richard mackney

Facebook offer reputation management

I'm not sure when this was introduced, but Facebook popped up a message a few days ago asking me to confirm my mobile phone number. I did, then it asked if I wanted SMS alerts, I do.

I've had a few messages so far, messages to tell me someone has replied to a thread or sent me a mail. But by far the most handy for ORM (online reputation management) is the SMS alert for being tagged In a photo.

Because of this, I've now lifted my embargo on not displaying tagged photos on my profile for fear of one one of 'those' Uni pics appearing!

At least now I have a fighting chance of de-tagging myself fairly rapidly. Still Facebook really should impliment a 'ask me first if I can be tagged' policy, but for now, this will do.

If you know me IRL (in real life) or virtually, feel free to add me as a friend and view my 'approved tag photos' ... http://www.facebook.com/richard.mackney

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Google has found 'some' of your public pages

My Google profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/mackney

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Facebook Fan Page Widget

Facebook have created a "Widgets Centre" where you can create profile badges and widgets for your fan pages or personal profile. Below are widgets for the two fan pages I'm involved with ...

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I've updated my icons/services ... where do you draw the line?

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Hack your twitter badge

It seems I've been messing with adding twitter status updates to web pages for years, in reality I only joined twitter in July08 - however, that's plenty of time to of been hacking around. I currently use FriendFeed on my 'HomePage' which is great as it pulls in all the media images too, but I got asked yesterday by the Brawn GP webmaster if I had a simple snippet of code for a ticker tape twitter feed.

I have two favourites ... the first uses .ASP to pull in any RSS feed and creates a typewriter style news ticker. The second is just a simple hack of the Javascript version provided by twitter and uses the marquee scroll. Both open links in a new window.

I like to call this a 'Twitter Tape' and hopefully, we will see this pop up on the Brawn GP website soon!

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My Travelogue in France

I'm travelling to France with my family. Instead of filling this blog with travel photos I have created a seperate blog for live mobile posting of pics, video and maps.

If you are interested in following me during my trip, you should follow the live blog here ...

http://french-connextion.blogspot.com

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The Ammobox Project

I have been asked if I would be a guest blogger on The Ammobox Project. It's something I have been following for a while and the concept of pre-packaged video equipment used for live video blogging is something I'm keen to get involved with.

You can catch up on my posts here:

Roaming Into France

Mobile blogging with the iPhone

Introducing Richard Mackney

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Mobile Blogging with the iPhone

I'm traveling soon and wanted to make sure I could post to the ammoboxproject while on the move, so this evening I have quickly downloaded and tested four iPhone apps for mobile blogging and sent a test (draft) post with each. I also added a photo from the camera roll to see how the app handles size, upload and position.

Here is a screen grab from the Wordpress app:

It's quite fast and easy to use with folders for local drafts. The photo uploaded straight to the ammobox server and exists in the uploads folder. The app is free and it does everything you would need and even has landscape mode. The only downside I can see so far is that it only supports WordPress ... But it's free!

Here is a screen grab from BlogWriter Lite:

Firstly, it has adverts - but it is the free version (full is £1.19) it supports multiple services such as Blogger, Live Spaces, WordPress and others. Setup was quick to the ammobox blog and it did what I wanted. I couldn't test the photo upload as the lite version doesn't support it. But for some reason it doesn't feel slick and I'm sure the text is blurred?!

Here is a screen grab from iBlogger:

Firstly, this app is £5.99 and that was a real put off for me. It supports most blog services but strangely does not support photo upload to Blogger (yet) it also does not support landscape mode which I feel is a must for mass typing on the iPhone with any speed and accuracy. However, it is slick and is under active development, so buying it now could mean more features in the future.

It has nice support for adding URLs and also a neat button to add a GPS location link. For some reason it would not post a photo to ammobox as it gave a message of 'server busy' each time I tried. The 'text only' test flew up with no problems so this may just be a glitch on the server side.

Here is a screen grab from BlogPress:

As I am writing this post on BlogPress you may of already gathered it is my favourite. At £1.79 it's a steal, it supports multiple services and I have already used it on my own Blogger blog. As you can see from above it allows multiple photos to be added and uploads them to Picasa. I know this won't float everyone's boat, but personally I like my images in an album that might not be on my own server - I think it comes from my flickr addiction.

I'm finding it surprisingly easy to type on the keyboard with two thumbs in lanscape mode - I'm actually finding it easier than my netbook as that has tiny keys that are also difficult to see in the dark (I can't fully touch type) holding the iPhone this way is quite comfortable.

So I'm going to come to a quick conclusion tonight - I will be using BlogPress for a while when mobile blogging and I'll let you know how I get on. If anyone has any experiences with these apps or others, please let me know by leaving a comment below ... I love testing new stuff :)

@richardmackney

-- Post From My iPhone
-- Cross posted to Ammobox Project

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Mobile blogging with BlogPress

I'm just trying out an iPhone app called BlogPress - which links to a number of blogging platforms to blog and post photos direct from the iPhone.

I'm about to add a couple of screen grabs to this post, which should save to Picasa. You can save as a draft or publish and edit ... Hmmm looks like I have already typed too much and now can not scroll down the page to see what I am typing ...

Since I have added the first photo above, I can now scroll down.

It's got great potential, but has a scroll bug that needs to be fixed before it is truely useable.

One thing I will say is that it is extremely fast. Could do with a spell checker though!

-- Post From My iPhone

Update: They have released an update that fixes the scrolling issue :)

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Photoblog, Moblog, Microblog, Vlog ...

I thought I would make a blog post about my experiences with the different types of blogging. So much has developed over 2008 for me and more and more great free online tools are available and getting better.

It used to be that when I wanted to send a mobile pic or a message to my mates I'd use email with GSM data on my mobile phone. The ability to take a photo and send it to multiple recipients in one data push was much more cost effective than using MMS which was running at about 50p per pic per recipient. Then we had the ability to run MSN Messenger on our phones, and again this was a great way to keep in touch when I was out and about. Both of these started to become redundant when i got into flickr.

Photoblogging
In August 2007 flickr and digital SLR's rekindled my love of taking photo's and more importantly sharing my images with others. I wanted to keep up with comments and write comments on the move on my Internet enabled mobile phone/pda and even when in the caravan I could upload new pictures using a laptop and PCMCIA datacard. Flickr also accepted images sent via email from a mobile phone, so these crappy resolution images started to creep into my once immaculate photostream.

Blogging
In 2008 things changed. Firstly I converted all my blog posts dating back to 2002 over to Google Blogger. Originally my blog was a static HTML based site where I hand coded every page locally, but by using the Blogger FTP method I had the best of both worlds. The ability to blog using an online interface with auto save to their own database and the publishing of the files to my own server where they can operate and be backed up even if Blogger is down or goes bust! Having the files on my own server means I can also run my own detailed statistics program and control Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for the whole site.

Moblogging
Also by using the free Google Docs, I can write blog posts offline utilising Google Gears and publish to Blogger once an Internet connection is established. Once online all my Google Docs can be made available to any machine I decide to use; Work, Home, Portable Netbook or Internet cafe.

I found out about Evernote through twitter and this again changed a few ways of working. A small application loaded onto my phone meant I could make voice recordings, notes or instantly upload pictures into the Evernote cloud. With the ability to log on from anywhere, this soon became the place to keep my thoughts for future blogs.

The flickr 'blog this' function has been great as it integrates with Blogger and allows the blogging of a photo easily with all the embed code handled by flickr and Blogger. Blogger is actually set up really well for Mobloging, the mail-to-blogger email address allows posting of a subject, body and attached image. Making it simple to blog with most mobile phones that allow email.

Microblogging or Lifelogging
I had already been frequently updating my status on facebook for a while before I 'found' twitter in July 08 (thanks to @StuartBennett) a lot of things changed for me. I found that I could listen and find out about cutting edge technology and converse with like minded people. It is also a place where uploading pictures and blogging is common place.

Once you get into twitter you then find out about the tools needed to get the best out of it. I had initially installed ceTwit (my ceTwit blog post) onto my PDA for instant notifications of tweets and also the ability to take a photo on my mobile and upload it to twitpic - once a photo is uploaded to twitpic it sends out a tweet with a link. As you could send your tweets to facebook, this also became an alternate way to publish photo links to facebook without having to go through the rigmarole of using MMS.

What I soon came to realise is that facebook is for your friends or people you have met and that they might not necessarily be technoheads. The people that use facebook don't want Internet noise on their news stream. So the link between twitter and facebook was broken.

On the other extreme twitter is all about Internet noise and it's all about learning how to use that noise - and in October 2008 I found TweetDeck (my TweetDeck blog post)

Vlogging
Using twitter is like a fast flowing river, once you jump in you will get swept away with the flow - and along came 12seconds.tv (my 12seconds.tv blog post) I found that I could take 12 seconds of video with my mobile phone, WiFi enabled Sony PSP or laptop webcam and upload it directly or email it to 12seconds.tv at home or on the move, the resulting video would then be tweeted with a link. It's not full on Vlogging, but it's a start and an important first step in getting in front of the camera.

The widescreen and high quality or HD advances in YouTube have really brought it back into the running as a platform and I have started to post more video to it recently. Although search engines don't feature heavily in my blog, it is useful that videos are now appearing in Google search results.

Futurelogging
Technology changes at such a fast pace I get excited when things come out to make blogging and sharing life experiences easier. Tools are constantly developing to handle online flow for work or for just fun. The recent launches of netbooks have opened up the opportunity for me to send my high res SLR images to flickr while on the move. Other free tools such as Google Picasa can even handle my RAW SLR files and convert them to JPEG ready for the flickr uploader, that automatically resizes images before upload so bandwidth shouldn't be too much of a problem. Blogging with the netbook is going to obviously be a lot faster than typing on a screen keyboard in the pda.

I recently got the 3 Mobile Broadband Starter Kit 12GB which lasts for 12 months or until you use 12GB - then you just top-up. This was £97 in total for the dongle (with MicroSD slot) and data (Saving £200 on data charges) and I'll never worry about going over my data allowance and being charged extra. So I hope for more mobile blogs to start appearing during the summer.

I know I have not covered a fraction of the sites I use or even touched on some amazing technology and free tools available so here is a list of sites or services that can easily be utilised for blogging that I have experience with or use on a regular basis. Maybe you should explore them yourself and decide which services would suit your needs ...

http://www.evernote.com

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

http://docs.google.com

Free web-based word processor and spreadsheet, which allow you share and collaborate online. With offline support.

https://www.mesh.com

With Live Mesh, you can synchronize files with all of your devices, so you always have the latest versions handy. Access your files from any device or from the web, easily share them with others, and get notified whenever someone changes a file.

http://www.qik.com

Qik enables you to share your moments live with your friends, family and the world—right from your mobile phone!

http://12seconds.tv

12seconds is the best place online for video status updates. It's a super easy way to share what you're doing with your friends and family using short video clips. You can use your web cam or mobile phone.

http://flickr.com

Flickr - almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.

http://twitpic.com

TwitPic lets you share photos on Twitter.

http://ping.fm

Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.

http://www.blogger.com

We created Blogger to give you an easy way to share your thoughts — about current events, what's going on in your life, or anything else you'd care to discuss — with the world. We've developed a host of features to make blogging as simple and effective as possible.

http://brightkite.com

Brightkite connects people based on the places they visit in the real world. With Brightkite you can see where your friends are, what they’re up to, see what's going on around you, and meet real-world friends.

http://twitterfeed.com

feed your blog to twitter, identi.ca or Ping.fm.

http://tweetburner.com

Tweetburner lets you track what happens with the links you share on Twitter.

http://www.tumblr.com

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be.

http://vimeo.com

Vimeo is a thriving community of people who love to make and share video.

http://seesmic.com

Seesmic provides anyone with an innovative way to communicate and connect online through video conversation. It's so easy: record a video directly on Seesmic's website, mobile phone or upload an existing video straight from your computer or link to a video posted on a social network.

http://bambuser.com

Stream video live from your mobile to the web.

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