SMBMSP December 2009 Podcast

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

Special guests:
Lindsi Gish
Communications Manager, Second Harvest Heartland
http://www.2harvest.org/
http://twitter.com/2harvest

Bing Crosby (Toby Cryns, http://www.twitter.com/TobyCryns)
Santa Claus (Phil Wilson, http://www.twitter.com/philson)

Links:
SMBMSP Store – http://www.cafepress.com/smbmsp/
SMBMSP website – http://smbmsp.org

Music:
White Christmas – Esquivel
Frosty the Snowman – Toby Cryns

How are we doing? Please send feedback to smbmsp@gmail.com

SMBMSP Podcast – November 2009

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.

smbmsp-turkey SMBMSP November 2009 Podcast
Show Date: November 12th, 2009
Produced by BellaMedia – http://www.bellamediaonline.com/
Hosts: Brad Bellaver, Rick Mahn and Mykl Roventine
Special Guest: Amy Bryant
Links mentioned during the podcast:
Thankful post by Amy Bryant – http://iplaybig.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/can-you-find-yourself-on-the-list/
SMBMSP#21 info – http://smbmsp.ning.com/events/smbmsp-21
Our Podcast Theme Song Contest: http://smbmsp.ning.com/profiles/blogs/announcing-the-smbmsp-podcast
SMBMSP Ning network – http://smbmsp.org
How are we doing? Please send feedback to smbmsp@gmail.com

50 Uses for Twitter

twitter 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.

  1. Keep in touch with my Twitter peeps friends
  2. General news item links
  3. News & links on my industry or area of interest
  4. Fast answers to quick questions
  5. Professional networking
  6. Links to nearly everything
  7. Marketing
  8. Personal branding
  9. Corporate & product branding
  10. Haiku’s
  11. Making friends
  12. Feel "plugged into the web and it’s various personalities"
  13. Replacement for instant messaging applications
  14. Chat tool
  15. Promotional tool for my blog
  16. Providing new reading opportunities
  17. Fun stuff!
  18. Meeting new, interesting people to communicate with
  19. Collecting links
  20. Finding sites related to social networking
  21. "To listen in on my contacts rants"
  22. A web worker "water cooler"
  23. Micro-blogging
  24. A personal "techmeme"
  25. Lightweight text broadcasting tool
  26. Easy way to annoy your spouse
  27. Promotional tool for my brand
  28. Ranting
  29. Idea generator
  30. No-cost non-profit announcement system
  31. Bring a sense of community to your home office
  32. Tracking status of friends
  33. Status message generator for other social networks
  34. Frustration generator (at least when it is down)
  35. Thought publisher
  36. Promotional tool for my organization
  37. Following public discussions
  38. Travel guide
  39. Controlled discussion between friends
  40. Uncontrolled discussion between friends with viewers
  41. List generator
  42. Meeting agenda generator
  43. Coffee shop locator
  44. People search
  45. Promotional tool for my company
  46. Product reviews
  47. Trip planner
  48. Backchannel for events
  49. Feedback generator
  50. 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.

10 Minute Review: Acrobat.com

image 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.

Adobe Buzzword beta 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.

Adobe ConnectNow beta 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.

Blogging – New Phase, New Theme

'arrow up' by Leo Reynolds 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.

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds

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