Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit 0.9.1
Getting Started with the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit – Version 0.9.1 – Release Candidate 1
Posted in R Programming, Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Visualization, SMART@znmeb, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Optimization.
– 2010/08/29
Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit Status Update / Road Map – Version 0.9.1 – Release Candidate 1
Download "Getting Started with the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit" (pdf, 1.25 megabytes)
Download the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit
Status
- Initial release will be as a LiveDVD. All components are now installed on the release media! Running the install scripts turned out to be more cumbersome for LiveCD users than I originally expected, so I packaged everything. And once the 700 MB barrier was crossed, switching to a "kitchen sink" deployment model made it possible to put back some things I wanted (mind mapping!) and add a major component (the R "statnet" social network statistics package.)
- Because Twitter's priorities have had to change in the oAuth / open source area, there is nothing in the current release of SMART@znmeb that authenticates with Twitter, either basic HTTP or oAuth. For me, it came down to throwing away about a year and a half of work on this or not shipping open source tools that authenticate with Twitter. If you want to build tools with SMART@znmeb that require Twitter authentication, please let me know. It will require a formal three-party negotiation - you, me and Twitter - but it can be done.
Road Map
- Now that I'm in kitchen sink mode, I will probably add in the R GeoSpatial task view and its dependencies. I don't do a lot of geospatial work myself, but I have a number of friends who do and I don't see the point of maintaining two separate appliances. I'm also thinking about adding Rapache, so one can build R-based web servers with the toolkit.
- Packaging the software as RPMs using openSUSE Build Service. This is a low-priority task, but it's something that should be done eventually. The most critical one is GGobi - it's actually in OBS already but the plugins are missing from that RPM.
- Demos, demos, demos! Part of your mission as a beta tester, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with things you'd like to do with this gizmo. The planned 1.0 release is September 30, and the only two demos I'm planning to add to what's already there are
- Exploring your Twitter "social network" with GGobi, and
- A topic model of tweets using Mallet.
- I am entering the appliance in the SUSE Studio 'Disters' contest. See the blog post at http://meb.tw/cw7TuD for details. The grand prize is $10,000US. How to help? Just like any other social media campaign - download it, blog about it, tweet about it, help me make it better, tell me where it sucks and tell your friends where it rocks.
Posted in R Programming, Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Visualization, SMART@znmeb, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Optimization.
– 2010/07/07
SMART@znmeb – Born on the Fourth of July! Version 0.9.1 – Release Candidate 1
Download "Getting Started with the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit" (pdf, 1.25 megabytes)
Download the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit
Born of the Fourth of July
Version 0.9.1 of the SMART@znmeb Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit is now available in the SUSE Studio Gallery. The link is:
- Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit 0.9.1 – SUSE Gallery http://meb.tw/bdox3f #measure #smmeasure
About The Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit – Version 0.9.1 – Release Candidate 1
Posted in R Programming, Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Visualization, SMART@znmeb, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Optimization.
– 2010/07/04
Twenty-Five Years And Counting
Today, May 13, 2010, marks the 25th anniversary of my arrival in the Portland, Oregon area. I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else, and I call it my home. For those of you reading this from outside the area, I invite you to come visit us. There are lots of conferences, festivals and other reasons to come here, but - well - it's just an all-around wonderful place.
But the thing is, I don't actually live in Portland, but in a suburb called Aloha that, strangely enough, has nothing to do with Hawaii. And I've never been to Hawaii, so I can't very well ask you to visit there, can I? So, yes, definitely visit Portland!
What do we have?
- Water. Two major rivers meet here, and fresh water literally falls out of the sky free for the taking! If you like it salty, there's a few bays and coves a couple of hours to the West.
- Air. We get our air mostly fresh off the ocean, or occasionally funneled through the Columbia Gorge by a high-pressure cell. In any event, we get it before much of the US, and we try our damnedest not to add stuff to it on its way East.
- Mountains. Yeah, there's one not too far away that gave us a little trouble in 1980, but for the most part, they're pretty to look at and a great place to go skiing.
- Parks. There are so many, I can't list them all, so I'll just give you a link to my favorite. Tryon Creek State Park. And my second favorite, Cooper Mountain Nature Park.
- Beer. Contrary to popular belief, you can get imported beer here. But why would you? Ours has better hops, has more alcohol, is served in pubs, restaurants, banquet halls and even movie theaters! To quote Wikipedia, "In 2008, Portland had 30 microbreweries located within the city limits, more than any city in the world and greater than one-third of the state total.[4] With 46 microbrew outlets, Portland has more breweries and brewpubs per capita than any other city in the United States.[5] Many have won nationwide and international acclaim."
- Food and wine. We grow it. We catch it in the ocean. We make it. We cook it. We eat it. We package it up and ship it. And we love to share it. Our food cart scene has been featured on national television and in the New York Times.
- Entertainment. New York has Greenwich Village. Washington has Georgetown. Portland has -- Portland! Jazz, folk, rock, symphonic, chamber, ballet, opera, and two new music ensembles. Portland has numerous theater companies and a major performing arts center. We have listener-supported jazz and classical radio stations heard around the world on the Internet. Oh, yeah - if you happen to hear bagpipes, they just might be coming from a unicyclist.
- Bloggers and Tweeters and Geeks, Oh! My!
- I'm a blogger. This is my blog. I used to have five others. And I have a LinkedIn page. And I tweet. A lot - at last count more than any other Portlander. Folks around here call me @znmeb.
- Geeks: we have Linus Torvalds. Perhaps you've heard of Linux? He invented it. We have Ward Cunningham. Perhaps you've heard of the wiki? He invented it. We have major contributors to Perl, PostgreSQL, Ruby, WordPress and other open source projects. We have Jive Software and Zapproved. We have the Silicon Florist. We have 30 Hour Day. We have Strange Love Live.
- We love social media, software and (wait for it) social media software! Software is a craft here, just like belts, jewelry and beer. You can actually sit and watch us make it in coffee shops and pubs.
Posted in Uncategorized.
– 2010/05/13
What Are You Pretending Not To Know, Mr. Zuckerberg? (Updated)
In case you want to block Facebook entirely, here are two links with directions. Enjoy!
How to Block Facebook http://meb.tw/ccqSEx
How to Block Facebook on your Computer without Software | eHow.com http://meb.tw/bQKOQq
Updated May 18th: Comments, pingbacks and trackbacks are back on. I'm still looking for the magic incantation to suppress the tweetbacks, though. On more substantive matters: 1. There is a search site being bandied about the Internet that supposedly shows scandalous information freely searchable out of Facebook. I'm not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that said site, which I am not going to name or link to, is in direct violation of Facebook's Terms of Service. So, yes, it's a great example of the risks, but I don't think it's a particularly productive way to achieve change. 2. There's an old saying: "If you like us, tell your friends. If you don't like us, tell us." In the case of Facebook, the "us" is the Board of Directors. Thanks to @davidhstannard and Wikipedia, Facebook's Board of Directors is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Graham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Breyer It is their job to ensure that Facebook is responsive to the needs of all the stakeholders
Updated May 16th: I've disabled pingbacks and trackbacks for this article. Apparently I'm picking up a comment every time someone tweets a link to this article. I've deleted the tweets -- I think they're annoying. I've also deleted a few links from comments. They are links to places I don't support. This is a moderated blog. It always has been and always will be.
Yesterday afternoon, May 11, 2010, at 18:01 Pacific Daylight Time, I initiated a deletion of my Facebook account. In what has to be the most insulting part of the process, after I acknowledged that I indeed wanted to delete the account and successfully entered the CAPTCHA codes, I was told that it would take 14 days for the deletion to take place. I can understand a one-day "grace" period, just on the off chance that someone might have captured my credentials and deleted my account without my knowledge. But not 14 days. That's just plain insulting. Now if I were really paranoid ... (Thanks, @sooperay!) One final note: Facebook's Terms of Service for developers now state:
Sometimes, satire says it best:
Updated May 18th: Comments, pingbacks and trackbacks are back on. I'm still looking for the magic incantation to suppress the tweetbacks, though. On more substantive matters: 1. There is a search site being bandied about the Internet that supposedly shows scandalous information freely searchable out of Facebook. I'm not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that said site, which I am not going to name or link to, is in direct violation of Facebook's Terms of Service. So, yes, it's a great example of the risks, but I don't think it's a particularly productive way to achieve change. 2. There's an old saying: "If you like us, tell your friends. If you don't like us, tell us." In the case of Facebook, the "us" is the Board of Directors. Thanks to @davidhstannard and Wikipedia, Facebook's Board of Directors is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Graham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Breyer It is their job to ensure that Facebook is responsive to the needs of all the stakeholders
- Facebook members, whose privacy appears to be at risk,
- Brands, who depend on Facebook as both a listening and marketing platform,
- Governments, who are responsible for their citizens' on line security,
- Facebook employees, and
- Facebook investors.
Updated May 16th: I've disabled pingbacks and trackbacks for this article. Apparently I'm picking up a comment every time someone tweets a link to this article. I've deleted the tweets -- I think they're annoying. I've also deleted a few links from comments. They are links to places I don't support. This is a moderated blog. It always has been and always will be.
Yesterday afternoon, May 11, 2010, at 18:01 Pacific Daylight Time, I initiated a deletion of my Facebook account. In what has to be the most insulting part of the process, after I acknowledged that I indeed wanted to delete the account and successfully entered the CAPTCHA codes, I was told that it would take 14 days for the deletion to take place. I can understand a one-day "grace" period, just on the off chance that someone might have captured my credentials and deleted my account without my knowledge. But not 14 days. That's just plain insulting. Now if I were really paranoid ... (Thanks, @sooperay!) One final note: Facebook's Terms of Service for developers now state:
"You must give users control over their data by posting a privacy policy that explains what data you collect, and how you will use, store, and/or transfer their data....You may cache data you receive from the Facebook API in order to improve your application's user experience, but you should try to keep the data up to date...You will delete all data you receive from us concerning a user if the user asks you to do so, and will provide a mechanism for users to make such a request. (emphasis added)"So, Mr. Zuckerberg, can you provide me with a complete list of these developers who have received data from Facebook concerning me, so I can initiate the process of requesting that they delete all data they've received? Thanks in advance for your prompt attention in this matter!
Sometimes, satire says it best:
"It is no longer necessary to write new stories about Facebook privacy issues; just change the dates." - @FakeAPStylebook on Twitter.A popular interactive visualization by blogger Matt McKeon shows how Facebook has systematically made more and more information about its members public over time. Click on the image to show the advance over time, or click individual times to see what was public at any one time. As the Fake AP Stylebook notes, with each day that passes, it gets harder and harder to say something new about Facebook and privacy. Bloggers like Marshall Kirkpatrick, Caroline McCarthy, Eben Moglen and Robert Scoble regularly write about the erosion of privacy on line in general, and among Facebook members in particular. I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook. It is my only connection online to a few friends and relatives, but for the most part, my online networking is done on LinkedIn and Twitter. Over the year that I've been on Facebook, I've used it mostly as a way of finding out when and where local musicians are performing. I am now making plans to delete my Facebook account. I've sent a message to those few friends of mine on Facebook that I have no other online connection with, and I have deactivated the account. I expect to delete the account within the month. Why am I leaving?
"I don't know about you, but I have not yet witnessed a spontaneous recovery from incompetence." - Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations.And I think that's what we're talking about when we talk about Facebook and privacy. I think we are talking about massive incompetence. I am planning to leave Facebook because I believe their management is incompetent. As shown in Matt McKeon's interactive visualization, Facebook has changed. It has changed from a place where people could connect in safety and privacy to a huge data mine. Facebook's 400+ million members' personal data and online behavior tracks are apparently not only public, but for sale. Facebook's management has ignored the howls of protest from privacy advocates like Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center:
"The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record: he has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age."Facebook's management has ignored the concerns of respected journalists like ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick.
"I don't buy Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending."Consumer groups have filed complaints with the FTC, four United States Senators have written to Facebook suggesting a reversal of recent changes, and hardly a day goes by without disclosure of yet another "bug" allowing personal data to "leak" out of Facebook. One of those Senators, Al Franken, has even posted instructions for disabling Facebook's recent "gift" of members' personal information to third parties. I don't know what to call Facebook's lack of response and failure to take the actions suggested by the Senators except incompetence. The more polite of the protesters are calling for a single-day boycott.
Facebook Protest Facebook Group "June 6th, 2010, chosen for being D-Day: Commit to NOT LOGGING INTO FACEBOOK for ONE DAY! That one day could cost them millions. Maybe THEN Zuckerberg will 'believe in' privacy."And if you do a Twitter search for "Facebook privacy", most likely what you will find is anti-Facebook blog posts by big-name bloggers and tweeters, instructions for how to disable the latest Facebook "gifts" of personal information to third parties, links to the interactive visualization above, and so on. Here's an Atom feed link if you want to see for yourself. In the face of all of this, I don't see how Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, can continue to claim:
"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."The only explanation I can offer is incompetence — a total failure to, as Susan Scott so eloquently puts it, to "master the courage to interrogate reality." Perhaps the most telling article of them all is by Caroline McCarthy of CNET News: "Understanding Facebook's Privacy Aftershocks". A sample:
"After Wednesday's privacy glitch caused Facebook to temporarily disable its chat feature while all the bugs were fixed, the New York Times quoted the company's vice president of public policy, Elliot Schrage, as saying, 'Are we perfect? Of course not.'"Ms. McCarthy continues:
"We should be getting used to the fact that an 'iterative' product model, the sort of practice that's become commonplace now that pushing out new features no longer requires waiting for the next release of a shrink-wrapped software package, will mean imperfections. It will mean screw-ups. It will mean bugs that are quickly patched and poorly thought-out features that are pulled in due time, but they were there in the first place, and user data may have been affected in the process."No, Ms. McCarthy! We most certainly shouldn't be getting used to it! Mr. Schrage's question should have been, "Are we competent?" And sadly, I think the answer is, "Hell, No!" I don't consider a "product model" that exposes 400 million users to such "screw-ups" as evidence of anything other than incompetence on a massive scale.
"What are you pretending not to know?" - Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations.So, Mr. Zuckerberg, what are you pretending not to know?
- Are you pretending not to know that respected bloggers and journalists regularly "call bullshit" on your public pronouncements about privacy?
- Are you pretending not to know that four United States Senators suspect your corporation of violating existing privacy laws, or that your business may have shown a need for new privacy legislation?
- Are you pretending not to know that one of those Senators is telling his constituents how to disable your recent changes? Do you think that's evidence that "people have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people?"
- Are you pretending not to know that a service with more than 400 million members simply can not be run using an "iterative product model", releasing "poorly thought-out features" and systematically revealing more and more about members to third parties and the open Internet?
Posted in Uncategorized.
– 2010/05/10
Business Intelligence From Twitter Text? Eight Books To Get You Started! (Updated 2010-09-01)
Download "Getting Started with the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit" (pdf, 1.25 megabytes)
Download the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit
The rise of Twitter has made large quantities of text available in multiple languages. As a result, text processing, text analytics and other natural language processing techniques have become a staple in business intelligence. So I've put together a list of what I think are the essential references in the area. I've attempted to arrange them in order of increasing mathematical sophistication. And, as always, I've provided Powell's Partner Program links so you can buy them.
Most of the algorithms described in these books are available in the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit. For a complete description of the toolkit, see About The Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit.
Even if you're not a Python programmer, this book is probably the best place to start. The book will walk you through the Python language, and it's written by the experts on the Python Natural Language Tool Kit. The Python Natural Language Toolkit is one of the featured components of my Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit.
Practical Text Mining with Perl (Wiley Series on Methods and Applications in Data Mining)
by Roger Bilisoly
For Perl programmers, this book is a good place to start. Topics include pattern matching, data structures, probability, information retrieval, corpus linguistics, multivariate statistics, clustering and an introduction to R programming. Both Perl and R are available in the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit.
After you've gotten started, this book will give you a good overview of the more technical and mathematical aspects of natural language processing. Topics include classical approaches, empirical and statistical approaches and applications. Machine translation, speech recognition, information retrieval, question answering, ontology construction and sentiment analysis are all covered.
The chapter on sentiment analysis is particularly well done. It covers most current techniques and includes sections on dealing with spam. Sentiment analysis is still somewhat controversial, although nearly all social media monitoring providers include it in some form. This chapter provides much-needed clarity on just what is and isn't possible in sentiment analysis. Chapter 13, "Normalized Web Distance and Word Similarity", is also notable. It describes the algorithms used in the CompLearn suite of programs that are part of the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit.
Understanding Complex Datasets: Data Mining with Matrix Decompositions (Chapman & Hall/CRC Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery)
by David Skillicorn
This isn't strictly a book about either text processing or natural language processing, but I've included it for three reasons:
- It covers all of the matrix decompositions one would use in text processing and natural language processing.
- It covers algorithms for social graph analysis.
- It has a very readable introduction to using tensors - arrays with more than two dimensions - in data mining. My opinion is that tensor-based algorithms are the future of natural language processing in general and text analytics in particular.
While also not totally about text / natural language processing, this book is an excellent overview of the technologies used in counterterrorism. There's not as much technical detail as there is in the other books - you'll need to go following the references. I've included this book because I see great potential for some of the technologies in business intelligence. For example, mining data for people in a social media site who "should" be friends or followers but aren't is one technique businesses could "borrow" from law enforcement.
This book is an excellent overview of some of the more recent research in text mining. It includes chapters on "Detection of Bias in Media Outlets with Statistical Learning Methods", "Topic Models", "Utility-Based Information Distillation" and "Adaptive Information Filtering". But in my opinion one chapter, "Nonnegative Matrix and Tensor Factorization for Discussion Tracking", justifies the purchase of the book on its own.
Much of modern text processing depends on linear algebra over so-called "bag of words" vector space models. In such a model, keywords are extracted from the text and a collection of documents -- called a corpus -- is represented by arrays of keyword frequencies. In these models, a matrix is a two-dimensional array of the frequencies, usually indexed by keywords for rows and documents or document authors by columns.
The Handbook of Latent Semantic Analysis (University of Colorado Institute of Cognitive Science)
by Thomas K. Landauer
Latent Semantic Analysis, sometimes called Latent Semantic Indexing, is a common technique in natural language processing, and this book explores it in both mathematical and practical detail. There is also a chapter on probabilistic topic modeling, sometimes called latent Dirichlet analysis. If you want to experiment with these techniques, I recommend the open source Java-language Mallet package. Mallet is included in the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit, as are R language tools for latent semantic analysis.
Kluwer International Series on Information Retrieval #12: Topic Detection and Tracking
by James Allan
Finally, we come to my current area of research, Topic Detection and Tracking. This book is the classic reference on the subject, and is required reading if you're interested in automated journalism.
Appendix - R Language Natural Language Processing Task View
In addition to the Python Natural Language Tool Kit and Mallet, the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit contains the R Natural Language Processing Task View. Here's a copy of the contents of that task view as of 2010-08-23:
CRAN Task View: Natural Language Processing
Didn't find what you're looking for?
Posted in R Programming, Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Visualization, SMART@znmeb.
– 2010/05/06
Want to help map the oil spill? Here’s how to do it with the Verizon Droid Incredible
Eyewitness volunteer reporters with camera- and GPS-enabled phones needed to help map the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
A call has gone out for people in the area of the Gulf of Mexico with camera- and GPS-enabled phones to help out with mapping. Relevant Twitter user names are @oilreport, @epiccolorado and @kate30_cu.Disclaimer
When I tested this, the process was dead simple on the Verizon Droid Incredible using the built-in Twitter client, called 'Peep'. The following setup instructions are for the Incredible. It's the only phone I have and the only Android device I've tested. Other phones will have different procedures and settings. For the record, the Android Firmware version is 2.1-update1. If you have another phone with GPS and camera and would like to contribute instructions, please do so in the comments! But please, no flames - I'll delete them!Setting up location
First, go to 'Settings' and select 'Wireless & networks'. Check the 'Wi-Fi' option and connect to any available Wi-Fi networks. Next, go back to 'Settings' and select 'Location'. Check the 'Use wireless networks' option. Check the 'Use GPS satellites' option. Select the 'LOCATION ON' radio button. You will get a warning message telling you that you are sharing your location. Since we're setting up to do field work, you want to do this, so say, 'OK'. Just remember to turn it off when you're hanging out with your friends later. Finally, go back to 'Settings' and select 'Privacy'. Check the 'Use My Location' option. You'll get another warning - select 'Agree'.Setting up the Camera application to tag photos
Start up the 'Camera' application. If you're holding the device in 'landscape' orientation, pull the menu tab on the left to the right. At the bottom of the menu, you'll see two gears. That's the 'Settings' menu. There are a number of settings, but the two you want to be sure you have are time stamping and geo-tagging. Make sure the 'Geo-tag photos' and 'Time stamp' options are set (green check-mark is present). If they are set, the pictures you take will have 'meta-data' with the time they were taken and the GPS location.Setting up the Peep Twitter client
The Verizon Droid Incredible comes with an HTC Twitter client called 'Peep' built in. You'll need to set it up if you haven't already. Go to the 'Setup' menu. Use the 'Skip' button to skip to the 'Set up social networks' screen. Press the 'Twitter' entry. Enter your user name and password and press the 'Sign in' button. Then exit with the 'Back' button. Start up 'Peep' from the menu. Press the 'Menu' button and select 'More'. Select 'Settings'. You've already set the 'Account Settings'. Under 'General Settings', make sure 'Use screen names' is checked. Under 'Send and receive', choose the number of tweets you want to download on a refresh. Make sure 'Update on launch' is checked. Select the 'Update frequency' you want. The default is every hour, but I usually set it to every 30 minutes. Next, you'll need to go to 'Services'. First, select a photo host. I haven't tried all of them, but the two options available with Peep are Twitgoo and Twitpic. I have a Twitpic account, so that's the one I use. For quality, I select 'High quality'. Turn 'Auto GPS Fix' on. I use the default URL shortener, 'is.gd'. Finally, set the 'Notification settings'. I use the defaults, but I set the 'Notification sound' off and 'Notification vibrate' on. Exit out of 'Settings' and you should be ready to post pictures from Peep with locations.Posting pictures with location
To post from Peep, first go into 'Menu' and select 'Update location'. When I do this from home, it usually gets my exact street address. Again, if you're sensitive about telling people where you live, don't try this at home! Go into 'Menu' again and select 'New Tweet'. You'll see an on-screen keyboard. Above that is a camera icon, a globe with four compass points, and a button marked 'Update'. First, press the 'Camera' icon. You'll get a choice of 'From camera' or 'From album'. I picked 'From camera'. When you press the 'Done' button, the picture is uploaded to your photo hosting service automatically and a link to it is inserted in the tweet. Now, press the 'Globe' icon. You'll get a 'Post your location' menu. It gives your latitude and longitude, accuracy (mine was 24 meters via GPS). You can 'Update GPS Now', which redoes the GPS fix. If you do this, you'll need to press the 'Globe' icon again to get the menu back. The other two options are 'Insert Maplink', which puts a link to a Google Map into the tweet, and 'Insert Location Name', which inserts the location. Again, if you use either of these options, you'll need to press the 'Globe' icon again to get the menu back for any others. Now, you can add any text you want to the tweet. When I did this, I inserted the street address and ended up with 52 characters left. You should be fine with just the map link. Once you've composed the rest of the text for the tweet, press 'Update' and Peep will send the tweet out! Yes, it really is that simple with the Droid Incredible! For 'citizen journalists' and volunteer workers, this seems to me to be the device of choice, at least where Verizon coverage is available. Again, if you want to contribute setup instructions for other devices, please feel free to post them here.Buy HTC DROID INCREDIBLE Android Phone (Verizon Wireless) From Amazon!
Posted in Uncategorized.
– 2010/05/04
Viralheat Social Media Webinar – May 25th, 2010
As a Viralheat affiliate, I'm pleased to pass on this announcement of an upcoming webinar on May 25th, 2010. I'll be there!
Join Viralheat's free social media webinar on maximizing your social media marketing ROI
Title: Creativity without Conversions = Zero
How to maximize your marketing ROI in the rapidly evolving world of online marketing and social media.
Social media is opening up entirely new ways of targeting prospects, but also adding a whole new layer complexity to marketing. Traditional outbound marketing efforts are being trumped by customers talking to customers. Is marketing as we knew it dead? No, but it does require a different and more scientific approach to market to this new breed of buyer: Customer 2.0.
- Find out what it takes to thrive in this changing marketing landscape:
- Align sales and marketing around jointly defined success metrics
- Augment targeted outbound marketing with inbound marketing
- Monitor social media engagement
- Nurture leads until they are "sales-ready"
- And … Continually test and measure marketing effectiveness – after all, you cannot improve what you cannot measure!
Join a complimentary webinar featuring Rand Schulman and Pelin Thorogood, Principals of the Schulman+Thorogood Group, on what promises to be a highly engaging discussion on the
evolving science of marketing to engage Customer 2.0.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
1pm ET / 10am PT
Moderated by Andrew Edwards, Managing Partner of Technology Leaders as well as co-founder and former board member of the Web Analytics Association (WAA).
Throughout the past 15 years, Rand Schulman and Pelin Thorogood have defined the shape of online marketing industry – by building the first SaaS-based Web Analytic company, WebSideStory, through its IPO and multiple acquisitions, as founding board members of the Web Analytic Association (WAA) and Online Marketing Connect (OMC), respectively, as well as by being instrumental in defining the Sales 2.0 movement. The Schulman+Thorogood Group principals have gained a reputation for cutting edge insight and actions.
Rand and Pelin currently work with a number of venture-backed startups and regularly speak at industry events. You can follow their latest musings on the evolving world of sales and marketing on their blog at:
http://schulmanthorogood.com/blog/
Posted in Social Media Analytics, Social Media Monitoring, Social Media Optimization, Viralheat.
– 2010/05/04
Can You Use A Verizon Droid Incredible Without A Google Account? Not Really!
Download "Getting Started with the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit" (pdf, 1.25 megabytes)
Download the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit
I recently got a Verizon HTC Droid Incredible phone. I wrote a review of it saying that it was pretty much useless without a Google account and a Facebook account. While you can use it without them, it's not easy, especially Google.
So first, let me talk you through using a Verizon Droid Incredible without Google and Facebook. Here's how to do a 'cold start' on the Incredible. Warning: if you're going to do this, before you do, make sure your battery is fully charged and the phone is connected to power.
Ready? All charged up and plugged in? First, go to 'Settings'. Select 'Privacy'. Uncheck the 'Use My Location' box. Press 'Factory Data Reset'. The screen you get will say:
'This will erase all data from your phone, including:
- Your Google account
- System and application data and settings
- Downloaded applications
'It will not erase:
- Current system software and bundled applications
- SD card files, such as music or photos'
Press the 'Reset phone' button. You will get another message that says:
'Erase all of your personal information and any downloaded applications? It is impossible to reverse this action!'
Press the 'Erase everything' button. The phone will reboot.
Now, you need to set the phone up. The first screen is 'Select your language'. I selected 'English', since I don't know Spanish. Press 'Next'. The next screen is 'Activate your phone'. Press 'Activate'. Bring up the phone keypad. Press '1' when instructed to do so. Wait. The phone will restart after programming has been successfully completed.
When the phone comes back up, you'll need to perform a few more setup operations. First, you'll need to tell it the language again. As before, I selected 'English'. After selecting the language, press 'Next'. Now you get a tutorial on 'Using the onscreen keyboard'. Press 'Skip'.
Next, you get 'Internet connection'. Since Verizon requires a data plan with the Incredible, I'm assuming you subscribed to the data plan, so select the 'Mobile network or Wi-Fi' option and press 'Next'. I have a Wi-Fi network, so the next screen was 'Wi-Fi networks detected'. If you get this screen and the 'Connect to Wi-Fi network' box is checked, uncheck it. Then press 'Next'.
Now it gets interesting. You must give your consent to enable Google's location service. Here's the text:
'Google's location service provides applications with your approximate location without using GPS.
'You can disable location collection at any time by turning off "Use wireless networks" in Settings.'
Uncheck the box. You will get another message! It says:
'Disable location service?
'Disabling location collection will also disable use of the location service, which is needed for some applications to automatically update. Are you sure you want to disable the location service?' In other words, you have to opt out of Google Location Service! Press the 'Yes' button. Press 'Next'.
Next, you will get the 'Set up accounts' screen. Press 'Skip'. Next, you will get the 'Set up social networks' screen. Press 'Skip'. Your phone is now ready to use - as a phone. The home screen shows a clock and six icons: 'Market', the application market, 'Camera', 'Internet', 'People', 'Messages' and 'Mail'.
What can you do with your device at this point? Well, you can make phone calls. You can take pictures with the 8 megapixel camera. You can use all of the built-in PDA applications, like Calculator, Calendar, Camcorder, Voice Recorder. Contact management? Ay, there's the rub! You have to enter your contacts one by one, by hand!
Let's continue. We have a data plan and a browser. Tap the 'Internet' icon and the browser comes up - pointing to Google! The first place I went is Wikipedia, to the page for Dmitri Shostakovich. Then I went to my own article about Shostakovich and Wikipedia. Yes, the Russian is readable in the browser. So at this point, we have a phone and a browser.
As you probably know, I'm a Twitter developer, so next, I went to Twitter in the browser. That's pretty easy; just go to http://mobile.twitter.com/ and sign in. You can do anything with the mobile Twitter web application that you can do with the standard Twitter web site, http://twitter.com.
But Twitter just released a native Twitter application for Android phones. As noted at Mashable, the Twitter Android application runs only on Android 2.1 and later. The Incredible runs 2.1, so I decided to install the application. There's a 'Download Twitter for Android' link to it on the Twitter mobile web site, so I just pressed the link.
And I was promptly dumped to a screen that said, 'Set up your Google Account'! That's right - in order to download the official Twitter Android Application, I need a Google account! Ay, there's another rub! While I already have a Google account, I decided to set up a new one just for this purpose.
I won't talk you through the process, though - my point is that you need a Google account to use the Incredible with the official Twitter application. And note that 'By creating this account, you agree to the Google and Additional Privacy Policies.' During the creation process, you will be presented with the Google Terms of Service to read and accept. They're quite lengthy, but I urge you to read them.
Once you get past the Google Terms of Service, you also need to read and accept the Android Market Terms of Service. Those are also quite lengthy, and again, I urge you to read them. Once you do that, you are back in the Twitter mobile page, where you can download and install the Twitter Android application.
I'll save exploration of the Twitter Android application the other social connection capabilites of the Incredible for later. But let's review:
- If you want to use the Verizon Droid Incredible without a Google account, you can use it only with the applications distributed with the device. It's a phone, a PDA and a browser only. Contact management is manual.
- Google Location Service is enabled by default. If you disable it, some updates may not work.
- To install applications, including the Twitter Android application, you have to have a Google account, and you have to agree to both the Google and Android Market Terms of Service. Both documents are quite lengthy.
Posted in Uncategorized.
– 2010/05/02
