Posted on

How To Control the Online Discussion with Google Moderator

Google Moderator is a feature that has allowed some pretty big names to have discussions with their audience without chaos ensuing. It provides a controlled environment where viewers on YouTube can ask questions and, if their question is popular among other Youtubers, get it voted up and answered. It’s like your own personal version of Digg…with video. Now, it’s available to all users.

Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time.

Moderator was used in discussions on YouTube with Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It’s also been used to facilitate discussion about the future of the African continent and who is the best slam dunker not in the NBA. While YouTube has made updates to the commenting system to make it more manageable and inviting, it’s still difficult to have any type of meaningful discussion within the comments. The noise easily drowns out the signal. Google moderator turns the tables in your favor.

Your first step is to add the Moderator module to your YouTube Channel. Just open the Modules drop down from your channel page and check the Moderator box (don’t forget to Save Changes).

moderator1

The next step is to create your first series. This refers to the entire discussion thread. Your Title is where you ask your community for questions, ideas, or suggestions on some topic. The Description allows you to got a little more in-depth as to what you want from your audience. You can optionally include a link to a YouTube video here if you are more comfortable expressing yourself on camera or need to attach related video content. One thing to note is that you can actually specify whether users will submit mostly questions, ideas, or suggestions. You can also specify start and end times for the series if it coincides with an actual event or you just want to limit responses.

moderator2

Each user response can also have a video link attached. There is no way to comment on individual post, which helps to keep things clean and focused. The only way a viewer can give feedback is by giving an item a thumbs up/down. Those items that get the most positive attention float to the top so that you can provide a video response.

Besides being a great way to get user feedback on serious issues, this is a great feature for YouTube personalities that thrive by entertaining or helping their audience. It will be easier to crowdsource your audience. Whether it’s a certain song they want to see performed, some problem that needs a solution, or some type of challenge they want to see completed. A great way to keep the good content flowing.

How will you use Google Moderator?


Posted on

How to Connect Google Reader Shares to Facebook via Hootsuite

I have a Facebook Fan page, but I rarely post there because they make it so difficult to do so. There is no bookmarklet that facilitates this action. I’m sure there is some obscure Facebook application that might help with this, but I haven’t found it yet. My only recourse has been to actually visit the page and cut/paste a link. Very time consuming and inefficient if you’re working at the level I am when it comes to social media.

I came across a discussion on piping reader shares into Twitter using Reader2Twitter. This got me thinking about Hootsuite‘s RSS/Atom feature, which lets you pipe a feed through Hootsuite and out to the social networks you choose. Rather than have to deal with yet another 3rd party web application, why not just use an existing feature in an application I already use daily?

Adding Your Facebook Fan Page to Hootsuite

The first step is to connect your Facebook Fan Page to Hootsuite. I actually stumbled across this by accident in simply trying to get my GReader shares into Twitter. Note that once you have done this, you can easily post updates to your Fan Page from within Hootsuite on a per-update basis, making it simple to keep your page updated with fresh content for your fans.

  • Click Settings at the bottom of Hootsuite
  • Click the Social Networks tab and then Add Social Network  on the right
  • In the popup, choose Pages under Facebook to connect your page to Hootsuite

FanPageHoot

Adding Your Google Reader Shared Items Feed

Adding your Shared Items feed is simple. The hardest part is finding the actual feed link. I found my Shares page from my Google Profile (your Google Profile is here). It should be listed as one of your websites. You should see the actual feed link on the right side of that page, just copy it. Alternately, you can go into Google Reader, click Shared Items on the left, and then show details on the right. The feed URL should appear, right-click and copy it.

GFeedLink

GFeedLink2

 

Back in Hootsuite and under Settings choose the RSS/Atom tab and Add New Feed. Paste your shared items feed URL into the first text box and decide how often you want the feed checked and how many tweets you want Hootsuite to send out each time. Be conservative here. If you send any more than a couple of tweets out at a time, you will look like a spammer or a n00b. Make sure you choose which accounts you want updates from this feed sent to at the bottom. Check the screenshot below to see how I have mine setup.

HootsuiteRSS

If you need any further assistance or clarification, please comment here. I would appreciate your feedback and would be happy to help. Also, if you have a better or alternate way of doing this, I’d love to hear it.

Posted on

Google Buzz, PleaseRobMe, and Privacy Scare Tactics

Buzz

With Google Buzz recently launching inside of your Gmail, many people immediately became concerned about their privacy. The primary reason being that there was a social component inside their email inbox, a place normally reserved for private discussion.

The other concern that arose was the way Google built your network. Most social networks are built, brick-by-brick, by the user. This is a huge pain to repeat every time you join something new. What Google did was use the wealth of information it already has on your to build your network for you and get you started. What they also did was make this new friend’s list visible to the public on your Google Profile page, just like any other social network.

Buzz also has location sharing available, which is a whole other can of worms when it comes to privacy concerns. Which brings us to the website PleaseRobMe.com. It’s a website that monitors location-based checkins and lets the world know when you are not home. Does that scare you?

Regardless of the various arguments, anecdotes, and opinions that can be expressed by these privacy “issues,” there is one thread that remains constant and true:

These so-called privacy concerns are just scare tactics to boost traffic

Think about this logically for a moment. Do your contacts on any social network immediately imply any connection between you and another individual besides the fact that you interact with them on that social network? If my Buzz contacts include Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, P. Diddy, and Barrack Obama, does that mean anything? The answer to both of these questions is Absolutely Not. In order to be afraid (and yes, it is only fear that motivates privacy concerns) of my contacts being made public, I have to make the assumption that someone besides me can make sense of that data. My contacts alone mean nothing to an outside observer.

PleaseRobMe

The same goes for PleaseRobMe. I check in at the grocery store. Suddenly, the world knows I’m not at home. Oh no! Now I’m gonna get robbed because I’m not home. Nevermind the fact that I have a family, a security system, several dogs, a platoon of security ninjas, and nosy neighbors. Regardless of whether the world knows I’m home or not, a potential robber still has to go through the same procedure of casing the house and whatnot before they can actually rob me successfully. Again, in order to be worried about this data being public, I have to make assumptions.

I do not mean to imply that location sharing has never led to a robbery. I also don’t mean to imply that having a public contact list has ever resulted in some other type of misfortune, but these are edge cases. These situations are not the norm. Also, people were being robbed way before location sharing existed.

So, before you go getting excited about the latest privacy scare as it relates to technology, take a moment and think about it. Is it a legit privacy concern, or is it just something being drummed up by the media or the blogosphere to boost their traffic?

h/t Hutch Carpenter

Posted on

Get Bookmarklets in Chrome Applications with Shortcut Manager

I accidentally stumbled across  this in looking at the Quix bookmarklet. I’m a heavy bookmarklet user, especially after switching to Google Chrome. One of the bookmarklets I use the most is for the PassPack password manager. This allows me to login to any website with a single click.

The problem is that, if I’m using an application shortcut or pop-up window, I can’t access my Passpack bookmarklet or any of my bookmarks. Then, I came across the Shortcut Manager Chrome extension. It allows you to assign a shortcut key to a block of javascript code. So, I can assign a key sequence that executes any of my bookmarklets. The steps are simple:

  1. Install the Shortcut Manager extension
  2. Right-click the Shortcut Manager icon and open the Options
  3. In the Shortcut Key box, press the keys you’d like to assign (I chose Ctrl+Shift+l)
  4. Choose the Execute Javascript option below
  5. Paste the javascript code for your Passpack bookmarklet into the text box
  6. Add a description

Now, you can hit Ctrl+Shift+l to run your Passpack bookmarklet inside of any Chrome window. This works in App shortcuts as well as in any popup windows (which I encounter with Posterous all the time). If you’re looking for a geekier solution, check out my Bookmarklet Key Bindings AHK script.


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

Thinking Bigger: Living in Your New House

Ranch style home in North Salinas, California

Image via Wikipedia

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Coldwell Banker. All opinions are 100% mine.

Many people have developed a culture of thinking small. We lament about stuff we can’t afford. We talk about how broke we are. We make jokes about how messed up our credit is and we would never be able to do something like buy the car of our dreams or purchase a house. Thinking in this way is a downward spiral, a race to the bottom. Even when you’re joking, thinking negative brings you negativity.

One example of thinking bigger can be found in the concept of buying a home. It seems like such a huge and difficult thing to do, especially if you’re not confident in your credit history or feel like you don’t make enough money. Just as with anything else in life, though, you won’t know unless you try.

“Not bothering to try is the same as failing, except that you don’t learn anything from it.”

With the 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits, this is even more incentive to step out and try something you didn’t think was possible. This federal income tax credit has been extended and expanded to include homeowners who wish to “move on” after 5 years of living in their current property, as well as first-time homebuyers. If you have one of these properties, make sure you get covered by property and casualty insurance so they can cover you just in case of any disasters or damages caused by other people. If you end up finding a broker, make sure they use this p&c software.

“Live in your new house mentally until it takes form around you physically” –Wallace D. Wattles

If you make less than $125,000 as an individual or $225,000 as a family or have lived in your current home consecutively for 5 of the last 8 years, you are eligible to receive a tax credit ranging from $6,500 to $8,000. To say it a different way, the federal government wants to pay you thousands of dollars for getting a new house and stimulating the economy. You have to act now as there may not be another extension. You need a written, binding contract by April 30, 2010 (close by June 30, 2010.)

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” –Les Brown

Start thinking bigger and stop sabotaging your own success before you ever get started.

Visit my sponsor: 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

One-to-Many Posting Options Still Lacking

I just recently (today) started using a service called Amplify that I learned about on Twitter. It’s supposed to let you easily share things across your social networks and provides a central place for discussion. I won’t get into too much detail about the specifics, but there is one major thing that instantly bothered me. Here is a screenshot of a post on my Ampblog regarding the RPM Challenge:

AmplifyRPM

Looks good, right? The bookmarklet is excellent. Let’s you select regions of the page and intelligently pieces them together into a baby blog post. I was impressed, until I took a look at how Amplify posted to my other services.

AmplifyTwitter

Ok, fair enough. Twitter doesn’t do images and is limited to 140 characters. This is good. I believe the URL is only that long because I hadn’t connected Bit.ly yet.

AmplifyFacebook

Uh, what’s this? It looks just like the tweet. I’m quite sure Facebook is capable of handling images and including thumbnails of stuff when you share it, so why is this Facebook share so bland?

AmplifyPosterous

Here is the Amplify post on my Posterous blog. Again, no images. Why is the good stuff being stripped away?

As you all may know, I’m a Ping.fm-aholic. It’s my go-to service when I want to speak to everyone everywhere. My problem with Ping.fm has always been that it doesn’t really do video and images (well, it does photos to flickr). I can’t be mad at that because Ping.fm wasn’t created that way. It’s all about status updates.

The other tool I use a lot for posting one-to-many is Posterous itself. It actually does do a better job of carrying over video and photos, but it has the same problem that Amplify does when it comes to Facebook. No Media!

PosterousFB

Well, sometimes photos show up, but videos don’t embed. Oh, I also have to run it through Feed-buster to get images in FriendFeed (yes, I still FriendFeed).

I am well aware that there are probably technological, underlying issues with getting media into Facebook and getting it to display nicely. I’m also aware that there may be issues with trying to get external images and video to show up on a 3rd party service. As a user, though, none of that matters. The point is still that I can’t share stuff the way I want. I have to settle for less…and that kinda sucks.

Posted on

How to Reverse Your Polarity

snapshot

Whatever things you hold onto in your thoughts will be the things you get out of life. I’m talking about your real thoughts, the ones in your subconscious, not the ones in your head as you look at your reflection and chant “I am somebody.”

Following from that, there is a serious problem with the way most of us think. Instead of thinking about what’s positive in our lives, we focus on everything that’s negative. Thinking about these negative things will, eventually, bring them into your life. Of course, this isn’t true of all of your thoughts, just the ones you focus on the most.

I’m sure this is some kind of survival mechanism, always looking out for danger and thinking about how to avoid it but, this is completely unnecessary in the world we live in now. For some people, it borders on paranoia.

For instance, some people spend a lot of time thinking about sickness. Some of them have even been diagnosed with stuff, helping to keep the thought of SICK at the forefront of their minds. Every time they don’t feel 100%, the thought of some ailment or another is amplified in their mind, bringing about the very thing they dread.

Do you know parents who are over-protective of their kids?

The children can’t play without a close watchful eye, they can’t leave the yard, they’re constantly admonished about this or that. Get down from there! Be careful! Slow down! You’ll put your eye out! A constant barrage of verbal warnings fueled by a mind riddled with doubt about their child’s safety.

We have it backwards, folks. If we keep focusing on what we don’t want, it’s exactly what we’ll get. The trick is to reverse your polarity. Any time you find yourself focusing on the negative, flip it to the positive:

  • Nobody wants to see their kids hurt. The next time you find yourself stressing about it, focus instead on how well they’re developing. How fearless they are. How fast they can move. How agile they are.

  • We have an extensive list of https://tranquilme.com/apply/, from Swedish massage and trigger point release to lymph drainage, all designed to address concerns from acute yet straightforward issues to complex and chronic conditions,

    The next time you’re feeling slightly off, realize that it’s probably no big deal. Your reality is health, as that is the way we spend most of our lives. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get certain things checked out by a professional, but you shouldn’t feel that every little thing is the beginning of the end.

In a more general sense, you have to catch yourself when you see that you’re dwelling on potential failure of any kind. Refocus on your goals, the things you actually want your life to be, and don’t be afraid to take those actions that will bring those things to you.

Can you reverse your polarity?

Posted on

Post Format: Chat

Abbott: Strange as it may seem, they give ball players nowadays very peculiar names.

Costello: Funny names?

Abbott: Nicknames, nicknames. Now, on the St. Louis team we have Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know is on third–

Costello: That’s what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team.

Abbott: I’m telling you. Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know is on third–

Costello: You know the fellows’ names?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: Well, then who’s playing first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow’s name on first base.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The fellow playin’ first base.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first base.

Abbott: Who is on first.

Costello: Well, what are you askin’ me for?

Abbott: I’m not asking you–I’m telling you. Who is on first.

Costello: I’m asking you–who’s on first?

Abbott: That’s the man’s name.

Costello: That’s who’s name?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?

Abbott: Every dollar of it. And why not, the man’s entitled to it.

Costello: Who is?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: So who gets it?

Abbott: Why shouldn’t he? Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.

Costello: Who’s wife?

Abbott: Yes. After all, the man earns it.

Costello: Who does?

Abbott: Absolutely.

Costello: Well, all I’m trying to find out is what’s the guy’s name on first base?

Abbott: Oh, no, no. What is on second base.

Costello: I’m not asking you who’s on second.

Abbott: Who’s on first!

Costello: St. Louis has a good outfield?

Abbott: Oh, absolutely.

Costello: The left fielder’s name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: I don’t know, I just thought I’d ask.

Abbott: Well, I just thought I’d tell you.

Costello: Then tell me who’s playing left field?

Abbott: Who’s playing first.

Costello: Stay out of the infield! The left fielder’s name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: Because.

Abbott: Oh, he’s center field.

Costello: Wait a minute. You got a pitcher on this team?

Abbott: Wouldn’t this be a fine team without a pitcher?

Costello: Tell me the pitcher’s name.

Abbott: Tomorrow.

Costello: Now, when the guy at bat bunts the ball–me being a good catcher–I want to throw the guy out at first base, so I pick up the ball and throw it to who?

Abbott: Now, that’s he first thing you’ve said right.

Costello: I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!

Abbott: Don’t get excited. Take it easy.

Costello: I throw the ball to first base, whoever it is grabs the ball, so the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to what. What throws it to I don’t know. I don’t know throws it back to tomorrow–a triple play.

Abbott: Yeah, it could be.

Costello: Another guy gets up and it’s a long ball to center.

Abbott: Because.

Costello: Why? I don’t know. And I don’t care.

Abbott: What was that?

Costello: I said, I DON’T CARE!

Abbott: Oh, that’s our shortstop!