Google side project keeps me sharp

Recently I've been experimenting with Google Business Apps. Once again Google has taken the market by storm by offering businesses of all sizes the ability to use business class tools like email, voice, sites, chat, shared calendaring and more in a web-based (or cloud-based) environment for very minimal cost.

I've started doing some SMB and non-profit work for a few friends/colleagues by helping them get everything set up.

See more details by going to my website at garrettmcalister.me . If you have any questions or would like help getting your personal brand set up please let me know.

New Email Banners w/ Partner Portal Project goes into Pilot

I've just finished rolling out a new branding product to my department at Cisco. A while back while working on some personal branding and career planning I developed an idea to better brand the virtual account managers within my group and also improve communications with the internal and external (partner) audience that we speak to daily.

Using photoshop and some corporate approved photography and design I composed an email banner that installs across the top of newly created emails within Outlook and Apple's Entourage. These new email banners have a picture of the VCAM along with contact information. When a user clicks on the banner it links him/her to a Webex Sales Portal where each Cisco VCAM has customized their own page with regional contacts, links, documents and webex recordings.

The response has been tremendous. I rolled it out to approximately 50 people in the organization and in a matter of days I had tons of requests from other groups within Cisco (and also partners for that matter) wanting a banner of their own.

The moral of the story is that email is the most highly used and most under-utilized branding tool in the marketplace today. There are several companies in that area that are starting to see email as a platform that can be improved on in many ways.

One of those companies is Incredimail (http://www.incredimail.com) They offer features for your email including notifiers, emoticons, email backgrounds, ecards, animations, and 3D Effects. Another company is Goldmail (http://www.goldmail.com) which offers an email service that embeds a link and takes the reader to a hosted video message.

There are also several companies that hope to expand the searchability and useability of current email clients like Outlook. Two of these companies are Xobni and X1. They help users manage the large numbers of emails coming into their inbox, help manage text searching within those emails and builds connected links between users and subject lines.

CarPeeple launches into Beta

As many of you know I work on a couple personal Web 2.0 projects in my spare time (I use that phrase loosely). Two weeks ago I officially brought CarPeeple online for testing and have started to get great feedback from some friends, families and colleagues.

The premise behind CarPeeple is an online, automotive marketplace that helps members buy, sell & manage maintenance for their cars. The uniqueness and strength of the site is the way in which it enables a network of providers to collaborate and bring quality, discounted services to the members.

I think that there is still quite a lot of room for improvement. At the moment we are working on three main enhancements: 1) Ability for members to turn car ads on/off for public display 2) Services directory that links to an enhanced service provider profile 3) Social networking integration.

Sometime in the late summer months we will be launching a printed version of our automotive guide which fully integrates with our online site. This guide will display cars for sale and service providers. It will be distributed in the Triangle NC area first.

If you have the time to test the site and list a car for sale (or shop for a car) I would greatly appreciate any feedback good or bad. I'm sure the site will morph quite a bit over the next few months as user feedback gets integrated into the newest versions.

The site can be found at www.CarPeeple.com and simply click on the "join now" icon at the top right corner to get started.

Opinions on SocialText

Originally Posted Oct 17, 2007, reposting here for public viewing

I've been working closely with SocialText over the last few months. It started when I developed an idea for an external, partner facing wiki and ran some trials using SocialText as the platform.

First and foremost the product is fantastic. It's so much easier to use than other wiki products like Confluence and makes so much more sense collaboratively given it's ability to create (user access granted) workspaces to open up the wiki to whomever the user chooses.

Test project:

I set up access in 4 "layers" (1) organization only, (2) geographic Area coverage [partner facing], (3) 0pportunity list view, and (4) individual opportunity and started working with a few partners. I developed virtual teams around each posted opportunity and the partners and internal team loved it.

We immediately started seeing increases in productivity and communication. In fact one partner accelerated several deals to closure (I think) due to the increased communication. I had positive feedback from all parties involved.

In the meantime I have been helping SocialText understand the unique requirements of an enterprise sales organization from a wiki standpoint.

Here are some opinions (below) I gave them around their new product SocialCalc: Since I spend a lot of time with Web 2.0 technologies I'll start by saying the market is moving towards online applications as a replacement for traditional programs like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc... Of course Microsoft is speaking out of both sides of their mouth because you'll find articles how they say that these types of applications will always reside (mainstream) as client based software but on the other hand they're pumping huge dollars into Microsoft Live. I disagree with their PR stance but I understand they're just trying to make money; however I do think it will take many years before online applications become the norm for doing business because Microsoft has a huge foothold on the market and people take time to change. But in the end the benefits of online apps makes the most sense. It sets apps "free" by enabling users to access them from any node, additionally it provides an easy form of backup.

As a business owner I want my life to be virtual and mobile if at all possible and the Internet provides this freedom. Now, take a moment and put the following types of companies under a microscope: Google, Microsoft Live, Glide, Zoho Writer, DocStoc, Thinkfree, etc... And see a huge host of Web 2.0 companies developing these types of applications through various online platforms and you'll see that there is a lot of energy and investment going into developing these new technologies.

Online spreadsheets is one of those applications. To see a list of spreadsheet online apps companies go here: http://www.go2web20.net/ and sort by the tag feature at top of page: "Spreadsheet".

In an ideal world the SocialText SocialCalc product would provide the exact functionality as using Excel. Microsoft has had years to develop this application so they know what people want. I wouldn't try to recreate the wheel from a functionality standpoint. Of course it needs to support different types of cell fields and algorithms. Besides the obvious advantages of "anywhere" access, automatic backups and shared wiki style spreadsheets that your product will inherently provide, I think that the biggest strength for wiki reporting will lie in the ability to mashup various spreadsheets and roll the numbers up to a common dashboard for managers and such to see.

With this functionality individuals will be able to post their numbers (whatever numbers) to their own pages and then roll those numbers up to other pages or workspaces where other team members can see them. In the account management world this equates to sales figures, forecasts, and other various achievement numbers. Visual graphing is a bonus.

Meta Social Networking/ Social Aggregation

I'm reposting some thoughts from an internal Cisco blog (minus the Cisco components) because I've been giving a lot of thought around the future of social networking.

Meta Social Networking & Social Aggregation are two phrases used to describe the morphing of social communications into a single platform for ease of use. These tools/sites provide relief from "tool fatigue" in which a user has to constantly login to websites all day to stay on top of his social calendar or work communications.

If you take a current snapshot of the social market (even though we're relatively at the start of social networking as a whole) you'll find that these networks are growing at an exponential pace.

Fast forward a year or two and it's fun to imagine just how many social networks will proliferate the internet and how these social networks will play out in our day-to-day social & business way of doing things. Some people will never touch a social network, some will build a profile in Facebook or MySpace just because their friends and family are doing it (but will never use it), some will be casual users and some will be everyday users. Which one will you be?

Today at lunch a colleague and I were discussing how the majority of people in our networks use an email centered work plan; in other words they plan their day, their contacts, their workflow, etc.. all around email. Email is the primary form of commmunication and quite frankly preferred over the telephone (as long as it's not relationship based). Email provides structure, communication history and a way to pace your response timeliness.

Look at the pre-teen and young adult arena and I think you'll find that email is ancient history. Instant messaging, SMS text, Twitter, blogging, etc.. are what the younger generation use. What is this telling us? I think the latter mentioned forms of communication are quicker, more efficient and certainly more in the "now". If you add conversation history wouldn't it make more sense to move to a the more timely instant messaging platform, real-time communications?

So how does this play into Meta Social Networking/ Social Aggregation? Well, combine real-time communications into your social networks, spill every data point into one portal and you've got the most sophisticated social ticker tape available to mankind.

Today, I think the market can be generalized into the following types of social networks:

1. Large social networks like MySpace (casual), Facebook (casual and business) & LinkedIn (business)
2. Niche social networks like College.com, eons.com, bebo.com (which can be quite large too but are normally focused on a niche crowd or interest)
3. Genealogy style networks like Ourstory.com, MyFamily.com, Dandelife, MyHeritage.com that are based on family or life experiences (normally include a timeline feature)
4. White-label social networking platforms like Ning.com, Piczo.com, PeopleAggregator.com which allow a user to form their own niche, branded social network
5. Meta Social Networks which, in various ways, delivers a portal for users to combine the various networks they belong too and feeds them to one location for viewing, tracking and staying on top of the activity at each of these sites. See Friendfeed.com, Spokeo.com or MyLifeBrand.com

These social aggregators are really onto something big. They understand busy, real-life personalities and allow users to have a broader, more enriched social experience.

Now, bring these capabilities into an enterprise environment and I believe we will watch the enterprise communication platform completely morph into a more robust, lifelike communication stream.

I'm on the Grid

This week I've been consolidating various social networking collaborative tools and professional information into a nice, neat package using Google's Blogger application.

I've also been moving my increasingly popular Web 2.0 Research wiki over to my main blog page so that it is easy to find and reference. Simply add my blog to your RSS reader and you'll be updated to the new changes as they come along. Just to give proper credit, these links and descriptions are compiled from other various sources online as listed in my favorite links section on my blog.

You can expect to see me more reviews here about Web 2.0 tools and technologies. My specialty is consumer & enterprise collaborative technologies and how they fit into a company's strategic framework. I also monitor start-ups in this space and dive some into Search Engine Optimization as a side interest.