Community Guy – Jake McKee

Off to Denmark

I’m off to Denmark again. It’s a long weekend, with Monday being a day off – which means I’m working. It’s funny how many long weekends I’ve NOT had in the last 5 years. Oh well, that’s the job. I work with the enthusiasts don’t.

I know posting has been light lately, due to the launch of the new BlogFusion 4.0 I’ve been working on. I’ll get back into the swing of posting soon, now that BlogFusion has launched and seems to be running quite nicely!

See you next week.

ME 103

XM Radio has launched a new channel – ME 103. The idea being that users program the content. They’re running a contest to find a person? People? to come in and run the station for a day. They’re even letting you bring 3 friends with you.

Not sure what happens after the contest though.

Lost Productivity

Alright, enough is enough. If I hear one more thing about the $627 million of lost productivity due to the Star Wars movie release, I’m going to scream.

Lost productivity is an assumption anyway, but in this case, it’s the wrong thing to focus on. The media, in their desire to negatize absolutely everything for a juicier story, are creating a story where none exists.

The fact is, we may be “losing” $627 million today, but how much was more money was earned (via increased productivity) all week, perhaps all month, while fans and non-fans alike got all excited about today? It’s pretty obvious that happy employees make better, more productive employees, right? So why not research that number too? Wouldn’t it be great if a loss of $627m today was oftset by a gain of $2 billion or something over the course of the week?

And by the way, I’ve been working my tail off this week so that I can take the afternoon off to go stand in line to get a great seat for the movie this evening.

I’m slow….

…in posting that is. The last few weeks, every moment I’ve had away from work has been dedicated to finishing up my ColdFusion-based blogging application, BlogFusion (as well as the help documentation, quick start guides, and the new blogfusion.com site). It’s been a 10 month project, but the new version 4.0 has launched, and I’m really proud of it.

I’ll be posting more soon… but first I need to upgrade this blog to get on the new version!

Inflection Point

Robert Cringley’s newest article is an absoulte must read. The subtitle says it all: This Week Changed the World of High Tech Forever, Though Most of Us Still Don’t Know It.

I tried to recap the article, but since a) it’s so short, and b) it’s packed with three BIG points, it was nearly impossible to grab a representative quote. In summation? Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and Google are all on the verge of some spectacular. Go read!

Podscope – searches audio podcasts

I’m having a hard time believing this one, but apparently, the newly launched Podscope searches the audio content of podcasts for specific keywords. From their FAQs:

What is Podscope?

Podscope is the first search engine that actually allows you to search for spoken words within any audio or video file. We’re starting with podcasts and will be adding all types of multimedia in coming months.

How does it work?

Just like any other search engine. You enter a word or phrase in the input box, and we’ll show you a list of results. By clicking on the (+) sign next to each result, you can select snippets of audio to help you decide whether to listen to the whole podcast or even subscribe. If you know about Search Inside the Book, that’s what we do for audio/video.

No, I mean how does the technology work?

Well, we could tell you, but then we’d have to… Um, magic.

They also have a blog where you can find out more. This service is brought to us by a group called TV Eyes, who:

… makes Radio & TV searchable by keyword, phrase or topic – just as you would use a search engine for text. With a fast growing network of stations monitored worldwide, TVEyes provides the technology and the content.

Good idea

Another good idea from the Idea-a-day.com site.

Idea A Day
Where Ideas Are Free

Welcome to Day 1727

Publish a book containing ‘Second Choice Designs’. The book would contain artists’ impressions of how cities might look had the second placed designer been chosen to create a famous landmark. We would see the Sydney Opera House had J?rn Utzon’s design not been successful and the tower in Central Paris had Gustaf Eiffel been an ‘also ran.’

Blingo – it works!

You’ve heard about Blingo – a wrapper around Google search technology that ads their own ads. When you and your friends sign up and use Blingo as your search engine,  you have a chance to win stuff. And when one of you wins something, you all get the prize. Movie tickets, iPods and more are the prizes.

Skeptical? So was I… until my movie ticket showed up today in the mail. On of my buddies in my Blingo Network won, so that meant I did too.

Blingo uses HollywoodMovieMoney.info (a movie ticket promo company) as their ticket provider, and they have a select number of theaters they work with. But a quick search revealed that any theater i would frequent, including the regular standby, is on the list.

Nice job, Blingo.

So what are you waiting for? Join my network! You’re using Google anyway…

CivicSpace – More doing it right

How many times have you visited a corporate or “official” site and been told nothing but how wonderful the product/service is. There’s no comparison, no discussion of other competitors. In an old school business mindset, that would be craziness. If someone finds out that there’s competition, they might go elsewhere!

News flash: We all know that there’s competition, and there’s always a good chance that we’re not going to use your service.

When vendors call on me, I very often ask them about their competition. Usually this is done towards the end of the sales call, but it’s important to do for one main reason:

It tells me a lot about them as an organization. If they’re respectful of the competition, it’s likely that they’re keeping up, not becoming arrogant. They’re hungry and all around good business people. If it shows in their sales pitch, it’ll show in their product.

I recently came across a corporate Web site that contained the following content under a section called “Similar Products & Solutions”:

The following are companies that provide turnkey hosted ASP solutions that overlap broadly with the capabilities of CivicSpace.

• Kintera


• GetActive


• IStandFor


• DemocracyInAction

In general, the offerings of these companies are most refined and “productized” than the current 0.8.3 version of CivicSpace. For example, if you want to conduct an email-based fundraising campaign with sophisticated tools, in the near-term, you may be best off selecting one of the vendors above.

This was on the corporate site for CivicSpace. As they put it:

CivicSpace is a community organizing process and software platform.

It allows you to build communities online and offline that can communicate effectively, act collectively, and coordinate coherently with a network of other related organizations.

CivicSpace enables bottom-up people-powered campaigns to operate on a more level playing field with more traditional top-down organizations, and, similarly, allows top-down organizations to leverage the power of grassroots organizing.

Amazing – honest and respect for, even suggestions for, the competition. But don’t you want to just jump on board with these guys? Volunteer to help out? To do some beta testing for them?

Talk about doing it right…

(As a side note, I could find no such references on any of those other 4 sites that CivicSpace mentioned)

Darth Vader is blogging

Darth Vader has, apparently, started blogging!

At any rate, the attack on the hidden rebel base began and I had General Veers mount a ground assault. Once his walkers had destroyed the rebel generator I made planetfall and personally supervised our incursion into the base. I must say that the stormtroopers’ new heavy weather gear makes them look very cool. Hats off to Palpatine. (Most people don’t know this but His Excellency designs all of our outerwear personally; he has a real flair for geometry, and a great sense of line.)

Due to Ozzel’s bungling we arrived too late, and the lion’s share of the rebel terrorists had already escaped. I could feel the presence of my son, but he was not at the base. The good news is that as I came into the rebel landing bay I saw the renegade Han Solo escorting the traitor Leia Organa aboard the same Corellian freighter that we captured them in last year. And do you know who else was with them? C-3P0!

Talk about a blast from the past!

I ususally don’t like these types of blogs, but I realized that it’s because most of the time they’re nowhere near as well done as this one. It’s worth spending a few minutes to get into the swing of the voice of the site.