New Twitter Badges!
January 2, 2009 by Cliff Ravenscraft
I don’t know about you, but I’m a social media junkie! Of course, twitter is a major tool for me to communicate and connect with so many in the gpsn.tv community.
There are only three flash flavors to choose from which each come in three sizes. However, I must say that anything is an improvement over the old twitter badge as shown here.
You can get your badge at http://Twitter.com/widgets
091 Podcast Answer Man - The Future Of Podcasting
January 2, 2009 by Cliff Ravenscraft
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
A Talk Amongst Those Who Plan To Podcast For Years To Come
In this episode, I share a talk with some folks who are pretty well known in the podcasting community. If there was any doubt as to whether podcasting is working for folks, I hope this conversation will put your mind to ease.
Discuss podcasting with other listeners in the Podcast Answer Man section of the gspn.tv Community Forum.
Please Note: Don’t miss any Podcast Answer Man content. For Cliff, podcasting is a full time career! At least two episodes of the Podcast Answer Man will be available for free each month on the free feed. However, there are many more episodes available to you as a gspn.tv Plus Member. For more details, please visit http://gspn.tv/plus.
Subscribe To The Podcast Answer Man Podcast:
Plus Members Subscribe Using Plus Feed Generator.
Warning Twitter Users! Do Not Use Twply.com!
January 2, 2009 by Cliff Ravenscraft
Are you an early adopter like me?
If you use twitter, you may have recently seen a post from a friend of yours that said “Just started using http://twply.com/ to get my @replies via email. Neat stuff!”
Being the early adopter that I am, I thought it sounded great. I miss the “tracking” feature where I used to get sms updates when someone sent me an @reply on Twitter. So what did I do? I went to the site and checked it out. When I got there, I saw an extremely vague website.
In fact, there’s no links at all on the site to explain how the service works at all. There’s not even a privacy statement! Instead, at the top of the page, it simply asks you to give them your Twitter Username and Password with the phrase “Your password is safe with us. No worries!”
I THINK NOT!
Don’t do it people! There are ways that this type of service can be done without needing your password!. Just below the username and password fields, there’s a question that says “Support Twply on your first login?” There are two radio buttons where you can choose to answer “Yep, go ahead!” or “No thanks!”
That’s all it says. When I read it, I’m thinking they are asking for donations! Right?
NOPE!
Basically, what happens is that if you click “Yep, go ahead!,” without notifying you, the service LOGS INTO YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT and makes a post ON YOUR ACCOUNT saying “Just started using http://twply.com/ to get my @replies via email. Neat stuff!”
As it turns out, this is what they author of the site considers supporting Twply on your first login. Two things have obviously happened. The site is gaining a massive number of new users every minute. Why? Well, I have about 1,600 people who follow me on Twitter. Over time, I’ve developed a relationship of trust with most of them. If they were to see a message from me giving such a glowing endorsement of a site that says I just started using this service, please come check it out, people would respond.
But what about the password? One might hesitate, but through this “social engineering” marketing plot, people are giving away their passwords by the droves! Why? Well, go back to the hypothetical scenario I gave before. People might say, “Well Cliff obviously trusted them enough with his password” and knowing that someone they “TRUST” sent a message saying the service is good, and then you see that it says.. “Don’t worry, your password is safe with us!” Well, people just type it in and move forward through the process.
So what’s the big deal? 1) They have your password and shouldn’t need it to do the service they are doing! 2) They don’t explain what “supporting them” means. (There is a difference between supporting a service and endorsing a service! 3) There’s no privacy policy 4) They send out a tweet in the “first person” as if YOU were the one endorsing the site! 5) Read on, because it gets worse!
YOUR INFORMATION HAS BEEN SOLD!
I’m not kidding. You can see this “FOR SALE PAGE. In the information about the site, they write “All advertising is running through word of mouth on twitter, we used a very different method. The method is not loved by everyone but we clearly ask on the homepage weather to use it or not. If they choose to “support us” then a message with the link of twply will be sent out to the users.”
The worst part is that the site actually sold! That’s right, access to literally thousands of Twitter accounts just sold for a measly $1,200.00.
I could go on and on about this one. However, I don’t think I need to say any more to convince you that this is one site that you don’t want to be an early adopter on! Have you already given them your Twitter ID and password? CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY!
As for your email address. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a bit of increased spam traffic coming in as result of the sale of this site!
090 Podcast Answer Man - Podcasting Is Dead? I Disagree! A Talk With Michael W Geoghegan
December 31, 2008 by Cliff Ravenscraft
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Podcast Answer Man Episode 090
Podcasting Is Dead? I Disagree! A Talk With Michael W Geoghegan
In this episode, I talk with Michael W Geoghegan regarding his recent comments about the statement of podcasting made in his blog regarding the demise of Podango.
Discuss podcasting with other listeners in the Podcast Answer Man section of the gspn.tv Community Forum.
Please Note: Don’t miss any Podcast Answer Man content. For Cliff, podcasting is a full time career! At least two episodes of the Podcast Answer Man will be available for free each month on the free feed. However, there are many more episodes available to you as a gspn.tv Plus Member. For more details, please visit http://gspn.tv/plus.
Subscribe To The Podcast Answer Man Podcast:
Plus Members Subscribe Using Plus Feed Generator.
089 Podcast Answer Man - Sad News Regarding Podango
December 28, 2008 by Cliff Ravenscraft
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Podcast Answer Man Episode 089
Sad News Regarding Podango
This weekend, I learned of some very shocking and extremely sad news regarding Podango. On Friday, December 26th, the president of Podango, Douglas G. Smith, published an entry on the Podango company blog. In the post, Doug writes, “Our ability to continue operations past the end of this year (2008) is in question. We do not want any of you, or any of your shows to be negatively affected by this uncertainty and so we are encouraging you to begin taking all necessary steps to secure your data or begin moving to another hosting provider.” … “As of today, the last day to move or secure your data is December 31st.”
In case you don’t have a calendar in front of you, that’s less than five full days from the date of the notice till the time that it is “possible” that Podango content producers will no longer have access to any of the content they’ve uploaded to the Podango servers and any and all rss feeds hosted by Podango cease to exist.
You may remember that I was considering a two year contract with Podango for the entire gspn.tv network. In this audio episode of the Podcast Answer Man, I share the story of why I chose not to sign with Podango at the very last minute.
Also in the episode, I talk with Todd Cochrane from GeekNewsCentral.com and Rawvoice.com. I brought Todd online because he has a hosting company that is a one of a few hosting options for these Podango content producers who are looking for a new home.
I know that many of you in the gspn.tv and PodastAnswerMan.com are personally affected by this news. My heart goes out to you! I can’t imagine that you saw yourself spending your holiday break working on a podcast show transition such as this.
One last thing mentioned in this episode was Michael W. Geoghegan’s blog entry asserting that this is further proof that “podcasting is dead.” Michael, I love and respect you man… I certainly agree that podcasting didn’t turn out to be what so many folks in the old days thought it would become. However, it’s far from dead. In a way.. Actually, in a BIG WAY, I’m glad it didn’t turn out the way everyone had thought it would. I’m totally digging the path that podcasting has taken me down!
Discuss podcasting with other listeners in the Podcast Answer Man section of the gspn.tv Community Forum.
Please Note: Don’t miss any Podcast Answer Man content. For Cliff, podcasting is a full time career! At least two episodes of the Podcast Answer Man will be available for free each month on the free feed. However, there are many more episodes available to you as a gspn.tv Plus Member. For more details, please visit http://gspn.tv/plus.
Subscribe To The Podcast Answer Man Podcast:
Plus Members Subscribe Using Plus Feed Generator.
Is Libsyn Down? How Can We Learn About Libsyn.com Outages?
December 28, 2008 by Cliff Ravenscraft
So I opened my email this morning (Sunday, December 28th, 2008) and noticed that many people had written to tell me that they were getting error messages when trying to download episodes of our podcasts.
I’ve been with Libsyn.com for three years now. And before I go any further, let me tell you that overall, I’ve been an EXTREMELY SATISFIED customer for the most part. When they first started out, things were a bit rocky. However, at the time, they were about the only independent folks out there who had a simple level cost, unlimited bandwidth media delivery plan available. Couple that with the fact that the cost was better than awesome, they had a hard time keeping up with the demand at first.
As for the past two years, my service with Libsyn has been pretty smooth sailing with only the occasional bump in the road. Okay, I know, mixed metaphors, but hey, it’s just a blog post right?
I’m writing this blog entry for a few reasons. First off, I wanted to be able to simply point listeners to this post when answering all the emails asking if there is something wrong with their subscriptions to our premium content at gspn.tv.
So for those of you who were wondering, you likely received one of two errors over the weekend. Either iTunes showed you something like “(err=500)” when trying to download the files from our rss feeds, or you got an “Internal Server Error” if you tried to either access the file via the web or using our gspn.tv iPhone Application.
I want to assure you that there is nothing wrong with your subscription and this was simply a random outage that Libsyn.com, the company that we pay to host and deliver our media content, had experienced over the weekend. Everything is back up and running now.
Another reason I wanted to make this post was to make public a suggestion that I recently made to Libsyn’s support staff. Actually, I’ve made this suggestion about three or four times in the past as well, but it’s never been followed through on. I’m wondering if I were to propose this suggestion here in my blog, if enough people were to comment on this post that they think it’s a great idea, and perhaps implement it.
It’s a real simple idea….
[Read more]
