One of the issues I see a lot of business people still trying to wrap their heads around is how to measure the effectiveness and value of their social media investment. In a lot of ways, it’s the question because no online effort is free. Even if all the tools are free, every campaign still takes time and effort, which you pay for by the hour in most cases. In almost every case where you commit to an online project the analytics will be squishy and gray at best, and you’ll have to come to terms with the immutable fear that your people could be spending their time and energy elsewhere. The fear is a given, and if you don’t have it’s because you’re not really weighing your options correctly. Read More
Twitter’s given us the best approximation of a true, measurable “pulse of the globe” that we’ve ever had and in the last few years we’ve have seen some fantastic Twitter visualizations of world events using all sorts of approaches. Read More
Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time learning on the web. I’ve temporarily put blogging and all the social stuff on hold in the name of focusing on teaching myself things I’ve always wanted to learn, as well as essential skills that, as a freelancer, help me deliver value to clients and broaden my skill set. Read More
3.0 is here, and it’s packed with awesomeness. I do all of my website development on WordPress these days and there are a lot of great additions in this release that I’ve been waiting on for this site, as well as on client projects. They’ve made the maintenance easier with bulk update functionality for plugins and the software, you now have custom post types for products, newsletters and real estate listings, and you’ve got a heck of a lot more control in the widget area. Here’s a 3 minute video overview on the new release, as well as an hour long video (bottom) where Matt Mullenweg talks at length about some of the updates, why they went that way, and shares some of the vision and philosophy behind what Automattic sees in WordPress’s future.
I’ve got a great two-video combo for you today that throws a spotlight on the current state of remix culture and values that are fundamental to the changing creative and cultural landscape of the social web. By fundamental, I mean that the values we chose to uphold when it comes to freedom, creativity and control in this new world of sharing and remixing content will dictate behaviors and culture that influence the direction and trajectory of the ecosystem. That’s a mouthful that means “for the sake of the community and the future, get the values right first”. Read More
We’re 4 days away from being able to pre-order the new iPhone and my gadget lust is at code orange. Jules and I are still rocking 3Gs so spending on this upgrade is easily rationalized :). There are a lot of groundbreaking innovations on the device, but what I’m most excited about is the camera. To date, believe it or not, I’ve taken 1275 photos with the 2 megapixel camera on my trusty 3G. An unexpected side effect of having a “good enough” camera as part of a device that’s with me wherever I go is that I use all the time – mostly as a memory and inspiration tool. If I want to remember something, or I see something that inspires me, I snap a photo. Over time it just became a habit and I’ve found it so useful that I’d never buy a phone without a camera again.
The volume of pictures I’ve taken on my 3G shows that Apple definitely crossed the usefulness threshold (for users like me at least) with their first stab at putting a camera in a phone. The image quality is lacking, though, and there’s no real manual control and it performs horribly in low light. Apple did a heck of a lot to correct those issues with the 3GS, and even caught the attention of photographers with the improved sensor, an increase in resolution, low light performance and tap-to-focus. (side note: If you haven’t heard about Chase Jarvis‘s new book “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You” check it out…awesome iPhone photography)
And with this release, Apple’s shown that they’re still listening and has put even more useful features into the camera:
Video recording in HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio and in-camera video editing with iMovie – I’m skeptical about what using this will be like, but how can you say this isn’t cool?
5-megapixel still camera – instead of uselessly increasing megapixels they’ve focused on putting in a kick-ass low light sensor, which will make much more difference to image quality.
The new front-facingcamera - finally I can take a picture of Jules and I when we’re out and about that I don’t have to re-take 3 times because all I got was the sky or “just” my stomach.
Tap to focus video or still images – awesome for isolating your subject and blurring the background – this is the feature that made photographers go banana sandwich when the 3G came out.
LED flash - huge – this sucker even stays on to light your subjects when you’re shooting video.
Photo and video geotagging -neat if you care about this sort of thing, which I do because iPhoto’s sorting by place is awesome.
The New Camera + App
OK, so I’ve told you all that so that I can now tell you about this. Now that the iPhone camera is 17 new kinds of awesome, you’re going to start looking for apps, right? Only natural. Along with the “Best Camera” app, I’d recommend this one – Camera+. What’s different about this app is that it gives you lots of control and a much closer experience to an actual DSLR that the pros use. Plus the lightbox, zoom and custom filters are sweet and you can do some really cool “post-production” type of work directly on your phone. For $2.99, it makes the whole experience of using the camera way more than $2.99 cooler…check the video, you’ll see what I mean. If you end up buying it and loving it, you can thank Lisa and TapTapTap for their hard work.
There’s a quick and dirty trick I’ve been using lately to do research on products and services. Whenever I’m about to make a big purchase or sign up for a new service, I like to know what my options are before I buy. So I go to Google’s home page and do a quick search on the product or service with “vs” attached. Before you click search, Google returns a list of the most searched on terms that include the the name of the product or service + vs. In under a second, you get a quick list of comparisons that others have made. It’s not a perfect solution, but you can often get a pretty good sense of what consumer shoppers doing their homework are comparing that product or service to. It’s a great way to use Google’s meta data to stumble on worthy competitors that you’ve never heard of that might be worth consideration…or even to find out who consumers think are YOUR biggest competitors. Like I said, it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s fastand serendipitous. The fact that the lists that Google is generating on the fly are based on search volume is great because it acts like a crowd-sourced vetting process, and it works often enough that it’s a useful place to begin your research.
Here are a couple of examples:
If you were considering LuLu.com to self publish a book, this might help. Did you know about CafePress or Blurb? Or that Amazon has self-publishing services?…
If you’re buying A Canon 7D DSLR (hint: big purchase), here’s a good approximation of most of the “worthy competitors” in the DLSR market that others are considering….
As with any Google search, the more specific you are, the better, and the less generic the name of the product or service, the better. ;-)
