The Buie Knife

Introducing Instant Computational Knowledge. After 'Gee Whiz' Factor, Will It Become Useful?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Could make Google look old hat!

Drawing on the world's online databases, this site gives you instant computational knowledge. Type in your location -- it'll instantly give you the weather, your longitude and latitude. It'll calculate the calories and nutritional value in just about any food. Type in "calories in Whopper," for example, and you learn not only that a Burger King Whopper has 730 calories, but 390 fat calories, and lots of other nutritional information. (Imagine having this capacity on your smart phone as you stand in line at a fast-food restaurant -- might make you walk out.) Ask who was the president in 1923. It'll tell you. I guess we'll eventually have a chip of this site implanted into our brains! Created by mathematical genius Stephen Wolfram, the site went live May 16, 2009. Some say it's out of beta too early, that it has flaws, and that it could make us stupid by giving us information we should calculate ourselves. Maybe so, but it's still cool to try it out.

How Restaurants, Lawyers, Plumbers and Other Small Businesses Can Use Facebook

The next phase for social networking sites like Facebook is for businesses to find added value in the site. Pizza Hut may be one of the first, with more than 800,000 fans or friends who receive special offers and new product announcements, and have the opportunity to order online. Interview.

The independent blog InsideFacebook.com featured several tips for small businesses:

• 3 Things Restaurants and Bars Can Do on Facebook.
• 10 Things Businesses Can Do on Facebook.
• 3 Things All Plumbers and Local Service Providers Should Do on Facebook
• 3 Things Lawyers Should Do to Market Themselves on Facebook.

Related:

• SocialMedia.com: Generating positive word of mouth about brands and products.
• Small Businesses Solicit Consumer Suggestions On Facebook

Future of Mobile Social Networking Is Here: Friends Recommend Nearby Restaurants On Your Phone

Om Malik, Business Week: "A clue to the future comes courtesy of a new Web- and mobile-based recommendation service from New York-based startup, Goodrec . It allows me to recommend books, restaurants, or places, then shares them with my friends on Facebook. The service aggregates the recommendations from my social network and puts them to use when I need some help making decisions. When looking for a restaurant recommendation in say, Dallas, I can pull up recommendations from my friends on my iPhone. These recommendations are an appropriate place to offer highly relevant advertising—whether it comes from the application developer or Facebook. My bet is that Facebook will start an ad network to target application developers such as Goodrec." Malik's article is entitled, "Why Facebook's Future Is Mobile: Facebook's mobile application brings together location-based data with social networking—and provides advertisers with pinpointed targets."

New Social Media Tools for Small Businesses, State and Local Governments, Non-profit Organizations

I presented at the NC Main Street Conference in Statesville on "Positioning Downtown for Success in the New Economy." State and local governments, small businesses and non-profits should utilize new social media tools such as Facebook, Linkedin.com and YouTube as well as many others, I contend. They are integral in the increasingly networked economy. 

I'm very impressed with the beauty of Statesville and the number of people in attendance at the conference -- about 500 -- and the interesting exhibits by vendors.

Money quote: "Wars are won in the winter," said Hilary Greenberg, who was hired in 1982 to head up Statesville's fledgling Main Street program, a job that essentially entailed turning the tide on a trend that was seeing the city's downtown turn into a ghost town. "The winter — the hard economic times — will end, but those who make it through it will come out stronger, and that is going to be the ones who have been prepared and ready." -- "Mainstream Event Sees Return of Downtown Guru," from Stateville.com

Here's my handout on new social media tools.

Communicating in the New Economy
2009 Main Street Conference, January 29, 2009
Presenter: Jim Buie, President, Jim Buie and Associates. www.jimbuie.com

Small Businesses on Twitter?

I'm giving a presentation to small businesses on how to use new media tools to increase their visibility, strengthen relationships with customers, get clients, recommendations for potential employees. Off the top of my head I know of two local businesses that use Twitter.com. As of this date:

• Weaver Street Market of Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough has 289 followers so far. They announce specials, new soups, new products, new coffees, bands scheduled to perform, gift ideas, etc.
• Carrboro Coworking has 207 followers.

Smbusiness on Twitter, with 936 followers, recommends that Twitter users develop "authenticity before marketing. Have personality. Build community." Show that you're a real person before you simply post products and deals.

Zappos, the online retailer, has more than 40,000 followers on Twitter.

Dell Computer has created a "social media for small business" section on Facebook.

Photo I took with My Blackberry Storm Cell Phone...But I've Had 5 PDA Phones in 18 Months

Butterfly Rainforest Exhibit in Gainesville, Fl
(For details about the exhibit at the Florida Museum of Natural History, click.) Photo uploaded by jimbuie3

I got a Blackberry Storm for Christmas -- it's the Verizon Wireless and Blackberry answer to the I-Phone -- sleek and cool. I'm still learning it, but I must say the camera is outstanding. A FLICKR application is included to easily upload photos from the phone wirelessly to the Internet.

Another cool feature of the Storm is the ability to watch an ENTIRE movie in crisp, clear digital color on my phone -- great when you're waylaid in the car or in an airport. (Update: six months later, I confess I've only watched one movie on the phone -- screen too small...much prefer to watch movies on the laptop.)

You can watch Youtube.com videos on it, if you have a high-speed data plan, though sometimes they hiccup. It's easy to integrate Facebook and Twitter, to keep up with your social networks, to share ideas, news and status updates.

To fully utilize the Storm's features, such as web surfing, you need an Internet data plan from Verizon wireless, which is $60 a month for unlimited access (kinda pricey). This version of the Storm has bluetooth but no ability to connect to a home or public wifi connection. (Update: The Storm 2, released in fall 2009, reportedly has wifi.)

The touch-screen Blackberry Storm is certainly an advance to no longer need a a stylus as I did for my PC PHONE. I tended to lose or misplace a stylus about once a month. But there are some frustrations with the Storm so far.

The touch-screen keyboards (the Storm has two) were initially time-consuming, especially before they "learn" what you are likely to type. Perhaps they were not properly calibrated on my Storm, but it took about twice as long as it should to simply type my name or a single message. One of the touch-screen keyboards I find completely unusable.

Update: I conclude that PDA phones are still not as solidly built, nor is the software as reliable and convenient as it should be. Two months after I started using the Blackberry Storm, the software crashed and I lost all of my data. Fortunately, I didn't lose a lot, and Verizon Wireless sent me a new one with no questions asked. The new one has an updated operating system and far more reliable keyboard.

But consider this: since I joined the PDA world in October, 2007, (1) My first Pocket PC, built in 2005-6 and purchased for $200, froze up repeatedly due to the unstable Windows Mobile operating system. I returned it. (2) The screen of my second Pocket PC cracked when I dropped it. I returned it and got my $200 back. (3) I purchased a third PocketPC second hand from a friend for $100 who said it had barely been used. It worked fine for a year, then the screen cracked when, in my pants pocket, it made contact with the steering wheel of my car as I was sliding into the driver's seat.

In short, I've had 5 PDA phones in 18 months.

Dispatches from Computer Hell

It seems a few days a year, if not a full week, I spend in computer hell. Is this not the human condition, true of most of us?

A lightning storm knocked out my cable modem (provided by Time-Warner), wireless Internet (provided by a D-Link router), and digital telephone service (provided by  Vonage), but I was determined to troubleshoot the problems myself.

Life Without Cable TV

More than a year ago, my wife and I cut the Cable TV, because our son tended to vegetate in front of it. We subsist on rabbit ears, and two consistently clear and crisp channels (PBS and CBS). "How can you be that disconnected from popular culture?" Appalled friends ask.

We order movies, and television series such as Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm (which aired on HBO) from Netflix or download movies from Netflix.com. A surprising number of television shows, from the best skits of Saturday Night Live to The Office, to my favorite news programs, are streamed online, on demand. And we can find most games we're interested in watching, such as the exciting NCAA final between Kansas and Memphis (including overtime! Kansas won its first NCAA title in 20 years), streamed live on CBS Sportsline or on the NCAA web site. (Hat tip to Ed Cone for inspiring me to blog about this.)

So now we curl up together with the laptop, or occasionally squabble over who gets to use it to watch something. Thankfully, my son no longer vegetates in front of the television. He only vegetates in front of the computer now. His latest obsession is Maple Story, an online role-playing game. Isn't that an improvement? Not sure.

Previous:

• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
• Convergence Between Movies, Television, Radio and Computers Has Arrived

"New Ways for Nonprofits to Amplify Their Issues Using New Media"

I was part of a panel at the NC Center for Nonprofits 2008 Public Policy Forum in Raleigh, along with Lynn Bonner of The News and Observer, Terry Zurowski of News 14 Carolina, and moderated by Trisha Lester, vice president of the NC Center for Nonprofits. Great turnout, lots of interesting questions, and lots of interest in new media. If anyone wants to post an additional question here, feel free.

I recommend engaging young people, who are already familiar with many online tools, in service learning to build your online presence and social networks. I had a handout of online resources, but didn't get a chance to distribute it, so I'm posting it below. If you can think of or recommend additional online resources, add them in the comments section.

Innovative Internet Strategy for Nonprofits

Michael Stein, one of the original pioneers in use of the Internet by non-profit organizations, has a great blog on Internet strategy for nonprofits. I first heard Michael speak on this topic in DC in the mid-1990s. Some of his recent topics:

• Two good articles on online social networks
• Inside a successful online fundraising campaign: Breast Cancer Fund
  
• Fifteen nonprofits recognized by Convio for online success
• Using Facebook and MySpace for advocacy and fundraising: the Humane Society of the United States
• Facebook: Tool for Social Change