The Steve Rubel Lifestream

More Location Based Services Coming to the Desktop

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:43:31 -0700

Google today said they are bringing location awareness to Google Maps on the desktop. I tested it today in Google Chrome here in Illinois and it worked really well, as you can see from the image.

So, where does this go from here? When you think about the metadata, lots of possibilities beyond this little feature...

Commerce - click a product on a site to find this item in a store near me where I am right now
Social - Loopt, Foursquare, etc. begin to work equally well from the desktop
News - citizen journalist reports from computer webcams can now more easily add metadata
Productivity - web-apps get location data automatically embedded; great for sales forces
Advertising - think of Google ads served based on your location that are hyperlocal

The upshot is that this is part of a bigger trend. Mobile isn't just about phones. It's about mobility. It's a state of being that covers an array of devices (netbooks, phones, Kindles, GPS systems) that tap into location based services that sync across.

Location Based Services are one of the most exciting areas to watch right now.

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Five Gadgets for the Social Technology Addicted

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:15:08 -0700

The following is my column in next week's Advertising Age. (Some of these I have mentioned before.)

Now that we're deep into summer vacation season many are not taking a break from social networking. In fact my friends seem to be quite active online, even from the road. Here's what they are using ...

Posterous (free - www.posterous.com) - As smartphones become more sophisticated, many are turning them into ambidextrous social sharing tools. Posterous makes this a snap by allowing you to upload photos, videos and text to a lifestream site, all via email. Also, if configured, they simultaneously update your social networks. Podcaster Leo Laporte is using the service to post about his trip China.

Verizon Mifi ($100 after a rebate, monthly fee of up to $60- vzw.com/mobilehotspot) - For socially connected who want to be always on, there's perhaps no more useful device than the Verizon Mifi. This mini gadget slurps in Verizon's speedy 3G connection and broadcasts it via wifi to up to five PCs or mobile devices like iPods. Fans include James Kendrick, co-author of the outstanding JKontheRun blog.

Netbooks ($200 - $500 - various manufacturers, including HP - an Edelman client) - Netbooks are mini computers that sit somewhere in between a smartphone and a laptop. They are three pounds or less, cheap and great for the web, email and office productivity apps. Most run XP or Linux and are low powered. Dave Winer is an avid netbook enthusiast.

Lacie IamaKey ($35.99 - www.amazon.com) - No matter where I am you will never find me without my mobile phone or an Iamakey. This 8GB USB drive is thin, shaped like a key and is industrial strength. Friendfeed addict Louis Gray just loves his.

Seskimo Crabble ($5.00 - seskimo.com) - Finally this handy little tool, which Mac nut David Chartier turned me onto, props up any phone or iPod and makes watching video on a seat tray a pleasure. It folds and fits in your wallet too.

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Solid Tips for Managing Your Online Social Life

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:14:00 -0700

MakeUseOf has two great sets of tips for staying on top of your online social life, without letting it run you. (Part I and Part II). This one is my particular favorite - a mind map of your online social life.

(On a side note I am making heavy use of mindmapping these days. It's not mainstream yet and people dig it because, well, it's different)

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Net vs. Books

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:02:09 -0700

I am writing this lifestream item from high above the US on American Airlines. It occurs to me up here that there are very few times these days when I am disconnected. And that experience, thanks to my smartphone, is getting a lot richer. This is changing my content consumption.

It used to be I would read/listen to dozens of books a year - mostly business and computer titles, occasionally nonfiction. However, I noticed that as the web becomes always on, so am I. This means that the times I would read, like on airplanes, I don't anymore. The Net ate my books.

So, I am curious to hear from you - is the Internet eroding your book time? I can't tell if this is a broader trend or not. If it is, what does it mean?

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Video Interview: The Posterous Team on their Vision, Strategy and Growth

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:40:00 -0700

via youtube.com

In this video I talk to co-founders Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan about the vision, strategy and growth of Posterous (traffic is up 20-50% every month). We also discuss lifestreaming and some forthcoming news: an iPhone app and theming.

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Video Interview: MG Siegler, TechCrunch Blogger

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:34:07 -0700

via youtube.com

While in San Francisco I spent some time with MG Siegler, a writer for TechCrunch. In this video he tells us what a typical day is like, what trends he's watching (particularly real-time streams and search), how he works with PR professionals and how he got the nickname "Parislemon."

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Essay: How to Captivate and Hold Attention in the Age of the Stream

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:05:25 -0700

This essay is cross-posted on the Fast Company web site where several of my colleagues and I are guest posting this week.

Imagine for a moment that you're standing on an overpass high above a busy L.A. freeway like the 405 or the 5. It doesn't really matter which. Pick one.

In a span of a few minutes literally thousands of cars will speed buy. Some will be loud. Others quiet. Some will be notable, but most won't.

At the end of the experiment, if I were to ask you to recall ten cars and trucks and what was memorable about them, I guarantee that you would be hard pressed to do so. What's more, none of the cars would have been "repeat impressions." You saw each car only once, and likely not every vehicle on the highway. That's precisely the same challenge that marketers face in the "age of the stream."

Consumers are spending a record amount of time on social networks. The two leaders are Facebook and Twitter. As both race to add features, they are increasingly adopting the same style of presenting information--an endless stream of brief but captivating status updates.

So far, attention-starved consumers by all indicators are eating it up. As a society we're becoming addicted to the infinite pipeline of status updates, short videos, and photos produced by our friends.

Unfortunately, the time to consume this endless buffet of updates (many mundane, some meaningful) has to come from somewhere. And often it's from traditional media, which favors quality and reflection over brevity. They're taking it on the chin. And it's the stream, arguably, that is contributing to the decreasing traffic to mainstream newspaper sites.

All of this poses a challenge to marketers. The media is where, as marketers, we generally play ball. How can we break through when life is nothing but a stream, and ad pages and feature placements become scarcer (and arguably captivate less attention)?

The short answer is to be ubiquitous. To do so brands must not only participate in all of the key social spaces, but also engage all day and night in a way that builds relationships. The community must feel like you care more about them than yourself. That's the easiest way in an endless stream to make an impression today.

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The Future of Blogging - a Collaborative Mindmap

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:02:00 -0700

A little over five years ago, sites like Typepad, Blogger and WordPress dazzled by empowering anyone to instantaneously share his or her thoughts with the world; My how times change. Today, however, in a world where thousands of status updates and tweets whiz by our screens every hour, blogging arguably feels slow.

So is blogging dead? It depends on who you ask. After all, TMZ and Mashable are blogs and they’re doing quite well. However, it’s definitely time for a closer examination of the blog – where it sits today and where it’s going.

Over on Mashable we are exploring this further by setting up a mind map that can be edited by anyone who signs up for MindMeister. Please edit it! Tell us what are we missing here. How can we paint a more comprehensive view of where blogging is going? Help us shape the right picture and we’ll report back on what we learned. It's also embedded above.

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Video Chatting at 35,000 Feet Works Pretty Darn Well

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:39:11 -0700

This morning I am flying from NYC to San Francisco. I try to fly Virgin America when I can since (right now) they are the only airline that has in-flight wifi fleet-wide. The rest of the airlines are rolling it out - slowly.

As an experiment I tried having a real-time video chat with my dad using Gmail and it worked relatively well. Video/sound cut in and out. Still, it was all quite manageable as you can see from the screen capture below.

Having the Internet everywhere is finally becoming a reality. We still have a ways to go. It should be like running water or electricity - reliable and fast. But the final cones of disconnectedness are slowly but surely falling.

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10 Useful Tips for Tricking Out FriendFeed

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:49:34 -0700

via maketecheasier.com

Great primer for newbies and veterans alike. The email notifications, when coupled with lists and Gmail filters, are outstanding and vastly underutilized by many.

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The Big To-Do Over To Do's

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:26:00 -0700

Years ago, life was simple. You created a to-do list - on paper. You checked boxes. And that was that. Somewhere along the way, as technology unleashed more inputs into our lives, the simple to-do list became glorified. The rising demands on our attention spawned an entire cottage industry of stand-alone to-do apps!

Remember the old song Sixty 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover? It seems like there's even more ways to manage and track your tasks on a PC, Mac, mobile device or in the cloud. Here's one list. And here's another. And the market keeps expanding too, a sign of our times,

I have tried many of these - in some cases multiple times: Backpack, Toodledo, Google Docs, Things, Omnifocus, GMail Tasks, Remember the Milk, Evernote and more.

My needs are relatively simple: I want to follow the general principles outlined by David Allen in GTD and have all my lists be: a) searchable, b) cross-platform, c) mobile and d) private.

I haven't been able to find one that sticks. But now I think I have finally landed on an outstanding combo: Taskpaper, pictured above. This is a Mac app but it also has an nearly identical Windows cousin called ToDoPaper. Both are super. A web service powered by Google Appspot is coming soon to Taskpaper.com as is an iPhone app.

What's great about Taskpaper and ToDoPaper is that underneath they are just plain text files. This means I can read/edit my lists anywhere, mark them up in any editor and have the changes sync back everywhere via DropBox.

Let's see if this one sticks but so far, I am loving this combo. What do you use?

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Rooting for the CrunchPad

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:38:11 -0700

Image credit: CNET

It sounds like Mike Arrington is getting closer to shipping the CrunchPad - a device that does one thing (surf the web) hopefully really well. Even though I am consolidating my technology, I want to see the CrunchPad succeed. There are a three reasons why:

First, I love the idea that any individual can, through smart sourcing, become not just a software entrepreneur but a hardware one too. It's not only a great American story, it's another great flat earth tale too. Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison never felt intimidated by giant competitors. So neither should Mike.

Second, I root for anything that puts the web in more people's hands at an affordable cost.

Finally, it keeps everyone else on their toes and innovating.

Good for Mike. Go CrunchPad go.

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How I am Declaring My Independence from Technology Today

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:59:00 -0700

For those of you in the US, Happy Independence Day! There are lots of ways to celebrate this amazing holiday. In New York, the Statue of Liberty crown is finally re-opening. Every town, it seems, has a parade. Here's another idea...

I am celebrating July 4 by declaring my Independence from some of the technology that clutters my "psychic RAM," as David Allen terms it in Getting Things Done. Last year there was a National Marked All as Read Day. July 4 is my own reminder to do the same.

I am simplifying my technology in five ways...

First, I am eliminating any bookmarks, software/webware that I haven't used in the last seven days. This is an idea I picked up from my friend Jeff Sandquist at Microsoft.
Second, I am down to two devices for everything - a laptop and a cell phone. Period, end of story. This means my Kindle is going on eBay (eBay is one of our clients).
Third, all my critical data seamlessly syncs between these two devices. If a service doesn't allow me to sync stuff via the cloud and access it both online and off, it's toast. Evernote and Google (Google Reader, Gmail IMAP, CalDAV) are lifesavers here. My business data already syncs wonderfully via Exchange.
Fourth, I dumped tons of of stuff: RSS feeds and virtually every email newsletter, with two exceptions - Marketing Charts and the Social Media Smartbrief
Fifth, I am setting up lists on Friendfeed to help me find signals in the noise and so that I can do the same here for you, my audience

Anyone have any other tips? Share them in the comments. I am always listening.

Photo credit: Mark All as Read Day on Flickr by Sidereal

My Yahoo Adds Peer-to-Peer Polling

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:33:00 -0700

Do you My Yahoo? I still do, occasionally, though I iGoogle more these days. I have been using My Yahoo for over 10 years, but what's great is that they haven't stayed still. Now My Yahoo is getting more social.

Yahoo today added a new social feature that lets you poll your friends right from the personalized page. You can grab it here. Unfortunately, this experience only integrates with friends within the Yahoo network. You can, however, share a link to your polls. It would be great to see this more seamlessly integrate with Twitter and/or Facebook Connect since that's where people are spending time these days.

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Question of the Day: Can a Phone Replace a Laptop? (My Take: Probably Not)

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:17:00 -0700

This is something I have been thinking about lately: as smart phones (pick one, any one) get more sophisticated, can one get away traveling for business sans laptop? For me the answer to date has been: sort of. Basically, if the trip is less than two nights and I know I won't need PowerPoint, I take the risk. Still, my laptops remain indispensible.

For more, see/comment on this post from Zee on Friendfeed. What's your view? As netbooks get thinner, lighter and cheaper this may all be a moot point.

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Friendfeed Brings "Best of Day" to Lists, Helps You Spot Trends from Friends

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:16:00 -0700

See and download the full gallery on posterous

One of my favorite Friendfeed features is called "Best of Day." I use it all the time to hone in on the most liked/commented conversations. If you're logged into Friendfeed, you can hit this link to see the most interesting conversations from your friends over the last 24 hours or this one for the past seven days. The problem with the feature, however, is that it only worked across all of your friends. This can be problematic if you follow hundreds of people, as I do.

Last night, however, Friendfeed quietly added a killer feature that brings "Best of Day" to lists - groupings of friends you categorize. Now you can more easily spot trends from friends. The screen grab below shows you the most interesting items over the last month just within my "favorites" list. This smart filtering of content plus the recent addition of real-time search on Friendfeed is exactly what those of us who participate in the social web need.

This incremental innovation gives me just another reason to be excited about Friendfeed. It's also why I love Gmail, Posterous and Evernote. They constantly keep innovating all the time even through the tough times.

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Google Knows You

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:52:00 -0700

Here's a fun little find for a Friday. If you have a Google Profile and you're logged in to your Google account, search for the word me. Your profile will come up as the top result. This is great if you get amnesia.

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Video: PBS Mediashift Interview

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:18:00 -0700

I spoke with Rubel a couple months ago when he was visiting San Francisco for the Ad:tech conference. We met at B Restaurant near Moscone Center and I interviewed him with my Flip camera.

Mark Glaser writing for Mediashift on pbs.org

Timestamps of the interview are on the PBS site if you want to drill down into a topic.

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Video Interview: Marco Arment of Instapaper

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:18:00 -0700

I took a quick trip uptown today to learn more about Tumblr and meet with their team. (I will have a video interview next week up with Tumblr's co-founder, David Karp.)

While I was there I shot this five-minute interview with Marco Arment, who developed Instapaper as a side project. (Follow him on Twitter @MarcoArment)

If you haven't tried the fantastic Instapaper service, be sure to check it out. Instapaper, which works on many mobile devices, is really for active web readers. It makes it a snap to save articles for future reading. Though we don't have it on video, Marco showed me some of the forthcoming features in Instapaper 2.1 for the iPhone. The new version, which should be out in a few weeks, has stronger integration with Twitter and Tumblr.

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My Stats Reflect How the Web Is Changing

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:17:00 -0700

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Robert Scoble is back to blogging, investing more time and attention this week there as opposed to Twitter and Friendfeed. He linked to me this week, which sparked my curiosity and encouraged me to dig into my Google Analytics archives to see a) how my traffic drivers have changed and b) what, if any, broader trends can be discerned.

For the purpose of this experiment I looked at two times when one of the web's most influential voices - then and now - linked to me: his post from earlier this week and another from December 27, 2006. While not entirely scientific, what they have in common is that a) Robert put the link at the top of the post and that b) both came during holiday weeks when web traffic typically slows. (In theory, to really test this I should track referrals from Scoble's Friendfeed/Twitter accounts - I suspect that they drive tons of traffic. However, that's hard to do given the way the sites are structured. Perhaps we can use Bitly stats to run a test)

Here's are my three takeaways from this little experiment (I am discounting the links from my old blog to this new one. It's an anomaly since I just switched) ...

I suspect that Twitter and Friendfeed today are major traffic drivers to many sites. I have heard this in meetings with execs at major media companies. What this means is that you must to syndicate your content where the people are and then engage in conversations around it in order to influence.
Yes, having a place you can call home online still matters. But you better make sure that it is dynamic and socially connected the social hubs. Louis Gray says your blog is your castle. But the problem is the big blog platforms like Blogger and TypePad have really fallen behind the curve. Blogs are fragmenting. They're virtually isolated from the social hubs. Posterous lets you post everywhere at once plus it syndicates reader comments into Twitter, Facebook and even Friendfeed if you use Backtype. Tumblr I believe can do the same. These companies are redefining publishing by making a blog format more social. The blog needs a reboot. I am excited to learn more about Tumblr when I meet with them later today.
I am curious about the word "Direct" in my logs. My gut is that in 2009 it reflects Twitter desktop clients while in 2006 it was more about desktop RSS readers.

Those are my takeaways from this little science experiment. What's your experience with stats?