Hair On Fire

Must... stay... current...

2012-01-05T10:04:00.003-07:00

Got a note from Amazon telling me that they were going to drop my RSS feed from the Kindle library if I didn't post more. So here you are Amazon. I'm posting.

Here's what the letter looked like.

Why Instagram is successful

2011-11-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

"That transformed the way I looked at photography—from trying to replicate reality into taking a scene and creating some kind of interpretation of its mood" - Kevin Systrom

Read more

Technology means never getting lost again

2011-10-05T00:42:00.001-06:00

When I was about 9, my family went on a three day camping trip in the mountains. I don't remember the area or who we were with, but there were a few family friends in tow; it was a simple point to point trip and the plan was to camp along the way. As luck would have it, we got lost on the first day. After bumbling around in the woods for a bit, we eventually found our way, but in the process of doing so we'd covered something like 12 miles. It was probably less, but at the time it felt like 100. It was significant to me for a few reasons: for one, i'd never walked that far in my life, and secondly, it was an exercise in trying not to absolutely lose it to the fear of being lost in the woods forever. Of course that would never happen even in the most dire circumstances, but for a tired, scared 9 year old, it seemed like a definite possibility. But what's surprising was that it wasn't the only time we'd been temporarily 'confused' as to our whereabouts. It seemed to happen quite frequently whenever we went somewhere new. It was just one of those things that happened, and as terrifying as it was, it was part of the process of discovering new adventures and experiences.

Fast forward a few years. (Ok maybe 30) The other day I was on my bike, on a new trail i'd never riden before, and it finally dawned on me that there really is no excuse for getting lost anymore. There are simply too many ways to figure out where you are. At any point during the ride I could have pulled out my phone and used the map application to pinpoint my location. If I didn't have a cell signal, I had my GPS on my wrist and within a button press or two I could get my GPS coords (not really that helpful) or just take a look at how far away I was from the pre-loaded route. In preparation for the ride, I'd also taken the same route file that I loaded into my watch and uploaded it to Google earth, so I could get a better sense of what the trail looked like, and more importantly, what the surrounding area looked like. I knew there would be climbs & descents, but reading a route description pales in comparison to a 3D rendering of the topology.

So from the phone to the GPS device to just the memory of what the trail would look like from Google Earth, I had no concern about losing my way, nor did the thought even cross my mind. Knowing where I am is something I take for granted now.

I know the technology has been around for years, but its never been easier than it is today to preview, track and record your whereabouts. Gone are the days of orienteering, i'll never buy a compass or topo map again. Score one for technology. Technology has really become a means to an end. The end of getting lost.

And so it begins....

2011-01-03T08:27:00.004-07:00

Another year is here, begging the question, "what have you done for me lately?"

Resolutions are bunk. They are drunk, empty promises on New Year's Eve. Resolutions have no teeth, the very word is mealy. Not as strong as a "decision" or as concrete as a "vote", it represents a hollow resolve of unfilled wants.

I made a resolution this year to blog more. Let's see how that shakes out. :)

Quark & TapLynx Webinar

2010-09-07T14:48:00.002-06:00

Following our recent announcement with Quark - we're putting together a webinar to talk through using the Quark Publishing System (QPS) and to quickly create branded iPhone and iPad applications with TapLynx.

Here's the information - hope you can join!

Automatically Publish News to the iPhone and iPad

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Session 1: 10am ET | 8am MT | 7am PT Register to attend this session.
Session 2: 12pm ET | 10am MDT | 9am PDT Register to attend this session.

iPad News Apps

2010-04-11T12:19:00.001-06:00

A screen by screen comparison of the first round of iPad apps from USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, BBC, AP, Reuters, NPR - focusing on interaction models, advertising and editorial.

iPad News Apps

View more presentations from Walker Fenton.

Skiing Valhalla

2010-03-20T23:27:00.006-06:00

Finally got a minute to string together some clips from Skiing last month. The outfit was Valhalla Powdercats outside Nelson, BC. Good fun - runs are relatively short, but great steeps and trees. Vid best played at Youtube (720p)

Dachis SBS2010, SXSW & Communitellegence

2010-03-19T17:57:00.008-06:00

Last week I got a chance to do a bit of travelling on rather short notice - first to NYC and then Austin, TX for a few conferences on social media.

Its always good to get on the road and talk to people - this trip was especially interesting as I got to have open and honest dialogs with the people who are implementing the social media & collaboration strategies within their organizations. To hear their challenges and roadblocks, no matter whether they are culture changing challenges or small provincial roadblocks is always eye opening and helpful. There is no better way to learn.

Communitelligence
The first stop was NYC to lead a panel on the Future of Intranets at Communitelligence. This Communitelligence conference was primarily geared towards marketing communications professionals who build, run and maintain corporate intranets. Most of the presentations were from companies talking about and showing off what they were building, the goals they were trying to reach and the challenges they faced. Think "support group for folks on the bleeding edge of technology who carry the burden of educating and cheer-leading other employees within their organizations about the value of using their newly minted portals which everyone discounted years ago when they were first introduced and useless" and you'll start to feel their pain.

Leading panels is always fun as you're not in the hot seat, you just need to keep the conversation going and find clever ways to cut off long winded questions (or responses) without sounding like a, uh, inconsiderate person. Being in Corporate Development is the perfect role for any panel emcee, since the nature of the job is to know just enough to be dangerous about just about everything. So along with my panelists, Christy Hahn from Nationwide and Patrick Durando from McGraw-Hill, we had a great conversation ranging everywhere from mobile to real time collaboration and everywhere in between. Judging from the sheer number of questions from the audience, there are some really interesting features/functions that everyone is excited to implement, but we have a lot to figure out as these new technologies are put into practice.

Dachis Social Business Summit #SBS2010
My second stop was a one day adjunct conference to SXSW called the Dachis Social Business Summit. The goal of the conference was to share tactical advice on social media strategy - and to give us perspective we heard from some of the social media pioneers from Comcast, KFC, Intuit to tell us how they are going about it. There were other speakers as well - from vendors to social media analysts and marketers, there were 16 speakers in total.

Some of the interesting takeaways from the day: Charlene Li continues to be an oracle in this space - she has a fantastic way of breaking down all that's happening into digestible morsels, and a way of helping us all see into the future a bit. Plus she's just a great presenter.

There were a few talks that referenced the value and power of motivating and encouraging the top 1% of your communities. Jackie Huba told a fantastic story about the Discovery Education Network that should be taught in any social media seminar. Frank Eliason (@comcastcares), another great presenter, told some really impactful stories about his experience leading the charge at Comcast - and the importance of personalization in support and how "social media will guide your organization if you use if you use it effectively". Seems to be working at Comcast. All in all, it was a fantastic experience, very well put together and a great lineup.

Last but not least, SXSW.
Now before I go off on a rant about how SXSW has obviously jumped the shark, I have to disclose that i'm way to old and uncool to try to pull off 5 sleepless days and nights in Austin, so this all may just be sour grapes. I don't own skinny jeans, don't have a faux-hawk, no longer write code, and next time I have to wait in lines like that there'd better be a mermaid or stuffed mouse at the other end to take pics with my kids and make their YEAR. If you need it spelled out I was not that impressed with SXSW. I think its a great place to network (i.e. stalk people on foursquare) and embrace the geek vibe, but the sessions were mostly useless and i'm not one to go out until 8:00am, if I even make it to midnight. So I think I missed out on the true benefits of the conference. So be it. Next year i'll send younger people. On the plus side, I did actually meet a bunch of the folks I wanted to meet - and had some conversations that I wouldn't normally have. So that was good. And I got this weird 'stalker' badge in foursquare, but i'm not sure what that means?

Your self selected collective

2010-02-11T09:19:00.006-07:00

Google Buzz - Day #2. Not limited by 140 chars, there's the potential of writing a longer post (as i've seen others do) but there is a place for blogging, and its not in buzz. Buzz still feels like a place to share links, pics, whatever with your people.

Interesting to go through the "do I follow back" question yet again. In Twitter, I paid attention to that, I don't want to go through that time suck again.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was some way to select which audience/community you might affiliate with? Then if buzz would allow me to post messages direct to that community... (Facebook does it, Social Sites does it)

But more importantly, I think there should be more effort towards encouraging like-minded audiences to aggregate into the same community - I don't want to be invited to 18 different groups for the latest cause-du-jour, as having a fragmented audience defeats the purpose of having a collective voice. If there was only one "I bet we can find a million people to support ...blah...." group instead of two, you'd get to your goal twice as easy...

Anyway, it will be interesting to see the list of people who 'follow' me grows over time. I'm going to guess that once this initial frenzy calms down - the discovery process for new people will be an interesting one. Imagine doing a google search and not only getting back a list of links, but also a list of the Google profiles of people associated with that link?

I'm going to guess thats not far off.

TapLynx. iPad. Get your app on.

2010-01-27T17:44:00.003-07:00

Loving the iPad announcement today and all the buzz around it. Here's the best news - TapLynx creates iPad apps - right out of the box.

And we're already reviewing the iPad SDK to see what else we can do.

This is going to be fun.

"If you're not on the iPhone, you don't exist"

2010-01-21T08:31:00.008-07:00

I've been getting some feedback recently over some comments I made at Digital Hollywood @ CES that sounded like a mandate for companies to get on the iPhone. Our friends over at Cult of Mac called it out, but the story was then picked up by others...

While the quote is fairly sensationalist, the point i'm trying to get across is that we (the collective 'we') aren't going to spend less time on mobile phones / tablets / mobile internet devices - so if you want to be in front of your customers/audience, you need to be on mobile, starting with the iPhone. Its really that simple. iPhone has the audience and the methods to allow you to effectively get your brand, your content, your game, your whatever in front of your audience.

We aren't going to see less of our mobile phones. This is not a pendulum like public opinion. Our mobile phones, like other techological improvements before it are going to be more ubiquitous (and hopefully more useful), until we reach the law of diminishing returns, and phone manufacturers realize that no matter how many bells, buzzers and text messages you send me, i'm still not going to send my Christmas thank you letters until Easter, even if the phone writes them for me. But, uh, that might be another story entirely.

NewsGator buys Tomoye!

2010-01-21T00:44:00.002-07:00

Big news at NewsGator - we've aquired a Canadian company, Tomoye, a well known player in the space of Enterprise Social Computing. Fantastic. Details here

Digital Hollywood @ CES 2010

2010-01-10T10:17:00.005-07:00

I had the pleasure of participating on a Digital Hollywood Panel at CES last week, titled "iPhone Apps – Change Agents – App Breakthroughs, Video, Games, Mobile Engagement and Advertising". It was a good panel, well organized and represented by Fandango, ESPN, FISHLABS, Freeverse and myself. Since the session was not recorded, I thought I might share some of the Q&A from the event.

·         How do you make money with applications?

There are three primary ways to make money in the iPhone - charging for applications, advertising and charging for premium content. Which method you use depends a lot on the content and your audience. Here are a few examples:

For Variety & All Things Digital, they are primarily serving news, so they have chosen advertising as their method of choice.

For STRATFOR, a publisher of global intelligence for fortune 500 CEOs, they are using Apple's in-app purchasing to allow their audience to purchase a monthly subscription to their content on the phone.

For Discovery News & Ad Age, the content is free, but they are charging people for the application.

Short answer: how you monetize your app will depend on your audience and your content.

·         How do you differentiate an app in today’s world? How is this likely to change?

Our perspective is that differentiation comes from the content - the app is just a window frame. Having said that there has been significant work that we've done to handle content appropriately - so that you can take advantage of the iPhone experience, including swiping, zooming, etc. But that's not really the question - the real question is, "since there are a dozen other skiball apps, hollywood news apps, sport scores apps, how do you get your app noticed?

Currently the majority of people still 'discover' new apps via the app store home page in iTunes. The second main source for discovery is from friends. Very soon we'll start to see the viral loops kick in (just as we saw with widgets) and app developers will think of new ways to get users to pass apps to other users quickly and easily...

·         What will define a successful app in the future?

As it has in the past. ROI.

·         Most apps now are consumer focused, do you have thoughts on what enterprise apps might look like?

Were currently working on an iPhone application which is a companion to our enterprise product, Social Sites, extracting just the essentials for the iPhone experience - the activity stream, contact information, etc. The overarching theme for any mobile application is that the experience has to be appropriate for the device. Regardless of what it is you are delivering on the phone, be it a game, a report or a message - its important to remember that you aren't on a computer (although people like to call it that) - you are on a device that fills in gaps while you're traveling, commuting, or just have a few minutes to kill. Mobile devices are best at keeping the conversation fluid.

Its Good to Give

2009-12-20T08:14:00.001-07:00

It's Good to Give from Chris Dealy on Vimeo.

... or else

TapLynx put to the test

2009-10-14T01:19:00.006-06:00

We've been promoting how easy it is to use our iPhone Application framework - TapLynx - and how anyone can do it without writing any code. So I thought I might give it a try and see if the framework lives up to the promise.

I don't code but I can stumble my way around Photoshop, and there is a Mac laptop that we use for testing that already has Xcode on it. How hard can it be? As it turns out, its a bit more involved than our widget framework, but not by much.... oddly enough most of the difficulty comes from getting set up with Apple which was a bit of a surprise given how elegant their interfaces are.

So here's how it went-

1) Got my Apple account.
Any app developer needs to get an account as a registered Apple developer, and you'll need to join the iPhone developer program for $99/yr (standard program will do). If you sign up as an individual, signup is immediate, and you'll be accepted into the program as soon as your credit card clears. If you are a company, there are forms to fill out, you need proof of your business, and if you get stuck you'll be dialing an 800 number in Scotland. It takes a few weeks.

2) Got a copy of the TapLynx SDK. Free download, easy.

3) Made an app & built it.
For those of you who are ventureing into Xcode for the first time (like I did), there is a getting started guide on the NewsGator wiki. All I did was to follow the 'getting started' section to get set up, then followed the instructions in this aptly named doc "Where to get RSS content from your favorite sources", which helped me grab some RSS feeds from my blog, youtube, twitter, picasa accounts and threw them together into the configuration file. It was surprisingly easy. Then spent some time in Photoshop making a splash screen, icons, and built the app. I felt quite proud of my 45 minute investment thus far.

4) Loaded it on the iPhone
This is where I had to pay a little more attention. Apple makes it easy for you to get your app running in the simulator, and even to load the app onto a device that is teathered to your computer. When you'd like send the app to someone so they can also try it out - its called an 'ad-hoc build' and it takes several steps, but these steps are very well laid out in the iPhone developer portal.

4a - create your development provisioning profile (login)
4b - register the UDIDs (login) for any external iPhone/iTouch you want to send your application to (or skip this if you're only going to load onto a tethered device)
4c - Finally, follow the directions for creating an 'ad-hoc' distribution

So i'm now a few hours into my app (I re-did my splash screen & icon again) and i've managed to spit out a zip file with my app and a mobileprovision file that I can send to my friends and neighbors to graciously offered to look at the Frankenstein I created. After some quick feedback from them, (most said "keep your day job") I was ready to upload my app to Apple.

5. Uploaded to Apple
This process is pretty straightforward, quite frankly it was more effort to put together an ad-hoc distribution than it was to upload to Apple. But there were a few gotchas I ran into regarding having the right icon sizes & screenshots - see this doc on iPhone graphicsfor more detail on what Apple needs to accept your app.

Then I waited. Apple says that 95% of all apps are accepted within 14 days. That's a pretty safe timeframe for planning purposes but it seemed to take forever. Secretly i'm kind of glad that it takes 14 days to approve for a few reasons:

1) I'll never have to do it again. The configuration file that I filled out that determines look/feel/content in the app lives online. I can make as many changes as i'd like without having to re-upload my app. That alone is worth the price of admission in my book.

2) the longer it takes other apps to get in, the more chance I have to get noticed amongst the other apps already in there. :)

When Apple says your app is "in Review" there is nothing you can do but wait. There is no visibility into the process, which may be by design, but is likely because they are slammed & don't have time to get into a discussion with developers about their apps. Decisions are swift and App store selections are binary. You either get in or you don't. If your app gets rejected, you start over at the back of the line. So having all the flexibility of changing whatever I want whenever I want is pretty nice.

All in all, the process of building the app was fun. It was really easy - and I'm happy to report that the framework does live up to its promises. I didn't write a stitch of code, and it was quick to put together. Brent did a fantastic job.

Want to check it out? Follow this link to download the app to your iPhone or iPod Touch. Let me know what you think!

Mobile = Web 1.0 (all over again?)

2009-10-08T00:13:00.004-06:00

The Software Business Online conference was last week in San Diego (Software Business Online - Sept 29, 2009) - I had the honor of presenting NewsGator's iPhone Framework, TapLynx, to a few hundred entrepreneurs, vcs & business development folks. The title of the presentation was actually "How Branded iPhone Applications Can Increase Your Audience Size and Produce Revenue", or "Why you should take a closer look at TapLynx" for short :).

One of the core points I was trying to make in the presentation is that the current mobile market is facing a lot of the same market dynamics that we saw 15 years ago when the web was getting started: there are/were lots of devices getting online (data plans on phones are relatively new), technology getting simpler (anyone remember trying to establish a PPP connection on a dial up modem?), and ultimately every company needed a website, much like the rampant demand for mobile applications now. Last May there were 35,000 apps in the app store, now five months later, there are 85,000. We can only hope to continue on the same trajectory.

2009 Software Business San Diego - Walker Fenton

View more presentations from Walker Fenton.

Original Twitter-ers: Church marquees

2009-09-20T00:22:00.000-06:00

Every digital innovation has an analog predecessor. Newspapers gave birth to radio, TV and the web, digital photography has replaced traditional film, snail mail has given way to e-mail & SMS, etc. Most of what we figure out in the digital world is an evolution or modification of an analog equivalent. No secret there.

Twitter also has a few analog parents but one stands out- they both consist of short messages that are used to make a statement, share news or attract attention, and whether you read them or not is based on being at the right place at the right time. The original twitter-ers/tweeters are Church marquees.

Let's start with the obvious. They are short form content. Twitter is 140 chars, Church marquees are limited only by the space on the sign and the size of the plastic letters.

They are both better served by attracting 'followers'. More twitter followers means more audience with which to share your wisdom/humor/self absorbed musings. More church followers means more people to absorb religious doctrines and fill the collection tray. Neither is better off in a vacuum.

They both use obscure shortcuts to 'link' to other content. Twitter-ers use URL shortners to point to referenced content. Church marquees use chapter & verse notation to point to specifc passages.

Whether or not you read the messaging depends on being at the right place at the right time. Depending on the number of people you follow on twitter and how active they are in a particular day, you may or may not see something that was tweeted because of the noise. Likewise with a Church marquee, you may or may not notice the marquee when you drive by...

With both, success depends on the quality of the lead. You will either pique someone's interest or you won't. Like any product slogan or tagline, there is an art in being able to communicate exactly what you want within a limited amount of space, and since there isn't really a way to do A/B testing in either medium, you'd better get it right, lest you'd prefer to tweet or preach into the ethereal, eternal bit bucket :)

Fun with Google Voice

2009-07-09T22:57:00.005-06:00

I got my Google Voice invite today, a mostly free service that gives me a new phone number and allows me to route calls to a variety of places- home/work/mobile/etc. Not one to turn down a beta invite, I signed up. First step, pick a new phone number. No pressure, right? You'll likely have this number for the rest of your life, so just pick one. Sure, I want it to be memorable. I would like it to be unique. I don't want it to spell something stupid like 'asshat'. I would like it to be in my home state so others aren't making long distance calls. Good thing Google has a way to search for the numbers that are available, right?. 30 minutes later i'm not that close to picking a number, but I found some good ones.

I started with what I thought were interesting number combinations, like searching for numbers with 6 zeros in them. Those are hard to come by, but I did find one from Delphi, In:

(765) 201-0101
I figured the area code was memorable as its sequential, as for the rest of the number, you only really have to remember its a '2' followed by lots of '01's. Cool, somewhat memorable, but I wanted to keep looking.

I then tried a bunch of random words/phrases:

(530) 426-2382
(530) IAM-BETA
Soda Springs, CA

(774) 264-8474
(774) ANG-UISH
Westport, MA

(920) 474-6635
(920) IPH-ONE5
Mapleton, WI

and then tried to get clever:

(707) 469-3277
(707) 4MY-EARS
Vacaville, CA

(530) 435-5663
(530) HEL-LOME
Gazelle, CA

and finally circling the drain:

(540) 748-8887
(540) SHU-TUUP
Louisa, VA

(775) 863-8669
(775) UNF-UNNY
Duckwater, NV

Ultimately I chose to go with the obvious. Its not my area code, I figure its a number that people will use to find me wherever I am - and hey - if they are in Verona, NJ, it will be a local call.

(973) 433-6866
(973) 4FE-NTON

Try it out - call or send me a text. Let's see how Google Voice works.

2009 Colorado Hajj

2009-06-27T10:33:00.002-06:00

Started innocent enough. Then came the weather. Seth Levine has a great write up of the adventure here, and here's the vid:

Colorado weather

2009-06-26T16:14:00.009-06:00

Three images taken within an hour of each other. Got to love Colorado weather.

Twitter echo chamber

2009-06-25T09:31:00.004-06:00

Check out today's Filtrbox email - great pickup from the TUAW coverage of our TapLynx app framework - but it also shows how Twitter is a massive echo chamber. Don't get me wrong, i'm grateful for the mentions - but as we head down this road of trying to generate signal from noise, this is a great example of the challenge ahead. There are a few retweets in there, and a few others that start off with the same sentence "TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming", but other than that, there isn't a ton to hang on to for deduplication or clustering.

The url shortners alone - almost every tweet in the list points to one - are almost all unique. Of the 46 tweets, there are 26 unique urls from 9 different systems - each pointing to the same place.

http://tinyurl.com/m4zb87

http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk

http://tinyurl.com/l7b2o5

http://tinyurl.com/krm8fa

http://tinyurl.com/n5tqf4

http://tinyurl.com/mhc6xd

http://is.gd/1buqF

http://bit.ly/UZ7lM

http://bit.ly/1aCqTr

http://bit.ly/13T7bU

http://bit.ly/14t7qf

http://bit.ly/qcy7d

http://bit.ly/lQT1e

http://bit.ly/mblTv

http://bit.ly/boAv1

http://bit.ly/fhvZs

http://bit.ly/2Iqcq6

http://bit.ly/M7cqc

http://ff.im/-4m7wx

http://ff.im/4m7il

http://twurl.nl/zaxaxg

http://twurl.nl/sv8051

http://tr.im/px3e

http://minurl.org/yajD3

http://ow.ly/15G1x6

http://cli.gs/25nHR

I wonder if we'll get SEO credit from these links - or if Google, Bing & others are even set up yet to unobfuscate these tiny urls...

	"Proactive Market Intelligence"

Top 10 most active Filtrs in the last 24 hours
Filtr Name	New Articles	Trend (1 day)
taplynx	46 new	24.3%

NewsGator46 new article(s)			Filtr
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/macfreaker	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://ow.ly/15G1x6 TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://ow.ly/15G1x6 ...http://twitter.com/ChargedMobi	taplynx
4	06/24	tuaw TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, i.. http://tinyurl.com/l7b2o5 tuaw TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, i.. http://tinyurl.com/l7b2o5 ...http://twitter.com/mr_rss	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk from @iNewsApp TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk from @iNewsApp ...http://twitter.com/erubinoff	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming. http://www.tuaw.com/category/iphone/ TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming. http://www.tuaw.com/category/iphone/ ...http://twitter.com/AtomicShroom	taplynx
4	06/24	TUAW.com covers TapLynx: http://twurl.nl/sv8051 TUAW.com covers TapLynx: http://twurl.nl/sv8051 ...http://twitter.com/taplynx	taplynx
4	06/24	iPhone app development just got easier - TapLynx allows custom newsreaders to be constructed without coding.... http://tumblr.com/xv12519k5 iPhone app development just got easier - TapLynx allows custom newsreaders to be constructed without coding.... http://tumblr.com/xv12519k5 ...http://twitter.com/TU_TechPedagogy	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - NewsGator's iPhone Application Framework http://www.taplynx.com/ TapLynx - NewsGator's iPhone Application Framework http://www.taplynx.com/ ...http://twitter.com/tewfiq	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - NewsGator's iPhone Application Framework http://bit.ly/M7cqc TapLynx - NewsGator's iPhone Application Framework http://bit.ly/M7cqc ...http://twitter.com/nuchef1956	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tr.im/px3e TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tr.im/px3e ...http://twitter.com/appletweets	taplynx
4	06/24	#iphone TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool to.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk #iphone TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool to.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/Iphoneblogs	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming. http://twurl.nl/zaxaxg TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming. http://twurl.nl/zaxaxg ...http://twitter.com/computertechie7	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/lastmacen	taplynx
4	06/24	[TUAW] TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk [TUAW] TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/apple_live	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://ff.im/4m7il TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://ff.im/4m7il ...http://twitter.com/katsanes	taplynx
4	06/24	Daily: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk Daily: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/readlittle	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://minurl.org/yajD3 #iPhone TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://minurl.org/yajD3 #iPhone ...http://twitter.com/iPhone_alerts	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://ff.im/-4m7wx TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://ff.im/-4m7wx ...http://twitter.com/iphonetastic	taplynx
4	06/24	TUAW TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, i.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk TUAW TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, i.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/myfeed	taplynx
4	06/24	TUAW: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/l7b2o5 TUAW: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/l7b2o5 ...http://twitter.com/macfeeds	taplynx
4	06/24	Apple News: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk Apple News: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/Apple_Wire	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iPod touchUsers of NewsGato.. TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iPod touchUsers of NewsGato.. ...http://twitter.com/tuawRSS	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/2Iqcq6 TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/2Iqcq6 ...http://twitter.com/appleworldwide	taplynx
4	06/24	TUAW: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/fhvZs TUAW: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/fhvZs ...http://twitter.com/oneofus	taplynx
4	06/24	TUAW - TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://bit.ly/boAv1 TUAW - TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://bit.ly/boAv1 ...http://twitter.com/cadesubs	taplynx
4	06/24	*post TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools,.. http://tinyurl.com/mhc6xd** post* TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools,.. http://tinyurl.com/mhc6xd ...http://twitter.com/jayshang	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://bit.ly/mblTv TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://bit.ly/mblTv ...http://twitter.com/katudonrss	taplynx
4	06/24	RT: @quanganhdo: #TapLynx seems to be very useful http://www.taplynx.com/ RT: @quanganhdo: #TapLynx seems to be very useful http://www.taplynx.com/ ...http://twitter.com/MrNhim	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/n5tqf4 TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://tinyurl.com/n5tqf4 ...http://twitter.com/themissingapple	taplynx
4	06/24	#TapLynx seems to be very useful http://www.taplynx.com/ #TapLynx seems to be very useful http://www.taplynx.com/ ...http://twitter.com/quanganhdo	taplynx
4	06/24	?????? TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/lQT1e ?????? TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/lQT1e ...http://twitter.com/applenewscentrl	taplynx
4	06/24	I was about to write off NetNewsWire for their RSS reader and now it looks like they're working on something else: TapLynx. I was about to write off NetNewsWire for their RSS reader and now it looks like they're working on something else: TapLynx. ...http://twitter.com/adamvl	taplynx
4	06/24	#TUAW: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://bit.ly/qcy7d #TUAW: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tool.. http://bit.ly/qcy7d ...http://twitter.com/michael_duvall	taplynx
4	06/24	Simply amazing! RT @MacNewsFeed: @TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/14t7qf Do it!! Simply amazing! RT @MacNewsFeed: @TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/14t7qf Do it!! ...http://twitter.com/appfreaks	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tinyurl.com/l7b2o5 TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tinyurl.com/l7b2o5 ...http://twitter.com/borsatoo	taplynx
4	06/24	#iphone NEWS: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... http://bit.ly/14t7qf #iphone NEWS: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... http://bit.ly/14t7qf ...http://twitter.com/iphone_newsfeed	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/1aCqTr TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/1aCqTr ...http://twitter.com/XombineIPhone	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/UZ7lM TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming http://bit.ly/UZ7lM ...http://twitter.com/GlobalMacInc	taplynx
4	06/24	NEWS: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... http://is.gd/1buqF NEWS: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... http://is.gd/1buqF ...http://twitter.com/iphone_newsfeed	taplynx
4	06/24	#iphone info: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed un.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk #iphone info: TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed un.. http://tinyurl.com/m8r9gk ...http://twitter.com/Iphoneblogs	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: (http://cli.gs/25nHR) #mac #iphone TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: (http://cli.gs/25nHR) #mac #iphone ...http://twitter.com/TND_Mac	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... - http://tinyurl.com/krm8fa TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... - http://tinyurl.com/krm8fa ...http://twitter.com/weightlossking	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx – Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... http://bit.ly/13T7bU TapLynx – Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... http://bit.ly/13T7bU ...http://twitter.com/bigWAVEdude	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming ...http://twitter.com/offerport	taplynx
4	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tinyurl.com/m4zb87 TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without programming: Filed under: Cool tools, iPhone, iP.. http://tinyurl.com/m4zb87 ...http://twitter.com/macatron	taplynx
2	06/24	TapLynx - Create iPhone focused newsreader applications without ... Users of NewsGator's NetNewsWire iPhone news reader have been waiting with bated breath forthe next iteration of the application, with the promise of the ability to mark news items unread and send articles to InstaPaper, amongst other ... ...myiphones.co.cc	taplynx

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#CoHajj

2009-06-20T18:38:00.001-06:00

A new definition for "reach"

2009-04-19T10:06:00.007-06:00

Today's definition of "reach" needs an overhaul, or perhaps an addendum. Wikipedia describes 'reach' as a the "total number of people exposed to a medium". FeedBurner calls it "the total number of people who have taken action — viewed or clicked — on the content in your feed."

"Reach" is a self-limiting measurement of the number of people your message will get be exposed to, defined specifically for broadcast messaging. Self-limiting in that there is no network effect, "Reach" describes the amount of people you might touch because you have a big microphone. So how do you describe the number of people touched because it was continually shared due to the allure of the content? "Viral" is close - but the word carries the baggage of skateboarding dogs and turntable cats. In the widget space, we measure this distribution through a "descendant rate" or "placement rate", but that doesn't really elucidate the power of an event like #motrinmoms or #amazonfail - or the gravitational slingshot you get when your photo or post is voted to the top of Digg.

We are not far from being able to evaluate individuals as channels for distribution around specific topics. But how do we quantify the performance of something like this, how do we monetize and most importantly, what do we call it?

Here are a few ideas:
Cassini (the space probe which used multiple gravity assists to get to Jupiter)
Ropedart
Catapult (though not great b/c that which is catapulted is typically only done so once)
Carry
Hop (as in network)
Suckerfish? (Remora)

Part of the fatal flaw of thinking this way is that reach denotes potential ("Hey Mr. Brand, your message will reach 100,000,000 people and each can become a customer") whereas you can't guarantee "Hops" (for lack of a better term). On the same token, a movie can't predict ticket sales, and they've figured that business model out...

Any ideas?

The Google of Metadata

2009-04-08T14:52:00.006-06:00

There are several systems available today that are doing their part to programatically watch, understand and extract interesting perspectives about the content flowing through the internet. NewsGator is one of them, although we are only doing a small portion of the work that people are interested in. We have attention data, topics and entities, (from our partners at mSpoke) but there are other data streams and metadata we don't have, and there are certainly other smart people trying to solve this problem.

What if there was a way to combine the efforts of all these disparate companies to know everything there is to know about a piece of content - and to be paid for their unique dataset or analysis?

A common architecture for enterprises who need this this information - a single set of APIs, a single SLA...

The "Google of Metadata" - a single place where you can understand not only the context of content, but also gain insight into its impact and reach of distribution.

I'm re-posting an ad

2009-03-27T01:00:00.002-06:00

I literally pulled this off of CNN.com. An ad. I don't even own a Honda.

President Obama

2008-11-04T23:40:00.002-07:00

On the front page of CNN.com, "Change has come to America".

This election season has been fantastic - people engaged, debating, reading the platforms, and most importantly, voting. I was mentioning to a friend the other day that in previous elections, I've felt like I was deciding between the lesser of two evils, this time that wasn't the case. Obama and McCain were strong competitors throughout the election season, they brought different ideas to the table, and now it seems we'll have the chance to try out Obama's. Hope they work.

Speaking of Elections..

2008-10-23T23:15:00.006-06:00

I've been nominated to serve on the board of the OpenSocial foundation, but I need your vote.

If you are not already a member of the OpenSocial foundation, you'll need to join by 10/29 - you can register here:
http://www.opensocial.org/opensocial-foundation/osf-membership-app

If you are a member, look for an email with your voting token, and then go here to cast your ballot.
http://www.opensocial.org/opensocial-foundation/election

NewsGator was a launch partner in OpenSocial, and all of our widgets today support the OpenSocial specification. The reason why i'm interested in serving on the board is to better represent our Media clients as the technology matures... we are off to a good start, but adoption is limited from the development community as the users haven't materialized. One way to get broader adoption is to help Media companies take advantage of the technology to better serve their audiences, which will drive usage and in turn encourage the development community to better support the spec. We at NewsGator are in a great position to help drive that effort, and a seat on the board of the OpenSocial Foundation will help us achieve these goals.

Thank you for your support.

Reuters 2008 Election Widgets

2008-10-03T14:58:00.004-06:00

The latest in our co-branded widget series has launched - and this time we are promoting headlines and video content from Reuters. The program is the same as we did around the Olympics with AFP, media and bloggers can create their own branded politics widgets with Reuters content (for free), sharing the highest quality content with their audience and driving links back to their site.

Here's one that the DenverPost put together (see it live):

This widget (one of three that we're offering) shows the latest video inline, and if you click on a thumbnail below the video, you'll go to a full media player on the Denver Post site. We're providing both the media player and the widget - each one is only a single line of javascript to deploy. All the Denver Post had to do was give us a logo and a page to point links to...

Would your audience like to have access to the political analysis and commentary from Reuters? Try it out

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

2008-09-21T11:13:00.001-06:00

Well said.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Kay

Business Week: Think Like a VC, Act Like An Entrepreneur

2008-09-04T09:55:00.002-06:00

A great article, worthy of a read. Some of my favorite sound bytes:

"Don't be afraid to be wrong—just don't stand still"

"Look for situations where the team or company has a distinct advantage against competitors; where you can leverage your resources, expertise, and relationships to create value."

Disaggregated audience means disaggregated content

2008-08-25T10:11:00.004-06:00

The Democratic National Convention is finally here, and there is way too much going on... so i've put together a list of a few of the places where you can see real time reports.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23dnc08
This searches the tweet-sphere for people using the #DNC08 hash tag in their tweets. Tough to get context from short form reports.

http://www.denverpost.com/live
Denver Post aggregating notes from their reporters around the city.

http://qik.com/dncwidget
Real time videos from people using the Qik broadcast video service.

PoliticsWest has pretty comprehensive coverage, although not realtime, and from the blogger angle, check out the Big Tent.

Got other sources? Leave a note in the comments.

UPDATE: Civic center seems to be a central spot for protests. Here's a webcam to watch the action: http://www.denverpost.com/dncall/ci_10284962

2008 Colorado Hajj

2008-08-12T08:44:00.007-06:00

For those of you who don't know the Hajj, it is the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Millions of Muslims make the journey every year as a show of solidarity to Allah, typically in December. I'm not Islamic and live no where near Saudi Arabia, but like the idea of a yearly pilgrimage, so a few years ago my fiend Pat Schwinghammer invited me on a rather adventurous climb, and we had so much fun we decided to make it a yearly thing, thus the Colorado Hajj was born. The ride starts at the steps of the Capitol in Denver, tops out at the summit of Mt Evans, then you turn around and ride back. All in all its about 150-ish miles and 14,000 ft of climbing.

This year I rode with Seth Levine, a first timer. Being from Boulder, he'd never ridden a single leg of the trip - not Lookout mountain, Idaho Springs to Echo Lake, or up to the top of Evans. Combine that with his bike setup of two chainrings (weekend warrior hill climber types like me have three) and its easy to see how the guy is a little crazy or a glutton for punishment. Or perhaps both.

We started our day at 3:40am to get to the capital at 4:00am. From there it was out 32nd to Golden, up Lookout to Gennessee (where we literally ), Evergreen and then breakfast in Idaho Springs before the last 27 mile, 7,000 foot climb. Breakfast this year meant Breakfast Burritos at Two Brothers Deli. Chorizo and eggs might not be the best choice nutritionally, but after 4 hours in the saddle it beats a powerbar.

The ride to Echo lake was beautiful, and the weather held for the trip to the top and back down to Echo lake again. Over squaw pass we weren't so lucky. Rain in your face at 30mph is about as fun as, well, rain in your face at 30mph, and it lasted until Evergreen...

All in all it was a great day - this was the first year that the ride was tweeted, next year we might upgrage to our own hashtag.

Update: The 2009 Colorado Hajj is going to be on June 20th this year. Starts @ 4:00am at the Capital, likely will last 13 hours. The ride is unsupported. And yes, we'll stop by Two Brothers for Burritos.

I look good on Cuil

2008-07-28T19:59:00.009-06:00

Like others, I was pretty excited to try out the new Cuil.com search engine. And like others, the first thing I googled, err, cuiled, was myself.

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=walker%20fenton&pi=0&sl=long

Page 1 was pretty accurate, a recent interview with Blogtalk radio and my twitter account showed up, followed by some random mentions. But starting on about page 3 I found the results got really interesting. For some reason, Cuil likes to attach 'relevant' images to results that may or may not have anything to do with the content. Take a look at this one:

Nice photo, but it isn't me. Nor is it the author of the post. The result links through to a press release on market wire. Interesting. A little further along I found this guy:

He's attached to a press release that I was quoted in for Rally Software circa 2004. Huh? Perhaps he works at Rally?

Here's the answer from cuil.com - faq #7

7. You have images beside your results. How do you pick which pictures to use?
We know from our research that people can make better and quicker decisions about relevance and quality when they can see an image from the website. We do our best to take images from Web pages that accurately reflect the content of the website. Many websites are full of images, so we use advanced algorithms to determine the best image to show the user.

In print I agree with that, I can make 'better and quicker' decisions when I see an image. But so much rides on that image... I found unknown guy #1 again next to a result that pointed to Jeremiah Owyang's blog. Again, I don't know this guy, and he's not Jeremiah. So why is he showing up in my search results?

I think Cuil should back off the photos until they are more accurate.

NewsGator / Gigya partnership

2008-07-22T08:53:00.003-06:00

As you may have read, NewsGator is partnering with Gigya to use the Wildfire sharing components on the back of our widgets. This is a big move for us, to date we've written and maintained our own sharing code, so to rely on a third party service for this critical technology was a significant decision. But as we quickly found out, the benefits easily outweighed the costs with respect to technology and the monetization options they bring to the table.

Without getting into too much detail on the technology, Gigya has put together a very efficient interaction model whereby their systems are not called until requested (by clicking on the 'get this' button on the widgets). What this means is that we are not dependent on their systems when the widget loads, which does not introduce another point of failure into the mix. I should also mention they've integrated into a few more destinations than we have :)

With regards to the monetization options, Gigya has a unique way of inviting people to install additional widgets during the sharing process. It feels like a welcomed add-on, "Since you're already installing a widget on iGoogle, would you like to install this one as well?" type experience. Its not intrusive, and advertisers and other widget makers will pay for the opportunity to be presented in that spot, and Gigya shares the proceeds.

So we're excited to be working with Gigya, we will both benefit from the shared experience.

I hit a scooter doing 20mph. Should I feel guilty?

2008-07-22T00:49:00.008-06:00

It happened at the perennial sufferfest known as the Mt. Evans Hillclimb. This year I was joined by a friend and race rookie, Seth Terry. The wreck (detailed below) wasn't much to write home about, but makes a good title :)

The race was especially challenging this year, the pain of ascent was directly correlated with the amount of time I didn't spend in the saddle this year. On the suckage scale, this ride went to eleven. This was my fourth year in the race and all of my times are still within 5%, albethey slower. So I guess that's ok.

The real motivator for me this year was a guy on a unicycle. I was stuck behind him on the bottom part of the course, which meant that anytime we past people they would cheer for him, then look at me with that 'you can do it' encouragement; but we both knew I was the guy who was losing to a unicycle. Truth be told, he is an amazing climber, and had there not been any flatter parts of the course (where I could shift up), he would have beat me.

Anyway, the real excitement this year was coming down the mountain. Since the citizen group started first, there were a ton of people still on the way up so uphill lane was off limits. And the downhill lane was fairly crowded as well, full of half lucid riders surviving at this point on fumes and hammer gels.

About 4 miles down I was following Seth and passed by a support scooter. The road was still fairly windy and steep, so we were all going at a pretty good clip; I think he was just trying to position himself better when the road opened up. But not 30 seconds later we rounded a corner and scooter guy spotted a rider in the uphill lane who had pulled over, and, being a support vehicle, decided to stop as well.

Now, perhaps I was a little too close, frankly I wasn't really paying attention as I half expected everyone headed downhill had the same goal of getting off the mountain as quickly as possible. So my hands were nowhere near the brakes when scooter guy hit his brakes and turned in front of me to help the wayward rider.

What happened next was a bit of a blur. I remember ping-ponging off scooter guy and careening into the uphill lane and eating it over the handlebars in the rocks. Scooter guy also fell over but since he was already slowing down, his pong to my ping wasn't nearly as dramatic.

After a few 'you ok?' exchanges, scooter guy took off, which seemed odd as now I was the one needing support. I tweaked my brake levers something ugly, dropped my chain, etc, all pretty minor considering the alternatives. After a few minutes to gather myself, I got back on the bike to try to catch up with Seth again.

Oddly enough, he'd also run into a rough patch on the descent with a front tire blowout during one of the straight sections. This was particularly lucky as front tire flats are really dangerous, especially on corners - so the fact that he'd been able to keep control of the bike after such an event was pretty impressive and lucky.

All in all it was a great day. I think next year i'll try to train a little more, perhaps i'll try riding a unicycle.

pics from the ride

Big in Japan

2008-06-26T08:57:00.003-06:00

We just announced a partnership with Digital Advertising Consortium (DAC) in Japan. Details can be found here.

Let the profile wars begin....

2008-05-10T00:48:00.001-06:00

MySpace, Google and Facebook all announce initiatives for sharing data between sites (but maintaining profiles). Mark the date. The profile wars have begun.

Business Week- Twitter Story #bwstory

2008-05-08T16:39:00.010-06:00

Stephen Baker is writing a story about Twitter, through Twitter. Its an interesting concept, to gather data for the story he's engaged in a very public discussion around the pros and cons of Twitter.

Here's the story. If you would like to follow the discussion from the tweet-sphere, the widget on the right will keep you up to date.

If you would like to contribute in the conversation, simply include #bwstory in your tweet.

How to make a successful widget, and what to avoid...

2008-05-06T10:28:00.006-06:00

Another question from the field - How to make a successful widget? I'll try to keep the answer short. In fact, here's the super-short answer. Widgets are successful when you are able to deliver the right content to enough of the right audience.

Breaking that down a little bit more, the success of a widget is defined simply through engagement and distribution. Engagement relates to the presentation of the widget and the content it serves. Distribution relates to whether the widget is getting in front of enough of the right people. Do those two really well, and you'll have a successful widget.

Sounds simple right? Sure. But "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry".

Here are the caveats - some of the places where widgets fall down

Engagement:
- widget is too complicated. Don't make the audience click to get to content (unless it's a big play button on a video). Users will look at the widget, then decide if they want to click. That first look is all you get to bring them in.

- fonts are too small, widget is too bland. Widgets always look great in development, but they have to compete with very busy pages. Pictures, big headlines, source content logos are always great ways to draw users into the widget.

- content doesn't look fresh. Did you forget to include a publish date in the widget? How often is the content getting updated? For most widgets, more content with frequent updates = better.

Distribution:
- widget is buried on your site. You can't put a widget 5 clicks deep in your site and expect people to find it. Widgets are like impulse purchases at grocery stores. They need to be displayed prominently in convienent places for people to pick them up.

- widgets are only deployed to the 'galleries'. Galleries don't work unless you are buying traffic and sending people there. Your audience doesn't spend a ton of time in the galleries looking for widgets.

I'll stop there - did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments

What is a placement rate?

2008-05-06T00:27:00.003-06:00

Since it has been asked - here's a definition of what we call a placement rate in widget-speak.

When a person clicks on some sort of 'get this' button (or equivalent) on a widget, then 'places' the widget on their social network profile, personal start page or blog, its defined as a placement.

The placement rate is simply the speed at which a widget is placed onto additional sites. Is your placement rate .01%? .15%? For a .01% placement rate, the widget needs to be seen 10,000 times before someone adds the widget to their site. For a .15% placement rate, the widget will need to be seen 667 times before it is 'placed'.

When evaluating a placement rate, you will also need to consider other factors, such as page placement, the attractiveness of the 'get this' invitation, as well as the other attention-stealing assets on the page.

Another aspect is "host" sharing vs "viral" sharing. There's a big difference... but that's a later discussion.

Too much fun.

2008-04-06T17:30:00.002-06:00

Best Practices Webinar - Driving Traffic and Monetization with Widgets

2008-04-03T11:03:00.013-06:00

Jeff Nolan and I had a great webinar yesterday with Rob Covey from National Geographic on current best practices for widgets - how to drive traffic and monetize. The webinar is available online for replay here:

https://cc.readytalk.com/play?id=0sdh4111

Don't have time to listen? Here are some highlights-

Best Practices for Widgets:
1. Clearly Define Your Objectives
2. Know Your Audience & Select Relevant Content
3. Aggregate Content From Multiple Sources
4. Take Advantage Of Social Interaction
5. Use Prominent Site Placement & Broad Distribution/Promotion
6. Monetize Your Widgets!

During the call we gave a quick overview of what widgets are and how they should be used, and then took a deep dive into how National Geographic is using best practices in their widget strategy.

Many thanks to Rob for being on the call and sharing perspective - with an industry & technology this new it is great to be able to talk about our shared learnings.

NewsGator @ Graphing Social Patterns West 2008

2008-03-07T06:50:00.006-07:00

Graphing Social Patterns West was last week in San Diego - its a conference put on by Dave McClure & O'Reilly about Social Networking.

We were asked to speak on a panel about Widget Strategies & Social Platforms (I took Jeff Nolan's spot), hosted by Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester. It was a great session, Jeremiah did a great job keeping the dialog going. Note to other panel moderators - instead of having us give our standard elevator pitch, Jeremiah had us describe our companies metaphorically (an idea from a co-panelist Pam Webber at Widgetbox), and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I described NewsGator's widget framework as a kitchen where you could create widgets using all of the ingredients we provide (our 2+ million feeds) or by bringing your own. Other panelists described themselves as connectors, pottery shops and a spine(!).

Thanks again to Jeremiah for the panel, and to Dave for including us.

Here are a few mentions from the press & blogsphere.

Jeremiah's notes from the panel

Kara Swisher from All Things Digital included us in her highlight reel (min 4:14)

A piece from ComputerWorld talking about the challenges we're seeing finding the right monetization for widgets...

Beth Kanter wrote up a good summary here

Digital Podcast wrote up a summary of the Widget Strategy session as well.

NAA Marketing Conference - Interview with BlogTalkRadio

2008-03-06T00:32:00.004-07:00

I had a good talk at NAA with Mel Taylor.

Have a listen...

National Geographic Puzzle Widget

2008-02-22T00:43:00.010-07:00

This is an especially cool widget from National Geographic Magazine- it allows you to put together a puzzle made from one of their photos...

They have an entire section of their site dedicated to these types of puzzles...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/jigsaw-puzzles

Scruples at work

2008-02-05T23:37:00.004-07:00

I love games like Scruples that challenge you with questions that have no wrong answers. The fun stems from the process that leads you to your answers, whatever they are... These games are especially fun to play with people you don't know, partly because you'll get to know them a little better, but mostly because they let you test your moral character against an audience without significant reprecussions. :)

At work we have daily scrums as part of our agile development practices, and we've been starting our updates by asking folks to answer a question. The questions are lightweight, people need to be able to answer within a word or two, or our scrum will get long... Rarely are the questions answered seriously, most of the time folks try to out-do each other with sarcasm, obscurity and absurdity, which always makes for good banter. The best answers will generate a fervor of wisecracks from the crowd, which generates more chaff & mockery, and ultimately the group needs to be reeled back in, but its fun nonetheless.

Some of the more memorable questions & answers...

Who is your favorite President? "Dan Borrego"
What is your favorite drink? "Polygamy Ale (you can't just have one)"
Favorite movie? "Banlieue 13"
Favorite movie line? "I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey"
What is your superhero name? "Max Capacity" (from an elevator)

Some upcoming questions...

Who would you like to switch jobs with?
What famous person would you like to take to dinner?
How much would someone have to pay you to shave your head?

Sucking the exhaust of a thousand Facebook applications

2008-02-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

If it’s not so evident from the past few posts, I’ve fallen off of the Facebook
bandwagon. Don’t take it the wrong way, I think they are still brilliant,
pioneers and thought leaders, but the foxes are unfortunately in the hen house.

In the beginning, I connected with friends and acquaintances, shared photos and
random flotsam from the web, and Facebook was great about letting me know what
people were up to. Now that my group of ‘friends’ has grown, and my friends have
added their own applications, the updates have gotten fairly noisy.

“Joe Smith has been SuperPokin’! Joe has dropped knowledge on Shirley.
Throw firecrackers at, give rice cake to, or throw Manning to Joe! ... OR
SuperPoke back!”

“Dave Jones challenged your movie knowledge on a quiz called "Name of the brands
from logos.". Dave's score was 100%. Can you beat Dave's score? >>”

How do I benefit from these notifications? I don’t. They do nothing but advertise the applications, trying to borrow credibility from their association with my friends. They are quickly becoming a disincentive to adoption- an annoyance that not only makes me not want to install the application, but to avoid Facebook altogether.

So what’s really going on here? The “mini feed” which Facebook essentially invented, is now being diluted and polluted (sounds like a soundbyte from Johnnie Cochran). Diluted because the meme is being adopted by every other social network and application, and polluted with unnecessary tidbits that reduce the utility of the feed. I’m hoping Facebook will respond appropriately and provide some sort of spam filter on the mini-feed, or figure some way to reduce the chatter…

For now, I’m moving to twitter.

UPDATE: Looks like Facebook is listening...

If SuperPoke is the crack cocaine of Facebook, then perhaps Widgets are a mild narcotic

2008-01-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

Just wrote a piece on viral vs interaction loops on the enterpriserss blog - have a read let me know what you think....

I love free software...

2008-01-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

NewsGator just announced that all client products (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, Inbox and Go!) are all free. Have a read, left side links - right side a live feed from the news-sphere (blogs, tweets, etc.).

NewsGator Press Release
Greg Reinacker
Jeff Nolan
Kevin Cawley twitter
Nick Bradbury
Brent Simmons
Niall Kennedy
Ars Technica
Steve Rubel twitter
Techrockies

Are bookmarks considered stealing?

2007-12-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of discussion around sharing content - whether implicitly (Facebook beacon) or explicitly (Google shared content) and all of the privacy and copyright rules that have been misinterpreted or otherwise broken.
One perspective that is getting lost in the discussion (as related to the copyright part of the conversation) is the notion that syndication always benefits the author, almost regardless of where the content is presented - whether on a website or as part of a widget.

As long as there has been printed paper and research, there have been citations and bibliographies. In fact, it is the goal of many academics to have their work quoted in other books and papers, as it lends credibility to their own. And at a very basic level, clipped articles, shared links - these are all just citations of a very simplistic sort. Its just one author giving validation to another.

Some think that when your article is shared or clipped and presented on someone else's site, that the original author is somehow cut out or slighted, as if the person clipping the content is somehow stealing credit for the content. If I've written an article and someone else clips it and presents it in a widget on their blog, is that person benefiting more than I am?

A good example to see why this isn't the case is on Steve Rubel's blog, Micropersuasion (http://www.micropersuasion.com). Steve writes frequently on a multitude of topics, and has a extensive audience. Sometimes the posts are long, others are just lists of links to sites or articles that are interesting. Steve also clips various items from his Google reader account and presents them on his blog (right side – Google Reader Faves). Steve doesn’t give attribution to the author – just the headlines, and what he’s doing is encouraging people to click through and read the content – not just because the headline is interesting, but because he is recommending it.

In either case, whether a link list or shared item, Steve is effectively providing citations through bookmarks, giving validation to another's work.

Now, the fact that Google made shared items open and public without prior consent is a different story...

"Velocity matters" - Eric Schmidt

2007-12-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

While the whole article is definitely worth a read, this little snippet speaks to me...

Google’s quicksilver corporate culture can be jarring for some employees, even
for Mr. Schmidt. He recalls that shortly after joining the company and its young
founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, he was frustrated that people were answering e-mail on their laptops at meetings while he was speaking.

“I’ve given up” trying to change such
behavior, he says. “They have to answer their e-mail. Velocity matters.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/technology/16goog.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=technology

NewsGator closes $12M financing

2007-12-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Breaking news.....

Read about it here

*I Just Saw it on CNN.com!

2007-12-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

CNN just launched their "Most Popular Video" Widget on their Tools & Widgets page. Its a great widget - clean, simple and straightforward. You can see it in my sidebar, or you can find it here: http://www.cnn.com/tools/index.html

Webinar on Monetizing OpenSocial

2007-12-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week we had a great webinar with Kevin Marks from Google on Monetizing OpenSocial. The event served as a great primer on what OpenSocial is, what its like to work within the new APIs, and where the opportunities are for media companies and brands.

As we talk more and more about widgets and OpenSocial applications - one theme seems to keep popping up more and more - that the ultimate application for all of these different user facing endpoints is advertising. Is this the beginning of Advertising 2.0?

If you didn't get a chance to join us on the call, and would like to replay the webinar, click here:

https://cc.readytalk.com/play?id=s9mxhww5

Forrester Consumer Forum

2007-10-12T11:14:00.001-06:00

The Forrester Consumer Forum was yesterday/today in Chicago. An interesting show, the undercurrents are similar to John Battelle's Conversational Marketing Summit. "Marketing is a conversation", "users are in control of your brand", and "you need to start trying things out now", etc...

These are great messages for us. As one of the enablers of conversational marketing, it was great to hear the people on stage preaching a message that plays into our strengths. Its also great to hear the audience respond with their questions, fears and concerns - it shows they're open and engaged.

There is a metaphor used in real estate to describe interested buyers that describes this phase of adoption. In real estate home tours, agents learn to key off of the way buyers act when visiting a new house. If buyers talk about how their existing furniture would fit, the agents recognize this as a sign of sincere interest and call this behavior "moving in". What it means is that the buyers have gone beyond their initial like it/ don't like it response and are thinking through what it might mean to commit.

So my takeaway from the show is that consumer brands are starting to "move in" to conversational marketing. It is going to be an interesting year.

I met a ton of really smart people today from different disciplines. Product people, vendors, analysts - the audience was great. I was hoping to catch a word with Charlene Li (she had a fantastic keynote), but so did the rest of the world so I didn't get a chance - perhaps next time...

CBSNews.com redesign

2007-09-14T11:36:00.000-06:00

The CBSNews.com redesign went live last night - and it looks great. The new look is clean, navigation is simple and efficient, and they've given great prominance to their video content.

But here's what's really cool (shameless plug) - there is a NewsGator widget on the homepage serving local content based on a user's zip code.

Try it out - put in your zip code and you'll get a few options of local content you can read - both from CBS and relevant external sources (like the local newspaper).

What's also cool? Katie Couric calls it out as part of her "video tour" of the redesign. Click here to watch the video- she calls it out at the 1:30 mark.

Also included in the redesign, on the Candidate Profile pages CBS is using NewsGator to filter out content only relevant to each candidate. CBS has chosen a handfull of sources they want to watch, and we are pulling out only those articles that relate to the candidate. Click here to see the "Latest from the web" on Barak Obama

Its been great working with CBS on this (and the other widgets) they are doing a great job embracing the new ways of Web 2.0 - or might that be Media 2.0?

The Upstream Seller Forum

2007-09-09T13:54:00.000-06:00

Doug Weaver and the Upstream Group put on a mini-conference for top Media sales executives twice a year (around the iMedia conference) called the Seller Forum. Each Forum is comprised of a dinner, followed by a day dedicated to talking about various topics. For this forum, the topic was widgets - so we were lucky enough to get the nod to present.

Ed and I got to share the afternoon session with Chris Cunningham from Freewebs. It wasn't a typical presentation, most of the audience already knew what widgets are and how they are used. Because of this the format was a 15 minute introduction followed by questions led by a panel.

Its always interesting as a presenter to try to 'feel' out the audience - how they are going to respond to your talk, how to draw them into the story you are telling, etc. This was a particularly interesting session because the audience was engaged out of the blocks... It took almost 45 minutes to get through our 10 slide/15 minute deck we prepared because of all the questions - many of which were answered by others in the audience. I have to hand it to Doug and team at the Upstream Group - the only way you can get that type of interaction and engagement is when the people in the audience know and trust each other, where there is no fear or reprecussion for asking questions or going out on a limb. It was clear throughout the session that people were open and honest with their observations and comments.

On the other hand its also easy for a discussion to get quickly derailed, but Doug and the panel were able to keep the conversation in line.

It was a great session - I think the folks there definitely learned a ton about widgets and we had a great exchange of ideas.

AP story on USA TODAY widgets.

2007-09-05T16:04:00.000-06:00

A great piece from AP on USA TODAY's widgets:
USA Today Distributes News by 'Widget'
And this is just the beginning!

Real Branding Digital Leadership Summit

2007-09-01T13:53:00.000-06:00

Real Branding is an interactive agency with strength in Digial Media. Mark Silva decided to gather a few of his clients and a few of us 'widget' vendors into a room to talk about the who, what, why around widgets.

It was an amazing day - 8 presentations in total followed by a "big ideas" panel around cocktails. There was ample time in each presentation to ask questions and discuss, and getting direct responses from buyers of this technology was invaluable.

Its obvious that we are in a very new space, most of the issues we've been dealing with for the past few months have been technical in nature - and now that we've got a handle on how the system is working (for now!) - it is great to start to understand our customer issues around how to sell internally, how to define success, and most importantly how to report on widgets, organic distribution networks and viral campaigns.

Many thanks to Mark for the invitation and for the opportunity to present to this group - and for the discussions and learngings of the day!

Google Trends

2007-08-16T00:42:00.000-06:00

I love Google. I've been playing with Google trends today - it is a relatively obscure Google product that gives a fascinating perspective on what's "news". But I'm wondering what it means for publishers, and what it says about what people want to read. For example, take a look at the top stories on Google Trends vs Google News

Google Trends

peru earthquake

daniel boulud (top chef contestant)

pacific tsunami warning center (Peru concerns)

peru news

peru map

mike moustakas (baseball player)

priscilla presley (Elvis tribute)

hawaii tsunami (peru tsuanmi?)

jose offerman video (baseball player who attacked someone with a bat)

Google News

Peru quake

US pressure on Iran

Toy Story

Padilla

West Nile

Iraq bombing

NASA space walk

Beckham

Utah mine

There are a few interesting points to note-

As you can see, the Google News top stories span the gamut of categories. There are headlines that represent international news, national news, sports, space, fear & greed, etc. Google Trends however, is telling us that 5 of 10 top stories are about the Peru quake. People are searching Google for news of the quake, maps of Peru, and whether there it caused a tsunami and if that tsunami is going to hit Hawaii.

So the question I have - would Google News (or any other media outlet) be serving the people better by having more information around the quake? Specifically, would Google News have 'trapped' more page views if they had better coverage of the quake?

To answer the question we'd have to do some comparing around traffic. Knowing how many page views Google News has vs how many searches there were for more (different) content would help. Unfortunately I don't have that data - the 'trends' charts don't provide values on the y axis. People will always be searching for something, but presumably after some media organization has told them what's going on...

I need to keep thinking about this one....

MercuryNews.com Home Page Widget

2007-08-14T12:31:00.000-06:00

I'm a big fan of the San Jose Mercury News - I have been since the days I lived in San Francisco and worked in San Jose. The Merc was the lifeblood of the internet boom in the mid nineties- how they were able to keep up with everything going on at the time i'll never know...

So I was especially excited to see that we were getting a chance to work with them on providing light customization for their readers.

The result is in-page widget on http://www.mercurynews.com/ (on the left side of the page below the photo)

What the widget allows visitors to do is to personalize the content they see on the homepage, to choose the content that they want to see - be it from the news desk or from any of their blogs. All the user needs to do is to click on the "Choose Feeds" link to pull up a menu of what the Merc has to offer!

Whatever content visitors choose in the list will be presented to them in the widget, and their choices will be remembered when they come back. No registration required, just an easy way to customize content.

The personalization that the San Jose Merc is giving to its users is unique - there are only a few papers who are beginning to bring web 2.0 type personalization into their web sites - much less directly on the homepage.

Head over and take a look - I think you'll agree that it provides a great balance to the page - so you can see whatever breaking news is happening while keeping tabs on the topics that are most important to you.

Let us know what you think in the comments!

Content, Metadata & Attention data

2007-08-02T19:45:00.000-06:00

There have been questions recently about the differences between content, metadata and attention data, so I'm going to take a minute to discuss them at a fairly high level, and how they relate to RSS.

Content, in the context of RSS is exactly what you expect- content is communication. Its a story or collection of stories, anything someone has written, photographed, videoed or spoken.

Metadata, defined by Wikipedia, is "data about data". Metadata about content (as pertaining to RSS) is data associated with content that is included as part of a feed. Metadata tells me what website the content comes from, who the author is, or where the image or other media associated with that content lives. These associated pieces of information within each RSS feed - the metadata - is defined by the RSS specification. Granted there is an endless amount of metadata about any piece of content, only a few pieces of metadata are included in the RSS specification.

All of this should be pretty straightforward. Where we get off on a z axis is when you start talking about attention data.

Attention data is metadata about the interaction around the content. Simply put - it is what you 'pay attention' to. If you (a user) look at a list of articles on a web page, and click on the headline of a story, you are 'paying attention' to that story. That act says you are interested in that story. Likewise if you email a story to a friend, you are also 'paying attention' (in a somewhat different way) to an article.

Where this gets really interesting is in the interpretation of this data. So I clicked a link - what does that mean? At a base level, it means you were interested. But what if you were one of 100,000 people that hour who clicked on that headline. That might mean the headline is popular, or perhaps controversial, and perhaps of interest to other members of the audience. There are several things you can programmatically deduce from the "attention data" around content. Want to know what stories are interesting to your audience at certain time of the day? You'll get that from the attention data. Want to know what content didn't engage your audience? You can figure that out with attention data.

I'm throwing around a lot of assumptions here. "Deducing" conclusions isn't always as easy as it sounds. There are an endless number of things that need to be considered when drawing conclusions from attention data. You need a rather large sample to start - and from there it is a rather long and drawn out excercise in statistics.

So let's recap. Content is what you think it is, metadata is information about the content, and attention data is qualitative information about the content as deduced from an audience's interaction around the content.

Got an opinion or perspective on this topic? Let me know in the comments!

Kill your RSS chiclet

2007-07-26T23:37:00.000-06:00

The little familiar RSS button is getting some fairly prominent real estate these days, and even though the button itself looks good, the interaction around trying to get a subscription is still tedious.

Find the button, click on it, view some cryptic code in your browser, copy the url from the address bar, log into your favorite reader, find the "add by URL" feature, paste the xmlurl, hopefully nothing got lost in translation.

Of course when you have cool browser toolbars or other programs that sniff and expose feeds embedded within a page, that makes it nicer. But you still have to have the wherewithall to install the tool. When the feed content is rendered in a style sheet like IE7 or in the traditional Feedburner view - those aren't bad either. But they're still not going to get my Mom to understand if she clicks this little orange link she's going to receive some immediate benefit.

Widgets are a great way to help solve this problem. Widgets will not only give the user the content that they want to keep tabs on, but it will also give the user more flexibility in where they can put the content, and in a much easier fashion. Click the button, find the icon for the social network, blog or personal homepage where you spend most of your time, and put the content there. No need to bookmark, tag or other- just drop the content you want on whatever place you call "home".

When you "subscribe to RSS" you are essentially taking content away from one place and reading it in another. Why not call it that? Forget the feed icon or RSS label. Put something on a button that regular people can understand. The widgets we build tell people to "Get This" - which is good, but to the uninformed doesn't answer the question, "To do what?"

Another idea from one of our designers (Christian Young) was thinking about changing "Get This" to "To Go". At this point i'm not sure which is better, although I like the "To Go" or maybe even "Take this with you". I'm sure we'll try all of them out.

The point however, is that RSS chiclets have served their purpose, and now need to be retired. Forget linking directly to your feeds. Branded, (monetized) widgets with the content of the feed, made easy for people share is a much better way to use that same small piece of real estate.

And while you're here, take my content away. click the "Get This" link on the right side of this blog. You'll never have to remember my URL again!

NewsGatorWidgets.com is alive!

2007-07-24T16:54:00.000-06:00

Its been a long time coming, but our widgets finally got their own website! NewsGatorWidgets.com is a site dedicated to showing off the NewsGator Widget Framework - product specs, a gallery and most important, it gives people an easy way to sign up!

Go take a look. Sign up, kick the tires, let us know what you think!

Mt Evans Hillclimb

2007-07-24T12:42:00.000-06:00

This weekend I competed in my third annual Mt Evans Hill Climb bike race - its an 'uphill only' race from Idaho Springs (~7000ft) to the top of Mt Evans (~14,000+) over 27 miles. Its always somewhat of a defining moment in the cycling season- to throw yourself and your body into quite a bit of discomfort for a few hours and see what happens. This year I was a bit slower (about 10 min off last year) which was expected as I haven't trained very much. I wonder how many more hours I would have needed to spend on the bike to shave those 10 min? I'm not sure, but these days there is little glory in sacrificing family time or work for a goal of irrelevant meaning. These days, its more important to show up & get it done as a token of balance in the work-life continuum.

Having said that, there is little that would dissuade me from participating year to year, regardless of shape. I guess that makes the ride a little more important than a 'token'. :)

Anyway, I did the ride without friends this year - which was fine by me, its not really a social event. But its usually nice to connect with someone at the top, to shake hands and revel in the achievement (and endorphins). Instead I took a minute to watch and listen to others- and I found the experience surprisingly quiet. Most everyone who does the race pushes themselves to their limits - and whatever is left over is stolen from a lack of oxygen and altitude. So aside from the occasional cough from the aforementioned lack of oxygen, it was largely a group of a few hundred people milling about trying to hydrate and find warm clothing for the ride down. There are no vendor boths at the top, no spectators, loud music or announcers to welcome you to the finish, just a beautiful view and a moment with yourself at the top of the world.

Discovery Shark Week & Everest Widgets

2007-06-24T23:22:00.000-06:00

We just announced that the NewsGator Widget Framework is officially out of Beta and that we've got some great stuff cooking with Discovery!

We're honored to be working with Discovery - they are extremely smart people and we're excited about the opportunity. Shark Week & Everest are just a start, we've got other ideas coming down the pike... more on that later.

What's great about Discovery is that they bring great energy to the process- they are focused on exploring the space, using our technology for a variety of different ideas...

This is going to be fun.

NewsGator Widgets Podcast

2007-05-31T10:04:00.000-06:00

A short overview of NewsGator widgets and use cases for the technology...

Have a listen!

Widgets Rule Web Content

Or download the mp3 here-

http://www.newsgator.com/CompanyInfo/Podcasts/

Too True...

2007-05-25T10:42:00.000-06:00

From Startupping

10 More Startup Commandments

You will have at least one catastrophe every three months.
Outsource effectively, or be effectively outsourced.
Do you thrive on stress and ambiguity? You'd better.
The best way to get outside funding is to be successful already. Stupid but true. But you cheapskate, don't need money, right?
People will think your idea sucks. They're even probably right. The only way to prove them wrong is to succeed.
A startup will require your complete attention and devotion. Thought your first love in High School was clingy? You can't take out a restraining order on your startup.
Being an entrepreneur requires a healthy amount of ignorance. Note I did not say stupidity.
Your software sucks. So what. Everyone else's does also, and re-architecting is the kiss of death for a startup. Startups are no place for architecture astronauts.
You do have a public API, right?
Abject Terror. Overwhelming Joy. Monstrous Greed. Embrace and harness these emotions you must.

Widgets at Work - Part 5: Reporting

2007-05-25T00:31:00.000-06:00

Reporting is another interesting aspect of widgets- a great unknown. At this point we have more ideas and questions than answers. At the outset we are able to capture standard analytics from widgets – the number of impressions, click-throughs, etc, but is that enough? Where reporting gets interesting is trying to track the trail of distribution in a campaign - who pulled which widget from which site, and was it shared from there? Can we dynamically generate a unique identifier from each of these widgets that then can be tracked based on some inherited property? Or perhaps there is a smarter way?

Assuming we can figure out a way to track the ‘share map’ between the widgets, what can we learn? The picture would look like the web itself, with threads of connections that splinter and weave – forming an organic distribution network that changes over time. Some threads may be prolific in sharing, but whether they generate significant traffic back to the source is another metric to account for. Or perhaps another may not be as viral, but the audience might be more active in exploring the source content. In either case, is there value in a self replicating distribution network? Of course. News is all about distribution…. And immediacy… and relevance…

What does an organic network need to thrive? Is it the same that drives newspaper sales? Or for a network to be created and live on, will it need something more? Can it evolve and change? Can a conversation take place through a widget that lives in hundreds or thousands of places? What sort of distributed community can you build through a decentralized network? When will widgets be able to update each other? Sooner rather than later...

Widgets at Work - Part 4: Monetization

2007-05-24T17:28:00.000-06:00

In this series, we’ve spoken of the different use cases for widgets, and in one of the samples we showed ads. To date, most who have deployed widgets have done so under the auspices that it will drive traffic back to their sites, where they will see revenue from the increase in traffic. But as these use cases mature, there are an increasing number of ways in which widgets will be monetized.

Some obvious ways to monetize:
1) Ads in the widget.
2) Ads within the content in the widget. Individual posts can contain advertising.
3) Ads between the posts within the widget. It is possible to have ads in between certain posts (e.g. between the second and third articles.)
4) Pre-roll/post-roll in a video in the widget.

And you can also swap out 'ads' for 'sponsorships' of course....

But let's get creative - how can we really sell this stuff? Some have talked about making the entire widget an ad (including us), but that's a tough sell unless you are providing a significant value to the audience. In our 'flyout' implementations (pictured), we are deliberate in only showing ads when the user requests content, and we're working on ways to pass information about the requested content to the ad tag, so the ad server can serve up more relevant information that relates to the requested content.

Got any ideas around this? Let me know!

Widgets at Work - Part 3: Broadening the perspective.

2007-05-23T08:52:00.001-06:00

We’ve talked about what widgets are, why people use them and how great they are for syndicating your content onto other sites. There is a second use case for widgets – where publishers will use widgets to pull external, related content into their sites to augment a topic with a broader perspective.

In this example we’re showing a widget that serves a few interesting purposes. In this example, Media General wanted a way to pull external content into their article pages that related to the topic of the section. Sports content would be on the sports pages, etc. The idea is to bring additional relevant content to the user, be it text, audio or video from a handpicked selection of sources. Media General still maintains full editorial control over the presentation – you never know what could show up in “What’s Hot” – so having post level editorial control is important.

The three tabs on this example are also interesting… “What’s Hot” is showing popular content, “Headlines” shows what’s recent, and the “Video” tab shows recent videos. In all cases, the content is presented in a flyout – which keeps the user on the page.

Anytime the user requests content, the two surrounding ads are cycled without refreshing the page… but that’s our next post…

This Just In: Media General partners with NewsGator

2007-05-23T00:57:00.001-06:00

I just wrote a piece on the NewsGator / Media General partnership here - or you can read the press release here. What's great about the deal is that we are able to rollout our technology in a big way across their network and continue to provide them with the latest, and most innovative applications of Web 2.0 technology. As a partner, we pride ourselves in keeping up to date with the technology that makes a difference for our clients - we try to stay away from that which is too gimmicky, or that doesn't provide significant value to the publisher or the user.

An example - this week we just released a new version of our widget framework, and included a great feature that allows publishers to handpick articles to present in their widgets - and to keep those handpicked articles up at the top of the list (or in whatever order they want). This level of editorial control, along with post level exclusion, are just a few of the features that make a real difference in an editor's ability to deliver the right content to their audience.

We're excited about working with Media General - they are a great group and I can't wait to see what new things we come up with!

Widgets at Work - Part 2: Fish where the fish are.

2007-05-12T10:19:00.000-06:00

A rather esoteric title for this post – it’s just an old sales metaphor that I like. The point is that your audience has lots of choices for discovering and reading news, so you need to make your content available where they are; on the web, desktop and mobile phone. As freely as content is distributed these days, it is presumptive to require your users to come back to your site for updates. Content comes to them. So when people to come to your site let them take something away. Give them a widget. They will come back for more.

This is a widget that gives users quick and easy access to pick this content up and put it where they’d like – be it on their blog, personal homepage or social networking portal. All of the content comes from one source, but it isn’t specific to text – there are links to audio and video as well. All the user has to do to grab this is to click on the “Get This” button at the bottom of the widget, and chose the service that they want to interface with. If the user has a Google homepage, they are just a single click away from including this on their iGoogle page. A side benefit of this is that when the widget is placed on another blog (or other public spot) then other users can pick up the widget as well. Try it – you don’t need a Google account. It just works.

When you get the widget on Google – take a look compared to the other elements on the page. Isn’t it nice to have great looking graphics amongst all that text?

Widgets at Work - Part 1. What is a Widget?

2007-05-11T00:40:00.000-06:00

For those of you who have taken business/economics courses, widgets are not what you think they are. They aren’t hypothetical units of production; they have nothing to do with utils. They aren’t built in Gotham, or produced by NewCo.

Widgets are small, portable pieces of your website that you can share with your audience. They consist of content and functionality that can be packaged and shared with other websites, desktops or devices. They maintain your look and feel, are centrally managed and represent your brand (wherever they live).

How to people use widgets?
The widget on the right was recently built that represents the latest and greatest news and video about the Phoenix Suns. This widget has the most recent articles from the East Valley Tribune, ESPN, Fox Sports and My San Antonio (because that’s who the Suns are trying to beat this week), and it has the latest video produced by the Phoenix Suns.

What’s in it for the user? As a fan of the Suns, I want the latest and greatest news about the Suns on my Google homepage or in my Vista Sidebar. Sure, I could get this content from going to each site and digging, but even then I’m not guaranteed I’ll find what I’m looking for. With a widget, users can take a small piece of your site with them and read it wherever they want to.

What’s in it for the publisher? Managed distribution, mindshare, brand, revenues… without losing control of content… essentially a mini-CMS that works anywhere and can deliver unique content, and support a one-click integration into other blog/portal/desktop/device property. Its essentially a way for a publisher to build an organic distribution network.

Hope you enjoy the series. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Widgets at Work

2007-05-11T00:31:00.000-06:00

In an attempt to sermonize some of the widget gospel, I've put together a 5 part series on Widgets at Work - which will talks about the fundamentals of widgets, and how people are starting to use them. Here's the article schedule:

Part 1
What is a widget? How do people use widgets?

Part 2
Fish where the fish are.

Part 3
Broadening the perspective.

Part 4
Monetization

Part 5
Reporting

Am I missing anything? Send me a note!

When electricity trumps etiquette

2007-05-01T08:23:00.000-06:00

I ate a salad with my fingers today. I haven’t done that in awhile, maybe never? I sat on the floor of the airport and ate a messy Caesar salad with unwashed digits. I bought the meal to go, and unfortunately had assumed that there was a fork in the bag... As silly as it seems, the reason why I was eating with my fingers was because I was all alone and I had finally found an unoccupied electrical outlet, I was desperate for current and couldn’t give up my spot. I needed both plugs, one to charge my laptop, the other to charge my phone. I was extra dependent, and plugs were scarce as the airport was packed.

I couldn’t leave my spot because I didn’t want anything to get stolen, and I couldn’t take anything with me because then I’d lose my precious power. There were vultures about, other businessmen with their laptops & smartphones; leering at me because I was taking up two rare plugs. There was one in particular who walked around me staring – trying to catch my gaze so he could non-verbally express his disappointment, but I didn’t engage. Eventually he left, resorting to a rather vocal huff before dragging his roll-y briefcase down the concourse in search of another outlet.

I could have teamed up with him, perhaps traded an outlet for bag security while I scavenged for a utensil, but that would have required a small modicum of trust... I wasn’t worried that he would steal my luggage, but I was almost certain that when I left he would unplug my remaining device and plug in whatever other device he had that needed juice.

So I skipped the fork and ate with my fingers. Forgive me Emily Post!

NewsGator Widget Framework in Beta

2007-03-22T22:04:00.000-06:00

Hot off the build machine - our widget framework (NewsGator Buzz) is now in Beta. This is so new, we don't even have good marketing materials for it... anyway - here's some info about it on the NewsGator Daily blog.

But to really see it - head over to http://www.newsgatornews.com - that's our demo site where we show off the technology. If you're interested, you can also sign up for an account and see for yourself!

Let us know what you think!

Not forgetting, just remembering less.

2007-03-20T17:05:00.000-06:00

I have this theory that you don't actually become 'forgetful' when you are older, you just don't remember as much.

Can you remember how you ate your last meal? Probably not. How many bites did you take?You may know what you had, or that it tasted good - but by and large you're likely to remember a beginning and end but not much in between. Or how about your commute into work? When you brushed your teeth this morning, did you actually concentrate on brushing, or did you lose yourself in thought staring at your reflection? Is it still forgetful if you don't remember it in the first place?

How is this different from forgetfulness? For one, in order to forget something, you need to have remembered it at some point. As you get older, more and more of your daily activities will fall into the realm of "stuff you did before" and so you don't have to concentrate - you just pay attention to differences. Call it 'going through the motions' or 'spacing out' - either way I don't think its entirely bad - or good for that matter. Its just time you spend with yourself. The risk is just doing it too much.

I guess the important take away is that change is good. It forces you to learn, adapt, grow, and ultimately remember new things. A good goal might be to 'find change' in your daily life, to look for new opportunities to do something different.

Brush your teeth with your off hand tomorrow. See if you remember it later in the day.

NewsGator Online gets a face lift

2007-03-20T08:46:00.000-06:00

NewsGator online has just launched the BETA of the new web reader - you can check it out here. Greg posted the details...

The new look is a result of many weeks of work - its faster, easier to use and has some great new features. Hats off to the online team- this is a great interface!

NewsGator Go! launches for the Blackberry

2007-03-16T09:44:00.000-06:00

I have to say what really got me addicted to RSS was when I got NewsGator Go! on my Treo... Its just so easy to get caught up in those "in between" moments when you're waiting for something (like waiting for a sandwich, or for a meeting to start).

Now Kevin and crew have released a new version for Blackberry (and other Java phones)...

Call me an enabler - but this is a great way to keep up!

New USA TODAY website

2007-03-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

The new site looks fantastic- I just wrote about it on the NewsGator Daily blog. Read about the new site and our part of the redesign here

NewsGator VideoBuzz

2007-02-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

VideoBuzz is here! Note the list of videos to the right- they come from a variety of sources:

youtube
cnn
google video
zefrank

Each source uses different ways to pass video through RSS, and each of the videos uses a different video format - but they all play inline. Click on a title, you'll see the video almost immediately. You don't leave the site and you don't get a heavy pop up that takes forever to load. Just the video, quick & simple. And one other thing while i'm on my sales kick. VideoBuzz (along with all of our other buzz products) has post level editorial control, just in case YouTube sneaks something inappropriate into the list. Just log into the administration site and remove the offensive content as quickly as you can uncheck a box.

Would you like to see this on your blog? Drop this scriptblock into your html or your template...

Or go to http://www.newsgatornews.com - see some samples, sign up and get your own.

Have fun!

"Don't let the urgent get in the way of the important"...

2007-02-04T21:32:00.001-07:00

...is a quote with no attribution, but its a common theme for lots of busy folks.

> time management junkies.
> Seth Godin talks about it here.
> There are 1.2 million results for "urgent vs. important" on google.

I have it as a tagline on this blog for the simple reason that it reminds me that what you are working on is equally as important as how hard you work on it. When you have too much to do, spending time working on the wrong thing is only slightly better than not working at all. Urgent work is behind the curve, reactive, thrashy. Important work is forward thinking, strategic, and critical for positioning.

Stating the obvious, no? Granted we all have to go through a bit of triage every once and awhile, stop the bleeding, mitigate risk, choose the hardest problem with the best likely outcome and solve it... The danger isn't getting caught up in those situations, its knowing the difference. Sometimes the important is pretty damn urgent.

Note to self- did you work on anything important today?

Development Equilibrium

2007-02-04T15:36:00.000-07:00

Call it a nit, but the old adage about the balance between scope, resource, quality and time doesn't sit right. If you aren't familiar - this notion defines the balance that exists (implicit or explicit) when working towards a goal. Some call this balance the 'natural order', I like to call it 'development equilibrium'. Essentially what it means is: your end product is guided by the decisions you make regarding these four variables. For example, in a project, if you decrease resource, then you will need to increase time, decrease scope or reduce quality to keep balance. Read the Kings Dinner for a story that explains these relationships in detail.

Although this equilibrium is used as a guideline in most cases (to prove a point) it really isn’t that simple.

What's missing? A few more abstracted variables that are also somewhat interdependent, and can impact the overall balance: motivation, experience, velocity. If you send two equal sized teams of engineers with the same experience off to achieve the same goals in the same timeframe- there is no chance that they will achieve the exact same results, or finish at the exact same time. The differences, while difficult to quantify, are largely due to these variables.

Motivation- Is the project a worthy challenge for the members on the team? Will the team be excited to do it? Group dynamics play an enormous part in fueling motivation. Will the team bounce ideas off of each other and improve on ideas- or will they endlessly argue and debate over decisions?

Experience – Does the team have the appropriate technical background in the right tools needed to execute on the plan? Do they have the maturity to work effectively through the problems that arise along the way?

Velocity- a person or team's productivity over time can measured as velocity. Efficiency (friction), speed, direction are all sub components of this variable. How well has the project been put together? Are good decisions being made as to how to put the project together? More important – are the right questions being asked?

It really just comes down to people. You need the right people for the job, and everyone involved (from business to QA) needs to have appreciation for the process.

100,000 pushups

2007-01-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

Isn't it interesting how sometimes small, insignificnant chit chat can drive decisions with lasting consequences....

At the beginning of the year, a coworker mentioned they had heard an interesting quote from Tommy Saunders (a football player) saying he was going to do 100,000 pushups this year. For one reason or another, Karyn took hold of the idea and now... we are all doing pushups every day as part of a challenge to do 100,000 (collectively) by year end. There are about 10 of us who are contributing to the count. We need to do 274 pushups a day.

It was easy at first, I was well rested from the long break, had plenty of sleep, and aside from sore arms, it wasn't so bad. Now, a month into it, my arms are still sore, i'm sleeping less (such is the nature of start ups) and for some reason when i'm at home and I get down on the floor to knock a few out, my daughter like to sit on my back and play horsey. Fun!

There is no such thing as a unique problem

2007-01-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

Just like dramatic situations, there are only a limited number of the types of problems that businesses face. It makes me crazy when people don't look for guidance or help because they think their problem is unique- and wind up making uninformed decisions based on a knee-jerk excuse, "No one has ever faced this problem before". The fact of the matter is that many times it takes work to uncover - but if you spend the time, you will likely gain perspective on your own problem if you learn about how others have dealt with similar issues.

The less our users know about RSS, the more likely they'll use it

2007-01-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

This is somewhat of a mantra of mine lately.

The point i'm trying to get at is that users shouldn't have to know about the technology to realize its benefits. Users don't care about technology, as J.B. would say, "they just want their stuff". Our job is to create usable applications that will give users their 'stuff' without requiring them to learn new interaction models, interfaces or vocabulary.

This notion is also referenced in a book by Pip Coburn called "The Change Function". Without going into too much detail, in the book he talks about the "Total Perceived Pain of Adoption" - which describes the relationship between users and new technology. Users simply won't adopt new technology until the 'perceived crisis' (their need for the new product or service) is greater than the 'pain of adoption' (how hard it will be to adopt).

Makes sense!

Why Hair on Fire?

2007-01-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

Its simple, really. In start up companies even the small issues are critical in nature, so when stuff gets escalated, people run around with their hair on fire. Some people run around with their hair on fire without the escalation... either way, its such a great expression of the urgency that drives us but that can also cripple if unchecked. Thus the by line. The urgent vs the important. I'll explain in another post.