Informed Networker Blog

• New logo design is now visible on the main site.
• Navigation at the top of the page has been refined. Still some bugs to work out in its rendering however.
• Some navigation moved to the bottom of the page.
• Added About Us, Contact Us pages and linked at bottom of page.
• Added new avatars based on servers rather than the green P for Pligg.
• Andrew Vogel joins as first Senior Editor.

Figured I would offer everyone a brief update on the latest news with informednetworker:

• I wrote a blog post about StumbleAds and my difficulties with them and this brought a massive and unexpected influx of visitors - around 6,000 yesterday. I don’t expect long-term gains from this influx, but still - was nice to see the numbers shoot through the roof.
• I am in the final stages of completing the logo for the site, and I think it is quite impressive. I didn’t do the design myself, rather I hired a team, but the concept for the logo is my own. Feedback from my wife (Charity) and Andrew Vogel (a friend and most dedicated supporter of informednetworker) have both voiced their support for this logo.
• I have removed the about us and top tags from the right-hand navigation. They seemed somewhat superfluous.
• I am working on adding additional pages such as about us, contact us, sponsorships, faq, etc. which will most likely be in the footer section of the page.

Update: I received my first reply from StumbleUpon via email at 12:41 p.m., around 10 hours after I had made the initial post. The issue was resolved by 5:40 p.m. on the same day. Apparently it was an issue on StumbleUpon’s part though I don’t quite understand what. The fact that there was an issue isn’t what concerned me, it was the lack of communication. Aaron, the guy who contacted me in regard to my issues was very kind and polite and moved quickly to resolve it. He didn’t know exactly where the disconnect was in the whole communication area, but has moved quickly to resolve it now - so I’m happy.

I love StumbleUpon. For those who don’t know what StumbleUpon is, its a social network of types - and an extraordinary time consumer. Essentially it allows you to define a number of topics that interest you and then stumble through websites that people have tagged with those terms. You vote a thumbs up or thumbs down on each site and can tag the sites with your own keywords. Over time StumbleUpon refines what sites it shows you based on how you vote.

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for quite some time now - long enough that I’ve stumbled across 8,000+ pages and 100+ videos. I tell everybody about StumbleUpon - because its a great service.

Recently I launched a new website, in fact its this one. InformedNetworker is a social news media site for Information Technology Professionals. Similar to Digg(tm) but focused on professional computing interests rather than the (seemingly) ever more consumer oriented Digg(tm).

I decided as part of the marketing campaign for this new site to promote my site on StumbleUpon using their StumbleAds program. Essentially, this program allows you to pay for each visitor - at the cost of $0.05 per visitor. Not a bad price, especially since these visitors are hitting you based upon tags you define. I plopped down $25.00 and opened an account on 8/30/07. I created my first campaign - targeted for the tag it and pointing towards my informednetworker site. Over the next several days nothing happened. I guess I was in a manual approval stage. Once the approval stage had passed the money began disappearing from my account till I reach $0.00. What was strange was that I wasn’t receiving any hits as my money disappeared - or at least the control panel didn’t (and still doesn’t) reflect any. So what happened? My money is gone and I didn’t receive any hits.

Okay, I’m a reasonable guy. So I sent an email to StumbleUpon on 9/4/07, 9/12/07, and 9/22/07 - none of which have received anything more than the form response informing me that the response had been received. Furthermore, I posted in both the StumbleUpon general help forum and in the ads forum - no replies from any officials there either.

So, here I am - nearly a month later and I haven’t received any clicks for the $25.00 that magically vanished. I’m frustrated. If I received even a one line email saying, “Sorry we are busy. But don’t worry we are working on it.” I would wait and wait…But right now I am a voice crying out in distress and they aren’t even acknowledging my existence.

Final step? Write a blog post about it and submit it to several social networks, including StumbleUpon in hopes that someone at StumbleUpon will find that CSR with an ignored email in their inbox and give me a response - any response that can resolve this issue and let me continue my intoxication with StumbleUpon.

I posted a job request over at ScriptLance for a graphic designer willing to make a logo for InformedNetworker. I am very happy with the favicon, but I did not feel that there would be anything free available that would make a worthwhile logo, so I am digging deep into my pocket to ensure InformedNetworker gets some quality design. I figured I’d share a few of the most impressive designers that have placed bids or expressed interest in the project:

• Logo Design Team.
• Designers Hut.
• Your Creative Web.

While I received dozens of bids in the end I settled on the Logo Design Team. Several of their logos I found extremely attractive and their reputation seems excellent. I’ll follow-up later if they accept and make a beautiful logo (or if they don’t).

So, I read two disturbing posts recently. The first from David Pescovitz over at BoingBoing, the second from Dale Dougherty over at O’Reilly. Apparently the California’s version of the Environmental Department Agency has decided to apply strict guidelines to an organization that redeploys old computers headed for the landfill to those in need. Seems like a perfect example of the law gone wild. You can read more at James Burgett (founder of this non-profit recycling organization) blog.

I know, I know. No one probably even reads this blog, but its a good emotional release to share with my non-existent readers just how much work the Informed Networker is. The problem isn’t finding technology news, no I have a good list of sources at this point and think I am racking up a good distribution of stories. The issue is the time to even sift through the stories, to determine what is important and then to summarize and publish it. Add onto that the ever continuing effort to market the site as well as the continuing challenge of improving it aesthetically, and you have a full-time job for several people. Unfortunately, this is a night-time project for me at this point, so I spend a lot of nights and weekends working on Informed Networker. Not that I mind, I’m just saying.

Mainly I am working on providing a steady stream of interesting news content, but I am also slowly working on advancing the design of the site. First off, I replaced the Pligg favicon (a green p) with a favicon from famfamfam’s silk set of a server with bar graphs. This is my main achievement which I hope shows the site is serious about its desire to grow and become a stable resource for IT professionals.

Secondly, I added a link to this blog from the main page. The text is small, but that is fine for now. Thats all.

Facebook is all the rage. Many would argue that it has become a hotter property than MySpace. It has become a must for new application developers looking for instant fame and glory and many are writing articles about the utilization of Facebook not only for personal communications but also for business use (see Ricardo Sueiras, JP Rangaswami, Gordon Cook).

Still, I’m not sure that Facebook is ready for business use. Take for example Jason Calacanis who recently admitted Facebook bankruptcy because of the overwhelming amount of data streaming in from the massive number of friends he has. Now, I must admit I am not such a personage as is overwhelmed - currently most of my friends are either family members or real life associates (excluding Calacanis) - but someday this may change. In that instance I will become one amongst many who are attempting to keep in contact on several separate levels:

• Friends & Family - Those we know and love on a personal level.
• Close Business Associates - Individuals we regularly network with for business concerns. Partners, VARs, employees.
• Business Card Associates - Individuals who in the old days we would have exchanged business cards with. We don’t have a significant relationship with them, but do want to keep the line open, knowing we might be able to utilize each other in a mutually beneficial way in the future.

Thus a dilemma arises. Facebook offers a way to rubbing shoulders with those whom we might not have had any opportunity to interact with in normal, every day life but on the other hand can result in an overwhelming amount of data continually being poured down our throats. Solution?

Facebook needs to allow its members to segment their friends into various groupings - not just geographic or interest based, but relationship level. On my News Feed I should be able to create multiple tabs noting any delineations I like such as “close friends”, “business associates”, “other”, etc. The same applies to my status updates and other posts. Do I really want my business associates to see pictures of my cat Fluffy? Me bare-chested on the beach? Do I want them to know details about my personal life? On the other hand, do my friends care that I spent more time reading about XML, XSS, or NAS than talking about cars, movies, or home improvements?

By implementing these two features Facebook would allow me to segment data in such a way as allows me to focus on the people I want to interact with most regularly while not undermining the “exchange a business card” effect of Facebook. Would these changes make Facebook a better business social networking tool for you?

Pligg released 9.8 and I performed the upgrade. It was only a minor movement from 9.7 to 9.8. The upgrade is mainly a bug fix release, so don’t expect too many new features. But in the progress I ran into two errors.

First, the upgrade install was complaining about a non-existent table. Apparently the developers (probably accidently) had hard coded pliggx_links into the upgrade.php file. Unfortunately, we aren’t using the pliggx_ prefix.

Secondly, the About box disappeared. This was the more frustrating problem. This in turn caused the entire sidebar to disappear as well once the page was cached (Pligg uses caching to speed up page loads). The site had this error from around 7:30 p.m. to 9:20 p.m. EST and I apologize for the downtime. I was able to remove some code from a template file and everything seems to be working correctly now, but hopefully I will be talking to the Pligg developers about what caused the issue in the first place.

All said, it was a much more time consuming experience than I had initially hoped - but its done now. Please let me know if you see any issues.

I received a polite letter in the mail within the last week from Verizon. Today was the first day I had a chance to read why “The only thing better than FiOS today is FiOS tomorrow.” Well, apparently it has something to do with the reason they are increasing my monthly 5.0 Mbps FiOS connection from $36/mo. to $53/mo. A minor price jump of $17/mo. or nearly half of my current FiOS bill.

Now, I like FiOS, don’t get me wrong. In fact I love it. When they initially installed FiOS it was a bit of the pain. The telecommunications guys they sent out to configure FiOS didn’t know much about routers or IP addresses - but thats okay, I don’t know much about traditional copper lines (though I’ve learned more than I wanted to). Then there was the fact that several weeks later my FiOS was abruptly canceled - apparently a paperwork detail on their end. But it was restored and since then, other than occasionally having to reboot my Actiontec router and remount the FiOS box inside my house, everything has been just dandy.

Still, a 50% price increase seems steep - especially with no additional features or benefits as a result. What caused this price increase? It seems to me to be a ploy to push consumers into purchasing a bundle. You thought you could have TV through another provider? Well, now it’ll cost too much - switch over to Verizon. You thought you could use a third-party VoIP provider for phone? Forget it, you need the bundled Verizon deal.

I’m still happy with my Verizon FiOS as a service, but I’m less than happy with the price increase, so Verizon, please consider this my open letter expressing my displeasure over an unexplained, significant price increase. I don’t need your digital TV, I use Joost, iTunes, Movielink, Blockbuster, etc. I don’t need your phone, I’ve got Skype In/Out. All I need is the reliable internet connection you have provided without being robbed blind in the process.

Am I crazy or is this a real smack from Verizon? In my opinion, a business which wants to succeed long-term needs to place the cares of its customers high on its priority list - this (especially without explanation) is no such action and one of the reasons I moved away from Verizon in the first place.