Twitter Search Results

I am not sure I totally get all the focus paid to incorporating Tweets into search results. Tweets that include images, video, and other links are simply providing attention and some context to pages containing valuable information. With respect to search they are just an additional dataset that can be used to refine results. I could see Google establishing a filter to view results with the most Twitter buzz or link to a list of Tweets supporting the content, but I seriously doubt the value having Tweets presented among traditional search results.

WP Greet Box Fix

As you can probably see this blog doesn’t have a whole lot of nuts and bolts, but I set up a social site for my Father’s office that has some goodies on it. I decided to add in the WP Greet Box plugin to it today. It worked great when clicking on individual posts; however, his blog has the Thesis theme and when arriving at the home page the darn Greet Box wasn’t popping up.

I found two great links (1 & 2) with information about troubleshooting and installation of the plugin on non-WP blogs.

After checking the page source, the solution was to add the following code to the custom_functions.php file:

function greetbox(){
?>
<div id=”greet_block”>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://example.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/functions.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/onload.js”></script>
</div>
<?php
}

add_action(‘thesis_hook_after_header’, ‘greetbox’);

Just replace example.com with your domain and add the hook you want and away you go. Maybe I added some extra lines, but it works so I am happy.

The Problem with Mobile Ads

I wholeheartedly believe in the value of mobile ads, but right now they have one obvious flaw. Without a specific app (or mobile optimized website) the smartphone is not a platform for action.

You’re on your phone, you click on an ad and you end up on some worthless landing page where the font is too small, there is no one-click purchasing, and no icon to immediately chat or speak with a sales representative to answer my questions or take down my information. Congratulations…..I can see that Oracle is the number one business software company, but you really haven’t allowed me to do anything useful with that knowledge.

The only mobile ads I have seen properly implemented are ones for iPhone apps, where I can be redirected to the app store (which has all my payment information already) and I take immediate action with just a few taps of my finger. I think this should be the model for the rest of the mobile ad industry.

Here is how we solve this……….

• For God’s sake design the landing pages for action
Make the landing page interactive and informative with just the essentials
Give me a big button allowing me to schedule a time for you to call me
Give me a big button to call, text, or chat with a sales rep….seriously people I am visiting your ad from my phone
Put more simply….design them with the functionality of a specific phone in mind

• Mobile ad platforms need to be connected to e-payment platforms
I should be able to buy something simply by entering in my password; although, this wouldn’t be a problem if we had mainstream cell phone based payments

• There should be options to share products via text or email
I have all my contacts at my finger tips let me tell them about your product

• There needs to be a bookmark/favorite option
If its a book I might want to buy I should be able to save it to my wish list. I can save Twittered websites to Instapaper so why not save things I want to buy for later.

Anyway, that is just my two cents.

Voice Tagging Images

I find Microsoft Recite very elegant, and it presents an interesting fork in the many applications of “voice recognition.”

At its most basis level, voice recognition software analyzes speech, and matches known words to their distinct set of syllables. Voice tagging is essentially a less precise implementation of voice recognition. Recite doesn’t match sounds to words, it matches sets of sounds to other larger sets of sounds that function like large tag clouds. The result is more available data for algorithms and thus more effective results.

The reason why I enjoy the simplistic approach of Recite, is that there are far more numerous and effective ways to communicate and store information than words. Pictures and other visualizations are the most effective communicators, and contain a large amount of intrinsic data (say a thousand words or so). It is obvious that tagging images with voice (and written words) is advantageous because the tags can be easily generated and recalled since they are based on the image; additionally, the associated voice data is already summarized in the image itself.

For these reasons, I feel that voice tagging is an effective method of manipulating images and visualizations. However, this really is only a valid solution when the cost & effort of creating voice tags is relatively low, or zero if it is part of a naturally occurring process as it is with recorded notes in Recite.

Access to Dental Care

I had to present on access to care last Thursday, so I put together a stimulating, very non-fascist presentation with the little time I had. The slides could definitely use a lot of work. I wish I had a recording because I had like 7 cups of coffee while I was putting everything together the night before, and I was on fire. A good number of people in the room were offended by my logic, since they felt threatened by the decentralization of professional power, even though it would benefit dentists as much as anyone.

I am embedding the slideshow and my talking points below so you can follow along if you want to take the time. I wish I had planned ahead better, so it wouldn’t be so hard for everyone to view the presentation and the notes. I also had some rebuttal notes, that I used in handling questions and objections, but they are unintelligible and not in any shape to be posted. I hope you all enjoy it. If there is anything you would like more information about, post a comment and I’ll get back to you.

View this document on Scribd

Growl Notifications

I have been Tweeting a ton lately, and I’d like to encourage everybody who might be curious to check out my Twitter feed. Friendfeed’s recently added Twitter syncing feature allows me to super easily share with my followers all the stuff that I find interesting, along with the rest of my activity.

Laying down trying to go to sleep in spite of the coffee I had around 8PM, I starting thinking about Growl notifications and how no matter what corner of the screen I place them in they never feel quite right. Don’t get me wrong I love Growl, and it makes my job so much easier when I have a ton of different windows open, but I just feel like the notifications should have their own real estate where they don’t cover up my search bar or items on my desktop that I might need to see. It would be fantastic for the Growl team (or anyone) to offer a notification device designated for Growl alerts. You could even make it bluetooth compatible with a touchscreen (or have it as and iPhone app receiving updates via WiFi).

Notifications and activity streams are becoming more and more essential, and numerous people have discussed how OS’s are traditionally document oriented, not stream oriented. Most people’s alerts are pushed to their email inbox, which is underequiped for notifications and is easily cluttered. RSS readers are better, but are also not designed effectively enough. An ideal solution would be something of a hybrid application (web app or browser add-on with a desktop client), that is application oriented like Growl. To me it makes the most sense for this alert system to also have its own monitor and taskbar/dock with updates that don’t get in its own way. Notifications are just one of those things that shouldn’t get buried behind windows, get in the way of taking action (they should empower action), or be too small or out of the way to notice. I’d just like to see something that puts it all together.

Unhappy Knee

I am making a ton of handicapped friends with my crutches and knee brace. This nice Italian woman in need of a complete knee reconstruction, who I tried to race the other day, offered me a home cooked Italian meal. When I get my handicapped parking pass then I really will be in business.

I flew home this past Thursday to get a second opinion on my injury and hopefully get  surgery so I can start rehabbing (airport security is so much easier when you are disabled by the way). Instead of heading into surgery like I had hoped, I had a very interesting discussion about my ACL and MCL with my doctor, Dr. Meade of Orthopedic Associates Allentown. He mentioned that, barring other complications like a locked out knee from a torn meniscus, some knees are fairly happy and can be operated on right away, whiles others you have to wait on a bit. My knee is a very unhappy knee (I have been abusing it all week by forcing it to bend and seeing patients). His primary concern was reducing the possibility of permanent post-operative stiffness, and he wanted my knee to feel almost normal and capable of straightening before we went ahead with any surgery. Until then, I am supposed to walk on it as often as I can without pain, and basically just ice and allow the swelling the non-torn ligaments to heal themselves.

It is always nice to get some sound advice, and hopefully this article is of some benefit to people dealing with something similar. If anybody has any questions, shoot me an email.

Handicapped

I tore my ACL & MCL this skiing this weekend up at Heavenly Resort in Tahoe. There was more ice than snow so it was probably bound to happen at some point. With my knee like this, it is far too tiring  to do anything other than see patients, so the posts might be few and far between for a while. People have been busy since I last was online. Google Reader has rolled out a new design, and so did WordPress. Very nice. I am going to get surgery pretty soon. Hopefully, I don’t end up like Tom Brady.

On a different note, some girl let me play with her Android phone the other day. Wow. They say the grass is always greener, but I think the Android user interface and software is far better than the iPhone’s. The actual phone is crap…the trackball is too small and the phone doesn’t feel all that comfotable in your hand, but all that is easily fixed by designing a proper phone. I think I will be switching in the future.

I set up a website for my Father

I have been pestering my Father about the importance of communicating with your “Tribe” on the web for almost a year now, and of course I have to be the one to set things in motion. I went and bought a domain and a WordPress theme that I liked, and put together a community blog for his office last night.

It’s an alright start, great considering I have next to no experience doing any of the things I had to do to get it this far, but it still needs a lot of work. At least I will be able to have an educated discussion when we pay someone to redesign it and combine it with the main website. The biggest problem I ran into is that he just doesn’t have any sort of branded resources or logos available that are designed specifically to be used in a blog or social network profile. I am not in the mood to make things from scratch; I had to use pieces of images from his business card just to make the header logo (which I still am not totally satisfied with). Note to anyone trying to maintain an online identity: pay someone to design logos and handle branding; it is important.

Anyway I am having fun tinkering with it a bit, and adding more features and cousin sites like Facebook pages. I appreciate suggestions that any of you readers might have to offer.

Twitter Groups Business Model

I have been doing a ton of microblogging on Twitter lately, and I am disappointed that there still are no groups for Twitter. After seeing the effect Twitter had with their election page, and recently seeing Tweetmas you would think they would eventually roll out groups for everyone.

They seem like such a simple addition, but I think it has been delayed because Twitter has plan to monetize their service using groups. I mentioned before how I felt their acquisition of Summize was a path to turning a profit, and I can see them combining that service with groups for advertising purposes or charging for enterprise type groups as some of their clones have done.

Twitter’s most significant asset is how it captures word of mouth, which greatly enhances their ability to effectively serve ads. Additionally, studies have shown that the affinity of members within a social network is inversely proportional to CPM rates. Interest groups like the election hub constructed by Twitter will have relatively high CPM rates and a high value since their members would have a fairly low affinity. Of course, they would be totally worthless without driving users to the content, so a group/interest search and recommendation engine would also have to be implemented as well. There still could be traditional self-organizing groups, friends tweeting to friends and co-workers tweeting to co-workers, but unless Twitter is charging for that category of groups there is not much value in it.