Jason Aaron Kiesel

I wouldn’t bet against MySpace. They attract over 70 million people a month…

Yesterday, I broke the 100,000 mark for number of spam messages in my SPAM folder on my GMail based corporate account. Now, GMail is supposed to delete the messages after 30 days, but I don't know if that's working correctly. So as an experiment, I decided to see how high I could get that number. The current tally is at 102,665. Spammers suck. GMail rocks (they catch 99.9% of my spam). I took a screenshot of my computer while logged in. Enjoy!

First, let me say what a pleasure it was to sit down and talk with Andrew from Mixergy.com. He's done some great interviews, and I'm honored that he wanted to have a chat with me. Andrew contacted me when he discovered that I built an application for MySpace called IMe. I was also the lead front end developer for the original team that built MySpace's MySpaceIM desktop chat application.

During the interview, we talked about the process a company or individual would go through to get an application on a social network such as Facebook or MySpace. Here's a link to the blog post and interview audio. He's got a summary posted, a video of his thoughts on the interview and a link to download it. Enjoy!

This will be my next computer. I have only one word for it… Dang.

How can I get one of these?

Just in case anyone wants to get a hold of me, I can be found on pretty much any of the major social networks. Check them out below if you're interested. And be sure and become friends with my dog Gus. He's a wonder dog.

FreedomSpeaks – http://www.freedomspeaks.com/citizen/jason

MySpace Personal – http://www.myspace.com/dotnetallday
MySpace Business – http://www.myspace.com/speakoutbeheard

Facebook Personal – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=847010576
Facebook Business – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1252205959
Facebook (Gus) – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1569023053

LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonkiesel

Hulu is streaming the debates live. If I were a TV network executive, I'd be looking for a new gig right about now. Conventional TV will be completely 10 years. They'll still work, but the physical box will basically be a glorified computer monitor.

I think I just found my new office PC. Maybe I should get one to run FreedomSpeaks?

Yep, the announcement came over the wire today (click here for the formal release). I was finally able to get FreedomSpeaks' API out the door. I'm really excited about this launch, I've been working hard on it for a few months now, and it's nice to see the fruition of my work. I still have quite a bit more work ahead of me, but the API will be driving pretty much everything. Here's a list of what you can do with the API (so far):

1. Get your officials based on your address
2. Get official data based on id/screen name. 
3. Get a letter based on id 
4. Write your own letter (and send it to your officials)
5. Forward a letter already written to your officials 
6. Search our database of officials 

We also have a widget (with a couple more due out soon) that members can embed in their blog, website or MySpace profile. This widget performs the "Get Officials" action and allows visitors to their site to lookup their officials. Pretty cool if you're into getting your friends politically involved.

I don't have a forum right now for the API, so if you want to leave comments about it, or have questions, just add a comment to my post. I'll try to answer every one in a timely manner.

Spread the word – Our API is Finally Here!

Below's a sample of our "Get Officials" Widget – Get Your Widget Code Now!

I've been reading through the blogosphere and it appears Amazon is launching a new CDN service. I've already applied to beta test it, as FreedomSpeaks runs off of S3 to serve all of it's public facing content. But this brings up the point of my post.

Why do we need a CDN if S3 seems to be working just fine in that capacity? Am I missing something here?

I just read Scoble's incinerating post on the less than spectacular demos for DEMO this year and I have to say, I agree with him wholeheartedly. I went through most of them and was unimpressed as well. I hate to be dismissive or negative, but I'm not really seeing much innovation lately, and this isn't the first time I've written about it (see my previous post on TwiistUp 4).

I did come across something interesting amongst the demo'ers. A site called crowdspring.com caught my eye, mainly because I have a design background and good design always me double take. On first glance, the designs they were showcasing were actually pretty good (logos, branding, etc.) and the quotes the designs were being submitted for relatively low (under a $1000). It's hard to find good designers and even harder to find inexpensive good designers. I think I'll be using this service in the future.

I won't blast Scoble for being honest. To all the startups out there, I have some advice – take it or leave it. Just because you are a startup, doesn't mean your site should look like crap. Since you are a startup, your site is really the only thing people are going to judge you on. Make it look nice, and don't let your engineers design it. Get a designer to do it, it's well worth the added cost (and the cost isn't always as outrageous as you think).

Great post Scoble. I'm glad someone is being candid and getting through the buzzwords and bull****.