Wordle.net

I’ve never been into sloppy Tag Clouds. They always seem to be organized, but really not usable. They might look cool, but I never use them to actually navigate someones site. Really, that’s too bad as tagging is a great way to actually help your readers know what you’re talking about.

Thanks to Pat Coyle for the heads up about this link. It is a site that creates a cloud or a visual representation based on indexing your site. It isn’t about tagging or having you organize anything. It is just a visual representation on what you talk about. That is what tag clouds are really. A display on what you talk about, not really a mode of navigation. I like this better as it is indexing and pulling out the topics you talk about on a regular basis, not just 10 tags or so that you use a lot. Go ahead, make your own Wordle. It’s a pretty cool Java app. If you’re on a Mac, use Safari instead of FireFox or Flock. Just a heads up. Leave me a comment with a link to your own Wordle, I would love to see them.

ShareThis

I found about a cool site through a ’round about way. @richjoslin posted a link to a design blog in a FriendFeed room “Web Design, The Good The Bad, The Ugly”. The design blog is called Cult Foo. They have a compliation of a bunch of different sites to check out. If you have 1/2 hour to kill, check it out (the tag cloud, literally, on the top with the fixed position and use of .png transparency is a nice touch). One of the site on there is what inspired me to write this post - Digiguru.

Digiguru is the blog/portfolio site for Craig Jaimeson in South Africa, a flash and front end designer. The site that he created is a full flash one with a clean calendar interface. It has several nice touches including Full Screen, permalinks using SWFAdress and smooth transitions. The site functions well, and allows him to create large graphics to convey his message instead of typing a bunch of paragraphs. I like this approach because if he doesn’t want to write a large dissertation, he doesn’t have to. That is where I feel blogging is difficult, writing something that matters. This is a simple way to convey a message, and if you need to add some text so you understand what the message is, so be it.

I would love to see is some sort of further organizing on the site. Either a tag cloud or even a stream of titles of posts so you know what some context the content is about. There aren’t any room for comments. This might be a tough thing to handle, but I think a timeline, or some way to inject two way communication would be spot on.

I would love to see if this could be an open source project. Now that would be cool. Be able to distribute this as a blogging engine/presentation engine… hell, I would even pay some cash for it. Not a ton, under $50, but if he’s looking to recoup his investment.

Let me know of other sites that have inspired you, as I’m always on the lookout.

ShareThis

I still need to pick up his book which was recommended to me by David at Substance.

This is a space that I continue to look at for inspiration. A lot of the social networks and social sites that have been built out have been built with development in mind, but the experience or UI is secondary. How will people use the cutting edge functionality that your company has invested in if your design and UI was the last thing that you looked at, and didn’t invest really any money or time in… that is a bridge that a lot of people like to cross after they have gone live with their site. I think this is a mistake. In this day in age, there are so many sites out there, first to market IS extremely important, but having your users understand how to use it is equally important. If you turn people off once they get there, you’ll have a hard time with them being a regular user. Then your competitive advantage is wasted because you will have to rehaul your design and relaunch.

This approach is how we are looking at iamatrailblazersfan.com v2.0. We’re bringing in a lot of new features, so our UI and design needed to be really solid to support these features and to make it easy for people. The team at Substance has been amazing and I’m really excited to bring their designs to life over the summer. We will learn a lot once we get live, but if we just went with some generic skins, the Trail Blazers brand wouldn’t sing in the site and fans would become frustrated. We will of course need to change, evolve and learn once we go live, that is inevitable. BUT, because we took the extra time with the UI, I believe (and the focus groups we’ve held believe) that this will a design that will support the community.

Tags: socialnetworks, iamatrailblazersfan.com, substance

ShareThis

Well, fast forward two years and I’ve found a void in my life - listening to NEW music. I find it really, really hard to find new music that I instantly like. I think it is really difficult to find music that you haven’t heard before, but have it relevant to you. The closest has been listening to Pandora and Last.FM. I LOVE Pandora, and I LIKE last.fm, however I still think that I find myself hearing a lot of music that either doesn’t hit the nail on the head, or hearing songs in which I like. But they’re songs I’ve heard.

Re-enter 3hive.com. On a whim today I went to check out the site today. Wow, I miss going there on a regular basis. I listened to a hip-hop producer today that goes by Rench. Here is the write-up. Bluegrass vs Hip-Hop (the album is called Gangstagrass, download it here). There was a song awhile ago by Aesop Rock f. Slug called I’ll Be Ok that uses a bluegrass harmonica to help with the casual hip-hop beats. This takes it a step further. Heavy sampling of country, bluegrass with fiddles and hits it with some solid lyrics. Is it my new fave, perhaps. Probably not. But the fact that it is something NEW and I would never have heard about it if it weren’t for 3hive. Another Northern Cali group, Meanest Man Contest is on there as well. I’ve been listening to “I Was Only Kidding.” Great spring, summer chill song.

This is why radio will die in the long run. They simply don’t have the flexible inventory to be tailored made for me. All the music stations currently in Portland get little to no listening by me. Why, 99% of their songs are irrelavant to me. I then listen to talk, NPR and talk radio. Seriously, I want to listen to new music on the radio and some side channel HD station isn’t going to cut it. It is still linear. It isn’t based on my preferences. Satelite radio has more options, but I find that to run into the same problem. Lack of flexibility to tailor make their product to you. And on the internet, that is what you get, exposure to new music that usually hits that nail. << I think that was a 2 Live Crew Song.

If you have a favorite online site, let me know, I would love to hear about it. Maybe I’ve heard about it, but maybe it’ll help find bands like Rench, Meanest Man Contest, Loot Pack and others I’ve found thanks to 3hive.com.

Tags: new, music, hip-hop, blogs

ShareThis

Mike Arrington talks about a company that he has seen that could be diving into waters that Facebook and MySpace have yet to fully embrace, Mobile Social Networking. Yes, there are mobile version of both of these sites, but neither harness the power of your mobile phone.

The mobile phone is an amazing device that continues to get crazy cooler as the months go by. Not once have I ever regretted waiting in line and dropping cash on my iphone. There are few things these days that I at least don’t double guess myself from purchasing later (ahem, Netflix… at times). Back to my point… mobile phones are no longer your phone, they are your microcomputer. You can do a run a ton of apps on your smartphone that eliminate having to use your laptop. So this is quickly becoming a replacement in someways, and in others an augmentation to people’s digital experience (web, video, photos email).

If you have this microcomputer everywhere, why not have your web experience be in relation to where you are at. You see more and more mobile phones tying in GPS (Boost does this, iPhones Google Maps has a triangulation feature). Having contextual information of the people that you are having online relationships while you are interacting physically. Arrington’s thoughts:

Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

So picture being in arena at a Trail Blazers game and you fire up your iPhone. You are able to do a multitude of things on your phone, watch instant replays from different angles than what was on the big screen, get coupons for the merch store, and firing up your social network to see who in the arena is there that night. A map comes up  and shows all your friends’ thumbnails and where they’re sitting in relation to you…  so you can say “hey”! You could also see in general others at the game that you might not have met yet, or the guy who sits next to you that you’ve become friends with is on iamatrailblazersfan.com, but you never knew.

The game operations people can see use this to create a better experience based on the psychographics of the people in the arena that night. A snapshot of tonight’s crowd might say that 85% of the people sitting there that night are fans of Jay-Z, so they’ll play more Jay-Z that night. All of this could be possible.

It sounds like Arrington saw a start-up that is harnessing the iPhone SDK to make this happen. I’m really excited to see what happens. I really think this could be an awesome addition to existing social networks for Facebook, LinkedIN, MySpace, Flickr and also niche sites like our iamatrailblazersfan.com or MyColts.net.

Having something like this only available for one phone is a problem. It would need to be cross carrier/cross model. Alas, that is a problem with our system in the states, standardization is lousy on mobile phones. That’s for another post.

ShareThis

ShareThis

1) Passion - I was on a panel today with Paul Colligan at Searchfest 2008, and he has passion for what he does. He has several podcasts and is a person neck deep in social media/web 2.0. If you ever get a chance to pick his brain about all things in the Web 2.0 space, do it. I will blog tomorrow about the presentation.

2) Over-reaction. Wow, there was a TON of buzz on Techmeme and blogs throughout the internet about the SWSX interview of Mark Zuckerberg (founder/CEO of Facebook) and internet reporter Sarah Lacy. People were just SLAMMING her on the blogs and in the audience at this session of SXSW. I’ve linked to the video from allfacebook.com. I guess after all the hype, I was disappointed as she didn’t do that bad of a job. She kept it casual and tried to have a conversation with Mark. She obviously has a past and tried to showcase some of those stories. Yes, she does a lot of self-promotion of her book, and no, she doesn’t get extremely technical… but by no means deserved the rousing she got. Someone in the audience heckled her for asking bad questions and then turned around and asked the most generic question in the world “What is the biggest obstacle to Facebook”. That’s like asking a band your interviewing, who their musical influences are. If you know who your subject is, you won’t find out anything new, therefor it is a question just to ask one.

She could’ve improved this interview if she would’ve had some specific direction on where she wanted to take it, rather than a fire-side chat with Mark. That I think would have shaped up better.

** UPDATE ** WordPress makes it way too hard to post video on your blog. Seriously, I wanted to embed the flash video from Viddler and it is taking too much time to hunt around for a plugin. I don’t freaking care that WP is “protecting” us. Thanks, I’ll start looking for another platform. In Blogger I could work on html in my posts. This is retarded, and no, it isn’t user error. I’ve been searching for 1/2 an hour and this looks like a common issue. Poop on WP today.

** UPDATE #2 ** Scoble has blogged about the Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg interview. Pretty solid post (as usual from Scoble). Great point by him… know your audience. She didn’t, and therefor went in directions that they didn’t like. Of course, unlike what these people are used to, they couldn’t just go to another site, they were “stuck” there in person. Also, after consideration, there is a way to handle heckelers and that was not the way. Either don’t acknowledge them, or have a solid comeback. She did neither. Having been in radio where most interviews are live, I’ve seen my fair share of really bad interviews, and this my friends, wasn’t THAT bad of an interview.

ShareThis

So, I’m in San Diego at PacNET, our ticketing provider’s (Paciolan) annual conference. I’ll be presenting about Web 2.oh and how we’ve been using it at the Trail Blazers. PLUS, I’ll be talking about SEM (we’ve done a little of that) and multi-media with your websites (we do that too!). I think I’m going to be tired of talking, and if you know me, you know that doesn’t happen often.

Another sweet ass conference is in New York right now… Sports Marketing Web 2.0 conference. My colleague, Pat Coyle has put this together to bring the people who bring sports marketing onling… all in NYC. This is a series of conferences that we’ll all be trying to put on over the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait to be able to attend one (I’m in San Diego for PacNET, read the paragraph above)… so I’ll have to wait until March. It’s a bunch of guys and girls from sport teams (most of them pro teams) and talk about the good and bad things that are going on in our world. We’re shooting for one to be in San Francisco in March. Who wants to go? If you are interested in this space, let me know, I can invite you to the Sports Marketing Web 2.0 social network. Yes, the guys who like to develop social networks have a social network. It’s like putting a mirror up to a mirror that reflects that mirror into a mirrrr….. ahhh my brain broke.

I’ll be speaking at an Internet Strategy Forum on February 20th… we’ll be talking about what clients want out of agencies. And I’ve seen both sides so I’ll have to change order myself when scope creep sets in… wait, isn’t that supposed to happen in private? I’ll also be presenting at SEMPDX, SearchFest 2008 on March 10th. I did it last year and loved it. This year it’ll be at the Portland Zoo! Sweet ASS! Should be fun. I’ll have an update as we get closer.

Oh yeah, Jack has a new video up. He’s dope.

ShareThis

This year, we started with a formal meeting where all the teams representatives hung in their own little groups and talked amongst themselves. It was cool cause in our little huddle was Greg. As in Greg Oden. He came down to be on a panel with some of the all time greats (Dr. J, Bill Walton) more on that to come. Also in the crowd was Amhad Rashad (go DUCKS).

I was introduced to Bill Walton. He’s just as tall in person as you expect, and is extremely cool. Seriously, he looked me in the face and said, what you guys have in Portland is great. We had something special in 1977 and what is going on now is amazing.

The Trail Blazers group gathered into cabs and headed to South Beach where we had an AMAZING dinner at WISH. Todd Oldham did the design… cool, you know it. Then headed to Mangos. Crazy good looking Puertoricans were dancing on the the bar. It was a good time by our group, some hung longer than others, but all in all, it was a good night for the first night of the meetings.

You might be asking yourself,  what the hell goes on there? Well, we’ll do a lot of different seminars in our own respective field. I will be going to Database Marketing, Marketing, Ticket Sales and Retention. Ther are community outreach, player development, public relations and other seminars that go on. I think these meetings hold a lot of water when it comes to brainstorming and furthering ideas for the teams and the league.

One topic will be one that is close to home, social networks. We don’t have the solution for social networking, but no one does. That is the beauty. Do we have the best website out there. No. But no one does. Seriously. Everyone should improve their sites and their interaction… and that is why we are here to discuss and refine. In addition to talking through what these sites can be, we are relaunching our social network, to strive for more. To strive for better. Fans deserve it. Our team deserves it. The internet deserves it. That sounds boisterous, or extremist, but you need to push to do better. Seriously.

I will try to twitter during the meetings… and maybe blog. I know, they’ve been rare. But I will make an effort.

Oh yeah, my little boy (Jack) is getting all growns up. Check out “Jack Lives Here”. He’s started to pull himself up. Crap, that means he’s about to walk.

ShareThis

1) We took on the interactive marketing for the Rose Quarter. This is no small feat as there are a lot of events that go on at the Rose Quarter.

2) Upped our coverage of the team in the off-season (Jim Taylor, BlazersEvangelist, traveled to New York and Las Vegas to cover the draft and summer league)

3) Brought in a new email marketing tool, Eloqua. This tool has some really remarkable features including a good integration to CRM and automated work-flows for drip marketing campaigns.

4) Greg got hurt. This one was tough since there was so much buzz about all the guys coming back early and playing together. Greg doesn’t get out on the court, but we will cover his comeback (video features of his rebhab, checkins with the trainers etc) and will be able to involve him more than if he was playing.

5) Launched our new season campaign titled “Rise With Us”. Pretty cool in that it goes beyond the organization. We will be placing cameras in the hands of the players, fans, employees to show what it means to be a part of this team. We should capture some really exciting footage of locker room talks, fans getting ready for the games, players on the road. I’m excited to see some of the stories unfold. More about Rise With Us in a future blog post.

6) Make It Better. This is relaunch for our Community Outreach program. We are launching this today and is to show how the whole organization “Makes It Better”. I think it is really cool all the work that the employees here take part in on a weekly basis. From the weekly projects in the summer to the larger projects during the season. One of those large in-season events is coming up on Monday next week (Harvest Dinner). We will be feeding over 5,000 homeless people here at the Rose Garden. The players get involved and man the food line, I think this year I’ll be helping with haircuts. I doubt I’ll be giving haircuts, that duty ended in college… probably helping with crowd control.

7) Upcoming Greg Oden Bobblehead night (Friday, November 9) and 90 & 92 Heritage night with Drexler, Porter, Williams, Duckworth and Kersey (Tuesday, November 13).

I don’t want to turn this into a promotion of all the events the Trail Blazers have coming up. More of, wow… there is a lot of work that has been done here at the organization… and still a lot more to come.

Iamatrailblazersfan.com continues to grow (over 8,500 members) and will be working on getting more this season. This is going to be a focus of mine in the next couple of months on how we can improve involvement in the social network. I will save all my current thoughts about social networking in upcoming posts, but they include: Facebook (I’ve found really good value so far with FB), LinkedIn (Is this like collecting baseball cards?), Twitter (one of the reasons I haven’t blogged in awhile), blogs in general, and finally Google’s announcement to Open Social.

ShareThis