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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

Twitter Updates for 2008-01-12

Posted on January 12, 2008 by jessestay

Lots of articles like these today: http://tinyurl.com/2zx825 #

@Afrowhitey ouch! What are you going to do now? #

@AfroWhitey get on IM when you get a chance. I’d like to get your blog back up. #

“Ask Jesse” Cam is back up at http://www.jessestay.com #

my 3 year old is logging into the computer all by himself on camera right now #

ordering Dinner and Cake from cheesecake factory mmm… #

@expecting_rain I’m not sure – last I checked it was close to 2 hours wait. For pickup it’s only about 25 minutes curbsite-to-go. #

Scratch curbside to go at cheesecake factory being 20 mins. You have to wait 20 more mins after u get here #

@biznickman I love that Dave & Busters! Man I miss VA/DC/MD area. #

Wondering how my 84 year old grandmother got on Bebo #

@susanreynolds, @conniereece I wish I could convince my mom to be on Facebook! #

Just added the Bebo developer app – woohoo! I’m a Bebo developer now! #

need to modify the WWW:Facebook::API for Perl to work as WWW::Bebo::API now. #

Bebo has much better categories than Facebook does for its apps. There’s an actual “charities” category. #

just secured the app names “latterdaysaints”, “catholics”, and “baptists” on Bebo #

@petdance are you atl500? #

@petdance added #

Anyone (biznickman?) know if there is any API and developer documentation for the Bebo development platform yet? (other than Facebook :-P) #

Are Pink and colored iPhones to come at MacWorld?: http://tinyurl.com/269o6k #

Look at me! I’m a Bebo Developer!: http://tinyurl.com/yuxrx9 #

How we used Facebook Notes to sync http://www.imonfacebooknowwhat.com with our Facebook Page(http://snurl.com/1wej5): http://snurl.com/1x8a5 #

so am I a sap if I like “My Best Friend’s Wedding?” #

@hundreddollar that’s what I love about it! Finally, a movie where she doesn’t break up the good, existing relationship! 🙂 #

didn’t realize @leolaporte broadcasts his KFI show on ustream.tv. Hi @leolaporte! #

I think Apple is releasing solid state Macbooks at MacWorld – they had a patent several years ago for that #

@kdumont you can chat with him in irc – irc.dslextreme.com #techguy #

w00t! After one year I finally convinced Microsoft to give me the $22 they owe me. 🙂 #

what’s going on with gmail right now? Can’t get it to send e-mail. #

Does anyone know a network admin that does freelance in the Boston area? My brother, @Afrowhitey is looking for one. #

@MarinaMartin it’s nice to see you back on rss – I’ve enjoyed your rss shares on google reader #

Jesse Stay is Now a Bebo Developer and Consultant!

Posted on January 12, 2008 by jessestay

That’s right – you may now add Bebo to my list of expertise. You may notice there’s a new category to the right – “Bebo”. The popular website Bebo.com, that I guess one could compare much closer to MySpace than Facebook announced late yesterday night that they were opening up their platform to developers. Before this, the platform was open to a small number of developers developing in a private beta of their application space.

I have started delving into their API, and I have to admit – I’m impressed! Their system is much more responsive than Facebooks (Facebook was recently rated as one of the slowest Social Networking sites), and in setting up a basic app, I have to admit it is a little more user-friendly than on Facebook. While it is much more user-friendly, Bebo has striven to maintain compatibility with Facebook. Almost every aspect of their API, from the API itself, to its FBML derivative called SNML is near duplicate. Bebo denies being the first to use the 3rd party partner-licensed platform Facebook is soon to release, but I have to admit, Bebo has done an excellent job at replicating what Facebook has done. If only Google could do the same with Open Social. Could this bring the developer community over to Bebo from Facebook?

Stay tuned – on SocialOptimize.com we’ll be posting some white papers on statistics surrounding Bebo, demographics, traffic, users, etc. as we find them. My partner, Allan Young is hard at work putting those numbers together. In addition to that, I’m working on migrating the WWW::Faceboook::API Perl libraries over to Bebo.

On a side note – one ironic thing I found about Bebo is that somehow, my 84 year old Grandmother is on Bebo. She has been sick lately, so I can’t imagine how old that account is. How many people can say their Grandmother is their friend on a social network??? 🙂