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With NFC baked into Symbian Belle (and a few Anna builds!), the number of applications with NFC capability keeps on growing. The latest addition to the number is Foursquare, as detailed in the NFC blog post quoted below. You can now just walk up to a Foursquare check-in poster at an event, tap your phone to it, even if the application isn't already running, and bang, you're checked in. 

From the blog post: The latest addition to the growing number of NFC enabled apps like Angry Birds Magic, Poken, Bounce and Asphalt5 is Foursquare. With the newest version of the application you can use your NFC enabled phone to check-in automatically by just tapping and NFC enabled/tagged poster. No more tedious steps of launching an application waiting for location fix, connecting etc... With NFC this is all done with a simple tap. Furthermore, the developer made it even easier for the user to check-in - without the need to have the app running - just tap and the app starts automatically and checks you in. Pretty awesome and again demonstrating the convenience of NFC! In a separate post Andreas explains how as a developer you can implement application autostart .  Foursquare with NFC support is available in the Nokia Store for Symbian NFC enabled phones (download Symbian version here, N9 support coming soon) . And the best thing about it is that it is not a separate application just for NFC sake. Developers simply added the support for NFC to the existing application version!

Symbian phones with NFC currently number six: the Nokia C7/Oro/Astound, plus the 700/701/603, and all future Nokia smartphones going forwards will also have NFC baked in.

Twitter was born as a text messaging service; tweets are 140 characters because that is the length of a text message, minus a few characters for the author’s name.Today, though, most people in the United States think about Twitter as a Web tool, and they use it either online or via smartphone apps.But Twitter has not forgotten about all the people in the world who do not have fancy phones. On Friday, the company announced that it had acquired Cloudhopper, a Seattle text-messaging start-up.There is “untapped potential” with Twitter text-message use “Mobile is clearly where the majority of usage will happen,” Evan Williams, Cloudhopper has already been working with Twitter to connect its service directly with mobile carriers around the world, in part so that users do not have to pay extra to send or receive text message tweets. Twitter has long had problems with this, and in the past has had to disable text messaging in certain countries because of high fees.Read more at bits.blogs.nytimes.com

The world of work for knowledge and information workers has seen enormous shifts over the past decade, and it is something that impacts a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs.  According to the 2006 US Census, 49% of US businesses were based out of the home.  While these ranks used to be dominated by the trades (e.g. construction, electricians, plumbers, etc.), advances in technology have swelled the ranks of the home-based knowledge worker (e.g. consultants, web designers, developers, writers, etc.).This creates a whole new set of challenges when it comes to getting work done.  Because information-based work is almost never done in a vacuum, most of us work in teams.  And a large percentage of those teams can go weeks — if ever — without seeing each other face-to-face.  Making this work well sounds like it should be easy given all of today’s technology: email, Skype, ooVoo, Twitter, etc.  But, as usual, the issue that requires the most management is not the technology, it’s the people.This creates a whole new set of challenges when it comes to getting work done.  Because information-based work is almost never done in a vacuum, most of us work in teams.  And a large percentage of those teams can go weeks — if ever — without seeing each other face-to-face.  Making this work well sounds like it should be easy given all of

today’s technology: email, Skype, ooVoo, Twitter, etc.  But, as usual, the issue that requires the most management is not the technology, it’s the people.Becky McCray of SmallBizSurvival recently posted an article on MyVenturePad discussing this very thing.  In “6 Tips for managing a distributed workforce,” she discussed several valuable tips in successfully leading a team that is all working remotely (presumably from their homes).  In addition to some of her great tips — ranging from reading The One Minute Manager to explicitly declaring the weekend off — here are a couple more items that I’ve recently been reminded are critical to the success of a virtual team.Clarifying priorities.Rules of engagement.

Roles and responsibilities.Talk through assumptions.Ask, Then DecideRead more at www.workingpoint.com 

We’re standing on the shoulders of thought leaders who got social media rolling, time to take the next steps: Better Research Better Metrics and a better understanding of what they mean Defining Ethical & Acceptable Practices Educating others and never wavering from the core elements of social media: What do you want to accomplish? How best do we work to accomplish your goal? How do we measure it? The author adds, “…so I’m done reading the 10 ways to better engagement and follower strategies. It’s either junk science or its been said already.The theories and practices are already defined, it’s time to go to work and use them.”

Geoff Livingston, a long time PR blogger, is calling it quits because, “I have run out of things to say.” Further into his post he shared a profound state of social media. Though the pioneering phase is done or may be near done, it’s actually a robust time for social media. Widespread adoption is occurring and best practices within verticals continue. It’s just time for new voices here and abroad (YOU GUYS) to carry the social PR conversation.

The internet and people are not new but the past 5 years have been a Social Media explosion. A breathless gold rush to a brave new country and anytime that happens great explorers emerge to lead the way.But the revolution is over

Cloud Computing is both an abstract concept which can reffer to every logical grouping of software services provided by one or more companies which may or may not be on the same hardware architectures. ted ar It also stands for the physical architectures involving SOA (services-oriented architecture) systems, server farms and a lot of hardware to provide on demand services 24/24 no matter what may happen. Not matter how one sees it, it’s all about regrouping services and taking responsabilities off from our good old PC or laptop standing on our desk. Not matter how one sees it, it’s all about regrouping services and taking responsabilities off from our good old PC or laptop standing on our desk.  Of course it’s a 2010 buzzword and I am personally seeing some kind of Terminal Server (Mainframes anyone?…) à la sauce New Millenium coupled with web technologies. The thing is… Cloud Computing along with Software Virtualization are really promising.  I put the second one with it because everything is about having almost nothing on the client side. ore.  You just log into the cloud and there you have your account and your services, may they be ga The idea of having every service in the Cloud is to ensure that eveything you need is always available from wherever you are on the planet.  You don’t need your PC or Laptop anymore.  You just log into the cloud and there you have your account and your services, may they be games, movies or any software.  And with the huge Mobile market, you’re about to have any of your services right there in your pocket. Read more at www.gamasutra.com 

Amplify’d from www.newscientist.comWHEN it comes to making friends online it is the quantity, not quality, of your blog posts that counts.Susan Jamison-Powell at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK studied the popularity of 75 bloggers on the site Livejournal.com. She looked at the number of friends each blogger had, the number of posts they made, the total number of words written and the overall tone of the posts. She then asked the bloggers to rate how attractive they found each of their peer’s blogs.She found that the more words a blogger posted, the more friends they had and the higher their attractiveness rating. The tone of their posts - whether they contained mostly positive or negative comments - had no effect. The findings were presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference this week.

Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates were computer science students without any real plan. They started Facebook because it was fun, used their talents, and was a novel way for Harvard students and alumni to stay in touch. Zuckerberg never anticipated it would host over 400 million members. And he had no clear idea where the money would come from. But he kept at it until, in 2007, Facebook let outside developers create applications for it, and game developers started buying ads on Facebook to keep attracting players. Hardly Zuckerberg’s strategy in 2004.And when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, started writing code in 1996 they had no clear plan or idea how they would make money either. But that didn’t stop them from starting. It wasn’t until 2002 and 2003 that AdWords and AdSense became the company’s money-making platform. Last week, in Don’t Get Distracted by Your Plan, I wrote about the importance of staying flexible, about the dangers of sticking too closely to your plan. But what if you have no plan? Read more at blogs.hbr.org

If you take the time to create good content, take the time to share it well. There is no magic formula, only thoughtfulness + tools. Know the Flow is my approach to social media data flow. Over the next week I’ll be sharing some of my theory and tips that I touched on in a recent #SoSocial presentation. Consider this the starter pack. Tools & Theory for social media content distribution

Distribution Tools

Social Blogs

“it’s interesting to see how large a company that provides an actually useful service can get bigger than one who’s apparent key reasons for existing are for you to share embarrassing photos of yourself and tend a virtual farm. Skype has also not felt a need to try to weasel its way into every corner of the Web with questionable tools that track your movement from site-to-site, or manipulate your profile because you click a “Like” button somewhere. Skype just exists. If you choose to use it, great, but if you don’t, they aren’t in your face about it.”

Some might say it’s like comparing apples and oranges as one is a social network, and one is not, but it’s still interesting to see Facebook is not the biggest thing out there despite what that company might like to have you thinkGigaOm provided some stats that Skype gave out at the recent eComm ConferenceSkype added 39 million registered users in the fourth quarter to end the year with a total of 560 millionSkype in 2009 accounted for 12 percent of the world’s international calling minutes, a 50 percent increase over 2008

36 percent of Skype-to-Skype calls as of the end of the fourth quarter included video — in other words, Skype is going to figure prominently in the video conferencing business, challenging more established players with its no-cost solutionlike Facebook, there are people with multiple accounts, and there are also spammers, but those accounts get shut down pretty fastSkype has also not felt a need to try to weasel its way into every corner of the Web

I was especially interested in commentary on the Chinese market by Robin Goad, Hitwise UK’s research director, who adds some sharp focus on the huge growth in micro-blogging in China – and the tool of choice isn’t Twitter: [...] Chinese Internet users are primarily interested in micro-blogging when it comes to social media.  Sina Micro blog (China’s alternative to Twitter) accounted for 1 in every 158 Internet visits in China for April 2011. This makes China one of the most voracious micro-blogging nations worldwide, with a greater market share of visits going to micro-blogging sites in China than in the UK, US, France, Canada, Australia or India. Twitter is by far the most dominant micro-blogging platform in the UK and US, but Twitter accounted for 1 in every 250 visits online in the UK and 1 in every 555 in the US during April 2011, much lower than Sina Micro’s dominance of the online market in China. What’s more, this data doesn’t take into account mobile or 3rd party applications, so the actual usage of micro-blogging in China is likely much higher than our statistics suggest. The metrics Robin posted underline the sheer scale of what’s happening in China in terms of connecting people. Add that info to other metrics such as Royal Pingdom’s The incredible growth of the Internet since 2000. It shows China as clearly the top country on the internet with 420 million users (compared to 22.5 million in 2000).

a survey administered by Jive Software that found both executives and knowledge workers believe social software will become a necessary part of doing business — even though the return on investment for this kind of software is still pretty squishy. 

Improving customer loyalty and service levels and driving increased revenue or sales were among the top reasons for using social software mentioned by survey respondents.

they shouldn't become so focused on attaining a hard ROI that they miss opportunities to use social to solve business problems.

Are you a “fast zebra”??? If so, it means you have special insight into navigating informal networks, I suspect there may be herds of them racing around in social media.

former US Ambassador to the United Nations, has a term for people who can quickly absorb information, adapt to new challenges, and get people aligned in the right direction: fast zebras. They are the people who can skirt around or blast through the kind of gridlock found not only in the political spectrum, but in organizations of every stripe.The metaphor is based on the fast zebra on the African savannah who survives a trip to the drinking hole by moving quickly while slower herd members fall prey to waiting predators. Well, organizations are sometimes like the savannah; to the new-comer, they constitute vast, unexplored areas fraught with hidden dangers. The fast zebras in both contexts travel the terrain swiftly to accomplish significant goals while the naïve ones run into the predators of red tape, unaligned incentives, and unmotivated teams.A fast zebra is someone who is singularly focused on achieving performance results, knows how the organization can both hinder and help, and charts their course accordingly. In particular, they are wise about when to use the formal and rational elements of organization (such as hierarchy, processes, and monetary rewards) and when to use the informal and emotional elements (including values, networks, and feelings about the work). Read more at blogs.hbr.org

While growth in usage of social media by the public continues to grow unabated, new research shows that social media usage among large companies is leveling off. The research from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth shows that corporate use of networks like Facebook and Twitter plateaued in 2011. The study looked at outward facing social media usage by Fortune 500 companies, and found that adoption of blogs, Twitter and Facebook did not rise from 2010 to 2011. Just under 1/4 of the Fortune 500 have a public facing blog. While this is an increase from the 16% measured in 2008, it has not increased at all since last year. Likewise, Twitter usage has only increased by 2% in the last year, from 60% last year to 62% this year. Only 58% of large companies have a Facebook page; however, another 2% rise from last years figure. Astonishingly, 31% have no presence on either Facebook or Twitter at all. This follows research last week revealing that 1 in 5 small business owners hate social media.  Bete noir of the industry was Groupon, with a whopping 70% of SMEs reporting their dislike of the coupon website.

learn how you can use stats from your blog in order to improve traffic and page views. http://onlinemoneywithgoogleadsense.blogspot.com/2010/04/statistics-to-monitor-on-your-blog.html

Social media has led to “social sharing,” the broadcasting of our thoughts and activities. It’s not a fad. It’s a sociological phenomenon, accelerating at light speed. Social sharing is a major behavioral shift, the most important so far of the 21st century. And the information we choose to share with friends, co-workers and even strangers, is re-defining the idea of what’s private and public before our very eyes.Read more at blogs.hbr.org

In the Business901 podcast, What Political Campaigns can teach business, part 1 of 2 we looked at a more strategic view. In today's podcast, we looked at the more tactical practices and how they related not only to a political campaign but to a typical marketing campaign. Derek A. Pillie has served public and political candidates for over 15 years. He has served on the staff of Indiana’s Third Congressional District, most recently as District Director for just over a decade. In that role, he oversaw Indiana operations of the office; including constituent outreach and helping taxpayers solve problems with federal agencies. He also worked on crucial economic development projects and was heavily involved with advising the office on online media and marketing decisions. After his federal service expired Derek started working at Cirrus ABS, an online marketing and technology development company. He currently manages their business development efforts. Cirrus ABS has added political campaigns to the portfolio of industries they serve since Derek joined the team, and he continues volunteer efforts on behalf of candidates he supports. Related Information: Preview of Political Campaign Marketing Podcast Political Campaigning – Strategy Update What political campaigns can teach business Lean Six Sigma for Government

PayPal’s mobile payment system has gone live at 51 Home Depot stores in the US.

The eBay-owned company has also reported that its mobile payment volume reached $4bn in 2011.

PayPal’s new mobile payment system, which was trialled by eBay CEO John Donahoe, allows users to pay at the till by entering their mobile phone number and PIN.

The worst thing about the Samsung RF4289HARS isn't that for $3,500, you get a little Android LCD touch-screen embedded above the ice maker whose 9 apps you can't even update. It's that it represents a missed opportunity. Samsung seems to be hell-bent on making all its appliances "smart" in the dumbest way possible. From users returning their "smart" TVs because their apps make them unusable to, well, gilded fridges that Tweet, the company seems to be designing from the perspective of "what can we cram into this device?" rather than "how can we enhance the experience of our users?" A really smart fridge, part of the Internet of Things, would know when you put that lettuce in the crisper, so it could alert you when it was about to become inedible. It would tweet its current temperature so you know when your kid failed to close the door all the way. A really smart fridge probably doesn't even have a display -- far better to control it from any other internet-connected device.

A new Greek scientific study has demonstrated how frequency electromagnetic fields, namely cell phones, portable phones, WiFi, and wireless computer equipment, alter important protein changes in the brains of animals. Exposure to electromagnetic frequencies is the result of our advancing technologies, but it is important to study these effects so people know exactly what they’re dealing with in order to take the necessary precautionary measures.

The study, entitled “Brain proteome response following whole body exposure of mice to mobile phone or wireless DECT base radiation,” was published in the journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine. Important areas of the brain such as the hippocampus, cerebellum, and frontal lobe are regions responsible for learning, memory, and other functions. These areas are negatively impacted by microwave radiation, even at levels below the safety guidelines put in place by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation protection

Researchers found that 143 proteins in the brain were negatively impacted by radio frequency radiation over a period of 8 months. A total of 3 hours of cell phone exposure were simulated over the 8 month time period, and the results showed that many neural function related proteins’ functional relationship changed the for worse.

“Eventually we want to make a version of the Obama Square application available to everyone from within the App Store,” Katie Hogan, an Obama re-election campaign spokesperson told The New York Times. “Someone who is a supporter of the campaign can then download the app, get a Square attachment and can go around collecting donations.” The app will collect information such as the donor’s name, address, occupation and employer.

A representative of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told the Times that Romney’s campaign will begin beta-testing Square during Tuesday’s primary election in Florida.

“We’re going to be testing it in Florida tomorrow night to see how it works and then hope to roll it out to the rest of the country,” Zac Moffatt, the Romney campaign’s digital director said. “Anything that reduces the barrier to donate is going to help us with our supporters.”