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(via -
docs.google.com )
I read it on 03/07/10 at 08:58 PM
Posted on 03/08/10 at 01:56 AM
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This documentation is for TwitterOAuth library verision 0.1.x.
If you are using trunk (0.2.x) these instructions will be wrong! Try it out live: http://twitter.abrah.am Twitter OAuth is in beta and could change at any time. Feel free to contact me with bug/questions. A full TwitterOAuth lib will be released soon. Currently the code is hacked together and should not be used in production without proper testing. IndexDefinitionsConsumer: the application you are building. registered with twitter. Sometimes referred to as application
User: the user using your application. Token: there are several different sets of tokens usually in key/secret pairs. Consumer token: the token pair Twitter gives you when you register an application. Request token: the first token pair Twitter returns. used to build an authorize URL used to request the access token. Access token: unique to user. Used to access users data. Get the codePull code from http://github.com/abraham/twitteroauthgit clone git://github.com/abraham/twitteroauth.git Process overviewThis is a very simplistic overview of authenticating with Twitter's OAuth. - Build TwitterOAuth object.
- Request tokens from twitter.
- Build authorize URL.
- Send user to Twitter's authorize URL.
- Get access tokens from twitter.
- Rebuild TwitterOAuth object.
- Query Twitter API with new access tokens.
ProcessFor this example we will be using the the index.php from the example folder and it will be located in the web root. public/index.php
public/twitteroauth/
Go to https://twitter.com/oauth_clients and register a new application. Fill out what the form. For a callback URL we will be using http://example.com/index.php. Once registered you will get a consumer key and a consumer secret. Those go in index.php Now we create a TwitterOAuth object. The class constructor chooses HMAC-SHA1 as the signature method, and builds a OAuthConsumer object with the app consumer key/secret. $to = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret); With that object we use curl to request a token from twitter. The API URL we hit is https://twitter.com/oauth/request_token. getRequestToken() pulls the tokens from twitter, parses it into an array, and creates a new OAuthConsumer object. $tok = $to->getRequestToken();
Save the tokens for when the user returns from Twitter. Set up the authorization URL. This is the URL the user will visit to tell twitter the application can access their data. https://twitter.com/oauth/authorize is used. $request_link = $to->getAuthorizeURL($token); Once the user tells twitter yes and returns we request the access tokens. The access tokens can be thought of the users passwords and will be used to authenticate as them for future API calls. https://twitter.com/oauth/access_token is used. $tok = $to->getAccessToken();
At this point you can check https://twitter.com/account/connections and the application should be listed. Build a new TwitterOAuth object using consumer key/secret and access key/secret. $to = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret, $user_access_key, $user_access_secret);
Now to interact with the API as the user to verify their credentials. This should return their profile. You can now save the access key/secret as being associated with the returned user info. $content = $to->OAuthRequest('https://twitter.com/account/verify_credentials.xml', array(), 'GET');
To send a status update change the API URL and add a key/value array. $content = $to->OAuthRequest('https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml', array('status' => 'Test OAuth update. #testoauth'), 'POST'); There you have it. Basic interaction with Twitter's OAuth beta. To run other commands just change the API URL and array() keys/values in the last call. LinksMy website: http://abrah.amTwitter: http://twitter.comOAuth: http://oauth.netTwitter API docs: http://apiwiki.twitter.comTwitter API discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talkFire Eagle OAuth docs: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/developer/documentation/php_walkthru
Tags: twitter   access token oauth key
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(via -
Evil Genius Chronicles )
I read it on 03/02/10 at 09:00 AM
Posted on 03/02/10 at 12:23 PM
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This post is my attempt to distill together many different threads into a common tapestry. There is a lot of turbidity in the publishing, podcasting, music, film, television worlds right now. I have these feeling that every bit of this is all part of a larger whole and I'm going to take a stab at defining it. This post will either be awesome because it succeeds or a miserable failure. There is no middle ground. Off in to it. This will be long, you have been warned.
First, let me inventory the raw materials that got me thinking this way. Recently JC Hutchins posted that he had been dropped as an author by St. Martins Press and that they would not be publishing the 7th Son sequels. The post lives between a gut-check and a crisis of faith from one of the pioneering new media creator/ novelist hybrid guys. He also posted about monetary realities of writers pubishing via ebooks. Not that long before this, I had listened to JC's Hey Everybody interview with Pablo Defendini and Ami Greko from The New Sleekness blog. It's a really interesting discussion about the future of book publishing by industry professionals young enough in their careers to be less invested in the status quo and more willing to help a new future emerge. (Side note 1: I met Pablo and Ami at last year's Dragon*Con in the classic SF con fashion I wanted to meet them, saw them in a hotel bar, asked if I could sit with them, introduced myself and hung out for an hour. Try it, it works! ) Much in my thinking was informed over the last month by the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing wars of far too large a trail to link to anything. In that debate I did first run across Joe Konrath, his fiction and some of his posts with amazingly open and detailed statistics of what he sells and what he makes from digital publishing. (Side note 2: I bought, read and enjoyed his book Whiskey Sour as fallout from the debate).
There are many other bits of thought in the mix, such as my feelings about beginning my own novel during NaNoWriMo and thinking about hiring my friends at Sterling Editing to work on it and what I might choose to do with such a book when)it is finished. That's enough of a prelude, though. Time to hit it.
JC Hutchins struck a nerve when he basically waved the white flag on his current way of working.
Creating podcast fiction does does not generate direct revenue for me. Based on anecdotal and statistical data, very few people are willing to pay for general podcast content, much less podcast fiction. Since my goal is to make a living wage with my words, the current monetization models including in-show advertisements will not deliver this. Dedicating time and effort to my non-fiction podcast projects will deliver equally underwhelming monetary results.
It is also apparent to me that using the Free model to promote a tangible product, such as I did with 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art, does not deliver sustainable sales results. I have friends some of whom are my best friends, the most talented people I've had the privilege to know and work with who have absolute faith in this model. I treasure their trailblazing efforts and enthusiasm. My faith, however, has been fundamentally rattled.
Put simply: The new media model viably supports only the most blessed and talented of authors. The time, effort and money I invest in entertaining you for free pulls my attention and talent away from projects that can generate revenue. While podcasting, podcast fiction, and most importantly your support and evangelism has positively impacted my life and career in ways I'll never be able to fully express, I cannot continue to release free audiofiction if I wish to make a living wage with my words.
This is pretty big stuff in the world of podcast fiction. Hutch was one of the pioneers of the form and his getting picked up by St. Martins was considered a watershed and a validation for the medium. So if he can't make it in this world, what does that say about all the other podcast novelists who are less engaged, have less of a fan base, less sheer horsepower? Does it mean this medium is screwed?
I am positing that Hutch had a terrible misfortune of timing, that he arose as a viable author at exactly the wrong moment in publishing history. As he started down his path it seemed like the end game was to get a book deal with a major publisher. For writers of the last 100 years, this was the reasonable career success path for authors, and practically the only one. In the last few years though a sea change has happened so rapidly and thoroughly to flip that Hutch got his boat capsized in the process and he will be far from the only one. As crazy as it may sound, for a certain kind of author at this point I think a major publishing contract may seem like winning the game but is in fact losing it.
The red flags I got from the JC Hutchins post started here:
Examining the lead up to, and release of, the novel, I cannot see how I could have promoted it any better than I did. I literally went broke promoting this book and Personal Effects: Dark Art (another novel that will not have a sequel; it also underperformed). I conceived numerous brand-new online marketing campaigns that dazzled you and others. I asked you to purchase the novel, and many of you did.
If JC is literally going broke promoting 7th Son and Personal Effects book, I think a reasonable question to ask is What is St. Martins Press' role in this? If JC is willing and able to put so much of his own time and money into the promotion of the books, what value is he getting from the big publisher that is worth giving away 90% of the sale of the book to them? 50 years ago, and 20 years ago and 2 years ago, this made sense. It was pretty much impossible to get a book published and into the hands of the world in any significant way especially in a way that a writer could make a full-time living without a major publisher contract, especially one paying advances at a level to be a livable wage. Nowadays, especially due to the markeplace enabled by the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader et al, that's a different equation.
Joe Konrath's post about the money he makes from the Kindle store shows a really clear pattern that he summarizes with:
My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.
My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.
If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I'd be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.
So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I'm losing $15,762 per year.
For a writer with an engaged audience, like JA Konrath has and like JC Hutchins has, there may well be more money in their books self-published primarily through the Kindle and other ebook stores. An interesting bit from the Konrath numbers above, that's from making 35% of the sales price for his direct books. When it changes to 70%, he'll be making twice as much per book as he posted above for the self-published ones.
Let me say it again: for a writer who is engaged with their audience and reasonably prolific (because you need new books to keep this engine turning), we may be at the turning point where a better living is available through self-publishing than a big New York publisher book deal.
There are certainly authors that this model will not work for. During my preparation for last year's Podcasting for Working Writers panel at Dragon*Con I talked to both James Patrick Kelly and Kelley Eskridge on this topic and they both raised the point that for a number of old school writers, the idea of engaging at the level of podcasting and doing large parts of their own publicity is anathema. A reasonable chunk of authors don't want to get out in the limelight and picked this career specifically so they don't have to engage. They write their books, maybe do a few conventions a year, do some bookstore events and that's it. Back to the keyboard where the serious work happens. That's fair enough and those writers will always need a publisher to do the parts of this business that would make them unhappy to pursue.
I think of the classic big publisher and big record label model as basically serving the function of the bank or maybe as VC. The manufacturing and distribution of the creative work was too capital intensive for an individual so this company would lend that money to the process, make the books or records show up in the store, do some publicity and keep most of the money. They insulate the creator from the process and from the retailers and fans. What publicity efforts exist, the big media company acts as a semi-permeable membrane to let a little of the public through, but not a lot. Ultimately in this model, the relationship with the fans of the buying public is owned mostly by the retailer and the publisher or label, very little by the writer or musician. For the author that doesn't want to feed and water that relationship, that's perfect.
For the other kind of author, a JC Hutchins or Mur Lafferty or Scott Sigler, going with a major publisher outsources to a third party a relationship with their fans that these writers are really really good at maintaining. When Hutch is paying his own money to publicize his books and his his own direct line into his own fanbase, what can the big publishers do for him? They could give him large enough advances to keep his bills paid while future books are written, but obviously they aren't willing to do that because sales aren't high enough. JC's books earn money, but not enough money to keep him in that system. For me, the real question is Did St. Martins Press do 9 times the work than JC did to get the work promoted? If not, what did they do to deserve a 90/10 split?
Last November for NaNoWriMo I began a novel that I have literally been thinking about since 1991 when I was 23. While I came nowhere near finishing it that month and am nowhere near finished now, I have a goal to finish this novel in 2010. I've already been thinking about what happens when I finish the book. Do I try to find an agent and then try to have them place it with a major publisher? Since I don't have any plans beyond that one book and thus don't necessarily have a writing career in mind, how does that affect my decision making? At the moment I'm leaning towards not bothering to place the book with any publisher at all. I'll pay Nicola and Kelley at Sterling Editing to work with me to get it publishable and hire a book designer and/or artist to hone the final product and then publish it to the Kindle store, Smashwords, the Nook store and whatever else seems reasonable at the time. I'll probably release it via Podiobooks.com at the the same time, do my publicity via that and the other usual online suspects and let it ride. The key point to me is that the energy I could spend in placing my book at a big publisher could be spent selling the book to readers and I'll probably make more money that way in the long run. This isn't the way things worked for the 19th and 20th century and it may not be the way it works in the future, but March 2010 it is the way it looks to me now. The validation of having a major publisher decide I'm their sort of writer doesn't do anything for me. I don't need the book contract to pay my living, I'd end up doing mostly my own publicity anyway so what the hell does the publisher have to offer me anymore? Rather than have them put out a $15 Kindle book that I see a buck or two from and no one buys with a print version that is on and off the shelves in head-swimming time on a death march to the warehouse remainder store, I'd rather put out a $5.99 ebook version that I see $4 from each one and more people buy. I have a whole rant on how the true function of ebook platforms is to enable impulse buys, but this current post is already too long. That must come later.
When I interviewed Cory Doctorow in 2006, one of the things he said is that the generation coming of age now is the first one to arise without a stigma attached to self-publication. Since I've been paying attention to the world of science fiction and writers in general, a giant shift has happened. When I joined GEnie in 1992, the notion of self-publishing your work meant that it was unreadable tripe and the very thought of it was risible to any serious author. Nowadays, it might well be the most rational economic choice available. If you aren't already in the system and earning livable wages from advances on your books, and you are the sort of writer and person with that drive a JC Hutchins, a Scott Sigler, a Tee Morris, a Mur Lafferty, an Alec Longstreth, someone willing to do more than thrown the manuscript over the wall and wait for finished copies to return it might be time to take the reins yourself and just do this. The costs are low which means the cost of failing is low. The traditional publishers aren't paying that much anyway so the opportunity costs are low. Just do it. Lynne Abbey, CJ Cherryh and Jane Fancher did. The writers at Book View Cafe did. I will. Don't pin your hopes on a big publisher with economic drivers that are different than yours. Just do it yourself, work the people yourself and keep as much of the money as you can.
Tags: akismet, amazon, ebooks, jakonrath, jchutchins, kindle, macmillan, publishing, sterlingediting, stmartinspress
Tags: book publisher money jc books
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(via -
mashable.com )
I read it on 02/28/10 at 11:14 AM
Posted on 02/28/10 at 04:12 PM
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Shared by Kristopher
android apps, android, nexus one
6 Free Android Apps That Will Make You Drop Your iPhone The Android Market may still lag behind the iPhone App Store in terms of variety and quality, but there is something to be said for the Android operating system's extremely tight integration with existing Google products, and the wide choice of devices and carriers.
There's no question that the iPhone has many wonderful apps, but Android's smart syncing with existing tools, interesting Android-only experiments coming every day from Google employees, and its open marketplace model have yielded some tools that may give the average iPhone user pause. If you're looking for a change, or you're in the smartphone market and still weighing the pros and cons, consider these Android-only apps and how they might fit into your work, play, and mobile lifestyle.
There's no denying that the iPhone OS is a gorgeous piece software. But when it comes to the home screen, you get what you get, and you don't get upset, to quote a nursery school mantra. Android is completely open-source, which means that apps can change the functionality and appearance of the OS, if you permit them to. This isn't always good for safety, but it's great for customization. OpenHome is one of the leading customization apps available on the Market. It functions as a replacement for the default home screen, into which you can load customs skins, icon packs, and fonts many of which are freely available in the Market and created by other users. In addition to the look and feel of your OS, OpenHome also allows for other custom tweaks including soft keyboard improvements and widget modifications.
Imagine a world where you never have to listen to another voicemail again. That's almost what you get when you set up Google Voice and utilize the Android app. Google Voice lets you keep your existing mobile number, but will forward your missed calls to a generated Google number that you can check on the web, in your e-mail, or via the app. The service automatically generates voicemail transcription that is usually accurate enough to get the gist of what the caller is saying. Instead of getting a voicemail on your phone, you'll receive and e-mail (or text message) with the transcription. The app then lets you scroll through your messages visually, like an e-mail inbox, and stream the audio messages from the web as needed, all without wasting precious mobile minutes. There are certainly other great voicemail alternatives for the iPhone (and Voice is available as a web-based service), but Google Voice's deep integration with Gmail (you can also enable audio playback within web e-mail messages) makes it a great compliment to your hand-held arsenal of communications tools. Google Voice is still an invite-only service at the moment. You can request an invite from Google here, or hit up your friends on social networks for one.
Classic gamers rejoice! NESoid is a Nintendo ROM emulator for Android that actually works. The app itself is software that interprets ROM files the format of choice for hacked console games. Assuming you're loading a worthwhile ROM file from your SD card, the gameplay is really smooth. The lite version of NESoid is free, but prevents you from loading a saved-state of a game. The full version will cost you $3.49 and unlocks this feature. Most ROMS are not exactly kosher in terms of copyright, so we'll leave it at your discretion whether you want to actually track down the games. This is likely why console emulators have not made it through the stringent App Store approval process, but are now appearing in Android's more liberal Market.
If you've got an eye on your stock portfolio 24/7, Google Finance can be a useful tool for getting customized, real-time quotes. The Android app syncs directly to your Google Finance portfolios and streams live data right into your hands by way of quote updates, charts, and financial news. Android is currently the only mobile platform with an official Google Finance app.
Google Listen is a unique offering from Google Labs that functions like a search engine and subscription tool for podcasts across the web. If you're on the train and realize you've forgotten to download the latest episode of NPR's This American Life, simply fire up Google Listen, search for it, and stream it immediately, from the source. Google Listen effectively eliminates the need to download podcasts or connect your handset to your computer. And with subscription options built in, once you find a show you like, you'll never miss an episode while you're on the go.
6. Gmail and Google Calendar
Last but not least, the utility of the fully integrated Gmail and Calendar apps that come built-in to the Android OS cannot be overstated. One of the core reasons why any Gmail or Google Apps user should go Android is that the handset will complete your suite of cloud computing productivity tools. Because of the intrinsic link between your Android phone and your Google account, the mobile functionality of Google apps like Gmail and Calendar are seamless. Draft an e-mail on your phone and it is instantly viewable in your drafts folder on the web. Update an appointment on the web Calendar, and it's reflected on your phone seconds later. Android users also enjoy the built-in functionality of shared calendars, Gmail labels, threaded conversations, and Send As accounts if it is configured in your settings. If you live and work out of your Gmail inbox, an Android handset is the perfect extension.
More Android resources from Mashable:
- 7 Mind-Blowing Free Android Apps
- Free Multiplayer Android Games [3 of the Best]
- 3 News Apps for Android Compared
- The Best Free Twitter Apps for Android
- 30 Android Apps to Watch
- 8 Android Apps Worth Paying For (And Some That Aren't)
Print Story Tags: android, apps, gaming, gmail, Google, google apps, google finance, Google Listen, Google Voice, iphone, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0
Tags: android google apps gmail app
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(via -
Tech News Daily RSS )
I read it on 03/02/10 at 09:32 AM
Posted on 02/27/10 at 09:23 AM
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Scientists have created a flat surface patterned after the body hair of spiders that refuses to get wet.
The surface also has the added benefit of being self-cleaning, since water does a pretty good job of picking up and carrying off dirt as it is being repelled.
This makes the material ideal for some food packaging, windows, or solar cellsthat must stay clean to gather sunlight, scientists say. Boat designers might someday coat hulls with it, making boats faster and more efficient.
But what makes the new surface really unique is that unlike other similar products out there, such as shoe wax and car windshield treatments, the new material doesn't rely on chemicals with water-repellent properties to stay dry. Instead, its surface blocks out water by mimicking the shape and patterns of a spider's body hair. In other words, physics, not chemistry, is what keeps it dry.
Spiders "have short hairs and longer hairs, and they vary a lot. And that is what we mimic, said Wolfgang Sigmund, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida.
It's been long known that spiders use their water-repelling hairs to stay dry or avoid drowning. Water spiders use their hairs to capture air bubbles and tote them underwater to breathe. But it was only five years ago that Sigmund began experimenting with microscopic fibers, turning to spiders for inspiration.
At first, Sigmund's natural tendency was to make all his fibers the same size and distance apart. But he later learned that the pattern of hairs on a spider's body consists of both long and short hairs that are both curved and straight. So he decided to mimic Nature and replicate this random pattern using plastic hairs varying in size but averaging about 600 microns, or millionths of a meter.
Most people that publish in this field always go for these perfect structures, and we are the first to show that the bad ones are the better ones, Sigmund said.
The technique, detailed in the science journal Langmuir, can be applied to keep even absorbent materials like sponges from getting wet. It may also be safer than other forms of water-proofing since the method doesn't involve the use of chemicals.
Sigmund says that he has even developed a variation of the surface that repels oil. However, he noted that the process is not reliable enough to continually create good working surfaces, and different techniques need to be developed to produce such surfaces in commercially available quantities and size.
We are at the very beginning, Sigmund said. But there is a lot of interest from industry, because our surface is the first one that relies only on surface features and can repel hot water, cold water, and if we change the chemistry both oil and water.
Tags: water surface hairs sigmund spiders
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(via -
Firedoglake )
I read it on 02/15/10 at 11:12 PM
Posted on 02/16/10 at 12:25 AM
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 (photo: plastic lemonade) First, Sen. Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on all executive branch nominees to extort the executive branch into rigging procurement to guarantee that the company he favored won a bid on a defense contract. Oh, and he wanted the FBI to build a crime lab in his state, too.
And now Sen. Lindsey Graham is copycatting, placing a hold on the closing of Gitmo hostage to extort the Department of Justice into not having a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And Graham's not being subtle about it. In a well-researched piece for The New Yorker, Jane Mayer breaks some amazing scoops:
Rahm had a good relationship with Graham, and believed Graham when he said that if you don't prosecute these people in military commissions I won't support the closing of Guantnamo. . . Rahm said, If we don't have Graham, we can't close Guantnamo, and it's on Eric!'
[snip]
Graham told [Mayer], It was a nonstarter for me. There's a place for the courts, but not for the mastermind of 9/11. He said, On balance, I think it would be better to close Guantnamo, but it would be better to keep it open than to give these guys civilian trials. Graham, who served as a judge advocate general in the military reserves, vowed that he would do all he could as a legislator to stop the trials.
Okay, Senators Graham and Shelby? This is the U.S. Senate, not middle school. This blackmail thing? Its not like, Oh, the cool kids are wearing Hello Kitty wristwatches and you need to follow the fad.
There is zero logical nexus between whether or not to close Gitmo and whether or not to have civilian trials, so the only reason for making the kind of statement quoted above, is quid pro quo. While I'm not suggesting that this is a Hobbs Act violation (read the link, trust me), it certainly smells just as bad.
Kate Martin, the Center for National Security Studies director, warns, We can't have a situation where political pressure forces the federal government to forgo criminal prosecution. That would mean the system is fundamentally broken.
Message for Rahm, from Marcy Wheeler:
Remind me. Didn't Rove and the Bush White House get in trouble for this kind of tampering with DOJ issues?
Really, the White House needs to BACK OFF and let the Department of Justice and the federal courts do their job. And a bunch of non-lawyers with ZERO expertise in this area should NOT be part of the decision making process, much less driving that process. Hasn't Rahm done enough damage to the President with his mishandling of the healthcare bill? Why do you want him to screw up something he knows even less about?
Tags: graham rahm trials said guantnamo
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(via -
Tech News Daily RSS )
I read it on 02/12/10 at 06:46 PM
Posted on 02/11/10 at 04:09 PM
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Facebook users in the American West appear to move around a lot, and often have friends throughout the country, while users from Minnesota to Manhattan have connections much closer to home.
And in areas in and around Texas, on the edge of what's generally thought of as the Bible Belt, the Dallas Cowboys rank higher overall on users' fan pages than God.
These are just some of the interesting findings about Facebook users recently discovered by Pete Warden, a Colorado-based, British-born ex-Apple engineer who has spent the last six months gathering and analyzing data from more than 215 million public Facebook profile pages.
What he's discovered just might shed more light on the culture of connected America than the 2010 census.
"If you actually look at [Facebook user data] in the aggregate, it's like a painting," Warden told TechNewsDaily. "Each individual data point isn't interesting, but when you step back and look at the trends in millions of profiles, you start to see some pretty interesting pictures emerging."
Warden says he's been overwhelmed by the response he's gotten from this project, after working on similar projects in obscurity for years.
Among Warden's less surprising findings: Fox News host Glen Beck gets the number one spot on Facebook fan pages from users in Eastern Idaho. And the "Twilight" books, penned by Mormon author Stephenie Meyer, rank high in the heavily Mormon communities in and around Utah.
Facebook mining
These and other observations that Warden mined from the massive amount of Facebook data were posted on his blog last week, along with maps that break down the U.S. into seven regions based on Facebook user trends.
Now, after gathering the data from Facebook's site using software he designed and honed in the process, and making a first round of enticing observations, he wants to turn the raw data he's culled over to academia for further analysis. But he also hopes to steer investors and customers to his own software and services for further data gathering and aggregation.
"I'm much better at building the pipeline for processing the data than I am at doing really rigorous stuff with the results that come out at the end," Warden said in a telephone interview. "The patterns that I've blogged about in the U.S. data are very qualitative."
Indeed, much of the conclusions that Warden has drawn are open to interpretation, and his given names for America's regional social connection groups "Stayathomia" (the Northeast), "Socalistan" (Souther California), and "Mormonia" (the predominantly Mormon towns in Utah and Eastern Idaho) among them are playfully clever, but not very scientific.
Serious about privacy
But Warden is serious when it comes to people's privacy concerns, even though all the data being gathered is publicly available on Facebook's site, and can be found via Google. He says he wants to make the data useful for large-scale data analysis, but not for tracking down individuals.
"We want to make sure we don't help scammers, we don't help spammers, and we respect people's privacy," Warden said, "but also allow some sort of new insight to come out of this."
To that end, Warden has delayed releasing the data for the time being (he initially intended to release it yesterday, Feb. 9), after someone from Facebook contacted him, asking for some time to check the privacy implications.
Once Facebook clears the data for release to the academic world, Warden says he's ready to pass the task of interpreting all this data on to others and feature their conclusions on his blog more often than his own.
Meanwhile, Warden has some problems to patch in his data pipe, problems that have been helpfully pointed out by readers of his blog.
"One of the great things about getting this out there is having thousands of pairs of eyes to look over this stuff, like the fact that [the data shows] the top name in Alexandria, Louisiana is Mohamed," Warden said.
"When somebody pointed out that some of the profiles seemed to be coming from Alexandria, Egypt, that was a head-slapping moment."
Tags: data facebook warden than users
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(via -
Mixpanel - Analytics for startups )
I read it on 02/23/10 at 04:34 PM
Posted on 02/11/10 at 12:05 PM
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Post by Tim Trefren (Co-founder of Mixpanel, Inc.) guest posted at http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/social-analytics/
When most people think of web analytics, they think about pageview tracking; basically, measuring which pages on a website are being viewed. Pageview tracking is a well-established technology, but it's no longer meeting the needs of many of the most well-known companies in social media. Companies like Facebook , Zynga, Slide, and RockYou are spending tons of resources building their own internal analytics tools.
There's a reason for this: Social media is highly competitive, and the biggest advantage you can have is data. To improve and grow, these companies need to gather as much information as they can, and they need more than simple pageview tracking.
In the following sections I will cover three of the most important things to measure for social applications.
1. Funnel Analysis: Measuring Conversion Rates
One critical kind of analysis that social apps require is called Funnel Analysis. This is a way of measuring conversion rates, which is the lifeblood of all applications. The term conversion rate refers to the total number of visitors who came to a site, compared to the number of visitors who did a desired action (such as creating an account or purchasing an item).
What Funnel Analysis gives you is a more granular way of analyzing conversion rates. Instead of simply looking at signups divided by total visitors, you figure out the steps that have to be taken to get a user to sign up and measure the individual conversion rates between steps. As you can see from the image above, there's often a pretty steep dropoff between each step, giving you the namesake funnel shape. (Note: the image uses made up stats and is for illustration purposes only.)
This more granular look at conversion rates can have surprising results. Let's take a look at Twitter's signup funnel:
1. Hit homepage
2. Go to signup page, fill out registration form
3. Browse suggested topics
4. Add e-mail friends
5. Search for someone
As you can see, the signup process is pretty complicated, and will benefit from detailed analysis. We might find, for example, that there's a huge dropoff rate (a dropoff occurs when many of the people who made it to one step don't make it to the next) at the Add e-mail friends step. Once we've discovered a dropoff rate like this, we have to figure out the root cause. The dropoff rate at the Add e-mail friends step could mean that users are unsure how to continue, causing them to leave, or they might not want to add their e-mail information. We would have to test to make sure.
Ultimately, Funnel Analysis is about finding and improving trouble spots in a website. With continual analysis, changes can be measured and ideas can be tested over time.
2. Engagement Tracking: Measuring What People Do
 As I mentioned earlier, pageview tracking is becoming less and less relevant for many web companies. Instead of the basic unit of measurement being the pageview, they are starting to track more directly relevant things, like the actions people are taking. Twitter, for example, may want to know how many tweets the average person sends and what they are searching for, not how many pages they viewed. Pageviews are just a way of approximating the information we really want, and as the web grows more interactive, they become less and less relevant.
Think about this: Sites exist today on which you never actually change the page. These are highly interactive sites, but they are impossible to track with pageviews, so traditional analytics tools are useless.
This will only become more common as time goes on and more companies develop highly interactive applications and adopt AJAX loading techniques.
3. Visitor Retention: How Many People Come Back?
This next technique measures a fairly complex but extremely valuable metric for successful web applications.
You can think of Visitor Retention as a measure of how sticky your site is. What we're really measuring is the percentage of people who come back again and again. The most common way of approaching this is to look at a group of users from a single time period (a week, for example) and track their behavior over time.
Here's an example of a retention table that should help clarify things:
Each row shows the weekly retention rates for a single group of users (sometimes known as a cohort). The first row, for example, is the cohort seen between December 7 and December 13, 2009. We can see that 15.15% of the users in that group came back after 1 week, 13.4% after 2 weeks, and so on.
This is crucial information, particularly for social applications, because most of the value lies in the size of the community. An application with low retention is like an empty shell many installs but few active users and you don't want to build an empty shell. You want a thriving, vibrant community.
Retention is a huge factor in building a strong community for a few reasons: You don't have much of a community if everyone is a newcomer (so more old users is a good thing), and the nature of retention is such that you get disproportionate returns on any increases you make. Without going into too much detail, an example would be that increasing retention by 33% might give you 50% more users in the long run.
Twitter is again a good example for us, as the network has been plagued by low retention rates. Twitter may seem successful now, but their low retention rate is troubling. In the past, companies that seemed to be extremely successful (think early Facebook apps) ultimately lost their edge because they couldn't retain their users.
It's entirely possible that Twitter itself could be a fad. With such low retention, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised but it is still too early to tell.
Conclusion
There's a lot to learn about analytics from the frontrunners in social media. The intense competition has resulted in many new and innovative ways to track and analyze visitor data.
We covered three such concepts in detail today: Funnel analysis, which lets you track conversion rates across whole parts of your site, engagement tracking, which is becoming more relevant than pageviews, and visitor retention analysis, which helps you understand and optimize the number of repeat visitors you get.
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Tags: retention analysis rates users social
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(via -
www.1938media.com )
I read it on 02/06/10 at 01:54 PM
Posted on 02/06/10 at 06:52 PM
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My Thoughts On Techcrunch And Daniel Brusilovsky
This was going to be a video, but frankly I'm too upset and I don't want my sentiments to be lost while you stare at my good looks and get hypnotized by my command of language and performance.
We are at a crossroads on the web and social media. It's time to start looking at ourselves with an honest eye. Today's topic is journalism and transparency.
I'm in no way a journalist but here's my transparency. I had a falling out last year with ManCrunch founder Michael Arrington. I honestly adored him, and would vigorously defend his general dickish and insane behavior to anyone who ever asked which was essentially everyone. I would say Mike is just like me, you just don't get his humor. I would do anything for him, he's been great to me.
Then Mike called to cancel his speaking appearance at The Audience Conference. Yeah I was in the car driving to the event when he called, but I tried to laugh it off. I knew all along he was gonna bail, and frankly being a friend and knowing that Mike can be Mike I really didn't care and was willing to let it slide, even though this was the second time he screwed up. He apologized the first time and we were cool. The second time he wrote some silly post on ManCrunchNotes about friendship and puppies. I like dogs too and considered the matter closed.
Then I watched him do the same thing, only worse and at a much larger scale, to another friend of mine. And then another. Then I heard some other stuff, which everyone else is mumbling about. Then I thought back to the way he treats his staff and realized that even though it makes for great puppet videos that nobody watches, It's just not my style to hang with a guy like that.
But that was months ago. My thoughts about TechCrunch in this post are not part of some revenge plot between an internet puppeteer who gets a few hundred views per YouTube video and a bigtime lawyer who claims millions of readers yet only generates a few dozen clicks each of the 20 times I've been on the front page of his site.
Daniel Brusilovsky, the latest character in the sad tale of TechCrunch, is 17 years old. Excluding Mike's puppy, this makes him the youngest contributor to the site.
Other TechCrunch contributors include Sarah Lacy, who earned her chops getting laughed off the stage interviewing Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and fellow auteur Paul Carr, who documented his unethical behaviors in a book you can download for free on TechCrunch. Paul's other hobbies include Foursquare checkins, and delaying writing the words he's under contract to write.
One of Sarah's more popular TechCrunch posts was talking about a juice diet product that costs $95 per day, which she totally paid for herself, which may or may not be repped by people close to Mike and companies that Mike invested in. Paul Carr tried it too. Even Mike gave the juice a go, or at least the puppet did I forget. Sarah also travels a lot which you can tell by the deep international flavor of her TechCrunch coverage and analysis. Or at least the pictures she posts on other sites.
There are other people at TechCrunch that I dig. I'm still mad that Hendrickson left because that threw off my puppet gag. And Schoenfeld did a great job filling in as master of ceremonies for Mike after Mike threw a tantrum and disappeared three hours before his own award show. I did a quick Google and he didn't call Arrington a total jackass even once for it. So props for that. There are others too but I'll spare them Mike's wrath by not mentioning them.
Bringing up the rear is Steve Gillmor who is the oldest TechCrunch employee at 157 years old. He's basically known for his unique talent for speaking in tongues. Tech style y'all. Yesterday Steve broadcast himself screaming at his assistant while being unable to use the copycat audio/video technology he bought for himself to compete with Leo, after he uh, left Leo's network amicably.
Since you haven't heard about Gillmor Gang let me tell you what it is.
The Gillmor Gang may or may not be a TechCrunch production. It consists of non-technical people yelling at each other about technology and runs for what feels like eleven hours. Visuals focus on odd angles of nostril hair, bad cell phone call-in audio, and lighting that makes them look like lizards. Their most popular video is a 90 second YouTube clip where keyboard cat plays jazz organ after Mike acts like an idiot, a Google employee throws his Skype headset down in disgust, and I roll my eyes uncomfortably.
This four screen picture-in-picture view was made possible by Leo's mastery of the tech that Gillmor still hasn't figured out how to use. You probably won't be able to find the site in Google since it changes URLs every ten minutes but you can probably find the keyboard cat clip on YouTube. If you bump into Leo Laporte, don't mention that you've seen it.
Unofficial TechCrunch employees include Robert Scoble, ex-camera salesman and Microsoft Vista evangelist. Today Scoble is again throwing around his journalism credentials (he dropped out of j-school) in defense of Daniel and Mike. I'll just point out that if you have to constantly tell people you're a journalist, there might be something lacking from your body of work. Even in this jaded age people tend to be able to smell actual reporting and it's not coming from building 43 at the Rackspace headquarters. Although it was fun to watch the Rackspace head of social media flop around on Friendfeed after the latest Gillmor Gang episode blew up. Cool site that Friendfeed. Somebody big should buy it and really fix up that community. And way to pick a winner in Scoble, Rackspace. Haven't seen a play this brilliant since you screwed up Slicehost.
But back to reporting. Closest Scoble ever got to a story was interviewing the guy who sells yogurt to Steve Jobs. Scoble reported that Steve Jobs was in great health. Jobs left Apple four days later for a liver transplant. Scoble was also on the private jet the day John Edwards announced his run for the Presidency, shooting video three feet away from the other video blogger who was John Edwards mistress and who mothered his child. Didn't pick up on that vibe either I guess. He sure has his thumb on the pulse.
So on the one hand I want to give Daniel Brusilovsky a pass. The kid is 17 and look at the environment he's working in and the idiots he's surrounded by. I'm tempted to blame the parents, but hey, there's no way they'd know this stuff.
Let's pretend for a moment that Dan is not some privileged little schmuck and that his parents aren't connected to Silicon Valley in some convenient way for Mike and/or Scoble. Let's imagine that the parents actually performed due diligence and took five minutes to Google the people their kid would be spending time with.
Wow. Well-adjusted, social, popular people. With lots of friends. And friendly Wikipedia entries. And they all love tech!
We all know this is utter bullshit. This is the world we've created on the web.
So before you yell at Dan, look at yourself. I know personally that lots of you know lots of things and you don't say the Stuff That Matters.
It's okay to call people idiots, or dopes, or morons, or liars when they are. This is part of the process of transparency.
Although it's probably not that helpful, you can even get away with being mean for no good reason. Here goes. Robert Scoble really is fucking stupid. Every smart person I know thinks so. Shel Israel really is a nasty prick. If you've actually tried to work with him, you know this. See? The internet didn't just collapse.
And yeah, TechCrunch has become a joke.
It's okay to say this stuff. In fact we have to say this stuff if we want to improve. You'll badmouth a restaurant for lukewarm fries on Yelp but you won't say that Rackspace Spokesman Scoble is a fool for thinking a VPN is a Virtual Public Network? One time is a slip of the tongue and we all make mistakes, but this guy has been on the wrong side of history going back a decade and clearly doesn't know anything.
It's also okay to promote other people who do great work. I don't care if it's Follow Friday or Tumblr Tuesday or ManCrunch Monday, take a minute next time and really find and promote Someone Who Matters. And if you can't find that someone, perhaps reflect on the web of connections you built and why you're wasting your time with them. Let alone endorsing them by keeping them in that little grid of profile pictures you're so proud of.
So yeah, I want to give Dan Brusilovsky a pass given the entire environment. But I can't.
I've met him several times and thought he was a smug little prick. Some kids are kids, some adults like Mike are kids, and some 17 year old kids know exactly what's up. My opinion is that Dan is a Man and falls into the last category. He knew what he was doing and deserves the consequences.
Should Mike have done a better job mentoring him? Absolutely. But look at Mike. He can't take care of himself in any way or even show up to the parties and conference circle jerks he throws himself. He seems to do an okay job with the puppies but I wouldn't trust him with an up-and-coming 17 year old tech reporter.
Mike's transparency post also deserves a little attention. It says nothing. It doesn't mention the company or companies involved in the alleged laptop-for-coverage scandal. I'm sure it'll all get figured out eventually, and it might even be a company that's a friend or sponsor of mine. But in the spirit of saying Stuff That Matters, I'll close with this:
If you bought a MacBook Air in order to get a 17 year old to write a post on TechCrunch, and you thought this would in any way improve your business, you're an absolute, total dope.
Tags: mike techcrunch scoble even video
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(via -
GigaOM )
I read it on 02/07/10 at 09:02 AM
Posted on 02/05/10 at 05:00 PM
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 The big project fails, the company begins to struggle and before you know it, the board of directors replaces the management team. Sound familiar? But crisis doesn't have to spell the end of the company itself.
Most companies and teams in turnaround situations focus on the obvious and important factors of balance sheet, cash flow and net income health. Teams also usually get to work quickly on market analysis that ultimately results in new product and business strategies. These actions are almost always necessary, just not always sufficient. Here are four often overlooked tactics that, if successfully employed, are critical to rapidly and successfully turning around a struggling enterprise:
1. Facilitate Closure - When a team has been through an extended period of hardship, it needs a sense of closure before it can start moving forward again, and closure is often best facilitated through a cathartic event that symbolizes the end of the perilous and painful journey. But while closure commonly necessitates letting a person or team go, don't rush to find a fall guy. Be very precise about identifying what was holding the company back it could just as easily have come in the form of an ineffective process or out-of-date strategy. Approach its removal the way you would a tumor: Excise carefully, and be wary of damaging any healthy surrounding tissue.
2. Set a Vision - According to intentional change theory, there are five steps to achieving sustained desired change. The first is to identify the ideal self, which for an organization is usually embodied in a collective vision consisting of its members' dreams (to be recognized as the best in the industry? world domination?), their desired future (market penetration? profitability?), and their strengths or values (high quality? extraordinary customer care?) Identify these in order to establish a shared vision that resonates with each team member on a deep, even emotional, level.
3. Find an Enemy - The easiest way to solidify an us is to identify a them. As Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory makes clear, people need to be part of a group, but in a company the result is often conflict between groups. The conflict that most often occurs in a crisis is affective and role-based and therefore often negative and value-destroying. There is no better way to rally the troops than to embody the fight with an external nemesis. Identify for your team an enemy outside the company and focus on beating or staying ahead of it, using everything from its press releases to its product launches to spur the team into action.
4. Tend the Garden - In our recently published book, The Art of Scalability, we talk at length about how leadership is like gardening. Leaders must hire or seed the team with the right people and mentor its members just as gardeners feed their plants. And when team members aren't working out, they need to be weeded out.
The time period between Microsoft's release of its XP desktop operating system and Vista marked the longest in the company's history between product launches. Jim Allchin, Microsoft's co-president, admitted in a Wall Street Journal interview to telling Bill Gates at one point that It's not going to work, describing the development as crashing to the ground due to haphazard methods of feature integration.
To recover from this, Microsoft enlisted the help of senior executive Amitabh Srivastava, who rooted out the process that was holding the project back. He then had a team of architects establish a development process that enforced high levels of code quality and reduced interdependencies. Once the new process was in place, the vision was set for what was ultimately a successful product launch, at least in terms of getting the product out the door and meeting the expected sales volumes.
There are entire books and domains of research dedicated to turning around failed projects and distressed teams. This list is in no way all-encompassing but if you are ever faced with the daunting task of turning around a team, these four tasks will be critical to its success.
      
Tags: team company product often vision
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(via -
MobileCrunch )
I read it on 01/26/10 at 08:10 PM
Posted on 01/26/10 at 02:59 PM
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