Technology

Quotes for the week ending 18 Dec, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“engagement zombies.”

William Paarlberg on creating a strategy for understanding lurkers in social media.

“I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios”

Fede Alvarez who uploaded his short film”Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack!) featuring giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo. He was offered a $30 million contract to make a film.

“It’s not inconceivable that some creative hacker could use Twitter to get into a key business application at some juncture …The more Twitter focuses on the business market, the more it will have to focus on security.”

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet

“Fencing the internet is not going to help anybody”

Andrea Servida, deputy head of unit at the EUs Information Society and Media Directorate General, on the Chinese proposal to meter international web traffic.

Quotes for the week ending 12 Dec, 09

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“However Mr. Jobs, now that you got into this mess …You are the only person who can get our APPS ‘everywhere.’ despite the fact that their MAPS have blanketed the country.

Commenter named Gary of Chicago, on the Advertising Age story on how Verizon Wireless created buzz for the Droid phone –a distinct shift in the way a carrier is advancing the popularity of a handset.

“And, the warning? Don’t read too many blog posts like this.”

43 Folders, on NaNoWriMo

“Living Stories,”

Google’s experimental project to save newspapers, featuring content from New York Times and the Washington Post

“Our role is actually stronger than ever, because we are more than  just a magazine … to promote travel around the state.”

Robert Stieve, editor of Arizona Highways magazine

“When you’re using search engines, you’ve got to be diligent. You can’t trust that just because it’s Number 2 or Number 1, it really is…”

Jim Stickey, on how fake web sites trick search engines which become ‘unwitting accomplices’ of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

“Industry Listening Program”

One of the four recommendations by Rohit Bhargava, who advises companies on easing into listening via social media by keeping an eye on keywords rather than brand mentions

There are Flip cameras and there’s the Blackberry Storm

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I often carry my Nikon D90 to events. But a camera bag, podcast recorder and laptop creates clutter.

So while holding off on a Flip video camera –for now– I use my trusty Blackberry Storm for the odd video. Turns out it does very well, especially when I want to cover an event live using a few social media elements.

This one was taken at a class on Social media for Realtors. I was there with a friend who is just getting into the space, and wanted to check out what Jerry Fischer, the instructor, was offering.

Click to view a few seconds of video.

What I found:

  1. The picture quality is really good for a phone. The audio quality, better still.
  2. Sending it to Twitvid is not easy – slow uploading. But the app I had downloaded for this made it one-touch.
  3. You really need a tripod when you do this. It is less distracting to the instructor, too.

Not that Jerry would have minded. He was also showing real estate agents how easy it was to video with Facebook.

Incidentally the audio recorder on the Storm also produces stunning quality. Saves carrying a bulky recorder everywhere.

“Customer experience with be huge in 2010”

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

In a great conversation with Nathan Wagner of Creative Refinery on customer experience, which he says will be the big differentiation in 2010.

Also testing how the integration of email and Word Press – and posting this directly via a Blackberry.

We are at Gold Bar coffee shop in Tempe. Nathan’s an old friend who advises clients on creating value increasing sales.

Update: Had to go in via the web to reformat the photo and headline. Since this was an experiment I had forgotten to write the headline in my subject line. The photo was taken on my phone by a fellow customer. By default, the phone’s email program uses the image name (usually a string of letters) as a subject line, so you need to watch out for that.

Word Press does have a few custom settings –short codes as they call them -for including the category of the post, making it a draft etc. I can see these expanding as more people begin to use smart phones to create content.

I like to see short codes to:

  • Resize the photo
  • Add some basic HTML
  • Include a URL

Did DARPA’s network challenge tell us anything we didn’t know already?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Last Saturday’s experiment baffles me.

The idea of the Defense Department trying to understand network effects is understandable. DARPA (which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) sent up 10 of these across the country.

Balloons to study social networking how information travels across the Net seems like a bit odd. Sure DARPA did invent the internet, but…

Why use a large object in the sky? On Twitter people resort to “wide area team-building and urgent mobilization” without any interest in a reward. Just ask Tiger Woods, and (you knew this was coming, all you balloon fans, didn’t you?) the dad of Balloon Boy.

Here is how it was handled: Teams were asked to take part in locating ten moored weather balloons at fixed locations in the US. They were visible from roadways (spottings here) and accompanied by DARPA representatives –hopefully not inside the balloon, as that would have been too much like the Falcon incident.

They went up at 10 am (Eastern) and supposedly stayed there until 4 pm on Sat, Dec 5.

Attached (hopefully not to the aforementioned rep) was a $40,000 prize “to the first participant to submit the correct latitude and longitude of all ten weather balloons.”

I have an idea, DARPA: Why don’t you do this once a  month, and then ask the winner to give half of the reward to someone who’s lost a job? The network effects of this would be huge since there could be 15.4 million people (the official unemployment figure as of Nov 09) Tweeting, talking and Facebooking this. Larry King would love to cover incidents like this and regularly point  to the bottom of his screen to show us his Twitter address.

Or maybe you could hire a few people to increase the network effects of your Facebook page –which had only 19 people leaving nice messages about this.

OK, enough of having a bit of fun at DARPA’s expense. Let me say what I liked about:

  • I like the fact that an organization like this is not sitting on its laurels, but trying to learn how this thing they created works, and morphs. (Watch this vid, below) as Peter explains.
  • I like the idea of encouraging collaborative efforts. Throwing it out to the hoipolloi. Nerd Fighters took up the challenge, and though they didn’t quite win, their efforts were very impressive.

Not enough organizations take risks like this. It’s time many did send up some trial balloons, red or otherwise.

Public Radius is two months young

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Can’t believe it’s been nearly months since I left ASU, and hung out my own shingle, PublicRadius.

PublicRadius_logoBut it’s been two wonderful months. I have been travelling, blogging a lot, conducting interviews, and managing (monitoring) Twitter feeds etc, apart from writing for two magazines.

As a result, I’ve been neglecting my blog here at Hoipolloi Report. But what has really amazed me is that when I occasionally glance at my page visits , traffic is up — sometimes inexplicably rising.

But from this weekend I plan to integrate the blog a lot more into my client work. So many great stories have been put on hold. But it has been worth it. So here are some random thoughts about this mini anniversary:

  • I often refer to a blog as the ‘center of gravity’ of traditional and digital communications –and this extends into media relations, reputation building, and managing relationships. It’s certainly been my starter kit in all these areas as I take Public Radius forward.
  • A blog teaches me about how to tell complex, many-sided stories in a people-friendly way, while being search-engine friendly as well.
  • Working in the digital space opens your eyes to the value of face-to-face communication. Yes I conduct business via Skype video conferencing, and interact with my LinkedIn and Facebook contacts. But nothing beats a great brainstorm on a napkin, seated in coffee shop (where I am writing this).
  • People don’t care about the tools. We tend to talk too much about Twitter workarounds and Facebook apps, when what people (and businesses) really care about are conversations. When electricity was first invented, I suspect people blabbered about plugs and light switches until someone told them to shut up.
  • Photography and Podcasting somehow complete the circle of storytelling, branding and reputation building. Both let you observe, record, and capture nuances that often get lost. I covered a conference last weekend using both. My camera bag was heavy, but my ‘stories’ are are that much more colorful.

Thinking digital in unusual spaces

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This video by Microsoft has not been watched a lot, but it sure demonstrates what kind of digital world we might be getting close to. The neat part is, it’s not just all digital, but a transition from analog experiences to interactive ones.

Watch the part around 4.09 minutes, when the man opens up the newspaper. How different is it from your experience today?

Not that you can scroll through a column, or click on a news item in the newsprint. But think about it: ten years ago, we never thought we would be able to read a newspaper on a phone, did we?

Or use a ‘tablet’  styled laptop in this way. Or take a picture of  an icon or bar code and have it link us to content. Which is what Quick Response Codes allow. (See my twinterview on this for more details.)

The critics of this tend to question how useful a hand-held device will be, when ubiquitous computing will make common objects interactive. “Why would the whole world revolve around a single technology (touch screens)?” asks one person commenting on the Microsoft video. Google probably has answered that, now, with its Android. Watch how its navigation application works.

Gotta mashup idea? Ideas wanted!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

There are so many mashups around us that we have begun to take them for granted. We tend to see more of the video and music variety -like Everyblock and those that are Obama-based. Google has a tool called ‘maplets’ to use the API of their maps.

How about a mashup of a mug and your Twitter followers? Check this out.

So I was glad to hear that there’s a British competition open for mashups, on three themes: Crime, Environment and Health. The winner gets £10,000!

Details here, and also here

Love it when a chart beats a logo

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

GatesWatching last evening’s live webcast by Bill and Melinda Gates, I liked how Bill zipped past Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, and the Windows logo, to note that these ‘pictures’ don’t compare to something completely different –a chart showing  decreasing infant mortality rates.

I love it when presentations don’t use graphics as a crutch. (Love it when the first slide is not the darn company logo, as if to remind the brain dead in the audience as to who is presenting! Full disclosure: I have committed this crime myself, and know it sucks!)

Love it when someone stops a canned PowerPoint preso and uses the flip chart instead to draw some crude Venn diagram or stick figure to explain the point. (If you’ve not read The Back of a Napkin, I highly recommend it, as I have done before like a broken record.)

In somewhat ironic news, this month, Gates (who owns Corbis) supposedly ‘expanded his stock photo empire’ with a small stake in Eastman Kodak.