All Things Cahill

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  • Social Media Vampires & the Death of Spam

    Some fun facts for this wonderful Monday:

    So where does this all go from here?  I suspect that social media could end up being the answer.  Eventually we’ll be weighting information from friends, followers or whatever we call our “nominated sources” that we’re not going to see information that hasn’t in some way been vouched for.  It may even come down to services vouching for “social reputation” which would actually allow the crowd to self-moderate.  Spammers can’t live in this environment, at least not for very long.  We’ll quickly learn that new accounts and people we who come unrecommended by someone else are no less than social media vampires waiting to be invited in.

    This is where the “pay to post” bloggers are going to lose out.  In my view, the most important thing we can have is our reputation.  Without it, you’ll be outside the trust circle looking in, and that’s going to be a heck of a place to be.

    Your thoughts?

  • Friday Music Video: Beck – Loser

    Yeah, one of those weeks.  So crank this puppy up and plan on regrouping over the weekend.

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJN3PGqDRNg[/youtube]

  • What is the next Wave?

    Google Wave - a chance for us to rethink Social Media?
    Google Wave – a chance for us to rethink Social Media?

    For some time, I’ve been looking for the next compelling thing in social media sites. For that next development that transforms the way we interact, that re-envisions forums, chat, photo galleries, articles, etc; in fact a redefinition of the way in which we communicate online altogether.

    For the past couple years, I’ve watch as vBulletin, my favorite forum software, basically did minor incremental releases, remaining essentially the way it was in 2001.  Wordpress has done better, yet still, the fundamental blog/cmslite experience remains pretty much as it was 4 years ago.  Photo gallery software, chat, etc. all remain pretty much as they were when they burst on the scene.

    The user experience on most sites now is very segmented.  Comments are in one spot, while forum posts over here.  Most sites  don’t integrate chat, as it tends to remove us from the page view model on which our revenue streams are so often based.

    We’ve patched together separate systems, and in virtually all cases, the seams are showing.  Clear lines of demarcation block logical points of information transfer.  Most of what happens isn’t real time, or anything close to it.  It’s a post then wait and click refresh experience for most of what we do.

    That’s the point of entry for Google Wave, the new open source project that launched in private beta today.  It has real time communications, chat has both private/public components, that can take on the threaded view of a forum with real time updates, that can be presented as a forum, or a blog, or whatever you imagine.

    You see the important thing here for a developer is that they’ve built the basic tools, but we can add whatever we want via their api.  To demonstrate this, they added Google maps integration.  Yet that bit could be a video, or even better a live video stream or a recorded application view (think Webex presentation), live photo gallery, or all of them.  All of which can be manipulated and edited real time by multiple users.

    So what is this Google Wave, really?  It’s opportunity for us to FINALLY break out of the box, to really do something new and different, to for once rethink the way we do our sites.

    I can’t wait…

    Check out the abridged version of the video from the I/O conference to get a taste of what I’m talking about.

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itc4253kjhw[/youtube]

  • Google Sidewiki – Because we haven’t made your life hard enough yet…

    Let’s say you own a business.  It’s a small business, and you’ve tried very, very hard to build it into something.  Along the way, like most businesses, there have been bumps, but for the most part, you’ve got a bunch of customers who love you.  Then one day, right in front of your door, someone puts up a huge billboard, and on it, they will allow anyone with anything to say about your business to put up whatever they want.  All of a sudden you’ve got some really nasty comments about your business hanging there where any potential customer will see them.

    Sounds, far fetched, huh?  No one could get away with that, right?

    Enter Google Sidewiki…an add on product to the Google Toolbar which opens a sidebar when you are visiting sites that allows you to comment about sites as you visit them.  So now, instead of commenting on my blog, you could leave comments on Google Sidewiki, where I am unable to moderate them.  Hence that troll who’s been stalking me, that one I banned from one of my sites, is now free to flame away, and the only recourse I have is to report him to big brother Google.

    There’s no opt out here, no metadata I can add to my site to keep them from doing this.  And frankly, because it’s Google, I’d really think long and hard before using it if there were, because one could reasonably expect at somepoint, they’ll find a way to make Sidewiki comments a component of my overall score in the Google algorithm.  So opting out might make me liable to lose search position.

    I spend enough of my time trying to work with Google, either watching my analytics position, or managing things in Google Webmaster, or working with Adsense.  I don’t need yet another way for them to monetize me.  How about, for a change, they make my life easier, not harder?

  • Has the Public Library Killed Book Publishers?

    As I was in the local public library picking up a little something to read on Saturday, I realized there was an interesting parallel between that and Internet file sharing.

    What does the library do after all; it loans books for free to people.  The same books which both publishers and authors base their entire commercial livelihood.  Thus if the picture the music industry draws of the dire future for music if file sharing is allowed continue were really a concern, every book publisher and author in the country would have gone bankrupt long ago.

    Instead, the public library is a place where publishers want their books to be.  They realize that by having them there, people will read them, then talk about them, thus causing other people to want to read them.  And some of those folks will actually buy the book…or even people who read the book at the library may decide they want to own a copy (yes, I have done this…).  Why would the recording industry or movie industry expect anything different for them?

    In fact, many libraries also carry dvds of the same albums and movie which the recording industry is trying to protect, and loan them, for free…

    Let’s here what you have to say on the issue…comment away!

  • Back to the Future – The Bestseller Roach Motel

    I was listening to the New York Times Book Review Podcast the other morning and co-host Jennifer Schuessler made an astounding comment.  She looked at the best seller list today, and then looked back 16 years ago to when James Patterson released his first Alex Cross novel, Along Came a Spider, and found the list contained virtually the same authors.  From her article:

    The list was equally brand-name-heavy back in 1993, when Patterson’s first Alex Cross novel, “Along Came a Spider,” made its debut. And most of those brands are still selling. Of the top 10 books on the fiction list published Jan. 31, 1993, eight were by authors who have had best sellers in the past year. (Robert James Waller and Terry McMillan, where are you?) Here are the first 10 books from that week:

    1) “The Bridges of Madison County,” by Robert James Waller.
    2) “Dragon Tears,” by Dean Koontz.
    3) “Degree of Guilt,” by Richard North Patterson.
    4) “Close Combat,” by W. E. B. Griffin.
    5) “Devil’s Waltz,” by Jonathan Kellerman.
    6) “Dolores Claiborne,” by Stephen King.
    7) “The Pelican Brief,” by John Grisham.
    8) “Terminal,” by Robin Cook.
    9) “Along Came a Spider,” by James Patterson.
    10) “Waiting to Exhale,” by Terry McMillan.

    The same writers…in fact as late as 2007 we saw entries from Robert Ludlum, even though he passed away in early 2001.  What does it say about the book buying public that we’re so willing to buy the same formulaic stories over and over.

    Case in point, Dan Brown.  Fantastical, improbable stories, with little character development, no eye for detail and devoid of any meaningful description.  The stuff your creative writing 101 professor would have refused to accept as unworthy for comment.

    Your mission today: throw away the best seller list, find an independent book store and inside, find a new writer and actually read something new and different.  We’ll all be better off for it.

  • Special Moments

    Nothing beats the joys of parenthood.  Absolutely nothing…

    For example:

    • Darling daughter #1(dd#1)  throws a box of crayons into my wife’s brand new (under 2 weeks) dryer machine.  Wife has nervous breakdown.  I spend the rest of the night chiseling crayon out of the drum with a screwdriver.
    • I get down to Washington on a business trip to find my books were removed from my suit case and replaced with a few well chosen Webkinz.
    • I call home from Washington and DD#1 answers the phone.  She wants to talk to one of the Webkinz and I have to do the voice for it before she’ll put the wife on.
    • We carefully select the seeds we want to put in our garden for the year.  Before we start them, DD#1 plants them all in a single flower bed.
    • DD#2 inexplicable has a bead from a necklace making kit stuck in her ear, defying all efforts by both the pediatrician and the ENT specialist to remove it.  It was finally resolved with surgery.
    • Finding your favorite tie knotted to a stuffed animal in the yard…and it’s been there through the thunderstorm the night before.
    • Speaking of thunderstorms, just because it’s a double bed doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have 4 people in it during a storm…
    • “I lost my wubbie/teddie/blankie” hunts.
    • Finding your wife’s missing diamond ring on a stuffed animal…two days after the hunt began.
    • Gum on anything (actually, that’s gum on EVERYTHING).
    • Clothes wars are great fun in the morning.  You want to wear your ballet tutu with flip flops and striped leggings to Church?  After an hour of argument, it might not seem like such a bad option…

  • Alligator Bait

    “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, just stop a moment and ask yourself why you decided to drain the swamp in the first place.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

    Thinking outside the box, now might be a good time for me to start a new business in alligator skin accessories.  The last couple weeks have been *that* busy.  We launched a new set of servers for the Splitcoaststampers.com site last week, and as with all things on massive sites like that it was “interesting” in the Chinese curse sense of the word…

    The point I need to remind myself often is this: I actually love this stuff.  As much as I may complain about being busy, I really, really do love to have lots to do, to be in the thick of the fight.  When I get to this point I like to think back on a point when I’d taken a new job and I went through a couple week period where I was going in every day, but they were literally too busy to get me throughly integrated into the team.  Hence, nothing to do.

    Me with not enough to do is a very, very bad thing.  If I don’t have enough on my plate, I will create new projects or inject myself into other existing projects.

    So here’s a little bit of advice for all of you: find a job where you are that fired up about the work you do.  Find something that inspires you, something that drives you to go further every minute of every day.  In doing so, you’ll find one of the true secrets of happiness.

    Trust me…

  • Newspaper Tipping Point: Current Events

    My 11 yo daughter called me while I was driving home last night, to ask me to pick up a newspaper so she could start her weekly current events assignment for school.  Without thinking, I told her “you don’t want a newspaper for that, you need to get the information of the web where it’s up to date.”

    Now I’ve worked with newspapers on and off since my days atthe  University of Vermont, and I worked for Atex where we engineered newspaper publishing software for close to a decade.  My grandfather was a linotype operator.  For me to tell her that the print edition of newspapers weren’t the place to go for current events was a huge step.

    The revelation: the print edition is all old news, yesterday’s news, in fact.

    However, it was also particially incorrect.  She’s certainly be getting newspaper content for her current events brief.  It just won’t be from the print edition.

    Strangely enough, I realized as I drove to the office today that the best way for her to put together her little weekly assignment would be to do the whole thing electronically.  That way she could link back to the original content, using only a summary so as not to violate copyright and run afoul of the AP and their army of revenue enhancement lawyers.  Now that would truly be a skill that all kids should be learning in school today.

    So there it is, the point at which I realize I have no use save bird cage liner for the print edition…it is now as useful as would be one of those old linotype machines that were once state of the art in type setting.

  • WordPress 2.8.4 – Update Now

    wordpress-logoThe folks at Automattic released a security update for WordPress today due to a very specific bug:

    …a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner.

    While this isn’t an incredibly nasty bug, it does affect the admin user, which many folks use as their only point of access to the system, which is poor practice.  On my customer sites, the admin user is never actually used by anyone (except for me, and only in an emergency).  Everyone gets a user specific account and that account has the right privelidges for that user.

    Click the upgrade button now, or have your web guy/gal/poodle take care of it for you.