Yesterday I attended my first unconference since being back in Vancouver. Since it wasn't really a topic at the top of my priority list and most of my closer colleagues and friends were not attending, it gave me the opportunity to re-examine the art of live blogging / tweeting / shouting an event.

Since the rise of social media over the past five years, many look to these “live reports” from participants to give a next to live view of what is happening or if any significant announcements are being made. The form of course can be as a full blog post on a hosted site or short bursts or “tweets” using Twitter or the many similar status updating services.

Over the past year, newcomer Foursquare is making impressive roads into the “update” forum through the iPhone and other smartphones… but as a service, it's focus is more primarily on WHERE the updates are being made and not so much on what you are doing. Thoughts and muses, something which has been the focus of Twitter and other services, doesn't seem quite in place there even though a “Shout” feature allows a generic short update no different in any way than a regular tweet.

So SHOULD someone use this when sharing live information from an event or conference?

My initial feeling right now is that it shouldn't. The interface on the iPhone and website for Foursquare really does on the location in every possible way and it is much more difficult to follow the flow of “thoughts” of your contacts, other than their new badges earned or another mayorship they took over from another unsuspecting soul. “Gamish” things followers looking for inspiration don't find very much inspiration in.

I would love to see someone come forward as the poster child of “LiveShouting” of an event. Let's keep our eye SXSW.

Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: foursquare, posting, posts, Twitter

This past week Google introduced a new social media service no one saw coming – Google Buzz.  Labeled as the new “Twitter Killer”, thousands of tech enthusiasts buzzed, rebuzzed and commented on each other’s buzzes on how this was something new, fantastic and MUCH better than any other social media service has ever been before. Yah, not quite.

The whole experience reminded me of another “tech frenzy” which occurred in early 2008. Tech Star Kevin Rose had introduced Pownce, a new micro blogging service with features far superior to anything else (at the time Twitter and Jaiku).  It could do links to audio and video, allow for easier conversations, less noise, etc. etc. Sound familiar? While the promise was there, Pownce quietly shut the doors at the end of 2008. Twitter had won.

Granted, this time around a much heavier player is involved – Google. With a large portion of the North American market using Gmail as their de facto email client, it seemed for many a “closer fit” to do what many don’t realize is already being done in other services for quite some time (the most  similar being Friendfeed).  The “instant engagement” factor dazzle many people and soon the day slips away as every single sneeze from recognized names is being liked and commented on.

I don’t like it. Not so much for the form it has taken, but more because it is not where most of MY engagement takes place. It totally makes sense if the big tech names such as Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte, or Loic LeMeur LOVE this platform… it works best for them. They can cough on their keyboards and 65 people from all over the world will ask them if they are OK within seconds. For me, Facebook is my present place of choice where colleagues, friends and relatives comment on my sneezes – and I appreciate that. Oh, I’ll broadcast those sneezes out to the rest of the services through Ping.fm (including Google Buzz) and will attract individual engagement here and there, but it’s not the same. Interesting but different.

I like it when companies like Google push the envelope and try to make present technology better or more integrated. They’re not evil. I’m just a little bit more cautious and cynical when I read comments like “I’m with Scoble. I’m going to do exactly what he does”… for no better reason than, well, Scoble says so.  The only words that come to mind are – TECHSHEEP. Hate ‘em, hate ‘em hate ‘em!

But back to Buzz… my feeling is it will by a part of many people’s  (and company’s) online strategy but in and of itself, it’s not really a game changer. Already the best use I’ve seen so far  has been by Pete Cashmore of Mashable getting feedback for stories being written, which totally makes sense since his blog’s constituency is Social Media. No “follow me because I say”. Just simple “Our writer’s are working on this story. What do you think?” kind of stuff. Totally gets my admiration and respect.

What are your thoughts? Being a “Buzzard” is game changing or just another social media brick in the wall?

Cheers.

Technorati Tags: Buzz, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google Buzz, Jaiku, Kevin Rose, Mashable, Pownce, Robert Scoble, Scoble, social media, Twitter

In 2007 when we left Canada to live in Japan, one of the LEAST things I  worried about was staying connected. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr… all were in place to keep a nice little “scattered” journal of my adventures around the world. Surprisingly enough, the application I turned to the most for the GREATEST connectivity were none of these… it was Skype. No, NOT the free audio or video  calls. It was the GROUP CHAT.

I created what was known then as a Public Chat Group. This allowed me to bring people in, encourage discussion (usually about technology) and moderate anyone who became overly obnoxious or belligerent to the others (yes, very much like a kindergarten teacher). I learned a lot about building communities online during that time and my reward was the friendship with many fantastic people around the world (not to mention a few new clients and opportunities along the way as well!).

The following year I continued my expansion with Skype, particularly with the Japanese Expat community in Tokyo and Nagoya. I started the TechTalkJapan Public Chat Group which later changed to JapanTechTalk and subsequently spawned into a weekly live podcast.

In 2009, I backed off of Skype…  for whatever reason. Twitter was now the tool of the geekorati and there seemed to be so many other ways to collaborate online, especially with the new iPhone and the plethora of cool apps being introduced. Skype just seemed to be, well, old skool.

Now a new calendar is hanging on the wall and I venture back to the Skype waters… to be shocked and shaken. Public Groups no longer exist on Skype! What??!!!

How this “little change” went unnoticed was in the version of Skype I was using (on Windows, yes – stop the booing and hissing). Even though I had purchased a new computer midway through last year, the version of Skype which came bundled with my Japanese EeePC was 3.5 and I never bothered to look. The major changes came with version 4.0 which was released a year ago! Talk about being left out of the loop. Since Skype hasn’t disabled any features from earlier versions, there really is no way of knowing this unless you are one of those people who always look for the latest beta versions coming out. I guess I’m just getting too spoiled with the iPhone which tells me automatically when a new version is ready to download.

What does this mean for online community collaboration with Skype? Well it doesn’t really kill it since the groups are still there and accessible. Most of the moderator tools have now been hidden in /get commands (ya, not big fan of that move).  A direct link to invite people can still be generated with the command /get uri but the NEW URL produced starts with skype?chat.. and not http:// , so shortening it with services such as bit.ly is impossible. Another scratch your head in amazement  move.

As long time pacificIT Chat participant Dan York noted, Skype is still the preferred chat client of choice for most people. In fact, I would say with the upcoming iPad most people will now be looking at Skype as the de facto way of using the device for video chatting – so the future is looking blindingly bright for the company.

Regardless of these surprises, my strategy for 2010 is to return to Skype and to fully utilize it to connect with friends, family and clients around the world. I just hope if more major changes like these come down the pipe this year, someone will send me the memo.

Technorati Tags: Dan York, pacificIT, pacificIT Chat, skype

Very interesting find lately has been PingTags, a recently released service by Squarepush.

QR Tags are scan codes the size of a postage stamp and are all the rage in Japan and other parts of the world. Most North Americans simply scratch their heads and say, “Didn’t I see one of those on a Scoble t-shirt or something?”

PingTags attempts to remedy this by making them useful with familiar tools such as LinkedIn and your mobile device such as the iPhone. Simply log in with your LinkeIn credentials, grab the blocky scan, place it on your website, then wait for people to scan it.

For the scanning visitor, the link appearing from the code will lead to a nicely formatted front door to scan owner’s LinkedIn profile. For the scan owner, the visit can be logged with the usual analytics information such as IP address, type of device visiting (iPhone, Blackberry, desktop, etc.) which links were visited and an EXACT location of the visitor, if they chose to reveal it during their visit.

I don’t think there’s anything evil behind it so the technology pretty well does what it should without compromising anyone.

Will this lead to more traffic from QR happy Japan? Sure… if you’re site can be read in Japanese, of course.

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: analytics, Blackberry, iPhone, Japan, LinkedIn, PingTags, QR Code, Scoble

Technorati Tags: Cartoon, Comic, Facebook, foursquare, humur, location, Technology, Twitter