Yep, it’s that time again! Time for the SMBMSP podcast, just in time for the holiday’s. So sit back and share some eggnog & joy with the SMBMSP podcast crew as they relax next to the fire.
SMBMSP December 2009 Podcast – A very special holiday show Show Date: December 10, 2009 Produced by BellaMedia – http://www.bellamediaonline.com/
Hosts: Brad Bellaver, Rick Mahn and Mykl Roventine
Well its high time that I start posting the SMBMSP podcasts, as we continue to crank them out every month. A visit to good friend and fellow SMB organizer Mykl Roventine’s blog got me thinking I should start. So below are the show notes and podcast.
I’d like to mention that we’re holding a contest for a podcast theme song, and we discuss the details in this show. Along with Mykl Roventine is our producer, Brad Bellaver of Bellamedia and special guest Amy Bryant who wrote a fantastic Thanksgiving post on her blog last week.
We talk a bit about giving thanks and what we’re thankful Social Media has brought into our lives and experiences, so I hope you give it a listen. As always, feedback is very welcome.
You can find the podcast home page and information and feed links here.
Awhile back, I’d started a list of "101 Uses for Twitter", but never seemed to get past 27 for some reason. Of course, it had been last autumn since I brainstormed on it. While I don’t think that I personally could come up with 101 uses, I’m sure there are many more than that.
So I thought about this again for awhile this morning and did think of 50 uses that I’ve seen or participated in. So here is a list of 50 uses for Twitter, I’m thinking of more as I write this, so maybe there is a chance at that "101" post sometime.
Keep in touch with my Twitter peeps friends
General news item links
News & links on my industry or area of interest
Fast answers to quick questions
Professional networking
Links to nearly everything
Marketing
Personal branding
Corporate & product branding
Haiku’s
Making friends
Feel "plugged into the web and it’s various personalities"
Replacement for instant messaging applications
Chat tool
Promotional tool for my blog
Providing new reading opportunities
Fun stuff!
Meeting new, interesting people to communicate with
Collecting links
Finding sites related to social networking
"To listen in on my contacts rants"
A web worker "water cooler"
Micro-blogging
A personal "techmeme"
Lightweight text broadcasting tool
Easy way to annoy your spouse
Promotional tool for my brand
Ranting
Idea generator
No-cost non-profit announcement system
Bring a sense of community to your home office
Tracking status of friends
Status message generator for other social networks
Frustration generator (at least when it is down)
Thought publisher
Promotional tool for my organization
Following public discussions
Travel guide
Controlled discussion between friends
Uncontrolled discussion between friends with viewers
List generator
Meeting agenda generator
Coffee shop locator
People search
Promotional tool for my company
Product reviews
Trip planner
Backchannel for events
Feedback generator
Authentication mechanism
So what are you uses for Twitter? I’m sure I didn’t capture them all, so add your ideas and things you use Twitter for below.
Just a quick weekend look at Adobe’s new "online office" product – Acrobat.com. At least, that’s how I found it referred to in some of the news bits today. Overall I was impressed with the first release of Adobe’s Acrobat.com efforts. With a slick, Flash based interface, it has good performance and is visually appealing.
They seem to be starting out with some good features, but are missing many. Zoho is closest to providing an online office suite that compares anywhere near Microsoft Office. Adobe is starting out with a word processor, document sharing ability with a generous 5GB of space, a document to PDF conversion tool, and a really nifty web conferencing application.
The word processor, called BuzzWord, is what you’d expect. It has the basics and is similar feature wise to Google Docs. PDF conversion is straight forward, you can upload a doc to convert and it saves the resulting file in the My Files applet. File sharing is accomplished from the drop-down context menu and provides the ability to embed the doc into a site.
The most impressive app included here is the web conferencing, called ConnectNow, which has features similar to WebEx. Adobe provides each user their own room, assigns a conference phone number to it, allows for desktop sharing, meeting notes, group & individual IM, and WebCasting with an optional web cam. Good stuff.
Just a couple bullet points:
Look & Feel: Wow – the Flash based interface is impressive
Consistency: Needs some work, changing applications launches too many windows
Integration: Very little between "applications"
Functionality: Depends on feature – some are quite rich, others very basic
Features: Document sharing, Word Processor, PDF Conversion, Web Conferencing
Overall it’s a good start. There is a long way to go to compete evenly with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but then Google doesn’t have a web conference tool. It’s not going to compete with MS Office, or any of the others for some time. With that said, however, if you want to convert some documents to PDF, host documents that you can link to in email or from a website, or a decent free web conferencing tool, it might be a good adjunct to your current solutions.
Wow, what a wild ride the last few months have been. I’ve been planning to refine the direction of my blog and revamp the appearance for some time and it’s finally completed!
Well, it’s almost completed – I’ve got a replacement for the About page almost ready to publish, and I’ve got one last page that I’ll add a little later. Seems I just can’t get it to come out quite right in the past week while working on other things – so I’ll get to that real soon.
Direction
The great part is that I’m refining my direction. Since I’ve come out of corporate, with a strong background in information technology, I’m going to focus on helping those organizations with social media. I’ve changed the description of the blog to "social web & the enterprise". I believe that to better describe the direction that I’m going.
Friends
First, I really respect a number of bloggers for their work & influence on me. So, instead of the old blogroll, or a list of links, I created a new Friends page. This page is people I have come to know, respect, learn from, work with, and I wanted to do more than just link to them. You’ll find a description of each blog and a thumbnail of their landing page.
Resume
Also page that can now be found in the top navigation area is the Resume page. I’ve had a variant of this Social Media Resume up for about 9 months, but never advertised it on the blog. I’ve revamped a number of pieces of the page as it used to be a completely custom HTML page forced into a WordPress theme template. Now it fully fits the theme, with a special resume.php template that allows different sidebars and such. Much better. I’ve pulled the video that I had on it, but will replace it with another one to fit the direction of the blog shortly.
Advertisement
You’ll also notice that all advertising save two things have been removed from the blog. While I make enough to pay for hosting, I believe that the ads detracted from what I’m here to accomplish, so they’re gone. The two items I mentioned that remain are badges for Personal Branding Magazine, and for Avatar Consultants. Their of personal interest to me, I’m involved in writing for one, and the other is my consulting firm.
Nowhere But Up
So if the picture in this post didn’t give a hint, my motto as I revise my direction and enter a new phase, is that there is nowhere to go but up. Join me as we bring the benefits of the social web to organizations of all sizes. Come along and help individuals realize the power and strength of their brand. Let’s make each day the best it can be!
I want to give a special thank you to Mykl Roventine for patience, ideas, and a great design – I wouldn’t have gotten this completed without his work. Thank you.
Got feedback? I bet! Don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts in a comment below.
“We are not enemies but friends.” Live your life. Completely. Without fear. Live it with Love, compassion, empathy, tolerance and joy. Treat every person with the kindness, respect and dignity they deserve by the very virtue of being a human being.
