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.

I am writing this post using Google Chrome (beta 4.0.249.30) for the Mac. I have only spent 10 minutes with Google’s new browser, but so far I am impressed. The UI is clean and simple. As a recent Android convert, I appreciate the minimalistic design approach across all the entire Google product line.

It’s faster.

The backend of WordPress renders much faster than it does in Forefox due to Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine (Cnet’s JS Speed Test). I never realized how much time I was spending waiting for Javascript pages to load until right now.

Speed is a major benefit, but there are several other things I like about Chrome.

• First, tabs open next to the current tab you are working on. This is subtle, but important. If you have a number of tabs open in Firefox, a new tab open at the far right side. It’s easy to get lost switching back and forth between open tabs. I noticed this refreshing change immediately.
• Second, when you view source code, it displays in a tab rather than opening a new window. I prefer tabbed interfaces as it minimizes clutter on my desktop.
• And finally, favicons are displayed in the bookmarks bar – nice touch.

The only thing missing is the Google Search Bar. How could they leave that one out?

I’ll add more comments to this post as I continue to work with Chrome. What are your initial reactions?

Does Google email you your messages? How accurate are they at taking the spoken word to text? That is my biggest issue… that and my messages are getting cut off before I get the phone number. Does it go to your email (gmail) or to a text on your phone? (Do you use the Google Phone? or who is your service with) Do you have a blackberry or IPhone?

So I thought I’d take the advice I often give to others and write a blog post as the answer to her questions. I asked Amy to call into my Google Voice number and leave a message. I use an iPhone, so I’m with AT&T, but the Google Voice service doesn’t care. It’s entirely independent of my network. I have my notifications sent to send to me via SMS and email. It will send to any email you wish. You can see the images below. But Google Voice also stores every message online for you.

Here is Amy’s message. (Yes, you get an embed code for each message.)

This is the exact transcription:

hey jeff this is amy programer from cincinnati ohio thanks so much for suggesting that i’d give you a call to see how well google translates voice to text i’ve been having some trouble with my spending box the i guess it’s AT&T or cincinnati bell wireless and wanted to see how well it translated hi find that motormen messages or getting cut off prior to my client or customer is actually leaving their telephone number at the end of the message which is the whole point of getting it translated so that all i have to do is look in my email and just click on the number and call them back without having to almost rack my car reading the number down and then dialing it back so let’s see how long this allows me to talk and it it puts my number again my number is (513) 377-3637 i’m currently using a blackBerry and hopefully this will work very well i’m curious to see if it goes to your google mail your email or jess at text message because my current service because it’s a text message thanks so much again this is amy programer with facebook and i hope you’re having a great day and sunny california see you later bye bye

Here is how it came to me on my iPhone via SMS:

And here is how it looked in email:

I think you can judge for yourself how well Google did at converting the human voice to text. I’ve been very pleased with the improvements they’ve made to the old GrandCentral.com service. And this is one of the features I’ve enjoyed the most.

Amy, what do you think?

When Google purchased GrandCentral in July, 2007, I replaced my regular phone number with my GrandCentral number. Today, that decision was validated by Google’s launch of Google Voice. The new feature list is impressive. You can read them there for yourself.

A Few Hiccups.

Like a kid on Christmas morning, I couldn’t wait to try one of the new features, conference calling. So, I sent out a twitter message to see how many people I could get on one call – using the same number I’ve had for the last two years. The first test was solid, except for my own error in hitting a couple of wrong keys. At one point I had five others on the line with me. The only failure, attempts to record the conference call all failed.

Undaunted I attempted another call later in the day, this time in a more controlled test. I reached out to three friends using Facebook chat, Stacy Lang, Ines Hegedus-Garcia and Nicole Nicolay. Stacy, on a Verizon cell phone, had no issue getting through, but both Ines and Nicole could not get through on their AT&T cell phones. When they both switched to land lines we were able to have our four way conference call without issue, but still unable to record. I was also unable to record any one-on-one conversations today.

The Great Promise

I sent a text message a few moments ago to someone who called me during dinner. I didn’t listen to their message. I just read the transcription and sent a text message to let them know I’d call them in the morning – without ever leaving Google Voice. I copied and pasted a portion of the transcription in to my Google Calendar to remind me in the AM to make the phone call. Life is good.

The transcription is not perfect, but it’s good enough to get a sense of what is being said. Here is a sample that came as a result of my pushing the wrong buttons on the first conference call. This is the exact transcription: “hey jeff ken montvale saw your we don’t we’re about testing this out thought i’d give it a shot and got this recording talk to you later bye.” And here is the actual message:

The new interface is a vast improvement over the old GrandCentral interface. It’s easier to navigate, cleaner, more feature packed. Google Voice lets me create multiple widget configurations too. GrandCentral didn’t. If you click on this one, for example, you will only get my voicemail.

I think I’m in love again.

If you're a Twitterholic, which is the only kind of person I can see using this, do you even have time for appointments? If you do and you are, for everything to work, Twittercal requires you to give it access to your Google Calendar account. You can deny access to your calendar anytime if you aren't impressed with the service.