I wrote previously about the coming exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and we’ve been seeing the next steps play out.

On February 3 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had a ceremony to commemorate the distribution of the last available blocks of addresses to all five of the world’s Regional Internet Registries (RIRs.)

And now word comes that the RIR for Asia and the Pacific Rim, APNIC, has released all of its addresses earlier than expected.  A portion of those addresses are being kept in reserve specifically to assist in IPv6 transition which is still happening at slow pace.

Next step is World IPv6 Day on June 8, when dozens of major Internet players including heavy hitters like Google, Facebook and Yahoo will provide all of their content over IPv6 connections to raise awareness of the need to implement IPv6.

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Tom Hickey Categories: General

As business people we seem to swim in a culture that abruptly labels unmet expectations as failures rather than lessons learned. This could be labeled as black and white, carrot and stick — take your pick. To me it places an unnecessarily negative and narrowly reviewed label on lessons that could otherwise bear real fruit for future interactions.

In the wake of countless huge companies being rewarded for failures that rarely seem to produce lessons or better results, this could be seen as the wrong message to send. But I’m talking about the little guys — those of us who have the gumption and power to do it better next time.

We had a project a few months ago that delivered less-than-hoped-for results. It happens. We learned a ton and the client acknowledged that the information and research was well worth the price.

The owner said something valuable to me, which was that success is unmistakable. You can smell it, taste it, and see it from a great distance. No one argues with it. No one makes excuses for it. It speaks for itself and everyone celebrates.

I agree with that philosophy. I’m not saying we should all pat ourselves on the back for not meeting expectations, whether they are from clients, employees, family, or anyone in between. But certainly there are constructive ways to evaluate those failures as lessons, which elevates our responsibility and chances to do better next time.

Make a point of scheduling time to review what went wrong and what went right. At Astek we call them postmortems. They are project reviews, or whatever you want to call them. The point is that you assign a focused amount of team energy and time to the evaluation, reach some reasonable and measurable conclusions (which requires knowing what you were measuring when you started), and then move on!

This last part is essential to make sure it’s a lesson and not a cloud of failure that can quickly turn to poison in an otherwise constructive work environment. Learn and move forward. After all, if you learn your lessons wisely pretty soon you’ll smell that unmistakable smell of success.

I place a real dollar value on these lessons, because they have real quantifiable value that is often thrown out with the bathwater. As a society we have no trouble spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on formalized education, so why are the street lessons so different? Both types of leaning require perseverance and a dedication to the end result.

Thomas Edison really said it best: “I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work.”

A business partner once said it like this: “In life you have only accomplishments and excuses.” A lesson learned is an accomplishment in its own right, but a failure with no lesson is nothing but an excuse and waste.

Another business partner once told me: “If you don’t learn something every day, your life sucks.” That one really stuck with me to this day. No one expects you to know everything or be perfect. Just do the best you can.

So go learn some lessons and let me know what you find!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, How To

I think there is a common misconception that “going green” seems like a lot of effort for such a small contribution.  Many people say to themselves  “I don’t drink that many sodas, I don’t have enough to recycle to be worth the effort.”  But I say to you, Scrooges, that if no one makes the effort, then who will?  It is our responsibility to be shining examples to our families, our neighbors, and our fellow vertebrates (and invertebrates too- I don’t discriminate against exo-skeletons).

So what are we doing at Astek to contribute?

RECYCLING:  One of the first things I did when I started here at Astek was to put together a recycling bin.  Chicago is notorious for being a bad recycling city so it didn’t surprise me that Logan Square does not have recycling pick-up, so I knew I had to make it happen myself.   I picked up a little plastic bin and made a recycling sign for it so nobody mistakes it for a garbage bin.  It also helps to keep the paper/cardboard recycling separate so you don’t end up with a pulpy mess if someone throws in a half-full can or something.  There are recycling drop off centers all around the city and when the bin is full I take the bin with me and empty on the way home from work

My Office-made Recycling Bin

ELECTRONICS RECYCLING:  Did you know that throwing away old electronics in your regular garbage can/dumpster is really bad for the environment?  The metal and computer parts in electronic devices not only takes a really long time to decompose, but often electronics have some kind of liquid that is highly toxic to the environment, so when you  throw it out you are poisoning the environment.  The good news?  There are lots of electronic recycling plants all around the city.  I found this great place called Recycle Tech Solutions which takes your old electronics and breaks them down safely to remove those dangerous liquids, separate the parts into basic elements and recycle or reuse every little bit they can.  They recycle everything from computers and print cartridges, to old refrigerators;  They say if it has a power cord of any kind they can recycle it!  So I gathered up the old, unused and broken equipment Astek had in storage, the used print cartridges, and even collected old electronics from the staff which they had laying around at home and drove it all over to these guys.  They were very friendly, and even unloaded the car for me!

COMPOSTING:  I have to give Andrew Crowe credit for this one- he has a compost bin at home and when we started talking about being more environmentally friendly he brought in a little plastic bin with a lid that we can put compost material in.  We put everything from banana peels to coffee grounds & filters in it and when it’s full he brings it home and adds it to his home compost.

BIKING:  A number of us in the office are getting psyched about the weather warming up soon so that we can ride our bikes to work!  Leaving the car at home is a great way to reduce you carbon footprint.  Did you know that there is a feature on googlemaps that now allows you to plan a biking route?  Google knows which streets have specific bike lanes and will map you a route to keep you safe.  A friendly reminder from all of us at Astek that you should ALWAYS wear your helmet and bring multiple bike lights with you if you might be riding at night.

No effort can be too small when it comes to cleaning up our environment.  If we all did these little things and inspired those we know to do that same it would make a HUGE DIFFERENCE!

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Sara Gorsky Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, google, Green

Andy Swindler previously posted about our successes with producing videos to demonstrate the next phase of work for our My25 client.  One key factor of those videos was capturing specific interactions in the prototype we built for My25.  More specifically, I needed to record video of exactly what was on my computer screen as I clicked around within our prototype website.  In order to do that I had to do a little research into video screen capture software.  I came up with a couple (Mac-only) products that are pretty great, and thought I’d share them here.  Having such software has already proved useful for other purposes too, such as demonstrating software configuration for people in our office. Rather than writing out step-by-step instructions, I can demonstrate exactly how to make a required change to VPN connection settings, for example.

One product, called Screenium, is notable for it’s ease of use and intuitive interface, and for the fact that its trial version is completely unrestricted except by the length of the recordings you can make.  If you don’t need anything over 30 seconds, then you don’t have much of a reason to buy the full version. And that seemed to fit out needs for the My25 video, as each individual interaction we needed to show was pretty quick.  However, one problem I ran into with Screenium is that its recording of mouse movements and other screen dynamics was a little choppy.  I was never able to reliably get a totally smooth capture with it, so I then had to look elsewhere.  But for simple uses, the trial version of Screenium is a great way to go.

We ended up buying a license for an application called iShowU, which is only $30, and well worth it.  The interface is a bit more cluttered than Screenium, but it is very full-featured, and takes lovely, smooth video.  The mouse movements and everything else turned out very fluid.

I was reminded of these tools more recently for a personal project where I needed to capture audio and video from streaming video online.  Both of these tools will capture audio as well as video, taking it right from the internal sound card as it plays within a web browser, for example.  Note that video is often presented online in a streaming format as a way to make it hard to redistribute copyrighted material.  Astek certainly doesn’t condone copyright violations, so please do use these techniques within the bounds of the law.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Technology, Web

One of the most regularly-asked questions I receive when it comes to incorporating Twitter into one’s marketing and business models, is “Well…what is Twitter? I know it’s there but…well, what is it?”. Twitter is one of the social media platforms that take the longest to learn and wrap one’s head around. You probably start with the question of what it is, and then you go to the reasoning around, “Well, who would want to know what I do? I don’t have anything that clever!”.

My response usually goes something like this:

Twitter is not about you talking. It’s about you engaging in conversation. Do you start conversations by stating what you had for breakfast? Most likely not. However you may start a conversation with, “I just read this great article on small business in the New York Times! Did you read it? I’ll email you the link”. That statement translated into a Tweet looks something like this: “Awesome article on small biz in @NYTimes! bit.ly/article – thoughts?”. Then someone may reply, and then you comment, and thus, a conversation is born.

Instead of calling up or emailing your friends who may find this article interesting, you may have a Twitter list set up of people who may find this article interesting – and they’re located around the world. They may share exciting news that you may be interested in learning about. You could find out about events, find out about a new book or trend, discover an exclusive coupon code, win a contest, or be involved with an online networking session (i.e. the ‘twitter chat’) that is at times more productive than in-person networking events!

Yes, Twitter takes some time to learn. However once you make it a part of your digital conversation habits (among email, texting and Facebook for example), you will be amazed by the people you meet and the information that you learn. Specific questions? Anecdotes? Please comment below and share your thoughts!

In the interim…I thought this video portrays a comical take on the Twitter learning curve…enjoy! (And by the way…you can follow the creator on Twitter HERE.)

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Fun, Social Media

It’s one thing when a company and its users, or anyone for that matter, declares their own holiday. In this case, Foursquare decided that April 16 (4/16) would be the perfect nerd-derived day to support their brand (4/(4 squared). The genesis of the idea can be traced back to an optometrist in Tampa in 2010.

You can hear thanks from all of the Foursquare crew here:

What’s remarkable is when the Mayor of New York City extends Foursquare’s self-proclamation into an official holiday for the city, a first for any social media brand. Is this a sign of things to come when digital startups like Foursquare base so much of their value on connecting people and businesses in the real world? The real world has responded in a way that’s anything but square.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun

While I’m a frequent traveler to Austin, TX, for music events and family, this was my first time at South By Southwest Interactive (#SXSWi). SXSW is divided into Interactive, Film, and Music festivals, each world-renowned for the quality of talent, content, and fun.

SXSWi is the height of Tech geekery, mostly focused around Web and mobile apps related to social media, such as Foursquare or Twitter. This is my crowd, for sure, and our social media guru Rachel Yeomans was even more plugged in than me due to her incessant and productive use of Twitter.

I dusted off my Twitter account just for the occasion. While I was one of the first people on it three years ago, I’ve found it difficult to keep up, which is a common issue for our clients to which I can relate! I’m glad I brought it out, though, as much of SXSW takes place on Twitter. This isn’t a surprise considering that Twitter essentially launched at SXSW years ago, but what did surprise me was the advanced and consistent use of hash tags to create interactive audience feedback for every session. Moderators would monitor the Twitter traffic for that session and involve the audience as they could.

Most of the big tech brands were present, as were most of the geek celebrities. A highlight for me was getting to meet a childhood geek hero, Guy Kawasaki, who was there supporting his new book, Enchantment. I fondly remember reading Guy’s column in MacUser magazine in the early 90s. As Chief Evangelist for the Mac when it was first released in 1984, he was there right at the beginning. Now he turns much of his attention to helping entrepreneurs, writing, speaking, and VC’ing. I got to meet him at his book signing, pictured below!

The learning, networking, funning, eating, and yes… drinking, all made for a dense and highly worthwhile experience, starting with legos. When we first arrived at the conference center, I found three huge tables full of legos, which immediately put me in a five-year-old state of mind. Perfect! No, we didn’t spend the whole time there, but it was a good way to get the juices flowing.

Me and my amazing creation…

And our friend Miguel Cano, from JSH&A, working on his own…

Presenter highlights included Chicago friend Jenni Prokopy (ChronicBabe) talking about building better health communities. An interview with publisher Tim O’Reilly gave us a glimpse into the future of digital. I learned about everything from social media metrics to text donations for nonprofits to web typography to mobile optimization to user experience process and more. I did make it one film event — a panel with Rainn Wilson for his new movie, Super. And somewhere in there we even made it to a couple of parties!

The food trucks are a highlight of Austin, particularly in the downtown area. Rachel, Miguel, and I walked until we found one with a short line — Turf N’ Surf Poboys. Yum…

Major sponsor and Foursquare competitor Gowalla was heavily represented, though I stuck to Foursquare personally. And vowel-challenged startup SCVNGR had everyone running around finding things for various types of rewards. All this served as real world preview of what is being largely hailed as the “next big thing” — the gamification of pretty much everything. What’s that? Well, it basically means that technologies with built-in game mechanics are more successful at getting people to actually use the technology. The best app in the world is useless if nobody uses it.

Foursquare, in my opinion, is the most successful example of merging game motivation with real-world advertising. While I’ve been using the mobile app for nearly two years, I’ve never seen such an intense concentration as I did at SXSW. People were checking in to everything, everywhere. Every room, event, party, and sometimes cars. I hit a new week record of 403 points! They released a big update to the app for SXSW, so it now tells you lots of good tidbits related to your own data, such as how long it’s been since you were at that location. This intrigues me since I purposefully choose not to broadcast my location to very many people.

The Foursquare people were everywhere as well. Forty of them came to SXSW, including co-founder Dennis Crowley, who I saw interviewed by Mashable SEO Pete Cashmore. In a particularly humbling moment for Dennis, an enormous print of his GAP ad was brought on stage and offered up to the audience member with the best question.

Dennis spoke about the future of Foursquare, and his vision to help you remember and find that coffee shop your friends were telling you to visit when you go to San Francisco, for instance. I also had a nice chat with Foursquare General Manager Evan Cohen after a smaller discussion he led with Lisa Bradner of Geomentum about the future of geo-related marketing and advertising.

Saving one of the most amazing moments for last, Rachel suggested we check out a live recording of The Nerdist with Chris Hardwick podcast at Esther’s Follies, a really fun local venue with lots of history. Fifteen minutes into the recording, Chris said it was time to bring out their special guest, who was none other than John Oliver from The Daily Show! Rach and I just about fell out of our chairs, as we’re both HUGE fans. We were treated to more than an hour of John hamming it up with the guys.

We’re looking forward to next year! Hope to see you there, too.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

You may have heard the buzz as of late, but the myth that ‘journalism is a dying industry’ is being directly challenged by The New Yorker magazine – on a platform that is partially blamed for thwarting the long-form journalistic style. The platform: Facebook.

For a limited period of time, The New Yorker Facebook fan page is featuring a “Fans Only” reading section that will feature a full-text version of “Farther Away”, a story by acclaimed author Jonathan Franzen. As of right now, the text is only available to magazine subscribers in print and through The New Yorker website. The hitch -  to access the “Fans Only” section you have to be a Fan – or in Facebook lingo – “Like” the page.

The New Yorker is a of the publication that primarily keeps its content behind a pay wall whereas most sites provide content for free. This is an interesting move on their part. An article on the site Poynter.org revealed that there isn’t a technical plan about increasing engagement on the company’s Facebook page via an interview with spokeswoman Alexa Cassanos. However the goal was to increase Facebook fans who are actually fans of long-form journalism. I like The New Yorker’s take on the balance of quality vs. quantity…in this case it’s a mixture of both.

This feature came on just after Facebook created a page just for journalists, to promote the industry becoming more active on Facebook. As of now the page has almost 40,000 fans and receives a decent amount of engagement. The comments however surrounding the announcement of The New Yorker’s efforts were received pretty negatively from a page that is supposed to be close to the target that The New Yorker is reaching for:

We will see what The New Yorker plans next as they seemed quite vague on the subject. Until then, if you excuse me, I have some reading to do.

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Social Media

Every other week, we at Astek come together and discuss news, projects, ideas, etc. This week our President and CEO, Andy Swindler, had an important employee announcement to make. He was considering bringing a new employee to the Astek team…and new bionic employee… .

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Fun

A recent survey conducted by SocialMedia Examiner shared that 90% of marketers say that social media is important to their business. Kind of a loaded statement as yes, a company can consider social media important but the act of embracing it/using it is another matter entirely. The statistic that caused my eyebrow to raise was that 49% of marketers who do engage in social networking have less than one year of social media experience. This isn’t necessarily a surprise as social media is now being popularly embraced, however my question is this: Are these marketers those charged with learning social media for their company or are these people being hired on by companies as new hire experts? Also (and perhaps more importantly), what constitutes ‘experience’?

The term “social media expert” has been slapped on so many people who claim the title just by having a presence on Facebook and Twitter (and a personal presence – not a professional one). Companies who don’t know what they should be looking for, are hiring people with little to no social media experience because some figure, “Well they’re on Facebook and Twitter, so they know social media”. This could not be further from the truth.

Whenever I read a survey I always wonder where the data came from. In this instance, SocialMedia Examiner featured a survey link on Twitter, which was re-purposed on Facebook and LinkedIn. It also emailed a list of 50,000 marketers. The survey was open for 10 days and closed with 3,342 participants. The number is not astronomically high, but high enough considering social media is still a relatively ‘new’ industry.

On a more personal note – discovering that I am among the 11% of people who have more than three years of social media experience…that number makes me feel a bit old. Excuse me while I start shopping for walkers.

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Marketing, Social Media