The last few weeks your Webconsuls' team has been busy and our blog has been quiet. I don't know about you, but it is amazing what you can learn in a month's time. Here are this month's five most interesting bits of information that I learned and I want to share with you:
1. Did you know that Gmail has a send limit? About a week ago we received a call from our client saying that she was sending out an email broadcast to her customers asking them to participate in a fundraiser for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami. All of a sudden she noticed that she could not send any email or receive any email. She called us and here is what I learned:
"In an effort to fight spam and prevent abuse, Google will temporarily disable your account if you send a message to more than 500 recipients or if you send a large number of undeliverable messages. If you use a POP or IMAP client (Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, e.g.), you may only send a message to 100 people at a time. Your account should be re-enabled within 24 hours." (Go here to learn more and keep in mind that many email services have a send limit, this is why some clients like to stay in contact with their clients by a newsletter service like or similar to Constant Contact.)
2. Twitter 2.0 seems to be just around the corner. Rather than have me rehash what someone else has discussed so eloquently, I will point you to the article. "Are We Ready for Twitter 2.0?"
3. Blogger does provide great on-line support. The other day I was on their site and I saw a section called "Recommended Articles and Discussion." One of the discussions was entitled "Too Many Good Bloggers are Giving Up" . Now, this caught my eye!!! So I clicked on it and enjoyed the conversation. If you have a blog and you have given up or you are thinking about giving up, I invite you to read the posts and join in the discussion. You might just refresh yourself enough to keep on BLOGGING!
4. During the past few weeks our team has been discussing the nature of our Webconsuls' blog. The questions raised are these: Should it be more technical? Or, do our readers want to learn more about the team as people and read anecdotal stories, as well? I will tell you that the team was split on this, but today I read an interesting article on an SEO/SMO newsletter. The article had to do with Social Networking pitfalls the 4th pitfall to avoid was this: "It's not about sell, sell, sell! If all you're doing when you visit the various sites and post your updates is pitch your latest program, product or service then it's no wonder you're not seeing results. Share information with your network, whether that's your own information or you're passing along information from clients and colleagues. The more you share, the greater your results will be. Whichever social networking arena you're active in (and it may be more than one) remember the "social" in social networking - it's to build relationships, make new contacts, and socialize. Inform your network, not sell to them." I think based on this guidance and our own practical experience from being part of Social Networking sites, new clients may come to you naturally.
5. Finally, as this Columbus Day Weekend gets underway, I know that our New England innkeeper, hotelier, restaurateur, livery, and entertainment clients will be busy beyond belief as the autumn brides and mountains blush and foliage season peaks; but won't they be surprised to learn that Tucson, AZ has its own foliage season! And yes, Mt Lemmon is 2869 ft taller than Mt. Washington!
This week's photos are from my days in New Hampshire. The one of the children is of Aaron and Dan enjoying a "Tom Sawyer" moment with children who were guests at the inn. Aaron and Dan were "teaching" them how to rake the autumn leaves and make Leaf People!
"Teach Us to Delight in the Simple Things"...Rudyard Kipling
Let me know what you think of Judy's "bytes"...see you next week.
Be the change you want to see in the world. As We and our children's children get stuck with billions is bailouts by the brain trust in washington for the fat cats on wallstreet, bankers and automakers, Watch this video about how $27 can change the lives of an entire village. Social Entrepreneurs using Micro Financing to make real change.
What is Microfinance? From WikiPedia
Some principles that summarize a century and a half of development practice were encapsulated in 2004 by Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and endorsed by the Group of Eight leaders at the G8 Summit on June 10, 2004:
Poor people need not just loans but also savings, insurance and money transfer services.
Microfinance must be useful to poor households: helping them raise income, build up assets and/or cushion themselves against external shocks.
Microfinance can pay for itself. Subsidies from donors and government are scarce and uncertain, and so to reach large numbers of poor people, microfinance must pay for itself.
Microfinance means building permanent local institutions.
Microfinance also means integrating the financial needs of poor people into a country's mainstream financial system.
The job of government is to enable financial services, not to provide them.
Donor funds should complement private capital, not compete with it.
The key bottleneck is the shortage of strong institutions and managers. Donors should focus on capacity building.
Interest rate ceilings hurt poor people by preventing microfinance institutions from covering their costs, which chokes off the supply of credit.
Microfinance institutions should measure and disclose their performance - both financially and socially.
Microfinance can also be distinguished from charity. It is better to provide grants to families who are destitute, or so poor they are unlikely to be able to generate the cash flow required to repay a loan. This situation can occur for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster.
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan
A few months back a friend of mine suggested that I might write a book titled "51 Cards!" When I questioned her on this title, she said: "51 Cards" is the title Kevin (her husband) proposed for your yet to be published autobiography. It alludes to your lamentation that the Baby Boomer generation is "not playing with a full deck" due to the emotional scars inflicted by such events as the Vietnam war, the assassinations of MLK, JFK and RFK, etc." I think the title is perfect and I have often said that people of my generation lived through many life changing events in our formative years. This is not an excuse, but an explanation of what we are about. And so today, I am remembering August 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon. It was on this day, 35 years ago, that the President of the United States (POTUS) Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation as a result of the Watergate Scandal.
On June 15, 1974, I received my BA degree from California State University, Los Angeles. What I recall most about my last year in college were the Senate Watergate hearings. These hearings ran from May 17, 1973 through August 7, 1973. The hearings were televised, but remember I was working and going to college full time, so being able to watch the televised hearings was a luxury. The university was nice enough to set up televisions in the library so that the actual social network of students could stop by the library in between classes to watch the hearings. Remember now, this is when we still only had three networks...NBC, ABC, and CBS. Oh, and yes we did have our newspapers. According to Wikipedia "Each network maintained coverage of the hearings every third day, starting with ABC on May 17 and ending with NBC on August 7. An estimated 85% of Americans with television sets tuned in to at least one portion of the hearings." The Senate issued its seven volume report on June 27, 1974.
Within a few weeks of my graduation I went to work for a small financial corporation. Every evening I would go back to my little apartment and turn on the news. But on August 8, 1974, I hurried home as Richard Nixon was going to address the nation at 6:00PM PST. We had learned this from listening to radio news that afternoon. That evening I watched intently as Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation. That was 35 years ago today and I invite you to listen to part of this speech here or visit the Miller Center to hear the whole speech.
The next day I went to work, but I brought my television with me. At 9:00AM PST, August 9, 1974, all of the employees gathered around this little 12 inch Zenith black and white television to watch Gerald Ford become our 38th president. It didn't matter which political side of the aisle you were on, this was, hopefully, a once in a lifetime event. If you want to learn more about this time in our history, I invite you to read "All the President's Men" by Woodward and Bernstein and "Blind Ambition" by John Dean.
It is funny, last evening I happened to catch Lewis Black on HBO. It wasn't a new bit, but I listened again to him as he described how "our" young lives were ruled by fear during the cold war. We practiced for air raid drills, nuclear bombs, hid under our wooden desks, and watched some of our parents waste their hard earned money building bomb shelters. "51 Cards", indeed!
"There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."
Social Media in the news. Creating and Commuincating with the people that matter.
Week two and again the tv is flooded with stories found using Social Media. CNN is replying to tweets from the viewers, and social media sites have become the hub of what is hot, right now.
What is social media anyway? In a nutshell it is user generated, shareable, embeddable, with commenting and voting added.
Does social media matter? Only if you think email matters, as internet users are spending as much time surfing social media sites as they are reading their own email boxes!
Welcome to the club gone digital, in a world where only a few love pickel ice cream those few can now find each other.
The Nielsen report came out this month and the focus was on social networking's rapid rise throughout the world. Social networks are growing and new behavior patterns are emerging. Cultural resistance to participating in social networks is waning and their influence is growing on a monthly scale.
People once less likely to be public are posting to social forums and flocking to social networks. This change is taking place across the globe. Two observations that struck me from the Neilson Report which can be immediately applied to websites, blogs, and social network accounts are:
SOCIAL MEDIA IS CHANGING THE RULES FOR ADVERTISERS Consumers have a deep distrust for advertising. Social Media offers a transparency and a candor that has created trust. Along with this trust is also a promise that you will not be invaded. Advertising efforts which are not "value adding" or part of the conversation are an intrusion in these social networks and advertisers must learn to play by the rules or risk having their message rejected.
Advertising must be a conversation rather than a push model
Don't advertise, communicate and participate in the community
DON'T ASSUME SOCIAL MEDIA IS FOR THE KIDS The numbers are changing and the demographic of the social networks is not necessarily who you would think. Facebook's greatest demographic shift has been the increase in users between the ages of 35-49. The standing presumption was that social networks were predominantly populated by teenagers and young adults.
Facebook recently changed their Terms of Service regarding the ownership of the content you upload to their social network. Previously when material was deleted from your account or an account was closed the material connected to that account would be removed as well.
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
A very important note to this amendment is that privacy settings are still enforced. If you have posted something from full public view the privacy settings are also retained in perpetuity.
A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I'd like to address those here. I'll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people's information.
Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they've asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn't help people share that information.
One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.
In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment. ...
Today as the 44th president of the United States is inaugurated we watch this historical moment from a myriad of technology. It does seem fitting and futuristic to see our new president embrace technology and social networks. It is surely an exciting sign of the times.
iPhone Application
Just in time for the inauguration. Watch the 44th Inauguration live from your iPhone. Download Ustream.TV, an application for the iPhone, to watch live and recorded video with a chat function. Use your phone to watch the inaugural events live and chat with others watching.
Inaugrual Photosynth The very moment Obama takes the oath CNN is asking for viewer to email their photo (10 MB size limit) with their name in the message if they want a photo contributor's credit. For more information on "The Moment" click here Inauguration Moment.
Pictures will be downloaded into a new software and the melding of multiple vantage points will combine to create a navigable 3D image.
We are very excited to see the application of the photosynth technology to document this momentous occasion. At Webconsuls we have used this same technology to show the large beautiful views of Kilauea Lakeside Estate and to show the cutting edge medical technology from the Division of Interventional Neuroradiology.
Social Media has gone mainstream and one needs to look no further than Youtube, or Twitter to see that. With a budding new war in the middle east Israel has taken to these social media sites not just to get their message out but to also to take part in the conversation. The democratization of information is in full swing folks, if you are waiting for someone else to get your message out, WHO ARE YOU WAITING FOR? With tools like Blogger, Youtube and Twitter anyone can easily take part in the conversation.
In 2009 don't be shy, click the comment button, take part in the conversation, you will be glad you did.
Last night I went to the federal public hearing regarding the completion of the 241 Toll Road. I am not a political person by nature, in fact I avoid political discussions for the most part because I rarely find that people want to "discuss", but rather they want to impose their political opinion. I prefer to hone my opinions on my own, quietly research the facts and gather objective data, but there still remains an aching suspicion that I am ducking out of the political process from a mixture of cynicism and apathy.
Reflecting on this political apathy I turned to one of my favorite sources for information, Wikipedia, and found this compelling quote from John Dos Passos,
Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension.
Each speaker was given 4 minutes to make their point. Silence in the crowd was mandatory in order to give each speaker their full turn to be heard. Speakers ranged from public officials, some from the Toll Roads board of directors, impassioned park goers who want their children to have a place to enjoy nature in the over developed mass of housing projects that has grown to typify the Southern Californian landscape, surfers, environmentalist, and Native Americans threatened with losing the burial ground of their ancestors. Big business and the "little person" gathered in one room.
It reminded me of "Town Meeting Day"which we had in Vermont. I remember it of course mainly as a day we had off from school and were able to go skiing for free. People of all walks of life would gather in the town hall and discuss local politics. I reflected on memories of one of my favorite teachers, Mr Altman, who would forgo the teacher's lounge and sit with us in the lunch room and discuss Plato's Republic and point out how fortunate we were to live in a state that engaged the political process on such a grassroots level.
As I sat there quietly and listened to each person make their arguments I was wowed by the statements ranging from emotional pleas to uphold the promise that this land remain undeveloped, to union workers requesting the toll road be built in order to provide jobs and help the economy. From the ridiculous to the profound I am still trying to come to terms with some of those arguments.
I see the blogosphere as the new town meeting. Your blog post are a vehicle to layout your opinion, cite your resources, illustrate your opinion, share a video. The power previously reserved for the traditional media is now in your hands. The town meeting can be held on your home computer, even your cell phone. Communities of like minded folks can join together in social networks, share opinions, take part in the political process.
Would'nt you like to know if someone you have friend'ed on your favorite social network was in your neighborhood? Say to hook up with like minded sports fanatics, or nerds? There is just such a service and it is called BrightKite, a "Location Based Social Network" and it is in invite only beta. If you would like a BrightKite invite reply to this post and we will make sure you get one. With BrightKite you can post your location to predetermined place marks, or send your location via sms. Once you login to a placemark you can email in photos of your location that others who are on your friends list can check out the seats you had at the game, or the sushi you are about to eat for dinner.
The social net is fragmenting at an amazing rate. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to post to all of your favorite sites thru one location? So all of your friends who prefer to be logged into Bebo, Blogger, BrightKite, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, Xanga, can stay in touch without having to track you down on your favorite social site of the moment. (Plurk! -DRM)
Social Networking websites such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn are growing and some people still don't know about them. It's easy to make an account. Simply sign up and see how many of your friends are on there. Then, view their friends profiles and see how you can relate to them or find their knowledge or connections useful to you.
It's a great way to expand your social network and get to know more of your friends friends.
April 10, James Buck was going to head back home from a three-week assignment studying the Egyptian blogosphere.
"I was trying to take some photos of this small protest and trying to be very clear that I was not in the protest, It was very tense." - James Buck
As Buck tried to leave the protest in a taxi, He was chased and then detained by Egyptian police. As he was driven to the police station under the direction of the police, Buck was able to sent out a single-word message from his cell phone to his Twitter account: Arrested. .
Chris Brogan has declared Today. Monday, April 28th "Read and Comment" day. Instead of your typical post (or as well as), get out there and comment on some blogs. Contribute to their conversations. Find some good stuff and add to it.
I am one of those people who need to justify most purchases. When that iPhone came out my creative juices started flowing. Hmmmm ... how can I convince myself that phone is vital to my existence, maybe not vital, but how can it help me? Sometimes you just need a little inspiration. The iPhone is a powerful tool and with every update new functionality is added.
Social Media takes time. Some say it takes more time than they can fit into their hectic lives. What if all you needed was a mobile phone? You could promote your business in your down time, those frustrating times when you can't really do anything productive, the commute home, waiting for doctors appointments, waiting in line at the grocery store, you could even use that iconic device to open up conversations about your business.
Here is a list of the ways I have used the iPhone for social media optimization.
1. The dynamic duo "photos" and "camera" turn you into a photoblogging superstar! Take a picture and upload immediately to your blog. Get more bang for your post and cc your social sites while you are at it. Setting will have to be preloaded and the contact for each social site added to your contacts for easy and immediate access. Once settings are in place shoot your tantalizing picture and post. Be sure to add a compelling title. 2. Find the videos you have loaded up on YouTube and watch them, send them to social sites, email them to contacts, or make the person in line with you at the grocery store watch it. Bookmark your videos on your iPhone. Depending upon your industry and chattiness you will find opportunities to share your videos. 3. I was never a text message sender before the iPhone, but the iPhone's large (by mobile standards) qwerty keyboard makes it easy and accessible. Combine your iPhone with a microblogging client such as Twitter and there are a variety of combinations to utilize. For example: Monitor your keywords and find the conversations as they happen. Using Twitter you can add 'bots' to search conversations which have your keywords in them. These messages containing your keywords can be sent directly to your phone and then your conversation begins. IMPORTANT POINTER: Be sure to adjust your text messaging package to insure your keyword alerts do not exceed your current text messaging package.
Buy technology you love and optimize your settings, bookmarks and features to remove all obstacles to using that technology.
Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends, colleagues, and current events, no matter where you are or what you're doing. For some friends or events you might want instant mobile updates for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.
During the recent Earthquake and California Wild Fires Followers Set Twitter Ablaze: "Twitter users Nate Ritter and Viss have been busy posting rapid-fire updates of the current wildfire situation in Southern California. Both of them are on the scene in San Diego, and they are doing an excellent job of providing information and news about evacuations, meeting points and anything important that local residents would need to know."
Quite simply: There is nothing more important to teach educators (and the rest of us) about technology, than how to network.
Putting out a fire? Escaping an Earthquake? Planning a class? meeting? Lunch? Conference? and need to be able to update (and update your site?) and be updated via your mobile device? Twitter is how you can do so.
And those reviews are having a considerable impact on purchase decisions. According to a recent survey by Deloitte's Consumer Products group, almost two-thirds (62 percent)of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet. Of these, more than eight in 10 (82 percent) say their purchase decisions have been directly influenced by the reviews, either influencing them to buy a different product than the one they had originally been thinking about purchasing or confirming the original purchase intention. Interestingly, while the percentages were slightly higher for the younger generations, all age groups are reading and acting on online reviews at significant rates. In addition, the reach of consumer reviews isn't limited to the online world; seven in 10 (69 percent) consumers who read reviews share them with friends, family or colleagues, thus amplifying their impact.
"This increasing market transparency can adversely impact the margins, market share and brand equity of consumer products companies," said Pat Conroy, vice chairman and US consumer products group leader at Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. "In the past, clever marketers and advertisers shaped brands, but now consumers are increasingly empowered, everyone has a voice, and information and opinions are instantly dispersed. Consumer product companies need to determine how best to capitalize on this new landscape. Clearly, there will be consequences for those who don't."
Did you get an invite to Quechup? DELETE IT!!! Just wanted to send a note out to everyone to let them be aware of a new social network that is spamming everyone in your gmail address book. If you get an invite from Quechup ignore it. I sign up for these sites all the time. I was sent an invitation from a customer and joined to check it out. When Quechup asked me to invite my friends I did, making sure only to invite Lisa McClure. However, everyone in my gmail address book was sent an invitation. The amount of bad press that can be found with a Google search on Quechup is amazing. Please disregard, trash, destroy, delete, remove, any and all invites from Quechup. and advise your friends to do the same. From now on I will google every invite I get prior to joining any new site. We advise you to do the same. and to contact us directly if you have any questions.
ABSTRACT Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week -- and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it.
Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005. Previously, Luis obtained a B.S. in mathematics from Duke University in 2000. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellowship.
He describes other examples of "games with a purpose": Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. He also explains a general approach for constructing games with a purpose.
Social Media Optimization uses the tools of Web 2.0: blogs, RSS feeds, social networking sites, social bookmark buttons, tagging, multimedia posts, and wikis, to target an audience, create an online presence and to develop familiarity and authority with the customer. SMO is about using these tools in conjunction with a website to spread your content far and wide, to create opportunities for others to link to your site and to establish yourself as an authority.
Social Media Optimization harnesses the power of the social network. Web 2.0 provides numerous and growing opportunities to become a participant in the on line communities. Social networking sites create new opportunities to reach potential customers and to establish a dialogue. Social Media Optimization operates in a way that is analogous to “word of mouth” advertising but is more efficient due to the tools and organization of the internet.
Developing content and posting in appropriate social forums, using the current tools to tag and make your content easy to distribute and link to is the focus of a Social Media Optimization Campaign. Building a wealth of informative posts using various media is an efficient and productive way to spread your reputation and encourage a discourse with customers.
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