Stature Software

A Social Experiment May Prove TV News Is Obsolete

February 3rd, 2010 by Erin Posted in Twitter | No Comments »

I come from a television news background. My husband is a television news anchor.

Television news was, and is, our life blood. If it goes away, we’re screwed.

That’s why I hate to admit that TV news really is dying a slow death thanks to Internet news Websites and social media, like Twitter and Facebook.

And now, a new social experiment may really leave me in a cold sweat.

It’s called “Huis Clos su le Net” or “Behind Closed Doors on the Net.” The experiment will lock five journalists, who are all from other parts of the world, in an isolated French cottage, leaving them without access to print newspapers or magazines.

So how will they keep up with the world? Through Facebook and Twitter.

The experiment will judge how well the journalists can interpret news of the world solely through social websites and how they might go about verifying the facts presented through Facebook and Twitter.

I have yet to get a handle on when this experiment will begin mainly because every website and blog associated with Huis Clos se le Net is in French, including their Twitter feed.

I do expect, however, that when it actually does begin news will spread like wildfire here to the United States.

My gut tells me that the findings from this experiment will not be earth-shattering; that, indeed, you can get ALL of the day’s news right there on Twitter. Facebook I’m not so sure about.

TV news is toast.

My husband better start looking for work.

 Tags: social experiment, social media, television news, twitter and facebook

Social Media, iPhone Apps Help Make A Difference

January 27th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Technology, Twitter | No Comments »

I’m no stranger to adversity.

Sure, ALL of us hit a rough patch now and then – but what I’ve been through, and what the people of Haiti are now growing through, is anything but rough.

It’s pure hell.

My husband and I, and our then 9-month-old daughter, were in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. As you know, the storm sucked the life out of the vibrant city – leaving it flooded and in ruins. The images you saw on TV were bad. But you have no idea what it was like to be there in person. No idea.

I expect the same can be said for what is unfolding right now in Haiti. I’ve seen the footage on the evening news, but being there is another story.

There is a silver lining though.

It is the monumental effort to give and help.

Back in 2005, I was astounded by the generosity of people across this country, and others, to help New Orleanians deal with Katrina’s aftermath. Donation after donation helped the city heal and rebuild. The call to action back then was, what I thought, unprecedented.

What we’re seeing now in Haiti is historic.

Aid is pouring in at an unbelievable rate – more so than ever before. And, it’s all because of technology.

Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have helped people spread the word, and many one-click FREE iPhone applications make donating effortless.

I often wonder how things would have played out in New Orleans – or even in tsunami-ravaged southeast Asia – if Twitter and more smartphone applications were around.

Funny, it was just five years ago – yet it seems like a completely different time.

 Tags: free iphone applications, help haiti, hurricane katrina, social media

Peer Into Microsoft’s LookingGlass

January 20th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Technology, Twitter | No Comments »

Personal branding.

Professional branding.

Online reputations.

For some, livelihood depends on what’s being said and passed around on the Internet.

Given the power of sites like Twitter and Facebook, online reputation tracking has never been more important.

After all, you want the power to react after someone has hung you (or your small business) out to dry, right?

Months ago, I touched on an application - Salesforce CRM for Twitter - that allows small businesses to track their complaints through basic searches.

Sure, that is all well and good – but now there’s a new, bigger breed of tools that can help you monitor your rep.

Enter Traackr’s Authority List.

Squidoo’s Brands in Public – which is a total (and expensive) waste of time.

And, perhaps the biggest and most controversial one of them all, Microsoft’s LookingGlass.

LookingGlass monitors conversations on social media sites, including Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube, so that companies can track consumer sentiment about their products in real-time. The product can also connect social media feeds with elements like customer databases, CRM centers and sales data within an organization. Most importantly, it will keep a log of what’s been said. Where, when and by whom.

LookingGlass is still in its testing phase but, in good Microsoft fashion, the company is singing its praises.

An excerpt from Clickz:

“While testing the system during the past nine months, Marty Taylor Collins, a group marketing manager for Microsoft, said the information acquired on at least two occasions saved her department from a serious misstep. First, the tool halted her team’s plan to discontinue an ad campaign when it helped them discover that a lead character had quietly become popular. In another instance, a PR disaster was averted during the beta-test release of Windows 7, after a system crashed just after launch.”

LookingGlass appears to be the total package, right?

Wrong.

There’s a hitch.

Microsoft is limiting its LookingGlass services to companies that purchase its suite of Microsoft products.

Way to share to the love Microsoft!

Given the bitter disgust surrounding the Windows 7 release, Microsoft better rethink its strategy.

Or, better yet, Microsoft should take a good hard look at itself through LookingGlass.

 Tags: microsoft looking glass, online reputation, professional branding, small business twitter

Apple iPhone vs Nexus One

January 13th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Technology | No Comments »

It’s on!

The big reveal has taken place.

Finally, we know what the Google phone – Nexus One – is all about.

And while the world is giddy, Apple is no doubt a tad bit nervous today.

Truth be told, I haven’t seen Nexus One with my own eyes – but I’m hearing it is about to give the iPhone a run for its money. Its specs alone are enough to take the iPhone head-on.

Comparisons between the two have just begun – and, well, by the sound of what’s being said on the street, Nexus One simply obliterates the iPhone.

But the experts at Techtree offer a different view. Here’s their objective take on the iPhone vs. Nexus One in some key feature areas:

Screen

When they launched the iPhone in 2007, a resolution of 320×480 was insane. Remember, these were the days of the N95s and the P1i’s, where QVGA resolutions ruled the roost. 240×320 was the best you could get and I remember looking at the N73 once and my jaw dropped when I saw the screen resolution of the now outdated phone. Just when I was sure that mobile phone screens couldn’t get any better, they launch the iPhone. If that wasn’t enough, they add multitouch to it, something unheard of then.

Fast forward to 2010 and almost three years later, while Apple is still stuck at 320×480, the likes of Symbian S60 have moved to 360×640 and the Nexus One with a 800×480 pixel screen makes the iPhone screen look pedestrian. Add to it the fact that the Nexus One boasts of an AMOLED screen, which further tilts the scale in favour of the Google Phone. Another thing that should not be forgotten is that the Nexus One has a larger 3.7- inch display. The extra few inches does boost your ego by 10x, doesn’t it? (Warning: Proximity to HTC HD2 users not recommended for Nexus One users) So, if you bought the iPhone for the sole reason that it had a kick-ass screen, it’s time to change your phone!

Imaging

This was a grey area in the iPhones armour during the time of the 2G and the 3G iterations of the device. In the company of the 3.2 and 5 megapixels of the world, the iPhones 2 megapixel camera was simply outdated. It did not have autofocus or flash and some even termed it a bad job at making a pinhole camera. To add insult to injury, it was incapable of capturing videos unless you jailbreak the phone and defy Apple’s command. With the arrival of the 3GS in 2009, Apple played catch-up with the world and managed to cram in a 3.2 megapixel camera. This took far better pictures and supported video recording as well, that too at a very decent VGA resolution.

The first generation Nexus One already boasts of a 5 megapixel camera, with LED flash and autofocus and at least on paper should take far better pictures than the iPhone. The video recording too is better (not by much though). The Nexus One is capable of recording videos in D1 (720×480) resolution at 20FPS. While we are yet to see how the videos turn out, this is still better than what the 3GS can do now.

Operating System

To start with, this is not an iPhone OS Vs Android battle but why the Nexus One is simply a more open platform as compared to the OSX platform of the iPhone. Apple’s policy of not allowing developers to make apps that mimic the core functionality of their own existing apps viz. the calendar, browser and even an e-mail client is not applicable to Android. This throws in a lot of options for the consumer. I don’t need 200 different apps to fart online! Give me a better e-mail client or at least the choice to switch between the applications of my choice.

Similar is the case with browsers. Who wouldn’t love to see Opera Mobile run on an iPhone? Yes, the existing browser on the iPhone is quite capable, but then, all we are asking for is a choice! Apart from this, from what we hear from primary reports, the Nexus One seems to work a lot faster than the iPhone – even with the phone multitasking. While this might be attributed to the higher Clock speed of the Snapdragon processor inside the Nexus One, we should not forget hat the iPhone 3GS too is powered by a very competent ARM Cortex A8 processor, which by no means is a laggard.

Voice Command

Whats the big deal huh? The iPhone already has it. I can just say in the artistes name and the iPhone will play it for me. I can even call my friend by simply saying her pet name on my iPhone. And that’s where it all comes to an abrupt halt. The Nexus One’s biggest and probably the most praiseworthy feature is the amazing speech to text ability it possesses. Too bored to type in your e-mail or update your facebook status or even tweet? Simply say it aloud and the phone will type it for you! While watching the launch of the phone on Tuesday, if there was a feature for which there was a collective applause, this was it. Who needs a physical keyboard if this works the way it is supposed to work? However, we will still take the voice commands with a pinch of salt as we Indians tend to have accent issues. If Google has taken care of that part as well (I’m quite sure they would have), this is something that would make even Swype look passe’ and so 2009!

Application Approval

While this does not have anything to do with the iPhone and the Nexus One directly, the eco system in which both operate are important. iPhone’s app store was a revolutionary initiative. Whatever we see now in the form of the Android Market and the Ovi Store and the BlackBerry AppWorld are nothing but copies of Apple’s idea of a centralised app store.

While the app store has been a roaring success, it still suffers from a “fascist” app approval process. The Android Market on the other hand has lesser apps and from a developer point of view, the process of approval is far less tedious. Also, thanks to the open platform, Android guys have a lot less to bother about than the ones who affix the stamp of approval at Cupertino.

Battery

So you love your iPhone very much and use it 24/7. But one fine day you realise you haven’t turned off the phone in two years and that the battery inside it (yes there’s one in there) needs to be replaced. Under normal circumstances (read, if you use a normal phone), you buy a new battery, open the lid at the back and replace it and continue what you were doing. But hey, this is Apple, we do things differently here. If your battery goes kaput on the iPhone all you need to do is to drag yourself to the nearest Apple Store (or a dealer in India) to have the battery replaced. This is because Apple thinks batteries are immovable objects and should remain inside till it meets its fate. The Nexus One happens to fall under the “normal phones” category and if you ever feel you’ve had enough of its battery, go ahead and get a new one.

Last, but not least, I’d like to add that Google has not married itself to one service provider – as Apple has done with AT&T.

That, in my book, is the biggest boon of all.

 Tags: apple iphone, google phone, iphone vs nexus one, nexus one features

Top Ten Small Business Trends In 2010

January 1st, 2010 by Erin Posted in Stature Projects | No Comments »

As 2010 comes screaming toward us, so do the traditional predictions for the new year and beyond.

These new year predictions have almost become obligatory. Many of them are stale and cliche – but we expect them and we LOVE to read them.

Considering this was a bumpy year, especially for small business, I wanted to jump on the prediction bandwagon as well.

What will 2010 bring to small businesses?

More money? Green responsibility?

Since I don’t have a crystal ball, I’ve turned to the experts.

Small business expert and USA Today columnist Steve Strauss offers this look at the top ten small business trends we can expect in 2010.

And guess what?

This news is actually insightful!

The New Frugality

A variety of factors have coalesced to create an era of frugality – the bad economy, stubbornly high unemployment rates, and the burst of the housing bubble to name just a few.

The upshot is that people are spending less, saving more, and are looking for bargains. For the small business person, this has several ramifications: First, as you well know, it’s tougher to get people to spend, and spend more. That isn’t going away any time soon. Secondly, you have to give people what they want, and what they want are bargains.

The New Employee

This trend is another directly related to the changing and challenging economy. More and more, employees are shifting, or are being shifted, to part-time or independent contract status. It might be a forced furlough or a forced downsizing, but whatever the case, full-time employment with full-time benefits is becoming harder and harder to find, and to offer.

It is not hard to understand why employers are doing this – it saves money – but it also creates a far less satisfied workforce. I know, “they should be happy they have a job!” — but really, can’t we begin to raise the bar again here soon?

Less Money, More Responsibility

The fact of the matter is that more and more small business will have to learn to get by on less, even while their financial burden grows. There are a variety of factors at play here again, and all are equally culpable: Fewer customers with less to spend, banks who won’t make loans, tighter credit generally, the end of the home equity ATM, etc.

Yet, while the trend is less money to go around (although it will certainly be better than 2009), the financial demands on small business continue to grow. Thankfully, Congress tried to do something about out-of-control health care costs for instance, but if it helps (debatable, hopefully) it won’t be for several years.

Welcome the Era of Hyper-Connectivity

Whereas your online life and brand used to consist of independent activities that were essentially stand-alone silos, the accelerating trend is towards using a variety of tools to create an e-interconnectedness. As explained by Adam Ostrow Editor-in-Chief of Mashable, it is easy, and smart and important, to now connect your blog to you Facebook account, which can also connect to your Twitter account, as well as MySpace, YouTube and more. Every time you update your blog for instance, your content automatically filters across your interconnected online world.

The opportunity and challenge is that you can increase your online presence multi-fold. Do it right and prosper, do it wrong and don’t.

Green Opportunities

The failure to reach any sort of comprehensive, legally binding, climate agreement in Copenhagen is further proof that Trend No. 6 is real and growing: There will continue to be opportunities galore in the eco-sphere for the entrepreneur. Governments may not be able to create green energy or zero emission cars, but the sharp business person can. There is and will continue be a growing and lucrative market for products that heal the environment.

Social Media Grows Up

Have you noticed that “social media” is a term that doesn’t really describe the experience that well anymore? Yes its social, and yes its media, but for business it has become so much more than that. Tapping, nay, mastering, social media is one of the hottest of all online trends:

• Everyone from Jet Blue to Comcast has turned to Twitter as a customer service tool.
• Companies like Whole Foods and Popeys increasingly use it to get feedback, post company news, etc.
• Big business has discovered what many small businesses already know: Facebook is a great place to advertise. “Facebook” in fact was the most searched term in 2009. (Source: Experian Hitwise)

Going Local

Consumers are increasingly looking for a local angle when looking where to spend their hard-earned dollar. Example: The explosion of farmers markets across the country. According to Entrepreneur, “there are almost 5,000 farmers markets across the country, the result of more than 5% annual growth for the past five years.”

Additionally, with people staying closer to home right now because of the economy, with folks focused ever more on community and family, and with the green ethos growing, home is where the heart (and dollar) is.

Sharing vs. Shared Experiences:

According to a recent NPR podcast, we used to share national experiences. The nightly news was a shared ritual for instance. The OJ Simpson trial was a shared experience, the same with Vietnam, and so on.

But that is changing, for two reasons. The first is the fragmentation of the media. With innumerable news outlets, websites, cable channels, mobile options and the like, the opportunity to create shared experiences is diminishing. We are all not watching or experiencing the same thing nearly as much.

Secondly, with the advent of easy to generate user-created content, sharing experiences and opinions is becoming ever more prevalent. YouTube, blogs, Facebook,Yelp, email even, all contribute to both the media fragmentation as well as the sharing culture.

For the small business person, it is vital to realize that 1) people look for, and increasingly expect, the personal, and 2) small, localized, immediate user-created media are where the eyeballs are headed.

Mobile Mania

Maybe the only marketing trend that is hotter than social media is mobile mania. Why? Maybe because there are four-times more cellphones than PCs worldwide, or because they are the favorite product of Gen Y, or because in 2000, there were almost no texts sent but this year, 130 billion texts will be sent amonth, and only 23% of those will come from my daughters.

So yes, mobile marketing is exploding. Whether it is creating the Next Big App, offering customers a real-time mobile coupon, or creating a text marketing campaign, in 2010 there will be mobile options galore for small business.

Even better maybe: The variety of ways to measure the success of your mobile campaign. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, they will include: “The number of eyeballs, shakes and finger swipes. The number of blogs, articles, tweets and diggs. The number of acquisitions, conversions, calls, responses or purchases. Total basket size, consumer recall, loyalty and recommendations. Check-ins on foursquare and check-outs on Amazon.”

It is a new world indeed.

The Start-Up Economy

Last year, 2009, my top trend was entitled “Economic Tumult,” and tumultuous it indeed turned out to be; the Great Recession is great in all the wrong ways.

But this year, while the state of the economy will continue to be the most significant trend effecting small business, the outlook is both brighter and calmer. It is calmer because things are slowly getting back to, if not normal, at least something recognizable. And it is brighter because out of the rubble, a new, vital, innovative start-up economy is being born.

We have entered the era of small business. Whereas GM president Charles Wilson once said “What’s good for the country is good for GM, and vice versa,” it can now safely be said that what is good for small business is good for the country. Consider these statistics.

Small businesses now

• Number almost 30 million
• Employ more than half of all workers
• Constitute 99.7% of all employers
• Constitute 97% of all exporters
• Create the majority of business innovations
(Source: U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, 2009)

With 10% unemployment for as far as the eye can see, with the unemployed running out of benefits, and with benefits not what they once were for the employed, start-ups of all shapes and sizes are taking root: One person shops, home-based businesses, part-time ventures, online enterprises, high tech companies – you name it. These are the folks who, with their creative energy, drive, ingenuity, and hard work will be leading us out of this anything but great recession.

Here’s 2010!

 Tags: new year predictions, small business 2010, small business trends