All feedback is good feedback… especially when it’s from Tim O’Reilly! - retweetradar.com

December 28, 2008 – 9:07 am

Saturday afternoon Robert Scoble sent out a simple tweet letting people know he popped up on the retweetradar (much appreciated Robert!), we had been talking about use of interesting metadata, for instance retweeted information, possibly being used to rank quality posts on Twitter in the comments of his blog posts about a better Twitter Search.

Twitter tweet from scobleizer

Then out of the blue I see Robert received a tweet back from Tim O’Reilly with feedback on retweetradar!

Twitter tweet from timoreilly

I read it, thought about it, and you know he was right on… the mixing of terms, people and links made the cloud too busy and “people” were not the topic of the tweets they we just authors and interested parties… I needed to jump to work couldn’t waste my chance to show Tim and the many others showing attention yesterday what could be done.

I reworked the interface so “people” and “links” had their own area but were still prominent and displayed the top ten of each among a few other minor tweaks. I let Tim know I made some changes, not expecting a response, but par for the course on this odd day I got one! Tim responded that the tool was now more useful to him.

Twitter tweet from timoreilly

I sent a tweet thanking Tim for taking any time to look at my little app and then sent him the link to my previous post on retweetradar’s launch. I wanted him to understand this wasn’t supposed to be a technical feat but that I was trying to evangelize the use of the amazing tools we have at out fingertips today to create anything we like on the web, in this instance Google App Engine and Open APIs. Suffice it to say Tim got it, as the father of the real concept of Web 2.0 should!

Twitter tweet from timoreilly

Quite a day indeed… one for the books…
-Ben

By Ben | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (4)

retweetradar.com - One days work from concept to launch with Google App Engine… Scobleized!

December 22, 2008 – 12:09 pm
retweetradar.com

So I was getting a little restless and decided to work on another Google App Engine app, this time without all the Python learning curve and with some real world experience with the Google tools under the belt from http://spy.appspot.com. The goal was to see how fast I could go from concept to useful application leveraging a few of the revolutionary tools we all have at our fingertips today. In the end with about one days work an app was released, likely with a few bugs, but some fun things happened and I believe a bit of foreshadowing of the future of building web apps.

The Concept

I had an idea that I really wanted to extract meaning from a large-ish set of social media messages in near real time and visually trend it over time, showing topics heating up in conversations even while still slightly off the conventional news radar. We’ve all seen lately the groundswell social media conversation routinely outpacing tradition broadcast media in speed and openess of accounting, this app would be yet another way to put your finger on that pulse.

The class of information that looked interesting was “retweets” in other words messages where Twitter users were quoting someone else’s post, essentially saying they liked it, or spreading the word. Tech blogger Robert Scoble called out the same last Friday saying “[Retweets] …by the way, great place to find news!”

The How

mashup

So now to the how, obviously Google App Engine was my choice for delivering this application, it’s ease of access, familiar development environment, ease to scale and obvious lack of initial cost make it a winner — Paul McDonald and Tom Stocky being very great folks to talk to, among other Googlers on the App Engine team I am sure, helps as well.

Next I needed the information, Twitter’s great search API acquired with the Summize purchase makes pulling tweets in near real time a non event. Now the value add, the real magic in the idea was to pull relevant information from the tweets and trend them, for that the lesser known Yahoo Term Extraction API was chosen, it’s simple interface, reliability and quality results. So the parts were chosen… we have the ability to capture social media posts, process out key terms, save, count and display them on the web… very nice. So in the equivalent of one days work over the last two days I took these parts and pieces, shook them up with jQuery and released http://retweetradar.com to the world.

The Outcome

The outcome was astounding http://www.retweetradar.com launched publicly via a Tweet and FriendFeed posts at around 8pm CST on Saturday, given the work done on Friday and Saturday certainly no greater than one common work day from start to launch. Once Sunday came around I tweeted the news to a few folks, Dan Zarrella was one he has done work on the data behind viral messaging on Twitter another of note was Robert Scoble to close the loop on his tweet about the value of retweets… then things took and unexpected turn… an inconspicuous but cool “like” came in from Scoble on Friendfeed.

Screenshot-Ben Hedrington - FriendFeed - Mozilla Firefox

Next thing I know Robert Scoble is using me as an example in a great blog post about events the mainstream media and even Internet media miss…

Robert says:

I love developers who try new things out. Check this out. Is this on TechMeme? No. Plus using Google’s App Engine, which is another trend we’re tracking: cloud computing.

I couldn’t agree more with the topic of that blog, even if I wasn’t involved! You did read it right?

This isn’t about launching another web app…

The fact this is possible is the real star here, the ability for anyone to bring an idea to the web in a highly reliable and scalable way for little to no initial investment shows a bright light toward the future… folks used to say the same for picking up some shared hosting for $5.95 and knocking out some PHP but realistically that app tipped over the second it saw real traffic and was hard to say whether it would be up day by day based on the other people, number of whom soaring each month, who shared your hardware.

Google App Engine and Open APIs clearly show where the web is going, the playing field is leveled… get out there and deploy those ideas you say you have scrawled on those napkins that you say are going to revolutionize the world, the tools you need to prove it are out there right now.

So, draw your own conclusions to the viability of my new app retweetradar – No, please do! Contact me with feedback on whether it is useful and any ideas to make it better – it’s really not a huge concern long term… but I don’t believe it is possible to argue that these tools be it social media, cloud computing or whatever you want to call them are truly leveling the playing field, flattening the world and company hierarchies and making whatever the future of the web will be possible for anyone.

By Ben | Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (6)

’spy’ makes “15 Useful Google App Engine Applications” on LouisGray.com!

December 4, 2008 – 8:35 pm
Google App Engine

My little Social Media ’spy’ application http://spy.appspot.com makes “15 Useful Google App Engine Applications” on LouisGray.com written by Mike Fruchter! I just slid in there at 15… hoping to keep plugging along adding useful features and using ’spy’ to expose more and more folks to the value of Social Media.

Google App Engine really does make it possible to kick out an idea out into the world delivering scalability, quality and efficiency right out of the gate. I hope developers continue to discover it’s power, Python and Django are nothing to be afraid of in fact I really value learning them.

Thanks again to Mike and Louis!

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’spy’ing on Mumbai? Floored that my little app can help…

November 27, 2008 – 9:33 pm
spy Usage

As Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Dan Farber of CNet and many others have reported Twitter and social media in general are playing a huge part in receiving accurate and timely information from the crisis in Mumbai.

While not in those leagues, in the last twenty four hours I’ve received notice of a number of posts written by bloggers looking to help people keep an eye on the events unfolding in Mumbai in real time and linking to http://spy.appspot.com/find/#Mumbai some of them written by people with family and friends too near to the events… I am floored… Read More »

By Ben | Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

Best Buy: I Spy Twitter - Social Media Efforts at Best Buy and My App ’spy’ Featured in the Pioneer Press!

November 23, 2008 – 2:08 pm

Julio Ojeda-Zapata technology writer and columnist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and author of twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your company wrote a nice piece today in the Sunday Pioneer Press titled “To twit or not?” [Update: PDFs here] about three Minnesota companies finding some success on Twitter excited to see one of them was Best Buy.

Julio captures well a few of our early efforts namely @BestBuyTulsa221 and other folks in our stores Tweeting to help customers, @jbweb using Twitter to find others in the company passionate about projects she is working on crossing existing hierarchies effortlessly and @BestBuyCMO shows the power of open thinking and openness to feedback all the way at the top. Really exciting stuff, and I love the sub headline “Best Buy: I Spy Twitter” couldn’t be more perfect!

I am personally excited Julio specifically calls out the ideas behind my work on the application ’spy’ (more on why I created ’spy’ here) and how we used it to display Best Buy buzz on in the “Hub” of our headquarters, exposing everyone to the Social Media conversation and it’s relevance to our business. I believe, especially in economies like today’s, finding new ways to tune into the conversation around your company can only help you focus on the right things and solve customers problems more quickly.

Thanks to Julio and the Pioneer Press for great coverage of our early efforts hopefully there will be more fun to report as this whole space moves forward, I know I am not stopping here.

This may be a bit self promotional but capturing Julio’s ’spy’ coverage here:

Ben Hedrington, a Web developer for the company’s BestBuy.com division, is such a Twitter fanatic that he created a new way to troll the twitterverse — along with other “social media” services such as FriendFeed and Flickr — via a built-from-scratch search engine he has christened “Spy” (spy.appspot.com).

Though fashioned in Hedrington’s spare time, Spy became an instant Best Buy hit. At one point, a big screen in Best Buy’s vast main lobby had Spy displaying the latest Best Buy-related buzz on Twitter. Spy has come in handy for Best Buy-related events, too. A screen behind the speakers is typically present, displaying a rolling series of event-specific tweets so staffers not physically present are able to chime in on discussions by using their Twitter accounts.

Even Barry Judge, Best Buy’s chief marketing officer, has Spy running in his office so he’ll know what is being said about his company on Twitter. Judge, a recent Twitter convert, said the service complements his blog and is a good way to gauge customer sentiment while speaking directly to his clientele in a way that feels genuine.

When Best Buy recently botched a phased rollout of a rewards-card program (meant to initially target 1,000 folks, it was e-mailed to about 7 million instead), Judge used his “BestBuyCMO” Twitter feed as well as his blog for mea culpas.

“Full transparency was helpful for maintaining trust,” Judge said. “Twitter gave me that visibility.”

By Ben | Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

How To: Install and Browser Test Your Site With Google Android Right on Your PC

November 21, 2008 – 10:16 pm

Browser testing is critical to any web developer, designer… really any web professional. You need to know how your users or customers are seeing your work through the multitude of browsers and devices available to them, new ones become available every day. I wasn’t able to find a quick answer to browser testing on the new Google Android mobile platform so I blazed a trail, captured and boiled down the steps so anyone can follow and get Android up and running on their Windows PC quickly and painl.

Installing the SDK and Browser

  1. First things first visit the Android SDK download page and download the Windows version of the SDK.
  2. Create a folder under C:\Program Files called “android-sdk”
  3. Un-zip the contents of the Android SDK you downloaded into this folder.
    Read More »

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Reading Age of Conversations 2: Why Don’t They Get It? - Great Format, Great Content

November 2, 2008 – 9:17 pm

Thanks to a quick lead via Chris Brogan I ran across in my FriendFeed I picked up the eBook version of Age of Conversations 2: Why Don’t They Get It?… now I never do this… I am not big on “real” books, I mean I read all day and night on the internet blogs, code, documentation but books, it’s not me…

So, you are saying to yourself, is this a book review from a guy who doesn’t read books? No… I am only 14 pages in but damn if this isn’t the most engaging a sharply pointed of anything I have read recently…. I needed to put down some thoughts and maybe engage possibly one other person to pick it up.

Different… How?

I tell you this is truly different, the “book” is written by 237 bloggers in digestible pieces on topic and on point, slicing through their points if view in a page or less, blog post style. Read More »

By Ben | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Paving a Path to the Truly Mobile Web: Mozilla Fennec Alpha 1 Released

October 20, 2008 – 8:30 pm

My back story: I recently got into a friendly argument with some Mobile experts on a RWW Live: Mobile App Development call, I threw on my rosy colored glasses and spoke of a time where the Mobile web browser has access to device features like GPS, Contacts, etc we could leverage what we learned on the web and build even cooler more contextual and helpful Mobile Web apps that worked everywhere… and was told maybe… someday… but for the foreseeable future we’ll be building our apps 20+ times and asking carriers permission to do so (listen to the MP3, really!)… well the news today strikes me well, the glasses are rosy again!

Mozilla has the Vision

Today Mozilla fires the first shots across the bow of the future Mobile web Read More »

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Can Making Social Media a Spectator Sport Move it to the Mainstream? - Why I Created spy.appspot.com.

August 5, 2008 – 9:23 am

There is much conversation among bloggers lately about targeting early adopters versus the mainstream, as Scoble would say the passionates versus the non-passionates, should we be excited when the early adopters love our product or service but the masses don’t understand it?

No, we shouldn’t we need to find ways that show the value of what we do to the mainstream otherwise we’ll be here talking to ourselves for years… how can we create that passion, or at least show ours?

The creation of my Google App Engine project ‘spy‘ has created a wave of conversation Read More »

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Responsible Corporate Laptop Stickering!

May 29, 2008 – 7:41 pm

So lets say you are a web guy at a big mid-western corporation and you at the Web 2.0 Expo this year and pick up a handful of cool stickers, then you see folks like Scoble (Mac, PC) and everyone up in the Blogtropolus with their laptops stickered end to end… you need to use those stickers… Read More »

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