The Paisano®
Renaissance 2.0

Steve Jobs and Apple can sell anything.

This comic strip is part of an on-going series called I.T. Happens. Here’s the entire series.

While decorating the exterior of the Casa Di Pai for Christmas I came up with this little ditty.
Hope you like it. If you don’t know what Twitter is then well …sawry.

On the first tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
an invite to a startup.

On the second tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

On the third tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

On the fourth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

On the fifth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

 
On the sixth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

On the seventh tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

 

On the eighth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

On the ninth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

 

On the tenth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Ten sites a-loading,
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

On the eleventh tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Eleven bloggers blogging,
Ten sites a-loading,
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup.

On the twelfth tweet of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Twelve spammers spamming,
Eleven bloggers blogging,
Ten sites a-loading,
Nine Stalkers stalking,
Eight babes a-chatting,
Seven guys a-flirting,
Six geeks a-coding,
Five Facebook Apps,
Four Twitter bots,
Three Friendfeeds
Two Failin’ Whales,
And an invite to a startup!

Happy Holidays everybody!

Pai

I guess anyone or anything can get into trouble online if not careful.

This comic strip is part of an on-going series called I.T. Happens. Here’s the entire series.

I did a post recently for Mashable called “40 Great Resources for Making Lists” where I covered a slew of services that bring smiles to the faces of anal retentive types like myself. As with any post on a big blog, there were a bunch of great links shared in the comments. I’ve combined my 40 links with the ones shared in the comments along with new ones that I’ve found since the post went to press. So, consider this List Master the ultimate list of list services.

We like to keep all kinds of lists; wish lists, checklists, lists of lists… you get the picture. In this roundup we will focus on services specializing in wish lists (things we want) and checklists (things we want to get done). Using these mobile and web-based tools you can keep track of daily tasks, build your reading list, organize your holiday gift giving, and more.

***Now in Alphabetical order!***

 

Wish lists

Amazon - The grandaddy wish list keeper of them all now supports all other sites thanks to their universal wish list button.

BoxedUP - Real time listing of new items added to wish lists is unique, but is it useful? The ability to show what you already bought and own is nice for youngsters who want to show off their stuff.

ComicScout – List maker for comic book collectors

GiftBox Home - Similar to boxed up and the easiest to use, but its interface is not as slick as the other newcomers.

Kaboodle – Fun shopping service with list management

MyFavz - One of the newest wish list sites. We recently covered it here on Mashable.

My IT Things - Not to be confused with MyThings.com. It offers some nice widgets to show off your lists.

MyThings - Its unique feature is the ability to get ratings and feedback from others for any gift ideas you have.

ReQall - Create shopping lists, wish lists and more. View them on your iPhone with free app too.

No More Notebooks – Add items form any shopping list and share it

Twizon – Where twitter meets Amazon

Wisheo - Specializes in group gifts, which sets the site apart from many of the others.

WishList – Cut from the original post by editors because it didn’t look like a web 2.0 service.

Wishli.st – Slick list site

Wishlistr - Slick list maker that you can share with others. Includes rss feed of lists.

WishPot - Has the most modern web 2.0 look and feel, as well as social networking features that let you share lists. Another strong feature is the ability to send ideas for gifts from your cell phone right to your wishpot account.

Wists - Another strong web 2.0 site with nice options to embed your wish lists on your blog or website.

Checklists, To Do Lists & More

These list makers can be used to track things you’d like to buy, but more often they’re used to keep track of places to visit, people to meet, things to do before kicking the bucket, etc.

22Books - Tracks books you’ve read or want to read or own.

43Things - Lets you lists your goals in life and connects you to others who have either already achieved those goals or who are also currently pursuing the same goals.

43People - A sibling site to 43things, only geared towards people you want to meet instead of things to do.

43Places - The natural sibling site to 43things, only for places you want to go instead of things to do.

MyAnimeList – lists for Anime and manga community

Blist – More an online database builder but great for lists

Blippr – List your favorite music, movies, books and more.

Checkvist – Quick way to create checklists

DoitDoitDone – really simple to do service

Doominow - Adobe Air desktop app that tracks your tasks.

EverNote – The ever popular EverNote that does it all. Great iPhone App too.

FlexLists - Looks and feels more like an online database than just a list maker.

Gubb – Track reminders and make lists

HipCal – Calendar and task management service

HiTask – Group task management system

IWantSandy – personal assistant that reminds you what to do

Jott – More of a note manager but it can work with lists online and on the cell phone.

LifeTango – A Bucket list manager

ListaGator - Offers unique ability to turn lists into RSS feeds. You can share any list as well.

Listingly – Lots to do with this to do list manager

Lino - Unique to do lists on sticky notes that you share online on a big corkboard.

ListPhile - Lists with database capabilities. Lots of possibilities with groups.

List After List - Includes unique wiki list creator that lets anyone edit/contribute to your list.

Monkey on Your Back – Why not get a hairy assistant to remind you about what to do?

Nozbe - Not just a task manager but a project management system as well (up to 5 projects for free).

NutShell – Manage notes and tasks while doing research online

onZiList - List your top 11 (not 10?) items.

PlanZone – Project manager type of service

Qlubb – Task management for groups (sorta like Ning)

Remember The Milk -The popular task manager that can snap into Gmail or work on its site. See below for the iPhone app.

Seekler - Mostly just displays lists of people’s favorite things.

Stickified – use sticky notes to get organized

Stuffable - Mostly a place to show off your, well, stuff. Gives people a good idea of what you’re into.

Task2gether – Interesting concept of tasks with groups

TaskBin – Sharable task lists for groups

Taskee – Great to do list for groups of developers working on websites

TaDa List - Very simple but powerful to do lists from 37Signals. ***Pai’s Pick***

Toodledo – Powerful task and project management service

Treedolist – Tree view of lists

Tweeto – twitter task manager

Utterli – More of a micro-blogging platform but it works great on cell phones to record to do lists and such.

Vitalist - Collaborate with others on tasks and projects.

Voo2Do - Does things differently than the rest in this group. Allow you to link tasks to projects and tracks tasks by due date, priority and time estimates. It has a good collaboration feature and a nice interface.

Worst3 - Mostly just for laughs, you can share lists of the best 3 and worst 3 things you can think of.

Wridea - Also offers RSS feeds and shareable lists.

Zirr.us – Brain dump capturing for notes and tasks

Zoho Creator – Create Web Apps for tracking lists and more

 

List Making Apps for the iPhone

Christmas List - Create your own Santa list and manage Christmas gifts.

EverNote: Free app that works with the web version in realtime

Holiday Gift List - Gift list manager for any holiday.

Remember The Milk - The popular online service now has an app for your iPhone. Read our previous coverage here.

ToDo List - Free app to track all your to do items.

To Do’s - Yet another free to do list tracker.

 

List Apps for Other Mobile Devices

ToDo List Matrix - BlackBerry app to track tasks.

QuickList - Free list maker for Google’s Android OS such as the T-Mobile G1 phone.

TooDo - Another free to do list app for Android.

ShopSavvy - Barcode app for the Android G1. See the video below to learn more:

Google continues to improve Gmail with new tweaks and features. The recent themes addition didn’t seem like a big deal to me because after all it’s just a cosmetic enhancement, right? Wrongo! By simply playing with the themes I stumbled across a benefit that I didn’t expect at all. It suddently made everything seem clearer and easier to identify visually. Perhaps I need to get my eyes checked or something, but that’s besides the point. I think allowing your users to customize their experience of a service is brilliant.

Customize Your Workspace

Go to Settings and click on Themes to see the wide variety of choices you have at your disposal. Clicking each one instantly changes things so you can sample what it looks like.

Personally, I like the Desktop best.

Environmentally Conscious Graphical User Interface?

There’s an interesting theme called Tree which takes a queue from iGoogle’s theme approach to things. Once you select the Tree theme it asks where you are located because it will actually change its appearance based on different factors reguarding your location. For example, if it’s daytime, then your Gmail will be brighter, if it’s night time then it will be darker. It also taps into the local weather and will display a wet look if it’s raining outside. It’s rather interesting to think that our themes can work with our external environments this way. This will be a trend that continues everywhere.

Widgets, Gadgets and plugins, oh my!

On top of all this, Google keeps adding more cool stuff in their labs area. When you click on Settings, click Labs to its left to see all of the goodies just sitting there. It’s amazing just how many options we have there. My favorites are the widgets that integrate Google Docs and Google Calendar (see my desktop image above). The tasks pad to the right of my Gmail desktop is from Remember the Milk which integrates wonderfully with Gmail and works with their free iPhone app as well as Twitter and their website. Once you join Remember The Milk for free, go to Services where you can integrate your account with Gmail and manage all of your tasks from there.

Google Talk to the World

GTalk appears on the leftside of your Gmail screen which is cool because you can chat while you work with your emails, Google calendar and Google Documents. They’ve recently added support for audio/video so you can use your webcam to chat with your pals. Also, If you want, you can integrate your Twitter with GTalk and communicate with your friends there as well. There’s support for AOL messenger as well but not for Yahoo or Windows Messenger at this time which would make GTalk truly a universal messenger.

Room for Improvement

Despite all of the cool new features that Google has added to Gmail, there is still lots of room for improvement. For example, they can do MUCH more with Contacts! Right now, it’s just a meager address book from the Web 1.0 era. However, they can actually turn it into a dynamic contact management system that could rival other players in this space such as Plaxo and Soocial. It would be tremendously useful if we could sync our contacts the way Plaxo does automatically. Whenever a contact changes contact info on their end then it propagates the changes all over the web in everyone’s address book in Gmail, ensuring that everyone always has the most current and up to date contact info. I can smell that coming someday. Hopefully soon. 

The other thing Google has been slack about has been their Google Profile feature. It could become the web standard for our virtual business card online but they just don’t get it. Instead we see a bunch of third party startups emerging in that space.

Best of Show

Even though Google continues to stretch itself too thin with a plethora of new ventures (sometimes strange ones), it appears to remain focused on one of their best services: Gmail. Let’s hope they keep their eyes on this valuable prize.

Don’t look now but FriendFeed is getting a little greedy these days. It no longer seems content to be merely a social networking aggregator. It seems to want to be a content provider instead of just a conduit for all our information. How so you ask? Well, it’s always provided a platform to post messages just like we do on other platforms but now they’ve added some cool new features that truly make it tempting to give up all of the other services and make FriendFeed your primary communication tool for social networks, including Twitter (insert blood curdling gasp here)!

The most enjoyable and long awaited feature for me has been FriendFeed in RealTime! No more refreshing your browser or long gaps of nothing on your Twirl client. Just constantly self-updating messages from all your friends from all over the web. It’s the web the way it should be everywhere. If I could I would make bumper stickers and T-Shirts that said, “Just Say No to the Refresh Button!”

 

The message editing window is nice too because it provides several options. First, you can choose to post a message just to the FriendFeed public timeline (called My Feed) or to any of the FriendFeed rooms you belong to. They can be public or private rooms. The other things you can do with these posts is add a link to a website or news story you want to share or a photo which then appears in the timeline unlike Twitter which can only adds links. I do wish they would allow the ability to add audio and video as well but then that’s treading on Tumblr’s and Utterli’s territory. You can also just post a comment.

As if that weren’t enough, I then stumbled across the feature that allows you to automatically post any message you post on FriendFeed onto Twitter. Thus, in one fell swoop FriendFeed has done a 180 and instead of just regurgitating tweets in your FriendFeed timeline, you can now spew FriendFeed posts into the Twitter timeline. How tweet is that?
My immediate concern was getting trapped in some warped never-ending loop where a single message would post on FriendFeed then twitter then FriendFeed then twitter and so on and so on! However, FriendFeed made sure such loops don’t happen so there’s no need to worry about that.

Here’s how to set that up really quickly: Go to your Accounts page in FriendFeed and enable the option to publishing your FriendFeed messages to your Twitter account. You’ll have to enter your Twitter login ID and password but that’s about it. You can also choose which content to post to Twitter such as just your public FriendFeed posts or you can include your comments to other people’s messages and even those things you’ve liked. It’s all up to you how much you want to share on Twitter which is great.

So, all this makes me really wonder if I should just start using FriendFeed from now on instead of Twitter as my primary communication service with my social networking friends. Until I make that decision I will continue to use both. If FriendFeed keeps adding more cool features like these (like adding video or audio) then I’ll have no choice but to make the switch for good to FriendFeed. It’ll be Bye Bye Birdie at that point.

Recently, I wrote “How To: Convert Videos for the iPhone (or any mobile device)” on Mashable.com. I covered some of the best ways to convert videos and copy them to your iPhone for free. Well, the beauty of blogging is that no matter how thorough you are when it comes to research there are always resources out there that you miss for whatever reason. Thankfully, however, readers are more than happy to share your omissions in the comments section (sometimes they do it politely, sometimes not so nicely). In any event, it’s wonderful to learn about new links and software that only adds value to your post thanks to the comments.

Well, unfortunately, it’s considered taboo to edit any post that’s gone to press on a big time blog such as Mashable so all of the golden nuggets must remain buried in the comments. So I’ve decided to take all of my links and resources and combine them with the valuable suggestions that readers have made in the comments and developed this list which I will continue to update whenever I find new resources, which I have since we published that piece only days ago.

So, save this bookmark if you want to track the best ways to convert videos to your iPhone or mobile device and check it every once in a while.

Online Converters

ConvertTube is a free service that converts online videos to several formats including the MP4 format that you need for Apple devices. Simply paste the video URL from sites like YouTube, Google video, MetaCafe, etc. and select the desired output format.

While the service is extremely simple to use, it must be mentioned that it can take an eternity sometimes for this service to convert even the smallest video. Sometimes it just times out or fails without any explanations. Still, most of the time it will do the trick if you want to do a quick conversion or two. For more than a handful, you’ll be better off with another solution that handles batch processing.

VideoDownloader is similar to ConvertTube except it doesn’t provide you with any output options. What you see is what you get when you download the video from the services they support: YouTube, Google, BlipTV, DailyMotion and a few others. So, if you can’t download the video .mp4 format, you’ll have to convert it with another separate utility which isn’t a big deal or expense.

Movavi Online Convert is another online video converter that provides the unique ability to download and convert up to five different online videos as one video. You can add all of the URLs and the service will send you an email with a link to download when it’s done. It could take a long time, so it’s not good if you’re in a hurry.

Zamar converts online like the others and also converts other forms of media such as photos.

YouTube now allows you to download many of their videos in MP4 format which means you don’t even have to convert the the video! You simply download and copy it to your iTunes which will sync it on your iPhone! Look for the download MP4 link beneath the embed code.

Free Software Converters

Videora offers an impressive suite of tools for converting and editing videos for free. The video files can be avi, divx, xvid, flv, x264, vob, mpeg, DVDs, YouTube, etc. Any of these videos can be converted into the proper video formats (MPEG-4, H.264) that play on the iPhone 3G. Here’s Videora’s Video Converter for the 3G iPhone, which does an excellent job changing existing formats of videos you own into the MPEG-4 H.264 format. Their other converters will do the same trick for other devices such as the iPod, nano, Tivo, Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), Xbox360 and more.

There are many options when you’re converting your videos for your iPhone. Obviously, the better the quality, the larger the file size. Ultimately it’s a personal decision everyone has to make on what’s more important: space on your iPhone or audio/video quality. Personally, I prefer to stick with the highest quality video and audio because the experience is so worth it. You just have to pick and choose which videos you want to keep on your iPhone. If you have the 8 GB then perhaps you should compromise a little and choose medium or high levels of quality for video and audio. Play around and see which results you like best.

Note: All of the converters are free and appear to be spyware free without any problems. They do offer a Videora 2.0 software and service package for a fee but that isn’t required for any of these converters.

Free Studio Manager offers a staggering 20 free audio/video tools. You can choose to download all 20 utilities as one package or pick and choose those you need.

There are a few that focus on converting videos for the iPhone. For example, there’s the YouTube to iPhone converter that downloads YouTube videos and automatically converts them to the appropriate iPhone MPeg-4 H.264 format for you. Keep in mind that many of the videos on YouTube are now in the .MP4 format, so the conversion process will skip that part once it’s downloaded and determines what format the video is in. There’s a handy batch mode feature which allows you to download several YouTube videos at one time, making this process more efficient.

Here’s the Video to iPhone Converter which lets you convert any video file that you already possess without needing to download any videos from YouTube or elsewhere. The important thing to point out about this utility is that it provides the highest quality video output in this roundup, whereas Videora can generate a standard quality MPEG-4 H.264 file (24 fps, 480×320 ACC 128Kbits). Free Studio’s converter can generate a High Quality MPEG-4 H/264 file at 30 fps, 480×320 ACC 192Kbits. It might not be that big a deal to most people, but it will make a huge difference to many of you.

Any Video Converter is another free converter for windows that will convert a boatload of formats to iPhone friendly format: DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI, etc.

xviD4PSP is an excellent package for Windows

Sucubus has a free windows tool for searching and downloading/converting videos

HandBrake is an excellent package for the Mac OS and now Windows too!

Squared5 offers a free converter for Mac OS and Windows

iSquint is no longer updating its converter for Mac users but you can still use the last version they released.

BetterYouTube is a free Firefox add-on that lets you download YouTube videos as mp4 format

MediaCoder is a free download for Mac

Gom is free for windows

 

Commercial Video Converters (NOT Free)

***Pai’s Favorite!***
Replay Converter is a media converter from Applian Technologies which is well-known for its Replay Capture Suite that includes the converter and several other products. Their most popular product is the Replay Capture tool that allows you to record any streaming audio or video much like a Tivo for the Internet.

Mac YouTube Converter works for the Mac and costs about $30

MelodyCan converts for a price

AimerSoft for the Mac $35

 

Video for Other Platforms

Okay, okay, we won’t ignore you CrackBerry heads. Here’s AVS Video for Blackberry that’ll help you convert videos for Blackberry devices.

All of the software packages referenced above were for the Windows OS, so MAC OS users won’t be able to use them. There was a free video conversion tool for the Mac OS from iSquint.org, but they’ve stopped supporting their product. However, it’s become open source on SourceForge, so others might continue the development for this tool for the Mac OS.

How to Copy Videos to Your iTunes and iPhone

After converting all your videos to the appropriate video format for your iPhone, you’ll need to store them on your computer in the right place so that iTunes can do its job and copy the videos to your device. The best thing to do is create a new folder on your system called, for example, iPhone Videos, and copy the newly converted videos to that folder. You can also get into the habit of converting new videos straight to that folder to save steps and time later on.

Once you have your videos in one place, simply launch iTunes, click on the Movies icon and click the File menu. Select Add Folder to Library, then select the new iPhone Videos folder that you created. iTunes will then suck in all of the videos that it finds in that folder.

Click on your iPhone under DEVICES and select the Video Tab. Then Enable the Sync Movies option, and select all of the videos that you want to copy to your iPhone. You can pick and choose which ones you want at any time.

The next time you sync, all of the videos you selected will be copied to your iPhone. You can view them by launching the iPod app on your iPhone and selecting the video option.

Must-Have Video Players & Utilities

Every system comes with a video player but these standard players don’t support that many formats. For example, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player does not support the Flash (.FLV) video format, which means you can’t download and play most of the videos you find online these days.

VLC Media Player is an open source media player that supports a plethora of video and audio formats. It loads quicker than most of the bloated media players and can handle most of the formats you’ll ever run into. Here’s a feature list.

Conclusion

This was just a sampling of the many cool tools out there that can help you download and convert videos into a format that you can use on your iPhone or any other device. In most cases, you can do so for free. However, some of the premium packages and services appear to be well worth their nominal fees when you consider everything they provide. In any case, you can now enjoy any of your favorite videos on your iPhone or other mobile device.

 

I started blogging about technology and other things on 11/11/2007 so today marks the first anniversary of my blogging career or whatever you want to call it. I began with a free WordPress blog (http://thepaisano.wordpress.com) which is no longer updated because I ported over to my own self-hosted blog some seven months later around July 22, 2008 which is where we be today: http://ThePaisano.com.

Originally, believe it or not, the name of my blog was “Pai in YO Face!”. I thought it was cute and clever at the time and people seemed to like it. Here’s how the header looked along with the black theme.

After awhile though I started getting a lot more visitors and more professional type people and the whole in Yo face shtick lost its luster. I tried a few different names but ultimately stayed with “American Pai” for many months up until I moved to my own self-hosted blog. Here’s how that looked for the majority of time on the free wordpress blog.

My blog had become basically 100% technical so I stopped writing about personal subjects which bothered me. I still wanted to share those thoughts and feelings but understand that a blog should focus on a central theme and stick to it if you wanted to be successful and keep readers coming back for more. Problogger convinced me of that when he shared some personal experiences and how he used to blog about several interests but didn’t attain success until he separated his themes into their own niche blogs. So my blog became a tech blog.

Seizing the Day!
Well, on February 14, 2008 I gave myself a Valentine’s Day gift and launched my personal blog on www.Blogger.com and called it simply The Paisano. It’s no longer there because a few months later I also decided to move my personal blog to its own domain and self-hosted blog and re-launched it as “Seizing The Day” at http://SeizingTheDay.net. Here’s the original header.

Humbled Pai!
Around April sometime I was asked for the first time to guest blog for someone else’s blog. It wasn’t just anyone either. It was none other than Sarah Lacy! She was the hottest news from the SXSW ‘08 conference and I was looking forward to reading her upcoming book called “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0”. She and I became acquainted on MySpace and Twitter and she was interested in a tweet I made regarding her employer, Yahoo and the horrible job I thought they were doing with Delicious (a service I loved and still do). So I was flattered and wrote my very first guest post and it was so exciting! I loved being read by a much larger audience and getting intelligent feedback in the comments, sometimes tough medicine is good for you. I went on to write several more pieces so I owe Sarah a great deal of thanks for giving a rookie such a break and so many lessons.

Around the same time I was asked to guest blog for another blog, SocialMediaMom! She asked me to write something about being a dad so I contributed a piece about my 9 year old entrepreneur son who used social media for a class project.

The MASH Unit
Ultimately, everything lead to my favorite tech blog in the world, Mashable.com in August! I wasn’t sure I was ready for such a gigantic blog but I knew it was my chance to see what I could do and I was so grateful for the opportunity. I’m still writing for Mashable where I’ve had the honor of contributing over 120 articles in only three months! While my output will continue to drop dramatically over time, I will still write an occasional feature for them. They’ve been incredibly nice to me and continue to teach me new things about professional blogging and journalism in general. I will be forever grateful to Pete Cashmore, Adam Ostrow, Sharon Feder, Mark Rizzn Hopkins and everyone else there.

My Guardian Social Angel
If I were to thank any one particular person for any success that I’ve achieved in my first full year of blogging and in social media/networking it would have to be everyone’s guardian angel, Chris Brogan. From the first time that I met him on Utterz and Twitter, he has been a gentleman and scholar and a great friend. Calling him a friend feels funny because you hear so many people do the same thing all over the web. It reminds me of Sparticus, “I’m Sparticus!” “No, I’m sparticus!” and so it goes. But the fact of the matter is that Chris Brogan truly does have that many friends all over the place. He always takes the time to share wisdom and experience and no one has taught me more about social media and social networking and blogging as he has. He’s also taught me many lessons about life and friendship as well. My favorite line he shared with me was “The Sun can warm a field of daisies or it can burn a hole through solid steel”. The lesson in that gem was a reminder for me to “Stay focused Pai!” So, every time I start to bite off more than I can chew or start procrastinating, I remember Brogan’s Daisies. Thanks my friend! By the way, I call him The Broganator because he’s a machine that cannot be stopped! P.S. I’m honored to be a contributing editor to Brogan’s new blog for dads called Dad-o-matic!

So here’s my wrap up of my first 365 days as a blogger.

ThePaisano       (161)
Seizing the Day (132)
Mashable           (120)
Dadomatic          (11)
SarahLacy             (6)
SocialMediaMom  (1)

Total Posts         431!!!!

Wow. 431 posts in 365 days. This is amazing when you consider that I continue to maintain a full-time day job in the I.T. industry and raise three children ages 9, 5 and 3 and I’ve never missed any of their practices, games or school functions and activities involving dads. I can only imagine what I could do if I were able to blog full-time!

I think everyone should stop and reflect on their anniversary and see how far they’ve come. I look forward to the next year online with all of you.

The current trend for web startups seems to be either the "everything but the kitchen sink" or the "aggregation or bust" approach. Sites either try to be your everything (and fail) or they try to manage and aggregate all of your data from other sites (and fail). So many startups have lofty ambitions and delusions of grandeur only to be awakened by the sobering reality that most people don’t want what they are offering.

Less is More
However, some startups hit homeruns every once in a while which keeps everyone’s hope alive. So what do these rare successful services all have in common that separates them from the majority of sites that fail? For one thing, they tend to have a laser-like focus on a particuler niche and service it extremely well. They subscribe to the less is more school of thought. It’s all part of what I call the Modular Web where services become customizable components that can be mashed up with other services. They can snap in to an existing service much like lego blocks.

The key is to provide the best possible service for the targeted niche and make it as easy as possible to implement it. So what are some good examples of this mashable modular web?

Google Maps is the ultimate example of a modular web app. Nothing has been used as much as this useful service. Countless mash-ups include Google Maps as one of its modules. The primary reason is because it does one thing and does it very well. However, because of its simplicity and ability to work with other services it continues to produce complex and very useful results.

Flickr has done very well as a service for people into photographer and hosting their pictures. Sure, they’ll add some new bells and whistles every now and then but by and large that’s what they do and nobody does it better. The ability to share images and collections has been the secret to their success.

The same is true with other niche services that have achieved mass acceptance such as YouTube which does the same thing as Flickr but for video instead. The formula for success is pretty much the same: Do what you do best and add some new little features every once in a while and change the interface a tad for good measure. No new coke formula, please!

If you consider universal group acceptance as a barometer of success then Twitter belongs in the mix. If your definition of success involves financial matters then we would not include Twitter in this discussion at this time (though few have any doubts that Twitter is headed towards a golden pay day). They serve the micro-blogging community and despite many scaling and performance issues they’ve managed to grow their membership base. They’ve also been able to spread throughout the web thanks to its open platform that allows countless third-parties to develop add-on tools that only helps Twitter in the eyes of its users. Their formula is to serve up their byte-sized (140 character messages) meals and let others add menu items a la carte style.

Divide and Conquer
When it comes to the big picture, it’s sometimes best to think small. Instead of trying to cover the vast casm that is the internet it makes more sense to narrow the scope and concentrate on a detailed zone or target area. Even if it’s a monolithic establishment, it serves them well to carve up their massive organization into smaller teams. They will find it to be more managable and more agile when it comes to productivity. They’ll be able to make decisions quicker and adapter to the ever changing terrain on the fly which is critical with technology. Their ability to remain focussed on their mission is also enhanced by this reduction in size. This nimbleness could very well mean the difference between success or failure.

Plug n’ Play

Plaxo is a service that understands what their bread and butter is:  address book management. Yes, they’ve branched out and tried a few other things like the silly greeting card service and their excellent social networking aggregation service called Pulse, but by and large their main reason for being is contact management. At the heart of their service is the address book widget that many other services reply upon to allow its members to access their address books in order to add or invite contacts to the service. It’s a perfect example of what the modular web is all about. All of these other sites didn’t have to develop the component that would allow members to access and manage their address books because they knew that Plaxo had an excellent mechanism available. Plaxo has carved a nice niche in that respect.
Others should strive to emulate this type of service. Concentrate on the core audience that they’re serving and make their solution modular like Plaxo has done so that any other site can plug-in your service to accomplish their tasks and objectives. Make it easy to use and access.

Stop trying to reinvent the Wheel
Too many sites waste valuable time and resources trying to do things that have already been done extremely well. This is not meant to knock innovation, not at all. The point is that in most cases it would be best to focus more on a new way to accomplish something rather than try to fix something that ain’t broken. There are too many things that need improvement to Waste time working on those things that don’t need it. There are also many problems that need solutions which would be a much more productive use of time.

Small But Powerful

Iphone app developers are enjoying increasing success because they are creating simple solutions for focussed niches. The don’t try to solve the mysteries of life nor do they try to funnel your tidal wave of social networking information. They build a small app to solve a simple need or problem. Web Startups need to take a page from the Iphone app playbook and do the same thing.

Summation
The Modular Web is all about collaboration and integration of services. It’s not wise anymore to be the be-all, end-all entity as in years past. Instead, the mindset should be to focus on a niche and specialize. The goals should be to strive for excellence in a specified area of expertise with great emphasis on making it as simple as possible to work with other systems and services. Ultimately, it’s about giving people options and choices. We will all be able to pick and choose which module or service to plug into our internet experience. It’ll become increasingly easier to create mashups on the fly because of the vast library of web modules that we will have some day.

Hey, I don’t know how this started but somehow the people have spoken and they want me to run for office!

I am indeed humbled Pai!

Here’s news coverage of what happened and this incredible online grass roots campaign that’s taken off!