Detention for Firefox!

I used to get detention for trying to forge notes from my parents .. at least that was a valid offense. Today, they get it for trying to use a better browser …

You all have to look at this letter sent home to the parents. It is a classic . I especially love where the teacher states

I had given him 2 warnings but he insisted he was just using a better browser …

It is a sad state of affairs when our students have become smarter than the teachers. This kid is probably going to move on and be forced to use IE his entire life, and then who knows what may become of him.

Top 10 Blogging Cities

There is a list published over at SocialMedia.biz with the top 10 blogging cities according to a SF Chronicle article. Here is the list for your review:

1. Austin, Texas (15% of adults going on the Web to read or contribute to a blog in the past 30 days)

2. Portland, Oregon (14%)

3. San Francisco Bay Area (13%)

4. Seattle (13%)

5. Honolulu

6. San Diego

7. Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas

8. Columbus, Ohio

9. Nashville, Tenn.

10. Colorado Springs, Colo.

Of course we would all expect the Bay Area to be on the list, frankly I thought it would be first. There are some surprises to me as well. Honolulu ? Shouldn’t they be surfing or sitting on the beach or something ? Two major cities form Texas ? I can see Austin being a college town, but Dallas does really kind of surprise me to be on the list.

And what about us here in DC ? No love … and none from Boston ? or New York ? There are a lot of blogs here on the east coast, but we must have fallen just behind Boise, Idaho …… Keep working people, we may get there some day.

Top Stories for Mixx From the Last Year

I was checking out the latest technology news on Blogrunner and same this post from Bill Hartzer titled “Top 10 Blog Posts about Mixx for 2007“. It was a pretty cool review of the stories written about Mixx over the last year.

They have the Techcrunch post along with some others. I thought it was pretty cool and wanted to pass it along and share with the rest of the DC Tech community.

Your Holiday Wish List: How Would You Improve Twitter?

If you read my latest post, I stated petty clearly that I thought Twitter gave me a better return on my investment over other true social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn.

Now this is not to say that I think Twitter is perfect by an means. There are some definite items that I think Twitter needs to incorporate that would round out their service and satisfy a broader user base.

My wishes for twitter revolve around groups.

There are a couple of things I think Twitter can do with regards to groups that I would find very helpful.

1. Allow us to categorize the people we are following into groups. I may have a certain group of friends I want to segregate into a separate group and follow them in a different way than the entire list. Maybe I have a DC Tech group I can follow, or maybe one day I need to follow a certain set of peers at work for a proposal we are working on. By having this separation, I can more focus my attention to my needs at that time. Of course you could always switch over and to your entire follow group.
2. Allow group addressing. By this, I mean allow us to message, directly or not, a group that we have set up. Twitter could really get a foot up on even SMS messaging by allowing this feature. As it stands right now, it is very difficult to blast a direct message out to a group.

How about anyone else. What would be on your holiday Twitter wish list ?

Update 1: I have gotten some suggestions on Twitter. Here are a few:

1. Sorting by name

2. Show images inline

3. Full url’s

T-Mobile Blocks Twitter. Why Would They Want To Do That?

I am no longer a T-Mobile user. I had a Dash until I switched to the iPhone a little while back. But according to some reports, including Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks, T-Mobile has blocked their users from sending Twitter messages, I believe from the SMS route. And customers are non too happy about it. Evidence the chain here on a T-Mobile customer service site.

I found it very interesting some of the comments left there. One in particular was quite ironic:

How can a T-Mobile sign on with Google’s open Android platform and block third party services? Obviously they don’t support open use so my excitement level for Android on T-Mobile has considerably diminished.

How true. Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding, I cannot be sure or speculate. But I do wonder sometimes who sits around and thinks this up. I cant believe for a minute they would consider this as a positive step.

When I was a T-Mobile customer, I was struck by how good their service was. Always spoke to a courteous service rep, which is always better than a computer generated voice telling me to press 1,2 or 3 …. Nonetheless I am struck by the shortsightedness of these decisions. T-Mobile is the small kid on the block in the US. Their network coverage is nowhere near the big 2 of Verizon and AT&T and this is certainly no way to stay in the fight. In order to compete when you are the small guy, you have to make people fight for you, not against you. Decisions like these are counterproductive and will not help their cause.

I mean look, we are in a time when certain forces, to include Google’s Android platform are “forcing” the giants like Verizon and AT&T to open up their networks. Well okay, define open …. but in any case, they see the writing on the wall and are responding in such a way to position themselves better. I think T-Mobile is going to be quite surprised by the backlash they will get from this. They obviously have misjudged the importance of the path to openness and the power of the 140 character burst.

Twitter vs Facebook: Which One Has A Better ROI ?

So in your opinion, which service gives you the most bang for your buck ?

Personally I would have to go with Twitter. I consider myself an early adopter of technology and spend a lot of time on the web checking new things out. I would also say, that like many others like me online, what we find cool one week, has faded from our minds the next week. Here is what I mean.

Typically in that “Honeymoon” period I find sites like Facebook and LinkedIn pretty fascinating. I spend lots of time poking around, joining different groups, immersing myself in the subculture of the site. But after a while my head of steam seems to fade. I cannot quite put my finger on the reason, but like any relationship, the allure fades. That is really what we have with these social networking sites, a relationship. So recently I made my foray into Facebook. I will not say that I have not gotten any return on my investment, I did make some friends and contacts, but for the most part, my focus faded. I noticed that a lot of the groups I was involved with had little to no activity. You would look into the discussion boards, only to find that the last activity had been weeks prior. I posted many topics only to have little to no feedback. On top of it all I found it really annoying to have to drill down into each individual group to see what was going on. I wish there was the ability to have one central location that showed the recent activity across all of your groups (it probably exists I just don’t know about it). Needless to say, I found myself checking back less and less ….

As for Twitter, I am at the other end of the spectrum. I will admit, at first I thought Twitter was a mere fad. Little snippets of text flying through the ether. But I was missing the point, missing the small nuances that make Twitter great. Twitter is so much more. I have found that as far as my investment, my return has been far greater than these other full blown social network sites. I have made the most contacts, kept up more with them, and also been able to use it as a tool to find and release news of note. Who would have thought so much could be done with a mere 140 characters? Best yet, I have do not have to dig through pages to get the relevant information. On my Macbook I user Twitterrific. It sits on my desktop and I see exactly what is going on with the people I follow in real time. Have a question ? Ask it and I guarantee you will have your answer i no time. It keeps me abreast of events in the area I am interested in and also lets me meet people I would not have otherwise had the opportunity to meet. I am working on s small startup venture, and I know it will be an invaluable tool for feedback and spreading the word. Business or personal, Twitter allows you to adapt how you use it on a per tweet basis. One of your tweets may be a friendly hello to your followers and the next a blog post you want the world to read.

I think as Twitter and its users continue to evolve its uses will expand exponentially. Sites like Facebook will become too big, too bulky, while the streamline micro-blogging tools will provide just the right thing to satisfy our never diminishing need for small fast segments of input and output. How many of us scan through thousands of RSS feed items a day only to really read the headline and the 2 sentence description? We rarely actually read the entire article, we have been conditioned to the news snippet and thats what Twitter now affords us. The ability to maintain our networks, social, personal, and business in a 140 character burst.

DC Tech: The Social Times Launch Party

I was fortunate enough to have the time to hit Nick O’Neill’s Social Times launch party. It was held in DC at MCCXXII. I had been following the RSVP list on the eventbrite page, and trust me it was growing. And it showed. There was a lot of people there and I was able to finally get a chance to meet a lot of local DC techies that I had come to know from twitter and the Justin Thorp’s DC Technology Network.

The venue was very cool and we got a chance to see some cool local startups showing their wares. Ann Bernard was there with a demo of WhyGoSolo as was Chris Seline and their cool social search site Searchles. They were also showing some cool new video features they are bringing.

Like I said, there was a great turnout. Small crowds were everywhere mingling and talking tech .. and some other stuff I guess. I wish there was more time to continue to put the actual faces with the ones we see on twitter and the like.

Overall I think it was a huge success. Congrats Nick and good luck with The Social Times. And good luck to the companies there to demo their products.

I got a few pics and they will be forthcoming. Check back here or on the DC Technology Network.

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Tags: DCTech, technology, startups, social times, the social times

Lets Support Our Local Startup Mixx

Many of you have seen a couple of my blog posts on the local startup Mixx.  It is a new and very cool social bookmarking site that has been recently featured on Techcrunch as a possible successor to Digg.

Well now they need the local DC Tech communities help !  I was messaged by Marc Benton last week about the Open Web Awards over at Mashable.  Mixx is featured in the Favorite Social News site.  I think all of us here who are trying to build that special tech community here in the DC area should be proud of any local startups and we need to support them as much as we can. 

So please head over to the poll HERE and give the gus over at Mixx your support with a vote.

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Tags: mixx, dc tecgh, startups, mashable

LA Times Gets In The Mixx

Our very own DC area startup, Mixx from VA, has patnered with the LA Times according to this report from VentureBeat.  Mixx will be used on the LA Times online site in much the same fashion Digg has been integrated into other newspaper sites.  The post also references the fact that teh LA Times has invested an undisclosed amount into Mixx as well.

There do seem to be some naysyaers out there, evidence this post from Mathew Ingram.  While he says he likes the look of MIxx, he is not sure of the reasoning behind it and if the move makes sense.

Hopefully this type of transaction gets a little more mojo going in the area for our other talented start ups out there.

Congrats Mixx, keep up the great work and good luck.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Mixx, technology, washingtondc, dc, LA Times

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