Using Profile Pics Elsewhere

UPDATE: Added section on Google+ profile pics

---

Just discovered a couple useful tips for embedding your twitter or Facebook profile pictures elsewhere.  Apparently, you can use the APIs to pull the images out.

For Facebook: http://graph.facebook.com/<username>/picture (where <username> is the username of the Facebook user whose profile picture you want to display) will display that user's current profile picture.  That URL doesn't even have to be updated when the user changes his/her profile picture.
For example:


For twitter: http://api.twitter.com/1/users/profile_image/<username> (where <username> is the username of the twitter user whose profile picture you want to display) will display that user's current profile picture.
For example:


Turns out Google+ also has a way of doing it: https://s2.googleusercontent.com/s2/photos/profile/{id} (where {id} is the big long ID number that G+ assigns to each user).  Don't forget to add some height and width attributes to your img tag as the profile pic from G+ can be fairly large.
For example:


I know, my profile pictures aren't that interesting, but that's only because we recently had professional photos done and it made sense to use one of them as both my Facebook and twitter profile pictures (notice the are actually different given the size restrictions on each service).  As far as I know, LinkedIn doesn't have anything quite as easy as this.  You have to make two calls to get the data: one using your own LinkedIn credentials to make sure you have permission to view the photo, then another to actually call the photo.  Kinda sucks if you ask me.  Maybe they'll wise up.

Fighting SOPA and PIPA

SOPA and PIPA are two pieces of legislation aimed at decreasing the amount of illegal piracy that happens on the internet.  They could, if passed in their current version, grant the government powers that could cause problems for legitimate web sites.  I can't say it much better than Wikipedia and Google.  Read the information available before making any decision.

One thing I can do is help spread the message.  If you have a Twitter account and live in Texas, the following links will tweet a message to the Texas congressmen and women asking them to represent their constituents by opposing SOPA/PIPA.

Brought the bill to the house:
Lamar Smith

Texan representatives on Twitter:
Joe Barton
Kevin Brady
Michael Burgess
John Culberson
John Carter
John Cornyn
Henry Cuellar
Quico Canseco
Lloyd Doggett
Bill Flores
Kay Granger
Gene Green
Charlie Gonzalez
Louie Gohmert
Al Green
Ruben Hinojosa
Kay Hutchison
Jeb Hensarling
Sheila Jackson Lee
Eddie Johnson
Michael McCaul
Kenny Marchant
Randy Neugebauer
Pete Olson
Ron Paul
Ted Poe
Silver Reyes
Pete Sessions

Automatically Tweeting with a QR Code

To continue with my QR fever, I've been looking into what can be easily automated using QR codes.

Twitter
The first thing I found is how to tweet from a QR.  This is fairly easy since any QR can contain a URL; So, the only thing needed is a URL that will tweet.  A quick search on the web revealed this.

http://twitter.com/home?status=insert%20your%20message%20here

Use these codes for special characters – (%20 is a space) (%40 is @) (%25 is #) (More here).  Given that, you could even include a mention, a hash tag, or even a tiny url.  I'm trying to figure out how to include a location in a tweet, but that's proving more difficult.  If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know.  Once you have the text, you can put it into the QR code generator on Google's chart API.

Facebook
The next thing I found is how to make a QR code to get someone to Facebook.  Unfortunately, there's not really an easy way to get people to 'like' something on Facebook by just scanning the code.  What you can do is point people to your Facebook page (or to any URL really) and hope they like it from there.  One thing you can do is point them directly to a 'like' page within Facebook.  This is accomplished by creating a URL like this:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://stuart.weenig.com

Click on the link above to see what this looks like.  You can replace the href=http://stuart.weenig.com with your own URL (like href=http://www.facebook.com/NetQoS).  This will bring up a very small like button that the user can then click on.  The nice thing about this is that if they're already logged into Facebook in their browser, they'll get a richer experience.

LinkedIn
Turns out sharing something to LinkedIn is pretty easy.  I used the qr generator at QR Stuff to figure out the link:

http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http%3A//stuart.weenig.com


I thought it was weird that the colon needed to be translated but that the forward slashes did not.  If you find that you need it, the URL code for a forward slash is %2F.  As you can see by clicking on the link above, the forward slashes do not need to be encoded for the share to work.

Locations
My next goal will be to figure out how to enable location based check-ins through Facebook and twitter.  If anyone already knows how to do that, let me know.

And Google+ Takes an Astounding Hit!

Well, the battle between G+ and Facebook is heating up.  Google+ exploded onto the scene with some wonderful new features that instantly propelled it into the ring with heavyweight social networking champion Facebook.  Circles and meetup were desperately needed in a social world where people were limiting what they did on other social networks because of our own dual sided nature.  I only had social friends on Facebook and all my professional connections were on LinkedIn.  I only recently added twitter where I've been mostly posting from my professional life.  Everyone had this problem, so Google stepped up and presented an elegant solution: circles.
Now with G+ you could post something and choose which circle of friends would see that post.  You could put all your professional friends in one circle, your social friends in another, and even make a closer circle just consisting of family and close friends.  It was a stroke of genius on Google's part.  Facebook took a huge uppercut to the jaw right after the round started.
Facebook floundered, modified the chat interface, promised an HTML5 based iOS app, and make a couple other small changes.  But Facebook wasn't out of the game yet.

Google+ and how it will change the world (or not)

This post is not much more than a place holder.  I got my G+ account already (gplus.to/sweenig), but i haven't spent enough time to figure out how or if it will change the world.  I promise it will come.

Facebook account versus Facebook pages

In the last little while, i've received friend requests from 'people' on facebook.  Really, the requests come from an organization like my local rock climbing club.  The account was setup by a person who is an officer of the club and wanted to get the club on facebook.  So, that person created a facebook account as if the group was an actual person.  It was then that i received the friend request.

For anyone trying to do this same kind of thing, don't do it!  Actually, don't do it that way.  Actual accounts are for real people not organizations.  If you have an organization and you want a presence on facebook, create a page.  The page can contain information about the group and has a wall.  Instead of friends, the page gets followers.  The page is administered initially by the person that created it.  The creator can then add officers that have varying levels of permission to do stuff on the page. 

I finally broke down and got twitter

In order to start syndicating myself a bit more, i've decided to finally get a twitter account.  I held out as long as i could.  Anyway, a friend of mine from the CA Endevor community sent me a how to on connecting your blog to your twitter account.  He also sent instructions on how to connect your blog to a facebook page, but i haven't tried that yet.  Anyway, here are the instructions (i've modified them slightly based on my experience):
Assumptions: You already have a twitter account.

1. Create a bit.ly (http://bit.ly/) account.
2. Find the bit.ly API key (found on the account settings page)
3. Create a twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com/) account.
4. Create a new feed using the RSS feed from your blog.
5. Under advanced settings, set it to include the title only.
6. Under advanced settings, make sure "post link" is selected.
7. Under advanced settings, select shorten link through bit.ly and use the 'bit.ly settings' menu to enter your user account and the API key from step 2.
8. Continue to step two of the feed creation and authenticate your twitter account.  This took a while because my IE settings were keeping things from happening.
9. Once you authenticate, your account should be available in the drop down box.  Make sure it's selected and continue.

That should be it.  You should see a new post on twitter with the title and link to your blog entry (it might only include the first one in the beginning, but should include every one after that).

How to synchronize your calendar and contacts everywhere

Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't do it sooner.  But i've just started using google to synchronize all my calendars and contacts into one place.  This can be difficult since I have a BlackBerry, an iPad, and a couple PCs at home.  Luckily, both my PCs at home are running Outlook, my personal pc running Outlook 2010 on Win7 and my company laptop running Outlook 2003 on WinXP.  I figured i'd share my method with anyone else in case anyone knows of an easier way of doing this.

First, let me define my requirements:

1. I want to sync my calendar and contacts across all four places.
2. I want the sync to be automatic.
3. I want the sync to be fairly regular, although it's not crucial that it synchronized every 10 seconds.  I'm ok with synchronization having a 10 minute lag.  It's just my calendar and contacts, they don't change that often.
4. I want to do this for free.

I looked into a few options for sharing calendars.  Microsoft has an option called web calendars, but it's not the same as synchronizing to a single calendar.  I finally stumbled upon Google's calendar sync app.  It runs on your desktop and synchronizes your primary calendar in outlook with your calendar on Google's servers.  My BB already synchronizes my calendar from my work PC to my BB, so that's already taken care of.  The only problem left was getting my Google calendar on my iPad.  Turns out, since iOS supports an exchange server connection, Google stepped in and made it so you can access your mail, contacts, and calendar via and exchange connection to m.google.com.  So, that solved it.  I now had one calendar on all my PCs and both my mobile devices.

Now for the contacts.  I've already mentioned that the iPad has an exchange connection to google and automatically synchronizes contacts.

I could synchronize my iPad with iTunes on my desktop and that would synchronize the contacts to outlook on my desktop.  However, I want this to be automatic.  I could probably use MobileMe to synchronize between the iPad and my desktop, but that costs money.  So, I found gcontactsynch.  GCS is a third party app that syncs outlook contacts with gmail contacts.  At first i had problems with Outlook thinking it was an unsecured program trying to access data, which in fact it is.  After allowing it a bunch of times, it started synchonizing without any prompts.  I wonder if i could use an exchange connection using the same settings as my iPad.  That would be more seamless and wouldn't involve a third party app.  Perhaps I'll try that sometime.

Google has a BB app called google sync that synchronizes calendar and contacts with the BB calendar and contacts.  I've already got the calendar synchronizing with my desktop, which synchronizes with my BB (now I'm rethinking that though since the calendar sync app would only run when my laptop is turned on).  So, all that's left is to get the contacts on my BB sync'd.  I could probably use google contact sync just like i did with my other desktop.  That would get the contacts on the desktop which would sync automatically with the contacts on my bb (through regular bb sync).  However, i'd prefer to use a google app over a third party app.  So, i'm using Google sync to synchronize the contacts to my BB which will get sync'd back to my desktop through bb sync.

So that takes care of everything.  I've got the same set of contacts and the same calendar on my phone, my iPad, and both my work and home computers.  I'm going to try uninstalling the calendar sync from my work PC and enable calendar sync'ing on my phone (which should also get the calendar to my desktop).  I'll post the results here.