Tag Archives: twitter

VMworld – Introducing the Software-Defined 7

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With VMworld a week away, I wanted to start talking about the goings on at the event and how I will be contributing to the community.  This year, we have seven EMC Elect Social Champions (also known as the “Software Defined 7”) who will be attending VMworld and offering live coverage of the event.  I am honored to be one of those members this year and will be your goto contact for EMC party related information (more onthat later) as well as taking photos of the entire show.

This year, EMC has several break out sessions, as well as a large double decker booth on the show floor, hands on labs, and a customer appreciation event.  A full list of all the events can be found here.  A member of the software defined seven has volunteered to be the social champion for a break out session or event and will be your contact for any questions as well as blogging & tweeting the content from the session.  They will become the goto person for asking questions during the event wether you are attending or playing the home game.

 

For those of you who cannot attend, but want to stay up to date on all things EMC at VMworld, i encourage you to visit the Virtual Pass page on ECN where we have everything EMC is doing all in one space.  There is even a discussion thread to talk about the show (thanks to a suggestion from Luigi).

Twitter, Tragedy, and our Finest Hour

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By now I’m sure most (if not all) of you have heard about the tragic events that occurred during yesterday’s running of the Boston Marathon.  Like most of the world, I learned of the news through social media.  My twitter timeline was flooding so fast I could not keep up.  Within seconds, the world was updated with news of the explosion, 140 characters at a time.  And as the news spread, others began to chime in.

While some were quick to point fingers and call it a “terrorist attack”, the most impactful messages were those of prayer, hope, and help and they seemed to outnumber the calls for hate and retaliation by 1000:1.

One of the biggest advantages of living in this digital age was how quickly we were able to check on those we love and care about.  My employer (EMC) was a large sponsor of the race.  Not only did we have people covering the race, but we also had coworkers running in it.  It was the power of twitter and my network of friends that let me know that everyone was safe and accounted for.

For those who were running in the race who we could not reach, technology provided us with a glimmer of hope in the form of tracking the racers bibs.  My friend Matt Brender put out a message of hope directing people to check on racers they know and see where they last checked in.

The link and message he shared was picked up by many and is a perfect example of how the online community can come together to help one and other.

With facts, rumors, and educated guesses flying around, all the news agencies were quick to get the story out, and not all of them got it right.  What surprised me the most was that the most credible news updates came from the hacker collective Anonymous.  They were quick to put out the message of ongoing activity, numbers to call, and facts (instead of conjecture) as they unfolded.

As the sun started to set and the dust began to settle, the messages switched to that of hope.  A Google doc was created full of people around the area willing to help shelter anyone that had been displaced by the days events.  People were willing to open up their homes in a showing of solidarity.  If anything, yesterday made the city of Boston and the nation stronger and why I believe this was our finest hour.

The Google+ Project: Fad, Fame, or Fiction?

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It has been less than a week since the Google+ Pilot launched and already people are getting hooked. Blog posts have popped up all over the place comparing this to Facebook, MySpace, and even Google wave. I will be doing none of that since I have never used any of those services.

If you are lucky enough to get into Google+ (and if you did, I hope you have me in your circle), you will notice the “less is more” style of layout. It a very simple 3 column approach. On the left you have your different circles (more on that later) and your chat. On the right you have, contacts you know, suggested contacts, and the ability to start a hangout (again more on these things later). The middle is your stream, and depending on who you are following, it can get a little crazy at times.

Google+ breaks down your connections into circles. As far as I know, you can have as many circles as you want. This allows you to group your friends and coworkers into different sections and restrict your posts. Adding a person to a circle is a simple drag and drop action. With this all setup, I can post something only to my close friends or family, without it going to everyone I know at work with. This provides a great amount of flexibility, and of course you can always post to all your circles or make something public for everyone to see. Like twitter, adding someone to a circle does not require an approval, however if they don’t have you in their circle, you won’t see any of the non-public posts. Also like twitter (or rather tweet deck), tagging someone in a post is as simple as typing a ‘+’ or ‘@’ and then typing out their name.

Photos are handled by Picasa, which should come as no surprise since it’s owned by Google. Depending on how many photos you have in an album, Google+ will arrange them in a nice mosaic as seen in the picture to the side. Photos can be included into posts in your stream and other Google+ members can be tagged as well as leave comments. This all seems like very standard stuff, and it is, but Google’s presentation seems to be very slick and is appealing to me.

The hangout is a way for members of Google+ to communicate through video chat. Hangouts, just like posts, are controlled by circles, so you only invite those you want. The video is all done through flash but the quality isn’t as good as Skype yet. What it does bring to the table is a web based video experience that allows for multiple people to talk together in a group, this feature is something Skype makes you pay for.

The other major section is Sparks. This is a sort of themed subscription area. You can use it to find public posts related to any sort of topic you search for. It will then create a stream filled with posts, stories /articles, YouTube videos, and other things that Google thinks is related to your inquiry. I haven’t played around too much with this feature yet because there aren’t a lot of public posts (this is expected in a limited field trial), but I expect this feature to be used a lot more in the future.

Google has also included an android app for this. This allows you to see your stream, manage your circles, make posts, and upload your photos directly from your phone. A word of warning, when you first install the app, it’s going to ask you to auto publish every photo you take. I suggest you say no to this. The app has the same simple UI that the webpage does, though not as feature rich. Clicking on someone’s name in a post does nothing at this point, where in the web version you can find info about them. I would like to see an iPad app as the mobile web interface is even more lacking.

With all these features, there are still a lot of kinks to be worked out. There seems to be no integration with anything non Google at the moment. I would love to see a post to twitter option, or a WordPress plugin to post to Google+. The task bar at the top will launch a new window when you click on anything outside of Google+ and then another one to go back in. At one point I had 7 windows of Google+ opened because of this. The hangout does not handle widescreen cameras that well. The image of a friend was squished / stretched to match the standard aspect ratio.

So how does one get invited to Google+? It’s simple, you need to know someone. On the first night, Google opened up invites to anyone a member chose. There was a simple button to include an email address. This however disappeared in several hours, but a second method has been discovered. This is detailed in a blog post by Susan Beebe and I have used it to invite several people. If you want me to try and invite you, leave your email address in the comments.

So, if you couldn’t tell, I like the service. I think it still has a way to go, but I’m told that Facebook and others started off small too. It has some great features and has the Google branding to help make it a great competitor. At this point only time will tell weather this is here to stay, or goes the way of Wave.

Greetings and salutations!

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Welcome to Thulin’ Around.  This is my first self-registered domain and my first major blog.  Many of you may already know me from various message boards and twitter.  You can come to expect a variety of different subjects on this blog including technology, automotive, photography, movies, current events, travel, or whatever is on my mind.

So why “Thulin’ Around”?  To answer that, I have to give credit to Koset Surakomol.  He suggested it as part of an impromptu twitter contest.  As you know, my name is Sean Thulin (pronounced “too lean”) and when you say the domain name fast, it sounds like “tooling”.  After tossing the name around in my head for about an hour, I thought it would be a perfect fit for a blog that covers so many different and unrelated subjects.  Koset is a Advisory Technical Consultant with Greenplum (a subsidiary of EMC2) and collector of watches and fast cars.  If you’re not already following him on twitter, you should be.

I also want to give thanks to Luigi Danakos.  He helped me register this domain and guided me through the WordPress setup.  As this is my first blog an my first post, do expect things to change around here before I get it into final form.  With that being said, I hope you enjoy my posts over the next months and years.