Archive for July, 2009

Posted on July 31, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

16 reasons why I'm not quitting the iPhone

So today, famed tech blogger, Michael Arrington @arrington of TechCrunch wrote a blog post called, “I quit the iPhone“. Arrington has a large audience that reads his network of blogs and is very successful and popular in terms of his events that he plans in the technology space. In other words Arrington has power and influencer depending on how you look at it. Either way Arrington and I both bloggers and entitled to our own opinions. I would like to think we have a lot in common but he’s a lot more successful than I am at the moment but lets hope that changes in the near future. Nevertheless this isn’t about Wayne vs Arrington but just my thoughts on why I’m not quitting the iPhone for another mobile device.

Here are my reasons.

1. The iPhone OS is the best mobile operating system in terms of usability, period.
2. I don’t want to carry around two devices. Arrington said he will use a Palm Pre and an iPod Touch.
3. I don’t live in a heavily metropolitan area and AT&T 3G service works great for me. I hardly have a drop call but I do notice a difference when I travel to larger cities such as Atlanta and Austin and the service is not as good with more users on AT&T’s network.
4. Apple’s iPhone app store is better than the upcoming Windows Mobile app store, Blackberry, Nokia and Google’s

Photo via http://www.insidefacebook.com
5. The iPhone has the best applications to access social networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook etc. Not to mention the new Facebook iPhone 3.0 app is going to be awesome.

6. The iPhone has best Twitter Apps as a matter fact, the App store has to many Twitter apps.
7. I have access to apps that get kicked out of the app store via the Cyida App store. because my I choose to jailbreak my iPhone.

8. I don’t have to wait for AT&T to allow tethering on my iPhone because I already have it via PdaNet without any additional charges.

9. I like to use my iPhone 3Gs for jogging with NikePlus even though the NikePlus site has way to much flash on it’s site but that’s another blog post rant.
10. I own a MacBook and use MobileMe to sync my bookmarks and files that I can access via my iPhone. Plus Apple just released the iDisk iPhone app
11. I enjoy over-the-air calendar and contact syncing with my iPhone using Google Calendar, iCal, Google Contacts and Address book along with my email.

12. The iPhone has the best apps for mobile blogging.
13. I can use the iPhone with iTunes and the Amazon music store.
14. I can run iPhone apps in the background via the backgrounder app and make Skype phone calls over 3G.

15. I have two choices for an app store, Apple’s app store and the Cyida App store.

16. I can theme my iPhone if I choose to do so via the Winterboard app in Cydia.

Those are just a few of my reasons why I’m not quitting the iPhone. I know some are very tedious and Mr. Arrington did say he would be using an iPod Touch therefore he’s not completely leaving Apple or the App store just the iPhone. Also Arrington did acknowledged that he believes the iPhone is the best mobile phone in the market, quote from the TechCrunch article “I’d move to the Palm Pre because I believe it is the best phone out there other than the iPhone 3GS.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely in love with the iPhone or Apple or AT&T and not happy about the recent decisions to remove existing apps or prevent some apps from seeing the light of day in the app store such as GV Mobile, and Google Latitude native app. Also I’ll be very surprise if GPush or a few other apps will ever see the light of day in app store. I’ve been waiting for Qik and Ustream.TV live video streaming apps to be released and only time will tell if Apple will approve them. If not I hope others follow GV Mobile leads and join the Cydia app store, something both Qik and Ustream have already done.

What are your reasons for sticking with the iPhone or did Arrington post convince you to leave AT&T and switch to another device?

Posted on July 30, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Hootsuite Twitter client goes 2.0, requires a tweet to upgrade. Screenshots & D.O.A.T

So I just received an to upgrade email to the new shiny, Multi Column View, Tabbed Layout, Quick Search and more 2.0 version of HootSuite. My first reaction was great, I love new the features and upgrades. But to upgrade I had to send out a tweeet from all of my HootSuite accounts, something I didn’t want to do. Now do a search for hootsuite and you’ll see others upgrading and auto-tweeting away.

Here’s a look at some of the new Hootsuite 2.0 features.

Multi-column view

You can create groups

More features.

So far Hootsuite 2.0 looks like a winner in the space of web based professional Twitter clients. It will compete with CoTweet and the new Seesmic web twitter client. But I’m NOT a fan of having to send out a tweet from all of my Hootsuite accounts announcing that I have upgraded. I know it’s a free service and sending out a tweet is smart for marketing for the platform but it still should be optional. From the time I started this post to know over 1,828 upgrade tweets have been sent out meaning other users are upgrading.

Maybe I should do a song called. D.O.A.T. = Death of the auto tweet!

Questions:

Your thoughts on the auto-tweet to ugprade?

Do you like the new interface?

Will you switch from CoTweet, TweetGrid or Seesmic web and use Hoosuite 2.0?

Update:

beebow: @waynesutton hey @hootsuite_help informs me the tweet is only required for early upgrades… investigating further…

Update 2:
The auto tweet is only if you want to upgrade early. So if you want to wait and not send out an auto tweet, don’t upgrade.

Posted on July 30, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Weekly Pitch: GizaPage, a social network organizer

The Pitch:

GizaPage (www.gizapage.com) is a social network organizer that helps consumers and brands manage their online presence by consolidating their many social networking profiles side by side under a personalized URL. GizaPage supports 75+ social sites, from Facebook and LinkedIn to Twitter and Delicious, giving users a hub to organize and promote their Web 2.0 social identity. As part of GizaPage’s ongoing efforts to give users more control of their social networking persona, GizaPage recently introduced several premium services:

• Custom URLs (normally $4.95 per month – free for a year if you sign up in July 2009) – Modify your GizaPage URL, removing GizaPage branding (e.g. johndoe.com vs. johndoe.gizapage.com). If your URL is already in use, you can host your GizaPage as a masked sub-domain (e.g. social.brandname.com vs. brand.gizapage.com.
• 1-Click GizaCards – Displays icons of all your social profiles on a single card. Using one click, the card takes people directly to your GizaPage to browse all your profiles from a single place, under a single URL. The 1-Click GizaCard can easily be embedded on your blog, Web site, Facebook wall or Twitter profile to promote your social identity on GizaPage and encourage further discovery and exploration of your many online profiles.
• Custom profiles – Change the background, color, font and layout of your GizaPage profile for free.
• Basic statistics – Get free up-to-date details on visits and page views to your GizaPage and various social profiles.
• Account updates – Receive free, bi-monthly e-mails alerting you to new GizaPage signups by contacts in your e-mail address book, new connections between friends and updates made to friends’ GizaPages.

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My first impressions: Clean interface, interesting idea but is it to late to the social profiles landscape.

Will I use it? I have yet to create an account but I will soon.

What features I like? The ability to provide statistics and promote your social profiles.

What features I don’t like? Since I have yet to create an account I really can’t say but I hope it has an auto discovery feature that finds my profiles vs have to paste  a url from my existing social networking profiles.

What does GizaPage remind me of? A mashup of FriendFeed, DandyID and Card.ly

Questions for you:

Will you use it, if so how?

Have  you read about GizaPage before?

What is your first impression of GizaPage?

If you would like for me to review your product or site email: pitches at socialwayne dot com . Disclaimer: I have no investment or relationship with the creators of this site. Thank you.

Posted on July 29, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

5 ways to engage with your audience outside of blogging

In today’s fast past, real-time, always on, content pushing world it seems as though everyone is trying to keep the attention of website visitors. You’re either sending out tweets, an email newsletters and/or ping.fm saying come here take a look at what I have to offer. But then what? Your website visitor clicks, read and close, while you’re hoping they will bookmark the page for later, subscribe to your RSS feed if you have one or contact you for more information. Here are 5 ways to engage with your audience outside of blogging or with your blog.

1. Feedback Widgets from Google & Twitter:

See: http://twifeedback.com & http://www.google.com/friendconnect

2. Add a SlideShare presentation: (everyone loves a good presentation)

3. Host a live video show using one of the following sites on your company site. Hubspot does this all the time.
Justin.tv
Ustream.TV
livestream.com

4. Promote a webinar on your site using eventbrite or a similar service and host using a webinar using:
dimdim.com
yugma.com
vyew.com

5. Add a real-time conversation flow to your site using FriendFeed, example Building43

In the end its still about the content but so much information being push to individuals I think content creators and site owners should think about content diversity and various ways to engage with visitors when they arrive to your website.

How are you engaging with your current site visitors?

Posted on July 28, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

What I'm sharing on Google Reader for July 28th

Today, while reading RSS feeds in Google Reader, I came across these interesting blog posts and wanted to share them with you. I hope you find some of them interesting. If one of them was useful to you or if you have a comment about one, let me know in the comments. For real-time results of what I’m sharing on Google Reader see my feeds on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/waynesutton
Thanks

	Shared Seesmic Introduces Video Commenting for WordPress Blogs
	Shared 23 Extremely Helpful WordPress Help Sheets And Resources
	Shared 35 Inspirational Shopping Cart Page Designs
	Shared 10 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Theme
	Shared So I can post a note in Google reader, let’s see if anyone