Reviews Archives - Page 2 of 10 - Stay N Alive

Category: Reviews

I’m On Facebook–Now What??? Makes the New York Times

Posted on by jessestay

IOFBNW in NYTimesMy Google Alerts notified me yesterday that the book I wrote with Jason Alba, “I’m On Facebook–Now What???” was featured in the New York Times.  The New York Times was interviewing my co-author on new ways to find a job if your current methods aren’t working.  It was a brief mention, just stating Jason was the co-author, but a mention, nonetheless!  Now to just make that best-seller list!

Want to learn more about what you can do with Facebook?  Check it out on our Facebook Page and become a Fan!: http://page.facebookadvice.com

Announcing New Features for SocialToo.com

Posted on by jessestay

SocialToo!Many of you are currently using SocialToo.com for auto-following those that follow you on Twitter.  Well, I just added 2 new features to the site that might warrant you wanting to log in again and seeing what’s there.  The first feature is Facebook profile redirects – now, “yoursocialtoouser.socialtoo.com” will redirect to your Facebook profile if you click on a link on your SocialToo! dashboard (after logging in).  See my Facebook profile here and add me as a friend!: http://jessestay.socialtoo.com BTW, this is just one more example of how you can integrate the Facebook API outside of Facebook itself.
Also, I just added a UI to the blacklisting functionality I’ve talked about before.  This will allow you to specify specific users you don’t want the SocialToo! Twitter Auto-Follow script to follow.  You will of course have to unfollow them if you are already following them, but from then on they will no longer be followed by SocialToo!

These are just a few of many integrated Social Tools I’ll be adding in the future.  Stay tuned here and I’ll keep you updated (I’ll also shoot you a quick Twitter DM for the big ones like this!).  Let me know if you run into troubles.  Enjoy!

You can also read more about it on FacebookAdvice.com here: http://facebookadvice.com/2008/03/01/socialtoocom-your-companion-to-facebook-and-the-social-web/

Announcing OpensocialNow.com – OpenSocial News and Reviews

Posted on by jessestay

OpenSocialNow.comI’m proud to announce a new website I’ve been working on.  You may have heard me Twitter about it a few times.  The site is called OpensocialNow!, and will be your source for OpenSocial News, Reviews, and info.  We’ll cover the Orkut launch, the Myspace launch, Hi5, and LinkedIn, as well as general things you can do with OpenSocial.  This is the first blog of its kind, and as OpenSocial launches in the next week or two I’m sure you’ll see many more like it.  It’s my hope that you’ll subscribe to the site via rss and make it your Official source for all things related to the popular social networking platform, OpenSocial.  You can read more about it right on the website here:

http://opensocialnow.com/2008/02/26/welcome-to-opensocialnow/

Oh, and stay tuned to OpensocialNow.com.  I have one more big announcement about a change in the OpenSocial launch coming up tonight!

Google Releases Spreadsheets Forms – S3 Equivalent Coming?

Posted on by jessestay

Google FormsYesterday Google announced a rather interesting, and I believe strategic move, allowing users of Google Docs to put forms in front of their online spreadsheets through Google Docs.  I didn’t realize this until now, but Google really has a dynamic, unflattened data source that they have been providing through their Google Spreadsheets.  Now, with the ability to add forms, in many ways we are seeing another hosted development platform for website owners to use for whatever they would like to collect data for.  This has been long needed – I can’t tell you how many people have asked me at some time to install Formmail.pl for them to send them e-mails of a simple form they have installed on their website.  Now, they can just set up a Google doc, and a form to front that doc, and no e-mail is necessary!

The functionality is very simple right now, but one has to remember this is Google, which at one point was just a simple search engine.  Google always starts simple, and takes over the world with that simple plan.  Imagine if Google were to incorporate their new graphing API into these forms for simple survey-taking capabilities.  Now, add to that the ability for more robust reporting beyond that, ability to include single cells from a spreadsheet, and perhaps a query language of sorts to interface with it.  Google could very soon be competing with perhaps at first the likes of Amazon S3 storage services, but even more, their SimpleDB query engine, at a much more robust level.  This is Google after all.  I wouldn’t put it past them.

Demo of Prologue With Joseph Scott, Developer at Automattic

Posted on by jessestay

I sat down for lunch at Applebees with Joseph Scott, a Developer at Automattic, who was the developer on the Prologue project. As I mentioned earlier, Prologue is essentially, as I term it, “OpenSocial for Twitter“, and allows you to create your own Twitter-like community on any WordPress blog with the addition of just a simple WordPress theme. In the demo, he shows how it works, and then we discuss potential uses for the theme, and ways one can use Prologue in their own Blogging environment. It was an enjoyable and interesting conversation!

Demo of Prologue With Joseph Scott, Developer at Automattic from Jesse Stay on Vimeo.

Bebo Announces Auto-play for All for Flash on User Profiles

Posted on by jessestay

Bebo LogoA really cool feature of the Bebo API is that, unlike the Facebook API, they are committed to allow autoplay on Flash widgets placed on Profile pages.  Facebook has turned off this feature, requiring users to click on the widget before it is allowed to play.  Today, Bebo became even more appealing by announcing they are going to allow the user to have preference over what autoplays and what does not.

On Bebo, Developers have the choice to have the sound on their Flash widgets play when the page is loaded, have the sound off when the page is loaded, or disable the sound entirely.  Users have the ability to disable sound entirely when they load pages:

“bebo users can opt to not autoplay flash content on profiles they view – if such a viewer is viewing a page then all sn:swf tags that requested sound=”on” will be set to “off”

Flash Widgets still autoplay, with or without sound.  The user then has the opportunity to turn on the sound with a little speaker icon in the upper-right corner of the widget.

I think this is a great way to prevent spam of music or other sounds playing as you load others’ profiles, similar to how MySpace does it.  At the same time, it stays flexible for developers in that they can have a completely running flash application (instead of an image, like Facebook), right as the page loads.  Apps like the Skype app for Facebook and my GrandCentral app actually have purpose with this method.

Cha Cha Saved My Brother – Why I’m a Believer

Posted on by jessestay

ChaCha LogoA few weeks ago, I met at a Tweetup with Justin Keller from ChaCha.com and a few others that were in town visiting for Sundance.  He gave me a cool, free scarf with the Cha Cha and Sundance Logos on it.  It was my first official “Sundance Swag”.   That was also my first introduction to Cha Cha, and from then on I heard a lot of cool things on Twitter about Cha Cha, and lots of celebrities up in Sundance that were loving it.

Today, that meetup had meaning when my brother called me from I-40 in New Mexico on his way to Las Vegas, between Gallup and Albuquerque saying he was stranded.  He wanted to know why traffic was at a standstill on what would usually be a pretty vacant Road (it is in the middle of the desert!).  I checked Google, couldn’t find any traffic info for that area.  Then I checked Google Maps to look at the traffic, and no traffic showed for the area.  I checked accuweather.com and weather.com to see if it might be weather, but couldn’t see any evidence.

Then I remembered Cha Cha had a “Human Powered” search engine.  I sent a question to “242242” (CHACHA on your cell phone) via text message on my iPhone asking why my brother was at a standstill.  Within just a couple minutes I received a response saying they were cleaning up after near white-out conditions, and to wait out until they cleared up the roads.  A link was attached, which also told me there were several accidents ahead and the road was closed (I love my iPhone’s browser!).  I quickly called my brother and told him the details so he could decide to find the nearest hotel and wait it out.

Cha Cha in this case saved my brother from a pretty tough situation!  Consider Cha Cha your personal, real life social, search engine for your cell phone – you send it a text message, a human “guide” that gets paid $.20 per transaction sends you your answer back, with a link to the source(s).  There is also a web version, which takes you to a chat box where you can ask a live person your question.  I had worse results with that – the person just returned a bunch of vague links with no real answer.

Regardless of my one bad experience, I have now added 242242 to my cell phone contacts list.  It will be my new friend when I need to find things on the go.  Don’t forget to add it to your contacts!

Pownce – Why it May be Worth Considering

Posted on by jessestay

I’m very surprised that Twitter is not trying to compete with Pownce. As some of you may know, Pownce recently went out of beta, and opened their platform to anyone interested in joining. For awhile, I wasn’t much of a proponent for Pownce, but just recently, I’ve decided to give Pownce a try and see if it could be a good alternative to Twitter.

The last time I tried Pownce, I was unaware of Twitter – to me, Pownce just didn’t make sense at the time. Why would anyone need another way of sharing things with their friends? Isn’t that what a chat client is for?

It wasn’t until today, when I wanted a way to share a song my brother’s band did with friends, I realized Twitter just didn’t fulfill my need. You see, with anything but text updates, you have to go to an external website, upload the file, then post an external link to that file, photo, or video for others to see.

Pownce took care of that issue for me. With one integrated client, I was able to upload the file I wanted to share, and boom – it was available to all my friends to not only click, but play directly from the Pownce client! Not only that, but I opened up http://m.pownce.com on my iPhone, and I was able to play it right on my iPhone, without having to download the file! Pownce supports most file types, as well as links, and events, as well as plain status updates like Twitter.

The other thing that I thought I may complain about, which Pownce has, is ads. Because Pownce supplies users with its own client (they do have an API – I’m sure there will be other clients available in the future), they are able to provide users with inline ads, separate from their updates, right in the client. Honestly, I kind of feel this is somewhat comforting – from these I know my update service has an actual revenue model. There’s organization among the chaos, and I know my update client will be around for awhile longer. We complain when there are ads, but honestly, I think this is a flaw that will catch up with Twitter – the unknowns of how Twitter will make money are making the community ask questions.

So, now that I’m on Pownce will I move away from Twitter? For now, no – Pownce needs an SMS option before I completely switch. There’s something to say about having my phone make an SMS sound every time I get an @ reply or a direct message. Also, Pownce does not yet support tracking – this is an extremely valuable tool on Twitter! I also have a great network on Twitter. For now, I can see myself having both Pownce, and Twitter open – I’m really hoping the missing features of Pownce are taken care of, and my network also gradually moves over so I can take advantage of this great service! You can find me on Pownce at:

http://www.pownce.com/jessestay

WordPress “Socialize Me!” Plugin Connects Your Blog

Posted on by jessestay

I’ve recently been looking for better ways to connect my blog into the social sphere.  I feel the easier my readers can connect with me, talk with me, ask questions, etc., the more personal my blog becomes.  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.  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!.  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.  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.  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.  You can try the plugin yourself at:

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

Twitter Opens Their Messaging Platform

Posted on by jessestay

Today, in the first post on the new Twitter Technology Blog, Alex Payne announced that Twitter is releasing their underlying messaging platform, which they call, “Starling”, to the community. From the announcement it appears Starling is the basis for handling all communication underneath Twitter, speaks memcached, and reminds me in some ways of Perl POE, for Ruby. This is the development baby of Twitter, a great move by the new head of Engineering for Twitter, and a great benefit to the development community! Twitter is starting to remind me very much of Google in its philosophies, starting with a core technology, focusing on that, then figuring out monetization after the fact, all while giving back to the community. Way to go Twitter!