Yesterday we received our shiny new 21.5 in. Apple iMac from Amazon. Though I have been a casual one-off Mac user in the past, this marks the first time that a Mac of our very own has become part of the household. I had installed an emulator for an OS 8.1-based Mac on our PC a couple of years ago, since I had always wanted a Mac, but never pulled the trigger to buy one. Running some of the abandonware was fun and brought back some memories of the demo Macs perennially on sale at B. Dalton Software Etc. at the mall.

One of the things I noticed after switching it on and going through the welcome video was the lack of trial software that often clutters the desktop of Windows-based PCs. The pre-installed trial apps don’t bother me as much as they bug others. As an aside, don’t you love the first time you switch on a new PC? You get to see the welcome video, and then it disappears to parts unknown.

Way back in 1999, I had given my mom the original bondi blue iMac as a Christmas present. She had never owned a computer before nor had any experience with computers, but promptly became a Mac snob. She primarily used it for web surfing, and took a liking to taking surveys and signing up to trial products. Several years and an eMac later, when she would come to my house and use the PC for web surfing, she would ask me about the location of the trashcan; and why did she have to click on Start to launch anything.

But back to me - The new iMac responds impressively to booting up and launching applications. I could go on and on about my impression of the look and feel of OS X, the sleek aluminum case, the sharp screen, but will instead focus on what made me fraught with (minor) anxiety.

PCs allow you to obsessively tweak under-the-hood settings for networking, printing, and about every other function you can think of. Mac does not. I never realized how comforting it felt to have control over the minutia of the OS. I joined the Android fanboy crowd to avoid buying an iPhone for this very reason.

Even still, I like the challenge of learning something new, and the built-in apps for video and photo editing will (hopefully) bring some of the raw footage I have from vacations and such over the years under control.

So the first thing I need to do is let go and let Mac. Maybe I’ll slowly merge into the Apple fan zombie army.

I'm not going to place a bet on whether Blekko will be successful or not since there are enough pundits out there weighing in with their opinion. I do hope Blekko sticks around, though, based on their tools for SEO. A little competition can't hurt, either.

Check out this search for public relations. When I ran my first search I noticed links underneath each result. When I clicked on SEO, I was led to a page with all sorts of information including inbound links, crawl stats and outbound links as well as the ability to compare one page against another.

The slashtag feature presents another opportunity for SEO geeks to experiment with optimization.

I would love to hear what you think and if Blekko's SEO tools are helpful for you.

On edit: Laurie Sullivan over at SearchBlog has a great write up about Blekko's focus on SEO. Check it out for more info.

This post was sparked by Eric Lundquist’s article “Five New Technologies That Will Change Enterprise Computing” from Smarter Technology.

The first time I used Google Instant I realized that the tech behind the scenes has the potential to revolutionize enterprise content management as well as unlock a new level of usefulness for siloed data.

Using real time scrolling search was like getting a sneak peek at the future. I have no idea how Google fulfills millions of simultaneous predictive search results, but it is one of the most impressive technological feats I've seen in a long time.

Of course, it would require a major systems upgrade at most companies to take advantage of the tech should Google decide to offer it as a commercial enterprise software. But for an information wonk like me, I believe it would pay dividends as instant as the search results that Google returns.

I can’t wait to see Google’s next big thing.

The trends of augmented reality and Web 3.0 are accelerating to achieve wider adoption. And at some point, these fairly disparate technologies could converge and usher in a "personally pervasive Internet."

A prototype application from the US Postal Service brought the concept of augmented reality to life for me, from the perspective of how it could be used for a real-world application rather than a novelty. The application superimposes the image of a Priority mailing box over the item that you want to ship. That way, the customer can select the ideal size packaging, which can result in cost savings by not paying for more packaging than you need.

And other examples of augmented reality are starting to crop up frequently. For more, check out this blog post from the Christian Science Monitor.  

After viewing a video of a prototype called "Six Sense" unveiled at the TED conference that demonstrates how off the shelf components can be assembled in to a system that merges the physical world with the virtual, it brought to mind how smartphones and mobile technologies could evolve to create a tighter linkage between humans and the information contained across the Internet.

The demonstration was striking in that it didn't rely on any sort of screen for data sourced from the Web. Instead of a screen, the system projects a contextual image or information that the wearer can manipulate. For example, when you pick up a box of cereal while shopping, the system will project nutritional information or user reviews for the product. Or perhaps prices from other stores around you.

Augmented reality along with the Web 3.0 vision of the Internet transformation into a massive and self organizing database portends what may be coming next. 

Experimentation abounds with augmented reality, and the notion of it is reaching a broader audience. Esquire Magazine even published an issue late last year that featured integration with an augmented reality application. But these early experiments rely on clients or programs that you must download to interact with your webcam and process images. And, these experimental implementations of consumer augmented reality feature more novelty than usefulness.

But with Web 3.0, the need to have a centrally controlled database of information falls away, since all information on the web -- or a vast amount of it -- will presumably be tagged and organized on demand, assembling itself for the task at hand. So while today Esquire dictates my augmented reality experience with a program I need to download, tomorrow augmented reality could be medium agnostic. The venerable web browser has the potential to evolve to this new level of functionality. Will your experience come from Microsoft, Google or Firefox?

Imagine if the march of innovation shrinks the wearable components showcased by the TED video about Sixth Sense to a point of where it's feasible to wear the apparatus as part of your everyday life. If Moore's Law holds true, microprocessor technology will surpass the processing speed of the human mind one day. Raymond Kurtzweil wrote about this in his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines.  

It will make Facebook and other social network seem clunky and old hat since you will carry around all information about your own networks along with access to massive stores of information that will seamlessly and effortlessly organize and present itself based on the world around you.

Eventually we will need to grapple with the issue of how much further the wall between work and life gets chipped away, since it has already begun being erased for people who have merged their online and offline lives through social networking.

I would love to hear about any other practical applications of augmented reality that you've seen or thought about.

This entry (LinkedIn – You get out what you put in) from Jennifer Jones’ blog got me to thinking about how LinkedIn and Facebook can effectively co-exist for social networkers.

At a recent social media event, LinkedIn came up as a point of discussion. One of the people there commented that she doesn't think LinkedIn is good for "very much" (paraphrasing). There were some heads nodding around the table, which took me by surprise since the bulk of the group was made up of entrepreneurs.

I thought it was a tragedy that so many that could benefit from LinkedIn eschew it and focus solely on Facebook or Twitter. Admittedly, LinkedIn remains frozen in time with some folks who remember the emails that were received from contacts who uploaded their entire Outlook address book. It indeed felt like being spammed at the time, but the service has evolved by leaps and bounds with a ton of useful features.  

Back to the event… Afterwards, I received six friend requests for Facebook but only one for LinkedIn. I suggested to each person requesting to be added as a friend on Facebook connect with me on LinkedIn instead.

By far, I prefer LinkedIn for professional networking. The degrees of separation info is useful, as well as the ability to see the names of contacts who are connected to my own set of contacts. Though I got started with Facebook by connecting with clients and people at work, my Facebook presence has taken a sharp turn to the mundane and personal. The needle on the record made the proverbial screech when I received a Friend Request from my grandmother. That’s when I knew it was time to carve out some definition for how I use the various social networks and focus on LinkedIn for professional networking.

Not that I don’t have work friends and some clients on Facebook, I do, but they tend to be people I’ve known for a long time or that I work with day to day who may be interested in seeing pictures of my dogs or knowing my opinion of New Moon (liked it, BTW). Do the people I meet for the first time at a networking event really care about that sort of thing?

I met some nice folks and made some new contacts by driving to the Northern Atlanta ‘burbs and going to the Social Media Breakfast this morning. I admit I was surprised by the makeup of the group. Perhaps 50 percent or more of the people in attendance were connected to real estate in some way. 

But this made sense once one of the founders of the Atlanta chapter, Ken Cook, let me know he’s a mortgage broker, I believe. It stands to reason that most of his contacts are in the real estate orbit. 

I enjoy checking out new networking groups, since you don’t really know what the group is about until you go to a meeting. Though I expected a round table discussion, the bulk of the meeting followed a teaching or presentation format. There was time for networking at the beginning, and some Q&A and experience sharing throughout, but much of the meeting was devoted to teaching techniques for using Posterous for content syndication. And as you can see from my blog being hosted on Posterous, I tend to agree it’s great for extending the reach of content. J

I should also add that Ken co-hosts a show on Blog Talk Radio called Social Media Edge on Tuesdays at noon. I’m planning on tuning in week after next.

Lt. Connie Braesch from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) joined the conference via Skype to discuss how the USCG is using social media.

Lieutenant Connie Braesch, U.S. Coast Guard via Skype 

The USCG, even though it only comprises two percent of the U.S. armed forces, leads in social media use among the U.S. military, said Lt. Braesch.

Lt. Braesch said her role is to do search engine optimization, keyword development and to spur collaboration. She added, “My mission when doing social media and communicating online is to educate and inform the public, who are our stakeholders. We have some amazing people doing amazing things every day and we want to let the public know about that.”

The USCG promotes full disclosure and inclusion of a disclaimer when making posts on websites outside of its .mil domain. The disclaimer lets people know that even though the Coast Guard is getting engaged in a conversation, it doesn’t mean that it agrees or endorses everything on the site.

The organization also has a comments policy where anonymous posting is forbidden, as well as offensive and defamatory language as it applies to comments made on official Coast Guard blogs, YouTube channel and Facebook pages. Lt. Braesch remarked that, as long as comments on posts don’t run afoul of the policy, the Coast Guard doesn’t delete them.

As for what visual content that gets shared via its YouTube and Flickr accounts, Lt. Braesch said that only the highest quality multimedia gets posted.

She added that the USCG considers its spokespersons to be the people on the ground or people who are in charge of rescue teams. They follow the same policy for social media, which can create a challenge for Lt. Braesch in the area of media monitoring.

For monitoring, the Coast Guard uses its own tracking system called Net Tracker to gather statistics about its internal blogs and websites as well as a handful of commercial and free services. Omnistats, as well as Google News searches, help the Coast Guard to get an idea of news that is most relevant and linked. Compete.com is utilized to compare the Coast Guard with its “competitors” in order to see how the USCG is performing against agencies and organizations it considers competing organizations.

The Coast Guard looks at Technorati, but Lt. Braesch said, “I don’t necessarily agree with it.”

Referring to the more than 100 official USCG social network pages across the various agencies that make up the organization, Lt. Braesch says that, “There are a lot of cats to herd and a lot of people to consult, and a lot of people to get on the same page for SEO, blog, and to provide unique and original content for followers. [Getting everyone up to speed] is not going to happen overnight, but we’re working on it.”

An education initiative on the horizon is to roll out standardized training for social media for the 41,000 people that make up the U.S. Coast Guard.

For an example of social media produced by the UCGS and its officers, see:

·         The Coast Guard Compass, The official blog of the U.S. coast guard: its people and missions

·         iCommandant - The Web Journal of Admiral Thad Allen

Rounding out the morning panels, Jeremy Pepper of Palisades Systems and Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing/Diva Marketing in Atlanta talked about how businesses are using social media. 

"The buzz online influences the buzz offline," said Bloomberg. She used the example of Chick-fil-a using online and traditional media simultaneously and in a complementary way to reach its audience.

Pepper doesn't like the term social media, but said the job of marketers is to get messages out there and to have your fans out there talking to others. He says "social media" is limiting as it is currently defined because it ignores 50+ years of PR history.

"There are a bunch of cowards on twitter who will just non-stop [complain] about a company," said Pepper. He talked about customers who try to hold a company hostage by complaining about them, and threatening to "tell all of [their] followers." He added this can cause an inordinate amount of focus on "squeaky wheels."

But he said for B2B, due to the stakeholders, you need to have a different type and level of communication than with consumers. B2B companies need to deal with trade publications and influencers as well as industry analysts far more than individual consumers. "It needs to be in a more corporate voice, but this doesn't mean it's being inauthentic." He also made the point that there are always exceptions to these kinds of guidelines.

In terms of engagement, Bloomberg defines the term as bringing back the "corner grocery store conversation" because it builds trust. "At the corner grocery store, people came in and did business, but they didn't just run off." People talked about what was going on around the block and in their communities. And social media brings this back by enabling meaningful communications because it brings one-on-one communications and a "handshake" back in a digital way.

When it comes to who you follow, Bloomberg said that you take from social media what you put into it. If you are building a social network, you never know what people will take or hear from you and what people will contribute to the conversation. "The business world has a tendency to push out messaging and ‘take.’ [In social media,] there is potential for a shift. We are giving back more than a product or a service. We're often giving back more information."

And this helps creates goodwill, remarked Bloomberg. "It rips down that Wizard of Oz curtain. We start to understand who is writing those PR releases. If you understand more about the person behind the press release, it can inspire trust."

Dr. Tom Watson from Bournemouth University in the UK (via Skype), Dr. Richard Waters, assistant professor at North Carolina State University, and Sara Valkova of Emory Healthcare in Atlanta discussed the effectiveness of social media usage by non-profits.

Dr. Waters began his remarks by saying he's not convinced that social media is the best tool for fundraising by non-profits. He said that if the end goal is changing behavior, social media tools may not be appropriate for all efforts since, "there continues to be too much power in face-to-face interactions [for fundraising]."

Presenting some highlights from his research about social media, Dr. Watson talked about how measurement of share of conversation may fall short as an indicator of effectiveness. "But we mustn’t forget that communication with key stakeholders is the most important of all," he said.

Watson discussed how social media should be supportive of efforts, and Waters agreed that it should be complementary. Waters added, "It presents great impact on awareness."

"You can't assume that people are reading your ads or coming to your website," said Sara Valkova. "You need to go directly to your audience." Social media is a way of doing this.

Valkova talked about a campaign that Emory did around heart healthy tips. In addition to a page on Facebook, it was important to also have a booklet and supportive ads to reach a broader audience. "[Social media] can be another medium to use alongside traditional media," she said.

A person in the audience asked a question about social media becoming more prominent and useful for non-profit use, and Dr. Watson said it's likely that it will become more prominent, but it's yet to been seen if it will be more effective.

Social media usage by non-profits could be hearkening back to one of the original functions of media relations, awareness, rather than two-way communication, according to Waters.

And beyond using social media for fund raising, there is a correlation between users of social media demographics and who non-profits need to reach. At Emory, Valkova said you need to know who your target market is. For example, if your target is mothers, then you need to look for where the working moms are and go to them, "whether they are on social media or not." Multimodal communication should be considered for most campaigns since social media likely doesn't reach everyone in a population.

Emory is using Twitter as another channel for PR. Instead of issuing a number of press releases, they can use twitter to talk about issues, such as H1N1. "And we also use it for customer service," said Valkova, but it took some education of management to prove to them that social media outlets like FaceBook have a role in customer service. "Non-profits have to be able to use the tool."

"And for Emory's Twitter account, we have to be very PC," she said. "You have to be appropriate in what you say to your audience," which gives rise to the need to train interns and other staff members on social media etiquette and usage.  

Sara Valkova and Dr. Richard Waters

At the Connect 2009 conference today at the University of Georgia, Melanie James of the University of New Castle (Australia) Aaron DeLucia of Porter Novelli and Dan Greenfield of Bernaise Source media spoke on a panel and addressed the transformational nature of social media.

Melanie James contends that the jury is still out if social media will be transformational to the discipline of public relations. In Sydney, there are rife turf wars between marketing, PR, advertising agencies and PR firms. Where PR ends up in five to ten years will answer the transformation question.

In my opinion, the situation with Sydney agencies is analogous to what is likely going on around the world. Online and in PR trade press there is and has been ongoing navel gazing as to who should lead in social media. It's an interesting conundrum because of the one-to-one and one-to-many nature of social connections on the web. A leader can be an agency that helps organizations find and leverage a social media "voice", but it can also be an individual who has an audience. And as we have seen with breaking news on the Internet, the leader can often be the collective public voice without any kind of gatekeeper. In other words, topics that make up the list of Twitter Trends, which is designed to reflect the volume of topics in Twitter conversations, can set or influence the news agenda.

Dan Greenfield said that the rules of engagement are changing, but reputation management is much the same in that you need to respect the audience as well as be genuine and honest. He says the transformation isn't in the arena of building and maintaining personal relationships -- there is nothing new here -- but rather how PR practitioners are doing their jobs every day.

James disagreed that social media is transformational to the PR professional. "In terms of return on investment, the jury is still out in what it can deliver," said James. And the number of social media analytics tools can muddy the waters for what is meaningful to measure. But, James said, “[some analytics tools] can be used to make a lot of pretty graphs."

Aaron DeLucia says that instant measurement is important because you can monitor the status of a brand daily and monitor relationships. With the breadth of measurement tools and ease of use, it allows you to measure more frequently.

There was agreement across the board with the need for social media to be integrated with PR strategy. An example was given of how airlines need to include the internet and social media communications in their crisis communications plans, but they are often behind the curve with addressing all channels comprehensively. And if they aren't doing the basics right, how can they be expected to integrate social media successfully?

One thing that has changed, said DeLucia, is that we are increasingly required to be more reactive since customer service or issues that impact brands can instantly catch fire and spread online. "PR practitioners need to adapt to this world."

You can follow the conference on Twitter by searching for the #connect hashtag.

From left to right, Aaron DeLucia, Melanie James (via Skype) and Dan Greenfield