State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – May 2010

Welcome to the fifth State of the Edmonton Twittersphere of 2010, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton, AB. You can see last month’s stats here.

For information on the data, definitions, and other background, click here.

For May 2010:

# of local users: 8051 (an increase of 378 from April)
# of tweets by local users: 430714
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 32901 (7.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 152459 (35.4%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 105836 (24.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 22356 (5.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 14753 (3.4%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates – the official Twitter clients continue to grow in popularity:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

Just over 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 9.6 tweets per minute in May (compared to 9.4 tweets per minute in April).
The day with the most local tweets posted was May 28 at 16908. On average, 13894 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 13492 in April).
Of the 152459 replies posted by local users this month, 57401 or 37.7% were to other local users.
A total of 1640 users posted 50 times or more in March. In comparison, 1175 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

Here are the top ten most listed local users:

Here are the top ten most active local users:

A couple of those are bots, so here are the next two:

Here are the top ten most active local users using #yeg:

And because three of those are bots, here are the next three:

Here are the top ten most replied to local users:

Here are the top ten most retweeted local users (by other local users):

Final Thoughts

We’re back over 8000 active users this month! We’re inching ever closer to 500,000 tweets per month as well. I suspect that the numbers won’t look as good for June given all of the downtime that Twitter has had recently. It’s interesting that three of the top ten active users using #yeg are bots. That’s the downside of a popular hashtag I guess. More on that next week!

Edmontonians magazine calls it quits, the edmontonian celebrates 1 year

After 21 years of publishing, Edmontonians magazine is calling it quits. Citing declining advertising revenues, publisher Sharon MacLean announced today via email that the June edition of the magazine will be its last.

“The news business is caught in the cyclone of change, fueled by the tremendous growth in popularity of access to news and information on the Internet. Both readership and revenues have declined significantly; major dailies have closed their doors, as have a number of magazines.”

Edmontonians had started to cultivate an online presence, amassing over 4400 followers on Twitter, but the publication remained firmly rooted in print. Perhaps anticipating a question about where the industry is going, Sharon wrote “there is much hope for the future of publishing – we simply ran out of time to bridge the transition.”

I can’t say that I was a fan of Edmontonians, but I know many people in the city really liked the publication. So far no announcement has been made on the website, so I’m not sure what will happen to the content available there. There’s also no word on what Sharon will be up to next.

The decision to cease publishing Edmontonians magazine comes at the same time that local website the edmontonian is celebrating its first year. And what a year it was! Jeff reports:

75,000+ people have checked us out. We’ve averaged 3 posts per day. We’ve got more than 2 comments per post. In the last year we’ve posted more than 780 times. We’ve also shown off more than 1,500 photos of Edmonton. We had 40+ contributors who wrote, took photos, shot video, gave us prizes, and did lots of other great stuff, all helping to tell Edmonton stories.

Of course, if you read Jeff’s actual post, you’ll see that the above stats are mixed in with his trademark writing style. Free from the constraints of print, Jeff and his partner-in-crime Sally have been able to produce content the way they want to, when they want to. That has resulted in a publication that I and many others enjoy going back to (or subscribing to) each and every day.

The similarity of their names notwithstanding, I think these publications are a great representation of two completely different worlds. The advertising-supported physical print model is increasingly under fire from the more flexible online digital media model. Will the edmontonian be around for 21 years like Edmontonians was? Almost certainly not, at least not in its current form (who knows what kind of technology we’ll have when 2031 rolls around). But for right now, its pretty clear that the edmontonian is the more sustainable model.

Congrats to Edmontonians on 21 years of telling Edmonton stories! Congrats to the edmontonian on a fantastic first year!

Edmonton Journal launches 2D barcodes with ScanLife

Yesterday the Edmonton Journal launched 2D barcodes throughout the newspaper, enabling readers with mobile devices to scan the codes for access to related information. They chose ScanLife to provide the technology, the same company that Metro Canada chose back in September. Here’s what The Journal had to say about the barcodes, known as EZcodes:

Want to vent? Send a letter to the editor? Tweet at one of our writers? Find a map to that great new restaurant? Just scan the code and that information stays with you and your phone to take wherever you want. The standing codes attached to our regular columnists and bloggers stay under the history button in the ScanLife application on your phone, so you can read their latest columns and blogs even when you don’t have the paper with you.

Mobile barcodes are another technology that Canada (and North America really) is behind on relative to the rest of the world. In that respect, I guess you could say that Metro and The Journal are adopters of the technology. ScanLife isn’t the only player, another popular choice (at least in North America) is Microsoft Tag, which uses high capacity color barcodes rather than the black-and-white EZcodes.

To get started with the codes that The Journal is using, simply visit http://2dscan.com on your smartphone to download the free scanning software. Then whenever you see the 2D barcode, just scan it! There are more detailed instructions here.

The Journal hosted a party last night at Earls Tin Palace to celebrate the launch. The patio was packed with people wearing nametags with EZcodes on them. Bistro columnist Liane Faulder was the host, appropriate as her section was the first to launch with the new codes. Here’s a video of Liane, Edmonton Journal publisher John J. McDonald III, and Caritas Hospital Foundation President John Boucher (the first advertising partner for the codes) talking about the launch of 2D codes in the paper:

It was a fun party! I learned that Sandra Marocco planted the seed for the idea after a trip to New York. She noticed the tags being used outside Saks on Fifth Avenue, and decided to explore them further. After she found that Esquire magazine was using them, she realized they might provide value to the Edmonton Journal. The rest, as they say, is history.

You can see a few more photos from the party here. You can also see some photos and a video at The Journal.

Thoughts on 2D barcodes in the Edmonton Journal

I have mixed emotions about the 2D barcodes now found inside the Edmonton Journal. I think it’s great that they are continuing to experiment, trying new things, and I hope we see additional innovations coming from The Journal in the near future. Having said that, I wonder if too much emphasis is being placed on the barcodes by management. More than a few times last night I heard “this is just the beginning” or as was printed yesterday, “the possibilities for connection are endless.” I have three main issues with the barcodes:

Putting the barcodes inside the newspaper reinforces the importance of the physical product. It emphasizes the “paper” part of “newspaper” rather than the “news” part. It’s short-term thinking, not long-term thinking. I think The Journal is very much facing the innovator’s dilemma, and even though the smart people that work under management know what needs to be done, they hit roadblocks at every turn. Here’s a rough analogy for you: The Journal is like a long-time smoker, addicted to paper. Connecting the physical paper to the digital world with barcodes is like a smoker using a nicotine patch, even though we know cold turkey is the most effective way to quit.
Speaking of reinforcing the paper, the barcodes give you more information than the actual website does. That’s just completely unacceptable. Take yesterday’s Bistro article on sliders. The EZcodes provide access to “a list of Edmonton restaurants with sliders on the menu…a tasty recipe from local foodie Shauna Faragini… and where to get slider buns and pre-made sliders”. The online story? Completely devoid of links. There are so many things wrong with this picture that I don’t know where to start. Writers need to do some extra work to create the codes, but I would much rather see that extra work be put into links on the website (and I’m positive that doing so would provide greater value to The Journal).
Less of an issue but still important is that the EZcodes are somewhat generic. Columnists get a code, and some special features like the Bistro get a code, but individual stories do not get their own codes. This is partly a technology issue, but mainly a cost issue. I think that makes the EZcodes a little less useful (an option to “tweet this story” after scanning a code simply isn’t possible, for example).

Again though, I want to reiterate that this is a positive step for the Edmonton Journal from the perspective of trying something new, and working to provide more value to readers (and advertisers). Congrats to the entire Edmonton Journal team for making it happen!

I also want to commend The Journal on the way they did the launch. They had videos prepared online demonstrating the technology, and every article I read asked for reader feedback and suggested a variety of ways to provide it. I really do believe that they want to know how to shape their use of the technology based on reader feedback. The party was a nice touch as well. Most interesting to me though, was the use of the @EJ_Cares account on Twitter. It has been actively monitoring and engaging in discussion about the 2D barcodes and the ScanLife application. The online community are most likely going to be the early adopters of the barcodes, so it’s smart to engage with them right away – well done to the @EJ_Cares team!

I hope Journal readers find the barcodes useful, and I look forward to many more interesting ideas in the future!

UPDATE: Here is Jeff’s take on the party and the barcodes.

UPDATE2: Turns out the information is on the website, just on a different story page (this is another issue with The Journal’s online stuff). I think the link text could have been more clear than “Slider tips and toppings” but the point is the information was online – my mistake!

Recap: The Way We Green Panel Discussion

Today the City of Edmonton hosted a panel discussion with environmental experts at the Art Gallery of Alberta. Part of The Way We Green, the panel featured five local subject matter experts and was attended by more than 150 people. The event was also streamed live online (an archive is available here). For those of you new to The Way We Green, here’s what Councillor Iveson wrote about it when he helped launch the project last month:

It’s picking up after the 2006 Environmental Strategic Plan, which was good but more internally focused on the city and not very high-profile. The project is building on the widespread consultations in 2008 that led to the city’s 30 year vision and 10 year overall strategic plan, The Way Ahead. Now it’s time to drill down and focus specifically on the environment – the services we get from it, the impacts we have on it, and the value we place on it.

As part of the project, the City commissioned a collection of discussion papers to help stimulate thinking and dialogue, and those papers formed the basis of today’s panel. The five panelists were: Debra Davidson, Pong Leung, David Schindler, Daniel Smith, and Guy Swinnerton. The panel was moderated by Ed Struzik.

The panelists covered quite a range of topics, and I thought Ed did a great job of keeping the discussion moving. Here are a few things that stood out for me:

Most of the panelists used the word “comprehensive”. They generally agreed that a comprehensive approach is required to tackle the environmental issues we face. I’m not convinced. I think you need to break the problem down and work in parallel from a variety of angles.
I found myself disagreeing with David quite a lot. Near the start of the panel he said something like “A sustainable Edmonton, in an unsustainable province, in an unsustainable country, doesn’t work.” I think Edmonton should lead by example, rather than relying on other orders of government to agree on policy and regulations. If we can make Edmonton the model sustainable city, why wouldn’t other communities in Alberta want to follow suit? And if they did, guess what, we’d be on the road to a sustainable province. Start local, and bubble up.
Pong, who I thought was the best of the panelists, said in response to David, “We can’t be paralyzed waiting for the perfect political environment to show up.”
Guy talked at length about density, pointing out how vital it is for us to address sustainability. He also mentioned some of the negative impacts our continual sprawl has had on the environment.
David then talked about population growth, noting that Edmonton is roughly doubling every 30 years. He basically said that we can’t keep growing and be sustainable. Again, I disagree. The issue isn’t how many people we have, it’s where and how those people live. Population density is far more important than population growth, at least here in Edmonton. Debra said as much in response to David.
The one thing David said that I did agree with was that we need some economic diversification. Everyone laughed and applauded when he said that Alberta “relies on one very oily teat.”
Ed asked the panel about taxes, everyone’s favorite topic. Debra said that affordable housing in the core would help reduce urban sprawl. I would talk about it more generally. Incentives are what drive behaviour, especially financial incentives. Right now, it’s too easy a decision to live on the edge of the city than to pay more and live near the core. The incentives are not aligned with the vision. Tax breaks for sustainable decisions and tax increases for unsustainable decisions might be one tool we can use to address that.

I thought the panel had some interesting thoughts and discussion points, though I’d have preferred if there was more opportunity for the audience to ask questions. You can read more about today’s event here.

“City Council gave us a 10-year goal to become a national leader in setting and achieving the highest standards of environmental preservation and sustainability,” said Jim Andrais, project manager for the Way We Green plan. “Now we have to find out from Edmontonians and environmental experts which environmental challenges are most important and areas where we can make the greatest difference. This panel debate, discussion papers, workshops and the online consultation are all part of that process.”

The second public survey for The Way We Green is now online – you have until August 20 to fill it out. The two questions being asked are about the challenges we face and the major changes we may have to make to address them.

You can learn more about The Way We Green here. On Twitter, follow the #yegeco hashtag.

Edmonton-based startup Edistorm continues to grow

One of the things we need to do more of in Edmonton (especially in the tech sector) is celebrate our successes (storytelling). Reg and I talk all the time, but not always about our respective projects. Recently though, I had the opportunity to ask Reg about Edistorm, his web-based, collaborative brainstorming solution. He first previewed it to the local community at DemoCampEdmonton4 back in October 2008, and has been steadily improving it ever since, demoing again at Launch Party in March. Reg said the feedback he received and introductions that he made at Launch Party were particularly useful. I asked him how the service has been doing since then.

Edistorm has been getting a lot of traction lately, largely from customers outside of Edmonton. In the last 30 days alone, Edistorm has had visitors from 103 countries and has signed up over 1000 new users. There are registered users from over 60 countries now (one of the great things about Edistorm is that it doesn’t contain a lot of text that needs to be translated…the short intro video on the website is enough for people in any language to get the idea and start using it).

For those of you new to the service:

Edistorm takes the metaphor of sticky notes on a boardroom wall and brings it online allowing anyone, anywhere to brainstorm with only a web browser.

After you login and create a storm, you’re presented with a nice blank canvas. You can add ideas (on sticky notes, natch) both manually and from “idea bots” that brainstorm with you, then you can organize and vote on them. If you invite others to join your storm, they can add ideas to the canvas and vote in real-time as well.

I asked Reg what was new with Edistorm. Turns out there’s a number of things the team has added recently:

You can now get daily email summaries to see which ideas have been added or commented on in your storms.
One of the coolest new features is templates, which help your organize your ideas on the storm canvas. When creating a storm, you can choose from SWOT analysis, pros vs. cons, domain names, and more. The team is open to ideas for more templates too!
Sharing storms is even easier – you can simply provide a key now, instead of having to invite via email.
A new iPhone app will be available in the app store within the next two weeks!

Brainstorming is something everyone does, and Edistorm makes it easy to brainstorm online with others. Reg sounds pretty excited about the growth he’s achieved so far (with very little marketing) and about where the service is headed feature-wise. Best of all, it sounds like some bigger organizations are starting to take notice. I think it’s great that another local startup is doing well, and I know Edistorm will continue to grow!

If you haven’t tried Edistorm yet, you can sign up for a free account here. Be sure to follow @edistorm on Twitter too!

Notes for 6/13/2010

Such a nice weekend here in Edmonton! Here are my weekly notes:

Who knew LOLcats would become such a big business? Here’s a NYTimes profile on I Can Has Cheezburger.
Really interesting photo gallery showing how the Library of Congress is digitizing the past and present.
I’ve noticed this lately: The Tech Press Turns on Microsoft’s Ballmer.
Google has a new search index, called Caffeine.
Big security breach this week for Apple iPad owners. Though I haven’t heard much about it since the story broke, so many it wasn’t a big deal after all?
Also Apple-related this week: they announced iPhone 4. NewTeeVee asks if Apple is killing the Flip as a result. All I can say is that I plan to get an iPhone 4, and likely won’t be getting a new Flip.
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan. Wow.

Edmonton Notes for 6/12/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Congratulations to the 2010 inductees into the City of Edmonton Hall of Fame!
The new Capital City Downtown Plan is nearing completion! You can see the final draft online here. It will be considered at a public hearing scheduled for June 21.
Stony Plain Road will not be widened to make way for the LRT. In other LRT news, ETS expects about 100,000 people to ride the LRT every day this fall.
A new $16.7 million Arctic habitat is now under construction at the Valley Zoo. It is expected to open in fall 2011.
Over at Fort Edmonton Park, the historic Capitol Theatre is being recreated. It is expected to open in spring 2011.
City Council voted on Wednesday to make it illegal for a motorcycle to be louder than 92 decibels while idling and 96 decibels while in motion. Oddly, Councillor Batty also wants to silence emergency vehicles.
City Council also approved a plan to allow for a new eco-industrial park in northeast Edmonton, called the Horsehill Energy and Technology Park.
Edmonton Stories is running a contest to promote the Honda Indy Edmonton. You have until June 28 to submit a story, which you can do here.
An Edmonton man tweeted what was judged as “the most beautiful tweet in the world” by Stephen Fry.
Don’t miss Vue Weekly’s Hot Summer Guide.
For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
The Edmonton Eskimos are playing host to the Calgary Stampeders tomorrow evening (on ShareEdmonton).
FC Edmonton is playing its first exhibition game on Wednesday, against the Montreal Impact (on ShareEdmonton).
Improvaganza kicks off on Wednesday evening (on ShareEdmonton).
It’s World Cup time! You can keep up on all the matches on Twitter. Roughly 20 bars in Edmonton have been granted permission to open early to show the games live.

It was a beautiful, busy day at the City Market today! Al Fresco continues through the evening, with the movie starting at 10pm.

Recap: Tech·Ed North America 2010 Day 4

Yesterday was the final day of TechEd North America 2010 and the start of a max exodus of geeks out of New Orleans (they’re hard to miss wearing the official TechEd backpacks or other clothing emblazoned with tech company logos). I’m sure some people skipped the final day, but it still seemed pretty full. As you can see in this video I recorded mid-afternoon, many people were still attending the final sessions:

After a leisurely morning, John and I attended Mark Russinovich’s session on Pushing the Limits of Windows. Mark is one of just a handful Technical Fellows at Microsoft, and probably knows more about how Windows works internally than anyone else. As expected, Mark packed one of the larger auditoriums at the convention centre. He didn’t strike me as a natural-born presenter, but I still very much enjoyed his talk (and learned quite a lot). As John remarked on the way out, “my brain hurts.”

I couldn’t resist attending the Coding4Fun session in the afternoon, titled Learn Windows Phone 7 Development by Creating a Robotic T-Shirt Cannon. Daniel Fernandez and Clint Rutkas walked us through how they built a Windows Phone 7 app to control the robot (affectionately named Betty) that debuted at Mix back in March. Along the way, they shot out a few dozen t-shirts and weren’t afraid to show off the robot’s capabilities! Here is a video I recorded of the robot in action:

It was a fun way to get some exposure to Windows Phone 7 development. If you’ve never checked out Coding4Fun before, you really should! You can find the source code for the app they built here.

The final session I attended at TechEd was Programming AppFabric: Moving Microsoft .NET to the Cloud, presented by Pluralsight’s Aaron Skonnard and Keith Brown. Despite progressing a little slowly at times, I thought the talk was fantastic. In particular, the way Aaron started it was memorable. He fired up a console app running on his laptop and asked everyone with Internet-connected devices in the audience to hit a public URL. Immediately requests started appearing on the screen, prompting the very distinctive “how did he do that” murmurs among everyone in the room (turns out it is the magic of the AppFabric Service Bus).

TechEd officially finished with a large party in the evening at Mardi Gras World. Buses took thousands of geeks to and from the event, which featured a number of live bands, magicians, jugglers, palm readers, and an Xbox gaming room, among other things. It was fun to just walk around the party, taking in the sights and sounds.

I learned quite a lot at TechEd, and have a pretty long list of things I want to look into further! It was a fun week.

You can see more of my TechEd photos here, and also at the TechEd group on Flickr.

Recap: Tech·Ed North America 2010 Day 3

Maybe it was because I was wearing shorts, but the convention centre seemed especially cold yesterday (and today). Still really hot outside for TechEd attendees however, with temperatures hovering around the 30 degrees C mark. The day seemed to go fairly smoothly, with the exception of lunch (there was a session that went through most of the lunch break, and they ran out of food, which meant incredibly long lineups right at the end).

The first session I went to yesterday was Windows Server AppFabric Caching: What It Is and When You Should Use It. I’m a fan of Memcached, and have been using it for a number of years now, so I really wanted to see how AppFabric compares (the codename for this was Velocity, which I wrote about here). I’d say that overall they are quite similar, though if you’re a .NET developer using AppFabric can give you some quick wins. One example is that with just a couple of lines in the Web.config, you can use AppFabric to store Session information, perfect for a web farm scenario. Another thing I like is that AppFabric Caching is managed through PowerShell. Here are some resources:

After lunch I attended one of the bigger sessions, Overview of the Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework 4, hosted by Julie Lerman and Chris Sells. I really enjoyed it, first and foremost because it consisted mainly of demos, and secondly because Julie and Chris were really entertaining and worked well together. Here again, I have been using an open source solution – SubSonic. I remember reading about EF really early on, but didn’t spend too much time on it because of all the criticism it received. If nothing else, the session yesterday made me want to look at EF again – it has really come a long way. I was impressed.

Another session I attended was Building RESTful Applications with the Open Data Protocol. Although labeled a 300-level session, it was very introductory, and didn’t contain anything I hadn’t already seen. It was great to see so many people in the session though – clearly there’s some interest.

I also took some time yesterday to explore the Exhibition Hall a bit more, stopping by the Spoon booth to talk with them. They have some really interesting virtualization and application streaming technology. I recorded a short video and wrote more at Techvibes.

There are lots of social events during TechEd, but last night in particular seemed like a busy night. John and I checked out the Springboard party at the House of Blues (where we saw some of the Hawks-Flyers game) as well as the Pluralsight mixer. Good times!

You can see more of my TechEd photos here, and also at the TechEd group on Flickr.

Recap: Tech·Ed North America 2010 Day 2

Full day of sessions at TechEd yesterday, though I did take some time in the morning to catch up on blogging, as I am doing today. Probably the most talked about topic at TechEd so far has been the breakfast! People are simply not happy with bagels, muffins, and scones. Either the breakfast or these mascots that everyone has been stopping to get a photo with:

The main feature of the day was the Business Intelligence keynote with Ted Kummert, Microsoft Senior Vice President, Business Platform Division. I missed it, so I’ll watch it online, which you can do here. You can also read a transcript here.

The first session I went to was Prototyping Rich Microsoft Silverlight 4 Applications with Microsoft Expression Blend + SketchFlow. It was really interesting to see how you could use SketchFlow to draw out some screens from your application, and then start to add behaviours and other improvements. We also saw the new feature that enables you to publish a SketchFlow document to SharePoint, making it easy to share a prototype/mockup with colleagues. For more information:

Another session I checked out was Intro to Workflow (WF) Services & Windows Server AppFabric. I’m getting increasingly interested in AppFabric. It seems like a no-brainer to use it if you’re on the Microsoft platform already. I probably should have brushed up on some WF before attending the session, but it was still useful to see how WCF, WF, and AppFabric work together. For more information:

My favorite session of the day was the final one, Open Data for the Open Web, presented by Douglas Purdy and Jonathan Carter. This session had two things going for it: open data, one of my favorite topics, and the hilarious tag team of Douglas and Jonathan. They were really quite entertaining, but still managed to do a great job of explaining what OData is, and what the vision is. And, bonus, the City of Edmonton logo was on screen briefly! Some resources from this session: