Why am I doing this ?

With sites like  Flavors.me , Squarespace and Posterous the need to actually own a front page for your web presence is reduced. Using so many social sites whose presence moves and grows with you means that a single site even with a layer of plugins is no really sufficient.  I can move my Blog to a more blog orientated theme and use Flavors.me to create a front page to bring people in.

What does it mean to you ?

If you have linked directly to an article its going to break if you have www.loudmouthman.com/articlename since flavors.me isnt actually hosted on my machine. I am guessing in the future it is a service Flavors.me can add to help in migrations.

I shall talk more about flavors.me later this month.

Thanks for reading.

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My phone usage  over 11 Days has been 433MB of Data.

In 10 days from the 1st of June I have sent 14 Twitpics the average size of which is 136Kb .

My general app usage for my iPhone is Twitter, Kindle, Mail, GoodReader, Comixology, Safari, Toodledo, Pogoplug and Evernote.

What I fail to understand is how  mobile operators  have been  surprised by the iPhone and its Internet usage.

If I was a shareholder in O2 I would be spitting nails at the lack of clear management and direction from the board. How could they  have been so short sighted as to sell a popular consumer product without investing in infrastructure to properly support it ?

I would also wonder where this ‘scarcity of bits’ ideology has come from in a company that exists purely on the transport of information electronically. O2 your approach is wrong on this and your Ideaology over the Internet is frankly as muppet worthy !

BBC News – O2 network scraps unlimited data for smartphones

O2 said that 500MB is two and a half times the average O2 customer’s current use and would allow someone to browse 5,000 standard web pages.

Picture credit : Kiss Me, I’m a Prince : Yogma

They insist this bill is to protect content creators and yet it has no clarification as to how  individual content creators can be expected to track and locate their content or successfully apply to an Internet Service Provider or Hosting company for the correct information. The bill does not protect them it is a farce and a lie to believe otherwise.

You cannot protect content creators by prosecuting the audience, but you can build and encourage content creators by creating confidence in their consumers.

In  no way does the Bill demonstrate a clear example of how I will be protected by the following events:

If we had seen a bill that addresses these issues then I believe we would have seen a bill that would never have been allowed to pass.

Thanks for reading

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I have voted Conservative for quite a long time and have met my MP ‘Francis Maude‘. I  can say that I have found Francis Maude  to be a smart and engaging individual who listens to your views with consideration. So why do I feel the Internet is more important than my Vote for a Conservative Candidate ?

I have written, emailed and twittered in an attempt to get Francis or Jeremy Hunts’ attention in order to discuss with them my concerns about The Digital Economy Bill. Other than a letter from Francis, which was not a form letter but which I will put up online later tonight, I have not had a chance to talk direct with them about my concerns.

Allow me to lay out some history.  Real history, the sort of history you need to read in order that you may  learn from your predecessors.

Radio waves are a feature of the universe and are freely available to everyone. However  there was a need to ensure that the radio frequencies  were  used productively and efficiently. The International Telecommunication Union founded in Paris in 1865 was the first in a number of regulating bodies which lead the way by creating  guidelines for the annexing of the radio wave spectrum,which in turn  lead to regulation and management of the airwaves. The mandate and charter of the  ITU and its historical offshoots was “to enable the growth and sustained development of telecommunications and information networks”  ( does that sound familiar ? ).  Today, should you want to run and own a Radio Station you will have to  get in line for a large number  of licenses, approvals, certificates and legal costs. New radio stations  are predominately  backed by Music or Media groups who benefit from the distribution of their content and their approved advertisers.

Telephony technology followed a similar path to that of radio wave regulation.  After the technical know-how of telephones, telephone-lines and exchanges  was established there was an abundance of  ‘ma and pa’ operated phone services  all of whom ran different, possibly non interchangeable, formats. Governments were encouraged  to intercede and through legislation Regulate  these ‘services’. For an example of this read  “A Brief History of Telecom Regulation“.  Meanwhile in the UK the Telegraph act was passed in 1868 and delivered technical control to a  newly formed GPO ( General Post Office ), over  time this group became BT ( British Telecom ) . You can read more about the BT Group over on Wikipedia. One interesting  aspect of the BT group  from a technically minded perspective was their decisions  in  regards to technical and physical  delivery of services which have stalled, delayed or restricted the growth of the Internet and Internet speeds .  Again the ability for other businesses to compete with BT in providing new telephone lines and faster network speeds is restricted by  overbearing regulation and management.

The Internet has, until recently, avoided too much UK Govt interference. Other than Censorship laws there has been no clear involvement by the UK Govt  in controlling access to the Internet or websites.  That was until the introduction of the Digital Economy Bill. I shall not re-iterate the many reasons why the Bill itself is a poor piece of legislation. Instead  you can visit The Open Rights Group and consider the issues.

What I wished to draw your attention to is the current trend in attempting to regulate and manage the provision of internet services with the same well meaning and apparently innocent regulations which ,in a similar fashion , were introduced to Radio and Telephone services.

It is my view that no government should involve itself defining laws which control its electorate on the basis of how a  private  or public business perceives it is being treated by its customers. Governments should not be protecting the interests of business to the exclusion of  that businesses consumers.  Imagine if you will the time of Henry Ford and the release of his Horseless Carriage. Did the farriers of the time demand the Govt legislate to protect their businesses from the perceived loss of income to people owning cars and driving them?  A daft argument in the absurd abstraction but one that demonstrates that the Music and Media  industry having successfully ensured control over Radio Waves and Phone lines now wish to control regulation of access to the Internet in a similar fashion.  Write to your MP, write to your Statesman and demand they stop this interference now.

I take the view that if the Conservatives will not actively debate and block the Bill then I am no longer willing to consider voting for them. The Internet is a resource in contention between its users and predatory businesses and we must do what we can to ensure that the same Internet and communication freedoms we experience today are there for our children to enjoy tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, now please go write to your MP.

I have a soft spot for pulp fiction noir styled detective novels so when I was given the choice of books to review I was always going to opt for the story of an Undead Detective who works the monster crowded streets of Nekropolis.

Matt Richter the Zombie Private Eye (un)lives in an alternate-reality city populated by monsters of every fictional contrivance possessed cars , were-whatevers, vampires ( which thankfully never sparkle ) and plenty Elder and Dark Gods. Nekropolis technology  ranges from the conventional to reanimated body parts sewn together to create devices like mobile phones ,surgical operating tables  or door entry speakers. Whilst  there is nothing new in this book when it comes to a genre and the plot  plods along like its undead protagonist, it is not until the end of the first act that you realise the story has an inevitability which will  keep you reading just to stay ahead of that plot Zombie. Sure your going to work out the  whom the villian  is but thats not going to stop you getting to the end of the book. Like all good pulp fiction your not in this to be invested in the characters your in it because the whole world feels, bloody gritty.

Dead Streets is like a lot of other books on my shelf in that it is the soul food of my reading. It is  the book equivalent of ‘mac n cheese’ and it is the sort of book your pack to read on the train then lend to a friend [1] .

Thanks for reading

Dead Streets by Tim Waggoner is available online and through Angry Robot Books

[1] don’t do that though because loaning books is copyright theft! [2]
[2] yes I have a sense of humour , who knew ?

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I shall be at EasterCon talkin Science Fiction and Fantasy with Fan, Authors, Publishers, Retailers and anyone else who will join me for a pint. Apparently im also taking part in talking about Social Media and twitter things at one of the panels so expect a Ustream stream channel from me at some point on the day.

As usual I shall be sporting my very subtly downplayed Loudmouthman.com TShirt so keep an eye out for it.

Thanks for reading.

Lets have a look at this twitter account activity. The group have quite appropriately completed their Biography and provided a link to their main website as well as included an Avatar for their account.  That is where all the good things that can say about the twitter account end.

Look at those tweets, “From API” is not such a bad thing  since it means they are using an unregistered program to send messages to twitter. In this case the program in question is gathering random twitter users and sending the rather repetitive message “Thank You for following, See our Hilarious video of the breakfast meeting on the moon at http://bit.ly/51Em61 “.

First of all many of those twitter accounts mentioned ( a mention is the use of the @ symbol followed by the twitter account name ) have not actively followed the account in question. Secondly the use of the mention thanks to Twitters broken implementation of twitter messages means your going to see the tweet in your Mentions list.

There is nothing in the use of this account that suggest that the owners or the video owners have a good understanding of online marketing and social media. Maybe there is an opening in their chapter ?

Like wise the use of the spamming account is not winning friends or influencing anyone in a positive fashion with many other twitter account users asking the group to stop spamming them or to stop using an automated system.

The lesson to be learnt here is the same lesson as always. Be Genuine, Be Real and Be Focussed, you will be forgiven a LOT if you are able to engage and interact with your social networks but you will be the focus of Blogs and Scathing comments if you choose to automate your interactions to the level of a computerised calling card service.

Thanks for Reading.

Update:

I had posted a comment on their YouTube and on their Blog those comments have since been removed. From experience denying, burying and otherwise avoiding a social media issue does not resolve the matter.

twitter, socialmedia, bni

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The Bookman takes a little of Verne and a little more of Gaimen and wraps the story of Orphan into a tale of personal discovery , romance and action across London Hospitals, Pirate Ships and secret lost islands. Lizard Kings rule as a social elite and books explode in the face of their owners and The Bookman chases and is pursued by the Orphan. Orphan , his name as well as his status, is  Poet living in a London that feels like it may have been created in collaboration between Jasper Fforde and Neil Gaiman every character fills the page with their own vices and histories. The Bookman is a masked Terrorist whose actions motivate Orphan and take the adventure on sea bound adventures more reminiscent of Jules Verne. There  much in the story that reflects familiar concepts and characters which feel most natural as Orphan encounters them and the pacing of the adventure left me turning pages ( well pressing page turn ) and enjoying the voyage.

The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar is available from Amazon and is published by Angry Robot Books

Thanks for reading..

• Built in Network Connectors , two of them at 1Gbit each.
  Meaning it plugs into my network and bonds those two connections into one BIG connection.
• A Media Server.
  All my music, photos and videos were visible to my PS3 and my XBOX and thanks to the above connection I could stream content and upload content and the box didnt skip a beat.
• Rsync duplication.
  I can back up this device to another rsync service either locally or via the internet.
• Bit Torrent Client.
  A web interface where I can pass .torrent files to have them downloaded and available to the mediaserver.
• File Sharing.
  With Users, Groups, Shared Directories etc etc.
• iSCSI Targets
  Making backing up and managing  disk images of other Macs and Windwows PCs a doddle.
• Virtual Slices
  Allowing multiple QNAP devices to be aggregated into one large disk.
• iTunes Library sharing
  Creating a shared library for all my iTunes libraries.
• expandable RAID storage ( in multiple configurations )
  Pulling the same trick as the Drobo I can upgrade the storage in my RAID as I grow my needs.

The TS-xxx range from QNAP has ended my interest in Drobo and I must thank the wonderfully helpful people of Ultimate Storage for their help in getting me a review device. You can follow Ultimate Storage on Twitter as StorageExperts

Thanks for reading.

Forensic science and methodical investigation are not the first things to spring to mind when you consider the Aztec Empire, though with all those human sacrifices and heart ripping ceremonies I am guessing their priests would eventually have taken some intersting in how bodies stop functioning.

In Servant of the Underworld  Aliette De Bodard creates Axayactl the Aztec answer to William of Baskerville or possibly Grissom of Vegas. A priest responsible for ensuring the safe and proper journey of the recently departed into the realm of death who becomes involved in solving the murder of a temple priestess.  Magic and Gods become tools of forensic divination and there is no easy get out in the plot here. As the world created  feels integral to the story and pushes the detective progress of the main character into mysteries and responsibilities as Gods endeavor to shift their own power and bargains are struck to appease or abate.

The mystical Aztec setting had every opportunity to become a tongue twisting and convoluted mish mash of vowels and golden thingies. Fortunately none of this occurs as day to day temple life and the duties of its citizens are described you can feel the richness of this bloody empire without once tripping over some unpronounceable God or location.

This is Book 1 in a trilogy and I am eager to get my hands on the next book when it is released.

Servant of the Underworld is available from Amazon and is published by Angry Robot Books

Thanks for Reading.

Back from the break , been off the blog too long but heres whats coming up soon .

Reviews of things like QNAP TS-410 , iPhone Stanza vs iPhone Kindle , New Books from Angry Robot
Discussions of ideas such as Privacy, Blog postings and Networking
Thoughts on how modern technology will change social habits.
more Marmite.

photocredit: Nesster

As you may  already  know WooThemes were responsible for the previous site layout VibrantCMS.  Woothemes have a track record of  solid themes  at the right price for end users. They provide  the best support and theme maintenance available for those Themes and they are top of my list for client recommendations for new wordpress layouts.

Hence the new theme, Coffee-Break which in its minimalist setting gives me a site reminiscent of Posterous whose clean theme leads me to this new layout.

Is it working for you, is this better or is this worse ?

Either way, thanks for reading.

The  advantage to using a Mobile Wifi (Mifi) Device over a traditional dongle is that battery power from your laptop is spared the effort of driving the USB dongle radio and modem. From experience the device has provided me 3 hours of work time vs the previous 1hr 10 minutes. Surfing speeds are  faster since the networking and usb processing are not being carried out on the laptop.

Its a great product , so why the worry ?

First out of the bag, it is not very intuitive. Now I might be being overtly technical here but I would expect some sort of webinterface that lets me know I am connected and whats going on.  To connect the device to your laptop and again to the internet requires several button presses and frankly these are not the easiest things to see negotiate.

The flashing leds on the cover are not on by default ( yes its saving energy but its makes me think its not actually working) and when they are lit the colours are not consistent to an positive experience . Where I expect green for good, red for bad I find blue for connected and red for “its working” but I dont know why.

Taking the above into consideration ( because I hate the phrase “that being said” ) I would at a pinch use this device for the sake that I have no other device to compare it against.

I would hope that future releases take on board some of these criticisms and apply them.

The device is  available as Contract or Pay As You Go from all good stockists , etc.

Thanks for reading.

Hak5 – http://www.revision3.com/host/shannon-morse, Darren Kitchen and Matt Lestock

Thanks for reading

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Have decided that the Guatemala High Grown Aribica from @XpressCoffee is a keeper. Its like Cuddling a big breasted women on the dance floor

The blend was prepared in  a cafetiere and heres where I break into potential snob mode and suggest that the coffee should be made with a kettle that has sat off the boil for a few minutes rather than the scolding strength of a just clicked kettle. The water is slightly cooler and the scents from the oils in the coffee seem to sit on the surface of the cup and run up your tongue in a delightful way. Many of the coffees sampled so far have been Breakfasts or After Dinner affairs but this blend is the one your serving to your friends during the day its just that friendly.

As a product in marketing it plays upon its own acceptance in the shopping basket of today. With adverts focussing on the “Love It / Hate It duality” of a product. I cant think of many brands that are happy to advertise the idea “You Hate This Product and we dont care”

Its the Twitter of food additives. Its not going away any time soon and its going to be around for a quite a while. Heres how Im using it today.

• Smear Marmite on the skin of chicken drumsticks before cooking.
• Stir Marmite into mashed potato
• Add equal measures of Marmite and grey poupon mustard before serving with sausages
• Place a small blob or Marmite into the centre of a Croque Madame
• Stir Marmite into Hot Chili Sauce to serve with Pizza.
• Place a small tub of Marmite as a dip for Pizza.

One thing I know about Marmite, no matter how I serve it the Marmite makes it mine.

Thanks for reading.

Film Riot hosted by Ryan Connolly

The guys in this show deliver some of the most creative and funny adverts for their sponsors. Each episode is effectively a sketch show which educates you about the film creation process such as  special fx, adding masks,lighting and handing small children heavy weapons  as well as how to shortcut on costs and time the creation of scenes. Its Shaun of the Film studios and I love it.

Thanks for reading.

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If you are a very long term reader of this blog or youve met me in person you know that I am a Open Source Advocate who promotes Ubuntu when he can. Like wise my love for the iPhone is almost Objectum-sexual. What drives this joy is not the end product in itself but the upstream control and oversight of a company or group of individuals who ensure that standards are adhered to and that quality is at least assured in the basic ‘its going to work’ sense.

In the case of Apple this is a paid for model where apps costing nothing to £60 are purchased via the Apple Store and in turn this price point is split between Apple and the developers ensuring that product usage drives revenue and in turn development and a return on investment in that time. Ubuntu repositories are freely accessible though the prestige in having a project accepted and packaged and available drives a certain Kudos or Whufte ( did I get that right ? ) .

Meanwhile Automattic the team behind WordPress provide a Plugins directory managed very much in the style of the Open Source Ubuntu model and leave the choice open to developers to request donations which leads in my case to a lack of focus and interest in ensuring these developers gain some remuneration for their eventual hardwork.

I want an Automattic Store for Plugins that lets me buy plugins to use on a per installation basis charging me pennies in the pound for that opportunity and in turn splitting the cost of that between Automattic and the Developers. Now there would be nothing to stop me just taking plugins and reusing , copying and installing them again and again but I suspect the option to opt in to a WordPress Store account as part of your won private WordPress installation to gain access to the Store Plugins would become very popular.  Or I could be utterly wrong.

Thanks for Reading.

ps. There are a whole bunch of similar stories and conversations around this topic elsewhere this was just my particular link free rant.

Here is the “how to” on configuring your laptop to connect  to that server.

These instructions differ from many  examples on the net by including advice on setting your Domain Name Server settings. This is an important step since many “man in the middle” attacks utilise amended Domain Name Server records to point you to a alternative “cloned” sites which act like the original. Protecting your name server lookups alongside your browser communications is the next best level of securing your surfing.

Since creating these screencasts and tackling this topic  I have have been introduced to Coocon App whose community manager DavidCocoonApp has confirmed that much of the issues I have set out to tackle are to be addressed in their product. So please watch this space ( or rather a newer posting on this blog )

As an alternative to all the above you could just use the Log Me In remote desktop access to your remote machine and surf the internet inside that connection although that might not be an easy answer if the machine is shared or if your laptop screen size is markedly different from your desktop screensize.

Thank for reading.

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This “Fair Trade Organic” its a deep harsh strong coffee. I think its a little annoyed with me for not treating it right in the morning

To be fair to the coffee I am  sure that the Bialetti Venus Stove Cofee Maker was not the best choice for its preparation and I suspect I was paying for my shortcuts. This coffee wants to be steamed, pressed and pushed. This Coffee wants to be treated with respect and attention and served in small doses and appreciated at length. Rush this coffee and serve it in a mug and your going to be whipped for it.

I will follow up this server end screencast with a tutorial on how to do the same from a MAC or using OpenVPN on a Linux box.

I would appreciate your comments and feedback on this and other tools as well as your thoughts on using Screentoaster.

Thanks for reading

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ScribeFire ( a Plugin for Firefox ) provides a editing tool for blogposts that manages my several wordpress blog subscriptions as well as allowing me to create content for the site whilst disconnected from the web. It has a strong , and ever improving, feature set and it feels like it reduced blogging fatigue by making the content creation process easier. . Yes I hear you say but you can do that with notepad or word or just a Moleskine what  makes ScribeFire better ?

Like many tools in my daily gadget lifestyle ScribeFire was initially tested with the view to managing existing posts and pages, what dveloped though was the appreciation that ScribeFire would let me create content for my blog(s) and when connected to the Internet I can upload those entries read for publication all without the cut/paste and re purpose hassle of connecting to the wordpress editor whilst online. I can open a new post when sitting on the train and save the note for publication. I can pull up previous posts and pages and link to them and other content and store this work for later revision and publication. Indeed many of these posts are written in batch days or weeks in advance and scheduled for publication to keep that blog monster fed.

Indeed I am sitting on a train approaching Horsham and typing this into my browser saving the note and opening a new one for my next new post.  If your using Firefox and blogging on any level go have a look at ScribeFire and give me your own feedback and experiences.

Thanks for reading

“Oh my ! This Fairtrade Rainforest Espresso from @xpresscoffee is like the first passionate toe curling kiss of a new lover.”

A Special mention should goto the Bialetti Venus Stove Coffee maker which brewed up the grounds and left the kitchen with memories of house hunting and property selling.  These beans are the first to arrive on my must have list of blends to grab from XpressCoffeeUK

The film follows the potential consequences a British Primeminister choosing political capital and financial reward over the lives of its armed forces. Trading a Special Forces unit in return for the peace of a Saudi King.  The victims of a political machine who exist as pawns in a larger govermental cat and mouse game play their parts  and at times I am reminded of those BBC Thrillers from the eighties your following the plot not the characters and its going to wrap up well. The  concept is solid and the delivery paces itself well but this is no Tom Clancy or Dan Brown “Megabucks production” nothing will explode but there will be times when you will be squirming in your seat.

The Film was produced on a budget of $3.1Millon was  shot on Location in Jordan and my own home town of Horsham and it  arose out of Cannes 2008  where Tristan Lorraine sought Funding for ‘Shadows From the Sky’ said by many to be the Erin Brokovich of the Skies. This debut is intended to lead the way to that film and I for one look forward to seeing what Tristan does next.

Thanks for reading.

Published from my iPhone using the wordpress iPhone app

Update:

Of course the new version of iTunes has a screen and application manager for the iPhone.  A big step forward but I want to this on the iPhone directly.

These are by no means fixed or ‘required’ rules and theres no official guidelines to say that this is any better than any others but from Observation, Experience, Experimentation and Evaluation I would say that these ‘rules’ provide an excellent guide to getting started in Social Media.

1. Arrive

You cant take part in the conversation if your not at the event so you need to Arrive , Sign up , Login , Observe. There is however more to signing up to a service than just a Username, Email address and a password. Consider the following when you Arrive at a new Social Networking Site.

Be Human, Be Genuine and Be Clear.

When choosing a Username for a site avoid using numbers or unusual characters in your name. You might want to add a space or use an underscore to create a more readable name but in the long run your making it hard for mobile users to interact with you. Further if you try to include Numbers or Initials into your Username then your probably going to be mistaken for a Robot or an Auotmated process rather than a human.

I use Loudmouthman because everywhere I go I sign up as Loudmouthman as a result people seeing Loudmouthman on a website are more likely to believe it is me. Further it stand out better than NikButler or NicholasButler. Its going to be easier to find Loudmouthman in Google than Nicholas Butler.

Whilst I dont always recommend the use of Nicknames for Usernames it does have a ‘added value’ of creating an additional way for people to easily tag and categorise you.

How will people know they have met you before ?

When signing up to a service I try to keep three things the same everywhere

Username : its usually Loudmouthman everywhere

Profile Photo : I have a profile photo I tend to use on every site. its a Picture of me.

Website  : I tend to promote http://www.loudmouthman.com

Have you a clear association with the group or are you an observer ?

Understand your reason for accesing the site and its community. You might just be registering your Name and Username on the site just to ensure that another member cannot steal it away from you. You might be on the site because your looking to overhear the conversations or you might have recieved an invite. However if the group is utterly new to you and theres no one you know on the site then the Rule no 1 to 3 are going to help you integrate better.

2. Listen

Depending on the website your going to have a number of ways to listen to the conversation. We have seen a change to the front page of twitter that now indicates they are firmly moving into the live search and trending data field. For the end user this means there is plenty of ways to locate groups and individuals within a social network who are sharing your interests or ideals and follow them or just add them in.  Listening allows you to find a way to overhear and then start a conversation with a user. its easier than a direct blurting or spamming. Bear in mind here its all about the listen, not the talking.

How to Listen ?

On Twitter you can use search.twitter.com to locate people talking about topics of interest. Twitter searches can be carried out from your profile page and from there you can save searches on your profile page.

On Facebook, Searching for groups to join where discussions match those which you are seeking. Use this listening as an opportunity to go outside your comfort zones. As you add more people to Facebook your going to see groups that they are joining or taking part in. as you join a group that information is shared on your facebook profile for your friends and fans to see. Its a useful way to see popular groups and communities especially mutual friends whom have joined that group.

On Linked-In groups similar to Facebook exist that you can join.

When Listening to groups and individuals use the Follow or Add Friend feature of the social network site to add that person into your group. Some sites dont require a mutual following to communicate ( like Twitter ) others may need them to approve your request. Dont forget to send a short message explaining why youd like to add them.

3. Ask

A good opening gambit in any conversation is to ask a question relevant to the group or community. Staying on topic or picking a topic recent to everyones awareness makes it easier for others to open a dialog with you. In turn their responses to your question will be seen by their friends, followed, groups and this bring you to the attention of a wider audience. All the while you are demonstrating an ability to listen and take part and be human, be genuine and be constructive. People love to have an opportunity to demonstrate knowledge or aptitiude and using a question is an invaluable way to open the door.

Consider your question though. It should not be personal, intergatory or invasive direct questions or ones which in hindsight are inflamatory can lead to you being percieved with a label or defintion you may not have sought.

Many people arrive in social networks and do nothing but Ask and they rarely progress into Provider, Delivers. Whilst they feel that they are consuming a lot of knowledge and understanding it soon becomes clear to the community that these users will constantly take from the community and rarely provide.

4. Provide

It suprises quite a few people that it takes this long in the process to be able to start responding and communicating well within a group. There is a subtle difference however between Provide and Deliver.

When Providing the aim is to answer questions of other users , effectively responding to people acting on Rule 3. you want to avoid using this as an opportunity to promote or spam the user with content core to your reasons for being online. Not every answer needs to be related to how you can provide a service, an answer or a solution.

Providing answers that borrow on the experience of Arriving and Listening within the group. Promoting other users content or directions earns you the respect of the social network in that you are not percieved as being selfish or simply trying to maintain an authority of your own.

5. Deliver

Having taken time to consider steps 1 to 4 of these rules the final process Deliver is where you are able to directly provide content and information that relates to your own agendas. It represents only 1 quarter of your activity in the social network and your conversation and oppotunties should reflect this. Quite a few Users ina social network grow a large community and after a while they clearly become just Deliverers. A large community around then may reflect and provide content around them but these ‘Deliver’ only mentality users soon burn the communication bridges they built.  When using a network to promote your own agenda or opinions bear in mind that the group are more willing to accept and embrace this if they can see evidence of Steps 2 to 4 in your activities.

Summary

Use the rules to build out your interactions with online networks from Linked-in, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and it gets easier to build a credible online profile that people will recognise ( as a brand ) and respect. It will be easier to take part in discussions or launch new websites since the community will add credence and visible history to your involvement.

Thanks for Reading

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The premise of the podcast is to take the regular tech conversations that Andy White and myself have and record them as a podcast rather than have Andy spend time asking me some weeks later what was that product ‘x’ that I mentioned or website ‘y’ that we discussed.  So it came to pass that we built Social Media White Noise and several people came to listen. So that was a good thing really.

Thanks for listening.

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“This is like kissing some beautiful demon queen. Little slices of flavour are whipped across my tongue. Bourbon Coffee @xpresscoffee“

When I opened the foil vacuum sealed bag the first boisterous smell to greet me reminded me of some of the better coffee houses I have sat in. The vibe from those beans was fun and the colour of blend once steeping in the cafetiere was a nutty red brown that begged me to find a moleskine and start writing.

Indeed the coffee beans were inviting enough that I couldnt help popping a couple into my mouth and crunching down to get that Coffee buzz kicking off first thing. They look and smell like how you want coffee to greet you first thing in the morning and they fill the rooms with warm memories and the need for Danish pastries.

So go now to the stores of Xpress Coffee UK and order a bag of Bourbon Beans and tell me im wrong ?

I should thank Robert Scoble for introducing Evernotes  purpose to me. I cant remember who he was interviewing but when they  demonstrated the ability to take a picture of a business card and how Evernote would tidy the image and index all the words on the card I knew it had an immediate role. It was clear that I could pass all my collected business cards into Evernote and have a indexed and searchable archive of contact details, accompanied by the images of the cards as they were snapped.

What followed was an exercise in Document Image Management as I used a flatbed to scan a collection of cards into tiff files. I then cut and paste each card back out of the A4 image and added them to my Business Cards Notebook folder in Evernote. Within a few hours I could search on phone numbers, names and locations as well as add additional meta information like tags and titles and notes to the cards.

From there the next regular routine usage for Evernote was to grab information from emails and licensing cards and keep a record of software license purchases and codes. Effectively storing a list of serial keys, activation codes and purchase orders for software. Whenever I need a windows license key or a shareware activation code I could just enter the name of the product into Evernote search and find all the notes related to that item.

After this process came the obvious need to use Evernote to track online payments, tax office documentation and purchase orders from suppliers. All the while im letting Evernote carry the workload of indexing and archiving the information that it is gathering from each note.

One interesting outcome of my Evernote usage was integrating Spinvox voice to text feature with Evernotes inbound email. Its served as two usefull applications by setting Spinvoxes notification emails for Voicemail and memo to deliver direct to Evernote it can track voicemails and index numbers and names automatically. Using spinvox memo I now speak the shopping list as I create it then I have a shopping list Memo in Evernote. Each of those lists being archived lets me check previous lists to see if I have missed anything more popular.

A more recent development in my Evernote usage has been the Public Notebook feature which has allowed me to create a ‘Wishlist’ of shopping items found around the web. Here Evernote lends itself to the web2.0 philosophy as I can mash up the different wish lists of separate sites and create a single list of multiple retail websites as well as add additional purchasing information and notes.

After that came the realisation that if I could build a wish list for anniversaries then I could use Evernote to track the various items requires in a complex build ( for example a Hackintosh computer ) to track the items and to note the build costs. Sharing that note book with the community to provide direction and guidance for other users.

The value in Evernote for me has come from its ubiquity to my working environments. It exists as an application for my Windows and Mac desktops and as an IPhone app I can use Evernote as a research tool collecting notes and thoughts on the move and collating them to the desktops when back home.  Id love to see an Ubuntu Linux version for the future but for the moment the webinterface suffices .

One such incidence involved a potential returns issue I thought I would experience with a faulty games console. Having gathered information from the Web and captured and clipped the relevant articles into Evernote on my Mac which mean in turn they would be to hand on my IPhone I went all prepared with Evernote and source materials to defend a claim for a replacement console, only to have the wind blown out of my sails by a very helpful and agreeable member of the sales team. I was more upset that I missed an opportunity to show off Evernote on the iPhone as a tool to win an argument. Still I have it in Evernote so if the discussion of Statutory rights and purchases ever arises im sure it will spring to hand.

Im not a premium user of Evernote since my regular monthly usage rarely exceeds the allowance and my collection of less than a 1000 notes barely scatches the surface of where I can go with Evernote. This though will change as I am beginning to see a use for Evernote as a collaborative tool for the Household Butler as well as with many of my clients.


Im a guilty of not spending as much time in the Evernote community of Blogs and Facebook though in many ways thats a positive for Evernote since im not spending as much time preaching to the choir but praising Evernote to new users. An interesting aspect of which is many I have met have tried other tools and I suspect this is more due to the desire to no ‘apparently’ follow a crowd or in some attempt to be bleeding edge.

My personal practice in using software is to use the tool that gives you the most freedom, the most feedback and the most interaction. If you can integrate a tool with your working habits and get great feedback from service then its going to be a constant use for your working habit without getting in the way of your work. When explaining to a client why it would be useful to them its easy to be flippant ‘oh its the clipboard for your life’ or ‘its a personal organiser that is organised’ but in reality its a magic digital pocket that knows what you dropped into it and can find it when you want it.

There may be many more features in the pipeline for Evernote but for now its ahead of the drag curve in functionality for me with its OCR, Free text indexing, PDF integration, Public and Private Notes, Collaborative shared notebooks and an API as well as import and export functionality. Screen capture and Email reception make short work of capturing the data so what more would I like ? just one more thing.
Id like the OCR’d text for that note to be associated with the note so that I could use Evernote to do some OCR and Document Imaging work for a few more detailed documents.

That being said, you can count me as one of the more vocal proponents for the use of Evernote more in your digital daily life and you can quote me on that.

Now go download Evernote and … thanks for reading.

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For you delight a few example videos from the site.

Using iSCSI initiator to connect a Network Storage Device Volume to your Windows XP installation

Configuring MX records for use with Google Apps for Your Domain

Since playing with Screentoaster there have been many other videos ( private ) that I have been able to create as part of either a training, tutorial or fact finding tool that in turn have provided my clients and my own memory with a great point of contact for note taking.

it makes me wonder at what point will screen capture and recording of screen casts become part of the whole operating system ?

Thanks for reading

[1] no really! it was via Stumbleupon !

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Xpress Coffee Blue Mountain Beans , as twittered by me

Blue mountain coffee sitting in my mug already I feel like im sitting with a girl whose more used to cocktail parties and catwalks.

Leaving this coffee to steep fills the kitchen with a deep “coffee shop” smell of bitter oils and warm scents that leave me wishing I had invested in some pastries and a large newspaper to read. Though Im settling back with Macbook pro and this blog. Its not a working coffee it feels like the drink you serve when freiend come round to shoot the breeze and talk technology of an afternoon ( hey I have friends that might do that ! )

More on my coffee considerations next week and if you want to join me on this coffee conversation then please visit Xpress Coffee and order Bourbon Dark which will be my choice for next week.

Now I am off to order some airtight containers to put the rest of these beans into before freezing them.

That was until I discovered Jing from the Jingproject people. It works on Mac and Windows it tracks your screen captures and allows you to annotate still images or record portions of the screen, with audio if desired, and store the results locally on your machine or uploaded to Screencast home page. In many ways the integration of these services along with the multi platform functionality means that this tool, like Evernote and like Screentoaster is now one of my must download installs and there is probably a whole other blog post in just that concept. In the meanwhile go play with Jing and let me know what you thought.

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I love my Jetstream Rollerball Uni pens

Thanks for reading and writing.

“We got the idea from talking to James. The model of removing processing power from the desktop and using human intuitiveness to manage the inbound results to peoples search columns was a no brainer”

Credit : http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitorcastillo/

Frankly I am surprised that given the amount of press such stories have received recently that more of the British Press have not paid close attention to the operating procedures of this fantastic British product.

In an interesting development to this story we note that James Whatley was today spotted in the same city as Iain Dodsworth

Thanks for reading.

Bin Collection Farce

Originally uploaded by theloudmouthman.

I can appreciate that we are putting a high demand on the local council workers who collect and remove our household waste. I can understand the need to make their lives and daily routines as predictable and direct as possible. Every week we drag those bins out to our property line and line them neatly on the left against the greenery leaving space for us to exit the drive way.

Imagine then the constant annoyance at returning in your car to discover the bins like this. Blocking the driveway. Add to the fact that Sharon has to leave the parked car with kids buckled in and wondering whats going on and move those bins back to where they were left.

Is it so terribly difficult to expect that if we are making the effort to make these bins available then the council would in turn make the time and effort to put them back where they found them ?

I am fairly sure I am not the only one to have experienced this ridiculous bin farce and I would be interested in collecting more evidence of Dangerous, Daft or just plain lazy bin replacement.

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for reading.

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Trains – The Culture Vulture Project – Towns and Country

Originally uploaded by theloudmouthman.

The Travelling moleskine project from The Culture Vulture is promoting The Big Draw. ( that has to be the highest link ratio for a sentence ! )

I picked up the ‘Towns and Country’ Moleskine from @Documentally at a recent Tuttle and whilst Im no artist I felt the pictures described in words along with my rather child like depiction of a train should convey my sentiments of rail travel for the modern blogger.

Im taking the book back into London today ( on the train ) and hoping to hand it on to the next contributor.

Im looking forward to seeing the finished article and to being able to say I contributed , if only a little bit.

Thanks for reading.