My Name Is Indeed a Saving Word (For Hurricane Preparedness Supplies)

If you saw my blog entry from Thursday (and chances are, you didn't -- Facebook Notes were being flaky again), you would have seen my entry Say My Name and Save During Hurricane Preparedness Week (for Real), which explains how saying "Joe Loong" during checkout will save you 20% off your purchase (excluding car batteries) at 3 Batteries Plus locations in Virginia, now through May 31.

Well, it's true -- after getting my car's intake hose replaced and my tire repaired this morning (apparently, I've been driving around with a nail in it for a few months), I stopped off at the Batteries Plus store in Fairfax:

Corvette not included.

After doing some shopping (to be honest, I'm pretty well set for most batteries and lights right now -- they have light bulbs and other stuff, though), I went to check out, and after saying my name and giving an explanation, came away with "my" 20% discount (looks like tax was still charged, though, and batteries and flashlights are supposed to be exempt):

Subtotal is 20% off. However, looks like tax was charged.

I bought a hand-cranked/solar flashlight, as well as an A23 battery for one of my odder lights:

In summary, see the original post, and through the rest of May, save 20% off your purchase (excluding car batteries) at Batteries Plus locations in Alexandria, Fairfax, and Manassas by saying my name (Joe Loong) at checkout.

Say My Name and Save During Hurricane Preparedness Week (for Real)

This is kind of odd, but 100% confirmed and true: During Virginia's May sales tax holiday for Hurricane and Emergency Preparedness Equipment, May 25-31, 2011 (which ties into National Hurricane Preparedness Week), at Batteries Plus store locations in Alexandria, Fairfax and Manassas, say my name (Joe Loong, duh) and save 20% off anything except car batteries.

What in the World?

A few days ago, I posted 5 Quick Rules: Choosing a Flashlight for Your Emergency Disaster / Go Kit to the blog. Purely by accident, I realized it was also National Hurricane Preparedness Week, so I posted it to Facebook (my Notes import isn't working currently).

Jason Mitchell, one of AOL's original three webmasters, used it to plug the Batteries Plus stores that he owns and operates -- here he is below, in the right:

In Virginia, for hurricane preparedness, there's a sales tax holiday until May 31, where you don't have to pay state sales tax on disaster preparedness supplies like batteries, duct tape, flashlights, weather radios, first aid kits, generators, blue tarps, etc. -- see the full list of tax-exempt items [PDF])

I asked Jason if he was doing any specials at his stores on top of that. Here's his response:

I confirmed via Facebook message that this is for real -- the discount is in the system and the employees at the 3 stores have been told.

So, my name is a saving word.

If you're looking for batteries or flashlights or other related disaster-preparation materials and you're in Virginia, go to Batteries Plus locations in Alexandria, Fairfax and Manassas, say "Joe Loong," and you'll save 20% off in addition to the sales tax saving.

My Photography Featured in The New Yorker

I saw on Saturday that one of my photos was featured on the web site of the prestigious magazine, The New Yorker:

If you want to get technical, or be "accurate," the photo was just illustrating a listing on The New Yorker's Events page, for a Cowboy Junkies concert (tonight, Monday, as it happened) at a place called City Winery in SoHo. It's a closeup of Margo Timmins that I took at the Cowboy Junkies show at the State Theatre last April.

It is not, I freely admit, a particularly good picture -- what is important, is that it's licensed  Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0), under which I post most of my Flickr photos, without that often-vexing "noncommercial use" restriction.

Since I'm not a professional photographer (very obviously), getting a vicarious thrill from having other people use my photos is the only kind of compensation I'll ever get from them, which is why I license them that way. (Model rights and the like still apply, so you won't see them used in, say, an overseas advertising campaign. At least, you're not supposed to, and if it happens, you can take legal action against the publisher -- not me -- if it happens.)

At least with the attribution requirement, I can find when people are using my photo when I do a Google search on my name or Flickr username.  By making it pretty easy for other people to legally use my photos (just give me attribution, and flow down the license terms for any derivative works), I can pretty easily see where my photos are being used. (Image searches like TinEye exist, but I'm not going to image search my 8,500 Flickr photos.)

I've talked about my mullet and facepalm photos being used to illustrate the respective Wikipedia pages, so I won't get into that again. When it comes to bands, though, I'm happy to report that a few of my concert photos have made it on to the relevant Wikipedia pages. Again, it's a function of being liberally-licensed and well-tagged (so they come up in relevant searches), with a few of them that are actually not horrible photos (I'm strictly a "blind squirrel" snapshooter):

• The late Ron Asheton of The Stooges (with Iggy Pop), taken at the Virgin Festival.
  
• The Apples in Stereo, at the Black Cat:
  
• And my favorite of this bunch, George Clinton, down in Centreville:
• 

In my own small way, I'm adding to the cultural conversation. Or at least helping to illustrate it. And by requiring attribution, I can find out about it.

I Hate the Eternal September

(I've been working on this post, on and off, for at least 5 years. I'm fairly certain that it hasn't been worth the wait. But I'm kind of drunk right now, and I'm also facing some self-imposed time pressure to post this before yet another September passes.)

I hate the Eternal September. It's basically the theory that USENET, and by extension, the Internet, was going to be a sort of utopian playground populated by self-actualized, empowered DIY-coder-types who would harness the power of democratized technology to build the Internet apps to control their own destiny and lead to a pre-Technological Singularity singularity where geeks ruled the world in a pure, technological, many-to-many, disintermediated meritocracy etc. etc. etc... that is, before AOL wrecked it all by unleashing the unwashed masses onto USENET, ruining everything.

(It's a mindset that I ascribe, perhaps somewhat unfairly, perhaps not, to Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital.)

Now, of course, being a self-admitted former AOL employee, one might chalk this up to pure defensiveness, even though the precipitating action predated my employment there by a few months.

However, if you've talked to me before about social media, you've probably heard my rant against that kind of revisionist technological utopianism:

There is, in fact, a communications medium that allows only particpation by the technically savvy. There are significant barriers to entry, and in fact, you have to pass an entire certification and licensing regime, and if you don't conform to norms and rules, you're out.

That medium is ham radio. And (apologies to my friends who are hams) outside of certain natural disasters and talking to spacecraft in Earth orbit, it is a medium that is essentially irrelevant to the cultural conversation.

My hypothesis is that, without the truly democratizing influence of the unsavvy, unwashed masses flooding the Internet for their celebrity gossip and movie quotes and chain e-mails and so forth, the Internet wouldn't have been nearly as influential and universal as it is now.

Now, by nature, I'm kind of an elitist, but at the same time, I think I recognize the limits of elitism and the power of populism. And I think the influence of the Internet is reflected in both of those concepts.

Anyway, that's just, like, my opinion.

Are Blogger Meetups Still Relevant? (Fairfax County Bloggers Meetup Review)

Here's a quick post about last night's Fairfax County Blogger Meetup.

Since I started working over by Dulles (again) last year, I haven't been out to very many events, and not many DC Blogger Meetups, primarily because heading all the way into town is a pain.

I'd RSVP'ed for this month's Fairfax County Blogger Meetup; I was kind of obligated to at least show up, since they were looking for a place in Falls Church and I'd suggested Clare and Don's Beach Shack

I got there about 8:15pm (it started at 7pm), just as things were winding down, though folks did stick around a bit to chat -- the featured guest speaker was Jeff Sonderman of blog network/news site TBD, so we talked about the state of local news, blog networks, and the area. He also had TBD swag.

Additionally, attending were:

* Jill Anderson of the Lake Barcroft Blog -- she organized the event, though she's handing over group leadership duties to...

* Ellie Ashford of the Annandale VA Blog (and also a TBD blogger)

* Micheal Clark of ShowBizRadio.net

* Doug Francis, a Vienna Real Estate blogger

The nature of blogger meetups has changed, and to a large extent, waned. People generally don't need the same kind of support and encouragement to blog, since the tools and the norms have changed so much. Also, Facebook has largely taken over the social status broadcasting aspect of blogging, as have mobile updates and microblogging.

Still, the networking aspect still has a role, especially for single-issue/themed bloggers, so I think that blogger meetups can still be useful to people.

I very much liked the guest speaker aspect of this meetup, to provide a bit of focus and direction while still maintaining the social aspect (without a rigid agenda) -- hopefully, this continue (next month's scheduled Guest Speaker is Ellen Scott, Community Web Producer for WUSA9.)

2010 So Far in Greenlit Fark Headlines

I haven't been blogging much lately, due to a combination of writers' block, self-doubt, and microblogging. What I have been doing is channeling my creativity (such as it is) into Fark headlines, which are mostly anonymous.

(This can be a good thing, especially when you rely on tropes like corny jokes, bad puns, casual misogyny and stereotypes -- applied ironically, of course. Headline submitters are anonymous, unless they out themselves in the comments, or opt to have their submissions listed on their profiles. I have my greenlit headlines listed, but not my redlights.)

Right now, I'm at 592 greenlit headlines, which puts me at about #89 on the current all-time Fark top submitters list, or firmly on the small end of the short head of the long tail of Fark submitters.

I'll try to talk more about using Fark as an example of headline writing and creating a culture of uncompensated contribution, but for right now, here are some of my more favorite headlines from 2010 to date, in roughly reverse chronological order -- each link below goes to the Fark comment thread, which contains a link to the relevant article. (You can also see all of my greenlights on my Fark profile, including the many lackluster ones that just happened to be submitted at the right time.)

See cells in the Seychelles for the sea scores [This one takes the classic tongue-twister and reworks it for the article. It kind of makes sense in context.]

Video of female service member servicing five service members' members circulating Fort Bliss [There's a better example of this kind of repetition wordplay later. Also, though the wording suggests it, since the article link was to the NYT, you don't actually see the video.]

It's 130 miles to Cowtown, we got a 160-pound barrel, a half-baked agenda on bullying, it's July and we're wearing full rodeo clown makeup. Hit it [An obvious Blues Brothers reference, but it has enough oddness to make you want to click.]

Pentagon surveys the troops: "How icky would it be showering with a gay? a) Squicky. b) Very icky. c) Icky. d) Mostly not icky" [I liked the Squicky/Icky construction.]

Hollister store in NYC infested with annoying, tenacious parasites. Bedbugs, too [Pretty standard classic comedy construction here.]

Muslims are disappointed by Obama. See, they really are just like everyone else [Article rode the wave of a series of liberal breast-beating articles from various places on Obama disillusionment.]

Anti-Semitic: Flipping off a bus full of Hasidic Jews on the Garden State Parkway. Anti-gravity Semitic: Bus full of Hasidic Jews flipping off the Garden State Parkway [I particularly liked this wordplay, which was simply reconstructing the sentence with the same constituent words.]

New Senate bill would require terrorists to present fake ID before buying prepaid cellphones [Somewhat subtle, at least compared to the rest of these.]

Plans underway to nuke New Jersey [Technically true -- not the worst trolling headline you'll see here.]

Al Qaeda has acquired a potentially devastating technology: Autotune [Set up as a serious headline, ending with the punchline.]

Person #1: Isn't it amazing how I can use my cell phone to get coverage about things that just happened in this murder trial? Person #2: You mean the one we're serving as jurors on? [I admit it has kind of a Readers Digest "Life in These United States" feel to it, but it was still funny.]

NJ man arrested for having a minor, amount of cocaine in his car [Some grammar humor of the "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" variety, which in terms of Fark greenlight potential, is only slightly behind Periodic Table puns.]

Design student reinvents the Cone of Silence, which looks amazingly awesome. Would you believe marginally effective? How about irredeemably stupid? [A very direct pull from Get Smart, which fit the subject matter.]

Under certain conditions, it's acceptable for passive voice to be used [More grammar humor. Distressing to see the number of self-professed Grammar Nazis in the thread who failed miserably trying to use the passive voice.]

Roundup-resistant weeds may require more frequent plowing, according to your mom [Every kind of headline is enhanced by a "Your mom" joke.]

Man getting testicular cyst removed accidentally gets the volume discount [Going for a subtle cringe-inducement factor.]

An iPhone. An air conditioner. Dirty underpants. A sock-wearing mannequin. Thousands of cigarette butts. A pregnancy test. Denture cement. Fake breasts. An 8-track tape. A jockstrap [The rhythm of the words is hypnotic, not to mention intriguing.]

Thank you for calling the Federal Nuclear Detonation Response Hotline. Your call is very important to us. Current wait time for the next operator: 24-72 hours. ♫ Tall and tan and dark and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking ♫ [Kind of a meta thing, as action movies have co-opted the Girl Form Ipanema for moments of incongruous calm.]

Photo surfaces of President Obama refusing to shake the hand of a disabled janitor [A trolltastic headline that only works when you click through to the photo:

]

Eiffel Tower attacked, suffering significant structural damage. Story developing [Another trollerific headline -- discerning readers noted the lack of a "NEWSFLASH" tag which this kind of breaking news, if true, would suggest, as well as the news source. The joke is in the photo:

]

Old Bridge old bridge repair repairs fragment fragments, state State Police police speaker, speaking [Probably my best this year -- it sounds like nonsense, but when you parse it out, it makes sense (except for one or two really redundant bits). As I posted in the thread: "Old Bridge [town] old bridge repair [overall project] repairs [the specific action -- this was the most redundant bit] fragment [breaks] fragments [off the bridge], state[s] State Police police speaker, speaking [also redundant, but necessary for the gag]."]

Acupuncture may be useful in treating joint destruction, multi-organ failure, flesh-eating disease, and paralysis. And by "treating" I mean "causing" [Pretty common switcheroo headline.]

Good neighbor: Operates noisy equipment indoors, with the windows closed. Dead neighbor: It's a portable generator [Variant of the comparison headline, a la Goofus and Gallant.]

Whoever said, "There's no harm in asking," clearly never submitted a request under the Indian government's Right to Information Act

Armed robbers in $1 million perfume warehouse heist who shouted "NYPD, hands up" may be criminals, but at least they're not liars

Government sources confirm second party involved in JFK incident [Another trolling headline, technically true but incredibly misleading.]

"You have the right to, like, not say anything. You have the right to an attorney, unfrozen caveman lawyer or other law-talking guy. If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me in a court of law?" [Rather long headline on the ruling allowing cops to paraphrase the Miranda warning, take to absurdity.]

American military gets its thumb drives back. U-S-B, U-S-B, U-S-B [Another favorite, subverting acronyms and jingoism.]

Pros and cons of a robot army -- Pros: It's a ROBOT ARMY. Cons: It's a ROBOT ARMY [I invariably read this one and hear Norm MacDonald.]

Open workplace romances are increasingly common. You still eat lunch alone at your desk [I actually said "Ouch" to myself as I wrote this.]

Lackawanna Cut-Off cut off for Lackawanna [Another repetition wordplay.]

New York's Central Park sees sharp increase in rabid, aggressive, foaming inhabitants. Raccoons, too [See the Hollister headline above.]

Company has plan to solve energy crisis using orbiting laser satellites. Not sure why they need an underground volcano headquarters, though

Henceforth, NPR will be known as NPR

High school baseball coach encourages players to masturbate instead of having sex, and to ignore that little red LED over there [Icky, but funny.]

Mumbai condom vending machines hit by burglars and vandals. Inconceivable

Isn't trying to analyze comedy fun?

Joelogon Tattaglia Joins the Mafia Wars Witness Protection Program

Last summer, I started playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. It was mostly in the nature of research -- finding out what the fuss was about, looking into Facebook social gaming, etc.

I wrote about it a few times on the NetSol blog, talking about how Mafia Wars gets people to do stuff, as well as how the Mafia Wars gameplay encourages interaction with members of your social network.

There's a lot you can talk about -- casual gaming, the brain chemistry of addiction and gambling, play-acting at transgressive behavior (or actual transgressive behavior, when it came to some developers and affiliate marketers), and most importantly, maintaining contacts via social grooming.

But it also got to be a chore. An essay by A.J. Patrick Liszkiewicz in March, Cultivated Play: Farmville, was still fresh in my mind -- it's all about how one of the rewards of advancing in Farmville is that you don't have to play it as much, as well as touching on obligation and network effects.

So there I was, back in April or May, at whatever level I was at, having just unlocked the Thailand achievement where you achieve top status simultaneously with the Triad and the Yakuza, and then... what? Every additional locale added was just another link to click, revealing another set of arbitrary tasks and achievements.

It ceased having any pretense of fun. So I bailed. Instead of just going idle (which would leave my fairly middlin' to high-level character as a teammate of my friends' Mafias), I went into my own version of "Mafia Wars Witness Protection": I deleted the app, blocked all updates, and didn't look back.

RIP Joelogon Tattaglia

Ultimately, I lasted about a year. I'm not sure what factors, if any, might have kept me in the game -- I'll have to think about that (as will Zynga, no doubt.)

Male Nerds at Digital Capital Week

You can see me for about a half-second in this Digital Capital Week Opening Night Party video from this past Friday (at the 1:10 mark):

The fact that the voiceover cuts over to me just as the phrase "male nerds" is spoken is purely coincidental, I'm sure.

Griefing the DARPA Network Challenge

I took a quick look at the DARPA Network Challenge site (on December 5th, they'll fly ten red 8-foot diameter moored weather balloons; the first person to register the locations of all ten will win $40,000). Also, I read the rules (which I'm not sure very many commenters have bothered to do yet, since they're in PDF), so here are a few thoughts:

* As currently structured, it's obviously a problem in game theory, behavioral economics, and group collaboration, not technology. Contestants will register as individuals, not organizations -- of course, people will collude and collaborate, but they'll have to determine not only mechanisms for intaking, validating, filtering, and crediting distributed reports (your basic crowdsourcing problems), but they'll also have to figure out the basis for distributing the prize. (And $40,000 is in the realm of "real money.")

Presumably, a large enough group to win will be in it for the bragging rights (I'm sure everyone is thinking "Anonymous"), and simply donate the money to charity, to avoid all those messy distribution issues.

However, since the registrant has to be an individual, the winner of record will still get stuck with the tax on the $40K prize, even if they donate it all to charity. Something to consider.

* The rules are only two pages right now. I'd be really surprised if the rules (which "may be modified at any time without notice") don't iterate and grow dramatically in between now and December.

Of particular concern is the potential griefing issue -- anyone with any modicum of deviousness has already said, "Hey, we should just fly a bunch of fake weather balloons to fuck up everyone else."

(The rules state that official balloons will be accompanied by DARPA representatives -- we're going to need some authentication method beyond "Some asshole wearing a navy blue polo shirt holding a clipboard." It'll have to be communicated far enough ahead of time to propagate, but not so far in advance to be easily spoofed.)

Griefing goes to the idea of motivation: You might not be able to mobilize and organize an credible nationwide team to win, but I can easily see groups of griefers -- call them "cells" -- popping up on game day:

Looking at costs, an 8-foot diameter balloon holds about 270 cubic feet of helium; with cost of balloon and tank rental, that's a few hundred bucks, which is easily spread across a few friends.

* Hopefully, no one will try shooting down balloons. That would be a bit much (as well as a violation of the contest rules). The rules cover changed locations, but I don't yet see anything about accidental or manmade balloon failure post-launch.

As to other potential hurdles (balloons in really out-of-the-way -- but still road accessible -- locations, I don't find that as interesting as the challenge of dealing with griefers, especially highly-motivated ones bent on undermining the game.

Of course, since no one ever accused DARPA of being dumb, it really depends on how they implement the Web site reporting mechanism (will it provide feedback when you submit a location, etc.)

Watch the skies.

Tags: darpa network challenge, crowdsourcing, griefing, gaming

An Embarrassment of Upcoming Things, October Edition

Not sure what I'm doing tonight. Tomorrow, though (Saturday, 10/3), presents us with choice paralysis a-plenty:

* The Dulles Day Plane Pull is from 11am-4pm. The plane pulling bit is fun to watch (and sometimes teams need spectator help), as well as the aircraft display. (See my photos from 2007; 2008 was canceled due to heavy rain, which doesn't look like it'll be a problem this year.)

* The Crafty Bastards craft show-thing is in Adams Morgan, from 10-4pm. If I go, it will be to maybe get a t-shirt, but definitely a falafel.

* I'm not 100% on this, but I'm pretty sure I saw a sign in the median on Reston Parkway for the Fairfax County Police Department Reston District Station Open House, 11am-3pm?

The kicker is that the Fell's Point Fun Festival is also both days this weekend. (Although I pretty much have to stay local Sunday to do some painting, which rules that day out.)

I'm a little leery of driving up to Baltimore after what happened the last time, though it's fun, even if you just end up hanging out in the beer garden (nee parking lot) and not moving. I'm pretty much leaning to the purely local stuff.

Looking out a bit further:

* The Reston Oktoberfest is Oct. 9-11 in the Town Center.

* Wednesday, Oct. 14 is both the October Washington Blogger Meetup at Madam's Organ in Adams Morgan. I was originally a maybe on this, because Cowboy Junkies are playing the Barns at Wolf Trap, but it looks like they're sold out. Yay for indecision!

* Friday, Oct. 16, The Raveonettes are playing the 9:30 Club.

* The PublicMediaCamp unconference is Oct. 17-18 at American University.

* The final BlogPotomac is October 23. I am as yet undecided, though I suppose I should decide quickly.

* CrisisCamp Philly is Oct. 24-25 -- I might just go virtual for this.

* Thursday, Oct. 29, Mike Doughty plays Birchmere.

As for Halloween, I have no idea what to do for a costume, which would be a big letdown after last year. I will have to do some thinking.

November brings BarCamp DC and CrisisCamp NYC, but one month at a time.

Meet (Busty) Christian Women, Easy

I don't usually pay attention to the ads on my Facebook profile, and they're pretty easy to ignore. But this one stood out: Not only because of the mistargeting (Christian singles is pretty far off the mark), but because it features a model with huge tracts of Bible:

Then I realized that I'd seen this particular particularly pneumatic model before -- she's busty glamour model Denise Milani (she works non-nude -- barely -- but I wouldn't call the site SFW) and she's a former SportsbyBrooks girl.

TinEye reverse image search finds the photo in larger size, used in other, decidedly non-Christian contexts.

While it's possible, of course, that Denise Milani is a fine, upstanding Christian woman, and that her photo was licensed to this particular Christian singles site, it seems far more likely that whoever was responsible for the ad -- either the site or an affiliate -- just grabbed an eye-catching photo off the Web. *yoink*

Seems to be standard operating procedure for any dating site ads on Facebook, whether it's over 30s, Christian, or whatever -- find a pretty girl whose boobs take up 40% of the available image area. (Actually, I guess that's the SOP for pretty much any Facebook ad.)

I actually did click through to take a look at their site. (Their slogan is "The Community for [Busty] Christian Singles.")

It has a lot to offer -- for example, it has a wonderfully streamlined registration process. For example, it asks your gender, but doesn't ask what gender you're seeking. Simple!

Tags: facebook

2 Year Twitterversary Statistics: No More Than 184,520 Characters of Inanity

After eDemocracy Camp 2, I was thinking about how much Twitter had become the de rigueur conference backchannel / session notebook / fashion accessory, which I didn't think was the case for the first one just a year ago.

That got me wondering about when I first joined Twitter, so I paged back in my archives and found that I posted my first Tweet on April 22, 2007, which was just about my 2-year Twitter anniversary when I first started this entry.

[This entry, incidentally, is unrelated to any of the current "When Did You Join Twitter?" or "How long are you on Twitter?" foolishness that's been going around. Also, if you hadn't noticed, I've given up my previous petulant objections and am resigned to calling Twitter posts "tweets."]

Getting My Twitter Stats
I was curious about my own Twitter posting pattern; the quick, easy, and pretty way to look at your stats of course is to use TweetStats (which I also did), but I wanted a little more granularity. (For example, TweetStats calculates your daily average just using the days you posted, instead of looking at every day.) So I decided to pull and crunch the numbers myself.

Here's my 2-year Twitter post count:

Click through to Flickr for additional notes by Patrick.

I signed up on April 18, 2007 and posted for the first time 4 days later. My posting was pretty much non-existent until the first spike (8 whole posts in a day!) from the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture race on May 3.

I stayed primarily with phone updates until June 14, when I got Twitterific, and you can see a general trend upwards (I switched to Twhirl on June 25), with an all-time high responding to birthday greetings (March 26).

Pulling the Numbers
To get the numbers:
* I used the Java TwitterBackup 2.5 to pull the XML file, which basically has everything (it took about 50 minutes -- it does 20 per minute to avoid hitting API limits)
* As suggested, I did a bunch of find-and-replaces in TextEdit to clean things up and remove extraneous fields
* I then pulled the numbers into Excel, where I did some serious massaging of the numbers. This included fixing the year on the previous years' posts (in the process, I may have shifted some of the dates a day... damned leap year).
* I also added in the intervening days where I didn't post to Twitter, consolidating them to get my daily Tweet count (this is where using the FREQUENCY formula came in.)
* Finally, I plugged the numbers into Google Spreadsheet to get a pretty chart, and uploaded it to Flickr to get a nice, 500px wide image.

TweetStats gave me an average of 3.2 average posts per day (with a median of 2.0 posts), though my numbers for the entire period (counting days I didn't post at all) gave me 1.8 posts per day (median 1.0). I haven't done any deeper digging; Tweetstats has a good talking points topline, and I have the raw data if I want to look any further.

Thrilling, yes?

Tags: twitter, twitterversary, tweetstats, twitterbackup

And now it can be told: Crostonfest

Actually, there's not that much to tell. Saturday was Crostonfest, a surprise thank-you in honor of DC tech scenester John Croston, held just before the DC Geeks Love Wine tasting event at nclud.

While we waited for John, there was Mario Kart:

Looking down:

Oblivious to the passersby gawking.

And the man comes to town:

Not being much of a wine drinker, I did not stay. Instead, I hoofed it over to Amsterdam Falafelshop to grab a bite:

"Falafel: You are chickpeas fried in Love and wrapped in HELL YEAH!"

On the way back, here's a traffic light control box on 19th Street:

When Flashing (You only live once)

On a photo note, I've started carrying my Fujifilm Finebix F30 again, since it has an Aperture Priority setting and I want to get a little depth-of-field in my photos (though I still don't want to spring for a DSLR).

This is after I've installed CHDK (add-on firmware that unlocks features on Canon point-and-shoots) on my Canon Powershot SD1100 -- it's somewhat cumbersome, though playing around with manual focus and aperture override might still be useful.

The downside, of course, is my F30 is bigger, heavier, and pretty beat up -- the case is dented and has a visible gap from being dropped so many times, and the shutter button sticks sometimes.

Afterwards, I had some time to kill before going to Ragtime to see Scott's band, so I went to work out at the still-shiny-new Fitness First in Arlington (on North Courthouse, coincidentally across the street from Ragtime) -- despite being a somewhat half-assed workout, I was still pretty tired, but I managed to stay awake with the help of a chai tea latte.

Tags: crostonfest, chdk

Check Me Out Over at the Network Solutions Blog (with some bonus features for my Twitter post)

For the past few weeks, I've been doing some blogging over at the Network Solutions blog, Solutions Are Power. (I'd met blog honcho Shashi Bellamkonda at a Twitter meetup last year, and stayed in touch through various DC tech events since then.)

I'm blogging about social media and online community topics (naturally), with a particular focus on how it can affect small business. (And I mean real small business, not just social media consultants.) So naturally, there's some potential overlap with stuff I've been known to write about here. (Not the dumb things. Well, not my dumb things.)

For example, a few of the posts I've done over there, started out as drafts in my head that were going to be used here, but I never got around to doing.

Take my "Twitter: I Was Doing It Wrong" entry. I'd been sitting on it for a few months and not getting anywhere with it, when I found a new hook and used it for the NetSol blog. Book it. Done. Well, with a few tweaks:

* Twitter Priority: I left out the idea of Twitter posters prefacing their posts with a number on a set scale (say 1-4), so that recipients could filter to the level of posts they wanted to see from any particular person. (Remember, even if I know and like you, I don't necessarily care about the trivial emphemera of what you're doing right now... or even if I do, I don't need to know it in real-time).

An example scale would be:

1 - Your standard bullshit update of no consequence (that is to say, a normal Twitter post)
2 - Your standard bullshit update, except with your location
3 - An update where you're specifically trying to share information you think might be interesting or useful to others (say, a traffic disruption, celebrity sighting, or miscreants setting off fireworks inside the Metro)
4 - An update where you're explicitly requesting a reply from people (like a question)

Throw in a 5, for truly extraordinary, emergency circumstances (e.g. "help, i'm in egypt getting arrested.")

Since it would depend on people's ability to honestly self-categorize their own Twitter posts -- well, let's just say I'm not holding my breath on this idea.

* On my Facebook/Twitter persona: A while back, one of my Facebook friends asked me why I was out partying all the time. When I asked why she thought that, she said that it was the impression she got from looking at my Facebook status.

My Facebook status comes from Twitter (via TwitterSync) -- I don't update it any other way. And at that time, I only updated Twitter when I was out and about. Which is why my friend thought I was just partying non-stop.

Anyway, check out my entries (and, heck, the other entries, too) on the NetSol blog if you like, and drop a comment and say hi over there.

Tags: twitter, network solutions, solutions are power, shashi bellamkonda

The New York Times Doesn't Want Any Dirty, Stinking Fark Links

I've seen a notable lack of New York Times links on Fark over the past few months. NYT used to be really unfriendly to social bookmarking and linksharing sites (with their login-registration wall), but that changed when they added permalink sharing URLs, which made linking to their stories easier.

Now, though, when you try to submit an NYT link to Fark, it fails -- you get an error:

"Can't verify that link: Throwing away unfetchable URL... 302 Moved Temporarily"

The error message says it's a 302 temporary redirect, though Redirect Checker says it a 301 permanent redirect. Either way, Fark doesn't like it.

I'm not 100% on the timing, but I think it's related to changes that were made when NYT rolled out their TimesPeople social network a few months back. (I already disliked TimesPeople because it adds a persistant Javascript tool bar at the top of the page -- when you page down in an article, it cuts off the first few lines, so you have to scroll back up to pick up where you left off. It's annoying.)

Anyway, that's probably why there haven't been any NYT links on Fark the last few months. (Other social booksharing sites seem unaffected.)

I guess an alternate interpretation would be that Fark doesn't want any NYT links. But the headline on that doesn't sound as cool.

Tags: new york times, social bookmarking, sharing

Followup: Washington Post LiveWire Spam -- Oopsie

Here's a followup to my impotent fist-shaking about the unsolicited, opt-out Washington Post LiveWire DNC coverage e-mail from yesterday -- after a serendipitous encounter with a Postie (and former AOLer) familiar with the situation, we can safely invoke Hanlon's Razor:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

As I suspected, the opt-out e-mail blast was a mistake, accidentally sent to the wider audience instead of the smaller one. It seems that there was a bad call by an inexperienced staffer, combined with a lack of process and control.

Admittedly, it was something of a tempest in a teapot; part of the reason why this perceived violation was so noticeable is that, to date, WashingtonPost.com has been a trusted source (at least, when it comes to self-marketing). For such a rookie mistake to appear was... jarring.

Additionally, as I had surmised, my blog entry is currently the #1 search result for the term post livewire. So I got that going for me.

Tags: washington post, livewire, opt-out, e-mail marketing

Washington Post LiveWire: All the convention news you need -- whether you want it or not

As I Twittered a few hours ago, I got a "Convention Update from Post LiveWire" e-mail, and I'm pretty damn sure I didn't do anything close to subscribing to anything remotely like it.

Checking my Washington Post e-mail preferences, as well as a reply from another Twitterer, confirmed this.

Looking at the mail header, it comes from bigfootinteractive.com; Bigfoot Interactive is an e-mail marketing firm that's now part of a larger marketing company, Epsilon.

I bounced it over to my Gmail account (it went into the spam folder, shockingly), which revealed an Unsubscribe link that didn't show up in PINE (yes, I still use PINE, which is still not ELM). I clicked the link, and all was revealed:

Washington Post LiveWire e-mail optout screen.

Note the page title in the browser: "Optout."

Optout. Now, I don't care if it was a mistake, a one-time thing, or a rogue marketer -- there's nothing that will set bloggers to wiggling their tiny, Cheeto-stained typing fingers in impotent blogging rage than an e-mail marketing opt-out.

It could be an urgent evacuation notice giving the best route to high ground to avoid the oncoming asteroid-induced tidal wave -- if I didn't subscribe to it, I don't want to see it.

I find it somewhat ironic that this would happen on the very same day that the Post featured a story about companies using blogs and other social media to reach out to customers ("Marketing Moves to the Blogosphere" -- it got more than a little blog traction here because it name-checked some of the usual area and marketing bloggers.)

Especially since bloggers and blog readers -- the very users who companies try to engage using social media -- are the most enraged by things like opt-out marketing e-mails.

Anyway, as I'm in this annoyingly-vocal, self-important and overinflated minority, as I finish this little impotent screed, I can only take solace in imagining that, thanks to the voodoo that is SEO, this entry will show up somewhere in the future on the first page of results for "Washington Post LiveWire."

Tags: opt-out, washington post, livewire, impotent blogging rage

Crowdsourcing a Restaurant: Good Luck With That

Today's Post has a front-page item about a DC restaurant-to-be (Elements) that's crowdsourcing its theme and menu: "Online, a Community Gathers to Concoct A Neighborhood Eatery."

The theme the community has picked is, er, a "sustainable vegetarian/raw food restaurant," with a community-center vibe.

Now, the article mentions that the owner/funder has the final say over all business decisions, so presumably she's crunched the numbers and sees a market opportunity that backs up the community's sentiment. I don't know anything about consumer demand for raw foods or the restaurant business (other than it's a tough racket), so I'll leave that be -- other than to say that what might work for a co-op or other collective endeavor, might not work for a 3,500 square foot restaurant with $1 to 1.5 million in startup costs, and that has to have appeal outside of the core community participants.

However, I do note a few caveats on relying on a community for feedback and guidance. I believe it's a valuable practice -- but you have to go in with your eyes open:

1. The loudest, most engaged people do not necessarily represent your entire target audience. Paying attention to users is important. Paying attention to all users -- not just the loud ones -- is also important. You need to capture the wants and needs of people who don't participate in the community, too, which requires looking at metrics, testing, and other forms of research.

For example, in product development communities, your active contributors may be power users or edge cases clamoring for features that have little value to the rest of your core audience. Overserving them can pull resources away from items of greater benefit to the larger community.

Look at the political primary system, where candidates cater to primary participants (the most engaged, active, and extreme sections of the electorate) to build momentum, then move to the center for broader appeal in the general election.

2. Don't forget about Participation Inequality. This is basically a restatement of point #1 -- the loudest users will dominate the conversation. Even if they are "influencers" with disproportionate impact on other people, you're still only hearing a few voices.

The Elements community has about 400 people -- here's a graph of their top 20 community points holders (which I will use as a proxy for participation -- I left out the #1 "Living Green" user, since that's composed of 4 people):

Sorry, no means, medians, or standard deviation -- this is as statistics as I get.

Since I'm not a member, I can't see the boards; even if we assume that semi-active participants (normally the "9" in the 90:9:1 ratio) number higher in this particular community, that's still not a lot of people, so you need to take care that you're seeing the whole picture.

3. If "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," wheels will find reasons to squeak. Again, this goes to audience tunnel vision. People are not wheels -- they like it when you pay attention to them, they get used to it, and they find ways to maintain your attention. You need to continually reach out to new voices (while at the same time, you can't alienate your early adopters -- it's tricky.)

4. Community drama can impact the business. Inevitably, every community goes through crises. Sometimes it's board drama that goes overboard. For activist-types, it's often a case of the revolution eating its own -- factions develop. In some cases, it's the introduction of a poisonous personality or incompatible culture.

If the business is explicitly tied to the community, this can be a problem. If you intervene, you're seen as taking sides. And if the community splinters in a meaningful way, you've got a big problem.

I don't have a case study, but I do have an anecdote, courtesy of subscriber letter in a March 1989 copy of Dragon magazine (I unearthed it and liberated it from my parents' house a while back):

A Dungeons-and-Dragons-type gaming group in Kentucky, numbering about 200, had an influx of what we today would call "griefers." This eventually caused group members to drop out, then splinter into smaller factions that eventually both withered away. In the process, the local gaming store (which provided supplies and a venue) saw its clientele dry up and subsequently went out of business. The community, which formerly sustained the business, took the business down with it.

The article says, "Unlike so many Web discussion sites, there are no angry or insulting posts in the Elements community." To that, I would just add, "Yet." Community conflict is inevitable... but it can be managed.

Conclusion
Anyway, the proof is in the pudding. Going to the community for feedback is great, but it's only one part of the puzzle. Unless the 10% of active and semi-active contributors is going to eat at the restaurant all-day, every day, the proprietors need to make sure they're not just catering to the whim of a select group of people, especially if they need to make a broader audience play.

(I was just going to add this to my del.icio.us slushpile for later neglect, but I'm making a conscious effort to reduce my post-procrastination; that is, post more, bookmark less.)

Tags: crowdsourcing, participant inequality, elements restaurant

I Enjoy Smart People and Dumb Quotation Marks (Refresh DC)

I made it to my first actual Refresh DC event tonight (I'd been to a happy hour or two before). Got to Georgetown slightly late, and I think I passed up a couple close parking spots because I wasn't sure they were valid. Chicken.

The speaker was Ellen Lupton talking about typography and design. Her presentation was funny and engaging, though I have to admit I was feeling a bit contrary tonight. Also, it looks like Twitter ate the updates I sent during the event, but bad typography is not a "crime against humanity."

Also, when it comes to quotation marks, as much as she hates dumb quotes, I hate smart quotes -- while I understand the usefulness and aesthetic, in practice, we've all been burned too often by cutting and pasting smart quotes that turn into little boxes or otherwise get munged. You can blame Microsoft or other software developers, but if text is something that people are going to work with and not just look at, until you can fix these kinds of real-world problems, it's just not worth the trouble.

And even though I appreciate good design, something felt a little hollow -- like the idea that good design justifies frivolous consumer consumption that will fill some void in our lives. (And I'm as much of a consumer as anyone.)

Or perhaps the notion that crafting is on the rise because fewer and fewer of us have vocations where we actually make anything worthwhile, and try to make up for it by creating silly notions, stuffed soft goods, t-shirts, papercraft and the like.

Like I said, I was feeling contrary and a bit off, so I skipped any post-event socializing and trucked home for a late workout. My neck is still a little sore from hitting the turf last night, so I ditched the pullups, but I felt a little better afterwards.

Tags: refresh dc, typography, ellen lupton, smart quotes

Facebook Loops... and the College Kids Scream

Apparently, something is amiss with the rollout of the new Facebook layout (presumably if you checked out the new design in Firefox); I've been getting this error for the past few minutes -- it's apparently looping between www.facebook.com and www.new.facebook.com:

Redirect Loop: Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

I expect many indignant Twitter posts and subsequent blog entries on the matter.

Tags: facebook, redirect loop