November 27th, 2008. Published under General. 1 Comment.
I have announced on Twitter that I have stopped Magpie from sending sponsored advertising into my Twitter feed. Basically it comes down to the fact that a lot of people expressed the fact they did not like advertising going into the Twitter and would ruin it’s image as a networking tool.
I would like to explain why I signed up for the service. Apart from writing a review for this very blog, I have been looking for ways to make a little bit of money on the side of my full time job, none of my web apps make money as they are just there for other users’ benefit. Like TwitterLeage, which was created to enhance the fun and competitive nature of follower counts. So this seemed a nice (not too intrusive way) of making a few pence.
But I didn’t see the line between making a bit of money on the side and clogging up my feed with advertising that may well have been suited to people following me.
So there you go. No hard feelings to anyone and thank you to the users who pointed out what I was doing.
November 25th, 2008. Published under General. No Comments.
This is the fastest blog I have ever created. Using my great managed VPS at Everycity I set up the blog and edited the theme inside 3 hours including 2 stories to launch with!
The blog is called Tweeter Stuff and is all about Twitter. This can be Twitter applications, news and intersting info about the awesome micro-blogging service.
Please have a look and let me know what you think. Also don’t forget to follow me on Twitter twitter.com/ollieparsley
November 9th, 2008. Published under General. 3 Comments.
I started listening to this weeks episode of Tuck In To Tech (awesome new site coming soon!) called “Blister Packaging…why? Just why?” [download]. Anyway thats slightly by the topic. So the co-host, James announced that he had an “angry” to get off his chest. I was intrigued! But I was shocked to hear that he was blaming Alistair for not producing a good enough show and losing 12 listeners 
. One point to remember is that I helped Alistair by co-hosting the episode from 2 weeks ago. So really I can twist it to say that 12 listeners just like me!
Anyway I am not trying to pass blame :p. So instead I am asking you, the readers, where have the 12 listeners gone? Are you one of them? If so please leave a comment.
On a separate not please submit your answer to the poll below.
[polldaddy poll=1091910]
October 27th, 2008. Published under General. No Comments.
I had the great pleasure of going with my dad to Wembley stadium. There was some confusion about if we could get our tickets! My dads friend bought them from TicketMaster, they failed to deliver the tickets to her address and that meant we needed her and her ID to collect the tickets at the stadium! How ridiculous! Anyway she was stuck at gatwick airport after getting back from holiday so we didn’t have her or her ID when collecting the tickets, just her credit card. This is not fraud by the way! We know her and she bought the tickets and my dad paid her back!
Anyway we got to the ticket office and managed to get the tickets after a bit of convincing. So then it was into the statium! The atmosphere was amazing, we all got three flags.
The Sterophonics started us off with their new single and then my favourite track of theirs “Dakota”. Then Neyo sang the american national anthem so well, Joss Stone sang ours, not easy to sing along to with all her high pitch melody!
Then the game started. Thats all your getting about the game!
At half time we had a stripped down New Orleans Mardi-Gras. I have a few photos attached.
The whole evening was amazing and I would do it again when it comes back next year. The actually game was more entertaining with last yeat. The New Orleans Saints have a new fan!
October 19th, 2008. Published under General. No Comments.
Funny Signs was my first Facebook application, it was as simple as I dared make it! I wanted to just learn the Facebook API.
But today the app lept over the 1500 user mark. That means that over 1500 people currently have it on their profile.
Ok so what is Funny Signs? Basically get a random funny road sign whenever you or anyone visits your profile. It automatically add a random funny road sign from the database. You don’t need to do anything at all, just add the app to your page.
Please check out the app and let me know your thoughts. Also if you have any signs let me know by e-mailing me using the contact page.
October 15th, 2008. Published under General. No Comments.
If you are reading this the chances are that you have come from the EveryCity website. If you have then please take a look at my blogroll to see web apps I have done recently.
So how did I win? Well I just wrote down my details when I was at the Future of Web Apps in london. I generally think I am an unlucky person and “good things never happen to me”, but I was suprised to receive an e-mail from EveryCity saying I was a runner up and won a years web hosting!
I do have an web app in the pipeline that will be hosted with them. Along with probably moving my existing web apps over to their service.
Subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with what I am doing! Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/ollieparsley
Also check out EveryCity if you haven’t already!
October 14th, 2008. Published under General. No Comments.
Earlier I was following the Apple Keynote at the “Spotlight turns to notebooks” event. I was so looking forward to having the rumors confirmed about the $800 notebook, brick and blu-ray.
Whenever there are rumors about Apple products the chances are that they’re true. But today I was disappointed to hear that only one of the 3 big rumors was true. I am the sort of person that does not have alot of spare cash and so the big savings on a cheaper MacBook would have suited me fine. I wouldn’t care if it didn’t have blu-ray and wasn’t carved out of aluminum.
But I was disappointed to hear that the price had come down a bit, but on the expensive MacBook. I will admit that it looks awesome, the trackpad is a great touch (pardon the pun). But they will still sell the same white plastic MacBook at the same price. Which for the spec is a ridiculous price at £719.00.
So as you can see this has not made me a happy mac fan. It has just made the little bit in my brain saying “Apple is just after money and is a walled garden” that little bit bigger. I still love my iPhone but I don’t see myself getting a MacBook until they lower the price or someone pays me enough to get one.
What was your take on the MacBook announcement? For more Mac news have a look at The Mac Cafe.
October 10th, 2008. Published under General. 2 Comments.
The expo floor
The biggest difference between this event and the other carsonified “Future of …..” is the fact there is an expo floor. This year was similar to last year where you have some big names with expensive looking expo areas, going all the way down to the low budget startups. All of these give away free stuff from pens to t-shirts. Also there are competitions galore. Microsoft was giving away and xbox and YuuGuu are giving away a MacBook Air!
On top of that Microsoft had a “Surface” demo that you could get your hands on. Along with that were some xbox machines for playing Grid or Guitar Hero.
Eye catchers
I wondered round the expo and approached some of the the companies exhibiting and these were the ones that I thought were really good.
- PhoneFromHere. They have a simple but clever service where you click a link on a website and it will instantly ring a landline number for free where a real support person or contact can answer.
- Zembly. Apart from the free shirt they have a great app that makes it easy to create Facebook apps. They do this by intergrating as many API’s as possibly and they are interested in using TwitterLeague’s simple API in a new feature they are building called “bring my API”.
- YuuGuu. They were giving away a MacBook AIR, what else do you want from me? :p
Expo floor video
Below is my Qik video of the expo floor. Sorry for the dodgey camera work!
September 21st, 2008. Published under General. No Comments.
As I said in the “Favourite iPhone Apps: Part 1” I knew that my list would change some what. So now I am going to compile my latest favourite apps and show which have stuck around and which have lost their novelty value.
Another change since last time was I have now spread onto another page of apps. I have used 3 pages (Which is quite a low number). But if I don’t use an app for a while or lose interest I delete it.
Twinkle
This is the only app that survived my top 3! Twinkle is made by Tapulous, who also make Tap Tap Revenge. It’s a Twitter application that originated in the installer.app on the old jailbroken iPhone. I used it briefly because I actually used Hahlo, a Twitter web app. The simple reason was that it worked faster and looked better. But being a web app it was prone to problems.
I have kept this app on my phone since I first got the device. I use Twitter all the time and to me this is by far the best free Twitter client on the iPhone. There are a few problems with it but version 2.1 of the software is currently being approved by Apple, it should be out any month now!
App Store Link
iFooty
This app was created by a couple of guys who obviously love football (soccer to you americans). It is exactly what you need from a football application. I am a die hard Reading FC fan and love keeping up with how their are doing, latest news, upcoming fixtures and results. This app does just that by using all the information from the BBC’s football website.
The only time I see myself not using this app is if a better one comes out. Or it’s just the end of the season and there is no news to catch up on!
App Store Link
Remote
This app is developed by Apple, this annoys me a bit as they have built in extra functionality into iTunes to make this work. Which other apps obviously do not have! Anyway, I have only really started using this app over the weekend. I have a mac mini on my desk and was sitting with my Windows laptop on my bed coding away and wanted to start the lastest Diggnation podcast episode. All I did was go to Remote, find the podcast and click on it. It then started playing on the Mac mini, through the speakers. Simple as that!
But my girlfriends dad used it just to annoy her. He would sit downstairs while she was upstairs on the internet. He would randomly start playing Abba really loud! That of course is the fun way to use it
App Store Link
That concludes my latest review of my favourite apps on the iPhone. I will no doubt change my thoughts again! Subscribe to my
RSS feed to be kept up to date.
What are your favourite apps? Leave your comments below please
September 19th, 2008. Published under Personal brand. 4 Comments.
[digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/Introduction_to_your_personal_brand]First off I am a fan of Gary Vaynercuk he has inspired me to make more of myself and realise that “Ollie Parsley” is a brand and that I can utilise that to both make myself better and also help my career.
With that in mind I thought I would just talk about how I use my personal brand and spread the word of Ollie Parsley! This is not a post about trying to boost my ego but to show you what your personal brand is and how you can be more effective in the way you connect to your community/audience and expand your personal brand.
WTF?
You might be thinking, what is my “personal brand” and why would I want to use it? Well your personal brand in terms of the internet is everything you do. The majority of the time this is using social networking, or having your own website. Basically anywhere that your name is written or has a link. Immediately you have a personal brand a community based around that brand. If you have communications with people who visit your site, send you an e-mail, tweet on Twitter then you are starting to utilise your personal brand and community.
Now you personal brand can be used to help you, chat to or support you. So there are lots of ways of utilising the community.
Better than zero
This is actually the name of a video blog by Gary and it fits well with what I want to say. The chances are that if you are on any social network that you have people following you and what you are up to. If you do, then you have a personal brand already!
First of all, to me the people that follow me on Twitter a really really important both as social interaction but also using them to help me out. This is because these people have similar interests to me and are likely to think in a similar way to me.
Facebook is a different entity altogether. I use it for just friends and using these people for helping me is not really that effective, but remember never to leave anyone out!
So I have 120 odd followers on Twitter, that is a great number, but there is also a lot of people that have thousands more than me. Of course I would love follower counts as big as them, but at least I have more than zero! So be thankful that someone is following you, if one person is, then there are a lot more people out there that can find and interact with your personal brand.
How do I use “Ollie Parsley”?
I am a member of numerous social networks and to me that, along with this website (ollieparsley.com) are the main focus of my personal brand. People that follow me, who may certainly be reading this (hello loyal Twitter follower! post a comment below if you follow me please!).
As a web developer, designer and podcaster I am always trying new things and pushing myself to learn new technologies. When I have done a website, for example, TwitterLeague, I immediately went to my community and sent them out a link with an invite code to use the site. I posted these invite codes on here, pownce, identica, twitter and all over the place. This was because the people visiting those sites, if they know me at all, would maybe want to look at what I have done, use it and comment on it. Now this is not a guarantee that even one person will visit that site, but if it is more than 0 then I have utilised my community. The art of utilizing your personal brand is to push that percentage of your “followers” up and up.
Making everyone happy
Another aspect to personal brand, in my opinion is to make sure you have a good name. Even though “all publicity is good publicity”, that is not always what you want!
So how do I attempt to make everyone happy? Well I respond to every single e-mail, comment and message I receive. Now I think this is just common sense but it is surprising the number of people that do not realize that. If one person doesn’t get a response from you that may lead to that person now following you any more. If so, that loss can be noticeable and others might pick up on that, possibly if that persons talks about his experience.
Another thing I do is respond to people that have talked about me in a bad light. Even if I am unsuccessful in changing someones opinion of me, I put the effort in and if I can’t turn them around then they are not the right person to be following me anyway.
Real world example of using the community
On top of that I respond to people talking about me, a website I have done or anything I am involved with. An example of this is a tweet that was written about TwitterLeague.com. The lady saw that the league was not ordered correctly if two people had the same follower count. Now she didn’t tell me, but she did tell her followers on Twitter. I immediately saw that this could cause her followers to steer clear of TwitterLeague. So I solved the problem as quickly as I could and sent her a response back and explained the problem had been solved.
Now I thought that might be enough to possubly fix the situation and her followers might pick up on the fact that I replied to her. But she then sent a tweet out saying how effective I was at solving the problem and actually talking to her about it. It was only 3 tweets altogether, but I turned round what could be a negative impact on TwitterLeague into a more positive impact than If she hadn’t said anything at all.
Her initial tweet:
GillClough:
@mweller twitterleague democratic. If 2 twitterers have same no. of followers, it alternates which one is top. Am competing with Openpad
My response after fixing the problem:
ollieparsley:
@GillClough I saw your tweet about TwitterLeague. I now have set the ordering so 2 people on same follower count are ordered by username
Response to her followers:
GillClough:
TwitterLeague author saw my tweet and modified application to improve how it worked. Role for Twitter as channel for rapid app feedback?
Don’t believe me? Check out the
conversation using Twitter Search. To me that process of helping turn an opinion round has helped me realise the importance of your personal brand and the community that surrounds it.
[digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/Introduction_to_your_personal_brand]So that was a very brief introduction to your personal brand, if you have any comments at all please don’t hesitate to add one below. If you feel I have missed anything out or you have an opinion on what I have written then please let me know in the comments.
