Marie-Lynn Richard

Klout is a strange social network that claims to calculate your social reach. However, the way it works is dubious to me. Take into account this laughable pop-up that grants me a ‘Klout Addict’ achievement for accessing the site THREE (3) times! If this wasn’t funny, I would be insulted. Not only is this ‘achievement’ entirely self-serving for Klout, it’s completely ludicrous! I only access Klout to keep an eye on its continuing self-destruction. I have a Klout score of 42, which I have not dissected to understand why but it gives me access to a lot of ‘perks’ which are interesting to dissect. In fact, Klout’s ability to provide perks to strategically influencial social media users is its ONLY commercial value (see below).

I am in no way influential in social media because most of my social media activity is directed ONLY to my Facebook friends 75% of whom are people I really know. All of my social media efforts are aimed at getting my clients and friends efficient at blogging and tweeting. My higher Klout score cannot even count in the fact that I have been driving online communities for 20 years. In fact as I use precious little spare time I have right now to make portfolios of my online activities I smile at my eBay and Etsy feedback which are tied to actual commerce and not only lip service! But since Klout offers achievements based on a user’s activities promoting themselves and Klout, it cannot be a sincere and accurate measure of one’s influence. In a perfect world, influence is measured regardless of the subject’s (or their staff’s) efforts at brand promotion.

Also, I hate how Klout uses my Facebook friends list to con me into adding Klout member who haven’t even signed-up for the service yet.

DISCLAIMER: I’ve been working on a vaguely similar concept as Klout since 2007. However, it is an idea propagation and influence measurement system that cannot be gamed by its subject, social media self-promoters or online celebrities. How Klout is viewed and used is of some scientific interest to me and I will continue to watch it.

I cannot wait to see what kind of achievement I will unlock in a few months when I log onto Klout for the FOURTH (4) time!

Example of a Perk offerred to users with a klout score of 35 or more.

Wahooly earns you equity

Wahooly and Klout have partnered to give a select group of influencers the opportunity to get a piece of the “next big thing”. 20,000 positions are exclusively available for Klout users with a score of 35 or higher.

Wahooly is making it possible for you to earn equity in emerging startups by using your influence as an investment.

Overview found here on January 11th, 2011. This is an interesting concept. However it seems to me that people with a Klout of 35 or more would already have, in their surroundings, plenty of aspiring start-up developers who can use their insight and help. This creates a much more interesting and valuable collaboration in the end.

I have been happy with my Powershot Pro 1 which I bought in June 2005. I paid a pretty penny for this camera, again around $1000. But then again that’s what I paid (and then some) for the two other Powershots I enjoyed before that since 1998. I enjoy small tiny things so I require the macro setting. At 8 megapixels, my old Powershot Pro 1 remained useful until recently when I tried to do action and indoor martial art photos. With only a moment to capture awesome shots, it was a catastrophe… So I decided to add another. After looking at the latest Powershot, I was disappointed because it felt so cheap compared to my heavy sturdy workhorse… So I went up a notch and got an entry level EOS Digital Rebel XS. Now I am a completely useless photographer so it will take a while for me to understand how to use this camera but I am already in love.

And because I m the queen of bad ideas, I decided to take my camera sport shooting in October, in a lake, while it’s raining cats and dogs. Some of the photos turned out great despite the gloomy gray weather. I love the portraits featuring real rain!

Russian Martial Art student Gabriel Charbonneau demonstrates a perfect Systema roll in 4 inches of water. Taken on October 2 at Plage du Cap-Saint-Jacques, Pierrefonds, Qc.

My spouse says I am the only one who can make him look cool. Stéphane Beaudin is a Systema Instructor (and Human Mobility Genius!)

All photos from the shoot are available on the Club Nagaika Facebook Page.

Years ago I took a great picture at a football game at Riverdale. It was the only good shot out of 100! I have moved back next to Riverdale and will try again, this time with my latest Canon.

Avec l’habitude de Facebook de faire toutes sortes de changements a leurs pages sans avertir les gestionnaires ou développeur ça peut devenir assez complexe de supporter des solutions créées spécifiquement pour Facebook! Mais depuis juin 2011, je développe activement des produits et frameworks qui permettent à mes clients de conduire différentes campagnes et même de publier sur Facebook AUTOMATIQUEMENT du contenu qui vient de leur site Web, catalogue de produit ou blogue sans qu’ils aient à travailler en double.

Dès le 1 octobre, Facebook requiert une version sécurisée de chaque onglet applicatif que vous avez sur votre page. Avec un grand nombre de personnes qui accèdent Facebook en https, il deviens primordial de supporter la connection sécurisée dans tous nos tabs.

J’ai installé un serveur dédié avec certificat SSL seulement pour les applications Facebook afin de permettre à tous mes clients d’être à jours et toutes les pages seront migrées d’ici le 22 septembre.

Si vous désirez migrer vos applications de page vers une plateforme conforme à cette nouvelle politique vous devez réserver votre transfert entre le 14 et le 22 septembre via le bouton inclus dans cette page. Ceci est valide pour les ‘fan gates’, formulaires, pages de bienvue et tout autre contenu en PHP qui utilise le framework Facebook et non les tabs FBML.

En réservant votre place sur le calendrier de migration, vous obtenez l’hébergement en version standard et SSL pour un an (75$/an) ainsi que le service de transfert et ré-installation de vos contenus. Il se peut que je puisse récupérer du contenu que vous avez perdu (depart d’employé ou fin de support du developpeur.) En prime vous aurez accès en primeur aux différents services que je développe en étiquette branche pour différentes agences. Il est important de noter que je vais vous contacter dans les 24 heures pour une consultation et ensuite accepter le mandat ou rembourser votre paiement car j’ai un nombre limité de places et certaines applications ne peuvent être incluses dans ce budget ‘on-size fits most’. Veuillez inclure l’URL de votre contenu ainsi que vos coordonnée ainsi que votre téléphone jour, ou soir s’il-y-a-lieu.

Si vous voulez implanter la solution technique la plus simple et pratique à supporter et nourir pour votre équipe de média social, vous devez réserver à l’avance mon temps. En date d’aujourd’hui je prévois avoir du temps après le 5 octobre 2011.

Cependant, vous pouvez passer par ma collègue Marjolaine Buteau de Kumulus Marketing pour tous vos besoins en stratégie média social et je pourrai contribuer à l’analyse de vos besoins technologiques dans la procédure de consultation!

I joined certain networks pretty late. I was never really in a rush. But when I joined Facebook and started working on Organizational Network Analysis projects in 2007, I started watching influence spread across social media. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are three networks who are propagating through regions and societies at varying rate and often it’s visible and measurable. Like when cool black people got smartphones and left MySpace to form a really interesting (and funny) culture of #hashtag memes on Twitter. It was in late 2009 when the volume of flirting Twitter accounts of urban people in their early 20s went way up. We, founding twitter nerds, noticed because of trending topics. This culture existed before, but MySpace blinks every which way and it’s impossible to read or study for the most part. It was a game changer when a big chunk of non nerdy society hopped onto Twitter to socialize and hook up using their cell phone. It may not have happened so fast had celebrities not bought into Twitter 6 months earlier. That even indicated the mobile tipping point, as in, I better make a mobile version of all my e-commerce websites!! Adoption rates and user movements across social media platforms are very telling of technology adoption but also INFLUENCE MECHANICS.

I was added to Google+ on day one by a Syster and received my official invitation on day 2. This afforded me an awesome first row seat to witness how people around me influence each other.

My ONA project became my big startup idea and I am still working on it. I have already bootstrapped two complete SaaS systems that were released to happy users but were never financed in 2001 and 2002. One was a plug-in for eBay (I still have my eBay developer hat) and the other was an eLearning system that created a study calendar based on your own time constraints. The idea was that not all people have the same amount of time to devote to their business building effort so the virtual teacher’s assistant would engage you in the program on a personalized schedule. So after 7-8 years of baby raising (and struggles with mobility after my car accident) I still have my startup brewing on the computer and it would seem that everything that happens seems to confirm that it’s a good idea. One of the awesome features of my social network is that it tracks influence across people on many levels. I am sure Facebook, Twitter and Zynga have teams devoted to studying the sharing map across the world. And it would seem Google+ is also interested in this science. In fact, Google+ invites are doled out based on social graph and influence. The larger your graph (as it is visible to Google through search results, Buzz and Gmail activity and publicly available sources like Twitter and (possibly) Friendfeed) are taken into consideration to rank who gets invited to Google+ (Okay I am just saying this based on what I WOULD DO given that I have access to about 50% of this info, but also based on observations.) I’v been scrutinizing Google since day 1 and I’m not going to stop now!

This week I was able to witness social media influence first hand, when I was added to Google+ on day one by a Syster and received my official invitation on day 2. This afforded me an awesome first row seat to witness how people around me influence each other. How technology celebrities influence each other. How social media celebrities change and sometimes pollute everything. On day 5, after a week of intense programming and bidding, I started really using Google+ myself.

I like Google+, and it’s ironic filter bubbles (circles). To me it’s not at all like Facebook but it’s an antidote to two sites I use but kinda loathe Twitter (noisy) and LinkedIn (low engagement). LinkedIn is not quite there as far as interface is concerned but it is a HIGHLY effective system that allows executives to find me and hire me. But the social part of it sucks and its groups are full of self promoters. Twitter is just so noisy and only valuable to celebrities (I should know, a celebrity friend gets a lot of traction from her tweeting and will be able to use it to directly influence her career.) I will be using my Google+ account to follow technologists, trend setters, VCs, influencers, peers and colleagues. It’s not a really place for friends, but I am following Tom Anderson just the same even though he never followed me because I actively avoided MySpace. As long as Google+ remains populated by geeks and it helps me avoid certain people who gunk up the works so that time wise it results in me learning from influencers who I really care about, then it will win out in the end for me.

And that’s really all I have to say about Google+ for now.

I have recently set up my Dropbox to run Xampplite for development on all my computers. Incidentally, this will also allow me to edit my localhost from my iPad. While I can’t run Apache on my iPad I can use it to maintain libraries of code for projects I am currently developing and if those libraries are housed in the Public folder than I can fetch them and install them to my Linode using Prompt.

I am currently working on a host of contest solutions for Facebook and Twitter in Québécois!! It is rather hard and expensive to localize English Facebook apps and they are horrendously expensive and kinda spammy. I decided to develop a white label with no spamming whatsoever for my clients. I will offer 4 types of contests including viral Twitter contests!!!

So after 3 months of doing mostly offline things and crafting I am back on programming projects at least 5 hours a day. But I enjoy being able to develop anywhere with the device I want to use. Whether it’s my netbook, my desk computer or my iPad. However, this morning I decided to see if I could build a website from scratch using only my iPad. I could have used Prompt and Nano’d my way to an application on my Linode but most people don’t have an unmanaged server or SSH ninja skills.

But you know how thrifty I am, it’s how I can afford my slacker lifestyle of doing whatever the f*&?ck I want while investing in my friends’ potential, learning new stuff, cooking my own food, cleaning this insane huge space, programming, making my own gifts and spending as much time with my spouse and child as humanly possible!!! So I went the ultra simple route using only free software on the iPad.

I sketched my Dropbox appreciation heart image using Live Sketch HD which can be cropped and resized using Adobe Photoshop Express. Then I used Nebulus Notes Lite (which easily syncs with DropBox) to edit my html in the Public folder. Not happy with the long winded Dropbox URL, I simply shortened it with bit.ly. I highly recommend this if you plan on giving contacts your URL. Plus it will allow you to track sharing and visits to your website.

So here’s my little one page demo @ http://bit.ly/MyDropboxWebsite.

This is not a complex and dynamic website, simply an html site than runs a bit of Javascript to spice things up. You are welcomed to look at the source code or download the whole thing.

How will I use this? Ever since I started programming, I have created dummy apps to show my clients or colleagues what it would look like finished. Doing this allowed me to explain how the app would work (in 1995, there was lots of ‘splaining to do) while getting usability feedback. Using my public Dropbox folder and my iPad, I can show clients digital mock-ups or and continue working on my apps. You see, I leave at 6am to take my daughter to school from Hochelaga to Pierrefonds (and back) and this takes 5 hours per day. My old Netbook can only muster 3 hours of juice hence why I enjoy more options.

So there you have it, free web hosting for your html website FOREVER!