Bwana.org

3 Ways To Utilize Google Friend Connect

Bwana — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:00:25 +0000

The masterminds behind Google are pushing an initiative known as OpenSocial which aims to connect many different types of web sites using one single API. One of the fruits of OpenSocial is Google Friend Connect which seems like a technology demo on the surface, but I’ve found a couple of possibly useful gems to utilize. First off, to get started with Google Friend Connect, make sure you are logged in your Google Account, then navigate to http://www.google.com/friendconnect. If all goes well, you should see this screen:

Click “Set up a new site” and you’ll be presented with a wizard to set up your website. I don’t want to focus on this part, but the main four steps to creation are:

Add two required files to your web server
Copy “members gadget” code
Paste into a page on your site
Choose more social features as desired

The focus of this blog post will be step 4. I’m going to show you some of the things you can do with Google Friend Connect which may not be obvious.

The first of the three is done by default once your site is setup: Setup a members gadget. The members gadget lists current members of your website, allows you to view their profiles, and add friends. If this sounds familiar, then you’re not crazy because MyBlogLog offers a very similar service. You’ll find the interface to be similar as well:

Image taken from inquisitr.com
The second use is not obvious and is accessible by clicking the Social gadgets link in the sidebar of the Google Friend Connect site. From here, there are a few gadgets to choose from (and I do mean a few). Choose Wall Gadget from the list of options, and it will walk you through the process of adding this gadget to your website. What is a wall gadget? Do you remember Shoutbox? Well, that’s essentially what it is, but this Facebook generation calls it a “wall”. If you’re a fan of the Facebook wall, and want it on your site, you can do so with your Google Friend community. Google takes advantage of its Youtube power and allows you to also embed Youtube videos in the wall. Unfortunately, they’re not truly “embedded’ but offer a javascript popup window of the video. Good enough methinks. Once it is setup, it looks similar to this:
The third use is my favorite. It exists in the same section as the wall gadget and it is called the Review/Rate gadget. This gadget allows your Google Friend community to review or rate your entire site or individual pages.

I believe this is a useful mechanism to solicit feedback from your community. It offers the familiar 5 star system that everyone knows and loves and supports anonymous feedback as well (The wall gadget also has an anonymous option for the daring).

I’ve implemented all three of these social gadgets on bwana.org and will soon implement them on bwana.tv and see it how it goes. As with OpenSocial, the whole Google Friend Connect thing is still fairly new and rough around the edges, but I believe these three gadgets will add value for some of the early adopters out there.

Feel free to join my website by utilizing the members gadget in the sidebar. You can also rate this blog post if you feel it is useful.

Update: Here’s Google’s official video

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Which Gaming Console Should You Buy This Holiday?

Bwana — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:53:23 +0000

So it’s that time of year again.

What time is that Bwana?

Well, it’s the time where you need to decide on which console to buy for your loved one. You’ve picked a perfect time to buy since all the consoles, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 are over two years old and have matured as platforms. Each console has a variety of games to choose from as well as social entertainment features that will knock your socks off. If only Pong! were alive to see this. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are fighting tooth and nail to get your business, so let’s get right down to it.

The Culprits

There are three main players in this space and I’ll give a brief description of each:

The Xbox 360 (360) - First out of the gate, Microsoft’s follow-up to the Xbox console was released with the promise of a more robust online offering and media center capabilities. This console supports high definition televisions as well as standard definition, has wired or wireless controllers, and can connect to the internet via wired ethernet connection or wireless internet.
The Nintendo Wii (Wii) - Formerly known as the Nintendo Revolution, Nintendo’s follow-up with the Gamecube assured gamers that it would redefine console gaming. The Nintendo Wii is the most unique as it offers motion sensing controls to an already stellar lineup of first-party titles such as Mario, Zelda, and others. It connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and offers a variety of other features that take advantage.
The Playstation 3 (PS3) - The king of consoles returns with a sequel to its record breaking Playstation 2 console and offers a high-end spin on consoles. The PS3 promises the glory of high definition optical support in the form of Blu-Ray, and a rich multimedia experience that Sony has been known for. Sony also promised to concentrate more on the online gaming and made a big deal out of their consoles brute strength and offerings.

The Questions

When considering these fabulous consoles, you should be asking yourself questions. If you haven’t started asking questions, I’ll get you started:

Do I care about online gaming?
Do I care about high definition gaming?
Do I care about high definition movies?
Do I play with friends and family often in person?
Do I want to leverage this console as a music player, video player, and photo viewer?
Do I have wireless internet?
Do I want to buy or rent movies from my game console?
Do I know what bluetooth is and do I own any bluetooth hardware?
What am I willing to spend after I buy the console?
Do I want to play my old Xbox/PS2/Nintendo Gamecube games on this new console?
What types of games do I like the most? Platformers? Role Playing Games? First person Shooters? Real time strategy? Music Rhythm Games?

These are just some of the questions that I have posed to people when asked which console to buy. As an owner of all three consoles, I can never recommend anything without first getting the needs and wants of the purchaser. So, now that you’ve asked yourself these questions, let’s dig a bit further.

The Profiles

When answering questions about which console you’ll buy, there are four main profiles that you’ll likely fit into (and I do stress likely)

The casual gamer
The gadget freak who sometimes plays games
The semi-casual online gamer
The hardcore gamer

The casual gamer tends to play games less than 5 hours a week, and often has to be invited in order to become motivated. These gamers play when friends and family come over, during parties, events, but do not generally play as a pass time. The casual gamer usually finds out about multimedia features of their console by visiting a friend who uses theirs.

The gadget freak who sometimes plays games tends to play games for maybe 10 hours a month depending on the situation. He or she will buy every new game that comes out, but won’t play it for more than 2 hours after buying it. The game collects dust and the gamer will claim to own it, but never play it. The gadget freak will utilize all of the features of the console except the gaming part.

The semi-casual semi-online gamer may average between 10-15 hours week depending on outside circumstances. If a new game comes out, this gamer may buy it to try it out, and play for it many hours, but eventually taper off into semi-casual mode again. This gamer is generally aware of the multimedia features of consoles and most times will take advantage of one or two.

The hardcore gamer can kill 40 hours a week playing 3 to 4 games online and offline. This machine of a man or woman will forego the love of family and friends to reach that new level, climb that impossible mountain, finish that new game on Super-duper-incredibly-impossibly-hard difficulty. The only music they care about is the music they can play while playing their favorite game. Movies, pictures, and the like are generally secondary.

So which are you? Remember, I did say likely. It’s my guess that you’re probably a combination of the profiles, (I know I am) so let’s dig a bit deeper.

The Method

The next step is to combine the needs, wants, the estimated profile of the purchaser to build a priority list. Let’s take an example to help you out.

Johnny Doodad plays games online only on weekends but usually plays 1-2 hours, Monday through Friday. Johnny has homework and his parents are strict on his gaming hours during the week. If Johnny does well, he gets to go all out on the weekend. Johnny loves first person shooters and platformers but never finishes them. Johnny already owns a Gamecube and an Xbox.

Based on my college education, I would rate Johnny a cross between a semi-casual online gamer and hardcore gamer. If given the chance, Johnny could easily rack up hours playing games, but has to adhere to the parental units. Given his lack of time towards the games, Johnny loses interest and shifts focus to another game before finishing the previous. Now, Johnny likes first person shooters and platformers, but he’s not necessarily loyal (an assumption). So let’s analyze:

Gamer Type: Semi-casual online
Genre Preferences: FPS, Platformer
Owned Systems: Nintendo Gamecube, Xbox
Gaming Preference: Plays on weekends, mostly online, but little during the week.

So which does Johnny care about the most? Let’s try to rank them:

Gaming Preference
Genre Preferences
Owned System
Gamer type

These are guesses, but they could provide an accurate view of where to concentrate your focus. Given that Johnny plays online, likes FPS and Platformers, and owns an Xbox, I would recommend an Xbox 360 in this case. It gives him his top 3 priorities right off the bat. Now, even if Gamer type were misplaced, and would be #2 on his priority list, an Xbox 360 would probably fit him best.

See the method? It’s all fuzzy and really depends on a lot of factors. This is the only way I can explain which console to buy this holiday. You have to ask yourself these questions and more to gauge which features are more important to you than others. Here’s a general guideline to go by:

Xbox 360
Pros: Platform has matured, Cheap initial price ($199 base), High definition gaming, High definition movie support (downloadable), Great game library, Online gameplay, Online marketplace, Great online community features, Great multimedia features (movie rentals, tv shows, music, photos, etc)
Cons: Costs $50 a year to play online, Pricey accessories, Prone to break (get a warranty!), No web browser

Nintendo Wii
Pros: Platform has matured, Cheap ($250), Excellent first-party titles (Mario, Zelda, etc), Unique controls, Lots of fun with family and friends, Online marketplace, web browser (costs extra)
Cons: Hard to find (too popular), Lots of accessories (Wheels, Balance board, Controllers, Gun, etc), Game library mediocre (due to poor third-party support) Poor online gaming support, Not so great multimedia support (No DVD Playback)

Playstation 3
Pros: Platform has matured, High definition gaming, High definition optical support (Blu-Ray), Superb multimedia features, Online gameplay is free, Updated often, Online marketplace, Supports existing Bluetooth and USB devices, User upgradeable storage, Built-in web browser, Linux operation system supported (basic features)
Cons: Pricey (starts at $399), Entire game library mediocre, Online community not is vivacious as Xbox Live

Wow!

I just did those off the top of my head. You see why this decision is not straight forward? I didn’t cover everything and it’s already overwhelming the amount of features each offers and also their pros and cons. It’s important to get those questions answered and prioritize them to find out which may be best for you.

The Wildcard

But, what about PC gaming? PC gaming is not dead by any means and offers a wide variety of choices. While price may be a barrier for some people, let me tell you about a deal that Valve has. They are offering their entire gaming library for $99. That’s right, they are offering 22 games for $99. You are not going to find that on a console. Granted, most of these games are first person shooters, it is definitely something to consider. Gaming PCs are coming down in price and if you price one compared to a console with 3 or 4 games, they price difference isn’t all that great. I’m not going to get into a PC gaming vs console gaming war here, but I do want to make you aware of this often overlooked wildcard.

Conclusion

In short, continue to research! I’ve provided a method of soliciting information in various categories and prioritizing them to attempt to find a best fit. There is no one size fits all for this type of decision. So, when asked which gaming console should you buy this holiday, the answer is it all depends on what you want, what you need, and how bad you want and need it.

Happy shopping everyone. It’s hard to go wrong this year.

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FFHolic Provides The Best Of FriendFeed

Bwana — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:16:07 +0000

The popular online discussion/aggregation service FriendFeed has a great deal of fans who swear by the service. Most of these fans have found the secret sauce in the sea of updates, duplicates, and as some would say, “noise”. This is great and everything, but it’s not an easy process to learn how to utilize the tools FriendFeed provides to see the things you want. I’ve posted a couple of articles on how to best filter the massive fire hose of information, but it’s definitely not for everyone. What about those who just want to peruse FriendFeed to see what the most popular entries are? FriendFeed added a feature a few months ago which shows the “best of” FriendFeed by day, week and month. This is great if you want to be limited to your social circle, but what about the rest of FriendFeed?

This is where a great service called FFHolic comes in and saves the day. FFHolic groks all of FriendFeed and displays the most popular stories grouped in many ways. FFHolic shows you:

Most discussed entries
Most liked entries
Most commented entries
Most popular users and rooms
Most active users and rooms

These are just some of the ones to start with. You can also show some of these entries by type such as videos, photos, and music. It doesn’t stop there. FFHolic provides a rich set of tools to get the best from FriendFeed. There’s the FFHolic toolbar which puts all of the site right in your Firefox browser:

FFHolic also provides widgets to embed on your own website. These widgets give you the option of showing your “best of” information or all of FriendFeed.

Finally, FFHolic has RSS feeds for all of its data so you can subscribe to your favorite criteria. If you use tools like Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, iGoogle, or My Yahoo, then this may be a good option for you.

For new users of FriendFeed, FFHolic provides a fantastic springboard to see the best that FriendFeed has to offer. It encourages those who are squeamish about filtering the massive amount of information FriendFeed provides, to continue to use FriendFeed to fit their needs. If you’re on FriendFeed and enjoy FFHolic, join the FFHolic FriendFeed room to discuss it and provide feedback.

See you on FriendFeed.

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Doing The TWiT, Baby

Bwana — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:26:37 +0000

So Leo Laporte, internet superstar and ruler of podcasting, contacted me a couple of weeks ago to appear on This Week In Tech (TWiT) as a guest host. After I picked up my jaw and changed my underwear (in that order), I happily accepted and we completed the show last night (listen here). At first I was a bit intimidated with the guest panel most of which have had huge exposure though the likes of TechTV and most recently Revision3, but I did my best to hold my own with such a large panel. Leo thinks the show went well and extended the invitation for future shows, so that’s a good thing

For those of you who don’t know much about TWiT, it recently won the Podcast Award for Best Podcast in the Technology and Science category. Leo Laporte produces a multitude of shows under the TWiT branding that deal with all kinds of interesting topics. For more information, go to http://twit.tv.

Leo has done an excellent job of taking the home grown podcast/video cast hobby and made it professional. If you view his live stream on live.twit.tv, it’s hard to tell that the setup isn’t in a television studio. Leo uses a tricaster to perform many professional effects using an insane setup that I can only hope to dream about for Bwana.TV.

I’m glad to have experienced this colossal event with the new media juggernauts and am already seeing the benefits of such high exposure. My web server has been taking a pounding since it was plugged on the show and also my Twitter follower count has increased by almost 200 in less than 24 hours. Insane!

Thanks Leo and everyone at TWiT for such a wonderful experience and I look forward to future shows.

I also want to thank Chris Pirillo for helping me through his wide, wide network of listeners. I occasionally produce videos for his podcast, the Chris Pirillo Show. I don’t know if Chris contacted Leo, but if he did, I’m even more grateful. Now, I need to get off my lazy posterior and produce more episodes of Bwana.TV and Bwana.org Radio. Look for new videos tonight on Bwana.TV and a new Bwana.org Radio tomorrow (11/11) at 8:30PM EST. Both will be streamed live as I produce them at live.bwana.tv.

Doing the TWiT, baby.

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Our Votes Were Cast

Bwana — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:32:29 +0000

Today, my wife and I went to our local poll around 9:30AM and was pleasantly surprised to find no line or no wait. We were in and out in less than 15 minutes and we cast our vote.

Without going into a long winded blog post as to why I voted the way I did, I’ll just say this: I don’t support either candidate, therefore, I voted for neither candidate. It’s that simple. I don’t vote “against” candidates nor do I vote for the “lesser of two evils”. It’s my voice to vote for candidates that I truly believe in and can say without conviction, “I support this person”. This year, I can safely say, neither candidate fits that bill. I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of my readers disagree with my decision, but frankly, I could care less.

Voting is about expressing your voice, and I feel I have expressed mine. So get out and express yours! Some companies are rewarding voters with treats if you present your “I voted” sticker:

Starbucks - Free Tall (12 oz) Cup of Coffee All Day November 4th for Voters
Krispy Kreme - Star-Shaped Patriotic Doughnut
Ben & Jerry’s - Scoop Of Ice Cream 5PM - 8PM

P.S. If you are a Floridian, there are several important constitutional amendments on the ballot that you should definitely check out and vote for/against.

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Twitter Teases Us With Election Site

How Much Have You Spent On iPhone Applications?

Bwana — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:53:06 +0000

The iPhone is taking the world by storm. (no pun intended RIM) Yesterday, Apple announced their quarterly earnings for Q4 2008 and the results were shocking to say the least. Apple reported they sold 6.9 million phones last quarter which achieves their goal of 10 million in 2008. Also surprising is that Apple is now the 3rd largest supplier of phones. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

Click to Play

It is also known that RIM and Google are planning to implement their own version of the iTunes App Store which has proven to be wildly successful. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Doesn’t this all sound familiar? Remember when the iPod first started to boom? I digress.

I’ve found the iTunes App Store to be a great addition to the iPhone universe, especially since there are a good amount of high quality free applications. The question I have for everyone is, have you been tracking how much you’ve been spending on the iTunes App Store? I know some people are well aware of how much they spend on songs in the iTunes Store and elsewhere, but do you truly know how much you’ve spent? For me, it’s easy: I’ve spent $5.99.

The only application I’ve bought to date is Tuner by Nullriver, Inc.

I’m quite proud of this since I was tempted so many times to buy other applications, but I refrained. I’ve made it this far by focusing on all the great free applications on the iTunes App Store. Some of these include Evernote, Pandora, Facebook, Twinkle, Remote, AirSharing, Pro Football App, and College Football App. In these days where many are cutting back on costs (myself included), free is a great price.

So, what apps do you feel are must haves for the iPhone/iPod-Touch? Have you tracked your spending in this temptation store? Do you care? Let me know in the comments.

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Sony’s Little Big Goof Affects The Planet

Bwana — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:41:29 +0000

The first and most important question that comes to mind is: Why?

No, not why did Sony delay the release of the most anticipated game since Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet. The question is, why in the world would these lyrics be allowed in any video game:

In the 18th second: “كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (”kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death‘).
Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: “كل من عليها فان” (”kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish‘).

This is an ESRB “Everyone” rated game with these lyrics from the Qur’an. Again, the question that comes to mind is why? The only good thing that came out of all this is that Sony did the right thing by completely recalling the game and delaying it until October 27th. A lot of gamers are upset about the delay (for selfish reasons obviously) and don’t believe they should suffer due to other’s “beliefs”. I’m not surprised, really. This is a much bigger issue than “having fun” or “entertainment” or even what some believe are their “rights”. There isn’t a gray area here. It’s about as black and white as any situation can be.

The lyrics that are included in this game add nothing at all, and I now question the motives of the game writers. This is supposed to be a game about light-hearted fun and creativity, but Media Molecule felt it necessary to include Qu’ran lyrics regarding death and destruction to the entire earth.

Why?!?! Seriously, why in the world was this even considered let alone allowed? I could care less about the delay, in fact, I reiterate, that I encourage it. This game should not be released in its current form. I was part of the beta of LittleBigPlanet for about 4 days, and was very impressed with the gameplay. I’m saddened that this glaring mistake has tarnished the game forever. I don’t think I’ll have the same level of trust for Media Molecule or Sony ever again.

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7 Ways To Harness The Power Of Real-time FriendFeed

Bwana — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:00:45 +0000

If you follow me, you know I’m a sucker for real-time communication technology such as IRC, IM/Jabber, AJAX. Twitter recently made me happy with their real-time election coverage over at election.twitter.com. Real-time is great for live events such as political debates, apple keynotes, or even watching a TV show or sports event. Yesterday, FriendFeed announced a similar feature for their service.

As you might expect, it shows real-time updates of FriendFeed pages that we had to manually refresh in the past. It not only shows aggregated items such as FriendFeed posts, Twitter posts, RSS imports, and Google Reader shared items, but it displays comments on those items as well. FriendFeed was smart enough to allow you to join the discussion right within the thick of things. There is a comment and “like” link below each post, and “comment” links below comments.

FriendFeed took it a step further and allows one to embed the real-time conversation anywhere. (from public-rooms) This is a huge value-add in my opinion, not only because no one else offers it, but it gives an incredible amount of flexibility for its usage. Now, let me suggest some ways to utilize this new feature:

Use FriendFeed lists. I can’t emphasize this point enough. Without FriendFeed lists, this feature would be fairly useless. While it could be useful for some FriendFeed rooms, the lists feature provides an incredible amount of flexibility on what to display. For example, I could create an “A-listers” list which consists of the heavy news makers on FriendFeed. Once you have these lists, I could view the real-time updates in one spot. I could also fashion lists to follow certain interesting people and view their updates in real-time.
Consolidate similar FriendFeed Rooms into a FriendFeed list. The rooms feature has been getting mixed reactions from the social community, but I believe there is a huge value in them. By consolidating similar rooms , you are given a one-stop shop to view their real-time updates. Here’s a use case: We can find Social media rooms from 500 FriendFeed Rooms list. At first glance there is the Social Media room, Social Computing Strategist room, and the Social Media Enthusiasts room. We would join all those rooms, create a list called “Social Media rooms”, and then view their real-time updates. That is just one example, I’m quite sure there are a lot more.
Create custom rooms for your blog. FriendFeed gives you the option to embed a public room’s live feed on your blog. If you’ve ever considered setting up a forum for your website, this is a great feature to have. In my previous post about utilizing FriendFeed rooms, I talked about using rooms for discussion forums or live-blogging. With real-time updates, you can now create these rooms, and instantly have the power to embed a live version of it on your blog.

Use the Mini-window. This feature is useful for those of us who multi-task and like to have dedicated windows for streaming news. Also, if you’re a Fluid.app user for Mac (see my video), or use another Site Specific Browser (SSB), this new feature is perfect for dedicated apps and widgets. Also, don’t be afraid to open multiple mini-windows!
Use the “Pause updates” feature. If you’re already addicted to FriendFeed, then you know it can really be a distraction. Now with real-time updates, we all fear our productivity will fall into the abyss. To alleviate this situation, I highly recommend using the “Pause updates” feature to halt the flow of FriendFeed goodness, so you can get your work done. Part of the power of this feature, is not to overuse it, and pausing the updates is one way to do that. Also, if things are moving too fast, don’t be afraid to pause!
Participate! Participate! Participate! FriendFeed makes it dead simple to comment or like entries as they flow. Don’t be afraid to join in a discussion! Use the like button for those entries you like. If you smile at an entry, like it! If you contribute more than one or two comments to a post, like it! The value of real-time update increases with participation.
Manage the noise. If you find the updates are too fast and overwhelming, utilize and tweak FriendFeed lists to decrease the amount of volume. Don’t be afraid to create dedicated lists just for real-time updates. Heck, I’ve created a list just for Robert Scoble’s posts since they can really overwhelm a stream!

These are just some of the ways you can harness the power of this cool new feature from FriendFeed. Remember, lists are key, leverage rooms, and manage the noise up front. See you on FriendFeed.

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Twitter 2008: Get Used To It (Goodbye IM/Track)

Bwana — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:16:13 +0000

Last month, I blogged my return to Twitter due to the fact that the Track feature was dead. I saw the responses Twitter gave Steve Gillmor at Bearhug camp and determined they were prolonging the obvious: Track is dead, and they’re not bringing it back.

Yesterday, I learned that Twitter has officially gone on record to say that their Instant Messaging (IM) feature is not coming back. (in so many words):

To summarize, we want to bring IM back. We intend to bring IM back. But we’ve officially moved it from our Things That are Broken list to our Things We Want to Build list. Based on our analysis, the cost-to-benefit for IM for the most users is not as high as some other things—so it will be a while before we tackle it. Like any budget (in this case, the budget of our limited engineering time), tough calls need to be made—especially in these times. And while we don’t expect everyone to agree with this decision, we at least want to be straightforward with you.

Translation: Don’t count on IM coming back, ever. Steve Gillmor doesn’t sound surprised by the announcement since I believe he shares the same pessimism with me regarding IM/Track at Twitter. ReadWriteWeb thinks IM will possibly be back next spring. I believe that’s a very optimistic view.

If you must have IM/Track functionality, there are a couple of options available:

Follow TweetTrak and send direct messages on terms you want to track. It will send you responses via direct message.
TwitterSpy is a popular option (I use IdentiSpy for tracking on identi.ca). It is an XMPP jabber bot with lots of features.

Twitter’s stance on IM re-emphasizes my goal of rediscovering how to best utilize Twitter. Since my return, I’ve been using TweetDeck and TwitterSpy with some success. This is my current method of utilizing Twitter:

TweetDeck to do non-realtime tracking of terms using their search feature. I also use TweetDeck to track replies, and keywords related to my websites and me.
TwitterSpy for some interests such as mobile phone news, Apple, web 2.0 topics
Twinkle on my iPhone for mobile Twittering
Twitter through Ping.FM for general blast messages

I’m still clinging to Track by using TwitterSpy, but I find it to be more reliable than TweetDeck’s search implementation. Once TweetDeck becomes more reliable, I can get away from using IM completely.

So this is the new Twitter folks. I say we start getting used to it, adapt, and adjust.

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Socialmedian Provides A Refreshing Take On News Aggregation

Bwana — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:21:40 +0000

Today, I made my fourth attempt to understand and utilize the new social network, Socialmedian. I’ve tried in the past with failed results. Why? I believe it may be due to laziness and also some social media burnout that I’m fighting through. Thankfully, this time around, I was able to dig deep and find some cool features. Check out my walkthrough video:

Click To Play

Socialmedian gives you the tools to effectively track and discover people who share your interests. They’ve taken some of the most powerful features of popular sites like Digg, FriendFeed, and Twitter and given us all the good stuff while leaving out the bad. For example, FriendFeed has a nifty “like” system, where you can elevate stories and let your friends know that you really enjoyed it. The word “like” presents a stumbling block if the story is tragic or full of hatred and violence. Socialmedian, took this concept and added a feature called “Mood” where you can state whether you like OR dislike a story, but still elevate it for your friends while letting them know how you feel about it.

Discovery is easy with Socialmedian through the “networks” feature. I recommend new users get started by tapping into the established networks on Socialmedian. Once you’ve discovered a network that interests you (there’s a high chance you will), then participate. Comment, add moods, use sharing mechanisms, and find new people to follow. This is the magical formula of Socialmedian. It’s not obvious by a long shot (hey, it took me four tries), but now that I know the ties with Google Reader, Twitter, and Facebook, it’s easier to contribute and participate in discussion.

If you choose to use Socialmedian, follow me at http://www.socialmedian.com/bwana

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R.I.P. VisualHub

Bwana — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:17:36 +0000

Most of you know, I do a video podcast/blog at bwana.tv. I often get complimented on the quality of the videos that I publish. These videos have a great look and do not have large file sizes. While I credit some of the high quality video to my camera (Canon Powershot TX1), I believe the bulk of the credit should go to VisualHub. I did a video on VisualHub back in April:

Click to Play

Yesterday, I learned that the company behind VisualHub, Techspansion, has decided to close its doors and discontinue VisualHub. Naturally, I was saddened by this decision since I use this program at least 5 times a week for my day to day video production. I’m going to continue to use VisualHub for as long as it works (think: software updates could break it without support) and attempt to find another solution in the meantime. The main thing I want to extract from VisualHub is the ffmpeg flags for most of the presets I use in the software. (My favorite is “All Devices” on the iTunes tab)

The power of VisualHub is not necessarily the internals, since most of them are open sourced, but the real power lies in the ease of use and the quality of the outcome. Video conversion can be intimidating and VisualHub made it painless and simple. I thank you, Techspansion, for making my life easier, and I’m sad to see you go.

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Apple: There Is A Storm Coming

Bwana — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:53:16 +0000

Hurricane flags are popping up over Cupertino, namely, at Apple’s headquarters. Why? The RIM-pire is at it again with a sweet new device that’s coming out soon for Verizon called the Blackberry Storm.

This will be RIM’s first touch screen device that is obviously built to compete with Apple’s widly popular iPhone. Recently, Google, T-Mobile and HTC were in the news regarding their iPhone competitor, the T-Mobile G1. I went on record to state that I was semi-impressed with what they had, but if I were to decide on what to buy today, I would pass on their model for various reasons. I also stated that I’m more excited about the Blackberry Storm than I am about the T-Mobile G1. Here are some reasons why:

RIM is serious business. These guys pretty much own the smartphone market and there’s a big reason why. They are adamant about making your device productive. While that may deter a lot of casual users of smart phones, the hardcore business users love it to pieces.
If anyone can stop the iPhone, it’s RIM. Not to take anything from Nokia, but it is my personal belief that RIM has a better chance of slowing down the iPhone’s momentum than Nokia. As I stated in my iPhone 3G review, Apple is serious about making inroads into the business market. When executives are approached about solutions, I guarantee RIM will be on the comparison sheet. They are capable of doing it.
Verizon has a great network to kick start the launch. Apple’s iPhone launch was very successful in some eyes, but was tainted by AT&T’s network. Obviously, AT&T is having scaling issues with all of the new users that the iPhone is bringing in. I believe Verizon has a better backbone for a huge Blackberry Storm launch. Their EVDO/CDMA system is largely touted as one of the best in the nation in terms of coverage and speed.
All other offerings are lackluster. Let’s face it, the touchscreen competitors of the iPhone are not up to the task of slowing down Apple’s momentum. This is solely my opinion with no real facts to back it, but I still believe it to be true.

AT&T is already preparing for the Storm with propaganda the same way Verizon did at the iPhone launch. Duncan Riley, of the Inquisitr, states the Blackberry Storm is the “new hotness” and I must agree. If you’re not excited about the Blackberry Storm yet, check out these photos that I found over on Electronista:

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Twitter Teases Us With Election Site

Bwana — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:55:29 +0000

We’ve always stated how Twitter is a great way to gather data from the masses on certain topics. No one will ever disagree with that. Tonight is the highly anticipated Presidential debates and Twitter is buzzing with colorful commentary from both sides of the race. Twitter has seemingly tapped into the technology from Twitter Search (formerly Summize) and created Election.twitter.com.

The website seemingly uses AJAX to automatically refresh all chatter about Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin. I’ve seen this technology used in other places such as Digg Spy (which I think made it popular) and it really gives a good flow of information without refreshing the browser.

This is good and all, but I’m concerned this is nothing more than a tease.

Twitter impressed a lot of us early in their company’s history by implementing a group feature for SXSW. You followed a certain Twitter user, and all related SXSW tweets were aggregated and shown together. We salivated over this functionality and asked Twitter the inevitable question of when groups will be implemented. The word was “soon”. This is why I’m not getting my hopes up over the really cool election site. I fear it’ll serve as a special Twitter function and won’t be rolled out to users just as groups was. If this is true, it’s really a shame because it’s a really nice feature, sort of like Track was, but I digress. I don’t really participate nor follow political conversations online frankly because the entire arguments are based on lies on top of lies based upon past lies which were founded upon even more lies.

Looking at the data stream at the Twitter election site, it’s obvious, and not surprising, most of the Twitter community is pro-Obama. It’s also sad to see a lot of name calling and generalizations on both sides of the race, but hey, that’s politics. I’m enjoying the use of the technology to highlight this point however. And to Twitter: Stop teasing us with stuff like this and roll it out. It gets old when you get our hopes up and then shatter them with silence.

P.S. If you’re going to particpate in #obamashot and #mccainshot, please make sure you have a designated driver. Thanks.

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Adsense For Feeds, Awareness API, Oh My!

Bwana — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:50:33 +0000

I’ve recently moved Bwana.org’s RSS feed to utilize Google’s Adsense for Feeds program which allows advertising embeds within your RSS feed. I was reluctant at first since I didn’t want to hand over control of my feed to FeedBurner. Anyway, after I got a setup with Adsense for Feeds, I ran into an issue which took some time to resolve. I could not figure out how to utilize all the nifty features of FeedBurner with my Adsense for Feeds account.

How is that you ask?

Well, with Adsense for Feeds, the feeds are hosted on a different domain than FeedBurner’s even though they use the same technology. FeedBurner’s feeds are hosted at http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourwebsite, while Adsense for Feeds accounts are hosted on http://feedproxy.google.com/yourwebsite. There’s been a bunch of controversy on how Google is handling the “switchover” to the new domain (it is currently a manual process which is not perfect).

My problem was, I didn’t know how to access the details of my “FeedBurner”, Adsense enabled feed. I didn’t know how to log in to FeedBurner since I didn’t already have an account there. The Adsense for Feeds section of Google Adsense shows a different set of options than what you see on FeedBurner. The main thing I needed was to enable the Awareness API so that I could show my feed count on my blog. By default, Adsense for Feeds accounts have the Awareness API disabled. So after scouring Google for solutions I finally stumbled upon it myself. The solution is:

Log into your Google Account at http://www.google.com/accounts using the same credentials as your Adsense account.
From there click the FeedBurner link:
You are automatically authenticated to FeedBurner with your Adsense for Feeds credentials.

From here you can configure and customize to your heart’s content. A very simple solution for a seemingly difficult problem. Hope this helps.

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T-Mobile G1: Beware Of The Limitations

Bwana — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:50:47 +0000

Today, the Google Android platform had its coming out party, and the first phone to use Google’s new mobile software, is the T-Mobile G1. Rather than bore you with all the details you’ve read about one the web already, I’ll summarize some limitations of the T-Mobile G1:

No 3.5mm headphone jack. (Update 09/25/08 - T-Mobile will eventually ship adapter but not in first shipments)
No modem tethering
Includes only 1 GB Micro SD memory card (expandable to 8GB)
~~Data transfer limited to 1GB/month~~ (Update 09/25/08 Lifted by T-Mobile)
Lack of Microsoft Exchange support out of the box
No desktop/computer sync option. All data in the cloud!
No A2DP/Stereo Bluetooth
Google Account required to use
No video capture
Update Copy & paste is limited to form fields. It is not global.

Granted this is the first release of many Google Android supported phones, some of these limitations can be taken with a grain of salt. The major limitation I can see at this time is that Google Android is all about cloud computing, and I don’t think adoption rate will be swift with that limitation. Not everyone is ready to completely move to the cloud. Since I haven’t had first hand use of the device, I can’t really recommend it or not, but on paper, if I were to make a decision today, I would pass on this model.