"Geo-Enriching" Your Website using iGeo: A Useful Technology?

nTerraCon has teamed up with Microsoft to create iGeo, software that will allow you to "geo-enrich" your website.

If you've ever been frustrated by a news article or a place-centric story and wanted a visual of where everything is happening, this is the software for you. Using iGeo, you can virtually fly to specific locations in 3D simply by clicking on a place name within your article. The software uses Bing Maps or Google Earth. 

Will iGeo catch on? The nTerraCon site demonstrates iGeo's use in the media, book publishing industry, education, and creating general documents. Perhaps, as a Social Wannabe blogger, if I ever posted a blog about a social media event in NYC, it might be fun to see a 3D map of where the event was taking place. I also see definite potential in education, to help the more visual learners, and in book publishing, in an age where reading is becoming more and more interactive. I do wonder, though, if Bing Maps and Google Earth, as they are now, are enough to attract users. I'd like to see if and how this software develops. 

Adding Google Analytics to Blogger

I just tried to get this set on my personal blog. It takes 24 hours to know if it worked right. If so, I can add it here too.

Art of the Friend Request

Making friends is a difficult, heartbreaking process in any setting. The internet--a place where one can skip the obligatory niceties that accompany face-to-face interactions--is a lot like the popular girl on the school bus on the first day of third grade, who promises she will be your best friend if you don't sit next to her. It's cold. It already has millions of friends. It doesn't need you.

The best bit of advice I "stumbled upon" actually came from a StumbleUpon user's profile:

"Friend requests will not, in general, be reciprocated. Rather, the thing to do is to drop me a message and be friendly. That does not mean "can we be friends?", but just making conversation. Okay, it's true that conversation isn't my greatest forte, but accumulating "friends" at random has to be one of the web's more meaningless activities. As with life, these things needs to be worked at!"

He points out that online interaction actually mirrors real life more than we think. How would you feel if a stranger came up to you on the street and requested your friendship? The old "Check this box if you like me" note trick went out of style in grade school. Friendship takes time. The only thing you can do is be patient and, well, friendly.

Why Doesn't Anyone Want to Be My Friend?

I am having a hard time making friends on the internet. Am I a digital pariah? A persona non grata of cyberspace? I am trying not to take it personally, but sometimes I need a virtual shoulder to cry on.

StumbleUpon in particular is giving me fits. I have exactly two friends, one of whom mysteriously appeared when I first created my account. I have no idea who she is, but unknown admirers on the internet give me the creeps.

To build my online presence, I have joined several StumbleUpon groups related to independent politics, one of my passions. I went to one of these groups and proceeded to invite as many of its members as I could to be a friend. I invited so many, in fact, that StumbleUpon made me stop inviting them. Apparently one CAN have too many friends.

Just one of the persons privileged with a personal invitation to friendship from me had the decency to reciprocate. I'll talk with my therapist about the pain of rejection, but I would appreciate it if anyone on our internet marketing team could offer some suggestions as how to build online friendships on the social networking websites so I can proceed with spreading the word about findingdulcinea.com. Any techniques that you have found effective? Please let me know.

Yours in loneliness,

Tony

More Social Media in India Facts

Despite the fact that a relatively small fraction of the overall population uses the internet, social media sites are extremely popular in India.

An estimated 60% of all Indian internet traffic is to social media sites. In absolute terms, social media sites had over 19 million unique visitors from India between December 2007 and December 2008.

The most popular social media sites in India are Orkut, followed by Facebook, and then Bharatstudent.com.

Two Twitter Videos

Here are two videos about Twitter from commoncraft.

First, just a general overview of Twitter.



Next, an exploration of using Twitter Search.

Adding Google Gadgets to Blog

Here's a video about adding Google gadgets.