Blog 500

Looks like Dr. Aman was on CBS News again, this time talking about Google Street View. Google was downloading emails and documents while taking pictures for Street View. I guess they took the opportunity to turn it into a war drive. Dr. Aman is right, there is no way that Google was doing this inadvertently! That doesn’t even make sense… I don’t drive around with my computer, “inadvertently” downloading people’s information from Wi-fi networks. You have to set your computer up to do something like that. P.S. Secure your wireless network for god-sakes!

I came across this site while doing research for a client. My client has a list of 2,600 contacts spread out across 4 different locations. I obviously had to try it out before recommending it, and I was pleasantly surprised at how nicely it worked.

Basically what it comes down to is that email clients often have difficulties syncing locally stored contacts to web-based mail services that don’t use Exchange Server (in which case, sometimes contacts get over-written anyway). Soocial solves this issue by storing your contacts in one centralized location. Not only can you sync your contacts between your email and web clients, but you can also sync your contacts with your mobile device. This means that if you have to change phones or services, you won’t loose your contacts.

The biggest benefit that I saw is with my iPhone. iPhone now has Exchange support, but I am weary of activating it for fear that my contacts will be lost. Now that I have my contacts backed-up externally, I can do all that I want with my phone without loosing my precious data.

Soocial also has a really nice contact management interface that allows you to merge your contacts from your different sources, and streamline your address book (AKA no duplicate contacts to worry about).

Keep in mind, I’m not affiliated with Soocial. I just really appreciate the service, and think that my friends should know about it.

Look at that! I did my presentation just a little too early. It turns out that yesterday Google struck a deal (monetary) with Twitter to include a real-time search of social networks. Read more about the deal on Tech Crunch. This seems like a promising technology for getting up-to-second results on current trending topics, as it takes longer to write an article than a tweet.

I promise to have more links that I have uncovered during my research, but I just saw this pop up today. I was a little angry because it would have been great to include in the advantage that Google has over Facebook.

I came across this awesome interview with Jeffry Zeldman (okay, I found it on twitter), but he makes a great case for twitter helping web designers to write more effective content. It’s a great read,  so I thought I would share it.

Just thought that I would share this. HTML is a new web standard, which specification is being drawn up for right now. I’m really excited about a lot of the new features.

Here it is, I set up my podcasting layer (a.k.a. my home office) to start my first podcast. I got my new microphone, and built my own pop screen. I built the pop screen for under $3. I went to the fabric store and picked up a a stretch frame for needle point work, and a brass doll stand. I stretched out fabric from an old t-shirt over the frame, screwed it closed, and tied the frame to the doll stand with a piece of string.

The setup worked out great! I was really proud of it. I used my iMac G5 to organize my notes and display websites with information that I planned on talking about. That way I could organize my notes without printing, and I also would not have to work about the mic picking up the sound of paper rustling. I then used my MacBook Pro for recording.

I used Garage Band instead of Audacity for recording. I was really pleased with the tools that Garage Band had for recording podcasts. Garage Band actually had a preset configuration for podacasting that had levels set, channels set, and a whole bunch of presets for equalization. I was also able o load my show’s set list into iTunes and drag the songs onto my timeline from my iTunes playlist. It all worked beautifully.

I decided that my podcast would be musical because I’m in a band, and love it when my band gets played. I want to give other bands the opportunity. Also, music is a big part of my life, so it just seemed logical to do a music podcast.

I signed up for a music alley producer account, so I chose a selection of podsafe music from their lineup. This means that I have the privilege to play all of the music I played on the show, with no royalty fees.

I really enjoyed the experience, and I plan on doing more episodes. I hosted my podcast on podbean, so please subscribe.

I just got my research topic approved for my first presentation in ACSG 500. My topic title will be “Facebook Takes Over the World… of Search.” Here’s a brief synopsis of what it will entail:

Facebook is attempting to de-thrown Google as the leading source of where people get their information online. The presentation will consist of how Facebook plans on doing so, and how their plan compares to buisness models of the past, where people provide the information on queries over machines.

If you have any links that I should know about, please post them in the comments. So far, I’ve found a really good article on Wired. I will post it, along with other items I find, later.