Category Archives: Web 2.0

I’ll admit to a bias towards technology drivers for fundamental change.

Still trying to wrap my head around twitter

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Okay, here’s what feels like a Rube Goldberg method for members of a group to share info via twitter without following each other and without needing the web to read the tweets.

  • Go to twitter.com/hashtags and click follow
  • Post a message with an the agreed upon tag, preceded by the # symbol (called a “hash” in some dialects). An example:

Exec director interview to air on CNN tonight at 9:15 ET #myorg

  • Go to twemes.com and get the RSS feed address for the hashtag — probably something like

http://twemes.com/myorg.rss

Looks good in theory — hangup is that feedblitz complains that the twitter account name isn’t formatted as an e-mail address. Anyone see what I’m doing wrong or have an alternate strategy?

And there are several things I haven’t thought through … What’s the risk of a spammer glomming onto the tag? How do I separate some tags for special handling (i.e. send to the phone, not just the web). [Maybe take the RSS feed, connect it to a special twitter account and watch that?? Ouch.]

Status of my Facebook Applications

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Here’s a quick look at the Facebook applications I’ve tried on my profile, the ones I’ve kept and the ones I’ve disabled.

Applications

  • Facebook Basics
    • Friends
    • Groups
    • Ads and Pages
    • I am a Fan of (like groups for pages)
    • Mini-Feed
    • Information
    • Education
    • The Wall
  • Information I provide
    • Command Post – an easy way to post info to multiple places. I use it to post to Twitter — the interface is actually easier to use.
    • Profile HTML, Profile Box – allow posting of arbitrary HTML on the profile. I’m using it on the AAUW NC page to show info from AAUWNC.org’s sidebar. It’s not dynamic, just pulling things statically.
    • Simply RSS – reposts a configurable RSS feed. I’m using it on the AAUW NC page to repost a yahoo pipe that combines the various AAUW RSS feeds.
    • Notes – miniblog items and imports of this information stream
    • Posted Items – links that I want to highlight
    • Flickr Badge – photos I post on Flickr rather than Facebook
    • Wordbook – import of the branch news
    • Where I’ve Been – not used very much
  • Information I find that might be of interest to others
    • Podcasts – I was hoping to use this on the AAUW NC page, but for now it’s on my profile. Links to NPR rebroadcasts and such.
    • Swarthmore College News – Cool. But actually more interesting for the architecture. Thee are several “news” apps around — it’d be good to find out how they work.tt
    • Feed Friend RSS – primarily AAUW related RSS feeds; has changed in the last month to put info in my mini-feed
    • del.icio.us – primarily items tagged aauwtech
    • SlideShare (for slide shows written by others; I tend to post my own slides elsewhere)
  • Fundraising applications
    • Change.org – campaign based. Useful for linking nonprofits to a “change” to educate the change supporters about the mission and capacities of the nonprofit.
    • Changing the Present – campaigns linked to a specific nonprofit. Good for micro-payments to honor a friend or for a group to collaborate to raise a specific (usually not very large) sum. Seems well matched as a substitute for secret Santa gatherings — at least for groups that are just too serious for such frivolity as Dollar Store gifts.
    • Causes – campaigns linked to specific nonprofit. There’s no AAUW presence, and it’s not clear the volunteers are empowered to create one.
  • Social Networking applications
    • Blog Friends – I’m not sure I get this one. It appears to recommend blogs based on your interests.
    • Introductions – allows me to introduce one friend to another
    • Top Groups – provides quick links to my most used groups (but has even less information about recent updates than the standard Groups application)
    • Interactive Friends Graph – works with Introductions to visualize friends who don’t yet connect
    • Bumper sticker – allows for sharing “badges.” The app, though, has some serious problems and is too flakey for a general recommendation.
    • My links – links to me on other social networking sites

Concerns

  • Very few apps work on pages. How to find good ones there is a challenge. In particular would like to use the notes feature, particularly if enabled to import a blog.
  • A simple training app like Flashcards would be helpful
  • I’m still looking for a way to integrate Twitter with a page. See twitter.com/aauw07. If I find a good app that integrates “status” with a page, I’ll create a Flickr account to post those updates for AAUW NC.

Disabled or Deleted

  • Virtual bookshelf — may reactivate once I have time to read
  • Word-A-Day, Zoho Online Office, – just didn’t use
  • Questions — would more likely use this on LinkedIn, not Facebook (?)
  • Flashcards and FC Test – developer seems to be off on other things, and until there’s a search function it seems minimally useful
  • Circle of friends – public or private “circles”. This functionality (like address lists in your e-mail) is now built in to the Facebook Friends interface. It’s more flexible and easier to use there.
  • Entourage – panel of friends’ pictures, can be easier to find them there. I just don’t use this.
  • Hotlists – I’m not into the ranking here.
  • My Cookbook – Okay. I posted one recipe. But if I think of saving one, I’ll post it at member.acm.org/~shoemaker And if I need one, I go to epicurious.com
  • Top Friends – not used.
  • Advanced Wall – not used. Let’s keep it simple, people.

Facebook pages – update

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Sometime in the last month or so, Facebook seems to have put some effort into cleaning up the problems with their initial release of the “pages” function. Things still aren’t perfect, but two big problems I’d bumped into seem to be working now:

  1. Events can now be edited.
  2. There are additional applications that can be added to pages, and there doesn’t seem to be as much confusion about adding an application to a page getting confused with adding an application to a profile.
  3. The “notes” application which can be used to pull in an RSS feed/blog is now available for pages.
  4. The “simply rss” application to republish a feed can also be added to pages. [Maybe Facebook is finally getting the idea of how important this is?]

Check out the AAUW NC page (and  consider becoming a fan) to see what I mean …

Profile aggregators

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At an STC meeting earlier in the year, I heard a presentation that mentioned Naymz. It sounded like too much work to keep yet another professional profile up to date, particularly since there was a “popularity contest” or “feeding the virtual pet” aspect to the whole thing, so I passed when a couple of other folks at that meeting invited me to join that network.

More recently, it appears that there are networks popping up that will pre-populate your profile with info gleaned from the web. You then may be stuck between a rock and a hard place: join to make sure the site’s picture of you is accurate, or ignore it and hope that it will either fade away or that the AI engine behind it will pick a reasonable representation of you. If you’ve been careful about maintaining a public web presence, and if your contacts are intelligent in filtering info they find on such sites, there’s probably not much incentive to put effort into correcting/enhancing these profiles.

Two that have popped up recently:

  • Zoominfo.com – I don’t even remember how I tripped over this. My profile’s relatively rich. In a search for my college roommate, I found she was quoted in USA Today earlier in the year. Who knew?
  • Spock.com – there has been a fair amount of traffic about this on the ISF mailing list (see, e.g. zenofnptech). I must admit I was really surprised to get a “trust invite” from Cyber-Yenta Deborah Elizabeth Finn who barely knows me and who was quite clear about her policy of “don’t expect me to accept your LinkedIn invite unless I really can vouch for your work.” It turns out that Spock is one of those sites that’s fairly promiscuous about using any address info you provide and sending invites to others on the site even without your permission will use information, including contacts’ e-mail addresses in ways you don’t expect. The community seems to be hoping it dies a quick death. If someone as smart and ‘net savvy as Deborah can be spoofed here, ordinary mortals need to beware.

But since we’ve been arguing for Open APIs and all data on the ‘net is subject to remixing, these sites, for good are ill, are here to stay.

Be careful out there…

Clarifying edits added in response to comment.

Status of my Facebook Applications

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Here’s a quick look at the Facebook applications I’ve tried on my profile, the ones I’ve kept and the ones I’ve disabled.

Applications

  • Facebook Basics
    • Friends
    • Groups
    • Ads and Pages
    • I am a Fan of (like groups for pages)
    • Mini-Feed
    • Information
    • Education
    • The Wall
  • Information I provide
    • Notes – miniblog items and imports of this information stream
    • Posted Items – links that I want to highlight
    • Flickr Badge – photos I post on Flickr rather than Facebook
    • Wordbook – import of the branch news
    • Where I’ve Been – not used very much
  • Information I find that might be of interest to others
    • Feed Friend RSS – primarily AAUW related RSS feeds; has changed in the last month to put info in my mini-feed
    • del.icio.us – primarily items tagged aauwtech
    • SlideShare (for slide shows written by others; I tend to post my own slides elsewhere)
  • Fundraising applications
    • Change.org – campaign based. Useful for linking nonprofits to a “change” to educate the change supporters about the mission and capacities of the nonprofit.
    • Changing the Present – campaigns linked to a specific nonprofit. Good for micro-payments to honor a friend or for a group to collaborate to raise a specific (usually not very large) sum. Seems well matched as a substitute for secret Santa gatherings — at least for groups that are just too serious for such frivolity as Dollar Store gifts.
    • Causes – campaigns linked to specific nonprofit. There’s no AAUW presence, and it’s not clear the volunteers are empowered to create one.
  • Social Networking applications
    • Introductions – allows me to introduce one friend to another
    • Top Groups – provides quick links to my most used groups (but has even less information about recent updates than the standard Groups application)
    • Interactive Friends Graph – works with Introductions to visualize friends who don’t yet connect
    • Entourage – panel of friends’ pictures, can be easier to find them there
    • Circle of friends – public or private “circles”. Allows for messaging groups of friends in an ad hoc way (i.e without setting up a group). Compare address lists you keep in your address book vs. e-mail lists hosted on the server.
    • Bumper sticker – allows for sharing “badges.” The app, though, has some serious problems and is too flakey for a general recommendation.
    • My links – links to me on other social networking sites

Concerns

  • Very few apps work on pages. How to find good ones there is a challenge. In particular would like to use the notes feature, particularly if enabled to import a blog.
  • A simple training app like Flashcards would be helpful

Disabled

  • Virtual bookshelf — may reactivate once I have time to read
  • Word-A-Day, Zoho Online Office, – just didn’t use
  • Questions — would more likely use this on LinkedIn, not Facebook (?)
  • Flashcards and FC Test – developer seems to be off on other things, and until there’s a search function it seems minimally useful