KeyLimeTie Blog
Last week, Google announced Voice Actions for Android, a robust set of voice commands that allow you to do anything from write a text message, begin navigating to a map location, retrieve directory listings or send an email. For the phone platform known for feature-richness, this is a leap forward for users.
Watch Google's video on Voice Actions:
How well does it work?
This third-party test drive praises the complexity of the appliation but notes it's still lacking in the field. The test of usefulness here is the speed and convenience to complete the desired (often routine) task. If it ends up taking less time to manually complete the task, or if you have to switch to manual to choose between search options, the practicality of the feature diminishes.
It's cool, but when will it catch on?
Google prides itself at releasing features the iPhone doesn't yet have. It's no surprise Voice Actions has more commands than Voice Control on the iPhone, a feature I use almost daily to place calls. Like the Android test drive link above, the iPhone feature has some humorous inaccuracies, however for dialing, voice activation is accurate for 80-90% of the people I call. However, just this weekend I get the sense voice commands haven't yet caught traction. The other day I was driving a car full of techies on the bleeding edge who chuckled when they heard me talking to my phone to make a call.
Have you used this feature on the Android phone yet? If so, tell us about it!
This year, KeyLimeTie ran the MC 200 relay from Madison, Wisconsin to Lake Michigan in Chicago for the second year in a row. For us, it's been a real team building and an opportunity to bond outside of the office. Plus, the event proceeds go to benefit the Special Olympics of Wisconsin and Illinois.
This is the second year we have participated. This year we focused a lot more on training and getting our times up. And, it paid off! We shaved two hours off our 2009 time of 35:21:13, running the 200 miles this year in 33:26:32.
Check out photos of Team KeyLimeTie on Flickr.
The KeyLimeTie team included:
Yep, we ran all this way.
Anthony Avallone
Brian Pautsch
Brian West
Butch Zemar
Chris Grove
Chris Pautsch
Dan Strabbing
Dean Giorgetti
Geoff Skyles
Joe Giorgetti
Michael Wick
Peter Morano
Sam Dekin
We can't wait to do it again next year!
KeyLimeTie is thrilled to be a sponsor and contributor for the second year in a row to SocialDevCamp Chicago, a weekend conference for people developing software and growing businesses on the social web. The event is being held this Saturday and Sunday August 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, with the pre-launch party on Friday night at the Illinois Technology Association. We hope you'll join us there. Check out the full schedule for more details and be sure to register before tickets sell out.
$2,400 in KeyLimeTie Services to Hackathon Winner
We're most excited to see the developer Hackathon contest that our very own Peter Morano started last year at SocialDevCamp gain so much more momentum this year. Since the grand prize winner will receive a demo table at midVenturesLAUNCH at the end of September ($750 value), KeyLimeTie is throwing in 16 hours of graphic design and innovation consulting services ($2,400 value) to help them prepare their app for the limelight. We can't wait to see what the teams come up with.
We're Contributing as Staff, Speakers and Judges
This year we're more involved than ever. In addition to Director of Marketing Tim Courtney (@timcourtney) as conference co-chair and CIO Peter Morano as Hackathon chair, our COO Brian Pautsch (@bpautsch) is participating as a Hackathon judge, Pete (@petermorano) is talking about the catalytic nature of Hackathons at 1:30 on the panel "Using Hackathons & Code Sprints for Innovation and Social Change," and I'll be a panelist during the 10:00am Saturday session "Killer Social Apps: 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Brand Engagement".
We're excited to have the opportunity to share both our passion and our expertise to the lively, energetic, creative and talented people who make it a priority to attend SocialDevCamp each year.
Please join us at SocialDevCamp, and if you come, please say hello!
KeyLimeTie and our client Lava Lite were featured in the article "Is your biz app-appropriate?" in this week's Crain's Chicago Business. Crain’s author, Steve Hendershot, reached out to KeyLimeTie for a perspective on the mobile app industry, allowing us the opportunity to share our experiences and observations through some of the work we’ve done for our clients.
The entire article can be found on Crain's Website.
Besides being a gripping and entertaining app, we’re truly excited about the potential influence user-generated Lava Lamp concepts may have on future product design and development. We’re also anxious to see how well the integration with Social Media for sharing lamp designs on Facebook and Twitter will increase brand awareness with the iconic company.
Social Media
We're also working with Lava Lite on social media campaigns for their signature Lava Lamp product. You can follow @LavaLamp on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
Let's Work Together
If you're looking to dive deeper into mobile for your company, give us a call. We'd be happy to talk through your goals and devise a plan that uses apps, mobile web, or both to help you connect with your customers on mobile.
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We're happy to announce the release of our latest iPhone app, a pace calculator and customer engagement app for the Naperville Running Company called "NRC Runner".
You can download the app today on iTunes. Here's what the app can do:
- Pace Calculator that lets you either tell the app your desired distance and anticipated time to calculate a pace, or key in a desired distance and pace to determine how long your run will take.
- Events Calendar that keeps you up to date on the events Naperville Running Company sponsors and participates in throughout the year, so you can join the fun.
- Special offers, store news and sale information so you can stay up to date with your favorite running store.
Here at KeyLimeTie, we take our running competitions seriously—so seriously that we just completed the MC 200 Madison to Chicago 200-mile relay a few weeks ago. Naperville Running Company is our one-stop shop for all the gear we need, and we're thrilled to work with them on the app.
Let us know what you think!
Need your own app or mobile website?
If you're looking to get into mobile and like what you see, give us a shout. You can contact us via email or phone at 630.598.9000.
KeyLimeTie's hole at the Hope to Give Golf Outing.
KeyLimeTie sponsored a hole at the Hope to Give Golf Outing last week that raised over $6,000 to benefit Childrens Memorial Hospital. The outing was held at Stonewall Orchard Golf Club in Grayslake, IL.
Hope to Give produces fund raising events that raise money for children, families of children and organizations specifically created to help children living with life altering medical conditions. They strive to bring hope, money, and support to those that need it most through various fund raising activities and events.
Check out the video of the outing below, and the list of outing sponsors on the Hope to Give website.
Thanks to our employees, I'm pleased to announce we were just named as one of “Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For” by the National Association for Business Resources (NABR). Here's a link to the press release we just issued about the honor as well.
In a nutshell, we're thrilled and thankful. It reflects the effort and consideration we’ve put into developing a constructive, relaxed work environment that has enabled us to attract and retain some of Chicago's most talented individuals.
What's great about this honor is we were selected thanks to our employees' responses to surveys the NABR distributed to our employees. They expressed their enjoyment of working at KeyLimeTie in such a way that ranked us in the top 101 companies in the area.
So, to that we say thanks. Thanks to everyone who each day makes KeyLimeTie what we are. We're honored to be on this list.
Google recently announced the release of Google Caffeine, the latest version of their search engine.
To help you get ready, back in September we wrote about three things to prepare for Google Caffeine. Have you implemented those steps?
Now that Caffeine is live, here is what you can expect:
- Search results that contain more relevant content including more recent blog posts versus aging items. While people expect businesses' rankings to be affected, marketers don't yet know exactly how.
- Content will now be searchable within seconds after it is crawled. This is because Google is processing content immediately instead of in batches like before.
- You won't see a change in the ranking system, because Caffeine's big changes are in the indexing architecture. If rankings are impacted, it will be as an indirect result and only visible at a later date.
What can you do?
According to Google, there isn't much content creators can do to take advantage of Caffeine, but it will benefit publishers indirectly. However, with properly configured social media profiles, people are starting to see their fresh content indexed within a few hours of posting a link to the content via their social accounts.
Why these changes?
According to Google, "People's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish."
Looking to dig deeper?
Read these articles on Google Caffeine to learn more.
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Community Pages show up in search results alongside fan pages, such as these for BP on Facebook.
Facebook "Community Pages" have added new ways for people to connect around interests, but at the same time they pose a potential threat to your company and your brand. How so? They create public pages (that nobody owns) around any common interest people have added to their profiles (for example, music artists, movies and products). If you manage a popular brand, don't be surprised if you find pages on Facebook with your product or company name on them, displaying content you didn't write and can't edit to your liking.
Like it or not, the days of completely owning your own message are gone. You can't hide behind press releases or your own claims anymore, especially if your company and your products get a lot of attention. Networked customers and stakeholders who have an opinion about you—positive, negative and all shades inbetween"will find each other. Today, your brand has evolved into the sum total of your customers' and stakeholders' thoughts about you, as shared on the web.
How do Community Pages work?
Facebook says they aim to make each Community Page "the best collection of shared knowledge on [this topic]". They do this by bringing in the topic's Wikipedia article along with recent posts mentioning the subject. This means whatever people are saying about the area of interest—good or bad—has the potential to get aggregated. Read Facebook's blog post on the topic for a full understanding of how this works.
Read About What is at Stake
If you represent your company's image or if you are involved in corporate communications of any kind, take the time to fully understand this trend. John Bell says Facebook Community Pages are no big deal once you accept what they are. Invest the time to read his article for an analytical perspective. Once you've read that, study Jeremiah Owyang's matrix on how Facebook Community Pages impact brands and consider the advice he brings as a seasoned analyst.
Example: BP on Facebook & Boycott BP Pages
Take BP for example. When you search for BP on Facebook, you'll see a list similar to the one on the right. The first result, "Boycott BP," is a Fan Page, or a page that a user created and owns. The fourth one, an Organization page, is a Community Page. It shows the Wikipedia summary for BP and aggregated user posts on the company—all negative, given the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Your Words and Actions Matter
While you never can insure against a coordinated social media attack, you can take action and do a few things consistently that earn respect and loyalty from your customers:
- Deserve the trust you seek by being honest. Transparency doesn't mean showing all your cards, but it does mean telling the truth about the claims you make.
- Demonstrate expertise. Build trust by showing your competency through how you interact socially on the web and through the content you produce about your product and industry.
- Demonstrate your commitment to your customers. Follow through on the promises you make both privately and publicly. By doing so, you'll give them every reason to speak well of you, and no reason to speak ill.
- Empathize with them. Even when people have bad experiences with your product or service, a little empathy goes a long way. See the problem from their perspective as you resolve it by doing the first three things.
The Best Defense is a Good Offense
You can pre-empt bad PR by creating your own advocacy program of engaged customers who promote you online. Jeremiah Owyang outlines how with this handy checklist.
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Just when you thought all the good domain names were taken, there's now a new opportunity to snap up a memorable domain—or even your brand name if your .com is taken. If you have a registered trademark, you can apply register yourname.co via the .CO Registrars today. If you don't have a trademark, you'll be able to get it as early as June 21.
What's this all about? Just like .biz, .info and .name, .co is the latest of what the industry refers to as "top-level domains" to be offered for domain name registration. The unique thing about .CO is it already carries similar credibility as .com around the world (think .co.uk, .co.au etc.) and that this is the first time .CO domains are being offered as top-level. If you're interested in background information, check out this Wired Magazine article on .CO domains.
Is it worth grabbing?
Yes and No. If you want your domain now, during the Global Trademark Holder phase, it will set you back $300. At that price, it’s not worth it for small businesses.
Once this becomes available at the $30 price, then it’s probably worth it. "Dot-co" rolls off the tongue. It connotes "company" and carries the familiarity of "dot-com." Plus, you have the opportunity to grab your first choice domain name if your dot-com is taken.
Register Your Own .CO
Here are our recommendations for getting your own .CO domain:
- Brand Managers: If you have a registered trademark and a high-value brand, register your .CO domain now before registration opens to the public. Only do this if your name is high-value as it will set you back $300 per domain.
- Small Businesses: Wait until the Standard Pre-Registration phase that starts July 20. Then the price will be a reasonable $30, and at that point we recommend you grab the .co domain.
- Everyone: Before the Standard Pre-Registration phase starts on July 20, think of opportunities to register just a couple generic domains relevant to your business that will have high search engine optimization (SEO) value (e.g. chicago-pizza.co). If high traffic either globally or from a specific region is valuable to you, you have another shot at creating a site that naturally ranks high for a generic search term.
Get Updates from KeyLimeTie
Please follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter or "Like" us on Facebook. We do our best to share useful information about the web, enterprise software, mobile technologies and how you can practically use social media for business.