The problem

 I’m not 100% sure what the problem is. The site won’t load and I get error messages about “unsupported form of compression” from Firefox and “cannot decode raw data” from Safari/iPhone. I recently updated the plugin to its latest version and now I have problems. Disabling the plugin does make the issue subside―a good sign for me, but bad for W3TC.

I asked others if they had similar problems, but no one had. I did get one unsolicited tweet about it, so at least I’m not alone.

Winning at support & customer service

Frederick provides support for the plugin and goes straight to the scene of the crime. He dives into your code on your server, trying to diagnose and solve your problems. The bug report process couldn’t have been easier. He was fast and helpful in his Twitter responses.

I can’t think of a better support system. Oh yea, and it’s free. Thank you, W3 Edge.

Cross your fingers

Here’s hoping that Frederick (and his team?) can solve this issue quickly. I’ve become totally dependent on their plugin and it pains to me leave my site up there without it.

Thanks for your willingness to help, Frederick. I look forward to updating this post with good news.

Related posts:

1. My Favorite WordPress Plugins
2. WordPress Comment Notification Emails are Broken

I did some googling, but to no avail. Some say it’s an SMTP setting error in PHP Mail. Others say it’s GMail’s problem. I’m stumped and I wish I could figure this out. I use my email inbox like a to-d0 list, so logging into WP-Admin every so often to manually check for new comments would work, but it defeats the purpose.

Any suggestions? Plugins?

Has anyone else had this problem lately? Are there any good plugins out there that could help me out? I’ve been looking for a more full-featured comment/email/reply/notification plugin, so maybe this will put me over the edge.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Related posts:

1. My Favorite WordPress Plugins
2. A WordPress Theme from Scratch
3. HTML Email Sucks

Don’t stress about “I have nothing to say!” or “when will I find the time?” This post took me 9 minutes, start to finish. And I hardly said anything. You can do it. Just write.

(Image taken from Preston Porter. Apparently he feels similarly.)

No related posts.

I resigned my position at StudentCity, my employer for the last 4 years. As of October 17, 2011, I work for McDougall Interactive, a digital/search marketing company in Danvers, MA. I’m sad to leave my friends and colleagues at SCC, but I’m excited for what’s ahead for me with McDougall.

Thank you, StudentCity

I’m grateful and indebted to StudentCity for the time, energy, resources, and training they gave me. I started there when I was just a few months out of college, still new to the real world.

I got my start there, learning how to design and code for an enterprise-level website, maintain code standards across a team, and build scalable, reusable assets. I learned how the business world works, an important lesson for SaaS workers. And I learned how *I* work, a VERY important lesson for any employee.

It feels like graduating

School is designed to prepare students for the real world. My 4 years at StudentCity felt similar. It felt as if those 4 years were an internship or apprenticeship, preparing me for the next thing.

The trouble is that, when students graduate from schools, they do so together and it’s a happy occasion. When a worker “graduates” from a company after several years, s/he does so alone and it’s bittersweet.

I’ll miss StudentCity

Mostly the people. I’ve had the same boss for almost all of those 4 years. He’s been awesome; friendly, accommodating, understanding, patient, trusting, empowering, inspiring, just about all the things one could hope for in a manager.

The rest of the IT team, old and new. In those 4 years, I had the pleasure of working alongside 16 other IT people. Currently, 6 of them are still employed by StudentCity and only 5 in our department. It’s a smart, talented group of people and they’ll be just fine without me.

Why this will be better

I loved my time at StudentCity. Things weren’t always perfect, but I have nothing negative to say about the company or people. It was by no means “bad.” However, working with McDougall will be better for me for several reasons.

1. I’m invested in their products and services ― something I couldn’t say about spring break.
2. It’s a small, flexible, adaptable company ― no getting lost in a sea of parent companies.
3. They need my help ― the design & development parts of McdIA weren’t a priority until now.

I can’t wait to start this new chapter in my life and my career. It’s going to be challenging, fun, and rewarding. I’m nervous about it, but very excited to hit the ground running.

Related posts:

1. Designing Spring Break
2. George Parks: Inspiration Personified
3. Work with me: StudentCity is Hiring

Microsoft Windows XP defined an era in personal computing. It remains iconic in the PC timeline. I think its desktop wallpapers are iconic by themselves. How many millions (billions?) of people looked at one of these 20 images every day?

1. Ascent

I don’t know what mountain this is, though it’s probably a famous one. The photography is nice & the scale of the moon is impressive, but I just don’t love this one.

As a background image, the photo is effective. It has muted colors & low-contrast and viewing desktop icons atop this image is perfectly easy.

2. Autumn

I love this photo. I grew up in New England, so scenes like this always make me smile. This view might as well have been down the road from my parents’ house.

As a desktop background, however, this image is a pain. The color contrast is so high that desktop icons are lost easily. The image’s saving grace is the dark tree trunk at left which housed most people’s left-side-oriented icons.

3. Azul

This is a very happy photo. I can’t help but visualize myself swimming in the perfect blue water (do islands like that really exist?)

As a wallpaper, this image does fairly well. The all-blue scenery makes for a mostly-consistent work area where icons & windows appear well.

4. Bliss

This scene might be the most iconic of all XP wallpapers. If memory serves, this image was the default wallpaper. And it’s aptly named; “bliss” sounds just about right. (However, have you ever seen a sky that blue? Easy on the retouching, Redmond).

I’m probably biased, but I think this might be the perfect desktop background. It has enough color & contrast to be beautiful, but enough consistency to make browsing a pleasure.

5. Crystal

This wallpaper must have been the activated background on every high school & college PC lab machine I ever saw. And I like it.

As a desktop, it’s perfect. Shades of blue that stay out of your way but don’t bore you.

6. Follow

Enter: college freshman girls. I think every single girl in my dorm had this as their background. But isn’t that the same small fish, pasted in 6 times?

It’s a good wallpaper. Mostly-blue backgrounds are becoming a theme. But its splashes of orange are a little much contrast for me.

7. Friend

My wife loves this one. And who could blame her? An adorable dog & rustic scene, shot in pantone. It’s a winning combination.

As a desktop background, it’s perfect. It has color, but still a black & white feel, making the colored icons a perfect contrast.

8. Home

Boring. Blah. That’s all I have to say. I hate this one.

9. Moon flower

Anyone who could keep this as their desktop wallpaper for more than a few minutes is blind or crazy. It almost hurts to look at.

Were it not for the overpowering color & contrast in the whole image, this background would be ok. But it’s just too much.

10. Peace

This is the best wallpaper Windows has ever had. It’s simple, elegant, and classic. I have always found this image very inspiring. I even tweeted about it a few weeks ago.

You can’t mess with perfection. All the detail of this image is away from the left-side icon stack that most users had. It’s perfectly quiet & beautiful.

11. Power

Ouch. Please keep scrolling.

12. Purple flower

I don’t remember seeing this one, but there it was in my old XP machine’s display preferences. I guess it’s ok. No major complaints from me.

13. Radiance

I like this one too. I don’t think I ever used it as my background, but it’s a nice photo. I’m a fan of darker desktops, so this one is right up my alley.

Like Autumn above, this one places its dark shadow strip strategically in the left-side icon stack area. The light moon areas a bit high-contrast, but overall this one works for me.

14. Red moon desert

I can’t help but see this wallpaper as an opposite to Bliss. The red tint of the sand is a bit much for me, but it’s a really nice photo.

I’m sensing a theme of keeping the images’ left sides darker, to provide better contrast for icons. This one does a decent job at that.

15. Ripples

See: Crystal.

16. Stonehenge

I find Stonehenge fascinating, so I’ve always loved this photo (did you know there are other henges?). It’s a good compliment to Bliss, though the colors aren’t quite as happy.

Like Bliss, this wallpaper has great color & contrast. A very good desktop background.

17. Tulips

Another college freshman girl favorite. If Follow didn’t win the battle for the pink & green dorm rooms, Tulips usually did. But I must admit, it’s a beautiful photo.

This wallpaper is tough, though. It has too many colors in the main icon stack area for me. I’d prefer if the last tulip or two were removed.

18. Vortec space

This one feels like a throwback to Windows 95/98′s shooting star screensaver. I can’t help but look into its center.

Other than the obviously distracting center, this wallpaper holds up well. It has good color & contrast and a dark left-side icon stack area.

19. Wind

Microsoft seems to love hills. This photo is a little boring, but it’s pretty.

This desktop works well too. The left-side icon stack is almost all orange/tan. Great color & contrast where it counts.

20. Windows XP

No one used this background except boring IT departments. I’m convinced of it.

Did I miss any? What are your favorites?

Do you agree that Peace is the greatest desktop wallpaper Windows has ever had? Or are you more of an Autumn/Follow/Tulips kind of person?

No related posts.

I’ve compiled this list in hopes that it might help other WordPress fans with their projects. Did I miss any? What’s on your Favorite WordPress Plugins list?

1. W3 Total Cache Plugin page

This plugin will improve  the performance of your website, giving your visitors a better experience and faster load times, by using caching.

WordPress is a dynamic CMS, meaning that it pulls information from the database and computes things on the fly. It then compiles a response and serves it to the user. If there are too many things going on, that can be a very slow process. W3 Total Cache performs those functions ahead of time, then creates and serves a flat, lightning-fast version to your users.

The benefits of using W3 Total Cache are impressive.

• At least 10x improvement in overall site performance, when fully configured
• “Instant” subsequent page views, using browser caching
• Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly
• Increased visitor time on site, due to reduced page load time
• Improved web server performance, allowing your site to sustain high traffic periods
• Up to 80% bandwidth savings via minify & HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript & feeds

Drawbacks

Caching seems to cause issues with .htaccess once in a while. On occasion, simply saving a post draft will return a 404 error. It’s annoying, but doesn’t cause any major problems.

2. SEO Ultimate Plugin page

SEO Ultimate is the best out-of-the-box solution for maximizing your WordPress website’s SEO efforts. I’ve tried dozens of SEO plugins and SEO Ultimate is definitely my favorite.

The plugin gives authors complete control over vital SEO settings, like URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions. It has customizable settings for noindex attributes, canonical tags, autolinks, 404 errors, and more.

SEO is a tricky thing. The real challenge is providing great content and value to your visitors. This plugin can’t help you with that. But it can help you maximize your exposure and technical methods for appealing to search engines.

Drawbacks

None that I can think of.

3. DBC Cron Backup Plugin page

 You must backup your data! This is the plugin I use to do it. It’s easy to set up, with one potential exception: you must provide an absolute server path to a writable directory. If that sentence made sense to you, you’re all set. If not, you may need to ask for help from a local web nerd.

I work with WordPress a lot and I always keep local copies of my PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript code. I learned the hard way that I also need to keep backup copies of my database. This plugin does so automatically. It could be on that cooking show: “set it and forget it.”

It will create daily backups of your entire database. If daily is too frequent for you, you can change the interval to any number of days, weeks, or months, all the way up to once-per-year. It’s very flexible and does it job perfectly.

DBC Cron Backup also offers gzip compression (level 1 through level 9) of the backup file so it will take up less space on your server.

Drawbacks

None that I can think of.

4. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin Plugin page

 This plugin displays a list of related posts at the end of each single post. It’s very useful for keeping your visitors engaged with your site’s content and avoiding the dead-end feeling users sometimes get after reading a post.

The plugin is extremely versatile and customizable. Or, if you prefer, works perfectly right out of the box with no tweaks or changes.

“YARPP,” as it’s known, has been endorsed by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, and by Matt Cuts, the head of Google’s Webspam team. If it’s good enough for those two heavy-hitters, it’s good enough for me.

Drawbacks

This one may not apply to everyone. I customize my YARPP templates pretty heavily and sometimes when the I update the plugin, I lose some of my customization. Very annoying.

5. WP-PageNavi Plugin page

 This plugin replaces the default “← Older posts | Newer posts →” links, used for browsing posts. It replaces those two links with pagination links dynamically calculated based on your posts and settings.

Its author, Lester Chan, is well known in the WordPress community for his many plugins and other contributions. The plugin is actively supported and continues to improve over time.

I find WordPress’ default “older”/”newer” pagination to be frustrating when I want to browse through several pages of post archives. WP-PageNavi provides a much smoother method of doing so. It does what WordPress should have done all along.

Drawbacks

The settings are customizable, but the template isn’t (unless you modify the plugin’s core files). The plugin does allow for custom CSS, but I’d like to see customizable PHP templates included.

6. Twitter Tools Plugin page

Aptly named, Twitter Tools provides a series of tools for integrating your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. I found this plugin most helpful for those authors who want to be content distributors, not just sharers or personal updaters.

Twitter Tools really does allow for complete integration: it’s like a two-way street. It can automatically tweet when you publish a new blog post. AND, it can automatically create a new post whenever you post a new tweet. It can also create a daily “digest” post, listing that day’s tweets.

The plugin’s Twitter-to-blog functionality can be very useful if your Twitter stream creates a lot of conversation and reaction. It’s also a great way to archive your Twitter stream for future reference.

Drawbacks

It’s a small drawback, but any Twitter Tools-generated tweet must have a prefix like, “Posted:” etc. I would prefer to tweet just the title of the post without any prefix.

Did I miss any?

These are my favorites. Honorable mentions go to Search Everything, WordPress.com Stats (now “Jetpack”), and Akismet.

What are your favorites? Let me know in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. Build a Custom Twitter Archive with WordPress
2. WordPress Comment Notification Emails are Broken
3. W3 Total Cache Problems

Word of mouth

They say the best form of advertising is word of mouth. That’s because a word of mouth “advertisement” is really just a social endorsement. Let’s say your friend loves her dentist. When you get a toothache, her enthusiastic endorsement of said dentist goes a long way. It’s relevant to your immediate needs and it came from a trusted source. A double-whammy.

It’s a matter of trust

Trust is what makes social endorsements different from paid endorsements like celebrity sponsorship or TV commercial testimonials? Trust. When your friend recommends you try her friendly, gentle, affordable, local dentist, you’re likely going to trust her. You assume she’s not being paid by the dentist for her recommendation, but is endorsing out of admiration & loyalty. By nature of being your friend, she’s trustworthy.

Lack of trust, is the same reason why you don’t rush out to buy whatever hair care product your cousin is hawking, despite how “AMAZING” and “Seriously. SOOO good!!” she may say it is on Facebook. You identify that her motives are business & profit, and immediately discount her endorsement. It just isn’t trustworthy.

Trust is about relating

Wikipedia says that trust is a “reasonable expectation (confidence) of the trustor that the trustee will behave in a way beneficial to the trustor.” Or, more simply, it’s the belief that “this is good for me.” Obviously, the “this is good” part is very important. But before that, conceptually speaking, comes the “for me” part. We have to be able to relate in a personal way to the trustee―the person or thing to be trusted.

This is why companies pay celebrities for endorsements. We form personal relationships with celebrities in our minds and we relate to them, projecting some of ourselves onto them. Most people have never met Tom Hanks, but they will tell you that he’s an honest, trustworthy man.

If a company put a stranger in front of you and the stranger said, “trust me!” your response would be, “Why? I don’t even know you!” So the company works very, very hard at casting actors who appear trustworthy and relatable.

Enter: Joe Everyman.

There’s something relatable about the little guy. We all see a glimpse of ourselves in the anonymous, hard-working, man or woman. Have you ever noticed how car commercials frequently feature average-looking, non-descript men and women? They’re nameless and sometimes even faceless. The viewer projects some of themselves onto those anonymous characters. It’s human nature. We can only see the world through our own eyes, after all.

Yelp is full of Joe & Jane Everypersons. So when Yelp tells you that 5 people you’ve never heard of have reviewed your local pizza place, something similar happens. You don’t know George P., Michael K., Thom H., Colin M., and John L. But that’s the point. They’re not special. They’re not celebrities. And they’re not your annoying cousin. They’re basically anonymous. And relatable.

Yelp users, if my theory is correct, project their own personalities onto previous reviewers. We trust their reviews, even though we’ve never met them. Somehow, what they say is worth listening to.

Trust is valuable

You can’t sell without trust. So if you’re trustworthy, you’re sales-worthy. And that is extremely valuable. It’s the reason Google is the web’s dominant search engine: when the search race was on, they provided the best results. They earned users’ trust. Google, Apple, Facebook…any of the biggest tech companies (and probably non-tech, too) have proven themselves as trustworthy.

Every company wants to be trusted. And Yelp is playing a bigger and bigger role in how people feel about local businesses and their products or services. A Yelp review can be a powerful thing. Yelp is becoming the unit of measurement―the standard to which businesses are held. And that puts Yelp in a very powerful position. They are trust currency.

But can trust be monetized?

It doesn’t seem likely. The difference between Google/Apple/Facebook and Yelp is that the former have concrete business models with revenue streams baked right in. Yelp doesn’t.

Yelp’s products are information and trust. The web has clearly demonstrated that it will not pay for information. The New York Times and BusinessWeek both wrote about Yelp’s business model, or apparent lack thereof.

Trust won’t pay the bills

Yelp has established itself as the authority on local business reviews and millions of people trust them. But trust doesn’t pay the bills.

I do have an idea on how Yelp could monetize its site. But if I described it in detail here, I wouldn’t make any money :) But it’s a pretty good idea. Trust me.

Related posts:

1. On Social Networking
2. Can Social Media Fires be Put Out?

A responsive work in progress

I designed this site following @beep’s principles of responsive web design. I’m just not finished yet. So, if you scale your browser down, you’ll notice that the site responds to you, just not very well.

The idea is to have a version that fits well for users on a full-sized monitor, an iPad, and a mobile phone. You’ll notice I said “iPad” and not “tablet.” That’s because I’m brand new to designing for the mobile market and this is my first crack at anything other than “web” and “mobile.” More on that to come.

Removing clutter

It took me a long as a designer time to learn to let go of “features.” They look so shiny and attractive. But most of the time, they’re clutter. This iteration of my website’s design is aimed at minimizing clutter. Colors are sparse, mostly reserved for links. Images are few, giving the existing ones more visual impact. Bells and whistles are all but gone, save for two social sharing buttons and Twitter’s @Anywhere functionality.

I hope this design isn’t boring. I’m trying to strike a balance between simple and empty. I hope that some subtle grays and soft gradients add just enough to the design to make it simple and effective.

Embracing modern technology

With this iteration, I’m upgrading my site from 2008-ish standards to 2011+. I’m using HTML5 & CSS3, Google Web Fonts, and several modern code standards.

HTML5

I’m finally using elements like <header>, <nav>, <section>, <article>, <footer>, etc. I started with Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate, and customized it to fit my needs.

Kudos to @adarowski and @jayroh for their HTML5 Boilerplate WordPress theme. I’m not actually using it here, but it helped me fine-tune my theme.

Web Fonts

I’m using Google Web Fonts to break out of the world of Georgia. I would have preferred Typekit, but I found their site confusing & unusable. I’m probably just missing something.

The two main fonts I’m using are Merriweather for headlines and Neuton for most other text content.

Object-oriented CSS

Since I attended An Event Apart 2010 and saw Nicole Sullivan speak about OOCSS, I have been writing my CSS with her teaching in mind. The basic principle is, “Write less. Reuse more.” My interpretation of it is very unsemantic. VERY unsemantic. But I’ve accepted that unsemantic-ness in the name of simple, fast, easy-to-use, and easy-to-reuse CSS code.

To see what I mean, check out the CSS that styles my website. Toward the bottom, you’ll see a bunch of “helpers,” things like .float_left{}, .width_100{}, .overflow_visible{}, etc.

A note on semantics

The unsemantic nature of my helper classes is worth diving into. I accept it because I think it helps me design better and write code better. That is, write CSS code better. I’m starting to figure out that I care more about my CSS than my HTML. I’m ok with adding <div class="float_left width_100 green"> to my HTML if it means that I only have to define .float_left { float: left; } once in my CSS.

This is a total 180 for me on the semantics debate. And I still hear a little voice telling me it’s wrong. But writing this way has cut my lines of CSS nearly in half, and it’s forced me to plan and organize better. Therefore, I think it has done more good than harm for me and my development.

What do you think?

All in all, I’m very happy with this design and code. What do you think? Did I reach a good balance between simplicity and style? Did I hit the mark on responsive design and OOCSS? Where do you stand on the semantics debate? Please tell me in the comments below or tweet at me: @tjkelly.

Related posts:

1. On the Latest Redesign
2. On HTML5
3. On Back-End Beauty

UMass Amherst Music Department just announced the new Minuteman Marching Band director, Doctor Timothy Anderson, formerly of Cal State Fresno.

Personally, I’m not in love with this decision. Of course, I don’t have all the information (and have never met or even heard of Dr. Anderson), and I’m admittedly VERY biased. But I don’t see how the university could consider anyone better qualified to lead that band than Thom Hannum.

However, with that said…

Welcome, Dr. Anderson

Best of luck, Doctor Anderson. You’re inheriting arguably the best and most enthusiastic college marching band in America, with thousands of vocal, invested, loyal alumni and fans.

We are behind you. We are with you. But we have VERY high expectations. We all hope you can meet them. You can count on alumni like us for anything you or the program needs.

Detail, Sparkle Hut

I’m sure there are some unhappy campers out there. But unhappiness or lack of faith in a leader is not something the late, great George N. Parks ever preached. This UMMB family will embrace Dr. Anderson with open arms and will follow him where he leads. And we’ll train our hair not to blow in the wind while we’re at it.

I’m reminded of one of George’s Starred Thoughts, “make sure you show support for others before they show support for you.”

Responses to Dr. Anderson’s appointment

• Tim Anderson named director of Minuteman Band – UMMB Alumni Website
• “Starred Thoughts” – Mike Cormier
• UMass Minuteman Marching Band Alumni Association – Facebook Group

News coverage of the announcement

• UMass News Office
• CBS Local
• Boston Globe
• Boston Herald
• NECN
• WHDH
• MassLive
• Hampshire Gazette
• WWLP
• Sacramento Bee
• KSBY California

Here’s what the university said

Dear Marching Band Alumni:

I know that you have been anxiously awaiting the results of our national search for a Marching Band director and I am pleased to announce the selection of Dr. Timothy Todd Anderson, director of the marching band at California State University, Fresno for this important position.

Dr. Anderson is an accomplished director who received his training in some of the best programs in the country and has great depth and breadth of experience with Division I marching bands. Dr. Anderson holds a doctorate in music education from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, a master of music from the University of Florida, and a bachelor of music with teacher certification from the University of Iowa.

During the past five years at Fresno State, he has been responsible for all aspects of the athletic bands program. His directing experience involves not only the nearly 300-member marching band and pep band, but also symphonic band, concert band and other ensembles, and he has taught a wide range of courses for both majors and non-majors and been involved in community outreach. He is also very active as a clinician and adjudicator. Dr. Anderson is expected to visit Amherst in the next few weeks and will be on board this summer to prepare for the 2011-12 season and band camp.

I also want to take this opportunity, on behalf of the entire UMass Amherst community, to express our deep gratitude to Thom Hannum, who served as interim band director during the challenging months following George Parks’ untimely passing. His devotion to the Minuteman Marching Band is legendary, and I know that you will join me in thanking Thom for his many accomplishments and in welcoming Tim to our community.

Dr. Jeff Cox, Chair

Department of Music and Dance

UMass Amherst

The university’s response was provided by Linda Hannum.

Related posts:

1. I’m a Featured UMass Alumni Blogger
2. Design Demo: UMass Alumni
3. George Parks: Inspiration Personified

The situation

I won’t get too specific, as it could reopen some healed wounds. But I will say this: I said a stupid thing on Twitter. It was personal. It was nasty. It was uncalled for. It was a mistake.

The recipient of my bone-headed tweet caught wind and promptly fired back. The trouble is: said recipient is in a powerful position and could do some real damage.

The predicament

My outcome: put out this fire asap. But how? If you know me, you know I’m happy to argue. I sometimes enjoy it. I’m fairly good at it. But in this case, it would have been a bad move. It would have fueled a fire that only needed putting out.

How do you put out a fire that’s burning on Twitter & other social media outlets?

The answer

Keeping in mind that there is no perfect answer, the first solution to explore is simply: apologize.

Fighting back only grows the problem. Ignoring it or covering your tracks can let it smolder. Calling for backup adds new complexity.

I apologized immediately. I realized what I said was stupid―and unwarranted―and that I should never have said it. I threw in some self-deprecation, just for good measure.

The conclusion

Social media fires might be the hardest kind to put out. People speak and act so quickly in this world that it’s almost impossible to keep up. Obviously, it’s best to avoid these fires if possible. But when they break out, act quickly and sincerely.

I made a mistake. I owned up to it. I apologized and held myself accountable. It wasn’t easy, but it was what needed to be done.

Feedback

Have you ever ignited a social media fire, accidentally or otherwise? How did/would you handle it? Let me know in the comments or tweet at me.

Related posts:

1. On the Social (network) Scene
2. On Social Networking
3. Twitter’s SEO Mistake

Drum corps and web development are the two things I love the most in life. It’s a wonder it took me this long to combine them. I saw a need more more thorough (and easier-to-use) coverage of the activity, so I rose to the challenge.

Corps Connect project details

Below is a screenshot of the Corps Connect homepage. You can expand the screenshot to full-size by clicking on it.

Related posts:

1. New Website: Spartans Drum Corps
2. Drum Corps – Chase Community Giving
3. New Website: 259 Lafayette Street

I got an invite to join their private beta, so I signed up. I created my first “story,” and played around with the options. The embedded block below is the result.

My first Stor(if)y

Was it good for you too?

What do you think of Storify? Is it the next big thing in social media? A flash in the pan? A diamond in the rough? A pain in the ass? I’ve had all these thoughts myself, and I can’t decide which is right.

I want to know what you think! Leave your thoughts in the comments or tweet at me.

No related posts.

Why, Facebook? Why!

Why would Facebook take away suggesting? The power of suggestion is very strong. And the power of social suggestion—recommendations made by your friends—is even stronger. Much of Facebook’s “viral” nature is derived from its users’ ability to share, and yes, suggest things to each other.

One possible reason to take away suggesting is to promote liking and sharing—two of Facebook’s most essential features. Some said the change was made to motivate companies to buy ads rather than use free, word-of-Facebook-mouth promotion. But that doesn’t make much sense, because not everyone lost their suggesting ability…

Admins can still suggest. Sort of.

Page Admins still have the option to suggest a page to their friends. Except the suggest function appears to be broken.

But the fact that the option is still listed is encouraging. It tells us that Facebook doesn’t want to eliminate suggesting entirely. If it exists for some users, there’s still some hope that it could exist for all.

Suggesting is broken.

Hitting the “Suggest to Friends” button on one of my pages brings up this—a collapsed box, with nothing inside it.

But this too is actually encouraging. Facebook doesn’t often leave broken features untended. Seeing unavailable functionality like this, seemingly unintentionally crippled, would—ahem—suggest that Facebook is currently making changes to the function. Limiting its availability to admins is a good way to test changes on a minority of users.

Will we ever suggest again?

So now the question becomes, if admins—the potential advertisers—can suggest, why can’t we, the target-market consumers? Is it becoming a privilege, accessible only to Facebook’s social influencers?

Or is Facebook just patching up a few things before suggesting returns to all users? Maybe too many “how to suggest to all friends” tutorials popped up and Zuck wants that “bug” fixed (or officially supported?).

Or perhaps—and I think this is most likely—suggesting was taken away temporarily while Facebook redesigns pages. They just finished rolling out new profiles, and there has been lots of talk of eliminating tabs on pages too. Perhaps this is just part of that rework.

I hope so. I like the suggest function. Sure, it gets over-used sometimes. But I think it’s a great piece of Facebook’s platform.

Feedback

What about you? Do you miss your “Suggest to Friends” button? Did you even notice it missing? What are your conspiracy theories about its disappearance? Let me know in the comments or tweet at me. Thanks!

Update: No, we will never suggest again. At least, not the way we used to.

Related posts:

1. On the Social (network) Scene
2. Soon You’ll Manage Your Stocks on Facebook
3. Facebook doesn't own my digital lifestream.

How my driveway usually looks

Note my car parked outside, nice yellow siding, and shiny green grass. Nice, right?

What I saw at 8:30am yesterday

I’m actually being generous with the amount of yellow visible in this sketch. It was more white than this.

After 2 hours of shoveling

Our friendly neighbor even stopped by with his front-end loader to help dig out the plow bank. Look at all our progress!

No related posts.

Downloading a Brightcove video is actually very easy, if you have the right tools. I’ll explain the materials needed and walk through each step of the process.

Tools required

• Safari 4+ WITHOUT Flash Player installed (how to temporarily remove Flash Player from Safari)
• Firefox or any other browser

Downloading Brightcove videos

I have only tried this on Mac OS X. It should work the same way on Windows, but the steps to remove Flash Player will be different.

Locate a webpage with a Brightcove video embedded

Load that page in your Flash Player-less Safari 4+. Click to load the video, if required.

At this point, you should see something like this.

If you don’t see this Flash Player error message, it means Flash Player is still installed in Safari. Go back to Gruber’s instructions to make sure you properly removed Flash Player.

Enable Safari’s “Develop” menu

If you don’t already have Safari’s “Develop” menu enabled, you’ll need that. Go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced.

Trick the Brightcove video into HTML5 mode

Safari 4+ comes with the ability to render webpages as multiple other browsers, including Mobile Safari for iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. In the Develop menu, find User Agent and choose iPhone.

Rendering the webpage in Mobile Safari for iPhone (or iPad/iPod) tells Brightcove that you’re using an iOS mobile device which, by definition, won’t support Flash. So, since Brightcove doesn’t want to exclude Apple fans from their video platform, they serve an HTML5 version. [Update: not all Brightcove videos have this HTML5 version. More about that issue later.]

Open Safari’s Activity Window

Safari’s Activity Window shows a list of every asset being downloaded by the browser: every image, CSS file, Javascript file, and yes, video file. Access it in the top menu, Window > Activity.

Find & open the video file

Locate the file you want. It will probably have a .mp4 extension. Double-click the filename to open the file.

One last hiccup: Saving.

For whatever reason, Safari won’t let you save the file you’ve just double-clicked and opened. This is where Firefox or any other browser comes in. Simple copy the URL of the .mp4 video file and open it in Firefox.

Limitations (updated)

I failed to mention one limitation when I first published this post. For this technique to work, the Brightcove video in question must have a non-Flash fallback.

In my experience, most Brightcove videos are H.264-encoded by default and are served through a Flash player—the same method YouTube and Vimeo use. And like YouTube and Vimeo, without the presence of Flash Player, Brightcove can serve up the H.264 file using HTML5′s <video> element. However, not all Brightcove videos have that <video> fallback. Unfortunately, my technique is useless without it.

Happy downloading

I hope this helps others reclaim a few Brighcove videos. Again I’ll point out that this How-to is not intended to be used for stealing videos. No one likes a thief. But in the event that you have legitimate use for this technique, I hope you find it helpful.

Feedback

Did you find this post helpful? Do you know of another way to download otherwise-protected videos? Did I miss something or get it wrong? Let me know in the comments or tweet at me.

Related posts:

1. Flash Mob Wedding in Boston
2. Internet Explorer 8