From the monthly archives:

July 2009

Making Life Easier: Verizon MiFi

by Michelle Lentz on July 31, 2009

You probably didn’t notice but I’ve been pretty much incognito since the end of June. I was on business trips, vacation, and BlogHer. It’s been a crazy 6 weeks.

But Verizon actually made my life easier. I’m not a big fan of most wireless carriers, based on my recent poor experiences with AT&T. But Verizon really surprised me. Knowing I was going on vacation, they offered me a MiFi for the trip. Full disclosure: Verizon lent it to me, no strings or fees attached, and I returned it early this week.

I’d seen the various wireless sticks from carriers at different conferences, but the MiFi was new to me. It connects to Verizon’s 3G network and up to five devices can use the MiFi at any given time. It’s a little wifi hotspot. And I do mean little. It’s about the length and width of a credit card, but slightly deeper – maybe like 6 credit cards sitting on each other. It’s tiny, thin, and fit into my purse.

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I played around with the MiFi at home before I left and I used the AC adapter while I was at home. I successfully connected 4 laptops and my iPhone on the network and the speed and service didn’t seem to degrade.  The created network is also secure, which is nice. “My” MiFi had the security code on the bottom. I don’t know if that was just my sample device or if they all do that. If so, you might want to rip off that little sticker if you buy one, just in case.

Connecting was easy. Because this particular MiFi had already been activated, I pretty much just had to press the Power Button and that’s it. It functioned perfectly while connected to my Mac, my PCs, and my iPhone.

I think they had in mind that I’d blog on vacation, and indeed I meant to. However, I was so exhausted every night that I sort of fell into bed. But I used the MiFi for other things. When they first gave it to me, I admittedly didn’t have high hopes. I was traveling to Alaska and taking a cruise. There was just no way this would work and I figured it would end up with an average review.

The day before my trip, I had a huge deadline that involved uploading a number of large PDFs and Windows Help Files to my FTP server for a client. Our flight had a brief layover in Salt Lake City and I powered up my iPhone and checked my email, only to discover that there was an error in my files. This necessitated breaking out the laptop and changing both the Help files and the PDFs, and then uploading them to my server again. I made the changes and broke out the MiFi. I easily and surprisingly quickly uploaded those files. I was impressed with the speed, considering how large my files were. Later that night, in Anchorage, I quickly checked my email with the MiFi and even managed to invoice my client (always important).

We left Anchorage a few days later and headed to coastal Seward on the Alaska Railroad. Just for kicks, I pulled out the MiFi again. For a good 70% of that train ride, I managed to have service through the MiFi, so I tweeted away from my iPhone. If you’ve ever taken that train route, you know that 70% is impressive. A good portion of Alaska is untouched by cell towers and people, which is why it is still so beautiful. In coastal Seward, we didn’t have any problem with the MiFi service, nor did we when we were docked in any port of call from Alaska down through Vancouver. Perhaps the most impressive part to me, and this was when I expected the MiFi to fail, was when we were tendered at Icy Strait Point – otherwise known as the middle of nowhere – with whales diving nearby and the cruise ship sort of in the middle of the ocean semi-close to the shore. I had service. I kid you not, I was able to research Vancouver wineries from my laptop as I sat on the deck of the ship in the middle of ocean-y nowhere, using the MiFi.

I am 100% sold on Verizon’s service. Does this mean I’m getting a Verizon phone since my iPhone contract expires any day? Well, not yet. Although I suspect some folks at Verizon are going to make it sort of a mission to show me their phones can compete with Sprint’s Palm Pre, we’ll see. I may be sold on their service, but their handsets still have something to prove.

The MiFi, on the other hand, was amazingly handy and quick. I’m considering purchasing either a MiFi or a stick (for one computer) to use at all the conferences I attend. Plus, it would be nice to go to any coffee shop instead of just one when I need to get out of the house.

You can get the MiFi online for $99 with a 2-year contract. The catch is that it’s not unlimited data. Service costs $59.99/month for a 5GB plan or a more limited plan (roughly 7-8 hrs per month) for $39.99. That sort of caught me by surprise. I’ve gotten accustomed, you see, to unlimited data and 5GB per month isn’t a lot for someone like me. This, however, was a pretty sweet toy and unlike a lot of my gadgets, it was actually useful.

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Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

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Should the Wall Street Journal Have Bought LinkedIn?

by Kristen Nicole on July 31, 2009

wsjThe Wall Street Journal has launched what it’s called a LinkedIn Killer. How’s that for self-serving promotion? But responses to the professional network from News Corp’s flagship publication have been lukewarm. It’s difficult enough for printed media companies to transfer their customer base and revenue generation from tangible to virtual, in the form of websites. Is a LinkedIn competitor the best way for WSJ to go?

Well, there are a number of other services and resources that the WSJ website and its affiliates could link back to a LinkedIn competitor, providing a measure of value to end users. Whether it’s a news feed full of related professional articles or a business directory that provides an advertising channel for brands and additional resources for professionals, there are a few options that the WSJ could surely take advantage of. But would it be worth it?

A professional social network from WSJ is too little too late. And depending on the ultimate goals for News Corp with the WSJ and an associated social network, it may be a moot update for the WSJ. But should the WSJ gain traction for a professional network, then there may be some opportunity for socially driven media sharing that could spread the WSJ’s readership. Having an internal system for sharing activity streams could be a good way to gain consumer data on readership and sharing behavior, ultimately providing recommendations and insight on how to improve the WSJ digital content and strengthen the transition from print to the web.

There are a number of other ways in which the WSJ could do this, however. Yet considering the previous rumors of the WSJ acquiring LinkedIn last year makes us wonder if this was part of the WSJ’s ultimate plan or if the company is just regretful for not having purchased LinkedIn.

Whatever the case is for the WSJ’s new network, the fact remains that LinkedIn is a great tool and does what it was designed to do. Frequent updates have made LinkedIn even more fluid, as the professional social network has made certain communications more open and other sharing features have made it easier to leverage the relationships you’ve created within the LinkedIn community. It will be difficult for anyone to compete with LinkedIn at this point.

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SoCo and Lime, and Facebook, and Hulu…

by Kristen Nicole on July 30, 2009

Several brands advertise online but few shift the bulk of their offline advertising budget to their online marketing strategy. Southern Comfort, however, has done just this, taking its $8 million budget to the online market. Why? Because SoCo’s target demographic is the 21-29 year-olds, who happen to spend a lot of time online and less time watching television.

The on-demand nature of online television content and the avid use of social networking means that SoCo needs to shift its strategy in order to follow its target demographic. More specifically, SoCo plans on launching ads on sites like Hulu and Facebook, as well as NCB, CBs, Fox and FX, among others. The question on everyone’s mind is whether or not this is a good move.

As GigaOm points out, spirits companies aren’t allowed to run commercials during prime time television, advertising online is a viable alternative. And with printed media such as newspapers and magazines continue to decline in readership, there are multiple reasons why a spirits company in particular is looking to put so much of its budget into online advertising.

But even though the online market is looking like the solution to SoCo’s increasing offline advertising needs, there are still a few things this spirits company will need to keep in mind as it makes this big shift for its marketing campaign. Ensuring that ads are being displayed to its core demographic is a necessary barrier for online advertising, but a barrier nonetheless. Limiting or controlling access to its ad campaigns, some of which could theoretically be in the format of engaging applications on various social networks is a concern all alcoholic beverage companies must operate around.

And converting online ads into offline sales is going to be a major aspect of SoCo’s brand. Further managing that brand online is also going to be a focal point for SoCo even more now that the company is shifting so much money to its online campaign. Not only will other spirits companies be watching SoCo’s next steps closely, but the advertising industry as a whole will be taking notes to see how effective SoCo can be.

What we’re finding based on studies conducted in the past few months is that decreased or modified spending on online ads have forced brands and web publishers to change their strategies when it comes to online marketing. The result has been an increased focus on engagement, from an operational and data-collecting standpoint. Whether or not SoCo will be incorporating engagement tactics that are quickly becoming standards for online marketing capaigns has not been revealed, and doesn’t appear to be one of the main courses considering the sites on which SoCo will be advertising. But SoCo’s actions will affect engagement studies and surveys nonetheless, so we’ll be keeping a watch to see how SoCo handles its next moves.

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Collecta Adds Video to Real Time Web Search

by Kristen Nicole on July 29, 2009

The real time search engine Collecta has released some new features this week, adding video and image search results from a handful of partners. Video feeds from 12seconds, uStream and Qik will now be included in search results on Collecta, enhancing the multimedia affect for real time quieries.

Launched last month, Collecta is one of the more recent additions to the real time search engine space. Coming with the concept of expanding real time search to as much of the web as possible, Collecta looks to give a more comprehensive look at what is occurring at any given moment across the Internet.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of this real time search data is coming from microblogging platforms and more traditional blogs, as these have become the most efficient ways of spreading breaking news. 12seconds, for instance, has a short-form blogging model that’s akin to Twitter. In creating such microblogging platforms, companies like Twitter and 12secnds have become standard for mining real time search results.

In the month that Collecta has been out, the company has also shared some of its own tracked data. Collecta is reporting that users are keeping the Collecta window open for 30-60 minutes. What does this stat say about the real time search trend? One could infer that users are facsinated with watching real time search, or like to be able to check on a moving real time search engine. So who does that benefit?

Advertisers is one possibility, should Collecta find a way to incorporate ads, either on the page or as part of the real time search query. This is something that many search engines and microblogging platforms are looking to do, especially as brands turn to such platforms in order to achieve some outreach data mining of their own. This would segue into another monetization option for Collecta, which would be as an enterprise tool.
But will the trend of real time last long, and is it beneficial as a lasting trend beyond enterprise use? How long will users keep a real time search engine window open for an hour or so? I guess we’ll find out soon enough how long real time search will be around, and how we’ll all benefit from streaming search result content. Right now it’s a curious study in human behavior, responding to a need for instant gratification on a cross-device manner, quenching an important aspect of quenching our thirst for immediate answers.

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My BlogHer Experience Part 2: Buried Tech

by Michelle Lentz on July 29, 2009

BlogHer, in my mind, was going to be a blogging conference – a conference about blogging. Because we were all bloggers, and therefore not tech newbies, I expected a little more emphasis on the technology that makes it all work. A little more social media, a little more blogging, and a little less recipe sharing and parenting.

I attended several sessions and I spoke on a panel and well, BlogHer was chock full of surprises for me.

I was really interested in some of the Geek Lab sessions, and sad to find they were only 30 minutes each. Not only that, there were multiple GeekLab sessions running at the same time, in the same room, which was divided into giant cubicles. I had the experience of attending sessions led by one sweet girl who had no projection to her voice at all. That means that although I was in GeekLab session A, I was hearing GeekLab session B in the next cubicle, taught by someone with no fear of projecting her voice. For a blogging conference, I was sort baffled that this is how the tech would be treated.

The one exception to this was a good panel on Advanced SEO & Stats. Why this one session was led in a full conference room and the others were not, well, I don’t know.

The Tech vendors, such as Microsoft Bing, Intel, Best Buy, and Nokia were not on the expo floor. In fact, they were in a tiny created hallway at folding tables on the way into the Geek Labs. I don’t know if this was their idea or BlogHer’s idea, but I would have liked to talk more with these folks  – Nokia, in particular – without talking over or under the labs in the next cubicle. (Microsoft, at least, managed to score a suite they called the MicroSpa in a different area.)

There are some brilliant women out there who speak on social media and technology in general that weren’t a part of BlogHer. I was thrilled to see Corvida on a panel, which was also supposed to include Laura Fitton (who had to cancel at the last moment). Outside of those two, I didn’t notice names I’d have liked to see represented. Where was Kathy Sierra? How about Kara Swisher or Gina Tripani? There are a lot of great ladies in tech and social media right now (just look at any of Brian’s photo posts). I would have loved the opportunity to learn from them.

By saying that, I’m also sort of dissing myself. I was on the Food Blogging in the Recession panel (with my Wine Blog). It was eye-opening for me. I always thought of food blogging (and wine blogging is a subcategory) as people who ate food and wrote about it, whether it was in their own kitchen or in Thomas Keller’s restaurant. I always considered (and still do) restaurant bloggers to be legitimate food bloggers. This was a room of folks who wanted, for the most part, recipe tips. We talked about leftovers, freezing things, spices, but very rarely did we touch on actual blogging or other types of food blogging beyond cooking (live blog). I had really wanted my panel to discuss how we’re handling blogging itself in the recession, with an emphasis on food & wine. I did not expect it to get into coupons and leftovers. Obviously, I wasn’t accurately prepared for my audience and that is my own fault.

I’ve seen some tweets rudely stating that if you didn’t like BlogHer, then you should stay home. Other tweets and posts have implied that if you want tech, you should go to technology conferences. But here’s the thing – BLOG is in the title and even the New York Times called it a technology conference. Next year I hope they add a Technology Track. Not just a Business Track, but a full-fledged tech track that happens inside larger conference rooms and not cubicles.

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Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

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