I got tired of manually inputting my work schedule every week for work so I created this mini app that basically parses my work schedule and puts it into google calendar. It still needs some work, but it works for now.
Awesome, just grabbed my Facebook username: http://facebook.com/josephhsu
FYI: just discovered that you can add/remove periods anywhere in the username so http://facebook.com/….joseph.hsu would work.
I just noticed that on Kevin Lim’s blog there is a tab that says ‘stats’ which links to a public Clicky page.
I never realized before that Clicky had a public stat page for every user! What this means is if you know a website’s site id, you can view their stat page.
if the site has the button, it will usually have the image (like mine in the footer):
if they do, just copy the the url, extract the number (that’s the site_id) and append it to:
A quick way to check if the site is even using get click is to view the page source (in Firefox, right-click, then select ‘view page source’), then do a search (ctrl + f in firefox) and search for ‘getclicky.com’. You will most likely see a line that looks like:
‘site_id’ above will be a number. Take taht number and append it to
and you’ll be able to view their stats page!
I hope this has been useful for you. Happy stats hunting!
So today I went to check out the Sprint Palm Pre at the Boulevard Mall here in Buffalo, NY. First off, I saw a glimpse inside their cabinet and they definitely have more than just three (don’t know exact number though). There was no line when I went and very few checking out the Palm Pre.
Observation: After checking Twitter, you see that ‘Palm Pre’ and ‘AT&T’ are in the list of trending topics. AT&T is on there because of an opera in SF. Though, no sign of ‘Sprint’.
The web OS was amazing. Everything felt nice while using. The card system works amazing for switching apps.
My only gripe is viewing your different apps and navigating them felt weird, I think it’s because the ribbon menu at the bottom takes up a lot of space and look like they’re part of the apps listing. You can scroll up and down and swipe left and right (reall nice indicators of how many screens of apps you have to either side). The multi-directional navigation of apps kind of makes things confusing.
I was told there is a maximum of 15 cards that could be open at a time. That’s pretty decent compared to the iphone’s one (though I’m sure Apple will do something about multi-apps).
While playing around, switching cards was very smooth, though opening menus was delayed and gave no indication that it was loading the menu (this resulted in closing menus by accident).
You may have seen the video of the Pre cutting cheese. (see embed if you haven’t)
After playing with the Pre, it indeed has a sharp edge, but at most irritates the skin on your hand. Maybe take some sandpaper to it? I don’t see this as much of a big deal unless you have sensitive hands.
photo by whatleydude
Compared to other Palm phones, they keyboard buttons are flatter and bigger. Noticed that I mistyped very often and the small spell checker database. Words went uncorrected.
The App Catalog is still in Beta, so stability is questionable. There a very few apps currently available. Tweed (by pivitollabs) twitter client is very nice.
Sprint has some really awesome discounts off monthly bills. I found out since I go to UB, I get a discount of 10%, but then since I get paid by UB also (part-time at CIT Helpdesk) I get a total of 19%!
Here are some discounts I found out:
I’m really tempted to get it, but I think I’ll wait for WWDC to see what Apple has to offer.
Awesome. Buffalo Police team up with CrimeReports.com. This partnership makes police reports transparent in order to get the data out there and hopefully result in residents providing information to solve crimes.
The city has hired CrimeReports.com, a company that uses computer technology to make law enforcement reports more transparent.
— via Buffalo News
Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester senior analyst, gives a look back and a future prediction on how consumers, companies, media and social networks have gone through changes that change the way they engage and will continue to do so. He presents this as “the Five Eras of the Social Web.”
The report was based on both quantitative by Cynthia Pflaum (@cpflaum), and quantitive through interviewing 24 companies.
Picture: the Five Eras of the Social Web
DestinationCRM.com has a great summary of the report.
A look at “HOW TO: Plan and Promote Events With Social Media” by Mashable, from a student’s perspective.
The tips given by that article are good for planning large events, but what about an organization that plans multiple events, and often?
A few things to consider:
Facebook is a great and easy way to promote events. But it only gets easy when you already have a group, sending invites to individuals is no fun. Do not use this to promote weekly meetings, it gets annoying. Also, make sure you have a general group and send invites for events, don’t use groups for events (unless it’s for people organizing the event).
Meetup.com is great for monthly meetups, usually open meets where anyone is welcome, but can be limited to private for only members.
Google Calendars lets you share calendars with others, so they can view events however they want. This is great for people who don’t want to have to check for events. You can even get Facebook events to your Google Calendar.
Photos should go to Flickr and Facebook. Both are useful. Flickr allows higher quality photos and is better for sharing. Facebook lets you tag people and makes it more social with your relevant network. On Flickr, create a pool and let people know what tag to use so they can be searchable.
For students, the best way right now to get an event out is via Facebook invite, because it’s easier to reach students. The main problem being how do you get the invite out to people you don’t send invites to? The only way to see what events others are going to is via the Events page.
Last week my group presented a proposal in class, our professor is Rhonda Ried, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Tonawandas here in NY. This campaign was meant to build a consistent brand between the cities of Tonawanda and North Tonawanda.
*Apology for some missing ‘s’s or any other errors in the presentation. As you can tell, I like using 280slides.
On slide 7, we were stuck between “home, canal home” and “canal, sweet canal”. I was leaning towards the latter because it would emphasize the canal = home and seems more grammatically correct.
Mentioned the Ithaca Commons Cam that was done by AWP and @sursly was kind enough to respond to some questions I had regarding the cam.
After the presentation, Rhonda and I talked via email and brought up a volunteer position that I may take for the Tech Committee for the chamber of commerce.
I noticed a lot of things watching the other groups present, both good and bad.
I disliked that several groups followed their marketing plan write-up so closely. I believe the presentation should concentrate on the broader concept of the campaign. It seemed some groups took their marketing plan and split it up into slides.
The way our group put our slides together was in this fashion:
One thing that we really missed was not including/emphasizing our objective. We were really pushing to build a brand, since the main issue was awareness of the Tonawandas. A lot of groups were trying to set up events, which I thought may not be the best tactic in this situation.
Another thing that several groups did was insult the client. One group said that they are good with clients who have gone ‘stale’.
On the first day of presentations, many groups did not use the primary research that was given to us. They quoted stats from their own secondary research which was limited to our own efforts (~30 people surveyed) and the results differed. The survey actually stated that around 60% rated the Tonawandas a 4 or 5 (out of 5).
We won (well our professor picked two groups out of ~10)! They said they liked a lot of our creative, use of research and social media implementations. Got a Tonawandas Gateway Harbor t-shirt, confidence booster and a volunteer opportunity out of it! Presentations are always a learning experience for me. I’m able to keep it together, but I still need to slow down and be clear. I think I may take a public speaking course.
For my advanced advertising course at UB, we went to Entercom for a tour (second time, first was last semester) on March 31, 2009. Once in the lobby, we were greeted by Don Tomasulo, Director of Results at Entercom. He recently had his title changed from Director of Marketing (I believe). Also got to meet DJ Anthony, very cool guy. He recorded each person in the class introducing themselves and mashed it together and put it on the air in about an hours time while DJing! He’s a really awesome guy funny, full of energy (even his boss Don compliments him on his hard work) and crazy multitasker.
Here’s my notes from the presentation and tour.
Need good business. Good advertising puts a bad business out fast.
product fair price placement people / branding advertising (never stop)
Don presented an interesting theory on why Tim Horton’s has such devote fans.
McDonald’s stopped advertising for 2 weeks, sales dropped
Minds resist change => takes time
experience + expectation + exposure = share of mind = share of market
power of sound: - iconic vs echoic, retention & recall - sound is tied to memory recall
Radio brings social (local feel)
creative is what makes a difference. Radio is the channel for messages + creative, vessel to brains.
“Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout
“Wizard of Ads” by Roy Williams. In the book, Roy Williams talks about 12 reasons why advertisements fail.
photo by G3K
Companies have already been building brands with personalities. Now companies are giving identities via various social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs and twitter (eg. comcastcares).
Brand identity is the intended unified characteristics that form the brand.
Bands have been embracing social networking through myspace for a while now. Some bands even use Myspace as their main website. Fans dream of getting in touch with the stars they admire. That’s why they go to concerts, try to get a signiture or a photo and try to get as close to the front as possible.
With Facebook’s recent redesign they have made the pages consistent with user pages, full with tabs and their own streams. This gives companies the ability to appear and act like a normal user.
Pages not only appear like profile pages, they function exactly like them. Instead of ‘friends’, they have fans, which is sort of one-way as they can’t become a fan of users. Once someone becomes a fan, a thumbnail and link appear in the user’s info tab in their profile. They even have a wall where you can view the page’s stream and people can leave comments. Luckily you can change the settings for the default view to only show page updates.
Companies have also been migrating over to Twitter, whether just to stream their content (@nytimes) or to get involved in the community (@JetBlue). This allows brands to be at the same level as other users and converse with them.
Twitter provides a place to not only broadcast but also as a customer-relations tool. Building real relationships with the customers and getting the word out through multilogue.
Branding, a name or symbol associated with a company, is the physical appearance of a company, the face, that is judged based on reputation and appearance. It a gives physical body to the company.
Blogs have long been popular with companies as a way to broadcast. Social media has opened many more channels and easier ways to go to where their customers are, in the social networks. The difference now is that the customers can directly respond and converse with other customers. Information then becomes disseminated through multilogue.
Content from companies is now mixed in with the content of consumers, whether via Facebook stream or twitter updates. While they are taking on identities, they really must be an Identity by opening up a two-way channel if they want to really build relationships with customers.
