Trumblog

It’s March 12, the first day of South by Southwest interactive when the social media digerati come together in Austin Texas and mobile sites and apps are launched or touched up with new features in order to take advantage of the opportunity.  But there is one social network who is bucking the trend and going their own way.  Who?  Why LinkedIn of course, who promised an app in December and is letting excitement build… and build… and build.

I know that it’s a bit of a dead horse, but I just can’t help myself.

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Early tomorrow morning I’ll be jetting off to Austin, Texas to spend a couple days with the geeky and the beautiful at South By Southwest.  I’ll miss the first day or so and am leaving before the end of the conference, but I’ll be soaking up as much as I possibly can to share with my colleagues and of course our clients over the coming year.

Of course I’ll be blogging and twittering as much as I can.  I’m armed with my big, heavy, but trusty HP laptop, a Verizon wireless card, my BlackBerry, my Canon PowerShot SD 750 digital camera and a big bag to carry it all.  My plan is to tweet liberally and participate in the conference back channel on my personal Twitter account @TPapi.  You’ll find more thought out insights on what I see and hear on Jack Morton’s twitter account @JackMorton.  I’ll post a synopsis of every event that I attend over the next three days here on the Trumblog in the category SXSW 2010 and daily recaps and other thoughts on the Jack Morton blog.  Photographs and video will turn up on the Jack Morton Flickr and YouTube accounts  or my personal Flickr and YouTube channel depending on the content.ha

Phew.

Thanks to all who answered my poll on sessions to attend at SXSW.  There is still time to answer and I will post results tomorrow morning.

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Last week I wrote about the ÜberTwitter and Seesmic Twitter applications for the BlackBerry and noted while Seesmic’s integration with Ping.fm was a great leap forward, it was missing some convenient features that could make it difficult to stick with that app over ÜberTwitter. I haven’t come to a conclusion about that yet, but after more time with the applications I have some pointers for what each app needs to do to overtake their competition.

Seesmic

It would be easy for you to take a breather after the hard work of integrating Ping.fm, but instead now is the time to keep enhancing your functionality and take advantage of the work you’ve done. Here’s what to do.

Aid Exploration

Right now the Seesmic BlackBerry application is great at sending status updates, but less so when it comes to conversation.  I’m talking about things above and beyond checking out a friend’s tweetstream.  Adding features like finding tweets near you and identifying trending topics help we twitterers to engage with the community around us, but who we are not necessarily connected with.  For the same reason adding a “find people” feature would also be useful for when you want to check someone’s tweetstream or mention them, but aren’t following them or know their handle.

Kick up the UI

Compare the two screen shots below of the status update screen for Seesmic (on the left) and ÜberTwitter (on the right).  Notice ÜberTwitter’s use of color, an icon and the friendly “What’s Happening?”  Now compare that with the Soviet era design of Seesmic’s screen.  I like that I can update multiple accounts from one screen with Seesmic, which you can’t with ÜberTwitter, but a little design would go a long way.

The Timeline screen design for the two applications is a little bit of a tossup.  Seesmic (on the left) gets more on the screen and has no ads, but ÜberTwitter has the nice bubble layout and the Über bar.

Finally Seesmiuc, let’s talk alerts and retweets.  Seesmic you MUST add alerts. It is crazy that I can’t set my BlackBerry to buzz me when someone replies or direct messages me.  That is a major issue that you need to clear up pronto.  As for retweets, did you not notice the hoopa over Twitter’s new retweet format?  An option to retweet old school would be a nice addition, especially since your competition has it.  Your quote functionality is a close workaround, but without copy and paste menu options on the update screen it’s a struggle.  Other features that would help we power users is friend picker autofilling of friend names in tweets and a list of friends and followers (2 separate lists, not 1 combined list please) that would help us find members of our community that may not be so active and ensure that we spell our friends’ Twitter handles accurately.

And last but not least change the logo.  I have no idea what’s up with the raccoon, but it’s not not doing it for me.

ÜberTwitter

Don’t think because I had  long list of things for Seesmic to do that you would get off easy.  Seesmic’s list may be long, but the features and changes are simple to implement.  You have the harder road. I’ll start with a simple enhancement for you; add saving of search terms.  This is pretty handy at conferences when you want to search for more than one hashtag or keyword and saves you from having to type each one in repeatedly.  It’s small, but it’s a nice feature.

The big thing that you have to work on is integration with other social networks. If you would let me post to Facebook and LinkedIn from your application (just post, I’m not greedy enough to ask for timeline views from other social networks too) that would be huge.  I wouldn’t even need posting to multiple social networks from one input screen as long as I can cut and paste.  It’s a big thing I know, but let’s face it, with a few features and tweaks Seesmic’s feature set with be equal to yours.  If you want to maintain your position you need to have all the features AND allow cross social network posting.

That’s it. Some suggestions for you both.  ÜberTwitter and Seesmic, the position of my favorite Twitter application on the BlackBerry is up for grabs.  The next move is yours.

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WordPress is probably the dominant blogging platform used today as well as an acceptable content management system. One of the aspects of WordPress that has led to its broad use is that it is open source, the code is free and updated and extended by users so that not only is it an affordable option, but it also has been enhanced through design (themes) and feature specific modules (plugins) to do just about anything that you’d want it to.

Despite that, WordPress did not have a BlackBerry application until last summerwhen a beta was released. It was a bit buggy and had some UI issues, but since then updates to the WordPress BlackBerry application have been rapid, developing a useful application for managing your blog. That part is key. WordPress for the BlackBerry is for existing blogs only.  Setting up a blog and refining the design and functionality of an existing blog are beyond the capabilities of this app (that will go without saying for most bloggers, but it’s worthwhile to point out to the newbies).  This app is for managing a blog that you already have, writing new content, editing existing content and reviewing comments.

Before you get started with the app you’ll need to set up your blog (the app supports multiple blogs either self hosted or on WordPress.com) with your log in information in order to download and sync your content changes. That’s how the app works; download content from you webserver, edit or create and then synchronize.

The app has four areas of functionality:

• Posts - blog posts,
• Pages - pages on your WordPress site,
• Comments - reader comments on posts and pages,  and
• Options - application settings.

Posts

The posts section of the app is of course for writing and editing blog posts. By syncing this section (each section of the app can be synchronized independently, which is a benefit for memory and time or causes unnecessary repetition depending on how you work) the number of posts that you pre-set are downloaded from the server. Those posts can then be edited and re-synched.

The landing page displays your recently posted and submitted posts with the title and date. Using the pencil icon at the top of the screen you can open a new post, the folder icon displays drafts, both local (on your BlackBerry or on the server) and when they were last saved. The icon with two arrows refreshes the list of posts.

The edit screen has the same basic content fields as the online version of WordPress: Title, Tags, Categories, Status and Content. The post title is naturally whatever you want to name your post. The tags (words that describe the post) are added as a comma separated list. Existing categories on your blog are imported to the app for selection and new categories can also be created from the app as well. The status refers to the status of the blog post in regards to it’s being posted. With some statuses not yet posted and others posted in different ways I don’t understand the logic behind their order.  Status options are:

• Pending Review – a post that has been uploaded to the web server, marked for review, but has not been published,
• Private - a post that has been uploaded to the web server, published and marked private,
• Draft - a post that has been uploaded to the web server, but not published,
• Published - a post that has been uploaded to the server, published and is currently live, and
• Local Draft – a post that only exists on the BlackBerry app and has not yet been uploaded to the web server.

Finally there is the post content, which is the HTML text for the post. I find it burdensome to write HTML markup on the BlackBerry so I tend to just write posts and then add the markup online later. But you may be more proficient with HTML.

I prefer to do the same with media. In the application image files from your BlackBerry can be inserted into posts and you can add a title, description, caption, etc., but the media can only be positioned at the top or bottom of the post. More precise positioning must be done online.

Once the post is complete it must be submitted to the web server. The status selected for the post determines whether the post is immediately public, is a draft, etc. Personally I prefer to submit posts written on my BlackBerry as a draft so that I can review the spelling, grammar, formatting and media before I promote it to live, but you can push posts live directly from your BlackBerry.

Pages

The pages section of the app functions basicaly the same as the post section. The main difference is that you can set the options for Parent Page, Page Template and Page Order instead of Tags and Categories. Parent Page and Page Template are drop down menues with data pulled from the live site. The Page Order option allows you to determine where in the order of pages on the site the new one will go by using a numbering system. Other than that the structure, submission and content entry functionality is the same.

Comments

Managing comments on a blog seems like a small thing, but it’s critical to maintaining a community and can be rather difficult with a mobile browser. WordPress for BlackBerry app makes managing comments easy allowing you to spam, hold, approve, delete and reply to multiple comments or individually with little time or effort.

Options

The WordPress application doesn’t allow for much customization and the options screen just gives you the ability to change the blog username and password for logging in, the number of posts that are downloaded and an option for uploading images at a smaller size. More options for things like memory usage, default location of media, etc would be nice add-ons in the future, but for now this will do.

Verdict

This application is a must have for any WordPress blogger with a BlackBerry.  It simply provides the primary features that bloggers need for writing and editing content on the go as well as managing their blog’s community.  It is everything that you expect from WordPress, stable, clean user interface, simple to use.  I find it extremely useful for blogging on the go (this post was written in subways during my commute and a parked car waiting for my daughter’s plane to arrive) or capturing an idea before it gets away.  I’ve published a couple posts directly from my BlackBerry, but for the most part I feel that some extra polish is required that this app really can’t do without a more feature rich text editor and finer media placement control.  With that and some memory management this application would be perfect. But even without it I am very pleased with the app.

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Forgot to mention this a couple weeks ago when the latest release of Foursquare for BlackBerry came out, but the application has added a tab in the top navigation for Tips.  The purpose of the screen is obvious enough, it’s a listing of tips for places near where you are and from each tip you can link to the venue, mark tips as done and see the profile of the person who left the tip.

It’s not earth shattering, but it’s a move toward expanding activity on Foursquare beyond just checking in to earn points, mayorships and badges.  Leaving tips has been sort of a secondary feature on the social network and is not promoted, but by making these tips a different way to explore the locations around you, not just by showing their names (that you probably already know), but what about them makes them interesting.

It also adds a little cache to adding tips.  A couple months ago when looking at how social networks were stealing functionality from each other I asked “how could Foursquare support and reinforce the tips and to-do’s for venues?”  This is one answer.

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It’s official.  I am going to South by Southwest this coming weekend.  I’m not going for the full four and a half days, just Saturday afternoon, Sunday and Monday, but based on the schedule even an abridged trip should leave me exhausted.  I’ve gone through the full SXSWi schedule and picked out what seem to be the most interesting and applicable events to create my own schedule for SXSWi, but it’s an impossible one.  There are just too many interesting things taking place at the same time.

So I’m opening this up to you, my friends, colleagues and anyone else who happened to stumble across this blog.  Since my goal of attending SXSWi is to gather information and ideas for our work together, and of course I’ll be blogging and twittering it all, it seems to make sense for me to ask you what you would like to learn about, what events you are interested in and then I’ll attend those.   My picks from SXSWi are below.  Select as many as you like and I’ll attend the most popular.

Just one caveat about my attending events.  There are so many interesting topics being covered at any given time that if the event I’m at turns out to be a dud or it’s clear that I’m not going to get something out of it I’m going to make the call quickly and bail for a different event.  There’s just too much great stuff there to spend a worthless hour in a conference room.

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Inappropriate tweets, reenacted by amateurs who are happy to go “there.” Have a great weekend.

Twitter: The Criterion Collection from sween on Vimeo.

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This 2010 State of the Internet video is along the same lines as “Did You Know” videos, plenty of stats on the internet, email and social media sites as a video infographic with an electronic beat.

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Back in January Seesmic, the Twitter client developer, bought Ping.fm, the service for simultaneously updating multiple social networks.  At the time they boldly promised a BlackBerry application that merged the two services by the end of the month, but version 1.2.19, that was released at the end of January, had no Ping.fm functionality at all.  This week Seesmic rolled out release 1.3.28 and my dream of total social network access from one app has been realized.

Adding your Ping.fm account to Seesmic is simple and done through the menu options Accounts > Add account… from there you select “Add a Ping.fm account,” enter your email address and password and your Ping.fm account, with access to all of the 50+ social networks that it supports, is set up.  Your Ping.fm account is treated like any of your accounts on the application and when you want to post an update it appears as one of the account tabs that you can select.  You can post to one account (Twitter or Ping.fm), a Twitter and a Ping.fm account, multiple Twitter accounts, and even multiple Twitter accounts and Ping.fm. Multiple Ping.fm accounts are not allowed, but if they were I bet you could post to all of them at the same time too. Posting is very reliable and easy, but I’ve had issues using the Ping.fm @ short codes (such as @li to post just to LinkedIn) to send an update to individual or sets of social media accounts.

When I reviewed the previous version of the Seesmic application I compared it to ÜberTwitter and while it held its own it did not unseat ÜberTwitter as my favorite Twitter client for the BlackBerry.  I’ve updated that chart comparing the latest versions of Seesmic and ÜberTwitter below.

Seesmic - ÜberTwitter Comparison 2

As you can see from the chart above the latest version of Seesmic maintains the same feature set and stands up to ÜberTwitter similarly to how the last release did. Primary Twitter functionality is all there on Seesmic and works well. I even think that pictures load a little faster on Seesmic than on ÜberTwitter. But ÜberTwitter has people search, tweets near you, tweet deletion, profile editing, trending topics, alerts and other small enhancements that Seesmic doesn’t. The only feature like this that Seesmic has is the ability to save searches.

But then there is Ping.fm and its integration with Seesmic. That addition is huge. With the addition of Ping.fm to the Seesmic app goes from an also ran to a product with a significant differentiator. The issue becomes do I (or will I now) update my social networks enough to be worth the trade for losing features like Tweets Near You, Find a Person and a nicer look and feel? Time will tell.

For now the novelty of Seesmic and its ability to post to multiple social networks has made it my go to Twitter app on the Blackberry. But I find myself drifting back to ÜberTwitter now and again for some of those missing features and realizing how important some features that I took for granted are. I can’t say anymore that ÜberTwitter is my favorite BlackBerry Twitter app, but I also can’t say that Seesmic is. Seesmic is in a great position, will need to keep evolving to take the lead. And only time will tell if the feature that I thought would be a game changer turns out to be little more than a novelty.

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Mayor Bill Bunten of Topeka, Kansas this week moved  to rename his city Google, Kansas for the month of March as a stunt to secure their selection as the location for testing of Google’s ultra fast internet infrastructure and receive the jobs, investment and who knows, tourism, that goes along with it. Interestingly Topeka means “to dig good potatoes” in the Kansa and Ioway languages.  I imagine that Bill Bunton wants it now to mean “dig for fiber optic cable.”

It reminds me of course of Hot Springs, New Mexico that in 1950 hitched it’s star to a different media channel (radio) and renamed itself Truth or Consequences.  2010 is a different time than 1950 and Bill Bunton is either smarter or less committed than the people of Hot Springs because Truth or Consequence’s name change was permanent while Google, Kansas will revert back to Topeka on April Fools Day.  And that’s probably a good thing anyhow since any city that permanently names itself Google would quickly find themselves on the wrong end of a copyright lawsuit rather than showered with thanks for the PR.

I wonder if the results will be fleeting.  Truth or Consequences (the quiz show) was broadcast from Truth or Consequences (the city) once, but then host Ralph Edwards was dedicated enough to the city that he visited every year for half a century as part of the city’s “Fiesta” held on the first weekend of May.  I seriously doubt that the hardware and fiber optics laid by Google will still be in use in 50 years and if it is then it will be as outmoded as the Victrola used to listen to quiz shows back in 1950. If Topeka’s smart, and I have no doubt that they are, they will need to capitalize on a Google investment by luring tech companies with cheap bandwidth and become a sort of “Silicone Plains.” But they’ll need to act fast because if Google’s plan is a success then Topeka’s window of opportunity will be short and the digital divide closed before they know it.

Photo: Truth or Consequences by einelam

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