How To Get People To Link To and Talk About Stuff You Write Without Being a Jerk (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

I’m writing this up to help bloggers and other people who create stuff online (videos, etc.) get their “stuff” more visibility, by getting more sites to link to it and talk about it. Specifically, I’m trying to help people in my group at work, Intel Software Network, by sharing some of my experience and ideas, since I’ve been blogging for over 5 years. I’m by no means an expert, just sharing what I know. I hope you’ll post a comment or otherwise jump into the conversation if you have ideas of your own on how to get more “outside” links and conversation around the things that you write.

This post is NOT going to be a list of “tricks” or quick fixes. I’m not talking about linkbait, or SEO black magic, or anything like that. Hopefully, the things I lay out will seem like common sense. It takes sustained effort over a period of time to build up your reputation and influence - you don’t just instantly “get famous”. So be prepared.

Update: Google has posted some great tips for bloggers. It’s mostly on how to optimize your site for Google, make your stuff more findable, etc. In case you didn’t want to just take my word for it…

Step 0: Build Your Network

This is “step 0″ because it needs to be worked on for a while before you get real results. I’m talking about connecting with people, in real life and online. Get to know them, what they like, what they write about, and what they’re interested. Help them get to know you, what you’re passionate about, and what you know. You can do this by exchanging comments on each other’s blogs, following each other on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, or whatever. The medium itself isn’t specifically important, but this is why I’m always talking about how important it is to connect with other people on places like Twitter.

Don’t be a snob about who you connect with. I have people in my network who are senior editors at large, popular tech publications, and also people who write small, narrowly-focused niche blogs or don’t blog at all. I’m friends with them because we have interests in common, and have shared inteactions - NOT just because of where they write! Don’t be blinded into thinking you need to connect with the “big fish” more than other people. First of all, it doesn’t matter. Second, you’re going to be asking people to link to or say something about your material, and you’ll sound like a jerk if it seems like you only care about attention from the “popular” crowd. Everyone has their own audience and sphere of influence. Be grateful for any and all links and attention that you receive.

Step 1: Create Interesting, Easy To Find Content

This is hopefully a no-brainer, but it bears mention. If you want people to link to something you’ve created, it should be interesting enough to merit the attention. No matter how good you think you are, not every single thing you write or create is going to get picked up on all the news sites and linked to all over the web. Some of your stuff is going to be higher quality than the rest. Consider exercising some restraint in what you try to promote, so you don’t become “the boy who cried wolf” by trying to get EVERYONE to link to EVERYTHING that you create. Attention and goodwill from other people is a precious commodity. Don’t squander it.

Also, make your stuff easy to find. For most sites, the majority of traffic comes from search results, not referring links. Think about what you’d search for if you were looking for the topic you’re writing about. Be clear and specific and relevant in your post title. Try putting your post title into Google, and see if Google has any suggestions for making it better (”Did You Mean…”).

Step 2: Link to Other People. A Lot.

Get in the habit of linking to other sites and people in your network. Do it a lot. It makes what you write that much more interesting and useful, and it’s a great way to connect with and show respect for the people you link to, and make them a lot more willing to link to you in the future. If you want people to link to you, don’t be stingy with the links you give out.

Don’t worry AT ALL about trying to keep people on your own site. Think of what’s probably the most visited and most useful site on the internet - Google. Is Google popular because they try to keep people on their site, or try to be “sticky”? No! Google is popular and useful because they send you away as quickly and efficiently as possible. Be like Google.

Step 3. Submit to the News Centers

There are lots of news sites and aggregators out there whose sole purpose is to link to interesting stuff that readers have submitted to them. Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, YCombinator Hacker News, etc. Discover which ones that are most influential for your area of expertise. Learn the process for submitting something, and what the criteria are for it getting published. Become a member of the community - read what gets posted, and post comments on stories.

When you have created something that you think would be a good fit for one of these news sites, submit it! On rare occasions, someone else might pick up your post and submit it, but for the most part, if you don’t do it, no one else will. Don’t be shy.

Don’t get discouraged if what you submit doesn’t “make it” to the front page of the site, especially on really big and popular sites, like Digg and Slashdot. Don’t give up, and keep at it.

Step 3.1: Use StumbleUpon

This one deserves its own subsection. StumbleUpon is a collaborative “hey, this is cool!” service that lots of people use. Basically, there are two sides to StumbleUpon. First, in the course of your web browsing, you “stumble” pages you think are interesting or cool. Second, you can see what pages other people have “stumbled” as interesting. That’s a super basic explanation.

The reason I put StumbleUpon apart from the other “news” sites is the quality of the visits that getting on StumbleUpon brings compared to the other sites. Getting linked on the front page of Slashdot or Digg will bring a BIG spike in traffic, but it doesn’t tend to last. People who read those sites are voraciously looking for “what’s hot”. Traffic from StumbleUpon is different. Because there’s not a “front page”, once your stuff gets into the database, it generates a pretty steady, constant flow of visits. Which is really nice.

Step 4: Ask Your Network, Nicely

Once you’ve built your network (see Step 0), get in the habit of letting them know when you’ve posted something that you think they may find interesting. Send out a link on Twitter, or in your Facebook status, etc. Try to make it “hey, I just posted this, let me know what you think” and not “hey look! I posted something awesome again!”. Ask (nicely) for people to link to your post, or to vote for it on Digg and the like. Again, don’t become “that person” who only ever tries to promote their own stuff. But when you’ve done something that you think deserves some attention, it’s OK to let people know about it. Again, if you don’t do it, it’s unlikely that anyone else will.

Step 5: Listen and Respond

Once you’ve put the word out, monitor for links and mentions of your stuff. This is where having “ego” search feeds, or a personalized listening dashboard like the one I created for Intel comes in handy. Set up search feeds (I use Google Blogsearch, Google News, Ask.com blog search, and Twitter search) for your name, and the URL and name of your site. This topic probably deserves a whole post of its own. I’ll write something up soon.

When a news site or a blog does link to or mention you, post comments on their site, thanking them, answering questions, and basically being involved in the conversation. The reason for doing this is to show that you’re smart, savvy, listening, and engaged in the conversation. Engaging in the conversation, wherever it happens, builds connections between the participants, and makes them that much more likely to want to link to you again in the future. Which feeds right back into “Step 0: Build Your Network”.

Step 6: Make This a Habit

Like I said at the beginning, this isn’t a trick that can be learned. This stuff takes time and effort. That’s why you need to think of it as skills to be learned and habits to be formed. Keep practicing. Accept that you might not get stellar results at the beginning. But if you keep it up, you’ll find that you’ve grown your own reputation, influence, and network of people who listen to you. That’s what makes all the effort worth it.

Step 7: ???

What have I missed here? If you have ideas, suggestions, or things that you do that you think would be helpful for people trying to get noticed and get linked to, please let me know. Post a comment, or post something on your own blog and link here. Like I said, I’m not proclaiming myself the expert on this subject. I learn lots every day, and I love it. So tell me what YOU do to get people to link to you and talk about you without being a jerk.

Posted in: blog

Survival Mode (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Things have colluded to make the last three weeks or so super busy on a personal, work, and community level. It’s been pretty nuts. Continues to be. But if I can make it through this weekend, I should be OK for the rest of the year.

Some of the things I hope to be writing more about soon: Ignite Portland 4, Ignite Portland 5, more netbook stuff, and gearing up for a project I hope to kick off next year that I’m really excited about. So stay tuned. I’m not dead yet.

Posted in: blog

Sprint’s “Now” Data Overload Widget - My New Screensaver (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Via John Gruber, Sprint, for some reason (marketing, obviously), has put up a giant Flash-based, um, dashboard display widget thingy, called “Now”, with a HUGE amount of data. Just let it all wash over you. Swim in the data. Perfect for info-crack addicts like me:

The audio bits are a little annoying. Wish there was a way to turn them off.

This is my new screensaver, for now, thanks to IdleWeb, a cool free little Mac app that lets you display any web page as your screensaver. I had been using the Digg Arc visualization. We’ll see how long this one lasts. For my screensaver, I can’t stand just some random visualization. I want realtime ambient data streaming across my screen when I’m not

Know what would be really cool? An open, customizeable, hackable version of this. Like iGoogle, My Yahoo, or NetVibes run amok. A framework to build and display the data, and a library of widgets to show realtime information. THAT would be awesome. Someone get on building that, would you?

Posted in: blog

Michael Crichton Died of What? (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Oh, those wacky Wikipedians. For a brief time this morning, when I first heard that Michael Crichton had died of cancer, his Wikipedia entry stated that he’d died "after a long, private battle with a velociraptor."

Somehow, I think he would appreciate the joke. The Wikipedia page has since been edited to remove the reference.

I loved the way he wrote about science. It wasn’t always science fiction, per se, but even when he was writing about corporate politics in Airframe, he just had a way of tickling both the literary and scientific parts of my mind. Too bad he won’t give us any more books.

Update: Hey, the New York Times linked to this post!

I know it’s just something Blogrunner automatically picked up, but it still feels pretty cool. The AP, CBS News, IMDB, the LA Times, and TinyScreenfuls.com.

Posted in: blog

Using the Web to Watch Election Results (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Every election is different - four years is a LONG time in Internet time. The tools and habits we have for getting our information can change a lot in four years. Here are some of the tools I’m using to track the election results today, besides my regular network of people on Twitter, FriendFeed, and blogs (which is where I get most of my news and information on any given day).

Google Maps Election Results

Pick your state, see live results. Get your own to embed on your site.

Google News Elections Coverage

Good summary of coverage from around the web. Has a nice mobile/iPhone version for keeping up away from a computer:

Twitter Vote Report

Interesting Twitter mashup, where people report conditions/experiences from their voting locations - wait times, any irregularities, etc. A real time stream of “on the ground” reports from Twitter, phone, SMS, and other means. Very cool grassroots project.

Don’t miss the “See It In Action” page, which has a bunch of embeddable maps/widgets with lots of cool data.

What About You?

What sites/resources are you using to track the election results? If you’ve got something cool or interesting to share, post a comment!

Update: Sarah Perez over at ReadWriteWeb has a much more exhaustive list of resources for getting your fill of this election. Video feeds, poll tracking sites, more mobile options, etc. If you’re looking for more election info, her post is a great place to start.

Update 2: Oh! And how could I forget http://election.twitter.com!

Posted in: 2008 , blog , election , google , mccain , obama , president

Hey, You. Vote. (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Just do it. No matter which candidate you support. It’s important. It’s worth it. It’s your responsibility. Don’t be lazy, and let it slip. Please.

Posted in: blog , vote

Why Do All Netbooks Have The Same Specs? Microsoft and ULCPC (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

This post started as a comment over on jkontherun, where James posted a great hands on report of the new HP Mini Note 1000 netbook. It looks really, really nice - as soon as the 6-cell battery version becomes available, this will probably be the one I buy for my family (I have been a fan of and recommending the Eee PC 1000H, which is still a great netbook - a half dozen people I know have bought one on my recommendation, and they love them).

BTW, I’m posting this on my own blog, instead of on the Intel Software Network blog (where I’ve been writing an ongoing series of posts on “The World of Netbooks”) because it could be seen as a little controversial, and it represents my opinion, and my opinion only, with a healthy dash of speculation. I don’t have any inside knowledge of this topic - all I know is from what I’ve read on the web.

Have you ever wondered why pretty much all the netbooks on the market have essentially the same specifications? A 9 or 10 inch LCD screen at 1024×600, 1GB RAM, the Intel Atom processor, etc. I think I know. It has to do with Microsoft, and something called ULCPC - Ultra Low Cost PC.

Microsoft doesn’t want to keep selling Windows XP. They want to kill it, and sell Vista. Makes business sense. But, these little netbooks don’t meet the minimum specs for Vista.

So, MS grudgingly decided to keep selling an “ULCPC” or “ULPC” edition of XP, but only for systems that don’t exceed the specs they set: no larger than 10″ screen, no more than 1GB RAM, etc. If OEMs make netbooks with beefier specs, MS won’t let them sell them with XP.

I suspect that the 1024×600 screen resolution limit is part of those restrictions, but I can’t find anything documenting that as fact. And I’m seeing contradictions about the limits. For instance, the ULCPC specification states a CPU no faster than 1GHz, but exceptions are made for the 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU we see is almost all netbooks. Same for the 80GB hard drive limitation - many netbooks have 160GB drives. I imagine that the complete ULCPC specs are known only to Microsoft and netbook OEMs. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. I REALLY had hoped that HP would buck the trend, since the old Mini Note 2133 has a 1280×768 screen, but alas, no.

One could argue that Microsoft is doing something “evil” here, or that they’re only practicing good business. Personally, I think they were blindsided by demand for netbooks, and had to scramble to get some strategy in place that would keep them from being shut out of the game altogether. But it’s a frustrating, arbitrary limitation, and one of the big reasons fanboys like me hold out hope that Apple will make a netbook. I mean, I actually like using XP on my netbook, but I’d like better specs in a netbook than what we’re ever going to see as long as MS gets to dictate their terms. Sure, Linux is an alternative, and a good one, but all the programs I love to use run on either Windows XP or Mac OS X. And if Uncle Bill won’t give me what I want, I can only hope that Uncle Steve will.

Oh, and raise your hand if you think Windows 7 is going to run better than XP on netbooks? That’s what I thought…

Posted in: blog , microsoft , netbooks , windows

Flickr Now Lets You Embed Slideshows (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Just noticed (via a blog post from Frasier Spiers, the guy who wrote the awesome Flickr Export for iPhoto and Aperture) that Flickr now apparently lets you embed slideshows in your blog/other places. Is this new? Frasier says it is, but others on Twitter are telling me it’s been there for months. I don’t recall it being there before, and I’ve never seen one used before today. But maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, and this is old news. Anyway. (Update: Apparently this feature is about two months old, according to the Flickr Blog, but I couldn’t easily find anything about it in my searches, so it obviously needs more attention. )

For demo’s sake, here’s a slideshow of my set of photos from the PC Mall in Shanghai, China:

This seems to work anywhere you can view a slideshow on Flickr - any set, any photostream, etc. (Hint: when in doubt, try adding “/show” to the end of the Flickr URL.) Look for the “Share” link in the upper right corner of the slideshow. You can customize the embed code, with different preset sizes (small - 400×300, medium - 500×375, large - 700×525, and super-sized - 800×600), or enter a custom size.

The slideshow itself appears in Flash, which means it won’t work on the iPhone (bummer!) or any other browser/device that doesn’t support Flash. The embedded slideshow has all the same controls as a normal Flickr slideshow - previous, next, jumping to a specific photo, etc. Oh, and they’re supported inline in Google Reader (like YouTube and a few - but not all - other embedded content types):

I can see myself using this feature a LOT. Quite often, when I have some photos to share, I’ll do a post with one or two representative photos, and just a plain text link that says something like “check out the rest of these photos in this set on Flickr”. Now, I’ll be able to embed the whole set of photos right in the post. That makes me happy.

Posted in: blog , embed , flickr , photos , share , slideshows

My Cool New FriendFeed Email Signature. Let Me Show You It. (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

I’ve wanted a fancy schmancy email signature that shows my latest status/posts/whatever for a while now. FriendFeed added the ability to do an image-only embed a while ago, so this afternoon, I put the two together, with the help of the Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures Firefox extension, et viola! This is what now graces the end of all of my Gmail messages:

————————————————————————————–
Josh Bancroft — http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com — 503-334-1889

That’s actually two FriendFeed embeds combined into one - the “badge“, and the “feed” widget. The “status” widget only shows the last update, and I wanted more than that. I also had to hack the URL of the feed widget to display 3 items, instead of the 1, 5, or 10 that the builder on the site will let you choose, but that was trivial.

Now, to dig into Outlook and make an HTML signature with this in it for my work email. Then, I’ll be able to annoy EVERYONE equally.

Posted in: badge , blog , email , friendfeed , signature

Why do I have such a hard time writing consistently (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

It’s been days since I’ve posted here. I’ve been sick, which is partially to blame, but not completely. I have a ton of stuff starred in Google Reader and elsewhere that I’ve wanted to write about - even just quick “Linky” posts. But it feels like there’s the gravitational field pulling me away whenever I start to think about writing something. Email to read, work to do, feeds to catch up on. Maybe I’m just having a slump. This blog isn’t dead or dying - never will, if I have anything to say about it. But maybe Paul Boutin is on to something - my activity on places like Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. have definitely had an impact. His point is that if you blog for the fame, recognition, link love, and money, it’s getting harder and harder to be “successful”. But I never have written for those reasons. This is a place for me to write my thoughts, and I don’t care a whole lot about who reads them. I mean, I love traffic, links, and feed subscribers, but for me, I love them because they represent people I interact with. People who are part of my network, my community. My friends. That’s the payoff for me. If I cared about ad revenue or page rank or how many hits/subscribers I had, I would have given up a long time ago.

So, I’m sure my muse will come back soon. Where are you, muse?

Posted in: block , blog , writing

Get an “Old” $2499 MacBook Pro for $1644 (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Amazon.com: Apple MacBook Pro MB134LL/A 15.4-inch Laptop (2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive): $1644 after a $150 mail in rebate

Since the new MacBook and MacBook Pros were announced yesterday, the “old” ones are going for a song. This 2.5GHz system was the top end MacBook Pro, and two days ago, was selling for $2499. That’s a screaming deal on what is still a terrific computer (I’m typing this on a slightly older version of the same computer).

That’s an Amazon affiliate link, so if you buy after clicking, I get a percentage from Amazon, that I’ll put towards a cool new project that I’m getting ready to unveil. Don’t feel obligated to use it, but if you do, I’ll appreciate it greatly.

Posted in: amazon , blog , macbookpro , sale

Liveblogging the October 2008 Apple Notebook Event (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

This post is where I’ll be posting my thoughts during the October 14, 2008 Apple “notebook” event, where it’s expected that they’ll be unveiling new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I won’t be at the event, but I’ll be following it live at all the usual suspects’ locations:

• Ars Technica (I’ll probably drop into their IRC channel as well)
• Engadget - they’ve got a blurry spycam pic of what the new MacBook Pro is supposed to look like (like an aluminum and glass iMac, basically), with *two* NVidia GPUs. Interesting…
• Gizmodo
• MacRumorsLive, if they’re around (they were absent during the last Apple event) Looks like they won’t be back until MacWorld 2009 in January

And of course, I’ll be hanging around on Twitter and FriendFeed to see what people’s thoughts and reactions are. I hope they can handle the load. I’m starting this post the night before to be ready for the AM. It’s like Christmas Eve - the anticipation of what Steve Claus is going to bring us is palpable!

Rumors of what is going to be announced range from new aluminum MacBooks (almost certain, given the spy photos we’ve been seeing) with Nvidia chipsets replacing Intel, a “real” Apple TV - a TV with Apple TV functionality built in - to the everlasting Mac Tablet/Giant iPhone/Newton 2.0 rumor, which has practically become a legend at this point.

The most interesting thing I think Apple’s likely to announce is a low cost MacBook. Rumors have been going around about a sub-$800 device. Some have wondered if this will be Apple’s entreé into the netbook world. Personally, I don’t see Apple doing anything with a netbook until OS X 10.6 Snot Snow Leopard is out, which should be in early 2009. Read why I think Snow Leopard is the critical ingredient for an Apple netbook. So what about this $800 system everyone is talking about? I think if they do anything, they’ll drop the price of an entry level 13″ MacBook to $800. It’s $1099 now, and I can see Apple making an aggressive move to get more people using Macs by dropping the price of their iconic laptop. You heard it here first.

But we’ll all know for sure in about 12 hours!

8:30 AM - John Gruber has a post up over at Daring Fireball wherein he seems pretty certain about what’s going to be announced. MacBook Pro with 2 GPUs and a glass no-button trackpad, similar update to the MacBook. No $800 device. Some other minor updates around the line. And a heretofore un-speculated upon new 24″ Cinema Display. Sounds about right, and John knows his stuff. We’ll find out soon.

10:00 AM - I’m here hooked up to the 60″ TV in the JF1 “living room”, ready to go. Got my tabs lined up, Brent Logan is here with me. Lay it on us, Uncle Steve!

Tim Cook is talking about how awesome Macs are. Sold 2.5 million last quarter. Yada yada. Slamming on Vista. Playing a new Mac vs. PC ad. Mac sales have “beat the market” 14 of the last 15 quarters. Great market share. Already equalled 2007 sales in the first three quarters of 2008. We get it. And now Steve’s back!

Jony Ive: “I’d like to take a couple of moments to tell you about a real breakthrough we’ve had about how we can design and build our notebooks.” Here comes the “brick” announcement (aluminum cases machined from a solid billet of metal).

Steve on the new NVidia 9400 M graphics/chipset: “They’ve dubbed it the NVIDIA GeForce 9400 M — it’s an amazing chip. Chipset and GPU on one die — 70% is the GPU, 16 parallel graphic cores, 54gflops of graphics performance. It’s a stunner.”

New glass trackpad: larger, multitouch, glass surface (like the iPhone - should feel great!), the whole thing is one button, can assign multiple buttons via software. I like. Should appear in all new MacBooks.

Which brings us to the new MacBook Pro - just like the spy shots. Black bezel, aluminum and glass (like the iMac), black keyboard (like the Air), all connectors on one side, NVidia graphics and chipset, and the new “precision aluminum unibody” case construction. Oh, and all Macs will now have the “mini display connector”. Uh oh. I hate those.

(Took a break to keep up with the news and chat with people.)

The new MacBook Pro starts at $1999, goes to $2499 for bigger hard drive, faster CPU with more cache, etc. And the Pro line has TWO Nvidia GPUs. The 9400 M, and the 9600 GT (which has 512MB of RAM and 32 graphics cores). You can use the lower end one to save on power and extend battery life, or use “turbo” mode and use the faster GPU. So, 48 graphics cores in the MacBook Pro. The foundation for all of the multi-core/GPGPU stuff like OpenCL and GrandCentral in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has been laid.

The MacBook line also got updated. They’re keeping the current plastic case 13″ MacBook (most popular ever), and dropping the price to $999. Nice entry level model. The “new” MacBook is very similar to the new MacBook Pro. Precision aluminum “unibody”, NVidia 9400 M chipset, glass trackpad, glass display with black bezel. It also uses the new Mini Display Port connector. Besides the second GPU and an ExpressCard 34 slot, and a bigger display (15″ vs 13″), there’s not much difference between the new MacBook and the MacBook Pro. The new ones start at $1299. $1599 gets you a faster CPU, bigger hard drive, and a backlit keyboard (boo on Apple for not making that standard!).

The new MacBook and Pro are available for order today, should be in stores tomorrow.

The MacBook Air got an update - CPU speed bump, 120 GB hard drive or option for 128GB SSD, and the new Mini Display Port. Not much else changed (including the price). Available in November.

And there’s a new 24″ LCD Cinema Display. Edge to edge glass, very thin, looks great. Cool features include a wire bundle that gives you a MagSafe power plug to charge your laptop, a USB connection for the hub in the display, and the new Mini Display Port connector. $899, available in November. Looks to be the perfect companion to the new Macs.

Oh, and Steve’s blood pressure is 110/70, in case anyone was interested. Now, for some Q and A.

Steve: “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.”

Steve: “In terms of netbooks, that’s a nascent market that’s just getting started.” Says netbooks are a new market and “we’ll see how it goes.”

Looks like that’s it! I might update this post later with link to the video that was shown, showing off the new laptops, and anything else interesting that comes up today. Now, to figure out how to get one of these new bad boys into my hands!

Posted in: apple , blog , laptop , liveblog , liveblogging , mac , macbook , macbookpro , notebook

Experiment: “Linkblog” Posts Denoted By ? (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Since starting to post my “link with some commentary” posts here on my blog, I wanted to have some way to denote the “linkblog” posts. I’ve always like how John Gruber does it over at Daring Fireball: a ★ character denotes a “link with commentary” post, to differentiate it from a “long form” blog post, original writing, etc.

Shameless enough to copy his idea, but too ashamed to copy the exact symbol, I’m going to try the following. My “linkblog” posts will be denoted by a ☍ character in the title. I think it looks sort of like a link. It’s a Unicode character (named “Opposition” - ooh, mysterious!), so it might not display properly in some places. But I think it will mostly be OK.

If it goes awry, I’ll find another character, or just bag the idea completely. But this is the explanation for the weird little ☍ characters you’re going to start seeing here from time to time (like this one and this one). Let me know what you think!

Posted in: blog , linkblog , unicode

Welcome, Gizmodo readers. More Shanghai PC Mall photos over here… (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Gizmodo’s Elaine Chow has a post up entitled “How To Buy Gadgets in China and Not Get Screwed“, in which she uses (with permission) several of the photos I took at the Shanghai PC Mall when I was there in April.

If you arrived here from the Gizmodo post, and would like to see some more photos of the PC Mall, I have many. There are a few in this post, Photos: Shanghai’s PC Mall - 5 Stories of Computer and Electronic Goodness, and the whole batch of 34 are available in this set on Flickr.

Enjoy!

Posted in: blog , gadgets , gizmodo , photos , shanghai

Flickr’s new iPhone web interface = AWESOME (with screenshots!) (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Saw word from John “Daring Fireball” Gruber tonight that Flickr finally launched an iPhone optimized web interface. Finally!

Of course, I had to check it out right away, and I agree with John - it’s great. Possibly the best iPhone web interface I’ve seen. Really nice. There’s no way to upload photos from the site (though they do point out that you can upload via email, which I’ve been doing from the beginning from my iPhone, and it works really well). But that’s about the only thing I can see that’s missing.

Update - What Doesn’t Work: The things that work on the desktop but don’t work on the iPhone version are basically the parts of the site that use Flash - the Uploadr, the Organizr, the Map, and Video playback (you can still see video pages and their comments, you just can’t play the videos). Oh, and Slideshows. Everything else works. I see this as one big benefit of all the work Flickr did a long time ago to move as much of their interface as possible into Ajax and javascript, and away from Flash (which doesn’t work on the iPhone, and likely never will).

To check it out yourself, go to m.flickr.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch. I’m sure the other methods you can use to trick sites into thinking you’re using an iPhone will work, too. There’s even a nice iPhone Home Screen icon if you want to save a bookmark to it there, and launch it from the Home Screen.

I took a bunch of screenshots. Here they are, in no particular order:

Posted in: apple , blog , flickr , interface , iphone , safari , web

Tying Your Tubes with WordPress - My Session at WordCamp Portland (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

I’m giving a session at WordCamp Portland today on “Tying Your Tubes with WordPress“, all about integrating all the difference places you probably write, read, and discuss things on the web into your WordPress blog. This post is the reference for the session, with the slides (such as they are - most of it is going to be discussion) and links to the plugins I talk about.

Here are the few slides I put together, on Google Docs. I’m working on them as we speak, but by the time the session starts, they should be more or less final:

And here are links to the plugins/tools that I’m going to talk about:

• Alex King’s Twitter Tools - to put daily tweet digests on your blog as posts (great for archiving them, since Twitter cut off access to tweets older than a few pages).

• K2 Theme - besides the TON of other great things it can do, it’s great for putting tweets, etc. in a sidebar using “Asides”. The K2 Support Forum is a GREAT resource if you have questions or need help.
• How to exclude a category (say, your tweet digest) from your site’s RSS feed. Either have people subscribe to the funky URL you get from this, or if you use FeedBurner, just tell it that the funky URL is your source feed.
• FriendFeed Comments - show comments and likes that your post gets on FriendFeed right on the post itself.
• FriendFeed Feed Widget - for showing your last 10 or so items that end up on FriendFeed right on your blog. There are some other cool badges on that page. Similar to Twitter badges, which I don’t use (I use Twitter Tools’ daily digests instead).
• soup.io, for publishing blended feeds. I use this for my lifestream and my linkblog.

I’ll add any other info that comes up during the session, and if you have any questions, post them in the comments! Woo hoo WordCamp Portland!

Posted in: blog , conferences , friendfeed , internet , portland , teaching , tubes , twitter , web , wordcamp , wordpress

More on Community Building: Hosting a Party vs Building a Building (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Following up my last post on how building a community is like hosting a party, I saw a great post this morning from Doc Searls, wherein he riffs on how companies come to him all the time, and say “we’ve built this great site, why don’t more people visit it?”:

The other day I was sitting in the company of leaders in one industrial category. (I won’t say which because it’s beside the point I want to make.) A question arose: Why are there so few visitors to our websites? Millions use their services, yet few bother with visiting their sites, except every once in awhile.

The answer, I suggested, was that their sites were buildings. They were architected, designed and constructed. They were conceived and built on the real estate model: domains with addresses, places people could visit. They were necessary and sufficient for the old Static Web, but lacked sufficiency for the Live one.

This goes RIGHT along with what I’ve been saying about how community building is like hosting a party. So many people come to me and say “we’ve built this great community site. Now how do we get people to use it?” They’ve built a building. A house for the party to happen in. It’s a usually necessary first step (the party COULD happen “in the streets” on Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. without a “house” of its own), but it’s ONLY a first step.

Once you’ve got a party house, stop worrying about the house, and start worrying about getting people to come to the party and have a good time!

Posted in: blog , building , community , party

Building a Community is like Hosting a Party. Don’t Be a Bad Party Host! (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

My job and my passion is community building. More specifically, exploring new ways of community building, and teaching them to other people. Quite often, I end up using the metaphor of hosting a party to describe what it’s like to build a community. A lot of what it takes to host a great party is the same as what it takes to build a great community.

My friend and Community Rock Star, Dawn Foster, has been posting a series of must-read posts over at her blog, Fast Wonder. If you work in online community building (and if you think about it hard enough, you probably do, even if you don’t realize it), you absolutely MUST subscribe to Dawn’s blog. She’s brilliant, and speaks the truth. Listen to her, and do what she says.

Her latest post is on who “owns” a community, and the tendency that companies have to sometimes act like dictators when they “own” the community (by hosting it on their site, etc.). They do things like delete any comments that they don’t like, or that portray them in a less than glowing light (rather than establishing a comment policy, and only removing comments that break one of the rules). It’s a great post, and the comment I left got kind of long, so, never being one to waste the opportunity to recycle my own words so more people will read them, I’m reposting here.

Trying to get “owners” to not freak out and do things like delete negative or critical (but otherwise non-rule-breaking) comments is hard.

The company that “hosts” a community should think of itself as en equal member of the community, with some special responsibilities. When you host a community, you’re throwing the party. Sure, you build and “own” the house (site) where the party will happen. You invite interesting people to come to the party, and hopefully have other interesting people for them to talk to, and interesting topics for everyone. You can provide amusements, but not stupid party games (no one likes to be forced into doing something they don’t like at a party). You’re there in case something goes wrong, and needs to be addressed. But if you’re a good party host, you want to make sure things go smoothly, and enjoy the party equally for yourself, NOT make yourself the center of attention the whole time.

Every time I think about it, I find more ways the party metaphor applies to community building. I think in this case, with ownership, you could say that sure, a party host COULD make and enforce abitrary rules, and act like a dictator, trying to control what people talk about, because it’s “their” house or “their” party. But that makes the party suck. No one will want to stay if you start acting like that. And in the end, besides defeating the whole purpose of having a great party/community, it’s really just embarrassing. No one likes an overbearing, self-agrandizing party/community host.

So, when you’re building an online community, or hosting a party in your home, don’t be “that guy”. Think about how to make the party/community more fun, more engaging, and above all, kick more ass. Everything else is just frosting.

Posted in: blog , community , hosting , howto , party

Google Android/T-Mobile G1 Phone breaks cover. But it’s no iPhone. (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

There’s a group of people who don’t want or can’t have an iPhone. They have numerous reasons. Maybe they’re locked into T-Mobile, and they can’t switch to AT&T. Maybe they’ve convinced themselves that they can’t live without a hardware keyboard. Maybe they’re open source patriots who feel like Apple exercises too much control over what you can and can’t do on the iPhone. Heck, most iPhone owners (myself included) probably have those feelings in some measure. But for the die hards, these reasons have been enough to prevent them from just giving in and getting an iPhone. In the 14 months that the iPhone has been available in the U.S., Apple has whittled the resolve of this group down as much as it probably can. The ones that are left, iPhoneless, are probably NEVER going to be convinced.

For those people, today is an important day. Today, the T-Mobile G1 (aka the HTC Dream, aka the gPhone), which runs Google’s open source Android operating system, was officially announced. And choruses of heavenly angels were heard.

I’m an avowed Apple fan and iPhone lover, but Android-based phones are fascinating to me. I’ve been perusing the breathless online accounts of “hands on” experiences, shakycam video, and armchair analysis (e.g., this post) that the G1 has generated since it’s launch event in New York this morning. Here’s what I think so far.

The G1 is a GREAT device. It can do amazing things. It’s got wifi, GPS, and works on a (supposedly-fast-but-so-new-that-no-one-really-knows-yet) 3G network. It’s only $179 with two year contract ($20 less than the iPhone - take THAT, Apple!). You can get Google Maps with Street View. You can browse and buy from 6 million DRM-free MP3s at Amazon, right on the phone. There’s an apps “marketplace” where you can download programs to make your phone into a flashlight, or a Tamagotchi, or whatever. It’s got a nice 3 megapixel camera. It integrates with Gmail and Google Calendar. It’s got a real, honest-to-Sergey physical keyboard that hides under the slide-out screen. Check out these two hands on videos from Engadget for all the dirty details.

It has some quirks. For example, HTC, the company that makes the hardware for most of the smartphones in the world (like the Palm Treos, and most Windows Mobile devices), has, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the G1 shouldn’t have a standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. Instead, it gets a single mini USB jack, for syncing, charging, power, and audio, and uses HTC’s proprietary “ExtUSB” dongle. The G1 ships with some (probably cheap, almost certainly uncomfortable and tinny sounding) earbuds that can use this proprietary connection. But if you want to use your own earbuds or headphones, you’ll have to get an ExtUSB dongle, sold separately, and rumored not to be available until some time after the October 22 on-sale date of the phone. To quote Engadget, “Why, HTC!? Why?!” So much for replacing your iPod with the G1. And what’s up with the vast bezel of blank plastic that surrounds the screen? And the bananaphone curvature that the bottom part has, when viewed from the side? I have my doubts about how usable the off center keyboard will be, when flipped open in landscape mode. Oh, and if you’re a corporate Exchange email/calendar user? You’re out of luck, at least until someone writes a decent Exchange ActiveSync app.

No word on how expensive T-Mobile’s 3G data plans will be (though they’d be insane to make them more than the $30/month that AT&T extracts from iPhone users - especially since their Terms of Service set a soft limit of 1GB data transfer per month - something you could EASILY blow through on a device like this). And while T-Mobile will happily sell you an unsubsidized (no contract) G1 for $399, you don’t get to SIM unlock it and take it to another network until you’ve been a T-Mobile customer in good standing for 90 days. And forget about tethering to use it as a 3G modem for your laptop.

But, quirks aside, I’m certain that the G1 will be a popular phone. For the holdouts who somehow don’t have an iPhone, this is the phone to get. It absolutely kills any Windows Mobile phone I’ve seen or used. And unless you’re locked in to BlackBerry via your company or something, I’d say that the gPhone is better than a BlackBerry, too.

So, if you want to or can be an iPhone person? You probably already are. For everyone else, your new phone has arrived.

Posted in: blog

Writer’s Block. I has it. (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Hope it won’t last too much longer.

I’m still posting lots and lots of short stuff, as usual, so make sure you check me out on Twitter, FriendFeed, and my Linkblog (where I post interesting news and my take on it). Feel free to subscribe via the relevant means (feed, follow, etc.) if you want to automate the whole process.

See you soon!

Posted in: blog

Counterpoint: The State of Search on the Kindle (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

(Over on the Intel Software Network blog, software ninja Clay Breshears put up a post today about why he will “Never Own an Electronic Book”. Turns out his frustration stems from how hard it is to search for something, if you don’t know exactly what you’re searching for. This is a problem not just for ebooks and readers like the Kindle, but for the web and our text-oriented world in general.

I typed up a response to Clay in a comment, which I’m reproducing here, because I think it illustrates that things aren’t as bad as they seem, and not yet as good as they should be.)

Clay, you make a very good point, but it seems to be aimed at the effectiveness of search in general, rather than just on ebook readers (though they suffer in the same way). Just like prices can only come down, I hope that natural language search can only get better from here.

That said, as a rabid Kindle fan, the situation there might not be as bad as you fear.

When you search on a Kindle, it searches across all the books you have on the device (it indexes them during idle time while you’re reading, and new books show up in the index quickly). And here’s what the search results page looks like:

Image credit Robert Mohns via Flickr

It shows you how many results were found in each book, and by selecting that book, you can quickly skip back and forth between the hits.

Notice that there are also options to find results from the web, Wikipedia, the Kindle Store, and the built-in dictionary on the Kindle, if what you’re looking for isn’t in one of your books.

Search DOES need to get better, but I’m pretty happy with how well it works on the Kindle today. Come by next time you’re in the neighborhood, and I’ll give you a demo!

Posted in: amazon , blog , counterpoint , kindle , language , search

New Google Reader Feature - Inline Web Page Preview (Not!) (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Update: I’m an idiot. This is a feature that’s part of Lifehacker’s Better GReader Firefox extension that I installed the other day. I just now noticed the behavior, and though it was part of Google Reader itself. Still, a cool feature - check out Better GReader for that and more! And sorry for the false alarm. Here I thought I was breaking news on a new feature!

Just noticed this - a new Google Reader feature!

When I clicked the post title, instead of opening in a new tab, as usual, it opened an inline preview of the entire target web page, right there inside Google Reader.

There’s a new “Preview” button at the bottom of the entry, too, where you can toggle the preview on and off.

Haven’t read anything from Google about this feature yet, but it’s neato!

Posted in: blog , feature , google , preview , reader

I Hate the Term “User Generated Content”. How About “Community-Curated Works” Instead? (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Something about the term “user generated content” has bugged me ever since I first heard it. I’m enthusiastically behind *what it actually means*. But the term itself just sticks in my craw. It makes me think of a galley full of slaves users, chained down, “generating” “content”.

I just came across this post about the term from Ted Ernst at AboutUs (a Portland-based wiki company where Ward Cunningham, the guy who invented the wiki concept, works):

The individual contribution is not what’s important, it’s not what makes everything work — it’s the fact that we have a community of contributors who implicitly agree to work together, to collaborate, to try and constantly improve the content.

It’s a short post, and worth a read. It references (and quotes) a great post by Brianna, a Wikimedia admin, where the idea originated. Read that one, too:

Actually, there’s only one problem at root: the attitude which leads one to choose these words. That attitude is one from the corporate world. That the best term they could come up with was “user-generated content” shows what a limited understanding the business world has of what it is we’re doing. And why should we settle for the best term THEY can come up with?

I’m a big believer that names are important. They have power and significance beyond what you think.

Food for thought.

Posted in: aboutus , blog , content , generated , names , naming , user , usergeneratedcontent , wiki

Best way to upload photos from an iPhone, and preserve location information (or: review of Flickup for iPhone) (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

I use Flickr to store my photos online. You can “geotag” your photos on Flickr, to show where, exactly, they were taken (on a map). I’ve geotagged most of the 4000+ photos I have on Flickr. By hand, dragging them to the correct location on the map. What a pain.

The iPhone, with the new 2.0 software, can take pictures and tag them with your current location (if you have an iPhone 3G with real GPS, this location information is usually MUCH more precise). Suddenly, the dream of being able to get photos from the iPhone to Flickr, WITHOUT having to manually geotag or othewise manipulate them, seemed to be within reach.

So close, yet so far away.

Right now, there are a few ways to get photos from an iPhone to Flickr. The easiest, I think, is to setup the “upload by email” feature on Flickr. This gives you a secret email address that, when sent a photo as an attachment, uploads the photo to Flickr for you. This is how I get iPhone photos onto Flickr 99% of the time. The downside is, the photos get sent at a much smaller size (640×480) than they were taken at (1600×1200). On top of that, all of the “EXIF” metadata (what make and model camera took the picture, what exposure settings were used, etc.) gets stripped off of the photo when it’s emailed. This includes the geotag/location information. So it arrives at Flickr shrunken and lobotomized and unaware of where it was taken. So sad.

Once the App Store launched, Flickr uploader apps started appearing in droves. AirMe seems to be a popular one, but I tested it, and it didn’t preserve the geodata, (and I think it shrunk the photos, too). So I deleted it.

I’ve been watching the development of an app called Flickup with interest. The author, Martin Gordon (@kodachrome22 on Twitter), is someone I kind of know from Ars Technica. But most importantly, the feature list of Flickup looked promising - it can upload photos and preserve the geotag/location information. It’s not free ($1.99), so I waited a little longer to try it than I would have otherwise, but try it I have, and I’m pleased (if not 100% ecstatic) with the results.

First of all, Flickup DOES preserve the geotag information of the photos it uploads (with a caveat):

This is a photo I took from within the Flickup app, and uploaded straight to Flickr. The app asked me for permission to use my location (like all location-aware iPhone apps do), which I granted, et viola! The photo appears on the map where it was taken (to the best of my iPhone’s knowledge). Click on the photo then click “map” to see it - I can’t figure out a way to direct link to a single photo on the map on Flickr.

Even better, for photos taken from within the Flickup app (as opposed to uploading saved pictures from the Photo Album), the photos go up to Flickr in their full 2 megapixel 1600×1200 glory.

If you’re looking for an app ONLY to take pictures, and send them directly to Flickr, you can stop reading here. Flickup is perfect, and does everything you’d expect it to (you can edit the title, description, and tags of the photos, etc., too).

So what are the caveats? They have to do with uploading saved pictures from the iPhone’s Photo Album.

First, when you upload a saved photo from the album, it goes as a shrunken 640×480 version. Martin says this has to do with some limitations in the iPhone’s APIs (which I believe). He also says that the API is the cause of all the other EXIF metadata being stripped from the photos (which is probably what makes this such a problem in the first place - fix your stupid APIs, Apple!) Don’t count this against Martin or Flickup.

Second, when you upload a saved picture from the album, Flickup WILL geotag it, but it appears to grab your CURRENT location (it asks), rather than use the location data stored in the photo. In other words, it will geotag the photo with the location of where it was UPLOADED, instead of where it was TAKEN. Martin acknowledges this is sub-optimal.

(A photo uploaded from my Photo Album, but geotagged at the time of upload.)

If what Martin says about the Apple APIs stripping out EXIF metadata (and again, I have no reason not to believe this is true), then there’s probably no way for Flickup (or any other photo uploader app) to preserve a photo’s ORIGINAL location information. The best we can hope for is how Flickup works - tag it with the location at the time of upload. If you take photos and upload them immediately, then there’s really no difference. But it’s super annoying that Apple comes SO CLOSE to making this work the way it should, yet falls short in the home stretch.

So, is Flickup worth the $1.99 in the App Store? If you’re a Flickr user that cares about a) uploading pictures at full size instead of 640×480, and/or actually preserving all that fancy location data that your iPhone can tack onto your photos, then yes, absolutely. Flickup is the way to go for full size geotagged Flickr uploading goodness.

There’s still room in this field for perfection. But it seems that it will depend on Apple making changes to the photo and location APIs on the iPhone, or some really clever developers figuring out ways to get around those restrictions. Guess which one I’m betting on happening first?

Posted in: apps , blog , flickr , flickup , geotagging , iphone , photos , review , software , upload

WordPress 2.6 “Press This” Bookmarklet Works Great on iPhone (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

I’ve become a bit obsessed with blog editors lately. I’m a long time fan of MarsEdit on the Mac, which, all other things being equal, is my favorite way to write a blog post (in fact, I’m using it right now). But I’ve been exploring options for other platforms, where I can’t use MarsEdit (the ScribeFire plugin for Firefox is my second favorite, because it runs everywhere Firefox does, including my little Eee PC 901 that runs Linux).

For the iPhone, there’s the WordPress iPhone app, available for free from the App Store. It’s actually a really great app, and I highly recommend you get it and use it if you have a WordPress-based blog. Even my self-described non-techy wife Rachel loves it, and uses it all the time to post pictures to our family blog. But of course, I can’t help but explore other options.

One of the cool new features in the recent WordPress 2.6 release is the new, revamped “Press This” bookmarklet. It’s a bit of javascript in a bookmark that lets you create a new post, and easily add photos or embed videos from whatever page you were on when you click “Press This”. Since it’s just javascript in a bookmark, it should work in pretty much any browser.

Which is, of course, what led me to try it on my iPhone. I’m happy to report that it works pretty darn well:

All of the functionality seems to be there - grabbing an image from a web page, or video embed code (which probably won’t work too well in practice, without the ability to copy and paste on the iPhone, although the bookmarklet is supposed to automatically grab the embed code from YouTube pages, and possibly other video sites, too). It seems to be able to do everything the full blown iPhone WordPress app can do, and even a little more (for instance, including a link to a page in your post, which is a pain in the butt without copy/paste, or including images from Flickr or any other web page without saving them to your iPhone’s Photo Album first). At the very least, it’s another option to add to your growing blog editor arsenal (what? you don’t have one of those? I do!).

I might go so far as to say that this is now the most flexible, powerful way to post to a WordPress blog from the iPhone. Yes, even better than the WordPress iPhone app itself.

There’s one small speed bump. I don’t know of a way to add the “Press This” bookmarklet to your iPhone without adding it as a bookmark on your computer first (find it on the “Write a Post” page of your WordPress 2.6.x blog), and they syncing it over to the iPhone via iTunes. Also note that each “Press This” bookmarklet is specific to a single blog - if you have many blogs, you’ll want to create a bookmarklet for each of them, and name them appropriately to avoid confusion.

What other iPhone blog editing hacks do you know of? Share them in the comments, along with any questions, enhancements, or anything else you feel like.

Posted in: blog , bookmarklets , editors , hacks , iphone , wordpress

Portland Ignites Gnomedex (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Speaking of Ignite Portland, Chris and Ponzi Pirillo, and the other organizers of the best geek conference I’ve ever been to, Gnomedex, pinged me last week to see if any Ignite Portland alumni would be interested in giving their talks at Gnomedex 8.0 this year.

As a result, at Gnomedex on Saturday morning, there’s going to be a “mini-Ignite Portland” with selections of popular talks from past Ignite Portland events. (This isn’t an official Legion of Tech event.) There’s also going to be a similar “mini Ignite Seattle” on Friday afternoon, with Brady Forest and his cadre of Igniters.

I somehow got roped into being the “emcee’, introducing the talks, etc (I’m not crazy about getting up on stage), but I hope to get through the intro quickly and sit down fast.

Rick Turoczy over at Silicon Florist has a writeup, with a list of the talks that will be featured, and you can see the “speaker bio” page for the talks on the Gnomedex site.

Here are the talks that are migrating north to Seattle:

• Kevin Fox - How To Buy a Car for Under $1000
• Mario Schulzke - Why Deutschland Loves David Hasselhoff
• Eva Schweber - How To Run a Startup and Not Lose Your Mind
• Vanessa Holfeltz - Boiling Water in 5 Easy Steps
• Jason Grigsby - Cup Noodle: Innovation, Inspiration, and Manga

The coolest thing about all of this? The idea for Ignite Portland was hatched at last year’s Gnomedex. They highlighted some of the previous evening’s Ignite Seattle talks, and I loved them. The energy and excitement were off the charts, and I immediately started thinking (and Twitter-ing) about how awesome it would be to do an Ignite event in Portland. Connections and plans were made, venues were filled to capacity, Legion of Tech was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Besides the obvious coolness of these talks, there’s something poetic about Ignite Portland making an appearance at Gnomedex. It goes to show that a lot of really cool things can happen in the space of one year!

Posted in: blog , conferences , events , gnomedex , ignite , igniteportland , portland , seattle

Ignite Portland 4 Volunteer Kickoff (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Just put up a note at IgnitePortland.com about the volunteer kickoff meeting tonight at Cubespace. If you’re interested in helping plan, organize, and pull off Ignite Portland 4 on November 13, check it out.

In the past, we’ve had almost more volunteer help than we can handle. Which is an awesome problem to have. This time, we’re going to focus on being organized, and trying to streamline the whole process (since there’s nothing really new about it, now that we’ve done three of these).

Oh, and don’t forget to fill out the volunteer survey, to let us know where you’re interested in helping out.

It’s going to be fun and interesting, no matter what!

Posted in: blog

Me as a Manga Character (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

Won’t be using this as my avatar, probably, but all the cool kids have been making these, so I had to jump on the bandwagon. Darn that condition I have - FOMO - Fear of Missing Out!

Now that I think of it, it doesn’t look particularly manga-ish, but oh well.

Posted in: blog

Hands On with the Lenovo ThinkPad W700 with built in WACOM tablet (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

At the Intel SIGGRAPH booth, I ran into something unexpected at the Intel Software Network kiosk - a brand new (just announced this week) Lenovo ThinkPad W700.

Besides being quite big (you can see it’s about to swallow my bestickered MacBook Pro whole), this Centrino 2-based monster’s claim to fame is the integrated Wacom drawing tablet in the wristrest.

The specs are extremely impressive, too: 17″ WUXGA (1920×1280) display, Intel Core 2 Extreme quad core 3.0GHz CPU, up to 8GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GPU with 1GB of RAM, and t