Dave Burke

Sueetie Member Services Seduced by YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.4

daveburke — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:05:41 -0800

You'll see a much tighter integration of Sueetie Member Services with YetAnotherForum.NET as the seduction of YAF.NET 1.9.4 beta bits becomes complete. I originally designed member services in Sueetie as a separate function, where a multi-panel account management page supported changing passwords, profile updates, friends and favorites, and so forth. Most YAF 1.9.3 member services were ignored.

The opposite will be true when YAF.NET 1.9.4 is released and Gummy Bear is the happy beneficiary. The existing member services will go away, to be replaced by Sueetie-enhanced YetAnotherForum member services.

The current Member Account Management and Public Profile pages are shown below. These will no longer exist in the next release of Gummy Bear.

With a YetAnotherForum.NET-integrated approach we'll be using a richer and more extensible Member Dashboard instead of the current Account Management page. The Member Dashboard will accompany the new YAF-based Member Public Profile page. The Public Profile page will be intelligent enough to enable a Dashboard and other custom links to the member owner.

The extensibility of this approach will be an ongoing bonus with any number of services easily added to the left-hand options menu. The initial release will support the ability to display your posts, favorites, friends, manage your subscriptions, signature, bio, site password and so on. It will be quite easy to extend this format with custom member services.

The two screenshots below are the Member Dashboard page with account management and services links at left. Below the Dashboard page is the Member Public Profile, accessible from a dashboard link, the "Welcome, [your name]!" header link, and is the page displayed when the member's username is selected in any site application link.

We've been moving in the direction of integrating Sueetie Membership with YetAnotherForum.NET's robust member services since we created a smart, site-wide "Inbox" link that leveraged YAF's Private Message Inbox function. This feature gets an upgrade as well, becoming the Community's "Message Center," with the "Inbox" link changed to "Conversations." Here's the forthcoming Conversations page, with Inbox, Sent Messages and Archive tabs.

There's more news of how Sueetie will leverage YAF 1.9.4 Cool on the way, so stay tuned.

My 65 Favorite Tweets of PDC09

daveburke — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:46:37 -0800

Microsoft did a fantastic job making PDC09 accessible to everyone, even to geeks as far away as Vermont. Their real-time HD video coverage of the keynotes and conference presentations was awesome. And what Microsoft didn't provide at http://microsoftpdc.com, Twitter did. The combination of microsoftpdc.com and the #PDC09 stream allowed me to feel like I was at the conference without having to fly across the country to get there.

Fascinating, really, the ability to follow the flow of a PDC conference in real time, being in on the pre-conference anticipation of the attendees, initial disappointments as the conference got off to a slow start, the bitching about snacks, reading about the parties, seeing reactions to the free laptops on day two, the arrival of the beloved ScottGu to the PDC stage, and, of course, reactions to the technology announcements throughout.

Below are 65 tweets I captured over the course of PDC09. They’re listed in reverse chronological order. Sorry. You may want to skip to the bottom and scroll up the list to get a feel for the action as it happened.

First are a few selected tweets to give you a PDC09 overview, listed IN chronological order.

Too many tossers on stage using Awesome to describe something that is just barely adequate

To the dude sitting next to me at the #pdc09 keynote. STOP FARTING!!!!!

They have really cheaped out this year, but at least it costs more. (from day #1, obviously)

I'll probably see the second day keynote for #pdc09. Hope it's better than day 1, that was painful.

@RoyOsherove #PDC09 in one sentence: "We think cloud computing is awesome"

RT @ctrlalt313373: You know it was a good night at #pdc09 if you wake up with the Win7 logo tattooed to your ass.

Overheard, "I went to PDC08 and all I got was this crappy Hard Drive"

@scottgu Go well? You knocked it out of the ball-park. Amazing.

http://twitpic.com/q0pjk the free laptop line is forming

Is waiting for one more Jew to come to the prayer room at #pdc09.

It is so funny to see ppl reaction about #pdc09 before and after they got their laptops :). now everything is ok!

LOL - First audience question in the lab session: Does this support VMWare? Now to see how many people leave the room

Microsoftpdc.com Fail http://yfrog.com/1dwdsp

That was that, #pdc09. Not a lot of exciting news, but decent sessions and great giveaways. I feel bribed.

BrianPeek
@John_Papa You too. Really hoping no one dies next March so I can go. :) #pdc09 #MIX10 /t12:53 AM Nov 20th from TweetDeck in reply to John_Papa
pdalbe01
RT @SaraJChipps: My favorite shirt that I saw all week said, "I need a girl who's name doesn't end in .jpg" #pdc09 10:37 PM Nov 19th from Swift
mkennedy
Microsoft, this does NOT give me more confidence in ASP.NET (even though I love it) http://twitpic.com/q6iob #pdc09 9:56 PM Nov 19th from web
RedWineCoder
LOL RT @SaraJChipps: My favorite shirt that I saw all week said, "I need a girl who's name doesn't end in .jpg" #pdc09 9:29 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
woan
#pdc09 webpage throws error on even home page in Chrome, works OK in IE 8 9:08 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
athraen
That was that, #pdc09. Not a lot of exciting news, but decent sessions and great giveaways. I feel bribed. 7:58 PM Nov 19th from Tweetie
jscottmoss
@ScriptingGuys LoL RT @dunnry: Overheard at #PDC09: "I was drunk and I don't remember getting my laptop" <=rofl 7:01 PM Nov 19th from TwitterBerry
matthewkane
is going home now that #pdc09 is over. 7:00 PM Nov 19th from txt
eNeRGy164
He is snoring so loud half the room is turning heads :D #PDC09 6:40 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
eNeRGy164
Somebody is snoring right behind me #PDC09 6:22 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
janerikohman
My first post on news from #pdc09: http://bit.ly/HCBAz 4:51 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
srehorn
dang it, I missed a session at #pdc09 because I got caught on a broken escalator 4:46 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
adajos
RT @brandonleblanc: Want to check out a really cool Facebook Windows app? Check out Fishbowl for Facebook: http://bit.ly/1DnrSc #pdc09 4:18 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
laromeo
It's amazing how far Silverlight and Blend have come in such a short time. I can't wait to install VS 2010 beta and Silverlight 4 #pdc09 4:10 PM Nov 19th from Echofon
occulto
Touchscreen does not work well with donuts #pdc09 2:42 PM Nov 19th from Seesmic
osbornm
Microsoftpdc.com Fail http://yfrog.com/1dwdsp #pdc09 2:36 PM Nov 19th from Seesmic
elijahmanor
"Tech Tweets for Today (19-Nov-2009)" #tech #aspnet #aspnetmvc #javascript #jquery #pdc09 http://j.mp/2v86Qc 1:12 PM Nov 19th from BigTweet
brada
Big claps for config free WCF services at #pdc09 1:09 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
rbanks54
LOL - First audience question in the lab session: Does this support VMWare? Now to see how many people leave the room #pdc09 1:08 PM Nov 19th from web
ericylai
Microsoft working on cheaper, possibly vertical flat-screen version of Surface touch computer http://bit.ly/4bFdh0 #Surface #PDC09 1:04 PM Nov 19th from web
JMPUGIN
Make sure you all check out the videos on microsoftpdc.com (video link on the left). Ton of session vids now there... #pdc09 1:03 PM Nov 19th from web
balanionut
it is so funny to see ppl reaction about #pdc09 before and after they got their laptops :). now everything is ok! 12:54 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
zumayabooks
RT @OReillyMedia: First five people that come by the O'Reilly Booth (#112) get a free t-shirt at #PDC #PDC09 /MH 12:42 PM Nov 19th from TweetDeck
nigelstratton
LOL RT @brada Is it bad that Windows *strongly* recommends a checkdisk on my demo machine the morning of my #PDC09 talk? ;-) 10:33 AM Nov 19th from Digsby
rob_hale_vt
I LOL'd in a hallway full of people when I got this follower RT @GuyNextToYou: @rob_hale_vt Sorry Rob, that's me. I have a.. condition. 6:23 PM Nov 18th from HootSuite
danvanderboom
Silverlight 4 whitepaper by @John_Papa, explaining most new features: http://is.gd/4Yjbm #sl4 #pdc09 (via @brian_henderson) 5:38 PM Nov 18th from Tweetie
rob_hale_vt
in Pablo Castro's session learning lots. but someone in this row is breaking wind - which is distracting + gross. #pdc09 5:36 PM Nov 18th from PockeTwit
robconery
Wondering how many recently laid off softies would appreciate the laptop giveaway at #pdc09 5:34 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
matthewkane
is waiting for one more Jew to come to the prayer room at #pdc09. 4:52 PM Nov 18th from txt
craiggib
http://twitpic.com/q0pjk the free laptop line is forming #pdc09 3:31 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
michaelperillo
Get ur free computer #PDC09 - ouch, look at that line http://pic.gd/5faaae 3:30 PM Nov 18th from UberTwitter
jguadagno
The line to collect the free #PDC09 laptop http://pic.gd/84b7c4 3:24 PM Nov 18th from UberTwitter
follesoe
@scottgu Go well? You knocked it out of the ball-park. Amazing. #pdc09 3:23 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck in reply to scottgu
mithund
@scottgu Your alien pic is a testimony to how awesome it was! #pdc09 3:23 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck in reply to scottgu
bjorn_eriksen
#PDC09 takes swag to a whole new level! http://twitpic.com/q0m83 3:10 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
alvinashcraft
RT @PDC09: Free slushies in the Big Room at 2pm today - sponsored by MSDev! #pdc09 2:51 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
Mark_KB
Presenter: Sharepoint + F5. (everyone claps) #pdc09 1:52 PM Nov 18th from Twitterlicious
sjnaughton
Very Cool RT @nikhilk: Silverlight 4 beta now available for download along with tooling support ... exciting times ahead! #pdc09 1:22 PM Nov 18th from Digsby
ReedCopsey
Shared assemblies between .NET 4 and SL 4! #pdc09 12:47 PM Nov 18th from web
brainstogether
RT @shanselman: Want to see the #pdc09 iPhome demo yourself? http://www.IIS.net/iPhone - please RT! 12:43 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
jeroenverhulst
Barcode scanning demo is impressive :) #pdc09 12:33 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
JohnJMcClelland
ScottGu on Silverlight4 will support webcam & Microphone, multicast streaming, output protection, offline DRM support #PDC09 12:29 PM Nov 18th from Ping.fm
Tableteer
Ladies and Gentleman: the GU has arrived #pdc09 12:23 PM Nov 18th from web
giovannibassi
In 3 weeks of dev, IE9 is already matching FF and Chrome in performance. And now we are seeing IE9 live at #PDC09. 12:15 PM Nov 18th from DestroyTwitter
browniepoints
"I went to PDC08 and all I got was this crappy Hard Drive" #PDC09 12:11 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
TipsterHog
Are you kidding me? Holy crap...they're giving #pdc09 attendees a laptop! I guess we now know why there wasn't any breakfast this week. 12:11 PM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
LBugnion
The Gu is so awesome that when he demoes and the lawyers try to block the stream, it still gets through. #pdc09 12:03 PM Nov 18th from sobees
adtrevors
LOL!! RT @ctrlalt313373: You know it was a good night at #pdc09 if you wake up with the Win7 logo tattooed to your ass. 10:45 AM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
kindohm
underwhelmed by #pdc09 day 1 keynote. I hope day 2 keynote yields more to get excited about #notatpdc 9:29 AM Nov 18th from web
baskint
RT @RoyOsherove #PDC09 in one sentence: "We think cloud computing is awesome" #PDC09InOneSentence 8:20 AM Nov 18th from web
Ravi_S_Desai
I'll probably see the second day keynote for #pdc09. Hope it's better than day 1, that was painful. 7:46 AM Nov 18th from web
theirishpenguin
RT @migueldeicaza: Swine flu and Microsoft Surface meta-tweet #CDC #pdc09 http://twitpic.com/px9fo 7:39 AM Nov 18th from TweetDeck
bryantlikes
Not too many hours left in the day. Is there really going to be a release of Seesmic for Windows? #pdc09 8:52 PM Nov 17th from web
amjindal
#PDC09 Crowd is thin and mood somber this year.. 5:58 PM Nov 17th from web
Jaxidian
I've seen more phones running Android here at #PDC09 than I knew existed! Droid, Cliq, G1, G2, & 4 others that I couldn't identify. I like!! 5:50 PM Nov 17th from Mixero
pauliom
#tee09 #pdc09 I'm just not getting #azure. If major companies cannot store their info (for legal locale reasons) then who's it for? 5:46 PM Nov 17th from web
dreadpirateryan
msft surface looks amazing, but the demo apps are not super interesting. show me something useful, not games and videos #pdc09 5:43 PM Nov 17th from web
SilverlightDC
RT @brian_henderson: RT @thedavedev: Over 8,000+ concurrent viewers during #PDC09 keynote this morning (via Scott Stanfield) 5:00 PM Nov 17th from TweetDeck
gduncan411
Even with a packed room the wireless seems to be working great (so far... ;) Nice! #pdc09 +5 2:22 PM Nov 17th from Seesmic
TwigOp
#pdc09 - they have really cheaped out this year, but at least it costs more. 2:18 PM Nov 17th from twidroid
andy_johns
#pdc09 The word of the day is "cloud" 2:10 PM Nov 17th from Echofon
timjroberts
I absolutely agee! RT @lcorneliussen: #AppFabric is huge. I think it should have been mentioned earlier in the keynote. #pdc09 1:58 PM Nov 17th from Twikini
s_geisler
To the dude sitting next to me at the #pdc09 keynote. STOP FARTING!!!!! (via @cloudjunky) - LOL 1:55 PM Nov 17th from Twitterrific
adamskt
Holy cow, Azure to internal SQL just blew my teeny tiny at #pdc09 1:00 PM Nov 17th from Echofon
journoian
Somebody hand me a minigun - too many tossers on stage using Awesome to describe something that is just barely adequate - #PDC09 12:55 PM Nov 17th from web

Stylin: Adventure Time

daveburke — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:22:21 -0800

The stylin background, borders and the attention to detail on other elements increase the confidence to make a purchase. On the UN-stylin side, there’s a spider dropdown animation that shoots that confidence to hell in my opinion.

Link to Adventure Time | View all Stylin Sites

Stylin: Wild Wings Safaris

daveburke — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:07:37 -0800

The low contrast between headers/footers and the body is what I like about this. Nice spacing and background effects. Tasty graphics and logo.

Link to Wild Wings Safaris | View all Stylin Sites

Stylin: Safarista Design

daveburke — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:58:36 -0800

Very beautiful. Someone sweated the details here. Like the menubar. Nice execution of an attractive body area background on the site content pages as well.

Link to Safarista Design | View all Stylin Sites

Stylin: Boco Creative

daveburke — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:51:35 -0800

Unique header and footer border style which is more visible if you look at the enlarged image or go to the site. Info-rich and attractive slideshow in the header area. Cool logo with a big “B.” We like big B’s.

Link to Boco Creative | View all Stylin Sites

Stylin: Rumos do Brasil

daveburke — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:41:28 -0800

With its author profile sketches and newsy format, this style is like a relaxed Wall Street Journal. I like the author sketches and pronounced font. Nicely proportioned menubar. Artistry is demonstrated here.

Link to Rumos Do Brasil | View all Stylin Sites

Nordic Track Book Club Review: Trust Agents

daveburke — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:34:34 -0800

Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust is deceivingly simplistic. You read, “be helpful, connect people, be transparent, blah, blah.” Social Marketing concepts you already know and may perhaps practice, yet they are presented here in such a way that you realize you can do it better, much better. Chris Brogan has proven the effectiveness of his claims after all.

The book was a solidly constructed hardback, a much nicer experience than many of the paperback-only recently published social marketing books in my collection (which I’m not all-too happy about.) Trust Agents was a quick read with a ton of good excerpts as you’ll see below. Recommended. 4-out-of-5 Nordic Track Ski Stars.

_________________

p.xv Focus on connecting with the people and the tools will all make sense.

p.11 Those who are active on the web realize that they need to embrace this new transparency, that all things will now eventually be known.

p.14 We are currently living in a communications environment where there is a trust deficit.

p.18 We view online social networks as media, not because they help us communicate, but because they extend human relationships.

p.22 Social capital is different from other kinds of capital. The mere act of gathering means that everyone who participates will exchange things and grow richer as a result.

p.29 Making your own game is about standing out.

p.36 Figure out who your gatekeepers are, then decide what rules you can break to make yourself a gatejumper.

p.40 It is important to differentiate yourself by creating a new category for you to fit in.

p.49 Create a source of competition for yourself—maybe even only in your own head—without telling anyone. Then regularly revisit that race to see how it’s going. Keep at it.

p.63 The trust agent must understand the dynamics of making a game such that there’s a flow, a system, a set of rules, the opportunity for fun, presumably a chance to be the best in the game. This is where programming comes in.

p.71 During this personal brand gold rush, anyone has the ability to make a name for themselves if they are true to their DNA and willing to work their face off.

Be authentic. Start pumping out free content and start becoming part of the conversation.

p.80 Self-orientation is a negative. The higher this is the less we tend to trust a person.

p.94 You must remain present to remain relevant.

p.98 Be sure to promote yourself, but make certain you have the reputation for praising others in a given community. Make those around you the rock stars.

p.101 Due to the rarity of comments, those who comment are remarkable and are noticed.

p.119 Multi-capitalism is the ability to understand multiple, varying forms of value and to know how to exchange one type of capital freely for another.

p.125 Do favors because you like someone, because its the right thing to do, or because you like to be helpful. The result is that you accrue social capital as a side benefit of doing good. But doing good by itself is its own reward.

p.137 If you can delegate a task to someone else or to a machine for that matter, in order to save either time or cost, it is your duty to do so.

p. 140 A book is like a big thick impressive $25 business card. We took it for what it could give us, Old World Credibility.

p.142 No matter where they go, Trust Agents have a desire to connect good people together. We refer to this as being Agent Zero, being in the center of a network and being able to spread ideas.

p.144 Trust Agents reach out to the up-and-comers. They make friends of the people starting out, those who might not be the big voices, or the movers or the shakers, but who are interesting, driven, talented an have potential.

p.154 Unlike old-fashioned networkers with a “what’s in it for me” attitude, trust agents are thinking strategically and considering opportunities for their new-found friends that are far downstream.

p.161 Yes, business cards are so 1987, and yet, they are just as important today as they have been for the past several years. Don’t dispute us, just make sure you have business cards.

p.173 Compete.com. How’s your traffic doing in relation to others in the field, and where is it coming from? The Trust Agent’s hyperlinks are the 21st Century equivalent of the name-dropper. Seeing your link on someone else’s website means that you have caught their attention.

p.175 The important thing to know is that links infer relationship.

p.197 He looks at all of these services, e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, as new phones that are ringing for your company, service or product. And when your company doesn’t have a presence or listening ability, it cannot hear this social phone ringing.

p.201 Make constant touches. Connect people together constantly. Link fervently.

p.208 When people ask Chris how he got to where he is in social media, his answer is always the same, be helpful.

p.209 Your blog is your home base. Anything authoritative goes on here. If you had a shop, that would be your blog. You are trying to increase foot traffic and walk-ins as much as possible.

p.215 Creating a group and filling it with the smartest people you know is the truest path to influence online.

p.224 Social recommendation has become so powerful that even BusinessWeek and other mainstream news sites now have Digg, Reddit and other Social Recommendation buttons on their articles.

p.227 Chose one thing you’d like to get your community to do. Simplify the act as much as possible. Give the idea a cause, something the community cares about. Reach cause-related influencers and help them spread it. Create an incentive. What will happen if someone participates. There must be a benefit for all involved.

p.249 Attention is great, but if it’s only attention, then it’s not sales, and let’s not think of sales as just money either. If we replace sales with the action I want you to take next, then that’s the real measure of success. Is there any other?

Everyman Links for November 16, 2009

daveburke — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:53:44 -0800

In the heady days of blogging. That LOL phrase puts this Buzz Canuck post in tonight’s #1 spot. Here it is in context, questioning the interactivity of some of today’s social media. “How much of social media is really social? Perhaps in the heady days of blogging (2003-2007 RIP) you could make the argument that social media had taken down walls, but media evolves and starts to look like the incumbent media before it.” Other good stuff, “the belief that virtual companies will not need a website of their own and will just operate on a number of social media prongs is foolish and unfounded in success." And “My prediction is that the term Social Media will fade into irrelevance. All media will be social. No more need for the distinction.”

Live from PubCon 2009! A Search & Internet Marketing conference called PubCon (I haven’t heard of it before either) just wrapped in Las Vegas, producing some good information like in this VerticalMeasures post PubCon 2009 Top 50 SEO Tips So Far. Worth a read-through. “Are you ranking #1 for a keyword that will not provide real benefit to your business?” “Put a call to action on landing pages.” “Bounce rate: 30% is good, 50% is ok, 70% needs work.” “80% of queries are informational. Give them what they want then lead them where you want them.” And that’s just from the first 15 tips.

The Emerging Super-rich Cyborg Overclass. Technology forecaster Paul Saffo was recently quoted in the UK Telegraph as saying, “In the future people will be able to grow their own replacement organs, take specially tailored drugs, and use genetic research tools to alert them from any possible hereditary health dangers. Mr Saffo says these improvements would only be affordable to the super-rich. And because of this, he says, advancements may lead to a divide between the classes and eventually could lead to the super-rich evolving into a different species entirely, leaving his not-so-rich counterpart behind.” I don’t know about you, but I can definitely see that happening. Soon.

Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit. How can I say it better than Ben Casnocha? There’s actually a lot of wisdom here. “When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer, must give him something worthy of his gift to you.”

Livescribe. Have you seen this new digital pen? It records audio while you’re writing so you have full context of the moment. On Oprah.

Maybe Microsoft Got it Right after all. There was a lot of bad feeling around the net toward Microsoft after we learned they dumped one of their most loyal advocates in Don Dodge. But now, only eleven days later, Dodge is with Google proclaiming his new loyalties—to put it kindly—enthusiastically. Some of the 100+ post comments pull back the covers. “Sorry, but this comes off as bitter and I'm a bit surprised that you'd actually expect anyone to believe that after just one week, you're totally sold on the superiority of Google's products.” “Wow, this post is -10 to Class. I didn't know who you were at MS, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to know who you are at Google either.” “This instant loyalty switch is a little abhorring. If you were faking it at Microsoft, why should I believe you'll not fake it while you're at Google? You, my friend, have no credibility now, at least in my eyes. Ron, signing out.” And my favorite, “Hi, So now this Typepad Blog will go on...Blogger, right? ;-)”

Define “Conversion” in regards to SEO please. Glad you asked! I happen to be reading two different SEO books on my Nordic Track at the moment, so it’s on the brain. So many aspects and terms to get a handle on, like “Conversion.” Its description in this SEO White Hats post is helpful, “Conversional goals can be set up through your Analytics settings. Take time to think about what goals you want to track. These may be sales or web enquiries you are receiving, or specific pages in your website that you want to focus on. While visitor contacts by telephone or fax will not be reflected in goal conversions, you can set your contact page as being a goal to get a feel for how many people are looking for your contact details.”

Digital Comb Over. I skimmed this Jeremiah Owyang post on establishing trust, but it’s Everyman worthy only because of “Digital Comb Over.” I never heard that before. Excellent! It’s even better than “in the heady days of blogging.”

A Blog is not a Business Plan. 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media from CopyBlogger. Particularly liked under the topic of Giving Your Best Stuff Away, “Remember Sean d’Souza’s bikini concept. You can give 90% of it away, but there will always be people who will happily pay to see that last 10%.”

Future of Media: Events? A perspective on content creation that I never thought about but find intriguing. The author uses TED as a model event for future media creation, describing the benefits of an event approach in that 1) it’s live, happening at a specific time and place in the real world, 2) it’s generative, where something new gets created, 3) it’s publishable, 4) performative, in that it has an audience, and 5) serial. It doesn’t just happen once, but ongoing.

Samenosity 3.0. Someone doesn’t like the fact that LinkedIn is integrating with Twitter to display Tweets. Well-written argument in I just want LinkedIn to do One Thing. What was thought-provoking was the closing paragraph, “So now, LinkedIn lets everyone in to rush the general admission floor. Way to go. Anatomy of a site on the way towards Samenosity 3.0.”

Bookmark for the FLV embed, stay for the wedding dance. I originally read this post because I like the idea of using an Open Source FLV player instead of YouTube. The post uses the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video to demo the player. I had never seen it before, but apparently YouTube censored it. Why they would censor a feel-good, life-affirming video like this astounds me. Yeah, I think I’ll check out that Open Source FLV player.

Everyman Links for November 14, 2009

daveburke — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:15:21 -0800

WEEKEND EDITION. The lighter side of Everyman.

A different take on round trips to the server. I discovered Stacey Mulcahy this week, or @bitchwhocodes. I don’t know her, but she’s a bitch who codes apparently, who recently tweeted, “Roundtripping makes me as comfortable as bending over in front of an ass man. Just sayin.”

I take mine #000000. That’s the caption of this Social Signal Cartoon. Funny, unless you’ve been drowning in CSS work lately like I have, then it’s not funny at all. Still, you have to “hear” it to find the humor, and “#000000” doesn’t do it at all. On the other hand, “I take mine pound triple zero,” then it’s funny. Cause everyone knows to use 3 zeros to reduce CSS file size.

I missed the Singularity? Love this type of illustration, the one type of ad I’ll click on. Mentioning “Singularity” anywhere in the ad whether applicable or not is bonus.

Girl and bear. Someone tweeted “Literally LOL’d!” Maybe it was @bitchwhocodes. I’m literally LOL’ing again creating the link.

Ahhhh! or Huhhhhh? I don’t know whether to be dazzled by these iPhone and iPod Touch app paintings or saddened to think people spent so much time creating them. One thing for sure, most images in this compilation are completely beautiful.

The Great Burger Advertisement. This owners of this Waterbury, Vermont restaurant are geniuses, first in coming up with a 2-pound burger challenge, but to arrange for a local Vermont mag titled Seven Days to do a video on taking the challenge. Mmmm…2 pound burger with 4-ounces of bleu cheese, 6 slices of bacon and two eggs, served in a crusty boule. Marge, I’ll be back in an hour.

Not Everyone is a Lumberjack. In less than a second you’ll know exactly what happens in this 1:02 minute video. What’s astounding is the sanguine, supportive commentary of the woman doing the video recording describing the deed when it happens.

Kazoo Man Test. If you can hit the pause button while watching Metallica’s Enter Sandman being performed by the Kazoo band Mister Tim you’ve got much more self-discipline than me.

Some really bad food photos. I’ll have to agree with the author of the CHOW Food Media post titled WTF Safeway Blog? Safeway’s a top-tier grocery chain isn’t it? Yet they’ve got an official blog with photos taken by an employee named Kate. Almost without exception these are REALLY BAD photos. I bookmarked this link almost a month ago and went back to the Safeway blog tonight where Kate is still serving up equally unappetizing photos. Geez, people.

Sueetie Favorite Changes in YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.4

daveburke — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:18:54 -0800

Sueetie has supported two types of YetAnotherForum.NET favorite content tagging for some time, Favorite Topics and Favorite Messages (individual posts.) Revisiting Sueetie Forum content tagging was an opportunity to spend more time with the new and improved YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.4 source.

Below is how Topic tagging worked in 1.9.3, where it was added to the thread's "Options" menu. You can see it in action at Sueetie Forums. Works great, but I wanted to expose the function a bit more in the UI.

The Message Tagging button as it currently functions works perfectly fine, too, but it probably shouldn't be listed with the Author Contact buttons at the bottom of the post.

The coming Topic and Message Tagging button locations are shown below. Favorite Topic button circled in blue, Favorite Message button in red. Notice also the arrow to a new area on YAF messages which in the screenshot says, "2 users thanked testguy for this useful post" along with the names of those who thanked him. This is YAF 1.9.4's new "Thanks" feature, another community-enriching feature that people are going to love.

I'm going to focus on tagging message favorites, but before doing so I wanted to show you what happens when the "Tag Topic as Favorite" button is clicked. A popup message appears and the button text changes to "Untag as Favorite."

Back to Message Tagging and the new YAF 1.9.4 Thanks feature. One of the beauties of YetAnotherForum.NET is its interaction with users through dynamic client-side prompts, button text changes, and popup messages. To achieve that "YAF Standard of Interactive Excellence" I built the 1.9.3 Sueetie Tag Message function with AJAX calling a WCF Service. On the screenshot two or three images earlier you saw how the message "You tagged this message by bitterSTAR as a favorite!" is displayed below the button. That's cool, but for 1.9.4 I wanted to duplicate the logic of YAF's new Thanks function. I like it, both front end and back.

"Thanks" uses AjaxPro, a framework I haven't used before. AjaxPro essentially provides a wrapper from client-side JavaScript to .NET classes. By walking through the logic of Thanks and AjaxPro I was able to create a completely new Tag Message Favorite function while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

In a nutshell, the Forum Message Tag process displays a "Tag" button, or if already a favorite, the "Untag" button. The button uses javascript to call a Sueetie.Forums Control Class through AjaxPro that performs the tagging or tag removal. The alternative javascript function code is returned and replaces the DOM ID element's HTML. To be even more succinct, you click a button, something cool happens on the server, and the button flips text and function in an instant with no postback.

The technical highlights are numbered in the code images below. 1) AjaxPro registers the .NET class the javascript will be talking to, 2) the initial HTML javascript to populate the button ID element is created.

3 & 4) The javascript function in YAF's JavaScriptBlock.cs class that talks to the Sueetie.Forums ForumFavorite class with AjaxPro is created and registered.

5) The Sueetie.Forums method is given the [AjaxPro.AjaxMethod] attribute, the favorite is created, and the "Untag" supporting button text is returned to the javascript code via AjaxPro.

At this point the button HTML is updated, ready and waiting for the user to change his or her mind about the favorite message, where the process can be reversed, then reversed again. "This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!"

Recent Activity Accentuation in YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.4

daveburke — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:33:25 -0800

I told you about the recent YetAnotherForum.NET fun I've been having with the YAF 1.9.4 beta bits when I described a new ForumLink user control a few days ago. I also told you there were more new YetAnotherForum features coming, but that I wasn't going to say anything until the pages were online. I changed my mind. :)

I want to tell you about the expanded Recent Activity lists you'll be seeing when YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.4 makes its appearance on Sueetie.com. You'll be seeing this on Gummy Bear as well, of course, and perhaps on other YAF.NET sites, too. Item Four on the Sueetie Manifesto states, "All enhancements made to .NET Open Source applications on a Sueetie project are given back to the original application community." Meaning that the crack YAF.NET core team knows where to find me and that I am at their service.

I had a teleconference with a group of seriously cool guys in IT and marketing yesterday to discuss Sueetie and open source .NET community solutions. As I told them, "YetAnotherForum.NET is enterprise-ready and all of the pieces are there. I came along with Sueetie and said, 'Wow! This forum app's fantastic. And it does all this? And I have the source code to change it and make it do this, too?'" We also talked about the fruits of seeing YetAnotherForum.NET with a fresh perspective and appreciation for its capabilities that perhaps some may take for granted. The final word? Look for big things to come for YetAnotherForum.NET from many fronts.

Back to the Recent Activity mod. There was actually very little coding involved. Everything was already built-in. All of the security and display logic was done. I simply moved a few things around. Below are two screenshots, the first is YAF.NET as it currently appears on Sueetie.com, where the Recent Activity list is almost portrayed as an afterthought. The second is the Recent Activity display (on my development server) as the forum area main page, along with new Unanswered and Most Popular topic displays.

You'll also notice some reformatting. One of the areas of "new YAF.NET appreciation" is its rich community support features. When 1.9.4 is online you'll find that more Sueetie Community features are folded into YAF.NET services, features like Conversations and a new [very sweet] Dashboard that you'll be hearing more about later. With Community in mind, you'll notice that member avatars have been added to the display, along with information on who started the topic, when, and how many replies to the post. I should mention that the user data is a combination of Sueetie and YAF elements. The Sueetie User Avatar is used exclusively, for instance, and most references to the Display Name are to the SueetieUser object.

Rather than the Recent Activity control sharing the spotlight with Forum Categories as we saw in the first screenshot, Recent Activity is now it's own page. How that happens technically is that su_recent.ascx is added to YAF /pages folder. I'm prefixing Sueetie pages with "su_". YetAnotherForum link logic is easy to work with. Each "page" (all of which ultimately derive from the UserControl object, with a visit to ForumPage and SueetieBaseControl along the way) are referenced by their filename corresponding to a value in the YAF.Config.ForumPages enumerator class, and then called with the YafBuildLink.GetLink() method. Slick. I'll let the pictures tell the tale.

To populate the DataTable objects I took a quick detour to Sueetie.Forums which references the YetAnotherForum libraries, making the addition of custom data actions a snap.

Now that I broke my promise and started telling you about some of the YetAnotherForum.NET Cool in the works, look for more posts soon. Don't worry, I'll let you know when they're online.

Everyman Links for November 11, 2009

daveburke — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:45:29 -0800

Engagement, not eyeballs. A meaty TopRank post on measuring the ROI of Social Media. Interesting to consider that measuring the number of Facebook fans, followers and subscribers is old-school ROI. “Eyeballs aren’t a measurement of success anymore because those eyeballs likely avert your advertisement. Hits aren’t an objective of a website, inquiries and conversions are. The measurement of success isn’t the creation of a Facebook page or even the number of friends/followers the page has. Rather, success is in the engagement with a particular audience and how that engagement has the potential to impact a preset objective.”

The future of The Tweet. John Battelle contemplates the future of tweeting. “At the moment, ‘to tweet’ means something along the lines of ‘to broadcast a thought, in real time, using 140 characters of text or less.’ And while confining tweets to this creative box has been seminal to the service's early success, I'd argue that continuing to do so will most likely consign Twitter to the status of a verbal footnote in our ongoing cultural conversation. So allow me to suggest what I believe the definition of the verb 'to tweet' should become: 'To share a moment.' In other words, to truly scale, 'Tweet' - the verb-in-process-of-becoming, or, alternatively, the verb-that-could-have-been-but-became-instead-a-footnote-in-history - needs to be defined by more than 140 characters of text.” I think he’s right and that we’ll probably be fascinated with how ‘sharing the moment’ is realized from a technical perspective.

Not Everyone. Someone. Seth Godin says, “You don't want everyone. You want the right someone. Someone who cares about what you do. Someone who will make a contribution that matters. Someone who will spread the word.”

Inspiring Soda Shop guy. Seth Godin included a link to this video in his “Someone” post as an example of ‘looking for the right someone’ rather than everyone. I guess I can see that. Regardless, I loved the video of John Nese, owner of Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles who sells more than 500 varieties of soda pop—but not Pepsi.

SEO tips. Get it out there. Keywords, keywords everywhere. Another TopRank post on SEO for Public Relations, with good reminders for all of us. I liked “Number one thing to do is make sure your website is crawlable.” “Content that is likely already being created is low hanging fruit in terms of SEO.” And “when optimizing, don’t forget to include keywords in title tags, within content, navigation links, image alt text…” (Keywords everywhere, I’m thinking.)

Hover Love. I’ve had more hovering content in previous versions of dbvt.com and I want that experience again, darn it. I love The Hover. Big buttons and useful OnHover() content, that’s the ticket alright. Here’s a nice list of jQuery hovering affects.

YAPAF. Yet Another Post About Free. And I’ll read every last one of them. Good stuff here. “Nurture relationships with your readers and evangelists and your small army will continue to grow. They’ll spread the word for you, which attracts more evangelists, and means that you will have ever more people stopping by.” Liked, “People buy souvenirs, not products.” Under the subtitle of They’ll Pay for Access, “The people who love what you do want other ways to access your knowledge. Your fans will start by picking up every digital product you offer. From there, many will want more exclusive access, such as a consulting service, a mentoring or coaching program, or a monthly membership with exclusive access to you.”

Alltop = Twitter Lists? This Listorious home page sure reminds me of Alltop. I didn’t use Alltop until it supported RSS and I won’t use Twitter lists until more sophisticated clients like TweetDeck support them. Definitely some good stuff on Twitter Lists though. For the sake of economy, I think I’ll wait a bit for them.

Mark Cuban on Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch may or may not block Google from his content empire. I don’t see the wisdom in it myself, but what do I know. I do find wisdom in Mark Cuban’s perspective, “Twitter is surpassing Google as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news of all types. What’s more, Twitter poses no threat to any destination news site. 140 characters does not a story make.” “Having to search for and find news in search engines is so 2008.” ha-ha.

Books on PC? WTF? I wanted to buy The Art of Community since it came out a few months ago. But $34 bucks? I don’t think so. We find out this week that it’s now available in PDF. For free. I downloaded it as soon as I heard the news and began reading it, but not for very long. Who reads books on a PC? Oh that’s right, Ballmer does. I hate it when that guy says such stupid shit.

Nordic Track Book Club Review: Career Renegade

daveburke — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:52:56 -0800

I’ve been working out of my home office doing mostly freelance work for nearly 10 years, so I read books like Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love on occasion to help keep me on the path. The book is authored by Jonathan Fields who has some good things to say as you’ll see in the excerpts. The physical book has a cheap mass-market feel to it that took away from the experience, but still a book worth spending quality Nordic Track Ski Machine time with. 3-out-of-5 stars.

__________________

p.23 What activity would you do for free purely out of a sense of passion?

You just won the lottery. One condition: You have to work the rest of your life. You can use the lottery winnings to live on, but not to fund any professional endeavor. Now what would you do?

p.26 A few of the elements that define the State of Flow. Working toward a clear goal with a well-defined process. Lack of a sense of self-consciousness. Altered sense of time.

p.29 The best part of being an entrepreneur is not the control you gain over wealth, but the chance to hand-pick the people you surround yourself with and create an organizational culture that is completely in sync with who you are.

p.44 She leveraged her unique knowledge to create a second business opportunity by providing information that taught others how to do what she’d done. She’d exploited an education gap.

p.55 Even if you aren’t the source of information, there are still alternative ways to exploit gaps in the information that serves your passion.

p.56 As the pace of life and the volume of information grows, really good filtering and reporting becomes increasingly valuable.

p.67 Indirect monetization. One example would be to create a premium content area, charge a subscription and offer a higher level of content, interaction and direct access to your expertise through email, tele-seminars or webinars.

p.68 The List. When it comes to blogging your list is comprised of your readers and subscribers. You grow that list by delivering valuable content. And each time you do that it serves a secondary marketing purpose. It grows your list and makes the people on it more receptive to recommendations.

p.94 You can often find gaps in demand for the gear, stuff or “schwag” that supports the main activities of a passionate subculture.

p.108 Creating, growing and leading a community requires a lot of work. Passion is what will keep you going, especially in the early days. Plus, because people respond powerfully to energy and authenticity, possessing these qualities will be key to effectively rallying people to your shared cause.

p.110 Make it easy for people to do what you love. Are there any gaps in the way the service or product is being offered, sold or delivered? Are there people or places who would benefit from better or easier access to this or a similar service or product?

p.123 Find the major keywords that people use to search for more information about your interest, hobby or passion. Tools.seobook.com.

p.141 As an Adwords advertiser you get free access to their keyword search tools. Detailed information about search volume and suggested additional or alternative keywords, and competition for each keyword.

p.178 You may be able to aggregate the wisdom of others around a high-interest topic, throw in a bit of your own thoughts and ride the coattails of other peoples’ authority until you establish enough of your own.

p.215 They found information that claimed yoga helped you lose weight, but what was glaringly absent was actual research that proved the issue. I had found my opening. I needed to run the first-ever study on yoga and weight loss. I approached the head of the Human Performance Lab at Adelphia University.

p.231 If you want to be fearful, go ahead, be afraid. But not of failure. Instead be afraid of never trying, because that is the closest thing you have to a guaranteed downhill slide for the rest of your working life.

Adding Editors and Owners to BlogEngine.NET blogs in Sueetie

daveburke — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:47:49 -0800

The following is a copy of a new Sueetie Wiki page that shows Gummy Bear administrators how to add editors and owners to site blogs. Still at a formative phase of Sueetie evolution, creating blogs and their users remains a manual process. That will change, of course, but for the present documents like this one will outline the manual process as well as provide the specs for future automation. In other words, all that follows will be replaced by the click of a button, and hopefully soon.

Process Overview

BlogEngine.NET supports two types of users with permissions to create posts: Administrators and Editors. Administrators have full range while editors are somewhat limited in what they can do on a blog. BlogEngine.NET is configured to use ASPNET Membership and Roles so that it can be integrated with Sueetie Membership. Like other applications in Sueetie, BlogEngine.NET extends ASPNET Membership with additional user data. The simple user data model of BlogEngine.NET is shown below.

As you can see, there's not much to it, so the process of giving user "testguy2" permissions to post to the site will be pretty simple.

Let's cover the data logic first. The tables in order shown are be_users, be_userRoles and be_roles. New Sueetie users are entered in be_users when they register. Roles in be_roles are populated by the site setup script. New roles to support additional blogs will be added to this table as well. The roles in be_roles match Sueetie site ASPNET Roles and work hand-in-hand with BlogEngine.NET blog permissions. Members in the "BlogAdministrator" role have ownership permissions for all blogs on a Sueetie Community Site. Any additional roles--"SiteBlogEditor" as shown here--are blog-specific. We'll see how to assign users to blog-specific roles in a bit.

Making Testguy2 a Blog Administrator

Now let's make testguy2 a site-wide Blog Administrator by adding him to the BlogAdministrator Role in the Sueetie Control Panel. That is shown on this screenshot. Now we will return to the SQL tables where we have a single but important task to perform: add testguy2 to the be_userRoles table. We obtain the BlogEngine.NET UserID for testguy2 and the RoleID for the BlogAdministrator role. Our sql command would be

insert into be_userRoles (userid, roleid) values (14,1)

"14" is the userID for testguy2, "1" the roleID for the BlogAdministrator role.

That's it.

Making Testguy2 a Blog Editor

There will be times when you create blogs in a Sueetie Community and wish to provide authorship to select members but not give them full administrative permissions. This role assignment is currently ASPNET Role-based, a combination of ASPNET and BlogEngine.NET role assignment logic. To scale Sueetie sites to support hundreds or more blogs, using ASPNET Roles is something we will want to avoid. But for the moment we will describe assigning blog editor status using ASPNET Roles.

We'll use the main blog of a Sueetie Community Site and make Testguy2 a Blog Editor. We'll start by adding Testguy2 to the SiteBlogEditor role in the Control Panel. Next we will add testguy2 to the be_userRoles SQL table, but instead of using "1" for the roleID of the BlogAdministrator role, we'll use "2" for the SiteBlogEditor role.

insert into be_userRoles (userid, roleid) values (14,2)

Gummy Bear supports a SiteBlogEditor role out of the box. The initial design of Gummy Bear also hard-codes "SiteBlogEditor" in the following site blog files:

/blog/admin/web.config
/blog/admin/pages/web.config
/blog/admin/extension manager/web.config
/blog/themes/[theme]/site.master.cs

We will want to re-architect that to use an app.config property at the very least, or a non-ASPNET Roles approach as I mentioned earlier. The good news that adding both a site-wide blog administrator or a specific blog editor is nearly identical.

Add a User Profile in BlogEngine.NET

One final step is to add the user's profile in BlogEngine.NET (for both Blog Administrator and Blog Editor roles.) This avoids encountering a runtime error immediately after a post is entered by the new user. The Sueetie Follow User function at the bottom of the post looks for the author's BlogEngine.NET Display Name. User profiles are stored as .XML files in /[blog]/app_data/profiles and will not exist until added in BlogEngine.NET Administration. Here's a screenshot of the runtime error. (Or if HttpCompression is enabled in /[blog]/app_data/settings.xml, a screen full of gobbledygook.)

Use the BlogEngine.NET "Profiles" tab to add a profile for your Testguy2 user and you'll be good to go.

Areas on the shortlist for change in future releases

As I mentioned before, we want to get away from using ASPNET Roles for supporting Blog Editor roles. I really don't like the idea of requiring a role for each blog when anticipating 100's of blogs on a Sueetie Community Site.
A single Editor role is currently supported in the Gummy Bear release of Sueetie, SiteBlogEditor. That rolename is hard-coded in various locations in BlogEngine.NET config files. We want to move to an app.config value per blog or roll this into the non-ASPNET Role approach to the editor role.
While BlogEngine.NET uses user profile information in useful ways not enabled in Gummy Bear, we don't need to create a user profile simply to support the Sueetie Follow User function. The best approach to a BlogEngine.NET user profile is to create the /[blog]/app_data/profiles/[username].xml programmatically as part of the Blog Editor creation process when it is added to Sueetie Administrative area.

Wrapping up

We will wrap up with two conclusions, 1) adding a user to a Sueetie BlogEngine.NET blog is a simple manual process that will become automated, hopefully soon, and 2) Sueetie and BlogEngine.NET taste great together.