Bethejustin.com

Entries in web20 (8)

Thursday

Jun032010

Instapaper Text Bookmarklet

Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 9:51PM

First off if you aren't using the Instapaper service well I don't even know how I would be able to handle the Internet without it. It allows you to create a arbitrary list of links or things you find on the net that you want to save for reading later but aren't likely to care about once your done and thus why bookmark them. It also has an iPhone App, iPad App, and is accessible from any web browser. It's a tool I've come to rely very heavily on in my day today stumbling across the net. I highly recommend it.

Primarily I interface with the site view one of several bookmarklets. The default "Read Later" simply saves something to your main Instapaper queue. The one I just discovered and wanted to talk about today is "Instapaper Text" it creates a stripped down text-only (with relevant images) version of the current page. This is something that you can access other ways (via the iPhone/iPad apps for example) but it is a handy way to quickly get a distraction free version of the page your looking at right in the browser and I find these versions FAR more readable and even for that matter printable.

What you end up with is this...

Vs.

Justin |

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Friday

May072010

Who's Tweeting Now?

Friday, May 7, 2010 at 9:00AM

I've been on Twitter since sometime in 2007 if I remember correctly. Since that time my use of Twitter has grown and evolved. But my friends and family have never really understood "the whole Twitter thing." I've tried to explain the power of Twitter to them at different times in different ways. Like Twitter itself has, I've often tried to start with search and the idea that you can follow conversations about real-time events using hashtags.

One of my first "ah-ha" moments with Twitter came after I had been using the service for a while and being a long time "space geek" I was of of course following @NASA's Twitter account. I can't remember exactly what piece of information I was seeking but there was something I was trying to remember likely about the shuttle or some other mission. So I sent a quick "at reply" to the NASA account and actually heard back with a response to my query. The "ah-ha" moment there is that what would this have taken pre-Twitter? An e-mail? Perhaps. Press credentials? Maybe. But here I was no more than a mere fan of NASA and their efforts and I was able to get a response from the source to my inquiry.

As the years have gone by NASA has expanded their use of Twitter and other social media services. The pinnacle of these efforts has to be the various tweetups that they've held in recent years. The climax of these has to be of course the launch tweetup that was held for the launch of the STS-129 mission. Also reaching fever pitch around the time of the STS-129 tweetup was the Space Tweep Society a collection of space geeks/fans communicating with each other and the larger Twitter community about their shared passion for human space flight. Of course having been a space geek myself since I was 13 these were my people and I became involved and got to know some of the STS-129 tweeps via Twitter and other space fans as well. Including some astronauts, NASA Employees, and Mission Controllers. I was on the Internet and a space fan pre-Twitter and that type of communication simply wasn't possible before.

Which brings us to today. I've continued to be active in the Space Tweep community, as well as the community that has built up around SpaceVidcast. Despite all this space geekery I've never actually seen a shuttle launch in person. With only a handful of launches remaining until the program ends and based on the amazing feedback of those who had attended the STS-129 event I resolved that if there were another launch tweetup I would at the very least sign up. So when the STS-132 tweetup was announced I signed up but didn't really dare to dream that I would be accepted.

I was though and I now have the opportunity to attend a launch with front row seats. NASA rolls out the red carpet for these tweetups which are a two day event at Kennedy Space Center with the opportunity to meet astronauts, NASA employees, tour KSC, and best of all witness a launch from right next to the official press center. If you've ever seen the shot of the flags and countdown clock on the news...yeah that's where we'll get to be. It is a truly mind-boggling opportunity that I was more than in shock, I was selected to be a part of.

All of this is made possible and facilitated directly by Twitter the oft misunderstood communication medium revolving around short 140 character messages. As I explained just exactly what this opportunity entails and I think even my most skeptical friends and family began to see some power in the medium and were of course happy, as am I, that it has helped me to fulfill a nearly life-long dream.

I will be tweeting during the event which will take place on May 13 and 14 from my account @bethejustin as well as hopefully posting here and to my Flickr. I hope you will follow along.

Justin |

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Saturday

Nov072009

Engaging NASA's Human Side

Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 1:08PM

It's no secret that I've been a space geek/nerd/enthsiast since I was about 13 years old. Since that time I've always admired (envied?) NASA, those who work there, and of course astronauts. Now in the world of Twitter/Facebook/YouTube and social media how I think of astronauts as people is changing drastically, and I think that's a good thing.

My mental image of how I think about astronauts as people was shaped early on in my love affair with space exploration as a result of a trip I took in the summer of 1994 to Space Camp in Huntsville Alabama. One of the key components of the program I was participating in was simulated shuttle missions. During my time I served on one flight in Mission Control as "Capcom" and on the next I asked for something with responsibility and ended up, to my serious surprise, as "Shuttle Commander." However I learned quickly just how much responsibility the Capcom has (hint: LOTS more than I ever imagined but that's perhaps another post). During my time at space camp I became quick friends with a fellow space geek in my group. I geeked out over things like shuttle abort modes and acronyms and he open my mind to a whole new world of things like Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. He suggested that I read the book Moon Shot to start catching up my knowledge of the early days of the space program and I did at the earliest connivence. (Btw, J.R. Harris if you're out there hit up the Capcom)

I think it is fair to say that if you look back on the Mercury days and the original 7 you emerge with a romanticized larger than life view of what astronauts are supposed to be. In fact back in those days that is the exact effect that NASA and the government was going for, and I came to idolize guys like Shepherd and Slayton (my to favorites from that era to this day, Shepherd in fact hailing from my native New Hampshire).

This romanticized view worked for the time but this is 2009. NASA and its astronauts, as best I can tell, have embarked on an unprecedented mission of engagement with the public they serve. I found myself wondering the other day for example as I checked in on one of my Twitter lists, that contains all the Astronauts currently on Twitter, if 13 year old me would believe that I might one day be interacting directly with actual astronauts. NASA and the astronauts have truly embraced social media, and that might almost be an understatement, we've now had everything from tweeting shuttle commanders, to "tweetups" on the International Space Station. Even now this new engagement is evolving and soaring to higher heights and much like Moon Shot defined my early impressions of astronauts Twitter and YouTube are shaping my impressions of the current brand of astronaut in an even more positive light.

Let me just highlight a few of the things I've come across recently that 13 year old me probably wouldn't have believed. The other day I came across a video of future Space Station Commander Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) had posted to TwitVid giving a brief tour of the American crew quarters in Star City Russia. In case that doesn't register for you we are talking about tweeting from one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War. We also recently got a look inside the "Astro Van", thanks to Astronaut Leland Melvin (@Astro_Flow) who posted another video to Twitter, as the astronauts rode to the pad for their TCDT (or "terminal countdown demonstration test") of astronauts joking around laughing the mood was light, and it was fun to see. Last but certainly not least Astronaut Mike Massimino has been producing a great series of videos (just one of many) on YouTube giving an inside look at the training of the STS-129 crew, if you are at all interested I highly recommend checking them out. In addition definitely follow @Astro_Mike on Twitter he's very active and a pretty cool guy.

So what does all this mean? Well I believe it adds up to unprecedented engagement and access to our space agency. After all NASA is a public effort and it is great to see them engaging the very public that keeps them flying. As a space geek it is somewhat mind boggling to me to get tweets from Star City for example a place that is not known for being open and has always fascinated me. More than anything though what you come away from following the tweets, videos, etc. is that these are just real people they have families, kids that need to do homework have sporting events to get to, they like to joke around, they have good days and they have days that are down right frustrating...like all of us.

What NASA is succeeding in doing, I hope, is showing the world the human side, beyond the rockets, acronyms, and tech talk they are an organization of truly great dedicated...real people. Hopefully seeing this side will make kids realize, "hey I can do this, they're just like me or my dad/mom, and I can be an astronaut too" and that's a good thing when we've heard much talk lately from the President about NASA's mission to inspire.

Here's the bottom line from all of this for me, for a group that spends much of their time circling it astronauts are a very down to Earth group of people.

Justin |

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Wednesday

Nov042009

My approach to @Twitter Lists

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 8:32PM

Many 1's and 0's have been delivered already on the topic of Twitter's latest feature known simply as "lists." Including some of the really great coverage by Mashable. However I will dare to dream that somewhere out there folks might be wondering what I think. Credit must also go to a blog post by Sean Bonner where he makes a "Prediction about Twitter Lists," that post really opened my eyes with regards to how lists are going to be transformative, as we'll explore now.

First what exactly are Twitter lists? Well any of the above links will probably do a better job explaining them than I but the basic premise is that they allow you to create collections of other Twitter users. Lists can be public, seen by any other user of Twitter, or private, see only by you. In addition to creating your own lists (up to 20 I hear) you can also subscribe, or I guess follow is the right term, any other public list. Okay this is handy and something many have wanted for a long time. However where it gets transformative, as I discovered from Sean's post above, is in the initially overlooked detail that you can put an account on a list without having to follow it.

Here's how that's changed my Twitter behavior. Essentially my new approach to lists can all be boiled down into the idea that I am trying to reserve my timeline for accounts that are actual people. These may not be people I know as in the case of a lot of tech journalists, celebs, etc. but the accounts still generally map to individuals, at least that's where I'm headed. There are of course exceptions for things I really care about like @NASA and many A Cappella groups, but the bottom line is the bar for which accounts I allow into my timeline is much higher. I've moved accounts like brands (think @JetBlue or @VirginAmerica), news feeds (think Digg feeds, @CNN, local blogs, etc.) these accounts tend to posts frequently and clutter up the timeline resulting in me missing posts from people I actually care about. In addition I also follow lists of for example all the NASA astronauts that tweet or all the SpaceTweeps out there both of which are fun because I can get a lot of content without having to follow an additional 500 people.

Are lists in their current form perfect? Hardly but I firmly believe that they are a gigantic step in a positive direction for the future of Twitter. The next step is for clients like TweetDeck and Tweetie to add support for lists however this will be on easy task. The first road bump is that to pull down the updates to a list via an app requires a hefty price be paid in the form of API calls. API calls are essentially the language these apps use to talk with Twitter. Currently Twitter allows 100 conversations to take place within an hour. This limit has worked well until down but let's say you have 14 or so lists each time you load them that's an API hit. The one client that has implemented lists, Seesmic, only supports manual updates of lists. I would like to think that at some point Twitter will remove or raise this limit with enough capacity. Hopefully they realize that it does little if anything to fight spam at this point. I have some thoughts on an approach to spam but that might be another post.

The other issue is what exactly is the UI that actually makes lists useful and easy to deal with? Seesmic's is certainly one approach and I feel like it's the one that you might expect and it is reasonable enough. TweetDeck is holding their cards close to the vest promising that they have something up their sleeves in terms of lists but not saying much more. It is clear to me that the purely column approach breaks down when trying to follow multiple lists. I would like to see some UI work in TweetDeck in terms of how you switch between columns the horizontal scroll that currently exists is a bit sloppy in my opinion. Regardless I am eager to see what TweetDeck comes up with. On the mobile side of things I think Tweetie has an easier time because in my mind the hierarchical nature of the iPhone UI makes sense one panel with a list of the users lists, tapping one loads that list, seems fairly obvious but then again @atebits does have a knack for some pretty creative UI design so another development that will be fun to watch!

Justin |

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Thursday

Mar192009

Facebook Freakout. Deep breaths people.

Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 10:25PM

I'm not usually the first to come to the defense of Facebook but you know I actually do feel bad for them this go around in terms of the latest iteration of the home page scandal. There has been a ton written about the supposed "Twitterification" of Facebook. All because they dared to try update the homepage layout. I remember back when they changed the layout the previous time and the all out collective conniption fit their users threw. As a result I tweeted back when the first screenshots of the most recent layout were released that we should be bracing for a freak out the likes of which the internet has never seen. Sure enough said freak out simmering since the changes went live has begun to roll to its expected boil.

Why feel bad for Facebook though? Well imagine you are a product designer or a developer at Facebook, by most accounts one of the Internet's hottest companies, except you can't innovate anything without the masses complaining every step of the way. I've been on Facebook for I guess a little over a year now and form what I've observed anytime Facebook does well just about ANYTHING it triggers an all out "sky is falling" level of reaction and downright panic from "Facebook users." This must make it pretty hard to innovate and also discouraging to work on something new for so long and then have irate Facebook users attack not only the company but the developers personally.

For the record, I actually like the new layout and this is probably because I spend way more of my time over at Twitter than I do on Facebook. Some interesting points have been raised, with little to back them up admittedly, about the demographics of Facebook vs. Twitter. It's been said that Twitter's demo skews to the say 25 and older crowd where as Facebook's demo screws to a younger high-school/college crowd. If that is the case and we generalize for a minute then the reaction of the Facebook users every time they change something is troubling indeed.

It seems to me that if the collective Facebook masses had their way or were, god forbid, running the Internet at large we would all still be surfing Web .01 in IE 2.0 and dealing with a constant barrage marquee tags, background MIDIs when a page loads, and pop-ups (kids ask your friends born before 1985). With progress and innovation come change. Imagine a world for a minute where there was no Facebook at all, yeah don't like that very much either do you?

If Facebook truly represents the next generation of innovators we're relying on to solve the world's problems let us hope their overreaction and inability to adapt in the face of Facebook home page updates is not indicative of how they approach life in general. Otherwise we're all in a lot of trouble.

Sometimes you have to give change a chance, stop take a deep breath, close your eyes, open them again and just try to understand the reasons behind the changes, learn the valuable life skill of adaptation, resist the temptation to throw a tantrum, and in the end you may just find the the people who worked really hard on those changes aren't as worthless as you might think. Maybe...they are even on to something.

Justin |

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