Matt’s Cuppa

I am back from what amounted to a two week vacation from the social web. It wasn’t purposeful. I have a day job which is currently taking more than its fair share of my mental energies right now, so by the time I’m home and ready to connect with people it’s time to go to bed so I can do it all again in the morning. So, trying to add a positive spin, I’ve been saying was on a vacation from Twitter– a Twittercation.

The funny part is that, unless you know me, you wouldn’t have guessed I was gone. Between my information-hoarding habits and the wonders of various API’s, my digital life goes on without my intervention. Whoa! I just did a double-take after writing that! My digital life goes on without my  intervention. What does that mean? What are the implications here?

Before I began writing, I checked my Twitter profile to find the last time I actually sent out a tweet. It had to have been ages ago, right? No, my last tweet at time of writing was about 20 hours ago. Huh? Whenever I save an article to my blog at Posterous my blog fires off a message to Twitter about it. It works so well that I don’t even remember that it happens. The same thing happens when I post to CellSpin, or to Utterli, or to Jott, to name just a few. If I bookmark an interesting article via Diigo, it’s posted to my blog here at Matt’s Cuppa.

What is intriguing, and a bit scary, is how little an effort I have to make to keep the gears moving in my digital persona. How much longer will it be before it no longer needs me? After all, what’s my contribution? All I do is provide the content. If I could somehow plug my digital self into my Google Reader, I could just walk away. If you followed me on Twitter, you’d never know that I was gone…  

Tags: twitter, api, social web

Popularity: 16% [?]

• Twitter / rockstarpr

  Bio http://greenwala.com + green + social media + PR + branding

  tags: rockstarpr, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / croncast

  Bio i love my wife, kids, rss and making media.

  tags: croncast, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / weinberg81

  Bio Social Media Hoser (awesome canadian slang…), Jewish Writer & Entrepreneur

  tags: weinberg81, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / GerryRosso

  Bio Social Marketing / Motivation / Health / Cigars

  tags: gerryrosso, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / kateritchie

  Bio news junkie, tea drinker, sports fan

  tags: kateritchie, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / adamcoomes

  Bio Social Media Enthusiast and President of Infegy, creator of the Social Media Monitoring and Insights tool, Social Radar.

  tags: adamcoomes, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / Sing

  Bio brillant / humble techie/ geek web evangelist interested in social networks and network science and digital art and most all technology usually in NYC

  tags: twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / transitenator

  Bio Austrian Blogger

  tags: twitter, tweeple, transitenator

• Twitter / footprint1117

  Bio Trying to cut my carbon footprint

  tags: twitter, tweeple, footprint1117

• Twitter / GeoffLiving

  Bio DC-Based Flack. Author. Baseball Fan. Georgetown alum: Go Hoyas! Personal blog at http://geofflivingston.com

  tags: twitter, tweeple, geoffliving

• Twitter / UstreamTV

  Bio Live Interactive Broadcasting

  tags: ustreamtv, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / davidalston

  Bio VP Marketing @ Radian6 - social media monitoring platform www.radian6.com

  tags: twitter, tweeple, davidalston

• Twitter / twebinars

  Bio Follow this Twitter address to receive updates on the social media summer series with Chris Brogan & Radian6

  tags: twebinars, twitter, tweeple

• Twitter / podcaststeve

  Bio Professional podcaster (really!)

  tags: twitter, tweeple, podcaststeve

• Twitter / jaffejuice

  Bio crayon. Jaffe Juice. Join the Conversation. Life after the 30-second spot

  tags: twitter, tweeple, jaffejuice

• Twitter / SamLawrence

  Bio CMO @Jive Software

  tags: twitter, tweeple, samlawrence

• YouTube - Implementing Drupal

  tags: Shared, Links

Popularity: 20% [?]

Good post. Not only is Web 2.0 getting boring, but at our current pace and with current technology (even hybrid or alternative tech) the Earth can’t sustain us much longer. We need to stop making toys and start making big changes in order to avoid even bigger consequences. That’s not to say that there are not lessons to be learned from the social web. There are, but now we’ve got to start implementing them on a much broader scale.

This manifesto for change comes at an important time, when a recent, but growing trend of Web 2.0 ennui is beginning to strike the citizens of the social media landscape. Even VC Fred Wilson was recently caught wondering if he was “bored with Web 2.0,” saying:

But I am a bit jealous of friends who are working on finding and funding alternative energy or biomedical technologies that have the potential to address the serious problems facing the world. At times it seems that helping the web become more social, intelligent, mobile, and playful is not as impactful.

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com Bored With Web 2.0? Demand Change In April, Umair Haque posted a manifesto on his blog on the Harvard Business Publishing web site where he called for today’s investors and start-ups to start building applications to “change the world” instead of just making apps that make money. He challenged Silicon Valley to find a problem to fix that will change the world for the better and then pledged that he would help by providing free consulting. Recently, he revisited this topic which he was due to speak on at this year’s Supernova conference. In this latest post, a summary of the speech Haque had planned for the conference, he claimed that 21st century capitalism needs a revolution. As businesses focus solely on profits, large part’s of the world’s population still fight extreme poverty. And our wealth, he says, isn’t even sustainable:

Popularity: 17% [?]

Radian6 Twebinars - Game Changing Moves - Doing Business with Social Media

The first in a three part twebinar series. Yep, a twebinar is pretty much what it sounds like.  Notice that we’re in our second generation of social technology here:

Generation 1: seminar + the web = webinar

Generation 2: webinar + Twitter = twebinar

I’ll be in attendance. Send me a friend request to @telecommatt if you’d like to add me to your conversation.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I’ve got some follow up news regarding a few different apps were mentioned previously at Matt’s Cuppa. To begin with, and to my disappointment, I was not chosen to be an Utterz Ambassador, despite submitting my story about the flack I get from certain family members about my Bessie t-shirt.

Even though I was overlooked, (For good reason. Those that were picked are long-time contributors to the Utterz community and will now be given even more of an opportunity to influence the direction of Utterz going forward. Congrats Ambassadors!) I will continue to say great things about Utterz and, like my post title states, I’ll always be an Ambassador in my own mind!

In the meantime, the guys from BooRah are kind enough to keep me informed about new developments on their end. I’ve described BooRah as a restaurant information aggregator, but they are quickly expanding beyond my simplified definition. In a recent email, Nagaraju Bandaru, BooRah’s co-founder and CTO, explained a partnership with BookingAngel that will allow online reservation to some 30,000 restaurants, as well as OpenID support. (<- Good move guys!)

And my last bit of news is that Molly over at Demo Girl came through with an Orgoo invite for me. I’ve already got my tea (an apricot oolong) picked out and a little space cleaned up in the sun on our patio, and I’ll be playing with (er, testing) that this afternoon. Molly, you rock!

Ah, yes, and I’m using this post to play around a little more with Apture, so hover over and click on a few of the links in this post and tell me what you think of Apture vs. traditional hyperlinking.

Popularity: 37% [?]

In my recent eHub post about restaurant review aggregator, BooRah.com, I mention that one of the most difficult things about writing the article was deciding on what I should leave out. I called the website “…the tip of the BooRah iceberg.” Perhaps I should have added that my review touched on only the tip of the tip of the BooRah iceberg. (Maybe that makes it an ice cube instead of an iceberg…)

Talking with Brian and Nagaraju prior to preparing the article was quite different than many of the interviews and demos in which I’ve participated. In speaking with people who operate in the world of “web 2.0″, you inevitably run into a wide spectrum of professionalism. (While that’s true elsewhere as well, I sometimes think that the speed of change on the internet doesn’t always leave time for professionalism in our interactions.) Throughout our communication, there was a general sense that these two weren’t strangers to the business side of Silicon Valley.

This became more apparent as we discussed what BooRah actually was. While a tremendous amount of energy and investment has gone into building BooRah.com, the website is really only BooRah’s public face. The technology behind the face, the semantic aggregation of data that meets particular criteria, is really where the future lies. Our conversation in this direction was naturally limited. There is the whole corporate secrecy thing, and besides that, I would have immediately gotten lost as they tried to explain how exactly BooRah did what it did.

It was explained to me that BooRah definitely has plans to move beyond the bounds of a website. Indeed, they have already made in-roads by establishing partnerships with media producers to incorporate BooRah’s technology into their own sites. And there is no reason that BooRah can’t expand beyond aggregating foodie blogs and restaurant reviews, either. According to Nagaraju, preparations for such an expansion are already underway.

It very evident, and rather refreshing, that BooRah is one “Web 2.0″ startup whose business plan extends beyond being bought out by Google. Although the demo was rather one-sided due to some Skype issues on my end, I was shown a multi-faceted product built on a flexible and future-oriented technology. I was introduced to a team who is able to speak very competently about their business, not just their product. And as an added bonus, I learned a lot about the restaurant scene in Chicago just in time for SOBCon08.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Add Interactive Spots To Your Videos With Veeple « Demo Girl

Anyone remember Pop-Up Video from VH!? With Veeple, you can roll your  own pop-up videos! Actually, this could be a fairly impressive tool for today’s knowledge worker, social activist, or SME. An interactive promo or profile video that could be shared with clients, etc. could be used to shorten ramp-up or team-building times, saving time and money.

unfortunately, although you can embed your video, it doesn’t look like you can download a copy of the video to distribute as something like a business-card CD.

Popularity: 10% [?]

The Top 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs - College Degree.com/http://www.collegedegree.com

Popularity: 11% [?]

twittervision

Wow ~ I just found the Matt’s Cuppa time-waster-of-the-day! I tripped over Twittervision while looking for something entirely different, and I’ve been watching the screen intently for the last 15 minutes.

Twittervision puts your Twitter tweets on the map. Literally. You log in with your Twitter login, password, and your location. It seems like you can be as specific, or not, as you want. Some people are at their street address and some just have their country. I logged in with my postal code.

After you log in, people’s tweets start popping up on the map. First you’re in Italy, then your in Asia, then San Francisco. After a minute or two, I stopped reading the tweets (since many were in languages I don’t know) and I sat back and watched the screen jump all around the world. It’s so fascinating watching this global conversation taking place!

Kudos to the Twittervision developers for taking Twitter and making it real!

Popularity: 11% [?]

I was feeling rather negative after my last post, so I made myself go out and find something out there that’s positive. 

With StickK, you literally draw up a contract that says that you will achieve a given goal. What I like most is that you can wager money that, if you choose, goes to charity if you fail.

stickK.com - Put a contract out on yourself!

Although you don’t really need a web application to create a contract for your goals, as their FAQ’s state:

In a word (make that two words): social psychology. Let’s say you sign
a contract promising to pay a friend a sum of money if you don’t
achieve your goal. Chances are, if you renege on your commitment
contract, your friend won’t take your money, or will be soft on you and
renegotiate the terms of the contract (after all, aren’t friends
supposed to be understanding?). Well, and don’t take this personally,
we’re not your friend. So we hold you to the contract!

A bit harsh perhaps, but probably effective. Anyone out there trying StickK?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Popularity: 18% [?]