Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Archives for October 2009

Social Media Success: How About a Little Twelp?

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twelpforce11I’ve recently started a quest; Find social media success stories that have nothing to do with Motrin Moms or Domino’s Pizza. Face it, though these are interesting examples of the importance of listening and reacting to the conversation,these examples are just plain old! By the way, if you’re doing a presentation on social media and brands any time after today, please delete any reference to these two brands or you will be officially labeled, by the official Labeling Office of the Web (LOW), as “old school”.

As part of said quest I called the folks at Best Buy to check on the health and/or success of Twelpforce.

For the sake of transparency I count many at Best Buy as friends. That said, my first of impression of the name of this initiative and it’s marketing campaign around the Twelpforce didn’t rank high on my cool-o-meter. To me social media is all about one-to-one contact and I didn’t necessarily think a TV add depicting a stadium of Blue Shirts (Best Buy employees) yelling out answers as the best way to showcase a concept and effort that is so darned positive and forward thinking…just sayin’.

I was curious and anxious to have the conversation. John Bernier, a Social Media Manager at Best Buy, and the one overseeing the Twelpforce initiative was happy to spend some time talking about it. This in itself is a good sign that a level of success is being attained.  …  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 57: Journalism & Social Media

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david-julioPhenomenal discussion at today’s Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP) at the Summit Brewery where the meeting was held. The discussion was on “Social Media and Journalism” and was facilitated by Julio Ojeda-Zapata (@jojeda), a technology writer and columnist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and author of the book, Twitter Means Business (and a frequent guest on Minnov8 Gang).

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 42:11 — 24.2MB)

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Panel members:

  • Jason DeRusha (@DeRushaJ), investigative reporter, WCCO-TV
  • David Brauer (@dbrauer), media reporter, MinnPost.com
  • Gene Rebeck (@generebeck), senior editor, Twin Cities Business Magazine
  • Julia Schrenkler (@juliaschrenkler), interactive producer, Minnesota Public Radio
  • Dirk DeYoung (@ddeyoung), editor, Business Journal

We were fortunate that the SMBMSP facility host, Summit Brewing Company, provided us with a boardroom to record in after the panel discussion and, though the room had a bit of an echo, we were able to get in a solid podcast with Julio and David Brauer joining us for a continuation of the discussion about journalism and social media.

Minnov8 Gang #56: Talking Blogworld with Lisa Grimm

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lisa_mainOne of the Twin Cities most active social media participants, Lisa Grimm (LinkedIn; Twitter; Facebook), headed out last week to the Blogworld/New Media Expo held in Las Vegas and two of the four Minnov8 Gang sat down with Lisa to find out what happened, her impressions of the event, and what she took away from it.

As someone engaged in PR, marketing and product management, Lisa has impressed the Gang with her knowledge and passion for the shift in social and human communication at the heart of the social media phenomena, so we actively sought her out when we discovered she was heading out to Blogworld and asked if she’d be willing to recap it for Minnov8 upon her return. Our hope? To get a fresh viewpoint from a Minnesotan directly in the demographic sweet spot for social media and in full-scale seek mode learning all she can about all of its moving parts. The result? Exactly that (and much more) from a woman with the confidence and intelligence to soak it all in, make the connections shaping her opinions, fully engage with the Blogworld speakers, thought leaders as well as key attendees at this event (plus we got to interview her before she becomes famous).

We also discovered something about Ms. Grimm and gambling. Did she help the economy of Las Vegas and the consumer confidence of gaming industry personnel?

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch and Phil Wilson (Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins were not available midday on a weekday).

Show Notes:

+ Blogworld

+ Chris Brogan and his book

+ Jay Rosen

+ Perhaps this is one reason why Ms. Grimm has the opinion she does about gambling.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 40:39 — 23.6MB)

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Visi Launches ‘ReliaCloud’ Services to Packed House

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ReliaCloud-logoGot a nickel? Then you have a server for an hour, my friend. Visi.com, Minnesota’s largest Internet services/hosting firm unveiled on Wednesday morning its all-new brand of cloud computing services, dubbed “ReliaCloud,” with pricing starting at 5 cents per hour for its first offering, called “Cloud Server.” The breakfast seminar, “CloudVision,” was held at The Metropolitan in St. Louis Park, and was sold-out, with more than 200 IT and business executives attending. (Tweets are archived at the hashtag #cloudvision, including my own.)

CloudVison-crowd+stageThe seminar featured talks by Mike Sowada, CEO of Visi, shown here on stage. (Photo courtesy of Charles Robinson.) Visi is the state’s largest Internet services and hosting firm, with data centers in both St. Paul and Eden Prairie.  A talk followed entitled “Cloud Computing as a Business Advantage” by Chris Howard, a VP at analyst/research firm Burton Group.  Jason Baker, CTO of Visi, wrapped up the event by presenting the first details of his firm’s new ReliaCloud offering, which included a live, online demo by product manager Johnny Hatch that came off flawlessly. I captured a few of the key slides for you… …  [Read More…]

Our Head In The Cloud: Minnov8 Talks With Chris Howard

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Visi hosted Cloud Vision 2009 at the Metropolitan this past Wednesday and invited Minnov8 along. It was an event tailored to the IT community they serve and was the chance for them to introduce attendees to their soon to launch cloud product called ReliaCloud. Minnov8 colleague Graeme Thickins has posted a complete look at ReliaCloud, so look for that here.

Along with the demo and pitch Visi featured a presentation on Cloud Computing as a Business Advantage by Burton Group VP, Chris Howard. Chris took some time to talk about opportunities, concerns, and even the multiple definitions of “the cloud.”

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ktP0i143B4

The slide deck of the presentation is available now from Visi.

Transparency Please, Governor Pawlenty

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Pawlenty_Governor-MN

Apparently our Governor has decided not to publicly release the communication issued by a state agency to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) relative to the Administration’s funding priorities for federal broadband stimulus projects, specifically the Minnesota-focused NTIA/RUS broadband stimulus applications stating in comments to the aggregator of public broadband information, StimulusBroadband.com, that, “…the communication issued by a state agency to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) relative to the Administration’s funding priorities for federal broadband stimulus projects in Minnesota is not considered a “public document.”

Thankfully I follow Blandin on Broadband‘s Ann Treacy and was alerted to this gubernatorial non-release. She had this to say about it:

It’s frustrating. The Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force has been so transparent with their information. I’ve gotten spoiled. Also I think the NTIA/RUS has made strides to be transparent with their processes so it seems against the spirit of the stimulus ideals not to maintain transparency. There are a lot of applicants in Minnesota waiting to hear about what their chances are for funding. Should they be getting ready to hit the ground running with the money; should they be coming up with a contingency plan?

Ms. Treacy ends with speculation in an attempt to understand:

Lots of folks are wondering why the list is closed. As the article indicates, Minnesota maybe trying to avoid criticism for their choices. The article says, “the decision to treat the NTIA response as non-public fuels a growing debate over whether States preferred public and government projects over private ones. It would appear that Minnesota could be shielding its rankings from the same type of criticisms other states are facing.” An underlying factor, may be the criticism they received for endorsing the Connection Nation mapping proposal. (I’m not making excuses, just trying to understand.)

Hopefully this is simply a delay before becoming public and not an obvious ploy to block Federal broadband stimulus funds due to the recently released Federal Communication Commissioner’s rules on net neutrality and the GOP’s anti-net neutrality stance and moves to block it.

Governor, lay this data out on the table under the light of public scrutiny.

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 55: The Connected & Social Library

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meg

Libraries used to be places to go solely to find information and knowledge in containers called “books” that were comprised of “atoms” and organized by Melvil Dewey’s cool Decimal System, but increasingly library systems are morphing in to places to get connected online where patrons can find their information and knowledge in “bits” while interacting with the library in an increasingly virtual and — most intriguingly in today’s participation culture — in an online and interactively social way.

The Gang had a chance to invite Meg Canada on the podcast to talk about the 21st century library, what our biggest Minnesota library system is doing (and what she’s driving within it) to embrace new realities that are internet-centric and deliver a surprising array of services you may not know even exist. Meg has long impressed us with how much she “gets it” with respect to new media and social technologies, but have been quite delighted to see how much of her energy is invested in the social and internet community in Minnesota and the role she plays in nurturing it along with good humor and an eagerness to serve others.

Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast. Had we known beforehand that she also sings regularly with the Twin Cities chapter of TechKaraoke, we would’ve had her croak out an Etta James tune or something. We’ll get her on another podcast soon and have her sing.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Opening & closing music is “38 Special” by Charlie Musselwhite (iTunes link) from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:58 — 36.9MB)

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Discussed during the show:

+ Wired article, “YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net”

+ Libraries & Broadband by Ann Treacy on the Blandin on Broadband blog

+ Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) on Twitter

+ Hennepin County Library (HCL) and their services; Bookspace, a social site for HCL book lovers; eBooks and downloadable audio books and videos; and a remarkably easy to use, searchable database of all events and classes in the HCL system; HCL on Twitter.

DoApp Making Big Strides with ‘Mobile Local News’ App

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DoApp-MobileLocalIf you’re a TV news station, newspaper, or online news site, you probably should get to know Minnesota startup DoApp Inc.  For those of you in our local tech community who already know of this firm (it launched early in 2008), you may find this fact amazing: on a search for “DoApp” in the Apple® iTunes® App Store, you’ll see the company now has — count ’em — no less than 84 apps published, available for download.  Now, you may have known DoApp only for utility and game apps, with which it had early success soon after the App Store launched in mid-2008.  The firm ended 2008 with well over 3 million downloads of those apps — 11 of them are now in the store (and most have been updated multiple times). But what are those other 70-some apps (and counting)?

Well, throughout 2009, DoApp has been busy on another front:  its “Mobile Local News” app, which is an ad-supported iPhone app it co-developed with partner Inergize Digital Media of Minneapolis.  The latter is also helping DoApp market the app, primarily signing up TV stations initially, which brand the app for their own use in their local market.  And each of those branded versions of the app is distributed via the App Store to consumers, who download them for free.  DoApp also has the app available for the Android mobile platform, with Blackberry and Palm Pre versions coming soon.  (By the way, DoApp’s first customer for the iPhone mobile news app was our own WCCO-TV, Channel 4.)

Now, however, I learned from the DoApp folks at the recent MIMA Summit (where they did a demo), that they and their partner Inergize are spreading their wings even further — now offering to build and publish branded versions for newspapers and other publications, as well as online news sites.

DoApp is now touting its Mobile Local News as making citizen journalism easy. It says 50% of internet users will be generating content by 2010, and that 100 million Americans now get their news from a mobile device.
In a newsletter it just distributed, DoApp says this: “Now it’s easy for readers (and writers) to create user-generated content with Mobile Local News. With our app, you can connect with a television station or newspaper and be part of the news-making process. No press credentials required! DoApp’s Mobile Local News is the first and only local news platform to provide user-generated content. You can easily upload video, photos, and text from your mobile device. Report the news as it’s happening!”

DoApp-logoAs you might expect, DoApp is touting its Mobile Local News as a tool for “citizen journalism.”  Get this:  it says 50% of internet users will be generating content by 2010, and that 100 million Americans now get their news from a mobile device. They don’t cite a source for those numbers, but they square with what I’m hearing elsewhere.Inergize-logo

In a newsletter DoApp just distributed, it says this:

“Now it’s easy for readers (and writers) to create user-generated content with Mobile Local News. With our app, you can connect with a television station or newspaper and be part of the news-making process. No press credentials required! DoApp’s Mobile Local News is the first and only local news platform to provide user-generated content. You can easily upload video, photos, and text from your mobile device. Report the news as it’s happening!”

To get more perspective on these recent developments, I asked DoApp founder (and early Google employee) Joe Sriver if he’d answer some questions, and he was kind enough to agree. Here is that email interview: …  [Read More…]

Best Buy’s mIQ Beats Microsoft’s MyPhone At It’s Own Game

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As mobile phones have become more powerful the need to access and backup information on them has increased. One way to do this is to mesh your phone’s operating system on a central server as pioneered by Danger’s Sidekick and emulated by Google’s Android and Palm’s WebOS. If something happens on the phone, it’s automatically synced to your account in the cloud and this, in theory, prevents data loss (that company is called ‘Danger’ for a reason).

mIQ logoI have been using a Windows Mobile phone for the past 18 months and have been looking for a way to sync my data wirelessly for some time. A while back I installed the beta of Microsoft’s MyPhone service but never got it working correctly. Not sure if it was something I was doing wrong but such services should just work without a lot of user intervention and MyPhone never got there despite repeated effort in it’s beta form (it sort of worked for me once launched; read on for details).

Last week Best Buy launched their mIQ service which I noticed supported Windows Mobile so I signed up and a couple days ago was sent my account invitation. After a somewhat complex setup process that involved both the handset and computer browser, I was ready to sync. And after quite a while it seemed to be about the same as MyPhone; not really working. So I rebooted my phone, started again and this time let it sync overnight in it’s charging stand. The next morning when I checked the phone had fully synced and after a logout and login all my photos, contacts, calendar entries, text messages and other data was backed up in the mIQ service online, as advertised. My one suggestion is that the status screens on the phone be a bit more clear that something is happening since I think the sync would have worked the first time without my reboot (just a more animated status bar would work here).

Both mIQ and MyPhone are linked to popular social sites. MyPhone supports Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr while mIQ links to Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and Flickr. On the phone the mIQ service lets you update status on these services from their client, a nice touch. mIQ integrates all the communications for each contact in it’s web app so you can see all the text messages and phone calls linked to each contact. It also lets you send SMS messages from the web and easily make Skype calls to your contacts if you have a Skype out account on your computer. mIQ easily allows you to share photos and videos from the web app and seems to be automatically set to push these as they are taken from your phone by default. mIQ also has helpful stats on your phone memory usage that cleverly links to memory cards available at Best Buy making it easy to buy what you need for your phone. Overall, mIQ is very complete, stable and useful for a first release service. Along with Windows Mobile, mIQ also currently supports Blackberry and Symbian (mostly Nokia) smartphones….  [Read More…]