Eric Martindale

While marketing RolePlayGateway, one of the things we considered was the "virality" of our approach. Viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. We're going to guide you on the road to a truly viral campaign.

A successful viral push can be launched simply by following three simple rules.

1. Don't spend everything you have on a single campaign.
2. Don't rely entirely on one vehicle of viral marketing.
3. Be different from everyone else; stand out.

While we're not nearly viral enough, part of our success so far has been the evangelism of our passionate users. And there you have it, one of the most important keys to successful viral marketing:

Passion: Users who are passionate about your service, your community, or your site. They will propagate, they will evangelize, and ultimately will generate more passionate users who will do the same thing for you. Dawn Anfuso calls these members Boomers - and it is important to not ignore them.

Make it easy for your users to share. Make it hard for them NOT to share. Add a feature on your site that encourages them to send an email to their friends about the service. Add blocks where they can copy and paste code straight to their social profiles on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo. Jeanne Jennings wrote an amazing article on Optimizing the "E-mail This" Marketing Opportunity, and I'd recommend you read it and implement the things you learn from it.

Widgetize: On that note, we arrive on one of our most powerful vehicles for viral marketing: Widgets. The list of sites that you can infect with widgets are endless. From iGoogle to individual sites, widgets encourage users to put your tool on their page. Be sure to incorporate other techniques here: Include encouragement to share it. Make it easy to post elsewhere and share.

One of the items that RolePlay Gateway could utilize to great success is the concept of game trailers. Many of the games on RPGateway are text-based, and have no real graphics. However, most of these games have amazing storylines, storylines which could be utilized to hitch audiences, or at least entertain them. Flash-based videos, or trailers, with pivotal content, captivating video and audio, and viral marketing elements such as "Email this!" or "Share This", would be an amazing leap forward. Take a look at how YouTube's video player works. Such trailers could even be uploaded to social networking sites, like YouTube and Google Video, and shared to millions of users with a touch of viral marketing magic.

Juice It Up: Include your URL everywhere you go. Facebook, MySpace. Everywhere. This generates user authority, even if the site you are on has nothing at all to do with your target market. Cross sections are a beautiful thing, and even if you don't get a drop of link juice in comments, market saturation is a very important, yet delicate, part of viral marketing.

Maintain a presence on every social networking site you can sustain. Extend your campaign to all of them. Create social groups for each of these sites, and publicize them. The more targets you hit, just like investing, the less committed you are to that particular market. Your assets are distributed, and while the workload may be unfathomably difficult (keeping up with so many social networking sites sucks... that's why we have ProfileLinker), the potential for success is incredible.

Reward: Another option is to provide tangible rewards for marketing. This can be in the form of prizes, such as in a contest, or to individual users. Incentives are very powerful, and drive many users to promote where they'd be otherwise apathetic. Things can be very simple, such as giving them tokens or credits, to very expensive, such as providing real cash per referral. This is probably the most effective, albeit expensive, method of encouraging users to infect others.

Don't Stop. Don't set these actions in motion and then hope they work. Get involved. Comment on profiles. Reply to messages. Enhance your viral effect. Make it tangible. If users can see that there is a real person there, they will be a lot more enthusiastic and encouraged to participate, and your viral marketing campaign will be more successful.

Other Resources!!! Web Marketing Today has an amazing list of resource articles that are sure to help you build your campaign.

So, Firefox allows you to open favorites in a sidebar - which is great for things like FriendFeed, Google Talk, Twitter, or even Facebook chat. It lets you use a good web service as what essentially becomes an extension for your browser, so you can browse your regular pages while still participating in the conversation.

I recently switched over to the social browser, Flock - with great success and elation. Flock is built from the Firefox codebase, but they are massively more social in what the browser does - drag and drop images, open media feeds, view your friends in their People and Places sidebar, among many other really cool things.

Then there's Friendfeed - which is a web service that recently took off (but I must say, I've been using long before the hype. :D) because it allows you to combine all of your social media connections (Web 2.5, if you will) and even cross-post responses between them (closer to Web 3.0, minus filtering and duplicate content issues...). After putting in a request to Flock's develpment team to start moving in this direction, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

When you bookmark something in Firefox, you can open the properties of the bookmark and hit a checkbox, "Open this link in the sidebar." However, this option is not available in Flock (by default). So let's open our trusty about:config:

Do a filter on "sidebar", and you'll find a value called "flock.favorites.loadPageInSidebar" - which is set to false by default. Right click this value, and click "toggle".

Bingo. Now you will have the checkbox on all your bookmarks that will allow you to open links in your sidebar!

Tags: flock, browser, web, sidebar, friendfeed, social media

There's some discussion about how forums are or are not social media, (frankly, I don't think there's any question at all) - and it occurred to me the answer of why there is this rift in perception of forums/message boards.

Message boards haven't changed in almost 25 years. There simply hasn't been any real innovation - and that's why there's so much "real" social media out there that's exploding right now. The stuff is so radically different from traditional mediums such as forums that everyone is missing the core of what social media is: community engagement and interaction

So, here are some of the things I'd like to see in a forum, and some things that I've implemented on some of my own forums (heh, or at least planning to implement):

Trackbacks It'd be awesome to have the same functionality in a blog post that we have on Wordpress or other blog software - did I give credit to someone? Let me hit the trackback API to make sure there's a connection between the two posts in the semantic web.

A forum thread is no different than a blog post. It has a topic, a goal, and a discussion pertaining to the original post. Let's see some of the functionality we found in the current decade put to use!

Native RSS Support There's nothing worse than having to write an RSS extension for your forum, and still not have the functionality you want. Give every URL on my forum a /feed, please. This includes forums, threads, posts, users: the whole shebang.

While you're at it, tell Feedburner to support filtered feeds - a lot of my users don't want every single post. And I sure as hell don't want to burn a new feed for every forum. C'mon, let's meet somewhere in the middle.

Semantic URLs Blogging software does it, why do we still have URLs on forums that use IDs right there in the URL? What benefit does that have to the user?

Social Profiles Alright, we've got friends and foes lists on our forums, now - but where is the option to make this information public? Why aren't we displaying a users' friend list on their profile page by default? What about all their most recent posts and actions, and selected excerpts?

A community can only grow in a stifled manner if interaction between members isn't made as easy as humanly possible. Current forum software is stuck in the 90's, with an XHTML wrapper around it. Let's fix this, and soon - before we all melt.

Real Metrics and Algorithms Stop using post count as a legitimate metric. This only encourages poor post quality. Let's see the ability to easily show Flesch-Kincaid, average word count, or something similar. The amount of posts a user has is not a good valuation of their contributions.

Instead, replace these with something more community-driven. Look at Digg for example. There is a solid (questionably) algorithm in place that measures users based on what they've submitted and the reactions of other users' reaction to that content, whether it be a comment or a submission.

Maybe I'm just whining. Maybe I've got legitimate desires. What do you think?

P.S.: And good god, phpBB! Why didn't you include this stuff in your phpBB3 release?!

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the "real names" policy either, but it is what it is. In the context of this "war" between the established social-networking sites, I'll take G+.

What we need, though, is to escape the tyranny of all of these centrally managed, dictatorially controlled, standalone social-networks... we need to keep pushing for federated, decentralized social-networks where users are in control.

I think that will come eventually. One problem right now, is that so few people care about the deeper issues. <sigh />

I've been using Twitter since pretty early on (and long before @oprah), and I've found it to be a superbly convenient communication tool and notification service. Even though it's still very young on the web (Twitter was founded in March of 2006) It's been the home to great ideas like the #twitterdata proposal and the publicdomain book-via-tweets project. It's also an awesome reputation management platform, and can be used to both to provide effective customer service and help distribute news and updates about your business or product, which is exactly how I use it for my online roleplaying project.

But as with the rest of the social media world, Twitter can become very complex very quickly (but I still contend that there is no social media overload) and as a result, can be difficult to manage. As a result, I use several third-party tools to help me manage and gather information that helps me do my Twitter job much more efficiently and effectively.

Splitweet [caption id="attachment_196" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Splitweet allows you to post and monitor multiple Twitter accounts and brands."][/caption]

For those of us with multiple Twitter accounts (like some people who create a Twitter account for each roleplaying character they use), Splitweet is an absolute savior. This service allows you to tweet to multiple accounts at the same time, as well as combining the "stream" from each account into one page. A lot of desktop Twitter clients offer this kind of functionality, but where Splitweet truly excels is in its ability to track what it calls "brands" (more reputation management terms here): you can specify keywords and phrases that will appear in a separate feed, even if you do not follow those users. This gets us around the disastrous changes Twitter made to the @replies, and helps us keep up to date on any mentions of our site's name and any tweets relating to what it is that we do.

Sherflock [caption id="attachment_195" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sherflock provides detailed statistics and summaries of Twitter users you are associated with."][/caption]

Sherflock is an absolutely awesome stat tracking machine that helps weed out the waves of spam that have been coming in since Twitter has gone mainstream. Sherflock gives a large number of statistics about each every account the either follows you or that you are following, and lets you sort and filter users based on these statistics.

Twitterfall [caption id="attachment_194" align="alignnone" width="217" caption="Twitterfall offers a live stream of twitter updates on keywords that you specify."][/caption]

This tool allows you to specify any number of keywords that you wish to view on a live, moving stream of tweets. This is very useful if you are using a computer that allows you to "pin" a window on top (like Ubuntu Linux), or if you have a multiple-monitor rig, or even if you use multiple computers using the input-sharing app Synergy. You'll get a live feed of updates on any topic of your choice, which can even be updated and changed in real-time.

Using these three tools will help you maximize you Twitter performance and make the most of an already awesome service, preventing you from being inundated with the massive stream of messages that you're surely going to subscribe to.

What are your top three Twitter tools? Feel free to make a comment or write your own post, and I'll gladly append a link to this post to help everyone out!

Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+

I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.

My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.

And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.

On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.

So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.

Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+

I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.

My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.

And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.

On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.

So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.

Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+

I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.

My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.

And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.

On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.

So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.

Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+

I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.

My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.

And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.

On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.

So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.

As a corporate business insider I can offer a perspective from the "enemy's" den. Many people agree that this movement has gained momentum and has the potential to become as big or bigger than the Tea Party Movement. I grew up in the same generation as many of those protesting today and I understand the innuendo behind Anonymous, I understand point being made by the zombies, and I understand what general sense of anger is meant for. However, keep in mind that you are generally a younger generation trying to speak to an industry dominated mostly by an older generation of people. To these people this movement appears random, chaotic, and annoying simply because they don't even know what this movement's demands or goals are. Indeed for almost all of September I don't think Wall Street even understood exactly what they were protesting, and just recently have they gotten some kind of vague idea as to what these people want done. Most people relate these types of sit-in's to hippies from their generation and view them as more of an unorganized annoyance. To my friends who I work with in NYC, comments I hear from them are to this effect (I am summarizing several people's opinions as one): "It's just stupid, they block traffic and cause trouble nearby. We have to exit buildings from completely the opposite side now just to avoid them if we're wearing a suit regardless of our purpose. No one is there during the day but all of a sudden they pop up during rush hour. They wreck local businesses and drive customers away. The corporations they protest are unaffected but the small businesses nearby are the ones they are actually hurting. We don't even know what they want."

My bosses have gone to meetings with Bernanke and Geithner it is unclear still whether these protests will actually have any influence over policy. At an executive level they still appear confused as to how to handle situation, mostly because they do not understand it. But understand this, from their perspective they have changed the following: In terms of big banks, their balance sheets have been improved light years beyond where they were in 2008 with more liquidity and more capital on hand to prevent these types of shocks to the system. They have repaid any tax dollars received and are often significantly more efficient at implementing change than the government is in making up it's mind on what to do. The majority of issues occurs because of the indecisiveness in Washington. Think about these issues: 12 people are tasked with cutting $1.7 Trillion in the next 5 weeks -- The only way that is going to happen is if they cut large dollar programs. That means Healthcare, medicare, social security, and of course military but that is even less politically viable than the other three. There is also gridlock on what will happen with the tax system in the future. Those main issues where indecisiveness has been are also some of the largest possible expenses a corporation could have. How do plan for variable expenses that could go up or down by 50% in EITHER direction? Corporations have no idea how to plan for healthcare, medicare, or social security plans for their employees because there is no decisiveness on what will occur in the future. They do not want to hire people that they cannot afford to keep a year later because of law changes. So even if they have the money for it now (which they do), they are unable to hire because of the risk of causing liquidity issues later and the massive negative PR associated with hiring and then firing. These banks also receive criticism for not lending money out, but this is not their fault. They ARE lending money out, but there is no demand. It is not supply side issues, there is plenty of money out there to be had. You can get a loan today no problem, don't believe me? Go try it at any bank you want. There is just no one who wants to take a loan. So all that free capital that we spent 3 years trying to push into banks is now stuck there.

This issue is not business related anymore. It is purely political. My above statements are not to absolve corporations of responsibility in 2008, but they are more to explain the current situation here and now. Europe is a whole other book to write about another time.

In a world where politicians and talking heads can call the greatest capitalist of our time Warren Buffett a socialist, and get away with it as "news" is the real issue at hand.

What are they doing to the glorious information social network that was!?

Honestly, the only reason I +1 things on Google is because I feel as if I'm influencing what people see in the search results. Social? Pfft.

How is social media changing government? Take a look at Estonia. #IgniteRaleigh

I think we are almost there. In Britain right now, there are very few urban places you can go where you are not on camera. It is not quite that extensive in the USA, but it is getting there. While social networking contributes to this, it will happen with or without FB and the like.

RT @martindale: How is social media changing government? Take a look at Estonia. #IgniteRaleigh

Genetics grad student +Joseph Pickrell (University of Chicago) suggests largely superseding peer-review with a sort of social platform, like Reddit or Digg. An interesting perspective, but I would love to hear opinions from other scientists as well.

Genetics grad student +Joseph Pickrell (University of Chicago) suggests largely superseding peer-review with a sort of social platform, like Reddit or Digg. An interesting perspective, but I would love to hear opinions from other scientists as well.

Genetics grad student +Joseph Pickrell (University of Chicago) suggests largely superseding peer-review with a sort of social platform, like Reddit or Digg. An interesting perspective, but I would love to hear opinions from other scientists as well.

Genetics grad student +Joseph Pickrell (University of Chicago) suggests largely superseding peer-review with a sort of social platform, like Reddit or Digg. An interesting perspective, but I would love to hear opinions from other scientists as well.

+Carmelyne Thompson is exactly right. Hackathons are a live view of the 'soft skills' of a dev - social interaction, time management, desire to be in the situation in the first place, leadership, teamwork - all the stuff a public code repo can't show. The end product's not always the point, and definitely not if you're looking for teammates, business partners, nerd friends, or employees.

...and in Internet related news this morning, Google+ Ambassador Eric Martindale was spotted at a local caffeine stand this morning (WHO was up at 0630?) spreading the news about Hangouts to the counter staff, baristas, and any stray morning coffee grabbers. His enthusiasm for Google Hangouts does not dim when he is away from his computer, and the excitement seems to be infectious. Word is that, as soon as he left the coffee shop, all of the employees and customers clustered around a computer, started a Hangout, and they are all still there, wired to the gills on caffeine, trading links and yakking about how many of their friends will be turning to Google+ and away from "the other social notwork". Eric, did we say to get some sleep? .. NO! Stay up ALL NIGHT! (another coffee?)

There's been a lot of talk about how Squidoo is getting punished because of how they are getting used by spammers. The idea there was to go in, create something called a "lense" that is relevant to something about your niche, and then do your marketing thing there.

Well, I just ran into "a new service from Amazon. It appears to let you create your own list and present it to the social community. I'm definitely thinking about using it before the Googledance makes it another cesspool.

I didn't do my Ubuntu reload yet, either.

Today is Programmers' Day, the 256th day of the year. Russia may be the only country in the world that officially recognizes it, but here's an appropriate early-morning post commemorating all of the hard-working code weavers in the software industry.

Take a moment today and thank your programmer friends for bringing you all kinds of things, from the timer on your microwave to the beautiful filters you have in Photoshop. From the comfortable air conditioning you're enjoying right now, to the wide array of social media sites that you use to share mundane and intellectual topics alike; virtually every industry on Earth is made possible today thanks to programmers of many different types.

So here's to you, [late night] Programmer. Enjoy your day!

Today is Programmers' Day, the 256th day of the year. Russia may be the only country in the world that officially recognizes it, but here's an appropriate early-morning post commemorating all of the hard-working code weavers in the software industry.

Take a moment today and thank your programmer friends for bringing you all kinds of things, from the timer on your microwave to the beautiful filters you have in Photoshop. From the comfortable air conditioning you're enjoying right now, to the wide array of social media sites that you use to share mundane and intellectual topics alike; virtually every industry on Earth is made possible today thanks to programmers of many different types.

So here's to you, [late night] Programmer. Enjoy your day!

Today is Programmers' Day, the 256th day of the year. Russia may be the only country in the world that officially recognizes it, but here's an appropriate early-morning post commemorating all of the hard-working code weavers in the software industry.

Take a moment today and thank your programmer friends for bringing you all kinds of things, from the timer on your microwave to the beautiful filters you have in Photoshop. From the comfortable air conditioning you're enjoying right now, to the wide array of social media sites that you use to share mundane and intellectual topics alike; virtually every industry on Earth is made possible today thanks to programmers of many different types.

So here's to you, [late night] Programmer. Enjoy your day!

Today is Programmers' Day, the 256th day of the year. Russia may be the only country in the world that officially recognizes it, but here's an appropriate early-morning post commemorating all of the hard-working code weavers in the software industry.

Take a moment today and thank your programmer friends for bringing you all kinds of things, from the timer on your microwave to the beautiful filters you have in Photoshop. From the comfortable air conditioning you're enjoying right now, to the wide array of social media sites that you use to share mundane and intellectual topics alike; virtually every industry on Earth is made possible today thanks to programmers of many different types.

So here's to you, [late night] Programmer. Enjoy your day!

After taking a look... it looks beautiful. But I agree with +Neeta Tolani, it's a scrapbook that is looking backwards. It doesn't really help you be social and connect now. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page that +Eric Martindale linked, there is a short video on the "new" FB apps. Now these seem more relevant to helping us connect with others, but, other than maybe being better designed, how's that much different than the apps we already have?

All of these Social Networking sites have been giving me a real headache since... well, since forever. There's too many of them. I can't keep track of everything. I've always had the idea of creating a service that'll link all of these together, check and update them all. Well, someone beat me to the punch.

Sara show this to me, but it's take me a while to post my results. Well, here I am.

Now, the other question is what am I supposed to do with all of these accounts that work as an OpenID, like Facebook? Do use one of these as my primary OpenID? Or should I go with one of the many OpenID providers? If so, which should I pick?

Oooh, someone's a clever cat. I was thumbing through Google Analytics today (like I do every day), and I was looking at what keywords people were using to find my site. I came across an interesting one:"social media" "search engine optimization" (inurl:resume | intitle:resume) Either someone is researching competition, or there's someone looking to hire people for a job they could do themselves. My guess is the former. Whoever you were, good job!

I bet you could do a search like, "lead developer" (inurl:resume | intitle:resume) and get some pretty tasty results. Or, perhaps someone wants to develop a custom search engine that utilizes Google to find highly ranked resumes? There's some nice and crunchy ideas.

+Coursefork is happy to announce the Startup Giveback, an initiative for entrepreneurs to donate equity instead of cash to social initiatives, in partnership with +Shoeboxed and the +American Underground.  All are welcome to our first event, which will be hosted at the Shoeboxed HQ in Durham, NC.  100% of equity will go directly to Startup Endowment, while cash donations at the door of the event will go to the Triangle Community Foundation.

Donations of all sorts, not just equity, are welcome!  While we're aiming for a 1% equity donation from each participating company, you're welcome to donate cash either online or at the door of the event.  Feel free to leave comments if you have questions!  I hope to see you there.

I was just reviewing some of my older starred posts in Google Reader, and I came across a great post from ShoeMoney about Understanding Communities. Pam outlines some great approaches to the whole social media market, and how to understand and utilize the communities on which they are build.

Oldie but goodie! Does anyone have any feedback on how relevant this four month old post is? I for one, totally support the ideas that she came up with for usability. I don't think usability will ever become a non-issue, personally. SEO is huge, but as we've always hammered home - your visitors come first.

I agree somewhat with the basic idea that there is no UNIFIED message to the Occupy movement. Most people see this as its downfall. For me I see this differently.

I kind of like the non linear message that Occupy movement is doing as a social experiment that can go anywhere. To me this rivals virtue ethics which I believe to be the best form of ethics as it is based on an individual with a basic system of organization and some loose guidelines. It is based on some general guidelines "peaceful demonstrations, 99%, end corporate greed, bring humanity back to business, ect" , but each Occupy movement is unique. It seems to me that the movement is based on the context of the individual cities and bases of folks. For instance SLC, UT has not had any issues with the police or the media. Everyone has been nice and we have been well received around the city. Tis not like that everywhere. there are so many sociological issues and political issues for each location. I feel this has not been tried before. It is adaptable and changable so it bends before it breaks unlike the tea party which is super rigid. The Occupy movement does not have to alienate anyone, and it is based in cooperation. If any movement wants to get a rigid simple voice all they need to do is vote on it. For me this is suddle and genious. It forces everyone who is interested to think for themselves plus it works as a collective conscious snowball . For me this is the greatest part of the movemnet. What could be more free than "free thought". For me this Occupy movement is "free thought association in action". For me this is a liberating liberty one mind at a time. What do you think about this?

Google is coming to #Raleigh  next week to talk about Google+ for business.

Google employee +Devin Buell is putting on the show at the Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh.  Interesting tidbit:

“Local "power users" will also share how they've successfully used Google+ to achieve business goals. Whether you're a new or experienced Google+ user, this is a rare opportunity to meet, greet, and learn from Google and some of North Carolina's savviest social professionals.”

If you're in the area, it might be a great opportunity to see what Google+ is able to offer to #local  businesses and engage with the local Google+ community. :)

Thanks for the heads up, +Derrick Minor!

Google is coming to #Raleigh  next week to talk about Google+ for business.

Google employee +Devin Buell is putting on the show at the Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh.  Interesting tidbit:

“Local "power users" will also share how they've successfully used Google+ to achieve business goals. Whether you're a new or experienced Google+ user, this is a rare opportunity to meet, greet, and learn from Google and some of North Carolina's savviest social professionals.”

If you're in the area, it might be a great opportunity to see what Google+ is able to offer to #local  businesses and engage with the local Google+ community. :)

Thanks for the heads up, +Derrick Minor!

Google is coming to #Raleigh  next week to talk about Google+ for business.

Google employee +Devin Buell is putting on the show at the Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh.  Interesting tidbit:

“Local "power users" will also share how they've successfully used Google+ to achieve business goals. Whether you're a new or experienced Google+ user, this is a rare opportunity to meet, greet, and learn from Google and some of North Carolina's savviest social professionals.”

If you're in the area, it might be a great opportunity to see what Google+ is able to offer to #local  businesses and engage with the local Google+ community. :)

Thanks for the heads up, +Derrick Minor!

Google is coming to #Raleigh  next week to talk about Google+ for business.

Google employee +Devin Buell is putting on the show at the Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh.  Interesting tidbit:

“Local "power users" will also share how they've successfully used Google+ to achieve business goals. Whether you're a new or experienced Google+ user, this is a rare opportunity to meet, greet, and learn from Google and some of North Carolina's savviest social professionals.”

If you're in the area, it might be a great opportunity to see what Google+ is able to offer to #local  businesses and engage with the local Google+ community. :)

Thanks for the heads up, +Derrick Minor!

Open Source is the Future of Education
If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub.  With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .

+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.

Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.

Open Source is the Future of Education
If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub.  With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .

+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.

Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.

Open Source is the Future of Education
If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub.  With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .

+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.

Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.

Open Source is the Future of Education
If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub.  With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .

+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.

Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.

I just found an awesome list of Open source applications for Windows, and thought I'd take the time to update.

I think I'm sick or getting sick from the weekend, which was awesome all in itself. Rode over to Ian's on Saturday, enjoyed a good night with some new friends, playing Unreal Tournament (the original, what else?) until somewhere around 3AM. Ah, good times. I woke up the next day in time to give Amber a call before she left for work. We got to gaming shortly after lunch, and for once, our ship didn't esplode! (partly because we left it behind for the majority of the game...)

Sunday we relaxed and watched football, both American and World. Poor poor Chelsea! I ended up rolling in at about 4PM, and proceeded to put together some home cooking for when Amber got off work. Unfortunately, my plans were foiled by her work schedule, and she got off at six instead of the planned five, denying us the opportunity of going to the park to eat while the sun set. We enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, and had a good cuddly evening.

Work today was a pain, though. Internet was out, and Bellsouth took until 5PM to bring us a mediocre solution. One of our major clients was having email problems, which I couldn't troubleshoot until the internet was up. Pity.

And, now I come home, GWing is having some people problems, and the GT League is bumbling along as usual. Now, about that roleplaying social reform...

Between work, my social life, and training, I play a game called EVE Online. It's the first game I've ever shelled out a monthly fee for, and it's well worth it. I came across this fan-made video for one of the in-game factions on CrazyKinux's blog.

Full screen this and play it in HD, while keeping in mind that this is made entirely of recorded gameplay video.

I'm the director of a group of players (called a "Corporation" as opposed to "Guild" in other MMORPGs), and if you're interested in playing with me, shoot me a line or message me in game as "Baeryn". You'll never find a game so perfect.

I'm competing in this event, and I need your vote! We're nearing the final 24 hours of this competition, and my startup has fallen into fifth place. Go here and vote for LocalSense : http://vator.tv/competition/vator-splash-la-june-2012?for=localsense&vote=1#participants

LocalSense™ was founded by myself, +Robert Rice, +Daniel Barbour, and +John Finocchiaro at the end of last year after seeing an enormous gap between how businesses and consumers use social media. We've spent the past six months building an incredibly powerful geo-aware platform to help bridge this gap and are extremely excited to get it into your hands. While we're in private alpha right now, but we're aiming to open a public beta by mid-June -- and winning this contest will help us get there.

Please vote for LocalSense, and if you want to be a really big help -- share it with your friends in the limited time we've got left!

I'm competing in this event, and I need your vote! We're nearing the final 24 hours of this competition, and my startup has fallen into fifth place. Go here and vote for LocalSense : http://vator.tv/competition/vator-splash-la-june-2012?for=localsense&vote=1#participants

LocalSense™ was founded by myself, +Robert Rice, +Daniel Barbour, and +John Finocchiaro at the end of last year after seeing an enormous gap between how businesses and consumers use social media. We've spent the past six months building an incredibly powerful geo-aware platform to help bridge this gap and are extremely excited to get it into your hands. While we're in private alpha right now, but we're aiming to open a public beta by mid-June -- and winning this contest will help us get there.

Please vote for LocalSense, and if you want to be a really big help -- share it with your friends in the limited time we've got left!

I'm competing in this event, and I need your vote! We're nearing the final 24 hours of this competition, and my startup has fallen into fifth place. Go here and vote for LocalSense : http://vator.tv/competition/vator-splash-la-june-2012?for=localsense&vote=1#participants

LocalSense™ was founded by myself, +Robert Rice, +Daniel Barbour, and +John Finocchiaro at the end of last year after seeing an enormous gap between how businesses and consumers use social media. We've spent the past six months building an incredibly powerful geo-aware platform to help bridge this gap and are extremely excited to get it into your hands. While we're in private alpha right now, but we're aiming to open a public beta by mid-June -- and winning this contest will help us get there.

Please vote for LocalSense, and if you want to be a really big help -- share it with your friends in the limited time we've got left!

Mark Zuckerberg's keynote at f8 was interesting. Overall, the changes seem and look pretty solid. Of course, we'll see how the masses respond to them over the coming weeks as things roll out.

A few weeks ago, there was a social media discussion hangout. One thing that was brought up in one of several videos that will be up next week, is Facebook making changes and one of the biggest things they need to work on is better educating users how to use new features.

Watch the video below to see our discussion. Thanks to +Amy Schmittauer +Carter Gibson +Eric Martindale +Jeffrey Powers +Lucas Johnson +Shefali Burns +matthew rappaport for participating.

Mark Zuckerberg's keynote at f8 was interesting. Overall, the changes seem and look pretty solid. Of course, we'll see how the masses respond to them over the coming weeks as things roll out.

A few weeks ago, there was a social media discussion hangout. One thing that was brought up in one of several videos that will be up next week, is Facebook making changes and one of the biggest things they need to work on is better educating users how to use new features.

Watch the video below to see our discussion. Thanks to +Amy Schmittauer +Carter Gibson +Eric Martindale +Jeffrey Powers +Lucas Johnson +Shefali Burns +matthew rappaport for participating.

Mark Zuckerberg's keynote at f8 was interesting. Overall, the changes seem and look pretty solid. Of course, we'll see how the masses respond to them over the coming weeks as things roll out.

A few weeks ago, there was a social media discussion hangout. One thing that was brought up in one of several videos that will be up next week, is Facebook making changes and one of the biggest things they need to work on is better educating users how to use new features.

Watch the video below to see our discussion. Thanks to +Amy Schmittauer +Carter Gibson +Eric Martindale +Jeffrey Powers +Lucas Johnson +Shefali Burns +matthew rappaport for participating.

Mark Zuckerberg's keynote at f8 was interesting. Overall, the changes seem and look pretty solid. Of course, we'll see how the masses respond to them over the coming weeks as things roll out.

A few weeks ago, there was a social media discussion hangout. One thing that was brought up in one of several videos that will be up next week, is Facebook making changes and one of the biggest things they need to work on is better educating users how to use new features.

Watch the video below to see our discussion. Thanks to +Amy Schmittauer +Carter Gibson +Eric Martindale +Jeffrey Powers +Lucas Johnson +Shefali Burns +matthew rappaport for participating.

Dear Search Engine Roundtable,

Since I subscribed to your feed (in early 2005), I have received and read every post you've made using my RSS reader of choice (Google Reader, currently). Your excerpts have been enticing, with well-written post titles and seemingly interesting topics. The idea was good, to aggregate content and discussions about Search Engines from multiple locations at one central blog.

Unfortunately, I've found that your articles are less informative than I'd have hoped, with frequent referrals to other locations where the conversations are actually taking place. Instead of effective bullet points and topic reviews, I find quick and hastily-written overviews of the content and discussion in question.

Not only that, but you're only providing partial content in your feeds! When I come across your posts in my daily reading of over 500 posts, you've caught my attention with your title - and because you're only giving me the partial article text, you've got me clicking through to your site (hoorah, ad impressions!). Unfortunately, half the time I'm wasting even more time by being forced to click through to yet another page to follow the conversation.

I rarely (if ever) find myself sharing your content, and from what I can tell from a cursory glance - you've never shown up in my shared items feed. (PS, when will I be able to control this page, Google? I hope this link juice means something in the future. Maybe even market that page in a bit more of a controlled fashion. I digress.) I've maybe starred one or two of your articles for future reading, but again - when I do finally read the posts, I find that I'm disappointed by your article quality and content.

What's up with that?! Alright, rabid feedreaders and social media evangelists - tell me if I'm in the wrong here, but I'm going to unsubscribe from Search Engine Roundtable.

Prediction: Global Riots One Year Away?

In 2011, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute (CSI) released a paper [1] presenting a model for understanding (and ultimately predicting) the social unrest that rocked countries such as Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt [2].  Of the data analyzed, the principal factor influencing said unrest was determined to be the food price index.

That's a pretty simple concept.  If one of your most basic needs was threatened, what would you do?  To quote the MIT Technology Review's explanation of the paper [3], “This isn't rocket science. It stands to reason that people become desperate when food is unobtainable. It's often said that any society is three square meals from anarchy.”

These models have other complex implications around the world, such as in the financial markets.  Another paper from 2010, titled “Predicting economic market crises using measures of collective panic” [4], shows that the economic crisis (and other singe-day panics in the market) in the United States were predictable events that relied on the relatively volatile sociological phenomenon of uncertainty and nervousness -- which makes some of the original paper's assertions even more interesting.  Most notably:

“Both factors in food prices can be linked directly to recent US governmental actions. Speculator activity has been enhanced by deregulation of the commodities markets that exempted dealers from trading limits, and subsidies and other policies have been central to the growth of ethanol conversion.”

Food for thought.

[1]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2455v1.pdf
[2]: http://www.globalissues.org/article/792/mideast-north-africa-unrest
[3]: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425019/the-cause-of-riots-and-the-price-of-food/
[4]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.2620v1.pdf

Prediction: Global Riots One Year Away?

In 2011, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute (CSI) released a paper [1] presenting a model for understanding (and ultimately predicting) the social unrest that rocked countries such as Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt [2].  Of the data analyzed, the principal factor influencing said unrest was determined to be the food price index.

That's a pretty simple concept.  If one of your most basic needs was threatened, what would you do?  To quote the MIT Technology Review's explanation of the paper [3], “This isn't rocket science. It stands to reason that people become desperate when food is unobtainable. It's often said that any society is three square meals from anarchy.”

These models have other complex implications around the world, such as in the financial markets.  Another paper from 2010, titled “Predicting economic market crises using measures of collective panic” [4], shows that the economic crisis (and other singe-day panics in the market) in the United States were predictable events that relied on the relatively volatile sociological phenomenon of uncertainty and nervousness -- which makes some of the original paper's assertions even more interesting.  Most notably:

“Both factors in food prices can be linked directly to recent US governmental actions. Speculator activity has been enhanced by deregulation of the commodities markets that exempted dealers from trading limits, and subsidies and other policies have been central to the growth of ethanol conversion.”

Food for thought.

[1]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2455v1.pdf
[2]: http://www.globalissues.org/article/792/mideast-north-africa-unrest
[3]: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425019/the-cause-of-riots-and-the-price-of-food/
[4]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.2620v1.pdf

Prediction: Global Riots One Year Away?

In 2011, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute (CSI) released a paper [1] presenting a model for understanding (and ultimately predicting) the social unrest that rocked countries such as Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt [2].  Of the data analyzed, the principal factor influencing said unrest was determined to be the food price index.

That's a pretty simple concept.  If one of your most basic needs was threatened, what would you do?  To quote the MIT Technology Review's explanation of the paper [3], “This isn't rocket science. It stands to reason that people become desperate when food is unobtainable. It's often said that any society is three square meals from anarchy.”

These models have other complex implications around the world, such as in the financial markets.  Another paper from 2010, titled “Predicting economic market crises using measures of collective panic” [4], shows that the economic crisis (and other singe-day panics in the market) in the United States were predictable events that relied on the relatively volatile sociological phenomenon of uncertainty and nervousness -- which makes some of the original paper's assertions even more interesting.  Most notably:

“Both factors in food prices can be linked directly to recent US governmental actions. Speculator activity has been enhanced by deregulation of the commodities markets that exempted dealers from trading limits, and subsidies and other policies have been central to the growth of ethanol conversion.”

Food for thought.

[1]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2455v1.pdf
[2]: http://www.globalissues.org/article/792/mideast-north-africa-unrest
[3]: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425019/the-cause-of-riots-and-the-price-of-food/
[4]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.2620v1.pdf

Prediction: Global Riots One Year Away?

In 2011, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute (CSI) released a paper [1] presenting a model for understanding (and ultimately predicting) the social unrest that rocked countries such as Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt [2].  Of the data analyzed, the principal factor influencing said unrest was determined to be the food price index.

That's a pretty simple concept.  If one of your most basic needs was threatened, what would you do?  To quote the MIT Technology Review's explanation of the paper [3], “This isn't rocket science. It stands to reason that people become desperate when food is unobtainable. It's often said that any society is three square meals from anarchy.”

These models have other complex implications around the world, such as in the financial markets.  Another paper from 2010, titled “Predicting economic market crises using measures of collective panic” [4], shows that the economic crisis (and other singe-day panics in the market) in the United States were predictable events that relied on the relatively volatile sociological phenomenon of uncertainty and nervousness -- which makes some of the original paper's assertions even more interesting.  Most notably:

“Both factors in food prices can be linked directly to recent US governmental actions. Speculator activity has been enhanced by deregulation of the commodities markets that exempted dealers from trading limits, and subsidies and other policies have been central to the growth of ethanol conversion.”

Food for thought.

[1]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2455v1.pdf
[2]: http://www.globalissues.org/article/792/mideast-north-africa-unrest
[3]: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425019/the-cause-of-riots-and-the-price-of-food/
[4]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.2620v1.pdf

After the usual late-nighter, I went out to grab some coffee somewhere north of 6:30 this morning. The young woman behind the counter asked in a surprisingly enthusiastic tone, perhaps recognizing me from a certain coffee adventure prior.

"What're you doing up so early!?"

I started to reply with a nondescript "Eh, work.", but what words actually slipped out of my mouth turned out to be more inquisitive.

"Well, have you ever heard of Google Plus?" I ventured, fully expecting a blank stare with that ever so vague hint of condescension. Perhaps I was too exhausted to consider how much buzz Google+ had generated, or to remember that it went public no less than a day prior. Whatever the case, her reply jarred me for a moment.

"Yeah, I've heard of it! Isn't it that new Google social network?" she asked.

I briefly explained how I'd met a handful of incredible people through Google Hangouts, and that we were all working on a side project outside of our normal jobs, and for fun no less. It might well have been my sleepless stupor again, but the ensuing conversation led me to believe she was absolutely fascinated with the idea of meeting and collaborating with people from around the world.

I grabbed my coffee and headed back to work, my enthusiasm bolstered by exchange.

P.S.: Since I can't hyperlink specific words in a Google+ post, the project I'm working on is Hangout Academy ( http://www.hangoutacademy.com ) and our team is as follows: +Carmelyne Thompson, +Jake McCuistion, +Christa Laser, +Lucas Johnson, and +Mohamed Mansour. We're on the warpath to get our first release out, so circle us if you're interested in hearing more about what Hangout Academy is.

After the usual late-nighter, I went out to grab some coffee somewhere north of 6:30 this morning. The young woman behind the counter asked in a surprisingly enthusiastic tone, perhaps recognizing me from a certain coffee adventure prior.

"What're you doing up so early!?"

I started to reply with a nondescript "Eh, work.", but what words actually slipped out of my mouth turned out to be more inquisitive.

"Well, have you ever heard of Google Plus?" I ventured, fully expecting a blank stare with that ever so vague hint of condescension. Perhaps I was too exhausted to consider how much buzz Google+ had generated, or to remember that it went public no less than a day prior. Whatever the case, her reply jarred me for a moment.

"Yeah, I've heard of it! Isn't it that new Google social network?" she asked.

I briefly explained how I'd met a handful of incredible people through Google Hangouts, and that we were all working on a side project outside of our normal jobs, and for fun no less. It might well have been my sleepless stupor again, but the ensuing conversation led me to believe she was absolutely fascinated with the idea of meeting and collaborating with people from around the world.

I grabbed my coffee and headed back to work, my enthusiasm bolstered by exchange.

P.S.: Since I can't hyperlink specific words in a Google+ post, the project I'm working on is Hangout Academy ( http://www.hangoutacademy.com ) and our team is as follows: +Carmelyne Thompson, +Jake McCuistion, +Christa Laser, +Lucas Johnson, and +Mohamed Mansour. We're on the warpath to get our first release out, so circle us if you're interested in hearing more about what Hangout Academy is.

After the usual late-nighter, I went out to grab some coffee somewhere north of 6:30 this morning. The young woman behind the counter asked in a surprisingly enthusiastic tone, perhaps recognizing me from a certain coffee adventure prior.

"What're you doing up so early!?"

I started to reply with a nondescript "Eh, work.", but what words actually slipped out of my mouth turned out to be more inquisitive.

"Well, have you ever heard of Google Plus?" I ventured, fully expecting a blank stare with that ever so vague hint of condescension. Perhaps I was too exhausted to consider how much buzz Google+ had generated, or to remember that it went public no less than a day prior. Whatever the case, her reply jarred me for a moment.

"Yeah, I've heard of it! Isn't it that new Google social network?" she asked.

I briefly explained how I'd met a handful of incredible people through Google Hangouts, and that we were all working on a side project outside of our normal jobs, and for fun no less. It might well have been my sleepless stupor again, but the ensuing conversation led me to believe she was absolutely fascinated with the idea of meeting and collaborating with people from around the world.

I grabbed my coffee and headed back to work, my enthusiasm bolstered by exchange.

P.S.: Since I can't hyperlink specific words in a Google+ post, the project I'm working on is Hangout Academy ( http://www.hangoutacademy.com ) and our team is as follows: +Carmelyne Thompson, +Jake McCuistion, +Christa Laser, +Lucas Johnson, and +Mohamed Mansour. We're on the warpath to get our first release out, so circle us if you're interested in hearing more about what Hangout Academy is.

After the usual late-nighter, I went out to grab some coffee somewhere north of 6:30 this morning. The young woman behind the counter asked in a surprisingly enthusiastic tone, perhaps recognizing me from a certain coffee adventure prior.

"What're you doing up so early!?"

I started to reply with a nondescript "Eh, work.", but what words actually slipped out of my mouth turned out to be more inquisitive.

"Well, have you ever heard of Google Plus?" I ventured, fully expecting a blank stare with that ever so vague hint of condescension. Perhaps I was too exhausted to consider how much buzz Google+ had generated, or to remember that it went public no less than a day prior. Whatever the case, her reply jarred me for a moment.

"Yeah, I've heard of it! Isn't it that new Google social network?" she asked.

I briefly explained how I'd met a handful of incredible people through Google Hangouts, and that we were all working on a side project outside of our normal jobs, and for fun no less. It might well have been my sleepless stupor again, but the ensuing conversation led me to believe she was absolutely fascinated with the idea of meeting and collaborating with people from around the world.

I grabbed my coffee and headed back to work, my enthusiasm bolstered by exchange.

P.S.: Since I can't hyperlink specific words in a Google+ post, the project I'm working on is Hangout Academy ( http://www.hangoutacademy.com ) and our team is as follows: +Carmelyne Thompson, +Jake McCuistion, +Christa Laser, +Lucas Johnson, and +Mohamed Mansour. We're on the warpath to get our first release out, so circle us if you're interested in hearing more about what Hangout Academy is.

As I have mentioned before, I'm in a love affair with Chyrp, which is an up-and-coming platform meant to replace WordPress and work a bit like Tumblr, as a microblogging and lifestreaming service.

One of Chyrp's major draws for me is the Aggregator module, which is included in Chryp 2.0 by default. Mike Crittenden of MergeWeb Fame has covered the use of Chyrp's Aggregator previously, but I figured I'd dive in a bit further and help others in configuring their feeds.

You may also be familiar with StackOverflow, a crowd-sourcing social-media head-bashing awesome site that enables users to ask tech-related questions and get awesome community-approved answers. The same group runs several other sites using the same model, including SuperUser and ServerFault, and they are even releasing their codebase as free and open source as the <a href="http://stackexchange.com/>StackExchange project.

But, onward into the goodies: syndicating your activity on StackOverflow (and the other sites) using Chryp.

The first you'll need is your Activity Feed. To acquire this, visit the "Recent" tab of your user profile and look in the bottom right hand corner: you'll see a link to "user recent activity feed". This is the URL for your activity feed, grab that and let's move on to Chyrp.

In Chyrp, you'll want to add a new aggregate in your Admin panel. Paste your Activity Feed into the "Source URL" box, then configure the remaining settings as follows:

Feather: Link Post Attributes: name: "feed[title]" source: "feed[id]" description: "feed[description]"

Now, assign a "Name" and make sure the correct Author is selected, and click "Update". You're all done! You'll see new content from your feed the next time your aggregates update.

Questions? Comments? Lemme have 'em.

Warning: Strong nerdery follows. Please be cautious of your fragile mind.

Since late 1997, in all of my pre-teen glory, I have been involved with something my friends and I simply called roleplay in our own little vernacular. Of course I've since learned that roleplay doesn't only refer to the peer-driven world of online roleplay, it refers to all sorts of real-world tabletop games, live acting, and various amounts of storytelling, but this particular post is written with the word roleplay referring to the freeform online roleplaying that I have always been so close to.

Freeform roleplay, or the idea that there is no GM (game master) or storyteller (as in Vampire: The Masquerade), and is instead driven solely by the players, with no concrete rules for battle, statistics, or progression of the story. Rules and guidelines were driven by common expectation, which developed as a sort of social justice system that remains effective, even today.

The very roots of this sort of roleplay stem from early chat systems, where one could adopt a simple moniker and create a personality around the idea of an "avatar", which in most cases consisted only of this name. Players, without defining themselves as such, would interact in an imaginative world that coalesced out of their collaborative imagination. Each would react to the other characters' actions and dialogue in a fashion that suited their own character's theoretical personality, and this would create a constantly evolving story arc.

As the web (and the young teen's perception of the web) evolved and grew, so did the concept of roleplay. Online forums became an entirely new beast, allowing users to write more and more into their in character posts, instead of being limited to the single lines that chat provided (of course, some chats had enough space for people to post a full paragraph, or even two - but this was limited at the time), they were able to expound upon their writing and even proofread their copy before sending it across the web for the other players to view.

Freeform roleplay had also grown to be very competitive at this point, with groups of players forming groups known as clans, guilds, or otherwise, and expanded their IC competitions from chat to the forums and message boards now provided by a few enterprising organizations (or individuals). It was this competitive banter and challenge that defined what many now call the golden age of roleplay, which is what really drove the forefront of this gaming medium.

There were plenty of players who had entered their late teens (and some even were adults at this point, gasp!) who moved away from chat, and who moved away from the conflict-driven world of this type of roleplay. They went on to create storyline-oriented games, with a small and select number of players in more of a collaborative fiction setting. These players often went on to become writers and editors, being driven more by the literary aspect of relaying a fiction onto the internet, and often have their own private niche where they can continue to do this with their long-standing playergroup.

And... that's where we are today. The freeform roleplay community is growing and changing, barely 15 years old at this point. We have the chance to nurture it, just as we have the chance to neglect it. Those of us who've been involved since the beginning have the greatest opportunity to influence the course of growth, and that's exactly what I'm hoping to do.