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Facebook: Building Successful Social Media Campaigns For Their Site

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:01:19 +0000

Both Electronic Arts and Microsoft have created social media campaigns for Facebook. Kevin Barenblat, CEO and Co-Founder of Context Optional discusses the creation of these campaigns on Facebook and how companies are making more social media connections through Facebook. Barenblat explains how Microsoft further developed the idea of a poke and geared it to the office. He also delves into how Electronic Arts taught more people about gaming with their gaming application.

Tags: context optional, EA, facebook, Jennifer Jones, kevin barenblat, Marketing Voices, Microsoft, social media

DirectPointe Provides Expert Remote Computer Support to Home Users

Brad Baldwin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:49:26 +0000

DirectPointe, an award-winning managed service provider (MSP), has added a new home computer care service with its DirectPointe Home offering. Until now, computer service meant disassembly and transporting your computer into retail location where a “geek” would add your machine to a 10-day-wait queue. But DirectPoint Home changes the game with its remote expert support where users can get help 24×7x365, all without the hassle of disconnecting cords and cables.

DirectPointe Home provides three levels of service: PC Care, On-Demand and Total PC. PC Care is a preventative service that solves 80% of the most common computer problems by doing routine maintenance. On Demand provides fast support so that you can get your problem fixed now! Total PC is an unlimited package that provides everything a home computer user needs to have peace of mind when it comes to their computer, including virus protection, online security, data back-up and unlimited support.

Seth Bailey, VP of the Consumer Division at DirectPointe, talks to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices about the offering and the benefits for retiring baby boomers or parents hoping to find relief from their mal-ware downloading youngsters.

Tags: Brad Baldwin, DirectPointe Home, PC Maintenance, Remote Expert, RockyMountainVoices, Seth Bailey, support

Bourquin Brothers on The Transition to New Media

Brad Baldwin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:35:52 +0000

Tim and Emile Bourquin are the founders and producers of the New Media Expo, the most popular convention for podcasters, online video creators and bloggers. The expo and 2,000+ attendees are heading to Las Vegas August 14-16, 2008. Registration is still open, but the special “early” rate ends June 30th.

Brad Baldwin connects with Tim and Emile at a Podcast Tuneup party where they were talk about adding more video and live streaming sessions at this year’s expo. They also discuss the transition of traditional media outlets that are adopting and incorporating new media into their content offerings.

Special thanks to the Podcast Tuneup team for use of their new recording studio for this podcast.

Tags: Brad Baldwin, Emile Bourquin, new media, New Media Expo, Podcast Tuneup, RockyMountainVoices, Tim Bourquin

Social Influence Marketing: It’s All About Your Peers

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:01:44 +0000

Who is in your social circle? What influence do they have on you and what you purchase? Shiv Singh, VP of Social Media at Avenue A Razorfish thinks your peers have enormous influence on what you do and what you buy. Talking to Jennifer Jones, Shiv delves into how marketers should best use peer influence to their advantage and where he has seen peer influencers have the greatest impact.

Tags: Avenue A Razorfish, Jennifer Jones, Marketing, Marketing Voices, peer influence, shiv singh, social media

What’s New: Empowering your sales force, SAVO Group

Cydni Tetro — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:00:38 +0000

John O’Donnell, a Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist with Microsoft, met with Drew at Convergence 2008 to talk about the challenge of making a Dynamics CRM solution compelling for sales people and how his company’s product (SAVO) can help drive Dynamics CRM usage by making important sales information easy to find, manipulate and rate and therefore encourage sales professionals to access and update Dynamics CRM each day.

Tags: CRM, John O’Donnell, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, S + S, SAAS, SAVO Group, USISV

Student Creates Multi-Touch Software and Table for Science Project

Brad Baldwin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:54:59 +0000

Here’s one student that takes the “Science Fair” to the next level. Bridger Maxwell, a high school student at Utah County Academy of Sciences (UCAS) decided to create a multi-touch table for his Science Fair entry–kinda like an iPhone screen, and Microsoft Surface on a budget.

The multi-touch experience allows for object movement, rotation, growing and shrinking, and even multi-hand, multi-person use. Inspired by movies like Minority Report, Maxwell leverages Apple OS X, code developed during Google Summer of Code called Open Touch, and his own code. The table, made from plexiglass and a dissembled Acer monitor, uses infrared light emitting diodes and an IR camera to detect and transmit fingertip motions as inputs.

Maxwell also expects to experience a future where multi-touch technology becomes a standard way to interact with applications, particularly for graphic manipulation and even gaming. Maxwell submitted his code back to the community at code.google.com/p/corkboard/ and has received coverage on Ars Technica and a local NBC news story.

Maxwell also expects to experience a future where multi-touch technology becomes a standard way to interact with applications, particularly for graphic manipulation and even gaming. While Maxwell didn’t get a summer internship on the iPhone team “this” year, has received coverage on Ars Technica and the local NBC news station. Not bad for a high school student.

Tags: Apple, Brad Baldwin, Bridger Maxwell, Google, iPhone, Multi-Touch, RockyMountainVoices, Summer of Code, Surface, Utah

Social Marketing Skill Set: How to Find and “Package” People

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:01:26 +0000

The digital marketplace is changing the skill set of marketers. Having knowledgeable people who “get social marketing and media” is key to success. But how does a person find the right people? Marketing Voices Jennifer Jones spoke to Matt Raggio, Managing Partner at Oak Technology Partners about what this prominent executive search recruiter recommends. His tips: Be well rounded, learn the new skills and don’t be afraid to promote yourself.

Tags: Marketing Voices, Jennifer Jones, Matt Raggio, Oak Technology Partners

The Reboot: Getting Into the Video Game Industry

Rio Pesino — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:01:18 +0000

Working in the video game industry is one thing every gamer dreams of doing. According to GameCareerGuide.com, more than 50,000 people in North America alone play, create and design video games for a living. Many gamers would jump at the chance to be paid to play video games, but most don’t know the first thing to do when it comes to getting their foot in the door. In this episode of The Reboot, host Rio Pesino speaks with video game recruiters from Bungie, LucasArts, BioWare, Ubisoft, THQ and FullSail about the hiring process, what they look for in a candidate and some insiders’ advice on how to break into the industry.

Tags: video games, gamers, The Reboot, Rio Pesino, Bungie, LucasArts, BioWare, Ubisoft, THQ, FullSail

TubeMogul: A Single Point For Uploading Video on the Web

Jennifer Jones — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:33:42 +0000

Given the tons of videos that are online now, how does a marketer get video distributed? Enter Tubemogul, a free service that provides some one a place to upload video and track it. Jennifer Jones spoke to Mark Rotblat, VP of Sales and Marketing for tubemogul, and learned how anyone who wants to get an audience with a super distribution strategy can get viewers with this free service.

Tags: Jennifer Jones, mark rotblat, Marketing Voices, online video, tubemogul, web video analytics, web video distribution

MailShadow Syncs Outlook to Gmail and Google Apps

Brad Baldwin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:28:04 +0000

Cemaphore Systems’ MailShadow for Google Apps keeps your Microsoft Outlook environment in sync with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gmail Contacts. Make a change in one, and the other is instantly updated to reflect the change. MailShadow for Google Apps is receiving a lot of attention since organizations can eliminate the expensive infrastructure, hardware, and co-location facilities required by Exchange, but still allow users to leverage the client-side productivity features in Outlook.

Tracy Scott, the VP of Marketing at Cemaphore, shows the beta version of MailShadow for Google Apps to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices. And if you’re interested in giving it a try, the beta sign-up is still open.

Tags: Brad Baldwin, Cemaphore Systems, Gmail, Google, MailShadow, Tracy Scott

H&R Block Social Media Programs Success

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:01:51 +0000

Who would ever think that a financial services company would be innovative about marketing? Paula Drum is vice president of marketing for H&R Block. In this podcast, she explains how programs using Twitter, Second Life and other onlines venues have had impressive success. As Drum tells Jennifer Jones, one of their great surprises was how much human capital they had to spend to make the programs work. She advises all marketers to truly understand just how much personnel commitment it takes to implement such extensive programs.

Tags: H&R Block, H&R Block, Jennifer Jones, marketing, Marketing Voices, Paula Drum, Second Life, social media, Twitter

The Reboot: The Pro Gamer Experience

Rio Pesino — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:01:16 +0000

Gaming is a hobby for most people, but a select few have enough talent and dedication to make it a career. Tournaments for popular games like Halo 3, Guitar Hero, Madden and NBA 2k8 are held all around the world, with huge prizes at stake. In this episode of The Reboot, host Rio Pesino puts himself in the shoes of a professional gamer and shares his experience entering an NBA 2k8 tournament, progressing through the ranks and winning it all… against a bunch of kids.

Tags: Gaming, Halo 3, Guitar Hero, Madden, NBA 2k8, The Reboot, Rio Pesino, professional gamer, pro gamer

What’s New: IdeaBlade Agile Development in the Real World

Cydni Tetro — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:20:33 +0000

Hear how IdeaBlade, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is using Agile Software Development to improve the quality of their product. In this session, William Leong, ISV Architect Evangelist, talks with Ward Bell, VP of Product Management at IdeaBlade, on how they have implemented Agile methods in their product development lifecycle. Since there are many ways to implement Agile development, it’s enlightening to see what has worked for this early pioneer of .NET application development tools.

Tags: Agile Software Development, IdeaBlade, USISV, William Leong

What’s New: Logotec Bringing Mobility to CRM

Cydni Tetro — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:12:31 +0000

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is a three-tier application that can help organizations manage front office processes, such as sales, marketing, and customer service, and serve as a development platform for business applications in different industry verticals. The platform aspects let you focus on your core needs by providing you rapid development toolkit, well documented SDK, outlook integration including offline access, mobile support, scalability including multi-tenancy, globalization support including multi-language & multi-currency, and power of choice when it comes to choosing deployment options. Sanjay Jain, ISV Architect Evangelist, speaks with Michal Klaja, CTO and Mark Frederiksen, BDM at Logotec Engineering to discuss their experience of adopting Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Platform to provide a Software + Service based Mobile solution to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 users.

Tags: Business Application Platform, Logotec Engineering, Mark Frederiksen, Michal Klaja, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, Mobile@Connector, S+S, Sanjay Jain, USISV

What’s New: Cincom Implementing Dynamics CRM

Cydni Tetro — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:33:27 +0000

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is a three-tier application that can help organizations manage front office processes, such as sales, marketing, and customer service, and serve as a development platform for business applications in different industry verticals. The platform aspects let you focus on your core needs by providing you rapid development toolkit, well documented SDK, outlook integration including offline access, mobile support, scalability including multi-tenancy, globalization support including multi-language & multi-currency, and power of choice when it comes to choosing deployment options. Sanjay Jain, ISV Architect Evangelist with Microsoft , speaks with Dan Nicholas, Sr. Director Product Research & Planning and Gregor Newland, Manager of Business Development & Alliances of Cincom Systems, to discuss their experience of adopting Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Platform to assist their complex manufacturing customers.

Tags: Application Platform, Cincom, Dan Nicholas, Gregor Newland, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, S+S, Sales and Product Configurator., Sanjay Jain, USISV

blip.tv: Cool Service For Hosting Video, Marketer’s Delight

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:01:34 +0000

If you have not heard or seen blip.tv yet, go check it out. It’s a free service for creators of user-generated content and it works well. In this podcast, Jennifer Jones speaks with Dina Kaplan, co-founder of blip.tv, to learn how serialized video shows for the Web are making it big. blip.tv handles everything so content creators can focus on what they do best: creating content. Hundreds of video shows are getting traction on the Web because of blip.tv.

Tags: blip.tv, bliptv, Dina Kaplan, Jennifer Jones, Marketing Voices, social media, user-generated content, video, Web tv

Former Organic CEO Mark Kingdon On the Power of Persona

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:01:43 +0000

In an increasingly complex world of demographic, psychographic and ethnographic research, it’s no longer safe to assume that companies actually know their customers. Harnessing the power of persona or a representative profile, which summarizes a key demographic target is a powerful means of figuring out the customer today. Mark Kingdon, formerly CEO of Organic, a digital marketing agency, spoke with Jennifer Jones at the Forrester Marketing Conference in Los Angeles in mid-April 2008 about personas and other key marketing trends today. Kingdon is now CEO of Second Life.

Tags: Mark Kingdon, Organic, Jennifer Jones, Second Life

The Reboot: Xbox Spring Showcase 2008

Rio Pesino — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:01:28 +0000

Several new games were unveiled at the Xbox Spring Showcase in San Francisco. Gears of War II, Fable 2, Too Human and Ninja Gaiden II were just a few of the games on display. The Reboot’s Rio Pesino was at the showcase to give you an inside look into the event.

Tags: Xbox, Gears of War II, Fable 2, Too Human, Ninja Gaiden II, The Reboot, Rio Pesino

Classic Scoble : Pandora bringing Internet Radio to Cell Phones

Robert Scoble — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:01:00 +0000

What was Scoble up to one year ago today? Check out today’s video for a trip down memory lane.
And for more context, check out his blog, from one year ago today!

Pandora is one of my favorite Internet services. It lets you build a customized radio station by starting with the names of your favorite bands and songs. It then brings you more music that’s similar to that. Here Pandora’s CTO, Tom Conrad, talks about the service, demos its new mobile service, and discusses new legislation under discussion that is designed to help keep Internet radio alive. For those who don’t know, Tom explains how the music industry is threatening to decimate Internet Radio providers by charging new, much higher, fees than regular radio has to pay to broadcast music. We have an interesting discussion about that while walking around San Francisco on a Saturday afternoon.

Other posts from a year ago:
Editor’s Choice: Pandora’s CTO talks music and politics

Tags: Pandora, Tom Conrad, Internet radio

Classic Scoble: Keep your laptop cool with Dean Haglund’s invention

Robert Scoble — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:55:00 +0000

What was Scoble up to one year ago today? Check out today’s video for a trip down memory lane.
And for more context, check out his blog, from one year ago today!

Dean Haglund is a comedian, actor, and inventor. You might have seen him on the X-Files or other shows. He comes into PodTech to talk about his invention which keeps your laptop cool while you’re using it in your lap.

Tags: Dean Haglund, inventor, X-Files, laptop

Citizen Journalism: Evolving Relationship Between the Press and the Public

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:01:01 +0000

Everyone has the power to participate in communication today through blogs and community groups. Many bloggers have become powerful, given the popularity of their blogs. Some have become citizen journalists - citizens who play “an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news.” But with millions reading their words through a medium that seems to give equal weight to traditional journalism, what does this mean for journalism, and for the code of ethics that journalists traditionally understand? Jennifer McClure is the founder and executive director of the Society for New Communications Research, a nonprofit think tank focused on the study of advanced communication tools. She spoke with Marketing Voices host Jennifer Jones about the status of citizen journalism today.

Tags: Jennifer McClure, Marketing Voices, Jennifer Jones, bloggers, citizen journalism, SNCR, social media

Infopia’s SaaS eCommerce Platform for Growing eTailers

Brad Baldwin — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:00:03 +0000

Applying the right technology solutions to enhance business growth is something Bjorn Espenes, CEO at Infopia, is passionate about. As a growth company itself, Infopia delivers a SaaS (software as a service) eCommerce platform for businesses that need to manage the common operational challenges that growth creates. Things like inventory management and merchandising, order management, and shipping and fulfillment all work together in a seamless online system.

Infopia is the “next step” for many of the savviest online sellers looking to grow their business. Titanium and Platinum PowerSellers on eBay, not to mention multi-million dollar merchants who primarily sell on their Web sites, have dramatically improved revenues with Infopia.

Espenes sits down with Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices to share the Infopia story and highlight the business problems Infopia solves. Espense shows why he was recognized as one of the Top 40 Executives Under 40 and a member of vSpring Capital’s v100 Entrepreneurs.

Tags: Bjorn Espenes, SaaS, Ebay, ecommerce, infopia, inventory, online sellers, powerseller

The Reboot: Top Five Things You Must Do in GTA IV

Rio Pesino — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:01:06 +0000

Grand Theft Auto IV has been out for a few weeks now, and most hardcore gamers have probably finished the story mode. So what else is there to do in Liberty City? Plenty. In this episode of The Reboot, host Rio Pesino gives you his top-five list of the things you must do in GTA IV, beside than story mode.

Tags: Grand Theft Auto IV, Liberty City, The Reboot, Rio Pesino, GTA IV

Xbox 360 Spring Showcase ‘08: Interview with Microsoft’s Shane Kim

Rio Pesino — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:49:59 +0000

The Xbox Spring Showcase wasn’t all about the latest titles. Microsoft Game Studio head Shane Kim spoke with The Reboot’s Rio Pesino and several other members of the media about a number of topics, including the Xbox Newton controller rumors, Blu-Ray, digital distribution and the evolution of Xbox Live.

Tags: Xbox, Microsoft Game Studio, Shane Kim, The Reboot, Rio Pesino, Blu-Ray

Brand Engagement: The Latest Insights From Brian Haven, Forrester Analyst

Jennifer Jones — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:32:33 +0000

Brian Haven, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research talks to Marketing Voices at the Forrester Marketing Forum in Los Angeles about the latest thinking about brand engagement today. Haven tells Jennifer Jones that although social marketing is taking off and many corporations are engaging in conversations with their customers, the science of brand engagement is far from complete. Haven mentions Nike and its use of social marketing as one fine standout example today.

Tags: brand engagement, Brian Haven, forrester marketing forum, Jennifer Jones, Marketing Voices, Nike, social media