Social network advertising, the fun way

What’s the best way to tap into peer advertising? Do you offer giveaways for customer retweets? Or how about checking Klout scores and offering preferential treatment to your most influential users in exchange for reviews? These techniques may have their place, but no one is all that enthused about spamming their friends’ feeds or knowing that Mr. Popular is still eating life off a silver platter.

A more appealing way to incentivize brand involvement is to make it fun. Make it something your participants can feel proud of. When people are doing something for its own sake and not because of an iPod giveaway, your company will be part of their lives in a way both of you feel good about.

Here are a few standout ways different companies have done themselves and their customers proud:

Marmite’s Elite Society Membership

Marmite is a sandwich spread. Only a few people can get excited about sandwich spreads… but if you’re a sandwich spread company, those are just the people you want to celebrate. The company we are social took Marmite’s new extra-strong flavor launch to a whole new level by seeking out self-proclaimed Marmite enthusiasts online, inviting them to a posh taste-testing session, and inducting them into the newly-formed Marmarati club. Marmite took a few enthusiastic fans and gave them something to talk about for years.

SolidWorks’ Forum Badges

Maybe you don’t have the resources to organize a gala event. But you can probably add digital badges to your forums without too much fuss. This is a common type of user incentivization, and I’m showcasing SolidWorks because it fits particularly well with their business model. SolidWorks sells simulation software for 3D design. With a product like this, naturally a lot of user questions come up and they need to offer tech support. SolidWorks manages part of this burden by tapping into its own user base, and making them feel good about contributing. The SolidWorks forum is constantly humming with questions. Peers who provide good answers to other user’s questions get points towards a medal for their forum avatars and designation as MVPs. This is a great way to encourage tech-savvy users to share the love.

Dropbox’s Dropquest Puzzle Challenge

Dropbox is a file-syncing service that lets you easily access your files from multiple devices. You get 2.5 GB of storage for free. There are various ways to get more free space by engaging with the company, but by far the most fun one is the once-a-year “Dropquest” with 1 GB of free space as the prize. I personally participated in the game this year, and it’s actually fun on its own merit, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys word and number puzzles. And the prize is directly related to the company’s service – they’re not giving away cruise tickets. It works, too. I can tell you that Dropbox occupies a much more prominent place in my mind after playing a couple hours of Dropquest.

by Sharon Campbell

Comcast brings internet service and computers for families

This is what we wanted to do since we always get so many used computers, often times we can fix them clean them up and give them away to low income folks.

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20108897-266/comcast-offers-cheap-broadband-to-poor-families/

Symantec tells customers to disable PCAnywhere

With applictions such as LogMeIn, WebEX, and GoToMyPC, surprised people are even using this. Do we really want to use VNC?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57366090-245/symantec-tells-customers-to-disable-pcanywhere/?tag=cnetiosapp

BlueStacks goes Metro with Windows 8

Very Interesting about BlueStacks in Windows 8 – Can’t Wait Thanks CES and CNET

http://ces.cnet.com/8301-33377_1-57355786/bluestacks-goes-metro-with-windows-8/?tag=mncol%3bcontentBody.4

Facebooks new server and data center designs

http://opencompute.org/

First spot in iPad2 line sells for $900

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20042285-71.html

Iphone for Verizon or AT&T which one is better

http://www.gadgetsdna.com/att-vs-verizon-iphone-4-comparison-infographic/8645/

Will Geolocation Services Ever Boost Your Business?

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

The web world is a whirl for small business owners, especially in urban areas. First there was Citysearch, which did its own online reviews. Then Yelp, in which users wrote reviews — not always good. In 2005, business owners that had just figured out how to make a webpage found themselves making profiles on MySpace or Facebook. Now just when many small business were just beginning to feel good about Twitter, there’s a wave of new services for smartphone users, called geolocation applications.

Today there are three primary apps: Foursquare, MyTown and Gowalla. All cater mostly to iPhone users. As users move about in the physical world, these apps track where they are, so that they can earn points for visiting places, like a business, public spaces or even their workplace. Businesses are already using these apps to promote themselves. Here are some details on each:

Foursquare — Users or players get “badges” for visiting places, and can compete for a top spot — the “Mayor” of a particular location. Some small businesses have begun giving Mayors discounts, because having the Mayor badge means they visit frequently.

Gowalla — Similar to Foursquare, Gowalla is a game that also gives users virtual items that add an extra spin to the badge concept. Gowalla is partnering with big companies to promote them with branded items.

MyTown — For the moment the largest geoloco app, MyTown has almost two million users. In this game, users can “buy” real world properties then charge their friends rent for visiting, similar to Monopoly. This game is also partnering with businesses to offer virtual items. Players want these virtual goods because it helps them advance in the game. And businesses want to give them because it incentivizes players to visit.

For now, small businesses are still trying to figure out where they fit in. But it won’t take long. By the end of the year, geoloco apps will probably be a notable new marketing channel for local businesses in some areas. Areas with large populations of twenty-somethings and lots of smartphone users — like the Bay Area — will see the most growth in geolocation advertising.

For a long time people have predicted that local businesses will draw nearby shoppers by, for instance, sending a coupon to their phone as they walk by the shop; a geoloco game can alert its users to such copuons. It can also identify your existing loyal customers, and help you give them a reason to come back.

The promotions aren’t limited to brick-and-mortar stores selling physical goods, either. Even a virtual business can get some play. For example, The Travel Channel has partnered with Gowalla and MyTown to give out virtual items that promote a new show, Food Wars. Whenever users visit a food-oriented location, like grocery or restaurant they receive virtual good relating to the show.

For most businesses, these services are still in the “watch-and-learn” category–they could be a good place to advertise, but it is still too soon to tell. But if you run a bar, a coffee shop or a restaurant in a college town like Berkley, it’s worth looking into now.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks

hField Wi-Fire: Get More Out of Wi-Fi

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks
In today’s wirelessly networked world, connection is effortless only in areas where you can get a reliable signal on your computer. If you live or work in place where your connection leaves something to be desired, or if you travel frequently, you can spend a lot of time trying to find a good network. Once you have found one, all too often it can sputter out the minute you connect. In those moments, all the technological wonder of the internet is worthless to you and if you depend on cloud applications, your fancy laptop is all but a brick. Enter the hField Wi-Fire, a relatively new $59 adapter that can help keep you connected to everything you need.
The Wi-Fire is easy to set-up. Install their software on your Windows 7, Vista or XP, Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5, or Linux kernel 2.6.24 machine, plug it into your USB hub, clip the adapter to your monitor and you are ready. Reportedly, the device can boost wi-fi range by up to 1,000 feet. It draws power directly the from the USB port, but it uses a small amount of energy, so the drain on your battery is minimal. Once the software is installed and the device plugged-in, you can pull up a connection manager window that displays all available networks, the strength of each network in a clear percentage and the speed of any network you connected to.
Knowing the strength of a given network in a precise percentage is very helpful when determining which network to choose. While the network list detected by your computer will display signal strength in three or four bar increments, there is a lot of variation within a given bar that you are blind to without a tool like the Wi-fire. With an accurate idea of how strong a network is and how much it is fluctuating, you can minimize the need to switch networks in the event of signal loss. With the Wi-fire, you can also point the “antenna” towards the strongest signals and boost reception further.
If you travel frequently for work or if the signal strength in your office isn’t particularly stable, the Wi-Fire could be a real productivity enhancer. And at $59, it is affordable to most small business owners.
You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks

Microsoft Office 2010:How Will it Effect Your Small Business’ Productivity?

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Many small businesses began using the Google Docs suite in 2007 and 2008 to create at least some of their standard documents because the programs were light, intuitive, enabled instant collaboration and were hosted in the cloud. But over time, users began to note certain flaws: access to the service, particularly for spreadsheets, can be interrupted, sometimes leaving users stranded for hours. Also, though Open Office and Microsoft document file types are supported, all document formatting is not retained, which means time consuming re-formatting. Not to mention that much of the functionality taken for granted in client office suites is noticeably absent in Google Docs. Want to track changes in a collaborative document? No can do. Want to make a pivot table? Sorry.

Microsoft Office 2010 is an effort to combine the best features of its traditional office suite (upgraded of course) and the collaborative ability of web apps like Google Docs. But there are some differences in how the collaboration tools work compared to Google Docs. Here is a list of some of the most interesting, new features and tools of Office 2010 and how they might effect productivity:

Web Apps:
• Excel, Word and PowerPoint documents can be uploaded to the cloud via a web browser for collaboration and web viewing
• PowerPoint retains much of its functionality in the web version, minus the light video editing capabilities added to the desktop version for 2010
• Excel Spreadsheets look and feel the same in the browser and multiple people can edit at once on the web, provided you give them access
• Word documents look and feel the same in the browser as on the desktop and multiple people can edit at once, though only through the desktop environment

How will this effect productivity: For PowerPoint and Excel documents, easier sharing through the web and collaboration is a huge boost and will eliminate a lot of version confusion. However, creating some of the complex tables and graphs in Excel, like pivot tables, isn’t possible through the web version — but there is considerable more functionality than Google Docs spreadsheets. If the Office 2010 web apps can prove consistently reliable to users, it will be a big boost to productivity, compared to current desktop or web solutions.

Word is another story. If users can’t collaborate over the web, that means all parties need to have Office 2010 to collaborate at all on Word docs, which means a lot of collaboration won’t happen. Because a lot of small businesses collaborate frequently with many different parties, for many Google Docs still may be the best live document collaboration option.

Outlook:
• Emails are now grouped into whole conversation threads
o “Clean up” conversations by eliminating redundant parts of threads
• Improved Search
• Users now have the option to connect Outlook to social networking services like Facebook and Twitter to see status updates from friends, in the application
• View all threads and attachments, calendar entries and more from a given person in People Viewer.
• The ability to add more than one Microsoft Exchange Account

How will this effect productivity: Email is often sited as one of the biggest productivity drains for large and small businesses alike. Anything that gives even small benefits to productivity in email, is bound to have a measurable effect. These new changes add more contextual information and a more intuitive way of viewing and accessing email conversations, which are big improvements and might even make email more fun.

Graphics Editing in Documents:

Users can now:

• Do basic editing of photos and images in Word and PowerPoint
• Do basic editing of videos in PowerPoint.

How will this effect productivity: In my experience, small business employees not familiar with graphics editing will often strip down or leave out graphics because editing them is too time consuming. If they are now able to make graphics (or video) look good easily, I think they will add them to presentations and documents more readily. Documents won’t be completed faster, but they will be more interesting and colorful.

Conclusion:

If collaboration and web apps are the biggest draws Office 2010, use the free web versions and then decide if want to purchase the whole suite. If you are already a happy customer of Office 2007, then it is probably well worth your while to switch to Office 2010 for the new Outlook alone.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks