Tribes Review

I have been a long time fan of Seth Godin’s books. I have previous reviewed Meatball Sundae, Purple Cow and The Dip. Today I decided to purchase the audio book of Seth’s newest book Tribes. This was available on iTunes and is about a 4 hour listen. This book is a great book for those people in business who are looking to find a way to grow through social media.

This book touches on how to grow your own tribe around your business. It can be an external tribe like customers or an internal tribe like your co-workers. You do not need to be the boss to be a leader of the tribe with today’s technology, anyone that can rally others to a cause are today’s heretics and leaders.

He goes on to say that people choose not to lead out of fear. That we all fear criticism. If we can learn to accept the criticism and even embrace constructive criticism we would have more leaders in the world. The book explains the difference between a manager and a leader and that you should not be sucked in to the belief that just because you are not a manager that you can not be a leader is no longer true.

This book touches on Twitter and blogging as well.

If you have read this book what did you think?

iPhone Review

Last week I purchased the new 3G iPhone and thought I would share my review of the phone. I was not caught up in the hype of owning an iPhone and had no intention of getting one until my HipTop 2 died. I hopped on twitter and asked others about their experience with various phones and the only one that fit my requirements that was available is the iPhone.

The Good
This has to be one of the best phones I have ever owned. The various applications you can add and that are included make the phone useful beyond any standard phone…

• SMS – although it is just SMS the iPhone allows you to track a conversation easily between your SMS friends. I have used SMS before and sometimes I forget the conversation if there is a large gap between. The iPhone makes that problem obsolete.
• Contacts - finally a contacts area that integrates all the other applications on the phone. You can text, phone, email or visit a site all from one contact. You can even add a picture and set custom ring tones for each contact.
• Maps – Do you get lost? With an iPhone that won’t ever be a problem again. The map works with the built in GPS that shows you where you are. If your in need of a coffee just fire up the map and enter Tim Hortons and all the local coffee places will be shown around you and you can find directions to them in seconds.
• Weather – have to hunt for the local weather? The iPhone keeps the current temperature and weather conditions available and 7 day forecast.
• Email - With many different options to setup emails the tool is easy to use and intuitive.
• Safari – Surfing with the iPhone is in full colour and works with almost every site. The zoom feature means you can focus in on smaller type. You can open multiple sites in various windows and flip between windows.
• WiFi - You can hook up to wifi and not use as much of your phone transfer.

The Bad
Even though it is a great phone there are some bad things with this phone…

• Rogers/Fido coverage is not the greatest. I have noticed dropped coverage in Surrey for Internet. As more people come on I am worried that this problem will only get worse.
• The keyboard is easy to use and you do get use to it. With only a few days under my belt I can type about 10 words per minute. With my old QWERTY phone keyboard I could type around 30 to 40 words per minute.
• The Internet browser will reload randomly. I am surfing a site and go to the next page and the browser just reloaded. If it is a forum it can be annoying because whatever you had typed is now gone.
• The email needs a select all button. If you have 50 or more emails in the inbox and want to just clear them out you need to select each one individually and the delete them all. I would prefer a select all and delete button.
• 3rd party applications stop loading in the background. So if your listening to music through last.fm and want to read an email. The music will stop as soon as you leave that application.

The Ugly
These things are horrible about the phone…

• You have to sign-up for a 3 year contract or no iPhone for you.
• iTunes Canada does not have all the applications that the US iTunes does.
• If you wish to develop for the iPhone you need to do so on an Apple computer.
• Power Users will be unhappy with the 4 to 5 hour battery life.

Do you have an iPhone? If so what is your favorite applications?

You Lookeen at Me?

Do consider myself to be a heavy Outlook user?

I have a large outlook file that grows daily because I save almost every email I receive. This allows me to go back and track anything about a customer that I have ever discussed. In business it is very handy to be able to find this information.

You could use the built in Outlook search features which will chug along and look through every email. Instead I have found a great Outlook addon called Lookeen. The software indexes your emails and you can search for information in seconds. No that is not a typo, I do mean seconds. Want to find every email with the word PayPal in it? That would take Outlook 3 or more hours to do. Lookeen takes 25 seconds to show all of mine.

If you are an Outlook power user then I suggest you give Lookeen a free 14 day test. The software is $50.13 per user if you decided to buy it.

This software gets a big 2 thumbs up from me.

What Outlook Addons do you use to make your life easier?

twhirl Review

Up until today I really never understood why anyone would use twitter. For those that have never used twitter, it is a micro blogging site. Unlike a full blown blog you can make mini 140 characters posts about where you are, what you are doing or anything that comes across your mind.

So today I was reading Miss 604’s blog and she was talking about some fun stuff going on at twitter. So I did a little research on how I should be using twitter by reading various blogs. If you do have a twitter account then it is an absolute must to have a notifier. I went out and started downloading and testing various twitter notifier software’s. I was really disappointed that most of them did not work. Frustrated I posted on my twitter asking what should I be using. A few minutes passed and a local Vancouver designer posted that I should try twhirl. I quickly downloaded it and have been using it all afternoon.

I am extremely happy with twhirl and now see how useful twitter can be. Like a blog you can join or create a community. You can network with people in your niche, local area or interests. Twhirl notifies you when someone posts that you are following, makes it easy to message people and faster to make posts (tweets). If you are not using twitter then I suggest you do. After you sign-up download twhirl and then add me to your twitter.

Meatball Sundae Review

If you have heard of web 2.0 but not sure how these can apply to your business then the book Meatball Sundae is an excellent starting point. As always Seth Godin creates an excellent book chalked full of examples that you can ponder on how to improve your business.

I personally found this book to general for my own specific needs. The book covers topics like the long tail of search, Digg, YouTube and social networking. These trends are all things I am aware so for me the book could have gone in to more depth.

I see this book as a good resource for business that are not very web savvy. If you are an online business then this book might not be much use to you.

The title is a unique metaphor used through out the book. Most companies being meatballs that generate average products for average people are using web 2.0 trends to make their meatballs look more like a sundae. This leaves you with an unappetizing meatball sundae. The general idea of the book is that if you wish to make use of web 2.0 trends you need to restructure your business from the ground up.

If you have read this book what did you think?

iStockphoto Review

I have been asked on more then one occasion where I go to get stock images for building sites. I have used a lot of sites in the past but I have started to exclusively use iStockphoto.com as my only source for images. My main reason for using them is that most of their images for web usage is less then $2.

iStockphoto provides images, vector drawings, flash animations and movie clips that you can use on your site or in print materials. To get started create an account, drop some money in to your account and begin searching.

Once you find a picture your ready to buy choose an image size and click the download. For web use I would suggest sticking to Small or XSmall as these will fit your needs. If your going to use one on a marketing slick you should buy a Medium to Large so that your end product will not be blurry or pixelated.

Next time you work on your marketing I suggest you do a quick search at iStockphoto to find the right image to fit your target market.

What stock image sites have you used?