Author Archive

UPDATE: I recently spoke with Joel @Rapleaf and he clarified that the data that Rapleaf collects is not used to deny individuals credit. Instead the information is used by the marketing departments to target potential customers (source).

While Twitter is free social media tool, there’s a price that one pays for tweeting. For example, there are plenty of good incidents caused by an embarrassing celebrity tweet (source). Aside from Hollywood celebrities, we’ve also had a local incident where a VP at the Atlanta PR firm Ketchum mistakenly used Twitter to exclaim that he “would die” if he had to live in Memphis while visiting his client, FedEx (source). This was a problem since Memphis is where FedEx is headquartered. Talk about a real Homer Simpson “Doh!” moment.

Until now, the price of tweeting was simply facing temporary ridicule and a small boo-boo to your online reputation. But that’s all changed now that data-mining firm Rapleaf announced that they are using data from Twitter to determine if you’re credit worthy collect demographics data in the public domain that’s exposed through social networking sites. According to an article in Fortune Magazine (source), the people that you “hang out” with can be used to determine if you’ll pay your bill on time (THE STRICKEN SENTENCE IS NOT TRUE!). As a technologist, I recognize that some analytics tools can also provide this extra level of information. For example, Pinch Media/Flurry can send demographics information from the Facebook application to your iPhone application. This simply add an extra dimension to data that you’re already collecting about the behavior of your mobile app users. Of course, this feels both cool and a bit creepy.

As a regular user of Twitter and Facebook, I’m less worried about what I say because I’m well aware that my statements are in the public domain. But, I’m reconsidering who I’m planning to follow or be-friend online. As a social networking contributor, you should consider whether you’re willing to allow a social networking site to expose that information to a search engine, like Google.

I guess that the quip “Be slow in choosing your friends” rings true.

Launching new services is rarely a silky smooth process, especially for a large enterprise. Take for example my recent “experiment” with Fancast:

A few weeks ago, I tweeted about the streaming service from Comcast called Fancast. While other streaming services allow you to watch videos from the major networks, none give you streaming content from premium channels like HBO, Cinemax and Stars. So when my DVR started being flaky this past Saturday night, I decided to give it a try.

The log-in process was painless and the search functionality worked well. To watch premium content, the service required a special Adobe AIR player, which I promptly downloaded and installed. Everything was smooth sailing until up to the point when I tried to start Watchmen. For some reason, the service kept displaying a message that I was an HBO subscriber thought I was. After reading the FAQ’s, I confirmed that was I logging in with my primary Comcast.net account, which is a requirement, so I decided to call in to Comcast’s local customer service. After waiting on hold for a short while, the representative confirmed that all of my account settings were correct but indicated that another department would be better equipped to handle the issue. She tried to switch me to that department by I kept getting disconnected.

When I called in to customer service again, I spoke with another representative but the second one didn’t even know about Fancast. Yikes! Even though I explained to her how the service worked, she questioned me whether it was something that Comcast offered. My wife, who was sitting in the room, was rolling on the floor laughing as I attempted to convince the woman to help me. When the rep tried to switch, I was promptly disconnected again. So, I searched Fancast and (finally) found the toll-free number for support. When I called it, the Fancast rep informed me that my account was working correctly but error that I kept getting was due to an issue that Comcast/Fancast has been having for a week. And there’s no ETA for when it will be fixed. Now that’s a bummer!

While most would chalk this up to Comcast’s poor service, I think that the issue is actually a combination of poor user experience and internal communication/training. NOTE: I challenge you to name a cable television provider that you think is doing a great job these days! While the integration between Comcast and Fancast isn’t where it should be (and there’s a myriad behind the scenes reasons why that’s the case), I would have liked to see a simple error message that indicates that the service is currently down and that they’re working on it. Also, it would have been nice if the customer service reps at Comcast get training on Fancast so that customers like me don’t have to feel like I’ve just made a prank call. Lastly, both Fancast and Comcast should communicate on a regular basis about system status — it would have been much better if the Comcast rep told me that the service was down and to try again later instead of trying to fix my when in actuality it wasn’t the problem.

Comcast must be feeling the pressure to adapt to shifting consumer behavior and increasing pressure from competitors. According to eMarketer, nearly 25% of all TV content watched each day will be time-shifted, on-demand, on the Web or on a mobile device by 2012 (source). Viewers are abandoning television for the internet. Also, both Apple and Google are looking to challenge traditional video distribution channels by offering their own subscription services (source and source). While the service is still in Beta, it is just a shame that Comcast wasn’t able to deliver on the concept.

After spending more than an hour trying to use Fancast, I’ve decided that I need to give Comcast another few weeks to work out the bugs — eventually this service is going to be Comcastic.

Despite the icy roads and frigid temperatures, hundreds of people from the US southeast region came together at SCAD Atlanta on January 8th – 9th to attend the inagural WordCamp Atlanta, a conference where the WordPress (aka WP) community exchange tips and tricks about this widely popular blogging (and sometimes as a web content management) tool.

I had the pleasure to attend this event along with my colleague Kathlene Hestir. Below are the highlights from the various sessions. I’ve tried to link to the presentations on Slideshare whenever possible.

Friday Night, January 8

WordPress & Journalism
Alejandro Leal and Thomas Wheatley (Creative Loafing Atlanta)

• Managing their blog using WordPress MU (which is the multi-user version of WordPress).
• Have a decent amount of data: 58 blogs, 906 users, 7977 Posts, 17556 Comments.
• Digital or online content is mostly separate from print content; very little sharing between the two.

WordPress & SEO (View on Slideshare)
Topher Kohan (CNN.com)

• Use basic SEO, such as good page title, content headline, 250 words, and ALT tags, on your website.
• You should use breadcrumbs b/c taxonomy is good for both search engines and the user).
• Rankings is going to become dependend on page load times (so hire a developer with strong server and page code optimization experience).
• Sculpt your webite with rel=”nofollow” attributes.
• Canonical URL’s are going to play a larger role in the future.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: Topher takes SEO very seriously — he did an amazing job getting everyone fired up about this topic. There are a ton of good plug-ins in the presentation so just check it out.

The AJC and WordPress
Cliff Barnett and Jason Gilstrap (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

• Rolled out WordPress to make this simple and consistent.
• WordPress is the central content repository for newsroom as content from system gets pushed both online and to the print system.
• Blogs responsible for 8% of traffic; posts on average get 700 comments.

Saturday, January 9

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: WordPress Resolutions: What to expect in 2010
Jane Wells (Automattic)

• Big Announcement: WP 3.0 is a producet of “The Merge” between WordPress and WordPress MU.
• Expect lots of goodies: a multi-site platform, new base theme, custom posts and canonical plug-ins (or de facto plug-ins for Twitter, Google Analytics, etc.).
• Enhanced media functionality is now pushed to WP 3.1 (maybe).
• WordPress.org is going to be undergoing a major redesign (with help from WP Ninja Mark Jaquith)

ADDITIONAL NOTES: Things like multi-site platform, custom “posts” (aka custom content types) and canonical plug-ins is HUGE news — this is where WP finally takes the baby step to become a true PHP-based web content management tool. Alternative solutions such as Drupal should take note!

Advanced Google Analytics Integration with WordPress (View on Google Docs)
Rusty Tanton (WebMD)

• Current plug-ins for Google Analytics are weak — they only feed you the basic info.
• Using custom variable and advanced segmentation one can REALLY analyze what’s happening on your blog

ADDITIONAL NOTES: Rusty code examples in his presentation so I suggest that you check it out.

Complex Content Management with the Pods CMS Framework Plugin
Scott Kingsley

• Ability to create custom content types in WordPress using Pods (Pods Plug-in).
• Data for pods maintained in separate tables.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: An interesting conversation started up between Scoot and Mike Schinkel over the viability of Pods since Jane announced that custom post types were coming (see tweet).

WordPress Security: Protectin your WP from Inside Out (View on Slideshare)
Syed Balkhi (WP Beginner)

• Do the obvious: keep WP updated, rename “wp-admin” folder and use strong passwords (10 chars or more).
• Use advanced techniques like, moving wp-config.php out of webroot, reassign admin rights to another user and delete admin account, get rid of error message on login screen, and limit access via IP whitelist to wp-admin folder and change DB tables prefix (don’t use wp_)
• Tons of good plug-ins for security so don’t be lazy!

PHP and WordPress – Converging Communities
Aaron Brazell

• Core is still written in PHP4 (some parts are using PHP5) so it is time to update core!

Final Thoughts

The conference was great. Lots of great speakers — I learned a ton! In case you missed it, plan to attend next year’s WordCamp Atlanta Conference, which will be held February 11-12 2011. The event was a great success — kudos to Tessa and Brandon for pulling it off.

Last July, Bill Gates handed over the reins to Steve Balmer. But while Bill is no longer running operations day to day, his quest for world domination now seems to be immortalized.

In a recent preview for the movie Despicable Me, we found an odd similarity between one of the characters called Vector and Bill in his younger days. In the movie preview, Vector is defending his company from another villain who’s wearing goggles (get it goggles, Google). Well, if you don’t believe me, check out the image below or the link movie preview. Bill, I mean Vector, makes his debut about 40 seconds into this clip.

Happy New Year!

Despicable Me Movie Trailer

Google announced yesterday that they’ve entered the URL shortening marketplace with a solution called Goo.gl (see Mashable’s coverage: source). The new service is going to be bundled with the Google Toolbar and Feedburner. Goo.gl is intended to compete with URL shortener bit.ly which has seen explosive growth in the last 9 months (according to Google Trends):

Not all URL shortener services have followed the same growth pattern. It is clear from the above that tinyURL.com has hit a plateau. It seems that Bit.ly has done well because their service has been integrated into multiple applications (eg: see NYTimes iPhone app and Feedly).

This service is a good strategic move for Google since URL shorteners are playing a larger role in extending the reach of digital content. As social media sites grow and smartphones adoption increases, users will become more reliant on these solutions.

I just think that the news release comes at an odd time because Bit.ly announces their new Bit.ly Pro service on the same day (thanks to @NickJAyers for the tip). The new service allows bloggers to offer their users a custom branded, URL shortening solution (note: the solution is built on top of the bit.ly platform). As part of the announcement, Bit.ly publicized the fact that several well known Web publishers and bloggers have signed up to use this service. Additionally, the new solution includes a more robust visualization engine for the analytics data (which now better competes with Google Analytics).

The launch of Goo.gl feels a bit like a disorganized, knee-jerk reaction to Bit.ly’s news — maybe even an attempt to take the wind out of Bit.ly’s sails. I say that because the release lacked any substantial marketing materials or formal developer documentation, which Google bundles as part of a new product launch (hey Google — where’s my YouTube video? I got one with Google Goggles). One can understand that Google now sees Bit.ly as a real threat because Bit.ly Pro further extends the amount of data the Bit.ly will collect about user behavior and that’s Google’s home turf. Clearly, the gloves are off in the fight to dominate the URL shortening marketplace.

NOTE: For some odd reason, I can easily type the word Bit.ly but Goo.gl doesn’t roll out the same way. Whenever I type this, I end up with Goog.l which is incorrect. I’m wondering if anyone else is having this problem or if it is just me?