shawn farner|*feeding* the social web obsession

“When the door of happiness closes, another opens. But often times we look so long at the closed door that we don’t see the one which has been opened for us.”
-Unknown

I just started today at Ritter Insurance Marketing doing IT work, and I’ll just come right out and say it - I’m totally flabbergasted.  This company knows how to embrace technology.

They are equipping every employee with dual monitors, realizing that two workspaces ultimately allows work to be done more efficiently.  They are also hooking employees up with wireless keyboards and mice - less cords make a world of difference as far as I’m concerned.  They have a Jabber server installed and each employee has a Jabber client installed on their machine.  Every employee is on each other’s buddy list, allowing communication to be quick and silent.  This eliminates shouting across the office, buzzing through on speakerphone or actually interrupting someone in person.

If you are looking to make your office more efficient, take some notes from this company, but lend an ear to a few more of my suggestions.

1. Migrate from Exchange/Outlook to Google Apps for Domains. Email and calendars accessible absolutely anywhere, no VPN required.  Google hosts it for free.  How can you beat that?
2. Reach out to the world. Start a company blog, interact with your industry on social networking sites, take a video camera around your office and upload the video to YouTube.  It is undeniable that most people would rather deal with humans than with a faceless empire, given the choice.
3. 20% time. I’m a big fan of this Google idea.  Basically, one day out of a week, an employee can work on whatever they choose.  I know this is more useful to a software company, but there is a ton of upside to all kinds of businesses adopting it.  It is never a bad thing to get an employee brainstorming.  Great things can happen.

I doubt many companies will adopt 20% time, but hey, worth a shot.

Well, it’s Mixtape Friday again.  For those of you viewing this post in Facebook, I just noticed that you can’t actually see the tape itself.  Apparently Facebook does not like Flash.  You’ll have to click where it says “View original post” and listen to it on my site.  This might be true for some feed readers, as well.

A few days ago I wrote a post about why I’d rather be here than in Silicon Valley.  While people there are more apt to become early adopters, Central Pennsylvania’s rate of adoption for new technology is much slower.  This basically makes those of us blogging, tweeting and FriendFeeding here the Robert Scobles, Louis Grays and Darren Rowses of the area.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

Now we’ve taken another step forward.  blogHarrisburg has been online previously, but today received a sweet new redesign that takes it to a whole new level.  What is blogHarrisburg?  Basically, it’s a web site that aggregates all the posts made about the area by local bloggers and places them conveniently onto one site.  This will do worlds to promote blogging in the area and will put much deserved eyeballs on some of the great work that local bloggers are doing.

Speaking of local bloggers and Twitterers, you can meet some of them Thursday (5/22) at the blogHarrisburg/Twitter meetup!  It’ll be going down at Appalachian Brewing Company on Cameron Street in Harrisburg from 6-9 PM.  I usually play volleyball during that time, but I’m going to try to make it anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll be looking at a promising Central PA web site that hopes to be your one stop for event information - Spotobe.

Since Twitter has once again bitten the dust, a lot of discussion has taken place on FriendFeed as to whether or not Twitter is running out of chances. Some believe that FriendFeed will ultimately replace Twitter. Personally, I feel that the two services have two very different aims. I don’t think I could leave Twitter solely for FriendFeed.

So what would I leave Twitter for, then?

• A well-planned service run by people who truly believe they have something special on their hands. These people would build their service fully anticipating that it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Downtime would be extremely minimal.
• Direct messaging between users, which FriendFeed lacks.
• The ability to update via SMS or IM and to receive updates via those as well.  And please, if you are going to support IM, support AIM.  It’s one of the largest services out there, if not the largest.
• Friend lists and the ability to send direct messages to just those people.
• The ability to easily import friends from other social networking sites.
• The ability to add friends to SMS who are not members of the service (that person would have to verify that they do, in fact, want SMS messages from you).

That’s all, really!  I like that Twitter is such a simple service.  It has its niche and it serves its purpose.  Unfortunately, it seems that they are down more than they are up lately.  If a service came along and did all of the things above, I’d join in a heartbeat.

Does the above service exist already?  Let me know about it and I’ll pimp myself out, mentioning it every chance I get.

I received an email earlier tonight from the IRS…

OR SO I THOUGHT.

It actually was not from the IRS, and I knew that almost immediately. However, there are some people out there who are pretty gullible and they might not pick up on the clues as easily. So I’ve cropped some images from my experience to help you out. (click to view full image)

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Of course, a lot of me wants to say yes.  Scobleizer interviews some pretty high-profile people in the world of technology.  He also gets to fly all over creation.  He has a multitude of eyes and ears hanging on his every word.

Unfortunately, I feel that being fully immersed in the startup world and the ever-changing landscape of the web has put him out of touch with those who will make or break many of these ventures; the every-day guys and gals.

That isn’t a knock on Robert at all.  I’m totally envious of what he gets to do, and if things go my way, maybe one day I’ll have as many eyes and ears on me.  You can call my BS if you want, but if I had to choose between being a voice among tens of thousands of voices in the Valley or being one of just a few here, I’d choose here.

I’m located within spitting distance of a state capital that is severely lacking in web presence.  There are not many people on Twitter in Harrisburg - how else would a college student be able to chit chat with local news reporters at will?  We have very few serious bloggers, but these bloggers consistently scoop our newspaper writers on a regular basis.  There aren’t many people here who get it yet, and to me, that’s exciting.

Those few of us bloggers/early adopters that do exist here have the opportunity to do something great, something not a lot of people can say they’ve done.  We have, in our hands, the opportunity to transform an entire city.  We have the chance to completely change the way this city communicates, consumes media and sees the world as a whole.

I would guess that 97% of Harrisburg’s citizens have never heard of Twitter.  They’ve never heard of FriendFeed.  Some might think that Google is the only search engine in existence.  These people use email, AIM, Myspace and Facebook.  They read their favorite sites using bookmarks, not RSS feeds.  They find new music through the radio and word of mouth, not sites like Last.FM or Pandora.  The early adopter pace is just too fast for them to keep up.

I do not look down on these people at all.  Many early adopters seem to think highly of themselves for having been on something “first”, before it was cool.  I do not think that way.  For me, these people are not a heavy anchor holding us back.  Instead, they are the sails.  When they flock to a service, then you know you have something special.

I look foward to helping introduce them to this new world.  And Robert, next time you go to Tel Aviv, save me a seat?

Guess who’s back?

I’ve scrapped my earlier plans of taking a course on campus at IUP in favor of taking an online class and coming home early.  Not only does this mean I get to enjoy nightly volleyball, I also get to start work immediately on my various projects.  I’ll get to start posting more heavily for WebpageFX and I’ll also get to work on (re)launching Be of Service.  Even more, I’ll get to roam about Harrisburg, eat sushi with cool people, Tweet-up with my fellow Central PA Twitterfolk and write more about this area.

Sweet.

By the way, is anyone looking to hit up Blogworld in September?  Las Vegas?  Let me know.

For my Major American Authors course (ENGL 436), our final exam format is this: we’ve been given a sheet with five questions on it and told to choose three. Today at 2:45 PM, we will walk into the classroom, sit down and write the answers. On top of that, we are allowed to use one page of notes and the actual books we’ll be writing about. Why was this not a take home exam?!

I could have this done already.  I could walk in today, hand it in and leave.  It would be so much easier.

On top of that, I also have a paper due tomorrow for the same class.  This paper was not anywhere to be found on the syllabus but made a surprise showing at the end of the semester.  It’s kind of like a large woman who’s pregnant but you can’t really tell, and then one day WHOA, she’s carrying a baby.  I also have to finish my story for Bible as Lit (an apocalyptic thriller, I’ll post it when I’m done) and also find some pictures for the rest of my scripture-folio.

I’ll end with this awesome paper I wish I could turn in.