Jake Ludington’s Digital Lifestyle

If you think the new Twitter Lists feature was designed to help you organize the people you follow, you would be dead wrong. On the surface Twitter Lists help you organize tweets into something sensible, but there’s something more in those lists. What Twitter lists really do is provide Twitter with semantic relationships between Twitter accounts, while also establishing the real authority figures on Twitter.

Twitter can already see you are interested in the people you follow. You could also draw the conclusion that Twitter can see you are interested in people who follow you. In a reciprocal follow relationship, there’s an implied stronger bond between two tweeters. That reciprocity is devalued by all of the marketing morons intent on building follower numbers. None of who you follow vs. who follows you data gives Twitter the ability to develop semantics around user accounts.

Twitter Lists create those semantics. Each time 2 people appear on a list together, Twitter can begin to group those two people into buckets. The more lists any two people appear on, the more likely they are to be closely linked in some way. So if Robert Scoble and I appear on a list called Tech Bloggers, a list called Tech Influencers, and also appear on a third list called Geeks with Kids, there’s obviously some similarity between the two of us.

Lists also establish authority. Just like multiple links from reliable sites translate to greater relevance in search, the more people who put someone on a list, the more likely that person is to be relevant. While you could probably discount everyone who adds Shaq to a Twitter list as being a fanboy, anyone who adds my friend Kevin O’Keefe to a list probably considers him relevant to what they are doing online.

The net result of this should be a Twitter search with more relevant results. In addition to showing the latest tweets on a topic, Twitter search should be able to evaluate that certain people are better able to provide data on Seattle (where I live), or Tech (what I’m passionate about) than others. And if I’m signed in to Twitter, this should be further enhanced by an algorithm that provides results based on how other Twitter accounts relate to mine.

Who this ultimately helps is Twitter partners who get the “fire hose” live stream of data. If Bing and Google can use semantic relationships and list affinity to evaluate the relevance of tweets, there’s more benefit for them in aggregating your data. So the question becomes: which lists are you on?

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I’m an information junkie. Put engaging writing in front of me and I’m distracted for hours. Reading tech blogs is a no-brainer for me, but I tend to read about tech stuff while ignoring the rest of the universe of great material. Thanks to some current work with Lexblog, I find myself reading a ton of law blogs. There’s a whole world of great law blog content out there that should be making all of us smarter.

For instance, via the Florida Asset Protection blog, I learned that if I ever need to file bankruptcy or protect assets from a creditor, I hope I’m a Florida resident. I also learned that it might be easier to become a Florida resident for purposes of protecting your assets than it is to become a resident to attend college, but that’s another story.

I’ve tweeted this before, but I’m loving Food Safety News. Who doesn’t want a daily dose of all the food (information) that could kill you? Although Bill Marler’s wry criticisms of the state of the food industry on his Marler Blog cut to the heart of the matter in a style that resonates better with me.

Another great law blogging personality is Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice. I admittedly don’t get everything Scott talks about because I am not a lawyer (IANAL), but I like his writing style and I learn something every time I read his blog.

And because I can’t escape tech, the Nanotechnology Law Report is a fascinating read on the edge of the future where the law meets things that have barely crossed over from the realm of science fiction.

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I found an old post I wrote back in 2004 stating that I’d never buy a device that was just for ebooks. My rationale at the time was that Pocket PC devices and others like them had gotten to the point where the screens were great for reading. Now I tell everyone I know why I love the Amazon Kindle. If E-ink had existed in 2004, I think my opinion then might have been different. At the time, everyone was touting screens that were special purpose LCD, which made no sense then and still makes no sense now. E-ink is easier on the eyes because unlike reading an LCD screen, you’re not staring into a light bulb while you read.

I find I’m reading more now that I have a Kindle because its more convenient than carrying a book around. For many types of information, like the morning newspaper, I like the format better because the text I want is unencumbered by all the ads. Not everything works on the Kindle. I don’t like reading magazines on a Kindle even though the content is largely the same. The difference is magazines have specialized in combining imagery with their text content to create something that’s better than the printed word alone. On a Kindle, the images are either gone or muted by the limitation of a monochromatic display. I don’t like these same magazines on the Web because they’ve gone to great lengths to make advertising more important than the content, so I find myself continuing to subscribe to several of the print editions.

If I were to gaze into a crystal ball and look for the device I’d really want to read this stuff on, I think my 2004 desire holds up, because I really want a multi-function tool like an iPhone or my T-Mobile G1, with all the applications that includes, plus the ability to get an E-ink experience when I simply want to read. Will we see that anytime soon? Hard to say. In the meantime, the number of books I purchased for Kindle in 2009 is close to double my book purchases for the 2 previous years. How about you? Are your reading habits changing because of technology? If so, how?

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Exporting data from Wordpress to take it almost anywhere else is a crapshoot as to how well the data will migrate. The extensible nature of Wordpress via plugins means you get an unknown assortment of data coming along with the base contents of your post, tags, and comments. If you didn’t delete spam comments before your export, you get to bring your spam with you. The awesome Wordpress revision feature hobbles your export file with every revision and autosave you ever made. Depending on where you choose to move your data (I know, who would ever leave Wordpress, right?) you may be stuck cleaning the Export file in order to get your content properly installed anywhere else. I’ve even had the misfortune of having another Wordpress install barf on content importing because a plugin from the old install wasn’t on the new install, which meant that the new WP install didn’t know what to do with some improperly handled metadata.

Instead of just giving me a dump of all data when I click the Export tab, WordPress should walk through a little wizard asking me what I want to keep. Let me choose to leave spam and revisions behind. Let me choose to leave all comments behind (without deleting them from the database). Maybe my tagging skills we lousy in a past life and I want to make a fresh start, so give me the option to exclude tags. These are all easy features to include. Maybe that’s asking for too much usability out of a free solution, but if it’s really the ultimate content management solution (it’s not), WordPress should be making it easier to work with data.

I know I’m going to hear that I should use plugins or develop these features myself. After all, WordPress is infinitely extensible. There is a plugin to delete revisions from WordPress. I don’t want to need a plugin to get clean data out, because I have no way of knowing whether that plugin will actually be stable. This is core functionality that would make Wordpress more useful to me and anyone else who ever moves their data around. I just wish they would fix it!

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We’ve all been on the receiving end of an employee following company policy at one time or another. For me, the instance that sticks out as most obvious to me was an occasion when I went to cash a check at the bank I visited every week, only to discover I’d left my driver’s license back at the office. The teller recognized me, but because it was bank policy not to cash a check without proper identification, I was out of luck. My lunch hour schedule prevented me from having time to go back and get my ID. Sure it was my fault for not having my ID with me, but I was no stranger to the people who worked at the bank. I was left with a bad feeling that I remember many years later.

Falling into the company policy trap can be even worse for small companies, because the the stakes are much higher. To use a hypothetical company as an example, lets say I own a video hosting service that competes with YouTube. My service charges a monthly subscription fee for a bunch of advanced features you can’t get from YouTube. Because of some exclusive distribution partnerships we worked out, our service also requires you to launch your video channel with at least 5 video segments. The 5 video policy was put in place because our distribution partners are concerned that too many video publishers launch with one video, realize it’s too much work, and abandon posting videos, which makes their network look bad. Your channel won’t be visible to the world until you have 5 video segments uploaded, although we will do the necessary configuration so that you’re live as soon as the 5 videos are ready to go.

To continue with my hypothetical example, lets say you are an artist who uses video as your medium. For your current project, you want to shoot a three minute video at exactly the same location, starting at the exact same time every day for an entire year. You want your video channel to go live starting on January 1 and continue throughout the year. Part of the experience of your project is that you need people to view videos from day 1. You can’t launch with the 5 videos I require, because our requirements do not match your vision. While we clearly spell out the requirements to everyone who joins our service, you contact customer support and request that we make your video channel live on January 1 with only 1 video.

There are two ways my video company could proceed. Customer support could respond that our policy is to require 5 videos and we refuse to make an exception. As a result you might take your business elsewhere and tell other artists that we aren’t a viable option for creative people. The other thing we could do is engage with you more directly, clarify what our concerns are about why we require 5 videos, and recognize that your goals are sound even though they don’t match up with our policy. Choosing the later course probably means you’re going to tell more people what a great service our company offers because we empowered you to succeed with your vision./p pBy being flexible in company policy when it makes sense, you can build a stronger company with rabidly loyal customers. In the hypothetical example I use, the 5 video policy exists to create a better experience for distribution partnerships, however, in the case of your art project, our company can have reasonable confidence that you will follow through because you have a track record for doing interesting art projects.

What about situations where an exception is made and the customer fails to live up to their end? There’s always that risk, but every business decision involves some risk, it’s a matter of assessing which ones will get the company closer to its goals.

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pSocial Media school is almost in session. If you’re still trying to get your head around how to use Twitter, want to know why you need to blog, need to attract high quality employees to your company or simply want to know how to connect the dots with local social media opportunities, you should join me at the Social Media 101 conference on September 25, 2009 at the Executive Briefing Center on Microsoft’s Redmond Campus./p pI’m specifically speaking on a panel about blogging and there’s also a ton of great information on how to use Twitter for your business, along with using social media to attract talented people to your company. The event starts at Noon, so you can even get some work done in the morning before sliding out of the office for an afternoon of social media education. See the full a href=”http://eastsidebusinesstechnology.com/2009/08/17/agenda/”Social Media 101 agenda/a for more details. Tickets are reasonably priced at $60 for an afternoon of social media education – a href=”http://sm101.eventbrite.com/”register now/a./p

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The fog was thick for this morning’s 10:35am sailing of the Wenatchee from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. From my usual spot in the galley area, I occasionally glanced up from my Kindle to look out the window, only to be greeted with a thick gray cloud in my field of vision. As we got near shore on the Seattle side, I suddenly saw Ivar’s zipping past at a speed considerably faster than what I’d normally expect for the morning commute. The ferry gave 5 short blasts on the horn to indicate imminent collision, followed by a loud bang and a jolt to the ferry. Down the aisle someone shouted for a doctor on board.

I went out on the front of the ferry to see what happened. All things considered, the damage looks minor, as you can see in the pictures here. As far as I can tell only one woman was injured and the resulting injuries appeared to be minor.

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Near the end of 2005 I finally took the initiative to learn to speak Mandarin, which is the official Chinese dialect spoken in China, as well as learn to read and write Chinese characters. I opted to hire a tutor in Seattle who could help me in this pursuit. In September 2006, I went to China for 2 weeks, where I found out that my Chinese was good enough to get around, but not good enough to get by. In the summer of 2007, I went to China for 6 weeks, studying Chinese 4 hours a day 5 days a week. By the end of that trip, I spoke Chinese better than 95% of people in the United States (maybe more), but I still needed work. Another month or more in China would have made a dramatic difference in my ability to speak Chinese, but that wasn’t in the cards.

Since I don’t have regular access to speak to people in Chinese, I’m constantly looking for tools to keep my Chinese from going stale in my mind. Most recently I ran across the Rhythmic Mandarin series in iTunes. Most of what’s there is already part of my vocabulary, but I can’t help thinking this would be an ideal solution for anyone who wants to ramp up to learning to speak Mandarin quickly because it uses a fairly unique approach to language learning, based on The Third Ear by Chris Lonsdale.

Rhythmic Mandarin is an amazingly catchy method for language learning, combining music and spoken phrases into context that makes it easy to learn. I think the key for me that sets Rhythmic Mandarin apart from other language learning audio tools I’ve seen is that they effectively chunk phrases in ways you would expect to hear them in conversation, rather than trying to focus entirely on whole sentences or just bombarding you with vocabulary.

I wish I had found this years ago, because it would have made my Chinese language learning much easier. You can order CD versions at Amazon.com, but I recommend you download Rhythmic Mandarin as MP3 files, because you can easily take them with you anywhere. The MP3 files are ready for your iPod, Zune or any other player. The methodology strips away the confusion of learning a language and makes it seem quite simple.

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I want great journalism to stick around. I don’t care whether big news outlets like New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal are the source of that journalism or something new and better. What I do know is that Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira is asking the wrong questions about how to news outlets compete with the likes of Gawker and Huffington Post in the online space.

In a piece titled either How Gawker Ripped Off My Newspaper Story or the Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition), Ian Shapira outlines the effort he put into writing a story about business coach Anne Loehr and the subsequent “theft” by Gawker in a blog post.

The major complaint Shapira has against Gawker is that they reference too much of his story in the Gawker article. I tend to agree with the issue of quantity, but find the solution (requiring Gawker (or anyone) to pay to reference more than a certain amount of a story to be a solution that only lines the pockets of lawyers who do the prosecution on violators. The reason Gawker works is because they neatly summarize things people few people want to spend their full attention on. Most people don’t have time for the full in-depth story. We want quick news hits that allow us to comment and move on to the next thing. Better Solution: Washington Post should build a better Gawker. WP could be giving people the full Shapira article and simultaneously be running their own Gawker competitor, extracting the best parts of an article with a link over to the full deal. Shapira could even be the blogger that summarizes his own article in that context, possiblly including a juicy tidbit or two that didn’t make the editor’s cut.

Overquoting on Gawker’s part resulted in too much of Shapira’s followup dedicated to a discussion of revised copyright laws, which is a misguided solution to the problem. Instead of focusing on how to crack down on the length of quoting, Mr. Shapira ought to be asking what Washington Post and others big news outlets can do to attract more of the audience that opts to start their news day at a Gawker or Huffington Post type outlet. As the guy who covers the Millennial generation for WP, Shapira might even be the guy who can find the solution to competing against Gawker.

A good starting point would be a comparison of the barriers to reading created by Gawker vs. the barriers to reading created by the Washington Post. In the case of Gawker, the Web reader has no barriers, you just hit their page and start reading. With the Washington Post, at various points in navigating their site, reading is interrupted to attempt forced registration. This interruption in reading implies that the primary business of the Washington Post is to collect user accounts, not display ads on as many pages as possible. If the Washington Post can’t give up the nag completely, then at the very least they should allow me to skip it and keep reading or rely on registering people when they comment (which is what Gawker does).

Another issue that leaps out at me is figuring out how newsrooms can make better use of technological advances. Example one: Shapira complains about an abridged biography that took him 3,000 words of note to acquire. While I’m sure some fact checking is in order, I got the same info reading the about page on AnneLoehr.com. A little advance research on the Web can save hours invested in gathering a story. Example two: Shapira reports spending four hours transcribing Anne Loehr’s presentation he attended as part of his research gathering. One word here: Outsource! When I need a transcription, I send my audio to CastingWords.com or something similar because I don’t have the time to transcribe. If my little one-person operation can afford that, surely Washington Post could be getting a discounted rate on transcriptions in bulk. The Post reporters could be spending that extra time engaging with readers in social media outlets or creating the blog summaries of their articles.

Another complaint in the article about Gawker is the failure of referring links from site’s like Gawker to prevent layoffs and contraction. That’s not Gawker’s fault. Just like classified advertising used to be a major source of revenue that supported journalism at newspapers, the new model needs a new sugar daddy. In my 5 things to drive online newspaper revenue I propose that newspapers need to get serious about being the source for online travel information about their geographic locale. When I search online for travel info, the local paper is never the best source of information, despite travel being one of the best paying online ad categories.

To summarize: If WP wants to beat Gawker, they need to:
1) Consider readers first by reducing nag screens
2) Embrace technology to create a more agile staff
3) Adopt an aggressive effort in travel to drive online revenue

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Every November my mom’s parents went to Arizona to escape the cold Iowa winters. We went and visited a couple of times, but the year that sticks out in my mind is the one where we went during Major League Baseball spring training the year after Mark McGwire was named AL Rookie of the Year. My brother was an Oakland A’s fan, so we went to see two then rising stars, McGwire and his “Bash Brother” Jose Canseco. Paul and I were hopeful of getting autographs from players after the game, because the spring training atmosphere tends to be more laid back, with far fewer people swarming players for autographs than during the regular season.

During the game we sat next to the on-field clubhouse entrance for the Oakland A’s, which meant we could see all the players walking past in between batting practice and the actual game. When Mark McGwire came through we asked him for his autograph and he stopped and graciously autographed baseball cards for my brother and I, along with a few other kids. We got lucky with the timing, because it was a moment when it wasn’t interrupting anything to do with the game.

After the game, someone suggested we wait at a specific point where the players come out from the locker room if we wanted to catch Jose Canseco. We waited around for awhile and there were few other people around. His then-girlfriend Esther Haddad, a former Miss Miami who later became his first ex-wife, showed up in his shiny red sports car to pick him up. As Jose came out we politely asked for his autograph. He blew us off and climbed in the driver’s seat of his car. Miss Haddad generously offered her autograph as a consolation, I think realizing that her boyfriend was being a jerk. I had plenty of experience getting autographs from players prior to this, so I realize there are times when players simply don’t have time, but that particular instance leaves me bitter.

I bring this up because once again Jose Canseco finds himself in the news as the subject matter expert on PED use in baseball. Canseco recently told ESPN:

“And I’ll tell you this, Major League Baseball is going to have a big, big problem on their hands when they find out they have a Hall of Famer who’s used.”

I’m assuming he’s pointing a finger at Rickey Henderson since it hadn’t come out until this week and nothing Canseco has done previously suggests he’s strategic in the way he reveals information. No matter what he says, or maybe because Jose Canseco says it, every time I hear his name in reference to steroids, I don’t think about him being the cheater everyone is painting steroid users to be, I just think Jose Canseco is that jerk who wouldn’t sign my baseball card.

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