Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Social Media Courses

I am currently writing this post on a train to London, where I will participate in a series of courses on Social Media. While I was researching about what courses were available and which ones were the best I found myself completely lost. Some would say Social Media studies are so new that no courses were actually good at all, while others said that any course would be somewhat valuable.

Saturday, 18 June 2011

Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless

Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless

My wife gets annoyed with a little habit I have. If I am on the phone, I can’t sit still. I will be walking around the room or the house, talking away. As I work mostly form home and the telephone is one of my main tools, you can imagine the rest.

When I was taking VOIP calls on the computer, though, I was stuck. I have used a bluetooth headset, but not only it made my ear ache, people also couldn’t hear me well. So I was down to a nice pair of Sennheiser PC350, typically used for gaming, but which I love to use both for VOIP calls and even with my iPhone. I had to buy a small adapter that allows both jacks (headphones and microphone) to be used with a combo audio socket, like the one on my Lenovo ThinkPad W510, but it worked fine.

Friday, 17 June 2011

Community Manager versus Advocate

One of the new professions that the new “always-on” world has given birth is the Community Manager. Some wonder if this is indeed a real job, but believe me, not only it is a real job, but is also one that is taking impetus and is becoming a key position in any corporation that values its future.

Jeremiah Owyang, an Industry Analyst form Altimeter Group and formerly from Forrester Research, has been an evangelist of this position and he defined what The Four Tenets of the Community Manager are. In brief, these

Corporate Support Online Models

As the corporate world moves online, the rest of the world struggles to understand the scope of this move. To be honest, many a good executives and managers, “old style”, are also struggling with the rapid and constant evolution of the online world, and those who think online corporate presence means having a website and maybe an online store are dinosaurs condemned to extinction.

Today, corporate presence online encompasses all aspects of the business, from customer engagement to brand development and hiring. The tools, available on the whole wide world, went from menace to key instruments, and Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn are no longer looked at as

Saturday, 11 June 2011

Angry Birds on Chrome


For those of you addicted to Angry Birds (or just curious), you can now get it for free form the Google Chrome Store, install it as an extension on your Chrome browser and play it for free. If you want to give it a try, just follow these easy steps:

  1. Start your Google Chrome browser
  2. Go to the Google Chrome Store here (https://chrome.google.com/webstore)
  3. If you don't already see a banner for the game, type "Angry Birds" on the search box and press Enter
  4. On the search results, click on Angry Birds
  5. Now click on the Install button
After Angry Birds is installed it will be available by opening a new tab on Chrome. Play away and have fun!

The Jawbone is connected to…

No, this is not a post about the human face anatomy, but it could be! I want to share a few thoughts what is purportedly the best bluetooth headset on the planet, the Jawbone® Era. For quite some time now, Aliph has made some of the best bluetooth headsets for mobile phones, and their new iteration, the Era, is a worthy descendant of a great line. You may find the name a bit strange, but it is inspired in the fact that this headset has a small sensor that

Friday, 10 June 2011

Sat Nav War!!! Well, kinda…

More and more, a lot of services for which we used to pay premium are becoming free. One such service is satellite navigation, commonly known as Sat Nav or GPS. You can buy a standalone device or have it integrated on your mobile phone or even laptop. There are many brands from where you can chose, like TomTom, Garmin, Nuvii, CoPilot and so many others, and each will sell you maps for a specific region plus the ability to receive turn by turn navigation instructions, speed camera positioning warnings, speed limits and even where you can find the next ATM machine.

iOS 5 Wi-Fi Sync... Oops

If you read my post from yesterday about the iOS 5 new features and similarities with other existing apps, this one won't come as a surprise to you. It seems like this new feature is very, and I mean very similar to an app submitted a year ago to the Apple Store, which Apple refused, but instead called the developer and asked for his CV. Greg Hughes, though, preferred to take his app to the Cydia Store (that's for jailbroken iPhones, in case you are wondering) where he made about half a million dollars selling it.

Thursday, 9 June 2011

Hacker Activity on the Rise

The last months have been fertile in hacking news. Just as we used to hear about wars and skirmishes between neighbouring countries, we now hear about hackers stealing account data from banks, gaming networks, credit card providers, and who knows what else is not on the news.

Amid these news we hear about accusations of "cyberwarfare", either pointing the finger at China, Russia or even North Korea. While this is not completely outside the probabilities, I personally see these cyber attacks as good old theft, where one steals money from another.

iOS 5 New Tricks

I was really excited when I first read about the new features iOS 5 will bring to the iPhone and other iDevices. I had been waiting for the announcement and partly followed the live coverage of Steve Jobs keynote address. When he finished, I was looking forward to this Fall, when iOS 5 is supposed to become available to the masses, but then I started thinking...