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Twitter. Facebook. Google+. Foursquare. LinkedIn.

It’s a pain in the you-kn0w-what to get these right. Different audiences on each service, different methods of posting makes it challenging to get them right.

Here’s how I use and manage them.

Twitter, just like Google+, has a very geeky crowd. That’s where I have my geekiest followers and friends. Twitter is also where I get the majority of my breaking news stories. If you see me staring at my phone in an elevator, I’m most likely checking Twitter to stay on top of security news, world events and geeky stuff. (Like these awesome Marty McFly sneakers Jeremy posted about today!). I post to Twitter if there’s something interesting in those three areas that I haven’t seen yet. I also follow co-workers, friends and people who tweet about things that are of interest to me. Posts from Twitter gets automatically cross-posted to LinkedIn, to keep my feed alive over there. (This also means I stay light on cursing on Twitter, due to LinkedIn being the professional network). Not that I curse that much. Dammit.

Facebook, is a completely different audience. Family. Friends from high school. Friends from California. Friends from Sweden. Etc. I use the friend list feature heavily. Some people wouldn’t be interested in knowing that I’m having an amazing day, so I try to spare them the two seconds it would take for them to read my posts there. Also, this is where I share the majority of embarrassing good pictures of my family and friends and those are also posted to select friend & family lists there. I guess I’m still old-school for not using Facebook for business connections as much as I should, and see other people doing, but Facebook to me is for close family and friends. This will likely change over the next couple of years as I’ll be forced to use Facebook more for business purposes. New blog posts from this site gets automatically pulled into my Facebook wall to a select audience.

Google+, is where all good geek conversations happen right now. The geek/techncial engagement without a 140-character limit is very exciting to see, and I’m looking forward to see if it will continue. Some people have even gone as far as pointing their blog domain (Hey Alex, how are you?) over to their Google+ profile. I’m not there yet. I like WordPress here on Stjernstrom.com for blog posts. I like having my own design. Still. There’s a great article by Chris Brogan here on how to get started with Google+ that you all should go read right now. (Ironically, I found that article via Twitter). I use Google+ Picasa as picture archive/backup service, but very, very few people get access to the pictures there. Think grandparents.

Foursquare. If you’re a friend of mine on Foursquare, you know me pretty darn well. Knowing where I’m at when I’m there is not information to be shared lightly. Sure, I’ll cross-post to Facebook or Twitter when going to the movies, but I won’t make that information public most of the time.

LinkedIn. LinkedIn is my professional network. If you’re connected to me on LinkedIn, we have, in some capacity, had a business relationship/meeting. That’s it. I use it frequently to find contact information for people I want to get in touch with for current projects, and just to stay in touch with people and see what’s going on in their professional lives.

So how to post and keep up with all these services?  There are a few tools I keep coming back to, depending on where I’m at. TweetDeck is excellent if I’m by my laptop. Hootsuite is great for cross-posting to multiple services and also allows you to schedule posts. Works from both laptop and they have a great iPhone app. The first thing to do, before posting though, is to consider the audience. Is it geeky/technical? Twitter/Google+. Is it information you only want to share with a select few people? Google+/Facebook. Is it an accomplishment you want to share with the world? All of them. Your bank account number? Don’t. (Don’t laugh, I’ve seen it happen).

Hope y’all are having a great day! See you on Twitter / Facebook / Google+ / Foursquare / LinkedIn!

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Disqus, I’ve reactivated you. Apologies for the whole Facebook-thing. I have missed you.

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Reading Eric Schmidt’s quote the other day:

“Life is short, work with people you like”

Got me thinking about passion and how lucky I am to be working with and having worked with what I love and have a passion for, for the past 20 (gulp!) years. Including my current job working on secret project I’m not allowed to talk about yet. I’ve been lucky enough to work with technology that I love with people that I love working with and for. I’ve been using this saying that I most likely stole from somewhere but I don’t recall from whom, that there are three important things about your work.

• What you do
• How much you get paid for what you do
• Who you work with

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As everyone knows by now, Jobs resigned yesterday because of health reasons. Here are my three favorite Steve Jobs quotes from the past few years.

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”[BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998)
-Simple Good, Complex Bad . Ironically an IBM slogan from the 90's.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. … One is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.” [Announcement of the iPhone, Jan. 9, 2007]
-Powerful and true statement.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]
-Happy to say that I’ve found this job several times. I consider myself very lucky to have worked with the products I have. PGP, CyberCop Scanner Ballista, Gauntlet and ExpectID IQ to name just a few. I loved working on all of them. And of course the product I’m currently working on that I’m not allowed to say anything about yet . The feeling of accomplishment after a release and working with people as passionate as you are about the product or solution is what gets me to work excited every day of the week (and on weekends)

More Steve Jobs quotes available over at WSJ.

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iOS 5 Beta 2 is out and I played around with it a little bit this weekend. Some very cool new features coming our way, including Reminders, which will replace every to-do list I’ve ever paid for. I mean, come on, being able to set a reminder based on your geographical location? Awesome. I can see myself passing by the grocery store on the way home reminding me to stop and buy milk. The future is truly here. The new notification center is greatness as well, with one interface for Twitter, Email, Calendar and SMS notifications. Not that us cool iPhone users will have to use carrier plans any more because Apple is essentially removing the need to use SMS with iMessage. (If you can get all your friends to buy iPhones, that is).

Another new feature is coming our way, iCloud backup. Basically, all your iPhone data will be backed up to the Apple iCloud. Pretty cool eh? All your music, email, documents and app settings such as the stocks you follow, your to-do list, user names, passwords…oh wait.

Do you *really* want to back all this personal data to a cloud provider (i.e. Apple) that just two months ago admitted to storing your entire location history on your local machine? Just go and do a Google Search on “iPhone storing location data” to see how upset we all were. And by “we”, I mean Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Guardian, and pretty much every news outlet and blogger on the planet.

I believe we might be suffering from short term memory loss here, people. This isn’t an exciting feature, it’s scary as hell. We haven’t heard yet from the Apple Spaceship how this data is stored. Is it encrypted? If so, who has the keys? (Hello Dropbox). I quickly looked through the iOS 5 developer release notes and couldn’t find any mention of encryption. Please prove me wrong. Please.

Trust is important. When it comes to data, trust no one.

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Some people asked, so here are the instructions.

What you’ll need:

-Apple Developer Account ($99/year).
-An iDevice (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)
-A Windows Machine

If you happen to be a close friend who’s reading this, I might be able to help you with step 1 above. Ask nicely.

How to do it:

First you’ll need to install a copy of iTunes 10.5 for windows. You’d think this would be available on the main download page from Apple like the Mac software, but it’s not. Instead, head over to the iCloud section and find it at https://developer.apple.com/icloud/downloads/ under Windows downloads. While you’re there, grab the iCloud control panel too.

Install iTunes 10.5, connect your device and grab your Device ID. You’ll need it to provision your device in the iOS Provisioning portal on the Apple developer site. Once you have it, go ahead and add your device at http://developer.apple.com/ios/manage/devices/index.action.

Sync your device.

Next, download the beta code from http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action#betadownloads

Once downloaded, on windows, you’ll need to extract it. The way to do this on Windows is to get TransMac. (15 day trial). Simply open the downloaded file, click on it within TransMac and drag it to your desktop. Once extracted, it’ll take a few minutes, head back over to iTunes and click on the summary page for your device.

Hold shift down and click “Restore”. This will open up a prompt for the file you just extracted. Select the file and press submit.

Then walk away and cross your fingers (or hold your thumb) while waiting for your device to restore to iOS5. Once done, sync your music, etc and you’re done.

If you’d like to sync your Photo Stream to your Pictures folder on your Windows box, go ahead and install the iCloud app that you downloaded earlier. It’ll sync all photos you take to a folder on your box and also allows you to sync misc items with Outlook. Barf.

A few notes on the beta:

-It’s a beta. A few things aren’t working. The most annoying one I’ve found so far is Qrank not working.
-I have not tested any actual phone functionality. Heh.
-The new notification center rocks. You’ll never want to go back to iOS4 after trying it.
-Tabbed browsing on the iPad is glorious
-Photo Stream works, but you can’t delete any photos from your stream yet. Workaround: Don’t take bad pictures.
-Reminders. Buh-bye every to-do list app I’ve ever tried. Being able to set reminders based on location and time will change the way you work. It also syncs across all your iDevices with the same Apple ID.
-Music in the cloud. Buy a song with your iPhone, if set up correctly, it’ll download on your iPad, iTunes libraries and any other device that’s connected to your Apple ID. This is magic. MAGIC.

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I read. A lot.

Before Kindle, I bought and collected hundreds, if not thousands of books. Most of them are now in my garage, except for a few select copies that I want easy access to that are in one of the three bookshelves in the house. Or they just look good together on a shelf. There’s something comfortable having books nearby to browse and discuss, like my friend Chauncey argues. I still buy the occasional book from Half Price Books to complete collections I have, and love to spend a weekend afternoon browsing a bookstore, but I rarely buy anything these days.

The thing is, since getting hooked on Kindle, I read more. I re-read more books.  I love collecting and building my Kindle Library. Currently at 221 books and growing every week. I wouldn’t have room in our house to store these even if I wanted to. Just like I don’t have room for my CD or DVD collection. Meaning that if I bought the physical/dead tree versions of those books, my only option would be to sell some books to Half Price Books or give them away. Instead, now I have access to them wherever I am, whenever I want.

Which brings me to my next point. I don’t actually read books on my Kindle, because Holly uses it most of the time.

I read on my iPad, my iPhone, computer, and sometimes even on my laptop. Living a busy life working on multiple things at the same time, I can now take advantage of those 10 minutes before a meeting/conference call to read a chapter or two in a book of my choice. When going on  a trip, I don’t have to try and fit 3 books into my luggage, I just bring my iPad.  The Amazon vision is that any internet connected device will have access to your Kindle library. Whatever phone or device you have, you can get Kindle. There’s no need to actually buy a Kindle Device unless you only read in the sun. (The iPad sucks in sunlight).

So with that said, let me try and break down and respond Chauncey’s points in his post about why he doesn’t own a Kindle:

1. Memory of reading a book together with someone. I completely agree. Having a memory of doing something together is great, and having a physical part of that is awesome. I have a shirt that I bought in Sweden on a recent trip there that I’ll always cherish because of the memories associated with it.

2. Collections. Chauncey collects books and gets them signed by authors. I have a football signed by Tony Dorsett and an autographed photo by Mats Sundin. Authors would still hold events where they meet with readers even if there weren’t any physical books because it’s good marketing. Wil Wheaton for example, holds events in bookstores and elsewhere where he reads from his books. With beer.

3. Having books in our homes. We agree on this one. Love it.

Chauncey, I’m not trying to talk you into getting hooked on Kindle, but if you want to promote reading and get people to read more, don’t hate the Kindle. What is wrong with people reading more?

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Welcome back, RSS.

Facebook appears to have added a “Subscribe via RSS” option to Pages. The link, found at the bottom left side of Pages beneath the profile picture, leads to an Atom feed of wall posts by the Page that can be auto-discovered by clients.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/24/subscribe-via-rss-pages/

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Hulu Plus is a service that allows you, for the monthly fee of $7.99 / month, to watch Hulu content on devices such as your Xbox or iPad. Sounds good, right? Hulu has some really good TV shows available, such as House, Castle and The Office. Also, movies! Pretty cool, eh?

Not to worry though, with Hulu Plus on the Xbox 360, you won’t be able to find anything. Who the hell designed this?

Let’s start by going through the signing up process. With Netflix, to add a device, you simply go to your computer, type in the activation URL, log in, and enter the activation code displayed on your TV screen. Done. On Hulu? Not that simple. Fire up Hulu Plus on your Xbox, get activation code, go to your laptop and browse to the (too complex) activation URL, then try to locate the “activate device” link.

I’ll wait.

It’s under account settings. Hey Hulu, make it simple for us, add a very visible “Activate Device” link or tab somewhere for new users. Simple good, Complex bad.

Ok,  all signed up, let’s find something to watch.

I’m in the mood for a movie. Not sure what I feel like watching, so let’s check out the “Popular Movies” menu item. The most popular movies on Hulu as I write this are:

1. Beer Wars (Documentary about beer. Don’t get me wrong, I like beer, but I don’t want to watch a movie about it)
2. Strictly Sexual (From the description: “Two successful women, sick and tired of dating and relationships, decide to keep two young men in their pool house for strictly sexual purposes.” And here I thought that everyone who uses the internet knows how to find porn if they want it. I’m obviously wrong.)
3. Gamers (“Hilarious journey into the world of MMO games like World of Warcraft”. Hilarious and World of Warcraft are two words that belong in the same sentence, however, the context of this particular sentence is wrong.)
4. Chicken Ranch (Seriously?)
5. The Dungeon Masters (“The Dungeon Masters highlights two men and one woman who devote their lives to D&D”. I loved D&D when I was 13. I don’t want to spend 1 hour and 28 minutes watching a movie about it. )

Wow. I think I can figure out what your target market is here, Hulu. Let’s see. Beer, Sex, Gaming and D&D. (Yes, I’m ignoring Chicken Ranch, because seriously, would you click through to figure out what it’s about?). These are the most popular movies on Hulu?

Oh well, let’s check out what’s been recently added, maybe there’s something there?

Recently Added Movies

1. Come On Children (1973)
2. Ornamental Hairpin (1941)
3. Dying at Grace (2003)
4. Osaka Elergy (1936)
5. A Married Couple (1969)

Two of them are in black and white. One of them from this century. Go Hulu.

Now given, Hulu is more focused on TV shows, with ABC, FOX, NBC, BBC America and Comedy Central signed up. So let’s check out the TV show selection. Friday Night Lights is a great show that I’ve been wanting to re-watch. (To find Friday Night Lights, “simply” go to “All TV + Movies”, “TV Networks” and scroll to “N” for NBC.). Seasons 1-5 listed, woohoo! We’re in business! Oh wait. They only have episodes 11-15 of season 1 available. And they can only be watched on the web, not on the 360. WTF?

Maybe it’s an NBC licensing thing. Let’s try another good show, this time on ABC, Castle. Seasons 1-3 listed. Nope. Only season 3 available. Sigh.

Hulu, this is not how people watch TV content. It’s a small sample, but your interface makes me want to throw up and I don’t feel like going through the pain of finding more. You need a recommendation engine like Netflix asap.

All whining aside, this will obviously be played out by what company gets what deals with what networks. For now, $8.65 / month for Netflix is a much better deal.

Update, May 16th, 2011: As if to prove my point, the most popular search term that finds this article? “Hulu Activation Code”.

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I’ve been playing around with AirPlay recently, getting 3 Airport Express and one Apple TV. Since we’re an iPhone household, it made sense to use Apple products for streaming music and video. Also, you can get an Airport Express from eBay for $60 or so. Compare that to the cost of Sonos (The only real competition I’ve found out there), and it’s a no-brainer for whole-house audio and video.

Once you’ve attached (easy) and configured (easy) an Airport Express and attach it to a powered speaker or receiver and iTunes & iPhone, it’ll show up as an option in Airplay enabled apps on your iPhone/iPad/iTunes. We use it to play music to multiple speakers throughout the house and backyard and to stream video to the AppleTV. Instead of having someone look over your shoulder or give them your iPhone or iPad, simply stream it to the TV. Simple as that.

It’s good to live in the future.

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