garykamen / blog

11-13-08

Google Flu Trends

A new service called “Flu Trends” launched on Google.org a few days ago. This service attempts to predict flu outbreaks by looking at flu-related search queries on Google.com. The data is broken down by State and conveniently displayed on a U.S. map (pictured below).

It will be interesting to see how accurate this really is. If it is, then it will greatly assist public health officials in preparing for regional epidemics. It would also be interesting to know if Google took into account States with a high number of medical and nursing programs. If not, Google might mistakenly report an influenza outbreak in New York City the night before a big exam day.

Flu Trends is Google’s second health-related service. In May it launched Google Health, an online database that lets you securely store and organize your health information in one place. Earlier this month, Medicare began encouraging Arizona seniors to use the service as part of a pilot program meant to streamline and improve healthcare.

11-09-08

Tips for Monitoring and Controlling your Company’s Online Reputation

With the web as open as it is, it has become increasingly difficult for companies to control their online reputations. Power that had once rested solely in the hands of corporate PR groups is now shared among consumers with an internet connection and the will to make themselves heard. If someone has a bone to pick with your product or service, they’ll blog about it, mention it in a forum, or write about it in the numerous consumer review websites out there. This openness can be great for consumers, but only if the negatively is warranted. If it isn’t - and the consumer is either acting ignorant or has a problem that can easily be remedied - then companies should make every effort the contact that person. This not only makes a happy customer, but can potentially create a brand advocate. Of course, you first need to know where to find them…

The Blogosphere: The most unmoderated place on the web tends to have a lot of corporate chatter. Start with a search on Technorati, currently the most popular blog index. Google Blog Search, IceRocket, and BlogPulse are also excellent resources.

Forums: Also known as message boards, these niche websites thrive on community participation. Users have a tendency to speak their minds, often masking their true identities. A popular forum topic can easily lead to hundreds of blog posts, news articles, and Twitter posts. BoardReader is undoubtedly the best place to start your forum search. BoardTracker is also a good one.

Twitter: The most popular micro-blogging platform is an excellent resource to find real-time opinions of your product or service. More importantly, posts made to Twitter often turn into full blown blog posts - so it’s best to catch them early. There’s a great little tool called TweetScan that automatically monitors Twitter and informs you (via e-mail or RSS) when a post is made matching your search criteria. Mark Collier of “Search Engine Guide” wrote a more in-depth article on this topic.

Search Results and News Stories: Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts both let you sign up to receive alerts via e-mail when a keyword-relevant news article is published or a specific website is updated.

Professional Services: If you don’t have the time (or will) to monitor the web on your own, you can always hire it out to companies like Reputation Defender.

It’s important to note that simply reaching out to your customers online is not always enough. Heavy social media users also like to see companies embracing the same technologies they use. This might include creating a company Facebook page or MySpace profile - or setting up a company Twitter account. Corporate presences on these website can also make a company more visible within search.

Any websites or tools I missed here? I’d love to hear about them in the comments…

11-08-08

How Barack Obama will Advance Technology

It’s no secret that President elect Barack Obama was the more tech-savvy of the two candidates. He ran a very technology-driven campaign, launching his own social network that attracted over 1.5 million participants (built by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes), and built up a Facebook profile to over 2.7 million supporters. In the end, he was able to raise just over $600 million dollars - much of which from the web.

Now that the election is over, it will be interesting to see how he puts technology to work when running the country. Throughout the past year, he’s made some comments on tech-specific initiatives he supports.  I’ve summarized them into the following list:

Net neutrality – loosely defined is the idea that all internet content should be treated equally. In effect it prevents internet service providers from charging a premium for different types of data traffic. Many fear that this private regulation will hinder innovation. President Obama is strongly in favor of net neutrality.

Wireless spectrum Auction – the FCC is auctioning wireless spectrum in the 700MHz range, currently being used by television broadcasters, but no longer will be in early 2009 when they switch to the new digital signal. This frequency range is especially attractive to mobile service providers, who can use it to extend service to underserved and rural areas. Where’s the controversy? Broadcasters are worried it will interfere with their signal, as are wireless carriers for the same reason. The FCC however has tested these “white spaces” and says there is nothing to worry about. President Obama sides with the FCC. More on the issue here.

Internet Taxes – President Obama wants to keep the internet free of federal taxes.

Federal E-rate program – allows underfunded schools to get subsidized telecommunications and internet services. Created under the Clinton Administration, the program unfortunately has eroded throughout the past eight years. President Obama has pledged to reform the program by expanding and modernizing it.

Chief Technology Officer – this would be a new appointment created by the Obama Administration who would be in charge of finding ways to use technology in order to add a layer of transparency to government. This may include the use of wikis within the legislation process, webcasts of important meetings, or open websites to collect and display comments from the general public.

Anything I missed? Let me know in the comments.

11-02-08

Essential WordPress Plugins for Every Blogger

WordPress is a great application by itself, but there are still a number of useful features that it does not natively support. Below is a list of essential tools to help you get the most out of your WordPress blog.

FeedBurner
An analytics tool for your RSS feed that tells you how many subscribers you have, and where they’re coming from.  If you don’t mind a few ads within your feed, the optional FeedBurner Ad Network helps you monetize your blog.
http://www.feedburner.com

Sociable
Automatically adds links to common social bookmarking websites like Digg.com below every post so that your readers can easily promote your content for you. 
http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/

RECAPTCHA 
Requires readers to type a jumbled word before commenting, preventing bots from spamming your blog. One of the best, and most popular CAPTCHA tools out there.
http://recaptcha.net/plugins/wordpress/ 

Akismet
CAPTCHA can prevent bots from spamming your blog, but if people are doing it, Akismet adds a second layer of protection by automatically screening each comment, and letting you review the ones that look fishy. 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

WP Google Analytics
Google’s completely free analytics program keeps getting better. This simple extension helps you to add the Google Analytics tracking code to your blog so you can track anything from page views, referring urls, downloads, etc… 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-google-analytics/

Google XML Sitemaps
Creates a sitemap of your blog, making it easier for the most popular search engines (not just Google) to index it. Additionally, whenever you create or edit a post, your sitemap updates itself and notifies the search engines.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

All in One SEO Pack
When submitting a sitemap is not enough to get your blog noticed by the search engines, this extension helps you optimize your page titles and meta tags, making it easy for search engines recognize your content as being the most relevant for a given term. 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

WP Super Cache
Each time a visitor loads a page of your blog, a call is made to the database. When multiplied many times, it can be very burdensome on the server and significantly increase page loadtime. WP Super Cache converts your pages to simple html, making them lightweight and fast. 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Get Recent Comments
This simple extension displays your most recent comments within the blog’s sidebar.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-recent-comments/

08-24-08

Identi.ca - The Twitter Replacement

FLOSS Weekly had an interesting conversation this week with Evan Prodromou, creator of Open Source Twitter clone Laconica. The idea behind Laconica makes so much sense in light of the continuing downtime problems with Twitter. It basically lets individuals host their own Microblogging service that connects with others’ using the XMPP protocol. What does this mean? If one goes down, the entire community isn’t affected.

Additionally, whereas the Twitter backend was built like a content management system, Laconica was built like a messaging system. The result is significantly less burdensome to the database. A working implementation can be found at identi.ca.