Thursday, 30 August 2012

Responsive on the vertical


// What can the visitor see on the first glance of your website? How can you accommodate users with different screen sizes?  Read on +Chris Coyier's article on #responsive   #design  above the fold :) 
http://bit.ly/PzETlp

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Wednesday, 29 August 2012

The Apple Manual on being a Human


// A big scoop for Gizmodo yesterday, with what appears to be the Apple manual on their Genius staff training. It's a full instructions set on how to talk to customers in a civilized, friendly and empathic way, while at the same time not admitting that there might something wrong with an #Apple product and of course always providing some opportunity of selling merchandise... 

Full read http://bit.ly/TtwMDq

cc +Guy Kawasaki have you seen this? I thought of your books when I saw this :) 
via +Nassos K. 

Unrelated issue: what on earth did #Gizmodo do to their commenting system? This thing is unusable...

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Penises on Salad Super-Delegates


// Oh Google automatic #transcribe feature, you're always an instant source of fun! :-)

It's like magic: "We're enjoying a tasty lunch with Athenos feta in our salads, it's super delicious" is transcribed to...
what i'm saying it's a steel into the penis that on our salads super-delegates

More fun on the video link here http://bit.ly/OIVAHI

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Mailgun: Email for Developers


// This looks really cool: Mailgun is a service that allows you to "outsource" all mail-related functions of your application. You can send, receive, parse, track, etc messages programmatically. The same goes for e-mail accounts, even whole mail servers. I'll be trying the service (there is a free plan) and posting some first thoughts... :) 

More information at http://www.mailgun.net/ Check out also their interview to +Robert Scoble  http://youtu.be/ag1BdUqoIQI

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Friday, 24 August 2012

The Meaning Of Fake


//Here is how to make headlines for your social media management company
1) Find a topic that's causing traffic these days: let's say... fake twitter follower counts and politicians in an election year
2) Develop a tool that supposedly can identify fake accounts
3) Instant success!

Meet the Status People Fake Follower Check tool http://bit.ly/NlG47P You just give it a Twitter handle and it gives you how many "fake" followers it has. But what is a "fake"? The #statuspeople FAQ page explains: [the tool] checks to see how many spam accounts are following you

Ok, first alert right here. "Fake" and "Spam" are different things. Spam bots follow you so that follow them back. It has nothing to do with fake accounts meant to boost your follower count. 

But let's ignore that for a second. What it is the criteria for a "fake" account? The faq page answers: On a very basic level spam accounts tend to have few or no followers and few or no tweets. But in contrast they tend to follow a lot of other accounts

That's the most terrible example of a fake/spam/whatever criteria I could think of.

With that kind of criteria, Facebook has 45% "fake" followers and Obama, depending on when you run the tool has between 30 to 40%...

And thus, without much effort, USA Today, totally ignorant of the world of technology, runs a headline of Obama has millions of fake Twitter followers http://usat.ly/SwDtZi
They even managed to sum the "fake" and "inactive" counts in order to come up with a "70% fake" number, because 70% sounds better than 30%... 

I forgot the best thing about this tool: it gives a count of 88% "fake" followers for it's creator @statuspeople:-D

Found via +Mike Elgan 

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Thursday, 23 August 2012

Burj Khalifa


// My contribution for  #LongExposureThursday  
Shot from the top of the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai :)

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Sometimes, life is good


// Sometimes... this happens :) 

via +Malte Ubl 

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Monday, 20 August 2012

You can not delete stuff from the internet


Public reminder: when something is public, a copy of what you posted (multiple copies actually) remains somewhere. So you can't just delete a customer's comment and pretend it never existed. If his cares enough (like +Thomas Hawk here), the situation will be made even worse for you. Think again Walmart... 


Embedded Link





Thomas Hawk Digital Connection » Blog Archive » Hey Walmart, My Wife Was Mugged in Front of Your Oakland Store Today, Thanks for Censoring My Facebook Comment
That is just rubbish! They (Walmart) should be ashamed about their inaction and flies in the face of everything that their ethical standards have in place for that company. You should at least receive...

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Starting-out photography tips


+Heather Buckley shares her wisdom, here are my favorites: 
1) Think about the environment surrounding your subject – what do you include? What do you leave out?
2) Watch the backgrounds, they can work for or against your subject, try depth of field to isolate subjects or emphasise their surroundings.
_3) Work fast, don’t miss the moment. _

Much more and examples here http://bit.ly/QhjV51

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Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Facebook on the freemium path


Apparently, what used to be a free service, #Facebook, is now fully freemium on all levels. I just got this "Promote" option that allows me to overcome Facebook's algorithm on what is "cool" for my friends to see and actually get them to see my posts (you know, the original purpose of Facebook's service). Until now this option existed only for Pages...

Meanwhile, Mashable reports that soon companies will able to to pay so that their posts will show up in the News Feed of users who have not liked the company page... http://on.mash.to/NBScQ2

cc: +Robert Scoble , have you seen this? 

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Saturday, 4 August 2012

YouTube Ad Context-Matching Fail


Dear #YouTube

just because I am watching a video with Japanese words in it's title, it doesn't mean I should watch an ad in Japanese. I'm a Greek watching this from Greece for God's sake. And the video contains people talking in English. After this, I don't understand how people worry that "Google knows so much about us"... Congrats on charging VISA for me watching their japanese ad though. :) 

BTW, funny video http://bit.ly/QSBr3B :)

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