EP:006 – The Cotton Club Podcast

In this Episode…

My co-host Keith Crawford and I discussed a very popular topic this evening, and that’s the rollout of Google Buzz. In this episode we both give our first impressions of this new social network / aggregator based on our initial 3 or 4 days of testing.  Keith has been an authority on FriendFeed for some time now so given the similarities between what Google is trying to accomplish with Buzz and what FriendFeed already does, he provided some excellent commentary.

Also, anytime Keith and I get together for a show we always like to close out w/ a few iPhone application recommendations.  This week we discussed Siri™, Waze, SleepCycle, and My6Sense.  Keith also discussed Appolicious, which is a resource that no iPhone app junkie is going to want to live without.  I also mentioned a story I saw today on CNN where several companies like AT&T and Verizon are getting together to open a competing APP store, you can find that CNN story here…

Since Keith and I are both avid NASCAR fans we dedicated a few minutes at the end of our show to discussing Jamie McMurray’s victory at the Daytona 500.  Stay tuned for another post on this blog dedicated to the race.

Win Dinner for 2 on Cotton & Keith’s ‘Name That Podcast Promotion’!

marketplacelogo2 As some of you might already be aware, Keith and I are looking for a new name for our podcast that we host together.  We are looking for something unique and innovative that best describes our show.  If you are unfamiliar w/ our show, be sure to listen to this weeks episode by clicking on the play button below to get an idea.  We typically discuss social media, web services, and iPhone applications.  You can enter our ‘Name that Podcast’ promotion by leaving a comment below w/ your suggestions or by posting your suggestion on twitter to @tsudo and @cottonr using the #NameThatPodcast hash tag.  Keith and I will go over each entry and select the one that we like the best.  If we chose the name you suggested, you will win dinner for two at The Market Place grill here in Conway, Arkansas.  You can enter as many times as you like.

Listen to This Episode / Subscribe to The Cotton Club…

Click on the play button below to play this episode on your computer, or you may subscribe to The Cotton Club in iTunes or using Microsoft Zune. For step-by-step instructions for subscribing to this podcast, click here…

Quick Thoughts on Google Buzz

google-buzz Okay so when Google started pushing Google Profiles the other day I knew that they were laying the foundation for something social, and it wasn’t going to be Orkut on steroids, insert sarcastic giggle here.  I went ahead and setup my profile a few weeks ago, you can find my profile here…

Turns out my assumption was correct, Google launched Buzz this past week inside of Gmail, which I thought was a little odd of a way to launch at first, but after giving it some thought, it was probably a pretty stealth way to roll the product out.  I know a few people that didn’t even notice the link on the sidebar until I showed them, and one person totally missed it and didn’t know about Buzz until they hit the internal landing page that slapped them in the face once they had logged into their Gmail account.

Turns out Google had all of their ducks in a row in one regard prior to releasing Buzz onto the mainstream, they even have a wireless version of Buzz that they are promoting.  Setting up Buzz was pretty easy for the most part w/ one huge exception that might have only affected me, but it was annoying nonetheless…

The Problem Connecting Sites to My Buzz:

When I went in to setup my sites w/ my Google Buzz I first thought that surely they would just bring over the sites that were connected to my Google Profile page that I had created a while back, but that wasn’t the deal at all.  I had a list of sites that I could connect initially, like my Blogspot, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, Digg, and YouTube just to name a few.  I set these accounts up, although I haven’t used Blogger in forever.  Underneath these sites I had 5 or 6 more sites that I could “connect”, none of these sites were my blog?  I found this odd and sat here scratching my head for a few minutes trying to figure out how they got the list of “suggested sites” that were my options.  These websites were actually sites that I had built for clients, and I had them listed and verified inside of my Webmaster Tools account, where I record their sitemap links, etc. 

I thought to myself for a moment that if maybe there was some way to delete these suggested sites that I would eventually work my way through the list of 800+ sites that I have in Webmaster tools until I got to my blog and I could do it that way.  Well, that wouldn’t work because I wasn’t able to do anything but add a site, couldn’t remove it from the “suggested” group of sites.

I went into my Webmaster tools account and went ahead and verified my blog (surprised I hadn’t done this a long time ago).  Once I did the verification process I went back into Google Buzz and clicked on selected sites again and noticed that my site was now in the list so I added it that way. 

What a headache!  I think it would have been much more efficient if users Buzz feed was originated by the sites that are connected to their Google profiles.  I am sure that Google had a reason for doing this but for the life of me I can’t think of why they would do it that way.

Now, here’s another dilemma I encountered.  While I was able to add Friendfeed as one of my connected sites, I got to thinking, if I connect all of these other sites to my Buzz, why would I need FriendFeed connected to my Buzz?  Wouldn’t that be overlap and duplicate content in my feed?  I opted to disconnect my FriendFeed from Buzz.  I still haven’t been able to get my Delicious links connected to my Buzz either.  Kind of makes me wonder if Google even wants third parties involved w/ their Buzz stream…  Has anyone else encountered the same issues that I have?  What am I missing?? 

Do We Need Another Social Network? And from Google?? 

It’s no secret that Google has attempted to get into the social networking business before, their Orkut product never really got wings for some reason, and I honestly think Google has known this for a while, which is why they never gave it a big push.  If you are unfamiliar w/ Orkut, here’s my profile you can checkout…

While Google Buzz is being labeled a Social Network, I don’t really see it as a “social network” like Facebook or Twitter.  In fact, I see it being more of an aggregator, sort of like what FriendFeed is.  I think eventually Google wants to be the place where you can plug in all of our “social properties” and content feeds.  If I was Google, that’s exactly the direction I would be looking as well, but I think they are going to have to package it a lot differently.

One component of Google Buzz that I did notice was that you can add friends more or less by “Following” people.  This component gives it the “social networkish-ness” but that’s honestly about all I have seen in that regard.  Friends can comment on other friends posts, etc.  I guess it’s sort of like Facebook w/out all of the Farmtown…

In Conclusion…

I don’t want to sound like I am down on Google Buzz, because as I mentioned earlier, I think that they have the right idea.  I just found the initial setup phase of joining to be somewhat frustrating and still don’t have my account setup w/ all of the sites that I want to connect but will live with things the way they are for now.

The bottom line, I think eventually if Google is persistent, they can grow Buzz into something cool that will rob other networks like Facebook and Twitter of face time, but it’s going to take some work.  I am advising my clients if they have the time to get their profiles setup and to start adding their sites to Buzz but not pushing it as something they need to do urgently…

Stay Tuned…

I think that the next edition of The Cotton Club might include some discussion regarding Google Buzz so be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss it.

In case you are unfamiliar w/ Google Buzz, here’s some info I found on the Google Blog:

We’ve blogged before about our thoughts on the social web, steps we’ve taken to add social features to our products, and efforts like OpenSocial that propose common tools for building social apps. With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you’re up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today’s world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it’s increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations.

Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google’s experience in organizing information can help solve. We’ve recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

We’re rolling out Buzz to all Gmail accounts over the next few days, so if you don’t see it in your account yet, check back soon. We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.
On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more info about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.

We’ve relied on other services’ openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We’re building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.
We really hope you enjoy the experiences we’ve built within Gmail and for mobile phones. If you want to learn more, visit buzz.google.com. We look forward to continuing to evolve and improve Google Buzz based on your feedback.

If you are already using Google Buzz, I would love to hear your comments about the product. 

I have only had 48hrs with the product and I will admit that there might be a lot about the product that I am totally missing.

EP:001 – The Cotton Club Podcast

I finally got around to recording my first installment of The Cotton Club Podcast this evening.  My guest co-host for the show this evening was Keith Crawford, you may know him as @tsudo on Twitter. This initial podcast was just a test run to see how things work so that when Keith and I get ready to launch another sideline project called The Social Radar in the very near future we can hit the ground running.

Please keep in mind that this is my first go at podcasting, the quality and content should get better over time.  Despite the fact that I have invested in an awesome setup from software to microphones, the audio of me talking didn’t turn out very well at all.  You can hear Keith great, and that’s probably a good thing since he is a lot cooler to listen to. :-)

The topics we covered on Episode 001 of The Cotton Club were as follows:

Thanks for tuning into my first show, I promise it’s going to get better over time, so please bear with me.  If you want to subscribe to The Cotton Club Podcast, you can do so on iTunes.

Production Note: The audio at the beginning of the recording isn’t very loud, a few minutes into the recording I finally managed to get it adjusted to where you could hear me a little bit better.  Please bear w/ me, this is a work in progress.

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed

A short time ago I blogged about a talk that Keith Crawford did at one of our Central Arkansas Refresh meetings on FriendFeed. You can find that blog post here.  Since that presentation, I have had a much greater appreciation for FriendFeed and what all it does.

Well, today I caught wind that Facebook had acquired FriendFeed for an undisclosed amount of money.  This is a huge thing in my opinion.  Acquiring FriendFeed is probably one of the smartest things that Facebook could have done.  FriendFeed is an awesome social aggregator and that’s something that I think Facebook was needing.  I hope that Facebook can make the most of their purchase and use FriendFeed in a way that won’t alienate it’s users by making it too Facebook-ish. 

Here’s a post that I found on Facebook’s blog about the acquisition:

PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 10, 2009 — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founders. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use."

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

About Facebook

Founded in February 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a privately held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.

Facebook

Keith Crawford’s Presentation on Friendfeed

For those of you who were unable to attend last nights Central Arkansas Refresh meeting due to other commitments, or just because you didn’t want to get out in the the hailstorm, here’s the video of Keith Crawford’s presentation on Friendfeed.  Special thanks to Rob McBryde for handling the video production and posting it to Vimeo. You can also view Keith’s presentation files on Prezi.com, http://prezi.com/107051/view/.  He also has posted some other related files to Friendfeed if you are interested.

I can’t speak for the group but I certainly know that I picked up a lot last night from Keith’s presentation that I didn’t realize Friendfeed was doing behind the scenes.  Today I probably received a half dozen or so follow notifications from others in the group that were at the meeting, so I know that I wasn’t the only one that has been neglecting Friendfeed all this time.

Enjoy the video, and be sure not to miss the next #RefreshCA meeting on July 28, 2009.

Presenting Friendfeed (Video) | KnowtheNetwork.com

Central Arkansas Refresh Meeting – Tuesday, June 30th

I wanted to remind everyone that our Central Arkansas Refresh Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 30th from 6pm – whenever.  We are meeting again this month at The Flying Saucer located at 323 President Clinton Avenue, see map below.  In addition to some great networking we will also have t-shirts, software licenses, templates, and other swag from our sponsors to giveaway…

This month Keith Crawford aka @tsudo will be our guest speaker.  Keith will be doing a presentation about FriendFeed.  I have seen a sneak preview of his presentation already and it’s very cool, not to mention informative.  Here’s a little bit of what you can expect:

Friendfeed is simply the most advanced content sharing and conversation platform you’ve ever encountered. Find out why you should be a using Friendfeed and learn the tools to become a power user overnight. Increase your productivity and your accelerate your community.  (visit Keith’s Blog)

If you haven’t already joined our Central Arkansas Refresh / Facebook Group, we invite you to do so, also be sure to follow us on Twitter, @refreshca.  If you are in our Central Arkansas Refresh / Facebook Group you can RSVP via event notification, if you would like to RSVP via Twitter, click here
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Central Arkansas Refresh Meeting

Just a heads up, the Central Arkansas Refresh Group is going to have our second meeting this next week (Tuesday, March 31) at the Starbucks located at 9401 N. Rodney Parham Rd. in Little Rock.  The start time is 6:00pm and we expect the meetup to last about 2 hours but with all of the networking that went on last week it’s hard to say what time we all need to tell our families that we will be home.  Also, if you haven’t already, please RSVP on the Facebook Event page so we can kind of get an idea for headcount…

Our Facebook group has grown to over 55 members now and continues to grow each week.  The group is open to everyone interested, our goal is to have a diverse crowd, here’s a little bit more from our website about the group: (compliments of David Kinkade, who is also promoting the group on his blog)

The Central Arkansas Refresh Group consists of technically minded professionals who make their living on the web — bloggers, software developers, graphic artists, social networking enthusiasts, photographers, videographers, marketing and media gurus, and website owners.

Centered in Little Rock, the Central Arkansas Refresh group launched in February 2009 to serve as a hub for education, networking and the sharing of ideas among like-minded web professionals.

The group is organized around the principles of the Refresh movement:

The Refresh Manifesto

  • Let’s Gather Great Minds
  • Let’s Share All Of Our Knowledge
  • Let’s All Grow And Learn
  • Let’s Promote Local Talent
  • Let’s Be More Than We Think Can Be
  • Let’s Make Our Cities Better

Membership is open to all interested web professionals, programmers and new media enthusiasts. Visit our Facebook page now to get involved.

Interested in being a corporate sponsor for the Central Arkansas Refresh Group? Visit our sponsors page for more information.

Facebook | Refresh Group Meeting