Quick Blog Update

December 4, 2008

This blog will be taking a short break. But I’ll be back with a brand new design and lots of fresh content soon.

I haven’t been as active here mainly because of work. We’ve been working really hard on some great, upcoming features for BlastGroups. We’ll be releasing a few of these features very soon so make sure you tune into the BlastGroups Blog for updates.

Of course, you can always see My Stream to keep up with my smaller updates and most of the cool, random things I find online.

In the meantime, enjoy this video I found from Kevin Rose by Malcolm Gladwell on what we can learn from spaghetti sauce:



BlastGroups Launches Streams, Blurbs, and Bookmark Enhancements

October 15, 2008

It started when we wanted to share things not only within our group and between our friends, but with the rest of the world as well. And so BlastGroups Streams were born.

A Stream is Visual Blog all about you and your interests. Your stream is located at blastgroups.com/stream/yourname. Think of a Stream as a visual blog that writes itself; they are created on the fly as you bookmark and share websites, embed videos, add photos, and more. Learn more by checking out a Sample Stream …

Continue reading over at the BlastGroups Blog »

Get Out the Vote

October 1, 2008

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way just released this video with the help of top celebrities including Forest Whitaker, Ellen, Jonah Hill, Jennifer Anniston, Jamie Foxx, Sarah Silverman, and many others to remind you to register and get out the vote.

Lots of people, especially young people, are all intent on voting but unfortunately forget the one key part - the registration.

The video is promoting a Google Maps voter registration info site at maps.google.com/vote where you can enter your address to find out how to get a registration card and when to send it in by.




[Link: 5 Friends.]

“Head of Skate” - An Alaskan Hockey Mom Becomes Vice President

September 25, 2008



[Link: Sarah Palin Disney Trailer.]

After hearing Matt Damon’s brilliant comparison of a Sarah Palin presidency to a bad Disney movie, CollegeHumor made the above trailer for “Head of Skate”, where “An Alaskan hockey mom becomes Vice President in the wackiest family comedy of the year”.

- via CollegeHumor founder Ricky Van Veen.

New Look for the BlastGroups Homepage

September 19, 2008

You might have noticed the new look for the homepage of BlastGroups. We’ve been tinkering with a new design for a while now and just updated it yesterday.

Used for any type or size of group
The main idea was to put more of a focus on all the different types of groups you can create a group website for. These links take you to our sample group pages where you can learn more about all the different group websites as well as get some ideas for your own… Continue reading over at the BlastGroups Blog »

Better Blogs and Forums

September 11, 2008

We wanted to take a few moments to let you know about a few newly released features.  All of these features have come directly from suggestions by users like you, so if you have any ideas about how the site can be improved, please…  Continue reading over at the BlastGroups Blog »

Triumph Reports from the 2008 RNC

September 8, 2008

I always get a good laugh out of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Here’s the Late Night with Conan O’Brien canine correspondent reporting from last week’s 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC):




[Link: Triumph The Insult Comic Dog At the RNC]


Also, in case you missed them, here are some other Triumph classics:

Triumph covers Comic-Con 2008.

Triumph on scene at the Attack of the Clones premiere in 2002.

BlastGroups Launch Coverage

September 2, 2008

It has been quite a couple of weeks for us at BlastGroups. We launched a public beta version of the site exactly two weeks ago, and we got a bunch of great press about the launch.

We want to take a moment to share some of the great coverage we received from some blogs involved with the Tech Industry from all over the world including… Continue reading over at the BlastGroups Blog »

BlastGroups Launches Public Beta!

August 20, 2008

[Excerpt from the BlastGroups Blog]

Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of the Public Beta Version of BlastGroups.

What does this mean for you?  For the past few months, BlastGroups has been available to a small test audience, and in that time it has been used to create public and private communities throughout the World.  Starting today, BlastGroups is now available for anyone to use and enjoy… Continue Reading over at the BlastGroups Blog »

20 Great Free Resources on Social Media

August 12, 2008

One of the blogs I subscribe to and frequently check out is ChrisBrogan.com. Well the other day he wrote a post on 20 Free eBooks About Social Media that I found very useful. They all look intriguing and cover pretty much the whole gamut of Social Media so I thought I’d post them for your benefit too. For each, the first link is for the direct PDF and the second link is to the author’s site.

20 Free eBooks on Social Media

  1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing - David Meerman Scott
  2. Marketing Apple - MarketingApple.com
  3. Masters of Marketing - Startup Internet Marketing
  4. Podcast Marketing eBook - Christopher S. Penn
  5. Google Adwords Secrets - SEOBook
  6. Get Viral Get Visitors - Stacie Mahoe
  7. Marketing With Case Studies - Dynamic Copywriting
  8. How to Write a Marketing Plan - Geisheker Group
  9. SEO for WordPress blogs - Blizzard Internet
  10. Social Web Analytics - Social Web Analytics
  11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter - Geekpreneur
  12. The Zen of Blogging - Hunter Nutall
  13. What is Social Media - iCrossing
  14. A Primer in Social Media - SmashLab
  15. Effective Internet Presence - Effective Internet Presence
  16. Introduction to Good Usability - Peter Pixel
  17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program - CRM Transformation
  18. We Have a Website. Now What? - Craig Rentmeester
  19. Blogs & Social Media - PRSA
  20. The Podcast Customer Revealed - Edison Media Research

His list is getting even more comprehensive from people contributing in the comments so again, check it out over here.

Know of any other great ones? I’d love to find some more so please share any if you have them.

Latest from the BlastGroups Blog

August 11, 2008

Our latest post from the BlastGroups Blog is out, head on over to see the post, “Why I should Start a BlastGroup?”

Google and Yahoo Make it Easier to Opt Out of Their Ads

August 9, 2008

Recently there has been a lot of talk in the press about the large amounts of data that big Web companies are collecting on users through the use of cookies. These companies collect information as you browse the Internet by dropping a cookie on your browser (no personally identifiable information is gathered, just a users’ IP address.)

The types of information collected include what websites you visit, what types of things you are searching for, and what ads you click. They use that information to then serve customized ads that are more closely based on your assumed interests. For example, someone who goes to many consumer reviews sites on BMWs, visits car shopping sites for BMWs, and searches for “2008 BMW X5″ would then be considered an in-market car / BMW shopper in terms of data, and thus receive more ads about cars and BMWs instead of ads about other interests such as food and restaurants. This targeting technology is called behavioral targeting.

The Web companies that are under the most scrutiny are the big Web publishers such as Yahoo! and Google, the big Ad Serving solutions such as Doubleclick and Atlas (owned by Google and Microsoft respectively) and other big Ad Networks such as Platform A (mainly includes Ad.com and owned by AOL) and ValueClick.

Well this week Yahoo and Google both made it easier for you to opt out of their ad targeting on both their internal sites and their ad networks across the Web. Yesterday Yahoo announced a new one-click opt-out policy, and two days ago Google announced it was possible to opt out of both Google and Doubleclick ad targeting in one click as well.

Many think that both of these announcements are preemptive measures by Yahoo and Google to protect themselves as Congressional scrutiny over these issues is heating up. The fact is that these new policies will not amount to much.  The majority of people will never hear about the ability to opt out and those that do will probably not bother with it anyways.

I, for one, am in the minority and will not be opting out, not because I am too lazy but because I actually like the idea of customized targeting, showing me ads more along the lines of what I actually want to see. I also know firsthand of some cool new changes going on in the online advertising space and am interested to see how these targeting technologies develop in the near future.

Again, I know I’m in the minority there though, so if you want to opt of ad targeting for either of these, i.e. don’t want their cookies, you can do so for Yahoo’s here and Google’s here.

We almost got a much Creepier Joker

August 8, 2008

I’ve previously written on The Dark Knight before, having posted about some of the newest posters that were released to gain even more momentum before the movie premiered.

Well earlier this morning I came across some more interesting Dark Knight news (again found on Digg, surprise surprise). This picture shows one of the early, pre-Heath Ledger concepts for the Joker. While I prefer the version of the Joker we got and can’t imagine it any other way, this picture reveals that we almost got a more sinister, even creepier version of The Joker.


The Joker Concept Art - 2


Some more concept art pictures for the Joker can be found here. These pictures as well as the entire shooting script are featured in the book The Art of the Dark Knight.

What do you think? Do you prefer the Joker as pictured here or the one we got?

An Explanation of RSS

August 7, 2008

What is RSS?What is RSS? I’m often asked this question so thought I’d spend some time to create a permanent page that defines what RSS is and hopefully clear up some of the issues. You can find my page on ‘What is RSS?’ here. 

A Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users!

August 6, 2008

The last post of mine was recently posted on Reddit.com and has become quite popular, reaching the top of the front page. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the service, Reddit is a social news site where users can post links to content on the Web and then let the community vote those links up or down.

The link on Reddit along with all the comments (330 and counting!) can be found here: Paris Hilton Responds to the McCain Ad = McCain gets served. There are some interesting and hilarious conversations going on over there so I encourage you to check them out.

But I just wanted to give a Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users who have checked out the post and my site! I definitely didn’t expect this much attention when I made this post but sure welcome it. :)

If you liked this video and want to see other viral and funny ones, check out this Online Community - Viral Videos . Or if you just like making fun of McCain and Republicans you can check out this site all about Funny pictures of President Bush.

Also, if you’re interested in reading about other social news and media, please check out my other two posts on the subject:

I’ll be posting more about social media and other social news sites like Reddit soon too, so stay tuned! To make sure you catch those posts and others, you can Subscribe to the RSS Feed here.

Paris Hilton Responds to the McCain Ad

August 6, 2008




[Link: Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad.]

Update: Wow, so this post has gotten a lot more attention than I ever thought it would! Largely due to a posting on Reddit (link with comments here.) , so I just wanted to say a Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users!

Update #2: Also, if you liked this video and want to see other viral and funny ones, check out this Online Community - Viral Videos .

I’ll also be posting more soon about other social media sites like Reddit too, so stay tuned! To make sure you catch those posts and others, you can Subscribe to my RSS Feed here.

Dr. Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

July 29, 2008

Noted Computer Science professor Dr. Randy Pausch passed away last Friday at age 47.  He is most famous for his “Last Lecture,” written for his kids but delivered to a crowd of 400 colleagues and students at Carnegie Mellon.

For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, his inspiring speech is well worth watching:





[Link: Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture.]

You can support the Randy Pausch Honorary Fund here.

You know you’re a Geek when…

July 23, 2008

…you get such a huge kick out of font humor. :)





The guys over at CollegeHumor have done it yet again.

[Link: CHTV - Font Conference.]

The Social Media Landscape

July 21, 2008

Just the other day I wrote a post to give an attempt to define what social media is. So then I started to think about the broad range of platforms and tools out there and was thrilled when I came across Fred Cavazza’s post on the current Social Media Landscape. He does an excellent job of analyzing the many social media players out there and does an even better job of displaying these graphically.


Social Media Landscape

[View this image in full size on Flickr]

A few missing tools worth noting
There are a few changes that I would make to this hierarchy and graphic though. First of all, I would change the Social Aggregation tools to just be “Lifestreaming tools”. I would also add an entirely new category titled “Social News Aggregators.” When I think of aggregators, I think of social news sites like Digg. These sites are on the rise, becoming ever more important in social media and deserving of it’s own category. Other sites that could be included in this category as well as are Yahoo! Buzz, Reddit, Mixx, and others. (I’ve previously written about the importance of these sites, specifically about Yahoo! Buzz and Mixx, here and here, respectively.)

Another subset of social media deserving of it’s own category would be “Social Bookmarking” to include many of the popular bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, furl, and others.

There are also a couple of notable sites and tools that are missing worth mentioning. Disqus, which offers a great way to enhance your blog’s comments (notice mine) and create a companion forum for them should probably be under the Discussion Tools section. There’s also Weebly, a very easy to use website creation tool, and in my opinion the best available, which should be added to the Publish section.

Here is Fred’s original list of sites and tools organized by category:

I personally don’t use all of these sites he mentions here, i.e. many of the gaming sites, but stay tuned because I’ll soon be writing in more detail about the ones I do most frequently use. And the ones I couldn’t live without. :)

So wait, what exactly is “Social Media?”

July 17, 2008

I’ve already referred to “Social Media” a few times on this blog and as it can sometimes be seen as a pretty vague term, I thought I’d expand on my definition of it.

First, a look at Traditional Media
The best way to get an idea of what Social Media is, is to first take a look at “Media” as a whole. Media can often be thought of, as Wikipedia puts it, the “tools used to store and deliver information or data.” However, what comes to most peoples’ minds is all the books, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, music, and movies that we encounter on a daily basis. These forms of traditional media are usually presented as a finished, mastered and “professional” product for you to consume.

The Web as a Platform
However, as most all of you are well aware, “Media” as as we know it, is actively being re-invented and has been for quite some time by our current Internet Revolution. Most of the traditional media companies are looking at their core businesses today and finding that they are losing ground fast. This is certainly true for television, radio, music, newspapers, and magazines.

It’s a very interesting time to be alive as we are now seeing a fundamental shift in the way that people consume their media and I think it will be very interesting to watch over the next couple of years as many of these traditional forms of media transition and adapt to the new Internet world order.

Social Media Explained
Social Media, on the other hand, is a new type of media that has fully embraced the Internet Revolution and can be found almost exclusively on the Web. The difference is that while traditional media is usually presented as a professional product for you to consume, social media is developed when people collaborate, using technology in order to connect and engage with other “like minds,” to create something with a meaning that can change every time someone else contributes to it.

Today there are all sorts of rich and powerful applications, tools, and platforms that allow anyone to become a legitimate content contributor, letting them easily share pieces of media and distribute it across a very wide audience all over the world. These websites and tools can be thought of as “Social Media Publishers.”

But the crux - or the secret sauce if you will - behind social media is the people. Some have embraced social media heavily, having started a blog, created personal and group websites, launched a podcast, etc. At it’s most basic level though, everyone (yes, including you) is now contributing to social media and can be considered “Social Media Contributors.”

Now, with all of the new sites and platforms that make the sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas and content (photos, videos, etc) so easy, it’s possible for almost anyone to become a part of the Media.

Every time you’ve uploaded a photo or video to a social networking site, added a comment to a piece of content you have an opinion on, talked with others on a discussion board, or shared a link with friends and family, you’ve contributed to the huge amount of “Social Media” that’s available on the Web.

And the fact of the matter is, whether you like it or not, this new Social Media is occurring with or without you. So I say dive out into it, and embrace the plummet.

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