Advances In Widget Distribution
October 21, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I’ve been working pretty hard recently on developing a local/national widget strategy and in doing so I’ve seen a lot of really cool widgets out and about the world. We all know by now that distributing your content widely is key to reaching eyeballs and advancing your message.
What is so cool now is that widgets are so easy to customize and deploy! Check out the YouTube widget below that pulls from the PBS YouTube feed, all it does it cycle through the latest videos uploaded to the account. This took me about 5 minutes to build and deploy, imagine if I were a designer and actually customized the look and feel of it…
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-03-19
March 19, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- @ftmedianews would you spend the extra money for an iPhone if it came with unlimited music from the WiFi store? #
- @davidherrold you got that right you do! #
- @guykawasaki you just spit those Alltops out all the time like there’s no tomorrow! #
- @guykawasaki when does the Alltop of Alltop headlines get released? Sort of a greatest hits of Alltop
# - @conniereece you Tweet so often with so many people I can only imagine how crazy it must be to be you #
- @mrpopular you’re following 900+ people with only one Tweet, are you going to be a spammer? #
- @minimage ha! I had a Blackjack for a while so I’ve use WinMob and it was a difficult life… come on over to the iPhone land, u know yo … #
- @shegeeks true, they’re not widgets perse, but I think the interactivity and always-there-ness is what widgets *want* to be. #
- @susanreynolds how many have you nixed so far? #
- @guykawasaki, I bet it does take a fair amount of time to do the research. If you need another helper, look me up #
- @dlpasco Let us know when you get one, I’ve got my application for an application and cert in. #
- @sernovitz I have no idea, but let me know if you do find it, that would be a hugely interesting ‘nugget’ to know how to find. #
- @susanreynolds you’ve got a tough job ahead of you, so much content flying at you all the time! #
- @conniereece I haven’t started using Tweetscan, but I get SMS’s all the freaking time, it annoys the people around me lol! #
- @bananasontoast, I haven’t seen an Overheard as funny as that in a long time #
- @conniereece I too have been hoping for more Mobile controls, like my ‘favorite favorites’ of the 20 people I ALWAYS want SMSs from #
- @conniereece SMSs from the people I most want to hear from, even when sms is turned off from the main ’stream’ that I get constantly. #
- @conniereece My iPhone doesn’t have a red flashing light! lol. It’s usually on vibrate though, it’s only bad when it’s sitting on my desk. #
- @jnil I bet that’s one of the first things that gets created with the SDK, although right now your best option might be HTML? or Email? #
- @jnil It’d be my quick and dirty solution anyway, if you find something else do let me know though #
- @minimage Maybe in July you can make the big switch! #
- @infinitypro Why thank you! #
- Good Morning Twitterville! #
- Busy day working on several projects at once #
- How is everyone today? #
- @rentzsch Yup, I’ve used Time Machine more in the last several months to restore files that I never would have done before. #
- The person i am supposed to be meeting with is 30 minutes late.
# - Just ordered a new 4-core super server with a big fatty Internet pipe for Contributr, this thing is going to be screaming! #
My iGoogle Homepage Favorite Things
February 9, 2008 by Jonathan · 2 Comments
The iGoogle homepage is my personal portal of choice, for a number of reasons, once I just like having the Google search bar right there waiting for whenever I want. I don’t keep a lot of widgets and tabs saved onto it, but enough to get me the latest headlines from my news organizations of choice, and weather (although usually my weather reports come from hitting the Weather icon on my iPhone.
A couple other widgets that I keep on my iGoogle main page is a ‘Daily Einstein’ quotes box (I’m a big Einstein fan) as well as a Joke of Day widget (I only glance at it every couple of days, but sometimes there’s something funny there!).
One other favorite thing on my iGoogle homepage is the Google Gadget Editor, for those moments when I get fed up with going to a website and just want a widget, I use an RSS widget template and roll my own! I’m sure this is what frightens some PR folk, people rolling their own content widgets, but gosh if they did them themselves audience numbers are sure to grow!
Very soon I’m going to roll out some widgets and other gadgets on my blog, mainly different ways to read and access the information contained in it. Some things I’m currently thinking of doing in the short term include a Mac OSX Dashboard widget, iGoogle homepage widget, iPhone application, SpringWidgets widget, and maybe some extra RSS feeds so you can roll your own (just be sure to send me a link, I love seeing what kinds of cool things people can do given some unique content).
Widgets and Syndication
February 7, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Below you’ll find links to widgets and other syndication tools and applications that I’ve built while working on personal and professional projects. I have experience building Mac OSX Dashboard applications, Facebook Applications, iPhone Applications, Google Gadgets, Flash Badges and more.
Facebook Applications
- KOMU News Facebook App
- KBIA-FM Facebook App
- ColumbiaMissourian Facebook App
- Contributr Public Items App
- JonathanCoffman.com Blog Posts App
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-01-30
January 30, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Headed to bed early tonigh, goodnight Twitterland! #
- Working on Contributr (Launch in 48 hours!) ahh! #
- Coding up some widgets for Contributr - yummy widgets #
Social Media Projects
January 19, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Traditional forms of media and journalism constrain news-products to older methods. With the enhancement of traditional values and methodology in journalism with new- and social-media technology your information products can be far superior than your competition.
Beginning in mid 2008 I began solely focusing on social media and online communities. Some recent Social and New Media projects that I’ve worked on:
See more projects I’ve worked on for KOMU.com.
Google Gadget Development
Facebook Application Development
Social Media Experimentation
- Social Media Links and Resources link blog
- PBS Engage (see more about what I did for the Engage project on this page)
A New Media Mindset
November 10, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
As I progress and increase my knowledge and interest in new-media ventures and the people who work with them I realize more and more about the organizational and staffing problems of companies, especially news organizations who feel threatened by new-media.
I’ve worked with new and emerging media for five years now, and I don’t claim to be the most knowledgeable about any of the technologies that I support, however I do have strongly-held beliefs as to what news organizations should be doing to embrace and take advantage of the tools and resources available to them.
The most common problem that I encounter in trying to support and innovate news-products with the newsrooms that I work with is the culture of fear, not in the traditional sense, but a culture of fear, of technology.
I’m constantly surrounded by editors, producers, writers, reporters, and management who don’t understand the technology resources they have and are scared to even try something new.
This self-destruction and fear does nothing to help their news organization emerge as a winner in a new-media landscape. Thank goodness there are news organizations who feel otherwise, but at least of the newsrooms I work with (one TV station and the other a small-market daily newspaper) feel compelled to constantly lag behind the industry, and innovation.
Both of the perps have people within their walls who not only aren’t afraid of technology, but actively seek new and innovative ways to present news and information, it’s those people, or people like them who need to be guiding the news media into the present and the future.
One key example is the TV station, They launched a new website 3 years ago using a huge content management system hosted in-house. The problem is, they’ve gone through one major redesign of the site (which was a very good thing) but that redesign took a year or more to complete, and other than that, they have done little to no new innovative things with their web site.
I’ve offered numerous opportunities to try new and exciting things that have been tested successfully elsewhere, but they are afraid to move forward.
They actually have someone who was supposed to make it a ‘priority’ to offer on their site podcasts of news stories etc. This may have been a good idea a couple years ago, but we can now see that podcasts aren’t as strong as we all thought they would be, and the adoption of RSS feeds to the general public is moving a lot slower than many of us thought.
Despite that, they continue to work on it, in the meantime not accomplishing anything nor moving forward with anything new that is indeed spreading much faster than podcasting.
The use of new-media tools like Flash streaming video, Twitter, Facebook, Widgets, and dare I say it, RIAs, are the things these news organizations need to be looking at to generate new revenue streams, but instead their stuck eternally in the late 90s with little to no progress.
I’m off to a meeting later today with 4 people who are working on a big converged media election project, we were making great progress for a week and a half on this project, only to have it run off the rails in the last 3 days. Now there’s discussion of using a different CMS, starting over, and other drastic, and unneeded changes.
Not only that, but the committee which has a hard enough time making decisions (as they often do) keeps growing, now I completely understand the importance of decision by committee and bringing in external viewpoints, but doing so in a fashion which alienates key players is not a recommendation I would make.
I’ll post again soon about this election project as it is consuming a lot of my time right now, and there are some very interesting implications of this project and how it is eventually developed and promoted.
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2007-11-01
November 1, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Testing MoodBlast after an update! Hello world! #
- I give up, things keep getting worse so I’m going to bed #
- Awake, responding to emails, then off to work #
- Working on some smart decision stuff. #
- I was supposed to meet with some people 16 minutes ago, neither has shown up yet… #
- Is there someone new doing nude things on JTV @kemics? #
- Headed to a budget meeting, gotta make money! #
- Just checked in online for my flight to Houston tomorrow, yay! #
- Hauling some trash to the curb, my neighbors will have to look at it all weekend, but it’ll be gone when I get back in town! #
- Alright, I think I’ve got more than my share of trash sitting at the curb, now time for laundry #
- The widget world just grew to 150 million users with Google OpenSocial - AMAZING! I’m off to build widgets! #
- Wow, Facebook must be crapping their pants right now since developers have an audience of 150-250 million users instead of FB’s 50 mil. #
- Catch my blogpost in about 5 minutes while I ride the OpenSocial blogwave #
- @jasonw22 the writing is on the wall, it may be an issue of join OpenSocial or get left behind, I know where my dev. hours are going! #
- Wow, Scoble says Google asked Facebook to get onboard, and well, Fb isn’t on the launch list are they? arrogance I say #
- @jasonw22 we were just talking about that the other day how redic. that was, and it’s looking like an even worse deal now isn’t it? #
- @kzimmerman I sure hope it can play nicely with AIR, Prism doesn’t excite me yet. #
- I’m TwitterTracking "OpenSocial" and getting pings on my iPhone every 5 or 6 seconds it seems, Twitter is on FIRE! #
- @ijustine, your picture is so large on twitterposter! (must mean you’re popular or something) #
- Trying out Snitter real quick, I like it so far. #
- @emilychang I agree, the novelty is wearing off quickly #
- @chrisbrogan amazingly important and valuable, I exploit them whenever possible! #
- @newmediajim talk about a great holiday gift! re: mimobots #
- @janole you got that right! I’m one of them #
- Wow I’ve gotten like 200 ims in the last few hours by tracking opensocial #
Google OpenSocial a Facebook Killer?
November 1, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Alright, I’m not the first one to report this but the Google Revolution has begun! I mean this is big, bigger than any other tech news I’ve talked about in a LONG time.
Google’s OpenSocial API is going to let developers like myself create one widget or web application and have a potential user-base of 150-250 million users, far more than anyone could reach with any one tool just 3 hours before now.
Google’s ultimate goal here is to create a layer on top of the traditional Web 2.0 world that we’re all used to that allows us to share and socialize just about anything.
Now, most of our web content is already highly commoditized, but this social layer adds to that.
No longer can you ignore the people and users that you didn’t even know existed, they can find you, your site, and manipulate your beloved content however they wish.
I’ve been wanting this for a long time, and I hope Google OpenSocial can live up to my expectations. In the meantime, I’m going to be garbling up all the information and blog rumblings I can in the next few days and report back again. Right now, the blogosphere is abuzz with theories that Facebook will now have to join the OpenSocial alliance just to stay in the game.
If I was Facebook and my boss had told me that we weren’t joining, I would be job-hunting. This just isn’t something you can ignore or take on.
I already have a list of about 15 quick and easy OpenSocial uses for my friends and clients to build and use immediately. Just give me a few hours and see what I can come up with!
I’ve already been evangelizing GoogleGadgets, and I’m thinking that using the OpenSocial APIs are going to be just as easy and just as useful as those were.
It’s my early understanding that these tools will be just a few lines of code away from making any web site or RIA (Rich Internet Application) compatible and loadable into over 150 million (my personal guess on actual users of the big social sites that signed on as of this blog post) profiles.
For more information, be sure to visit my Twitter feed which is linked in the right hand column or at http://www.twitter.com/jdcoffman As always please check out my site and portfolio for more information about me and what skills I can bring to your company! -Jonathan
yourminis - Widgets for the rest of us?
October 27, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
yourminis :: web widgets, blog widgets, desktop widgets, widgetize your content!
Well folks, here it is, the widespread simplification of widgetizing your content. While yourminis isn’t quite a plug-and-play, but it is a very strong AS3 API library for content creators to use. They already have big name partners like VH1, MTV, and others who hope to hit up the in-crowd and get them using widgets.
They also recently updated their codebase to include Adobe AIR support, so all your web widgets can be deployed, syndicated, and repurposed anywhere on the web or on the desktop.
This just further solidifies my belief that the widget economy is just about to explode, man I sure hope Contributr can get launched into beta before it happens!
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