The iPhone For Business
February 25, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I was speaking with a friend of my dad’s recently about the iPhone and it’s implications and usefulness on the enterprise level. I thought I’d share some of the ideas and thoughts I had about it in a quick post today.
- The lack of ‘push’ email is a limiting factor
- The 15 minute wait for new messages automatically is probably soon enough for most purposes, however I’ve found that the phone often doesn’t actually check that often unless you’re actively using the phone.
- Traditional business types don’t tether their cell phone anyway, sure road warriors and the like do, but everyday usage, probably not)
- Having mobile Safari is a very valuable tool not just for people like me, but the crackberry world as well.
- Security, these smart phones carry so much even with my limited data set I keep the phone on automatic password lock, and you should too.
- Until recently ATT didn’t offer enterprise plans for the iPhone, now they do, so what are you waiting for?
- Now that the bulk of the buzz about the iPhone has died down a little what’s left is still the best cellphone I’ve ever used, and I’ve used a LOT.
- For new and social media types like myself it’s powerful enough to tide me over for a weekend if I leave town and decide to leave my laptop at home (gasp!).
So there you have it, my latest thoughts on using iPhones in the business world.
Testing BEE - AIR Blog Poster
December 11, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Here’s another attempt at finding a suitable desktop based way to post to my blog. this one I’ve tried before, but I can’t remember why I never used it. Maybe after this first post with it i’ll remember and have to decide whether or not to keep it.
This post was made using Bee, a WordPress blog posting application built with Adobe AIR. We’ll see how it works. The big feature of this app is that it pulls from Flickr’s API to find and post images from your photostream, or all of Flickr.
Qumana - An Attempt
December 11, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
This morning I’m trying out offline blog editors, I’ve decided that if I’m going to post more often, I need to integrate the blogging experience deeper into my daily workflow. And I think that may become easier if I always have a new-post window open not in the browser, but on my desktop. (I may even assign a Mac OSX Leopard ‘Space’ to it.)
The first offline editor that I tried was AirPress, a hybrid blog editor using Adobe AIR technology, I really wanted it to work, really badly because I’m a big fan of Adobe AIR, it’s a great platform in my book. But it just didn’t do everything that it claimed to do (at least in my first install attempt). It refused to pick up my iSight for web cam recording, it wouldn’t insert small jpg’s into the editor, and it never actually uploaded anything to my blog. I’ve emailed the AirPress people and I hope it’s just something I’m doing and not the application itself, if I can get it working, I’ll use it.
In the meantime I’m trying out Qumana which, despite not being as pretty as AirPress, appears to be working.
More to come!
Powered by Qumana
CaspioVote Post- Additional thoughts
November 14, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
My post earlier today regarding my initial impressions of the CaspioVote election guide has unfortunately caused a little stir.
I have emailed Caspio asking for clarification and a demo of the product. I will wait to respond further until I have some documentation from them to either counter or confirm the information I was able to find regarding their latest web application.
It has come to my attention that they are unhappy with what was written and feel that it was an unfair assessment of their application.
All I can say at this point is that I took what information was available in the publicly accessible portions of their website, including links, their press release published today, and a quick 5-minute review of the source page of the one example I was able to find on a live site and my observations were made from that research.
Obviously there is not much out there at this point, which I think is why it’s important to take an early look for an initial evaluation and it very well may change my outlook once we’ve setup a time for a demo.
One of my primary interest areas is new-media and content delivery. Web applications that make that delivery easier and more accessible to more people are constantly on my radar. Fortunately for me, I’m in a position where I can try out and sample many applications and share the knowledge gained in a conversation with a community.
CaspioVote is something that interests me personally and professionally which is why I took the time to look at how it can be used and how it works.
If you’re interested in more information about Caspio in general and other conversations that have taken place check out these links:
http://www.customerthink.com/news/caspio_named_finalist_in_cnet_webware_100
http://commonsensej.blogspot.com/2007/10/caspio-dustup.html
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/06/10/hyper-local-apps-to-save-the-newspaper-biz/
http://www.jacobian.org/writing/2007/sep/12/db-journalism/
http://www.thescoop.org/archives/2007/09/07/outsourcing-database-development-or-the-caspio-issue
http://www.thescoop.org/archives/2007/09/12/on-trials-software-and-otherwise/
CaspioVote - Turnkey Election Guide - A Review
November 14, 2007 by Jonathan · 2 Comments
CaspioVote is being marketed as an easy-to-use election guide type drill-down, database driven tool for media companies to plug-in to their sites and have an insta-election guide.
I’ve read all pages of the site related to this particular application, and visited the only live client page I was able to find through their press release and have given my opinions, good and bad about the information that’s currently available on this just-released system.
Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
Pros:
- It’s turnkey, pay the money and it’s an instant election guide
- No coding or other knowledge needed other than sticking a a code-snippit into your existing site
- Relatively inexpensive, which it typically the case with turnkey solutions.
- No additional staffing needed
Cons:
- It’s turnkey, this means you have little control because all the work has been done for you.
- It’s does not appear to be search engine friendly, not having a URL hierarchy is going to limit if not exclude you from the free traffic that your news organization will get because of the lack of search engine friendliness.
- No additional staffing needed, this is a great solution when you’ve got a one or two person web crew in your newsrooms and neither of which is a database or web application developer.
Some other thoughts – Here the CaspioVote Features page and my response to those items, the Features page has the bulk of the public information about the application which is why I’ve concentrated on the details provided there.
- Fully-hosted and operated by Caspio, requiring no support from IT.
- They have control over your site, if their servers crash or the software breaks, you’ve got to wait for them to fix the issue, much like if you use GoogleDocs instead of MS Office, it’s great until Google’s servers go down for a few minutes and you haven’t saved what you’re working on. You’re completely at the mercy and experience of the Caspio staff and their datacenter (having not seen a license agreement for the application, is there an SLA to provide accountability and retribution for extended down-time?)
- Seamlessly integrates with your site.
- By seamless, they mean they give you a snippit of code that happens to be a javascript call to display the information, this method isn’t search engine friendly, and tends to have difficulties in cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility.
- Covers all race levels (local, county, state and federal) and ballot issues.
- This hierarchy should be easy enough for basic web users to understand and use. Does it provide enough flexibility for those who want more information and detail?
- Visitors see local election details and candidate profiles on your site and print their customized ballot
- Print their custom ballot as seen on the only live-site sample running this application is simply a button that prints the web page that they’re on, complete with the original site navigation, images, and the Caspio frame.
- No limits on the number of counties, state and federal districts, townships, parishes, municipalities, or school districts.
- Well I would hope there wouldn’t be!
- Unlimited page views included in the annual license.
- This is only important because each time someone visits your election guide, it’s really their website that’s coming up inside yours, frankly, it’s not unlimited, what they have is tiered pricing based on your market-size, having a bigger market means you’re likely to have more web views, which in fact makes the price higher. So yes it’s unlimited page views, but at the same time, you’re still paying more for your size. This does seem to be a fair way of pricing and is quite common when working with media companies.
- Mass-email feature to help you invite candidates to complete their profiles and answer your questions
- No interference with your advertising and analytics systems so you enjoy all the traffic and ad revenues.
- It seems like this could be problematic depending on how they have the site implemented within your own.
If I were an Internet person with a limited budget at a newsroom that wouldn’t otherwise have a very comprehensive election guide of information on their site without this application, then I would be very interested in what CaspioVote has to offer.
If a newsroom were to buy into the CaspioVote program, they are getting what appears to be a basic content manager of information directly related to a specific election. I’m basing my review on the only live example site available at the time of this posting.
Caspio provides a great entry into the very basic information that every news organization should have on the web anyway, however it is greatly restricted in functionality and usability because of the single- form of navigation and the limited information provided on each page as shown by the live site using the application. The literature available on the web says that they can implement extended functionality for a fee.
On the same front as usability and functionality, by looking at how the page loads and how the hierarchy is built, I would imagine that this setup would not be very ‘functional’ for those viewers who have disabilities and use software and other assistive devices.
For one, screen readers don’t always pick up on those java calls at all, I’m not an accessibility expert by any means, but I do hear complaints from people trying to use the web with assistive technologies and struggling so I’m curious to see what testing has been completed.
There’s my first impressions of the application, what are yours? Comments are open below.
[EDIT 1- added bullets to make the post easier to read]
[EDIT 2- Edited for grammar]
Pudding Media - uh-oh ads for VOIP
October 28, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I presented this new company to my fellow Convergence Journalism friends last week and they were shocked… as am I. PuddingMedia promises free phonecalls (VOIP for now, cellphones in the future) if you’re willing to let them ‘listen’ to your conversations and serve-up relevant ads based on what you’re saying. Imagine if you’re making dinner plans in Miami with a friend and you then hear a beep and then a 30 second ad for a hot new club on the strip… and in exchange, your airtime was free.
Now, I’m sure I’m not the only person who this is worrisome for, and my colleagues were flabergasted. However, we live in a world where so many of our actions are already being recorded, is this all that much worse? Is this crossing the line? I’m not sure yet.
I do know that I’ve been using GOOG-411 lately, the free info service from Google to get ‘operator’ like intel on businesses, movies, weather and more… and I’m willing to bet they’re tracking my and my information requests!
I’ll be watching this company very closely, I’ve signed up for a beta-code but haven’t started testing. Rest assured loyal readers, I’ll have a detailed write-up very soon.
Church of the Customer Blog
October 18, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
A few days ago I shared a link with you regarding mobile spam, and also one about the credibility of word-of-mouth recommendations. This short posts highlights how word-of-mouth spread and reach has created a new genre of online activism.
Church of the Customer is a good blog anyway, so you should add it to your RSS reader and give it a read every once in a while.
New Media Mind - A New Blog 4u
October 14, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Sharing my new media thoughts to the world. — New Media Mind
I’m sharing this new and exciting blog with you today because it’s worth it. The author of New Media Mind is Jen Reeves, my boss at KOMU, and friend. We’ve worked together for 3 or 4 years now on various projects and we’ve accomplished a lot! Not nearly enough, but we’ve done a lot.
I first met and started working with her as she launched the new komu.com 3 years ago, I wasn’t involved in the planning, but I was one of the original content generators and editors for her. Since then, I’ve posted, edited, written, or had my hand in over 1,400 stories on komu.com and it grows each week. It’s truly been an amazing experience working on such a project.
Unfortunately we have a list a mile-long of tools and technology that we’d like to introduce but there is currently a spending freeze on this fabulous site… Which honestly, is quite a backwards view of the web and journalism in this day and age. The web is such a powerful and important tool it’s a shame that it’s being neglected in such a manner.
All that to say, Jen is fabulous and you should check out her emerging blog.
Moodblast - Updated Review
September 23, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I’ve been using the fabulous software called Moodblast for several weeks now and overall it’s working out quite well. One thing that I’ve noticed is that you do need to make sure you give it some time and have a good internet connection.
I’ve encountered several instances where I’ll update my status in the application and only 2 of 3 or 4 services actually pickup the update. More often than not Twitter is one of the applications that does not receive the update.
The road-map for this product is very nice and the developer is a great guy who’s doing some very cool work with the wonderful Web 2.0 APIs that are available.
In case you missed my first post regarding Moodblast, it’s an OSX application that sits on your computer in the background, being called up by a hotkey. Essentially what it does is synchronize all of your social-networking ’status’ updates like Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Skype and more. It’s very handy if you’re making a concerted effort to take full advantage of the multitude of social applications available today.
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