Jon Stewart Speaks To Bill Gates About Twitter

Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by Zahid Lilani. 2

I love Jon Stewart and Bill Gates is a guy I have a lot of admiration for. As we all know in the social media sphere that Bill Gates joined Twitter, lets take a look at what he had to say about it:

Twitter Applications for Your Small Business

Posted on 24. Jan, 2010 by Zahid Lilani. 4

In 2010, we will see a big push by Twitter to help small business understand and embrace social media. There are hundreds of Twitter applications out there that help you manage the way you use Twitter but if you are a small business owner, you don’t want to deal with thousands of Twitter apps, you just want to use the one that will work for you and help you manage and market your small business profile on Twitter. Apart from managing and marketing your small business on Twitter, it is also important you monitor Twitter for latest trends and check the pulse.

You want to use all the Twitter applications the way Pros do, right? Below is the list. Did I mention all these services are free?

Management

CoTweet – With CoTweet you can manage one Twitter account while allowing several employees to contribute. Each person maintains their own identity and their activity can be monitored. The service is one of the best of its kind and it will only improve, you should be on CoTweet if you are serious about Twitter reputation management.

HootSuite – Best web based Twitter client to help you manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets and measure your progress. Use the ow.ly URL shortener to track clicks and get stats.

Tweepler – Manage your Twitter followers in a simple yet efficient way. As a small business owner, your goal should be to follow active Twitter users and not bots or “run on” Twitter users. Tweepler helps you archive followers in follow or ignore buckets and saves you time by giving you detailed stats that eliminates the need to visit each follower’s profile.

Monitoring

Monitter – It is true to its name, lets you monitor what the community around your small business is talking about on Twitter. You can enter your business name and even find out without registering what others are saying about your business. You don’t have to register to use any of the features on the website. You can also add the RSS feed for the location and the keyword you would like to monitor to your favorite RSS reader.

Tweetbeep – It is like Google Alerts but for Twitter. Tweetbeep tracks Twitter conversations that mention you, your business or your products and services. Alerts are sent to you via email every hour. Basic service is free, you have an option of signing up for a premium account with no ads and alerts every 15 minutes.

Marketing

twtQpon – Create coupons for your small business services or products and share them with your Twitter followers. Posting coupons on Twitter is a sure way to get re-tweets and generate buzz.

This list is not comprehensive, I will be updating it every time I find something new, interesting and useful. Be sure to bookmark this post so that you don’t miss out.

Foursquare’s New “Special Nearby” Feature

Posted on 18. Jan, 2010 by Zahid Lilani. 6

Surfing the blogosphere I came across couple (1|2) of stories related to “Special Nearby” feature on Foursquare. I hadn’t personally seen one while using Foursquare but that changed a week ago when I made a trip to Chipotle in Sunnyvale.

Foursquare	Special Nearby Ad

The “Special” that was offered to me as a user of Foursquare was quite tempting. Buy one latte, get the second for one cent. It was dinner time in my household, I had to pass…

Here is the coolest part.

To get the latte for one cent you had to show them that you checked in, more check-ins means more exposure. I think it is a pretty good return on investment for 1 cent. Measurable or not is up for debate but little promotions like these do create more buzz.

I might be an exception here but when I check in, I ping Twitter and my friends on Foursquare. Few hundred of ME out there Tweeting and Pinging can create quite a bit of exposure.

Do you agree? Have you seen this new feature on Foursquare yet?

GITMO Reunion, One Guard and Two Prisoners

Posted on 16. Jan, 2010 by Zahid Lilani. 8

Interesting things happen everyday in the world but there are some stories that make people think. These stories move you in the most unusual way. One common theme in all the moving and unusual stories is human emotion.

Few months ago I saw a story on 60 Minutes about a rape case where a man was wrongly convicted. The rape victim was the key witness during the trial and she was 100% sure that the accused was the alleged rapist. Well, after few years, it turned out that the accused wasn’t the real rapist. Once the real rapist was caught and sentenced, wrongly accused and the victim had a one on one meeting.

Wrongly accused forgave the accuser…. that is powerful and incredible.

GITMO reunion is a similar story.

In 2008, Brandon Neely, was searching for friends on Facebook when he entered the name of few detainees that he guarded during his time at Guantanamo Bay. Neely, an army veteran, spent six months at GITMO in 2002.

Shafiq Rasul was one of Neely’s prisoners and showed up in the search results. Neely decided to message Rasul and was “astonished” when he responded. A BBC reporter found out about this amazing exchange and decided to fly Neely to London so that he can meet Rasul and another prisoner in person.

Neely apologized, Rasul forgave. Rest is history.

Brandon Neely, center, was a Guantánamo Bay guard, and Ruhal Ahmed, left, and Shafiq Rasul were prisoners.

Original story: New York Times | BBC

BBC link has the video of the original meeting which is not “embed” friendly. Go over and watch it!

iPhone’s Touchscreen Most Responsive

Posted on 13. Jan, 2010 by Zahid Lilani. 6

Geeks out there are doing so many cool experiments. One of them did this experiment where the responsiveness of touchscreen was tested for four major smartphones in the market, iPhone, Droid, HTC and Nexus One.

It was concluded that iPhone’s Touchscreen was the most responsive.

Here is how the experiment was done:

Although MOTO usually uses sophisticated tools to test touch screen accuracy, we have also developed a simple technique anyone can use to evaluate the resolution and accuracy of a touchscreen device. All you need is a basic drawing program (download one if necessary), a steady hand, and a few straight lines drawn very slowly on the screen.

To read more, visit
http://labs.moto.com/diy-touchscreen-analysis/

Please note that in the video, Nexus isn’t shown but the same technique was used to test it.