The only two articles you’ll be able to read on Wikipedia today describe the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. The rest are unavailable due to a widespread blackout on the Internet. You might have noticed Google’s logo expressing their support, shown below. Google didn’t go as far as to shut the search engine down, which may very well put the Earth off its axis at this point, but they do have a SOPA/PIPA petition you can sign.

If you’re unfamiliar with this new legislation under review, it’s worth knowing about. The short version is that it has the potential to violate the First Amendment, censor and cripple the Internet, impose harmful regulations on American business and threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions. It is thoroughly documented, so I will point you to TechCrunch’s SOPA coverage for the latest.

Fellow tech entrepreneur Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger, has been fighting this battle for months. Go Ben! People took notice when Ben threatened to move his 1,000+ domain names away from GoDaddy if they continued to support the bill. Today, if you try to pull up one of his websites, FAIL Blog, you’ll see the following message before entering the site:

Ben is not alone. While Facebook hasn’t officially joined the ranks, Zuckerberg has. I haven’t been extremely vocal about this for various reasons, but not because I support the bills. I generally feel that ridiculous measures like this written by people who don’t truly understand the consequences will blow over in time. But that doesn’t just happen by accident. It happens thanks to thousands or millions of people who make a stand.

And it’s always a useful reminder of the power lawmakers have, and the attention we must pay to our own power to help them craft policies that positively influence our lives. Someone once told me that technology moves much faster than the law, and this is one of those points of conflict that can emerge.

If you want to help and have about 10 seconds, this SOPA/PIPA petition from Avaaz.org is a good place to start.

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

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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You might have heard about Google’s announcement to purchase Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion. On the surface this would seem to be a move to solidify the Android ecosystem and cult by starting to build and distribute their own mobile hardware (cell phones and tablets).

That’s part of it. Apple has demonstrated the market power and profitability that a proper cult following can generate and continues to demonstrate this commitment by practically giving away their newest operating system, Lion ($29), and actually giving away their upcoming iCloud service to all Lion users. Not a bad way to get people to buy the latest and greatest.

Not too far beneath Google’s surface brews a tempest that has significant implications for all mobile technology innovation in the years to come. Google’s main interest in Motorola is 17,000-plus patents that allow them to enter the patent wars currently underway. In this war, patents are conglomerated legal cards to be played as part of an ongoing legal strategy for each company vying for market share.

Patents were designed to fuel innovation by rewarding someone’s original idea, allowing him or her a specific period of time to capitalize monetarily on that idea. Technology moves much faster than the law, and we’re quickly seeing the limitations of copyright, trademark, and patent law as they currently stand.

On the heels of reports saying Android phones occupy nearly half the market, one might wonder how such a deal could get through anti-trust court. To Google’s credit, this does represent a new business sector for them as they wisely licensed the Android OS (classic Microsoft strategy) rather than building hardware (Apple). Now how do you think those dozens of hardware manufactures feel about competing directly with a company owned by their licensor?

While Larry Page states that the deal will “enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences,” I’m not convinced. The little guy doesn’t have the legal muscle to enter the patent wars, and is often only brought in unknowingly after he’s had some success.

Certainly Google has offered much innovation to the world, and some see as a defensive move. I have a limited amount of trust for any large corporation, and these days that includes Google and even Apple. If you’ve been watching this game awhile, it may seem somewhat ironic to see Apple and Microsoft banding together to sue Google. The enemy of my enemy and all that.

This situation makes me squirm the way much of our stock market does. What was created as an institution to allow anyone to invest in a company, hitching his or her star to the success and failure of that company, has become an abstraction that allows people to place bets on the success or failure of anything or nothing. We’ve seen how well that played out in recent years.

Social media was created by individuals for individuals. Let’s make that clear up front. As far as businesses are concerned, they have done some fantastic things with social media to connect with their client base via customer service, engagement, charity, or just seeming “cool”. The businesses who have done this well are looked upon as models to other businesses to the point of some saying, “We need to do what they did and we’ll be successful!” I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not necessarily true.

If you are a business and say, “We need to be social.” I ask you this: “Why?” Granted, social media is fun. I would tweet all day if I wanted to! But so many businesses start with feeling they need to get on specific platforms – mainly Facebook and Twitter. However, as a business, you may not be appropriate for social media. In the financial sector, most companies only allow their personnel to be on LinkedIn. You may run a manufacturing facility – not sure if Facebook is really the best platform for you.

So before you get all platform-crazy and want to be on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Hulu, YouTube, Vimeo, Quora, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+…. take a step back and answer the question, why do you want to be on social media? What is the business goal here? Most of the time, it’s to gain more clients and increase business. Or it’s to engage with existing clients and maintain them. Or it’s to just know everything that’s being said about you and your competitors to gauge where the market is going so you can model marketing plans around the consumer voice. Whatever it is, figure it out. Then we can talk about platforms.

Now, the next huge debacle – do you have the resources to manage these presences? If you want to create a presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you better make sure you have a plan on who is going to be creating that content and when. And whoever is responsible, make sure that person or group of people is knowledgeable on appropriate community management skills.

Does the person running your social media communication know that there should be a generic company Facebook profile (i.e. mine is Rachel at Astek) to manage your company Facebook page so his/her personal profile is kept personal? Does he/she know that the you should always have more people following you on Twitter than you following – and that you actually need to engage on Twitter at least 12-15 times a day (and those are in conversations, not just status updates)? And finally, whoever is managing your social media presence, does he/she call him/herself an expert? If so, find someone else!

The term “expert” in social media land is almost the equivalent of a four-letter word. Those of us who make our careers off of social media and innovative technologies know that whatever we do know, there is twice as much stuff that we don’t know. Pride is not a good feature in a community manager. Make sure this person is innovative, creative, and always reading and trying to learn on what’s going out there in that scary land many call a “cloud”. For example, Google+ brand pages are just around the corner. Do you have a plan in place for when that happens – whether that plan includes engaging in that platform or focusing on something else?

Now we enter into that precarious zone of agency management. Many businesses stat that they want to be active on social media but don’t have the time. So they want someone to do it for them. And no, don’t hire an intern to manage your social media. Going back the qualifications of a community manger, you need to make sure that a certain skill set is present in this individual – plus you need to make sure he/she knows your brand, is trustworthy in protecting and representing it, and if he/she leaves, you’re not left going, “Now what?”

Therefore, if you do hire an agency or someone externally to help you launch a social media presence, fantastic! Have at it! But I would strongly suggest that messaging and content creation come from someone internally, and just have the agency train you on appropriate messaging and to set expectation on what level of engagement is realist for the company to maintain. Because if the agency can send out 15 tweets a day, that’s great, but if your internal bandwidth is only 5 per day, then you have a problem. It is perfectly reasonable to hire an agency to take over social discussions on a one-off basis such as for an event, conference, Twitter chat, etc. But full-time ownership should be created internally unless that agency is almost grandfathered into your business or if they give you a clear exit strategy so you know how to keep up with the presence they created for you after they’ve left to go to the next client.

Social media is not a buzzword, and it is and will continue to grow into being vital for business successes. You should not ignore it, but just like any other business decision, make sure you have a plan on how to use it and why you are using it in the first place. Have questions? Do you have good examples/case studies? Please share as we easily could’ve missed it on our Twitter feed!

Check out this blog showing five awesome and even slightly practical modes of transportation. Ever wanted a flying car, batmobile, or just to ride more safely on your bike? Now you can!

There’s not a lot of good that comes out of a recession – debt, foreclosures, decimation of retirement plans, etc., etc., etc. But one silver lining to every recession in American history is that moment when “…because that’s the way it’s always been done.” becomes “…well that’s what got us into this mess in the first place.” And when that philosophy finally shifts, when Americans really commit to finding new solutions, we can come up with really, really cool stuff.

Around mid-2009, I started hearing about this new focus in the technology world on “selling your by-products.” Manufacturers have been doing it for years, selling sawdust and fabric scraps. But now technology companies were starting to look at their work this way. And I don’t mean technology companies that manufacture products, I mean programmers. “What are the byproducts for programmers?” you might ask. Well in the case of the creators of Basecamp, 37 Signals, they count among their by-products a book, written from a foundation of the blog posts they wrote while building their product line, and a new programming language, Ruby on Rails. They wrote a great article on this idea that I still refer to today: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1620-sell-your-by-products

But the tech world weren’t the only ones exploring innovative by-products. Around the same time this blog post started getting circled around the Internets. It’s an article about finding new ways for non-profit theatres to create reliable streams of revenue and it focuses on the “by-products” of theatre. What does that mean?

“…It means you sell memberships, not tickets. It means that if I pay you ten bucks a month, I get access. I can visit every rehearsal. I get a guaranteed ticket to every show you do. I get unlimited empty seat passes after I use my guaranteed ticket. When a guest artists comes to do a Suzuki workshop with your acting company, I get a chance to sign up too. For free. When you have some down time, your company members teach a class, and I get to come. For free. It means that instead of throwing your unused costumes and props in the dump, you throw a souvenir party. I get to come take home a souvenir. For free. Because I am a supporter, and that special-purpose prop is just more sawdust to you. Could you sell these things in other ways? Sure. You could do a prop auction. You could sell seats in a summer acting workshop. You can sell individual tickets. But I don’t think that’s the best way to sell the sawdust. Remember: we’re trying to stay away from simple transactions. We’re trying to concentrate our value into a long-term relationship. Don’t encourage your customers to track dollar-for-dollar what they get out of every transaction. Encourage them to understand that theater is a process. A process that costs money, but produces hundreds of wonderful results. Let them invest in the process, and then let them reap the results.”

The article goes on to encourage the use of technology to stream events, gather feedback from your members, allow that feedback to influence a production in progress, use your members as dramaturgs, focus groups, critics, and fans to not only build excitement for opening night, but to make the performance better and to build relationships with your audience that last all year round – not just the few days or weeks that you have a play running.

Pretty cool idea, right? And in the last couple years since that article there have even been performing arts companies embracing this new business model and are having success with it! But this idea can definitely use some more support. Specifically technical support…

…enter the Audience Engagement Platform:

http://www.youtube.com/v/2243Dwwqv4A

I’ve heard it described as “The Facebook for the Performing Arts” but I think it’s really a way for performing artists to sell their “sawdust.” It’s still in beta and by invite only, but if you can think of a performing arts company or individual that is forward thinking enough to really use this program, I’d encourage you to send them to this link to get in on the ground floor of this way-cool new platform!

If you’re like me, you can’t have enough digital desktop space. However, if you’re like me, you switched to a laptop many years ago, and had to take a step back from desktop computers that could easily run as many monitors as you could fit on your desk. Macs have always had an advantage here, running dual monitors since the late 80’s. This was one of the reasons they gained popularity for desktop publishing.

While most laptops natively support one external monitor in addition to the built-in screen, I’ve found myself at times wanting two big displays since I usually don’t have my laptop open on my desk. I find it cumbersome and recently downgraded to a 13“ MacBook Pro since I typically use the laptop as a laptop on planes and in coffee shops where it’s cramped. I may even go AirBook next.

Low and behold, about a year ago the geniuses at DisplayLink invented a microchip (let’s call it a magic box) that allows you to run a monitor off nothing more than a USB connection. How does it work? It compresses the video signal to fit into the 480 Mb/s data stream that USB can handle. Back in the day you had to have a separate video card for every monitor or pair of monitors, which used far more power and generate more heat. No more.

So now they’ve licensed the chip and there are all varieties of magic boxes out there. I highly recommend this USB display adapter from Diamond Multimedia, which works on Mac and PC and also has a built in 3-port USB hub since you’d be losing a USB port otherwise:

Installation is a snap. Install one DisplayLink driver, which you can find here for free, then plug it in and go! The box has a DVI monitor port, so you may need an adapter for VGA, etc.

The only drawback is that the refresh speed is a little sluggish. You’ll notice this when you drag windows around or play a video. It can support HD resolution on up to six additional screens (one monitor per box), which is great, but I would not recommend it for watching movies or gaming. That’s what your main monitor is for!

At Astek, we’re completely laptop-based, which is great for a flexible work environment. And now the only significant limitation has been removed. I tested it out first on one workstation, and then bought them for the whole office. It’s $60 for the box, so around $300 total investment including a monitor for a significant increase in productivity. Here’s my current setup:

What would you do with two monitors?

We’re big fans of the Specialized Information Publishing Association (SIPA), an organization focused on the ever-changing needs of niche publishers, typically in the B2B space. As members and speakers, we’ve enjoyed getting to know the diverse groups involved, and I often learn as much as I teach at their seminars, since publishers are in the middle of a bone fide revolution.

Tom Lynch and I attended the national conference in Washington D.C. this month, and added “exhibitor” to our list of credentials. Astek’s growth has always been fueled by word of mouth from our happy customers (thanks!), but we felt it was important for us to add another layer of support for SIPA, as well as to get some extra exposure for Astek by having a booth that stood out and quickly became known as “Astek Lounge.”

I’m thrilled with how well our booth turned out, thanks largely to Vin at Vin Design, who is an expert in experiential design.

First things first. Tom and I headed over to IKEA to pick up some essentials. We were creating something very different from the blue table we were provided — a space that would invite people to come in and stay awhile. And it worked!

While we were giving away real apples (on the right), we decided to have a contest and give away another Apple in the form of a new iPad 2. People entered by scanning our QR code (on the left) to register for our ePiphany newsletter. This gave us an opportunity personally to help several SIPA members get their QR code readers installed and working on their smart phones, which proved most painful on Blackberries.

Check out Astek iPad winner Brad Forrister, of M. Lee Smith Publishers/Business & Legal Resources, basking in his new toy (green cover of course):

We had fun experimenting with colorizing QR codes, and used them on the table tents strewn throughout the lounge to make it easy to learn more about Webany CMS, ePiphany, and the people at Astek:

I gave a talk on mobile publishing to a standing room-only crowd. Every couple of years publishers are thrown for a new loop in technology: SEO, CMS, social media, and now mobile. We’re helping many publishers figure out how to go mobile, which is the fastest growing content consumption market.

SIPA is a very progressively-minded organization, and hired Astek to run Twitter for the whole conference. Rachel was putting in 12-hour days back in Chicago, but it was a raging success. Several members participated, both those at the show and ones who could not make it. We had two Twitter walls (one shown below with Kati and Anne), and hashtags for the conference and each seminar to facilitate macro and micro topical real-time conversations.

I tweeted the awards ceremony in real-time and Rachel picked up the broadcast to retweet through @sipaonline. It was a blast and really demonstrated the power of Twitter to the attendees. We’re racing with it, offering this service to all kinds of conference organizers. Twitter has come a long way since I first wrote about it in 2008, and the conference aspect has become the clearest way for me to explain its true potential to people.

We had a tiny bit of downtime in the booth, which Tom used to show me how to juggle apples:

At the end, we donated the IKEA furniture to the local Boys & Girls Club of America, who were as thrilled to get it as we were not to ship it home. Now that’s a win-win.

See you in Miami!

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Yesterday kicked off National Small Business Week! What does that mean? It means that during this week, it’s all about the ‘little guy’. Then again, sometimes that little guy grows up very quickly to become a strong presence and maybe even a role model for the business world (i.e. Groupon). Astek is now seven employees strong, and we definitely want to share in the shout-out to our small biz brethren. And what better way to shout out than through social media?! Considering that in the beginning, social media was used mostly by the small business owner as an inexpensive (and sometimes free) marketing tool. So now let’s see what they’re saying (and what’s being said) through those same channels.

One of the first actions I took when hearing about National Small Business Week was to send out a tweet asking for a hashtag. The @SBAgov Twitter handle responded quickly with #SBW2011. A new column on my Seesmic Desktop later, and I quickly learned about the planned #SBWChat today at 1pm Eastern Time!

Fast forward a mere five minutes later, and my boss sent me the following link to a blog post from Duct Tape Marketing announcing an iPad giveaway each day during National Small Business Week! It’s set up in a sort of ‘guess-the-blogger’ format, which I think is extremely interesting and creative, plus kudos to him for what will lead to some amazing analytics results!

National Small Business Week 2011 will be highlighted with two-and-a-half days of events in Washington, D.C., where 100+ business owners from across the country will be recognized. They also have a website where you can check out the schedule, the speakers, those being honored, and even live webcasts!

So as we tip our hats to the small businesses, here is a quote from President Barack Obama’s statement to kick off the week with some inspiration and a well-earned pat on the back.

“Small businesses embody the promise of America: that if you have a good idea and are willing to work hard enough, you can succeed in our country.  This week, we honor and celebrate the individuals whose inspiration and efforts keep America strong.”

Thank you fellow small businesses for all of your service and hard work. Perhaps we will have the honor of tweeting with you soon!

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