Google Docs vs. Traditional Organization 1/20/2010

Google Docs is my favorite and most used web app. I have 68 documents under just one of my Google accounts. I use them to keep track of debts between my housemate and me, my internet login credentials at 32 different sites, everything needed to maintain my 42 domains and hosting accounts, prospective band members to try out, entrepreneurship ideas, a couple of to-do lists, comparison shopping for furniture and other interesting stuff on Craigslist and eBay, potential job leads, real estate clients’ tenant ledgers, earnings and payments collected as an independent contractor for tax filing and invoicing, and a lot of other things.

In the past I collected lists such as these in far less efficient ways. I organized credits and debts between housemates on paper, whose data I could not reorganize and which I frequently could not locate when needed. I kept my internet credentials stored in an Excel file on my home PC so I was powerless and anonymous on the internet when I was away from home. And I had to save receipts and keep paper trails when invoicing clients, tracking tax deductions and receiving business payments.

Spreadsheet and document organization is enough of a reason to abandon my old methods but another revolutionary advancement is my ability to collaborate. My housemate can add debts to the same Debt Log when I owe him money and we can both view and edit the document simultaneously, which allows us to see exactly what’s owed without worrying about any revisions we haven’t seen yet. My bandmates add prospects to the list when they find a new musician and we can all see our progress in real time, which motivates us all to put in work ourselves. And my real estate clients can update themselves on when and how much their tenants have paid, which saves me a lot of phone calls and headaches.

Google Docs is an all-in-one solution to my paperwork organization struggles and many other issues I never would have known existed before I used it. Because it updates on the fly I never have to worry about losing my work in a power outage or computer crash. Because of its live collaboration feature and flexible permissions settings I know that my intended collaborators and I always have secure access to perfectly current data. Because of its Microsoft Office similarity and compatibility the apps are completely intuitive and make it easy to migrate data across platforms. Because the processing power and data storage is remote I don’t have to worry about my system specs and stability. And like all well designed websites I get a consistent usability experience in spite of varying hardware, operating systems and browsers.

I do many things to organize my life now that I would have never considered doing before Google Apps made it possible. I consider it an invaluable resource and I always try to help my friends, colleagues and clients learn to make Google Apps work for them like I have.

Greasemonkey Scripts for Facebook

I’ve always been a fan of efficient website navigation that balances the greatest usability with the fewest clicks and least scrolling. If you spend as much time on Facebook as I do, you should appreciate these efficiency enhancing tweaks I discovered a few months back.

These tweaks are scripts which only work in Firefox, and only after you’ve installed the Greasemonkey add-on. After you’ve installed Greasemonkey and restarted Firefox, browse through scripts at userscripts.org.

My favorite Facebook scripts include:

Facebook Fixer
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8861
Description: Enhancements for Facebook: bigger profile pictures and photos, easier viewing of albums, links to download videos, showing people’s age and sign, Google calendar integration, keyboard shortcuts & more. Compatible with new Facebook and fully customizable!
IMO: This is a very powerful script. It requires a little customization but it’s totally worth it. After install, scroll to the top of any Facebook page, open Settings > Facebook Fixer. Read through the settings and experiment.

inYOf4ceBook
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8712
Description: Larger versions of thumbnails and profile pictures on mouseover on facebook.com.
IMO: Huge time saver. I no longer have to click through to new pages to see the full-resolution version of pictures. This duplicates a feature in Facebook Fixer but I prefer the way this works so I disabled the feature in Fixer.

Facebook Friends Checker
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/40027
Description: Regularly checks your Facebook friends to check whether anyone has removed you from their friends. When the script detects that someone you used to be friends with is no longer one of your friends, a message will appear informing you about who it was and giving a link to their profile page.
IMO: This works perfectly. When someone is no longer my friend it could be that they deactivated their account or that they removed me from friends. I know which is the case when I click their profile link. If I see their profile with the option to Add to Friends, I know I’ve been removed from friends. If their profile link just reloads my home page I know their account is currently inactive meaning they probably intentionally deactivated their account. It’s kind of sad how often I get removed as a friend, but at least now I know who not to invite to my birthday party.

Remove “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/61160
Description: Remove “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds.
IMO: I don’t care who my friends become friends with. I have 723 friends and they make a lot of new friends. This doesn’t need to clutter up my Feed. Check out the “See also” section of this page for links to other feed hiders you might like, including Remove “Attending,” “Attended,” “Became Fan,” “Joined Group,” and “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds.

Facebook Show Age
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/59910
Description: Adds age next to birth date.
IMO: Perfect integration and works great. Age is far more important than birthday and it’s nice not having to calculate age in my head any more.

FBOnlineNow
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/59795
*ONLY works after you’ve installed this app: http://apps.facebook.com/invisible/
Description: Turn off Facebook Chat and use FBOnlineNow to see who’s online (active or idle friends).
IMO: I was a little confused at first but now i love it. After you install this you’ll see 2 chat pull-up menues next to each other. the original chat menu is between the new one and notifications; it’s confusing because there’s no icon on it any more.

Facebook URL Cleaner
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/29910
Description: Cleans Facebook URLs that don’t actually take you to a new page.
IMO: It works great. Now rather than http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=569919637#/profile.php?id=725831319, you’ll see http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=725831319

By the way my other favorite Facebook add-ons are Image Zoom and Download Statusbar. Cooliris is cool too but I usually have it disabled. And the most revolutionary, game-changing add-on ever made must be Addblock Plus. ABP deserves its own blog post though so look forward to that in the future.

If you try any of these, please comment and share your experience. Do you love these tweaks as much as I do?

55% Drop in Facebook’s College-Enrolled Registrations in Past 12 Months

An article on ReadWriteWeb discusses Facebook’s changing demographics, conveyed in the image below. The article focuses on the changing demographics, as the 55+ user base is exploding while the 18-24 range is growing least quickly. It questions how this change will affect Facebook’s market opportunities and whether its college-aged users – once the exclusive user base – is migrating somewhere new.

I think the site has already seen its explosion into the 18-24 base and is now enjoying a similar explosion in the 55+ area. If it had started out as a 55+ exclusive user base we’d witness the same trend in reverse, with 55+ growing slowly and 13-24 blossoming. This is because there is a finite number of people in each age range and the growth cannot continue to multiply at the same rate forever.

It would be interesting to see another study exploring the seeming exodus of college students. The site is growing in college-enrolled users at half the rate it did last year. Graduation should not be a factor because just as many incoming students can be expected to replace the grads. Are the students removing their college affiliation from their page? Or are college students deactivating their accounts on a massive scale?

I have a GreaseMonkey script installed which tracks my Facebook friends and alerts me when one is no longer my friend. Sometimes this means they deleted me as a friend and sometimes it means they’ve deactivated their account. They each seem to be happening at a rate of about 12 friends per month, out of 723 total friends. This trend implies that 20% of my friends are deactivating their accounts each year, though my GreaseMonkey script does not tell me how many of them reactivate their accounts. That is a surprisingly high number, but it doesn’t do much to explain the overall 55% drop in college-enrolled users.

Intro to Online Communities 1/11/10

Our first class kicked off with a fantastic speaker, Jeff Cole, Director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg.

He communicated a lot of info in a relatively short period of time about the evolution of mainstream media and what to expect in the near- and mid-term future.

Topics included:

• Traditional media falling apart due to its delayed schedule and lack of options
• Music business changing greatly, from year’s most popular albums selling 30 million copies down to just 3 million today
• Dying platforms requiring advertising changes
• The effect internet penetration and bandwidth access have on TV and print media viewing
• Evolution of popular social networks in the 2000′s
• Impending consolidation of print media
• Possible future of radio and education
• Significance of branding, addressability and privacy in modern advertisement
• The power of mass word-of-mouth through Twitter and other social networks

Interesting facts and questions included:

• Consumers now demand updates every 30-60 seconds
• Is a bundle of 12 tracks still the best way to market music?
• Walter Annenberg sold TV Guide to Rupert Murdock in 1990 for $3 billion (and we in the class directly benefit)
• In 1975 90% of viewing was on 3 TV channels
• Now 90% of viewing is on 15 websites
• Teens today are more interested in news than ever before
• Indian internet penetration is only 9% so newspapers are still booming
• When penetration reaches 30% newspaper sales will plummet
• PVR (e.g. Tivo) is used by 30% of Americans; how can you still engage PVR users in advertisements?
• Not much difference between internet use by dial-up users and people with no internet, but a huge difference between dial-up and broadband
• Teens don’t want to be on the same social network as their parents
• Biggest group of social network users are aged 60-70 (though I highly doubt this stat)
• In 2008 55% of young people said their online communities are as important as ones IRL (in real life)
• In the near future students will learn intro level college subjects from the best professors in the world via digital courses
• If the digital advertising model fails we’ll have to pay for digital content in the future

We heard about clicker.com to find TV shows on the web and Telepresence for life-size video conferencing. We also heard from APOC grads about twiistup.com and kasamamedia.com.

Welcome to my tech blog, Jesse.LA!

Hello and welcome to my blog. I’m Jesse Wilson and I’m enrolled in the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Program on Online Communities seeking a Master’s in Communication Management.

I just registered jesse.la to be my new tech blog and use for my class, CMGT 534 – Introduction to Online Communities.

Dot-LA domains were originally intended as the top level domain (TLD) for Laos, but its official registry site now claims, “Los Angeles is the world’s first city to be awarded its own unique internet address: .LA”

The advantage to a Dot-LA name is that they’re still widely available and hyperlocal. If you want to register a dot-LA domain, I recommend using 000domains.com with coupon code “confirm10″ to get the price down to $31.49 a year, excluding hosting.

Then I installed Google Apps which allows me to use a Gmail webmail interface and many other Google services under my own jesse.la identity. And now I’m using Blogger to administer the site’s content, though I might later install my own CMS such as WordPress, PHPNuke, Joomla or Drupal, all of which I’ve experimented with in the past.

Thanks for your visit and I look forward to educating my readers on CMGT 534 and the world of online communities and tech news.