Disruptive Conversations

As I wrote about over on Disruptive Telephony recently, Skype recently was attacked by a startup, fring, for allegedly blocking fring's connections. Today, over on this "Brafton" site, an unnamed author makes good points in "Skype/ fring battle indicates blogs can be good for brand management and link bait.

They point out that Skype was able to quickly respond to the attack with a post out in their own blog. The response post very clearly said that fring's claims were untrue and led to posts like mine that called fring's statement into question - as well as the update or revision of many of the posts that had gone out quickly with the initial news.

It was an effective response by Skype - and a great reminder of the power of having a blog with which they could in fact respond.

However, the Brafton writer goes on to point out something I'd noticed as well. Skype's blog post rapidly filled up with comments - but almost no responses from Skype employees. To their credit, Skype left comments wide open so people left all sorts of comments venting their frustration with various other aspects of Skype's policy.

As of this moment, there are 219 comments on the post - but only 2 are from someone at Skype (Peter Parkes - who is a great guy) answering 3 of the other 217 comments.

Now, many of the comments are purely venting about the lack of a non-Verizon Android app and a hundred other topics. Perhaps the folks at Skype just realized that they couldn't possibly satisfy the comments... and just decided to let people vent. Still, the paucity of Skype comments seems kind of glaring. As the Brafton write indicated, some of those comments express disappointment at not seeing more response from Skype... so the commenters did notice. One commenter (michael.nr.burrows) said:

Wow not many blogs get this vociferous, and you know what, the staggering lack of comment from Skype tells me a lot about their attitude to their customers.

It's curious... in the midst of those comments are some that would seem could have had a response.

The Brafton writer concludes:

The moral of the story is that blogs can be a powerful tool in managing a brand and generating inbound links, but it's important for corporate bloggers to keep a conversation going by responding to commenters in order to maximize blog brand-boosting opportunities.

I agree... the power of having a corporate blog is to be able to respond quickly to attacks that happen in blogs... but posting the initial post is just the start of the response.

P.S. Prior to writing this, I did try to reach out to Peter Parkes at Skype, but his mood message indicates he's on vacation through the weekend. Could part of Skype's challenge be that they only have one person focused on blog response? (I don't know.) Good question for you all - do you have coverage for people going on vacation?

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For over 5 years, I've been a paying customer of TypePad and use TypePad's blog hosting service for my 5 main blogs (this one, Disruptive Telephony, DanYork.com, Blue Box and Seven Deadliest UC Attacks). In fact, you'll note that one of those, danyork.com, is what I use as essentially my home page on the Internet. Beyond that, I have about 10 other blogs on TypePad that I've used for various projects, experiments, etc. (Once upon a time the Green Mountain Curling Club site was in my TypePad account. It's not anymore... someone else took it over when I left Vermont.)

Overall, I've been very pleased with TypePad's service. It's generally always worked... no major outages... quick and simple to put up new sites, complete with domain mapping... support has been relatively quick.

But I'm finding myself increasingly hitting limits or encountering challenges with the site - and I'm starting to think about potentially moving my sites... although the headaches involved with doing that make it fearsome to contemplate. Over a couple of posts I want to outline some of the limits I've run into and perhaps find out what other TypePad bloggers have done to combat those issues.

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Linking Between Sites

Perhaps my greatest frustration with TypePad right now is the difficulty involved with linking between sites within my own account on TypePad. For instance, today I wrote a post on my Blue Box Podcast blog that linked to two different posts (here and here) over on my 7 Deadliest UC Attacks blog. Given that I have referenced those posts on one of my other sites, I would like to have some mention of that reference on each of the 7 Deadliest UC Attacks posts.

Essentially, I want a trackback or pingback from the one new post to the two old posts.

You see, I guess I've gotten spoiled... WordPress just makes this trivial and automatic. For instance, over on Voxeo's blog portal, here's a post in one blog (Voxeo Talks) that references a post on a different blog (Emerging Tech Talk). Look at this second post... down there in the comments is the reference from the newer post:

What did I have to do to have this cross-blog linkage happen other than link from the new post to the old post?

NOTHING!

WordPress tries to send Pingbacks and the pings "just show up" on the other older posts. I don't have to think about it... I just link and it happens.

In contrast, here are the steps I had to go through to link my posts in TypePad.

1. Go to each of the old posts and find the Trackback URL - which involves scrolling down to the end of the post to find something looking like this:
   
2. Copy the Trackback URL- For each post to which you are linking, copy that big ugly Trackback URL.
   
   
3. Switch back to your new post - Either in the web interface or in an offline editor like MarsEdit (what I use).
   
   
4. Open the Trackback field and paste the URL.
   
   
5. Repeat the above steps for EACH post you reference.
   
   
6. Publish your post.
   
   
7. Approve the Trackbacks in the target blogs - For your own sanity, you pretty much have to run comment moderation if you blog is even remotely popular. The result is that Trackbacks get stuck in the moderation queue. So you have to go into the admin GUI and approve the trackbacks:
   
8. Repeat the preceding step in the admin interface for each blog referenced - In my case, the two posts I referenced today were both in the same blog, so I could go to one admin interface and approve them both. In cases where I reference posts across multiple blogs, I have to switch to the admin interface for each blog and approve the trackback. Not difficult to do... just tedious and extra time I have to spend.

So... eight or more steps in TypePad - versus zero steps in WordPress.

Can you see the frustration?

What I want is that if I link to a post in one of the other blogs that I own, then there should be some link automagically created back to my new post.

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Hideous Trackback URLs

The existing process might be a bit easier if the TypePad Trackback URLs were easy to create. Consider this Trackback URL from WordPress:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/voxeotalks/2010/07/15/slides-voxeos-unique-business-culture/trackback/

And then look at this one from TypePad:

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341bfc6e53ef01347fc3ed5a970c

What is simple about the first one? Easy, it is just the blog post URL with "/trackback" added on to it!

That's it.

So if I am linking to a previous post on a WordPress blog, I have to just visit the page once to get the URL of the post (or get the URL from another post) and then simply append "/trackback" to the URL to send a Trackback over to it. I never have to go back to that page. I never have to look down to the bottom of the post to find the Trackback URI. I just add /trackback and go on with writing. Easy to do after the fact as well - you never have to visit the page again.

Now, again, with WordPress supporting Pingback automagically, I don't need to use Trackbacks within my own site... but if I want to - it's easy to do.

The TypePad Trackback URLs, on the other hand, have no pattern I've seen... I must go back to the post page, hunt for the URL at the bottom of the post and copy/paste it back.

Again... not hard to do... just time-consuming.

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In the end, I want to run a network of blog sites - and quickly and easily link between them as I post new content referencing older posts.

TypePad really needs to make this easier.

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Want to learn more about the iPad? I was pleased to read in Facebook this morning that my friend Bryan Person is launching a new blog:

Exploring the iPad

Now, Bryan has literally just started the blog up, so the content there is just a couple of posts, but being an iPad user and finding more uses for it every day, I'm looking forward to Bryan's own explorations.

If you're an iPad fan, do check it out...

P.S. Thanks, Bryan, for linking to my video about the Camera Connection Kit.

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As I wrote about before (and also here), I think the Diaspora project is a great idea and regardless of whether or not the guys truly establish a open, distributed Facebook alternative, the reality is that we're going to get some darn good research done into how open, distributed systems can be created.

They said they would keep us updated, and true to their word they now have a blog post out: "One Month In"

For starters, I was not aware that they had taken up residence at Pivotal Labs... which I view as a great move for all involved.

The post gives a view of what they are working on, lays out their plans for the rest of the summer and provides some screenshoots of a working Diaspora implementation.

They also include this video that shows messages propagating from one Diaspora node to six other ones. It's not necessarily super compelling video... but it gives a glimpse into working code. And, as they note, this is communication happening without any browser refreshes and without an XMPP server in the background:

Diaspora Message Propagation (pre-alpha!) from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

All in all it's cool stuff and I'll continue to be interested to see what they come up with over the course of the summer!

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In one of those strange cases that makes we wonder if I should really be merging this blog with Disruptive Telephony, the folks over at Programmableweb.com announced they had been acquired by Alcatel-Lucent. I've long been a fan of the ProgrammableWeb site and their long lists of APIs and mashups, so I'm thrilled for them that they have found a way to keep the site going and evolving.

Still, the marriage with ALU just seems a bit... odd... I'm admittedly still trying to wrap my brain around it a bit. The reality, though, is that the "real-time web" is one in which it is all about APIs, and making data accessible to people and developers through open APIs. To that end, it does make a certain amount of sense for a communication company like ALU to look at how it can gain more prominence in "the API game". Perhaps this is a way to gain access to a developer community and, over time, help familiarize them with ALU products and services. We'll see.

I hope for the ProgrammableWeb folks that it does work out like this:

This milestone is a great opportunity for ProgrammableWeb and our community to work with a global organization who gets what open APIs are about, who value the independence of ProgrammableWeb, and who want to grow the open API ecosystem both in the world of telecommunications and beyond. In the end this step will bring PW to a whole new level in terms of fulfilling our mission to be the go-to place for open API developers.

Congrats to the whole ProgrammableWeb team, and, for the sake of the "open Internet", I do wish them all the best continuing to promote open APIs!

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Are you interested in how you can service customer requests across all the different communication channels they might use? Do you want to give your customers a choice in the way they interact with you? Rather than requiring them to call in to a customer service phone number, do you want to let them send you a text message? Or an IM? Or use Twitter?

If so, you may be interested in a free webinar I am giving tomorrow, Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 11:00 am US Eastern time titled "Unified Self-Service: Creating multi-channel communications apps using Voxeo tools". You can register for free.

I'll be talking about this concept we call "Unified Self-Service" where you can create a single application that interacts with customers across multiple communication channel (but not necessarily using the exact same user interface). It's a topic I blog about on Voxeo's site and mention in our various presentations.

Perhaps obviously to long-time readers, I have an interest in the "social" side of the communication, particularly as we talk about "Social CRM" and engaging with customers through social channels. You can naturally expect to hear me talk about that tomorrow as well.

Registration is free... and if you can't attend, the session will be archived for later viewing from our Developer Jam Session page (and if you register, we'll let you know when the archive is posted).

It's a fun topic... and I'm looking forward to the conversation we'll have tomorrow.

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As a writer, I have an admittedly sentimental attachment to the ancient world of typewriters. I own several... in fact I went through a phase where I thought it would be a cool idea to "collect" them... and accumulated 4 or 5 from various antique stores and yard sales before I confronted the reality that they are very heavy and there is just no easy way to display them, especially in a smaller house.

Still, though, there is something appealing about the old keys... the clicking sound... the ability to type text without batteries or any kind of power source...

Not that I want to return to those days, mind you. After several decades of word processing I think my brain is rather wired into typing text and then editing it later, rather than assembling it on paper or in your brain and typing it all out without errors. And I don't miss whiteout...

Anyway, I was amused to read on Mashable this morning that someone has a kit to turn your typewriter into a USB keyboard. You can apparently buy converted typewriters directly from usbtypewriter.com ... or you can buy a kit to convert your own. The site has step-by-step pictures of how to convert your typewriter.

Of course, as Gizmodo adds with snark... this means you can type even slower on your iPad... :-)

I don't know that I'll do this... although I'm thinking that I have a small Underwood Portable that might be perfect for this... but it's fun to see that someone has done this!

What do you think? Going to convert one of your old typewriters?

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Today, June 1, is the final day of Diaspora's funding drive over on Kickstarter. I love the exquisite irony of the graphic I've included on the right side of this post... "This product will only be funded if at least $10,000 is pledged by Tuesday Jun 1, 11:59pm EDT." .... given that the four guys are closing in on $200K in pledges!

As I wrote about before, the promise of Diaspora is an exciting one for advocates of the "open Internet". There are many challenges that they face in building a distributed, decentralized social network. There are some aspects of privacy and security that can be easier in a centralized model... but for our own long-term future, it's great to have some folks out there looking at this issue.

I wish the Diaspora team all the best with their work and will certainly be watching and looking at how I can help. Already, their concepts and ideas have increased the discussion about what we want the "social networking" part of the Internet to look like. They may not succeed... but if not they will certainly help us all in their trying. And in the best case, we'll have a new service to use that will let us have a bit more control.

Will they hit $200,000 in pledges today? 14 hours left... it doesn't matter, really... they've already received way more than they ever expected!

P.S. And yes, in full disclosure I should state that I am one of those 6000+ backers.

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With Google Wave now being available for everyone, and specifically now available for businesses using Google Apps, I thought I'd just post the 5 steps of how to enable Google Wave for your Apps account. (The steps appear in the video on the Google Apps page, but you have to watch the video to know that.)

1. LOGIN TO GOOGLE APPS

You have to be the administrator for your Google Apps domain in order to enable Google Wave.

2. CLICK "ADD MORE SERVICES"

Next to the "Service settings" heading there is a "Add more services" link. Follow that link:

3. CLICK "ADD IT NOW"

On the next screen, you just select the "Add it now" button:

4. CONFIRM YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS

Google throws up a page just warning you that you can't get support for Wave through existing support contracts... and other warnings. Just hit the "Yes, enable Google Wave" button:

5. START ENJOYING WAVE WITHIN YOUR APPS DOMAIN

That's it. Now you can just direct people within your Google Apps domain to go to:

http://wave.google.com/a/yourdomainname

and they can start waving! Here's what it looked like for me:

Now, as noted in the warnings, users in your Apps domain can by default also invite external people into your corporate waves. That may be a great thing... that may be something you want to think about.

In any event, enjoy waving within Google Apps!

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Remember Google Wave? The big buzz that we all talked about last year? (And that I wrote a good bit about here.) While some of us may have reduced (or dropped) our Wave usage, Google is naturally using it heavily and as 5,000+ developers all gear up for the big Google I/O conference this week in San Francisco, the word is out that you can follow along in "Live Waves" during the event. This big URL should take you there (assuming you have a Wave account):

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:group%253Aio2010-wave%2540googlegroups.com+tag%253Aio2010,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252BeRiTZrZkCcw

You should see something like this:

Note that if you are already in Wave you can simply enter this in the search box:

group:[email protected] tag:io2010

If you aren't familiar with the idea of using "live waves" for conference note-taking, you may want to view my Emerging Tech Talk #40 video podcast where I demonstrated how Google Wave could be used this way.

Note: Thanks for Jay Cuthrell for tweeting out this info.

P.S. If you are out at Google I/O, please say hello to our Voxeo Labs team who will be in the Google I/O Sandbox demonstrating Voxeo technologies and how they work with Google services

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