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How to Take Your Company Mobile Today

cgseo — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:01:00 +0000

As mobile phone penetration continues to surge, the years-old hype about the mobile Web being the next big thing is no doubt coming true. But despite all of the industry gurus, conference keynotes and trade magazine articles imploring you to get your business ready for the mobile space, it’s not always easy to know where to begin. Sure, you could hire a team of top-notch mobile developers, but not every business owner has that luxury, especially with the economy still in limbo. Here are a few tools to get started: Sponsor Make Your Website Mobile Friendly Your company’s website may be getting you noticed on the desktop, but what happens when people try to access it from their phones? Probably a lot of pinching, scrolling and squinting. There are a few ways to get your existing site ready for mobile display with minimal coding and development required. One such tool is a hosted solution called Mofuse , which offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface from which to manage mobile content, design and ads. Plug in an RSS feed URL to pull content in from your company blog (or any source), or simply publish static pages with the most pertinent info. When it’s ready, Mofuse provides several flavors of code snippets for redirecting mobile users from your full-size desktop site to the more mobile-friendly version. Another option is Mobify , a freemium service that takes your existing website and strips it down to only the essentials you want your mobile users to see. The result is a clean, highly usable design that displays for the users who visit your site from their phones. Although they have different pricing plans and feature sets, both Mofuse and Mobify come with custom domains, analytics, ad server integration and e-commerce options. Get Started With QR Codes Although not yet as common in the U.S. as they are in Japan, QR (quick response) codes are popping up more and more in commercial and marketing contexts. These square barcode-esque patterns can be printed on any page or real-world surface to enable users with a QR-equipped mobile phone to scan it and then be be redirected to any URL. These could be used in print advertisements to send users to your mobile site for more information or for special promotional offers. While the jury is still out on if and when QR codes will see widespread adoption in the West, it’s easy to get started using one of the many QR code generators that are out there, including Kaywa QR Code , Delivr and QR Stuff to name a few. Keep it Social This may seem like a no-brainer and the last thing the world needs is somebody else espousing the magic of the social Web, but we would be remiss to discuss going mobile without touching on the most obvious and simple way of getting your brand onto people’s phones. Let’s face it: people access sites like Facebook and Twitter from their phones all day long. If your company has a social media strategy, then it already has the beginnings of a mobile strategy. Phone photo by Thiago Felipe Festa . QR photo by cocreatr . Discuss

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How to Take Your Company Mobile Today

Military Grade Augmented Reality Could Redefine Modern Warfare

cgseo — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:24:00 +0000

When explaining the concept of augmented reality (AR) to someone who has never heard of it, I find myself going through a series of common real-life and pop-culture examples to help them understand. Aside from explaining that the 1st and Ten Line in football games and the computer vision of the Terminator are indeed forms of augmented reality, I often use examples from the military – the fighter pilot heads-up-display, for example – to supplement them. In fact, the military has played a significant role in the early development of AR, and one company is attempting to make sure it is a large factor in the future of the technology as well. Sponsor A Chicago-based company called Tanagram Partners is currently developing military grade augmented reality technology that – if developed to the full potential of its prototypes – would completely change the face of military combat as we know it. Tanagram CEO Joseph Juhnke presented the technology last week at the Augmented Reality Event in Santa Clara, California, and wowed the audience with his presentation. Illustrations from Juhnke’s presentation tell the company’s story of how their technology could give American troops the upper-hand in hostile situations. First of all, the company is developing a system of lightweight sensors and displays that collect and provide data from and to each individual soldier in the field. This includes a computer, a 360-degree camera, UV and infrared sensors, stereoscopic cameras and OLED translucent display goggles. With this technology – all housed within the helmet – soldiers will be able to communicate with a massive “home base” server that collects and renders 3D information onto the wearer’s goggles in real-time. With the company’s “painting” technology, various objects and people will be outlined in a specific color to warn soldiers of things like friendly forces, potential danger spots, impending air-raid locations, rendez-vous points and much more. In the above image, a spotter on a roof paints an area near his squad-mates in a red color, marking the area as a danger spot. The ability to virtually communicate the location of hostile forces to fellow soldiers is an invaluable technology to troops fighting in unfamiliar urban environments. The local fighters have “home field advantage,” because they are fighting in their back-yards in a way. Tanagram hopes to level the playing field – and then some – in an effort to help troops better understand their surroundings. All of this technology can also be monitored from a central base location by military leaders. They can gather around a virtual map of the battlefield with live location data for their troops. Best of all, the system has a memory for the information put into it – which means soldiers new to an area that has been fought in before will have the benefit of knowing where previous danger spots were. As futuristic and far-fetched as this seems, Tanagram is actually in the process of building this technology right now. The company is funded by a grant from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and plans on having a working proof-of-concept that runs on an iPhone by the first quarter of next year. Tanagram also hopes to have the server/client system operational as early as Q2 2011 as well as an open source head-mounted display (HMD) client by the end of next year. Discuss

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Military Grade Augmented Reality Could Redefine Modern Warfare

Demandbase Brings Real-Time Customer Identification to B2B Marketing

cgseo — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:01:00 +0000

What would you do if you knew exactly who was coming to your site and were able to tailor your site accordingly? With Demandbase ’s B2B-focused Real-Time ID service, businesses can now identify information about a visitor’s company, including industry, size, location and revenue before they even render their sites. In addition, they can also identify if that visitor is already a customer. Thanks to this, businesses can now, for example, tailor their marketing messages and advertising on their home pages for every visitor, and show them just those messages and white papers that are relevant to their businesses. Sponsor Demandbase’s solution is based on the company’s extensive database of company IP addresses. While regular reverse IP lookup services often only reply with the address of a company’s ISP, Demandbase has created its own proprietary database that goes beyond this and provides far more detailed information. The company has also partnered with various data providers like Dun & Bradstreet, Jigsaw, Edgar Online, Harte-Hanks, Hoovers and LexisNexis that allow it to display relevant company data. The idea here is that by being able to identify your visitors even before you render a page for them, you can cater your website to these visitors and increase your chance of converting these visitors into paying customers. This technology also comes in handy when it comes to registration forms. Instead of asking visitors for their company information when they want to download a white paper, for example, Demandbase already has this information. Integrates with Existing Tools Demandbase provides its customers with an API, so they can integrate this information with their existing customer management and business intelligence solutions. The company claims that it can correctly identify 83% of U.S. business traffic and that its real-time solution can identify a customer within 5 milliseconds. The company currently identifies about 200 million Web visits to B2B websites each month. New Today: LivePerson Integration Starting today, Demandbase is also bringing its technology to LivePerson , the popular live chat solution for businesses websites. Thanks to this, a company that implements Demandbase’s solution can now, for example, ensure that chats on their website are routed to the right specialists, and instead of having to gather basic information from these customers in the chat, the agents can immediately provide relevant information to their customers. Discuss

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Demandbase Brings Real-Time Customer Identification to B2B Marketing

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Talks About New Privacy Controls (Live Blog)

cgseo — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:15:28 +0000

Facebook is holding a press conference this morning where the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will discuss Facebook’s progress in bringing enhanced and simpler privacy controls to the popular social networking service. Since Facebook’s last round of updates, the company has come under growing pressure to safeguard its users’ privacy and offer simplified privacy settings. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company has “made a bunch of mistakes” lately and we expect Facebook to announce how it plans to regain its users’ trust today. Sponsor Note : As an experiment, we will use Google Wave to live blog this call. We recommend you use Google Chrome or a recent version of Firefox or Safari to follow along. For now, this Wave is read-only. We plan to open it up for comments after the event is over. The press conference is scheduled to start around 10:30am PT (1:30pm ET). Discuss

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Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Talks About New Privacy Controls (Live Blog)

Wolfram Alpha Turns 1: An Interview with Stephen Wolfram

cgseo — Wed, 19 May 2010 05:00:00 +0000

The launch of the “computational knowledge engine” Wolfram Alpha was one of the most anticipated product launches of early 2009. Since then, it’s been rather quiet around Wolfram Alpha, even though the company continues to add new features and data on a regular basis. Today, we had a chance to talk to Wolfram Research’s founder Stephen Wolfram about the first year and the company’s plans for the future. Sponsor Looking Back As Wolfram told us, the most basic question he tried to answer when the company started development was simply to see if it was even possible to take all this data and make it computable. Now, a year later, his answer to that question is an emphatic “yes.” Wolfram, however, also acknowledged that right after the launch the user experience for first-time users wasn’t necessarily ideal, as Wolfram Alpha didn’t yet have data for a lot of knowledge domains. The choice at that point, he said, was to either delay the launch and get more data, or to release Wolfram Alpha and be able to learn how its users would use it, and then enhance the experience over time. Wolfram says that today, most users are aware of the difference between a search engine and Wolfram Alpha, and the experience for first-time users has become far better. He stressed that the team (which consists of about 200 employees and 500 volunteers) is currently adding new data at an increasing pace. That’s gotten easier as the team has learned how to import information from a large variety of knowledge domains and sub-specialties. Getting the Data is Just 5% of the Work Unlike Google , Wolfram thinks that the Web “isn’t useful for getting raw data.” Indeed, whenever the Wolfram Alpha team experimented with this, the data simply wasn’t up to par. Instead, the company will continue to mostly work with data from primary sources. Getting this data, however, is only 5% of the work. The real difficulty is to understand how to compute this data and to understand how people talk about this data: What kind of questions do they ask? What are the alternate names for a specific chemical element? In addition, the Wolfram Alpha team and volunteers also check for anomalies in the data they receive. If there are major outliers, the team will track down more information to verify the original source. Sadly, though, not all data is free and Wolfram Alpha has to pay if it wants to include some databases. To make Wolfram a viable business and still offer this data, the team is considering a subscription plan that will give paying users access to deeper datasets from subscription databases. Challenge: Bringing Wolfram Alpha to More Users The question now, however, is how to get more users and how to bring Wolfram Alpha to more users through more channels. As we noted earlier this year, the company’s newly minted managing director Barak Berkowitz thinks that the team’s “number-one priority is to get Wolfram|Alpha in the hands of everyone.” To get to this point, they will soon release more and better tools for third-party developers who want to use the company’s APIs to integrate Wolfram Alpha’s functionality in their own sites and services. It’s also worth noting that Wolfram Alpha now offers an appliance that companies can install behind their firewall to curate and compute their own data. Looking Ahead: Analyzing Your Own Data, More Knowledge Domains, Programming with Natural Language Queries Besides looking back, we also asked Wolfram about his plans for the future. In answering this question, he stressed that this new approach to computing is just getting started and it usually takes him about 10 years to develop his projects before he fully understands what’s possible once this new paradigm has arrived. For the near future, however, Wolfram hopes that Wolfram Alpha’s users will be able to upload their own data and perform complex computations on this data and use Wolfram Alpha to find correlations within Alpha’s vast database. The usage scenarios for this could include anything from analyzing sales data to doing personal analytics on data from devices like the Fitbit . In addition to uploading data, Wolfram Alpha will soon make it easier for users to download data to use in presentations. Wolfram also wants to bring Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica closer together. One development that Wolfram is especially excited about is using Wolfram Alpha’s ability to understand and compute natural language queries in order to create Mathematica programs. By building on this capability, Mathematica users may soon be able to write and manipulate their code using natural language queries just like in Wolfram Alpha. Obviously, the team behind Wolfram Alpha will also continue to add more data across an every-growing number of knowledge domains. Today, for example, the team is launching real-time space weather data, 12 complete genomes and local maps, as well as numerous other knowledge domains related to math, biology, physics and geography. Discuss

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Wolfram Alpha Turns 1: An Interview with Stephen Wolfram

Huddle Scores $10.2 Mil, Goes Office Shopping

cgseo — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Huddle , the enterprise-focused social networking suite, announced a $10.2 million infusion and a plan to open a Bay Area office. Matrix Partners led the series B investment in the three year-old, London-based company, along with Eden Ventures and the company’s Chairman, Charles McGregor. Sponsor Huddle, which “recently became cashflow positive” (I think that means they’re making a profit), employs 40 in the United Kingdom and the United States. They anticipate quadrupling in size in the next year. “Huddle has raised in excess of $15 million in equity funding since its launch in 2007. The company is using the capital to expand its U.S. presence and build a team in San Francisco led by its newly relocated co-founder, Andy McLoughlin.” Among the customers for their business social network offerings are Procter and Gamble, Disney, HTC, Panasonic, Kia Motors and Nokia; as well as governmental organizations like UNICEF and charitable groups. Discuss

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Huddle Scores $10.2 Mil, Goes Office Shopping

SCVNGR Takes Location-Sharing Beyond Check-Ins

cgseo — Thu, 13 May 2010 05:01:00 +0000

The current crop of location-sharing services like Foursquare and Gowalla rely on very basic game mechanics to entice their users to check in at their favorite bars, restaurants and coffee shops. Just checking in, however, really isn’t that exciting in the long run. SCVNGR , which got a major investment from Google Ventures earlier this year, is taking check-ins to the next level by adding additional game-like challenges to virtually every one of the 20 million places in its database. For now, SCVNGR is only available in the U.S., but the company plans to expand internationally soon. Sponsor Challenges vs. Check-Ins While you can just use SCVNGR to check in at your favorite coffee shop (worth 1 point), you will get extra points if you fulfill one of the missions that either the SCVNGR team or other players have created for this place. This could mean taking a picture of the location, for example (worth 2 points). Seth Priebatsch , the company’s founder, also told us of another example, where customers at a local restaurant had to fold their burrito wrappers into elaborate origami sculptures (worth 5 points). According to Priebatch, most activities shouldn’t take more than just a few seconds to complete. For now, getting points on SCVNGR isn’t tied to discounts, coupons or any other real-world bonuses. Instead, players will simply get to see how well they are doing in relation to their friends. Instead of just becoming the mayor of a given place, SCVNGR allows regulars to create their own challenges after they have checked in a few times. SCVNGR is currently available for the iPhone and Android platforms. From Enterprise to Consumer Product Interestingly, today’s consumer launch of SCVNGR is the second part of the company’s roadmap. Since launching in late 2008, SCVNGR has already worked with over 600 companies, museums, universities, conferences and other organizations, including Princeton, MIT, The Smithsonian National Zoo, the City of Philadelphia and the U.S. Navy. These groups have used SCVNGR to create interactive experiences for their customers and visitors. Now that anybody will soon be able to create challenges, it will be interesting to watch how SCVNGR develops. Discuss

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SCVNGR Takes Location-Sharing Beyond Check-Ins

Hawaiian Hardwood Company Grows RFID

cgseo — Fri, 07 May 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods is mounting an intriguing new project to use RFID to track the growth and sale of its heirloom Koa trees and lumber. The project is designed to allow investors in the company to track the growth of their investment. An RFID tag will be attached to “each tree to track ownership, growth, maintenance and the lumber yield from each tree owner’s stand,” according to the company. Sponsor “(HLH’s) GPS / GIS system will locate each tree by an exact set of geographic coordinates allowing the tree owner to locate their trees on maps and by satellite imagery. It is only a matter of time before you will be able to go on line and use these coordinate to look at your specific trees from space.” In other words, you can watch your trees mature via Google Earth. The company planted the first 140-acre section with Koa trees in 2009. In the coming half a decade, the plantation will fill the entirety of a 2700-acre site on Hawaii Island’s Hamakua coast on the big island of Hawaii. This site was once the personal royal forest of King Kamehameha I. It will eventually support the growth of 1.3 million tropical hardwoods, primarily Koa, indigenous only to Hawaii. The business set-up is designed to allow different sized investors. The product is sold, on the hoof as it were, in units of 100 trees. Discuss

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Hawaiian Hardwood Company Grows RFID

Social Networking: The Employment Law Revolution That Wasn’t

cgseo — Fri, 07 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

There’s been a lot of anxiety provoked (and money made) predicting a “parade of terribles” in the workplace as a result of social networking sites and employee blogs. While there is no doubt that these sites provide additional opportunities for employees to be distracted from getting their work done, I contend that not all that much has changed. Employees that are wasting their time on social networking sites today were gossiping at the water cooler in yesteryear, and the solution is the same: thoughtful policy implementation and vigilant managerial oversight. Sponsor Guest author Gary M. Gansle is a partner in Dorsey & Whitney ’s Labor and Employment practice, based in the firm’s Silicon Valley office. Gary has a highly successful track record litigating employment-related claims on behalf of clients, and provides expert advice and counseling with respect to a wide range of employment law issues. He has established a nationwide training practice, conducting programs for managers and employees on employment-related topics such as “Managing within the Law” and “Preventing Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace.” Gary is also a contributor to Dorsey’s Northern California startup blog . While there are clearly some updates to how we manage the workplace, in context I don’t think it is as revolutionary as many doomsayers would have us believe. The implications of social networking fall into three categories: pre-employment, during employment, and post-employment. Below is what I see as the key considerations. Pre-Employment I recommend against using social media to screen applicants because of the risk of inadvertently obtaining information that cannot lawfully be taken into consideration in the hiring process. However, if you are using social media to screen applicants, consider these steps: Do so consistently, rather than pick and choose who to screen. Have a low-level, non-decision maker screen first to filter out any protected class information that is inappropriate for decision makers to consider. Then have them report out only what can be lawfully considered. Don’t friend applicants on Facebook to access non-public information. During Employment Consider adding new language to existing policies, such as your technology policy, code of conduct, harassment and discrimination policy, and confidentiality policy. The types of specific modifications to consider include: an unequivocal policy statement that abuse of social media can be grounds for discipline, up to and including termination. an express prohibition on disclosure of confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets. a directive that employees should keep company logos or trademarks off their blogs or profiles, and a request that employees not mention the company in commentary unless for business purposes (and then only with prior approval of the company). a prohibition on employees posting or blogging during business hours, unless for business purposes pre-authorized by the company. a request that employees bring work-related complaints to HR before blogging or posting about such issues. a prohibition on posting false information about the company, its employees, customers, affiliates, or business partners. a general instruction that employees use good judgment and take responsibility, personally and professionally, for what they publish online. a requirement that all employees who identify the company in their blog include a disclaimer that the views expressed are those of the blogger, not the employer. Post-Employment In this category, the single biggest issue is recommendations. Companies should consider updating their written policies on providing references (which should already limit such information to last position held and dates of employment) to include a prohibition on managers giving LinkedIn recommendations to employees or former employees unless pre-authorized by HR. I suggest this not because I thrill at the Big Brother quality of it, but because of the risk of defamation claims for references that go wrong, and the fact that manager statements – even statements not on company letterhead or made through a formal corporate communication – are attributable to the company and may be inconsistent with legal positions confidentially being taken by the employer. With the addition of some of these common sense updates to existing policies, your company can feel confident that the “revolution” of social networking won’t have nearly the devastating impact predicted by most commentators. Photo by Jason Pratt . Discuss

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Social Networking: The Employment Law Revolution That Wasn’t

Why Does LinkedIn Keep Doing Things That Don’t Make Sense?

cgseo — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:10:50 +0000

Professional social LinkedIn launched a new feature today that has tons of promise: the ability to follow new hires, departures, job postings and more at particular companies. It’s pretty awesome to have a newsfeed of company updates across your sector of interest, as an employment-o-phile (I love hearing about people’s jobs) this seems like a feature I’d really enjoy. Unfortunately, the implementation is a big disappointment. The condescending, pageview hungry attitude that colors so much of what LinkedIn does is all over this new feature as well. I’ve recorded a short screencast tour of the feature below. Let me know if this drives you as nuts as it does me. Sponsor To be fair, the company says this is only the beginning and that there is more development of this feature on the way. It’s hard not to be cynical about it though, as LinkedIn does things just like this all the time. There is also the ability to customize which kinds of company updates get delivered in your LinkedIn email newsletter, and maybe that will work out great for the stuffed-shirt-Blackberry wielding crowd, but the social media users the company seeks to connect with need more and better ways to consume this information! There is a feed of your network updates you can subscribe to, but it’s filled to the brim with imported tweets and the most low-value LinkedIn updates like new friend connections. Please oh please, LinkedIn, why can’t you just make it easy for your users to get clear notifications of when people and companies make job changes and hires, in an interface of our choosing, so that we can come back to LinkedIn if we want to read more? It’s maddening. We’ve been complaining about this for years and the company keeps coming to us saying “you’re going to love what we’ve got to show you next!” But new developments continue to have the same limitations. It’s a heartbreaking loss of opportunity for all parties involved. Discuss

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Why Does LinkedIn Keep Doing Things That Don’t Make Sense?