Disruptive Conversations

"United Breaks Guitars" took far less than a year to hit 1 million views!

2009-07-10T10:54:49-04:00

When I initially wrote about the "United Breaks Guitars" video two days ago, it only had about 15,000 views. On his website, Dave Carroll wrote this:

At that moment it occurred to me that I had been fighting a losing battle all this time and that fighting over this at all was a waste of time. The system is designed to frustrate affected customers into giving up their claims and United is very good at it. However I realized then that as a songwriter and traveling musician I wasn’t without options. In my final reply to Ms. Irlweg I told her that I would be writing three songs about United Airlines and my experience in the whole matter. I would then make videos for these songs and offer them for free download online, inviting viewers to vote on their favourite United song. My goal: to get one million hits in one year.

No worries about hitting 1 million in one year... this morning as I write this the count is:

1,351,943

Under four days since it was posted July 6th! (Probably hit a million in 3 days.)

Dave Carroll obviously hit a public nerve, too, as he has now been all over the television world... CNN with Wolf Blitzer... CBC... CBS Morning Show... and comments on YouTube have indicated its popping up on TV in all sorts of different parts of the world. Mainstream media has covered him, too... some examples include the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, the LA Times.

It has, of course, been all over Twitter (also another search).

His "SonsOfMaxwell" Facebook page and MySpace page chronicle some of all the ensuing craziness.

As he said in his website post, he really does need to thank United. This one little video (and only the first of three planned) has really propelled him to a global stage... no way to really know but you'd have to imagine that SonsOfMaxwell have no doubt sold a good bit of music online in the past few days (you see mention of people buying in various comments). It helps, too, that Carroll seems very honest and transparent about this whole thing and that in this case it does seem like United was clearly in the wrong, even if he didn't file his claim within the 24 hours United's policies require.

To their credit, it's good to see that United is responding. Their updates to their unitedairlines Twitter account clearly state that they are sorry, that they are working to make this right by him, and that they will be using this video for internal training purposes. The CNN video also refers to a statement from UAL.

It would be interesting to see what, if anything, United does to work with him on subsequent videos. Video #2 is apparently nearing completion, but it sounds like video #3 is still open... could be an interesting opportunity for them if they were interested. It would be fun if they invited him to sing at some United event. Externally, they seem to be putting a good face on it. Internally, no doubt some folks are cringing.

Also interesting to note that Taylor Guitars has so far been low-key on their Twitter account, not really responding or jumping into the conversations on Twitter. They did, though, post this piece about safe air travel with your guitar on their website that does not refer to Dave Carroll or the ongoing issue directly, but does give tips about how to safely travel with your guitar. That piece is also pointed to from Taylor Guitar's home page.

All in all another great example of how in the age of social media your customers are in control and, if you don't provide appropriate service, have multiple avenues to voice their frustrations.

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Technorati Tags: united, ual, dave carroll, socialmedia, youtube, guitars

Social media: Where brevity is appreciated, where clarity and simplicity win

2009-07-10T09:18:46-04:00

This morning by way of Skype's publicist Chaim Haas, I learned of Renee Blodgett's interview with Robert Scoble Skype's chief blogger Peter Parkes (direct link to video). The interview itself was quite interesting as Peter spoke about the role blogging in particular plays within Skype and about his role as "chief blogger", as well as how it has changed since he began in 2006. Robert Scoble also gave his perspective on how corporate blogging has evolved. It was an interesting discussion.

One phrase of Peter's, though, stuck out in my mind as being so accurate about Twitter and really the whole current state of social media:

It's actully quite refreshing to be able to work in an environment where brevity is appreciated, where clarity and simplicity win.

Indeed. A nice concise summary.

As I wrote about way back in December 2007, using Twitter is my daily lesson in attempting brevity. As I wrote there, it's hard for an old-school trainer who wants to be sure that everyone completely understands to learn the art of conciseness and brevity. I keep trying ;-)

The full video, which is worth watching, is here:

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Technorati Tags: socialmedia, skype, scoble, robert scoble, blogging, peter parkes

"United Breaks Guitars" - If you don't like their customer service, create a satire music video!

2009-07-08T02:18:12-04:00

In yet another example of how a customer can respond when they are not pleased with the service they are getting from a company, here is musician's Dave Carroll's music video, "United Breaks Guitars":

As Dave Carroll writes on his explanation page:

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.

The "Detailed Version" of events on that same page goes into the particulars of what transpired.

As my friend David Bryan said on Twitter, this is one of the most clever ways to complain that I've seen. And for United, this is only part 1 of 3.

United... are you paying attention? Your customers are voicing their dissatisfaction.

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Technorati Tags: video, united, customer service

I will miss Kodachrome (though I haven't used it in years...)

2009-07-06T10:40:28-04:00

I was sad to learn recently that Kodak has ended the 74-year-run of its Kodachrome film. The Wikipedia page on Kodachrome has some good info and links - and Kodak themselves put onlne a tribute site to KODACHROME.

In my younger years, I was seriously into photography and shot tons of rolls of slide film. When I was the University of New Hampshire in the mid-1980's, I used to put together slide shows for public events for the NH Outing Club (an outdoor activity group, i.e. hiking, canoeing, skiing, etc.). Admittedly, working on the typical student budget, I shot mostly Ektachrome in those days due to the cheaper cost of processing, but in later years I did use Kodachrome quite a good bit. I used it on various trips out west... on a trip to Greenland... in many different places. There was just something about the colors in the film. Great to shoot with.

The reality, though, is that I haven't bought a roll of Kodachrome, Ektachrome or really any film in probably...

fifteen years.

Maybe even more. Now, between jobs, family and other activities, my photography activities dropped off and the 35mm cameras and lens all sit in the basement... as do the many, many trays of slides... waiting for the mythical time when I'll have the cycles to scan them all in to my digital photo library.

I'm obviously not alone in that. Here's question #1 in Kodak's FAQ:

Why has Kodak decided to stop offering KODACHROME?
Due to declining customer demand for KODACHROME, continued production of this film in no longer viable. Over the years people have moved from KODACHROME to other methods of capture, be it new films or digital. Simply put, not enough people are shooting KODACHROME for us to continue offering it.

And that's the thing, isn't it? We've all gone digital with our photography. When was the last time any of you actually bought film?

Let's be honest, too... how many of us really want to go back to using film? The convenience of digital photography is just far too great to even remotely think about going back. Even now, I'm watching the prices of DSLRs continue to drop and keep waiting to jump back into doing more photography with higher-end gear...

Still, it's sad to hear of the passing of such a great institution within the world of photography.

I may just have to find a roll of Kodachrome before it all is gone, dust off the camera and lenses and go off for a picture-taking spree... just for old times sake...

R.I.P., Kodachrome...

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Technorati Tags: photography, film, kodak, kodachrome, images

Video of my FIR interview of Eric Schwartzman (and briefly Christopher Penn)

2009-06-29T11:45:01-04:00

Listeners to For Immediate Release episode 460 last Thursday, June 25th, will have heard that I interviewed Eric Schwartzman and then briefly spoke with Christopher Penn as well. Although FIR is only audio, there was actually a video component to my report last week. You see, I didn't have my audio recorder with me at the event where Eric and I met, so I simply recorded the video using my small JVC Everio hard disk video camera. I then imported the movie into iMovie '09 on my MacBook Pro. Next I opened the resulting movie in GarageBand, where I deleted the video track and exported the remaining audio track as an MP3 file that I sent to Shel and Neville for the FIR episode.

But... since I did have video, I decided to upload the video of Eric (and briefly Chris) to YouTube where you can watch it now:

You can find out more about Eric at ontherecordpodcast.com (sans beard and mustache :-) or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ontherecord. Christopher Penn can be found at marketingovercoffee.com or twitter.com/cspenn

The For Immediate Release podcast can as always be found at forimmediaterelease.biz

Enjoy...

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Technorati Tags: fir, forimmediaterelease, ericschwartzman, danyork, christopherpenn, pr, marketing, social media, socialmedia

Speaking at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week in Boston

2009-06-22T07:33:59-04:00

This week, I (Dan York) am at the Enterprise 2.0 conference today through Thursday at the Westin Boston Waterfront in downtown Boston. The keynote panel I'm on, The Future of Social Messaging in the Enterprise, doesn't happen until Wednesday morning at 9:15am... but I came down early as a good number of the sessions are of interest.

If you are at the show and would like to say hello, please do email me. I expect to also be posting updates to Twitter on both danyork and voxeo.

You can also follow along with the conference "backchannel" on Twitter by following the hashtag "#e2conf". Here's an easy search URL:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=e2conf

I expect to have a very cool Voxeo announcement out on Wednesday, too... but more on that then... ;-)

P.S. And why do I do the silly "I (Dan York)" construction at the beginning of this post? Because I see my content being scraped and so "I" alone doesn't make sense in other places the content winds up :-)

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Technorati Tags: e2conf, voxeo, danyork, dan york, enterprise 2.0, boston

Twitter's SPOF Stupidity Continues: Ever hear of redundancy?

2009-06-15T21:03:22-04:00

While much of the blogosphere is currently dwelling on how great it is that Twitter is postponing its maintenance to allow Iran-related communication, my mind is still reeling from reading the Twitter blog post, particularly this part (my emphasis added):

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight.

Like Chaim Haas, my reaction is... why is that "network host" singular?

Given the millions of people now using Twitter on an ongoing basis... given the incredibly large ecosystem of applications and systems linking in to Twitter... given the very real communications uses that Twitter has evolved to have... given all of that:

why does Twitter not have redundant connections?

This is really "Network Infrastructure 101" when you are supplying a hosted service. Anyone providing a cloud-based service should ensure that they have redundant network connections... redundant providers... redundant everything. Coming from a company (Voxeo) that provides a hosted application platform, it boggles my mind that Twitter would need to take its system down for "network maintenance". We would never do that... our customers wouldn't stand for it!

And that is perhaps the issue... we have customers... Twitter has users.

We ensure that we have multiple redundant providers and networks... because our customers pay us to ensure that their applications are always available. Twitter can get by on "best effort" - and on a single network provider - because no one pays...

Twitter continues to be a massive...

Single Point Of Failure

One company... providing a messaging infrastructure... obviously based on one network provider.

This is my personal frustration with Twitter. I've been using it for now 2.5 years or so and continue to see so many benefits to Twitter, yet as someone who has been involved with computer networks for 25+ years, the very idea of a SPOF is hideous. I'm much more interested in distributed architectures like what we see with Laconi.ca and Identi.ca,(As I wrote about a year ago.) or what Google seems to be promising with Wave.

Yet Twitter's simplicity... it's directory of users... it's easy APIs... it's ecosystem... all of those things keep us using its services...

So while I commend Twitter on listening to their users and postponing their maintenance window... I ask as a long-time user -

why do they need a maintenance window?

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Technorati Tags: twitter, microblogging, nomaintenance, identi.ca, laconi.ca, google wave

Initial thoughts on Nambu as a Mac Twitter client

2009-06-11T23:51:03-04:00

Recently in a bit of frustration, I decided to shift from using an Adobe AIR-based Twitter client on my Mac over to using Nambu, a native Mac OSX app. My frustration is due to the fact that all of the major AIR clients - Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck and Twhirl - seem to suffer from the problem of consuming a serious amount of CPU usage on my MacBook Pro. I don't know if this is an inherent issue of using the AIR abstraction layer, which is another layer sitting on top of the operating system, or if the problem lies more in the programming of the applications themselves.

Whatever the case, in frustration this week when my CPU was yet again high and the Activity Monitor showed that the second highest app was one of the Twitter clients, I went off and installed Nambu to give it a try. (The application which is inevitably sucking up the most CPU on my Mac is Firefox... which is why I'm dearly waiting for the real build of Chrome so that I can find and kill off tabs of poorly-written web pages!)

So far, I've been very pleased with how Nambu works. Most importantly for me, I can use multiple Twitter accounts. (I tweet from both @danyork and @voxeo and occasionally a couple of others.) All in all the experience is very similar to that of Seesmic Desktop or TweetDeck. There are, though, some differences which I thought I would note here while I think of them:

"Compose" field is at the bottom of the screen, versus the top as in TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. (Not bad, just different and takes some getting used to.)
"Compose" field doesn't stay open after you tweet. So if you flip to the Nambu window you can't just click in and start typing. You have to either click the "Compose" button at the top or press Cmd+N to start a tweet.
Both TweetDeck and Seesmic (and other Twitter clients) have this UI component where you can go over the picture of someone and have actions right there to either reply, retweet, direct message, etc. In Nambu you have to either click the gear icon on the opposite end of the tweet and then go down to a menu choice... or click on the tweet and click on one of the buttons on the menu at the top. (For me, one value in a desktop Twitter client is speed and the ability to just quickly scan through and act on various tweets. Single-click action buttons are nice for this.)
Inability to resize the columns. Ideally I'd like to see more columns on the single page (so that I can visually monitor a bunch of searches at the same time). I'd like to make the columns smaller if I want. (Note that I can't really resize the columns on Seesmic or TweetDeck, either.)
"Sent" column doesn't differentiate between tweets/replies and direct messages. All are just shown as "sent". It would be nice if there was a visual clue as to which ones are direct messages.
When you click on someone's twitter name, such as "@danyork", you get a list of their recent tweets - but I couldn't see any way to reply to a tweet from that window. I had to click a button to go to their Twitter page to do that.
That I could see, there was no "in reply to" feature that would show that a tweet from someone was in reply to another tweet. Now... Nambu does have a VERY cool feature that replies to a tweet are threaded underneath the main tweet... if you can find that original tweet. If you can't find that tweet, though, you are left not easily knowing what the original tweet was.

Again, overall I've been quite pleased with Nambu in the few days that I've started using it... I'll write more here as I use it more.

Comments are, of course, welcome.

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Technorati Tags: twitter, nambu

140 Character Conference next week in New York...

2009-06-10T16:39:53-04:00

Are you interested in the disruptive role that Twitter is playing in the media / communication landscape? If so, are you planning to head to Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference next Tuesday and Wednesday, June 16 and 17, 2009, in New York City?

Alas, my schedule takes me elsewhere (Orlando, Florida) next week, but if I were available, I'd definitely try to be there at the event. The schedule looks great and the speaker list (aka "cast of characters") is a veritable "who's who" of the social media space.

It truly does look like Jeff has put together a great show... and I expect we'll see LOTS of twittering early next week! (You will be able to watch here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=140conf )

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Technorati Tags: 140conf, twitter, microblogging, jeffpulver

Revisiting "The Dark Side of Status Updates" - a home potentially burglarized after Twitter updates

2009-06-02T13:06:59-04:00

Back in November 2007, I wrote a post here called "Twitter is Terrific for Thieves - The Dark Side of Status Updates" about the danger in giving away too much information on Twitter (and Facebook, etc.) and how that could potentially lead to someone burglarizing your home. At the time it led to some interesting conversations on Twitter and in the comments.

Fast forward 1.5 years and many million more Twitter users... it appears (and I must emphasize appears) that precisely that kind of thing did happen in Arizona:

Home burglarized after owner 'twittered' he was leaving town

The homeowner very unfortunately was robbed of thousands of dollars of equipment. The Twitter connection was mentioned here:

"Every one of them that reads my tweets that I sent out knows that I was heading out of town," said Hyman, "I've got it set-up where Twitter goes into Facebook, so it could be someone I know about on Facebook."

However, and this is the part that needs to be emphasized, there is really no way to know if the thief/thieves were watching Twitter or if it just happened to be a random theft. As the article says:

Unless the crooks are caught, Hyman said there's no way to know for sure if this was a random act or if he was targeted.

And that's exactly right. It might have been someone who saw equipment in the house through windows. It might have been someone who knew there was a tech business operating out of the house. It might have just been someone randomly breaking into homes.

Or it might have been someone monitoring Twitter.

We may not ever know. As I mentioned in my original post, though, it's important to think about what you say in Twitter or Facebook status updates. Do you really want to tweet that you home is going to be vacant for the next two weeks? Do you want to post the update that you had to leave the 72" plasma TV on the back porch until you could clear up the wall space? :-)

Ah, the brave new (open) world we all live in...

P.S. Hat tip to Todd Van Hoosear for re-tweeting about this Arizona article

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Technorati Tags: facebook, twitter, security, privacy, microblogging

Demo of iMovie '09 image stabilization (before and after)

2009-05-15T15:54:04-04:00

Given that I'm using Apple's iMovie software for my Emerging Tech Talk video podcast, I was intrigued by the idea of the new "image stabilization" feature in iMovie '09. The concept is simple enough - iMovie simply compares one frame to the next, finds the matching patterns and adjusts the frames so that the patterns line up from one frame to the next. This will either remove or reduce the "shake" that happens when you are recording with a handheld camera.

After recently purchasing Apple's iLife '09 (admittedly primarily for the iPhoto improvements), I thought I'd give the iMovie stabilization a test. I chose one of my Emerging Tech Talk videos that I recorded with my little JVC camera down at ITEXPO earlier this year:

I just recorded this with Transnexus CEO Jim Dalton out in the hallway outside the conference rooms. I was holding my JVC camera in my hand and trying to brace it against my body to keep it stable.

I honestly didn't really realize how much the image was moving around until I watched it carefully afterwards.

Now here is the version after iMovie '09 image stablization:

What do you think? I thought the stabilization turned out rather well.

From a workflow point-of-view, performing the image stabilization was just another step in the iMovie '09 post-production process. I selected the video clip (the entire segment is one "clip" in iMovie), clicked on the "gear" icon, chose "Clip Adjustments", clicked the checkbox next to "Smooth clip motion", pressed "Done"... and waited. It did take several minutes on my MacBook Pro... I'm not sure exactly how long, but it was a number of minutes.

I've not yet imported any video from my camera since moving to iMovie '09, but it appears that there is a checkbox during the import that you could check so that movies go through the stabilization process during import. Obviously this will lengthen the import process, but would then get you on your way to editing with a smoothed out image.

I'll have to try it out on some other clips, but so far it looks like it could be a useful tool for working with movie clips shot with a handheld camera.

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Technorati Tags: video, imovie, apple, mac, macosx, ilife, imovie09, imagestabilization

Getting back into blogging after a brief break...

2009-05-15T15:53:51-04:00

As you have no doubt noticed, my last post here was April 23rd... what happened? Well, our second child was born April 24th, and as any parent of a newborn can tell you, you enter this wonderful yet challenging vortex where your time is entirely in the service of the wee one... ;-)

I'm slowly getting back up to speed now, though, and so you'll see more posts appearing here and across all the other blogs where I write...

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blo.gs to get new life with WordPress/Automattic team

2009-04-21T16:52:43-04:00

For those of us who have been around blogging for a while (crossing over the 9-year-mark myself in a few weeks), blo.gs was a site we all knew not only as a very creative domain name but also as one of the earliest "ping servers". (Courtesy of today's announcement, I learned of this great post that gives some of the early history of ping servers and services.)

Then blo.gs was purchased in 2005 and nothing much seemed to be done with it. Other ping services emerged. Many of us just started using Ping-o-matic rather than trying to keep up with all the various services. And over time blo.gs didn't seem to get any mentions anywhere, really.

So today it was rather cool to learn that Yahoo is transferring blo.gs over to Automattic for "safekeeping and further development". Automattic, if you aren't aware, are the folks behind the hugely successful WordPress blogging platform/software, as well as the Akismet blog comment anti-spam service and other tools.

It's great that Yahoo did transfer the service and thus one of the older domains can live on. Now it will be interesting to see what Matt Mullenweg and the rest of the Automattic crew do with blo.gs....

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Technorati Tags: blogging, ping servers, social media, tools, wordpress, automattic, blo.gs

Is "family identity" dead? (In a communications form)

2009-04-13T11:03:17-04:00

Is the concept of "family identity" dead in terms of communications?

As I was thinking about my talk tonight over the weekend and how the ways in which we communicate are changing, one of the themes that kept emerging was what I'd call "The Death of Family Identity".

Think about it... once upon a time, there were primarily two ways that people would communicate with members of a household (outside of the obvious one of knocking on the front door):

Postal mail
Telephone

In both cases, there was one "address" for the family... either the postal address or the phone number. In either case, you could contact "the Yorks", for instance, by sending a letter to the address or by calling the family phone number. The mail or phone might be picked up by any member of the family, but it could be shared or passed along to other members of the family. Mom, dad, brothers, sisters, friends or whomever lived there... anyone could potentially see the mail or get the phone call.

YOU HAVE REACHED "THE YORKS"

Let's take the phone. My parents have had the same phone number for 35 years. Growing up, anyone could have called that number and reached either of my parents, myself or my brother. That was the number to call us on. Period. End of story. And while there were certainly some disadvantages to this approach... busy signals (pre-call-waiting), messages not being delivered, people listening in on extensions... there was also a solid sense of "identity". You could leave a message there and someone in the family would get it. If it was urgent, someone could try other ways to reach the person - or could provide info about where the person was.

Fast forward to today... mobile phones are ubiquitous and traditional "landlines" are being shed at a rapid pace. As today's mobile-phone-using college generation starts to buy homes, will any of them actually bother with a landline? What's the point? The mobile phone lets you receive your calls wherever you are. No more messages that aren't communicated to you by a family member... no more busy signals because your sibling is on the phone...

Personally, I wouldn't invest in the landline biz... sure, many of those who have them in their houses today will keep them until you pry the handset out of their cold, dead fingers... but that's a market that's capped. And many of us who have them may move... if I can eventually figure out a solution for fax and 911, I'll probably cut the cord, too.

But let's think about that in terms of "family identity":

Mobile numbers are individual - Each person has a mobile phone. Mom, dad, brother, sister... everyone has their own phone with their own number. For families who have "cut the cord", how do you just leave a message for the family? Say you want to invite them over for dinner... how do you just leave a general message? You can't... you have to call one of the individuals. Or maybe you call a couple. (Or maybe you just text them all.) It's no longer simple.
Mobile phones are less reliable - Your ability to reach the family members assumes, of course, that their mobile phones are reachable. Batteries die and need to be recharged. Phones are lost. Someone is traveling in an area with bad coverage (recall that I live in the wireless backwater known as the United States). Voicemail messages may not be delivered in a timely fashion. None of these were generally issues with traditional landlines.
Mobile phone numbers change - How many mobile phone numbers have you had in the last, say, five years? Some of you may still have the same numbers, but odds are most of you reading this have gone through several numbers. Either because you switch carriers and cannot move your number... or it's just too much of a pain in the neck and it's just easier to get a new one. Or you wanted that shiny new phone that another carrier had and so you wound up with two mobile phones? Regardless of the reason, there is more churn in mobile numbers. Anyone seriously think they'll have the same mobile phone number for 35 years?

So in a world without home landlines, how do you reach "the Yorks"? Sure, you could set up a "family number" through an abstraction layer like Google Voice that would ring all family phones... but how many people are actually going to do this?

SNAIL MAIL

Do I even need to discuss it? When was the last time any of you reading this wrote an actual "letter" to someone and mailed it in the postal service? When is the last time you received a personal letter?

Messages are sent online... either through "e-mail" or IM or increasingly through services like Facebook, etc. And all of those media have the same issues as mobile phones: they are almost always individual, they are less reliable, they change.

Gone are the days of the sending a letter to "The Yorks". Now you have to cc a bunch of email addresses and hope they all get there... or rely on someone in the family to send it to everyone.

(And sure, some of us, myself included, still engage in this quaint, anachronistic custom of sending "Christmas cards" to a family, but even there I've increasingly seen friends and family reciprocating with "e-cards"... that time is probably limited, too.)

SO DO WE CARE?

Is "family identity" dead in our brave new online world of 2009? Does it matter? Are we better of with the convenience we have today and the ways we have to connect as individuals?

I don't know the answer. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it does. Maybe it's just another aspect of the changing fabric of our society where we don't yet understand the full ramifications as we continue our evolution into the cloud... Part of me feels like we are losing something... but the pattern isn't fully clear.

What do you think?

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Technorati Tags: identity, internet, telephone, landlines, email, family, future, trends

Speaking tomorrow night at Keene Public Library: "The Big Disconnect - How Communication Is Changing All Around Us"

2009-04-12T16:28:51-04:00

UPDATE: Just confirmed that the start time is 7:00pm versus 6, which is what I thought it was, but I was writing my post based on info on the library's web site. ;-)

If you are in the area of Keene, NH, tomorrow night, Monday, April 13, 2009, you are welcome to swing by the Keene Public Library at ~~6pm~~7:00pm to hear me speak on: "The Big Disconnect - How Communication Is Changing All Around Us" where I'll be talking about who the ways we communicate and the tools we are use are changing... basically the topics I write about here, over at DisruptiveTelephony.com, in my FIR reports and essentially in most of the other places I write. The full abstract of the talk is below.

This whole thing started off innocently enough. Another parent at my daughter's school knew about the kinds of things I do and asked if I would be willing to talk to the library board (on which she sits) about changes in communication technology. They are apparently doing some long-range planning over these next few months and she thought my input would be helpful. My first response was (and still is) to suggest they talk to my neighbor and long-time Keene resident Jon Udell who has, among other things, created the LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator. She appreciated that info but continued to also want me to talk to the board.

Given that this is the kind of presentation that I do on an ongoing basis anyway, I agreed. Then somewhere along the way it seems the library board morphed this into a public presentation... when she asked me for a headshot and bio for flyers, well, I knew it was getting a bit bigger... ;-)

Ah, well... it didn't and doesn't matter to me. If I'm speaking to five people or 20 and private or public, it should be a good conversation regardless. Having this presentation has also been helpful in that it has helped me synthesize some points that I'd been thinking about for some time into a more coherent form.

So at this point it's a public event to which anyone can go. If you find yourself in Keene tomorrow night, feel free to stop by. Here's the abstract of the talk:

Is the future of our inter-personal communication a 'tweet'? Are we going to become 'friends' with everyone through sites like Facebook? What are all these 'feeds' people are talking about? And what is going on with all these e-books?
We are living in a time of great change both in terms of the technologies and tools we use to communicate but also in terms of the changes those technologies are making to the fabric of our society. Traditional media outlets are under severe stress. Newspapers are folding or stuggling. Television audiences are fragmenting and moving online. Radio empires are collapsing. Email is dying under the weight of spam. Landlines are being cut in favor of mobile phones. In the midst of all this change, people are sharing details of their lives in social networks like Facebook and MySpace. They are 'tweeting' with Twitter. They are posting video to YouTube. They are collaborating using documents 'in the cloud'. They are networking on LinkedIn. They are blogging and podcasting. They are sharing and creating information in so many new forms and ways.
In this talk, communication technology expert Dan York will discuss these trends and technologies and look at how both the ways in which we communicate are changing as the underlying technology changes. What is fueling those trends? How are people changing the way they consume information? What does it mean for each of us as we blur the contexts in which we interact with people? What are both the challenges and opportunities for organizations and businesses? What are some of the societal impacts? What about privacy? (Or is there such a thing?) And how can people most appropriately participate? Come with your questions and join in the conversation about how communication is changing all around us.

P.S. I don't know that I'm entirely comfortable with the label "communication technology expert". I suppose some people may consider me that, and I have been working with online communication networks and tools for pretty much 25 years at this point... but from my perspective the more you know, the more you know you don't know...

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Technorati Tags: keene, danyork, dan york, social media, communication, communication technology, facebook, twitter, trends

Speaking at OSCON 09 in July about building a corporate blog portal with WordPress MU

2009-04-09T11:37:12-04:00

As I noted today over on the Voxeo Talks blog, I'l be speaking out at this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention OSCON on the topic of "Building A Corporate Blog Portal Using WordPress MU". I'll be talking about the challenges and lessons learned while building blogs.voxeo.com using WordPress MU, much of which I've documented over on the "Behind The Blog" weblog.

In my Voxeo Talks post, I included the abstract. I'm looking forward to passing along what we've learned and helping others build blog portals on top of WPMU. The more who use WPMU for such portals, the better we'll wind up making the software in the end.

If you are planning to be out at OSCON, please do stop by and say hello.

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Technorati Tags: wordpress, wordpressmu, wpmu, danyork, voxeo, oscon, oscon2009, oreilly, blogging, blogportals, socialmedia

Have you looked at the Twitter Fan Wiki lately? Amazing number of tools...

2009-04-06T08:45:29-04:00

Wow! Have you looked at the Twitter Fan Wiki lately? It is at:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps

I wound up there late last week for some reason and realized that it had been many months since I had visited the page... what an incredible number of apps built around Twitter! There is no official "count" that I could see, but dumping the page source to a file and grepping for <li> in the relevant part of the file gave a count of close to 700 listings.

If you haven't taken a look at this view of the Twitter ecosystem lately, it's worth a look. (And if you are looking for topics for your blog, you could just start at the top reviewing Twitter apps and you'd have no end of things to writing about...)

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Technorati Tags: twitter, tools, microblogging

One single picture that shows why I want Google Chrome on Mac OS X...

2009-03-30T23:19:14-04:00

Why can't I wait for the Mac OS X version of Google Chrome? After tweeting that today, someone asked me again. Here is a very simple picture that shows WHY I want Chrome on Mac OS X:

Yep, there is good old Firefox jacking both my CPUs to close to 100%.

Funny thing is that it wasn't even a large browsing session for me. The session manager plugin I'm now using says that I had 3 windows with 59 tabs.

Yet somewhere on one of those tabs was some kind of screwed up web page that was jacking my CPU up. Perhaps it was a Flash object. Perhaps some kind of multimedia content. Perhaps just lousy design. But the problem is that I can't find that tab easily.

Enter Google Chrome. I want that Process Manager to see which of the many tabs is killing my performance. (And then I want to kill that tab!) I'm looking forward to it!

P.S. And yes, I have indeed tried the Stainless browser for Mac OS X, which implements multi-process browsing like Chrome. It's nice and seems to work well, but it (like Chrome apparently) is still very much a work-in-progress. I'll keep watching it, though, and trying it out from time to time. Perhaps if Chrome continues to take forever and if Firefox keeps sucking up all my CPU from time-to-time... perhaps then I *will* move to Stainless...

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Technorati Tags: firefox, mac, macosx, chrome, google, stainless

Newspapers fighting to survive - disrupting habits by dropping home delivery days...

2009-03-30T22:29:35-04:00

As a lover of language, journalism and writing - and yes, as one of those anachronistic subscribers to not one, but two daily newspapers, I've watched with great interest the continued devolution of the newspaper industry. You all know it... the stories are, of course, in the newspapers and online almost every day these days. We're right in the midst of a great chaotic change in media consumption, as Clay Shirky recent wrote in his great essay

Today, though, the changes to the industry started to hit home for me personally. In the editorial page for the New Hampshire Union Leader, publisher Joe McQuaid laid out the (overall comparatively good) situation for the Union Leader, the tough challenges of providing local coverage, and then dropped in the change:

We are taking several steps to deal with it, the most noticeable of which will occur in mid-April. At that time, for areas outside Greater Manchester, we will discontinue Saturday distribution and begin publishing a combined Friday/Saturday Edition. It will contain all of Friday's features plus key sections and features from Saturday's current paper. It will be delivered to state-area subscribers on Friday and be available at retail outlets on Friday and Saturday.

For those who don't know New Hampshire, Keene is very definitely an "area outside Greater Manchester". We're about 1.25 hours to the west of Manchester down in the southwest corner of N.H. over by Vermont and Massachusetts.

No Saturday morning Union Leader for us.

Now as it happens, this isn't really a particularly big deal for my wife and I. The primary reason we get the Union Leader is because it is the only newspaper with daily morning delivery during the week. The Keene Sentinel, the other daily newspaper we get (and one of the oldest in the country still using the same name), is published in the afternoon during the week. However, both newspapers get delivered on Saturday morning. And in truth, both are fairly thin on Saturdays and, with the way the newspapers increasingly print wire stories, etc., they both tend to have a fair amount of duplicate content.

So this change is really no big deal. We'll just read the Sentinel on Saturdays. We really mostly care about the local news anyway (and the comics).

But I have to wonder about those in other areas of N.H. that don't have the duplicate paper. Will this accelerate some people finding (online) alternatives? Perhaps not... after all, it is only one day of service dropped.

Consider, instead, Detroit, where the Detroit Times and Detroit Free Press are reducing home delivery to Thursday, Fridays and Sundays. They are cutting four days of delivery. Which led me to completely agree with this quote (my emphasis added):

"They are accelerating greatly the print-to-digital transformation, and they are taking a great chance there," said Ken Doctor, media analyst with Outsell Inc.
The biggest risk is in breaking readers' newspaper habits, he said. If readers realize they can get by without a newspaper at the doorstep four days of the week, they might conclude they don't need it delivered on the other three days. Circulation could drop, and with it, ad revenue.

I think that is a serious gamble and risk on the part of the Detroit papers. Now, maybe, as the story seems to indicate, this is really a last desperate gamble to keep the papers afloat - but I agree with the analyst that this is probably only going to accelerate the ongoing transformation. Perhaps it's a step that will keep these two papers financially going in the short-term, but in the long-term I can't see how it will do anything but hasten the demise.

You are breaking readers' habits.

A personal story - the reason why we have two newspaper subscriptions is because of our habits. I have been a daily newspaper reader for decades. In every place my wife and I have lived we have subscribed to a daily morning paper. Before my daughter, I always snapped wide awake at 6:00 am pretty much every single morning of my life. My daughter got the early-bird gene but she ratchets that back to 5:00am or 5:30am and over the years my body clock has migrated to that as well. We therefore have tons of time in the morning before work and school start. So we like a morning paper. Great to read before the day begins.

When we moved to Keene last summer, we started out subscribing to the Keene Sentinel, but in comes in the late afternoon, usually around 4:00pm or so. We tried... but it broke our habit and try as we could we just didn't find we ourselves adapting. We even tried reading the previous day's Sentinel the next morning... but that just didn't work. So we sucked it up and subscribed to the Union Leader primarily to get a morning paper. We wound up keeping the Sentinel as we enjoyed getting all the local news that didn't wind up in the state-wide Union Leader.

Because of a habit, we subscribed to a paper. Break that habit, and we'll stop.

If the Union Leader were some day to drop to only doing home delivery three days a week, I can say with probably 99% certainty that we would drop our subscription for those remaining 3 days. It's a daily habit... a pattern... and if that habit can't be fulfilled, what's the point?

I would expect the Detroit papers will be finding this out...

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Technorati Tags: media, newspapers, new hampsire, nh, detroit

Of choosing a new image/avatar - and wondering why we choose the images we do?

2009-03-27T00:20:14-04:00

So I'm thinking of changing the "avatar" image I use across all my blogs and social networks.

In truth, I quite like the current image I have been using (pictured on right), because I'm not really a big fan of most of the pictures of me that are out there. But with this particular one I like the profile... I'm almost smiling... and the purple and pink background is distinctive. My image can easily be found in a batch of other images. I'm also looking to the right, which is again just different from so many of the other images out there.

This image has worked well for me as I've used it across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, all my various blogs, my Gravatar, and basically every other social network I'm in (and I'm in a lot as part of my job). Given that "Dan York" is a rather generic name in English, and that there are a good number of other "Dan Yorks" out there, I've tried to use one image everywhere so that when people see my account on some service, they have a very easy visual clue that it is, in fact, the Dan York they know. It's part of my online identity... a bit of personal branding, etc.

However, there's a fundamental problem with the image - I only have it in low resolution.

And in fact, very low resolution. For all the many positive comments I've received about that particular image, the truth is that it is simply a screen capture of a random frame in a video interview that Jeff Pulver did with me back at Fall VON in October 2007. That's it. A screen capture of a web video. No pro photographers. Nothing like that.

The problem is that when conferences ask me for a "headshot", in my ideal world I'd like to give them the same shot that I have on my website and social networks... but I can't give them this one. So I need a new image for which I also have a higher resolution image.

I've thought of going to a local photographer for a shoot... and I may still do that, but as I wrote about over on a Voxeo blog, I was fortunate to have some great shots taken of me out at eComm by photographer Duncan Davidson (click any of the images to jump to his site - you can then click between the images on his site):

(And do check out the rest of the eComm 2009 image gallery - I'm quite impressed by Duncan Davidson's work.)

As Duncan has very kindly given speakers permission to use them for headshots, blogs, etc., I'm now toying with using a cropped version of one of those shots. Something like maybe one of these:

I'm thinking maybe the last one... mostly because it's off-center a bit. What do you think?

All of this got me thinking and wondering these thoughts:

What do you like in an avatar shot?
What made you choose the one that you are using now?
Do you like close-up images or farther away?
Do you like just the person in them or with other people/kids/significant-others/animals?
Serious? Funny? Muted backgrounds? Distinct backgrounds? Posed? Casual?

(Or are you perhaps not the over-analyzing, over-thinking type that I am and just put up random shots and change them around all the time?)

There's no right answer, of course... in this world of social media we all get to choose this part of our online identity... and that persona can of course change and morph over time as we ourselves do. Still, I find it interesting to think about - why do we choose the images we do?

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