Chilling in New Orleans (literally) December 12, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, qik, Travel ; 1 comment so farIn NOLA for Do it with Drupal this week and having a great time.
It’s so cold here that it snowed!
Peter Hirshberg on TV and the web - TED Talks November 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, Digital Media, Historic, Radio, Trends, TV, Video, Web Sites ; add a commentJust a few minutes after I wrote my most recent “Internet killed TV” rant, I see this more well-informed and context-rich talk about the very same subject, complete with references to Marshall Mcluhan.
From Peter Hirshberg on TV and the web | Video on TED.com:
In this absorbing look at emerging media and tech history, Peter Hirshberg shares some crucial lessons from Silicon Valley and explains why the web is so much more than “better TV.”
A Silicon Valley executive, entrepreneur and marketing specialist, Peter Hirshberg might just be the definitive voice on how new technology affects business and culture. Full bio and more links
YouTube Has Replaced MTV
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, Trends, TV, Video, youtube ; add a commentIt’s official - crappy reality TV has been replaced by reality, captured on your Flip™ brand camera!
You tube held their first ever awards show - YouTube Live, complete with Discovery Channel stars, pop (and anti-pop) music, ukuleles, breakdancers, vulgarity and lots more, all in a familiar MTV Music Awards-style format.
Now that YouTube has peaked, it’s time for some of the verticals and startups to try again. A few years ago, all you heard about was Yet Another Video Site popping up every 5 minutes. Now I fully expect cable networks, magazines, radio stations, and companies none of us have heard of to adopt similar tactics — most will fail, but a few will succeed, and we can stop subscribing to cable TV, because crappy entertainment, gossip, infinite programming and cheesey awards shows have now arrived on the internet too!
I expect also (more like hope) that there will be lots of directory services and lowest-common-denominator channels showing up, like the TV Guide of the web, the Home Shopping Channel (I guess SlickDeals and the like have gotten us part-way there), the religious video, and what have you.
One reason why we don’t see more cable networks rushing to put all their content online in its full form is the on-demand nature of it all. If you want to watch the Sopranos, you’re forced to watch what comes on a few minutes before and after, perhaps the entire show, and for HBO, especially the commercials for their other original programming and the movies of the month. This was an important way to hook the viewer into coming back.
However, DVRs and Tivo have killed that for people who don’t care about watching it in real time, so why do prime-time schedules even matter any longer? Everyone made a big deal about Barack Obama breaking in to the World Series for his 30 minute commercial, but weren’t people watching it on Tivo a few hours later, or the next day?
In the future, there will not be any possible way to grab the attention of that many people at once, unless we have another 9/11 (knock on wood). I don’t even have to watch the Superbowl any longer, I can catch all the commercials on YouTube the next morning.
What do we do now?
WordPress Plugins that stand the Test of Time November 18, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Tech, Blogging, feedburner, SEO, spam, Web Sites, Wordpress ; 3 commentsI’ve been engaging in a personal project recently to get all my OLD wordpress sites upgraded to 2.6 and on the latest versions of plugins and such. This has helped me notice that there are things I’d like to do with the software that it doesn’t do by itself, either because of 3rd party services or for SEO reasons.
One thing: I wouldn’t create a new WP site without the amazing K2 theme. Just get it. You’ll thank me later. No price tag, just CSS and some awesome AJAX, plus plugin integration and an alternate sidebar manager. The theme that kicks WordPress into high gear.
Here are 10 plugins I probably wouldn’t deploy wordpress without:
- FeedBurner FeedSmith - If you use FB, this is a no-brainer
- Flare Smith - Eric Marden’s excellent FeedBurner stats and FeedFlare plugin. No more copy and pasting javascript
- K2 Hook Up - Every site has those couple of places where you need to paste some javascript for tracking or ads, and K2 provides hooks into all of them. This plugin exposes those to blog admins. Another Xentek creation.
- Related Posts - I don’t think this is in active development anymore. I have no complaints, though. A great reason to have K2 and K2 Hook Up.
- Landing Sites - Let’s get real. Not all visitors hit your site from the home page. When people reach your site via a search engine, this plugin helps you display some helpful pointers to what they might have ACTUALLY been looking for. Useful for very old blog posts. Another great reason for K2 Hook Up.
- All in One SEO - This is a very recent addition to my list, but something that is sorely needed if you pay attention to your Google Webmaster reports, and you’re concerned about how your blog shows up in SERPs (when it shows up in search engines). This plugin is actually pretty brainless, but powerful at the same time.
- Google XML Sitemap - Again with this one, as soon as I started paying attention to Webmaster Tools, the sitemap stuff was jumping out at me, and I felt the need to address it.
- Secure Accessible Contact Form - Websites don’t exist without contact forms. That’s a statement. However, spam and usability can get in the way. This plugin leaves nothing to the imagination, and apparently it’s blocked 17 spam on this blog. Go team.
- FeedWordPress - For planet-style sites or other syndicated sites, this plugin has tons of options but works pretty well out of the box. Integrates with your built-in Blogroll and Categories, too. As I remember, installation is gummy, but this plugin is still an essential part of my toolkit.
- Akismet - I would have stopped blogging a long time ago if I had to put up with the thousands of spam comments I get on a weekly basis. Wordpress must be an easy target, because the spam rolls in, and it never stops. Ever. Install this plugin no matter what. Requires an API Key from Wordpress.com
This is not an exhaustive list of every plugin I use or endorse, just 10 you should know about, or some that are too essential to pass by.
Honorable mention goes to the built-in WP Widgets - without those babies, life would be hard. K2’s sidebar manager actually approaches a new level of sophistication with widgets, and I often wish I were running K2 on this site. Either way, you’re getting the chance to display lots of dynamic stuff that lives near the content, without needing to be the content itself.
Lately I’m a Drupal guy, but I still think WordPress has its place in my day-to-day, especially for a blog like this, or when you miss the days of 5-minute setups.
These plugins all (except FeedWordPress) get first priority on every WordPress site I configure for myself, clients or friends. I have donated to several of these developers’ tip jars, and I hope that by writing this post, I can do something just as good as loose change in the virtual hat.
A New Identity Costs $20 (at iStockPhoto, at least) November 2, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Career, photos, Web Sites ; 2 commentsGiven my new employment situation, I need to have a new identity. After a couple of hours of cruising a stock illustration library, a couple of clicks in an open-source image editor, and an edit from a friend, we have a product:
I may yet try to work in the statement “Drupal? Easy.”, but this was the version I saved out for the web. I’m sure you’ll all get to see the paper copy one of these days.
Smart Mailbox Formula: Flagged Messages October 29, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Tech, email, interface, Mac OS, Teaching ; add a commentOne very simple way to keep your email organized is by using flags in Apple’s Mail program. 
If you’re like me, you are pulling in most, if not all, of your messages from a GMail or a Google Apps account. This means that your “starred” items in your Google Mail will also be “flagged” once they get to your Mac.
Flagging messages in Mail.app can be done via the menu Message > Mark > As Flagged, or by simply pressing Command-Shift-L when you have selected the message(s) you would like to flag.
Creating a Smart Mailbox is very simple. Just choose the menu item Mailbox > New Smart Mailbox…
At this point, you be presented with a popup box asking you for a Smart Mailbox Name, and several options. The first line of options reads:
Contains messages that match all of the following conditions:
You can also match TODO items, or ANY of the following conditions. For this example, we will leave this line alone.
The first condition by default matches the “From” email address of any messages. This is what we want to change:
Click on the select box for “From”, and choose Message is Flagged from the list. The other options in this condition will disappear.
This Smart Mailbox is already pretty useful, but our Flagged messages from several months ago probably aren’t too useful any more, so we’ll add another rule. Click on the plus to the right of the popup box to add a new condition.
When you are finished creating this new rule, the second line should read:
Date Recieved is in the last 60 Days
Before you press OK, take a seecond to admire your work. You’re being smart with your email.
After you OK the creation of the new Smart Mailbox, a new “Flagged” item appears in the left sidebar of your Mail window with a little purple icon. If you don’t see it, click the words SMART MAILBOXES until the arrow to the left of the words is pointing down, and your Smart Mailbox should appear.
All of your flagged messages from the last 60 days are in this smart mailbox, but they have not been moved from their home in your other mailboxes either. If you remove the flag from a message with Command-Shift-L, the message will no longer appear here.
While this is all great, I did notice one annoying thing: Since all my mail is coming in from a GMail server, several of the messages in this folder were duplicates, because they also appear in GMail’s “Starred” folder. In order to fix this problem. I selected my Smart Mailbox, and then chose the menu item Mailbox > Edit Smart Mailbox…
Once you’re editing again, just add a rule that reads as follows:
Message is in Mailbox: Inbox
After you OK this change all your duplicate GMail messages should disappear.
If you’ve got a Smart Mailbox Formula that helps you wade through the ocean of information we all seem to be swimming in these days, please share it in the comments below. I’m sure we could all use a little bit of help.
Larry Halff and Tara Hunt - Ma.gnolia 2 October 28, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Entrepreneurship, Love, microformats, OAuth, open source, OpenID, Social Media Events, Trends, Viddler, Video, Web Services, Web Sites ; add a commentVideo introducing Ma.gnolia 2 from this year’s Gnomedex conference:
Larry Halff and Tara Hunt [...] discussing how Ma.gnolia has implemented many of the tools of the open web such as OpenID, OAuth and Microformats and [...] unveiling Ma.gnolia 2, the next evolution of Ma.gnolia and a building block of the open web.
The real Web 2.0 entrepreneurs like Larry will realise when they’ve got something great — and how they can get that something into the hands of the most people possible might be by giving it away, opening the data for unknown uses, letting you import (and export) as much as you want, giving you tools that don’t just raise their bottom line, but instead make you love the service so much that you need to invite everyone you know to use it.
Use Smart Mailboxes to Organize Your Email October 26, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Tech, email, interface, Mac OS, Teaching ; add a commentIf you’re anything like me, you tend to hold on to your email for months, years, or pretty much all of eternity. 
Now that I have things like Google Apps for Your Domain and IMAP, I can literally keep as much of my email as I want, and always get access to my full message history. On top of this, I have 7 inboxes to check.
There are several advantages to this system as far as I can see - I never have to worry that someone has the wrong email address, or one I no longer use, because I always know the message will arrive on my desktop, but at the same time live somewhere on dark and dank hard drive deep in the Google infrastructure, wherever that may be.
Here is my big problem: I get dozens of messages a day. On the day I wrote this tutorial I had received 20 messages by noon! How on earth am I supposed to keep track of the messages I want to keep, without abandoning my pack rat nature?
My solution for now: Smart Mailboxes. You’ve at least seen Smart Playlists in iTunes - the program ships with a few of them baked in. The Finder also features a few pre-selected searches under “search for” on Leopard. Apple’s Mail.app has had Smart Mailboxes for some time now, and it’s about time you got a little more insight into what is going on with your mail.
The very simplest way to create a Smart Mailbox is to use the little search box in the top right of your Mail window and push the Save button. That’s really all there is to it. You can choose a few simple options from the popup box - the application has already chosen a sensible folder name for you, based on what you searched. You could try searching for something related to a big project you’re working on, or all the messages from a particular friend, or a group of friends. The possibilities are endless.
What are some of your favorite Smart Mailbox formulas? I’d love to see them in a comment.
Doterati Doesn’t Get It October 24, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Doterati, Orlando ; 7 commentsDoterati is holding elections for their advisory board. The current leadership has decided that they will not be allowed to govern next year, in an attempt at humility, or checks and balances. In theory, this is a good idea.
However, what if the best people to steer the organization are already in the right place?
Edit: Only one member of the current board is allowed to sit on the elections committee. They are looking for some volunteers to round out the electorate.
However, and this is the big one for me, in order to nominate anyone, you must be a paying ($150) member.
This community is synthetic - if one really wants to support all of Central Florida, why not invite all of Central Florida to participate?
Take down the pay wall. I won’t vote if voting comes with a price tag.
Letting go the Strings of Servitude October 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Uncategorized, BarCamp, Blogging, bloggingfringe, Career, CoLab, Coworking, Drupal, floridacreatives, Liberatr, Orlando, OrlandoScene, PopSci, Site News, Social Media Events, Teaching, Trends, Video ; 9 comments
That’s right, folks, I quit my job at Bonnier. No more PopSci, no more corporate life.
Somehow I thought our friend Jonathan (above) working his VCRs and television sets helped get that message across. As Pandos, instead of fighting against modern technology, just letting a couple of simple magnetic tapes play serves as a more entertaining picture than a single curated stream.
My life working at Bonnier had become a lifestyle - long days (and nights), spending all day in the same place doing the same thing. I couldn’t even take 7 months of that.
So now what?
I’ve got a couple of freelance things lined up that should bring in the next month’s income alright, but I don’t want another hourly job. Here are some ways I plan on keeping myself distracted:
- Drupal Easy - this is the home for some (free) Drupal advice, and hopefully some (paid) screencasts, eBooks and tutorials. I will be doing a Drupal conference circuit in the next few months to connect with folks who are looking for training more than straight-up work. I hope I am a good provider.
- Orlando Scene TV - I still have yet to see a project emerge that achieves the goals of this videoblog. The more I think about it, the more it needs to be a one-on-one account of some fun stuff. We were trying to bring more of a TV correspondent feel to the show, but that takes work, and this is supposed to be about fun! Maintaining this channel gives a place for the Blogging Fringe videos and Orlando Puppet Festival content to go, and video is so engaging, measurable and portable — I really love doing this.
- Florida Creatives Podcast - I have been meeting some great people who need to get pulled in to this community, and one of the best ways to get them to care about you is by doing the completely selfless thing and asking them about themselves for half an hour, and sharing the conversation with the world on a well-trafficked web site. The happy hours will certainly continue.
- Florida Creative Summit - the idea here is to do something like BarCamp, but that covers more than just geekery - I am talking to some folks about how to pull this off right now, most of that goes down at Florida Creatives Happy Hour. This is the whole point of Florida Creatives coming to be in the first place.
- Coworking Orlando and our first coworking space in Orlando, CoLab - Coworking Teusdays are still going strong after some 8 months — also, I have already paid my $49 for use of a desk at CoLab in November — I’m not sure whether I will be full-time or part-time there in the future, but I know I want to be present for the birth of the formal coworking movement in Orlando. This is something I’ve been talking about for years, and now it’s downtown and affordable. Couple that with all the communities looking for useful consistent space, and the need for something like this is even greater. This probably deserves a separate blog post…
- Oh so many more things… like getting other Florida Creatives chapters going in other cities, like Brevard, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Tampa, South Florida — helping Petentials get to a happy place — doing a joint event with Doterati — creating a DIY community, a graphics hackers community, a podcasting community, a blogging community, an independent microblogging site, and lots of things I can’t think of just now.
To all my Bonnier peoples, I will keep in touch. Let’s do lunch! Blackwater BBQ?
To everyone else, it’s good to be back!
