Posts Tagged ‘app’

More Control Equals More Sharing

September 29th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I love SoundHound. So please don’t think I’m picking on them or hating on their app. I’m not.

In fact, I think the folks who built it are evil geniuses who probably sold their collective souls to the devil to be able to magically identify just about any song from a few seconds of sound sent streaming over the wireless internet while traveling at 70 miles per hour down the freeway, or even standing still.

But I don’t like their social sharing interface. Truth be told, I don’t like the social sharing interface for most apps. They too often force their thinly veiled sales pitches into the messages, either by brute force, not giving users the option to edit, or by hoping we’ll be too lazy to delete their suggested messages.

“Just used #SoundHound to find…” is a waste of precious Twitter characters in my opinion. That fact will be obvious to anyone who clicks on the link, since it will take them to a SoundHound song sample. And their brand message is not the message I want to send. If I’m sharing a song I’ve just heard on the radio, for example, I’m doing it because I like it, and want to lead others to it.

Give me more control. What I’d really like is for app creators to give me some options in the application preferences. In the example to the right, let me set my own default prefix for the song, artist and link. Let me choose my own #hashtag if I want. And let that be my new default message format. It would be a simple enough change to make and I, for one, would use SoundHound more often if I didn’t have to take the extra time to select and delete their advertising copy on every use.

Pandora makes a similar mistake with their web service. I’m assuming they’d both like people to use the sharing features or they wouldn’t put them there. If I could set my own default message, or get rid of theirs, at a minimum, I would probably play a larger role in leading people to their services. But I can’t, so I don’t. I gotta believe I’m not alone here.

Give me control. Give me a choice. I’ll share more. How about you?

REBarcamp Sacramento Live Blog

June 8th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I’ll be live blogging the REBarcamp in Sacramento today and testing a couple of new features in the Zeek Live Blog app, including posting updates without linking back to this post. In looking back on my stream from previous conferences, the link just gets in the way if the entire point can be made in 120 characters. So, we’ll see how the new features do out in the wild.

9:20 am: The crowd is beginning to gather. This wine bar makes an interesting location. We’ll see how it works out for the sessions

9:43 am: @Andykaufman talked me into leading a session with him on mobile… hard to lead and live blog, but I’ll try. :)

iPhones, EVO’s & Droids, Oh My!

9:50 am: Andy asked how many iPhone users were thinking about switching phones. Vast majority of group is using the iPhone.

9:59 am: “I think the next gen iPhone is the perfect RE tool. The ability to edit video is a key” – @jerrykidd

10:07 am: “As a broker, creating content on the fly creates real opportunities for mistakes.” – @genariede

10:12 am: The crowd at the mobile session is highly participative.

10:13 am: @jerrykidd recommends “print n share” for the iPhone.

10:23 am: Interesting discussion about the relative value of testing vs talking on the phone, accuracy, conveying emotion, etc. I feel like the balance of the crowd is leaning toward higher levels of texting.

10:25 am: There are real dangers in the ubiquity of access to data via mobile technology. Andy asked how many have considered a communications policy to limit access. Interesting question.

10:26 am: How many have a communications policy to limit access?

Automated Social Media Marketing Systems via @pkitano

“My background is in developing media companies. So this is going to be a completely different approach to real estate social media.”

11:07 am: “First engage your community.”

11:08 am: “Local advertising doesn’t work because a cpm model doesn’t work.”

11:11 am: What works in local advertising? 1. Immediate discounts. 2. Making it easy to find a place to find a local service. “You need to become the local media for your community.”

11:14 am: “All local news will be user generated at some point.”

This is more about @pkitano’s product than an REBarcamp session, but he’s raising some interesting points.

11:22 am: Groupon – what makes it interesting is the deep discounts they can offer. They sell at deep discount and take 50% of the gross. They are now segmenting their market even smaller to access deeper local involvement. There are now at least 10 Groupon imitators in San Francisco alone.

11:24 am: Local ad power – “I rarely go to any restaurant without a coupon now.”

What Pat is suggesting is that real estate agents use an automated system to become a local media channel and create value for their community by creating local advertising outlets. Focus is on creating on a specific location and providing an aggregation point for user generated local content.

What is the need for a revenue model via advertising if the goal is to sell real estate? “It’s to create quid pro quo opportunities for the community.”

“From my experience, with over 4000 followers, I only average 40 clicks on any link on Twitter.” @jerrykidd

11:46 am: Pat is making a connection between automated local news Twitter streams and the 365 Things Facebook page ideas and the consistency of the content and ease of creation.

Twitter: Fad Or Effective Marketing Tool

If I were to base an opinion on what I’m hearing in this session, I’d say it’s was fad. I find that Twitter conversations that focus solely on broadcast tactics woefully miss the mark.

2:22 pm: Fad Or Business Tool?

2:32 pm: Relative to business, I think Twitter is one of the most misunderstood social sites.

2:49 pm: I do like the way this Twitter session has navigated… Lively conversation. Thanks @christellez

The End

3:05 pm: Tamara And Laura Close It Out

Buzzre Live Blog

June 3rd, 2010 - Jeff Turner

A live blog of the Buzzre conference in Portland, Oregon.

Building An Online Marketing Strategy by @garrons

10:43 am: “Consider using the Internet.” :)

10:46 am: “Before you blaze out of here with all of these tool ideas, take a step back and look at ‘the moment’ when new appointments are set. If you understand what drove that moment, you’re way ahead of the game.”

Garron is talking about three sites, for three different agents that are archetypes of conversation points. Each one represents each agent’s “moment” points.

1. Showing requests prospecting DB.

2. Sphere referral, direct inquiries, prospecting sign ups.

3. Sphere referral, IRL meetings.

10:57 am: @garrons is talking about blogs that are designed to support real life relationships, not Google. clairewidmark.com is not designed to attract search engines, it’s designed to support what Claire actually does each day to get to the moment.

10:59 am: “Realize when you find something interesting & ask, ‘how can I share that?”

11:00 am: Garron getting animated.

11:02 am: “I want my website to reflect me in a way I’m proud of. I want to be proud to share my site because it reflects who I am.”

11:06 am: “Take a look at your online presence. If it does not reflect YOU and how you connect with clients, you will not be as succesful in your online marketing efforts.”

11:08 am: “Utilize supportive tools. Understand your community & use tools that work.”

I want more on “the moment” concept from @garrons

Creating A Successful Real Estate Hub By @tyr

“Your real estate business comes from your ‘sphere’ and yet most tools are direct to consumer and doesn’t play to your existing skills.”

11:14 am: The agent business cycle.

11:17 am: “Tools fall into 3 areas, lead generation, client management & sphere building.”

11:18 am: Building your sphere: Facebook, Twitter, Blog

11:21 am: Keys to Facebook success: 1. Super easy. 2. Awesome referral marketing tool. 3. Focus on status updates.

11:23 am: 365 Things To Do In Vancouver, WA is a great example of a Facebook fan page that has impact in increasing sphere of influence. Created by @dalechumbley

11:25 am: Facebook tracks the “influence” and interaction on your fan page. The greater the level of interection, the more Facebook promotes the page.

11:27 am: “You need to have a solid hub for your social media activities, a place to lead people to.”

11:28 am: “A blog is just a series of emails to the world.”

11:29 am: Lead generation has to happen from your hub. The first step is having a hub you’re proud to show off.

11:30 am: “Your hub has to have dynamic content. The content must change!”

11:31 am: “Your hub must have home search.”

11:32 am: “You really need to be able to prospect against the database you create.”

11:33 am: CRM –> Conversion

CRM Keys

11:36 am: 1. Get them into the CRM! 2. Observe activity and track behavior. 3. Know when to ask for business, understand the trigger.

11:37 am: “Most important: make your blog the hub of your agent business cycle.”

11:52 am: Dale Chumbley & John Payson close the morning w/ a discussion of their strategies.

Afternoon Breakout Sessions

1:17 pm: mugtug.com <– had not heard of this one. @1000wattjoel is detailing apps that help you move to the cloud. This one is an online photo editor.

1:19 pm: blacktonic.com allows you to tell a story with your slides. Entirely web-based.

1:22 pm: Joel Burslem presents the cloud.

1:24 pm: notableapp.com is mostly designed for websites, but will work for any document or image to notate changes you’d like made to the document. Entirely browser-based.

1:30 pm: @1000wattjoel thinks mailchimp.com is the best email marketing site.

1:33 pm: squarespace.com is being discussed, but it’s “cool” features have been replicated in themes like Headway for WordPress. It has lost it’s luster for me.

1:36 pm: Note to self: take a look at kissinsights.com

Lifestyle Branding: Why It Matters by @bhgre_wendy

Shifting gears. Wendy will be focusing on strategy. Pointing out the differences between traditional and lifestyle branding. This is a shift away from commodity features to values and aspirations and vehicles for self expression.

1:47 pm: Wendy Forsythe

1:48 pm: “Informed consumers & pervasive technology = consumers in control.”

1:49 pm: There are 73 million echo boomers… the next generation of agents and consumers driving change.

1:51 pm: “The traditional business model of real estate is old fashioned & broken.”

1:53 pm: How do we fix the model?

1:55 pm: “RE brands were built on ego & status quo.This won’t work going forward.”

1:57 pm: “Leave the past behind.” The focus needs to move to value, quality, design, innovation and relationship. Relationship is the glue that holds it all together.

2:00 pm: “C-Level Life – Complete Consumer Control” What does today’s consumer want? Simplicity, speed, scrutiny, customization, innovation, freedom, entertainment, collaboration, transparency.

2:01 pm: “Brand interaction is a dialogue -requires integrity, authenticity, performance.”

2:07 pm: “One of the mistakes we make in building our brand is being to generic.”

2:15 pm: @bhgre_wendy is using @tboard & @locoheather’s blogs to illustrate community focus.

2:17 pm: Recommendations: 1. Focus your branding on neighborhoods and communities. 2. Focus your branding on lifestyle.

Traditional branding is out. Lifestyle branding is in.

Why Your Name Matters Most – @barryhurd

“We’re all Big Foot to people searching for us online.” They’ve never seen us, all they can learn about us must be pieced together from what they find online. What will they find?

2:42 pm: “48% of searches on Google are based on names.”

2:45 pm: “If I know people are searching for me, I may as well manage my appearance.”

2:51 pm: Barry Hurd

2:55 pm: Interesting ideas about putting ads for yourself on searches for your name. I’ve never looked at the ads associated with my name results on Google.

2:57 pm: “One reason why tweeting matters: it occupies search results quickly.”

2:58 pm: Video matters for the same reasons, especially on YouTube.

3:03 pm: Showing Webmynd’s Firefox plugin to move Google ads out of the way to get quick snapshots of someone your searching for information on.

3:07 pm: www.SocialMention.com allows the export of search results to an RSS feed and excel spreadsheet.

3:09 pm: Note to self: take a look at addictomatic.com

Barry’s presentation is available at slideshare.net/123socialmedia

Implementation Without Procrastination, Frustration or Complication by @darinpersinger

Darin is discussing the fears that keep us from making a choice and moving forward. Began his discussion with the MIT Door Study on fear of loss.

3:30 pm: Darin Persinger

3:34 pm: Encouraging action –> “You’re already ready.”

3:36 pm: rescuetime.com monitors how much time you spend on web sites and shuts them off to you if you’ve exceeded preset limits.

3:37 pm: Identify and focus: “What is the one thing that I will start doing tomorrow morning.”

3:38 pm: Motivation: “Is this something I really want to do?”

3:39 pm: Focus: eliminate, delegate, don’t complicha

3:45 pm: Implement: hesitation is a productivity killer. “Just do it.”

The Future Of The Real Estate Brokerage

4:19 pm: Great conversation:

OC WordPress Live Blog

March 29th, 2010 - xmluser

This post is simply a live demo of an iPhone app and WordPress plugin we’re developing.

7:08 pm: Let’s try this again. :(

7:48 pm: I put a few streams of Brandon Dove talking about BuddyPress at www.qik.com/respres

7:50 pm: A good BuddyPress site to look at as an example is www.rideoregonride.com

7:55 pm: Niraj is demoing ScreenSteps, which can be found at www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps

7:59 pm: ScreenSteps uses XML-RPC to post ScreenSteps documents directly to a blog post on your WordPress blog.

8:05 pm: ScreenSteps uses a manual/lesson/step metaphor. Ablog post will be a single lesson.

8:16 pm: ScreenSteps also allows you to update the blog post from the ScreenSteps desktop application. So changes can be made to all docs and the post with one edit session from the desktop app.

8:28 pm: This ends the live blog app/plugin demo. :)

8:42 pm: Sorry, one more thing: magicfields.org is rockin’! Some concern was expressed about WP 3.0 compatibility.

11:20 am: Testing a new feature. Again, pay no attention to me. :)

11:34 am: And again.

11:43 am: Testing a few new features to our live blog app… in the wild. :)

6:57 am: “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Testing A Header

11:40 am: Oh, that was nice. :)

11:45 am: Will be testing new WP livebloghgng features at #rebcphx including new hinternal headlines.

This Is How Internal Headlines Look

11:46 am: Uses H2 tags… Will be configurable in release.

6:43 pm: Testing from iPhone OS 4.0 Beta

Doing Some Testing – 4/26/2010

2:07 pm: We’re refining the UI, so I’m just testing.

2:17 pm: Non-tweet test. :)

Looks like all is well.

10:22 am: Photo test.

4:46 pm: Testing new features.

2:14 pm: OC Wordcamp tomorrow. #wcoc (just testing Live Blog update)

2:19 pm: OC Wordcamp tomorrow! #wcoc (just testing Live Blog functions)

Gahlord Dewald, Social Media Improvement Via Web Analytics – A Live Blog

March 25th, 2010 - xmluser

7:57 am: Getting ready to live blog @gahlord’s web analytics presentation. #retso

8:01 am: Gahlord is going to be focusing on how to improve your social media efforts using web analytic tools. Find him at meetwith.me/thoughtfaucet

8:04 am: :) @Gahlord is trying to jumpstart his geek brain. Scary thought. #retso

8:08 am: “I like to measure things because it helps me discover more about how things work” – @Gahlord

8:11 am: Analytics help us understand what we can and can’t control and how we respond and make decisions in the wake of those things we can’t control.

8:13 am: Analytics OODA Loop via Jonathan Boyd: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act @Gahlord #retso

8:18 am: “You can generate satisfaction without ever converting.”

8:19 am: “In social media there are two audiences – cheerleaders and customers.” – both have value.

8:22 am: Another objective of analytics is to get repeatable results. Amen.

8:26 am: “I think you should all wake up and say,’I don’t care how many Twitter followers I have.’” @Gahlord #retso

8:32 am: “Campaign tagging” – when you share a link to your site, it will give your more information about where that link came from and why. What are they responding to? Are they responding to a topic, or at a specific time?

8:32 am: “Is your audience awake?” analytics help you know for sure.

8:36 am: A poor man’s reputation management is Google alerts.

8:39 am: It’s important to orient based on channel, by action, by use, by human. “Learn to indentify who is influential.”

8:41 am: “You can develop a clear approach for aligning your social media plan with your business goals.”

8:42 am: Getting people to your website is never a final goal.

8:43 am: Free tool: Google Website Optimizer

8:44 am: Great session.

7:07 pm: Let’s test this live blog app.

We’re Proud Of The Cisco SIO To Go iPhone App

November 18th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

This morning, Marie Hattar, VP of Network Systems and Security Solutions at Cisco, was one of the keynote presenters at Interop. She shared her excitement a few weeks ago on Twitter, but didn’t let the cat out of the bag about what Cisco security innovation would be unveiled. We’ve been chomping at the bit to share as well.

The Cisco Security Intelligence Operation.

The Cisco SIO provides a visual look at security and threat statuses on a global basis. And she announced that the Cisco SIO To Go iPhone application is coming soon. Zeek Interactive is proud to have been chosen by Cisco to build this iPhone app.

Curt Franklin, the online community manager for Interop, described the app in his Interop keynote review this morning. He said, “This will let security officers see the threats and responses so they can understand what’s happening and what Cisco is doing in response. The idea is that this will allow the staff in the companies to formulate their own response and rules to keep their network safe. From my point of view, this is a very neat concept, and not dissimilar to services that have been available on SEIM consoles for a while. The really new piece of this is its availability anywhere — a theme that’s starting to play out for all of this morning’s keynote addresses.

The Cisco SIO To Go iPhone app will be free when approved. And while we’re very excited about the first version, we’re even more excited about the additional functionality of the update which will be submitted shortly.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

UPDATE: The Cisco SIO To Go App is now available via iTunes. App Store Link

Photoshop.com Mobile Comes To The iPhone

October 10th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

While I love the camera on my iPhone 3Gs, sometimes the light is not quite right for the perfect shot. Lots of apps exist on the iPhone to help you remedy this problem. I’ve tested dozens. I can confidently say that none of them are as easy to use as Adobe’s Photoshop.com Mobile.

It’s not overstuffed with features, and it doesn’t need to be. The Adobe programmers nailed the use of the iPhones touch screen and simplified the tools by making the entire screen act as your effect slider. If you’ve ever tried to grab the small slider bar on some apps, you’ll know why that’s a benefit. Here’s a sample result.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Jeff Turner: Out & About

AutoStitch – My New Favorite iPhone Panorama App

June 8th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Back in November of 2008, I wrote up a quick review of two iPhone panorama stitching applications – Panorama vs. Pano. Shortly after that review, Panorama changed it’s interface, but it has remained my panorama app of choice. Until tonight.

Enter AutoStitch for iPhone.

AutoStitch appears to be based on the same core technology as my favorite desktop stitching application, Calico. It was almost two years ago to the day that I found a Mac application using the AutoStitch technology and AutoStitch for iPhone is a great way to celebrate that anniversary.

Unlike either Panorama or Pano, you can simply point Autostitch to photos you’ve already taken and it will automatically analyze the images to create the best panorama possible from them. This DRAMATICALLY reduces the time it takes to capture a panoramic image. There is no need to worry about accurate alignment. For the sample image below, I took 15 photos in quick succession. I only almost no care in making sure there was consistent overlap. Those photos were automatically saved to my iPhone photo album.

After launching Autostitch, you simply select the photos you want it to stitch together. AutoStitch has a “tutorial” on their site, but it’s not needed. Point it at your photos and let it rip. AutoStitch analyzed the photos and created a panorama from the images in short order.

Here are some screen captures from the process:

Select Your Photos img_0005

Here is the resulting image. (Click to view larger)

AutoStitch Example 1

And here is the cropped version. (Click to enlarge)

img_0441_2

It just doesn’t get any simpler than this. And don’t worry that your panoramic image doesn’t look very clear on your iPhone. When you get it to your computer you’ll find a nice surprise. As the AutoStich FAQ explains, “The iPhone Photos app limits the resolution at which it displays images. As it limits display resolution to a maximum in each image dimension, the display resolution can seem particularly low for long and narrow images.”

I’m going to have some fun with this app!

UPDATE: Here is a sample AutoStitch for iPhone photo set on Flickr. To demonstrate ease of use, took the 14 photos in 48 seconds.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]