I never thought I’d see the day but shy old me is on YouTube.  What’s hard to appreciate from the video is how packed the little gym is and how nervous I am.  Well, maybe it’s not hard to appreciate how nervous I am.

Thanks again to Dan Taylor, Jean Anne Carroll and the rest of the Creative Minds crew for having me out.  I look forward to many more gatherings, from the comfort of the audience.

A big thanks to Dan Taylor and Jean Anne Carroll for inviting me to speak tonight at Creative Minds.  My theme was [cough cough] keeping your website up to date.  Like the title says, do as I say, not as I do.

I’ve been busy, OK?  Keeping the site up to date was put on the backburner in order to focus on finishing websites for my clients, but it’s no excuse.  Keeping your site up to date with periodic posts is my number one tip to small businesses for generating a bond with your prospective clients or customers.  People want to see that you visit your own site and that you care about what image your business is projecting.  To that end I’ll be redesigning my own site in the near future.

I like the image of me beside the books because it’s a hint at the wide range of knowledge required to do my job.  What I don’t like is how heavy I am in the picture.  Anyone who was at Creative Minds tonight will wonder who the guy is in the picture.

The other thing that I don’t like is the confusing set of names.  I was introduced tonight as Kennedy Data Solutions, the website says Quinte Web Design, and neither are memorable or particularly meaningful.

The name I’ve chosen to move forward with is Jacob Kennedy Solutions.  And I’m getting business cards.  Soon.

Thanks again everyone for laughing when they were supposed to and to anyone from Trenton, sorry, I didn’t mean it.

Jacob

Another website goes gold.  This one, investincheese.ca, is a website dedicated to the promotion of cheese-making and enjoying in the Frontenac, Hastings, Lennox and Addington, and Prince Edward County regions.

The site features dynamic pulls from Twitter, Flickr and YouTube as well as some unique things like a news ticker, the Digg Digg plugin which enables easy sharing on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz as well as the Share This plugin.  It is, of course, a Wordpress-driven site and is best of breed for March 2010.

Coming later this week is a news aggregator.  Very cool stuff.

I say, LET THEM EAT CHEESE!

I’m a simple guy.  I have pretty simple tastes and the glass I put my drink in is an example of that.  I was always a fan of Dean Martin and his swaggering, faux-loaded persona.  I have a memory of his glass being simple as well  (that could have been the poor resolution).

For a long time I’ve been using green, patio rocks glasses.  They’re big (which means less refills) but they’re also pretty cheesy looking.  I was cruising Canadian Tire, having just finished a paying job, and spotted some plain but heavy old fashioneds for about $8.  While it was more than Value Village wanted, they were perfect.  I scooped them and brought them home, proud as punch.

Arriving home I unpacked them, washed them, and put them to the test.  Perfect.  Or so I thought.

My wife noticed the glasses and wrinkled her nose.  Bad sign.  I had anticipated this reaction and kept the receipt but I was going to talk my way out of it, or so I thought.  She thought they looked cheap.  I countered, “simple.”  She countered “cheap.”  Ouch – not going well.  She said that if I didn’t like the green patio glasses that I could use the crystal rocks glasses.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

The pattern is called “Pinwheel.”  Not exactly simple.  I said I would give them a try.  I dropped the first three ice cubes in the glass and they made a very loud, very any-harder-and-they-would-break type of noise.  I got the look.  I said, “if you want me to use them, this is how they’re going to be used.”  Amazingly that passed for logic.

So now my drinks are sipped from crystal.  It’s fancier than I’d like.  I have to refill more often than I’d like.  I have to be more cautious than I’d like.  But I have a happy wife, which I like.  In a world of compromise I would say that this is one that I can happily live with.

Below is a picture of the three glasses.  I’m sure you can pick them out but consider that one glass is cost $0.99 for 4, one cost $8 for 4, and one cost $8 (and I had to ask if it could go in the dishwasher!).  I think I know which one Deano would use.

I was skeptical about the value of Twitter.  It seemed like another flash in the pan or another ‘teeny’ app, like MySpace.  I set up an account a long time ago but didn’t like the web interface and found the whole thing a waste of time.  It was right around the time that Facebook was finding the masses and I found much more value in that.

My how the tables have turned.  Now I try to Tweet at least once a day and only occasionally pay attention to my Facebook.  The difference seems to be that Facebook is social networking for your actual friends while Twitter is for the social network at large.  Chances are good that you haven’t met half of the people you ‘follow’ on Twitter but you likely have met and probably have even talked to most of your ‘friends’ on Facebook.

I’m not saying that I value strangers over my friends, it’s quite the contrary.  It’s mostly a difference in timing.  By and large the information that comes through Facebook is not time sensitive whereas the information flowing through Twitter is as-it-happens.

That brings me to TweekDeck.  As with most things on the Internet I stumbled across TweekDeck when I noticed someone’s status update in Facebook was posted from there.  Noticing the similarity between the names Twitter and TweetDeck I was intrigued.  It didn’t take long before I found out that TweekDeck is a social networking client unlike any other out there (and it’s free).

TweekDeck, first and foremost, manages your Twitter stream.  You can group different followed people, watch custom keywords, separate your direct messaging, and search for people and themes.  I have a very simple layout which involves “People” (real, live people), “Businesses” (businesses like Sears, FutureShop, Dell and EngadgetHD), Direct Messages (these are semi-private Tweets between you and someone else) and Mentions (any time a Tweet has your username in it).  The last column I have is my Facebook feed.  In version 0.30.3 of TweetDeck you can have several different types of Facebook columns but I just have the one, mass jumble of Facebook information.  The icing on the cake is that you can post updates to all of your social networks, at the same time!

Did you hear me?  At the same time.  That means I don’t have to have several browsers open and keep switching between them.  I can just have TweekDeck open and get near real-time updates from Twitter and Facebook and keep everyone updated, all on the same screen.  What has changed recently is that TweetDeck has added some strange kind of super logic into the Facebook posting so that they know when you’re updating your status or posting to your wall.  I’m guessing it has to do with the content but it is amazing.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the different apps you have to manage to keep in the loop, give TweetDeck a try.  It’s also on the iPhone.  Haven’t tried it there yet but hopefully soon. (hint, hint).