Yay me! Beer and Blog Goodness in St. Johns!

I'm very happy to report that tonight my favorite networking event Beer and Blog will be held in my beloved St. Johns neighborhood at the Leisure Public House! I wrote a little thingy for their website in which I provide the Top 5 Reasons You Should Haul Your Carcass to St. Johns, for those of you who need reasons to meet me in person. (I also include in that post a badly written sentence in reason number three. It is atrocious. LOOK AWAY.)

Please RSVP on upcoming.org and join us tonight, won't you? I'd love to see you there to apologize in person for that terrible aforementioned wording. ;)

Let's go steady!

Help Wanted: Needy Enabler

The best and worst thing about the Internet is the information overload. Every day I add to links to my Google Docs list of web sites that I want to spend more time looking at...some day. There are two categories of links I save: 1) sources of information for stories I'm researching, and 2) hawt applications I don't have time to play with.

This morning I was perusing my short story research list of web sites relating to roller skating culture in the 1950's-1970's. I gazed longingly at my hawt apps linkies and suddenly thought, "If only I had a client (or 10) with projects that needed me to know how to used these amazing utilities." What a perfect excuse to rearrange my priorities and justify hour after glorious hour learning the intricacies of these apps! I'm not talking about kinda knowing them, or getting the gist of it. I'm already there. I'm dreaming about full-on expert knowledge.

Take a look at some of the applications I'm buzzing over, broken down into RSS and productivity apps and SaaS widget (SMOD) creators.

RSS and productivity apps

http://www.aiderss.com/
Calling itself "an intelligent assistant that saves time and keeps you on top of the latest news," AideRSS identifies feeds by their web popularity, customized by topics specified. It lets you make widgets (aka SMODs...read why I call 'em that here) to output the feed based on your criteria. The purpose is to lessen the information overload by getting you the stuff that is most likely to make you shudder with ecstasy. This is a very good way of getting you relevant and timely information to scoop even the most eagle-eyed feed sifter.

http://www.netvibes.com
Netvibes works like iGoogle on steroids. Using tabbed home page functionality (which you can share with the public) you can put widgets, whole websites, email inboxes, instant messenger apps, link collections and lots more, all in one place. From the little time I've had to play with it, it seems to be a fairly easy way to monitor everything I hold near and dear and to catch new stuff I don't know about yet. Oh, goody! More links to add to my linkie list!

http://www.dapper.net/
This tasty app creates RSS feeds for web sites that don't have subscription functionality already. It provides the means to make widgets, Google gadgets, APIs and Netvibes modules with these feeds. In the Dapp Factory you simply type a URL into a box and click a radio button next to several output options, for example Dapp XML, iCalendar, RSS feed, or Netvibes module. There are several steps, and each step has its own demo for hand holding.

http://pipes.yahoo.com
Oh, boy. This app is one I could do so much with, if only I had the chance. It allows for the manipulation of feeds to extract specific data (such as geo codes) and then mashing them into one feed. It's a drag-and-drop app, which me lurves, and visually connects all the adding and subtracting of the data in feeds with an animated wiggly pipe. Heaven!

http://yuuguu.com/
I'm the one in my circle of (flesh) friends that gets these kind of phone calls: "Hey, Michelle! Um. I'm working in Microsoft Word and there's this doo-hickey on the right side of my document that won't go away. And, when I try to print I get a message asking me to download something. WTF? Call me?" Sigh. Yuuguu is a screen sharing app that lets users see each others screens, without security issues. It integrates conference calling and instant messaging and is PC, Mac and Linux compatible. Meow!

http://screensteps.com/
With the tag line "The documentation tool for people who don't want to do documentation" you can guess why this app is appealing. Personally, I lurve beautifully simplistic technical writing and how-to-manuals, but it's an art to do it right and can be tedious to put all the elements together. Photos and copy traditionally come from different applications (which often fight each other) and when you're doing 15 tutorials at once, well..things can get hairy. ScreenSteps promises to be an efficient, quick way of creating tutorials and guides .Also, there's tons of documentation on how to use the app on the web site. Documentation made, I'm sure, with ScreenSteps.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) SMOD creators
Please, please, please, will someone hire me to make them a widget? Of all the social apps out there, SMODs are hands down my favorite. Here are the most interesting I've found so far:

http://sproutbuilder.com/
SproutBuild (in beta) is the one I've spent the most time playing with. (You can see the one I built on my music/movies/books blog.) Its interface reminds me of Flash, and it has some glitches, but MAN IS IT SEXY. It handles both imported or linked media, and uses familiar convention from page layout applications (such as master pages and component panels). At first glance it seems far more customizable than some SMOD apps.

http://www.widgetbox.com
Widgetbox takes your Flash movies, HTML code, web site URLs, RSS feeds or Google gadget and turns it into a SMOD. You can export your shiney new SMOD directly to Facebook and track its viral spread.

http://www.kickapps.com/
This app has a lot of the same bells and whistles as SproutBuilder, but with disco lights, a hosted bar and free cab rides home for your drunk ass. There is of a lot of documentation on how to get your beloved SMOD viral in your budding social community. The SMOD is also highly customizable, allowing you to mess with the HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It's also compatible with CMS apps like Drupal and Joomla. (Note to self: Become an expert in Drupal and Joomla.)

So, whatdoya say? Make a mediaChick happy? Hire me to crunch some feeds, track trends, spy on your competitors, or write stuff that your readers want to read. Enable my lust for hawt apps I don't have time to play with!

Let's go steady!

Is Spinning Toothpaste the Future?

I was shopping for food (I hate shopping for food) and I saw this 3-D kiosk at the Fred Meyer in my beloved St. Johns neighborhood. First I stared at it as it projected logos and products and produce at me. Then I pushed on the buttons on the panel and accepted a coupon for Fancy Cat and a contest entry form for free gas for a year. (I found it amusing that the entry form had to be mailed in. You know, as in snail mail.)

I'm so curious about this Holo™ 3D kiosk technology sitting in the lobby of my chain grocery. What brings such technology to my sleepy neck of the woods? What does it say about me and my neighbors? I also wonder why this kiosk isn't gathering any data (that I can see) besides clicks. It feels like a missed opportunity.

After I finally escaped to the safety of home (and $104 lighter) I sat down and chatted online with @lollyrae:

me: there's a cool three-d ad kiosk at the st john freddies
h: ads
no
me: Its freaking 3d spinning fruit!
Its awesome!
it spits out coupons
and contest apps that you have to MAIL in
perfect for the st johns blog, no?
h: yes
me: I got a picture of a spinning tube of toothpaste
h: i want to see some hair products flying out of their containers
and some instructional guides for the tampon-novice
me: Hm, perhaps I shall put that renumeration in the copy?
h: maybe so!!
I would be excited to stand there and feel bodily threatened by flying produce as well

She is *not* kidding. She'd turn it into performance art and invite all her Portland Cacophony Society friends. Look for a St. Johns neighborhood post soon. And by soon, I of course mean "eventually".

Let's go steady!

Please Stop Calling It a Widget

Mike Berkley of SplashCast Media recently wrote about the bad naming convention of calling of syndicated direct marketing applications like the SplashCast player a "widget," and how that practice inadvertently contributes to the "old skool media" syndication's weary-eyed view of "new skool media" syndication technology.

At the core of the issue is the silliness of the word itself, which depreciates the application's simple yet powerful ability to let fans spread a brand's message faster than you can say "viral marketing". To me the word "widget" conjures an image of small peoples who practice the Wiccan religion, not fantastically efficient social media technology. We might as well call them "gizmos". So, how shall we refer to them instead? Direct Media Applications? Brand Ambassador Tools? Syndicated Media Appliances? Even the word "gadgets" discredits their value.

This morning I found yourminis.com, which provides customizable Syndicated Media Modules (Ooo! I like that one!). With it, in about 60 seconds of dragging and dropping and without even creating an account, I made myself a syndication-enabled module of my Flickr photos. I went ahead and created an account anyway, however, to keep track of the data my Syndicated Module (another good one!) collects, such as views and how many times the code was copied.

I have high expectations for media syndication technology, and certainly consider myself to be a Social Media Module Ambassador. Now, if only people would stop calling it a widget!

Let's go steady!