In addition to opening Memolane up (strategically timed to take advantage of SXSW), they’ve also added integration with Instagram (yay) and MySpace (yawn).

As I’ve been playing with Memolane, I’m enjoying the interface. It’s a fantastic way to peruse your digital history. You can check out my Memolane — and feel free to sign-up and add me.

Still not convinced? Check out this video introduction to Memolane.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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It’s been said that everything you do or say on the Internet is there for ever. But even with all the various websites and services we use, it’s still not easy to collect all those tweets, posts, photos and other artifacts in a organized way. Flavors.me does a fair job of aggregating this data, and Facebook is doing more and more aggregation. But neither of these attempt to take a historical look back at your activity. This is where Memolane attempts to fill the gap, creating a digital timeline of your contributions.

Currently in beta, Memolane allows users to configure a variety of popular services and then automatically collects them in a timeline. The services supported include Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Picasa, RSS feeds, YouTube, Vimeo, Foursquare and TripIt, with support for additional services promised.

The results are pretty amazing. You can scroll back through time and see where you checked in, what you tweeted, what photos you posted and so on. Across the bottom of the screen is a series of vertical lines that represent a granular view of time that lets you quickly scroll through years of data. Slick!

You have control over whether you share this publicly or not, but I noticed some glitches. For instance, if you have photos marked private on Flickr, they still come over into your Memolane timeline. Depending on your Memonlane settings, they may be visible in your “lane” regardless of your Flickr settings. Not great, but then it’s still in beta.

If you’re interested, you can check out my Memolane here.

UPDATE: Beta Invites

Memolane Community Manager Meghan Krane graciously gave me an invite code to share with you (thanks, Meghan!). If you’d like to try Memolane for yourself, sign-up here using the invite code “hester”.

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Growing up, we all sang the familiar song. Thankfully, I’ve never tasted blackbird pie (nor do I desire to). I never even really thought much about what I was singing as a child, otherwise I might have gagged.

Fortunately, there’s a new kind of Blackbird Pie that’s actually quite tasty. I’m referring of course to the fantastic Blackbird Pie plugin for WordPress.

The Blackbird Pie plugin let’s you easily quote a tweet with the links and look of the original tweet, like this:

Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in the most excellent WordPress plugin for sharing tweets: http://t.co/az5d46g

February 20, 2011 7:28 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffhester

Jeff Hester

Blackbird Pie adds an icon to the TinyMCE visual editor. When you are editing your post, click the Blackbird button and you’ll see a screen that let’s you paste in the URL to the tweet you want to share, or search for a tweet.

My original tweet. The URL is highlighted and copied to the clipboard.

Here’s the dialog for inserting a tweet:

The sweet thing about Blackbird Pie is that all the links that would be “live” in the original tweet are live in your post as well, including linked Twitter handles, the client used and any links.

The Twitter API is called only the first time. The generated HTML is stored in a hidden custom field so subsequent loads won’t rely on Twitter uptime.

If you ever have occasion to post a tweet on your WordPress-powered website, Blackbird Pie is a must-have plugin. And it’s also supported on WordPress.com, too!

*Incidentally, some say the 24 blackbirds baked in a pie refers to an actual historical event. Who knew?!

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A sample of the League Gothic web font

One of the challenges of designing for the web is that the font you want for your design may not be available on the computers your audience use. Resolving this usually requires either 1) Ditching the design intent and sticking with broadly supported font families; 2) Creating images containing text, in which case you can use whatever font you have; or 3) Using a web font type kit.

Option #1 is unappealing to most designers, although it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. There’s a good reason that those fonts are widely used. They’ve stood the test of time. Ever see the documentary Helvetica? Watch it.

Option #2 is not so great, though I’ve seen it done and it can work successfully if kept to a minimum. Images are always heavier than text alone, and much more difficult to update. Search engines can’t read them well, so you need to include ALT text.

Option #3 requires a little more effort, but the results are much more flexible. There are several web font kits available.

TypeKit was one of the original. They are a commercial service with access to a large library of quality, licensed fonts. You can get a free account for a single website, which is what I did recently for U.S. Speed Sport. You can see the page title (“Drag Racing” in this case) uses a special font provided by TypeKit. The drawback with the free account is that you have a limited library of fonts, and you’re required to display the TypeKit badge. It’s not obtrusive and might work for a smaller site, but bigger sites will probably want to pay for the non-badged license.

Google Web Fonts is a free alternative that is based on the TypeKit code. The javascript kits are very similar. The advantage here is that there is no badging requirement, but the library is even more limited than TypeKit’s free level.

My most recent discovery is a site called Font Squirrel. They literally hundreds of web fonts available in prebuilt kits, and you can create your own. I haven’t had a chance to use Font Squirrel yet, but it looks promising.

Are you using web fonts in your designs?

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Five years later, the event has grown to three days, and a much bigger venue than that humble beginning. The dates for WordCamp SF and venue have been confirmed: August 12-14 at the Mission Bay Conference Center. According to Jane Wells, the tentative plan is to focus programming for publishers on Friday, bloggers on Saturday, and developers on Sunday.

Who should go to WordCamp SF?

If you work with WordPress, whether for your own sites or clients, WordCamp provides a unique opportunity for intensive learning and community building. You’ll rub elbows with others who love and use WordPress, everyone from designers and developers to small-time bloggers and big corporate names (yes, they use WordPress too!).

The first ever WordCamp SF back in 2007

WordCamp SF is the biggest and original WordCamp, and is where Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg delivers his annual State of the Word address. WordCamp SF is different from the many excellent local WordCamps. While the local events generally focus more exclusively on WordPress, the San Francisco event pulls in some big name speakers talking about bigger topics.

I highly recommend attending a local WordCamp for the intensive learning and networking opportunity with local WordPress folks. For me, I attend WordCamp OC (I helped Brandon Dove and Jeffrey Zinn of Pixel Jar organize last year) and WordCamp LA. This year, I’ll probably be found at WordCamp San Diego, too.

Another great local option? Check out Meetup.com for local WordPress user groups. We are fortunate here in Orange County to have a very active group organized by Jeff Turner and Steve Zehngut of Zeek Interactive.

If you can swing the trip to San Francisco, also attend WordCamp SF for the inside scoop and the inspiration. It’s a big event, and like any big conference, it helps to network with other attendees before you go to make the most of the trip.

You can find a complete list of local WordCamp events at WordCamp Central. For instance, this very weekend there’s WordCamp Phoenix (Hey guys, look forward to hearing all about it!).

Mark your calendars for WordCamp SF, and be sure to let me know if you are planning on attending. We’ll meet up for a cold beverage!

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Having been involved in discussion forums, developing online communities such as BigBlueBall as well as enterprise communities in the context of knowledge management (KM), what’s interesting to me is how Quora takes the traditional threaded discussion format and completely reinvents it, with some excellent results.

Granted, there are important differences between Quora and a discussion forum. Quora is specifically and exclusively suited to a question and answer format. Forums can serve a much broader purpose, including open discussions, brainstorming and ad hoc, asynchronous collaboration. But when you look at most forums, a large percentage of the discussions begin with someone who needs help (they have a question) and subsequent responses (answers, in the best case scenario).

How does Quora do this differently? First of all, forums typically require the participants to begin by navigating to the category that is best suited to their topic. This alone can quickly become a barrier, as the way I would categorize something might be very different than the way other people would. In Quora, you simply ask a question. You have the option of tagging a question with one or more keywords (roughly analogous to categories). Other Quora users can follow (think subscribe) specific questions if they are curious about the answer, or they can follow a tag and get notified of any activity tagged with that keyword.

Second, where forum are typically listed in either a threaded view (i.e. Slashdot) or chronological view, Quora allows the responses to be resorted. Other Quora users can vote on the best answers, and they percolate to the top.

The Q&A type site isn’t really anything new. Google tried it before, and failed. Yahoo! Answers is another service that has hung in there, but the quality is spotty. So far, the quality of the responses has really set Quora apart. It’s not uncommon to see a CEO or founder of a company jump in with a response to a question about their business model. The particpants, by and large, are a higher caliber than I’ve seen in similar systems.

What happens next? Last week at the Social Media MasterMinds meetup in Orange County, we speculated that the opportunity for Quora has already come and gone. The theory is that once it goes mainstream, the quality suffers. The noise level increases as people look for ways to “use” Quora to improve their SEO, market their company or service, or insert spam links for pharmaceuticals.

I’m still in discovery mode on Quora. I’m following a few topics — some personal (hiking) and some professional (knowledge management). I’ve voted up a few good answers, added an answer, and asked a couple questions (with mixed results so far). The process has been interesting and even useful, but the jury is still out on whether I’ll stick with it. For now, you can me find here on Quora.

If you work with forums, online communities or KM, Quora is worth looking at. Consider it food for thought.

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My first WordCamp experience was at WordCamp San Francisco back in 2007. This past year, I worked with Brandon Dove and Jeffrey Zinn to help organize WordCamp OC. WordCamp is a great way to immerse yourself in the WordPress community and learn a lot in a short time from some really brilliant people.

Some people are put off by the thought of attending WordCamp, thinking it’s too advanced for them, but there really is something for everyone — developers, designers, bloggers and people just thinking about blogging — all of them have something to gain.

Chances are good there’s a WordCamp in your area. If you are using WordPress, or even considering using WordPress, check out the schedule of upcoming WordCamps and sign up! You’ll be glad you did.

Oh, and if we met at WordCamp LA, leave a comment or send me a tweet @jeffhester with the hashtag #wcla.

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A new project from Small Batch Inc. looks to change all that. Typekit promises to give you the ability to embed fonts on any web page with full fidelity and typographic control. 

Typekit is not yet available, but you can sign-up here to be notified as soon as it is.

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On the surface, robo-calls and text messages may seem like equal nuisances, but anectdotal evidence suggests that Obama’s text messages have been much more effective. 

With a little thought and it’s easy to understand why. A text message is permission based and less intrusive. I had to provide my mobile number willingly to sign-up for Obama’s text alerts. And I can read them when it’s convenient. In contrast, I have never received a recorded message that didn’t piss me off just a little. Who wants to be interupted by a recorded message? Not me. 

Hats off to Obama for his great use of this technology. And be sure to vote on November 4th.

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So what is Office 2.0?

For starters, it’s the name of the conference described on the web site as “…a collective experiment organized every year in San Francisco, CA and aimed at discovering the future of online productivity & collaboration. It is a unique gathering of visionaries, thought leaders, and customers using innovative online services for getting things done at the office, at home, and on the go.”

Wikipedia describes Office 2.0 as “…a marketing neologism representing the concepts of office productivity applications as published applications rather than stand-alone programs. The term leverages the Web 2.0 concept to conjure imagery of collaborative, community based and centralised effort rather than the more traditional application running on a platform locally.”

So just as Web 2.0 embraces the community and user-generated content, Office 2.0 explores new ways of working in a primarily online, collaborative environment.

I’ve seen firsthand success with collaborative online communities, particularly with the online, community-centric approach Fluor has taken with knowledge management. Distributed ownership, administration and accountability, coupled with a culture that encourages every voice to be heard has proven to be not only extremely effective, but essential to success.

In the spirit of “eating your own dogfood” the conference is paperless. Instead, each participant is given an HP 2133 Mini-Note running Linux, with wireless access to all of the tools necessary during the conference: Google Apps for email and calendaring; ClearSpace for discussions, blogging and publishing; Zoho for presentations and so on. On Wednesday, we will split into teams and respond to a simulated enterprise crisis in which we’ll put all these tools to work to solve the problem.

I’m looking forward to meeting others who are applying these concepts to support their business strategy, and learning innovative ways to stimulate similar success throughout the enterprise.

The Challenge

Probably the largest challenge to Office 2.0 is breaking down the barriers put up by IT Czars and establishing trusted, reliable ways to work outside the firewall and in the cloud. Most enterprises are leery, and rightly so, of putting their eggs in someone else’s basket. It will be interesting to see how other companies are tackling this issue.

Check back here and via Twitter, and I will keep you posted throughout the week from Office 2.0.

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But what if I want to know what the traffic will probably be like a few hours from now? I was just checking the live traffic for my trek to the airport, when I saw that you now have the option of seeing what traffic is generally like at any time of day and any day of the week. Sweet!

Of course, it’s just a guestimate based on historical data, but hey, it’s better than nothing! Thanks again, Google!

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 Nicely done!

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One of the things I like best so far is the ability to auto-update plug-ins via FTP. It worked perfectly, and simplifies the process tremendously.

So far, the only plug-in that I’m not able to get running with 2.5 is also unfortunately one of my favorites: Ankur Kathari’s Gregarious social bookmarking plug-in. Everything else has worked like a charm!

Already running an older version of WordPress? Here are the famous three-step upgrade instructions.

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Adobe has introduced Photoshop Express, a free, web-based version of Photoshop. Photoshop Express is available now in beta form, and apart from the required Flash 9 plug-in (also free), you don’t need to install any software on your PC. This means Photoshop Express will run happily on your Mac, your Windows PC or even your Linux computer.

On top of that, Adobe is providing 2 GB of storage for your work, also free. So now you can edit images from pretty much anywhere with a PC and an Internet connection.

While graphic designers and image pros will still need the full desktop client, most people will find Photoshop Express more than meets their needs. Even pros will find it useful for those occasions when their own PC is not nearby.

And it’ll probably make law-abiding citizens out of a lot of would-be pirates.

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