2011 October

Google, Amex & Your Business or Non-Profit

October 31, 2011 By 1 Comment

Google and American Express have announced a new contest that has several things you can take advantage of: You can win $5k in advertising; get press by a feature on YouTube; learn how to tell your story in 20 seconds (a discipline we ALL need to learn!); and learn how to use the new YouTube video editing feature.

The contest details state, “Google and American Express want you to share your business story. So we’re offering you the opportunity to win one of 36 online ad campaigns worth $5,000 and be featured on the YouTube homepage on November 25th in honor of Small Business Saturday.” The full rules are here.

Of course, we believe that every small business, non-profit and startup needs a strong web presence, especially before you embark on a campaign which may likely get you A LOT of online attention. To show you how widespread the lack of an online presence is, Google’s Minnesota representative, Ben Theis, dropped a startling statistic on us during this Minnov8 podcast: 58% of Minnesota’s small businesses have ZERO WEB PRESENCE!

So make certain you have a good website and that you take advantage of highly visible contests and offers like this one. We are…

Filed Under: Web/Tech

Elderly Need Super-Simple, Phone-like Skype

October 26, 2011 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

By now many of you have probably seen, and chuckled about, this delightful video that went viral of a senior couple goofin’ around with their webcam. These two are trying to figure out how to use it (and having fun in the process) but the humor obscures the reality: Using a computer, using Skype, and making certain Skype’s audio/video inputs are set correctly is befuddling to most senior citizens!

Let me tell you a story that may mirror many of your own to illustrate why we need a brain-dead-simple Skype phone that is as cheap, super-simple to operate, and as powerful as a landline phone.

It’s a few years ago and I’m in my home office on a Saturday, facing the street and my neighbors house across it. I bear witness to my elderly neighbors — he a fairly tech-savvy retired Fortune 100 executive and she a loving mother and grandmother — saying a very emotional farewell to their son, daughter-in-law, and two toddler grandsons.

The son is an executive at a different Fortune 100 company and the family was headed to Europe for two years to open a new line of business. My elderly neighbors would have only one visit during that time and I immediately thought, “Oh geez…those two boys will grow up so fast and forget them” so I had to do something.

I sent my neighbor and email clearly laying out all of the power of Skype, that it was free, that if he and his son each had a webcam that they could see one another and talk often. The biggest reason to do it was to maintain (and continue to build) grandpa and grandma’s relationship with those two little boys.

Not hearing anything for two weeks, I feared that I’d stepped WAY out of bounds as a neighbor. But what happened next surprised even me. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Innovation, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

The Second It’s Possible, I’ll Cut the Cord

October 23, 2011 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

The 'new', and still inadequate, Comcast DVR channel guide

Like so many others, I’m fed up with Comcast/Xfinity and am constantly seeking developments that will allow me to cut-the-cord and do away with cable TV.

Comcast in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul acquired TimeWarner’s Roadrunner service. Here in my hometown of Eden Prairie, Comcast claims a “legacy millstone” hangs around their necks and that’s why their HD DVR interface is so horrifically bad. I’ve talked to Comcast technicians, VPs in the business group, and cable analysts and all say that, “It will change at some point soon.” I’ve been hearing that now for three years.

I’ve been looking at my bill and decided to go out and buy my own DOCSIS 3 modem for the Comcast internet service. Instead of paying $7/month, I bought it for $109 and my connection is about 25% faster! Think Comcast would’ve notified me and encouraged me to upgrade months ago? Nope.

Besides the HD DVR interface being so horrible, the ‘Comcast On Demand” service is a joke (from an interface standpoint…the content play fine once you get to it). Turns out that HD TV content is buried within nested categories which means it’s tough to find and tougher to find again once you want to watch something. Since Comcast has invested heavily in three new data centers for this service, one would think they’d spend some time in the human interface that THEIR CUSTOMERS TOUCH, wouldn’t you? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web/Tech

Huh? Pine Cones Point Toward a Brighter Future?

October 23, 2011 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Pine cones near a pond by Red Rock Lake in Eden Prairie, MN

Snagged this photo with my new iPhone 4S (and its 8 megapixel camera) on my morning walk with my dog. The light was nice at that hour and I stopped to snap a photo of these pine cones…but I came away with A LOT more than just a picture!

After I took the photo I closely examined this spruce and the bunches of pine cones all over it. I was suddenly struck with the thought about how fascinating it is that pine cones like this on another form of pine, the Bishop, which require fire to drop and open up…thus spilling their seeds so a new generation can grow. I immediately thought, “What a metaphor for what we all are going through right now in the U.S. and globally.“

The global economy has “burned” and, like so many of you who stay up on current events, know that many people around the world have seen their lives “scorched” with jobs lost, homes foreclosed upon, benefits reduced, and governments toppled. But ALL THE TRENDS point toward new growth and I fundamentally believe that, as the world continues to accelerate toward an internet-connected future, we will see unprecedented innovation and an increase in value created.

How? Where are all of these trends pointing to a future like that one? Like any other innovation or invention, one cannot look backwards (like many conservatives and MBAs do) or look side-to-side to see what other countries or companies are doing and then do what they’re doing only slightly better (e.g., trying to knock-off iPod with Zune; deliver ho-hum tablets to compete with iPad). The key is to strategically anticipate the future and look ahead to make the best, educated and calculated guesses you can and then go make the future happen.

In our core business (The Trend Curve™) we track trends globally for the home furnishings industry. Since so many other factors influence what happens within the home, we analyze industries like fashion, technology, manufacturing and what is happening with color, since color equals emotion and, surprisingly, echoes the mood of consumers. Color is becoming more vibrant, brighter, and dare I say, “optimistic?”

In some general trend areas as well as all of the foundational home-related industries we track, optimism abounds:

Small Business Optimism Picks Up: “The National Federation of Independent Business reported that it’s Small Business Optimism Index gained eight-tenths of a point to rise to 88.9. The gain snapped a six-month string of declines.”
The Expectation Economy (note #3 that “Copying competitors is a race to the bottom“) expects a brighter future: One site we follow is TrendWatching and their new business types site called Springwise since the latter, especially, delights us often with some of the new, disruptive and radical businesses being created around the world
Manufacturing is quickly embracing trends like 3D printing (great blog by Howard Smith, a U.K. technologist). 3D printing promises to accelerate the time from idea-to-prototype-to-manufacturing; at some point relatively soon to buy, as a consumer, plans online that will enable one to simply print-out an object at home; and much more.
Technology gadgets, the internet’s impact, ubiquitous wireless and more are transforming the world. To get up to speed quickly on what’s going on globally, look at former Morgan Stanley analyst, and now venture capitalist, Mary Meeker’s State of the Internet at Web 2.0 Summit or read this article & watch the video of her presentation.

Yep…you can argue every one of these points and counter them with a pessimistic and dark analysis that the sky is falling, the world is tumbling toward oblivion, and the only way to compete with the Chinese is to drive the American workforce toward subsistence living and a 3rd world country wage structure. So if you’re inclined to comment and tell me why everything is horrible and bad, don’t bother since I’m not placing my energy on the negative.

Filed Under: Innovation, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Boxcar: Aggregating Your Social & More

October 20, 2011 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Like many, I’m constantly trying to optimize any time invested in social media lest it suck up more than it already does. One of the more useful apps for aggregating my social is one I have on my iPhone, iPad and now Mac (Mac version is in beta but you can download it here) is called Boxcar.

Once you download the app you can configure your accounts (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, email, and many others) and receive instant notifications in one place, the app itself. It’s incredibly efficient since it enables one to respond in a timely fashion without having to launch and respond within multiple apps or on multiple websites.

That’s the upside and I use it often for just those purposes. The downsides?

1) Notifications still appear within each app and you have to deal with them when you open ‘em up. Even though I view, for example, a DM in Twitter within Boxcar, the Twitter app on my iPhone and iPad (and now Mac) each show a “non-viewed notification”. So I have to tediously open the app, view the notification, and close the app to make that specific notification go away. What a pain.

I wish for an API from all of these social services that allow a notification service to toggle-off a notification once it’s been dealt with by a user. I suspect no services do that since they want you to login to them and use them directly.

2) Credentials, and their security, are another issue. Since the key to my digital life is my email repository within Gmail — everything from site passwords to application licenses to sweet somethings between my wife and I — I’m using Google’s 2-Step Verification to harden the security surrounding my Google related accounts (especially email). Though it was a pain to setup (especially to authorize all the apps that require Google logins like RSS reader apps) the peace-of-mind I have knowing there’s one more layer of security to protect it is an imperative so I can sleep at night.

So do I want to login to any aggregator and authorize their app to with my Google credentials? Nope. I don’t care what they say about their use of OAUTH, that they “pass-through” credentials, or anything of the sort. It’s too valuable and, of course, if someone attempts to change a password on Facebook, Twitter or any other social site, I’ll get email notification unless that’s been hacked too!

If you want to enjoy a one-stop-shop for all your social media interactions, give Boxcar a try but (in my opinion) don’t aggregate your email in there too.

Filed Under: Web/Tech