Web Development and Technology Blog

This is a techy blog, not a personal one, but just what I have been thinking as I consume all the tech around me.

My Dad, Lynn Pearson, died in 1999. Oddly, however, I find many of the times (which seems to be a lot lately) I spend on social networking sites reminds me of him.  He would never have used Facebook, and definitely not Twitter; it took 3 years for me to get him on the Internet to start with…so I tried to think about why when I am on Facebook do I think about him.

The answer to me, is that Facebook, and to some extent Twitter and the rest of the networks I am on (see previous post about social overload), shows a curious cross-section of your life to this point. I have friends on my Facebook from all stages of my life: including friends from elementary school that I haven’t talked to in years, high school, college, old jobs etc. Most of them don’t know each other and don’t have anything in common except me. In some ways it really does feel like Six Degrees of Separation.

So the random quizzes and conversations that come up with this varied group, leads me to think about those different places in my life. I definitely hadn’t thought about Wesley and his “Why yes” taunting in years, or for that matter his Mustang he had in high school that he put on “5 Cars I’ve Owned,” or all the kids I knew at St. John’s Elementary School.  Maybe I am getting old, but I think it is awesome that new technology is allowing me to reminsence and interact with those people, and do it before I am 80.

In the end, maybe this blog isn’t about my technology or my dad, but rather the curious socialogical experiment that we are undertaking. The one in which an increasingly dispered populace with seeming less interconnectedness, is actually overcoming that distance virtually. Another reason an amazing time to be alive!

Senator Jack Johnson, Tennessee State Senate District 23, is a client of Majority Strategies, aka “my day job”, and we have launched a new version of his campaign web site.

Jack Johnson Web Site Header

Currently, the Tennessee legislature is in session, and Senator Johnson is using the site to keep his constituents informed on the news from the session, his schedule and committee meetings, as well as, solicite feedback from them.  Senator Johnson has also started to Twitter and you can reach his account from the site.

Senator Johnson is up for election in November , 2010 and will continue to use the site as a valuable communications venue to speak directly to the voters in his district.

We have some amazingly talented designers and the site looks incredible. On the back-end it has a custom content management system to easily allow the Senator and his staff to add events, news release and any other information; manage volunteers and send email to his email list.

I look forward to working with candidates around the nation to help them improve their web presence so they can communicate directly with voters.

Feel free to use my contact form if you are interested in getting more info on me or Majority Strategies.

After several bumps along the road, the web site for the Pearson Funeral Home, the oldest family-owned funeral home in Louisville, Kentucky has been launched.

The look of the site has been over-hauled and updated.  Additionally the major changes are:

• Virtual guestbook – People can easily add condolences to a virtual guestbook, that the staff moderates
• The obituaries are easier for the non-technical staff to input and update and post pictures
• Custom content management system – staff can add new pages and edit all existing content
• Easier navigation, including dynamic menus

No site is ever finished, but it is nice to get this site launched and for visitors to get to use it.  Not maybe the most exciting site, but a great marriage of function to purpose.

It always seems that maintaining and updating your own personal site is the hardest and most neglected. Ironic, considereing you contastantly tell clients that fresh, relevant content is the most important thing to keep visitors returning and improving search results. However, since I don’t pay myself, paying customers always come first.

So as I was looking at my site to get it up-to-date, adding my new job and such, I realized that I needed to add links to all my social networks. Previously, I only had a link to MySpace, which my wife and kids use. At the time I created that, I never thought I would have so many accounts littered all over the place.

I tried at one point to keep them separate, so that Facebook only had personal friends and LinkedIn had colleagues, but that didn’t work as planned, as some personal friends only had LinkedIn and some colleagues only had Facebook, so I ended up with duplicates. In addition, I now Twitter a fair amount so I am following a cross-section of people there. And finally I am using FriendFeed to aggregate some of the data (you know, because Scoble says everyone will leave Twitter and go to FriendFeed, so hate to be left behind :-p). This is only the tip of the iceberg when you think about all the private social networks going up, I know I belong to one for Red Jumpsuit Apparatus powered by Ning among others.

I think it is a big mess.

I know from each company’s perspective they need the traffic and users to get advertising to keep the platform free, but from the users perspective it is a nightmare to keep up with it all. I hope that Facebook Connect and the Google Friend Connect and the like are a step in the right direction. I think we need interoperability and we need to be able to control our own data. If I want my friends to follow me to Plaxo and FriendFeed and back to Facebook, they are my friends, I should have the options for what info gets shared and by whom and to where. Of course, it will take it a while to iron it all out, but till then feel free to add me/contact me, wherever you find me.