The future of Metzger Business
Metzger business has been used to keep track of my rambelings as an experienced Internet and ecommere business architect who is interested in social media. I am also very interested in small business and my community so I’ve decided to turn this endevor into an experminent. I’d like to help small businesses and my community by making this a platform for publishing. I’ve invited a number of small businesses jnthe community to start posting articles one a regular basis. I hanlve room for several additional business to post as well. On top of that I’ll be doing business reviews of businesses in the Marietta and Roswell comunities. I’ll continue to write about how I think social media can help both small and large business and how this site helps the businesses that participate on it.
You’ll see chAnges in the site Over the coming weeks and months but we are going to start slowly. So please enjoy drop us some comments and tell you friends in marietta and Roswell. If for a business and would like to contribute please feel free to reachout to me. Kevin [at] Metzgerbusiness [dot] com
Remote Control Your Computer
Remote Control Image
I recently found LogMeIn.com. This is a wonderful free remote control services that allows you to remotely control either a Mac or PC. It even works with smartphones. You can actually control your PC or Mac through a smartphone. This is a truly incredible service and if you are a small business and have used GoToMyPC this service can save you $30/month.
They also offer paid services such as tech support, virtual networking and an advanced version of remote control that allows you to transfer files and use remote resources to print copy past etc. It’s all very cool. Check it out! It’s free and Freeing.
I just might be an Apple FanBoy
Okay maybe I’m just a tech geek but I want an iPad. I love apple and have even before the release of the Mac. My first computer was an Apple IIC and was this amazing thing that if manipulated properly allowed me to write my own games.
Today the iMac we own renewed my interest in computing and is still allowing me to define my own games. The release of the iPad will take defining your own game even further. You can now take the game with you. As a blogger and tech enthusiast I love the product.
As a blogger and tech enthusiast I wonder why a few things were left out: Here is what I would have liked to see in addition to the incredible technology that is there. I want an iSight built-in on both sides so I can do video or video chat. I want the computer to do flash – this is a common technology used on many web sites and for many video presentations. I want the iPad to run more than one application at a time. And I want the iPad to be able to make and receive calls with a blue tooth headset and voice commands.
All the above said I think it turns out that the tweet I sent out on Tuesday before anyone else was saying it is going to turn out to be true “Somehow I think Steve Jobs speech tomorrow will be more impactful than the State of the Union !” For some reason I was thinking the State of the Union Speech was Tuesday.
The reason I think I’m right is because we have seen, even with some missing pieces, the introduction of a complete change in computing!
Savvy Cyber Kids – An Interview
DADvocate – Internet Discussions from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.
This is a video interview with Security Expert Ben Halpert. Ben has two daughters and a son on the way. When his first daughter was born he began thinking about the security risks for being on line with children and how and when that conversation should start to take place. Ben decided that we are probably reaching out to children too late in life to begin this conversation. Much like teaching your children to say please or thank you Internet behavior conversation needs to start when your children are young and still listen to you.
Ben has started the Non Profit Savvy Cyber Kids. This organization is dedicated to providing resources to parents and teachers that will help them in educating their children on internet safety. Currently Ben has a number of resources available on his site including:
- A Parent Child Agreement – Rules for Online Safety
- Adult Caregiver/Parent Checklist
- SafeOnline 101 Presentation
- Finally Ben has a children’s book that is still in the works but expected to be published later this spring.
To access all this information and keep up with Ben go to benhalpert.com
I’d also like to thank Jeff Sass for inspiring this interview with his post Having that conversation with your kids. You can find more on Jeff Sass at JefferySass.com
Response to Reeking of Desperation
An interesting question was raised by Julian Smith about how people spend their time acting desperate to get seen by the big names in Social Marketing. I formatted the following response but then realized it was more the length of a blog then a comment so here it is.
9 months ago I started my blog MySpellingSucs.com – an unedited discussion of my dyslexia and ADD and my daughters Cerebral Palsy. I started it just to start writing something and do it consistently. I wanted to just say what I felt and do it the way I wanted to. I was tired of listening to fast easy money crowd who really didn’t know what they were talking about and I just wanted to do it my way. I write about how I have learned from my children and parenting, specific issues on CP, and I occasionally interview or write about inspirational folks with disabilities. I love writing there and it has brough me great pleasure as well as some recognition. I was awarded 2009 East Cobber Father of the year and this happened when my readership was only from my local network of friends.
Then about 6 months ago I started getting involved in community – twitter, expanding Facebook and LinkedIn, commenting on other blogs and that kind of thing. I found more readers coming to my site and then I really started getting interested in and attaching to people who were leading this revolution. Julien – Yourself included.
After a few months I found myself backing away from the “Guru’s” and focusing in the “Second Tier.” I do this because they have more time they are just as educated and have as many new and innovative ideas and they communicate more. I know the “Guru’s/First Tier” used to communicate with their audience as much as the “Second Tier” now does but the “Guru’s” don’t have the time to communicate with new folks as much as they would like and they need to keep their loyal audiences loyal so they communicate with as many as possible and are diligent about communicating with the folks that have helped them along the way.
It’s been in working with this “Second Tier” of bloggers that I have found I have the most pleasure and have begun to get the most recognition from the Guru’s. It makes sense.
In any community you want Gate Keepers. A Gate Keeper helps you know who the good and who the bad are when you don’t have the time to figure it out yourself. If the people I trust vet you and say your good than I’ll (as the guru) take a little additional time to find out more about who you are.
I guess what I’m saying is I like the idea of being yourself. That may have something to do with connecting with the crowd but do it your way and find the folks you enjoy communicating with.
This was originally going to be a comment in response to the blog post Reeking of Desperation but was too long. Julien thanks for the inspiration.
Not on Save the Ta-Tas or National Brest Cancer Awareness Foundation
I’ve been on the net for a while now, you know since it’s inception, and I’m wondering if the nets best prank has been played on Facebook or if there really is a brest cancer awareness campaign going on right now. Currently women on Facebook are telling what collor bra they are wearing. I went out to http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/ and http://www.savethetatas.com/ but neither site has any information on the home page. Here’s the thing. If they haven’t started this campaign then they should be out there tonight jumping on it and figuring out how to use it regardless of whether it was the best idea to begin with because it has caught on like wildfire.
If someone knows the origin of this event please educate me because I’d love to know. By the way my favorite color I’ve seen so far “HOT Nude” sounds intriguing.
Post for Sponzai
Whatever hatred saves the number.
Twitter Wiki Pages for Your Business. Is Your company monitoring it’s coversation?
We have a wiki at the office. It’s not used much. There are a few reasons it’s not used. 1) You have to be on the corporate network. Our sales team who is remote is not set up for remote access or they simply don’t know ho to use it. 2) The wiki is dokuwiki which is somewhat easy to consume but a pain to add pages and info to for anyone who is less technical than a tech type user. 3) The biggest reason that the wiki has not been adopted is that the information out there hasn’t been all that valuable to the population at large.
I know #1 and #2 have to be addressed and they will be with an upcoming intranet project. We’re looking at hosting something on the cloud that we can use LDAP or AD to log on and maintain a single sign-on environment. We also want to find something that will be easy for user’s to add pages and intellectual property to. Finally it will have to serve as a platform for communication to the company. I’m very excited about this project but I’m going to have to reserve the rest of topics 1 and 2 for another post.
The third point I made above has been addressed with 2 initiatives I have completed in the last few weeks. The first was a long process of designing integration strategy and documentation including implementation documentation, project plans, risk scenarios, etc. The second was a simple Twitter page. I want to talk about the value of that twitter page today.
What I did:
I built a page on the wiki that consolidated all the current Twitter chatter about our company and all our competitor companies. I also set up a few searches to monitor our top customers and any discussion with those customers that focus on Shipping. I then showed this page to our Director of marketing, VP IT, director Sales Ops and a few weeks later our CEO. We now have a very nice little dashboard of all the conversations that are happening that are important to us.
How I did it:
- Go to Twitter.com/widgets
- Create a search widget for each Company name I wanted to follow, You do this by selection Search widget on the entry screen and filling out Google type search entry form.
- I copied the code created by the widget
- I created an HTML Table and started posting the widgets. I gave a cell in the table for each widget.
Marketing Impact/What we have learned:
- End customers – our customers, customers hate our competitor’s offerings.
- There is not much discussion about our company out there.
- When we found an upset customer, we were able to respond quickly.
- If an upset customer receives their package they probably won’t be upset anymore.
- Most Important: our company needed a Twitter presence. Our customer’s are there and Our Customer’s Customer’s are there. We now have a service presence and I expect we’ll continue to grow from there.
I do want to make one point. The exercise to build this page took about 3-4 hours. It would take a more skilled person about 1-2. I could do it again now in about 45 minutes.
What are some of the ways you’ve used Twitter in your company?
Flip – Awesome Product
I recently got my flip which I absolutely love. It’s so easy to use and I have captured much of my kids that I otherwise would not have. I need to remember to bring the camera around more often because it has been a blast. I don’t know what exactly it is about the flip but it completely changes the way I look at video.
Importing and uploading videos has been a blast too. The flip software has taught me the value of cropping clips and has made it easy to upload videos.
While I do absolutely love this product there is one thing I don’t like about the software, I can’t tag my videos when loading to Youtube and yet the flip automatically tags the video with FlipShare. I think this is a significant flaw in the software. They should provide me the option of tagging the video and allow me to choose if I’ll add the FlipShare tag. Asked I will, but as long as I’m not being asked I’ll go up to YouTube and remove the tag since I have to add my own up there anyway.
All the same I think the camera and import software are incredibly easy to use a great value and worth buying unless your some kind of videophile. I’m not so it suites me fine.
Hey Flip let me know if you change the software so I can upgrade.
Oh Yeah I wrote this review instead of video as my one boycot against the Flip because of the software design. Otherwise I recommend buying it.
Merry Christmas
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