KyleLibra.com

Serious question. I’m notoriously bad about making consistent updates on this blog (except for February where I posted 27/28 days). On my tumblr on the other hand I post all the time. Over the past fourteen months I’ve posted over 800 times, which comes out to 1.9 posts per day. I bring this up because this a question I’m faced with a lot. What makes people come back to a web site. Traditional thought would say consistently updating content, but blog vs. tumblr is proving that wrong for me. Maybe because original content (blog) vs. reposted content (tumblr) is far more important? I’m not sure.

Update: blog gets about 2x traffic than my tumblr for the curious

Facebook was followed by Twitter, which will be followed by Foursquare. Just remember when the only thing the mainstream media can talk about is foursquare. You heard it here first, it’s going to be huge.*

What does it do?
Foursquare is a mobile location based social networking application. What does that mean? It’s an application you run on a mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.), that allows you to alert your friends of your location. At this point, a lot of people are going to ask, “why would I want people to know where I am?” To those people I say this: think back to when you first heard about Twitter. You probably asked a similar question, but trust me this is actually a good idea. First of all on Foursquare you have considerably less “friends” than on Facebook or Twitter. The people you’re giving your location to are much closer friends. You also have the option to not broadcast your location when you check-in to a new location. Most people don’t use it to tell everyone they are grocery shopping or running errands. Instead it’s used to tell people about the social places you’re hanging out. Bars, restaurants, coffee shops and other places you would want friends to meet up with you.

What makes it so appealing?
There are several gaming aspects to Foursquare that make it incredibly addictive, but at it’s core is the location based awareness. Now that most smartphones are equipped with gps, the app can determine where you are in a city. There are a ton of useful functions for this. To name a few: finding specials nearby, locating friends nearby, exploring new places, and getting local recommendations.

The gaming aspects of Foursquare are what make it really addictive. First there is a weekly leader board. You earn points by checking in at locations. You can compete with everyone in the city, or just your friends for points and to see who can top the weekly leader board. Next are the badges. By doing different things you can unlock badges which are displayed on your profile. All of the badges are designed to keep you participating with the application. Finally, you can become mayor of a location if you are the person who has visited most in the past sixty days. Some businesses have even offered perks to mayors in an attempt increase business. Here is one example.

Why it will be a huge hit
Foursquare is going to be huge because of the convergance of location awareness, gaming element and integration with other social media sites. It’s not trying to compete against Twitter or Facebook, instead it uses those platforms to have it’s users promote what they are doing and get more people involved. To truly get an understanding of how fun and addictive Foursquare can be I recommend you try it out for yourself. To get the most out of it, find a bunch of friends to try it out with. While they are constantly expanding to new cities, you’re most likely out of luck if you live in a smaller metropolitan area.

*I started writing this before I’d tried out Gowalla, which might turn out to be even better, but for basically all the same reasons. Right now Foursquare is #1, but Gowalla is quickly gaining in popularity.

Since graduation I had pretty much forgotten about my alma mater’s school newspaper, The Rambler. Several weeks ago that changed. I received a call from one of the newspaper’s writers wanting to do an article about my involvement in the Fiesta Movement. The article itself isn’t bad, although they did misquote me and there is a huge typo*. You can read it for yourself right here. My issue is not with the article written about me. I was flattered that they wrote an article about me and that it ran on the front page no less.

My issue is with The Rambler itself. I found out the article had been published when a friend tweeted this. I went searching for The Rambler’s web site to read the article for myself. After reading the article itself and then spending about ten minutes browsing the rest of the web site and reading through a few of the articles I got to thinking. The conclusion I came to is simple: The Rambler could and should be doing a lot better, not only in terms of content, but delivery.

The following is a collection of my thoughts on something that could stand to be improved. This is meant as constructive criticism, although it will probably come off as the bitter ramblings of an alumnus. Either way I’m ok with it.

Problem 1: The Web Address
If you want to be taken seriously you need to register a top level domain, not transyrambler.wordpress.com. So many things would be better than this. A domain name and hosting cost next to nothing. A domain name at the most is $10 a year, but some hosts will throw it in for free if you sign up for extended hosting. My host has a hosting package which would more than cover the traffic the online edition of The Rambler for a mere $7 a month. With tuition now topping $25,000 at Transylvania I would hope the school newspaper would have enough in it’s budget to cover these expenses.

Problem 2: Lack of a Strategy
Although I referred to it as the “online edition” above, a more accurate term would be “the stories from the print edition copied and pasted onto the web and then never given a second thought.” It’s obvious that a second thought has never really been given to the “online edition.” It all starts with a cohesive strategy. The obvious starting point would be to figure out the audience. An online edition would be able to start researching what other college’s are doing with their online editions.

Problem 3: Design
Everyone’s a critic when it comes to design. Say what you will about my own design choices, the core purpose is for this to be read as a blog, one post after another. The opposite could not be more true for The Rambler’s site. Built on WordPress, it reads like a run of the mill blog. WordPress can be used as a versatile content management platform. For a good example of what I’m talking about, check out Cal State Fresno’s Collegian Newspaper. The site is powered by WordPress, but made to look more like a newspaper. There are tons of tools out there already to make this happen with WordPress, it wouldn’t require hiring a team of designers. This is something just about any CS student could figure out.

Problem 4: Lack of Web Only Content
The paper’s most immediate audience is Transylvania’s student body. Without web exclusive content they have absolutely no incentive to look up the paper online. There is so much opportunity here. Web only content could be more timely news, such as what is happening in Lexington over the weekend. This could also include content aimed at audiences outside of the student body who might only read the online edition. Think Lexington area residents or Transylvania alumni.

Problem 5: Lack of Discussion
Very rarely have I seen a comment posted. The heavy moderation of comments discourages discussion. I had to go back several pages to find an actual comment, and when I did find one it was “For once your column makes me smile” followed by “Thank you! That makes two of us.” The internet is built on openness. If you only approve positive comments, no one is ever going to say what they are actually thinking. You have to allow honest and open discussion. If you try to censor conversation and only allow the positive to come through people will see right through you. Unfortunately this is something Transylvania has never really understood. Not only will supporting discussion help create a sense of community around the “online edition” of The Rambler, it will also help increase web traffic. When people start heavily discussing stories, they will also start heavily sharing stories.

Problem 6: No Social Media Integration
I’m still surprised Transylvania as a University is on twitter. They are usually really behind when it comes to understanding technology and progress. What is even stranger is that the student run newspaper is absent. Not just from twitter, but from all forms of social media. At the very least there needs to be a “share this” button at the bottom of posts.

Problem 7: Realities of a 1,100 Student Campus
An unfortunate reality is that students are busy. Most are too busy to write for the paper. Instead of depending on every writer to produce one hundred articles in a school year, figure out how to encourage hundreds of students to produce one article over the course of the year. I have two suggestions on possible ways to make this happen. The first way would be to modify the freshman English curriculum to include one assignment that requires students to write something with the intention of getting it published. If you get published, you get an A. This would encourage quality submissions of content, of which you can never have too much. A second way would be to monetize with advertisements. The money would never be enough to pay an entire staff of students, but could instead be used to encourage more students to submit quality content. Writers could be paid based on which articles are most popular based on a mathematical formula. WordPress already has a good way to track this called Popularity Contest.

Conclusion
This probably has come out as negative, but it’s really meant as some constructive criticism. There are endless possibilities with an online edition of The Rambler, it bugs me to no end to see it in it’s current state. As an alumnus I’d really like to have a reason to read the school’s newspaper online, but right now I don’t. Unless of course they’ve written an article about me.

*The misquote is in the final paragraph. I only said what is within the first set of parentheses. The typo I’m referring to is when they said “Delta Sigma Phil” instead of “Delta Sigma Phi,” that one should have been obvious considering the article ran on the front page of the paper.

Recently the trailer for the much anticipated Watchmen film was released in conjunction with The Dark Knight. It went unnoticed by a lot of people who couldn’t wait for the feature to begin. To change that I made this simple list about why you should get very excited about the Watchmen film. For those who have no idea what it is about, briefly it is a superhero story that takes place in the mid 80′s in an alternative history where the country is on the brink of war with the Soviets. Superheros exist, but are deeply flawed characters. The story begins with one of their own being murdered and follows the heros looking for answers.

1. The Watchmen book is Highly Rated
The original book is the only graphic novel to win the Hugo Award and the only graphic novel to make Time’s list of “the 100 best English-language novels.” That means critics regard it better than 300 and Sin City.

2. IMAX
Christopher Nolan shot scenes of The Dark Knight specifically for IMAX. Zach Snyder is doing the same thing and then some. More and more movies are being made to look great on IMAX and this is one will be ground breaking in the regard.

3. This is the Anti-Hero Movie
This summer has already seen Hulk, Batman and Iron Man and next summer has many more in store for us. We are going to need a break and luckily Watchmen is different. All of the superheros are regular people except for one and it explores their struggles with problems all people face. It is as dark as Sin City and as cinematic as 300.

4. Zach Snyder
Watchmen is being directed by Zach Snyder who also made 300 and Dawn of the Dead. Enough said.

5. The Trailer is Beautiful
You can check it out here.

If you haven’t seen The Dark Knight yet, what are you waiting for? It is the best movie I have seen in a long time.

There have been reports coming in all weekend about how it first had to have midnight screenings extended all the way up until 6am to meet demand. Now it has broken the all time opening weekend box office record. If that isn’t enough to make you go see it, there have been reports that IMAX tickets are hitting Ebay and selling for as much as $300. Reviews have been so good, it is currently the #1 movie of all time on IMDB.

If you are going to see the film and want to get yourself into the experience I suggest reading into some of this background material.

Gotham Tonight – These videos are supplemental material that should be watched before you see the movie. They explain what has happened in between the first and second films.
Christopher Nolan Interview – Get inside the head of the director. I would predict there will be some golden statues coming this guys way in the future.
Dark Knight Marketing – One of the biggest parts of the film was the incredible marketing campaign, this link explains what lengths they went to in order to make sure everyone knew about the film.
History of the Joker – If you weren’t aware of all of the stories about where the Joker came from, you’ll find this one interesting.

(spoilers in the links below)
Finally, for those of you who have already seen the film there are a few things you need to check out to get the total Batman experience. First this comment thread of initial reactions to the film will help you find words to express how good it was. Second, this poll also does the same thing. Finally, this lengthy post deconstructs some of the major themes of the film.

Update: I started thinking, who would be the villain(s) in the third film. After reading the Wikipedia entry on all the possibilities, I gave up thinking about it.