Is Google Buzz really Google Hype?

My fave apps of 2009 are @foursquare @googlevoice @dailybooth @socialscope @posterous

Posterous Sidebar Flair Hack

Notice the two pieces of "flair" in my posterous sidebar, "recent posts" and "flickr photos".  Perhaps you've tried to embed some javascript in your custom posterous theme and found out that they simply don't allow it.  That's probably a good thing.  You can get crazy and buggy with this stuff.  However, without javascript support, typical blog sidebar widgets won't work. 

But... I googled some suggestions and customized them for my needs.  Basically, some javascript in an iframe and you can build yourself a nice, safe sidebar widget.  This is sort of how Google Gadgets on iGoogle work.

I think I might eventually lose the flair, but in the meantime, I'll share how it's put together.

My widget supports showing posterous posts, tweets, rss feeds, delicious feeds, and flickr photos.

I built the "recent posts" widget using my posterous rss feed.

The two iframes I embedded in my theme are

<div class="sidebar-block">
 <iframe marginheight="0" marginwidth="0"
     src="http://files.martinruiz.com/files/
        martinruiz-posterous-sidebar-widget.htm?method=rss&
        feedurl=http://martinruiz.posterous.com/rss.xml
     frameborder="0"
     style="border:0;height:525px;width:290px;">
  </iframe>
</div>

<div class="sidebar-block">
 <iframe marginheight="0" marginwidth="0"
      src="http://files.martinruiz.com/files/
         martinruiz-posterous-sidebar-widget.htm?method=flickr&
         username=martinruiz&user=8335702%40N03&
         count=3&layout=v&size=m"
      frameborder="0"
      style="border:0;height:600px;width:290px;">
  </iframe>
</div>

You need to set the width and length of the iframe to fit your theme's sidebar.  It might require a little trial-and-error to get it right.

About the Parameters
"method" parameter can be set to "posterous", "twitter", "rss", "delicious", or "flickr".
"css" parameter can be set to the path of your CSS file.  Otherwise it uses defaults that I like:)
"style" parameter can be set to "posterous" --- this uses "posterous" default theme
"header" parameter can be set to the Header text for the widget, i.e., "Recent Posts"
"count" parameter is the number of items to display

Swing Street ain't the Jazzy place it used to be

Hacking Education with Donors Choose #hackedu

Amazingly, donorschoose.org makes hacking education easy.  I see these projects as micro-startups, bootstrapping, hacking and finding creative ways to educate kids.

The notes below were written to me by students of a Donors Choose project I helped with, "FlipCams for Hispanic Students".  Their teacher is using the Cams to enhance their learning of English.  I relate to these kids.  I learned english after entering first grade... sink-or-swim.

I've set up a Giving Page for projects where Reading is encouraged or Technology is applied in creative ways.  Click and donate...  If you find a cool project, let me know and I'll post it on my giving page.

My talk at Manhattan Bridges High School

(via facebook)

I still have plenty to achieve in my life but SHPE(Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) saw it fit to invite me to talk to students and parents about my experiences as a Latino Technologist.  The truth is, I still feel very much like I did when I was in high school.  In a way it fuels my inner drive.  I had a few moments to speak to the students and parents before my talk and *I* was blown away and inspired.

I shared a few personal stories that have influenced my choices. In a nutshell, I've been engineering/hacking everything from education and business to technology since the age of 6.  Here are a few thoughts I shared,

1. concentrate your energy on a few things - that's how I learned english when I started school... at the expense of many other things, but it was worth it.

2. tinker and experiment a lot, and definitely *create* stuff - I broke a few TVs before I learned how to fix them:)  Most of my learning came by way of solving problems and creating solutions.

3. focus on what you're good at, especially when you're not sure what to do - this is how I chose a college and major.

4. it doesn't take many resources, especially money to get some things done - I grew up very poor.  We had three books in my home which I read over and over again... and I figured out how to finance my education.

5. listen to your mom!

As I reflected on what I was going to say I began to realize I might have a book in me... maybe some day I'll write one.

About Manhattan Bridges High School - Academy of Engineering
Manhattan Bridges High School opened its doors in 2003, catering to Spanish-speaking students who have been in the US for less than 4 years.  The school fosters a family atmosphere and has an engineering based curriculum.

About SHPE - Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (via shpe-nyc.org)
The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1974 by a group of engineers employed by the City of Los Angeles. Their objective was to form a national organization of professional engineers to serve as role models in the Hispanic community.

College for $99 and Working Around Accreditation #hackedu

Free Twitter feed with Feedburner

[[ experimental ]]

I read my Twitter friend's updates in Google Reader, along side news and blog feeds.  Unfortunately, your Twitter friends timeline is not public and requires authentication.  The service I relied upon to do this was broken all day yesterday.  This led me to experiment with a few things including Feedburner.  So far it seems to be working fine.  You'll need a Google Account to set this up... 2 steps:
 
1. Simply burn your Twitter friends timeline with Google's Feedburner and your Twitter 'username' and 'password'.

http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/username.rss

2. Import the new feed into your reader

Although I haven't tried it, I suppose you can take advantage of other Feedburner features like "Email" and "FeedFlare".

Related Article:

DIY Twitter Client: Yet Another Twitter Client Hack

Tale of Two Schools - Impact and Expectations of Technology #hackedu

Real-time Social Web is Anti-Social

"Real-time" is for machines.  That's a thought rolling in my head today.  I'm thinking of possibly doing a long post some time soon, but in the meantime, I'll share a few "random" thoughts.

Professionally, I design and develop real-time trading systems.  I see strong parallels between the evolution of real-time trading systems on wall street and evolution of the real-time social web. 

The social web is at an inflection point, as it deals with "real-time".  "real-time" search in Twitter.  "real-time" aggregation in FriendFeed and so on.  There appears to be enormous value, but we're struggling to harness that value, and it's quickly overwhelming us.

I'll begin with a very brief evolution of real-time trading systems.

Trading
In the beginning, users are amused by real-time data.  In fact it does add a lot of value.   We show real-time prices in trading systems,  User reacts, points, clicks... trades.

Users realize the advantages of its immediacy, so naturally they want more.  Follow more companies, get more prices and other company data in real-time, trade more etc.

At some point there are too many companies, too many prices, too many decisions, not enough screen real-estate,and slow humans:)

Now we introduce the machines... In my case, trading systems that consume massive amounts of real-time data, make decisions, while hiding the complexities and details.

Social Web - same path
For the social web, you might start with Twitter Search.  You follow a hash tag or two (2 companies).  Or maybe you follow a few friends.

Seems interesting, so you want to track the same hash tag in other social sources, say Delicious.  Or maybe you want to follow more people.

You're impressed so you want to track more tags without compromising speed.  No one wants stale data.

Suddenly, you find yourself following too many topics, too many people, you can't decide which conversations to join etc.  You can't possibly process each bit, tweet, message...

So you turn to the machines.

But now you're further away from the humans... and therefore anti-social.

Is this bad?
Not necessarily.  Moreover, it doesn't have to be anti-social.  My experience in finance shows me the way.

Algorithmic trading systems do 99% of the heavy lifting.  They trade behind the scenes according to rules that react to real-time information.  They're effectively complex event processing engines.  Now this is key.  Great Algorithmic trading systems are designed to interrupt humans when they need help.  In other words, where humans add value.  These would be "exceptions" or situations where there's a lot of ambivalence.

Possible solution and future of Real-time Social Web
The Real-time social web will, at some point, need it's version of an "algorithmic trading system".  Effectively, hiding but still processing all the real-time information of interest... then interrupting you when it needs your help or when you can add value.  Some of this is happening today with tools like Twitturly, that aggregate, filter and rank stories/links mentioned in twitter.

Like trading engines, social engines might have "behind the scenes rules" and "exceptions"

Behind the scene rules
- Retweet link every 2 hours until 25 percent of my readership has read my post
- Tweet link only after 10 percent of my followers are online, based on their last tweet times
- Introduce followers that ReTweet my links
- Retweet old stories during down times
- Tweet posts with tags that match trending topics
- Retweet until your post gets a comment

Exceptions
- Notify me to create new post if ReTweet count is too low
- Have me choose a specific post to tweet if too many posts tags match trends
- more than 5 people ask me a question that matches keywords
- let me know which one of my followers is posting the most
- Notify me when when my 10 favorite friends are online
- Alert me when any of my friends mentions a vacation or wedding

The Technology might already exist where Trading and Social Web intercept - "News"
Interestingly, the technology exists, albeit, too expensive for the average social networker... but probably priced right for corporate brands.  Financial Services shops already use complex event processing engines like StreamBase and Progress/Apama to process price signals but also News stories in real-time.  Processing news is a really tough problem that I won't get into here.  However, I have a hunch that harnessing the real-time social web is this way is actually "easier" and less "risky".

Anyone want to team up on this bad boy? could be fun!

Afterword - Ultra High Frequency Trading - Ultra High Frequency Social Networking
In the past few years there's been an increasing focus on Ultra High Frequency Trading or Low Latency Trading in Finance.  Sub milli-second trading.  Faster data, Faster reaction times.  The basic idea is that there's value in reacting first or taking advantage of sub milli-second behavior or phenomena.  Things are developing quickly in this space.  This could also be where the real-time social web will head toward.  Perhaps I'll speculate on what the ultra high frequency social web might look like, in a future post.

What do you think about the Real-time Social Web?