A New Beginning at Tumblr

I've successfully migrated over to Tumblr. I think it just suits me so much better in terms of what I want to share and my believe to deliver information in a way that makes it easier for busy people to stay in the loop.

http://allisontsui.tumblr.com

Temporarily Closed

I'm temporarily away working on a better and improved blog that is almost ready to go. Hang in there and I'll be right back!

Inside Googleplex

A look at life inside. Very interesting.

How Mobile Will Change The Way We Shop

Last night, I found myself playing with a relatively new app I installed on my iPhone called RedLaser. I’m determined that apps like these will impact the way we shop. You ‘scan’ the barcode with RedLaser with the camera's phone and through local and online retailers it’s able to bring back a list of places selling the same product with all the prices, making it extremely easy to compare.



What does this mean for me and you?
The biggest advantage with this barcode scanning for consumers is the accuracy. You cannot go wrong with searching the product name or brand name because it's uniquely identified by a series of numbers or a Universal Price Code (UPC). Now, consumers have a walking scanner in their hands. Going down that path, apps like RedLaser enables us to bargain hunt much quicker and faster, making price comparison almost effortless. There's no more need to open a browser to search. There's no more need to type in the product you're trying to look up unless you want to type in the Universal Price Code (UPC) manually. Some people didn’t bother with comparing prices before but this might change, especially with the shift in consumer purchasing behaviour following the recent recession. (Check out this report by PwC about changing shopping behaviours.)

One of my favourite features of the app is that it helps you record down products you scan so you can spend more time looking it up later. For added convenience, you can also e-mail yourself the items you've scanned. Another favourite is its capability to search food items against allergens and returns a mini report. If you live in the US, a book scan will also tell you which library it's available at.

What a great app! I can only see it get better.

Website: http://www.redlaser.com/

Inside Facebook by ABC News

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, recently sat down with Diane Sawyer of ABC for an interview. I've always been curious about how he is like and how he thinks. Afterall, Facebook has been a huge influence on the social movement we're all currently experiencing.



Source: ABC News

At the moment, ABC's website still has a few more video clips from the interview.
http://bit.ly/9fFxnw

My Whitepaper Frustration

Like many out there, my inbox is flooded with social media whitepapers desperately waiting for me to open. To be honest, having read a lot of them over the past year or two, a lot of these whitepapers say very similar things to me. Today, I was somewhat interested in taking a look at one that talks about how to improve service through social media.

Is it just me or are these companies making it way too inconvenient to download these whitepapers? I clicked on ‘Download’ and it brought me to a page requesting for my info. “Just 3 Easy Steps” it claims. Unfortunately, I think it’s “3 Steps” too many. Don’t they already have my email? Why are they asking for it again? If another company’s whitepaper is featured, perhaps it’s time for a re-examination of the privacy policy and allow us an option to transfer our permission to third parties to access our information. I’ve gone through this process too many times and today I decided to go against it. I closed the email and deleted it. I didn’t feel it was worth my time to do it all again, to read information I most likely have read already or can get easily elsewhere.

Now they’ve lost the opportunity for me to share information with the rest of the team. I’ll tolerate signing in with existing information to view the information. I’m also willing to sign up from scratch where I haven’t before. That’s fair game. Making me sign up again and making me answer the same questions from the same place? Not acceptable.

Just Watch This. Metaweb and How It's Going to Change Searching Online.

Google recently acquired Metaweb, a semantic web and real world database company that believes it can help improve search and make for a richer web experience. For more than four years, Metaweb has built an open database called Freebase which has a collection of structured data of over 12 million "entities." Each entity can be anything that's a person, place or thing and can be connected with other entities to derive meaning.

Have you noticed that when you do a search in Google a word can have multiple meanings. What Metaweb and Google hope to do is to better distinguish between all the definitions a word may have and deliver better search results.

A very interesting, but complex topic. I find the way they are set up very similar to linguistics. Perhaps, this could be the birth of a new topic, social linguistics?

The video explains this whole idea very well.

Global Social Media Insights Tool

Trend Stream has released a lite version of its Global Web Index, a syndicated market research service of behavior on the web and social media. Although only a lite version, it is an interactive tool that will give insights to what drives the audience, their activities online, and their feelings toward brands in social media.

The data in this lite version was extracted from their "Wave 2" dataset from January 2010. A newer data set, Wave 3, from July 2010 is available but is only accessible to current clients. Still, a very neat tool. Best of all, the data is displayed in a very infographic-like manner.

Due to the width limitations with my current template, I suggest hopping on over to site to check the tool out. http://www.globalwebindex.net/widget/index.html



Source: http://globalwebindex.net/thinking/lite/

New YouTube Mobile Website

http://m.youtube.com/ is where all mobile users can now go for YouTube.

With a redesigned and friendlier user-interface, the YouTube experience on mobile devices will finally be a much better one! More importantly, high quality (HQ) video streams for mobile on YouTube has arrived. To best honest, I can't quite understand why it took so long for this to happen...

Seth is Right. Validation IS Overrated.

"Validation is overrated... If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you're worthy." - Seth Godin

I read a blog post by Seth Godin over the weekend and it couldn't be more true. Why wait for somebody to tell you you're good enough to do something. That's not to say things should be done blindly though. In the past, we wait for someone to tell us we're worthy of recording an album or writing a book because they have the skills and marketing to help push it further. At a mental level, by them saying that and willing to provide resources also gives a big shot of confidence to the author.

The thing is though, why? Is it because we've been taught at a very young age to get approval from those above us before we can continue moving ahead? I understand there are rules and there should be rules to help keep society in working order.

However, it doesn't have to be this way. Most of us are now equipped with a decent desktop computer with recording and writing capabilities. Digital cameras have never been cheaper than before. If you don't have internet at home, there's always the library for that connection to push your work out. The only thing missing is the mentality to believe that you can do it. You don't need to wait for someone to validate your thinking. "Believe" just like Melanie Oudin did when the 17 year old defeated a three-time tennis grand slam player at the US Open last year.

I think I finally understand what Nike's slogan truely means. JUST DO IT!

The Art of Innovation - Guy Kawasaki

Some good pointers in there indeed.

How Long It Takes to Earn USA Mininum Wage Around the World

A visualization of how long it would take to earn the annual U.S. Minimum Wage from different countries around the world. Quite interesting. I guess one is better off flipping burgers for the Queen than for Obama or Harper at McDonalds. This, of course, does not put into consideration purchasing power or the different costs of associated with living in different countries.

Click the image to enlarge

Source: Fixr

NXNEi (North by Northeast Interactive) 2010

North by Northeast Interactive (NXNEi) successfully unfolded itself in Toronto at the beginning of this week where a series of presentations were made about the newest cutting edge tools available to us today for music production and distribution. A series of panelist and presenters covered off everything related to technology, social media and other trends important to the music industry.

This was actually the first year the interactive component was put into NXNE (something I got to be a part of, as a NXNE Conference Volunteer this year) up here in Toronto, which replicates the interactive component of South by Southwest (SXSWi) held every March down south in Austin, Texas.

As luck shall have it, I found a link to the unofficial SXSW presentations channel. It's a place to share and find presentations from SXSW. Not only does it include 2010, but also previous years.

http://www.slideshare.net/sxsw2010

TED Talks: What Adults Can Learn From Kids

Child prodigy Adora Svitak talks about what adults can learn from kids. It quickly reminded me of the book "The LIttle Prince/ Le Petit Prince." Kids are often ignored and discredited because of their age and the resulting lack of trust. What we adults fail to acknowledge is that kids can bring a lot of value to this world too and have qualities and thinking this world needs to progress.



I liked this talk. Very impressed with Adora's thinking.

Google TV Explained

There's been quite some buzz around Google TV since March but what is it that Google intends to do with TV? No one explains it better than Google themselves in this video. The question is - What do you think? Do you want one?

Canadian Mobile Phone Penetration and Subscription to Increase

Stepped inside a mobile phone store lately? If you haven't I can tell you that a lot of the cell phones inside Bell, Rogers, Telus are all now mobile devices with more than cellular capabilities. And, most of them require you to be on a voice and data plan if you want to get the phone at a cheaper price. 

And, unsurprisingly... “eMarketer forecasts the number of mobile subscribers in Canada will rise from 24.5 million this year to nearly 30 million by 2014, an increase of about 20%. Subscriber growth will level off as the market approaches higher penetration levels, reaching 84.7% by 2014.” (Source: eMarketer)

Comparing Canada against other countries reveal that smartphone penetration in Canada is quite high (near the top) which would match the expected increase in mobile subscriptions over the next couple of years. A good piece to know if you're planning for media spend/ penetration on your customers.

 
The interesting thing is that not even ten years ago I asked why anyone would want to go online with their small screened cell phones. It was inconvenient because you can barely see anything on the screen and the keys were a disaster to use with three letters designated to one button. Mobile internet has since come along way. It finally is more convenient to use and allows you to stay connected no matter where you are. They are addicting (but fun) to have and use as long as you don’t become a slave to it.

What Do You Expect Out of a Facebook Brand Page?

A lot of brands are on Facebook now but there isn’t one I go to religiously. A lot of them don’t provide enough value nor give me enough reasons to go back.

Brand pages on Facebook gives a brand the opportunity to establish a community where they can educate their followers about the company, what the brand represents and the products it has. There’s a lot of room for creativity in terms of information display and the way it’s executed will give customers a glimpse of how the company operates.

Having said that, here are a few things I would like to see more brands have on their Facebook pages to enhance the experience of a prospect or an existing customer : 

• Teach DIY projects with the brand’s products
• Creative uses for the brand’s products
• An application to book appointments, order goods and services, sign in to member-loyalty programs
• Coupon codes or other perks
• Promoting new products based on features
• Promoting upcoming events
• Tips to help customers enhance/ get the most out of the current product
• Make references to the lifestyle attributes of the product
• Show some transparency into how the company achieves quality and innovation in its products
• Highlight and link any new mobile apps
• Promote the sharing of stories with the use of the brand’s products
• Have fan specific content where they have to ‘like’ you to see it.

At the end of the day, what's important is leveraging social media as a tool to help facilitate and keep conversations going among like-minded followers in a space that's unique to prospects or existing customers.

Inside Facebook Headquarters

Ever curious about what the working environment at Facebook is like? The people at Time have a collection of images.

Click on the link here or the image below - Inside Facebook Headquarters.

I'm Back!

After two weeks, I'm now back as promised!

Infographics

BRB in 2 Weeks. I promise. In the meantime, here's something to ponder over.

Infographics!
Lately, I've been quite obsessed over infographics because I feel that we're living in an information-overloaded society. How often do we sit in a presentation and a lot of data is presented? The same goes for all the metrics reporting we're asked to do on spreadsheets. Sometimes, there's so much data and information that our brain turns numb.  It's inefficient and yet we're always looking for new ways to capture more data and more information.

Information needs to and CAN BE presented in an user-friendly and appealing way. That's where infographics come in. It's the concept of the "ideas, issues, knowledge and data being visualized!" (David McCandless, The  Visual Miscellaneum) The right amounts of information and design can be combined to successfully convey a point.

"Charts and Graphs Can Communicate Data; Infographs Turn Data into Information" - Randy Krum, Coolinfographics.com

There are variations of how it looks like but typically:

• Holds stats and main insights of the idea being conveyed by the author
• Presents ideas in a concise and intuitive manner
• Makes the reader think and realize what the big picture is
• Are visually appealing
• Are easy to understand
• Have the potential to be cross-cultural and cross-language

What Makes Good Information Design


Source: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/interesting-easy-beautiful-true/

Want Links to Good Infographic Sites?

• Cool Infographics
• Information is Beautiful
• Flowtown

I'm still going through David McCandless's Visual Miscellaneum. He's the guy behind the Information is Beautiful website. If you're thinking about getting the book, feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to share with you my two cents on it.

See you all in two weeks.