Jan 1007
It’s the new year and it’s customary to look at the previous year and make predictions about the upcoming year or decade. Every day in my e-mail inbox, I get a flood of Top Ten lists. So where do I go when I need statistics about which Web browser is winning the browser war, how many users Twitter really has, or the gadgets and technologies that will likely shine in 2010? Here are my favorite sites:
Sep 0918
Google is doing it again. Google is turning the publishing world upside down with Google Books, currently in beta. Google Books allows the public to download more than a million public domain books in PDF and EPUB formats.
Google has been quietly scanning the world’s books for inclusion into Google Books, which is both a search and a library. Here’s how it works:
- Users like you and me and go to Google Books and use the Book Search, which functions just like a regular Google search.
- If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given Google permission, you’ll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it’s in the public domain, you’re free to download a PDF copy.
- Books that are still in copyright can sometimes be previewed; you’ll also find links to sites where you can purchase or borrow the book.
- As long as you have a Google account, you can “add” books to your library for later viewing and downloading.
For example, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is in the public domain. I can download a full copy of Huck Finn from Google Books. Read the rest of this entry
Sep 0908
We’ve been kicking around ideas for making the Matrix Group intranet better. During a recent meeting, the Director of Software Engineering wondered if we should switch from our intranet calendar to the Google calendar. Whoa, I thought. Put my company calendar and personal schedule on Google? My mission-critical data that I would die without? No way.
But then I got to thinking. Gmail is a seriously good e-mail service. Google Analytics is so ridiculously good that yes, I would pay for it; in fact, I would pay lots of money for it (don’t get any ideas, Google.) And before Google bought Postini, it was already a best of breed, commercial anti-spam service.
So I did a little more research on Google apps. It turns out that the Google apps, terms and conditions I’m familiar with are for personal use. But Google also markets its services to companies and schools. Google offers the same services (Gmail, calendar, docs, Web site hosting, and Postini) to companies for a really low price ($50 per user, per year). So why is the corporate version of Google Apps not free? For the money, you get a 99.9% uptime reliability guarantee (for Premier Edition users), mobile device support, 25 GIG of storage, and the Google promise of security and compliance. Phone support is supposedly also available, but I can’t find reference anywhere in the Terms of Service to back-up and retention of data. Read the rest of this entry
May 0914
All day long, I sit in meetings where my staff, clients and I try to intuit what customers and members want. We look at usage reports, search logs, customer feedback forms, guestbook entries, and survey results. All of these sources give us insight into what customers do, seek and want. But after conducting a focus group for a client this evening, I’m reminded that we need regular face time with our customers and we need to just ask them what they want.
Tonight’s focus group was amazing. Nearly two dozen people gave up two hours of their day to discuss why they are members of an organization, what they like about the Web site, and what would make their jobs easier. Some of the ideas were mind-blowingly simple, while others were flat out brilliant. If half of the product ideas prove economically feasible, this organization has a product road map for the next year.
Speaking of product road maps, I am in the habit of calling a couple of customers after each release of our association management software, MatrixMaxx. I call to check-in, get feedback on new features, and, most importantly, ask them for the one thing they would like to see in a future release. For the 9.1 release, the suggestions were all spot on, some were so easy to implement we wondered why we hadn’t done the work earlier, and some proved to be blockbusters.
But what do you do when you have zillions of customers and you get a flood of customer requests on a regular basis? Google Moderator allows communities to post suggestions/questions and then vote on all ideas submitted. President Obama used Google Moderator to accept questions for an electronic town hall meeting; citizens submitted and then ranked questions; the President answered the most popular questions. Read the rest of this entry
May 0912
What do the iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and Google have in common? They have great platforms that have contributed greatly to their success! What’s a platform and why does it matter?
Wikipedia defines a platform as “a place to launch software. It is an agreement that the platform provider gave to the software developer that logic code will interpret consistently as long as the platform is running on top of other platforms.”
I’m convinced that Facebook zoomed past MySpace because it launched a developer platform earlier. The developer-friendly platform lets developers create zillions of cool apps and suck more of our time, energy and loyalty. How many quizzes have you filled out on Facebook?
The iPhone is no different. Apple opened up its platform, hosted a user-friendly store and nine months later, iPhone users had downloaded 1 billion applications, most of them free or under $5. My husband says he can purchase or download apps for his Blackberry but it’s not easy and the apps are on multiple sites. No fun at all.
Twitter’s platform lets developers capture streams of data from the millions of tweets posted every day. Born from these streams are apps that let us visualize tweets, manage tweets, search tweets, map tweets.
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Feb 0905
When I’m researching a product, I go to the Web. When I’m looking to hire a candidate, I go to the Web. All day long, I’m running searches in Google and other search engines. So it only stands to reason that customers, prospective customers and prospective staff are likely running Google searches on my company, Matrix Group. And when they do, what do they find?
Some call it ORM – Online Reputation Management – or the art of managing how you and your company are perceived online. ORM starts with tracking mentions of your company on the Web, anywhere on the Web, in every nook and cranny. So how do you that? There are tools and services, but I like:
Feb 0904
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a keynote session by Chris Sacca, former Head of Special Initiatives at Google, during the ASAE Technology Conference. Boy was it fun to hear about what it’s like to work at Google, Google’s core values, the perks, and the future of search. I was so inspired by Chris’ words that I decided to follow him on FriendFeed. I’m relatively new to FriendFeed, but it feels like I’m stalking Chris Sacca. I can now follow this guy’s tracks as he views, posts, comments, and bookmarks across the Web. Do I really want all this information about one person? Even for me, this is starting to feel like TMI (too much information).
But first, let me tell you about Chris’ speech, which was terrific. Among the things he talked about:
Jan 0927
I had the pleasure of speaking at the ASAE Technology Conference, taking place until tomorrow at the DC Convention Center. My topic? Dealing With Big Trends in a Small Staff Organization. Here are the 5 big trends I discussed:
- Your Browser as the New Operating System. The Web browser is increasingly the platform for mission critical applications, like association management systems, intranets, document management systems and e-mail.
- Conversation is King. We used to talk about creating a communications strategy. Today, we need to create a conversation strategy because customers are interested in engagement, in two-way conversations.
- Unified, Integrated Data. I call this the Amazon Effect. Our customers expect us to know who they are, communicate with them in a personalized way, and give them personalized offerings. We can’t do this unless we have a unified view of their activities and interactions.
- Zen Tech Warrior. These warriors want information on specific topics, when they want it, on the device(s) of their choice. Take me, for example. I might want my magazine in print, news via e-mail, and alerts via text. Can your database handle these preferences and can you execute on this information?
- Green Computing. We all know that we need to do our part to reduce energy consumption and save the planet. Data centers represent 1.5% of the electricity demand in the US. Think green when you buy computers and peripherals.
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Dec 0817
One of the goals of the last redesign of the Matrix Group Web site was to make my bio more prominent in search engines. I had previously resisted putting any information about me on the Web site for a variety of reasons, but my new biz team reasoned that since I do a lot of speaking and writing, people will Google my name; when that happens, we want the Matrix Group Web site to pop-up on the first page, if not first on the list of results.
I typed “joanna pineda” into Google tonight and this is what I found:
- An interview that I did for The Washington Post back in 2003 is the number one result. This makes sense, given The Post’s Google page rank. Here’s a wikipedia page on how Google page rank works.
- This blog, The Matrix Files, is the 3rd listing. This is great, exactly what we wanted. The blog strategy is working.
- The About Joanna Pineda page on the Matrix Group Web site is the 4th listing. Fabulous.
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Nov 0818
As if it weren’t enough that Google catalogs the Web, tracks traffic to our site, and helps us get from point A to point B, a new service from Google claims to be an early warning system for outbreaks of the flu.
Google flu trends, a service from Google.org, the search giant’s philanthropic arm, analyzes search terms that are related to the flu and creates maps of the US that presumably show where there are outbreaks of the flu. So, if I type “flu symptoms” into my browser, Google will take my search terms and my IP address, and interpret that someone in VA has the flu. In typical Google fashion, typing in the words flu symptoms, aches and pains, chest congestion and other terms will register in Google flu trends because the analysis has shown that these search terms tend to go together and they are indeed related to the flu. Read the rest of this entry