Playing Business and Windows Mobile

The coming of BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android software has left everyone googoo gaga over touch phones. The entertainment and large app stores on the web for these devices is overwhelming – in some cases saturating the market. But a handful of phones out there are still running quietly with Windows Mobile. But what will become of this operating system and its future?

I took a big risk recently, and I am curious to see where it goes. I acquired an HTC Maple smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.5 and have been playing with it vigorously for the last two days. I want to explore its capabilities and see what applications for business I can find. I briefly played with an older phone that had WM 6.0, and it was very slow. However, the Maple/6.5 combo has proven fast and reliable. And it has a potential for marketers.

Above is a Quick-Read (QR) Barcode. You can instantly transfer phone numbers, web addresses, SMS, and plain old text. So what are the applications? Think buses, trains, transit, and public places. If you download a barcode reader like i-nigma you’ll see that it takes you to our charity project Snow4Innocents website. And it only takes a fraction of a second. Microsoft MUST capitalize on this by integrating this with their Mobile OS. Push a button and “bing” you have information transferred to your phone.

I was legitimately excited when I used the Maple’s homescreen. I haven’t been impressed with the WM default homescreens, but the Maple’s is functional. I have easy access to SMS and view new emails/messages. This is key to getting a phone widely adopted by businesses. My only wish is easy home screen access to change WiFi access points and easy access to settings. The new Opera Mini browser already proves itself with a slick interface. If Microsoft can pull all of this together it has the potential to gain leverage in the market.

Very soon, I am going to try to develop an app for this phone. I want to see if I can integrate a meaningful interface with the homescreen and also plug twitter directly into it as well. Data access isn’t slow – the phone has the potential.

Do you have an app idea? Don’t hesitate to send me a message! Send me a note straight through the ACG website here: http://www.avalanchegroup.ca/#/contact.

Return From Africa

It’s August 1st and we’ve returned from the Snow4Innocents (s4i) charity expedition in Africa. We will be wrapping up (s4i) operations for the remainder of August and will resume business-as-usual on September 1st.

We’d like to thank everyone that has participated in the (s4i) charity. Oakley, IonEarth.com, VancityBuzz.com, Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland, and Rwenzori Trekking Services all contributed to the great success.

Want to see more? Visit http://www.snow4innocents.org/.

Notice: ACG Is Going to Africa

In an important announcement made this week to existing and potential clients, ACG explained that operations will be suspended until Sept 1st. Here’s why we’re excited to tell you that we’re going to Africa:

As Executive Director of ACG, I will be traveling to Uganda to summit and ski Mt. Stanley, Africa’s third largest peak in a bid to raise funds to fight childhood disease. The expedition has been named Snow4Innocents and is raising money for Uganda’s only children’s hospital, Holy Innocents.

From May 1st to Sept 1st, I am dedicating 100% of my time to see that this campaign is a success and reach our goals of funding the completion of construction of the hospital. I ask you to follow along on the Snow4Innocents website, donate, and even submit a crazy idea for me to perform on the expedition.

The impact on our existing clients will be minimal; however, we will not be taking on any new projects until Fall 2010. Any support ACG will provide will come from our partners and electronic sources. Please let us know if there is any better way we can serve you.

I look forward to returning back to Vancouver to resume operations in September, and in the interim let’s make this a great adventure.

– Justin

Earth Hour Short Tweets

The Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, The Forbidden City, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa all will be turning off their lights for Earth Hour. But how does the online community show its support? ACG will be shortening all tweets to 60 characters during Earth Hour in a gesture to save power on the mighty Twitter servers that must save, process, and regurgitate the community tweets.

From 8:30-9:30pm wherever you are tweeting from and no matter what you need to say, join ACG in a 60-character tweet hour to show our support for the Earth!

How to Use New Retweets

Update: Tweetdeck has fixed this issue in the latest version of their client. I still suggest, however, being aware of lost information because of Retweets. You never know if an @reply is misspelled or neglected because of system issues.

When I was taking the usual morning look at Twitter and Facebook, I noticed that there were quite a few companies offering deals if you retweeted their updates. I wanted to look into how these companies would fulfill their promises, and I realized that there’s a large gap in feedback with Twitter’s new Retweet functionality. Have a look at the image below:

Hopefully you’ve noticed the Retweet link on the web client navigation. But what about other applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic, Hootsuite, and others? TweetDeck supports mentions but as of version 0.33.2 you cannot add a column that supports Twitter’s new Retweet functionality. I haven’t seen it in other clients and I could not find a post of mine that was retweeted in any mentions list in the web client.

If your company is running a campaign to “Retweet to win a product”, you absolutely need to be aware of Twitter’s Retweet functionality and find users that are Retweeting according to the new functionality. There is likely a pool of users that you cannot see that are retweeting your posts, and this can throw your analytics. If these “hidden” retweeters are not seeing retribution for their retweets, you may have an unexpected PR issue as well.

So what’s happening with the Retweets? Since Twitter has expanded its API to designate certain tweets as reposted/retweeted items, it will propogate that tweet to followers of the retweeter but does not include an actual mention of the retweeter in the timeline. Therefore, Retweets will not show up in traditional Mention timelines that search for the tweeters “@” username. Web clients will need to adjust for this accordingly.

Legacy of Olympic Social Media

Never before has North America seen such a digital intimacy with the Olympics. From the first Canadian gold won by Alex Bilodeau to play-by-play updates by thousands in the final Canada vs. USA game, the number of tweets to hit the airwaves and the Olympic Facebook fan pages were in record numbers.

ACG captured a few of the thousands of tweets sent out when Team Canada won Men’s Hockey Gold as depicted above. Never has emotion and micro-blogging been at an all-time high because of a hockey game. The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics have absolutely changed the way social media will be used by the world to watch and cheer for their athletes and countries and, of course, connect with everyone else via social media.

Many Vancouver locals and visitors also were able to partake in the games themselves thanks to the hundreds (if not thousands) of Facebook groups, events pages, and fan pages that described local concerts, cultural houses, and parties in the city. The social media pages created in light of the Olympics have energized the entire city to flock to the city center in record numbers. This mass gathering will be interpreted as a renewed sense of patriotism for the Maple Leaf flag and renewed strength in Canadian athletics.

The Olympic movement of 2010 isn’t over yet. Closing ceremonies and another night of excitement await the city.

Valentine’s Offer to CDN Women’s Snowboard!

In spirit of Valentine’s and our own secret love for Canadian snow, we challenge the Canadian Women’s Olympic Snowboard team to bring home a gold medal and we’ll take the female Canadian winners out on a Valentine’s dinner date!

Of course dinner will be post-Valentines, but who says you can’t celebrate cupid’s day a week after? We want to get Canadian’s pumped on our awesome girls snowboard team this Olympics and take them to the Gold!

The events we want to include in our offer are ladies Snowboardcross (Feb 16), ladies Halfpipe (Feb 18), and ladies Parallel Giant Slalom (Feb 26). We know we can get our Olympic Canadian ladies boarders pumped and going for the win!

So is it a deal Canada?

Storytelling and UX

After having the weekly browse through the web blogs, I came across a great article that highlights many of the points we like to show our clients when designing their websites.

In many cases, a visit to a website needs to be like watching TV. A documentary, sitcom, or movie has a planned storyline designed to introduce the viewer to the concepts, pull them into the story, reach a climax, and give them with a conclusion that leaves them wanting to experience it all over again. Designing a website is just as emotional as a documentary, and the user experience needs to be planned in the same way.

Have a look at the Smashing Magazine article that touches on “Storytelling”. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/29/better-user-experience-using-storytelling-part-one/

Functional Phrasing

While designing the navigation for a new client, I sat down to chart out the terminology used for each page and its appropriate category. The first words any designer would use are “Home”, “Products”, “Contact” – they’re common on any website.

However after mapping the entire user experience and seeing that this client’s site wasn’t going to be cookie cutter, I realized that the descriptive words used in the navigation are not the easiest to understand while navigating the site. This client mainly operates in the econferencing sector, and words like “audio” and “video” were going to immediately confuse the visitor.

What’s the solution? Functional phrasing! Design navigation titles that describe the functionality of the page (or product). “Video” was either replaced or subtitled by “Studio Conferencing”, allowing the user to better understand the product. This phrasing also helped to simplify the navigation, cutting out “disambiguity” pages that contain a giant list of products.

New Developments

We’re excited to start rolling in the holiday season with new developments at ACG. We’re still hard at work internally, but here’s a few developing points going on with us:

1) New website to be released for the Mountain Shadow Pub. ACG is preparing to launch a new website for the favorite North Burnaby pub. The website will be a mix of flash and AJAX navigation, and will also feature a simple mobile site for cell phone users.

2) Announcing our social media flagship project dubbed “Justin”. Justin (shortened from “Just-In”) will be a social media management tool, allowing users to monitor social media and have a central social communication platform. Justin has been quietly discussed with a few candidate Alpha testers in the last two months, and we are hoping to soon have a test version ready for our testers. We currently do not have a set schedule, but we are 80% to Alpha. Justin will be replacing our test app, Dustin.

3) Working with Crush Marketing! ACG is happy to be working with Frank Leffelaar from Crush. Frank has ten years of internet marketing experience with large European corporations, and we are happy to be working with his expertise.