Today my HootSuite client was offline for a while, which was a big surprise. In general Hootsuite is a very reliable service. Fortunately, I was informed this was due to a remarkable update. Some time late I noticed significant changes to the social media dashboard beginning with a completely refreshed HTML5 user interface, plus geo-located search, native Twitter ReTweets, and integrated Google Analytics.

For me Hootsuite was already the best Social Media dashboard for both personal and team based social media management. Today’s improvements prove Hootsuite continuously keeps improving its service.

HTML5 powered

With the recent announcement of Google’s HTML5 site and many other brands like Apple on-board, HootSuite has made a substantial investment in this new technology standard. HTML5 allows them to release unique features like geo-search and drag & drop. This combined with the improved performance with more responsive tabs and streams makes using Hootsuite a real pleasure.

Page redesign for better access to the streams

The most noticeable change is a fully redesigned dashboard, with more space for accounts, updates and an intuitive arrangement for HootSuite’s many features. Additionally, you can now choose a design theme which suits your tastes.

And many more

This is just a first quick impression of the new release. See the Hootsuite blog for more detailed information about Hootsuite 5.

A debate titled: The freedom perspective of digital media with William Echikson, Communications Director of Google EMEA seemed promising. It doesn’t happen everyday you can hear the future Google plans directly from one of the leaders. It turned out differently. After the debate you could leave the room rather disoriented. Is Google really just looking for more content to earn more and do we need the government to protect our copyrights?

William Echikson visited Gdansk 22 years ago as a reporter. Sending news was completely different from today. The Internet provides everybody the freedom to share their news with the world. It decreases the obstacles for free expression. On the other hand the Internet is an area where breaching copyrights happens on a regular basis.

The Google mission

Google has been started by two guys working from a garage not knowing how to make money. They basically concentrated on gaining as many visitors as possible. We can conlude this appeared to be a good concept. Today Google earns thanks to the high amount of visitors. This enables them to sell advertisements. According to William “Google is just an advertising company”.

Google aims to disclose more and more information through the Internet, they offer a platform where others can publish content. Basically this should generate even more visitors of course. The more frequent Internet users will visit Google sites the more advertisement space they can sell. William discussed two examples: Google Books and Google News.

Google Books aims to publish books you cannot buy anymore. Think about copyright free older books. They already agreed with several libraries to publish selected books. They plan to scan a tremendous amount of books from American libraries in about 8 years time. Comparable projects would take most governments at least 20 years.

There are also many books which are no longer available anymore, out of print. The publisher still owns the copyright. Google enables them to publish these books online to make them available to an increased audience. It’s up to the copyright owner to decide whether or not the reader has to pay. Of course Google will share in the future sales, but is this wrong?

Something similar is applicable to Google News. By publishing news on Google News, which is ads free, newspapers are receiving more traffic on their websites. By selling advertisement space on the news papers website both Google and the news papers earn because of all the generated traffic.

Is governmental control needed to protect our copyrights?

In the beginning of Google Books they published pieces of still copyrighted books. The intention was to show the publishers the potential of Google Books and to achieve a win-win situation. Under pressure of the EU the European copyrighted books have been removed from Google Books.

One of the main questions is whether or not the government should act like that. Do we have to be protected against Google? You could say that Google is digitizing all this information for their own gain only. Google is a normal company, that has to earn money. Enabling them to digitize everything and to store it in their databases can lead to abuse by Google. They can use all the content to improve their language algorithms. This could lead to improved search and translation services which Google could start asking money for.

The governmental control concerns Google. It blocks the openness of the Internet. Turkey in example has just announced a two year ban on YouTube. Google had a lot of freedom in China around the Olympic games. But recently it became impossible for Google to offer the openness they want.

In Europe there is a fundamental issue. Take the Google directors in Italy who have been convicted of a crime because of one indeed horrible movie which was online. According to William the movie makers have to be punished, not the providers of a content sharing platform.

More and more artists/copyright owners decide to go online. Monte Python has been fighting for years to protect their copyrights. Many people were illegaly publishing Monte Python material. Recently they decided to stop fighting and to join them. They allowed Google to publish their movies online. And they profit from this decision.

What’s wrong with content sharing?

Enabling people to publish content online is one of Google’s aims and in my opinion it’s logical they want to earn money for that. Google is investing fortunes in the development of their platform and sooner or later this has to pay off. But this doesn’t mean governmental control is not needed. We should prevent a company like Google will abuse its position. Copyrights have to be respected.

Google claims they do the best they can to prevent copyright breach. If somebody reports copyright breach Google will take appropriate measures. They also try to prevent copyright breach by scanning material which have been published online.

On the other hand more and more people decide to share their “copyright” with others through creative commons licenses. They believe the end result will improve by sharing. Platforms like Google support this in a perfect way. They increase the potential audience and make you can reach people you wouldn’t reach in the traditional way.

Poland, Gdansk, it’s time to open up!

The legal structure in Poland hardly enables a more open approach to sharing artistic rights. Gdanks is a candidate to become the European Capital of Culture in 2016 and uses the pay off: “Freedom of Culture, Culture of Freedom”. That’s why Gdansk should stimulate that artists start sharing their copyrights through more open creative commons licenses. By doing so Gdansk can stay the city of freedom, a status Gdansk gained because of the Solidarity “revolution” in the 80′s.

What’s is your opinion about the increase of online available information? Do you have experience with creative commons licenses? Do we have to watch out for these Google activities?

It might sound like big words: “social media revolution”, but hopefully you will agree something is happening in the online world. An increasing amount of people shares information and their opinions online. They by-pass traditional information sources and distribution channels and decide based on the opinion of like-wise people they meet online. Before I already wrote it’s no longer a question whether or not it will influence your business. Today they main question is when and how it will affect you. The following (recently updated) movie shows in very short time what’s happening.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

Today two of my social media students at the University of Gdansk presented their final case. They made use of a very funny South Park movie showing the (non)sense of being online friends. It shows we might treat social networks now and then a bit too serious. We had to laugh a lot and I would like to share it with you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgkfghupFE

Recently my iPhone became very slow, it hardly responded anymore. I tried to fix it in several ways, but nothing helped. After searching the Internet for a while I found several potential solutions and at least 3 were helpful to me. Feel free to try yourself!

1. Reboot your iPhone on a regular basis

Especially when you are frequently installing apps from the App Store you should reboot your iPhone after the installation has finished. It seems that your phone needs to clean up some memory space. Switch your iPhone off by pressing the on/off button on top for a while to reboot.

2. Close your web pages

In general I don’t close the web pages I’ve been browsing with my Safari browser. Keeping these pages opened seems to use a lot of memory and will reduce the performance of your iPhone. Close a page by clicking the numbered icon on the right bottom, close by pressing the cross.

3. Clear the browser cache

Clearing the browser cache improved the most for me. This option is a bit more hidden. Choose the “Settings” icon on your “home” screen. Look up the “Safari” line and click.

There you will have to select “Clear Cache“. Also “Clear History” and “Clear Cookies” (be aware that you will loose some default settings) could improve the performance.

After performing the above actions my iPhone started performing better again. Hopefully it will help you as well. In case you know other improvements, please share below.

Currently I’m testing both Foursquare and Gowalla. These tools enable me to check-in at locations I visit. In an interactive way I’m investigating my own neighbourhood and unknown cities. The competition part of the applications make it even more funny to use. By visiting a location often you can become the Major of that side on Foursquare. Of course people already started faking their check-ins to gain points. Therefore, Foursquare decreased the distance from the spot to login. And to prevent further abuse they hired the Foursquare Cops (LOL!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4rfzYul9O8

Social media are there to stay, whether you like it or not. At its best you can make advantage of them by including social media into your marketing and communication strategy. But at least you will have to follow what people are online telling about your brand, product or you in person. But how do you do that? How can you prevent this becomes a time consuming task? I will explain two tools which I use frequently.

Every day huge amounts of information are being added to the Internet. Think of blog posts, reviews and comments, news items and updates from various social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook andTwitter. It is impossible to keep track on everything. Yet this is important.

It’s fun to see how others write positively about you. A thank you message by you should follow. And it’s even more important to act quickly when someone’s sharing their dissatisfaction. An accurate response to a negative expression is a very good impression among online users. Everyone realizes you can make mistakes. This is not a shame if you at least react with an appropriate response.

Fortunately, there are several tools that continuously scan the Internet for new expressions. Besides several expensive solutions, there are two very good free solutions: Google Alerts and Social Mention.

Google Alerts, e-mail with the most recent Google search results

With Google Alerts you receive daily or weekly by email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on the query you have defined yourself.

You can use Google to search for any random keyword, think of:

• Your company name
• Product name
• Names of employees
• Names of competitors and industry relevant keywords

On the page of Google Alerts the requested Alert can be created. In the above picture you will see I created an alert for the following “search string”:

“peter horsten” OR phorsten OR petersopinion

Determining the right search string is relatively simple by using the Google advanced search page. Enter the keywords Google should continuously search for. Click on “Google Search” and the Google search box shows the search string to copy.

You will receive an e-mail to confirm you would like to receive the alerts, instantly, daily or weekly. Once you start receiving the alert a quick analysis of the e-mail message will show whether or not immediate action is needed.

Social Mention, real-time social media search and analysis

Social Mention, the Google Alert for social media. Gradually, this distinction is disappearing. Google Alerts, like Google, now fully focuses on social media as well. The basic concept of Social Mention is similar. Again, a search term can be made (also to be determined using the Google advanced search method described above) and the result will be send by e-mail as well. The big difference is that you can instantly watch the result online, including additional statistics.

What I recommend?

Normally I don’t mind to share my opinion …. In this case, I think both solutions are useful. Social Mention certainly has the advantage of the immediately visible online result. Tuning the search terms is therefore more convenient. Social Mention also gives more additional statistics. On the other hand, Social Mention mainly shows results from Social Networks and Google Alertsseems better in showing results like blog posts.

Advice: Just try them both and see for yourself what is best and / or works most enjoyable. I invite you cordially to share your opinion below. Let’s learn from each other!

Today at the 4Developers conference in Poznan, Poland, I presented the audience my concern about the existing gap in between client’s need and the reality of the software developers. For some reason we seem not to manage to understand each other well enough. Too many projects do not deliver the result the client was hoping for. Honestly, it’s no longer a question whether or not this gap has to be closed. We just have to do it to make software more successful and clients more happy. But who’s responsible to bridge the gap? In my opinion the software developers. I will try to explain why. [Picture source: Allaboutjazz.com]

Software projects fail too often

Based on many data sources and publications we can only conclude software projects “fail” too often, meaning:

• The project is not delivered on time
• The project is not delivered within budget
• The project is not offering the requested/promised functionality

A combination of the above is happening as well of course.

It’s not easy to improve but we just have to

Neither I’m going to claim I know best how to solve the issue. Honestly I’m learning every day of the mistakes we are making ourselves. As every other software company we have both successful and improvable projects.

Nor will I tell you it’s easy to bridge the gap in between clients/users and software developers. These are people with a different background, different interests and a different focus. Both communicate, think and express themselves totally differently. You could say clients are from Mars and software developers from Venus.

But one thing is for sure. We need to bridge this gap. Business will have to talk together with IT, it should neither be a continuous fight nor competition.

Are we willing to work together as partners?

To realize excellent software solutions a developer will need very well specified requests. Based on a quick poll among the audience and my own experience I conclude too often clients are just not able to really specify their needs. At least not in terms a developer will understand.

I don’t blame them because I believe it’s almost impossible to fully define your needs in such a way that everybody will understand it.

We will have to find another way of communicating the client’s needs. At it’s best developers are defining the needs together with the client. Several “best practice” or “Agile” methods are available to support this process.

It’s important that we define what the software application has to do in terms the business understands. When using Business Driven Development it would look like this:

Discussing the needs in this way will also lead to all kind of usefull user stories which will make the developers understand the needs better. Besides discussion will lead to more creative ideas! Together you can prioritize them. While prioritizing it will also become clear that currently too many useless features are being developed. By setting the right priorities together you can also safe a lot of money.

The next step would be to start prototyping. You can do this by means of wireframes, mockups, draft GUI’s etc. The aim is to show the client/user as soon as possible what it’s all going to look like. The instant user feedback will show the developers whether or not they are still on the right track. Communication is king in this phase. Developers should be willing to except changes in business priorities during the development. A user will better understand what he really needs once he sees the first prototypes and working releases.

Honestly, the method doesn’t matter, because it’s just a method. If the willingness to improve is there from both sides and when they invest time and effort in defining the project you can choose any method that suits you best. The cooperation as partners will be the biggest gain, period!

Developers will have to start this change

Developers their life will become a lot easier if they understand the client’s needs better. Therefore, they should make the first step.

And why wouldn’t you? Just imagine that you won’t have to fix “bugs” anymore and that the amount of unexpected change requests drops? How would that feel? I know it’s scary, but please just give it a try. What can you loose? Add some funk and have more fun making better solutions, may be even the best solutions.

But this doesn’t mean it will be easy. Especially when clients think in the traditional model of sending a request and agreeing about a fixed priced, fixed date project. Both sides will have to trust each other. The business has to dare to share their ideas and needs. If it’s hard for your development team to achieve this interaction with your client just start working like this yourself. One of the team members could “act” like the client. A sales person, consultant or business analyst are in general best for this job.

We try to achieve this level of trust by having many (in)formal meetings at the start of the project. Having a drink and dinner together makes you start acting different. Several workshops together show the added value of such an investment.

If we don’t change the competition will overrule us

Having a nice and relaxed 9 to 5 (or more common in Poland an 8 to 4) job you might not be willing to bother about the above. But software doesn’t stop at 4 pm. Clients are depending on software solutions 24 hours a day. And business dynamics are hard to plan.

If you are willing to support the business better this will demand an additional investment. You will have to spend time together, probably you should learn more about the business. That will take time, after hours.

But if you don’t do this, the competition is waiting. In China and India there are many young, eager and clever software developers willing to take our jobs. Today the main issue for the client will be that it’s even harder to outsource the work to these countries. But sooner or later they will find out how to use these resources if we as Polish and European developers don’t manage to seduce our clients.

It’s not about methods, but about “funky” cooperation

Hopefully I managed to show we can not solve the current situation just by implementing a new “funky” method. There are more steps needed. I will summarize them:

1. Get to know each other: Business en IT will have to invite each other to share thoughts, to understand each other
2. Trust each other: The relationship in between Business en IT will have to be based on trust
3. Stimulate creativity: Business needs should be defined together
4. Make things understandable: Business needs have to be defined in an understandable way, as “user stories”
5. Set priorities, exclude waste: The business sets the priorities for the implementation of the features
6. Interact: Development should be more iterative and interactive based on prototyping
7. Communicate: During the development we have to communicate, communicate, communicate
8. Change is the norm: Developers have to be open to changes. Business needs will change over time

The above is a rough summary of today’s presentation at 4Developers in Poznan, Poland. Feel free to check the slides. I’m looking forward to your feedback, comments and opinions below. Thanks for your attention!

After my presentation @mesirii send me the following link where Martin Fowler and Dan North discuss bridging the gap as well.

I just came along a nice blog post by Drew McLellan, Social Media Cheat Sheet, where he presents the Social Landscape created by CMO.com. The sheet shows what social media can be used best depending on your personal aim. The bottom line conclusion for me is that you have to make you will be on YouTube to gain most from social media.

Just like Drew states I’m frequently asked what social media site somebody should use. In general I tried to figure out what social media site would fit best. Based on the Social Media Cheat Sheet from now on it’s possible to provide a better answer.

Depending on your aim you can now choose the best performing sites. To achieve this you will have to be aware what you want to use social media sites for:

• Customer communication
• Brand exposure
• Driving traffic to your site or
• SEO?

Analysing CMO.com’s social media landscape I conclude I will have to do a lot more on YouTube. I’m curious about your opinion!