July 1st, 2009
Live: Cisco Live Blogger Meetup
Warning: This is a live blog. Words may be misspelled. Sentences, incomplete. But the photos will be plenty, so you can’t be mad either way.
Cisco Live is the ultimate networking event; literally, physically, and socially. Engineers from all over the globe have converged in San Francisco this week to study, listen, learn and network with the networking giant’s clientele and community.
This year’s event is the 20th anniversary, and they’ve launched an interactive website for people everywhere to sit in on the event.
I spoke with one of the executives in the cloud division, and he said that Cisco Live is the one event that brings out developers to see the “day star“. They participate in BOF sessions, talks, tutorials, and intensive training courses.
Robert Scoble made it to the event:
Jeremiah Owyang, chatting with a Cisco exec:
The difference between social media and traditional analyst meetings: it takes a much more personal approach. For bloggers, they actually started this out of straight passion. They want to meet people. It’s hard for companies to match it.
Social media is not scalable. -@jowyang “Even Scoble can’t scale. Not everyone can make those one-to-one interactions, especially if you are already huge yourself. How can you connect with every single one of your customers?” asks Owyang.
This is event is cool because some of the best bloggers get a chance to interact with companies. I think the event was well coordinated, but I agree with Owyang in some ways.
“When social media becomes popular, it starts to look like mainstream media, and companies will treat it the same way.”
Here is me with the world’s first cell phone:
6:30 p.m. - I am going to take some more pictures. They are about to announce something, stay tuned.
Bloggers and Cisco folks:
I had a chance to talk to Alex Thuber, the VP of “Go-To Market”. We chatted about the actual Cisco Live event itself. It’s amazing that in a down economy, over 10,000 people made the trek to the bay area to interact.
Dark Jedi bloggers Harry McCracken, Owyang, and Brian Solis:
ZDNet got lucky tonight. Both I and blogger Oliver Marks won a free flip cam:
Scoble and Steve Gillmor:
One of the reasons I moved to SF is to go to events like this. But Cisco Live brings the event to me. I think that’s pretty cool.
Special thanks for Brian Solis and Future Works for inviting me to this event. It’s cool to watch bloggers interact with big companies and see how the industry is run. It’s also fun to hear what is on everyone’s mind in real life instead of just reading Friendfeed :)
June 30th, 2009
Twitter adds better friend management
It looks like Twitter pushed out a new design for it’s friend and follower pages.
There are two views: the old traditional expanded view, and the new compact list view. There is more information about your friends too; it now lists their real name, location, and latest tweet. (Techmeme)
There is a little drop down on the right that allows you to block, unfollow, and “mention” a user. Clicking the mention link brings you back to your home page and fills in @username for you.
It’s not much, but it’s more useful than before. I check this page frequently to see who is following me each day.
It looks like they are phasing this in slowly because it only shows up for me when I refresh a few times. Also, it only works on page 1!
June 24th, 2009
Facebook makes status updates available to the public
I am not one of those people who thinks Facebook is trying to be more like Twitter. They actually had status updates before Twitter, but they were never as public or simple as Twitter. Today, they take a step into the open statusphere by letting you publish your status updates to the public. (Techmeme)
“You are about to make this content available to everyone on the Internet”
This is definitely a cool feature, but now users won’t have to login to see someone’s status updates anymore. Isn’t that a bad thing for targeted ad revenue?
Also, it just prompted me to verify that I wanted my updates public but when I logout and goto my profile, I don’t see any status updates. Maybe it’s still being deployed, but I am kinda confused.
One thing is for sure though: Facebook has a lot of power using a “publisher” tool that’s public. With over 200 million users and counting every second, their userbase is way past Twitter’s. It also seems people trust Facebook more than Twitter, but that’s just what I’ve seen among people I interact with.
Feedback:
June 24th, 2009
Boxee launches on Windows; new apps from CurrentTV, Digg, MLB.tv
Boxee, the on-demand streaming video platform for the desktop, has launched on Windows, along with apps and content from plenty of new sources. (Techmeme)
Photo by Scott Beale
The alpha version of Boxee has been out for a while now on Windows, but now a stable version is in the wild. I’ve used it a bunch of times, and it’s got any other Windows-based media center beat 100 fold.
You can now watch CurrentTV on Boxee with a slick interface. “Current has been right there in terms of technology. They are doing a lot of great stuff online, and I think working with Boxee, they are taking that next step to participate in the main place where people get content,” said Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee.
“We have also been working with Digg for a couple of months,” admits Ronen. Bringing Digg to the TV experience has a lot of promise. There is now a Digg video application on Boxee that basically makes Digg a TV station. Even if some of their videos are immature, they are funny and viral.
Tumblr is also tumbling into the Boxee box. Ronen showed a slideshow with background music, which could be nice at a party as an undertone.
When the MLB.tv logo came on the slideshow, the crowd got a boost. “Because it’s sports, because it’s live, because it’s high definition; it’s a great experience. We hope it’s just the beginning,” said Ronen. You must be an MLB.tv premium subscriber to use it on Boxee though.
Once logged in, you can see all the results, scores, schedules of the teams you like. If a game is playing live, you can watch it right on Boxee. The game streamed in HD over the bar’s wireless internet, and it looked sharp. This alone could be a reason to connect Boxee to your TV.
Along with a redesigned website, Boxee’s desktop app has some new looks. The left nav bar has changed, with easy access to over 100 applications including MTV, Last.fm, HBO podcasts, and more.
If you haven’t played with Boxee, it’s definitely the future of web-based TV. You don’t have to subscribe to overlords like Comcast and Charter to get your video anymore. Boxee is free, fun, and open source. Let me know what you think of the service in the comments.
June 2nd, 2009
Twitter's next question: Where are you?
My buddy Ryan Sarver is moving to San Francisco to help Twitter answer the question that Foursquare, Brightkite, and Loopt have all been trying to answer: Where are you?
Sarver has been in Boston working for Skyhook Wireless, the company that helped Apple and many others implement location features on their mobile devices using cell tower triangulation.
It’s interesting to think how Twitter could utilize this extra bit of spacial data. The capabilities are there. Will it look and feel like Google Lattitude?
Dave Troy’s Twittervision has been around for years, and plots tweets on the map in real time.
But does Twitter even have enough space to include geo information without sacrificing precious character-count? Using Twitter on the mobile is great because you get all you want: the message. No extra junk. It’s not Facebook where there are photos, videos, zombies, and games. It’s just text and maybe a link or two.
Loading ...If Twitter wants to add geolocation, they have to re-evaluate how they use SMS.Twitter needs to build a rich interface for every communication platform possible. And with the addition of Stop Design on their team, I think that’s possible. They will take the simplicity of Google’s design and apply it to Twitter. If they want to compete with Wave, they have to really expand their user interface options.
Third-party apps like Tweetie and Twhirl do a better job of organizing content than Twitter itself, which kinda scares me. Adding search to the home page was an important move, but when will we see threaded replies? Now it just sounds like I am ranting, but I think these simple things will make Twitter more desirable.
It seems like they are hiring all-stars lately, so let’s see what they produce.
May 30th, 2009
Live: Wordcamp 2009
The following is a live blog. Beware of spelling errors, and lots of photos. Enjoy.
Wordcamp is a conference about blogging and developing the future of the best blogging platform. Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg is celebrating the 6th anniversary of the open source blogging software. Did you know all of ZDNet’s blogs run on an instance of Wordpress?
Why do you blog?
9:15am Scalable Blogging, Tim Ferriss
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect” -Mark TwainTim Ferriss poses the question. He uses his blog for access to resources and people and building the right audience. It’s the perfect laboratory for learning from his readers, and giving back his own commentary. The author of the book Four Hour Work Week, said that his blog helped out his book more than his book helped out his blog. They complemented each other, but the feedback element on the blog is much stronger. You can interact with people better on the web than any other medium. And it’s only becoming more fluid.
Ferriss uses Twitter, Evernote, and a site I’ve never heard about called SlinkSet.
He says the important thing to being a good write is having your own “voice”. You gotta find your natural tone.
May 27th, 2009
Google gives away hundreds of free Android phones to developers
You got more than a free tee shirt if you chose to attend Google’s summer web developer conference Google I/O this year. (Techmeme)
The company handed out hundreds of HTC Ions today to eager developers, attendees, and press. The phone is packed with the Android 1.5 operating system, and a T-Mobile SIM card with 30 days of unlimited data and calls.
Check back on The Web Life for more coverage from Google I/O.
May 13th, 2009
Photos: Technologizer Tweetup
Last night, uber geek and massively popular entrepreneur Harry McCracken hosted a tweetup for his site Technologizer in Burlingame, Calif. at the Nectar Wine Lounge.
I got to say hello to a few friends, and learned about the latest iteration of Twittfilter, which I will write up at a later date.
ZDNet’s Sam Diaz was also there sharing a wine with me. I also got to meet the guys behind Twitter search engine Twazzup. Enjoy the pictures!
May 13th, 2009
Twitter: now with less noise
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone blogged about a “small settings tweak” yesterday that eliminates updates from your feed that begin with the @ symbol (these are known as “@replies”). New users mistake @replies as a way to direct message someone, and now that’s essentially what it is (Techmeme).
Users are furious, as #fixreplies is the top trending topic on Twitter search. People are even trying ways to get around the altered feed by using special characters or double @@.
Stone says discovery of new tweets is still important to the overall Twitter experience, and you will still see links to users that you don’t follow, as long as their @username isn’t the first word in the tweet.
How mad are you? Is this something that will make you stop using the site? I am personally glad they fixed replies. If you want someone’s updates, follow them; it’s as simple as that. If you don’t, then don’t.
Caroline McCarthy over at CNET News has a more in-depth look at this story if you are interested.
May 10th, 2009
Easily spam Twitter with trending topics API
Last night while scanning the Twitterverse, my buddy Josh noticed that every trending topic was being bombarded with nasty spam.
With Twitter’s trends API, you can easily scan the feed for hot topics, run a spam bot to register usernames, and retweet the trending hashtag with phishing links.
So the new sidebar feature that lists trending topics and offers live search could be dangerous now. Be careful, and if something looks spammy, don’t click. Hopefully Twitter gets a handle on this soon.
Andrew Mager is an associate technical producer at CBS Interactive Business. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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