blogstring.com

Yesterday I got an invitation to the TripSay invitation-only beta. The site differentiates itself from the other travel sites by actually giving members less information and more value than the current travel networks. From their press release:

TripSay is not a service for searching for the best price for a vacation package. It’s a connected and personalized social community for those who wish to document their travels, earn “travel fame,” share secrets and discoveries with fellow enthusiasts, and also actively seek their next adventure.

At TripSay travelers share and discover only the information that matters to them with the help of like-minded enthusiasts. Travelers researching specific destinations, experiences and activities are looking for specific recommendations and tips that are usually buried, if they are available at all, in traditional travel review sites. TripSay delivers quality over quantity and uses a unique recommendation engine to proactively match destinations, places, sights, content, and activities for people across their network of friends as well as with those with similar tastes. It creates a community rooted in the exchange of expertise as well as trust.

It starts with someone describing their preferences, saving trips, and marking their previous destinations and dream vacations. The service then automates the process of connecting the right people and also personalizes their maps and information based on each unique individual.

When you talk about using preferences to provide recommendations, well, you’re speaking my language. So let’s take a look.

When you’re building your profile, TripSay asks you to enter the names of places you’ve visited, and rate them. In order to motivate users to add more data, you’ll see (if you squint), that TripSay adds:

9559 people have rated more places than you. Rate just one more place to advance to #8657.

Smart.

As you add new places, the map on the left changes (a google maps API integration) to reflect your ratings.

The Profile

(click for larger image)

As you’ll see, the object of TripSay is to accumulate points to increase your “fame”. Within your network, this is an indication of trust and expertise. You can join groups to talk about places you’ve visited, dream destinations, and give tips on sights to see.

Under the map, the Recent activity section constantly updates with what people are saying in the network. For instance:

christophergurr wrote a link tip about Vancouver, Canada
Milestone’s is unique because we’re all foodies - a passion we share with our guests. Our skillful preparation begins with our in-house chefs who have mastered the art of delivering the expected, unexpectedly well.

Clicking on the Vancouver link, I see:

The profile page for Vancouver aggregates comments from TripSay users, grabs a description from Wikitravel, and displays relevant photos from flickr.

What’s Good

Some of the things I like about TripSay:

• The interface- The UI is clean and easy to use. This is a site that consciously avoids information overload.
• Outside API Integration- TripSay uses Google Maps, Wikitravel, Flickr, and search results to give users access to more detailed information without creating clutter on the main site.

What’s Bad

Like all other social services, in order to get the maximum benefit, you need to create yet another set of friends (inviting people you know, adding others, etc.). This is another great example of how true data portability would benefit these social networks.

Conclusion

I have to be honest in that I’m not an expert on all the travel sites that are already out there. With that said, I like what TripSay is doing. If I was really interested in finding new places to visit, and wanted to share my own tips, I would definitely use TripSay.

But I’m curious what you think. Have you tried similar services?

If you’d like to try out TripSay, send an email to info@tripsay.com with the word Blogstring in the subject line.

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Well, the lazy days of summer are most definitely upon us. As I struggle for good blog topics and look forward to weekends at the beach with a cold margarita, how can I pass up getting tagged in a summer meme?

Larissa Fair got me, and I can’t say no, so here we go, things I love about summer!

4 things you like about summer

1. The beach and frozen drinks on the deck at the Sea Ketch with my girlfriends
2. Countrytime Lemonade commercials
3. Driving with the top down!
4. Hayward’s ice cream stand in Nashua

4 of your favorite vacation destinations

1. Maine–lakes and mountains inland, ocean on the coast, lobster rolls
2. Greenfield State Park — spent many summers camping there growing up
3. California - Central Coast for wine tastings and the beach
4. DC - It’s hot as Hades in the summer, extremely miserable, but there are many good friends to share a frosty pint with to cool off, and lots of BBQ action

4 of your favorite summer foods

1. Strawberries
2. Corn on the cob
3. Watermelon
4. Do margaritas count as food?

4 concerts not to miss

1. Kenny Chesney
2. Brad Paisley
3. Journey (I am going to see them in August with Heart and Cheap Trick, oh yes)
4. Jimmy Buffett (whether you like him or not, the tailgating is amazing)

4 things to avoid during the summer

1. Sunburns
2. Tanning salons (why pay when the sun is free?) 
3. Community urine-filled pools
4. Heat exhaustion (maybe this only applies to me, who keels over if not properly hydrated!)

Tagging:

Jen Zingsheim

Amanda Gravel

Paull Young

Chelpixie

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At 9:00 EST I’ll be doing the third episode of the object:location podcast over at BlogTalkRadio. As always, I’ll be joined by J. Trent Adams, founder of matchmine (my employer), and today we’ll be talking about how the idea for matchmine came to him, and how he brought it from concept to reality. He’ll also explain the difference between URL and URI, and I’ll take a look at TripSay, a new travel service that promises to give its users less information.

The call-in number is (347) 539-5920.

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Haven’t used the word “dope” in a while. Feels pretty good.

Anyway, I’ve been flirting with the idea of doing some kind of podcast for far too long. On June 25th, BlogTalkRadio announced $4.6 Million in Series A funding from the Kraft Group, so I had to check it out. [full disclosure: I work at matchmine, a company also funded by the Kraft Group]

What have I learned? Well, podcasting is really, really hard. And BlogTalkRadio is very cool.

What’s So Great About BlogTalkRadio?

Well, first of all, it’s easy. To have a show, you just set up an account, and you get a phone number to call and a pin. You schedule a “segment” (their term for an episode), and call in to start the show. Others can call in too, and the host can punch up callers microphones on a switchboard. It’s simple enough that anyone can have a professional sounding show.

While the show is being aired, listeners can hear it at BlogTalkRadio or on your blog using an embed code. Or both. And when the show is over, it’s archived at BlogTalkRadio, and offered as an MP3 download as well.

Though navigating the site is a little bit tricky at first, BlogTalkRadio is great for anyone looking to easily create and distribute a podcast.

What’s So Hard About Podcasting?

I’m lucky enough to sit about 20 feet from Trent Adams, founder of matchmine, Data Portability advocate and media guy. I mean, the guy created the first direct-to-digital video show for the New England Patriots, producing over 70 hours of content each week. Not exactly a lightweight.

So when I approached him about doing a show, he was all for it, as it’s the kind of stuff he does all the time. And instead of actually preparing for it, I just thought we’d wing it. Bad idea.

Our first episode started with nearly 2 minutes of dead air (I couldn’t find button to turn on the mic), and was followed by a stream of relentless uhs and ummmms from me. I was a mess, but Trent had my back and ran with it.

After the show (described as “moderately painful”) I decided prep work was the way to go. I actually filled out a sheet in five minute increments and even assigned clever names. With that, I give you episode two of the object:location podcast. In this episode we discuss:

• The new digg.com recommendation engine
• XDI and XRI- WTF are they?
• meOwns.com- A social network for showing off what you own

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My article, MySpace: Availability vs Portability was published on Media Bullseye today.

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Now here’s something I never thought of. (Isn’t that always with the way with something new?)

The lovely Amanda has a new client, 211(me), and kindly asked if I’d check them out . (She put a great pitch together, by the way, by appealing to both Nathan and myself on a personal level and connecting her new client with something she knows interests us both–bars! Props go to Amanda for conducting blogger outreach right.)

Do you hate business cards? I do. I collect them, then they clog my wallet, and I have to enter all my new contacts’ information into my address book, and sometimes I don’t recall the person behind the card. I frequently give them out to new contacts at social media events, but the person usually just connects with me afterwards by finding me on Twitter of messaging me on Facebook, and vice versa. Business cards almost seem a bit quaint and obsolete in this digital age, don’t they? Not to mention bad for the environment.

211(me) offers “mobile business cards.” You can create a card with all your contact info, store it in your computer and phone, and text or email it out to anyone. Here’s the one I made, using my Blogstring info:

And now my fair and balanced review.

Why it Works:

It’s Green, and Green is “so hot right now”: Basically, it’s a way to never be caught without your business card and save the environment. I’ve never been a big greenie, but the idea of using a mobile card seems like a really simple way to earn some environmental karma. Why kill trees when everything you need to know about me is right there online anyway?

Saves Time: If everyone used this, we would be spared from having to go through the cards we collected at all our events and type in everyone’s info. It would all be on our computers already, because the cards come with importable v-cards.

Multiple Uses: You can create multiple cards for various purposes; while the card I’ve made here promotes Blogstring, I could also make one for Media Bullseye, CustomScoop, or any of my company’s products and/or promotions. As Amanda pointed out in her pitch, bars and nightclubs are using the service as mobile marketing to spread the word to young people about upcoming events, and even movies are getting in on it. Here’s some examples from the site’s gallery:

Why It Might Not Work:

Good for Geeks, but Who Else?: I’m giving 211(me) a total thumbs up, but I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize that this is a niche service. If I’m at a social media event? Absolutely. If I’m at a regular old business lunch? I might not whip out my phone and offer to text my card to a run of the mill business contact who might look at me like I’m nuts.

Not All Phones Have Internet: In order for someone to open your card on their phone, they must have mobile Internet. Not everyone does. This is easily solved by just sending it to the person’s email instead….but some might take issue.

Overall:

Good concept, good cause that also works as a marketing angle (as I said, green is so hot right now), fun to play with, potentially very useful with the right niche of people. Thumbs up!

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Tip of that hat to @adam_rosenberg for pointing this out to me. Greatest. Thing. Ever.

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So, this morning I went through my usual routine, checking email, mainlining caffeine, sucking down 23 ounces of raspberry iced tea, etc. And when I went to gmail, I noticed something strange:

I also had 4 chat requests, all from people with SEO in their gmail username. Now, SEO link request spam is nothing new, but the timing is weird. So I decided to take a look:

So here are my questions:

1. I don’t have an online beauty store or a jewelry related website, so why am I being targeted by people saying “We would like to exchange links only with Jewelry related website” ?
2. SEO spam is really no different than any other kind of spam…..the people sending these messages are no different from the people selling v1agr4 or c1ali$. They are just trying to hit as many people as possible hoping that .00001% of people will bite. So why are these emails coming through instead of being caught by gmail’s spam filter?
3. Does this actually work? I mean, do people actually benefit from blind emailing web site owners to ask for link exchanges on sites that are completely irrelevant? I understand PageRank, and just don’t see how much site owners would gain from absolute garbage link farms.
4. What can I do? Is there a good way to create, say, a text file to use as an additional filter? I’d love to be able to set up a gmail rule that looks at a blacklist I create, and if one of the sites listed in my blacklist is in the body of the email, the agent would delete the message.

I did a little research to see if my name landed on some kind of “Hey, this is a really good guy to spam” list. Some things I noticed:

• These people have multiple email addresses- A quick google search of the email addresses turns up zero results. They’re using multiple addresses to send this stuff (when they’re put on a blacklist, they’ll just move to another email address). In addition, they’ll often send the email to a huge list and will actually include their real address in the “to:” field. For example:

Searching the first email address yields no results, but searching the second gives some results. The first is an SEO link exchange request conversation from a debian list.

• The sites they list in their signatures do not exist. This was strange to me. If you’re going so far as to spam the world to get links, why would you put a fake site as your signature?
• Once you’re on one of these lists, it’s insane, as everyone replies asking for links to their sites. Meh.

Is anyone else getting these all of a sudden?

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As I’m getting over a mild case of the black plague, I’m in more of a contemplative state of mind. So, with that, I thought I’d go over something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: having everything in one place. I will warn you: this is going to be one of those rambling posts that doesn’t end in anything resembling an answer or a conclusion. But you’re used to that.

• Some people do their banking in a grocery store
• You can get coffee in a bookstore
• You can buy Pizza Hut at Target

You see where I’m going here.

The argument goes like this: We have less time to do more things. There’s always more to do than time to do it in, so we try to consolidate. Multitask. Kill two birds with one supermarket.

The same goes for our time doing things online. We want to participate in social networks, write, get recommendations, watch videos, etc., and with new things coming out every day, it becomes overwhelming. We just can’t keep up.

But consolidation and “one stop shopping” are not the same in both the physical and virtual worlds.

Let’s go back to brick and mortar land. How often do you do all your shopping in a department store? Compare that to how often you do your shopping in ultra-specialized stores in a mall. Why is that?

The same goes for online tasks. If I want to write a blog post, I go to my blog. If I want to write a twitter message, I go to twitter. If I want to do banking, well, you get it.

To be honest, having everything in separate locations can be an enormous pain. Having one central control panel for all my stuff would be incredibly useful. I’d love to have something that lets me access all the services I use from one interface.

But so far, that interface does not exist. Many have tried, but I’ve seen a lot of department stores and zero malls.

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If I had the time:

• I’d post here every day.
• I’d spend at least an hour each day bookmarking, sharing items, commenting on other blogs, and searching for new stuff.
• I’d take the time to figure out the ins and outs of magnify.net, and I’d run my own channel.
• I’d publish a podcast on both blogstring.com and the matchmine blog.
• I’d do more videos.
• I’d take advantage of the seesmic video comment opportunity on blogs like mashable and techcrunch (you know, if I had something to say).
• I’d start a video series where I’d interview entrepreneurs and local techies.
• I’d plan more events.
• I’d find creative ways to justify attending more events.

That’s the beginning of my list. If you could have an additional, say, 2 hours each day, what would you do with it? And I don’t mean things like “spend more time with my family”. I’m talking about the things you always wanted to try out, but never seem to find the time for.

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