Check out (and buy) Amoeboid on iTunes

And for a little extra fun and learning, stop by the website for Beatrice the Biologist

Dynamic QR Code Creator on DavidMeharey.com

Solution: Remember that it’s not all about you. When people are commenting or asking questions, make sure you take the time to thank or answer them. If there are businesses that you like, make a connection in social media. If there are clients that post interesting (and appropriate) things, go ahead and like them, follow them or repost/retweet (with your own comment). Also, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out on social and review sites to see what people are saying about your business.

Lack of Content. If the only reason you are posting on Facebook or Twitter is to get more likes or followers, why are you posting at all? People don’t want to read about how you want more people reading your posts or tweets.

Solution: Post about things that will be of interest to your existing and potential clients. They’ll share with others and help spread the word. If people are interested in what you’re writing, they’ll come back, like and/or follow you.

Lack of Purpose. Hopefully, you’ve invested time and effort into creating a website that represents your business well. When it comes to business, Facebook, Twitter, and others are the new marketing channels. The purpose of marketing is — shocking as it may be — to sell products or services. Yes, brand-building, product exposure and client engagement are all very important, but ultimately they are intended to get people to buy something from you.

Solution: Make sure you’re making the connection between your social media activity and your website where they can buy from you. Keep your site active by posting articles, updates, and announcements, then share them on social media. Have a way for people to connect with you on your website using a newsletter sign-up. An important thing to consider: What if Facebook or Twitter suddenly disappeared? What would happen to all those likes and followers that you’ve spent countless hours and effort on? How would you get in touch with them? It would be nice to have your newsletter email list as a fallback.

Posting to all sites at the same time. Each social site has its place. Many people will engage with you across multiple sites so you need to be aware that posting on all of them — at the same time, with the same message — ends up giving the appearance of automation, or worse, spamming. This may result in people disengaging.

Solution: Time your social activities based on how the sites are used. Even if it’s a single announcement, make sure that you time and word it differently. For example, announce something on your website and Facebook a week in advance, then tweet a reminder on Twitter closer to the event.

Keep in mind that this is specific research and should be balanced using your own site analytics (eg. Your site gets mostly Firefox traffic vs IE).

http://www.longtailvideo.com/html5/

Today is the day!  Apple is releasing it’s much touted iOS 5 mobile device operating system.  I’ve personally been eagerly waiting this release as it contains some wonderful improvements and feature that will be useful in my day to day business.  It’s a free update so no need to concerns yourself about cost.  There is already an update for iTunes this morning to help support the new features in iOS 5 and iCloud.  You can get the lowdown and nitty gritty on iOS 5 here.

A QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code created by Denso-Wave of Japan in 1994 to track inventory during manufacturing. The “QR” means “Quick Response” since the code was intended to be decoded at high speed.

The idea is that you print the QR code and people use a mobile device — iPhone, Android or other smartphone — app to scan it to cause something to happen. You can encode a URL that automatically launches the browser, create a 250 character text note, put a phone number that gets dialed, or create a SMS that is automatically sent from the phone. The possibilities are endless. I’ve seen some excellent uses on band posters in store windows, you just scan the QR code and get sent to their upcoming event web page. You could incorporate event tracking info for specific posters or locations…Hmmmm. I’ve also seen them on the backs of business cards to enter complete contact info.

Have you ever used them? Did you create them or scan them for something?

One of many free online QR Code generators

Super simple real-time reader on iTunes — no need to take a picture just line up the image and boom — for your iPhone or iPod (with camera).

Just for fun, if you get the app and scan the above QR code you will be sent to Goatminds.com on your phone

So given this incredible power….how have or would you use it?

Google’s statement:

Like most companies we regularly communicate with our business customers via email newsletters, updates on our official blogs, and printed materials. This short book about data was sent to 1,500 of our UK partners and advertisers.

There are only a limited number of copies, and they aren’t for sale or designed for anyone other than our partners – but anyone who’s interested can visit the companion website at www.thinkquarterly.co.uk.

http://ismyblogworking.com/

It reports on the status of:
Your web server
Your RSS feed
Your robots.txt file
Your blog is indexed by Google
Your blog is indexed by Bing
Your blog application support for gzip compression.
WP Super Cache
Your blog hosting

Along with a collection of technical details.