Blog24 » Social Networks

A new profile website for blog24′s author

Chris — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:40:00 +0000

If you ever wished you could find me, Chris Marshall, on social media websites then you are in luck! I recently created a new profile website which contains links to some of the places on the World Wide Web where you can find me [cfm24.com].

I wanted to keep it simple and logical. It even looks good on IE1.5! Here’s what it looks like on an iPod Touch (Safari):

I’m sure you’ll sleep better tonight safe in the knowledge that you will now know how to find me on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and so on…

Similar Posts:

How Apple Could Improve iTunes Genius

Chris — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:10:17 +0000

Genius was introduced in Apple iTunes 8. It is a feature that enables users to created playlists of music that ‘go together well’.

Since its introduction iTunes Genius has had an unfair amount of criticism. While it is not perfect, Genius is a useful tool which will improved upon given time.

While Genius relies on mass user input to work perhaps Apple should consider joining forces with some software and web-based services that already exist to greatly improve the feature.

Firstly, when I first read about Genius (before the official launch) I thought it would actually analyse the music itself rather than just data about user music collections and playing habits.

Analyse the music?

It would be great to classify music based upon the way it actually sounds. There is one application that does this to a certain extent — Tangerine for the Mac. Tangerine analyses music to workout to factors that might be of importance when creating a playlist — beats per minute (BPM) and beat intensity.

“Tangerine! lets you easily create playlists of upbeat music, or playlists for relaxing. It works by analyzing the BPM and the beat intensity of your music. Spend your time listening to music, not making playlists.”

Adding this simple functionality into iTunes would be the first step to improving the selection of tunes that ‘go together well’ by using Genius.

Cross reference more user data?

The iTunes music store does not contain all the songs available in the world, far from it! Genius is limited to suggesting music that Apple sell via the iTunes Store. As a result there are thousands of tracks that will never be found in a Genius created playlist.

New bands form constantly, they produce a constant stream of new music. Apple needs to keep ahead of its competitors and make sure that music that is not available in the iTunes Store is considered when generating playlists and making suggestions via the Genius sidebar.

Apple need partnerships with other online services that offer greater range of music data. If Genius could share data with websites such as iLike.com and Last.fm this would greatly improve the diversity of music that was included in playlist creation.

Both iLike.com and Last.fm are socail networking websites where people are able to share musical tastes. Both already intergrate with iTunes to a certain extent and such intergration could be extended to improve Genius.

Apple iTunes musical social network?

The chances of Apple getting involved with just one aforementioned social networks is highly unlikely. Apple are more likely to create their own social network rather than ~~utilize~~ utilise existing services to improve upon Genius’ functionality.

Genius could be so much better than it is today. Social networking and music analysis could be the key to making playlists perfect – just don’t hold your breath.

No matter what Apple are planning for Genius, if it involves restricting data to that held for the music in the iTunes Store then Genius will forever be limited.

Similar Posts:

New Design Makes Bookmarking Site Delicious [dot com]

Chris — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:45:43 +0000

Today del.icio.us became delicious.com as the infamous bookmarking website’s excellent new design went live. The long awaited redesign looks streamlined and incorporates fast loading ajax features that simplifies use.

“The new Delicious is just like the old del.icio.us, only faster, easier to learn, and hopefully more delightful to use and to look at.”

Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here

A short animation was also published to illustrate the differences between the old del.icio.us and the redesign:

A year in Beta

This redesign has been in the pipeline for over a year and early previews gave a clear indication of what was to be expected of the new site. However the aforementioned blog post by The Delicious Team also indicated that new features are in development and may be added in the near future.

“It has taken us a while to get here, and we really appreciate all the patience and support you’ve shown us. Now that our new platform is in place we expect to release new features more quickly.”

For more information about the changes take a look at the Delicious What’s New page.

Best comment about the redesign so far?

By DrFunke on digg.com:

“Hmm, now I can’t access it from work because the network nannies think delicious.com is a porn site. Anyone else having this problem?”

Similar Posts:

delicious.com screenshot

Chris — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:35:42 +0000

delicious.com screenshot, originally uploaded by Marshall24.

The great redesign for the relaunch of what is now delicious.com — cleaner, fresher and more dynamic and a lot faster.

Similar Posts:

Popular FriendFeeders

Chris — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:07:29 +0000

Step 2—Geek Party!, originally uploaded by bizstone.

This screenshot, uploaded to Flickr by Twitter’s Biz Stone, provides a clue to how certain people have become increasingly ‘popular’ on friendfeed.com.

Allen Stern, of centernetworks.com explains why the likes Loic Le Meur, Dave Winer, Robert Scoble and Leo Laporte have so many followers:

Read more about Allen’s theory on FriendFeed Defaults.

‘Participation Premium’

However, Robert Scoble is partly correct in saying that being an active user of friendfeed.com has attracted the number of followers too. Perhaps FriendFeed use the amount of participation as part of their formula to decide who features on the Popular FriendFeeders during sign up.

“I’ve noticed that participating brings more people into your lives. I call this ‘The Participation Premium‘” — Robert Scoble

As Scoble points out in his article on the subject of FriendFeed popularity, Michael Arrington has not been rigorously active on FriendFeed but is a very popular blogger outside the FriendFeed community. Again, perhaps this is why he is listed during the FriendFeed sign up process — it’s part of the formula.

Should Friend Feed Change?

Allen Stern certainly thinks so — he wants a random selection of people offered during sign-up. Maybe he is just jealous that the same bunch of ~~geeks~~ fine fellows are listed.

One solution would be to give new users a choice. A simple menu to select between, Busy Bloggers, Flickr Freaks, Cunning Commentators, Movie Buffs, Podcast Masters, Movie Makers, Bookmark Junkies, Music Maniacs and Robert Scoble. Each selection would provide the new user with list of FriendFeed users who are either popular or prolific participators within each category. This ought to be fairly easy to integrate as FriendFeed hold the necessary information.

To give more exposure to a greater number of users perhaps the popularity ought to be recalculated daily (or more often).

Similar Posts:

Biz Stone Talks To NPR About Twitter

Chris — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:34:45 +0000

Biz Stone was interviewed on The Byrant Park Project morning show a few days ago. The interview covers many Twitter related topics including the idea behind Twitter and its future, the Fail Whale, and the recent/current problems Twitter is facing.

At some point Twitter will have to make money and become profitable and Biz touched on one idea how this may happen with the introduction of ‘commercial accounts’. While Biz would not discuss how many people have joined Twitter he did reveal that the number of member had increased six fold in the last 12 months.

Twitter, What Are You Doing? Co-Founder Tells All

Both informative and relaxed this interview from National Public Radio is definitely worth listening to if you are a Twitter user. Plus there’s the bonus near the end when you will discover why Biz got his name.

The accompanying page is also informative and a must for any Twitter fan. Listen to Biz Stone interview.

Similar Posts:

Introducing The Fail Snail

Chris — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:07:57 +0000

The FAIL SNAIL, originally uploaded by ronin691.

Top marks go to Todd from Dallas for his take on The Fail Whale.

Todd explains his inspiration:

Inspired by the availability of Twitter’s Fail Whale as a T-shirt and Tantek’s “Note to Self” comment [read] I made teh Fail Snail, and he’s coughing up some “goddamn leaky HTML” hex.

Similar Posts:

Boycotting Twitter Could Lighten The Load

Chris — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:50:23 +0000

As I begin to write this the Fail Whale is indicating Twitter’s ongoing problem — ‘Twitter is over capacity’. It is the frequent outages that Twitter suffers that has prompted Paul Chaney, Internet Marketing Director at Bizzuka, to arrange a 24 hour boycott of Twitter on July 4th.

Paul Chaney explains his idea:

It’s time fans of Twitter express some tough love by joining in a 24-hour boycott – a “twittercott” – starting at 12:00 a.m., July 4th. Let’s declare our independence from Twitter by not using it the entire day. We send a message by NOT sending messages. Get it? If enough of us were to participate it would be a shot heard round the world wide web!

Paul wrote about the boycott on his blog, Conversational Media Marketing and has set up a group on Facebook, Boycott Twitter, which, at the time of writing, has 5 members.

One member, Graham Hancock of Mississippi, posted the following comment, which sums up my opinion about Twitter’s troubles rather well.

I don’t see how this will get anything done. Just get over it. Twitter is free and their service will get better over time. But hell, you’re more than welcome to boycott and make the service faster for the rest of us.

Of course there was a response from Paul Chaney that included the following ludicrous analogy:

We’re like a bunch of drug addicts who continue to go to the same dealer for our fix. But the dealer is unreliable. Still, we show up hoping not to see the whale this time. That’s insanity.

Twitter Fan I Am — Addict I Am Not

Personally I am a huge fan of Twitter and send tweets daily. I do feel that the alternatives, like Plurk, FriendFeed and the brand new identi.ca lack some of the features offered by Twitter.

Using SMS to add Tweets via mobile phone is a major advantage over the other services. Also I am able to received updates from selected members directly to my phone. This is how I keep in touch with my brother who lives over 5,000 miles (8,000km) away. I use the SMS method to add items to my Google Calendar too — very useful.

Major Investment

While I doubt that a one day boycott will have the desired affect. Following investment from Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos and venture capital specialists Spark Capital should give Twitter a noticeable performance boost in the near future. Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, indicated recently that the process of rebuilding Twitter, “piece by piece,” is underway and, “will take months”.

Hopefully the investment will turn Twitter into a reliable service by autumn. However, the new service mentioned earlier, identi.ca is copycat sites that offer similar microblogging services but Twitter will hopefully remain the forerunner. If these clone sites become as successful as Twitter they too are destined to overload failure.

The Fail Whale Sensation

Ironically Twitter’s ‘Fail Whale’ has it’s own fan club, failwhale.com and its own merchandise. A claim that none of the Twitter clone error pages certainly cannot make.

The popularity of the Fail Whale does seem to indicate that despite the problems that Twitter continues to suffer there is a dedicated and loyal base of users that will ensure Twitter’s success in the future.

Shall I Join The Boycott?

Boycott Twitter if you like but only time will heal Twitter’s flaws, and it is doubtful that rival sites will gain as much popularity or attract the investment to survive. Whether I boycott Twitter or not is yet to be decided, I’ll let you know via Twitter tomorrow.

The good news at the moment is that Twitter is now live following the most recent hiccup.

Update: July 3, 2008 @ 16:59pm

Paul Chaney Blogs His Rationale

Rationale behind the Twitter boycott by Paul Chaney.

Some are wondering what my motives are in calling for a boycott of Twitter on July 4, a day I’m suggesting that we “declare our independence from Twitter” for 24 hours.

I can understand that some, perhaps many, consider this an exercise in foolishness (or stupidity) and that nothing will be accomplished. It’s obvious that others view Twitter’s foibles as nothing more than an annoyance, something to be tolerated until the day finally comes when we see the Fail Whale no more.

Similar Posts:

10 Updates You Will Never See On Twitter, Facebook or Plurk

Chris — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:46:51 +0000

Currently sleeping so please do not disturb.
Just robbed a bank — don’t think much of the getaway car.
Wondering why prostitutes are soooo expensive.
Attending my funeral — a good turn out.
Managed to smuggle 1kg of cocaine via Heathrow. Awesome!
Digging tunnel to aid escape — thirsty work.
My fake passport seems to have done the trick!
Never realized that specimen pots were so small.
Digging a shallow grave for the mis’ess.
Just committed suicide – bye x

Add your own in the comments.

Similar Posts:

Making Big Brother History

Chris — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:31:56 +0000

As the new UK series of Big Brother looms all the affiliated hype and nonsense increases online. This hype seems more intense this year with the increasing popularity of social networking websites such as Facebook. Although this just could be because I have not sought such enthusiasm on the web with previous Big Brother series.

You may ask, “why I did this year?”. Good question, but here is the reason:

A couple of nights ago I was thinking about the power of social networking and how to explore this. Then it hit me — use social networking to influence the outcome of a reality television show which relies on viewers’ votes.

Big Brother is the perfect candidate for an experiment in social network power. Social websites such as Facebook and Myspace share a large portion of the demographic with the Big Brother audience. Perhaps this is a sweeping statement drenched in stereotypical presumption but I still feel that is fairly accurate.

Creating a Facebook Group

Moments after thinking about influencing the Big Brother result I created a group on Facebook entitled ‘The Big Brother 9 Winner‘.

The description of the group briefly describes the idea:

This group has just one aim. To get enough people to make the 9th contestant that enters the Big Brother house on June 5th, 2008 the winner.

As this ambitious experiment relies a large group of people I urged my FB contacts to invite theirs too in the hope that the group would grow exponentially. Huh!

Raising Awareness

Promoting the group and the idea is an ongoing task. As this experiment is about social networking most of the promotion has been via Facebook and Myspace, with ocassional posts to Twitter and therefore FriendFeed and my underused Tumblr page.

Other than the social networking websites I have created bbwinner.blog24.co.uk too which might be used for further promotion in the near future. This blog entry is also a form of promotion.

So far, the response has been minimal and an intensive effort will be made to get more people to join the Facebook group and hopefully build a community of people who want to influence the result of Big Brother.

Big Brother starts on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 and contestant number 9 will be revealed. No matter who it is, male or female, idiot or genius, annoying or pleasant — making them the winner will be a major summer project.

Join me to make Big Brother history by joining The Big Brother 9 Winner.

Similar Posts: