Apperceptions

Another Search

Motivated by yesterday's post, I decided to perform another Google search and I hit some real gold. 

Here's a great flash video (page, flash movie) I found in the results.  Check it out.

Failure

My friend Ionia recently joined the Yahoo Videoblogging Group and she asked me if it would be appropriate to share a funny Google search result with the group.  As a moderator, I had to point out that it really needed something to tie it to the topic of "videoblogging" before she sent it in.  So here's a video that demonstrates what she (and I) found so funny.  Click the pic to view the vid.

New Project - New Blog

I am excited to be working with my friend Rachel Toole.  She is home from NYU for the summer and we are collaborating to document the process of implementing SpinFlow principles at Outhink, Inc.

Yes, Outhink.  Everyone can derive value from more SpinFlow training and discipline.  Like Tai-Chi or a martial art, SpinFlow requires study and practice.  There are no colored belts, but clearly there are masters and there are people who have a passion to create and wish to spin and flow media with ease.

So how are we doing it?  First we are establishing modern networking lines of communication between us and, to that end, we have created a pair of blogs (mine's a vlog, hers will be soon also; others may follow).

Much of our discussions and activities will revolve around using SpinXpress, ANT and vlogs.  You can find all the details and my first video related to this on my new vlog.  Rachel is free to do whatever she likes with her blog and I think it's already very interesting.

You are invited to observe and participate through the comments, we are very interested in your feedback and value quality interaction.

Rachel's Summer Spin blog.    My Spin Summer 2005 vlog.

No Hart Feelings

I would not want to be John Hart today.  He is experiencing the darker side of group collaboration.  It has been quite something to watch.  Basically, it went down like this as far as I can tell from quickly going over all the relevant emails and blogs (please let me know if I got it wrong in any way - times may be a little off due to timezone issues in messages):

Wired News: Free Buzz Blitz Earns Rebuke

I see Wired has jumped into the whole Creative Commons / BzzAgent debate.  Actually, it looks more like BzzAgent paid for the interview - very one sided.

Wired has been on the zzzzzzz-list for some time.  I think it may be time to move it to the trash bin.

Link: Wired News: Free Buzz Blitz Earns Rebuke.

From the sidelines: From A-list to zzzzzzz-list

Ha!  I knew someone would like this.

Link: From the sidelines: From A-list to zzzzzzz-list.

Sure getting lot's of hits from the recent trackbacks to Seth Godin's blog entries.  And the links from Ryanne, Ian and karmagrrrl ... thanks you guys!  Ahhhh, digitial presence!  While you're looking, please do check out SpinFlow.

RSS Feeds for Videos

Hmmm.  I just tried to see if the RSS feed for this blog would work in ANT.  Nope.  Ant indicated an error downloading and parsing feed.  I've done this before successfully for webjay feeds, but not a TypePad blog. 

I was thinking about using Feedburner anyway as it will be useful for the new SpinFlow site.  Perhaps it will work better.  I notice it's use on other sites and I hear you can get good stats too. 

Ok, so more stuff to learn and do trying to get my message about SpinFlow out to you. I'll make notes here as I resolve things.  I'll probably have to learn more about RSS enclosures or something like that.

This is what SpinFlow is all about: helping to remove the barriers to self expression.

Little Things and Old Lessons Relearned

It's always fun to notice the little things we do that end up mattering to someone.  Last night, Gordon Gould of Weblogs Inc. stopped by and was prompted to write a great little post about SpamPoison, an item in my sidebar.  Then Gordan linked back to me, which is just too cool.

When I started this weblog, I was certainly influenced by other people's blogs.  Being a developer, I tended to look first at the "toys" that blogs had and then the content.  I was originally more interested in how people created and used weblogs than I was in actually writing one (that has all changed, now content is important to me and I find a desire to express myself). 

WooHoo!

I'm stoked.  One of my WebJay playlists topped 100 hits (wow!) and made it to the home page popular listing.  Oops, my fifteen minutes of fame is up; i've already dropped from fourth to seventh place.  I better keep that content fresh!  Here's a piece I pointed to this morning from the Internet Archive.  It's in my derivative works playlist.

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger

Interesting post from Scobleizer today:

I'll say it again. You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.

Link: Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger.

Digital Presence

This is the first in a series of posts whose initial discussion will be centered around defining a metric for the notion of "digital presence" (DP).  Let's begin by examining how people currently use this term on the web.

Using Google and Vivisimo, one sees several common uses of this phrase:

1. DP can refer to a person or organization's image, look, presentation, appearance, visibility, representation, reputation, etc. This can include those sites/communities/publications that you control and those that you do not (e.g., open forums). This term is used by some web designers and marketing folks. Also used by biz/tech columnists to describe acquisitions of digital technologies/content/companies.  Examples include: Kodak in Deal to Boost Digital Presence, or Apperceive's digital presence is not as great as that of HP's.
2. DP can refer to the existence or availability of a resource - that is, a person, device or application - on a network. Being "present" ranges from simply being registered to actively participating with others.  Examples include: markus@outhink.com is currently logged into the SPIN network using SpinXpress. Also, 'markus' is shown as busy on MSN Messenger; or a resource is available in SpinXpress. Also having your computer help others make smarter choices about how to reach you. Here is an article about this that has a great title: Beware of geeks bearing presence.
3. DP refers to "telepresence", as in video-conferencing or virtual worlds. Example: "Dave's digital presence in the virtual music studio is quite lifelike; it's as if he is in the studio in LA, even though he's actually in Tiburon".

Note that these three definitions are not entirely distinct nor exclusive. With that in mind, I am mainly interested in the first meaning.

Ultimately, we are interested in defining a metric for DP. We want to be able to say things like "Using our approach, clients typically see an increase of x% in their digital presence". Or, we might calculate and report metrics for various entities and define a "Billboard" style chart for their DP.

Feedback?