Thom Allen Weblog

Friday, September 21, 2007

BlogRush is pushing the envelope

Whether or not you use or even like BlogRush, I'm getting a noticeable increase in the amount of traffic my blog has been getting ever since I signed up. There have been some problems with cheaters, as happens with services like this, but it seems to be drawing readers to my blog which I really like. BlogRush is attempting to improve the service and minimize abusers.

In order to use BlogRush you have to install a plug-in on your blog. At first I didn't like that, and pretty much I still don't, but that's what's required so its on my blog. I hope they come up with something not as obtrusive as this large graphic box they have now. It would be cool to just have the headlines. It would fit into my blog a lot nicer than this big huge monstrosity, and probably load much faster.

At the moment it seem to be living up to the hype. I'm not into all the backlash that has taken place. If I can increase the number of reader by a few hundred I'm all good.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Facebook application development and living in Utah

2 Comments so far. What's your opinion?

Jesse Stay asked if he was the only Facebook developer in Utah. And one of the comments he got on his blog asked "why is that important?" The statement was framed around the notion that anyone anywhere can develop applications, why is geographical locations important.

From my perspective its mostly for support and networking. When I am looking to refer work to someone I naturally look to my close local associates first. It's just natural. If no one there can help then I look to my extended network. I've just always done this. I hope my network in return does that for me.

But after having a short conversation with Jesse about writing Facebook application it appears the number of people actually doing it is small. Sure there are a lot of applications available on Facebook, but honestly, there are a lot of duplicate "I can do better" applications.

So yeah Jesse, I live Utah and I develop Facebook applications.

If you're looking for someone to write an application that integrates with Facebook, you can contact me here.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Technology That Empowers Me

2 Comments so far. What's your opinion?

I'm around technology all day. I have a laptop, a PDA, several desktops, cameras and so on. But there are a few pieces of technology that empower me. My T-Mobile MDA empowers me the most. It gives me the ability to be connected just about anywhere.

1. I have mobile Internet. This allows me to check my email account via GMail, track my calendar with GCal, read my RSS feeds with Google Reader, visit web sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. However a majority of web sites are not PDA friendly and are useless to view. This is also true for video. Trying to stream video is nearly impossible. Great services such as vTap are starting to change this.

2. My MDA has a built in MP3 player, Windows Media Player, that allows me to listen to all the music I want, and because I have a large storage card I can have dozens of songs available at all times. I can even watch videos, but I can't watch many because of quality issues. But this isn't really an issue for me because I don't watch a lot of video on my MDA.

3. The ability to stay in touch with my teenagers via SMS is invaluable.

4. View PDF and Office documents. One of the reasons I decided to go with an MDA instead of the Dash is the ability to edit Office documents. I spend a lot of time writing Word documents and tracking projects in Excel. It's nice to be able to use the file on my MDA and on my Laptop.

5. I've recently started storing more photos on my MDA. I used to have a whole bunch of pictures in my wallet, but it didn't seem as cool as being able to show more recent photos of the Family, events and just plain cool pics. So I took the photos out of my wallet and put them on the MDA.

There are more reasons my MDA empowers me. One I hope will give me even more utility is Skype. It's shaky on my MDA, but I know the technology will get better. This opens up a whole new world including mobile podcasting. Now if there was a mobile version of Audacity I wouldn't really need a computer any more.