What Was Once Scoble's... Is Now Mine
I don't consider myself a car person - and on both occasions where I have had to replace my car, it has been only after a mechanical problem's repair costs look to far outstrip the true value of the vehicle. That was true in 1999 when I returned my used 1991 Ford Escort GT, picking up a used 1998 Mercury Tracer, and true again this week, as I leave the Tracer behind, trading up to a used 2006 BMW 325i. The Tracer, with more than 140,000 miles on it, has served me well for a decade, but with its transmission toast, it was time to let go.

But, as with most things we've discussed on the blog over the last couple years, we turned to the Web to solve our issue, when it presented itself, starting back on March 28th.

Upon hearing I needed to pay upwards of $4,000 to fix my broken Tracer, my tendency would be to walk down the street to the nearest dealer and find something, anything to replace it. But instead, this time, I posted a note to FriendFeed, explaining the situation, and asking the vibrant community for feedback. In the discussion, seeing more than 80 comments, I explained I wanted to be more like my peers in Silicon Valley, but honestly didn't want to go in debt for the privilege.

In the middle of our back and forth, Robert Scoble swooped in with an offer I had to pay attention to. He posted, "Louis: we are selling our 2006 BMW 325i with 56,000 miles. Make me an offer. Well maintained and fun to drive."


The "New to Me" BMW Safely In Our Parking Lot
56,000 miles sounded a bit high, but considering Robert's visibility, it'd be bad for him to pass along a lemon. I was definitely interested. In April, I saw the car at an tech meet-up in Mountain View, and was even more convinced it was the right way to go, even after independently looking at alternatives throughout the Bay Area, to see if I could get a newer, better, car for the price Robert was offering.

In the meantime, Robert and I said we would target the end of May for a purchase. He was awaiting the delivery of a new Toyota Prius, and on Monday, it arrived. This put everything in motion, so on Tuesday night, we packed up the twins, headed to Half Moon Bay, and made the deal. Now, the car that was once Robert's is now mine (assuming my check clears the bank, and I have no concerns).

By Friday, a charity will come pick up my Tracer, and give me a tax deduction of a mere $500.


The Obama/Biden Sticker is From Robert. Should I Ditch It?
That I bought my BMW from Robert instead of a random car salesman or third party advertiser on Craigslist, eBay or the San Jose Mercury News speaks volumes in terms of how we can leverage our connections forged online. Though I've grown to know Robert well over the last few years, I learned of him through blogging, and he found out of my situation using FriendFeed. Much of our discussion about the transaction has been public, in fact, leading from the first offer, to his later posting, on April 15 that he was still planning to sell it to me.

Robert is happy that he has his new Prius, and no doubt happy he was able to pass along his car that he enjoyed to a good friend. Our family is happy because we managed to find a respectable, nice car without having to sell one of our kids or mortgage their future. And both of us are no doubt happy that we used the social networks we both have been promoting for years. Unfortunately for me, the BMW doesn't have any aftermarket enhancements that tap into the real-time Web. I was hoping Robert would have made the car one of a kind. But it's still a great deal and I'm glad I could leverage the Social part of the Social Web to get it done.

Last year, when ReadBurner was saved from an early demise, I gained more than the return of a site I enjoyed and found useful. I also gained a good peer and friend, in Drew Olanoff, who along with Adam Ostrow and a small team of developers, have been working on expanding ReadBurner, and extending its product line, including BurnURL, which we have discussed before. For whatever reason, Drew almost immediately transformed from a virtual world acquaintance who I knew through podcasts and trading e-mails, to a real-world friend, someone who I know I can call practically any time, any day.

Drew is energetic. Drew is geeky and loves it. Drew is really funny and always has me laughing. Drew is sharp and has a great eye for what works and what doesn't. Drew has a sense of personal style that you can see in everything he touches, from his own blog, to his work at ReadBurner, and previously at Strands, or his new job at GOGII.

And Drew is selfless. He famously got a woman's Twitter account ID tattooed on his arm for charity. And he was the first to ever dare and babysit my twins when they were very small.

But in May, my conversations with Drew changed tone. Drew had found a lump in his neck and throat area, and smartly thought to go to see a doctor. His symptoms pointed to his possibly having Hodgkins Lymphoma, a form of cancer. As his tests were being reviewed, I spoke to my dad, also an MD, and asked what he thought. In his matter of fact way, he ageed, saying, "Yup. Sounds like lymphoma."

Drew got the news not too long ago, that yes, he had been diagnosed with cancer. The big C... and would have to undergo chemotherapy. In fact, his first chemotherapy session was this last Monday. We've talked in the last few weeks on the phone about how he feels, what he expects, and how this will change him. But even as the disease tries to sap his physical strength, Drew's spirit is not being dampened. He is taking on this challenge like any other, and is looking to heighten awareness and deliver change.


You Can See What People Blame On Drew's Cancer Here
Today, in a heartfelt post, he revealed his battle with cancer, and started a new movement, to "Blame Drew's Cancer" for anything you want. Simply post a note to Twitter with the hashtag #blamedrewscancer and a dedicated site at http://www.blamedrewscancer.com will show whether you blame his cancer for your losing your keys to the downfall of your favorite sports team, or the economy at large. And with time, Drew will likely announce corporate partners who are going to work with him to kick cancer in a place that hurts.

I blame Drew's cancer for going after a guy who has been nothing but good news ever since he entered our family's life. Our kids love him and so do my wife and I. That's why we're asking you to also Blame Drew's Cancer... and show the big C who is boss.

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

In January 2009, I stumbled across a wonderful little company with a big idea: Create one place to collect, control, discover, and analyze your social profiles – a LinkedIn of social media, if you will.

Where services such as Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed help you create or manage content, DandyID’s ultimate objective is not to be another repository for content, but an identity and brand management dashboard of your online profiles which comprise the you-component in social media.

Since January, Sara Czyzewicz, Arron Kallenberg, and the growing DandyID team continue to fine tune their engine and are announcing a few new services for their growing subscriber base. I had a chance to catch-up with Arron on the phone last week, and we spent a few hours discussing some of the exciting new offerings coming to DandyID:

Verification Services:

Think of verification as the VeriSign of social media. The new verification services will allow you, as a DandyID community member, to create an authentic, centralized hub displaying all of your various social profiles in a convenient and discoverable identity management offering.

A few of the first verification integrations are:

1. Twitter
   
2. Brightkite
3. MySpace
4. YouTube
5. Flickr
6. Facebook
   

Free and Pro Versions:

DandyID is launching a “Pro” version to complement their free offering. When asked about the difference, Arron succinctly offered this explanation:

The Free version is very rich, and intended to help you collect yourself, verify yourself, and proliferate yourself. The Pro version is intended to help you understand the impact of your identity and brand, ultimately bringing value to the identity.

Analytics:

As part of their new Pro version of DandyID, analytics are being introduced for those more interested in understanding the impact of their social identity, what services their community frequents, and where the ideal intersection of community and identity proliferation might exist

1. Personal Stats: Comprised of Service Stats, Site Stats and Users these services offer a handy toolset to dig in and understand how people are using your profiles to find you, a traffic breakdown of how people are using your services, and other DandyID users who have visited your identity.

2. Social Analytics: This tool allows you to visually see what percentage of your friends frequent various services such as FriendFeed, Twitter, or Facebook.. A great use for this might be to help you increase your interaction within a given service subset to maximize the time you pour into your social brand.

3. Contact Updates: Build an RSS feed to monitor identity updates by your communities.

Intersections:

In summary, the DandyID team continues to build out some interesting offerings in pursuit of the perfect web. However, I think I am most enamored with the thought of what this young service can offer to us to this fractured social web in which we all live in today.

Does this create a hub from which the spokes of our brand can turn?

Only time will tell, but at the intersection of our exponentially increasing activity and the evolution from search to discovery lies the need to proliferate your online identity in a meaningful and manageable way.

What path do you intend to take?

Update: Allen Stern posted some really great information here, and a SXSW video interview.

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Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. He is always interested in connecting; To discover the many ways you may connect with him, visit him at DandyID.

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TweetStats: Closed Since Sunday Afternoon
On Sunday, we mentioned Twitter had run into a bug that masked the display of third party clients on the service, erroneously reporting all updates as coming from "Web", whether they were, or if they were instead from the mobile interface or any of the growing array of applications that interact with the microblogging leader. Now into Tuesday, the bug hasn't yet been fixed, and in the meantime, popular statistics tracker TweetStats has been shut down - incapable of operating correctly with bad data pouring in.

Twitter's API team is telling developers that the "from Web" issue is the result of large growth in the company's database, thanks to a recent increase in API developers and their registering applications to work with OAuth. The database object reportedly grew to a size incapable of being cached, dramatically impacting performance.

Still a small company, rather than push for Twitter's engineers to come in over the weekend to resolve the issue, the company said they chose the "quick solution", opting to "disable source parameters", according to postings on their Twitter API forum here.

Initial guidance was that the issue would be resolved "likely early in June 1 workday" (sic), but more issues have cropped up. The company followed up with a second note saying, "Due to problems with other *critical* code we've had to delay deployment of this fix until tomorrow."


TweetStats Reports The Trouble Sunday
TweetStats shut down mid-day Sunday after the issue had impacted the statistics gathering service dramatically. And while Twitter has again offered a new date of resolution, the developer, Damon Cortesi, has said he'll find a way to get rebooted, with or without help from Twitter.


TweetStats Hopes for Best, But Prepares...
He noted late Monday night, "If not fixed tomorrow AM, will re-open and deal with the consequences."

Jesse Stay has more around the details of the API issue here: Where is Twitter’s Emergency Response System?