At VanDamme Associates (soon to be fka VA), we like our social media. Besides being blogging and Twitter fanatics, we integrate websites and Association Management Systems with various social media platforms, including ThePort, Go Lightly, and our own Ektron Group Application.

An up and coming player on the social media horizon is Google Wave. Although it is not available to the public now, Google announced a developers version at Google IO on May 28. Google Wave is presented as an open-source, real-time communication platform, combining elements of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management. Google Wave looks to be an elegant, in-browser communication client that anyone can use to bring together a group of friends or business partners. The group following the wave can discuss topics and share files – in real time, character by character.

Along with the real-time dimensions, Wave is bringing extensibility, embeddability, and sharability to the table. We will be able to embed a Wave in any blog or website, and we can also build widgets or gadgets that utilize Waves. Like today’s wikis and Google Docs, anything written within a Wave can be edited by anyone else.

Visually, a Wave resembles a rich, web forum. Appearances aside, there are key differences.

• Everything is shared. While some web forms allow for editing of posts, being able to edit everything, wiki-style, is part of the Wave DNA.
• Not everyone is human. The environment includes helper robots that access the Wave as if they were collabators. Some of the robots already in service include Debuggy (an in-wave debugger), Stocky (which pulls stock prices based on stock quote mentions), Tweety (the Twave robot, which displays tweets inside of a wave), and Spelly (a natural language spell checker).Files are first class citizens. While forms and email system often support attachments, we will be able to drag and drop documents and images into a Wave. Within a web, images are presented in albums, sound files can be played, and documents are shared.
• Plugins are seamless. Gadget and widgets can be designed to work within a Wave – including rich applications like issue trackers – and other platforms can embed a Wave into a page, much the same way we embed YouTube today, to create, for example, a instant chat room or talk-back channel.
• Playback’s a breeze. Wave’s playback feature walks-through how the entire conversation developed from the start, player-piano style, making it to figure out “how we got there from here”. For someone joining a Wave-in-progress, Playback is a great catch-up on the thought process.
  But, the strangest bit about Wave is that Google is not only enabling collaboration but competition. The “lion’s share” of the product will be available as open source, and there are already basic, non-Google hosted implementations of Wave. Once Wave becomes generally available, companies will be able to install third-party Wave implementations on their own servers and retain control of their own collaborative assets. If a discussion takes place inside a intranet firewall, it can stay within the firewall. (Or, alternatively, just let it ride on the Google cloud.)

At the moment, there’s no published schedule indicating when Google Wave will be made available to the public. But, it is real and already available to bleeding edge developers. For more, check the resources section.

Resources

• Google Wave: A Complete Guide
• Official Wave Site
• Developers Blog
• Wave Google code site
• Google Code Blog
• Google Web Extensions
• Google Web Toolkit
• OpenSocial

In the third in a series of “talks for smart people”, BlueTie tonight hosted “To Tweet or Not to Tweet” to an engaged and inquisitive group in Pittsford NY. In fact, if the audience had its way, the talk would have been a hour-long question and answer session.

Some hot-button queries were

• Why would someone follow over a thousand people?
• How do you find people to follow, or people to follow you?
• When should I follow, and when should I friend?
• Are the social networks converging?
• Is privacy an issue? Or a non-issue?
• Can Twitter be used a guerrilla marketing tool?
• How else can I use Twitter in my business?
  
  In between a battery of of questions, local Twitter guru Emily Carpenter walked us through the basics of LinkedIn, FaceBook, and, especially, Twitter.
  
  The Twitter portion of the talk focused on the dizzying number of third-party add-ins. One that caught my eye is Ping.fm. A point of convergence between the social networks is a status message or micro-blog. Ping makes it easy to update your status on one or more networks from a single dashboard. Of course, like most social network applications today, there are missing features, like post-dating messages, but it is still a sweet dashboard. I’ll be trying this one again.

As to the Twitter questions, I won’t try to speak for Emily, but here are my own answers.

Why would someone follow over a thousand people?

Mainly to get more followers of your own. People often reciprocate: if you follow someone on Twitter, they follow you back. To compensate, Peopleuse third-party Twitter applications to filter out the important feeds or likely tweets.

Personally, I only follow people that I actually want to read regularly. But, I have noticed that following someone usually leads to more follows, even if it’s someone like @TonyRobbins or @JohnTesh. If you want to be followed, follow someone else.

How do you find people to follow, or people to follow you?

Start by using Twitter’s Find People feature to lookup your friends and colleagues. Look at who they are following for other interesting feeds. Then goto to a site like CelebrityTweet and look for other people that interest you. Also try looking up your favorite authors. (I found @StevenRCovey that way.)

When should I follow, and when should I friend?

On Twitter, we follow. On FaceBook, we friend. On LinkedIn, we connect. On Twitter, you can follow anyone who is tweeting things you want to read. On FaceBook, it’s better to friend only people you actually know and trust, especially personal friends that you might join for dinner or drinks. On Linked In, it’s best to connect with professional colleagues that are connected to your career in some way. People that you might interview for or against.

The nice thing about Twitter is that it crosses the line between personal and professional. People expect Twitter to be a mix. Twitter’s a place where you can be a whole person, and not just the work-you or the home-you.

Still, the Internet is forever, so don’t tweet anything you don’t want the grand kids to read, even if they aren’t born yet

Are the social networks converging?

Yes, the network are adopting similar feature sets, and integrators, like Ping.FM, make it easier to reuse content between networks. Someday, there may one be one. But, for now, people tend to use LinkedIn to manage their resume, and FaceBook to manage their social calendar.

Is privacy an issue? Or a non-issue?

To older folks (like me), the amount of information teenagers are sharing on social networks is frightening. But, privacy is relative. The key thing to remember is that nothing you share on a social network is private, so don’t say anything you don’t want your mother, kids, or spouse to know. Personally, I hesitate to mention when I will be traveling, or where my kids might be at a certain time. Burglars and stalkers are no strangers to technology.

Can Twitter be used a guerrilla marketing tool?

Absolutely! Just today, SlideShare sent me this email: “We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right. ;-) Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.”

There’s no reason why my SlideShare views should have spiked on Apr 1st. Even though I think it’s a marketing prank, still, I wrote about it. (And, fool me twice, I’m doing it again!)

Another instance is that we have a meeting coming up for the still-forming local chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysts . To get the word our for our next meeting, one thing we are considering is asking the members to blog and tweet about it.

How else can I use Twitter in my business?

Many people and businesses have Google Alerts in place to search for items of interest. There are Twitter applications that let you do the same thing with Twitter feeds. For example, I mentioned “bikinis” the other day, and suddenly Bikini Beat is a follower. (Don’t ask!)

By proactively searching Twitter for keywords, companies can target consumers or head-off consumer complaints. But, seller beware, in this age of transparency, be upfront and honest. On the Internet, we can Google, but we can’t hide.

Oh, and should you Tweet?

If you have to ask, then you should :)

But, only when you have something to say!

Once upon a time, Douglas Adams observed that, in an apparent attempt to keep our brains from working, humans have a habit of continually stating and repeating the very, very obvious, as in “It’s a nice day”, or “You’re very tall”, or “Oh dear, you seem to have fallen down a 30-foot well, are you all right?”.

• Accepted a proposal.
• Finished a book.

• Bought a car.

  What not to tweet:

• Good meeting!

• Yummy lunch!

• Huge dump!

  Or, for the ADD enabled, the micro-version:

• What to tweet: Milestones.

• What not to tweet: Minutia.

To be fair, it’s not just the people using Twitter. As a web application, Twitter sucks eggs. It does one thing, and does it poorly. Given a robust and featureful platform, we might attract a better class of twit.

Happily, third parties are busily writing improved Twitter clients and applications, but that doesn’t excuse Twitter’s own lack of innovation. (Or inability to pick a business model to fund innovation.)

Here’s the ten most obvious features that a competent micro-blogging network should offer out-of-the-box (most of which have already been invented):

9. Twits often use tweets as polls, but we have to tabulate the votes by hand (StrawPollNow).

8. Twitter is a micro-blog, and people also have regular blogs, but we have to post our own tweet when we post a blog (PingTwitter).

7. People post URLs in tweets, but what are the most popular URLs being posted? (TwittURLs)

6. Twits have followers, which follow other twits, but Twitter doesn’t recommend which twits we should be following (Twubble).

5. Twits like to follow their own followers, but Twitter doesn’t have an autofollow feature (TweetBots).

4. People like to re-tweet, but there’s no re-tweet feature, and no handy list of tweets most re-tweeted. (Can you dig it?) (ReTweetRank)

3. We can mark tweets as favorites, but where’s the list of the most favored tweets on the network?

2. The tweet feed is an generic chronology. Where are the categories? The personas? The tags? The Web 2.0? (Twemes)

1. The platform is so not scalable that people have time to get a “Twitter is Busy“ tattoo waiting for it come back online.

My prediction for 2010? Twitter becomes MySpace so-yesterday, and a new site with a reasonable feature set becomes the next socially transmitted dementia.

Lame but true: Gliffy is my new best friend.

1. Gliffy is a visual tool fluent in pixels. I can drag and drop shapes in Gliffy to my heart’s content, but I can also specify the precise pixel dimensions, and position shapes at exact positions on the page. Most other tools force you to drag everything into place by hand – which is like flying an airplane without an altimeter!
2. Gliffy exports drawings to standard formats, like JPEG, PNG, and SVG (Visio). It’s easy to paste Gliffy images into Word docs or insert them into Google Docs.
3. Gliffy is cloud-based. I can use Gliffy anywhere there’s an Internet connection and a browser. It also works great with Chrome!
4. Gliffy is reliable and well-supported. After several weeks of hard use, I’ve had exactly one functional issue with Gliffy. I filed a ticket, and an hour later my problem was solved.
5. Gliffy stores drawings in easy to manage folders, and files that are quick to load, and easy to share.
6. Gliffy is inexpensive … starting with free. A free account has the same utility as a paid account, but imprints your drawings with a “Powered by Gliffy” advertisement. The paid accounts start a $5 a month for one user, or $25 a month for ten users.
   (Did I mention that Gliffy lets you specify shapes in pixels?)
   
   
   
   
   The next time you need to whip up a wireframe or UI mockup, do yourself a favor and take Gliffy for a spin.
   
   
   
   
   (Did I mention it was free?)
   
   
   
   
   See Also: 20 Steps to Better Wireframing.

There’s no shortage of online TODO list managers: Remember the Milk, Todoist, Toodled, just to name a few. A new offering, CheckVist, brings a second dimension to TODOology: keyboard-friendly outlining.

CheckVist bills itself as an “online collaborative outliner and task list manager”. The bullet points include

• Jot it down fast with keyboard shortcuts to speed data-entry
• Exchange data with other applications through import and export
• Refine tasks with unlimited outline levels and multiple checklists
• Work with others by sharing checklists and enabling change notification
  CheckVist is not as feature-rich as similar products, but for brainstorming and outlining, there’s something to be said for a clutter-free interface. While CheckVist supports the notion of “todo”s, it’s really about organizing chunks of information in to a hierarchical list, often with a group of collaborators, not about personal time and deadline management. As a result, CheckVist a great complement to other, more complicated products.

How fast is data entry?

My favorite CheckVist feature is that it’s intuitive (err, “familiar”) to use. Common outlining keyboard shortcuts, like tab and shift-tab work as expected. Items can be moved up and down with the Ctrl+Arrow keys. The UI is geared to multiple lists, making it easy to get in and out of different lists that you may maintain for different project.

The CheckVist UI doesn’t make you think, making it a great product for brainstorming.

Does CheckVist work with other applications?

My second favorite feature is the easy and elegant way CheckVist imports and exports data. Several convenient formats are supported, including plain test (tabs), Atlassian Confluence format (wiki), OPML format (Mac), and HTML format. When exporting, you can include or exclude notes, status, and change details.

For super-fast data-entry, my favorite approach is to whip up a tab-based outline in a programmer’s editor, and then import it to CheckVist for refinement. If you need to include an outline in a Word document, it’s very easy to export it as plain text, paste it into Word, and convert your outline to a bulleted list with just a click or three.

It’s also easy to copy checklists, either by using the built-in copy feature, or by exporting a checklist and importing it again later. If you have large project checklists that you use over and over again: here’s your sign!

Are large checklists easy to manage?

CheckVist seems geared for larger projects. I’ve several outlines working (in my free account), some of which with well over a hundred items, and it hasn’t skipped a beat. Since, it’s a snap to open and close the outline items, it’s easy to get the big picture, and then drill down to the fine detail.

Can multiple authors edit a checklist?

Since CheckVist is primarily a brainstorming product, collaboration is a key use case. It’s easy to add additional authors to any of your CheckVists. As the original owner, you can always unshare the list with any of the other authors.

To help grease the rails of collaboration, CheckVist tracks of who edited a task, and can alert you whenever an update occurs.

Is “alpha” software safe to use?

Right now, CheckVist is labelled “alpha” software by its authors, and it’s only been in public use since August 2008. CheckVist has a very solid, professional feel to it, and I have no qualms about using it myself. Though, your mileage may vary.

There are some glitches, mainly around latency when editing. Sometimes when I’m rewriting a task, the changes won’t display correctly while I’m making the change. But, as soon as it is saved, the task displays correctly.

The biggest problem I’ve had is with trying use the “undo” feature. Bluntly, CheckVist undo (as of this writing) is not ready for primetime. The feature tends to undo more than you would expect, and if you use it, you’ll probably regret it. Of course, if you’re used to using ctrl-z in other products, undo can be a hard habit to unlearn :(

Overall, I’ve been using it hard, and the only data I’ve lost was due to undo. Everyone has to decide for his or herself how scary is an “alpha” tag.

Who makes CheckVist?

If you are use of any of the fine JetBrains products, like IDEA or Resharper, you would take comfort in the knowledge that CheckVist is brought to us by two TeamCity developers, . According to the website, “”.

Is CheckVist right for me?

If you are looking for a decent online outlining tool, to use for checklists or brainstorming, then definitely take CheckVist for a spin. It may not replace your TODO list manager, but you might also get more done. :)

HTH, Ted.