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The more I look at business cases related to whether an organization should consider moving their data center operations over to a managed services solution the more obvious it seems that it should be done. This is especially true for smaller businesses.

I’ll quickly recognize (and diffuse) the argument that some organizations have people on staff that can run their systems, and I don’t disagree.  However, what about making decisions going forward?  Is the current staff focused on just keeping current systems up and running to meet the current needs?  How about handling issues in the future to keep pace with growing tech requirements?  I am certain that the answers to these types of questions seldom consider issues that will be faced down the road, considering that so many teams are understaffed so maintaining current projects is enough to keep everyone busy.

I also used this article: Making the Case for Managed Services to think though other issues that need to be evaluated in the decision, such as hardware, new staff requirements and facilities.  It is also important to remember that costs are not just the people costs for keeping your systems online. 

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St. John's Combo Platter: Pierogi and Holupki

I feel like I’m a one-man directory for Foursquare in the Binghamton area — sort of a modern day Lewis without Clark.  It seems like everywhere I go requires that I enter the name and address.  This doesn’t mean that I’m the only local user, far from it. It means I’m the only local user with a kid. While the others are fighting over mayorships at the bars on State Street, I’m commenting on the blueberry cheesecake at Apple Hills and holupki’s at the St. John’s Festival.  That was just yesterday.

Tim McGraw via last.fm

One of the tricks of country music song writers that are out of fresh ideas is to write a song that does nothing, but drop proper names, such as people (Conway Twitty rhymes with so much), places (Cabo is a fav)  and things (happy hour).  You don’t even need to be a country music fan, and I’m sure you have a jukebox of bad music in your head right now.

Well, I’m going to test one of the worst offenders of this:  a song called Southern Voices that is sung by Tim McGraw and was written by  Bob DiPiero and Tom Douglas — to make sure the blame is spread fairly.   The opponent Zemanta and their semantic web publishing tool.  I’m afraid to paste in the lyrics, because this thing will explode. The song is nothing but a name dropping brain dump in the hope that somewhere ol’ Tim will be able to hit the right note with the music public to make you, yeah you, want to buy this drivel.

(Now, before some heads explode, please note that I am not condemning the names in the song, which range from Charlie Daniels to Jesus. I’m a big fan of these people. It’s the shameless use of their names that is bad.)

Ready… time to hit ctrl-v, and I’ll tag the names that Zemanta finds:

Hank Williams sang it

Number 3 drove it

Chuck Berry twanged it

Will Farmer wrote it

Aretha Franklin sold it

Dolly Parton graced it

Rosa Parks rode it

Scarlett O chased it

Smooth as the hickory wind

That blows from Memphis

Down to Appalachicola

It’s hi ya’ll did ya eat well

Come on in I’m

Sure glad to know ya

Don’t let this old goat cross

In this Almond Brothers t-shirt and throw ya

It’s cicadas making noise

With the southern voice

Hank Aaron smacked it

Michael Jordan dunked it

Pocahantas tracked it

Jack Daniels drunk it

Tom Petty rocked it

Dr. King paved it

Bear Bryant won it

Billy Graham saved it

Smooth as the hickory wind

That blows from Memphis

Down to Appalachicola

It’s hi ya’ll did ya eat well

Come on in I’m

Sure glad to know ya

Don’t let this old goat cross

In this Crimson Tide t-shirt and throw ya

It’s cicadas making noise

With the southern voice

Jesus is my friend

America is my home

Sweet iced tea and Jerry Lee

Daytona Beach

That’s what gets to me

I can feel it in my bones

Smooth as the hickory wind

That blows from Memphis

Down to Appalachicola

It’s hi ya’ll did ya eat well

Come on in child

I’m sure glad to know ya

Don’t let this old goat cross

In this Charlie Daniels t-shirt and throw ya

We’re just boys making noise

With the southern voice

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Southern Voice

I got a southern voice

A southern voice

Now, let it be said that I’m a big fan of Zemanta and their publishing tool is great for making the blogging process easier. However, Zemanta tried, but it was just overwhelmed by the country music hit formula. 10 of the 24 proper name references that I found as ‘in-text links’, but it did much better finding 20 of 24 pictures, and it offered a wide range of related articles to choose from.

To the Zemanta people and power users: If there is a way to request more in-text links, let me know and I’ll send it through again. This song should become the benchmark for all future improvements.

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Citi Field - First Game

My tickets for the Red Sox / Yankees on Oct 2 at Fenway came in the mail today — only 161 games away.  The key to getting these was that they were single seats, but directly behind each other in rows 12&13 behind home plate.  Which is cool.  The thing is that the game time is TBD, so I have to hope it is a day game, so we can take the Little Monster to see the Green Monster, though that probably means that it isn’t a big game.  Again just 6 1/2 months away.

The real downside to this is that there is no way I can keep Colleen a Mets fan considering that the first game she went to was a Mets/Nationals battle for last place last September. Now it the Yankees/Red Sox, and I can only dream that it is a battle for last.

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It was a fun strategic/tactical exercise to roll-out news to each outlet.  The first step was to coordinate website updates to show a co-branded presence. This had to be done before I posted the announcement on our Twitter and  Facebook because  of the immediacy of those outlets, so I had somewhere to link readers.  I also wanted to make sure news outlets had a chance to confirm (because they still do that) and assign the story, so sending out email and faxes (yes, dialed it myself) also had to be sent before the social media postings.  The big surprise was having one of the local TV news stations call so quickly that I had not yet received the fax confirmation.

Here are the steps I followed –
A week early:

1. Create a call sheet – name, email, fax, and Twitter accounts
2. Sign up to follow their twitter accounts – You want to give them time to follow you

Day of the announcement:

1. Update website — In case  news people go there to confirm
2. Send out faxes and emails
3. Post on BlueStorm’s Twitter and Facebook — It’s also good to have some of your co-workers on-call to RT and “Like” so the message spreads virally
4. Post on local third-party or business blogs — The local news site allows the public to create their own blog space, so I posted the release on BlueStorm’s PressConnect page
5. Send direct message to reporter’s Twitter — I only did this to those that I had a prior relationship
6. Good old-fashioned follow-up — This worked great because I found that my local press contact was out that day from her voice mail.  I was able to connect to the news desk and placed a press release based article at the top of the Business section. That would have been an embarrassing miss.

The Results The story ended up in the lead segment of two local news broadcasts, including this report on Newschannel 34.  We also had the Business section headline in the Binghamton Press and appeared on the front page of the Binghamton Business Journal.  The only downside was that the WBNG-TV News interview and Press articles were not posted online even after I called.  My lesson there was that next time I needed to include the web producer on my release list.

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Here’s to trusting auto-correct.

– Tim

Image via Wikipedia

It has been far too long since my last entry, but the reason is good — we were on the move again. At the end of September, I started a new job in Binghamton, NY. Probably the last place on earth I ever thought that we would be moving.

For the first few months, I drove back-and-forth between Weschester and Binghamton, but we made the move to temporary residence at my parents, and then finally into our own apartment this week. No hurry right now to buy a house, but that will happen soon enough.

I’ve been doing all the moving myself while the rest of the family spent Christmas plus a couple more weeks in Florida. So I’m off to unpack up some more boxes and settle in. Good to be back.

Freebase from Metaweb

“Freebase is a community managed database for knowledge about the world. Information in Freebase is organized as a web of facts, which can be systematically retrieved.”

So get this: Someone else stores and maintains the data, and you get to use it. This is a great resource for building applications or as a repository to supplement content projects.

As I had covered back in June, I am itching to build something using these resources, and last night may have given me a little more inspiration. For help I’ll look to pick up Jaime Taylor’s new book “Programming the Semantic Web“. Jaime Taylor presented a mix of high-level application ideas along with some code samples to show how it works, both the ease and flexibility of accessing data. Robert Cook, the co-founder of Metaweb Technologies, covered aspects about how we can use the Freebase database, including usage allowances (100k queries/day), the Creative Commons licensing requirements, and how we can upload and maintain Freebase data

I can already think of a great semantic search application that can be built with already available data — so if you are that client I spoke to last week — call me fast this is a home run, or I’m building it myself!

Like I said: It makes you want to start building. Great presentation.

Hyperlocal Guides

The panel participants had a opportunity to discuss their company and products, and also voice some opinions. The panelists were: James Tunik the CEO of Mapcidy; Dennis Crowley the Co-Founder of hot start-up Foursquare; Polly Lieberman, VP at Buzzd; and Brad Rosen the Founder of Prximity.

However this is where I thought there might have been a disconnect between the topic and the panel — I do not really see these companies as being hyperlocal. Sure they are local-based guides, and each offer their own ways to gather and display information about where you are right now, but they do not present the hyper-local qualities of our two NY entries, outside.in or Patch.

With that behind me, I have to say that Mapcidy may be the closest to a hyperlocal implementation based on Tunik’s description of the planned launch on September 10. The plan is to gather data as it is published and build a layer on top of a Google Maps API. Foursquare seems to be the most fun, and likely the best chance to deliver the ad dollars that are missing from this business. The issue there appears to be scalability, though to be fair this has always been an issue with rolling out local sites. Buzzd seems to be approaching this more from the mobile web side, which is in-line with Lieberman’s comment that the mobile apps business is nothing but a phase the mobile industry is going through. She thought that apps go back to the days that applications where distributed on CD-ROM and ran as a standalone executable. Soon enough the apps will be standardized to run using a mobile browser. In the words of Rosen, Prximity is looking to be our virtual concierge with the ability match events to our interests, location and free time. It’s certainly very early in their development, so let’s give them a chance to evolve, but you can test their beta.

The next step is to sign up for these applications and see how each delivers. I’ll follow-up down the road after I get some testing under my belt.

Real-time Search with Collecta

Doing this is the definition of social media, since I can’t be a real social gathering with other fans, this way I get to exchange information, barbs, or frequently in the Mets case — bitching. One thing to note is that through Collecta I can’t directly contribute, but it made it very easy to find other Mets fans and add them to my twitter follows list and ping away.

Overall it was interesting, but it also changed my perception of this as “search” as we have come to know it. The search engine paradigm is that I want information, that information is stored in historical archives, and I use some words that surround the topic and this hopefully gets me an answer. On Collecta, it was more of watching history unfold. The results are partial pieces of the big picture, but as time — in this case the game — played on, it was up to me to follow along and piece everything together.

The flow of information was constant, but the content mixed during the evening. Here are some samples:

• play-by-play: “David Wright RBI single scores Angel Pagan, who slides under the tag at home. Mets trailing 6-4 now. 5th inning. #mets” by @citycynic
• commentary: “you know if the DBacks have shut down their offense for the night like we normally would, we could actually get back in this one.” byMetsWFAN @
• pictures: From carryboo on Flickr
• cheering: “Daniel Murphy goes yard. Mets are within one at 6-5. Wow. by @TheRopolitans”,
• of course, some bitching: my fav “The Mets suck!” By @pete807
• game recap just minutes after the final out: “Reynolds powers Diamondbacks past Mets 6-5 (AP)”

So the outcome of all this: First, the experience needs to be renamed from real-time search because anything called search eventually gets compared to Google by the mass audience. The only thing that it shares with the Google activity is that I type a query in a box and click. I this case the “Now!” button.
Second, it is the perfect complement to enjoying a live event on TV or radio. The endless stream of commentary is perfect for baseball which we all know has a lot of down time. However, I’m sure it will provide the same benefits for the American Idol and Lost crowds as their geek quotient increases.

Though the Mets lost this one, I think I found a new way to add some enjoyment to the game.

Take care, and Let’s Go Mets!