Category: Top Story

Five Underrated Features of iOS6 & the iPhone5

by Katherine Elsasser
Add a photo in Mail with iOS6
iOS6 lets you add a photo in Mail. Not exactly groundbreaking, but somehow revolutionary anyway.

They say the devil is in the details, but it for Apple it seems like the small stuff is actually the most redeeming feature of their latest software update, iOS6, which is otherwise getting killed by complaints about the new Apple Maps. You’ve seen http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/, right? These small updates aren’t as obvious (or glamorous!) as Maps, but they’re way, way more useful, and not just because they seem to work.

Reminders Badges
Badges are what Apple calls those little circle notifications that show up on the top right of your apps (like when you have App updates to install, for example). If you’ve got reminders piling up, the Badges will remind you of your reminders.

Improved GPS Reminders
I love reminders, can you tell? In iOS5 we were able to set a reminder based on our current GPS location so we’d be reminded of something whenever we arrived or left that location. The problem was that the only location you could be reminded about was wherever you were. Now you can set an address and be reminded whenever your in the vicinity of that location: near the grocery store or the library for example.

Phone Calls “Reply With Message”
I have one phone for personal and work use, and no landline. That means I spend a decent amount of time on it, and in things like conference calls you’re usually not free to do any call waiting magic! The new reply with message feature lets you send a pre-written message letting the caller know you’re on the phone and you’ll call them back when you can, so they know you’re not just ignoring their call.

Add a Picture from Mail
This one is so obvious (and handy) it’s almost infuriating we didn’t have it before! How many times have you gone into mail to send a picture, only to realize you can only do it from your photos? This is finally fixed so you can email a photo from Mail. Seeing as that’s how  it works for every other email service it shouldn’t feel revolutionary, but it does.

Custom Text Message Vibrations
This is another one that doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but has already improved my life substantially. Basically, you can assign contacts a special vibration for when they text you. So for example, your S.O., boss and best friend could have a “priority” vibration, your other close friends a different one, and then everyone else is unassigned. It’s already kept me from jumping up to check a text message that’s actually just a reminder to pay my wireless bill :)

So yes, they’re small changes, but they really have made a difference in how I use my iPhone. Besides, I already have a GPS Unit in the car.

For more on how to upgrade to iOS6, check out our post from a couple weeks ago.

 

#Blogalicious12 Q&A With Mario: Can You Make Money With AdSense?

by Mario Armstrong

blogalicious 2012 avatarThis Q & A series is a continuation of Mario Armstrong’s presentation at the Blogalicious Conference, a leading industry event celebrating diversity in social media. You can see highlights from his presentation & submit your own questions here. 

Question: About earning revenue for your blog, what are your thoughts about Google’s AdSense for blogger, where ads are placed on your blog based on text and content related to the advertiser?

—
Answer:
One nice thing about AdSense for Blogger is that they’re both Google products, which means it’s super easy to implement, so that’s good. The bad news is that for most of us, it’s never going to bring in the kind of money that sustains a business. It’s harsh but it’s true.

Google AdSense LogoIt’s really hard to predict how well AdSense will perform for you. The Pay-Per-Click Google offers varies based on a lot of things, like how much traffic you get, the keywords users searched, competition between advertisers and much more. For every ad click, you could receive anywhere from a penny to several dollars, but that number tends to be low, especially as you start out.

A couple of other things to remember if you do decide to use AdSense. First, be respectful of your reader’s eyeballs: don’t go overboard with ads, and make sure your actual content is still easy to read. Second, AdSense basically uses a “match-up” between advertisers and search to deliver ads, so it’s extra important you’re doing your best with SEO.

Bottom line: there’s no real harm in using AdSense unless it’s taking up site real estate that could be put to better use, like making you more money. But to really turn your blog into a business, you’re going to need to come up with more revenue-generating strategies beyond just AdSense.

Questions on my Blogalicious 2012 talk? Need advice on how to move from free to fee? Ask away!

by Mario Armstrong

Whether you were at the Blogalicious 2012 conference this past weekend in Las Vegas, or you’ve taken a look at the slides from my keynote presentation, you probably have a lot of questions about how you can start thinking about yourself not just as a blogger but a media company and start making the transition from free to fee!

Well, I’m here to offer my help and experience in any way I can! I’ve set up a form on Google Docs that will let you ask me anything you need help with. Are you attempting my 21 day challenge and need some guidance along the way? Having trouble booking speaking engagements? Struggling to figure out how to generate revenue with your website? Go ahead and fill out the form to ask me a question!

4 New 4G LTE AT&T Devices Just Announced: Including Galaxy Note II & Galaxy Express phones, as well as the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1″ Tablet

by Shy Mukerjee

Four exciting new AT&T devices, all of which sport AT&T’s ultra-fast 4G LTE network, were literally just announced. We don’t have pricing or release dates on any of these devices quite yet, but we’ll be going hands-on with all three phones and the one tab next Thursday at an exclusive AT&T event in NYC. Hopefully we’ll be able to shed some more light on these devices next week, as well as be able to show you some hands on videos of all of them. The official word from the press release is that “[a]ll of these devices will be available from AT&T in the coming months” which sounds like they’ll be here by the end of the year!

Samsung Galaxy Express

Samsung Galaxy Express

While this seems to be placed as a “budget” version of the Samsung Galaxy S III (and will hopefully come in at a budget price) this seems to be a high-end smartphone that makes just a few compromises comapred to its big brother. Sure, you have to accept a 5-megapixel camera instead of the S3’s 8-megapixels, but you get a fast dual core processor, a huge 4.5″ screen (only slightly smaller than the 4.8 incher on the S3), a whopping 2000 mAh battery (the S3 boasts only 100 more mAh), and the same OS, Googl’e Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

Smaller isn’t necessarily worse—the S3 is quite large, and this “baby brother” version may actually turn out to be the better smartphone. I can’t wait to try it out!

Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro

Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro

When we looked at the previous Rugby phone, I called it “the toughest 4G phone on the market.” While it was a little underpowered, it was really the only choice of any phone for those whose phones will take a lot of abuse on the job.

Now, this phone has been massively updated with the latest tech! The new Rugby Pro sports a 4″ AMOLED screen, the 5-megapixel camera (think iPhone 4 quality), and it shoots 720p HD video.

Another cool feature that makes it easy to deploy for business is that it has full EAS corporate email support. You can even encrypt the whole device to prevent data from leaking out if the phone is lost in the field.

This looks like a huge upgrade over the previous Rugby in every respect, and will certainly be “tough” to beat!

Samsung Galaxy Note II

Samsung Galaxy Note II

I had my apprehensions about the first Samsung Galaxy Note. Since then, S-Pen tech has improved quite a bit, at least on the larger 10.1″ Galaxy Note tablet. Will those same imrpovements come to the Note II? I certainly hope so.

This phone is unique in the lineup of new Galaxy devices in that it’s the first that’s shipping with the cutting edge latest version of Google’s Android operating system, Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). I still haven’t gotten that on my Galaxy S3, though reports are that it’s coming any day now.

Just like the previous version, this is a huge superphone with completely maxed out features. Like the dual core speed on the Galaxy S3? The Note II smashes that with quad core. Like the 4.8″ screen on the S3? The Note II bumps it up to a whopping 5.5″ display.

Yeah, it’s a huge phone, but it’s also like having a touch screen and stylus compatible mini laptop in your pocket.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1”

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1″ with 4G LTE on AT&T

Mario and I attended the NYC launch of the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1″. At the time, we didn’t get to do as much testing as we liked and came away with mixed feelings about the tablet. The software didn’t work as smoothly as we would’ve wanted. The S-Pen was improved, but not perfect. The multi-tasking was extremely limited in terms of the number of apps available.

You can read my first impressions on the blog here:

http://www.marioarmstrong.com/2012/08/15/samsung-galaxy-note-10-1-tablet-first-look/

The addition of 4G LTE on AT&T is a huge boon to the device, but that really only brings it up to where the iPad 3 was back when it launched this past Spring. While this is a great tab for Android fanatics (it’s hardware is powerful and it has a great screen), I’d say it’s probably the weakest of the devices that AT&T announced today. Unless the price point can come in at a point lower than the new iPad, I’d say that Apple’s tablet with 4G LTE on AT&T is probably still the way to go.

Photoshop Templates for the new Twitter Header Image

by Shy Mukerjee

When Twitter rolled out the new header images yesterday with an announcement on the TODAY show, I quickly realized that a lot of people were going to take the Ryan Seacrest route and integrate their Twitter avatars into their header images for a single, seamless header (see image at right). After all, this happened with Facebook Timeline covers as well, sparking some really creative uses of the new format.

In updating not only my own Twitter header, but the ones for Mario, Small Biz Go Mobile and the #SocamShow as well, I ended up creating a Photoshop template to make it quick and easy to design, test, and deploy a variety of new Header images for Twitter.

So I thought I’d share those with you :)

Instructions for Use

These Photoshop templates have four layers: a black background, a place for you to drop your own background image, a simulation of the white outline that Twitter will automatically place around your image, and a layer for you to drop your header image.

To set it up, first drop your background image onto the blank background layer called “Your Background Here” and line it up exactly how you want. Then, using the guides I provided, copy and paste the section inside the guidelines (the area inside the white box) to a new document. This will be your new Twitter profile picture, so save it as a JPG image remember where you put it!

Finally, set up the document so that the white lines around your profile pic and the black background are hidden, showing only your new header image.

I recommend saving this as a PNG image for the best image reproduction (Twitter allows up to a 5MB header file, so even a very large PNG should work just fine) or as a maximum quality JPG image.

To upload your new header, log into your Twitter account, click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner, and then click on “Settings.” In the menu that appears on the left side of your screen, click on “Design” to see your design settings. The option to upload your new header image can be found here.

Download Links

I’ve provided downloads in two different sizes. The SD one is an exact pixel-for-pixel representation of the final image size that Twitter will display on their website. If you’re looking to work quickly and get something up right away, this is probably the one that you want. The dimensions on this image are 520×260, for reference.

The second download is the HD version, offering the highest resolution image Twitter will accept: 1252×626. I image they’ll be using a higher resolution version for things like retina displays on the iPad 3, so if you want your header image to show up with the maximum image fidelity everywhere it appears, this is the one you’ll want to download.

Twitter Header PSD Template SD – 100 KB

Twitter Header PSD Template HD– 1MB

How to Upgrade Your iPhone to iOS6: What You Need to Know

by Katherine Elsasser

iphone 5 and new ipad running iOS6iOS6 is coming tomorrow September 19th! If you have an eligible device, it’s important to do some crucial prep work to make sure you’ll be able to update with minimal hassle. Even if you don’t care too much about feature updates, it’s a good idea to download the new iOS just for the security and bug fixes alone. Plus the upgrade is free, so why not?

So first, what’s eligible?

The short answer is all the recent iDevices. That includes:

– iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone4S
– iPad 2 and the iPad3 (also known as the “New iPad”)
– iPod Touch 4

It’s important to note that not all devices will have the capability to take advantage of all of the features of iOS6. Lots of the small tweaks of iOS6 will be available to everyone, but many of the key features will only be rolled out to the newest devices. Check out our chart:

How to Upgrade

1. Tidy Up a Little
Take this opportunity to get rid of stuff you’re not using. It’s just taking up memory space. Go through your photos, notes, and videos: if you have them in another place, do you really need it on your device? Delete apps you’re not using. Think of it like cleaning out your closet: if you haven’t used it in 3-6 months you don’t need it!

2. Back up your iDevice
Make sure you back up.  It’s a two part process, so hang on tight. To start, make sure your device is connected to a power source and you have stable WiFi. On your phone, go to Settings > iCloud > Backup and Storage > Backup Now.  iCloud backup is free for all iTunes purchases of music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books. For everything else (including camera roll photos), Apple gives you 5GB of storage for free and lets you pay for more. If you don’t want to pay for more storage it’s not a big deal: you probably still need to plug your device into a computer running iTunes. Here’s why:

iCloud will not back up media you didn’t purchase from iTunes (music, movies, etc), podcasts and audiobooks, and photos transfered from your computer. So you probably need to sync with iTunes by connecting your device to a machine running iTunes, either via USB or wireless. If you haven’t set up wireless syncing with iTunes then don’t start now: go the old fashioned way and plug into your computer.

3. Get the most recent version of iTunes (10.7)

If you already have iTunes on your computer, you can update by going to iTunes > Check for Updates. If you are having trouble with the auto update, you can also download it at http://www.apple.com/itunes/.

That should do it! You’ll be all set to bask in the glow of iOS6. If you have questions feel free to leave a comment or get in touch on Twitter @smbizgomobile.

How Small Businesses Can Use the New Twitter Profiles, Twitter for iPad

by Katherine Elsasser

This morning on the Today Show, Twitter rolled out a couple of big changes: updated profiles and a huge update of their iPad app. These new Twitter changes are bigger than they sound, and it’s important businesses react quickly to these and future changes to a key messaging and marketing platform. Not only is there a slight first mover advantage, but you’ll never be caught trying to play catchup on new technology. It’s especially important if being a tech-savvy company is important to you brand. As always, it’s a branding opportunity.

Mario's new Twitter profile page

Updated Profile Image
Goodbye tiny Twitter avatar, hello giant banner. Does Matt Lauer’s Twitter profile page remind you of anything? If you answered Facebook, we’re on the same page here. That giant image is great for quickly and immediately introducing people to your brand, and makes your Twitter page feel more “branded” in general. Take advantage of it, and make sure you’re presenting a page that fits in with the rest of your identity, digital and otherwise.

Updated Profile Photo Stream
Over in the left sidebar, you can see the redesigned Twitter profile page puts a lot more emphasis on photos that you’ve posted. As a small business, it’s important to remember to take those photos, and that only 6 will show at a time. While taking photos, try to balance subject matter, colors, and close-ups between photos, so that you have different kinds of photos showing on your profile that look good even at a glance.

The big trend here is an emphasis on media, and users creating and sharing it. Again, that should remind you of Facebook, and it makes sense. Getting users to interact with your service means they spend more time on your site, and it makes sense to bring the media inside your site, rather than push users elsewhere to bring pageviews to other people.

We see that same trend pushed even farther in the new Twitter iPad app. The big news here, beyond the redesign, is that users can experience media from Tweets within the stream. The company told the Today Show that the idea was to create an experience more like Twitter.com, but also to let users “view photos in fullscreen and swipe through them really easily.” So again, it’s all about photos. Are you good with a camera? It’s good for Twitter, Facebook, and your business’s image if you are.

Exclusive Offer: 20% Off #neverbepowerless Duracell Powermat System

by Katherine Elsasser
powerhouse4040 panelists
A big thanks to all our #powerhouse4040 panelists!

In case you missed it, last night was Mario Armstrong Media’s giant #Powerhouse4040 party in NYC at Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club. We were there with SocialCam, Duracell Powermat, and yes, Jay-Z himself. It was a blast, but if you missed it, don’t worry. We have a special offer for MarioArmstrong.com and SmallBizGoMobile readers!

We get to offer our readers the first-ever discount code on the Duracell Powermat 24-hour Power System! Save 20% just by entering the promo code “powerhouse4040” at checkout when you buy the system directly from Duracell.

We’ve talked about how much we love this system before, because it’s great for anyone with an iPhone that’s always on the go. It includes a wireless charging case for your iPhone, the Duracell Powermat you use to charge it on, and a backup battery to get an extra charge while you’re on the go. Your days of running out of battery are over!

Click here for our special 20% discount offer on the Duracell 24-Hour Power System so you’ll #neverbepowerless!

Developing a Mobile Marketing Strategy: Delineate A Territory Where You Can Be Unique

by David Egger

David Egger is Lead Marketing Manager for AT&T’s IRU (Individual Responsibility User) Mobility Programs. You can find more blog content from David and other experts on emerging technologies and mobile application on the AT&T Networking Exchange Blog. AT&T has sponsored the following blog post.

 

Develop your mobile marketing strategy
Samsung Galaxy SIII on AT&T

With so many options to promote your business today and an American economy that seems to be driven by advertising and its revenue, how does a small business develop a mobile marketing strategy and rise above the white noise? Michael Porter offers marketers some great advice for situations like these: “A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.”

A first-year marketing professor will teach that Marketing is about 4 P’s – product, place, price, promotion.  While I can’t help you decide how to price your products in this blog, I can tell you that knowing your mobile marketing strategy as it relates to product, place, and promotion will help center your mobile marketing strategy.

Look Inward 

The first step in developing any communications about your company is to know exactly what you want to say about your products and services.  You do this by intimately knowing these parts of your business.  What is your product, who buys it, when do they buy it, how often do they buy it, what triggers those purchases?  Examining and answering these questions will get you quite far down the road from your competitors, as these are the questions that high-cost consultants will ask … and they are the questions most business owners won’t be able to answer adequately.

For example, is your product something not even sold to consumers?  Your mobile strategy will be vastly different than a mobile strategy for a consumer product.  Is your product something purchased on a whim, or a planned, expensive purchase?  This will determine how you design your strategy and optimize it for the type of customer that your business will serve best.  Is the buyer of your product someone younger or older?  While the elderly are joining social media in greater numbers, you’ll need to tailor your approach depending upon how your customers approach the mobile space.

Read More