EchoDitto - Technology

Sprinkle A Little Social On Your Site - posted by Meaghan Lamarre

Sun, 25 May 2008 11:13:41 -0700

So our friends at the leading social networks -- MySpace, Facebook, and Google -– are finally getting the idea that we don’t really want to spend all our online lives on their websites. Last week these three companies launched new plans to let us integrate our profiles on their networks with other sites we use. All three initiatives claim to be advancing us closer to the idea of the utopian open social web, where we can connect with all our friends on any network through any website. But how close are we?

Google's initiative here is the most interesting … and the most disappointing. Called Google Friend Connect, this initiative allows any website owner to, as Google's David Glazer says, "sprinkle a little social" on their sites (listen to the audio of the announcement, thanks to ReadWriteTalk). I didn’t realize “social” was a noun, but I digress. Through some applications Google is developing and, eventually, other developers will be contributing, a website owner can paste in a little code on her website and voila! she can now have users post photos, add comments, and other social functions on her website (check out Google's demonstrations to see what I mean). Sounds kind of cool. And it's definitely great if you’ve got a static site that needs some spice, and you don’t know a lick of code.

But there are a couple of key failings of this new plan.

First, you've still got to select your network. After Google announced Friend Connect, which originally was supposed to include your Facebook profile as a networking option, Facebook banned Friend Connect, saying it violates their privacy settings. So, if you put a Friend Connect application on your site, your users have to have a Google or OpenID account. If you want let people connect with their Facebook friends, you can't do it through Friend Connect.

The bigger drawback, however, is that there's no way to integrate the data from Friend Connect with whatever you’re doing on your site. At EchoDitto, we recommend using everything you know about your users to tailor your communications with them and their experiences on your site. But the really cool discussions that you might foster on your site, or information on the users who submitted photos to your contest, all of that will be inaccessible to you. And that doesn't sound very open.

The jury's still out on Google Friend Connect, which isn't even available to the public yet, as well as Facebook Connect and MySpace's Data Avaibility initiatives, so it remains to be seen how these programs will work in practice, or how quickly they'll lead us to that utopia of the open social web.

SXSW Take Aways - posted by Chris Jones

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:42:23 -0700

South by Southwest was an absolute blast. I could go on and on about the panels I attended or the people I met, but I'll just say they were all awesome. Instead this will be about what I saw as the overarching themes of the conference: accessibility and data ownership/transferability.

Big Point #1: Everyone is online. We're all aware of this, but too few of us produce work that is accessible to anyone besides english readers in standard web browsers. What about assistive technologies? What about non-english readers? How will we deal with localizing our work? There are some great projects to help with the creation and maintenance of content in multiple languages. More and more, we're going to have to make use of these things.

First, it's important to nail down the key terms. Internationalization does not equal translation. Internationalization, according to User Experience Designer Jon Wiley from Google, refers to the overall design of a product. That means getting down to architectural considerations, like whether or not the visual presentation of a site is flexible enough to allow for changes in character set height and width or direction that appear with localization of the actual content. According to him, English has relatively short words, which can expand greatly when translated. As a rule of thumb, he says that any layout should allow a +40% size tolerance to account for that expansion.

Beyond those architectural decisions, content must be localized. Wiley describes localization as the act of making content appropriate for a target audience. This goes beyond translating words according to culture to color considerations. For example, what does red mean to a target audience? It might mean urgency, or it might imply luck.

Google is available in 117 languages, and gracefully shifts from left to right text (ex: english) to right to left text (ex: hebrew). Google's visual layout is also fairly simple compared to a lot of our work. Luckily, they've produced some useful tools. CSS Janus does a fairly decent job of translating left to right-focused CSS to right to left. Google Translate is useful to check the fitness of a visual design for proper expansion for other languages (NOT as a translation service, of course).

So to summarize, everyone's online, and content needs to be accessible to more people. Localization is no small task. Following accessibility guidelines is not easy. So this point, machine translation projects cannot produce worthwhile text, so budgets will have to expand to work with translators. Still, it's crucial to get the full breadth of the audience on board with whatever it is a site is promoting, so it sounds necessary to me. Honestly, I'm excited about this stuff. I'm in the process of a full redesign of the website of a community bike shop I work with, which will be localized for both english and spanish-speaking audiences.

Big Point #2: We want control of our data. Again, we're all aware of this. Down in Austin, I felt a genuine air of paranoia about who owns data, and how protected and portable it is, and how we sort through it all. We've all dumped loads about ourselves on the web, and clearly business has an interest in using it to target marketing.

Users need choices and clear explanation about what is public and what is not. I'm probably not alone in being unsure as to which parts of a Facebook profile are public and which aren't. Things need to be simple and easy. Catering to the lowest common denominator is not always preferable, but with everyone using data harvesting services, maybe it's necessary. I can't imagine it's a bad thing that everyone knows exactly how Netflix works. They bop you over the head on every page as to what ratings do and how they produce better recommendations, so even my parents know how it works. That sort of transparency is good.

What about who owns the data? Facebook's culture is to just dump everything about yourself. Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) says that he's in this to change the way we communicate, and says relatively little about how that information will be used. Seemed like Beacon wasn't widely loved. What about our loved services? Flickr rules, right? Well, it's already owned by a fairly large company, which may soon be owned by an even larger and not always loved company. What about services like Twitter that exist with no revenue and tons of users. We love Twitter, but I don't understand how any company could exist with no revenue forever. How will these sorts of services use that information? Again, I love you, Twitter. This is not an attack, just a question.

How do we access all this stuff? There was a great panel that focused on OpenID and oAuth. Creating a new profile for every site we visit seems a little silly. Decentralized single sign on sounds great to me, but it's crucial that we trust those third party authentication services. I'm hoping to do more with OpenID in my projects at Echoditto.

In closing, the big points are things we've been aware of and thought about for a while now. The difference is that it's clear the rest of the web is thinking about these things too. We're in for some interesting times. Drupalers, time to look at the internationalization handbook. Maybe it's time to read about RDF, as it might blow our data concerns wide open. There's some neat stuff coming down the pike.

More than nerdy news and politics? - posted by Cristen Perks

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:33:31 -0800

Well, you may not know this, but I'm quite the baker and crafter. My parents call me "Martha, Jr." I've been supplying the DC office with sugar cookies for the last 18 mos and I have to say no one has complained. Although Ben is quite the cook as well - he's definitely challenging me for the title of "office baker." Where am I going with all this?

Well recently I haven't had a whole lot of time to spend doing the crafty things that I like to and then, like a beam of light down from the sky, I discovered an RSS link on the food network site. It struck me! I don't have to just monitor news, friends, craigslist with my RSS reader - I can monitor food blogs, recipes and crafy magazines too!!!! [insert sound of angels singing]

I'm not really sure why all of this didn't occur to me earlier. I think I've gotten so stuck in the routine of monitoring work stuff over the last 3 years with RSS that I didn't realize the fun folks had finally caught onto RSS in the last year or so. This has definitely inspired me to make some time for being crafty. Some of my favorite finds are on del.icio.us if you're curious. And if you don't know what I'm talking about with all this RSS mumbo jumbo, watch this video, it's great:

So, being that I'm an internet strategist - longtime fan of crafty bastards - and just now having the aforementioned epiphany, it should be no surprise that I'm also just now hopping on board the etsy train. I'm amazed by the breath and strength of the community surrounding handmade crafts - what a great resource. In the first week, I've gotten personal tips on selling products from another local etsy fan and have even placed my first order. And to think, I can thank my RSS reader for all of this!

Last Night a Dorkbot Saved My Life - posted by Anne Keenan

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:43:37 -0800

A few weeks ago, I read an EchoDitto Labs blog post about Dorkbot DC, which prompted me to search for a NYC equivalent. Bingo! Dorkbot NYC meets the first Wednesday of every month only a few blocks from our office. Perfect, for someone like me who is essentially lazy.

What is Dorkbot?
dorkbot-nyc is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties from the new york area who are involved in the creative use of electricity. dorkbot meetings are free and open to the public. Since we started dorkbot-nyc in 2000 many other dorkbots have sprung up around the world. See them all at: http://dorkbot.org
Well, I mean, of course it started in NYC.

I got to the gallery a little before 7 and found a seat toward the front. Being shy and a little nervous that someone was going to ask me to solder or explain how the internet works, I then had 15 minutes to busy myself with my iPhone, and furtively check out the room. Things looked promising: all projectors and mics seemed to be working; everyone seemed pretty friendly; and someone had brought my favorite snack, kettle corn, to share. Ready.

The first presentation was two guys explaining their new open-source program to push user interfaces to mobile devices (called Mrmr). The premise is that you can build interfaces to control computer programs and then send them to someone’s mobile device. Then that person can control the program from their phone. Their example was a computer visualization program where you could adjust the angle, static, distortion, etc.

The best part was that they actually explained it in human language. When open for questions, the discussion became a little more robot-based, but I pretty much followed. If you are a robot, and would like more robot details, check out their site.

The details of how this will actually be helpful in real life are a little vague, but they did suggest we could use it in museums to send interactive content to people or add it to interactive billboards to let passersby interact with them. Pretty fricking cool…

When the next presenter, Andrew Senior, started talking, my heart skipped a beat. His three projects were explorations of artificial life—life forms that live on television radiation, words that come alive and crawl toward each other, robots that help plants achieve optimal energy storage. Amazing. I recommend watching this video immediately. And then swooning.

All in all, I left the meeting filled with nerdy hope for the world. There are people out there working on amazing projects, not for money, not for fame, just for the joy and intellectual challenge of it. I love these people. And plan to spend the first Wednesday night of every month with them. Wanna join me?

P.S. One other thing filling me with nerdy hope for the world: the Obama Yes We Can video. It’s #1 on CNN and on Google Video for a reason. These geniuses (or… celebrities) have turned a political speech into a relatively catchy video. The kind that makes you want to listen again and again so you can sing along to it. Just when you think there’s nothing new in the world, smart people come along.

My "social web" epiphany - posted by Meaghan Lamarre

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:45:53 -0800

I have a confession to make.

For the past year or so, I have been merely "going through the motions" of using the newest social networking technologies.

True, I have been dutifully maintaining (ok, "maintaining" may be too generous) my MySpace and Facebook profiles. I signed up with Twitter and I've even twittered more than 20 times (granted, that's over the course of two months; I've already been chided for my lame tweets). I use the EchoDitto del.icio.us feed, and even started a personal one. One thing I'm on top of: I'm a dedicated updater of my Gmail status messages.

But the usefulness of all of this just hadn't clicked for me. Until today.

There was no earth-shattering revelation, no life-changing lesson inspired by a friend's Facebook update. Rather, it was a slow dawning of realization, built up over several month's use of these tools, of they way they facilitate what I can only describe as "shared being."

It reminds me of living on campus in college. When living in a dorm, usually in close enough proximity that you can shout and be heard by several friends, there is a constant exchange of ideas. Sometimes these ideas are of little value, but sometimes they're really clever, or creative, or brilliant. And the fact that you can bounce those ideas off your friends in your dorm, or in the dining hall, allows the ideas to grow into something really great. I really loved that about being in college -- the constant flow of ideas. And the feeling that we're sharing it all with one another -- the boring, inconsequential stuff as well as the epiphanies.

That's the feeling I get with these new social tools. Thanks to these technologies that allow me (and my friends) to broadcast our thoughts to the universe -- in a way that's so quick and easy that it takes almost no more effort than talking -- I can stay in touch with what the people important to me are thinking and doing, whenever they choose to share it. I learn an enormous amount from a friend of mine who twitters about the various web projects she's exploring. I get great ideas (and much amusement) from my friends who include cool links in their Gmail status messages. I'm smarter for having read friends' and coworkers' del.icio.us feeds. It's as though we're all sitting around the dining hall table, sharing whatever's on our minds. And it's really cool.

So, ok, I'm converted. I've got to go twitter this now.

¡Viva la Barça, y Viva la Drupalcon! - posted by Phil Lamb

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:10:22 -0700

I just flew in from Barcelona, and boy are my arms tired!

Well, not really - actually I got back about two weeks ago, but what with finalizing development and launching President Clinton's newest site and the Bears beating the Packers, I haven't had a lot of time to collect my thoughts and set them down via an interblag. Well, now that things have calmed down slightly, I figured I'd give it a shot.

First of all, Barcelona is an amazing city. It's incredibly metropolitan - sort of like New York on a smaller scale and with more spanish, although most people with whom I interacted spoke great English. It's really easy to get around, which was good since the conference was taking place at CitiLab Cornélia, on the outskirts of the city.

The overnight flight was not nearly as sleepy as I would have liked. Older planes apparently don't cool off much during flight, which is bad for me, as I really prefer to sleep in a cold room with lots of blankets. I also prefer to sleep lying down, which, as any of you who've experienced transatlantic travel in coach know, is basically impossible in a 747.

Anyway, what that all amounted to was me getting in at about 9:30 and wishing I could have slept. Thankfully I was able to adjust fairly quickly to the new schedule, and things were aces from there.

It was interesting to meet in real life so many of the people with whom I had interacted via IRC and forums. A lot of them were really cool people, which was great since I had come as the sole representative of EchoDitto and didn't exactly have any guarantee of social interaction. About two days into the conference I met up with ExoDitto Justin Miller, who was there with a group of people from the DoD. They're doing some really cool open-source stuff which I'm not sure I can talk about here, but needless to say the move towards open-source is one which I think would benefit a number of existing government agencies.

The days were PACKED and to my chagrin a number of talks I wanted to attend were scheduled for the same timeslot, but someone had the brilliant idea of recording most of the sessions and posting them online, and I'd definitely recommend checking them out.

It wouldn't be feasible for me to talk in depth about every session I attended, so instead I'll just focus on the one that interested me the most: the Agile Development method.

Why did this one strike me? Well, for the most part there weren't many technical surprises at DC07, with maybe the exception of Dave Cohen's presentation on Drupal for Facebook, which shows some real promise for melding the two platforms. One of the reasons I was sent out to Barcelona was for self-improvement, and as many developers out there know, getting a great development process going is one area where many people find themselves stuck. The Agile process, to me, represents a great solution - one that will almost certainly keep the client happy and the developer sane, and that combination leads to faster development, less overhead, and more client leads.

Here's the general idea behind Agile software development:

Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software
Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
Working software is the principal measure of progress
Even late changes in requirements are welcomed
Close, daily, cooperation between business people and developers
Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication
Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
Simplicity
Self-organizing teams
Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

- wikipedia

EchoDitto's development process is already composed of some of these ideas, but lately we've been starting to take a look at adopting a majority of them.

All in all, DC07 was an incredibly beneficial experience, reinforcing things I already knew and teaching me things I didn't. I'm not entirely sure where the next DrupalCon will be held (some are saying Stuttgart), but if you get the chance - GO!

President Clinton, Martha Stewart, and our newborn: MyCommitment.org - posted by Michael Silberman

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:22:38 -0700

Quick! Got a TV near you? Our latest project, MyCommitment.org, is going to be on TV today! Oh, and President Bill Clinton will be introducing it. Along with Martha Stewart. On her TV show. For almost a full hour. I'm not kidding, and, as you can imagine, it's making all of us a bit giddy.

MyCommitment.org launched this morning in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York City. The idea is simple: Global leaders, CEOs, organizations, and heads of state all come together each year to make massive commitments to help solve the world's greatest problems. But rather than letting the big whigs have all the fun, MyCommitment.org invites everyday citizens to participate in the pledging process with their own ways to make the world a better place. And just like at the CGI summit, every commitment that an individual makes must be specific, relevant, and trackable.

Find out when The Martha Stewart Show airs in your area today so that you can watch President Clinton explain the MyCommitment.org project along with his new book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World. (We also had the honor of developing and launching the website for Giving earlier this month. Check it out here.)

It's not every day that global institutions—especially ones as influential as the Clinton Foundation—decide that the potential benefits of multiplying the reach and impact of their work far outweighs any risks associated with opening their doors to everyday citizens. Given the levels of true participation that MyCommitment.org is inviting and enabling, we see this project as a pretty bold move for President Clinton, his foundation, and CGI -- and we couldn't have had a greater privilege than to work on developing and implementing this campaign with the President's team.

Let us know what you think! (That is, of course, after you make your own commitment and rate some of the others.) Like almost everything on the web these days, this is only the first phase, so please drop a comment here or on the campaign blog with any ideas you have for the next evolution.

And if you think that both the MyCommitment.org and Giving sites are looking especially good, you can pay a compliment to our good designer friends over at BiroCreative; they're responsible for making it all look so slick, and I'm sure they'd love to know what you think as well.

UPDATE: Watch President Clinton announce the launch of MyCommitment.org at the CGI meeting:

Nurse, I've dropped the Wii-mote... - posted by Nicco

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:40:22 -0700

As a follow-up to my last post on teaching, let’s fast-forward a few decades: from the youth to the “wise”. A couple days ago I had a long compelling conversation with Jim Moore and his son Graham about the elderly and technology that got me to thinking: how can we use technology to connect the un-connected elderly with those of us living a more digital lifestyle? Then I saw this post about the Nintendo Wii in nursing homes and it’s clear: technology offers oblique opportunities to engage the elderly.

Those of you who have known me for some time probably have heard stories about my beloved Great-Aunt Ednas (yes, I have two Great-Aunt Ednas). Great-Aunt Edna in Florida (as opposed to Great-Aunt Edna in Queens) is in her 90s but has astonishing mental acuity. She’s downright dangerous; God help you if you get into an argument with her. But she lives an increasingly limited life – my Great-Uncle Joe died a few years ago, and her ability to drive and get around town is diminishing. She doesn’t have any family in Florida, and she has mostly out-lived her friends. I don’t get down to see her much, but I call every few days. In short, she’s alone most of the time. [I have a brief and mildly depressing photo essay from my visit to her last year here, complete with photos of Uncle Joe's letters of commendation from the Department of Defense for his work on the "Flame Warfare Effort in Vietnam".]

Aunt Edna would love the internet – but the bar to engage online is a little too high. And a digital picture frame is not really engaging enough – a little too passive.

I loved my grandmother intensely, and when she was alive and having trouble leaving the house, I got her an Apple iSight so we could do digital video chats online. It worked surprisingly well – and it was pretty easy for her to figure out. But my grandmother was digitally a lot savvier than my Aunt Edna – she had taught herself email years ago – and my grandmother also had my parents across the street to help sort out any technical difficulties. Aunt Edna has never used a computer and has no one nearby to help if she runs into any kind of difficulty.

So how do I use technology to connect Aunt Edna to the wired world? I’m going down to Florida in a month for work, and I’m going to check in on Aunt Edna. I’m tempted to bring her an old laptop and order up internet for her through her digital cable service. But I’m also pretty sure that is not money well-spent; there are so many ways it could go wrong, and I’m just not there to help ease her into it, guide her into using a computer regularly.

I’m chewing on this issue, considering my – and Aunt Edna’s – options. Maybe I’ll get her a Wii. But I’d rather get her a means of connecting to the world, an outside line. At the end of the day, it’s still so complicated! It’s worth figuring out; thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, more and more people are living longer. Online community offers an incredible way to engage the elderly without the hassle -- and perils -- of leaving their homes. We've just got to make it a little easier.

Overwhelmed - posted by Nicco

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:42:14 -0700

I don't know about you - but I'm overwhelmed by our social media. So many blog posts, so many friend requests on Facebook and LinkedIn, so many emails. In the month of August, I received 2,960 emails directly addressed to me – that’s excluding spam, excluding bulk email lists, and excluding emails where I was CC:ed. I replied to 1,231 of those emails.

I vaguely recollect somewhere reading that the average human being can process approximately 150 relationships. I have 329 friends on Facebook, 15 pending friend requests, and 25 group invitations. Am I anti-social, or is this just crazy?

I have tried all kinds of things to cope. I even bought the Lifehacker book and tried all manner of ways to manage my time better and generally keep on top of it, and it just seems overwhelming. I'm convinced it's a part of the social media condition, although my appetite for new things and my particular personality no doubt exacerbates it. The nature of technology and it's effect on our social fabric is a regular topic with my father-in-law in our semi-weekly podcasts where we try to reconcile his notions of relationship and communication with mine, a couple generations later. Wither the good old-fashioned letter between friends, long and rambling and concerning the condition of the world? What will happen to historical biographies - so dependent upon long, detailed, preserved correspondence - in the age of the Blackberry? And why has the average vocabulary so contracted that hardly anyone knows what "the fantods" means anymore?

My friend Chris Massey says there’s just a limited number of hours in the day, and if you care about the quality of your relationships you necessarily limit the quantity of them. A while back, he and I started the Quitters & Losers Club, a response to my chronic over-commitment:

Blessed Are the Quitters

"Dear people, my name is Nicco and I'm only here for a few minutes today to encourage you and enlist your personal participation in an intentional act of change and necessary transformation. At the heart of such a proposition is the reality that no change is possible without letting go of something. In other words, you can't take up unless you're willing to give up .... something.

Now, you might be wondered exactly what I'm getting at. Well, someone here today...shouldn't be. What I mean is that someone among us is not fulfilled to a degree sufficient to justify their staying as opposed to going. If only they would take a bold self-empowering leap and act for the sake of themselves and all of us here today. If only we could surround them with sincere, supportive encouragement and faith in their ability to secure a better future. If only they would QUIT.

That's right. I said it. You heard it. And you know it's true. Sometimes, more often than we are willing to admit, the right thing to do is quit. It is the first step to real change. In our culture, we teach people not to quit. We suggest that it is weakness that makes one quit. On the contrary, it is self doubt and weakness that keeps us from quitting. Quitting is cutting away from the security of the dock and putting out to sea, not to drift but to find the wind, trim the sails, and set a course for what you believe is out there waiting for you.

Just for a moment, ask yourself when was the last time you practiced a good quit. I suggest you reconsider your sens-abilities. Without the ability to quit, you're stuck. Free will? -- No way! But you can reclaim your power; you can rise up on your own two feet. You can demonstrate to yourself and everyone around you that you aren't going to sit down and take it easy any more. You may be half-talented, semi-lame, and somewhat self-deluded, but that doesn't mean your finished yet. You have the power and the power you have is the power to quit. I know you would like to, but you're afraid, unsure, tentative, wary, etc. Don't let that hold you back from your future. Trade in your half-empty glass and seek out a full cup. You deserve. You've been thirsty all your life, but you've relied on others to bring you that always partially filled glass of satisfaction. Stand up. Rise up. Quit!

What is your last strand of reservation tethering you to the berth you occupy? Is it that you are afraid of being -- listen carefully, I'm going to say it -- "a loser"? Don't cringe. The strong among us are all losers, but we're able to cut ourselves away. We want more. And when you really admit it, you're a loser, but you have never let yourself "loose". Free. Wild. Hopeful. Daring. Just quit.

My appetite for all the wonderful things in the world (like puppies) - all the books to read, all the causes to take up, all the people to meet, all the music to listen and all the art to see - overwhelms the limited number of hours in my days, and I find myself forced to make decisions. Except I'm not all that decisive, and the end result is a lack of sleep and a general feeling of being adrift and ovewhelmed.

But at this particular junction I've got some clarity on what's next: at this late hour - I will take my leave of you - quit, if you will - to be "lost in the arms of rhythm and of sleep". Good night. And if you've got any ideas on how to cope in this hyper-connected, hyper-social world of digital availability, let me know. I'm all ears.

From the Labs... - posted by Tom Lee

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:18:13 -0700

Summer's almost over, but I and my fellow Ditto geeks remain as pale as ever. We might not have gotten to the beach as much we'd've liked, but we did manage to put some interesting things up on EchoDitto Labs. Here are a few of 'em:

Geeky enough for ya? If so, you might want to subscribe to our feed.

No iPhones in Vermont - posted by Scott Bulua

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:19:43 -0700

Vermonters have long resisted their membership in the United States, and some rebel separatists are still calling for an independent Green Mountain Republic. Furthermore, the international focus of my alma mater, Middlebury College, certainly adds to the international image. But Apple, and their iPhone partner AT&T, have abused Vermont's desire for independence: iPhones, which are only available in the United States, cannot be purchased or used by Vermonters. In fact, iPhone users who make more than forty percent of their calls in Vermont will be booted from their contracts. The real reason is that Vermont is the only state without AT&T cell service, so the company is forced to cover roaming charges, but the situation smacks of discrimination.

While this may upset Vermont's Apple fanatics, the state, which has been rapidly losing its young, can certainly use this discrimination to their advantage. By courting AT&T users who want out of their contracts, everybody wins. The winters may be cold, but the Verizon reception is excellent.

Flickering Farmers - posted by Michael Silberman

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:01:10 -0700

I spent part of Saturday at the Berkeley farmer's market (well, one of them) visiting with a good friend and enjoying some truly perfect weather. One of our first stops was, of course, for coffee. The Blue Bottle Coffee Company had a booth where they were slow-brewing coffee cup by cup, as it was ordered, slow-food style. I ordered a special New Orleans iced coffee that was roasted with chicory and cane sugar -- it was pretty amazing. Something about the scene was particularly poignant, so I whipped out my Treo, snapped a pic, and dutifully emailed it up to Flickr with a simple caption before i forgot where i was.

When I logged on to check email the next day, I was stunned to find the following subject line among my messages: "[Flickr] You are BlueBottleCoffeeCo's newest contact!" I couldn't help but laugh, yet i wasn't sure why... At first, I couldn't imagine a busy coffee roaster -- or any local entrepreneur -- taking the time to even setup a google alert let alone listen to a friend opine about the virtues of the web beyond e-commerce. Then I think I laughed at my own small-mindedness and false assumptions. But finally I was just plain happy that the entire online encounter was possible. I was glad that my photo was so easily found by someone who would appreciate it and that BlueBottleCoffeeCo could so easily reach out and acknowledge me and my little customer existence in this simple way. Creepy for some; exhilarating for the rest of us.

Facebook Application Fatigue - posted by Gregory Cooper

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:17:00 -0700

I am proud to have not lived under a rock for the last month. It has its benefits- I experienced the sublime pleasures of seeing Paris Hilton get out of jail, visited my grandmother in New York City, and found inner peace.

Still… a small part of me wished that I did live under that rock. Why? Well… there is this onslaught of Facebook applications cluttering what was my favorite social-networking application!!!

Example: Facebook Graffiti

OK… I exaggerate. Facebook took a very bold step by opening up their platform, and in short order they have produced some impressive applications (Flickr, iLike, etc). Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, MySpace has recently revealed that it will soon follow suit. Finally, it is also generally known that Facebook users complain whenever anything is changed.

Yet, there are tell-tale signs of "App Fatigue" in the online community resulting from an overload of Facebook Applications, which requires users to spend enough time learning and distinguishing quality applications from… well… not so quality ones.

Want to hear about my sojourn into the world of Facebook apps? Sure you do! Last week, I decided to try the "30 Boxes" Facebook application, spent 10 minutes setting my preferences, and found that my only reward was a big fat error message! (It has been a week… still not working)

To make matters worse, I received a request to be someone’s "Top Friend", who I barely knew. I rejected her request on principal- Facebook shouldn’t distinguish ‘friends’ from "best friends" or "super best friends forever." Ackkk! Definitely reminded me of MySpace.

Yesterday I sat myself down to watch a recording of Mark Zuckerberg’s address in San Diego. I heard Mark Zuckerberg reason that Facebook needed to become a platform for creating applications because decentralized systems work better and so logically ‘good’ Facebook apps would succeed. I thought to myself- “Yeah… that sounds reasonable and Web 2.0. Rock on!”

Still, I couldn't help but notice that leaving Facebook users to sort out which apps are good and which are not, have left many users fatigued and simply lost interest in trying new applications. I’ve heard repeated complaints how the new applications reduce Facebook’s "clean and simple" interface. This is more than just anger about suffering the Facebook Graffiti app…it is just that no one wants to take the time to sort through the 90+ applications! Facebook users don’t want to install a new application that are not trustworthy nor tested in order to "throw food" or add "super poke."

Even Facebook App developers are recognizing this trend: "I definitely think that people are initially going to run into 'app fatigue,'" said Amit Gupta who created a Facebook Platform application for his photography tips newsletter, Photojojo. Facebook users are an especially finicky bunch- the release of the News Feed last year provides a prime example of how Facebook users expressed vehement disapproval, followed by acceptance and support. People don’t like change… familiarity and continuity are valuable to users who don’t want to bother learning a new interface.

Will the release of Facebook as a platform, and the subsequent onslaught of mostly ineffective applications harm Facebook’s growth and reputation?

My opinion- No.

While angry that it has to conduct such sorting, the masses of Facebook users will eventually sort it out, and the useful applications will remain while others fall to the wayside. Already there are a myriad of articles on websites like CNET.com, Wired, and ZDNet that detail the most useful Facebook applications.

Bottom line- Until the initial rush of applications slows down and clear winners emerge, I don’t give a fig to whatever my friends are adding.

A lot of businesses are crazy for Facebook applications. What does the Facebook Platform mean for businesses in the long run?

Time to Meet - posted by Gisele Toueg

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:12:54 -0700

For me and my friends, Summer 2007 seems to be the season for weddings. In addition to my own August nupituals, I've got six weddings on the calendar this summer. Yikes! All those weddings mean six showers and six bachelorette parties. Doesn't leave much time for catching up on old episodes of 24.

That being said, the most challenging part of attending so many events is figuring times that work for most, if not all invited guests. I can't even begin to count how many group emails I've read and responded to in the past 2 months with the subject line: "Bachelorette Party Dates." What a pain to keep going back and forth, listening to people's family obligations, travel schedules, and roster of out of town visitors. It's enough to make me want to curl up in front of the DVD player and sit it all out.

But yesterday, a tip from EchoDitto's own Michael Silberman might have solved the problem for all wedding-related event planners around the globe. The solution: Time To Meet, an online calendaring solution that allows you to input your availability through a web-based interface. Event planners can invite a list of people to enter their availabilities on a common schedule. Time to Meet then finds the best times and lets the organizer confirm the final time. All invitees get an email with the meeting date and time, and you're done.

If only I had known about this sooner, I would have spent the past eight weeks complaining less and watching more Jack Bauer.