Last night about one hundred members of the Social Media Club of St. Louis gathered for another monthly meeting this time with guest speaker David Siteman Garlandat Moulin Events on Chouteau. Garland gave a talk about how to measure your reach and influence in the social media world.
A St. Louis native has one of the most enviable jobs out there. (For oversexed men, at least.) He reviews and posts photos of women. Just women. Preferably "hawt" women. And gets paid for doing it!
A random sample of the user-submitted photos on Hawtness.com
Joe Olk, 27, of west St. Louis County, graduated from DeSmet Jesuit High School and then from Webster University with a degree in creative writing. He went to Seattle more than a year ago to visit friends, landed a job there and now is the man behind Hawtness (Alexa ranking here), a blog within the Pet Holdings, Inc. blog empire (icanhascheezburger.com, failblog.org.)
Just when we thought Google couldn't get any more loveable.
First George Clooney, now free WiFi. Clearly Lambert Airport was the place to be in St. Louis in 2009. To be fair, free WiFi and Clooney were not simultaneous events: the WiFi only started today, and, like Clooney, it will be fleeting, lasting only until January 15, 2010.
Still. Free WiFi! This exciting new development is due to the largesse of Google, which, for the holidays, has placed free WiFi in 46 other airports across the country and also on all Virgin America flights.
The last CompUSA went out of business in 2007 and left a giant gaping hole for a decent computer store in the St. Louis retail market.
Some might argue that the hole existed even when CompUSA was still in business since we've never been lucky enough to have a really good computer store. You know, the kind of place where you could pick from a nice selection of parts to build your own computer or get that odd gadget that a place like Best Buy or Office Max just isn't going to carry.
Sure you can always get stuff like that on the Internet, but often it's nice to be able to actually handle a product before you buy it and there is something about the instant gratification of being able to buy something and have it the same day.
Micro Center occupies the space left by a former furniture store in Brentwood
Twitter added a new list feature in the last week or so. Twitter lists (if you haven't explored them yet) allow you to group Twitter users into categories of your own creation.
The lists allow you to view just the tweets from the people in those categories. Also your lists can be public or private, with public lists being available for subscription by others.
Tara Hunt (second from right) meets with St. Louis fans and admirers at the Royale on Thursday
Michael Tomko was so excited when he learned that one of his social-media heroes -- Tara Hunt -- was making a rare appearance in St. Louis yesterday, he decided to throw an impromptu tweet-up for her at the Royale.
The tweet-up was certainly a highlight of a damp and otherwise uneventful Thursday night in St. Louis. Among the attendees were Tim Eby of the recently re-branded St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU), David Gray of Xplane, Chris Buehler of Scorch Agency, Melody Meiners of Girls Guide to the Galaxy as well as the owner of The Royale, Steven Fitzpatrick Smith among others.
Tara Hunt is known for several things across the web and social-media world. She's a marketing consultant, public speaker, author, co-working space founder among other things. Her book The Wuffle Factor is about building and leveraging social capital. You can learn more about her at her blog, Horse Pig Cow.
As you'll recall, the Cardinals skipper sued Twitter back in May, when he discovered someone was passing himself (or herself) off as La Russa on the popular social media site. The lawsuit alleged that Twitter was damaging the trademark rights to La Russa's famous name.
The legal claim was soon dropped, however, when it became evident that La Russa didn't stand a chance of winning the suit, thanks in part to federal laws that prevent websites from being held accountable for what their users post online.
Following the suit's dismissal, a rumor circulated that La Russa agreed to settle the case after Twitter made a sizable donation to La Russa's Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF). But that wasn't true. The case was settled without any monetary compensation, according to reports.
We bring this last tidbit up, because ARF is all that La Russa has tweeted about thus far on his account.
Last week Foursquare finally made its debut in St. Louis. That's a little later than co-founder Dennis Crowleytold us back in July, but it is within his expectation of being available here by the end of October.
Here is a little recap on what Foursquare is and what it does. Foursquare is a location based game that you can play with your phone. There is an iPhone app, an Android App and it works via a mobile website for other smart phones and you can also play via SMS text message on other non-smart phones. The core of the game is you go to your favorite places and check in to Foursquare on your mobile phone and get points.
Last month we told you about the St. Louisans vying to get their panels on the program at the 2010 South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin this coming spring.
Well, the first batch of panelists was announced yesterday, and we were pleased to see our fair city represented on this list by one Will Sullivan, Interactive Director from the Post-Dispatch with his panel "Process Journalism: Getting it First, While Getting it Right."
There was no sign of our other two panel hopefuls, David Gray and James Macanufo, but they could still make it in. The SXSW website indicates that this is just the first list of panels with more to come.
Woot.com can brag about doing something not many businesses are doing these days: they're growing. In fact the online retailer is growing so much that last week their St. Louis- based creative wing made the move from a cramped storefront on South Kingshighway to a custom-built space on the second floor above Seki Sui on South Grand.
Woot.com was founded in 2004 by Matt Rutledge in Dallas. His plan to hire his brother, web designer, and St. Louis resident Dave Rutledge to create and manage the website ran into a snag when Dave said he didn't want to leave the Lou' for Dallas. So the brothers worked out a deal where Dave could set up shop and manage the creative side of things here while Matt managed the nuts-and-bolts of the acquisition and distribution end of the business in Dallas.
Phishing scams seem to have spiked in recent weeks on email systems like Hotmail and Gmailaccording to the BBC. A lists of thousands of usernames and passwords from Hotmail, Gmail and other services have been surfacing here and there around the Internet. This comes after a report in August from IBM that said that Phishing scams were actually on the decline.
Just in case you didn't know. A Phishing attack is an attempt to gain access to your password by directing you to a fake website that looks like a site you trust where you have to input your credentials to get access. A Phisher might build a clone of MySpace, for instance, and then send you a message telling you to go look at some embarrassing photos someone has posted of you there. Once you login to the fake MySpace with your real credentials they have you. And the next thing you know all your friends are pissed off at you for spamming them.
Andrew Bell sent out a message to the members of his St. Louis Twitter Group, STL Tweeters on Ning saying that he didn't have to keep the group going. And indeed, with the exception of a few spammers, the site has been basically dormant since last spring.
Andrews message:
A message to all members of St. Louis Twitter Users
First and foremost, THANK YOU for all that helped get the word out about this site, helped make graphics, provide content and show up for some pretty awesome tweetups! It was a blast, and I enjoyed it.
I'm thinking about closing up shop here. Given the traffic (and the content of the traffic that we do have) and also the lack of time, energy and lack of interest on my own part I decided that you probably don't want your email inbox subject to any more abuse.
If anyone is interested in taking full control, I'll be glad to help transfer the site over, or whatever else need be, but if not, I will be shutting down the site sometime next week.
I do highly recommend Greg Bussmann's site http://stlsocialmediareport.com/ for all your tweetup (and other social media needs). All of the features that we utilized here, are available there, but has a much better upkeep.
Again, thank you for all your help and support, you can always contact me at doctorsound@Gmail.com and twitter.com/doctorsound
The St. Louis County Police Department has joined the ranks of their comrades in blue in the city and created a crime-mapping database for use by the public.
The database (viewable at maps.stlouisco.com/police/index.html) features crime happenings for the past 90 days in municipalities patrolled by county police. (County suburbs such as Kirkwood, University City, Florissant etc. with their own police force do not report to the county and are absent from the crime map.)
St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch says the database was created in-house and at no additional expense to taxpayers. (Perhaps that's why the map is missing a toggle bar allowing you to move your vantage point around inside the map -- the main flaw I've found so far with the website.)
Last week Google sent out the first batch of 100,000 invites for their new collaboration product Google Wave, resulting in the most ridiculous jockeying for invites since Joost a couple of years back.
Twitter went crazy with otherwise self-respecting geeks begging anyone who claimed to get extra invites to please pass one along to them. Somebody even set up a Twitter account claiming to have several hundred invites to give out for anyone who followed and re-tweeted a message for more people to follow for a chance at getting an invite. (No word on if this offer was legit, but betting folks would likely lay odds that it was not.)
All hype surrounding Google Wave is enough to make one wonder about the psychology of this phenomenon. It's like a group drug frenzy -- for a drug almost no one has even tried yet. What is it? Is it about being first?
So our tongues may have been planted firmly in our cheeks when it came to the Best Bus Route category in our 2009 Best Of St. Louis issue:
Best Bus Route We regret due to lack of funding service to this category is suspended.
But despite seemingly every useful stop in the city bearing that brief and cutting message, some good things are actually going down with public transportation in the River City.
At the beginning of August, Metro implemented their "Partial Service Restoration Plan," which brought back and created more than two dozen routes in the city and county.
As the observant folks at UrbanReviewSTL point out, the coolest of those is the new Downtown Circulator, which loops from City Hall to America's Center to Busch Stadium. (Hey, how about that, we're a big city after all! With a cheap and efficient to get around downtown and everything!)
But by far the best news is that St. Louis' bus routes are now available on Google Maps. Enter your start and end address in the "Get Directions" search function and it spits out the nearest stops, estimated times, and route options. It's convenient, it's accurate, and it beats the hell out of the "TripFinder" function on Metro's website.
The Squishums team: David Wolk, Matt Hucke, and Daniel Shinn.
At the current rate, the co-owners of Cranky Yellow, an art gallery/concert venue/clothing shop on Cherokee Street, will become the Mark Zuckerbergs of the art world.
Less than a month ago David Wolk, Matt Hucke, and Daniel Shinn launched Squishums, a unique social networking site for local artists. Already the service has more than 125 members (some from as far away as Detroit) and is averaging 200 unique page views per day.
"We'd been developing [the site] for about three months," Wolk says, sipping a can of Pabst sitting on a tiny chair in the cluttered shop. "It went live on August 20 and we posted one link on Facebook. It's kind of random. We weren't expecting anyone to join."
Squishums is basically a blend of Digg, Flickr, and Facebook. Artists create a profile, then upload images of their work or other art they enjoy. They are then able connect with other people by "squishing" items that other users have uploaded. The site's software learns from each person's unique tastes and recommends the work other artists, creating what Wolk calls "an inspiration feed."
As Cheech and Chong said: things are tough all over. That's especially true in the newspaper business. Lots of reporters are out of a job these days. But a few have embraced the change to do things they've always wanted to do. Case in point Adam Jadhav.
This past summer Jadhav left his reporting job at the Post-Dispatch but not in the way most reporters have been leaving the paper lately. He quit. He left to follow his dream of becoming an international correspondent. Never mind the fact that he doesn't have a regular gig as a foreign correspondent, he is obstensibly funding his dream from his own pocket and from freelance reporting gigs he picks up here and there.
Twitter creator Jack Dorsey takes questions from the media Friday at Webster University.
Having assumed the title of "chairman" of Twitter, Jack Dorsey is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the social-networking software he co-founded in 2006 -- leaving the 32-year-old free time to ponder his next big project.
This morning at Webster University, Dorsey hinted at one of his plans for the future. It involves pairing with his "old boss" Jim McKelvey of St. Louis-based Mira Digital Publishing to start a new company with "similar ideas" as Twitter, but in a "completely different industry."
Dorsey, a St. Louis native (Bishop DuBourg High School, class of 1995), says the new operation is still in "stealth" mode, and couldn't give a name for it just yet.
Social Media events have tapered off quite a bit in recent months but they haven't completely disappeared. There are a few upcoming events of note that deserve some attention.
Tomorrow could be the biggest Tweetup St. Louis has ever known (no really it really could be the biggest Tweetup in St. Louis ever, not like that other one). Jack Dorsey co-founder of Twitter will be visiting our fair city (and his home town) tomorrow, September 18 and will be speaking at 10 a.m. at the Loretto-Hilton on the Webster University campus. But unlike most Tweetups, you will need to RSVP for this event. There may still be space available. Go here to find out.
Local real estate agent Karen Goodman has a very entertaining feature on her website: bad MLS photos. By posting these photos and commenting on them, she shows agents and sellers what not to do when posting photos on the Real Estate Multiple Listing Service. But it's also great fun to browse the images and wonder what the hell some of these agents or sellers were thinking when they took these photos.
Facebook launched their "Lite" version in India and the U.S. yesterday. The Facebook Lite is basically Facebook stripped down to just the status updates and comments.
What a brilliant and original idea! I was wondering when someone was going to launch a service based on status updates. It would be cool if they were just limited to 140 characters too ... wait a minute ...
Yeah the obvious comparison is Twitter, but Facebook Lite reminds me more ofPownce, the Twitter also-ran service that was launched by a team lead by Digg founder Kevin Rose and later purchased and killed by Six Apart last year.
The thing that Pownce did that the new Facebook Lite also does is allow you to share photos and videos as well as leave comments on items.
So, my guess was wrong about Apple releasing the Beatles catalog on iTunes. I'm not ashamed of that. It was a long shot. But I did get some things right about the Apple announcement and I was surprised by quite a few things, too.
I was right about iTunes 9. That wasn't hard to guess. I haven't had a lot of time to explore the new version yet, but it seems they have tweaked the interface a little bit by adding some new sharing features. They've also changed the layout of the store quite a bit. One big enhancement to iTunes for iPhone and iPod Touch users is the fact that you can now rearrange your apps on the phone via your computer. But overall I can't get all that excited about a new version of iTunes. Maybe I will when I use it a little bit more.
Today is the day when we find out if my prediction that Apple will be the first to release digital versions of the Beatles catalog at the "iPod event" comes true. I'm sort of leaning against my prediction since Apple named the event for a Rolling Stones song; "It's Only Rock'n'Roll"
Whether or not Apple has Beatles news today, it's likely the iPod announcement will be good news for fans of the media players. Some have noticed that prices for all current versions of the iPod have been slashed ahead of today's event. So maybe the entire line of iPods will get a refresh today. It's been widely speculated that the big Apple product news today will be a new iPod touch with a mic and a camera. Others believe that Apple will also kill off the iPod classic which will be the end of the road for the original device that revolutionized the music business. And others are saying that the entire iPod line will get 3.2 megapixel cameras including the iPod classic.
South By Southwest (or SXSW) is a well known music festival that happens in the spring in Austin every year. It's been around since 1987 and has become one of the biggest and most important festivals of its kind. But in recent years there has been more to it than just music. In the 1990s the festival organizers added film and interactive conferences to the SXSW brand. Both have become as important -- or maybe even more important -- to their respective industries than the music conference is to its industry.
The interactive conference has probably had the most growth in the last two or three years. SXSW is where Twitter debuted in 2007. Last spring was the biggest SXSWi yet and if looks as though 2010 will be even bigger.
Each fall the panels for the spring conference are chosen via an online "Panel Picker" poll. The voting ends today, so if you want to have any input you might want to head over there, NOW!
If you haven't heard yet, Webster University is honoring Twitter co-founder (and St. Louis native) Jack Dorsey this month as its "Success to Significance 2009 Person of the Year."
Dorsey -- now of San Francisco and New York -- will be in town September 18 to accept the award and hold a "Tweet Up" to discuss the technology he created.
In announcing Dorsey's award and visit, Webster's dean of the School of Business and Technology, Dr. Benjamin Akande, stated:
Steve Guttenberg
"If I were to micro-blog Jacks impact on business and society in 140 characters or less, I'd tweet: Jack Dorsey's Twitter is to our generation what Gutenberg's printing press and Bell's telephone were to theirs."
Uhm, Dr. Akande, have you ever followed Dorsey's tweets? (Exhibit A, B, C .)
Yesterday Gmail went down for about two-and-a-half hours. The event caused so many people to go to Twitter to kvetch about it, that it nearly took down that site as well. To be accurate, people who use Gmail via an email client like Apple Mail or Microsoft Outlook had no problems getting their email. It was the web interface that went down. The Pop and Imap servers didn't seem to skip a beat.
Google made the following statement via their Official Gmail Blog explaining the outage and what they are doing to prevent this from happening again:
It takes photos, plays music and video, you can browse the web, it even catches criminals. What can't the iPhone do?
Not much, apparently.
Apple's iPhone store has been an incredible success --2.4 billion worth of success. Proving that the iPhone is way more than just a phone. It's the worlds first successful hand held computer.
Here are a few random apps that have caught my eye recently. Some you may find useful, some ... not so much.
Text Plus Is a free text messaging app. And by free, I don't just mean the apps price, it allows you to send text messages for free. It also allows you to have group text conversations, kinda like Twitter.
Technically this is old news-- the judge in the case said way back on July 2 that he had "tentatively" decided to overrule the LA jury's three guilty verdicts and acquit Drew on misdemeanor charges of violating MySpace's "Terms of Service" agreement. But, as of last Friday, the judge's ruling became official and the (mostly positive) long-term implications warrant a little discussion.
In the ruling, which you can read in full by clicking here, Judge George H. Wu wrote that convicting Drew would set a dangerous precedent and "convert a multitude of otherwise innocent Internet users into misdemeanant criminals." In other words, if you've ever skipped to the end of a lengthy, legalese-filled Terms of Use policy and just checked the box without reading, you can now thank Judge Wu for potentially saving you some hassle and a possible criminal conviction.
Several legal and online naval-gazers are celebrating the ruling. Perhaps the folks at Wired put it best when they wrote that the acquittal is "the only sensible disposition of a depressingly sad case." The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog said the decision protects an "unconstitutionally vague" reading of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Of course since Drew is perhaps the greatest villain of the Internet era-- one who was long ago tried, convicted, and punished on the Web's court of public opinion-- not everyone is taking the acquittal lying down. The most outraged group seems to be the typically level-headed commenters at the Post-Dispatch, who responded to the news by cyber-bullying the original cyber bully.
Record companies have been dragged kicking and screaming by consumers (and Apple) into the digital age in the last ten years. And predictions are that 2010 will mark a tipping point where music purchased digitally via download will account for more than half of all music purchased.
The industry seems to have adjusted to the new reality as revenues from downloads have started to make up for lost CD sales. But, as many have observed, the new reality seems to have marked a return of the early days of the record industry when most music was purchased as singles.
It was an age that the music industry thought they had successfully killed when the CD format made single purchases a rarity. Yes, there was a CD single format but the industry never marketed it heavily, because there was a huge profit incentive in getting someone to pay ten to fifteen bucks for ten tracks even if they were interested in just one.
Now record companies are losing revenue because consumers aren't buying tracks in bulk like that anymore. So Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI have gotten together to form a consortium to create a new digital version of the album.
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