I wish that 2012 could be the year that every soldier from every country came home for good. (vote and be active in your country's choices)

I wish that 2012 could be the year that every human being on the planet had an equal chance for dignity and self-determination that would bring food and shelter to their families and make the world a better place for all. (participate in http://kiva.org)

I wish that 2012 could be the year when we could give up the notion that we alone are worthy and understand that all deserve a chance, the same chance that we, the privileged, were born with through no inherent qualities of our own doing. (get over yourself, collectively, we've been brainwashed)

I wish that 2012 could be the year that people who have kids would become patient, ardent and inspiring teachers to their own children in the hours they could be spending on that responsibility. This alone would change the quality of life for the entire world. (got kids? Think about the time you spend with them and the effect you need to have on what and who they will become)

I wish that 2012 could be a year where the quality of life of every being on this planet would improve, just a little. (Stop selfishly wasting resources)

You may notice that these were my wishes for 2011. Little has changed, unfortunately.

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Brough Turner, founder of Netblazr which he describes as "a radically new form of wireless ISP." 358: Brough Turner of Netblazr by VoIP Users Conference

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Don't believe the image, it's beautiful out here right now! Will this new app save Twitter? twitter.com/randulo/status…

— Randulo Zeeek (@randulo) December9, 2011

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Randall, Google Plus is waiting for you and here's why:

• Your Tweets that you consider throwaway during chronic insomnia are not disposable at all, but they're recycled a lot. You're a great writer, you know it, we know it. 
• There is no law that says you have to post things longer than 140 characters, but you'll never be stopped by that limit.
• There's no law that says you have to post a photo, but should you care to, you can post one or more
• There's no law that says you must post links, but you can post them and they will usually be  presented in an interesting inline fashion at the bottom of your post.
• Posts on G+ can be edited and deleted forever, should you care to. Same with comments.
• Public posts are indexed in Google's search results. Don't want that? You have full control of it.
• In fact, you can aim your posts at anyone you like, from the full public + future public who sees search results to one person.
• There's plenty of noise on G+, but just like on Twitter, you don't circle (follow) noisy people, you won't see them.
• Yes it takes some work and time to get it working right. Making wine doesn't? Raising kids? The Time Crossword Puzzle? Nothing worth doing does it self.
• Hangouts. I won't get into this here. Just Hangouts.
• Serious discussion? It's up to you, once you've made your environment, you can be serious or just a desperate insomniac at will.

What's in it for you?

Let's face it, of those 
356,663 followers
you have, how many are interacting with you? At night when you can sleep? Sturgeon's law, my friend.

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Thinkup 1.0 is released! @ginatrapani and the crew talk about how they got here and where they're going.

Thinkup Talk Podcast is also available on iTunes

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Social media is not for everyone. Does your butcher shop even need a web site? 

But here's the thing. If you are going to do something, put your heart, soul and possibly money into it and do it right. I'm looking at two Facebook fan pages. I call these brand pages. One has many thousands of followers, the other about 10% of the first, yet these represent equally well-known luxury brands with a nearly identical consumer demographic. They were created at about the same time. There is only one reason why there is a ten-to-one ratio of activity and followers. Can you guess what it might be?

Page A is open to fans posting photos, videos, and comments. Page B is not. Page A has a dialog going on week after week. Page B has a continuous feed of vanity posts, liked by people either from the company or from their agencies. Page A wants to engage with you. Page B wants to preach and blurt. Not by coincidence, the same two have Twitter accounts with the same comparison of engagement level. Page B does a little better on Twitter, because it started earlier and Twitter is more forgiving. Why? Because your posts are not usually read all lined up like they are on Facebook, so the lack of engagement isn't obvious. If you could examine the Twitter activities of of the pages on a tool like Thinkup, you'd see a huge difference: Thinkup calls Page B a "broadcaster". It's really just a news feed with no dialog at all.

Take a long hard look at what your company (product, brand or service) is doing out there. Is it possible you don't get it? One of the first things you need to do is to put yourself in the place of a visitor. Why do they come? How easy is it to find what they've come for? If you can honestly say that you've answered those two questions and that your page or site meets those expectations you've determined, you're good. If not, you'll need to decide whether it's worth continuing.

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Podcasting is now, and a lot of high visibility talents have adopted it with a passion. Kevin Smith has a whole network of comedy tailored to the taste of Silent Bob fans.

Of that group, Jay Mohr, who I first noticed on his series Action, explained to comic buddy Patrice O'Neal on a recent episode of Mohr Stories, how he started and what he sees as the benefits of podcasting. Someone told Mohr about how podcasting would help fill up his live gigs, and he says this works. I don't doubt it. I'm really happy to listen to Mohr - if only he'd talk a little about Action, which had so many qualities and was so ahead of its time on TV. Mohr told Patrice O'Neal he's seeing better crowds at gigs already, and tried to explain how people listen to audio podcasts while commuting, traveling, etc. They talked about Louis CK as well, another pioneer, this time in self-produced TV Louie. It's all proof that the future is now. What are you waiting for?

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I really like this product!

You can make free calls between units, so if you have family at a distance that costs money to call, you can effectively set up free calls between the units.

Got Google Voice? You need one of these ObiHais at home or at the office to connect it to a phone and not need to have a computer on all the time.

Check the Amazon link for pricing on the Obihai. (support the VUC buy buying it through Amazon if you care to)

While the ObiHai product is a geek's dream with a zillion parameters to tweak, an ordinary mortal can set it up in a few minutes.

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There are already too many channels, but I can't find a channel that everyone is listening to, and it's a problem. I will cross post this on at least 5 of them: email, Facebook, Google Plus, IRC, and the Unblog.

While at Astricon, every single night there were ad hoc groups forming to go to dinner. Some had American cells, some got the wifi cut off and had no data, etc. So how were we to keep in touch? The irony of a large conference entirely about telecommunications, convergence, VoIP and telephony is surely not lost on you, gentle reader. We really need a single channel if we want to keep in touch. That channel, for my part and until something better comes along is Google Plus.

If you want to be included in future dinners, wine tastings, lunches, breakfasts, strip clubs, poetry readings or whatever comes up when we get together in meat space or virtually, please get on Google Plus. It matters not if you do not follow anyone or are not active, but it does matter that that channel is the most flexible at the moment. Adding my prejudices, Facebook isn't good for this, IRC is too old school, email too iffy. Assuming you have a cellphone and data, Google Plus is the way to go. If you eschew social networks - of which Google in NOT in my opinion - fine. But don't be surprised if you don't hear about things in a timely fashion.

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I was looking at the statistics from two podcasts I've produced over the last 5 years, the current VoIP & Tell (the VoIP Users Conference) and the New Wine Consumer which hasn't recorded a new eposide for about 18 months.

What's interesting to me, is that these are very targeted sessions, something akin to presentations at a trade event. When you do a presentation at the typical trade show or convention that I have attended, you'll be talking to maybe 25-80 interested people.

During the 18-month hiatus of the New Wine Consumer where no new material is being produced, we still see about 1,500 unique IP downloads each month of the 250 existing recordings. Suppose a single sponsor had a mention at the beginning and end of each of these. That sponsor would have reached an audience of over 160,000 very narrowly-targeted people. Compared to the scatter approach of TV, radio and newspapers, you might start to see why this is so impressive.

The case of VoIP & Tell (VUC) is much different, because each week we gather between 35 and 100 live callers. Those who are unable to call live will usually listen to or download the recordings. The current average of downloaded VUC recordings is 5,000 to 6,000 per month. In one year of sponsorship, about 60,000 listeners are listening to guests and regulars discussing this very vertical market.

I look forward to meeting many of them at Astricon, Digium's Asterisk product showing in October of this year.

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Thinkup Talk #9

Lots of great contributions from the great Thinkup community:
Very improved Facebook plugin, Beta 15 migration issues, manual migrations, future planned improvements and features.
Mentioned links
http://waxy.org/projects/thinkup-launcher/ 
http://expertlabs.aaas.org/thinkup01/?u=The+White+House&n=facebook+page 
https://dev.twitter.com/blog/introducing-twitter-web-analytics  
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Use+Cases
https://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/wiki/Installation%3A-Local-Computer

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I think the It Gets Better Project for gay teenagers is a great idea. There is nothing as depressing for a young person than to experience ostracism, bashing and abuse in a period of life that's hard enough to deal with. I'd like to point out though, that not only gays suffer from this kind of thing in their teenage years.

When I was in junior high, living a normal social life with friends of both sexes, looking forward to a sex life on the near horizon, my family moved 2,000 miles across the US and I was plunged into a new school in the middle of the second year. The social pecking order in such places is already established, I didn't fit in anywhere. I was pretty much shunned by most of the other students, but I met a friend and neighbor, Owen Husney with whom I've corresponded all these years. Owen and I shared the common problem of "not fitting in" and we hit it off right away. We both learned to play the guitar and formed a band. Later we went our separate ways musically, but we've kept current with each other. We both went on in life to do some surprising things, considering how little respect we got in those early years. After playing and recording with a band called High Spirits in Minneapolis, Owen got into management and signed and developed an artist who has made a deep and lasting mark in the musical landscape: Prince. Owen also managed Al Jarreau, a seven-time Grammy award winning jazz singer. Owen has been playing the big league of the music business for decades.

On the occasion of fifty years passing since we first met outside on a snowy day in Minnesota, I recorded a chat with Owen about our lives then and now.

It Does Get Better by randulo

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Santa Barbara Airport, the newly opened (beautiful) terminal, Wednesday morning. Who's sitting there a few feet away from us? Why he's probably on his way to play his next gig in Northern Cal (the SFO flight is next to our gate).

Before I tell you what Jeff said to that, I have to mention that I have shaken some very famous hands before. I'm not an autograph guy, I'm not a photo op guy, I shake hands and mutter whatever comes to my mind. I swapped a sentence or two with all four Beatles and recall George saying what sounded like "Bagsy!" when I handed him a guitar. Ringo said "What'ya got for me, then?". Mel Brooks said something witty as did Milton Berle. Shirley MacLaine smiled and I can't recall what she said. In short, celebrities, at least the ones I've met, who actually are famous for doing something, for being someone, are most often just people. If you don't try to interfere with them, they're as gracious as you or me, maybe even more so, noblesse oblige.

All this to say, what that Rooster Cogburn voice replied to my compliment, "I really like your work" was just this: "Well thank you... I like your glasses, man." Imagine, someone at that level of achievement who, when complimented, sends a vibe like that right back with as much sincerity. I truly believe there's a lesson in this for all of. I hope I can remember it next time someone says "I like what you do." It does happen, you know.

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Here's this month's Thinkup Talk with Gina Trapani, Andy Baio, Sam Rose and Aaron (one of the Thinkup mentees) contributing their experience from the development point of view.

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This has become a big topic right now, some very famous people have lost their accounts for using names they've been using for years, names that have become their Internet brands. The names are spotted by an algorithm (what else, it's Google) if they have no last or first name, such as 'randulo' or punctuation such as 'dev/null'. I have experience this first hand so what follows is my recent experience. This information is posted without warranty, free of charge and YMMV. Pass it on.

Upon detecting what they deem to be a fake name or role account, the profile is made invisible. This also has the effect of disabling the ability to post or comment. You can still see the activity in your circles. Your posts on this account are also made invisible (or deleted, not sure which). When you log in to the acount, go to profile edit and there will be a paragraph that explains the rule you skirted and a link to a form.

Remedy.

I editied the profile to show my real name and submitted the form, which includes sending an image of an official piece of ID with your name on it

After.

Once you've completed the form, a decision will be made by Google. No email or other communication is sent, but suddenly the updated profile appears and the gplus.to short URL (such http://gplus.to/randulo) if you had one, works again. This short name can be anything, it doesn't have to be a name.

The process took less than 24 hours, I checked the profile the morning after, and it was all back on. I don't know yet if posts were reinstated.

I do appreciate Google controlling comercial accounts and in fact, I'd like to see an option to block ALL non-individual accounts by default. I think that would go a long way towards being better than Twitter or Facebook in the long run.

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First a few myths need dispelling:

• Google is still NOT fully open at the time of this writing
• Unless you are a superstar, a very developed social graph isn't enough to get you in
• The number of invites you get won't help
• The email share "trick" doesn't change the fact that when it's closed, it's closed

How

At the moment, Google is still throttling registration. This means that if you get a new invite, your best chance to register to to go there immediately, since the open period can stop any time. Persistence is important. Keep watching the skies!

My anecdotal experience with the social graph thing, aka penis size, proves that size doesn't matter. Nor does who contacts are, how many they are, how active the account is, or what you've put in your profile. I know one person I invited has a huge number of Twitter followers, he's well-known in software and podcasting circles, and he had a hell of a time getting in. I've seen people with tens of thousands of followers on Twitter complaining about not getting in, while my throw-away Gmail account got in immediately with one share. I've invited people who are not big in social and they've gotten right away,because they acted on the invite right away.

Why

Totally. The only people who should give it a pass are those who are not in any social networks now, not even one, not on Twitter, and refuse to look at online groups or forums. Those people will only use Usenet and email. I doubt they'll be interested. Anyone else, other than crazy early adopters who begged for Wave invites and sign up for a lot of new sites to explore them, normal people who enjoy Twitter even marginally, should definitely go explore G+.

Hangout is a killer feature. You click one button and you have announced that you're ready the chat via video and called up the chat software. You can either announce it to people limited to your circle(s) or go public. I've done this numerous times, me who eschews video usually, and I find it easy and high quality. I've been in full-up Hangouts (10 people), and one on one. Both are very cool. It's the true water cooler of the Internet.

Circles will require some work on your part. If you don't do the work, you will find yourself looking at noise. You absolutely must curate one or more circles of people you want to watch (like following on Twitter). When you add someone, they see you added them, but not the name of the circle. So as the joke goes, no one gets a message like "Randulo has added you to his Douchebags Circle" which would indeed be awkward. There are a few default circles for friends and family. The rest can be for centers of interest.

Rather than gushing on, which most of us do - that should tell you something right there - I will just say one more thing.

Most of the people I'm hanging with on Google Plus agree, this is an exciting time. G+ is filled with Google employees and big name social media people as well as a lot of passionate early adopters like me in a myriad of interest centers. We are all contributing to the direction G+ will take, and this is just the beginning. Scoble said he thought the "new car smell" will wear off and we won't care about it any more. I expect it to become part of where I live on the Internet, which was in many ways, in Gmail.

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In the early 1990's we lived a few doors down from François Mittérand, the President of France.

It's a little strange to take this point to its logical conclusion: I had the same urologist as Mittérand. Yes, same guy who examined... Talk about six degrees of separation, we're talkin' close connection!

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I'll be here http://gplus.to/randulo

Subjective reasons I like G+

Circles are groups of people you can classify. It's very much what Diaspora wanted to be, but it works and there will be people on it.

G+ can certainly replace Twitter at some point for many reasons, long texts, built-in sharing of links, photos, videos, and other people's posts. Someday there will be clients, I expect, including maybe an iPhone app.

Already has built in-video chat, which can gracefully degrade to audio if that's what you want.

The interface is great. One of the things I detest about FB is the interface and the cluttered look.

Someone mentioned on Plus one of the key reasons it may be a success: starting over. Many, many people who have been on FB for a long time wish they could have done it differently, chosen their friends and interacted differently with them. My choice was to simply kill the account in around 2007. But I needed to come back, so I tried it again, and friended a lot of people I knew in real life (but another life, not my current one). That didn't do much for me because they are mostly musicians and mostly posting about gigs I can't go to. Anyway, I recommend it highly as a way to get a fresh start in social media.

Photo sharing is very well done, since Google has the Picasa property and has made unlimited space a reality, or so I've heard.

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37°C - body temperature (98.6° F) and we're all looking for a little fraîcheur.

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Sometimes web sites and services that use crowd sourcing just work, and one great example of this is Forvo.com, a site that has over a million pronunciations of nearly as many words in 268 languages. What better way to promote your winery than to join this site and pronounce the name of every wine you make?

Pavillon Rouge du Château Margaux

So all the great Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Austrian, Swiss, French and winemakers, get your boots on, roll up your sleeves and say the names for us! And if you're not into wine, join and pronounce some words in your language, just to add to the world's knowledge base!

Take a look at the list of requested words, can you help? It just takes a moment to enrich human knowledge forever.

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