by OsakaSaul on January 25, 2012

I went looking for my mom in Google – by searching “funny regifting stories.” You can imagine my dismay in discovering not one of you has nominated my mother for the regifting buffoon of the year (dis)honor, despite her years of giving clearly the wrong thing to the wrong person. (I’ll look for your mom – and my mom, assuming she’s roughly hand-wrapped a Ronco Slicer-Dicer “As Seen on TV” and did you in with it – and other regifting stories in the comments below, and we’ll see if I can’t beat your best regifting story.) What I did find was from a Cosmo article with a collection of funny regifting stories, I found these stats:
Top 5 Excuses Why People Regift
1. It was a perfectly good gift that I simply didn’t want or couldn’t use: 90.8%
2. It was something I knew the recipient would genuinely like: 45.3%
3. I didn’t have money to buy a new gift: 36.9%
4. I didn’t have time to buy something new: 27.7%
5. I didn’t like the gift recipient, so I didn’t care what I gave him or her: 12.5%
Source: Regifting Stories – Funny Regifting Story – Cosmopolitan

As I get deeper into blogging, you know what occurred to me? Those five regifting reasons read pretty darn close to the reasons people tell me they “repurposed” content to populate their blog:
1. It was perfectly good material that the author simply didn’t want to share or couldn’t figure out how to share where it would get seen much.
2. It was something I knew my readers would genuinely like.
3. I didn’t have money to pay authors for my blog – but wanted contributors anyway.
4. I didn’t have time to write something new.
5. I don’t get business from my blog, so I don’t care what I publish.
Dishonorable mentions:
6. “What’s never been said before anyway?”
7. “The guy’s going to appreciate getting seen more; I did credit him, after all.”
8. “Publish or perish, I can’t simply go mute can I?”
9. “Its just a blog post – not like I printed it in a book or included it in a screenplay.”
10. “I spent all this time building a my crack team of content sharers; we share each others’ blog posts here and there, and so, I must take advantage of that, open the fire hose, and spew as much ‘content’ as the system can handle…”
You want CMS action, and have yet to bask in the not-so-warm glow of being recognized for your…
Douchebaggery
No, that’s not my car – but I seem to have silver paint on my key…

little patience/big car (is a not totally unlike) little patience to write/big CMS

Because we all need CMS. (And I didn’t have the time to locate a parking spot that I would have had the time to back my fuel hog into.)
Hell, even when I see you douching it up, I usually don’t have the nerve to call you on it – since if you are a blogger and we share each others’ posts, sooner or later you wind up helping me with something and so, I really would rather not offend you. As for controlling your reputation, I am safest keeping my opinion to myself.
Content Repurposing
Here is Ezine Articles on the subject. Ah, but article author Cathy Strucker only discusses “…taking intellectual property you have created and using it in another way.” Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/110568 Not a word about ye ole copy > paste > credit someone who has not given you permission to use their material > “voila,” instant blog post.

So, where do you stand on bloggers lifting the work of others and using it to lure social media consumers to their sites? Is it fair play when a blogger credits an author – who he has not garnered permission from – and grabs the entire article…?
Your blog is like your house

I wont tell you how to act.
I may, however, silently judge you and then rethink my sharing of your blog to my social media streams. And if you’re a particularly offensive host, I probably wont stay long – or return for more.

While we have this special opportunity, while I am not calling out anyone in particularly, least of all you, the situation is perfect for me to ask you to consider my stance on the blogs of others:
1. You put your name on it, you tie your professional profiles to it, and thus, every thing you slap up to your blog represents you. Professionally.
2. Maybe you are profoundly respected and also known to use very foul language when speaking with nearly everyone. It might not work for me, but you might be the type of character who makes that work – and so, on your blog, as well, that aspect of your persona might not be a thing to hide.
3. Stanley Kubrick directed films less and less frequently from the beginning to the end of his career; there are great bloggers who leave us work which resonates, though they do not publish daily. Maybe you’ll be okay if you don’t publish daily as well.
Rules on reblogging / repurposing the material of others: strikingly similar to those for regifting

1. If just one rule-of-thumb is best for you: don’t do it ever. You’ll never be able to play it off well if you get caught.
2. You actually get caught far more often than you think you do, but people often settle to remember you for it – rather than calling you out for it. (Unless the original gifter/author is them.)
3. What you leave under your blog header for us is like what you leave under the Christmas tree for us; rock-solid take-away value and a dearth of thievery/pawning off your “lifts” from others’ writings will be something we will remember you for – every bit as much as it was clear you put much thought into what you gave us for Christmas.

It all matters, at least that’s my stance.

Gamification: Motivation and Engagement
by Andrzej on January 18, 2012

What’s Game Good For?
Before we can talk about applying game mechanics to anything, we need to understand what a game actually us. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a game as “a form or spell of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength or luck.”

That’s pretty hard to digest as a something you can say to a decision maker! However, if we break it down further we can start to get at some core ideas that should help. Play and sport are all activities or tasks. Played is not a strong word in the corporate world. It conjures images of nerds playing quake after hours on the corporate network. So instead, how about we use completed.

Rules Can Be Starting Points
Next, rules. We all have rules, but it is not something you hear people talking about in businesses. Instead, we could say parameters or guidelines. All projects have parameters or guidelines. That leaves us with a new definition, that really does mean the same as before, but one that is easier to apply to day-to-day activities. “A task that is completed according to a set of parameters or guidelines.”

Give Us Tasks / Call to Action
Sounds familiar, but doesn’t sound much fun now, does it? You have to look deeper into what games are, beyond the words on a page. Games are fun, but why?

Throw Me Something
Rewards. Every game you play, from childhood and onwards is based around a simple principal. Complete a task, get some kind of reward, enjoy the process and repeat. The last bit of the definition gives us more; “decided by skill, strength or luck”. To complete these tasks and to get the rewards, you need to demonstrate some kind of skill.

How do you make a task fun?
The task can be anything from jumping over barrels in Donkey Kong to learning the basics. In the case of Donkey Kong, there are two rewards for the task. The first is the fun of the challenge. It is fun to jump those barrels, you enjoy perfecting the skills needed to achieve the task. The second is the satisfaction of completing a level and being rewarded with a virtual kiss from the damsel. Task and reward.

Learning your ABC’s is not intrinsically fun if it is just done through repetition. There is very little joy to be had from the task its self. However, add some word association to it, add a reward or two – such as merit marks or extra playtime – and suddenly we have a game. The task has been made more enjoyable with the addition of a reward for completing it.

This means we need to add back two important ideas to the new definition: competition and skill: “A task that is completed according to a set of parameters or guidelines in a fun, competitive and skilful way.”

Where is gamification in the real world?
It is at this point that you should start to see what we mean by gamification and how it can work. Let’s look at a couple of examples of how these simple ideas have been used in the real world.

First, a very simple concept that has been used a lot in the last few years are Badges or Awards. I have personally used them on my Games Review Site recently, to quite a bit of success. The idea is that for tasks that have been achieved on the website, badges and experience points are awarded. So on the site; if a user has a review published, they get some points. If it is their first, then they will also get a badge on their profile. If they have 10 published, they get another badge and so on. Editors get points and badges for adding news, publishing articles and editing reviews. League tables are then available to show how well each team member is doing each month. A little bit of competition builds between the editors and suddenly we are getting more news, reviews and articles published than ever before.

Another great example of this task and reward system being used in the real world is with a GPS system called Waze. You install an app on your mobile device and start to use it in just the same way as GPS. However, the game is in helping other drivers become more aware of what is happening on the roads around them. If you are stuck in traffic, you can get your passenger (safety first) to report the jam to other users. This then appears on all the other drivers’ maps and alerts them to the problem. It also earns you some points and badges. Again, the simple task of reporting traffic or road issues becomes a game.

Just recently, I read about these game mechanics being applied to Accounts Payable!. The company in question had a system in place that awarded points to individuals and teams for every line of data that was entered. At the end of each month, the team with the most points chooses a charity that the company then would donate money to. This is a great example of how adding a little bit of game theory to a very, very mundane task can make it a whole lot more interesting and rewarding.

Motivation, Engagement and Game Mechanics
At the end of the day this all boils down to one thing. Motivation. If a person is motivated, they will be more productive. Most motivation is negative. You are motivated to do your job because you need the money and don’t want to get fired. Gamification gives you the opportunity to motivate people in a much more positive way. Imagine a group of workers who are competing to be the best at even the most mundane of tasks, just because at the end of the month they may get to put a trophy on their desk. Happy workers leads to increased productivity and retention.

This nicely leads us into one of the key benefits for you, the person who first wanted to delve into gamification, engagement. Imagine people coming back to your site, over and over again, because they want to get enough visits, or actions on your site, to get the title of Chief News Monkey. This kind of engagement would be much less likely to happen if there was not something in it for the user. Humans will invariably look at all tasks with a little bit of “What’s in it for me?”. Once the user is engaged in the task, you will get more from them. On a website this would be seen in the length of time they stay on the site. Rather than just looking at the page they came for, an engaged user will maybe look at two or three extra pages, especially if they were getting rewarded for doing so. Within a company, engaged workers will be more productive. Name me one company that is seeking to reduce productivity! Employing simple game mechanics can help achieve all of this and more, if done properly.

Video games have been using this trick to achieve high retention for years now. Do you think people would continue to play Call of Duty or World of Warcraft for all this time if there was not some kind of reward for playing for longer? Of course not. Many play so that they can unlock the best weapons, or get to level 70 or unlock a particular badge they want to display on their profile. These awards motivate them to play more and more and buy new addons when they are released. Again, motivated and engaged by simple rewards.

You may not yet understand how this can help you. That’s fine. It is a hard concept to apply to work. It is even harder to sell the concept to the holders of the purse strings.

However, if motivation, engagement or productivity are things that interest you – Gamification is definitely something you will want to probe into further.

About Andrzej Marczewski: Web developer since 2000. A huge advocate of all things social media related. A dedicated life long gamer who believes that game mechanics, technology and gamification can be used to help almost anyone.

Social Ghosts – Catching the Eye of Big Companies

by Ross Quintana on January 11, 2012

Social media presents the mirage of revenue potential to companies

As companies salivate over the new found data to be scraped from social media, they do it with great fear – the fear that comes from seeing social apparitions. Social ghosts are the shimmering images of potential customers. Companies feel comfortable dealing with real customers who are measured by the sales revenue they generate.

The scary thing about ghosts is you aren’t sure if they are real or what they can do to you. To companies they have always measured marketing to sales on an instant breakfast timer. Measuring relationships and customer influence is foreign for them. Social media is seen as something less than real…a ghost.
Big business should know that short-term thinking wont convert the interested into customers or brand ambassadors

Companies have tried to talk to the ghosts before… “Hey there, ghost, would you like to watch my ad for macaroni and cheese?” Since they are dealing with relationships that require more than a 15 second advertisement, they have fell short with most attempts to use social media. So who do they call?
SocialBusters: social media autopiloting companies

They hire a firm to be social for them and they ask them to advertise to the ghosts… Some unscrupulous companies may take their money with little real return for the company, only to teach them that using social media is like trying to talk to the dead – and to set everything possible on autopilot. Automated content, auto-responders, and autocratic comment moderation…

Corporations biggest downfall is that they are short term thinkers. If they can’t see the ROI they don’t believe in it. Are social ghosts real? Can a company really make money through connecting and engaging with their customers? Can the money making machines pass over into the other world where spirits (their customers) live? Yes… but it isn’t easy.

The first thing they need to do is understand the metrics and see how those metrics lead to revenue and sales. Second, they need to stop thinking spam, and start creating relationships, making connections, and finding their best and most influential customers. How can they do this?
Social metrics

Companies like Klout and others have attempted to put a number on it (shout out to Beyonce). They have created metrics to determine how influential a person may be. Now many social media lovers are going to cry foul on Klout, but they are simply one of many that will develop ways to measure social influence. Influence it seems is the ghost that has always been in the house of business and enterprise but nobody has been able to get a clear picture of it. Brand influence is clearly present in the marketplace and has kept many companies alive when their businesses were failing. Social measurements are going to be a valuable currency in the new socially connected world. People can invest now and spend their influence later. Companies need to see the value of customer relationships and learn how to know who their most influential customers are and treat them even better. There is a whole new world available to companies if they can cross over and touch a ghost.

Track down Ross Quintana‘s blog and… Be the Future

Or get into conversation with him > @Ross_Quintana

Innovation strategist, reverse engineering through observation, I am passionate about adding value, seeing what is next, and connecting with great thinkers.

When you order your steak, da guy’s gonna say “witturwittout?” This means, “would you like your cheesesteak sandwich with or without fried onions?”
Be prepared to tell the guy which cheese you want in it. Be like us: go with Provolone. “Wit” (Like I tole ya’, dat’s duh onions, umkay?
Hoagies and steaks (AKA steak sandwiches) are supposed to start with an Amoroso long roll. Its a local bakery, and they’re just right. Subway will never understand. You will when you get a real steak at Pat’s – or just about anywhere else.
Jim’s Steaks on South Street are not bad at all. But they *are* for tourists. “Go down attaway, downnastreet,” as we say, “ova tuh Pat’s Steaks.” Or Geno’s, every bit as authentic and divine in quality. Get hot peppers and pickles “onnaside” (on the side).

FRIENDLY WARNING to fellow Philly buddies

Order anything BUT a sandwich when you’re out of Philly. You are spoiled, dig? You think our sandwiches are “normal.” You grew up on great $5.00 large pizzas at neighborhood joints, and $2.00 Italian hoagies and pizza steaks and lemmetellya’, even a tuna hoagie in Philly beats a Subway “submarine sandwich.” Subway produces abominations, and things that should not be: they’re too scientific and have no soul in their preparation – and the roll sucks dead donkey!
Junk Food

Tastycakes are our junk food. If you are under ten years of age and think Tastycakes are pricey, you eat Now ‘N Laters,” “Jolly Ranchers” and trade ‘em when the teacher isn’t looking in class. There even used to be a thing called “Chikostick” – a candybar that was chicken and peanut butter in theme – but actually worked out well. I am quite disgruntled that Chicosticks caught on but my Vagsickles (you know, popsickles for the vagina?) never made it to market. Back to Tastycakes: avoid the “French Green Apple Pie” thing. Other Tastycake pies are okay and heavy as hell, they really fill you up. Your basic and most important, traditional Tastycake-to-know is the Butterscotch Krimpet, however. (The Tastycake site shows that they make several types I have never even heard of; they two we actually live off are Jelly and Butterscotch.
Continuing with local junk food, I need to explain that “pressels” ain’t junk food, but rather a local staple of our street cuisine. They’re like Knishes in New York City. More on our beloved Philadelphia Hot Pretzel, later.

WuddurIce: Summer wouldn’t be right without waterice, our name for Italian Ice (“Ices” it is called in NYC). Guys scrape it out of big cans and pack white paper cones with it. You get the best in South Philly, and the flavors to know are lemon (with real bits of lemon) and bubblegum (without real bits of bubblegum).

Incidentally, an absolute must-know, particularly if you wish to pass under our stranger-danger radar: only in Phladelphia is water pronounced – correctly – “wudder.” For what its worth, to hear a lovely white-trash Philly accent, listen to Kevin Bacon in Sleepers. And then, Sly Stallone can do an Italian South Philly accent, pretty much anytime (though he’s the product of money – from our “Main Line” area. Locals know what I mean, here. The Main Line: Will Smith, Sylvester Stallone, and lots of people who think they’re better than lots of people. Philadelphia old money.)
Downnashore

There ain’t no “going to the seashore.” That’ll get you doubting and glaring looks from us. We go “downnashore” (down the shore) = drive to any of the beach towns that are from 30 minutes to 60 minutes south of Atlantic City (a cesspool) for a cheap beach vacation. Margate, Brigantine, all the way south to Cape May, or, just above that, to Wildwood, where bars are open until about 4/5 a.m., beer and crap food is cheap, music is bad, but “innasummer” (gettin’ it yet?) “dese illegal chicks werkin’ az nannies ‘an shit’ from Ireland are downnere” (you catch “awn” quick!) and they like American guys. Pretty much ANY American guys. (Or, pay for the next pitcher of beer. They’ll like you then.)
Dag!

This we exclaim, to mean, “I can’t believe you would be so unreasonable!”
Stickball

New Yorkers play handball. Look it up; it is nothing like European handball, the Olympic sport. In Philly, weez (“we”) gots stickball for the kids. Yuh juss needuh broomstick widdout duh broom part and like, half or even a whole old tennis ball or pinkie ball. If the park’s too far, you play stick ball in the street. You can play until either dinnuh time or, pretty much, until wannaduh (one of the) kids messes up a parked – on worse yet, a non-parked car.
Pitching Pennies

You want to get as close to the wall to collect all duh udduh guyz pennies. Just play wit guyz from your own damn block so yuh don’t get punched in the head over a “stranger’s” penny. (A stranger lives a block away, and thus, isn’t a local, or “from your neighborhood.”
Pressels

Cheapest way to fill yourself up on the street: a hot pretzel. You can order ‘em without salt, too (we wont be offended, neither!) “Duh pressel guy’s” probably got both yellow and brown mustard, take your pick, there aint no right or wrong on this one. (Just don’t be a dipshit and ask for Grey Poupon, “uh kay?” (okay)
We Got Uhlotta Schools

Don’t say TOO much nice stuff about Temple University, Drexel, Villanova, LaSalle, St. Joseph’s, Textiles & Sciences, or my alma mater, Penn State; most of us did a degree – or a “coupluh yeehz” (couple of years but no degree) at “wannadem” (one of them). They ain’t no big deal to us, as such. We even got an Ivy League one, University of Pennsylvania (AKA “Penn”) which attracts rich brats from out of town. In Philly and even within “jussah” (just a) 30-minute driving radius, we actually have another dozen or so full fledged universities and a good number of two-year schools, like CCP (Community College of Philadelphia).
Just TRY Settling for a Sandwich After You’ve Had a Hoagie

An Italian Hoagie will make a wonderful lunch. “Dey got” lots of meats and also lettuce and raw onions in ‘em. Real men’ll say “extra mayo.” If you are health-conscious, fine, go with the alternative to mayo, oil and vinegar. That’s legit, and one of the two normal choices. If you’re going local, though, say “Gimme Italian Hoagie, light awnna onions ‘n lettuce, throw in some hot peppers ahn heavy awnna mayo. Ahn on her’s, no onions or peppers, ahn she sez oil ‘n vinegar. Which wayzuh (way’s the) can (toilet)?”
Broad and Market

We ain’t got no 14th street. What would be 14th Street is Broad Street, and unlike most of the other numbered streets, it goes two ways. Its busy, though, so take Second Street one way / Fifth Street the other way to go “innanouttah da city.” Be careful when driving drunk and horny “arrown” (around) Broad and Market Streets. You’ll see skank “broads” young and old and very old (and very skanky) who are clearly up for “market.” And bored, head-cracking a-hole Philly cops, a leftover remnant of the (former Police Commissioner) Frank Rizzo era, who seem more interested in you and your driving then the prostitutes.
Connoisseurs of Heroin Know us too

The Kensington/Frankford section of Philly, AKA Badlands, AKA Zombieland: this is where white trash are created, for generations and generations, and raised and rarely escape and tend to get into forties of malt liquor and good ole’ Philly heroin.
Scoring smack under the “El” on “Frankford Av” predates me, going back well over fifty years, maybe a hundred, even, and though you’d think they’d go straight to New York, drug-buying tourists drive up to three hours to get to Frankford Avenue, under the “Frankford ‘El” (our elevated subway line) to score “H.” There seems to be a well-trod pipeline supplying Philadelphia with heroin, and for some reason, though the Badlands are only a couple square miles, Philly’s Finest (police) can’t reign them in.
Don’t call it “heroin,” “China,” or “smack”; The French Connection was made a long time ago. You’ll soon figure out if what they have in stock is “brown” or “white.” (What little more I know I know from documentaries.)
For crack, you’ll want to venture to North Philly, AKA The Jungle, where I went to high school. If you are low on melanin, a stroll through the Norf Philly could be quite an adventure. Again, harping on the utter worthlessness of the lackadaisical police force of Philadelphia, I recall seeing a photograph of a house that was identified in a Philadelphia Inquirer article as a crack house: I got to see it every day, clearly open for business throughout my four years of high school.

Have We Got Neighbors…
This is what is known about ‘em:

There is pretty much up and down, because across Pennsylvania you just drive through Philly’s ‘burbs, and then, run down formerly-industrial towns, hills and farmland, Amish communities, and mountains with only mediocre skiing/snowboarding. And when you stop at a tavern trolling for an easy local lay who you can ploy with Buffalo Wings and Yuengling Black and Tans (Yuengling: America’s oldest beer and a thing to know if you venture anywhere near the main campus of Penn State, is pronounced ying ling), the locals figure out you are “up from Philly,” and clearly think its, like, the place to be in Pennsylvania. (“Okay.”) Wanna act like you down? Jussay “yo’, kinnai get a cupla Porters downnere (“Pardon me, Barkeep, perhaps you did not see me. I’d like two Yuengling Porter beers, please.” The “downnere” (down here) provides a subtle and not-too-aggressive suggestion that you feel ignored or getting second-rate service.)
This is what we know of up and down:
Down (South of Philadelphia is pretty much South of Pennsylvania):

“Downnashore” is “off to South Jersey”. Other coastal towns even further South (NC, MD, VA, WV, GA, and all the way down to FL) are unthinkably far. If you really gotta go far “down South,” like to buy fireworks from VA, etc., where good ones ain’t illegal, you know duh I-95 goes all the way down, down to the Florida (we say “Flahrduh” / when you’re there, learn to UN-say that; they say “Floorduh”) annits free.
Up

New York: its mostly big and farmy, like PA, but NYC is a place to see, now and then. But everything costs a whole lot more there, so you don’t stay long. Annennere’s (“And then there’s”)… “Norf” Jersey: its got bridges and tunnels to New York City, its got oil refineries, factories, warehouses, highways, pollution, bed-towns for NYC commuters, it smells bad 24/7, and its got Triberr (where blogs get seen). Act like you know it is rude – and could easily get you punched – to talk trash about Italian Americans or sound like Danny DeVito when you are in “Joyzee” (Jersey). A few Italian Americans are/were “Familia” (what we actually call mafia); most are everything but bad guys.
Further North, or, “even more up”: I guess dey got Boston and Rhode Island and other New England places (but we can’t name more than a couple places up dere ’cause its real, real far and for rich people ‘anyways’)

♥ Share this if you’re proud to be from Philly – or we didn’t rough you up too bad when you were there last, for your cheesesteak ahnna couplah 20-bags of “white” ♥

How to Use Embedly…

Embedly has libraries available for a host of different client and server-side web languages, including jQuery, Python, Ruby and PHP. For users who don’t want to mess with writing their own tool, Embedly has built its own JavaScript tag and WordPress plugin. Community-developed plugins for Drupal and Joomla also exist.

Since the WordPress plugin was developed by Embedly itself (and we use WordPress at Mashable), here’s a brief overview of how easy it is to use Embedly to bring rich content to your website.

Install the Embedly Plugin

The first step is to download and install the Embedly plugin. Activate the plugin and you can select what services you want to enable from the Embedly menu in the WordPress dashboard.

Embedly frequently updates its service list, and you can run an “update services” command to get access to more libraries.

Paste URLs Into Your Posts

The next step is to simply enter a URL on its own line into your posts or web pages. Each service has slightly different parameters for how URLs should be entered, but in general, the base URL is all that is needed.

To embed a Twitter status update, for instance, you just need to enter in the URL to that update. The Embedly API page has the parameters for each service supported by Embedly.

Enjoy Rich Media Embeds

The Tumblr support is one of my favorite features — simply entering the URL for a post will embed the content of that post. If it’s a photo, the photo is displayed; if it’s a video, you’ll see the video in its player, and so on.

On the Twitter end, Embedly’s Blackbird Pie implementation is a lot easier than any other method we have seen. The company even has basic support for Twitter Photos.

You can take a look at an example page I created using Embedly on one of my test blogs.