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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

A few riffs on the 4th annual Tools of Change conference, which I attended last week in New York City for ForeWord Reviews magazine:

Self-expression is the new entertainment
So said keynote speaker Arianna Huffington at the fourth annual Tools of Change Conference in New York last week.  That statement – from the founder of the most popular political news web site in the blogosphere – drew some raised eyebrows and mild grumbling from conference attendees.  Huffington was making the argument that today users aren’t just idly sitting on the couch waiting to be entertained, they want to be involved in the entertainment.  They text, they blog, they tweet.  They attract fans, followers, audience.  They are entertainment.  She argued that publishers must embrace new media to help draw in these self-expressionist users, who create bits and bits of content themselves.  But not all self-expression has value, some would argue.  In fact, many would argue that most self-expression is crap.  Publishers will need to learn how to separate the weed from the chaff.

63% of something is better than 100% of nothing
The pricing model for eBooks is highly-charged with controversy.  When Google it’s Almighty Self reared their head at TOC, most of the questions laid at their feet came in two flavors: pricing and DRM.  The industry wants to know how large a slice of the revenue pie they’re going to have to share to be listed in Google Editions, and how much control they’ll maintain over their products.  The answers:  Google will take 37%.  Publishers and distributors will set the list price.  “We think the publisher is far more qualified to set prices on their products [than we are],” said Google’s Abe Murray.  While many publishers may bristle at the notion of sharing more than a third with Google, they ignore Google’s crowd-gathering skills at their own risk.  Worldwide, nearly 40% of all Internet traffic travels through Google, and more than 80% of all mobile traffic is Google-charged.  Of the top 25 most visited blogs, 45% of their traffic is referred by Google. Whatever Google Editions may look like, and however the pricing models and distribution channels work themselves out, if you have a product, you want it pumping through the Google pipeline.  Google seems to be saying to the traditional publishing world: “We’ve figured this ‘E-Thing’ out, come along with us, unless you think you can do it better yourself.”

Tablets to the rescue?
Yes, the January announcement of Apple’s iPad was exciting.  It remains to be seen if the device, set to hit the streets in March, will prove to be a smash hit or just an oversized iPod.  The tablet PC has been trotted out before, only to fail miserably in the marketplace, making little more than a novelty-sized dent on the industry.  Apple promises an online bookstore that will do for reading what iTunes did for listening to music.  But, as WWW founder Marc Andreesen points out in a recent interview with Fortune: “Businesses built on the written word… have to reinvent their whole businesses from top to bottom if they want to survive.”  If you’re a publisher and you think Steve Jobs has come to your rescue with his latest shiny gadget, you may be ignoring the fact that your business practices and content needs to evolve to keep pace with the new medium.

It’s the content, stupid
In a now famous memo by the same name, Bill Gates wrote back in 1996 that “Content is King.”  Yes, way back when Kindle wasn’t even a twig yet, Microsoft Bill was talking about the future of the Internet and web sites in general.  But the phrase has since taken on broader meaning as it applies to media in general.  However, it still appears that many of the folks who use ink and paper to deliver their content think they can just cram that content into a new device and survive.  It’s increasingly apparent that there’s a shift in the way end users consume information.  An eBook on Amazon’s Kindle is essentially a physical book displayed digitally on a handheld device.  With few exceptions, it fails to utilize the powerful tools that even a desktop PC offers.  We saw this sort of lazy transition back in the early days of television – another milestone in the evolution of content consumption – when networks relied on radio programming to fill their schedules (similarly early motion pictures were mostly filmed stage plays).  Consumers quickly demanded that TV utilize new technology, which resulted in live satellite news reports, the 30-minute sitcom, etc.  Content morphed to match the medium by which it was being delivered.  Oxford Media Group’s Kirk Biglione gets it:  “The customer expects to find their content quickly and easily, and in the format they want it in.”  Publishers need to realize that they’re publishers, not book creators.

Why can’t my eBook do this?
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that there were two requirements for any new invention: that it be simple to use and that it advance the cause of human happiness by taking into account the needs of people.  So far, digital books and publications are oh-for-two on Vonnegut’s criteria.  Sure, some eReaders are fairly easy to use – the Kindle is a megastar in these still early years of eBooks – but until a format is adopted as standard, getting eBooks onto the reading devices will continue to be a pain for most non-tech consumers.  The process of buying an eBook needs to be as easy as downloading and listening to music.  On Vonnegut’s second point, eBooks themselves have a long way to go.  Most of them are woefully impractical to search, nearly impossible to annotate, and difficult to recommend to friends through social media sites.  In contrast to other media such as film and even plain old web sites, eBooks have failed to push the envelope when it comes to functionality.  A pair of TOC presenters: Jeff Gomez and Peter Meyers, examined how eBooks of the future can “advance the cause of human happiness.”  In “Book Meets Tablet: 10 Ways to Enhance Your iPad Books,” Meyers, who once cut his teeth as the co-founder of Digital Learning Interactive, outlined specific features he’d like to see in eBooks.  Especially interesting were his ideas for a Notes & Highlights Browser that would enable the reader to organize and share his notes in a multitude of ways, a Visual Table of Contents (show me the chapters in order or Inspire Me), and Character Notes, where the reader gets to dig deeper into the back story of the main characters of the novel.  In “Storyworlds: The New Transmedia Business Paradigm,” Gomez shared how a handful of companies are telling stories using digital media in exciting ways.  If publishers listen to the likes of Gomez and Meyers and integrate just a few of the new features into their devices and content, eReading can be much more fun in the near future.

Increasingly fewer people are actually visiting web sites in a web browser. Theincreased reliance on mobile devices and social media has changed the way we “surf the web.”

In the 1990s, when companies were first dipping their toes into this ocean called the World Wide Web, they built brochure-like web sites that gave contact information and stale descriptions of their products and services. The Internet was little more than a digital yellow pages.

In the late ’90s there were enough web sites online that users started to rely on search engines to find information. The best way to get to the top of those search engines was to have relevant content. That drew visitors, and the more visitors the better.  The more visitors the more you could potentially reach through email newsletters or email contact forms, or possibly even message boards. A metric was born: traffic equals audience. And the more traffic you got, the more email subscribers you got, and the more you got to visit your site frequently the more you may sell your products or services. It was a numbers game.  A webmaster could predict with fairly certain accuracy how much return on investment he’d get based on how many page views, which translated to purchases, etc.

Now, folks aren’t going to traditional web sites as much. Many of the most visited and used web sites are social destinations built around communicating with friends and family in our extended networks of connections. We click and swipe and share information instantly. And let’s face it, web sites are hard to read on cell phones.

So how do business and organizations measure and predict their success on social media networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter? The answer hasn’t changed. It’s a numbers game.

Followers are to Twitter what unique visits is to a web site. If you grow your followers on Twitter (or friends/fans on Facebook), that should eventually (and quite often quickly) translate into a longer online reach.

When you attract followers through social media you’ve earned an audience that’s willing to ENGAGE your brand.  The importance of that relationship cannot be overstated.

From there, it’s not important WHO your followers are, it’s who THEY KNOW and how they can help you deliver or influence those extended followers to be loyal to your products and services.

Twitter is simply a new method of communication, like the telegraph, phone, radio, and television before it. Except it’s even more powerful than those mediums.  Brands that fail to recognize this, especially smaller brands and emerging brands, are missing the point of social media, and risk failure.

Social media is not a time waste.  It’s a platform to engage your customers and would-be customers.  Why wouldn’t you want to engage your customers?

The Twitter doubters, and there are still many, make the mistake of thinking of Twitter as a destination, instead of as a medium to reach consumers. If a brand can carefully carve a presence on Twitter and attract even a few hundred followers, they can effectively disseminate and/or solicit information.

Want examples? @JetBlue is using Twitter to communicate flight information, special fare deals, and travel tips. One of the largest cable television companies, Comcast, is providing customer service on Twitter through @comcastbill, where subscribers can ask questions about their service, billing, installation, etc. Even the NBA’s Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) have embraced the medium, tweeting injury report moments before game time.

If you own a business in a competitive industry and you haven’t started tweeting, you should find out how Twitter can help transform the way you interact with your customers.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Facebook lately. I don’t know what it is, but Facebook seems to be hitting critical mass, as even my parents are on FB now. Here’s an article we ran on the Guru Blog at Boone Digital on how to set up a Facebook page for your business.

I’ve received two good leads and one client through Facebook, and since it’s free advertising and networking, that’s gravy. My Facebook page can be accessed from the link at the top of this web site.

Social Networking websites like Facebook are increasingly becoming the place to find more clients and business partners. These websites are not just for social networking, but for networking, period. In the first month of 2009 alone, more than 20 million new users opened a Facebook account. Tapping into that market is free and fairly simple. Here?s how to create a Facebook page for your business or organization.

This tutorial assumes you have already created a Facebook account. You need a personal account before you can create a Facebook page for your business.

1. Log into Facebook and scroll to the very bottom of your screen.
2. Click on the Advertising link in the footer links.
3. Click on the ?Pages? link (there?s a flag next to it at the top of the page in the links for the Advertising section)
4. On the Facebook Pages page, click the button ?Create a Page?
5. Select the type of business, enter the name, and proceed through the setup for your new page as prompted.
6. Upload your logo and make sure to add your phone numbers, website address, fax number, email address, etc.
7. To activate your page, you will need to ?Publish? it. There will be a link to prompt you to do this.
8. Now that you?ve created the page for your business, post it to your wall on your personal Facebook page so your friends will know about it. You can even email your friends (Facebook only allows you to message 20 at a time) to encourage them to become fans of your new page.
9. In the future, to manage your Facebook page for your business, a link named ?Ads and Pages? will appear on your Facebook page. To manage, you will click this link to access both areas.
10. That?s it!

So you?ve created a Facebook page for your business, now what? What can it do for you? How do you utilize it to create new business?

• When other Facebook users ?fan? your page, a mini version of your logo will show up on their profiles. You can?t ?friend? people with your page, but people can ?fan? your page.
• From within your Facebook page for your business, you can send ?Updates? to your fans to tell them when you have a new product, specials, events, or anything else. This is probably the best use of the Facebook pages for your business.
• Post ?Links? on your page that go to specific pages on your company website, such as your products or services page. Or post a link to an article you wrote on your website that will garner interest.
• Create and run Facebook ads for your business and send the click-throughs to your Facebook page and ultimately to your company website. There is a cost for this, but it?s fairly affordable compared to other forms of online advertising.

There are many social networking websites, but Facebook is currently the leader in users and buzz. Don?t miss a chance to market to the hundreds of millions of users that lurk on Facebook every day.

It’s never been easier to travel, as airlines, hotels, resorts, and travel-related retailers are clamoring to attract us to use their services. The website TravBuddy.com is a great place to get travel info and much more.

The best thing about TravBuddy.com: Social networking. The site allows users to find travel buddies planning to travel to the same places at the same times, or to learn about destinations from people who have been there or actually live there. In fact, some users find friends on TravBuddy who they can travel with or get help from when they take their trip.

Another wonderful part of the site are the reams of travel reviews. There are, as of last count, more than 17,000 reviews of restaurants, bars, hotels and attractions. Need to know where the best martini is in Madrid? You can find out. Want to find the best place to rent a kayak in Sydney? That’s there too.

Users can also create travel-based blogs and upload travel photos. The photos (750,000 have been posted to blogs so far) are a great way to actually see places you want to go to, but the blogs are a little thin. Though TravBuddy boasts 65,000+ blogs, most of them are old our rarely updated, and many of them offer little to help you plan a trip. The reviews are best for getting the nitty-gritty details.

As of March 2008, TravBuddy has nearly 1,350,000 registered contributors and it’s growing, as it has been featured prominently on the NBC Nightly News, Popular Science, Real Simple Travel, and other media outlets.

I signed up on TravBuddy a few months ago because I’m going to the South Pacific in 2009. In a very short time (within hours) I had connected with folks who had been where I plan to travel and they gave me valuable tips. I also met several very friendly TravBuddy users who gave me advice on booking flights. The community at TravBuddy is wonderful.

The worst thing about TravBuddy.com: the blogs are not updated frequently (user-driven so that’s to be expected somewhat). For that reason, the site just misses a 5-star rating.

The least you need to know: TravBuddy.com is a social networking site to connect travelers with similar interests and itineraries. It’s especially appealing to adventure travelers, the types who cringe at the thought of a bus tour or a guided walk through a museum. However, it still offers a community that will benefit all types of travelers. It’s a fantastic way to safely connect with people in the places you want to travel to, to learn the secrets of enjoying that destination. You may also make a travel buddy who will throw on a backpack and take the trip with you!

Website rating: 4 out of 5 stars

URL: www.travbuddy.com

We all love Microsoft Office, right? Ok, maybe we don’t. Much of the world may run on it, but, let’s face it – it’s bloated and expensive. That’s just one example of mainstream, over-the-counter software that manhandle our lives. Many people think that if they want to write a document, create a presentation, or have their kids draw a cool picture, they have to pony up for it. Not true. On the internet, there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Here are five programs you can download today FREE. All five can do the same stuff as their pricey counterparts.

RSS Bandit
RSS Bandit is a RSS and Atom reader that allows you to keep track of all of your news feeds in one location via a very intuitive and feature-filled interface.

Miro
Tired of Windows Media Player or Real Player? Miro is a full-featured, free, open-source media controller. Videos can come in from lots of places– a web browser, email, a p2p application, or Miro. Miro can watch any folder on your computer and include those videos in your collection. So when you save something to your desktop, for instance, it will show up in Miro without needing to be added manually.

Running out of space? Miro can move your video collection to any location on your system, such as an external hard drive. When you install Miro, you can search you computer to find all your video files and list them in your Miro Library.

FileZilla
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. Among others, the features of FileZilla include:

Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
Available in many languages
Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
Drag & drop support
Configurable Speed limits
Filename filters
Network configuration wizard

GIMP
GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package with lots of cool features. It’s amazing that this program is FREE! Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP: Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens’ barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface. Add edges, bevels, or perspective skews and drop-shadows very easily. There’s not enough space to list all the things GIMP can do.

Tux Paint
Tux Paint is a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6 in the US, key stages 1 & 2 in the UK). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. Kids are presented with a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help them be creative.

The drawing canvas is a fixed size, so the user doesn’t need to worry about “pixels??? or “inches??? when making a new picture. The entire program fits on a screen as small as 640×480, and can be displayed full-screen, to hide the computer’s underlying “desktop??? interface. (It defaults to 800×600 mode, but can run at larger sizes and in portrait or landscape mode, as well.) Loading and saving of images is done using thumbnails, so no knowledge of the underlying operating system’s filesystem structure is needed. Even filenames are unnecessary. Fun sound effects are played when tools are selected and used. A cartoon version of Tux, the Linux penguin, appears at the bottom to give tips, hints and information.