New Twitter

So I finally got the New Twitter web client opened up to me today. Unfortunately on an account I don't really use. So I have not really been able to put it through the ringer on my personal account, but played enough to get a general idea. My first impression is - It's good.

I think it works great for a personal account (or could with minor tweaks). I like it a lot better than using something like Seesmic web or even a desktop app (like Seesmic2 or Tweetdeck). It's the closest thing to the Twitter iPad app, which is hands down the best Twitter experience for a personal account. It can definitely get better though, and here is where I need it to start:

1. Pop ups on mentions. Seesmic's web app and Google Calendar both use Chrome's ability to display pop ups when you have a new message. Twitter needs this. With sound.

2. This is what will stop me from leaving Seesmic web possibly. It needs better visual separation of unread tweets, as well as the ability to stay on the last tweet you read when you refresh.

I actually read my entire Twitter feed most of the time, on my personal account. I keep the people I follow to a manageable level. So this won't probably apply to a lot of people that follow thousands. NewTwitter currently does not load new tweets, but instead tells you at the top how many new tweets are waiting. Once you click on this - it loads the new tweets. I would prefer that it just auto updated new tweets in, but I can live with having to refresh it myself, which is easily done with a keyboard shortcut (hitting the period). Problem is - the keyboard shortcut refreshes the stream then takes you to the top of your feed to the most recent tweet. Skipping over all the new tweets that came in between the last one you read and the most recent. I would rather it refresh everything above, but leave me where I was when I hit refresh. So once I refresh - I can work my way up the stream again. Basically I want Twitter to load the new tweets above me, out of my view.

I keep Twitter open in a tab at all times. So if it's been an few hours since you checked in, and you refresh, you have to scroll way down to find where you had left off. But making matters worse - there is no visual representation showing where you left off. Old Twitter used to at least darken the divider line between the last tweet you read and the oldest new tweet. So you could see where you left off. NewTwitter does not do this. The work around is - you have to remember to select the tweet you last read before hitting the refresh keyboard shortcut. This will still whisk you up to the top of the feed, but will at least leave your place marked down below so you can scroll down to it. 

So if I could get a "refresh and don't move" option - that would keep me on here and leaving Seesmic Web behind, for my personal account. I would still need Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop running in the background for searches and for other accounts. This really does nothing for those monitoring keywords or watching over brands. NewTwitter is designed for the casual user. The Facebook user. And more or less - I think they succeeded. 

3. My pie in the sky request? Keep my reading location in the stream synced across NewTwitter and Twitter for iPhone and iPad. When I log into each one, ask if I want to go to my furthest location from a previous session. Similar to what the Kindle App does. That way if the last time I checked Twitter was around lunch, when I get home and fire up the iPad, it takes me to where I left off.

So it sounds like I'm complaining - but over all I'm pleased with it. Just a couple tweaks and I would love it. The embedding of media, the right hand info pane when you click on a tweet, keyboard shortcuts. There is a lot to like and it's a big improvement over the previous version. Which I considered pretty much unusable.

Live Writer it is…for now

I'm going to use Live Writer for this project. It's a great piece of software, even if it lacks the cloud. I'm using Live Sync (another great tool I just found from Microsoft) to sync the folders between computers. This way if I start editing a post at work, I can finish it when I get home and vice versa.

One of the things that pushed me over the edge was how well it took a copy and paste from Microsoft Word. Basically I am going to be editing and posting a bunch of guest blog posts from various people. The post are not from typical "bloggers". Most of them don't even know what Wordpress or Blogger is. They are sending me posts in Word documents with photos embedded in them. Normally a nightmare that would involve me have to cut text out, scrub formatting, ask them to resend the picture as an attachment, on and on.

With Live Writer, I can actually copy the entire document (including the picture) and paste it directly into Live Writer - and it just works. I can then manipulate the picture and wrap text if need be. So for this project it's a life saver. 

Hopefully Google will get something out soon that is connected with Google Docs. Until then, Live Writer it is. Like I've said before, I'm not normally a fan of "syncing" and prefer it just all live in the cloud - but at least for this project, I'm going to give it a ride.

Testing a Post using the Scribefire Chrome Pluggin

ScribeFire gives me the cloud based blogging I was looking for, but it's not near as pretty as Windows LiveWriter. But Microsoft, as usual, doesn't seem to understand what I need. We never seem to be on the same page. There is no built in way to store your blog posts in the cloud, which means it's no good for me. There is not even a built in way to sync your posts. I'm not really a fan of syncing anyway, so I'm not interested in the work around I could use to sync posts across all my computers. Would have been nice if they would have just let me store my posts in Sky Drive.

So ScribeFire is very basic, which I'm not opposed to, but it's a little too basic. It looks crappy. But since it's a Chrome plugin I assume it will be available in another Chrome browser? How will it know who I am? Or will I have to give my blog credentials every time I want t blog?

Let's see how well it handles pictures.

Ok - it doesn't allow you to upload pictures. You can only insert pictures from the web. No good.

I don't see a "preview" function either. It says I can "save progress" but I'm not sure if that saves it as a draft or not. I'm just going to publish and see what we get, but in the end the inability to upload photos kind of kills this one.

Testing out Windows Live Writer (to blogger)

I’m a cloud junkie, and more importantly a Google cloud junkie. I avoid using desktop software like the plague. For email it’s Gmail, for Word Processing and Spreadsheets it’s Google Docs. I use Seesmic’s web app for Twitter. gReader, Pixlr, Cloud Canvas – anything I can shove through Chrome I do. And sometimes I loose features because of my insistence on the cloud, but normally the ability to have it in the cloud, accessible from any computer and backed up, is more important than what I’m missing. I work on two desktops at work, two laptops, an iPad and an iPhone at home, and more recently a desktop at home. (It seems the more computer literate the kids get, the more computers we need). I need and want everything, everywhere. To me – the only programs I’m cool with being an installed application are iTunes, Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver.

But I hate the default blog editors that are a part of the different platforms. I use Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr. I hate all of their efforts. I started playing with using Google Docs as a blog editor a while back. This was exactly what I wanted, then they took it away in the most recent release. So I’m back to the online editors. And I hate them.

I normally start a blog post as a Google doc, then maybe the first paragraph. I’ll then do a dotted line and brainstorm ideas at the bottom. Might just be a sentence, might be a whole paragraph. It’s essentially the idea pad for this post. As I write the blog, I’ll copy and past things up to the top, continue to write things I don’t want to forget in the bottom and keep doing this until I have it how I want. Then I go back and review any notes left at the bottom. If I need to add them I do – if not I delete them out (or copy them to another Doc if I think it’s something I may write about later).

Lately I have not been doing very much long form blogging. But I use that same technique for drafting long emails and documents. But now that I need to pick up my blogging for some new projects I’m taking on, I’m finding that not being able to do it that same way is pissing me off.

I tried creating just the text in Google Docs, then copy and paste it over to the online editor once complete, insert any needed graphics, and publish. But this is a pain which requires me to use a notepad to scrub the text of formatting, then most of the time edit the HTML to make sure breaks etc are where they should be. It’s to painful. It sucks.

I had heard about Windows Live Writer for a long time, but ignored it because it does not live the cloud. Which wtf does Microsoft mean with “Live”? Live to me should mean in the cloud not another piece of bloated software living on my computer. Hopefully this means it will at least Sync across computers. I have not looked into this yet. If nothing else I’m hoping I can use Drop Box somehow.

But – holy crap. This is an awesome blog editor. I have not hit publish yet, but I’m writing this blog post in it – and it’s everything I want in an editor. It drafts the posts as if they were on the site, in my fonts, colors, etc. The formatting tools are top notch.

Let’s test a picture:

So I dropped a screen shot in of Windows Live Writer and was able to resize it by dragging. All in all – this is exactly what I want – just in the cloud. So that’s kind of the one thing holding me back form just shutting up and going with it. I’m going to publish this and try to edit some old posts with this as well as add the other blogs I need to use this for and keep testing it out. I’ll update where I end up.

In Gowalla Branding Coming Soon?

Looks like Gowalla is getting close to releasing these branded trip/badges/passport stamps I was talking about yesterday. One of the founders, Josh Williams (@jw) (not the one from KC), tweeted here and here today about the new National Geographic tips where they have allowed them to do this.

So when do the rest of us get this?

More Ideas for Locals

So my post about the Roasterie’s menu screens ended up introducing me to Danny O’Neill (the owner of The Roasterie) as well as Will Greggory (@wgpr), who runs PR and Social Media for them, along with some other food and drink clients in town. If you follow me at all on Twitter - you’re well aware of my love for food and drink. So Will pretty much has my dream job. Anyway - I had coffee with Will at the Roasterie yesterday morning to talk about those ideas. That’s where I met Danny as well - who appears to be 8 feet tall and was a super nice guy.

We discussed the idea of setting up a new monitor on the wall that would be more of that window into social media. It could run twitterfall (or something like it) on news searches, mentions of the Roasterie etc. I touched briefly on this stuff in my last post, and it sounds like something Will is going to push for. I’ve kind of fleshed this out a little more and expanded on it, like tapping into The Roasterie’s physical network to have group tweetups centered around events and hashtags, and I will get into those soon - but I kind of wanted to jump to a different idea. It was an idea I was thinking about for a different local beverage company - that I kind of thought would work for the Roasterie too and passed on a little to Will.

A couple weeks ago I heard one of the founders of Gowalla, Scott Raymond (@sco) talk about the origins of Gowalla, as well as the future of it, at Free State Social. I was not very familiar with Gowalla* at the time as I use Foursquare and just assumed they were pretty much the same thing. They are not. I won’t get into all the details about Gowalla and why it’s different - but instead just wanted to talk about one of their features.

*Every time I try to type “Gowalla” I type “Gowallace”. They should totally change the name.

In Gowalla you can set up a trip. Basic idea - I can join 5 (or more) different locations together in a trip. You collect a badge at each stop when you check in and when you have hit all the places on the trip - you earn the trip badge. The first people I thought of was Boulevard Brewery (@Boulevard_Beer). Seems prefect for them. Not only do they have their own base location (the brewery) where they put on events - but they distribute to pretty much every bar and restaurant in town. They need to set up trips all over town and reward people for completing them. Create multiple trips. A Waldo/Brookside Trip, A Downtown Trip, on and on. Even have a massive Marathon like trip that takes people all over the city. A dive bar trip, a fine dining trip. I can stop right...you get the idea?

These are things that do not have to be accomplished in one day, but over the course of time (except for a few brave souls that I hope flag down a taxi at the end of the night). Now to make this better - when you earn the trip badge - you should get something for it. I don’t know what - that can be figured out later. What you would like is for there to be a virtual reward given on Gowalla - that could be taken somewhere to cash in for a real reward. Gowalla is just starting to play with these types of things from what I understand - so I don’t see that option yet. But I know they have experimented with things in the past like this for people. The good news...Scott Raymond, one of the founders, is from Kansas City. So maybe he can be talked into experimenting on this idea with a local company on the verge of national attention.

You end up getting some good buzz for being the first person to do this. You essentially are giving out a reward/carrot to your customers. If Boulevard did this correctly - getting on one of these trips could be good for business for these bars and restaurants. Give them a sign/decal to put in the window that they are “A Stop on the Boulevard Beer - Gowalla Dive Bar trip”. (See if Gowalla will co brand those signs with you).

So that’s that idea. I mentioned to Will that he could pull the same thing off with the Roasterie. The Roasterie is not just a Cafe, but the premium coffee brand in Kansas City (and growing outside of KC according to Will). The coffee is in a ton of restaurants and served in other coffee shops all over town. So you can do the same type of trip - one that ends at the Roasterie for a free cup of coffee. Reward the other establishments that buy from you, reward your customer for seeking out your coffee and get some good buzz along the way (pun noticed - not intended - but noticed).

Will tells me the Roasterie’s plant and Boulevard’s brewery are right down the road from each other and these two local drink companies started at about the same time. I think you could set up some great cross promo coffee/beer trips together.

Taking this collaborated Gowalla trip idea further, I saw Chef Celina Tio (@crtio) while I was at the Roasterie (sorry I did not come by and say “Hi” Celina - you looked like you were in a good conversation). Celina is a James Beard Award-winning chef that recently opened up a new restaurant in Brookside called Julian’s (@juliankc). It’s one of my favorite places in town and the crispy pork shoulder is so ridiculously good I can’t put it into words (although she tells me it’s not on the summer menu - I’ll be stopping by soon to see if this is true). Celina prides herself on serving local Boulevard Beer and uses a seasonal brew in one of my favorite appetizers there, her Bowl o’ Mussels. Celina is an avid Twitter user and gets social media. I’d like to see the Roasterie, Boulevard, Julian’s and maybe a couple other businesses in Brookside get together create a trip. A trip that ends with me getting the crispy pork shoulder preferably.

I’m done.

Update: Celina says the Pork is still on

Another Update: Turns out Celina's conversation was with Brent Anderson (@andbrent) who does her branding. He does amazing work - check him out at andbrent.com.

Pssst - I was talking about you

If I write a blog post about someone, or mention them on some other network, I feel like I need to send them a tweet letting them know I was talking about them. It’s not that I really care if they read it or not, but If I don’t tell them about it on Twitter - it seems I was somehow talking about them behind their back. Like Twitter is the only real legit channel of communication or something. I't's weird. Or I'm weird - whatever.

The only time I did not do this was when I wrote a post on how the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was missing the boat on social media. I had to send an email to them. I couldn’t tweet them, because they did not have a twitter account - and holy cow I just checked and they still don’t. As a matter of fact, go to their website and the only contact options you are given are mailing address, phone and fax.

I better send a fax over to let them know I just mentioned them again.