My Top Ten Favorite Google Products

As Google has grown as a company, its reach has extended well beyond its initial foundation as a massive search index. The company now represents many things - including a mobile handset platform, a Web browser, Web-based e-mail, a social network, and a wide variety of software programs. Like Microsoft in the 1990s, it is often hard to see a viable business where the company does not play a role - and a significant one at that.

With Danny Sullivan revealing Google CEO Eric Shmidt's favorite product is the Chrome browser, I began thinking about my own preferences, and thought I would share - inviting you to do the same.

1. Google Reader

Google Reader is my starting point for finding the day's news quickly. The RSS reader is the very best way that I know of to get all the blogs and news sources I read in one place, and it provides me with simple keyboard shortcuts to read through them rapidly, choosing to share them on my link blog to downstream social networks, including FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook and Socialmedian.

As Google Reader has expanded its social capabilities, I have also recently enjoyed a near-explosion in active conversations on my shared feeds, and find I am spending even more time inside this product than in months past.

Though it may sound crazy, I believe the quality lead Google Reader has over its competition exceeds even that of Google Search's quality lead over its relative competition. I would rather have Reader and be forced to use Yahoo!/Bing than use Google Search and use some other RSS reader.

2. Blogger

The Blogger platform, now 10, doesn't get enough respect. The simple blog publishing and hosting product makes it easy for me to add new posts, categorize them, and update my templates, multiple times a day. Having moved well beyond its initial reputation of being something like a spam blogs haven, Google has put real effort into clamping down on bad behavior. Meanwhile, outages that used to impact the service have practically been eliminated.

Blogger is the platform of choice not just for my blog, but for my wife as well, giving us one place to log in to update either site.

3. FeedBurner

While the product hasn't seen a ton of updates since its acquisition a few years back, FeedBurner hasn't received much challenge (with the exception of FeedBlitz) when it comes to distributing RSS feeds from millions of blogs, mine included. On top of making sure that my posts get distributed, FeedBurner also keeps tabs on statistics in terms of total subscribers, click throughs and site visits, and enables the ability to customize each blog post with feedflares, adding additional interactivity.

4. Google Search and Google Blog Search

Google Search just does its job, period. Even as the Web has grown dramatically, Google's ability to return the "one right answer" solution when guessing what I am looking for is unmatched. It may lack the real-time capability of other sites, but imagining an alternative Web without Google search is daunting.

Similarly, Google Blog Search has largely replaced Technorati for most and is the default engine for finding new content on blogs around the Web.

5. GMail

While I have been using .Mac e-mail since well before GMail ever launched, the product changed the game in terms of what online e-mail represented. GMail, at its debut, offered storage space 20 times higher than the competition, integrated search and other features, such as labels and automatic filtering that make it both light and flexible. While other free e-mail products have gained a poor reputation online, seeing a GMail address doesn't make me turn away in scorn. I recommend that any business starting an online media strategy obtain a GMail account to centralize related e-mail.

6. YouTube

Though, like FeedBurner, not born at Google, YouTube is one of the most recognizable brands on the Web. Like Google Search, it has become the default service on the Web for what it does - enabling people to share videos and view videos, from silly family pictures to professionally designed music videos or corporate interviews. It is through YouTube where my wife and I share home recordings of our twins, and embed them on our sites. The ease at which we can port YouTube content to Facebook, FriendFeed and blogs is a big reason we use them above any other competitor.

7. Google Maps

Ever since I acquired a GPS unit for my car, my reliance on Google Maps has plummeted. But if in a pinch, if in another car, or needing to look up a route quickly on my iPhone, there is no substitute. While I once used Mapquest to find my frequently-lost self around town, Google Maps is now the trusted standard. As TechCrunch recently noted, only Google was sharp enough to recognize the recent closure of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, alerting potential travelers accurately.

8. Google Chrome

A decade following the peak of the initial browser wars, between Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, we have an interesting tussle for browser market share once again, this time involving Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and Apple. (With Opera still not dead yet) The debut of Chrome, first for Windows and Linux PCs, with stable Chromium builds for Mac here as well, introduced more stable browsing, simplified favorite pages, and speedy load times. Let not the low ranking fool you - compared to Schmidt's #1 position. For me, it's a good product, but not the market leader in the way its brethren Google Reader, FeedBurner and Search are.

9. Google Desktop

Google Desktop brings the power of Google Search to your desktop files - helping to find everything from text files and e-mails to rich media content embedded in office documents. While in years past, much of its functionality could be found in Apple's Spotlight, or the Mac's integrated search in Finder, the latter is just too slow and unreliable, with Google Desktop gives you the familiar and trusted approach you know from the Web. Its ability to crawl through previous dates to see when documents were created is especially useful.

10. Google Analytics

Few self-respecting bloggers go too far away from their Web traffic statistics, and many have two, three or more packages going simultaneously, to ensure they have enough datapoints to consider themselves experts. For no cost, Google Analytics provides detailed stastics, not just for the last 4,000 visitors (as Sitemeter does), but for all visitors, letting you compare time periods, dive deep into demographics of visitors, and see trends in your publishing and content.

Close but not included: AppSpot, iGoogle, Google AdWords, Google Earth, Google Docs, Google Finance, Google Groups, Google News

What are your top ten Google Applications? Did I miss your favorite?

Video Snacking 10 Seconds at a Time, On 20 Screens, via Twitter

Combine the elements of your short attention span with the world's hottest little network, in Twitter, and the viral aspects of YouTube, and you've got a fun little site called Veetweet, which as my friend Drew Olanoff wrote me is like "giving a 3 year old a quadruple latte and the TV remote."


Veetweet Randomly Selects the Latest YouTube Videos Shared in Twitter
The premise seems simple. Veetweet finds the latest YouTube videos posted to Twitter, lays them out in a grid on your browser window, and plays them out in an endless stream of 10 second video clips. Should you find any of them interesting, you can click on the history playlist and see where they came from, or open the current video on YouTube.

It's a lot of like channel surfing an infinite number of channels, selected by somebody else. Find something you like? Open a new window. Not finding anything? Keep watching, and maybe something will come along. In my viewing of Veetweet, I went from guitar solos to Mexican stand-up comedy, to an excerpt of Fox News denouncing Mr. Rogers.


My Veetweet History Is Saved If I Want To Find a Video
Your Web browser is all set to play 20 channels at once, but you don't know in which order. As one ends, another expands and starts playing, as the one just watched is replaced by something new, constantly filled by the latest tweets that link out to YouTube.

The project is a showcase for 9astronauts.com, a team of developers marketing their Javascript, Ruby on Rails and iPhone coding skills. (See their other projects here)

Know and Master Your Social Media Data Flow

This Is How My Social Media Data Flows. I'll Explain.
If you're anything like me, you are constantly creating social data. From your blog posts and your tweets, your photos and videos, bookmarks and status updates, you are creating new information, big and small. You might do so in spurts, or you might be creating new content throughout the day. But with so many different social networks out there, and friends scattered here, there and everywhere, there's always the potential you're not sending the right data to the right place. But if you start by knowing where your data is flowing now, you can make minor adjustments along the way to get the recipe right.

On March 24th, I told Harry McCracken of Technologizer that if I were to provide any Twitter user one piece of advice, it would be: "Always know where your data flows, and participate where it lands."


That simple piece of advice is a major challenge to most people. Whether they don't want to step out of their comfort zone, or they believe they only have time for one social network where they participate, most choose one or two places, while neglecting others. Others simply use services like Ping.fm to send all updates to all places at once, a scattershot process to something that probably deserves fine tuning.

My approach to this problem is to always create content while knowing its impact downstream. Here is what I have chosen to do with my data I am creating.

1. Blog Posts

Blog Posts that I create here at louisgray.com are packaged up by RSS, using FeedBurner, and end up in RSS readers. They also are published in headline form or excerpted, on FriendFeed and Socialmedian. Every day, updates in the last 24 hours are bundled up by e-mail and sent to FeedBlitz.

2. Twitter Activity

My Tweets, when posted, be they notifications of new posts (which I do manually, not automatically) or other content, are posted to Twitter and echoed both to Facebook and to FriendFeed.

3. Native FriendFeed Posts

When I post a new item directly to FriendFeed, it echoes to Twitter, which in turn, updates Facebook. Knowing this, I often author the headline using Twitter language, such as @ signs and hashtags, keeping the headline short. I can then, in FriendFeed, edit the headline to use normal language, optimizing the data for where it is consumed.

4. Delicious Bookmarks

Bookmarks I make on Delicious are shared to FriendFeed, and bounced to Twitter and Facebook. I ensure the headline and the source of the article are displayed, and now truncate that to hit Twitter's character limits.

5. Google Reader shared items

Shares I make in my RSS reader not only stick to the link blog, but they impact FriendFeed, Socialmedian, and the shared item counters, like ReadBurner, RSSmeme and now InFeeds.

6. YouTube Videos and SmugMug Photos

The YouTube and SmugMug activity I do is largely family related, so when it gets imported to FriendFeed, using RSS, it is echoed to Twitter and Facebook (like in #3).

7. FaceBook Status Updates

They stay in Facebook, period, which is why I usually just update it using Twitter.

The reason I list each of these specifically is because each stream of data has a different intent and possibly a different audience. Given much of the content flows through Twitter and FriendFeed now, I make a conscious effort to optimize the data for both services. I also recognize that when I post to both services, I just might receive comments and likes on Facebook, which is happening at an increasing pace.

Thinking about the data flow has an impact on how I behave. It is because of FeedBlitz that I prefer to have more than one post in a 24-hour period. I also know that as I am bookmarking sites that cover articles from this blog that I am getting to reward others who write about the same things I do. I recognize that by tweeting too much I could muddy my Facebook and FriendFeed, and have negative repercussions as a result. I also know that I need to make sure the headlines on my SmugMug photos and YouTube videos make sense once they hit Twitter.

It may seem regimented, but once you think about where your data is flowing, you will find a process that works with you. The good news is that RSS is not dead, despite some beliefs otherwise. In fact, it plays a bigger role than ever in terms of shuttling updates to and from services. I have set up my publishing preferences in this way for me because it matches what I believe to be the right data with its right destinations, and when activity from the community participates, I try to be there as soon as I know it has happened, through close monitoring.

And considering this is essentially my social media creation workflow, you might also be interested in the post I wrote last Spring on my own social media consumption workflow. It hasn't changed much at all since.

Social Media Outposts: Maintenance

By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)

This is a continuation of last week's post regarding creating social media outposts. The first part was creating outposts or as I refer to them, tollbooths. The core objective is for organic search engine traffic, and reserving the brand's identity on the given social networks I have chosen. It's no secret anymore that social media optimization works and it works well with regards to search engines. In the previous post, I outlined my reasons for choosing the social media platforms, today I will delve into maintenance, which is basically updating the outposts.

Maintenance starts with automation:

Automation is key to making this work. My outpost task is for commercial use, so it's not a viable option for me to manually update all of these outposts. Some of the outposts will have to be manually updated, but the majority of them will be automated. I will be covering some of the tools and features for automation that I use in this post.

Blogger:

Since I will be using multiple Blogger.com accounts for this task, and updating the majority of these blogs at the same time, the solution is post by email. This works because the blogs I will be updating are going to be receiving the same content. This also works with Wordpress blogs.

I simply create a mail list with all the distribution blogs post to email addresses. Using Outlook or Gmail, I compose the blog content. The subject of your email letters will be the titles of your posts, and the body of the emails will be the posts themselves. To include an image in your post, you can attach an image to your email. You can also use plain text or HTML when composing your posts via email.

Twitter:

To send status updates to Twitter, I will be using TweetDeck. I prefer TweetDeck because of the ability to group my followers, and because nothing comes close to it, at least for a Windows client. TweetDeck also allows you to post status updates to Facebook. There is one drawback though, presently you can not use multiple Twitter accounts on TweetDeck. This is a major hurdle as I will need to be updating multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. Seesmic would be better off for this task because it supports multiple Twitter accounts and grouping. Both of these are desktop AIR apps and are memory hogs, so there are plenty of other solutions for posting to Twitter. Eventually the clients will be taking over these Twitter accounts and will have their own preferences on how to post to Twitter. Most of these clients are not too tech savvy, and in speaking with them, the majority of them are used to using a browser for everything. Using Twitter.com to post will probably be the road they take.

Facebook:

For updating the Facebook fan pages I will be using a few of the built in options as well as using a few applications. For my objectives, I'm only concerned with automation for videos, status updates and notes. There are a ton of Facebook applications you can use for customizing your Facebook fan pages. Read this Mashable post for a good starting point. Spend some time browsing the application directory for a full sampling of all the current Facebook applications.

Status updates:

There are a few Facebook applications that will do this using your Twitter account's RSS feed. One that I have been testing out is RSS Connect. You can also use ping.fm to update your fan pages too. There are a few other tricks to do this, but either one that I mentioned should be suffice.

Notes:

This will be done by using RSS. Simply add your blog's RSS feed, set it and forget it.

Importing video:

Videos for the fan page will be imported in from our YouTube channel. You can either upload them manually to your page or use YouTube Video Box or YouTube Box for automation.

Importing photos:

I do this manually, as I want to be selective on what photos I add to the fan page. I suspect there is probably an application for this. I also allow on the the fan pages for tagging and adding of photos by fans.

Create custom boxes:

With basic HTML knowledge you can use Static FBML to create custom boxes to cater to your fan page needs.

MySpace:

This outpost will be pretty much bare-bones. Its only purpose will be for branding and vanity url purposes. I will customize the layout, upload a few target videos, link back to my central hub, fill in some profile data and that's all. The application gallery is very weak. While there is an option to export blog postings made on Myspace, I did not find an application to import RSS feeds into Myspace. MySpace is the weakest link in my outpost strategy, again only being used as a branded outpost and that's all. Set this one and forget it.

YouTube:

YouTube will be used for the main video hub. All videos are uploaded to YouTube through YouTube.com first, then distributed to all the outposts. There are tools to create videos and upload them to YouTube directly, I prefer using their website to do this. With our YouTube channels, the first thing we did was customize our channels.

1. Log into your YouTube account. Click the yellow "Edit Channel" button.
2. Set up your channel information - website URL, profile picture (88x88) and description.
3. Within Channel Design scroll down to "Advanced Design Customization". Set background, link and border colors.

If you are looking to automate the YouTube upload process, a good site to use for this is TubeMogul.com. TubeMogul will allow you to send videos to YouTube as well as Viddler, Vimeo , and a whole slew of other video sites.

One tool that does it all is ping.fm:

You can use ping.fm to pretty much update all of your social networks. Ping.fm supports over 40 social networking platforms. I have tried it out in the past and it works pretty well. One word of advice is not to cross your streams. The last thing you want to do is have double or triple updates of the same message broadcasted across your social networks.

That's pretty much the tools of the trade that I recommend and or use for updating my outposts. I'm still pretty much old fashioned and prefer manually updating the majority of my content, but when it comes to bulk and that's what this project is, these tools, once set up, save a lot of time and effort. In the end, it's all about working smarter not harder.

The next post, part three, is not necessarily about outposts, but more on brand monitoring and a big part of that is monitoring the social media networks for brand mentions. Stay tuned...

Image by Rejar under Flickr CC

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Creating Social Media Outposts

By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)


Roll-Your-Own Social Media Campaign: Outposts

I recently started a new job at a software company. One of my responsiblites is creating and launching an effective organic SEO & social media strategy for our customers. Our customer base deals primarily with the auto industry, not the keenest when it comes to marketing on the Internet, much less social web. The majority of our customers spend their advertising dollars on print, TV and radio ads. This strategy for the most part works well, as it's locally targeted to a geographical region.

My main objective with this task is primarily for search engine purposes only. Creating back links and outposts. Brand monitoring is also another objective. This is a roll-your-own strategy tailored for the three objectives I mentioned only. Educational training on social media comes later. These type of clients are salesmen who are on the sales floor all day long trying to move product, and often these clients will have an employee assigned to the Internet division, but that employee usually does not know the first thing about Internet marketing. Their sole task is updating online inventory and responding to Internet requests. These are the employees who will require ongoing training about Internet marketing and more specifically social media marketing, engagement and interaction. More on that on a future post, but lets get started.

Think of outposts as a sort of toll booth. This is the analogy I'm making here. It's pretty much the same in real life. On the Internet there are many toll booths for many destinations. You need to own and operate that toll booth, instead of your competitors.

1. Reserving and creating the brands name online, aka vanity urls.

The first step is creating accounts on the major social networking sites. All I'm concerned with at this point is Twitter , Facebook , MySpace , YouTube and blogging. Blogging for this objective will be using Blogger.com, eventually leading to in house blogs as well as hosted on the brands website using WordPress. I need to reserve the brand's name on these networks for search engine traffic, but equally important is to keep them out of the hands of name squatters and potential competitors. I'm not concerned about the smaller social networks, they can come at a later point if needed.

Why choose Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and YouTube?

Blogger:

• The ability to create dozens of blogs utilizing targeted keywords.
• Easy to use with no learning curve.
• Vanity URLs
• Google juice
• Marketing
• Branded outpost

Self hosted WordPress blogs will eventually be the main informational hub for consumers

Twitter:

• Real time search capabilities.
• An API we can hook into to pull and post data.
• Consumer interaction, engagement & lead generation.
• Broadcasting inventory, specials, etc.
• Vanity URL & tweets are indexable by search engines, Google being the prime target.
• Branded outpost

Facebook:

• The ability to create a public branded fan page & vanity URL
• Public pages are indexed by search engines. Google being the prime target.
• Consumer interaction, engagement & lead generation.
• Rich multimedia environment.
• Branded outpost

MySpace:

• Vanity URL
• Public pages are indexed by search engines, Google being the prime target.
• Multimedia environment, primarily will be used for video/photo purposes only.
• Branded outpost

YouTube:

• Vanity URL
• Distribution hub for videos created in house.
• Ability to create a custom channel.
• Embeddable share options for videos and soc nets.
• Indexable by search engines, great for Google juice.
• Branded outpost

2. Creating consistent brandable outposts.
Now that all these accounts are created, it's time to turn them into outposts. Remember an outpost is used for driving traffic back to your central hub. The hub in this case is the brands website.

• Outposts need to be streamlined and most importantly consistent across the board.
• Corporate contact information, banners, logos and URL name should all be the same.
• Outposts always link back to the central hub.
• Always use targeted keywords in profile information.
• Goal is to achieve uniform omnipresence on all outposts.
• When information is changed on the central hub, it needs to be reflected on the outpost.
• Link back to all your outposts. Always remember main emphasis is on the central hub.
• Encourage following and fans on your outposts and always follow back.
• Keep the outpost fresh with content as often as possible, this is key for search engines.

That's part 1 of this roll-your-own strategy. Outposts are relatively easy to set up and maintain, and are key for organic search traffic. Part 2 will cover maintenance of the outposts and will also dive into brand monitoring.
Image by thetruthabout under Flickr CC

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

10 Business Models to Monetize Web Applications

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

During my morning reading, The Long Tail had a link to a survey of Web app business models. If you take a look at the charts listing the revenue models, you will see there are twenty models listed. However, that is not an exhaustive list of ways to make money. Some of the models, such as Fixed and Variable Subscriptions, have several "implementations" that you can attempt.

Having said this, why is it that monetization is so hard for many Web 2.0 applications? Let's look at what needs to be done to support the various business models.

Subscriptions

1. Fixed subscriptions are a simple concept where people pay monthly fee for a product or service. Typically, you can charge for removing advertisements or some level of premium features. The problems with fixed subscriptions are that you need to create a subscription payment system and you need something to charge for. The first issue can be rectified by integrating with something like PayPal. The second issue is what most sites have difficulty with, what do you charge for? Premium content or features are much harder to find as you want to ensure you can build as large an audience as possible. Premium features need to be really interesting, and generally not available for free elsewhere.

2. Variable subscriptions are much more interesting. These are things like charging for use of an API or data feed. These are difficult as it requires a large amount of tracking application usage, and the pricing plans are more difficult to administer. Again, there are the questions of whether your services are generally available for free or even that useful.

Third Party Support

3. Advertising is the most common form of third party support. However, most Web applications are not launching with advertisements, which I think is a mistake. Google AdSense may not help you make millions, but maybe it offsets the costs a little bit and it opens up opportunities for real advertisements in the future.

4. Sponsor is a glorified word for really nice advertiser. A sponsor typically has a permanent advertisement on the site. These are nice, but it typically requires a decent amount of traffic in order to attract one.

5. Paid content is the black sheep of third party support and generally vilified by bloggers. The amount of negative publicity that you could receive from paid content may not be worth the money, especially if your site is still young. I would definitely recommend against this unless you are an established blogger and can easily defend your position.

Products And Pay-Per-Use

6. Products and Pay-Per-Use are probably the hardest monetization models to use. Do you have a physical product or virtual product that you can sell? Are people even willing to buy your product? Products typically require a significant amount of capital to develop or purchase, so your costs are generally high as well. Pay-per-use models are also difficult to develop. PayPal is an excellent example, where they charge transaction fees for each transaction. Just like the variable subscriptions, tracking of application usage can be difficult and for transaction fees, there is a large amount of financial work involved. Most technical people do not have significant financial background, so there is a large knowledge obstacle to overcome.

Services

7. Branding tends to be a side effect of what you have tried to do with your application. However, there is good money to be made from consulting and speaking engagements. This is an interesting option, but it tends to be more of a personal option as opposed to monetizing your application directly.

8. Create a platform. This is part of the model for the iPhone. You can charge developers for the development kit. This is immensely difficult to do because your platform must be hugely popular. Twitter is becoming a platform, but has been so open with their API that they would have difficulty charging people at this point. With this option, you should start charging immediately when it is released.

9. Affiliate sales are also an interesting option and do not require a huge amount of initial work. The difficulty with affiliate sales is that you still have to create something that is worth buying. I would also think that the amount of revenue possible from affiliate sales is smaller than most people creating Web applications would want. Granted, I do not have experience with this model, but you are sharing revenue with the people who are your affiliates. You could create a larger sales network in this way, but people would have to want to sell your product.

10. White label services do not appear very often for some reason. This is similar to the platform model, but the difference is that your software is not obviously at the forefront of the product. Ning is the most widely known option in the social network space, but there is a significant amount of competition. This model also requires some portion of other models as well. Ning has fixed monthly subscriptions as well as variable usage subscriptions. You could avoid mixing models by charging a larger fee for the initial creation of the white label service, but a larger initial payment will also scare potential buyers away.

Obviously, this list is not complete, but these basic models can be implemented or even integrated into most applications. I have avoided the "holy grail" of internet applications, selling the entire startup, as there is no direct way to implement this. It is also ridiculously difficult to survive without any monetization and be purchased for a decent amount of money. Most potential acquirers would like to see some semblance of revenue and potential revenue before buying something. It does help to be the hot application in the hot industry, i.e. YouTube or Twitter, but there are very few opportunities to do that and there will be tons of competition.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

Gawkk Delivers Video Discovery Engine With a Social Center

It doesn't take a scholar to recognize the commentary around most YouTube videos appeals to the lowest common denominator. As is common with many Web services that have gained mass popularity, the discussion on YouTube more closely resembles a junior high locker room than an exchange between friends and family. At times, the nonsense spewed underneath the most popular videos is practically enough to make a person avoid the site altogether.

In contrast to the banal free-for-all at YouTube, where the inmates are in control of the asylum, we have seen the rise of more personal, friend-centric services to exchange links, images and video through social media in the last few years, including sites like FriendFeed, Twitter, Ballhype and Socialmedian. A new name to be included as part of that conversation is Gawkk, a social video discovery and sharing site, which pulls in the most popular videos across the Web from services including YouTube, Hulu, Break.com and others, and sets up a platform to see what videos your friends have shared or commented on.


A Gawkk Video from Hulu, With My Comment
The service, created by former Direct Hit co-founder, Gary Culliss, lets you subscribe to channels as diverse as CNN and the History Channel to The Simpsons Channel, Law & Order, and even Budweiser Commercials. You can also browse the site's many different categories, see the most popular videos of the day, or simply follow the channels your friends have subscribed to.


Some Popular Videos Found on Gawkk, via MSNBC and Hulu
As a Gawkk member, you create your own personal channel, and can add videos to your channel by hitting "Save" underneath any video. You also can create an activity stream by voting videos up or down (like with Digg) or through your comments.

For example, my channel can be found here: http://www.gawkk.com/louisgray/channel and my activity feed can be found here: http://www.gawkk.com/louisgray/activity.


My Gawkk Activity Stream
Unlike YouTube and Hulu, Gawkk does not actually store the video media on its site. Instead, it acts as way for users to share video they have found from anywhere on the Web and share it on the site (using a bookmarklet, found here). Videos are brought to Gawkk both by users themselves, or imported from the many external sites, which are then organized into thousands of public channels, chronologically, by topic, from TV shows to actors. As a member, you can subscribe to any number of channels, and even have the option, at signup, to rate each channel from one to five stars to signal your interest, and also indicate what other channels you might like.


Rating Each Gawkk Channel, Choosing to Subscribe


My Gawkk Channel Subscriptions
Videos that receive the most "up" votes are promoted to the home page for the entire community to see, just like the most popular items on Digg, Ballhype, Reddit and other social voting sites. The hope is that by breaking out of the muck that is YouTube, you can enjoy sharing video with friends and finding common interests.

You can find me on Gawkk with the ID of louisgray (as with most other services). And if you want more friends than just me, find who else is already on Gawkk by checking your online mail address book.

Push Yourself to a Healthy Lifestyle With Web Communities, Tools

By Daniel J. Pritchett of Sharing at Work (Twitter/FriendFeed)

photo by nchenga

Has your career eased you into a sedentary lifestyle?  Are you keeping your mind sharp by tracking tech trends but losing your hold on physical fitness?  One of the big downfalls to wired life is the ease with which we can lose touch with our surroundings but the emergence of the social web is helping to change that.  Keep reading for some communities and tools that will help keep you informed and motivated in the never-ending journey to a healthy life.

Learn new exercises and proper form
Try YouTube and Wikipedia for demonstrations of proper form.  One of my favorite virtual personal trainers is YouTube's Scooby1961.  Scooby is a very modest and endearing fellow.

Real-world personal trainer Ross Enamait has a site full of workout information and a vibrant personal fitness community on his forums.  Ross's stuff tends to be geared towards the "combat athlete", so if you're not into boxing et al you might not appreciate the tone of the forums as much as you will enjoy Ross himself.

Share motivation through social networks

• Hit Traineo or Daily Mile to log your weight, diet, and workouts and to trade stories with other motivated individuals.
  
• Search for #twit2fit on Twitter for an easy source of motivation and a simple way to log your workouts.  There's also a Ning community built around Twit2Fit where you'll find forums and better opportunities to talk with people.
• Search photo host Flickr for photos tagged fitness or motivation.  Upload some of your own!

Track your progress with gadgets and web tools

My daily walk plotted on GMap Pedometer

• Some new runner-oriented GPS devices can log your daily run to the web for later analysis.  If you're training for a marathon you might really like one of these!  Thanks @fraser for bringing these to my attention.
• For a free alternative you can track the length of your walks or runs after the fact using Google Maps mashups like Treksee or GMap Pedometer.
  

Nutrition help
You'll want to keep your diet on track, too.  Check up on the nutrition content of your favorite foods using any of a number of online resources like NutritionData.

Your turn!
What keeps you motivated?  What are your favorite online health resources?  I'm sure LouisGray.com readers can chip in with your own personal fitness anecdotes, favorite health tips, and best-loved social networks for exercise help.  I'd say the one thing that really got me thinking about fitness in manageable terms was BripBlap's article titled 101 thoughts on losing 100 pounds.

Read more by Daniel J. Pritchett at Sharing at Work.

When Mom's Away, Dad and Twins Play

My wife is in the middle of crunch time to complete a massive paper for her Masters' Degree program in World History. With her facing a 30-page submission due in the middle of this upcoming week, I've been pulling extra time covering Matthew and Sarah, including virtually all of the last 30 hours or so. Not that I mind all that much, as it's afforded me the opportunity to get more pictures on the record, post some short videos to YouTube and sync up with SmugMug. And while the most ardent followers on FriendFeed (and Twitter or Facebook) have seen much of the content already, I thought I'd share some of it here as well, retaining some of the personal nature of this blog, even as we've swayed heavily toward tech, and you've seen new writers crop up.

As not everyone is as digital as we are, we've had requests from the extended family for more formal photos of the twins, so they can share them in Holiday letters and such. But when everything is digital, it's hard to explain to my grandmother just why there's no such thing as a negative any more. So... we trucked off to J.C. Penney's last Saturday and got the twins photographed in studio. As most parents will no doubt tell you, they were worst behaved when we needed them to be good, and were smiling most just five minutes after we left. In between the cries and complaints, the team managed to snag some pretty good photos. One is below, and all are uploaded to SmugMug.


Sarah and Matthew from the Recent Photo Shoot
As Matthew and Sarah get bigger, approaching five months, they have filled out quite a bit, and are no longer needing to be constantly held. This affords for more "tummy time" and they are now interacting more with one another, even if it is just a quick poke or stare.

Their growth also affords us the opportunity to try out new toys. My favorite (and theirs) is a new jumper to bounce in our doorway. Padded with blankets, due to their small size, both Matthew and Sarah have spent some good time in the jumper, bouncing to and fro, and expending energy until they tire out and beg for food.


Matthew in the Jumpy Swing
As has been true since their very birth, their growth is being chronicled and shared with you. Some might fear for safety and privacy, but we're knowing that transparency and openness is the way to go. Kay Ballard even called it "Family 2.0". All I can say is that as we got two kids at once, maybe it's fitting.


Sarah in the Jumpy Swing
To see all our baby videos, check out our YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/asypta.

Seesmic to Release New Nokia Client, Sees New Video Every Minute

Yesterday evening, at a panel on lifestreaming put on by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur introduced the video conversation site as seeing significant growth and part of the real-time Web, utilizing video, for the first time, in an active way, rather than a passive way, as YouTube does. The result is a site that he says is used in more than 40 countries and sees a new video posted every minute, a number which has now reached more than half a million since May, from 30,000 different users. Also, he dropped hints to a new Seesmic client built for Nokia handsets that would enable full video conversations, including replies, to debut today.

I attended the session and took notes via laptop, so all quotes are "best effort."

Le Meur said Seesmic came to life due to a gap between today's text-based social software, including blogs and Facebook, and the more active nature of video. He said that while YouTube offers the ability to post comments and replies to videos, they don't happen all that often, and that through integration with tools like Disqus, Twitter and FriendFeed, Seesmic can power the video conversation.

As he told attendees, half of the service's traffic happens on the Seesmic Web site, and another half occurs through desktop clients, like Thwirl, which he acquired earlier this year. Seesmic is now also installed on 7,000 blogs, including this one, and TechCrunch, enabling visitors to leave video comments on stories, and embed the entire video thread.

Le Meur, who raised $12 million for Seesmic, said the actual costs of the site are relatively small, in the tens of thousands per month. Costs are largely kept low due to users' videos, on average being less than a minute, he said. But plans for revenue include a mix of advertising and pro accounts, which would have greater capability and customization. He also spoke highly of co-branded operations, citing a 20th Century Fox promotion that received 1,600 view replies, and said a new feature, called groups, would debut in coming weeks.

"We were very lucky that we raised $12 million, and we are very cautious," Le Meur said. "We can hold for years."

The goal of growing Seesmic isn't to flip the company and make a quick buck, Le Meur said yesterday, joking about his record of selling four different companies after saying that was a "bad goal to have". Instead, he wants to help power anytime communication by video from anywhere, getting as close to real life as possible, while continuing to learn from the user community as to what features should come next.

"I would like to pursue my vision of a worldwide talk show, where people talk together, no matter where they are, all on video," Le Meur said. "We are building something real different. We wouldn't have done video comments at the beginning, and now we are learning by the community. We have a very active community and get thousands of feature requests."

Le Meur, who has one of the most active, most-followed Twitter accounts in the world, said he saw the real-time nature of the service as incredibly compelling, and that the "instant Web" was changing everything. His goal would be to leverage the power of sites like Twitter and FriendFeed to reach more users and groups of users who find communities online, even if the video quality, so far, isn't the best ever - something that has surprisingly been a boom for online dating sites.

"The good news is that you actually look worse (on Seesmic) than you really are," he said, adding that Seesmic would be branching out to make even more people look worse than they really are, through the release of an updated Nokia client today, which will let Nokia users have a full conversation, including video replies, using only their handsets.

The Web Offers a Window Into Paradise's Burning

Three weeks ago, I told a story about how Northern California fires had once chased my family and me from our home, as evacuation orders had our family of seven packing our belongings and heading to the central valley floor, not knowing what we'd find when we returned. This weekend, the fires came back to Paradise, where I lived from 1994 to 1999, and where my family spent 10 years. But this time they weren't stopped at the town limits, and the fire has consumed more than 70 homes, so far scorching more than 23,000 acres.

Over the last 24 hours, I've turned to the Web to learn all I can about this tragedy, and through the various tools out there on the Web, from newspaper Web sites to user submitted photography, recorded video, and even a streaming broadcast of the county's public safety scanner, to learn what has happened. And the news is not good.


Firefighters Take to the Air to Fight the Blaze
While this blaze, dubbed the "Humboldt Fire", hasn't gained the national attention given the San Diego fires last year, or even the awareness we saw in the Bay Area for the fire last month in the Santa Cruz mountains, the effects are just as devastating. While I haven't called Paradise home for almost a decade, we've gotten word over the last day or so that friends' homes have been wiped clean from the earth, their life's dreams and possessions erased in a flaming fury.

The two main sources of news have been the area newspapers, including the Chico Enterprise Record, where I once wrote as a staff intern back in 1995 and 1996, and the smaller, hometown Paradise Post.


See KCRA Sacramento's Report on the Blaze from Friday
Photos from the Enterprise Record have been circulated through the Associated Press, and show stories of loss, heroic efforts from those fighting the blaze, and agony. The Enterprise Record also asked those effected by the fires to submit their own photos, and both collections feature hundreds of first-party accounts. At one point, nearly 10,000 of the town's 30,000 residents were asked to evacuate, and of the three roads out of town, only one was left open, with none who left being able to return.

A PDF map of those homes burned shows the flames came within a mile of where I spent my 8th grade to 12th grade years. And while the family who now lives in our home appears to have been safe, other friends were not so lucky.

My younger sister, writing on our family blog, posted last night:

"The Rogers and the Sterlings both lost their homes. The Greers are still not able to stay at their home and are in (Yuba City). The Halls are okay, as is Tiger Tail. All of Wayland is supposedly gone."

The Rogers family and The Sterling family were both friends and members of our church. Tiger Tail Lane, which my sister references, is where our home was, luckily escaping the flames again. Tonight, my mother added a new note:

"The Sterlings are apparently devastated -- it took them 20 years to build their home."

The Sterling's youngest son, Rob, is currently serving a two-year mission for the church, and it now becomes a trial for the family to see if they tell him, or when they can tell him, without distracting from what they consider extremely important work.

This kind of personal detail makes what otherwise would be yet another sad story full of statistics on homes burned and acres torched just that much more real. I can check the CDF's report and see that the blaze is now 45% contained, has cost $5 million so far, employing nearly 4,000 fire personnel. I can see stories that say it will be fully contained by Monday, and that the threat to Paradise has decreased, but clearly, for some it is already too late.

I'm watching on the Web, but I can't help but feel powerless.

Faithless Bombs Video: Amazing Music, Piercing Message

One exposure to music from Faithless, led by lead singer Maxi Jazz, will make you sure you've never heard any sound quite like it. I first fell in awe of Faithless' unique vocals in the epic "Insomnia", and gained immeasurable respect for his work with the Iraq War-themed "Mass Destruction", released in 2004. But even that didn't prepare me for the raw message and real emotion shown in his video titled "Bombs" from his latest album, "To All New Arrivals", which hit the iTunes Music Store in early November. While the album hit stores about a year ago, starting in Europe, I only found it today, and ... Wow.

While I highly encourage you to purchase the album (and two accompanying videos) from iTunes, below is the "Bombs" video, courtesy of YouTube. It's very impressive to see an artist I really already like taking such a strong political stance, regardless the consequences.

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Ps_MBXEdA



If you found this music strong or the message moving, pass it along. I'm dismayed it took me so long to find!

Web 2.0 Logos Celebrate Halloween - You Scared?

It's October 31st, which can only mean that while the kids go door to door to get candy, we're going from Web site to Web site to find out which Web companies are embracing Halloween in the true tradition of logo modification!

Google, which has a very long history of this thing, is of course participating. So is Google's subsidiary, YouTube, and Google competitors, Yahoo! and Technorati. Even Friendfeed, started by some ex-Googlers, has debuted a great Halloween logo.

Can you find any notable Halloween themed logos out there that I missed, and hopefully some that have absolutely zero to do with Google? Post them in the comments, and we can update the picture.

Google Video Still Peddling Soft-Core Porn Smut

I'm no prude, but I tend to believe that the higher the prominence a service has, combined with its ease of access, the more responsibility that service has to ensure its content is within commonly accepted guidelines. Barring those restrictions, the option should be offered to avoid questionable material. While Google does a good job with the majority of its offerings, the company's Google Video site is out of control - dominated by by soft core pornographic clips and innuendo.

Despite my noting several months ago that the Google Video service's most popular videos are almost universally offerings of a sexual nature, the world's number one information portal has done nothing to stop its direction. If no action is taken, it's likely that the adult portion of Google's video collection will so overwhelm other content that those seeking less titillating topics will head elsewhere.

Nearly a year after Google acquired YouTube, the main page of Google Video promotes videos they believe you would like (Recommended), Popular Videos, and a wide array of featured material. Also included on the front page are "Blog Buzz" items, similar to Technorati's Popularity rankings, Movers & Shakers, and a Top 10 list.

Today's Top Ten List as of midnight Sunday Pacific Time...

1. SEXY HOTTIE BABE DECIDING to SHOW HER BIG BOOBS on YOUTUBE?
2. Barbie Girl :D
3. Woman In SHOWER!!!
4. Girl caught by boyfriend
5. Webcam Girls Go Wild ( full )
6. Guy pwned by girl! www.videowhip.co.uk
7. Ainda te amo
8. sex hardcore xxx
9. Beyonce falls
10. loko da xuxa

It doesn't take a forensic scientist to see what is driving these rankings. In fact, if you click on the Top 100 link, the "brilliance" continues... offering... "Two girls teach one another how to French kiss"... "SEXY FART IN WEBCAM"... "close up half-undressed couple rolling around on bed"... "Hot Bikini Porn or Proud Vet?" ... "Kim Kardashian HUGE A*S AND TITS" and much more.

In Google's search results and image results, one has the option to add SafeSearch filtering to "not to have adult sites included in search results". Yet, even if I set my preferences to the most strict option, these videos don't change. Google's algorithm shows me the top 100 most popular videos, regardless if I'm looking for the PG-rated list or R-rated list.

Google is pervasive. As I mentioned last week, the site delivers me 95% of my blog traffic from search engines. With YouTube and Google Video, Google can dominate the video space as well. People of all ages are turning to this site to learn what's hot and what's not, and if Google Video is to be believed, sex continues to be hot. Very hot. I think the very least the site could do is extend the "SafeSearch" filtering to video, remove adult material from the Top 10 and Top 100 listings, or collapse the Top 10 list so the questionable material is off the front page. We wouldn't accept this ease of access to soft porn from AOL or CNN or Yahoo!, and we shouldn't accept it from Google.

YouTube Debut of Ash Steffy: New Tenant

One of my best friends from high school, Ash Steffy, attended UCLA, pursued post-graduate study at the Art Center in Pasadena, and continues to follow his dreams as an aspiring film director in Hollywood. After much prodding by me, his much-anticipated short film debut has hit YouTube, in the form of "New Tenant", which covers a working stiff's efforts to pursue a 9 to 5 living, only to see one morning go hilariously awry. I hope you like it. Be sure to share with those you know would also enjoy it.

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZg0ErXRMTE

The iPhone Says My Thumbs Are Too Fat

Saturday morning, we finally swung by the Apple Store at Valley Fair in San Jose for the first time "Post iPhone" to take a look at Apple's new device that has the tech world aflutter. While very thin and chock full of features, the iPhone's virtual on-screen keyboard rejected about half my keystrokes in a quick trial run, making me more comfortable in my decision to stick with the Blackberry, at least for now.

I've used a Blackberry for the better part of five years, through three product generations, and while the keyboard has changed quite a bit over time, it still follows an easy to use format, with the standard QWERTY layout, and tactile response. When i started fiddling with the iPhone, to try and test its e-mail capability, half the letters would end up one away from their intended mark, making the words so badly jumbled that not even the included auto-correct dictionary had a clue as to where to start.

If I would try to type, "Hi there from the iPhone", it was more likely to read "Ho yheer gtom rhe iohome." Making it worse, every time I would delete a mistype, my next keystroke would put the same error right back. It got me thinking one of two things was occurring. Either I was slipping into lazy eye double vision which had my hands not coordinating well with my eyes, or my thumbs were too fat. It had me longing for the simplicity of the stylus on my old Handspring Visor, or the keyboard from the Blackberry line of mobile handhelds. If I did walk away with an iPhone (and I didn't), there's no question there would be some significant practice necessary before I could become as proficient as on the Blackberry.

That's not to say the experience with the iPhone was all bad. The camera was drop-dead simple to use. Squeezing and stretching photos on the screen or scrolling through the faux address book was a breeze, especially after having seen Apple's numerous demo videos. Playing videos from YouTube was quick and crystal-clear. I didn't mess around with Safari, but have no doubts that too was solid. And the iPhone is extremely thin, moreso than I had expected when it was first announced.

If I was looking for a Hallelujah moment that pushed me over the edge from interested observer to proud owner on Saturday, it didn't come. If cost and phone service quality were not an issue, I'd love to have one, but both are, and for now, we're still going to be cheering on the iPhone from the sidelines, and looking into ways for our fat fingers to cut back on the carbs.

Our Apple TV Gets an Upgrade, With YouTube

Since the initial euphoria over getting the Apple TV set top box into our home, we haven't exactly been using it every day. While it's a great backup for missed shows that can be downloaded from iTunes, and also a fun way to play iTunes music through my TV's speakers, the inflexibility of iTunes in terms of not having movies for rent, or the ability to play .AVI files natively, has limited our use. Today, Apple debuted a new software update for the Apple TV that delivered a new source of entertainment: YouTube, directly to the Apple TV.

As I noted in my writeup for The Apple Blog (see: YouTube Comes to My Apple TV), the installation process was simple, taking about 10 minutes, and adds YouTube as a dedicated channel on the Apple TV, alongside TV Shows, Movies, Music, etc. Now, instead of looking at thumbnail-like video clips from the laptop, I can search and view this primarily amateur-created entertainment on the big 42-inch screen. As with my initial experience with the Apple TV, I expect this to be a fun amusement in the near term, and used sporadically longer term, but it is a good proof point for the coming marriage of television, entertainment and the Web.

The lines for where content is obtained are increasingly blurred, and whether it be my laptop, my iPod, the TV screen or, maybe, someday, the iPhone, I am getting a similarly increasing array of choices of how to enjoy this entertainment, either on the big screen or the little one. The YouTube deployment is also another proof point of continued closeness between Apple and Google, two of the "good guys" in technology, who haven't been sullied by decades of Microsoft-like behavior. While I don't anticipate any closer of a business relationship, like the one insinuated by New York Magazine this week, saying Google could acquire Apple, that these two are working together can only mean good things for consumers everywhere.

I can only hope that the previously rumored movie rentals from iTunes are next to debut from Apple. We'll be sitting with popcorn and remote in hand, waiting.

Viacom Goes After $1 Billion of Google's Cash

It has a nice "Dr. Evil" ring to it. Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion dollars, saying the company, through its acquired YouTube video sharing property had used its programming online without authorization. The suit is more than just saber-rattling and content takedown requests, but poses a very serious threat to the future of YouTube.

Viacom famously demanded that YouTube remove all of its copyrighted content from its servers, more than 100,000 clips, and give up the names of those who had posted the files, ranging from Comedy Central "fake news" to MTV videos. Meanwhile, Mark Cuban and others railed on Google and YouTube's seeming inability to filter uploads to prevent the posting of copyrighted material. But Google, as many ISPs have when their users go astray, said the onus was on the individual.

Viacom, I believe accurately, says that "YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site." After all, Google and YouTube before it, are in the business of selling ads, and whatever drives traffic to the ads is money in the bank. After spending $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube, Google has a very big potential headache on its hands now, as one of the biggest media giants on Earth isn't messing around.

Soft-Core Porn, Sex Themes Power Google Video

It's largely believed that Google Video will censor pornography or adult material from being uploaded to the company's video service. While in large part that may be true, that you can't find hot, steamy triple-X action on the site in the standard results, a quick stop over to the "Top 100" popular videos shows that Google Video users are just as interested in seeing a little skin as anything else.

Among tonight's "Top 10" films, you can see the titles hint and titillate users with names such as "Hot Girls", "Lesbos", "Sex Without Condoms", a video titled "First allowed Porn? XXX?" and "Barbie Girl". Beyond the Top 10, the themes are much the same... "Naked Kristina", "Spice Girls - Naked", "Giving Birth" and "Hot Sexy Webcam Girl". (See the screenshot from tonight here)

Hardly the PG and PG-13 landscape I might have naively expected.

Just this week, the hubbub over copyright issues surrounding Viacom's takedown notice to YouTube (a Google property) brought to light the issue of automatic filtering. Mark Cuban, the Broadcast.com-made billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner, said that the search engine was likely using filters to block out racy images, with the help of some manual labor.

He writes...

"Is there anyone out there who really believes that the Google and Youtube "communities" scans all 60k daily uploads to protect those that might be offended by a nipple flash or two?"

While there is a separate, hidden channel, for more adult themes, Google Video and YouTube largely promote themselves as family-friendly sites, but it's clear to me, at least, that on the Web, porn is still king. Porn sites helped push the Web forward in its infancy, toward e-commerce, and pop-up windows, and significant innovation.

While those really, truly, looking for hard-core porn could find it elsewhere, Google Video now looks like it has a place as a soft-core alternative.

Scoble's Right: Technorati Isn't Scaling to Beat Google

I want to root for companies like Technorati, who have introduced new features and functionality for today's interactive, social Web. Technorati, when the site is up, is one of the best for tracking the popularity of topics and conversations, or to see which bloggers are among the most frequently linked to. But for months, the site has been riddled with slowness, server timeouts during searches or peak load, and most recently, has seen outage after outage. (The above image was posted on their site tonight, during some updates.)

In the past, Technorati CEO David Sifry has been open about the scalability problems. Just this last July, he commented on a previous note I made about the slowness, saying:

You make a great point, we've been working very hard on building out the scalability and reliability of the Technorati service... Making sure that regular users like you are getting what you need, every time, quickly, is intensly important, and I want to know if you or anyone you know is having problems, so we can address the issues immediately...

His openness and speaking directly to the blogging community is commendable. I love the personal touch. But the truth is that Technorati still isn't scaling, and as Robert Scoble has pointed out time and again, Google's Blog Search tool is getting increasingly better, closing the gap between it and the blog search pioneers, including Technorati.

Meanwhile, Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion found one likely reason Technorati isn't that focused on keeping their core search tool on top of its game. He discovered on Tuesday that Technorati is planning a Digg-like competitor called Technorati WTF, short for "Where's the Fire"? Yet, that site still isn't live, though it could be coming shortly, causing some of the recent downtime.

Just like I mentioned with YouTube recently, downtime is not an acceptable part of today's Web-driven world. If you can't deliver your core services, then why are you adding new features? Fix what is broken, and learn how to make updates without impacting the users. I haven't seen Google go down for maintenance, maybe ever. If they're up and you're down, where are the users going to go?

Previous Stories:
Silly YouTube - Where's The Redundancy?
Web 2.0 Companies Play With Error Messages