All posts by Anthony

My day job involves online marketing and running on caffeine. the rest is spent maintaining a few blogs on things I find interesting about the Internet, online marketing and coffee.
Reviews, Technology

Diaspora, Disrupting Social Media & Delivering T-Shirts

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The Diaspora T-Shirt
The Diaspora T-Shirt

When you only have ten invites for a new social network, to whom on Earth do you give them? It is an interesting question, and in a way, unintentionally similar to another shiny new tech thing, Path, which limits you to 50 connections. This week I got my Diaspora t-shirt, as part of my backer’s rewards. A few days later I also got my Alpha invite. With the 10 invites.

Diaspora is not limiting its users to just 50 connections, or even to just the ten that they give you invites for. Understandably as it is in Alpha, they are limiting scale, at least until things move forward some more. Whatever the reasons, I am still left on the wrong side of the network effect and with the question of whom to give one of the ten invites.

Network Effect as a Bell Curve

Network Effect as a Bell Curve

  1. Populated by purported ‘social media gurus’ or bored IT staff. That’s it.
  2. Early adopters can find their immediate circle of friends.
  3. That guy who made primary school miserable for you wants to become your friend.
  4. Ignoring your coworkers’ friend requests becomes harder to sustain.
  5. Boomers are commenting on their kids’ party photos, thanks to friends tagging them.
  6. Traditional media is reporting on all of those off-colour pages your profile links to, as funny as they were at the time.

Obviously I would want to give them to people I already interact with, and of course I would like to give them to people who would actually use them, but who are they? It is like Google Wave all over again. Not everyone even looked at it after they cemented their geek cred by acquiring an invite.

Diaspora Alpha
Diaspora Alpha

In the Diaspora Alpha, you can manage your updates by groups called ‘Aspects’, post photos and even publicise your own content through Facebook, Twitter and, even more cool, as an RSS feed. Comments on photos and posts are there, as is the ability to reshare posts across aspects after publication. I am interested in seeing if doing this makes all comments visible too, but unfortunately I can’t test that right now.

TL;DR

  • Looks cool
  • Is a pretty good fit
  • Guarantees geek credibility
  • The Diaspora Alpha looks cool too.
Reviews, Technology

Cool Shirt, Cool Search Engine

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Blekko T-Shirt
Blekko T-Shirt

I just got a new t-shirt sent to me by Blekko, the new search engine. Blekko has a lof of cool stuff that I have written about on my other blog, at Contoleon.com.

Aside from sending me a really cool new t-shirt, Blekko is cool because it introduces a few new tools in an easy to use format. As cool as the SEO tools are, there are a lot of cool things there just for everyday use. A few of these features are:

  • Being able to create groups called Slashtags and limiting your search to just them. For popular searches that are overcrowded, like blogging or music, this restricts the search to known credible sources, cutting the spam.
  • The ability to edit and manage Slashtags can be shared, making it easier for you to collaborate to create groups of sites that are credible and useful for later use.
  • Searches, including terms and slashtags, can be ordered by relevance or date, making it easy to find the most recently updated content. This search can then be subscribed to as an RSS feed.
  • They also sent me a cool t-shirt, because I emailed them after this post: Blekko’s Launch Rocked: 10 Thoughts.

TL;DR

  • Create Slashtags of sites and other Slashtags, search only them
  • Share editorship of Slashtags to pool knowledge
  • Subscribe to searches as RSS feeds
  • Cool free t-shirt
Black coffee, Cafe Review, Reviews

Alegria for Coffee on Park Rd

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Alegria on Park Road
Alegria on Park Road

Finding a coffee on Park Road is not hard. Finding a good one isn’t a problem either. There is always La Dolce Vita, and most of the other cafes are worth trying too. Including a brand new one called Alegria Mediterranean Bistro & Bar, just next to La Dolce.

It is actually more restaurant than cafe, and their tapas menu is certainly worth checking out, but they also do good coffee. Alegria serves Moak coffee. I enjoyed the long black; it was strong, though a little bitter. Alegria also had a range of biscuits, some of which were made by one of the proprietors’ mothers. It is amazing how good someone can be at baking after a few decades’ experience, as my own Greek grandmother’s biscuits demonstrate as well.

http://www.bistroalegria.com.au/
Alegria Mediterranean Bistro & Bar
Shop 11, 20 Park Road
Milton QLD 4064

Black coffee, Cafe Review, Reviews

Coffee, Yoghurt and a Haircut

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GW Private Room Coffee and Yoghurt
GW Private Room Coffee and Yoghurt

GW Private Room is the first hairdresser I’ve been to that offers wine as well as tea or coffee. They also do breakfast. It is a neat little place in Festival Towers with free parking for customers and one of the coolest two level layouts I have seen. Hannah recommended the place, and it was a great choice.

They also serve black coffee in a glass. It and the yoghurt arrived on a rectangular plate as they got to work on my hair. It is actually harder than you think to eat and get your hair cut without getting hair in your food.

The coffee was OK but the glass was too hot. I guess this is why no-one else serves black coffee in something so conductive. Since they have massage chairs for the customers to sit in while they get their hair washed, I don’t plan to hold this against them.

The haircut was very good, the coffee was very ordinary, but overall in terms of service, GW Private Room does stand out.

http://www.gwprivateroom.com.au/
89 Charlotte Street
Oaks Festival Towers
Brisbane | CBD

App Review, Technology

CamCard, Business Cards & Less Typing

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CamCard
CamCard, how to avoid too much typing

Business cards are archaic. Inscribing some information on a piece of ex-living flora is not a perfect fit for a digital world. Getting the information from its dead tree format into a useable form is annoying. Unless the card has been printed by the Printing Services in Houston Texas and has something like a QR code or a smartphone app like CamCard.

CamCard scans a photo of the business card and imports the details it recognises to your phone’s contacts. It is mostly accurate and any errors it picks up can be corrected when you get to preview the information imported, before it is added to your contacts. Unlike information sharing apps like Bump, you won’t be restricted by who may or may not have it installed and set up. CamCard works with normal business cards, as they have been for decades.

The other week my boss was at a conference. He had just recently installed CamCard on his iPhone, and loved it. It scanned cards fast, and mostly accurately. The cost of the full app in the end was worth it, especially compared to how much time he would have lost had he had to enter the details manually.

CamCard works well, and can save heaps of time. While I wish Bump was more widespread, rendering business cards obsolete, for now there is a need for apps like CamCard.