I’ve spent the last 10 weeks building a site for a client. Well, a web app. It’s called One Minute Business Checkup and it’s 100% my work… programming, DB schema, graphics, Javascript, the lot. I don’t like doing one-man builds like this, as a rule, but this was fun. Check it out. And if you’ve got a small business, use it!
Awoke this morning to the discovery that Twitter suspended my account overnight. I’ve sent the relevant appeals out, so stand by for more details. Worried.
If you’re using WordPress as a CMS, you may have set up static pages for both a front page (e.g. “Home”) and a page to list your latest blog posts (e.g. “Blog”).
I did that today for a client site and immediately realized that in the site’s main menu the Blog link would look a lot better if it had a submenu containing all the blog categories. (I didn’t want nor did I need a completely separate category menu.) So I threw together this little bit of code that takes care of just that:
<?php
if ( !function_exists('add_blog_cats_to_menu') ) {
function add_blog_cats_to_menu($str) {
$cats = wp_list_categories('title_li=&echo=0');
$title = get_the_title(get_option('page_for_posts'));
return str_replace("title=\"$title\">$title</a>", "title=\"$title\">$title</a><ul>$cats</ul>", $str);
}
add_filter('wp_list_pages', 'add_blog_cats_to_menu', 1);
}
?>
For you programmers out there, this is just a slightly intelligent way to inject the output of wp_list_categories() into the output of wp_list_pages(), at the right place.
If looking at code scares you I’ve turned it into a plugin. Go to the Admin > Plugins > Add New page in your WordPress installation and search for “add categories to menu”, or download it here (give that file a .php extension instead of .txt and upload it).
As soon as I have a live site sporting this plugin, I’ll update this post with a link, so you can see a live demo.
I’m likely to update this shortly with a configuration page so you can specify categories to exclude, and so forth. Comment below if you urgently need that.
This is all the more comical for the fact that it is hot, sunny and summery in Australia at Christmas time. If you don’t like the humour, blame my wife!
We’re all class! And for something vaguely more traditional, again by the inimitable Cameron troupe…
On a more serious note, may you find at least a moment or two to consider the Lord Jesus Christ… the “reason for the season”. More than that, he is the Way, Truth and Life!
Coming home tonight, I listened to the ABC radio host chatting with a guest who, almost as a throw-away remark, said something that hit me really hard.
I was “exercised in my spirit” to send the following to Lindy Burns, the host of the show. Having taken as long on the email as I did, I thought I might share it with you, my dear blog reader, as well.
As always, despite its off-topic nature, I open this up for discussion in the comments.
Lindy,
In your last 30 mins today you touched on a topic — or rather Andrew did — which is very dear to my heart.
I tried to get on air, but it could not have done the matter justice in that tiny window of time, either way.
Andrew explained that the proposal to push the legal drinking age to 19 was an “attempt to break the nexus” of the various change events that an 18 year-old is presented with, all at once.
That’s huge!
Speaking as someone who has spent most of his adult life in young adult leadership in various church contexts, I have long been waiting for a public discussion about the terrible burden we place on kids turning 18.
If, say, you were to tell your friends that you had scheduled major surgery for the same month as a divorce finalisation, along with your last Uni exam, along with some other “watershed” event, they would gently and hastily sit you down and check your temperature… for good reason.
But… here’s what our society introduces into, or takes away from the life of a teen, at or around their 18th birthday:
- The right to purchase and drink alcohol.
- The right to enter an adult bookshop, brothel, pub, or other “previously forbidden” establishment.
- The right to purchase and smoke cigarettes.
- The right of full independent legal standing: to sue or be sued, to engage in commerce under their own name, etc.
- The right to apply for credit in their own name.
- The right to vote and stand for a political seat.
- The right to enter into a legal union with another (i.e. marriage or de-facto).
- The right to do anything without parental consent. Anything.
- The right to drive a car and experience the new freedoms that mobility offers.
- The conclusion (for most) of high school and the likely attendant grief of that “closure” (for most!).
- The beginning of uni, or a first full-time job, or the “unsupervised freedom” of a London gap-year (good grief!).
These are off the top of my head, as I write this. There must be more.
Now, contrast this with the entirely different approach of many traditional societies — and ours if you go back far enough — where the transitions of an adolescent into adulthood were very carefully entered into as “rites of passage”; where these were arranged and sequenced according to longstanding traditions, honouring achievement and faithfulness on the part of the youth, and making their advance into full adulthood an accountable, manageable and enjoyable affair.
In this modern day we have entirely lost this notion of a “rite of passage”, with its attendant sobriety and emphasis on the young person’s place within a community structure of accountability and honour.
I might be accused of idealism except I’m not describing an ideal, but actual history, and that which still exists elsewhere today.
But the one clear point I want to make is this:
We’re UNFAIR to our kids approaching their 18th birthday. We’ve introduced a huge number of dramatic and consequential changes — one on top of the other — and not even admitting what we’ve done, or the risks and burdens thus introduced.
And then we’re coming down heavily on — especially — the young men, when they can’t deal with it and their testosterone gets the better of them in some predicable display of immaturity!
That’s… cruel.
So I wish there were some ways we could indeed “break the nexus” and I certainly DO endorse the idea of relocating the legal drinking age at least a year AFTER the legal driving age. But I only wish we could give the kids a little more of a break!
Here are some quick thoughts, other than the one just mentioned:
- Since the VCE programme is really about readying (most) kids for university, why not consider the various ways that we could “bridge the gap” between school and uni in those two years… especially year 12. The goal here would be to smooth out the transition from high school to uni as much as possible and to secure a higher “retention rate” among school leavers choosing to continue on to uni. Were this done well, I could see some smart Year 12 kids starting one or two first-year uni classes, say… why not?!
- How about permitting youth to drive at 18, but insisting that vehicles cannot be insured to a probationary driver, thus forcing the insured to be a parent/guardian or other full license holder to whom the youth is now answerable. The premium will be increased for the guardian, of course, but the youth can pay the difference… which will be less than a policy for him/herself alone, I’d guess.
- In this post-GFC world, why not legislate that a person with equity below a given level cannot secure credit. Full stop! This would stop youth accessing credit from predatorial or just plain stupid institutions. If someone in that situation wants credit, they will need a guarantor (which could be Centerlink in some cases, which usually knows more about you than you do, anyway!).
- Why not forbid a P-plate driver from carrying ANY passengers between 12pm and 5am. This would completely eliminate the very concept of the “designated driver”, which is an appalling over-burdening of responsibility on anyone, let alone a young adult. Instead, it will force P-plate party animals out of cars completely and onto public transport, unless there is someone with a full license at their disposal. Statistically, that 21+ person has wisened up a lot already!
I don’t offer these ideas as even “good” ideas, but rather as fuel for good public discourse, which is desperately needed.
We have ended up in this sorry state because we have lost the VALUE of protecting youth and young adults from what they cannot handle. We have also failed to acknowledge that an 18 year old of a few generations back was in many ways further advanced through adolescence than the same 18 year old today. So, the “marker” of the 18th birthday is flawed, because it assumes that emotional maturation has not shifted relative to physical maturation.
Don’t even get me started on the effect of the television, computer and portable electronic device on the emotional and social maturation processes of children and teens. But I would put to you that while kids are as smart as they’ve ever been, there is evidence to suggest a good many are not as mature.
So…
Can I at least suggest to you that there is a radio segment in all of that?! And I, for one, think it is an urgent matter to discuss… for the sake of young people who are mostly doing the very best they can in a society that has SET THEM UP for a fall.
Thanks Lindy.
If you’ve read this far, you’re a champion
-Alister
This week I made a decision. A difficult decision that shouldn’t be. I made the decision to monetize my Twitter account.
This post explains my rationale and might have to do for now as a “disclaimer” of sorts. I’d appreciate your feedback, because my “journey” on Twitter may be instructive for your own purposes, but most of all because I want your help to do Twitter better.
Earlier this year I decided to get serious about Twitter. As a “blogologist” I could teach you, coach you, brow-beat you and bore you senseless about blogging, but I was not the expert “microblogger”. It’s worth pointing out here that what I do for a living amounts to continually experimenting with the World Wide Web, figuring out what works and doesn’t work, and deriving out of my work/play some best practices (or at least sensible strategies and tactics) for my clients and readers.
Getting serious about Twitter meant a few things:
The first reason I have for monetizing it is about ROI. There are many ways I can measure the return on my Twitter efforts, and most have nothing to do with money. I really love it, for a start. It’s the most fun you can have if you’re a social animal and get a thrill out of connecting with fascinating people from all over the world (it makes every day a serendipitous occasion of one sort or another). But to ignore the need for a financial return is silly.
Now, with my blog, I clearly do receive a (very modest) financial return from it. Of course, most of what I earn is not directly derived from my blog (or blogging) and there are very few people out there for whom that is the case. I know very few people who make a lot of direct income from blogging, and the number is, if anything, dropping. Their formula involves loads of traffic leading to advertising, affiliate sale and product revenue streams. My blog is rather an also-ran in the particular niche it sits in, and hasn’t the “critical mass” of traffic to do more than give me an “income trickle”, rather than a stream.
The second reason I have for monetizing my Twitter account comes back to what I do: I play around with products, services and protocols online in order to test and prove to my clients, readers and others what works, doesn’t work and why. The question of monetizing Twitter is a huge one at the moment, and far be it from me not to go out there and try stuff. And… far be it from me not to do that with the account that matters the most to me: @alicam. Scary as that may be, if it should offend people.
So I’ve decided to go for it, despite my fears.
Can I just make an important point of order, here. I’m preempting some complaints.
Twitter is a protocol, more than anything else. It’s not a website, although it has one. It’s not software, although most people use it by means of software. It’s a short messaging protocol for peer-to-peer online communications. There is not much more to say, and that’s why Twitter is so successful, to my mind: it’s really really simple and really really “open” for people to do with it as they please. Accordingly, I get upset when people tell me off for some aspect of how I use Twitter. I get equally upset when the guys at Twitter do the same. It seems we all have trouble getting it into our heads that the technology of a thing is not the same as the culture of a thing. Especially so with Twitter.
Culturally, people have become fond of describing Twitter as — and using it as a means of — friends doing online SMSs. The “rule” then follows that you should only follow people you already know. Conversely, then, following loads of people you don’t know is a contravention of said “rule” and that’s wrong. The fact that this is entirely a cultural thing, and has nothing to do with the technology, should be plain to all, and supported by the fact that this rule is nowhere written down.
Who told you Twitter was for connecting friends together only? Who told you it couldn’t equally well be used as an outbound marketing channel for businesses? Who told you to judge someone like me, with 90,000+ followers AND friends, and to deem me to have overstepped some line of propriety? I can explain exactly what I do on Twitter, how I do it and why I do it, but why must I do that? Why do I have to answer to a given set of “culturally-defined” norms?
Surely we all realize that Twitter will go the way of every other service, protocol and language on the Internet?? Perhaps you were not there, but I well recall the early-to-mid 1990s. I was there when you could get from one end of the Yahoo directory to the other in a day. I was there when the big innovation in websites was the “What’s New” page — perhaps the real precursor to the blog. And I was there towards the end of the 1990s when commercially-minded people — alleged raving mad capitalists — came and “defiled” the beautiful, innocent, pure culture of it all, with their dirty campaign emails, their banner ads and their long-form salesletters.
But tell me what you see today? As with all these things, you’ve seen them settle down into an orderly reality where common sense has prevailed and where we’ve accepted that good ideas cost money. Sure Firefox is free, but the guys who write it have jobs somewhere else. Sure Linux is free, but Linus worked for someone while he wrote it. Folks, there is a market economy behind everything you enjoy online, even if the spoils of that market are geniuses with free time who create cool things like HTML, Mozilla, XMPP, Apache and some key elements of almost the entire protocol stack that sits behind your daily experience of the Internet.
Likewise, the folks behind Twitter are struggling to move from “fairyland freeville” to a place where money doesn’t grow on trees. Behind everything online is a real business model, and if there isn’t someone will be eating canned dogfood soon enough.
Here’s a curious parenthesis to this: it might well be argued that Twitter has created a business opportunity for others (thanks to the Twitter API), better than it has for itself. There are perhaps hundreds of services out there which you can use your Twitter credentials to log into, which will then charge you a fee for some value-add service. This is the most wonderful thing, to my mind… the purest form of (beautiful) capitalism, and what we have previously seen with Google, MySpace, Facebook and the iPhone: a huge whale (excuse the pun) that gives life and sustenance to a gazillion tiny little suckerfish hanging off the side of it. All the big guys do it: build something massively valuable and — almost always — free to the consumer, create a comprehensive API and then invite “app developers” to get creative! And the fruit of this extraordinary model is up-and-coming new media millionaires “feeding off the Facebook/Google/MySpace/iPhone beast”, as it were. Gotta love capitalism.
Twitter MUST go down this path. Twitter is doing its best to do so. The key is the API, massive performance, massive scalability, massive reliability and — never forget — a revenue model for themselves.
Ok, I think that was an excursus on an excursus. Where was I going with this?!
The basis of any business is value. And here’s how I see it playing out for my hours spent working on Twitter: I will bust my butt to make my Twitter account valuable to my followers if my followers will tolerate the occasional sponsored tweet. That’s it. No more, no less.
I would like to think that my Twitter account is already valuable to my followers, so let me restate it: I will continue to tweet as I currently do (the same volume, humour, breaking news, personal touch, etc) and I will ask you to accept a tweet now and again that someone paid me to tweet; an advertisement, if you will.
When I tweet something that has been paid for by someone else (or from which I derive revenue) I will indicate it, most typically with the #ad hashtag. I will never tweet out anything that I wouldn’t personally be interested in or is “off-topic” for me or my followers. And sponsored tweets will be rare… I am fortunate to have a lot of (real) followers and I get to charge quite handsomely for the privilege of access to my “followership”. I don’t need to do much of it, but I do need to do it.
If you decide this approach of mine is wrong, then I will bid you a sad farewell and accept your “unfollow” with sadness, and conclude that like the laggards of 1995, you refuse to accept that everything has a price, and that I have to pay a price to do what I do on Twitter, as much as you should have to pay a very trivial one to enjoy my tweets in turn.
What do you think? Does something I say here upset you? How do you feel about sponsored tweets? Will you stop following me if you see a sponsored tweet from me now and again? Can I trust you to come on this journey with me, if I am transparent about how much I earn and how I do it? I want this to be a learning experience for all, but I know I need to be recompensed in some reasonable way for it.
Finally, I trust the great majority of my Twitter followers. They know me pretty well. They know I’m real, that I care and that I am not about to burn anyone. I worked hard to get where I am now, and I only want to strengthen it and “expand” the possibilities here.
Thanks for being a part of it!
Regarding the imminent Copenhagen treaty signing, Janet Albrechtsen writes in the Australian:
Ask yourself this: why has our government failed to explain the possible text of a treaty it wants Australia to sign? There has been no address from any Rudd minister to explain the draft treaty. No 3000-word essay from the thoughtful PM. No speech in parliament. No interview. No press release. Nothing.
But wait, it’s not only the PM who is silent… the media has been stunningly muzzled! Janet again:
And what explains the media’s failure to report and analyse the only source document that offers any idea of what may happen in Copenhagen? Ignorance? Laziness? Stubborn adherence to the orthodox government line that a deal in Copenhagen is critical? An obsession with the politics of climate change rather than policy?
Do you smell a rat yet?
Here’s what I’ve just done. I’ve spent the last 90 minutes or so watching an absolutely compelling video from Lord Monckton, a formidable foe of the climate change lemmings and the very evil architects of a new and coming wave of “communist tyranny” soon to land on ALL our shores.
Watch it. Just suspend unbelief for long enough to watch the bloody thing…
This is a fairly comprehensive demolition of the climate change pseudo-science. It highlights the blatant lies and distortions of the IPCC and other UN bodies who have no interest in democratic process, truthfulness or proper science. None.
There is much more to consider about the draft treaty document, but I want to fully read it myself, first. Here it is for you to grab yourself.
Copenhagen is in early December. That’s NO TIME AT ALL. It’s time we woke up from our stupor and started to realise we’re being treated like mushrooms by both the political and–even more sadly–the media establishments.
More to follow.
Meanwhile, talk to me about it on Twitter. I’m @alicam.
2Day FM is the flagship station of Australian radio network Austereo, and among its star attractions are morning presenters Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O. Well, they used to be star attractions, except they were pulled off the air “indefinitely” after an on-air stunt went badly wrong on the morning of Wednesday 29th July.
In an even-more-vulgar-and-crass-than-typical show, Kyle and Jackie O strapped a 14 year old girl to a lie detector — in the presence of her willing mother — and began firing a barrage of very personal questions at the clearly very uncomfortable child. The ABC reports:
When her mother asked if she was sexually active the girl replied: “I’ve already told you the story about this … and don’t look at me and smile because it’s not funny”.
After the distressed teenager revealed she has been raped as a 12-year-old, radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands responded by saying: “Right, is that the only experience you’ve had?” before the interview was brought to an end.
Not surprisingly, both presenters, the radio network Austereo and the mother have all been “torn to shreds” in the Australian media. The Kyle and Jackie O show has not returned to the air. According to an Austereo spokesperson:
…following a great deal of consideration and having consulted Jackie O and all stakeholders, Austereo has formed the view that it is in the interest of all parties, for the Kyle and Jackie O Show to go into recess until we have completed an across-the-networks review of the principals (sic) and protocols of our interaction with our audience. This review commenced last Wednesday, July 29.
On my best estimates, it was June 20th when Twitter added their first Australians to their Suggested User List (SUL). In case you’re wondering, that’s a list of Twitter accounts that have been chosen for special attention, and from which as many as 250 are (randomly ?) drawn and presented to every new Twitter registrant. The newcomer to Twitter is invited to follow this list of 20 Twitter “exemplar” users from a wider list of perhaps-close-to-300 Twitter accounts which make up the Suggested User List.
So, yeah, it was around the 20th of June when I noticed the first Aussie Twitter account added to that list — and as far as I can tell, still the only Aussies. Who? Wouldn’t-ya-know… Kyle and Jackie O, boasting the delightfully enticing bio:
Australia’s #1 radio show who always get into trouble coz of what they say on twitter! U were warned:-)
Under their own steam, Kyle and Jackie O managed to get their Twitter following up to the very impressive figure of 85,000, but since June 20th have grown by something like 11,000 followers per day to today’s stellar total of 361,852 followers!
Make no mistake: that kind of growth on Twitter is typically explained by only one thing: the account is on Twitter’s Suggested User List.
I for one am particularly unimpressed with Twitter — that Kyle and Jackie O’s account remains on the SUL. San Francisco ain’t that far from Sydney. Or do Twitter seriously not monitor what the people behind their so-called examplar SUL accounts are doing? How can Twitter not know about the massive media storm we’ve had down here in Oz?!
What am I not seeing here?? Either Twitter hasn’t heard about Kyle and Jackie O’s “banning”, or they have heard about it, but don’t think it’s a big enough deal to have their Twitter account’s privileged position on the SUL revoked. And I for one would love Biz, Ev or one of the team to clarify their position. Anyone there, lads?
I was stunned today to discover that a lot of people just don’t “get” the Carrington theme by Alex King and the team at Crowd Favorite. To me it’s a no-brainer why it’s so damn good, and why I’m basing a part of the functionality of my upcoming Vanilla theme on it.
So being a faster talker than a typer, I shot a fast and crappy video explaining my passion. Comments welcome below or here.
Seen this before?
It’s the suggested users list that Twitter installed a few weeks back. A brand new Twitter users sees it at the conclusion of their signup process.
@biz explained a few days ago how they go about selecting people for the list, and it’s still a whole lot less than clear and transparent:
We’ve explained that the Suggested Users list is a bit like your local book store’s staff picks but there’s a little more to it than that. Our Chief Scientist developed a program that scans active Twitter accounts for a bunch of key ingredients such as how much of the profile is filled out, certain indications that the account is interesting to others in some respects, and a few other signals.
This program then generates a list of potentially interesting Twitter accounts that myself and some product team folks here at Twitter take a look at for another set of criteria. For example, is the account a good introduction to Twittering for a new user? Does the person or organization running the account have a fairly wide or mainstream appeal? If they are a celebrity or business, have we confirmed it’s really them?
Finally, we’ll do a gut check internally with a couple folks before adding them to the Suggested Users list. The list continues to grow and change although only a subset of twenty accounts are randomly displayed as suggestions during the new user signup process. Twitter is not paid to include accounts in this list. The Suggested Users feature exists to do a job—it makes Twitter more relevant and valuable to users. All that being said, when we find out Oprah starts Twittering for real we may very well put her on the list.
I don’t like it.
This is 2009 man! Folksonomy rules (ever heard of Cluetrain?)! Get with the program.
Here’s my super-simple, “very Twitter” way to do it… a hashtag!
I’m inviting everyone to “get seen” by @biz, @ev and the team and it’s about as simple as it can get.
Seeing how impressively the average Twitter user has got behind the idea of the #followfriday “thing”, I’m suggesting that you use the #ivotefor hashtag followed by the @userid of your intended “suggested user”.
The Twitter crew can do the rest…
So if you want to vote for Guy Kawasaki, say (a notable list “absentee” at this moment), you’d tweet:
#ivotefor @guykawasaki – coz he’s got the same name as a motorbike
Put whatever you want after the userid, but please stick to the format of the hashtag and userid first!
Got it?
Right. Get to it. Let’s see just how much traction we can get with this, and how fast!
Oh, and if you love me (why wouldn’t you?!?!), please follow me… @alicam. And I’ll be sure to follow you back!
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