Blogger with a .com

Hidden Feature of Chrome?

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:24:00 +0000

Dragging a Chrome Tab to the side of the screen.

Calling all Chrome users, I just noticed a feature I have never seen in Chrome.
Have you ever tried dragging a tab to the sides of your screen?
I am pretty sure this is not a function of the numerous extensions I have installed. I checked on an account with far fewer extensions.
To make use of this you just have to drag a tab to the centre of one of the sides of your screen.

Top: Makes the Tab into a maximised window.
Left/Right: Makes the tab take up 50% of the screen vertically
Bottom: Makes the tab take up the lower 50% of the screen.

Please let me know if I've just been completely oblivious to this awesome feature, Cheers.

[edit: Just found http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=166203&topic=14678&ctx=topic explaining exactly this...]

gTLD: What was bid upon?

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 10:55:00 +0000

gTLD reveal day was 13th June! "What the Hell does that mean?"

Well, Glad you asked, gTLD is a generic top level domain. No clearer?
Well, You know in a web address how you have a .com or a .org or .net? They are TLD.
The generic TLD are any TLD with 3 or more letters.

"So what is the deal with gTLD reveal day?" Well ICANN has put other possibilities up for grabs and some big players on the interwebs have been putting in bids for these things. As you can imagine it is quite a good indicator on where these companies, groups and individuals think the possible future is with the internet and business in general. Am I a little jaded to say these guys are jumping on things that they think can make them a few pennies?

I wanted to put together some interesting information based up a little massaging of the applications data from ICANN.

So interesting things;

#1 They say the Future is mobile, Well some big names are putting their money on it.

The most bid up gTLD was ".APP". With 13 different bids. Competitors for the gTLD are

Lone Maple, LLC
Afilias Limited
.APP REGISTRY INC.
NU DOT CO LLC
Dot App LLC
Top Level Domain Holdings Limited
Merchant Law Group LLP
Webera Inc.
dot App Limited
DotApp Inc.
TRI Ventures, Inc.
Amazon EU S.à r.l.
Charleston Road Registry Inc.

Points of note here; Charleston Road Registry Inc has a Google email address as it's contact (google.com not gmail.com); Afilias and .APP Registry INC. both have a VERY similar contact email address (so much so I'd put money on it being two bids from the same person); The other two dot App and DOTAPP do not seem to be related in anything but name.
I am no expert in this field but I can not seem to link any of the above to Apple. Most seem to be TLD based investment companies except for those last two. The only company that went for the .APPLE gTLD was the CSCInfo.com contact who was not one of those bidding on .APP

#2 The other Top five gTLD with Bids

#3 Applications made by Google and Amazon

Last little tip for this particular blog post, and excuse the rather excessively long lists here.

Google gTLD applications:

ADS
AND
ANDROID
APP
ARE
BABY
BLOG
BOO
BOOK
BUY
CAL
CAR
CHANNEL
CHROME
CLOUD
CORP
CPA
DAD
DAY
DCLK
DDS
DEV
DIY
DOCS
DOG
DOT
DRIVE
EARTH
EAT
ESQ
EST
FAMILY
FILM
FLY
FOO
FREE
FUN
FYI
GAME
GBIZ
GLE
GMAIL
GMBH
GOO
GOOG
GOOGLE
GUGE
HANGOUT
HERE
HOME
HOW
INC
ING
KID
LIVE
LLC
LLP
LOL
LOVE
MAIL
MAP
MBA
MED
MEME
MOM
MOTO
MOV
MOVIE
MUSIC
NEW
NEXUS
PAGE
PET
PHD
PLAY
PLUS
PROD
PROF
RSVP
SEARCH
SHOP
SHOW
SITE
SOY
SPOT
SRL
STORE
TALK
TEAM
TECH
TOUR
TUBE
VIP
WEB
WOW
YOU
YOUTUBE
ZIP
グーグル
みんな
谷歌

Amazon gTLD Applications

AMAZON
APP
AUDIBLE
AUTHOR
AWS
BOOK
BOT
BOX
BUY
CALL
CIRCLE
CLOUD
COUPON
DEAL
DEV
DRIVE
FAST
FIRE
FREE
GAME
GOT
GROUP
HOT
IMDB
JOT
JOY
KIDS
KINDLE
LIKE
MAIL
MAP
MOBILE
MOI
MOVIE
MUSIC
NEWS
NOW
PAY
PIN
PLAY
PRIME
READ
ROOM
SAFE
SAVE
SEARCH
SECURE
SHOP
SHOW
SILK
SMILE
SONG
SPOT
STORE
TALK
TUNES
TUSHU
VIDEO
WANGGOU
WOW
YAMAXUN
YOU
YUN
ZAPPOS
ZERO
アマゾン
クラウド
ストア
セール
ファッション
ポイント
亚马逊
家電
書籍
通販
食品

Last.fm Secret Tips and Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 08:40:00 +0000

Everyone and their dog knows of Last.fm or at the very least has wondered what it is to "Scrobble" a tune that they are listening to.

WTF is a Scrobble?

Long story short, Last.fm was probably the first check-in application. A Scrobble is equivalent to checking in to a location on Foursquare or Facebook. You are basically telling Last.fm, "This is what I am listening to right now...".
Why the hell do I want some random web service and by extension the rest of the world knowing what strange musical tastes I have.

Well, Initially, Last.fm was more just a social network thing. You could share what you are listening to to your friends. Big whoop. However as they collect more and more data they can start making recommendations based upon what other people in the world listen to. Say person A listens to a whole load of artist X. Last.fm can see that and realise that person B also listens to artist X alot but in a playlist mixed in with artist Y. Therefore artists X and Y are likely similar and if person A doesn't listen to Y then this implies they are unaware of the artist. Voilà, Last.Fm makes a recommendation to person A.
This example is probably as simple as it gets and you are probably looking at tens of thousands of people instead of just a single person, Y. Thereby increasing the accuracy in terms of what they recommend.

Personally (being the google-ophile I am) I use Google Music and use the Better Music chrome extension which does my Scrobbling.

The "Secret" tips and tricks.

Free musics!

Now for those secret tips and tricks. I have a nice little system in place to get me additional music. Last.fm features a recommended free music feed, which I practically jumped upon when I saw. Just from a small amount of info it had thousands of tracks available for me. To find this just sign into your Last.fm account and look right at the bottom of the first page. You should see the RSS or Itunes feed.
Now upon seeing this I had a nice little loop made that goes a little something like this:

Listen to Music in Google Music.
Better Music Chrome Extension Scrobbles to Last.fm for me.
Last.fm recommends new free music via RSS.
RSS feed plugged into Miro on my Desktop.
Miro downloads any new tunes.
Google Music Uploader adds said tunes to my Music account.
Goto 1.

So when I listen to music I automatically get more free music in a similar vein. Awesome eh?

Automatic Events.

You may have noticed just above the home page section for free music there was an events section. This (when you add in your rough location) gets all the music you like and checks the area for music events you may like. And best of all, there is a iCal link!
You need to go into the Events page from the home page and click the "subscribe" link but from a fairly simple series of actions you can easily add events in your area to your Google calendar (or whatever calendar you use).
This results in gigs and festivals automatically appearing in my calendar that are not only local but also filtered by music I like or would most likely like. ^.^

Wrapping up...

Okay so anyone else have any music/google related tips such as these?
The comic above is my testing an application called "Pixton", thought it might be quite cool to find a comic maker for blog posts just to add a little extra.. unsure on this however, let me know what you think..

Dotwork Damian Tattoo Site

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:43:00 +0000

An example of some of the work to be found on www.dotworkdamian.co.uk

Just did quite a major rework of a Blog I help with for Damian my ex-house-mate. Mainly just swapping from the older template it was running on to a Dynamic Views version.
This was certainly one case where having some content on the site made working out what I needed to do for it assisted a great deal. When I setup the original one I was expecting a combination of text and images. However after some time it's proved to be a predominately image based site so my choice of which view to use was pretty easy.
Please have a gander and let me know what you think!

Dynamic Views and Chrome extension Style Bot

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 07:50:00 +0000

Anyone familiar with Blogger templates should recognise my template as one of the often maligned Dynamic Views (all be it slightly modified). I figured it maybe time to have a bit of post on some of the tips I have learnt whilst using said templates.

Your Blogger Dashboard

They are pretty new and don't exactly have a huge amount of support so far and there is a particular lack of good gadgets or the ability to add your own. I am eagerly awaiting new gadgets and avidly read each new post from Blogger Buzz.
That being said I am a great lover of the shiny and new. Most software I use is beta or at the very least updated to the bleeding edge. This is the main reason for my bloody mindedness in making use of Dynamic Views.

Blogger Template Designer

There are two tips I have picked up so far. Firstly an awesome resource for template tweaks can be found on the Southern Speakers Website. Yoboy the owner regularly posts nifty tweaks that can be made via the Add CSS function in the backend of Blogger.
I made up a couple images to assist in this.... (this assumes you already set a Dynamic View template)

Once you have this page open on your dashboard it is merely a matter of copying the appropriate code from Southern Speakers into the "Add Custom CSS" text box.

My second tip here comes in the form of a Chrome Extension called Style Bot. Style bot is an awesome little tool for editing CSS on the fly. It sits there quietly in the background until you click the little CSS icon that appears in the Onmibar box.

When you click on it you get a sidebar on the left or right of your screen that enables you to select elements on page you wish to change. The bar itself has a simple and advanced mode. The simple mode appears as web form style interface that allows tweaks to the most commonly adjusted aspects of CSS.
As you can see from this it's a very simple matter to edit the general look of your site. The best part however is that all the adjustments happen in your browser and not on a live site. Which brings me nicely to the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the panel. This leads you to a text entry box that allows you to write or paste CSS into the extension. So if you wished to test a particular piece of CSS from, for example, SouthernSpeakers.net you could without the possibility of screwing up your live site. Once you have what you need you can save the CSS locally and have it run whenever you access that particular site. There is a lot of possibility here, for example say you don't like a particular section on a site you could have local CSS running to hide that.
When using this extension the icon in the Onmibar will light up green if it is running custom CSS on the site you are currently viewing.
Finally, If you are editing CSS for the sake of a Blogger template there is the "Edit CSS" button on the interface. Once you are happy with any adjustments you have made and wish to add them to your site then you click this button, which shows you all the custom CSS you are running. Copy it all from here and post it into the "Add CSS" section in the Blogger Template Designer. Then click the "Reset" button on the extension to clear the local CSS so you can view the actual CSS on the site.
Please note without resetting the local CSS it will overwrite any changes you make to the site itself so to be sure that you are seeing what everyone else sees make sure you have completed this step.

Related articles

Quirkyworks: Freelance Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 09:39:00 +0000

Okay, in other blogging news I have been assisting my mother in untangling her numerous sites. Currently she has three different sites, is paying an extortionate amount and ironically the one that sees the most attention is the one that doesn't cost her a penny.
Firstly there is her blog (http://crlncxn-quirkyworks.blogspot.co.uk/), hosted with Blogger and as I said gets most her love and attention.

Secondly there is her main site (http://www.quirkyworks.co.uk/), this is more a portfolio, exhibiting her various stories and screenplay. This is costing a fair amount via 1and1 and I really see as superfluous to requirement.
Last there is the Quirkyshop http://quirkyshop.co.uk/ from where she sells some children's stories. This is certainly the largest sink for money as once again it sees very little attention and has all the bells and whistles needed for an online store.

My grand master plan, (already in progress) is to amalgamate all three into one single site. I plan to take the name Quirkyworks and switch that from her main site to her blog. The content from there will be added to the Blogger site in the form of pages and the requirement to pay for webspace is cut out the equation for that particular site. Whilst doing this I have been making sure that the content is somewhat adjusted to provide better keyword density with some appropriately researched keyword via Market Samurai.
I plan to do the same for the Quirkyshop, taking the content from there and adding it to a page on the Blogger blog. The actual MP3 that are hosted on that site I believe would be far better hosted via Soundcloud using their "buy" options. Again stopping the need for having additional Webspace. This also means that the stories get the additional traffic from being available via Soundcloud. I could potentially point the Quirkyshop domain directly to the shop page on the new site but I am thinking running a shop.quirkyworks.co.uk subdomain would be a better idea.
The last thing I am thinking is maybe posting at least two of the stories to Podiobooks.com with some simple advertising leading back the Quirkyworks.co.uk for an additional traffic stream.

So the "Tim'ification" of Quirkyworks leads to a saving of two sets of webspaces one of which is additionally costly due to store features, and potentially one domain name.
Stay tuned I will post when this project is complete.

Exciting Times, Please change your RSS Feeds.

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:52:00 +0000

I should maybe have done this at the before I started pushing my site in terms of getting it out there. I decided earlier today it would be a great idea to get a better, more easily remembered and typed domain name for which I'd have control over the name servers.

So 3-4 hours ago, like a phoenix BloggerWithA.Com arose from the remains of Brief-history-of-tim.blogspot.co.uk.

I have very rapidly got Blogger to switch the name, Google apps and a whole plethora of none standard apps with all appropriate subdomains sorted out.

Image via CrunchBase

Finally I got around to checking my FeedBurner account and realised two things. I have nearly doubled my subscribers in the past week and secondly I am going to break my feeds.
This, like pulling a plaster, is one of those things best done quickly and very definitely as soon as possible.
I am going to initially setup feeds for the new domain and do all the things that are needed for that, sort out a few other things, but eventually I will pull all the Brief History feeds.
This is mainly just a warning to that effect. Please switch your feeds to the new rss one I get them setup.

Chrome Extension: Google+

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 08:00:00 +0000

As my favourite of the social networks I figured I was due to write about the various Google Plus extensions and app I use on a regular basis. Consider this Tim's Google Plus Chrome Tool Bundle!

Google+

First off we need the application itself. Does what it says on the tin. Adds a link into your new tab screen that gives you a quick way to get to Google Plus after you open a new tab.

Google+ Easy Share

This extension is the only one I use a lot and is not directly produced by Google. It adds a host of right click context menu features to chrome that are not really covered by the other extensions. The +1 button extension below is good but it does not really allow you to get specific with your shares. With Easy Share I am able to select chunks of text or images or whatever on the page and specifically share those items.
In other words, this extension is all kinds of win!

Google+ Notifications

This is one of those extensions that I am really surprised is not already a part of Google Chrome right now. I mean if you are anywhere on pretty much any other Google property you have your little red square blinking away at you in the top right so why not in Chrome. What would be a nice additional feature for this extension would be the ability to hide the in page notifications.

Google +1 Button Chrome Extension

Lastly, the official +1 button for Chrome. The other extension that I am guessing will find it's way into the default setup of Chrome. Does exactly what you'd expect, press it and share the page you are currently viewing.

Worthy of mention the Android app of course, Love all the features in this, so many and so much that this should really be another blog post (makes a mental note).

Chrome Extension: Buffer

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:36:00 +0000

Buffer and it's Chrome Extension

I Love this App, and I'd highly recommend to anyone. Buffer itself is a social media application that is aimed towards enabling you to schedule Tweets or Facebook or Linkedin posts at particular time slots thus spreading the load of your shares.

With the increase in information over load and the hosepipe nature of most our social networks these days it is tricky to post something that doesn't get buried under half a ton of other posts before someone gets to see it.

Buffer also allows you to "buffer" up a whole load of interesting shares and have them auto post over the next few days rather than you adding to the deluge on other peoples streams.

If you also add to this the functionality of Tweroid which is a nifty little app that can tell you when people are most active on your Twitter account and then allow you to set your posting schedule accordingly.

This then takes us onto the actual extension itself. I wouldn't say that it is particularly ground breaking itself. One click shares to Twitter, FB and Linkedin, with the option to unselect any that wouldn't be appropriate. It's a nice addition to an awesome app.

Blogger Tip: Label RSS Feeds

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Whilst chatting with my good friend +Wynd last night we were discussing the differences between Blogger and Wordpress, and in particular what was possible in each. The main thing here was the ability to separate the blog into categories and have feeds for each category. For example with my site you have the labels above for Home, Tech, Photography, Blogging and Tools. This is fairly simple to setup within Blogger however it is not so obvious how I would get a different Rss feed for each particular label.

After a little research I found this article that explains how to setup just this for labels but for pre-dynamic views Blogger. Very useful article unfortunately it does not work for Dynamic Views as the ability to edit the html of a widget is no longer available.

However it did allow me to find the link structure for the label rss feeds. The feed structure goes something like this.

Domain name then "/feeds/posts/default/-/" then the name of the label you need, so for example for the photo label feed you would need this:

http://brief-history-of-tim.blogspot.co.uk/feeds/posts/default/-/photo

As things are at the moment the only way to replicate what was written in the article I referenced would be manually making the links and then adding them to a link widget as far as I can think of. I did however think of a couple extra things to do on top of where we have got so far. Specifically the addition of Feedburner into the equation. (For more specifics on the basics of feedburner check my initial post on the subject)

Image via CrunchBase

So after creating the link block on the left with the standard blogger feeds I went back and redid all the feeds I posted with Feedburner feeds instead. Quite a bit of work as it is a manual process but will make it so that any advertisers wishing to post on my feeds to be able to target specific subjects rather than just the entire sites feed. e.g Photography advertiser can specifically target my photo feed.

So, Feel free to check out the Label Feeds to the right and if you are particularly interested in one particular subject that I blog about but not the others feel free to mix and match your feeds. ;)

Chrome Extension: Images

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 09:41:00 +0000

As a new section to my blog I decided it might be an idea to review all the various software, apps and other tools I use. Given that I use Chrome on a ~~daily~~ hourly basis and my setup is a long way from "vanilla" I thought this maybe a good starting point for reviews.

Of all the categories, images is probably the most universal, doesn't matter what social network you are into or what ever images are a huge part of the interwebs. Having said that however I do focus more on the Google in terms of images. I like to use Picasa/Google Photos over anything like Flickr or Instagram and my favoured image utilities reflect that.

Screen Capture (by Google)

First off and probably one of my most used image extensions is the screen capture extension by Google. Even in writing this post I used it three times to grab the images down the right hand side of the post. It is a relatively simple extension that does exactly what you would think it should.
Click the icon on your bar at the top and it presents you a few options. Capture a selection or even the screen. After you've selected what you required click done and select where to save it.
You have the option to save it to your local machine or to a web based image service (picasa, imgur, facebook or sinur microblog).
And that is pretty much that... Very simple very easy and VERY useful.

Search by Image (by Google)

Second, we have the Search by Image extension which I have to admit I do not actually use a lot but when I do need it's functions it's a god send in terms of work flow. The search by image function is a relatively new feature with Google search that allows you to search for a image by uploading an image and the little spiders at Google find you similar images based on various factors with the image you are searching by. My usual use case if trying to find creative commons version of pictures or hunting down people that are using images without permission.
To actually use this function in search it requires you to download the image to your computer and then re-upload the image to search before Google let's loose the spiders of war. This kind of inefficiency of work flow drives me crazy and this is where the search extension comes in. All it really does is give you a right click context menu item on images to search for a particular image on a web page. So rather than, right click, save image, select save location click okay, goto Google search, find the search by image section, click upload, re-find the image, wait for the upload... you only have to right click, search by image and you are done. Genius :)

Picasa Image Uploader

Last in this little round up is the Picasa Image Uploader extension. Another very similar in functionality to Search by Image. It gives you a right click context menu on images for uploading an image from the web directly to your Picasa dropbox folder. Which again is a marvel in workflow efficiency and a boon for researching for images for what ever purpose you require.

I am always on the lookout for similar style extension to these, so if you have any other suggestions please leave them in the comments. Of course , as mentioned, I have focused heavily on the Google side of things here, so if you have a favourite for Flickr, Instagram or whichever other image networks drop me a comment too ;)

June 2012 - Meeting the Neighbours

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:30:00 +0000

June 2012 - Random clouds near sunset over Buxted

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:03:00 +0000

Really liked this image as it very much looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud.

[edit: really not sure on the picasa Blogthis feature :/ ]

Apps I'd like to see: Traveller

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:39:00 +0000

(This is a failed proposal to funded apps hence the particular formatting)

Traveller App

1. What does the App do?

Currently unemployed, I quite often find myself on the phone with a potential employer, having to very quickly find their location and the viability in terms of cost and time for commuting to the place of work. As a non-driver, train is usually my best bet in terms of longer distance commuting. I have shortcuts on my computer for Google Maps and the local rail provider’s site for finding out times and costs.

After a recent call I was convinced this process could be made better. The first point is that I only refer to two websites that cover walking/cycling and trains. It would be nice to be able to compare other modes of transport such a buses/coaches, taxis or cars.

Another thought that occurred to me was that combinations of different transports can lead to faster or cheap travel.

As an example I’ve made up a small map.

The green circle shows where I would be capable of walking within 20 minutes. When I add the possibility of using trains we get the red arrows and the additional blue walking distance circles. With more modes of transport the areas possible would increase. e.g. with the addition of a bike the green circle would expand to include most the island of Portsmouth, and using bike and train I could also include most of the mainland visible at the top of the map.

I am quite enamoured with this form of visualisation for the app as with a few sliders you could tweak the values of time and cost to work out the best potential way to get to a location.

That very simply put is the basic idea for the app.

2. What & who is the App's target market?

Anyone who travels and wishes to save time and money.

3. Any other details you feel appropriate.

The basic idea above is the bare bones of a potential app. I have numerous ideas for either additional features or additional plugins.
* Firstly and probably most importantly is the possibility of an additional revenue stream over your standard applications - that being ticket sales. With some appropriate partnerships you could offer sales of tickets for commission, maybe even combo sets where a journey uses several different forms of transport. e.g. train, bus, walk, train.

*Waypoints. Obviously not all journeys are point A to point B. Waypoints would be great so that people could go point A to point B via points C and D.

*Next you could add in additional “Sliders” for determining journey routes. Off the top of my head you could have carbon footprint or calories.. for the green fitness freaks. Wouldn’t it be great to discover that getting off a station earlier and riding the last section of your daily commute would save you £X, burn off Y calories and save Z trees per day?

*How could this be made more social so as to attract that viral aspect that is often the make or breaker in apps?

The main thing that jumped out at me here was the possibility of sharing your route or to request carpooling on social networks. Obviously care would have to be used to implement this for reasons of personal safety. However, the trend in social networks is for circles being able to share with a specific group of people. With careful sharing this could offer more protection not less. e.g. if you have to walk down a series of dark streets late at night this is obviously not good; sharing this route you could discover that a friend takes a similar route or drives it and you could share the journey.

Additional to safety there is the cost aspect. You might discover that you and a friend take the train after each other every day. Thanks to sharing your route you find out that if you took turns driving you could both save X amount of money.

At this point we really are getting into the realms of a new social network where each user has access to a variety of modes of transport and through sharing those people could work out faster/cheaper/safer/greener/more social routes to commute.

*Until now I have been focused on a more local daily commute aspect of travel but this app could easily include air/sea travel and become international.

With some very quick research I quickly found a transport API provided by the government that would be very useful when used in conjunction with the Google Maps API.

Speculation on G+ Business

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:14:00 +0000

Google+ wordmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[originally posted on my G+ here as it has been linked to elsewhere on the web I figure it maybe something good to post here]
[A further edit.. seems like the places integration is being looked into..

So who has thoughts on what we can expect to see from Google when the G+ Business profiles come into existence?

Personally I predict some heavy integration between Google Places and G+. I even got excited enough to make a very quick mock up of what I am hoping for. My thoughts here are predominately "path of least resistance" looking at what already exists within the Googlesphere and seeing how they could be combined to quickly provide something useful.

My primary focus here has been the link between + and Places as + is the hot topic here and when it comes to a social presence on Google for business then Places is the prime candidate. Therefore my mock up really just looks at the combination of those two items.

I think the factor here that excites me most is the possibilities here for small local business. The ability for people to look at a Google Map and see all the business locations near them, then find the associated G+ profile from that. This would provide reviews, event details and even potentially offers. Of course big corporations with numerous different outlets would also have this capability but the ability to search be geographical location with such fidelity that Places provides puts smaller companies on a near equal footing with their local competitors.

I am still contemplating the best way to deal with a multiple location business. Maybe best have each category filtered by geographical location. Say for example a menu that could select all posts/events/photos/etc by company wide or particular location?

Other aspects of this fantasy that really appeal to me are the possibilities for the user groups on the left hand side. Obviously there would be the following group. This allows people to get that particular businesses official posts show up in their stream. The other three speculations here have more potential in my mind.

Firstly we have Reviewed, This would be people that have written reviews about a particular location. In Places currently this just leads to a very sparse Google Maps user profile. I can't review the reviewer. I would like to be able to check out a reviewers "credentials" to see the validity of said review.

Secondly we have Checked In, fairly simple to see how and why this could be useful. Very easy to see if people I know are at the location.

Lastly and I think possibly most importantly is "Employees". Now I know that this certainly won't be something that you'd want to include everyone in. I was mainly thinking about the current craze on G+ of creating lists of employees for larger companies. This provides faces and a social identity to businesses. Lets say for example you included your customer support, technical support and community managers to this list. People have a fairly instantaneous way to get in touch with the appropriate people from your business. They could talk with or even Hangout very easily.

I have included the beta application Offers on the diagram as that is very closely linked with Maps and Places. I have not included the possibilities of also including Shopper. That would really make the companies Plus profile ('scuse the pun) a one stop shop. So say I want to buy a new computer, I could find a local store, check the prices and offers, get face to face assistance with official customer support, check other peoples reviews of both shop and product and then finally when I have made my decision put the store details on my Droid for turn by turn directions there.

If you love someone...

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:40:00 +0000

"The Facebook Ranch" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Okay so been a little while since I blogged but much of my efforts in terms of writing has been going towards my Open University course. However a recent assignment on which, led me to some realisations about why I dislike Facebook as much as I do. The particular assignment was a group discussion on "Facebook: love it or hate it". Many different points were discussed and as usual I took my Google advocate stance.

The first of the realisation came in the form of an analogy I thought of that I posted to my Plus account.

Just had an amusing thought about the nature of Facebook and Plus in the form of an analogy...They are farms, their customers are the people buying advertising, we are the cattle.. Mooo.The big difference.. Google has Takeout, that is the cattle on the Google ranch are Free Range!

This led into to second realisation which was a somewhat more instinctive dislike that I have only just understood. Having been a geeky sort for many years the idea of "backup, backup, backup" is instinctive. You can see this in almost every aspect of how I make use of computers. For example I tend to tweak my OS a lot and so my partitioning is setup so if I happen to go that one tweak to far replacing my OS is a simple task without loss of data or settings. (Last emergency reinstall was accomplished in about 40mins) My actual important work and information is all in my dropbox folder and therefore stored on their site and both my computers. My "office documents" are stored in the cloud shared between two Google Profiles and additionally backed up to a folder on my main computer via fuse.

"The Google Plus Ranch" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To say I operate a "belt and braces" policy in terms of backing up is an understatement.

Here is where the instinctive gripe comes in. Facebook provides me very little ability to protect myself. Initially when thinking about this it was just pure annoyance that I couldn't easily migrate my data to another social network if I so wished. Obviously it is not good for Facebook to allow people to escape easily. The whole business model is based on the fact that they get money for displaying ads on pages you view.

With this discussion about Facebook for my course I started thinking on the subject more and had my second realisation. Facebook is not only trapping your data on their network but also restricting your ability to backup your data in case you need to revert changes. Say I delete something by accident or even worse my account is hacked. Facebook provides no way to revert changes and their stringent export policies don't take into account that you may want to export your information and then import it in a worse case scenario. The chances of this happening are not exactly remote either, a whole terminology has sprung up related to this, getting Fraped.

So what is important to Facebook here? A Fraped account will still generate the same ad revenue as an untouched account, possibly more if it were really controversial. For you however a screwed up account could be factor that screws up your life. Think about relationships, current and potential employers, etc.

It is more important to Facebook to keep your account active and making them money than giving you the tools to potentially save a lot of grief and the possibility you move to another network.

Which brings me to the post title and that old saying "If you love someone, let them go..", Facebook does not love you.

Speculations on Social Currency

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:09:00 +0000

Woke up and my brain decided to have a bit of a Doctorow moment. As is my way rather than read newspapers I checked my G+, GReader and Gmail. (sense a theme there?) Through serendipity there was a series of articles that got me thinking about "Social Currency" and as Doctorow would put it "Woofie".

The first article was all about NFC (Near field communications) which is where the currency aspect of my thinking came in, next there was numerous articles all about the latest and greatest in social media. This led to a bit of an epiphany moment when I thought, "Why do NFC payments have to use normal currencies?".

Social Income

I am guessing most people have a "social media value" otherwise why is it so important for Google and Facebook to have to the best way to present advertising to particular people. This is the first aspect of Social Value, The space on our profiles and walls that allow companies to advertise to us and our friends/social circles. This is a purely passive economic aspect to our online identity. We log in, look at our profile and companies pay to be part of that.

This part of marketing is still very much in the old way of thinking of us as consumers consuming the products of producers, but this is the age of the "Produser" we are continually generating content everything from clicks, views and checkins right through to blog posts, photos and videos. Obviously the aforementioned public wall is part of this too, as the producer of the content on that wall the user whose wall it is is creating that content. All this content we produce is of value.

Lets start with the more passive of this production. Clicks, views and checkins. Clicks and Views obviously increase the search ranking of a particular company. The better the search ranking they have the more people will look at the companies site and given an appropriate website this leads to conversions to sales. So technically each of these clicks and views could have a price attached to it.
Next is checkins, once again this will increase search engine value but for a lot of companies this has an additional value. Take for example Dominoes pizza, if you take a look through their menu there are two distinct pricing. Delivery and Collection. If a customer collects their pizza as opposed to relying on delivery service with the costs behind that then they are offered a different price/set of offers. This may obviously require a slight change in the way that checkins work, instead of using GPS for the checkin use the NFC to checkin instead. So checkins have a two fold advantage here and potentially a much more significant economic value to the company.

Now the more active side of content creation. Starting with comments and reviews, I am mainly thinking here that these would be on the companies main site or sites such as Google Places. These have the value of providing other potential customers with info or help on a particular company or product. Firstly the reviews can be seen in action with companies such as eBay or Amazon with their third party sellers and pretty much most sites have some facility for their users to provide product reviews. Both of these can be a deciding factor in whether a sale is made.
Another good example of this in action is my mobile phone provider GiffGaff. GiffGafff has taken the step of not using an outsource telephone help line, instead all the help services are provided by other customers on the forums. Useful customers are rewarded with additional credit. Personally I really like this business model, You feel like you are communicating with people that have experienced the same issues that you have rather than some random person in another country that is watching the clock and is just working their way through a flowchart of answers to provide.
An action as simple as writing a few lines of text or even clicking a star rating can provide a company economic value.

Finally we have the most active of the content creation, blogs, videos, photos etc etc. These certainly can provide value to companies. As the most recent example I can think of, I noticed a "thing" in a friends photo stream that I think would be perfect for my mum's birthday. Thanks to a random photo in someones stream that company has made a sale. This is of obvious value. ('scuse the vagueness, at the time of writing it's still before mother's birthday so the "thing" needs to remain secret.) This particular method is somewhat harder to track. In the above example the place didn't have any link attached and I had to ask where it was in the comments. I am thinking that maybe some kind of advanced "How did you hear about us?" system might need to be used. Providing a link to that content that made the sale would probably be best here as just crediting a particular person could be gamed if you happened to just be walking past the store for the purchase.

Social + Economics

The idea of this Social value is certainly not new as I previously mentioned Doctorow Woofie has something like this as does my previously blogged about Empire Avenue. However with the emergence of NFC I believe that this social value will come into play more. Rather than having a credit/debit card that is attached to a bank with no real link between that banking identity and our social identity we are looking at a method of payment that will live on the same device as, for a lot of people, contains all the relevant details on our social media identity.

I am still thinking through all the potential ways that this linking could affect us. I think the most probably end result would be something like a loyalty card. You would earn points or a rating that would provide discounts to particular companies.

As a potential example here:

I post that "I really fancy a Dominoes Pizza" on G+: 5pts
I check out the Dominoes Website: 1pt
I decide that a pickup is a good idea and go buy a pizza with the NFC checkin: 10pts
I enjoy said pizza and write a good review on Google Places: 4pts
Next time I decide on getting a pizza I check Google Offers and find that with my 20pts I qualify for special offers worth 0-20pts.
I spend that 20pts to get a free pizza.

gCredits

As I have mentioned before, I am a card carrying Googlophile. Most of what I have mentioned here is not a huge step further from what is already out there. Looking at this purely from what Google does currently provide:

Google Wallet: Provides the abilities for the NFC, Additionally it would need to provide a "second currency" in the form of gCredits that could potentially be linked to specific companies. Payments in the Primary currencies could provide additional gCredits like airmiles or nectar points.
Google Offers: Allows for discounts from particular companies, if there was a tiered discount system based on gCredits earned with a particular company.
Google Latitude/Places; Already provides Checkins, a second type of Checkin via the NFC payments in Wallet would possibly be needed.
Google Adsence: Potentially make payments in gCredits.
YouTube/Picassa/G+/etc.: The ability to provide gCredits for content about particular companies.
Api: Something to allow third party sites to provide gCredits for content/actions on their sites. eg. help forums.

This could potentially become a new economy, people paying for products purely with gCreds and at this point I should mention that I am not the most economically minded of people, this is purely a speculation in the technical aspect of this.

Google Plus: Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:12:00 +0000

On Google Plus we have seen several different developers from various different applications from Google ask for suggestions on how to better integrate the application that they work on with Plus. I personally had a lot to say on the Google Docs possibilities. The suggestions session I am DYING to see come up however is the potential features between Blogger and Plus. If you are currently a Blogger user then you will probably be aware of the new backend interface in "Blogger in Draft" and yes, my being the early adopter type am currently both using and liking this. Soooo much cleaner.
However I get the feeling that the Blogger developers were not quite so aware of Plus as most other Google departments. The Draft version I am using has very little of anything todo with Plus.
I have many ideas on this subject and here are at the very least some of them.

Authorship and Identity:

This is one area that definitely needs work. Firstly what is the point of my having both a Blogger Profile and a Google Profile? A joining of these would be great. The Blogger profile is like having a very limited version of the Google. I would be more than happy to ditch the Blogger one in preference to the Plus one and I have in fact where possible done that with my current theme. However that did take some knowledge of coding and it would be better if this were an option in the back end of the site. Besides my trying to strengthen a single identity I was also trying to do this for compliance with the new authorship stuff Google is introducing. This basically means that in search results when a post you have written comes up and you are appropriately compliant you will have a nice little Picture to the right of the result like in this image.

Under the assumption that your Google Profile is your main identity for your Blogger blog, The intergration of the authorship compliance would mean two major changes to the default templates supplied with Blogger. Firstly instead of having "posted by Tim" as plain text at the bottom of each post, it would require the "Tim" to be hyperlinked to my Google Profile with an "author" rel tag. Secondly the "About Me" widgets would likewise be changed to your Google Profile with all appropriate tags. Lastly it would be nice if your Google Profile itself would pick up on the fact you have a blog with Blogger and automatically add those reciprocal links.

Public Sharing:

Sharing is one thing that Google has got nailed fairly well here. I personally really like Circles however that is not to say I can't see some shortcomings. Due to the nature of circles being something each user selects for themselves it means that selective sharing only goes so far and when it gets right down to basics there are people you have circled that can get specifically selected content and then there is everyone else who gets whatever you publicly share.

This is great for sharing with those you actually choose to circle, but then there is that somewhat larger circle of "Everyone Else" and this is where I see huge additional potential for Blogger. Now Blogs by their very nature are usually roughly on one topic, people with interest in that topic can seek out your Blog, to read and/or follow it. There is a specific audience within the subset of "Everyone Else" that are going to find it useful. So why not have the ability within Plus to share posts to specific Blogger Blogs? I know there are already numerous ways of doing this via email posting.

The blog here allows for another form of public sharing that can target specific groups. I know sharing that information to public would technically make it available to all but when it is specifically on a persons profile it comes in a very diluted form. It has to fight with all the other information that person deems worthy to share publicly. With a blog you have a distinct public location to share to that can be specifically relevant to what ever your chosen subject maybe.

The other major point here would be that blogs can have multiple authors. It is the subject of the blog that people are interested in not one particular bloggers baby pictures.

Commentary:

As to comments. I would dearly love to see synchronous comments sections. By this I mean when you publish your posts on your blog it is automatically shared to your g+ profile publicly and with options for other specific circles. Likewise if you make a g+ post that you share with your Blog it would automatically be on your blog too. At this point people could comment in either location and the comments would be shared. As things are currently they are two distinct beasts. A person on g+ could make a comment that is absolute gold about the post and yet anyone reading the blog would miss out. Conversation is restricted to particular groups and web locations. I had a similar idea whilst Wave was first released with embeddable wave/blog posts. If this were indeed introduced then the whole concept of "comments" may have to be renamed "conversation" given the way g+ comments work currently. Just think a blog comments section that doesn't require you to press f5 to see a reply to your last comment.
And yes I have another major point here. This would allow conversation between people in g+ and those that have yet to reach g+ enlightenment.

Conclusion:

There has been some speculation of the future and relevance of Blogger since the introduction of g+, there have even been certain people that have redirected their blog urls to their g+ profiles. I can see their point if their blog is purely about them as a subject. It makes perfect sense. However if your blog only covers certain aspects of your life or particular subjects then I feel keeping these location separate a better call.

Google Plus: The Video Chat Peeve.

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:33:00 +0000

Sometimes I feel like the Hulk.. "Tim Angry! Tim Blog about stuff!!".
So my annoyance of the moment is the seemingly popular comparison on the internet between Hangouts and Facebook Video Chat. To me this is pretty stupid. They both have video, are both attached to a social network and they have been released recently. That is where the similarities really end. To really make a valid comparison here you need to add a couple more applications into the equation.

Excuse that ghetto image here I wanted to quickly show my major complaint with the current torrent of "which is better?" posts.

As you can probably see, I see there as being two comparisons that should be made not one. Firstly Facebook chat is most similar to Google Talk/gChat a service that was released in November 2008. Both services provide in browser 1on1 video chat calls. I have to admit I have not tried Facebooks latest offering as from what I have heard the browser plugin does not support Linux. I have also made a concerted effort to move away from the walled garden of Facebook. So for me personally Google wins in this case. +1

Secondly we have Hangouts vs Skype Premium Group Chat. This is a more tenuous link between services but in terms of what each provide it is a lot closer than the Hangout vs FB Video chat ie. group video chat. The differences here are quite major. The skype solution does not provide a web client. it is not linked into a social network and therefore requires all participants to not only get a skype account but get a skype premium account. So for Skype to provide the same functions that Hangouts provide you and all the other participants would be required to pay $4.99 each to participate. Therefore that would be $49.99 for a group of 10 friends per month to use an equivalent service as Googles free solution.
Once again this is not a service I have tried myself. I am not willing to pay for it, and more importantly I don't think that Linux is supported for this. (group video requires skype 5.0, Latest Skype Linux version 2.2)
Google +1

In conclusion, the current comparison floating around the internet is wrong. If you make a more valid comparison Google still wins on all fronts.

Google Plus: Searching Tips and Suggestions

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 14:52:00 +0000

Well if you have read the rest of this blog you know; a) I am very anti Facebook, b) I've been of the belief that besides pokes and "everyone is there" inertia Google could provide a better choice.
And now, unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere, you know Google released Plus and this would be a major reason for my somewhat lax week or two in terms of this Blog. I've been getting up to speed with all the shiny new plus features ;)
Now at this point I could go back to my last post featuring Facebook and rework it with the addition of Plus to the Google Family, but really what is the point. I will only get annoyed by everyone comparing Facebook's Skype based video chat with Hangouts, when it's clearly just doing what gChat (also already in g+) has been doing for a long time with video. Hangout is something totally new.

So what to write about?

Well firstly, My favourite little G+ trick so far. Adding G+ as a search engine to Chrome.

Add Google+ search to Chrome.
1. Open URL: chrome://settings/searchEngines

2. Add new entry with following values:

(Search in posts)-

Column 1: Google+ Posts-

Column 2: post-

Column 3: {google:baseURL}search?q=site:plus.google.com inurl:posts/* %s

(Search for profiles)-

Column 1: Google+ Profiles-

Column 2: profile-

Column 3: {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&tbs=prfl:e

This simple put allows me write something like "profile [tab] southsea" to find people in my locale with G+ profiles or "post [tab] southsea" to find people's posts about Southsea.

This tip was taken from the rather remarkable crowd sources open guide document about G+.

I am sure in the future I will have many other tips to add but I am really waiting on the API to be released and for some further development before that which brings me to the meat of the blog post. What I would like to see from G+.

Operators:

First thing that comes to mind is even better circles. As they are at the moment they are really awesome. However being a somewhat advanced Googler I'd like the sharing equivalent of Advanced Search Operators. To show what I mean I made a quick Venn diagram.

The obvious first example is not. Say your friendly with your boss at work but you have something you want to share with your friends but not those related to work, Pictures from a party for example, without creating another circles for "non-work friends" there is currently no way to deal with this. Using the current advanced search operator terminology this would just be "Friends -Work".
Second example would be the and operator. In this case say you have something you wish to only share something with people that are both your friends and work colleagues. The office party pics for example. Again in advanced search operator terms "Friends AND Work".
Very simple change using a current concept used already at Google that would vastly improve the capabilities of circles. I do get that I am not a standard user and most my friends give me blank stares when I start talking about these operators, but for me these would be the top of my list for new additions due to their theoretical simplicity to add.

I am at this point going to cut things short as this post was about to turn into a novel. I have many ideas of features for G+, probably much to the annoyance of +matt maber, however I find speculation like this sometime brings up new ideas and sometimes brings up a new way of doing something. A prime example of this will feature in my next post!

Fodder ^ 2

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:06:00 +0000

A slightly odd title to a Blog post. Let me explain, I am always on the look out for subjects that would make interesting and continuing subjects to write about for my Blog and just recently I thought of one, Food!
I use Evernote for quite a few reasons and probably the most prolific is on the subject of food. One of the busiest feeds I follow is the Tasteologie one from NotCot which is an aggregate feed following many other blogs posting mainly recipes, and so given that cooking interesting food has become a replacement for many other bad habits, I have been storing and categorising recipes from Tasteologie into my Evernote . Which I have an appropriate Android app for so when I am shopping I can check on recipes and then work directly from my droid when I get into the kitchen. After said recipes have been prepared I take a photo and have been posting those results along with a link to the original recipe onto FB (via picasa, this link is direct to the album of foodie experiments).
And so, in the form of physical fodder I've had a form of blog fodder staring me in the face and additionally, for the win, there is very little additional work needed to my current process to make this into something good for my blog.

For my first post on the subject of food, I was going to just grab something from picasa that I have already cooked, and there are quite a few different things in there that would be truly deserving of such an "honour". However given this new avenue of informational dissemination I figured I should cook up something with a little more meaning and history.
I have always been a bit of a foodie and some of the first recipes I can remember cooking myself came from the books of Delia Smith and after a little hunting I found "Iced Date and Walnut Cake". Something tastey to start with and the lemon icing is always a winner in my mind. Keep in mind one of my current food heroes is the great Heston, that the kitchen I work with is never the easiest to work in and invariable my experimental nature oft gets the better of me.
I present Tim's Date and Walnut Loafy Cake thing!

Cooling

Iced...

And Sliced!!

And the official word from Mr Simmons, "omnomnom good cake nomnom."

Empire Avenue: Eaves = Whuffie?

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 23:08:00 +0000

{EAV_BLOG_VER:2914f6650be34393}

Once again Click on BBC has sparked my interest in a "thing". This particular interest is a website called "Empire Avenue". It's not exactly a new concept and there have been numerous similar apps for Facebook that would allow you to trade on your social networks. The big difference with Empire is the number of different social networks that you are able to hook it up to.

Twitter
Facebook Profile
Flickr
YouTube
LinkedIn
Facebook fan pages
RSS feeds for Blogs.

So, you may ask, what makes this different to other analytical systems such as Klout? Well, it's the selling, trading on your social media status. That status does have aspects that allow for financial recompense. For example, a popular YouTube account could sell advertising space. Or a blogger (as I am about to demonstrate) could post an Amazon affiliate link, thereby making money for the owner of the page.

Obviously in the case of Empire Avenue, the currency is purely virtual and does not actually translate to real world currencies. Or does it? It could be argued that by attaining good stock ratings within EA you could pull many extra followers to your other accounts - and thus transfer your reach in the wider social media realm. As a nice little knock-on effect, you could then make more money via advertising and affiliation.

There are two things that really caught my attention here. First, by applying a currency like this (even virtual) and the very fact that it is only a "game" it really engages the competitive nature of people. Secondly it sparked a memory of a story I really liked. "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow.

Cory has a slightly strange approach to the way he releases books to start with; they are all released Creative Commons as opposed to Copyright. You can download his work, for free. You can even re-release with appropriate attribution in another format. Of course, he does also release work in a more traditional format for those who appreciate a hard copy version of the books. The big gain, however, is that by allowing others to, say, read his stories for a podcast or make a graphic novel from them is exposure which in turn makes people more likely to stumble across his work for sale.

So, as you can probably, see Cory does have a somewhat new way of looking at economics and this is where the book comes in. In the story Down and Out, there is a far from conventional economic system called "whuffie." Think of it like kudos points. The basic premise was that when you did something that improved society or even the life of a single individual, people could assign you whuffie. It was like removing the wage system from the world and replacing it with a tips-based society. People that progressed and improved society would get more whuffie which would allow them to have better housing, better food etc. etc.

This is what really caught my attention with Empire Avenue - the similarities between Whuffie and Eaves.

http://www.hallmann.co.uk/empire-avenue-connects-the-world-to-a-new-type-of-social-media-networking/

Ubuntu: Unity - my tweaks

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:40:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaVery succinctly Unity is what is providing the desktop experience in the latest version of my favoured operating system Ubuntu. It has caused some controversy within the Ubuntu community, mostly around it's seeming simplicity and lack of customisation options. I am firmly on the pro-unity side however. If we look at the past, present and potential future of Unity I hope I can show where my optimism stems from.

Unity was originally designed as an interface for netbooks. This is where the simplicity of the system comes from, It has been designed from the ground up to be usable on small screens with "lesser" hardware. While it was still in it's 2d netbook stage I did play around with it on my somewhat more than a netbook laptop. Whilst I did appreciate it, it did indeed lack a lot of the features I wanted and my laptop was more than capable of providing. Maybe had I been using a netbook it may have come into it's own a little more.

Fast forward to today and Ubuntu's latest incarnation Natty 11.04. We find a somewhat bulked up version of Unity as the desktop supplier for not just netbooks but desktops too. Once again lots of cries of "over simple" and when I very first installed I was inclined to agree. I do however place a lot of trust in Ubuntu and figured that there was a good reason they moved away from gnome and gnome shell in favour of Unity (gnome is still available from the login screen in 11.04). So I held my tongue and persisted.
Initially it was slightly harder to use. I had to dig through numerous menus to find anything and from my slightly more technically able position I had a hard time finding many things I could tweak. The one thing that kept me trying was the knowledge of Unity's relative age compared to other desktop solutions and I am glad to say my patience has been rewarded.

There are many nice features within Unity as standard such as the Me menu and the Sound menu. However the two things I am really liking require some tweaking.

Firstly you have lenses or Places. The standard install of unity has two of these built in, File and Folders and Applications. They are basically search filters, I press super + F and start typing it runs a search of my files and folders. Likewise super + A gets me a search of my applications. Just pressing super and typing runs a search of both those lenses. This is where things start getting really interesting.There are
many other Lenses in development currently.

One of the first lenses I came across was the Gwibber one. This will search all entries in the program Gwibber which is the driving force behind the Me menu. For those not familiar with Gwibber it is a Social Media program that allows access to all your favourite networks, twitter, facebook. etc. etc. Once the lense is installed by pressing super and starting to type I am not only searching files and apps on my computer but all the social networks that I have hooked Gwibber up to. That moment when I first searched like that was probably the turning point for me on my opinion on Unity as a whole and since then there have been many other lenses.
Worthy of mention in particular is the Ask Ubuntu lens. In the age of the Produser this is really where traditional customer services and help documents are headed and I really hope this makes Ubuntu as a whole more accessible to the average computer user. Ask Ubuntu is basically crowd sourcing the customer support of the OS. If you have a question about the OS you just press super and ask away. The lens provides you user submitted answers from the site.
These two Lenses are by no means the only offerings out there, there are a few more listed at my favoured independent ubuntu blog. There is in my humble opinion a hell of a lot of potential here.

The second feature of Unity I am really liking is the launchers/quicklists. Initially this was a real negative for me. The launcher had basic functionality and not much more. Each app you could open, move around in or pin to the launcher. That was a real disappointment. Once again patience paid off and the reward has been a whole load of customisations that I have yet to see in other OS or desktop environments.
I should at this point say that the following tweaks do require a familiarity with terminal although I do know of GUI based applications in development to achieve these results.

First off a simple example from the aforementioned AskUbuntu site, which does have a rather long list of these tweaks. The basic Home directory launcher icon is usually the very top icon and doesn't as standard do much but open the home directory. Ronseal. With my setup my home folder is also my desktop so this really isn't much use to me. However by following the directions in this post, you can change it's functionality so on right click you can bring up a series of different directories to goto. Already a simple tweak takes a practically useless launcher into something far more practical. There is also a more complex tweak where you can setup a script on a cronjob to pull the folder list from your bookmarks within nautilus.

Given the way a lot of Linux applications work there are many application specific quicklists that allow for starting and stopping media players, opening programs with different settings than default or with a particular page or document open already. Read though the askUbuntu section on quicklists just for a brief look into the potential ;)

My favourite quicklist tweak so far however does just a little bit more. The Google Docs uploader (originally found on OmgUbuntu but the first link has better instructions) allows you to open the different parts of Google Docs as Chrome Apps, however the real clincher for favourite quicklist is the upload aspect. This basically amounts to being able to drag any appropriate file direct onto the icon and have it uploaded direct into Docs.

Once again although the Docs upload functionality is nice, given I use Chrome I could also just drag those docs direct onto the Chrome window for the same effect without having to tweak my menus. It is however the potential of the process that really gets me going, photos to your flickr/picassa, vids to youtube, files to ftp etc etc..

And so, the future of Unity... one word.. Potential.. and bucket loads thereof!

Regulation - Cross Posting

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:26:00 +0000

Thanks to the BBC show Click pointing out www.namechk.com I've suddenly found myself at the very least doubling the number of accounts I have. This has very quickly led to issues with setting up cross posting between various accounts and thankfully I think the solution I have come up with not only solves this problem but also fixes one minor gripe I have with Google Reader.

The first issue comes from sites such as Digg and Blip.fm. Sites where you may spend an hour or so poking around and favouriting numerous posts or even with the previous example of Digg and Blip I might be listening to the first and reading the second whilst marking items from both sites as favourites. Having crossposting turned on in this situation can easily cause a deluge of posts to Twitter and/or Facebook.
To my thinking this is bad in several respects. Firstly it's annoying to be "spammed" by lots of posts you may or may not be interested in, secondly Facebook given this deluge tends to shrink the offending application down. Rather than posting each link you will get one post and a link below it saying "and X more from site Y". Lastly, The internet is international. If I post a link in the Uk mid-morning that is the middle of the night in California.

Issue two. In Google Reader there is no efficient way to post a favoured link to other sites quickly. If you find something you like and want to post to Facebook and Twitter you have to click "Send to" then Facebook and fill in the details, then repeat the process for Twitter. There is also a similar issue with Picassa.

The solution? Well there, of course, isn't one best solution. Something like this really requires looking around the web and finding what best works for you. For me however, I found myself going back to an old favourite.

Enter SNS Analytics. It's not exactly ideal for new users but it's array of features more than solve the aforementioned issues. First +1 for SNS is that you can use your Google login to access it. Given the way I have been writing the blogging tutorials here this is a significant point. No extra account details!

When you first login there are a few things that you will need to hook up. Firstly your Social Channels, Click the button on the sidebar and give SNS access to your Twitter and Facebook. I am assuming you will just have the one Twitter here, SNS however can happily deal with as many Accounts as you need. (My other identity on the web is also a SNS user and if I remember rightly runs about four twitter accounts). I also assume you have just the one Facebook Account (technically it's against FB TOS to have more), SNS again shines here and can actually post to any groups your a member of or pages you own or like.

This is all you really need to post, just click the "post a message" at the top and you can post to both Twitter and Facebook.

This hasn't as yet solved the previous issues yet and so we need to setup some Feeds and Feed Campaigns (both under the Feed Campaign button on the side bar). Feeds are sources of information and most RSS/Atom feeds should work well here. Feed Campaigns are what SNS will do with the different feeds and which Social Channels it will post them to.

So for example, I initially setup 5 feeds at this point:

A Brief History of Tim http://brief-history-of-tim.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
digg.com: Activity http://digg.com/timothycoxon/diggs.rss
TimothyCoxon's Blip.fm Feed http://blip.fm/feed/TimothyCoxon
Tim Coxon's Photo Gallery https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/timothy.coxon?alt=rss&kind=album&hl=en_GB
Tim's shared items in Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/03474438795437265508/state/com.google/broadcast

First off we have my blog, I prefer this solution to the one I previously blogged about with Feedburner.
Second we have Digg and Blip, Both are likely to be high traffic sources.
Third we have Reader and Picassa. As you may have guessed here, we are about to automate shares and uploads from these services.

Final stage in SNS, setting up the Feed Campaigns themselves. With five sources and two outputs we can have from one to as many as you see fit campaigns. You could just take every source and have them feed out to Twitter and Facebook in the same campaign. Personally I made ten, each source with a separate campaign to each output. Main reasons for this is making the analytics easier to use both within SNS and when they hit the sites they link to. Secondly this allows a better "drip feed". Each campaign will post one link from the feed every hour (or whatever you post it as).

Thats it! We should now have in place a system that would mean if I we to listen to twenty four tracks on blip.fm in an hour, "blip" them all, rather than my stream being really busy for an hour, it would ration them out over the next twenty four hours. I also am automatically posting anything I share in Reader or upload to Picassa.

Syndication, Tim's eye view.

noreply@blogger.com (Timothy Coxon) — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:23:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaContinuing on from my post about Feedburner and due to my signing up to various marketing sites that have been asking me about my magazine reading habits, I figured it might be a good subject to clarify my position on.

The main reason for setting up Feedburner is to provide additional functionality for you sites RSS feeds. These feeds are what geeky people like me use to follow peoples blogs and various other sites. Simply put a feed is your website with all the "style" removed leaving just the content. People can then use a feed reader to format your stripped down content and get updates from many different sites in one location. This is a much more efficient way for people who want to follow a lot of sites to keep abreast of the content they actually read the sites for, they get just the content and titles from each post rather than all the graphics from your website theme, all your widgets and what ever other things you have built onto your website. Now the thing I really like about feeds over magazines is the ability to custom pick the authors and news sources that actually interest you. Rather than paying for a block of info you maybe interested in some of, you can filter out the content you are not interested in and not pay a penny for it.

Image via CrunchBase
My personal preference for feed reader is Google Reader, this nicely keeps in theme with this Blog as with the Google login details (you should already have if you are trying out the guides I have been writing), you already have access to Reader. Reader is really simple to use, find a site you want to follow.

Look for an image like the one above or at the bottom of my sidebar.
Copy that link.
Move into Reader and at the top left there is a button, "Add Subscription".
Click that and paste the sites feed link into it.

That is you now subscribed to that site. From this point on whenever there is new content on the site it will also appear in Google Reader.

This is a very simple description of how Google Reader works after getting a more diverse reading list you may find that you want to start categorising feeds or sharing the posts in various social networks. All of which is possible.

Now going back to my opening statement about my magazine reading habits. While Reader is not exactly a magazine in the traditional bound paper and the formatting is certainly not traditional. There are ways however that you can view your subscriptions in Reader in a more traditional magazine format.

Firstly you have Feedly, with this you can use your Google login to view you chosen subscriptions in something much closer to a paper magazine. Feedly also gives you the option to login with your twitter and Facebook accounts to provide a sidebar of your recent posts from twitter and your Facebook wall.
While I quite like Feedly for it's ability to introduce traditional media readers to feeds I personally prefer plain Reader.

Paper.li is another example of a site that takes a more modern concept and reformats it into something potentially more human readable. Paper.li is predominately aimed towards Twitter users. As most people using Twitter who are following more than 50 people you will probably find that unless you are in front of the computer for most of your time you will miss a considerable number of tweets. Paper.li will take a twitter feed and work out what the most relevant tweets are and then publish them onto one page in that favoured magazine format. I actually really like Paper.li and is definitely my favourite of the magazine reformaters. I currently run three different papers.

The Timothy Coxon Weekly. This is taking my posts from the week and providing a magazine based on what I've found interesting.
Tim's Google Weekly. Specifically so I and others can follow the goings on within Google. For this I've signed up to numerous different Google related Twitter feeds and collected them together in a list and then had Paper.li use that as it's content source.
Tim's FaceBork Weekly. Just like the Google one but focused on FaceBook. I made this one specifically because of all the posts from people on FB that complain that X, Y or Z has changed and no one told them about it. Information of X, Y or Z is all out there you just have to look rather than expect it to be handed to you. I hope with this particular paper it makes it easier for my friends in FB to find that information.

And finally, whilst on the subject of Facebook we have Post Post very similar to news.li but this one specifically picks out interesting things from Facebook that your friends have posted.

I hope I have provided a little insight into my thoughts on magazines and a few new "Toys" for people to play with thanks to this post.