What Would Proximity Sensors Do For The Mobile Web?

January 18, 2010

Our dumb web is getting smarter. It already knows who you are and who you know, and it won’t be long before it will be able to leverage those connections on your behalf wherever you go. Our mobile devices are already being outfitted with sensors of all types. There are currently two common scenarios for [...]

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Here Come The GeoWeb Wars

January 15, 2010

One of the very first apps I downloaded on the iPhone was Around Me, and it’s still one of my go-to’s. It’s simple and it does exactly what the name implies – it finds your location and shows you all the critical services around you — banks, coffee shops, bars, gas stations, hospitals, movie theaters, [...]

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When There Is No Manual

January 14, 2010

It’s not always easy to tell who’s really leading when an entire team is just going through the motions and following procedures in a manual that they’ve all used before for similar projects. When all the variables for a project are known and the expectations and plan are clear to everyone from the very beginning, [...]

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BART Teams up with Foursquare to Add Some Fun For Commuters

January 13, 2010

Foursquare’s thinking outside the box. They’ve teamed up with BART to spice up the ride for commuters. This is the first example I’ve seen of a transit agency using social media.

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Shifting To A “People Driven” Economy

January 13, 2010

Erik Qualman has produced a few good videos like this in tandem with the release of his book Socialnomics. This one focuses on interesting facts and figures that show how human behavior on the web is shifting (which is the whole point, right?). I particularly appreciated (A.) the insight that: “Successful companies in social media [...]

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Simple Touch Points Of Loyalty

January 12, 2010

Julie got this card in the mail the other day from our dry cleaner. It probably took them only a few minutes to write and send it. I think the card speaks for itself. Simple, personal, perfect. Handwritten notes still go a long way.

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Hacking The Flip – A Quick Lesson In Community Building

January 6, 2010

I’ve been an Flip Camera owner for about a year now. I’m actually on my second one. I started with a 60 minute Flip Mino and then sold it and upgraded to a 120 minute Ultra HD a few months ago. The great thing about The Flip cameras is the simplicity. Fits in your pocket, [...]

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Three Themes For 2010

January 5, 2010

I’ve decided to ditch the idea of new years resolutions this year and focus instead on three key themes. Here they are:
Limiting Myself To The Essential

I read Leo Babauta’s book The Power of Less late last year and it had a surprisingly profound affect on me. I didn’t have any major “ah-ha!” moments while getting [...]

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Best of 2009

January 1, 2010

2009 was a great year for me and this blog. I had a ton of fun writing, I learned a lot and I got the opportunity to meet and work with a whole host of really smart, engaging people who opened my eyes and inspired me. In this post I’d like to take a moment [...]

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Talking Social Media In Long Beach, CA

December 18, 2009

Two weeks ago, Gunn/Jerkens, a Marketing Communications company I do social media consulting for, hosted it’s first-ever Social Media Mingle event. Clients and associates joined us for a day-long seminar that started out with a 4 hour presentation, co-delivered by myself and Katie Wynne (I am the one excitedly waving my arms around in the [...]

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The Future Of Magazines?

December 17, 2009

I came across this video demo of a digital magazine prototype on Popular Science and was ultra impressed. Hat tip to the developers in Bonnier’s R&D group and BERG Design for their work on this. This year we’ve seen escalating hype around ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle, as well as a lot of speculation about [...]

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Social Media ROI Reality Check

December 17, 2009

This slide deck by Oliver Blanchard on Social Media ROI is a hoot. It provides a witty introduction to measuring social media campaign ROI. Importantly, it highlights the fact that social media is an investment that requires people, time and resources, and if you’re not measuring impact in terms of things that matter to your [...]

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The Critical Shift

December 11, 2009

Five years ago, if someone from your marketing department said “Let’s market to our existing customers!” they would have risked losing their job. Why would any organization spend time or effort on customers who’ve already bought the product? Backwards you say? Not anymore. This is a winning strategy on the social web.
Social media changes the [...]

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Absolut Me

December 11, 2009

A Wordle of your delicious tags can be surprisingly revealing about what makes you tick…

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Creating A Branded Social Media Presence For A Non-Profit

December 9, 2009

A social media project I’ve been working on this month went live today, and I’m proud to finally be able to share the final product. Second Chance is a non-profit organization based out of San Diego, CA. The organization focuses on breaking cycles of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, substance abuse and incarceration through social entrepreneurship. Over [...]

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The Future of Freedom In The Internet Age

December 7, 2009

Today there’s a big push to make Internet Access a basic human right. In the US, the majority of us take freedom of speech (online and offline) for granted and we tune out the debates on heavy censorship that is commonplace in other countries. If you’re not aware of the kind of control and manipulation [...]

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The Phone Book – Designing Interactive Storytelling Experiences For Parents & Kids

December 5, 2009

It takes about 30 seconds to realize that this product is a perfect marriage between digital and analog. The interface is simple, and the story telling is rich and engaging. What a fantastic way to bring together parents and children. Not only does it encourage reading, it also inspires creativity.
This video was originally posted on [...]

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Beyond Buzz: Diving Into How You Actually Measure Online Conversation

December 4, 2009

One of the hardest questions to answer definitively when it comes to social media is “How do we measure ROI when it comes to conversation?” Starting a blog and getting on Twitter and Facebook is a good start, but, even if you’re producing great content at a good clip,  it’s hard to measure the value [...]

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Social Media = Positive ROI

December 3, 2009

Katie Wynner and I have been putting together a presentation we’re giving in Long Beach, CA this week on Social Media Marketing and she came across this video on Social Media ROI. The video showcases several of the best known Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies and data that I’ve [...]

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What Would You Do Tomorrow If You Were Laid Off Today?

December 1, 2009

It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? There are a lot of people out there right now who’ve had the question thrust upon them when they weren’t ready. What would you do? Would you seek another job just like the one you had because it’s easy, familiar and safe? Or would you go and do the [...]

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