When I’m not in client meetings or on the road, I am usually working from my home office.  Friends and colleagues regularly ask whether I get lonely or distracted working from home, and my answer is always  “no.“   They often say things like, “I don’t think I could work from home…” “I’d get lonely…” “There are too many distractions at home…” etc.  Feeling lonely is a rarity since I’m in meetings and/or phone calls every day.  As for distractions go, in my experience there are way more distractions in an traditional workplace environment then a home office… (more…)

There’s an interesting debate afoot… Could News Corporation (Newscorp) trump Google by preventing them from indexing their various sites including Wall Street Journal, or would this bring down Newscorp by making its content less discoverable?  What would happen if the world’s biggest publishers joined forces together against Google and sold the ability to index their content to the highest bidder?  What would this mean for the Internet and profitability of the web’s biggest publishers? (more…)

Having trouble convincing your organization to invest in social media?  You’re not the only one.  Many of my prospective clients are in the same boat.  They understand that social media can be used to help their organization grow and manage customer perception, but unable to estimate a realistic return on investment grounded in a real-life case study, they have trouble rationalizing a significant investment in social media.  Unfortunately, there aren’t enough companies that measure AND talk openly about the dollar-value ROI of their social media investment.

One company that is talking openly about their social media ROI is Dell, who today announced that since June of 2007, they’ve earned more than $3 Million in revenue via Twitter alone.  (more…)

I’m a big fan of the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe.  If you’re unfamiliar with this work of genius, it’s a computer in a pen.  It allows you to record what’s being said as you take notes and links the two together, which makes it much easier to listen to everything someone is saying rather than struggling to write it down in your notes as they’re saying it. (more…)

In a deflated economy, the number of people calling themselves “consultants” is on the rise.  Plenty of job seekers are “consulting” while trying to find a full-time, “permanent” role.  Taking on an interim consulting project is a good option if you’re trying to pay the bills while looking for full-time jobs, but consulting isn’t for everyone.  If you’re looking for a consultant to complete a project, in times like this, it’s buyer beware. The kind of people that make great employees don’t always make great consultants.  Doing your due diligence before hiring a consultant is critical. (more…)

Ahhh… It’s a new day, and there’s yet another 3rd party developer jumping on the Twitter train…

TwitPub is a 3rd party developer that is leveraging Twitter’s infrastructure to monetize tweets through subscriptions. TwitPub is run by AdExcel Online Networks Sdn. Bhd., which is based out of Malaysia. TwitPub operates a bit like a premium SMS subscription (though not on your mobile) – users pay to subscribe to the private tweets of content owners/ publishers.  The idea is that content publishers sell access to their private tweets, which can contain information about any number of topics (daily horoscope, finance alerts, music news, etc… anything – you get the idea).  (more…)

Today, I’m excited to launch SocializeMobilize.com.  On it, I’ll be publishing articles about social media, web 2.0, mobile, and mobile and web convergence.  You’ll also find all of the legacy content from my former blog, socialmedia.vox.com, which I started in 2006.  Under “services” tab, you’ll find more information about me and the consulting practice I’ve been running since 2003.

Why did I start a new blog when I already had one?

In 2006, I started a blog about social media and mobile on Vox, a community powered, free blogging platform run by SixApart.  I originally started blogging as an online experiment, prompted by conversations I had with colleagues at SplashData, who I met while consulting at Palm, Inc.  SplashData made a mobile blogging platform that was acquired by SixApart, and they encouraged me to try Vox, which had just launched.  Interested in the socialization of the web, and curious about blogging, I used Vox as a way to express my thoughts and start conversations about web 2.0 and, occasionally, mobile convergence. (more…)

Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards), officially opened to the public yesterday.  If you use Microsoft Outlook, it will change your life…  Xobni is a utility for Outlook that analizes your email – things like:

• Who emails you most and when
• Who responds fastest to your emails
• Who you respond to fastest

Xobni makes it easy for you to find files you’ve exchanged via email – regardless of where they’re buried within the thousands of emails in your inbox.

Besides being a really valuable productivity tool, it turns your inbox into a social network.  Without having to type a thing, in two clicks, you can initiate and send an email to anyone in your “network” (i.e. anyone you’ve exchanged email with).  There are also pre-populated notes that enable you to:

• Ask a friend/colleague for their phone number, or
• Request time on a friend/colleague’s calendar – Xobni pulls down data from your calendar and inserts your availability into an email… You can even customize what days/times you want Xobni to search for your availability.

Downsides?  I hate to admit it, but Xobni is actually making me like using Outlook!  The only thing I dislike about Xobni is that it’s not available in more places.  You can’t use it on a Mac or or web-based mail systems like Gmail (sigh).  There is no mobile application or WAP compatability, so it doesn’t work on a mobile phone.

What would I like to see in the future besides broader availability on other email platforms?

• More control over email templates… I’d love to be able to create my own email templates.  For example… “Thank you” emails that I can send to people that, say, had me to dinner, or who I invited to a party.
• Integrations to my favorite web sites. For example… I’d like to be able to set-up an evite from within Xobni and send it out to everyone on my network.  Even better, I’d like Xobni to track my interactions on all of my favorite social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) AND multiple email accounts AND IM AND phone calls (i.e. with a mobile integration)
• Group/ List functionality – that is – the ability to set up groups of people and have the ability to email them all at the same time. (i.e. my “best friend group” my “project X group”, etc.)
• Greater integration with Calendars and Address Books.  For example, I’d love to see the scheduling template be more interactive and actually allow a user to book time on my calendar, without me having to enter the time into the calendar, upon receiving their reply to my email.  I’d love it to work like Outlook invites work… Allow recipients to click on one of the available times listed in an email and automatically book it.

Yep – I think I’m love.  Get it, and it will change the way you look at your inbox.

Last night, I partied with the IT team at Genentech at Full Spectrum 2008.  It was an awesome event.

On the one hand, it was a typical tech party (note: Dr. Spock and Neo).  On the other hand, I’ve never seen an IT team embrace Facebook with such vigor…

And, as an added bonus, there there were glow-in-the-dark dancers on roller skates, casino games, and at least 4 simultaneous games of “Rock Band” (the video game) going at a time…

Thanks to Paul Lanzi for the invite and the photos.

Watching Bill Gates’ keynote from CES 2008 reminded me of how important it is to work with people you not only like but also that bring out the best in you and compliment your skills.  Gates is a technology genius, but he didn’t put together this ‘mocumentary’ alone.  This is the work of marketing genius:

Speaking of Bill Gate’s forthcoming last day in the office, I thought it might be fun to dredge up a little something that I saw on the Late Show a couple of years ago: