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Kelly Flanagan is a good friend, a collegue, and the CIO of BYU. Years of seeing all the trouble I get into with my blog were not enough to disuade Kelly from starting one of his own. Kelly calls his blog Technology: Rantings, Ramblings and Reviews.

Kelly is a CIO who gets his hands dirty--configuring systems, transfering video, building things--and is also curious. Those combined in his blog to create articles that are much more interesting that the typical "enterprise computing" discussion you get from many CIO bloggers.

Tags: cio blogging byu reviews

Friends and family often ask me what laptop they ought to purchase. My answer is always the same: "It depends". Then I proceed to break down the pluses and minuses of different types of laptops and try to determine where to start looking. After that, I find out more about exactly what [...]

While still vague in regards to details, Facebook today released some important information regarding their new design that is sure to excite those users that are considering leaving for other networks. The first of such features seems to be a slap in the Face (and maybe a token from former Google Execs) to Google Employee-founded FriendFeed. Facebook is calling the feature, “Publisher”, and from the Developer Wiki,

“The Publisher will be a central focus of communication and sharing in the new profile. It sits right on top of a user’s Feed inviting the user or others to add content. Applications can integrate into the Publisher to provide rich experiences for creating or finding content to post into their own and their friends’ Feeds…

This has replaced the old Wall Attachments feature. Now, Wall is just one type of application for creating content (text content), on par with posting links, or uploading photos or videos. For example, to add a video with the Video application, the user no longer creates a Wall attachment and adds the video. Instead, the user posts a video to a friend’s Feed just as if she were writing a Wall post.”

From the screenshots (to the left), it appears as though you can also comment on each posted item, further encouraging a “conversation” amongst members of the Facebook community. What’s most interesting is the integration with the Facebook Platform API and ability for developers to present items for discussion within a particular user’s Feed. It appears as though your applications will be able to actually utilize the text box within the publisher to present information on a user’s feed in different ways. More information regarding the new combined Feed/Wall can be found here.

Also very interesting is it seems as though Facebook will soon allow, via the publisher, the automatic playing of Flash, and onload events within FBJS. It seems this is Facebook’s answer to the demand from users migrating from Myspace and the competition from Bebo who allows such onload events.

In addition to the publisher, Facebook has released more information via their developers wiki about the Tabs that will be available, and how applications will be displayed via those tabs. It appears as though at first, all applications will be rendered in their current form in a tab called “boxes” (they mentioned earlier today that name may be temporary). What’s new though is it seems as though your application will be able to give the user options to render other forms of profile boxes to an “Info” tab on the user’s profile. It’s unclear, but this could mean your application will be able to have multiple forms of displaying itself within the user experience beyond just Canvas pages, profile boxes, and feeds. A new FBML tag has been created for this purpose called “<fb:add-section-button/>” which appears to give your application the ability to have the user add a “section” to their profile. (I now need to update FBML Essentials!) Such section will have the ability to display image objects or text that the user can type and provide to your application.

Facebook is also allowing your applications to register an “Application Tab URL” which will have your Application appear in a list of applications next to a “+” (plus) sign in the list of tabs. The user will then have the option to add your Application as a tab, offering an alternate canvas view of your application for the user’s friends to see.

Beyond the Info and Boxes tabs, it’s a bit unclear as to what the other tabs will be called. The most recent screenshot by them includes a “Photos”, “Wall”, and “Feed” tab, but it seems as though the Wall and Feed may be combined to produce the “Publisher”. It could be that the current “News Feed” will be under the Feed tab, while the combined Mini-Feed and Wall will be under the Wall tab. I’m sure we’ll see more screenshots soon. Also of note is that the Action items, the links below your profile image currently, will be no more. Instead you’ll be able to offer your users interactivity via the publisher and other integration points throughout the user’s profile.

It also seems as though the separate News Feed/profile is no more when you log in. It seems they are bringing the focus on the profile and including what is now the “News Feed” to become what will be the “Feed” tab. I like this new concept and hope it catches on - I think it will be a win-win for both Facebook, users, and developers in that it will bring a more fluid experience to users, and encourage discussion and people more than anything else.

With the release of this information to the developers wiki it seems Facebook is on the verge of releasing the new design very soon. I would expect to see such features in the next week or two, considering it was originally supposed to launch last month.

UPDATE: Facebook just released their official announcement here: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=107

Beth Kanter and I met over at Graphing Social Patterns this year. I was running late to the lunch and happened to sit down at a table I saw Rodney Rumford at. I introduced myself and Beth happened to be at the table. She asked if she could give a book away on her blog, and interviewed me briefly. She posted a great review of the book today (yes, that’s my big head in the close-up!), and announced the free giveaway of “I’m On Facebook–Now What???”.

Learn more about Beth and ways to “Change the World” using Facebook on FacebookAdvice.com…

I’m going to step away from my normal focus on Social Media because the inner-geek in me just couldn’t resist. Recently Chris Pirillo posted a challenge that I just couldn’t help taking on. In it, he criticizes a post by Preston Galla of ComputerWorld stating “5 Reasons Vista Beats OS X”, and he makes some very good points. I admire Chris a lot because he’s one of the most unbiased Geeks I know, except when it comes to the Mac. Chris and I would get along well.

I too am a Mac user, in fact, the post I am typing at the moment is on MarsEdit on a Macbook. I absolutely love my Mac, and thus far have not found a preferred Operating System for development and desktop environment to work on, at least as a software developer (I should note that actually, most of my software development is over Terminal on the Mac, over to a Linux Server, my preferred server OS).

I will be the first to admit however that the Mac does have its flaws, in particular Leopard. I do run a Vista Ultimate machine, and I love it too, but for different reasons. Let me give 5 real reasons, and Chris, if you’re reading I would love to hear your response to this, why Vista, at times can be better than a Mac, in particular Leopard. Here are 5 reasons in response to Chris’s challenge that I think really make sense:

1. It’s all about the media. Chris, I’m not sure if you’ve used Windows Media Center to its full extent, but sit down, set up a Windows Media Center machine/server, and then set up an Xbox 360. Be sure your server has a good TV card or two in it as well. Now, sync the two, and begin watching TV live over your home network. Add on a Media Center Extender to another TV in your house and begin streaming live TV on another channel to that TV as well. Now, on one of the extenders, open up some music, maybe even from your iTunes library on your PC (assuming it’s not DRM protected, stupid Apple). Go on over and visit the videos you have stored on your PC. Install some MCE plugins, and begin browsing your videos on Youtube, or even Netflix watch now movies. Got HD? MCE supports it. Go to the sports section, see all the sports games playing currently and what their scores are, surf through all the sports channels (all in HD!). Go in and schedule to record your favorite TV Series. AppleTV isn’t even near ready for this (although I so desperately would love to see them do it!). Heck, turn off MCE even and start playing some games, or rent a movie. If you can point out a Mac combination that can do that, I’ll jump for joy!
2. The corporate environment. As a CTO and entrepreneur, I simply cannot force everyone onto a Mac. I have first, the expense of the learning curve and integration between Mac and PC, and second the cost of the Macs themselves. I can get a PC for under $500 these days. The closest equivalent to that is the Mac Mini, which still, at the equivalent PC level is more expensive. Now, add to that the expense of Parallels so those that need Windows apps like Quickbooks Corporate editions and others. True, integration with Exchange is possible, but is still pretty limited when compared to Windows. In the end I’m looking at a pretty expensive IT budget. Again, I think a Mac is an excellent development machine, and would still encourage a Mac for my developers due to their need to develop in cross-platform environments, but it just doesn’t make sense cost-wise across the entire company.
3. Hardware compatibility. I agree - there are a lot of options when it comes to supporting hardware for a Mac, but, can I just get a decent wireless print server that works with the Macs in my household? What about print drivers that work across the network with Windows-connected printers? Leopard fixes some of that, but it’s still not anywhere near compatible as the Vista machines are. Is it Mac’s fault? No, but it is a strong point to buying Vista. What about shuffling around every time I need to connect to a projector because Macs use the non-standard VGA/DVI adapters? I’m sure the readers can come up with more unsupported hardware.
4. Finance Software. I touched on this a little earlier, and Galla very broadly covered it in mentioning supported software, but his claim was not backed by specific examples. Simply saying, “Vista runs more software” is an opinion, and Chris, as you point out not necessarily proof that Vista is better. However, one thing I do have issues with is the vast array of Windows Finance software (aka Small and large business versions of Quicken and Turbotax) but lack of within Leopard. I run a very small business at the moment, and frankly, Quickbooks for Mac is simply too much for me. I’m looking for something more like Quicken Home and Business until my business gets large enough for me to hire an Accountant. There’s also the flip-side to that in that if you run a very large business, there are no enterprise versions of Quickbooks for Mac. This is why both my Father, and Father-in-Law who are CPAs do not use Macs. For now, I’m stuck to slowing down my machine with Parallels any time I need something like that, which, IMO is a hack.
5. It’s all about the animated wallpaper! Can your Mac run animated pictures of waterfalls, running streams, or flowing lava? My Vista machine can. Come on - you have to admit that’s something my Vista machine can do that my Macbook can’t, don’t you? So long as we’re going to praise the Mac UI this is one really cool feature I’d just love to see on my Mac. There are also other cool UI features on Vista that I like, even though I think Mac trumps them as a whole.

So, those may or may not be big things to some, but that is my list, and you asked Chris. Of course I could always come up with 10 more things that Mac beats Vista in, but my point is, as they told us when I was a Sales person at Computer City as a teenager, there are strengths to each OS - it’s important to evaluate what works best for you and your situation, and choose accordingly. Now, I ask my readers, are there any reasons (supported by true, concrete facts) that you feel Vista beats Leopard or the Mac in general?

I just caught this article from Mashable and I just had to pipe in. In the article, Mashable’s Kristen Nicole claims Guy Kawasaki paid too much for the development of AllTop, at $10,000. They compare it to Askablogr.com, claiming Chris DeVore only paid $7500 for the development of Askablogr, with its rich feature-set.

I was blown away by this! Not that Guy Kawasaki paid $10,000, but that Chris DeVore only paid $7500 for Askablogr. Now, I don’t know Chris, so take this with a grain of salt, but some call it a deal. I say he’s a cheapskate! For something that will be your primary revenue source and your main line of business, $10,000 for something like Alltop.com is a steal! The fact that Chris DeVore only paid $7500 for his development means he’s either hiring offshore, doing the development himself (in which those costs are way under-inflated), or he’s very much underpaying a bunch of gullible developers that probably don’t believe much in the product they’re working on.

As a business owner, when supporting a technology-based business, it is of utmost importance that you put your developers and IT staff at first priority. They are your bottom-line, and should be the superstars of your business. You have to keep in mind that for top notch developers and technology, you’re competing with the likes of Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and others to get the best talent. By not paying your developers, you will either a) lose your developers very quickly, b) have a revolution at one time in your future and your developers will all back out on you in rapid succession, or c) not get the best work and skills you could be getting, and you’ll definitely run into scalability issues as your site grows in the future.

I recently finished the book, “My Startup Life“, by Ben Casnochas. I bet Guy’s read it and Chris hasn’t. In it, Casnochas talks about the lessons he learned by not paying his lead developer well. He quickly had threats of the staff to leave, and they quickly ran into scalability issues due to the unexperienced offshores they were hiring overseas. In building a technology-based business it is of utmost importance that you pay and treat your IT staff well or it will come back to bite you in the future.

So, Kristen, I say Guy is the smart one in this case. I am willing to bet his site scales better, his developers are happier, and more likely to work with him in the future. Guy’s likely to get millions for Alltop.com in the future, should it succeed, so $10,000 is a very small price to pay to get good developers on staff.

You’re seeing it here first folks - this morning Facebook announced a new tag on its wiki called <fb:rock-the-vote/>. I imagine an announcement from Facebook will come soon on their purposes for this. From the wiki, <fb:rock-the-vote/>:

Displays a Rock the Vote widget inline in your application. The text inside the tags is formatted as a hyperlink. When the user clicks the link, a Working Assets US Voter Registration dialog appears. When the user is done, they are prompted to share it with their friends. Then they are returned to your page.

This is particularly suitable for political apps or any app that wants to encourage voter registration.

Now, I’m not that familiar with the whole “Rock the Vote” organization, and I’m very for encouraging voter registration, but isn’t this also giving preferential treatment to other big organizations on Facebook? How did “Credo Mobile” get their sponsorship on this? Does this mean apps and organizations like my company’s client, “Takes All Types” will have their own tags for developers to use too? Has FBML been turned into an advertising tool? As a Facebook Developer myself I’m a little concerned about this one.

To implement the tag, you would do something like this (from the wiki):

<fb:rock-the-vote>Register to vote!</rock-the-vote>

The link looks like this:

And produces a form that looks like this:

The second half of the form looks like this:

Today, a new way of posting to the News Feed in Facebook appeared on the Facebook Developer’s wiki. Facebook introduced “Feed Forms”. To use a Feed form, you simply create a regular form as you would any other form, but add a special “fbtype” attribute to the form. The only documented value listed thus far is “publish”. Facebook then intercepts the form, reads the url in the action parameter, and prompts the user, asking them if they want to publish the story to their friends.

To use a “feed form”, the url in your action parameter for the form should return content in the form of JSON with a simple feed response. The example they give for return JSON data is this:

{ "method": { "fbtype" : "publish",

           "next": "http://my.canvas.com/next_page.php“,

           “feed”: {”title_template”: “{actor} published status”,

                    “body_template” : “New status is \”{status}\”",

                    “body_data”     : {”status”: $_POST[’status’]}}

}

I created a sample form that looks like this, returning the above data (changing the url) in application/x-json format:

<form action=”http://fbmlessentials.staynalive.com/index.php”>

<input type=”text” name=”status” value=”" />

<input type=”hidden” name=”action” value=”feedforms” />

<input type=”submit” value=”Submit” />

</form>

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem this feature is live yet (or I’m just doing it wrong), as my returned JSON data just gets returned back to me when the form is submitted. I will post screen shots as soon as I hear confirmation that it has gone live (I expect that to be next Tuesday, when they usually do pushes).

Does this mean Facebook is doing away with the automated posting of News feeds by applications, or is it just one more way, and better way to make your feed story more likely to appear in your user’s friends’ news feeds? There is no official word from Facebook yet as to how they intend to use this.

My Google Alerts notified me yesterday that the book I wrote with Jason Alba, “I’m On Facebook–Now What???” was featured in the New York Times.  The New York Times was interviewing my co-author on new ways to find a job if your current methods aren’t working.  It was a brief mention, just stating Jason was the co-author, but a mention, nonetheless!  Now to just make that best-seller list!

Want to learn more about what you can do with Facebook?  Check it out on our Facebook Page and become a Fan!: http://page.facebookadvice.com

Many of you are currently using SocialToo.com for auto-following those that follow you on Twitter.  Well, I just added 2 new features to the site that might warrant you wanting to log in again and seeing what’s there.  The first feature is Facebook profile redirects - now, “yoursocialtoouser.socialtoo.com” will redirect to your Facebook profile if you click on a link on your SocialToo! dashboard (after logging in).  See my Facebook profile here and add me as a friend!: http://jessestay.socialtoo.com BTW, this is just one more example of how you can integrate the Facebook API outside of Facebook itself.
Also, I just added a UI to the blacklisting functionality I’ve talked about before.  This will allow you to specify specific users you don’t want the SocialToo! Twitter Auto-Follow script to follow.  You will of course have to unfollow them if you are already following them, but from then on they will no longer be followed by SocialToo!

These are just a few of many integrated Social Tools I’ll be adding in the future.  Stay tuned here and I’ll keep you updated (I’ll also shoot you a quick Twitter DM for the big ones like this!).  Let me know if you run into troubles.  Enjoy!

You can also read more about it on FacebookAdvice.com here: http://facebookadvice.com/2008/03/01/socialtoocom-your-companion-to-facebook-and-the-social-web/

I’m proud to announce a new website I’ve been working on.  You may have heard me Twitter about it a few times.  The site is called OpensocialNow!, and will be your source for OpenSocial News, Reviews, and info.  We’ll cover the Orkut launch, the Myspace launch, Hi5, and LinkedIn, as well as general things you can do with OpenSocial.  This is the first blog of its kind, and as OpenSocial launches in the next week or two I’m sure you’ll see many more like it.  It’s my hope that you’ll subscribe to the site via rss and make it your Official source for all things related to the popular social networking platform, OpenSocial.  You can read more about it right on the website here:

http://opensocialnow.com/2008/02/26/welcome-to-opensocialnow/

Oh, and stay tuned to OpensocialNow.com.  I have one more big announcement about a change in the OpenSocial launch coming up tonight!

Yesterday Google announced a rather interesting, and I believe strategic move, allowing users of Google Docs to put forms in front of their online spreadsheets through Google Docs.  I didn’t realize this until now, but Google really has a dynamic, unflattened data source that they have been providing through their Google Spreadsheets.  Now, with the ability to add forms, in many ways we are seeing another hosted development platform for website owners to use for whatever they would like to collect data for.  This has been long needed - I can’t tell you how many people have asked me at some time to install Formmail.pl for them to send them e-mails of a simple form they have installed on their website.  Now, they can just set up a Google doc, and a form to front that doc, and no e-mail is necessary!

The functionality is very simple right now, but one has to remember this is Google, which at one point was just a simple search engine.  Google always starts simple, and takes over the world with that simple plan.  Imagine if Google were to incorporate their new graphing API into these forms for simple survey-taking capabilities.  Now, add to that the ability for more robust reporting beyond that, ability to include single cells from a spreadsheet, and perhaps a query language of sorts to interface with it.  Google could very soon be competing with perhaps at first the likes of Amazon S3 storage services, but even more, their SimpleDB query engine, at a much more robust level.  This is Google after all.  I wouldn’t put it past them.

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Yesterday Google announced a rather interesting, and I believe strategic move, allowing users of Google Docs to put forms in front of their online spreadsheets through Google Docs.  I didn’t realize this until now, but Google really has a dynamic, unflattened data source that they have been providing through their Google Spreadsheets.  Now, with the ability to add forms, in many ways we are seeing another hosted development platform for website owners to use for whatever they would like to collect data for.  This has been long needed - I can’t tell you how many people have asked me at some time to install Formmail.pl for them to send them e-mails of a simple form they have installed on their website.  Now, they can just set up a Google doc, and a form to front that doc, and no e-mail is necessary!

The functionality is very simple right now, but one has to remember this is Google, which at one point was just a simple search engine.  Google always starts simple, and takes over the world with that simple plan.  Imagine if Google were to incorporate their new graphing API into these forms for simple survey-taking capabilities.  Now, add to that the ability for more robust reporting beyond that, ability to include single cells from a spreadsheet, and perhaps a query language of sorts to interface with it.  Google could very soon be competing with perhaps at first the likes of Amazon S3 storage services, but even more, their SimpleDB query engine, at a much more robust level.  This is Google after all.  I wouldn’t put it past them.

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I sat down for lunch at Applebees with Joseph Scott, a Developer at Automattic, who was the developer on the Prologue project. As I mentioned earlier, Prologue is essentially, as I term it, “OpenSocial for Twitter“, and allows you to create your own Twitter-like community on any Wordpress blog with the addition of just a simple Wordpress theme. In the demo, he shows how it works, and then we discuss potential uses for the theme, and ways one can use Prologue in their own Blogging environment. It was an enjoyable and interesting conversation!

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A really cool feature of the Bebo API is that, unlike the Facebook API, they are committed to allow autoplay on Flash widgets placed on Profile pages.  Facebook has turned off this feature, requiring users to click on the widget before it is allowed to play.  Today, Bebo became even more appealing by announcing they are going to allow the user to have preference over what autoplays and what does not.

On Bebo, Developers have the choice to have the sound on their Flash widgets play when the page is loaded, have the sound off when the page is loaded, or disable the sound entirely.  Users have the ability to disable sound entirely when they load pages:

“bebo users can opt to not autoplay flash content on profiles they view - if such a viewer is viewing a page then all sn:swf tags that requested sound=”on” will be set to “off”

Flash Widgets still autoplay, with or without sound.  The user then has the opportunity to turn on the sound with a little speaker icon in the upper-right corner of the widget.

I think this is a great way to prevent spam of music or other sounds playing as you load others’ profiles, similar to how MySpace does it.  At the same time, it stays flexible for developers in that they can have a completely running flash application (instead of an image, like Facebook), right as the page loads.  Apps like the Skype app for Facebook and my GrandCentral app actually have purpose with this method.

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A few weeks ago, I met at a Tweetup with Justin Keller from ChaCha.com and a few others that were in town visiting for Sundance.  He gave me a cool, free scarf with the Cha Cha and Sundance Logos on it.  It was my first official “Sundance Swag”.   That was also my first introduction to Cha Cha, and from then on I heard a lot of cool things on Twitter about Cha Cha, and lots of celebrities up in Sundance that were loving it.

Today, that meetup had meaning when my brother called me from I-40 in New Mexico on his way to Las Vegas, between Gallup and Albuquerque saying he was stranded.  He wanted to know why traffic was at a standstill on what would usually be a pretty vacant Road (it is in the middle of the desert!).  I checked Google, couldn’t find any traffic info for that area.  Then I checked Google Maps to look at the traffic, and no traffic showed for the area.  I checked accuweather.com and weather.com to see if it might be weather, but couldn’t see any evidence.

Then I remembered Cha Cha had a “Human Powered” search engine.  I sent a question to “242242″ (CHACHA on your cell phone) via text message on my iPhone asking why my brother was at a standstill.  Within just a couple minutes I received a response saying they were cleaning up after near white-out conditions, and to wait out until they cleared up the roads.  A link was attached, which also told me there were several accidents ahead and the road was closed (I love my iPhone’s browser!).  I quickly called my brother and told him the details so he could decide to find the nearest hotel and wait it out.

Cha Cha in this case saved my brother from a pretty tough situation!  Consider Cha Cha your personal, real life social, search engine for your cell phone - you send it a text message, a human “guide” that gets paid $.20 per transaction sends you your answer back, with a link to the source(s).  There is also a web version, which takes you to a chat box where you can ask a live person your question.  I had worse results with that - the person just returned a bunch of vague links with no real answer.

Regardless of my one bad experience, I have now added 242242 to my cell phone contacts list.  It will be my new friend when I need to find things on the go.  Don’t forget to add it to your contacts!

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I’m very surprised that Twitter is not trying to compete with Pownce. As some of you may know, Pownce recently went out of beta, and opened their platform to anyone interested in joining. For awhile, I wasn’t much of a proponent for Pownce, but just recently, I’ve decided to give Pownce a try and see if it could be a good alternative to Twitter.

The last time I tried Pownce, I was unaware of Twitter - to me, Pownce just didn’t make sense at the time. Why would anyone need another way of sharing things with their friends? Isn’t that what a chat client is for?

It wasn’t until today, when I wanted a way to share a song my brother’s band did with friends, I realized Twitter just didn’t fulfill my need. You see, with anything but text updates, you have to go to an external website, upload the file, then post an external link to that file, photo, or video for others to see.

Pownce took care of that issue for me. With one integrated client, I was able to upload the file I wanted to share, and boom - it was available to all my friends to not only click, but play directly from the Pownce client! Not only that, but I opened up http://m.pownce.com on my iPhone, and I was able to play it right on my iPhone, without having to download the file! Pownce supports most file types, as well as links, and events, as well as plain status updates like Twitter.

The other thing that I thought I may complain about, which Pownce has, is ads. Because Pownce supplies users with its own client (they do have an API - I’m sure there will be other clients available in the future), they are able to provide users with inline ads, separate from their updates, right in the client. Honestly, I kind of feel this is somewhat comforting - from these I know my update service has an actual revenue model. There’s organization among the chaos, and I know my update client will be around for awhile longer. We complain when there are ads, but honestly, I think this is a flaw that will catch up with Twitter - the unknowns of how Twitter will make money are making the community ask questions.

So, now that I’m on Pownce will I move away from Twitter? For now, no - Pownce needs an SMS option before I completely switch. There’s something to say about having my phone make an SMS sound every time I get an @ reply or a direct message. Also, Pownce does not yet support tracking - this is an extremely valuable tool on Twitter! I also have a great network on Twitter. For now, I can see myself having both Pownce, and Twitter open - I’m really hoping the missing features of Pownce are taken care of, and my network also gradually moves over so I can take advantage of this great service! You can find me on Pownce at:

http://www.pownce.com/jessestay

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I’ve recently been looking for better ways to connect my blog into the social sphere.  I feel the easier my readers can connect with me, talk with me, ask questions, etc., the more personal my blog becomes.  You’ll notice I’ve added some pretty little icons to the right that show the networks I belong to and, if you’re on them, you can meet me there.  I will be adding more as I create new icons.

Today I came across a nifty new Wordpress plugin from the guys at blah, blah! technology called Socialize Me!.  Socialize Me! collects your user names and profile urls from about 20 to 30 different social networks, and then detects if the users visiting your Wordpress blog belong to those social networks.  If so, with some code you insert into your Wordpress template, a message appears to those users notifying them that you also belong to their social network, inviting them to come visit you.

I have thus far been unsuccessful in testing this - I can’t tell if it’s because I already belong to the social networks, or if I’ve entered in the wrong information.  If you visit the Stay N’ Alive blog and see a message inviting you to visit me on any of my social networks, please let me know in the comments below.  You can try the plugin yourself at:

 http://www.blahblahtech.com/2008/01/wordpress-plugin-socialize-me.html

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Nokia finally worked out their N810 developer discount code issues in the US which means I get to go through the LetsTalk security theater again! I thought I’d dig a little deeper as to what triggers them treating their customers like this. The representative grilling me said that they usually do verification on orders for unlocked phones. Conspiracy theories are left as an exercise for the reader.

But because I hassled them about it they went a step further on me and called American Express to ask them to call me and have me personally authorize the transaction. That call came through just as we finished with the following multiple-choice questions:

What month was Rebecca born in?
Which of these counties have you lived in?
What month was Bruce born in?

Why does this bug me so much? Because for $7.95 you too can find the answers to these questions and more! I used public record searches to find my high school classmates for our 10 year reunion. If you really want to steal someone’s identity $8 is a small price to pay to do decent job of it.

When American Express called me I had LetsTalk wait while I complained to AmEx and asked them to put a note in my record to not hassle me the next time LetsTalk asks them to. I also asked AmEx if there is some financial incentive for LetsTalk to do this, better rates for better security or something. There isn’t.

I really wish someone would slap LetsTalk for wasting their money and hassling their customers. Please, Nokia, please won’t you slap them? Or fire them. That would work too.

Comments are open on this post for anyone who can think of a legitimate reason for LetsTalk to do this crap.

Today, in the first post on the new Twitter Technology Blog, Alex Payne announced that Twitter is releasing their underlying messaging platform, which they call, “Starling”, to the community. From the announcement it appears Starling is the basis for handling all communication underneath Twitter, speaks memcached, and reminds me in some ways of Perl POE, for Ruby. This is the development baby of Twitter, a great move by the new head of Engineering for Twitter, and a great benefit to the development community! Twitter is starting to remind me very much of Google in its philosophies, starting with a core technology, focusing on that, then figuring out monetization after the fact, all while giving back to the community. Way to go Twitter!

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I’ve been on the Google Reader band wagon for a long time now. I currently subscribe to about 150 feeds, and I read or skim over probably near 1,000 or more feed items a day. Reading my feeds is how I stay up on the latest and greatest, and how I am able to give the best advice to my clients. Instead of me going to news, now the news comes to me, which, despite the amount of news I read in a day, has made me actually more productive.

Google Reader has recently added a friends feature. Now, all those on your GMail or Google Talk contact lists that use Google Reader will appear in a Friends list to the left of Google Reader. You can choose to turn your friends’ feeds on or off in the settings (upper-right of Reader), and even invite more friends to begin using Google Reader. As your friends “share” the feed items that they like, you also get to see what they are sharing. This feature in effect has actually started bringing me even more news. It will be interesting to see the SEO effects of this as people no longer subscribe to blogs, but rather rely on their friends sharing their favorite blogs with you. Personally, I think it will improve the odds, as now more people will see your blog due to the viral nature of this system, and more people in result will be persuaded to subscribe to your blog - this time through Google, improving the SEO chances of you appearing in Google personalized results for that individual.

Here’s how I use Google Reader. Bloggers may want to take note, as this could provide some tips as to how to further improve your posts to fit with the power Feed readers out there.:

• Skim, Skim, Skim! - There’s no way I would get through all 1,000+ of my feed items if I read every single one of them. I skim over the headlines, and sometimes the content, then move onto the next item. Only if the article is important to me do I read the article in detail.
• Learn the Shortcuts - There are 3 or 4 shortcut keys that are essential for me. I use the ‘j’ key to open the next item and mark it as read. I use the ‘k’ key to move back to the previous item. I use the ’shift-s’ key combination to share the item I’m reading if I think those that are friends with me might be interested. I use the ’s’ key to start items I want to “bookmark” for later - this is Google Reader’s equivalent to del.icio.us. I then use the ‘r’ key to refresh the list I’m on - I like to click on the link “x new items” and read through those. Then, when I hit ‘r’ to refresh, it only shows me the new items I haven’t read yet.
• Add as many friends as you can - The more friends you have, the more information you receive. If a friend isn’t providing productive feeds, then perhaps you can take them off, but besides that, information is good!
• Stay on top of your feeds - if you don’t check them several times throughout the day, they will build up, and you’ll be stuck spending an hour or two in the middle of the night catching up. I like to use my cell phone when I’m away from my computer to go through my feeds. Google has excellent mobile tools, and Reader is no exception.
• Don’t use iGoogle - I was using this for awhile, and realized a) I couldn’t use the shortcuts, and b) I couldn’t utilize the sharing or starring features. Perhaps if they improve it I’ll go back.

Those are the strategies I use to read through my feeds in Google Reader. What strategies do you use? Please add me as a friend - you can either add me as a contact in Google Talk, or shoot me an e-mail and you’ll automatically be added to my Google Reader Friends. jessestay at gmail dot com

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I’m proud to announce the new design of the Stay N’ Alive blog. Yes, that is me on a Segway, a little slouched, but my real, geeky self, having fun. I’m tempted to subtitle the blog, “A Developer, Having Fun!” Really, that is what being a developer is all about - if you’re not having fun, find something else! I sincerely love what I do - at heart, I will always be a developer, a Geek at heart.

Another geek at heart, Bill Gates, gave his final keynote address at CES last night. He left a hilarious, yet touching video making fun of what his final day could be like. I have to admit, as a Linux and Mac user primarily (I use Windows for my Entertainment Center experience), I was a little choked up after this. I became a programmer because of Bill Gates, working on MS DOS machines, Windows 1 (came on a 5″ floppy), 2, 3, 3.1, and 95 way before I was ever a Linux user. I owe much of my experience as a programmer to this man - while we make fun of him, he is an inspiration to us all:

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I’ve been considering doing this for awhile - we’ll see how long it lasts and when my wife puts an end to it. If you look in the upper-left corner of the blog, you’ll see the “Ask Jesse” Show stream. If I’m online, when you click play you’ll see me, live, as you are on the blog!

Here’s how I did it:

1. Create an account at Ustream.tv
2. Click on “My Shows” - there you can configure the look and feel of your show page if you want
3. Click on the “Go to Show URL” link next to the “Broadcast Now” button
4. You’ll now see an “Embed Stream” html snippet in the lower right of the page - copy this, then paste into your html layout for your blog
5. Click “Broadcast Now”, and you’re live for all your voyeuristic viewers to see!

The Camera I’m using is the Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX. It has great picture, includes a built-in microphone that detects how far you are, and the camera comes in with built-in software that follows where your face is (or two faces if you’re more than one person). I’m half-way across the room, and you can still hear me well, and the streaming results are almost real-time! (Scott Lemon says it took just 14 seconds from him Twittering to me saying I received the Twitter)

Some issues to watch out for:

• Make sure you’re appropriate when your camera is on! Put a sign up or something reminding those entering the camera area that they are being recorded.
• Be careful if you talk to sensitive business clients. You may want to mute, or stop the stream altogether so sensitive information isn’t broadcast out to the entire world
• Be sure your router can handle the bandwidth. I use a Gigabit Linksys WRT350N Router, and my Comcast connection has 8 Mb down, and about 3 or 4 up (at times). Search for “Comcast Speed” in the search box in the upper-right for some tips on how to speed up your home internet

My big prediction for 2008 is it will be the year of streaming video, and you’ll see more and more people embracing such technologies. I think I’ll try this for a bit - I think this can be a great way to drive people to stay on your blog longer. People are naturally voyeuristic, and want to know more about the person whose writing they are reading. If they can actually see them and chat with them, they are likely to stay longer, bringing more traffic to your site.

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My Co-Author, Jason Alba, is having a bad day today. I’m sure I haven’t helped, as we both have had somewhat heated discussions over the design of the cover of our book among other things (we think we’ve got a good idea for it though!). Not just that, but now I’m going to disagree on the points he made in his blog today.

While I’m of course very much for social networks (please, invite me to more!), while I’ve also probably sent Jason several large attachments as we’ve discussed our book back and forth (did I mention we now have a Facebook Page - become a fan!), while I’m sometimes a jerk, and I’m definitely a genius :-P, I understand his points in those items. What I don’t agree about however is that Facebook mail can cause people to pay less attention to you.

You see, I’ve actually used Facebook mail to my advantage several times. There are several of my Facebook friends, and even non-friends (remember, I only add people that a) are truly interested in me, or b) I have personally interacted with - this ensures my network stays strong) who I know receive thousands of e-mails per day. I also know people are generally hesitant to use Facebook mail due to its current limitations.

Because of this, using Facebook mail actually had the reverse effect one would think it would. My mail got attention from those users - some times they asked me to e-mail them personally after my initial contact, but now they knew who I was and had established a personal communication with me. Not just that but they had my picture and profile information to find out more of who I was. I now stood out in their mind, and to me, that’s valuable.

While Jason may not want to be contacted via Facebook, I suggest you try it some time to another person you need to get in touch with. I guarantee, while they may not contact you right away, they will be more likely to read and pay attention to your Facebook mail than they would a regular e-mail from you. After your first contact - sure, go ahead and send them normal e-mail!

Now, as to the issue on Cc: vs. To: that Jason mentions, Gmail takes care of that for me! Everyone is a To: in Gmail’s terms, so that’s all I have to see. Now, if Facebook could just have a Cc: and forwarding/reply system.

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Packt Publishing sent me a copy of MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide for review. MediaWiki is the open source wiki software that powers Wikipedia.org. Many organizations, including mine, use MediaWiki to power their own wikis. The book is a bit incoherent at times and needs polishing, but it had some good sections and introduced me to several new features of MediaWiki.

The title is a misnomer since the first half of the book addresses MediaWiki basics, topics with which an “administrator” should already be familiar. Besides chapter 2, which covers installation, it’s not until Chapter 7 (”Administrating MediaWiki”) that the book really begins to address administrative topics. In a few places the book even suggests that you “request an administrator” (sic) to complete a certain task. (Wait, I thought I was the administrator?) The book might more aptly be called “The MediaWiki User and Administrator’s Guide.”

These are the chapters:

• Chapter 1 - About MediaWiki
• Chapter 2 - Installing MediaWiki
• Chapter 3 - Starting MediaWiki
• Chapter 4 - Advanced Formatting
• Chapter 5 - Organizing Content
• Chapter 6 - MediaWiki in a Multi-User Environment
• Chapter 7 - Administrating MediaWiki
• Chapter 8 - Customizing MediaWiki
• Chapter 9 - Hacking MediaWiki
• Chapter 10 - MediaWiki Maintenance
• Chapter 11 - Cool Hacks

There were a few instances of gushing praise for wiki software that seemed untempered and unsubstantiated. These weakened the book, as if the book were fighting for legitimacy. For example, the introduction states, “If we think a forum, blog, and CMS are easy solutions for this, then a wiki will be an even easier solution for the problem.” (p. 9) Not a line you’d use to sell MediaWiki door to door. After explaining how to edit a page (again, is that necessary for an administrator?) it reads, “Can editing be simpler than that? I don’t think so.” (p. 15) An administrator’s guide doesn’t need to preach the virtues of the software — administrators are already sold — but if it attempts this, the claims should be specific and backed by evidence, not sweeping and general. If the book were to explain that “X percentage of users prefer wiki software because of Y and Z” or “wiki software isn’t right for every situation, but it’s great for A and B,” the administrator might actually have some ammunition with which to sell wiki software to users and decision makers.

Chapter 6 addresses using MediaWiki in a multi-user environment. I think this should be assumed from the beginning. Again, wiki software is not universally superior to all other blogging or CMS packages. It should be assumed that MediaWiki will be used for multi-user collaboration since that’s where it excels. It shouldn’t be an afterthought.

I found several typos and awkwardly written sentences. The editing team should have done another pass over the book.

The book taught me several new things about MediaWiki, including the following:

• Interwiki links, page 61 — “Using interwiki links, we can create links to other sites on the Internet. This gives users the option to avoid pasting in entire URLs (as for regular web pages) and instead use shorthand by adding a prefix to another wiki.”
• External images, page 67 — Use $wgAllowExternalImages = true; then write something like this: [http://www.packtpub.com http://www.packtpub.com/images/PacktLogoSmall.png]
• Definition Lists, page 75 — “To indicate a definition term, use a semi colon at the beginning of the line. To indicate the definition, use a colon….”
• Creating a gallery, page 100 — You can create pages with four columns of image thumbnails.
• Magic Words, page 107 — “Magic words [like NOTOC or NOEDITSECTION] are a few reserved words that are used for special purposes in MediaWiki. They are used to create special types of formatting.”
• Using Sort Keys to Sort Category Listings, page 121 — Category listings are sorted alphabetically by first letter. With sort keys you can cause specific categories to appear out of the usual order.

Administrators and developers will like the sections on how to use templates (p. 122), how to create a new skin (p. 208), and how to write MediaWiki extensions (p. 226).

I would have liked more information on these topics:

• Subversion (SVN) usage and best practices
• Database internals
• Memcached
• Administering multiple installations of MediaWiki (wiki farms)

This book could conceivably be two. After being thoroughly proofread and polished to match the audience, the first half of the book could be a great resource for MediaWiki users. The second half, expanded to include the above topics, would be well suited for a MediaWiki administrator.

So, after a wonderful Christmas with the family - time well spent with kids, my wife, and in-laws, I find myself reflecting back over the last day and realizing how much of a geek I really am. Here are some of the Geek Christmas gifts seen around the Stay household this Christmas:

Scooba floor sweeper/Cleaner - This was a gift from myself to my wife - I got a super deal off Woot.com for this, and I’m quite proud of it. We’re still trying to decide if I’m enjoying this more, the kids are enjoying it more, or my wife is enjoying it more. For me, it’s just fun watching it almost go down the stairs, then at the last minute realize it’s stairs and turn around - this thing is so smart! For my wife, it gets dirt off her floor she never even knew was there! For my kids, it’s just another pet, even seems to have a personality. We’ve named it “Lionel”, our new indentured servant.

Nintendo DS - We finally got one of these for the kids, along with the game, “Nintendogs”, and “Brain Age Academy”. I tell you - Brain Age Academy will put you in your place if you think you’re already smart. Overall I really like this gift (the DS) - it has built-in Wifi that allows you to play with your friends over the internet and download your own games, a microphone, and the games for it are really cheap! The only thing I hate about it is now I want another one for myself!

Lego Star Wars - the Complete Saga for the Xbox 360 - I love this series. It allows you to play more than one player at a time, which is great for my kids. There is no blood - the worst that ever happens is you chop off an occasional lego head, but it ensures to make fun of the fact that you’re just dealing with Lego figures. It’s also a lot of fun for adults, and you can play with your kids!

Rock Band for the Xbox 360 - This is my favorite gift. I like it for the drums. You can customize your own character, and tour the world, or get your whole family or friends together and form your own band. My kids are a bit too young to be effective at it, but they still have a lot of fun. The great thing about the Xbox 360 version (I can’t vouch for the others) is you can download new songs straight from Xbox Live Marketplace.

Tamagotchi - This was my daughter’s gift. She has two of them, and essentially they are little digital animals you can put on a key chain, backpack, or necklace. You take care of them, pet them, feed them, play with them, and you can even put them together and they can play with each other. I’m told that when you put the boys and girls together they even make babies! This is a great toy if you want to teach your child how to take care of an animal or pet.

Ben Casnocha’s “My Startup Life” - I’ve only started reading this, but thus far I really enjoy it. It goes over how Ben Casnocha started his own dot-com business at age 12, and the successes and failures he experienced while doing it. He shares what to do and what not to do when starting your own business, and goes over the things every startup should consider. It is very inspiring, being the entrepreneur that I am. Every Geek needs to learn the principles taught in this book to best monetize the skills they have.

Beyond the gifts, my Christmas Eve started with my kids tracking Santa on Google Earth at NoradSanta.com (that was a huge hit!), followed by many Tweets from all over the world about the experiences others were having on Christmas. While we had many other great geeky toys, from the traditional Star Wars figurines, to a digital microscope that hooks up to the TV, the above gifts were my favorite that I think all my readers should check out.

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I discovered a new friend yesterday to aide in using Facebook. The Facebook toolbar for Mozilla Firefox is one of the coolest and most useful extensions I use for Firefox now. It shows you (like my Snitter does) with a popup every time a friend updates their status message, someone writes on their wall, or any type of activity happens to you or any of your friends on Facebook. With this new toolbar for Firefox, Facebook quickly becomes a living being, allowing you to see things as they happen on Facebook. Now, if Facebook could find a way to make their site more of a discussion between a community, rather than just between a few groups of people, I could actually replace Twitter with Facebook. You can download the toolbar here:

http://developers.facebook.com/toolbar/

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As those who read this blog know, I have a love-hate relationship with Apple. The other night I completely finished a great blog entry on Facebook releasing its own Platform Architecture, similar to OpenSocial Containers, and Bebo being the first to utilize it. Well, I hit “publish”, and realized Leopard had killed my internet connection again! This, after I just installed another update that was supposed to fix everything.

I’m about fed up with Leopard, the problem is there’s not much better elsewhere. Every Operating System has its strengths and every Operating System has its flaws. I like Vista for its new interface and Entertainment (Media Center) Center capabilities. I love Linux as a server. I love Mac as my desktop because it gives me a great combination of both worlds and has a pretty interface. Unfortunately, Vista is bloated, Linux takes too much configuration to get up and running as a decent desktop, and Apple’s flaw? They can’t do a launch right, but continue to make fun of the competition. I had the same issues with Tiger when it launched, now I’m having problems with Leopard - DNS dying, internet randomly going down, applications crashing, grey screens of death. It’s driving me nuts! I just wish they’d stop picking on Microsoft and fix their own operating system! Frankly, I’m beginning to feel sorry for the poor Microsoft business man (the PC) that guy from Die Hard keeps making fun of in Apple’s commercials.

Great - my internet connection just went down again — Now What???

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On Linuxtoday.com, there is an article with an OpenSuSE 10.3 review.  Out of interest I clicked on the link and started looking at the article.  From the article:

“in the latest 10.3 release, specific support for a Linux/Windows dual-boot setup, enabling both operating systems to be installed on the same PC.”

Unless I missed something, didn’t know we didn’t have specific support for dual-boot setups :)  Good thing it was added it in this release

Other than that it seems to be a decent simple review.  But the thing that jumped out the most was the listed Con.

“Cons It’s not Windows”

Call me crazy, but I list this as a pro

My co-author, Jason Alba pointed out this hilarious acapella number by the group, “Straight No Chaser”. Check it out - they are quite talented, and it should get quite a laugh out of you!:

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Utah had it’s very first Social Media Garage meeting as a non-Facebook specific group yesterday, December 11. Phil Burns and I started the Utah Facebook Developers Garage, and at our October meeting, the group agreed to making our name much more generic so we could support technologies such as Open Social. I think the meeting yesterday went better than I could have expected.

Jeff Barr, evangelist for Amazon Web Services, was our featured guest speaker for the night. He spoke on Amazon ECS (E-Commerce Service), S3 (Simple Storage Service), EC2 (Electric Compute Cloud), and SQS (Simple Queue Service). I think it was very educational for all that were there - many there were not aware of what Amazon was doing.

Towards the end he featured Social Media technologies that are currently using AWS. He talked about Paul Allen (the younger)’s We’re Related (a company I consulted for as they were planning the software) and their tremendous success in dealing with 1.8 million users in just 2 months, utilizing AWS, S3 and EC2 to help them with the process. He featured a couple other examples, including iLike, that were also using their services to scale on Facebook.

My favorite feature of the night was Jeff Barr’s demo of how he uses Second Life to help him evangelize, and present AWS to a worldwide audience. He gave one of the coolest demos I’ve seen on how he’s using the second life rendering engine to model the AWS systems in 3D. He clicks on a little Amazon logo in his model, and in animated 3D in Facebook it all runs, demonstrating the process flow in real time right there in Second Life! He says he plans to tie in a real system to this model, feeding real data to display the data in a real environment. He also showed how he has weekly meetings with AWS developers in right in Second Life, and went on to show a presentation he had made in Second Life to a users group half-way around the world!

Jeff Barr, after last night, convinced me that Second Life is here to stay - it’s an invaluable tool that, if used right can be a great method of communication, presentation, and meeting with a worldwide audience. He convinced me that Second Life is even more useful for businesses than it is for the average non-business user using the service! I strongly suggest if you are a business owner, looking at a Second Life strategy to communicate better with customers, lead-gen with customers, and build new business.

After Jeff’s talk, we went over a few more samples of sites using AWS. The Bungee Labs folk demoed some of their services using the service. One guy (trying to remember his name - sorry, I promise I’ll get it!) showed off his site that counts down to 2008 in binary (http://11111011000.com/ is 2008 in binary)! I talked about my Holy Rolls applications (We’re Catholic and We’re Baptist) and how for an application with 4-5 thousand pageviews a day, AWS handles it fine, and I always have the ability to scale if I need to.

When the event was over we all put our names into a Santa Clause hat and drew for 2 Google Water Bottles given to us by Google Code, and some cool Wordpress T-shirts provided by Joseph Scott, from Automattic. We then finished the evening with a great competition (and great singing voices!) of Rock Band on the PS3. It was quite a Social!

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Dave Bascom, of SEO.com, and also a good friend of mine, recently reminded me through a blog post of his about Danny Sullivan’s Whiteboard Daily Search Cast where he criticized Facebook ads as a “revolution”. Danny goes on to say that because search ads are being “requested” by the user, search engine advertising is much more of a revolution than that of Facebook advertising.

I respectfully disagree with Danny here. I think Danny is getting his terms confused. While SEO is the process of me getting what I have requested, search engine advertising is not that case. Advertisers on search engines do not know who I am and therefore cannot detect the best ads to send my way. Because of this, it is extremely easy for advertisers to get what I am truly looking for wrong, and especially hard to convince me that I should buy their product. Advertisers only know what I’m searching for - not who I am, not who my friends are, and therefore what search engines can deliver is extremely basic. Search Engine advertisers (note I’m not saying SEO here) are still pushing ads to me, many of which are not what I want to receive.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a search engine’s biggest competitor in the ad space. Facebook, in essence, has on top of the existing internet, created a personal internet for others to use, associate with friends, purchase from retailers, do business, you name it. People remain on Facebook (and other social networks) because it is where their friends and family are. Facebook knows these relationships, these interactions, and all about who you are and what you are looking for. Therefore, all Facebook needs to do is give a basis for businesses to do business on top of their “personal internet”, and now all users have to do is search within Facebook and they can get way better search results than a normal search engine could ever give you. Facebook has done this with their platform. They’ve done this with their “Facebook Pages”, and they’ve also done this through Beacon.

Now, add to that the ability for advertisers to convince your friends to tell you about your product. Danny, it’s not about getting into “the conversation”. Facebook isn’t just a “conversation” - I use Twitter for that. Facebook is a lifestyle - it’s a way of living. It’s not about someone, even a friend entering the conversation and saying, “hey - do you want a new iPod?” It’s about me and my friends talking about what we’re getting for Christmas, and one of my friends knows I’m looking for an iPod, and tells me about a cool deal on iPods he discovered. Facebook is not an interruption - it’s a natural evolvement of life. Well-placed ads in Facebook are those that Friends tell other friends about. They’re about me seeing what my friends are doing, and realizing - hey, my friend just shopped at Fandango (hi Phil!), maybe I should shop there too!

I am going to be blogging here really soon about a term I call Social Network Optimization (there’s also a chapter in my book), or SNO. While SEO is all about defining your place in a linked relationship between websites, SNO adds a layer to that by defining your place in a linked relationship between real people. You’ll start seeing more and more SNO as social networking becomes more and more used. Is SEO dead? I don’t think so - a good company will need to find ways to utilize both techniques to place themselves optimally on the web. SEO could eventually evolve more and more into SNO, but SEO I think will always be around in some form.

SNO and Facebook ads are the new revolution. Viral and Permissions marketing is here to stay my friends - Danny, I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong on this one.

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I think it’s blatently evident that I, Jesse Stay am on Facebook. Now what???

Actually, that’s exactly what. For the past few weeks I have been mentioning on Twitter that I have been working on a “super secret project”. That project is actually a book that I am writing with Jason Alba, founder of JibberJobber.com, and author of I’m in LinkedIn — Now What???. Jason and I are both excited as to the potential for this book to get people excited to use Facebook.

In a slight change from my direction of being a Facebook developer, I am going to use this expertise to give non-developers and business people a new insight on Facebook, and how Facebook could indeed be used for the average Joe, or even in a business sense. I get the question all the time, “Why should I be on Facebook?” This book will answer that question, and more. I’ll write about things like privacy issues, and a new term, which I’ll blog about later, “Social Network Optimization”, which I see as a layer on top of what SEO can do for you.

Jason’s expertise in the job market and what job hunters and seekers, as well as businesses themselves are looking for brings a unique view into how people seeking to use Facebook as a tool can find value. I’m excited to have Jason’s help, and previous experience in authorship on this book. I think Jason’s a smart guy.

If you have any input or suggestions on what you would like to see in the book, or things you like or dislike about Facebook, including tips and tricks, and would like to have an excerpt credited to you in the book, please contact me. Like in Jason’s “I’m on LinkedIn, Now What???” I’m very interested in having lots of quotes from every day Facebook users and how they like to use Facebook.

If you are a blogger, in the media, or have expertise in the area we are very interested in Endorsements and reviews as well. Contact me or Jason and we can send you a pre-edit copy of the book for you to look through, give input, and review before it gets published. We’ll publish the best endorsements and reviews. Please let me know if you have any further suggestions on how to spread the word.

We’re hoping to release the book to readers around January, making it one of the first books on the topic of Facebook to be sold thus far.

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Today (in fact, just a few minutes ago), Facebook officially launched their “Pages” platform for advertising. This was something I have eagerly been waiting for, as it finally allows businesses to have their own pages on Facebook, allow discussion, have “fans”, and even add their own applications on their pages. This truly gives businesses a presence directly within Facebook. This is huge news! You can sign up here.

The one little thing they revealed with this launch that I doubt will get much attention, is it seems they have finally revealed their full reason for using 64-bit profile ids. If you look at SNAPlicate, Inc.’s (my company) Pages profile that I created, it uses the exact same “profile.php”, with the exact same “id” tagged onto it. I’m guessing their database has some sort of profile_type table that tells if it’s an individual or business profile, so the application can act appropriately. Therefore they had to accommodate for all the additional profiles they would add through businesses. This 64-bit id was actually a hint and we never knew it!

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Ooh, and as we move towards the "Gimmie" season, I always love seeing the new products companies come out with to vie for my attention.  Well Leatherman has a very interesting new tool that looks quite cool.  The Leatherman Skeletool.  I currently love the Leatherman Wave that I carry, but this one has some spiffiness that cannot be denied.  I really like the look, the increased blade width, and the dual purpose carabiner/bottle opener.  It doesn't offer quite as many  "tools" as my wave, but covers the important parts, in a sexy new look, and especially in the CF body, a very nice weight.

Some people didn’t want to believe me, but it appears I was right about the gPhone launching on November 5th. I was not completely right about it being their Social Networking platform. Of course the platform launch of OpenSocial was launched early. It appears the November 5th launch so anticipated by all the blogosphere was, in fact, the gPhone and their new platform, Android.

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I’ve blogged about this before - for some reason (not that I would have an influence), it still hasn’t stuck. We are officially in Web 3.0. Why do I say this?

I define 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and any major computer change as a change in platforms. Back in the day we saw major platform changes from Unix, Apple II, to the IBM PC and Microsoft Windows. All these were major platform shifts, accepted by the general population. People are stuck in trying to define 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc. as marketing terms surrounding the general consumer, when in fact they aren’t. A 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 release is usually a major architecture change instantiated by the developers, and branded by a marketing or business staff.

So let’s look at Web 2.0. Web 2.0 started making a name for itself at the launch of Gmail, YouTube, Flickr and maybe even sites such as del.icio.us, and Digg. What was special about these sites? They all utilized AJAX, a relatively new platform which allowed developers to create desktop “clients” on top of the previous, 1.0 web platform. Around this same time came Adobe’s Flex, another similar platform which accomplished the same purpose. Add to that Google’s Gears and Adobe’s Air, (and maybe even the soon-to-come Mozilla products), developers now had the capability to provide media-rich, client-side platforms that have the ability to communicate with the web all through a single web browser or web communications platform. This was a major change from the previous web architecture of only being able to shift from page to page to get what you wanted your applications to do on the web.

Over the last year or two, as some of the Web 2.0 applications have released social capabilities - sites such as Classmates (not a platform), LinkedIn, Hi5, MySpace, and Facebook. Users have embraced many of these sites, and have begun to utilize these sites as their own “personal internet”, allowing them to view what their friends are doing, keep track of relationships, business contacts, and use the internet at a much more personalized level. Some of those have released APIs to the platform controlling the social capabilities within their own architectures. These APIs, such as OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform bring an entirely new level to these social websites, giving access to hundreds of millions of individual internet users. Now, through an entirely open methodology, developers, like never before have access to an entirely new internet, inaccessible before, that brings completely new customers, a much more personalized audience, and a completely new method of application development. Social API, my friends, is Web 3.0.

What will Web 4.0 be? I predict the cell phone market - perhaps through phones such as the iPhone and just announced Android architecture. There are more than a billion cell phones out there, at an even more personalized level than even the social networks can provide!

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Due to some last minute complications, the Utah Facebook Developers / Social Media Developers Garage has changed its location for tomorrow. Thanks to Perfect Search Corporation, we were able to secure a last minute location to host the event. The event will now be held at Perfect Search Corporation in the Fibernet Building in Orem - it will NO LONGER be at Noah’s. Same time, same speakers. The address is:

1145 S 800 E Suite 325 Orem, UT

Our instructions are to stay out of the development areas and in the conference rooms only. To get in, if no one is at the door, please call me on my cell phone and we’ll send some one to let you in: (801) 979-7576. I apologize if this is an inconvenience. Thanks again to Tim Stay and Perfect Search Corporation for their willingness to host our event.

Here’s a Google Maps to that location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=1145+S+800+E+Suite+325,+Orem,+UT&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.219963,76.025391&ie=UTF8&ll=40.276612,-111.676068&spn=0.006859,0.018561&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1

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InfoWorld asked me to do a head-to-head review of Parallels and Fusion. That review appeared today.

As a frequent user of both virtualization packages, I really enjoyed this review since it gave me an excuse to dig deep on some things and to talk to the product managers for both.

One thing is clear: there's some stiff competition between Parallels and VMWare and the users are the winners. These are both great products that perform well. VMWare has a performance advantage--especially when you need multi-core performance. Parallels, I think, has a slight advantage in usability and a pretty big advantage--for now--in the way snapshots work.

Read the review for details, but here's the bottom line:

• VMware Fusion is a solid virtualization package for OS X that builds on VMware's long experience but offers a native Mac look and feel. Support for SMP and 64-bit operating systems make it the top choice for power users. Support for Windows is strong, but some switchers will find the sparse set of GUI-based management tools a turn-off.
• Parallels Desktop is an intuitive, easy-to-use virtualization platform for switchers who need to run Windows applications alongside OS X. Convenient, GUI-based tools and a quick Windows install are the product's real strengths. Lack of support for 64-bit operating systems and some versions of Linux won't matter to most users, but could be important to developers and others pushing the platform to the limit.

Both packages cost $79.

Tags: virtualization infoworld parallels fusion reviews

I am rather late on this news, but I haven’t seen anyone take this slant on it. As most of you are aware, Facebook has removed their notifications.sendRequest API method in favor of a more standardized invite interface for all their applications. This has several ramifications:

1. You are pretty much forced to use FBML now if you want an invite interface. IMO this is a good thing, and especially good for Facebook, as it means they have more control over the content of the applications on their platform. You can say goodbye to most of the applications using iFrames in the future.
2. All invite interfaces will pretty much look the same. Facebook has provided a few FBML tags that make creation of the friends list to select from, and form to send invites to very easy. I implemented this on all my applications last night and I have to say it’s quite slick. This also means more applications will have invite forms and will henceforth grow much faster. Expect to see many more invites in the coming weeks from various applications because of this.
3. All your base belongs to Facebook. Facebook now has much more control over how invite forms look and are used. On the other hand, developers have much less flexibility on how the invites are used. I am having a huge headache trying to figure out a way to get an invite link below your friends profile pics if you have the app installed on a few of my apps. Maybe Facebook doesn’t want it. Some theorize it’s because many developers have abused this interface.

I have mixed feelings about this interface. On one hand, this makes it extremely easy to create an invite interface. On the other hand, this puts everyone at a level playing field, keeping some of the more creative developers out of the game. I’ve seen similar things with the limits Facebook puts on various API calls. I would love to have Facebook notify you of every new SteepAndCheap.com product on my SAC App, for instance. The Spammers have ruined it for some really good ideas to come forth.

In all, this is good for Facebook. More people will use their applications, a trend they seem to be moving towards lately. You see they’re putting a huge focus on this after opening their Apps Directory this last week. More exposure == more money for both Facebook and those developing their apps. In the end I think this is a good thing.

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So my old GPS is finally beyond hope.  It has fallen into a state that can only be deemed useless, and I need a new one.  I'm hoping to get some recommendations from folks about what GPS models features you like the most.  Some of my requirements include:

• Screen - not just tracking
• Topographical Maps
• Mac Connectivity - Preferably bluetooth

• Plot waypoints before a hike
• Use During a hike to verify location/path
• Little geocaching
• Exporting hike details to Google Earth, etc..

I was discussing with a client today about this, and realized I still had not blogged about this yet. Facebook has launched Developer Accounts. Now, no longer do developers have an excuse for errors on their pages, or sites going down because they are working on their production Facebook app, which is their only development environment to work in. Also, no longer do developers have to risk all their work deleted because they opened up a mock Facebook account and Facebook decided to kill it because it wasn’t a real person. I strongly suggest you start using this if you are a Facebook developer.

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A few months ago, Facebook announced they were releasing their platform to all developers via an open API. At the same time, they release an Application Directory indexing and categorizing all of the applications for their platform. I was wondering today if Twitter, who had an open API even before Facebook, had the same thing. It turns out they do, and it’s on the Fan wiki:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps

Not quite 5000+ like Facebook, but there are quite a number of apps I didn’t know about. What Twitter apps are your favorites?

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Apple - are you listening? I’ve got a tip for you that I’m pretty sure could very well be a solution to all your woes. Ars Technica today released new information about Apple’s new SDK and how they will continue to be web based. The article mentions the updates will be “released soon”. I actually like this idea - I see the future of operating systems as web-based, and Apple IMO is on the right track, making the AJAX SDK much more similar to what you could do with a normal SDK.

Apple - you’re on to something here with this update to be released soon after the last update - stay agile! Steve Jobs mentioned fighting the iPhone hackers was a “cat and mouse game.” He then followed it with, “I don’t know if we’re the cat or the mouse”. Apple - the object is to stay the mouse, constantly having to be chased by the cat. So long as you’re the mouse, the hackers will never keep up.

How do you become the mouse? Constantly release updates, faster than the hackers can keep up! Release new feature after new feature. Keep giving your customers more - they’re hungry for it! I guarantee you Apple, if you can keep your customers satisfied with lots and lots of new, cool stuff, they’ll ignore that their phones can’t be hacked until that stupid relationship you have with AT&T expires and you can truly allow your phone on multiple networks.

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Are you in Utah? Do you like getting the latest news, as it happens? Do you like giving back to society?

Well I may have something for you. I’d like to announce the new Twitter Bot, “SLCNews”. The way it works is if you see news happening in your area, you generally can report the news much faster than a News reporter who has to get to the scene. Citizens are usually the first reporters on the scene of a major event, yet the reporters always get the credit. With this Twitter bot, if you see news happening in your area, report it by direct messaging the Twitter user slc news, followed by a short amount of text describing the event happening. All people following the user slcnews will then get Twitter updates (usually on their cell phones) that share with them the news happening. The idea is if enough people pitch in, your news will be much more on time, much more accurate, and very on the scene. I can see this meshing with Twittergrams, links to Flickr photos, etc. all from your cell phone (on your cell phone, all you have to do to send a message to slcnews is to send a text message to 40404 that says “d slcnews accident on I-80″ or whatever the news that is happening).

So if you’re on Twitter and live in Utah, please do your part to the community and follow SLCNews! If you’re not on Twitter yet, please click on the link above and join! If there were ever a reason to join Twitter, this is that reason! If you like this and don’t live in Utah, let me know and maybe I’ll add your city next.

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With yesterday’s announcement of the statusUpdate API call in Facebook, my thoughts have been going wild on what this means. This was clearly done for Twitter and other status update sites out there. I can also see some cool uses for it in other applications too.

One thing this does hint at, whether Facebook is thinking about it or not, is the possibility of a common logon system similar to Microsoft’s Passport or OpenID. The next step Facebook should take is open their authentication system up in the API. Currently, you can get a user logged into Facebook via the API. Facebook now needs to package this and market it as a complete solution to sites like Twitter to get them to base their user profiles off of Facebook profiles. I would prefer this method personally, as I only need to update my profile in one place (Facebook), and then I can use Twitter for all my other status needs.

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Finally! The moment has come! Soon you’ll be able to just update Twitter and magically your Facebook profile will update to what your current Twitter status is. This is big news, and great for Twitter, as now users can focus their updates in Twitter, what it was made for, and not worry about updating in a million places.

I have yet to see the feature on the Twitter app, but it was only released yesterday, so I expect to see it soon. The only main disadvantage I see to the feature is now when you send @so-and-so your Facebook friends won’t really know what you’re talking about. Do I see an acquisition down the road by Facebook?

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I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile, and I’m really glad Thom blogged about it today. I’d like to introduce you to Thom Allen. Thom’s a great programmer and a good friend of mine that I met through the blogosphere and Twitter. Thom actually lives just down the road from me practically.

Thom reminded me the other day that he too is a Facebook Developer and is open to new projects. Thom’s very capable and I’m sure would do well for your next Facebook project. So if you need a Facebook Developer (I’m pretty booked right now, but hey contact me too!), Thom would be a great choice to get the job done.

If you are a Utah Facebook Developer and would like me to feature you on the site, give me a ring!

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Thom Allen inspired me to take some pictures of my blogging station. Looking at some of the others out there, mine’s not quite as simple. I guess when it comes down to it, the Mac in the middle is all I really use to blog, but everything else plays such a large part in the content of my blogs that I thought I’d include it. Some of the pictures are a bit blurry, but in them, you’ll see 3 laptops (a Linux, a MacBook, and a Windows laptop), a Windows Vista (64-bit) desktop, a Ham Radio station, a picture of my wife, an iPhone, 2 scanners, and a printer. I should have also included the Digital Rebel XT I shot the pictures with (that I forgot to turn on my flash or use a tripod obviously) as well, as that has been used in several of the posts I’ve written. For your enjoyment, here is my blog station - how many bloggers can say they have a Single Side Band Ham Radio Tranceiver as part of their set up?:

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I was setting up a development account today for Facebook, and came across the below code. It looks like Facebook is adopting reCaptcha. I’m glad to see larger sites adopt this - it is a great way to give back to the community and I think will do wonders for the transcription of archive.org documents.

DigitalThom pointed out earlier today that you can’t comment on a mobile phone because of the ReCaptcha on this site. I’ll try to look at that and see if we can get that working so you can comment from your cell from now on.

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I was in the Apple Store today, and was having a really hard time finding help just getting a copy of iWork I wanted for my laptop. I usually don’t ask questions at these stores and generally know what I want - I’m an easy sale. The thought came to me as I was standing in a really long line of customers that Apple could solve this with a simple solution.

Most of the customers taking up associates’ time were just asking simple questions about their Macs, or what type of Mac they should get, etc. What if Apple were to offer a commission to their customers for every sale brought to the Cashier resulting in a customer helping another customer? I would be happy to stick around longer personally just for a little bit to help other fellow customers if I was given an incentive to do so.

Using this method would ensure the easy sales like me were taken care of, and those with just questions can get their questions answered by those actually using the product. We had a whole group of fellow geeks standing around in the store today talking about our iPod hacking experiences - I’m sure we could have been put to good use. This solution could apply to almost any electronics store, and I’m sure could save thousands to millions of dollars in employment fees and customer satisfaction.

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Many of my loyal readers recognize the strife I have with the iPhone. Its elegant, sexy interface is alluring, yet as it draws you in it immediately pushes you away like a magnet, turned the opposite direction in reverse polarity. My goal in buying an iPhone originally was to figure out how to write apps for it. With its AJAX browser interface it seemed not too complex an interface to actually use as a development platform. However, as I mentioned earlier, I bought it, and immediately returned it because I realized that first, I had no way of using my wonderful T-Mobile plan rather than being locked into a 2-year contract with AT&T, and second, the iPhone DOES NOT support 64-bit operating systems at the moment, and I’m not about to downgrade my OS for a simple phone.

So I just recently had the opportunity to buy a MacBook for my daily business efforts and Facebook development. I have owned Macs in the past, and find them ideal development desktop environments because I get the best of almost 3 worlds, the Mac, Unix, and Windows through Parallels. It’s an ideal testing environment for a web developer.

The same day I bought it (yesterday), it was announced that finally a free unlock solution was available to free yourself from AT&T. Finally, I was in an ideal situation to buy an iPhone, try it out, review it, hack it to my T-Mobile, without having to switch carriers or downgrade my OS to an inferior architecture. I know, I’m a hypocrite, but all along I’ve really just been trying to make this work and Apple just wouldn’t let me!

I’ve realized my belief in that is completely wrong. I now totally understand why Apple is locking people into AT&T (why no 64-bit support, I have no idea)! You see, Apple knew people would unlock their phone. They know us developers way too well. Yes, we would complain and gripe, but Apple knows we all secretly love their products.

The issue is, Apple needed carriers to embrace and support their phone to make it big and “cool” in the market. Scoble says all you need to be cool is a small group to promote the heck out of your product. Verizon actually turned them down in initial deals. GSM I belive is a better network worldwide, so I believe they started seeking out partners in the GSM market. AT&T was the biggest US partner so they worked out a deal with them, which was a huge bonus for Apple, as they had exclusive marketing rights at AT&T stores all across America.

You see, Apple knew people would complain about being locked into one provider. The thing most people are neglecting (including myself) is that Apple knows their customers. They knew developers would soon hack the OS - it is a UNIX OS after all, and while they would have to protect their agreement with AT&T and try to patch the hacks, developers would always get around that until AT&T caved and let them just leave it open to the hacks. The iPhone would expand into other markets, and voila, Apple has T-Mobile and other GSM providers without even trying!

I hacked my iPhone last night. I now run my iPhone on T-Mobile, no contract, and excellent customer service! I have a shell prompt into my iPhone. I can ssh and SFTP into my iPhone. It was actually unbelievably (with a few quirks) easy to set up! Will Apple update it in the future? Probably, but you can also bet hackers will quickly have a new hack to keep it unlocked - there is no way around it, and Apple knows this. They built the software to make working around the hackers hard! I find it very hard to believe this wasn’t part of their underlying business strategy.

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I mentioned this earlier, and only learned about one other Utah Facebook Developer. Today the question was raised again as someone contacted me, looking for Facebook developers in Utah. I only had one person to refer them to. Are you a Facebook developer? If so, please comment below and I’ll send you referrals!

As for other alternatives, if you are a business owner looking to launch a Facebook application and are looking for a Utah-based Facebook developer, I suggest choosing a good developer, and having them learn Facebook as part of the spec for the project. Any good developer should be able to learn Facebook in not too much time. Frankly, most Facebook Developers I know are in entrepreneurial mode right now, as there is simply too much money in this area to pass up!

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I have yet to see this on Techmeme or elsewhere - feel free to Digg it up! It looks like as of this morning, iPhoneSimFree has announced their list of vendors, which have begun to take orders for the iPhone unlocking software. This is a pure software unlock that is set to release your iPhone from Cingular to use on any Cellphone network.

The software begins in the US at $99 from Wireless Imports. However, from their T’s & C’s it says:

“Please be aware you are purchasing software that will be installed on your computer which will unlock your phone via wifi. In the event Apple comes out with a new firmware upgrade which will lock your phone again you hereby agree that Wireless Imports nor its vendor will be held liable or responcible for unlocking your handset again. If your handset becomes locked you will be charged to unlock it again. “

Hmmm…$99…for something that isn’t even guaranteed will work for much longer, I think I’ll pass for now. Based on the above text you will need to pay $99 each time they release an update to bypass any of Apple’s efforts to re-lock it. I’m willing to almost guarantee that will happen, too, so purchase at your own risk. It also looks like software that’s to be shipped - not sure if a downloadable option will become available.

You can see the list of vendors selling the software at:

http://www.iphonesimfree.com/cgi-bin/iphonesimfree/engine.pl?page=buy

For me, I think I’ll wait for a T-Mobile version (that supports 64-bit) iPhone.

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I blogged in fury yesterday about my experience of buying an iPhone and not being able to even use it. That iPhone is now sitting on my desk, calling to me, “use me!…use me!”. I can’t turn away from it. So…pretty. So…alluring. Must…resist…temptation. I’m very tempted now to hold it until the unlocking software comes available for purchase. I’m also very tempted to downgrade my Vista to 32-bit so I can just use it. Apple - see what you’re doing to me! I’m entrapped in the throws of your merciless marketing schemes! What do you think? Is it worth my sacrifice just to use an iPhone? Or should I return it to the store on Monday?

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Okay - I admit. I just barely turned it on. I still hate it! More on that in a minute.

I decided today, for some business reasons (trying to learn how to develop for an iPhone) to go out and buy an iPhone. Yes, I’ve read all the articles and did my research before-hand (see my previous articles here and here). I knew there was a chance I’d be switching to AT&T and footing around $100 for an early termination fee (which I was going to try a few tricks to get out of). Frankly, that didn’t matter to me because the iPhones are now cheaper than the new Treos, and to me it made it worth it. Plus, it was a deductible business expense!

Well, I’m definitely having buyer’s remorse and will probably (if I can give up that alluring, shiny screen I can’t get past the first screen on) be returning it on Monday. I don’t see how anyone could be using these things!

I opened it up - very nice, pretty packaging that Apple is known for. Inside was the beautiful, sexy iPhone calling to me. “Activate me! Activate me!” it said. The minute I removed the packaging it knew to turn on (magic!). What do you know - it said “Activate me!” right there on the screen! (okay, something to that effect) I press the button that says “Activate me!” Nothing. I start pressing buttons. Nothing. I soon realize that you need to connect it to iTunes to get it working. I’ll get to that in a minute.

I mentioned I hated it before turning it on - that’s still true. Before even opening it, I know very few people that just love AT&T. In fact, I don’t think I know anyone that does. Some like it, lots hate it. I love T-Mobile, so I DO NOT want to switch to AT&T if I don’t have to. Not just that, but they lock you into a 2 year contract! Why risk getting stuck with horrible service for 2 years when I’m already in a wonderful, loving relationship?

So I started surfing around the internet for unlock solutions. I had heard this was now possible, and figured I’d now start researching it. After all, I had already unlocked my T-Mobile MDA and upgraded it to Windows Mobile 6 - how hard could it be? It turns out you either a) need to open up the case, pull out a soldering iron, risking explosion and other mishaps - not to mention voiding your warranty in the meantime, b) buy a custom SIM card and perform a few software updates (ok, that’s an option), or c) wait for a new software hack by iphonesimfree that they are saying they will start selling as a download on their site soon. Cool - I’ll just wait for option C and I’ll be able to keep it with T-Mobile, right?

Well, wrong. It turns out I can’t even use the thing.

I decided to follow the instructions and hook it up to iTunes. iTunes popped up, and said “Please connect iPhone to a computer running a 32-bit version of Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista.” What? I recall no warnings about this by the sales people. I see no large print signs warning users of this (this is a big thing, right? I mean 64 bit is all computer manufacturers are making now isn’t it?). So I decide to upgrade iTunes to 7.4.1 to see if maybe it’s fixed in there (after all, everything else in iTunes works great on Vista 64 bit!). I start the install process, it downloads the files, and all of the sudden I get an error saying, “Errors occured while installing updates.” I try multiple times, with the same error - does iTunes itself no longer support Vista 64 bit? Are they moving back in time? What gives Apple?

Apple, I think I may just consider a Zune after this experience.

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As part of my research for last Thursday’s UPHPU meeting about search engine optimization, I reviewed a new book:  Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A Developer’s Guide to SEO by Jaimie Sirovich, Cristian Darie, published in April 2007 by Wrox. In my opinion, SEO should be a part of every developer’s training. The book covers all the basics, debunks a few myths, advises on how to avoid black hat SEO attacks, talks about foreign language SEO, and rounds out with chapters including an e-commerce case study and SEO for WordPress.

You can find a more detailed review of Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP at designsimply.com.