Wallace Wilson

I like Google Buzz, but...

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:32:00 +0000

I want the option of looking at Buzz with a List view or Expanded view (or user specific view - talked about below). Just like Google reader. Give me the the first 140 characters like twitter, and then let me pop it open if I want to read more, or see all the comments. No pictures or videos at first glance please.

Mute needs to work like it does in Wave. If I mute a conversation I don't want to see it again unless I go looking for it. Seems like currently the idea is I wont get notified of the anything in Gmail if I mute it. But I don't consider Gmail my Buzz inbox. The main stream is my buzz inbox. If I mute it, I mean mute it from my stream. If you want to keep it that way (where mute is affecting your Gmail inbox instead of my Buzz inbox/stream) then you need to allow me to delete a post. And once it is deleted, it does not show up in my Buzz stream again. If I want to see it again, I would have to go to that user's individual stream and view it there, or undelete it there to allow it back into my main stream.

I need lists or something. Actually, in true Google fashion give me labels/tags. There are too many people I don't really want in my everyday stream. Some people are just too noisy. I get it - you like Star Wars and Legos - I don't want to see every picture you found of that shit on the web today. But I still want a list of all you freaks to check in on from time to time.

Give me stars to tag favorites with and I want a quick click button toolbar on each Buzz post. I don't want to click down arrows and select stuff. And stuff. Let me click and keep moving.

These are all things that are already part of other Google products. Seems easy to bring them over here. (seems easy because it's not what I do).

But here is where it would be nice to see Google put in a little extra effort. I want better user/follow settings.

I would like the ability to tag a user as a certain type and that would dictate how their buzz showed up. Maybe a ranking (or super star) system. If I rank someone a 1 - then no matter what they post I see the whole post and a large chunk of comments below. If I tag them a 2, I get the 140 characters of the post with icons letting me know there are pics/videos, how many likes and comments attached to the post, etc. If I tag them a 3, I see their name collapsed behind other Buzz posts, just letting me know that they had something there but with no other info on it in my way. I can click to see more. But no matter what - I only see them in my stream when they post. People commenting on their post does not elevate it to the top of my stream again.

To make this work, I need a small tool/link bar that runs across the top of each user/post so I can make changes to their classifications on the fly. On the left side of this bar there is a 1, 2, 3. I click on that to move that user around in the ranking system. I can only have one of these selected at a time. Obviously we can do better than numbers, but you get the drift. On the right of the tool bar is a star, a mute and an X. The star makes it a favorite, the mute makes sure I don't get notified about it in Gmail and the X makes it go away forever (unless I go undelete it on the users page).

And dear god, don't give me a "follower settings" page. If you make me do that, or go to a list view of the people I follow and decide how much I care about them - it's worthless. I need to be able to mark/tag them on the fly. Everyone starts as a 3 when I follow them. As I see their posts more (and how much they post lolcats and avatar shit) I can just reclassify them as I move through my stream. And as soon as I move someone from a 3 to a 1, all the post in my stream should reformat to the new setting (oK - that seems kind of hard - so I'll just refresh after making a change if I care that much).

On a side note - I really like getting a Buzz update in Gmail and it works like I was on the Buzz tab. I want that with Wave too. I want a Wave to come to Gmail and act like a Wave when I have it open.

Then after Buzz does all that, I would like it to make me a burrito.

A lot going on - but not a lot of time to talk about it.

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:16:00 +0000

I have not been terribly active as far as blogging about technology, software and social media lately. I have a lot of things I want to talk about as far as Google Wave goes, and I'm currently in the middle of a roll out of cloud based Point of Sale software for 70+ retail location, which should be providing tons of information as well. Not to mention we just rolled out our new site (www.strasburgchildren.com) and are getting ready to start the social media phase of our re-branding online (which by the way, I'm looking for a e-commerce/social media coordinator if anyone knows of someone). Oh yeah - and I'm moving our entire organization over to Google Apps in a couple of weeks. Even with all that going on, or because of all that going on, I've been too tired to get anything out there lately.

So follow over at wallacewilson.net instead, it grabs what I'm doing off the web, which is not a lot right now - but still more than what's going on here.

I'll be back over here eventually.

Seesmic's Web App - Love it

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:02:00 +0000

I've been using Seesmic's new web app for twitter for the last few days and I have to say I love it. I was begging for this a few months ago and this is pretty close to what I wanted. I don't plan on using anything else to access twitter (on my computer) - unless a better web app comes out. Either way - I'm not going back to a desktop app.

If you are someone who just uses twitter.com to access twitter - it's a no brainer to switch to this. For those of you that use a desktop app like Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop - you really need to give this a try, but you will find a few things missing. The one I really want is multiple accounts. The other two that I don't need so much, but I like, are groups and facebook integration. I assume that @loic and team will figure out a way to get them in soon enough. Until then, running the page in two different browsers (when I need two accounts) will cover my bases.

Here is a good post by Louis Gray on Seesmic Web. He quotes Loic as saying, "there has needed to be some evangelizing for this new introduction to be accepted". I don't understand why this is such a hard thing for people to accept. Especially for something like Twitter where if you don't have a web connection - there is not a lot you can do anyway.

I'm always excited to uninstall another program from my computer. Personally I want all my apps in the cloud. And I don't need any syncing (except maybe with my iPhone I guess, where the AT&T pipe is still slow). Just keep it all in the cloud and give me a browser.

Friendfeed is doing "Real-Time" right

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:57:00 +0000

Friendfeed has put out it's version of real-time search, and it's better than what anyone else is doing. Much better than Twitter. The best part is you can embed this real time search anywhere on the web. This is what I wanted Twitter to do not long ago - so at the end of a blog post I could include the most recent conversation on the web about the topic.

Friendfeed does not have as many users as Twitter and the early adopter crowd leans more to the tech side than the whole of Twitter would. But for this blog it works.

And that's not to say no one talks about pop culture or politics or whatever at friendfeeed. They ramble on about that stuff over there as well. For this post, I wanted to grab something that was getting a lot of talk on the web - so you could see the feed in action (it auto updates). Michael Jackson is moving too fast to even monitor. So I went with SarahPalin. You can roll your mouse over a post to pause the feed from moving while you read.

If I ever get back to writing over here - I'll start using this.

When did Facebook get Google "Connect" ... and why doesn't it work?

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:32:00 +0000

I just noticed this for the first time today. In my facebook settings - I can tell it to automatically log me into facebook if I am logged into some other network. I chose Google, since the first thing I do every morning is log into Gmail. Here is a screen shot:

This would be awesome if it actually worked. I could not get it to work in Chrome, Firefox or IE. Is this new or has it been around a while? Anyone know the dealio with this?

My Initial (Premature) Thoughts on Google Wave.

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:56:00 +0000

Wow - from the little bit I see here (and it is a very little bit) - Google Wave looks and sounds impressive. I hope this actually comes out soon and is not just vaporware.

And while it looks to be a massive piece of software, I hope it is not another fragment of Google floating around the web. I hope it acts as a replacement for Gmail. I don't want it to be a separate thing I have to log into. Or something that I can't use with people not on Wave. Hopefully a "wave" acts as an email (or IM , or SMS, or meeting request or whatever) for those that are not on wave. Obviously there will be new functions that can only be a wave, but I hope it is backwards compatible with other communication. Don't make this just be a different network.

Since this is all about communication - hopefully we will see it bring in Google Voice as well. That's important. And hopefully the calendar plays a major role in here. I would think the events and meetings I'm involved in would be considered a wave since more often than not it involves my contacts. Picasa will obviously be involved.

Will I be able to add other social data to my contacts? Can I tie my friend's flickr, twitter and last.fm account to them. Can I generate a news feed on my contacts from this data? Jaiku started playing with this idea - does Google bring it and it's more prominent status update over here? (IM status update does not count - that needs to be different).

If it somehow includes this giant wish list maybe Google finally pulls off the long awaited "the internet is the social network". I've always doubted that was possible - but this looks close. Well the direction my imagination went when I saw the picture looks close. I'm excited to see what Google's imagination comes up with.

Google breaks the intranet - with no warning

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:45:00 +0000

Here is an issue with moving to "the cloud", and even more so moving to the cloud with Google. I recently moved our company's intranet over to Google Sites. I wanted a low cost, easy way for department heads to be able to manage and update their sections of our intranet from anywhere. Google Sites was perfect for this. Recently though Google made some unannounced changes to Sites that broke the intranet.

Google apparently decided to host images and code for the new Sites on different domains than they had previously been on. The problem with that is we use internet blocking software at our retail locations and all domains (even location of graphics) have to be opened up in the software.

Since we had no warning or control over the switch - everyone just came in one morning and could no longer see or navigate the page (we also lost all our navigation links on the site for some reason and had to set them all back up).

So since this is in the cloud (and mostly because it is Google) we received no warning or notification that changes were coming - they just came. We were given no control over the change. I did not even receive an email about it when it was complete. I had to start digging once the phone calls started pouring in. Had this been on our own servers, we would have had the option to upgrade at the best possible time for us (which would not have been the moment we walked in the door on May 19th).

Had it not been a secret (for whatever reason) we would have prepared the PCs ahead of time to access the new domains Google was going to use to host these. But this is what happens when you let these things out of your control.

We use the free version of Google Apps for this intranet. But even so - with Google making such a push to get business to take their cloud services seriously- it's a pretty stupid way to go. You're not going to talk us into upgrading to additional features if you keep jacking around with us.

LIfe - Collecting

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:42:00 +0000

I think I'm going to start a tumblr blog . Let me rephrase, I think I'm going to start using my tumblr blog I set up a year or so ago. There are so many different fragments of my life floating around on the interwebs now. From my kids/family blog, to facebook, this blog (whatever this is), twitter, friendfeed, Flickr, youtube on and on. It's important that each of those has their own place. I think different parts of my life need to stand on their own still. But I also want to bring them all together somewhere. Or bring at least some of them together.

There are other topics I would like to talk about as well. This blog seems to be more focused on technology, social media, google, etc. I'm fine with that. I need a blog for that. I'm passionate about all that. But that's not really all I'm passionate about. I'm also passionate about bacon and baseball, this just seems like an odd place to talk about those things. I also enjoy taking pictures, music and puns (I'm just kidding - I hate puns). Again - they don't seem to go here. But they go somewhere.

I posted earlier wondering how we tie all this social together, and I still don't really know. But this is a start for me as far as my personal brand goes. I talked about what Skittles was doing at the time and how using multiple social networks as their site did not seem to work. They tried to build a site on top of a bunch of separate sites. What needs to be done is to build content for your site from a bunch of separate sites. But it still has to be "your" site. That could work.

And no Friendfeed suggestions please. I like Friendfeed a lot and use it. But it's not really what I'm trying to accomplish here. I'm not looking for life-streaming, more like life-collecting. I want it to reside in one spot - not linked all over the web and not mixed in with everyone else.

Really the only reason I'm telling you all this now is because I needed to write a post here and see how it feeds to my Tumblr blog. We'll see how it goes.

Busy with Hangdowns

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:11:00 +0000

I've been pretty bad about posting, but for good reason. I've been preoccupied with a side project called Hangdowns (www.hangdowns.com). It started off as an experiment or proof of concept. I wanted to see if you could build a small ecommerce site off nothing but free Google tools. Turns out - you can.

Using Blogger and Goggle Checkout I put together a site to sell Lego Necklaces and Scrabble Necklaces that a friend of mine assembles in his spare time. We launched it over a week ago, and have actually be getting sales. Nothing to make you quit your job for, but enough to entertain us.

The only marketing we are using right now is facebook (well and Twitter - but not really). So it's fun getting to play around with facebook ads for something like this. Much better product for the facebook crowd compared to trying to market Strasburg product there.

I'll write more about the social marketing aspect of the project later. Until then, join hangdowns facebook group - or follow us on Twitter @hangdowns.

If you're passionate about your message, then money is not the issue.

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:34:00 +0000

Let me start by saying I love the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. I want that place to make it. Let me also admit I have let my membership slip since Buck O'Neil died. It's kind of like 18th and Vine disappeared from my radar for a while...and I feel bad about that. But some of the blame falls on them for their internet strategy, or lack of it.

I don't want to get into all the junk and politics going on around the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. You can read about it here and here if you need to catch up. I'll just set this up like this: I pitched Bob Kendrick about 7 or 8 years ago while I was at MoonWire. They said they did not have the budget to do the things that needed to be done to establish a real online presence. A couple weeks ago, after reading more about the problems they were having I emailed Bob just to tell him I hoped things picked up and how surprised I was that they still had no real online presence, especially when it comes to a social media: no Facebook, no Twitter, no blog. A whole generation uses the web through those channels, and the NLBM was not visible anywhere. They have basically closed the blinds on today's internet user. Bob emailed back that he agreed, and he hoped they would be able to get some budget increases so they could get involved on those things. There it is again. Budget.

I don't post this to pick on Bob Kendrick. From what I understand, Bob is dealing with a lot of crap down there right now. And the times I have met him I have really liked him. A lot. And again, I'm not in the loop over there to see what they are really working on. I'm just going with how it looks from the outside. His thoughts about creating an online presence are common with a lot of people and businesses. They don't really understand today's social web. It is so different than it was even 7 to 8 years ago when Bob and I first met. I know with Buck O'Neil gone, it has gotten harder for the NLBM to get attention and spread the word. Buck was a social giant. They need to find a way to start talking to people without Buck. No better place to do that than online. And it doesn't take stacks of money anymore.

Being successful online these days has less to do with budget and a lot to do with passion for your message. Especially for something like the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. I'm hard pressed to come up with another group that would be as exciting to build an online community around than the NLBM. And it would cost very little to get going. It should be every social marketer's dream to pitch them ideas. It's got to be the easiest job in town to get immediate results from. My head is spinning with ideas.

Here's one...

Live Tweet history. Baseball season is starting in a couple weeks. Live tweet some historical Negro League games. Act is if they are happening right now. If a game was played on May 1st 1925, then on May 1st 2009 tweet the game as if it happening right then. Give me the pitching match up, standings prior to the game. Tweet the first pitch. Then from there sometimes you might tweet crucial at bats pitch by pitch, other times you might just tweet once for a whole inning if they were up and down in order with nothing exciting. You know how the game ends. You know where the drama is and what at bats prove crucial to the outcome. You could tell an amazing story doing this.

The best would be if you could do a season. Pick one game a week or a couple from the same season and let us follow that season from beginning to end reliving (most of us living for the first time) the season. The problem would be, do we have enough records and score cards to tweet 2 important games a week for a whole season? I don't know the answer to that. But I imagine there is enough to get started.

I think you could get a lot of buzz by using the shiniest new internet darling, Twitter, to bring history alive. And this takes little money. It just takes the passion to want to tell people about it.

How about this...

Give me some short video tours of some of the exhibits, given by some ball players and post them to a facebook page. I'm just talking about 3 minute videos by someone like Joe Carter (he's in town). Have him show us a piece in a current exhibit and maybe give a little background. A teaser to the full exhibit. Put out at least 2 a week. Or go after current ball payers that are in town to play the Royals and have them come over and do a short tour on an exhibit. This does not take a budget - this just takes some passion.

There are so many possibilities to use social media to spread the word.

The NLBM has the unbelievable responsibility of teaching us about an important part of our country's history. They hold a lot of that history behind their walls. Unfortunately - instead of spreading the word, they are locking it up in a web site from the nineties and acting like the reason they can't tell anyone about it is because of money. That's silly.

It doesn't take money. With all the tools available to the internet marketer today, it takes passion. I hope all that passion over there did not die with Buck O'Neil.

Blunt watch is off - but...

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:54:00 +0000

Roy Blunt has already started with Google Ad Words for his 2010 Senate campaign. Here is a screenshot from my blog. Notice under my friendfeed widget, I run Google AdWords (hey my kids love Ghostbusters...shut up).

Seems early - but I doubt they are having to pay much for it right now. I don't imagine there are a ton of clicks on it. But he's getting his name out there. I'm curious what keywords they are bidding on right now. He has ads on searches for both Robin Carnahan and Sarah Steelman...not sure what else (besides his name obviously).

Unfortunately for Roy, the link takes you to a site that looks like it was built in 1996. I'm pretty sure that's the same site he had when I worked for him. Seems odd to be so proactive on so many things that drive people to a site, but so backwards on the site you drove them to.

Blunt watch is off though (before it even started). The idea of only watching Blunt's use of social media is silly. Plus I'm not sure who I'm rooting for yet.

Im in ur n00sfeed - bean ur frend

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:38:00 +0000

Currently fan pages on Facebook are useless in my opinion. As a user, there is absolutely no reason for me to join one, except to tell people I joined it or to write on the wall of the page I joined. Those reasons suck. If I want to see what's going on with the brand, celeb, politician I can still go over to the page without being a member of the page. As a fan I don't get any special notification when they add content to their page. There is very little benefit to being a fan. The fan page is not part of the social aspect of Facebook. They are outside the social graph. Or were. Yesterday Facebook made some announcements and the biggest one in my opinion is that Fan pages can now have a status and will post to thier fan's news feed.

As a content provider of a fan page, the biggest draw back is (or was) that when I did something on my company's fan page, like announced a new sale, uploaded a new video or pictures of new designs, etc - our fans did not know about it. They were not notified by anything that we had made changes. We could send them an update, which we do from time to time, but I'm not a big fan of facebook messaging. Especially the fan page update notifications. But now, we can get our "status" and other posts to show up in the news feed as if we were one of their buddies. This is huge...if used properly.

The best part of Facebook is without a doubt the news feed. It's how I keep up on everyone. I never just go to someones page unless I end up there by clicking on an item in the news feed. The ability to get our message into the news feed is going to change the way we communicate with our customers on Facebook. We are going to be able to keep them updated on sales, new collections, store events nationwide, etc in a whole new way. And we will be forced to do it in 160 characters or less. I consider this a very non intrusive way to keep them up to date. Much better than a fan page update sent to nowhere.

Allowing the fan pages to update the news feed is going to open up some viral promotion for brands and public figures. If we can post a picture of a new collection to our wall, and have that picture post to our fans news feed, then get a few of those fans to "like" the new designs and that "like" shows up in their friends news feed that have never heard of us...that's fantastic.

I'm sure there is a fear by some that you're going to lose "fans" by showing up in the feed. But those are fans you don't need probably. Quality over quantity. And there will be complaints by users that the brands/public figures are adding too much additional noise by jumping in the news feed. Again - your not really losing anything by losing this type of person as a fan. They did not want to hear from you anyway. I'm sure you will lose some fans and I'm sure there will be complaints. But I think in the end you're going to pick up a lot more with the viral possibilities getting in the news feed creates. Not to mention that the ones you do keep are people that really want to keep up with your brand and hear what is going on...and buy.

I'm looking forward to becoming a "fan" of more brands and political figures now that there is actual benefit in doing so. And I guarantee, now that our fans will be watching us in their feed, we will make sure we are providing better value to them with our page.

I want to put Twitter conversations at the end of each post.

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:48:00 +0000

Is there a Twitter widget that will let me post a stream of tweets to my blog based on a search? I know I can add my most recent tweets to a blog in the side bar, or could do an RSS feed of a Twitter search in the side bar, but that's not what I want. I want to be able to post a stream based on a search at the end of an entry, in the body. Not the sidebar. Similar to Google News Headline widget.

Google recently released a wizard that lets you generate code to put a Google News headline box on your site. You can provide a box running a news search on the subject you are talking about. The good thing, is I can put it right in the middle body of the post. Like this:

The bad things is, I don't really want a Google News headline box on my post. I want something like this for Twitter. So if I'm writing about something I can have a Twitter search at the end - showing maybe the last 3-5 tweets on the subject.

Kind of a "here is what the web is talking about on this same subject". I don't want news stories - I want conversations.

Is there anything like this? There should be.

How do we pull all this social together?

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:31:00 +0000

I like the thought behind what Skittles.com is doing (using Twitter , Flickr , Facebook and YouTube as the content of their site), but it doesn't really work. Too fragmented of an experience, and really no value. But, like I said, I like the thought of it.

They are trying to figure out the problem that most everyone is trying to figure out. Not just companies and organizations. There are so many social networks to be involved in, where do you focus your time? So many of these social networks overlap with each other. Should Skittles put videos on YouTube, Flickr or Facebook? All of them? If they have decided to use YouTube for video, how do you tell the people looking at pictures over on Flickr or Facebook (where you chose not to put video) that you're using YouTube for video?

Now honestly, I have no idea why anyone is interested in watching videos or commercials of Skittles. Unless you can drop them in a bottle of diet coke and create some sort of fizzy explosion - personally I'm not interested. But I'm not really talking about Skittles here. I'm talking about all the companies that are trying to figure out how to use social media. With so many different sites you need to participate in, how do you unify that experience for the customer? Is there even a way to unify the experience?

It's the same for individuals. Do you make a snarky comment about the guy next to you on the bus on Facebook or Twitter? Do you use Ping.fm to send it to both? Are your friends the same on both networks? Mine aren't.

Do you post the pictures of your kids birthday party on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, or that one with a fish? Maybe you don't want the whole world to see, so what relatives and friends have joined with which site?

And if you're going to spend so much energy on these social networks, what do you put on your own site or blog? Friendfeed helps with this, but does not go far enough. Ideally, everyone would open the doors to their data so we could post most of this on our own sites. Instead of putting an annoying floating navigation widget on the top of everyone elses page, we would be able to pull in the information from those social networks better. There are small steps being made in this direction, but I doubt it will go all the way. The idea of the internet as the social network will never really come about unfortunately. So how do we piece it all together into on cohesive presentation?

I didn't write this post with any solution in mind.

I want a Google Reader TweetDeck Mashup

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:55:00 +0000

Away from politics and back to the cloud. I use TweetDeck most of the time to watch Twitter when I am at a computer. TweetDeck is one of the main things that finally helped me to understand Twitter. The ability to organize the big conversation is what makes Twitter work for me, and I have not found anything that does it as well as TweetDeck. But as always, give me an inch and I want a mile.

The problem with TweetDeck is I have to download it. Now this would not be a huge deal, if I could sync multiple clients. But it does not do this. This is important for three reasons to me. Groups, Search and Layout.

Groups
I really like the group feature. While watching Obama's speech Tuesday night I had a "Politics" group where I added a bunch of the people I knew would be watching the State of the Union as well as all the Congressmen and pundits. I had a little acerOne netbook running TweetDeck that was just watching that group's feed during the speech.

I like this group and want to keep it, but will add and subtract users from it as I lose interest in their thoughts or new people come along. But this group is only on my netbook, which I don't really use all the time (mostly when watching TV). So I would have to set this same group up on the other two laptops in the house I may be on (depending on who else is on a computer). Then as I add and subtract people from the group, I have to go around and do it on all the others.

Search
Then there is my computer at work. Now I don't need the "Politics" group at work, but I would like to have the searches I set up at work to be on my laptops at home as well. At work I setup different searches to watch the conversation going on around our customers. I'd like for those searches to come up at home as well. I modify and delete searches and I want them to be the same when I get to another computer.

I also do a lot of different searches on users or hashtags. If is see a question or comment from someone, and I want to see the answer or response they get, I'll set up a search for all posts with that users @name in it. Now I can see what everyone responds to this person, especially the people I don't actually follow. Eventually after the response is over, I'll delete that search.

Or the other day Sarah Steelman joined Twitter (@sarah_steelman ). Steelman is rumored to be thinking about running against @RoyBlunt in the Republican primaries for Kit Bond's seat in the US Senate in 2010. This interests me and I want to follow what others are saying to Steelman on Twitter. But not enough to go to Search.Twitter.com everyday and do a search on her name. But if I just set up a search in TweetDeck on her name I can scroll over to that column every couple days and see if there has been any activity. If a flood of conversation starts happening on her, I'll notice it quickly from the TweetDeck notifications.

Layout
I move columns around all the time, depending on what I am doing/listening to. Let's go back to the Steelman example. When she joined Twitter, I moved her search into the main view (4 columns with my current column width). I wanted to see what response she got out of the gate when she joined. After a while, I wanted to keep the search, but not in my main view. So I moved her to the end. I want this layout change to follow me where ever I go.

Google Reader changed the way I read the web. And TweetDeck has changed the way I listen to Twitter. But I want TweetDeck to function like Google Reader. No matter where I go it's always the same. If I create new tags or move feeds to folders at work, it looks the same when I get home. If I add a new feed on one laptop, that feed is on the other laptop as well. I know you can use dropbox to sync TweetDeck but I don't want a solution that complicated. I'm talking about something that anyone can use.

I hope TweetDeck figures out a way to put it's product in the cloud. Or - I hope Google somehow adds a Twitter interface to Google Reader that breaks Twitter down and makes it as manageable as TweetDeck does. I like all my news in one place. Adding RSS feeds and Twitter into one interface would be great. The real time web is the next big space in search I would imagine. You would think the king of search would want to get in here, and no better place to start with than Twitter right now.

@Google has just shown up on Twitter all of the sudden.

Sen McCaskill says "no" to following on Twitter...for now.

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Sen McCaskill (@clairecmc) has now weighed in on the question of should politicians be following people on Twitter . She tweets if she tried to follow thousands of people responsively she would have no time for her job. It's similar to a conversation going on with bloggers right now. And there is some truth to that. But I think she is missing something.

I want to clarify (add to) my original thoughts here. I don't think these politicians should be sitting in front of a computer, or on their mobile, constantly watching the stream from people they are following. There is a lot of garbage people are sharing on Twitter. I would hope @clairecmc or @royblunt are using their time to work on important things and not watching what people are eating for lunch on Twitter. So I understand why she thinks it's a bad idea to follow people. But I think this takes us back to her not "getting" Twitter.

First, if we you are not following me I can't DM you. @clairecmc says to just go to her website to contact her then. This is consistent with her use. She wants to use Twitter to broadcast her thoughts and you can contact her in other places. But why are you forcing the user/follower/constituent to go down a different path than they want to - to get a message to you? Why not just have your DMs go to info@claireonline.com? That's the same email address I would send to if I took the extras steps to go to one of your websites . That's a very easy setting to adjust on Twitter. Or make DMs go to a certain staffer whose job it is to reply or forward the important ones.

Second, "listening" on Twitter is not the same as "following" people or watching the stream on your home page. She is right, with as many followers as she has, there is no way she can keep up with what they are doing. And there is no reason to see what all these people are doing all the time. But is she watching for posts with her name in them? Is she following issues on Twitter that affect her state? Using Twitter Search or even better Tweet Deck make this very easy to do in a little amount of time. I don't think she should personally be doing this, but her new media director should be. Or someone else on the staff at least. It's this staffer's job to then get the important/interesting ones on to Sen McCaskill.

Now - my original post on this had to do with Roy Blunt . There is a big difference in how these two staffs need to use Twitter right now I would think. Blunt is in campaign mode with his announcement that he is running for Senate. While all politicians are always campaigning, McCaskill is not up in the next election. So there will be a different approach. Blunt needs Twitter a lot more than McCaskill right now.

In the end, obviously, Sen McCaskill should use Twitter however she wants. There is no "right" way to use it. If it becomes a too big a burden for her then she stops using it all together. But as someone on the outside, it does not look like she, or her staff, really know what can be done with it yet. And I think this is true from about 90% of the politicians out there. Like I said, there is no right way to do it, but there are more effective ways to do it.

I think @royblunt made the right decision to start following. As Twitter grows, and these staffs start to understand it better, I think @clairemcm will start following as well. After that, can these staffs figure out how to "listen" to Twitter?

Roy Blunt is getting there - Blunt Watch is on.

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:29:00 +0000

It looks like I'm off the hook right now for the $50 donation I promised Roy Blunt. He had to contact me by 5 Pm tonight and I did not get a direct message or email from from him (or his staff). So no donations just yet to the Blunt campaign.

But at 10:46 this morning, Roy started following all his followers. It happened shortly after @stlshamed tweeted my post . So I'm holding out hope that Roy (or his staff) actually is tuned into the web and figured out we were talking about it.

But rules are rules. Following me does not get the donation.

I'm going to leave it at that tonight (need to get to the State of the Union pre-game). But I'll have more later on this subject. I've got a post on Roy's "lost" tweets that Google's cache saved I'll get to later. Maybe I'll do a "Blunt Watch" to see how he uses social media to get this going. Observe Roy as a microcosm of politicians and social media this election cycle.

Anyway - good job to Roy Blunt and his staff for "following". It's something @clairecmc hasn't bothered with yet. And I have not run across Sarah Steelman or Carnahan yet on Twitter (or anywhere) either. Time to get in the game ladies.

I get Twitter now - but does Roy Blunt?

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:47:00 +0000

I posted a while back that I did not have the same enthusiasm as others when it came to Twitter . I changed my approach, as I said I would, and it makes more sense now. I find myself on it as much as friendfeed now. But I'm not going to write about my new found love of Twitter today. Instead, I'm going to write about someone I found on Twitter over the weekend...Congressman Roy Blunt (@royblunt ) (R - MO).

I interned on Blunt's staff in 1996 when he won his first House election. It was my senior year in college. I had a lot of fun on that campaign and met a lot of interesting people. Career decisions lead me out of politics, and it's something I regret I am not involved with anymore. While I enjoy my days spent in technology and marketing, politics still gets me going more than anything. So running across Roy Blunt on Twitter, tweeting his schedule as he announced his Senate candidacy, was a good find... but also kind of a shock.

I don't know why it shocked me, but it did. I starred at the screen for a minute then did a quick scan of the few tweets there. It looked real enough. First tweet was 2/19/09 - so looks like he fired this up for his Senate run. I immediately thought about how much Obama's use of social media changed the way campaigns are going to run. These guys are all going to have to start communicating with us in new ways. Most importantly they are going to start having to listen to us in different ways...like Twitter. I liked the idea that Roy Blunt got it.

Then that's when I looked up at his stats: Updates: 9 - Followers: 80 - Following: 0.

Zero. He's not following anyone. He's not listening to anyone. Never mind, maybe he doesn't get it yet.

I decided to see if I could get Roy to communicate with me, since he won't be following me it looks like. So I tweeted this:

"@RoyBlunt I interned on your 96 race (Wally). I'm in KC. Want to talk about what I can do on this race. DM or email (ww@wallacewilson.net)."

I sent that on Sat, and so far have not heard back. It's odd for a politician to ever turn down help. I bet if I filled out his online form offering help, I would get at least a standard "Thanks for your support, please donate.... But I just offered to help on Twitter and got nothing back. That tells me he's not paying attention to what Twitter is saying to him. Right now it's all one way communication.

I don't want to harp on Roy too much here, because he gets it more than most of his colleagues. Or at least he gets that he needs to get it. There is only one other Missourian on twitter and that is Sen Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc ). She is only following her own communications director (@adriannemarsh ) so I'm not sure she gets it yet either. But Sen McCaskill is in tight with the Obama crew (as tight as they allow you to get I would imagine). So she's probably not too far from getting it. Plus, she gets how to tweet. She gets the idea of communicating with us and how to do it. Go read some of her page. Too many politicians on twitter think it's there for them to just post links to their web site.

Roy seems to get this part as well. He's communicating what he is doing and not just shoving tired press releases at us on a different channel, or telling us to go look at his website. He also has not asked for money yet. He's building a nice level of trust here to start. But sooner or later, he's going to have to listen to people as well. He's going to need to start following before people realize how one way the conversation is and tune him out. He's going to have to "get" twitter.

You want to see someone who I think really gets it? Check out John Ensign (@johnensign ) (R- NV). Two things tell me he gets it more than others.

1. He is following more people (1,318) than are following him (1,256).
2. Look at all is @ messages to others.

These two things tell me (or at least make me believe) he is on Twitter to listen and communicate. This is where Roy (and most politicians) need to get. Now I'm not saying Ensign is a great guy or his tweets are super insightful. I don't know him at all. I'm just saying it looks like he gets Twitter and how to use it.

Does Roy Blunt get it? Not yet, but he looks like he is on the verge of getting it. I would love to help him get over that hump. I'm not going to fill out a form or email him yet. Let's see if he (or more likely his staff) can find this blog post. If they are serious about running, they better be monitoring the web for stories and tweets (a simple RSS feed of a Google Blog Search will do it). If they find me by the 5 PM on 2/24/09 I'll make a small donation of $50. That gives them more than 24 hours. That's an eternity on the real time web.

I'm a little worried that maybe Roy just doesn't have a staff in place that understands the web and how to use it. Twitter is a great start but the website (www.royblunt.com) is in sad shape (even with the social effort that is being displayed at the bottom of the site). They already dropped the ball coming out of the gate with what appears to be a rookie mistake like not securing domains . And I can't find a real blog yet (which I still think is very important when it comes to campaigning and governing). But I'm cheering for them and I hope they get it. And if they need any help, hopefully they have figured out where to find me.

I want tags (labels) in Google Docs

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:17:00 +0000

It drives me crazy to have to take step backwards when I'm in Google Docs. Folders? Really? I hate having to chose where I'm going to store a document, PDF or spreadsheet that applies to multiple subjects/projects. The last thing that goes though my mind as I click Move to Folder is "I'll never see that document again".

Search works well (except it can't search the text in a PDF). I could take the time to set up "saved searches" instead of folders and tag my items in the actual documents. Then a saved search (which is what labels are in Gmail) would work. But that's a manual tedious process, which also requires me to create a "tags:" line at the top or bottom of my document (which has to be deleted before emailing or printing). Then I have to manually create a saved search anytime I make up a new label. No thanks.

I don't understand why people like folders better than labels, but I get that some people do. Can't we just have both in this situation? It's really just a few steps from being available. You have "Folders" and you have "Saved Searches" already set up. Allow me to use folders if I want, but also allow me to tag or label an item somewhere and have that tag automatically create a saved search for itself. Then I 'll just use the saved search functions in gDocs.

Or does someone know a good way to fake labels in gDocs?

Is Google Getting ready to Unleash Push Gmail?

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:07:00 +0000

Google released Mobile Sync for iPhone (and others) today. It's allows you to sync up to 5 calendars and contacts with your Google account and pushes it with MS Exchange.

You have to turn the "Mail" feature off when you set this up, but maybe setting this up with Exchange is a sign of things to come. Hopefully Google is as tired as the rest of us with waiting for Apple to open it's push notification service.

I would much rather have a dedicated Gmail App instead of using Apple's Mail App, but push Gmail through Exchange would definitely hold me over.

Google removed the public calendar directory

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Was I the only one that used the Google public calendar directory? According to Google's decision to end the public calendar directory , I was one of few. I found this out while trying to find the KC Royals 2009 schedule.

I always enjoyed that someone else cared enough to put together Google calendars of my favorite sports teams that I could just add to my calendar with a few clicks. The directory made these easy to find. Now, I assume people are still out there putting these schedules together, I just have no easy way to find them anymore.

I initially thought that removing the directory would just mean I would have to go to a traditional Google search to find what I wanted. A search for kansas city royals public google calendar turns up nothing, but that's not too weird. It is the Royals and there are not a lot of us Royals fans out there right now. So I tried a New York Yankees search since there are way to many Yankee's fans out there. But nothing I see with a quick scan.

When you create a public calendar, gCal tells you that it will be available in Google search. Obviously it gets lumped in with too many other things to make it very easy to find quickly. No where near as easy as having a directory. Does anyone know any search keywords to use to narrow it down to calendars only?

There are other options. I could type in the schedule myself (not going to happen) or it looks like with mysprotscal.com you can download and import a calendar. But all these options require a lot more work that simply having the calendars in a searchable directory.

It's a shame that more people/organizations did not take advantage of Google's easy calendar integration and directory. I always wanted things like my favorite comedy club to keep a google calendar of performances. Or some live music bars I like to have a performance calendar in google. That way if we wanted to plan a night out, we just tick on those calendars to overlay them on our calendar and see when a good night is and what is going on where that night.

If my kid's school would do a Google calendar it would make my life so much easier. Instead they use something called WebCal creator which does me no good. You might as well fax me a paper copy of it. If my kid's teacher would set up another calendar with just class room specific stuff, that would be incredible. Relying on notes hidden in backpacks and what my kid says is going on is not proving to be all that informative.

For Royals fans out that looking for the schedule, here is the one I downloaded and imported from mysportscal.com. Go to the "Other Calendars" section in your gCal, to the left of your calendar, and paste in this email address where it says "add a friend's calendar": wallacewilson.net_fnecfkr9i32p6or0vi7bbp2a78@group.calendar.google.com . That will add it to your google calendar. It was simple enough to download, create a new calendar, and import. But it was too many steps for some, and not as easy to find.

Can Google Latitude Make Location Based Networking Go?

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:26:00 +0000

So Google released a new location based service called Google Latitude . I think it's a pretty cool idea and hope it catches on. It's not a new idea, but things get more attention when they come from Google. Unfortunately I'm on an iPhone and they have not released the new app for it, so I'm not going to give you a review of it yet. On iGoogle it's not very interesting to he honest.

Of course the web started buzzing with "this is great" and "this is a nightmare" post as soon as it was announced. I had two thoughts when I first saw this, "I wonder if I can talk my friends into trying this" and "I wonder if Google is the right one to move location based social networking forward". I think those two are related.

While Google has an enormous base, they still have not really figured out how to put it all together into a social network that people use (I know...Orkut is very popular in Brazil and the Niagara Falls area). Latitude is just another unconnected piece of Google floating around out there. For this type of location based service to get traction, it needs to be plugged into something that already has a base built on a social network. This way, when it gets fired up for the first time, there are a ton of users already sitting there. If we all turn it on and see each other, we can find ways to use it quickly. If I turn it on and all I see is Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan ...hey I love reading those two, but I'm probably not turning it on again just to see where they are. Not very useful.

But...add this to facebook and it becomes useful within 5 minutes and stays useful, at least in the way a social network can be "useful".

Not only does Google not really have a real social network, but less than 25% of my friends and family use Google for anything other than search. And they are not going to sign up for a new service or with a new company to do this. They just wont.

I tried Loopt when it came out, but hardly any of my friends did. I lost all interest in it almost immediately when no one I really cared about was using it. It was not because the app or features itself lost the luster, it was that no one else was using it. It was a social application that was not very social for me.

On the other hand, just about everyone I know is on facebook. My friends, family, colleagues, etc. If Google can plug into my facebook friends, that would be cool and useful. While you're at it, let's do LinkedIn as well. Twitter, Friendfeed...keep going. Of course that's just a dream. Facebook and Google don't plan to share with each other that much.

I wish Google would either figure out how to tie all their loose ends into a social network knot that attracts people - or pass this on to companies who care more about building a social network (or already have one). Google likes to think "the web is the social network" but that's not true, and it won't work. I'll write more on that later.

Of course maybe the problem is I just need more friends.

gTasks - Task Management or Check List?

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:54:00 +0000

So Google Tasks has come out with an iPhone optimized version as well as a gadget for iGoogle. I'm glad to see they have quickly added some new features to it. Makes me think it is something they care a little about, at least right now.

But this does not really do anything for me. It does not address any of the issues I wrote about earlier. Mostly - collaboration and being able to move and work with the tasks in different ways.

I have used Google Tasks a few times for little things, like a short list of things to accomplish before leaving the office for an extended weekend. But that is about it. I'm not sure the iPhone interface adds that much really. I use the notepad on the iPhone to jot quick ideas down, or just send an email to myself that gets flagged as a task in gMail. I don't normally need to create a multi-layer list on the go.

If I could share a list, now this might mean more. Maybe the ability for my wife and I to both add items to a list of things we need around the house (light bulbs, trash bags, etc). Then when we are out somewhere by ourselves, we can see if there is something we need to pick up, then check it off so the other does not.

But do I really need a shared shopping list that bad? No. It sounds more like that is what they are trying to replace here, a grocery list. I don't call that task management. And I think that is the issue here. I'm defining task management more as project management. They are defining task management more as a check list.

They claim the goal here is to help us move from paper for task management to gTasks for task management. I don't really use paper for task management either, so maybe that is why this is not for me. I use paper in meetings to write down tasks. But more of what I write in a meeting are the notes that go along with the task. I'm not going to sit there and touch all this out on the iPhone.

I understand Google is not looking to duplicate MS Project and build a full blown project management type app here. But until I can share/assign a task to another person, move a task from one list to another, have gCal integration and possibly add attachments (and multiple emails) to a task - I'll just stick with using gMail itself to handle my tasks.

At least with this update though it looks like they care enough about it to keep going, which is good. The bad is...it kind of looks like they are going in the direction of a shopping list/to-do list and not really task management. At least as I define it.

Am I doing it all wrong now?

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0000

I just tried to log into Facebook with Google Chrome and was told "Sorry we are not cool enough to support your browser". They list all the browsers they support...no Chrome listed (see below). So I thought I would write a quick post about that and went to Google Docs to compose it...except even Google told me it could not work with my browser (see below). Except it's not my browser...it's their browser. Am I doing the interwebs wrong now?

I've been using Chrome since it came out to do these things..

Update - It appears to only be in incognito mode that I am locked out of these.

Update - Looks like they pushed out a new version last night, 1.0.154.46 that has caused this. I fired up another PC and it was still on 1.0.154.43 and I had no problems with facebook or gDocs. I told it to upgrade and it installed .46 and then was locked out of facebook and gDocs again.

Update - I sent in a Chrome bug report here and they claim it is fixed. No new release out yet with the fix in place though.

Update - New stable version is out (1.0.154.48) and things are back to normal.

It's stupid how uncool I am.

noreply@blogger.com (Wallace Wilson) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:28:00 +0000

It irritates the hell out of me that I have never heard of the Dirtbombs until today. I'm actually angry about it. It's stupid how uncool I am. I ran across them on Ben Tesch's latest site "Songs You Should Know About "

I guess that's better than not finding out about Ben Kweller until iTunes suggested it to me.