Stardust Global Ventures

Everybody is all up in arms over facebook places. Why? Confusion!

Let’s answer a couple of questions those of you who have never used location based services may have.

First of all if you’re using your computer, facebook places will not be told where you are or what you are doing. It doesn’t work that way.

Second, if you don’t use facebook on your phone you have no worries. Facebook places can’t possibly know with no input where you are or what you are doing.

Third, even if you do use facebook on your mobile device you still have to access the places tab and tell it where you are. For instance, when I am out and about in the world using facebook on my phone I have to open up the application and then manually open places and then type in where I am and it has to recognize that as a place or I have to tell it that where I am is the location of, for example, Lorenzo’s pizza. If I don’t tell it anything, it has no knowledge. GPS still has to be activated and linked with facebook in order for it to have any idea where you are.

The hype over facebook not being trusted is a whole other issue. I definitely understand there is little reason to trust facebook because they’ve certainly not done anything to garner trust. They’ve allowed your information to be public in spite of the steps you may believe you have taken to keep your privacy locked down. But location based services really are not smart. At least not right now. All of them, facebook included give you controls and you then set the privacy to whatever you choose. If you have facebook and don’t use it on your mobile device you have not one thing to fear. You don’t have to mess with your settings at all and it won’t matter one iota. You are as safe as you were before Places came to be.

EDIT: My friend Dameone Welch-Abernathy pointed out the one thing I forgot to mention. If you’re still really freaked out about all this, the one thing that guarantees you are not checked in is if you go to your settings and change other peoples ability to check you in where they are. Seriously though unless you have really skanky friends, they probably wouldn’t if they knew you didn’t want them too.

The old bait and switch.

This morning I was pointed to a link at Sysomos Blog . They ask the question, “Is Twitter really about lots of followers?” Fascinating since they don’t answer that question, they simply suppose it is, and explain how to make your twitter stream appealing to the masses.

Personally I vacillate a bit, but unless you are working for a company, building a company, trying to reach ‘the masses’, so to speak, I don’t happen to think attempting to reach millions of people and have a million+ followers on twitter is a goal. And, this article, while not totally off the mark, certainly begs the question ‘why’? Why is it important to be interesting enough to garner a bunch of new followers? Why does it matter at all how many followers you have?

Think for a minute about the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come, or if you tweet authentically people will follow – but it’s all about your goal, isn’t it? Does it matter for you if you don’t meet the industry ‘standard’ for number of followers? Why are we all expected to race toward a number that someone has set out there as important to reach, especially if we aren’t marketers. Or are we?

Are we marketers?

To be fair, all of us to a certain extent are marketers. We may not be marketing a big name product but we do market ourselves. The struggle, though, is that every second person on twitter is telling us how they have the answer to getting more followers, or some other ridiculous thing, and we get confused.

Let’s think about what really matters to us.

Are you a mouthpiece for a company, either your own or someone else’s? Is your goal to achieve a large audience so that your message is heard and possibly the reason someone makes a decision? If so then your numbers mean something different than the average person’s. Still, we need to remember there is a difference between broadcasting and engaging. This distinction is really getting muddied.

Dunbar’s Number

Well known anthropologist, Robin Dunbar theorized the number 150 as a mean number for processing ability in group size. The actual number will vary between 100 and 230, but 150 is what we can expect to be able to have in our network and still feel connection with. Others have posited this number is too low, with more recent numbers coming from a study of the US that suggests a mean of 230 with a high of 290.

Any way you slice it, there is a limit to cognition. These numbers are meant to provide explanation for how large a group can work in consort without conflict. In other words, there is a limit to the number of people we can positively impact.  There is no gaming the system, and there isn’t a great deal of difference in socio-economic/intelligence quotient.

What do you need to know?

Let’s assume you have a large network and it is necessary. What you need to know is that the larger your network, the less percentage of engagement there will be. As it grows you will become more like a megaphone and less like a conversationalist. The reciprocation will be lost and just as in the past with movie star idol worship, you will stop being a person and become a commodity. Own it, or get out of it but know what you’re getting when you go for those big counts. Don’t get me wrong, you will still have conversations but the actual numbers of people you will become personally involved with and stay personally involved with will diminish.

What’s your goal?

What you want may depend on what you’re doing. If you’re using twitter for business you have an entirely different goal than someone who is simply trying to stay connected. Understanding the difference is the key. Don’t be fooled. You are important and deserve a rich network full of people of your choosing. Whatever you do be considerate of those you connect with and keep your eye on the prize. The prize is what you want to gain from the involvement.

Today is July 4th, 2010. Independence Day for those of you who are American or those who know anything about the history of the United States. Independence of what? Hm…that’s not really in debate, but this day and what it means has given me pause. Why? Because I’m about to embark on a new path that leaves me decidedly not independent, or does it? Let’s think about this.
Ken and I have been partnered for nearly 3 years. After these years of partnership we have finally decided to legalize ‘us’ as a couple. We have the marriage license, have a minister, our attendants/witnesses are ready to arrive for the big day. What about my 3 year long independence? Does a ceremony mean independence is no longer possible? Am I now to be absorbed or will I remain independent and a separate entity inside a partnership?  What is Independence?

Webster’s dictionary defines independence like this: 1 : the quality or state of being independent .

When you look up independent, here is what you get: 1 : not dependent: as a (1) : not subject to control by others : self-governing (2) : not affiliated with a larger controlling unit <an independent bookstore> b (1) : not requiring or relying on something else : not contingent <an independent conclusion> (2) : not looking to others for one’s opinions or for guidance in conduct

Independence means I have the right and ability to choose what I stand for, what I’d like to do and who I’d like to do it with. Independence means my opinions will still be my own, I will not have to give up what I believe or think for anyone else.

What independence doesn’t mean is that the past no longer exists or that we relinquish all of who we were prior. Nor does it mean we become whole only inside the marriage. It simply provides a point of reference for what we stand for. Isn’t that what independence day in America is? I stand for me, I support my family and I support my soon to be husband. I remain Independent.

Happy Independence Day, friends and colleagues.

We hope you will join us in thought: Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 4pm pdt as we celebrate our Independence as a couple. Media will follow. (We are the first couple in technology after all)

Just a quicky to consider the latest twitter bug as referenced on Mashable.

What do you think would happen if our numbers ceased to show, permanently? What would the so-called guru’s base their expertise on? Better yet, how would they set themselves apart? What would happen to the social media we have a love/hate relationship with?

I’d really love to find out. Hm….I wonder.

Just got through reading one of Robert Scoble’s opinion pieces on privacy. He makes some good points but more than that, it made me consider just what it is that most of us really mean when we talk about privacy. Have a look at his post and then let’s talk. http://scobleizer.com/2010/05/08/much-ado-about-privacy-on-facebook-are-we-protesting-too-much/

I don’t necessarily always agree with Robert but he definitely makes me think. I don’t think a locked down website is what most people want from Facebook. I know that’s not what I want. It is what everyone says they want, but maybe we should ask ourselves to really consider that. I think we want something else entirely.

You all know I’m female. Like it or not females are addressed by a certain segment of the world population differently than males are. While it doesn’t happen often, I have certainly had my share of requests for friendship by people who send a message telling me I’m ‘hot’ or asking for my IM so they can contact me directly. Usually they want me to use Yahoo, which sort of tells me something must be in yahoo I am not privy to because while I have a yahoo account for Flickr, I do not use yahoo.

So with these experiences, and a long term account on Facebook as well as a long term life online, it caused me to really think about what I would like on the web regarding privacy.

I want control of who has the ability to communicate with me. That’s all. I want people to treat their online neighbors as they would their next door neighbors and not expect they have the right to write derogatory things on their ‘walls’ or send mail that is inappropriate. I don’t want strange men or women to publicly hit on me, I do not want them to come to my place of business, ie email, linked in messages, blog, or wherever else i may be conducting business to ‘call me out’ like a high school bully. I expect to be treated on my public spaces the way I would were we in the same physical space. With dignity and respect. I think typing has emboldened us for some reason and I think we should step back and really consider when we all got the right to be mean and insensitive to one another.

I have recently had to block someone on Facebook. I blocked them because they were sending messages I don’t appreciate receiving. It’s not that I care if they see my profile, I only choose to not receive messages from them because they apparently struggle with the common courtesy I talked about above.

Since I’m writing this on my iPhone, I’ll end now. But think about it. Is it really privacy or simply some measure of control that has been missing from online life?

A while back Tom Foremski wrote a post called – Dirty Little Secrets: Social Media Is Terrible at Promoting Products.

I have thought about that and he’s right. Social media promotes social media, or to take it deeper, Social media is what companies use to promote themselves. But no one is successfully promoting a product with social media. What social media is doing is enabling communication.

Are Brands social? I don’t think so. We pay attention to brands because of cultivated credibility. People brands may be social, but typically by the time they reach recognizable brand status they are not nearly as social because they are too busy and bombarded, so people brands find the other people like them, and are social there. It no longer matters that they aren’t social because they have built enough credibility that WOM takes over and becomes all that matters. Even bad word of mouth rarely impacts them. Most treat that as sour grapes.

As a people brand grows, does social shifting happen where they no longer have to engage because the people who built and helped them now do all the ‘social’ for them? Is it asynchronous – where you, the brand, no longer have to be involved? I believe this to be the case.

Is the assumption that by having 100k + followers that you have then achieved such a state of brand identity you are no longer required to engage? How then do we maintain credibility? We don’t expect the products to jump off the market shelves at us as we walk through a store, why then should a people brand expect and get unconditional devotion? Do they now have whuffie, or karma to spare and other people perpetuate their brand for us?

I’d like to not confuse a Brand with Engagement. Engagement happens between people looking for something, be it friendship, products, or information, and those providing what we’re looking for. The best engagers are not the brands we already identify. Those brands have all become part of the old broadcast media mold. No, the best engagers are people who haven’t yet arrived. Hmmm, I wonder if that’s an argument for high turnover in social media? I think I’ll save that for another post.

Who of you have not heard some major brand tell you, “We listen and we respond”, only to ask a question and either get nothing in response, or get the canned response that they will respond as soon as possible but due to the massive number of requests it may take a while? Is this what we want from engagement? Can we even call this engagement? I think this is LAME!

What we want from engagement is a front facing contact, someone who is representative of the brand, not the brand, who will take the time to help us out. We don’t want someone identified as a brand because as soon as we identify a person as a brand, they have reached a status that defeats the purpose of the front facing person. A brand simply doesn’t have enough to give to that many people. Certainly not the engagement piece.

Brian Solis recently wrote the book, Engage: The complete guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. I haven’t personally read this book, in part because I have not had an opportunity, but there is another piece to it. I don’t think Brian engages well, except with those in his immediate universe, and I find it incredibly difficult to get excited enough to buy a book that is supposed to teach engagement from someone who is now his own brand. Certainly Brian is successful, you really can’t argue that, but why is he successful when he doesn’t eat his own dogfood? I believe Brian is successful because he has reached that brand status that many wish to reach, and yet so few ever truly achieve. But reaching that status now means he is incapable of being a person and truly engaging the way most social media people engage – which illustrates my point.

This isn’t a piece on Brian, and I’d rather not make it about him which is why I’m only linking to his book, not to him on a personal level. He is merely an example of the big picture I’m trying to paint, certainly not the only example, just a good one.

Once upon a time most Brands paid attention, asking questions about how they could do better, or what they should do differently, or even how to make your experience better. Once they get to the royalty stage, the only thing that shakes a brand up is a need to combat bad press, in other words the need to defend themselves.

You are certainly capable of making up your own mind about all this. I just had some thoughts, and where better to put them than here?

On a final note I’ll end with something I saw on twitter just moments before posting this. Practice what you preach, better yet, don’t preach. Just practice!

Makes sense, don’t you think? If you aren’t living it, walking the walk so to speak, at some point people will notice.

Technorati Tags: Tom Foremski, Sheryl Breuker, Brian Solis, Personal Brand, Engagement,

Many of you have read or seen the interviews I did about the Chile earthquake. I thought I’d tell you in my words what happened and then I’d like to share some thoughts on what social media really is from my perspective.

Saturday, February 27th, 2010 I awoke and got a cup of coffee. It’s the first thing on my agenda after a quick stop at the washroom. I had a few slurps and then went to the office to get phones. This is a common routine for Ken and I. Coffee then phones.

After getting phones, I look to see how many emails and messages there are, clearing them from my phone as I go. Then I typically open tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is the twitter client I use most often on my iphone. Once I have looked at twitter I head to facebook, because while I have a facebook app on my phone it doesn’t show me my pokes and my goal as a rule is to clear up anything that is an action item. Pokes are action items.

Saturday began like any other day, but I got stuck at tweetdeck. Both Ken and I noticed a number of tweets regarding an earthquake in Chile. My brother’s wife is there so our ears perked. We started searching google for news, looking at trending topics on twitter and in general seeking any information about the status of the people in Chile.

Once we saw the magnitude of the earthquake, 8.8 is HUGE, we started wondering if we should contact my brother to find out if he heard anything. I decided to attempt to call Chile to see if maybe all was ok in Santiago, which is where Maria was, and of course couldn’t get through. Call failed. Call failed many times and by now I was getting nervous. I looked at Ken and asked if he thought I should call my brother. We agreed I should.

I woke my brother up from a sound sleep to give him horrible news. An earthquake had occurred and we had tried to reach his wife and couldn’t get through. He said he would start trying. He was so distraught! There is nothing like having to share with a family member bad news. Really bad news. My heart went out to him but I believed it was better he know what happened than to wake and hear it elsewhere.

My brother and I quickly got off the phone with each other so he could start his long vigil while trying to find out what had happened to Maria. In the meantime, I too went to work to see if I could find some answers.

I can’t tell you how often I have been asked what hashtags are and how to use them. I have certainly used them for basic searches before this, but they became a lifeline.

Quickie def. of hashtags: A hashtag uses the hash symbol [pound sign] on your keyboard to draw attention to a specific topic or word.

When I was looking at the trending topics I quickly saw patterns. #Chile was big, #chileearthquake was too. #terremotochile was the biggest one at the beginning of my search so there I went, to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=terremotochile
I noticed a lot of people had many other hashtags so back on twitter I started posting random tweets, at first with no hashtags, moving to hashtags.

I honed my tweets and eventually started getting responses from people until the final response that really was a game changer for us. This one, from @jpcoderch:

We soon worked out the details and he went to work in Chile trying to call my sister in law. It took approximately two hours until he finally got through to her. Maria sent a message back with the code word twinkie, a pet name she uses for my brother so we would know it was really her.

The rest is really history. The interviews I did with the BBC as well as CBS Miami and even the conversation I had with a person from MSNBC which led to a story on their blog, that’s all easy enough to discover and share and it has been shared enough that I do not feel compelled to again.

What hasn’t really been talked about, though each of the news stations attempted to put their own spin on it, is the value in social media. I’m not talking about the communication potential or the way we might all find our next job, but the life altering value I have personally experienced. It also changed perceptions for me.

Prior to this incident, I had relationships with a few fairly well known web-celebs. Do you know only a handful of our moderately well known friends communicated any interest in what was happening or offered on any level to put the word out, and none of them, unless pointed to our situation offered support of any sort? Does this surprise you? I was not surprised, but it did give me pause to consider who we align ourselves with and what value are they in our lives if when something that really matters happens they aren’t even be in the audience as silent support. How engaged is that? I’ll save that for a later post.

Is social media important? Yes. Is it really important? Yes! Social media empowers it’s users to find their own information, to seek out people and ideas to enhance their lives, and provides opportunity to gain perspective. Prior to now, we were fed our ideals, socialized by big media, and brainwashed into believing all was as we were told. The innovators of the world didn’t buy into it and created tools that we can all use today to find what the real truth is. It is also much more as our story clearly demonstrates. It is an organic connection to the whole planet that allows us to see there is more than just us.

My thoughts have been building. I am in the process of writing a much more detailed post about engagement and social web celebs. For now, let me just say thank you to all who helped us and encouraged us through an incredibly trying and frightening time. We were very lucky to have the tools we have to be able to get to a result that was ultimately a gift. We found our family member alive and safe.

We hope all whose paths crossed ours during the awful Chile earthquake have had the kind of outcome we had, and for those who did not – our hearts grieve with you for all you have lost.

Technorati Tags: #terremotochile, #Chile, #earthquake

First the written news:

Friends, Family Go Online To Find Loved Ones

MIAMI (CBS4) ? Amid the devastation in Chile is a communications meltdown leaving people with few options. There are virtually no phone calls, but lots of digital messaging.

Moments after hearing about the earthquake, tweeter Sheryl Breuker in Walla Walla, Washington tried reaching her sister-in-law in Santiago, Chile. When she couldn’t get her on the phone, she turned to Twitter.

“So I gave out her phone number to a couple people. About two hours later, we received notice that she was safe, she was OK,” Breuker told CBS4′s Gio Benitez over the phone.

Total strangers went out to find her sister-in-law in Chile. They found her.

“What I learned was that the person helping us was also missing family and had not yet heard from his family, so it was a pretty big deal, and pretty awesome, honestly,” said Breuker.

Today, phone lines did not connect families, but fingertips did.

“You’re pretty much a social media expert, in a sense. I see you have like 18,000 tweets, did you ever expect something like this to happen?” asked Benitez.

“Absolutely not. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and you hear these stories of people having these experiences, certainly nobody I know,” said Breuker.

Follow Sheryl Breuker on Twitter here.
Follow CBS4′s Gio Benitez on Twitter here.

Note: Moved the CBS video below the fold to stop it from running every time people hit the web site. You can see it below Continue reading “Behold, the power of social media” »

Imagine awakening only to learn there’d been a major earthquake in Chile, where you have family. We did.

Many of our friends know Sheryl’s brother Brian and his wife Mariali. We’ve all been friends for quite some time (Jaiku, Facebook, Twitter), but now we’re also family. She lives just outside Santiago, not far from where the big earthquake hit this morning.

We immediately tried calling, texting, online, but no contact. Power, water, and phones are out there. In many areas the devastation is severe. We simply didn’t have any idea. We reached to social media. Everywhere.

People responded, mostly by retweeting. The power of the retweet is something we take for granted. A man we didn’t know in any way sent a simple tweet that he was in Chile and
asked how he could help. We scrambled to give him every bit of useful information that we could come up with.

He messaged several times that phones were out and he couldn’t get through. Then, amazingly he said “as soon as I get a chance I will go to the address you gave me.” Through Twitter, we made contact with someone in another continent, but close enough to go physically check on our family.

If that isn’t magical enough for you, if you really don’t understand the power of human communications through technology, the power of what we can do together, within two hours of our first contact with this man, I got a DM in Twitter than said “found her! she is OK…. she told me to tell Twinkie to stay cool, she is fine!” And an email with more info on how to try to contact her directly.

Twitter’s a tool. The power is in the people, but the reach and potential is far bigger than you understand. Until your life is personally and directly impacted, you simply can’t truly appreciate that power.

Technology gives power to communications tools. Communications tools give power to people. People impact one another and change the world.

Our deepest heartfelt thanks to @jpcoderch. You are our hero of the Santiago earthquake JP. Now we’re connected. At some point Sheryl and I hope to visit Mariali in Chile. It’s a part of our family. I hope we can take you to dinner one day and get to know each other in person as well

Side note: Many of you know our dearest and best friend, JP. What an interesting bit of serendipity that our new friend and hero is also JP. John Paul and Juan Pablo. Two gentlemen and friends who touch our lives.

Social media = ROTC or Return on Trust & Credibility. I grabbed that from friend, Shashi Bellamkonda and think it incredibly compelling. One of the things we all look for when trying to understand the value of social media is a way to define it so it makes sense en masse. In attempting to define the ROI it gets a little sticky because there are so many different sets of analytics and no one can agree on a standard. For more on my thoughts on that here is an article I recently wrote for Women Grow Business in Washington DC – Replacing ROI’s Old Monetary Vision.

Last night I was pointed to a great article that actually helps remove some of the mystery around social media and the value it has in the world we live in today. One of the biggest indicators is that social media investment is minor if anything at all, and your return is potentially huge. I’m sharing from the article but I hope you’ll go and read it in it’s entirety.

The SBSI found that nearly one out of five small business owners are actively using social media in their business. Small businesses are increasingly investing in social media applications including blogs, Facebook® and LinkedIn® profiles.

And further to that is this next paragraph by small business owner Dr. Alan Glazier.

“In order to meet the growing challenges of a tough market last year, I was forced to consider alternative options to keep my business visible,” says small business owner Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and Founder, Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care. “With a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities. Our Google® ranking is consistently number one for many of the phrases people use to search for eye doctors in and around my city and we have received a “bump” in terms of new visitors to the site. My blog has been picked up by different news sources and led to media interviews. I am now recognized as a thought leader in social networking within my profession and lastly but most importantly, my marketing budget has been reduced by more than 80%.”

Let me just reiterate, the cost of social media is minimal. As stated above, Dr. Glazier lowered his marketing cost by 80%. What could your company do with that 80%?

Of course, it’s not enough to simply create a presence in the online world of marketing venues. People want to have a relationship with those they hire. I would caution you that engagement must be a part of your marketing campaign. Broadcast messages will not build a customer base. You must use tools, video, audio, and messaging systems to encourage a relationship.

Today, small business is winning. It’s winning because they are resourceful and far more attuned to their clients. During an economic downturn such as we have been experiencing for the past 18 + months, small business success is a key indicator of the value in social media.

Yesterday Ken wrote here on stardust three key factors to success. Adapt, Adopt, Adjust. This should be every small business’ mantra. Social media must be included in that.

Remember, Social media = ROTC or Return on Trust & Credibility. We build our trust through social communication. Credibility will follow with engagement.

Something to keep in mind when reading this, I didn’t do a technical review. If you want that, you’ll have to wait for Ken to write something. These are personal experiences and feelings from a pseudo geek.

You’re probably aware of the queries both Ken and I have thrown out about iPhone stuff. We’ve been such strong proponents of RIM, I’m pretty sure most of you can’t fathom us switching sides. We didn’t, at least not exactly.

We got iPhones.

I know, that’s got to be the big shock of the year. So how come I said we didn’t switch sides? To switch sides implies we are no longer rooting for the other team, and no longer view them as quality and that simply isn’t the case.

We took a little road trip this last weekend and our friend Dameon, aka @phoneboy called while we were in transit. Something I thought about while talking to Dameon was how much I still loved my Blackberry. My Blackberry Bold found a new home with my son who swears it’s the best phone ever – that coming off the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic phone which we loaned him a year ago and he LOVED.

What I loved about my Blackberry.

Both the Blackberry curve and bold are impressive devices. They thread messages wonderfully, their messaging service works almost flawlessly, to send both text and mms is super simple, and the apps for basics like twitter and facebook work better than their native platforms work most of the time.

I also loved typing on Blackberry. Typing on a qwerty keyboard is so much easier than a non qwerty, and when I say that I mean it beats hands down my use of the iPhone. If I had to say one thing would make me think twice again it would be that feature, or lack of a feature that could cause me to rethink.

The Blackberry messenger service was incredible. The iPhone may have over 100k apps but nothing I have found touches what Blackberry messenger could do, from basic messaging, one on one, to group messages, as well as file and picture transfers I simply don’t see anything in iPhone that comes close.

Multi tasking is yet another feature the Blackberry does well. With the Bold I was able to have multiple applications running at the same time, and did. I could have a call up, apps running, all while web browsing, something I’ll talk about later.

There are a few apps on the Blackberry that I miss but the truth is, if I were to shift back to that device I would miss some apps from the iPhone. Still, worth a real mention here is an app that I used in beta called socialscope. There has not been another mobile app that remotely functions the way socialscope does. That one app is a struggle and why it took me a while to buy the tweetie app on iPhone, something I wish I hadn’t purchased because I don’t find it better than anything else on iPhone that’s free. I remember hearing how fabulous it is and all I can say is, those who said that never had socialscope. ‘Nuff said.

Now web browsing. If all you’ve ever had is basic browsing like those non-smart phones offer, the Blackberry browser wouldn’t seem bad at all. I know because that is all I ever had pre Blackberry. However, once you have experienced other types of browsing you quickly see that RIM has a lot of catching up to do in order to provide a comparable experience. I’m not sure they can, actually. It’s unfortunate because so many things about the blackberry are actually superior to the iPhone. The appstore and browser make all the difference in the world. So let’s talk about that.

Experiencing the iPhone.

Many of you know that about a year ago Ken and I both got an ipod touch. Why that matters is because getting an iphone meant we already had a clue how to use it. Using the iPhone isn’t quite like using other phones or pda’s. It simply behaves differently, has a unique interface, which ultimately anyone can use because you don’t have to tell someone what to do to use it, it’s incredibly intuitive. It functions and works so easily and that is one of the great things about it.

We spent a year using ipods yet were pretty hesitant to get an iphone. There wasn’t any one straw that broke this camels back, it was many things.

First, while we don’t much care for the typing experience on iphone, something I’m sure we will eventually not have is a keyboard. Certainly not in the way we have them in current iteration of computer systems. I think touch, and ultimately voice will be our interface. We both think it likely.

Second, we are growing more and more mobile. Down sizing if you will. We want a device we can use in more ways than just to text or im and talk on the phone. Certainly I was able to watch youtube on my Blackberry, but if you put the Blackberry screen next to the iphone screen you can quickly see that there’s much better ability to see things on the iphone. I don’t have to squint as much and that is a big deal as I rarely have my glasses. Ken wears bifocals which also makes the iphone much more user friendly!

Third, the browser. There is not enough white space to talk about how brilliant the browsing experience is on the iphone. I LOVE the browser so much! It is the BEST browser on any mobile device I have ever used, and I have used several. I like that you in essence get tabbed browsing, and so far I haven’t found a limit to the number of windows I can open.

I love the ability to both pinch the screen to make it smaller or bigger, depending on need. The way I can scroll so seamlessly across a page not optimized for mobile browsers.

I don’t like the way my messages are threaded in the message box. It has made it impossible to respond to pokes much of the time. If I get a poke from someone and immediately following get a message, the message can be addressed, the poke can not.

I also don’t like that I literally have 3 different inboxes for mail. They all fall in the mail section but are separated there into 3 different boxes. It is more tedious and  I don’t care for it but it’s certainly doable.

The appstore, that’s incredible. If you’ve tried to use an appstore for any other platform you can appreciate a simple click and install process and how nice that would be. Blackberry appstore would like to be good but it isn’t. It’s a real pain.

Itunes on the other hand makes everything awful. I do NOT like itunes. Now, I will grant you that maybe I don’t use it to it’s best advantage, so that could be user failure. But many people I talk to despise the itunes interface and I wish it wasn’t so annoyingly cluttered, or processor intensive. I also wish there were better directions for how to prevent your non DRM’d media from becoming owned by itunes. I know how to do it should I need to, but it is a non-intuitive process. Funny how all the rest of the things about the iphone just work on an intuitive basis but not itunes. Not sure what happened there but someone clearly dropped the ball.

The sum of the total…

I wish I could tell you all that I wouldn’t change back, but that wouldn’t be fair. I probably would in the right circumstances. But for now, I’m an iPhone user and it’s not that bad. It’s not perfect, but I’m still learning. I’m sure I’ll have more to say as time goes by. I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks and I have a lot to learn.

Gosh people get so upset about a gadget that not only isn’t in their hands but isn’t supposed to replace current devices. This is supposed to be a new category of device. Why are people so tied to knocking a product or putting someone else’s opinion through a meat grinder?

My first thoughts on the iPad hold. I think it’s COOL! I want it. I can’t wait to own one. I would definitely be a first generation owner if I can justify throwing some money at it.

I think there are some perspectives missing from this whole discussion. Mr. Jobs said this is not a netbook, it’s not a phone, it’s not a pc, it’s something in the middle. A whole new way of doing stuff. Maybe not to the iphone user, though from all things I read and heard yesterday, there will be new things for those of us who already are familiar with that device.

I was on someone else’s site responding to comments yesterday about how I don’t think we should undervalue this new device. It seems to me, this is the future, not the past and to compare the two is not possible. They offer different strengths.

Ken made some great points to me this morning. He said this isn’t a computing device this is a connecting device. I hadn’t thought of it quite like that but that’s worth some consideration.

What about other possibilities? How about a holder that will keep it protected in the kitchen while you look up recipes? Or in the workshop where you might need to know what tool you need to do something? How about sitting on the coffee table so you can read the newspaper or as the remote for your home theater system so you don’t have to shell out 200 bucks for a remote to run it all? How many 200 dollar gadgets can it replace in an all in one new device that also happens to do some other really cool things?

Where are the futurists? We aren’t going to be sitting with a keyboard and mouse the whole rest of our lives. We’re going to be changing and evolving. We are going to be swiping screens and using our voice to do things that to now were just possibilities on the horizon. Tomorrow we’ll be doing a wide array of things we can’t even fathom. The iPad is a step toward it and a step away from where we’ve been. Am I the only one who sees that?

And another thing, to loosely use one of Steve Jobs statements, the processor in this new device was not meant to compete with a 3.8 hyper-threaded or quadcore anything. It is a different animal altogether. It is apparently as fast as anyone has seen anything run. I say WOW and COOL because it won’t heat up at the same rate as a traditional computer, won’t need the cooling system attached, and will in general require less power to run, which is FABULOUS!

Like many other people I sat on my sofa watching as patiently as possible for what was coming for Apple. Having recently switched to an iphone from a Blackberry, I had high hopes and great expectations. And I also made the assumption that many others did that there would be a tablet on their horizon. I wasn’t wrong but that wasn’t the big deal. Not in my opinion.

140,000 apps at your fingertips. From day one.

Right now, iPad can run almost 140,000 of the apps on the App Store. It can even run the apps you’ve already downloaded for your iPhone or iPod touch. Learn more

That is certainly a big deal. It’s super cool, and I’m probably more aware of how cool it is having used my new iphone for a couple weeks. But that’s just the beginning. The new iPad Also has the ability to dock to a keyboard. If you haven’t paid attention to me ranting about this in the last year, you won’t know one of the big reasons we didn’t choose an iphone sooner was no physical keyboard. I do miss it and this makes me really happy. Productivity will begreatly enhanced with this.

Watch out Kindle!

Another game changer from my perspective is iBooks. A beautiful, easy to use virtual bookshelf, the book reader and bookstore ‘just works’. Kindle over priced themselves, making their devices more expensive than many netbooks, and consequently their lack of extra abilities will make it impossible to compete with this new device. It’s unfortunate that they will be collateral damage but they will and so will all other book devices.

Unlimited 3G Data? YES!

If I had to pick a single part of the Steve Jobs News Cast this morning that really turned our world upside down, it has to be the 3G data plan for $30 a month, no contract, cancel anytime! I won’t repeat it but do think this will change the future landscape of mobile computing because this one statement invites competition that we haven’t seen for a long time. Competition will be good for our pocketbooks.

Now you’ve seen some of the neat pictures, I’d like to ramble for just a minute. I love this device. This is a device that in my mind is just about the coolest thing I’ve seen, since the pc. I was practically drooling, largely because I see how much this will change the future, our future.

Of course with the good comes the bad, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple of things that are lacking or outright missing. There is no camera. You can’t do video. You can watch it but no creation. Also, the storage ability, or lack there of makes it impossible to make this a primary computing device.

All of that said, the iPad has so much potential for putting something that was typically a tool associated with mac centric geeks in the hands of everybody. It will force us to change our computing behavior thereby creating acceptance of new ideas to further enhance our lives.

I’m so excited!

Technorati Tags: iPad, Apple, Steve Jobs, Kindle

My 2 cents, for what it’s worth. I don’t get all this hub bub about how scary it is to share your location with the world. We used to put our addresses in the phone book. OH NO! Who hasn’t been ‘stalked’?

Just today I saw no less than 4 posts about the geolocation craze. I’m in it and loving it. My favorite quote comes from Euan Semple.

Euan wrote:

I am always surprised when people write as if they were victims of technology rather than in control of it – I guess it is a bit like email!

Why do I like this? It points out that with technology we have more choices and more options to control what we take in, or to better filter things. Expecting everyone else to accommodate us is a little arrogant. Certainly we should try not to be too disruptive, but we really do need to better handle what we take in and stop expecting others to handle it for us. Filters are a key component to our sanity in a world where we are inundated with too many choices and too much noise.

Just a little piece of my mind. I won’t be leaving too many lying around. I need them.

Technorati Tags: geononymity, sheryl breuker, filters

Many of you know, Ken’s phone, a blackberry curve, went kaput just prior to the Christmas holidays. Ken and I have been predominantly Blackberry users since my arrival in the US 2 years ago. My initial experience could have had me forever a fan girl, actually, it did leave me a fan girl. I am a Blackberry fan. I don’t think that’s in danger of changing anytime soon. And why would it? So many things to like.

Of course, what I realized as time went by is that the things I most appreciate about a blackberry are things any smart phone could have offered me. It really comes down to the connectivity. The ability to connect to a variety of people and places from virtually anywhere. The form factor was fantastic, the QWERTY keyboard, outstanding, the multi-tasking superb. Even the browser, though certainly not what many have come to expect, still brought me to the world in ways I hadn’t conceived of 5 years ago.

Today my world is different. I look to the future with a different set of eyes. Eyes far more attuned to possibility. Where is mobility heading? I listened to a webinar by Gartner, an analyst group who has a lot of gifted people sitting in their offices studying trends, people who take real data and make smart projections and predictions based on a variety of factors. One of their projections struck a chord in me.

Gartner has suggested that by the year 2013, 3 years from now, the mobile browser will overtake todays browser in a pc. This makes a great deal of sense to me. It makes sense because the smart phone industry on a global level is growing at a huge pace. People will be browsing on their phones, or whatever we call the next device we pocket that we can use for voice and data.

Something else that has been on everyone’s mind, the Apple tablet. Who knows if they have one up their sleeve or not, I think it entirely likely, but whether they do or not, what is likely is somebody is making one and it will more closely approximate the apple iphone than it will a blackberry curve or bold.

Now, why would I say that? One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to have enough perception to know that the swoosh of a finger on a screen beats the hell out of a mouse. Do you remember what it felt like the first time you used a mouse? The inability to control it perfectly, the way the cursor would run all over the screen, and how you felt incredibly inept? The mouse hasn’t changed much in all these years and the lack of control, with practice yes it got easier, but what could be easier than touch with your finger and being that exact? What about voice controls? These are both things the iphone does well and are really the beginning of a new way of computing. I realize all of you who have been using an iphone for what is now nearly 3 years, are laughing and thinking, DUH. We already knew that. But that thought shouldn’t take away from the fact that other devices have had a lot to offer as well.

But the times, they are a changing, and with it our computing habits, and that brings us to devices that also must change to keep up.

I don’t know what you all read on the web, but everywhere I look there are articles talking about smart phones and tablets. These are almost buzzwords today. A few short years ago if you had a mobile phone, all you really cared about was whether it would give you the ability to talk to someone when you were out. Then it was all about text. How many stories have you read about the massive cost of not having unlimited text plans? Today with global travel so prevalent, it’s data costs. What is data? It’s the web pages you view, the things you download, the newspapers you read, the youtube video’s you watch. And we all do watch and read those things, or anyway it would seem so. In a few years it really will be world acceptance, not so different than what the telephone became as it caught on, the only significant difference is the speed that it will do so.

So today I write this on a netbook. The little 10.1 inch screen a far cry from my desires a few years ago to sit in front of a 21 inch screen. No my eyes haven’t improved and I haven’t gotten a stronger prescription of eyewear. What I have gotten is a device that is mobile, handy, wifi enabled, capable of doing basic computing ‘stuff’. Beside me sits my trusty Blackberry Bold. But waiting for me in my living room, bleeping away is my new 32 gig iPhone 3GS. It’s ready for me to do what I will. Will it take me to the next iteration of technology? Of course it will. That’s all it can do. But it isn’t perfect and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a technology out there that will wow me the way I could have been wowed a few years back. Technology is too much a part of my world. I can’t see the future, but I have it on good authority we’ll recognize it when it happens.

Technorati Tags: blackberry bold, iphone, technology, sheryl breuker