Latest [web2latest] from Web 2.0 Journal

The Top Ten Internet Video Hosting Sites

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:00:00 EST

All about Internet Video - How To Post Your Videos to Online Video Hosting Services, The Top Ten Internet Video Hosting Sites, Top Sites to Make Money with Internet Video and How To Post Your Videos to Online Video Hosting Services

A Sales Success Story - Overcoming the Price Objection

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:00:00 EST

A few years ago, I was asked by one of my best sales executives to assist in salvaging a large contract with an Arizona client. The Sales Executive and his team had performed extensive business analytics, developed strong support from the client’s management team and had even received a verbal approval from the key decision maker, Mr. C. However, at the last minute, Mr. C. cancelled what was to be the closing meeting for this nearly 2MM contract.

During my "salvage" meeting with Mr. C. he shar…

What FINRA Doesn't Want You to Know About Social Media

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

What FINRA Doesn’t Want You to Know About Social Media

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:15:00 EST

Topic A at the recent Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Annual Meeting (SIFMA) was what to do about the fastest-growing communications phenomenon since the invention of the Internet: the explosion in social networking. Whenever compliance and communications come together there is sure to be a tussle and this meeting was no different. Chairman and CEO Rick Ketchum cited the current policy as “currently constructed, these sites would not permit you to easily supervise these communications. For that reason, most firms prohibit their employees from using these sites for their business.”

Mobile Smart Phones for Work & Play

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:45:00 EST

I am consulting now days and my iPhone is used for both personal and professional purposes. Several weeks ago I complained in an article about having to use my personal phone number and voice mail for business. A kind reader suggested that I try the new Google Voice service. I did and am still learning it but it has some interesting feature that I find handy for mobile workers.

Mobile Software Companies and Their Online Marketing Strategies

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST

For many years I have developed and managed marketing campaigns for mobile software companies. I ran seminars, Pay Per Click campaigns, white paper distributions, email blasts, webinars, Web 2.0 strategies etc. As a result, I am very interested in seeing which mobile software companies advertise online. It costs money to place an ad on websites, blogs and on search pages. Many companies simply don't have the money to advertise these days.

Mobile Convergent Devices and Applications

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST

I can't let this experience go undocumented. I am sitting in Starbucks drinking a Mocha, writing a blog article, chatting with an international client on skype, checking and responding to emails, taking phone calls, recording voice memos, accessing spreadsheets on Google Docs, scheduling meetings and listening to music all on my iPhone.

B2B Lead Generation Tip #3: Identify the Metrics that Matter

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

If you haven’t addressed the first two steps in the lead generation planning process - establishing the right mindset and building a strong roster of stakeholders - you may want to go back and review those before you read this. After all, if you’re a smart lead generation marketer, you know (or you’ll find out) that process is critical. Skip a step or ignore part of the process, and you can expect a weakened lead generation program.

The API Is the New CLI

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST

Infrastructure 2.0, from a purely developmental standpoint, is about APIs. It’s about offering up the functionality and capabilities of a wide variety of infrastructure – network, storage, and application network – to be externally controlled, integrated, and leveraged for whatever purpose a developer might dream up. It enables providers and enterprises alike to turn infrastructure functionality into services. Need compression? Caching? Routing? Load balancing? Via service-enabled management APIs these can become services, provisioned and released through the invocation of a service. When expanded to include the sharing of actionable data – performance statistics, status, availability of application services (context!) – this integration becomes the mechanism through which a dynamic infrastructure is created. One that reacts to events and conditions in the network, storage, application network, and application infrastructure in real-time.

Rules of Engagement

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

Most CPA firms have yet to establish a social media policy, as they are likely considering the best approach to bring social media into the marketing mix. Truth be told, there is no hard and fast rule on how companies should approach this. The accounting industry is no exception, and faces particular challenges in creating social media plans, such as whether to include client references, and giving tax or other consulting advice in a public forum and later being held responsible for it.

Barcode Scans and Prices on Mobile Handheld Computers and Smart Phones

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:30:00 EST

Last week I wrote an article pondering the benefits of using my iPhone to capture the bar code on grocery store products, using the integrated digital camera, and then have my iPhone use its GPS coordinates to look at the prices of this product in other grocery store locations that are close to mine.

Windows 7 Networking Controls Video Screencast

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:30:00 EST

This week I begin a new series of video screencasts for Dell’s IT Expert Voice Web site. The site has all sorts of useful information for corporate IT folks that are interested in migrating and using Windows 7, and my humble part will be to produce a regular series of videos similar to what I have been doing on my own over at WebInformant.tv. Do check out this video which talks about the differences between Windows 7 and earlier versions when it comes to networking controls.

Moyea Video4Web Converter V2.1 Released

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:15:00 EST

The new Moyea Video4Web Converter V2.1 with optimized menu display pattern, fast video codec encoding speed and perfect bug-fixings, makes video to flash video conversion the easiest and quickest ever.

Enterprise 2.0 and Mobile Software Applications

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

The term Enterprise 2.0 is receiving a lot of press these days (see definition of Enterprise 2.0). In this article we are going to discuss possible use cases for Enterprise 2.0 in the context of enterprise mobile applications. Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen defined Enterprise 2.0 in this way, "a system of web based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration (kudos for buzz words), information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise." The bottom line, unstructured information sharing tools for use by the enterprise.

Want to Succeed In Social Media?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:16:00 EST

Recently, I've seen a lot of studies about the lack of success of small businesses in social media. In one eMarketer article alone they reference not one but two of them: Small businesses are not hitting it off with social media, according to an August 2009 study from Citibank. More than three-quarters of US small-business executives surveyed did not find social networks helpful for generating leads or expanding their business.

Control Your Brand and Reputation, Even When You’re Not Around

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:04:00 EST

In his October 2009 Newsletter, James Bowles, Washington DC’s leading Executive Business Coach and career transition consultant, outlines the facets of your personal “brand” and reputation – that stand to scrutiny when you’re not around. What do people say about you when you aren't around? Or more importantly, what does your boss, current (or future) client, or other key stakeholders and partners say about you when you aren't around? For example, in a compensation review meeting (when promotions to key positions are being discussed) or simply when your work and additional opportunities to hire (or fire) you are being considered?

The things that people say about you when you are not around is usually called your reputation. A better way to think about it is that it's your personal "brand" – and this is one of the biggest factors in your ultimate success on the job, with clients and around your community. Here's the good news: for the most part, YOU completely control it! Here’s the challenge – to control it appropriately, you may need some essential business coaching, to learn some essential facets of personal brand marketing, reputation management and talent management (a.k.a. “human resource management”).

Three things make up your brand – your skills (i.e. what you know), your experience (i.e. what you’ve done well), and your attitude (i.e. how you act). These are the things that others remember and discuss when the conversation becomes about you, without you. However, having a great brand may not be enough by itself – like any developing brand, marketing yourself is required. Key stakeholders need to know your skills, experiences, and attitudes…so check around. Who needs to know, who do you need to influence? It's wise to make your brand known to everyone, but it's crucial to know who will be making the decisions you care about. Also, it's important to know who influences the decision makers.

Once you know them make a list - then determine the following:

Have they heard of you?
Do they know you?
Have they seen your work?
Have they been positively impacted by your work?
Do they know what you want to do?

Work through this list, thinking of how you can have an impact on the decision makers. Turn the answer to these questions to “yes, absolutely!”. Find ways to work on projects that they care about, or be on teams that work on their projects. The key thing here is that the relationship needs to be give-and-take. Do something positive for them to establish your brand, and maybe they will respond by helping you down the road. Quite literally, the most powerful force for successful career change and accomplishment for executives and business leaders is active personal marketing and partnership with stakeholders to obtain feedback, reflect, and act upon it.

This sort of internal “reputation brand marketing and management” is essential in your career, especially if you’re seeking a career change or in fact re-entering the workforce from a layoff, as a Mom returning to work, or establishing new independent career goals. If in fact your career change results, like so many of these do actually do, in reliance on decision makers and stakeholders you don’t actually know (for example future clients or employers learning about you on the Internet), your personal brand and reputation management actions require a degree of Internet Information Marketing and Management skills (and some social media coaching). This is to ensure you come across the way you desire when people search for you, or your services, on the Internet, in social media channels, or through business and information directories.

For more information regarding DC Business Coaching, Executive Leadership Training, and HR Talent Management, contact James Bowles, Washington DC Executive Coach and HR Consulting. For more information regarding Personal Online Marketing and Reputation Management, contact KME Internet Marketing.

Continue reading about “The Word on the Street (About You)”...

Coffee Table Tags

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:15:00 EDT

Embedding tags in books is probably the most obvious way to connect print content with online content so it's surprising more book publishers are not following Rough Guide's lead. Their new coffee table book, Earthbound: a Rough Guide to the World in Pictures is tag-enabled.Each image in the book is linked to a QR Code that resolves to a Google map of the location for more context-specific Stewart McKienoreply@blogger.com0

First Week Fast Growth

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:00:00 EDT

So, the first week "on the air" went very well. Not an easy week, but remarkable good. We rapidly increase our midstock and microstock collection of royalty free images and this keeps our hands busy all the time. The infrastructure we choose for www.pixamba.com is extremely versatile and can be adjusted according to the system load and storage capacity. Since both the load and the images collection growth all the time, and fast, we work around the clock ensuring high system uptime and short response time. It seems that we are on the right way: the response time of the system is very good even now and it is going to be even faster soon, when we'll do some more IT & development work.

Pixamba.com Beta Opens to the Public

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:45:00 EDT

I am very excited to show you up some initial results of our hard work for quite a long time. Pixamba.com opens it doors for the contributors and image buyers. You are warmly welcome to join us and start selling your photos and illustrations with Pixamba. We offer high resolution stock images at very affordable prices and we are here, online and offline for any question or suggestion you may have.

Umoo Opens Private Beta to Launch Social Gaming Tournaments

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EDT

Today is finally the day that Umoo tournaments is coming out of private beta and into the public arena. I can now set up my own tournaments with a larger crowd, maybe I can push the magic “Invite my Facebook friends button’. Currently, I mostly play Fun games, without any entry fee that is, but I am itching to do the real game. For a few bucks I can make some real money with this game. We are interviewing Umoo players and some of them make a lot of money on Umoo. Surprisingly, they make more money than I ever made juggling my 401K account on the real stock market. However, after playing for a couple of weeks now, I have concluded, I am not going to quit my day job just yet.

Sony Ericsson C905

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EDT

Sony Ericsson has time and again come up with exciting and rather different looking gadgets. They have revolutionized the music phone segment with the Walkman series, created waves in the camera phone segment with Cyber shot series apart from introducing exciting touchscreen phones. The one such handset which has once again managed to stand apart from the crowd is indeed the Sony Ericsson C905. Within its bent edges and sleek design are incorporated a number of functions that would compete against any 3G enabled handset available today.

Blocks to Profitable Behavior

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EDT

I recently added 20 yards of distance to every club in my golf bag with no effort whatsoever (and the chipping now is sublime). For the non-golfers out there, this is quite a significant improvement. I have played the game for about 15 years achieved a reasonable standard and plateaued, content in the knowledge that I know enough to be competitive and to enjoy myself. Over the years I have taken, on average, two lessons per year, read copious amounts in magazines, watched my heroes on the TV, dreamed of faultless rounds, practiced my bad habits at the driving-range and, of course, played once a week.

Is Your Vocabulary Costing You Money?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:45:00 EDT

By Tom Hopkins When we give a presentation to a future client not only do our appearance, visual aids, and body language relay a message, but the words we use create pictures in their minds. When we hear a word, we often picture a symbol of what that word represents. We may even attach emotions to some of these words. For example, let’s consider the words, SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN, WINTER. Depending on your particular experience, each of those words can generate positive or negative emotions in [...]

Is Email Dying?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:00:00 EDT

Have we reached the point where email’s influence over our electronic lives is waning? It is hard to imagine, especially for those of us who grew up in the minicomputer/PC era. For two generations, email was the killer application. It delivered information reliably and within a few minutes. But today the properties that made email so attractive for so long are now a liabiliity. “A few minutes” for a response is so last year, driven in no small part by texting and cell phone ubiquity. At the same time this was happening, wikis, blogs and social networks have begun to erode email’s document exchange role. The notion of sharing photos or a slide presentation using email attachments is becoming quaint.

Alfred Poor’s New Video Reviews

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:45:00 EDT

My long-time former PC Magazine colleague Al Poor has begun his own series of video reviews of consumer products on his YouTube channel here. You can find a new Epson photo printer, the Buffalo Terrastation, and other products. Like my WebInformant.tv series, they are sponsored by the vendor and are short, fact-packed five minute pieces. [...]

Getting Past Gate Keepers

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:15:00 EDT

By Tom Hopkins In business situations, when you are trying to reach the person who has the authority to make decisions regarding your product you are very likely to have to go through one or more people before reaching that person. For the sake of efficiency, there will likely be a receptionist and/or assistant who takes the initial calls for the decision-maker. It’s important that you realize most assistants are taught to protect decision-makers. Or, shall we say, screen calls so the decision-makers only speak with the [...]

Gain Your Prospect’s Attention

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:15:00 EDT

By Wendy Weiss On a cold call you have approximately 10-30 seconds to grab your prospects’ attention—and you won’t get a second chance. Read on to discover how to gain your prospects’ attention… I was eating lunch. The phone rang and thinking it might be a client calling (and also, let’s face it—I’m a little compulsive) I bolted to my desk and grabbed the receiver. Instead of my client, on the other end of the line was a perky person telling me that their company provides high-speed Internet [...]

Use eMarketing to Change Your Marketing Game

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Today's B2B marketers have more opportunity to positively impact sales revenue than ever before. Thanks to Web 2.0 we can attract prospects, begin our customer relationship, inform and entice qualified buyers - without ever directly engaging more expensive sales resources to nurture buyers along the way.

25 Years After Escaping Iran

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:30:00 EDT

Its hard to imagine that its been almost 25 years since my parents secretly smuggled many of our family members out of Iran due to brutal religious persecution. Persecution that is unfortunately picking up once again in todays time. A reader asked me to provide more info about this portion of my background and so I offered this short post.

The Future of Mobile and Route Sales Applications for Smart Phones, Part 2

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:15:00 EDT

In this second article in the series I want to focus on the use of business intelligence and business analytics as it relates to mobile applications. If you are driving a vehicle and/or using a Smart Phone, you do not want to be doing a lot of research and analytics on your small screen while driving. There should be a workflow already created in your central database application that you can simply activate through a request on your mobile device. This could be a series of queries, filters and reports that can all be activated and analyzed by the business analytics software in the central office. The resulting report of this analysis is your instructions and action steps as a sales person or route driver.

How Technology is Changing Small Town America

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:45:00 EDT

There was an interesting article by Bill Kauffman in the Wall Street Journal today (October 20, 2009) in the Bookshelf section called Where Home Is, The Heart Isn't. It talks about the book Hollowing Out the Middle by husband and wife sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas that describes a trend where young people of intellect and ambition leave the middle of America for the coastlines. This migration has devastating effects on the middle of America according to the authors. The sharpest insight in the book according to Kauffman is that "small towns play an unwitting role in their own decline" by promoting the idea that fulfilling one's dream means one must leave home for the big city lights along the shores.

Help Me - RFID on the Road

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:15:00 EDT

I want to obey the law. I want to stay within the legal spend limits, but it is so hard when you have two dogs in the car, kids asking questions, the radio on, a hot cup of coffee and you are trying to read a text message while driving through the rain.

Five Steps to Ensure a Clean CRM Database that Builds Relationships

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:45:00 EDT

When speaking with a partner of a local law firm, he lamented about their database, "Just getting our holiday card list right requires a monumental effort!" Many times sales leads in the database are kept long past their shelf life which means they no longer hold any revenue potential and should be jetissoned. A well-known stumbling block for anyone who has worked in marketing or sales is bad data. While there are many protective measures companies can employ to make sure they are operating with clean data such as Access Hoovers as a plug-in to Microsoft's Customer Relationship Management software, you will only realize the full potential of your marketing efforts using CRM with clean data. Though it seems trivial, even the distribution of holiday cards has created many a headache at professional services firms.

A Box Life

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:30:00 EDT

A Box Life is a cute idea for QR Codes sponsored by clothing firm Columbia as a recycling initiative. Put a tag on a cardboard box so that when the box is reused you can track the 'life' of the box. By snapping the tag and providing your location data or entering the tracking code printed under the tag with your current location via a widget on the website, you update the box's current location so it can be tracked as it criss-crosses the USA.

Wired MIR

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:45:00 EDT

Kooaba's mobile image recognition (MIR) technology will be used in the November edition of Wired magazine (US) to link print advertisements to online content. Kooaba claims this as a US first. Oddly enough Wired online are also running a vstory on augmented reality (AR) here. The advantage of using Kooaba's MIR technology rather than tags as the page-to-promotion link is that MIR can leverage

Personal Branding Book Review by Marshall Goldsmith

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:15:00 EDT

I had the privilege of serving on the Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation (now the Leader to Leader Institute) for ten years. Peter was a pioneer in understanding the impact of knowledge workers in the new economy. He simply defined knowledge workers as ‘people who know more about what they are doing than their boss does’. In a world where knowledge workers are the key to value in most corporations, personal brand management becomes critically important.

Authentic Personal Branding Concept

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT

"The Secret" was launched by Rhonda Byrne in 2006 and says that thoughts have an energy that attracts like energy and you attract into your life whatever you think about. This tool refers to what Buddha said: "What you have become is the result of what you have thought". It suggests the following: "your dominant thoughts will find a way to manifest. ... Whatever you focus on the most is what will be most attracted to your life. ..Once you are aware of this law and how it works, you can start to use it to deliberately attract what you want into your life... Like attracts like...You get what you think about, whether wanted or unwanted...You are a living magnet...You get what you put your energy and focus on...Energy attracts like energy...it has it roots in Quantum Physics.

Take A Business Approach To Conferences

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:00:00 EDT

I've been here before. I remember my first time. I was happy to know the teacher wanted to work with me, but then I went to the meeting and it was horrible. I decided my child should be present, expecting we were ready for solutions. Instead, I sat stunned as she told me how horrible and terrible he was. She had only had him for a little over 6 weeks so how could she know this? I've had him for 11 years and I know he is a kind, caring child.

It's a Lovely Evening Here in Pampanga, Philippines

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:15:00 EDT

Random thoughts on a lovely evening.

Google and Twitter Make Social Search a Reality

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:45:00 EDT

Last week Google officially announced their newly formed partnership with Twitter. The officially statement indicates this partnership will allow social media updates on Twitter to appear in Google’s search results. Google also demonstrated their new Social Search feature at the Web 2.0 conference to really get Internet marketing consultants excited. Although this new feature isn’t [...]