Petentials Reviewed by Amber and Leo June 8, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Site News, Markteting, Podcasts, Links, Reviews, Web Sites, Entrepreneurship, itunes, Petentials, Social Networking , 4 comments
Hooray for Google Alerts, and my media habits. A few days ago, I got an email from the google (now with a new and un-improved favicon…blech). This email linked to a blog post that linked to a podcast, and that was exciting.
The blogger was Kym Huynh, one of the hosts of a brand-new podcast called Best of the Net. In their first episode, The Google Bar, the topic was Pets, and the first story was Petentials, which is just amazing.
Then as I’m listening to some of my weekly podcasts, I noticed something even more amazing.
Every week, Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte sit down to talk about the latest happenings on the Internet. A few weeks ago, they were complaining about not having any guests, so they solicited the audience to email in if they had a web startup. Being the faithful listener that I am, I had to tell them about Petentials. I really thought they’d have thousands of suggestions like this every week, so I didn’t exactly expect to hear anything too soon, but…
I was listening to this week’s Net @ Night, “Tiffany Roll”, and when Amber got to the letters, I heard her say “This week’s letter is from Ryan Price in Orlando…”
Excuse me?
…and then they talked about Petentials for the next several minutes. I stopped right where I was standing and smiled the biggest smile. Right after that I called Darren and told him the good news.
Let’s keep the good vibes going - I know lots of you folks out there have podcasts and blogs - how would you like to feature a new social network that has been covered by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur? Yeah, I thought so…!
Listen to net@night 55: Tiffany Roll (RSS, iTunes)
Listen to Best of the Net 1: The Google Bar (RSS, iTunes)
Looking at the dates that these were released, I almost wonder if the Best of the Net show heard about us via the live stream that Amber and Leo do over at TwitLive.TV while they are taping the show. If so, that makes for a great follow-up to my previous post.
For Post’s Sake! April 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, News, Blogging, Orlando, Links, Drupal, Events, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, OrlandoScene, Friends, Petentials, PopSci , add a commentFeeling like I haven’t blogged in a while, so here are some things that have happened.
I saw (and played a bit at) an awesome marathon show by marc. with a c. on Saturday at Stardust. I used to be in the band, and I remain a fan. Marc just released his latest album, Linda Lovelace for President
We had a super-awesome Florida Creatives Happy Hour last night - HUGE thanks to all the first-timers, and of course our repeat offenders. If you haven’t seen or registered for the new site yet, surf on over and create a group, get organized, or otherwise try to toss some useful information in there.
Went to an inaugural Refresh Central Florida and Orlando PHP group (seperately). Refresh may or may not be the “tech association” that everyone has been hububbing about - there was talk of turning it into a “United Arts for Geeks”, supporting local groups and individuals. Actually, I was thinking of using United Arts as a channel to have a Florida Creatives professional grant that gets specified in all the same ways the regular UA grants go, just sponsored by us.
Things have been going gangbusters for pet dating site Petentials.com in the last few weeks our US ranking for Alexa is hovering around 100K (we’re more like 400K globally). We’re currently on the second page of Google for “Internet Pets”, but not too high for “pet dating”, hence the googlebombing you may or may not want to participate in… ha!
We’re planning a downtown Orlando photowalk as part of an episode for OrlandoScene.TV - this will be either May 10th or 11th, barring weather, number of RSVPs and other factors. Bring your SLR and your eyes. We’ll be doing interviews with photographers and linking to photosets and whatnot. The idea is to get a little co-promotion on, and get a hold of some much-needed production stills for Orlando Scene. In the AXIS Mag article, well, globe with a network cable… yikes.
Did I mention the kick-ass Drupal meetup we had last week? That was a fun time. I signed up to talk about Drupal Theming with Zen and… I think Views sometime this summer, but I know for certain that our next meetup will be held May 17th in Maitland. Check the Florida Drupal Group page for more info.
Ah, let’s not forget Likemind - we ARE still doing that - now we’re back at Panera Bread by Lake Eola. The next one of those should be May 16th. I have a picture of that somewhere… check the Ryan Price and the Media feed for those bonus Flickr pics you get in there from time to time.
I’m sure I’m missing lots and lots and lots. I have been SO busy lately.
BTW, over at Bonnier (the makers of PopSci) we’re hiring a MySQL Admin. If you are an experienced database administrator, or you have several years of experience with MySQL, send us an email.
P.S. I almost forgot! If you like the movie Clue, Improv Comedy, theatre, mystery, games, or if you’re my friend then you MUST MUST go and see “Murder We Wrote” over at Rollins College this weekend. YOU WILL THANK ME.
Petentials on Fox News April 11, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : News, Site News, Career, Markteting, TV, Petentials, Social Networking , 2 commentsPetentials on Fox 35 | Petentials Park
Also, here’s an email Darren sent out to friends and advisors.
As some of you know, the Fox reporter, David Martin, informed me today that the feature on Petentials was picked up by Fox national news. I think what this means is that it’ll be aired on local news shows throughout the country over the next several days…or weeks.
We’ve had about 50 new accounts created in the last 24 hrs. In fact, 4 have been added in the last 2 minutes. There are 20 people on the site right now.
It looks like we’re now getting some Tennessee traffic, so my guess is that we were on the early news in Tampa tonight and the late news in/around Cleveland, Tennessee. Exciting stuff!
Now it’s hit Minneapolis/St. Paul (and maybe others). 123 people currently on the site…and rising with every refresh! At least 20 new registered users in the last 20 minutes. Plus, we have someone who wants to be our community ambassador for Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Update: Detroit Free Press Article
When Old Media Gets Their Heads Above Water February 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : News, Video, TV, Trends, Petentials , add a commentThey do a story like this. About how new media is eating their breakfast and lunch.
See Also I Like Turtles: A Special Report
What’s your interest in distributed social networking?
Posted by Ryan in : Links, Trends, Standards, Web Sites, Petentials, Social Networking, OpenID, microformats , add a commentAfter watching Chris Messina’s existential DiSo Interview, I decided to go check out a bit more about the distributed social networking stuff Chris and Steve Ivy have been working on - there are 160+ people on the mailing list now, and hundreds of threads.
Here’s a little bit about the DiSo Project:
Social networks are becoming more open, more interconnected, and more distributed. Many of us in the web creation world are embracing and promoting web standards - both client-side and server-side. Microformats, standard apis, and open-source software are key building blocks of these technologies. This model can be described as having three sides/legs/arms/spokes - pick your connection: Information, Identity, and Interaction.
DiSo (dee • zoh) is an umbrella project for a group of open source implementations of these distributed social networking concepts. or as Chris puts it: “to build a social network with its skin inside out”.
Our first target is Wordpress, bootstrapping on existing work and building out from there.
So what does that mean?We’re building Wordpress plugins that implement or build on:
* Microformats like XFN, hCard, XOXO — wp-contactlist, wp-profiles
* OpenID — wp-contactlist, wp-openid-server
* OAuth
* …and others
They also ask you to state a reason for wanting to join the mailing list, which I’ve copied here:
I am a big fan of microformats and distributed, semantic applications. I work for a social network that’s a little bit different because we’re mapping the relationships between animals. It gets even more interesting there, because some animals live together, some animals play together, some share parents, and then they all have one or more people who take care of them. It’s been difficult for us to take open source software and shoehorn the relationships into it, and what that means as far as a user experience goes.
One funny thing is the idea of your “active pet” or active profile - if a person can create multiple resumes, one for film jobs and one for programming jobs, for example, then maybe this idea of having multiple profiles is important. The people you play poker with on the weekends might not want to be notified when you update the work blog - others will.
So there’s another layer. If someone subscribes to your updates, can they subscribe to a subset of those, so as not to get loads of BACN in their activity stream reader?
I think about these things.
If you haven’t seen it, check out that weird animal social network.
iPhone Web Clip Favicon Fun! January 28, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Links, HowTo, Drupal, Browsers, Trends, Design, Web Sites, interface, Branding, phone, Petentials , 1 comment so farIf you have a web page of any kind - blog, business, social network, whatever - take 3 minutes out of your day and hook this up.
Everyone has a fun little 16×16 favicon to sit in the bookmarks section, links bar, or tabs of their favorite browser (Flock, Songbird and Firefox come to mind). This has been a long-running tradition with webmasters and SEO companies to give you that last bit of branding: the favicon!
Now with mobile devices and desktop apps (rich internet applications, too?) getting into the mix, there is a need for favicons larger than squint. Enter, the apple-touch-icon and associated rel tag, which is even easier to implement than a favicon. No special file formats, no special programs needed. Instead of a screenshot of the web page, you now have a degree of control over a bookmarker’s (webclipper’s? that sounds nice) touchscreen.
All you have to do is name the thing apple-touch-icon.png and throw it in your document root. According to the primary vivid, it should be 57×57px, but that’s actually the rendered size and not likely the size Apple uses internally. If you go to http://apple.com/apple-touch-icon.png, theirs is a nice round 129×129, which is roughly 2 1/4 times larger than 57×57. I figure Apple must know something we don’t, so I’ll play along.
And now, a handy diagram to show you what’s up:
Favicon
16×16Apple Touch Icon
57×57Apple’s Official Icon
129×129
Once you get your image loaded, borrow the boss’ iPhone and add the webclip to your home page. There is also a preview screen that lets you know instantly if your icon is working (not pictured).
The iPhone even added a nice glossy, buttony finish to the experience. Ahhhhhh…! You’ll also notice the edges of your icon may get trimmed (which caused the boss to make a face). This is, as far as I know, normal. If you don’t want the boss to make a face, center the icon and leave some extra space around. Using the Apple example may be a helpful guide.
Last but not least, you may be wondering: “Why do I have to name my icon something so specific, and why do I have to use the document root?” Looks like you don’t. Again our friends at vjarmy.com tell us that there is a rel-tag we can throw in the header if we want to place the icon elsewhere:
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/path/to/my-cool-icon.png" />
If you don’t want to use a .PNG, you have smelly feet, but if you’re OK with being known as the smelly foot man, by all means, don’t use the best web picture format. I also had to dissuade my boss from experimenting with transparency in the .PNG, because I’m quite afraid of the results. Imagine a person with a naked woman on their iPhone desktop; now imagine your company’s logo displayed distastefully close to (or on top of) an unmentionable portion of said woman’s body - with a transparent background! Yikes. I would feel very sorry for Six Apart on that day…
I find the apple-touch-icon tag to be a scoche proprietary for my taste, but so are iTunes tags in podcast RSS feeds, so I guess we must needs put up with a little bullcrap every now and then.
I also heard someone recently complain about sites that have a default iPhone interface, and I mostly agree. They should put the interface on a subdomain so you can get at the regular functionality of the site, but I believe a truly useful service should be user-friendly through multiple interfaces, and traditional web apps are not always suited to touch screens.
If you have any questions (or if I forgot something) buy all means, let me know.
I am also hoping to make a small and fun Drupal module that encourages you to upload a 129×129 image to use as your site’s official webclip instead of a screenshot, so be on the lookout for that. Would you like to see other iPhone-friendly features integrated, like style sheet includes, javascripts, etc? I’d love to know.
