Home - Stay N Alive

Social Media at Sundance

Posted on January 24, 2008 by jessestay

On Friday as I attended a few talks of the University Venture Summit, during which I met quite a few people that use Twitter.Â Amazingly, I think Twitter is really starting to become the communications medium for Entrepreneurs.Â I t may be catching on a little more in the Geek and development community lately, but with as strong of a networking potential as it provides, I believe the Entrepreneurs have grasped it much faster than the rest of the world.

As I followed a few of these new visitors to Utah, I started to notice some of them were using a new term, prefacing “sundance” with #, seeming to direct their Tweets to those at Sundance.Â In IRC world (I often term Twitter as IRC 2.0), #sundance would mean the sundance channel.Â So I decided to track the term “sundance” on Twitter as the Sundance festival went on in Utah last weekend and throughout this week.Â Wow what a new view of Sundance I received!

I soon learned of a Tweetup some of those at Sundance were having.Â I decided it might be worth driving up to Park City to meet some of the non-Utah Twitters visiting town, so I drove up with Charlie Oliver (@charlieoliver on Twitter) to see what all the hype was.Â It was there that I met with Sperling Reich (@sperling on Twitter), Justin Keller (@justinkeller on Twitter), and Colleen Coplick (@colleencoplick on Twitter).Â Justin works for Cha Cha, a social search service very similar to Mahalo.Â They were handling a service as a sponsor of the Sundance Film Festival which helped visitors, tourists, and Stars figure out what’s going on, where to find things in town, and more.Â I heard someone Twitter this week that Quintin Terantino is in love with their service after this week!Â Colleen is a Social Media Consultant and PR expert, and she was doing photography and PR for the festival.Â Sperling is working on a new site (sorry Sperling – don’t remember all the details!) of some sort which tracks screenplays behind films, along with other film-type technology.

Over the weekend and during this week, through Twitter, I’ve learned that there was a Facebook Party, a MySpace party, a MySpace cafe (I heard over Twitter they give good swag!), and a few others like that.Â I heard where Seal was.Â I heard where several other stars were hanging out.Â I heard how people up in Sundance were taking the death of Heath Ledger.

I’ve never seen so much from a birds eye view of the festival!Â It’s amazing the role that Social Media is taking in these festivals and conferences.Â I must try to track the places I’m in or near from here on out on Twitter.Â I will definitely be going to the Festival and be more involved in it next year after this – the Sundance Film festival is now truly a “Social” event!Â Now, I want to know why Twitter (the company) didn’t have a presence there!Â Their users certainly were.

WordPress “Socialize Me!” Plugin Connects Your Blog

Posted on January 23, 2008 by jessestay

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

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

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

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

I Predicted it – the “Real” Big Announcement at MacWorld

Posted on January 16, 2008 by jessestay

Overshadowed by all the hype generated around the “MacBook Air” and iTunes Rentals, it seems people are missing one big announcement that comes with the MacBook Air. That announcement is the final inclusion of a Solid State hard drive in an Apple product. While other manufacturers have this, it has been speculated for a long time that this was going to happen with Apple, starting with a Patent they filed last year.

In Leo Laporte’s show last Saturday, I mentioned in IRC I thought Apple was going to announce a solid-state drive at this keynote. He quickly dismissed it (while unwilling to confirm any rumor, a wise decision). I’m happy to say, I was right! 🙂

Twitter Updates for 2008-01-14

Posted on January 14, 2008 by jessestay

Just realized there’s no place to put links on a Facebook Page – that’s frustrating! #

it’s way hard to boycott Techcrunch when all my Google Reader friends are sharing Techcrunch feeds with me 😛 #

lol – NBC must be desperate to do a whole special just for award announcements. Won’t they make more money posting it on the internet? #

“Why are we not funding this???” – Peter Griffin #

@libel_vox ah – those poor advertisers! #

How do you charge your clients for maintenance? Hourly? Part of the project? #

okay – now that my servers are all back online, my apologies to those that requested skitch invites. Please re-send requests to my e-mail. #

On Leopard and having connection issues? Enable G-Only on your router, and use WPA Personal-AES and your problems will go away. #

Wireless N, based on support forums on apple.com has *huge* issues in Leopard, with no fixes yet. #

Looks like I’ll be going to the Graphing Social Patterns Conference coming up (assuming my wife doesn’t have the baby) – who’s going? #

@humancell it’s March 3-4 in San Diego #

We should do a blogger bus from Utah 🙂 #

@petdance I don’t think she’ll have the baby until mid-end of March so I think she’ll be safe having the baby instead of someone else 😉 #

@humancell – ah come on! I’m risking missing my baby being born. Surely you can miss your wedding! 😉 #

@humancell, of course, I haven’t discussed it with @rebeccastay yet. I may be the pig too 😛 #

so, if Netflix is trying to compete with Apple, why can’t I use their “Watch Now” feature on my Mac? #

Twitter Updates for 2008-01-13

Posted on January 13, 2008 by jessestay

@dacort: http://joemaller.com/2008/01/12/itransmogrify/ – convert flash to iPhone-native formats on your iPhone #

This is how I use Google Reader – how do you use it?: http://tinyurl.com/2cekf4 #

How I use Google Reader

Posted on January 13, 2008 by jessestay

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

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

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

Skim, Skim, Skim! – There’s no way I would get through all 1,000+ of my feed items if I read every single one of them. I skim over the headlines, and sometimes the content, then move onto the next item. Only if the article is important to me do I read the article in detail.

Learn the Shortcuts – There are 3 or 4 shortcut keys that are essential for me. I use the ‘j’ key to open the next item and mark it as read. I use the ‘k’ key to move back to the previous item. I use the ‘shift-s’ key combination to share the item I’m reading if I think those that are friends with me might be interested. I use the ‘s’ key to start items I want to “bookmark” for later – this is Google Reader’s equivalent to del.icio.us. I then use the ‘r’ key to refresh the list I’m on – I like to click on the link “x new items” and read through those. Then, when I hit ‘r’ to refresh, it only shows me the new items I haven’t read yet.

Add as many friends as you can – The more friends you have, the more information you receive. If a friend isn’t providing productive feeds, then perhaps you can take them off, but besides that, information is good!

Stay on top of your feeds – if you don’t check them several times throughout the day, they will build up, and you’ll be stuck spending an hour or two in the middle of the night catching up. I like to use my cell phone when I’m away from my computer to go through my feeds. Google has excellent mobile tools, and Reader is no exception.

Don’t use iGoogle – I was using this for awhile, and realized a) I couldn’t use the shortcuts, and b) I couldn’t utilize the sharing or starring features. Perhaps if they improve it I’ll go back.

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