UberNoggin

I’m a huge fan of Google apps. I’ve pushed the internal links in a Google doc to their limits trying to make something wiki-like to share with coworkers and collaborators so I’m really excited that Google might be announcing the release of wikis on Google apps.

Google acquired Jotspot a while back so let’s keep our fingers crossed!

This holiday weekend has been an interesting one in the world of social networks. As I posted before, a few days ago Quechup (a social networking and dating site) spread invites like a virus by snagging the address books of folks who created accounts and spamming every contact with an invite to the network.
Plenty has been written about the practices of the site, their wrong doings, and the aggravation caused by the whole mess so I don’t want to talk about that more. However, the more I think about the mess the more I think about what we can all learn from it. I’ve been brainstorming and trying to boil down my thoughts on this. I welcome feedback, critique, and additions.

What Social Networks can learn:
Be straightforward and transparent: Tell users what you’re going to do with any information they provide on the site. Be clear about policies and procedures. Don’t bury details in a hard-to-read TOS and expect people to find them.
Take criticism: Apologize when your site or your staff do things that make users upset and STOP the practice immediately. A bug shouldn’t function for a minute more than you know about it. Take your site down if you have to but don’t let a bad idea or a mistake become a PR nightmare.
The only invites should be personal invites: Online trust relationships are difficult to establish at best whether they’re between people or between users and a site. Automated invites are meaningless. Don’t send an invite to a user’s contact unless the user has been asked (or at least allowed) to send a personal message along with the invitation.

What Social Network users can learn:
Research a site before you join: Unless the invite you receive is personalized assume it’s spam and check up on the site, send an email to the person who invited you, and do a quick search for stories related to the site.
Screw-ups happen: The internet moves fast. Great ideas can spread just as fast as bad ideas. A few years ago email viruses were the big thing. I don’t know anyone who didn’t become a victim of at least one.  I felt horrible every time I received an email from a friend who said they became victim of the Quechup mess when they signed up because the invitation came from me, someone they thought was on top of all of this. Surely, if I invited them it must be a worthwhile site. Each email made me want to club further and further under my desk. Then I realized “Hey! Crap happens” I sent out as many apology messages as I could and tried to let as many people know that they should disregard the invite.
Networks are migratory: Though you may build your network on one site, if a majority of the network moves somewhere else you might follow. Some members of your network might function like scouts, going out to find the new spaces, and report back to the collective about what’s out there. I’m proud to be such a scout but there is responsibility attached to that function. I think I failed in that this time by allowing myself to be tricked by a bad site. Se la vie! We live. We learn.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not claiming that I followed this advice when I made the mistake of signing up but I’ve always believed the only bad experience is the one we don’t learn from. What insight do you take away from this mess?

Dear Scoble,

First, let me say. Robert…Mr. Scoble…you’ve been under a lot of heat lately. I don’t want to add to that. You’ve been extremely graceful while under fire. BUT! Wow, do you miss the mark with your latest Kyte video about the “blog of the future.” Let me tell you why.

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If you don’t have time to watch the video, here’s the lowdown. Scoble says that blogs have become cluttered with ads, widgets, sidebar calendars etc. Lots of elements that take attention away from the central content of the blog. Up to this point I agree with Scoble. Then he goes TOTALLY AWRY!

Scoble suggests a blog interface where all of the sidebar bits (Facebook links, Twitter widgets etc) are relegated to “books” that zoom in and out similar to CoverFlow.

If you’ve never seen Coverflow, it looks like this:

How pretty! How very Iphone! How very useless and against the whole concept of a blog! Who are blogs for? Are they for the blogger or the reader? What Scoble describes is the ultimate personal homepage. I’d love to be able to see all my daily goodies on one easy-to-navigate page but this is not a blog. A blog faces outward to an audience. It should be easy to read, easy to navigate, and the text shouldn’t be buried in some snazzy Flash interface. My blog page isn’t perfect; there’s some junk on it but the purpose behind everything on it is to help the reader, not help me.

I know Scoble is brainstorming here and I think he has some good points but not to apply to blogs. I agree with him about the need for simplicity on the page so the content is featured but that’s about where the agreement stops. A blog should be simple, uncluttered and created solely with the reader/audience in mind.

Is it egotistical to think that readers are really dying to see your Facebook profile so easily? Or that they’re dying to be able to see your Flickr page without leaving your blog? There’s nothing wrong with linking to other iterations of your identity to allow your readers t find out more about you. Doing so contributes to your ethos and your trustworthiness but it should be subtle. Not “in your face.”

Blogs are not personal homepages. If we’re going to redefine how a blog would work best we need to keep two things in mind: 1) easy to write 2) easy to read. That’s it.

Back to the whiteboard, Scoble. Give it another shot.

Sincerely,

Intellagirl

This poster was created to advertise a talk I’m giving at Notre Dame in September. It’s the ass-kickingest poster anyone has ever made for one of my talks. I love it!

In other surreal news, I found out yesterday I was nominated for Faculty/Staff Homecoming Queen. Ha!

I just got back from the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) and I’m absolutely buzzing with big ideas! Don’t stop reading if you’re a SL naysayer. There’s more to this than meets the eye. If you’re at all interested in how Web 2.0 concepts are changing the internet and how we work, socialize, and think you should be paying attention to the SL phenomenon.

I gave a talk about education in SL at the convention and managed to stir up some big ideas from folks I talked to afterwards who have my brain bouncing around to big big things. First, let me point out that SL is very much a web 2.0 space. Let me go back to my 4 traits of web 2.0:

1. Off-site data: Yes. Your avatar, its inventory, and the rest of the SL world lives on remote servers so no matter what machine you’re on when you log in the world looks and works the same.
2. API: Yes. SL is becoming more open by the day but there are already significant API opportunities for porting data in and out of the space.
3. Prosumer: Oh Yes! Everything in SL is user generated. EVERYTHING! You don’t get much more prosumer than that.
4. Social: For sure! SL is people. Without the people who use the platform, who build and create, and who host events SL would be as empty and dead as the press claims it to be.

So what’s the big deal about SL being web 2.0? Integration. There are lots of 2.0 apps that let you pull info from other services you use but none that has such huge potential as SL. I’m on a constant search for a web 2.0 space where all of my other info feeds and social networks are easily integrated and accessed. But for that to be truly practical you need a space where folks are eager to spend their time, a central “space” that people can call home and pull all of their relevant info to them. In my mind, SL has the greatest potential. If I could sit in my house in SL and edit a rich text doc, see friend notices from other systems such as Facebook, listen to music, and peruse my RSS feeds I’d be a very happy girl. So why do all this in an immersive environment? Why not just a mashup website? Because SL offers tools that are not available on the 2D web. I can’t bring easy 3D modeling of ideas, spatial understanding, custom visuals etc into a 2D mashup site but I CAN bring all of the 2D functions into the 3D space (or at least I hope we’ll be able to soon).

SL could be the most powerful virtual global village around. Imagine dragging a headline onto a friend so he could read the same blog you’re looking at. Or even better, dragging the headline onto a wall so you could read it at the same time. I dream of websites that look more like groups of rooms with doors and teleports to other rooms where I can “surf” along with other people who are in the space and we can talk about what we’re seeing and then add those ideas back to the sites we’re visiting together.

Why can’t the future be here faster!?

I love how quickly an idea can pass around the net. From blog to video to IM to microblog…bouncy ideas abound. The latest is Bacn. According to Lifehacker (a blog you should read if you’re not) Bacn is:

“Email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.”

The term came about last week and has already spread across the webosphere. Here are just a few links to follow to learn more:

• The Official Bacn2 Blog
• Bacn on BuzzFeed
• Technorati hits on Bacn
• IJustine’s video of the original Podcamp discussion that spawned the term

Beyond the amazing meme-speed of the internet, there are other important implications of the Bacn fad. First, it’s a symptom of info overload created by “pull.” All of the updates, notices, and feeds that we love and laud as being time savers might just be overwhelming us. I get about 30 emails a day from a couple of mailing lists I’m a member of, about 5 Facebook notices, about 10 Twitter notices, and a few other random updates from Slideshare, Google alerts etc. All in all this adds up to about 80+ emails a day that I don’t have to open but might not want to delete either. We all knew what Bacn was before the meme started because we’ve all shuffled emails into a “read later” folder or somehow marked them to be worth saving but not worth reading right away. It seems we’re working toward a balance between “push” and “pull” that will be important to watch as new kinds of info filtering apps come along.

Second, Bacn is interesting as a phenomenon because once a problem/issue is given a name there are sure to be apps developed to help us all deal with it. I, for one, use labels on my gmail to help me know which emails are vital and which can be shuffled into the “later” pile but I’m sure it won’t be a week before there is a “Bacn filter” or a “KrspyBacn” app to help us stratify bacn into different types. Will there be “Canadian Bacn”, “Turkey Bacn”, “FaknBacn”?

Getting tired of the Learning Management System on your campus? Ever look to see how infrequently your students actually log in to see their assignments etc? Let me tell you, it’s pretty darn infrequently. So why not create a course site on a social network where they already live? Facebook now has several apps that make a near perfect course management system. Use “Courses”, a file sharing app, and a chat app and you’ve got every tool in Blackboard on a site that doesn’t go down, isn’t so bland that it puts you and your students asleep, and actually offers collaborative resources that BB can’t provide (oh and you’re not supporting a company which caters to administrators rather than instructors and students but that’s my personal grudge).

Give it a try and come back to tell us all what you think.

I’ve been called lots of things….but I’ve never been called a Purple Cow. Until now that is. Thanks, Roland. I’m now a blushing purple cow.

In my constant search for desktop “pull” perfection I’m always looking for some kind of aggregator that truly pulls everything I care about in one place. Google Desktop definitely shows some promise.

Yes, it sits on your desktop. Yes, that can be distracting. Yes, it has all kinds of feeds that might shove info in your face that you’re not interested in. BUT! You can change all of that, customize it in really powerful and handy ways, and make it exactly what you want.

For example, mine has short cuts to all of my Office apps (which I use, oh, a MILLION times a day), my Skype connections, the local weather, my gmail, news headlines (from sources I picked), a little notepad, a feed from my Flickr photos, my RSS feeds, a to do list, and a Google search bar.

Some of the gadgets you can add are a bit silly like the one that tells your the Star Trek stardate for the day. But hey, I’m sure someone is in love with that gadget.

What I like most about it is that it really does aggregate the first four or five tabs that I open every day when I sit down at my desk. It saves me time. Yes, it actually saves me time! So much of the technology I play with is cool for about a day and then I realize that I’m not able/willing to integrate the technology into my daily routine. If you can’t make easy use of it then it doesn’t work for you and you have to move on.

My only wish for the Google Desktop is a TV plugin. I have Media Center on my machine and I have a guilty habit of watching schlock like Dr. Phil while I work. It would be lovely to have it on a little screen on my desktop sidebar. Hey, a girl can dream, right? Maybe Google knows what’s best for me and doesn’t have this little plugin to save my productivity.

Give Google Desktop a try and tell me what you think. Is it great? Is it horrible? What gadgets do you like best?

On Friday August 10 I’ll be presenting another “Web 2.0 Business Secrets Seminar” and we’ll be streaming it live on the internet! Please feel free to pass these instructions onto anyone and everyone who may be interested in watching the presentation.

To view the seminar live on the internet, you will need Quicktime player. If you do not have quick time player, you can download the software at http://quicktime-downloads.com/.

To get started:

1. click “start”
2. click “all programs”
3. click “quicktime”
4. click “quicktime player”
5. click “file”
6. click “open URL in new player”
7. copy paste this URL: rtsp://in-info-webmac.informatics.iupui.edu/live.sdp

You should then be set to go! The presentation will begin at 9:00am EST.