Don't Fear the Tech

How To Subscribe To a Podcast (Without iTunes)

2012-07-10T13:08:00.000+02:00

I'm a contributor to a couple of podcasts, and I've appeared as a guest on a couple of others. Whenever I mention that fact to most people, the first question I usually hear is:

What Is a Podcast?

A podcast is like a cross between a radio show and a blog. It's an audio program that is published over the Internet like a blog is.

There's a broad variety of kinds and formats of podcasts. Some are short, some are long. Some are daily, others are annual. Some are pre-recorded and edited, others are recorded live on-air. Some are only audio, some come with a video version.

The one thing that all podcasts have in common is the way they're distributed: through RSS.

What's RSS?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". And it is really simple. The vast majority of blogs and other websites use RSS to publish their posts.

As a user, such as yourself, the way you use RSS is as a "web aggregator". It's a tool that allows you to bring all the new posts from your favourite websites into one place, sort of like an email inbox, that lets you read them without having to visit each website individually.

To do that, you need an RSS reader - an application that you use to subscribe to RSS feeds, and displays them for you. Although there are a lot of RSS readers available, my favourite is Google Reader.

Just paste the address in the Subscribe box

You can subscribe to a feed in Google Reader by pasting the address of the website you want to subscribe to into the Subscribe box. Google Reader will find the feeds associated with that site, and you're away. If you are visiting a site with an RSS feed, and you see an orange RSS button somewhere on the page, clicking that button will take you straight to the feed you want, and you can just copy the address from your browser's address bar into Reader's "Subscribe" box, if you want to.

Look for the RSS logo.

You can sort your feeds into folders, and you can share the items you like directly to Google+.

(Most other feed readers work in much the same way, although not all of them are as easy to use as Google Reader)

How Do I Subscribe To Podcasts In Google Reader?

All you need to do is subscribe to the podcast's RSS feed. When the podcast's creators publish a new episode, it'll appear in your Google Reader with a little audio player box, so you can listen to it right there in your browser.

Listen in your browser or download the file.

If you prefer to download the file and listen to it later, there's a link to the original audio file right below the player box. Easy as that.

How Do I Listen To Podcasts On My Phone?

If you've got a smartphone, or other phone that allows you to play music, you probably already know how to get your music onto the phone. Podcasts are MP3 files, just like your digital music collection, so you can copy them to your phone the exact same way.

If you have an Android phone, there's an even easier way: Google Listen.

Google Listen

Listen is an app you install on your phone. It accesses your Google Account, and then creates a new folder in your Google Reader called "Listen Subscriptions". If you move one of your podcast subscriptions into that folder, Listen will automatically download new episodes and have them ready for you to listen to at your convenience.

You can easily manage how often it checks for new episodes, when it downloads them (you might want to tell it to only download via WiFi, or it'll cost you a fortune on mobile data charges), how many episodes to store on the phone and so on. It's simple, elegant and easy to use.

If you don't like Google Listen, there are plenty of other podcast apps available with more powerful tools, most of which work together with your Google Reader account.

Is That It?

Yup, that's all you need. If you have an Apple device (an iPod, iPhone or iPad) there's another way of subscribing to podcasts using iTunes. But since I don't use Apple products myself, you'll need to find instructions for that elsewhere.

If you'd like to subscribe to the podcasts I contribute to, click here to add them to your Google Reader.

If you have any questions, please drop them in the comments below. I'll do my best to answer them for you.

What Is Android?

2012-05-16T11:14:00.003+02:00

As an Android fan, I get asked this pretty often, even moreso nowadays. People have noticed the Android billboards that Cell C have put up around town, but it's still not obvious what Android actually is, let alone what anyone might want it for.

What Is It?

Android is an operating system for mobile devices. Now before you go to sleep, let's explain that.

An operating system is a piece of software that runs on every computer, including the one you're using to read this on. Most desktop and laptop computers run the operating system made by Microsoft called "Windows". Computers made by Apple run a different operating system called OSX, and a few geeks use an operating system called Linux (which comes in many different flavours - the most popular of which is Ubuntu, made by Mark Shuttleworth's company).

Cellphones are computers too, and they also need operating systems. Most tablets (like iPads) are essentially giant cellphones, and use slightly modified versions of the same operating systems their smaller cousins use.

Phones and tablets made by Apple (iPhones, iPads and also some iPods) use an operating system called iOS. BlackBerry devices run the BlackBerry operating system, and Nokia devices could run one of several different operating systems, usually Symbian or Windows Phone (Microsoft makes aversion of Windows for phones too).

Android is an operating system for phones and tablets that isn't limited to one manufacturer. Like Windows, if you buy a smartphone made by a manufacturer other than those listed above, it's probably using the Android operating system (with a few exceptions).

Most of the devices made by manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, Sony, Motorola and LG run on Android.

Android is a version of the Linux operating system (the one geeks use on their computers) made by Google specifically for phones and tablets.

Why Isn't It Called A Google Phone Then?

That was a decision Google made early on in the development of the Android platform. They've made Android "open source", which means that any manufacturer can use Android on their devices for free, can change it how they like, and can even exclude all of Google's services from it if they want to.

The most popular Android devices do have the Google services built in though, and some of them will even have a little Google logo somewhere on the device, to show that Google themselves have approved it.

Why Aren't the Android Phones Called "Android Phones"?

That's another marketing choice. Each manufacturer chooses to brand their devices differently, and most don't see the need to reflect the Android name in their branding. Some do: Motorola brands some of its Android devices as "Droid", and a few others use clever names that hint at the Android-ness: the LG Optimus and the Nexus One for example.

But what that means is you can't walk into your cellular provider shop and ask them for "The Android phone." like you could for the iPhone. There isn't really one.

Galaxy Nexus

But every generation of new phones includes one put out by Google themselves, designed to be the "pure Google experience" device. These ones always have the word "Nexus" in the name, and their version of Android will always be unaltered by the manufacturer. The current one is called the Galaxy Nexus (called that because the device is actually made by Samsung, who brand their Android phones and tablets with the "Galaxy" name).

These Nexus devices are the closest you'll get to something resembling the Android phone.

Why Would I Want an Android Phone?

One of the most important benefits of choosing Android is choice. If you choose Apple, you get one iPhone - no choice. BlackBerry gives you four or five to choose from. Windows phone gives you one or two options in the South African market.

But Android gives you dozens of different devices to choose from, with a dizzying variety of options to suit what's important to you. Do you want a slick-looking device? Try HTC or Sony. Do you want the best specifications? HTC or Samsung. Want something inexpensive, but still a good smarthpone? Samsung or Hauwei. 3D camera and screen? LG all the way.

Android also offers variety when it comes to tablets. Instead of Apple's one iPad or BlackBerry's one Playbook, you can choose an Android tablet that suits you. There's a whole array from the Samsung Galaxy Note tablet-phone (sometimes called a "phablet") all the way up to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - and that's just Samsung!

There's also clever things like the Asus EEE Pad Transformer that lets you turn your phone into a laptop!

But What About Apps?

You've probably heard that Apple devices have more apps available than Android devices. Once upon a time that was true, but no longer. Because Android is now outselling Apple just about everywhere, app developers are spending more time developing for Android than they are for iOS. Android also gives you several different app stores to choose from: Google Play, Amazon, Getjar and network app stores, as well as allowing you download apps over the web and install them manually. You can't do any of that on an Apple device - it's iTunes or nothing.

Apps optimised for tablets are still lagging behind a bit. Android tablets might be selling quite well here in South Africa, but overseas they're generally not doing very well compared to the iPad. That's changing, but it means that apps for Android tablets aren't always as nice as their iOS counterparts.

What About Data Plans?

The thing about smartphones is they need data.

In the South African market, BlackBerry still holds a corner on the market of unlimited on-device data usage. With the exception of one special offer by Nashua Mobile for a handful of Nokia devices, you can't get unlimited data for your non-BlackBerry device (either Android or iPhone) in South Africa yet.

That's probably why BlackBerry is still the top-selling smartphone in SA (despite the fact that it's not doing very well in most of the rest of the world).

But that will change. Mobile data is getting cheaper all the time, and it's just a matter of time before unlimited plans are extended to other devices.

What's All This About Honeycombs and Ice Cream?

You might have heard Android fans talking about things like "Gingerbread" and "Ice Cream Sandwich" and been completely baffled by it. That's understandable, but it's not really that complicated.

Every time Google releases a major update to the Android operating system (which they do once or twice a year) they give the update a code-name. The names they choose are in alphabetical order, and they're always named after a sweet treat, because that's more fun than version numbers and whatnot.

The Android Garden at the Googleplex

Version 1.5: Cupcake (the third version of Android to be released, but the first version to use the naming convention)
1.6: Donut
2.0: Eclair
2.2: Froyo (short for "frozen yoghurt")
2.3: Gingerbread
3.0: Honeycomb (this version is only for tablets)
4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich (for phones and tablets)

As of right now, if your Android device is running anything older than Gingerbread it's pretty out of date. It's time to ask your manufacturer for a software update (which should happen automatically) or to start thinking about upgrading your device. It's not the end of the world, but some newer apps might not run properly (or at all) on your device.

Rumour has it the next version will be codenamed "Jelly Bean".

Should I Get An Android Device?

Yes, I would recommend it.

iPhones are a good choice too, even if they're technologically behind Android and a bit overpriced, they are beautiful. When you pay extra for that iPhone, you're paying for the Apple logo.

BlackBerry is also a good choice, especially for students. The unlimited data makes it worthwhile for a lot of people, even if the hardware is a year or two out of date.

If labels aren't a big deal for you, and you're okay with adding a data bundle to your cellphone account, Android is the way to go. You won't need to compromise on anything, not even the beautiful design.

Need help deciding on which Android device to get? Drop me a comment below!

Oh Noes! They Changed [Insert Service Name Here]!

2012-05-08T11:21:00.002+02:00

I'm sure it's happened to you, probably recently: You're surfing the web, minding your own business, and you log into some or other website that you use all the time (like Facebook, Gmail or Twitter)... horror of horrors! They've changed it!

The world is upside-down, nothing makes sense anymore! How are you going to get things done? How will you know when your friends' birthdays are? How will you tend your virtual crops? Why, Internet? WHYYY?!?!

It's a reality of the Internet that the services we use online (especially the "free" ones) will change from time to time. It's not only necessary, it's a good thing. They're trying to make their services better for you. Yes, you.

The companies that offer those services usually make money using an advertising model, meaning that you "pay" for using the service by being exposed to ads down the side of the page. The better, nicer and more useful they can make their products, the more likely you are to spend time on their site, looking at those ads and, perhaps, buying something from time to time. They know that making you happy is good business for them.

Because of that, those sorts of products are almost never "finished" - they're perpetual works-in-progress, constantly adding new features, tweaking the interface and enabling you to do more and more things.

But that can sometimes be a scary thing. A familiar place where you spend a lot of your time is suddenly different - it's enough to make you feel nervous, overwhelmed or even completely lost. Here's how to deal with those changes.

DON'T PANIC

Douglas Adams' words are very relevant here. When you log into Facebook and things are different, the first thing to remember is to keep calm - they've changed it for a reason, and things are probably a bit better now. Just give it a few minutes to explore, and you might just find that you like it better this way.

Another important thing to remember is that they usually don't remove features. If there was a button on the front page that you used all the time, it's probably still around somewhere. They might just have moved it to a drop-down menu or something in order to make way for other, more popular features.

I had a moment like this when Google+ changed its front-page layout a few weeks ago. I was always comforted by the little "Send feedback" button at the bottom-right corner of the screen. It meant that if I was having trouble with the site, I could send them some feedback, and they'd hopefully be able to fix it. I think I only actually used it once or twice, but it was good to know it was there.

Little button in the corner

But when the new layout came, I used it happily for a few days. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. I spotted a problem I was having with the site, and when I moved my cursor down to report the problem, I couldn't find the button!

I took a deep breath, and spent a few seconds looking around. I soon found that the button had been moved to a drop-down menu at the top of the page, along with a few other items that probably don't get used that often.

In a drop-down menu

These guys are very clever, and they monitor things like click-rates for various buttons. If a button that's taking up some valuable real-estate on an important part of the page isn't getting clicked very often (on average - some users probably use it more than others), it makes more sense for them to move it elsewhere to make space for something else.

What if they actually have removed a feature?

Although they'll seldom actually remove a feature, it does happen from time to time - a specific feature just isn't popular enough, or works in a way that it interferes with other, more popular features, and they decide to take it away. Or sometimes they change the way it works in an important way. It can be a bit frustrating if you were one of the few users who were using it for a specific purpose, but can't do it that way anymore.

When this happens, they'll seldom drop you in the deep end. Most of the time, when a feature is removed, they'll generally offer you a different way of accomplishing the same thing. It might take a little more work from you to do it, but it should, in theory, be possible.

This happened to me a month or so ago when Facebook made a change that made my life a little harder. I belong to a local community with a shared interest, and we have a Facebook Group that we use for various things. One of the things we used it for was to create Facebook Events and automatically invite everyone on the group.

About a month ago, Facebook removed that auto-invite feature. At first I was furious. How dare they take away this feature that I relied upon so heavily? It actually took me a few weeks to get over it (I don't use Facebook that often, so the time-scale for these things can be pretty long). I eventually saw that it was still possible for me to invite all the group members to the events we were creating, even if it wasn't possible to invite them all with one click.

For us, this change means we have to now manually invite everyone in the group who might want to attend, rather than spamming everyone in the group (about 300 people) most of whom aren't interested. So although it's an added burden for the group admins, it does make sense.

What if they change it so much that it's completely useless?

Sometimes that does happen. From time to time one of these changes will make it so you can't use the service for what you were using it for before. What do you do then?

The nice thing about the Internet is that it's really, really big. For any given service, there's probably at least one other service out there that does the same thing just as well, or better.

When Facebook changed their group events feature, the first thing I did was look for alternative services. I found two that seem to work pretty well: Meetup and Plancast. Neither works exactly the same way (and Meetup isn't free), but both are probably close enough to be useful.

A little bit of Googling (and usually a visit to LifeHacker's archives) should help you find an alternative that's close enough to what you need.

How do I protect myself from these changes?

Having learned the hard way, I think it's important to guard against becoming too invested in any given product or service that could, potentially, be changed or removed in the future. To that end, here are a few tips:

Check for portability. A good online service will provide a way for you to export your data any time you want. Google is particularly good with that sort of thing, and Facebook provides those services too. Ask a geek friend to check a service for "data portability" for you before you get too invested.
Don't spend too much time on it. If you find that you're spending more than 20 minutes customising or setting up a service or tool, that's probably 20 minutes you've wasted. Most of these things need you to customise them a little, but be wary: the more customisation a tool needs, the less likely it is to survive. Try to stick to the "vanilla" experience as much as possible.
Think like a geek: learn your way around. Spending a few minutes exploring the menus and settings screens will help give you a bit of insight into the logic behind a service's design. If you understand that logic better, it'll be that much easier for you to cope with changes intuitively.
Try new things. If you hear about a new product or service that does something similar to one you already use, give it a go. The more you try, the more alternatives you'll already know about if one of them is changed. Also, these services tend to work with each other (especially Facebook), so your exploration might reveal some fun or useful new ways of interacting with services you already use.

Dealing with change is not only part of the online experience, but it's part of the human condition. But if we're prepared for it, we can make the most of it.

Getting Organised in the Cloud: Google Calendar

2011-06-17T14:56:00.001+02:00

I've found that the easiest way to get organised is by having a truly powerful calendar at my disposal. A good calendar should be everywhere you need it to be, customisable to your specific requirements and easy to access for yourself and anyone who needs to book time with you.

Generally speaking, on this blog I try to remain ambivalent on exactly which tools I recommend. In most cases, for any given problem, there are bound to be a variety of different tools that solve the problem in different ways. The choice of which one to go with depends largely on what your specific needs are. That's not the case today.

Today I'm going to break that rule and recommend a specific tool, Google Calendar, because I have yet to come across another tool that's as powerful and versatile. Nothing else I've seen comes even close.

What is Google Calendar?

As the name suggests, it's a personal calendar tool provided by Google. At first glance, that's all it seems to be - a calendar not unlike the one you would find in Microsoft Outlook.

A fresh, clean Google Calendar

If that's all it is, what's all the fuss about? Why do you need another calendar when you've already got one in Outlook (that's probably synced to your smartphone)? But when we take a slightly longer look, we start to see how powerful Google Calendar really is.

Google Calendar Is Everywhere

Google Calendar lives in the cloud, on Google's servers. Although the best way to interact with it is from the web interface at http://calendar.google.com, Google provides a suite of syncing applications that allow you to bring your Google Calendar into just about any other place you might want to work with it: your smartphone, Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, iGoogle, embed it on a website or work with it through third-party services like Tungle.me. Everywhere you go, Google Calendar will follow you. And changes made anywhere else are synced back to the cloud, so all your other devices are updated as quickly as possible.

All of Your Stuff is in Google Calendar

If you're experienced with Microsoft Outlook, you'll be accustomed to the idea of keeping separate calendars. You might have one for your work appointments (that you share with your team) and another for personal stuff (that you wish you could share with your family or friends, but can't because they're not on your company network). Google Calendar takes this to the next level: you can create as many different calendars as you like. You can keep them private, share them with other people or even make them public for the world to see.

For example, I keep my own calendar for all my appointments, personal and professional. I've given full editing rights to my wife, so she can make appointments on my behalf if she wants to - by just adding them to Google Calendar on her end. I've also given a few close friends limited viewing abilities to the calendar, so they can see when I'm available for social outings and whatnot.

In addition to that, I've created a calendar for my Star Trek fan club. I've given viewing access for the calendar to all the club members, and I've nominated certain members who can create and edit events on that calendar too. We've also published that calendar on our website, so visitors can see what we've got planned.

One step further, I've created a calendar for my public appearances - if I'm scheduled to do a talk or attend a public function, I'll copy the event from my personal calendar to the public one, which is published on my personal blog. If people want to know where they can see or meet me, they need only look there.

All of these calendars are overlayed on top of each other in my Google Calendar view, colour-coded so I know which calendar a given event belongs to.

But there's more. In my Google Contacts I've added birthdays and wedding anniversaries to most of my contacts. By enabling the "Contacts birthdays and events" calendar, I can see them all overlayed on my Google Calendar view. Same goes for Google Tasks: if I've assigned a due-date to a task, it appears on that day in my calendar, giving me a daily to-do list.

And expanding beyond the Google-verse, I've added special calendars that display my Facebook and Plancast events, Twitter history, Foursquare check-ins and even my phone calls (clicking those links will take you to places where you can learn to add those things to your Google Calendar too). This I found very useful when I was filling in a weekly time-sheet - if I couldn't remember what I was doing at a given time, I could check back to see where I was and who I had spoken to around that time to help jog my memory.

All of that stuff combined gives me a super-useful, festive-looking calendar with tons of useful information I can glean at a glance. With a little tweaking, your Google Calendar could also look like this:

Pictured: productivity

Other Cool Stuff

Google Calendar has a bunch of cool tools to help you get and stay organised:

Interesting calendars - in addition to being able to create calendars that you can publish, you can also add public calendars other people have published. If you know the address for the calendar you want, you can just click the "Add to Google Calendar" button, otherwise you can browse the "Interesting Calendars" catalogue. The sorts of calendars you're likely to find include public holidays for your country, religious holidays (for you or your team members), sports team fixtures, weather forecasts and, my personal favourite, the Stardate calendar (created by Google's geeks in honour of the 2009 Star Trek movie).

Appointment slots - this tool allows you to book sections of your calendar as being "available", and then publish that availability on a dedicated web page. If you want to share your availability with someone, just send them a link to the page and encourage them to choose a slot that suits them. That appointment then gets added to your calendar (and theirs too, if they also use Google Calendar). It's a lot like the pre-existing service, Tungle.me. Tungle still does a slightly better job of it though, so it might be worth using that until Google Calendar's team catches up on Tungle's functionality.

Colour-coding - not only can you select a different colour for each of your calendars, but you can select a second colour for individual events, allowing you to catagorise them by type or importance.

Labs - Like Gmail, Google Calendar has a bunch of extra fun tools available in the Labs section of the settings. These are new, experimental tools that you can try out before Google makes them part of the official tool. Ones I particularly recommend are "Event Attachments", "Event Flair", "Smart Rescheduler" and "Who's My One-on-one With?".

How Do I Get It?

Google Calendar is a free service (yes, completely free) that comes with every Google account. Just go to the Google Calendar homepage, sign in with your Google username and password, and you're up and away. If you don't already have a Google account, you can sign up for one right there - it's also free. If your organisation uses Google Apps, you'll have a Google Calendar for that account too.

It can look a little confusing at first, but give yourself a chance to play around with what it can do. And don't be afraid to look through the excellent help pages for guidance. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to post them in the comments. I'll do my best to come up with an answer for you.

Happy Googling!

Syncing to the Cloud - What For?

2011-02-22T14:59:00.001+02:00

In previous posts I've taken a look at using cloud computing services for fun and profit. Today I'd like to look at the whole notion of cloud computing, and exactly why we, as end users might want to use it.

(For those who aren't up to speed, "cloud computing" is a term used to describe services that store your files and other data on a remote server, and allow you to access it via the Internet)

Probably the biggest convenience-related aspect of cloud services is that all your different devices have the same data all the time.

"But I don't have lots of devices!" I hear you say. Maybe so. But if you have a computer for work, another for home and a cellphone, that's already three devices with data to be synchronized. If you're not syncing them directly, then you're probably doing it manually, by taking a phone number in your work address book, entering it into your phone's contact list, and then saving it again on your home computer. Sound familiar?

In the old days (like three years ago) your computer acted as the central hub for all the syncing. If you were syncing at all, your syncing situation probably looked something like this:

With your main computer in the middle, and all your other devices syncing off it. If you had a second computer, you would have to sync via a third-party cloud service, like Microsoft Exchange or something to keep your stuff updated.

But here's a hypothetical situation (that you may actually have come across): let's say you have a meeting set up on your second computer. While you're sitting at that computer, you change a detail (say the venue). A few minutes later you need to change another detail (say the time), but all you have with you is your cellphone, so you update it on your phone's calender.

So now what's happened? The second computer accepted the change and synced it up to Exchange. Exchange then sent the change to your main computer. So you go home that evening and sync your phone with your main computer... the computer tries to update the event in your phone's calendar, but it sees there's already a change in your phone's calendar (the time is different). It doesn't know how to resolve the conflict, so it creates a duplicate event. So now all your devices have two copies of this meeting, one with a changed time, the other with a changed venue. Weeks later, on the day of the meeting, how do you know which is the correct one?

There are three problems with this picture:

1. There are too many steps between different devices. More than one step leaves you open to errors.

2. Too many of the syncs have to be activated manually, usually by you actually plugging one device into another and pushing a button to make it happen. This means that the syncing between two devices at opposite ends of the chain could take hours or even days.

3. Everything is dependent on the Main Computer. If that gets stolen or damaged, the whole process breaks down, and you have to start again from scratch!

But everything's changed now. With the right devices and cloud-based services, you can now have a picture that looks more like this:

With all your devices syncing directly with the cloud, your central storage location is safely protected by a cloud services company. All your devices can sync directly with the cloud, updating it and each other via the Internet, and in real time! You don't even have to push a button to make the sync happen anymore (unless you want to) - as long as they're connected to the Internet, these things all sync themselves!

Plus you can add or take away devices as you see fit. Laptop gets stolen? No problem: just get a new one and carry on where you left off. Want to sync up your tablet computer, smart TV or car? No problem: just log them into your account and away they go.

And it's not limited to just calendars and contact lists anymore. Any of your content: documents, presentations, photos, videos, music, podcasts you name it! Even certain applications can be synced to the cloud!

In future posts we'll look at exactly how to get syncing set up between your devices and the cloud. Don't be scared though, it's a lot easier than it sounds. And keeping organised will be so much easier when you're there.

Latitude vs Foursquare

2011-02-07T10:15:00.000+02:00

Latitude Check In

A while back I wrote about using location-based social networking tools for business purposes.

In that post I cited Google Latitude as an example of Live Location Transmission (a tool that sends an approximate location of your phone to your friends) and Foursquare as an example of a check-in based tool (that requires users to manually inform the service that they have arrived at a particular location).

About a week ago, Google released a new Check-in feature for Latitude, which effectively turns Latitude into a hybrid of both kinds of services. I've spent about a week playing with Latitude check-ins, and I thought it might be useful to do a comparison between it and Foursquare. Probably the best way to do that is to highlight where the two services are different.

The most glaring difference between them is their catalogue of locations you can check into.

The Database

Add a new venue in Foursquare

When using Foursquare, if you want to check into a place, but you can't find the place you're sitting in the Foursquare system, you can create it yourself. It allows you to either enter the address manually, or pick up your coordinates from your smartphone's GPS, give it a name and then catagorise it (is in, it's a gym, or a restaurant, or an office building or what have you). Once you've added the place to Foursquare, other users can check into it too.

The advantage is that you're not limited by the existing contents of the database. The drawback is that it relies on humans to create the content... and humans make mistakes. You'll soon see that many places are mis-spelled, named incorrectly or in the wrong location. Only the person who originally created the place can change the listing, and if they don't know how to do that, then you sit with bad data in the system.

Latitude works differently, however. It draws its list of locations from the Google Places database. While Places is an enormous database, it's not complete, so you'll often find (especially in South Africa) that the place you're looking for isn't available.

While the data that's in the system tends to be well managed and curated for accuracy and that sort of thing, adding new places to the catalogue is kinda difficult. (In South Africa it seems impossible to add a place unless you're the owner of it)

Availability

Since Foursquare launched two years ago, they've made a constant effort to make their service available on as many different smartphone devices as possible. As it stands, I've yet to find a smartphone that isn't supported by Foursquare in some way or another. There's even a Chrome extension that lets you check in from your desktop. Foursquare also allows other application developers to connect to their service, so you can check in from other apps like TweetDeck.

Latitude check-ins, being a brand-new service, is still only available in one place: Google Maps for Android. I have little doubt that it'll be supported in future versions of the Google Maps for Mobile applications for other smartphones, and maybe even for the Latitude desktop view, but as of right now they're not yet available.

Syndication

A popular feature of Foursquare has been the ability to re-post your check-ins into your other social-networking sites. By default, it allows you to immediately post into Twitter and Facebook. If you've set up your syndication properly, you can send your posts from there into other services like LinkedIn or Google Buzz.

Latitude also allows you to send out your check-in alerts, but so far only allows you to send them to Google Buzz. This has its advantages, as you can configure Buzz to have your Latitude check-ins only appear in certain people's feeds, but the down side is that not everybody uses Buzz yet. If you want your check-ins to appear in Facebook or Twitter, you have to use some kind of third-party syndication app to make it work - which is a bit of a pain.

Unique Features

Latitude and Foursquare each have some features that have no analogue in the other. Let's look at a few of the most notable ones:

Foursquare:

The gaming component: In addition to being a social networking tool, Foursquare also has a built-in game. Each time you check in you earn points, and you compete against everyone else in your city in a weekly contest. You also earn badges for your activity, and if you check into a given location more than anyone else, you become the "Mayor".

With the exception of a few establishments who offer discounts and specials to their mayor, the gaming side of Foursquare is basically just for fun.
Tips and To-Dos: When you check into a place, you have the option of leaving a tip. Something like "Try the bacon and salami pizza!" for example. When someone else sees your tip linked to a place, they can add it to their "ToDo" list, and a reminder will pop up when they check in reminding them to try the bacon and salami pizza
Check-in History: Foursquare keeps a complete history of all your check-ins, and even allow you to export that history in a couple of different formats. My favourite is the way you can import it into your Google Calendar as an overlay - I've found it useful in reconstructing my movements for things like timesheets. (Latitude does keep a history of your movements and gives you some fun visualisations, but as far as I can tell your check-ins aren't included in that yet, and you can't export it to anything)

Latitude:

Ratings: Latitude check-ins live in the same place in the Google Maps for Mobile application as Google Hotpot - a service for sharing ratings and reviews with the world at large, and your friends in particular.
Automated Check-ins: If you frequently visit a particular place (your favourite coffee-shop, or your office building, for example) you can set Latitude to check you in automatically when you're in range on that place. This saves you the annoyance of having to thumb through the app checking in manually, and also saves you in case you forget to do it yourself.
(I haven't tested this bit thoroughly yet, and I'm curious about how sensitive it is. For example, would it check you in if you're just driving past a place? I'll keep playing with it and let you know)

Wrap Up

All in all I'd say that Foursquare is probably still in the lead between the two - it's a more mature service with a more established user-base. However, if Google manage to solve the few problems with Latitude (and I predict they will), it will likely win out over Foursquare as the leading location-based social networking tool of 2011.

I've personally pretty much stopped using Foursquare now. I haven't removed the app from my phone yet though... I may change my mind again in the future.

Email in the Cloud

2011-01-20T08:16:00.004+02:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about using cloud-based backups.

(Just to bring you up to speed: cloud-based services are tools that run via the Internet on a server hosted by somebody else like Google or DropBox)

Today we'll be looking at another very important tool that we should consider moving into the cloud: email.

Now some people may be a little confused about that. After all, email is part of the Internet right? Doesn't that mean it's already in the cloud?

Well yes, kind of, but not always.

If you're using your company email account, odds are it's not cloud-based. Most medium to large companies keep their own email server which runs on their local IT network. If you pop down and visit the boys in IT, they could probably show you the email server. When you access your work email from inside your office, you're probably accessing it over the local network, not the Internet.

Your email server probably looks like this

There are some good reasons for doing it this way, mostly so that your email server (which is probably running Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino or something similar) can talk directly to the other servers on your network and exchange information with them freely.

If you use the email account your Internet service provider (ISP) gave you, that's not quite cloud-based either. Their email server will likely sit in a server room with all their other various servers. When you connect to that server, you're doing it through your service provider's network, not technically through the Internet.

In both these cases if you've set up your laptop or smartphone to connect to that email account, that connection will generally happen over the Internet, so I suppose you could say that they're cloud-based in a way, but that's not really the kind of thing we're talking about here.

So What Are We Talking About?

If you've been on the Internet for a while, in that time you've probably come across (and maybe even used) two services: Hotmail and Gmail. They are the leading cloud-based email providers. In both cases you can only connect to these services via the Internet, and therefore the cloud.

But Why Would I Want That?

One thing you've probably noticed with your work or ISP email service is that there tends to be a fair amount of down-time. It may go down for hours, even days at a time during which you're stuck without email. The reason for that is that your company or ISP has a relatively small staff of engineers and technicians, and they're tasked with keeping an eye on a bunch of different servers at the same time. Not only that, but they often can't afford "fail-over" servers (backup servers that take over immediately if the main server goes down). So when there's a problem, you usually have to wait for those techies to fix it, which will sometimes take a while.

Proper cloud-based mail providers aren't limited by that. Gmail and Hotmail have colossal server farms dedicated to nothing but provide their email service. If one server, or even one whole datacentre, goes down, there are others that pick up the slack and keep providing the service with little or no interruption to you.

The redundancy these guys use is so robust that it takes a pretty rare and severe problem to cause any real interruption of the service. These things do happen, but not often. In 2010 Gmail recorded an average of 7 minutes' down time per month. Just to give you an idea, that's 46 times more reliable than your average Microsoft Exchange server.

Cloud Storage

As is the case with cloud-based backup tools, cloud-based email stores all of your old emails on their server, which means you can access it from any computer. And since Hotmail and Gmail offer you quite a lot of storage space, you can keep a much longer history of emails than you could with your corporate or ISP email account. So much so that you will probably never have to delete an email (Gmail didn't even have a delete function at first... they only introduced it later because the users really wanted it).

Gmail in particular puts that extra server capacity to work in a number of ways for you, one of which is the ability to send much larger attachments than with other services. You can now send attachments up to 25MB in size via Gmail (for context, your average Word document is less than 1MB).

But I Like Outlook!

If you've been using Microsoft Outlook or some equivalent email application for a long time, you've probably grown accustomed to it. Although the web interfaces for Gmail and Hotmail are quite intuitive, some people just don't like having to change to a new application to do the same old thing.

Fortunately both Gmail and Hotmail allow you to connect up to your Outlook or other email clients, so you can use your email the way you've always done it and still be working in the cloud! Of course there are limitations - you'll still need to log into the Gmail or Hotmail website to search your archives for very old messages, but you probably won't need to do that often anyway.

(Connecting your Gmail or Hotmail to Outlook can be a bit tricky. Although there are helpful guides on how to do it, you might want to ask your local IT-savvy person to help you with it.)

But I Have Too Many Email Accounts!

If you've been online for a while, odds are you've accumulated quite a few different email accounts over the years, many of which you might still be using. One of the advantages of an application like Microsoft Outlook is that it lets you plug in a number of separate email accounts into one application.

Fortunately Gmail lets you do the same thing. Gmail has connectors that let you link up to your Yahoo Mail account, and both Gmail and Hotmail have a built-in POP3 client (POP3 is an email protocol that's supported by most email servers) that let you pull your various different email accounts into your Gmail or Hotmail Inbox and archive. Unfortunately they don't yet support Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino email accounts - for those you'll still need to use your corporate software.

But I Use Email on my Smartphone!

Gmail for Android

No problem. Most smartphones will allow you to connect multiple email accounts just like Outlook does, so you can use Gmail or Hotmail alongside your work email account on the same device.

In addition, most smartphones also have Gmail and Hotmail apps available that allow you to send and receive emails, as well as search your vast archive right on your mobile device.

So How Much Does All This Cost?

Nothing. That's right, it's free. You "pay" for the service by looking at the ads on the page, but you don't even have to buy anything.

Both Hotmail and Gmail have corporate equivalents that allow you to have your whole company, school or other organisation using cloud-based email instead of a local server - and those generally aren't free. But they are competitively priced, and worth considering if your company has had trouble keeping its local email server up.

Does My Business Really Need a Website?

2011-01-12T11:52:00.001+02:00

Yes. Absolutely yes. If you don't already have one, drop everything and get one now!

I think it's gotten to the point today that the question of if you should have a website isn't important anymore, now a more useful question is what kind of website you need.

The answer to that question depends largely on what kind of business you have, or indeed whether you're a business at all. I would argue that any brand needs to have its own website, whether it's your business, a specific product or service your business offers, a division within your business or even you, yourself.

There are plenty of different kinds of websites, and there's no clear dividing line between them. The nature of your brand will dictate what kind you need. Every good website should include the following components:

Site with image banner

1. Who are you?
What is the name of your brand? What sort of thing do you offer? This should be obvious on every page of your website, even if it's just in a banner image across the top of the page. If someone comes to your website through Google, they won't necessarily come in through the front page. If they're going to stay and read more, they need to tell at a glance what sort of website they're looking at.

2. Front page.
This is the ideal place for visitors to your site to start. When they type in your website address (www.yourbrand.co.za) this is the first page they'll see. To make the most of it, try to strike a balance between giving the reader as much useful information as possible without overloading them with text. If the user never clicks beyond your front page, they should at least have gleaned the most important information about your brand you want them to have, whatever that may be.

3. About Us.
A second page that describes in more detail what your brand is about. This might include things like the names of your directors, corporate affiliations, a brief history of the brand and so on.

4. Contact Us.
Your visitors need a way of getting hold of you, if they want to make use of whatever you have to offer. Office phone numbers are good (if you have those), but more important than that is an email address - one that a person actually reads. If you get an email from a prospective customer via your contact page and you don't respond to it within one business day, you can safely assume you've lost that customer for good.
A good supplement to this area would be links to your brand's Facebook Page and Twitter profile, allowing the visitor to engage with you through those channels as well, without having to go looking for you on those services.

5. Products and Services.
Although it should be obvious by looking at your website what kinds of products and services you offer, it's important to have a place where they're explained in more detail. If possible, give an updated price-list of what you have available. Ideally have a way for customers to make a purchase directly from the product page.

6. News.

This is an area often overlooked by corporate websites: a place to post your news and announcements, be they press releases, new product releases or just interesting stuff that relates to your industry. A good way of doing that is by building a blog into your site (or making your whole website out of a blog, using a content management system like Wordpress or Blogger). It's not enough to just have a news section, you actually need to commit to updating it no less than once a month. If visitors arrive at your site and see that nothing on it has changed since 2005, they may assume you've gone out of business (or are at least having some kind of financial trouble) and go elsewhere.

Although making a really good website is a lot easier than it was ten yeas ago, it's still a fairly technical procedure. Odds are you already have a person in your company who has technical or creative leanings, and might know how to build one for you. Alternatively there are online services like Google Sites and Squarespace that let you build a basic site by pointing and clicking.

If you're a freelance professional or some other kind of sole proprietor, your brand is yourself. But even if you work for an employer, it's still a good idea to think about managing your personal brand, both as an extension of your employer's brand, and as its own entity - in case you someday decide to leave that company and do something different.

My Google Profile

Building a personal brand site is a lot easier than one for a business, and odds are you've already got one. Your Facebook or LinkedIn profile page could be easily adapted to serve as a brand site... although LinkedIn might be the better choice, given its more professional focus. I prefer to use my Google Profile (I've even got it set up so that if you go to www.owenswart.org, it takes you to my Google Profile).

Other options worth considering are adding an "About Me" page to your personal blog or a Flavours.me personal landing page. Both of those are pretty easy to put together, and with a little effort can be really stunning.

The thing about having a website for your brand is that it's not just a way for people to find you on the web so they can call you. Your website is your digital "avatar" - it represents you online and speaks for you in conversations you don't even know are happening. If you want to make sure those conversations are as well-informed as possible, it's in your own interest to make sure your website is the best possible ambassador for your brand.

Putting It Together

2010-12-14T15:11:00.003+02:00

In the last few posts I've touched on some social networking tools and how they can be used to help your business, team or personal life, notably Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Google Latitude.

Thing is, with each new tool you start to use, along with the added benefits comes an added overhead: each tool gives you a new place you have to go - another inbox you need to check. At some point all these social tools start to become overwhelming. What can we do about that?

Social Aggregation

Aggregation is a movement in new technologies that aims to solve this problem by pulling many different sources of information into as few screens as possible, and where possible, only one screen.

I've already talked about one particular social aggregator in past posts: TweetDeck. Although primarily a Twitter client, TweetDeck also allows you to interact, to a limited extent, with your Facebook, Google Buzz and Foursquare accounts. Of course to get the full range of features for any of those, you'll still need to go to the main website, but TweetDeck does a pretty good job of covering the day-to-day basics.

TweetDeck

I've also mentioned an alternative to TweetDeck, Hootsuite, that does most of the same things, as well as allowing you to connect your LinkedIn account. Hootsuite has, unfortunately, recently started charging a subscription fee for some features that used to be free. But it may still be worth it, if those features are important to you.

But managing feeds and inboxes is only half of the problem. What about contacts?

Contact Aggregation

In each service you'll likely have a separate list of contacts (or "friends" or "followers" or whatever that particular service calls them). Although most of them will give you an opportunity to import your contacts from the other services manually, they generally don't provide you with a unified view of all of them.

If you know someone pretty well, odds are you're friends with them in Facebook, connected to them in LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter and Foursquare, share your stuff with them in Google Latitude and Buzz and chat to them in Google Talk. So that's one person with five different profiles spread all over the Internet (I said "five" not "seven" because most Google products, including Talk, Latitude and Buzz, use a shared contact list stored in your Gmail Contacts).

Wouldn't it make more sense if you could pool all those accounts together and have just one profile for that person?

Well, as it happens, there are some aggregation tools that let you do exactly that.

Inbox Side Panels

If you use Gmail and/or Microsoft Outlook, there are a couple of tools that you can use to achieve this: Rapportive for Gmail and Xobni for Outlook.

Rapportive

Rapportive is a browser extension, which means you can download and install it as an "app" in your Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox Internet browser. When it's installed, you log into Gmail and open an email. On the right-hand-side of the email where the Google Ads used to be is now a small profile view of the person who sent you the email! Rapportive searches the Internet for matches on that person's name and email address and shows you a list of links to their various social networking profiles, as well as their last few tweets (if they're on Twitter).

Xobni

Xobni is an Outlook add-on that works in a similar way. You download and install the add-on which will then launch every time you open Outlook. It sits on the right-hand side of your Outlook screen and reads the email address of the person who sent you the email you're looking at. It searches social networking sites, displaying their stuff there for you to see. You can also 'friend' or 'follow' them through those social tools from right there, if you want to.

In addition, Xobni searches your Outlook history and displays panels showing a list of who else that person knows, the last few email conversations you've both participated in, meetings you've both attended or have scheduled, and even the last few files you've sent back and forth as email attachments,

If you opt for the paid version of Xobni, it gives you even more cool features!

Gist

Gist dashboard view

If you'd like to take it to a level further than what Xobni and Rapportive have to offer, the big player in this arena is Gist. Gist calls itself a "social CRM" tool, because it really is more than just a social aggregator.

To set up your Gist account, you'll need to give it access to your other contact lists: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail and so on. Gist then imports all those lists and keeps them updated. If you have a lot of contacts, it may take you a while to set it up properly: sorting through duplicate entries, differentiating between people and companies and that sort of thing.

Once you've got it worked out, Gist will give you a unified view of your contacts' activity across the different social media platforms, as well as communication histories, meetings, blog posts and news articles about them. Gist also uses an algorithm to calculate a "relevance" score for each person and company, figuring out how important they are to you, and thereby allowing you to filter the feed view based on how busy you are - if you're very busy, you can see only the most important people, if you're having a slow day you can see everyone.

Gist also has browser plug-ins and an Outlook add-in like Rapportive and Xobni, as well as mobile apps that let you monitor your dashboard on the go.

(There's even a trick you can use to get Gist to update your Google Contacts list, making that more relevant in and of itself).

Mobile

That's all fine and good if you're sitting at your computer, but what if you're on the run? You've arranged a meetup with a business acquaintance on Twitter, but you're running late, and she doesn't follow you on Google Latitude. Now you need to phone her and let her know, but you've never asked for her phone number and she's not logged into Google Talk. What do you do?

Most smartphones allow you to call someone directly from the Facebook or Gist app on the device (assuming your friend has put their number on their profile). Android devices take it a step further though.

Linked contact on Android

The Android contact manager syncs not only with your Google and Microsoft Exchange accounts, but also with Facebook, Twitter and Skype, if you have those apps installed. It also has duplicate detection, and allows you to create an aggregated contact page out of all those different profiles, filling in information from all of them. So if your associate has their phone number in their Facebook profile, you've already got it in your Android contacts, with no intervention from you!

Invisible Computing

The ultimate goal of a user interface design is to make the computer effectively invisible - to make it so you need to do as little work as possible in order to get the information you need out of the system. Social aggregation tools are working towards that goal, and they're getting better at it every day.

Until the various social networking sites figure out how to update each other with their respective contact lists, at least we have these tools to help us do it for them.

ChromeDeck

2010-12-08T08:38:00.000+02:00

ChromeDeck

In a previous post, I described two different Twitter clients: TweetDeck and HootSuite, the main difference between them being that while TweetDeck was a downloadable application for your computer, HootSuite was a web-based application ("webapp") that you could use inside your browser.

Well, there's been an update to that. In the last 24 hours, Google has announced the launch of the new Chrome Web Store - a website that allows you to install webapps for your Google Chrome web browser. Included in that launch is dozens (if not hundreds) of webapps to choose from, some compelling, others less so.

One of the new webapps available in the Chrome Web Store is a web-based version of TweetDeck, affectionately known as ChromeDeck.

ChromeDeck has more in common with the Android and iPhone versions of TweetDeck than with the desktop version, but it's a fully-featured TweetDeck application in its own right. And, like the others, it's free.

So if you're keen to check it out, go install Google Chrome, then head over to the Web Store to see what nifty things are available.

Another important thing to note is that ChromeDeck doesn't support all the same features as HootSuite. HootSuite has some really cool tools that allow you to collaborate with members of your team, all working on the same set of Twitter accounts. But if you're not using those sorts of things, ChromeDeck is a perfectly suitable alternative that syncs with your existing TweetDeck account.

What's This "Twitter" Thing?

2010-12-06T13:00:00.001+02:00

If you live in South Africa, you've no doubt heard quite a bit about Twitter in news lately: between @pigspotter's feud with the JMPD and the ANC Youth League threatening to close it down because of Julius Malema impersonators.

You may even have been inspired to sign up for it to see what all the fuss is about... and then soon lost interest because you didn't see the point. If so, you're not alone.

Despite Twitter's growing popularity, it has a peculiar status in that is seems unable to explain decently what it is, what it does and what it should be used for. Even people who "tweet" constantly often have a hard time explaining exactly why they find it so compelling.

Given that so many others have failed, I'm going to give it a go anyway:

What Is Twitter?

Twitter describes itself as a "micro-blogging platform". While that's certainly true, it still doesn't give you much information.

Essentially Twitter is a kind of social networking tool, sort-of like Facebook, but a lot simpler. When you have a Twitter account, you're encouraged to post tweets - a short message of up to 140 characters long - which are then published to your Twitter profile page and sent out to anyone who "follows" you (sort of like a Facebook "friend"). You can follow other Twitter users, which means their tweets are shown in your feed. If you and another Twitter user follow each other, you can send private tweets to each other that don't appear on either of your profiles.

And that, in a nutshell, is Twitter. Sounds simple, right? But if you've looked at somebody's Twitter feed, you've probably seen a lot of things that look like this:

(by my friend @angelameadon)

That looks pretty confusing. What are all those funny letters and symbols?

If you've been using SMS for a while (since the days when it used to matter how long it was), you're probably familiar with that abbreviated SMS English that was originally developed by users in order to convey as much meaning as possible is as few characters as possible. Twitter users have developed a kind of short-hand for the exact same reason, but it's a little different because Twitter isn't just on your phone: it's on the Internet.

The part saying "#WikiLeaks" is called a "hashtag", which is kind of like a subject for an email. A tweet doesn't need a hashtag, but if you're tweeting about something that a lot of people are talking about, you might want to include one (or two, or three). That way when someone is looking for tweets about the WikiLeaks scandal, all they need to is search for "#WikiLeaks" and they can find all the tweets they need.

The bit that says "http://v.gd/Vmo1Ej" is actually a website address, even though it doesn't really look like one. Since the rise of Twitter and other similar services, a bunch of tools have appeared that allow you to turn a long web address (called a URL) into a short one - short enough to be included in a tweet. The one above actually redirects to the full address: http://213.251.145.96/mass-mirror.html. (My personal favourite URL shortener is http://goo.gl/ - but there are plenty of others to choose from).

There are other tricks and shortcuts you can learn too, but you don't actually need any of them to use Twitter. And once you get into it, you'll find you'll pick them up pretty quickly.

What Is Twitter For?

The nice thing about Twitter is that it's not really intended for any specific use... it's a platform. It's entirely up to you, the user, to decide what to do with it.

Some people I know only tweet about life-changing events, others use it to make business announcements. Some use it for sharing interesting things they find on the Internet, others use it to post every inane detail about their day. Some choose not to tweet at all, they only use it to follow other people. I use it for a combination of all these things, depending on the mood I'm in.

But more importantly, I use it to syndicate the content I create. Whenever I post a new entry on this blog it automatically sends out a tweet to my followers with the title and a shortened URL pointing to it. That way my readers don't need to check in here all the time, they can just wait for the next tweet.

Another nice thing about Twitter is that it's connected to everything. I originally started using it when I connected it to my Facebook profile... whenever I tweeted it would automatically copy into Facebook and update my status there. It was easier to update Twitter than Facebook directly. I don't use it for that anymore, but I do use it to post stuff into Google Buzz and LinkedIn.

Plenty of other services are set up to send stuff to your Twitter account, so when you do things on the other site, it automatically tweets about it. Supported services include Foursquare, YouTube, Blogger, Wordpress, MySpace, Posterous, Tungle and a bunch of others. Twitter can really become a kind of hub of your online life.

(Incidentally when you post your Foursquare checkins to Twitter, which then forwards them to Google Buzz, you can make your Foursquare posts appear on your Google Maps... which is pretty cool)

So It's Just Another Internet Toy?

Well it can be, but it can also be a serious tool. More and more companies are starting to use Twitter as a way of syndicating their web content and engaging with their customers.

For example, in the same way I have this blog hooked up to my Twitter account, you could hook your company's website up to a special Twitter account made for your company. Every time you post a news item to your company website, it would send out a tweet... then your staff and clients who follow your brand on Twitter would all have that post appear in their Twitter feeds.

Online news sources use that feature really well (like @News24 and @EWNUpdates), but other companies use it all the time too, like @NuMetro, @google and even @twitter themselves.

Customer engagement is a nifty way of using Twitter too. When a customer is upset about your company, odds are they'll go onto the Internet and complain about it... and Twitter is a place where that happens often. If you set up a search on your brand name, you can instantly spot when people are talking about you and respond to them then and there: in real time and in public.

A few months ago I had a frustrating customer experience with MTN... I wasn't getting any joy through the usual channels. (Full disclosure: I'm not only an MTN customer, but I've done some work for MTN as an outside consultant in the past) When I eventually tweeted about my frustration, I got an almost immediate response from @MTNSouthAfrica who worked quickly to help resolve my problem. I was sorted that same day.

How Do I Use Twitter?

Well the obvious place is to go straight to http://www.twitter.com/. From there you can do just about all the Twitter stuff you might need to do. You can also download official Twitter apps for your smartphone so you can tweet on the go.

If you feel a little limited by the standard Twitter stuff, there is a constellation of 3rd-party Twitter clients available. One important difference between the official Twitter apps and these 3rd-party ones is that usually the others will allow you to use more than one Twitter account, whereas the official ones don't. This may be useful if, for example, you manage your own personal Twitter account as well as one for your company's brand. With a decent 3rd-party client, you can manage them both from one screen.

Although there are many to choose from, my personal favourite is TweetDeck. TweetDeck comes with a version for your desktop/laptop (whether it's Windows, Mac or Linux), or a version for your smartphone (if you use iPhone or Android) that works in much the same way. Not only does TweetDeck allow you to have multiple Twitter accounts hooked in, but you can also connect your Facebook, Foursquare and Google Buzz accounts and use them all from the same application.

TweetDeck clients

If you'd rather not install extra software on your computer, you can always use HootSuite - a tool similar to TweetDeck, but it runs inside your browser window. HootSuite also has matching smartphone apps with the same sort of functionality.

When it comes to connecting your Twitter account to your other accounts, that's usually pretty easy: when you're on a site you're hoping to connect, just look for a button saying "Connect to Twitter" or something similar... you'll usually need to login to your Twitter account to grant permission, then you're away and tweeting!

When you sign up to Twitter, don't forget to follow me, @owenswart, and be sure to let me know you're there so I can follow you back!

Head in the Clouds

2010-11-29T12:10:00.001+02:00

On this blog and elsewhere, you've probably come across the term "cloud computing". If you're not familiar with system architecture, the term is rather obscure... and as we know, obscurity can be a bit scary.

But fear not. Not only is cloud computing not all that scary, but it's something you could be using to your benefit!

What Is It?

The term "cloud computing" is a reference to an old practice in system architecture design... in the design documents, a cloud symbol has been traditionally used to represent the Internet. So, in essence, cloud computing is Internet computing, where the kinds of work that is traditionally done by your own computer instead happens on some anonymous server somewhere on the Internet.

Another, more familiar, term for cloud computing is "hosted services", where your data and/or software is physically hosted by another company on your behalf.

What's It For?

Just about anything really. Cloud computing refers to the way your data and software work, but what you use that data and software for is up to you. These days, you can do just about anything in a cloud-based service that you can do with normal software, although not everyone is ready to make the full transition yet.

Let's look at one of the most common uses for cloud computing: backups.

Backing Up to the Cloud

As anyone who has ever lost data can tell you, one of the most important bits of your technology infrastructure is the ability to create and access backups. In case your computer crashes or gets stolen, you still need access to your important stuff.

External Hard Drive

A popular solution to this problem is an external hard drive: a shiny box sitting next to your computer where you can manually save copies of your files. But what if someone breaks into your office and steals your computer? What's stopping them from stealing your hard drive too?

Another common solution is to have a backup server somewhere on your network, usually sitting with the boys in IT downstairs. You might be able to access a shared drive where you can store copies of your documents in case something happens to your machine. But what if your office building burns down with both your computer and the backup server inside it?

A better option, surely, would be to save your backups somewhere far away, but still easy to get to. And that's what cloud-based backups do: you upload your files (either manually or automatically) to a server somewhere in the cloud. If something happens to your computer, you can just log into your account from another computer and be up and working again in minutes!

But what if something happens to the cloud server? Well, that's not your problem. That server has its own team of engineers and technicians whose job it is to worry about exactly that. They manage backups of your backups, disaster recovery plans and rollover servers on your behalf, so that you don't have to. Even if the worst happens, odds are the only impact on you will be that their service might be unavailable for a few minutes.

Outsource the Risk

And therein lies the biggest advantage to cloud computing: the cloud guys manage the risk so you don't have to. All you need to do is pay the subscription fee (if there is one) and they'll handle all the hard work. As long as you've got an Internet connection, your stuff will be working.

For personal use, I use DropBox for my cloud-based backups. It creates a folder on your computer, and any files you put in the folder are automatically uploaded to the cloud. If you install DropBox on another computer, it downloads all those files to that computer and then keeps them synced. There are even apps that allow you to access your DropBox from your smartphone, and it gives you the ability to share files and folders with your friends or with the Internet. All for free (or for a modest fee if you need more space).

There are also cloud-based backups available for more specific uses: Picasa Web Albums allows you to backup and share your photos, Evernote keeps a copy of your notes (including audio and photographic notes) in the cloud and so on. And there are plenty others to choose from.

Most cloud-based backup services offer a free service intended for personal use, as well as an upgraded paid-version (with more space, added features and that sort of thing) for more active users or corporates.

If you haven't already got yourself a backup space in the cloud, what are you waiting for? Go!

Meetings: The Enemy of Productivity

2010-11-22T12:42:00.001+02:00

Let's say, hypothetically, you've been invited to a meeting. Sitting around the table are six of your company's employees, with an average pay-rate of R150 an hour. The meeting lasts two hours. That meeting has just cost your company R1800, plus the extra coffee, print-outs and Choice Assorted biscuits, as well as the lost time that could have been spent doing actual work. Was it worth it?

How often do these sorts of meetings actually produce valuable outcomes? Have you ever suspected that some people arrange meetings all the time because they don't have enough work to do?

There are plenty of ways of optimising meetings (such as setting a time-limit, removing the chairs from the room and so on), but since this is a technology blog, I'm going to look at some technological alternatives to having meetings.

When looking for a technology to replace the need for a meeting, let's first look at what the meeting is about.

The Team/Company Announcement (aka the "Town Hall" meeting)

Most companies don't have these too often... maybe once every few months or so. But do we need to have them at all? What's the point of gathering all those expensive people into one room anyway? To give them all the same message at the same time, right?

Isn't there an easier, cheaper way of getting a message out to a large group of people simultaneously?

Well yes: email.

Email is effectively free, and all your staff should have access to it. (If they don't, how are you still in business? It's 2010!) Sending one email costs the same as sending 100 000 of them, and each employee can take the time to read through it when is most convenient for them, without disrupting their busy days.

Of course you may be concerned that your message may not convey well in text format... you'd really rather your staff get to see your face and hear the tone of your voice. This is a valid concern, and fortunately there's a solution to that too: video.

With the webcam on your laptop (or even the camera on your smartphone), you can record a video message (doing multiple takes, if necessary) and put it in a place where your staff can access it and view it at their convenience. If you have an Intranet site, you can post it there. If you don't, you can post it on a free video-hosting site like YouTube and send the link to your staff (just be sure to set the privacy options correctly).

YouTube is a particularly appealing option, since it gives you the ability to provide your staff with a public discussion board on the video page, where they can engage with you and each other about the message you were trying to get across.

The Collaboration Meeting

These sorts of meetings tend to be roughly equivalent to telephone calls in terms of the kind of conversation that takes place. The added benefit of being in the same room together is the ability to share references: printed documents and other visual aids. But how often does actual work take place in a forum like this?

More likely, two workers will have to have several such meetings in which they bring each other up-to-speed on their respective progress, and share input to help each other move forward. Are these constant interruptions really the best way to do that?

Other than the obvious way to share documents with each other, email, there are a few technologies that can provide a more integrated two-way communication flow, particularly when it comes to collaborating on documents. Document collaboration tools are ubiquitous now, and if your company has something like Microsoft SharePoint Services or Google Apps, you probably already have access to them. My personal favourite (and a good example of what these things can do) is Google Docs.

Google Docs collaboration

In Google Docs, you can create a document in your document library and "share" it with your colleague. Once you've done that, you can both have the document open at the same time, and can edit it together in real time. Google Docs even has a built-in Google Talk client that lets you chat with your fellow collaborators in real-time, and right inside the document window!

Whether the document is a proposal, presentation or manual you're co-creating, or a task-list for work happening in another application, a tool like this would probably eliminate the need for most of those meetings. In fact, there's no real limit to the number of collaborators who can share the same document - your whole team could be editing the same task list at once!

The Project Meeting

In my own experience, these are probably the most time-consuming meetings in any given company. They generally require the presence of each member of a project team, even though most of them are only involved with one small part of the project, and don't really need to know, in detail, what's going on in the rest of the project.

So for however long the meeting lasts, probably a substantial portion of the attendees are effectively wasting their time: sitting around with no real contribution to make, and having to listen to people talking about things that don't really interest or concern them.

Now that's not to say that there's no value in these sorts of meetings, but wouldn't it make more sense if those people were able to carry on with actual work during the parts of the meeting that don't affect them directly?

Skype Conference Call

One old-school solution to this is the conference-call, although newer tools have made these easier and more productive. Tools like Microsoft Lync and Skype allow multiple participants to join in on an audio conversation while sitting at their desks (or on the road via their smartphones), carrying on with other work. They can even do it while wearing comfy headsets so they don't have to hold that old phone up to their ear or annoy their coworkers by using a speakerphone.

These tools even allow you to share an image of your computer desktop with the meeting, in case you need to demonstrate something to the group, and they have an accompanying text-chat that allows you to send things like addresses, names, numbers and links through to everyone or to one person at a time.

The One-on-One Meeting

Although two co-workers who sit close to each other would correctly surmise that a quick face-to-face would likely be a quicker and cheaper alternative to a phone call or Instant Messaging session, what if your workers aren't close together? Do you really want them to drive across town for no reason other than to have a meeting?

What if they could get all the benefits of a face-to-face meeting, without having to leave their desks?

Google Talk Video Chat

Video-conferencing is no longer the domain of the large multi-national corporation. If you have a webcam (which most laptops have built-in by now) and an Internet connection, you can video-conference. Most Instant Messaging applications have a built-in video chat feature. And since both participants are sitting at their computers, they can share any and all supporting material through the other channels, as mentioned above.

Video chat can even be used less formally for remote-workers... setting up an all-day video chat session can give them the sense that they're sitting in the office, and make them feel more part of the team.

Try to Have Less Meetings

In general, like telephone calls, meetings tend to be overused because people don't think through the true cost and implications of spending all that time and effort, and what the potential gain might be.

As a rule, I would suggest implementing a policy where staff need to motivate for having a meeting - to make a case for why they need to pull everyone else away from their desks and why the other tools at their disposal aren't adequate. I think you'll find that your coffee and Choice Assorted budget may start to look better after a few weeks.

Where Are You?

2010-11-16T16:58:00.000+02:00

Scooby Doo: Where Are You?

If your business includes mobile workers - sales-people, consultants, drivers or that sort of thing - odds are somebody, somewhere in your company probably has to ask that question several times a day: "Where are you?"

Here's a scenario: you and one of your mobile workers are headed to a meeting at a client's premises first thing in the morning. You get there on time, but your colleague hasn't arrived yet. The meeting is starting, but there's still no sign of him. What do you do?

What most people would do is pick up the phone and ask "Where are you?" But think about that for a sec. Your colleague is likely well aware that he's late for the meeting. He's probably frantically dealing with traffic, trying to avoid getting traffic fines, and grasping to the only remaining thread of his last frayed nerve. Do you really want to add to his stress by making him answer his phone in traffic, distracting him, and possibly even causing an accident?

No, of course you don't. But you also need to know what's happening so you can deal with the client in his absence.

Here's another scenario: You've been CC'd on an urgent email to one of your staff regarding a crisis at one of your clients' offices. You've seen her response to the mail indicating that she's on her way. This is an important client, and you'd like to know when she arrives so you can breathe a little easier.

What most people would do is insist that she call you as soon as she gets there. But then you don't really want to break her stride... after all, she has important work to do there. Do you really need to disrupt her while she's busy placating a distraught client? But you need the info!

Fortunately there are some tools that can help us in these sorts of situations, and they don't require tapping into access control systems or installing GPS trackers in your employees' cars. They are what we call "Location-based Social Networking Tools".

You may recognise the term "social networking" as being the sort of thing that includes Facebook and Twitter. Location-based social networking tools fall into that category too, but as the name suggests, they're all about three things: location, location and location.

In broad terms, there are two different kinds of these tools: live location transmission and check-in based services. Let's take a look at an example of each.

Live Location Transmission Services

As the name suggests, this is a service that transmits the location of the person over the Internet, either in real-time or pretty close to it. The most popular of these services is Google Latitude.

Google Latitude

Latitude works through Google Maps for Mobile which runs on the user's smartphone. It uses a combination of GPS and network triangulation to figure out approximately where the phone is, and therefore where the person is. It then sends periodic updates back to the Latitude server over the Internet, which then forwards that information to the user's contact list.

If you and everyone on your team were using Latitude, you would be able, at a glance, to see where each of them are (or were as recently as a few minutes ago, depending on when the server last updated their position), laid out on a Google Map either on your own smartphone, or on the Latitude website.

This would be perfect for that first scenario: you're sitting in the client's meeting room waiting for your colleague. Wondering where he is, you whip out your smartphone and open Google Maps. You can now see that 11 minutes ago he was on or near the highway, roughly half-way between his home and the client's office. You can safely assume he probably won't be there for a while still, so you can suggest to the client that you start the meeting without him.

A new added feature of Latitude is real-time updates. If both you and he are using Android smartphones, you can set Latitude to give you minute-by-minute updates of his location for a short duration. This feature will probably be available on other smartphones in the near future too.

Check-in Based Services

These require a little more effort from the user than the other kind: when the user arrives at a place, she has to "check in", or inform the service that she's actually arrived. That information is then relayed via the service to her contacts. The biggest name in check-in based services is Foursquare.

Foursquare

Like Latitude, Foursquare is designed to run on smartphones. Although any mobile device with a web browser can use it. To check in, the user opens up the Foursquare app on their smartphone and waits for it to load a list of nearby venues (like Latitude, Foursquare knows where the phone is, more-or-less). The user then selects the relevant venue (the client's office, for example) and clicks the "check-in" button. Everyone on her contact list can now see that she's checked in there.

If you're one of her Foursquare friends, you can set your own Foursquare app to alert you when she checks in. Alternatively you can watch her Foursquare profile page on the Foursquare website, or you can plug your own Foursquare account into a Twitter client like TweetDeck or Hootsuite.

If you already use Facebook or Twitter, you can connect up your accounts and have your Foursquare check-ins transmitted to those other services too.

Things to Consider

As with most things, there are a few caveats here.

Privacy: some people aren't comfortable with the idea of their phone telling the Internet where they are. They find it creepy, and words like "Big Brother" come to mind. Before implementing a location-based tool as a policy, it's probably a good idea to discuss it with your team first. Also, look into the privacy policy of the tool in question so you can answer your team's questions. It might even be a good idea to try it yourself for a while with your friends and family so you can get a feel for it, and encourage your team to do the same.

As with most social networking tools, while they may have business applications, they are designed for personal use. Try to respect your team's privacy, and keep an open mind about what you see on their profiles.

Precision and accuracy: Given that both of these services (and the vast majority of others like them, including Facebook Places and The Grid) are free of charge, you won't be able to get a 100% guarantee. Latitude is sometimes imprecise, showing a location that isn't actually where the user is, or having a large margin for error (indicated by a blue circle on your map). Foursquare, being a relatively small company, sometimes gets inundated and their service has to be taken offline for a couple of hours here or there.

If you're going to be using these tools, keep in mind that they shouldn't be used as anything more than a convenience. They're not (yet) reliable enough to use as evidence for things like KPIs.

Cost: Although these services are free to use, they both require transmission of data over the Internet, which can have a cost. If you aren't already, it would probably be a good idea to offer some kind of subsidy towards your team's cellphone bill to compensate for it.

I've used both of these services for personal and business reasons for quite some time, and I find them very useful. Another feature of both tools is that they keep a history you can refer back to later - particularly handy when filling in timesheets and that sort of thing. Even if you're not likely to use them for your team or mobile workers, I'd recommend checking them out for yourself, just for the fun of it!

How To Choose a Smartphone

2010-11-11T18:41:00.002+02:00

By now you should be well aware of the benefits having a smartphone offers: the ability to be fully productive while out of the office. If you haven't already got one, buying a new smartphone can be a daunting prospect. There are so many options to choose from, which is the best one for me?

One important thing to bear in mind is that, despite what the marketing says, all smartphones do pretty much the same things:

Internet connectivity: web, Email and instant messaging;
Personal data: contacts, calendar, notes;
GPS and navigation;
Camera: stills and video;
Media: music and videos;
Third party applications (apps).

The differentiating factor between different smartphones is not really what they do, but rather how they do it. An important thing to remember when looking at smartphones is that they are essentially small computers. Like computers, smartphones have different operating systems.

When dealing with computers, there are only two or three different operating systems you're likely to encounter: Windows, Mac and Linux. Smartphones have a wider variety of different operating systems. I'll take a look at the most popular ones available on the South African market.

Nokia Symbian devices

Although you may not realise it, odds are you've already used a Symbian device. Most Nokia cellphones are running a version of the Symbian operating system. The middle-range Nokia phones are mostly using a version of Symbian called Series 40. High-end Nokia phones mostly use Symbian Series 60, and are classified as smartphones.

Although Symbian Series 60 (S60) has been the top selling smartphone operating system for several years, this is unfortunately no longer the case. New applications for S60 aren't being released as quickly as they once were. Choosing to go with an S60 device today means, most likely, that for at least the next two years you will be perpetually behind the times.

That said, two very good reasons to go with Symbian are:

Familiarity. If you're already accustomed to using a Nokia device you may prefer to go for Symbian because it will be easier to learn to use than going with an entirely new operating system. You already know your way around the menus, and are familiar with the various pop-up menus. If the thought of learning a new device from scratch makes you nervous, that's something to consider.
GPS. In my experience Nokia has the best native navigation application of all the mobile platforms: Ovi Maps. The maps are free and accurate, and the interface is familiar and easy to use.

(Nokia is not the only company that makes Symbian devices, but non-Nokia symbian devices are becoming more and more rare.)

BlackBerry devices

By now you've probably seen several of your friends with their shiny new BlackBerries. They're becoming increasingly popular in corporate South Africa. Although BlackBerry has, like Symbian, become somewhat dated technology, it's doing very well here for one simple reason: BlackBerry devices come with unlimited on-device data on contract. This means that all emailing, chatting and web surfing you do on the actual BlackBerry device is free.

Considering the high data charges of mobile contracts in general, this is a pretty sweet deal. A lot of people are quite happy to put up with old-fashioned technology if it means free Internet.

RIM are the only company licensed to distribute BlackBerry devices, which means that there's a nice synergy between them: once you've mastered one BlackBerry, the rest are easy to use. Although the interface isn't terribly intuitive, once you get the hang of it, it really makes sense. You'll tend to find that once someone goes BlackBerry, it's hard to get them to consider any other device.

One warning: if you're hoping to connect your BlackBerry to your work email account, you might experience some difficulty if they haven't installed the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. BlackBerry is specifically designed for that sort of thing, but it works best with that server software in place.

iPhone 4

I'm sure you've seen one of these beauties by now too. Like most Apple products, iPhones are beautifully constructed and very well designed. The interface is simple and intuitive, and despite the fact that it's a powerful computer, it doesn't overwhelm you with complexity.

The thing about iPhones is that the Apple corporation is very strict about what can and can't be done with their devices. Apple puts strict limitations on what sorts of apps you can install, and what features of the device are available to you. Some people find that comforting, as it eliminates the added complexity. Others find it limiting.

Another thing to note is that, at any given time, there's only one iPhone. At the moment it's the iPhone 4. There's no choice between different devices with different specs, and there's no way of upgrading the one you've got (as opposed to most other smartphones, which have upgradeable memory). Again, some people like the simplicity, others don't.

Android Devices

Although I've been a Symbian man for 6 years, this year I decided to try something new: I went for an Android device. And I am so glad I did. And I'm not alone, Android is currently the top-selling smartphone platform in the US.

Android is an operating system developed by Google and provided to various handset manufacturers to power their smartphone devices. These include Sony Ericsson, Motorola, HTC, LG and Samsung.

Android was designed to compete directly with iPhone, and so has a similar visual appearance. But the important difference between iPhone and Android, is that Android gives you virtually unlimited choices. Not only can you choose from a variety of handsets (each with its own customisations and feature sets: this one has a better camera, that one has a bigger screen, some have slide-out keyboards, others don't, and so on), but Google places no real limitations on what applications you can install.

In fact, Android is so open and comes with so many options that this is it's most oft-cited criticism: that all the choice it offers can be overwhelming and confusing to the first-time buyer. That's probably true, so if you're thinking of trying an Android device (and I strongly recommend it), it might be a good idea to ask a friend who already has one to help you choose the right one for you.

Another down-side to using Android (and the iPhone, to some extent) in South Africa is that not all the services on the device are available here yet. For example, the Android default navigation tool is Google Maps, which works beautifully. But unfortunately Google haven't switched on the Voice Navigation service for us here yet, which means you have to tweak it or install other software in order to get it going. These things are just a matter of time, but they can be frustrating.

Windows Phone 7 devices

These aren't as common as the others I've mentioned, but you may have come across them from time to time. This isn't the best time to be talking about Windows-based smartphones, since Microsoft have just released the latest version: Windows Phone 7, which should reach our shores any day now.

Previous Windows smartphones were designed to replicate the familiar Windows desktop environment on the phone, as well as to integrate neatly with your Windows computer. Windows Phone 7 is, by all accounts, a little different in that it's less focussed on linking up with your Windows PC, and more focussed on connecting to your Windows Live ID (Microsoft's online community service which links up to a bunch of different social networking and cloud computing services).

Like Android, Windows devices aren't limited to one manufacturer, and you're likely to find Windows Phones made by HTC, Samsung, Dell, HP and Sony Ericsson, as well as several others.

Others
You're likely to come across other smartphone platforms such as Palm's WebOS, Nokia's Maemo and Samsung's Bada. Although these are all perfectly capable in their own right, they all share a limiting factor: low adoption rates.

The more popular a platform is, the more likely it is to continue being updated, and to be supported by third-party application developers. Each has its advantages and benefits, but in general I would advise going for one of the more popular ones I've mentioned above.

If you work in or close to the corporate world, a smartphone is becoming less of a geek-toy and more of a necessity. If you're thinking about getting one, my advice would be to go for it.

When making your decision, I'd suggest whittling it down to a short-list. Some factors to consider would be:

Camera quality: do the extra megapixels count? Do you want a front-facing camera for video-chat too?
Interface design: touch-screen, "qwerty" keyboard, numeric keypad or some combination of these?
Compatibility: some platforms work better with the tools you already use, like Android works best with Google Apps, iPhone works best with iTunes and Windows Phone works best with Windows Live.
Third-party apps: developers of new apps tend to favour one or two platforms. At the moment the most popular are iPhone and Android.
Appearance: looks matter to some people - do you need a sexy-looking iPhone or a serious-looking BlackBerry?

Once you've got your short-list, I'd recommend going down to your local cellular operator's store and trying out the demo units, just to make sure you're happy with the device you're buying. In all likelihood it'll soon become an indispensable extension of your body... best make sure you get the best one for your needs.

Facebook Isn't (Necessarily) The Enemy

2010-11-08T09:58:00.000+02:00

Mentioning the name "Facebook" in a business context will likely cause a round of eye-rolling and complaints about workers wasting valuable time on what is generally perceived as a leisure activity.

This view is so common that many companies go so far as to block Facebook from their Internet firewalls, with the intent of preventing their staff from Facebooking on company time - a step that will usually drive the more resourceful staff members to find alternate means of accessing Facebook on company time.

While it's true that Facebook certainly is used as a personal, recreational toy, there's no denying the fact that your staff will be on Facebook if they really want to, regardless of what steps you take to stop them. So instead of fighting it, why not consider using Facebook to your advantage?

Tip #1: Group Accountability

The interesting thing about Facebook is that it's difficult to do anything there that your friends won't see. If you're playing FarmVille or filling in "Which Twilight Character Are You?" quizzes, your friends will usually get a notification in their news feeds about it.

If everyone in your company is on Facebook and are friends with each other, they can all keep an eye on each other. Everyone is accountable to everyone else! If Jenny in Accounting is playing Mafia Wars at ten in the morning, everyone else can see it happening. Odds are, after being called out on it the first time by Martha in the next cubicle, Jenny will probably wait until lunch time before trying it again.

Tip #2: Social Calendar

A lot of companies these days have a vibrant social calendar, filled with company braais, birthday lunches and end-year functions. Using ordinary tools like email to arrange these things can be frustrating. Designing fancy PowerPoint invitations, managing RSVPs and sending out announcements to attendees can get pretty time-consuming for whoever is in charge of arranging it. And then there's the problem of sending out the photos afterwards... it's enough to crash your email server!

Fortunately this is a problem that Facebook has already solved. Facebook Events is a clean and simple tool designed specifically for this sort of thing. Invitations can be made up in a couple of minutes, attendee lists are managed right from the event page, changes and updates are automatically sent to everyone and there's even a special place for posting the photos!

The discussion board on the Facebook Events page provides an added dimension by giving you a place for staff members to discuss the event, helping to generate excitement beforehand, and hopefully enhancing the whole experience.

Tip #3: Extra Communication Tools

Above all else, Facebook is essentially a communication platform. It has a variety of tools built into it intended for an array of different functions:

Facebook Messages are a lot like emails, with the ability to attach links, images and videos, but using less bandwidth than an email ordinarily would because the attachment is only downloaded if the recipient actually decides to view it;
Facebook Groups allow you to create separate communities within Facebook that can be used for private discussions - you could create one for your company, one for each department and one for each team;
Facebook Chat is a basic Instant Messaging client built on an open standard, so it will work on most 3rd-party chat applications as well;
Your Wall is a place you can post thoughts, ideas and interesting sites you may have found on the web. This can be announcements, questions or links to news items relevant to your business;
Facebook Pages are like a mini-website for your brand within Facebook, with built-in communication tools that let you engage with your clients in the social space.

And so on. Facebook is also constantly updating, improving and revising their tools, so expect more useful stuff in the future.

Be Careful

One ongoing criticism of Facebook is about its privacy policies. Although that shouldn't scare you away, it's important to make sure your staff are using their privacy settings properly, so as to avoid embarrassing or awkward situations.

If you're going to be using Facebook as a tool for your business, I would strongly suggest that you encourage one or more of your staff to become experts on Facebook's privacy tools, and to train the rest of your staff on how to use them properly.

An important thing to keep in mind, especially when making a transition into the social networking space, is that this is an area where your staff have been doing all sorts of personal things up till now. They may have some embarrassing photos or other posts on their profiles that even they might not be aware of (you might have some too!). Try to keep an open mind about what you see there, but at the same time work with them to learn restraint and etiquette on how to behave properly and professionally on Facebook.

Keeping the Lines Open

2010-11-04T13:30:00.001+02:00

Although it seems that the telephone isn't generally the optimal communication medium to use, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that most people aren't yet aware of that fact. As a result, many, if not most, businesses still need to make themselves available to clients over the phone.

In medium-sized businesses where most workers are equipped with a telephone on their desk, the temptation is to use that phone not only for dealing with customers, but for internal communications as well. That's probably fine, from a cost point of view, as calling from one desk to another behind the same exchange usually doesn't cost anything.

The problem lies in the fact that, in most cases, that phone can only handle one call at a time. If one of your sales people happens to be calling a helpdesk agent to arrange a meeting, for the duration of that call, any customer calling in will be unable to reach either one of them, which defeats the purpose of having the phone to begin with.

The same is true of companies that have field agents who traditionally use their cellphones to communicate with each other and the head office. The more they need to do that, the less reachable they are to customers and prospective customers.

In a previous post, I've covered the fact that sometimes a phone call is necessary. But what about when it isn't? What tool should be used for intra-office communication that leaves the phone lines open?

Email is an option, but it's often too slow and cumbersome for a quick message exchange. SMS costs too much. The logical alternative is Instant Messaging.

For the uninitiated, Instant Messaging (IM) is a tool that allows users to communicate directly with each other via a text-based interface through a computer or smartphone. The IM application will usually be able to broadcast the user's availability (as in: Logged In, Away or Busy) which can indicate whether it would be best to use IM or some other means of reaching the person.

Odds are, many of your staff are probably already using IM between themselves, but in order to ensure a certain level of standardisation, you may want to consider formalising a policy around it, and declaring an official IM tool for everyone to use.

As with most things in technology, there are a variety of IM tools to choose from, each with its own strengths and limitations. I'll look at a few of the more popular ones.

Skype

You've probably heard of Skype as the tool used by families and friends to stay in touch over long distances via video chat. But Skype is more than just a video chat application, it's also a voice and text chat tool supporting some interesting extras like ad-hoc online meeting rooms and calling out to ordinary phones.

Wikimedia

Skype is probably the best known of the IM clients, and as a result is already pretty ubiquitous. There are Skype applications that run on all popular desktop computer operating systems, as well as most of the more popular smartphones.

The basic service is free, and the software is relatively easy to install across all your company's computers.

Google Talk

If your company runs its email hosting through Google Apps, you already have a Google Talk feature available to you (although it may need to be activated by your Domain Administrator).

Wikimedia

Google Talk has all the same features as Skype with one important exception: it's not strictly necessary to install a Google Talk application on a computer in order to use it. Google Talk can work inside your Internet browser window when you log into your Google Mail page. It also interfaces with your existing Google Contacts and allows you to launch chat conversations with those contacts even from inside an email.

Like Skype, there are Google Talk applications available for most platforms (if you feel it necessary to install one), but unlike Skype, Google Talk is built on an "open" standard called Jabber/XMPP. This means that any third-party application developer may create an application that will allow you to use Google Talk through it. So for those platforms that don't already have a native application available (such as Nokia Symbian phones), there are third-party ones that work just as well (such as Fring).

Microsoft Lync

If your company uses Microsoft Exchange for email, you should already have access to Microsoft Lync (or its predecessor, Microsoft Windows Messenger). It may need to be installed by your Domain Administrator.

Lync is the corporate version of the popular Windows Live Messenger (sometimes still referred to as "MSN Messenger").

Wikemedia

Lync supports most of the same features included in Skype and Google Talk, but with one important difference. Lync can be set up to run on your own internal server. Where Skype and Google Talk both require access to the Internet to work, Lync doesn't need it. If Internet access is limited or otherwise restricted for your company, you may prefer to go with a locally hosted alternative.

The down-side of this, of course, is that your remote workers and field agents would find it more difficult to log into Lync from their smartphones or home offices.

IBM Lotus SameTime

SameTime is IBM's answer to Microsoft Lync, and works in a very similar way. If your company uses Lotus Notes for email, you probably already have access to SameTime.

Ed Brill

Of the services listed, SameTime is probably the least supported IM service by software platform providers. Although SameTime comes built into Lotus Notes for Windows, Mac or Linux, connecting to SameTime from a smartphone can be very difficult or even impossible.

These are merely the tip of the iceberg. Other popular IM tools include AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and Facebook Chat as well as a plethora of less popular services geared at a variety of different uses. If one of the big names mentioned above don't suit your purposes, there are plenty more to choose from.

Having tried all the ones I've listed here, my personal recommendation goes to Google Talk. I find it to have the most pleasant and consistently good user experience, and it's integration into all my other Google services makes it a pleasure to use. If I were to offer one criticism of Google Talk, it would be that there is currently no one Google Talk application that supports all the features. The desktop client supports a different array of features to the Gmail client, which is different to the web gadget and so on. Hopefully Google will release a new, comprehensive version in the near future.

Put Down the Phone: 4 Steps to Choosing a Better Communication Medium

2010-11-02T09:09:00.002+02:00

By Takkk [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

For decades now, arguably the single most valuable and powerful business tool has been the telephone. Thanks to the telephone's speed, high fidelity and relatively low cost it has become virtually indispensable as a communication medium.

But in the 21st century, is the telephone still as relevant as it once was? Should it still be the default communication tool for business, to the exclusion of all else?

I argue that it isn't, and it shouldn't.

That's not to say the telephone doesn't still have it's place, but it seems that that place is no longer at the top of the podium. Other tools like email, Instant Messaging and SMS are often a superior choice.

But how do we determine which medium we should use for the given message?

There are four factors to take into account:

1. Speed:

How fast do you need to get your message across? How soon do you need an answer? It may be quick and easy to pick up a phone and call someone for a quick answer, but is it really necessary? Do you really need an answer so urgently that you risk intruding on the time of the person you're calling? Is it worth interrupting a meeting or disturbing a concentrating worker?

If you can wait a few minutes for an answer, perhaps a better option would be an SMS or an Instant Message. If you don't need an answer for a few hours, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message might be more suitable.

Especially given the ubiquity of cellphones, the telephone call remains unrivaled when it comes to speed. The ability to exchange ideas in a quick-fire exchange has tremendous value under the right circumstances. But faster isn't always better.

2. Fidelity:

Does it matter how much of the message makes it through? Is it short and easy or long and detailed?

Communicating by voice (be it on the phone or in a meeting) is most efficient when the message itself is concise and clear. A brief discussion providing updates on a topic both participants already understand well would be a good example of this. In this case, if portions of the message are lost due to poor audio quality or loss of signal, the impact is low as the receiver already understands the context of the message, and likely only needs to hear a few key words in order to make sense of it.

However, when conveying messages that need to be delivered in full, voice communication is seldom the best choice. This could be things like long numbers, detailed descriptions, unfamiliar terminology or proper names - things that the receiver would need to understand completely, and may even need to refer back to later.

In this sort of situation, text-based communication would be the logical choice. Providing the information in text form allows the receiver to interact with it as needed, which may include being able to copy and paste it into another system.

When it comes to fidelity, the telephone comes out at the bottom of the pile.

3. Cost

It's a valuable exercise in and of itself to try and save on costs, but is it worth it to invest a little more to get an urgent message out?

Most of the alternative communication media I've mentioned above have a cost of zero or near zero: email, Insant Messaging, Facebook messaging, Twitter... these are all Internet-based technologies that cost only as much as it takes to send the actual bits and bytes via the Internet... in other words, effectively zero.

Contrast this with a telephone call which is often billed by the second. A cost comparison between an Instant Message conversation and a telephone call used to convey the same information will often reveal that the phone call cost several orders of magnitude more.

Now, as mentioned above, the telephone call is the fastest tool available. That being the case, there may well be occasions when the extra expense is justified in order to get the quick response. But how often is that really the case?

4. Persistence

Arguably the biggest failing of the telephone conversation is that, under normal circumstances, once the call has ended, there is no record of the content of that call other than in the respective brains of the participants. Human memory as a storage medium may be adequate under certain circumstances, but when it comes to detailed knowledge or sensitive information, it's simply not good enough.

One solution is to record telephone conversations for later reference, but this often has legal implications, and probably shouldn't be entered into lightly. Another popular solution is "following up" the phone call with an email containing the details of what was discussed.

Here's the question I've yet to hear a good answer to: if you're going to send an email after the phone call anyway, why not just save everybody the time and money, skip the phone call and just send the email? Is it really necessary to have a voice conversation first? Really?

Written communication media are generally easy to refer back to, easy to back-up and easy to redistribute. No need to remember what the conversation entailed if it's possible to refer back to the original text, and no need for "broken telephone" when passing it on to others.

In short, the telephone still has value, but that value is limited only to certain circumstances. Before making that call, think through the four criteria listed above, and ask yourself if the phone really is the best option. You'll probably find that it isn't.