Category: Technology

No, I’m not talking about stealing office supplies. Swype is an awesome keyboard replacement tool for Android phones. It comes standard on some phones like the Samsung Epic and I have used it on my Evo and my Nexus S. You can get it for your phone at http://beta.swype.com…

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Guy Kawasaki, American venture capitalist and ...
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I’ve been following industry oracle Guy Kawasaki for over 25 years and I agree with him almost all of the time. He was right about the Mac, he’s right about Posterous and he’s right about Alltop. He’s right about so many things. When he speaks, I take notes. This time, however, I take issue…

He posted a recent article on the topic of Facebook pages recently and this is one of the rare times I need to take issue…

“Q: I’m a small business entrepreneur, and I’ll be introducing a consumer product soon. Should I create a website for my company or a Facebook fan page?

A: I faced a similar question a few weeks ago for my book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. I had three options: create a site for the book, add a section for the book to my existing website, or create a Facebook fan page.

After five minutes of thoughtful deliberation, I decided to add a bare-bones section to my website (which I haven’t gotten around to do yet—which should tell you something) and create a Facebook fan page but not to create a website for the book. Here’s why I did not choose a website:” Source: Ask the Wise Guy: Facebook Fan Page or Website? : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

Guy goes on to elucidate 4 reasons why he did not choose a website and 8 reasons why he chose a Facebook page along with 3 potential ‘gotchas’ — go to the source and read the entire article if you’d like…

Here’s where Guy and I part thinking. In business, the answer is rarely either/or. Frequently it’s both/and. Guy’s advice is great for someone launching a product or a book, but it’s not really great long term advice for an entrepreneur launching a company. As a short term strategy I recommend that entrepreneurs buy a domain, set up Google Apps and create a Facebook page. Google Apps will give them the ability to send corporate email from their domain and their domain name can be temporarily directed toward their Facebook page until they build a blogsite. This will give them a total ‘appearance package’ that will allow them to look professional immediately while they contemplate their website and further social media strategy and tactics…

On this issue I side with author Lisa Barone who recently posted…

“Brace yourself: Facebook is trying to take over the world. Or, if not the world, at least the entire Internet. With Facebook partnering up with popular sites like Yelp, many SMB owners may feel as if their load got lighter. I mean, why waste time worrying about your building your blog or your own site when you can grow your Facebook presence instead? If Facebook’s opening up the doors so that people can take you with them, you don’t have to worry about anything else anymore, right?

Wrong!

It doesn’t matter how hot Facebook or any of the other social media sites are looking right now. You still need to be focused on using your blog to create your own authority and brand.” Source: 10 Reasons Not To Ignore Your Blog For Facebook

Reason #1 she cites? “You don’t own Facebook”…

The problem with Facebook from my perspective is that you’re not only a renter, you’re a free renter and you can expect all the rights and privileges thereof. In other words, you have no rights on Facebook — not even privacy. You use it at your own risk. Facebook can — and has — made major changes to their technology without notice or recourse. Using a Facebook page is a great place for an entrepreneur to start but not to stay. I agree with Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and other internet visionaries who propose an internet ‘homebase and outpost‘ strategy that puts a blog at the center of your online presence. The key is that you have to own that presence and be ‘master of your domain’ name and internet brand…

In the future, these homebases may become less important as more people understand the wisdom of David Sauter and his team at Envano. Their ‘autobahn’ model describes a future where a website becomes less important as a company embraces appropriate social media tools to build their internet presence, but the lack of an ‘easy button’ or unified social media dashboard makes this more of a future vision than a present reality…

Guy, I love you, your thought leadership and your content, but just this once I think your Q&A might have done the reader a disservice. Readers? Questions? Feedback? Please comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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From time to time, I post a list of WordPress plugins that I’m currently using. It must be that time…

Click to enlarge...

I think the best recent find is Google Docs Embedder which allows me to easily display documents without having to post them to Scribd first. How about you? Have any good ones to pass along?

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Twitter
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Do you tweet? Or twitter? Victoria Harres does…

“The other day I sat down to write something about Twitter. I struggled with my thoughts, threw some words down, and came up with a question: “Why are you twittering?” I knew the answer people would give. I know Twitter, and I know the type of people who tweet. I know why my husband is on his iPhone flipping through tweets at 1:30 a.m. He insists on reading every tweet from every person he follows. Personally, I’m guilty of recently tweeting after midnight with a couple of people who tweet for major newspapers. So I know my husband and I are not the only ones afflicted with this social addiction.” Source: Why People Twitter – in one word.

So? Do you? Spill the beans in the comments…

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“Guy Kawasaki visited Ireland to deliver his Art Of The Start talk at the Irish Software Association’s annual conference. His ‘Irished-up’ version of the talk was warmly received by a packed house. Despite his busy work and tourist schedule (this was his first visit to Ireland) Guy found time to sit down and discuss his online life, how he stays in touch with everything that is going on out there, and his new venture, Alltop.com.” Guy Kawasaki is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of this generation. Click here to read his perspective on life online…

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Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace ...
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“The VAR Guy was flipping though his Sunday morning paper when he spotted an article about Ubuntu Linux. He took a few more sips of coffee to perk up and make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. Sure enough, Ubuntu had made the leap into the mainstream media — earning coverage in Newsday, the eight largest newspaper in the nation. Has Ubuntu reached its tipping point with consumers?

Newsday’s Personal Technology column includes a question from a reader who intends to purchase a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with Ubuntu preloaded. Sweet. The VAR Guy already has a Dell Ubuntu desktop, and also is looking at an Ubuntu laptop.

Newsday’s columnist walks the readers through some potential issues related to Ubuntu (scan down toward the middle of this Newsday page). But overall, letters like this reinforce an undeniable truth: Ubuntu is quietly becoming a mainstream phenomena.” Click here to read more…

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“When it comes to running a business, our feet are firmly on the ground but our data and software are increasingly in the cloud.” Cloud computing can be very helpful in lowering the technology costs of a business — let me show you how! Click here to read the original article…

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With the official announcement of Google’s Nexus One yesterday, I’m going to go out on a limb and say “It’s time to sell your RIM stock”. This slurp from Mashable came out almost a month ago before Google’s announcment and the BlackBerry was in trouble then…

“As you may know, we’ve been conducting our weekly Lunchtime Poll and getting Mashable readers’ opinions on the topic of the week. This week we pitted six smartphone platforms against each other in our Smartphone Smackdown and asked you lovely folks to cast your votes.

We put RIM’s BlackBerry, Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, the Symbian OS, Palm’s webOS and Windows Mobile head-to-head and sat back to watch the votes fly. At the end of the day, all had a respectable showing on the scoreboard, but there can be only one winner…

… and in this case the victor happens to be Apple’s iconic iPhone — the platform that kicked off the mobile app store craze that other mobile players have followed. With a commanding 43% of the vote, the iPhone was the champion, although Google’s (Google) open source Android (Android) platform was not too far behind at 29%. RIM and Palm both took 9% of the tally, with Symbian and Windows Mobile bringing up the rear at 5% each.” Source: Mashable Readers Vote: iPhone Wins the Smartphone Smackdown

I’ve been a BlackBerry user for over two years now and the products that are coming out today make the BlackBerry look like DOS compared to a Macintosh 15 years ago. When my chance to renew comes up I’ll be getting an Android phone so fast it will make your head swim. Until then, I’m stuck with this stupid Curve that looked so cool a couple of years ago…

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Sweta of GlobalThoughtz has an interesting blog post on the topic of corporate blogs…

“How do you follow your favorite company? How do you come to know about their latest launch or what’s cooking in their labs? My answer to this would be their ‘Corporate Blogs’. Not only does it give me a constant update about the company I like but also makes me feel connected to them. It gives me the feeling that they are listening to me. 

Today as a consumer, I have several products to choose from for each of my need and certainly my choice is driven by my affinity to a particular brand. Just like Internet presence had become crucial a few years back, corporate blogs are absolute necessity now. After all we live in the world of Social Media.

Its not just web companies that need to engage their consumers with their blogs. Few of the most loved companies in the world also house must read blogs. One of the best example of corporate blog is Official Google Blog, not only does it provide an insight into the company but also provides useful information to its readers. Corporate blogs such as McDonald’s Corporate Social Responsibility by McDonald’s, Check Out by Walmart and Fast Lane by GM have made these most loved companies even closer to their consumers. The Social networking sites Facebook and Twitter constantly update their users with their blogs The Facebook Blog and Twitter Blog.” Source: Why a company must have a blog.

Here’s the real payback, however, and the real reason why these corporations do it: HubSpot says that companies that blog get 55% more visitors, have 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages [which are valuable from a search perspective]. Better yet, customers who are engaged by a corporate blog and social media spend 30% more than their disconnected counterparts, according to MarketingSavant Dana VanDen Heuvel…

I guess you don’t really HAVE to have a blog, but at a time when many companies are fighting for their economic survival, I think it’s good to know there’s a good, fast and cheap tool that delivers these kinds of results. Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…

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…I did a post on ‘top 10 tactics and tools for tightening your tribe‘ with social media. ‘Tightening your tribe’? What the heck does that mean. Well, in order to understand the reference you’d have to drill down on Seth Godin‘s book ‘Tribes‘ which I have been reading over and over again this summer. Here’s what the summary in Google Books says about it:

In this fascinating book, Seth Godin argues that now, for the first time, everyone has an opportunity to start a movement – to bring together a tribe of like-minded people and do amazing things. There are tribes everywhere, all of them hungry for connection, meaning and change. And yet, too many people ignore the opportunity to lead, because they are “sheepwalking” their way through their lives and work, too afraid to question whether their compliance is doing them (or their company) any good. This book is for those who don’t want to be sheep and instead have a desire to do fresh and exciting work. If you have a passion for what you want to do and the drive to make it happen, there is a tribe of fellow employees, or customers, or investors, or readers, just waiting for you to connect them with each other and lead them where they want to go. 

Seth says that in order to start your movement, all you need is the message and the tools to share it. When he discusses social media, he refers to it as a tool for ‘tightening your tribe’, hence the title of my series. Godin does not, however elucidate on tactics and tools much beyond mentioning Facebook, Twitter, and Basecamp…

Being the social media tactician that I am, I decided to mindmap those tools and for the next 10 weeks starting on Monday, there’ll be an original post to the series. Stay tuned! I’ll work hard to make it worth your while!

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I had a great connect with an old friend who is a real estate rockstar in Barrington, IL. She’s not willing to accept anything less than being the dominant player in her industry and she’s looking at social media as a way to help her accomplish her objectives. Couldn’t help but think of her when I saw this article…

“Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media.

It used to be that you could efficiently grow your businesses by interrupting potential customers with outbound marketing methods like cold calls, email spam, and advertising. Today people and businesses are tired of being the targets of so much outbound marketing and they’re getting better and better in blocking it out.

At the same time, people and businesses have fundamentally changed the way they shop and learn, turning more and more to Google, social media sites and blogs to find what they want. Inbound marketing helps companies take advantage of these shifts by helping them get found by customers in the natural way in which they shop and learn. The following are Brian’s five steps to help you get “get found.”” Source: How to Get Found : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

You can go to the source and read more, but just in case, those 5 ways are:

  1. Be remarkable
  2. Create content
  3. Optimize content
  4. Promote content
  5. Measure results

As for my old friend, she certainly has 1 and 2 down cold — I’m hoping to get the chance to help her with numbers 3-5… ;-)

In the meantime you can use the site tools [comments, contact form, call button] to contact me if YOU are an entrepreneur who wants to be found!

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OK, now this is cool! If you’re a webmail user — and by now I hope you are after hearing me tout Gmail — here’s an essential Firefox extension that you need to have…

“WiseStamp a Firefox extension enables you to easily customize & add personalized email signatures on any webmail service (Gmail ,Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail). Empower your personal and business interactions Get WiseStamp Now!” Source: WiseStamp an Email Signature that works for you!

Go to the source and download it now…

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I do! It’s one of the most important skills or disciplines I’ve developed over the past 3 years. Lifehacker recently surveyed their readership to find the best mindmapping tools…

“Mind mapping is a great way to add structure to brainstorming sessions and visualize your ideas. Check out the applications your fellow readers use to do their best brainstorming.” Source: Hive Five: Five Best Mind Mapping Applications 

Go to the source and read about the 5 favorites. Personally, I use Freemind, Mindmeister and Xmind in that order. What are your favorites? Comments please…

Update 10/21/09: Since I wrote this post back in March of 2009, I have become disenchanted with Xmind due to their difficult to manage licensing scheme. I have become enthralled, however with MindManager Pro. Whenever I have something I need to figure out for myself or want to explain to someone else [like a screencast] chances are I’ll mindmap it first to help me make sure I cover all the bases. I also use Mindmeister quite a bit primarily because of their cloud computing approach to mindmapping. I can publish a mindmap on the internet and embed it in a post like this:

They also have an iPhone app that flawlessly syncs with the online version. These days, chances are I’ll start my map in MindManager Pro and make it public in Mindmeister when it’s ready to go. Only problem is that MindManager is very $$$. You can duplicate the same workflow with Freemind [which is free] and Mindmeister. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me — if you contact me, I’ll send you an invitation to try out Mindmeister!

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Yup. This about says it all…

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Ponder this…

At CES, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed that 40% of all tweets come from mobile devices, demonstrating mobile’s increasing importance to the social media company.

On stage at the AllThingsD event at CES, Costolo bantered with Kara Swisher about why Twitter is at CES, its plans to become simpler and more consistent across platforms, and the impact of its celebrity users.

During the course of the conversation, Swisher asked Costolo which devices and operating systems are the most important to Twitter’s future and its health. Costolo responded by saying that 40% of all tweets are now composed on mobile devices, up from around 20% to 25% a year ago.

Twitter mobile usage exploded with the release of the company’s official iPhone, iPad, Android () and BlackBerry apps. The mobile web site, SMS, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for BlackBerry are the most popular Twitter apps after the company’s website.

Costolo also revealed that Twitter () now has 350 employees, 100 of whom were hired just recently in Q4 2010.

via mashable.com

Does this surprise you?

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Is it possible to love a phone? Oh, yes — I looove both of these… 

The Nexus S 4G from Google offers a stripped-down Android experience free from unnecessary pre-installed ‘bloatware’ apps common on many other phones. This highly customizable device is ‘pure Google’ and many Android users will prefer this experience to the bells and whistles other manufacturers load onto their phones. It can still take advantage of Sprint’s 4G WiMax network, offers a beautiful 4-inch slightly curved display, and will always be the first phone to get Google’s Android software updates. For hardcore Android users who want to keep things pure, this a great choice.

The HTC EVO 4G was the nation’s first 4G phone, and though it is a year or so old and is likely to get superseded by the EVO 3D later this month, it still packs a fair old punch. Sporting a large, bright 4.3” screen, this phone lets you take advantage of Sprint’s speedy 4G WiMax network. You’re also likely to find your monthly cellular bills with Sprint are lower if you choose your plan carefully. With an expected update to Android’s 2.3 Gingerbread operating system in the next few days, the EVO 4G will still keep you ahead of the pack for a while yet.

via androidapps.com

For almost a year, I was thrilled with the Evo but then Cindy Otley of Sprint in Green Bay tempted me with the Nexus S. Never have I been more ecstatic about a device — or at least not in recent memory! With more speed, more memory and less crapware, the Nexus S is the Android phone that beats them all, especially when combined with the Sprint network. Call the Oneida St. Store @ (920) 497-2181 ‎and let Cindy hook you up…

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Travel much? Then you might benefit from this advice from social media superstars Chris Brogan [above] and Mitch Joel [here]…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

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Let me count the ways…

“When technologists of the future look back in time, they’ll remember 2009 as the year Google got serious about an internet operating system, speeding up the web, and indexing EVERYTHING in sight. Take a look at the year 2009 in Google.” Source: This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition – Google – Lifehacker

No company produces more good, empowers me more, or innovates more. Go to the source for a reminder of what Google delivered this year…

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