There was some great brainstorming going on, but not nearly enough time to discuss the massive changes and shifts happening on the Internet.  Thus, the reason I was inspired to share some ideas about what I see coming.

And while many organizations and face-to-face meetings are still important, from an online standpoint, I cannot tell you how radically things are currently changing right before our eyes when it comes to marketing and social networking.

Are chamber of commerce groups important-yes. Will there always be a need for television ads and print material such as newspapers-for some.

But at the same time, future generations are not going to want yesterday’s news once a day, and DVRs are already becoming the kiss of death for TV advertising.  What I see is that conversations are becoming the new way that we talk about businesses, products, and services.

Recently, I attended WordCamp San Francisco, and one of the themes I heard from various speakers was community, groups, and relationships.  And based on that, I wrote “conversations” on one of the tablets which asked “what does WordPress mean to you in one word.”

I know this is going to sounds extremely cliché, but social networking tools such as blogging, videos, FaceBook, and Twitter are where we’re heading.

Will some of these be around in the future? Maybe and maybe not.  But it’s not so much the forum, but the tool itself.  Blogs are not going away.  Videos are not going to disappear.  And maybe new social networking sites will replace FaceBook or Twitter, but the concepts will still be the same.

Both online and face-to-face communities, groups, and relationships will be the new evangelists, advertisers, and mavens.

What I would recommend is instead of brushing off these new technologies and trends, embrace them for what they are now, so you can stay ahead of the game in the future and maximize the potential for your business, while others are left to try and figure it out later and try to catch up.

And if you’re interested in the Bakersfield Business Referral Network Meetup group, you can find more information here about signing up.  It’s a great group of people who are trying to stay ahead of the curve, and are sharing ideas on how to survive in the future economy.

What I mean is that while I find myself using iPhone applications such as Tweetie and FaceBook to quickly upload some content, that doesn’t work when taking pictures with my SLR, shooting video with the Vado, or recording audio with my iRiver.

So until I have a device that has both quality and the ability to instantly upload to the cloud in an easy way, I’m going to have to focus of making myself process the content.

And one thing I have realized when it comes to processing content, is the longer I wait to deal with it, the less chance this task has of being completed.

In other words, for me, what I’ve found that works best is to transfer and upload the content as soon as possible afterwards.  If I wait longer than 2-3 weeks I usually won’t deal with it.

For example, WordCamp San Francisco was almost 3 weeks ago as of this writing, so unless I process the audio and video I captured this coming weekend, more than likely it will never get done.

I guess this is not much different from other tasks in life–but it just seems like with so many devices and content becoming part of our daily lives, it makes it seem so overwhelming sometimes.  So how do you deal with content overload?

Not only was there talk of agencies running leaner and meaner, but two other points that were mentioned were in regard to collaboration, and the need for agencies to be able to show measurable outcomes.

And while both of these ideas are not new concepts, in either the private or nonprofit world, the discussion reminded me of a recent email article Jason Calacanis wrote in regard to what to do if your startup is about to fail.

Believe me, I’m not hoping any nonprofits or other agencies fail, but I think Jason’s thoughts can be translated to almost any situation, good or bad.

In fact, many of Jason’s recent articles have inspired me to push even harder during these difficult times in both my day job and ‘second life’ IT business.

If your nonprofit or other agency is also dealing with budget challenges, I would recommend reading a reprint of his article (and any others you can find).

They may be geared toward the private tech sector, but there is lot’s of good advice that can be used by all, regardless of what you do. If you too are inspired by his thoughts and writings, you can sign up for future articles here.

This year I’m going to do something a little different and not only post some of my goals for 2009, but also offer up some project and business ideas that all I’ve been doing is keeping to myself.

Maybe by putting this content out there, I will find alike people who will stumble upon this and reach out to collaborate, and in some cases, make some money.

With that, here are some miscellaneous thoughts and musings:

(1) Digital Divide in Kern County – I put this one first because I’m not sure if this is even a worthwhile project.  I wrote about it a while back as at the time the digital divide was a hot topic.  But now my thought is–so what?  What if needs and areas could be identified?  Would it greatly help to show where access to the internet in Kern County is lacking?  And with the economy the way it is, how do you address those needs?  Lot’s of questions.

(2) Try FaceBook – This is an easy one and thus the reason why it’s second on the list.  I’m going to take the plunge because I’m curious why I’ve had unrelated friends from unlreated circles getting caught up in the whole FB madness.

(3) Create Printcasting Content – The Bakersfield Californian is part of a project right now related to creating and publishing customized content.  I’m going to see if I have enough discipline to create small, maybe 250 words or less, computer related tips and content.  I haven’t looked into the terms yet, but I’m hoping I can post the content to multiple sources so I can use outside of Printcasting.

(4) pics2go.com – This is the business idea nugget.  The basic business model is offering picture taking for weddings and events that can be printed onsite.  Weddings would no doubt be the long tail, but with some work other events could be booked.  I have the pics2go.com domain; have done research regarding high quality prints; and can put all the pieces together.  What I’m looking for here is probably a college person interested in photography and starting a business that would require non-traditional working hours.  Contact me if you’re interested.

(5) Bakersfield (or Kern County) is Talking – Create a show that highlights Bakersfield stories of past, present, or future.  This could either be location-based (such as businesses, historical places) or interviews with people.  My thought would be to create some pilot episodes and then shop them around to local vendors.  And where is this going to be seen?  I personally think there is already enough available channels to add the content, and more and more are beginning to allow HD.  This project is also an evergreen content concept, in that it never really expires (unless the channels do).

(6) Youth Building/Repairing Computers Projects – I am willing to volunteer time for a project related to teaching youth either building or repairing computers.  Not much more to be said here.  Contact me and let’s collaborate!

(7) Plugin Reviews – I play around with so many WordPress plugins that maybe it would be worthwhile to create reviews.  It’s exciting to see what is happening in the WordPress community right now in regard to all the exciting plugins and themes that are being created.  

Well there they are.  Goals and ideas for 2009.  Comments are welcome.  If you’ve made it this far and have interest in any of the above, contact me and let’s talk.

If you haven’t heard of Street View before and you are from Bakersfield, go to Google Maps and look up a local address. Chances are Google will show a Street View thumbnail which you can click on to enlarge.

However, I say ‘most’ because if you turn Street View on while zooming out of Metro Bakersfield, you can see there are several gaps of areas that were not captured. In fact, my neighborhood is one that it missed. And to make things worse, when the Bakersfield imagery was first loaded and I searched for my address, it showed the view of a street a few blocks away.

I realize accurate data collection is difficult, but I would rather Google maps not return any results versus showing the view of a completely unrelated street, which is evidently what Google ended up doing.

Now when I search for my address it does not offer an incorrect thumbnail. This does, however, makes me think twice about Street View results. What if I try and use the street view feature for an area I’m not familiar with, only to find out the results it came back with are not even a true view of the area? I think the feature can still use some work.

This technology has also rasied some privacy issues for this type of imagery collection. In a recent area where the notorious Google van made its rounds, the captured imagery upset some home owners whose house displayed a little more detail than they were comfortable with.

Google eventually removed the imagery, but it shows how powerful this content can be. All one has to do is see some of the sample views on streetviewr or googlevan and you can see why this might be a problem. Regardless, it is exciting to see Bakersfield, California being included in such cutting edge technology.

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Bakersfield Sign at Buck Owens Blvd

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Father Garces Statue at Garces Circle

The site interface is simple, and one of the first things I did as a new visitor was search for proposals from schools in my area.  By typing Bakersfield in the search box, I found several local schools who had active proposals.

In addition to the site, Social Actions Labs created a WordPress plugin called Possible Related Classroom Projects which displays donorschoose.org campaigns at the bottom of posts based on content.  Clay Burell did a nice job of summarizing donorschoose.org and the WordPress plugin here.

And while I like the idea of the plugin, I have a couple of recommendations as to enhancements.  First, why not offer an option to embed the project campaign links into the sidebar?  I understand sidebar real estate is limited, but it would allow for an educational-focused website (such as a PTA or school parent club) to display the information in a more prominent position.

Secondly, instead of showing proposals related to content, why not allow keywords to be included–similar to donorschoose.org website search results?  For example, only showing Bakersfield-related projects.  I realize this limits the results, but again, if I’m supporting a Bakersfield educational-related website, I probably don’t want proposals from other areas to be displayed.  Not to mention the kinds of results that may be displayed based on my content.  I noticed there is a way to not display related proposals in a post using a variable, but this does not seem ideal.

Again, I think the donorschoose.org concept is great!  What a neat way to support educational projects–both at the national and local level.  And no doubt the WordPress plugin can enhance the ability to support those projects, but I think the plugin could be enhanced to offer multiple placement options, and the ability to focus on local search results.

UPDATE:After being contacted by someone at donorschoose.org regarding the enhancements I mentioned, I was informed that the website allows the ability to create custom RSS feeds and widgets. By using the SpringWidgets creator, you can get code for multiple scenarios.

After doing a search for Bakersfield, I used the options from SpringWidgets to export the widget into html, which I then embeded into a WordPress sidebar widget and bingo. You could also embed into a single post, which might be a useful solution if the post is specific for education campaigns and not the entire focus of the website.

Meanwhile, I recorded some audio from the event, including Matt Mullenweg’s The State of the Word session, and this weekend I finally got around to processing it. 

Although John’s video from The State of the Word is the real deal, if you are interested, you can download the audio portion of the talk here, or you can play it below.

As for the specs, I recorded it using an iRiver iFP-890 (internal mic), sent it through Levelator, and exported it using Audacity. 

I wrote an article earlier this year about using WordPress as a digital scrapbook.  Although it has been a while, I finally put an example together based on my original thought. 

My son and I recently went camping, so I put some of the content from the trip together in a post.  The elements of the post included using an embedded Google map based on the GPS location I took at the campsite;  an information balloon within the map that contains information about the campsite, weather during the trip, and links to a Picasa album; scanned PDF of the campsite map; and a narrative of our trip and some highlights.

Below is the Google map and a link to the campsite map.  I used the Google Maps Quicktag by Daniel Denk, as I regularly use the Google My Maps and this plugin was the easiest to incorporate the embed link to display the map.

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Here’s a slideshow:

To take the digital scrapbook idea to another level, you could create a My Maps of a larger area (say the United States) with markers of event locations that would link to smaller focus maps.

By combining available content such as pictures, video, GPS coordinates, and Google maps within WordPress, you can easily create a digital scrapbook to capture life events in a format available to family and friends.

Below is a narrative of day one of the camping trip.
 

Carson and I went camping to Sequoia National Park on June 20, 2008

We had reservations at the Lodgepole Campground.  The park was quite full, and I knew it was going to be, as I had made the reservations online about three months before, and even then there were only a handful of spots left.  So although our campsite was nice, it was slim pickings. 

Carson fought a nap the whole way from Bakersfield and during the last 15 minutes of the trip he finally dozed off, which is about how long we had been in the forest.  He woke up after his catnap when we arrived at the park entrance and talked to the ranger.

The entire park and its staff remind you all of the time about the situation with food and bears, and they were very strict about not even leaving food out unless it’s only an arm-length away.

Day One:

Carson was very excited when we finally got to our campsite and was ready to explore, but I told him we needed to set up camp.  He had so many questions.  I had packed way more stuff then we probably needed (supplies and food), and it made for what seemed long a long and laborious camp setup.  We had a new larger tent and I was anxious to see how big it was.  I was happy with it and it did well the entire trip.

After setting up camp, we went down to the river, which was located about 30 yards south of the campsite.  Carson and I threw rocks for a little bit, and then he wanted to put his feet in the water.  We took our shoes off and put our feet in the water and it was extremely cold.  No doubt you could tell this was recent snow pack melt.  Both of us could not keep our feet in the water for longer than a few minutes.

After checking out the river, we had some snacks and then headed over to the Lodgepole market to get some firewood and snacks.  After that we stopped by the visitor’s center, but it was already closed as by now it was getting to be late afternoon.  Carson wanted to explore some more but I wasn’t sure when it would get dark and I wanted to be prepared to make dinner and make a fire.  As we headed back, we used a payphone to call mommy and left her a message letting her know we made it okay.

After heading back to camp, Carson wanted to go back to the river.  We went and threw more rocks and did a little more  exploring.  He was curious about the rainbow trout we could see in the river, the rocks, plants, etc.  He wanted to even try and go out in the river but it was running way too fast, and especially with how cold the water was.

We headed back to the campsite and next Carson and I took a quick bike ride.  I didn’t bring my bike so I walked while Carson rode.  The campsite was completely sold out and there were a lot of families and kids around doing the same, riding bikes and taking walks.

On the eastern end of the campground loop we were located on, we could see people coming back from a hike on the Tokopah Falls trail.  Carson asked where they were coming from and I did my best to explain what they were doing.  This greatly intrigued Carson and he told my straightaway that he wanted to go on a hike.  I told him it was too late this day but that maybe tomorrow we could go hiking.

We headed back to the campsite and started getting ready for the evening.  For dinner I made spaghetti and Carson was quite hungry and ate two big bowls. 

I forgot how much work was involved with cooking and cleaning while camping, especially trying to keep Carson busy as I was flying solo.  I remembered that I had brought the older Sony cybershot digital camera for him so I let him go to it.  Many of the pictures in the album were taken by Carson.

After dinner I started the fire.  Even though it was starting to get dark, Carson was having a hard time not doing anything for any of amount of time.  As twig light arrived, a huge amount of bats came out to snack on the larger insects flying around.  It was quickly getting dark and Carson had no other choice but to rest.  As soon as the sun dropped it started getting cold.  I wondered if being near the river would make it even colder at night, and it turned out it sure seemed like it did.

I had brought stuff to make s’mores and I was hoping Carson would be excited about this.  He had fun cooking his own marshmallows but he really didn’t care for them, nor the graham crackers, which was surprising because he eats them at home.  So it turned out the chocolate was the only thing he ate.

With all the excitement, Carson had not taken his usual nap.  He was so tired that pretty much after s’mores we got ready for bed.  By now it was so dark you could really see the stars.  Carson was pretty amazed and how many you could see. I got the portable DVD player out of the car, and set it up in the tent.  Carson wanted to watch the Cat and the Hat movie.  The funny thing about that was the next morning, when Carson told me that after I turned on the movie, he fell asleep before the cat made an appearance in the movie–he was so tired.  That was it for day one.

Audio Listener Feedback – My original thought was that getting a toll-free number would open the floodgates for listeners to call in and leave feedback, but it turns out that is a lot easier said than done.  Even though the call was free, it was tough to get listeners to call in and leave feedback.  At the time (at least for this podcast), we found people were much more willing to leave feedback using email vs. calling in.  I even personally found this to be true when one time I left audio feedback for the Daily Source Code podcast.  FYI–I used Kall8 as our toll-free provider, and the service was excellent.

Consistency – Based on NASCAR news, we found that Tuesday evening was the best day for Stockcarzone to be released.  However, on the one or two occasions that the show came out later than usual, we noticed a drop in downloads of that episode.  Listeners expect to be able to download and listen to the show on a consistent basis, and this will maximize the number of listeners.  However, see the next paragraph for the exact opposite type of listener.

Listener Catchup – We found that some podcast listeners are extremely loyal, in that there were those who would go back and catchup on episodes they missed.  We mainly knew this by looking at downloads of shows which were one or more weeks old.  We also know this phenomenon to be true because listeners would leave feedback about an older episode consistently tell us that they were catching up.

Hosting Content – We used Libsyn to host our podcast, and it was worth every penny we spent.  The uptime was generally rock solid, and when a new episode was released, it would always handle the load.  Even when the podcast was highlighted by websites like Yahoo and we got a huge spike in listeners, Libsyn never hiccuped.  I would fully recommend the service.

iTunes Presence – I cannot stress how important it is to have a podcast presence on iTunes.  Throughout the 2+ years of Stockcarzone, listeners always averaged at least 60% (and usually more like 70%) of our total subscribers.  I don’t think We would have ever lasted as long as we did if we did not have the podcast on iTunes.  I realize there are other options besides iTunes for podcasts, but it’s obviously a preferred method for many listeners.

Overall the Stockcarzone podcast was a great project, although not profitable.  Corey and I both learned a lot about independently created content, and we met a bunch of great listeners and NASCAR fans.  Hopefully the information in this article will help if you are interested in podcasting and creating your own content.

Really, what else could this monthly fee be for besides extra revenue?  I say that because you can hook up your own router without paying an extra monthly fee for free.  It is not like Brighthouse Networks is providing any additional network feature for a monthly fee that works out to be nearly $180 a year for nothing.  There is no network magic here.

Brighthouse Networks discourages users from setting up their own home network by not allowing a router to use a different IP address, but you can easily work around this by cloning the address via your router.   A great write up can be found here.

Most routers have this cloning capability, and doing a Google search on configuring a router to clone a MAC address will steer you in the right direction.  As to hardware, I would recommend the LinkSys wireless WRT series, especially as they are compatible with Xbox Live service, and it provides you with both a wired and wireless solution.

And why isn’t the FCC monitoring stuff like this?  I cannot be the first person to write about a ghost fee that has no added network value, but yet a huge company like Brighthouse Networks can get away with charging customers for nothing?  If you’re already sharing your cable internet connection with your entire neighborhood, why are they trying to charge you for sharing a connection in your house?

If you are considering hooking up a router to a BrightHouse Networks internet connection, don’t pay an additional monthly fee to have a home network.  Do some research on your own, or contact Bakersfield Computer today to discuss your needs.

UPDATE: It doesn’t appear MAC cloning is an issue anymore when adding a wireless router.  However, there should still not be any fee associated with setting up your own wireless network.