WORK LIKE BATMAN

Do you have a pile of work to do from your home office, a "white collar" desk job, or need to complete long hours of data entry (it is tax season now)?

WATCH YOUR POSTURE, ROBIN!
Most of the time...stand up while you work! This burns more calories, gives you more energy in general, and makes you sound better on phone calls!

The line about posture is out of the Dark Knight Returns book from Frank Miller.

TO THE BAT COMPUTER!
Get a sweet (sweeet) keyboard and mouse combination...it is the most used part of your computer, right?
There are multitudes of ergonomic designs from companies like Microsoft.

I prefer the wireless, rechargable, orange-glow-in-the-dark Divino variety from Logitech,
especially when it looks sleek, uses secure Bluetooth technology, and can be branded with a minimalist Bat logo.

Recently, Logitech launched a contest for some nifty prizes ala Dark Knight.
Swag!

CAPE AND COWL
Keep a neutrally-coloured blazer or jacket at your desk; dark beige, dark, blue, or grey seem to work well for most people. Layers of professional clothing are a nice (successful) way to handle temperature changes throughout the day within an air conditioned office, right?

Keep your clothes in shape by avoiding those 1960's "Bat Poles"...

Enjoying our Networking Mixer!

We're always staying in touch with industry professionals, right?

QUOTATIONS FROM THE FAST AND FRIENDLY CLOUDS!

Feel free to use some TANTALIZING QUOTES related to Twitter and Google for spicing-up your speeches, discussions, and board (bored?) meetings...

From Vogelstein writing in Wired magazine, August 2009:

“Google is big. Very big. Its millions of servers process about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every [60 minutes]...bigness is the very point of Google...its competitive advantage-is its ability to find meaning in massive sets of data. The larger the data sets, the more potential meaning can be derived...”

By the by, one petabyte (PiB) is equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes (B), and each standard byte contains eight bits (ones and/or zeros). Impressive, isn’t it?

Eric Schmidt, one of the founders of Google, repeatedly reminds his employees that Microsoft could crush Google at any moment. To wit:

“...because Microsoft is a follower, there is a concern that it could use its Windows monopoly to restrict choices”

Here's a couple from Jarvis in his What Would Google Do? book:

“When China’s Sichuan Province suffered its horrendous earthquake in May 2008, people who felt it firsthand shared their experience via Twitter...people in the quake zone would use Twitter to update friends...If I were going through a quake, I’d want to tell family and friends that I was safe, wouldn’t you?”

Note that back then, the Twitter service was only 600 days old – this is a reflection of the significantly swift adoption rate that y'all have for web services that “just work” connect you with your friends and family.

What Would Google Do?:

“...those of us that teach students in rapidly changing arenas...must get better at keeping up with – no, getting ahead of – our students, industry, and society.”

We're standing on the shoulders of Giants, right?

We're enjoying the multitudes of free web applications that are being developed nowadays to "just work," with the software vendor getting out of the way.

How do some of the newer, smaller, web vendors that "give away" free online services pay their employees, though?
The Web 2.0 conundrum...
Any brilliant ideas about this?

I keep hoping that this Golden (Google?) Age of developing free "just work" web applications lasts for a while.

If not, change will be brutally and significantly swift, too.

Talk about these ideas soon, eh?

We Are Visible - Samples of Posters...

WHY AIR MILES ARE NEEDED FOR WEB 2.0

Before Web 2.0 evolved, the concept of "Customer loyalty" was pervasive in the software industry (E.g. "we've only ever used Microsoft Outlook for CRM").



In many people's view, this was the result of a combination of factors including the following:

• steep prices for software, making it prohibitive to buy from another vendor
• unique "killer" features of one title over another
• investment of intensive staff training, and costs of subsequent re-training

With the establishment of Web 2.0 software applications, smaller agile
companies were able to come up with competitive products that were
able to quickly pull "loyal" customers away from the giants. Some of the advantages are as follows:

• low fees for software
• streamlined features to get the job done
• easy-to-learn minimal staff training

Moreover, note that competing companies can copy all of the
functionality, terminology, and marketing from other companies
extremely easily...(e.g. compare the glaring similarities between American Basecamp and the European iTeamwork, for
instance).

In the current environment then, with high exportability of data
records, think about how easy it would be for you to buy one software
title...
use it for a while and then say "nah, there's something better over here..."
....and quickly change vendors
(e.g. people that used Evite from Yahoo now use
Facebook for event management;

Australian Diigo quietly took over Furl for online management of bookmarks;
Delicious is contending with Yahoo and Google Toolbar for bookmarks)!

Did Web 2.0 move us into a world of low customer loyalty, copycat
features everywhere, and high migration?

For instance, there are sooo many vendors for free (and almost free) Web 2.0 software for
task management lists, todo lists, and sticky note applications,
that it boggles the mind which one to choose.
Most sane people likely just "go with the marketing flow."

How do Web 2.0 vendors retain customers? To ponder...

• "Air miles" point / discount programs to make customers reluctant about switching vendors?
• How comfortable are you with the vendor's business philosophy - are you in-tune?
• With more organizations from your industry using the same application, there may be more apt support for your specific needs, right?
• Do you keep buying more and more disparate mini applications, or just get one giant application that is much more robust?