Disruptive Conversations

When writing my last post about iPad apps, I stumbled upon this post over on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): "iPad hacked with Verizon MiFi innards".  As the post explains, someone took apart their iPad and merged it with the contents of a Verizon MiFi:

Not something I'm personally thinking of doing anytime soon... but it's cool to see!

(And a sign of just how far people will go to NOT have to use Apple products with AT&T's network!)

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Um, TypePad ... isn't this a fairly obvious spam comment on my blog?  I mean... when the name includes "seo company" and it starts off "Lorem ipsum"....

As I've noted, I've been increasingly unhappy with aspects of TypePad's service... and the increasing number of spam comments that are getting through the "filters" TypePad has makes me wonder if the comment spam filters are being maintained and updated.  If this kind of thing continues, I think it's only going to drive me and others increasingly over to WordPress...

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A while back, the good folks at Skype did a thorough redesign of their blog. They moved the blogs to the "blogs.skype.com" domain and created a nice portal page that shows blog posts across all their various blogs. That portal page easily lets you see the "top stories".

They added in some great pictures of their primary bloggers. They spent some time just refreshing the overall artwork.

All in all the blog site looks great and the redesign was, to me, very nicely done.

Except...

While the form may be quite pleasing, the function is unfortunately not.

Here's the problem... from the "blogs.skype.com" portal, you can easily get an overall sense of what is being written across all Skype blogs and can visit posts you want to read. However, within a single blog (like this one) you see only a single post followed by this lovely link:

Yes, indeed, there is no way to quickly browse through the contents of a single blog! Instead you have to view each post individually and step through them one-by-one. That may be fine if someone has the time to go through and sit there scrolling down and then waiting for pages to load. But if you just want a quick view of what they are writing about... it's a mind-numbingly slow process.

For instance, I recently wanted to know what was new with the Skype client for Linux (not much, it turns out), so I went to the Skype Linux blog to learn more. The first post was quick and I could easily scroll down and click the "Old articles" link. The second post has 182 comments - and ALL comments are displayed! Given that the "Old articles" link ONLY appears at the bottom of a post, I had to scroll all the way down to the bottom to go back to the previous post.

RECOMMENDATIONS

If I were Skype (and I have no affiliation with them beyond being a very active Skype user), I would encourage them to:

1. Provide a way to see recent posts for a blog - Either display the posts on the main blog page in full form or as abstracts - or at the very least provide a widget or box that lists titles of recent posts, allowing someone to jump to a post based on the title.
   
   
2. Provide navigation on the TOP of posts - Forgetting about the issue with seeing all recent posts, if I am reading any blog post and want to go to the previous or next post, it's annoying to have to scroll all the way to the bottom. (And yes, my blog (this one) goes the other direction in only having nav links at the top, which is fine for browsing but kind of annoying if you've scrolled all the way to the bottom. I personally like blogs to have both links at the top and bottom.)
   
   
3. Consider not displaying the comments - If they left the blog as it is, I would at least not display comments by default. I personally like the display of comments by default... but if you have to scroll all the way down to see the navigation link, it can be a bit of a pain. I would not display them - as they seem to already do for the first post on each blog - and let people click the "Comments" link if they want to view them all.

What would you suggest? How could Skype make the navigation better?

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Over on the Socialized Software blog, Mark Hinkle came out today with a great post called "The Traveler's Guide to the iPad." He also included the great graphic I'm including here on the right. I love to see pictures like this that so aptly capture the intent of the post.

Anyway, Mark's post contains a solid list of apps that any iPad traveler should definitely consider. I'm actually quite partial to the Apple case, but that's just personal preference. I like his suggestion for the Verizon MiFi hotspot - I'm eligible right now to upgrade from my current Verizon data card to a MiFi and am definitely considering doing so.

I do like his app suggestions... DropBox and Evernote, in particular, are two that are now critical parts of my iPad routine. I also love the fact that an e-book reader allows me to read books on a plane that would be too bulky to carry in my already-space-optimized carryons. One addition that Alec Saunders recently turned me on to was "Rocket Taxi", an app that uses your iPhone GPS to find the nearest taxi companies to call for a cab. It's an iPhone app, but presumably would work great on the iPad as well.

There are a couple of other apps on his list that I'll be checking out...

I don't know about others of you who use an iPad while traveling, but for me the iPad has definitely become a key part of my travel routine... so it's great to see lists like this offering suggestions for other travelers.

If you use an iPad while traveling, what apps have you found useful?

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What was fascinating to me, though, was the role that Facebook played in the response to the accident.

When my wife called me to let me know what had happened, I was 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles getting ready to go out for a run before a long day at the ITEXPO conference/trade show speaking on a panel, meeting with analysts and recording some video interviews. There was obviously not much I could do from 3,000 miles away beyond try to reach a couple of people on the phone to see if they could help.

But what I did do was post a status update on Facebook.

What happened next was what we in the security community would refer to as a "denial-of-service attack" on our phone line... our home phone started ringing and pretty much didn't stop the entire day. (And the "DoS" aspect is that we do not have call-waiting, so new callers got a busy signal for most of the day.) Our truly wonderful friends and family in the greater Keene, NH, area reached out to my wife with so many offers of help and support... it was incredibly humbling and VERY much appreciated. Email messages and Facebook messages poured in... to the point that there was simply no way my wife could even begin to answer them all. The word spread from Facebook out through email and phone to other channels, as well, letting people know at our daughter's school, for instance.

As someone remote it was extremely reassuring to me to see the comments on my status updates, to see the posts on my wife's Facebook wall/updates and to see the messages coming in. As I rearranged my schedule and spent most of the day on planes flying home, those messages certainly gave me a sense of reassurance that even though I personally could not be there to help, others were there to help.

It was a powerful personal reminder of the power of a connected community - and an interesting view into using a global tool like Facebook for local action in your community.

And yes, we've had tools for building online communities for 30+ years now.... BBSs, email lists, online services (think CompuServe), web forums... and a hundred other forms. Facebook is only the latest major player in the well-worn space... and 5 years from now maybe we'll still be on Facebook or maybe we'll have migrated to something else.

There is power there, though... the power of bringing people together - and so easily distributing news and information. Much more to write on this, methinks...

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What do you get when you combine a presentation done with Prezi and the screen capture tool ScreenFlow?

A pretty cool way to quickly create a video to tell a story!

This morning our Voxeo Labs team was working on launching a new application called "Tropo AGItate". They had a blog post, but it didn't really go far enough in telling the story of how this new service worked. So our CEO Jonathan Taylor, who has been experimenting a lot with Prezi lately, whipped up a quick Prezi to explain what happens. A group of us collectively tweaked it a small bit ... and then I launched ScreenFlow on my iMac, put Prezi in full-screen mode and recorded the presentation with a voiceover.

It did take me several takes to get the timing down right... but after that I simply went to the File menu in ScreenFlow, chose "Publish to YouTube...", filled out the video description fields... and a few minutes later the video was exported and uploaded to YouTube!

Super simple and easy! And we were pleased with the result:

(Warning to my marketing friends: This is from our Labs team and so is on the geekier side of things :-)

P.S. A tip to anyone who my try this kind of recording themselves... Prezi lets you advance using the right arrow key, so I didn't have to use my mouse at all.

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Dear Facebook,

Can you please help us out here?  You see, we've come to understand that so much of the conversation these days is happening within the pretty walls of your garden. We like it.  We write there. We play there. We post photos. All is happy.

Some of us have even created Facebook "Pages" for various parts of our lives.  We've created Pages for our businesses or employers, schools, churches, community groups, bands, bars, blogs, causes, projects and pretty much anything else we want to promote.  I've done it myself for a book I wrote and also maintain my employer's Page (Voxeo).

Here's the problem.  There are certain <expletives deleted> unethical people who believe that they have a right to fill up your Facebook Page with links to whatever products or services they are paid to shill.  So they find your Facebook Page and leave posts on your Wall or add them as Links.

They are slimy spammers - and their garbage pollutes our Page and detracts from the conversations we want to have.

Sure, we as "Page administrators" can remove the postings to our Page, BUT WE HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT THEM FIRST!

This is the crux of the problem.  After all this time, you still don't provide any way for us to know when someone has posted something to our Page.  Sure, you give us a weekly email summary of the activity on our pages... but that doesn't really help us know what has been posted.

We have to keep going to back to each Page and checking now and then to make sure spammers aren't polluting our page!

But what I don't get, dear Facebook, is why this is so hard to do... I mean, you send email notifications for practically everything else that goes on within your pretty walls!  Most of my personal email inbox these days seems to be filled up with various notifications of who commented on what and who wrote on my wall and who sent me this and who did what to whom...

In fact, I can even get all those notifications by text message and receive them "in the moment" on my mobile phone.

So you are already notifying-us-to-death, Facebook... but why can't you give us the one notification that we as content creators within your walls really need?   I mean, part of the point of Pages seems to be so that we'll buy ads to promote our pages and get more "Likers" (side note: what the heck was wrong with "Fans"? It was so much easier to say).

So if we're creating pages to then create ads to then give you MONEY, wouldn't it make sense to help us out a bit?

Just send us yet another notification or text message whenever someone posts something new to our Pages.  Can it really be that hard for you to do?

Thanks for listening (or not),

Dan

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At the very severe risk of opening myself up to endless spam comments from a zillion people trying to get me to buy their hosting services... I want to ask you, dear readers and friends, a simple question:

Who do you recommend for hosting WordPress sites?

For some time now I have been unhappy here on TypePad... many reasons, some of which I've written about and others that I started writing about earlier this week... and then SixApart dropped the news that it had been acquired - and I seriously wonder what kind of investment TypePad will really get. But that's for another post...

Anyway, I'm finally gearing up to bite the bullet and move over to WordPress, a platform I use daily and have become extremely pleased with. I looked at WordPress.com and in fact have a couple of smaller experimental blogs there... but it is too limiting for someone like me. So I need to go self-hosted.

Type "WordPress hosting" into Google, though, and you get a zillion entries... everybody and their brother, sister, mother, father, aunts and uncles seems to be in the game.

In doing some research, I'd narrowed it down to a few services... and was pleased to see them listed on http://wordpress.org/hosting/ when I found that site.

Here's what I want:

• EASY INSTALLATION - I want to just make a couple of clicks and have WordPress up and running... I don't want to download it, set up MySQL, do the Apache config, etc. Been there, done that... I'm looking to write, not administer.
  
  
• MULTI-SITE - I have a network of blogs... I need a hosting provider that supports WordPress 3.0 in its full MultiSite usage.
  
  
• EASY UPDATES AND PLUGIN INSTALLATION - WP 3 has all sorts of great ways to update the system, install plugins, update plugins... I want to use all that WP goodness. (I don't want to be waiting for a provider to have the latest and greatest version available. I want to get it all direct after install.)
  
  
• DOMAIN MAPPING - It goes without saying that I want to map all my various domains to WP in MultiSite mode.
  
  
• BACKUPS - While I'll make my own backups, I want the provider making backups, too.
  
  
• COMMAND LINE - Having said all the "easy installation" stuff, I do want to be able to ssh into the server and muck with it if I want or need to. In fact, I'd potentially like to be able to run python scripts for Tropo apps on it. I may want to run other software, too.
  
  
• RELIABILITY, SCALABILITY, SECURITY, STABILITY - It should go without saying that I want all of these traits in a hosting provider, too.
  
  
• OUTSTANDING SUPPORT - I work for a company that provides hosting for communications apps. We provide an insanely high level of customer support (in fact, we call our teams "Customer Obsession Teams")... our team have set a high bar for me personally... so I'm looking for a provider who can give a high level of rapid response, assistance, etc.

And naturally, I don't want it to cost an enormous amount. I kind of like what MediaTemple offers... although some of the others out there have better pricing... what do you all think? If you do self-hosted WordPress, who do you use? Why did you choose them? Any other criteria you would add to my list above? (Feel free to email me if you don't want to post public comments.)

Thanks in advance... and naturally I'll be chronicling my move from TypePad over to WordPress... from everything I've read there are parts of it that will be potentially quite painful. :-(

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Want to learn about how to set up a corporate blog using WordPress? Want to find out how you can get involved with social media on a limited budget?

I'm not usually one to promote commercial webinars on this site... in fact, I don't think I've ever done it before. But I'll make an exception for Ragan's "WordPress blogging for business" webinar coming up October 21, 2010, from 2-3:15 US Central time.

Why? Two reasons:

1. I'm a huge fan of WordPress, have built Voxeo's multi-blog portal on WordPress and maintain a blog about using WordPress for business.
   
   
2. Because I'm a heavy user of WordPress, I want more people to use WordPress for business... the more business users of WordPress there are, the more plugins will be written that are business-focused, the more tips will be shared, the more consultants will be able to specialize... etc, etc.... it's one of those opportunities like the Apache web server where all win by the collective usage and sharing.

So I applaud Ragan for running this webinar. It's not free, but at $99 it's not expensive, either. The agenda also look great:

• Use the right strategy to name the blog—using a subdomain or a separate URL
• Install WordPress software using WordPress.com or Wordpress.org
• Customize your blog's settings and create various user profiles
• Find the best plugins for your blog's needs
• Create your keyword publishing guide through search optimization strategies for blogging
• Design a publishing calendar to keep your blog relevant, interesting and useful
• Establish and publish a blog comment moderation policy
• Know how and when to participate as publisher and commenter
• Sprinkle social media content throughout the blog
• Use Google Analytics to measure blog traffic and activity

If I were giving this webinar that is the kind of agenda I'd choose.

Now, I'm going out on a limb here a bit as I don't know the presenter, Pete Codella... I've never heard him before and so I have no idea how good he may or may not be. Ragan is NOT a non-profit, though... they need to keep their lights on, so I'm going to assume that Monsieur Codella is a good presenter.. his bio seems solid, too.

Anyway... if you are interested in potentially using WordPress for your blog site, do check out this webinar.

Disclosure: I have NO financial connection to Ragan Communications and they have no clue that I am writing this post. I should note, though, that they are one of the sponsors of the "For Immediate Release" podcast to which I contribute weekly reports. I do not, however, receive any financial compensation for my involvement with FIR. I just think this is a cool webinar that Ragan is offering.

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A few weeks back, Mitch Joel wrote a great post on his blog called "Online Video Can Kill Your Credibility" that really asked those of us involved with video online to step up our game a bit and really look at how to make better videos.  Mitch, who admittedly does not create video himself, pointed out that with the sheer volume of videos being uploaded daily we need to look at how to improve the production so that our videos stand out.  He offered several suggestions, of which I'll point out:

• AUDIO - It has always amazed me how incredibly important audio is to video. Mitch has a number of good pointers here.
  
  
• LIGHTING - This may be obvious, but it's a point that people so often don't pay enough attention to - make sure you have good lighting!
  
  
• BACKGROUNDS - It does matter what is behind you. Does it support your story? Or does it at least not detract from your story? (i.e. do people watching your video spend their time trying to figure out what the big orange thing on your shelf is?)

I agree with Mitch on the value in Steve Garfield's great book, Getting Seen - and I in fact recorded a video review about the book.

However, I'm not sure I entirely agree with Mitch's overall view that without improving production values your videos are doomed to die.

It all depends upon your audience.

It may be that the format for your videos may be perfectly fine as the "man-in-the-street" form with quick interviews taken with a Flip camera and rapidly posted. It may be that your video shot in your messy office fits in with the theme of the show.

Or not.

Mitch's post is a great reminder of the natural evolution that occurs in every "new media" as it matures into just "media". Go back to the mid-80s when the Macintosh first came out and brought everyone into the world of "desktop publishing". Do you remember the "ransom note publishing" that ensued when everyone started throwing a zillion fonts on a page just because they could? Do you remember how many horrid looking documents were created? Over time, though, people learned to use the tools better and expectations were raised for a higher level of document.

Similarly, back in the early '90s when the Web was brand new, pretty much everyone had to connect in to a server and edit HTML files by hand. The fact that you HAD a web site was the huge deal - so people didn't care as much about what it looked like. Over time, expectations have been raised and (thankfully!) many of the atrocious sites have been left back in the 90's.

Ditto podcasting... back in the early 2000's when podcasting first appeared it was perfectly fine if someone just turned on the microphone and pressed record. It was a new, joint experiment and any podcast was cool... ditto video podcasts...

Novelty trumps production values.

To Mitch's point, though, there comes a point in time when the "new media" is so commoditized that higher quality content does rise and get greater visibility. It is up to all of us who create video to take a look and ask ourselves - what will we do to stand out from the competition? How will you improve the quality of what you are doing?

I know what I want to do with my show - what are you going to do with yours?

P.S. And yes, we're in this funny state where you don't want to improve your quality too much or people see it as "too commercial" and "not authentic" - there's a balance in there somewhere... that will undoubtedly change over time as well.

Note: Photo courtesy of pursuethepassion on Flickr.