One of the great things about our line of work is that you get to work with people all over the world. This nearly always means talking to them on the phone, and this would be seriously expensive and annoying if it wasn’t for a little application called Skype.

Skype is a free VOIP (Voice over Internet protocol) service that lets you make free phone calls from your computer to other Skype users anywhere in the world, over the Internet.

If you haven’t used Skype before, you should give it a go, because it’s so cheap. For example, it’s free to call other Skype users anywhere in the world. If you want to call a landline from your Skype account, it’s very cheap too. For example, a call from a Skype account in New Zealand to a landline in Australia would cost 2 cents per minute.

You can download Skype from http://www.skype.com and you don’t need to pay to start using it, but there are paid services available for calling landlines and mobile phones, and Skype Premium allows you to do group video calls.

Skype was invented in 2003 by Nicolas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. The company is based in Luxembourg. As of 2010, there were 663 million registered Skype users. Compared to using your existing phone, obviously, price is a huge advantage. You can also use Skype for free instant messaging, sending files to people, conference calls, and video calls.
Skype is great for video calls, but you don’t have to show your face if you don’t want to. If the person you’re talking to has a web cam, you will be able to see them.
You can even do group video calls, with multiple people all on the screen at the same time! You need to pay for Skype Premium to do this, however. It costs about $10/month.
If you’re using Skype from your computer, you’ll need a microphone if you want to make phone calls. Failing that, you can do instant messaging instead. You can type your messages while the other person talks to you.
You can call landlines from as cheaply as 2 cents per minute, depending if you pay a monthly subscription or pay-as-you-go. It can be quite a bit more expensive to call mobile phones. To get around this, it’s better to install Skype software on your smartphone and tell your contacts to do the same. Then you can make a free mobile-to-mobile phone call anywhere in the world (as long as you’re in range of a wireless hotspot or you’ve got a sweet 3G plan).
If you’re using Skype’s paid services, you can choose Pay-as-you-go where you prepay for Skype credit (just like topping up your TradeMe account) or you can choose a monthly subscription. There are lots of subscription plans to choose from, depending on what countries you want to call.
My favourite way to use Skype is from my mobile phone. Skype has versions for smartphones so that you can use your phone as a Skype phone. The iPhone app that I use is absolutely brilliant and it integrates really well.
The call quality is mostly really good, although it depends on your Internet connection. Basically, the faster the better (Come on Pacific Fibre!).

There are some alternatives to Skype out there, e.g. Google Talk, Windows Live, etc., but I’ve never used these other services. If anyone has, I would be keen to hear about their pros and cons and how they compare to Skype.

And my Skype username is mhcmiller

The location-based social network which allows you to tell your “friends” when you “check in” to a location has 6 million users and is growing at 35,000 new users per day.

People use Foursquare for a number of reasons, e.g….

• connect with friends
• explore new places
• get discounts from shops
• earn badges for “fun”, like becoming the “Mayor” by checking in the most times

But where’s the fun? It seems to me that checking in to 4square is something you do when you’ve got nothing better to do, e.g. when you’re waiting in line for your coffee or you’re waiting for your fish and chips on a Friday night and they’re taking ages.

Or worse, when your date stands you up and you don’t want to sit there looking like a wally so you get your phone out and “check in” in the hope that you’ll become the Mayor of the Mexican restaurant you’re at. But unfortunately for you, now that Foursquare has been around for a while, you would need to check in about 2,000 times to become the Mayor. No consolation prize for you. But you might get one of the hundreds of other meaningless badges that Foursquare offers.

And if you check in every time you go to Burger King or McDonald’s, your followers all get to see that your diet is like Morgan Spurlock out of Super Size Me.

I can sort of see the appeal if you lived in Manhattan where there are about 10,000 bars and restaurants crammed into an area the size of a football field. Foursquare might make catching up with friends and bar-hopping a bit easier and more fun, but this doesn’t translate to a place like New Zealand with our vanishingly small population density.

And anyway, Facebook Places looks set to destroy Foursquare, since Facebook now has 600 million users.

Am I just being a bit thick? Or is location-based social networking really the biggest thing since Facebook?

You’ve tweeted a few times about what you’re up to and what you think about whatever was on Campbell Live.

But somehow it’s a bit lifeless. You need to know where the magic comes from. What is it about Twitter that makes it so addictive?

First of all, Twitter is a social network and we are social beings, so a couple of extremely old-fashioned personality traits come in very handy: being organised and having good manners.

Unfortunately, I’ve always struggled with personal organisation and I can be extremely rude, but I’m getting better.

To apply these concepts to Twitter, the secret is in the way you organise your Twitter streams and interact with other Twitter users.

I’ll quickly run through 3 ways of organising your Twitter stream into manageable, meaningful sources of information, then I’ll talk about 3 ways of sharing information so that people see you as a nice, friendly person on Twitter.

Searches
Twitter is a massive real-time search engine. Search Twitter for up-to-the-minute information on just about any topic. Just type in keywords like you would in Google, and you can save your searches for easy searching on the same topic in future. But the results of searches can be pretty random. To get around this, use #hashtags.

#hashtags
Hashtags have emerged as the de facto standard for tagging tweets that are on a specific topic. For example, the Canterbury earthquake saw #eqnz emerge as the hashtag for that particular event. The recent Accelerate conference had a few but we seemed to settle on #oto60. Likewise, #cricketworldcup seems to have emerged as the hashtag for the Cricket World Cup that has just started. So if you want to use Twitter to tell the world that Jesse Ryder is God’s gift to cricket, include the hashtag #cricketworldcup in your tweet and it’s much more likely that your tweet will actually be read by people who care about cricket, because a lot of people will have saved the search ‘#cricketworldcup’.

Lists
Lists are a good way of organising different Twitter users into groups based on a particular topic. As I mentioned in my previous article, I’ve created a list that compiles a whole lot of New Zealand news feeds. Now when I want the latest New Zealand news updates, I can just check that list. It’s more convenient than checking Google News, especially on my iPhone, and it makes it easier to share the stories with my followers.

Replies
This is where the fun starts. If someone tweets something, you can reply to it. You don’t need to be friends with them like in Facebook. So if Shane Warne tweets that his favourite flavour of ice cream is Goody Goody Gum Drops (Shane seems to talk about food a lot), you can simply hit ‘Reply’ and tell him that maybe he should eat less ice cream and concentrate more on choosing a fake tan that isn’t bright orange.

Just like email, you can also ‘Reply all’, so that more than one person is mentioned in your tweet.

Retweets
If you read a tweet that is so funny, informative, shocking, or weird that you’re just dying to tell all your friends about it, simply hit ‘Re-tweet’. This is just like forwarding an email to all of your contacts.

Twitter gets really interesting when people start replying to you and re-tweeting YOUR content. But how do you know if people are replying to you or re-tweeting your tweets? You need to monitor what people are saying about you out there on Twitter, and you do this with ‘mentions’.

Mentions
Twitter can tell you whenever you’ve been mentioned in a reply or a re-tweet. You can even set up a SMS service so that you get a text message every time someone does so. So if someone asks you a questions, has a go at you, or tells the world you’re a great person, you’ll know about it immediately.

Direct messages
If you want to communicate with another Twitter user in private, do it with a direct message (or DM). I don’t use these much myself – I prefer email – but a DM is more useful if the recipient has SMS set up. They’ll get your message as a text message immediately. The only thing to remember about DMs is that you can only DM someone who’s already following you.

It’s really important to remember your manners and common sense when using Twitter. Everything you tweet is in the public domain. A good example of this occurred at the Accelerate conference, when presenters were sharing sensitive financial information about their companies. It’s good to tweet from a conference to provide a running commentary for people who couldn’t attend, but make sure you respect people’s privacy.

OK, that should be enough to get you started and hopefully hooked!

Next time we’ll look at some cool tools that make it even easier to make the most of Twitter, including Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Flipboard, URL shorteners, Twitpic, and more.

Like any communication medium, you need a strategy and a consistent approach to make Twitter work for your business. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need help.

I’m slightly depressed and annoyed to hear the rumours that Apple is about to launch its iPhone 5. I’ve only just bought an iPhone 4!

The new phone may (or may not) have the following features:

• facial recognition
• NFC – a technology which enables mobile payments (your phone will take the place of your credit card or EFT-POS card)
• streaming music from the Cloud – so you don’t need to download all your music onto your phone
• really smart voice control and search
• full 1080p high-definition video
• multi-core processor for better performance and longer battery life

Even worse, the iPad 2 is expected to be announced any day now – and there’s even talk of the iPad 3 being released before the end of the year.

Are you planning to buy an iPhone or an iPad soon – or are you going to wait until the new versions come along? Or are you going to go the Android route? Or Windows? Or Blackberry? Or (heaven forbid) go old-school and get a Nokia?

At the moment, we’re leaning towards websites rather than apps, except for specialised applications.

Read the full article here…

Now, I’ve never been a fan of the iPod until now. I always figured that if I wanted an MP3 player I would shoot down to Dick Smith’s or the Warewhare and pick up a $20 flash device rather than investing $400 in something that essentially does the same job. Enter the iPod Touch.

This has to be THE coolest device I have EVER owned. MP3 player? Pfffffft! I listen to music on it via a wireless tuner in my car but otherwise this is the device that I use for almost everything that my laptop used to be used for. It’s a games machine, it’s my communication device of choice – Skype, email, Twitter, Facebook – my productivity pal and my fitness friend. I’ve tried out so many apps it’s getting almost ridiculous. And THAT is what the title of this post is all about.

After seeing me at a wedding reception whipping out my virtual Zippo lighter to a slow ballad, my wife and friends have dubbed me The App King Pro. So I thought I should put this dubious title to good use and share some of the apps I’ve come across.

This week: Xmarks. Ok, so I’m starting off with a webapp instead of an Apple native app, but Mogul are big fans of webapps, so bear with me.

Being incredibly dependent on the devices in my life, I find it difficult to keep one version of the truth. There are some other apps I use to help with file synchronisation – and again that’s a whole other post. However, until now I’ve not come across a good way to manage bookmarks between multiple browsers (I regularly use 6) on multiple devices (work PC, home laptop and now iPod). I use Google Chrome as my browser of choice which syncs bookmarks between Chrome installs on different computers but not other devices or other browsers.

Xmarks hosts your bookmarks in the cloud and synchronises them from any browser for which you have installed their add-on.   But i can’t install addons to iOS Safari, so how does that help with devices? Well… Once you’ve signed up with Xmarks and synchronised your bookmarks, visit my.xmarks.com on your device, log in to your account and BAM! All of your bookmarks are available on your device. Add this page as a bookmark on your home screen and you have instant access to your bookmarks, always. It really couldn’t be easier.

I’m loving all of the other productivity tools I’ve come across so (i)Tune in next time for more info on the apps I love.

Thanks to everyone who took part in the survey. We’ll update you all next week with details of the online marketing workshop(s) we’ll be running for all participants.

We’re working with the Havelock North Business Association (HNBA) members to give Havelock North a regional ‘digital advantage’ ahead of big events like the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and to provide visitors with information they may require, such as businesses’ opening hours and location.

We have contracted EIT student Damian to get out and about in the streets of Havelock North, creating and verifying Google Places listings in an effort to make Havelock North the most ‘Google-y’ place in New Zealand!

Visitors coming to Hawke’s Bay might be looking for a dentist, tyre stockist, food market or a babysitter. We want to ensure when they are searching online, using a computer or their smartphone, that Havelock North businesses are as easy to find as possible.

According to the official Google Blog, over 4 million businesses around-the-world have claimed their Google Places listings since its launch in September 2009. The listings connect people to relevant information such as hours of operation, vouchers, and product offerings, but also offer photos and video uploads. We want to ensure Havelock North is capitalising on the service.

It’s estimated that around 20% of all searches on Google are related to location. Google Places is a fantastic free service that enables businesses to raise their digital profile and promote their goods and services to people searching the Web.

Another great benefit of Google Places for businesses is that it provides valuable insights into how many people are clicking to their listings, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people travelled from to get to the business. All this can really help a business fine tune their offer or expand into other markets.

Havelock North Business Association President, Adrienne Pierce is excited to see Mogul embrace the tool. “We’re very grateful to Mogul who are willing to invest their own time, for free, for the collective good of Havelock North businesses. The Association is working towards providing Havelock North Village with wi-fi access, so Mogul’s initiative works in really well with our strategy. We live in a digitally mobile society, so Havelock North will be in a powerful position to communicate and direct visitors to the town through their computers and smartphones.”

Anyone can create their own Google Places listing but not everyone is sure how to go about it. If there are any other Havelock North business’ wishing Mogul to volunteer their services to help with their Google Places listing, please contact me (Georgina Miller) at Mogul on 06 877 7478 or email george@mogul.co.nz

So I got one anyway.

And here are my thoughts on it…

The iPad is like an iPod Touch on steroids. It’s about the size of a paperback novel and has a touch screen.
It has 32GB of memory, so plenty of room for music, photos and videos, and Wi-Fi connectivity so you can surf the web, check out Facebook and Twitter, and read your emails.

The touch screen and tilt action makes it much more intuitive than a keyboard and mouse. The games are very cheap. Some really good ones are free or only cost about $3. If you have kids, they will love it, especially the excellent educational games and Angry Birds, a cult classic in which you destroy pigs sheltering in elaborate fortifications by launching birds at them with a catapult.

My mother-in-law loves playing scrabble on it – she’s a teacher so she loves the chance to exercise her vast vocabulary.

The iPad’s niche seems to be couch computer – you can play on it while watching TV or lying in bed – or spending time in your “office”, as the Fonz would call it. Computer is not really the right word for this thing, perhaps it should simply be called a tablet device. After surfing the web for a few minutes with its beautiful high-resolution touch screen, a laptop seems as antiquated as a typewriter.

I’ve already noticed some changes in my behaviour. I’ve never been unable to sit passively watching TV – my attention span is far too short. I need to read the newspaper or a magazine or change the channel every 15 seconds.
The iPad has made watching live sport a much more interactive and enjoyable activity. I watched the World Cup match between the USA and Ghana while following Google’s new real-time Twitter feed and it was like watching the game at a pub catching snippets of hundreds of random conversations. Some of the tweets were funny, like listening to Beavis and Butthead passing snide comments. When the USA lost, I actually felt sorry for some the fans, even though I really wanted Ghana to win. The iPad gave a real sense of community.

We’ve been using it as an iPod to play music through the stereo in the office. It makes it so easy for downloading music, and it’s cheap too ($13 for an album). We’ve downloaded more music in 3 weeks than we have in the least 3 years.

Things to be aware of before you get one:

• It doesn’t have a camera, and it doesn’t have a USB port so you can’t plug anything into it.
• The battery doesn’t seem to charge up from a PC, only from a Mac. If you haven’t got a Mac, you’ll need to charge it up from the wall instead.
• It doesn’t support Flash, but YouTube still works.
• It doesn’t have a phone, but it’s too big to use as a mobile phone anyway. However, it has a microphone so you can use it for Skype calls.
• It’s Wi-fi only so you can’t connect to the Internet outside of Wireless hotspots, although 3G iPads are now available.
• It seems a bit slippery and fragile, and until I got a folder for it, I was always scared of dropping it on the hard floor.

So the big question is “Should you get one?” Hmmmm… The iPad is very, very cool but it feels like it could be better. I would probably wait a while and see what improvements Apple makes to it and then see what else appears on the market. Most of the other manufacturers have devices in the works and some of them look pretty good.

http://mashable.com/2010/01/27/9-upcoming-tablet-alternatives-to-the-apple-ipad/

Rumour has it that Microsoft’s rumoured tablet device has been cancelled:
http://gizmodo.com/5527442/microsoft-cancels-innovative-courier-tablet-project

And Cisco has recently announced a tablet device aimed at business customers:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11156/index.html

If anyone wants to have a play with the iPad, I’ve got it here at the Mogul office most days. Come and check it out!

These phones allow you to browse the web in much the same way you browse the web with your computer.

And more and more people are doing exactly that, with mobile versions of Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter becoming very popular for mobile users.

You might be thinking about how a mobile version of your own website can add value to your business, and the good news is that we know how to do this stuff!

So if you want to come in and talk about how a mobile version of your website might help your business, contact us today.