Chris McIntyre » Social Networks & Web 2.0

GoDaddy UK Commercial from Mevio with Candice Michelle

theFerf — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:24:37 +0000

Just found this video commercial from when I was working at PodShow. It was a lot of fun to be a part of (even though I was just behind the scenes). This I believe was for GoDaddy UK in cooperation with Mevio in the UK. The video is the “I want to be a GoDaddy Guy” spoof and features Candice Michelle, the GoDaddy Girl. Enjoy!

BTW, if you want to see some of my behind the scenes photos of the event, click on over to my flickr set to see them.

GoDaddy, OJ Borg, Candice Michelle from Wonkles on Vimeo.Similar Posts:

New Job Official > I Have Joined Change:Healthcare

theFerf — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:13:37 +0000

Well, the news is official now. I left Mevio about 5 weeks ago to move back home to Nashville, TN and to start a new career…this time, in healthcare.

Through my early days of podcasting I was extremely fortunate to meet tons of great people. But in 2005 I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of Christopher Parks. At that time he was just a lowly podcaster to me (jab), host of a show called the BizCast (don’t look for it, you won’t find it. He pulled all the links down). Turns out he had a lot more to offer to the world than just a small town business podcast.

Christopher started the company I now work for as Product Manger, change:healthcare, out of frustration with the healthcare industry, and all the medical bills resulting from both of his parents unanticipated deaths within 1 year of each other. While this seems like a sad story (with no disrespect to Christopher or his family), it truly is a blessing to Americans everywhere who struggle with healthcare, related costs and confusion every single day of their lives. Because of this tragic event, Christopher was driven to make sure no one had to suffer through the confusion of paperwork, rejections and health jargon while dealing with sick and dying loved ones like he did.

You will no doubt hear more and more about this rising star, change:healthcare, in the coming months & years. We are growing explosively, releasing robust bill management tools and helping people save TONS OF MONEY on their healthcare costs every single day. But I will save the details for a later post.

For now, let me just say I am proud to be working with this company. They epitomize everything a company should strive to be: energetic, proud of their offering, revolutionary in their product and services, leaders in their field, and making a difference that is monumental to the growth and education of our nation as a whole.

If you are interested, you can read more about change:healthcare and the products and services offered here.

Links of Interest for this Post

Similar Posts:

Are You on Twitter? Do You Follow Me?

theFerf — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:41:43 +0000

I use Twitter.com daily. If you use twitter, you should add me. You can find me on twitter with username theferf. If you do not know what twitter is, there are many resources you can find about it including information on how to register for and master twitter, listings of the top twitter tools for your computer & phone, and more… so I won’t go into that here. Visit any of those links are do a google search for twitter and start your journey.

And dont forget to follow @theferf!

Widget to Watch Presidential Election Results

theFerf — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:25:24 +0000

I found this cool widget to track the presedential results in pretty much real time. Enjoy!

Similar Posts:

The Mevio 404 Page – It’s Almost Tradition and I am a Living Error

theFerf — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:30:51 +0000

What started as a joke years ago at PodShow has now become a tradition at Mevio. If you are unlucky enough to find an error or 404 page on the Mevio.com website you will find the back of my head not looking back at you. We have had a number of different versions of these over the years within the company for some reason. It’s sad that I look forward to the site crashing and burning to get a good laugh at the images that show up that we have forgotten about.

Thanks to a few of the people (jawbone, sue, bryn) who made me a living error.

Here are a few of the previous ones I could find:

Similar Posts:

Mevio Shows & Channels, Now Embeddable!

theFerf — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:55:23 +0000

A new feature just released on the Mevio site is the ability to embed videos, shows and channels found on the site in other locations. I thought I should test it out… so enjoy Amy Mac’s Fit Life below!

Similar Posts:

Status Update, Where Am I?

theFerf — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:43:20 +0000

It has been a crazy few months so I thought I would give another quick update. The marathon training has been going great. Logging lots of miles, until, I got shin splints. I have been not running for the last week or so and have been trying to stretch and relax a bit to ease the pain. It was probably a good thing though, because I had a LOT of work to do last week as PodShow released a major upgrade to the site, as well as a name change to Mevio.

So a little bit about the name change. PodShow, the company I have worked with for the last 3+ years, has re-branded to Mevio (found at mevio.com of course). There were many reasons for this but I don’t really need to get into all of that here. If you would like a great take on the transition from one of our producers standpoints, you can check out the GeekBrief blog with Cali Lewis. She wrote up a great post on it. I am excited about the changes happening at the office and am looking forward to where the company is going.

Now back to the marathon training. In preparing for the big race, Amy and I (as well as Nick a little bit and our friends Joe and Pam) are going to run in some other races as well. Mid May we are going to be taking part in the Bay to Breakers 12k and then the San Francisco 1/2 marathon in August before we take off to the Portland Marathon in October! Lets hope my shins heal up nicely before we get too much further :)

What else? In August, Amy and I will have been married for 7 years. At that time, we will be taking our first official vacation as a couple! We have taken a weekend here and there, or went home to Tennessee for a week but still working regular hours, so this is a pretty big deal for us. We will be taking off to Hawaii (Kauai and Maui I believe) for around 10 days and if the timing works out, maybe a trip through Las Vegas on the way back to attend the Portable Media Expo… we will have to see about that one, though.

Other than that, I guess it is work as usual. Long days and nights trying to build the best online entertainment hub on the planet :) Stay tuned for more updates and photos, I have lots of them but no time to post regularly. Nick and Amy are both up to some amazing things that I can not talk about yet… but soon!Similar Posts:

Did You Know 20% of Every Dollar in America is Spent on Healthcare?

theFerf — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:48:37 +0000

You may not know it, but a change is coming. Soon we Americans are going to breathe a collective sigh of relief and wonder to ourselves, “what the hell were we thinking?”. The healthcare industry as we know it is seriously fucked up. It is not going to change over night, but with the help of one small company it just may be changed from this point on. Enter change:healthcare.

change:healthcare has one mission… To provide consumers with the tools, services and information they need to make the best healthcare decisions possible. Period.

Did you take a minute to read the words in the image above and grasp how awful this is?

“20% of every dollar in America is spent on healthcare.”

With the amount of money, time, energy, frustration and confusion that exists within the healthcare system, hardworking people like you and I have previously been left out of the conversation. We have been left to fend for ourselves and to find our own information in order to make intelligent decisions about how we spend our money in regard to health related expenses. Do yourself a favor: visit this page and learn about the change that IS coming. Starting March 3, 2008, you too will be able to change healthcare.

>> Change Healthcare WebsiteSimilar Posts:

Fit Life & Fitness Attack Featured on PodShow!

theFerf — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:18:00 +0000

This Photo taken by theFerf

If you haven’t visited www.PodShow.com yet today, you should do so… Amy Mac and Fit Life are featured on the home page! Congratulations Amy!

Oh yeah, and once again… don’t forget to Buy the Fitness Attack Book on Amazon today.

Amy Macs Fitness Attack Book Now Available! Buy It

theFerf — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:39:06 +0000

Friday is the Big Day!! Amy Mac has published her very first book titled, “Fitness Attack” where she gives you 101 easy to implement tips & tricks to hack your body (and your life) into being better. If you have the $15 to spare, buy her book from Amazon.com on Friday (leap day)!

Similar Posts:

Fit Life on TiVo > Congratulations Amy Mac!

theFerf — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:30:26 +0000

There is no denying the fact that my wife, Amy Mac, kicks some serious ass. To prove it I would like to present the details to you. She is on TiVo. Need I say more?! If you own a TiVo purchased in the last couple of years you can now access Amy Mac’s Fit Life (from PodShow) on your TiVo box. The photo is the night it happened… Amy Mac watching Amy Mac on TiVo (it was too funny not to take the photo).

Anyway, if you own a TiVo there are a few different ways to find the programming. But Basically, this is the deal…

How to Get Amy Mac (Fit Life) on Your TiVo:

Push the TiVo button on your remote
Click on “Find Programs”
Click on “Download TV & Movies”
Click on “PodShowTV”
Click on “Fit Life with Amy Mac”

That’s it! From this point, I recommend that you get a season pass so it will automatically download the episodes when they are published. Enjoy, and congratulations to my wifey!
>>View the Slide Show of the TiVo Photos Here
>> View Just the TiVo Photos HereSimilar Posts:

Listen to the Dizzy Band with the PMN Flash Widget!

theFerf — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:25:30 +0000

PodShow recently upgraded their PodSafe Music Network music player widget… so I thought to myself, why not rock out to the Dizzy Band to give it a test!

Fit Life Episode 001 is Out! – Amy’s New Video Podcast

theFerf — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 04:12:49 +0000

We finally released the first episode of Amy’s new video podcast, Fit Life. It is a little rough, but check it out below. We are beta testing the flash player as well, which seems to squish the video a little… so if you want a good version you are going to have to download or subscribe from the links below. Otherwise, enjoy the video!

>> Download Here
>> Subscribe Here

PodShow & BT Unite for UK Content Explosion!

theFerf — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:22:04 +0000

Today is an exciting day, dear friends. PodShow announced their partnership with BT and launched the first stage of BT PodShow (found at www.btpodshow.com)! Soon audio and video talent from the UK and Ireland will be able to be part of ‘the show’ with a reliable and powerful content creation, promotion and discoevery engine!

Check out the PodShow Pressroom for more information.

PodShow+ Launches, Check it Out!

theFerf — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:02:26 +0000

Hello family and friends. As you know, we have been developing the PodShow+ Social Media Network for sometime now and we have finally opened the doors! You can find my profile at Ferf.PodShow.com or you can browse the main site ore create an account at www.podshow.com.

There are a lot of fun things to do there like finding and interacting with old and new friends, finding great content to subscribe to, listen to or watch, and more. Make sure you check out the Program Guide on the site, it will help you find some of the best shows on the site.

If you have any troubles and are looking for ‘insider help’, don’t hesitate to email me (yes mom, this is meant for you). I would love your feedback and any bugs you find, be sure to let me know as well!!

PS> after you get into the site, make sure you go to my profile and click on the ‘dig me’ link to add me to your friends list. :D

Yahoo Beta Mail/RSS Now with AJAX

theFerf — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 20:38:26 +0000

I had seen the rumors for a while now floating around that Yahoo! was going to introduce a new mail client with RSS capabilities, but I guess I overlooked that it was also going to be an AJAX based application. For what its worth, here is my opinion.

It’s buggy. It locked up my browser (Firefox 1.5 / Mac OS X) while just clicking on a few links and the operation is a bit clunky and slow. But that is all the bad I have to talk about for the time being. I have only really played with it for a short time but seem some cool potential with it. It operates much like a desktop application should with dragging and dropping of a message (or messages) into folders. I was also able to browse and delete my mail with the arrow and delete keys. The browser auto checks for new mail so no need to refresh, it will just show new mail as it arrives. I guess I should also mention that you can open multiple emails (in tabbed browsing format) and click between them and a new message compostion window if you need to see multiple emails. The right click while in the Yahoo! Mail Beta also functions as it would in a desktop application with such features as ‘reply to sender, reply to all, mark as spam, etc’.

Another cool addition, as you can see from the screenshots, is that of RSS integration. It seems to have pulled in my ‘My Yahoo!’ subscriptions for display inside of the mail application. While there doesn’t seem to be any special support for podcasting (it just reads the RSS feed as a normal news feed) I did have a lot of trouble subscribing to Podcast RSS feeds. It kept telling me the feeds were invalid (mostly with feeds linked to a WordPress Blog).

So my final opinion: It still needs a lot of love. They are on there way to making it cool, but the hang and drag time frightened me a bit. One thing I just can’t stand is being afraid I am going to lose data…and when I hit a link or go to a new page in the Yahoo Mail Beta I feel like it could crash at any second and I would lose whatever i was doing at that point.

Facebook ID leads to arrest at Purdue

theFerf — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:51:53 +0000

Kids sure are getting crazy at good ol’ Purdue. Nothing like getting pinched for a crime because you gave too much or your personal information awa to facebook. The authorities now have caught the bad guys through both MySpace and Facebook social networks.

The arrest of a Purdue University student with the help of Facebook.com, a popular student directory on the Internet, is one of the latest instances of police using such Web sites to aid their investigations.

On Saturday, officers took Justin J. Vorbroker, 20, into custody after he was alleged to have threatened another student with a pocket knife. That incident comes close in time to one in which police in Boulder, Colo., arrested six men in connection to a rape and robbery after finding their photographs on MySpace, another popular Web site.

Journal and Courier Online – News

Facebook to Sell Out?

theFerf — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:20:01 +0000

Something about this just seems wrong. Somehow Facebook has the reputation (at least to me) as being this untouchable private community. The idea of an aquisition of such a private community is mind blowing in 2 ways:

1. The Bad: you only have an audience of 18-23 year olds
2. THE GOOD: you only have an audience of 18-23 year olds!

Business Week is reporting that Facebook has turned down a $750 million acquisition offer and is looking for $2 billion. The blogosphere is buzzing about the news.

The source of the information is an executive(s) at Facebook, which as a private company is fairly free to say just about whatever it likes with regard to acquisitions. And what they are doing is clearly playing Business Week to get the word out that they are very much for sale.

TechCrunch Ã‚Â» Facebook is doing the Skype dance

Selling My Car on eBay Motors: 2000 Honda CR-V

theFerf — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 22:16:35 +0000

Interested in a 2000 Honda CRV? Then you are in luck. Check out mine for sale now at ebay! Maybe this will get picked up by Edgeio too for sale.

We bought this 2000 Honda CRV in 2002 and have absolutely loved it ever since. We are the kind of people that like to get out and enjoy life, and this SUV has given us the ability to get there with all of our stuff! I was amazed at the capacity of this vehicle with the fold down seats and the roof rack.

This is the 4th Honda we have owned (2 other civics and a Honda Motorcycle previously) and we would buy nothing else but Hondas. Hondas are built to last without a doubt. We sold our first civic with 240,000 miles on it and it was still running like a dream, so this one should have plenty of miles left on it. So lets get down to the details…

This car has ONLY been serviced at the Honda Dealerships with Genuine Honda Parts. It has been in a small fender bender (someone bumped into the door) but was repaired promptly at the Honda Repar Center and is in perfect working order. This car has always been owned by NON smokers and has always had all of its maintenance work performed on schedule including the 90k mile tune-up, new tires, frequent oil changes and lots of TLC.

The CRV runs very well and is very comfortable for everyone to ride in. The interior fits 5 adults and has plenty of cupholders, armrests and storage for all of them. The CRV is very versatile on the inside with dual folding rear seats, a rear accessory charger, a built in picnic table and cooler in the back for tailgating, tie down straps and a few small compartments to keep things from rolling around. This car, like all Hondas, gets really good gas mileage and is a great highway vehicle. It is built on a civic chassis so it is very easy to maneuver, park and has a great turning radius.

We have had no issues with this car but must unfortunately get rid of it. We have recently moved to California leaving our home and cars behind. We have no need for cars with public transportation so we must sell them all. The reserve is set at $7500 because that is what we need to pay off the loan.

BONUS! We will be throwing in our Yakima roof rack/cage (shown) for gear and 2 Yakima bike racks (not shown) with locks with the CRV. We have used it to get our bikes all over the place but have no need for them after CRV is gone. Paid over $600 for it a few years ago, free for you!

See the Ebay Auction Right Here.

The Nature of Social Networks and its Participants

theFerf — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:13:24 +0000

The nature of why social networks work is an interesting beast and Im always excited to join in conversations regarding them. My experience with 95% of these networks is that they do not maintain my interest past a day or two even if I am REALLY trying to pay attention.

So what makes a them sticky and what keeps the users coming back? Maybe it is possible I just havent found MY social network yet. According to an article I read today (from the leader of the Yahoo! Technology Dev Group), 1% of any given group starts something (creates the initial content), 10% participate (adding to the pile) and everyone else just lurks (reads). I lurk at MySpace, I lurk at TagWorld, I lurk at Yahoo Groups…but I have never wanted to become the 1% or 10% (for the most part) at these places. Maybe something will come in podcasting where I could be the 1% or 10%.

As Yahoo! has been gobbling up many social media sites over the past year (Flickr, upcoming, del.icio.us) I often get asked about how (or whether) we believe these communities will scale.

As an example take Yahoo! Groups.

* 1% of the user population might start a group (or a thread within a group)
* 10% of the user population might participate actively, and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress
* 100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups (lurkers)

There are a couple of interesting points worth noting. The first is that we donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t need to convert 100% of the audience into Ã¢â‚¬Å“activeÃ¢â‚¬Â participants to have a thriving product that benefits tens of millions of users. In fact, there are many reasons why you wouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t want to do this. The hurdles that users cross as they transition from lurkers to synthesizers to creators are also filters that can eliminate noise from signal. Another point is that the levels of the pyramid are containing – the creators are also consumers.

Elatable Ã‚Â» Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers