We're very excited to for our final meeting of 2009.  It's all about the two
sites that made some of the biggest headlines this year: Facebook and Twitter.

In the spirit of the meeting, we have set up Twitter and Facebook pages for
RMIUG.  You can find them at the following URLs:
http://twitter.com/rmiug
http://www.facebook.com/pages/rmiug/158630038332

Follow us!

We hope to see you at the meeting!

JZ

>>>>
The Tuesday, November 10th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
(RMIUG) will discuss "Making sense of Facebook and Twitter."

You might say that 2009 was the year of Facebook and Twitter.  It's not just
that both sites saw incredible growth (Twitter: 4.5 million active visitors at
the end of 2008 to 24,000,000 active users today; Facebook: 140 million active
users at the end of 2008 to 300 million today), Facebook, and especially
Twitter, becameimpactful media helping to report stories, became massive
sounding boards, and promoted freedom.  Consider how these services have
influenced culture around the world:

     * In January, US Airways Flight 1549 experienced multiple bird strikes and
had to be ditched in the Hudson River. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the
ferries that rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers
were still evacuating and sent it to Twitpic before any other media arrived at
the scene.
     * In June, when reports came out about Michael Jackson's cardiac arrest and
ensuing death, tweets about the pop icon comprised 30 percent of total volume on
Twitter.  Shortly thereafter, his Facebook fan page rose from a mere 80,000
prior to his passing to over 6.7 millionafterwards.
     * Also in June, following allegations of fraud in the Iranian presidential
election, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool and as a method of
communication with the outside world after the government blocked several other
modes of communication.


While the services have been around for several years (2006 for Twitter and 2004
for Facebook), it is only recently that they are now part of the collective
media zeitgeist.  It seems like every media outlet, celebrity, and even the most
technophobicInternet user (read: parents) have Facebook and/or Twitter pages. 
Just like the growth of the Internet itself 10-15 years ago, the penetration of
these social media outlets is staggering.

But what does all of this mean?  How does Twitter differ from Facebook?  If more
people are using these services to communicate, does it mean other media are
being used less?  When should you use Twitter over Facebook?

If you are interested in any/all of these questions, then the next meeting is
for you.  We will bring in the following Twitter/Facebook experts to help us
make sense of it all:

Our Speakers:
Dave Taylor (taylor@...): Dave  has been involved with the online
world since 1980 and has helped shape the modern Internet. His career has
included working as a research scientist at HP's R&D Labs, contributing code to
Berkeley Unix 4.4, building four startups, publishing twenty business and
technical book, and writing thousands of articles. He current runs four blogs,
including AskDaveTaylor.com focused on tech support, the film blog
DaveOnFilm.com and The Business Blog @ Intuitive.com and also writes for the
Boulder Daily Camera, Boulder Weekly and Linux Journal. Dave has a Bachelors in
Computer Science from UCSD, a Masters in Education from Purdue and an MBA from
the University of Baltimore. He's @DaveTaylor on Twitter.

Eric Elkins (eric@..., @datingdad, WideFoc.us on FB): CEO of WideFoc.us
Corp., brings more than a decade of writing, marketing, ePR, social media and
educational expertise to his clients. A former teacher, he spent six years as
youth content editor at The Denver Post/Denver Newspaper Agency.Elkins served as
co-founder and publisher of Bias Media, a multiplatform media engine and a model
for reaching the elusive 21-34 market. This innovative concept combined a print
magazine, a website, events, mobile messaging and email marketing to build an
integrated online/real world community.Elkins also served as New Media Practices
Manager at Metzger Associates, a PR and venture strategies firm, and as VP of
Marketing at Mocapay, a mobile commerce company. In 2007, Elkins founded WideFoc
.us, a social media strategy agency serving small businesses, consumer brands,
agencies, and global corporations. His young adult novel, "Ray,
reflected"(website under construction), comes out in mid-November, and he's also
the Dating Dad.

Links:
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com
Dave Taylor's Contact Page: http://www.davetayloronline.com
Eric Elkins' Widefoc.us: http://www.widefoc.us/

The meeting is Tuesday, November 10th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm
start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in
Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93),
take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles
into the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go toMapQuest ( http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the
NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which
is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and
open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to
accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people
will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first
serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to
admit additional people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (http://www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software
Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that
provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project management,
marketing communications consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product
information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach the
RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR has
security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use the facility.
If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple regulations, I would
ask that he or she not attend and instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when dealing
with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please contact me
directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Below are the minutes from our September 8, 2009 meeting.


Thanks to all attendees and participants.


JZ

>>>>>>>
Minutes of the 8 September 2009 meeting, "Smartphones: The Invisible Desktop"



About 60 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin facilitated and Linda
Hardesty recorded the minutes.


Links to the presentations can be found at the following URL:


Joe Pezillo:
http://www.rmiug.org/html/minutes/2009/docs/future-of-mobile-0909-jpezzillo.pdf

Kevin Cawley:
http://www.rmiug.org/html/minutes/2009/docs/future-of-mobile-0909-kcawley.pdf




----------

MEETING SPONSORS

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments, Copy Diva
(www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual equipment, NCAR (www.ncar.ucar.edu)
provides the facility, and ONEWARE (www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes.



------------------------------

ANNOUNCEMENTS



We have a new committee member tonight, Dave Taylor, welcome!

Crispin, Porter & Bogosky is hiring a new QA employee for its publications.
Email agordon@... for more info.



------------------------------

INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)



Donald Norman, one of the foremost authorities on human computer interaction
(HCI), was onto something when we wrote "The Invisible Computer" in 1998. In
that book Norman, a former head of advanced technology for Apple Computer and
Hewlett Packard and founder of several HCI groups including the Neilson Norman
Group, postulated the following, "I don't want to use a computer. I want to
accomplish something. I want to do something meaningful to me." In other words,
he doesn't want to use "applications" or "utilities," he wants the computer and
its software to fade into the background, become "invisible" — replaced with
simple, task-centered devices.

He used the an analogy of the motor to demonstrate this idea. When motors were
first available, they were large, heavy, and expensive. To accomplish different
tasks, you'd purchase accessories — a sewing machine, fan, mixer, or whatever —
and hook them up to your motor. Today, motors are in everything and you rarely
even think about them: they are in your hair dryers, DVD players, toothbrushes.
They are all around you but you don't consider them. You think of the device
itself.

Computers, too, have also started to become invisible. They are in devices such
as cell phones, pagers, DVD players, toys. Each provide a specific utility that
can only be accomplished with a computer. But with each device you don't think
about the computer that drives them: it's just there, working in the background
helping you to accomplish something that is meaningful. They are all part of the
invisible computer.

If we are at the dawn of Norman's vision of the invisible computer, today's
smartphones, might be considered the invisible desktop. Answering email,
checking your bank balances, surfing the Internet, were traditionally only
possible on your desktop or laptop computer. But these days, smartphones can do
all of the things but with a significant additional utility: you have it with
you all the time. Want to send a picture of your kid to your parents? Snap it on
your phone and send it to them now. Need to find a restaurant while you're on
vacation, find it now and even get directions to it. Need to know whether
you're blowing your budget, bring it up now. Today's smartphone is starting to
displace the things you traditionally do on a computer.

While all of this seems futuristic and perhaps faddish, there are some
statistics to back up the premise that this trend is only increasing:
* Opera Software, makers of one of the most popular mobile device browsers, said
recently that in June 2009, 26.5 million users viewed more than 10.4 billion
pages that represents a 143% increase in users and a 224% increase in pages
viewed over 2008.
* In only nine months after opening it's application store, iPhone users
downloaded 1 billion applications.
* Pandora, the nine-year old personalized radio station, is on the road to
profitability because of its popular iPhone app with the ability for users to
purchase songs directly from iTunes.

------------------------------

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS



Joe Pezzillo (http://www.metafy.com/, joe@...) has been a leader in the
Boulder technology scene since the early 90s. He spent three years as a creative
director for the Apple Electronic Media Lab here, he founded a pioneering
internet broadcasting startup during the "web 1.0" era, he's worked for a
variety of web software companies, and he's organized countless community
technology events including most recently the local BarCamps and iPhoneDevCamps.
Building on his years of Mac OS development experience, he's spent the last year
as a full-time iPhone developer for a Fortune 100 financial services company,
and has recently co-founded a new startup, Push.IO, that's building "Smart
Infrastructure for Smart Phone Developers."

Kevin Cawley (kcawley@...) was recently a founder and CTO of
Socialeyes, a social CRM software provider and presently co-founder of
localbunny.com. Before that, Kevin founded Big Ring Software which developed
enterprise mobile software solutions, a mobile podcasting client, and a mobile
RSS reader. NewsGator Technologies acquired Big Ring Technologies where Kevin
became Director of Mobile Applications. At NewsGator, Kevin successfully brought
to market several mobile and VOIP solutions. Kevin Cawley is also the author of
Tiny Twitter a leading mobile Twitter client. Kevin has a Bachelor's degree in
Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of
Computer Science degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder

LINKS
Push.io: http://push.io/
Donald Norman's Website: http://www.jnd.org/

http://www.localytics.com

http://1svp.wordpress.com

http://mashable.com/2009/08/27/convert-earnings/





------------------------------



Joe Pezzillo



When I worked at Apple Don Normal insisted that a handheld device needed
physical buttons. Now look at the iPhone.



A comparison of the first Mac 128k 25 years ago with the iPod Touch 2g is
amazing. 128k vs 128M RAM, 8MHZ vs 532MHZ processor, $2495 ($5000 adjusted for
inflation) vs $399 or less.



What does your mobile device do now? Ubiquitous, personal, camera, music, maps,
TV,games, computer and oh yeah, phone



User behavior – Users like apps (better than websites), Not monolithic like
desktop apps, quick in /quick out, e.g., Specialized camera effects vs Photoshop
filters.

More Personal "Knows more about you e.g. Google voice search finds nearby
merchants.



Back in the day, Marvin Minsky remarked that airport urinals are smarter than
computers, since they know are there.



Yelp applications – you point the camera and it gives you restaurant reviews for
nearby establishments.

Augmented reality. Html5, 4g faster network.



Why is this so exciting? Mobile phones – 4.0 Billion in use.



Mobile is not Desktop – not used the same way



Twitter vs iPhone – their growth charts track with each other. Did iPhone "make"
Twitter?



Conclusion - If you want your app to be successful, it has to work on iPhone.
Mobile is the future









[Joe's introduction of Kevin] I met Kevin in 2003. He was working on a mobile
pod caster, which was later bought by Newsgator. He is a premier app developer –
lot of experience.





Kevin Cawley



The app store is not the future of mobile. There are app stores everywhere –
Windows Marketplace, App world, VeriOn App Store, Ovi, Samsung A Store, Palm App
Catalog, iPhone



Too many app stores. They are better channels for getting app content and games.
But, they create customer confusion through option overload. They also cause
frustration for developers, who have to build for multiple platforms. Which
platforms do you choose? There is no portability for developers across
platforms.



So should we have Just One App Store? I don't think so. Consumers like choice,
and developers don't like to be confined. What if Tim Berners-Lee had to approve
every Web site, and we could only surf the web from one device? Apps are not the
future – websites for mobile devices are.



Can developers make money in apps? Look at some numbers. There are 1 billion
apps. 1 in 30 cost money, average price $2.65 (http://1svp.wordpress.com). There
are 65,000 developers, according to Wikipedia. They get a 70% cut. That comes to
$951 per developer, on average.



Of course, averages don't tell the story. Some developers hit the big time.

           o

             "iPhone Unit Conversion App Makes $20,000 a Week" – Mashable August
2009

But this is just a phase. These things go in cycles, just like Facebook apps
were two years ago:

           o

             "Which is exactly what Shen and Tokuda did when they rewrote their
app and let it loose on Facebook. Two months later, the duo had generated more
than $200,000 in ad revenue." - Business 2.0 Magazine August 2007

The App Store is Just a Step in Progression

           o

             Web
                 +

                   AOL introduced the Web
                 +

                   Yahoo opened it up, Google improved search
           o

             Social Networks
                 +

                   MySpace
                 +

                   Facebook
                 +

                   Twitter
                 +

                   Future: Open Social / FB Connect
           o

             Mobile 1.0
                 +

                   "On Deck" Carrier Applications – developer pays a lot to get
the application approved, and gets to write apps that work on one model of one
brand.
                 +

                   App Store breaking down that wall – but now app stores are the
gatekeeper
                 +

                   Future?

My vision of the future is Mobile Web 2.0

           o

             Developers can build once and run anywhere
           o

             Consumers can have options
                 +

                   Emma can get her pink clam shell
                 +

                   Asher can get his tricked out Spiderman phone
           o

             Phone Manufacturers get
                 +

                   Competition
                 +

                   Innovation
                 +

                   Thriving businesses

We can use Web 2.0 as a Benchmark

           o

             Broadband
           o

             Flash
           o

             Ajax => Javascript + Async Service Calls
           o

             We need something like this in mobile

What we now need in Mobile Web 2.0

           o

             Getting better connectivity
           o

             Breaking Down Carrier Walls
           o

             Programmability
                 +

                   Flash Lite – has flat lined
                 +

                   Silverlight Mobile – remains to be seen if MS really will make
it open
                 +

                   Palm WebOS " " " Palm " "
                 +

                   App Widgets
                 +

                   Mobile Ajax + Google Gears/some cache, to deal with the on/off
nature of mobile phone connection

Real Winners & True Mobile Revolution

           o

             You
           o

             Me
           o

             My kids J







Q&A



Q: The Web allows people to make social connections online, but also archives
your life and makes it public.



A:  Privacy has always been an issue, but now we have search, indexing, and
instant access. Mobile service adds geolocation to your records.



Now there are software companies working on ways to erase your history. There
are also ways that individuals can sometime "fuzz" the records, as happened
during the recent election in Iran. People were setting their location to
Teheran, to make it harder for authorities to search for people who are actually
in Iran.





Q: Cross referencing of social networking multiplies privacy concerns. People's
friends connections create a spiderweb that can be traced to analyze people's
movements and behavior. This is great from a marketing standpoint, but a
nightmare for privacy.



A: Next generation of web users are less sensitive to privacy concerns. There
are some potential social benefits, like 30 people at a crime scene all taking
pictures. It is difficult to weigh these concerns. The best advertising is
indistinguishable from advanced technology



Q: How does a business profit from this disparate world? Different platforms.

A: There is no set or known formula, there are thousands. Digitally delivered
goods are coming into importance. Findability in google. K – apps go through
fads.



Q: What does ajax bring to  mobile platforms

A: Ajax brought desktop-like capability to the web



Q: Web Kits may be a seminal technology

A:



Q: Elaborate on carriers. Elephant in room

A: They have too much power and control. At some point they will evaporate.



Q: The stuff on my phone is private, my contact list, personal info. The stakes
are higher if a virus or Trojan steals that data

A:



Q

A The monolithic application model is under attack



Q: Thoughts on OpenMoco platform

A: Great idea. I don't know why that didn't get mainstream traction.



Q: Will mobile platforms have connectivity to peripheral devices like keyboard
and monitor?

A: There are devices that connect, like blood pressure cuff. But ultimately, the
single-purpose devices will have mobile connectivity built in.

Hi RMIUG!

Unfortunately, our minute taker cancelled at the last minute.  So, we are in
need for a minute taker for tonight's meeting.

Would anyone be interested?  You would need to take detailed notes during
tonight's meeting and compile them in MS Word.  The meeting is from 7 - 9 PM at
the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder.

Details here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rmiug-announce/message/161

The whole process (including the meeting) takes about 4-5 hours.

We will pay you $100 for the effort.

Please reply to me only!

Thanks.

JZ
josh -at- rmiug.org

Just wanted to send a quick reminder about our meeting this coming Tuesday.

We've also added a new speaker!

We hope to see you there.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

JZ

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Tuesday, September 8th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
(RMIUG) will discuss "Smartphones: The Invisible Desktop"

Donald Norman, one of the foremost authorities on human computer interaction
(HCI), was onto something when we wrote "The Invisible Computer" in 1998.  In
that book Norman, a former head of advanced technology for Apple Computer and
Hewlett Packard and founder of several HCI groups including the Neilson Norman
Group, postulated the following, "I don't want to use a computer. I want to
accomplish something. I want to do something meaningful to me." In other words,
he doesn't want to use "applications" or "utilities," he wants the computer and
its software to fade into the background, become "invisible" — replaced with
simple, task-centered devices.

He used the an analogy of the motor to demonstrate this idea.  When motors were
first available, they were large, heavy, and expensive. To accomplish different
tasks, you'd purchase accessories — a sewing machine, fan, mixer, or whatever —
and hook them up to your motor.  Today, motors are in everything and you rarely
even think about them: they are in your hair dryers, DVD players, toothbrushes. 
They are all around you but you don't consider them.  You think of the device
itself.

Computers, too, have also started to become invisible.  They are in devices such
as cell phones, pagers, DVD players, toys.  Each provide a specific utility that
can only be accomplished with a computer.  But with each device you don't think
about the computer that drives them: it's just there, working in the background
helping you to accomplish something that is meaningful.  They are all part of
the invisible computer.

If we are at the dawn of Norman's vision of the invisible computer, today's
smartphones, might be considered the invisible desktop.  Answering email,
checking your bank balances, surfing the Internet, were traditionally only
possible on your desktop or laptop computer.  But these days, smartphones can do
all of the things but with a significant additional utility: you have it with
you all the time.  Want to send a picture of your kid to your parents? Snap it
on your phone and send it to them now.  Need to find a restaurant while you're
on vacation, find it now and even get directions to it.  Need to know whether
you're blowing your budget, bring it up now.  Today's smartphone is starting to
displace the things you traditionally do on a computer.

While all of this seems futuristic and perhaps faddish, there are some
statistics to back up the premise that this trend is only increasing:
* Opera Software, makers of one of the most popular mobile device browsers, said
recently that in June 2009, 26.5 million users viewed more than 10.4 billion
pages that represents a 143% increase in users and a 224% increase in pages
viewed over 2008.
* In only nine months after opening it's application store, iPhone users
downloaded 1 billion applications.
* Pandora, the nine-year old personalized radio station, is on the road to
profitability because of its popular iPhone app with the ability for users to
purchase songs directly from iTunes.

During the next RMIUG, we will explore this idea further.

Our Speaker:
Joe Pezzillo (http://www.metafy.com/) has been a leader in the Boulder
technology scene since the early 90s. He spent three years as a creative
director for the Apple Electronic Media Lab here, he founded a pioneering
internet broadcasting startup during the "web 1.0" era, he's worked for a
variety of web software companies, and he's organized countless community
technology events including most recently the local BarCamps and iPhoneDevCamps.
Building on his years of Mac OS development experience, he's spent the last year
as a full-time iPhone developer for a Fortune 100 financial services company,
and has recently co-founded a new startup, Push.IO, that's building "Smart
Infrastructure for Smart Phone Developers."

Kevin Cawley (kcawley@...)  was recently the founder and CTO of
Socialeyes, a social CRM software provider. Before that, Kevin founded Big Ring
Software which developed enterprise mobile software solutions, a mobile
podcasting client, and a mobile RSS reader.  NewsGator Technologies acquired Big
Ring Technologies where Kevin became Director of Mobile Applications.  At
NewsGator, Kevin successfully brought to market several mobile and VOIP
solutions.  Kevin Cawley is also the author of Tiny Twitter a leading mobile
Twitter client.  Kevin has a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from
the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of Computer Science degree from
the University of Colorado at Boulder


Links:
Push.io: http://push.io/
Donald Norman's Website: http://www.jnd.org/

The meeting is Tuesday, September 8th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm
start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in
Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93),
take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles
into the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the
NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which
is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and
open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to
accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people
will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first
serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to
admit additional people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (http://www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software
Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that
provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project management,
marketing communications consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product
information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach the
RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR has
security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use the facility.
If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple regulations, I would
ask that he or she not attend and instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when dealing
with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please contact me
directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

RMIUG Members,

I'd like to welcome Dave Taylor as a new member to RMIUG's Executive
Committee and thank Bryan Buus, who is stepping down, for his many
years of service.

Bryan has been a member of the RMIUG board since the group started in
1994 and has helped in numerous ways over our history.  He's had an
enormous role in the technical side of RMIUG, launching our first
email lists and helping on web hosting and list moderation.  There is
often a lot of behind-the-scenes work that needs to be done and Bryan
has always lent a helping hand: suggesting meeting topics and
speakers, reviewing meeting announcements and minutes and assisting
with decision-making and policy for the group.  I'd like to personally
thank Bryan for his many years of service and numerous contributions
to RMIUG.

Our newest board member is Dave Taylor, who is a very active member of
Colorado's Internet and business communities.  I've known Dave for
10 years and really look forward to his contributions and ideas on
future directions for RMIUG.  Below is a short bio on Dave -- I hope
you'll welcome him to the group and reach out to him with ideas and
suggestions.


Regards,

Dan

PS.  As always, feel free to email us at rmiug-comm@... if you
have ideas, comments or issues to discuss.

*****

Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is
widely recognized as an expert on both technical and business issues.
He has been published numerous times, launched four Internet-related
startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and
holds both an MBA and MS Ed. Dave maintains four weblogs, The Business
Blog at Intuitive.com, focused on business and industry analysis, the
eponymous Ask Dave Taylor devoted to tech and business Q&A,
DaveOnFilm.com, a film blog, and The Attachment Parenting Blog,
discussing topics of interest to parents. Dave is a frequent industry
speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and frequent
guest on radio and podcast programs.

He's a mentor for Techstars, has a column in the Daily Camera's
Business Plus section and writes film reviews for the Boulder Weekly
and Colorado Biz Magazine.  Dave has also been warmly received at two
past speaking engagements at RMIUG meetings.

The Tuesday, September 8th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
(RMIUG) will discuss "Smartphones: The Invisible Desktop"

Donald Norman, one of the foremost authorities on human computer interaction
(HCI), was onto something when we wrote "The Invisible Computer" in 1998.  In
that book Norman, a former head of advanced technology for Apple Computer and
Hewlett Packard and founder of severalHCI groups including the Neilson Norman
Group, postulated the following, "I don't want to use a computer. I want to
accomplish something. I want to do something meaningful to me." In other words,
he doesn't want to use "applications" or "utilities," he wants the computer and
its software to fade into the background, become "invisible" — replaced with
simple, task-centered devices.

He used the an analogy of the motor to demonstrate this idea.  When motors were
first available, they were large, heavy, and expensive. To accomplish different
tasks, you'd purchase accessories — a sewing machine, fan, mixer, or whatever —
and hook them up to your motor.  Today, motors are in everything and you rarely
even think about them: they are in your hair dryers, DVD players, toothbrushes. 
They are all around you but you don't consider them.  You think of the device
itself.

Computers, too, have also started to become invisible.  They are in devices such
as cell phones, pagers, DVD players, toys.  Each provide a specific utility that
can only be accomplished with a computer.  But with each device you don't think
about the computer that drives them: it's just there, working in the background
helping you to accomplish something that is meaningful.  They are all part of
the invisible computer.

If we are at the dawn of Norman's vision of the invisible computer, today's
smartphones, might be considered the invisible desktop.  Answering email,
checking your bank balances, surfing the Internet, were traditionally only
possible on your desktop or laptop computer.  But these days,smartphones can do
all of the things but with a significant additional utility: you have it with
you all the time.  Want to send a picture of your kid to your parents? Snap it
on your phone and send it to them now.  Need to find a restaurant while you're
on vacation, find it now and even get directions to it.  Need to know whether
you're blowing your budget, bring it up now.  Today'ssmartphone is starting to
displace the things you traditionally do on a computer.

While all of this seems futuristic and perhaps faddish, there are some
statistics to back up the premise that this trend is only increasing:
* Opera Software, makers of one of the most popular mobile device browsers, said
recently that in June 2009, 26.5 million users viewed more than 10.4 billion
pages that represents a 143% increase in users and a 224% increase in pages
viewed over 2008.
* In only nine months after opening it's application store, iPhone users
downloaded 1 billion applications.
* Pandora, the nine-year old personalized radio station, is on the road to
profitability because of its popular iPhone app with the ability for users to
purchase songs directly fromiTunes.

During the next RMIUG, we will explore this idea further.

Our Speaker:
Joe Pezzillo (metafly@...) has been a leader in the Boulder technology scene
since the early 90s. He spent three years as a creative director for the Apple
Electronic Media Lab here, he founded a pioneering internet broadcasting startup
during the "web 1.0" era, he's worked for a variety of web software companies,
and he's organized countless community technology events including most recently
the local BarCamps and iPhoneDevCamps. Building on his years of Mac OS
development experience, he's spent the last year as a full-time iPhone developer
for a Fortune 100 financial services company, and has recently co-founded a new
startup, Push.IO, that's building "Smart Infrastructure for Smart Phone
Developers."

Links:
Push.io: http://push.io/
Donald Norman's Website: http://www.jnd.org/

The meeting is Tuesday, September 8th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm
start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in
Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93),
take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles
into the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go toMapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the
NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which
is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and
open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to
accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people
will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first
serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to
admit additional people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical talent for
Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software Development
projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that
provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project management,
marketing communications consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product
information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach the
RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR has
security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use the facility.
If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple regulations, I would
ask that he or she not attend and instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when dealing
with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please contact me
directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Thanks to everyone who attended.

JZ

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 14 July 2009 meeting, "Raise Both Hands and Say, Yeah: Multitouch
Technology Is Here"

About 25 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin facilitated and Jeremy
Kohler recorded the minutes.

----------
MEETING SPONSORS
Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments, Copy Diva
(www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual equipment, NCAR (www.ncar.ucar.edu)
provides the facility, and ONEWARE (www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes.
Thanks to Joe Spinello for recording the podcast.

------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENTS

Look for a posting on Craig's List and RMIUG for a job opening in a software
consulting/cable software company. Looking for a mainstream Java developer, web
services, agile programming.

There's a good java user group that meets at CU.

------------------------------
INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)

Engineers have always been trying to find ways to interact with the human body.
Your car's steering wheel is an example of an elegant interface. Your VCR's
programming interface is probably an example of a bad one. For computers, we
started with punch cards, then came the keyboard and mouse. The original Palm
had a rudimentary touch screen. I think multitouch is very interesting, and
today you see it on the iPhone. Now you can control applications with several
body parts. The iPhone features pinching and expanding gestures to zoom, etc.
Multitouch is a very natural way to interact with a computer. Apple laptops now
have multitouch right on the trackpad as a standard feature. Multitouch adds a
new dimension to the way we do things, and it could open up a whole new world in
the way we interact with computers.

------------------------------
ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Laura Nichols (lnichols@...) is a Senior Technology Lead at Crispin
Porter & Bogusky, a Boulder-based advertising agency whose clients include
Microsoft, Volkswagen, Old Navy, Best Buy, and American Express. Laura spends
most of her time there working on the Microsoft team providing leadership for
the development team, programming, and new technology research. She specializes
in .NET development and has developed a passion for multitouch technology.
Previously, Laura was a Technical Lead at Texture Media, a digital agency that
prided itself on building brands online, where she led the development team for
clients such as Midas, Celestial Seasonings, and National Cinemedia.

------------------------------
LINKS

Natural User Interface Group (www.nuigroup.com)
Perceptive Pixel (www.perceptivepixel.com), Jeff Han's company
22MILES (www.22miles.com), applications for sports
Microsoft Surface (www.microsoft.com/surface)
TacTable (www.tactable.com)
Instructables (www.instructables.com), info for do-it-yourself
Multi-Touch G2 (www.multi-touch-screen.net), software from PQ labs


------------------------------
LAURA NICHOLS

WHAT IS MULTITOUCH?

Multitouch is a set of interaction techniques that allow you to control
graphical interfaces with your hands, using several fingers at once. It's a
system that recognizes more than one input at a time. Examples include the
iPhone, Blackberry Storm, HTC phone, Microsoft Surface, and the HP TouchSmart
computer. There's so much new stuff coming out now that it's hard to keep up.

Companies that specialize in multitouch include Perceptive Pixel, which was
founded by Jeff Han, a pioneer of multitouch.

Another company, called Schematic, is an interactive digital agency. It made a
12 x 5 foot multitouch wall that was displayed at the Cannes Film Festival. The
wall recognized people based on the RFID chips in their nametags, which allowed
the wall to give people very personalized individualized information based on
their registration information. This was entirely developed in Flash.

The Multitouch makes the Cell. These are just boxes that can be scaled into
larger forms by putting the boxes together. It's an interconnecting set of
display cells, arranged in any size and shape. Nobody else is doing this.

Ralph Lauren used its store window to project its web site 24/7. People could
walk up to the window on the street and place orders. It was developed in-house
at Ralph Lauren. A projector puts the web site on the window, and a touch-type
film that was applied to the window senses the touches.

HISTORY OF MULTITOUCH

The iPhone made multitouch mainstream, but it really started in the late 1960's
at the University of Toronto and at the University of Illinois. The Plato IV
computer-assisted education system was built in 1972--researchers used it to
study how touch computers could assist in education. Then in 1982 the Flexible
Machine Interface at the University of Toronto became the first multitouch
interface. In 1983, Myron Krueger developed gestures and demonstrated them using
a light table. He was way ahead of his time. In 1984 Bell Labs created the first
multitouch screen (Myron projected onto a light table, so he wasn't touching a
screen directly). In 1992 IBM and Bell South made Simon, the first smart phone.
In 1998 Fingerworks made some multitouch tablets (and Apple eventually acquired
it to develop the iPhone).

In 2005 Jeff Han came up with some absolutely amazing stuff. He projects an
image onto to a mirror, which bounces to a big screen, and a camera records the
image. He's working on pinching gestures, a virtual typewriter, and is
perfecting pressure sensitivity. You can zoom in and rotate maps, play games,
etc. He has an application that pulls in data from MRI and CT scans, and then
lets doctors drill into the brain and look at the image through multitouch.
Obviously this can be very practical.

Then came the iPhone and, in 2007, Microsoft Surface. It can identify objects
place on a table, like cameras and cell phones. So you can use it to gather
stuff onto a device: Put your phone on the surface, it automatically syncs up
and lets you exchange files.

MULTITOUCH TODAY

Everyone is making multitouch flat panels, and they're getting competitive and
cheaper. There are also multitouch windows. For floor screens, you project onto
a mat and you can dance on it. Could be like the Wii Fit (a pressure-sensitive
platform you stand on to go skiing, etc) but with more capability.

One manufacturer made a screen with real water that runs down its surface--you
touch the water and it refracts the sparks you create, which makes for a neat
demonstration.

How about World of Warcraft? Yup, you touch the screen to move your character,
or hit it to attack someone else's character! (You'd need a really durable
screen for that.)

At the Chicago airport, travelers can use multitouch on public displays to get
maps, weather, etc. that's pertinent to their trip.

REACHING THE MASS MARKET

So you want to develop an application? Ask yourself: Does it work with the
screen you want to use? Is the hardware durable enough to last the expected
lifetime? Is multitouch actually useful and appropriate for my application?

Don't use touch just for the sake of the technology. Start by focusing on the
experience instead.

Making a mobile product? It better be durable because users are going to be
dropping it, etc. And if you're doing desktop-level graphics, you'll need a
powerful CPU.

Don't use multitouch for writing: No one is going to write a novel that way.
Keep in mind that multitouch is for consuming and manipulating data, not
entering it.

Why multitouch applications work: In 1999, the Museum of Modern Art created the
Un-Private House Table. It was a touch table with a hockey puck. It recognized
the data in the puck and let you look at floor plans specified in the puck.

Multitouch is a good medium for sharing: You can push data across the multitouch
table to someone else.

Multitouch is about exploring. Make exploring worth it so you get surprised and
things happen. Design it so you can change stuff and observe the effects. People
should be able to use it to figure out how things work.

Make it simple. It's new, so if it isn't simple, people won't adopt it. A
multitouch table might let you order drinks and play games, but that's it.

The Ibar is an entire bar that is a touch screen, possibly the largest surface
of its kind. It knows when your glass is empty and you need a refill. A lot of
this is just for fun.

A restaurant in Europe lets you order entirely by touch screen: You don't see a
waiter until the food arrives.

Keep it minimal: What you leave out is as important as what you put in. Consider
the Liberty Science Center: It made a cave painting wall where kids could make
handprints, fingerpaint, to simulate cave painting. Nothing more than that.

Size matters: A giant screen isn't always best. The Detroit institute of Art
used a small one to display the Book of the Dead and let people flip through it
to study it--making it huge wouldn't have made sense for that purpose.

Have a clear goal, and make it practical. The Sprint Digital Lounge in the
Sprint store allowed visitors to compare phones on a touch screen without having
to walk all around the store trying to remember everything. You get all the
information in one place. So Sprint had a practical use and a clear goal.

TOUCH TECHNOLOGY TYPES

Resistive: Uses two metallic layers such that pushing makes the layers touch.
It's an old technology that doesn't support multitouch well. For example, you
can't pinch with it. But it's good for single-touch applications. Unfortunately
the layers develop cracks and fail after a lot of use.

Capacitive: This is glass coated with a transparent conductor. Human touch
affects the electric fields and changes capacitance. But it only works with
fingers, not objects. The iPhone uses it. It's cheap and easy to implement.

Projected: Embedded wires register where you touch, and it lets you use objects
like a stylus. It's not mainstream yet.  But it's expensive and not workable for
large screens because of latency issues--you can't go much above 42 inches.

Acoustic: Transducers listen to the sound of the touch. This works on on any
surface, so it very versatile. Works even when scratched.

Optical: A projector, a camera, infrared lights, and some acrylic. This is good
for large screens. Infrared light is used for detection: The light passes
through the acrylic panel from the edges and when you touch, you create a dark
spot. The camera senses infrared and sees the spot. The software analyzing the
camera image then registers a touch. Instead of infrared inside the acrylic, can
use lasers that skim along the top of the surface, so you don't even have to
quite touch the surface. Infrared-based systems have trouble dealing with direct
sunlight.

You'll find resistive, capacitive, and projected technologies in notebooks
today.

Keyboard challenges: Keyboards don't work well on a touch screen, so people are
working on adding different types of feedback (which improve typing accuracy).
You can get visual, audio, or tactile feedback. So when you touch it vibrates,
for example, and people make fewer mistakes because you can feel where you are.

Do-it-yourself is not that hard. You need acrylic and a camera that has had its
infrared filter removed and replaced with a visible filter. Use vellum to
eliminate glare. The acrylic must have polished edges so the infrared light can
get through--you can have it fire polished or sit around for an eternity sanding
it.

Tangible User Interface Object is a protocol for decoding detected gestures from
your camera.

The Natural User Interface Group is a great resource for this, and it's very
active.

SUMMARY

Advertising and games are great for getting the multitouch medium out there, but
real-world applications are the important thing. Remember this is for data
consumption, not creation. Hardware is key: It can fail and kill your great
application. And don't use it for technology's sake: Only adopt multitouch if
it's useful.

Now here is the future according to Microsoft: It sees multitouch in file
sharing, medical imaging, sports, ebooks, shopping, credit cards, in-store
navigation and product assistance, engineering, science, and just about every
aspect of everyday life (there's a Microsoft video demonstrating these
concepts).

Q&A

Q: Can I use a "pretend" finger on my iPhone when it's really cold out and I
don't want to take off my glove?
A: Nope, capacitive technology requires a real finger.

Comment from audience: I hear that Apple working on a glove, and there's a
third-party stylus out there.

Q: Is multitouch patented?
A: Apple is trying to patent it parts of it, but the nature of the idea is such
that the whole concept probably isn't patentable. People have patents on the
software of course, but no patents yet on multitouch itself.

Q: Android phones have some pivot hardware, but it's not working well enough yet
for general release. I sure hope Apple doesn't patent that and prevent this
stuff from coming out.
A: I don't think Apple can stop people from doing this stuff. A lot of companies
are out there developing devices and screens.

Q: What about open source software?
A: I like the stuff you can get through the Natural User Interface Group. You
can make it in .NET and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). The code is
developed in C++ with a WPF API.

Q: Does tracking more fingers make things difficult?
A: No, performance does not degrade, even with dozens of fingers.

Q: What about adaptive technologies for people who don't have fingers?
A: I haven't seen much of that yet. Obviously, multitouch is not yet accessible
to amputees and blind people. I think there will be way to support these groups
as multitouch becomes more mainstream. There would have to be special
prosthetics that can interact with the technology.

Q: How much computer power do you need?
A: Lots. You need a lot of video memory, and a dual CPU helps. The Community
Core Vision software is a hog.

Q: What's the lowest-price platform out there to develop for?
A: Well there's the HP TouchSmart computer which goes for $1500. That's not
cheap. Then again, my first implementation that I built in the garage was
essentially a cardboard box with a web cam taped to it--that didn't really cost
anything.

Q: So what are you doing with your current garage project?
A: I'm developing applications in my spare time and using the interface for
prototyping. My clients want to see a prototype to demonstrate ideas before
making much of an investment. And it's versatile: It can run on Mac, Windows, or
Linux.

Q: What kind of camera is best?
A: The best deal is the PlayStation 3 Eye camera (you want at least 60 frames
per second, and that's the more affordable camera that can do that). A web cam
will work too, but you have to rip out the infrared filter and replace it with a
visible light filter. Some cameras have the infrared filter painted onto the
lens, so make sure you do your research.

Just a quick reminder that we have an RMIUG meeting this coming Tuesday, July
14th.

I hope to see you there.

JZ

>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Tuesday, July 14th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
(RMIUG) will discuss "Raise Both Hands and Say "Yeah:" Multi-Touch Technology is
Here"

Since the dawn of innovations, engineers have been devising ways for the human
body to interact with technology.  Some have been quite elegant (the round
steering wheel in a car), others, awkward (programming a VCR).  For if it isn't
"natural" for humans to physically use the technology, the innovation will be
abandoned.

To that end, interfacing with your computer has come a very long way:
* In the 1950s, the punchcard was king.
* In the 1970s, it was the keyboard
* In 1984, Apple introduced us to the mouse
* In 1996, the original Palm had a touchscreen with handwriting recognition
software called Graffiti
Considering where we started, it is amazing that we still have computers today

One of the more interesting interfaces is multi-touch.  Multi-touch denotes a
set of interaction techniques which allow computer users to control
graphicalapplications with several body parts simultaneously .  The idea is that
if using one finger or a hand to control a computer provides a natural interface
(click the button on the screen by touching it with your finger), using two or
more could afford more even more natural gestures.  The Apple iPhone leverages
this technology to enable users, for example, to use two fingers zoom in and out
using only its 3 1/2" touchscreen and not any additional buttons.

Beyond mobile devices, multi-touch is also gaining a lot of steam.  Nearly all
of Apple's current laptops use multi-touch on theirtrackpads enabling a pinches
and pulls to minimize and maximize your windows.  Although seemingly esoteric,
this additional dimension of gestures can open up a whole new way that we
interface with computers.

During the next meeting, we will explore the world of multi-touch and learn
about:
* It's history
* The different types of multi-touch
* What it could be useful for
* When is it not useful
* How to build your own Multi-Touch system.

We will be bringing in an actual, home-built multi-touch system for attendees to
demo and experience!

Techie/hackers/makers, this is a meeting for you!

Our Speaker:
Laura Nichols (lnichols@...) is a Sr. Technology Lead at Crispin Porter
& Bogusky, a Boulder based advertising agency whose clients include Microsoft,
Volkswagen, Old Navy, Best Buy, and American Express, among many others.  Laura
spends most of her time there working on the Microsoft team providing leadership
for the development team, programming, and researching newtechnologies.  She
specializes in .NET development and has developed a passion for multi-touch
technology. Prior to CPB , Laura was a Technical Lead at Texture Media, a
digital agency that prided itself on building brands online, where she led the
development team for clients such as Midas, Celestial Seasonings, and
NationalCinemedia.

Links:
Microsoft Surface: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Crispin Porter + Bogusky: http://www.cpbgroup.com

The meeting is Tuesday, July 14th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm
start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in
Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93),
take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains forapproximately 2.5 miles into
the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the
NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which
is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and
open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to
accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people
will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first
serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to
admit additional people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical talent for
Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software Development
projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that
provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project management,
marketing communications consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product
information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach the
RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR has
security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use the facility.
If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple regulations, I would
ask that he or she not attend and instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when dealing
with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please contact me
directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Hello RMIUG!

It has been suggested by several folks in our community that we should Podcast
our meetings.  In other words, record them, digitally, for distribution to the
community at large.

The RMIUG committee feel this is a great idea.  However, we need someone to
coordinate it.  We need someone to:
* Provide the equipment
* Set it up during the meeting
* Record it
* Edit it

I can help post it to our website and make it available to the community as a
whole.

If you have the skills and, more importantly, the desire to help us podcast
RMIUG, contact me.

As always, questions, concerns, comments are always welcome.

Thanks.

The Tuesday, July 14th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
(RMIUG) will discuss "Raise Both Hands and Say "Yeah:" Multi-Touch Technology is
Here"

Since the dawn of innovations, engineers have been devising ways for the human
body to interact with technology.  Some have been quite elegant (the round
steering wheel in a car), others, awkward (programming a VCR).  For if it isn't
"natural" for humans to physically use the technology, the innovation will be
abandoned.

To that end, interfacing with your computer has come a very long way:
* In the 1950s, the punchcard was king.
* In the 1970s, it was the keyboard
* In 1984, Apple introduced us to the mouse
* In 1996, the original Palm had a touchscreen with handwriting recognition
software called Graffiti
Considering where we started, it is amazing that we still have computers today

One of the more interesting interfaces is multi-touch.  Multi-touch denotes a
set of interaction techniques which allow computer users to control graphical
applications with several body parts simulatneously.  The idea is that if using
one finger or a hand to control a computer provides a natural interface (click
the button on the screen by touching it with your finger), using two or more
could afford more even more natural gestures.  The Apple iPhone leverages this
technology to enable users, for example, to use two fingers zoom in and out
using only its 3 1/2" touchscreen and not any additional buttons.

Beyond mobile devices, multi-touch is also gaining a lot of steam.  Nearly all
of Apple's current latops use multi-touch on their trackpads enabling a pinches
and pulls to minimize and maximize your windows.  Although seemingly esoteric,
this additioanl dimension of gestures can open up a whole new way that we
interface with computers.

During the next meeting, we will explore the world of multi-touch and learn
about:
* It's history
* The different types of multitouch
* What it could be useful for
* When is it not useful
* How to build your own Multi-Touch system.

We will be brining in an actual, home-built multi-touch system for attendees to
demo and experience!

Techie/hackers/makers, this is a meeting for you!

Our Speaker:
Laura Nichols (lnichols@...) is a Sr. Technology Lead at Crispin Porter
& Bogusky, a Boulder based advertising agency whose clients include Microsoft,
Volkswagon, Old Navy, Best Buy, and American Express, among many others.  Laura
spends most of her time there working on the Microsoft team providing leadership
for the development team, programming, and researching new technologies.  She
specializes in .NET development and has developed a passion for multi-touch
technology. Prior to CPB, Laura was a Technical Lead at Texture Media, a digital
agency that prided itself on building brands online, where she led the
development team for clients such as Midas, Celestial Seasonings, and National
Cinemedia.

Links:
Microsoft Surface: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Crispin Porter + Bogusky: http://www.cpbgroup.com

The meeting is Tuesday, July 14th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm
start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in
Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93),
take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles
into the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the
NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which
is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and
open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to
accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people
will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first
serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to
admit additional people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical talent for
Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software Development
projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that
provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project management,
marketing communications consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product
information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach the
RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR has
security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use the facility.
If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple regulations, I would
ask that he or she not attend and instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:
1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when dealing
with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please contact me
directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Minutes of the 12 May 2009 meeting, "Searching the Social Network: Future of
Internet Search?"

About 46 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin facilitated and Jeremy
Kohler recorded the minutes.

----------
MEETING SPONSORS
Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments, Copy Diva
(www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual equipment, NCAR (www.ncar.ucar.edu)
provides the facility, and ONEWARE (www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes.

------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENTS

I think RMIUG should make audio recordings of the meetings and post them on the
web site. Anyone with the appropriate expertise want to do that?

Ubuntu is a free OS based on Linux--you should check out the latest version.

Boulder Digital Works is a new venture at CU, sponsored by Crispin, Porter, and
Bogusky, to create a university-level set of education around doing interactive
work. Ask Josh for more information.

------------------------------
INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)

The pervasiveness of Internet social communities is astounding. In particular,
the growth of two of the most popular tools, Twitter, the microblogging
platform, and Facebook, the social networking juggernaut, have been the
technology story over the past 12 months. According to Quantcast, Twitter's
traffic has more than doubled from 6 million to 15 million visitors in the last
MONTH alone. Facebook is also on a tear with more than 200 million active users,
more than 100 million of which log in every day at least once. There are also
reports of Facebook adding users at a pace of 1 million per day. To say that the
space is growing is an understatement.

These staggering statistics demonstrate how the masses are increasingly engaging
with these tools. These aren't just check-it-out-once-and-leave type of sites.
These are becoming part of people's daily habit like reading the newspaper used
to be or email is today. And the amount of content that's being created around
it is staggering.

What is also clear is that users increasingly use these tools to filter their
Internet. Just like "classic" search engines, these tools bring you relevant
information. The big difference is that you are getting it from people you know
and trust. Trying to find a mechanic for your BMW? Would you rather Google tell
you which ones to go to or your friends in your neighborhood? The marriage of
search within a social network is extraordinarily powerful.

Today we will explore search and social communities. We will begin to understand
how social communities work and how they can be married with search to provide
different or (maybe) better results.

------------------------------
ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alessio Signorini (alessio.signorini@...) is Director of Search
Technology at OneRiot, a Boulder-based social search engine that finds the pulse
of the web by prioritizing information based on its current popularity among the
social websites. Prior to OneRiot, Alessio was a Director of Technology for
Ask.com, one of the largest search engines on the Internet. Alessio is
completing his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Iowa.

------------------------------
LINKS

OneRiot: www.oneriot.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com


------------------------------
ALESSIO SIGNORINI

(Note:  You can download the presentation at the following URL:
http://rmiug.org/html/minutes/2009/docs/presentation_090512.pdf)


I'm from Italy. I used to play professional soccer. Now I'm doing something a
bit different.

People use search engines for everything, but now we're also using social
networking sites a lot. Combined, the technology can be very interesting.

A social network is any group of people doing something together, like having a
meeting. So social networking doesn't only mean Facebook. People use social
networks for a lot of reasons. They evolve and increase in size. Lots of
government intelligence gathering is based on analyzing social networks.

Facebook, MySpace, etc. are social network services. It's fun to connect to
friends and family. But Facebook was not the first. Remember Usenet? BBS? Later
came The Well, TheGlobe, Geocities. But no one really cared about those things.
Facebook is much cooler.

Remember everybody had a blog? They could be searched, and people used blogs to
keep track of their lives, post photos, etc. SlashDot is a blog that became an
alternative news source, and it's still huge: 900,000 blog posts published
daily. A huge business. Good for advertising business. Blogspot has 5.6 million
people in the U.S. visiting every day.

GROWTH OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

Friendster: Didn't work so well, but it was the first. 90 million registered,
but no one going there anymore. The point was to meet similar people in your
area. Friendster had declined a $30 million buyout offer from Google. Too
bad--it is declining now.

MySpace: Launched by eUniverse. It did way better than Friendster. But it's now
losing users. In 2006, MySpace did a $900 million deal with Google for
advertising. The problem with it is that it lets you design exceptionally ugly
pages with terrible colors. Just look at a random MySpace page and you'll see.

Facebook, on the other hand, is very well designed. Everybody likes Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg launched Facemash in 2003, which then became Facebook in 2004.
100 million users are now logging in daily. It offers an open log-in platform,
an internal ad network, and a public API. This allows for targeted advertising
and lets other platforms tie in.

SPECIALIZED SOCIAL NETWORKS

LinkedIn is like Facebook for grownups. Epernicus is for scientists (so there
aren't a lot of users). Flixter is for movie lovers, and it's very nice.

Ning lets you create your own specialized social networks. I might create one
about soccer shoes. Or one for pet lovers, anything. Ning is not big. Facebook
is general, with no particular topic; Ning is about something specific.

SEARCH ENGINES

Remember Altavista? It was very nice, pretty amazing for the time. It relied
solely on keyword matching. But today we expect much more. We get maps,
conversions, weather, flights, etc., all from the search engine.

People think search engines can answer any question. You get some very funny
queries, like: "What's the mpg of the car in my garage?" as if the user expects
the search engine somehow to know.

Search engines are very good at answering even difficult questions. Many
companies believe in this. Google was the first, in 2001. Back then it was a
search service where a Google employee would do a search for you and email you
an answer later. That lasted one day only, too much traffic. They opened a
proper service later and had the editors do all the work (rather than subject
matter experts) but decided to close again 2006.

Today the most popular question-answering service is Yahoo Answers. It's very
polished and taps the Yahoo community to write answers. Its competitors are
Answer.com, AllExperts, and ChaCha. Initially ChaCha was popular: You send a
question, they send you an answer--but the key was that you can do it on your
cell phone. Of course now there is iPhone, which lets you find the answer
yourself. ChaCha was too expensive--it couldn't make money giving answers in a
couple of minutes, so then it outsourced to India and went downhill from there.
Other services offer virtual visits with experts where you pay for time--like
doctors, fortune tellers, etc.

Now how do you marry question-answering services to social networks? Use some
artificial intelligence here. For example, if I know what your interests are,
maybe I can send the question to someone whom I think can answer in a couple of
minutes. Who is likely to be online right now and know the answer? Well, no one
is doing this yet, so here's your chance to start a new business!

What if you don't have the right friends on Facebook to answer your question?
But if I look at the searches that you do, and I can find out enough about you
(the way targeted Google ads do), then I can group similar users who aren't
necessarily friends and, for example, know what movies they like. Based on that,
I can recommend movies you're likely to enjoy too. This way I can connect people
without them knowing that they are connected.

From your IP address we know about where you live and what kind of Internet
connection you have. Google ads can track you based on a cookie that Gmail
places in your computer, for example. So if you're buying a car or ordering a
pizza, you'll get local results. This means that search results will vary
depending on where you are when you submit the search request.

Audience question: How do I protect my privacy from sites that place cookies?

Cookies are not evil. Facebook uses a cookie to remember who you are during a
session so you don't have log in every time you turn a page. I don't think you
need to be nervous about cookies. But if you are, I suppose you could set your
browser to not accept cookies. But then many websites won't work, especially
when you have to log in somewhere--so you need to accept cookies at least for
those sites.

Cookie trackers really don't care who you are--they just want to know what you
do. With cookies, I could perhaps create a profile of you and use it to figure
out what you mean when you search for "apache" :Is it the Indians, the
helicopter, or the web server? If I tracked your previous searches and page
visits with cookies I can make a pretty good guess which one and give you better
results--and that's not necessarily with bad intentions.

Audience question: How do you break out of the mold that the engines have
created for you?

It's a problem. But even Google will try to throw in some other stuff just to
see, just in case it guessed wrong. So it doesn't always provide the same
results for you.

Audience question: How do you get the same results for people in different
locations, like if I'm doing a conference call?

Well, the search engine companies use the IP and you can't control that. Google
would use the IP of your router, which is assigned by your ISP. There is a
little application (Tor network) that people use to hide their location, but
that might not work so well. On the other hand, if everyone uses a proxy server,
then everyone will get the same results even if they are in different locations.

Audience question: Don't companies change the posted price of something
depending on who is looking at it?

Yes, sometimes they try that, but not too often. I wouldn't worry so much about
that.

Audience question: But what if someone gets hold of the information that Google
has collected about me? How well is that information protected?

It's saved in internal servers, in huge log files. Google has an incentive to
keep that information protected--it doesn't want its competitors to get at it.

Now let's get back to search, just knowing that there's a tradeoff: You give,
and you get.

By the way, regarding those huge log files. Query log analysis is really very
interesting and very powerful. It's an exciting field to get into.

RANKING URLs

Traditionally, URLs in search results are ranked by relevance and popularity
(how many people are linking to your page, and who is linking?) plus around 200
other parameters and nuances are considered. This is the foundation of PageRank,
which is Google's algorithm.

There are many other ways to rank pages, of course.

Now: How do you rank pages using social networks? What pages do people like me
want to see? If you can match the user to the right group, then you can identify
things that the group likes. We don't care who you are, rather, we fit you to a
pattern that we do care about.

Ranking shared URLs

People share URLs on Facebook, Digg, Twitter, and hundreds of other sites. How
can we use those? Digg, Facebook, and Twitter share millions of URLs per day.
This seems like an easy problem at first, because popular URLs must be
important, right? And you don't have to crawl them yourself because somebody
already did that for you. So, no problem to produce real-time results, right?

Nope, actually it's very hard. Because you have to expand all those shortened
URLs, and you still have to crawl them to do some verification. And there's
"dechroming," where you deal with pages that have mixed content. Sidebars with
related links, for example, are not part of the targeted main content and you
have to separate it somehow. And that's difficult. Then you have to do context
analysis, figure out how to deal with proper names in the content, remove
duplicate content, etc. This is lots of work.

And you're still not done because now you have to do indexing of the cleaned up
content. It's like a book index, and that's complicated. You use a tree
structure for your index, rather than scanning a long list, because list
scanning is too intensive for real-time application. So it's a lot of work and
consequently very expensive to produce real-time search results.

For example, real-time signals like the number of diggs and tweets will just
kill your database. And while you're doing all this stuff, you have make the
information instantly accessible to users who are performing searches.

So many real-time engines are just filters of social network traffic. They are
looking at tweets or just titles rather than the full content--because actually
indexing content in real time is kind of impossible.

BETA SITES

Scoopler: Real-time search. It's filtering traffic. Cool, but not necessarily
useful to intercept Tweets. It's a lot like an RSS feed.

Collecta: Same thing. Very cool looking, but not a search. The info is not
scrubbed for relevancy.

There's lots of talk about real-time search. Twitter wants to do it. Google
wants to do it. So does my company, OneRiot. A real-time search is delayed maybe
by 45 seconds, not much more than that.

Now Google cheats to get its results faster: It up-ranks pages from CNN,
craigslist, and other sites it knows are important. This allows Google to skip
some of the processing steps.

OneRiot completely relies on what URLs users have shared. This could be faster
than Google.

You might wonder if we can capture public opinion about something. Can we find
out how many are getting the flu, for example? Well, let's look at tweets from
people who are having headaches. Can you find a place where a lot of people are
having headaches? That's the foundation of some of my researches. How about
STDs? Ok, nobody tweets about that; but they do tweet about the drugs they are
taking for those STDs they don't talk about--so we are able to figure that out
too. Cool, huh? That's the research we are doing. It's important for public
health services who might want to track the spread of misinformation, for
example.

So here's how to be successful in search:

Find good pages
Be fast in parsing content
Study users, identify groups
Classify queries and assign to groups
Provide instantaneous feedback because delays will lose people
Create an API to interact with your platform. Twitter became famous because
everybody tweets from their cell phones. Twitter gets most searches through
third-party connections, not twitter.com.

Q&A

Q: Twitter makes everyone a reporter. Do you keep track of how people are using
Twitter?
A: Other companies are tracking this, especially URL abbreviators like bit.ly
and tinyurl.

Q: Why is Facebook search so horrid? You can't find content.
A: Microsoft bought a percentage of Facebook to get access to the content. But
Facebook is not letting Microsoft access the data for search. However, Facebook
is thinking about it. So is Twitter and Digg. The critical question is how do
you make people pay for it?

Q: Is the quality of a search better with the combination of social networks and
web search?
A: Well, when you look on Google, you get good background information. On
OneRiot, however, you find out something that is going on right now. The social
network gives you the "real-time" search engine.

Q: I'm raising my own rank by tweeting about myself. Does it work?
A: No, usually we can see through that. If you are very clever, you can fool us,
but most people can't.

Q: What about Google custom search engine, to search specific sites?
A: Doesn't help because Google won't crawl your site that often--certainly not
as often as it crawls CNN, for example.

Q: What other sites do you use, besides Twitter?
A: Delicious, YouTube, and many others. We're adding more stuff in a few weeks.

Q: How does live searching affect Google? Does Google crawl OneRiot?
A: Google crawls Twitter. It cannot crawl our search pages. So Google will get
to the stuff eventually.

Q: How do you know if what you're doing is working to get your pages ranked
high?
A: You can't really test this because it's a sort of black magic. Companies will
help you with search engine optimization, but they don't necessarily know how
the engines really work. For Google, you should use all the tools that Google
provides, like site map, news tools, etc., and use robots.txt and nofollow to
help crawlers focus on the good stuff. Your page rank will always be changing.
Sometimes Google will raise it up just to see if people will click on it. If
they don't, it drops down again.

Q: How about just have good and interesting content! And good links!
A: Internal links don't matter--you want to have links coming from other
websites. Some people open fake blog posts just to link to their pages, but if
Google finds out you're trying to game it like this, you'll get blacklisted and
that can really hurt you. Sign up for Google Analytics--it's good info that will
help you understand how your site is being used.

Q: Why use OneRiot instead of Google?
A: Google is perfect for finding existing information, maps, whatever. But you
can use OneRiot to find out what's hot right now. What are people talking about
right now in Boulder, Colorado. What going on there? An interesting event
happening there tonight?

Q: How do I search my Facebook network to find out something?
A: You can't right now. There are some primitive services out there, but not too
good yet. You really can't do it. We'd love to do it, to find out what's hot
among people who are similar to you. But not yet.

Q: Any ads on OneRiot?
A: Nope. The model is to first make something good, then go for the advertising
later.

Q: What about Second Life? Are you monitoring the chat there?

A: That 3-D virtual world was very cool at first, but they had trouble scaling
up. People are abandoning it now, and things aren't looking good for Second
Life. A lot of its high-level staff have left. At OneRiot we are not monitoring
their chats.

The following is a quick reminder about the meeting we will have this coming
Tuesday, May 12.

I look forward to seeing you at the meeting.

JZ

>>>>>>
The Tuesday, May 12th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group (RMIUG)
will discuss "Searching the Social Network: The Future of Internet Search?"

The pervasiveness of Internet social communities is astounding.  In particular,
the growth of two of the most popular tools, Twitter, the micro-blogging
platform, and Facebook, the social networking juggernaut, have been the
technology story over the last 12 months.  According to Quantcast, Twitter's
traffic has more than doubled from 6 million to 15 million visitors in the last
MONTH alone. Facebook is also on a tear with more than 200 million active users,
more than 100 million of which log in every day at least once.  There are also
reports of Facebook adding users at a pace of 1 million a day. To say that the
space is growing is an understatement.

These staggering statistics demonstrate how the masses are increasingly engaging
with these tools.  These aren't just check-it-out-once-and-leave type of sites. 
These are becoming part of people's daily habit like reading the newspaper used
to be or email is today.  And the amount of content that is being created around
it is staggering.

What is also clear is that users increasingly use these tools to filter their
Internet.  Just like "classic" search engines, these tools bring you relevant
information.  The big difference is that you are getting it from people you know
and trust.  Trying to find a mechanic for your BMW? Would you rather Google tell
you which ones to go to or your friends in your neighborhood.  The marriage of
search within a social network is extraordinarily powerful.

During the next meeting we will explore search and social communities.  We will
begin to understand how social communities work and how they can be married with
search to provide different or (maybe) better results.

Our Speakers:
Alessio Signorini (alessio.signorini@...) is currently the Director of
Search Technology at OneRiot, a Boulder based social search engine that finds
the pulse of the web by prioritizing information based on its current popularity
among the social websites.  Prior to OneRiot, Alessio was a Director of
Technology for Ask.com, one of the largest search engines on the Internet. 
Alessio is finalizing the completion of his PhD in Computer Science from the
University of Iowa.

Links:
OneRiot: http://www.oneriot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com

The meeting is Tuesday, May 12th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm
start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in
Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93),
take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles
into the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the
NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which
is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and
open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to
accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people
will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first
serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to
admit additional people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical talent for
Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software Development
projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that
provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project management,
marketing communications consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product
information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach the
RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR has
security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use the facility.
If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple regulations, I would
ask that he or she not attend and instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when dealing
with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please contact me
directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

The Tuesday, May 12th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group (RMIUG)
will discuss "Searching the Social Network: The Future of Internet Search?"

The pervasiveness of Internet social communities is astounding.  In particular,
the growth of two of the most popular tools, Twitter, the micro-blogging
platform, and Facebook, the social networking juggernaut, have been the
technology story over the last 12 months.  According to Quantcast, Twitter's
traffic has more than doubled from 6 million to 15 million visitors in the last
MONTH alone. Facebook is also on a tear with more than 200 million active users,
more than 100 million of which log in every day at least once.  There are also
reports of Facebook adding users at a pace of 1 million a day. To say that the
space is growing is an understatement.

These staggering statistics demonstrate how the masses are increasingly engaging
with these tools.  These aren't just check-it-out-once-and-leave type of sites. 
These are becoming part of people's daily habit like reading the newspaper used
to be or email is today.  And the amount of content that is being created around
it is staggering.

What is also clear is that users increasingly use these tools to filter their
Internet.  Just like "classic" search engines, these tools bring you relevant
information.  The big difference is that you are getting it from people you know
and trust.  Trying to find a mechanic for your BMW? Would you rather Google tell
you which ones to go to or your friends in your neighborhood.  The marriage of
search within a social network is extraordinarily powerful.

During the next meeting we will explore search and social communities.  We will
begin to understand how social communities work and how they can be married with
search to provide different or (maybe) better results.

Our Speakers:
Alessio Signorini (alessio.signorini@...) is currently the Director of
Search Technology at OneRiot, a Boulder based social search engine that finds
the pulse of the web by prioritizing information based on its current popularity
among the social websites.  Prior to OneRiot, Alessio was a Director of
Technology for Ask.com, one of the largest search engines on the Internet. 
Alessio is finalizing the completion of his PhD in Computer Science from the
University of Iowa.

Links:
OneRiot: http://www.oneriot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com

The meeting is Tuesday, May 12th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm
start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in
Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93),
take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles
into the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the
NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which
is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and
open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to
accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people
will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first
serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to
admit additional people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical talent for
Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software Development
projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that
provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project management,
marketing communications consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product
information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach the
RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR has
security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use the facility.
If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple regulations, I would
ask that he or she not attend and instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when dealing
with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please contact me
directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

We received many emails and even a few tweets (via Twitter, of course)
from our April 1st announcement, "RMIUG receives $10 million from
Federal Stimulus bill, opens grant process."  Here is the full text of
our posting: http://www.rmiug.org/april1-2009.html

Most people had fun with the news, some weren't sure if we were
serious, some fell for it completely (we did receive one serious
application!) and maybe one or two folks got bent out of shape at our
silliness.  You may recall this isn't our first time with April
foolishness: http://www.rmiug.org/html/meetings/1996/meet_1996_04_01.html

Anyway, we hope we at least brought a smile to a few faces even if
we're not handing out $100K checks (or getting 'AIG' bonuses ourselves
;-) anytime soon.

Below, we've shared (anonymously, of course) some of the replies and
feedback we received.  If you got taken in hook, line and sinker,
don't worry, we won't tell.


Regards,

The RMIUG Committee


****
AWESOME!!!!
****
And Happy April Fools Day to you, too.
****
Well done, very nice. How many requests have you had so far? ;-)
****
Good one!
****
April fools,eh?
****
It's a joke that your calling your bonuses 'AIG', right?  I think
you're going to hear a lot about that.  Somewhat tactless...
****
Hi RMIUG, I just read about the grants being offered through RMIUG.
That is fantastic.  <<grant application followed>>
****
Ha Ha.
****
Where is my check?  :)
****
Can I ask questions about this?
****
Wow, this is great news.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
Are you planning to keep the community updated on the recipients and
their result?
****
Nice one!!!

And I heard today that Obama has announced he’s rehiring Rumsfeld to
“deal with old Europe.”
****
I totally fell for this! Love the 3D Blogging opportunity. You are sick.
****
Congratulations on being awarded this grant.

I am a <position deleted> in Boulder. I am writing to see if RMIUG
needs volunteers to help review grant applications.
****
Fantastic news! Congrats!
****
HA!  Had me fooled for a minute!
****
Ah! April fools. I guess you got me.

In all seriousness, it does not seem too out of the realm of
possibilities that a federal program like this might actually happen.
****
You are funny with WAY too much time on your April Fool hands...
****
I remember last year or the year before when you said RMIUG was being bought
out - and I TOTALLY fell for it.  So, now I am onto you:-)  Have a good
day...
****
Rotflmbo! :) you got me :)
****
I'm a sucker  ;-)
****
oh man, u got me! i didn't even see the AIG ref til now. i read it
really fast earlier and thot i'd just throw a fun jab, that's funny!
now back to the real world of job hunting, such freakin fun.......
****
What an idiot! I forgot about it being april fools - got me.
****
I'm working on a system right now to <details deleted>.
Before I spend the time putting something together, I just want to
make sure this isn't an April Fools joke.  I've seen a lot of those in
my inbox today.
****
Hi, I'm <from a media outlet in> Colorado. I got sent the release on
the stimulus aid from a reader, but given the date, I wanted to
confirm that this was not an April Fool's joke.
****
I just <reread it> and darn near pee'd my pants!
****
This is an April Fool's day joke, right? If only it were true... it
would be a much better use of federal funds than the AIG or GM or....
Ya almost had me, though...
****
You had me for about a minute....than I remembered ist apr 1st

Good One!
****
We were just wondering if the press release you posted yesterday was
an April Fools joke or not.
****
<<And the 2009 RMIUG "Sourpuss of the Year" Award Winner...the
envelope please...LOL>>

Thanks. Good joke. Keep them coming. Now that I know it's a "jokester" type
site, At least I won't need to waste my time reading anything on your site
in future.

****
Okay - I fell for this. I found it on the 2nd and wasn't thinking.
There may not be a grant - but thanks for prompting my friend and I
come up with a new business idea.  We'll just have to find funding
elsewhere.  :)

::  For Immediate Release  ::

Boulder, CO: The Rocky Mountain Internet User's Group (RMIUG) has
received a $10 million grant from the recently-passed Federal Stimulus
bill to promote greater usage of the Internet in Colorado.  The
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was signed into law on
February 19, 2009 by President Obama in Denver, Colorado.

RMIUG's board of directors will be soliciting mini-grant proposals for up to
$100,000 per grant on the www.rmiug.org website.  Applicants must
demonstrate a way that they can help expand Internet usage within the state
of Colorado, including mechanisms for measurement and tracking, as well as
pre- and post-follow up surveys that show increased satisfaction with
Internet usage in Colorado.  Applicants must be Colorado residents for at
least 30 days prior to April 1, 2009, and must not have been convicted of a
felony.  All new websites or web applications for consideration must be
hosted at an approved Tier 1 datacenter, also located within the state's
borders.

Grants will be administered and awarded by the sole discretion of the RMIUG
board.  Areas of grant interest include (but are not limited to): iPhone
applications, Facebook applications, Web 2.0 interface development, video
podcasts and 3D blogging.

Board members will be compensated for their time, and will each be
awarded an additional $125,000 Accelerated Internet Growth (AIG) bonus
if RMIUG's grant is able to demonstrate a 10% increase in Internet
usage by Colorado citizens by April 1, 2010.

According to Jeff Finkelstein, one of the board members of the Rocky
Mountain Internet User's Group, "We're thrilled to be part of the solution
for helping get the economy in Colorado going and increasing Internet usage
in our state.  Who would have thought our little grant proposal would have
been approved by the Federal Government?"

Fellow board member Dan Murray agreed.  "RMIUG has always been at the
forefront of launching bold new initiatives, especially at this
specific time of year.  We're proud of our history of bringing forth
unexpected and even startling new announcements that surprise,
bewilder and sometimes baffle our loyal and devoted members."

Grant applications, questions or comments should be directed to the Board,
rmiug-comm@...


### END

The Tuesday March 10th RMIUG meeting has been canceled.

We will have a meeting at our next regularly scheduled date/time, Tuesday, May
12th.  Look for an announcement in the coming weeks.

JZ

Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 13 January 2009 meeting, "Digital Experiences Beyond
the Monitor: Interactive Digital-Out-Of-Home Concepting and Process"

About 28 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin facilitated and
Jeremy Kohler recorded the minutes.

----------
MEETING SPONSORS

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments, Copy Diva
(www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual equipment, NCAR
(www.ncar.ucar.edu) provides the facility, and ONEWARE
(www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes.

------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Joel Sanders: Xiosoft in Broomfield is looking for two project
managers for web applications.

If you have suggestions for topics and/or speakers for any upcoming
meeting, please send them to Josh Zapin. Want to be a speaker
yourself? Let Josh know.

------------------------------
INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)

Want to interact with a billboard in the middle of New York City's
Times Square? Or have a window display whistle at you as you walk by?
Or have a bus stop tell you when your bus is going to arrive.

While all this seems like science fiction, it is already happening today:
Volkswagen used a 3,685-square-foot interactive billboard in New
York's Times Square enabling pedestrians to vote yes or no to poll
questions that appear on the sign via SMS. An Obama Minute, a
grassroots group of Barack Obama fundraisers used software from a
startup called LocaModa to display text messages on a Jumbotron at
49th Street and Broadway in New York's Times Square. Estee Lauder Lab
Series for Men used a radio-frequency identification (RFID) solution
to display videos on digital signs above the product when customers
pick up different products.
Interacting beyond the computer monitor is a reality and is shaping
our spaces and day-to-day life. From advertising in well-trafficked
squares, to information displays in airports, digital experiences are
moving way beyond the computer screen.

A recent study confirmed its impact is increasing. The study
commissioned by Danoo, a digital out-of-home media company, and
Arbitron Media Research has found that consumers are highly engaged
with the new, digital billboards. These Web-connected LCD screens have
been found to have an 84 percent engagement rate with consumers.

While this sounds great, knowing which platforms to incorporate into a
campaign, and how to architect a solution to not just support, but
take advantage of them can be a complicated task. And this work is
still in its infancy.

----------------------
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Joesph Corr (jcorr@...) and Mathew Ray (mray@...)
are Senior Technical Lead and Associate Technical Director,
respectively, at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (CP+B), Creativity
magazine's 2008 Agency of the Year.

In a previous life, Joe was the Manager of Technology at IQ
Interactive, a founding SODA member. An Interactive Developer/Designer
with over 12 years of professional experience designing and developing
for the web, Joe has a background in Flash, Flex, AIR, Silverlight and
other interactive tools. Joe is currently finishing his MFA thesis
from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Interactive Design.

Mathew's most recently work is on the Microsoft Windows account and
the "I'm A PC" campaign. Previously at CP+B, he directed acclaimed
projects for Volkswagen and Dominos including vw.com and the BFD Pizza
Builder. In a previous life, He served as Director of Research and
Development for IQ Interactive in Atlanta and helped build a large
interactive team while producing award-winning work for the American
Cancer Society, Audi, Celebrity Cruise Lines, Cox Communications,
Genworth, IBM, the National Geographic Channel, Royal Caribbean, and UPS.

CP+B is a full-service integrated advertising agency with clients
including American Express, Burger King, Coke Zero, Dominos,
Microsoft, Old Navy, and Volkswagen. The agency and its work has been
profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today,
Business Week, Forbes, Fast Company, Time, Newsweek, Business 2.0,
Advertising Age, Creativity, and Archive. The agency currently has
over $1 billion in billings, with offices in Miami, Boulder, Toronto,
Los Angeles, and London.

LINKS:
Crispin Porter + Bogusky: www.cpbgroup.com
YouTube videos: allegorithm
---------------------

Mathew Ray (MR): How do you expand the digital experience beyond the
monitor. What's the next iteration of getting digital experiences out
into the world. Digital Out of Home (DOOH): any experience that's
beyond the traditional digital experience with a screen. Huge concept,
could be a lot of different things. HBO voyeur DOOH presentation
showing a cross-section of a building to see what's going inside,
using a projection. relatively low cost compared to digital screens.
Grafitti Research Lab: Art project displaying images outside.

Joesph Corr (JC): Neoproj does 3D projections with a series of
projectors onto 3D objects. Wrapping an entire building in a digital
display. It's not flat, and you can do it in lots of interesting
places. There's room for your concept to adapt to your place and vice
versa.

MR: At a trade show, you can project onto a car a distorted video
projection so that it looks like you're seeing the engine running
through the hood. And you can scale it all the way up to building size.

JC: This is space- and place-based, so it often doesn't persist for a
long time. It's like a spectacle for events, so the people who do this
well are not only technology experts but they're also event experts.

MR: I just went to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas
and found digital displays everywhere you look. This stuff ties in
with architecture and the sociology of spaces. But why do digital out
of home (DOOH)?

JC: Out-of-home is an older term that refers to print billboards. DOOH
involves a digital display. And then you have dynamic DOOH that's
influenced by people, weather, and other local interactions. Making
DOOH interactive makes it a lot more engaging.

MR: It's a powerful thing when people can control their environment.
Imagine you go into a clothing store and the mirror helps you try on
virtual clothes--that's way beyond the web cams and projectors that
you might have in your house.

SPECTACLE
MR: Creating an event is core to what we do in every project. It has
to be something worthy of being talked about, something that has PR
value, and something that sells itself.

JC: Once you get into spectacle, you get into "imagineering." Like
Disney.

MR: The technology isn't far from that used in multitouch screens,
which are open source and you can build one for around $200. This
stuff is getting cheaper. Part of what we do is use DOOH to make a
brand famous and memorable, make it stand out, make an impression.

JC: Our tech group is inside the creative department, and that lets us
pull off this stuff well. There are multiple parts, and each is one
spoke on the wheel. We work extremely quickly. Choosing location is
important. Understanding the psychology of space is important. You
need an architectural focus, and you need to know why people are there
and what they're doing so you can create experiences that people want
to interact with--otherwise you might end up just distracting or
annoyed people.

MR: In preproduction we go through ideas while the tech folks find out
what's feasible and what isn't. Then we gather requirements and move
onto production, scoping, what features we can have. We have to ensure
that we don't lose momentum during the whole deployment process--that
means keeping the concept interesting to the audience during the time
that it exists. We have lots of little pieces firing at the right time
to keep people's interest.

JC: In production, getting that vendor management is the most
important. We find that the duration of the project increases with the
number of vendors you have.

MR: What the People Want (Volkswagen). This took us six weeks to
execute. Volkswagen needed to rebrand themselves under one umbrella.
It's German parent company says it's the people's car, but U.S. didn't
have something like that--we had "Fahrvergnugen" and a bunch of other
things. So the U.S. Volkswagen also needs to be the people's car. How
do you make that happen? Start with "All around the world it's what
the people want." Put in on TV ads for teasing, then move it to the
corporate web site.
We made a flash site for this concept. Now we had an ecosystem that
would foster the DOOH concept. Starting with the web site, we began a
banner campaign to reinforce the DOOH experience. So the flash site
has people submitting questions and voting on them. Then you can run
contextual banner ads on other sites with the submitted
questions--that way we make your question famous: "Wow, that's my poll
question on someone else's site!" Then a mobile polling site allows
people to vote on questions displaying on a billboard while you're
standing in front of the billboard. All this led to the DOOH piece in
Times Square: the Super Sign. We had three screens: text, a video
ribbon, and a high-def screen for interactive content. The Super Sign
displays voting results in progress. It got a lot of press, and people
liked that they could see their work in such a visible place. Even The
View spent five minutes arguing about one of the poll questions, and
that was great PR for us. About 1 million people participated.

Audience question: What's the advertising budget and payoff? How does
it compare to other forms of advertising?

JC: Well, we're spoiled by online space because you get immediate
feedback on your efforts.
MR: This wasn't designed to sell product specifically, rather, it was
a rebranding campaign. There are other ways to get messages out for
different purposes. So we couldn't look at product sales, but the
million people voting helped us gauge success. The core idea of
spectacle is to generate buzz.

JC: I'M A PC: Microsoft strikes back at Apple's "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC"
ad campaign. During this we tried to constantly show the volume of
people participating. Are you a PC? if so, show us your PCness. One
spoke of this wheel included web ads. And like the Volkswagen poll, we
had a way to make you famous: if you participate by submitting a
testimonial, then you see yourself saying I'm a PC later on. The Times
Square signs were important for this. People upload their videos, they
get moderated, then they're ready to send out to lots of different
places, including Times Square. The idea is you see this in Times
Square, interact with a street team that operates under the sign, and
then perhaps get on the screen within an hour. The street team helped
give it a lot of awareness. You could even SMS the sign to pull your
face right up. Just using text messages, in this case, was a
remarkably simple way to get it done.

Audience question: How do you educate people on how to interact? How
do they know to text the sign?

JC: Education is difficult. We relied on participants to read their
e-mail instruction, plus the street teams helped a lot. Timing was
difficult and important to keep up momentum. We built an app for an
ultramobile PC to facilitate on the street team interaction. Street
team members wear t-shirts so you can spot them. What do people get
for this? They got a button with a URL and we would e-mail them later.

Audience question: How many SMS messages did you get?

MR: Not a lot because of bad timing. We launched that feature late in
the campaign, just a few days before it ended. So we missed the crest
for that particular feature. That's why timing is so important.

JC: We also did one at JFK airport where Microsoft has a lease at a
terminal walkway. The corridor has those conveyor-belt people movers
and digital displays on the walls that can be coordinated with the
room lighting. So how do we fill the room with an experience? How
about animations that match people's speed on the people movers--so
the images follow along with you. We had to rent IMAX cameras to get a
wide enough animation.

MR: The stuff we didn't do was having the screens react to people's
hand waving, etc.

JC: We also did a lot of "I'm a PC" billboards and signs and digital
displays scattered around. Some digital signs were cylindrical
displays which required interesting specs. Or the Liverpool Megawall.
In lieu of street teams, we put video pod booths around where people
could record their video testimonials. In shopping malls, etc. We even
put one right in front of an Apple store, which generated a lot of press.

MR: Our public works teams worked on-site to monitor how it was all
going.
JC: We remessaged contributors as new things were added to the
campaign. And make sure you go to the place where you're creating an
experience: it's critical to confirm the specifications.

JC: Another interesting tool is E paper, which is a pulse-powered
display. You just send it a pulse and then it shuts off and maintains
the image. There's WiMax, increased data speeds, gestural interfaces,
multitouch interfaces, microprojectors--lots of good technologies
coming for DOOH.

MR: Window films on store fronts are not too expensive and within
reach for creating DOOH. People are responding to this technology
already: some people are projecting stuff on top of someone else's
projection--sorta like hacking. And DOOH isn't limited to creating
spectacle. In stores, products are starting to interact with customers.

JC: Regarding the I'm a PC campaign, because of visibility we had to
be very careful: lots of fail-safes to prevent embarrassment. Imagine
the "blue screen of death" at Times Square!

JC: Neoproj makes the projection technology that we use. If you have
enough projectors to mask off areas, you can create the illusion of
projecting behind the 3D object. It's all about the calibration of all
these different projectors, lined up with millimeter accuracy. Your
space, like a building, gets laser mapped to make a 3D virtual model,
then the whole thing is texture mapped. Some projectors can adapt to
where you're standing and change the masking, etc. Mostly uses DV
quality footing. You need custom driver software and custom rendering,
which be extremely difficult. You also have to watch out for changes
to your environment. At shopping malls they project things onto floors
that you can walk though and interact with.

MR: At CES there as a floor projection--it acted like a giant keyboard
that you could play around with. For that kind of thing you basically
need infrared cameras, projectors, and infrared emitters. It's the
same technology as in multitouch screens.

JC: There's at least one shopping mall display that's projecting a
hologram into a space--that's right, interactive holograms are coming
now.

Audience question: What was your target audience for these campaigns?

MR: for Volkswagen, we knew there was a lot of traffic and news
coverage in the spaces we were targeting. So the New York sign was for
anyone willing to see that Volkswagen was reaching out to them. It's a
pretty wide swath of people we wanted to reach. But it's part of a
larger-scale system, not just reaching people in Times Square. It had
a viral life of its own. This was not a narrowly focused campaign.

JC: I'm a PC was also a branding campaign with a wide demographic.

MR: Basically the target audience is everybody.

JC: If we were trying to move products within a demographic, then it
would require more careful output. At JFK airport, we went to visit
the space to scope it out. It was clear that the people who made the
previous setup didn't scope it out because it was too active for folks
who had just finished a long plane ride. Seizure-inducing blinking
lights and stuff. So the place, the time is very important. Don't get
lost in the technology your using.

Audience question: Did people at JFK look at it?

M: We don't know, but there are face-recognition technologies that can
track that, or even cater the ads to the people who are there--that's
sounds pretty scary, but it's coming.

JC: Children's museums have that kind of interactive stuff now.

JC: DOOH can be crowd-based and gestural: like web cams that
understand the motion in the crowd. In one project, the crowd played a
cooperative video game by raising their hands in unison. Took only
three weeks to develop, and it was wii-based. There's also lots of
homebrewed stuff coming out. Anybody can get involved, and barrier to
entry is pretty low.

Audience question: How much time is there between creative concepting
and going live?

MR: It was 2.5 weeks for Volkswagen: making the sign and the SMS
gateway. Sign technology is the Wild West right now, it's all
custom-developed. Each one has different requirements. It's difficult
to get your head around the requirements and develop something fast
enough. But it's slowly becoming standardized. The signs you're using
often limit what you can do based on their specific technology.

Audience question: Do you think you could sell the ability to interact?

JC: The product that you buy might have a built-in "tag" that lets you
interact. Some people are putting RFID tags in clothing that you are
trying on. You can print RFIDs on paper now so it can be part of the
package itself.

MR: There are plenty of retail opportunities for this stuff beyond
advertising. RFID is a huge watershed. Your products can interact with
the virtual world if they have an RFID tag. So you could take out your
camera and a nearby display might recognize the camera and start
pulling pictures for you.

Audience question: What about privacy? Can you opt out of this stuff?

MR: Remember that your image is already being captured and processed
all over the place. Everytime you walk into a retail store, you're on
camera. They have your image, but it's still anonymous.

JC: But maybe you could have a do-not-call list for this stuff? Submit
your iris to the list? Who knows. It's too new for there to be any
standardized protections yet.

MR: This is clearly a disruptive technology that will force us to make
more decisions about privacy and identity. But now that we are at the
point of commercial viability, this will certainly become important.

This is a quick reminder about our next meeting on Tuesday, January 13.

I hope to see you there.
>>>>>>>
The Tuesday, January 13th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users
Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Digital experiences beyond the monitor:
Interactive Digital Out Of Home concepting and process"

Want to interact with a billboard in the middle of New York City's
Times Square?  Or have a window display whistle at you as you walk by?
  Or have a an busstop tell you when your bus is going to arrive.

While all this seems like science fiction, it is already happening today:

     * Volkswagen used a 3,685-square-foot interactive billboard in New
York's Times Square enabling pedestrians to vote yes or no to poll
questions that appear on the sign via SMS
     * An Obama Minute, a grassroots gropu of Brack Obama fundraisers
used software from a startup called LocaModa to display text messages
on a Jumbotron at 49th Street and Broadway in New York's Times Square.
     * Estee Lauder Lab Series for Men used an RFID solution to display
videos on digital signs above the product when customers pick up
different products.


Interacting beyond the computer monitor is a reality and is shaping
our spaces and day-to-day life.  From advertising in well-trafficked
squares, to information displays in airports, digital experiences are
moving way beyond the computer computer screen.

A recent study confirmed its impact is increasing.  The study
commissioned by Danoo, a digital out-of-home media company, and
Arbitron Media Research has found that consumers are highly engaged
with the new, digital billboards. These Web-connected LCD screens have
been found to have an 84% engagement rate with consumers.

While this sounds great, knowing which platforms to incorporate into a
campaign, and how to architect a solution to not just support, but
take advantage of them can be a complicated task.

During the next meeting, our guest speakers will explain what some of
the current options exist for large scale interactive digital out of
home executions, with insight into a few executions they have
overseen.  Lo-fi and homebuilt executions are also possibilities, and
often are potential endeavors for students or teams interested in
speculative projects.  This session will go over all of the possible
options today, as well as look to the near and distant futures as we
wrap up with some ideas we have on our wish list.

Calling all techies: This one is for you!

Our Speakers:
Joesph Corr (jcorr@...) and Mathew Ray (mray@...)
are Sr. Technical Lead and Associate Technical Director, respectively,
at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (CP+B), Creativity magazine's 2008 Agency
of the Year.

In a previous life, Joe Corr was the Manager of Technology at IQ
Interactive, a founding SODA member. An Interactive Developer/Designer
with over 12 years of professional experience designing and developing
for the web, Joe has a background in Flash, Flex, AIR, Silverlight and
other Interactive tools. Joe is currently finishing his MFA thesis
from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Interactive Design.

Mat Ray's most recently work is on the Microsoft Windows account and
the “I’m A PC� campaign. Previously at CP+B, he directed acclaimed
projects for Volkswagen and Dominos including vw.com and the BFD Pizza
Builder. In a previous life, Mathew served as Director of Research and
Development for IQ Interactive in Atlanta and helped build a large
interactive team while producing award-winning work for the American
Cancer Society, Audi, Celebrity Cruise Lines, Cox Communications,
Genworth, IBM, the National Geographic Channel, Royal Caribbean, and UPS.

CP+B is a full-service integrated advertising agency with clients
including American Express, Burger King, Coke Zero, Dominos,
Microsoft, Old Navy, and Volkswagen. The agency and its work has been
profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today,
Business Week, Forbes, Fast Company, Time, Newsweek, Business 2.0,
Advertising Age, Creativity and Archive.   The agency currently has
over $1 billion dollars in billings, with offices in Miami, Boulder,
Toronto, Los Angeles and London.

Links:
Crispin Porter + Bogusky: http://www.cpbgroup.com


The meeting is Tuesday, January 13th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with
optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The
meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the
Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive
west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the
foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on
Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and
voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to
point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off
the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass
the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

The Tuesday, January 13th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users
Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Digital experiences beyond the monitor:
Interactive Digital Out Of Home concepting and process"

Want to interact with a billboard in the middle of New York City's
Times Square?  Or have a window display whistle at you as you walk by?
  Or have a an busstop tell you when your bus is going to arrive.

While all this seems like science fiction, it is already happening today:

     * Volkswagen used a 3,685-square-foot interactive billboard in New
York's Times Square enabling pedestrians to vote yes or no to poll
questions that appear on the sign via SMS
     * An Obama Minute, a grassroots gropu of Brack Obama fundraisers
used software from a startup called LocaModa to display text messages
on a Jumbotron at 49th Street and Broadway in New York's Times Square.
     * Estee Lauder Lab Series for Men used an RFID solution to display
videos on digital signs above the product when customers pick up
different products.


Interacting beyond the computer monitor is a reality and is shaping
our spaces and day-to-day life.  From advertising in well-trafficked
squares, to information displays in airports, digital experiences are
moving way beyond the computer computer screen.

A recent study confirmed its impact is increasing.  The study
commissioned by Danoo, a digital out-of-home media company, and
Arbitron Media Research has found that consumers are highly engaged
with the new, digital billboards. These Web-connected LCD screens have
been found to have an 84% engagement rate with consumers.

While this sounds great, knowing which platforms to incorporate into a
campaign, and how to architect a solution to not just support, but
take advantage of them can be a complicated task.

During the next meeting, our guest speakers will explain what some of
the current options exist for large scale interactive digital out of
home executions, with insight into a few executions they have
overseen.  Lo-fi and homebuilt executions are also possibilities, and
often are potential endeavors for students or teams interested in
speculative projects.  This session will go over all of the possible
options today, as well as look to the near and distant futures as we
wrap up with some ideas we have on our wish list.

Calling all techies: This one is for you!

Our Speakers:
Joesph Corr (jcorr@...) and Mathew Ray (mray@...)
are Sr. Technical Lead and Associate Technical Director, respectively,
at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (CP+B), Creativity magazine's 2008 Agency
of the Year.

In a previous life, Joe Corr was the Manager of Technology at IQ
Interactive, a founding SODA member. An Interactive Developer/Designer
with over 12 years of professional experience designing and developing
for the web, Joe has a background in Flash, Flex, AIR, Silverlight and
other Interactive tools. Joe is currently finishing his MFA thesis
from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Interactive Design.

Mat Ray's most recently work is on the Microsoft Windows account and
the "I'm A PC" campaign. Previously at CP+B, he directed acclaimed
projects for Volkswagen and Dominos including vw.com and the BFD Pizza
Builder. In a previous life, Mathew served as Director of Research and
Development for IQ Interactive in Atlanta and helped build a large
interactive team while producing award-winning work for the American
Cancer Society, Audi, Celebrity Cruise Lines, Cox Communications,
Genworth, IBM, the National Geographic Channel, Royal Caribbean, and UPS.

CP+B is a full-service integrated advertising agency with clients
including American Express, Burger King, Coke Zero, Dominos,
Microsoft, Old Navy, and Volkswagen. The agency and its work has been
profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today,
Business Week, Forbes, Fast Company, Time, Newsweek, Business 2.0,
Advertising Age, Creativity and Archive.   The agency currently has
over $1 billion dollars in billings, with offices in Miami, Boulder,
Toronto, Los Angeles and London.

Links:
Crispin Porter + Bogusky: http://www.cpbgroup.com


The meeting is Tuesday, January 13th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with
optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The
meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the
Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive
west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the
foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on
Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and
voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to
point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off
the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass
the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 11 November 2008 meeting, "Securing and Abusing
Internet Domains: Can JoeThePlumber.com Catch a Break?"

About 25 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin facilitated and
Jeremy Kohler recorded the minutes.

----------
MEETING SPONSORS

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments, Copy Diva
(www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual equipment, NCAR
(www.ncar.ucar.edu) provides the facility, and ONEWARE
(www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes.

------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Crispin Porter + Bogusky is a service agency that produces
windows.com, burgerking.com, etc., and is looking for people who know
it all. Project managers, developers, accounting people. Contact HR or
cpbgroup.com and look for postings.

If you have suggestions for topics and/or speakers for any upcoming
meeting, please send them to Josh Zapin. He is currently in hot
pursuit for several speakers for 2009, but always seeks new ideas.

------------------------------
INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)

Domains are really at the core of finding things on line. And being
found is worth a ton. Like everything else, this tool comes at a
price. Imagine you go to Ford.com and find GM info. Ford would be
pretty upset. And many of us just type a domain without going through
a search engine.

The domain exploitation industry is big--that’s where you buy a domain
and then sell it at a premium. Dark Blue Sea owns half a million
domains. Some companies use algorithms that scour the Internet for
what’s hot and anticipate popular domains--and then buy them up even
before you know you want them. Registrars are getting into the
squatting act too. Network Solutions has been accused of buying
domains people have searched for using their search box. I think these
trends are worrisome.

----------------------
ABOUT THE SPEAKER

David Schachter (dschachter@...) is an intellectual
property attorney at Sherman & Howard LLC, a 160-person Denver firm.
David’s expertise is in all forms of licensing, sale, protection, and
commercialization of intellectual property and technology development.
He is a member of the Computer Law Association and the Copyright
Society. He also serves on the executive committee of the Metro Denver
Economic Development Corporation. David writes the Legal Bytes column
for the Denver Business Journal and is listed as one of the Best
Lawyers in America for Intellectual Property.

---------------------
LINKS

Sherman & Howard: http://www.shermanhoward.com
Denver Business Journal: http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/

------------------------
DAVID SCHACHTER

I’m in the business of protecting people's rights, specifically,
intellectual property (IP) rights. I'm not advocating a position, and
I work both sides of the street. I defend people who feel their
trademarks are being infringed as well those who are accused of
infringement.

Intellectual property laws have been around for hundreds of years, and
now they are trying to find their way with each other. Thirty years
ago no one knew what intellectual property was outside of patents. Now
it's become a commodity--like your brand name--that can be the most
valuable part of a company.

IP falls into any of four subject areas or categories, sometime more
than one. Trademarks, copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets all have
their own sets of laws, and that produces a dilemma regarding how to
protect things that fall into multiple categories.

1: Patents.
Patents are for ideas that take the shape of a useful invention with a
practical application. A recent decision blew a hole in
business-method patents like “one-click purchasing.� That kind of
thing was going insane. Patent law goes all the way back to Hammurabi,
in terms of references to rewarding innovation. It’s in our the U.S.
Constitution too. The idea is that you teach the world and we'll give
you a limited monopoly--with the intent to benefit the world, not the
inventor.

2: Trademarks.
Nothing to do with patents. A trademark is how you identify a product
or service in commerce. They help people form associations, like when
you see the golden arches. You immediately know what it represents:
McDonald’s hamburgers. For example, if I ask you “What is LODAL,� who
knows. Change it to KODAK. Now you know.

Trademark (TM) and service mark (SM) are common-law claims that you
have something trademarked. (R) means you have a federal trademark
registration. Federal means you went through a very difficult
application process and you have nationwide exclusive rights.
Common-law trademark is limited by the geographic territory you use it
in. This is very problematic. Courts have still not completely
resolved how territorial rights work on the Internet.

3: Copyrights.
Copyright goes back hundreds of years. It deals with a tangible
expression of ideas: paintings, writings, photographs. Nothing to do
with trademarks, although you can have a copyrighted logo that is also
trademarked. It covers the “right to copy.� What you can't copy is an
author’s expression of an idea, but the idea itself is not protected
so long as you steal the idea in an original way. People steal
software code, for example. If I see the code is identical, then it's
copying. But if you just do the same thing with different, then it
doesn't matter--that’s not copying. You control the means of
reproduction if you own the copyright.

A legal issue is how to prove copying. It can be direct evidence (I
saw you do it), or you can prove copying by showing that someone had
access and produced something with "substantial similarity." There’s
no rule of thumb or litmus test here--you can be sued for just copying
a tiny bit of something.

You don't have to register a copyright until someone infringes. If
it's fixed in any tangible form (as of 1986), it's automatically
copyrighted.

4: Trade Secrets.
This is a catchall: Any form of information in any medium that is both
valuable because it's not generally known (secret); and it's treated
like a secret. Source code is copyrightable, but it's also a trade
secret. Customer information, marketing plans, and financial
information can be trade secrets. There’s no registration needed, but
you have to be really treating the information like a secret. If it’s
on your public website, it’s not a trade secret.
You should rely on an nondisclosure agreement (NDA) to protect a trade
secret. It makes the ability to prove a trade secret a thousand times
easier. It doesn't guarantee that something is a secret though because
it still has to be treated as one.

So why are we here tonight? We are learning the difference between
trademarks and domain names. Domain names are billboards that
represent a product or service, so they can be trademarks. But it’s
not automatic.

How do you get a trademark? Two ways. One is by using the term in
commerce, like “Kodak.� If you only do that, you have a common-law
trademark the moment you start using it. It will be limited to the
geographic territory where you're using it. The goal is get a federal
registration, so you get protected throughout the U.S. There’s no such
thing as a global trademark though.

The problem with trademarks is “likelihood of confusion.� If two
trademarks might be confused by the public, then there's a potential
for infringement. This is designed to protect the public. Trademarks
don’t have to be identical, but there has to be a potential that they
will be confused. To own the trademark you have to go into business
and start using it. You can't trademark “Burger Kyng�you’re your
restaurant because it could generate confusion. Apple Records and
Apple Computer, on the other hand, didn't have much problem until
computers started playing music. You could even have two magazines
with exactly the same name, so long as they are serving completely
different markets--but you have to convince a trademark examiner that
there’s no confusion.

To federally register a trademark:
1: Make sure it actually functions as a trademark. You can't trademark
"hamburger" because it's generic. It has to identify something specific.
2: Make sure it’s original. If someone beat you to it, they may
already already have rights to it. Is someone already using it? It
depends on who got there first. For example, a county in Florida has a
restaurant called “Burger King� that was around before the franchise.
The franchise sued and lost: the court ruled that the Burger King
franchise could never open a restaurant in that county, otherwise it’s
infringing on the original Burger King’s trademark. The geographic
limitation is often fought over.

When considering a trademark, go to USPTO.gov. The trademark office is
very user friendly, and you can search the registered trademark
database. Let's search for Kodak. Yup, about 100 Kodak registered
trademarks. That's one way to search for trademarks--but you have to
search the web too, in case someone is using it without registering.

Note that state fictitious name filings, and state trademarks, may be
evidence of use, but they do not confer substantive trademark rights.

The official statement is that it takes 6 to 9 months for a trademark
registration application to be processed. It takes a really long time.

Theoretically your common-law trademark can apply nationally, but
that’s a dangerous way to go. It’s better to register.

If McDonald’s allowed "McSushi" that would erode the brand, and that's
what the lawyers would argue. You don't want your trademark to become
generic like Xerox’s did.

Purchasing a Domain

So long as a domain name isn't an exact match, you can purchase it. No
one screens them for infringement. The problem is that a domain is
very easy to purchase and is extremely powerful as an identifier. So
they have a big potential to create instant confusion. Courts can't
keep up. 180 million domains now, going up by a million a month.
Trademark laws are woefully unprepared for dealing with domain name
confusion.

So how do you infringe a trademark through purchasing a domain name?

Simplest way is to buy a domain that’s an existing trademark. An early
cybersquatter in the 1980s bought panavision.com. He charged big money
for it and got big money for it. But now the law says that if you are
using a domain in bad faith (not just owning it), that's infringement.
A guy bought peta.org. So People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
tried to get him to give up the domain, but he wasn't doing anything
with it so he was protected. But then he put a link on his peta.org
website for selling books and he lost on that point--because he was
now using it in commerce in bad faith. The courts start to care when
you're engaged in commerce.

Typosquatting

This is when you buy spelling variations on a trademark, like
“westing-house.com.� You can buy it, and you’re not infringing if
you’re not doing anything with it. But the moment you engage in
commerce with it, Westinghouse can sue you. A recent doctrine is
called “initial interest confusion�: Even a diversion to another page
is enough to damage a trademark.

Now let’s say your family name is “Westing� and you want a website
called Westing-House. That should be fine. But if your name is Wendy
McDonald, you can't be selling hamburgers under either name. You can
still have a website so long as you're not selling burgers with it.

Often there’s a problem when you can't find the owner of a domain when
that info is hidden.

Frontrunning

This is very controversial, and no one has officially acknowledged
that it exists. It’s when a company secretly monitors what domains
people are searching for (in a registrar’s domain search box) and then
buys the domain before the customer gets around to it. Network
Solutions has been accused of this.

Parking.

Let’s say you buy a domain that you think will be attractive to
someone. There’s nothing wrong with that and it’s not cybersquatting.
In 1992 a guy bought Wallstreet.com and sat on it, then sold it for 10
million dollars. No problem there, but if he had directed it to
parking page full of ads for companies that offer financial services,
then it would have been infringement.

Domain parking is legal.

Tasting.
You can buy a domain for a probationary period and then return it
after the period if no one bites.

A guy wanted to buy a domain from a squatter in Hong Kong. I emailed
the owner asking if it was for sale. I got an automated reply saying
it's $6000, not negotiable. Not even dealing with a human here.
Sometimes you can get a domain without being gouged. But usually it
doesn't work that way. And it’s not illegal.

Warehousing

You buy thousands of domains made from common words. Most word combos
are already bought.
All 3-letter domains were gone years ago.

Let’s typosquat, right here right now. I will try to buy... Kodak.com
from Network Solutions. Hmm, they’re all taken on basic extensions. Oh
look, Kodak.biz is available. Other weird extensions aren't taken
either, like Kodak.zimbabwe.com.

kodakk.com? taken. Probably someone smart at Kodak took it. But all
other extensions are available. kkodakkk.com is available. Companies
will buy up all kinds of misspellings, but Kodak didn't buy that one.
So I can buy it, but I can't sell cameras with it. I can't put up a
website with it. So I could buy Kodak.biz, and if did anything with
it, Kodak could come after me. And I can't trademark kkodakkk.

Some registrars allow you to make an offer to domain owners, but
you're begging to be gouged.

Keyword advertising

This isn’t directly about domain names, but it’s a nefarious creature
of the internet. Is it trademark infringement or fair use? An
insurance company competing with Geico put "geico" as key word in
search engines to make the competitor’s ads pop up. Geico sued them
for making commercial use out of the name. The competitor said, No,
I'm making use of a fact. Like putting up a billboard next to Geico's
corporate headquarters. Courts have supported keyword advertising.

If Your Trademark Is Being Infringed

Cybersquatting rules are part of the trademark law. You have to prove
they were trafficking in the domain (making commercial use of it) and
you have to show bad faith, that they have a motive for using it.

All domain owners are required to submit to the Uniform Dispute
Resolution Procedure. The UDRP is part of domain's terms of use
agreement. It’s not a court: All they can do is award the domain name
to the winner of a dispute. Most trademark law is U.S., and it only
applies to the U.S. UDRP is global, and you don't have to find the
owner to initiate a proceeding. If owner doesn't show, they default
and lose the web site.

UDRP is much cheaper than a trademark lawsuit, but you don't get
damages. Also the forms are easy to fill out online. I think it costs
around $1700 to file.

Q&A

Q: I got an email message warning that someone is about my trademark
as a domain name
A: That’s spam, and it’s pretty common.

Q: What if set up "bureauoflandmanagement.com" and sell guns?
A: In that case the government could probably just say it's basic
consumer fraud.

Q: Would you trademark amazon or amazon.com?
A: You can trademark a whole domain name, but you have to show
commercial use of that name. Just putting “amazon� on your door
wouldn’t count.

Q: What's the latest on Network Solution’s alleged frontrunning practice?
A: Well it’s not necessarily illegal. But it might be violating some
commercial protection rule because it's basically spying on customers.

Q: What about registrars who “claim� that an owner didn't renew?
A: They are supposed to be neutral, but some think they can make money
that way.

Q: Isn’t confusion dependent on how many people know about something?
What if it's a brand new business?
A: If I'm suing, my standard of proof is “likelihood of confusion�--I
don't have to produce any actual confused people. It's a very low
standard.

Just another quick reminder about our upcoming meeting tomorrow night
(Tuesday, November 11th).

I hope to see you there.

JZ


>>>>>
The Tuesday, November 11th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet
Users Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Securing and Abusing Internet
Domains: Can JoeThePlumber.com Catch a Break?"

Domains, the hierarchical names given to web servers, are the core of
finding things online.  And being found is worth a lot in the online
world.  But, like anything nice in the world, this wonderful
technological tool comes at a price.

Think about it: What if you typed in http://www.ford.com to get
information about Ford Motor company's new Flex crossover only to get
its arch-rival GM's website?  Ford, with the billions it spends on its
trademark and brand, would be very upset (to say the least). An
organization's domain is the atomic level of finding it online.
Messing with that in the digital age is the equivalent of war.

But these days, the "domain exploitation" industry, companies that pay
the minimal $6 or $7 to reserve domains in anticipation of charging a
premium for future demand, and other ruses, has made securing domains
expensive or near impossible, and the abuse of those with legitimate
Intellectual Property rights has become well known.  Companies such as
DarkBlueSea, a publicly traded company, owns over 550,000 domains in
its portfolio and makes money on selling them at a significant
premium.  These companies actively and algorithmically, scour the
Internet for trends and buy up domains ahead of the demand.  So, when
you finally decide on the domain you need, it's no longer available or
expensive.

Complicating the situation is when the registrars, the places where
you register your domain name, start to get in the squatting act.
Recently, Network Solutions, the largest Domain registrar, allegedly
would hold, for itself, a domain that it believed someone was
interested in, based on observation of search behavior.  During that
period of time, if the person went back to purchase domain, Network
Solutions was accused of upping the price on the domain!

If the Internet is supposed to be the great leveler in the business
world, are these trends worrisome?   How is the law helping or
hindering the problem?  Is there a way for JoeThePlumber.com to catch
a break?

During the next meeting, we will bring in a guest speaker to discuss
this fascinating topic:
David Schachter (dschachter@...) is an Intellectual
Property attorney at Sherman & Howard L.L.C., a 160-person firm based
in Denver.  David's expertise is in all forms of licensing, sale,
protection and commercialization of intellectual property and
technology development.  David is a member of the Computer Law
Association, the Copyright Society, and serves on the Executive
Committee of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation.  David
also writes the "Legal Bytes" column for the Denver Business Journal.
  He is listed as one of the Best Lawyers in America for Intellectual
Property.

Links:
Sherman & Howard: http://www.shermanhoward.com
Denver Business Journal: http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/

The meeting is Tuesday, November 11th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with
optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The
meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the
Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive
west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the
foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on
Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and
voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to
point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off
the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass
the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Just a quick reminder about our upcoming meeting this coming Tuesday,
November 11th.

I hope to see you there.

JZ


>>>>>
Subject: Tues, Nov 11 RMIUG Mtg. – Internet Domains: Can
JoeThePlumber.com Catch a Break?

The Tuesday, November 11th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet
Users Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Securing and Abusing Internet
Domains: Can JoeThePlumber.com Catch a Break?"

Domains, the hierarchical names given to web servers, are the core of
finding things online.  And being found is worth a lot in the online
world.  But, like anything nice in the world, this wonderful
technological tool comes at a price.

Think about it: What if you typed in http://www.ford.com to get
information about Ford Motor company's new Flex crossover only to get
its arch-rival GM's website?  Ford, with the billions it spends on its
trademark and brand, would be very upset (to say the least). An
organization's domain is the atomic level of finding it online.
Messing with that in the digital age is the equivalent of war.

But these days, the "domain exploitation" industry, companies that pay
the minimal $6 or $7 to reserve domains in anticipation of charging a
premium for future demand, and other ruses, has made securing domains
expensive or near impossible, and the abuse of those with legitimate
Intellectual Property rights has become well known.  Companies such as
DarkBlueSea, a publicly traded company, owns over 550,000 domains in
its portfolio and makes money on selling them at a significant
premium.  These companies actively and algorithmically, scour the
Internet for trends and buy up domains ahead of the demand.  So, when
you finally decide on the domain you need, it's no longer available or
expensive.

Complicating the situation is when the registrars, the places where
you register your domain name, start to get in the squatting act.
Recently, Network Solutions, the largest Domain registrar, allegedly
would hold, for itself, a domain that it believed someone was
interested in, based on observation of search behavior.  During that
period of time, if the person went back to purchase domain, Network
Solutions was accused of upping the price on the domain!

If the Internet is supposed to be the great leveler in the business
world, are these trends worrisome?   How is the law helping or
hindering the problem?  Is there a way for JoeThePlumber.com to catch
a break?

During the next meeting, we will bring in a guest speaker to discuss
this fascinating topic:
David Schachter (dschachter@...) is an Intellectual
Property attorney at Sherman & Howard L.L.C., a 160-person firm based
in Denver.  David's expertise is in all forms of licensing, sale,
protection and commercialization of intellectual property and
technology development.  David is a member of the Computer Law
Association, the Copyright Society, and serves on the Executive
Committee of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation.  David
also writes the "Legal Bytes" column for the Denver Business Journal.
  He is listed as one of the Best Lawyers in America for Intellectual
Property.

Links:
Sherman & Howard: http://www.shermanhoward.com
Denver Business Journal: http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/

The meeting is Tuesday, November 11th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with
optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The
meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the
Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive
west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the
foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on
Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and
voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to
point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off
the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass
the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

The Tuesday, November 11th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet
Users Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Securing and Abusing Internet
Domains: Can JoeThePlumber.com Catch a Break?"

Domains, the hierarchical names given to web servers, are the core of
finding things online.  And being found is worth a lot in the online
world.  But, like anything nice in the world, this wonderful
technological tool comes at a price.

Think about it: What if you typed in http://www.ford.com to get
information about Ford Motor company's new Flex crossover only to get
its arch-rival GM's website?  Ford, with the billions it spends on its
trademark and brand, would be very upset (to say the least). An
organization's domain is the atomic level of finding it online.
Messing with that in the digital age is the equivalent of war.

But these days, the "domain exploitation" industry, companies that pay
the minimal $6 or $7 to reserve domains in anticipation of charging a
premium for future demand, and other ruses, has made securing domains
expensive or near impossible, and the abuse of those with legitimate
Intellectual Property rights has become well known.  Companies such as
DarkBlueSea, a publicly traded company, owns over 550,000 domains in
its portfolio and makes money on selling them at a significant
premium.  These companies actively and algorithmically, scour the
Internet for trends and buy up domains ahead of the demand.  So, when
you finally decide on the domain you need, it's no longer available or
expensive.

Complicating the situation is when the registrars, the places where
you register your domain name, start to get in the squatting act.
Recently, Network Solutions, the largest Domain registrar, allegedly
would hold, for itself, a domain that it believed someone was
interested in, based on observation of search behavior.  During that
period of time, if the person went back to purchase domain, Network
Solutions was accused of upping the price on the domain!

If the Internet is supposed to be the great leveler in the business
world, are these trends worrisome?   How is the law helping or
hindering the problem?  Is there a way for JoeThePlumber.com to catch
a break?

During the next meeting, we will bring in a guest speaker to discuss
this fascinating topic:
David Schachter (dschachter@...) is an Intellectual
Property attorney at Sherman & Howard L.L.C., a 160-person firm based
in Denver.  David's expertise is in all forms of licensing, sale,
protection and commercialization of intellectual property and
technology development.  David is a member of the Computer Law
Association, the Copyright Society, and serves on the Executive
Committee of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation.  David
also writes the "Legal Bytes" column for the Denver Business Journal.
  He is listed as one of the Best Lawyers in America for Intellectual
Property.

Links:
Sherman & Howard: http://www.shermanhoward.com
Denver Business Journal: http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/

The meeting is Tuesday, November 11th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with
optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The
meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the
Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive
west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the
foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on
Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and
voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to
point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off
the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass
the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Below are the minutes from the September 9 RMIUG meeting.

Thanks to everyone who attended.

JZ

>>>>>>>>
Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 9 September 2008 meeting, "Social Networking: Our
Friend or the Next Friendster?"

About 27 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin facilitated and
Jeremy Kohler recorded the minutes.

----------
MEETING SPONSORS

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments, Copy Diva
(www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual equipment, NCAR
(www.ncar.ucar.edu) provides the facility, and ONEWARE
(www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes.


------------------------------
INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)
It seems like we hear the term "Social Networking" incessantly. It's
impossible to turn on the TV and not hear about people competing for
Twitter or LinkedIn friends or the fact that teenagers spend more time
on MySpace or Facebook than any other activity online. Even YouTube
has become so mainstream that they were recently part of presidential
primary debates. With a gazillion Tweets and hundreds of millions of
MySpace pages, it seems like "Social Networking" is all the rage on
the Internet these days.

The statistics seem to back up this phenomenon: comScore recently
reported that Social Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook
received almost 191 million unique visitors in May 2008 with MySpace
and Facebook getting roughly half of that traffic alone.

Social networking has been a huge phenomenon over the years, but those
of us who have been working with the Internet for a while have seen
trends like this before (anyone remember Friendster?) and can't help
be skeptical. Friendster was popular a couple of years ago, then it
went away. Things have changed though--maybe it would survive if it
were introduced today.

What are these sites? Why are people attracted to them? How are they
different than before?

If the Information Age can be coined the Attention Economy, then
eyeballs and mindshare is the currency. Social Networking sites have
been getting much of our attention and is important currency. Is it
finally time to take notice?

----------------------
ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jason Cormier (jcormier@...) is cofounder and Managing Partner
of Room 214, a Google-certified search marketing and social media
agency and CEO of RSSReady, a RSS feed product and services company.
Jason is a strategist dedicated to the systems and operations that
make Room 214 clients successful. He plays a lead role in the
development of customized search engine visibility, online word of
mouth and social media programs, ROI analysis, and tactical execution
of marketing plans. As Chief Executive of RSSready, Jason also
coordinates software development and custom install efforts for Post
Zinger, an advanced content management platform for blog, podcast, RSS
feed management, and reporting metrics. Current clients include Alltel
Wireless, The Travel Channel, Rally Software, Hive Live, EAS, Centura
Health, Best Promotions, Smarty Pig, and the Denver Broncos.

---------------------
LINKS
www.room214.com
www.rssready.com
www.capturetheconversation.com


------------------------
JASON CORMIER

Social Networking / Social Media

Keep in mind I'm a marketing guy, so my perspective is on how does
social networking work from a company perspective. Why should a
business be interested?

Premise:
Markets Are Conversations (from the Cluetrain Manifesto). Markets are
dynamic, it's where you establish or lose credibility. Word of mouth
is the most effective marketing and carries more weight than a
billboard or anything else. If markets are conversations, it would
behoove us to be a part of those conversations. If we want to dominate
in an industry, then we should capture the conversation so people are
talking about our products and services.

As Room 214, we used to focus exclusively on pay-per-click marketing
and search engine optimization, but our newer focus is on social
media. In the mid 90's I walked around telling people why they needed
a web site. The business of web development alone at that time was an
easy wave to ride, but one that has since crashed. Marketing caught
up. Companies learned that building it didn't mean people would come.
Now there's a new wave that has risen with social media. There are a
lot of clowns riding that wave right now, but they will fall away as
systems of accountability become more defined.

Current metrics standards are not very well established, but companies
can still see results from the kind of activity we are engaging in.

Search Engines Are Media. 95 percent of the time, the first place I'll
do my research on anything will be on search engines. This is a
similar stat for journalists. Optimization, keywords are still important.

Leveraging conversations and search engines is what's needed for
creating successful social media campaigns.

Content is still king. There are all these social media properties out
there, but just creating an account doesn't do anything for you. You
need updated and relevant content. Since Dave Taylor is here tonight,
look at AskDaveTaylor.com as a regularly updated blog with relevant
content.

The Facts

Social Media is Mainstream. 80 million blogs (we know most are garbage).
69 percent of users participated in user-generated content (blogs and
comments). That doesn't say much, it's just the way the Internet is:
There's lots of user-generated content.

Bird's Eye View of Online Marketing

This slide is a bit outdated, but general feel is correct. Traditional
advertising is still needed for directing attention to things on the
web. RSS comes into play with Social Media, a part of the larger
picture. My company focuses on everything that's on line. Analytics
and our ability to measure is critical. When you effectively set
expectations in conjunction with points of measurement, it's difficult
for the client to be disappointed.

The Pieces

This is just one way to look at it. Certain industry experts/gurus are
defining things like this, such as Chris Brogan. Aggregators,
Connectors, Feeders, and Publishers.

Closer View of Social Media

Lots of common social media properties: Facebook, Myspace, and many
others.

The Conversation: The Art of Listening, Learning, and Sharing

Where is the conversation taking place? The philosophy of approaching
someone on line is similar to the off-line approach. For example, it's
easier to join a conversation than to start one. Walk into a bar: It's
more effective to listen to what's going on around you, find a point
of interest, and then find a way to engage. So real life informs the
online approach.

The Technology

How things have changed. In 1998 Google indexed web pages. Now RSS is
the workhorse that allows Google to index new content instantly. If
you're a marketing expert, the big question is what are you doing to
leverage this change?
Question from the audience: What is RSS?
RSS is extensible markup language that provides a newsfeed. For
example, A major difference between a blog and a web page is the RSS
feed: You can subscribe to receive updated content, and it's totally
anonymous. The difference between an mp3 audio file and a podcast is
the RSS feed. Again, your ability to subscribe to that audio/news feed
is where the power lies. Several aggregators allow you to subscribe to
this kind of information. A simple audio file doesn't have those
properties. RSS is behind how the features in applications like
Facebook are updated.

Google places weight on things that have historical value with
relevant content. RSS and web pages are both indexed by search
engines, so we pay attention to things like title, description, links
and tags. We treat RSS feeds like web pages so they are effectively
indexed by Google at the keyword level.

Objectives

Listening:
Depends on what you're in it for, like reputation management. Who's
talking smack about your brand? Google Reader is good for getting
engaged with searches on RSS feeds. There are tools that can help you
monitor any conversation on the Internet. If search engine marketing
is about keywords, social media marketing is about key influencers.
Companies want to know who's saying what about them.

Talking:
Your content plan is a big one. It's not just how to announce about
what you're about, you engage in a conversation too. Use the 80/20
rule. Set up a Digg account for a client. Comment on interesting
articles in the client's industry. Digg 80 articles specific to your
industry, but only 20 specific to you. Not a cheesy PR tactic.
FriendFeed is an aggregator that puts all your social media properties
(accounts) on one screen. Take all your RSS feeds and put them in
FriendFeed. Makes for more interesting updates to show in your site,
Facebook page, etc.

Energizing:
The big trend we see is that content is really moving off of corporate
web sites. The old strategy is to keep people coming to your corporate
site. But the reality is you have to meet people where they are.

Criteria

Does the company participate in an ongoing effort? The challenge is
we'll present a bunch of tactics to a company to leverage social
media. Now the responsibility is on the company to produce the
content. We can't do it; the client is the content expert. People will
recognize if your content is garbage. Your company needs to realize
there's a level of work involved. You need to hire a Community
Manager--the voice behind the company that understands how the social
networking properties work.

The Planning

How do you pick social networking properties? It depends on your
industry. If you are an aspiring musician, for example, you better
have a Myspace page. Sometimes you need some web development, like to
set up a blog site.

Widgets:
A piece of a web site that resides on a personal page of yours.
iGoogle: your customized home page brought to you by Google. They are
updated by RSS feeds. Check out clearspring.com for a clear
description of this, with plenty of examples.

The Measurement

Quantitative metrics:
Total Conversations = about what? Identified by keywords, etc. Tools
tell me how many conversations took place about a certain keyword set
or theme within blogs and news sites. The tools basically filter RSS
feeds. None of these tools work on Facebook. Example tools and
services include Collective Intellect, BuzzLogic, Radian6, Filtrbox,
etc. Even with tools, nothing is a substitute for human review.
Clients don't like being fed a data dump. The tools are in their
infancy stage. We test many of these tools. All have limitations. So
how do you provide effective reporting of conversations? What do you
do with the information?

Q: Is there a security problem with widgets?
A: I can't think of any cases of that happening.


Twitter Profile:
This is a microblogging application. Only 140 characters per message.
Some people tweet constantly. It's a very interesting application that
continues to grow like crazy. There are neat ways businesses can use
this. Tweetscan: scans the Internet on a keyword level to find these
short entries.

You don't want to use Twitter as a billboard, but it's a very relevant
social media property that will continue to grow. It's real easy to
drown in this stuff. I used to think twitter was dumb. But it's not
only a source of entertainment, but also a good way to remind people
of what's going on. Very applicable for live events.

Q: On Twitter you can subscribe to an RSS feed based on your search
results.
A: Yes, "following" on twitter is nice.

Dave Taylor comment: I was in Atlanta once and twittered about it and
got invited by a guy at CNN to come have a tour. All because he
followed me on twitter. And I don't know how he came to follow me on
twitter.

Q: Is this a flash in the pan or this here to stay? All these
properties are losing money right now. Does this thing have legs? Is
there something different about these sites?
A: That's a good discussion. One thing to pay attention to is what age
groups are using it? Popular with some groups, not with others.
There's tons of properties popping up constantly, and I think it's
part of the evolution of the Internet.

Q: My wife is hooked on Facebook because it lets her connect to
people. But my mom isn't on it. So there seems to a demographic
difference. The tools are amazing and matured.
A: You'll see that advertising finds its way into these things.
Companies advertise within RSS feeds and make money.

Q: From a marketing psychology perspective, what human needs are being
satisfied? What needs will give this staying power?
A: People want to be a part of something. They want to feel they are
contributing and connected. Some companies have been busted by putting
cheesy ads in blog comments. Deceptive marketers will get called out
by other bloggers.

Q: Would you say the best kind of marketing is from a conversation
with people that you trust?
A: People invest with their time. The power of user generated content,
like product ratings, is that more people will look at that than at
traditional marketing.

Q: What if my product gets bad ratings?
A: You can moderate comments, but people can also manipulate data on
rating systems. Some companies will have the CEO step in and respond,
and that can earn respect and quiet things down.

Q: Does following the 80/20 rule mitigate being overly solicitous? How
do you make your pitch?
A: We'll find 100 influential bloggers. How do you engage them? Polite
email to a blogger, a personable approach often works. Pay attention
to the blogs, and comment when the opportunity arises. But comment as
a regular participant, not a random poser.

Q: Where do you put your blogs?
A: We have a corporate site (Room214.com) that pulls the headlines
from our Capture the Conversation blog posts and podcasts. We like to
get very calendar about things. Set up a strategy to have certain
keywords in your titles.

Q: What percent of blogs are actually read?
A: Just because I have 500 subscribers to my blog feed doesn't mean
anyone's reading it. Comments mean it's a conversation.

Q: What metrics do you look at?
A: Number of comments, unique visitors, subscribers, referral sources
(that's a big one). Bounce rate: how quickly do people leave?

Q: Most of the conversations are under anonymous handles, and in that
situation, people will say outrageous things. People masquerading as
someone they're not and trashing your product. What do you do about that?
A: Hopefully you have some moderation in place. We don't want to
censor. The way to deal with it is by responding as quickly as
possible. That's part of reputation management. It's dangerous, no
question. You do open yourself up to this stuff.

Q: Any malicious stuff associated with tinyurl, like servers blocking it?
A: Not that I've heard of.

Just sending this quick reminder about our meeting tonight.

We hope to see you there.

Thanks.

JZ

>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Tuesday, September 9th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet
Users Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Social Networking: Our Friend or the
next Friendster?"

It seems like we hear the term "Social Networking" incessantly.  It's
impossible to turn on the TV and not hear about people's competing for
Twitter or LinkedIn friends or the fact that teenagers spend more time
on MySpace or Facebook than any other activity online.  Even YouTube
has become so mainstream that they were recently part of presidential
primary debates.  With a gazillion Tweets and hundreds of millions of
MySpace pages, it seems like "Social Networking" is all the rage on
the Internet these days.

The statistics seem to back up this phenomenon:

     * comScore recently reported that Social Networking sites like
MySpace and Facebook received almost 191 million unique visitors in
May 2008 with MySpace and Facebook getting roughly half of that
traffic alone.
     * HitWise reported that the average time spent on Social
Networking sites for all Internet users was over 27 minutes long.


Those of us who have been working with the Internet for a while have
seen trends like this before (anyone remember Friendster?) and can't
help be skeptical.

But what are these sites?  Why are people attracted to them?  How are
they different than before?

If the Information Age can be coined the Attention Economy, then
eyeballs and mindshare is the currency.  Social Networking sites have
been getting much of our attention.  Is it finally time to take notice?

During the next meeting, we will bring in a guest speaker to discuss
this fascinating topic:
Jason Cormier (jcormier@...) is Co-Founder and Managing
Partner of Room 214, a Google-certified search marketing and social
media agency and CEO of RSSReady a RSS Feed product and services
company.  Jason is a strategist dedicated to the systems and
operations that make Room 214 clients successful. He plays a lead role
in the development of customized search engine visibility, online word
of mouth and social media programs, ROI analysis and tactical
execution of marketing plans. As Chief Executive of RSSready, Jason
also coordinates software development and custom install efforts for
Post Zinger, an advanced content management platform for blog,
podcast, RSS feed management and reporting metrics. Current clients
Jason works with include Alltel Wireless, The Travel Channel, Rally
Software, Hive Live, EAS, Centura Health, Best Promotions, Smarty Pig
and the Denver Broncos.

Links:
Room214: http://room214.com
RSSReady: http://www.rssready.com
Company blog: http://www.capturetheconversation.com

The meeting is Tuesday, September 9th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with
optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The
meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the
Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive
west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the
foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on
Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and
voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to
point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off
the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass
the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Just sending this quick reminder about next Tuesday's RMIUG meeting.

We hope to see you there.

Thanks.

JZ

>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Tuesday, September 9th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet
Users Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Social Networking: Our Friend or the
next Friendster?"

It seems like we hear the term "Social Networking" incessantly.  It's
impossible to turn on the TV and not hear about people's competing for
Twitter or LinkedIn friends or the fact that teenagers spend more time
on MySpace or Facebook than any other activity online.  Even YouTube
has become so mainstream that they were recently part of presidential
primary debates.  With a gazillion Tweets and hundreds of millions of
MySpace pages, it seems like "Social Networking" is all the rage on
the Internet these days.

The statistics seem to back up this phenomenon:

     * comScore recently reported that Social Networking sites like
MySpace and Facebook received almost 191 million unique visitors in
May 2008 with MySpace and Facebook getting roughly half of that
traffic alone.
     * HitWise reported that the average time spent on Social
Networking sites for all Internet users was over 27 minutes long.


Those of us who have been working with the Internet for a while have
seen trends like this before (anyone remember Friendster?) and can't
help be skeptical.

But what are these sites?  Why are people attracted to them?  How are
they different than before?

If the Information Age can be coined the Attention Economy, then
eyeballs and mindshare is the currency.  Social Networking sites have
been getting much of our attention.  Is it finally time to take notice?

During the next meeting, we will bring in a guest speaker to discuss
this fascinating topic:
Jason Cormier (jcormier@...) is Co-Founder and Managing
Partner of Room 214, a Google-certified search marketing and social
media agency and CEO of RSSReady a RSS Feed product and services
company.  Jason is a strategist dedicated to the systems and
operations that make Room 214 clients successful. He plays a lead role
in the development of customized search engine visibility, online word
of mouth and social media programs, ROI analysis and tactical
execution of marketing plans. As Chief Executive of RSSready, Jason
also coordinates software development and custom install efforts for
Post Zinger, an advanced content management platform for blog,
podcast, RSS feed management and reporting metrics. Current clients
Jason works with include Alltel Wireless, The Travel Channel, Rally
Software, Hive Live, EAS, Centura Health, Best Promotions, Smarty Pig
and the Denver Broncos.

Links:
Room214: http://room214.com
RSSReady: http://www.rssready.com
Company blog: http://www.capturetheconversation.com

The meeting is Tuesday, September 9th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with
optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The
meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the
Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive
west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the
foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on
Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and
voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to
point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off
the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass
the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Below are the minutes from the July 2nd Meeting

Let me know if there are any questions/comments.

JZ

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 2 July 2008 meeting, "The Unintended Consequence of the
Spam Wars: Why Your Email Isn't Getting Delivered"

About 20 people attended tonight's pre-holiday meeting. Josh Zapin
facilitated and Jeremy Kohler recorded the minutes.

----------
MEETING SPONSORS

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments, Copy Diva
(www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual equipment, NCAR
(www.ncar.ucar.edu) provides the facility, and ONEWARE
(www.oneware.com) sponsors these minutes.


------------------------------
INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)

We all know spam. We all hate spam. It clutters our inbox, offends us
(do I really need to see another Viagra ad?), and is just a pain in
the neck. Some researchers have estimated that every 24 hours, 100
billion spam messages are sent. That's 100 billion useless emails
every day. Ferris Research estimates that the lost productivity costs
businesses $100 billion worldwide, of which $35 billion is in the USA
alone. I think we can all agree that if we could obliterate it
completely we would.

While obliterating is probably impossible we sure are more or less
succeeding. With a litany of cool-named products like Spam Assassin,
Spam Eater, and Spam Agent, we are starting to see a decrease in
spam's growth rate. 2007 saw an increase of spam of about 10% down
from a 53% the year before that and over 100% the year before that.
Some people are saying this is the case because antispam products are
working, making spam a less attractive avenue for marketing.

Using fancy algorithms and other methods, these products "read" your
email and determine whether the email is truly worthy of your
attention. While certainly not perfect, they are helping to reduce the
clutter.

But are they doing their jobs "too" well? Increasingly people are
finding that critical emails are lost in their "spam" folders because
some attributes of these legitimate communications fail the algorithm.
So we may win the battle but not the war because email is such an
important communication device.

----------------------
ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. (amitchell@...) Anne is the CEO and
President of the Institute of Spam and Internet Public Policy.
Mitchell brings with her nearly 10 years of experience in the Internet
and email industries, both from the legal and technical side. Mitchell
was the Director of Legal and Public Affairs for Mail Abuse Prevention
Systems (MAPS), the original antispam blacklist. Following her time at
MAPS, Mitchell was cofounder and CEO of Habeas, the first of the email
reputation services.

---------------------
LINKS

Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy: http://www.isipp.com
SuretyMail: http://www.suretymail.com
The Email Deliverability Blog: http://www.GettingEmailDelivered.com

------------------------
ANNE MITCHELL

A question for the audience: What's your biggest interest in this
topic? Why are you here?

AUDIENCE COMMENTS:
At work we use email in place of talking. Why don't my emails get
delivered?

We're extremely dependent on email with multiple email systems, so
spam is a big problem for us.

I work with email marketing systems, so I want to catch up on trends
in delivery and permissioning.

A family friend sent some messages I wanted and some I didn't, so I
tagged his mail as spam, not wanting to offend him. I'm not sure if
that's the best way to deal with it.

I run an email hosting company, so I try to make sure my servers don't
get blacklisted. We also have some trouble with backscatter.

I want to know what is "responsible" email marketing?

My web clients are getting hammered by spam from other countries and
I'm looking for solutions.

ANNE MITCHELL: A lot of admins actually just block entire countries.

AUDIENCE COMMENTS:
We use an in-house email deployment system, and we want to keep our
servers whitelisted.

I just want to know how to block spam.

I can get 50 to 500 spams per hour because our email addresses are
posted on a web page.

ANNE MITCHELL: You can disguise your email addresses in code so that
machines harvesting email addresses for spammers can't read it.

AUDIENCE COMMENTS:
I'm just trying to get our legitimate bulk emails delivered.

I work in IT and I need to keep up with this stuff.

I'm interested in working in this space.

I don't know much about spam.

I want to know what can we do as responsible citizens to help in the
fight against spam. How should we report it? How should we deal with
phishing emails, and what about these abuse addresses that are set up
for reporting?

I work in IT and I'm tired of hearing my clients complain about spam.

ANNE MITCHELL:

Is spam is slowing down? End users say yes, there's less spam, we're
doing a better job. But IT and admins say just the opposite, because
incoming spam has not gone down at all. ISPs for the most part are
absorbing this problem. So the filtering is getting better but the
spam isn't.

Remember when spam started including images of text? That was to get
around filters looking for "viagra" and other  words. Now spammers are
starting to send PDFs. In response, spam filters have started blocking
emails with attachments.

So with all this filtering going on, is your email getting to where
you want it to go?

People do have problems getting their email delivered to customers,
and it costs them money. This affects people on all levels.

The problem is that your good mail is getting caught up in the spam
filters as the filters try to keep up with the spammers.

Sometimes email doesn't even reach the recipient's spam folder because
the ISP didn't even send it along.

THE EMAIL PATH
Your email server sends a message to the recipient's ISP, which looks
up your IP address in a database via a DNS query. The ISP queries a
whole bunch of databases all over the world to see if the sender's IP
is blacklisted somewhere. It's  pretty easy to set up a
blacklist--which can cause problems--but fortunately now the industry
does a little due diligence to look for "genuine" blacklists. Some
blacklists include IPs simply because someone doesn't like them.
Fortunately most ISPs don't pay attention to those  lists. To be on a
genuine list, you have to truly be spamming or you haven't taken steps
to fix a clear problem--like a hosting company not dealing with a
customer who sends spam.

Your email has to run the gamut of dozens of spam filters, and they
all filter differently.

Some ISPs use their own filters, others use off-the-shelf stuff. Spam
filtering is all over the map. ISPs can use various combinations of
blacklists and filters, so it's hard to deal with the
nonstandardization, plus ISPs don't always reveal what they are doing.

SPAM ASSASSIN
Spam Assassin is one of the most widely deployed filters out there. A
lot of ISPs use it because it's open source, easy to use, and
customizable. Our service is listed with Spam Assassin.

It looks for different traits and assigns "points"--too many points
and it's tagged as spam. Kind of like failing a driving test--you can
make a few minor mistakes and still pass, but if you make too many you
fail.

Spam Assassin also assigns credit for unspamlike traits.

With Spam Assassin, the recipient email server checks the sender's IP
address for blacklistings. For example, if your IP address is using
open relays, it might be blacklisted. It also checks if your IP
address matches your domain--spammers often spoof a domain name, which
creates a mismatch.

Then it analyzes the mail headers.  For example, it analyzes the the
subject lines--searches for gappy versions of commercial products as
well as specific words and phrases.

HTML vs plain text mail: Text has better deliverability because HTML
is preferred by spammers. So lots of HTML raises your spam point
score. The software also looks for certain HTML tags, such as really
tiny or really large font sizes--these things have to be "just right"
to pass.

Spam Assassin also looks at the body of the email. Don't say that you
comply with spam regulations, for example, because it will cost you
points. "Unsubscribe" links also cause spam demerits. Even though
you're supposed to include that stuff as a good citizen, don't mention
anti spam laws because spammers are doing it too (but you MUST include
an unsubscribe link, and honor it!)

Filters might catch even common terms that you might use in normal
writing. Lots of regular text is now being identified as spam indicators.

------

So given all this testing, hitting "send" is like sending your baby
out into the world, wondering if it will make it to the other side.
What can you do to ensure delivery?

One method is to outsource your email to a service provider. This is
recommended for people sending lots of email. Check their reputation.
They might be being blocked too. See if they are participating in our
program or one of the others. See if their IP address is blacklisted
at rbls.org. Check your own IP address too.

If you must use your own  server, beware that if your ISP is hosting
spammers and won't deal with them, the entire ISP might get
blacklisted through no fault of your own. So then you may have to
switch your ISP--there's no other solution if your ISP doesn't clean
their act up.

Get your header information accurate and complete. Make sure your IP
address matches your domain. Don't use a nonexistent "From:"
address--that's spoofing, and it makes you look like a spammer.

Set up reverse DNS so your IP will resolve your domain name. DNS is
like directory assistance. Forward DNS takes a domain and finds the IP
address. Reverse goes the other way. Your ISP has to set that up for
you. And now ISPs do reverse lookup because spammers do a lot of
spoofing.

Publish authentication records like SPF and Domain Keys.

Doing these things makes it look like you're doing the right thing.
Kind of like displaying good manners, even if it doesn't always work.

If you're a big emailer, develop a personal relationship with  all of
the ISPs to which you send an appreciable amount of email. It's almost
impossible to get good responses from you're the ISPs without a
personal relationship. Many volume senders have a full-time ISP
relations person.

You really need to be aware of things that can trip a spam filter, and
they are legion.

Audience Comment: Always include a return path header for bounce handling.

You can also test your emails. Send a draft through a content checker,
or send it to yourself.

A lot of ISPs run Spam Assassin on the outbound mail server, so your
email might never even get past the gate--it won't even reach the
recipient's spam folder.

Text or HTML? Going to text sacrifices your data on click-through
rates that come with HTML, so it's scary for some.

Tell your recipients to whitelist your address! That's important
because some people never check their spam folders.

For commercial email: How you build your mailing list affects your
deliverability. You need to prove that recipients gave you permission
to send them email. The gold standard for this is double opt-in, where
you don't put someone on your mailing list unless they specifically
responded "yes" to your request to opt them in.

Just providing opt out isn't good enough. Some businesses
automatically opt you in, and then offer opt-out. It's perfectly legal
and some big companies do it that way.
You  need to be able to show opt-in information; if you don't, and
just go with opt-out, it'll get you into trouble. It's not worth it.

Antispammers have taught users not to unsubscribe from spam. So
instead everyone clicks the "Spam" button instead to report it. Now
we're retraining people to unsubscribe. Fortunately, ISPs set up
feedback loops so that when someone clicks you as spam you get
notified. Some ISPs even click your unsubscribe link for you.

When someone signs up with us for accreditation, we require feedback
loops.

Important to remove email addresses from your lists that bounce.

Backscatter:
A spammer spoofs your email address so you get all the bounce
messages. This is because spammers don't clean their lists.
Backscatter can be enough to crash smaller servers. It's a pain, but
it won't get you in trouble. You have to have your coder find whatever
is unique about the backscatter and set up a filter based on that. Of
course you don't want to block the whole ISP.

A year ago I could never say this: We outsourced our own spam
filtering to Postini. They have really turned around from their
earlier reputation of being unresponsive to senders, and I can highly
recommend them now. Their service is well worth it. This way you
outsource your spam filtering: all your mail goes to directly to
Postini first (you set up your MX record to handle that).

People actually sign up antispammers for mailing lists and that gets
them blacklisted.

Audience Comment: Disgruntled employees might opt in their old boss to
a mailing list.

Closed-loop (double) opt-in will prevent that by sending a
confirmation email before really signing you up. That verifies that
the email address  is owned by someone who wants to opt in. This is
what ISPs are looking for. They want to see the confirmation emails or
logs showing click-throughs on subscribe links.

If you send out a newsletter that requires a fee, that's another way
to verify confirmation--someone paid to be on your list. Always try to
send a confirmation message.

Some older lists are legitimate but were built before confirmed opt-in
existed. So you might have to reconfirm your legacy lists. The trick
is to make your message really compelling and split your list. Offer
an incentive for reconfirming; those that don't reconfirm you can
eventually drop. An incentive might be something like a free subscription.

Be CAN-SPAM compliant, but don't say it in your emails.

Don't try to "game" the spam filters by fussing with headers and
servers--it just makes you look like a spammer.

So email deliverability problems is a big issue and everyone has it.
Watch your dos and don'ts, and consider using an email service
provider--that can take a great weight off your shoulders.

And remember: Filters don't know the difference between "looks like
spam" and "is spam."

------------------------

QUESTIONS and ANSWERS


Q: Is there anything wrong with  using a complex email address with a
number at the end?
A: A lot of spammers use those complex addresses with numbers and
stuff. There's no rule per se, but you might trigger it somewhere.
Monitor your own email deliverability. Service providers can do this
for you. Or open up a bunch of free email accounts – like at Yahoo and
Hotmail and AOL, and see if your mail gets there.

Q: SpamCop blacklisted me because we got some backscatter and
bouncing. I want to keep track of bouncing and inform my customers
that their emails didn't make it someplace.
A: Not a big piece of the problem. ISPs know that spammers will spoof
your email address and cause backscatter.  Most of them won't hold it
against you.

That said, it's important to bear in mind that ISPs do not have to
accept your email, so  if something you are doing is causing a problem
then you just gotta do what they want.

Q: How do I avoid people mistaking my emails as phishing attacks?
A: Don't send IP addresses and make sure your links are normal. This
has been a big problem for financial institutions. The average end
user can't tell phish from legit. So just make sure you don't look
like those phishing emails you receive. You choose not to provide
click-through links--instead provide text instructions that tell
customers to go and log in to their accounts.

Q: How about return-path certification logos?
A: No one thing will kill you. Even we have to be careful with our own
accredited mailings because local spam filters can catch them after
they pass the ISP. Just be careful.

Q; Email postage? This could save ISPs lots of money.
A: That concept has met lots of resistance. Email is supposed to be
free. But how would an ISP know that postage was paid anyway? Spammers
could spoof that too. Of course, senders pay our company to ensure
that their mail gets through. So that's not terribly different from
the postage idea.

Q: Are there any ways of fixing this really screwed up email system?
A: We are testing a system that does an end run around ISPs and all
spam filters, and delivers email directly to a user's in-box. Check it
out at mailflipz.com. It's RSS based: it pulls email instead of
pushing it. Works great, but requires the user and sender to sign up.

Q: How about mass adoption of certification (publishing authentication)?
A: SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is happening. But it's just one
indicator that you're doing the right thing. You can't satisfy every
filter out there.

Q: Do filters monitor your email volume?
A: Some ISPs will look at weight limits. It hasn't been a big issue.
But if you bring a new IP address on line, be careful to use it slowly
at first to build its reputation--mass emails right off the bat won't
help , in fact they'll likely get the mail coming from that IP address
blocked.

Q: Can we have better laws?
A: CAN-SPAM is an opt-out law. Even places with tighter laws can't do
much. Spam gets routed all over. We have always said that it takes a
3-prong approach:  LAWS, TECHNOLOGY (filters), and USER EDUCATION.
That last one we've really fallen down on. That's the problem. People
buy stuff through spam. Until we educate the masses to not click
through, it's going to remain a big problem.

Q: What is some good email software?
A: Most of the Mac OS apps are great. I use Mail.app. For the greatest
security we recommend a Mac because it's a whole lot safer. If you're
running a PC you're just asking for it right now.

Audience Comment: Cloudmark service is based on how many people are
reporting back--it's good if you've got a PC.

PLEASE NOTE: The next meeting will be Wednesday July 2nd.  It is not
on our "usual" second Tuesday of the odd month.

Just a quick reminder.   We hope to see you there.

JZ

>>>>>>
The Wednesday, July 2nd meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users
Group (RMIUG) will discuss "The Unintended Consequence of the Spam
Wars:  Why Your Email Isn't Getting Delivered"

We all know spam.  We all hate spam.  It clutters our inbox, offends
us (do I really need to see another Viagra ad), and is just a pain in
the neck.  Some researchers have estimated that every 24 hours, 100
billion spam messages are sent.  That's 100 billion useless emails
every day.  Ferris Research estimates that the lost productivity costs
businesses $100 billion worldwide, of which $35 billion is in the USA
alone.  I think we can all agree that if we could obliterate it
completely we would.

While obliterating is probably impossible we sure are more or less
succeeding.  With a litany of cool-named products like Spam Assassin,
Spam Eater and Spam Agent, we are starting to see a decrease in spam's
growth rate.  2007 saw an increase of spam of about 10% down from a
53% the year before that and over 100% the year before that. Using
fancy algorithms and other methods, these products "read" your email
and determine whether the email is truly worthy of your attention.
While certainly not perfect, they are helping to reduce the clutter.

But are they doing their jobs "too" well?  Increasingly people are
finding that critical emails are lost in their "spam" folders because
some attributes of these legitimate communications fail the algorithm.
   Even if we win the battle against spam, are we ultimately going to
lose the war.

During the next meeting, we will bring in a guest speaker to discuss
this critical issue:
Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. (amitchell@...) Anne  is the CEO and
President of the Institute of Spam and Internet Public Policy.
Mitchell brings with her nearly 10 years of experience in the Internet
and email industries, both from the legal and technical side. Mitchell
was the Director of Legal and Public Affairs for Mail Abuse Prevention
Systems (MAPS), the original anti-spam blacklist. Following her time
at MAPS, Mitchell was co-founder and CEO of Habeas, the first of the
email reputation services.

Links:
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy: http://isipp.com


The meeting is Wednesday, July 2nd from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional
6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting
will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at
1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder
Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive west
towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the foothills.
NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving directions,
go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila!
Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point
you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off the
lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass the
hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/


*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

PLEASE NOTE: The next meeting will be Wednesday July 2nd.  It is not
on our "usual" second Tuesday of the odd month.

The Wednesday, July 2nd meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users
Group (RMIUG) will discuss "The Unintended Consequence of the Spam
Wars:  Why Your Email Isn't Getting Delivered"

We all know spam.  We all hate spam.  It clutters our inbox, offends
us (do I really need to see another Viagra ad), and is just a pain in
the neck.  Some researchers have estimated that every 24 hours, 100
billion spam messages are sent.  That's 100 billion useless emails
every day.  Ferris Research estimates that the lost productivity costs
businesses $100 billion worldwide, of which $35 billion is in the USA
alone.  I think we can all agree that if we could obliterate it
completely we would.

While obliterating is probably impossible we sure are more or less
succeeding.  With a litany of cool-named products like Spam Assassin,
Spam Eater and Spam Agent, we are starting to see a decrease in spam's
growth rate.  2007 saw an increase of spam of about 10% down from a
53% the year before that and over 100% the year before that. Using
fancy algorithms and other methods, these products "read" your email
and determine whether the email is truly worthy of your attention.
While certainly not perfect, they are helping to reduce the clutter.

But are they doing their jobs "too" well?  Increasingly people are
finding that critical emails are lost in their "spam" folders because
some attributes of these legitimate communications fail the algorithm.
   Even if we win the battle against spam, are we ultimately going to
lose the war.

During the next meeting, we will bring in a guest speaker to discuss
this critical issue:
Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. (amitchell@...) Anne  is the CEO and
President of the Institute of Spam and Internet Public Policy.
Mitchell brings with her nearly 10 years of experience in the Internet
and email industries, both from the legal and technical side. Mitchell
was the Director of Legal and Public Affairs for Mail Abuse Prevention
Systems (MAPS), the original anti-spam blacklist. Following her time
at MAPS, Mitchell was co-founder and CEO of Habeas, the first of the
email reputation services.

Links:
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy: http://isipp.com


The meeting is Wednesday, July 2nd from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional
6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting
will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at
1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder
Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive west
towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the foothills.
NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving directions,
go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila!
Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point
you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off the
lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass the
hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/


*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

PLEASE NOTE: The next meeting will be Wednesday July 2nd.  It is not
on our "usual" second Tuesday of the odd month.

The Tuesday, May 13th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users
Group (RMIUG) will discuss "The Unintended Consequence of the Spam
Wars:  Why Your Email Isn't Getting
Delivered"

More details coming soon...

JZ

The meeting is Wednesday, Jul 2nd from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional
6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting
will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at
1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder
Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive west
towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the foothills.
NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving directions,
go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), click on Driving
Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila!
Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point
you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off the
lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass the
hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough
room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to
predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is
always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more
attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional people into
the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical
talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and
Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages
for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company
that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG
meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related
Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be
displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also
reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/


*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=