The Social Networker

by Chris Miller at 09:23:29 AM on Monday, June 29th, 2009
An all guys roundtable discussion with Caleb Elston, Jeff Smith and myself.  Just at 43 mins in length.

Find articles on our topics by following our groups bookmarks on Diigo here

   * Facebook as the second Internet, has it consumed you?
   * Boxee.tv on Windows
   * and more....

Our advertiser for this episode is CertFX.  Your online source for computer certification preparation materials.  With the above link only, you can save an additional 20% with the coupon code "IdoNotes"

by Chris Miller at 01:52:22 PM on Friday, June 26th, 2009
With the recent news of Facebook becoming the second Internet as we know it, they have embraced the need for consumers to track everything they purchase and where they bought it.  So introducing the first image of the Facebook Citizen Preferred credit card (image below)

Image:The Facebook credit card - coming soon (and what you get with it)

 Imagine a social graph built around things like the following:
  • clothing purchased and sizes
  • shoes and sizes
  • movies seen and rented
  • types of live events
  • favorite restaurants
  • where you buy groceries
  • where you buy gas
  • where you travel
  • what hotels you like to stay in
  • what kind of coffee you drink
  • the list is endless....


With the new Facebook Preferred card, you not only become a consumer of these goods, but a Citizen of Facebook.  Where your every movement is then tracked, graphed and soon, mapped via location services as applications in Facebook.  While they build the walled garden to keep other financial institutions out, they will be growing in how much they know about you.
  •  Advertisements will be shown that exactly match what you not only buy regularly, but what you will buy in the future.  Oh you will want it, they know it.
  • Friends and family will get personalized birthday wish lists sent to them.  No more guessing what you don't have or really need.
  • Anniversary gift lists that combine you and your significant other as shown in your relationship status will be generated.  no more making the significant other mad when you pick the wrong thing.  You can't anymore.
  • When whole families use the card, vacation packages will be shown that everyone would enjoy.  Make the kids and grandma happy in one trip
  • Your significant other will immediately be able to see where you just were and when she is getting what you just bought.  No more sneaking to the local DQ for an ice cream cone without her!

So sign up today and get your Facebook card.  Facebook is financing it with ad revenue so no need for the banks as middle men.  You will transfer money via the new Facebook Funds.  Don't worry about the interest rate, they already know your credit score for gosh sakes.

by Chris Miller at 08:58:00 AM on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
CertFX.  Your online source for computer certification preparation materials.


Awesomesauce roundtable discussion with Louis Gray, Wayne Sutton, Sarah Perez, and myself.  Just at 56 mins in length.

Find articles on our topics by following our groups bookmarks on Diigo here

    * Facebook Vanity URL's - should they cost you also?
    * Paid Twitter feeds, yes or no?
    * Mixero, LiveFlow and Floxee (see Diigo Links)
    * Social identity management, do you do it correctly?
    * Friendfeed colors make Sarah sick (literally)
    * Quick commentary on Bing and other announcements
    * and more....

 Our advertiser for this episode is CertFX.  Your online source for computer certification preparation materials.  With the above link only, you can save an additional 20% with the coupon code "IdoNotes"

by Chris Miller at 11:21:24 AM on Friday, June 12th, 2009
As we discussed on TheSocialGeeks Episode 16, the Facebook vanity URL dam walls open tonight for those of you registered on Facebook before May 31 2009.  Yes, before May 31 only.  This is to prevent squatters on specific names.  So what name are you going to pick?  What rights do you have to that name?  (Side note that the name must be 5 characters or greater, so sorry IBM, Dell, HP and KFC?) This was an important part of the discussion on the podcast and I found myself thinking more about it this morning.

Myself, I have a brand name that has been built under IdoNotes across all the networks.  Well documented, shown for years and mapped to me.  So I even have a case to use the form Facebook has in place when there is a conflict with someone taking your name.  That brings me right to the next point.  What about your common name?  You know, as in "ChrisMiller"?
  • Who owns that right on Facebook with the hundreds of people with that name?
  • Is it first come, first serve?
  • What about first person that was on Facebook?
  • How about the most active person?
  • The one with the most friends?
  • The one with the largest fan page?
Then following what Louis Gray said on the podcast, which summarized to "Facebook is leaving off the fact anyone can buy a domain name and redirect it to your facebook page".  He uses SocialToo for that very purpose and many of you own multiple domains.  Is Facebook where you want your point of entry for everything?  Why not have a social page like Wayne Sutton or myself?  Then link to every profile.  So why is this so important to Facebook?

Easy, to make them your portal for your identity.  It is the pure ownership of you showing off you you are and you are passing it to someone else.  I am saying to you to go and get your vanity URL on Facebook.  Fight with the masses.  But then go register a domain that represents you and make a brand out of it. Be yourself and own yourself.  Do not let a site like this force you into showing your identity through them.  Use them as the free service they are, ad driven.  Not putting so much worth into a URL you do not own or control in the end.

by Chris Miller at 12:38:01 PM on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
This was pointed out online by Gina Trapani.  With so many  clients, websites and tools using Twitter under your account name, you can easily break the API rate limit for yourself and have to wait till the next hour cycle to get tweets and updates.  You know you suffer from VGS when you :
  • constantly trip this rate limit trying to glean as much as you can
  • constantly tune how often clients update to get the maximum out of your hourly limits
  • constantly close and open clients hoping that it will reset your rate limit (umm no)
  • constantly open a client, check something and shut it down so you don't get blocked for the hour
  • constantly watch the counter in the corner of your Twitter client

As you can see, this nervous twitch of rate limit watching is more than an affliction, it consumes you so you don't miss a single tweet.  Learn to jump in the stream of information and jump out without feeling guilty. Learn to ignore the limit.  If you break it, good for you, that means no distractions for the rest of the hour.  Pull your eyes away from the client and take a breath.  I would type more but my rate is running out.

**************
Further VGS entries:
Created Subject
05/19/2009 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - The Co_friend
01/27/2009 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - The Over Information Gatherer
12/10/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - Social Network Refugee
12/01/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - new Repetitive Posting Syndrome (RPS)
11/17/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - the publisher aka Minutia-streaming
09/18/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - Social Stalking
06/23/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - Forcing Temporary Remission
06/12/2008 Using Jott for reading (listening) to hot RSS feeds
05/12/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - Profile of a Social Networker
05/08/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - the dosage issue
04/14/2008 Tweeting in the bathroom - the new social crime
04/07/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - the variance
03/12/2008 Chris Pirillo further proves my VGS theory is true
03/11/2008 Virtual Gratification Syndrome (VGS) - you have it

by Chris Miller at 10:42:36 AM on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Twitter has started some interesting trends, with one being #followfriday and the use of the hasthtag to describe it.  Well I thought it would be appropriate if we had something for each day of the main workweek.  I did find one in existence for Monday already, so my job became easier.  These are up for debate, but the idea is to get some flow and consistency going.  I want some voting and input on Thursdays
  • #musicmonday - on this day you list a link to your favorite artist, song, album, video or whatever as long as it is music.  URL shorteners please!
  • #twotuesday - you share two comparisons of something.  Maybe a product or new site.  The idea is to have conflicting sites on the topic so we get both sides to any story.  It helps you learn there is more than one side and shares it with us
  • #webwednesday - I decided this one should be where we show off hidden gems on the web.  Sites that have amazing content and should be seen by many.  Do not forget to use your URL shortener of choice please
  • #  ???   I have quite a few ideas but lets get some input on this one and decide on the best.  I don't want to be responsible for the entire web
  • #followfriday - on this day you simply list a string of @ names, such as @IdoNotes, and tell your followers they are worth following.  It is wise to suggest people that are not super celebs on Twitter to help see new and exciting people.  Like @IdoNotes   ha

by Chris Miller at 10:03:40 AM on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Livedrive banner

After visting my local Costco and watching people buying terabyte drives by the basketload recently, I began to question the disaster recovery planning the we, as individuals and not companies, have put into place.  In the speed as which technology is becoming cheap for home usage, I think too many of us are becoming comfortable in either cloud, SaaS or local computing to make the right choices.  I am going to attempt to break down each of these and give a summary of my best practices.

Cloud
The most common form of cloud computing that individuals consume is free web based email and online storage.  In this mode you have limited information kept locally on your computers at home, but have the flexibility to reach this data from anywhere.  Some of it is ad driven, which you learn to ignore for the value of the service itself.  Email systems like Gmail and Hotmail have become a commodity that you consume with no regard for worrying about your data, which is the first mistake.

Let's take Yahoo Photos for example.  When Yahoo bought Flickr they ran both for some time and then sent the announcements that you will migrate to Flickr.  Soon after they shut down Yahoo photos and many people were still left stunned as their pictures were just gone (if they did not know about Flickr).  Recently Yahoo did it again with Briefcase, but there was no exit plan in place for that one.  You had to make sure you had your data and they closed the site.  No migration.  I am not saying millions were impacted, but simply using it as a cloud example.  There is plenty of other recent ones that are closed or closing.

The idea is that we do not plan for contingency in the closing of these cloud sites, that have never relied on your for funding, unless you wanted additional storage or services.  Often called Premium accounts.  Many of you have never made a local backup of your cloud hosted email and some even don't keep their photographs locally anymore.  What you leave yourself open to is total loss of accumulated data from it ONLY sitting in the cloud.  Gmail for example offers the ability to access email by POP/IMAP.  This allows you to bring a copy locally onto your own machiens for archiving or storage purposes.  Now Gmail may not be one to close given the state of Google, but take your pick between the public free email systems.   (**please see tip at end of article**)

Saas
This isn't really inclusive in any DR plan since you rely entirely on the Software As a Service provider to have redundancy.  I know of many that start on one or two servers only, nothing more.  People stand a high chance of losing data if you do not know how your SaaS provider operates.  Think Magnolia for social bookmarking when they lost databases and recently the whole registration beta list at Imindi,  Most of these do not offer ways to sync or get copies of the data stored there and you are at their mercy on how often they back up and how long they retain those backups.  They may or may not have multiple servers in multiple geographic areas to keep them operational.

You also pay for this service, so understanding what they offer in terms of data retention and your ability to retrieve that data and move at any time is important.  Remember SaaS may be in the cloud for some providers and not others.  Additionally, many SaaS providers offer no escape, meaning no way to move and take your data with you easily.  What happens if they are down for 3 days?  While you may not be able to act on everything, you could at least see your data if you had local copies.   (**please see tip at end of article**)

Local
This is where the majority of people maintain their family photos and even the only place they keep copies of their Quicken and other stored data.  Now the technical person in the house may go out to Costco or Best Buy and track down a large USB drive to start making copies of laptops and home computers.  The more advanced might even go so far as a home media/storage server.  A couple will burn DVD's for safe keeping and put them on the shelf.  What is wrong with each and every one of these?  They sit in the same house!

Now a few have moved to webdrives, This is where you back up your data to web based archival systems.  This falls into the SaaS category on some of the smaller startups offering the service.  While others like MIcrosoft have a built architecture.  But how long do they keep that data in rentention is a question you have to ask.

The idea of disaster recovery is not only for the physical machine, but for the physical location too.  If something happens to a home, such as water damage, fire, tornado, whatever, the backups are gone too.  Having 40 copies of the same data on DVD, USB drive and multiple machines won't save anything. (**please see tip at end of article**)

Summary
So what do I propose?  A combination of all of these. It may take some time to organize a flow that makes sense, so map it out before you start moving files around.

Use your local systems and provide not only a quick local backup, but also find web storage.  Provide yourself with a low cost and flexible alternative.  Feel free to keep downloading those family photos, videos and such to that terabyte USB drive, but invest in a remote web drive to move the very important files, like financial, for long term safety.  Grow it as needed from there.

Feel free to use SaaS services, but make sure you can offload, download and keep copies of the data that then follow the same local rules as before.  You are trusting your data to another provider fully in most SaaS scenarios.  Make sure you are a step ahead in case they don't have their own good procedures.  Remember offline access and copies are better than no access

Look into cloud services.  Gmail has grown so incredibly large and offers so many ways to access your data, take advantage.  But also pull that local copy for longevity and safe keeping. This also allows you to access data if Gmail (or whatever) goes offline.  You then get the benefit of being able to work from anywhere most of the time with the peace of mind in knowing you have that data offline.  Shipping that monthly to a web drive is not a bad idea either.  As long as you think about combining each of the tools, you are on your way to personal disaster recovery.

*****  If I can leave you with one more tip before I hit publish, I would like you to take the time to also map out your plan.  This means not sitting in the corner with coffee, laptop, USB drive and online access.  But actually drawing it out, listing what files are important and where they all reside.  Then take this file and place it in each of the locations so no matter what happens, you know exactly where you stored and kept that data and backup.


Conference/Article Materials

My Files

Yes this is a blatant theft of the outline that Jess uses on her page, but I asked permission. Why?? Because I am a hardcore admin and can make ugly tables to make you developers frustrated, but this was too nice to pass up.

Also Known As: Chris Miller (when awake)

Boring Certifications: (only because someone asked twice)

  • Workplace Collaboration Services 2.5 - Team Collab and Messaging
  • Domino 7 Certified Security Administrator
  • PCLP ND7
  • PCLP ND6
  • PCLP R5
  • PCLP R4
  • CLP Collaboration (soon to be retired Aug 2006)
  • random former R4 exams
  • CLI for numerous admin areas including Domino, Sametime and Workplace
  • CLP Insane

Yes, I write some of those dreaded admin cert exams you take. I won't say which ones so you don't come looking for me, but I will say they are the real good recent ones that have been coming out.

Weapons/Equipment:

  • At work an IBM 2 GHz
  • At home a plethera of 6 machines with various Windows versions and Red Hat on a wired/wireless LAN
  • A Toshiba E740 with 802.11b (yes geek toy)
  • An Apple 40GB iPod that is filled to the brim
  • Compaq RioPort MP3 player (now in storage)
  • An EBook (REB1100) also for travel (Love that darn thing)
  • Verizon and they always seem to know how to find me, damn cell

Animals:

One dog, a Pug. He has been on this world before and seems to understand slippers and a fine cigar. Mind you that is him in the chair and not me.

Let us now also add a deranged cat that is in the process of being toilet trained. Update: Toilet traning was very very close.

Music:

Non-stop. At my desk, in my car, walking to work and back to my car downtown. In the house there is a crazy zoned set-up for you home automation geeks.

I am a self-proclaimed MP3 fiend, to which I have tried rehab 4 billion times to no avail. Next is the MP3 hard-drive for the car that I found. Now what kind of music you ask? I will never tell.

Languages:

  • Incredibly fast English
  • Very slow Spanish
  • Emoticon-ese
  • Learning Korean
  • HTML
  • Advanced Sarcasm

Geek class special abilities:

  • Notes/Domino overdrive
  • Workplace
  • Sametime
  • Active Directory (huh? kidding)
  • Quickplace
  • LMS, LVC and the other L's of elearning
  • Windoze junk
  • MS Exchange versions
  • LAN
  • TCPIP
  • Server Iron
  • Yeah, yeah it goes on some

Skills:

Get back to you here

Spells:

Hershey’s Stomach of Holding: Jess and I are fighting over who eats more chocolate. TWDUFF can help me out and vouch for me.

Character Bio:

This will take far more time than I have today. I will start with I was born and still live in St. Louis, MO. Even though for a couple years I was never, ever here and always on the road, this is smack in the middle of the US. Everything is just a few hour flight. That part is nice. No beach/ocean/coast isn't the best. But with the travel I make up for it.

Don't Panic

Looking to find me in person? Here is where I will be.




DatesEventLocation
delayedcustomer visitMinneapolis, MN
Mar 31 - Apr 4Lotus Notes and Domino 8 Upgrade SeminarCopenhagen, Denmark
Apr 30 - May 2Admin2008Boston, MA
May 10 - 15Lotus Notes and Domino 8 Upgrade SeminarLondon
Jun 4 - 6Irish Lotus User Group 2008Dublin, Ireland
Jun 16 - 19Lotus Notes and Domino 8 Upgrade SeminarSan Francisco, CA
Jun 21 - 29VacationSome island I am not telling you
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