Ryan Trembath (dot) Information

So hip in fact that we’re doing wild style! Meaning it’s part of one of my work projects and I’ve spent some hours reading, trying to get into the “tag space” and understand where the world is at on the subject.

Of course I had to check out some implementations of the concept so Flickr, de.licio.us, ma.gnolia and a bunch of other tagging sites have crossed my screen.

If you’re new to the concept and looking for a little more insight I found these articles that might help to understand, at a high level, where tagging is at and where it might need to go.

• Ontology Overview - Musing on Value of tags for organization
• Cognitive Analysis of Tagging - Insight into how the mind process behind reading and tagging a piece of content
• Automated Tag Clustering - Discussion on making sense of large sets of tagged data
• Database Schemas for tagging - the geekdown on how a database could be set up to manage tagging in an application. Honestly, parts of this were over my head, but it may be useful if you’re looking to program

Yesterday, a friend and I were doing some basic searches to see if his name came up online. Having deleted his myspace profile weeks ago, nothing should come up right?

WRONG!

Check out this little scraper site operating under the guise of a Myspace search engine. Looks like they’re scraping profile information and (for your added benefit!) putting their own Yahoo! and Kontera ads on the page.

There is nice little disclaimer noting that:

All profiles and associated pictures are copyright their respective authors. MySpaceProfiles.org is not affiliated or associated with MySpace.com in any way.

Does that carry any weight? I’m not a lawyer.

I did find, via the remove my profile link, that you can paste this code:

META NAME=”MYSPACEPROFILESBOT” CONTENT=”NOINDEX”

into your profile so that their robot won’t index your page. This will also (apparently) delete any existing profile on your id. But what if I already deleted my profile?

There is a form where you can enter your id and request it removed, which I have done for my friend. I will keep you posted on whether or not it’s actually removed.

Managing your image just got tougher.

This falls inline with Lisa Barone’s post yesterday. Lisa made all of her personal facebook information private and still ended up in the search results. Turns out that her friends don’t keep the same privacy settings she does.

Where’s my publicist!?

Big companies spend time and money managing their online appearance and now you will have to as well. It’s already a well documented fact that most employers will do the Google, Facebook, Myspace search on you. This wonderous two point oh world of search, social and advanced scraping has the potential to be a headache for us all.

Are you prepared?

Ever since Winnipeg’s Millennium Library opened they have advertised that free wi-fi was coming to the building. Well, it’s finally here and through an exclusive deal with MTS Allstream it costs $3.00 an hour.

Hold up. That’s not a public service. Rogers and Telus already provide internet/fee service in the area. The marketed benefit of using MTS is “a portion of the revenues back to the City of Winnipeg to support ongoing technology needs and the purchase of library materials”

We’ve officially leapfrogged back into the future.

I had half of a post written about this “leaked” Google video for the new guys, then I found this post that covered all my points and more. If you’re a Google Fanboi I suggest you read it.

If not, I’ll give you this to think on. Apparently Google reader is storing 10 terabytes of information from over 8 million feeds. Does big brother’s name start with a G?

My friend Goldburg says anything typed with thumbs probably isn’t that important.

I was doing some reading online today and found Juan Damia’s Blog. Though he usually focuses on research and analytics, a topic I’ve come to hold dear to my heart, he recently posted this list of text messaging slang.

A couple favorites I’ve never encountered and wouldn’t have understood:

A3 - Anytime, anyplace, anywhere
AAMOF - As a matter of fact
AFAIK - As far as I know
EOD - End of day
FWIW - For what it’s worth
FYEO - For your eyes only
IANAL - I am not a lawyer - Careful how u lead up to this 1
JAM - Just a minute
WRT - With respect to
YW - You’re welcome

I didn’t realize I was so out of the loop, I’ve been wasting my productivity time spelling words.

At my old job, the “Lifestyle Shot” was a topic of hot debate in the boardroom every time a new site was being designed.

Unfamiliar with the term?

It’s used to describe the main photograph, usually involving people smiling and doing something, on the homepage of a site. The “lifestyle shot” is supposed to help your customers feel comfortable and “see themselves” in your site. Check out how happy you are about insurance, or meet a friendly dentist up close and personal.

Get it?

If you’re designing a site with this look/feel, always keep in mind that your users may not perceive the image(s) presented the same way you do.

For example, I worked on this online pharmacy site. The call center staff said that our customers would often ask why we had two gay old men on the front page. From the perspective of the design team, it had just been two friends, healthy and strong, saving on their medications.

Another example is this vegetarian dating site. Some guy grinding a model holding a bowl of uncooked tofu? Seems a bit…lame. Do they really know their audience?

Bottom line here would be: people like to see themselves in your content, just make sure you’re on target with who “they” are or you might be doing more harm than good.

You may have noticed the make your own Simpson’s character fad courtesy of the the Simpson’s Movie page. Guess who’s on the bandwagon?!

Go give it a try. It’s easy to use and walks you through what to do with the picture once it’s generated.

I saw the movie last night at the cheap seats. Since it’s probably been 6 years since I actively tried to watch an episode of the show it was good to see everyone still kicking.

My friend called it “mediocre” but I thought it was pretty funny. There was quite a few little throwbacks to episodes for the Simpson’s geeks out there. What do you want?!

There just ain’t enough good songs about truckin’ anymore. Red Solvine is THE guy.

Yeah, this is normally more tech/music oriented, but lets file this post under “Branding”.

My friend Maria was in town a few weeks ago. It was late, we were hungry and the local 222 line put me on hold.

What to do?

I figured I’d help Maria get the most out her Winnipeg experience and indulge in a Porno Pizza, the latest international pizza phenomena.

I called the number, ordered a 2 topping large pizza, and was told it would get to us around an hour.

Let the waiting begin.

Pizza Arrives

Pizza arrives just over an hour after we order. Not sure how long the pizza actually took, the ringer on the apartment phone was off. An annoyed delivery driver called my cell phone to let us know she was out front.

Hot sauce…check. Ranch dressing (for dipping)…check. Greasy porno? I guess we’ll have to seek it out!

Bring Your Pizza Cutter

Business was so busy they couldn’t cut the pizza enough, or they just don’t care. I put Maria in charge of cutting. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad job after all.

What the hey?

What’s this under the pizza? Maria is confused.

Fluffer!?;

The pizza action was cooling down, so I decided to heat things back up. Burnt my hand pulling it out of the stove. HOT ACTION!

There she is

Finally some porn.

They made up for our vegetarian ways by giving us more meat in the picture. Two guys, one girl, many greasy stains.

The picture itself looks like it was laser printed off the internet. A chemical bond between the printer ink and the wax paper under the pizza has formed making the picture scuzzier then it was initially.

How the pizza sliced - Ratings out of 5

Pizza - 1.5
Price is a big factor here. We could have gotten 2 bigger pizza’s from the hotline and tipped the guy 5 bucks instead of this. Wasn’t sliced, was cold and 3 slices made my hungry tummy turn.

Porno - 2.5
I would give the porno three X’s (XXX). It was pretty hardcore. Grease stains don’t turn me on.

Overall, this is a novelty. It’s staying power is questionable, but it might survive on the fact that Winnipeg is a tits and ass town and they’re open until 5 AM. Personally, I wouldn’t waste $25 bucks again, but it’s off my list of things I didn’t know I wanted to try.

In case you were wondering, Maria and her room mate ate the remaining pizza the next day and felt ill. I’m sure the pizza people would say she was hung over.

I just saw this on Soxiam Wiki. I’m not sure whether this is a genius tongue in cheek video campaign or a complete disaster. I personally couldn’t watch the whole thing, but give it your best.