Philly Geek Dinner is Wednesday Night (September 3rd, 7pm)

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I finally went for a bike ride to see Privé in person. What I found was better than imagined, even after reading Michael Klein’s enticing description and having high expectations.

During my drop-in visit I met Kevin Landon, who abandoned a staff meeting to give me a tour (the video below doesn’t do the restaurant any justice, the place is fabulous). From talking with Kevin I learned Privé opened only two weeks ago and has been doing wonderful.

We’ll be one of the first groups there, and probably the first blog-heavy group. He showed me around and I got to see the impeccable cut white stone walls, attractive furniture, sleek lines and spotlit mural. He promises the food to be as good or better than the looks.

And he’s probably right. They’ve hired the young Peter Karapanagiotis, 23, who performed as saute-saucier at Buddakan as well as Brasserie Perrier. It’s going to be a real treat to experience his work while he’s fresh and the restaurant is brand-spankin’-new.

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Posted in Bicycling, Facebook, Geek Dinner, Philadelphia, Podcasting, Social Networking

100 Miles Stronger w/ Nike+

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Today I hit 100 miles of running with Nike+. It shows how poorly I’ve been keeping up with running (Galina is in to 200+ now). It’s a nice feature they offer… Rewards keep participants interested. I’d still like to see more non-flash integration with blogs.

The stats for my first hundred with Nike+:

  • 26 runs
  • 3.81 miles per run
  • Average pace of 7’24”

I’m still tracking with both Nike+ (today’s) and Nokia SportsTracker (today’s). The SportsTracker, with GPS, is slightly more interesting because it maps your progress while on the run and offers live mapping. I’d still like to have SportsTracker integrated in a blog – it’s a pain to share otherwise.

Something else of interest during today’s run… Everyone on the trail was in a great mood! I offered, “Good Morning!” to eight people and received eight positive responses. In Philadelphia this is a first. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s a fluke. But either way, it’s awesome to return from vacation with a strong positive vibe.

Good Morning!

Posted in Blogging, GPS, Life Streaming, Nike+, Nokia, Running, SportsTracker

Annoying Twitter Spam

Posted on by Sol Young with 6 Comments

It seems like half of the spam I’m getting on Twitter is from a certain six figure income dot com domain (I won’t dignify their site with a link). My complaint about it in a tweet yesterday hit a nerve in quite a few people.

I’m pretty sure it’s one person, sitting in a basement somewhere, who is mass creating accounts and running some mass following scripts.

This is very easy and completely doable by a single person (then annoys thousands). There isn’t a way to filter followers with such criteria, but @chadspacey put a great idea up on Flickr. It’d take a lot of work on the back end, but is a simple and community based approach, a-la craigslist.

Posted in Uncategorized

Easy way for spammers to follow more than 2,000 on Twitter (and get better results)

Posted on by Sol Young with 3 Comments

The 2,000 follower limit, it would seem, was put in place to prevent mass following and spam on Twitter. This was pretty frustrating for me since I fell in to their beyond-the-limit zone (I followed over 6,000 people because I loved the information, but couldn’t add any more).

I’m not complaining too much, as I’m enjoying the more traditional use of my Twitter account for now, but this is a ridiculously short-sighted fix.

I haven’t seen much attention drawn to the following facts (pun wasn’t intended):

  1. People are more likely to recipricate a follow request from someone with a low following/friend count.
  2. There isn’t a legitimate way to prevent someone from having multiple Twitter accounts (accounts are tied to email addresses).
  3. The Twitter API limits are based on account, not where the call is coming from (one server can make many requests on behalf of other accounts).

From the above simple observations, one can see the easy way to follow an unlimited number of people.

  1. Create a large number of accounts.
  2. Follow a smaller number of people with each account (you’ll have better reciprocation).
  3. Follow a lot of people (the API limitations will apply per account, so your follows-per-hour will actually be quite large).

The people running Twitter are great. They’re really trying to do the right thing. So maybe I’m completely wrong when I anticipate the above and say that this looks like a Facebook move. Facebook’s 5,000 friend limit works for Facebook. Facebook’s API is advanced and robust and complicated enough to not get terribly nailed by multi-account mass spam following.

Additionally, the information load on Facebook is different. You get a clear picture of who a person is that is friending you. You’re given enough information to make a decision. On Twitter, this isn’t the case.

So what’s going to happen?

  1. Spammers are already adapting to the limitation, as described above.
  2. Tweeple will stop trusting low follow-count users (do you trust an eBay user without feedback?)
  3. Twitter’s servers will still be inundated and over capacity.

I blame it on Scoble…

Posted in Architecture, Facebook, Micro-blogging, Microblogging, Twitter