Apple’s Ping Handles Privacy Just Right
Posted on | September 2, 2010 | View Comments
With the recent release of the Ping feature in iTunes 10, a new social platform has evolved for music lovers. I love the idea of bringing a social aspect to iTunes, but I’m not yet sold on the interaction with just the store. Why can’t my existing library of CD’s and digital tracks be included in the fun? I think in time the service may expand to include it but it will be interesting to watch initial reactions. Check out this guide for a detailed setup guide.
One thing that I do know for sure is that Apple got the privacy settings right. Recent issues with Buzz and Facebook have been all over the media basically saying that users cannot trust the privacy settings and they are not clear enough. When enabling Ping, users are asked a serious of questions that break it down very clear to users. It’s open, its clear, and its to the point. Kudos to Apple for getting this right where other major players have failed.
The setup for privcacy gives you 2 paths to take and one option. You can ‘Allow people to follow me’ and if so, ‘Require my approval to follow me’. The alternative, nice and clear is ‘Don’t allow people to follow me’. Your required to set these preferences during setup- it doesn’t get much easier or clear cut than that.
Domain and URL SEO Techniques – Using city, state, and street as an example
Posted on | August 30, 2010 | View Comments
TweetDeveloping clean, search friendly domains and URLs is the first thing that you need to look at when developing a site from the ground up. I like to think of the process like it were a geo-specific site. As an example we’ll use Hartford, CT.
I would want my domain to be connecticut.com in this case. This represents our business, our top level domain. In the case you need to abbreviate, you want to make sure you abbreviation is clear and precise (eg: ct.com). Don’t try and come up with something crazy that only you can decipher (eg: cnnect.com). This is a domain not a vanity license plate. Take a look at this article about URL canonicalization (using www. vs not using it)
From there we’ll move to our city. This represents your business channel (if it’s appropriate to break it out and you have the content to populate it). We are looking for hartford.connecticut.com. This makes a clean, clear structure that shows we are looking at data within Hartford, for the State of Connecticut. Some examples may be manfuacturing.ourbusiness.com or research.ourbuisness.com. Only break out these subdomains if your business reflects the same structure and you have enough content to break out into separate entities. It may not make sense for you to do this, and you should take great caution in making this decision. Cross linking between all of your subdomains is also very important to keep your top level domain relevant for each. Search engines will not just pick up on it. More information can be found in this article about SEO and subdomains.
So now we are have our domain structure for a specific channel, hartford.connecticut.com, now it’s time to move on to the rest of the URL. You should be using keywords instead of ID’s or variables being passed. Sticking with the geo reference, now we are looking at http://hartford.connecticut.com/downtown – this is a nice clean structure that is keyword rich. Depending on your sites content, this may be as far as you need to go. For extensive sites, you may have specific content pages that need to be broken down to an even more detailed level. In that case, we’ll do something like this: http://hartford.connecticut.com/downtown/old-main-street
If you can avoid filenames like index.php it results in a much cleaner experience. If developing in PHP, several frameworks can lend a hand in URL re-writing to make clean SEO friendly URLs. My favorite is the Kohana PHP Framework. Keeping a nice clean look for the end user and improve your chances of link backs.
In some cases you may not be able to easily avoid using extra parameters or other application ID’s in your URL, but if you can avoid it the extra time spent may just help improve your search rankings.
Key tips:
- Use a dash (-) instead of an underscore (_)in URLs
- Use keyword rich URLs
- Keep the length to 5 or 6 keywords
How technology has evolved since our soldiers went to Iraq
Posted on | August 26, 2010 | View Comments
Credit: Beverly & Pack @ flickr
A few weeks ago the last combat convoy made its’ way out of Iraq. Our country has been fighting for the last 7 years and I felt it would make for an interesting read to see how technology has evolved and what has popped up in the that time. Below are a few featured items that everyone knows and loves that have come to light in the time our soldiers have been in Iraq. While you’ve certainly used, read, and seen all of the following, it’s a reality check to think about how the world has changed in the last 7 years.
Facebook – 2004
The social networking phenomenon that launched in 2004 has changed the world we live in today. The social network states today it has over 500 million active users. I’m not sure this one needs needs any more elaboration.
Firefox – 2004
While Mozilla existed for a few years, Firefox launched in 2004 as an open source browser available to everyone for free. Firefox changed the way users browsed and developed for the web. It forced web giants like Microsoft to shift more of their focus to the web browser market which led to the advanced web browsers we use today.
YouTube – 2005
Launched in 2005, YouTube is the place for video on the web. It’s difficult to imagine a time when people weren’t watching 2 billion videos a day.
Nintendo Wii – 2006
While our troops were battling for us their children were home playing Call of Duty and Wii Sports. The game console changed the way that kids played video games and opened up a whole new world of fitness strategies.
iPhone – 2007
While iTunes and the iPod are among the biggest changes of our decade, the iPhone has been instrumental in upping the smart phone game. From their innovative touch screen to the simple yet flexible interface the iPhone has been a game changer. At the time the war started, take a look at the phones that were hitting the market.
A successful Twitter customer service experience with @Comcast
Posted on | August 17, 2010 | View Comments
Google ‘twitter for business use’ and you’ll see pages upon pages of best practices and case studies about business’s who use Twitter. Comcast gets it. I had an issue with a remote that the customer service center would not replace for me in person. I tweeted about it and mentioned @comcast along with it. Within minutes, @comcastbill replied and asked a few questions, followed by a DM that asked for my address to ship the remote I needed next day via UPS.
For some reason, the remote that was shipped did not arrive next day. I hopped back on twitter and shouted over to @comcastbill that the remote had not come in. Instead of back tracking his story, putting me on hold, or making excuses; he simply said I won’t waste time digging up what happened. I’ll ship you another remote- here is the tracking number. The original remote actually ended up coming in about 3 days later. Turns out that UPS delivered it to the wrong address and it had to be re-routed.
Being able to make quick decisions without having to bounce back to a manager or supervisor for approval coupled with a quick and effective response was the key to making this service engagement a success. Congratulations Comcast you guys have gotten customer service by social media right!
Pandora watchout, Grooveshark has what your missing
Posted on | August 12, 2010 | View Comments
I stumbled upon Grooveshark today and I am very impressed. As a long time Pandora user and premium service subscriber I’m always pretty happy with the service. All attempts with different streaming services have just been unpleasant and reassured that my Pandora subscription ($36 annually) was worth it’s weight in gold. The desktop app, mobile app, and web versions are all very clean. I’ve had very few gripes and only published one of them.
Enter Grooveshark. The first thing I noticed was the ability to search for a song and add it to my stream. That is something very unique, and also made me appreciate how easy it is to add songs your ‘craving’ to your stream. It’s also just as easy to remove songs from your stream with no annoying skip limit like Pandora has. It’s also very easy to pinpoint a particular album and listen to it from start to finish. Grooveshark also lists a popular playlist which lets you see what other people are listening too. You also have the ability to connect with the other users of the service and share your likes/playlists/radio stations.
Like Pandora, Grooveshark also offers a radio that will stream music based on genre. It’s different from Pandora’s service because it’s not based off an initial artist or song request, but you do have the ability to add songs you found via search to your radio station. It’s yet to be seen if that helps the service ‘learn’ what type of music within the genre you like. So far it seems that the free version is very feature rich, ad supported, and not limited to any amount of listening. The VIP service offers a desktop app, enhanced web UI, and extra support. At $30 annually it packs more of a punch and comes in at a lower price than Pandora. It also works internationally for now. For that reason, watch out Pandora.
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