Twitalyzer Home Screen

This week we witnessed the birth of yet another Twitter tool. Its name is Twitalyzer. What makes it special in the midst of so many other Twitter-related tools and applications ? Well, at first glance, it did not became apparent for me either as it looks like one of those tools to analyze your “influence” on Twitter by measuring such variables like the number of times people reply to you and mention your name.

That is, until I discovered a tiny menu on the top right of its homepage, mentioning “Twitalyze Brands”. Interested, I clicked on the menu and voila ! I was taken to a page where there was this big title banner of “Twitalyzer Brand”. Now it got me intrigued, and just for the sake of testing, I entered “Nokia” as the brand to be analyzed. I waited like three minutes before I got to see the results, but it’s all expected because Nokia is such a big brand and must be getting a lot of mention from the Twitter crowd. Fair enough.

It was not until I got to the result page that I realize that this is indeed an excellent tool. Of course, by now we need not mention again the importance of online reputation management. But until now, I was only aware of Twitter-search based tools in order to do just that. Twitalyzer Brand takes it one step further by giving you the important parameters right in the first page of the result of your brand.

Twitalyzer Nokia Result

After it has finished analyzing Nokia, – in this example -, Twitalyzer Brand told me that “NOKIA most recent brand strength in Twitter was rated as mind-boggling based on a calculated score of 88.4 out of 100…” Furthermore, it also measured the brand as having 70.5% of signal-to-noise ratio, 4:1 positive brand favor, 22.3% of brand passion, and 77.5% of clout. Now, of course I’m aware that for the curious side of us, it may not be enough. We might want to know on what calculations and algorithms such assessments are based upon, but that’s beside the point here.

My point is that, at the very least, Twitalyzer Brand can be used as a very splendid method to analyze your brand’s mention on Twitter, – and thus, manage your online reputation. Bear with me for a second, and I’ll tell you why. Excited by a neat execution of its analysis on Nokia, I clicked “learn more” under the parameter of “brand favor”. I then was taken to another page where it gave me the definition of “brand favor” ( “the ratio of citations that are generally positive to those that are generally negative” ) and the list of actual public updates where people mentioned Nokia in their tweets, – both positively and negatively. I don’t know about you, but for me, that alone is a big enough appeal to use it as a tool to scan feedbacks from people who used my products.

I suggest you do the similar thing with the other parameters. Explore the site. Also don’t forget to take a look at their features of “Time-Based Analysis”, “Benchmark Your Success” and “Twitter Brand 100” list, which are located in the bottom of the page. If there is a time that I recommend a young site, then this is it.

NOTE :  The Twitalyzer site can also analyze your personal Twitter statistics other than your brand’s.  Just click on the “Twitalyze People” menu in the top right of the page.

My last post pointed out the existence of a DRM chip within the earphone of the newest model of Apple’s iPod Shuffle. Shortly afterwards, Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing wrote a short piece of news that in fact, it was an incorrect piece of news. Well, if more accurate findings were made, I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong too. Let’s check the facts.

Doctorow quote a post of BB Gadgets where the writer and his team members actually dissected the said earphone and found that the chip inside is not actually a DRM chip but instead :

“However, it’s described as a “transmission” chip, suggesting that its role is not authentication or digital rights management, even if the result is to encourage manufacturers to pay an “Apple Tax” to license technology that allows their products to be used with iPod equipment.

This partially corroborates iLounge’s original report. iLounge noted that the new included headphones with in-line controls use an “authorization chip” to communicate with the iPod, a part available only from Apple. (Apple uses a similar chip inside the latest iPods to prevent video output from working with unlicensed iPod docks and other accessories.)”

In layman terms this means that the chip did not prevent any other earphones to be used with the new iPod Shuffle, but it will make it illegal to manufacture third-party headphones unless you have a trademark license from Apple in order to claim “Made for iPod Certification”. The chip will then act to constitute the trademark license itself. Thus, any other earphone maker can produce their own official earphone for iPod as long as they include the chip in their product.

Now to the confession. As I said before, I’ll readily admit that I was wrong when I reported that the chip was one which prevent any user from using other brand of earphones. However, I still find it sad that this piece of technology is being used NOT to prevent privacy or other criminal acts, but to deter a completely valid business competition. I’m aware that one can still officially produce an iPod earphone ( provided that it has the necessary chip inside, bought from Apple ); but ultimately, the customer will be the one who suffer the most here. Because in the end, the cost of the said chip can only mean one thing : higher prices. iLounge put it excellently with this quotations :

“From what we were told, Apple offered to sell developers the chip for $1 in a bundle with a $2 microphone, costs which are then multiplied and passed on to consumers. The component costs are now apparently lower. There are also authentication chips inside the new Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic, and the In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic—the ones that you may recall were delayed last year for mysterious reasons.”

Enough said.. !

Just when I thought that the topic that I blogged about was obsolete, I stumbled along the piece of news that Apple has inserted a DRM chip into its new iPod Shuffle, – thus effectively stopped any user who wants to use his / her own preferred brand of earphones. At first, I was skeptical, as I know that Apple is a successful brand and certainly has its own band of haters who are ready to say anything to taint its reputation.

But today, Techcrunch has posted an article where someone actually has dissected the said model of iPod and found an unidentified chip, “that appears to be some sort of proprietary digital control that prevents unauthorized transmission of commands to the Shuffle without an official Apple adapter.” Now, this may well be the evidence that we need that the Shuffle does indeed contain a DRM chip.

Which is just very sad and hypocritical. Sad, because the DRM technology which was first invented to stop any piracy to intellectual properties, is now being used to defer what is actually a fair business competition. Hypocritical, because Apple’s own Steve Jobs has been reported before to state his position that he is ( or should we say was? ) anti-DRM. Granted, Jobs is not currently on the helm of Apple due to health issues, but as David Rothman of Teleread excellently put it, “the Shuffle was probably planned long before the back-off, and second, I doubt that his people would take this radical step without consulting with him.” People may actually leave iPod as their own preferred brand of MP3 player after this.

As for me, I now find myself simply lamenting the day DRM was invented. Period. The way things are going, if big companies keep on using it, the only one being victimized is us : the valid customer. As for the piracy, I do feel that you can now conveniently use it as an excuse if you want to use DRM in your product to force people to use its own peripherals ( another of your products ). The customer is then left with no choice. Let’s just pray that somebody, somewhere will again do something about this. At the very least, we can say our opinion about this abuse of our technology.

Disclaimer :

NET is not affiliated with any of the software / application company. While I am helped by certain features of these programs, in no way I can guarantee that they will give the readers the same results. Always back-up your file before doing major changes to your computer.

OK, I’ll readily admit it. I have a weakness in getting my tasks done. Sometimes I let myself get too immersed in the details that I have difficulty in prioritizing and managing my tasks. That, and the all-too-common dilemma of procrastination of course. Am I getting familiar already ? If you share the same problem with me, read on to discover a possible method to get out of this productivity inefficiency trap.

It’s not that there isn’t a possible solution for my problem. The basic, underlying issue is time ( and self ) management here. The “First Things First” method of Franklin Covey quickly came to mind as I outlined this post. Yet I particularly want to make a certain emphasis on the wildly-popular way of “Getting Things Done” ( GTD ) as preached by David Allen, a recognized author and productivity coach across the globe. There’s a reason for this. While whether or not GTD works for you will remain up to you to decide, the benefit of practicing it can best be summed b y its tagline : “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity”. Now, that’s a promise I heartily embrace, to let go of the stress of daily life.

At its core, basically GTD works by collecting your thoughts ( I like to think of it as actually get the stress blocks off my head ), processing them ( by assigning them to the appropriate contexts ), organizing, reviewing and doing them. I am summarizing a lot here. For more information of how exactly this system can get the stress out of your head and help you increase your productivity, the Wikipedia article of GTD has an excellent set of article references that should help you. My focus, instead, is to point us into one of a great ways to practice this action management method.

Enter Thinking Rock. Developed since 2005, it is a free, open-source and multi-platform (Linux, Mac OSX, MS Windows, …) organizer software, designed to practice GTD. Now I have been an avid user of task managers like Rainlendar or Outlook, but Thinking Rock differs from them radically by employing the GTD method straight from the home screen itself.

Thinking Rock

From the home screen, you are straightly coached and encouraged to employ the GTD method of collecting and processing your thoughts. This has forced me to alter my old task-management way of simple listing, to actually classify them as actionable or not. In the end, it saves me a lot of time and help me prioritize my life in such a way that I now have more time to do the tasks themselves rather than just pondering about them. Translated, it should spell less-stress for my life.

In their own words, Thinking Rock “is NOT another to-do list. It allows you to:

• collect your thoughts, also called dump your mind;
• process them into actions, projects, sub-projects, reference items or someday/maybe items;
• actions can be done by you, delegated to someone else or scheduled for a particular date;
• projects can be planned into ordered list of actions and sub-projects;
• you can review all your actions, projects and other information quickly and easily to see what you need to do or to choose what you want to do under your current context at a particular time. These views can be easily modified by you to tailor for your needs;

Having been using it for more than two weeks now, I can certainly testify that it helps me organizing my life. And as the title of this post series implies, I hope that it will also help you all. I certainly enjoy it.

The free community version of Thinking Rock can be downloaded here.

According to the Wikipedia, the term “Enterprise 2.0”refers to :

“social software used in “enterprise” (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, enterprise social software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.”

I believe that we do not need to delve further into the importance of incorporating Enterprise 2.0 in your business. The fact that you are reading this is a clear enough sign that you realize the need to evolve into such kind of enterprise, rather than staying true to the prehistoric status quo of one-way content feeding of Web 1.0. The question is how are we going to do this. In this post, I am going to suggest three ways which seem to me are the keys to plot your successful presence in the world of social networking :

• Register as a member in as many social network as you can afford to maintain. I would suggest three of the most important there is, – namely Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Other than that, be a member of other social network relevant to your business. Remember that the key phrase here is “as many social network as you can afford to maintain”. Having one too many account may stretch your time and resources in such a way that you can’t keep up with the need to update them all.
• Provide useful contents to your networks. Update your company’s official blog. From time to time, post some useful links to quality articles. It doesn’t matter that you don’t produce the content themselves, as long as you mention the necessary accreditations and don’t claim them for yourselves. This way, people in your network will eventually recognize you as a source for good content.
• Engage in conversation or other interaction in your networks. In Twitter, this means actively engaging in conversation by replying to other people’s updates. In Facebook, this may mean commenting to others’ contents or useful links in their profiles. In your company blog, this spells as the need to reply to the comments that your visitors leave in a welcoming and accommodative way.

These three simple steps may seem obvious to you as an avid web user. However, one concept that runs behind them all spell the difference between the successful web personas like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki, – to the rest of the world who seem to never raise up beyond the level of mediocrity. This concept is contained in one simple word : consistency. As I have mentioned once in my previous post, whatever you do in the Internet, you need to update, update and update your page or status or blog. There’s nothing worse than seeing a company’s blog which hasn’t been updated for a long time. It gives your audience the impression that you can’t finish what you started, or even that you are a company that lacks commitment to do your job. Hardly the impression you would want your company to have, would you ?

The good news is, once you hold fast to the concept of consistency, the three methods I mentioned above are easy enough to do, – or at least to manage. You can update them all yourselves, or you may opt to delegate the tasks to a staff specifically dedicated to do just that. However you choose to do it, just don’t give up easily. After all, tenacity is a close sibling of consistency. Do what you need to do, and embrace the fact that you are entering the new, excited realm of Enterprise 2.0. Good luck !