http://www.nsipartners.com/blog Marketing & Technology News Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:56:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 I got a quick and valuable lesson yesterday in the power of Twitter’s real-time universe. Just a few minutes after last being on our website, I tried to access it and found it was down.  I tried our host provider's site-Host Gator-and was stunned to find that it too was down.  ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/05/learning-to-%e2%80%9cget%e2%80%9d-twitter-up-to-the-minute-customer-service-updates As I write, I am thinking there must be something to this social-media thing, if my company is willing to pay for me to spend many hours reading up on, and learning better how to use, social media (SM). The idea is that I will become an SM expert; particularly ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/04/i-am-surrounded-by-social-media I learned tonight just how extensively my expectations as a consumer have changed, and how important it is for companies to be pro-active on the internet. When I bought my first pair of hiking boots in the ‘70s, I learned to be a loyal consumer. When that first pair of ... http://www.nsipartners.com/blog/2009/04/consumer-expectations-really-do-change-the-game