This morning, I was driving from Raleigh, NC up to Blacksburg, VA where I’ll be spending the week for work.  I got off I-81 to fill up my car and when I was getting back on, I had a small altercation with a semi-truck driver. It was a typical entrance ramp on the right and as I was coming down the ramp a big rig, who was accelerating, got up close to the van in front of him in the right lane, making it impossible for me to merge. I am a pretty safe driver, so I slowed down almost to a stop and eventually was able to get in the right lane, but I was already in the gravel.

I was a bit torqued, as I thought it was a very rude and not to mention very dangerous to be driving a loaded semi truck in what I believe was a very unsafe manner. I did not get road rage and chase him down, but eventually I was in the left lane passing the same truck while climbing a hill. When I pulled up next to the cab, the window rolled down and a hand came out and shot me the bird with some animated gestures to go along with it.

The truck in question was a flat bed with no noticeable logos or “how am i driving” notifications on the back. However, it had the name of the company and the city and state on the side so I snapped a picture. It was easy enough to google “Granite Hardwood, Granite Falls, NC” and give them a call. The receptionist seemed a bit leery at first when I asked for a transportation manager, but she eventually passed me onto a manager who was very apologetic and concerned.  He asked me several locations, and said he could identify the driver based upon the description of the truck as well as the general vicinity (I-81 N in Virginia near Chilhowie).  He assured me that steps would be taken. He even said that he had problems with this driver before (then why is he still driving around representing your company?).

However, I still felt that this blog post was justified. Not only was I endangered by an aggressive driver, but the driver couldn’t let being the aggressive driver and running me off the road be enough and needed to make an obscene gesture.

If you own a company or make hiring decisions, make sure that you hire the type of people you want representing your company if they will be wearing your logos or diving your branded vehicles.

What’s amazing about the numbers is that 15% more adults are watching online videos than using social networking sites. Another number that’s amazing is the “near-universal” use by 18-29 year olds (old media beware).

I work with a lot of communities who still think that “broadband” is just high-speed internet and nothing more (which granted, all this online video viewing is occurring over today’s broadband). I often coach them on the fact that broadband will deliver all of your telecom services in the future including services we don’t even know about yet as well as those we do (like cable TV, telephone, etc.).  As more and more folks experience video online, they will pressure their local community leaders to become active in promoting broadband availability and broadband adoption so that they can experience the same services that those of us who live in more urban or suburban areas do.

Personally, I watch videos on my TV over Netflix from my Tivo, but also have a MythTV computer acting as a video server where I have ripped most of my DVDs and downloaded (mostly legal) videos.  I also watch plenty of youtube, google video and plenty of old media sites (like comedy central).

If you don’t have broadband, why not?  Is it too expensive or is it not available?  If it’s not available, contact your local elected officials and ask what they are doing to bring broadband to your area. It’s not just for browsing the web anymore and has serious economic development impacts on your locality.

My boss and I were talking recently about blogs, the Internet, Social Networking (Social Media), Twitter, and the like.  He brought up some statistic about blogs that I found interesting.  That only 5% of blogs have been updated in the past 120 days (according to a New York Times blog entry from June).  He considers himself one of the early bloggers and has had a blog since the dinosaurs. He regularly updates it (at least once per week but sometimes as frequently as dozen times per month) and has many opinions about the value of bloggers and blogs in general.  I’m not going to go into that, but he can on his blog if he so chooses.

It got me to thinking about my own blog and the fact that it’s not something I update regularly. I sort of go through spurts where I’ll write blog entries a few times per week and other times where I either can’t think of a topic or I have bloggers block  I just don’t want to blog on topics that may be on my mind.

My absence can also be related to all the stuff that has been going on in my life recently including moving, traveling more (now that I’m working remotely for my same job), attempting to sell a home, Stacie starting her internship at NC State, etc.

However, this morning I came up with a topic I wanted to blog about, but before I started writing it, I decided I’d at least post this upgrade my server (laptop), upgrade WordPress, and pen this first. Maybe it will get me over the hump, maybe not. I’ve heard some folks say that blogging can improve your writing skills (which I’m not so sure about) and that if you force yourself to create a blog entry per day for 100 days it will become much easier.  I can just see myself blogging 100 times in 100 days with topics like whether or not to mow the grass….

Regardless, this discussion with my boss also turned to other Social Networking/Social Media tools and users. Which, like my frequency in blogging, has been very intermittent.  I will tweet a few times per day, but then go a month or so without a tweet. Likewise, I go for weeks without a single Facebook status update, but then send several when I get the hankering (like recently at a Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and John Cougar show).

I guess where I’m going with this is that sometimes I feel like being social and other times I feel like curling up in a ball on the couch and watching movies two or three times in a row (like Citizen Kane) and that Social Networking/Social Media is like that but the time periods seem to last for weeks/months versus any given Sunday.  So like Judy Nichols (who probably got a huge boost from the NYT), I’m going to get back to it eventually….

As it was looking like my blog consisted of nothing but tweets, I wanted to hide my weekly tweet posts (from Twitter Tools) from my main blog page. I still wanted them available for search engines, or if someone just wants to see my tweetroll (hey baby … want to see my tweetroll?) (did I just coin a new word? – A google search indicates I did not).

After poking around on google and the WordPress site, I figured out a pretty easy way to do what I wanted.

1. Download and install the Advanced Category Excluder plugin
2. Put all of your Twitter Tools weekly digests in a category if their own (tweets)
3. Set incoming Twitter Tools weekly digest posts to post to the new category
4. In the ACE settings select the Twitter Tools weekly digest category on the Home column

Once these steps are completed, your tweet digest posts are no longer visible on the main page.

The next step for me was to create a page for my tweet digest posts.

1. Create a page (I named mine My Tweets)
2. On the page, include only the URL of that category (mine is http://blog.sidboswell.com/category/tweets)
3. Assign it a template type of Redirect

That’s all that I needed to do.  You can tweak the settings of ACE pretty easily to hide or un-hide your tweet digest posts from widgets and plugins where appropriate.

She asked that I help her with some changes, but when I started making suggestions she was reluctant to include my changes in her article because the audience had never heard of “web2.0″ and were more concerned with the loss of prescriptions as a profit center to 1800petmeds.com.

I was taking the angle that the practices, universities, and other vet professions (like drug sales (e.g. 1800petmeds.com)) that aren’t taking advantage of new advertising media (e.g. social networking, viral marketing, etc.) would lose to those that do. I’m not an expert in the field, but even I see the changes that these technologies are causing in my business and my company is trying to find way to use them to our benefit.

Additionally, as clients get younger a yellow pages advertisement just doesn’t go as far as it used to. A friend of mine recently complained that his children couldn’t find something on the Internet when it was easy to find in the yellow pages and they just didn’t even think to look their first (or even second).

I think that most successful practices at this point do have Web sites, but do they allow e-mail appointments or respond to e-mails?

Should veterinarians start Facebook groups for their clients, blog on the latest epidemic in their regions, tweet suggested reading or even reminders for annual vaccines. Better yet, if they don’t will they lose out to those that do? After all, it’s a profession that is based upon a veterinarian-patient-client relationship and relationships are moving into cyberspace whether or not the practicing veterinarians want that or not.

I’d be happy to get some perspective from either veterinarians or cognoscenti in social media and new forms of advertising.

I’ve had a crate of used paperback and hardback books in the basement for months. When friends come over, we offer them any book in the crate that they want free of charge just to get it off our hands. We don’t have a local used bookstore so we were going to toss them if we couldn’t pass them on. We are trying to be environmentally friendly and were loathe to put the stuff in the trash so we have identified ways to recycle them (our local recycle pickup will accept paperback books and the local YMCA will take old text books and hardback books). However, even that just seemed wasteful.

I was browsing Lifehacker Top 10s recently and came across the top 10 internet freebies and links to two popular book swapping services; PaperBackSwap.com and BookMooch.com. I’ve used them for a week or so now and here’s my review.

First off, you do have to pay postage to send your books out. If you are mailing from the US to the US you can use the USPS Media Mail rate, so a typical paperback book will cost $2.23 to mail (a book under 6oz (a small paperback) can be sent using USPS First Class for $1.68). So if you’re tight on cash the trash bin or recycle bin may be the best answer. However, in my opinion, the book selection on both sites is excellent so I will be able to get books for free when we land at our new residence.

Both sites work on a credit basis. Basically, you get a credit for each book you send and deducted a credit for each book you receive. Additionally, both sites give you a few credits for just posting your books so you can get started getting used books in the mail even before someone requests one of your books.

Of the two, PaperBackSwap.com has a much slicker interface that is easy to navigate, easy to post books, and a better social networking features. For shipping books there is a very nice feature that generates a PDF to either wrap the book with or tape to other packaging. For a small fee the PDF can include delivery confirmation and/or even include postage. In exchange for the fee you get “credited” for the book immediatly upon shipping and don’t have to wait for the receiver to use the site to “accept” the book for you to get credited. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the site is for inside the US only.

BookMooch.com does not have fees anywhere on the site (with the exceptions of donations). They support the site on a volunteer basis and pay for bandwidth and servers with donations and funds from Amazon.com if a user buys a book (new) from Amazon if it is not available from another user. The operator even seems averse to commercializing the site. The interface is a bit clunky and browsing books is done more with searches and tables of text. Many users of BookMooch are outside of the US and you choose if you can honor their request or not depending on how much it will cost to ship a book to a foreign location. However, if you do agree to ship internationally, you get additional credits.

I had my books listed on PaperBackSwap for a week or so before I also posted my books on BookMooch where I immediatly received requests for books which I had not on the other site, including several international requests (I may have been cheating by listing my books on both sites). If someone requests a book from one site, I immediatly remove it from the other site. Only in one case did I have a request for the same book on both sites overnight.

Using both the sites, I’ve been able to get rid of about two dozen books in a little over a week which also gives me several credits which I will use to get books in the future.

Here’s a list of the books I am giving away on BookMooch (I can’t find a method of lisitng my inventory on PaperBackSwap but it’s the same books).

I love Facebook.  It’s a great way for me to keep in touch with friends and for me to let them know what I’m up to and vice versa. In fact, it’s let me get in touch with friends from Elementary and High School which I haven’t even thought of for decades. However, their privacy policy has left much to be desired. I am not a privacy nut. I have a blog, twitter account, personal web pages, use Google and Amazon (another topic all together). However, the type of data that Facebook is collecting is a bit scary, even for me.

I understand the implications for marketing and I’m somewhat OK with that. The frightening part for me is that the data does not expire. I don’t plan to run for office nor do I plan to get sued, but just think of what that data says about you and if it could be used against you, maybe by an opposing attorney who subpoenaed the data.

Some speculate that the changes in their privacy policy are due to the decline of ad revenue. A friend of mine blogged recently about the changes in the type of advertising on Facebook. It has gotten racier and he was concerned as his children have Facebook accounts. He also speculates that is also a symptom of the same. That Facebook is looking to sell information to make up for the declining revenue from it’s advertisements.

Added after the original post:

Amanda French posted an excellent blog entry on the Facebook Terms of Service and compaired it to other social networks. A must read for those that are interested in the topic.

Oh and the groundswell has caused Zuckerberg to post another entry in his blog. Very reminicent of the blog post about the beacon diseaster.

Updated 2 days after post:

Facebook seems to have done an about face (again). I credit Amanda French and really like the explaination by Alexander van Elsa on the Facebook Business Case.

Social Networking has come a long way. The first I read about the ToS was on twitter and I just kept coming across it including a link to a federal complaint.

Tweety

Twitter is all the rage.  Is it the next facebook?  The next version of social networking?  Social network without wiress?

I created a twitter feed.  You can follow me here, or you can simply text “follow sidboswell” to 40404.  You’ll be requested to respond with a username and you’re off.

Twitter is like a combination of SMS (texting) and facebook. The basic question is “what are you doing now.”  That can only get you so far. Do I really need to know that my friends are cooking bacon or driving to work. Is that valueable?

Rather, use clever updates to your twitter feed. Consider it a micro-blog. Follow some others that you find interesting and respond to them (using the @username command). I can think of 100 utilities for twitter, but for now, I’m going to stick with the social side of things. When I’ve mastered that, I may try some utilitiarian tasks in my professional life.

Until then…..