HyveUp Blogs

Buzz Revived Friendconnect

Xavier Vespa — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The specificity of Google Buzz right now is that the early-adopting community barely talks about anything else but Google Buzz and how it works. We can literally observe how the collective intelligence of the community uses self-education to build a secure living environment for itself.

One way we can observe the significant growth of the community is through Google Reader. Many of you have probably noticed that your followers' count on Google Reader grew equally to the number of new followers that you generated on Buzz:

What we are seeing here is Friendconnect finally emerging as a practical social graph provider, enabling millions to share with the entire Google community from within their email inbox. Grand!

Send Google Docs Directly In Email

Xavier Vespa — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:55:00 -0800

I am an heavy user of Google Docs, always on the look out on how I can boost my productivity with this cloud-based word/sheet editor. I have found some glitches between gmail and gdocs that sometimes make the Google experience incoherent. I noticed five minutes ago a new feature in the gdocs that will be very handy:

If you don't use Google Docs a lot, you might not know what I'm talking about. "Paste the item itself into the email". That's super convenient to directly send a text to someone when that was the initial intention, instead of sending the person a link to a document...

I like new features!

Delete Your Buzz Account!

Xavier Vespa — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:51:00 -0800

Well privacy concerns that hubbubs around Google Buzz are being dealt with. This morning, I saw this new option in my Google profile:

All of a sudden, Google made it more flexible to just leave the network and close the door behind if we want, unlike Facebook who's blocked The Suicide Machine because it made it too easy to leave Facebook.

Pana.ma, the iPhone Twitter-like Voice App

Xavier Vespa — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:15:00 -0800

There has been a lot of buzz lately about Twitter-like voice applications, so I would like to contribute by mentioning Pana.ma, a twitter-like kind of voice messenger. Pana.ma is available on the iPhone and the Android app is under development. The video below is in French, so if you don't speak our very dear language, just skip the video to see where I'm going with this:

Remi Vespa, the Business development director is my dad. The company he works for, Pana.ma, just launched the iPhone app and things are going pretty well so far. I've been following his company since he started working there, and I have to admit that they've been moving mountains around just to get this app out. While doing my time in the Valley, I studied a lot of tech startups: They all try to change our habits one way or the other, to add another piece of technology in our daily lives. Pana.ma offers to change our communications habits in a radical, yet more intuitive way: By being a voice soliloquist and a hubbub listener. So if you have an iPhone, just try it out!

Friendfeed Inflates Feedburner's Subscribers' Count

Xavier Vespa — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:28:00 -0800

I recently discovered that your Frienfeed subscribers' counter has a direct impact on your Feedburner's subcribers' counter. As you can see below, I have linked a fresh new blog to my friendfeed account, and created a Feedburner URL for the blog's feed. The results are pretty conclusive: The blog suddenly got a a surge of subscribers (compare to its 0 average), and the feedcount is almost equal to my number of subscribers on Friendfeed:

Why does this saddens me? The Feedburner subscribers' count gives a fairly good clue on the influence one blog has. Knowing that you can pump up your RSS subscribers' count by following a ton-load of people on Friendfeed for follow-backs makes it flaky.

When I mentioned it to someone I collaborate with, his reaction was: "That's stupid, it's like counting Twitter followers as RSS subscribers!"

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree actually. Is an official RSS reader subscribers more valuable than a Twitter subscribers? Quite frankly, I'd like to see numbers to be convinced. What do you think? Could Buzz also influence the Feedburner subscribers' counter?

5 Free Press Release Distribution Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:10:46 -0800

www.free-press-release.com/
This is probably the top free press release distribution service. Without being a member, you can submit press releases for free and they will be indexed by Google within 24 hours. For a very small investment, you can get premier services.

www.prlog.org
All services are free here. Your press release will be distributed to Google News and to numerous search engines. You can edit or delete your press release, get visitor statistics, etc.

www.1888pressrelease.com
This service offers free press release distribution, sample press releases, press release writing tips, etc.

www.pr.com/press-releases
You can post your full company profile on this site, submit news and press releases through this distribution service. It connects to Google News, Yahoo News, AskJeeves News, Excite News, Topix.net, and MSN News.

www.free-press-release-center.info
This free service offers keyword linking. You can choose a keyword and a URL (different from your main site URL) that will appear as a link (using the keyword as the anchor text) in your press release.

Facebook Fan Page Widget Bug

Xavier Vespa — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:09:00 -0800

I like this Facebook Fan page widget bug. It shows 9594 fans instead of 94. This actually happens when my blog doesn't load properly, and seems to not be rendering scripts.

Obviously, the '94' in 9594 is my fans' count. But how about the '95'? Does Facebook preloads a +1 fan option every time the widget is called? Maybe, but from the looks of it, this info is totally useless anyway...

Constructing Google Buzz

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:23:00 -0800

Of course Google Buzz' got a buzz: the Gmail team implemented it into every gmail inbox out there (around 100 million), without even providing an opt-out feature to kick it out of our traditional inbox. That inevitably gets conversations rolling. And since it's there to buzz on forever, we might as well get used to it and find a way to use it appropriately.

Louis Gray muses on a basic and efficient way to organize your social data flow across mutliple social networks. What I like in his organization approach is the centrality of Friendfeed. I could not agree more with his idea that Friendfeed is the best social data flow management tool, whether it serves as a "content creator" or "content collector".

However, I do not agree with the way he has integrated Buzz in his social data flow graph. First, Buzz is in the graph, and I don't think it should be. Why? Simply because Buzz is in its infancy. It is merely a concept of social flow being tested within gmail. It's all pretty basic and not so appealing. Mobile access is limited (ex: android 2.0 and up only), and we the geeks are not impressed to see a lighter, friendconnect-powered, friendfeed clone in yet another gmail tab. They should have launched it as a beta lab feature instead of bullying it up to our faces overnight.

My point: Buzz will become more interesting once it becomes what Louis Gray calls a "content creator". For example, if I can tweet from Buzz, or update my Facebook page from Buzz, than Buzz will most probably become my social cockpit, since it's almost already the case with gmail alone. I'm pretty sure that real-time wasn't rolled out right away to maintain a manageable launch on 100 million accounts at once. Obviously, real-time Buzz is just around the corner.

My recommendation for Buzz is to maintain your ongoing social media strategy without trying to intricate Buzz in the process. Keep an eye on it though: Look who starts to follow you, follow a lot of people to see if Buzz manage to reduce the noise, look who's being active in your network, what new features are being rolled out, and also track your traffic data to see if Buzz emerges as a significant traffic referrer.

Right now, most bloggers are not jeopardizing the control over their own social data flow on Buzz: Michael Arrington's buzz is his twitter and wordpress feed. Brian Solis doesn't have a public buzz.

So that's it. Let's wait for Google to roll out some more goodies before giving Buzz too much buzz. What do you think of Buzz so far? Is Google Buzz a winner?

+500 Best Green Blogs -- Awesome List -- URLs, RSS, Twitter, Facebook...

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:20:54 -0800

During one of my missions, I built up a list of green bloggers for marketing purposes. My job did not just consist of collecting blog urls and names, but also the writers' names, email addresses, Twitter accounts, Facebook account, RSS...

It took me way over a hundred hours to build this list, and all the while I was making it, I couldn't help but think that this kind of data should be public anyway. So now that I am done with this job, I want to make the job easier for anyone who is now trying to build a list of green bloggers for marketing purposes.

I took away the email addresses and other types of sensitive information, but all the information I have decided to share or not here is some info you can find on those bloggers' websites.

If your site is not included in this list, please add it in the comments below!

Link to the Webpage

Influencing Google on "Web Influence"

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:19:06 -0800

I recently realized the 'about hyveup' page was ranked 3rd in Google with the keywords "Web Influence", and 1st with "Influence web". I was really impressed by the rewards of my SEO efforts, so I thought I would share it with you:

What I love about this specific first rank situation, it's the keywords: Web influence. it's pretty cool to find that your company's name is the closest match that Google could find for that specific query.

In case you are wondering, there is not an amazing amount of incoming clicks coming from there. I guess ranking first on some keywords is just pure branding.

Contributing to @rwwfr

Xavier Vespa — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:10:00 -0800

Today, the big news for me was my first post in ReadWriteWeb France. It's not the most amazing piece of content I have ever written, but I know that writing for this blog is good karma (how else can you explain the logo :)

Seriously, I always considered ReadWriteWeb as being an excellent resource for the smart geek, so becoming a part of the contributing team is deeply rewarding.

Don't Be Twitter's Pawn, Boycott The SUL!

Xavier Vespa — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:34:00 -0800

Recently, Twitter underwent a major overhaul of the Suggested User List. Instead of having one big list of tweeps picked by the staff, there is now a directory organized by category, and no more mass following:

"... now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists"

While facilitating the adoption of Twitter for new users, the SUL also offers an incredible followers' boost for the "suggested ones". A NYT article mentions the name of Mr. Johnson, a regular tweep who suddenly found his name on the SUL and saw his followers' count jump from 5,000 to +600,000 in just a few weeks. Because of that boost, his Twitter name was also published on the cover of a TIME magazine.

By making celebrities overnight, Twitter has become more than just the technology provider in the Twitter game. Twitter also became a Kingmaker of some sort, propelling some users to the tip of the pyramid, hence influencing what people read in a big way.

Against that system is RSS-pioneer Dave Winer. Dave Winer often wrote about the SUL and how it gave Twitter too much information control over its own social network. Dave Winer also suggests that Twitter outcasts from the list any user that does not pet Twitter nicely.

Recently, Dave Winer fell head over heels when he realized that the microblogging company added his name to the newly-designed SUL. He seemed pretty pissed by it. Why? Because the same day he found out he was on the list, Dave Winer asked for his name to be removed from the SUL.

As we can see, on January 22nd, in a matter of a few hours, Dave Winer gained an above-the-average amount of followers. The guy would probably have gained influence power from the exposition of the SUL, but he decided that it was against his ethics, and so he took a stand against it. I admire his move.

Freely Mix Text And Voice In Conversations!

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:54:58 -0800

Our client Pana.ma just launched “Voice Messenger”, the world’s first integrated voice and texting service. Free-of-charge, Voice Messenger enhances traditional texting because users can now seamlessly add their voice to text conversations for simple convenience or when emotion and meaning cannot be conveyed by text alone. Because Voice Messenger is just like texting, Pana.ma is simple and intuitive for anyone to use.

The service is built on Pana.ma’s communications platform that answers the growing need for consumers and businesses to communicate asynchronously in the mobile or Web context using their voice as well as text. Users can easily create one-to-one or multi-party conversations (or conversation networks) by picking names from their address book or by searching the service’s user directory. These conversations can persist indefinitely.

“With virtually everyone mobile now, younger generations are calling less, texting more, and generally dismissing voicemail. We started Panama to add and deliver voice into the texting ‘paradigm’ because kids told us they wanted it!”

said David Hayden, co-founder and CEO of Panama.

“Texting is the communication mode of choice because it is more immediate, efficient, non-invasive, and convenient than any other mode (including calling). We simply saw that voice was missing and needed to be there to add the emotion and meaning that texting lacks. It’s a simple adjustment, and a natural evolution, but we think that this is a service that will have a radical impact on how we communicate.”

Available first to iPhone and 2nd generation iPod Touch users, Pana.ma’s service enables anyone to freely mix text and voice in a single conversation thread. The service will also be launched on additional platforms over the next two months.

The Pana.ma service includes the following features:

Seamless integration of voice and text in any conversation thread
The only mobile solution for sending and receiving private messages with a group of people
The ability to create public and private conversations
The ability to play back a conversation in part or in its entirety
Unlimited messaging and unlimited storage
Access to the only public forum for voice messages so anyone can easily create and participate in public conversations of interest
Cost savings by eliminating reliance on traditional text messaging
Alerts for new messages, even when the app is not running

This is really a super cool service, which we are now using to improve the communication with our own customers. Pana.ma is available on the AppStore; download it and send me a voice message @ remi.

Looking For Published Google Docs? Bing It!

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:00:07 -0800

In September 2009, a Google employee, Marie, announced via the Google Docs forum that published Google Docs (which are made public by default) would be crawled, indexed, and used to serve SERPs:

This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people.

In other words, Google Docs wanted to flip its users' data public to make more money out of it Facebook-style. In July 2009, two months before the announcement that linked-to published docs would be indexed, the Google Docs team removed a feature that automatically tagged published documents as 'published', making it really hard for users to keep track of which documents were potentially indexable. Technically, only docs linked to from a Website were crawlable and indexable, but as one commenter on the forum put it:

If someone who knows the URL for my published document, they can link to it from their own publicly crawled webpage, thwarting my attempts to avoid having it crawled. That means that I'm at the mercy of anyone who gets their hands on the URL for my published Doc.

Indeed!

Today, Google did not apply what Marie said it would. If you search for "pdf site:docs.google.com" on Google, no documents are found. If you do the same query on Bing, some 1.500.000 documents are found. How come?

Even after you publish your documents, spreadsheets or presentations, they won't appear in the Google search index; however, other search engines may potentially index published docs.(from Google Docs Forum)

Google probably did that to avoid a PR mess around a central product of its recently-launched Pro Suite. Even if indexing was a good idea, strategically, it was too easy for the competition to hurt the image of Google Docs by arguing that Google could leak out to the world your sensitive business information.

Nevertheless, instead of giving up the fight, Google decided to shut the competition down by allowing them to crawl and index Google Docs' library of published docs. In the case of MSFT/Bing for example, Google is giving away a priceless source of information to Bing users, making Bing a more attractive search engine. On the other end, Bing users get to discover and get used to the universe of Google Docs.

Google traded a bit of its search pie for a bit of Microsoft's Office pie. Interesting!

Naked People Through iPhone Augmented Reality App

Xavier Vespa — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:15:00 -0800

Via a French Blog Agency's newsletter (XPrime ID), I landed on this Youtube video, and it put a smile on my face. It's all in French, but quite frankly, you don't even need subtitles to understand what goes on here. The developer who is introducing us to the Nomao app on the iPhone shows a secret feature that undresses everybody through augmented reality. Take a look, it's knee-slapping and mind-boggling at the same time.

Finally, augmented reality does more than just showing tweets and restaurant reviews...

For the story, Nomao is a French geolocalization search engine. They made this video (and this feature?) to promote the new augmented reality feature they added to their iPhone app.

De-Constructing Facebook's Walled Garden

Xavier Vespa — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:31:00 -0800

The news about replying to Facebook comments directly from your email inbox is a warmly welcomed one. This feature will most definitely generate more social activity through Facebook's platform, which will in turn generate more crawlable, indexable and sellable public content. This intent is obvious because the new feature does not include inmails, even though the technology behind replying to inmails via email would be far less complicated then the one behind replying to comments via email.

By enabling email discussions, Facebook is de-constructing its own walled garden by taking away the link that was taking users on its site over and over again. On one hand, discussions will probably explode. On the other, Facebook might experience a slight loss of traffic velocity (because of email's remote activity). However, since data generation will increase, Facebook will become more competitive on Twitter's grounds, and we all know by now how dear this is to Facebook (and there's nothing wrong with that).

Hopefully, this feature will be enabled on Fan Page Comments as well. This will help all those Fan Page owners who are struggling to create interactions around their products.

As a side note, I wonder how much of the Friendfeed intelligence was involved in this new feature...

Reply To Facebook Comments Via Email, At Last!

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:13:19 -0800

Today in the 'yay!' section, Facebook is announcing that users are finally able to reply to comments via email. Thus, no need to visit facebook.com over and over again to partake to a discussion, everything happens from the email inbox.

Finally Sir Facebook, we've been patiently waiting for this one. For well over two years now, through email, I have been managing my blog's comments via Disqus, and my Twitter's followers and DMs via Topify. Facebook was irritating because I mostly handle emails on my mobile, and Facebook's mobile site is heavy and lame.

Now that replies to comments via email have been enabled, it would be a good suggestion to enable the same for inmails. Unfortunately, those are not public, and it seems like privacy is not a concern for Facebook anymore...

Via The Next Web.

Gizapage: Build A White Label Social Media Hub For Your Brand

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:00:02 -0800

Gizapage, the service that lets you stack all your social profiles in one URL, is taking things to the next level. Today, the company is announcing a couple of new features that aim to make Gizapage a more attractive product for Social Media marketers and bloggers alike.

Aside from Gizapage, the hub best known on the Web to gather social profiles is Friendfeed. However, as its name mentions, Friendfeed only feeds you with your friends' activities, but it does not give front and center exposure to your social profiles and those of your friends. Plus Friendfeed has been acquired by Facebook, so it would not be surprising to see the Website shut in the coming months.

Gizapage gathers all social profiles into separate tabs accessible from one Web page. In through the tabs, visitors have access to all the original features of each social network. So what is new at Gizapage?

Custom Link

First and foremost, my favorite new feature is the Direct-to-profile custom Gizalink, which means in plain English that I can link to my Youtube profile simply by adding "youtube" to the end of my Gizapage URL: http://xavier.gizapage.com/youtube. This feature is an excellent move because it makes putting a Gizapage link up on your site almost the equivalent as linking directly to a specific social profile.

One reason one might want to use Gizapage instead is to suggest more social profiles while promoting a specific one.

Analytics

Another argument for using a Gizapage profile is that the company is rolling out upgraded analytics for users, enabling brands and bloggers to get a glimpse at their social traffic. This traffic measuring tool should satisfy a great number of Social Media marketers looking to put an accurate number on the results of their actions. Unless they use indirect means to infer visits on their social profiles, marketers have no way to calculate the traffic they generate on social profiles.

By combining the direct-to-profile link with the analytics tool, linking to a Twitter profile within Gizapage could become more interesting than linking directly to it.

Branding
Aren't visitors driven away by a site that doesn't look like what they are expecting to find (you click on a Twitter link and land on some unknown site)? Probably. To fend this off, Gizapage is adding another feature to its social Web gizmo: a Gizapage profile is now fully customizable, from the background to the URL. This way, visitors might not recognize the Twitter design in the Gizapage tab, but they will identify the Website's name, design and URL they were on.

Gizapage started with a really simple plan: Bring all social profiles in one spot. Today, Gizapage's upgrade gives marketers and bloggers more control over their social traffic.

I do not know how Gizapage is optimized for SEO, but there is a fun tweak you can do with tabs. In Gizapage, you give the name you want to tabs (I called my Twitter tab 'status' for example). The direct-to-profile link feature uses tab names to find a specific tab. Thus, to link to a Twitter profile, which I called 'status', I go http://xavier.gizapage.com/status. With a branded URL, I could have http://social.hyveup.tv/status. Think of the possibilities...

Steps To Unlock Blogger Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:11:33 -0800

Block report, ######.hyveup.tv

Late Friday, December 19th, 2009, PST time, Blogger automatically marked ######.hyveup.tv as a spam blog.

This means the site has been temporarily suspended, and access to its content is impossible.

Spam blogs are detected by robots that analyze a site and determine their 'spam likeliness'.

However, Blogger admits that robots can do mistakes (as in this case).

For that purpose, from the Blogger's dashboard, the owner of the blocked blog can go to a page where filling out a captcha letter verification is required.

Once the owner of the blocked blog goes through that process, Blogger displays the following message:

If you leave this page and access it again, it gives you the following message:

The message from the Blogger team asks for our patience. Unfortunately, we are going to need a bit more than that.

8 days after going through the unlock request process, the message above disappeared from the page, and the owner of the blocked blog was asked to go through the verification process again.

After going through the verification process again, the previous message re-appeared, but the unlock request date had changed to December 28, 2009, instead of the December 19, 2009, the initial request date:

And 5 days later, the same bug happened again, resetting the unlock request date to January 4th, 2010.

On January 7th, 2010 at 12:00Am, the blog owner followed the steps mentioned on http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=33fc69199fb4214a&hl=en.

First was to submit the blog's URL to an appeal spreadsheet, which has been done:

Afterwards, the blog owner posted a report in the Something Is Broken section of Blogger's help forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=49d54eb778a68bbd&hl=en):

Analyze Any Feedburner RSS Feed With Feed Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:59:52 -0800

To better understand the reach of the bloggers I was getting in touch with, I needed to know the number of RSS subscribers they each had. After a little research on the Web, I found satisfaction with Feed Analysis, a Feedburner feed analytics tool hosted by BlogPerfume. Feed Analytics offers the following:

- Column chart of subscribers per month
- Line chart comparing subscribers, hits, views, and clicks daily
- Pie chart breaking up RSS consumption per days of the week.
- View the past 6 month, or the past 50 months!

Here is the chart for the HyveUp feed:

As you can see, above the chart is an estimate of the value of an ad on a blog, and the value of the blog.

Same here, above the chart are a few numbers that help you understand a feed's activity.

And again some predictions on a blogger's RSS subscriptions growth for the months to come.

Overall, it is a great tool to get a visual glimpse a one blogger's RSS network size. My only regret is that this data is not downloadable in a CSV format, this would have been pretty neat for record purposes (or a button to transfer the data on a Google Doc).

If you are like me and you dig this tool, then go Digg it too.

The Minitel, A Web's Ancestor

Xavier Vespa — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:33:00 -0800

This, my good friends, is the Minitel, the ancestor to the Web. We French folks, have had that baby in our homes since the 80s. Hey have become really rare today, but when I visited my grand-parents during the holidays season, I found one in their living-room, so I thought I would share it with you.

For more info about the Minitel, read Wikipedia.

Bloggers' Relations, Backbone Of Social Media Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:16:50 -0800

The Marketing Sherpa just released the 2010 Social Media marketing report. In this report, as mentioned on Social Media Today, so-called social marketing budgets are set to rise across just about every industry sector. A graph shows that a high number of respondents intend to increase their social media marketing budgets.

The interesting finding is that respondents seem to be more attracted by social media quick fixes like microblogging, and less by heftier operations that require more efforts like blogging:

From the Marketing Sherpa:

“The most effective tactic shown in the chart above – blogger relations – is used by far fewer organizations than less effective tactics primarily because of the effort required. This focus on “fast and easy” versus effectiveness is a problem that is far more prevalent with organizations in the trial phase of social marketing maturity than with more advanced social marketers working from a strategic social marketing plan.”

This is an interesting report. In more than two years of selling Social Media marketing services, I have noticed the same trend: No one is feeling the blogging thing, simply because it gives too much to think about: Design, editorial strategy, SEM strategy, measures of success, comment moderation, SMO, crisis situations... On the other hand, a majority of people like the Youtube video idea, because it is visually self-explanatory, and it's easy to share.

On the other end, I don't talk with a lot of companies interested in microblogging. Microblogging is still an obscure new tool, and if a lot of folks are ready to invest more in microblogging, it is probably because it is way cheaper to handle a Twitter account than it is to handle a whole blog.

Respondents find that bloggers' relations require too much effort. It sure does, which is exactly why I think it should be heavily invested by whoever is serious about Social Media marketing: Knowing bloggers in a niche is the biggest asset a company will gain from a social media marketing campaign. Bloggers are the pulse of news online. If those bloggers know your business and the people behind it, they will respect it, sometimes mention it, and listen to its official messages.

I hope that this microblogging craze will soon slow down, because marketers need to realize how a social media marketing campaign lacks a backbone if it does not comprise a bloggers' relations strategy.

Foursquare Tests Free Meals

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:33:11 -0800

Foursquare took a step forward today: the first official 'Foursquare mayor eat for free' marketing operation was launched by a local venue. Techcrunch spoke with Foursquare's director of business development, who said that 400 stores across the US are already running regular geo-targeted promos with Foursquare.

Foursquare seems to dramatically increase in popularity, but the company never mentions the number of users on the network. The business model being tested here fits a scenario where the volume of users goes way beyond a few million. By the time Foursquare breaks through those numbers, Google has time to see it coming and start to conceptualize a Places/Latitude mashup. Maybe by then Facebook will have implemented a similar geo-targeted feature for its Page product (since we are all longing to see what Facebook will do location-wise). Even MerchantCircle could theoretically implement this feature for their users, business owners.

Will This model be convincing enough to make mobile check-ins the center of attention? Are 'free meals' daring enough? Foursquare holds the credibility of a possibly huge advertising stream in-between their hands: May they not drop it.

Manage Your Twitter Contacts With Tweepi

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:50:01 -0800

Manage Your Twitter Contacts With Tweepi

Xavier Vespa — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:46:00 -0800

It's hard to manually manage all of your contacts. Even Twitter doesn't really offer a way to do this in a breeze. Enters Tweepi, my favorite contact manager for Twitter. Tweepi makes managing Twitter contacts easy by displaying all of them in a spreadsheet:

Organizing contacts this way makes it easy to view a lot of information in a reduced visual space: Followers, following, tweets in the last 7 days, RT done, RTs by others, last tweeted... There is all the behavioral info on your Twitter contacts you need to have to make an educated choice on who to follow/unfollow. If you are like me (i.e. lazy), you'd like a system that tells you directly who is following you and who isn't for example. Tweepi's got that covered.

Tweepi offers 4 different tools to follow/unfollow tweeps.

They called the first one 'Geeky Follow'. If you need suggestions on who to follow, just enter the name of a person you like on Twitter, and Tweepi will recommend people based on the network of that person. This is a great way to keep your network consistent, and have recommendation engines identify you as a consistent person.

The second one (my favorite) is the 'Flush' tool. It simply shows you everyone that is not following you back on Twitter, and you can unfollow all of them in two clicks.

The third tool is the 'Reciprocate' tool, and as the name says, it enables you to bulk-follow everyone that follows you on Twitter.

The fourth tool is called 'cleanup': When using that tool, Tweepi displays all the tweeps you follow on Twitter, and you select who you want/don't want to follow. This tool is handy if at one point you turned the auto-follow on, and you need to undo that mistake.

Recently, Tweepi integrated a new feature to its service: The safelist. If there are tweeps syou absolutely want to keep following, but you are worried to unfollow them in a bulk operation, then mark them in your safelist, and you'll be safely bulk unfollowing tweeps from now on.

Managing Twitter contacts is a huge challenge. Twitter is still on a growth curve, but the product is still way too geeky for regular folks. Tweepi is a bit geeky too, but it makes your Twitter network much more easier to visualize and to manage. Bloggers like to make lists of which applications Twitter should acquire, and I think that a product like Tweepi is a good candidate.

Google Marks My Blog As Spam And Starts To Scare Me

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:13:03 -0800

For some reason, Google thinks that the Click2Map blog is a spam blog. I received the following email early this morning:

Hello,

Your blog at http://click2map.hyveup.tv/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: SPAM. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible.

For more information, please review the following resources:

Blogger Terms of Service: http://blogger.com/terms.g
Blogger Content Policy: http://blogger.com/content.g

-The Blogger Team

When I accessed my Blogger dashboard, I was actually asked to fill a captcha box to check if this blog was actually a spam. Once I did, I was acknowledged that they probably did a mistake, and that the team was going to review the blog shortly:

Read more »

Google Marks My Blog As Spam And Starts To Scare Me

Xavier Vespa — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:11:00 -0800

For some reason, Google thinks that the Click2Map blog is a spam blog. I received the following email early this morning:

Hello,

Your blog at http://click2map.hyveup.tv/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: SPAM. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible.

For more information, please review the following resources:

Blogger Terms of Service: http://blogger.com/terms.g
Blogger Content Policy: http://blogger.com/content.g

-The Blogger Team

Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Well thank you Blogger for calling my content nonsensical and irrelevant. Very pleasing! (it's hard to stay polite here)

Regarding the links, the blog does indeed point regularly to Click2Map.com, since it is the Click2Map blog. Blogger should not forget they have a post-template feature that enables bloggers to automatically insert the same content at the end of each post (like a link):

I am particularly upset after the Blogger team because I write every post I publish on my blog: It is all original content covering geo-tech news. In addition, I get paid to write on this blog, so it is really inappropriate for Blogger to cut me off like garbage.

It happened once before that Blogger marked one of my blog as spam, wrongfully, and once Google erased one of my account, again the click2map at gmail dot com account (sorry Click2Map), because they erroneously thought it was a spam account.

Bottom line: Google and Blogger's anti-spam technologies are not very precise. More and more, I wonder if I should start migrating to a service provider that is not Google, because Google's monopoly over the Web is starting to scare me (much more than Microsoft's OS monopoly).

Yelp! Google Is Stealing The Web!

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:40:12 -0800

Yelp! Google Is Stealing The Web!

Xavier Vespa — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:18:00 -0800

Rumors about Google intending to buy Yelp broke out on the Web. It doesn't really come as a surprise, and it's even coming quite late in Google's game. Google is interested in consumer reviews because Google is now catering online services to small businesses.

It all started on September 24th, when Google announced Place Pages for businesses. Right off the bat, Yelp was identified as the potential loser in this adequation. This wasn't entirely true because Yelp had quality reviews from millions of dedicated users. Google didn't have that. However, Google announced that Place Pages were only designed to appear in Google Maps, which was not true: Those pages were indexed and findable on the Web.

All of a sudden, Google became a competitor to sites like Yelp. Yelp reinforced its communications with small businesses to make sure business owners keep considerign Yelp as their premier place for handling consumer reviews and ratings.

To start fighting on Yelp's ground, Google had to figure out a way to measure the popularity of businesses too. Enters PlaceRank, the algorithm used by Google to determine the popularity of places. PlaceRank is defined by a businesses' PageRank, user-generated info, and trusted sources, among other things.

Since an algorithm is not enough, Google officially announced the release of the 'what people are saying about' feature on Place Pages. Google is shamelessly scraping consumer ratings from its trusted sources (maybe it is a partnership, I don't know) to power its own pages:

How many small consumer-rating Websites will die from this? Whatever they do, Google will simply use their user-generated info to power its own Place Pages. So whether you believe that your brand is strong enough to keep visitors coming to your site (like Zagat probably), or you really want to plan an exit before it becomes too obvious that Google just stole the Web and is serving hyperlocal info to Audi A8 drivers with it.

As an outro, here is a brief quote from Lawrence Coburn's rants on Google Place Pages:

The question is not, "What does Google's move towards being a destination mean for Yelp?" The question is, "What does this mean for the Web?"

Google has become a dominant company by being the most powerful online middleman in history, sitting between the searcher and the destination website. It appears that they may be starting to wonder what would happen if they became the destination.

In French: Yelp! Google Rachete Le Web!

Audi First Affiliate Of Google's In-Car RevShare Model

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:03:41 -0800

Well is it Germans' day or what? This morning, Twitter announced the launch of the German version of its site, a great news for the massive number of Twitter users in Germany. Almost instantaneously, Google announced its partnershsip with Audi, and the integration of Google Earth in the new A8.

As Germans, with a natural born passion for cars, we're very excited about this newest milestone and we hope that drivers will have that same "ooh" and "aah" reaction when exploring Google Earth from the Audi A8.

Herzlich willkommen, Audi!

From within your new A8 car, you get access to:
Google Earth
Google Maps
Local Search
Wikipedia and other types of layers

Read more »

Audi First Affiliate Of Google's In-Car RevShare Model

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:54:00 -0800

As Germans, with a natural born passion for cars, we're very excited about this newest milestone and we hope that drivers will have that same "ooh" and "aah" reaction when exploring Google Earth from the Audi A8.

Herzlich willkommen, Audi!

From within your new A8 car, you get access to:
Google Earth
Google Maps
Local Search
Wikipedia and other types of layers

Why did Audi decided to work with Google? Since Google ditched TeleAtlas, word has been that Google is not doing such a good job with its own geodata.

Since an Audi 8 costs between $70,000 and $120,000, I guess a buyer would expect the geodata to be quite accurate. Actually, when you look on the Audi Website, it seems like Earth was already a product of the Audi Quattro. Google didn't really talk about Earth in the Quattro, so I guess they are doing it now with the Audi A8 for two reasons:

1. Now Local Search is part of the products provided by Google.
2. It is a much more powerful branding operation to be associated with the Audi A8 then it is to be associated with the Quattro.

I guess the next episode will be with Google's Navigation System in a Ferrari.

As a side note, this project with Audi was led by the Google Automotive Team. Oddly enough, there is no page online that talks specifically about this team. There is Melissa Grusch' LinkedIn profile, a "West Coast Automotive Team Manager at Google with only one network connection.
There is also a press release from a media company that tells us a little more about why Audi would want Google as a partner:

the GoogleTM Automotive team has thorough knowledge of the advertising business, combined with relationships in the highest levels of the automotive industry. This will benefit our Automotive clients more than ever, and help them grow their business and maximize their return on their marketing investment.

Ad Revshare! The main advantage of Google over its geo-competitors is that they are into monetizing their maps with hyperlocal ads. Audi just became the first Adsense automobile affiliate!

PlaceRank: A User-Generated Geo-Content Strategy Is Also Required

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:27:00 -0800

Last week, Google Maps sent out about 100,000 stickers throughout the US to small merchants registered on the Google's Local Business Center. Not all registered merchants got a sicker with a QR code, only those with a higher PlaceRank did.

On a different parallel, a writer of SearchEngineLand noticed that some businesses are indexed as landmarks in Google Maps, and wonders how PlaceRank is affecting this status. Keir Clarke from Google Maps Mania offers the most comprehensive explanation about PlaceRank and what affects it.

Form Google's Favorite Places FAQ page:

"The list (for the 100,000 stickers) was determined based on the popularity of a business' Local Business Center listing, as determined by how many times Google users looked for more information about a business, requested driving directions to get there, and more. Google users "decided" based on their actions, and we sent the decals."

However, Keir Clarke notes that behavioral analysis is not the only factor in placeranking businesses. In 2006, Google filed a patent for a geospatial ranking system. From Google Maps Mania:

Based on the patent application it is likely that Google are also using other criteria than just a business' popularity in the Local Business Center. These criteria probably include authoritative recommendations and user recommendations, ratings and reviews from a number of trusted websites.

He then recommends to check out any Place Page and look at the external links chosen by Google to understand who those trusted sites are (Citysearch, Zagat, Yelp...).

When you look at those business pages, you also see another interesting element on the page:

User content! Finding user content on a business page is a hint that user-generated geo-content plays a part in the evaluation of a PlaceRank. Obviously Google crowdsources its intelligence, and since Google is about to index geodata from Google Maps' third-party-generated maps, I wish to paraphrase something I've said before: If you are a search marketer, and you recognize that maps generate search value, then you need to use Click2Map to start getting more control on your indexed geodata.

The Feds Are On Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:53:43 -0800

David Herron writes on his blog that several US intelligence agencies use social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to gather data about people's private lives. A study at the University of Berkeley, California, investigates what guidelines some federal agencies follow when it comes to hoovering around social networks.

The Samuelson Clinic made over a dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of EFF to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies, asking for information about how the government collects and uses this sensitive information. When several agencies did not respond to the FOIA requests, the Samuelson Clinic filed suit on behalf of EFF [...] The lawsuit demands immediate processing and release of all records concerning policies for the use of social networking sites in government investigations. (from official complaint)

The Feds Are On Twitter

Xavier Vespa — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:35:00 -0800

The Samuelson Clinic made over a dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of EFF to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies, asking for information about how the government collects and uses this sensitive information. When several agencies did not respond to the FOIA requests, the Samuelson Clinic filed suit on behalf of EFF [...] The lawsuit demands immediate processing and release of all records concerning policies for the use of social networking sites in government investigations. (from official complaint)

So far, nothing says that the guidelines used by those agencies are unethical: We just don't know, but it seems like they don't want us to know. However, I wonder what the Feds are after on social networks? Technically, Homeland Security knows a great deal about me through my trips to the States, my Green Card, my credit cards, city agencies, school data, yearly tax reports... What is written on Twitter or Facebook that is so unique?

My guess would be that social networks help the Feds understand people's social graphs. Facebook is a social graph goldmine (Facebook kinda made 'social graph' the 2008 buzz word). In this Web era, Feds are not limited anymore to intercept pirated radio waves through the air, or randomly tap phone calls: Now they can elaborate on who is connected to who, who influences who, and how dissident opinions emerge from small groups.

If Facebook is not obliged by the law to share its data center with the government, it could advise, off-record, on how to tweak the system (like fake friend requests or data-sharing through third party apps).

Back in March (2009), several founders of tech startups met at the White House to suggest novel ideas to save the American economy. Once you shook a few hands to a few bandits from the White House, you can't go back.

My point is that federal agencies are probably very-well informed by insiders on how to hack their way through people's lives. For example, this story might have been made up, but it reveals an underlying truth about the government and technology-builders. Once again we owe it to the hippies from Berkeley for saving our butts and protecting our rights while we obliviously tweet about every little things that we do.

En Francais sur TwitteRadar.

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Landmark Status, PlaceRank, And Google Maps Mashups

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:14:00 -0800

A few months back, Google Maps released icons and labels for businesses and prominent places on their maps. The new feature is intended to make discovering places easier. Clicking on an icon opens a classic marker's window withholding info about that place (business info, reviews, photos, Wikipedia articles, and a lot of other local information).

Following up on this new feature integration, Chris Silver Smith writes in SearchEngineLand that some places are marked by Google Maps as landmarks, thus getting more exposure in various zoom level and density scenarios. Some of those landmarks are businesses, ultimately making them more visible and more competitive than non-landmarked businesses. Hence the question how can your business achieve landmark status in Google Maps?

Chris Silver Smith investigated this question, and pulls back 5 factors that could influence the landmark status:

1. Business category: Entertainment seems to be a favorite.
2. Zoom level, business density: Landmark visibility more likely in less dense areas.
3. Years in business: Older seems better.
4. Authority/Popularity: Rank on search engines.
5. Related Wikipedia page

Those parameters for landmark status success sound plausible. However, there is one aspect of Google Maps' indexing technology that hasn't been discussed much, even though I find it to be a crucial one that could also influence the landmark status: Google Maps mashups' data.

Recently, Google Maps announced that it would start indexing content from third-party-created maps to broaden search results.

When Google crawls the Web and see that a thousand sites link to one specific Website, than it concludes that this Website is important. What happens if Google Maps' crawl thousands of maps and discover that one place has been marked thousands of times, with consistency in the content data every time. Wouldn't that favor Google Maps to consider this one place as a landmark? Couldn't it contribute to a place's PlaceRank?

I think being a popular place on Google Maps' third-party maps is something that will gradually become a competitive edge in the local search business.

Fly Like A Bird On Google Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:47:59 -0800

Today, the Google Maps team is announcing a new feature (again) to its mapping tool: Bird's eye view. Until today, you could use Google's imagery technology to see the earth from space (Google Earth) and streets in details (StreetView). Now Bird's Eye View bridges the gap between Google's macro and micro views of the world.

As mentioned on the LatLong Blog, this tool will be specifically beneficial for real estate professionals, as well as for holiday resorts. Google Maps' real estate partners (orbitz, Trulia, Redfin) are already beta testing it while more areas get coverage (right now, only San Jose and San Diego are covered).

We're very excited about how these new perspectives on a property will help to improve your geographic searching, whether it's for a new home, a great hotel for your next trip, or any of the other cool uses that developers come up with.

Google Maps Opens Labs, Fun!

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:45:01 -0800

Fly Like A Bird On Google Maps

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:10:00 -0800

We're very excited about how these new perspectives on a property will help to improve your geographic searching, whether it's for a new home, a great hotel for your next trip, or any of the other cool uses that developers come up with.

Once again, Google gets deeper in the real estate business after they released a real estate search engine a few months back.

After ten seconds of playing with the bird's eye view feature, you get bored. There is nothing ground-breaking in terms of interactivity for any given Joe like me. However, have a look at the quality of the pictures, and the smoothness of the navigation, and you will understand right away how real estate pros are interested in such a technology.

My main concern with this tool is: How many times a year will they be updating the images. Earth and Streetview were not specifically developed for professionals, but for everyone. However, he Bird's eye view seems to be something real estate businesses were asking for, and were ready to invest some of their money into it as well. Therefore, in this B2B-type of arrangement, isn't Google obliged to update their images regularly, at the risk of showing a field instead of the new suburban area that was built there in the past nine months?

Also as a sidenote, I wonder if Roost's blog will change its name now...

Via Zoorglob.

Google Maps Opens Labs, Fun!

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:11:00 -0800

It took a while for online mapping and the mobile Web to converge, but now it seems like they are inseparable. As a gift before the holidays, the Google Maps team launched a Labs feature for the Google Maps application on Android phones. This is the third Labs that Google is opening to developers and beta users, the two preceding ones being the Search and the Gmail Labs.

Is Google trying to make their maps a bit more entertaining? That's quite possible. In 24 hours, Google launched a Maps Labs, stickers for local businesses, and Favorite Places on Google Earth. All of a sudden, Google Maps gained a whole lot of interactivity, and something tell me that 2010 will be the year for Latitude.

Until then, let's all enjoy the Maps Labs on Android, which offers the following features:

- Display a scale bar on the map, to get an idea of how far apart things on the map are
show a terrain layer, to help plan your hike or cross-country ski trip;
- Search for popular categories, so you never have to type in "Vietnamese restaurant" or "bowling alleys" again;
- Turn the blue My Location dot into a compass arrow that shows the direction you're facing when stationary;
- Add a Layers button to the screen so you can quickly toggle layers like Traffic, Satellite, Latitude, and Transit Lines.

I wonder if the popular categories are going to become Google Maps' most profitable, hyperlocal ad revenue...

Stickers, Google's Plot To Dominate Local Businesses

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:17:00 -0800

A few month ago, Google launched a world-wide buzz with real-size map markers distributed to a selected few shops and restaurants in the major capitals of the World. This operation was meant to raise awareness about Google's Local Business Center.

Since Google can't really give every merchants a huge marker, they are now getting in stage 2 of their guerrilla marketing strategy: Today the team is announcing the launch of an operation that will consist of sending a sticker to all the local merchants listed in Google's Local Business Lists.

As demonstrated in the video below, the sticker contains a QR code that can be snapped with any given smartphone. Each merchant will get his unique sticker with his unique QR code, and when passers-by will snap the code, it will take them directly to a mobile version of the business' page on Google's Places.

Will that thing take off? By placing such a sticker, merchants are giving away the control over their image to Google: What if a bad review sits on top of a business' reviews? What if a business' reviews get hijacked by a bunch of reviewers (like a group of 12 who didn't like the service). Those problems already exist today, but bad reviews are not displayed on a business' storefront like it would with Google's stickers.

Also, as mentioned on Google Maps Mania, Google uses a PlaceRank to target merchants and send them stickers. What affects a PlaceRank? Reviews? Visits? Star ranking system? Is Google planning on borrowing Foursquare's check-in approach to contribute to the strength of a PlaceRank?

So are stickers really the answer?

Locate An IP Address On A Map

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:37:00 -0800

Today, I had to check on an IP address of someone who left a comment on my blog to better identify the location of that person. Thus I discovered GeoBytes. In short, here is what you get with an IP address:

That's it! Super simple, ain't it? The info is, of course, approximate. However, if you have some additional data to compare it with, then it does the job. And with the latlong provided, you can easily place it as a marker on a map.

Create And Monetize Your Google Maps

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:12:00 -0800

Monetizing a map might be something you are considering, whether you are a business, or an individual who focuses on creating quality geo-content. MyMaps from Google is a great tool to create maps, alas it doesn't provide the option to monetize your content on the Web.

The most simple way on the Internets right now to put ads on a map is to use Click2Map. Click2Map is a powerful map creation tool that displays the maps you create on Google Maps. I previously wrote about how you can insert variables in the data of your maps to make your mapping efforts lighter, but today I will share with you the very simple process of using Google Adsense with the Google Maps you create.

The first step is to create an account with Click2Map. Once you're in, you can use the XML/CSV/KML uploader to quickly create (a) map(s), and then, in the map editor, in the top menu bar, go to publish > as a Web page, and then you get this little dialog box:

As you can see, all you have to do is check-in the advertisement box, enter your Adense pub ID, and you're good to go!

So if you publish touristic maps for example, or real estate maps, consider the ad money that runs in those verticals, thus the value of a click. If your maps truly add value to the geo content that's available today on the Web, then your work will be rewarded.

TwitteRadar: Top Twitter Blog In France

Xavier Vespa — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:00:00 -0800

Since I moved back to Paris, I have been actively working on connecting with the French tech crowd, a move vital for my business. Along the way, I met the author/owner of TwitteRadar, a French blog that covers everything about Twitter. We met for lunch, and almost right away we decided to cooperate on the redaction of TwitteRadar.

TwitteRadar was launched in March 2009, so just a few months ago. However, it took off pretty fast, and its unusual growth is due to Twitter's slow debuts in France. The writing team is composed of the owner (aka Seoadsenseman), me, and GusiRonfle, a young upcoming blogger in the French tech blogosphere.

TwitteRadar covers everything about Twitter from news, applications, users and oddities. As part of the editorial team, I will mostly cover the plethora of Twitter apps that populate its API. Also, if time is on my side, I will go a little deeper and try to provide a status update on Twitter's progression in France.

Of course, this is all in French. But for all of you who wish to learn French, but can't quit the geek reads, try TwitteRadar!

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If You Give Facebook Geo, Foursquare Will Grow

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:09:00 -0800

In a recent article, Techcrunch writer Jason Kincaid anticipates the move of Facebook in the geo-location space. According to the author, Facebook has 4 components that guarantees a smooth adoption of any geo-located feature they would launch: mainstream usage,real friends, solid privacy settings, and already-existing dominance on smartphones apps.

I can't argue with the fact that Facebook will probably become a huge database of locations, but I do oppose the opinion that Facebook opening up a geoAPI represents a threat to geo-location services such as Foursquare. If Facebook opens up such an API, Foursquare's possibilities will multiply by ten.

Yelp
Foursquare is like Yelp: they did not invent reviews, they just made it fun. Yelp and Foursquare focus on sharing places to go out. From that standpoint, it is not at all the mission statement of Facebook. Facebook connects friends, but if none of your friends like to go out, then Facebook is the worst Yelp of all times. On Yelp, people sign up because they are after information about going out, and Yelp specializes in that service.

Same goes for Foursquare: You and your buddies share info about places to go out. All you have to do is check-in from your phone, but still the intent is for users to associate their location with a specific location, most of the time a business. We use Foursquare to share this specific type of info (and be part of a fun user-generated game).

Intentions
When Twitter opened up his geo API, nobody thought that was going to kill Foursquare. Most developers saw it as an opportunity to tap extra userdata from Twitter's engines, and boost the power of their applications with it. When someone tweets something, it usually lacks context: Someone can tweet about anything that on its mind. So when someone tweets 'having the best meal ever!', even though if Twitter knows the exact location, and can associate a business with this address, its assumption will not be 100% correct (I could be eating at home on the floor right above a restaurant).

With Foursquare, users intend to share this specific type of data. Let me remind you that before you check-in a place with Foursquare, you scroll through a list of near-by businesses to select the one you are in. This small user experience component makes Foursquare SO different from Facebook, even though they both gather geodata from users' mobile activities. Foursquare doesn't just manage to tell you where your friends are going, it also turns consumers into influencers. That is the winning aspect of Foursquare!

When Facebook treats their users like consumers, usually it doesn't fly. Fourquare was designed for consumers to share their buying habits, so from that standpoint, they win.

Why did I state below that Foursquare would multiply its possibilities by 10 if Facebook opens a geo API? Because just like Twitter has been an amazing source of traffic for Foursquare, Facebook would be a huge playground for Foursquare to play on.

Waze/Foursquare: Gaming For User-Generated Geo Content

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0800

All Points Blog reports that Waze is adding more gaming in its nav/traffic app. Waze is the new augmented-reality-Pacman-like driving game (yes, with a real car). Users play to gain points. Waze plays to build maps, collect real-time traffic data from its service's usage, and commercialize this real-time user-generated database of traffic information (Must read O'Reilly's Brady Forrest coverage on Waze).

Waze is not the first popular service to use the form of a game to generate a massive input of user-generated geo content. Foursquare is playing the same game: On Foursquare, users check-in every time they are in a new place: bar, shop, train station, park... Users play for points, popularity, and eventually rewards. Foursquare is basically building the first updated in real-time, user-generated yellow pages. And it works like hell! Will gaming take mapmaking to mass adoption?

In a previous post, I mentioned how a movie about geocaching with a hot star could only have a positive impact on the online use of maps. But even more engaging could be to turn geocaching into a big virtual game. That's what Foursquare and Waze are doing, and it seems like the more the toys, the merrier the users.

As mentioned above, Waze added more gaming components to its mobile application:

The updated game incentivizes users to travel in areas that need map updates: "The new version adds more capabilities to waze’s already popular 'munching' game that encourages users to validate road driving directions as they drive around. Users will now munch ‘road goodies’ - cherries, hammers and small gift packages worth bonus points - that will be placed in areas where the waze system has identified map problems."

The strategy is simple: Everywhere the dataset for a road is a little weak, Waze will drop candies to attract users that will automatically generate feedbacks on the status of the traffic. In a Waze's world, users are merely lemmings, whose actions are controlled by the dude who holds the joystick.

Foursquare is also using gaming and a reward system to keep their users active. They even have an interesting business model. The way the user-generated data is input very much resembles the way a wiki works: New data generated by our phone pushes the older data down, providing a status update for the location. The more the data, the smarter the machine, the bigger the business opportunities.

Just like Wikipedia, power users are conferred the role of editors. It is no a chore for the hardcore user, it is a consecration:

I have to admit that I was excited about this. The creators of Foursquare are tapping into basic human behavior. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs describes a theory of human needs which include “Belonginess” and “Esteem.” Foursquare plays to both of these, and many others. It’s prestigious (in a trivial way) to be the “Mayor” of a location. Each “Badge” collected along the way creates a sense of accomplishment. Every new user blazes a path visible to the next wave of users.

Those are obviously the same dynamics that drive the growth and success of MMOPG games such as WOW. So the fundamentals of gaming have indeed been applied to mapmaking, and it seems to be working quite well.

Note: Foursquare is no (yet) real-time -enabled.

Find Tracks On A Map

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0800

Google Maps Mania reports on what probably is the coolest music map mashup there is: Tracks On A Map. From the map, you can find music based on the location where bands uploaded their tracks to SoundCloud. SoundCloud is a service for music artists that make sharing and distributing tracks a snap.

Once you land on Tracks on a Map, you first select the genre you wish to listen to. A bunch of red dots start to pop up on the map. In a markers' window, you'll find the artist's avatar, the play button, a share on Twitter/Facebook/email button, and the list of music artists in the selected area.

At the bottom of the map, there's the music player that looks really slick. The fast-forward button on the far right is a random feature that plays new tunes from unexpected places.

This is the most beautiful (and bug-free) map mashup I have seen in a while. The design is excellent, the artists on the network create quality content, and quite frankly, this is something MySpace should seriously consider doing since they are moving away from social netowrking to re-focus on content-sharing and distribution.

Congrats to the SoundCloud team!

Other similar projects:
The New York Music Project
Gracenote's popular tracks by regions

Ideas Are Zimbabweaan Money!

Xavier Vespa — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:00:00 -0800

Lol! found via Kid666.

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Twitter Apps: Seesmic For Android

Xavier Vespa — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:00:00 -0800

On Friday night, Seesmic released an app for Android. As soon as I saw this, I paid a visit to the Android app and was in the first 50 to download the app. In a snap, the app was on my phone, and I was testing the features.

As I wrote last week, I use Swift on my Android, which is very fast and feature-rich. Compared to Swift, my feeling about Seesmic for Android was not very positive:

seesmic for android: no multiaccount, no lists, no facebook, kinda slow, lil disappointed, but it's only 1.0.

Even though I am disappointed, I am certainly not uninstalling the Seesmic app from my phone.

Despite its obvious shortcomings, Seesmic already runs better than most Twitter apps on the Android market, so that's brownie points for Loic Le Meur's mobile app.

In the background, Seesmic is a powerful social platform that connects its users to their Twitter accounts and their Facebook profiles, through a Web browser, an Adobe Air app, a .NET Microsoft app, and through a Blackberry or Android phone. This means your Seesmic account can keep you connected to your friends wherever you are.

Also, at its core, Seesmic is extremely feature-rich. If you look a all the features across all the different Seesmic products, you get:
- Multiple Twitter accounts
- Merged timelines
- Geolocation and lists support
- Facebook integration (and Facebook page management)
- inline username auto-complete
- Create/save searches
- Create unlimited number of columns
- Twitter trends
- Reply to all
- Tweet to multiple accounts
- Mr Tweet integration
And so many more...

Therefore, I won't uninstall Seesmic from my phone because I believe that a good load of the features above will slowly be pushed onto the Android app. It's simply a matter of patience. My request would be to push the multiple account feature first, as I really miss it :(

Also, you have to keep in mind that Seesmic is the Twitter app that got the most fundings since conception, and is backed by the most influential sharks of the Silicon Valley. Unlike smaller Twitter apps developed by some Joe from the middle of Ohio, Seesmic is here to stay.

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Google Search To Index Map Mashups' Data

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

As we mentioned in our Twitter stream a few days ago, Google Maps will index map mashups soon. This means if you created a map with Click2Map, then very soon your content will appear on relevant search results pages. Of course, you might not want everyone to find your maps, mostly if it pops up on irrelevant search terms. So to avoid the backfiring, Google took a few steps to make sure content indexed from maps is opted in:

1. We only index data from maps that have been viewed by many unique users. For example, maps only viewed by you and a few friends won't be indexed.
2. If your page is protected by robots.txt, we will not index your content.
3. You can opt-out of the logging by specifying "indexing=false" when loading the API For example: http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=abcdefg&sensor=true&indexing=false
4. If you are a Maps API Premier customer, we will not index data from your maps, unless you opt into indexing by passing in "indexing=true".

This is very exciting news, both for Google who finds a way to index more geo-content, and for map creators, who probably expect a little traffic from their mapping efforts. From Google Maps Mania:

Programmable Web has recorded over 1,800 sites that use the Google Maps API. My guess is, however, that the number of websites using the Google Maps API runs into the tens of thousands. Therefore Google have a potentially enormous data set that they can leverage to enhance Google Maps as a product.

Antony Zanetti, Co-Founder of Click2Map, mentioned that Click2Map will roll-in this opt-in/op-out indexing feature really soon to its users. If you are an online marketer, and you understand that maps are a powerful tool for search marketing, then you will be able to leverage the power of Click2Map to satisfy your marketing needs.

The GeoAPI vs SimpleGeo: Is Real-Time The Final Word

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:00:00 -0800

Geo-technologies are becoming more and more tendances. As the Internet's juggernauts became the map providers, there is now a highway for businesses to grow on top of those huge geo platforms.

In the past few days, I have seen two important players stepping in the geolocation space, all with a very similar approach to offering a simple geo-based service: The GeoAPI and SimpleGeo

The GeoAPI describes its service as "All your location needs in one API". Basically, developpers find in this API a reverse geocoder, easy access to +16 million businesses' data, writable private layers, easy-to-add media layers, and a SDK to make iPhone dev a snap.

When covering the launch of GeoAPI, Erick Schonfeld mentioned:

So a developer who wants to build their own Foursquare/Gowalla-type mobile app with check-ins and geo-Tweets can build it on top of the GeoAPI instead of assembling all the underlying data from scratch. Developers get up to 20,000 queries per day for free. They can also store their own data in the GeoAPI servers and run geo-queries against them.

GeoAPI charges developers if their app gains in popularity (or are simply data intensive). There is probably a fair amount of money to be made there. But that's not it. According to the GeoAPI terms Of Use:

data you write against the API is by default also licensed to us non-exclusively

I am a dummie with fine prints, but I think it means that any code that runs against the API will be considered as belonging partly to GeoAPI, which kind of makes sense since all the data is hosted by GeoAPI.

SimpleGeo offers a somewhat similar service for developers: Instead of building everything from scratch, devs can simply use the existing geo-features of SimpleGeo, and build geo-based apps on top of it. The service allows to:

- Perform complex geospatial and temporal queries via single http request;
- Access geotagged data from major social networks and media-sharing Websites.
- SDK for building augmented reality apps faster.

Three versions are available: free, $399 per month, and $2,499 per month. A public version is slated to launch in the spring. Everything seems very similar to he GeoAPI. The only difference is that SimpleGeo has been optimized to handle real-time operations:

SimpleGeo, Galligan (SimpleGeo's CEO) says, was built from the ground up to support real-time on a much broader scale (he says this is one reason why companies like Foursquare have partitioned their users by city).

Since SimpleGeo is still in private beta, no terms of use are publicly available, and there is a crude lack of deeper info about this geo-based service.

Conclusion: Both services seem very similar. I couldn't judge the back-end infrastructure behind each services, it seems it all comes down to this: The GeoAPI has the partnerships to provide business data (doesn't mean SimpleGeo couldn't offer the same), and SimpleGeo is real-time-enabled.

Both services launched in the past two weeks, so there is probably going to be a lot of new feature releases in the next few months. Follow SimpleGeo and The GeoAPI on Twitter to stay up-to-date with those future big players of the mobile Web industry.

Video SEO: Automatic Captions Will Change Google's SERPs

Xavier Vespa — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:24:00 -0800

A few days ago, Youtube announced the launch of automatically generated captions for videos. Basically, you don't have to bother with Capiontube anymore (link in this article) to manually create captions for videos, export them, and import them in Youtube.

To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they're off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

Pretty cool! However, as a video marketer, this feature is making me lose an edge in the service I offer to some companies to boost the visibility of their video on Google's SERPs. Captions are a very little-known trick to add data to your video, thus making it more discoverable. How does that work?

As explained in Google's post about the release of automatic captions:

captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they're looking for.

So first if your video had captions, then it was easier for Google to suggest it to a foreign-speaking audience, since the caption text could instantly be translated.

Also, by having text illustrating a video as it rolls, Google is getting a deep insight on what's going on inside the video. To clarify things, a machine cannot analyze a video the way the human eye and brain does. For example, when Youtube gets a video, the title-description-tags are important, but not enough to make indexing accurate. Clicks between related videos is another way Youtube understands the content of a video. Embeds are also a great opportunity for Youtube to index the content around a video and spot keywords. However, until now, Google/Youtube were only getting hints about the content of a video. Starting today, what's being said in a video won't be a mystery anymore.

The power of closed captions goes beyond indexing. As mentioned in an older post on the Google Video Blog:

If your search results include caption snippets, there will be a link called "Start playing at search term", which is extremely handy for long videos.

This means that in a very near future, when you will upload a video from your Flip for example, what's being said will be indexed right away, and with a little Pubsubhubbub love, anything that's been said in the video could show up on top of Google's SERPs if Google finds it relevant, exactly at the moment when it's being said.

So watch your mouth! Nobody is used to a system that records everything and makes it available to the World. You would not want to get home someday and notice that the comment you made about the President of your country's been picked up on video, escalated to the top of Google's SERPs, and inevitably picked up by major news publishers.

My point is that closed captions have never been a popular feature in Youtube, despite its amazing ability to make a video discoverable. Now that captions are automatically added to the mix, i's going to change a lot of things regarding Google's universal search results.

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AOL Bings Mapquest?

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:05:04 -0800

So it seems that AOL is going under a lot of downsizing! The once leader in Internet connectivity is now struggling to prevent its legs from shattering under the weight of the products it manages.

Yesterday, Kara Swisher from All Things Digital wrote a post mentioning that AOL is probably trying to get rid of Mapquest (as well as Bebo), and that it could be a great opportunity for Microsoft to buy it and kill Google Maps' domination in the process:

Purchasers of the service that provides mapping and directions, sources said, are likely to be other mapping giants, especially Microsoft (MSFT).

But it is not clear if the software giant or anyone would fork over a huge sum of money for MapQuest.

That would include the $1.1 billion in stock that AOL paid for MapQuest in 1999.

http://click2map.hyveup.tv/2009/11/aol-bings-mapquest.html

Lists, Base For Twitter's Geolocated Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:01:00 -0800

It's been talked about and documented for quite a while, but it is officially happening right now: Twitter has opened up its geolocation API to all developers:

Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall.

Lists, Base For Twitter's Geolocated Intelligence

Xavier Vespa — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:01:00 -0800

It's been talked about and documented for quite a while, but it is officially happening right now: Twitter has opened up its geolocation API to all developers:

Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall.

Android Apps: As Swift As Twitter Gets

Xavier Vespa — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:52:00 -0800

Android Apps: As Swift As Twitter Gets

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:00:06 -0800

AOL Bings Mapquest?

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:25:00 -0800

Purchasers of the service that provides mapping and directions, sources said, are likely to be other mapping giants, especially Microsoft (MSFT).

But it is not clear if the software giant or anyone would fork over a huge sum of money for MapQuest.

That would include the $1.1 billion in stock that AOL paid for MapQuest in 1999.

If you do the maths, it is a great opportunity for Microsoft: According to Quantcast, Google Maps gets 42 million visits in the US monthly, Mapquest gets 38 million, and Bing Maps get 30 K. So if Microsoft can put $1 billion just for market shares, then it could easily jump the vault and start to tickle Google's heels.

I found this perspective on Mapquest through Francois Lardinois' Twitter stream saying he wasn't buying the rumor. I admit I was having a hard time buying it too, so I asked Kara Swisher: if AOL sells mapquest and bebo, what would they have left to focus on?, and she simply replied: Content!

Fair enough. However, I agree more with Greg Sterling when he says:

It strikes me however that a company seeking to be a force in local or that sees local as a “key strategic area” is probably making a pretty significant mistake selling the top online mapping brand and the number two destination in maps.

What do you think? Would AOL drop Mapquest? Would Microsoft pay a billion bucks for it? And mostly what would Microsoft do with Mapquest?

Put Your Tweeting Business On A Map

Xavier Vespa — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:21:00 -0800

Google Maps Mania shared a nice tip the other day about Tweeting Places a user-generated service that lets businesses know what their Twitter account is, so that loyal customers can follow them through micro-messaging.

Each location is shown on the map with their Twitter profile picture. Clicking on the picture shows the latest Tweet and the Twitter URL. Users of the map can add locations to the map simply by clicking on the map and adding a Twitter address.

Put Your Tweeting Business On A Map

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:07 -0800

Each location is shown on the map with their Twitter profile picture. Clicking on the picture shows the latest Tweet and the Twitter URL. Users of the map can add locations to the map simply by clicking on the map and adding a Twitter address.

Lists, Base For Twitter's Geolocated Intelligence

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:00:00 -0800

It's been talked about and documented for quite a while, but it is officially happening right now: Twitter has opened up its geolocation API to all developers:

Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall.

Since I just moved back to France, and Twitter just released a French version of its platform, I hope that this geolocation juice will boost usage by my fellow cheese lovers. How it works for those who don't get it is, every time you will tweet something out, your location will be attached to your message, thus discoverable with a zipcode search for example.

No later than yesterday, I wrote about Swift, an Android app which already has geolocation built-in. Actually, a lot of Twitter apps already have geolocation integrated in their features. So why is Twitter saying "Today, the Geotagging API is officially available", since it has been available for a while now?

Most likely, the story is that the API has been in alpha/beta for a little while to fine-tune the engine, and now that she is running great, she is officially open for business. The geolocation API is an amazing tool, mostly when you consider Twitter's lists feature. As the developer of Tweeting Places wrote in our comment box yesterday:

During last month, Twitter introduced lists and this became a complete game changer for the service (Tweeting Places). People do care to compose very nice lists of local tweeting places, and this makes places discovery so much easier.

So, developers, if you start playing with the geolocation API, make sure you understand that lists are a full part of Twitter's geolocated intelligence!

Android Apps: As Swift As Twitter Gets

Xavier Vespa — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:50:00 -0800

I find the choice of Twitter app in the Android market a little slim. Twidroid looks big, and it feels like the competition lives under its shadow. I was a big fan of Loquacious despite a few bugs and shortcomings, but as I mentioned somewhere else, this multiple account Twitter app is not available in Europe, so I had to let go and choose something else.

Right now, I am using Swift, which describes itself as the fastest, leanest, meanest Twitter client for Android. I have to admit that the tagline says the truth.

First, in the settings, you can customize your notofications (timeline-mentions-messages). You may also select your default pic and video uploader (not link, weird!). Finally, you can choose if you want links to open in the phone's browser, or in Swift's lighter and (technically) lighter browser.

Once you start using Swift, one thing stands out: new tweets do not push old ones out of display, so if you are logged in for say twenty minutes, you will have a long scrollable list of tweets. Clicking on a tweet takes you on the tweet's page, where you get the location/time/date/user/app details along with the tweet, a reply or retweet button, an option to save/copy-text/copy-link the tweet, a link to the profile of the tweeter(er?), links to the tags used, and a preview of the content behind the short link.

If you use the Swift browser, it will open a simple browser with no specific features. I don't really find it faster than my phone's browser.

On a user's profile page, you find all the regular stuff you have on Twitter.com, but there is one feature I often find missing in smaller Twitter apps for Android: You can follow/unfollow a user. 90% of the time I consume Twitter, I am on the go. That is exactly when I notice users I like/dislike. But I have to wait for a laptop before managing my contacts, and usually by then, I totally forgot user names. So this small feature is more than welcome.

Basically you get a long list of tweets, with an easy way to customize your timeline while waiting for the bus. And it runs fast... With no bugs! If I had to mention a few shortcomings, aside from not being multi-account, it mostly lack the feature of being in the sharing options of the Android social sharing options.

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Put Your Tweeting Business On A Map

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:20:00 -0800

Each location is shown on the map with their Twitter profile picture. Clicking on the picture shows the latest Tweet and the Twitter URL. Users of the map can add locations to the map simply by clicking on the map and adding a Twitter address.

In the old days, finding tweets on a map was exciting. Today, the excitement is harder to find. However, finding specific people or businesses on Twitter is still kind of hard, so this map could be a good start to get anyone into using Twitter for local news.

As you can see above, Tweeting Places is prety straight-forward: Click on a marker, and get this location's latest tweet.

To add your own place, login to Twitter using Oauth, click on the place of a physical business to create a marker, and enter your Twitter handle in the box:

After moderation, you are good to go.

So far, there isn't much adoption of the service: About 50 businesses have submitted their Twitter info in North America, and about the same number in Europe (the counter indicates there are 300 places indexed total). Unfortunately, adding markers or clicking on created markers is all there is going on in this site. Tweeting Places is a very simple Twitter/Google Maps mashup, nothing more (and it is quite disappointing). For example, I would love a map where I could select an area, and automatically the service would create a Twitter list of the accounts in this area, which I would of course automatically follow. Dream On!

Be A Smarter Border-Crossing Illegal Immigrant

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:41:03 -0800

"

Crossing the US-Mexican border is a sport that thousands of Mexicans practice every year. Unfortunately, its lack of regulation makes crossing the border an extremely dangerous activity. To help make this sport more official (and maybe submit it to the Olympics one day), a group of activists from the Electronic Civil Disobedience created a mobile app to guide border-crossers through the border:

The primary goal of the Transborder Immigrant Tool is to increase safety during border crossing by directing heavy-footed immigrants to safe routes, shelter, food, water, and friendly sympathizers [...] Dominguez and his research lab BANG (Bits, Atoms, Neurons, and Genes) took the GPS enabled Motorola i455 phone, which is under $30, available even cheaper on eBay, and cracked it to create a simple compass-like navigation system.

Be A Smarter Border-Crossing Illegal Immigrant

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:34:00 -0800

Crossing the US-Mexican border is a sport that thousands of Mexicans practice every year. Unfortunately, its lack of regulation makes crossing the border an extremely dangerous activity. To help make this sport more official (and maybe submit it to the Olympics one day), a group of activists from the Electronic Civil Disobedience created a mobile app to guide border-crossers through the border:

The primary goal of the Transborder Immigrant Tool is to increase safety during border crossing by directing heavy-footed immigrants to safe routes, shelter, food, water, and friendly sympathizers [...] Dominguez and his research lab BANG (Bits, Atoms, Neurons, and Genes) took the GPS enabled Motorola i455 phone, which is under $30, available even cheaper on eBay, and cracked it to create a simple compass-like navigation system.

DocVerse Vs Google Docs: Microsoft Office Strikes Back

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:00:04 -0800

EchoTweets: The Atom of Infinitweet

Xavier Vespa — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:12:00 -0800

The controversial Twitter app EchoTweets announced a few days ago the addition of a wide set of game-changing features that definitely challenge Twitter in its quest to curate trending topics.

EchoTweets is the service that decided that a tweet shouldn't be limited to one account, and could be duplicated across accounts, even though you only have to hit 'tweet' once. Here is the list of new features:

Moderated Echo Accounts: When your Echo Accounts sign up, they can now choose to be moderated or unmoderated. If an Echo Account chooses to be moderated, they will receive an email each time you send an Echo Tweet and they can simply click a link to approve or deny your retweet request. Unmoderated accounts will automatically retweet your tweet without notification.

Standard retweet text added to retweets: You can now choose to have all retweets start with the text "RT @hyveup" (followed by your message). Once Twitter adds retweets to their API, we hope to have an even better integration.

Send Echo Tweets from any Twitter client: Instead of being required to use EchoTweets.com to send an Echo Tweet, you may now use the Twitter client of your choice. Simply send a Direct Message to @ETRelay and within 5 minutes, the message that you sent will be tweeted from your main account and retweeted from all of your Echo Accounts!

Add an Echo Account sign-up form directly on your website: We now allow customers to embed an iFrame on their website and let people sign up as Echo Accounts directly on their website. Your Echo Accounts never need to actually visit EchoTweets.com anymore. All it takes is copying and pasting some HTML code.

More Exposure: We have added a random selection of our Basic and Pro users to our homepage as well as users page. This means more exposure and more followers!

Introductory price offer: Get more for your money. You can now sign up for our Basic account for only $5/month or our Pro account for only $12/month (never any activation or cancellation fees). Customers who sign up by the end of November can lock in this introductory rate.

Coming soon...

Scheduled Tweets: Set up your Echo Tweets in advance and we'll make sure they get set out on the schedule you choose.

Paid Tweets: We are bringing together the top Twitter users to help pass on your message. Soon you will be able to pay-per-tweet.

Wow, that is a lot of sweetness for marketers! Very soon, all our tweets will be retweeted indefinitely across the twittersphere until they crash against each other. The Twitter marketer of tomorrow will be very savvy physicians!

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The Map Provider Does Matter

noreply@blogger.com (Xavier Vespa) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:00:07 -0800

The Map Provider Does Matter: "

Does it matter if some data is presented to you on a Google Maps or a Bing Maps? All Points Blog had an interesting post on that question yesterday:

[...]Regular folks don't really care about the source background or API used, just that there's interesting data and the app 'works'[...] API providers and data providers are 'back' to selling to developpers.

Behind A Twitter Bot Is A Human Bot

Xavier Vespa — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:52:00 -0800

Since I wrote a piece on how to create an auto-retweet Twitter bot, on a daily basis, I receive emails from people who fail to create their own and ask for help. The problem is that I am not a developer at all, so I am unable to identify their problems. Actually, I don’ really care if some people are not skilled enough to spam Twitter even more, I wrote a post AND I did a screencast on how to go about it, so my free contribution to the spamosphere stops there.

However, some people come to me as if I was the guru of auto-retweet bots, and beg for my help. At first, I actually tried to help, but when my help wouldn’t work, people would get pissed at me for not living up to some promise I never made, as if I sold them something at some point. So I just stopped helping. Today, someone wrote to me, and I think I never saw someone going this far in treating me like a customer service of some sort.

Here is the email (the typos came with it):

"Hi my name is ### I watched your video on the twitter bot I spent the last hour trying create it but something went wrong and what seemed to turn up on your page dident on mine but I bet you get a lot of questions but this one is very important and it would really help if you could help me.

can I ask you to do this for me please it would really help-i tryed to link the pipe from twitter search on for "WWE" I did it and it dident work. so can you please please do it for me can I trust you thank and please help me.

yahoo email address: ###
password: ###
twitter username: ###
twitter password: ###

please make me a pipe and I can't offer you money but I will subscribe to you and suggest you to all my friends thank you.

First I am not a human bot for creating Twitter bots.

Second, I can't believe this idiot is sharing his Yahoo and Twitter credentials with someone he doesn't know, and who he treats like a servant. I am not a bad person so I won't use his info for malicious purposes, unless someone suggests a really funny idea in the comments!

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The Map Provider Does Matter

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:37:00 -0800

Does it matter if some data is presented to you on a Google Maps or a Bing Maps? All Points Blog had an interesting post on that question yesterday:

[...]Regular folks don't really care about the source background or API used, just that there's interesting data and the app "works"[...] API providers and data providers are "back" to selling to developpers.

It's true that from a developer's point of view, it is hard to judge if the consumer really cares about who provides the map. Personally, I like to find the Google logo on the maps I browse, but technically any map provider is ok. However, I have a hard time believing that consumers do no care who the map provider is. Maybe the difference between map providers is not so obvious today, but this could change in the very near future...

For example, Google Local Business Center's data will probably never be openly shared, and will probably only be displayed on Google Maps. It is hard to imagine Bing launching a tool for merchants, and expecting local businesses to go through the registration once again, just to appear on Bing Maps as well.

Also, Google has Latitude. Even though the service is still a little passive, it gathers social geodata that could be used the same way Loopt does with Pulse.

Finally, it is a little known fact, but along with a MyMaps account comes a user profile. While there isn't much to this feature yet, at least it's already there, and ready to be expanded on if needed.

So I think it does matter which map provider a developer chooses: While it might not be obvious as of today, I think all map providers are getting busy at making their service unique, and while I gave a few examples of how Google is unique, there are probably good example in the case of Bing and OpenStreetMaps.

DocVerse Vs Google Docs: Microsoft Office Strikes Back

Xavier Vespa — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:31:00 -0800

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Google Docs' new zip upload feature. I was interested in the way Google was slowly eating up on Microsoft Office's grounds by adopting the position of the collaboration platform for documents. Yesterday, Techcrunch wrote about DocVerse, a plug-in to Microsoft Office that les you collaborate on your Word, Powerpoint of Excel files direcly with coworkers.

To work, DocVerse must be installed by all parties involved in the collaboration, but once that is set, any member of a doc can edit the doc offline, or directly on Docverse's online document editing and sharing platform. Everything is automatically synced, kind of like the way DropBox works. There is even an IM integration to enhance collaboration and feedbacks. The plug-in lets you simply add comments on the documents you collaborate on, and is a great time-saver for those who do not use Google Docs in the first place. Will it save Microsoft Office from being slurped by Google Docs?

Microsoft's Office products have the advantage of delivering much more features than Google's online doc editing tools. However, it is such a pain to save and share a doc (and ensure compatibility issues) every time one needs feedbacks, that doing a simple draft wih Google's word editing tool can save hours of work.

I think DocVerse could save Microsoft Office the same way Xobni is saving Outlook by integrating a whole set of Web 2.0 and Enterprise-class features. Making Microsoft Office tools directly connected to the Web is a a great opportunity to strike back against Google Docs' online editing and sharing convenience. While appending comments on a doc is still a very limited feature with a basic design, it does the job of saving you and your team some precious work time.

Also, as mentioned on the Techcrunch post linked-to above, DocVerse already grabbed $1.3 million in VC funding, which means they probably have bigger plans than just adding comment boxes to our Microsoft Office Documents. As of today, the plugin costs $49 per install, which I think is a bit pricey, and could kill the adoption rate of a product that only has some very basic features to offer so far.

What do you think? Could a plugin like DocVerse make Microsoft Office more competitive against Google Docs?

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Geocaching Gets Hot Creds With Rachael Taylor

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:00:00 -0700

Geocaching is coming to a theater near you! On November 6th, the movie SplinterHeads will be out. SplinterHeads is a simple love story:

Galaxy (the girl, Rachael Taylor) takes Justin (the guy) on a geocaching adventure, a GPS activity that is a part hike and part treasure hunt, and he quickly falls in love with her.

The movie was written and directed by Brant Sersen, an indie film director who used to do skateboard and punk films.

For the movie, the crew used geocaching.com to organize the hunt:

If you too, you would like to have a little geocaching fun, follow this link to GoogleMapsMania review of great geocaching services.

Google Docs Enable Zip Uploads, Slurps Your Desktop In

Xavier Vespa — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:59:00 -0700

Google Docs is on a roll! Two weeks ago, the announced a great feature for Docs users: Sharable folders. With this addition to Google Docs, users don't have to share a doc again and again with their coworkers, they can just assign it to the shared folder. Today, Google brings more to its online office platform: Liberate your Google Docs with Convert, Zip and Download:

The feature lets you bundle your Google Docs in a format of your choice (MS Office, Open Office, PDF, etc.) and download them as a zip file. No longer do you have to download each document individually, which can take a lot of time if you have hundreds of documents like I do!

That is... Pretty awesome! Keep in mind though: while you can download zip files, you cannot upload zip files.

Google Docs is starting to break the barriers down between online and desktop files. It is almost entering in a collateral race with DropBox, the service that automatically syncs folders across computers, and keeps a record of everything online for backup. Google Docs and DropBox are two very different products right now, but if you consider Google's browser approach to an operating system, then those two products might be heading in the same direction!

I have been using DropBox to collaborate on video projects. The advantage of DropBox is that you can easily share media files (less complicated than Youtube), and you don't have to upload anything: You just drop your files in your Dropbox folder.

Now how different would it be if, when you started your computer, your operating system would be an hybrid of web browser and local desktop. Your files are stored online, but you can open them directly on a desktop-based text editor (or a text-editing app). From that standpoint, their would be no upload implied (it would all happen in the background), and sharing files will have reach the same simplicity as DropBox. This is what Google is slowly getting to with its browser Chrome.

My point: By filling the gap between desktop folders and online folders, Google Docs is coming even closer to threatening Microsoft's desktop-based approach. For this specific reason, Microsoft should buy DropBox and integrate it to Windows 7. (Too late for that I guess!) All of us generate an enormous amount of files every year (the ones we create, but also our bills, administration documents, receipts...). Some of those files are being digitalized today, and sent over to our email inbox. We need a way to easily organize all that information in a time-efficient manner:

"Convert, Zip and Download" now joins dozens of other liberation features across our product offerings, ranging from Blogger's full blog downloads to email export from Gmail using IMAP and POP3. (From Google Blog)

Good times ahead of us people, good times!

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Google Map Icons Collection: Could It Be Huge?

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:11:00 -0700

Interesting find through The Map Room: Some developers created a database of map icons, and anyone's welcome to use them.

Nico Mollet writes to tell us about his project: hundreds of free icons, colour-coded by category, to be used as placemarkers in Google Maps (API or My Maps).

For two years now, Google has allowed users to import their own markers on the maps they create. However, creating a good icon requires the hand of a graphic designer (32x32s are tough), and I assume most maps creators (professional or not) are not graphic designers. Thus Google's marker import tool had shortcomings, which is why the Map Icons Collection is an interesting project.

First, the Map Icon Collection offers hundreds of icons ranged by category: Office, culture, education, media, restaurants, sports... The list goes on. The designs are very clear and respectful of the symbols' standards.

What's better is that those markers are already hosted online. All that needs to be done is copy the url of a picture and paste it in My Maps (or Click2Map).

As mentioned above, those markers can be imported through MyMaps or through the Google Maps API, which is a real opportunity for developers who intend to add value to their Google Maps applications (by offering more design options). As one commenter mentions in this forum:

Remember, though, that Google doesn't store custom icons for you. The icons have to on a web site somewhere. To add an icon to the set for your map, you have to enter an http://... web address so that the google map can find the icon at all times.

So the custom icons have to be uploaded to a public, non-passworded, accessible 24/7 web directory. And stay there, never moving, and never having the domain name or any directory/folder names changed. In other words, the URL for the icon(s) must never change.

Which is exactly what Map Icons Collection does for you!

While this is all very nice and somewhat anecdotal, I can see a great potential for a service like Map Icons Collection: By hosting the images, the developers can see a lot about how the icons are being used: Where, when, by who, clicks, referrer... A 1x1 px image can track everything that goes on in a Webpage. In other words, it has the potential to turn into an interesting Google Maps analytics tool for anyone interested in the performance of their maps.

In a way, it would be like bit.ly riding the wave of micro-blogging, and offering a wide depth of insight through a really simple service (url shortener). Of course, I'm getting a little ahead of things here. Right now, the Map Icons Collection is only what the name says, and the developers never talked about this whole idea I am coming up with there above.

Just a reminder of US visits alone on Google Maps before you go:

Make Your Blog Mobile: MoFuse Is No Use!

Xavier Vespa — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:51:00 -0700

A few months ago, I read a very interesting post about the misconceptions around mobile Website optimization. This article (I didn't bookmark it, unfortunately) made me realize I was probably losing traffic in the growing mobile search arena. The article was mentioning the fact that search engines will not automatically favor a site because it has a mobile version, but having a mobile Website certainly gives you more brownie points.

Since I don't like to miss out on an opportunity to optimize my content, I went online and looked for services that could make my site mobile. The most popular service seems to be MoFuse, so I tried it out. MoFuse does one thing great: It is easy to create a mobile version of your site. MoFuse fails something else: Nobody finds your mobile Website.

Getting started is easy: Mofuse will ask some info about your site, and in a few minutes, the mobile version will be created. Once created, MoFuse also offers an amazing set of features to customize your mobile Website: add a logo, submit your custom url (mine is http://m.hyveup.tv), track traffic with analytics, integrate Adsense, modify the design, create pages, and a whole lot more. All those features are great, and with those alone, MoFuse has the goods to compete in the web-to-mobile sweet spot.

However, Mofuse doesn't work for me for three reasons:

1. The mobile version looks like a RSS feed page: Blue-linked headlines. If your Website offers a unique design experience, MoFuse will not convey it in your mobile Website.

2. Mofuse doesn't have a plugin for Blogger, which means mobile visitors visiting my Website won't be automatically redirected to its mobile version:

If you are using Blogger and your blog is hosted by Blogger, this solution will not work for you at this time.(from the Mofuse Website)

That's a real deal-breaker, but there is more:

3. I created my mobile Website with MoFuse about a month ago, and nobody ever found it. There is no mobile SEO whatsoever implied with a MoFuse mobile Website:

One visitor would be the least!

So all the features offered by Mofuse are great, but you can see how in some scenarios, they are not worth a penny. I really like all those features, but I don't like how MoFuse handles the shift from Web to mobile. It fails to capture something more than just content.

I will now be testing other services or diy tricks to get a real mobile version for my Website. Follow this blog to stay in touch.

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Can Google Maps Revive The Dead With Augmented Reality?

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:19:00 -0700

Our friend over at Google Maps Mania reports on a pretty spooky service: In Krakow, Poland, a Website offers to find the cemetery plot number of dead people on Google Maps. The 'Lokalizator' lets you search graves by 'resident' name, and offers to narrow the search down by date ranges.

The map also includes bus-stops for each of the cemeteries, with bus times, and shows the locations of all cemetery entrances.

Obviously, since this map is in Krakow, it's not really interesting to search through it (I have no clue what a typical Polish name is, and I have been to Poland before). However, if there were a similar service in my area, I can easily imagine myself playing with it the night of Halloween to see who's dead where, and maybe pay them a visit! And then it stroke me:

This morning, I also read All Points Blog's article on Google Maps' Parcel Layer. In a gist, this article elaborates on the incredible ability that Google Maps has to integrate different types of data.

This idea of applying layers of data on a map is the main element of today's new trendy technology: Augmented reality. Augmented reality is nothing but layers of digital info applied directly to a user's environment through a mobile screen.

A lot of companies are getting in the augmented reality business. In fact, a handful of companies are getting into the business of making it easier for a lot of other businesses to get into the augmented reality's business. For example, ARsighths recently launched a create-and-share-your-own augmented reality platform.

Which leads me to the this conclusion: If I could access some archived files about those dead people - like old pictures, documents, maybe video or audio recordings - and mix that info with the Lokalizator's data on dead people's location, and mash it up in an augmented reality app, then I could walk around a grave yard with my cell phone, and see dead people living through it.

Think I'm crazy? Read this!

@USGSted For Earthquake Twittertainment!

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:18:00 -0700

Here is an interesting tool found through the AnyGeo blog: The Twitter account @USGSted is a US government owned account with one specific goal:

In this exploratory effort, the USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and quantity data to provide geo-located earthquake detection within 60 seconds of an event’s origin time. This approach also provides a central directory of short first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location.

USGS stands for US Geological Survey, and TED stands for Twitter Earthquake Detector.

If you follow the link to USGS' Twitter account, you will see that every tweet comes with a pic from Twitpic: Sometimes it shows a map of the with markers locating tweets, sometimes a graph, and sometimes it's just a spreadsheet:

Unless you are a geology student, administration or business, I don't see the point of following this account. However, I have to give them props on the way they use different mediums to show the data they gather: It makes earthquakes so much more entertaining!

Better Twitter Bot? Twitterfeed Says Yes You Can

Xavier Vespa — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:50:00 -0700

If you don't read ReadWriteWeb, you might have not heard about Twitterfeed's shiny new features: Faster engines, Pusubhubbub for real-time goodness, Facebook integration, and Google Analytics tracking enabled. This is the best list of feature additions I have seen in a while!

I have been using Twitterfeed for a year and a half now: It has allowed me to post updates from anything that has a RSS feed to my Twitter profile. When Friendfeed came around the corner with its syndicate'n tweet model, I stopped using Twitterfeed and it slowly reached the bottom of my toys' box. After a site re-design, Twitterfeed is now announcing a technology revamping. Will it change anything?

1. The faster engine: Yes I reckon that the user experience might be a little smoother and faster. I created my Twitterfeed account with a ClickPass (OpenID) login, so it always take me about 2 minutes every time before I can access the site.

Once on the site, I don't understand why the team decided to give a flashy re-design to Twitterfeed, instead of a simple and easy to load interface. As one commenter mentions in the ReadWriteWeb article mentioned above:

I used to use it a lot, but after they changed to the new interface, it becomes a lot more difficult to manage dozens of feeds :(

Totally agree. I think that they should have made this issue a priority. For example, I love Tweetbots because it loads in secs, so you can easily go from one feed to the other without the painful loading times.

2. Having a 'real-time' label today seems as important as having a 'green' label for any business out there: It's just the trend, and everybody wants it, even though it's not that important after all.

For small publishers, it could actually have a negative effect on their sites: In my case, it happens many times that once I hit publish on a post, I keep working 5/10 minutes on the published post, because I always notice details that need slight changes. I know that Twitter usually takes between 5/10 minutes before posting new items, which is perfect to let me adjust the last details of my posts.

With Pubsubhubbub (the stupidest name ever), it publishes my blog content to Twitter in a matter of seconds (technically), meaning some people will get to see my post published before I do. I don't need real-time on my blog, and I think that I should have the option to not work with it.

3. The integration to Facebook is the most ridicule addition I heard for a product that has 'Twitter' in its name. There are thousands of things you can do with Twitter and RSS, but adding Facebook in the mix is more confusing then convenient. Plus I am sorry to say that I turned it on for one of my Pages on Friday, and so far it failed to work. Great!

In the same article mentioned above, the writer wonders if Twitterfeed is following Feedburner's steps as a RSS leader. It's an interesting thought, since Twitterfeed now distributes over 350,000 feeds. However, where Feedburner burns content into RSS, Twitterfeed merely distributes it. Where Feedburner has the merit of enabling easy sharing of data, Twitterfeed has the inconvenience of making online noise pollution even easier.

Again, Twitter is more bot than human.

4. Last but not least, Twitterfeed is now integrated with Google Analytics. You can simply append an UTM tag to your Twitterfeed's tweets, and Google Analytics will track them for you. I haven't tried it yet, but I am sure this will drive more big publishers to use the service:

You'll be able to understand how people clicking on your posts from Facebook differ from those clicking from Twitter and track the complete path of their visit to your site.

Ok so basically Twitterfeed now lets you RSS-pollute the Web faster, in more places, and with deeper analytics. Of course I am a fan of Twitterfeed. I tend to trash them because they are becoming big and that's what we do with big startups: We challenge them.

But it's not all about trashing. I think that in terms of strategy, Twitterfeed is not in a very good spot: It offers users a very passive way to use Twitter: You don't even have to tweet anymore with Twitterfeed. While this is a time-saver, it is also against the nature of Twitter, which, let' not forget, allows two-way communications.

Twitterfeed stands in troubled water because any other popular Twitter client could easily let their users submit their own feed and offer features similar to the ones mentioned above. For example, Seesmic could very well offer the same feature, but it would be better, because fromm the same Twitter client, publishers could submit RSS news AND interact directly with readers.

Since I am not just about bashing, here is my idea for Twitterfeed: Get into the feed reader business. Today, all feed readers have a big weakness: If I share an item I liked on Twitter, chances are the author of the feed item won't know I retweeted his article. Twitterfeed should build the next generation of RSS readers, one that is fully integrated with social technologies such as Twitter.

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UK Crime Maps Down, Stress Goes Up?

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:37:00 -0700

The Government of England is keeping pace with new technologies by publishing a crime Maps of England's neighborhoods [Map]:

The Home Office hopes it will boost public confidence in the police service by giving people more information about crime. The map gives the public immediate access to figures on all crimes and specifically burglary, robbery, violence, vehicle crime and anti social behaviour.

The question raised here is: Is it appeasing or stressful to be aware of your neighborhood's crime rate? I want to say 'depends where you live', and if you live in a high-rated crime area, you certainly don't need a map to know it. However, there are some interesting facts that come with this seemingly useless technology.

First the map pages aren't too bad. From the homepage, you type in a city's name and it take you to the city's page, with a map of the area, a comparison tool, a few stats, a RSS feed, and a link to download the last 12 months' data about the area. The layer over the map that colors areas according to their crime rates is really sketchy though. The maps are powered by Bing.

For the British government, this tool is going to help on two levels:

- Mass media outlets tend to exaggerate crime propagation, which increases the citizens' level of stress. By making the real numbers accessible to the population, the government hopes to gradually deflate the nation's level of fear.

- Citizens could stay up to date with their neighborhood's crime rate, and request explanations from Police representatives when criminality seems to grow. The governement hopes that maps will bring local communities closer to Police forces.

As mentioned on the All Points Blog, the UK Crime Map is getting a lot of hits right now, and its servers can barely take the rush. This doesn't sound like a crime-fighter to me.

Best Geo Blogs: Get On The Geo Bandwagon!

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:35:00 -0700

Want to hear the latest about mapping/location technologies? Down below is a list of blogs that, if combined together, could become the New York Times of Geo news. Some of those bloggers write short updates that give you the pulse of the mapping world, while others write elaborated thoughts on upcoming mapping technologies. Enjoy!

All Points Blog
AnyGeo
Digital Urban
GIS Lounge
Google Latlong
Google Maps Mania
Google Sightseeing
James Fee GIS Blog
Mapperz

Mibazaar
O'Reilly Radar
SlashGeo
The Map Room
Understanding Google Maps And Local Search
Urban Cartography
Vector One
Very Spatial

And if you want the lazy way to subscribe to all of the above, here is the RSS feed of my geo folder in Google Reader: http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F15253945229172140065%2Flabel%2FClick2Map

Google Customer Service

Xavier Vespa — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:15:00 -0700

I use several Google accounts to gather and share specific chunks of info with the people I work with. I understand that in the war against spam, Google must not like those who create hundreds of accounts, and start blasting emails through some clever duct-taped smtp engineering. I operate several Google Accounts simply for the sake of leveraging Google's awesome set of products and sharing it with specific entities.

Last week, I tried to log into one of those account and found out it had been deactivated. I followed links around explaining Google had reasons to believe my account was not in good standing. I was not happy about this so I left a note in a box that says "We read your emails but we never respond". Since Google has the best customer relationship reputation in the West, I thought this account and all the products/content attached to it were gone forever.

The same day, later in the afternoon, I receive this email from the Google Account team:

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. The issue you
described should now be resolved.

Wow... First time I actually experience some sort of a customer experience with Google. The email was right, the account was back up.

I have an issue with Google: It hosts way too much of my existence's knowledge, and if one day my account fails, 90% chances are that Google's forums will be my only interlocutor. There is no public user representative. Google is a bit of a tyran on its own grounds, and that makes the Google digital life a very stressful experience.

All I have that makes me do business with Google is the trust I have towards the brand. I don't trust Google when they say they are not evil, but I trust them when they keep providing Web prosumers with top-notch free internet/mobile products.

All in all, seeing my account reactivated the same day I complained about it made me feel so much better about the whole brand in general: They finally recognized I existed!

For info in case your Google account has been deactivated too: I opened the account with a crooked Yahoo! secondary email address, but when I wrote the complaint to Google, I used an email address that has the same name as the Google Account I created. It validated my affiliation to this business and its name.

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Twitter Pulled The Plug On Plain HTML Widget?

Xavier Vespa — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:47:00 -0700

Yea, what happened to Twitter's plain HTML widget? Today, if you follow Twitter's links to their in-house widgets, it will only direct you to the Flash widget. It's not that I don't like the Flash widget, it is just that I hate it: It's flashy and not Webdesign-friendly. It seems like Twitter wasn't around in 2007 when Web widgets went disco and made everybody puke.

If you are looking for the old classic widget, do not worry, it did not disappear:

Yep, the classic widget is still accessible on Twitter. You just have to follow this link (it will ask you to sign in first if you are not logged in already):

http://twitter.com/widgets/html_widget

So for some reason, Twitter decided to link only to the Flash widget, but kept the plain HTML widget up-and-running secretly. What's up with that?

It seems like something happened during the early August DOS attacks on Twitter:

No I mean the code they used to publish to let people add HTML Twitter feeds to their websites seems to have vanished :(

Could the HTML widget be a weak spot for spammers or hackers to mess up with Twitter's infrastructure? That seems highly unlikely. Is Twitter bothered by the fact that Webdesigners can fully customize plain HTML widgets? I don't think so either, because it is easy to code your own HMTL widget.

Here is what I think: Twitter doesn't really want to eradicate the plain HTML widget, but it really wants to push the Flash widget. Why? I see three reasons:

- Flash widgets show more than plain widgets, like avatars and such. Not so long ago, Twitter rolled out the search widget, which displays tweets withholding specific keywords (it's supposed to add context to a Web page, but I don't see it happening). Very recently, Twitter also launched the Faves widget as well. For those widgets to make sense, they need to show richer info like avatars to let Web visitors understand what's going on. Flash also allow animations to smooth out the drop down list of 140-character messages.

- A Flash widget, like a picture, captures more user activity. With their Flash widget, Twitter knows a little bit more how visitors interact with the widget, but also what they do around the widget. This is serious widget business stuff here.

- Last but not least Flash widgets are one size fits all: blog, Myspace, Facebook...

So the plain HTML widget is still on Twitter, but I think that not linking to it is a way to pull the plug on it, and let it slowly run out of breath.

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Mobile Maps: Simple Geo-Tracking With Loglocation

connect@hyveup.com (Xavier Vespa) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:52:00 -0700

In the 'app-agora' of the Android's market, one finds all kinds of oddities. While scouring geo-tracking apps, I found Loglocation. Loglocation is not an app superstar, I found only one Website that reviews Loglocation. If you check out that Website, you'll find a comment made by a user on Loglocation:

To this I reply: No, stupid, you just didn't get it!

Loglocation is probably the most simple geo-tracking app on Android. Loglocation simply records your location at given intervals. The difference between Mytracks and Loglocation is that Loglocation will turn the GPS on only few seconds every time it needs to record location. Unlike other geo-tracking apps where GPS is ON full time, which obviously is a barrier to record location over a long period of time, Loglocation works in the background, and its battery consumption is seamless.

I left Loglocation running on my phone for a whole week to see what kind of data it would generate, and I set the interval on 10 minutes. The result is displayed on the map below:

Lifing at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Trip Sharing with Google Maps

If you zoom in a tad, you'll spot my house. Since I work from home, it gets saturated in that area. I visited a family member in the north part of town, and have various businesses to handle downtown. You can also see my trip to a professional meeting with a client in Oakland. Down South is the family day care center where I drop off and pick up my son everyday.

This is not the performance map that other apps create for your bike ride, jog, or what have you. This is you living. It tells your story in the most honest way. This map isn't filled with sweat and endurance, it is filled with our real everyday life stories.

Of course, this is just me musing on the potential of life-tracking. The hardcore reality of Loglocation is that the app records your location, but doesn't offer you any way to view your geodata, and share it with others. Here is what I had to do put my Loglocation data on the map above:

Loglocation records tracks in a GPX format (optimized XML for GPS-type data). Using a disk explorer (I use Astro), there is in the SD card a file with a name made of 10-12 numbers. Open it as text in the file viewer, copy the whole thing, paste it in an email and send it to yourself. Form your desktop, copy the text again, create a notepad file with it, and name it .gpx. Then go on GPS Visualizer, and submit your .gpx file. GPS visualizer lays out everything on a map, and offers to extend your experience with EveryTrail to share the map with your friends.

In other words, Loglocation doesn't work quite yet. But the app reminds me of Personalytics, ie an app that track your activities in the background and provides a deeper insigth on your life. I say, it's worth keeping an eye on those kind of apps.