Archives for January 2011

Facebook Tips – Tagging best practices and etiquette (Video)

January 10, 2011 by Joe Hackman 45 Comments

I recorded this video to show people how to use the relatively simple tagging function on Facebook. I also explain more in depth in the video some of the etiquette involved with tagging people and pages. This is a great introduction to the feature if you are unsure how to use it or are looking for a starting point on etiquette.

What would you like to see?

Do you have any Facebook related topics that you’d like to see a video of? Please let me know and I will try to include it in this series.

Mentioned in this video/post @Lifehacker and @Shonali

Episode summary Interview the Interviewer Episode 1 – Adriel Hampton (Podcast)

January 6, 2011 by Joe Hackman 2 Comments

This is a new monthly feature on my podcast where I will be interviewing “interviewers” in this case Gov2.0 Podcast host Adriel Hampton. Adriel is a passionate advocate for harnessing emerging technologies to make government more effective, collaborative and transparent. He is an early Gov 2.0 adopter and co-founded the popular public interest podcast Gov 2.0 Radio. In addition to producing the weekly show, Adriel is a community leader at GovLoop.com, the social network for government, and group manager for the LinkedIn Gov 2.0 group and its more than 4,500 members. Since 2005, Adriel has worked as an investigator for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, and he began his career as an editor, designer and writer for several San Francisco Bay Area daily newspapers. In 2009, he ran a grassroots campaign for U.S. Congress.

Highlights

What can you expect by listening to this podcast?:

Insights from one of the top people in the Gov 2.0 Space
Twitter and Social media tips
Where Adriel finds time to Tweet (hint – he commutes on public transit)
Some social media book opinions
Social media in relation to political campaigns (Adriel ran for Congress in 2009)

Listen to Interview the Interviewer Episode #1:

[audio:http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joehackman/2010/12/30/interview-the-interviewer-episode-1–adriel-hampto.mp3?localembed=download]

Adriel Quotables:

Regarding his 2009 campaign for Congress

“I got more Twitter followers than I got votes.“

Defining Gov 2.0

“Basically Gov 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 tools and principles in government.“

On the disconnect between government and citizens

“We are the government, it doesn’t matter if you work for government or are a tax payer, or an immigrant to the country. Everybody makes up a democratic governance structure.“

Find Adriel Hampton online

On Twitter @adrielhampton
His blog adrielhampton.com

Listeners, who should I interview next?

Why 2011 may be the Year of Privacy

January 4, 2011 by Joe Hackman 4 Comments

As we roll into our 14th year here at Managed Solutions taking stock of the last 14 years many trends have dominated our priority list. In 2010 the focus was extending the life of under-maintained hardware, Cloud Computing and Security. Signs are pointing to privacy being a very relevant issue for 2011. The Wall Street Journal really started the ball rolling with their privacy series in 2010. That really set the tone with many consumers learning and becoming much more concerned about their data privacy. Also it seems like everywhere you looked in 2010 Facebook was being criticized for their at times what appeared to be utter contempt for the privacy of their users. See also “Frustrated by the new Facebook groups? So am I, and something you can do.” on amplify for some additional discussion on that.

Photo credit Opensourceway, Creative Commons

Spokeo.com got “spinsucked”

Gini Dietrich posted a great article this week that struck a chord with the readers. It’s been viewed, shared and commented on heavily since it came out. The post was about “Deleting Your Spokeo Profile” and it detailed what information could be found on Spokeo.com and how to delete the profile. I thought based on the comments that it was worthy of a screencast so I recorded it and shared it with Gini. You can view it on Youtube. At one point Spokeo was not able to process requests, so I joked with her on her blog that there is a new /. in town and that spokeo had gotten “spinsucked” so henceforth that will be my story, and I will stick to it.

As further proof that this issue really resonated with many of us, I had one person completely disconnected from the matter ask me on Facebook last night if I had “heard of Spokeo” at that point I realized this was really circulating far and wide.

Learning from the debate

Some debates did come up over the spinsucks post, here were the opposition arguments to removing your profile from spokeo:

There are many other sites that mirror the same data
They are probably harvesting the required email address to sell
The information is public domain only, readily available

One less site is better

In response to argument #1, one less site is certainly better is it not? Not to mention Spokeo actually did a bang up job of getting a lot more data than other sites seem to have to offer. I’d rather not be listed there.

Avoid the harvest

Avoiding the email harvesting concept is easy, you should use either an alias that can be tracked and later deleted or a “junk” email that is only checked in these circumstances.

The information is public domain only

I don’t think this is the case, it appears that Spokeo has found or paid for some really unique data or at least their paid for service touts that. If it is all public domain it’s usually not in one place. If someone is going to go after it, let’s make them work for it, does that sound like a decent strategy?

What does it mean?

I think these developments solidify the position that 2011 is the year of privacy, why? We know now, and we care, and we’re reading and watching and opting out to the tune of disabling a website. Our current privacy laws are not reacting fast enough for the changes in this digital world. This disparity is creating a vacuum that will be filled one way or another.

What happen’s next? Predictions

So the question is do the companies that are gathering this information and making it available cave from the pressure cooker that is likely to develop from consumers this year? Does the government step in and pass new privacy legislation more geared to our digital and interconnected age? Or does a group of entrepreneurs put together a service that opts out and erases data that can be masked, opts you out of junk mail and create an opportunistic menu of other privacy features?

I’ll be talking privacy a lot more this year and making it a priority to educate and discuss both here on Managed Solutions and also on my blog. Please join the conversation and share your thoughts. The most compelling comments will be added to the post and the authors cited. Or perhaps you’d like to guest post about this, if so please contact me.

How to use Tagxedo to embed a cool tag cloud on your Blog

January 3, 2011 by Joe Hackman 5 Comments

Have you tried Tagxedo? It’s a pretty nifty little app I spotted on @liendi11’s Amplog recently. While playing around with it I realized that it was more difficult to get the clouds to work in WordPress than one would think so when I found a way to get it to work I also created a video to explain it. The method that I demonstrate shows you how to create a tagxedo cloud that is usable in both pages, posts and even as a widget. The main thing that needs to be modified is the size of the iframe code that is provided in the tagxedo code snippet. Here is the video followed by a live example of the tag cloud.

In the live example of a Tagxedo Tag cloud below you’ll note that all of the links go to the default function in the setup – a Google search page. Ideally a blog specific search should be used. I’d imagine someone will get creative and port it to a WordPress plugin before too long but until now you can see the possibilities. (Note: If you click the tags it will take you off my site and to Google search, apologies I should have adapted it to my site search!)