Will Speaking

A popular segment in ITN's News at Ten is "and finally..." - it's the last part of the news broadcast that ends with a good feeling.  Those two words "And finally" signal something coming up to make you smile. Here's the clip from 31/1/08 News at Ten.  And finally.... Tags: itn , and finally , willspeaking , news at ten

I got my invitation code to Repliqa this morning.  Essentially Replica is a discovery and recommendations service, with a focus on Video. After sign in, it asks 19 questions to learn more about me.   Like "People expect me to be funny" and then you answer Strongly Agree / Somewhat Agree/ Agree/ Disagree  etc.   It is building a profile of you by answering these questions, so the content matches what you like. " Most of today's web sites attempt to address the problem by focusing on the popularity of objects (videos, blogs , songs, etc.) or by applying collaborative filtering techniques to deliver "good" information to the user. This object-centered approach is incomplete because that which is ranked as "popular" is, by definition, of maximal interest only to the average user. People today want information that is personally relevant as well as just popular." - From Repliqa website The first video recommended was this, which seems appro...

The myAOL team launched more updates last night (including more modules,  12 new portals for myAOL | HP).   One feature is themes.... Check them out... some very nice themes for your page.  I am sure you will like them! Tags: myaol , aol , themes aoljpictureUpload , aoljpictureUpload_3

Don't let people say silly things about your company Yes I mean it. Your company. I read the blogosphere,  and often see articles on some feature or product that has been launched.   Then I follow the comments.   You get the normal AOL bashing,  some people who like it, some people who bash and have never used the product being reviewed.  All the normal stuff. But Frank Gruber set an example for me last year.  When he spots these comments, he follows up with a comment and (if possible) contacts the person who wrote the it. Often the comments don't have contact info or use real names.  But if they do, Frank will email them as follow up.  And the response is normally good.      If Frank can do it (as busy as he is), so can we all do it. The latest blog that struck me was this article " Yes, People Still Use AOL " on Silicon Alley Insider.  The first comment was negative, the third was negative.   ...

I love it when people say to me " people don't customize " or " people don't personalize ".... then as they are explaining why "people don't" their cell phone rings.  And it's not the normal ring, it's Lil'Kim singing her heart out.    Hmm... so if people don't customize, what is that ring tone on your phone - I know Lil' Kim is not the default :-)  People do customize. People love to do it!    You can customize by adding a theme to your page,  adding music,  your IM icon is customized.   At home, you customize the color of your new car,  or the ring tone on your phone, or the message on your answer machine.   Look at myspace.com if you want to see people customizing. When I customize, it is saying something about me.   AOL has known this for years - with the Buddy Icon, Buddy Sounds and in AOL 9.0 with cool Desktop themes.  It even gave you the ability to "snag" a theme your friend had setup and c...

Have you seen some utilities, applications or widgets that take something and make it easy? I often come across a few of these.    For example, a whole bunch of free utilities exist for Flickr photos - just showing how much developer community they have. One very fun utility is " My Cool button ".  Yes, that's right. It's a web site that allows you to create a web 2.0 'ish style button.    It's very simple - 4 steps.   Fancy a graphic on your button?  Or maybe giant text?  How about a purple one?  Once you've created your cool button, you download it in PNG format, and off you go. Some examples :  The first allows you to subscribe to the feed of this blog, the second allows you to get alerts. Give it a try. As for me, I am going off and creating buttons for every URL I can think of... Tags: web 2.0 , willspeaking , william morris , my cool...

After two Netgear wireless routers stopped working (within 6 months of each other, they just stopped - no signal, no response),  I finally gave up and got a new one.      I am not sure why the Netgear router just stops working, but when it happens twice I figure something is wrong with the devices.   Netgear support is OK, and they had sent me a second router 6 months back, but that finally conked out.   Maybe too much cat hair in it, or something.    I put it down to a defect in this particular model. I went to Best Buy at Santana Row and came out with a new router, this one from Belkin.  It seems to be working great (so far), but check back in 6 months. While I was in Best Buy,  I went on a bunch of machines.   Some really nice looking laptops from HP and Sony, and some really really nice screens.       I also tried myAOL and Magnet on most of the displays, to see what th...

For those who have not used Magnet (and I must say where have you been? :-) ), the team has been working on taking Magnet with you, where ever you go. Magnet is a number of things, but at the heart of it is a way for you to discover new content ( blogs ,  photos, videos) about the subjects or topics that matter to you.  Magnet does the heavy lifting - going across the web, through millions of webpages , and bringing you part of that - based on what you like.  Sounds hard?  Well, it is hard to do and the engineers behind magnet have been working long nights to pull this off.   But for you, it's is easy to start using it, and to discover content on subjects you like. Magnet doesn't ask you to list what you are interested in - you can tell it if you like.  But rather than fill in forms, you start exploring. You can click on photos, and as you do this, Magnet slowly starts to determine what you are interested in.   You can also do a search (e.g....

Yesterday, the excellent PBS series Frontline   featured an episode focused on kid's living online "Growing up online".   It was quite an eye-opener to me, with some really bad things going on with bullies online, that resulted in a tragic death.    It also showed some parents trying best to protect children, and the children not liking it, as you can imagine.    Danah Boyd was also featured on the show.   You can watch it online here . Tags: pbs , frontline aoljurlAdd , aoljurlAdd_1

I've been using Bluestring and SimpleStars Photoshow.   Both allow you to add video, photos and music, then share your show with others.   Photoshow has come along way since I last used it.   It has a pretty active community of users who share and comment together.  Bluestring worked well. This is the first time I have used Bluestring for a while, and it worked easy enough - upload went with no glitch, and I quickly put together a show.    It doesn't yet have an extensive collection of slideshows to choose from.  I added music, though the music (for some reason) does not play in the embedded version below.     Photoshow is really easy to create a show - really easy , and they have licensed music for playback (though it's a bit cheesy). Though it is not as good as your own music.  It offers tons of choices to quickly put together a show (themes, for example).  It is fast, easy and polished. See below for the Photosh...

AOL has launched a number of Facebook widgets.  Here's a list of the one's I have used. Add some of them today, and check them out. AOL Music launched  " My Favorite Artist ". This lets you view videos, music and photos from your favorite artist.  It's quite nice - just imagine all the videos you can watch on Gwen S or even the Spice Girls.  I found it needs a wee bit more social interaction (e.g. it would be good to see which friends on your friends list had the same interests in your music).     It is rich though, using videos from AOL Music's video vault and alot of great photos. Right Now on AOL - The DL (Dynamic Lead, and not the Down Low) - otherwise known as the lead generator. This is a very good widget, available in Large or Small sizes.  You can add it to Myspace and Blogs too.  It's nice, since like AOL.COM,  you never know what lead stories you will see.     The only downside for Facebook i...

The latest beta of AOL and AIM webmail now integrates nicely with XDrive .  So you can share files, have them stored at XDrive, and send links instead of sharing the entire file to 20 different people. I gave it a try this morning. It has some glitches (photos stored on Xdrive did not always show thumbnails, for example - making browsing a bit tricky),   but sending them and getting them to my gmail and yahoo accounts worked well. Give it a try.    Webmail Beta is here.   Xdrive is here. Tags: aol , will speaking , webmail , mail , xdrive aoljpictureUpload , aoljpictureUpload_1

I am in the process of making "Will Speaking" a public blog.   Rather than move off to another blogging system,  I will continue to use AOL Journals.     You can subscribe or unsubscribe at http://alerts.aol.com/ Tags: william morris , willspeaking , will speaking , aol

( To unsubscribe to the alert for this blog, click here ) Congrats to Mike! A big congrats to Mike Macadaan on his promotion to Vice President.   OK, this is a couple of weeks late.    Mike has shown great leadership in leading by design, and innovation.    Congratulations Mike! Twiistup 3 Speaking of Mike - he held the 3rd Twiistup last night, down south. See the blogtv Video from Somewhatfrank. Focal Reviews Really soon, standby for your review.