THE DREAM IN ACTION

Took a little bit of video while I was in SD last week. Didnt’ you think I wouldn’t share it?

Recently the concept of the online conversation has been very prevalent in my offline conversations. As I find new blogs or even news sites that I like the importance of the community around that site becomes relevant and is an asset (or liability) to the site. Whether I’m reading a local story at OnMilwaukee or reading AVC.com or following readers here on Ryan A Graves.com it is important to me what others think about the story or post I’m reading.

As that conversation held by the community becomes more important it becomes more important to me that it is easily manageable and followable. I don’t want to have to take that conversation off the site to Twitter or email, but I want it right there. I think I’m coining the term  “conversation centralization” as the ability to keep the communities interactions in one place. The best place for the centralization is where the conversation started, on the blog.

As I bounce around the web and contribute or listen to different conversations (as I do very often) I’ve found one tool that has dominated and really been the embodiment of conversation centralization, DISQUS commenting system. DISQUS (pronounced, “discuss”) gives me the ability to comment, then receive any follow up comments or responses in my email, then re-respond directly from my email, but the conversation centralization piece is that it posts my comment back to that blog for others to follow. DISQUS completely eliminates (in my experience) spam comments and adds huge value to a site! Guy Kawasaki recently posted about another commenting system he uses on his blog but I ‘commented’ back to him to check out DISQUS for these added features. For a blogger with a ton of readers who wants to manage a large amount of conversation from their blog, this is hands down the most efficient tool. This commenting system also allows you to track all of your comments, and replys on their site.

Whether you check out DISQUS or not is really not my concern. The point is that conversation centralization is going to be key for sites to find and expose the true hidden value in their readers and communities. It use to be all about the blogger, now it’s all about the community around the blog.

  Many of you like using Friendfeed to aggregate your internet activities and share those activities with friends and followers on the web. Sweetcron (that a came across from Dave McClure’s FF) is very similar to Friendfeed in the sense that it will aggregate any web activity that you decide to share with your Sweetcron, the main difference is that Sweetcron is self hosted like a normal blog. You install the Sweetcron software on your server and host your site like normal. The developers name is Yongfook and he is based in Tokyo. I wasn’t familiar with this developer before but as I watched his explanation of what Sweetcron is he seems awesome, and hilarious!

This is the screen shot of Yongfook’s Sweetcron based site where he pulls in images of twitter comments, links, shared on Digg, things from Facebook, images from Flickr, and more.  Like I said, this is cool, and this guy is awesome.

As Dave McClure said on his blog, 500Hats, about Sweetcron, it is going to be “Fooking huge!”

UPDATE TO POST:

I have now installed Sweetcron on my server and set it up early this morning. It really is awesome. Now folks can get to my Sweetcron Lifestream by clicking the  LIFESTREAM link at the top of my site. Here is a little screen shot of what it looks like!

Recently the startup incubator TechStars based in Boulder, CO graduated another class of promising startups. ActionsTalk has reached out to a few of the recently graduated companies for a few startup spotlights. We are already scheduling interviews with BuyPlayWin and ignighter.

Look for more great startup spotlights at ActionsTalk and let me know if you are (or know of) a startup that is worthy and interested in being spotlighted!

This is just a short example of the hard work that the TechStars put in over the summer. If I catch a bug in any of your sites I’m blaming this LipDub video. Great work on the very promising companies.

TechStars LipDub from Andrew on Vimeo.

You may know that the link above called ‘DAILY‘ is my Posterous blog that I use to share things that don’t fall under the categories of topics that I like to discuss on Ryan A Graves.com or are just quotes or media that I find interesting. Posterous is hands down the easiest way to share info and because of the simplicity of their platform I am able to share something almost daily. I recently found this image on Posterous.com and thought I would share it both as a evangelistic post for Posterous and as a small plug for my DAILY posts. Check it out.

If you’re like me you constantly have a new ideas for web technologies. The point of most of these technologies is to just keep things simple and in order to keep things simple user interface is critical. Mozilla (who developed the Firefox browser) has just launched Ubiquity.

Mozilla says that the goals of this new tool are:

“Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)

Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone (not just Web developers) to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)

Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.

Extend the browser functionality easily.”

This demo shows a few easy example of how Ubiquity can be used to simplify your web experience. This is innovation made simple.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Recently I’ve become some what of an evangelist for “most” thing tech. I find value in the technologies that I use (that’s why I use them) and I try and share that value with the people around me.

Blogs for example: My Dad was a journalism major and is a phenomenal writer and I’ve encouraged him to start writing more, possibly using a blog format. My Mother studies a ton and prepares a talk each week for the Bible study that she teaches, and that would be a great content to post/share on the web. My sister is, so far, the only non-techie that I’ve been able to convince to start a blog. She works for a PR firm in San Diego and finally started a blog. Although her blog currently has only one post, it is a very solid post and will benefit her in her professional and her personal development. My next project is to convince my girlfriend, who is an inner city kindergarten teacher, to set up a “class blog” where she can ‘feature’ :) the work of the kids in her class and write about some of her experiences. This could also be a great communication tool between her and the class parents! Not everyone needs a blog, I get it, but many people have a voice, and in today’s world why not share that voice?

The blog that inspired the name of this post is Gotham Gal. She is the wife of VC Fred Wilson of AVC.com and I stumbled upon her blog via his (I think it’s awesome that he links to hers!). This blog is the most normal blog I’ve ever seen! and that’s a compliment. It’s contents consist of 1 thing and 1 thing only, her thoughts, which actually covers almost everything. Gotham Gal discusses her vacations, her children, often times her cooking or a good recipe. Her most recent post was about how her family is a bunch of political junkies, but a post last week was the recipe to a cherished Feta Salad (it was good by the way), and before that, about why her family loves technology. Great work Gotham Gal!

People struggle with the idea of putting their lives on the web and being very public. Remember, you control what goes up. Write about what you feel comfortable sharing, nothing more, nothing less. Use a pseudo-name if that makes you more comfortable, their is nothing wrong with that at all! In the end I just hope that my efforts to evangelize cool technologies (in this case, blogs) is taken for what it is meant to be, helping. I get a ton out of regularly writing this blog and I think others can benefit from the practice as well. Let me know if you consider yourself a non-tech person and you have a blog. Or, if you consider yourself a tech evangelist to non-techies. I’d love to share and learn your “tech”niques.

Recently the RSS updates on Ryan A Graves.com got really messed up, I apologize. Everything is back up and good to go. Also, you can now get this blog via email! In order to promote readership I’ve posted these buttons on the top of the sidebar to make is SUPER easy to sign-up for this blog via RSS or EMAIL.

If you have any other methods of reading this blog that you would like to see please use the comments to let me know what would work best for you. Thanks so much for reading and commenting on Ryan A Graves.com. This journey of blogging that was started in July 2007 has been and will continue to be a blast!

I have to give some cred to Blake my co-founder of ActionsTalk. Blake recently wrote one of the best blog posts I’ve read in a while about how he’s handled the problem of “information overload” and efficient communication. As you know I am about tech for value’s sake not tech for tech’s sake and Blake has definitely found a valuable combination of technologies in his communication segmentation strategy. The post is really what I think many blogs miss (this one included) a solid how-to with personal experience and application. Blake’s diagram of how he’s used his iPhone to more efficiently manage information and communication is awesome. Solid post Blake.

This post alone is now one of the strongest opposing factors in my battle to hold out on getting an iPhone. At this point it’s only a matter of time.

Check out Blake’s post on Communication Segmentation here.

My roommate Tad recently post this ad from EA Sports calling it great viral advertising.  I have to agree.

Adjix is a new company that acts just like TinyURL by shortening web site addresses making them perfect for Twitter. But, Adjix adds a little banner ad at the top of the site that you visit via their link. If you own the account that shortened the Adjix URL then you get a cut.  You can collect $0.10 for  every 1000 unique views and $0.20 for each valid, unique, click-through. I know this is tough for the 200 follower crowd like me but for the Twitter “Big Guns” who link a ton this could become quite profitable.

If you’d like to help out with my small account I recently start click on this link http://adjix.com/sf to come right back to this page!

I promise this is my last post about how nice it is to be home, but there is something about SD that I just don’t get anywhere else.  I had lunch today on the San Diego Bay at C Level with my mom and Molly and it couldn’t have been more enjoyable. The weather was faithfully perfect and the company was ideal. What a wonderful trip!

I was at dinner last week with a group of up and coming, creative, start-up-ish people and one of them asked me, “do you work or do you just Twitter?” At first I went on the defensive and thought, well of course I work. I work 10+ hours a day and I do damn good job! Then I took a moment and thought about my Twittering…I realized that I do Twitter a lot. Twittering is short and 140 characters takes about 6 seconds to type. So, I may Twitter once an hour but I don’t think that makes me unproductive. I don’t take smoke breaks or excessive coffee breaks, I take 6-15 second Twitter breaks.

I looked back through my “tweets” that day and wondered what she was talking about. I know that I Twitter a decent amount but what exactly does that look like to my near 200 followers? Well, that weekend/week I met with the CTO of GE Healthcare, which was awesome, I went to the Chicago Air and Water Festival, I road a scooter around downtown Chicago, I went out to a happy hour and watched the Olympics, I spent time with my girlfriend, and I went a neighborhood festival. Without trying to brag at all, I realized that my life was pretty exciting…at least on Twitter.

The thing about Twitter is that if used correctly it can make a person “look” pretty damn exciting. I’m not a huge fan of tweets like, “going to bed” or “just ate some rice”. I don’t want to read that that type of tweet, it’s a waste of my time, so I don’t post that type of tweet. I try and tweet the more exciting things in my life. I’ll share if I’m going to watch a movie or go on a trip or head to a bar or even work on a certain project but I find those things exciting and productive and worth sharing. That is the type of thing I’d like to read about someone else, so that is what I share. My tweets hide some of the more boring things in my life and highlight the more exciting events.

So when reading the tweets of other I always keep in mind that Twitter highlights the exciting and hides the boring. Not many people tweet about doing payroll but a lot of people tweet about closing the big deal or their latest vacation. Take Twitter with a grain of salt, it definitely makes me more exciting!

Today, August 21st is my father, Eric Graves, 60th birthday. I’m lucky enough to be home in San Diego for the big day!

Dad, Happy Birthday, I’m pumped to be able to spend some quality time at home with you and the fam. You’ve always said as a measure of your success that for 25 years you’ve had the same wife, job, and home. You really should be proud. You’ve done a phenomenal job raising 3 kids and given us opportunities that you never had, any fathers dream. For me personally the dream is in action and that’s all made possible by you!

So, I just wanted to say thank you and happy birthday.

LYD

Personal branding is becoming a very hot topic on the internet. Also, personal avatars are becoming more and more popular with MyBlogLog, Gravatar, and other services where you face pops up all over the web. FACE YOUR MANGA is the latest trend that I’ve spotted with creating cartoon avatars. I recently spend 20 minutes or so creating my face and now I’m using it on Twitter.

Let me know what you think and how accurate you think it is!