Chip Oglesby

At the beginning of August, I took a trip home to see my parents. Three quarters of the way there, something happened to my car and it started overheating. I wasn’t sure what it was, so I stopped off at the gas station and topped off the coolant.

After leaving the car at home for two consecutive weeks and not being able to fix it, I finally diagnosed the problem: it was a blown head gasket! Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve always had problems with my Lexus, but this drove me over the top after hearing that it would cost $2,500 to fix it. It was then that I decided that I wouldn’t buy another car, but instead I would purchase a bike and get back in shape.

Buying a bike was something that I’ve toyed with for a while, but never had the motivation to do. The first week I was back in Columbia without a car, I walked three miles to work and decided that I would never do it again. After that I began my search for some new wheels.

I consulted friends on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to see what they liked. For a while I was considering purchasing a Trek Soho, a fixed speed Gary Fisher bike that would be good for getting around the city. A guy from my local bike store (LBS) convinced me that if I were going to buy a bike, I was better off going with a commuter/hybrid bike, something that’s a cross between a mountain bike and a road bike. Mountain bikes are too heavy for the city and I’m to heavy for a straight road bike so I finally settled on the Trek 7.1 FX pictured below.

When I first started telling friends and family what I was going to do, I got a lot of resistance. I heard lots of people say “You can’t do that” “You won’t last long/you’ll give up after a while” “What will you do when it gets cold?” “What if you need to go out of town?” and I would calmly reassure people that I in fact wasn’t going crazy and that I was excited about riding to work everyday. Besides, it’s only six miles round trip, how hard could it be?

Two months later: What have I learned?

Two months in to this experiment and I’m still going strong! I am very happy to report that I love biking to work on a daily basis and even have fun riding in the rain!

When I was commuting by car to work, it would take me about 10-12 minutes by car to get to my office. When I first started riding, I took things very slowly and didn’t push myself but my times have drastically improved since then. It now takes me about 17 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes to get home in the afternoon. On the week of September 20th one afternoon I had to race a storm home in time so that I could make it to my house before things got crazy! I made it home just in time for the bottom to open up.

Riding in the (light) rain isn’t that bad. It stings when it hits your skin if you’re going more than 25 mph like I was, but other than that, it’s pretty refreshing riding in the rain. Just be sure to pack your clothes in a waterproof bag or put them in a grocery bag and stuff them in your backpack and you’ll be fine. If it’s raining really hard like it was the morning of 9/23, I’ll just call the office and tell them I’m working from home until the rain stops.

Bike facts from Trek go by bike:

• Just three hours of bicycling per week can reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke by 50%.
• If you bike four miles round trip each day instead of driving, you will save about 66 gallons of fuel per year.
• That same daily trip will burn 36,000 calories in a year; the equivalent of over 10 pounds of fat.
• 40% of all trips are within two miles of the home.
• You can park 14 bikes in the same space you can park one car.
• The U.S. could save 462 million gallons of gasoline a year by increasing cycling from 1% to 1.5% of all trips.

Yes, there are still days when I’ll ask someone for a ride, but I try to limit that to extreme circumstances. I’ll never ask someone if I’m just too tired; I always suck it up and ride anyway. I have asked friends for rides before I bought my lights and lock but now that I have those, I feel comfortable riding anywhere. I’ll also ask a friend for a ride if we’re all going somewhere more than 8 miles out of town, like to the movie theaters in Sandhills or on Harbison.

Not everything has been absolutely perfect. Since I’m a big guy, I do put more weight on my frame and wheels. I’ve magically broken two spokes in the months since I bought my bike but I blame those on rough riding, like going through potholes. I do also have to deal with the fact that I don’t have a full shower at work and have to resort to other options, but I’ve managed to tame that beast rather well.

Here’s what I know about riding in the city so far:

• If you’re going to ride, be safe. Never assume a driver knows what your doing.
• Don’t ride too close to parked cars. You never know when someone will open a door in your path. It’s called getting “doored” and it sucks when it happens.
• Buy a helmet, lights and a bike lock. I know it doesn’t seem cool, but it will save you a lot grief in the long run.
• Don’t be afraid of using the higher granny gears on your bike. They’re there for a reason.
• It’s not a race; enjoy your ride every time your on your bike.
• Anyone can do it, including me. I might not look like Lance Armstrong, but I will.
• Columbia isn’t the bike friendliest city ever, but it’s better than New York and San Francisco.
• Pedestrians are always distracted. Don’t assume they can hear or see you, especially when they’re glued to their phone.

The image above sums it up pretty well. I’ll add the following points:

• I look forward to getting out on my bike and riding without a destination.
• It feels great zipping through stopped traffic right when the light turns green!
• Driving a car at any speed above 45 mph feels like you’re piloting a rocketship!!
• People for the most part are pretty nice about passing and not honking or gesturing.
• There’s a large community of daily commuters throughout the US with some very helpful websites.
• Riding a bike has allowed me to slow down and enjoy life more. No more life in the fast lane.

What to look forward to:

Fall will be starting soon and that means it will be getting cold. That means it’s time to think about layering up when riding to work and also figuring out bus routes if it snows this winter so I can continue to get around. At some point I would like to add some upgrades to my bike.

I’m also looking forward to living in a city that’s more bike friendly. Columbia has very few physical bike lanes in the city. I won’t point fingers at who should be responsible for building those, but I do think there’s an opportunity to do something about it soon.

While on my trip out west, I was surprised by how bike friendly Portland, Seattle and San Francisco were. Some people call them a bikers heaven so it would be nice go back and visit them when I actually have time to rent something and spend the day riding around.

If you’re curious about bike riding or are looking for someone to go with you, let me know and I’ll help you out as much as possible. We can ride around town and look for the safest route for you to ride to work.

Happy trails!

This post will be short, sweet and to the point. Social Crush was a very intense two day hands-on social media conference for Columbia, SC.

Monday featured a bootcamp that taught basic 101 information for Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. I taught the Twitter session and felt like there was some really great engagement with questions about how to compose tweets, how often someone should tweet and how to track analytics using services like bit.ly.

Tuesday we absolutely hit the ground running full speed! We covered every topic from ‘like-gating’ to geo-location services. The afternoon sessions featured more breakouts that covered Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and location based services. Social Media Club again volunteered to help lead some of these workshops. I was looking forward to hearing Skeeter Harris’ Youtube talk, but I totally missed it.

I spent the day taking notes for Social Media Club. You can find those here.

Wednesday was another full-speed hands on session that featured a keynote speaker from Hubspot as well as a great overview of blogging from the guys at Zementa.

All of my notes from Wednesday can be found here as well.

Given my current situation with my car, I decided that now might be a good time to look into buying an electric car.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The Nissian Leaf gets 100 miles on one charge.

There’s even the Chevy Volt which is a gas/electric hybrid. It gets 35 miles on an electric charge and 340 miles additional mileage on gas.

The idea of having a fully electric car in the city is very appealing. My average commute to work is 6 miles round trip so I would be there perfect audience.

But what happens if I want to go out of town? How far could I really make it?

I built the map below that shows all electric car charging stations in South Carolina.

Data provided by Plug-in Carolina.

As you can see, it’s very sparse. There are stations in Greenville, Union, Spartanburg, York (Rock Hill), and Columbia.

If you were to buy a Leaf your travel options would be very limited. Greenville  is 103 miles away from Columbia. Spartanburg is 93 miles away, Rock Hill is 68 miles away and Union is 72 miles.

Granted, these are towns that provide dedicated charging stations and you can still plug your car in at a friend’s house but will that stop you from traveling with your electric car?

Here’s another Google Map I’ve found by a user, Jim, while searching for EV stations. His map has a few extra additions my doesn’t.

View Larger Map

So the big question is, with most large towns spread out around South Carolina will you be willing to take the risk of traveling to these towns in a fully electric town?

If you follow any news about Google, undoubtedly you know that Google has released a new social network called Google+. At it’s core, Google+ brings the best of each social networking platform to this new service: updates, social sharing, photos and check-ins. IF Google+ is successful, it’s going to be huge for them. Why? They’re accomplishing exactly what shareholders want, users spending more time on their site with their products.

But there’s another interesting, somewhat overlooked feature of the Google+ platform that could ultimately benefit both Google and advertisers: Check-ins. As more users push towards using mobile first, this is quickly becoming a burgeoning area for opportunity among small business owners.

Let’s take a look at the tools that Google has under it’s tool belt:

Android

The Android platform is ground-zero for this entire idea. Everything will feed into the phone and use it’s GPS to determine the user’s location and which deals are available based on checkins through Google+ and past Google Offers.

Google Wallet

From the Walstreet Journal: By 2014, 70% of U.S. consumers will have smartphones and 52% of those will be NFC-capable, according to estimates by payment consultancy Mercator Advisory Group. Already, app developers, wireless carriers, banks and card companies are racing to shape the potentially lucrative mobile-payments ecosystem. Google also is working with 16 retailers, including American Eagle Outfitters Inc., Walgreen Co., Macy’s and Subway, to develop its own point-of-sale service, called SingleTap. Under this system, consumers will be able to pay with credit accounts stored on the phone, redeem promotions and earn loyalty points.

Google Wallet is currently being beta tested in San Francisco and New York, but there should be larger markets opening up by the end of the year.

Google Places/hotpot

Businesses can use Google Places to help improve their search results. This can be helpful for both desktop and mobile users. The Google Places app on Android allows users to read reviews as well as check-in to businesses on Latitude and Google+. The more a user checks in, the more rewards they could earn. There’s also a mobile version for web users as well as an iPhone version where users can also leave reviews of the business. Businesses can also offer special deals on the web version of their Google Places page to help entice customers to visit their stores.

Google+

Goolge+ has a better chance with users adopting checkins than Google Latitude because it’s a new service and most users on Google+ might not realize Latitude can run in the background on their phone tracking their every move. Most users are accustomed to checking in on foursquare, gowalla or facebook places, so this would be a welcome addition to most users. It is yet to be seen how Google+ will integrate checkins with Google Places and rewards.

Google Latitude

Google Latitude is where things really start to get interesting. Being able to track movements over time as well as the ability to automatically checkin using geo-fencing opens up new possibilities on the analytical side for Google Places.

Google Offers

Currently beta testing in Portland, New York City and The Bay Area. Google Offers is likely to be a competitor to Groupon. Users can buy discounts to their favorite restaurants.

Tying it all together

Theoretically, if Google were to tie all of this information together, here’s what I think will happen:

Since all Android phones require a Google account to work, there will be at least one way to track each individual user. As the popularity of Google+ increases, it will become harder for most users to resist using Google+.

Some of these users will ultimately start checking into places with their friends creating yet another piece of the puzzle. Using Latitude’s History tracking, Google can create a profile based on each users most likely time to visit their favorite bar.

Because the phone uses Google Wallet and the user has used it in the past, Google can build a profile of what that customer is most likely to buy.

Since Google can understand the sentiment of the customers visit based on their review, it will know if they are most likely to return again in the future.

Google can the use Google offers to precisely target the customer based on past history, offering them coupons for items their most likely to buy.

Google could help small businesses target and reward a select and highly active group of people without breaking the bank by offering deals such as what we see daily on Groupon.

Which would be a better deal, offer 53 highly active customers 1/2 dinner and 12 somewhat active customers a free appetizer when they check in with two friends or selling 1,000 $25 for $50 worth of cuisine to everyone in your town?

Eventually Google will have the metrics and data to support all of this, but how will customers and users react?

Some advocacy groups will cry foul and see this as an invasion of privacy, but Google answers to its shareholders who demand more ROI from Google’s products.

This type of service would also be a direct competitor with Groupon and Foursquare. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts if something like this were to happen.

Amidst all the talk of recent hacks, I decided that it would be time to use Google’s new two-step verification process for my account.

Using Google’s new two-step process will make it harder for someone to access your account if they try to guess or steal your password. This extra layer of security prevents someone from completely hijacking your account.

This service is also available to both individual and Google Apps accounts.

Watch the video below to get a better understanding of how this process works:

The verification process works with the follow systems:

• Blackberry
• iPhone
• Android
• iPad
• iPod touch
• Text messages
• Phone calls

The method that we’ll focus on is setting it up using an Android and iPhone.  In the Android Market and iTunes Market download the program called: Google Authenticator. You’ll need that for step two of the process.

Once the program is installed, if you plan on using both phones like I do, you’ll need to go through the process with them together at the same time. If you don’t you’ll have to start the process all over again, like I did.

Head over to the two-step verfication page and get your phones ready to scan the barcode.

To link your phone to your account:

Using the QR code: Select Scan account barcode. If the Authenticator app cannot locate a barcode scanner app on your phone, you might be prompted to download and install one. If you want to install a barcode scanner app so you can complete the setup process, press Install then go through the installation process. Once the app is installed, reopen Google Authenticator, point your camera at the QR code on your computer screen.

Using secret key: Select Manually add account, then enter the email address of your Google Account in the box next to Enter account name. Next, enter the secret key on your computer screen into the box under Enter key. Make sure you’ve chosen to make the key Time based and press “Save.”

In my experience the Google Authenticator app did not work for the iPhone so I was forced to enter the secret key in manually.

Once two-step verification is turned on,your phones will stop working. This is normal. You’ll need to go in and create an Application-specific passwords for both phones.

Application-specific passwords

These are passwords that you’ll have to enter for every program that you use that does not reside on Google’s servers.
For example, it could include the following:

• Google Voice App for the iPhone
• Gmail for the iPhone
• Google account access for Android
• POP and IMAP email clients such as Outlook, Mail and Thunderbird
• Gmail and Google Calendar on smartphones
• ActiveSync for Windows Mobile and iPhone
• YouTube Mobile on Apple devices
• Cloud Print
• Installed chat clients such as Google Talk and Adium
• Picasa, 3D Warehouse, Sketchup, and installed applications
• AdWords Editor
• Sync for Google Chrome

The good thing about the ASP’s is that you’ll only have to enter them once, making the program more secure.

Logging into your account

Once everything is set up, you’ll probably want to log into your account for the first time.

When you pull up the Gmail screen you’ll be prompted to enter your username and password. The sign in button has been changed to verify and you’ll need to enter a time based password from the Google Authenticator program. This password changes at random intervals to ensure a safe log in method.

You’ll have to do this with each browser and each computer that you use, which can become a pain, but it can remember your account for up to thirty days.

One downside to this approach is that it’s harder to log in from someone else’s computer if you don’t have your phone with you. Fortunately, Google will give you a print out of 10 codes that always work. They recommend you store them in your wallet, I recommend you memorize some of them and destroy the card! You can never be too careful.

If you don’t have your phone or your wallet, the third option is a phone call from Google to a trusted phone number you have. If you don’t have any of these options available, you might want to give up on checking your email for the time being.

Things to consider

• This process is much easier if you have a smartphone
• This process does depend on your smartphone so don’t lose it
• If you lose your phone, there are other options for recovering your password
• Logging into your account without access to your phone is difficult, so that that into consideration.

Following on the heels of yesterday’s post, I thought it would be interesting to see how Facebook pages handles custom status updates and sharing links.

As you can see from the image above, just like custom status updates for individual pages, facebook will also let you customize who can see your updates for your fan pages.

If your a small business, you probably don’t need to worry about this unless your running special deals in specific areas around your state, but let’s think about it from a large companies point of view.

For example, if you’re Starbucks, you might want to target consumers in a specific area about deals. There are two options, a geo-targeted ad and status update. You’ll pay for the ad, but you won’t be paying for the update.

Once you’ve decided on the general geographic area similar to the image above, you can also choose states and cities separately. You cannot however, drill down to street-level, so you can’t target people within five miles of a store in the 29205 zip code.

If you only have one store in a given zip-code it, might be easier, but it depends on how things are set up.

One option I would like to see added is the ability to target facebook’s ‘Questions’ to certain geographic areas. It would be nice to see an integration where we could ask users “We’re thinking of starting a new chapter/business/whatever here, Where do you think it should be?”

There are times that come along when you might want to share a link with a particular group of friends of a political orientation or with a group of friends who might only be interested in niche topics like data, technology or journalism.

Usually, most people will just share a link or status update with everyone. Now that facebook allows you to customize your updates, things just got a lot more interesting.

Below, I’ll show you how you can target your friends or online connections to make sure those who are interested in what your saying can stay engaged without people tuning you out.

When you want to update your status these are your basic options:

• Everyone
• Friends of Friends and Networks
• Friends and Networks
• Friends of Friends
• Friends only
• Customize

You can see how you would select them from the drop down menu below. This is accessible from your newsfeed and from your profile page. This feature is somewhat enabled on the iPhone facebook app. Your privacy settings will determine what shows up and where it’s displayed on facebook’s website. For example if someone mentions “cooking” it would now appear in the search results: “Cooking out and Pool with Aljere, Lana, Kels, and Shawn! Yay!”

If your privacy settings are for ‘friends only’ then only your friends will see your status update. But if your settings are for “everyone” then anyone searching for ‘cooking’ would be able to see your update as well.

This is where things start to get interesting. From the menu below you can choose the customize option.

It allows you to pick certain people while ignoring everyone else on your friends list. If you choose three friends for example and update your status to “Where do you want to go to lunch today?” Those three people would be the only ones to see the status and have the ability to respond.

This could be helpful for people or organizations trying to elicit help from individual members.

As you can see in the screeshot below, you can now add lists to your custom privacy settings when you want to share a link or update your status.

If you’ve taken the time to filter out all of your friends, which I hope your doing as you add them, these lists pretty much manage themselves.

This way if you want to share some political stories, you can have a list for friends on the ‘left’ or  on the ‘right’ without flooding everyone’s newsfeed with links they don’t want to see.

Try it out and let me know if you have any questions about how to fine tune it.

You may or may not believe that Global Warming is real, but one thing we can all agree on is how much it’s been snowing these past two years!

I did some digging around on Google and found exactly how much it’s snowed. 2009-2010 placed third in 63 years with an annual snowfall of 8.9 inches. It hasn’t snowed this much in 37 years!

I’ve made this nifty chart for you below to see for yourself: