Eric Martindale

Since you cannot reshare a share, I linked to the article by +Carmelyne Thompson instead. Nice read regarding how we operate in Hangout Academy!
http://hangoutacademy.com

Whoever is curious what we use:
- Gerrit for Code Review
- We use Debian for Staging Server / Production Server
- We have automated builds that it deploys the web app to Staging server
- We follow agile development, we do modified SCRUM every other day.
- We document enough so that if a new member joins, they wont get lost.
- We design, we architect, we develop and iterate!
- We use hangouts for our main communication tool.
- We use Google Apps with Sites / Mail / Calendar integration

The team is beyond awesome, read her post to know the full picture! We love to tinker, we love development, and we love design!

via +Carmelyne Thompson

Since you cannot reshare a share, I linked to the article by +Carmelyne Thompson instead. Nice read regarding how we operate in Hangout Academy!
http://hangoutacademy.com

Whoever is curious what we use:
- Gerrit for Code Review
- We use Debian for Staging Server / Production Server
- We have automated builds that it deploys the web app to Staging server
- We follow agile development, we do modified SCRUM every other day.
- We document enough so that if a new member joins, they wont get lost.
- We design, we architect, we develop and iterate!
- We use hangouts for our main communication tool.
- We use Google Apps with Sites / Mail / Calendar integration

The team is beyond awesome, read her post to know the full picture! We love to tinker, we love development, and we love design!

via +Carmelyne Thompson

So, I bought a new laptop from System76. About damn time, I say.

The specs:

• 15.6" HD+ LED Display @ 1600x900
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 Graphics with 512MB GDDR2 Memory
• Core i5-520M Processor ( 32nm, 3MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz )
• 2 GB - DDR3 1066 MHz (DDR3: zoom zoom. ;])
• 250 GB 5400 RPM SATA II (I considered a bigger hard drive, but I have a NAS at the house and honestly plan on taking advantages of synchronized OSes like ChromeOS in the very near future, so I decided against it)

So far, I'm absolutely lovin' it. The hardware is very clean and Apple-like, with no disgusting third-party stickers plastered all over the thing. There's a System76 logo sticker on the back, which I could easily remove with some isopropyl if I so chose. Part of System76's sales pitch is pre-built Ubuntu boxes (which is what sold me, to be honest), so it came with Ubuntu 10.04, my day-to-day operating system of choice (especially since Backtrack makes things oh-so-awesome.)

I do have some minor complaints:

1. I had a dead pixel on my LCD. They won't replace it unless "there are more than 6 dead pixels. :(
2. As a result of the hinge design, the screen won't fold back more than ~35°. A bit of a pain in specific use scenarios.
3. A lack of one-button volume controls. The volume controls are only available through function keys, sadly. Some buttons on the top right for volume up, down, and mute would make this already awesome laptop perfect.

I don't know how much control System76 has over these hardware-design issues, but fixing them would seal the deal on any of my future purchases. ;)

It's a new currency, designed for the Internet Age, that doesn't depend on any one government, bank, or company. It works the same way everywhere, regardless of what country you're in – allowing for financial freedom in ways not possible with legacy currencies.

I carve pumpkins, too, but I do fairly intricate designs so I use "Funkins" so I can keep them forever...I've done one of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Freddie Krueger...this year I'm thinking of doing V from V for Vendetta...

I'd add that our monetary system is utterly corrupt by design. You work for money, but you do not own what you traded your labor for. There is no capitalism because money printers can dismiss the price system at will from the inside. Price signals are created at the will of the planners and not by the needs of the people.

I'm not so sure I would lay the blame for facebook's "problems" with their development model. Not that I'd argue for their development model because I know little about it or particulars of their changes, but my problems with them stem purely from a design perspective (call it Human Factors if you want).

If #bitcoin had been around earlier, how would things be different? @pmarca says even TCP/IP and BGP would be designed differently. #CJDNS!

RT @martindale: If #bitcoin had been around earlier, how would things be different? @pmarca says even TCP/IP and BGP would be designed dif…

RT @martindale: If #bitcoin had been around earlier, how would things be different? @pmarca says even TCP/IP and BGP would be designed dif…

Might want to check this too. Security generally is under serviced, bad guys are too often ignored in the design process.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0922/From-the-man-who-discovered-Stuxnet-dire-warnings-one-year-later

+Eric Martindale I primarily use it for some hobby AI projects at this point. Since it was designed as the catch-all language for high-reliability systems in the military including thermonuclear devices and airplanes, it seemed like the reasonable choice here :)

There's sadly not much commercial interest in Ada :(

In addition to the expansion of the FLIBE salts when they are heated, the system is at low pressure, so a loss of 'containment' results in a liquid leak at low pressure (2-3x atm pressure), instead of flashing water to steam at high pressures (100x atm pressure).

In this liquid leak, it is spilled into a catch pan that channels it into holding tanks (this is the walkaway safe design). Simply turn it off, walk away, and it is safe. Stab a hole in it and it leaks down and is safe. Remove power, safe.

Here's some cool technical details on why your images can appear differently in different browsers or applications, despite using the same display hardware. Worth the read if you edit photographs!

As it turns out, various applications (and the libraries they use) handle four-channel images differently, some even choosing to discard some of your image data entirely. It looks like even between Photoshop CS4 and CS5, the methods used to handle these layers are different!

#phtotography #photoshop #design #media

Here's some cool technical details on why your images can appear differently in different browsers or applications, despite using the same display hardware. Worth the read if you edit photographs!

As it turns out, various applications (and the libraries they use) handle four-channel images differently, some even choosing to discard some of your image data entirely. It looks like even between Photoshop CS4 and CS5, the methods used to handle these layers are different!

#phtotography #photoshop #design #media

+Darryl Barnes “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Robert A. Heinlein

After taking a look... it looks beautiful. But I agree with +Neeta Tolani, it's a scrapbook that is looking backwards. It doesn't really help you be social and connect now. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page that +Eric Martindale linked, there is a short video on the "new" FB apps. Now these seem more relevant to helping us connect with others, but, other than maybe being better designed, how's that much different than the apps we already have?

I've been working for an industrial company that's still struggling with the very idea of open-source, so unfortunately there's nothing on github I can point a potential employer at. I guess in theory I ought to be doing something on the side just for that reason, but after writing code all week long, it's not exactly high on the list of priorities in my free time. :-)

100% agree with the sentiment though -- résumés are almost worthless for Software Engineers. Once in a while I can tell that someone's not completely inept, based on the specific way they describe their current/past work on a CV. But even then, it's hardly worth the time it takes to sift through the pile, vs. just bringing people in to talk for a bit.

A few lines of code are worth a thousand words. HR at large companies tends to get bogged down with the specifics of which languages/technologies they know, but that's missing the point entirely. If you can just have someone design a small system in pseudocode that solves some simple problem, the orders-of-magnitude difference in talent between individual programmers becomes obvious.

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

+Terrence Lui definitely, i'd love to hear more about your efforts and would love to help brainstorm the recruiting process.

There are people that have a gift of hiring good people. I personally think that a friendly exchange with an individual and a philosophical conversation can go a long way.

Personally, respect is the biggest key for me in a employee/employer relationship. I think upfront and straight forward is the ideal.

What are the key traits you want in an employee? Diversity is key for a team, but you need focused individuals and broad thinking individuals as well.

In my past I have loved the hiring process and offering my recommendation to employers. When I worked for a sporting goods store, I doubled back on my managers suggestion during a final interview and the manager was very unhappy about it. Something was off.

I left the job for an unrelated reason a month later and they hired the guy I turned away against my recommendation. He proceeded to embezzle over 10,000 in merchandise before being caught stealing bats and selling them second hand. The reason it felt wrong.

Mutual respect is key.

I personally would request an email to introduce yourself (if you have more than a handful of applications face to face with every potential is not cost effective)

from that, don't focus 100% on experience. You need a well rounded team, that means old and new perspectives.

Also, don't promote someone to supervisor that is the best designer. Adequately gauge the persons talents and build them in that area. A supervisor does not have to know a thing about who they are supervising. It depends on your desired form of leadership. Some models take the best and have them lead, some take leaders and have them work with the best.

Definitely an interesting read.
Whenever i work at a Diabetes camp, one of the questions i have received from parents is "How do you make sure the remote is controlling the right pump? Currently, Medtronic/Minimed uses a device ID to pair the meter, CGM, or remote to the pump. I believe Johnson & Johnson/Animas One Touch Ping uses a similar method - i would have to ask my brother.
The Insulet Omnipod uses a proximity registration method, which i don't fully understand (I haven't played with it much), but I have a feeling that this pairing method might be vulnerable to an attack, possibly of a man-in-the-middle design.

I also do not see how interfering with the CGM signal could cause any issue - the only integrated CGM/pump combo that is FDA approved for sale in the USA (Minimed 522/722 or 523/723 ("Revel")) does nothing with the CGM information beyond display it on the pump and alert you to changes. Let me reiterate: the US CGM/pump combo does not use CGM data to alter insulin patterns - at this point in time, the FDA simply will not allow it.
Now, assuming the insulin pump is Medtronic's European model, I have been told (by a Medtronic Diabetes sales representative) that the european model features an "auto-off" switch - if the wearer's blood glucose level drops below a certain threshold, the insulin pump will immediately suspend insulin delivery. I do not know the specifics of how this works, if it is all insulin or just the basal levels, but it is a potential vulnerability, but leads to the risk of a high blood sugar (which leads to long-term complications if uncontrolled).

Now the flipside of the auto off, would be an automatic insulin increase. Theoretically, if we wanted a closed-loop insulin delivery system that mimics the natural function of the pancreas, we need to automatically reduce insulin delivery when blood glucose levels are dropping, as well as increase insulin delivery when BG levels are rising. The current technology has its known issues, so I am not sure if the FDA (or any similar agencies worldwide) will even allow this functionality with the available technology, but it is still a valid concern for biomedical programmers.

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

After a year and a half working with some of the smartest and most competent engineers I've ever met, it's time for me to part ways with BitPay. I've had the opportunity to be deeply involved in the design, implementation, and deployment of some incredible technologies, but we're turning a page in the story of Bitcoin's rise and it's time to start exploring the new chapter. BitPay continues to paint an incredibly compelling picture as to what the decentralized future looks like – we worked on some incredibly far-reaching and massively impactful ideas, including: - [ChainDB][chaindb], a distributed database backed exclusively by the Bitcoin blockchain. - [Copay][copay], a truly decentralized wallet & identity management platform. - [BitAuth][bitauth], a secure authentication mechanism for peers on the web, using the `k1` curve. - [Impulse][impulse], a method of securing zero-confirmation transactions. - [Foxtrot][foxtrot], a completely encrypted data transmission network. - [Bitcore][bitcore], a library of common software functionality to glue everything together. You might notice a few common themes. Let me point out the two most important. Firstly, that everything here is open source (with the notable exception of ChainDB). Open source, and more importantly [free software][free software], is a very big deal to me. Prior to joining BitPay, I was [open sourcing education][coursefork], [contributing to open source software](https://github.com/martindale), and [speaking on the importance of open source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYLWdG-lP0). Some of the things I'm most proud of are the things _other_ people built with the things _we_ gave away – _that's_ the real power of open source. Secondly, that everything here is based on Bitcoin, not some alternative blockchain. BitPay was a firm believer in Bitcoin as the exclusive platform that would secure the post-fiat era, and that belief has held strongly with me before and after my departure. Until a more compelling alternative to Bitcoin emerges, One of the other exciting things to come out of BitPay was the emergence of [DECENTRALIZE][decentralize], which we formed last fall with a few of our fellow employees. DECENTRALIZE has become [an acclaimed content source][cointelegraph:decentralize] in the latest resurgence of decentralized thinking, and now it gets to be a much bigger priority for me. Before I joined BitPay, I'd put a lot of work into [Maki][maki], a framework for making full-stack application development significantly easier. Maki took a bit of a back-burner position while I was focusing on my work at BitPay, so I'll be redoubling my efforts to see that vision through. In fact, I think now's as good a time as any to share that vision. To that end, I'm starting a new project named Fabric. I'd like to entirely eliminate centralized servers on the Internet and catalyze the development of an entirely new class of economic actor. More details soon. As we embark on our next journey, let's always remember the carefully selected input used to create [the Genesis Block][genesis]: > The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks [chaindb]: https://bitpay.com/chaindb.pdf [copay]: https://copay.io/ [bitauth]: https://github.com/bitpay/bitauth [impulse]: https://impulse.is/ [foxtrot]: https://github.com/bitpay/foxtrot [bitcore]: https://bitcore.io [decentralize]: https://decentralize.fm [free software]: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [coursefork]: https://coursefork.org/ [maki]: https://maki.ericmartindale.com/ [cointelegraph:decentralize]: http://cointelegraph.com/news/114496/leaders-in-bitcoin-broadcasting-pandoras-box-is-open-and-theres-no-going-back [genesis]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block

Hello there, adoring internet-stalkers! (I'm kidding. ~_~) You may have noticed (if you were loyal, that is ;)) that my Feedburner-powered RSS Feed has been lacking in activity lately. There's a reason for that.

Recently, I got rid of WordPress and Sweetcron in favor of a new CMS platform, Chyrp. I had been running Wordpress for a long time, using it to share my thoughts with the general internet populace. However, it had become a bit of a chore to maintain, and it really felt like duplicate work on top of all the other content-generation I was already performing (i.e., forum posts, blog comments, Last.fm "Loved" Tracks, Google Reader shared items, etc.), so I began to look for a way to aggregate this content into a central place.

For a while, FriendFeed served this purpose well, but I didn't like the lack of control I had over the source. Facebook also filled part of this gap (and it still does, to a point), and they've even purchased FriendFeed, but I was looking for something quite a bit more customizable and self-hosted. Through various referrals, I came across Yongfook's Sweetcron project which was a new platform designed specifically for this new thing they called, le gasp, "Lifestreaming".

However, after fighting with Sweetcron and its aggregation methods, particularly its lack of support for various service feed formats; I decided to look into something else. Initial searches landed me upon Tumblr, who had conveniently announced a feature that syncs comments across multiple services (or aggregates). Sadly, I didn't want to get back into a world where all my code was hosted by someone else, and I had no control over it. I kept Sweetcron running on my site under lifestream/, but I continued searching for a better solution.

I then stumbled across Bazooka, which was billed as "the first free PHP tumblelog engine". Thanks to Bazooka developer Evan Walsh, who alerted me to a more up-to-date and current replacement called Chyrp. And I was sold. I immediately spent a few hours converting my existing content from WordPress and SweetCron over to a test installation of Chyrp, and then took the next night changing my site structure and 301'd all my old links to the new URLs.

That's where EricMartindale.com stands today. I've spent a few weeks getting my stream set up the way I want it, and I'm turning the RSS feed back on. Posts should begin flowing into your RSS reader very shortly. Post comments, feedback, and questions here!

Edit 10:13 PM EST: It looks like Feedburner is having some trouble parsing my new RSS content. You can subscribe to my direct feed and it will always work.

Edit 10:58 PM EST: I've fixed the problem and committed the patch to GitHub.

One of the sites I own and run (RolePlayGateway) has a pretty large forum, with several customizations and features that I've added on to the base install of phpBB3. As time went on, we continued upgrading the servers (moving from GoDaddy shared hosting to GoDaddy virtual dedicated servers, then onward to MediaTemple's (gs), and now we're on the second tier of MediaTemple's (dv) hosting) in an effort to keep the hardware moving as fast as possible.

As I'm sure you know, hardware can be pretty expensive! One month, while on MediaTemple's Grid Server, we racked up $600 in CPU time overage charges. (Ow.) Now that we've moved onward to bigger and better packages, we're shelling out just about $100 per month for a rock-solid server solution that can be upgraded seamlessly in the future. But since upgrades can only go so far without being prohibitively expensive, I thought it was time to take a look at some of our coding approaches.

Enter memcache, the distributed database caching solution originally designed by LiveJournal to help them deal with massive databases and large volumes of users. DavidMJ has written some shiny ACM modules to help phpBB3 make use of some caching systems, and a memcache module was among them.

That didn't work so well. It gave about a 50% boost to phpBB3's performance (which was great!), but we were still choking the server, and ended up upgrading to a bigger and more robust package with MediaTemple. So I started looking into more options, and DavidMJ suggested xcache. So I go grab xcache and compile it, then enabled it in php. Bingo! There's a 500% boost in our page compile times, and across most of our pages we're now well under 0.1 second compile times. (With the exception of viewtopic.php, which frequently approaches 2 seconds due to bad coding on my part... this will be fixed soon.)

So now that I've got the thirst for speed, let's take a look at how we're performing. To do this, use the apache benchmarking tool:ab -n 100000 http://www.mydomain.com/my_page This will test the URL you specify 100,000 times, and give you some feedback about how the page performs. You'll end up with something looking like this:

Server Software: Apache/2.2.3 Server Hostname: www.mydomain.com Server Port: 80 Document Path: /my_page Document Length: 0 bytes Concurrency Level: 1 Time taken for tests: 15.30100 seconds Complete requests: 1 Failed requests: 0 Write errors: 0 Non-2xx responses: 1 Total transferred: 715 bytes HTML transferred: 0 bytes Requests per second: 0.07 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 15030.100 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 15030.100 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 0.00 [Kbytes/sec] received Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0 Processing: 15030 15030 0.0 15030 15030 Waiting: 30 30 0.0 30 30 Total: 15030 15030 0.0 15030 15030

Some tweaks to the default xcache config that I recommend:

Set the number of caches to one per processor on your server! ; set to cpu count (cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep -c processor) xcache.count = 4

This post will be updated as I explore phpBB3 and more server side options. (I wrote part of this post, then stopped writing... and figure I'd publish it a couple days later anyway!)

There's been a lot of active discussion about the state of AOL's directory project, DMOZ. There have been many attempts to unseat the directory project from its position as the most authoritative listing resource, such as the Yahoo Directory. Many of these attempts have fallen by the wayside, as Rand Fiskin points out, but none have remained more controversial than DMOZ. More recently, Chris Crum's post on WebProNews about his lack of respect for DMOZ has stirred up a hornet's nest of DMOZ criticism, including a particular post claiming DMOZ is a waste of time.

I forwarded a lot of this on to Philip Nicolcev, known by username as "frug", who is the editor of several roleplay-oriented categories on DMOZ. He responded to me directly with a highly insightful email, and I was fortunate enough to receive his permission to share its contents.

I've been editing the pbp category at DMOZ for what... 4 years now? About that. This article is a big whiny complaint which misses the mark. They are both correct and sadly mistaken. Yes, dmoz is outdated and yes, it fails because of attitude problems, but not silly allegations of 'corruption' or people who are bitter because they didn't get listed. We don't list everything, I don't list even half of the submissions I get, and anyone who has been an administrator or an editor for a similar type of project knows better than to take these kinds of complaints seriously. One thing they say is definitely correct: Apply once carefully following their rules if you wish and then, as Will suggested, forget about them.

This is exactly the approach that should be modeled for any directory, regardless of its state or condition. When you are submitting a link to a directory, you are being offered the privilege to be listed as a resource by the owners and management of that directory. They are not obligated to list your link, let alone review it in a timely fashion--but this would be genuinely appreciated and would reflect on the directory's position as a "good" resource.

DMOZ is the primary source for Google's Directory, and you must respect the opinion of such a large and successful company. It's obvious that the idea behind an open directory like DMOZ is good, but where they fail is in execution. More on that later.

He continues:

That is what you should do. Apply once and forget about it, don't claim anybody is corrupt because whether you believe my opinion or not, there's no corruption. Nobody cares enough about dmoz anymore for it to be valuable for extortion. Don't be ridiculous. Furthermore if you were to speak to some of the senior editors you'd discover that they are pretty damn uptight, even obsessive. The problems with dmoz are, in my opinion, twofold. First off, you have the dated trashy look of the website which is a relic of the 1990's. It's not user friendly, it doesn't entice anyone to go browsing, and it hasn't adapted or added features that would help people understand the structure of the directory or find what they're looking for. The editor forums still use phpBB2, and you should see the editing panel. You wouldn't believe how dated this stuff is. Frankly it has needed an overhaul for years now.

I largely agree with him. The phpBB team deprecated the phpBB2 branch at the beginning of this year, ending support for the outdated platform. AOL would do well to do a complete overhaul of the site's design now that "Web 2.0" has come and gone (and I could reference posts all day on that) - and AOL has completely missed their opportunity to latch on and ride the wave.

Philip finishes his correspondance with the frightening truth that has been plaguing many post-Web2.0 sites and services:

The second problem, attitude, is partially the cause of the first problem. It's a stagnant atmosphere where nothing gets done and nobody gets listened to. They would rather leave a directory as a cluttered mess of garbage than risk breaking its structure by overhauling it. Fixing my category took me about two years before I had approval to restructure it, and I'm in a small niche category nobody pays much attention to. Since becoming an editor I have deleted about 60% of the outdated links listed. Had I not joined, they'd still be there cluttering things up with linkspam geocities pages from 10 years ago. So yeah, dmoz is failing, but not because of corruption or because some guy didn't get what he wanted. And, honestly, if the author of this article was applying to dmoz just to 'test how fair it was' then I'm glad they rejected him. Somehow they made the right decision because he's wasting their time.

And that's the exact problem - the DMOZ community has completely stagnated, which has resulted in the puddle of goop that the directory has become. In my personal opinion, I think that AOL could do a lot better job at community management (all reputation management aside) by setting up a more rigid structure of responsibility. The editors need to be held responsible for a timely review specified by their superiors, and there needs to be cross-checking of the editor's work by other qualified editors.

Is this another example of AOL's purchases being mismanaged and ultimately being forgotten, such as what many people claim is the case with ex-Nullsoft product WinAmp? Perhaps, but I think that remains to be seen. After all, even our favored Google took a questionable amount of time to convert phone-consolidation service GrandCentral to the new Google Voice after its 2007 acquisition. DMOZ was in fact originally a Netscape project, which then-strong AOL acquired in 1998. Since that acquisition, little has changed.

All said and done, DMOZ needs some love if it's going to survive as anything more than a relic of trust and authority in the Web 2.0 bubble. As Philip points out, it has both good and bad traits and deserves further attention, but it needs to be attention in (and from) the right direction. The questions remain; where has AOL been? What can be done about the editors (or lack thereof)? How can DMOZ be improved?

So, Firefox allows you to open favorites in a sidebar - which is great for things like FriendFeed, Google Talk, Twitter, or even Facebook chat. It lets you use a good web service as what essentially becomes an extension for your browser, so you can browse your regular pages while still participating in the conversation.

I recently switched over to the social browser, Flock - with great success and elation. Flock is built from the Firefox codebase, but they are massively more social in what the browser does - drag and drop images, open media feeds, view your friends in their People and Places sidebar, among many other really cool things.

Then there's Friendfeed - which is a web service that recently took off (but I must say, I've been using long before the hype. :D) because it allows you to combine all of your social media connections (Web 2.5, if you will) and even cross-post responses between them (closer to Web 3.0, minus filtering and duplicate content issues...). After putting in a request to Flock's develpment team to start moving in this direction, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

When you bookmark something in Firefox, you can open the properties of the bookmark and hit a checkbox, "Open this link in the sidebar." However, this option is not available in Flock (by default). So let's open our trusty about:config:

Do a filter on "sidebar", and you'll find a value called "flock.favorites.loadPageInSidebar" - which is set to false by default. Right click this value, and click "toggle".

Bingo. Now you will have the checkbox on all your bookmarks that will allow you to open links in your sidebar!

Tags: flock, browser, web, sidebar, friendfeed, social media

Warning: Strong nerdery follows. Please be cautious of your fragile mind.

Since late 1997, in all of my pre-teen glory, I have been involved with something my friends and I simply called roleplay in our own little vernacular. Of course I've since learned that roleplay doesn't only refer to the peer-driven world of online roleplay, it refers to all sorts of real-world tabletop games, live acting, and various amounts of storytelling, but this particular post is written with the word roleplay referring to the freeform online roleplaying that I have always been so close to.

Freeform roleplay, or the idea that there is no GM (game master) or storyteller (as in Vampire: The Masquerade), and is instead driven solely by the players, with no concrete rules for battle, statistics, or progression of the story. Rules and guidelines were driven by common expectation, which developed as a sort of social justice system that remains effective, even today.

The very roots of this sort of roleplay stem from early chat systems, where one could adopt a simple moniker and create a personality around the idea of an "avatar", which in most cases consisted only of this name. Players, without defining themselves as such, would interact in an imaginative world that coalesced out of their collaborative imagination. Each would react to the other characters' actions and dialogue in a fashion that suited their own character's theoretical personality, and this would create a constantly evolving story arc.

As the web (and the young teen's perception of the web) evolved and grew, so did the concept of roleplay. Online forums became an entirely new beast, allowing users to write more and more into their in character posts, instead of being limited to the single lines that chat provided (of course, some chats had enough space for people to post a full paragraph, or even two - but this was limited at the time), they were able to expound upon their writing and even proofread their copy before sending it across the web for the other players to view.

Freeform roleplay had also grown to be very competitive at this point, with groups of players forming groups known as clans, guilds, or otherwise, and expanded their IC competitions from chat to the forums and message boards now provided by a few enterprising organizations (or individuals). It was this competitive banter and challenge that defined what many now call the golden age of roleplay, which is what really drove the forefront of this gaming medium.

There were plenty of players who had entered their late teens (and some even were adults at this point, gasp!) who moved away from chat, and who moved away from the conflict-driven world of this type of roleplay. They went on to create storyline-oriented games, with a small and select number of players in more of a collaborative fiction setting. These players often went on to become writers and editors, being driven more by the literary aspect of relaying a fiction onto the internet, and often have their own private niche where they can continue to do this with their long-standing playergroup.

And... that's where we are today. The freeform roleplay community is growing and changing, barely 15 years old at this point. We have the chance to nurture it, just as we have the chance to neglect it. Those of us who've been involved since the beginning have the greatest opportunity to influence the course of growth, and that's exactly what I'm hoping to do.

Alright, so MIT has this #physics professor named Walter Lewin [1]. He teaches (among other things) Classical Mechanics (lectures, slides, and notes all available on OCW [2]) and he appears to be a chalkboard wizard. ♪♫

Observe the #chalkboard #dubstep .

Hat tip to +Jonathan Langdale for leading me to this. :)

[1]: http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/lewin_walter.html
[2]: http://www.archive.org/details/MITclassical_mech

Alright, so MIT has this #physics professor named Walter Lewin [1]. He teaches (among other things) Classical Mechanics (lectures, slides, and notes all available on OCW [2]) and he appears to be a chalkboard wizard. ♪♫

Observe the #chalkboard #dubstep .

Hat tip to +Jonathan Langdale for leading me to this. :)

[1]: http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/lewin_walter.html
[2]: http://www.archive.org/details/MITclassical_mech

Alright, so MIT has this #physics professor named Walter Lewin [1]. He teaches (among other things) Classical Mechanics (lectures, slides, and notes all available on OCW [2]) and he appears to be a chalkboard wizard. ♪♫

Observe the #chalkboard #dubstep .

Hat tip to +Jonathan Langdale for leading me to this. :)

[1]: http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/lewin_walter.html
[2]: http://www.archive.org/details/MITclassical_mech

Alright, so MIT has this #physics professor named Walter Lewin [1]. He teaches (among other things) Classical Mechanics (lectures, slides, and notes all available on OCW [2]) and he appears to be a chalkboard wizard. ♪♫

Observe the #chalkboard #dubstep .

Hat tip to +Jonathan Langdale for leading me to this. :)

[1]: http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/lewin_walter.html
[2]: http://www.archive.org/details/MITclassical_mech

Every time I think of maths education, I think of Lockharts Lament: (pdf) https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=KhJDU9naJYn0lAXzCA&url=http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf&cd=6&ved=0CDkQFjAF&usg=AFQjCNFGDSuprzF62frJ9aW3y61xxH-w3A&sig2=lGf-UZ-HvOPUhbO3P3HG5A

While marketing RolePlayGateway, one of the things we considered was the "virality" of our approach. Viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. We're going to guide you on the road to a truly viral campaign.

A successful viral push can be launched simply by following three simple rules.

1. Don't spend everything you have on a single campaign.
2. Don't rely entirely on one vehicle of viral marketing.
3. Be different from everyone else; stand out.

While we're not nearly viral enough, part of our success so far has been the evangelism of our passionate users. And there you have it, one of the most important keys to successful viral marketing:

Passion: Users who are passionate about your service, your community, or your site. They will propagate, they will evangelize, and ultimately will generate more passionate users who will do the same thing for you. Dawn Anfuso calls these members Boomers - and it is important to not ignore them.

Make it easy for your users to share. Make it hard for them NOT to share. Add a feature on your site that encourages them to send an email to their friends about the service. Add blocks where they can copy and paste code straight to their social profiles on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo. Jeanne Jennings wrote an amazing article on Optimizing the "E-mail This" Marketing Opportunity, and I'd recommend you read it and implement the things you learn from it.

Widgetize: On that note, we arrive on one of our most powerful vehicles for viral marketing: Widgets. The list of sites that you can infect with widgets are endless. From iGoogle to individual sites, widgets encourage users to put your tool on their page. Be sure to incorporate other techniques here: Include encouragement to share it. Make it easy to post elsewhere and share.

One of the items that RolePlay Gateway could utilize to great success is the concept of game trailers. Many of the games on RPGateway are text-based, and have no real graphics. However, most of these games have amazing storylines, storylines which could be utilized to hitch audiences, or at least entertain them. Flash-based videos, or trailers, with pivotal content, captivating video and audio, and viral marketing elements such as "Email this!" or "Share This", would be an amazing leap forward. Take a look at how YouTube's video player works. Such trailers could even be uploaded to social networking sites, like YouTube and Google Video, and shared to millions of users with a touch of viral marketing magic.

Juice It Up: Include your URL everywhere you go. Facebook, MySpace. Everywhere. This generates user authority, even if the site you are on has nothing at all to do with your target market. Cross sections are a beautiful thing, and even if you don't get a drop of link juice in comments, market saturation is a very important, yet delicate, part of viral marketing.

Maintain a presence on every social networking site you can sustain. Extend your campaign to all of them. Create social groups for each of these sites, and publicize them. The more targets you hit, just like investing, the less committed you are to that particular market. Your assets are distributed, and while the workload may be unfathomably difficult (keeping up with so many social networking sites sucks... that's why we have ProfileLinker), the potential for success is incredible.

Reward: Another option is to provide tangible rewards for marketing. This can be in the form of prizes, such as in a contest, or to individual users. Incentives are very powerful, and drive many users to promote where they'd be otherwise apathetic. Things can be very simple, such as giving them tokens or credits, to very expensive, such as providing real cash per referral. This is probably the most effective, albeit expensive, method of encouraging users to infect others.

Don't Stop. Don't set these actions in motion and then hope they work. Get involved. Comment on profiles. Reply to messages. Enhance your viral effect. Make it tangible. If users can see that there is a real person there, they will be a lot more enthusiastic and encouraged to participate, and your viral marketing campaign will be more successful.

Other Resources!!! Web Marketing Today has an amazing list of resource articles that are sure to help you build your campaign.

Sorry, no web cam set up right now.

I agree content is a big differentiator that doesn't get the attention it deserves. I personally think that a novel new collaborative content strategy would be useful about now. Something more richly interlinked and taking advantage of the interconnectedness of the web at large, and all the information within it.

"Since 1998, the Open Directory Project has been the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a passionate, global community of volunteer editors." - and they just launched a blog.

read more | digg story

Work is work, as per the usual. I'm work at a company called TechNoggins, doing all sorts of various things. Primarily, I am Callcenter Manager, handling calls for three states and eleven major cities. It's unfortunately fairly slow today, which means my salary isn't augmented by the influx of web development work. Sad day.

I've been messing around with some of Facebook's features, recently. I just linked "My Notes" to this blog, which seems like a cool feature, but it needs some work. It imported my posts what seems to be twice?

Someone posted LeekSpin on the Grand Tournament forum. I've been subtly amused by the music to which this has been put, and have been listening to it for just over an hour now. You want to talk about overplaying, hrm? Full immersion, hrrrm?

Well, looks like I have a PC here in the office that I need to fix. So, until later, I'm gone. :P

Yep, this April 22nd, 2008 is my birthday (credit to the intro goes to sXePhil), and I'm turning 21 today. However, due to the upcoming MMA fight that I've got at Dorton Arena on April 26th, all mandatory 21st birthday celebrations will be postponed until after the fight.

For those of you who aren't already aware, you can pick up tickets at Carolina Fight Promotions. I'm going to be fighting Andy Teague, a well-versed jiujitsu competitor, and the match is scheduled for three rounds at 3 minutes each.

So, today being my birthday--and as such, I've received tons and tons of birthday wishes--I thought I'd give some shoutouts to everyone who has done so. It's pretty simple, all you've got to do is write a "happy birthday" post somewhere on the web, link to me, and then show me the page you want me to link back to.

My twitter friends have had an early start, and it's already the afternoon - don't procrastinate, I'm ending this at midnight tonight!

Thank you guys for the happy birthday wishes! Martin Bowling Michelle Reno Brian Mark Rae Hoffman Dave Rohrer Alex Simpson Heather Sexy SEO SEOcom

There's some discussion about how forums are or are not social media, (frankly, I don't think there's any question at all) - and it occurred to me the answer of why there is this rift in perception of forums/message boards.

Message boards haven't changed in almost 25 years. There simply hasn't been any real innovation - and that's why there's so much "real" social media out there that's exploding right now. The stuff is so radically different from traditional mediums such as forums that everyone is missing the core of what social media is: community engagement and interaction

So, here are some of the things I'd like to see in a forum, and some things that I've implemented on some of my own forums (heh, or at least planning to implement):

Trackbacks It'd be awesome to have the same functionality in a blog post that we have on Wordpress or other blog software - did I give credit to someone? Let me hit the trackback API to make sure there's a connection between the two posts in the semantic web.

A forum thread is no different than a blog post. It has a topic, a goal, and a discussion pertaining to the original post. Let's see some of the functionality we found in the current decade put to use!

Native RSS Support There's nothing worse than having to write an RSS extension for your forum, and still not have the functionality you want. Give every URL on my forum a /feed, please. This includes forums, threads, posts, users: the whole shebang.

While you're at it, tell Feedburner to support filtered feeds - a lot of my users don't want every single post. And I sure as hell don't want to burn a new feed for every forum. C'mon, let's meet somewhere in the middle.

Semantic URLs Blogging software does it, why do we still have URLs on forums that use IDs right there in the URL? What benefit does that have to the user?

Social Profiles Alright, we've got friends and foes lists on our forums, now - but where is the option to make this information public? Why aren't we displaying a users' friend list on their profile page by default? What about all their most recent posts and actions, and selected excerpts?

A community can only grow in a stifled manner if interaction between members isn't made as easy as humanly possible. Current forum software is stuck in the 90's, with an XHTML wrapper around it. Let's fix this, and soon - before we all melt.

Real Metrics and Algorithms Stop using post count as a legitimate metric. This only encourages poor post quality. Let's see the ability to easily show Flesch-Kincaid, average word count, or something similar. The amount of posts a user has is not a good valuation of their contributions.

Instead, replace these with something more community-driven. Look at Digg for example. There is a solid (questionably) algorithm in place that measures users based on what they've submitted and the reactions of other users' reaction to that content, whether it be a comment or a submission.

Maybe I'm just whining. Maybe I've got legitimate desires. What do you think?

P.S.: And good god, phpBB! Why didn't you include this stuff in your phpBB3 release?!

I've been relying heavily on node.js this past year to provide a robust set of tools to solve the problems I encounter on a daily basis. I was pleased to see honorCipherOrder was added to node's TLS library in node.js v0.7.6, and released with node.js v0.8.0.

Late last year, security researcher Juliano Rizzo announced a new attack against the AES encryption used in the SSL/TLS transaction he dubbed BEAST. The details are interesting to those who care, but it turns out that we can mitigate this attack in node.js by enforcing honorCipherOrder on the server. Let's take a look.

If you have an HTTPS server that looks like this:

var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');

var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('key.pem'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('cert.pem')
};

https.createServer(options, function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end("hello world\n");
}).listen(443);

...you can now manage the cipher order by using the ciphers option. In the following code snippet we're going set the options for the above server to use Steve Caligo's cipher order, which prefers TLS 1.2 ciphers (which are not vulnerable to the BEAST attack) for clients that support TLS 1.2 but falls back to the RC4 ciphers on TLS 1.0 clients.^[...]

var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('key.pem'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('cert.pem'),
  ciphers: 'ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES256-SHA:RC4-SHA:RC4:HIGH:!MD5:!aNULL:!EDH:!AESGCM'
};

Finally, we will enforce the cipher order on the server's side of the negotiation:

var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('key.pem'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('cert.pem'),
  ciphers: 'ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES256-SHA:RC4-SHA:RC4:HIGH:!MD5:!aNULL:!EDH:!AESGCM',
  honorCipherOrder: true
};

...which leaves us with the following code for a working server that is not vulnerable to the BEAST attack (in node v0.8.0+!):

var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');

var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('key.pem'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('cert.pem'),
  ciphers: 'ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES256-SHA:RC4-SHA:RC4:HIGH:!MD5:!aNULL:!EDH:!AESGCM',
  honorCipherOrder: true
};

https.createServer(options, function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end("hello world\n");
}).listen(443);

Edit, 6/13/2013: Lloyd Watkin has done some research on his own and decided to use a different cipher chain:

ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:AES128-GCM-SHA256:RC4:HIGH:!MD5:!aNULL:!EDH

You should read into why he chose it and make an educated decision. </edit>

Until node.js implements this as the defaults (they should), this is something you should implement where using HTTPS with node!

I often get asked for my Skype address, sometimes in relation to business or casual conversation. I politely decline with some degree of hand-waving about my reasons, and suggest an alternative form of communication (typically either Google Talk or Google Hangouts, depending on the context—both are built right in to Gmail!). I'd like to outline some of the reasons why I've made the decision to avoid Skype, primarily so I have something to link to when someone asks me about it.

First and foremost, we don't really know what Skype actually does. The binary (the actual program you run on your computer) is obfuscated, so attempts at disassembling it [PDF] to verify some of its strange behavior and the information it is transmitting have so far come up with very little. This is an issue, because Skype produces encrypted traffic even when you are not actively using Skype. This means we can only speculate on what information Skype is collecting about you after you've so graciously chosen to install it, and perhaps more importantly who it is sending that information to.

Quoting Salman Baset:

When a Skype client is not in a call and is running on a machine with public IP address, it has on the average 4-8 active TCP connections and atleast one UDP connection.

While connecting to external IP addresses is normal for a server/client architecture and necessary for receiving notifications, the volume of traffic and number of connections is concerning, considering the compounding issues between Skype's peer-to-peer architecture [PDF] and the "reasonable level of detection accuracy" in snooping on voice calls in Skype [PDF], despite the [purportedly] encrypted nature of the Skype protocol.

Speaking in general terms, Skype is "black box" software which has undergone no public review despite very concerning observed behavior. When new Skype malware (like Skype IMBot, of which an analysis is available, or the more recent Skype account hijacking) is released, there are very few options to protect ourselves if we've got Skype installed. On Linux, tools like AppArmor and TOMOYO exist, but without the ability to easily view the source and understand the attack (per perhaps even fix it proactively, before it occurs) we are at the mercy of Skype's new maintainers to provide a timely resolution in a reactive approach.

If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

In conclusion, while Skype may be convenient, it presents a series of questions that must be asked and implications to be considered before choosing it over other chat, VoIP, and video chat solutions. I can only hope that more people consider these things before doing so.

I've been using Twitter since pretty early on (and long before @oprah), and I've found it to be a superbly convenient communication tool and notification service. Even though it's still very young on the web (Twitter was founded in March of 2006) It's been the home to great ideas like the #twitterdata proposal and the publicdomain book-via-tweets project. It's also an awesome reputation management platform, and can be used to both to provide effective customer service and help distribute news and updates about your business or product, which is exactly how I use it for my online roleplaying project.

But as with the rest of the social media world, Twitter can become very complex very quickly (but I still contend that there is no social media overload) and as a result, can be difficult to manage. As a result, I use several third-party tools to help me manage and gather information that helps me do my Twitter job much more efficiently and effectively.

Splitweet [caption id="attachment_196" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Splitweet allows you to post and monitor multiple Twitter accounts and brands."][/caption]

For those of us with multiple Twitter accounts (like some people who create a Twitter account for each roleplaying character they use), Splitweet is an absolute savior. This service allows you to tweet to multiple accounts at the same time, as well as combining the "stream" from each account into one page. A lot of desktop Twitter clients offer this kind of functionality, but where Splitweet truly excels is in its ability to track what it calls "brands" (more reputation management terms here): you can specify keywords and phrases that will appear in a separate feed, even if you do not follow those users. This gets us around the disastrous changes Twitter made to the @replies, and helps us keep up to date on any mentions of our site's name and any tweets relating to what it is that we do.

Sherflock [caption id="attachment_195" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sherflock provides detailed statistics and summaries of Twitter users you are associated with."][/caption]

Sherflock is an absolutely awesome stat tracking machine that helps weed out the waves of spam that have been coming in since Twitter has gone mainstream. Sherflock gives a large number of statistics about each every account the either follows you or that you are following, and lets you sort and filter users based on these statistics.

Twitterfall [caption id="attachment_194" align="alignnone" width="217" caption="Twitterfall offers a live stream of twitter updates on keywords that you specify."][/caption]

This tool allows you to specify any number of keywords that you wish to view on a live, moving stream of tweets. This is very useful if you are using a computer that allows you to "pin" a window on top (like Ubuntu Linux), or if you have a multiple-monitor rig, or even if you use multiple computers using the input-sharing app Synergy. You'll get a live feed of updates on any topic of your choice, which can even be updated and changed in real-time.

Using these three tools will help you maximize you Twitter performance and make the most of an already awesome service, preventing you from being inundated with the massive stream of messages that you're surely going to subscribe to.

What are your top three Twitter tools? Feel free to make a comment or write your own post, and I'll gladly append a link to this post to help everyone out!