In what the company called Blogger's biggest announcement in several years, Googleintroduced a versatile template designer this morning that opens up a wide array of creative high-quality designs to the millions of users on the platform. The launch comes in the wake of Blogger's 10th anniversary, and raises the bar in terms of both appearance and ease of customization, guiding Blogger users to leverage new professionally designed themes with thousands of background images, and customization on layout and color themes. The combined package could mean the end of flat-looking Blogger templates, and gives potential WordPress users or switchers a serious alternative.
The new Blogger Template Designer, which launched on Blogger In Draft, features 15 new professional templates at introduction, with more to come, including anticipated user submissions, customized layouts with up to three columns, hundreds of background images via a partnership with iStockphoto, and the ability to change colors and fonts across the site. The package, which I will definitely be messing around with shortly, is an effort to give everyone their own personal look and feel that doesn't appear to be "cookie cutter".
Blogger's New Template Designer In Action
"How people look on the Web is really important, especially if it comes to publishing or blogging," said Siobhan Quinn, a product manager of Blogger at Google yesterday. "We wanted to empower people to create their own unique design, with tools that are extremely simple and powerful at the same time. We believe the blog is your blog, and you should be able to do anything you want with it."
Prior to this morning's launch, the vast majority of existing Blogger templates were created by or impacted by Google's then visual design lead Doug Bowman in 2005. With Doug now at Twitter for a year, and the templates looking somewhat stale, not to mention difficult to parse in HTML (trust me), it is high time for new designs.
Blogger Template Designer's Image Picker
Blogger Template Designer's Layout Tab
The introduction of a few dozen templates for Blogger wouldn't be that much of a big deal, except for the fact the company has leveraged the engineering talent at Google, and applied that to its new design options. As was explained yesterday, every template can be applied to every available site layout, and if users opt to tilt their blog toward one specific color theme or another, care is taken to make sure the text and images are not only readable, but look good.
Blogger Template Designer's Advanced Tab Options
This customization leverages a new concept of a "main color theme" which as Quinn explained, "lets you shift from one complementary set to another, with an infinite number of palettes in the color spectrum."
Blogger users who tap into these new designs will get the option to modify the existing templates through a Layout tab that lets them apply any template to any layout, including 8 body layouts and 3 footer layouts. You can even adjust the width of any column to get customization down to the pixel. As the sidebars are edited, they present different "drop regions" for Gadgets you may have installed. And if you want to get into the code, there is always the option to muck with the HTML to make it yours. Should you want to add a customized CSS file, you can add that as well, and even remove it later without seeing your blog fall apart, as Blogger uses your code to override their own, not deleting it outright.
With tens of millions of Blogger blogs out there, even if Google offered hundreds of pre-made templates, they would still be recognizable as Blogger hosted. Now, if Blogger users do revamp their blogs with the new Blogger Template Designer, they can take on the author's personality in a new way. Watch this space, as I may be leveraging them myself shortly.
Brazen Careerist Adds Future-Focused Social Resumes
For most of us, resumes are updated with great irregularity - usually just before leaving one job, and just after arriving at another. These resumes also are much more focused on our pasts than our future - highlighting previous jobs and degrees, durations of each stop, and what we think were the most notable accomplishments. In parallel, online resumes that encourage connections, such as LinkedIn and Plaxo, are dominated by connections to previous colleagues and partners found at each position. This leaves the often most-difficult portion of the resume, the objective, as the only major segment that looks to the future - and all the focus on previous accomplishments makes the entire process more challenging for new entrants into the workforce, with little or no experience that matches their goals or potential.
Brazen Careerist, a social network aimed at generation Y professionals, took a look at this gap and has made moves to turn the resume around, focused as much on one's ideas and forward-looking goals as it is on their work history. The site encourages users, who are posting upwards of 100,000 updates a month to the network, to add "Top Ideas" to their resume, where they are given high precedence which can hopefully overcome one's assumed lacking years of experience. These top ideas, like other engagements on the site, are open to comments and discussion from other members, making the resumes not just about these top ideas, but social as well.
Ryan Paugh's "Top Ideas" On His Brazen Resume.
The network lies in between the more established social networks of LinkedIn and Facebook. LinkedIn can be rigid and stodgy for an older generation, with Facebook presumably being very casual. Thus, so too is the social, ideas-based resume, a less formal, but still professional way to communicate one's business goals and inspiration.
You can add up to five "Top Ideas", up to 500 characters apiece, and rank them any way you wish, on top of your more traditional resume on the site. (see mine here) If you change your mind as to your top thoughts any time later, you can delete old ones and replace them with newer priorities.
Brazen's Top Ideas Are Both Integrated And In a Dedicated Tab
Brazen Careerist is tapping into generation Y's proclivity to be active in social networks, while also presenting them the opportunity to organize their thoughts. The site suggests: "Conversations happen pretty fast on the web, and before you know it, they're forgotten. Effortlessly organize the most important things you have to say so employers, colleagues and friends don't forget just how smart you really are."
I have been working with Brazen Careerist since the beginning of the year, and they are a client of Paladin Advisors Group. The launch of social ideas-based resumes also follows the network's recent overhaul which makes the site much more like Facebook or FriendFeed, letting you post to a "Fan Feed", recommend entries and add comments. The result is a much more friendly and social experience than a LinkedIn, but focused on career mobility, not entertainment.
Will the addition of "Top Ideas" to one's resume help potential recruiters and employers get to know candidates better before reaching out? It certainly can't hurt. Brazen Careerist's moves are welcome in a world of resumes that haven't updated much in a long time.
Coverflow for Feeds? Google Reader Goes to "Play".
Anybody who watches my online activity knows that I try to consume a ridiculous amount of information and filter out the best to you. My most efficient tool for that is Google Reader, which captures all the feeds I am interested in, as well as recommendations from friends I follow. The best of these items get shared. But not everybody wants to read a ton of items as fast as possible, in the order they were received, with no sorting on relevance. With that in mind, Reader is experimenting with a new tool called "Google Reader Play", available today in Google Labs. The presentation of Play is a lot like Apple's Coverflow, showing one item at a time, in full screen. And the more you use Play, it adapts to what you like. (See their blog post)
Some of Play's promise sounds reminiscent of my6sense, the digital intuition iPhone app I help to advise as part of Paladin. Brian Shih, product manager at Google Reader, explained that Play watches your behavior, and tailors itself to your own personal interests.
One Item (A Video) Displayed In Google Reader Play
"As you browse, let us know which stuff you enjoy by clicking the "like" button, and we'll use that info to show you more stuff that you'll like," he said in an e-mail. "If you want, you can also choose categories and we'll personalize your stream to only show you stuff from those categories."
The technology behind Play has been publicly available in Reader for some time, including the same code behind "Recommended" items and sources, as well as the sorting function they call "Magic". While you don't need a Google account to use Play, if you do sign in, it will be personalized with items that you already like, including items that people you follow in Reader have shared, as well as other items similar to those things you have taken action on before.
One Item Displayed In Google Reader Play
The learning process for Reader's Play is based on both implicit and explicit behavior. Without your needing to fill out forms online indicating what you like or don't like, Google will figure out your preferences based on your own behavior - just as my6sense does on the mobile app for RSS and social streams.
Shih says by no means is Play intended to replace Google Reader outright. He says "both Google Reader and Reader Play are about finding and reading interesting stuff online". Play is supposed to be, yes, more fun, while Reader is all about organization, tracking your history and making sure all your items are read. From within Reader, you can view any feed in "Play" by opening the feed settings and opting to "View in Reader Play". (See image on left)
Disclosure: My6sense is an assumed competitor to some aspects of Google Reader, and My6sense is a Paladin Advisors Group client, where I am managing director of new media.
Thing Labs, the parent company of Brizzly, one of the more innovative Twitter Web clients out there, unveiled a slew of announcements this morning, with the acquisition of popular iPhone application Birdfeed and WikiRank, a visualization Web app based on Wikipedia data. The acquisitions will help fuel the launch of Brizzly's first branded iPhone application, and a new Brizzly Guide, which extends the trend explanations core to Brizzly since the product debuted with permanent definitions, accessible even after a topic stops trending.
The Brizzly Guide, as you can assume, looks much like Wikipedia, integrating a trending topics definition with related links, and a Twitter search. For example, Chuck Norris is trending because he turns 70 years old today, and SXSW is trending because of its debut on March 12th. This furthers the company's focus on the Let's Be Trends API launched last fall.
Why Is Chuck Norris Trending? Because Chuck Norris Trends When He Wants.
"I would love to see the Guide fill the gap in 'why are people talking about this' and 'what is it' that I don't see on Wikipedia or other search/news sources. Wikipedia is definitely of great value and we use it for context on some Guide pages," said Thing Labs CEO Jason Shellen. "We are turning on new ways to contribute and can't wait to see how our users continue to help explain the world around them."
Brizzly's new iPhone application, released today, has been much awaited, and a clear hole in their lineup. But the company took a different approach. Rather than building their own app from scratch, they acquired Birdfeed, and worked with the developer, Buzz Andersen (@buzz), who recently joined Jack Dorsey's Square, to add new features and release it as a branded app.
Brizzly's New iPhone App With Custom Tabs and Photos
The new iPhone app features many Brizzly-only features, including Brizzly Guide support, uploading of photos to Brizzly Pics, and muting from Brizzly.com. It also features multiple account support, lists, saved searches, classic retweets, custom tabs and infinite scrolling, according to a microsite on the new product, found at http://brizzly.com/iphone/.
Google Buzz Integrating With Apps Still Pending
Editor's Note: This version replaces a prior one that suggested rollout had already started.
When Google Buzz debuted a month ago, integrating a new social network into your GMail, it did not roll out to business accounts running GMail on Google Apps. At the time, the company promised Apps customers would see Buzz added "within a few months." A premature promotion of the mobile version of Buzz to both consumer GMail users and Apps users made some see Buzz erroneously, before its time.
On Tuesday, as Susan Beebe's showed, many Apps users saw Buzz appear as "New" in their GMail settings, with a description of the new service. But that excitement proved to be short-lived, as explained by Todd Jackson, GMail Project Manager at Google, late Tuesday night.
"Nope, we haven't released Buzz to Apps customers yet. We had a small issue this afternoon where we mistakenly promoted the mobile version of Buzz to both consumer Gmail users and Apps users, but this is now fixed," he said.
When Buzz actually does go live for Apps, the social sharing service, which took some initial criticism for aggressive connecting and transparency, taking a step into the corporate world, will need to do so tentatively, as discovery of partnerships, let alone recruiters or other relationships, is more dicey than familial or casual friend connections that dominate most GMail activity.
A year ago, I introduced you to a simple, but challenging, iPhone game called Doodle Jump. Produced by Lima Sky, the fun game, which took advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer and had you jumping from platform to platform in search of new high scores, has seen phenomenal success, passing one million downloads before the end of 2009. Thus, it's no surprise that its success has drawn what I perceived to be the highest form form of flattery - complete copying, possibly with the intention of making you think there is a new companion game to the app, called "Doodle Run".
This evening, I got a press release on the new Doodle Run, being told I could "Run, fly, and shoot your way through danger with Doodle Run for iPhone". The game's graphics even were reminiscent of the trendsetting Doodle Jump, leveraging graph paper in the background of what looked to be a hand-drawn figure and hand-drawn scenery.
From the Doodle Run Press Release...
I immediately thought Doodle Run was the companion game to Doodle Jump, and clicked through to the Web site for Doodle Run, only to find out it wasn't Lima Sky behind the application, but instead, a developer called eBattalion, whose other work includes games such as Nanoids, Love Link and FLIP, also on the iTunes store - all of which were updated on March 8th, for whatever reason. It seemed to me that the addition of the word "Doodle" to their new Run game was to seize on the popularity of Doodle Jump and trick casual visitors like me into downloading their latest 99 cents offer without thinking.
I e-mailed Igor Pusenjak, co-founder of Lima Sky, to ask if the game was theirs or if there was any affiliation. It is not, and my e-mail was the first they had heard of it. Igor responded:
"Your assumptions are correct. This is not our game nor do we have any agreement with the developers. Thanks for bringing this to my attention."
I sent an e-mail to the eBatallion team as well, and they said that "no copyrights or trademarks were violated in the development of Doodle Run and the title is very descriptive of the actual content in the product." Sam, the developer, also pointed me to other applications, such as Doodle Army and Doodle Bomb, that used the same language, going so far as to suggest Doodle Jump was "very similar" to another product, called Papi Jump.
"The word “Doodle” is intended to describe the graphic style of the game, not any association with any of the other numerous doodle-style games on the App Store."
On first blush, this seemed like bad intentions of the highest order, which could and does cause confusion in the marketplace. Even if this game is amazing, I am avoiding it on name alone. But eBatallion may have a point that Lima Sky doesn't have a monopoly on the word "Doodle".
SocialToo Expands Twitter Phishing Protection to All Users
Increased use of Twitter has made the users sharing and clicking on links more attractive to both legitimate businesses and ill intended people looking to steal passwords or guide you to unsavory sites. Seemingly each week there are new stories about phishing attempts that prey on direct messages (DMs) from trusted people, and if compromised, these accounts could lead to more spam, just spreading the mess further. SocialToo, a company led by Jesse Stay, and one where I am an advisor, has opted to take a proactive approach to enable phishing protection for all users, not just those with a premium setup, or those who had manually enabled filters themselves. The result is a much-improved, and safer, Twitter environment.
The move, as outlined in Jesse's post from this morning, means that anybody who has ever created a SocialToo account, even a free one, is protected from receiving direct messages that contain known phishing attempts.
Prior to today's move, SocialToo had already blocked nearly 20,000 malicious messages, just on the 2,000 users who had enabled the feature, an average of about 10 per user. With phishing protection now enabled for 60,000+ accounts, the volume should similarly scale thirty-fold.
Over the time Jesse has been working on SocialToo, there have been multiple instances where his application has publicly noted phishing attempts faster than any official word from Twitter, or the press covering Twitter. Rather than leverage this opportunity to extract money from users, we agreed it made more sense to do the right thing and get these protections out to the much wider audience.
"As has always been a priority, we feel keeping your stream clean and the web in general a cleaner place is important," he writes. "Hopefully this makes a significant change in how clean the streams of Twitter users are."
As an advisor, and as a SocialToo user, I have had phishing protection enabled on my account for quite some time, and the coverage of such attacks almost catches me amused, as I never see the ill-intended direct messages targeting my mail box. In fact, SocialToo tells me more than 140 direct messages to me have already been filtered, automatically.
I believe that using Twitter without having SocialToo enabled would be as silly as running a Windows computer without having antivirus enabled. Even if you won't convert to the premium plans offered by SocialToo, you should set up an account to get your Twitter messages protected.
Four More Join Twitter via Yahoo!, Google, LinkedIn, Retail
Twitter's growing ranks continue to swell practically every Monday this year, and today is no exception, as the blue birded microblogging service added four more to its arsenal today with an interesting mix of well-known tech faces and a curveball, also taking on an executive from a franchise furniture store in San Francisco. The latest hires take the company's full-time roster closer to 150, and swell the number being followed on their official list to more than 170.
The three new hires from LinkedIn, Google and Yahoo! are also joined by Caroline Quick, who along with her husband, Josh, built out a furniture business, called EQ3, which launched in 2003 and started to take off the following year. Caroline's LinkedIn profile describes how she oversaw the build-out of two multi-million dollar retail locations in San Francisco and Emeryville, which are the company's top performing stores in North America.
Isaac Hepworth, who left Google at the end of January after 3 1/2 years there, didn't spend much time on a planned break, announcing his joining Twitter in mid-February. He starts today as a product manager for Twitter after his role at Google as a group program manager focused on partner solutions. Products he impacted while at Google included AdSense, Android and YouTube.
Kristen joins Twitter as an executive assistant to Evan Williams, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was previously executive assistant to Carol Bartz, Yahoo! CEO, and prior to Bartz, she held the same role working with the since-departed Sue Decker.
Despite Isaac's addition and the fact that both Biz and Ev hailed from Blogger, part of Google, Twitter hasn't become completely dominated by former Googlers, as we have seen hires join the company from practically every major tech company since the beginning of the year, including Facebook, Microsoft, Ning, IBM, Six Apart and others as well. The wide array of backgrounds should make for interesting discussions as the company makes strategic decisions going forward.
Editor's Note: A previous version did not denote Kristen Cordle's role and background, which has now been included.
BackType Launches Labs, BackType Me, for Social News
BackType, the best comments search engine on the Web, which launched in 2008 and has since morphed to act as a "real-time, conversational" search engine, today announced the introduction of BackType Labs, an "in progress" look at some of their newer projects. The first to debut is a service called BackType Me, which aims to find out what content is being shared by people you follow on Twitter.
Shares from Within My Social Circle on BackType Me
Now, searching BackType displays shared items from friends as well, which feeds the BackType Me product. Search BackType for a specific term (for example, the Oscars) and if logged in, you can see which of your connections shared a specific article on Twitter. The core BackType Me service displays all content shared in your social circle, and highlights the individuals who have shared it.
BackType Me could be a quick way to scan important items shared on social sites from friends in your network, and I assume we can expect more to come from BackType Labs. The team is already hinting at something called "BT.IO", which could be yet another URL shortener or something else entirely. We'll be watching them at work in the Labs when it debuts.
For Many Families, Facebook Is The Real World Web
Facebook is huge in practically every way measurable. The site sports more than 400 million active users, and just passed Yahoo! for the 2nd most trafficked site on the Web, made even more impressive by the number of hours each active user on the site spends using the platform each month. The company's Facebook Connect product is setting itself up as a challenger to represent your identity online, and many anticipate the company taking on PayPal or other products for online transactions. But even more than the raw numbers, the impact Facebook has, from sharing, to members' gestures, to the act of friending and unfriending, cannot be overstated. For while many of us digerati get all atwitter about newer, shinier objects, the mainstream Web has made Facebook their central gathering place to talk with casual friends, family members, and even talk business. Now, activities online affect those offline, and offline events directly impact a response on Facebook.
Offline Impacts Online. Online Impacts Offline.
About a year ago, I said Facebook's success made it the social media prism and translator, by which all newer tools could be described. But as the site adds functionality and sheer mass, it's possible that could render many of its potential challengers irrelevant.
Even as I try service after service, or single-use products, those in my family who have made the Web less of a central point in their lives have taken to Facebook in a way unseen with any other product. While my family has generally been among the faster to adopt other platforms, like e-mail, or even blogging, Facebook has become the central point where messages are sent, photos are shared, updates are given, and offline relationships are mirrored. Now, rather than making phone calls to see how everyone is doing, it can be a lot easier to check one's Facebook status, read their Wall, and see what other friends of theirs are saying. And when we do meet face to face, we can reference what we've seen on Facebook, instead of starting with an empty slate.
Facebook Connect for All Platforms
As with most families, ours occasionally has bumps. Marriages show cracks, and siblings fight, just like any other unit. When one couple was rumored to be talking of splitting, it became even more official when the in-law unfriended all of the other's siblings and relatives, making a clean break. When friend requests came from the crazy aunt who had ridiculous political leanings, it was declined. And people internally squabble about why one sibling's photos get a ton of comments, but another's don't.
I have seen and heard many similar conversations in families everywhere. What seems to be happening, as Facebook becomes THE default social network, where people are expected to be connected, and always listening, is that other sites become utilities for specific functions. Google is used as a search utility. Yahoo! becomes a news site or finance hub. ESPN is for sports. But Facebook has become that go-to site that absorbs what many other sites used to. It has become the platform for sharing photos, the platform for messaging, the platform for casual games, and personal connections. Its continued growth and visibility reinforces this position, as over time, the Facebook hold outs join up and get connected.
I may prefer Google Buzz and FriendFeed and Twitter and SmugMug and all these other best-of-breed sites for their specific use cases, but thus far, I haven't been able to convert the family to converge with me there. Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web platform with external services feeding in, and it feeding out. It becomes the conduit, but also the destination.
EdgeTheory: Twitter’s Firehose, Emerging Business Model
As mentioned on Monday, Twitter introduced firehose access to their API for seven new partners. This evening, Chris Saad, Mashable's Ben Parr and I discussed the announcement of Twitter’s new API partnerships and implications for the company's revenue, developer and user communities.
Is this approach competitive or cooperative with the community, and how is their model likely to change over time?
How Interesting Are You? Your Twitter Stream Might Know.
Do you drink too much? Do you have what it takes to be a movie critic? Are you the Foursquare mayor of your own office? A new service, in its infancy, has emerged to find out the answers to those questions and others, by analyzing your Twitter stream, providing you with a score, per category, and pitting your results against those of other Twitter users from across the Web. In its undiscovered phase, the app doesn't have too many results, but if you run the service against your account (and so do your friends), you just might find out you're the biggest social media guru in the world (or the biggest drunk).
How Big a Nerd Are You? Find Out.
Start out by heading to http://howinterestingareyou.com/. You'll find the site has preloaded a number of questions, including whether you like to cook, whether you are a nerd (I only got 1 point and demand a recount!), or if you are a "real gamer".
One Query's Score Lets Me See the Ranks or Add a Comment
Click "Find out", and after the service taps into your Twitter account, using OAuth, you gain a score, and can view the rank against your peers, in a leaderboard. If so inclined, you can add a comment to that score, which is placed on your result (and your profile). If you don't add a comment the first time, but want to later, just run the query again, and add or edit a comment later.
How Interesting Is It That I'm Not Very Diversified?
Your personal profile (and those of all who use the service) shows the total score you have received, your top 9 scores overall, and even shows the results in a pie chart. With 114 points as a "social media guru" (Boo! Hiss!) and only 38 elsewhere, that result dominates my chart. But if you are less one-sided than I am, you can probably fare better.
If you haven't seen a lot of applications built in the last few weeks that leverage the Google Buzz API, it's because there aren't any. In fact, Google hasn't yet rolled out any API for Buzz. According to the company, this isn't due to any backroom dealings where they plan to introduce proprietary code and hooks that tie activity to their platform, but instead, because they wanted to be sure they could first build a product that in fullness leveraged open Web standards, and start with that foundation to deliver an interoperable system that could continue to function even if Google were to "disappear off the face of the earth".
In a presentation to the Silicon Valley Google Technology Users Group last night, held at the Google campus, DeWitt Clinton, a software engineer for the company, talked to developers and other tech enthusiasts about the company's API strategy and approach to Buzz, and explained that Buzz is designed not to increase lock-in to Google, but instead, to leverage open technologies that will let data flow to and from sites without central ownership. While a Buzz API will eventually be released, it will leverage the same open standards that power it today.
"The first principle of Buzz is that we can build this on protocols that are open and free, but not centralized," DeWitt said. "Can Google disappear off the face of the earth and Buzz still works? We need to make this data federated and distributed."
On the day Buzz launched, I referenced much of the foundation for Buzz in a quick article about the open tools and APIs that "make Buzz hum". But last night, DeWitt expanded that story to include 9 major open APIs, briefly outlined below.
DeWitt called Atom "the lingua franca of the programmable Web today", explaining that Atom contains entries that are "well structured", and include source entry, GUIDs that enable deduplication, and specification of the content type. He said, "You are able to pass rich data in that Atom feed in a way that is more specific than other feed types."
DeWitt said AtomPub "has become the most popular paradigm for restful APIs on the Web." AtomPub expanded the original Atom format to include the ability to both create and update feeds, not just passively read.
ActivityStreams essentially watch users' activity and can specify rich verbs and actions within those feeds. This enables feeds for all comments posted on Buzz, all likes, or even alerts that one person following you on Buzz also follows you on another network. DeWitt's examples hint at future developments for the platform, as these specific feeds are not yet clearly visible.
Much discussed here on the blog, Pubsubhubbub reduces the need for sites to poll for updates, and powers real-time updates between services. DeWitt reiterated "the hub is decided on by the publisher" and "there is nothing Google-specific about that.", saying that the infrastructure and plumbing for Buzz has been laid for the last few years. Pubsubhubbub has been pioneered by Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin, both Google employees.
Developed by Flickr, MediaRSS syndicates rich media through both RSS and atom feeds, creating a structured namespace inside RSS for content and a thumbnail. Buzz leverages MediaRSS, letting you pull rich content, like Flickr photos, into the platform. Of course, PicasaWeb, a Google property, also supports MediaRSS.
The product of engineers from all corners, including Twitter, OAuth was engineered "to solve a vexing problem in the industry," Dewitt said, explaining OAuth prevents the need to ask users for their name and passwords on third party sites, acting as a delegated authorization protocol that gives permission to the application. Google Buzz, like Twitter, leverages OAuth to provide authenticated access to your data.
A new-age version of the old command-line prompted, text responding Finger protocol, WebFinger aims to be a way to get public information tied to an individual, through their identity, assigned to an e-mail address. "We want people to identify themselves, and we want people to discover people," DeWitt said.
WebFinger is similar to the strategy of OpenID, but OpenID hasn't had massive adoption by end-users who have found it unwieldy. WebFinger, aiming to be less arcane, enables the independent nature of Buzz, helping to federate the data and distribute it by domain, owned by the end user. DeWitt said, "The profile lookup and notification mechanism can be in the hands of the user being addressed."
Still in earliest stages of development, Salmon is an extension or replacement for the old PingBack model that had blogs informing the other about references or links. This "flawed" model only provided minimal data, and could not be verified, letting me send PingBacks anywhere I wish if I chose. Salmon's goal is to leverage what's being called "Magic Signatures", signed with a public key to prove and verify linkage.
The first approach for Salmon will be to migrate comments from aggregators to originating posts, as covered a few times on this blog. But DeWitt said that "Likes" are similar activities that could flow back with Salmon, or be used to notify users of "following" or other activity. DeWitt forecast that sites like Blogger and StatusNet would rapidly adopt and federate Salmon to transmit data updates.
Simply described, Portable Contacts show your information and that of the friends who you follow, providing users a secure way to get access to address books and friends lists without having to request credentials or scrape the data.
DeWitt also noted XFN, the XHTML Friend Network, and FOAF (Friend Of a Friend) as being key contributors to the Buzz technology stack today, adding that he was "glad smart people were working on this ten years ago because we are all benefiting from it now."
Given Google's size, there is a good amount of distrust on the Web from people who think they own too much of your data, know too much about you, or have goals that run contrary to your own ideals on privacy, communication and sharing. Not even DeWitt's detailed presentations and explanations and promises of openness and data portability will convince everyone that they are on the right path. But I personally believe the frankness and detail that is being shown here is not just promising a strong future for this individual product (Buzz), but also in extending the groundwork done for the entire Web, for products and services we haven't even seen yet.
DeWitt adds: "All of these protocols are open. They are literally also all free. They are intended to be used by everybody, with or without Google being involved. You don't have to ask us if you can use Salmon or Pubsubhububb. We have a liberal and permissive patent license."
Is Google going away? Not today, and not this year. Is Buzz perfect? No. Of course not. Can it do all the things I can do on other sites, like FriendFeed? No. Not yet. But it seems that the Buzz team has opted to make tradeoffs that favor fast shipping and openness over completeness and individual features. And if you don't trust Google, it sounds like you can do something about it.
"We are pretty adamant about not building this on proprietary technology," DeWitt said last night. "If any of you feel that it is not going in the right direction, you have the power to change its direction and Google will not stop you."
Open Identity Exchange Proposes Identity Trust Framework
Today, at the RSA conference, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), aimed to increase trust in online identities, and backed by the OpenID and Information Card Foundations, announced its inception. In parallel, the U.S. Government is recognizing multiple technology companies as meeting federal standards for identity assurance, including Google, PayPal and Equifax, essentially securing users' ability to register and log in at federal Web sites with credentials from each of those services.
Goals of the Open Identity Exchange include building online users' trust and confidence in the exchange of identity credentials, standardizing these interactions and reducing hassle with online logins, registrations and purchases. As practically any Web user knows, frustrations with remembering scads of online user names and passwords, each corresponding with different sites with varying trust levels, can be a complete pain - no matter how much effort is taken to standardize, and the alternative, keeping one password for multiple services, which many do, has many more problems of its own.
OIX and its members are looking to reduce the problems with today's Web and move toward further highlighting open standards. Founding members of OIX, a non-profit corporation, include Booz Allen Hamilton, CA, Equifax, Google, PayPal, Verisign and Verizon.
The Often Complicated Process of Assessing Trusted Identity Online
Google's participation in the exchange follows the company's hirings of some of the more vocal advocates of OpenID and the open movement in general, including Chris Messina and Joseph Smarr. Earlier this week, a Google spokesperson wrote by e-mail that the inclusion of the company as part of OIX's launch should not come as much of a surprise.
"As you probably know, Google has long supported and contributed to the development of identity standards such as OpenID and OAuth, largely in order to increase online security by reducing the reliance on password use across websites." they wrote.
A white paper on the new OIX Web site, entitled "An Open Market Solution for Online Identity Assurance", explains how open identity technologies, including OpenID and Information Cards, serve to take closed user name and password systems deployed by most Web sites and expand them to accept identities issued by other parties, such as Google, PayPal and Equifax. Much of the paper, and OIX's mission, centers around the issues surrounding identity, including social, business, legal and emotional, such as trust.
This model of trust is explained in a second piece which defines a new "Open Identity Trust Framework (OITF)". The OITF paper shows holes in today's trust frameworks, and questions how people passing along personally identifiable information can be sure their data is protected with acceptable technical, operational and legal safeguards, while proposing a structured role for policymakers, providers, assessors, auditors, and dispute resolvers, to be sure that all participants are acting in a trusted manner. It may seem overly bureaucratic, but considering the Federal government needs to accept its findings, process is a good thing.
Lest you think this just yet another association or bureaucracy with talking heads looking to grease the skids of online growth, see the conclusion of the OITF model paper, where the authors explain a data utopia: " Imagine that the OITF model takes off and identity aspects of all digital communications become reliant on this new layer of the Internet. Society could become dependent on this type of infrastructure for collective action. The authors want to make it clear that trust frameworks for identity information portend to be so important for the future information society that they warrant extensive scrutiny, participation, and feedback from a wide representation of stakeholders. "
TiVo Launches Premiere DVRs, Keyboard Remote, Web Ties
After changing the way many people watch television, by pioneering time shifting, season passes and the ability to pause live TV, TiVo has become synonymous with scheduled television recording, even under intense competitive pressures from cable provider clones. In recent years, TiVo's standard-bearer hardware boxes have evolved to include ever-larger hard disks, integration with wireless networking, avoiding pokey phone line schedule updates, and more additions to the machines' playlist - adding on music, photos and on demand videos from partners. Today, the company introduced a new top of the line product family with its Premiere and Premiere XL boxes, aiming to make the DVR the central entertainment box for your living room - including not just cable TV, but movies, Web content and music as well. Alongside the announcement, the company also introduced a new take on their trademark remote - with an integrated keyboard, as well as new partnerships with Pandora and FrameChannel.
TiVo's aggressive marketing materials call the new Premiere and Premiere XL DVRs "the one box to rule them all". The reason for the new messaging? A focus on integrating all these entertainment sources into one package, with improved discovery. As important to TiVo as the new boxes' 320 gigabytes of space for Premiere or a full terabyte for the XL model is a revamped search functionality that lets viewers find content from many sources at once - be they on cable, the Web or from partners.
The New TiVo Premiere DVR
For the last few months, TiVo has been running a search beta for its customers, and it looks like they have been watching the activity, as the new search shows the highly graphical interface, previously only accessible through their beta trial, including poster-like images for related programs, and hooks to BlockBuster, Amazon and Netflix. Searching the new Premiere line becomes even faster when one has access to the new remote control, which, when turned sideways, slides out to reveal a QWERTY keyboard, greatly easing the ability to type onto the screen.
TiVo's New Remote With a Slide-Out QWERTY Keyboard
Beyond basic search, TiVo is talking up its directory of programming and artists - saying you can now view actors' entertainment resumes and show's cast lists, much like an on-demand IMDB. TiVo also promised you wouldn't need to be constantly changing screens from menu to menu, moving to a more simplified UI, with double and even triple columns, built for today's larger HD sets.
The New TiVo Browsing Experience
TiVo Central With Built-in Search With Partners
Also announced today was a tie-in with Pandora, the popular music streaming service, letting you listen to your personalized radio stations through your TV set. This news not only is available to the Premiere line, but also to existing Series 3 and HD line customers, which means our home could tap into our music on the HD and XL boxes we have. While announced today, Pandora doesn't go live for a few months.
Interestingly, also debuting today is a relationship with FrameChannel, which promises to "bring the best of the Web directly to the TV, offering users access to nearly 1,000 content widgets of personal and commercial content, ranging from Tweets, photos and status updates to news, weather, sports scores and stock quotes." The FrameChannel tie-in is highlighted as your own personalized channel, much like a browser start page or PointCast from the late 1990s, but on your TV.
The new Premiere line carries on the TiVo tradition of getting ever thinner and more sleek from generation to generation, despite increased hard drive capacities. Also new to Premiere is an on-screen disk space meter to show how many more shows you can record, and a built-in 30 second scan, which no doubt makes it even easier to skip commercials.
The new TiVo lineup is available in a month's time - debuting in early April. The standard Premiere model is $299 and the XL is $499.
Beware Apple Fanboys Interpreting Apple Lawsuits
The news this morning of Apple filing suit against HTC for allegedly infringing on 20 patents related to the iPhone is making its rounds through the Web, as Cupertino fights back against what it perceives to be unfair copying of its intellectual property. The suit, related to specific functionality of the phone, as well as user interface issues, is largely seen as Apple trying to slow the growth of Google's Android mobile OS, without suing Mountain View directly. And while precious few of us carry law degrees, and can offer deep analysis of why this suit has more merit than any other, the gut feeling is one I recognize from my decades as an Apple fanboy - Steve must be right and Go Apple!
John Paczkowski of All Things Digital explains the suit's array of patents, and which HTC phones, namely the HTC Hero, the Droid Eris, T-Mobile G1 and Google's vaunted Nexus One, are impacted by the suit.
Regardless of which mobile handset camp you sit in, the question that the iPhone dramatically changed the marketplace cannot be debated. From Apple's position, the many smartphones that have followed have increasingly approached the iPhone's previously unique capabilities, and no doubt, one must respect Apple's innovation in the space, which had previously one of compromise and mediocrity - with the possible exception of BlackBerry's product line. That Apple is allowed to protect their intellectual property is serious business, and if they truly find their work was infringed upon, then serious business says lawsuits can be required.
But that exact same voice that tells us Apple fanboys to root on Cupertino is the same one that laughed in the face of Nokia's lawsuits, which similarly claimed the iPhone infringed on ten patents of their own last fall. In that case, one can smirk and look at Nokia as a has-been handset maker who fell behind the times to a more nimble Silicon Valley legend.
Could it possibly be that Nokia's lawsuit is every bit as valid as Apple's against HTC? Ask any Mac fanboy, and the answer should be no - regardless of the visible data. In an Apple fanboy's mind, there are two eras of phone: Before the iPhone and After the iPhone. All phones prior to the iPhone are irrelevant, and all smartphones after it are mere copies.
In Silicon Valley, and many parts of the world, there is a saying: "Small companies innovate and large companies litigate." So what to make of a large company like Apple who somehow manages to innovate but plays the courtroom as well as Perry Mason? And how would the Web react if Steve Jobs and team had gone all in and filed suit against Google? Relationships and families would be torn asunder as people scrambled to choose sides. So while this morning's news makes us all raise our eyebrows, and think again about the world of innovation, patents, and business, don't expect those of us who have been drinking the holy water of Cupertino to see things on a level playing field - because when Apple is involved, they're on another field altogether.
Intuit's Mint and TurboTax Have Your Finances Summed Up
It may only be the beginning of March, but our home's taxes are already done. It's a yearly traditionof sorts to head online, capture all relevant data, and trick Uncle Sam into giving us a refund in time to blow it all on the Final Four (not really). That's due to my leveraging TurboTax online, which gets easier every year, considering how it comes pre-linked to the prior year's data. Now, with Intuit also owning the personal finance site (and awesome iPhone app) Mint.com, the same company keeps my data organized all year round - and with tax time being a good opportunity to look backwards, I thought I would highlight some of Mint's more interesting options.
While much of Mint.com's focus has been on trying to find ways for you to save money, for example, by switching from one credit card to another, or finding a new brokerage firm, I have been watching my Mint activity to help see whether we have been breaking even this month, if our family is within budget, or through getting alerts on high expenditures and deposits. Mint has become one of my most frequently-used iPhone applications and Web sites, especially as I've managed starting the new consultancy in the middle of last year, transitioning from my full-time role with a more stable income.
Mint.com Shows Half My Spend Was from 10 Merchants in 2009
As you know, doing one's taxes helps to bring clarity into the last twelve months. It gives you a sum total of what you earned, what you took home, what you were able to deduct, and how much you gave to the government. But it doesn't show you details on your spending. Mint does.
If you are a Mint user, you can walk through your spending history, and if organized well, you can see where your money is going - to your house, to your groceries, utilities, car, or entertainment, to name a few categories. After logging into Mint, click Trends, and choose Spending By Merchant.
Clicking Mint's "Other" Category Shows Me Merchants 11-20
I selected the 2009 period, and found, unsurprisingly, that 5% of our home's expenditures went to Safeway. What was a surprise is that we had more than 100 transactions at Safeway, which meant either my wife or I was going to the grocery store every 3 or 4 days (some days had multiple charges). The most we ever spent at Safeway was $208.32, and the least was a mere $5.49. In contrast, expenditures at Apple just exceeded 1% of all spending last year, less than 2 percent overall. Meanwhile, no doubt the result of having twin toddlers, and their being invited to other baby showers and friends' birthdays, there were more than 20 expenditures at Toys R Us, good enough to have gotten me a brand new MacBook Pro with all the fixings.
Just like you no doubt do when you look backward at your previous year's investments, there are purchases on my Mint.com history that make me cringe - as I look at air travel to events that proved less than useful, or wonder about whether I should have given so much money to Adobe, or raise my eyebrows at the more than $1,100 spent at Chevron in 32 separate transactions. But the more I look at the data, the smarter a consumer I become, as I use the information to change my behavior, and constantly look at Mint to see if I am on track.
Everything I have heard from my occasional talks with people at Intuit is that Mint.com's being set to replace Quicken Online is that Quicken was seen as a tool for the last generation - the one who balanced their checkbooks to the penny. Mint.com isn't yet integrated with TurboTax, but I would assume having the two properties under the same roof offers plenty of potential. The question is, can you take advantage?
The Followers Game Is So 2008. Time for New Metrics.
Any time one's statistics can be counted and ranked against peers online, the inevitable next steps include leaderboards and gaming. Humans have this innate sense of need to be ahead of all others, to measure themselves, and deliver some level of self-assigned worth thanks to what are questionably valuable statistics. While it is said by some that there is real value to having an open, random, network, we have all seen bot-driven impersonal behavior on many networks as people try to game the system for maximum follower counts. It would be harmless were it not for many third parties using these inflated follower counts as one element of assigning value to an individual.
For the many of us who roll our eyes at Twitter accounts with followers well beyond 20,000 or 50,000, who seemingly spout nonsense interspersed with advertisements, or those of us who recognize million-plus accounts were the product of the recently semi-retired suggested user list, there are the frequent media swoons over people's following numbers, used to verify one's credibility.
I Stopped Growing My Followers. Am I Less Relevant?
It's this seeming need to count and extend one's network further and further in a never-ending for self-validation that might have Facebook deciding to never open up beyond 5,000 connections, avoiding the faux arms race, and why you now see complete unknowns gaming Google Buzz by following tens of thousands of accounts in hopes that a fraction of the number follow back, pushing them up the rudimentary leaderboards that exist today.
Ask any active social media user or blogger their follower statistics or RSS subscribers, or even their usual page views per day or month, and they will know within 3-5%. Anybody who says they don't know or don't check is probably lying. They might modestly tell you that one number is "too high" because of one service or another, or they aren't chasing numbers, but they know because it's one way to measure success.
Of These "Top" Buzzers, Which Belongs? All of Them?
Breaking through 1,000 subscribers on this blog was a big deal for me. So was rapidly getting to 2,000 and eventually 5,000. Now, I glance and note any wide variance in the number as being due to one service or another missing each other on the back end. On Twitter, my numbers don't go up or down much, especially after I stopped using autofollow, slowing growth dramatically. So watching the newest network, Buzz, has been interesting - the first real valuable network to come along in a while.
Even though the Google team considered not displaying followers and following counts in Buzz, they eventually opted to display. Now, sites like Buzz Top not only show the same top tech enthusiasts you have seen on other networks, but scores of unknowns who could be following as many as 10,000 to more than 36,000 different accounts, hoping their message can reach more people.
I promise you that even the 250 I follow in Buzz is enough, just like I've decided following about 1,400 in Twitter is enough for how I want to use the service today. There is no question that anybody following more than a few thousand in Buzz is missing out on most of the updates, yet the allure still exists.
We have got to achieve more accurate ratings of influence that determine value. There is no question that value of an individual varies widely from one person's point of view to another, but I've just about had it with follower numbers. How would social networks be improved if we just hid them away entirely, and stopped looking at growth or relative sizes? My value is still the same, in terms of quality, whether I have an audience of 2,000 or 20,000, especially if I have the right people. Buzz had a chance to take a high road with putting the numbers game aside, but we're seeing the games begin already. I wonder what new network will be the first to start focusing on quality and less on quantity.
Twitter Unleashes the Firehose to Seven New Partners
As Twitter promised back in December at LeWeb, the company has now extended access to the firehose, the full feed of public tweets, to a full array of partners - going beyond the initial deals with search leaders Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft. The partners announced today include personal favorites Twazzup, Collecta and Kosmix, taking Twitter more into the realm of platform rather than destination.
Twitter, through its continued rise in traffic, use and the public consciousness, has seen the data flowing through its system grow increasingly valuable, as the company aims to live up to its lofty goal as the pulse of the planet. This rich data set, now open for partners to tap into, can potentially rival traditional search engines in terms of value, especially where real-time reaction and sentiment analysis comes into play.
Kosmix, behind the personalized newspaper service, Meehive, and extended topic pages on its own search tool, wrote to say, "Having full access to the entire tweet streams will give us the chance to surface all relevant and interesting information on what is buzzing on the Web for any given topic."
Financial deals were not disclosed by Twitter, or by its partners, but the company looks to have found a way to recognize revenue and gain income off of the public stream. In this age of real-time data, the faster and more relevant, the better. That Twitter is letting more of its secret sauce spread across the Web will make it harder for other sites, namely Facebook, to look as nimble.
The more we use social services, the more updates we provide, and typically, the more friend connections we make. For the most part, for most people, the number of connections we have on our active networks are steadily increasing.
With time, the sheer volume can be considered noise, and there comes a time to make a trim. But it can be surprisingly difficult to break a connection, or to break multiple connections, on most of these networks.
I thought I would take a look at some of the major networks I use to show who makes it easy, and wonder as to whether they can make it simpler to sever ties.
On Facebook, you are increasingly seeing "Add as friend" buttons from suggestions, or running into friends of friends making comments on your connections' news feed.
To add a connection:
1. Click their highlighted name and get redirected to their profile. 2. Click the "Add as a friend" at the top. 3. Click "Send Request".
The request will then be approved or declined.
To unfriend a connection:
1. Click their highlighted name and get redirected to their profile. 2. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and in the bottom left, click the small text: "Remove from Friends" 3. Click the "Remove from Friends" button that pops up.
The number of steps is the same, but unfriending is much less prominent, and "tucked away". As with friending an individual, with the exception of the friends suggestions page, you have to go one by one, profile by profile, and cannot unfriend in bulk.
On FriendFeed, you can see if another user is a connection or not in a few ways. Comments from friends on items have a blue discussion bubble, and those who are not have a gray one. Also, if you mouse over someone who is not a friend, you have a "Subscribe" option. Friends' boxes just show what lists they may be placed on.
To add a connection:
1. Mouse over their ID. 2. Click subscribe. 3. Choose what friend list to put them in and hit "Subscribe".
To unfollow a connection:
1. Mouse over their ID. 2. Click on their ID name and get redirected to their profile. 3. Click unsubscribe.
It is the same number of steps, but you have to be redirected to their profile, meaning you can't unfollow them directly from your feeds, but only on their own page. You also cannot unfollow people in bulk, but you can follow people in bulk by synchronizing with Twitter or other services, such as GMail.
1. Click the user's ID to get redirected to their profile. 2. Click Follow.
To unfollow a connection:
1. Click the user's ID to redirect to their profile. 2. Where it says "You are following", click Stop.
Google Buzz doesn't directly show you how to unfollow a group at a time, but if you do find you are following many people...
1. Go to your own profile, such as: http://www.google.com/profiles/me. 2. Click "Your name" is following "The number". 3. This page will have "Unfollow" next to all your connections. Click unfollow for any you need, and you can reduce your connections quickly. It's one of the fastest ways I have ever seen to reduce your total count.
If somebody invites you to connect on LinkedIn, adding is easy. Just click "Accept" to get connected. Otherwise...
To add a connection:
1. Find the person's profile. 2. Click "Add this person to your network". 3. Explain the connection. (Colleague/Classmate/etc) 4. Send invitation.
Surprisingly, there is NO way to unfollow or disconnect from somebody via their profile.
To unfollow a connection:
1. Go to "My Connections" under "Contacts". 2. Click "Remove Connections" 3. Select Who You Want to Unfollow 4. Click Remove Connections 5. Confirm "Yes, Remove them"
The benefit to this process is that it is relatively simple to disconnect from many at once, but you can't preview a connection if you don't recall the relationship. It is surprising that you can't unfollow via profile.
1. Go to the individual's profile 2. Click "Follow".
To unfollow a connection, there are a few ways.
1. Go to the individual's profile. 2. Select "Unfollow" from the options pull-down.
Alternatively:
1. Click the "Following" button on your own profile. 2. Unfollow one or more people listed by clicking the "Actions" button and choosing "Unfollow" for each you want to disconnect.
In most social networks, the ability to follow anyone is relatively easy. Every profile has a button that asks you to connect. Some, like Facebook, are pushing new people to you all the time. But to reduce the connections and unfollow in bulk can be more difficult, leading to links that have since faded in importance, or can be cluttered. Twitter has done a good job to let you unfollow from multiple places, and Google Buzz makes contact management very simple, from your own profile, but there are clearly ways that most sites can improve the connection experience.
A Month In the Cloud Shows Potential
At the end of January, I told you how I had recently picked up a MacBook Air to replace my aging MacBook Pro, and as part of that process, I would try to do as much as I could online instead of through desktop applications, leaving much of my rich media on the old laptop, and choosing the Web over hard disk as often as possible. A month in, it seems there is still much room for the cloud to grow, but despite the general trend for massive data growth, I still haven't used more than 30 percent of my spartan 128 GB solid state hard drive - a back of the hand measurement of how little data I am keeping with me and not leaving in the air.
As I mentioned last month, one of the first decisions I made was to keep iTunes and iPhoto data on the old laptop. I recognized I needed to keep Microsoft Office, for pure sanity purposes, but left Adobe's CS suite on the other machine.
Those applications I have downloaded have been rare, letting me tap into the cloud itself - for example, Skype, for audio phone calls and podcast recording, the Sonos controller to power the home stereo system, and Spotify, to access the on demand music network.
The goals are multiple. First, can I do a test run at being operating system agnostic, maintaining the flexibility to move toward a promised Chrome OS when it ships? Second, can I make the actual hardware insignificant, treating the new Air as a "disposable" machine, making migration to a newer device in the future simple? Third, and most important, can I find major weaknesses that continue to exist with an all cloud strategy?
At the end of February, my 128 GB solid state disk hard drive, much smaller than the 200 GB SATA disk it replaced, has 91.36 GB available, or just more than 71% of total capacity. This includes all system files, the pre-installed iLife applications from Apple, and preferences for many of the pre-installed apps. In fact, the one place I expected to consume a lot of data, with client files and PowerPoints, has proven to not be much at all. The folder for Paladin, with all client folders, is actually less than a single gigabyte.
Are there any headaches to going cloud-only (or close to it)? Sure. For somebody who uses PhotoShop a lot, the lack of PhotoShop has me reaching for it often. In the interim, for images for the blog, I've relied on lots of screen captures, and small editing in Preview. Anything stronger pushes me to the media machine. But the problems have been extremely rare. If I had an Office competitor that made it easy enough to edit all my files and save them remotely, I would be happy to give Microsoft Office the boot. But it's not there yet. And in the meantime, I am using GMail more and my Mac e-mail account less. I have been taking Zoli Erdos' advice and moving my Mac e-mail to the cloud, but that process isn't yet completed. I'll keep you posted on that, promise.
My new-ish MacBook Air isn't just lighter in terms of weight. It's massively lighter in terms of data too. It makes sense that in the future, so long as we have one place to put all our rich media, the rest of us really only need thin clients. We're getting there.
Beware the BCC: Copying Can Make Us All Blind
Assuming E-mail is the original social network, this Web 1.0 tool continues to have a large role in how we communicate and share ideas. With the exception of the clear GMail/Buzz integration or the recent Outlook/LinkedIn tie-up, for the most part, e-mail has not been dramatically revamped to take advantage of today's faster-moving, highly featured social networks. But despite e-mail's longevity, some basic attributes of the form continue to cause trouble between contacts who haven't mastered their core functionality. One of the most troublesome, the infrequently used, but often abused, BCC.
With BCC, the recipient doesn't know all who got the message.
As you no doubt know, BCC stands for "Blind Carbon Copy", providing a way to send e-mails to people without revealing their e-mail addresses. This can be an aid for mass mailings without exposure, but also used to be sure an individual gets a note without the direct recipient's knowledge.
For every blow-up around poorly-trained marketeers who copy their entire customer base, or PR flacks who display all the intended reporters by dumping their contacts database in the TO or CC field, you have quieter mistakes that happen when the intended recipient who thought they were having a private conversation sees a third party jump into the discussion without warning. As the intended public recipient sees the third party elbow their way into the conversation, they may lose trust in the original sender, and wonder what other messages were being shared.
Often, those BCC'd blow the cover of the messages' routing.
Some e-mail clients (such as a BlackBerry) will automatically make it clear to the recipient that they were BCC'd on a conversation, which hints they should not reply all. But not all people are as discerning and recognize their role in the world of BCC to be a silent observer. I know that when I get a BCC message that any reply I provide goes to the originator and not to the others in the thread.
Given my goal to be public about communication, my own use of BCC is extremely infrequent. Due to the potential issues that can arise as trust is perceived to be broken, I tend to follow up a BCC note to the individual saying "You were BCC'd. Make sure not to reply."
If you are someone who tends to BCC individuals as a normal course of business, I have no doubts that you can get caught by this process. Not all recipients watch the To and CC fields closely, and they may expose your willingness to overshare. With so many other ways to have private conversations 1-1, and the ease of which forwarding prior conversations via e-mail can occur, it makes sense to get above board, and preserve the BCC option for simply obscuring mass mailings.
Ecademy Chairman Says Limited Networks are "Flawed"
This week, Ecademy chairman Thomas Power and I presented to a roomful of executives in various influential positions in Silicon Valley companies on leveraging social media and taking advantage of new networks or technologies to find information faster and make the right decisions at the right time. (See the presentation on 'connectedness' here)
Before he flew back to the UK, I took some time to ask him about his approach to social networks and what he thinks about connections.
Thomas, connected to more than 30,000 on LinkedIn, and endorsed by more than 700, more than double the world's second-highest profile on the site, believes strongly that any kind of limits online, from Facebook's limit of 5,000 friends (which he hit long ago) or Twitter's limiting you to 1,000 follows a day, is short-sighted and damaging to potential growth of one's network. Thomas' profile on his own network, started in 1998, without many of the limits of other companies, highlights his own connections to more than 56,000.
My own e-mail in box proves Thomas to be an incredible communicator, who tries to maintain relationships well beyond Dunbar's number. You can hear some of his thoughts below, which I recorded via CinchCast.
Disclosure: I spoke to Ecademy last year in a paid engagement and just completed another engagement with Thomas this week. It's quite possible he and I may work on many more opportunities going forward. Simply put, I like the guy.
GMail Ads on Buzzed Reader Items Attract Controversy
Given the ease of distribution of content from site to site and network to network, with RSS or any other model, it's no surprise that scrapers galore are stocking away our unique copy and then trying to make a quick buck from ads surrounding it. Even though the copyright is not theirs, they are trying to make an end run around the system. As new aggregators and networks have hit the market, those of us creating the content have had to reevaluate what constitutes good practices, and what constitutes bad behavior - whether well intended or otherwise. Google Buzz, which has gained its unfair share of criticism for perceived security holes in the weeks since its launch, has finally gained a more valid critique, from Jesse Stay, who alertly noted, as I had earlier in the week, that the act of putting Buzz in one's GMail meant that content too can flow through Buzz, with Google pocketing cash on ads around your content, without the content originator getting a dime. It's the latest twist in the evolution of content and copyright in a fast-changing Web.
One Shared Item from Me on February 21st in GMail, With Ads
As you know, I don't try to monetize my content here on the blog. I don't run advertising, and I have long said that I don't mind if my content gets shared here and there for more comments. I want my content to be shared, as information, wherever you are comfortable. But yes, scrapers bug me. They mess up search alerts, and negatively impact the perception of this mirage-like image of a personal brand.
I don't believe for a moment that a new network like Google Buzz is an intended scraper, any more than I thought Shyftr was trying to steal comments from your blog when they offered shared comments on full feeds. But, thanks to Buzz living in your GMail, and many people, like me, pulling Google Reader items through Buzz, you can see how one's full content could feature advertising that benefits Google and not me. To some, this is the definition of a scraper.
Another Shared Reader Item from Me In Buzz in GMail With Ads
As a huge Google Reader advocate, and fan of the nascent network, Buzz, I do not mind in any way that my full content is being distributed. I love RSS. It is fantastic. But when I saw the ads in my GMail against others' content this week, it did strike me as odd, because it violated the unspoken rule that it's something you flat-out don't do.
I recognize that "fixing" this perceived flaw is hard. If I am the Buzz team, the act of removing ads against shared Reader items in Buzz while in GMail is probably non-trivial.
But I also can see their potential response. In theory, they cannot prohibit somebody from forwarding your content in full by e-mail, and GMail is an e-mail system. In theory, Google Reader shares are equivalent to e-mail forwards, and thus, the same as any other content being shared in this way.
Jesse asks, "Google, how is this not evil?", calling it copyright infringement. Unlike the overreactions this month, he's a lot closer in this criticism than others. I still hold that Google is not evil and is not trying to be evil, but it's more in the gray area than we would like. I assume if this holds, then we as content creators are going to need more re-education in terms of what the new rules are, and how we should adapt.
How To Enable Comments on Google Reader Shares In Buzz
With the recent launch of Google Buzz, shared items from Google Reader's RSS platform have become more visible and more important than ever. (TechCrunch said growth increased 35%) Those Buzz users with existing shared Reader feeds had these streams automatically connected to Buzz, enabling Buzz viewers to see your shares, and if enabled, to leave comments, once obscured in your own private network, in a public place. But those following you on Buzz don't automatically have the option to comment on your Reader items, and for some, this can be frustrating. Here's how you can help them join the conversation.
Google Reader enabled conversations back in March of 2009. As somebody who has adapted to a distributed multi-locational world of conversations, I have optimized my activity to embrace the conversations in this platform. In the last year, I have been enabling connections to comment on my Reader shares, and as a result, the conversations grew dramatically.
An Active Google Reader Item in Buzz, With Comments
But the integration, to date anyway, has required some effort on my part. As new followers added my feed to their reading list, I have had to give permissions to these followers to comment on my items, by adding them to a folder, which I called "Friends". This work, a few followers a day, has paid off in a big way, as I have enjoyed fantastic conversations in my Reader, and now, this group can participate with me in Buzz.
Many of you are probably seeing more followers from Buzz into your Google Reader world than you ever had before. Now, it is more critical than ever to move these folks into a folder who can comment on your items, or they will be met with errors, locking them out of your conversation.
2. On the left side, click "Sharing settings". (Shortcut here)
3. Where it says "Who can see your shared items?", there is an item which says "Who can comment on your shared items?". Those items that have checkboxes are enabled.
My Sharing Settings and Connected "Friends" to Comment on My Items
4. Click "people are following you", and from there, you can add individuals to folders.
Adding a New Individual To a Group for Commenting
5. Repeat until you're done.
Note How All My Contacts Are In Groups for Commenting
As new followers come in, even if you choose not to follow them back, you should add them to a folder that can comment on your items. With Buzz drawing ever more attention to your Reader shares, and Reader shares being a big part of the content there, it makes sense to extend the conversation there. If this seems complicated, note it is due to a policy of having "private" conversations in Reader from the last year, and adapting this policy to a new public place. Until Google Reader enables fully public conversations on all shared feeds, this will be how you can make your feed an active place.
In what the company called Blogger's biggest announcement in several years, Google introduced a versatile template designer this morning that opens up a wide array of creative high-quality designs to the millions of users on the platform. The launch comes in the wake of Blogger's 10th anniversary, and raises the bar in terms of both appearance and ease of customization, guiding Blogger users to leverage new professionally designed themes with thousands of background images, and customization on layout and color themes. The combined package could mean the end of flat-looking Blogger templates, and gives potential WordPress users or switchers a serious alternative.
Anybody who watches my online activity knows that I try to consume a ridiculous amount of information and filter out the best to you. My most efficient tool for that is 
Editor's Note: This version replaces a prior one that suggested rollout had already started.
A year ago, 
Increased use of 
After changing the way many people watch television, by pioneering time shifting, season passes and the ability to pause live TV, 
The news this morning of 
It may only be the beginning of March, but our home's taxes are already done. It's a 
Any time one's statistics can be counted and ranked against peers online, the inevitable next steps include leaderboards and gaming. Humans have this innate sense of need to be ahead of all others, to measure themselves, and deliver some level of self-assigned worth thanks to what are questionably valuable statistics. While it is said by some that there is real value to having an 
Assuming E-mail is the original social network, this Web 1.0 tool continues to have a large role in how we communicate and share ideas. With the exception of the clear 
This week, 
Given the ease of distribution of content from site to site and network to network, with RSS or any other model, it's no surprise that scrapers galore are stocking away our unique copy and then trying to make a quick buck from ads surrounding it. Even though the copyright is not theirs, they are trying to make an end run around the system. As new aggregators and networks have hit the market, those of us creating the content have had to reevaluate what constitutes good practices, and what constitutes bad behavior - whether well intended or otherwise. 
