Daniel
student, sharer, thinker, tweeter, techie, trekkie, lover, carer, canvas, quirky, blogger, reader, consumer
Posts
I decided to experiment on sunday evening and bought myself some Tesco Extra Special gammon steaks and some coconut milk...
After marinating for two days I cooked on up today and it tasted delicious, possibly a bit too salty but that can be worked on.
1 table spoon of Skippy Peanut butter
1 tea spoon of Olive oil
1 table spoon of lemon juice
1 table spoon of water
1 table spoon of coconut milk
Grab the gammon steak and run a knife up and down it not cutting all the way through but just into the flesh, then spread the paste liberally over it, it should spead as easy as margarine, if not add some more water
Once you have it pasted on then add any powdered seasoning you wish (if you wish, its perfectly fine without!)
Stick it in a tub and put in in the fridge for a couple days.After that cook it however you so wish! I fried mine in some olive oil for a tasty explosion
I'm not sure how I feel about ending the holiday. On one hand, Malta is a beautiful place, brilliant sunshine, blue skies, a cool breeze, friendly people, beautiful women; What more could you ask for? On the other hand there is no place like home, no place like the cool north where a day of brilliant sunshine is treasured most assuredly as a father would his first born. I wouldnt say I have missed home, but it is good to be back.
This morning, in Malta, I awoke with a single song running through my mind. I don't remember who it was by or when it was released (sometime in the nineties) and the only lyrics I remembered were these:
"Back to Life,
Back to Reality"
And so it ends.
I style myself as an Ox or a Bear or any other animal whose physical strength and gentleness are both cherished; I have one achilles heel, my damned constitution! I spent Monday night and most of tuesday in bed with the most horrendous stomach bug. I'd been to the splendid island of Gozo and had tasted Maltese fish soup and fresh swordfish
All that was soon in a bucket on the balcony! Tuesday I spent in bed until my brothers girlfriend discovered she had some holiday sickness pills in her suitcase, what I would have given for her to have found them earlier! Though still feeling quite rough, I made it back to Paceville (pronounced Parcher-ville) for an evening of shisha, cisk and larking about with my new found French friends. I will miss them.
Driving around Malta is, to sum it up, mental; THREE separate occasions we were almost in a crash. The first and the worst involved a car on the other side of the road attempting to overtake into oncoming traffic.
Shortly before that series of events, we all had dinner at the Blue Creek, sadly the service was pretty terrible and the food was passable, but the view...was amazing...
It all stemmed from the near calamitous drive to the airport, with the driver not actually knowing where to go or having at least checked the location and route.
I guess I could have kept quiet but I strongly feel that the one driving should make at least some preparations!
Anyway, I decided to go off alone as its the best way to let them have some time and space ad I k ow it causes great strain on my brother when his girlfriend and twin argue.
Which had led me to a random walk away from the airport to a bar somewhere and a bottle of local beer.
I have arrived.
p.s. the beer was €1.20, I felt a bit touristy and stupid handing him a €10 note
Couple of months ago I was up in Sunderland on business, On the train back the train passed a Nuclear plant Coal fired power plant (Drax I'm told) in the distance.
I think the first one is the best
I tweeted something today, with the phrase 'IRL' in and was asked by my brother what IRL means.
Why you ask?
Why opens minds,
Why is the key that unlocks the cage of ignorance;
Why un dams the river of knowledge;
Why is the reason.
Last year I worked, briefly, for a training company and wrote a series of blog posts on up and coming technology. I have reposted some of them in my blog for posterity and will post the rest.
For now here is a link to all my work
Its been nearly a year since I last posted a meaningful worthwhile blog post. So much has happened that, well, either i'd bore you to death or it would be filed under tl:dr (too long, didn't read for those uninitiated with geek parlance) but I'm back!
First published for Silicon Beach training here on 15/01/2010
The power of social media was on full display this week as people took to social networking sites to blog, tweet, post and update their statuses.
There’s nothing particularly new in these activities, what is amazing is what they were posting about and the effect this had on the biggest disaster so far this year.
From eyewitness accounts, to calls for aid – social media effectively broke the news on Haiti’s worst quake in two centuries. Proving once again that news is becoming dependent on social media and its legions of users’ real time updates.
News of the earthquake spread within hours through Twitter, with photos of the earthquake appearing soon after.
Help Haiti and the Red Cross have been trending topics in the days following the quake, and tweets from high profile celebrities such as Wyclef Jean have helped spread the word of the plight of the western hemisphere’s poorest country.
Even the biggest news networks had to rely on social networks to get information on the earthquake in Haiti. Twitter was again seemingly the media of choice, mirroring last summer’s explosion of Tweets on Iran.
It is the personal nature of these networks that make their cries for help so much more effective.
But still, plenty of people use Twitter, Facebook and the like to update the world on what they had for breakfast or how bad their hangover is.
A current popular trend on twitter is about what you would do to your partner if they cheated on you and lets not forget the #lowbudgetmovie’s geeky humour. Showing that despite social medias now increasingly important role in news and serious discussion, it can at the same time be entertaining and fun.
I for one will be keeping an eye on Twitter Trends. After all; this is the future, real time news from real people.
First published for Silicon Beach training here on 29/01/2010
If you’re wondering what all the fuss on Twitter is about; #googlevoice? #iPad? And all this talk about #Flashisdead? Then let me explain…
Firstly, Google voice is a handy service that consolidates all your phone numbers under one “Google number”. It was made available to iPhone users on Monday.
Then there’s the iPad. Apple’s new tablet computer similar to the iPhone but bigger, which was announced to great fanfare on Wednesday.
And lastly Adobe Systems lost 10% of their stock market value in the last 5 days.
So what do these seemingly random events have in common?
The link is HTML 5.
HTML 5 is the successor to HTML 4, the basis upon which our rich social media internet experiences are built. What do we need HTML 5 for when HTML 4 works so well and is straightforward to learn?
Well, it’s not all about obscure programming languages, it’s about the next evolution of the browser and for that matter, the entire internet and the way we interact with it. HTML 5 is still a little way off but that doesn’t mean we can’t get a heads up on what’s to come.
Gone, will be the need for flash, Silverlight or the myriad other plugins used to show video on a web page, replaced by new video and audio tags for multimedia content.
New elements such as section, article, footer, nav among others replacing the generic div tag bringing some structure to HTML! And lets’ not forget the new form types and attributes such as email, url, data and search (the others can be found here)
Offline storage database: as demonstrated by Google Voice; ever been writing an email, blog or tweet and your connection mysteriously stops working? You might lose your work but HTML5 intends to solve that by allowing web sites to store information on your browser for later synchronisation. Obviously there are far more complex uses but the simple stuff helps.
Drag and Drop: don’t like the layout of your Facebook / Linkedin / Twitter page? Just drag the elements around and drop them where you like (I hope they support this!)
All this stuff is going to make the web developer’s life a lot easier, want to have an email field on a form? Just use the new “email” input type; Need to cache database results to make your site run faster? Use the offline storage database; Want to dynamically graph some poll results? Let the browser draw it in 2D on the fly using the new tag.
Of course with all this new stuff knowing the basics of html and CSS becomes even more important. There is still time to brush up, it’ll be at least a year before we start seeing rich HTML 5 web applications. But there’s no harm in being prepared.
My friends girlfriend's little girl asked me last night if I could be her godfather. At first I said no and laughed it off thinking it was a joke.
I turned to my friends and they had to correct me and inform me that in fact her mother had told her she could ask anyone she wanted.
I soon found out the reason. She has no contact with the people chosen by her absent father but her sister and brothers do, so she felt like she was missing something.
So anyway I figured this is too big a decision for a 7 year old to take without thinking about it.
Me being me, I suggested she write on small paragraph detailing why it should be me.
The picture is what she wrote.
I can tell you now that reading the letter almost brought a tear to my eye.
Kids are awesome. PERIOD. If you don't think so the read the picture again and again until you understand.
Some of the good people I met at the Brighton Twestival. I had a really good time and definitely recommend it.
I'm not sure exactly how much was raised for charity but I'm sure it was over £2000
(edit: Over £3000 was raised on the night!)
Wandering up and down the platform at Green Park station I spied some cool art work.
Location based services are not new, some, such as Loopt have been around since 2005 but 2010 is the year that they’re really taking off. Loopt has around 3 million users in the US (its not available anywhere else) but it differs greatly from the current trend in location based services, that of moving away from “always on” location to that of “checking in” at specific locations.
Foursquare and Gowalla are leading the charge of the ‘Geosocial‘ location based mobile services, with Foursquare having recently had 370k “check ins” in one day. With only 500k registered users the leader, Foursquare, is still relatively small compared to other, traditional, social networks (Facebook, with 400m users is by far the biggest social network but doesn’t yet have a Geosocial aspect) but it is growing fast.
Arguably 2010 will be the year of location based social and business networks, especially with services such as simpleGeo offering location infrastructure to startups. This lowers the barrier to entry significantly allowing start ups, such as stickybits, to provide geotagging in its unique offerings.
So is it all hype? From a business point of view are they worth engaging with like other social media?
Its not just about being Social
Foursquare and its peers have positioned themselves squarely (no pun intended!) in the social media space with a light gaming element. Users are encouraged to check in at places by gaining points and badges. I recently gained the “School Night” badge on Foursquare for checking in after 3am during the week and have become “Mayor” of one of the buildingson my University campus (displacing someone who obviously hasn’t been in a while!). The social side is about leaving tips for people at locations and letting them discover interesting things to do.
Businesses have started to warm to the idea of rewarding frequent visitors with free coffee (in Starbucks case) but this can go further. Many businesses run reward schemes with stamps and cards and its fairly simple to move this to location based rewards. After all, by checking in at a venue you’re in effect giving it your approval as a destination of interest. This type of marketing will become ever more important to business as 78% of people are said to trust peer recommendations.
Another startup launched at South by South West (both Foursquare and Gowalla were launched last year at SxSW) over the weekend is aiming to tap into the business networking aspect of Geosocial networks.
Pairwise was created by 2 strangers from San Francisco (no surprise there!), Euwyn Poon, 25 a corporate law graduate and software developer and Brandon Leonardo, 26 a professional software developer.
The idea was born out of Euwyn’s personal need to connect with as many business and software types as possible, this being his first SxSW and is first big opportunity to do some networking. Euwyn saw it as the perfect product to release at SxSW when scores of developers, journalists, venture capitalist would be in and around Austin.
Euwyn says:
“Pairwise is a mobile app that facilitates business networking by letting members of a crowd identify specifically who they’re looking to connect with. It further identifies hidden connections between people to make a “warm” introduction”
There seem to be an endless string of startups and existing companies looking to use Geo location in their products. Twitter has recently activated its Geo tagging features on its main site (Geo tagging tweets has been available through the API since November, 2009). Facebook the biggest player in the social media space is expected to announce its own Geo location features at its f8 conference in April.
But its advertising that is expected to bring in the real money for Geo location based networks. Geo targeted advertising will become more wide spread with businesses jumping at the chance to leverage the users location to target advertising. Whether customers will want such location specific advertising pushed to thier handsets is question these networks will have to answer in time. According to a recent article in the Economist, Location based services and the advertising opportunities associated, will be worth over $12 billion within 5 years, although forcast’s like these should be taken with a pinch of salt.
So really its all about Business?
Well no, not at all. I see ‘Geosocial’ networks as a logical extension of our current social networks. They all have the same idea in common, that of sharing with your friends / colleagues; Facebook is the platform that aggregates all of your past thoughts and future plans. Twitter has positioned themselves as a stream of things and thoughts happening right now and Fourquare and Gowalla extend this by tying you to places, adding the new dynamic of things you are doing, not to mention allowing your friends to join you and collecting badges in the process.
- Facebook is “hey friends, I want to share all this stuff with you, what ive been doing, what my plans are, my pictures etc”
- Twitter is “hey friends, this is what im thinking, this minute, right now”
- and Foursquare/ Gowalla is “hey friends I’m here, right now!”
There are of course, privacy concerns, but users and detractors alike should remember that the point of “social media” is that you should ensure your only sharing online what you would normally share in public in real life. Ensuring that sharing is still a “want and not a need” (@snafflepuss) will become ever more important in the Geosocial future.
South by South West (SxSW) , that creative, technology, music mashup happening in Austin Texas has given us, in the past, Foursquare and Gowalla in the past has done it again.
"Pairwise is a mobile app that facilitates business networking by letting members of a crowd identify specifically who they're looking to connect with. It further identifies hidden connections between people to make a "warm" introduction"
I just awoke from the strangest dream...
Updates
-
@ncameron but the footwear! the footweearr!
-
WHAT. does #smartcasual mean these days? once upon a time it was shoes, jeans and a shirt / knitwear jumper now?
-
@davewiner I had to stop reading when he failed to understand net neutrality
-
@JaayTee65 @inn_dar @rileyescobar84 once upon a time in a town far far away...a silly boy directed racist language toward us (i think)
-
A train approaches http://t.co/AE26c1PP
-
@inn_dar @rileyescobar84 @JaayTee65 haha you just reminded what that boy did! hahahahaha #noplaceforracism #protectyourneck
-
@BradMcManus well according to comScore (no one else has verified it yet)
-
@BradMcManus Its not ahead of the mailOnline though, dunno if ur interested but it surpassed the NYT as the most read online site
-
@BradMcManus could be, could be, try it through a russian proxy and see?
-
@BradMcManus you know that search is tailored to you right?
-
go #giants
-
Going all in for the #giants
-
@rioferdy5 no concentration for the #pats
-
@Mr_Ogundare he only 5'9!
-
@bglendenning yes hes taking a shotgun snap
-
@bglendenning degea has brilliant shot stopping talent. JUST his aerial game is suspect. Bu he can learn that! No 1 shud write him off
Posts
We have now added Content Marketing to our Blogging Training course to create the mighty Blogging and Content Marketing Training course, so you can get a head start on your internet marketing endeavours.
It can be tough to get your brand, company or website noticed on the big World Wide Web. Fierce competition for search engine rankings and SEO dominance is rife between websites gunning for the same keywords and with the same general target audience; so what can you do to get yourself to stand out from the crowd?
Currently, one of the most effective methods of generating interest from users and building up back links to appease the search engine lords is content marketing. This form of marketing has many advantages and uses which should be explored by anyone looking to extend their website’s visibility, outreach and exposure.
Why should I do it myself?
The internet is made of content. It’s what people use it for; to find useful information, tips and entertainment. By creating your own content you can write about the topics your website, blog or company specialise in from as many angles as you can think of. Doing this not only gives you more searchable content to be found via search engines it also gives you the opportunity to stamp your authority on a subject, working your way into becoming an expert in your field that people will look to for knowledge, answers and cutting edge info.
However, if you aren’t ready to put yourself forward as an expert just yet, content marketing still has some valuable other uses which when used properly will help improve your site’s traffic and exposure to new users.
If you would like to find out more about content marketing then have to look at our post on Guest Blogging and Great Places to Post Your Content, or read on to find out more about how blogging and content marketing can benefit you.
Guest Blogging
Writers have been creating guest content for other sites for some time now, giving writers the opportunity to share their knowledge and writing style with a new audience, as well as being able to get a link to their own website. This link is useful for a few reasons, namely it allows the reader to hop straight to your site if they like your content and also the back link can work in your favour when it comes to SEO and search engine rankings, especially if it is coming from a website with a high authority or page rank.
Accepting guest posts can work in your favour too. Search engines like sites that update their content regularly, so posting relevant and useful content from others can take the strain off of keeping up with the demand of writing as well as giving you to post articles on topics you may not be as knowledgeable in.
You don’t even have to approach sites directly now to enquire about guest blogging. With guest post sharing and distribution sites such as My Blog Guest making the process of bidding for content and choosing who you want to publish your own offerings far easier than ever before.
Going Viral
Another major advantage of making your own content is sharing. Social media sites have made sharing content so easy these days that if you have something that is timely, unique or of exceptionally high quality you can find your content being shared all over the web, hopefully going viral. Combine this with the fact that Google’s new Search plus Your World search algorithm weighs heavily in favour of popular, well shared content on Google’s social network, Google+. So this method can boost your search engine rankings as well as bring in interest from a new audience.
Easy on the Wallet
Content Marketing also has another big advantage; it’s extremely cost effective. If you are creating your own articles or accepting guest posts the cost is extremely low, if not free (except for staffing costs!) Bear in mind that your content will also hang around for far longer than any advertising campaign you may choose to run, so you are likely to see a far better ROI on these efforts.
All of these benefits make content marketing an extremely attractive marketing method, which is why we have updated our Blogging and Content Marketing Training course so you can learn all of the latest techniques to teach you how to make high quality, sought after content.
Related posts:
In a move to provide its users with more customised and personal search results, Google have launched their new “Search Plus Your World” feature to their enormously popular search engine.
The new features, which are currently only available on google.com in English but are being rolled out globally, takes a far more social stance on the search, offering custom search results which displays content from your Google+ network as well as global results. You can use Google Search Plus Your World by logging into your Google+ account and clicking ‘go to Google.com’ link at the bottom of the search page if you are not in America. You then see a personalised results page (shown below) and can switch between personal and global results using the toggle switch at the top right of the page. This is a dramatic update that potentially could change the face of Search Engine Optimisation and the way we receive our search results.
Find out what Search plus Your World means for internet marketing and SEO. This move has Twitter hot under the collar but Google says it is Twitter who don’t want to play.
Personal Results
Through deeper integration with Google’s social network, Google+, the new search feature will allow you to discover your own information, photos and content as well as content that has been shared and +1′d with you within your network, all within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). These results aim to give you far more personal results based on:
- posts from your friends on Google+
- private/limited content which has been shared with you on Google+
- full web listings
- full web listings which have been modified through your personal behaviour
- fell web listings which have been modified due to your social network connections
The implications of these changes are that you can receive more meaningful results which match what’s going on in your life, giving you more of an indication of what the members of your online world are sharing, doing and saying.
One extremely handy feature is the ability to find photos taken by you and your friends within the search results. If you look at the search result image below, when searching for the keyword “beach” images taken by people who are relevant to you are displayed.
People and Pages
The changes also contain the inclusion of Google+ profiles within search results, displaying them in the sidebar to the right of the results (shown on your right). This new “People and Pages on Google+” box allows you to quickly and easily add profiles to your circles, expanding your own potential personalised search network in the process. The new feature recommends profiles based on what they are talking about through their post and comments on broad search terms (for example, the image to the right was taken after searching ‘football’), introducing you to people and pages that have similar interests and expertise in the field you are searching.
Profiles in Search
As well as the new sidebar, Google+ profiles are now discoverable within search results. It is now possible to search for one of your friends by entering the first few letters of their name, providing you with results that include Google+ profile information and web results which including content that is connected to them. This will allow you to more accurately find information about a specific person as it will filter out results from people with the same or similar name to the person you are searching.
Too Much Information?
This isn’t the first time Google have used previous search results and online behaviours to personalise their search results. This was initially launched in 2005 being developed and refined ever since, introducing Social Search in October 2009 to help you find “more relevant public content from your broader social circle”.
Search results display private content in the same way it would display public results which may worry some users, however Google is securing your search results with the same SSL encryption that keeps your emails in GMail private.
While the search is definitely getting more social, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are not included in the search results, making having a Google+ account essential to make use of the personal search results. Although these networks don’t currently allow Google’s web crawlers to index the vast majority of their information, Google are open to setting this up in the future, which would have a massive increase in the amount of personal information, content and photos that are discoverable using the service.
The new feature also flips idea of global results on its head by focusing on local results which should be more relevant to you. Luckily, if these features are not to your liking you can always turn off personal results through the toggle button on the top right of the page or even turn it off permanently through your personal search settings.
We are currently seeing a big change in search and making sure that your sites are ranked highly by search engines is still as important as ever, which is why proper SEO Training Courses are needed, so you know that the effort you are putting into boosting your rankings isn’t working against you.
Related posts:
Look into my crystal ball...
2012 has historically been a hot year for predictions. The finishing of the Mayans cryptic calendar has been touted as a sign of the ‘end of the world’ by many a pessimist, citing Nostradamus’ prophecies as the evidence they need that the end is nigh.
Luckily, not all predictions for next year have to be so gloomy; there are plenty of developments yet to come out in the tech world. here are our top SEO predictions for the new year.
Google service integration
Now the most used browser on the web, Google Chrome has always offered more than just a smooth and seamless web browsing experience. With Google having their fingers in a lot of pies, many of their services are becoming integrated with the browser.
Google services such as Google Docs, which is already proving itself as an excellent file sharing facility, and Google+ (which is covered as part of our Social Media training course), the rival to Facebook which is picking up steam, will find themselves more embedded with Google’s software, encouraging a growth in collaboration and sharing.
The ability to install a wide variety of apps and extensions to your browser not only gives you a tailored browsing experience it also opens the platform up to being more than just a browser. Expect to see these built upon, with Chrome borrowing from Google’s Android mobile operating system’s seamlessly customisable app and widget based set up.
The new social sharing revolution
While Facebook is still the daddy of the Social Media world, Google+ Business profile pages still have a lot to offer. Using these pages to share content will become a vital tool in your SEO tool box, especially with the potential of Google+ having more of a stronger bearing on Google’s search results in the near future.
Death to spam
Google have always prided themselves on working on methods of detecting bad content, the kind of content that you would find festering away in your emails spam box. While it may not be possible to completely eradicate this digital menace, measures to minimise gratuitous backlinking through poor quality content, affecting many SEO campaigns, will be made, changing the way you go about content marketing. A more cautious vetting process will have to come into place in order not to negatively affect your rankings, with extra care required to:
- Choose which guest posts you publish. Do they have a good page rank and authority?
- Choosing who you offer guest posts to. Good quality content should be enough to help get you in with more respected blogs and sites with a decent page rank. Poor quality material will do nothing to persuade these sites to publish your work.
2012: the year the web went mobile
There is no doubt that the mobile web really took off in 2011, but this is just the beginning. With the popularity of smart phones only rising expect to see more of an impact on ecommerce as SEO. Making use of location based services such as geo tagging, expect to see more mobile web features spill out into the real world, leading to a new real-time, real-world marketing format for businesses. High-street Browsing Optimisation maybe?
Giving businesses a new more creative way to interact with their clients, apps offer new revenue streams as well as a method of communicating with customers. This is why we expect to see the use of apps increase, with large growth in sales. As a key part of both the tablet (whose owners took up 14.5% of internet users in 2011 according to Emarketeer, who also predict that this will rise to 22.9% in 2012), and smart phone industries we predict that apps will become increasingly diverse and complex, with mobile optimisation becoming an essential part of any SEO strategy in 2012. This is why Silicon Beach Training now offers Android App Training and iPhone App Training to compliment our popular SEO and Social Media training courses.
Search results: now it’s personal
Your search and social media information are becoming even more important tools in creating customised, bespoke search results. Information such as your location, search history, Google+ profile information and data from your Gmail account will become increasingly important factors when performing web searches, relying more on social engagement to make connections between businesses and potential clients.
Related posts:
As usual Silicon Beach Training develops training to meet industry demands, providing the new media industry with the tools required to compete in a constantly evolving market. Don’t get left behind – enrol on one of our mobile development training courses with iPhone App Training and Android Training now available.
As each day passes smart phones integrate themselves deeper and deeper into the lives of people all over the world. Long gone are the days of just making calls on your phone, now web browsing, emailing, social networking and navigation are all key features used by today’s modern phone user.
Customisation is a key advantage to owning a smart phone, with thousands of downloadable apps, both free and for purchase, available to tailor your phone to your life. There’s an app for almost everything!
The two key players in the smart phone OS market are undoubtedly Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, with Android overtaking iPhone sales by 2 to 1 over the summer. Android also has the new smart phone owners market pinned down, being purchased by 56% of first timers. One of the main points which has caused this surge surpassing the iPhone is down to Androids open source format, allowing it to be used by a wide variety of manufactures, thus offering a wide selection of handsets to the consumer at different price points making them more affordable compared to Apple’s iconic alternative.
Another key point to Android’s success is largely down to the apps they have on offer. Android’s App Marketplace is filled with a wide variety of apps which make as much, or as little, use of the phone’s functionality as the developer desires. Unlike the iPhone, Android’s open source OS allows developers to work with the full potential of the phone’s features, opening up a pandora’s box of possibilities for people looking to get into Android App Development, something which is becoming more and more accessible.
It’s time to join the app party!
Once app development was only achievable by professional developers and script kiddies, now it has never been better for newcomers to get involved in app development, with an array of internet tips to give you a taste, and comprehensive face to face Android App Development training courses being set up to get you well on your way to creating your own dream app.
Due to market demand, Silicon Beach has developed a full 5 day Android App Development training course which has been designed to take you right through the full development process. From learning about the Android’s development environment to designing and building your own app, to learning how to get listed on Android’s Marketplace, everything you need to know build your own successful app is included.
While its market share is still behind never discount the iPhone. The iPhone 4S boosted Apple’s stake in the market, outselling Android in its launch month (October 2011) selling 4 million units in its opening weekend. With its own vast catalogue of apps for the iPad as well as iPhone it is still a must for all app developers. Silicon Beach also offers comprehensive, hands on 5 day iPhone App Training courses, so you can make sure your future apps are available to the major majority of smart phone users.
Related posts:
Location based services are not new, some, such as Loopt have been around since 2005 but 2010 is the year that they’re really taking off. Loopt has around 3 million users in the US (its not available anywhere else) but it differs greatly from the current trend in location based services, that of moving away from “always on” location to that of “checking in” at specific locations.
Foursquare and Gowalla are leading the charge of the ‘Geosocial‘ location based mobile services, with Foursquare having recently had 370k “check ins” in one day. With only 500k registered users the leader, Foursquare, is still relatively small compared to other, traditional, social networks (Facebook, with 400m users is by far the biggest social network but doesn’t yet have a Geosocial aspect) but it is growing fast.
Arguably 2010 will be the year of location based social and business networks, especially with services such as simpleGeo offering location infrastructure to startups. This lowers the barrier to entry significantly allowing start ups, such as stickybits, to provide geotagging in its unique offerings.
So is it all hype? From a business point of view are they worth engaging with like other social media?
Its not just about being Social
Foursquare and its peers have positioned themselves squarely (no pun intended!) in the social media space with a light gaming element. Users are encouraged to check in at places by gaining points and badges. I recently gained the “School Night” badge on Foursquare for checking in after 3am during the week and have become “Mayor” of one of the buildings on my University campus (displacing someone who obviously hasn’t been in a while!). The social side is about leaving tips for people at locations and letting them discover interesting things to do.
Businesses have started to warm to the idea of rewarding frequent visitors with free coffee (in Starbucks case) but this can go further. Many businesses run reward schemes with stamps and cards and its fairly simple to move this to location based rewards. After all, by checking in at a venue you’re in effect giving it your approval as a destination of interest. This type of marketing will become ever more important to business as 78% of people are said to trust peer recommendations.
Another startup launched at South by South West (both Foursquare and Gowalla were launched last year at SxSW) over the weekend is aiming to tap into the business networking aspect of Geosocial networks.
Pairwise was created by 2 strangers from San Francisco (no surprise there!), Euwyn Poon, 25 a corporate law graduate and software developer and Brandon Leonardo, 26 a professional software developer.
The idea was born out of Euwyn’s personal need to connect with as many business and software types as possible, this being his first SxSW and is first big opportunity to do some networking. Euwyn saw it as the perfect product to release at SxSW when scores of developers, journalists, venture capitalist would be in and around Austin.
Euwyn says:
“Pairwise is a mobile app that facilitates business networking by letting members of a crowd identify specifically who they’re looking to connect with. It further identifies hidden connections between people to make a “warm” introduction”
There seem to be an endless string of startups and existing companies looking to use Geo location in their products. Twitter has recently activated its Geo tagging features on its main site (Geo tagging tweets has been available through the API since November, 2009). Facebook the biggest player in the social media space is expected to announce its own Geo location features at its f8 conference in April.
But its advertising that is expected to bring in the real money for Geo location based networks. Geo targeted advertising will become more wide spread with businesses jumping at the chance to leverage the users location to target advertising. Whether customers will want such location specific advertising pushed to their handsets is question these networks will have to answer in time. According to a recent article in the Economist, Location based services and the advertising opportunities associated, will be worth over $12 billion within 5 years, although forcast’s like these should be taken with a pinch of salt.
So really its all about Business?
Well no, not at all. I see ‘Geosocial’ networks as a logical extension of our current social networks. They all have the same idea in common, that of sharing with your friends / colleagues; Facebook is the platform that aggregates all of your past thoughts and future plans. Twitter has positioned themselves as a stream of things and thoughts happening right now and Fourquare and Gowalla extend this by tying you to places, adding the new dynamic of things you are doing, not to mention allowing your friends to join you and collecting badges in the process.
- Facebook is “hey friends, I want to share all this stuff with you, what ive been doing, what my plans are, my pictures etc”
- Twitter is “hey friends, this is what im thinking, this minute, right now”
- and Foursquare/ Gowalla is “hey friends I’m here, right now!”
There are of course, privacy concerns, but users and detractors alike should remember that the point of “social media” is that you should ensure your only sharing online what you would normally share in public in real life. Ensuring that sharing is still a “want and not a need” (@snafflepuss) will become ever more important in the Geosocial future.
Related posts:
KeePass Review – Store passwords securely
To start with I have about twelve different passwords just for social media, about seven for different websites that I manage, three for different forums…you get the message I have a lot of passwords to remember!
It gets even worse if you are a business engaging in social media, you want to protect your passwords but also want employees to use your social accounts.
So how do I keep track of all these online passwords?
Keeping track: manage passwords online with KeePass
I use a little tool that seemed to have slipped under the radar, it was mentioned on Robert Scoble’s blog a few months back and its become invaluable to managing all the passwords I have to remember.
So what is it?
Its an application that sits on your desktop storing all of your passwords in a searchable database. Ok, so storing all of your passwords in one place sounds like a stupid idea but KeePass mitigates this by using 256 bit encryption on the database and then on each password.
You create a password database called, for instance, Silicon Beach Training and select a password for it.
You can then go in and add all your passwords; This may sound daunting but there is a healthy community that has developed plugins to import passwords from Firefox and IE straight into KeePass.
The passwords entered can be categorized in any way you see fit with nested groups allowing you to sort information intelligently. It also provides you with a search bar so you wont lose them!
So far it just sounds like a little application re-inventing the wheel. Where it gets interesting is when you use Firefox or Internet Explorer as your main browser. When you add a new password you can specify a URL, and whenever you navigate to that URL it will auto complete all the form fields for you.
KeePass is portable
This little feature becomes useful when you use multiple computers. Instead of installing KeePass on every machine you use and having to maintain duplicate password database’s you can install the KeePass safe on a USB stick. This allows you to use it on multiple machines and auto completes passwords on any machine. Just remember to press no to “Do you want to save this password” in your browser.
There are many other features (a full list of KeePass features can be found here) but one that is most interesting is the random password generator which as the name suggest generates a password of user specified quality.
It’s a very simple tool to use, but if you struggle then they have a pretty good tutorial and a community of dedicated developers bringing new features to help you manage your passwords effectively.
Well, at least that’s what I think! Go try it out!
Related posts:
Image by Steven Depolo
It seems there’s always a technology or service threatening to revolutionize the internet. Promising to change the way we access information and how we use it.
In the past it was “web 2.0″, “web 3.0″, “crowd sourcing”; the list goes on!
Silicon Beach Training offer programming training including Python Training and Ruby on the Rails Training in Brighton, Sussex.
Recently, “Real Time Web” has entered the arena, it sounds great but in practice, few people have a clue what it is. Simply put it means web resources are published and consumed in real time.
Real Time Web
As as soon as “stuff” is published, a blog post or any other user generated content, it is syndicated around the web and indexed immediately. The most obvious example is google search including up to the second results from twitter. Social media is all about real time, streams of information created constantly and consumed almost instantly (find out more with out social media course). Broadcasting your location in foursquare is pretty useless if people only find out a few hours/days later! Real time web can be thought of as another paradigm of the social web experience.
For a while only the big boys, Google, Facebook and Twitter and others have made use of these real time data streams, with us peons only able to use RSS and ATOM to get our content out there. Recent developments by both Google and WordPress have put this real time power at the disposal of every blogger and content creator on the web. If you are thinking of using WordPress and need help check out our WordPress Training and our Advanced WordPress Training courses.
You’re probably thinking how does this differ from RSS and ATOM? Well it doesn’t, its an extension to both those protocols to allow for real time publishing, but how exactly have they done this?
What is PuSH or PUbSubHub?
The very definition of “Real Time Web” is to have content consumed in real time. PuSH or PSHB (many names and acronyms have been used in discussions but from here on out I’ll only use PuSH as it best describes what it does) is a protocol that allows RSS and ATOM feeds to change something that you need to ask for into something that is given to you.
Quite simply, it works like this
- A blogger or content creator creates a feed and specifies a hub (see Where are these hubs bub? below)
- A consumer subscribes to the blog using the RSS feed in the normal way
- New content is created and the source pings the hub saying “i have new content!”
- The hub in turn “fat pings” the subscribers saying “Hey, the blog has new content, here it is!”
Here’s a cheesy video that illustrates PubSubHubBub!
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]This all happens within a few seconds of the content being published, thus satisfying the “real time web” definition!
How can you jump on this real time bandwagon?
There are three steps to real time publishing,
- set up your feed with a hub
- pushing your content to a hub
- grabbing other peoples stuff from the hubs.
Before all of this you will need a firm grasp of RSS and ATOM.
For those of you that have your blogs hosted by WordPress you need to do zip, nada nothing! They have already implemented everything you will need. If you have a WordPress blog but host it yourself, you can head here to find the plugin’s.
How to PuSH your content
The simplest way to quickly start using this to get your content out there is to head on over to Feedburner and create an account.
Add your content feeds,
hit publicize,
select PingShot and press activate and your feed is set up as a PubSubHubBub feed!
If for some reason you don’t like simplicity, or more likely you want more control over the publishing and retrieving then you’ll have to set up your RSS feed that includes hub forwarding information. To do this you’ll need to change part of the RSS feeds XML structure with a couple of lines of code.
Where are these hubs bub?
To implement PubSubHub youself you’ll need a hub. You can either create your own (which requires a fair bit of programming knowledge) or you can use one of the public hubs
- App Engine reference hub — http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com by Brett Slatkin
- Superfeedr hosted — http://blog.superfeedr.com/api/http/pubsubhubbub/pubsubhubbub/ by Julien Genestoux
- RabbitHub erlang — http://github.com/tonyg/rabbithub/#readme by Tony Garnock-Jones and Alexis Richardson
- Miyamoto python/twisted — http://github.com/progrium/miyamoto by Jeff Lindsay
- WebGlue ruby — http://github.com/zh/webglue/tree/master by Stoyan Zhekov
- !Subfeedr perl — http://github.com/miyagawa/Subfeedr by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa
- PubSubHubbub-rb ruby — http://github.com/barinek/pubsubhubbub-rb by Michael Barinek
- SubHub Django integrated hub — https://code.launchpad.net/subhub by Ivan Sagalaev
More information is available at google with tutorials and information on how to create a hub and start feeding the world your real time content.
How to grab other people stuff from the hubs
As always there are two ways to get real time blog updates.
The quick way is to start using an RSS reader that supports PubSubHuBBub, there are quite a few, but these are limited to web only readers and leading the pack is Google Reader with Bloglines, Bloglovin and Netvibes bringing up the rear.
The second option is to create your own PubSubHuBBub reader or modify an existing RSS widget to receive instant updates. Again consuming a PubSubHub message can be quite challenging so an understanding of web programming is needed, specifically server side scripting (take a look at our PHP/MySQL training course)
You can try this by heading over to our Feedburner page and subscribing and you’ll receive new blog post immediately after posting.
That’s all there really is to it. So go ahead and start publishing in real time, you’ll notice the difference straight away!
Related posts:
If you haven’t already heard, Google released a new Social Media offering called Buzz, a hybrid love child of Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter.
Buzz is still in its infancy, one of the easiest ways of jumping on the Buzz wagon is to have your tweets buzzed automatically, which is fairly straightforward. Buzz supports all the same# tags and @ mentions, so your twitter tweets work the same in Buzz.
But in my opinion this is a total waste of time. Buzz is many different things and it may seem similar to twitter but its not! Buzz should be used in a way that plays to its different strengths. I see it as a new tool in the social media armory of the local business (find out how your business can benefit from Social Media training here). The targeting of your local market is also great for SEO – see our new Search Engine Optimisation Course in Brighton, Sussex, to learn more.
Buzz is many things to a small business, read on and find out what…
Buzz is discussion
I liken using Twitter for business as using a man on the street corner handing out leaflets; You tweet something, maybe a link, maybe some important short announcement, but that’s it. The followers are expected to either go to the link or not. simple right?
Now Buzz, on the other hand is the booth inside the shopping centre (mall to you transatlantic folk!) where the salesperson says something that makes you stop and walk over to talk, to discuss something. Google Buzz is a discussion platform, newsgroups for the 21st century. If you are familiar with using twitter to interact with your customers or reader base then Buzz is a real boon to these efforts.
I started using Buzz on day one and followed the usual people, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, LeoLaporte etc. what I found was that Buzz was being used in two ways, some people used it like twitter and other used it differently and some used it like a threaded conversation. This second use is the most interesting from a business point of view.
Buzz is Business Friendly
Now this is where is gets interesting. As a local business you want to get reach, you want to engage your customer base and keep your business on their mind.
Google Buzz makes this a breeze in two ways; firstly is gives you a platform for discussion.
There are no limitations on the length of a Buzz or the type of content (in contrast to twitter’s 140 character limit) which gives the small business different ways to interact with customers. For instance something as simple as a restaurant snapping a pic of two dishes and buzzing what the followers think should be the dish of the day.
Of course with Twitter you can do the same thing, but Buzz lets your customers interact with each other too. They can comment on the buzz but be replying to another customer, they can see everything that everyone else has said easily and in one place. That’s not all though, as the buzzer (is that what we are calling them??) you can view every response in a threaded way, much like a forum, much like a discussion!
Secondly…
Buzz is Geo Location
Lets not forget Buzz throws geo location data into the mix as well. When you use buzz inside Google’s maps application on your iPhone, Nexus One or any other phone with maps support you have an option to add a buzz layer. This overlays all the geo located buzz’s in your local area.
Ok great, people will know where I am when I buzz, So what?
Well, a single engaging buzz gives the local business an instant hyperlocal advertising campaign. If I had followed the previous example up and made a post from my phone then i could tag my location as the restaurant; Showing everyone using Buzz on their phones where the restaurant is and what offers it has on right now.
But you can do this on twitter right?
Of course you can, but geo location in Buzz differs in two important ways.
Everybody in the local area can see the buzz, irrespective of whether they are following you or not.
When searching for a business on Google maps (on your phone) there’s a button “buzz about this place” which lets customers buzz about your business and let’s potential customers see whats buzzing. Even negative buzz can be made positive with a little interaction. Google Buzz allows you to comment on any public buzz so a few choice comments can turn a negative buzz positive. This feature alone is potentially a bonus for business’ SEO (find out more about SEO for local business’ on our SEO course). The more said about the company the higher up the Google local page will be on search results.
Buzz is integrated into Google maps, the most popular maps application for smart phones, so you can guarantee that anyone in your area searching for a business will see all the buzz posts.
Forget leaflet dropping, in the next 6 – 12 months Buzz will be the tool to use for this kind of targeted local advertising.
It gets even better if your business has been using Gmail. There’s been a lot of disparaging remarks about Gmail using your contacts as a base for people to follow. While not such a great idea for personal users (such as myself) its a great idea for people that use it for business as it starts you up with an instant follower base and continually suggests to the people that you email to follow you on Buzz making it easier to gain followers.
Buzz is young
So Buzz seems a pretty good tool to use but its a toddler to Twitter’s teenager and Facebook’s 20 something, its early days and there are problems and skepticism.
Gmail integration
This is a double edged sword for businesses; on the one hand its great if your customers use Gmail and you can leverage their use of it, on the other hand its a barrier to entry for Buzz as you cannot use Buzz without Gmail potentially limiting the user base.
It’s early days
Buzz has only been around for a few weeks and as such the “general public” seem to be largely unaware, in fact not only the general public but it seems a lot of people that use twitter and facebook and don’t use Gmail are blissfully unaware. This became starkly evident when chatting to a blogger friend with a large following on twitter and Facebook (@afrofilmviewer), but had never heard of buzz. I assume that this will be a formality and as time moves people will drift towards Buzz potentially for the exact same reason that the general public doesn’t know about it. Gmail.
Google are constantly changing and tweaking Buzz based on user suggestions so even if take up in your area is a little slow, it is definitely worthwhile to start using it now and the a head start on the bakery down the road.
Related posts:
Profile
Summary
Experience
- Jan 2011 - PresentTechnical Consultant / Funnelback Search- Responsible for completing all implementation activities
- Face to face client meetings for requirements analysis and definition
- Configuration of software
- Enhancement development
- Extending and tailoring software for clients (Java, JS, Perl)
- Testing
- Go-live support for client.
- Server configuration and installation
- Independent and team working
- Project planning - Aug 2010 - Dec 2010Drupal Developer / Cameron & Wilding
- Jul 2010 - Jul 2010Student Associate / Priory School, Lewes
- Feb 2010 - Mar 2010Social Media Assistant / Silicon Beach Training
- Jun 2009 - Sept 2009Systems Engineering Assistant / Rockwell Collins Visual Display Systems
- Jul 2009 - Aug 2009Freelance Developer / Bboss.biz
- Oct 2007 - Jun 2009Network Support Assistant / University of Brighton
- Jun 2008 - Sept 2008Web Software Consultant / Avanti Communications
- Jan 2006 - May 2007Sales and Marketing Administrator / Elyo Services Ltd High Wycombe, Bucks
Education
-
2007 - 2010University of BrightonBsc Hons in Computer ScienceActivities: Brighton Tsunami American Football Club
-
2006 - 2007Thames Valley UniversityAccess diploma in computing
Additional Information
Latest checkin
-
@Fitness4less Gym (Hare street)7 days ago
Badges
Checkin history
-
@Fitness4less Gym (Hare street)7 days ago
-
9 days ago
-
@Fitness4less Gym (Hare street)10 days ago
-
@Tower House (81 Fieldgate Street)10 days ago
-
@Old Kings Head (Scrutton Street)2 weeks ago
-
@Highbury Pool & Fitness Centre (Highbury Fields)5 weeks ago
-
@Westfield Stratford City (Montfichet Rd.)5 weeks ago
-
7 weeks ago
-
@Tower House (81 Fieldgate Street)2 months ago
-
@Old Kings Head (Scrutton Street)2 months ago
-
@Superdrug (Old St.)2 months ago
-
@Squiz UK (109 - 123 Clifton Street)2 months ago
-
@Tower House (81 Fieldgate Street)2 months ago
-
@Tesco Metro (361 Bethnal Green Rd.)2 months ago
-
2 months ago
-
@Tower House (81 Fieldgate Street)2 months ago
-
@All Star Lanes (Westfield Stratford City)2 months ago
-
@Fitness4less Gym (Hare street)2 months ago
-
@Hitachi Consulting (2 More Riverside)2 months ago
-
@Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station (MAN) (London Rd.)3 months ago
