JD Hancock

If you’re not familiar with Hipster, it’s a photography app that offers a cool, grid-based design like Pinterest, the ability to add neat filters like Instagram, and the location awareness of Foursquare. Lately I have been favoring Hipster over Instagram for my “out and about” photography, for several reasons:

• Hipster assumes that location is important with the photos you are taking on the go, which in my case is mostly true.
• Hipster has a web interface so even people without an account can play.
• I prefer Hipster’s filters over Instagram’s.
• I don’t like square photos.

Check out Hipster for yourself:

• Hipster
• JD Hancock’s Hipster Profile

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree,
How lovely are your branches.

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree,
How lovely are your branches.

In summer sun or winter snow
A dress of green you always show.

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree,
How lovely are your branches.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful and safe holiday season.

As you may know, I am a cyborg. I have electronic implants in my head to help prevent chronic headaches. It’s true!

Last January, well after I received my current implants, I underwent an additional procedure to help prevent headaches called “radiofrequency ablation.” During this procedure my doctor poked the back of my head with a large needle and then shot radio waves into my nervous system to disrupt it, blocking the pathways of my headaches. I know it sounds fantastic and unbelievable, but shortly thereafter I became completely headache-free.

However, radiofrequency ablation is a temporary fix that lasts only a year, so it is not surprising that for the past several weeks my headaches have returned. Although they are thankfully not yet at the pain level I once experienced, they are enough to once again negatively impact my family, my work, and my hobbies. For example, you may have noticed I did not post a “Super Social Media Roundup” this past Monday.

So before they get any worse, today I will be undergoing radiofrequency ablation again, or as I like to call it, the “giant needle procedure.” While quite painful, it is a relatively minor procedure with very little risk to my safety. Once it’s done I’ll rest for a few days, so if my online activities continue to be somewhat spotty, you’ll know why.

Thank you to all of my friends and family for your support during this time. It is truly appreciated.

What Tools Were Super This Past Week?

• Flavors.me — is a service that builds you a well-designed homepage based on other services you use such as Twitter, Flickr, WordPress, etc. They recently added several new, compelling, and free layouts. (example)
• moviegr.am — is “a quick and easy way to find movies, watch trailers, and share with friends.” This is the cleanest design I’ve ever seen for a movie fan site.
• Twitter’s 2011 Year in review — shows the people and trends of the past year.

What Else Was Super?

• The United States Federal Trade Commission settled the issues around privacy with Facebook, including mandating regular privacy audits for the next 20 years.
• The technology company Atos has instituted a “zero email” policy, banning company email in favor of instant messaging and social media. While I doubt this approach would work for all organizations, it’s certainly an interesting idea.
• Facebook purchased the location-based service Gowalla. I hope this is good news for the Gowalla team. Like many former fans of the service I’ve felt their new direction this year was not the right direction. But, generally speaking, I support those who are exploring new ideas around location-based services.
• Klout had another technical hiccup over the weekend resulting in scores significantly dropping for many people. This issue has since been resolved. This is not super for Klout, but it helps underscore my position on the service: it is at best a useful but imperfect tool.
• As Klout scores were on shaky ground this weekend, I saw more buzz around three other reputation services: Peerindex, PROskore, and Kred.

What Super Stuff Happened To You?

• My employer Demand Media launched an internal program encouraging employees to make better use of social media. I believe we will see more and more organizations embracing similar efforts.
• I made a new and very simple background for my Twitter profile @JDHancock because the t.wist.it service that for years has posted my Flickr photos as my Twitter background suddenly stopped working properly. In your opinion, what makes a great Twitter background?
• I gave Last.fm another look this past week, and the service is growing on me. I’m currently using Spotify to “feed” musical suggestions to Last.fm, a process known as “scrobbling.” Spotify is also posting the same songs in the Facebook ticker. I like the idea of several different services using the same information for slightly different purposes.
• I continued moving to my new Google+ account and shutting down my old one. Circle me!

What Will Be Super Next Week?

• You tell me!
• Don’t forget that you can follow these roundups each week via email.

JD Hancock writes about social media every week … because it’s fun!

What Tools Were Super This Past Week?

• CubeSocial — is a social customer relationship management system that imports your contacts and create social profiles for each.
• Museum Analytics — is an online tool to share and discuss museums and their audiences.
• Flout — is a funny twist on online reputation scoring systems such as Klout. (example)
• Jobs Tractor — uses Twitter to find local web development jobs near you.

What Else Was Super?

• Empire Avenue rolled out an improved and much-needed redesign to its navigation.

What Super Stuff Happened To You?

• My family had a holiday vacation in San Antonio, Texas and crowdsourced some of our travel decisions via social networks. Our friends and family recommended places to visit, and we benefited from their previous experiences.
• Not-so-super was my attempt to use Gowalla as a travel guide during my vacation. Several months ago the once-beloved service dropped many of its most popular features to transform itself into a travel guide, much to my dismay. And unfortunately, I’m sad to report, it is a disappointingly poor travel guide. We had much better luck using a combination of Foursquare, Yelp, and Facebook to find interesting places to visit.
• Foursquare awarded me the “Oversharer” badge. While some people might be offended at the suggestion that they overshare, I was shocked it took me so long to earn it.
• I wrapped up a seven-part photo series featuring the superhero team known as the Metal Men.
• With Google+ now supporting Google Apps, I moved my Google+ activity to my more-often-used Google Apps profile. Circle me!

What Will Be Super Next Week?

• You tell me!
• Don’t forget that you can follow these roundups each week via email if you like.

JD Hancock is a friendly cyborg who started creating websites professionally in 1995. It’s true!

To all of my friends and family in the United States, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving Day. Gobble gobble!

Thanks to my son for modeling the turkey hands.

What Tools Were Super This Past Week?

• PROskore — is a reputation scoring service with a professional focus. (example)
• Opinionaided — is an “ask your social graph” app for iPhone, Android, and the web with a more personal bent than Quora.
• WitStream — features clever tweets from funny folks on Twitter.

What Else Was Super?

• NASA reached 20,000 followers on Google+ faster than it did on Twitter and Facebook.
• Brands continue buzzing about the recently-launched Google+ Pages. But will Google+ users pay any attention?
• Over one million people have grown a moustache during the month of November to support Movember, raising awareness of men’s health and cancer.
• Triberr users previously accustomed to the service’s wonderful auto-posting to Twitter are now having to get accustomed to logging into Triberr regularly and posting manually instead. Okay, that’s not so super, but it’s true.

What Super Stuff Happened To You?

• I started a week-long series of toy photos centered around the classic superhero team the Metal Men.
• After spending some time with the Twitter Activity and @username tabs, I’ve concluded the usefulness of the former is a bit dubious, but the latter is a great way to keep track of your mentions, retweets, etc.

What Will Be Super Next Week?

• You tell me!
• Don’t forget that you can follow these roundups each week via email if you like.

JD Hancock is living in the future in Austin, Texas.

I dedicated some time this weekend to a funny toy photo inspired by a classic line from Ghostbusters. I hope you enjoy it.

Related

What Tools Were Super This Past Week?

• connect.me — is the prettiest social reputation service I’ve found. (example)
• SmartSync — is an iPhone app I’ve used to sync my Facebook contacts to my phone for a while, but lately my appreciation for it has grown. It also does great birthday reminders.

What Else Was Super?

• Google changed their search algorithm again, sending SEO gurus running back to their crystal balls.
• Bank Transfer Day attracted 81,900 RSVPs on Facebook.
• Zynga’s CastleVille launched, a game that combines social and MMORPG elements.
• Google yanked some of the social features out of Google Reader, angering the Sharebros.
• Louis C. K. announced on Conan that he hates Twitter. And he has 700,000+ followers. Huh.

What Super Stuff Happened To You?

• I upgraded from an AT&T iPhone 3GS to a Verizon iPhone 4S and (after dealing with a nightmare-ish restore issue) saw an immediate jump in my productivity. I recommend Verizon. I recommend iPhone 4S.

What Will Be Super Next Week?

• You tell me!
• Don’t forget that you can follow these roundups each week via email if you like.

JD Hancock is a professional web-slinger, but he also does all this for fun too.

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone has a safe holiday!

What Tools Were Super This Past Week?

• Blippar — is an augmented reality tool designed to function similarly to a QR code reader, but without the QR codes.
• Later, Spam! — helps you fight Twitter spam and earn points for doing it.
• Know Your Twitter Followers — reveals demographic information about your Twitter followers … if you can stand a long wait; it’s currently in beta and flooded with requests.
• 7 Billion & Me — documents the world population as it rises past the 7 billion mark.

What Else Was Super?

• Klout updated its algorithm, which was not met with a lot of enthusiasm as many saw their score drop dramatically with no explanation given.
• As a result of the financial protest movement, “occupy” became a banned search term in China, which is not super, actually, and not surprising either.
• The X Factor USA television show announced it would allow viewers to vote via Twitter.
• The Obama 2012 campaign launched “Obama for America” on Tumblr.

What Super Stuff Happened To You?

• I played quite a bit more with Spotify, and I’m enjoying it.
• I got to dig in on a secret project at work. Shhh! Don’t tell anybody!

What Will Be Super Next Week?

• You tell me!
• Don’t forget that you can follow these roundups each week via email if you like.

JD Hancock is a cyborg who only uses his powers for good.