Many people tend to get bent out of shape every time Facebook changes anything. I’m wasn’t in that camp until Facebook Timeline hit. As a Web developer, I appreciate that Facebook successfully manages a community with more than 800 million users, which offers them a bit of forgiveness for little interface issues. Beyond that, I bet if the people complaining about new interfaces went back three months later, they wouldn’t even recognize the old one and would agree that things had, in fact, improved.

As a Web-savvy individual, I don’t have any great love for Facebook’s approach to privacy settings. I find them cumbersome and imagine a lot of users don’t take the time to navigate, therefore leaving their accounts wide open for perusing. I periodically check on my settings to make sure everything looks good, even logging out and Googling myself to see what other people see.

I was therefore rather shocked to discover that when I upgraded to Timeline, Facebook automatically changed the privacy settings on all my photos to make them viewable by all Facebook users without notifying me. In fact, it wasn’t until a non-friend (who soon became my friend) told me that she liked my Burning Man photos that I became aware that all my photos were being shared with all 800 million of my closest friends.

The fact that managing privacy on Facebook feels a little like managing a database is one reason apps like Foursquare are so popular. Not only did Foursquare create a superior culture and interface for checking in to your favorite places, they steered around the Facebook privacy settings issue by making it easy for you to collect your privacy settings under a separate app rather than digging through Facebook. In other words, when you launch Foursquare you aren’t connected to anyone until you add them, so it’s much easier to know exactly who has access to the information you share through that app.

I think we’ll find this approach of organizing information and privacy under a brand name will become more common in the future, making it easier for people to associate apps, communities, and privacy settings with a brand rather than as one of numerous settings in your Facebook account.

Here are a few tips for managing Facebook privacy:

1) Make sure your profile isn’t open to everyone (even non-Facebook users) by confirming your Default Privacy setting for new posts. Click on the arrow in the top right corner

Then choose the option you want, most likely “Friends.”

2) Make sure your past posts, photos and any other sensitive information are not available to all Facebook users. This was the main problem in my case, since all my old photos were made available without my knowledge. On the same page, find this option and click “Manage Past Post Visibility.”

Click “Limit Old Posts” when you see this:

And finally click “Confirm” when you see this screen to limit all past posts to be viewed only by your friends:

3) Facebook has created little tools all over the place to make it easier for you to share something with friends or other specific groups. In the example below, this posting will be shown to Friends by default, but I can easily change that by clicking “Friends” and selecting another group or list.

Good luck and let me know if you have any other privacy tips!

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

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Andy Swindler Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, How To, Social Media, Technology, Web

Google is the #1 search engine in the world and has evolved significantly over the years. Back in 2000 Web pages were often only indexed every few months, so you might perform a search and see information that was several weeks old. Since 2003, Google’s process for finding and delivering information has become much more efficient, with page indexing going from weekly to daily.

The Internet would be virtually unusable by today’s standards without the efficiency of search engines like Google. Check out this video of Matt Cutts, software engineer head of Google’s webspam team, explaining the technical concepts behind the searches that drive our daily Internet lives.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Search Engine Optimization, Technology, Web

I’ve spent most of my life evaluating the impact of new technology and pondering how it can make life better, work more efficient and people more knowledgeable.

I’ve found that often people seem to get very frustrated when technology changes. Facebook is a famous example of this, as they change their interface regularly. I recently noticed that since switching to Timeline that Facebook had defaulted to showing all my photos and friends to all 800 million Facebook users. The interface to set Facebook privacy is poorly designed and de-centralized, so for the first time I find myself joining the bandwagon of discontented users.

But I’ve noticed it coming up in other discussions recently, such as learning to type on the iPhone and getting used to threaded or “smart” email systems. People often use the word, “intuitive” to describe technology interfaces when they really mean “familiar.”

iPhone typing, or touchscreen typing in general, presented a steep learning curve for people used to good ole fashioned keyboards. Keyboards evolved from typewriters, which were straightforward mechanical interfaces. You press a key and the letter is presented on your page.

We have entered an age where technological innovation seeks to make up for the clumsiness of human fingers on small devices by responding with suggestions when it thinks it can help. Apple calls this feature Auto Correct. I believe this is fundamentally a good thing, but it does require some adjustment as people are now interfacing with artificial intelligence rather than a passive mechanical interface. Truly embracing and adapting to this concept will render good results while expecting an iPhone to work like a typewriter will result in frustration.

Threaded email is another innovation along the same lines. Email systems that display email messages simply ordered by date or author have quickly been replaced by the concept of threaded conversations. Email is fundamentally a very outdated technology that won’t change due to all the disparate systems that must talk to each other. So the artificial intelligence of threading is introduced on the system that people use to read messages, such as Gmail or Apple Mail in Lion. For the most part, I think threading is a huge time-saver, but it’s required me to rethink how I interact with my email, especially when searching for specific messages.

Microsoft’s “Ribbon GUI” interface, introduced in Windows Office 2007 was a bold gesture. They performed a significant amount of user testing to evaluate the increased efficiency of reinventing the classic word processor/spreadsheet interfaces that people had used for decades. Those seeking familiarity were met with great frustration. Those who took the time to retrain themselves to adapt to the benefits of the interface arguably were rewarded with enhanced productivity.

The point is that we must open our minds to some degree of retraining, rather than assuming each piece of technology will simply build upon our familiarity with what we used before. The very nature of technological progress dictates that we must constantly be willing to challenge existing paradigms to break free of the familiar and find something truly better. It might just take a bit of effort for us all, but it’s often worth it.

Then again, sometimes technological upgrades really are not better on any level. We’ve all experienced this enough over the years to be somewhat gun-shy about embracing the latest and greatest. The increased ability for consumers to express opinions via social media about things that don’t work well has caused many companies quickly to roll back new features and try again. This direct and immediate feedback leads to better interface design in the long run when the companies listen.

They say it takes three weeks to form a new habit, so be sure to give new interfaces at least that much time before giving up. Give it a shot, or ask your friendly technology philosopher to show you the way.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Technology

When I’m talking to a client about website design, I find that it’s best to take a step back to learn more about the company’s business goals so that we make sure the new website will do everything a website can do to drive success related to those goals. Usually it takes more than a website alone to drive business success, so we’ll complement that with an interactive marketing program using search, social, email and other channels.

I’ve observed a broad spectrum of what websites do for businesses, from bad to good:

Bad – At its worst your website is working against you. You’re out there beating the streets to get a new deal, everything goes perfectly with a new prospect and it’s a good match on both sides. You get to a strong “maybe” or even a verbal “yes.” You’re about to pop the champagne.

And then they look at your website…

…the one your intern created eight years ago and nobody in the office remembers how to update. It doesn’t come anywhere close to representing your current service offerings, greatest work, or brand experience of your company. It doesn’t look contemporary and doesn’t work in Firefox or Chrome, let alone mobile browsers.

In short, it isn’t you and it’s working against you. Once they see your website, that big fish you have on the line decides not to take the bait. And all that time and energy you invested was wasted just because your investment didn’t include your website.

Neutral – For many of the B2B service firms with which we work, deals come through relationships and word of mouth. It’s no different for us at Astek. In this case, your website’s primary purpose may be as a checkpoint among many other factors of getting a deal. It’s a brochure and it’s your voice of thought leadership. The website alone isn’t responsible for you getting or losing business. It won’t catapult you forward or hold you back, at least not yet.

Good – At its best your website not only serves as a checkpoint but is pulling in prospects and realizing other goals all on its own. You made a commitment to designing and building a strong website. You participated in the process and worked with experienced professionals who implemented great strategy, design, technology and marketing tactics such as SEO. Your website is aligned with your business goals.

The clearest example of this is an e-commerce website that is directly responsible for driving business revenue through online sales rather than just serving information or generating leads. Whether you have e-commerce or not, your website can be doing more for you and your company than you’re probably aware.

So, is your website working for you or against you?

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Web

I have been fascinated with technology my entire life. From my first computer consulting gig in the second grade to now running Astek, I have been constantly fascinated by technology’s potential to empower, democratize, inspire, motivate, revolutionize, and capitalize every industry and individual it touches. I’ve been equally interested in the tendency for technology’s infancy state to disrupt before it does any of those positive things.

And even as I write this I find myself describing technology as “doing” these things, but of course technology is simply a tool, capable of nothing without human intervention. That’s how we tend to talk about technology, as though it has a mind of its own.

As Arthur C. Clarke wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” When technology is new, people often indeed view it as magic because their understanding of the mechanics is so limited. This naive state is important, because it tells us how people use the technology perhaps without understanding the way it was designed to be used. This can lead to accidental innovation in the form of byproducts or creative usage.

My favorite contemporary view comes from author Clay Shirky, who said, “Curiously, once the technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting.”

I agree with Shirky that only when technology becomes ubiquitous do we favor talking about the social benefits that integrated technology delivers rather than the features that make us geek out. Only then do the most interesting non-technological social effects of a technology begin to emerge.

Twitter is a perfect example of possibility+conflict in my life. The mechanical ideology of Twitter is incredibly simple compared to other social or information networks. But clearly it is no trivial task to keep all those billions of tweets going.

As someone who has been on Twitter for more than four years and has yet to send 1,000 tweets, my mantra has remained consistent: I speak when I have something to say. I find Twitter to be a highly disruptive medium as I’d typically rather be talking with someone face to face than online under any circumstances.

Yet at the same time, I love the wide-spread potential for Twitter and I see it becoming more refined and less disruptive. Twitter’s own iPhone app was historically at the bottom of the list of Twitter apps until version 4.0. To me, this one changed everything. They really finally figured out how to make it easy to spend five minutes on Twitter and get the most value out of it rather than previous apps which we much more focused on cramming features in than streamlining one’s Twitter life.

One of the greatest disruptions of mobile technology is the flaky nature of Internet connections. The U.S. suffers behind some third world countries since we still have to maintain so much copper infrastructure. There are some creative solutions out there to boost reception, but until this “just works” it will continue to disrupt by making people stare at their phones for a minute or more waiting for tasks that should have taken a few seconds to process.

The social network I most actively participate with is Foursquare, where the basic action of “checking in” to a place should just take a few seconds. However, given the realities of mobile Internet reliability and my lack of desire to paint an antenna on a tree wherever I am, Foursquare does indeed end up disrupting my life, especially my meals, more than I’d like. It’s worth exploring, but we have a long way to go before everyone is on board.

I’m always enchanted to meet someone who is not yet on Facebook or has yet to delve into one the other daily social phenomenons. People the geeks may view as luddites who haven’t yet seen the light to me represent a sort of purity that makes me wonder if they are still appreciating parts of life that the digital haze has diffused for the rest of us. We’re going through something necessary for humanity’s progress, where increased connectivity will solve big world problems. But the current value of it all currently leaves room for doubt.

Perhaps Einstein got it right in 1941 with a bit more brutal view of the impact of technology, saying, “Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”

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Andy Swindler Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Mobile, Technology

As the Web world continues to evolve every day, Astek moves right along with it. While we offer a wealth of services related to newer Web strategies and tools such as social media, good old fashioned websites are still alive and strong.

Sometimes it can be hard to know where to begin if you’ve been given the task of redesigning your company’s website. Having been through this process numerous times, I’ve shared some of my own thoughts and good articles I’ve read recently that can help you through the earliest stages of redesigning your website.

Write your Website Redesign RFP (Request for Proposal)

Like most shopping expeditions, you will find the best product or service for you if you know what you’re looking for ahead of time. This starts by drafting a document of your requirements, which are unique to you. This will help you define your objectives and come to the table with a clear roadmap.

I’ve sometimes found myself in the position of helping prospective clients write their RFPs, whether or not we get the work in the end. I’ve been on both sides of this, and find that working through the RFP with someone who has been through it before can help you immensely.

The most important thing your RFP should do is clearly outline all the parameters of the project to structure it for your vendors so that you can align the format of the proposals you receive. The more specific your requirements, the easier it will be for you to compare quotes. Comparing apples to apples will help ensure you’re picking the right vendor for the right reasons.

RFPs take on numerous forms, but the basics should include project overview, goals, services requested, key roles, expected formats, special requirements, technical requirements, existing integration points, submission details and timelines. For extra credit, you can also create a site map, which is a bullet list or flow chart of the expected pages on your website.

Read more about creating a Web RFP from MarketingProfs. (Free account required for full article)

Read Seven Tips for Improving Your Website from Entrepreneur.com’s Daily Dose.

Illustration by Matthias Pfluegner

Choose the Right Partner for You

Not all Web vendors are the same. They range from individuals to large agencies. With so many options, it’s less a distinction of good and bad and more a matter of alignment with your culture, goals, work style, capabilities, and budget. Some Web professionals focus purely on design. Others do design and development and perhaps hosting. As agencies grow larger they tend to offer more services such as strategic marketing and ongoing campaign development. Full-service boutique agencies like Astek are rarer.

Your RFP will help align the formats of the proposals you receive, which will make them easier to compare. If you didn’t get very far with your RFP, never fear. A good Web consulting firm will be able to guide you through the process. It just might take a little longer to get there. Most websites don’t tend to do a whole lot on their own, so you should consider how this will fold into your overall marketing strategy.

Like anything, you’re better off with a firm that is really good at a couple things than okay at a lot of things. Many Web firms have their own content management systems (CMS), like Webany, so you should specify if you want a proprietary or open source CMS. Mobile is becoming essential for websites, along with SEO and social media, where it can be difficult to determine the true level of experience being sold. Ideally you will find all these disciplines under one roof to reduce the amount of time you’ll spend managing multiple vendors.

Always be sure to ask for references with whom you can speak and examples of past work.

Read tips from Scott Robinson about choosing the right web developer.

Read about tips for keeping up with the digital revolution and getting unstuck.

If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line. Good luck!

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Andy Swindler Categories: How To, Marketing, Web

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

Whether you are publishing content or selling products, you need to make it as easy as possible for your customers to get to your goods on their terms. Mobile usage is growing exponentially and will be an increasingly essential part of your toolkit to keep your customers coming back for more.

But if you’re just starting to think about how to go mobile, it can be hard to know where to begin. Two of the key things you’ll need to research are what mobile devices your customers are using now and what they want to use in the future. This information will help you make the right decisions when planning how to allocate your valuable resources.

Review your analytics. You should have Web analytics running on your website. Google Analytics is a top-notch free tool that will tell you a lot about how people are accessing your content. While analytics are useful, they don’t tell you the whole story. You also want to know how people ideally would view your content, which isn’t completely revealed until you’ve created an optimized mobile experience.

Send a survey. The best way to find out what your customers want is to ask. There are numerous survey tools available, which you can use to send a Web-based survey to your email list. Regardless of how you deploy the survey, it’s important to keep it short to increase the number of responses. Here is a suggested set of questions to find out your customers’ mobile preferences:

1) What type(s) of mobile phone do you have?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

2) What type(s) of mobile phone do you expect to have 1 year from now?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

3) From where do you typically view our website?
        a) Work
        b) Home
        c) On the go

4) From what type of device would you prefer to view our website?
        a) Desktop computer
        b) Laptop
        c) Tablet
        d) Mobile Phone

5) On a mobile phone, how do you prefer to read content?
        a) Apps
        b) Mobile Web browser (e.g., Safari)
        c) RSS Reader

6) If you own a tablet, what kind?
        a) iPad
        b) Android
        c) Windows
        d) Blackberry
        e) I don’t own a tablet

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, How To, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

I owe a lot to Steve Jobs. My family got an Apple IIc computer when I was in the 1st grade (thanks Mom and Dad!) and it defined my entire career. I was an early card-carrying member of the cult of Apple. It wasn’t just about being cool or different. There are hundreds of tangible reasons why that platform was and is superior. Not just for artists, but for everyone. An evangelist was born.

In the 2nd grade, my 1st grade teacher came to get me out of class to help her “fix” her Apple IIe. Remember those guys with the green and black monitors? Turns out she just didn’t have the monitor on, but I found it remarkable that she came to me rather than any other adult in the school.

That was my first consulting gig.

I often don’t write about “big news” since I figure everyone is doing it and the world probably doesn’t need one more blog post. But in this case, this isn’t just news. This is the end of an era.

But it’s not all sadness. Steve’s legacy is so strong, inspiring, and lasting that his untimely passing also marks the beginning of a new era — for Apple and all technology companies and geeks.

We’ve seen social media take hold in the past few years, and I believe we have yet to realize the true potential of that technology. In its infant state of exploration, experimentation and fundamental learning, social media remain anyone’s game.

Apple fueled the growth of new technologies such as social media by exploding the potential of open mobile app distribution. I clamor to ideas like this — philosophies, frameworks, and factories working together to empower everyone and level the playing field.

At the center of all this was Steve, whose singular vision and demanding standards merged artistry and technology into some of the most empowering devices and software ever created.

Being a life-long Apple fanatic means I’ve been there in good times and bad. I saw Steve get booted from Apple, and then triumphantly return to save the company from disappearing altogether. I painfully tried to help my college buddies with their late-90’s Mac’s that just weren’t very well-built.

When the Mac came about in 1984, I became mesmerized by desktop publishing and later PageMaker. The Mac made that world possible at the time, and once again I found it easy to dazzle people by doing what I enjoyed most – using the things that came out of Steve’s mind to solve problems and create.

This lead me to pursue journalism through high school and college. I was also an Apple Student Rep at Northwestern, which is the only time I received a paycheck from Apple. While I didn’t specifically pursue journalism as a career, my life has led me along the path of the new journalism in the form of social media and communication technologies. I apply these lessons on behalf of my company and clients every day.

And yes, I still use a Mac. Now I have several. I feel like much of the world has come to understand what I’ve known all my life. Vision like this is rare and deserves to be revered.

Steve would be the first to tell you that his path was not without mistakes. Whose life isn’t? But his journey is an extraordinary one worthy of reflection. He had a unique way of bringing teams of varied talent together to create something profound around a singular vision. It’s no surprise that Pixar is one of most successful film studios and business success stories in any industry.

Five years ago, who would have thought that thousands of executives would be walking around with an Apple logo on their phones?

If you’ve never seen it, take a few minutes to watch Steve Jobs’ address to Stanford graduates in 2005. These words continue to inspire me.

Thanks Steve for all you’ve given me and the world. We’ll never forget what you did and we’ll do our very best to carry your torch of innovation.

Update:
I was going through some old Apple memorabilia (yes, I have a lot of it), and found this photo of the rock we painted at Northwestern University in April 1997 before they changed to a single color logo. We made the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, the next day. However, the article was titled “Macintosh Misery” due to our decision to create hopeful art during a dark chapter in Apple’s life. Steve’s return and recovery of the company shortly thereafter thankfully make these mere anecdotes of history.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Gadget, Technology

As the whole world goes mobile (2,600% increase predicted by 2015), two main options have emerged for bringing your business to the party: build apps or optimize your website.

I want to focus on the second option, optimizing your website/HTML, which is becoming a more appealing option as HTML becomes more capable of doing the things we’ve typically needed apps to do.

Once HTML 5 can do anything an app can, I see only three major advantages to building an app:

• Push notifications (a common app feature that currently doesn’t work in HTML)

• Distribution (selling/downloading an app that lives on a phone versus saving a bookmark)

• Offline access (HTML 5 is already pushing this one off the list as it has built-in offline caching features)

Apps also still have a “cool” factor, but typically introduce more time and cost in development and maintenance.

A number of terms have emerged to describe Web optimization for mobile devices. I’m here to tell you they all essentially mean the same thing: delivering a reduced amount of content to your users in a logical fashion to create a more efficient mobile experience. Ideally your website will detect the user’s device and optimize it on the fly since there are so many different mobile devices and screen sizes.

• Mobile Optimize
• Mobile Format
• Mobile Template
• Mobile Versioning
• Multi-Siting
• Adaptive Content Rendering

I think “optimize” is the most logical and accurate. Whatever you want to call it, the effort is partly technical, but largely falls in the realm of content strategy. With less screen real estate to use for your message, you’ll need to make careful decisions about what’s most important to convey to your user.

Come to think of it, brevity might just not be such a bad thing for the future of digital content delivery.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Uncategorized