What will Google do next in web?

Using an age-old public relations tool, Google looks to be sneaking its web redesign into the public via a leak. Not sure if this is the case or just someone on the outside found some web sites using the new image?

Here is the story on The Next Web.

Using New Media Update

I am impressed with Google's ability to place ads for me on pages I visit. I just visited Science Daily web site and ads there for me are for Emory's business school [I used to work at Emory] and ads for health that are for Atlanta-based programs.

I thought I would find some comments on using Google+, and ran into Life Hacker.com. Check out this web site for many features on using state-of-the-art media.

If you are trying to find apps for your iPad, you can check out this article. I really don't know how the writer decided these were the best, maybe the best for him?

Check it out on PC Magazine.

New technology is getting more and more fun

Not posting on your own blog for months is bad form in the blog world.

Since I am managing a few blogs other than for Goodwin Communications, I have put them as top priority. Now, I am back looking at my own and wondering what is important in communications that should be covered. No doubt that technology is changing at warp speed and affects our habits.

I have been doing what everyone else does and bought all the new items in order to learn how to be effective with them. It is important to sign up for major new tools - since Twitter, Posterous, tumblr and others have become the norm, what is new on the horizon?

I did like the fact that Facebook bought Instagram - makes sense to me with Facebook's social goals. I started using Instagram a few years ago when Poloroid stopped making instant film and I could not buy it for my camera. At the same time, all things photos went online, even though I longed for the Poloroid art form. Voila, Instagram and its very cool features, expecially the square, really soothed me.

Of course, I love Siri like everyone else - you can entertain yourself with this. I wish I liked online games, as they look fun but I get bored with them. The iPad is great for fiddling with images. If I went out more often, I would use FourSquare - I would love to be the mayor of something.

Best new item is the Google hybrid glasses that act as a miniaturized smartphone wired with hands-free access to a micro display, cameras, microphone, Web browser and speech recognition. I want one right now.

Let me know if you think of something more awesome to discuss here!

What will you do with Google+?

It is interesting watching the media coverage and interest in Google+. The important goal here for Google is to try to break through the media saturated environment so that people can understand advantages of its new product.

Even though a recent news article says there are only 20 million users right now, it appears from the Google+ web site that it is "overcapacity" right now, so it makes sense it will not catch up to Facebook numbers any time soon. And, a half billion users may not be a goal anyway. A Forbes reporter is already writing an eulogy for Google+ and explains why.

If you are a communications strategist for a large company, then you have been spending time trying to understand and use this product. Where does it fit in with all the other channels you are recommending and building elaborate plans to use?

Read this NPR story to get some extra perspective on Google+ as you plan your strategy going forward.

Watching New York Times new digital model unfold

There is no doubt that the New York Times has taken on a mightly challenge in setting up its digital subscription plan. Are there enough of us who regularly read a lot of NYT pages that will take the plunge? Read about how some people are viewing the change on Adweek. Wired puts it well: "The New York Times unveiled its widely anticipated digital subscription plan Thursday, a big step by one of the most impactful newspapers in the world. In the months to come, the headlong dive by this resource-rich media giant should help answer the biggest question in digital news: Can newspapers convert digital readers they have conditioned for years to expect “free” into paying customers? In other words, if The New York Times can’t, who can?"

Planning content for a tablet

Hewlett-Packard announced its long-awaited new tablet device called the TouchPad today. There's no doubt that developing a web site today is not like it was a few years back.

We need to plan for how this information is displayed and how it is consumed in a new way. We got some practice with the iPhone and then the iPad, but the tablet is more ubiquitous now.

I will leave the details to the techies who help us brand messaging and content folks get the info out in the right format. But no doubt the mobilty factor is not just about phones.

For the consumer looking for information, anything goes now. To learn more about this tablet, visit the New York Times.

The Social Network movie: Conversations started

Update to my blog below: Bulldog Reporter covered the topic about Facebook brand today. Younger audiences found it the movie appealing and thus looks favorably toward the brand. Older audiences not quite so much.

From a public relations standpoint, I have been interested in how Facebook, Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, and others have been portrayed and how the brand is affected for Facebook.

I am interested in how our views of society are changing, what the new opportunities are, how young entrepeneurs get to the top in business, and more.

David Brooks, an op-ed editor for the New York Times, says ..."the “The Social Network” is bad sociology, it is very good psychology. The movie does a brilliant job dissecting the sorts of people who become stars in an information economy and a hypercompetitive, purified meritocracy. It deftly captures what many of them have and what they lack, what they long for and what they end up with."

From a brand standpoint for Harvard, I have not been paying attention closely enought to know what it will think about Brook's comments, "The old WASP Harvard is dead. As Nathan Heller writes in an intelligent blog post called “You Can’t Handle the Veritas,” (Sorkin also wrote “A Few Good Men”), most kids at Harvard today come from pressure-cooker suburban schools. The old clubs are “vestigial curios.” Computer geeks do not spend their days desperately trying to join the Protestant Establishment because people born in 1984 don’t know what it is."

No doubt there is much to react to in the movie "The Social Network" and look at a generation that thinks about life and approaches it from a much different orientation than the observers who are writing about the movie. Review.

Does an online newspaper really want to know readers' favs?

Check out the NYT article on newspapers using advanced technology to see what people are reading online. This is not new, but evidently the Times thought it was good to review this practice.

It says, "Editors at The Journal, like those at other large newspapers, follow the Web traffic metrics closely. The paper’s top editors begin their morning news meetings with a rundown of data points, including the most popular search terms on WSJ.com, which articles are generating the most traffic and what posts are generating buzz on Twitter. At The Washington Post, a television screen with an array of data — the number of unique visitors to washingtonpost.com, how many articles those visitors view and where on the Web those visitors came from — is on display for the entire newsroom."

My question is: What happens when you find out your readers are not interested in the serious matters you were covering - they would rather see what the local celeb is up to than see how the November elections are stacking up. The NYT has the luxury of readers interested in everything, so this helps a broad approach. However, a smaller newspaper, such as the AJC in Atlanta, will focus on what the readers are looking for - and it appears to be unusual local stories, the crime scene and celebs. This is why I need an online newspaper now, so I can read the NYT to get some important news of the day that affects the country - like top notch financial news. If I want celebs, I will go to Huff Post for that.

Use LinkedIn to find business, experts say

A column in The Augusta Chronicle gives a good, simple summary of the use of social media in business. I think author Jeffrey Gitomer's ideas about LinkedIn for business make sense, especially for the small business owner.

Gitomer says, "LinkedIn allows you to find people who possibly can do business with you, and, more importantly, it allows people to find you. Most of the salespeople who use LinkedIn are trying to find leads and/or beg for some kind of connection. This strategy is the least useful, but it's better than a cold call. LinkedIn has a wealth of CEOs and other C-level people in its network, and millions of entrepreneurs (yes, millions) who own their own business and can make a final decision. LinkedIn is the new cold call. Instead of calling a gatekeeper and fishing for information on one possible decision-maker, you can now advance search on LinkedIn and determine exactly whom you need to contact before you make the call. You can discover who is connected to your connections and find people by job descriptions and job titles." Read more by the author of The Sales Bible by visiting the Chronicle.

Check out ways to use LinkedIn from the horses mouth.

Keep in mind latest tech problems that may affect you

No doubt that as a consumer it is hard to stay aware of bugs and problems of technology you use and understand whether or not it is a problem to manage.

Wired's Epicenter blog used reporting from IDG News Service, PC World, Infoworld and Computerworld to piece together this interesting summary of 2010's tech problems that may affect or have affected you. It is titled "Biggest Tech Industry Apologies of 2010(So Far)".

For example read the following excerpts:

McAfee in April apologized for its anti-virus update that took down Windows XP computers around the world, although the company said the problem affected a small percentage of its customers.

The carrier in June apologized for a hack that exposed thousands of iPad customers’ e-mail addresses and vowed to work with law enforcement to prosecute those responsible.

Adobe in February issued a mea culpa for allowing a 16-month-old bug in its Flash Player to fester without a patch despite the fact that the plug-in itself was updated four times since the flaw was revealed.

Visit Wired for the full story and links to more information.

Expanding ways to reach audiences with ads

Ready, set, go for a new kind of advertising option - on license plates while a car is standing still more than 4 seconds!

The San Jose Mercury News reports, "The California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates for vehicles. The move is intended as a moneymaker for a state facing a $19 billion deficit. The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is in motion but would switch to digital ads or other messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds, whether in traffic or at a red light. The license plate number would remain visible at all times in some section of the screen. In emergencies, the plates could be used to broadcast Amber Alerts or traffic information."

Read more.

A new car to love: Saab Aero X

I am attracted to stories about auto styling - good design always pulls you in.

Check out Wired magazine's story on the new Saab styling.

Jason Castriota, the designer, says the new Saab 9-3 will emphasize aerodynamic efficiency.

Spyker Cars NV [owner of Saab] CEO Victor Muller says, “It is truly aircraft-inspired and Swedish-clean." Read about his plans for the company.

Evidently Saab pulled in a 36-year-old American to accomplish this. Read more.

While I scouted for a photo, I found the Saab Areo X, and I have already changed my affection to this auto! Images.

Getting to the bottom of AT&T/iPad email exposure

The best way to look for answers on the AT&T/Apple iPad snafu this week is to look for analyses from the experts who cover this technology. Here are some excerpts and links to help figure out what went wrong.

Gregg Keizer at Computer World says: "The hackers who harvested an estimated 114,000 Apple iPad 3G owner e-mail addresses defended their actions Friday as "ethical" and said they did nothing illegal. The hacking group Goatse Security obtained the e-mail addresses using an automated PHP script that collected iPad 3G owners' ICC-ID numbers and associated addresses from AT&T's servers using a publicly-available feature of the carrier's Web site. AT&T disabled the feature last Tuesday, a day before the Valleywag Web site [that was given the info from the hackers] first reported the story.

Gawker Media LLC is the focus of a Wall Street Journal article that is tied into the controversy this week of iPad owners' email addresses. Even thought the FBI, say the WSJ, is looking into Gawker records, it not a focus of the investigation. "Gawker's Valleywag section wrote Wednesday about a glitch in AT&T Inc.'s website that exposed the email addresses of iPad owners, including politicians, military officials and media executives," notes the article.

Information Week's blogger George Hulme through in cut to the chase message on Friday: "Essentially, all that happened is that a security firm managed to brute force a process that returned the correct unique identifier for the iPad and associated e-mail address. Based upon published lists, there were plenty of .gov, .mil, as well as high-level politicians, journalists, and CEOs affected. Our Paul McDougall has an in-depth write-up here. Jim Rapoza blogged earlier today that Cloud Is Real Culprit in iPad/AT&T Security Hole... The "cloud" isn't the culprit at all: AT&T's security and development processes are.

No doubt we will hear more about this in coming days, as well as other security issues for mobile technology.

Social tools making headway, enhancing work in organizations

I am following the new concepts underway for social networking within an enterprise -Facebook-like features that allow workers to more effectively. I came across the article by Mike Swift at San Jose Mercury News that does a good job explaining it - excerpted here:

"... Social media — complete with Facebook-like status updates, profile pages and networks of social connections — is coming to your office cubicle. Palo Alto-based Socialtext and other smaller companies already supply workplaces with the same sort of online social tools that Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter brought into the mainstream in recent years — features such as networks of personal connections, internal wikis that allow groups of employees to collaborate, and Twitter-like microblogs that co-workers can follow. But with Microsoft, the 800-pound gorilla of office software, set to push deeper into the market with its SharePoint 2010 release May 12, analysts say online social networking is crossing over from something you do for fun with friends and family to something you increasingly will do with co-workers as part of your job."

Obviously this concept will spill over as a tool to interface with customers along with current use of Facebook etc. to engage our targeted audiences.

Privacy control issues addressed by Facebook today

Finally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a news conference to let people know he is making it easier to adjust privacy controls on Facebook. Considering how many users, over 500 million people, depend on Facebook now for communications and to interact with fan pages, companies still need this channel in their toolkit to reach consumers.

You can read what Zuckeberg said on his blog today. Here is an excerpt:

More recently, we also launched community pages and other ways to give you personalized and social experiences on other sites you use. Since then, you have sent us lots of feedback. We've listened carefully in order to figure out the best next steps. We recognize that we made a lot of changes, so we really wanted to take the time to understand your feedback and make sure we address your concerns. The number one thing we've heard is that there just needs to be a simpler way to control your information. We've always offered a lot of controls, but if you find them too hard to use then you won't feel like you have control. Unless you feel in control, then you won't be comfortable sharing and our service will be less useful for you. We agree we need to improve this. Today we're starting to roll out some changes that will make all of these controls a lot simpler. We've focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications.

Nuancing the social in the online world

Thank you to makeitwork.com for this image.

Staying in touch with friends - how nuanced is the online and mobile world becoming and will this become something like the "splinternet" in acquisition of information and social conformity?

Read an observation at Yeah! - ..."digital identity is beginning to define who we are offline (or at least it's becoming a symbol or identification). It's how we're known to friends (real and digital) and strangers alike. Non-users of pervasive technology platforms will quickly find that they're the odd man out. The person who can't be counted or included."

Awareness and Personal Branding

I have been reading a book by Harrison Monarth called "Executive Presence, The Art of Commanding Respect Like a CEO" [on Amazon] and decided to Google him to see what comes up - afterall, he says you should be good at branding yourself!

Well, he is good. I found a lot of ways to learn more about him and his skills. I think one of the best ways to brand yourself is to write a book about how to do something well in the current business environment. I like it when someone thinks innovatively, and Monarth seems to combine common sense with new ideas.

With my Google of Monarth, I found an interesting person who has written a book, too. Dan Schawbel of Millineal Branding, published "Me 2.0". He interviewed Monarth for his blog, and I will give you one sentence to ponder and then visit Schawbel's blog for an interesting interview - "knowing the impact of how you come across is most critical." I agree that awareness is important. I haven't read Me 2.0, but it looks interesting!

In Monarth's book, he tells CEOs, or CEO wannabes, that they should utilize all social media to enhance their brands. I agree that communicating your ideas in various forums is good, and building relationships in a 2.0 world is important.

A chance to firm up Wikipedia page on social media marketing

It looks like social media marketing has made the Wikipedia. Check it out, the page is asking for citations and verification! It is amazing how quickly these tools have been incorporated into traditional PR and marketing activities - now the standard.

"Social media marketing is a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property (e.g. the vast majority of video on YouTube is published by non-YouTube employees)."

Check it out. Thanks to mashable for the image.

When it's mobile, brands will have to choose

There is a lot of conversation going on about social media, and most of us have adopted rudimentary, or sophisticated for that matter, plans on how to use this to our organization's benefit. As time goes on, we will need to rely on some experts to help us learn more about mobile technology and how it is going to affect our public relations efforts. Mobile expert Conrad Lisco takes a look at the complexities of the technology in his blog called ThumbJockey. The image comes from buymeaniphone.

"As the number of operating systems and platforms grow, so too will complications for brands looking to go mobile. Brands are asking not only how they can get consumers engaged via mobile, they're asking how to get the engaged on iPhones in particular. Why? Because the iPhone-wielding public represent an opportunity for rich, meaningful brand engagement. How do we plan for a more open, seamless mobile experience? Because developing for handset-specific applications, browsers and optimizations isn't going to be cheap. And it isn't sustainable. We have to move past this walled garden approach to mobile started by carriers years and years ago."