Twitter’s use as a business and personal tool has exploded and it’s now clear that it’s become a key tool for any business social media strategy.   To make sure you, your business, or your clients are properly using Twitter and to avoid the inconvenience or trouble from a banned account, use caution when you are using Twitter and generally use caution with tools that automate Twitter activity, as things like “bulk automatic unfollowing” is now considered a violation of their terms even when this was – until recently – allowed.

Twitter Best Practices “Rules” from Twitter

technology twitter, twitter best practices

Two of the sharpest tools in the Search Engine Optimization “SEO” shed talk about the evolution of SEO in an April 2009 interview of Ralph Tegtmeier by Aaron Wall at Aaron’s excellent blog  ”SEO Book“.

Although I don’t endorse some of the SEO tactics they discuss, it’s important that everybody has a better understanding of what very advanced folks are doing to adapt to the many changes in search over the past several years.    Also very interesting is the discussion about SEO morality.    I’m not as critical of Google as Ralph is in this interview but I do agree that Google’s dominance has severerly distorted the way the internet would ideally assign rankings to sites.    The best example of this in my view is the overzealous use of “NoFollow” tags, which are allowing older, inferior, highly SEOd content to trump fresh, high quality, new content because the incoming links to that content are too often nofollowed, coming in from Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress,  Flickr, and other major sites that are automatically nofollowing links.

Google would say this is necessary to avoid the kind of manipulations that don’t serve users, but I remain skeptical this approach has done more good than harm, and certainly Google’s “very low transparency” working philosophy has stunted the growth of quality content.    I know this for a fact because my own decisions in developing content have changed greatly over the years knowing that quality is often not  rewarded, and site downrankings are so confusing that it leads one to abandon sites rather than improve them.

Social media gives us a wonderful opportunity to use human input to screen out junk, and I think better use of this by Google would open up newer, better sites that currently fall well under the radar screens.

technology Aaron Wall, fantomaster, Google, optimization, SEO, SEObook

Back Angle

Originally uploaded by SniperStand

The Sniper Stand deserves an award for elegant simplicity. A tiny plastic nub allows iPhone users to prop up their phone as a TV / Computer screen using the Sniper Stand and a Credit Card. Although a tiny plastic blob is arguably overpriced at $9.95, so is everything else with respect to iPhone accessories and at least this one seems to provide a valuable service to users.

The thing I really like about this is how it demonstrates that functionality in technology does not need to be complicated. Too often we assume that an advanced technical solution is required when in fact all we need is a little ingenuity. Good show, Sniper!

More from Wired, who likes it:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/sniper-stand-turns-credit-card-into-iphone-kick-stand/

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This is an unsolicited endorsement for the Eneloop battery system I’ve been using for a few weeks in Europe to keep my camera going.    On my last big trip – to China – I carried and used up dozens of batteries in my digital camera and wound up frustrated trying to find quality alkaline batteries at a good price.   Thanks to Eneloop I have needed only one spare set of batteries, charging up as needed using only a power adapter plug since the Eneloop charger works fine with Europe’s 200+ volt power.     The batteries have been superb, allowing me to take about 300+ photos without a recharge.   With the spare charged set I carry around I’ve had no need to use any other batteries.

Another clever Eneloop innovation is that the AA size fits inside a C or D shell provided with the kit, allowing you to use a small number of rechargeables for many devices.

Thanks, Eneloop!

technology enloop

BBC has an interesting story and a wonderful graphic showing the top 500 supercomputers in the world by country.   Story is here.

Although the USA still leads in Supercomputing superpower, China is rising fast with two of the top ten fastest machines, and appears to be looking to become a major and key player in this area.

Supercomputers are used in many applications that require massive computational speed and power, among them Climate  Research, Military Applications  such as nuclear bomb simulations, and – arguably by far the most interesting – Artificial Intelligence research and development.    My understanding is that IBM Blue Genes are currently the fastest machines doing AI  but hopefully the US based Jaguar – a Cray machine at Oak Ridge Labs and the world’s fastest computer at 1.8  peta FLOPS, will soon be tasked with AI research.

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USA Today has a great WIFI locator here: http://usatoday.jiwire.com/ Not sure if this is the best resource but it seems to have a LOT of hotspots, including many in Europe.      Hotspot providers can ad theirs to the database.

Unfortunately free WIFI everywhere does not appear to be in the near future, but it is encouraging to see so many coffee shops, hotels, and even some communities realize that free WIFI is an inexpensive amenity that is likely to cost less than the benefits it brings to a location.

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We’ve noted before how the rise of Twitter as a business communications platform is very significant, but it’s not clear to me how long it will take for businesses to understand the huge, free, explosive power Twitter offers to them.

It is clear that many businesses simply don’t understand how simply it can be to change a bit in order to effectively use the internet to improve efficiency and cut costs.      We still see, for example, online chat systems that almost routinely default to “please call customer service”.     A personally frustrating example of a ridiculous online system  was the email response from my health insurer – Lifewise.     I’d asked a simple question by email, and recieved a reply using a “secure” encrypted email system.   So secure in fact I could not open the mail.    The instructions did offer a fix – I could forward the mail to another address and then would get back a decrypted reply.    This failed a few times but then seemed to work, so finally I had my answer which was …. wait for it …..

Please call customer service

Although it’s possible Lifewise handles most of these issues without the call, I have my doubts as this lines up with the challenges we’ve all seen as businesses struggle to integrate legacy systems with online environments.     Call centers are the staple info resource for many large businesses, but instead of simply routing people to those legacy phone systems they should, for example, set up Twitter account for each phone operator, allowing them to communicate with literally dozens of clients in the time it takes to handle a single call.    Many questions are generic and security is not needed, but the general phone path is to ask for account information first.     If, for example, all inquiries that did not need to be secure were routed to a Twitter operator, that person could shoot out canned answers and canned links  faster than you can hit the Ctl key.

Twitter is not the *only* solution to an integrated customer service strategy, but it was the missing “hyper efficient” communications  link and I’m anxious to see more businesses start to use it that way.

technology business, twitter

The new San Francisco / Oakland Bay Bridge is one of the world’s most ambitious, expensive, and technologically sophisticated projects. Check out this flyover of the massive self-supporting span tower which will be the bridge’s key architectural feature in terms of style, as well as become a new Bay Area icon to rival the Golden Gate bridge.

Unlike its predecessor, the new Bay Bridge can sustain substantial earth movement from a large earthquake without major damage. The design allows the bridge to move with the earth rather than stay rigid which would lead to potential collapse.

technology bay bridge, flyover, new oakland bay bridge, oakland

In what appears to be an effort to support local business, build a more robust travel database, and stem the tide of other sites in this arena, Google is expanding it’s “Business Center” feature to integrate with the place pages feature launched last year.   The combined effort is called “Google Places” and it’s a very good idea that appears to have the backing of Google’s massive promotional / advertising / search juggernaut.     Today in “Introducing Google Places“, over at the official Google blog, John Hanke of the development team writes:

we want to better connect Place Pages — the way that businesses are being found today — with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google.

Google is adding several feature to the site, such as free photo shoots of business interiors (a clever idea!), real time business updates, and $25 business advertising.

I remember talking with Google several years ago at a search conference about how they were struggling with ways to support and expand their local business features.    They could not hire an army of salespeople and wanted to partner with sites that were working the local angles.    Luckily for Google most businesses now have broadband and a much higher level of internet savvy and acceptance, so Google can effectively bypass partnerships with intermediaries and work directly and scalably with local business.    Seems like a winner for everybody but the intermediary sites like Yelp, CitySearch, and TripAdvisor, all of which offer similar features.   This may be good for most but will diminish the value of sites that will need to compete with Google Places for the attention of people and advertisers.

technology Google, google places, travel

Today (Saturday) the Apple iPad goes on sale around the country.    Early reviews are overwhelmingly favorable and based on the first wave of enthusiasm and comments it looks like great news for Apple and bad news for the Amazon Kindle, generally considered to be a mere shadow of the kind of experience users will have with the iPad.

A LOT more breaking iPad news is over at Techmeme

Apple iPAD launches

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