Dooley Online

Twitter Camp

I've just gotten back from a week of camping in the middle of Pennsylvania with thousands of my closest friends at Creation Festival 2008.

Yes, we slept in tents.
Yes, we cooked our own food over an open fire or camp stove.
Yes, we used outhouse toilets.

We were there to experience rock/hip-hop/grunge/inspirational concerts and speakers on two giant outdoor stages.

And, for some reason, the organizers of this event contracted with my cell phone carrier to provide cell phone support. So I have 4 bars most of the time. Whoohoo!

As a result, I was able to twitter the camping experience.

See my twitpics (in reverse chronological order) here.

What are you going to do for OneWebDay?

David Weinberger via blog post and twitter reminded me that OneWebDay is coming up on September 22. The first ever OneWebDay was held in 2006.

The idea was created by Susan Crawford, who set up the web site, traveled to different cities to encourage people to celebrate OneWebDay. She is committed to working on OneWebDay through 2016.

The idea behind OneWebDay - a global Earth Day for the internet - is to:

• focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy)

• focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills)

• create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet

The members of its board include:

• Kaarli Tasso
• Renee Edelman
• James Tierney
• Allison Fine
• David Isenberg
• Gregg Vesonder
• David Johnson
• David Weinberger
• Richard Whitt (chair)
• Mary Hodder
• Doc Searls
• Susan Crawford

OneWebDay, Inc. is a non-profit organization based in New York.

del.icio.us beats out Digg in UI

I've been using del.icio.us and digg.com for some time now and I have to say it ...

Digg's interface doesn't make me a happy camper.

Not only do you have to go through multiple screens, but you have to review an auto-generated list of current diggs that might be your digg and double-check by hand that your digg hasn't been already submitted.

(Actually, like that feature as I've found some interesting stories that way.)

But it is such a laborious process to get a digg dugg that I am more likely to post to my del.icio.us account rather than post to digg.

I mean, who has time?!?

If digg wants to maintain it's marketshare, it is going to have to improve it's user interface.

And soon.

Hope vs. Hype

Jeremiah Owyang tweeted about a great video from the collegehumor folks -- "If Things Turned Out Differently ... What if all the hype was true?"

How many of these items did you invest your time and money in?

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Twitter Tips and Tools

The other day I was stuck on the DC Metro for two hours after one of the cars on our train derailed. What an twitter opportunity. Imagine my chagrin at not being able to find my phone in the bottom of my overstuffed backpack!

With the recent twitter chatter about downtime and integration, I wanted to post just a few of the useful links I've recently discovered.

Twitter tools

Several hard-core twitter users use various clients or tools to assist in twittering. Here are some resources to find out more:

• NetworkWorld posted a useful presentation on the Top 12 Twitter Tools.

• Courtney Sellers is putting together http://www.twoolz.com which will also list a variety of twitter tools.

• rememberthemilk is an online to-do list that stands alone or can be configured to interact with twitter and other applications for free or for a small annual fee.

When twitter goes down ...

Many people turn to other tools when twitter goes down -- here are just a few:

• friendfeed allows you to add feeds from several socialmedia sites (twitter, facebook, linkedin, blogs, etc.) to create a more comprehensive picture of what you and your friends are doing online.

• Stan Schroeder and Michael Arrington suggest twitter addicts turn to twiddict to deal with twitter downtimes.

Organize your Tweets with Hashtags

Every year I take our church youth group up to Creation Festival Northeast. This year I thought it would be fun and helpful to tweet the event so parents and other youth (not going) can keep tabs on what we're doing.

One of the groups I'm associated with suggested we use hashtags to identify specific content relevant to our group -- so I've adopted the following strategy:

• If you want to identify your tweets as relevant to a specific topics, you can use hashtags. Basically, include "#keyword in any tweet that is keyword-related.
  
  Remember, you only have 140 characters to work with, so make your keyword short but relevant.
  
  For the hardcore twitter user -- use Twitter's track feature to get these tweets dropped wherever you want.
  
  For the general twitter user, there are services like Tweetscan (which offers real-time twitter search) where you can check out the twitterverse at your leisure on the keyword front.
  
  You can tweet to the tag with this:
  
  http://twitter.com/home?status=#keyword
  
  Or simply append your tweets with "#keyword"
  
  Then, interested parties can subscribe to:
  
  http://twemes.com/keyword.rss and follow the conversation.
  
  For more on how to do this, go to http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Hashtags

What twitter tools and add-ons do you use?

Classmates v. LinkedIn / Facebook / Twitter / etc. . . .

I joined Classmates.com years ago.

But,  I have to admit, I don't follow it.

I get periodic emails about who has recently joined from my high school and college. This morning, 20 more people joined my network. But I only recognized one of those identified.

Though it does most of the work for me, Classmates just isn't a major social media site that I use.

Why?

Probably for the reasons social media works in the first place:

• Social Media takes offline relationships online (or generates offline relationships from online meet-and-greets).

• The most popular social media is FREE! Okay, Classmates offers a free package, but advanced functionality (like added background information) costs extra. The free service LinkedIn allows you to post resume and background information about yourself for free -- and you can define the kinds of connections you want to make.

• My network defies definition. I'm not as connected to those I went to school with as I am with those I live and work around. Facebook does a good job of allowing you to connect with people outside a specific network as well as those within a variety of networks -- including those networks that are informal and self-defined.

• Real conversations in real time in real places. Classmates allows you to post notes but they are static elements. I've recently had to update my phone service for text messages because I've expanded my twitter network and have many tweets coming directly to my phone. This allows me to participate in the lives and activities of a self-defined universe of people at times and places beyond the space in front of my computer screen and in a way an online application cannot.

What social networks do you use and why?

Cows and Climate Change

Ever since I read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in 7th grade, the relationship between man and cow has always triggered mixed emotions.

But in recent years, not only are there concerns about how we treat our bovine friends before we eat our bovine friends, but our appetite for bovine products may be contributing to global climate change in a significant way.

Here are just a few of the many articles on how cow methane emissions are contributing to climate change:

• July 2000. CNN reports that in pulling together Australia's emissions inventory for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, government officials map the impact of belching and flatulence in cows and sheep which annually produce 90 percent of Australia's methane emissions in the agricultural sector.
  

• March 2005. Compassion in World Farming sponsors an international conference on animal sentience. Preceding that conference, news.com.au published an article by Jonathan Leake on "The Secret Life of Cows" where he reports that "cows have a complex mental life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited by intellectual challenges, researchers have found."

• December 2005. British scientists were fighting climate change by trying to reduce the harmful greenhouse gases produced by flatulent cows.

• December 2006. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization releases the 400-page report "Livestock's Long Shadow" where they identified cow 'emissions' as more damaging to the planet than CO2 from cars.

• October 2007. More methane is emitted from the front of a cow than the rear. But given that no viable method has been devised to capture this gas as it erupts from either end of the cow, Swedish company Svenska Biogas develops a method of obtaining methane from the bits of cows that would otherwise be discarded during the slaughter process. Is this a trump card in the fight against global warming?

• March 2008. Climate change experts target cow flatulence. The Rowett Research Institute is leading a European project to develop a feed additive that can inhibit the production of the foul smelling gas but so far it has only succeeded in trials with lambs. An institute spokesman said it was looking for commercial partners for further research.

• April 2008. Climate Change: From Cows to Kilowatts – A Case Study in Successful Technology Transfer. The “Cows to Kilowatts” initiative in Nigeria aims to reduce the water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from slaughterhouse waste. Building on innovative technology from Thailand, the project converts abattoir waste into household gas and organic fertilizer, providing local communities with clean, cheap fuel.

Finally, here is a how-to video on how farmers can extract methane gas from cow dung and use as a fuel.

A picture says a thousand words . . .

Source: Ranganathan, Janet, et al. 2008. Ecosystem Services: A Guide for Decision Makers (World Resources: Washington, DC). pg. 18.

Social Media in the mainstream

In Josh Bernoff's blog "Help me get your boss to understand social technology" he asks:

How do we reach the managers who aren't using social technology?

Here's my 2 cents:

• Get the staff using social media to connect with each other and your organization online.

• Use every venue at your disposal to market how you are using these tools both internally and externally. Use your enewsletter, internal memos, emails, stakeholder meetings, hallway conversations, bulletin boards (real and virtual), etc. Saying it once doesn't cut it.

• Follow those opportunities up with one-on-one, group, or online training and discussion to get more people talking to each other and leveraging the tools.

• Track and market social media metrics -- numbers AND success stories/anecdotes.

• Encourage staff to share stories -- crowdmarket these tools.

• Look for good return on investment (ROI) stories -- your own and others. Look for opportunities to replicate others' success stories and make them your own.

• Recognize that time and timing are key ingredients and they come at a cost. Help people recognize the time-saving and cost-cutting opportunities social media provides.

• Make sure the organization is prepared to provide support and guidance to those who are in the process of shifting their workload to the online space.

All this should create an avalanche of information and move social media into the mainstream.

Of course, it is already becoming more mainstream anyway. But hopefully this will speed up the process.

Stop Global Warming!

It's great when my personal and professional life connect in a TV ad.