Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

When I heard Beth Kanter and Allison Fine had created a book for non-profits,The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, I had to pick up a copy. I’ve been following Beth on Twitter (@kanter) for a year and a half and had the opportunity to chat with her at the Twitterville launch party a year ago.

The Networked Nonprofit does an excellent job explaining the “What?” behind social media for non-profits. What is social media? How does it apply to non-profits and what is the larger picture?

It’s easy to get caught up in the technology and tools aspect of social networking. The Networked Nonprofit lays out an easy to understand view of the Web 2.0 environment without forcing readers to jump over technological jargon barriers.

Social media is all about networking, something non-profits understand very well. The book builds off of that familiar concept and uses it as a scaffold to approach topics like online engagement, transparency, and crowdsourcing.

I strongly believe that The Networked Nonprofit belongs on the nightstand of every non-profit manager and anyone looking to support non-profits.

You can order a copy or a set of The Networked Nonprofits books via Amazon (affiliate link below).

Photo Credit: Noah Sussman – License

Twitter recently rolled out its new iPad mobile application.  Go to the App Store to get the latest version.  Here’s a review of 5 cool features.

1. The application is made for the iPad. The previous application was just the iPhone version.

2. See multiple “views” on one screen. The new app allows you to see snippets of more than one view at a time.  This is basically a visual “breadcrumb.”  Unfortunately, there are a couple of instances when things get “stuck” and it is difficult to close the active panel.

3. Article/image previews on tweets. Click on an item in your timeline and see the tweet with the article preview below.  This saves a click and gives you a good idea if you want to continue and read the  article.

With the release of Flipboard, there has been a movement towards visual browsing of  tweets.  This is a great next step for Twitter.

4. “Faux” attachments on tweets. Twitter still doesn’t allow for attachments but this “Attachments” screen simulates that action.  On a new tweet, click on the paper clip and you get access to your iPad photo album.  The Twitter app ties in third-party image hosting companies to accomplish the faux attachments.

5. Integration with services.  The app also allows users to connect to third-party services like Posterous for image and video posting.  Video posting?  Apparently the Twitter app is ahead of the iPad development curve and is already listing different video services.

I was surprised by the way the app “knew” how to select my Posterous account since  I never use Posterous on the iPad.

Review

The new Twitter for iPad app is a great step in the right direction – it uses the iPad’s space intelligently and it incorporates preview features like rich desktop apps.  I tested some of the “gestures” mentioned in the Twitter blog post but they weren’t intuitive so they’ve got some work to do there.  All in all, it’s a must download.

Did you see any other great features?  Overall, do you like what Twitter has done?

The new Tweetdeck experimental version uses the “User Streams API” from Twitter and it is turbo charged. It’s so fast that my All Friends stream of 7,724 people is almost a blur.

This version is in limited release but you can request access by going to the Tweetdeck site, logging into your Tweetdeck account, and submitting the request. I received an email back from Tweetdeck a few hours later.

If the video demo below scares you, don’t request the new version yet.

This tweet from @Gorillamonk made me want to download the new version and see just how fast it was.

Here’s a view of my Tweetdeck stream. It hauls booty.

Are you likely to download the new version after watching this video? Or does this look out of control fast?

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YouTube announced a new HTML5 video player that works on the Apple iPad device. The player is smart enough to know whether it can display Flash or if it has to switch to HTML5 mode for a non-Flash enabled device.

I tested the new player against the regular YouTube player on an iPad and the new player still needs some work. The new player takes a longer to load, has some funky behavior (a duplicate window appears below the player), and the screen is bouncy when the player isn’t set to fullscreen.

I can see why the new player isn’t available from the regular video page yet.

Furthermore, in order to get the HTML5 version to load, site visitors must have gone to the YouTube HTML5 page and opted in as an HTML5 Beta tester.

This player is basically in development mode. I wouldn’t rush out and start changing all your embed codes but it is worth testing out, especially if it can help you with an existing issue.

This is sample code to embed the new player:

<iframe type=”text/html” width=”640″ height=”385″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID” frameborder=”0″>

“VIDEO_ID” is the ID of the video which looks like an encrypted string. For the videos below, the ID is “FmWNwJRVK_g.”

I embedded a video using the new HTML5 player and also using the standard YouTube player to test on the iPad. I did this for my test but feel free to do the same and test it via your desktop/laptop and via your mobile device or iPad. Remember to opt in to the YouTube HTML5 Beta if you want the player to show up…or you’ll only get a black box in its place.

The New HTML 5 player

The standard YouTube embed method

What do you think? Is the new player useful yet? Will this solve any browser or platform issues for your videos?

I’ve been overwhelmed by all the Facebook changes. Things are moving as quickly with Facebook as they are with Twitter. So I thought I’d review the Facebook changes one chunk at a time and see some of the practical implications, for sites and for users.

One of the changes Facebook just launched is its site personalization services. This allows external sites to display content based on information from a user’s Facebook account.

For example, I just visited Pandora.com for my morning music fix and saw this:

Because I was logged into Facebook, the Pandora site was able to:

1. Display the top header bar with my Facebook profile picture. The bar also includes the message ” Hi Jesse. Pandora is using facebook to personalize your experience. Learn More[link] – No Thanks[link]“.




2. Display my profile picture below the music tracks and pull in links to artists I had Facebook fanned (Snoop Dogg and Susan Boyle).

Initial Reaction

I wasn’t surprised to see these additions because Facebook had posted a massive picture to my Facebook Wall and description of some of the changes. My first thought on seeing the change was to think “Wow, that’s pretty cool.”

I was viewing the change from the perspective of a blog owner who could potentially do something similar. However, I could see how people could be freaked out after seeing the change. “Why is Facebook following me, even out on the Web?”

User Privacy

So what do you do if you don’t want Pandora to display this Facebook information and connections? You just have to click on the header and either click on the “X” or on the “No Thanks” and your Facebook profile and your artists pics go away.

I tested the persistence of this “No Thanks” opt-out action by refreshing the browser, opening things up in a whole different browser and the Facebook information did not reappear.

Facebook Posse To Go?

I also visited the food review site Yelp, and the site displayed my Yelp-using Facebook friends.

These are friendly faces so I didn’t mind seeing them on the site. Most of the time I’m on a different social network, I do want to find users that I friend on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

Further Research

I didn’t test to see what happens on the Facebook side of things after doing key actions, like adding new Pandora channels or adding new Yelp reviews. I imagine that would require further exploration of Facebook privacy settings which I’ll reserve for a future blog post.

Bottom Line

I like the personalization changes, so far. I’m going to actively explore all the “under the hood” mechanics of the Facebook-publisher connection and test things out jesseluna.com when that is possible.

I think that major “disconnects” will occur when we start seeing our Facebook information on sites that we don’t want to associate with in any way shape or form. For example, if an employment site like Monster.com starts using this feature, it could start publishing information to your Facebook account. I haven’t researched how things appear on Facebook, so this is speculation. But if your boss follows you on Facebook, you could be in for a lot of explaining.

What do you think about these personalization features? Cool or creepy?

I purchased the Apple iPad on Opening Day, April 3, 2010, but recently uncovered a rare deleted scene from my unboxing experience.

You can discourage future attempts at humor by leaving a comment here and on YouTube.