Grooming my Social Graph

Google Buzz peaked my interest in my social graph. I knew about Google's Social Graph API but I never looked into it before. It turns out that it uses XHTML Friends Network, XFN for short, to declare links between various services. The entire system is built on top of the existing web and uses links that are already in place. When a person links to another person's page, they describe the relationship using the "rel" attribute. There are several defined ways you can describe your relationship using a link that are shown in the following table:


Depending on how you want to describe your relationship, there will be different values used in the rel attribute. You can also use multiple to describe a single relationship. For example, if you have met someone and are their friend you may use rel="met friend" in a link.

Right now there are a growing number of sites that are using their existing data and simply declaring these relationships. The power comes when big companies such as Google index these pages and can then surface and analyze this information.

The only real way to use this type of information at this point in time is to correct your social graph. When I looked at mine using Google's Site Connectivity tool, I noticed that all of my profiles were not all linked together. When you enter in a URL of on of your profiles on services such at Twitter or Digg or the URL of your personal home page or blog, it uses the public data to connect to all of your other services. Even though I had a lot of established links, it simply was not fully connected.

What I needed to do was update all of my profiles so they provided a two way link using the "me" relationship. This mean each of my profiles on the various services needed to link to one of my pages that I was claiming to be me, I choose my blog because it is where I have the most up to date content. This is just half of the link that is required. A link from my blog would need to be traced back to each profile. This way both ends are in agreement and can substantiate the same claim. The link does not need to be direct and can pass through several nodes. For example if my Twitter account claims my blog, my blog claims my Google profile, and my Google profile claims my Twitter account, this provides the same authority as two profiles claiming each other.

After adding and updating links between all of my profile pages my graph was corrected, but was not updated. Luckily Google provides a tool to force a recrawl of updated pages to correct the graph. The pages you can recrawl are those claimed on your Google Profile, so if you want to correct a link just add it and force the update. I did this for several pages that I then removed from my profile. They were linked to on other places in my social graph, but I did not want them listed on my Google profile.

While it is not yet useful, as more sites support XFN, this may change the way we use the Internet. There are valid concerns about privacy, but the potential applications are very exciting. I'll leave the explaining up to Google:

STUG Featured on GottaBeMobile

Travis has spent some time promoting STUG Website and it looks like we have our first feature on a website. Needless to say I'm a little excited.

GottaBeMobile is a blog focusing on Tablet PCs and mobile computing. In a blog post that was posted very early this morning they covered Tablet PC Tips for Students.

My favorite part of the post is where they mention, "they've got some great humor and their effort is to be applauded." That might be a little self centered though. STUG is still really young and we only started our website and Tablet Tips at the beginning of this year. They mentioned that they enjoyed our episode on What Not to do on Your Tablet and our episode on Getting Organized: Paperwork.

Hopefully STUG can continue to promote Tablet PC use in college and use Tablet Tips as instructional videos focusing on Tablet PCs and college students. This is a very niche market that doesn't have much coverage. STUG seems to be niche enough that it can stand on its own. Overall this is good news for STUG and Speed School.

Preventing RSS Overload

I wasn't a big RSS guy for the longest time, now I use it everywhere. I'm not going to list all of the things I subscribe to (RSS feeds or podcasts) in this post, but I am going to talk about how I like to use RSS. My current reader of choice is Google Reader. I didn't start using it until after I moved to Gmail, which probably had something to do with using other Google services.

I like to subscribe to things that don't post that often. Lets say I like knowing when Revision3 has an update, such as a new show. I'll subscribe to the RSS feed and check my reader every day. This way I don't have to visit all of these sites I want to stay up to date with, I can just check one place. Since I subscribe to a lot of blogs that post periodically, I always something new to look at.

The problem is, if I subscribe to a feed such as Engadget or Gizmodo, I get swamped. I simply can't keep up with the massive number of daily posts. However, I do like seeing some of the posts, probably the most popular ones. Often these posts don't make Digg's homepage or they haven't yet.

A long time ago I ran across the website AideRSS but wasn't yet using RSS as much as I was now and just thought it was a cool idea. Then, not that long ago Leo mentioned AideRSS and I looked it up again. By using the 'best' setting of the feeds I can wittle down massive feeds down to just the high quality content.

I should probably explain what AideRSS does. It uses PostRank(TM) to calculate the best posts for a given feed using lots of different services. It gathers data from lots of sources about each given post and uses it to decide the post's rank. You can then chose what level of posts to subscribe to: good, great, or best.

This service has allowed me to subscribe to Ars Technica, Crooks and Liars, Engadget, Gizmodo, and Tree Hugger. All of these blogs tend to, individually, post more then I can keep up with. Together, these blogs produce a massive amount of content. By using AideRSS on best, I only get a few posts each day. While I'm not getting all of the content, I still feel like I'm getting some of the best content.

Right now I'm only using AideRSS to subscribe to a few blogs. Now that I'm using this service, I hope to find some other feeds to subscribe to using this service.

Even though I'm using AideRSS to filter down some of the big internet blogs, it works for any feed. Below I have included the widgets that AideRSS provides for a feed, but these are for my personal blog!

When I get a new profile picture...

When I get a new profile picture it takes a while for me to update everything. Even before that, Cassie has to draw my profile picture. My habit for my last five profile pictures is to have them custom drawn by Cassie. She really does a great job and tends to use different art styles each time so they all look really different.

However, just getting my profile pictures is the first step. She doesn't tend to draw them in perfect squares, so my first step is to crop it to a square. While I'm at it, I edit the picture down to a smaller resolution for those services that don't support the higher resolution images.

Once I get finished making all of the technical preparations I then start uploading the picture to everywhere on the internet that I have a profile picture. This is actually a rather lengthy list. I keep a folder on my computer where I sort my old profile pictures. In addition to the pictures, I keep a Word document containing the locations that I use a profile pictures. This gives me a quick checklist when I get a new pictures so I know I've uploaded it to everywhere.

1. My Blog
2. Facebook
3. Skype
4. Pownce
5. Technorati
6. Flickr
7. Digg
8. Last.fm
9. Gmail
10. Windows Vista (Laptop)
11. Windows Vista (Desktop)
12. Hulu
13. Twitter

I don't really use everyone of the above services regularly, but my profile picture exists at each location so I keep it up to date. I really do see a need for standardization with regard to updating information across multiple services. It is nice that some places, such as Gmail, update across multiple applications now, but it still does take a decent amount of time to update all of the different locations.

Actually updating the pictures doesn't really bother me that much. It is an event for me. It is even fun to a certain extent. However, there is a little headache that goes with the process. Mainly compatibility. The problem is different services don't like taking the new pictures. The two that really give me a hard time have been Pownce and Gmail. It normally takes more than one try to get the new profile picture to stick.

I can see how a service that would help standardize this process would definitely be useful. For the time being, I will continue to go site to site updating my picture. The main thing I need to remember is when I register for a new service, I need to add it to my list of places to update.

New Profile Picture

Last night Cassie sent me a new profile picture.  I've updated it in about 10 different places (Including my blog) where I can have a user icon.  It is a different artistic style than my last one.  I really like the change.  My previous one wasn't bad but change keeps things fresh.

Thank you Cassie! :)

Cassie submits Sicko story to Digg

This is really geeky...

Basically, I watched Sicko and really wanted Cassie to watch it.  She didn't want to at first but she finally did.  Then she blogged about it in her post: Health Care Doesn't Care That totally took me off guard because she never blogs, although I'm trying to encourage her.

Then she submitted it to Digg a while after she posted it.  Health care doesn't care (Digg)

I was just talking to her on Skype and she sent me this...

"I about died when I checked it and saw I had 6 diggs."

As of the time that I posted this article her story now has a total of 7 diggs.  That is definitely more diggs than any story I ever submitted to Digg.  It even has three comments! (Although one of them was mine.)

I am slowly converting her into a blogging, digging, computer geek.  My plans are progressing nicely... ;)

Cassie was actually really excited about the fact she gained attention on Digg.  Although she probably won't be homepaged, I promised her a cake if she ever does become homepaged.

I can't wait and see how many diggs it has tomorrow.  It is not the fact that it was submitted by her that is really great, it is the fact she wrote the blog entry.

Windows Live Writer: first impressions

I've been using Live writer for a very short time, but I feel that I have posted enough to actually write something of a review about it.

In short, I like it.  I is a stable and useful way to create blog entries.  I especially was satisfied when I realized the many different useful plug-ins that were available.  I have currently installed a grand total of 3.  First, the DiggThis plug-in that allows an easy addition of a Digg button to a post.  Next, I added the Ink Blogging plug-in, although I doubt I'll ever use it.  I just added it because I have a tablet.  Last, and most useful, I added a Flickr Image inserter.  The Flickr plug-in will probably be the most useful.  I'm able to search Flickr, including my personal pictures, and insert them without having to make a big deal of copying and pasting the correct size picture and everything.  It will save some time when it comes to posting.  The only down side is there is no way to automatically upload imported pictures to anything other than an FTP server.

I'm not sure if it is because I have a slight drop in the amount of homework right now, but I have been blogging more since I started using Live Writer.  I really like how I'm not forced to go to Blogger and log in and start writing.  Launching an application is faster and it more convenient.

I am glad there is a useful integrated Spell Checker.  I would only blog in Firefox specifically because it had an integrated spell check.  Other features I like are the automatic draft saving.  I turned the frequency up to 1 minute just so I won't lose any of my hard work.  I also was excited (and am testing out in this post) the built in PING feature.  So far I've added FeedBurner and Technorati, but I might have a few more places to PING as as well.

I haven't found any quirks that annoy me enough to mention.  I am still a little confused on how to edit old posts, but that is because I am not familiar with that feature yet.  The categories tool is much more powerful than any web based interface I have seen.  I'll continue to use Windows Live Writer for all of my blogging.  On an interesting but unimportant side note, unlike Blogger, the time that the Publish button is clicked is when the post is published (time stamp wise), rather than when it was first started. 

Hopefully Live Writer only improves my blogging habits.  It is really a quality piece of software.  Way to go Microsoft.

Testing Windows Live Writer

I saw a link on blogger about Windows Live Writer and I thought I would give it a try.  It seems to be interesting.  It is a strange cross between a web editing tool like FrontPage and a typical AJAX like text editor.

I'll be blogging with this software for a while and when I get around to it I'll write something about how it is to use.

First Impressions are good.  It is not that I disliked the blogger interface, it is just that a more powerful (and even offline) too is more attractive to me.  Plus, the preview feature on this that inserts the post like it was actually posted to your blog is really awesome.

I'm Now Importing my Entire Blog Into Facebook

I've not been very decisive about this topic, but something just put me over the edge, the new Facebook API. One of the reasons I didn't want to import every one of my entires into Facebook is because some of them are just really random and don't matter. However, with the new Facebook API and applications, the interface is already crazy beyond crazy.

It is not that I want to add to the madness, but I don't see the harm in having my blog in Facebook. I actually talk about interesting stuff sometimes.

The only problem that I see arising is the formatting and embedded objects I use from time to time. I've already noticed that it is a little funky on some of my older posts that were imported. At least the pictures are importing nicely. :)

To my friends on Facebook: if you find this annoying, first try and change your settings, secondly, if you ask nicely, I might turn it off again. :D

One Month of Blogging

I made it!

I considered leaving this post at just the above statement but I guess I can elaborate. Before I started blogging I always wanted some type of "web presence" but never knew what exactly I wanted it to be. Facebook was great for my friends, but it didn't show up in a search engine (except my public section of my profile).

The one thing I have learned that really can drive people to a blog is giving something away. In my case it was offering Joost Beta invites. I was pleasantly surprised with the number of hits my blog received. Google Analytics can shed some light on how many visitors my blog has received.



That huge spike in the middle of the graph is actually about the time I posted that I was giving away Joost invites. To my surprise, the number of views didn't bottom out after that, although



Sadly, I am not comfortable displaying the map with any more detail because it will reveal where I live. Oddly enough, my blog gets the most hits from the region in which I love. (It is not just me hitting my blog, my friends look at it as well, but it really sticks out.)

Overall, I am happy with my blogging experience. I hope to continue to post interesting things and maybe I'll even attract some readers.

A Jared Blog: Spanish Edition

I've been getting a lot of Spanish speaking visitors asking for Joost invites so I decided to do something a little strange.

In an earlier post (Internet: Yahoo Pipes and Facebook) I talked about the Yahoo! Pipes service. Just to play around with the service I decided to take advantage of the BableFish module.

Here is the link to the A Jared Blog - Spanish RSS Feed and a link to the A Jared Blog - Spanish Pipe I made. It does translate my RSS feed but it is having some problems. I'll elaborate. The RSS feed that is being imported into the pipe includes a rather large amount of text; it includes the last 25 posts in their entirety. This information is then piped through a truncate module that reduces the number of posts down to 10. Then the feed is piped through the English to Spanish translator.



There is one major problem with this pipe. It doesn't work. Well, it does work, but it doesn't translate everything. I am thinking there is some limit on the amount of text that can be translated and I am surpassing it. Also, the entries seem to be translated in random order. I also have trouble getting the XML version of the RSS feed to display.

I decided to post this anyway because I thought it was an interesting use of technology. Granted, the translation is going to be spotty because it is done by a computer, but it just shows how powerful the internet has become. Maybe Yahoo! Pipes is just under heavy load at the moment and it will start working better after some time.

If anyone ever uses it tell me if it works or not. I really like the Yahoo! Pipes service and think as it expands its features will become a very common service to use on the net.

New Profile Picture

I have good news, I have a new profile picture for my blog as seen to the right (or at the bottom of this post). You can see pictures of my old picture at the bottom of this post as well. I'm really excited as the first one (although it was still good) was only temporary.

Thanks Cassie for putting your time into making it look great! You can see more of her artwork on her blog Cassie's Corner, but she hasn't been posting very often although she did post a random drawing recently.

My Old Picture

My New Picture

Blogging Law

I've been blogging for just over a week and when I started legal issues were not at the forefront of my mind. However, yesterday I found this posting on Digg: 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

The posting linked to an article posted on Aviva Directory about the laws surrounding blogging. While some of the things did not apply to my blog at the moment, several things I found of interest.

First, the advice about (point #2) deeplinking was very interesting and useful. Before I read this post, I had no problem linking directly to the page which I wanted to reference. The first tip was to not claim other people's work (pages) as your own. This is just common sense. The other point which I am going to try to do a better job at is indicating that your linking to an outside website (you'll notice above I linked to both the blog entry and the main blog for the article I am talking about).

The next point of interest (point #3) was about using pictures. The first problem that arises was using pictures that are not your own. I'll never post a picture that I did not upload to blogger. The problem that arises is copyright. While it is not likely that legal action will be taken against my blog, it is still something that I will consider in the future. The good news is, using thumbnails is legal. The only thing I need to take into account, is that for a picture to be considered a thumbnail it needs to be a standard shape and side.

Other points the article talked about include copying other's posts, infringing on trademarks, handling the content (specifically comments) submitted by users, and liability. I have a feeling this article made it to Digg because of the HD-DVD code that was being posted on hundreds of blogs and other websites. It was submitted to Digg once before and was not homepaged.

Since my blog is not that popular I am not going to make any major changes. From what I have read, I have been doing several things right. I'll just keep in mind the legal issues that are involved in blogging.

One Week Ago

It was now one week ago that I started my Blog. Amazing, I actually have kept it up for a solid week. Who would have thought my attention span would last this long. ;) This will be my 15th published post. I have a few that I have been working on that are not published yet. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all.

I know I don't really have anyone reading my blog yet, but that really doesn't bother me. My blog is still really new and I am trying to find my place on the internet. I have published websites before, but they have always been for a specific organization that I was involved in. This is my first time really putting something out there that revolved around myself.

I guess one of the main things I plan on posting about (and I already have posted several entries about) is technology. Now, that really doesn't narrow down the topic much, does it. Specifically, I'll probably be posting about my interests which range from listening to podcasts to beta testing new software. Also, if I ever get back into it with my classes or just as a hobby, I'll probably be posting a little about computer programming. Maybe I'll eventually even post some code that I have written. I know I typically search the internet for examples on how things are implemented before I experiment on my own. I also have some code that, a long time ago, I developed in PHP that I would like to publish. I currently can write in PHP, Java, C, and C++ although I have written in VB once.

Other things I would like to post about would have to be old projects that I have worked on. I have modified a computer case, built an arcade, and wired the basement of my parent's house for Ethernet. (This is the point where I should mention that Cassie helped me with all of these projects. If I didn't she would probably remind me that she did.) I am sure there are other projects I will be doing in the future that I will post about too.

I also have been a photographer (by hobby) for a few years and would like to post some of my old pictures and definitely take some new ones that I could put up. This is probably a dream though because of the amount of time it would take. Even though summer is here, I have summer classes and I will still be busy.

I also know I will be posting some about just random personal things that come up that I feel so inclined to write about. Also, I'll be sure to talk about Cassie some (especially her blog). I know that this Friday night (May 4) I'll be posting about the Spiderman 3 movie after I get back from watching it. I can't wait for that!

One week down. I guess I'll give another update after a month. I'll put that in my Outlook tasks right now.

Internet: Blogging Basics from a Beginner

I promised in my last post that this post would be about technology and I was having trouble picking a topic so I finally decided to blog about blogging. I am fairly new to blogging and really haven't found a niche yet. I really don't have any readership yet, the formatting on my blog has changed at least twice a day since its launch, and I haven't gained any pattern to my posts yet. So, I've decided to talk a little about my experience getting started in the world of blogging.

First off, I knew I was going to use Google AdSense. I was surprised how easy it was to get going with the service. I think my experience was so simple partially because of the simple yet powerful tools that Blogger has built in. Personally I think the ads do not detract from the look and formatting because I was able to customize them to match the colors I have selected for the blog. The powerful tools that blogger offers allowed me to use a drag and drop interface to make a personalized looking blog while using standard tools.


The next thing that I knew I wanted to include in my blog was some way to track how many people are actually visiting my blog. At first I looked at using StatCounter to track the visits before continued my research. It was not that StatCounter did not appear to be a good service, it was simply that I found a better alternative. Eventually I found Google Analytics and thought it would be a good choice for my little blog. The features are full featured enough for a large website. Actually, many of the features are simply useless because I do not have enough hits. Many of the breakdowns are so detailed even with a reasonable number of hits for a brand new blog, the breakdowns are simply useless. I'm not going to post an example, but I have a feeling I will spend too much time analyzing statistics from the service.

Lastly, I wanted to help promote my blog. Obviously there are a multitude of ways of promoting a blog but I quickly turned to Technorati. I subscribed to the service and quickly noticed how low my rank was. It has since moved up in the world since Cassie's Corner has linked to my blog. Technorati also provides other useful features such as the search box for my blog which is located in the right navigation bar. There are also some other features such as the Technorati rank which can be found somewhere on my blog. I have a tendency to move it around because I haven't found a place where I think it looks good. It has been floating around the bottom of the page.

I have a good question that I have yet to answer: Why did I start blogging? Well, I have an admission. I actually posted a note about my upgrading from Windows Vista on my Facebook Notes. I spent probably an hour formatting it and working on it making it look really great. Afterward, I had this little voice in my head saying that I should start blogging. Well, I ended up listening to that voice and a few days later I subscribed to blogger. Actually, I still import my blog entries into Facebook using their built in import feature. I have considered turning it off but for the mean time I will leave it on.

I still have some things that I want to add to my blog and change that I have yet to figure out. First off, I am not a big fan of Blogger's built in list of tags. Technorati has a tag cloud feature that I have considered using but in the mean time I will just keep things the way they are. The other thing that I am not a big fan of is the way the archive currently looks. I have it set to the the drop down setting which I think is too big. I do like the way that it looks when it is a flat list. I might add a recent posts drop down and change the archive to the flat list. I have a feeling that I am going to work on that as soon as I click the publish button. Which will be right about now.

Internet: Oh the joy of colors

I've been having fun playing with the colors of my blog for the past few hours. I've settled on shades of red (obviously) but I am not quite sure if I like the current setup. I do like how it has the checkerboard type style in the upper corners but as for the main body of the blog, i think there is a bit too much red. I have links set to red and my Google Ads are currently red. I think the two prior need to be a different color to help set them apart form everything else. The obvious choice would be blue but I am not sure if I want them to be the default color.

I should probably update my default picture to the left as well. It has the blue border built in since I started with a default template and the color scheme was all blue. That might happen later today. I was also promised a new profile picture within a week or two by Cassie, who also drew my current profile picture. Hopefully that will come through. I'll probably post again about tech stuff in my next post. Now that I have written it down hopefully it comes true.

Cassie's Corner

I have great news: Cassie's Corner was started yesterday!

Cassie started her blog. She is still working on it but it is definitely under way. Her blog will definitely not be as dry as mine considering the main thing she will be posting is pictures she has drawn on her tablet (not technology like me).

Hopefully she works on the layout (which already looks great) and some of the features over the next few days. I know I will be frequenting it to see what she has posted. I also know I will be bugging her to post more often (but I can live with that). Hopefully she is not too upset I forced her to get a blog and.

If I already haven't said it enough, Thanks Cassie! You are totally awesome!

Personal: Cassie's Blog

... does not exist yet. :(

You can see the picture she drew of herself to the left. She also drew the picture of me that is located to the right at the top of my blog (assuming I don't totally rearrange everything or your looking at this on Facebook).

I've not been blogging for very long, so it is not like I have much authority, but I really want Cassie to start blogging. I know she is not going to post like technology, she is not a geek although many people think she is (sorry Cassie) because she is good with technology.

What I think would be perfect for her is if she blogged about her drawings. Just upload a few of them and write a brief description of what it is and maybe where she got the idea. Mainly just to get her stuff out there. I know I enjoy looking at it (since I am totally unbiased), and some of her work is just awesome. I know I plan to blog about photographs I have taken if I ever get any time to take some.

Here is what her complaint is: people will respond negatively to what she posts. Since my blog is about technology and myself, people will not post negative things. My response was that no one looks at my blog at all to even post ANYTHING. I guess she just needs a little encouragement. I think she will finally start one after she finishes finals this week (good luck by the way). I'll probably help her set everything up and will be sure to have a link posted in an entry and permanently on the side of my blog.

My First Post!

So, I've decided to start blogging on blogger.com...

I don't know why, I really don't have much time considering how crazy Speed School is but I needed a new hobby. I'll probably be posting a lot about technology considering that is about 50% of my life. :D However, I'll try to post things other than that so it is not totally tech.

I don't know how often I will be posting and I am not even sure how this is going to work out.