Friendfeed is doing "Real-Time" right

Friendfeed has put out it's version of real-time search, and it's better than what anyone else is doing. Much better than Twitter. The best part is you can embed this real time search anywhere on the web. This is what I wanted Twitter to do not long ago - so at the end of a blog post I could include the most recent conversation on the web about the topic.

Friendfeed does not have as many users as Twitter and the early adopter crowd leans more to the tech side than the whole of Twitter would. But for this blog it works.

And that's not to say no one talks about pop culture or politics or whatever at friendfeeed. They ramble on about that stuff over there as well. For this post, I wanted to grab something that was getting a lot of talk on the web - so you could see the feed in action (it auto updates). Michael Jackson is moving too fast to even monitor. So I went with SarahPalin. You can roll your mouse over a post to pause the feed from moving while you read.



If I ever get back to writing over here - I'll start using this.

When did Facebook get Google "Connect" ... and why doesn't it work?

I just noticed this for the first time today. In my facebook settings - I can tell it to automatically log me into facebook if I am logged into some other network. I chose Google, since the first thing I do every morning is log into Gmail. Here is a screen shot:

 

This would be awesome if it actually worked. I could not get it to work in Chrome, Firefox or IE. Is this new or has it been around a while? Anyone know the dealio with this?
 

My Initial (Premature) Thoughts on Google Wave.

Wow - from the little bit I see here (and it is a very little bit) - Google Wave looks and sounds impressive. I hope this actually comes out soon and is not just vaporware.

And while it looks to be a massive piece of software, I hope it is not another fragment of Google floating around the web. I hope it acts as a replacement for Gmail. I don't want it to be a separate thing I have to log into. Or something that I can't use with people not on Wave. Hopefully a "wave" acts as an email (or IM , or SMS, or meeting request or whatever) for those that are not on wave. Obviously there will be new functions that can only be a wave, but I hope it is backwards compatible with other communication. Don't make this just be a different network.

Since this is all about communication - hopefully we will see it bring in Google Voice as well. That's important. And hopefully the calendar plays a major role in here. I would think the events and meetings I'm involved in would be considered a wave since more often than not it involves my contacts. Picasa will obviously be involved.

Will I be able to add other social data to my contacts? Can I tie my friend's flickr, twitter and last.fm account to them. Can I generate a news feed on my contacts from this data? Jaiku started playing with this idea - does Google bring it and it's more prominent status update over here? (IM status update does not count - that needs to be different).

If it somehow includes this giant wish list maybe Google finally pulls off the long awaited "the internet is the social network". I've always doubted that was possible - but this looks close. Well the direction my imagination went when I saw the picture looks close. I'm excited to see what Google's imagination comes up with.

Google breaks the intranet - with no warning

Here is an issue with moving to "the cloud", and even more so moving to the cloud with Google. I recently moved our company's intranet over to Google Sites. I wanted a low cost, easy way for department heads to be able to manage and update their sections of our intranet from anywhere. Google Sites was perfect for this. Recently though Google made some unannounced changes to Sites that broke the intranet.

Google apparently decided to host images and code for the new Sites on different domains than they had previously been on. The problem with that is we use internet blocking software at our retail locations and all domains (even location of graphics) have to be opened up in the software.

Since we had no warning or control over the switch - everyone just came in one morning and could no longer see or navigate the page (we also lost all our navigation links on the site for some reason and had to set them all back up).

So since this is in the cloud (and mostly because it is Google) we received no warning or notification that changes were coming - they just came. We were given no control over the change. I did not even receive an email about it when it was complete. I had to start digging once the phone calls started pouring in. Had this been on our own servers, we would have had the option to upgrade at the best possible time for us (which would not have been the moment we walked in the door on May 19th).

Had it not been a secret (for whatever reason) we would have prepared the PCs ahead of time to access the new domains Google was going to use to host these. But this is what happens when you let these things out of your control.

We use the free version of Google Apps for this intranet. But even so - with Google making such a push to get business to take their cloud services seriously- it's a pretty stupid way to go. You're not going to talk us into upgrading to additional features if you keep jacking around with us.

LIfe - Collecting

I think I'm going to start a tumblr blog . Let me rephrase, I think I'm going to start using my tumblr blog I set up a year or so ago. There are so many different fragments of my life floating around on the interwebs now. From my kids/family blog, to facebook, this blog (whatever this is), twitter, friendfeed, Flickr, youtube on and on. It's important that each of those has their own place. I think different parts of my life need to stand on their own still. But I also want to bring them all together somewhere. Or bring at least some of them together.

There are other topics I would like to talk about as well. This blog seems to be more focused on technology, social media, google, etc. I'm fine with that. I need a blog for that. I'm passionate about all that. But that's not really all I'm passionate about. I'm also passionate about bacon and baseball, this just seems like an odd place to talk about those things. I also enjoy taking pictures, music and puns (I'm just kidding - I hate puns). Again - they don't seem to go here. But they go somewhere.

I posted earlier wondering how we tie all this social together, and I still don't really know. But this is a start for me as far as my personal brand goes. I talked about what Skittles was doing at the time and how using multiple social networks as their site did not seem to work. They tried to build a site on top of a bunch of separate sites. What needs to be done is to build content for your site from a bunch of separate sites. But it still has to be "your" site. That could work.

And no Friendfeed suggestions please. I like Friendfeed a lot and use it. But it's not really what I'm trying to accomplish here. I'm not looking for life-streaming, more like life-collecting. I want it to reside in one spot  - not linked all over the web and not mixed in with everyone else.

Really the only reason I'm telling you all this now is because I needed to write a post here and see how it feeds to my Tumblr blog. We'll see how it goes.

Busy with Hangdowns

I've been pretty bad about posting, but for good reason. I've been preoccupied with a side project called Hangdowns (www.hangdowns.com). It started off as an experiment or proof of concept. I wanted to see if you could build a small ecommerce site off nothing but free Google tools. Turns out - you can.

Using Blogger and Goggle Checkout I put together a site to sell Lego Necklaces and Scrabble Necklaces that a friend of mine  assembles in his spare time. We launched it over a week ago, and have actually be getting sales. Nothing to make you quit your job for, but enough to entertain us.

The only marketing we are using right now is facebook (well and Twitter - but not really). So it's fun getting to play around with facebook ads for something like this. Much better product for the facebook crowd compared to trying to market Strasburg product there.

I'll write more about the social marketing aspect of the project later. Until then, join hangdowns facebook group - or follow us on Twitter @hangdowns.

If you're passionate about your message, then money is not the issue.

Let me start by saying I love the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. I want that place to make it. Let me also admit I have let my membership slip since Buck O'Neil died. It's kind of like 18th and Vine disappeared from my radar for a while...and I feel bad about that. But some of the blame falls on them for their internet strategy, or lack of it.

I don't want to get into all the junk and politics going on around the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. You can read about it here and here if you need to catch up. I'll just set this up like this: I pitched Bob Kendrick about 7 or 8 years ago while I was at MoonWire. They said they did not have the budget to do the things that needed to be done to establish a real online presence. A couple weeks ago, after reading more about the problems they were having I emailed Bob just to tell him I hoped things picked up and how surprised I was that they still had no real online presence, especially when it comes to a social media: no Facebook, no Twitter, no blog. A whole generation uses the web through those channels, and the NLBM was not visible anywhere. They have basically closed the blinds on today's internet user. Bob emailed back that he agreed, and he hoped they would be able to get some budget increases so they could get involved on those things. There it is again. Budget.  

I don't post this to pick on Bob Kendrick. From what I understand, Bob is dealing with a lot of crap down there right now. And the times I have met him I have really liked him. A lot. And again, I'm not in the loop over there to see what they are really working on. I'm just going with how it looks from the outside. His thoughts about creating an online presence are common with a lot of people and businesses. They don't really understand today's social web. It is so different than it was even 7 to 8 years ago when Bob and I first met. I know with Buck O'Neil gone, it has gotten harder for the NLBM to get attention and spread the word. Buck was a social giant. They need to find a way to start talking to people without Buck. No better place to do that than online. And it doesn't take stacks of money anymore.

Being successful online these days has less to do with budget and a lot to do with passion for your message. Especially for something like the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. I'm hard pressed to come up with another group that would be as exciting to build an online community around than the NLBM. And it would cost very little to get going. It should be every social marketer's dream to pitch them ideas. It's got to be the easiest job in town to get immediate results from. My head is spinning with ideas.

Here's one...

Live Tweet history. Baseball season is starting in a couple weeks. Live tweet some historical Negro League games. Act is if they are happening right now. If a game was played on May 1st 1925, then on May 1st 2009 tweet the game as if it happening right then. Give me the pitching match up, standings prior to the game. Tweet the first pitch. Then from there sometimes you might tweet crucial at bats pitch by pitch, other times  you might just tweet once for a whole inning if they were up and down in order with nothing exciting. You know how the game ends. You know where the drama is and what at bats prove crucial to the outcome. You could tell an amazing story doing this.

The best would be if you could do a season. Pick one game a week or a couple from the same season and let us follow that season from beginning to end reliving (most of us living for the first time) the season. The problem would be, do we have enough records and score cards to tweet 2 important games a week for a whole season? I don't know the answer to that. But I imagine there is enough to get started.

I think you could get a lot of buzz by using the shiniest new internet darling, Twitter, to bring history alive. And this takes little money. It just takes the passion to want to tell people about it.

How about this...

Give me some short video tours of some of the exhibits, given by some ball players and post them to a facebook page. I'm just talking about 3 minute videos by someone like Joe Carter (he's in town). Have him show us a piece in a current exhibit and maybe give a little background. A teaser to the full exhibit. Put out at least 2 a week. Or go after current ball payers that are in town to play the Royals and have them come over and do a short tour on an exhibit. This does not take a budget - this just takes some passion.

There are so many possibilities to use social media to spread the word.

The NLBM has the unbelievable responsibility of teaching us about an important part of our country's history. They hold a lot of that history behind their walls. Unfortunately - instead of spreading the word, they are locking it up in a web site from the nineties and acting like the reason they can't tell anyone about it is because of money. That's silly.

It doesn't take money. With all the tools available to the internet marketer today, it takes passion. I hope all that passion over there did not die with Buck O'Neil.