Songza.com Listening to humanized music

I was excited when I discovered Pandora. I felt the same excitement when I read GigaOm's Blog post

The founder of this company Songza is 23 years old. You cannot download any songs just listen to them and of course buy them. Songza is a combination of a music search engine and a song jukebox. I punished it by bringing up names that are popular in the Asian music scene only and still Songza delivered. Songza has a lot of respect to the user's time so there is no registration , just open Songza.com and start listening.

I will be using this a lot in the coming days .

Looking at Flight wait times on a Map

TechnoSailor- Aaron Brazell posted this link on Twitter for flightwait.com.

I quickly compared the Flight Delays for BWI(Baltimore Washington International) with IAD ( Washington Dulles Airport) And there was a world of difference. BWI showed all green And IAD was almost all red, yellow and black. The colors denote the delays.

Green 0-15 minute delay
Yellow 15-60 minute delay
Red 1-2 hour delay
Black More than 2 hour delay

It is a good Google MAps mash up with Data provided by FAA. Very simple functionality - search by airport or by zip code. I put in my zip code and it did not ask me for my preferred airport (BWI) but defaulted to IAD.

If I am at airport and nothing to do I would be browsing this site

Help to find out who called you - Social media too

Social Media is all about people helping themselves and others by sharing knowledge. I was surprised to see a number on my caller id that i could not identify beyond the number. So I used Google and got a result at http://800notes.com.

The site lets you post your experience with unidentified callers and lets you search for others comments on that number. I think there is definitely a use for this. i would prefer companies identify themselves when calling so you do not have to investigate on your own. It's not a perfect world so I was happy that I found 800notes.com.

They have a form that lets you report numbers but I am not sure where. This site is a good idea and its a form of social media too.

Community Manager Role

While Community Manager Roles have extended for many years how do companies who are dealing with the new citizen journalism coping. What is the Community manager's role now. Where do you go for resources? Connie answers these questions in her post.


She along with Jeremiah Owyang are really helping by sharing their experiences and providing resources

read more | digg story

Small Business Survival Blog

I am visiting a cousin who is a small business in the NJ/NY area. Every year when we meet up we exchange tech thoughts and I give him tips on how to concentrate on running his business and get technology to work for him.

His questions this time were:

a) How to get automatic backup between his home computer and his home computer.
b) What anti virus software to use?
c) How to prevent BHO's from hijacking his browser?
d) How to migrate the dos program that his business has been using last 10 years.

I spent a few hours giving him some answers. I was happy to answer his questions because helping am ll business succeed is what I do at work.

I have been reading the Small business Survival Blog of Becky McCray . her Blog helps answer questions for Small businesses in rural areas and small towns get help. This is a great blog. It is a must read for small business. Becky McCray also has a Friday Brag Basket where anyone can post their brag or introduce themselves and gain help from her and her readers.

Added activity while driving

The term of the future is "hyperconnectivity' Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google has said that the first thing he does on the morning is check email.

I am tempted to check my mail the first thing on many days but its not to see if my millions have become billions, I am usually looking for new Twitter emails. Going back to the topi cof Hyperconnectivtiy I am connected everywhere I go to the Internet due to my T-Mobile Dash.

The only exception is while driving. I am averse to testing while driving. I do enjoy the convenience of Jott With Jott I can call Jott and speak my thoughts and Jott transcribes my voice (yes even my 'Southern" accent) and makes a text post on my Blog or on Twitter. IT has a great voice acitvated menu so you dont have to search for the "1" or "2" button on your phone to choose from the menu. Jott can also send emails to people on your Jott addressbook - A great feature for people like me who commute for 45min to 1 hr kne way each day.

Another cool program that lets you Blog while you drive is Utterz . You can call utterz and have it post to your blogs. Comments can be in the form of soundbytes fro your listeners and they can call in and listen to your utterz and respond.

I hope Utterz starts a voice activated menu so I can use them safely while driving and I am looking forward to the option of transciption. If I post to a blog or to Twitter I want them to see the messgae right there instead of another URL.

As I drove to New jersey from Maryland I used Jott to post to Twitter. As I reported the exit I passed Whitney of Ldpodcast.com even said I was close enough to join them for dessert. The real utility will be for other Twitter followers to see wherenthe slowdown is on the NJ Turnpike or if a reststop is out of food :).

Hyoerconnectivity is the way if the future. Whether we like it or not we will be communicating more with our kids using the internet even if they are at home on another floor .

LinkedIn - Some interesting Facts

• LinkedIn users average around 60 connections
  ( San Francisco-based executive headhunter Ron Bates has the most LinkedIn connections with 33,540 direct contacts)
• The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven( Source link below)
• Average user of LinkedIn probably belongs to at least 3 to 4 groups that are meaningful to their professional life.
• The average LinkedIn user is 39 and makes $139,000 a year.
• 89,000 are chief executive officers, and nearly half a million others occupy another job in the C-suite

Links to sources:

* http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html
* http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=groups_faq
* Smartcompany

Update:

A Valleywag post has the stat that in October Linkedin grew 189% vs. Facebook 125% .

Alarm:Clock post talks about the stats from Hitwise

Visits to LinkedIN are up 323% year-over-year, its still mostly used by early tech adopters.
Hitwise points to the prevalence of GMail users to show that LinkedIn is still primarily used by early adopters. Though Yahoo Mail is used in the US 10x more than GMail, Yahoo Mail users outnumber GMail users in LinkedIn by just 3-1.

Clay Newton took this a little further and posted interesting facts comparing a few sites like LinkedIn .

Charging The T Mobile Dash using USB

I am not sure if all cell phones can be charged using the Laptop USB connection - I love it that I can do that with the T Mobile Dash. Since I use the cell phone for email, twitter and facebook I can run the battery down pretty much in 3 to 4 hours if I am out of the home or office. PLugging the laptop in and doing work while the T-Mobile Dash recharges is a great convenience and i love it.


All it needs is a USB cord.

Point Blank stealing of Domain Names

This blog post is from a few months ago. But it is a very important issue for people to watch out for . This goes to show that you should be very careful where you buy or even search for your domain. This story needs to get a at lot of attention so I am Digging it again.

read more | digg story

Yahoo! Says the Future Will be Modeled on Facebook

always wondered what the Yahoo game plan in this space was. They may be losing executives but they must have some amazing homegrown talent that can come up with new ideas. The future of both email and start pages is in social networking, according to Yahoo, but what's really at issue here are two concepts that Yahoo execs didn't name explicitly, but which will be familiar to most of the readers here. RSS and Attention Data.

read more | digg story

Podcamp DC EDU - 11-10-07

Podcamp DC EDU - 11-10-07
Originally uploaded by Joel Mark Witt

Shashi Bellamkonda (me) Talking to Whitney Hoffman of LDPodcast a free weekly podcast/internet radio show about learning and learning disabilities.

Original Photo from Podcamp EDU 2007 Courtesy Joel Mark Witt

A Vision of Students Today - Students and how they absorb Information

Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University created this video and posted it to YouTube. The video has so far had 803,906 views since it was posted. I came across this video from Joel Mark Witt from Marylandzoo.tv who showed thsi video before his presentation at the PodCampEDU 2007 at the American university. Great video please spread it to friends.

Joel Mark Witt - very witty marylandzoo.tv

Community Participation in Action

Joe Mark Hewitt made everyone take their phones and cameras out and take video at the same time. here is the Video i took from my T-Mobile Dash. I am sure these will be available at a central location later.

Enjoy.

99 ways to promote your blog

A list of 99 different ways to promote your blog globally In the Social Media. Also read this article http://tinyurl.com/2fy2s9 which ategorizes all the Social Media sites in the World. Add new sites in the comments fields and I will update the blog posting.

read more | digg story

Joel mark hewitt Sure woke everyone - He is Witty

Look at MarylandZoo.tv to watch Joel Mark Hewitt ride camels.

PodcampDC2007

Newmediajim and Loren at podacampDC2007

GEosteph at podacmpDC2007

Notes from PodCampEDU2007

Amazing resource on Podcasting :http://davidwarlick.com/

Wiki for PodCampEdu2007 http://podcamp.pbwiki.com/PodCampEDU

Rods Pulse Podcast http://rod4jefferson.blogspot.com/

Tammy Munson at Podcamp EDU

Tammy Munson : PodTalkDivas.com

Website resources:

PodcastPickle.com
Phonecasting.com
Juice.com

Pod cast tools:
h2zone
Olympus ws200
flip

Tools:

Audacity
GarageBand

AudioAcrobat
Slabpcast.com

Podcast411.com
podcastingunderground.com
podcasting.about.com
podcasting4teachers.com

Andy Carvin talking at pPodcamp Edu 2007

Presentation from PodcampEDU2007b is at http://andycarvin.com/vlogging101/podcamp-edu.ppt

Andy Carvin's Blog
This is a more interesting Blog from Andy Carvin!

Great idea & You got there first ....Story of MobaSoft

I wrote about Chipin in a previous post. Today on Twitter Michael Bailey posted a link to his Blog and talked about his products and his struggle for launching them. Its a story that resonates with many of us who dream of building our own thing or have the next big idea or even just start our own business.

Is the formula for success being quick to market ? Should we wait for everyhting to be perfect or do we let users drive our features ? This is every online product innovators dilemma. Some have taken the risk and succeeded and some succeded without taking the risk.

Where will Mobasoft go ? You could turn this into a reality show and make this successful and shape the future for Mobasoft. You can chipin at http://www.mobasoft.com/wordpress/?p=161. Remember the guy who got $1M by making people buy a pixel on his homepage for $1.

ZDNET Review of the T-Mobile Shadow

T-Mobile Shadow sets the standard for Windows Mobile usability by ZDNet's Matthew Miller -- I was reading one of my favorite mobile sites, Mobility Site, and saw that NY Times writer David Pogue apparently had a chance to try out the T-Mobile Shadow and provided his thoughts. I am not quite sure how much time he actually spent with the device since I think he missed a few features [...]

I am going to strongly think about this phone when I replace my T-mobile Dash which has excellent value.

Blogged with Flock

Mobile post sent by shashib using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

FaceBook Business Pages

I was reading Jeremiah Owyang 's posting on the  Facebook Announcement yesterday. Jay answers some good questions. I think since he mentioned that they had a Foresster page established but not yet published it gives you the opportunity for corporations to start building a page but not yet publish it.


Corporates please take note of Jeremiah 's Quote :
"Please, before you rush in and create a Facebook page for your company, consider the overall strategy, and use the POST methodology that we prescribe: People, Objectives, Strategy, and then finally Technology."

 I have some questions that I did not find answered on Facebook or other sites:

How should corporations deal with  Abusive comments and outright spam?
Should corporations turn the wall off ? What are the ramifications?
Will corporations have the ability to delete comments or moderate them?

Anyone care to answer them? This may be helpful for anyone wating to answer the question.

Blogged with Flock

Collecting Money from your group -Chipin.com

My friend Steve Dembo is doing a very noble thing. He is raising money from his online and off line friends for Habitat for Humanity . Extremely noble motive and a great thing to do. What is amazing is that he is using Chipin.com to make it easy for anyone to make a contribution.

Please visit his Blog and make a contribution

Chipin gives you the option of a target for fund raising and by answering a few basic questions you are good to start collecting money for a noble cause.

1. What's the purpose of your ChipIn?
2. How much money do you need to collect?
3. When do you need the money by?
4. How would you like to collect your money?

You can get widgets that you can add to a blog or website . You can even embed the ChipIn widget on MySpace, Typepad, Blogger, and Netvibes. I believe Chipin has a FacebookApp too.

Chpin uses Paypal to collect the money and gives you a dashboard to check the progress of your goals.

Mobile post sent by shashib using Utterz. Replies.
What is Utterz? You can start podcasting from your phone using Utterz. You can participate in the network and reply to anyone else's Utterz or create your own group and exchange views. The cool thing is the ability to do this independent of your PC.

If it is a weekend or night and you have unlimited night and weekend minutes you will like using the feature to listen to everyone's Utterz. I liked listening to the Utterz Topic of the day and the responses while driving.

What I do not like about it : The prompts are all numbers without the voice option. While driving and using Bluetooth I would rather be able to say "1" or "6" in my "southern accent" than try to manipulate keyboard on my T Mobile Dash. That is probably illegal if i cross the DC line.

It is a great tool and has a lot of uses in the social media. using Utterz I post directly to the audio portion of this post.

What does the Google Android Announcement Mean to you ?

I have been complaining about the restrictions on cellphones in the US by the cellphone companies a lot. I probably should be happy with today's announcement of a Open Phone Operating system.

Everyphone has a Operating System that runs the phone just like Windows runs PCs. If you have a phone with an internet connection the chances are that your phone has one of these operating systems:

Symbian, Palm, Openwave, Windows Mobile.

Google has announced that it will introduce the Android OS with its partners in a Open HAndset Alliance( Both Phone companies and device manufacturers will use for cellphones) Google, T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola, Sprint and others. The phones with this platform will be available in the Summer of 2008.

So if you are in the market for a phone today go right ahead and buy it. 3 Billion people already use Mobile devices (http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/8528.html).

When Android is established by the end of 2008 - the other factors not changing ( example : Microsoft coming up with a cooler operating system) you may be able to install widgets that developers can develop at their whim. There could be a mashup application of your Twitter buddies GPS/Google maps and twitter to show you how many twitter buddies are in the same bar as you.

There is no end to innovation- payment by phone, scanning RIFDs on your phone, taking your Pandora preferences with you. poking someone automatically on their Facebook profile as you pass their city :) anything is possible. Since this is a open platform the cost of devices may even reduce as there may not be a license fee.

You have atleast a year to dream about what apps will be the coolest for your phone.

Startup Related exciting articles In Today's Washington Post

The Washington Post has two exciting articles. one was on the start up week end and the other is about the start ups in general in the DC area - very interesting to read. listen

Building a Community Byte By Byte

Web's New Field of Dreams Emerges in D.C

Powered by Jott

Flock New Social Media Browser

When I first tried Flock I had given up on them. When they came back with their latest avatar they have done a good job. Flock is a free makes it easy to connect with your social media sites and your RSS feeds.

When I open flock i have my Flickr photos running as a loop on top ( I can choose any Flickr feed or a random feed) I have a side bar called "My World" that gives me access to my accounts that I have specified for example : Blogs, Twitter....

When Flickr sees a page with a media element or a feed its tells me with a subtle message on my browser window and the coolest thing about it is the "Sow me how " button . Clicking it will present the button in such a obvious manner. This is the friendliest design I have seen in any web application.

There are a couple of plug-ins that I have to check. Off technology it seems like the flock guys are absolutely plugged-in. They have a community ambassador Evan . You can actually contact him by AIM, Skype, GTalk or email. I did give him a shout to give him some feedback and had a great time chatting with him.

Flock has potential to give the large browsers a run for their money. Maybe Google will buy them and roll the features into Mozilla or Microsoft. In the old days Microsoft may have bought them and killed the browser but if they do a acquisition now they will probably kill IE and adopt the new technology.

A new browser is both a gamble and smart play. It will be tough to run against the adoption of IE, Firefox and Opera so I would suggest Flock be positioned as the extra browser on your desktop that you will use for your social media play.