Looking for the Path

Culling the Spammers from My Twitter Followers: TwitBlock.org Rocks!

2009-08-25T12:10:00.001-07:00

From a high of 7,093 I have agressively BLOCKED spammy followers using TwitBlock.org, my new favorite tool. [I'm not sure how I got spam listed by 9 twitblock users, but I have some suspicions. Oh well. If you're in the neighborhood and would like to "whitelist me" as not spam I'd appreciate it.]

Well, my aggressive unspam blocking has resulted in a drop in my follower count to 6,870. Seems like the Tweespammers are agressive about unfollowing unfollowers. I say if you're gonna blast crap quote spam, MLM marketing messages and sexcam soliciations I think you should be blocked. Perhaps those folks can figure out who blocked them and block back?

No worries. Seems like the value of a tweet just got a little more easy to spot with Twitblocker.

Two great things about this tool.

1. It shows all your spammy followers on one screen allowing your to unfollow a lot of people at once. And the spammers are easy to spot, believe me. Especially when they are all lined up together like a police lineup.

2. As the tool gets more users and more accounts are rated as spam, the ratings will get better and the tool will be better at pulling spammers out of your flow.

Here's a sample output as TwitBlock began scanning my followers:

You can see I have not blocked sxpanel, but I am about to block Schwartz632. It's easy to spot the spammers, but TwitBlock makes it really easy to find them all in one place.

What we need perhaps is a kick ass Tweeter list. I've been wanting to build a matrix of folks I follow in different fields. Like a verification or a seal of approval for some folks I think are awesome. Starting with my very few #FF #followfriday nominations and Mr. Tweet recomendations, I'm sure I could produce a shortlist of recommendations. That will be my next task.

In the mean time keep it clean and add your account to Twitblock.org and get blocking. The twittersphere will thank you and together we can reduce the noise.

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/twitblock-inaction

NOTE: If you think I'm spammy please let me know. I'd be happy to understand how I can provide more value for you. My motto is WIIFY (what's in it for you).

And an ON NO: In unfollowing so many peeps I just upset my follow/follower ratio and I can follow no more people. Gotta get out the wackin tool again. ARRRGGH!

See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right A funny post from Mashable on the Top 25 most spammy Twitter Avatar images.

Latest Twitter Posts

My favorite twittertools:

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

Culling the Spammers from My Twitter Followers: TwitBlock.org Rocks!

2009-08-25T12:09:00.001-07:00

No worries. Seems like the value of a tweet just got a little more easy to spot with Twitblocker.

Two great things about this tool.

2. As the tool gets more users and more accounts are rated as spam, the ratings will get better and the tool will be better at pulling spammers out of your flow.

Here's a sample output as TwitBlock began scanning my followers:

You can see I have not blocked sxpanel, but I am about to block Schwartz632. It's easy to spot the spammers, but TwitBlock makes it really easy to find them all in one place.

In the mean time keep it clean and add your account to Twitblock.org and get blocking. The twittersphere will thank you and together we can reduce the noise.

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/twitblock-inaction

NOTE: If you think I'm spammy please let me know. I'd be happy to understand how I can provide more value for you. My motto is WIIFY (what's in it for you).

And an ON NO: In unfollowing so many peeps I just upset my follow/follower ratio and I can follow no more people. Gotta get out the wackin tool again. ARRRGGH!

See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right A funny post from Mashable on the Top 25 most spammy Twitter Avatar images.

Latest Twitter Posts

My favorite twittertools:

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

How To Recognize the Scammers on Twitter: You've Been TweeSpammed!

2009-08-16T09:39:00.001-07:00

Everyone is new on Twitter. Everything changes and everything stays the same.

On thing that doesn't change is the flood of scammer twitter artists leaching on to your account. Here's what they look like and here's what they do.

This is a collection of TwitterSpammers I BLOCKED from following me today:

Notice the last tweet was 2 days ago! For a tweeting tips service, you'd think they'd update at least hourly if not daily. Maybe they just don't have many good ideas yet. Notice the tweet is also nothing but a quote. [NOTE: QuoteSpam is alive and well on Twitter as well. After a while you tire of the people who think it is a good use of their time to cut and paste famous quotes into their Tweetstream. Well, it DOES up their tweet count, but the value of an Einstein quote to my daily interests is quite low. And if the quote is from Oprah... well, I think she stopped tweeting a while back.]

Let's see two biggies: 1. no avatar; 2. random letters for name. Only tweet starts with "Make Money..." If someone would build an app that immediately unfollows and reports all tweets that begin with "Make Money..."

Bad Twitter ID. Contains "f" and "_" to snag a real sounding name. But there's that first tweet again, with these magic words "internet marketers." And she's got "make money" in there too. Poor woman in the picture is probably a real estate agent and has nothing to do with this account. And lastly the last tweet was 21 hours ago. [Hey Twitter, could you give us a way to filter followers by "last tweeted?"]

And the "making money" with "sexy torso" approach. This one adds "get paid" as a nice come on. So let's see, we've got SEX, HEALTH and MAKE MONEY. It's the San Diego address that really sets off the alarm bells though... (just kidding on that one)

So there are two reasons these type of scammers join Twitter and follow everyone.

1. Just like spam, they believe that they can drive traffic to that "make money" or "teeth whitening" or "get out of debt now" link if you just click on it.

2. And they follow you in hopes that you will follow them back. [There's a funny consequence of Mr. 50k and his auto-follow auto-bot tool. He follows all the pornsters too. And he's SOOOO busy he doesn't even have time to look over his follower list.] And even if you don't follow them back, and I would suggest you don't unless you want a lot of their friends dropping by, they are hoping that visitors looking over your "followers" list and see their ID.

You can report these abusive accounts by forwarding the tweet onto the @spam account. Apparently someone at Twitter takes that responsibility seriously.

But please do BLOCK the scammers and save others from accidentally following them when they look over your stream of "followers." It may take you a bit longer to get to 100 or 1,000 followers if you are editing and blocking the scammers, but it goes with the territory. And until Twitter adds a BLOCK and REPORT AS SPAM function we'll just have to do it the old fashioned way. One follower at a time.

UPDATE 8-15-09: I think my very mention of MLM in my post about TweeSpammers got me a lot of MLM related crappo followers. I woke up this morning with this smiling face along with about 15 new scammers trailing my tweets.

In discussions with @michaelpearsun last night we were wondering, if Twitter and Co. are touting their phenominal growth curve, what would be their incentive to block people from creating multiple and bogus accounts? To Twitter's stats it's merely another user. As Michael said, "If you have 28 million users with a lot of spammers vs. 2 million users of very clean users the proposition is very different." So Twitter says, "Gosh look at our amazing growth. Yes, we know there are some people gaming the system, but look at the growth rate on our monthly page views."

And did you notice that to "manage" your twitter account you are forced to weed through users 20 IDs at a time. Now I'm thinking there are much better and more efficient ways of managing my users, BUT... for Twitter it's a ton of page views every time I go in, even just to clean out the spammers, Twitter racks up the stats. And what can we do about it, but comply and complain. Or not complain at all.

I prefer at least giving a little bit of feedback. (grin)

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/twitter-spammed

See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right

Latest Twitter Posts

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

How To Recognize the Scammers on Twitter: You've Been TweeSpammed!

2009-08-16T09:38:00.001-07:00

Everyone is new on Twitter. Everything changes and everything stays the same.

On thing that doesn't change is the flood of scammer twitter artists leaching on to your account. Here's what they look like and here's what they do.

This is a collection of TwitterSpammers I BLOCKED from following me today:

So there are two reasons these type of scammers join Twitter and follow everyone.

1. Just like spam, they believe that they can drive traffic to that "make money" or "teeth whitening" or "get out of debt now" link if you just click on it.

You can report these abusive accounts by forwarding the tweet onto the @spam account. Apparently someone at Twitter takes that responsibility seriously.

I prefer at least giving a little bit of feedback. (grin)

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/twitter-spammed

See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right

Latest Twitter Posts

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

The LAST Netbook Back-to-school Promotion EVER! (Dell's 10v Netbook Revisited)

2009-08-06T12:24:00.001-07:00

Well you can’t fault Dell for putting their heart into the netbook fiasco.

A quick check of Dell.com still reveals no fewer than 5 Netbooks in the Dell line.

Mini 12
Mini 10
Mini 10v.
Vostro A90 (the Mini 9 in disguise, perhaps they still had more to unload)
Latitude 2100 Netbook (a new low for Latitude branding)

Not sure how the Mini 10 is “New” but okay.

The problem is this…

The LOWEST POSSIBLE PRICE on a netbook from Dell is $299 for a Mini 10v. Here’s the scoop on that underwhelming package.

10.1″ screen
1 gig of ram
1.6 GHz Atom processor (designed for smart phones and that’s about the performance to expect)
Ubuntu (okay, but Dell has done something wonky to it so you can’t update it like a normal Ubuntu load)
8 gig Solid State Drive (wow, I think an MS Office is bigger than that by itself)
3-cell battery (you could add a 6-cell battery for $35, but who knows what that means?)
1.3 mp webcam (my Blackberry Curve has a much better camera)
802.11g wireless networking

That’s hardly a computer. I know it’s a NET-book, but that’s about it. You can see from all manufactuer’s “netbook” ads that they are not hyping the performance of these barely-usable devices.

The back of Fry’s newspaper ad yesterday has a REAL notebook, a Toshiba with an AMD Athlon processor for $379. Let’s see what you get for the extra $79 bucks. It’s definitely a hard time to be a computer manufacturer with a back stock of laptops.

15.4″ screen
2 gigs of ram
Athlon dual-core processor (a real processor designed to run Windows!)
Windows Vista Home (I’d rather have the “downgrade to xp, but okay)
160 gig hd
DVD recordable drive
802.11 b/g wireless

I’d say that’s a hard sell on the Dell-io. And if you are a parent planning on buying a Netbook for your student, STOP!

The cost savings are not worth it! Buy a real computer. Leave the netbooks for exotics who already have a real machine and want something bigger (not necessarily faster) than their mobile phones to carry around. The idea of syncing a laptop and a netbook has seemed like a problem from the start for me, but I’m not the target market. And I won’t be… Until…

Here’s what’s going to put the netbooks and the Kindle DX down for the count.

Apple’s iTablet. And it’s not a fantasy any more. Expected before the end of September, Apple’s entry into the lower-cost mobile computing market is too late to compete with the back-to-school promotions offered by Best Buy, Dell, HP, Fry’s and such. But mark my words. The Netbook mistake will be done by this time next year. If in 2010 we are still hearing about Atom-powered sub-compact netbooks will be gone, I’ll jump in the lake with my MacBook Pro in my hands. Even Android won’t be trying to deliver it’s magic on a “netbook.” Perhaps a “phone-book” or a “thin-book” but the dog days of sub-computing computing are done.

Happy computing.

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/last-netbook

More fun with Dell:

Dell Has Gone Stark Raving Brand Crazy (Reviewing the Dell Studio XPS 16)
Netbook Fun: DELL’s Inspiron 10v Reviewed and Pawned (perhaps check out this review if you’re really interested in the 10v)
Dell Mini-9 or Vostro A90 or the Mac OS X Netbook
Dell’s Adamo Is Cold Black Steel – 85% Still Say “So What!”
Netbook Wars Heating Up or Melting Down – Where the Heck is Dell?

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

The LAST Netbook Back-to-school Promotion EVER! (Dell's 10v Netbook Revisited)

2009-08-06T12:23:00.001-07:00

Well you can’t fault Dell for putting their heart into the netbook fiasco.

A quick check of Dell.com still reveals no fewer than 5 Netbooks in the Dell line.

Mini 12
Mini 10
Mini 10v.
Vostro A90 (the Mini 9 in disguise, perhaps they still had more to unload)
Latitude 2100 Netbook (a new low for Latitude branding)

Not sure how the Mini 10 is “New” but okay.

The problem is this…

The LOWEST POSSIBLE PRICE on a netbook from Dell is $299 for a Mini 10v. Here’s the scoop on that underwhelming package.

10.1″ screen
1 gig of ram
1.6 GHz Atom processor (designed for smart phones and that’s about the performance to expect)
Ubuntu (okay, but Dell has done something wonky to it so you can’t update it like a normal Ubuntu load)
8 gig Solid State Drive (wow, I think an MS Office is bigger than that by itself)
3-cell battery (you could add a 6-cell battery for $35, but who knows what that means?)
1.3 mp webcam (my Blackberry Curve has a much better camera)
802.11g wireless networking

15.4″ screen
2 gigs of ram
Athlon dual-core processor (a real processor designed to run Windows!)
Windows Vista Home (I’d rather have the “downgrade to xp, but okay)
160 gig hd
DVD recordable drive
802.11 b/g wireless

I’d say that’s a hard sell on the Dell-io. And if you are a parent planning on buying a Netbook for your student, STOP!

Here’s what’s going to put the netbooks and the Kindle DX down for the count.

Happy computing.

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/last-netbook

More fun with Dell:

Dell Has Gone Stark Raving Brand Crazy (Reviewing the Dell Studio XPS 16)
Netbook Fun: DELL’s Inspiron 10v Reviewed and Pawned (perhaps check out this review if you’re really interested in the 10v)
Dell Mini-9 or Vostro A90 or the Mac OS X Netbook
Dell’s Adamo Is Cold Black Steel – 85% Still Say “So What!”
Netbook Wars Heating Up or Melting Down – Where the Heck is Dell?

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

My Musical Passion Catches Fire: Buzzie Live at the IPO Festival in CA

2009-08-02T15:20:00.001-07:00

My son Jason shot some video of our show at the Orange County Fair. He wasn't so focused on the show but was making some great comments along the way. I don't know if he was going for an art piece, but he sure got one. This was shot on a Flip video camera and edited with iMovie. Click on the image below to watch the video on YouTube.

The Buzzie musicians are:
John McElhenney: vocals and guitar
Robbie Rist: guitar and vocals
Derrick Anderson: bass
Marc Joseph: drums

The song "Just Another Day" was written and performed by John McElhenney.
©2009 All Rights Reserved, Happy Mac Tunes (ascap).

Many thanks to David Bash and the entire staff of International Pop Overthrow.

The video is also available on

Vimeo
Yahoo
MySpace
Blip.tv

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/buzzie-live

The photostream is also available on Flickr.

And now by popular request is the raw footage of She's Gone, the song behind the video, un-edited and narrated by Jason.

Vimeo
YouTube
Blip.tv
MySpace

Posted via web from music as fuel

Smartest Guy in the Room vs Teamwork

2009-07-31T09:26:00.001-07:00

Scott Berkun has some amazing posts about managing Rockstars, leading the "smartest guys" and basically working with awesome teammates without pissing them off.

And sometimes the TEAM comes before the Rockstar.

Here's Scott's Teams and Stars essay on the subject and a short excerpt.
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">It’s hard to understand good teams until you’ve been on both good and bad ones. You can often find frustrated people on good teams and happy people on bad teams: they don’t have enough perspective to see where they are for what it is. Some stars, people of high talent, are poor judges of teams because they’re tempted by the desire to stand out rather than the desire to succeed. Despite this, a common managerial temptation is to hire big talents, challenging the balance of needs for a successful team.</p>

I once was part of the Best Team in the World. And since then I know that at least two of my previous teammates and I have struggled to regain some perspective on our TEAM work.

Once you have been part of an Agile team it is hard, maybe impossible, to go back to a dysfunctional team. In the Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team the core foundation for TEAMing is TRUST. I assert that this issue is the same in social media, or collaborative communities online, where we must find tools and take risks to establish the trust between ourselves and our potential teammates. When the TRUST is threatened the entire TEAM is threatened.

Here is a graphic of Lencioni's hierarchy.

It's only through TRUST is the team willing to have CONFLICT. And without the ability to disagree the TEAM cannot work through difficult tasks.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/teams-stars
<ul>
<li>Scott Berkun's Teams and Stars</li>
<li>Patrick Lincioni's Table Group</li>
</ul>

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

Smartest Guy in the Room vs Teamwork

2009-07-31T09:25:00.001-07:00

Scott Berkun has some amazing posts about managing Rockstars, leading the "smartest guys" and basically working with awesome teammates without pissing them off.

And sometimes the TEAM comes before the Rockstar.

I once was part of the Best Team in the World. And since then I know that at least two of my previous teammates and I have struggled to regain some perspective on our TEAM work.

Here is a graphic of Lencioni's hierarchy.

It's only through TRUST is the team willing to have CONFLICT. And without the ability to disagree the TEAM cannot work through difficult tasks.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/teams-stars
<ul>
<li>Scott Berkun's Teams and Stars</li>
<li>Patrick Lincioni's Table Group</li>
</ul>

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

The "Value-Add" Consultant vs. The Smartest Guy In the Room

2009-07-29T21:01:00.001-07:00

These are lean times for business.

As the "recovery" begins the long task of pulling us up by our consumer-driven bootstraps, it is easy to see how businesses are taking fewer risks and hiring fewer full-timers, opting instead to hire consultants. And within many companies that distinction can make a world of difference.

I recall a meeting a while back when my team was meeting with the VP of our division for the first time. The VP was very excited by what our team was doing, and during the discussion I too became enthusiastic and quick to respond to the VP's ideas and questions.

After the meeting adjourned I stayed back and chatted with my mentor/manager.

"Was I too much?" I wondered, knowing that I had reached for the sparkle with the VP.

Later in our 1 x 1 my mentor talked about the "consultant role" as something that I needed to out grow.

"We all know you are smart. We hired you because you are smart. But sometimes you need to listen to the question the VP, or executive, asks and answer just that question?"

More recently I have had some "consultant" moments that have caused me to reflect on what I could have done differently to "answer just that question."

The first one was an informal "job interview" with the CEO that was arranged by a friend and champion within the company who was inspired to have me join the team.

The hour flew by with the two of us jumping across many topics. At one point I used my computer to show this person some examples of the work I had done and was doing with WordPress and Google Analytics. We ended with an enthusiastic call to "have you back" to further the discussions.

Then something happened. This person rushed around the office looking for one of his senior people that he wanted me to meet before I left. After about 5 minutes the CEO came to the front desk and said the person was not available and would be at least another 15 minutes on the phone if I wanted to wait. Joining in the excitement and confident in the "have you back" talk I said that I would prefer to meet with this person when I returned.

SNAP! That was it. Something about my desire to do something else, rather than sit and wait had sullied the deal. In a phone conversation several weeks later the CEO lectured me on "listening" better. Rather than what I had felt was a collaborative discussion, the CEO now framed our meeting as a job interview and was schooling me on being a better listener.

A mutual friend later said, "Perhaps they didn't like not being the smartest guy in the room."

In a more recent example, a COO brought me in on a job opportunity and grilled me for over 3 hours. By the end of the 2nd interview we were white-boarding the organizational structure of the marketing side of the business. I thought things had gone swimmingly and was told they were going to do some due diligence before making any moves.

A couple days later the COO sent me an email about "setting up more interviews this week and next week" to insure that the company was confident in making such a big move, in hiring someone like myself. The position was going to require that the COO give up some of his control in order to make a place for a Creative Director or Marketing Director as we had outlined TWO rather than ONE position on the whiteboard.

I immediately fired back an email requesting we jump into the role immediately and "test drive" my creative side while solving some of the urgent design issues facing the company. My rate and the company's penchant for consultants made the offer too good to refuse. I started the next day and jumped headlong into the details of a creative project.

Over the course of the next few weeks I scored some major victories. Even the COO said, "You solved a problem a lot of designers had failed on."

But as a consultant I also quickly reached my limit with some of the changes that needed to happen to make the Creative Director position a successful one. The current "designer" had been hired and was being somewhat protected by the COO. And while I was being told to manage this person the COO continued to give direction and projects outside of our relationship.

When I called the COO on the issue, he agreed with me, but I could see I had not won any points. In fact, many of my tasks continued to be dependent on meeting with the COO, and often I was put in COO-watch mode, literally waiting for this person to get out of meetings. A crisis point came when I was asked to wait until 6pm to meet. And it was 6:30 when the door opened signaling the arrival of the COO.

Having kids and a baby sitter who turned into a pumpkin at 7, I was somewhat frustrated with the hurry-up-crunch-time-and-then-wait-on-me mode. I let my consultant mode slip, just for a second and allowed my frustration to show. That this person's significant other is a full-time parent, and that no other employee in our group had kids, put me at somewhat of a disadvantage to this type of wait-for-me management.

That could have very well have been the SNAP with this position as well. While my contract lasted beyond the initial 3 weeks, when I returned after a week off I got an email from the COO that said "I have decided to go another direction."

So again, perhaps I had run into the smartest guy in the room. And this time I had not played fully to their strengths and allowed them the "leadership" they needed to feel comfortable with me as an employee rather than a consultant. So their job opening is back on the web, in "another direction" that sounds a lot like the direction I was brought in on. Hopefully the COO will find someone a bit more hungry, a bit more compliant, a bit less familied.

Anyway the miss was unfortunate. The self-expressed need for the COO to "confidently relinquish this responsibility" had not been fulfilled. As a consultant I did not have the base to stand on when the issue of the designer's performance and workload came up. As a full-time employee the COO would've had to answer to his own call to "relinquish" control and perhaps he was just not ready to admit that someone else might be at least as smart as he was.

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/consultant-role

Posted via web from jmacofearth's posterous

The "Value-Add" Consultant vs. The Smartest Guy In the Room

2009-07-29T21:00:00.001-07:00