The Social Networker

by Chris Miller at 11:12:53 AM on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008


Without going deep into a site review, there is nothing really to review. It does what it does and does it well. It just isn't really a social network in my eyes.
Find out if someone likes you without fear of rejection
The main idea is to join groups and communities that interest you and tick those that you like or are interested in. If they happen to tick you, then you both get an alert. If it happens they they do not, no one knows the difference. So it is like eyeing that special someone across the classroom and never knowing if they like you. While they do the same thing. Neither of you want to take the risk of being rejected.


I can see this site being hip for the teens and starting communities around schools/cities. So basically all you grown folks should stay out of this site.
They give you banners to put on your MySpace and Facebook pages so people can go and Tick You Off. They have some minor UI issues to clean up still on formatting the user profile pages, but that was it.


Humorously you have a private control panel to let you know how often you are ticked and at what level of tick-ness. Sort of like a scoreboard. So this site isn't really social networking, but more for social dating without the rejection. There is another overview posted on eMediaWire right here.

Hmm, sending the link to my teenagers....


by Chris Miller at 09:00:00 PM on Thursday, January 17th, 2008


What the? How the? Where the?

Those were all the first words I used when I first saw the homepage and got into the site. After I logged in, the landing page looked exactly like before. Many colors, many boxes and no order or flow to do things. So let's get this straight from the beginning. The interface that welcomes you needs a serious overhaul, but the product behind the scenes does not get the bright star it should if users will not stay and use the site.
Knowgee homepage

So here I sit, befuddled like any beginning user would be. But fear not, I trudge on. Determined to find the reason for this site and it's promise to help me sort or control what is in my brain. So I jump to the little green button for the tutorial.
Knogee is a web 3.0 site that helps individuals, organizations and communities assemble and interact with deep knowledge on a range of specialized subjects.  The heart of Knogee is a new type of intelligent agent that questions, guides and collaborates with users and then uses what it learns to repeatedly canvass the web to find fresh, highly relevant information.

A Web 3.0 site! Whew knew we made it out of 2.0! Ok let us get serious. It is supposed to learn and help you make widgets. The Personal Edition is free and there is a paid edition.

A ha! I told you I would find it. I started my own knowledge map of sorts. I created a topic, created some basic questions and some sample answers underneath. The product then goes out to the Internet to help you start building this knowledge collection. Wow, it came back blank, but I knew one key thing I wanted focus on. DataPortability. I put that into the Google tab instead of the new Knogee tab and bam!!, it lit up like a Knogee tree. This thing called the Knogee Harvester goes out and picks the fruits of knowledge from the Internet it seems. Impressive listing on my topic with a voting ability to help your knowledge quest grow. From there I hit a darn wall once again.

Anyone want to get in there , or from Knogee, and explain what the heck is going on?

by Roberta Kitto at 11:45:00 PM on Thursday, January 10th, 2008


One of the hottest and most viral apps on the web right now is Twitter. Originally web based, a new crop of desktop clients have started appearing everywhere. No matter whose tweets you are reading, everyone seems to to be tweeting in a new and different way. Ah but such is the beauty of Twitter... In addition to the officially sanctioned Twitter client downloads available on the Twitter site (Twitteroo, Twitteriffic, Twitbin, Twitter Widget, Opera Widget, Spaz, Mobio and Twitter Gadget), two of the better and more popular clients are twhirl and snitter. However, there is a new contender has a few people tweeting. Witty is one of the new products to come out of Google's OpenSocial API freeforall. This twitter client for Windows Vista and XP is powered by Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). There are a lot of people who have a lot of great things to say about Witty, so, since I have Vista (yes I know... boy do I know), I thought I would see how it measures up to twhirl, which I like OK and snitter which is great!

I am not sure where all of these great reviews are coming from... I am no fan of Vista, so any software that might run more smoothly on this creeping monstrosity of an OS is welcome on my machine any time - at least for a trial run. Compared to the slightly sluggish but cool twhirl, Witty didn't fare much better, and its UI was too bland for my web 2.0-spoiled-tastebuds. Witty fans claim a lot of extras and perks, but I couldn't find one feature that neither of the others had. As a matter of fact, both Snitter and twhirl had a lot of extra customizations that were unavailable in Witty. Not being an M$ person, maybe I am missing some of the Microsoft magic inherent in Witty. I don't think so, though. For all the acclaims, I cannot see what all of the fuss is about. I will stick with the 1,000 other ways to tweet without resorting to yet another bloated Microsoft-based application on my already slow as Christmas Vista laptop.

by Chris Miller at 08:44:07 PM on Thursday, January 10th, 2008


So once again Chris Saad of (Engagd and Particls) points to a site a team member of DataPortability.org created that comes out as simple and amazing as I would expect. Jon (of Cluztr) seems to have whipped up Tagurself.



Simply enter some social profile URL, RSS feed or even a URL of your own and it reads the current tags and other info and outputs a breathing tag cloud. Of course, you can whip it out as a customized widget or Facebook app.



Why is this so amazing to me? The simplicity folks! We spend so much time tagging other information with social bookmarking and blog postings, you have a hard time putting out tags on yourself. Lotus Connections and some other social sites offer the ability, but outputting it into a portable format that works on any site or webpage is the solution. With the widget, you select the color (no pop-up wheel yet, hint Jon!) and sizing and paste it somewhere. Or choose the easy route and plug it into Facebook. I hope they find a way for me to grab multiple feeds or I have to finish my social profile or single mega-feed



So while the page and application grows in the short future, I will be using it, do you get yourself?


by Chris Miller at 12:38:10 PM on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
I am pleased to announce that I (IdoNotes and TheSocialNetworker) will be joining in with the DataPortability Workgroup.  I have been working with Chris Saad for a while utilizing Particls and was happy to see they started this movement to take ownership of your own data.  The philosophy of the workgroup sums up the reasoning to simplify and open the standards on how our social networking information is controlled:
Philosophy  As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen tools or vendors. We need a DHCP for Identity. A distributed File System for data. The technologies already exist, we simply need a complete reference design to put the pieces together.


Image:TheSocialNetworker joins the DataPortability Workgroup

by Chris Miller at 11:24:10 AM on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
Today's podcast brought to you by Rhapsody. Members get unlimited, legal access to over 1,000,000 songs, plus CD burning, playlist sharing and more. Access via the web, PC browser or even your stereo

Enjoy a 14 day free trial on me!!




Harrison of Spokeo answers all my questions about this amazing aggregation tool. A must have for anyone that plays in multiple social network sites, or lurks and follows multiple people.

You will hear some echo every so often but it took weeks of us to get the timing right to record so we went with it instead of trying to recreate the whole podcast.


by Chris Miller at 11:43:00 AM on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
I ran across a link to this site in Twitter with Chris Brogan asking what was different about it. Well I think I partially understand this, and even set up a podcast with Mosio to get more answers that will be out shortly.



The site is SMS based, of course. The idea is you can ask any question you need and get a real person to answer. Whether or not it is a good answer will depend, but it seemed people put effort into very direct and good answers from the ones I read and watched over the days. Ads are placed between questions and at the top banner, which answers where some revenue comes from. The site breaks down into a few areas:

  • Questionarium - this is mainstay area. You ask a question via SMS to Mosio and then someone gives you the answer. I found some myself answering a few playing around, but there are others that seem to live in answering a lot of questions sent in. There are hooks into your instant messaging clients for notification purposes. Unfortunately, I could not reply from the instant messenger which would have then added some benefit. You still have to log into a browser or answer via SMS.
  • Apps - now this got a bit more interesting. There is a find capability to let you search for any business using type of business or the exant name with city or zip. Not many people I know always know what zip code anything is in. The remind function seemed to be the most useful. You could set a reminder for anything you want in minutes/hours or a specific date and time. Mosio then pops you a reminder. Birthdays are a part of the reminder system so you will never forget again too. Here was a cool one. Currently available for 17 US cities and London (see their site for the updated lists) you can get phone numbers for taxi services just by sending a request to Taxi and the city you need. From there it gets fun with 8-Ball, Fortune, Inspire, ChuckNorris and finally a news service sending TextCasts from a few major news providers.
  • FYI - seemed to be people just sending in status updates much like Twitter. I would like to see this area go away quietly to make the service more useful and focused.
  • Search - this let you search all across Mosio from a web browser. This would be awesome from SMS if you could get links and numbers to text back to get the info or even use your phones WAP browser. A downfall of the search.

I see this site connecting those for one reason. They have lots of questions they need answers to. How will it play out and compare to text services that Google already offers? Not sure. I know I can text Google anything from weather, searches, math, definitions, conversions and a few more I can't think of to get a SMS back. The underlying difference is this allows a real person to look up the answer or even just know it and give you something. Opinions are allowed which gives it the real element. For searching Mahalo gives you a full topic researched by people, Mosio gives you short answers known by people.

It is free, so nothing to lose. Worth a shot to try them out and see if it is useful for you.


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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