technology tips and music recommendations with a personal touch

Facebook is a wonderful social network. I’d even go as far as saying it’s one of a kind. In less than 2 months, I’ve gone from being indifferent, to trying and hating it, to giving it a second shot and actually falling in love with it, until finally I became obsessed with it and started spreading the word about it in my social circles.

So given this newfound obsession with Facebook, how can we, if not cure it, find a way to make it worthwhile?

I had this simple idea a while ago which was: why not we actually use Facebook for what it was intended? That is, why not use Facebook to maintain and grow our relationships with the people we care about?

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God bless Web 2.0 for giving us the technology to share our passion easily with the rest of the world.

Some of you, even my friends, don’t know that I am passionate about photography ever since high school. At that time, I won the photography class award for creating a portrait photo composition of my brother, using a darkroom technique of combining two negatives to create transparency effect in the composite photo (anybody know what that technique is called?). The winning photo was also featured as a Photo of the Day on PhotoPoint.com in October 6 2001. However, I lost that precious photo when that site went out of business on December 2001. I still hope of finding that photo stashed somewhere, someday.

Anyways, fast forward to 2007, my interest in photography is still on and that’s why I hang out at Flickr almost daily. I don’t take photos anymore, but I enjoy browsing interesting photos. Coincidently, “interestingness” is the exact term Flickr uses to describe a regularly updated patch of the most “beautiful, amazing, moving and striking” new photos on Flickr.

Here is where Web 2.0 comes into play:

I needed a way to get those photos delivered to me as soon as there is a new patch. Naturally, I was looking for an RSS feed for only the interesting photos on Flickr. While that wasn’t available on Flickr website, a simple search in Google returned a result of some guy who posted this very exact RSS feed. Here is the address:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/InterestingFlickr

So I subscribed to this feed and I usually receive 100+ new photos a day in my Google Reader. Granted, not all of them are interesting to me. However, there are usually 5-10 photos a day that simply stand out as plain gorgeous and amazing. I usually add those ones to my Flickr favorites collection, and I’ve been doing that for the past couple of months.

Now here is the punch line: if you like what you see, then you can too subscribe to my favorite photos stream using this RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AlaeddinFavPhotos

Think of this collection as the combined goodness of Flickr’s finest photos, excluding the almost-pornographical ones that might get you fired at work. I promise to keep this stream of photos consistently fresh and interesting.
How to get your own favorite photos feed:

1. Get Firefox browser.
2. Install Greasemonkey extension.
3. Install Flickr user favorites feed script.
4. Find and share your favorites RSS feed link in your Flickr favorites page.

I think I'm on a roll here with this whole productivity-related posts. Thanks again to Ben from the Instigator blog for "instigating" this meme.

For a while I've been wanting to share our cool way of sharing stuff at work. In any typical office working environment, you've got a lot of e-mails flying back and forth between desktop workers. The e-mails are mainly forwards of interesting videos, pictures, articles or documents found on the Web or received through personal e-mails. Most of them are non-work related. Hell, when I got back from my vacation last week, there were 215 e-mails sitting in my inbox, of which about 10% only were related to my project. Most of the others were simply links to interesting sites and articles from my friends (honestly, some of them weren't even that interesting).

The Problem

While I appreciate the gesture, sometimes it gets really annoying to mix work- and non-work-related stuff in the same inbox and having to sort them out. Furthermore, getting frequent new-mail notifications can be very distracting and it often breaks my creative flow.

The Solution

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Believe it or not, there came a period when I kept thinking "the web sucks, there’s nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to watch!". I would launch the browser, and stare for a while in the blank white canvas, thinking: "so now what?". I had no good use of the web except for emails and chatting.

That was between 2004 and early 2006. Sometime mid 2006, I discovered something that would make a bigger impact in my life than anything I’ve ever tried before!

That thing was Netvibes; a wonderful online service that puts everything you’d ever want to do on the web in a single customizable page. The odd thing is, nowadays, I don’t use Netvibes (for some reason). However, credit goes to Netvibes for introducing me to the wonderful world of really simple sex syndication, otherwise known as RSS feeds (click here if you don’t already know what that is).

So I went ahead and gave it a shot. I added some preset feeds for popular sites and later discovered some more on my own, such as LifeHacker.

Fast forward to this day: I am one hell of an RSS addict who realized so many benefits from using RSS that I can’t even count. However, it occurred to me yesterday why not think of the top 5 things you achieved by using RSS?

So here they are. While reading this, try to think of things you achieved by using RSS and share them in the comments section.

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During my final preparation for my upcoming speech about Web 2.0, I often realize ideas and draw conclusions that were not apparent to me in the early stages of my research and analysis. In the last 3 months since I’ve started this project, quite a few changes have taken place on the web that had me reevaluate the exemplars I’ve chosen to demonstrate the various Web 2.0 principles.

One of my all-time favorite services that is going to have a prominent mention in my speech is the world-class VoIP telephony service known as Skype. What’s odd about using Skype as an exemplar in this presentation is that it’s really not a web-based service to start with. However, the principle I’m highlighting today is really not specific to Web 2.0; it’s in fact applicable to lots of products and services on or off the web.

Many people refer to this principle as the network effect, which is:

A characteristic that causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer depending on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service.

Furthermore, some people talk about reaching the critical mass which is the turning point where each subsequent addition of new customer adds a valuable point to the existing customers (I’m calling them ‘Subscribers’ in my speech).

A fine point to remember about critical mass is that once you hit that stage, people will perceive the value your product or service has to offer to be equal or greater than the price they’re paying for it (also known as utility:price ratio). Practically, this means that after this point, the major factor attracting new customers to you will be based on the fact that alot of other customers have already signed up for it.

Here is a snapshot of a slide that’s part of my treatment of this principle:

So how did Skype reach its phenomenal success and wide user adoption? In other words, how was it able to hit the critical mass and beyond?

The secret is in employing 3 killer builders of network effect, the last of which to join the rest only about a week ago. Let’s explore them in details.

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One of the greatest prides somebody can take in his work is his dedication to producing excellent and valuable product or service. Blogging is by no means any different. In my ongoing blogging experience, I’ve learned that readers actually do notice a dedicated blogger who goes the extra mile in presenting his ideas professionally with his readers in mind.

Being a borderline perfectionist by nature, I’ve taken it as a rule from day one to always write posts in which I present something new or add a twist to an existing idea or conversation. In doing that, I’ve always put one question in mind: What’s in it for my readers? Whatever it is I’ve decided to write about, this question always helps me shape up the entire post into something meaningful and useful by the general population of my blog’s audience. It even helps me completely discard ideas that I perceive having less of an intellectual value.

In order to present a complete story in the ideas that do make it, I’ve gradually built up slew of tools that help me take my ideas from inception to complete, well-written posts supported by visual illustrations. (I’m a visual learner, so naturally I rely on visuals to convey my ideas). Today I’m going to let you in on the tools of my blogging trade. Not that any of them is unheard of, but I believe that having them combined and using them effectively should help you get your blogging in shape and make a bigger impact with consistently hit posts!

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My favorite new service in the world of online Web 2.0 services is a new startup called Twitter. The idea behind this lovely little service is so simple and useful, yet it amazes me that it hasn’t been addressed before, especially seeing how new web startups are popping up daily.

In a nutshell, by using Twitter, me and my friends will be able to actually keep in touch all the time. This means they will get updates instantly whenever I decide to let them know of something I’m doing or about to do. It’s sort of a microblog, meaning you’ll be posting short status messages every now and then whenever you feel like it.

What makes this service unique and compelling is the variety of ways you can use to do all of this. Currently, you can use combination of the following to post your updates as well as get updates from people you choose to follow:

• Web (through Twitter website)
• Instant messenger (I use GTalk to post my status updates, I send the messages to a virtual Twitter contact who takes care of posting it on the website and notifying my followers)
• SMS (although this be bit costly, but it’s useful if you don’t have access to internet connection)

Everything about this service screams “let’s keep in touch and socialize”. I believe it’s a wonderful service, a one that is gaining popularity and momentum.

So go sign up now and add me (http://twitter.com/Alaeddin) to your friends and let’s have our little fun with this amazing service.