I'm now the community manager for doterati!

doterati, Central Florida's interactive marketing, media and technology association, recently held their 2009 board elections.

I'm happy to say that I was elected community director! This is a very exciting position for me as it is inline with some career goals that I have at MindComet.

You can read the MindComet press release here.

TweetBacks by Dan Zarrella is flawed

Dan Zarrella has been hard at work with a service called TweetBacks. Essentially, it searches the Twitter public timeline for the URL of the page that it is installed on. Based on the amount of chatter on the web, this product has proved to be very popular.

There are currently two ways that you can use his implementation; One is a hosted version and the other is a non-hosted version as a word-press plugin.

Both versions are flawed.

Hosted version - I'll be blunt. I don't see the logic in making this a hosted service. For one, his infrastructure costs escalate as the popularity of the tool increases. However, if he wants to spend the money, more power to him. But this is not where the issue lies. The real issue with this, is that Dan has created a single point that can be a bottle neck to hundreds, and as the service grows, thousands of blogs. And as I write this, users of the hosted version are reporting that it significantly slows down page loads on their blogs. Apparently demand for the service is growing faster than he can scale his hosting infrastructure. Coming from a strong systems engineering background, it is my opinion, that unless you must absolutely keep something central, then you should always look at methods for distributing application load.

Now, there has been alot of chatter about the page load issues on Dan's blog, and Dan has responded with a second version that users can self-host. Kudos to Dan for listening to his readers and responding. However, I think he missed the mark in his response. His new version doesn't use any javascript in implementation. It is a pure PHP solution.

What's the problem with that?

Well, the problem lies with rate limiting on the Twitter API. According to the Twitter API docs, requests are limited to "100 requests per 60 sixty minute time period, starting from their first request". This is tracked by IP for unauthenticated requests. So basically, if you use his PHP solution to display TweetBacks on your blog, all requests to the API will come from your server IP. This could be a problem for blogs with high traffic.

Enter Quak Bak.

Based on the two major flaws with TweetBacks, I've released my own version called Quak Bak (formerly known as TweetBackRedux).

My implementation is self-hosted and all requests to the Twitter API are done from the clients browser via AJAX. As of version 0.2, it installs in three easy steps. All you need is a Unix server with PHP4 or greater and cURL.

Who spoke to me in 2008?

Seth Godin gave some poignant advice on the number one secret to a great blog.

Most blogs that earned my subscription did so because they they resonate with me. The message and content speaks to me.

Those that don't, usually get deleted. No sense cluttering up the reader with noise from tribes in which I don't belong.

So who spoke to me in 2008? I won't name them all, but I present the stars here.

BTW, if you have any suggestions for me, please share.

Seth's Blog - Seriously, I really dig what this guy has to say and am in awe with the manner in which he goes about it. Can Seth Godin be any better of a story teller? This blog speaks to me. It is one of the most pragmatic philosophies of marketing that I've read.

Chris Brogan - This guy gets it and is not afraid to share it. And from what I can tell, he's a real class act. How do I know? About a month ago, I was at a Tweet-up in Orlando, which I specifically attended because I knew some heavy hitters would also be there. Chris actually walked by me, but I didn't introduce myself, because I didn't want to be a nuisance. Then, I see this post on his blog the very next day. Like I said, class act (and possibly clairvoyant).

Michael Ruhlman - Great blog. It's subject is culinary, but it isn't recipe or technique focused per se. Instead, it's part informational, parts tips, but mostly the enertaining musings of this culinary hero. One of my favorite culinary blogs.

Foodie at fifteen - He's actually sixteen now, but props to Nick for this very honest and passionate blog. It's a fun read and he knows his stuff. He's also caught the attention of more than a few brilliant culinary minds. This kid is going far.

Bob Del Grosso - His blog is called A Hunger Artist. Who can't love a food blog named after a Kafka story about a guy who starves himself? Bob, who is or was an instructor at CIA, lives on a farm, butchers his own meat and makes his own salumi. Could life get any better than that?