http://www.nsipartners.com/blog Marketing & Technology News Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:19:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_224" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="(Photo credit: Telegraph Media Group)"][/caption] Google's Buzz seems to be catching on. We are thinking about including it as part of some social-media marketing initiatives, but how should organizations use Google Buzz in ways that they're not already using Facebook and Twitter? It appears to be yet ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2010/02/google-buzz-questions [caption id="attachment_221" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="(Photo credit: Xobni)"][/caption] Thanks to Jeff Price at BOC International, who sent me a LinkedIn connection invitation via a new Outlook plugin called Xobni, I have hope of "taking back my inbox." This is according to both Xobni's literature and reviews like CNet's. I had never heard of ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2010/02/downloaded-xobni-a-very-promising-outlook-plugin We are upgrading technology like crazy, and it's all great software and hardware, truly: Salesforce, Exchange, Netbooks, the HTC Smartphone, Central Desktop, Powerpoint Share, SocialCast, etc. But all of that involves money and training, and we're still coming down the various learning curves. Want a really simple solution to improve things ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2010/02/a-low-tech-low-cost-workflow-improvement-that-may-win-the-prize-for-2010 It is really good -- definitely a keeper. It's hard to figure out--quite a steep learning curve, and I think I still only know about 40% of it. It's like having an alien artifact: you never quite know when it will start to pulsate or emit bolts of lighting or ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2010/01/the-verdict-on-htc-imagio This new smartphone just arrived yesterday, and Matthew and I have been working to set it up. After 5.5 hours, it's mostly--but not fully--syncing to the desktop, and we still can't get it to sync to the HP netbook. It seems to be feature-rich and well designed, but it's browsing ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/11/high-hopes-for-the-htc-imagio James Temple at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote on October 29th "Personalization Moving into Screening Spotlight" which takes an interesting look at search versus social media. In it, he quotes Jay Adelson, the CEO of Digg saying that his successful crowdsoucing tool that popularizes content through voting must do more ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/11/now-i-know-why-i-dont-use-digg I continue to marvel at the immediacy of information on Twitter. I seldom use my personal Gmail account during the day, but at the moment I'm in the midst of transitioning between computers.  Email is already on the new one, but my calendar is on the old one.  So I sent ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/09/with-gmail-down-users-turn-to-twitter-for-info For some reason (maybe just fatigue?) I found this series of tweets today to be amusing.  At the same time that a new study shows that much on twitter is "pointless babble," along comes one of those exhanges that shows just how useful Twitter can be in crunch. For crowdsourcing to ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/08/crowdsourcing-your-it-support-needs-on-twitter While one of our vendors (hint: telecommunications) wants to charge an Early Termination Fee for service that malfunctioned for five straight weeks until we were forced back to their competitor, I am issuing a four-figure credit to a client for work they contracted before later changing their minds. Billing for "early termination" is easy ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/06/customer-justice-versus-early-termination-fees One of my job responsibilities is to review websites -- clients' sites, client's competitors' sites, and so on.  I've noticed that many sites are plagued with minor copy issues, inconsistencies and navigation problems. There are small, inconsistencies, such as fonts and sizes changing throughout paragraphs, as well as bigger inconsistencies. Bigger ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/05/problems-hindering-your-site