Social Media Burnout

Feb 10, 2009 | blog

'REBOOT!' by Magnus So you’ve drained all your energy on social media and don’t know what direction to go next?  Don’t fear my hard workin’ friend!  The next step is closer than that notebook you’re drooling on.  Come on!  Wake up!  You’re makin’ us look bad.

I know you’ve been trying to take it to the next level and figure out how to break into the blogging stratosphere alongside the Brogan’s and Scoble’s of the world.  Of course, the reality is that getting to that level is through a LOT of hard work.  A never-ending job of reading, learning, tweeting, researching, writing, blogging, writing, and (hopefully) consulting.  All to become really good at what you do.  As any expert, and they’ll describe the same type of thing.  Long hours, following their passion on a topic that they want to share as much as learn about.

So you’ve been writing about social media, talking & tweeting with the rest of the flock about social media.  What’s the next step for you to make your mark?

Find something else to talk about.

Seriously, I’m not trying to be a smartass about this.  You stumbled upon (heh, get it 😉 ) social media and something clicked, but you came from doing something else.  I’m not saying there isn’t space to explore social media as a career.  What I am saying is that its nothing more than a set of tools to better communicate.  You need to use these tools to better interact with folks either in your industry or the genre that fits your passions.

  • Social Media allows you to listen to customers better and faster.
  • Social Media allows you to start, and join in conversations with customers.
  • Social Media can be a new teambuilding tool.
  • Social Media are tools of change for those looking to affect change.

So if you still have dreams of being a blogging superstar, make sure that you find your niche and get started sharing your knowledge.  That’s one of the values of social media – sharing what you know in a way that helps other folks, but also brings more folks to your doorstep.

Good luck my friend, and don’t let the keyboard leave marks on your forehead!

😀

Photo credit: Magnus

Android, Gmail, and Thunderbird

Oct 15, 2008 | blog

thunderbird-logo_small With the knowledge that I’ll be moving to the T-Mobile G1 in the near future, I started thinking about my contact list. Yeah, the one I have in Outlook that I sync to my current Windows Mobile phone. But wait, there’s no sync client for Android phones.

However, in the case of the T-Mobile G1, it will sync it’s contact list with my Gmail Contacts over the 3G connection. Ok, I can live with that – it actually works out better in the end. More on that later. With that realization, I started thinking about how best to edit and update all those contacts I have in Gmail.

T-Mobile G1 For a long time I had looked for some kind of utility to sync from Outlook to Gmail Contacts. I was hopeful when early last year Google themselves released a Outlook to Gmail Calendar sync tool. Alas there was no contact sync utility, just some API extensions to make it possible.

Since I’ve been playing evaluating Thunderbird as a replacement for Outlook on and off for a year or so, it occurred to me that there may be a way to sync Gmail items to Thunderbird via Add-Ons. Sure enough, they exist. With a Gmail Contact Add-On and a Gmail Calendar Add-On, I’m able to edit and update these times fast and easy via a great offline client.

The great part of all this is that because the G1 automatically syncs Gmail, Contacts and Calendar – all my PIM data will now effortlessly be in sync from PC to Web to Mobile. No matter where I go to send an email, make a call, or view my schedule, it will always be in sync.

Do you know of any interesting Google or Gmail related Add-Ons for Thunderbird that would make it even better? Let us know what you find that works!

Now to just wait for the G1 to be delivered…

Dumbphone

Jun 23, 2008 | blog

Nokia 5310 XpressMusic Ok, in a moment of weakness (or brilliance… you decide) I jumped at the change to go back to a simple feature phone rather than a smartphone.  So my trusty T-Mobile MDA (my MDA Page is here) has been replaced with the phone you see to the right – a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic. I’d been planning on waiting it out for the US version of the HTC Touch Diamond that would leverage T-Mobile’s 3G network. Or biting the bullet and jumping from T-Mobile to AT&T just for the 3G iPhone this summer.

Instead, I found something that I hadn’t been looking for. Simplicity at a price that I couldn’t pass up. While talking with Amy about phone and such, it dawned on me that the one function of my phone that I use more than anything is… voice calls!?! Yep, turns out all the fancy ‘why? because I can stuff’ just doesn’t count for much when all I really used all my smartphones for over the years is voice calls.

Sure, I’ve used weather apps, email apps, feed aggregators, note taking apps, the new fancy touch-scrolling “today” apps, and many, many, many others.  But in the last year, they’ve really not been of use to me. Probably because of having a laptop with me more often than not, and the proliferation of WiFi.

Still there where two items that I couldn’t live without. Tethering of my laptop and the ability to receive email. Tethering and using the phone’s EDGE service works fine, but alas, email simply sux. I’m working on a solution to that, but it’s not a show stopper. A nifty feature is the ability to sync music with Windows Media Player & Rhapsody’s 4+ million tracks. Kicks ass as a media player, something I hadn’t planned on but was drawn to in the end. I happened to capture a speedtest while connected via EDGE and testing that out.

image[5][1]

Then nice thing is that for the first time in about 5 years (probably longer) I’ve got a sexy little phone rather than a big brick hanging off my belt. The fact that it was uber affordable in comparison to a smartphone that’d not use 1/10th of the features helps too.

Being a IT guy, and a technologist at heart, I still long for the big-buck devices… I just don’t have a real use for them at this time. We’ll see if this lasts.

Pin It on Pinterest