Internet & Web

Dave Does Digital: A Morning Show and Social Media

January 13, 2010 By Phil Wilson

How a Twin Cities morning mainstay, The Dave Ryan Show, is using social media.

I admit it, I listen to commercial radio quite a bit…yes, even Top 40. I know this is hard for many to admit. There is this pressure that if you don’t listen to NPR all the time you’re some how less of a person. I have my public radio favorites and still love to dig for new and more independent music, but I like hearing the “hits”. It’s the way I was brought up. Whether they be current or more from my formative years, I listen to rock, alternative, country and pop stations and the “hit” music they play. Besides, with a pre-teen and teen in the house and car it’s pretty much a given that I’ll be hearing my fair share of Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift.
It’s for that reason that I noted and was impressed with how one of Minneapolis’ local shows was using interactive and social media tools. What was also impressive was how they were integrating it into their on-air presentation. They often noted that more and sometimes exclusive content could be had online…a practice all too often avoided by stations and personalities.

As I have commented here on RemainComm, commercial radio as a whole has been slow in adopting and investing in the new forms of media that allow the growth of relationships with their listeners. OK, some just plain suck at it. KDWB’s Dave Ryan Show is an exception. Dave and his cast have done some interesting things and I had a chance to chat with him about his interactive pursuits.

For better or for worse, Dave still looks at interactive as “free marketing”. For the radio business the price tag of free is the main appeal of social media. Dave noted, “You’re crazy if you’re not taking advantage of everything you can to reach your audience.” But to Dave’s credit he goes on to say, “Yeah, you want more listeners but you really do care…about the listeners and the content. It’s like having a booth at the State Fair.” A practice all Twin Cities stations take part in, whether it makes sense as a marketing tool or not. Dave also notes that what they do online is “an extension but it also keeps us relevant. It helps let the audience know that you have your fingers in all the cool stuff.” (More on his use of social media to listen further down the page.) Here’s a look at what they are doing. Some of it is obvious, some not, and some of it shows great foresight…. [Read More…]

Activ8: Event Management for Small Business

January 11, 2010 By Steve Borsch

Activ8 is a new Twin Cities-based event/class registration service targeted to the small business’ that has a limited (or no) no web presence but those who offer services in the areas of dance, karate, gymnastics, or fitness studios are perfect potential users as are individual instructors in fitness, music, yoga, or tutoring.

One of the great things about the internet is how it’s so perfectly geared to make the inefficient more efficient. The creator of Activ8, Marc Kermish, is an athlete who saw a lot of inefficiencies in event management with athletics service providers (and many others) and has delivered a web application that can dramatically simplify the entire event management process.

Activ8 enables the posting of any sort of event, class, or gathering that requires a participant to purchase a ticket. The event organizer can post their event, class or gathering, collect participant information and payments via credit card, and then communicate with their participants throughout their event planning process. Activ8 does not charge the event organizer for the use of its service but instead, takes a small fee from every participant transaction.

After I was initially contacted about Activ8, and knowing that the event management space is fairly crowded, I poked around the site and app to look for potential competitive advantages Marc might have and was pleased to have two which leapt out at me. … [Read More…]

Your Customers are Watching You

January 4, 2010 By Steve Borsch

While many internet and web technology sites and blogs have published their 2010 predictions (including Minnov8), this post serves as a warning and a wake-up call to Minnesota companies that the power you once held — not just in communication, marketing and public relations surrounding your products, services and company — but that power is quickly shifting to your customers in new ways that you need to understand and strategically prepare for or suffer the consequences beginning now.

The acceleration in mobile internet use — and the devices exploding in number to access it — is enabling the masses to understand what you’re doing as an organization, comment to one another on your activities but (and perhaps most disturbingly to those of you with previously publicly unavailable or difficult to obtain data) it is enabling customers to examine your products, your company’s record on the environment, your labor practices (onshore and offshore) and much more.

How can your customers do that? … [Read More…]

Classroom of the Future?

December 7, 2009 By Steve Borsch

classroom-future Reinventing education in a time of accelerating change is more important than ever before, especially if you’re at all interested in your kids and our future workforce being technologically savvy and possibly more so than any other workforce in the world.

Normally I wouldn’t do a story on an interesting initiative with a marginally innovative technology perspective, but I’ve been writing for nearly six months for Scholastic, Inc. and their Administrator area online with a blog called “Accelerating Change.” As a consequence, I’ve been deeply involved in K-12 education technology study which has given me a unique perspective and I remain focused on uncovering true innovation or even incremental steps along the way toward true reinvention of education.

The PR gang over at Padilla Spears Beardsley, a group of folks whose quality public relations I’m continually impressed by, sent over some information on a Classroom of the Future initiative and their client, Tierney Bros, whose involvement in this worthwhile endeavor is worthy of note:

“People entering the workforce today are expected to have stronger technology experience and capabilities than ever before. Teachers today face the challenge of keeping pace with the latest technological advances – such as interactive presentation and conferencing technologies – with often limited resources.

For the fourth year in a row, Tierney Brothers is helping prepare the next generation of workers by offering a Tierney Brothers “Classroom of the Future” Technology Grant in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. This unique opportunity gives every school in Minnesota and Wisconsin the chance to receive $15,000 worth of technology, integration and training for their school. Students taught in these classrooms will learn using AV technology similar to systems Tierney Brothers, a leading provider of digital projectors, flat panel displays, systems integration, large format printers, graphic and engineering supplies, and audio and visual communication solutions has integrated into John Deere, Land O’Lakes, Wells Fargo and other businesses.”

Certainly a laudable initiative (especially with our State budget shortfalls) and an obviously smart thing for Tierney Bros to do since they’re in the business of selling this sort of gear in to K-12 education, but I’m doubtful these technologies are truly making classrooms future-ready and instead are putting a shiny new cover on a musty old book.

… [Read More…]

WCCO Walks The Wire

November 3, 2009 By Phil Wilson

wire At their latest Bloginar gathering WCCO-TV previewed The Wire, a site that will allow users to see a story develop over time. It also allows staffers and users to interact and contribute to stories as they do develop. I had a chance to sit down with WCCO’s Director of New Media, John Daenzer to talk more about what WCCO hopes to accomplish with The Wire and to get a pre-launch walk-through of the service.

The origins of The Wire can be traced to a huddle with WCCO Brand Director Casey Kespohl nearly two years ago. “We had been thinking about creating some sort of environment to engage people more in not only news gathering but local news and information.” says John. “We didn’t know what it was.” (To see what it is right now, take a look at this screencast and commentary by John. Note: There is also a list view of The Wire in the offing.)

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfp1i6vOjdM

The launch date for The Wire, built in collaboration with the Nerdery at SierraBravo, was originally slated for November 1st, but that obviously will be pushed back as they continue to secure funds to develop it.

At the mention of funds I realized that my conversation with John sounded more like one I might have with a start-up rather than one I’d have with a Director of a department for a large media organization. Admittedly, funding for these sorts of projects, even at the corporate level, is tricky. As a former employee of CBS myself, on the radio side, I can speak from experience, and I’m sure it’s true at many companies, securing a budget for a project that deviates from “traditional” business development is almost more difficult than getting funding from complete strangers.

John points out that balancing the time and resources that will be spent on what WCCO traditionally does versus developing new avenues is a constant challenge. “My boss says we’re like scouts on a pony that rides ahead on the road to find new things…coming back and reporting what is a good road and what is not.” noted John. “The Wire is a road we’re riding down.”

This securing of funds continues to strike me and John makes no bones that WCCO is open to outside money to complete the building and launch of The Wire. “We are actively seeking a sponsor to help build and launch The Wire. If you’re XYZ telecom, you’re not just looking to throw money around. You spend very carefully and strategically, especially right now.” He continues, “We believe we are going to find a company that believes something like this will benefit our community — and benefit the sponsor financially.”

Funding will also be determined by the return…the monetization of The Wire. Beyond the more traditional advertising and ability to purchase an event on the timeline, John and his team have considered other opportunities. In fact, when I threw out the concept of selling a white label version to other media outlets it was obviously not a new idea inside the building. John noted that other CBS owned stations that have heard about this have expressed interest. “When can I have it?” is how John describes their excitement. He goes on to say “My visceral response is ‘How much money do you have to help me build it?’ Within CBS it’s all the same pot…Getting money from other stations within our family is not really worth it. Now outside…we haven’t really gone down that business model yet.”

Even though they haven’t acted on that new business model, it’s quite refreshing for a media fan like me to hear a company looking beyond their safety zone to examine the core vs. growth strategy. “I think it’s a great reflection of our leadership. I’m proud to be part of that.” says John.

An equally exciting statement that John made along this ‘start-up vibe’ was that of dealing with competition. “This past Tuesday (at the Bloginar) I was asked why I was showing this, now somebody could steal it.” He goes on to say, “We have to worry about what is best for us and good for users and do it in a way that we think is best, as quickly as we can.” In fact, in regards to The Wire, WCCO plans on welcoming input from who most would consider competitors. In our walk-through he even notes posting items to the timeline from (gasp) other TV stations. Imagine a story from KARE11 being posted on WCCO’s Wire.

Start-up thinking and collaborating with competitors…from a traditional media outlet? Now that is innovation.

GiveMN: Charitable Fundraising Meets Social Networking

November 2, 2009 By Tim Elliott

GiveMN logo This morning my Twitter stream was filled with tweets about GiveMN an online charitable donation site which launched today. The idea is simple; provide an online resource for the more than 36,000 Minnesota charitable and religious organizations to raise money for their programs. GiveMN.org is built with Razoo, an online platform optimized for charitable giving based in Washington, DC. This platform not only makes it easy for charitable organizations to publicize their programs to attract donors and accept contributions but also is fully integrated with existing social networks Facebook and Twitter extending their promotional reach.

Online fundraising costs about a third of what traditional direct marketing does which makes GiveMN a much more efficient way to raise funds. The foundation that administers GiveMN plans to cover much of the 4.75% credit card transaction cost from corporate and private donations so that 100% of the contributions will go to the designated charity. Their partners and funders page lists a number of well known organizations such as The Saint Paul Foundation, Greater Twin Cities United Way, The Minneapolis Foundation, The Bush Foundation and The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits along with corporate and media sponsors.

To kick things off, GiveMN has designated November 17th as “Give to the Max Day” where several of their donors have pledged up to $500,000 in matching contributions to fund programs and cover the transaction costs. More details will be posted on the GiveMN site in coming days about this event as well as on their Facebook page and Twitter account.

GiveMN looks to revolutionize charitable giving here in Minnesota but also might inspire other such efforts in other states. You never know where Minnesota innovation will strike next.

Transparency Please, Governor Pawlenty

October 21, 2009 By Steve Borsch

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.

DoApp Making Big Strides with ‘Mobile Local News’ App

October 16, 2009 By Graeme Thickins

DoApp-MobileLocal If 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!”

As 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.

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

October 16, 2009 By Tim Elliott

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 logo I 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…]

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