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So how intelligent is that Siri anyway?

October 5, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

“Siri, is it going to rain?”

“Yes, it is going to rain in three days, that is why I have taken the liberty to order you a new umbrella from Amazon in black. They have promised me it will be here before the rain starts. Until then it is better that you stay indoors.”

“Euhm, Siri…”

“No worries, I haggled for a 5% discount with EC2. We know each other.”

“Yes, nice, but Siri…”

“And you know you need a new umbrella, because the last black one you had was destroyed in that storm last week. I did order that very sturdy Dutch on that can withstand a typhoon.”

“Yes, but Siri…”

“No John, stop whining. You know you need an umbrella. If you don’t you are only going to get wet and catch a cold. And we don’t want that, do we?”

See, I see a host of new problems…

😉

Apple launches new iPhone 4S, voice assistant and iCloud (Prices updated)

October 4, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Today Apple launched their new iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S still has a glass back, a square outlook and a 3.5″ retina display. But beyond that, it is all different. It has the new A5 processor for more speed. It has increased WIFI speeds, so it will be faster. It has a new 8 mega pixel camera with a new backlit sensor with better software to take better pictures and shoot 1080p video. And with it’s new dual core graphics processor, it can compete with game consoles. Not in the least because the new iPhone 4S will come with mirroring through AirPlay, enabling you to show the screen on your TV. Oh, and they have learned and included two antenna that switch intelligently to ensure you are connected. The iPhone 4S also has a new battery that will make sure it lasts longer than any iPhone before. Personally I would be interested to see whether it will last a full day. I have been waiting for a phone that can do that for years. All in all, it is a great new phone, but what makes it nicer is iOS 5.

iOS 5 comes with a truckload of new features that will make the iPhone just nicer to use. And the good thing is that it is compatible with most iPhones and iPads. That means that I can still run it on my iPad 1 and you could still run it on your 3GS. Notifications have taken a leaf out of the Android book. It is a pull down now and you can immediately go to wherever the notification came from. Naturally Apple gave iCloud a good part of the stage today. Mainly because so much in iOS 5 will be moving towards the cloud. To sync with your other idevices mainly. Sharing your photos all over your iOS devices, sharing your music with iTunes Match, storing things you want to read later etc.

And so the technobabble goes on. But what really got me going, is the new SIRI voice assistant. Yes, I know, it will be English mainly first, but they claim it will be there in other languages as well. So who knows, it might learn to pronounce our Dutch names at some point. But the intelligence is really cool. Asking whether you need an umbrella gets Siri going to find out what the weather will be like in your area and then telling you whether you need an umbrella based on the forecasts in your area. It can track where you are and notify you of things you need to do when you get close to a specific place. And it can combine your information and your question to set appointments for you or reschedule them with simple human questions. Yes, it all looks awesome, but I am still skeptical. Having first used voice recognition in 1999 for a project, I am always expecting it to fail somewhere. And my Android speech recognition does that as well. 85% of the time it spells out the tweets I dictate quite well, but that other 15% often make it an annoying application.

Yes, I am looking forward to the new iPhone 4S. It seems to be a nice phone. Will I pre order it? I am not sure yet. Apparently the iPhone 4S goes on pre-order on the 7th of October with the first countries getting it on the 14th. The Netherlands will have to wait for the 28th of October with 20 other countries. Prices are set to $199 for the 16Gb, $299 for the 32Gb and $399 for the 64Gb version in the USA. Prices for other countries have not been released yet.

UPDATE: The French Apple store currently shows that the iPhone 4S will be available without a contract starting at € 629. No other prices are mentioned, but with Apple logic that might mean that the €629 is for the 16Gb, €729 will be for the 32Gb and it might be as much as €829 for the 64Gb. Pretty pricy phones.

UPDATE 2: The French Apple store currently shows that my estimation of the iPhone 4S prices was slightly off. The prices rise €110 per doubling of the storage. So, the price for the 16 Gb is €629, the 32Gb is €739 and the 64Gb will be a hefty €849. If you are planning a trip to the US in November, you will be able to get an unlocked iPhone 4S 16Gb for $649, 32Gb for $749 and the 64Gb will cost $849. Not enough to cover the cost of your ticket, but if you are bringing 10… 😉

Are you a blogger? Register to be an official LeWeb’11 blogger now!

October 4, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

About a month ago we opened up the form to suggest the bloggers you would like to see at LeWeb. And now it is your chance!

Do you think you can add unique coverage to LeWeb? Do you love writing about conferences and spreading the word on everything you have heard? Then you might be the blogger/podcaster/vodcaster/etc we are looking for for LeWeb.

What do we expect of official bloggers? We are looking for people that:
Have a passion for content and reporting;
Commit to attending and covering the conference (it’s in English) on their blog (any language);
Have significant reach and influence inside their community.
And naturally, they have to have a proper, publicly accessible and established blog or postcast. And by the way, having huge numbers of followers on whatever social network does not make you a blogger. Blogging does.
(An official blogger will receive tickets to LeWeb’11 for free. Every blogger will need to cover their own expenses for visiting the conference.)

Frédéric de Villamil and myself will be going over all submissions as they come in. This takes time. Please allow us to take that time. Each blogger we select to become an official LeWeb’11 blogger, will be contacted by us personally and directly.

Thanks!

And now, sign up if you feel you meet our criteria!

The original. Click it to go to the full set with 10 filters.

Flickr launches android app

September 30, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

The original. Click it to go to the full set with 10 filters.

Great news for a boring Friday afternoon. The Flickr app has finally come to Android. So, you now need to download it and go outside to take pictures of everything you see. The app takes the whole Flickr experience along to your phone. You can browse your photostream and the streams of your contacts. You can comment and share pictures on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, your WordPress blog or via email. Nice.

Obviously, no Flickr app would be complete without the option to take a picture and uploading it to Flickr straight from your phone. And this app does that. Or so I have heard from others, as it crashes on my Nexus S every time I take a picture. Luckily for me, you can also pull a picture out of your phones’ gallery and use that.

The new Flickr app has got 10 filters that can be applied to your pictures for that Instagramesque feeling. Does it cut it? Well, it comes close. The filters are nice and consistent, but without a picture that matches the filter, it won’t be nice to look at. I have taken a standard photo with some nice colors, sun and shade and you can see the filters at work.

Will I use it? Well, I am doubtful. Why? Well, first off, because it crashed on me. I tend to dislike that. Besides, I share most of my pictures through Mobypicture and use the Camera Effects app if I want filters. Is it a bad app? No, it is actually quite a nice app. Great controls and easy to locate what you need.

As an extra, Flickr has launched Photo Sessions. A way to share your slideshow with your friends regardless of the device they are on. And they can comment on your photos etc. Nice. But I miss the audio channel of being able to talk to your friends to hear them as you share the pictures. Just a thought.

Amazon launches Kindle Fire

September 29, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Everyone has been talking about the tablet market. Especially about the prices of tablets. Ever since HP decided to pull out of the market and dumped its discontinued tablet with its discontinued OS, it became clear that price is a much bigger hurdle for buyers than most expected. Enter Jeff Bezos and the new Amazon Kindle Fire. A $199 tablet that could be the biggest change to the tablet market since the introduction of the iPad.

The Kindle Fire has been based on the hardware of the RIM Playbook, but with Amazon’s own Android based operating system that seems more than enough to offer a good user experience. Obviously I have not had my hands on one the people who have, seem to be pleased with it. A good reason might be that Amazon firmly believes that everything you use on the tablet you should be able to use from the cloud. And that makes the 8Gb storage limit much more believable and practical.

Lets be honest, the biggest thing in the Kindle Fire launch is the new Silk browser. the Silk browser is a new angle that Amazon is taking with their Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). They already offered the power and storage of their servers to startups and anyone who wanted to take an advantage of their speed. But now they are offering it to everyone through the Silk browser.

The Silk browser helps you access webpages smoother and quicker than other tablets. Why? Well, basically because you do not browse the web yourself, but Amazon’s EC2 does it for you. You send out the request and EC2 gets the page and repackages it into something a lot simpler and easier to load for your Kindle Fire. And as you will be browsing pages that others browse as well, those pages can be served faster than you would get them from a conventional browser.

However, there is a downside to Silk. And that is called EC2. That is, if you value your privacy. There is a reason why Amazon offers the Kindle Fire at $199. It is called sponsorship. Because Amazon is going to learn endlessly more from your tablet than any kind of customer research can teach them. They will go with you on your surfing trips, your trips to find the best deals, your trips to relate to your social networks and everywhere else. And it will do it in the nicest way possible. So, Google, where does your chromebook stand now?

In all honesty, the Kindle Fire is a nice tablet. It looks nice, seems to be fast enough and with Amazon’s appstore for Android you have all the possibilities you get on tablets twice the price. The Kindle Fire is going to have a pretty big impact on the tablet market. Here’s for hoping there will be EC2 privacy settings.

How Facebook killed the “like” button and introduces a new marketing challenge

September 28, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

The like button has only been around for about a year. Just a year. And look what it has done. It has brought over us a storm of people asking us to click that button for their sake. It has brought us services that have included their own version of the like button like G+, +K etc. It has brought us endless buttons that are published for the sole reason of sharing a story somewhere on a timeline in your social universe. And now Facebook has come and taken it all away again. And that is a good thing.

To be honest, if you are a marketeer and your metrics consist of measuring your Twitter followers and your Facebook likes, you might as well use the weather report to assess your business success on social media. Though this might sound a bit strong, that is the truth. Neither of these figures tell you anything about your position in social media. The trouble is that neither of these figures shows whether there is a relationship. You can have a million followers on twitter and nobody who is actively engaged with you. The same goes for your Facebook likes. They might not have anything to do with the engagement of your customers. One of the reasons people would have to like you, would be to be able to post to your wall. Facebook has announced that this will change and that non-fans will be able to post to your wall soon.

Recent surveys show that people only “like” about 10 brands on Facebook. This means that not even all of your fans will be liking your page. As a matter of fact, I own and use a number of Apple products but I have never liked Apple on Facebook. And I bet you can look around your house and say the same thing about a lot of brands you use daily. On the other hand, liking has never been and never will be the basis of conversion. Your competitor with less than 1% of your likes might have built a very engaged community which might quadruple his conversion rate over yours.

The new social graph approach with frictionless sharing (automatic sharing of your ativities) and a redesigned timeline will make sure that your community will not be seeing as much of you as you might have wanted. And their network might not come across you at all. With the recent addition of the ticker for less important and quicker news, we see that most branded content ends up in the ticker and scrolls off the screen within seconds for more active users. There goes your like-button strategy.

Marketeers, just like anyone else on social networks, need to go back to the basics. What is the best way to engage with my audience? How can I connect to them on a personal and relevant level. How can I make sure that I help my target audience reach their goals. And how and when can I communicate with them on a personal level, so I do not interfere with, but add to their experience. If you are a marketeer for a company, whether you are small business or working for a multinational corporation, you need to let go of everything that you have learned about mass communication. You need to look at your target audience and just ask yourself one simple question; How can I relate to all these people in the most personal and relevant manner? If you can answer that question right, you are on your way to social media success. Especially on the new Facebook.

Microsoft releasing WP7.5 Mango now, plus the web market

September 27, 2011 / Arne / 1 Comment

Earlier tonight Microsoft has started to release the new Mango version of Windows Phone to its customers. If you are running a Windows Phone, it is probable that you will need to be patient as they hope to be releasing Mango to 10% of its customer base today. They will be taking weeks to update all of the handsets and carriers that are currently offering phones running WP7.

If you are wondering where your update is, you can check for yourself here.

The good thing about the slow release is that Microsoft is trying to fix possible bugs as the software is released, updating as they go. Smart move. Read more on the Microsoft blog.

Just a little while ago, Ben Rudolph also posted a run through the features of Mango and included the Web Market. An interesting step. Almost a year ago, I spent some time with Robert Scoble talking about how an app market for Windows Phone would be useless as the target audience for Windows Phone would not buy apps for their phone. Now, with what I have seen of Mango, that might be about to change.

I am looking forward to reading the first reports of updated phones. Got one? Let me know.

How Facebook changed the playing field

September 27, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Last Thursday, Facebook showed a number of new features to the development community. If you read tech blogs, you might have already read about most of the changes Facebook will be making in the coming weeks. But in all honesty, it is not just about the changes in itself. Facebook has started to move in a direction that we have all been expecting, but that we set in a far away future.

Facebook really is moving away from their social network status. They have turned around to the old saying that content is king and are building their own contextual and personality engines. They are working to share with me what I want to see. Serendipity goes out the door and is automated by their contextual engines ‘accidentally’ showing me exactly those things that I am looking for. It enhances my relationships with my friends on Facebook as Facebook emphasizes the ways in which we are similar and slowly takes out the bits that are less interesting.

And then there is frictionless sharing. Lets face it, this is something that we have been waiting for for years. You might not think so, but none of us really likes to spend time updating our social networks. In a lot of ways updating your network is time that could be spent on friends. Facebook is now offering you the option of updating your social network by itself, leaving you the extra time to spend on your friends.

There has been a lot of shouting about privacy and logging out of Facebook and using browsers in incognito mode. The funny thing is that most of us have Google accounts as well. They don’t log out either. In fact, they have not been logging out for far longer than Facebook has been tracking our web behavior. Does that make it alright? Of course not, but it means that we do need to make clear choices on what we share with whom. Not everything should be for everyone. That goes for the new Timeline feature (pic), but also for frictionless sharing. And that is no different than it was last week. We still need to choose who we allow to see into our lives. Like we choose who we let into our living room.

Personally, I think Facebook has done a great job. Yes, I am enthusiastic and I expect many others will be as well. Mainly because it takes the work out of sharing what you are up to and it allows you to work on your relationships instead of your sharing apps. And that changes the playing field completely. Lets face it, will I consider another network that will not allow me to share with similar ease? Facebook has been a standard for social networking for some time. This will ensure that they will be for a long time to come and that if you want your network to be successful, you need to stay close to Facebook.

What could we have done to keep you as a customer

Can you tell us why you are leaving?

September 19, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to say goodbye to Vodafone and switch to Dutch mobile provider Telfort. And with good reason. Or at least, that is my opinion. This week I got a questionnaire from Vodafone asking me why I was leaving them.

In essence that is a great move. Someone leaves you as a customer and you want to know why, so you ask them. However, what is my trigger to fill out the questionnaire? In this case, the only thing mentioned in the email announcing the questionnaire, was that all the answers will be kept confidential. As if that is of any concern to me. In fact, I am telling everyone who wants to know that I am leaving Vodafone and why. And the interesting part of this is that it is not even about the price. It is about my customer experience.

So, yes, my new Telfort subscription is cheaper and has the same network quality. But what triggered me to change providers is the way Vodafone treated me over the past months. In the past I have had my trouble with Vodafone, but usually their customer service solved the problems. Until now. A couple of months ago the Dutch providers have jumped the data train. Whatever was possible before isn’t anymore. Unlimited internet subscriptions are turned into limited versions while prices are multiplied. And if it remains unlimited, the speed drops down after a set amount of traffic. Annoying to say the least. So, I approached Vodafone Special Services (yes, a couple of years ago they told me I was a valued customer) to ask them whether they could give me my average data usage over the past couple of months. And then it went silent. I asked again and it stayed silent. I the end, I got an offer from another party to switch to their network. So, I called regular customer service and during our conversation on the length of my subscription, they told me that they could just give me the figure for the last three months. Apparently Special Services no longer thought I was a valued customer as nobody responded even though every customer service employee can see the answer to my question with a single click.

Was I unhappy with Vodafone in general? No. Over the past seven years I have been very happy about their services. However, if I spend around €1200 with you every year, I would at least expect the courtesy of answering a simple question. In the questionnaire they also asked me whether I was approached personally with an offer and whether that would have changed my choice. That is hardly a question. Of course it would have helped if someone would have contacted me and talked with me about my personal needs in mobile communications and how they could match that. And a good offer could have kept me with Vodafone. That call would at least have shown me that my relationship with Vodafone was a two way street. Now the feeling remained that my relationship with Vodafone depended on me. My money, my effort, my enthusiasm.

If a client leaves you, it is great to ask them why they are leaving. You can learn from it. However, it is much better to keep your customer from leaving you. Talk to them before they leave. Answer their questions. Show them that you value the relationship with them as well. That is not hard to do. Most people are quite happy with a call or a personal message. If you run a subscription service, make sure you contact your customers in time, to see whether there are better solutions you can offer. Your relationship with your customer is much more important to them than the actual price of the subscription. Because the perceived value is different.

Praktisch LinkedIn gebruiken voor ondernemers

September 15, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Gisteren mocht ik voor de Zeeuwse netwerkclub Fun In Business spreken over het praktisch inzetten van LinkedIn. Net als bij de meeste andere sociale netwerken leeft ook over LinkedIn vaak de vraag hoe het direct wat op kan leveren voor je bedrijf. De essentie van die vraag zit, zoals altijd, in het stellen van duidelijke doelen en het richten op een duidelijke doelgroep. Daarnaast heb je natuurlijk de technische mogelijkheden die LinkedIn je biedt om je te profileren en zakelijk te netwerken.

Hieronder staat de presentatie die ik gisteren gegeven heb. Allereerst ga ik in op het inrichten van een effectief profiel. Daarna kijken we naar de mogelijkheden om je te profileren door het gebruik van LinkedIn Answers, de bedrijfspagina en natuurlijk de groepen. Ook komen er een aantal handige tips voorbij voor het starten van je eigen groep. Na het profileren kijken we naar acquisitie via LinkedIn. Er zijn veel mogelijkheden, maar ook veel verkeerde benaderingen. Er komen weer een aantal nuttige tips voorbij. Uiteraard mag op een avond over LinkedIn het onderdeel werving en selectie niet ontbreken. Ook daarvoor heb ik 15 tips in de presentatie gezet. Afsluitend kijk ik dan nog even naar een paar tools die het gebruik van LinkedIn leuk maken. Daarvoor licht ik er twee functies uit LinkedInLabs uit, maar ook de nieuwe startup Vizualize.me. (Kijk naar mijn eigen Vizualize.me profiel.)

Natuurlijk is de presentatie maar de helft van het verhaal. Voel je vrij om de presentatie te bekijken en de delen met anderen. Wil je het geluid bij de presentatie hebben, neem dan contact met mij op. Ik kom graag eens bij je langs om te vertellen wat de impact van LinkedIn, maar ook van andere sociale netwerken kan zijn op jouw bedrijf.

Presentatie Fun In Business 14 september 2011 – Hoe kan ik LinkedIn gebruiken voor mijn bedrijf

View more presentations from Arne Hulstein

Got a startup? Be on stage at LeWeb’11!

September 8, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Yes, LeWeb will have a startup competition again. This year LeWeb is looking for the three best startups for the Social/Local/Mobile (SoLoMo – yes, the theme) marketplace. Is that you? Well, it might be if you have got anything to do with any of these. And the best way to find out is to enter the competition.

Something that I personally love in the approach to the competition this year is that they will be including a video element in their competition. And they have already said that creativity and originality will be the key to success. So, bring out the video equipment, the pizza, drinks and snacks and do an all night brainstorm with your crew how you are going to storm this competition. Read more on the LeWeb’11 agenda.

Btw. why do I love that video element that much? Because I know it will be fun to do, but also because I know it can pull your team together more. Hanging out and trying to get the weirdest ideas going to present your startup will get the most out of your team and bring you closer together after the stress of regular business. How do I know? In 2008 I ran a video competition with Erwin Blom and Lucien Burm. Soocial did a great movie that took the complete Next Web conference by storm. (They were not actually in the end results for the competition as they also won The Next Web’s own startup competition.) Take a look at it below and then get to work!

Hassle Free from Soocial on Vimeo.

Customer happiness is in your attitude

September 7, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

How often do you check the satisfaction of your customers? Do you dare to offer them the guarantee that whatever their problem is, you will solve it? You should. And this is why.

The other day I ordered an arm strap for my Nexus S from eBay.com so I can take it along when running. As a European, ordering from an American site to take delivery from something from Hongkong might seem to be a potential nightmare for both seller as well as buyer. But then my strap included a message from my eBay seller. My seller requested that I would give him five stars. You might think that is a bit too much. But the lines after that were what made the message so important. Regardless of what my problems were, my seller promised me that he would solve any problems I would have with the item he had shipped to me. His attitude to get a five star rating was that he did not want my user experience to be anything but those five stars.

So, when was the last time you asked your customer whether they were satisfied with the product you provided them with? Make it a point of your business to ask that question. Make sure you ask that question to anyone and everyone. Because their feedback will make sure you achieve no less than five star experiences for every single client you have. Will there be problems to solve? Of course, but the right solution will win you ambassadors instead of clients. And they bring in new clients to become ambassadors.

Arne Hulstein