Hacking avc.com

August 20th, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We launched a fun new featurette today—the tech circle. You can read more about it on our main blog, and on Fred Wilson’s blog, but in essence it is a showcase for our latest product, the content discovery network.
This was my first product launch again in years, so I couldn’t sleep really. But not simply because something was going to go live.
Since Fred was leading the pack with his blog post, and since Fred blogs early in the morning, we had to flip the switch on his blog before he wakes up. Because all blogging tools are somewhat old, the best way to do that is to actually put some code into the design of the site.
I’ve had Fred’s google analytics access for a while now, and now he shared his blog access as well. So I had the honor to hack my way trough Typepad’s opaque templating system. Of course I first tried on a test blog, and of course the templates changed on the live blog as well while I was still figuring out how it all works. Hopefully nobody noticed. 🙂
Anyways, our recommendations have now connected together a group of very interesting product people from very different backgrounds. Would love to hear your comments on it, and would love to hear if anyone would want to start a new circle with some of your blogging friends.
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Blogging is safe for now

August 27th, 2012 § Comments Off on Blogging is safe for now § permalink

 

it seems the debate about the death of blogging just won’t die out, but this post by Tim Bray is a great. I completely agree with everything:

  • that the main reasons for someone to blog are:
    • Money.
    • You love writing.
    • To influence.
    • To entertain.
    • To inform.
  • that people who have always written stuff are mainly those who can’t not to
  • and the following quote sum’s it up:

I don’t know of any way to be influential without deploying some combination of rhetoric and polemic and storyline. And I don’t think you can do that without writing a few hundred words, organized into paragraphs, with a permalink.

 

What was the most common phrase in English 500 years ago? [Linguistics]

August 17th, 2012 § 3 comments § permalink

We live in amazing times – in a couple of years, we will have digitized all books every published (that survived), and we will be able to apply machine learning to the past. It will spur a whole new era of historiography.

What was the most common phrase in English 500 years ago? [Linguistics]

#linguistics With millions of books scanned and digitized by Google, a new type of linguistic analysis has become possible – as people are able to delve into hundreds of years and millions of books’ worth of data.

via: io9.com

… that the research has been done by a fellow Slovenian is not a coincidence – lots of talent over here 😉

Taming Email Overload With SaneBox

May 12th, 2012 § 3 comments § permalink

Information explosion

Information explosion (Photo credit: Emilie Ogez)

Sanebox, this is a startup i really like, because they make my inbox managable.  they are for email, what evernote is for notes. they just get it.

Taming Email Overload With SaneBox

Calling email overload “a crisis in communication”, TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington issued a challenge back in 2008: “Someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages.

via: techcrunch.com

basically, it’s just a ‘priority inbox’ that actually works – they classify less important emails correctly, and they send me a summary at the end of the day. it turns out, most of unimportant stuff is just spam, or automated reminders that I can just glance over and forget.

simple concept, that makes all of us a bit more productive – how much does the planet gain, if we all save 30 mins each day?

tower of babel emerging – auto-translated gmails

May 11th, 2012 § Comments Off on tower of babel emerging – auto-translated gmails § permalink

finally! this is so incredibly important for the global society!

not only it is possible to read anything by auto-translating web pages, now anyone will be able to communicate to anyone else. next step – transparent translations of IM and phone call in real time!

Google launches automatic message translation in Gmail

Now, you would be able to comprehend emails you receive in other languages. Google has just announced that it would be rolling out the automatic translation feature in Gmail over the next few days. “Over the next few days, everyone who uses Gmail will be getting the convenience of translation added to their email,” Jeff Chin, Product Manager,…

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: www.buzzom.com

 

ComScore: Value And CPMs Are Out Of Whack

April 12th, 2012 § Comments Off on ComScore: Value And CPMs Are Out Of Whack § permalink

Onomatopia "Whack" hitting ball. Cre...

Onomatopia "Whack" hitting ball. Created in Adobe Illustrator by Jeremy Kemp, 2/24/05 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

the wild wild web is not a romantic place, it’s just senseless, and here’s another proof:

ComScore: Value And CPMs Are Out Of Whack

Not only are an average of 31% of display ads never even seen , but there’s little to no correlation between the CPMs sites are charging and the value they’re delivering to the advertisers – where value is defined as ads being viewed and delivered to the primary demographic target.

via: marketingland.com

as a geek i’m sad that in a world driven entirely by data and algorithms, well on the way to the promised land of perfection and frictionless and justice, such stories are a normality, rather than anomaly.

meh.

multi-channel marketing and bad infographics

April 6th, 2012 § Comments Off on multi-channel marketing and bad infographics § permalink

we all like infographics, because they make data and information value central, and then use visual storytelling rather than fancy words. in this act of replacing word compositions, with incredibly stronger visual compositions, we perform two actions:

  1. reduce the message to it’s core. this is always a combination of ‘extended puncline’ and ‘the context’.
  2. amplify the core

as infographics are becoming massively popular, the consequences of performing the first action badly are becoming a problem. it usually happens when the creator of the infographic is biased. here’s a very simple and benign case:

Blogging Better Than Facebook? Why Not BOTH? [Infographic]

I find that a lot of people involved with social media tend to get into discussions about which platform is better with the ultimate goal of eliminating of one platforms they are discussing. This happens often with the Facebook and Google+ debate, with the goal of eliminating Facebook and totally defecting to Google+ or vice versa.

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: anisesmithmarketing.com

good marketing is always multi-channel, with the message adapted to specifics of each channel. yes, you should always do Facebook and Blogging, and probably a few others as well.

the original author of the infographic has noble goal though – to her the blog is the hub of your online life, a point I very much agree with, and a great argument to invest in it. but saying no to all other channels is just madness.

Why bother seeing the world for real?

April 5th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

This project is the closest we’ll get to teleport for a while.

it’s also an amazing collection of bits and pieces of the world, that we would never see otherwise.

there’s something poetic about it.

Google Sightseeing – See the World on Your Desktop

Browsing Google Maps you can see lots of interesting landmarks and fun occurrences captured by the Streetview cameras. Finding all of those fun and interesting views can sometimes be tricky. That’s when the Google Sightseeing blog becomes handy.

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: www.freetech4teachers.com

Disconnect: another service to protect our privacy?

March 27th, 2012 § Comments Off on Disconnect: another service to protect our privacy? § permalink

A heart-shaped cookie

A heart-shaped cookie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Privacy is a funny thing.

Online, we want search engines to show us best possible results, Facebook to amuse us with most intriguing stories from our friends, and yet we are afraid that they are ‘stealing’ our data with cookies.

I guess this disconnect of expectations happens because we are intimately convinced, that the world revolves around us, and that the ‘most relevant result’ has nothing to do with me as an individual, so why would they possibly need MY data, don’t they have enough from everyone else already?

Disconnect: Ex-Googlers raise funding to stop Google, Facebook & Co from tracking your data

TechCrunch :: In the age of endless sharing, super cookies, social search results, and that ever-present social graph, it’s comforting to know that there are some who are still prioritizing privacy. (And a few of them are former Googlers no less!

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: www.nextlevelofnews.com

Supposedly in Netherlands, people don’t use shades on windows, because “windows are for looking out, not in”, and in NY, it’s sometimes considered rude to use shades that prevent neighbors use their binoculars.

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Guest Blogging And Black Mailing. Or What Is It?

March 7th, 2012 § Comments Off on Guest Blogging And Black Mailing. Or What Is It? § permalink

I was really sad when I read this article. So far I have rarely came across misunderstandings amongst fellow bloggers.  Every time a blogger screws a fellow blogger, a pony dies somewhere.

Guest Blogging And Black Mailing. Or What Is It?

I love doing guest blogging. And I love so many genuine guest bloggers who are nurturing the blogosphere with awesome content on other blogs, apart from their own. Since I’m so much into guest blogging and since I’ve experienced all its goodness,…

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: www.probloggingsuccess.com

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