• The Connect with Friends section – Seriously, it’s now my responsibility to help my friends connect with people? And why would I randomly write on someone’s wall just because Facebook told me to?
• Suggestions section – I’m fine with the concept of suggestions. I just rarely see relevant people or pages to add. Also, if I click to ignore the suggestion once, I should have the option to never see it again.
• Publishing friend and fan stories – Isn’t this why the Suggestions section even exists? So I can see who to become a friend or fan of? Displaying them in the feed is pointless.

Luckily, there’s a way to clean up these irritations and make some other cool Facebook customizations that result in a much better user experience. Here’s a quick tutorial on my favorite, Facebook Fixer:

1. Download Firefox if you don’t have it already.
2. Download the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. Restart the browser when prompted.
3. Install the Facebook Fixer user script.
4. Go to Facebook or refresh the page if it’s open already. Under the Account menu, go to Configure Facebook Fixer.
5. Navigate through the options and choose your favorite customizations. You can always refresh the page, see what the option does and then switch it back if you don’t like it. I have it set up this way:

• Check - Keep the left column visible, even after scrolling down (Home Page tab)
• Uncheck - Show the Pokes, Suggestions and Connect with Friends sections (Home Page)
• Check - Hide fan/friend/group stories (Feeds)
• Check - Popup bigger versions of photos and profile pictures on mouse over (Pictures)
• Check - Add links to add birthdays and events to Google Calendar (Birthdays/Events)
• Check - Keep the top menu bar on the screen, even after scrolling down (Menus/Chat)

Play around with the options on your own and you’ll eventually develop your own preferences. Keep in mind that Facebook Fixer must be separately installed on every computer you want to use it on. Give it a test drive and let me know what you think!

Image credit: flavor32

Combining the popularity of social networking, gaming and mobile applications has been a huge success for Foursquare and it doesn’t look like that will slow down in 2010. Businesses can use the service to increase their visibility, run special promotions and get a snapshot of their most tech-savvy and loyal customers. Customers can get special discounts and perks for checking in and holding on to mayorships.

With that said, there are some privacy concerns that users should be aware of and guidelines that will help make Foursquare better. The company is continually working out the kinks of the service by listening to the large amount of feedback from the community.

Everyone has their own opinions and preferences, but here is how I personally use Foursquare to get the most out of it while still addressing privacy issues:

• I only friend people that I know – Why? While I know that many people treat Foursquare like Twitter and follow/friend everyone in sight, I prefer to keep the social circle tight. I personally don’t need a crazy ex-girlfriend creating a fake account, friending me and then showing up at Starbucks one day to convince me that she “changed”. Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it won’t as Foursquare hits mainstream popularity.
• I never check in to my home – Another popular Foursquare activity that I don’t understand, though the upcoming addition of private venues should help with this. People check in to their own houses and give out the exact location of where they live, while giving burglars real-time updates on when they’re not home. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s always the embarrassment of not being able to hold down the mayorship at your own home. Ouch.
• I send only select check-ins to Twitter and Facebook – Most of the time, I just want to get credit for the check-in and let my Foursquare friends know where I am. There’s no need to bombard my Twitter and Facebook friends with these updates, unless I have a comment to make in association with the check-in that might be interesting to them. Also, sending the check-ins to Twitter means the whole world can see where I am, something that I’d obviously like to be careful of.
• I only check in when I spend more than 10 minutes at a place or buy something – This makes me more “committed” to the check in, instead of just running through the mall, slapping the wall of every store, and racking up 92 check-ins in an hour. Although that would be a fun badge to earn.
• I keep the venues clean and updated – Periodically, I’ll go through my check-in history and clean up addresses and venue names according to Foursquare’s style guide. I’ll add relevant tags/categories and maybe a tip or two about the venue. It makes it easier for users to search for venues and find interesting new places to check in.

You certainly don’t have to follow my lead. Develop your own preferences and habits if you haven’t already. Just like other social networking sites, there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to use Foursquare as long as you’re not spamming or cheating. With the help of a strong user community, I’m looking forward to seeing how the company responds to feedback from power users while still being able to adapt the service for the masses.

Are you using Foursquare? Why or why not? What personal guidelines can you share? Post your thoughts in the comments section and thanks for reading.

Image credit: nydailynews.com

I want to start answering those questions with this list of my favorite running tools that have shaped my running habits in one way or another.

• Dailymile.com – this site for logging your workouts is like Facebook for runners. It’s easy to find a website to track your runs, but not one the powerful social aspects that dailymile brings to the table. You can become friends with people from all over the world and see their workouts in your feed. Narrow down the feed to see only local people or keep it open to everyone and live vicariously through a marathoner posting pictures from a race halfway across the globe. The incredible part about dailymile is the level of support that other runners provide, whether they know me personally or not. Whenever I post runs, I get motivating and inspiring comments from both friends and strangers. Runners of all levels coming together on one site really makes me believe in the strength of the running community.
• Fit Milwaukee – every runner can use the support of a group to motivate them. Fit Milwaukee is a group that was formed with one simple goal – to get Milwaukee into shape. Using social networking on Twitter and Facebook to spread the word, the group has started a blog, planned numerous fitness activities, and launched a weight loss challenge. All for free. If you’re not in Milwaukee, seek out groups like this in your own city or form your own!
• Garmin Forerunner – my ultra-geeky but oh-so-important GPS watch. From the moment I step out the door, it has satellites watching over my run and giving me real-time updates on my pace and distance. Nothing is more comforting on a run than 99.999999% accuracy on that 8-miler you just finished. How did I ever run without one of these?
• Runner’s World – when I need the advice of running experts or training plans for my next big race, I turn to my trusty Runner’s World magazine or website. I can always find helpful articles on training, nutrition, injuries, motivation, gear and more.

You can’t go wrong with using one of all of these tools to jump start your running plans. I love that each one uses technology in one way or another to aid runners.

What about you? What tools do you use most often and why?

Image credit: rcsaxon

[Note: Naturally, the day after I posted this, MLB took down all video clips of this guy. I guess they want this kind of behavior to continue! Here's a picture instead or see a more thorough recap.]

You hear about stories like this every year and it never seems to stop. I feel sorry for the real fans that have to deal with people like this. After spending hundreds of dollars on hard-to-obtain tickets and overpriced beer, it would be nice to have the promise of a great fan experience. A colleague of mine recently blogged about the topic of sporting event drunkenness at college football games. I totally agree with putting unique measures in place, such as the rules the University of Minnesota recently implemented at football games, and keeping the drunks at home.

About a year ago, I did some comparison shopping between DISH Network and DIRECTV’s satellite TV offerings before I ended up choosing DISH. Ever since then, I’ve been receiving direct mail pieces from DIRECTV at least once every two weeks promoting their services and trying to convince me to sign up with them. They send the same exact letter and inserts with every mailing. It goes directly from my mailbox to my trash can without a second look.

Now, I don’t have anything against DIRECTV, but this type of marketing is definitely not going to get me to switch. Here is a situation where a company is flushing their marketing dollars down the toilet when they could have spent five minutes getting to know me and personalizing their marketing campaigns.

With my name, address and email address on file, DIRECTV could’ve easily found my blog, social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, the company I work for and probably much more. A mere five minutes of web surfing would reveal that:

• I’m a huge sports fan, especially football, and my team’s games aren’t always on TV (NFL Sunday Ticket)
• I enjoy a wide variety of movies and TV shows (Premium channels on HBO, Showtime, etc.)
• I have a Blackberry (Mobile TV)
• I’m online all the time. Duh. (Program DVR from the website, view statements and pay bill online)

These are just a few quick examples. Who knows how much information DIRECTV could be getting with 15 or 30 minutes of research per customer. It’s clear that marketing to lost opportunities is important to them, but why continue to create noise when the ability to create a profile about me and my likes/dislikes is right there on the web for the taking? You hear so much about recruiting using social media – sourcing candidates on LinkedIn or background checks on Facebook – but why not more about prospecting with the same social media tools? Traditional tactics are clearly not working as well as they used to.

Is a new sale worth five minutes of your time? I’d love to hear your opinion on this issue in the comments below.

If you’re like the vast majority of Twitter users and only using the default twitter.com to manage your tweets, you’re missing out on some excellent web apps that will help you organize Twitter better and be more productive. Time for you to take it to the next level.

Twitter web apps have come a long way this year and are only getting better. Create groups of friends, set up keyword searches to find new and interesting people, manage multiple accounts and sort all of this information across columns and tabs. Here are a few great web-based apps that you can access from any computer – no download required.

• HootSuite is one of the apps I use on a daily basis and an excellent all-around Twitter tool. The multi-column, multi-tab interface is great for organizing different keyword searches and dragging and dropping friends into groups. A built-in URL shortener called ow.ly gives you integrated click stats and integration with ping.fm allows you to update all of your social networking profiles at once. For business tweeting, you can manage multiple accounts and schedule tweets for later.
• CoTweet, although designed for businesses tweeting and has wonderful support for multiple accounts, is also great for individual accounts because of its incredible simplicity. I love the profile view that quickly pulls together a person’s bio information, whether or not you’re following the person, conversations you’ve had together and recent updates. Mentions and direct messages can be archived so you’re only seeing the newest tweets. Another welcome feature is the integration of bit.ly – enter the API key associated with your bit.ly account and enjoy seamless URL shortening and analytics.
• Brizzly is the new Twitter web app on the block that has a clean web interface, a chat-like direct message box, support for groups and multiple search capabilities. You can add pictures easily from your hard drive and watch as both pictures and videos appear right inside your Twitter stream. Another simple feature I like about this app is the “why?” link next to trending topics on the right side, answering the question everybody asks when a topic like #moonfruit shows up one day. I just started playing with this app a couple days ago, but so far I’ve found it to be great for consuming tweets rather than sharing them (as my friend @adamap explained to me). To try Brizzly out, use this invite code or ask me for an invite in the comments section below.
• Seesmic Web is a lite version of the popular Seesmic desktop app. I don’t often use Seesmic Web, but if you’re looking for a crazy simple tool for managing Twitter, look no further. The design is minimalistic with a user-friendly interface that is perfect for new users.

What’s your favorite Twitter web app and why? Let me know in the comments!

Although they’ve only been around for about five years, social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn have become life changers. People that you, in the past, might’ve lost contact with forever are suddenly in your news feed everyday talking about their kids and careers, posting pictures and sending you quizzes.

Ask yourself how your life would be different now if you had Facebook 20 years ago. What if you friended every person you met along the way? Would you have made different life decisions? Would you have gone to a different college, moved to another country or even married somebody else?

Or maybe nothing would’ve changed. After all, even with Facebook you have to work on friendships and relationships to keep them alive. You can’t just send a buddy a gift in Mafia Wars and expect to be the best man at his wedding. At some point, you have to pick up the phone.

What do you think – would this be a butterfly effect that alters the course of history or am I over-analyzing things again?

The tough part is turning that short-term habit into a lifetime obsession. With running, once I got back into training for about a month, it all started coming back to me. I now realize why I loved running in the first place. I enjoy the competitiveness, the races, the personal bests and the “runner’s highs”, but the best part is the enormous level of support the running community provides to runners of all skill levels. Runners have a thousand reasons to keep training and racing, but without the community behind them they are much more likely to give it up. Support comes in many forms – dailymile.com is like Facebook for runners/bikers, giving them a chance to connect with other athletes, share goals, track their workouts and encourage each other to keep up the great work. The Badgerland Striders in Milwaukee, one of hundreds of running clubs across the country, coordinates races, provides volunteer opportunities and organizes marathon training buildup runs on Saturday mornings leading up to the Lakefront Marathon.

If you truly want to get beyond those 21 days, don’t do it alone. Find a person, a group, a network or a blog where people just like you are hanging out. You don’t need to wait until the New Year to make a resolution!

What kind of numbers are we talking about here? If you account for sleeping and eating, Forrest probably ran at least 12 hours a day. Based on my expert pace detection skills, I’ll assume he was moving at an eight-minute mile pace. That works out to 90 miles/day, 630 miles/week and 32,760 miles/year. He went through a pair of shoes every four days. He must’ve been on the Michael Phelps diet, because he was burning over 10,000 calories a day. Yikes. It can’t be possible! Or is it? I guess I’ll never know.

If you ever decide to take a sabbatical from work and try the Gump training plan out, I recommend making sure one of those runners following you is a chiropractor. And please, bring a razor.

image by gladwell.com

For example, in a brilliant piece titled “How David Beats Goliath,” Gladwell questions why underdogs in basketball games don’t use the full court press more often considering its high level of success. The full court press evens the playing field more and makes it a game of effort rather than a game of ability. He goes on to analyze underdogs outside of sports, such as Lawrence of Arabia leading the revolt against the Ottoman Army near the end of World War I. T.E. Lawrence was an underdog that broke the rules and found success, discovering unconventional ways to defeat a conventional army. Everyone likes to root for an underdog, especially one that takes the favorite out of their comfort zone and makes them rethink their strategy.

I just finished reading Outliers last month (well, listened to, if you read my recent post on audiobooks). An outlier, according to Gladwell, “is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience.” Many assume that success comes from hard work, but Gladwell destroys that assumption by showing how highly successful individuals, like Bill Gates, were not only hard workers but also presented with an extraordinary set of circumstances that others born a few years earlier or later didn’t receive. Gladwell also enjoys researching the uncomfortable, shown by his chapter on plane crashes being a result of the culture pilots grew up in. Gladwell states: “How good a pilot is, it turns out, has a lot to do with where that pilot is from—that is, the culture he or she was raised in. I was actually stunned by how strong the connection is between culture and crashes, and it’s something that I would never have dreamed was true, in a million years.”

In polling my friends and colleagues, very few people have even heard of Malcolm Gladwell. I highly recommend starting with the underdogs story and even checking out some sports-related banter with Gladwell and Simmons. It’s some of the most thought-provoking and entertaining writing I’ve read in a long time. Let me know what you think!