Stephen Pickering » Tech

Great Resources for How to Use Twitter

Stephen Pickering — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:24:03 +0000

I saw a tweet today by Chris Brogan called “50 Power Twitter Tips.” I want to remember this post and go back and read it often. As a side note about blogging: A lot of times I think of my blog as a self serving tool, a second “brain” if you will, for storing stuff that I may need months later. I had this happen twice today. I was trying to network my Linux machine to my Mac to transfer some files. I had dug up the techno info months ago and made it a blog post. I can’t keep that stuff in my brain all the time, especially when its something I use a few times a year, and its not a task that’s in my everyday profession. So today, using WordPress’s search function, I easily found the post and got my task done quickly and painlessly, because I had done the painful leg work of finding the info months before. Now, yes, I could just as easily store that same info on my Computer, no doubt. But the additional benefit of the blog platform is that it makes the information available simultaneously to anyone in the world who may have the same problem. The blog becomes a “scaling” solution as well as a self serving one, simultaneously. The great benefit of computers and the internet is not only in processing mundane work, but offloading mundane but necessary information onto your “second” brain, so as to free your organic brain to be more spontaneous.

I’ll keep adding to this list as I discover more great resources. Do you have any of your own you would like to recommend? Leave a comment. I’d love to read it.

50 Power Twitter Tips – ChrisBrogan.com – I need to read this list every day, or at least every week. These tips are succinct (they are all short enough to be “tweeted” individually) , and they can be put into practice immediately. These tips will not only help you to get the most out of Twitter but also make it more fun and additionally increase your “influence” in the Twittersphere in a natural, authentic way. Chris Brogan is a special guy. He’s a bonafied internet, blogging, twitter “celebrity” but he has no hubris. He really likes people. He really likes to help them. He’s genuine, down to Earth. He’s not trying to impress or be part of some “elite” class of individual, although as a by product of his activities he has become part of that group, maybe even at the top of it, through acting in a way that’s the exact opposite of most of the Twitter “illuminati.” A genuine “Trust Agent” as his book goes. And one of the most enjoyable speakers you’ll ever watch.

Just Added A New Customer to My Rackspace Cloud Site: What I Learned

Stephen Pickering — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:13:55 +0000

Update 6-18-10 : I did add that 2nd Customer. Yeah! They emailed me yesterday. Set up their site in about 2 minutes. Now they are rocking in the Cloud with no extra effort.

Actually, I thought I would add 2 customers, but I haven’t heard back from the other one. Since I started re selling Rackspace Cloud Sites last summer, I’ve had lots of inqueries, some of which have become customers, some of which have not, but all have asked good questions, questions that many times I would have to call Rackspace Techs or Ping Chad Keck or Rob La Gesse on Twitter to answer.

I just realized, “Why have I not been writing all these down to build an FAQ page?” Well, I’m going to do just that. I’ll start with these most recent two inqueries, and then maybe I’ll dig through my email and find the rest and slowly add to the page, or just start from scratch and start documenting fresh questions as they come in.

Q: We have been looking at your basic rack space package & wonder if you could clear up how many separate domains we could host? Is it one domain per package or a set amount?

A: You can put as many domains as you want on there, and I would only charge you extra if you’re account as a whole exceeded the limits. (Here are the plans and the amounts for overages.)

(Here’s a good one! Solid, basic, and to the point!)

Q: Are you still reselling rackspace cloud sites?

A: Yes!

Q: If I start off with the basic plan and find its not big enough, can I move up to an advanced plan without taking my site off line?

A: Yes, I can change your plan without it affecting your site. I just click on your site, change the plan that’s applied to it, and that’s it. Nothing touches your site or database.

Q: How big are the mailboxes?

A: The mailboxes are 1GB each standard. I was just told by Rackspace they can be increased to 3GB upon special request, and they said it’s no additional charge.

Well, those are 4 good solid questions to start things off with. I’ll add them to my FAQ page now, and continue building it as things roll along.

Q: Hi, I saw that you are reselling couldsites for Rackspace. I’m interested. I have three or four websites right now. I’d like each of these to have its own public IP address. Is this possible with your hosting?

A: Unfortunately no. With Cloud Sites, the ip address given is the ip for the server and not just the domain in question. This feature is available with Rackspace’s “Cloud Servers” product, however.

Here is the page with the details of my Rackspace Cloud Site hosting packages that this post refers to.

Here is the page with the information I need to get you started hosting your site or blog in the cloud.

Here is the FAQ Page I’m building for My Re-Selling Rackspace Cloud Sites Packages

And as always you can email me at Stephen@StephenPickering.com or call or text me at +1(501)291-1375.

You can also ping me on Twitter or Facebook.

Here’s a link to the Rackspace Cloud (Sites, Servers, and Files)
Here’s a link to the Rackpace Cloud Sites Page
This is the best blog to read about the Rackspace Cloud. It’s by Chad Keck, an engineer at Rackspace.
Here’s a link to the Rackspace Cloud Sites Wiki

Some Places to Get a Custom Logo

Stephen Pickering — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:08:58 +0000

Chris Brogan's New Logo by StressLimitDesign.com

I just noticed Chris Brogan, the well known Social Media blogger tweet that he got a new logo.

He mentioned he got it at a place called: StressLimitDesign.com in Montreal. Their webpage looks like they don’t want you to contact them (that’s facetious). So I don’t know what their prices are.

Scobleizer mentioned a few weeks ago that he got a logo, which is a pretty big deal: the no.1 blogger in the World has never had a logo until now! Ha! I need to dig up that post. Seemed like a pretty cool little place where he got it. [later] Oh here it is, I found it: http://idesignyourlogo.com/ I design your logo dot com? Doesn’t get much more focused than that. Just browsing, I like their work.

Scobleizer's New Logo by IDesignYourLogo.com

Of course there’s always 99designs.com, which everyone raves about. I’ve been interested in logos for some time, getting one myself, making one or something. As you can see I don’t have one, except for some special text that Google provides.

Writing this at a cafe on an iPad having breakfast and coffee. Other than the WordPress app being horrible, I could get used to this.

Related Outside of this Blog:

Carolyn Winter: Do You Resonate with Your Logo? Do Your Customers Resonate with It?

Google Font Directory – Free Custom Fonts for You’re Webpage/Blog

Facebook’s Privacy Solution is So Simple

Stephen Pickering — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:00:02 +0000

Instead of screwing with the granularity of your main page or account, confusing and aggravating the users, all that Facebook has to do is have two separate pages for each user: one completely private (except for those one chooses to be friends with), and the other completely open and connected to the open web. They already have this feature in “Pages.” All they have to do is tell people that this is your private page, and this other is your public page. To encourage users to create a public page, make the public page the only place that is searchable in Google or the open web. If only 10% of users choose to have a public page, you’ve got an automatic Twitter in one day. But to encourage even further adoption, innovate and iterate the public pages like crazy, and also tell the users, they must have a public page in order to search the public database. If the only way people can search and more importantly gain value from the Facebook public database, and the network effect that goes with it, is to have a public facing page, I can guarantee you 90% of users will adopt it.

What does this approach do?

It restores user trust. If you’re main account is completely locked down, not even searchable, you will also gain more users. My sister doesn’t belong to Facebook. She doesn’t trust it. Maybe it’s too late, but if trust were restored, she and millions of others, who don’t even consider Facebook and option, may join. But even if they don’t, you’ve restored trust in your main user base.
When users have a clear choice, they are going to contribute more value to the eco system. I recently heard Deepak Chopra quote, “A person convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” This manipulation of users to “trick” them into sharing things in public, only makes them more reticent, if not in fact close their account, to share anything useful.
You’ve simplified things. Not all those “sliders” to give everyone a headache over their account settings. The main account is completely private except for friends. The public page is completely open. No frustration or headaches. The simplicity will make the value of the network effect and the eco-system, and possibly even the number of users, explode.

When Facebook aquired FriendFeed last year, I thought this was the approach they were going to take. Dead simple. Everyone would have their private account and then a separate public page that would essentially be FriendFeed, with all its value of search algorithms that I had thought simply nailed Social search, and would not only prove fruitful to a business model, but also provide even more value to the user. The perfect recipe for “win, win”, the exact recipe for applying Google’s search model to Social Search.

Instead, they seemed, and even more so now after F8, to move in the opposite direction. Screwing with everyone’s main account, violating that sacred trust that enabled them to get such a large user base in the first place, and what is more, doing nothing with “Pages.” And now it seems after F8, “Pages” are almost being discouraged in favor of the “Likes” implementation. I guess they figure that anyone with a public page already has a website, and instead, why not just encourage them to virtually turn that open page into a Facebook page with the “Likes” implementation? Sounds good. But what are the implications? What happens when I the individual user clicks the “Likes” button? Is all my information being shared with third parties? What happens when that gets out, and every headline across the country screams, “Don’t click the ‘Like’ button!” Turns what might have been a useful thing for not only the user, but also the Facebook brand, into a liability, not to mention simply just bad Karma.

I don’t know Marc Zuckerburg, or know what his values are. If they are indeed, “evil,” a term the industry labels a company that tries to make their money through manipulation, then I guess this post is like talking to a tree. For even if they do “Correct Course,” as Dana Boyd, Tim O’Reilly, John Battelle, and many other smart prognosticators predict they will do, does it matter? This is indeed one of the salutary effects of a free market: Consumer push back and the realization that the big money is in making the “right” choices, forces a company to change or be in danger of losing its business. In a true free market, what’s right for the company is aligned with what is right for the consumer. But still, if Facebook is the “it” company of the next decade, and only the market is forcing them to make the right choices, the internet won’t hold in its hands a very transcendent leader. “He who is forced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”

The internet and the communications revolution is truly a place of infinite possibilities, almost a metaphor itself for the “Quantum Effect,” which states that, even in a complete vacuum, even in complete nothingness, (which is not to be imagined as a patch of empty space, because in nothingness, even space doesn’t exist), the idea of symmetry must exist, and the slightest break in it, which must occur, leads to an explosion of infinite proportions.

I would argue that Facebook would be of greater value and in turn be capable of making even more money than they ever imagined, by doing it the old fashioned way: providing value, innovating, and being completely transparant. Good will translates into cash in all sectors of a truly free market, but even exponentially so in the freest of free markets, one where “choice” and “free will” is the highest value: the internet. The Communications Revolution.

What do you think?

Google Font Directory – Free Custom Fonts for You’re Webpage/Blog

Stephen Pickering — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:45:54 +0000

Many interesting things were announced today at Google’s annual I/O keynote and meeting. Google “Wave” is now open to the public with no invite necessary. That should attract more users and get some “network” effect going, making it a more useful service. Another little one, kind of under the radar, is the availability of some custom fonts, free and open source, that you can easily grab the code for with a few snippets and apply to your webpage/blog. This is useful for design purposes and to have a little fun being creative with your page. I grabbed one already and applied it my header “Stephen Pickering” up there. What’s nice is, besides the fact that they are royalty free and open sourced, that since Google is hosting them on their own servers, the fonts will render properly on any “Modern” browser. I just checked on Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, and my header rendered correctly. Not sure about IE, since I don’t have it. Before, if you applied custom fonts to your page, more than likely other browsers wouldn’t render it, as they only support a few of the main fonts that are commonly used. But the Google servers make sure the code is there for most of the browsers to render it. Didn’t work on my iPad, however. I still don’t understand or like the fact that the iPad uses a “mobile” browser. Very lame on Apple’s part. Flash notwithstanding, the screen real estate is large enough on a tablet, that one should expect a more robust browsing experience.

http://code.google.com/webfonts

Neither Twitter, Facebook, nor Apple Will Survive the Open Web

Stephen Pickering — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:03:43 +0000

I was thinking about this subject tonight, that there is no way such closed systems as Twitter and Facebook can survive the force of the open Internet in the coming years with the price of data, storage, and bandwidth all marching toward near zero cost, much less be an Eco System or “Platform.”

As these communication and computation costs lower each
year, it will drive so much innovation, the walls will be torn down.

See, what is exactly the value proposition of a closed network such as Twitter or Facebook?

A) The Network Effect.

The Network Effect, or “Metcalfe’s Law” says that the value of a network equals the number of users it has squared. Obviously, the more users the more exponentially the value of said network increases. Facebook has 400million users. Twitter around 50million. You might think Facebooks network effect is tremendously greater than Twitters, but Facebook is a much more closed network. On average a typical user may have 100 “friends” or network connections. On Twitter you can connect to virtually anyone on the network simply by “following” them. It doesn’t have to be a reciprocal agreement. Everyone on the network is accessible to you. This means Twitter’s more open Network is of far greater value than Facebook’s larger but more closed Network. That’s why Facebook is in a tremendous frenzy to open their network more through “Pages” “Facebook Connect” and changing the default privacy settings.

So if Twitter’s vastly smaller, but vastly more open network has more Network Effect value what does that mean? The more open a “network” is, the more valuable that it is. This means there is an incentive to build a completely open network. So one will be built, or shall we say, not built, but merely “facilitated” because the act of building one implies some degree of closed. The completely open network already exists. It’s called the Internet.

We all know how many users and how much traffic Facebook has every month. They say its like an upward hockey stick. But how much value are Twitter and Facebook giving off each month?

And how much traffic and how many users does Internet, Inc. have?

Basically you trade your identity and your content for their network effect. Also they throw in their bandwidth, storage, and programming. As of now this has value, plenty of it and that’s why you see the spike in these “networks’” traffic.

But now the process of them selling you down the river begins. They figure they’re giving you network effect, bandwidth, and storage for free in exchange for them selling your content. Sounds fine, right?

But the problem is innovation will drill a hole into any walled garden. Quickly, innovation will fork around sand boxed networks and find ways to connect people without them giving up their identity or their content. Each day, storage and bandwidth prices drop. They are heading rapidly to zero. So that part of the economic proposition is losing weight very quickly as well.

Twitter isn’t the network. Facebook isn’t the network. The network is the network.

Even the mighty Apple, as much as I am blown away by this iPad I’m typing on, can’t survive this onslaught of the open web. For instance, tonight I was watching a TV show on the wonderful ABC app and it occurred to me that I was being forced to watch the commercial because I couldn’t minimize the browser. it felt Pavlovian to me, being trained by the nature of the device, forcing me to behave in a way I didn’t want or like.

I don’t think the user will put up with theses strategies for long, and I’m sure the open web will come to the rescue.

It also occurred to me tonight that Gmail keeps 5 years and 25,000 of my emails forever available and searchable and yet Twitter only let’s me go back and see a few weeks of my Tweets, with a substandard if not plain archaic search system.

That’s just plain lack of innovation. And Facebook is hardly better.

Technology, driven by innovation as it is, is a poor place for a lock in business model. Technology doesn’t want to be trapped, and will eventually fork around it’s captors.

Sent from my iPad

Painted on the iPad

Stephen Pickering — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 07:36:26 +0000

I haven’t attempted to draw or color anything in 20 years, but the iPad feels so natural and unintimidating that you allow yourself to play. And then when I was reading TUAW, they highly recommended an app called Art Studio that’s like as good as Brushes but only .99! Pretty unbelievable. I jumped in.

So I just finished painting this on the iPad. Mondrian anyone? Hhehehehehehehehhe. But the point isn’t whether this is much more than a grade school coloring. It’s not. The ego is out of the way, just as in the paradigm of the iPad, the technology gets out of the way.

Rather, the important point is, and I don’t know if you can tell this from the photo, but: it felt like coloring or painting in the real world. I had fun doing it. Yes it’s possible to have fun with a regular computer using Photoshop or Illustrator or some such creative tool. But the experience isn’t as intimate, warm, and human like. Even with applications that excite me such as Garageband for producing music, I tend to leave the project more stressed than when I began. The 2 foot chasm between the person and the screen, with keyboard and mouse guarding the passage, is an even larger psychological gap, it seems, leaving a lot of emptiness on the table and more than a little reticence at trying something new.

But with the iPad that experience changes. The intimidation and distance, both physically and emotionally, seem to melt away.

That’s been one of my main take aways from using the iPad: It’s a marriage of the digital and analog worlds. I have never had this kind of “human” or “emotional” experience interacting with and creating on a computer or piece of digital technology.

That’s one of the many reasons that I think this is the most important, interesting, and will be the most popular technological device in history. I think virtually everyone on the planet will have one in a few years. It’s as revolutionary as the internet itself because its a way to engage and interact with the internet, and the digital world in general, in a human way.

And its just the beginning.

The iPad seems to manifest the archetypal spirit of a continuum.
In all myths heroes and heroines have a single purpose, the power of a committment.

In the spirit of that committment the iPad seems to unobtrusively and intimately be able to be one’s delightful companion in seamless experiences of both entertainment, inspiration, productivity, and creativity.

And it does this in a way that is an aesthetically pleasing experience, a natural experience symbolized by it’s most important interactive gesture: that of human touch.

Technology that is inviting and fun to use gets engaged. And the marriage helps both the technology, as a more diverse group of talents come in contact with it, and society as a whole as it interacts more harmoniously, and receives the benefit of both knowledge and emotional support.

And finally the individual, who is freed by a system whose power now works with and for him, after so many years in the dark where cold, unenlightened systems were imposed upon him and his Spirit.

How to Use an iPhone as a flash drive

Stephen Pickering — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:52:19 +0000

Easy, just use iPhone-Explorer from Mypod apps. It’s really cool and free, for Windows or Mac. It’s a little program that browses the files and folders of an iPhone like it were an external drive. Nice because iTunes keeps a lot of things hidden, for instance sound recordings and notes. But it’s also nice to have direct access to all your files on any machine, without always going through the cumbersome iTunes, which sort of locks it down to one machine.

I’m going to add it to my ‘Cool Apps and Sites’ page now.

You can go to their page and download it here; iPhone-explorer.com

All the Google Accounts on Twitter

Stephen Pickering — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:18:28 +0000

Twitter’s newest ad platform:

________________________________________________________________

Courtesy of the Official Google Blog

twitter.com/Google – our central account
twitter.com/GooglePubPolicy – our take on politics, policy & government*
twitter.com/Blogger – for Blogger fans
twitter.com/Google Books – Passages, quotes, images and product news*
twitter.com/GoogleCalendar – user tips & updates
twitter.com/GoogleContacts – user tips for Google Contacts*
twitter.com/GoogleImages – news, tips, tricks on our visual image search
twitter.com/GoogleNews – latest headlines via Google News
twitter.com/GoogleNewsJP – latest headlines via Google News Japan*
twitter.com/GoogleReader – from our feed reader team
twitter.com/GoogleVoice – updates & info on Google Voice*
twitter.com/iGoogle – news & notes from Google’s personalized homepage
twitter.com/GoogleStudents – news of interest to students using Google
http://twitter.com/googlemobileapp – Updates on Google mobile apps*
twitter.com/YouTube – for YouTube fans
twitter.com/YouTubeES – en Espanol
twitter.com/GoogleAtWork – solutions for IT and workplace productivity
twitter.com/GoogleSites – Google Sites updates*
twitter.com/GoogleToolbar – news & tips from the Toolbar team*

Geo-related

twitter.com/SketchUp – Google SketchUp news
twitter.com/3DWH – SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse
twitter.com/Modelyourtown – 3D modeling to build your favorite places
twitter.com/EarthOutreach – Earth & Maps tools for nonprofits & orgs
twitter.com/GoogleEarth – updates from the Google Earth team*
twitter.com/GoogleMaps – uses, tips, mashups
twitter.com/GoogleSkyMap -Android app for the night sky

Ads-related

twitter.com/AdSense – for online publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsHelper – looking out for AdWords questions and tech issues
twitter.com/AdWordsProSarah – Google Guide for AdWords Help Forum
twitter.com/GoogleAnalytics – insights for website effectiveness
twitter.com/GoogleAdBuilder – re building display ads
twitter.com/GoogleAdManager – info on managing online ads & inventory*
twitter.com/GoogleAffiliate – info for publishers from Google network advertisers*
twitter.com/GoogleAuto – news for auto advertisers*
twitter.com/GoogleFinSvcs – news for financial services advertisers*
http://twitter.com/googlemande – news for media & entertainment advertisers*
twitter.com/GoogleRetail – news for retail advertisers
twitter.com/GoogleTech – news for tech advertisers*
twitter.com/GoogleTravel – news for travel advertisers*
twitter.com/GoogleTVAds – info on our digital system for more measurable TV advertising*
twitter.com/TechnologyUK – for U.K. tech advertisers
twitter.com/UKretail – for U.K. retail advertisers
twitter.com/creativesandbox – for advertising agencies*
twitter.com/InsideAdWordsDE – for German AdWords customers
twitter.com/GoogleAgencyDE – for German ad agencies
twitter.com/AdSenseKorea – info for Korean-language publishers*
twitter.com/AdSensePT – info for Portuguese-language publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsRussia – AdWords news & tips in Russian
twitter.com/DentroDeAdWords – Spanish updates from the Inside AdWords blog
twitter.com/GoogleAgencias – for Latin American agencies*

Developer & technical

twitter.com/AdWordsAPI – AdWords API tips*
twitter.com/GoogleResearch – from our research scientists
twitter.com/GoogleWMC – Google Webmaster Central
twitter.com/GoogleCode – latest updates for Google developer products
twitter.com/GoogleData – Data APIs provide a standard protocol for reading and writing web data
twitter.com/app_engine – web apps run on Google infrastructure
twitter.com/DataLiberation – our initiative for complete import/export of all data
http://twitter.com/googledevapac – for Google developers in Asia-Pacific*
twitter.com/GoogleMapsAPI – about using Google Maps embedded in websites
twitter.com/GoogleIO – Google’s largest annual developer event

Culture, People

twitter.com/googletalks – notes from our @Google speaker series
twitter.com/googlejobs – the voice of Google recruiters

Country or Region

twitter.com/googlearabia – news from the Google Arabia Blog*
twitter.com/googledownunder – Google activities in Australia & New Zealand
twitter.com/googlebrasil – News & info for Brasil*
twitter.com/googlecanada – News & notes from Google Canada*
twitter.com/GoogleDE – Google in Germany
twitter.com/GoogleKorea – News & notes in Korean*
twitter.com/GoogleLatAm – Latin America (en Espanol)
twitter.com/GooglePolicyIt – Notes on Google policy issues in Italy
twitter.com/GoogleRussia – Information in Russian on Google products & services*

Update: Additions indicated by *

Courtesy of the Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-accounts-on-twitter.html

Apple Computer Knowledge Navigator Video

Stephen Pickering — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:59:15 +0000