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.

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I had a unique opportunity to attend a presentation put on by The New York Semantic Web Meetup called Content, Identifiers and Freebase from Metaweb about ways to use Freebase. I’ll use organizer Marco Newmann’s words to describe Freebase:

“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.

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Last night I attended a panel discussion on The Future of Hyperlocal City Guides that was part of the Future of Local Media Salon Series.

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.

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I had an geek’s evening planned where I would watch the Mets and follow along on real-time search engine Collecta. Sadly, this is not the first time (this week) I have done something similar, but usually I do it via my @METSorYANKEES twitter feed.

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!

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A busy day around FIT for the the NY Tech Meetup scene thanks to New York Internet Week. Late in the afternoon the FIT Great Hall hosted 60 NY start-ups and at least 500 people (my estimate) for a showcase event. Attendees had free access to visit all the start-up tables for demos and questions.

From there the action moved into the Auditorium for the monthly Meetup gathering where the program was the standard 5 minutes to demo your product. It was a great a night for the demo teams. I can honestly say that I will try out each of these products, with the exception of the MakerBot. However, it was cool enough that I’ll share it with a brother-in-law who likes these robotic thingies.

Here are some links that you should check out:

– UpNext – If you are in the NYC area or a frequent visitor, you will want this great iPhone app that features a 3-D vision of the city, subway maps, and built in directory all by simple tapping on the map.
– Centrl – Another map-type app for iPhone and BB, but it focuses more on the social networking that pulls in feeds from all the major social platforms.
– Livestream / Procaster — High-quality live video from your lap-top is possible with these simple tools.
– Aviary – Think online Photoshop.
– MakerBot – It was hard for some of us to grasp what was being discussed here, but think of it as a desktop robot builder that grinds out mini objects. Check out the web site and you’ll see.
– NYSenate.gov – The new web site that will bring transparency to NY government. Cool I guess.
– Mahalo 2.0!
— Jason Calacanis showcased the new Mahalo and their plans for sharing the revenues with page owners.

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Since I’m not having the greatest luck in the Web 2.0 era of the Internet, I decided to skip ahead a generation by attending the Web 3.0 Conference this week. Web 3.0 is a term often applied to my time at Hakia with the driving concept being the Semantic Web or Linked Data. I say “or” because I am not an expert on the subject, so when I am around those that are (or make my eyes gloss over with claims to be), I hear many prospectives on how these terms are used. My perspective is broad, not hands-on, so I tend to group these ideas together as they play themselves out.

The conference program went beyond this broad view of Web 3.0. It included panels on cloud computing and social media from both technical and business angles. Overall I thought the programming offered options for everyone. I focused on topics around monetization and marketing applications, along with a panel on semantic search technology — as you would guess.

One consistent result of these panels is that I get all antsy and want to start building things. So tonight I’m taking my “just good enough to be dangerous” programming skills to the NY Semantic Web Meetup to get a demo of some hands-on tools. Let’s see what I can learn there. Maybe I will be able to post my own little semantic web application here in the next couple weeks — or else, I’ll come back next week and delete this paragraph.

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Very compelling article in Ad Age today from Peter Hershberg at Reprise Media about search and social media called What Social Media Means for Search. On the upside, it adds to the observation that search and social media are coming together, and it also provides a good backgrounder for understanding the relationship. However, it does not offer any tactical side to take advantage of this activity.

Using his Search 3.0 label, Peter and I agree that the new feed-driven social world takes us beyond the “intent” shown by a user during their search engine experience and provides us direct insight to the “it is happening now” stage, such as the millions of daily tweets for “need coffee.”

We’ve heard the story forever from proponents of mobile advertising that they will be able to deliver a Dunkin’ Donuts (my coffee of choice) coupon when we walk past a store. Great in theory, but when does it reach the masses and will it work? My answer to when, is who knows. I’m sure it can happen now with the proliferation of location-based services, but is it better plan than monitoring social media feeds — I say no.

The mobile ad plan is not marketing to a person who has shown intent in this activity; they just happen to be walking by a Dunkin’ Donuts, so now you are hoping that you can change a user behavior as they pass by. However, monitoring a Twitter/Facebook feed will directly let you know who is going to get coffee, NOW! It is up to the marketeer to hit them directly with the coupon for the coffee or a complimentary donut. I guess the next question is when will Twitter or the Twitter apps we use start monitoring our Twitter feeds, or Facebook for that matter, to match ads to its updates.

Update: As I was posting this, I took a look back at the current Ad Age they have posted an article “Google Uses Twitter to Sell Ads.” So it looks like this idea is taking its first steps. This will evolve to feed-targeted networks, not the general Adsense network, because the higher “happening now” feed network will be drive higher CPC values.

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It seems all of our favorite insider blogs are floating a heading that contains “Search” and “Social Media.” Even next week’s Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York contains no less that 6 sessions around social media, including a special social media track. However, with as many of these articles that I have read, none seem to explain how social media and search mesh other than being buzz topics for them to claim an expertise.

I see it as a “Chicken or the Egg” discussion on whether social media drives search or search drives social media. More importantly, if you are in the business of identifying trends, where should you watch if you want to stay ahead of the curve? For my money, I would look at two places, Twitter analysis tools to understand breaking news events and search tools for identifying what people are interested in.

Why two places? News events get reported first on twitter. The event could be as big as the Hudson River plane landing or “I’m having coffee.” It’s highly probably that 99 of 100 event trends discovered on Twitter may have no legs to affect the social media space. However, there is still that 1 in a 100 that strikes a chord with someone. That person does an entry in their blog, that entry gets posted on a Twitter feed, that eventually finds its way into Facebook by someone who has their Twitter and Facebook accounts linked, and all of a sudden you have people searching for the topic to learn more.

The life-cycle of this event would be like this:
News Event > Twitter Post > Twitter Trend > (Facebook) > Search Trend > Steady Search Traffic

Think of the Motrin Mom story or the Octomom. To so many people these were non-issues when they first read it. I remember reading about the women who gave birth to eight babies, and then thinking how amazing that was and that she would get the hero treatment. Then someone looked closer and the story got some serious legs. Soon “Octomom” had regular Google search traffic, and the sentiment completely shifted.

Let’s look at how you can track events and that lead to social trends. Below are some tools that I have used for in tracking terms:
1) Discovering Breaking Trends – Using Twitter trending tools
Below are some tools

• Twitter Search – Found below the search box
• TweetStats – Provides a trend cloud and historical list
• @trending – From Karelia Software (http://karelia.com/)
• Twendz – Highlights conversation themes and sentiment of tweets

2) Identifying What People Actively Want – Use search engine trends

• Google Trends
• Hitwise
• WordTracker

Update (4/1/09)- Thanks goes out to David Berkowitz and his fine blog, Inside the Marketers Studio, for pointing out this article on other Twitter analysis tools: 8 Excellent Tools to Extract Insights from Twitter Streams by Yung-Hui Lim on Social Media Today.

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Nothing big today except for the expectations set by my forefathers that today I will drink an excessive amount of Guinness. Unfortunately to bystanders this is one (another) of those expectations that I never fulfill. Part of the enigma of being Tim McGuinness.

Maybe it’s the phoniness of the season. Yesterday I received an email promo from a big website addressed to “Timothy O’McGuinness”. Seriously, if you Google “Tim+Mc+Guinness,” the top result is a bar fight. Do we really have to add the “O’whatever” to Irish-up my name?

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I have started to look into trend tracking and how trends become social media topics that rally people together.

Last night, following a genius episode of 30 Rock, I jumped on Google Trends to see if there was any activity around two phrases that they introduced to a network TV audience: “Fun Cooker” and “Hot Richard.”

As soon as the show ended, I fired up Twitter and searched “Fun Cooker” and received 10 results. Each time I hit reload the count jumped: 10; 14; 20. So that was enough to show that th eworld had a new catch phrase.

I jumped over to Google Trends to see what was happening there, and I found that “Hot Richard” was the #1 trending term. It is a term that generates relevant results (not going to link to them from here), but never generates traffic, then suddenly during the show it goes through the roof.

It will be interesting to see how these phrases start to appear over the next few days on Facebook and Myspace. I’ll check back in a month.

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