Wednesday 28 September 2011

Anyone got this or is it still just for the chosen elite?

Anyone got this or is it still just for the chosen elite?


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Introducing Twitter Web Analytics | Twitter Developers
Twitter is a powerful platform for websites to share their content, and drive traffic and engagement. However, people have struggled to accurately measure the amount of traffic Twitter is sending to t...

Monday 26 September 2011

The problem with the Facebook Timeline


I've been posting/sharing stuff on Facebook for years now. All this content was not very important (just things I found interesting at the time) and was not intended to become an archived, easily accessible, representation of myself.

The fact that the (old) wall feature only showed the last 10-20 posts and going back in time was very hard, meant that these posts had a short lifespan. So my use of Facebook was likewise.

Now Facebook is making it easy (with no other alternative other than deleting posts one by one) for all my "friends" to dig up what I've been posting 4 years ago.

Bottom line, when Facebook introduces such major changes they should provide the tools to manage them easily. Otherwise they will have the negative reactions that they are getting.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Dear BBC,

I wish I could tell you what I think but beta.bbc.co.uk gives me the current homepage, apparently because I am a visitor outside the UK. So when you decide we are worthy on accessing your new design, I will tell you what I think :)

Cheers,
A Non-Subject

Reshared post from +Sophie Brendel
The beta version for the new BBC Homepage is now live! http://beta.bbc.co.uk/ Tell us what you think at this blog post http://bbc.in/r3cIYC, at #BBChomepage on Twitter, or here and I'll pass comments on the the team.


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BBC - BBC Internet Blog: Redesigning the BBC Online homepage
Last three BBC homepage designs, with the new beta Come for the things you need, come back for things you discover I’m James Thornett, Head of the BBC Homepage...

ok google, i got the hint

but i'm already here, a simple "if" statement would tell you that :)

google+ you have a bug: i shouldn't be suggested to add myself in a circle :...

google+ you have a bug: i shouldn't be suggested to add myself in a circle :D

just checked the ext.js vs jquery report, is it really that big of a difference?

just checked the ext.js vs jquery report, is it really that big of a difference?
http://blekko.com/webgrep?page=view&id=1d59f0f5300683494825280940a34f7c

Reshared post from +Danny Sullivan
Incredibly busy day with search news. Among the items, a way to "grep the web" with Blekko.


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Oh Good Grep! Web Grepper: A New Web Intelligence Feature From Blekko
Blekko, the search engine that launched last year and is known for its spam reduction efforts, is introducing a new feature today that will help make previously difficult, if not impossible to find (f...

G+ is speeding up!

* Search people and posts by topic
* Hangouts on Android
* Record a Hangout session
* Broadcast a Hangout session to unlimited(?) people
* Hangout APIs
* Registration is now open


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Official Google Blog: Google+: 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99... 100.
Google+: 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99... 100. 9/20/2011 09:00:00 AM. For our international readers, this post is also available in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and...

Tuesday 20 September 2011

The A Case for Social Depth



Reshared post from +Esteban Contreras
The A Case for Social Depth

+Dan Reimold has 44 followers at the time that I write this. He wrote an "article" called "Google+: Social Media Upstart 'Worse Than a Ghost Town." http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/09/google-social-media-upstart-worse-than-a-ghost-town262.html

Dan's article basically says "Google+ is not good because no one follows me."

Now, Dan has some "evidence" for this. Of course he does.

Except his evidence consists of Rainbow Rowell's article on Omaha.com. +Rainbow Rowell has 33 followers on G+ and she has posted a handful of times. Rainbow's opinionated column basically comes down to this: "My Google+ home page is worse than a ghost town. It doesn't even feel haunted. Meanwhile, down the road,in a much less desirable neighborhood, Facebook is teeming with life." So apparently Google+ is dead because Facebook, which is over half a decade older has more users poking each other (I'm not disagreeing necessarily, just paraphrasing).
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110821/LIVING/708219941#rainbow-google-vs-facebook

And her "sequel" is well... "The fact that I think Google+ is useless might be one of the best possible indicators that it's going to succeed. Get yourself a Google+ account. This thing's going to be huge." I'm not sure what it is. Insurance? Change of heart? Sarcasm? Live journal emotional flashback?
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110824/LIVING/708249964/1199#rainbow-if-i-hate-a-new-idea-it-s-gonna-be-huge

But that's not all. The "best" evidence comes from the one and only Forbes: +Paul Tassi, the person who called the "eulogy" for Google+ and celebrated when others talked about it on G+. http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/08/15/a-eulogy-for-google-plus/

Apparently Google+ has become appealing to Mr. Tassi, who ironically also wrote a follow-up article only hours after the first one. No one remembers that one. Now, when I first saw Tassi's profile on Aug 15th, he had few followers and aprox 5 public posts. Today he's a happy Google Pluser with 1200+ followers. He almost raves about it without having to rave about it. Paul has converted and has amassed a following.

But wasn't G+ dead? Hmmm... I'm confused now. I thought the word "EULOGY" was a strong one but apparently I've been reading the wrong dictionary.

Now, I would've rather Dan linking to this TechCrunch article. Despite their opinionated (and allegedly unbiased) point of view and their recent TMZification, TC writers actually know what they're talking about. +Robin Wauters actually posted some numbers: A 41% decrease in public posts month-to-month. He might be right (someone please do call +Robert Scoble lol), but I will soon tell you why less posts doesn't show the whole story. It's not a good sign, but it doesn't say anything about the quality of posts and the engagement within them (take a look at the average Fb post), or the quality of users (take a look at your DMs and you'll see what I mean). http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/15/raise-your-hand-if-youre-still-using-google/

My thoughts are that if something is dead or a "ghost town", then no one will care enough to write about it more than once. Google Buzz died once and it was a quick death. Google+ is dying on a daily basis but I don't think +Larry Page is worried about what to post next before someone else tweets about his absence.

Traffic matters and all these deaths of Google+ create traffic. Even if the only people who care about it are those geeking out here and the media which absolutely loves to cover social media at its shallowest.

25 million or not, the Google+ community is unique and it has something worth coming back here for: DEPTH.

We'll see what happens but I can assure you that there is no dead player in the Social War(s). Social depth is what I see as the next big thing in social. And I don't mean this based on evidence but only as my personal hope (I've learned from the pros above that writing is apparently all about my own experience). In all seriousness, this is why I think Google+ matters to me: SOCIAL DEPTH.

Google+ doesn't create it, but it enables it in a way that my blog doesn't, location-based apps don't, Twitter barely does, FriendFeed almost did, Tumblr almost does, and MySpace never will.

I'm a big fan of all Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Google+ is new so I may be blinded by that. Or maybe I'm excited to see 3 big competitors instead of two or maybe I'm more of an "interest graph" kind of guy. I'm in a position where I can, and must, get to know them all quite well. But bottom line, I'd interested in more meaning and substance while I'm spending time on these networks. And the same goes for articles with clever traffic-driving titles.

In album September 20, 2011 (11 photos)









Sunday 18 September 2011

When a "Find my car" app ended up being "find any car", e.g

the perfect tool for thieves :)


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'Find My Car' iPhone app finds anyone’s car • The Register
Blogger tags security and privacy howler. By Richard Chirgwin • Get more from this author. Posted in Security, 14th September 2011 02:24 GMT. Free whitepaper – IBM BNT RackSwitch and IBM System Networ...

New Performance report on Google Analytics

Google has added a "Performance" tab in the "Site Speed" report (available in the new Google Analytics interface only). It provides a break-down of your visitors according to the loading speed they experienced. This was previously possible through custom variables but it's great to see a native support which will allow more complex reports to be built.
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/site-speed-gets-upgrade-hello.html

Saturday 17 September 2011

Excellent archive of resources on the hottest web design trend of your times :)

Excellent archive of resources on the hottest web design trend of your times :)


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The ultimate responsive web design roundup | Webdesigner Depot
More than 70 resources for creating responsive designs, including articles, frameworks and boilerplates for responsive layouts, tools, techniques for resizable images, 100 examples and much more!

/me ponders on changing title to Code Designer ;)

/me ponders on changing title to Code Designer ;)


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The Art of Good Code Design
You probably have never heard of Dieter Rams (pictured at left) but certainly know of his work. For many years he was a product designer for Braun and ...

Friday 16 September 2011

cool news!

cool news!

Reshared post from +Chris Chabot
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Lao-tzu

I’m super excited about how the Google+ project brings the richness and nuance of real life sharing to software, and today we’re announcing our first step towards bringing this to your apps as well by launching the Google+ public data APIs.

These APIs allow you to retrieve the public profile information and public posts of the Google+ users, and they lay the foundation for us to build on together - Nothing great is ever built in a vacuum so I’m excited to start the conversation about what the Google+ platform should look like.

Please follow the link to the blog post to find out what exactly we’re launching and you can find the technical details on how to use this on our new developer site at http://developers.google.com/+

I’d also like to take a moment to introduce my team who will be joining me on working with our developer community (ie: you!) and answering any questions you may have about the Google+ platform on our discussion forums.

We’ll all also be doing a bunch of Hangouts over the next few days and beyond to talk to you directly and hear what you think of the +Platform as well as helping with any coding questions you may have, so make sure to add them to your Google+ developers circle!

+Timothy Jordan
+Jonathan Beri
+Ade Oshineye
+Will Norris
+Jenny Murphy
+Wolff Dobson

Now let's see lots of re-shares on this post & let's get this party started!


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Getting Started on the Google+ API - Google+ Platform Blog
Official source of information about the Google+ platform

Thursday 15 September 2011

Excellent ideas to reduce even further your KB footprint

Excellent ideas to reduce even further your KB footprint


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Recycling and animating icons with CSS | Webdesigner Depot
In the not so distant past, we were learning about revolutionary techniques to save HTTP Request and KBs alike through the use of image sprites. These sprites

Wednesday 14 September 2011

WordPress plugin of the day: Auto Link Best Tags

Here is a nice WordPress plugin that can improve content discovery within your blog. It finds mentions of a post's tags inside the text of the post and creates links to the respective tag pages.

Get it at WordPress › Auto Link Best Tags.

excellent logic on xkcd :)

excellent logic on xkcd :)

Going to be trying this soon

Going to be trying this soon

Reshared post from +Eric Cheng
Very useful. I had to kick it off 3 times, but it seems to have worked.


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Move Your Photos - An easy way to move your Facebook Albums to Picasa
Move2Picasa is a web application that helps you export all your facebook albums to picasa and share with your google+ circle in just two clicks.

Photos on Google+ are sharing-un-friendly

Try to share a photo to Facebook: No proper title, no description, no image can be matched (or declared with proper tagging)
(Photo by +Eric Cheng, he has some amazing photos)

Facebook really needs to learn about this amazing concept of people OPTING IN to...

Facebook really needs to learn about this amazing concept of people OPTING IN to new features... Got this in the mail today


Hi Markos,

We're trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we'll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.

You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.

Thanks,
The Facebook team

A pig in the sea and other social network gripes

[caption id="attachment_388" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Yes, it's a pig in the sea. Photo by Eric Cheng"][/caption]


Good day, here are two gripes from my morning browsing...

1) Photos on Google+ are sharing-un-friendly
Try to share a photo to Facebook (or wherever for that matter, a service that will try to extract data from the URL): No proper title (example: the author's name and/or part of the description), no description (photo caption), no image (the photo perhaps?!) can be matched (or is declared with proper meta tags)

2) Facebook really needs to learn about this amazing concept of people OPTING IN to new features... Got this in the mail today:

Hi Markos,

We're trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we'll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.

You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.

Thanks,
The Facebook team


It seems to me the a***** persona that media and that movie have attached to Zuckerberg is a) probably true b) has expanded to become a modus operandi in the company he created...

Arguments vs sensationalist journalism

Who wins? :)


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Tech Writers In Denial: The Michael Arrington Case Study | Loic Le Meur Blog
Tweet. (pic, Joi Ito). I have read so much BS- about Michael Arrington's supposedly displaced integrity as a writer that I thought I should set the record straight. Mike has been an investor in my...

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Change always brings opportunities :)

Change always brings opportunities :)


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Responsive Web Design | Webdesigner Depot
Responsive design has quickly become recognized as an incredibly smart way to build websites ensuring that websites render the same across all browsers.

Monday 12 September 2011

awesome :)

awesome :)

How soon before we have ads in Google+ ?

How soon before we have ads in Google+ ?


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Facebook Has Just Added In-Stream Ads
Ads on Facebook have pretty much always had their place ; we know they’re going to pop up on the right hand side, clearly labelled under sponsored content. And up until the introduction ...

You can have Google Analytics in Picasa That's it, i'm moving from Flick...

You can have Google Analytics in Picasa That's it, i'm moving from Flickr


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Using Google Analytics to track visits : Captions, Comments, and Tags - Picasa Help
You can integrate Google Analytics to monitor your Picasa Web Albums photo traffic. Please note that this is not a feature for the average bear. We recommend that you first gain some familiarity with ...

Sunday 11 September 2011

Why is the client being so stupid?

Clients aren’t stupid. They aren’t doing things your way because they don't know what you know, and they don't think about products and problems the way you think about them.

So true. It's our job to explain and educate and stand on our position, if we are going to be helpful to our clients.


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Stupid, Stupid Client | UX Magazine
Stupid, Stupid Client. By Jon Kolko / September 1st 2011. I was speaking with an interaction designer at Thinktiv the other day. He'd been managing a particular client engagement, and was remarkin...

Saturday 10 September 2011

Drupal needs to be more user-friendly or it's going to be overpassed by WordPress...

Drupal needs to be more user-friendly or it's going to be overpassed by WordPress (if it's not already, measurements in this area do not have consistent results)...


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Acquia to Launch Apps Market for Drupal Sites
A Web publisher's choice of content management system could determine its relative visibility to its audience, especially those who frequent social networks. In last December's Water & Sto...

Friday 9 September 2011

This looks very very good if it actually works like that

Has anyone tried it?

Say you want to copy Facebook’s any-page-on-the-web sharing feature where a title,...

Say you want to copy Facebook’s any-page-on-the-web sharing feature where a title, photo and part of the content is automagically presented to the user. Or you want to build yet another news reading service (after you finished building your geo-location group-chat app ;)). You can now do this with Diffbot. More (and a short PHP example) on my blog :)


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How to read pages with PHP and Diffbot, a visually learning robot « The Markos Giannopoulos Blog

Thursday 8 September 2011

How to read pages with PHP and Diffbot, a visually learning robot

Say you want to copy Facebook's any-page-on-the-web sharing feature where a title, photo and part of the content is automagically presented to the user. Or you want to build yet another news reading service (after you finished building your geo-location group-chat app ;)). You can now do this with Diffbot.

This guy has seen too many Steve Jobs presentations...

This guy has seen too many Steve Jobs presentations...

Wednesday 7 September 2011

web design gem of the day :)

web design gem of the day :)


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Personas as a site design tool | Opinion | .net magazine
Stu Collett of Super User Studio says building a detailed persona of your target user is an essential part of creating a truly successful interactive website and explains how to go about it

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Looks like LinkedIn is following in Facebook's footsteps



Reshared post from +Jim Goldstein
Looks like LinkedIn is following in Facebook's footsteps. You've been opted in to LinkedIn's various programs that I'm sure many of you might not want to be in including 3rd party advertising. Details and instructions in the following article. Thanks for the heads up on Twitter +Peter West Carey


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A Box You Want to Uncheck on LinkedIn
[See UPDATE below!]

Apparently, LinkedIn has recently done us the "favor" of having a default setting whereby our names and photos can be used for third-party advertising. A friend forwarded me ......

Monday 5 September 2011

This is the tag cloud of 2 months of posts from my blog

If you could have a word cloud for everything you post online, which words would it contain?

The state of my cloud

When I re-started this site, a bit more than 2 months ago, I thought (or so I said to myself) that I would be posting a lot about coding practices, examples, etc.

And it turned out quite differently as you can see on the current status of the tag cloud. Google Plus has been the big news of the last few weeks and it also seems I'm more interested in social media than I thought I was. Or tech news sites mainly post about Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple.

Bottom line, it is obviously easier for me to shortly comment on stuff rather than to write more thorough posts. Consider this my public commitment to changing this. :)


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Where ideas for design come from | Opinion | .net magazine
The creative process isn't just magic. Web Hosting Search's Jane Campbell explains how and why designers' creative process works, and goes through it from practice and preparation to execution

Sunday 4 September 2011

It seems we can not avoid the chain mail situation no matter how we change the way...

It seems we can not avoid the chain mail situation no matter how we change the way we communicate. Mail forwards are being replaced by re-tweets, +1s and re-shares. When even highly knowledgable people like +Vic Gundotra and +Robert Scoble fall for these kind of things, what's the solution?


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The new social network chain mail: Are you being scammed?
The world of Internet media and press is tricky business. What some of us might believe to be valid news or worthy of a post is sometimes revealed to be a scam (or at least a cleverly ...

A very well done introduction to managing your productivity

For those familiar with the subject, a good reminder on hacking your lazy brain ;)


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How to Make Your To-Do List Doable
There's no better feeling than checking something off your to-do list. Done! Finished! Mission accomplished! Yet it's so easy to let a whole day or week go by without knocking one task off your list.

Excellent reminder that in the end any type of improvement in a company or a it's...

Excellent reminder that in the end any type of improvement in a company or a it's products need to answer a critical question: is this better for the customers?


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Efficiency: The second essential of a customer centric business | UX Magazine
Efficiency: The second essential of a customer centric business. By Different & Erietta Sapounakis / August 4th 2011. It's Melbourne, Victoria 1998. The state government continues its drive to...

Saturday 3 September 2011

Of course the service is new, but more measurement / engagement data and analytics...

Of course the service is new, but more measurement / engagement data and analytics is missing from Google+. Facebook is not doing a good job at this either, which only means that it's an opportunity for Google+ to excel.


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New Edgerank Pro lets you find out who views your Facebook updates
Edgerank, a site that allows you to instantly check your Facebook Edgerank score, has just a launched a revamped version of its site and a brand new paid version. Edgerank Pro allows ...

MC Hammer: Role of Social Media in Marketing

MCHammer, entertainer and entrepreneur, discusses his thoughts on the impact of social media in marketing. The public session was part of the Stanford GSB marketing course, the Power of Social Technology (Dr. Jennifer Aaker). A panel of experts, including Robert Scoble, MC Hammer, and Loic LeMeur, discussed how social media can build successful brands.



MC Hammer: Role of Social Media in Marketing - YouTube.

Paul Carr at his best, writes about the CrunchFund story


Meanwhile, the quote to keep you laughing the entire weekend (and badly needing a Picard facepalm picture) by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: "TechCrunch is a different property and they have different standards… we have a traditional understanding of journalism with the exception of TechCrunch." :D


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TechCrunch | The CrunchFund: Actually, Tim, We Don’t All Have “Different” Standards
Yesterday afternoon, Mike Arrington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced the launch of "the CrunchFund", a venture fund that will -- according to the New York Times -- "invest in start-ups, including s...

It's about time someone said the truth about the criminal organization that is...

It's about time someone said the truth about the criminal organization that is Google... ;)


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Eagles singer Don Henley: EFF, Google "aid and abet" criminals
Musician Don Henley says that the EFF and Google "essentially aid and abet" copyright criminals—and any member of Congress who votes against website blocking does so, too.

Trying out the Picasa - Google+ connection

I love how Google+ show photos from an album, tempted to look for a Flickr to Picasa conversion...

In album Denmark Nov/2008 (78 photos)