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I am heavy into marketing, and even more heavily into technology. You also might see some blog posts about modern art spring up here and there - so don't freak out.

I also blog at The Direct Marketing Voice, and throw around ideas as a Market Intelligence Analyst at QuantumDigital.

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cloud

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Using the Cloud to share Word, PowerPoint and Excel

Many companies today use Google Apps to run their business, with integrated email, spreadsheets and online documents.  Last week, Google announced a new technology that will enhance the way you want to collaborate on traditional Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents.  Microsoft themselves have released a suite of ways you can collaborate on these formats, morphing their Office Live platform into Windows Live SkyDrive - where you can either upload static Office files, or use the Office Web Apps for real time collaboration.  However, the Office Web Apps have their limitations - they are scaled down from the full desktop software products so they will work well on the web.

The Office plugins from Google now allow any Google Apps user to essentially use Google as a place to maintain online versions of their full Microsoft Office documents.  This means that you can use your desktop version of Word, Excel or PowerPoint to create the best possible document with all the advanced features that the desktop software suite offers, and also keep that file online (in google apps), so that it's accessible by whoever you choose to share it with.  Plus, according to the video that they released (shown below), it allows you to intelligently merge the changes made when two people edit the same object (e.g. same sheet on Excel), and do this all online, so that the best version is always online. 

This means that we're a step closer to bridging the gap between feature completeness of our document creation tools (dominated by Microsoft), and the pervasiveness enabled by google (think Google Apps, high uptime, and easy accessibility on an Android phone for those who have them).  Though this may be Google's move to bolster the Google App product, trying to win yearly software seats from business customers, in reality it benefits every user of Google & MS Office by merging the competencies of each company.

More about:  Cloud  Google  Office  direct mail postcards  SaaS 

Filed under  //  cloud   google   office   saas  
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Yes, you need a CRM ( great article from Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero)

In this day and age, when information flows freely and data capture requires the advanced skills of copy and paste, there’s no excuse not to use a CRM for your business. Price isn’t an issue – there are free and low cost systems out there that offer 80%-90% of the functionality of the top end systems. Here are a few options and some of the tradeoffs:

Salesforce.com. Salesforce is the 800 pound gorilla in the world of CRM, and for good reason. It offers an incredible amount of power, but that power comes at a price. Salesforce isn’t cheap (as much as $150/user/month), and it’s a bear to set up well. Out of the box, it’s okay, but it requires extensive configuration and expertise to make it sing. If you do set it up well, however, you will find that Salesforce can make a huge improvement in your business profitability.

via christopherspenn.com

I have to totally agree with Chris Penn on his recommendation that businesses of all sizes use a CRM - but not just for one aspect of the business. When you are considering a tool like Salesforce or Zoho CRM or Sugar CRM, think about the breadth of the tool. If you just adopt a software tool for a limited number of users in one department the usefulness of the tool is mitigated. As important as having a CRM is giving access to everyone in your corporate sphere. This may even mean considering ways to share a limited access version of your CRM for your partners and customers. Some information is meant to be shared - and it will hurt your brand if you implement yet another data silo.

Filed under  //  cloud   crm   saas   web tools  
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Productizing uStream.tv and Justin.tv

If only the web streaming destination sites looked at how their streaming service could be applied in other niche areas, they could easily productize their general technology. Case in point: both ustream and justin.tv have good services if you want to broadcast a webcam to your family friends, or larger audience.

 
Now what if they took a few hours one day and created a registration page option - that way companies like Hootsuite could easily host a webinar for their massively popular service, while also collecting "attendee information".  The vanilla ustream / justin.tv products don't require registration.
 
 
Outlook

Filed under  //  cloud   streaming media   web 2.0   web tools  
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