The Pew Internet and American Life Project 2010

Last week, The Pew Internet and American Life Project released this year's "The Future of the Internet IV" its fourth look at how the Internet is changing our daily lives. The organizers asked some 900 or so smart thinkers, industry pros and academic leaders the following questions:

* Will Google make us stupid?
* Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge?
* Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now, or will the most interesting developments between now and 2020 come “out of the blue”?
* Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years, or will there be more control of access to information?
* Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade?

Some of the surveyed responses to the questions help form the Pew report. Here's a sampling.
* Will Google make us stupid?
"What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking." - Nicolas Carr

* Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge?
"We are currently transitioning from reading mainly on paper to reading mainly on screens. As we do so, most of us read MORE, in terms of quantity (word count), but more promiscuously and in shorter intervals and with less dedication. As these habits take root, they corrupt our willingness to commit to long texts, as found in books or essays. We will be less patient and less able to concentrate on long-form texts. This will result in a resurgence of short-form texts and story-telling, in ‘Haiku-culture’ replacing ‘book-culture.’" – Andreas Kluth, writer, Economist magazine

* Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now, or will the most interesting developments between now and 2020 come “out of the blue”?
"For me augmented reality has to be the future for 2020, together with it's close cousin the internet of things. I think that these two will grow up together over the coming years, and slowly creep more and more into our daily lives as more and more devices become web enabled, and the ability to connect to the web becomes ubiquitous. It will become commonplace to be able to overlay reviews of a product simply by pointing a screen at it, or check the weather forecast by pointing your phone at the sky." – Rich Osborne, Web Innovation Officer, University of Exeter

* Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years, or will there be more control of access to information?
"This will be an ongoing debate, particularly when traditional organizations see the Internet encroaching on their legitimacy and relevance in the Internet Age. These groups will flail around to protect their business models and perceived relevance, but there will be equally powerful capabilities emerging from the Internet community that will break through/counter those new controls/restrictions on the flows of information." -- Richard Forno, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

* Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade?
"The key here is ‘publicly disclosing’ -- that is, folks can maintain anonymity in the basic sense, but there will be more technical ways to identify the user, even by associations and patterns as well as IP. That is, folks will continue to be able to choose to post things anonymously -- more accurately, via pseudonym, where they have an ongoing identity, but not their identifiable real self -- but there will also be more systems requiring identification." -- Ron Rice, University of California, Santa Barbara

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project produces reports exploring the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. The Project aims to be an authoritative source on the evolution of the Internet through surveys that examine how Americans use the Internet and how their activities affect their lives. Always a good read.

Using Google Hard Drive (via Google Docs)

Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson writes today:
"A month ago, Google announced it would provide users a free, online hard drive through Google Docs. We tried it out over the weekend. It's awesome. Here's how you can use it, too."

Here's Google's original blog post - "...upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online. Because Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size, which is larger than the attachment limit on most email applications, you’ll be able to backup large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud."

It's all about online file storage. You have you own local storage on your laptop, PC of Mac. And maybe you might even use an external hard drive, storage keys or discs to capture some of your critical files. And there are other services to use like Drop.io or Drop Box. But are you willing to upload your files to Google? I am. However, some of the more paranoid commenters in the link above feel you shouldn't. I guess it depends on your comfort level with sharing files online. One commenter shared a link about Google's privacy info regarding Web History (you can read more about that here).

Click here to follow the slideshow and start saving your goods to go on Google's hard drive to access from any Web connected computer.

Tiger Woods, Mea Culpa and a Fall from Grace

The world stopped at 9am this morning for Tiger Woods' staged apology show. Crazy enough that all the networks broke regular programming for this, but even crazier with all the control aspects around it. All the camera angles were pre-planned, the set was dark blue somber, and it looked as if Tiger spent the last two months rehearsing this.

But he did what he was coached to do, and he did it to the the T. The ultimate coachable athlete, I guess. The question is, was this staged apology show executed well enough to gain him favor with his audiences again? A spin around the web shows difference in opinion:

- The Wall Street Journal opined: "Executives in hot water, take note: You could learn a thing or two from Tiger Woods' apology Friday. Communications experts said Mr. Woods' frank but stiff speech provides lessons in what to do – and not to do – for business leaders when delivering bad news or facing a scandal. Good, they say, is forthright language: "I was unfaithful. I had affairs, I cheated," Mr. Woods said. But giving a speech in so scripted a way, and waiting so long to do it, isn't."

- MTV quoted public relations guru Howard Bragman of Fifteen Minutes PR, who said "What wasn't smart, Bragman said, was the tightly scripted nature of the event, which was boycotted by many members of the golf press, who decried being shut out. "I hate the format," Bragman said. "He's basically at war with the media, which is not what you want to do. ... He picked a fight by not putting himself in a traditional media format and not answering questions."

- Gawker wrote in a terrificly titled piece "Tiger Woods buries himself in recovery cliches" the following: "Then there was the weird part where he brought up being raised a Buddhist (his mom looked distinctly uncomfortable at that point), but said he had "drifted away from it in recent years." (No kidding.) Then he said, "Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint." Again, this felt forced and false."

- The Washington Post offered: "He apologized to almost everyone he had ever crossed paths with. He looked sad and choked up at times. He said that he had learned from his mistakes and is still learning after spending 45 days in a rehabilitation center -- though he never specifically mentioned where he had gone seeking help. He tried very hard to sound humbled.

He didn't pull it off."

No, he didn't. Too weird, too late. Let's all forget it and move on. The Waste Management Phoenix Golf Open is next weekend. Enjoy all the other golfers out there!

The New Media Future - Wired Magazine

A cool inside look at how digital technology is changing the way Wired Magazine is seeing the future of digital editorial matter and how the new visual innovations are changing the way we view 'journalism' - this video shows how Wired puts it all together with advertising, editorial, visual innovations, new relationships and more - sharp eye to the future.

Upcoming Business-Media-Marketing Events in Phoenix

It's business-media-marketing social season here in the Valley of the Sun and I wanted to pass along a few of the worthy ones coming up.

* February 18 - The Enterprise Network’s February Executive Forum features Brian Mueller, CEO of Grand Canyon University (GCU). He'll talk about how his team worked to turn around the university's fortunes to become a thriving public company with a market cap of more than $800 million. GCU is the only Arizona company to hold a successful IPO following the financial markets meltdown in the fall of 2008. (Register here)

* February 23 - It's the Networking Phoenix big free quarterly networking fest - already, some 600-plus people are registered to attend. It's the Valley's biggest free networking event. (Register here)

* February 24 - Maximize Search Marketing Opportunities. Presented by SEMPO, this event features Bill Hunt, author of the bestselling book “Search Engine Marketing, Inc.” Hunt has been a pioneer in Search Marketing and is considered the top thought leader on Enterprise and Global Search Engine Marketing. (Register here)

* February 24 - Mobile Marketing Strategy, presented by AMA Phoenix. Sean Bartlett, Director of Mobile Strategy for Tempe-based Sitewire will show you how to make the most out of your mobile marketing plan through case studies and discussion of today's mobile marketing ecosystem, best practices, mobile/traditional marketing synthesis and how to measure your efforts. (Register here)

* February 24 - TiE AZ's Mentoring Event - TiE AZ is hosting Mentorfest! on Feb 24th. It's a unique group mentoring event that gives start-up entrepreneurs a chance to learn from the TiE-Arizona mentors and other senior community entrepreneurs in a casual group setting. (Register here)

* February 24-25 - Building and Protecting Reputation 2010 A two-day event aimed at corporate communicators, business thought leaders and others. This conference is a short course into the dynamics of organizational reputation, and how to manage it. It is also about the role communications and public relations can and should play in helping senior management and employees build and protect an organization’s reputation. (Register here)

* March 18 - Produce a business news video in a day -
Part of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference from March 19-21 at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix. Arizona State University TV-production specialist Brian Snyder will equip you with the skills and build your confidence to shoot business news videos in this daylong training session. Register here.

If you know of more similar AZ events coming soon, please add links and info in the comments.

Like Google Buzz?

So far, I like Google Buzz. I think. I hope I can work it into my daily work life. It's radically wonderful that it's all contained within our own email universe, something that's lacked in both Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. I'm havng conversations with other Gmail users who are peers, friends, and long lost strangers. Cool.

Business Insider noted that well-known tech wunderkind Jason Calacanis thinks "Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years." Jason has a lot of good thoughts on how Buzz is already a game changer. Read others too.

Get Google Buzz (after you sign up for Gmail, presumably).

Session review - Extreme Digital Marketing: Where Email Slams Into Social Media

I attended the second day of a event called "Extreme Digital Marketing" with two leading locals who know their way around the grid - Lon Safko, social media business consultant for hire and author of the Social Media Bible; and Ron Cates, Director of New Business Development for email marketing firm Constant Contact.

Lon gave the crowd a bit of basic Social Media Marketing 101, and it's always worth revisiting for small businesses looking to drive their online marketing efforts:
Step 1: Analyze your existing media
Step 2: Social Media Trinity
Step 3: Integrate Existing Strategy into the Trinity
Step 4: Identifying Resources
Step 5: Implement Strategy, Metrics and Analytics

Both pros spoke well in their knowledge areas, gathered the audience into teams to discuss elements of both email marketing and social media, and how they both can act together to better serve one's customer base. Audience members consisted of small businesses, including a pet resort owner, a boutique bakery shop, intimate apparel goods provider and others. A good mix of business owners learning and understanding more on how to wrap their heads (and budgets) around using social media or better email marketing.

Snow on East Coast means revenue loss for PHX?

You wouldn't realize it on the surface, but it seems that the East Coast snowstorm will have a financial impact on the city in which I live. Seems the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) National Conference on Education is scheduled to start tomorrow, and according to a commentor at the AZ Central, some have had to cancel flights because of the East Coast storm:

"That is only one of the effects; people do not realized the economic effect this has on the Phoenix area. The Convention Center and Downtown hotels were expecting major arrivals for the American Association of School Administrators conventions, cancellations started coming in yesterday due to closed airport in Midwest and today already for east coast. Multiply that time the amount of hotels in Phoenix and add in the money they would have spent on rental cars, dining, taxes, souvenirs, spas and other items and the Phoenix area could take a major loss in revenue due to this storm."

And this comes at a time when Phoenix region hotels and resorts could certainly use the influx of paying customers.

"You don't have to shovel sunshine...."

AZ Tech Council Brings Six Board Members Aboard

The Arizona Technology Council has appointed six new directors to its to help the Council in support of issues and topics critical to Arizona’s expanding technology industry including education, entrepreneurial funding and public policy. [See the full release here].

Listed below are the directors who were each elected to serve three year terms:
- Tyler Bryson, MBA, General Manager Enterprise and Partners Group Southwest District, Microsoft Corporation. Tyler oversees Microsoft’s sales, services and partner efforts in the Southwest United States with responsibility for over 150 enterprise customers across California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Hawaii.
- Ed Escobedo, CIO of Apollo Group. With over thirty years of experience within the IT industry, Ed is responsible for all elements of IT Service Delivery for the Apollo Group.
- Joseph Ferro, Director, Network Technologies, Cox Communications, Inc. With over fourteen years of technology experience, Joe is currently responsible for Internet, Voice and Data for residential and business subscribers at Cox.
- Gene Holmquist, President, Ensynch, Inc. Gene brings more than 20 years of experience in building great teams and successful services companies. Under his leadership, Ensynch has grown at a rapid and profitable clip with revenues having grown ten-fold, workforce has increased while still maintaining a "Best Place to Work" status and geographic expansion has begun to other markets.
- Clate Mask, JD/MBA, CEO, Infusionsoft. Clate raised $17 million in venture capital funding from Silicon Valley-based Mohr Davidow Ventures and vSpring Capital after bootstrapping Infusionsoft from 2001 to 2007.
- Stephen Speidel, COO & CIO of Insight Enterprises, Inc. Stephen has been in management positions with Insight or one of its acquired entities since November 1996. Prior to joining Insight, Steve spent 12 years at IBM working in IBM's Services business.

Snowy DC Time Lapse video

Alltop had this up on their Twitter stream today and I wanted to share it here - East Coast Snowfall on a time lapse camera in the DC area over February 5 and 6.



Here in Phoenix today? Slightly overcast, chance of rain temps low 60s. 70s by the weekend.

Monday Holiday Adventures

A glimpse of some favorite adventures from around the Web-o-Sphere today.

- "You shouldn't have to work today." There are those (almost 20,000 at last check) that suggest the US should take a hangover holiday on the Monday after Super Bowl. What say you?

- Silicon Alley Insider (via TechCrunch) writes concisely "Facebook's Plan To Build A Real Email System And Attack Gmail Is Brilliant." It's about Project titan, presumably Facebook's new email platform.

- How to make an awesome corporate blog? Forget the 'corporate blog' and just make a great blog! That's one of several tips that start here.

- Mark Ferrari's coffee is top notch, A1, mega awesome. It's good coffee! See it in a few PHX-area Costcos again after Feb 22.

- "But look underneath the surface and something interesting is truly afoot. Consumers across the globe are sharing media on Twitter and Facebook, friending relative strangers, becoming fans of their cities and their favorite shows on Facebook and talking with their public officials on Twitter. It seems obvious then, that where consumers are, business must follow." A good read on social media for business at Inc Technology from Saumil Mehta.

More News Content coming via Facebook

Brand Republic (and others) writes:
"Facebook has quietly become the fourth largest distributor of news content on the web as people spend more time on social networking websites. Facebook sits behind Google, Yahoo! and MSN as the place where people get their news online, according to research from Hitwise. Last year Facebook overtook Google News rising from just over 1% in January 2009 to 3.5% last week."

Definitely a big week for Facebook as it celebrated its sixth birthday, passing 400 million users!



From Facebook's blog post:
"In addition to reading news on Facebook, you can share news with your friends on external sites with Facebook Connect. Outlets like The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, USA Today and countless blogs have become more social by adding Facebook Connect to their websites and iPhone applications. You can sign in with your Facebook login to see what articles your friends are reading and comment on articles with your authentic identity.

Startups are also using the power of Facebook Connect to provide social news experiences. Daily Perfect is a personalized news website that you can sign into with Facebook Connect, and it will deliver news tailored to you based on your Facebook profile. For example, I've included in my Facebook profile that my interests are "San Francisco," "technology" and "religion," and Daily Perfect surfaces current affairs related to those interests."

McCain for Senator 2010 new site

Big news for Gangplank stalwarts Forty Agency as it has unveiled its work for AZ Senator John McCain's new re-election site - and it rocks. I'm grabbing screenshots from the link above for you to see some of the planning that went on below.



I caught wind of Forty's news last fall that the agency had won the bid to be part of the creative team to re-do McCain's old web site into something bigger, brighter and shinier the senator's 2010 re-election campaign. It was a big public deal and a big step for the agency's future.

Creative consultancy OVO, which describes itself as "specializing in naming, brand identity and strategic design for businesses seeking to launch, grow or reinvent themselves" was a key partner w/Forty in the project. OVO actually 'designed' the site working from Forty's initial site architecture, then Forty built the site from OVO's designs.

Forty's Kim Stearn elaborates:
"Forty developed the overall strategy and approach for the site, and sketched prototype layouts for each of the key pages on the site. We sent the sketches over to our friends at OVO, the campaign’s branding agency, who designed the basic look of the site around the campaign identity they had established. Forty used this design direction as a baseline for developing the rest of the site." Forty shared some of the planning processes involved in setting up the site (pics below).





"The new site features people-focused content that will continue to be enhanced as new features and content get added to the site. There’s also an interactive “video wall,” where supporters can record online videos to show their support."



Congratulations to the Forty team, their partners and the contractors who assisted. May the site help Senator McCain in his efforts to get re-elected.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business (Inc Mag)

INC mag has a good beginner's guide for businesses trying to figure out how to assimilate social networking into its overall business strategy. In the article, it asks...

"Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself when forming your social networking strategy:
1. What are the needs of my business? Hopefully, you’re not putting your company name on a social networking account just to send messages back and forth to former high school classmates, so there has to be an impetus. Figure out what your needs are. Are you short-staffed? Is your advertising budget running thin?

2. What am I using the site for? After you’ve established your needs, consider the primary goal of your social networking strategy. Do you want to recruit employees for a certain department? Do you want to market a new line of products? Do you want to connect to more people in your industry?

3. Whose attention am I trying to get? Okay, so you want to market that new line of products, for example. You still need to know your target audience for that product, and with more than 300 million users on Facebook, you'll need to narrow your focus.

Later in the piece, it breaks down the different social networks, and asks which one is right for your business, and which ones would best fulfill the requirements of your strategy. There are also sections on social network marketing, social network promotions and using social networks for recruitment. Definitely worth a click through.

Most Companies Don't Have A Social Media Policy

eMarketer writes today about a recent study by Manpower Associates that surveyed companies in the Americas, Asia and Europe and found that...
"...only one-fifth of the companies surveyed had a formal policy for employee use of external social networking sites. Firms in the Americas and Asia-Pacific were somewhat ahead on this front, but the majority of respondents in all regions had no policy in place. Among companies that did have a policy, 63% claimed it was effective in combating lost productivity."



And while it productivity is a concern for management, it seems that reputation management is also an area of interest to companies' social media policies. But so far, reputation hits are minimal,according to the report. From the overview: "Despite stories about people being fired for committing social networking gaffes, just 4% of companies worldwide said their reputation had been hurt by employee use of social networks. That rate was doubled in the Americas but still represented only a tiny percentage of respondents."

If you are a business owner or company manager, it's time to create a social media policy straightaway. Mashable kindly offers its list of 10 social media policy musts.

Extreme Digital Marketing - Where Email Slams Into Social Media

Coming up next week (Feb 9th) in Phoenix is a session put on by two leading local Web guys - Ron Cates of Constant Contact and Lon Safko, co-author of The Social Media Bible. The two are hosting Extreme Digital Marketing - Where Email Slams Into Social Media at the National Bank of Arizona.

"Heard about social media? Do you know where to start? Do you know how to integrate it with your conventional marketing? Do you really know how to maximize your email campaigns? This event brings you the best of email marketing and social media brought to you by the country's leading experts! Understand the importance trusted networks, blogging, and Twitter. Learn why segmenting, day-parting, and the 1.54 second rule is critical to the success of your email conversations"

Tickets are $50 and can be bought at the Eventbrite link above. The two are also doing a second session two days later on February 11th as well.

If it's 'Splinternet', is it Broken?

Wow. I opened my eyes and learn today that the wonderful, joyous discovery and education platform we call the Internet is breaking, faltering, splitting. In a fine blog post, Forrester Sr. VP Josh Bernoff calls it 'the Splinternet' and suggests that it's due to new devices and new platform walls. He wrote last week:

"Web marketing has grown since 1995, based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization -- it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized. Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format, and technology. Each new social site has its login and many hide content from search engines.

We call this new world the Splinternet (with a nod to Doc Searls and Rich Tehrani, who used the term before us with a somewhat different meaning). It will splinter the Web as a unified system. The golden age has lasted 15 years. Like all golden ages, it lasted so long we thought it would last forever. But the end is in sight."

Josh dispenses a bit of advice for this new era we're entering:
- pick your devices carefully
- rethink analytics, links, and measurement
- embrace the new platforms

If you're a Forrester client, you can read the whole report at this link.

Using Twitter to Drive Restaurant/bar business

Social Media consultant/educator Chris Brogan had one of his cool Kitchen Table interviews with Milwaukee restaurant/bar owner Joe Sorge, and in the video below, Joe offers up some of his tips on using Twitter to help drive traffic and business at his several restaurants. It's all good and worth a view.