Twitter Applied

It hasn’t failed to surprise me how many people don’t get an application like Twitter. I will concede that most of the “noise” on Twitter, not unlike much of the noise on the web is just that, “noise.” However, like the web, Gwitter like applications have potential to be more than the “Me-generations” platform for narcissistic self indulgence. I’ve started to see some fairly interesting uses of twitter for actual conversation and relaying useful information rather than simply telling everyone what you are doing right now (really, do we need to know you are having lunch?).

So I’ve looked around and pondered the question and here are a few ideas for getting something more out of Twitter and making the platform useful for all:

1. Ask a question about something you really need to know the answer to. Instead of “How is everyone today?” try “Has anyone seen the new Movie? How was it?”
2. Answer other people when they ask useful questions, ignore them when they don’t.
3. Get Local, connect with people who live where you do, the conversations will be more relevant to your daily life.
4. If you aren’t already, Tweet from your mobile phone, real-time is more relevant and the spontaneity more genuine.
5. Think of your tweet as a mini-blog, not a way to broadcast your every thought. Trust me, no matter how funny it is in your mind, it may not be to everyone else.
6. Twitter as a news source, spread timely info.
7. If you’re traveling, Twitter your location from time to time. It can be fun and is a good way for close family or friends to know where you are (I’ve done this on a couple long road trips and it’s helpful).
8. Twitter announcements like a press release, but do so sparingly otherwise people will stop paying attention.

This is hardly an all encompassing list but should get you started on some more practical uses for Twitter.

Search Engine Optimization - Images

There are a lot of people out there that will tell you how to optimize your website for search engines. In fact, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become so popular that it’s spawned many of the usual product and service offerings to “ensure your success” or “guarantee a top page placement.” Do yourself a favor and don’t buy the hype, there is an abundance of free information out there to help. There are undoubtedly reputable publications which offer lots of helpful info at a price, and rightly so, people should be able to charge for the time and effort spent compiling all the good things you can do to optimize your site for search, it really is that important, but no one can guarantee your a particular page rank. There are just too many variables that you can’t control which get factored into the search algorithms.

However, you can do better and improve your standings which over time can have the same effect as compiled interest. It may not be much day-to-day but after a year or two it really adds up.

One of the big things a lot of people overlook is how they handle meta-data with respect to their images so here are a couple of helpful hints to improve your chances of being found through the pictures you use on your site:

1. Don’t use names like IMG00279, give your image a REAL and MEANINGFUL name like telluride-mountains.pg.
2. Use the ALT tag and include a meaningful name or description. It might just be the name of the image again or something else but USE it.
3. Use a “-” rather than in underscore “_” or blank space between words. To a search engine a “-” is a “white-space” character the others are special characters which means if you use a dash the search engine will read the name of the image as “telluride mountains”, but if you use an underscore it will be read as “telluride_mountains” (one word to a computer) and people aren’t likely to search for that. A good explanation (though somewhat technical) of why can be found here.
4. Host your own images. I know it adds a little load and uses more space but image searches are common and you can use them to drive drive traffic to your site.

Do this for ALL images on your site. Don’t use names like “header-logo.jpg.” Use something like “Scott-Ellis-header.jpg.” Hmmm….. now that I think about it, I might have some cleaning up to do myself.

Getting more from Google Mail

I’m a huge fan of most Google applications and am consistently turning my web development clients on to the benefits of using GMail for managing e-mail, typically via their own domain and Google Apps. A while back I stumbled upon this post on the official GMail blog explaining how use “multiple” addresses while only needing one e-mail address.

Let’s assume your e-mail address is : scottellis@yourdomain.com

You can insert a period “.” anywhere in the name and Google will ignore it so you could give someone the address “scott.ellis@yourdomain.com” and email would still just come to scottellis@yourdomain.com. Alternatively, if you were weird you could do something like s.co.tt.ell.is@yourdomain.com and the effect would be the same.

More interesting and useful is adding a plus “+” after your email address. You can append anything to your e-mail address and still receive it at the regular e-mail address making it easier to flag, label or otherwise filter certain e-mails. For example, you could use “scottellis+airlines@yourdomain.com” and use that address for any e-mail you get from various airlines. It would still come to scottellis@yourdomain.com but you could then filter on that address. I would probably do the specif airlines like scottellis+aa@yourdomain.com but you get the idea.

Read the original post here…

More On Woopra

After I posted my “pre” review of Woopra yesterday I found the following video on John P’s ” OneMansBlog.” It’s an audio free video which walks through the functionality of Woopra so if you already have access, watch it and learn a thing or two; if you don’t already have it, it makes a functional demo if you want to see more of the features but is at a little low resolution to give you too much detail. Users familiar with the application will have an easier time following along.

Now go and get your Woopra on!

Woopra Live in Action from johny on Vimeo.

Woopra Review

While taking part in the Dallas WordCamp a couple of weeks ago we were introduced to Woopra but one of the company founders John Pozadzides and given an opportunity to take part in the beta trial of the hosted, real-time website analytics program.

The first reaction to Woopra by almost everyone is WOW! Visually the application is very engaging and includes features such as a world map that shows a ping wherever someone is hitting your website from in real time and a stock-type ticker at the bottom with scrolling statistics among a myriad of other things. You can drill down into your statistics any number of ways, tag visitors (i.e. if you know who they are you can always know when they come to visit) and even start a real time chat with them (could be creepy or fun depending on how you look at it and use it).

For any stats geeks out there Woopra will be a must. You can sign up now and as soon as they have openings in the Beta trial they’ll let you in. Otherwise, you’ll have to want until general availability. Some noise has been made about the usefulness of “real-time” statistics but I can easily imagine situations where real time stats could be very useful such as during a campaign or product launch, or for monitoring sudden bandwidth issues and requesting real-time increase of bandwidth from your host. If you have ever observed the “Digg effect” on your website you know what I am talking about. I’d also like to say, it’s just cool…

Cali Lewis, host of GeekBrief.tv had an opportunity to interview John P. at WordCamp and provide a more in depth demo of the platform which will include API’s for expansion.

GBTV #337 | Introducing Woopra from Neal Campbell on Vimeo.

One thing I would personally like to see built in (hint hint if you read this John) would be real time threshold notices so that if my traffic suddenly spikes while I’m not watching the screen I get an SMS message, that way I can call up my webhost and increase bandwidth on the fly preventing a site crash (or crash of anyone else’s if on a shared server).

This would make a nice integration point between Woopra and Layered Technology’s ability to throttle bandwidth on the fly and leverage their gridLayer computing system.

I’ll hold off on a full review until the product is out of Beta and generally available.

Some other good posts on Woopra:
TechCrunch Review
DownloadSquad Review
Lorelle Review
CrunchBase Review

WordCamp2008

I’m currently enjoying day two of WordCamp2008. The conference has been very informative and while other sites I have are already on WordPress, vsellis.com is not. So with that in mind, I’m going to take a short break from bloogging and get the new site up ASAP in word press.

If you see funky things with the site my apologies, it’ll be fully operational soon with lots of great new stuff.

If you aren’t familiar with WordPress, you’ll be getting an education soon. If you have any interest in blogging, or maintaining a website, even if it doesn’t have a blog, you’ll want to keep your eyes vsellis.com coming this week.

WordPress is free and very powerful.
Some large sites that run on WordPress

• Wall Street Journal
• New York Times
• Ford Motor Company
• 71 miles
• jobs.wordpress.net
• Borders Books
• iFnancial Times
• Rolling Stone Magazine
• People Magazine
• Several Yahoo Blogs
• About.com Blogs
• NASA
• cNet.com
• And a lot of others…

Good Technology or a Good Idea

According to a recent article in Forbes, good ideas are more valuable than good technology.

That’s not to say that if you are an upstart company you should skimp on technology, but if you’re planning to get venture capital or expect a quick acquisition, a good idea is more significant. The fact remains that technology continues to become commoditized while it becomes ever more essential to doing business. As the barriers to implementing technologies lower, and the technology becomes easier to use, the technology itself becomes less of a differentiator and the validity (i.e. financial viability) of the idea behind the business ever more essential.

While the venture capital market continues to be difficult there is still and abundance of private equity looking for a place to grow. Before you land capital to fund your idea you can expect to be vetted on several issues. Have your house in order and prepare to be harshly critiqued on the following:

- If you are successful, how easily can competitors crash your party?
- How much does a big audience matter to your idea?
- What is the track record of your leadership?
- Do you have a business model?
- Are you focused on building a business or the exit strategy?
- …and of course a myriad of other things.

The take-away is to be sure you do your due diligence, perform market and competitive analysis, and most of all be realistic about, not married to your ideas.

Tools of the Trade

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of business books. I have read plenty of them but find that all too often they fail in on one of two areas:

1) All theory and what you “should” do but no practical application, or
2) Great tactical steps and “how to’s” but no way of helping you understand how those things translate to the nuances of your business or idea.

Have you ever read a great business book, finished it feeling motivated and excited about the future only to realize that understanding how to apply all that stuff was as cloudy as ever? That is because one of the greatest challenges for anyone writing on business is helping readers understand how to apply what they are learning, a task so daunting that I think most books don’t really try as doing so becomes less a business lesson and more of a lesson in creative thinking. It’s not that the books don’t contain great content and ingenious thinking, often they do, but they just don’t cross the bridge to practical application. The best tools, explanations and teachers take complex ideas and make them look simple, even when they are not and in doing so make it easier for the reader or student to apply it to their own unique situation.

One of the my goals for vsellis.com is to pick up where some of those great ideas leave off and help you figure out how to apply what you have learned. Of course every business is different but how we think about those ideas and learn to apply them is pretty universal. To achieve that I’ll be developing and publishing various types of IP (intellectual property in the form of applications, whitepapers, tools, …) to help cross the bridge from theory to application. The catch is to change the way we think about and learn the translation process, not to necessarily to do the translation for you, though the best road to that end will be through examples and explanation. Along the way we’ll address problems and solutions and help you move from sitting on your couch reading a book to running your business.

But before we begin, allow me to set your expectations; you still have to do the work. I’m simply going to help you develop the idea, then move past the idea and excitement to actually working on your business, and in the process, more quickly get over the inevitable bumps in the road.

I’ll add to this discussion that I won’t recommend any books, blogs, papers or tools that I haven’t read or used myself and that I wouldn’t be willing to pay for myself. Also, I don’t judge any of those things based on popularity or lack thereof, but rather on the content and the value it brings to what we are trying to accomplish.