How social is your social life outside of social media? A new Facebook app from Ultimat Vodka attempts to answer that question by measuring the frequency of your checkins and using facial-recognition technology that analyzes photos on your Page to see how happy your friends are to hang out with you.
The Social Life Audit app, released this week, rates your social status (measured by how many photos you appear in per week on Facebook). your crew size (the average number of people who appear in photos with you) and your activity level (how many places you check in to per week), among other factors, to make its determination.
There are 12 variables in all, which are illustrated below. Some of the measurements are pretty dubious. For instance your “hookup potential” is determined by the percentage of people tagged in your photos who are single. If you get a failing grade, as I did, then Ultimat will offer you some tips to improve your score.
The app, created by Stink Digital, may not ultimately become a Klout for your social life, but it is a clever piece of advertising for Ultimat with a lot of viral potential. Other marketers have attempted to cull Facebook data to cater to users’ narcissistic tendencies, most notably Intel’s Museum of Me, but Ultimat and its ad agency, Amalgamated, appear to sowing new ground with Social Life Audit. At the very least, it’s a good excuse to hit the bars.
[via Creativity Online]
More About: Advertising, apps, Facebook, Marketing 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/18/klout-score-social-life-app/?utm_source=feedbu...
Two-thirds (67%) of adult social media users in the U.S. voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race, although only a half (51%) would vote the same way if they knew what they know now. Market researcher Lab42 polled 500 social media users on all things politics.
The findings, presented in the infographic below, reveal top issues, candidates and news sources for social media users. When it comes to the 2012 election, almost half (46%) of respondents didn’t think it would be bad if most members of congress were defeated in the upcoming election.
While roughly half (51%) of social media users have posted political content to their Facebook walls, 36% have changed their opinions of someone based on political content posted to Facebook or Twitter.
Take a look through the findings and let us know what you find most interesting. How do you think adult social media users in the U.S. differ from the general population?
More About: election 2012, infographic, Politics, Social Media



from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/21/social-media-politics/?utm_source=feedburner&u...
 There's not much new in the art of firemaking, and most methods are a few hundred thousand years old. But in the 21st century, getting a fire started in the fireplace can still be more difficult than it needs to be. Crumpling up inky newspaper as tinder under a full size split log is hit or miss at best, and gathering up sticks as kindling is a pain, especially for city dwellers.
This winter, I've solved the problem with the discovery of "fatwood" firestarters: small sections of resin-rich pine (most commonly from the longleaf pine Pinus palustris) produced from stumps. They just work: criss-cross two of them, light them and they will quickly catch and burn long enough to get the big logs going. They work every time. They smell good, they're inexpensive and they're sustainable. They come from existing stumps and the Fatwood company plants three trees for every one they use. Start a cozy fire faster with a clear conscience this winter.
-- Matthew Perks
[These firestarters are really great for getting campfires going in tough wet conditions, too (that is as long as you remember to toss a few in the back of the car).--OH]
Fatwood Firestarters
$15 for 10 lbs
Available from Amazon
For those interested in larger amounts my family has always gotten 25 lb increments of fatwood for $30 from LL Bean with free shipping.
Manufactured by Wood Products International 
from Cool Tools http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/005946.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_med...
The MBTA is getting an upgrade, just in time for the Thanksgiving rush. Today, the T launched a refreshed mobile site, MBTA.com, with updated features and new sections to improve the on-the-go experience of commuters, making it easier to find out where your bus is or to send a complaint if it’s delayed.
Back in 2007, the MBTA rolled out an initial mobile site when it launched an updated version of MBTA.com. That version of the mobile site was built for much smaller phone screens, explains Josh Robin, Special Assistant to the General Manager for Innovation and Special Projects. “It was essentially pre-smartphone era.” With the incredibly rapid development of smartphones in the past four years (hello, Siri), the MBTA suddenly found its mobile site outdated. Additionally, in the past year alone, the MBTA has experienced significant traffic growth to its mobile site, indicating it was time for a change, so this spring, the MBTA made a decision to reinvest in mobile site. “The smartphone has revolutionized customer innovation for us,” says Robin, noting the new site will be optimized for the bigger buttons and screens on smartphones. Specifically, the service alerts pages have been completely redesigned, and the schedule pages have been refreshed to include information on service frequency and times of the first and last trains, an ongoing customer request. Additionally, the new site incorporates mobile trip planning through Google Maps. The new mobile site also incorporates brand new features such as a customer comment form, which allows riders to report concerns and send comments on-the-go. No more angry tweets to @mbtaGM that may or may not go unheard. “The comments [on the mobile site] go directly into the departments that can fix those issues,” explains Robin, whether it’s a giant puddle at a station or a problem with a bus driver. 
Most significantly, the new mobile site will include an apps page, which provides a list of MBTA apps specifically for your device. Apps like Catch the T and OpenMBTA were spawned by the MBTA’s Open Data initiative, allowing developers access to real-time bus, subway and train data and “revolutionizing the way people ride the bus and the T,” adds Robin. “The heart of these initiatives is about addressing all the things that drove people like me nuts,” says Robin, explaining that nearly every MBTA employee uses the MBTA to get to work. “Waiting for a bus doesn’t have to mean leaning over and looking for the headlights.” Now, it simply means typing MBTA.com into your web browser. Will you use the new MBTA.com mobile site or stick with apps?
from BostInnovation.com http://bostinnovation.com/2011/11/21/mbta-launches-first-upgrade-to-its-mobil...
Did the addition of " What's Hot" not satiate your burning desire for real-time happenings on Google's social network? You're in luck, as Mountain View's quietly added another way to aggregate popular content on Google+. Upon initiating a search, a list of trending topics appears to the right, exposing what's currently en vogue on Mountain View's social network. Functionally, it's a dead ringer for Twitter's trending topics and unlike "What's Hot," won't bombard you with random unrelated, but popular, posts. Will it pass muster as an official feature, or will it be left to linger in the ether? We'll find out, but Google if you're listening, we're watchin'. Google+ quietly gets trending topics, dares you to search for it originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | TechCrunch | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/21/google-quietly-gets-trending-topics-dares-...
For those in the Lean Startup world, the utopian version of product development is continuous deployment. It means every engineer is deploying code multiple times a day, often even on someone’s first day of work. It’s also exceptionally test driven, reducing risks of bugs taking down the entire system. While many startups aspire to this, few have succeeded, which is why it was so exciting to have Brett Durrett of IMVU come and speak to the Lean Startup Circle Boston last Thursday night. Brett is VP of Engineering at IMVU, which coincidentally happens to be Lean Startup Guru, Eric Ries’s startup he spent many years helping build before becoming the movement’s biggest evangelist.
{Note: Brett’s presentation was awesome but hasn’t been posted yet. I’m embedding his Lean LA version as a reference until it can be posted.}
In a nutshell, continuous deployment breaks down into 3 steps:
- Develop a feature
- Test it
- Deploy it
But why would you do continuous deployment?
The reason for using continuous deployment hits the core of lean startups: more iterations. Whether funded or bootstrapped, there’s a limited amount of time to iterate and nothing speeds iteration like getting new features, site tweaks and updates out faster. Continuous deployment forces you to break down all your features into bite size chunks which can save you building massive features when you can confirm it with much smaller steps. It also minimizes version control issues if no one is working on a long term project based on old code.
It also makes your engineers more efficient. Is it easier to find the problem with freshly deployed code that has 10,000 lines in it or 10 lines? Is it easier to get engineers up to speed on a system that expects them to write a micro feature or build a major piece of the system? If everyone writes their own test code, you have greater accountability across the entire engineering team (you have to fix what you break) and you don’t have to hire a QA team that is in charge of cleaning up everyone else’s mess.
The Continuous Deployment Process for Engineers at IMVU
After convincing us why it matters, Brett walked us through the process for an IMVU engineer. Once an engineer has finished building their bite size feature, they walk through all of the following in less than 15 minutes!
1) Engineer runs the test in their sandbox.
To keep from clogging the deployment and testing systems everyone shares, engineers first run some basic PHP tests on their own system to ensure the code is ready. (Note: they don’t do branches in the repository; the brand in the code instead.)
2) Engineer runs testing on main system
After passing the tests on their computers, they enter the queue for the main testing system for all over IMVU called Buildbot. They have tons of tests so you tag your code based on what parts of the system it affects and what it’s for. This optimizes the right tests to run and which can be avoided. (Running every test would take over 8 hours.)
On average, it takes about 8 minutes to run all the tests needed. They’ve achieved this speed because they have 40-50 instances running just for testing. They’ve also discovered that 12 minutes or less is the optimal time to have testing take and keep your engineers happy.
The most common slip at this stage is a missing tag, which means a needed test isn’t run.
3A) If all tests pass, the engineer now deploys the code.
3B) If any of the tests fail, the engineer reverses their commit.
With the rate the whole team is deploying and testing, there is no time to have people fixing while they’re in the system. Therefore, regardless of the issue, the engineer will reverse their commit and go back to fixing the problem on their machine and starting the test and deploy process from the beginning.
4) Deployment occurs in pieces
Currently, IMVU (with over 50 Million registered members) has 800 servers in use. When they deploy new code, it starts out on just 35 servers. This ensures that if something goes wrong, it doesn’t take the entire site down.
5) Testing continues after deployment thanks to the Cluster Immune System
Even after deployment, they’re still testing, just in a different fashion. They’ve developed their own tool called the “Cluster Immune System” which monitors key site (speed, system performance, etc) and customer metrics (revenue, registrations, etc) to make sure there hasn’t been a dramatic change. Even the best tests won’t notice an engineer accidentally made a blue button on a blue page; the tests will see the button is still there and works, but won’t realize a user can’t see the critical sign up button.
This system runs on those 35 servers they use as a live test bed. If anything goes wrong there, they prevent it from deploying to the rest of the system. If not, it’s deployed system wide to all 800 servers.
An audience member asked about “what if you don’t have massive traffic you can segment to test a new deploy?” Brett said it’s an advantage when you’re bigger, but until then, you may just run at Cluster Immune System to monitor a system-wide deploy.
The best news of all of this? IMVU plans to open source the Cluster Immune System (CIS) soon.
6) If all CIS testing is passed, deploy to all servers, but continue monitoring
Even after deploying to all servers, they still monitor for anything unexpected. If they see anything alarming, they’ll roll back and remove the feature.
—
This entire process takes only 10-12 minutes. Only one engineer can be in the Buildbot testing phase at a time, but as soon as you enter deployment (step 4, above) someone else can enter buildbot.
—
This process sounds great, right? But it seems so sophisticated…how do you get started? Brett covered that too..
Getting Started – How do you actually do this?!?
Getting started is a different process depending on if you’re an established company or just an infant startup with limited traffic, but either way, there’s great ways to get started:
-
If you’re a small startup – Start with a sandbox for each of your engineers and just focus on pushing code quickly and in small chunks. You can develop your testing as things break; that’s how IMVU built their system.
-
If you’re an established company – Start with production (ie- the last step before deploying code) and automate that process. Start building tests for whether something should be deployed or not. Work to get the automated tests as good as the human part of the process. Once you’ve accomplished this, keep working backward to continue to remove humans from the deployment flow. At first, you should err on the side of preventing problems then clean up your tests to be efficient.
Whether big or small, the same key rule applies: Anything can break once. Then you have to make it so the same thing can’t happen again by writing a test for your mistake. This builds both accountability and builds only the tests you really need…one step at a time. – PitfallsLike any system, this isn’t perfect. There are challenges both with getting personnel buy in and in scaling this: 1) Philosophy- Blameless systems It’s not “Ned broke this!” it’s “How did we let that fail get through our system.” Brett really emphasized this important difference. It’s a philosophical buy in required to really make this work best. At IMVU, they hold regular “Blameless Post Mortems” to discuss issues that slipped through. 2) Optimize your testing As you grow, more tests will be required. You should optimize for which tests actually need to be run for a specific line of code (as they did with tagging) and purchase sufficient hardware to make tests fast. IMVU also found they could save a tremendous amount of time simply by optimizing the order the tests run, by running the slower ones first (a 22% time saving). They also then built in dependency in the testing (ie- if Test B requires you pass Test A to work…make sure Test B runs second). Finally, sandbox testing of high level issues kept a lot of code from entering their “1 engineer at a time” test system by having everyone be able to test it on their own machines first. 3) Outsourcing doesn’t work well This sort of system requires a cultural buy in that IMVU found couldn’t be instilled well remotely. It also proved difficult to manage the testing system whenever some engineers were in a different time zone. 4) Complex fails are harder to find Brett still occasionally finds issues don’t fail during the work day…and being VP of engineering it means he gets the 3am calls about such issues. They also struggle with MySQL and memcached issues, which has led to separate systems being developed to deal with them. — The key principle in all of this is that continuous deployment is a constantly evolving system. It is not perfect. However, taking it one step at a time will help you build a formidable engineering process that allows your company to move faster than you ever thought possible. Ready to try to bring continuous deployment to your startup?
from BostInnovation.com http://bostinnovation.com/2011/11/21/continuous-deployment-possibility-or-pip...

Here's another Mac 101 tip for novice Mac users.
When I first heard about iCloud syncing iWork documents between Apple devices I became quite excited. Like many, I create iWork documents on my Mac and then access them on my iPad or iPhone on the move. Up until now, I've been using Dropbox to sync my files between my Mac and my iDevices. And though this works really well, the whole seamless, behind-the-scenes ease of iCloud really appeals to me.
Since iCloud debuted alongside iOS 5, I've been really pleased with how well this works. That is, between my iPad, iPhone and accessing my docs through a web browser. However, where I've struggled to see the seamless beauty of iCloud is when syncing my iWork docs created on my Mac to the cloud. I thought I hadn't flipped a preference switch in Pages or in my iCloud settings, but after having a complete read through of Apple's description of what iCloud does when syncing iWork docs between your devices, I realized there is no automatic syncing of iWork docs between a Mac and iCloud -- iWork docs need to be saved to iCloud manually.
To do this is not all that complicated. And while there are a few different ways, the simplest is as follows. Have your iCloud account open in a web browser. Click on iWork and then Pages (if you want to upload a Pages document, for example). With all your Pages docs visible, simply drag the Pages document from your Mac onto your web browser, where all your documents are. You will be asked if you'd like to upload the document to iCloud. That's it.
While this is convenient, it's not as convenient as saving a document on your iPad and seeing it automatically appear on your iPhone. It's likely this kind of implementation will come to the Mac in the future, but for now I'm sticking with Dropbox. Mac 101: Getting iWork files on your Mac onto iCloud originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2011/11/18/mac-101-getting-iwork-files-on-your-mac-onto-i...
angry tapir writes "Microsoft has announced a program designed to help 10 developers or startups launch businesses around products for Kinect, the controller that senses motion and voice. Developers with Kinect applications for the Xbox or Windows are invited to apply to the Kinect Accelerator program, even though Microsoft does not yet allow the sale of products based on Kinect for Windows."

Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
from Slashdot http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/11/20/2348210/microsoft-to-back-kinec...
With the release of OS X Lion, Apple updated their licensing agreement to allow the virtualization of Mac OS X under programs such as VMWare Fusion and Parallels. This functionality allows you to deploy different sandboxed installations of OS X on a single machine. The change, however, appeared to only apply to OS X Lion and not to previous non-server versions of Mac OS X such as Leopard and Snow Leopard.
So, when the Lion optimized version of VMWare Fusion was released, it allowed users to run additional virtualized copies of OS X Lion, but continued to prohibit running older versions of Mac OS X under Lion.
Those rules seem to have changed a bit in the latest version of VMWare 4.1 which was released on Friday. As first noted by Macworld, VMWare's Fusion no longer strictly prohibits the virtualization of client editions of Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. But one big change with this update isn’t documented anywhere: The software has been modified so that it will run the non-server versions of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) and Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). Previously, VMware Fusion supported virtual Macs running Lion, Lion Server, Snow Leopard Server, and Leopard Server. The change in support, however, is a bit subtle. Instead of prohibiting the use of non-server Snow Leopard and Leopard, VMWare prompts the user to verify that they are licensed to run such copies:

Macworld's Jason Snell confirmed that simply agreeing allowed him to to install and run non-server Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Leopard under Lion. Now, whether end users actually have such a license is less certain. When questioned by Macworld, Apple simply reiterated that virtualization is allowed for Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard Server and Leopard Server.
The main advantage for end users of such a configuration is the ability to run older PowerPC-based applications on demand. Apple removed Rosetta PowerPC emulation support in Mac OS X Lion, stranding some users who depend on legacy PowerPC applications. By running Snow Leopard in a virtual machine under OS X Lion, those users could continue to run their PowerPC applications on occasion while otherwise using OS X Lion. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Financial Times' Mobile Site Broadens Readership to Morning and Evening Hours
• Apple Releases Thunderbolt Software Update for Snow Leopard
• Signal Snowboards Honor Steve Jobs With the iShred
• Djay 4 for Mac Packs Pro Features and Analyzes Tunes for Musical Key
• Apple Releases 4.4.3 Software Update for Apple TV [Updated]
from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - Front Page http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/20/vmware-fusion-now-allows-virtualization-o...
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