The Orange Chair

This article, What are the most useful social media tools for small business? – Trends in the Living Networks, has a great list of a range of online tools you can use as a small business to communicate, connect, organize and run your small business. Many of them you may already be familiar with, but there’s likely a few that will be new to you.

I also recommend this list to anyone who works for a larger company but is responsible for using social media within their part of the organization. These could be the right low cost for you and your group if you don’t have a larger, enterprise-wide solution to tap into.

Nieman Journalism Lab has provided a great example of how to crowdsource, courtesy of the Guardian. 

The Guardian’s had a big problem, they were going to get scooped by a competitor while having to deal with too much data to process in too little time. Solution? Crowdsourcing.

So what did they do?

“….wait for the associated public-records dump, shovel it all on your Web site next to a simple feedback interface and enlist more than 20,000 volunteers to help you find the needles in the haystack.

Your cost for the operation? One full week from a software developer, a few days’ help from others in his department, and £50 to rent temporary servers.”

Sounds easy, right? Well not easy, but not as hard as it might seem if you follow the lessons offered in this article. Check it out, as well as the Nieman Journalism Lab in general.

…can be seen in this video here:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn1brUCqEjE"]

Lots of fascinating statistics, linked with a theme, presented well. One of the reasons for the powerful changes that digital technology is bringing on like the juggernaut that it is.

Thanks to thetrendwatch.com for this.

There’s a good interview with the Director of Innovation at Kraft on why they are charging 99 cents for their app when they could just give it away. Anyone developing and marketing an iPhone App should check this out in Advertising Age.

National Resource Canada – part of the Government of Canada is recruiting in 2009. Here’s part of their pitch to new recruits:

“At Natural Resources Canada, we don’t just think outside the box. We work outside the box.

As well as pens, paper and computers, the tools of the trade might include a pick, or a shovel, a GPS and camping gear. And on some days, the closest thing to a colleague might have feathers or fur.
….
We don’t block YouTube or Facebook. Our people decide what tools help them to work as a team and to get the job done. Our very own Wiki helps give wings to the most creative ideas, whether they come from a senior manager or someone at entry level.”

For companies that are recruiting new (and not so new) hires, you should be aware that some organizations competing for the same people are offering access to social media tools as a benefit. I think you should too.

I don’t have anything to add on the whole Kanye West story. I do want to comment on this, though: ABC’s Moran removes tweet with Obama swipe at Kanye – Michael Calderone – POLITICO.com.

Even though the tweets were removed, they were still available as of last night via Google’s caching. (And to be fair to Michael Calderone, he does acknowledge that.) Anyone who thinks they can post things on the Internet and then by deleting them not have anyone see them is in for a surprise. Ask Terry Moran.

And now for something completely different! According to BBC NEWS:

The Royal Opera House is to stage an opera created through social networking site Twitter. Members of the public have been invited to submit their “tweets” online – messages of up to 140 characters – which will form the new libretto.

The first scene of the as-yet-untitled work has already been completed and features a man who has been kidnapped by a group of birds.

Now for some, this is a great way of engaging more people in Opera (assuming the libretto comes out well). For others, they may say: well, the libretto doesn’t count for much anyway! Either way you look at it, it promises to be a novel and innovative way of connecting opera with…well, everyone.

Go to the BBC article for more info.

I liked this interview by Der Spiegel (via Salon.com) of Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” and now “Free”, not to mention editor and chief of WiReD. The interview really provides a great summing up of some of the key ideas of the transition from old to new media. I may not agree with all of Anderson’s conclusions, but I enjoy how thought provoking they are and how he puts them.

It is an interesting interview: Anderson seems miffed at the start, but he rolls out alot of ideas in two short pages. See Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter? | Salon News for the interview.

My fellow Web 2.0 consultant, Aaron Kim, recently left IBM. Typically when someone leaves IBM, we have a going away lunch where we allow everyone to sign a card wishing the person all the best as well as chipping in for a gift for the person. Now seeing that Aaron has worked with people all around the world, and being that we were both Web 2.0 people, I thought we should take a Web 2.0 approach to things!

Instead of sending around a card, I set up a blog, Aaron Kim’s Leaving IBM Lunch, and asked people to comment/wish Aaron the best on the blog. (As well as providing them with information such as how to get to the lunch). As for a going away gift, using a combination of the ChipIn! service and Paypal, I collected money for Aaron and then transferred it to him after the event.

All in all, it took me less time to do all this than it would have taken to shop for a card! Plus, the benefit was that people from Australia, Japan, Spain, the UK, California in the U.S., and of course Canada, could all participate.

To make it even better, another IBM web 2.0 expert, Jamie Alexander, inspired Aaron to take the gift money and provide it to Kiva. The money raised for the gift is now helping entrepreneurs in El Salvador, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cambodia. You can read more about this at Aaron’s blog.

Best of luck, Aaron. And for people who think using Web 2.0 technology is too difficult…well, as you see, it can be as simple and as effective as this.

First, this is an incredible video. It reminds me of the work of David Hockney, though of course, it works in a different way than his photographic collages:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Et7UQh1tg"]

By itself, I was impressed very much. But what is interesting about such things is that others can comment on it. For example, it turns out that perhaps the video is not so original, as you can see here at Gizmodo. As well, the site where I found it, molt:n, noticed an interesting life transition in it. All of this to say that the video by itself is great, but the power of Web 2.0 technology that allows others to easily share and converse about the video makes the experience even greater.

Finally, kudos to the people who posted the video here, YouTube – The PEN Story, for acknowledging what others discovered.