nerdflood

I was able to successfully acquire my desired name in the great Facebook vanity URL landgrab of 2009. No longer am I Facebook Random User ID# 501415487. I can now be found at facebook.com/nathanielpayne. It’s a minor thing, truly, but one that I’m happy to have secured. And yes, I was up late at night acquiring the username. It was fun to watch the posts from my Facebook and Twitter friends, seeing who was able to get the usernames they wanted, and who ended up having to settle for their third or fourth or even fifth choices. I was also pleasantly surprised at how well the Facebook servers held up. There had to have been about a million users simultaneously hitting the same /username page trying to select the name they wanted. It didn’t even slow down or falter for me when I was making my attempt.

So, kudos to Facebook for enabling a great feature and making it run so smoothly. Hopefully enough people got the name they were looking for. If not, tought toodles. There’s always Orkut.

Facebook has essentially guaranteed that I will never, ever engage with any of their advertising partners. How did they do this? Easily. They did it by completely ignoring me.

For the past week, there has been a recurring ad being displayed on my profile sidebar advertising Sexy Singles in My Area™. It features a half-naked girl on a bed, and I’m honestly sick of seeing it. Every time it has appeared, I have clicked on the little thumbs-down icon. When the message pops up asking why I’m hating on the ad, I select “obscene” (or “pornographic” – I can’t remember what the available comment is). It disappears, but not for very long.

There’s two things very wrong with this. One is obvious: when I so clearly indicate to Facebook that I’m not interested in the ad, why does it keep showing up? I would think they would at the very least change the image and attempt to covertly display the same ad again. But it’s the exact same ad, every time. That, in and of itself, is lame.

But this is even more lame. Supposedly, Facebook has the ability to take content that you are viewing and display appropriate corresponding marketing material. It’s called “targeted advertising”, and it works pretty well in the real world. Apparently not so much in the world of Facebook. You would think, with the sheer amount of metadata available to them, Facebook might have the ability to check just one, small, seemingly insignificant field: Relationship Status.

You see, Facebook, I’m married. I’m not interested in Sexy Singles in My Area™, not even in the slightest. You’re telling me that you aren’t capable of checking just one, simple field on my profile and say “hey, maybe this guy isn’t interested in seeing half-naked chicks in his ‘targeted’ advertising”?

Of course, maybe Facebook is actually checking to see if men are married, and then displaying that sort of advertising to them on purpose. Maybe another one of their advertising partners is an online marriage counseling service.

In any case, Facebook has failed to advertise to me in a meaningful way. I have a whole other rant on how pathetic their “People You May Know” friend suggestor is. I’ll save that for another day.

I’ve been using GIMP off and on for a couple of years now, but I just haven’t been completely happy with it. I hate the multiple separated windows “feature”. And it always took way too long to load, even after I completely reformatted my computer recently. I’ve been looking for an alternative. Something with more features than Picnik, but works better than GIMP.

Somewhere along the way I heard about Paint.NET, asked around about it, and decided to give it a try. The first thing I have noticed is that Paint.NET loads approximately 47.35 times faster than GIMP, which was by far my biggest complaint with the software. I went ahead and took some photos and played around with some post-processing, something I could never quite get the hang of while using GIMP. Here are the results.

Alex with Dandelion
This one didn’t turn out so great, mainly because I tried to use too many of the image adjustment options. After some hue saturation, some level mixing, a glow affect, and some contrast adjusting, the dandelion ended up blending in almost completely with Alex’ hands. Still, I think it looks better than the original. Okay, maybe not.

Before

After

Flowering Tree
I thought this would be a good one to work on because I could focus on making the purple color of the flowers really pop out with some warmth and glow. I adjusted the color bringing out the lavender and gave it some softness. I think this one really turned out well.

Before

After

Guitar Top
This one I am most proud of. I did the least amount of adjustments to this photo. All I did was give it some light saturation to really deepen the color of the wood on the guitar surface, and a little bit of contrast to darken the pick guard (thereby removing my head from the reflection in the photo). I think the result is a much more pleasing photograph that has some definite richness to it.

Before

After

All in all, I’m really happy with Paint.NET. It seems to be much friendlier to use than GIMP (at least to me), and just as extensible with its own set of plug-ins (though I never bothered to extend GIMP, so I doubt I’ll do so with Paint.NET). I just love the fact that it opens so much faster. The transparency of the various windows on top of the working canvas helps, too. With this result, I’ve already uninstalled GIMP. If it keeps working out for me so well, I may even give the developers a donation.

Last one, I PROMISE!

I just realized that in my last post, I was far too kind to TrustyPig. I gave the TrustyPig admin too much credit, thinking that he was simply the victim of some freelance web developer from China that stole the site design from SmartyPig.

Why did I allow myself to swallow that ridiculously lame excuse?

The site had the exact same design as SmartyPig. The site has the NAME TrustyPig. It was a complete and total, absolutely blatant rip-off, pure and simple, right from the start. No one at TrustyPig is even remotely innocent in this situation. It was an utterly intentional attempt to subvert the popularity of the brand SmartyPig created and ride the wave to stardom (or at the very least, a relatively insignificant amount of attention). Regardless of what this “Costy” fellow claims, TrustyPig is nothing more than a pathetic shadow of what SmartyPig brings us. A poser. A worthless pretender.

I was a fool to think otherwise.

Maybe this won’t be my last TrustyPig post, after all (but I am going to shut up about it, at least for a little while).

I know, I know – I’m already sick of talking about TrustyPig myself. But today, we received word that the TrustyPig admin (“Costy”?) has responded to our claims that the SmartyPig website design was stolen.

Rather than post the response on their own blog (which any transparent company would do), TrustyPig opts instead to work through an affiliate at Money News Online. The response is actually two-fold: first coming from a poorly-constructed, grammatically-challenged response from the Money News Online editor; followed by a fairly articulate and seemingly authentic reply from the admin of TrustyPig. I’ll cull the details and highlight the interesting parts from the full post for you right here (because I’m just that nice).

First, the MNO editor doesn’t think too highly of our friend Andy:

I will not name this blog or give a link to it as I think that the admin of this blog only needs to bask into spotlight of an already popular TrustyPig and get attention to his junk blog.

Really, MNO? You’re going there? Well, fine. According to Compete data, TrustyPig doesn’t even register, while Andy’s blog is generating a modest, but existing, traffic flow. I don’t know how much traffic connecting himself to TrustyPig will gain him, but I doubt it will be enough to make everything he’s done worth the effort. Rather, he’s doing it to help SmartyPig.

This is so called “call to action” probably came from the competitors of TrustyPig who failed to destroy the program by sending constant DDoS-attacks to the site at first.

Nope, sorry, MNO. As much as you would probably like to believe that TrustyPig has legions of enemies willing to go to the ends of the Earth in order to destroy the immense power of their service, we Iowans didn’t even know TrustyPig existed until yesterday. A quick Twitter search (our primary communication and organization platform) shows we started talking about this yesterday. Apparently this DDOS attack they suffered was sometime last week. We don’t support direct attacks like that. In fact, I doubt any of us even know how to do something like that.

Now, a response allegedly coming from TrustyPig.

I got several comments on the blog regarding this issue last night and I must confess that I was shocked to find out about this. I initially hired to developers to build the site, a programmer from Romania and a freelance designer from China. You have to trust me that I wasn’t aware of this problem, I never heard about smartypig.com and moreover I obviously didn’t want to copy their visual identity. I ordered the designer to make me a project related to my domain name and in a web 2.0 style. Now that I think about it I was surprised that he had ready the design in 2 days

Yeah, I would be concerned if a developer returned such an amazing site design in just two days.

I already contacted a designer here in Romania and he’s on the job. Shortly we’ll have a makeover of the design. I do realize that I cannot totally change the layout because it would affect the site generally and it would require to much time that would be better invested in developing the program rather than this. But we’ll sure change the site in such a way that it will not resemble smartypig anymore.

Which they have already done, and we applaud their timely redesign.

As soon as I get the designed changed I’ll give an official communicate and offer my official appologies to the smartypig people.

We look forward to hearing from SmartyPig that this has actually been done.

It’s true that the main guilty person here is me because I’m responsible with the site

One-hundred percent true. I won’t deny that at all.

I’m sorry that the people from smartypig didn’t contact me immediately and explain the situation, they would have surely find an understanding attitude from me. They prefered to go on the blogs and now I got hundreds of tickets and messages about this situation.

I would have loved — even preferred — to have contacted TrustyPig directly, but their website expressly prohibits this activity. The site is completely and utterly devoid of any sort of contact information. No email, no feedback form, nothing. The contact page is a link to a help desk form which requires you to create an account in order to utilize — something I was not willing to do given the shady nature of TrustyPig’s operation. Our only recourse was to leave comments on the blog, which were apparently deleted before they ever got posted. At the very least, he knew we were trying to contact him, but since he never responded, we had no idea anyone was actually listening.

Since TrustyPig seemed particularly uninterested in being contacted, and no one was talking back, we opted for blogging the hell out of the situation. Obviously the noise we made caught their ears. If they had only had the foresight to have an email address on their contact page, maybe this entire situation could have been completely avoided. Now, their brand has likely been irreparably damaged.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m done wasting time with all of this. I was prepared to find out more about TrustyPig and unravel some shady history, but actually I think this guy was just the victim of a cheap, pathetic web developer. TrustyPig still deserves the bulk of the blame for not being transparent about the situation, and also not looking into the credentials of the web developer responsible for building their site. But now that the situation has been (essentially) resolved, it simply doesn’t deserve any more attention.

So, yeah – I’m pretty much done talking about TrustyPig now. Everyone can go back to sleep.

You would have thought that after yesterday’s efforts by the Des Moines online community to destroy TrustyPig’s reputation that something would have changed by now. And will you look at that. Someone has a new site design today!

Beautiful. A search on Google for trustypig reveals why that site design has been posted so quickly. To shut us all up!

That’s two separate posts by Andy Brudtkuhl followed by my post soon after. All three results following directly behind the link to TrustyPig. Absolutely gorgeous. Andy knows his SEO, and once he got us all organized and blogging, linking, bookmarking, FriendFeeding, we successfully disrupted the general order of things.

But I’m not prepared to shut up about this just yet. Yes, they’ve finally decided to change their site, but what TrustyPig did was still utterly despicable. If they are willing to steal someone’s site design, then obviously they can’t be trusted as a company. I haven’t investigated their services too closely, but whatever products they’re peddling, or software they’re encouraging you to download, DON’T DO IT. Who knows what sorts of things they might be secretly installing onto your computer. I won’t ever be back to their website, on the off chance that the site itself may even be infected. Their entire business model and method of operation just reeks of back-alley criminal activity, and I want to make sure no one becomes a victim to their idea of “business”.

I’m going to be looking more in-depth into their operations. Maybe I’ll find out something interesting, maybe I won’t. But rest assured, I’m not done blogging about TrustyPig.

We don’t have many web 2.0 products coming out of Des Moines these days (you can read my commentary about that here). So when something hideous and wrong happens to one of our few entrepreneurial successes, we take notice, and we do something about it.

Des Moines-based SmartyPig is a site where you can start a goal-oriented savings account that friends and family can contribute to. It’s a great concept with a fantastic web presence, and is also backed by FDIC. Here’s SmartyPig’s website.

Great, right? Of course it’s great.

Well, here’s the website of Romania-based TrustyPig, which apparently is some sort of scam advertising platform. How do I know it’s probably a scam? Would a legitimate company steal another site’s design, right down to the CSS and logo?

It’s disgusting, and we Iowans will not stand for it, and we’re hoping some of you non-Iowans won’t stand for it, either. Troy Rutter was the first to let us know about this (I think), and since then, Andy Brudtkuhl has started a merciless brand hijacking campaign that so far has yielded excellent results:

To see how this works, I’ve attached a screenshot of the Google results of my attempt at brand hijack via blogging. Notice I’m #2 behind the target brand when searching on Google – exactly where I want to be. Also notice the message I’ve attached to the brand. Success.

I don’t know what the eventual result of this campaign will be. I doubt we can convince TrustyPig to see the error of its ways and take down the site design. I also don’t think we will be successful in getting the site or its “service” completely shut down (and no, I wouldn’t support a series of DDOS attacks against this company). I suppose at the very least, just getting people informed about TrustyPig’s completely unacceptable practice of site design stealing will be enough. In the end, after all the hoopla, I just hope we’ve done enough brand damage to cause the site to fade into obscurity.

A while back, Jesse Stay (FriendFeed | blog) asked a question on Twitter (which I, of course, responded to on FriendFeed, as did many others). It was a simple question:

Just curious, if you had one city in the U.S to live, based on affordability and web 2.0 networking potential, where would you live?

I tossed in a second to the response of “Des Moines, IA” from fellow local tweep Andy Brudtkuhl (FriendFeed | blog). It was a knee-jerk response based almost entirely on the fact that I love living in the Des Moines area, and I feel as though there’s a lot of potential hidden here that no one has felt is worthy of tapping into because, well, it’s Des Moines, Iowa.

I thought the conversation was over until Jesse pinged me a reply on Twitter asking what web 2.0 businesses have come out of Des Moines.

Wait, what? You mean I actually have to qualify my answer? On the internet? I didn’t think we had to do that sort of thing these days. In fact, I don’t recall ever having to do that.

Jesse had me cornered. So, I naturally turned to my tweeps. I asked for a list of web 2.0 products and/or companies that got their start in Des Moines. We came up with the obvious SmartyPig.com. Someone mentioned offhand that the developer of the Jabber/XMPP protocol came from Iowa. Someone else asked if we get to count Chris Pirillo (FriendFeed | blog) since he’s an Iowan. Hmmmmm… We scratched our heads for a while. That was about all we could come up with. Nothing substantial had really had its roots in Des Moines. We were pretty much utterly devoid of interesting web 2.0 products.

I felt compelled to respond to Jesse. Even though the answer wasn’t necessarily what I would have liked to give, he deserved a response. The answer was, unfortunately, Des Moines had been the home to very little by way of web 2.0 products.

That’s when I realized: we may be short on product, but we make up for it with our people.

I have yet to find a more dedicated and engaged group of social media enthusiasts outside of the Iowa demographic. And while these people may not be creating web 2.0 startups out of their garages, they are definitely heavily involved in the web 2.0 universe – far more than I ever thought a remote village like Des Moines could ever possibly be.

We have a tweetup group that gets together periodically to talk shop. One of our tweeps has started an online business selling Twitter ID cards to other regional tweetup groups. We have people voraciously working with Iowa-based corporation to understand social media and begin to create an online identity and voice. Co-working? We’ve got that. Jelly? We’ve got that, too. An online-conscious patent and trademark lawyer? Sure! Someone posting their life online? You bet. Web consulting? There‘s several. Social media consulting? Only the best. There are hundreds of us on Twitter, FriendFeed, blogs – you name it. Maybe it has something to do with the vague feeling of being a million miles away from the epicenter of everything cool and interesting that forces us to co-exist online in these social communities. Maybe we’re all looking for the next best thing. Maybe we’re each secretly building the next best thing. But whatever the reason, there is a presence there that amazes me every time I dip my toe into one of our numerous social circles.

The fact is, despite the massive gravitational pull of tech talent towards Silicon Valley, the next big thing may not even come out of California. It might come out of Seattle, or Minneapolis, or Tempe, Arizona. It depends on where the focal point of talent, passion, and just plain luck manages to get drawn together, fire on all cylinders, and successfully strike online gold (I’m well aware of how atrocious a mix of metaphors that was).

It could happen in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. Or, it could happen in Des Moines, Iowa.

As if there weren’t already enough places for geeks to hang out online, another challenger approaches! Popular science fiction publisher Tor has re-launched their website as a mini scifi geek social network, and I have to admit, it has an excellent set of initial features and offerings.

First things first: here’s my profile. It will be added to the sidebar just as soon as I get a chance to re-install Flash on the computer and create a new fancy button (a story for a later time).

So, what is there to see and do on the new Tor.com site? Plenty. The main focus of the site appears to be a multi-author blog with contributions from leading names in the ever-clashing world of geeks: John Scalzi, Jo Walton, Irene Gallo, Bruce Baugh, Patrick Nielsen Hayden – great content, which looks like it will be updated often.

And what else would you expect to find on a literature site? That’s right, free stories! Already a couple of short stories by John Scalzi and Charlie Stross have been posted, with the promise of more on the way. A great marketing tactic to get newcomers interested in purchasing the long form fiction: get them hooked on the free samples. Really looking forward to seeing more of this in the future.

Besides literature, there’s also art galleries featuring creative works of some utterly phenomenal science fiction and fantasy artists. Amazing work to be found here.

The profiles are another aspect of the new site. A bit boring if you’re already used to filling out profiles on other social networks, but it’s a nice way to connect everything together in a central dashboard. Especially nice is the ability to bookmark specific sections of the site for referencing later. For instance, I’ve bookmarked both of the posted short stories to get to when I have a free moment, as well as a gallery of artwork that has been modified into traditional computer wallpaper. Slick. I can also point people directly to my bookmarks. I think we have a winner.

Want a photo gallery? Well, even if you don’t, it’s in there. So you get to either use it, or ignore it. It will likely come in handy for showing off photos from geek conventions of you posing awkwardly with semi-famous writers and bloggers. Not that that ever happens. To me.

The message board system is a wonderful invention, probably because it reminds me so much of how FriendFeed works. You can go in and create separate threads, just like in a regular message board. However, comments can be posted on blog posts, stories, or even the individual art pieces. All comments everywhere on the site are coalesced and fed into one location, making following conversations damned simple and satisfying.

So far, I’m definitely enjoying the new redesign, even though I haven’t had much time available to do anything more than poke my head around the various features that have been implemented. I hope to actually participate soon, and look forward to seeing the site evolve over time as people begin to settle in, make friends, and enjoy geek conversation.

For those interested, I posted a follow-up comment over on FriendFeed to my Google Docs / Buzzword post.

One important aspect I forgot to include in that post: offline access. GDocs has offline doc sync through Gears. You would think Buzzword would be a shoe-in for offline access through Adobe’s AIR platform, but so far, that’s not the case. Maybe they’re working on it, and I would assume they are. But at this moment, GDocs has offline, Buzzword doesn’t, and that matters.

Ryan Stewart from Adobe (FriendFeed | blog) commented there that they are working on an AIR version of Buzzword, just as I had surmised. It makes sense to me that offline access should be mandatory, but is it really that important to anyone else? Though I mainly work online whenever possible, I always rely heavily on offline sync to keep backups of documents and to have access to them when the internet isn’t readily available. I missed this functionality the most I switched to Buzzword.

Right now, I desperately need a fast-loading system and offline access more than a gorgeous interface (and no, Jonas, that doesn’t help, but thanks for your input). Google Docs fits that bill nicely, for the moment, despite its horrendously sterile and uninviting interface. When Adobe gets the framework loading quickly and offline sync via AIR working, I’ll be jumping ship that very day.

What does everyone else think?