This is my first installment, so for background, I use Bufferapp and absolutely love it. Each day I try to send out two links to articles currently of interest to me, one quote from Baltasar Gracian (#gracian) and I reply to a Plinky prompt each night (try it, it’s a great way to reflect at the end of the day).

One thing I learned about Bufferapp this week is that they use bit.ly, and try not to replicate shortened links, but sometimes it happens resulting in large click discrepancies in the analytics. I use the analytics more as an ‘of interest’ than ‘lifeline’, so it doesn’t matter me, just found it odd that one of my posts got twice the clicks as I have followers, so I pointed it out to the folks at Bufferapp and they gave me the above explanation.

So on to the week that was…

I’ve been extremely interested in learning more about how API’s can resolve a breadth of enterprise issues both on the back-end and sales facing sides. It is quite clear that tablets and smart phones are all the rage. Problem is to deliver applications to assist sales or customers requires the ability to pull data and information from a range of internal systems and storage locations. When dealing with multiple sales forces and audiences the complexity quickly scales. API’s, standard frameworks, and unified platforms are all needed.

Programmable Web is a great web site for the latest information on APIs.

Speaking of Web sites, Gerry McGovern is unmatched for his insight’s regarding user tasks on Web sites. This week he addressed why ugly web sites are perceived as credible by users.

An article regarding AdWords caught my attention as management of our corporate account was transitioned to me at the start of this year. SEO Moz had an article, which to me served as a reminder to test results you see (ie Trust, but Verify).

On Thursday, a post from Drupal founder Dries Buytaert spoke to the release of version 8. I’m at the very early stages of a Drupal 7 implementation and know that we will need to upgrade at some point, so the timeline is very relevant.

The week ended with an interesting post by Om Malik on the Mobile-Social-Cloud. What intrigued me about this was concept of the ‘office’ platform. Using PC’s with iphone’s and ipads and making everything work together is a priority for me right now.

Plinky addressed food, animals, Valentine’s Day, and travel.

I don’t theme my Gracian quotes, but this week’s hit upon highest points/peaks, character, insinuation, and when to put something aside.

I also tossed in a few Tweets on Gen X, Gen Y, a shark that swallowed another shark whole, steps to success, free classes from MIT, and how could I not have had at least one Jeremy Lin reference (okay a retweet stating his story was the best basketball story since the fish that saved pittsburgh).

In essence Prezi is a ‘big wall’ on which you place content. You can then develop a ‘path’, which is a linear presentation like powerpoint. The transition from one piece of content to the next along the path is accomplished via zooming out and then in to the next piece. A user can also simply move around free form.

I should note that Prezi offers a free ‘public’ version, along with two other paid levels. I used the public version. In tier 2 content can be made private, you can incorporate your logo, instead of Prezi’s in the viewing frame, and you get up to 500mb storage. The top tier ups the storage to 2000mb and offers the ability to work offline.

Using Prezi was reasonably simple, I created an account and clicked on “New prezi”. Since the free account was hosted online and required to be public, I gave it a generic “hello world” name and used content about a friend who is a racecar driver (anyone want to be a sponsor, let me know;-)

In edit mode you have three core tools, along the top center is ability to “Save”, “Undo” and “Exit” along with a few others. On the right center is your zoom in/out tool, and at top left is your tool to customize your prezi. When you are ready to see your prezi in action, you can hit the “Show” button on the bottom right corner.

What I found to be a bit challenging is understanding the scale. When you place objects using “Insert” you then have the ability to size and drag the object once placed. I tried to make the objects relative to one another, but when converted to a presentation or iPad the size of the objects didn’t reflect what I expected to see.

When zoomed out, it sometimes has trouble allowing you to select an item so you have to zoom in to click on it.

With all my content added, I then created the ‘path’ that I wanted a viewer to follow, again they could chose to follow it or move around free-form.

You simply select content and click on it. A dot shows over the piece with a number and a slide roll is at the bottom of the screen offering two options to order and re-order. You can move icons of the content by dragging them or you can move the dots with the numbers to other content pieces.

When you exit prezi, you can then watch it online, download it for desktop, or connect from iPad to watch.

In total I had four short video clips (each under 30 seconds), six pdf pages, and 28 images. There were also four column headings.

Online, I played the presentation in full screen mode. The transitions were not as smooth as I expected. Several times the transition paused making it very choppy.

I next selected download and ok to create a file I could show on my laptop. The zipped file was 32MB. On opening, I found that the desktop is a flash file. Similar to online, the desktop version was not as fluid as I would have expected and I was running on a laptop that was only a year old so performance should not have been a problem.

On the iPad, you have to download the prezi app and then log into your account. The first time you connect it takes a long time to process images. I had to update to a new version and the update took a good 2 minutes.

Once synched my presentation opens in full screen. There is a top bar that allows you to select “Show” and it tells you to “Tap and hold any object to edit”.  There are also two arrows on either side of the iPad indicating you can tap to go forward or back.

I can resize images using my fingers as I would in most applications, but if I click on an image it doesn’t zoom into it, instead it asks if I’d like to delete it. I also can’t slide my finger to advance to the next or previous slide which is a little more intuitive.

The transitions were smoother on the iPad, but I couldn’t get the YouTube video to play.

The other thing I don’t like is that at the end of the show you can’t click on the right arrow to begin again, instead nothing happens giving the appearance that it doesn’t work.

At the end of the day, Prezi is an easy to use tool that offers some self-directed opportunities for the user, but the online and downloaded transitions were not very clean. The iPad transitioned well, worked on and off-line, but the video would not play. The zooming in and out is a refreshing alternative to slide transitions, but I’m not able to use common iPad motions to accomplish tasks, which may be a challenge to end-users.

I’ve known Andy for more than twelve years, and he didn’t have to walk to be an inspiration. His spirit is inspiring. So too we now see is his desire, perseverance, and ability to overcome the obstacles and challenges of life.

In September, Andy had sent an email out announcing that he had walked 200 feet, his longest ever, in therapy. He also wrote,

“I THINK IT WOULD BE SO MUCH OF A INSPIRATION IF I WALK IN THE PEP RALLY WITH THE WALKER INTO THE PEP RALLY! MY THERAPIST STARTED IN TEARS WHEN I SAID THAT! EVEN DIANA. I WANT TO BE INSPIRATION TO PEOPLE!”

There’s not much more I can say, the video pretty much says it all. Congratulations to Andy and I can’t wait to see what you do next.

You can read a post about it with his complete email here.

To learn more about Andy, you can read this post about his desire to work.

So I’ve been following the Joe Paterno firing and quickly thereafter, passing, with interest (fair disclosure, I am a fan of PSU, JoePA, believe he was dismissed unfairly, and my father is a Hall of Fame coach on the HS level serving one community for 30+ years, so I relate to the Paterno’s on my own level).

On Friday, I came across an article by Anna Heim, “CBS fires sports blogger following Twitter-based misstep on Paterno’s death” on my The Next Web feed. In it Heim wrote, “As you may remember, CBS Sports wrongly announced the death of the ex-Penn State American football coach Joe Paterno – who had recently been accused of child sex abuse.”

I was incensed, posted to my friends on Facebook and asked who would be fired next?

I clicked on the author’s name and found her Twitter feed. She had tweeted the article link so I replied to it writing, “@abracarioca @TheNextWeb your facts are wrong, paterno was not accused of doing anything wrong, you should correct this story”

She replied, “@RossNunamaker @TheNextWeb I just did, one word was missing, sorry about that”

Today the article section quoted above read, “As you may remember, CBS Sports wrongly announced the death of the ex-Penn State American football coach Joe Paterno – who had recently been blamed for not doing enough to report child sex abuse.”

There was no reference that the article was edited after being posted and no apology in the article for the misrepresentation. What disgusts me is that her answer came across flippant regarding her false accusation that a beloved dead man had been accused of child sex abuse in a post on a site with a large readership. And she was trying to defend bloggers.

The case studies had a strong emphasis on text message programs, which somewhat surprised me, but makes sense given the comfort level the industry has with social. All-in-all a great day with lots to consider and think about, plus many networking opportunities.

I was glad to see quite a few people I know while meeting some new industry professionals. Below are my notes for four of the six case studies. Please note these notes are a mix of direct takes and interpretations or thoughts I had during the presentations. Thanks to all for sharing!

Monique Levy, Manhattan Research, opened with “Multiscreen Health”. I must have been hepped up on coffee because I took the most notes on this one:

• it is a multi-screen world and most owners have multiple devices
• focus on simple tasks for consumers > reminders, look-ups, etc.
• Smart/cell users, use the web twice as much as apps
• Where do consumers use smartphone for health? Home.
• We are heading toward data capture and electronic medical records via mobile
• conversation around he physician has shifted from smartphone to tablet
• Could  see up to half of physicians on tablet by year end
• iPad allows physician to show instead of tell
• How physicians want to receive information – 75% Web, 50% Print
• Longer form reading on desk/laptop, short burst phone/tablet
• Haven’t studied what physicians show patients
• Haven’t studied if tablets are wi-fi or 3g

Dr. Katherine Malbon, Mount Sinani Adolescent Health Center, spoke on her Text in the City program.

• Started with chat, advice, and health remedies
• sign-up for service by texting short phrase to a number (post campaign determined this confused users)
• HIPAA compliant and security critical
• must keep a text program simple and personal

Peter Gannon, Within3, spoke to “Successfully Collaborating with Healthcare Professionals”

• Create a community akin to an advisory board
• He provided a good list of reasons people give for not creating a community (among those items, off-label discussion, adverse events, etc)
• Addressed the need to have Education and risk aversion, risk monitoring, and risk mitigation
• Advisory Board is most common point of entry for online, but clinical trial, speakers bureau, medical science liaison, medical association sponsorship and custom engagement communities are also options
• Digital advisory boards can have web casts, forum, profiles, resources and can have lower cost while maintaining quality
• Can always pilot the program and roll out to additional audiences over time
• Moderator is critical, must understand both the group and the platform/medium
• If partnering with an association, trust and transparency are critical
• Must commit and nurture these programs, can’t build it and hope they come

Coming out of the break I didn’t take notes and missed a portion of the next two so I’m not going to share my very brief notes, but will say that Jenna Mons, Allergan, presented “The Power of Integrating Mobile into the Marketing Mix” and “Text4Baby” was presented by both Shwen Gwee, Edelman and Susan Can Johnson and Johnson.

The final case study presentation was by Xavier Petit, Shire, “Building a Long Term Strategy for Mobile.”

• 85% traffice that is mobile is iphone/Android
• Mobile Optimized vs. Responsive Design
• Mobile health users: 61% web and 32% apps
• Overall online users: 43% web and 28% apps
• Overall people see a traditional adv, use search to learn more, and are purchasing via mobile
• Email – design for smartphone

Following the case studies there were round tables, which are comprised of a facilitator or two and attendees.

The first I attended was “Apps vs. Mobile Web for Healthcare Communications” with moderators James Miller and Xavier Petit. As it turns out Miller and I had known one another through the Healthcare Marketing & Communications Council where I’d previously worked. This round table had a nice mix of people from a range of backgrounds. I’ll speak only for myself. It seemed that there is no competition between these approaches, but instead you need to consider what you are trying to accomplish, identify where the end user will most likely be, and select the interface that is most appropriate for the situation.

The second roundtable was “Integrating Mobile and Social” co-moderated by Mario Nacinovich, AXON, and Theresa Jacobellis, Huntington Hospital. Nacinovich and I have also known one another and it was good to discuss this topic with him that didn’t even exist when we first met.

This group also had a good discussion. We talked mostly about instances when mobile and social would be appropriate to target for a campaign and when maybe not so much. It would seem there are opportunities out there, but companies need to be very careful to inform their employees on social policies and think programs through in detail.

I didn’t do so well.

According to my Plink stats I’ve written 33 answers, 8 of which have been in the past 30 days. My goal is to write an answer a day and post it to Twitter via BufferApp for my evening Tweet.

So what is Plinky?

Plinky is a niche social site. Members are given a prompt for them to answer, they can read other members’ responses, can favorite and/or comment on one another’s answers, and can follow members. You can also see answers to prompts written by others and post your answers to Facebook, Twitter and some other services.

I also scrolled through members and stopped at page 50 with 10 per page, which tells me that many have registered but most don’t regularly use. While writing this post, I decided what I’d do is follow fellow Plinkians who have 20 or more answers and see if I can build a network of the actual users. We’ll see how that goes.

All in all this is a great little site for people who enjoy writing and thinking, a brief escape from the daily grind that will leave you mentally refreshed and rejuvenated.

While I opened a Twitter account in August of 2009, I didn’t begin using it seriously until June of 2011.

At that point I had outlined an approach to Twitter. My plan was to purge followers I had followed for the simple reason they followed me (read about my experience Follow You, Follow Me) and to post links to articles I found of interest from Google Reader feed.

Like everyone, my time is precious, but so too is staying abreast of what is happening. I had to find ways to optimize efficiency. After a few different approaches I settled on Google Reader to find content, Buffer App to manage and provide analytics, Twitter to distribute, and Twylah to view a summary of my content topics.

I started using the Bufferapp.com in early October 2011 and now 30% of my Tweets have gone through their management service.

I’m using the free service, so I can put up to 10 Twitter posts in the queue. This is great because if I’m reading feeds in Reader I don’t want to live Tweet six in a row at 10:00 p.m. Instead, at the bottom of the article I select “Send To”, “Buffer” and a tab opens so I can customize my Tweet. Then I can decide whether I want to “send now” or “add to buffer”.

Occasionally, I’ll send it right away, but most often I add it to my buffer. In my buffer I can re-arrange the order of the Tweets, which is nice because I’ve currently settled into a sending pattern of Link, Quotation, Link, Plinky Prompt (what’s a Plinky Prompt? Look for an upcoming post on the social service that inspires to defeat writer’s block).

I started sending two Tweets a day, but found with Buffer it was easy to add a few more so I had a mix of links and content. In Buffer, you can select settings, and there you identify how many Tweets per day and when – to the minute, you want them sent.

Another great thing about Buffer is that I’ll get an email reminder if my Buffer is low, which encourages a steady stream of Tweets from me to the world.

I know there are a tremendous number of services to assist you with managing your Tweets, but right now I’m feeling pretty good about the (note links are to posts I’ve made about how I use these services, not to the services themselves): Google Reader – Buffer App – Twitter – Twylah combination.

Best part, once I send from Reader to Buffer I don’t have to touch anything.

In September, Technorati wrote about the new service and indicated it was invite only private beta. I signed up over the holiday break by making a request and receiving the invite. It appears this is still the case based on the homepage.

Twylah scans your Tweets and organizes them in categories based on keywords. It also allows you to “pin” up to three categories to always render at the top of the page. Today, I pinned Gracian (Baltasar Gracian), whose quotes I Tweet once a day and left the rest open. The result:

So my Twitter profile information renders at the top, then my topics act as tabs and the home page highlights either what I’ve pinned or what Twylah deems me to most often Tweet about.

I really like what Twylah is doing and this could have huge potential. Twitter frustrates a lot of content consumers, because it is overwhelming and disorganized in appearance. Twylah, though, is very organized and intuitive. If generators use Twitter and post thinking about Twylah, Twylah could become an outstanding source for content consumers.

The biggest thing I have learned from using Twylah and will begin to employ is the more common use of hashtags to help Twylah better understand the topic each Tweet addresses.

I’d also imagine that as these Twylah sites get indexed and added to search algorithms, it will help brands of all kinds to rank, provided they are using the service!

What do you think? Have you tried Twylah? What is your reaction?

I read a “Year in Review” featuring the most popular stories by the local Patch.com tonight and found it interesting to see the most popular posts were about accidents, deaths, and injuries.

By comparison, while I included this type of post, my most popular ones were about hot community topics such as issues involving taxes, school district decisions, zoning and the like. These were topics where I’d report, provide my opinion, and ask readers for their thoughts.

The lack of this type of post tells me Patch, or at least my local one, hasn’t yet found the pulse of the community. Further, if they haven’t, then they are competing head-to-head with existing print media (and to a lesser extent local radio and tv) and I think that is a big challenge to tackle in the new year considering the financial churn.

By summer of that year I launched, crashed and burned my community site, NewsOverCoffee. After many months back at the drawing board I re-launched in March of 2006.

Despite that I was late to arrive on Facebook and Twitter, but I had been on Linked In.

I like to try different services and there are many good ones, but lately I feel like I’m being a bit overwhelmed and I need to reign them in.

I’m closing my community site, but for the past 18 months or so I’ve relied on email sending to Posterous and distributing to Blogger, Twitter, and Facebook. This allowed me to save a lot of time, but I think it segregated the conversations and because I hardly ever visited the site I feel like I made it less social (I also receive comment notifications by email, so I didn’t have to ‘check’ on the site often).

Personally, I use Twitter, Buffer App, Google Reader, Facebook and Gmail daily.  I use WordPress and LinkedIn moderately (maybe weekly). I’d like to use Goodreads , Chess.com, and Plinky more than occasionally. I also have a web site (Concrete 5 CMS).

The Web site was good when I was networking heavily and hosting a variety of projects, but I think a better use is to turn the whole of it over to the Arts Center I help and use WordPress for myself and Corey Lewis Racing.

I love the concept of a single platform and Google comes close. Gmail and Reader are great. I’ve noticed that while I quickly post content from Reader to Buffer App for distribution to Twitter, I often now fail to folder the same content as I had in the past for quick reference in the future. Twylah kind of helps with this because it organizes my content for me.

I intend to post anything I Tweet to G+ and see what happens, but I feel I’m stuck on Twitter and Facebook for the moment because few of my friends and followers are on G+

I also really am liking Google Music, which again nudges me toward that platform, but it needs to improve its manager, twice now it has autouploaded my daughter’s music because we have it all on one computer.

At the end of the day, I think Google is going to win this. Its services are there and when you throw in Chrome and Android you’ve got a pretty complete package that is reasonably open compared to Apple. In the meantime, I’ll probably continue to use lots of services.