Web Stuff

Reputation Management Online

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:39:00 GMT

I've always recognized the importance of online reputation.

One of the key things that has driven the rise of Paypal and Ebay, Amazon and others has been their "trust" factors.

Having a way to prove users are who they say they are is nothing new, OpenID and other initiatives aim at creating independent ways to identify your self online.

Something that has not had as much attention as identity is reputation, something that I think is in some ways even more important than identity.

If I trust you, I don't really care if you call yourself bugs bunny and don't show me your address. If you have 1000 positive responses to you on ebay, I don't really care what your name is ... your reputation precedes you, so I don't hesitate doing business with a "bugs bunny" from "who knows were".

As such, and in part with the developments we've been doing with our social suite and the "liveinsites.com" network of sites we've been building, I've been doing a lot of thought about online reputation management and how to rethink it a little.

This is a flowchart of a new service that should be invented (probably already has been and I just haven't found it yet).

Google-Bad-Screen

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:33:59 GMT

Google-Bad-Screen, originally uploaded by DJ_Riel.

I can't help it, I get a secret pleasure when Google Screws up.

So ... may I share this moment with you all.

I'm using the (google) Chrome web browser

I go to the address for adsense (google again)

And get the dreaded RED SCREEN warning from Chrome telling me that this is not the site I'm looking for.

Their security certificate expired? Something glitched anyway... nice to know it happens to the big boys too.

Hyper Local Social

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:16:00 GMT

Hyper Local Social
Originally uploaded by DJ_Riel

We went off to New York City recently to promote the LIVEIN websites to the digital elite in the real estate business.

We had these shirts printed up so that when we were at the event, the 3 of us were "Hyper / Local / Social"

It went over quite well as the entire conference was very focused on Locally focused social media.

You might also like this video that we did for the show.

Mobile Video Blogging with QIK

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:58:00 GMT

This is a new mobile video blogging app I'm playing with.

Digital Signage Advances

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:26:00 GMT

Signage has made a lot of advances in the last couple of decades, moving from simple sign boards, to new weather proof materials and more lately the move to digital sign boards.

Being able to remotely update the signage on billboards is an important next step in the process.

However, this has to be the coolest advance I've seen yet.

How about Gender Targeting?

Showing ads that are more likely to appeal to a female, when a woman is standing in front of the sign.

Merging facial recognition software makes this possible, and of course you can see the future painted here, why not the next step ... a personalized ad that is targeted at that individual consumer.

Big brother anyone?

How I use my Nokia N96 to Video Blog

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:56:00 GMT

This is a little video blogging lesson that shows you how I use my N96 to create video blog posts.

While it's not perfect, it's the best way that I've found to have an accessible camera that takes decent quality pictures and video.

I like not having to lug different devices around, so I'm partial to this phone.

While the "fruit phone" people would have me switch, I'm still much more impressed with this camera than any they've shown me yet.

Screen Toaster Video Recording

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:13:00 GMT

Just wanted to try out this new screencast software that I found called ScreenToaster.

I use JING a lot, but I always like to keep up to date on the new contenders.

This one seems pretty smooth - Java based, web interface, even noticed an API

Capture your screen in seconds

Business Catalyst Bought By Adobe

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:34:00 GMT

Business Catalyst was recently acquired by Adobe.

OK, it was over the summer, but none the less, it's pretty fresh.

I'm particularly interested in that fact, as I've seen them and their "brown" or whatever the retail platform was, as a real model of where our platform is going.

While I admit to having some professional envy for how well they executed their application, I also see that it bodes well for future takeovers of these types of web applications by larger entities with an existing customer base and a desire for a web business management platform.

So anyway, here is the press release from Adobe about buying Business Catalyst

Google Launches Turn By Turn Navigation

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:32:00 GMT

This will piss off garmin and tom tom ... in fact, if you check their stock prices, you'll see their nose diving as we speak.

Yahoo! Finance
Quote for GRMN

Have a look at this game changer, turn by turn navigation.

So far, only on Android phone, but you know it won't take long to spread to other platforms.

Today is Windows 7 day

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:47:00 GMT

Today Windows launches it's latest operating system salvo

Windows 7

I think Shelly Palmer said it best in this interview.

And since I'm still on XP, I agree ... that's a day in my life that I won't get back.

Marge Simpson To Pose In Playboy

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:23:00 GMT

Is it just me, or does this seem a little weird to you?

Marge Simpson is going to be posing nude (almost) in Playboy.

Not sure the blue haired mom is going to attract the 20 something crowed that they're hopping for.

Interesting approach, we'll see how it all plays out for the old bunny.

Beware of Free Wordpress Themes

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:09:00 GMT

Saw an interesting article on the Wordpress site about hack's in themes.

The deal is that many 3rd party websites are providing free Wordpress themes with encoded script slipped in - some even going as far as to claim that decoding the gibberish constitutes breaking copyright law. The encoded script may contain a variety of undesirable payloads, such as promoting third party sites or even hijack attempts.

Source Article

Another reason that I like my SoldWith.com suite, none of that to worry about.

Of course it also makes me wonder about all the free twitter themes that are floating around too.

Inspirational Soap Sales Man

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:22:00 GMT

How many of us buy things from Door to Door salesmen?

I can't remember the last time I even saw a door to door sales man.

This guy is inspiring, he's truely understood the path that he has to take.

It's not about the soap, it's about you and understanding process, dedication and celebrating the small steps, not just the big steps.

Watch this video and think of how hard he's worked to get himself where he is today.

Then take a minute to appreciate how much he has to teach you about understanding where you are.

You can view and comment on the orriginal video here:

http://www.zarias.com/?p=440

Skype Law Suit May Shut It Down

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:29:00 GMT

?What would we do without skype?

In an interesting development, JoltID the owners of the underlying P2P technology that drives Skype (the same guys that brought you Kazzaa as well as Jolt TV) have brought suit on Ebay, (who purchased skype for $2.6 BILLION - yup, that's a B) for breaking their contract.

"A spokesman for Joltid said: "Skype has breached its licence and infringed Joltid's intellectual property. As a result its licence has been terminated. Joltid is enforcing its rights in the courts. Like any member of the creative industries, Joltid will defend its innovations with determination. It is certain of the validity of its position and looks forward to the resolution of the issue."

Can you imagine? $2.6 Billion and you didn't secure the patent for your product?

WTF? Who makes these deals?

So ... what would you do if Skype shuts down?

Google Talk?

Not quite the same now is it?

Crushed by Amazon not being in Canada

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:44:00 GMT

I can't tell you the number of times that it frustrates me that Amazon doesn't spend the time to cultivate the Canadian Market.

I mean ... Ya, I get the numbers / economics thing.

But haven't we consistently proven ourselves in the inventing technology thing?

Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto ... All hot beds of technology with great startup's and talented people (that are always getting gobbled up by the Yahoo's of the world).

I was deeply offended, especially as one of the AWS's biggest evangelists and loyal start up customer, to see that the "start up challenge" contest that they are offering is not available in Canada.

Now, while I don't like it ... if it was only available in the US, I could somehow swallow it a little better than, US, UK, Isreal and Germany.

Germany? Didn't they loose the war damnit ?

What's wrong with Canada that I can't be included in your little competition.

Why can't I buy a damn Kindle

Why can't I tie my application payment processing to Amazon payment service?

It's all so damn Frustrating.

Amazon Hates Canadians, there's just no other way to look at it.

Damn Amazon.

BTW... if you're going to buy something from them use this link so I feel somehow justified by getting $0.17 cents from them for your purchase

Microsoft ordered to stop selling Word

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:38:00 GMT

?Microsoft has landed in hot water over it's use of custom XLM in word.

Seems the judge felt that they were infringing and ordered them to stop selling word (?? wow)

They'll appeal of course

Spokes man Kuts said:

"We are disappointed by the court’s ruling. We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict."

More here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=22595

and here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3712

Networked Blogs

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 25 May 2009 06:15:00 GMT

?Always trying new things, these guys wanted me to verify the ownership of my blog ... with their widget (that's a good little link back tactic)

Follow this blog

Cool Music Search Community

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:31:00 GMT

Check out this cool music seach and comment site, it's my new favorite site / app

Blip.fm

Colour Wheel Web Tool

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:43:00 GMT

This is a physical color wheel that gives you the web safe hexadecimal values for each color.

Super handy for designers (or for talking to them about the color you're after for your text links).

I got mine at the local art store, but here's their website if you want to order directly from the company.

Web Colour Wheel

What does a program manager do?

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:38:00 GMT

I read "JoelOnSoftware.com" fairly regularly.

Besides the fact that I'm a client of his (we use fogbugz in our development cycle) I find his writing pretty on topic.

It's not highly technical and I guess since he's the CEO, he's talking about things regularly that are things I'm going through, or have sympathy for.

A big part of my job is providing guidance on the software that we create. While I don't actually program any of it myself, it's my job to shape the vision of what that software does and the features that users will actually need to make it do what it's supposed to for them.

Interface is a running joke around our shop. As a small shop tackling a big program, we don't always get the UI right the first time. (ok sometimes it takes till the 3rd or 4th pass before it's really singing. ) While better planning on my side would reduce the number of revisions, it's not always easy to do on paper. There is something that actually using the software gives you that looking at a wireframe UI never does.

Anywhoo... back to the joke that is Developers creating UI.

I loved this quote from Joel's blog as it mirrored my coders completely

"Lacking a program manager, your garden-variety super-smart programmer is going to come up with a completely baffling user interface that makes perfect sense IF YOU’RE A VULCAN (cf. git). The best programmers are notoriously brilliant, and have some trouble imagining what it must be like not to be able to memorize 16 one-letter command line arguments. "

Read his full post on "how to be a program manager"

Ask A Ninja talks about Net Neutrality

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Ask A Ninja Special Delivery 4
Net Neutrality broken down for you by a ninja. God i love this guy

How To Forward Your Domain Name

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:45:00 GMT

Here's a video that shows you how to forward your domain name to another one from within the 1&1 control panel.

If you don't use 1&1 there will be a similar process although the steps may be a little different.

Ben Shaffer, meet Bob Sirling

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:14:00 GMT

Maybe you've met each other ... ?

3D Webcam | 3D Blogging | 3D Home Tours

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:04:00 GMT

OK, so doing a web cam chat wearing 3D glasses could be considered a little geeky by some :)

I have to say I love this idea, if nothing else, it's a cool way to distinguish yourself from the other webcam geeks doing their shows.

I can see doing 3D house tours and other things with something like this just for the cool factor of it.

How to use BBcodeXtra to write HTML for you

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:32:00 GMT

I don't like coding ... I know that sounds funny but it's true.

It's why I have my team around me to do the code, I hate it.

However, if you're going to do things like build back links to your site, make minor text edits or put ads on craigslist to promote your business...

It helps to know a little HTML, just the basics.. you know BOLD, UNDERLINE, ITALICS, LINKS, IMG... just to help move things along

Here is a really handy fire fox plugin that I always install it's called BBcodeXtra

Here's where you can download this handy plugin
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/491

And here's a quick video that covers how to use it:

Why should you care about your URL?

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:36:00 GMT

Besides the obvious Search Engine Optimization benefits of a well mannered URL, there is another side benefit to having short, readable URL's in your site structure.

Just now I was struck by a new sony micro laptop...
http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/servlet/ProductDetailDisplay?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=10001&productId=1006029&navigationPath=n32009n100299n100535

Now ... the laptop is pretty sweet and I wouldn't mind checking it out.

It was cool enough that I wanted to twitter about it with my circle.

Guess what? the URL alone was too long to post into twitter.

That alone would make me want to use ModRewrite on my URL's so that I had something more like
sonystyle.com/cool/new/laptops/red

of course if they were using our XLsuite platform, it would be a total non issue, they'd have the product name in the URL as well as the title of the page and we'd all be tweeting about it now.

How to use FireFTP

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:06:00 GMT

This is how to set up and use FIREFTP with a traditional FTP account.

How to Set Up and Manage Google Mail

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:22:00 GMT

Here is a short video on how to set administrator access, set up groups and new email accounts in google's hosted mail.

How to cancel recurring payments in Paypal

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:07:00 GMT

Canceling recurring payments in Paypal is not as self evident as you might like if you haven't done it before.

Here's a little screencast of how to do it if you need help.

New Jing Pro Release

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:35:00 GMT

As a fan of the ease of use of Jing, I was happy to pay the $14.95 per year to get their new pro version.

Besides allowing uploads directly to youtube and flickr, it supports MP4 videos (smaller) and best of all, gets rid of the ugly jing logo that's at the end of each of the videos on the free version.

Check it out at jingproject.com

on a side note.....

I find this very weird - what video's of mine do people watch on youtube?

New from Desktop

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:40:17 GMT

Everything is amazing but no one is happy
I thought this was pretty funny

Some Wino and the Front Street Party

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:22:00 GMT

Front street party wino, originally uploaded by DJ_Riel.

this was a little accident

Shift Happens | Did You Know

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:14:00 GMT

This video really helps put things in perspective.

If you're not on the net now, you better start building your presence as it's growing exponentially and it'll just get harder and harder to get your message heard.

Capture Fox Is a Good Free Screen capture alternative

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:19:00 GMT

This is a new plug in for firefox that I discovered recently.

It takes a few more steps to convert the AVI file to a flash file and then upload it.
(I like Pazera for converting files to flash)

I'm going to play with it a little more, you can to by installing it into your Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8090

Crazy or Genius?

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:59:00 GMT

This is a great video and of does a great job of showcasing something I strongly believe ... there's a fine line between crazy and genius.

I love this video EVEN THOUGH it's an apple commercial.

Beware of Zombies

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

As you know if you follow my blogging, I'm a fan of Lee and Sachi over at Common Craft. They're stuff is usually a little more tech oriented, but this morning I got an email about one of their more seasonal films.

Enjoy.

Microsoft's Odd Choice of Advertising

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Is it just me, or is this one of the strangest ads that you've ever seen for Microsoft.

At what point did they decide that eclectic ads showing two of the Richest guys on the planet in awkward social situations would be a good representation of Microsoft.

Well actually I guess Microsoft is a little like that family member that shows up at Christmas dinner unannounced and uninvited. You know the one, that sort of weird uncle that you're not sure which member of the family they're related to? The one that's always asking you for money and doesn't stay to help you with the dishes.

I don't know ... I just feel that, like their web search engine that they're trying to PAY people to use (and failing miserably I might add), Microsoft has completely lost touch with the general public. How these ads are supposed to connect with viewer and what? Make us feel more ... in touch with Bill Gates? (Didn't he retire anyway? Why isn't Balmer doing these ads... or is that what you do when you retire from driving one of the planets biggest companies? Become a reality show icon with a celebrity... why not I guess... If it's good enough for the two Cory's and Gene Simmons ... then why not Bill Gates.

Anyway... you be the judge... does this make sense to you?

Download Google Chrome

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I thought I'd share my google chrome experiences with you, I've been using it for a couple of days now and I have to say it's pretty cool.

My initial experience was a little weird, it was pushing ebay to the top of the list.

I do miss my custom search engines a little, my domainsbot, wordtracker and wikipedia search engines are a little missed, but overall it's a very nice smooth experience.

One of my favorite functions is the "Create Application Shortcut" which I promptly made Gmail and XLsuite applications out of.

Now I simply hit the XL on my quick launch and it boots me right into the back end of our application - WITHOUT a navigation bar.

While it's borrowed from Prism, its' a very nice way to create seperate applications out of your commonly used web apps.

Plus it's just nice to have them on your quicklaunch instead of in your browser history.

Overall, it's FAST, Thin and Lite. I have had a few weird moments with it - for example, it does not seem to like our WYSIWYG tool bar, dropping several of the buttons (of course the most important "source code" and "link" ones :(

Not sure if that's a java script thing or what, but I'm sure we'll find out.

Makes sense why google would want their own browser, but I see ONE MORE browser to have to bug trap for when we do sites.

Interestingly enough, Chrome is already %4 of our traffic, close to Safari and already out stripping Opera in it's first week on the block.

I think it's worth a try, but don't uninstall your firefox quite yet... A new kid is on the block.

Samsung Unboxing

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:38:34 GMT

Thought this was funny, I guess you have to go a long way to get some attention over the fruit phone.