stephen – Page 3

Everywhere and Nowhere

The Desert — Courtesy of Ducklips Photography

Ever get the feeling that the internet is everywhere and nowhere? Have you ever tried visiting the Internet in person? How many people have achieved this goal, (besides anyone from the Matrix)? In reality, the internet is just a long set of cables, switches, routers, firewalls, etc. Not too exciting of a place to go. The “location” of the internet is not as important as your location. And this can mean you as a person, you as a company representative, you as a salesperson, you as leader. Each facet has its own little niche of things that can happen. Last night, I saw a new Pepsi commercial. A lady was on the beach and there was a very long line to the drink vendor/cabana. So she quickly got on the phone and put in her location (actually a little off of where she was) and that she just saw David Beckham at the beach. Everyone from this line gets the updates on their phones and run to try and find him, clearing the line so she could get her Diet Pepsi. Not all location check ins will have this affect, obviously. But as either an entity or person providing services/products, you can strive for that.

Two major events happened this past week, (actually three – the Royal Wedding, but that is not covered here), Osama bin Laden was killed and a local inadvertently tweeted the whole event; and Facebook and Assange are fighting over whether or not Facebook has let the government in the backdoor to spy on the Facebook community. Each one has a lesson for location services.

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Thursday, May 05, 2011

Digital Marketing / Social Media

I am Not All Alone In the World

Chicken - Ducklips Photography — Courtesy of Ducklips Photography

As I scour the web and read, I come across many different articles. One thing that has been in the news for some time now is the unrest in the Arab world, and the different demonstrations, and subsequent backlash from those events. But it is not just about politics, it is about using the social media to be more than a way to play Farmville or Angry Birds. I love the social media outlets just as much as the next person. It is fun, I love joking around with my friends. The Hirdweb Facebook page is another extension of this blog, and I use it to suit my needs. However, many businesses set up a page, then let it flounder after a few months. It is not enough to just set up a social campaign, or page, or feed, the company must keep it going. And that can be easier said than done.

Doing any type of campaign, whether it is a traditional spot, or a new social campaign, there needs to be some type of sustainable presence and interaction. Whatever the product or service, if you want the people to keep coming back, it has to be more than just “Here is my product/service! Hope you enjoy” type of message. Some campaigns do not provide products or services, they provide messages, movement, and reshaping ideas. No matter what the message is, no matter what the end result target may be, a sustained drive will lead to better success than a quick one hit and bail.

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Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Applications / PHP

You Did What?

Today's topic is kind of short, but a very important one. If you are not living under a rock, then you know about Sony's problem with their Playstation online services getting hacked and being down for some time. A new concern now is that this has exposed the credit card…

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Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Digital Marketing / Planning

Measured for Success

Keeping in the theme from last week, every day will have a specific theme, and I will keep the same ideas of last week. So without adieu, here is this weeks plan:

Monday – Measured for Success; Planning ideas and thoughts
Tuesday – You Did What?; focusing on coding
Wednesday – I am Not All Alone In the World; ideas and code segments for people like me, social lepers
Thursday – Everywhere and Nowhere; examinations on location services, social integration and strategy
Friday – Riddle Me This; fun stuff to finish up the week

Birds Fighting Over Food — Image courtesy of Ducklips Photography

And today’s topic is figuring out what is the measure for success. If we look at last week and my posts, I wanted to have a post every day of last week, and I got through Thursday. I missed Friday, and that should have been the easiest one to do. So based on my own goals, was last week a success? I would have to say no. I put a goal of 5 posts in 5 days. I did 4 posts in 5 days, so I fell short. And that is what is important to understand when trying to plan a new application: what is the measurement for success, and can it actually be measured. When planning for an application, it is important to understand what will define the success of the application. It is much like a goal. It should be conceivable, achievable, measurable, and desirable (others do exist, but these are important when planning on gathering statistics). Another important part of this measurement is the fault tolerance allowance. This includes the level of error, or missing the set goal, that you are willing to accept. For this, let’s examine two different scenarios.

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Monday, May 02, 2011

Digital Marketing / Social Media

Focus on the Locus

Location services, good or bad? Well that depends on how it is used. If you you it to stalk other people, then it could be bad. It could also be a better way to stay engaged. Locus, defined as: 1. a place; locality. 2. a center or source, as of…

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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Applications / Ideas and Sorts / Social Media

Ideas for the Social Leper

Social networking, check-ins, friending, linking-in, and other items have made for an interesting world. Some people may see this as a purely consumer/individual niche, with only the younger crowd getting into this new fangled technology. The internet has been around for a while and people sometimes have a hard time…

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Applications / PHP

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

CakePHP is one of those frameworks where it is easy to set up and get an application running in a minimal amount of time. It provides different securities, helps, and functions in the framework so that your application can run smoothly and be safe. As with all applications, the level of security and functionality depends on the developer, not the code, not the language, not the database. An application is only as secure, functional and reliable as the person/team who is coding it. One of the reasons I do like Cake is that the built in security and helpers offer a developer a great way to secure data, validate it, and display it. And that can also be one of the more trickier parts of getting the application to work correctly, finding the data to do something with it.

CakePHP provides some functionality for finding the data, this is done using the “find” method. You can read more about this at the Cookbook. Using this, one can grab data from many different tables if needed, or just one table. For this exercise, I am going to use dummy data to show how to find data, using simplistic finds, and using joins, and sub-queries. So first lets examine the data tables. Not all of these are going to be connected. This is a very simplistic, quickly drawn up solution to a lending library

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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Ideas and Sorts / Planning / Social Media

Whats the plan, Stan

After nearly a month off, I believe it is time for me to institute a new way I am going to blog. Topics range from a ton of different items, and I think we should have a specific way of what I am doing. So, starting today, and hopefully I…

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Monday, April 25, 2011

Digital Marketing / Ideas and Sorts / Social Media

At the Dance

When I was a younger kid, I would watch different shows with my parents. A couple of these shows had a similar gag. The Muppet Show had a segment called "At the Dance", which was similar (a homage maybe?) to Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In cocktail party segments. These segments were…

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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Applications

Update to comments

Just a quick note, and then maybe another post later today. I changed around the comments of this site to use Livefyre. Having two comment systems (Intrinsic WP comments and the Facebook comment plugin) was just a little too much. If you had comments in older posts and now they…

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Monday, March 21, 2011