Archive for December, 2009

New Year’s Resolution: Getting My Money’s Worth

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Dec 2009

30

Darwin (my dog)

 

This year, my New Year’s Resolution is to get the most out of the products I use. I recently received a Nikon D90 for Christmas from my family, and I want to make sure that it’s a present that doesn’t go to waste. The thing is, I often don’t take advantage of the full functionality of the products I use. Take Adobe Photoshop, for example. It’s an unbelievably extensive and powerful program. Yet I use it mostly to crop photos, adjust brightness, levels, curves, and sharpness and occasionally use filters to enhance (or, destroy) my images. If I were to make a guess, I probably use less than 10% of the program’s actual power.

 

Even as an extremely knowledgeable and large power user of Excel, I still haven’t learned how to properly harness macros. Yes, I can do a ton of pretty cool things with formulas and PivotTables, but without mastering (or even really ever using) macros, I’m leaving a huge part of the program untouched. So this year, rather than purchasing or using a number of new, different products, I want to truly maximize my value of the products I currently own. Luckily, doing that with Photoshop and my new camera will be a joint process – I’ll be posting my trials and tests on my flickr. I’d love to hear any feedback, whether positive or negative, as I am relatively new to photography. Regardless, I’m having fun learning new ways to use a camera and new tips and tricks with Photoshop.

 

The new layout for Techshots is also near to launch. I’m using the theme from P.J. Onori, which will also help me to integrate other sources like my Flickr, Tumblr and Google Reader feeds into the website. It should be up sometime early in the New Year.

 

Now that you’ve heard mine, what’s your New Year’s Resolution? Feel free to post your plans in the comment section.

 

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Woot’s Social Media Attempts Make Me Sad

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Dec 2009

17

sad panda Woots Social Media Attempts Make Me Sad
There’s nothing more depressing than mediocre efforts to engage using social media. On any platform. Whether it’s setting up an automated direct message to feign interest, creating an empty/useless Facebook Fan Page, or blanket spamming an advertisement on Twitter based on keywords, half-hearted and generalized attempts at personal interaction are piontless and often obnoxious.

 

Without getting too much up on a soap box, I think lazy social media efforts are insulting to a customer’s intelligence and are disrespectful to the value of their time. There, I said it. So when I see sales outlets set up their Twitter account solely as a RSS feed for their website, I feel like it’s a genuine disservice. Which brings me to Woot.

 

Woot.com is one of my favorite online outlet retailers. Scratch that, they’re my definitely my favorite. They have built an entire business on creative and funny ways to interact with their consumer. Rather than put together a boring and nondescript product page for their sale items, they create a story for every single piece that they sell. It sets them apart (and far above) pretty much every other online outlet. So it’s somewhat puzzling that they have put absolutely no effort into their social media attempts. Their Twitter account is essentially a feed for Woot.com’s new sales.

 

Woot could easily leverage their 1.5 million followers on Twitter by offering specialized sales, promotional codes or time-based offers, but instead they choose to leave their account general and bland. It’s unfortunate that such a creative and forward-thinking company does not come up with a better way to monetize their (obviously) valuable social media presence.

 

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The Beauty of a Virtual Workplace

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Dec 2009

01

 

Viralogy, the social media rank and measurement company that I work (and write) for recently entered a Vator.tv competition for $10,000 sponsored by Elance, called “A New Way to Work“. We previously won a competition where we pitched the Viralogy idea in front of a number of different investors.

 

The project was designed to illustrate the advantages of working virtually on a team without an office. I really enjoy the opportunity to work with a group of intelligent, motivated entrepreneurs from all over the West Coast including L.A., San Francisco, and Vancouver, all without having a central office, and was happy to share some of the reasons I embrace my “New Way to Work”. The rest of the Viralogy team shares their stories as well, and if you watch the video, you’ll see that Joseph Yi has a cute dog too! (Though not as cute as mine :).

 

An excerpt:

 

Breaking the mold of a localized business allows me to plan my hours and my days the way I want. Whether I work at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m. is up to me, and it allows me to manage my productivity effectively. If I need to spend more time with my dog or my fiancée during the day so that I can burn the midnight oil at night, I can do that. If I want to spend my day working on my netbook in a coffee shop, I can do that too. It’s a large responsibility that can be incredibly rewarding if managed well.

 

Working virtually means that our staff is extremely flexible and respectful of each other’s needs in terms of time. For example, we hold a weekly company meeting at 8 p.m. Those meeting times are extremely rare in the normal corporate culture, but we have found it to be a perfect time to collaborate and think creatively. When you can work in a virtual workplace, you have increased flexibility not only with respect to location, but time as well.

 

Do you work on a virtual team? How much do you like (or dislike) it? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I think the tools available are making it easier and easier for teams to work virtually, but there are still certainly many of barriers.

 

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