I was recently hired (via Wiz) by the production team of a commercial photo shoot for a new construction project. They wanted to photograph the local residents of the neighborhood forming various shapes (without using too much Photoshop) and post the results on billboard signs. My responsibility was to design the formation arrangements, given the desired results and the estimated number of available participants.

In addition, I was also asked to physically apply the formation designs on the field. This meant mapping and measuring the frame (the pictures were taken from 20 meters above ground using a crane) and plotting markers on the ground.

In order to make the setup time for each new formation as short as possible, I’ve designed the formations in such a way that they had as many overlapping anchor points as possible. We worked in a small staff (me and two assistants), and the entire photo shoot went great! We made the construction companies’ logo (seen above), the projects’ slogan, a smiley face and some general geometric formations for post production.

I just love working in productions! I’ve studied film in high school and took different roles in the production of many short films (I’ve even made one myself, called “90% Truth” which was screened in Tel-Aviv Cinematheque). I just love the team spirit and the can do attitude that are so rare on other industries. Another thing I like is working outside every once in a while (it doesn’t happen much in my line of work) because at the end of the day I get to use my “another day at the office” one-liner :)

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Try it:

You can add the new button to each of your posts, and whoever clicks on it will see the title of the post, a like counter and some pictures of his friends who liked it too.

What else?
GetSocial is totally free. If you like it, please consider a donation. Thanks!

You can get all the latest updates about GetSocial/GetSocial Live via Twitter.

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Successful Software just featured an interview with me about donationware and about my free software: GetSocial & GetSocial Live.

Successful Software is a blog about MicroISV life. It’s authored by Andy Brice, creator of PerfectTablePlan and a man who actually write software for a living (as opposed to fighting his way up the corporate ladder from nine to five every day).

His blog is usually very interesting (well, if your in the software industry), and it’s an honor to be featured there.

Check it out: Donationware – An interview with Hillel Stoler of GetSocial

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Take two cups of Facebook share, add a spoonful of twitter and two quarts of no respect for peoples privacy and you’ll get Google Buzz.

How to Generate a Google Buzz Button for WordPress.com?
I’ve added a new feature to GetSocial Live: you can now use it to generate Google Buzz buttons for your WordPress.com blog!

Try It (It’s alpha transparent and will work on all types of backgrounds):

The button is routed through Google Reader. it’s a temporary solution until a better API for Google Buzz becomes available. Get yours now!

For the best results, you should use your permalink (instead of shortlink) when you generate Google Buzz buttons. The reason for this is that the source of the link is extracted from your post URL. If you’ll use the shortlink GetSocial will not be able to extract the name of your blog. Instead, it will assign WordPress.com as the source for your link (the link itself will work fine, and correctly connect to your post though).

For regular updates and status reports follow GetSocial Live on Twitter.

What is Google Buzz?
Google Buzz is a new service from Google. it was launched a few days ago, and is probably intended to compete with twitter. You can post text and images there, comment, ‘like’ and follow/unfollow people. It’s a hybrid between the Facebook share feature (which automatically fetches images and other information from your posted links) and Twitter (excluding its famous 140 characters limitation).

What’s Wrong With Google Buzz?
Google Buzz was integrated into Gmail, so it’s already got a huge user base. That’s also one of my problems with it – I think that Google Buzz is imposing itself on Gmail users, and that’s just ain’t right. Also, many Gmail users found themselves ‘following’ (and being ‘followed’ by) random people who Google Buzz have automatically selected from their email contacts. This was done without them even using the new service! That’s bad for privacy, and also not particularly fun – do you really want to find out that you’ve been “following” your ex?

But wait, it gets even worse: since you can click through to other people’s profiles and see who they follow and who follows them, you can (at least in this early stage) deduce who they’ve been exchanging emails with – and again, that’s without them even using the service! I’ve personally found out the secret identity of an anonymous blogger using this method.

The thing that really amazes me about Google Buzz though, is its name. What’s going on here? Doesn’t Yahoo already have a service called Yahoo Buzz? Am I the only one to notice that? ‘Like’? ‘Follow’? I think we’ve seen all this stuff somewhere else already…

In my opinion Google Buzz, like GTalk and Google Wave before it, was designed to keep you connected to your Google account for as much as possible so that Google could phish (and keep, forever) even more personal information about your browsing habits and use it for targeting ads. But hey, that’s just me.

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The coupons are good for new users, and will only work with AdWords accounts that are less than 14 days old.

UPDATE (May 01, 2010): All coupons have been handed out. Sorry I didn’t have enough for everyone, see you next time! :)

To get your free code you’ll need to do two things:

1. Link to this post from your blog (it must be a legitimate blog, e.g. not spam!).

2. Go here and fill in your name, email address, and a link to your blog.

I will send you the coupon via email within a 24 hours time, come and get it!

Please note:
1. In order to use the coupon you must be new to Google AdWords. This means that your account must be 14 days old or less!
2. You must use the coupon you get. You can’t pass it to someone else, keep it unused, publish it online, etc. If you don’t use it, tell me and I will give it to someone else!
3. After you’ve used up the coupon, you must manually stop your AdWords campaign if you wish to discontinue it.
4. The marked value of the coupon is 200 NIS, actual value in USD may vary.
5. Coupon giveaway will only continue while supplies last – hurry up!
6. All invalid requests will be ignored.

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Some updates (on the domain side) require scheduled downtime, and that’s why I’ve recently created this Twitter account as an independent source for updates about GSL upgrades, new versions and maintenance downtime. Needless to say, it’s a 100% spam free twitter account – so go ahead, start following GetSocial Live now!

If we’re already talking about downtime, some of you may have noticed that GetSocial Live was unavailable at times during the last few weeks. The reason for this, is that GetSocial Live was hosted (for free) on Google Pages. When the service suddenly shut down, GetSocial Live became unavailable. Migrating to Google Sites (the successor of Google Pages) was impractical because you can’t run HTML files directly from Google Sites, and that’s why GSL went down. Currently, GSL is temporarily hosted on a paid host, but will soon migrate to a permanent location (still paid though). I apologize in advance for any resulting downtime, and will try to provide alternative links via the GSL Twitter as needed.

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I’ve just launched a new (and very special) version of GetSocial:
GetSocial Live is a web service that generates script-less social bookmarking toolbars for your WordPress.com blog. It’s fast, extremely easy to use and absolutely free!

Here’s an example of what you’ll get:

GetSocial for Mac
GetSocial Live is similar to good ol’ GetSocial, but it offers only the basic functionality of the Windows application. On the other hand, it’s got some huge benefits too:

1. GetSocial Live supports every OS and every web browser (Mac users, this time I totally came through for you!).

2. No download is required.

3. GetSocial Live will be centrally updated (so you will always use the latest version).

How can you help?
GetSocial is free, but manufacturing and maintaining it sure isn’t!

You can help by donating (even in Euros and Pounds) – Contributors of 25 USD or more will receive a 50 USD worth* promotional Google AdWords coupon code for free!

I’ve also embedded some Google AdSense into GetSocial Live, and while Google policies forbid me from directly encouraging clicks – I’ll merely say: CLICK ON THOSE ADS!!!!!!

If you like (or even if you just use) GetSocial – tell your friends about it! Post about GetSocial/GetSocial Live, add getsociallive.com to your blogroll, share getsociallive.com via social networks and generally let people know that there is a new social bookmarking service in town!

Known issues:
‘Copy to clipboard’ will only work with IE. FF and chrome users need to right-click and copy the code manually…

Check out GetSocial Live!

* The coupon code is only valid for new (less than 14 days old) Google AdWords accounts. The coupon marked value is 200 NIS, actual value in USD may vary. Available while supplies last.

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Google Wave seems like an overly complex solution to a non-existing problem. Nowadays the issue is not how to communicate with your friends and colleagues, the real challenge is to get some actual work done between answering your email and watching viral videos online.

A few months ago, when it was released, I actually sat down and watched the entire 80 minutes or so of the Google Wave presentation in YouTube (please note that this atrocity, which I bet almost no one watched in full, currently have a 5.0 star rating!).

I’ll skip the part where I rant about the well fed and self satisfied Google lecturers, who seem to stretch every bit of information that could have been thoroughly explained within seconds into minutes upon minutes of arrogant and graceless presentation. I don’t bear a grudge against them for wasting my time with the video though, after all Google Wave is designed for that very purpose – wasting valuable time.

Last Thursday 100,000 “lucky” users got a chance to test what is hyped as the future of the internet (and then blog about it I guess). What truly amazes me right now is that everywhere you look (okay, everywhere within the constraints of your monitor) people are raving about the mythical powers and neon bright economic future of Google Wave (whose actual nature and/or use seems to elude even its own developers).

This reminds me of two things: the thousands of blog posts and “articles” about why your business must be in Twitter right now (the short answer is ‘because’) and the educational book “The Wave” (no pun intended) by Morton Rhue (Todd Strasser), where a US high school is caught in an experiment of mass brainwashing, dictatorship and let’s face it: hype.

I just don’t get all those people who rain praise and positive reviews about what seems to be at best a half baked idea just because it comes from Google. I might be proved wrong somewhere along the line, but in my opinion Google is too big and too clumsy for its own good. I think that right now, in the shadow of the economic crisis they’re just shooting in all directions.

Specifically, Google Wave seems to me like an overly complex solution to a non-existing problem. Nowadays the issue is not how to communicate with your friends and colleagues, the real challenge is to get some actual work done between answering your email and watching viral videos online.

Because Google Wave is a real time service, and because it’s about conversations and not about posting, I predict that every ‘wave’ will soon turn into a huge tsunami requiring literally hours to follow. Consider the level of commitment required to use this service, especially if you’re not stuck near the computer the entire duration of your day, and need to catch up with what went down with your 643 friends. It’s like trying to read all the comments in a popular YouTube movie – long, repetitive and rarely rewarding.

In the bottom line, if Google Wave was named ‘Whatever Wave’ (or even worse: ‘Microsoft Wave’) no one would care about it. At best.

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