via mashable.com
woensdag 5 december 2012
zondag 2 december 2012
Top 5 Spotify Apps For Music Discovery
via readwrite.com
Spotify wasn't built for discovery. The Swedish music streaming company realizes this and instead of trying to natively bake a zillion features into its service, it launched a platform for third party developers about a year ago.
Spotify's app directory now features almost 60 HTML5-based add-ons for the service's desktop client. These apps perform a lot of different functions - some are social, while others sonically augment album reviews from big name publishers. The thing for which they're probably most useful is discovering music you might like but may never have heard otherwise. verder
zondag 4 november 2012
Glow-in-the-Dark Highways Coming to the Netherlands
The Netherlands is hoping to spice up its highways, with a futuristic solution for safer driving conditions and greener technology.
By mid-2013, the country will use photo-luminizing powder to replace road markings and ultimately produce glow-in-the-dark tarmacs, Wired.Co.UK reports.
The powder will charge on sunlight, soaking up enough energy to power 10 hours worth of highway light during nighttime. Special paint will also be used to draw snowflakes across the roads. The snowflakes will only become visible when the temperature dips to a certain point, indicating to commuters that the surface is likely slippery.
Within the next five years, the Netherlands hopes to add intera…
Continue reading...More About: Netherlands, driving, trending
iPad mini is already popping up in car dashboards (video)
A day after Apple’s new iPad mini tablets hit retail shelves, people are already starting to do creative things with it.
For example, the guys over at Soundman (who also do the Amplified web show on Revision3) have already installed the smaller tablet into the dashboard of a 2010 Volkswagen CC.
The iPad mini connects using Bluetooth wireless, and is held in place within the dashboard by using magnets. Yes, that means you don’t have to leave your new $330 toy within your vehicle for eager thieves to steal. That’s pretty useful unless you just enjoy paying for new side windows and cleaning up shards of glass.
The smaller size of the iPad mini make it a far more practical option than the regular 10-inch iPad, and certainly easier to use while driving than an iPhone/iPod Touch.
The down side to having this installed into your car is that you risk some really boring drives if you ever lose your iPad mini. Still, it is pretty cool. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Uitklappen
Filed under: Gadgets, Lifestyle
via google.nl
zaterdag 13 oktober 2012
zondag 12 augustus 2012
zondag 1 juli 2012
zondag 17 juni 2012
Coca Cola Security Cameras - YouTube
Je kunt Flash Player downloaden via Adobe. </div> </div></div>
via youtube.com
this is how the world should be!!!
woensdag 6 juni 2012
zondag 27 mei 2012
dinsdag 22 mei 2012
SpaceX Launches the Era of Private Spaceflight
Last night, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It's carrying a reusable spacecraft called Dragon, which can dock with the International Space Station. It's unmanned this time, but it's capable of carrying cargo or crew. This will be the first time a spacecraft built and launched by a private company docks with the station. It's a new era.
via readwriteweb.com
zaterdag 19 mei 2012
Everything You Need to Know About the Social Media Bubble
Are we or aren’t we? When it comes to social media bubbles and whether or not we’re in one, there is no shortage of people willing to argue on each side of the debate.
It doesn’t matter if Facebook finishes Friday, its first day as a publicly-traded company, with a valuation of $105 billion or $75 billion: The debate is sure to get more intense in the coming weeks, months and possibly years. Earlier this month in the buildup to Facebook’s IPO, we took a look at the social media bubble (or lack thereof) in a five-part series that was based on dozens of interviews with experts on both sides of the divide.
via readwriteweb.com
donderdag 17 mei 2012
Twitter Won't Track Your Personal Information If You Opt-Out [Updated]
via gizmodo.com
It's no secret that social networks collect huge amounts of personal information from you. Now Twitter will give you a choice in the matter. 
dinsdag 15 mei 2012
zaterdag 12 mei 2012
vrijdag 11 mei 2012
7 Tips & Tricks To Get The Most Out Of Google Drive
Google Drive is a great service, but installing the application and synchronizing some files is just the first step. These tricks will help you take advantage of Google Drive, both on the desktop and on the web – whether you’re looking to easily synchronize other folders with your Drive or take advantage of the features only available on the website. 
via makeuseof.com
5 Things That You Should Be Using Your Cloud Storage For
Just last week, Google Drive finally shipped and we’re now able to give it a spin to see if it lives up to the expectation of being a Dropbox competitor. Personally, I’ve not given it a hard look yet because, well, Dropbox works! I have a paid Dropbox account and it’s perfect for me. Maybe after a few months of being played with, I’ll feel like Drive is worth jumping into. If you’re new to cloud storage, I won’t blame you for going Google. Both services are great in that they offer a nice chunk of free storage that anyone should be able to put to use. With the cloud’s rising popularity and on-the-go computing as popular as ever in 2012, it’s time for you to get on the ball. But what exactly should you be using Dropbox, Google Drive, or another alternative for? Let me help you figure that. 
via makeuseof.com
zondag 6 mei 2012
zaterdag 5 mei 2012
vrijdag 4 mei 2012
zondag 29 april 2012
zaterdag 28 april 2012
dinsdag 24 april 2012
Google Drive
Ga verder dan opslag. Werk samen.
Met Google Drive kunt u meer doen dan alleen uw bestanden opslaan. Deel bestanden met wie u wilt en bewerk ze samen, vanaf elk apparaat.
Met Google Drive heeft u direct toegang tot Google Documenten, een pakket hulpprogramma's voor bestandsbewerking waarmee de samenwerking beter wordt, zelfs wanneer uw teamgenoten op kilometers afstand zijn.
via drive.google.com
zondag 15 april 2012
woensdag 11 april 2012
maandag 9 april 2012
Windows XP ondersteuning eindigt over 2 jaar - Security.NL
Over precies twee jaar zal Windows XP geen security updates meer ontvangen, wat zo goed als zeker het einde van het dan 12 jaar oude besturingssysteem betekent. Windows XP verscheen op 25 oktober 2001 en krijgt op dinsdag 8 april 2014 de laatste beveiligingsupdates. Daarna stopt Microsoft met het uitbrengen van security updates. De softwaregigant adviseert gebruikers dan ook om op Windows 7 over te stappen.
via security.nl
What Facebook’s world-class engineers will do to Instagram | VentureBeat
Facebook is home to some of the best, brightest hackers in the world. Its brain trust of developers is pretty much legendary, and with today’s Instagram acquisition, some of those developers will be spending time on Instagram now, as well.
“We will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure,” wrote Facebook CEO (and a hacker himself) Mark Zuckerberg in this morning’s announcement. And Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom noted in a blog post, “We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.”
Think about the contrast: Facebook’s campus holds thousands of staffers, including a highly trained army of crack engineers. In fact, Facebook is so dedicated to excellence in engineering that it hosts the annual Hacker Cup, a speed programming competition that requires participants to solve algorithmic puzzles of maddening complexity.
Instagram, on the other hand, has 13 employees, total. They’ve labored hard and well to produce an app that’s loved by 30 million users around the globe, but now they’ve also got the resources of one of the world’s engineering giants.
So, what will Facebook’s engineers be able — and likely — to do to Instagram?
Bug squashing and feature fixes
While Instagram’s team is probably delighted on a strippers-and-blow scale that the staff has remained so tiny right up to a mind-blowing $1 billion acquisition, having a small group of engineers can make bug-squashing a long, slow process filled with not-as-fun-as-they-sound hackathon weekends.
In a brief poll of my Twitter followers, current Instagram power users complained about crop features not working well, among other minor but frustrating issues. We predict that Facebook’s army of mobile devs will first devote their attention to fixing these kinds of clumsy features and squashing any bugs that exist — particularly in the just-launched Android app, which has received its share of complaints about usability issues and bugs.
No interface changes
Facebook is known for its best-in-class engineering team, but only recently has devoted more of its attention to modern, beautiful web design, too. While Facebook’s own Timeline designs are getting much, much better, the site is still seeing heavy user interface competition from newer, more agile apps such as Flipboard and Path.
As a result, we don’t think Facebook will be giving the Instagram team too much input on interface and design, which most users don’t seem to complain about much, anyhow.
Deeper Facebook integrations — but not at Twitter’s expense
We’re sure some of Instagram’s technological ties to Facebook will deepen post-acquisition. How did we come up with that stunning leap of logic, you might ask? Well, we’re somewhere between psychics and geniuses, plus we have a Magic 8 Ball in the newsroom.
But seriously, it would be boneheaded to not presume that Facebook sharing from Instagram will get smoother, shinier, and more interesting now that the two companies are one big happy family.
However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it quite clear in today’s announcement that any relationship with Facebook will not change Instagram’s relationship to other social networks. Twitter sharing will still be there, as will the app’s connection to Tumblr.
A mobile web app — maybe
We’ve been seeing a huge push by Facebook to bring the mobile web to the same level of user experience and technological elegance that you’d see on any other mobile platform, including iOS and Android.
“What we’re not seeing is developers really embracing that mobile web ecosystem the way they’re embracing native… How can we help them understand the mobile web as a viable option?” asked Facebook mobile developer relations dude James Pierce in a recent on-campus meeting with press.
However, Pierce further noted, a mobile web app isn’t the right solution for every application — particularly apps that require hardware and camera access, as Instagram does. “There’s no one answer,” Pierce concluded. “We have that conversation on a one-by-one basis with individual developers.”
Facebook is working with a consortium of mobile heavyweights to bring better tools and benchmarks to the mobile web. In the next few months or years, projects like Ringmark might bring the mobile web up to the standard that an app like Instagram would require — and at that time, it wouldn’t make sense to hold back the hordes of mobile web users from participating in Instagram, as well.
Basically, Facebook’s MO (as expressed to VentureBeat by Facebookers themselves) is to collect every user of every smartphone in the world. iOS is a big part of that. Android is a big part of that — which is why Instagram’s recent move to Android was so important for this acquisition. And the mobile web, believe it or not, is even more important to Facebook than iOS and Android put together.
A decent web presence
Many users would love to see Instagram get a better web presence. While Facebook’s emphasis these days has been all about mobile, the web is that company’s wheelhouse. It’s entirely possible that Facebook’s engineers might make an Instagram web presence that is both beautiful and functional, perhaps beefing up the Instagram APIs along the way.
A gorgeous Timeline integration
Timeline, Facebook’s new look and feel for profiles, is all about images. We can imagine Instagram’s Timeline integrations getting a lot prettier over the next few weeks.
Already, Instagram photos are flooding Timelines at a rate of six photos per second. Since how the images appear on the Timeline is all about structured data — and since how the data is structured is the responsibility of the third-party developers — we can imagine Facebook’s engineers will have a lot more time and resources to make how Instagram photos appear on the site much better organized and more visually interesting, especially for at-a-glance consumption of multiple photos.
Top image courtesy of Diego Cervo, Shutterstock
via venturebeat.com
vrijdag 6 april 2012
zondag 18 maart 2012
If Windows 7 "Simplifies" the PC, What Does Windows 8 Do to It?
All through the Windows 7 promotional tour, Microsoft demonstrated the many ways that the new operating system simplified the PC. Product managers and executives gave the following explanation: They watched the way people work in the real world. They realized these people want to take fewer steps to accomplish the things they do most often. Users don't like to be told what to do, or led into one way of doing things that the designer of the software may prefer. People feel better about their computers when they're not thinking about them as computers - when they can concentrate either on their work or whatever they may be having fun with. The operating system should say hello, welcome, and then get out of the way.
If these things were all true as recently as 2009, what manner of cataclysm upset the balance of the universe so horrifically as to have made black white, and to replaced Windows 7's design philosophy with that of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview? As I run through these examples with you, as an exercise, imagine explaining them to your mother.
The Search for Start
Dividing a smartphone's small screen into eight or nine tiled blocks, makes sense and makes the phone easier to control. Using the same logic to divide a larger PC screen into dozens of mosaic blocks, does not do either. Does any Web site you've ever used, work like this? Or to be more specific, any Web site since 1998?
What makes the Windows 7 Start Menu work well (which I said at the time of its release) was its simple, two-column division: things you typically use on the left, things you typically do on the right. I typically open a Network window to see which computers in my office are functional. I open up documents I've been working on recently. And to search for stuff, what could be simpler than simply typing what it is you're searching for?
One aspect of Windows 8 design - which was literally explained to me in a positive light using these words - is that you'll learn how to do something once you've discovered it for yourself. It is not obvious from the Windows 8 Start screen that you can still just type something and Windows will search for it. There's no search control that says that. However, this is still how Start works - you type a character, and search begins.
But in everyday work, you shouldn't have to go searching through the entire file system for stuff you did just yesterday. Not everything in life requires search, contrary to whatever Google design philosophy Microsoft has commandeered.
Zones Instead of Buttons
When the Start Button premiered in Windows 95 (to the Rolling Stones singing backup, you may recall), it was with the idea of giving the user one obvious place at all times for beginning any task. The most sensible place to put something that will most always be on the screen, at that time, was the lower left corner of the Desktop.
As you may already know by now, in Windows 8, the Desktop is one of two staging grounds for applications, the other one being the "Metro-style" world where the easier, device-like apps will run. So there is no longer any one single place on the screen that will always, or most always, be visible. How does one get to "Start" if she can't always see it? Microsoft suggests that you might try looking at the keyboard - and indeed, on most PCs made in the last decade, there's a Windows logo button. (Of course, the Windows logo has changed with Windows 8, but that's not too confusing - just uninspired.)
With the Consumer Preview, Microsoft addressed this for the first time by adding a zone in the lower left corner that brings up a kind of Start button when you hover the mouse pointer toward that corner (assuming you're one of those old-fashioned folks who still use a mouse).
In the Developer Preview, it was difficult to control the Metro-style apps, the new class that uses the WinRT library. When I asked why Metro apps couldn't share the Taskbar with the other Desktop apps, the response I got was that the Taskbar would not always be on-screen. Why wouldn't it be on-screen all the time? Because sometimes you'd be running a Metro-style app.
Well, so much for that explanation. If you hover the mouse over the Start zone button, or if you hover it in the upper left corner of the Desktop, you'll get what amounts to the taskbar for Metro-style apps. Yes, friends, you are now looking (above) at a Desktop with two Taskbars (which calls to mind the lyrical phrase, "And now for something completely different"). Typically, bringing up a Metro app replaces the entire Desktop with the app, in which case, the Desktop gets miniaturized and changes places with the app you just clicked on.
Why is any of this important? Imagine the following situation: You want to play a song. Sounds simple enough, right? Assume you've made it through to the Desktop, you've opened an Explorer window, and you have a list of your MP3s in front of you. When you double-click on any of these, your Desktop goes away.
Within 20 seconds, the Desktop is replaced by this thing (right). It's not a list of the music you own - it's a piece of wallpaper containing some random album covers from music published in the last century. Granted, you'll be listening to your song now, but you'll want to return to your work. This is something the former designers at Microsoft (whom I guess were all sacked) used to know: Sometimes you do other things while you work, and sometimes you do more than one thing at a time.
Getting back to your work is a matter of rearranging the screen. First, you click on this wallpaper in order to get the music player controls back. (Ask yourself, on what class of device whose screen is larger than a postage stamp is it absolutely necessary for the music player to consume all the real estate?)
Then you grab the top of the wallpaper as though you were about to rip it off of your screen (above), and drag it to one side or the other of your screen. You'd think the Desktop would come back now, but no. Although you've zoned your music player, you now have about 84% completely blank screen. How many of your co-workers do you know who would be freaked out by even a partially blank screen - doesn't that mean something's gone wrong? The next step is for you to fill the remainder of the space with the Desktop.
So you point to the upper left corner to bring up the Desktop miniature (above), and click on that. This restores the Desktop to the scary blank space, and now you can continue about your work (below). Now, this is not Windows Media Player we're looking at - although it's offered in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, it's as a kind of fallback alternative. This Music app, which replaces Media Player as the default, takes up either the rightmost or leftmost 16% (roughly) of the screen. Although the border between the Metro and the Desktop world looks like it includes a handle, in practice, you can only change the app's relative size to 84%, 100%, or zero.
When you size a Metro app to 84%, it reduces the Desktop space to 16%. For the moment, there is no functional reason to do this. Like in the screenshot above, the Desktop doesn't shrink or partition itself; it just makes itself a big taskbar. In Windows 8, there are quite a few surprisingly detailed procedures for doing things that accomplish nothing whatsoever, this being one of them.
(This just in: If you happen to own a mouse with one of these programmable page up/page down buttons, pressing it when you're listening to a song in the Music app will bring up this little box in the left corner for about five seconds, whether or not you have the app showing along either side. You won't know this fact unless and until a) you discover it accidentally for yourself, therefore "learning;" or, b) I tell you about it.)
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via readwriteweb.com
dinsdag 13 maart 2012
How social business will transform B2B Sales & Marketing
BigStockPhoto mage by kentoh
B2B must evolve to meet clients’ changing needs
Client work for B2B and B2C organizations has me reviewing thousands of conversations in social venues every month, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that much of Sales and Marketing as we know them is significantly out of alignment with B2B clients. They are much smarter now and want a new style of relationship with their business partners (erstwhile “vendors,” “providers”). Social business is permeating client networks throughout the economy and changing client behavior and expectations.
This has created a rare opportunity for B2B sales and marketing people who understand and respond ahead of the market. Here I’ll do a deeper dive into how legacy Sales and Marketing functions will evolve, using social business as a lever.
Reexamining B2B Sales and Marketing
Marketing assumes it’s not economically feasible to have large-scale one-on-one client conversations. Sales assumes it must rely on one-on-one prospecting to drive value. Both assumptions are increasingly false.Two examples of misalignment: One of Marketing’s underlying assumptions is that it is not economically feasible to have large-scale one-on-one client conversations, so marketing must achieve scale through secondary research (and remain isolated from the client). One of Sales’ key assumptions is that it must rely on primary one-on-one prospect/client/customer communications to drive value. Both of these are increasingly false, so I’ll drill down on them before offering practical recommendations for how Sales And Marketing can explore social business at a new level.
As head of marketing for several B2B firms with direct sales forces since the 1980s, I have worked with my fellow execs in Sales, Operations, Finance & IT to drive the top line. As a management consultant, I have advised clients in adopting numerous disruptive technologies that have confronted enterprise functions with change. These experiences lead me to believe that social business will transform B2B Sales And Marketing during the next 5-10 years. Moreover, organizations that begin the transformation process earlier will profit at the expense of laggards because social business will improve enterprises’ communications and collaborations with clients by an order of magnitude.
B2B Marketing usually refers to several practices that vary with the type of business, but the end game is to define/control message and produce leads that are worked by Sales:
- Defining the firm’s brand, strategy, value proposition and “message”; this includes managing how various brand elements are used (elevator pitches, logos, colors)
- Designing and running outbound “campaigns” via email marketing, snailmail
- Attracting/capturing inbound leads via rich media, SEO, SEM, thought leadership
- Conducting database management (CRM..)
- Producing “collateral” (websites, brochures, templates for use by Sales)
- Managing the firm’s participation in conferences and trade shows
- (often) Managing the firm’s channel and strategic alliances
- All of these practices are grounded in scaled group communications; i.e. Marketing communicates with researched demographics, not individuals because they usually have no relationships with individual prospects.
B2B Sales/Business Development is a contact sport that usually refers to a direct sales force, which is sometimes supported by indirect or inside sales:
- Identifying leads via face to face, telephone or email interactions with their individual professional networks; often salespeople are hired for their career-accumulated networks
- Working leads sourced from Marketing and their individual work according to a gated pipeline or funnel along which leads approach conversion
- Conducting (telephone) calling and email campaigns
- Getting and conducting meetings with prospects
- Working conferences and trade shows under Marketing’s direction
- Entertaining clients and prospects (golf, opera, sports, other events)
- Collaborating with channel partners’ representatives to exchange and work leads
- Closing deals and handing off to “delivery” teams (or, in the case of professional services, managing delivery)
- All of these practices are based on communications with individual prospects.
In summary, Marketing has served as the firm’s research and scalable communications arm while Sales has been responsible for doing the deals. Marketing’s value proposition has been researched intelligence, strategy and scaled communications. Salespeople would develop intelligence based on direct feedback with their own networks.
How B2B Sales and Marketing can evolve with social business
Marketing’s biggest mental roadblock is the habit of being isolated from the client/customer. “But I don’t touch the client, that’s Sales.” No, Marketing has to evolve its approach. Marketers that realign themselves will unleash value that they could only dream about before. Here are a few specific ideas to get your evolution thinking started:
- Marketing makes most decisions in isolation from real clients (research and focus groups are too artificial because they rarely focus on client-to-client interactions, which are an order of magnitude more enlightening). Marketing can start infusing marketing research with direct communication with prospects and clients.
- Conferences and trade shows can be fantastic opportunities to connect with differentiated prospects, but few firms even come close to realizing the ROI. The opportunity here is to reimagine events as connection opportunities that happen to have a geographical/time dimension to them. Marketing currently spends most of its attention on physical event logistics. What if they used the event as an excuse to involve prospects in discussions leading up to the event? Onsite, they capture the most relevant client/prospect conversations on video, which can enable other prospects to get engaged. They design programming that engages attendees and non-attendees in what happened “after” the event. But “the event” is no longer bounded by the physical event.
- Transform the channel by organizing online collaboration spaces that connect various channel partners in ways that are meaningful to them. Most parts of the channel have information that is useful to others, but it’s almost impossible to get someone on the phone. Email is very inefficient. And people need guidance for how to interact in transparent social venues.
- Here’s how many-to-many communications in social venues have different economics: Research has consistently showed that, in most online social venues, about 10% of participants are interacting while 90% are observing. And they can go back to it. Moreover, anyone interested in that topic can find it. Now. Email is a closed system that has no leverage in comparison. High-quality, relevant digital conversations are almost always superior to any “content” that any company can create because the prospect is involved. It’s more relevant, it’s more individualized.
Sales needs to come out of its shell. Many salespeople are actually shy in front of large audiences they don’t know personally (how many times does the sales team gab among themselves at the trade show booth?). So, it’s a stretch for many salespeople to converse with “strangers” in social venues. Many of them are afraid of writing (they’re talkers). Here are specific examples for Sales:
- Although many people have learned this, I’ll repeat just in case: In general, writing questions and responses in public is held to a fairly low standard grammar-wise. Most people aren’t going to attack you if your sentence structure is horrid. You can spell-check words. Get over this fear if you harbor it. (Rare exceptions apply.)
- Like Marketing, Sales need no longer accept assumptions about “market conditions,” or prospects’ needs. Find and interact with people in social venues who are talking about things your clients care about. Observe what they think, and ask them questions.
- Think about yourself compared to people in your firm and outside. What knowledge or interest do you have that you have related to the product/service that lets you add unique value? Experiment with search: create keyword combinations that find these conversations, and observe them for a while. Then jump in and add your perspective. Remember, these conversations are your thoughts immortalized. Even better, you can bookmark the best ones and share with prospects later. In the LinkedIn forum, the prospect will see you offering value-added information and guidance; when people thank you, your credibility goes way up. In forums, other prospects are setting the table for you to help them and gain huge, immortal visibility.
Net net
Disruption always serves to elevate threats and opportunities. I hope you can see that “traditional” sales and marketing practices developed in an era in which B2B clients had relatively little opportunity to find information independently or to connect with other people with similar challenges. Social business has changed the game, and early movers have the opportunity to profit to the detriment of their competitors.Christopher S. Rollyson is a partner in Socialmedia.biz and managing director of CSRA, a management consultancy that advises enterprises and startups on social business strategy and execution. He is also the founder of Social Business Services, The Social Network Roadmap and the Executive’s Guide to Social Networks. See his business profile, contact Chris or leave a comment below.
Categories: business, business use, JD Lasica, social marketing
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