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Stay N’ Alive Has a New Design!

Posted on December 16, 2008 by jessestay

If you haven’t been by to visit the actual blog lately (hello my loyal RSS Readers!), you might want to click on the link up there to come see what it looks like. Thanks to my friend and talented Graphic Designer, Brandon Babb, we now have a new design! I’d also like to announce a few new directions for Stay N’ Alive.

Community

You’ll notice on the right there’s now a “Community” sub-section with options to join the community on either Google Friend Connect, or Facebook Connect. Choose one, or the other, or both! Right now it’s a great way to know what other friends of yours are readers of this blog, or perhaps get introduced to someone new. Or you can just invite your friends and tell them about a story you like, asking them to join the community as well! (I suggest you personalize your message)

It should be noted that by joining Friend Connect (just a single click if you have any Google account anywhere), you’ll have the option to also post on the wall you’ll see under the same “Community” subsection. I encourage you all to get on the wall and communicate! You can leave a message for me, or respond to others’ messages. The replies are threaded, so it makes for a great place to just talk amongst yourselves. Also, through Friend Connect, if you are a Twitter user, you can now invite your friends to read an article via Twitter by clicking the “Invite” link, choosing the “other” option, and then Twitter. Google just announced this today. I’m sure you’ll see many more features launched in the future as Google tries to compete with Facebook.

If you join Facebook Connect, you’ll have the option to invite your Facebook friends. In the very near future you should be able to also use this same identity to comment on posts, post those comments to Facebook, among other things. (It’s still unclear if this will be through Disqus or not) For now you can still share the posts to your profile, and see other Facebook users and friends that have visited the site. Expect to see much more as I begin to enhance and expand both Friend Connect and Facebook Connect to further enhance the site.

More About Me

Let’s face it, I have to pay the bills. So I have included some more information about me, and about the blog. Go ahead – click on the “About” section. Oooh – see it expand and contract? Pretty cool, eh? This will only get better.

You’ll notice I now have information about my Speaking, and Consulting. If you know someone, or have an opportunity in either of these areas, please don’t hesitate to send people my way. I’d love to see how I can help you, as I feel I have a few talents I can share with you and your friends in various capacities. Check out my client list if you want to know results.

Also, I’m avoiding it for the moment, but those little square boxes in the upper-right could be for sale if you would like to make an offer. I also have 3 more boxes that could go below those, and they can be combined to make bigger boxes. Let me know if it’s something you’re interested in. Make me an offer and I’d love to consider it, although I’m still debating if I want to sell ads here or not.

Photography

Dooce, watch out – I’m coming for you! There’s more than enough room for the two of us here in Utah, and us Daddy bloggers can compete with the rest of ’em! As of yesterday, I’m now starting (at least) a photo of the day. What the subject of these will be I’m still debating, but I’m open to suggestions, and feedback. My goal is to tell a story. Photography is a passion, and hobby of mine – I’d like to share some of that with you.

You’ll still get the same tech news, same early adopter technologies. I’ll still be blogging regularly on LouisGray.com, InsideFacebook.com, and occasionally Dadomatic.com (just search for my name on any of those sites), but this is always my home. Keep coming back! Oh, and trust me, there’s much more to come.

What Once Was

Posted on December 16, 2008 by jessestay

In October we took the family up the nearby Millcreek canyon. It was beautiful outside. The leaves had all fallen on the ground, coating it in this beautiful orange, brown, and yellow. Just as beautiful were the trees the leaves had fallen from, now barren. What once was.

Reflection

Posted on December 15, 2008 by jessestay

We decided to take a little trip to go see the Christmas lights on Friday as a family at the Salt Lake City Mormon temple. I couldn’t resist the beauty of the lights on the water with the reflection in the background.

Potential Applications of Facebook Connect in E-Commerce

Posted on December 15, 2008 by jessestay

I’m way too late on this, since it’s been mentioned several times already, but I thought I’d share a little presentation Jesse Pickard and the Razorfish guys did that I had the opportunity to help out on. Jesse asked me several questions about Facebook Connect a few months ago, and he turned it into this excellent presentation on potential uses of the platform for E-Commerce. In it, he uses iTunes, the iPhone (I still predict that’s coming – I always have, as has Facebook), and Amazon all as examples of potential integration points for Facebook Connect. These types of services have tremendous potential to see maximum success from integrating social networking into their own e-commerce platforms. They do risk some privacy, but that’s the advantage of Facebook – they are one of the few services out there which allow for privacy controls of their users, and they are only getting better at it.

I’d really like to see more e-commerce organizations embrace Facebook Connect. If I can be of help in doing so, please contact me! You can read more about it via the presentation Jesse Pickard made:

Portable Social Graphs – Imagining their Potential[swfobj style=”margin:0px” width=”425″ height=”355″ src=”http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=fbconnectrazorfish-1228360493956517-8&stripped_title=portable-social-graphs-imagining-their-potential-presentation” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”]

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)

You’re Invited to the First Utah CoWorking Offices

Posted on December 10, 2008 by jessestay

This Thursday, December 11, I will be speaking on a panel at a Tweetup (that’s Twitter-speak for get-together) in the very first Utah Coworking Office. The offices are located in Orem, Utah, and promise a location where everyone can bring their business, pay a shared fee covering only rental costs, and share the company of others as you and your business gets off the ground. It’s unique of its kind for Utah, and should prove popular amongst many entrepreneurs looking for a place to hunker down while they work.

You’re invited! On December 11 from 6:00pm to 9:00pm they are having a Tweetup at the new Cowork Utah offices. All in Utah are welcome, and as part of the Tweetup, me, @ashbuckles, @newspapergrl, @mollermarketing, and @mickhagen; will discuss Twitter, what it is, why it’s useful, why it isn’t useful, and other topics as you enjoy the company of others at the event.

So come on over for some great company, great food, and a great opportunity to see what the new concept of “Coworking” is bringing to Utah as we participate in this event.

The address for the event is:

383 N. State St., Suite 201 (second floor)
Orem UT

You can download the flyer for the event here.

The New Media/Journalism Panel Friday and My Thoughts

Posted on December 9, 2008 by jessestay

As I said earlier last week, Friday I was on a New Media and Journalism panel with Paul Foy of the AP and Fields Mosley of KUTV Channel 2 news here in Salt Lake. As the blogger of the group, I had a unique opportunity to share some of the new advances in Media. I gained a new perspective on journalism and shared my thoughts over on LouisGray.com (where I regularly blog – subscribe to see more of my posts there!).

Here’s a brief quote:

“As the blogger of the group, I was obviously the least experienced in the field of journalism. I actually felt quite awkward at times feeling they thought I was out of place, and was that “guy who sits in his pajamas in his parents’ basement”. (I actually brought that up, mentioning only half of it was true – I’m actually at Jiffy Lube as I write this, awaiting my car to receive its safety and emissions certification. And yes – I’m dressed.) However, in reality, in a room of PR and marketing professionals in the tech field, they were actually the ones out of place, and I think that became evidently clear as one of the audience members asked who in the audience had published some sort of content about the event we were in during the event. Almost all of the audience, including me, rose their hands. The traditional news reporters were the only ones without their hands raised, further showing the sad state of our news media today.”

Old Media is dead. Read more over on LouisGray.com.

Finally, a Tactful Anti-Prop 8 Video!

Posted on December 3, 2008 by jessestay

With all the attacks against Mormons and other groups, I have been wondering why anyone could be against Prop 8 and support the people behind the no campaign – I was actually somewhat a supporter of the anti-Prop 8 campaign until my faith began to be attacked for supposedly not allowing me to support what I was indeed supporting. As a Mormon, I just couldn’t stand for the attacks against my faith and videos like this one. Because of that I’ve been on the defensive, perhaps supporting more of the pro-8 campaign than I would have originally felt comfortable with doing. However, finally, perhaps the anti-prop 8 crowd is getting it as this awesomely tactful and funny Anti-Prop 8 video has surfaced on Funny-or-Die. Like it or hate it – you can’t go wrong with Jack Black or Mr. Doogie Howser himself!

I introduce to you, “Prop 8, The Musical”:

[swfobj width=”464″ height=”388″ classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ flashvars=”key=c0cf508ff8″ allowfullscreen=”true” quality=”high” src=”http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”]

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

To the No on 8 campaign and all those protesting my church – Let’s find more positive ways of promoting this campaign. Hopefully we’ll see much more of this in the near future.

Remember When Your Followers Were Deleted? Twitter’s Done it Again!

Posted on December 3, 2008 by jessestay

Earlier in the year you may remember Twitter “accidentally” deleting a large portion of a majority of their users’ followers and having to spend days restoring those from tape backup due to their mishap. Well, it would appear that Twitter has done it again. This time may not be as obvious to users.

On SocialToo.com I was noticing we were getting “Rate Limit Exceeded” errors for our whitelisted @socialtoo user. Such errors shouldn’t be happening for whitelisted users so I looked into it. Sure enough, on the Twitter development mailing list I noticed an email from the founder of MrTweet, Yu-Shan Fung, stating they too were seeing the same issue with their @mrtweet whitelited user.

Alex Payne, Twitter API Lead, confirmed the issue, stating, “It looks like some database maintenance inadvertently truncated our table of whitelisted users.” He then continued in a follow-up e-mail making the problem seem worse: ‘The updated estimate I’ve just received from our ops guys is “more
than 15 minutes and less than 12 hours”. They have to restore from a
nightly database backup. Said backups are quite large, and take some
time to get through.’ It would appear that Twitter has inadvertently deleted an entire table of all the whitelisted users – this is the table that enables many of the Twitter Apps you use to continue to talk to the API without breaking. This is what we as developers are relying on to work or our Apps go down.

It was the exact issue of database deletion and insecurity of Twitter being competent enough to not do it again that caused me to go on hiatus from Twitter earlier in the year. Problems like deleting an entire table from a database, especially twice in a year, are inexcusable Twitter! I recommend finding someone that can ensure this doesn’t happen again. It’s time to upgrade your Operations team. As developers, we simply can’t rely on this, and it’s why I called my service SocialToo and not TwitterToo.

In the meantime, many of the Twitter services you use until this gets resolved may have issues. This includes SocialToo.com autofollow being down until the table in the Twitter database is up again. I’ll keep you updated on the @socialtoo Twitter account when this comes up again.

Presentations Available With Audio

Posted on December 2, 2008 by jessestay

Just a quick update – I’m posting my Ignite presentation below, dubbed with audio this time. It should be a great primer to get you started in Facebook Development. Also, scroll down and you’ll be able to listen to the panel I joined at Global Entrepreneurship Week Utah 2 weeks ago.

Facebook Development in 5 Minutes[swfobj style=”margin:0px” width=”425″ height=”355″ src=”http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=fb-development-5-minutes-1227159742206508-8&stripped_title=facebook-development-in-5-minutes-presentation” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”]

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: city lake)

Here is the GEWUtah Panel (taken from http://www.utahpulse.com/featured_article/unleashing-ideas-conference-viral-marketing-secret-weapons-a-down-economy-panel-dis):

[audio:http://www.utahpulse.com/files/GEWViralMarket.mp3]