No more forgetting your loyalty cards

Received a very welcome update on my Galaxy Note 3 from Samsung this morning stating that the firmware was updated now enabling the preinstalled Beaming Service on my mobile phone.

"This enables your device to communicate with any red laser or image based barcode scanner found at retail stores around the world."

Intrigued I read into it a little further. By downloading one of these Share Card apps your phone does away with all those annoying Loyalty Cards that fill up your wallet and that we keep losing, forgetting or snapping in half. This actually is a fantastic rebirth for the Loyalty Card business as it creates a new incentive for people to start signing up again when the whole process is streamlined and always with you on your mobile phone.

Once you download the app, Beep n Go I went with,  you add your cards by scanning the barcode on them. This saves the data that you can then display to the vendor through the app the next time you are at the cash register.

As NFC is moving swiftly forward with its future now guaranteed in the Apple world with the new iPhone 6 now hosting its first NFC capabilities, its great to see new digital gathering technologies empowering users to utilise their phones and make their lives more effecient. This is definitely a tool that I will welcoming use and can see the benefits for.

Keep your ears and eyes open

What a brilliant example of community managers watching their social space for an opportunity to score a goal. The short tennis match, or in this case X & O's happened between KitKat and Oreo on Monday on Twitter.

A simple comment made by a customer about two competing brands that she tagged in her Tweet started a fantastic example of smart thinking and fast action. So here it is.

So, who is the first to respond. You might think they will win the watch.

What a beautifully simple and yet effect response (serve) by KitKat. You think, what might the competitior come back with or will they even respond and then...

Superb. Rather than attack your competitor, do the opposite. Put them on a pedestal. And win the match, hook, line and sinker. Absolutely, love it.

You might think to yourself, how can you orchestrate something like this, although I believe some of the most effective viral effects of social media purely come from remaining in the moment and capitalising on the opportunities that are provided for you. Make the space to entice your customers to leave you with those fantastic chances and then respond. 

For more tips and hints you can follow +plugMEDIA.net  on Twitter or Facebook or enquire about attending one of our training courses in Social Media Marketing. 

Author: Sam Lyons 

more like a personalized newspaper... Facebook New News feed

As outlined on their new News Feed page - Goodbye Clutter, Hello bright, beautiful stories. Facebook has released the  details on their new News Feed. Mark Zuckerberg, looking a little nervous on the video from Facebook, Palo Alto, spoke of "rich stories - visual and engaging" and "your choice of feeds" allowing you to "dig into any topic you want".

So what has happened to the News Feed?

As, Julie Zhou - Director of Design, tells us, looking at the feedback they received from users, where only 40% of the original Facebook layout was actually your News Feed and the remainder was clutter. They have focused on a more newspaper type feel and increased your content area by around 65% to 70%. This means larger photos, with text information mapped over the images.

Another big move is cross platform friendly look and feel, "mobile inspired consistent UI", where your news feed looks incredibly similar across all the different OSs.

Linked Articles have also got larger images, more text and even the logo from the publishers appearing in the feed.

Choice of Feeds - now you can chose the feed you wish to see, with up to 7 separate News Feed you can decide what you want your newspaper to look like and what content you are consuming.

When people add you as a friend your Cover photo and Profile Picture appear in the Newsfeed. This means your Cover Photo will get a lot more real estate and might make you really consider what image to use.

Bigger Video

Upcoming Events and Trending Stories appear in the similar format

What does this mean for business?

Content becomes a bigger king. With this new richer visual experience, the challenge will be now to offer more engaging visual content that grabs the users attention. Additionally, due to the fact that users can choose from 7 different News feeds, and Follow being one of these. You will have to really make it worthwhile for your fans to check in on this News feed tab. As for how this will affect EdgeRank, who knows at this stage although due to your content being kept potentially separate it might actually work to your advantage. No clear news has come out as to how Facebook Ads and Promoted Stories will now work, I imagine this was at the core of there redesign decision and it will be even more necessary to pay to the Facebook Ad Revenue. Although, word is that some of the new News feeds will have no ads at present.

Goodbye Clutter

Want to be put on the waiting list to see it first - go to the bottom of this page and click Join Waiting List

For more of the latest changes in technology and moves in social media, head over to plugMEDIA.net and sign-up for our Newsletter or Join us on Facebook or Twitter. Our new redesign will be launching soon with some fantastic ways for you to interact and be heard.

What will the new Facebook Newsfeed look like?

So, good old Facebook is at it again. Keeping the digital marketing and social media gurus on a continuous learning curve. What can we expect from the meeting in Menlo Park, California on March 7th?

As mobile has become such an important model I imagine we will see a more generic timeline that works across the varying platforms. 6 out of every 10 people visting Facebook daily are doing it through their mobile phone. Additionally, it is expected that we might see Video Ads (up to 15 secs) coming to the newsfeed. Another big change, haven't had the pleasure of testing it myself, is the Graph Search feature that they have rolled out to many users. So, I imagine they will want this more clearly integrated into the new Facebook newsfeed.

Another thing I noticed recently scanning through my own Newsfeed is the enormous quantity of photos that overwhelm your feed. I can see some form of collation of images to make them more easily consumable. Nevertheless, based on a lot of changes by Facebook over the past 24 months I can see advertising taking the centre frame and perhaps some new method for advertisers to pay to get their content seen.

Facebook Test Timeline design: courtesy of ReadWrite founder Richard MacManus, who resides in New Zealand

So, what do you think might be in the new redesign. Or what might you like to see? Tell us your thoughts.

Did you see this beautiful Facebook concept by designer from Fred Nerby in Australia

For the reading the latest thoughts of sam @ plugMEDIA  on new technologies and the ever changing landscape of social media, please join us on our Facebook page.

To sync or not to sync, that is the question!

So, the jury is still out. One year after making the brave decision to move me and plugMEDIA.net into the cloud, I am unsure what is the best Cloud Drive space sync option. For anyone that knows me, I am quite partial to a little bit of Google with my cornflakes, coffee and pillow. So of course I had purchased Google Docs space the second it was available to buy. Only 5 bucks for 20GB a year. As a PC and Mac user at the time of my brave step there was no GDrive, so I went with iSync on the Mac. Free, light and wonderful to use. At that stage I was using the seemingly wonderful SyncDocs on my PCs. Then Google brought out Google Drive across the board and I thought fantastic. Google did it. Then it all got a bit messy.

!!!WARNING!!! As far as I can work out none of the above named apps provide an ability to recognize each others synchronised files. This is, the local copy of your online file system. Of course there's a local copy. What this means is, you start with one of the above Apps and voila, you are stuck with it. It places some form of code on the files, that were you to try and use say, SyncDocs to sync your nice sync'd files that iSync or Google Drive had created, it goes, they are not mine. No way. They are all blind. They just create a duplicate folder of every single folder and file. You might think, Sam Lyons, why are you wasting my time with this detail. As they so smartly say, the ones who dont ;) ;) lets not mention, the devil is in the detail. In this case the devil being, maybe you are using 50gb of sync'd folders and files, now your local machine will make a nice second copy of this and presumably, I didn't wait to find out this part, it will then try to make an online copy of the first copy of all the folders.

Next, sorry Google, I do still love you. Truely. Belated Happy Valentine's :P - Google Drive, din din diiiinn. Well maybe not so, din din. More like, flop, plop, drop. Say for instance, you need to move your Google Docs folder (this is what they call the local version of your cloud storage) to a different location on your computer. To say a different drive perhaps. Seems fairly normal thing to do. Well think again buddy and buddyets. Boom. Lets give that man double. It does the same thing. Makes a duplicate of every single file. You think someone might have thought. Ohhh. Maybe we need to look into this. Of course no one mentioned it to them. Or they did, and are currently frantically getting it sorted. Eh, ......... you can read more about their franticness may you wish here - http://tllg.net/yZUH (190 posts and 10 months later no resolution, apart from a what appears to be a computer automated reply from Google with the wrong answer). Still love you, please forgive my judgements :)

So in summary, you still here. Woah. I have made the decision. One size fits all. I feel and just in the last week took note, that iSync might be the winner. It seems to be incredibly fast with its sycn'ng. Like super. SyncDocs, nice app, they do charge a small fee of $19 a year, seems to be a bit like an old steam train. Takes a while to get moving, although does pick up some nice speed. Google Drive, until you respond to paying customers that have a grievance, I have to say I am disappointed with you. Go into the corner and lower your head. When you have thought about what you have done, I will be here to give you a hug. Finally, yes I do stop at some point. Maybe, just maybe, I need to be considering a more grown up cloud option. I do keep hearing about this blue box thingy, box drop or something. Kidding. Seriously, being using it for years. Never had a problem. Just never upgrade from the free account. Also, my habitual love of Google kept me away perhaps.

What do you think? Do you even care? Have you just wasted 8 mins of your life reading this because you were bored and work? Good for you. No seriously. Love to hear your thoughts on how you are integrating your life or business into the cloud. Now, back to real work Sam. Adios. Till next time. GoogleiSyncSyncDocs Sam x

You have mail... is there anyone there?

Let me begin with an apology. Sorry for every person that has had to wait more than 24 hours for a response to an email you have sent me. Genuinely, I am sorry. Let's not go into how long you had to wait. Excuse me for this, I now understand how it feels.

Now. My rant.

What has happened to electronic mail? Has someone removed the power switch! Originally the main sales pitch for email was its lightening fast speed, arriving on someones desktop within a matter of seconds. Fortunately, I believe I know the answer. It comes down to prioritisation.

Last year I had the pleasure of attending a course in Time Management and Personal Effectiveness. One of the main lessons I took from from this, is to deal with things in the order you receive them. I have worked hard to put this into practice and it has made an enormous difference. Especially, when it comes to email, I have noticed how easy it is to forget an email, that you say to yourself, 'oh I'll come back to that one'. Within a day another mountain of distractions and emails are bombarding you. Facebook, Google+ and Twitter vying for your attention. Then you have texts, phone calls, TV, Radio and finally humans. Everyone asking for your attention. It is overwhelming.

So, what is the result. Well, I can only speak personally, until I gain my omnipresence. Disappointment, Frustration. Lower mind thinking. Extra distractions. I have a system of lists for all my tasks. I number each with a priority of importance and then tick them off as I go along. My mistake and one that this challenge has arisen for me is, I need a follow up list to check on responses. Otherwise, its a couple of days and I realise my well planned system begins to fracture. I feel distracted and suddenly I begin to wonder, what happened with that thing I requested, suggested or recommended to that client.

My solution. Understand that due to the very busy lives we are all leading, accept that email has become a little slower in its old age. Send a friendly reminder saying, hey just checking in, 'did you have a moment to look at my last email?' Also, using a tool like Boomerang might just be the solution. A free tool that you can integrate with your Gmail account, that will resend the email when no response has being received after a time period, that you define. Make your plans to allow for longer turnaround on communications. The most successful method is to ring people to remind them about your email.

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

How TV is changing

How we absorb and assimilate information is rapidly changing every day. PLUGmedia recently redeveloped one of our clients website, Mactivate, that sells and repairs Apple hardware, in Dublin. As we worked together in developing the new website I was privy to the wonderful range of Mac products that are now available. One day, Alan demonstrated the AppleTV to me. I was immediately hooked and picked up one later that week.

Six months later, what can I say. Has it changed my life? Yes, it most definitely has. For someone that loves technology and is always looking at the latest gadgets, plug-ins and apps. AppleTV is really changing the way we access information. I remember a company I used to work for, introduced the first Internet TV box to Ireland, Unison, at the end of the last millennium. 12 years later I believe they finally are getting it right.

How do I use my AppleTV?
I estimate that I began using it every week. More recently, with the introduction of Netflix in Ireland, this has ramped up to everyday. It started with me accessing the free services provided, such as YouTube and the files on the computers in my house using HomeShare. Playing music from my different computers. Showing image and video files from my iPhone.

Next step was to insert my credit card details and download some movies. Once your details are logged in, it is too easy. From standard to HD you can access and array of the latest movies that you find on the shelves of your local video store, the ones that are left. After, upgrading my Internet connection to UPC, the download was faultless. Not once did I notice a waiting for download or connection error.

Shortly afterwards we had the addition of thousands of Internet radio stations. This was on every night we were having a couple of drinks and before going out to get the heart racing. Then came Vimeo and some other News and sport related video sites. As of a week ago I noticed an ad online stating Netflix in Ireland. Since signing up for the €6.99 a month option. The AppleTV has been on every single day. Watching the two Series of Misfits in 2 days. Fantastic TV show. Numerous movies and dipping in and out of other TV series that I never had the time to watch before.

Warning for your AppleTV

It is so easy to get lost into this new, just click world of information. Perhaps, like most people, its the honeymoon stage of the relationship and the familiarity breeds contempt factor, will take its hold. The one thing that has become apparent since Netflix arrived, is my ISP has suddenly started limiting my bandwidth/data usage from what I can tell. Now, I have started getting Connection Errors and spinning waiting icons. You will probably need the top end data usage and download limit option.

Another point, is that currently there is no Apple embeded browser at the point of writing this articles. The are a host of other features that the AppleTV can provide, that you can read here. I did come across some article about how you can Jailbreak your Apple TV to get past some of the limitations, by a company called Firecore. And I also tried an application on my iPhone and PC called AirVideo that converts files on the fly, as the streamed from one video format to the other from your PC to your AppleTV.

Perhaps, you have some suggestions of how else you can use your AppleTV. If you buy your AppleTV from Mactivate remember to tell them Sam sent you :)