This month we’re writing about things that inspire us. In our digital world there are countless innovations, so I’m often inspired by new approaches to old problems.

I’ve noticed a shift in how local services are supplied to consumers and businesses. Until recently, websites vying for the holy grail of bringing local customers and service providers together used classified- or forum-type websites that allow service providers to post what they do generically. Customers were expected to sift through these listings or post what they needed and hope for the best. This paradigm is being uprooted due to rapid advances in Web and mobile technology that put the customer in charge.

The bottleneck of traditional marketing forced companies to create products and services they believed people need or want. Or in some extreme cases, companies created products they knew people didn’t need, and simply used their marketing prowess to convince people to buy their products anyway.

Small or independent service providers have largely followed suit, mimicking the marketing strategies and tactics that have restricted corporations to a limited number of products and services that can’t possibly cater to every daily need of billions of unique individuals.

Innovative local marketplaces now enable consumers to articulate exactly what they want or need at any given moment, typically via a GPS-enabled smartphone, and then leave it up to the service providers to find them and in some cases even duke it out for their business.

The wild increase in personal efficiency articulated by The New York Times is possible due to technology that enables people to tell companies what they want rather than the other way around. Now people of all walks of life make their own hours by doing exactly what people need when they need it for the amount they want to pay. This growing wave of independent providers avoid the waste and annoyance of casting wide nets with traditional marketing. This was a battle they’d never win against the corporations, so rather than keep trying they changed the rules of the game.

Here are a few that stand out:

Zaarly – Post what you want done and what you’re willing to pay. For instance, our own Tim McDonald who helped launch Zaarly tells the story of an Illinois man who needed help fishing his keys out of a storm sewer and got it done for $75.

TaskRabbit – “Do more. Live more. Be more.” People post what they need done and TaskRabbit-vetted service providers make offers to do the work, allowing the consumer to choose the best fit based on their criteria.

Agent Anything – Connects busy, hardworking people who need things done with college students looking to make money.

Will these resources help consumers focus on what they need rather than want? Not likely. It’s not hard to imagine dreaming up all kinds of random tasks you ask to have done, just to see if you can get them done for a small price. This is refreshing in a world over-crowded with group deals, coupons, and classified sites providing yet another place for service providers to sell their wares and creating confusion for consumers who don’t know where to begin.

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

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

We’ve reached the end of a significant phase with eMainstay, a client with whom Astek has spent the last three years building the My25 web-based meal-planning software to improve health and reduce management costs for communities housing people with developmental disabilities.

In order to broaden the market for the software, which has proven highly successful in numerous USDA-funded studies, eMainstay approached Astek to develop a robust new My25 prototype for the software and online community development. We chose video as the form to convey our vision for the future of our software and a truly innovative approach to household-oriented meal planning.

The videos below say it better than words. Bon Appetit!

My25 Business Overview

My25 Online Toolkit Intro

Extra special thanks to Vin Design, Kathleen Ermitage, and Sedgwick Productions for their multiple contributions to the ongoing success of this project.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Technology, Web

You may have noticed a new kind of square barcode popping up all over the place, which are most likely QR codes. Actually there are a few different kinds of barcodes, but they all have the same basic purpose – using your smartphone’s camera to access information encoded on anything in the physical world.

I think of this as putting hyperlinks on any surface you see – anywhere. This is huge.

It’s the best thing I’ve seen bridging the real world of signs and paper to the virtual world of Web and mobile. With the right app you can transfer information such as contact data from a name tag or view the trailer for the movie review you’re reading. The possibilities are endless and they aren’t limited to scanning the physical world since you can scan a code on an LCD monitor and take the information with you.

Earlier this week I noticed an otherwise unmarked white cargo truck with QR codes on the back and sides. I didn’t get a chance to scan the code to see if it was a subtle marketing experiment or used for logistics tracking, but I did get the picture below.

In addition to seeing these pop up in magazines recently, I saw one Tuesday night on a Dance Flight program by DanceWorks Chicago, who recently became an Astek client. The link goes to an extended program with videos and other multimedia material you can’t get on paper.

Try scanning the QR code above. I use QuickMark on my iPhone, which works quite well scanning screens and paper. You can download QuickMark here.

Social media writer and consultant Rachel Yeomans recently posted an article spotting a QR code on Facebook for Net-a-Porter’s new mobile site:

For an example of the Microsoft Tag, which I think is a bit too colorful to be practically incorporated into most branding, I scanned an ad from the current issue of Entertainment Weekly (yes, someone else in the office has a guilty pleasure). Scan the code below to view a YouTube trailer for The Green Hornet on your mobile device. You’ll need to download a tag reader free from Microsoft.

If you’re envisioning a world in which we all wander around scanning each other for information, well, you’re probably not too far off. But this is all an interim step until the technology becomes so ubiquitous that we don’t even need our phones to do the scanning. At that point privacy and social concerns will take over the conversation from technology.

You can generate your own QR code to try out the technology. Post a comment if you’ve seen some interesting QR codes out there or think of any great uses for this technology.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

One of the biggest challenges we face when working with bloggers and within Astek is keeping the momentum of the blog going. If you were to look at our blog for the past month, you’d think nothing was going on at Astek, which couldn’t be farther from the truth!

As we get back in the saddle after vacations and various other last ditch efforts to soak up what’s left of the summer’s warmth, it’s a good time to offer some suggestions for keeping your (and our!) blog going.

1. Set a Realistic Schedule. Whether it’s once per week or once per month, set a schedule that you’ll be able to keep. We all get busy once the day starts going and the blog often falls to the bottom of the list. Try committing to writing your blog before you do ANYTHING else on every Tuesday, for example, and see if that helps.

2. KISS (Keep It Short & Simple). One of the things that seems to block a good article is being worried about making it perfect and long. By all means, you want to use proper spelling and grammar, but often the posts that get read the most are the shortest. Post a link and your immediate thoughts if you don’t have more time.

3. Remove Barriers to Publication. Even the act of logging into a website to update your blog can create an excuse not to publish. We recommend MacJournal or WinJournal to write posts quickly and easily from your computer. Programs like this make adding images simpler and save your login information so you can publish with one click.

4. Keep a List of Topics. Find a way to keep a list of all the interesting things you see on Facebook, the Web, or that people send you. I use MacJournal to queue up possible blog topics, but you could use Delicious.com or even a Word doc. If you keep a simple list you’ll never be stumped for a topic. As Andrew Crowe recently discovered, sometimes the list is right under your nose.

5. Be Honest. …with yourself and your audience. Don’t waste time back-filling spans of time without posts. It’s all ancient history by now anyway. Just focus on getting on top of your current schedule and don’t worry about the past.

Keeping a steady publication schedule is important for readers and search engines to know that you’re active. Let me know if these help and if you have some other tips that work for you, please leave a comment.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media

Mobile marketing has changed a lot in the past couple of years. Geo-targeting uses your smart phone’s GPS to find out where you are, allows you to “check in” to a location, and deliver targeted messages to you based on that information.

Leaders in the geo-targeting space include Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt (plus LooptStar). They are similar in many ways, but each offers a different twist on an increasingly familiar theme. They enable local businesses to find and attract consumers in new ways, such as offering coupons or special offers to regulars based on how many times they’ve come in. Like many start-ups, none have mastered the monetization aspect of mobile marketing, but there are clearly endless opportunities here.

In order to give people incentive to use the apps, various forms of social “rewards” are used that essentially turn exploring your city into a game. We are social creatures, and while some of these rewards may seem meaningless or frivolous, there is an attraction to them as they create an element of social status within communities. A large part of the appeal to people in large cities with lots of friends is to make sure you never miss the action, but I believe the jury is still out as to the real social value of this once the initial allure wears off a bit.

While this isn’t intended to be an in-depth review, I’ll discuss some interesting distinctions of each:

Foursquare – I’ve been on Foursquare for about a year now. It’s been amazing to watch the database of local places grow since it depended on the community to enter locations. Now it’s rare that I go somewhere that isn’t already there. The person who frequents a location the most becomes the “mayor” and some establishments give benefits for that position. You collect virtual badges for achieving certain things, like being in a place with at least 50 other people (Swarm) or hitting 4 clubs in one night (Crunked). You get the idea. Foursquare made a gamble by creating a new database of locations and friends, but it seems to have paid off. The most compelling thing about this is the special offers that are based on your location. When you check in somewhere, the app will tell you if there is a nearby special, or one at the place you are (a free drink for 10 check-ins for example). While Foursquare has exploded in the past year, I haven’t seen a congruent explosion of the specials offered by businesses.

LooptStar is a spinoff of Loopt, which was historically a more informational type of app. Their new entry enters the “rewards” space more heavily. The thing that LooptStar does that I believe will give it an advantage is use Facebook Connect to leverage the largest existing social network rather than wait for everyone to find their friends on yet another new one. They were later to the game, but I believe this will give them an edge in the long run. In LooptStar you become a “boss” rather than a “mayor.” But the rewards look to be more tangible than FourSquare.

Gowalla benefits from being on all major mobile smart platforms, including Blackberry and Palm. They also rely on partnerships with existing travel-related services to offer “trips” and share those with your friends. While Foursquare provides community tips based on your location, Gowalla focuses more on directly exploring your friends’ favorite locations to learn more about what they like rather than the community at large.

All of these apps feature basic sharing with your Twitter and Facebook feeds to let people know what you’re up to. Yelp has entered the space by adding check-in to its feature set and you can bet that Google is going to be all over this with its massive business database and Android mobile platform. The problem these sites have is that they have established brand and culture that make it harder to break into new areas.

While this space is fascinating to watch, it still has a long way to go. The apps depend largely upon smart phones such as iPhone and Android, which represent the minority of the mobile market. Also, I feel that any app that requires you to actively check in to a location rather than simply knowing where you are is going to appeal more to geeks and early adopters than the majority of people. It can be very distracting to interrupt your social experience. “Wait guys… I have to check in here first…”

What’s the alternative? Remember Minority Report, when Tom Cruise’s retinas were scanned everywhere he went? In that version of the future, you didn’t even need a device to tell the network where you were. Cameras were so ubiquitous that they knew anyway. Scary? A bit. Possible? You bet.

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

People have been serving customers in “real time” ever since there have been customers. So this is not a new concept. In fact, we’re using technology to correct a problem that technology introduced–distance between company and customer.

If someone walks into your store with a problem, you fix it immediately. If a customer calls you on the phone, you talk to them (hopefully) immediately. But what if someone posts something negative about you on Twitter or to an Internet Forum? What then?

Real time search allows you to monitor those types of interactions, complaints, and complements. It’s still your responsibility to respond, but the time needed to find such messages has been greatly reduced.

The lines between marketing and customer service are blurring. Quickly responding to someone on their own turf in a respectful manner has potential not only to set them straight, but also increase the likelihood they will tell other people about your remarkable effort to make it right. And your public response will serve as a permanent record for anyone else who sees the comment.

Twitter is currently the primary source of real time content, but expect others to get on board quickly. Twitter’s success has driven the major search engines to add real time search features to their products. But Twitter still manages the majority of real time traffic, so you can use Twitter’s built-in search engine as a place to hear what people are saying about you. Otherwise, expect popular online listening tools to start accommodating real time search in the near future.

This certainly won’t pre-empt any traditional forms of customer service, but people are out there talking about you online one way or another. You’ll be better off if you’re aware of it, since it’s not just going to go away on it’s own. At the end of the day, you should view this as an opportunity to serve people better.

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

The right CMS allows you to focus on your website content rather than the tools that run it. Numerous options meet the demands of countless websites. Astek designed Webany for you.

By now you should know why you need a CMS and how you can use a Content Management System to keep your website up to date. I wanted to share some tips about choosing the right CMS to make your Web life easier and more productive.

There are four basic types of CMS:

1. Open source applications that require configuration from a Web professional
2. Boxed desktop software that allow you to edit your website from one computer
3. “Boxed” hosted software that requires configuration from a Web professional
4. Hosted software as a service (SAAS) applications that relieve you from the burden of worrying about the backend

Here is some more info on each type of CMS to help you make the right decision:

1. Open source means that the code used to create the software is publicly available and takes advantage of a huge pool of resources (programmers) to develop. There are advantages and disadvantages to open source software. Since development is not regulated by a single entity, it also means that version-control isn’t 100% predictable or reliable. Typically this weighs on the side of advantage since there are a number of passionate, dedicated developers to fix problems that arise.

Open source developers create add-on modules or plug-ins to provide extended capabilities including forums, blog, wiki, web-stores, photo-galleries, contact-management, e-commerce, etc. It can be time-consuming to find the right plug-in, verify it works with your website and does what you need it to do, but chances are there is a solution out there for you. You will typically need to work with a developer to install, configure, and develop an open source CMS for you to use.

We like to use WordPress for blogs, which is an open source CMS for publishing. For blogs it’s nearly perfect, but we find that for creating more complex websites it has some limitations that inspired us to create Webany.

2. You can purchase boxed CMS desktop software like you would a word processor and run it from your computer. Adobe Contribute is a fairly capable desktop-based CMS. Typically these are designed for one person to manage one or more websites from one computer. While they can sometimes handle multiple users, this gets expensive quickly since you have to purchase additional licenses of the software for each person.

Some boxed CMS products are far more expensive and do offer a greater array of features. These also require set-up from a knowledgeable professional and rarely work perfectly “out-of-the-box” as their packaging might suggest. Again, these products are usually not designed to handle highly complex websites like our solution.

3. There are a few “boxed” hosted solutions out there that are not open source, but may still offer a suitable range of options for your Web needs. These are “boxed” solutions in that they are purchased as a single license, but are not designed as do-it-yourself products. You will need the help of a Web developer to install and configure these products on your Web server, as well as train you to use them. Telerik’s Sitefinity is a good example.

4. That leaves us with SAAS or hosted Web CMS. These have a big advantage in saving you time and money with set-up since they are maintained by the company who provides the service, which means you don’t have to worry about it! Some hosted CMS’ have pre-made templates for you to use, and only a few allow you to use a custom design.

You may still need the skills of a Web professional, especially if you are custom-designing a website to match your brand and specific needs. Astek specializes in this type of development, but we were consistently disappointed with CMS solutions that sacrificed features for ease-of-use, or packed in so many features that that they became cumbersome to use. Rather than settle for another solution, we decided to make one that meets our ideal for a CMS.

Webany is just right. She offers more flexibility than you’re likely to need while maintaining an intuitive design that makes managing your website a snap. You can update anything from words to photos to movies to custom forms without any knowledge of HTML. Use a custom design from Astek or anyone else.

Most importantly, Webany makes sure that your updates won’t counteract the effort and money you put into creating a custom-tailored look and feel. Auto-archiving and user workflow ensure a painless approach to website maintenance.

If you’re interested in learning more, please contact us for a Webany demo.

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

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Technology, Web

I’m typically skeptical of new whiz-bang Web sites, tools, and features that set out to “change the way we work” until I’ve actually seen the benefit. Google Wave seeks to do just that. Rather than piling on one more piece of technology or layer of abstraction, they cleared the slate by asking, “How should all of this work?” rather than, “How could what exists be better?”

I’m intrigued because I’ve been having a lot of the same thoughts and discussions lately. Email has existed more or less the same way for well over a decade. People have built new interfaces, ways to tie conversation threads together, and new free services, but fundamentally the idea of sending messages with attachments back and forth in a time-shifted manner is the same.

Google Wave seeks to reinvent real-time interaction and collaboration by treating these interactions in a centralized, consistent manner. This makes sense to me. The more applications we layer on and rave about being “the new thing” (Twitter comes to mind), the more fragmented our communication becomes.

Google Wave may or may not be the answer, or it may just be a step in the right direction. At a glance it seems to be trying to solve something that’s been nagging me for awhile. We are so focused on the tools, we often lose sight of what we are trying to communicate and the value contained therein. At the end of the day, what matters is that we want to share ideas and messages with people who will find them relevant in the most efficient manner possible, no matter when or where they happen. If we’re developing a global hive mentality through our communication technology, it will depend on messages seamlessly interacting across mediums, languages, locations, and context. This is a lofty goal, but it’s one worth shooting for.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Social Media, Technology, Web

Okay, most of them are on MySpace, too. But I’m not over there much these days. Some great apps to check out in this round-up, including a Snood-equivalent time-sucker called Bubble Town, some gorgeous Facebook art, and a SUPER addictive word game called Twirl. Well, if you’re into words.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Social Media, Technology, Web

Over the past couple of weeks a series of unfortunate events has led me to spread my computing across two laptops and a Mac Mini (Long story starting with a flat tire and drowned MacBook Pro). We typically use SuperDuper to move the information on computer into another as part of our regular backup strategy. In this case, I’ve been using Apple’s built-in function to transfer the files and settings, which works incredibly well.

Through all this I realized that the love and personal attachment I’ve always felt for my Mac’s has transferred from the physical machine to the “soul” of the machine. Before I get too spooky, let me explain. I’ve been using Mac’s for two decades. They’ve always been a significant purchase (most computers are), but I really used to geek out on the machine itself. Apple has almost always excelled at merging beauty of form with the highest practicality of industrial design (longevity, durability, easy access to replace parts, etc.). Since I lean on the side of function in design, nothing impresses me more than artists and designers who truly innovate and move the industry forward by creating brilliant art without sacrificing practicality. (And yes, even at current prices Mac’s are still practical over the long haul if you compare their average lifespan to equivalent PC’s)

The new MacBook Pro is no different in continuing the practical work-of-art tradition, but the software has evolved to make moving from one computer to another painless and simple. So simple, in fact, that it’s not difficult to imagine that what you’re actually doing is moving the soul of the computer (that is, everything you do to make it uniquely your own) to another body. Taken a step further, it’s not hard to imagine that this soul will one day live in the cloud and that you’ll be able to access it from any computer or mobile device. Let’s not talk about Matrix-esque hard-wiring quite yet.

At first I was slightly disappointed in myself for losing this enamor for my computer. I wrote it off to growing up, or just the fact that with the business I now own several computers when I used to hold onto just the one. But then I realized all I’ve done is stopped caring so much about the physical body of the tool, and now focus entirely on how I use the tool. I still love my Mac. It’s just that now “my Mac” isn’t really a computer, it’s some transient pile of ubiquitous bits and bytes that have a diminishing relationship to the body they inhabit. I guess you really can’t judge a MacBook by its cover.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Gadget, Technology