Why you shouldn’t have a corporate blog?

I was very intrigued by a blog post on the Conversation Agent where they talked about why a company shouldn’t have a corporate blog. Of course they were just kidding and it went over some of the internal reactions that you would get from starting blogging and essentially social media within your company. Here are my favorites:

• You get part time results for part time efforts – been a victim of this before, you gotta put in a lot of effort to write the posts and engage with your community. If you don’t then they won’t.
• You publish only “perfect posts” – blogs are meant to cover timely information especially in the age of social networks and instant communication and sharing with your contacts.  Quality lowers of course but the content is valuable.
• You think it’s a marketing job to write and edit the posts – the key to corporate blogging and social media is letting readers behind-the-scenes of a company and getting to know personal brands instead of corporate brands. Of course, there is a mix of the two but personal brands are key to introducing within a blog.

Do you have any other experiences from corporate blogging and social media? Any do’s and don’ts that you would like to share?  Post a comment.

-Randy
http://twitter.com/djksar

The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation Needs Your Help

hey everyone! Sometimes I’d like to get a little off topic (usually my blog covers social media news, viral marketing, and mobile) with a cause that is very near and dear to my heart – the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation! On Saturday May 30th, my soon-to-be wife Kari organized a team from the Lucile Packard’s Children’s Hospital called GI Janes and Joes. We walked in downtown San Jose for apprx. 2 miles to show awareness for this disease and to raise some good mulla! Of all the teams there $180K was raised for research and patient services. Great stuff but the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation still needs your help until there is a cure. I know times are tough but if you could donate $20 to help find a cure or going out to dinner what would you do?   Donate today

Here is a very interesting chart taken from 2006 financial data – check out the # of patients!

 

Organization	Number of Patients	Gross Revenue	$ Raised per Patient	Research as Percent of Expense
Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation	1,400,000	$40.5 million	$28.92	36%
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society	747,000	$240.3 million	$321.68	28%
March of Dimes	508,536	$244.8 million	$481.38	19%
Multiple Sclerosis Society	400,000	$219.9 million	$549.75	21%

 

For those that couldn’t make it to the walk here is a short (55 second) video:

 

If you have any questions ping me at @djksar on Twitter or email rksar at yahoo dot com. Remember to check if your company matches and corporate donations are accepted. 

-Randy

Waze: User-Generated Driving Map on Android

I just signed-up for an alpha of an Android app called Waze which is a user-generated driving map. I can use it to know how traffic is going on the roads via user-generated content which in my mind is much faster and more reliable than 511 or any police report.  It might make a few more people using their cell phones and data plan while on the road but is definitely helpful. Also, it allows for you to edit the map which is helpful if you are on a new road or one where there is no left turn anymore (like on most of the San Francisco roads!). Their taking sign-ups now for their alpha release so if you are daring (and live in the San Francisco Bay Area) sign-up at www.waze.com, follow @waze on Twitter, and read their blog. I haven’t tried it out yet, but once I get access to the alpha I’ll do a video and take some screenshots. Stay tuned and if you have used it let me know what you think.

-Randy

Going to Google I/O 2009

Just signed up for Google I/O conference in San Francisco May 27 & 28. Look forward to the Android sessions as well as meeting other developers.  Any meetups or tweetups that anybody knows of?  Post them here!

My Top 3 Interactive Marketing Sites

My friend Sheryl asked me what sites do I follow for the latest in interactive/online/social media marketing. There are so many web sites and blogs out there but I picked the below ones based upon the case studies they share:

• Marketing Sherpa http://marketingsherpa.com is a great resource for case studies and webinars on the latest on marketing.
• MediaPost - http://www.mediapost.com/publications – I subscribed to Mediapost’s Out to Launch email newsletter where it sends daily emails on marketing campaigns that have launched.   
• Womma – http://womma.org/ is great to stay updated with word of mouth / viral marketing. Just recently they’ve been done webinars. Make sure to subscribe to their Facebook Fan Page too.  

What other web sites or blogs do you recommend?

-Randy
http://twitter.com/djksar

Interview with Brett Butterfield, CEO of Pixelpipe

I interviewed Brett Butterfield from Pixelpipe on the MOTODEV Android Podcast. Really interesting conversation on their media sharing gateway, their Android App, the Android SDK 1.5 (aka Cupcake), and listener questions. Listen to the podcast on BlogTalkRadio and let me know what you think.

-Randy
http://twitter.com/djksar

Video Streaming Apps Coming to Android?

All the hub-bub yesterday on Twitter was Google’s release of the Android SDK 1.5 Preview, aka Cupcake. Of course, the one feature that I’m waiting for a developer to build upon is the video recording api. Either Seesmic, Qik, Stickam, YouTube, KyteTV, or Ustream should seriously look at building an Android application cause I would use it in a heartbeat! Last year was the year of Nokia and video streaming apps but this year will be Android-based devices with that functionality courtsey of the Cupcake SDK. Stickam this week did come out with a Java-based app on Android but only for viewing purposes so hopefully this new api will lead them in the right direction in their product plans. What do you think? Here are a few questions to start a conversation:

• Are video streaming mobile apps what consumers are looking for?
• Is there enough market for them?
• How much would you pay for a video streaming app?
• What is the business model for video streaming companies? Add based on the web site or is their ads within the mobile app for viewing their content?

Add a comment below.

For more information on the latest Android SDK release here are a few blogs that I recommend you read. If you have any others post a comment below as well.

• Ed Burnette’s blog on ZDNet
• Code Android – (Singapore Android User Group)
• The Official Android Developers Blog Post

-Randy
http://twitter.com/djksar

Google I/O 2009 Android Sessions

Was looking up the Google I/O conference for this year and saw a few interesting Android talks:

Turbo-charge your UI: How to make your Android UI fast and efficient by Romain Guy
Learn practical tips, techniques and tricks for making your Android applications fast and responsive. This session will focus on optimizations recommended by the Android framework team to make the best use of the UI toolkit.

Pixel perfect code: How to marry interaction and visual design the Android way by Chris Nesladek
A great user experience incorporates three pillars: structure, behavior, and expression. This talk will explore the wide variety of interaction design patterns we have built into the Android system framework to help educate you on the best way to use these pattern-based behaviors for an optimized user experience.

Supporting multiple devices with one binary
The Android platform is designed to run on a wide variety of hardware configurations. Learn how to take advantage of the application framework to make your application run on a wide variety of devices without having to build a custom version for each.

Android Lightning Talks (this looks like a fun one!)
Join your fellow developers for a series of lightning talks. If you’ve done a cool hack involving Android, if you’ve devised a clever technique for a common problem, or even if you just want to get up on your soapbox for 6 minutes to appeal to your fellow developers, this is the session for you. We’re opening up this session for a sequence of 8 6-minute slots, where anyone can propose a topic. Attendees will vote on the talks they’d like to hear most, and then it’s off to the races. But be wary of the 6 minute limit, or taste the wrath of The Gong.

Debugging Arts of the Ninja Masters by Justin Mattson
Ever have one of those days where your application just doesn’t run correctly, and you can’t figure out why? Well, we’ve been there, and we’re going to show you how to fix it. In this session, Justin Mattson will school you on the advanced usage of Android debugging tools like traceview, the hierarchy viewer, and the instrumentation system. He’ll also present several case studies where Google used these tools to solve real world problems, and show you the before-and-after results.

Coding for Life — Battery Life, That Is by Jeffrey Sharkey
The three most important considerations for mobile applications are, in order: battery life, battery life, and battery life. After all, if the battery is dead, no one can use your application. In this session, Android engineer Jeffrey Sharkey will reveal the myriad ways — many unexpected — that your application can guzzle power and irritate users. You’ll learn about how networking affects battery life, the right and wrong ways to use Android-specific features such as wake locks, why you can’t assume that it’s okay to trade memory for time, and more.

Writing Real-Time Games for Android by Chris Pruett
Do vertex arrays keep you up at night? Do you have nightmares involving framerates and event loops? If so, this session might have the cure for your condition. Chris Pruett will discuss the game engine that he developed, using it as a case study to explain the common pitfalls and best practices for building graphics-intensive applications. You’ll learn how to properly pipeline game and rendering code, manage drawing surfaces, and incorporate 2D and 3D graphics cleanly.

Hope to see you there at one or all of these sessions!

BTW, first heard about this via Twitter and then on the Google Developer Blog post by Dan Morrill

-Randy
http://twitter.com/djksar

My Top Free Android Apps on the Android Market

Been downloading apps via the Android Market and here are my top 5 so far:

• The Weather Channel - I have Cupertino, Pebble Beach (my wedding location), Albany (Oregon), and Papeete (my honeymoon location).  Really easy to a city and brings in the most recent weather data as well forecast for the next 36 hours or 10 days. One thing I wish it had was photos from that location – why not pull the most recent Flickr photos with that location?
• Last.fm: Stream your favorite music over the 3G network.  setup is simple and all done via the phone. Up and running within a f ew minutes.
• Wine-by-the-bar: Scan my bottles at home and at the restaurants so I can keep track of what I’ve been drinking and my notes/rating
• Meebo: great web-based IM chat client now on mobile. Login in to multiple chat clients including Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, Gtalk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, MySpace, and Meebo itself.
• myAccount by T-Mobile:  I can see my current activity, bill summary, and pay directly from my phone – awesome! Now only if the iPhone had this at release then you wouldn’t have seen those 1000 page bills from AT&T.
  

Well those are mine since the past week. What are yours? Post a comment on this post or hit me up on twitter @djksar.

-Randy
#android fan & idea generator
http://twitter.com/djksar

What is Android?

One of the best resources on the web I’ve been using recently has been slideshare.net. Everyone is uploading their presentation there from a conference or user group meeting and it turns it into a flash presentation that you can embed into your site (even wordpress.com blogs). Here is one I found titled “What is Android” by Erik Fields from Think Interactive and how it compares to the iPhone SDK in terms of developer platforms and user experience.

P.S. My co-worker and I are hosting an Android developer panel this Friday at 2pm PST / 4pm CST on designing, developing, and distributing your Android app. Tune it live to http://blogtalkradio.com/motodev. Questions will be taken online at http://tinyurl.com/motodev, via twitter @motodev and by calling in during the show at (347) 826-9350. Hope to you can tune in.