sean.blog

While hiking today I noticed something bright off in the distance.  I left the trail and after some walking found these wild flowers, growing over a decent sized area.  Such a nice find :).

Ah, old floppies, these bring back memories :)

Thanks to the popularity of social networking platforms, up-to-date contact information is only a few clicks away.  But for iPhone users, digging through social networking applications or using the iPhone web browser to get a contact phone number can become tedious.  The Mac Address Book, and its syncing capability with the iPhone offer a great alternative.  I’ve found a few tricks and tools to sync Facebook and Linkedin to my Mac Address Book, and from there to my iPhone:

1. Facebook Phonebook Exporter Greasemonkey script: This script will export phone numbers from a Facebook friend list.  WARNING: This script currently uses a remote service to process contact information.  So unless you plan to host the web app portion on your own server (code available on github), you will be sending some potentially private information to a remote server.  Instructions on how to use this script are available.

2. Linkedin VCF file export: Linkedin offers VCF exporting of all contacts through the standard web interface.

3. AddressBook Sync: This Mac app will synchronize Facebook and Address Book contact pictures, birthdays and locations.

After running these tools, the Address Book had a few duplicates, and more then a few contacts that needed minor editing (usually involving moving firstnames and lastnames to their respective fields).  Overall this is a huge time saver for a Mac/iPhone user since all contact information is now in one easy to access place.

Rain on a hot virginia summer night.

I’ve Graduated, and I’m a freshly minted MBA!

I began the MBA program with the goal of learning everything I could.  Two very challenging years later, I can say I succeeded.  To many an MBA program has certain connotations, often shaped by mass media portrayals of business school programs, and those who choose to attend them.  Having finished the program I can promise anyone entering an MBA program that you will not find a simple path to a well paying yet non-challenging job.  Golf is not the official pastime.  Actually, I don’t know if I really had any hobbies during the last two years.  Mostly I studied and slept 5 hours a night.

In the end, the MBA program and my classmates gave me a new perspective on the markets, people’s behaviour and their impact on the world around us.  To my teachers and my classmates, from almost every part of the world, I would like to say: “Thank you for changing the way I see the world around me.”

As Twitter grows, and Facebook continues adding features to imitate the platform, many are wondering what the future revisions of the Twitter platform will look like.  I’m not one to attempt to predict the future, history has shown that rarely yields great results.  But based on Twitter’s market position, the expansion of Facebook, and the position of other minor players in related markets I believe there’s a lot of opportunity to grow the functionality of the Twitter platform, while maintaining the simple and intuitive user experience.

As Friendfeed users know all too well, the added features of Friendfeed and similar microblogging services offer a much richer media experience then that offered by more spartan services such as Twitter.  Adding functionality to Twitter through media sharing and dedicated URL storage fields will enrich the twitter user experience while matching the functionality offered by Facebook.

URL storage in dedicated fields will let users write full 140 character messages and remove the need for external URL shortening services.  These services may confuse new users and beyond click tracking offer very little added value.  A twitter operated shortening service can be used for SMS users, or one of the many external services can be used.

Media sharing is a great feature that could allow Twitter to grow its functionality while matching some of the useful features offered by Facebook.  A partnership could work well, allowing Twitter to concentrate on delivery a great microblogging experience while using a service like Picasa Web to share pictures.  This will allow Twitter to avoid the huge infrastructure costs that Facebook is now facing, while letting users share higher resolution pictures.  The facial recognition features of Picasa Web will make everyone’s life easier, as anyone who’s ever uploaded 50 pictures to Facebook and had the daunting task of tagging them will tell you.  Video sharing partnerships with YouTube or Vimeo could add more features while limiting Twitters infrastructure and development costs.