Archive for February, 2008
Synchronicity in Cleveland…
Have you ever had that feeling that things are just slotting into place around you?
Yesterday I finished reading “Meatball Sundae”, the new book by Seth Godin. It’s a small book in which Mr. Godin lays out why forcing “meatballs” (things we need) with “sundaes” (new marketing methods) don’t work. He uses various examples, hopping between Wedgewood in the 1800’s up to his own Squidoo in the present day and outlines 14 trends that could help.
It was a good book, most of the trends and pitfalls I was aware of and been educating our clients about for a little while, but there are also some new spins in there that sparked the occasional “ah-ha” moment.
Today I crashed the Web Association lunch panel entitled “B2B and the Digital Transformation” with our very own Megan Hauer as moderator. As I sat there listening to the panel describe their methods they are trying to get to clients in the B2B market one thing struck me.
All of them mentioned some of the very things that Godin touched on his book:
- proving to upper management
- treating each customer as an individual
- include online and “traditional” marketing in the same budget
- winning small battles
These were guys seeing this transformation happen for themselves and got it. I also saw nods around the room and also some head shaking. The head-shakers were in the minority, but they are the ones that Godin is going for in his book.
Things are changing and people (management) are going to have to accept that you will have to start changing the way your company works to make use of this new marketing, because just adding some web2.0 topping isn’t going to cut it.
2008 is definitely shaping up to be an exciting year.
Technorati tags: “meatball sundae”, marketing, “seth godin”
Google aquires GrandCentral…
Google has now acquired GrandCentral and will be offering the functionality free with other Google online apps.
GrandCentral lets you have a single number that combines all your other numbers (mobile, home, & work). So you can give your GrandCentral number out and then screen calls or use it to listen to voice mail online, record calls and import your address book. You can also set when or for whom a certain number will be called.
It was extremely easy to setup and the call to verify the account happened less than a second after I clicked “go” on the web site.
GrandCentral also has a mobile component and with Google’s Android this could be a great integration.
Now I’ve set this up I’ll be kicking the tires and see how best this suits me.
Technorati tags: google, phone, grandcentral, organize
Monday Links – 2008-02-25
- Spammers break Gmail CAPATCHA – via @robataka
- Stage6 is closing down – via warren ellis
- A look at WIRED1.1 – via semacode blog
- More about IE8 standards mode
- radar.net gets $7.2M
Technorati tags: spam, gmail, ie8, video, divx, funding, mobile
Flock1.1 beta
Some of the things I’m loving about the new Flock 1.1 beta:
- Flock Blog Plus add-on is now workable again (belated congrats to mctones on his new arrival)
- Integrated Gmail & Yahoo! mail
- Cleaner “My World” page – I never used this before but might give it a go
- Seems a lot faster on start-up
Monday Links – 2008-02-19
- Farecast.com – Using data from reservation systems or airlines to predict the best price
- Pew Internet: Online Shopping – report on online shopping habits
- LIVE – already played out?
- HD is no more – All hail Blu-Ray
- The street as platform – excellent read via William Gibson
Blogged with Flock
Pownce is now free for all…
Pownce has been in “web2.0 invite-only beta” for a little while now and yesterday opened it’s doors to one and all – Sharing the love on Valentines day.
And that’s a big part of Pownce, sharing. More than just another IM/social network, this lets you share events, links, files and messages. You can do this either on your page or through the slick little app that runs on AIR
One of the reasons I haven’t used this much since being part of the invite-only beta was a lot of the people on there I see in different places online anyway.
With this public launch though you can also connect friends from other networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr as well as the usual online email clients that are already on the system. I did try this today (sorry for the mass requests) and Pownce does a pretty good job of finding matches within it’s system but when I tried to cancel an invite (who knew two Dave Woods would look very similar) I got an error message.
There is also a Pro package which will cancel advertisements, though I haven’t seen any to date on the free version, send up to 100Mb files and design custom themes.
One of the other nice things is the aggregation of other social networks, IM, and websites you can display on your page, making Pownce another place you can start to manage your online presence.
Hopefully I will be using this a little more now it’s truly open.
Blogged with Flock
Microformats come to Mahalo…
The human-powered search engine, Mahalo, has now introduced microformats in their profile section.
Chris Miller has a good breakdown of microformats employed in Mahalo on his blog.
Now they’ve had a taste of the kool-aid from Tantek, I’m looking forward to seeing these creep a little more into the result pages in the future.
Blogged with Flock
Vote for us at SXSW…
As I posted earlier, we have one of our sites as a finalist in this years SXSW Web Awards. You can also vote for it to win the Peoples Choice Award.
Please visit https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/ and cast your vote for Galloping Inn in the CSS category.
You can vote as many times as you want, but only once a day.
Thanks 
Blogged with Flock
Optiem is a finalist at SXSW 2008
One of the websites we built, Galloping Inn, has been chosen as a finalist in the 11th Annual Web Awards.
We’ll be travelling to Austin to attend the South by South West Festival and (finger crossed) coming back with the award for the CSS category.
Blogged with Flock