ifttt makes social media a breeze

Social media is a big part of any modern marketing campaign.  However, managing social media properly can mean a lot of time-consuming work.  It’s one thing to have a solid plan, but the real work comes with the day-in, day-out hands-on implementation of this plan.  There are lots of products that claim to automate this process, but they’re all missing a key thing: variety.  You can set your tumblr to auto-update to your twitter, and your twitter could update your facebook, but this creates a single monolithic, repetitive structure.  So, how do you add nuance to your social media plan without adding complexity and hours to your day? Read More

Victorinox Swiss Army Flash Drives Aren’t Just Secure, They’re Unhackable

In today’s mobile business world, data is king.  Having the right files at your fingertips can be what makes or breaks that big deal, and you never know which deck is going to give you that competitive advantage.  With more and more data able to fit onto smaller and more portable devices, the age-old problem of data security has gotten even more complex. After all, the information that helps you close the big deal is exactly the information that you don’t want to drop on the floor for the competition to find.  Or, maybe you need to store your client’s financial information and want to make absolutely sure that it’s not divulged to a local identity thief. In either case, Victorinox (yes, the same folks who brought you the Swiss Army knife) has just what you need. It’s called the “un-hackable flash drive”, and it keeps your information completely safe while you’re on the go. Read More

Bizness Apps makes apps for your small business

Everyone wants a custom app for their small business, but there’s not always the time or money needed to code one up from scratch.  As most business owners are busy with the daily needs of of their business and don’t have time to take an advanced HTML class, Bizness Apps can help. They provide a series of functional components that can be easily plugged into an app and deployed using HTML5 and/or to the Apple App Store or Android Market.

I am often dubious of one-size-fits-all solutions, because they remind me of the heinous website templates of the early internet (geocities, anyone?).  A time when anyone with some basic HTML knowledge felt justified in charging thousands of dollars for 5 minutes of mindless data entry, calling the result a “professional” website. However, Bizness Apps isn’t like this.  Bizness Apps can leverage design skills to make something really attractive. A great option for design professionals who do not like to code, Bizness Apps offers a white-label solution that can be resold to clients. Read More

Color Efex Pro 4 for Image Professionals

Images are an increasingly important part of today’s hyper-connected world.  Apps like livestream make image sharing simple and effortless, streaming images from events almost instantly.  Because of this, it’s important to ensure that any image associated with your brand broadcasts a professional look-and-feel.  For example, my company always hires an event photographer to snap party pictures that our marketing team can use.  Sure, we also use the candids taken by the party-goers; but blip.tv understands that a professional marketing strategy requires a professional image.

With that said, your photographer will need to have the best and most modern tools on the market to be truly effective.  Enter Color Efex Pro 4 from Nik Software, the latest version of its popular digital photo filters used for retouching and creative enhancements.  This software takes the features that we love in their iPad app Snapspeed to the next level. Read More

Quisitive Saves You Embarrassment, Lawyer Fees

Shakespeare wrote “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”.  Nothing could be further from the truth in business.  Naming and slogans are some of the most important aspects of branding.  People do not ask for a facial tissue, they ask for a Kleenex, rather than an adhesive bandage one might ask for a Band-Aid.  When companies want to distance themselves from a product that has tanked, they change the name, when they want to be associated with something great they adopt it’s name or naming convention.  Take for instance the letter ‘i’ in front of a product name, mimicking the iPod, accessories for the device often are named with an ‘i’, for example iDock or iClock.  Recently at the company where I work, we did some market research and found that some small changes to our name would greatly improve how our product was received by our potential customers.

Before now when the time came to name or rename a brand the only way to make sure that you were not using a name that was already associated with another brand or product was to pour over thousands of pages of patent records, or even worse, pay an expensive attorney to do so.  Why pay a lawyer to do what your iPad can do for five bucks with Quisitive?  Thіѕ awesome app allows users tο screen аnd search аll οf thе trademark аnd patent filings іn thе United States, аll frοm thеir iOS device.  Fοr thе entrepreneur or marketing professional οn thе gο, thіѕ is a critical tool tο add tο your kit.  If you think that this would be useful to you give іt a download аnd lеt υѕ know what you think іn thе comments.

LiveShare Condenses pictures from your event into a sharable stream

We’re always throwing events at my job.  We have parties to promote new product launches, new partnerships, good sales quarters and the mandatory “holiday season” shindigs.  Parties are great branding opportunities, because they put a human face on your company and because everyone loves free food and drinks.  After you throw a party, make sure that you get some good press out of it; parties are expensive and you’ll want something concrete to show ROI. Read More

The Lutron Control App Helps Your Business Take Control of the Power Bill

Last month, the power bill in my 750-square foot New York City apartment climbed to $315.  This is definitely enough money to impact my family budget.  And it made me think about my office, where we have roughly 10 times as much space to heat/cool and 30-50 times as many electronic devices (including a used drink fridge for our beer and soda).  That’s a one heck of a power drain.  Savvy electricity conservation isn’t just good for the environment- it’s good for your businesses’ bottom line. Read More

BlinQ: Control your TV with your iOS Device

At a recent tech expo,  a newer contender in the world of universal remote apps for iOS devices caught my eye.  Although not an original idea, this particular implementation has a relatively low cost considering its rich feature set.  This type of app represents the direction I believe that TV is going: businesses should be prepared to engage customers in new ways using ancillary content like ads, interactive games, and social content.

Ryz Media’s BlinQ TV has the newest twist on this idea. BlinQ’s big “get” is that, instead of routing commands over Wi-Fi, BlinQ gives you an IR blaster that plugs into the device’s headphone jack.  The small blaster can control a TV, cable box, and most other devices with no intermediary hardware. Best yet, it’s very affordable at ten bucks.

BlinQ offers a guide that allows you to forget channel numbers and just concentrate on content. It does this by focusing on the popularity of shows among BlinQ users–the popular stuff is at the top, and there are pop-ups that alert you to trending shows. You can recommend what you’re watching to your friends via Facebook and Twitter.  This product is a great look into the developing relationship between the TV and mobile devices; as soon as we don’t have to find a little gizmo to plug into our phones to get this functionality, absolutely everyone will use their phone as their remote.  So, start thinking about what kinds of games and social features you might want to integrate into your company’s TV advertising campaigns, because it’s going to be the norm in the very near future.

Looxcie is great for field Professionals

We’ve talked about the collaboration requirements of both office-bound professionals and the folks working out in the field.  While office-based collaboration is pretty straightforward, field collaboration is more unique and real-time oriented.  Field-based collaboration needs can be understood like this: how many times have you seen something amazing or catastrophic and said “man, I wish I had my video camera out”.  Now, imagine you’re on a construction site and there’s a serious accident.  It would be even more important to have gotten that on camera, right?  Unfortunately, it’s not realistic to walk around with a video recorder held out in front of you at all times.  You’re a contractor, not a photographer.  No problem…Looxcie to the rescue! Read More

Augmented Reality and Gamification Drive Engagement

I was recently invited to the Majesco “Holiday in July” event in New York City.  I was excited to attend the event, which featured new video games and free food, but I didn’t anticipate leaving with tons of new ideas and innovations to share.  Games are great fun, but this is a blog about business on the go (ie- not kids stuff), right? Wrong.  Gamification and augmented reality are the wave of the future for mobile business and marketing, and it was made clear to me at this event. Read More