Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: Twitter (Page 2 of 3)

What Will Make or Break Google Plus

June 29, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I was thinking about Google Plus a little last night as I continually refreshed my screen hoping it would magically appear. I think there are a few things that can really make or break Google’s latest attempt at social.

1. Nobody has groups right yet

Twitter’s lists are great, but are basically read only. You can’t broadcast to them. This is in keeping with the way Twitter fundamentally works, so that’s cool. But as far as the people on your lists go, it is more of a mark of reputation to be on someone’s list than it is an indication of engagement from that person to you. Facebook has done a better job with Groups, but they aren’t even close to the three dimensional overlapping of sets of groups we are able to so easily process in our brains. Maybe Google is actually smart enough to tackle this abstraction.

2. Group Texting

Yeah, everybody has a group texting gadget, but Google has more reach. They bought Disco, and have seemingly re-branded it as Huddle. I hate texting, but this may make it a little better.

3. Ubiquitity (I just made up that word I think)

With Chrome, Google has the ability to offer a nice extension to make Google Plus always on. No need to visit a site or run a separate app to see what is going on…it can always be there, yet still unobtrusive. I don’t see why Facebook couldn’t do something like that with Chrome, but they don’t own the browser. Google could actually ship their extension as a part of the browser (and I bet they will), while Facebook will have to settle for being an extension. I don’t know the numbers on how many people running Chrome don’t ever install extensions, but I’m betting that number will rise as Chrome gets closer to the meaty part of the user adoption curve.

4. Android

Google already has a big market share for mobile, and they’ll be able to tightly integrate all the features of Plus into Android. iOS users are stuck with an HTML 5 webapp for now. Again, I don’t know what this has done for Gmail, and it was already a hit before, but this may be a huge factor. Bonus points if they offer up an online locker with plenty of space the way they did with Gmail at the beginning. That would be a big feature for storing photos and video.

Just some thoughts. I’m sure I’m way off base here. Tell me why.

***UPDATE***

Instant Upload from Android devices is a money maker! Coolest thing yet for any social platform I’ve used!

I’m reading– March 10th through March 16th

March 16, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Digital Will – I could do a whole series of posts on this. Maybe I should. Maybe I will (no pun intended).

Just try to cut off Netflix’s content supply – Can’t wait until the cable companies are skipped entirely and we can buy directly from the producers and/or networks. Win-win-win-lose. The “lose” is for the cable companies. The market will find a way.

Jon Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs for Killed Music – I say Jon Bon Jovi has done more harm to music than Steve Jobs ever could.

Top 20 Obnoxious People At The Gym – I’m #5, @svandyke is #8, and we are both “The Guy Who Sits on the Sofa and Drinks Coffee For 2 Hours and Leaves Without Even Working Out”.

iPad 2 for Distributed Teams – Interesting. Can you RDP with an iPad?

Twitter Drops The Ecosystem Hammer – Then, uh, Twitter…how’s about giving me a UI that’s even half as good as TweetDeck? Are those crickets or birds chirping?

iPad 2 could lead to glut of rival tablets – Oversupplied means under-priced. I’ll wait it out.

Man Trains For Marathon While Eating McDonald’s-Only Diet – HT @DustyOverby I did the same thing with Little Debbie snack cakes and Petro’s chili.

Stricter Limits on Debit Cards Coming? – No worries…they’ll be happy to issue you a credit card to cover larger purchases. Of course, the interest rate on that card will be about 10-20 times the amount of interest they are paying you on the MONEY YOU ALREADY HAVE BUT CAN’T SPEND BECAUSE THEY SET SUCH LOW LIMITS. Better not be late with that payment. Big banks suck.

Stuff You Should See– September 3rd through October 13th

October 13, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Top 5 things to HATE about Marathon Runners -Ha! Best list since “Stuff White People Like”. I made every annoying thing on this list!

Amusing Ourselves to Death – Awsum.

Higher education bubble poised to burst – "The people running America's colleges and universities have long thought they were exempt from the laws of supply and demand and unaffected by the business cycle. Turns out that's wrong."

Market: Over 12 Year Period You Made More on 1st Day of Month.. – That is a pretty amazing fact.

What if the Postal Service runs out of money? – Cheese and crackers! Just let it die already!

Testing Teachers On Math and Reading – I can just hear their excuse now…"I may not be able to lay an egg, but I can tell a good one from a bad one" or "Do you think Tiger Woods' golf coach is better than Tiger at golf?"

Google SEO Starter Guide updated

The Most Influential Consumers Online are on Twitter – The easiest way to get a lot of retweets is to write an article praising Twitter users.

Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter? – "Stupid jock" isn't always true.

Stop Repeating Yourself: Set Up a Workplace Wiki – I tried this at a former job a few years ago. The result–I used it. Then we had the middle management who would copy the contents of a help file somewhere and paste it into the wiki. That gets you bonus points for authorship when you show it in your PowerPoint!

IEEE Spectrum: Get on the Optical Bus – Good news for 3rd party software vendors. Now they can blame software issues on the fact that you don't have hardware with optical bus!

A few fabulous homeschool rants – heh.

I Was Wrong

October 11, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Ok, not really in this instance, but a couple of years ago I wrote a little post on why I give full articles in my feed. I think that, at least for the time it was written, this was a reasonable and logical notion.

Things are different now.

At the time, RSS was the best thing going. For many of us, it still is. I love RSS and Google Reader and still rely on them pretty heavily to keep up with the sites and blogs I follow. But the rules of the game have definitely changed in the last couple of years. I’ve noticed much more traffic being driven by Twitter and Facebook than feed readers ever did. I think the question to ask now is whether your audience and the market as a whole are more likely to follow your blog with RSS or with Facebook or Twitter.

Obviously, there’s no way to get a full feed on a Tweet, so that’s not an issue. But the way Facebook handles blog integration through the Notes application means you probably don’t want to give full feeds there either. If you do, you aren’t leaving any reason at all for anyone to visit your site. Post on Facebook, comment on Facebook, and stay on Facebook–that’s what I’d do.

I’m going back to summaries only in my feed. I think the best strategy these days may be to write a good headline, get an interesting thought or two in the first couple of sentences (thanks for the practice Twitter), and pull people in to your site that way. I also found a nice little plugin that integrates Facebook comments straight to your blog.

Interested to see how this little experiment plays out. I can always switch back later.

Stuff You Should See– June 29th through July 29th

July 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Free Nature Work/Sleep Mix You Control – Awesome…sometime music is too distracting. Want to try an mp3 for running.

Gmote Turns Your Android Phone Into a Remote Control for Your PC –

TweetEffect- When did you lose or gain twitter followers? –

FreshBooks – Online Invoicing, Time Tracking & Billing Software – Pretty cool for people who are one man shows.

Hey, Michael Moore, I’m calling you out – Random Mumblings – Big stick time.

Shit My Kids Ruined – I caint have nuthin' nice.

Appcelerator Developer Center – This looks cool…write your app in JavaScript and Appcelerator maps it to native code for multiple mobile platforms. Hmm…..

101 Fast Recipes for Grilling – Grillicious! Can't wait to get back to regular grilling. And by that I mean entertaining the kids in the pool while the real grill master does her thing.

Dishwasher Rules to Clean By – The "Quick Rinse" is my new favorite dishwasher feature.

Fannie Mae Cracks Down on Strategic Default – Do you really need someone to tell you that "strategically" defaulting on a mortgage is wrong? Sorry, but I don't feel pity for someone who is behind on their mortgage while they have sea doos and dirt bikes in their garage.

Stuff You Should See– April 2nd through May 24th

May 24, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Lost Finale Heads Into The Light – Newscoma writes some of the best Lost summaries/observations around. I’m going to read this…as soon as I get to watch the finale.

How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job – Hilarious.

After Housing Bust, Builders Dust Off the Boom Machine – Demand is demand, even when it is manufactured out of thin air.

Build Your Own Backyard Fire Pit – Ain’t nothin’ better than your own backyard

Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook – Really only need one. I’m not convinced they are competent enough to protect people’s data even if they wanted to.

18 Week Olympic Distance Training Program – Intermediate –

Can Science Explain the Concept of Heaven? – I was really just looking for a yes or no.

Stuff You Should See– February 5th through February 11th

February 12, 2010 / / 0 Comments

9 Studies That the Anti-Vaccination Movement Says Show Links or Bury the Truth – And a few notes on them. I don't understand the Latin parts, but I think the idea here is that these things keep a lot of people from getting really bad diseases, err, alive.

iPhone Is Buzz Compatible While Most Android Phones Aren’t – "Currently there is only an estimated 28% of Android devices in use that are capable of taking full advantage of these services. This is due to the fact that lower Android versions browser does not support HTML5, although the gears requirement is meet". How's that for ironic and frustrating?

Google Buzz in Enterprise – Will Need to Overcome Google Apps Limitations – More on Google Buzz in the Enterprise. This argument against it (for now) makes sense

A Butcher’s Tips for Avoiding Cuts in the Kitchen – We just bought a knife sharpener, and it scares me to have blades that will actually cut things now. Although, a sharp blade is probably safer.

A newspaper starts exiting the Web – Huh?! I guess if you're trying to kill your newspaper, it's better to kill it as quickly as possible instead of letting it suffer.

A “Miss Me” Billboard I Can Get Behind – For realz.

5 Reasons Why Google Buzz Will Fail – Funny!!!!

Consumer debt will hold back spending, holding back economic growth. – Don't be ridiculous. We just have to "get banks lending again". Right.

Stuff You Should See– January 15th through January 26th

January 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Celebrity Rehab 3 – Take it day by day. If you can go the whole season without watching an episode, more power to you. But I'll bet you a cold cold beer you can't do it.

Mardi Gras 1956 – This is cool. I haven't been to New Orleans in 6 or 7 years. This makes me want to go back. Not for Mardi Gras, but I still want to go back.

Lost Fans Soon To Be More Annoying – I can't wait to hypothesize on Twitter. For hours.

Trees toppling in national park kills – Wow….this is really sad and such a freak accident. You don't think about things like this happening.

Lane Kiffin Dirt and Cover Up – I've heard for a while there is some of this type stuff out there, but haven't seen anything other than stuff on message boards. I run a message board and can attest that it's not much more than a bunch of monkeys banging on keyboards. But once a blogger takes the time to type it up…maybe there's something to it. Interesting!

Background Apps To The iPhone? – An Apple fan girl told me this already existed. I guess not. I have to say, I LOVE having the ability to stream Pandora and run a Cardio program simultaneously while I'm running. It works just like you'd think it would. Cardio lowers the volume of Pandora to give you distance and pace, and raises the volume back when it's finished.

Dysfunctional Leadership Quotes – It's funny to read this and know that somewhere out there, there are even worse examples of leadership than those described here. LOL!

Venues Can Display Foursquare Mayors – It will be awesome when I'm featured on the WalMart, Publix, Panera, and IKEA websites. You may already believe that's me on the Sea World site when you visit, but that's an actual whale.

15 Steps to Cultivate Lifelong Learning – Very nice article here. Even though I sort of know all of these things intuitively, I need to be more active in implementing some of them.

Stuff You Should See– January 11th through January 15th

January 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

15 Steps to Cultivate Lifelong Learning – Very nice article here. Even though I sort of know all of these things intuitively, I need to be more active in implementing some of them.

Cocaine in Space Shuttle Hangar – And no mention of it in the local paper. At least no mention I could find. Interesting

Twitter’s Answer To Facebook Connect – I'm pretty close to breaking it off with Facebook for good. This is only fuel to the fire.

How to Tether Your Android Phone – Nirvana

Iphone VS Girlfriend – Maybe 2010 will be the year this type situation gets a clever name.

And How Are Things in Venezuela? – People spending their money needlessly because there's no point in maintaining savings in a soon to be devalued currency. Only in South America, right?

Top 10 Fighters – MMA Pound for Pound – I'd like to see these guys in a "Ten Men Enter, One Man Leaves" battle royale. I think if Anderson Silva could use his quickness to stay in open space for the first 15 minutes, he may come out as the real ultimate fighter.

Twitter’s traffic in trouble? – Scoble has a ton of advice for Twitter. My advice for Twitter: be Twitter and nothing else. Get rid of the 140 character limit? No way! Add comments? No way! Besides, do we really think Twitter could implement all these things without Fail Whaling left and right. Just be Twitter and be good at it, thanks!

Stuff You Should See– January 5th through January 7th

January 7, 2010 / / 0 Comments

If Big Stupid Tommy ran the Knoxville News-Sentinel – Big Stupid Tommy is a genius.

You Drive What? – Proud to be among the first to provide them with some link love. This looks very promising.

What Google’s Nexus One means to your organization – I’ve had my Android phone for about two and a half months now. I’d say the model I have isn’t quite on par with the iPhone standards by hardware standards, but the Android platform is. The phones are only going to get better, and they’re available on multiple carriers. Even development is more hassle free. Look out Apple.

Memphis Has Lost A Shining Star – Some sad news coming out of Memphis.

Home sales fall 16% in November – The real estate market may not be finished falling, but I don’t see interest rate opportunities getting any better in the near term. That’s what skeers me the most.

How to say stupid things about social media – Without a doubt, this is the best article on social media I’ve read in a while.

C-SPAN Challenges Congress to Open Health Care Talks to TV Coverage – I know they have the numbers to pass anything they want. But those representing states and districts that oppose this legislation have the OBLIGATION to be as contrary and obstructive in these negotiations as their constituents want them to be. It’s still a representative republic, right?

Stuff You Should See– January 3rd through January 5th

January 5, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Facebook blocks ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’ – All of your facebooks are belong to Facebook. Got it?

Photocheck.in for Foursquare – Since Orlando is so close, I've had a chance to mess with Foursquare some. Not that there's really anything huge going on in Melbourne, but it's close enough. Here, you get to be the Mayor of places like Publix and Panera (although I'm the current Long Doggers Mayor as well), and I don't think many other people in this little village are playing along. But photo checkin is a really cool idea for places like Sea World and IKEA, where I actually have taken some photos and almost forgot to 4S checkin.

WordPress 2.9.1 – This is supposed to fix some pingback issues. I've been using Delicious to auto-generate a lot of posts based on stuff I bookmark, and I've noticed that my posts don't seem to ping the other blogs I've linked to the same way they would if I wrote a post in the editor. Not sure why this would happen, since the ping is supposed to happen at publish time. Hopefully this was just a WordPress issue and is resolved.

Facebook Rolling Out Redesign To Some Users – I'm trying to quickly set the over/under on how long it will be until I see the first post in my FB feed of someone complaining about the new layout. Tentative line is 35 hours.

Some Google Wave Bots – I suspect lots of people got busy at the end of the year and the Google Wave hoopla died down. It may be coming back big this year, and here's a list of useful bots to add to your account. If you're on Wave, let's make an effort to communicate that way!

George F. Will – Catastrophe and survival – Read it. Again.

Do More, Buy Less – A huge positive from a recession. This goes hand in hand with the fact that people are saving more. I'm still amazed that people at the top continue to contend that the answer is to "get credit flowing again." Well, I'm not really shocked that they say it. That's what benefits them and their friends. But I am amazed that so many people buy it hook line and sinker.

Google and HTC Working On a Chrome OS Tablet – Want.

Stuff You Should See– December 30th through January 3rd

January 3, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Do More, Buy Less – A huge positive from a recession. This goes hand in hand with the fact that people are saving more. I’m still amazed that people at the top continue to contend that the answer is to “get credit flowing again.” Well, I’m not really shocked that they say it. That’s what benefits them and their friends. But I am amazed that so many people buy it hook line and sinker.

Google and HTC Working On a Chrome OS Tablet – Want.

Crunchy French Toast – This is now the official French toast recipe of our household. We’ll only be using the cream after long runs though.

50 Things we know now that we didn’t know this time last year – To be honest, I’ve suspected at least 34 of these things for a few years. I just wasn’t able to prove them.

Global Warming Won’t Prevent Ice Age – If it ain’t one thing with these climate fanboys it’s another.

Four UT basketball players face drug and weapon charges – I have an idea for college basketball players with aspirations of making it to the NBA. Lay off the weed for just four years. Once you get into the NBA you can do pretty much anything you want. I don’t really care what you do as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, but if you’re going to take the money you have to play by the rules made by the people who write the checks.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – What we really need is a Web 2.0 homicide machine. Only those with strong passwords survive!!!! I predict Web 2.0 homicide will be a big trend in 2010.

My Twitter “Follow Back” Rules

December 29, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I have a gmail filter set up so that notifications of new Twitter followers don’t get sent to my inbox. I go through them a couple of times of weeks, and I’ve picked up on a few patterns in my follow-back decision making…

  1. If you are following more people than I am and have only produced 1% of the tweets I have go back! You are not getting followed.
  2. If you are following 10x more people than are following you, go back! You are not getting followed.
  3. If you are following a number of people approximately equal to or smaller than the number of people that are following you and your number of tweets is at least 10% of the number of people you follow, I’m going to check you out and probably follow back.
  4. If I know you in real life, I’m going to follow you. Even if you’ve never tweeted. But expect me to prod you into participating.
  5. If you mention David Lee Roth or Falls City beer in your profile, I will follow you.

Expect this list to grow and evolve.

Delicious Link Dump– December 22nd through December 28th

December 28, 2009 / / 0 Comments

2009: The Year of the Failed Narratives – I love story time! I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed that none of the stuff they are trying to sell us involves dragons or unicorns. I mean, if we're going to write fiction, let's go all the way with it.

Ghetto Kool-Aid – The word "ghetto" is over-used. The word "Kool-Aid", however, is not.

The New Flight Security Rules, So Far – When you can count on showing up for a flight four hours early, not being allowed to access your carry-ons (the whole purpose for carrying things on when you have children), not being able to hold objects in your lap (try explaining that to a toddler), and not being able to go to the restroom for the last hour of the flight…why on earth would anyone fly anywhere with kids? This will definitely be changing our travel plans in the future.

Is cable worth it? – Not even if they paid you to watch the commercials

Top 10 Bad Things That Are Good For You – I don't set things on fire and put them in my mouth, so weed is out. Can I double down on the beer instead? And I won't need the LSD to counter the extra beer for a few years. I won't knock the maggots until I've tried them.

Obama, Left Behind – What he really needs to fix this is a new web site and a fresh Twitter account. They'll be back in no time.

Mortgage Applications Drop to 2-Month Low – I have to believe this is mostly due to the fact that people are hanging out waiting on short sale approval letters. *hint hint*

Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem – Shake it baby! This is the first and only shoot 'em game I ever bought, but it was pretty good. I'm not that into video games, so I didn't really keep up with the drama that was the continual delayed release of the sequel.

Stripper For Christmas – Ho Ho Ho! Yeah, that wasn't very original.

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