Dropbox paper just came out of restricted beta last week – and it is fantastic. I’m moving on from OneNote and doubling down on Dropbox.
I’m hoping we get better integration with the core features in Dropbox – but that is something I’m certain is in the works and will make paper even better in the future.
You can check it out by heading over to https://dropbox.com/paper
I’m still old school enough to think that voice conversations still matter. So I call people, and they call me. When I’m out and about I like to know who has called me back at my office (no I don’t want my cell to ring EVERY TIME someone calls my home number, my cosinity number or my home office number). That way I can see who it is and give them a ring right back if it was really something we needed to discus.
I’ve had a number of solutions in place for this over the last 2 years or so. From IM messages to SMS messages. The problem with IM is the lack of great notification on mobile devices. The problem with SMS is paying 2-5 cents each.
This led me to think – maybe using Twitter and @ messages or DM’s was a better answer.
Before I give you the code let me first explain how this works. If you are not comfortable with Asterisk, Asterisk AGI, and customizing extensions.conf you should probably stop here.
Continue reading “How to Use Twitter and Asterisk for Call Notification”
As you all may (or may not) know justSignal creates creates solutions that allow you to track specific contexts (subjects, events or topics) on Social Media. Our current widget is focused on Twitter (and why not), with FriendFeed, Google Blog Search and Blog Comments (via Backtype and Disqus) coming after SXSW.
With Demo coming up next week we thought you might want a way to track all the action and engage in conversation with other people attending or just interested.
We won’t be presenting… but we will be serving up this justSignal Tracker… How is that for a demo?
NOTE: All justSignal Trackers come with an iPhone optimized Web Application. Go ahead and point your iPhone/iPod touch at http://justsignal.com/demo09 to view the use the Tracker on your iPhone.
You can bookmark this page (or see the link at the top of this blog page) to return to the Demo 09 justSignal Tracker at any time.
If you’d like to embed the widget in your own page leave a comment below. I’d be happy to provide you the details.
I’ve spent a large part of my professional life dealing with the realities of having conversations with customers. In every type and size of company imaginable. And there is one single reality that holds true:
Your brand is what your customers say it is… regardless of your best Marketing and PR efforts.
With the rise of Social Media this reality is even more true. Not because you ever really controlled you brand – but because word of mouth just got global, social and the biggest megaphone you could have ever imagined.
It used to be a single pissed off customer might only impact 10 or 20 people over the course of 3 months. Now a single dissatisfied customer with a Twitter account or Blog can reach hundreds of people in a single day. And, as a rule, if you are doing (or not doing something) that makes customers mad, you do it to more than one per day.
So feel free to create all the marketing material and press releases you want lauding your superior product or service and you commitment to great customer service. In the old world that might have worked. But today it simply can not compete with the conversations your customers and prospects are having about you. You are what they say you are.
If you want to really impact your brand – and how it is perceived by your customers and prospects, get in the conversation.
Your PR and marketing staff will tell you to invest in Social Media Monitoring tools like Radian6 and Techrigy to gather Social Media data to analyze for your next marketing campaign. And I concede – monitoring what is said about you is a positive first step. The challenge with this strategy is that you are still trying to control the conversation.
What you need to do, what you should be doing is participating in the conversation.
Provide Solutions, Inform, Listen and Respond
The most important branding you do (and can do) is in the conversations you have with your customers and prospects.
Think I’m nuts? Great – Let’s look at two examples:
Motrin’s Blunder:
Motrin released an ill conceived ad. And it isn’t that they didn’t realize their mistake – it was that they weren’t engaged in the conversation. Because of that there were 4 days to allow the controversy to reach significant proportions.
Links:
http://mashable.com/2008/11/16/motrin-moms/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/motrin_bows_to_social_media_pr.php
http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2008/11/18/motrin-moms-and-the-perils-of-social-media-marketing/
Ford’s ScottMonty:
ScottMonty from Ford is actively engaged in Social Media. And because of that he is able to react in real (or near real-time) to negative and positive brand messages. This allows Ford the opportunity to actively engage in the conversation and refute false perceptions and reinforce positive messages.
Links:
http://friendfeed.com/e/a8d15997-12ec-eeee-921b-61c96ed66d27/Why-I-love-the-US-auto-industry/
The takeaway:
Analyzing the data and reacting is about how fast you can “clean up the mess”. It pre-supposes you can megaphone your brand message and shout down those who have a different point of view.
By participating in conversations about your brand you have the ability to prevent situations where the perception becomes the story. You have the ability to turn negative experiences into positive brand affinity moments that increase your customer loyalty and enhance your brand in the eyes of those watching. And in this new Social Media world we are all watching.
I use JQuery… it is the JavaScript framework at work at cosinity.
I can categorically state that – while not perfect – JQuery lives up to it’s tag line – “write less, do more”.
There is a wonderful tutorial over at WebMonkey entitled Get Started with JQuery that can help you get started.
What I’m reminded as I write this is that the real value of any application is the value it brings to the user. The real value is in solving important problems OR giving users a capability that did not exist – or could not be realized. While there is something to be said for the coding purist who wants complete control over every line of code used by his/her application… there is more to be said for re-using as much as possible in a well architected way, to quickly solve those customer problems.
Brian Roy 