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Facebook Messenger for Android now available in Europe

August 26, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Right before heading off to bed to leave for a conference early tomorrow morning, I decided to check the Android Market. I was sure Facebook was not going to be releasing its Messenger app so quickly in Europe, but I was proven wrong. I already had the iPhone app through my American iTunes account, but now the Android app is available for Europe in the Android market as well. A great step for what might just replace most of my other messaging apps.

Download Facebook Messenger from the Android Market.

Jux, the future of blogging?

August 25, 2011 / Arne / 1 Comment

Yesterday Jux has launched something new. An addition to blogging? An alternative for blogging? I am not sure. I think that for now, I will call it a great tool for sharing. Because for me, that is what blogging and social networks are all about. Sharing with friends and meeting new people through the content that I share. For you? That might be different. For your business? Again. But for me, it is about sharing what I see, what I think about, sharing my thoughts and inspiring others.

So, Jux you said? Yes. Unlike current blogging systems (like this WordPress blog), Jux is not focusing on sharing text and then beautifying it with images. Jux aims for the experience. Images, video and text can all be mixed together to create more of an experience page than a blog in the traditional sense of the word. Do I like that? Yes. A picture says more than a thousand words, and I am a bit of a talker. But I like the way Jux presents the content I can create. I like what I write to be an experience. And Jux allows me to create that. More than WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous does.

Is there a downside? Obviously. You have to have that visual content. And not everyone always has visual content that supports the point they are trying to get across. There also is a distinct lack of lenght. I wouldn’t know how I could share the post on recommending your favorite bloggers for LeWeb’11 in Jux. And that makes it less of a real blogging platform to me.

Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. There is no way to save a post as a draft. Or at least not that I could find. Then there is no way to connect it to your personal URL, which is incredibly important if it is your personal expression space. By my standards anyway. And I would like to have more freedom in moving text blocks around and playing with more fonts and styling elements. But I am sure that will grow in the future. So, Juxers, if you are reading this, this is my wish list:

Saving a post as a draft
Scheduling a post
A creative all text format that I can use to post text only posts
Keeping me signed in with Facebook and Twitter
Moving text blocks around and resizing them to fit text and images
More fonts
More styling elements
Allow me to change the color of my JUX title
Running it on a personal domain or a personal subdomain

But in general, I am going to play with this for a while. Check out my playground.

Send your favorite blogger to LeWeb11 in December

August 24, 2011 / Arne / 1 Comment

This year, I will be part of the team that is overseeing blogger accreditations for LeWeb. Together with Stephanie Booth and Frédéric de Villamil we will be making a selection of the best international bloggers (and podcasters) who will be invited to be official LeWeb’11 bloggers. However, we need your help to find the best bloggers for the job.

This year LeWeb’11 will be a three day conference. That is an extra day over last year, which means there will be 33% more great content. That alone is a reason to be there. The theme this year is SOLOMO, social-local-mobile. If you are not eligible for a blogger accreditation, you can get a ticket at €800 off until September 30th! If you are a student, freelance developer or a startup, there are different offers for you which you can find at the bottom of the registration page.

Right now, you can help a blogger go for free and be an official LeWeb’11 blogger. How? Just by filling out a simple form. Just tell us which bloggers you like and why you think they should be invited to LeWeb’11.

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;
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.)

We 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.

Please keep in mind that being recommended is not part of a popularity contest. There have been some people that had that thought last year. Every blogger will be looked at and selected based on our own criteria. The number of recommendations that they have had is of no importance to us.

The main reason for us to work with recommendations, is that we want to discover important bloggers and podcasters that we might not have known of. And to make sure that we do not miss anybody we absolutely should be inviting.

So, here is the form. We are looking forward to your recommendations.

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Where do I want to go? – About individual transportation

August 18, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

This morning, I am typing this on a bench at a train station while I am waiting for my connection. I have a place where I want to go, but there are no straight trains to get there, nor has getting there been fundamentally changed over the past fifty years. Or even longer. Let’s face it, the last great boost in technology for public transport came when we traded steam for electricity or diesel for areas where they couldn’t be bothered to put the wiring in. And in the meantime, we are sitting in traffic jams with all their negative side effects. Something is wrong here.

I know I am probably not the first one to say this, but where are the personal transportation pods? The Netherlands is reasonably covered in rails. Trains go to most of the country, and there are many well situated stations. But very often our train journey takes us along the route of the majority rather than suiting our personal needs. A transportation pod could solve a problem here. Today I am traveling from my home to a city about an hour and fifteen minutes away by car. The journey will take two hours by train. Most of that extra time is taken up by waiting to change trains. So what if we would change all of that?

Imagine I wake up in the morning and I decide where I need to go. The new train system allows me new choices. I choose to travel to my destination in a standard transportation pod. It is a small unit that can hold four people and their luggage that can be pre-reserved or taken from a station based on availability. The fare you pay depends on the way you book your pod. If you pre-reserve, you get immediate availability in a timeframe of 15 minutes around your chosen departure time. And you get a small discount on your trip. You also pay a pod price, that can be shared with your passengers by swiping a card or NFC enabled device within the pod. That way it will become cheaper and easier to provide group transportation for companies or for a day out with the family. The pod then runs along the rails of the train network at high speeds, being constantly guided by a local and central computer system. This takes you to your destination in almost the time as it takes to take your car. A good start.

Now look at it from a business perspective. It offers traditional train travellers the experience they are used to, but without the smelly neighbour. It also offers drivers the individual transport that they claim is their main reason to stand in traffic jams. You can offer multiple sized pods with four seats being the standard and other sizes designed to suit needs. A two seater pod for romantic outings or a twelve seater pod with alternative seating arrangements for meetings on the road. Hooligan pods that have nothing destructable in them, or festival pods that offer a place to pre-party with groups. And all these pods can be priced differently based on the needs of the client, subscriptions, time of day, distance and many other factors. And you can even decide on running very large pods, just like a current train, on busy routes at busy times offering travellers a significant discount for traveling in a group.

Are there no challenges? Yes, there are. Pod availability at stations will be a problem. However, travellers often wait fifteen minutes to get on their train now. Central storage locations at a maximum of fifteen minutes from a station could solve the availability problem for travellers that did not register a pod. However, special pods can only be reserved beforehand. A technical problem is the issue of passing at stations. At smaller stations there might only be two rails available allowing two way traffic. Another ‘parking rail’ ought to be installed so that passengers can easily get in and out of pods without stopping other traffic. And then there is the issue of level crossings. Personal transportation pods might be keeping the booms of the level crossing closed all the time due to their number and irregular schedules. From a business point of view, the biggest trouble lies in the investment. Individual transportation pods need to be built, old trains need to be scrapped and contracts to build new trains need to be cancelled. But the transition does not need to take much time. You can even allow for a bathroom or coffee break button in a pod, allowing new business at stations. And you could think of a million things you can do with a pod on the road when connected to wifi and social networks.

I honestly believe the individual transportation pod on rails has a future. But it’s main advantage is it’s main disadvantage. It is new and disrupts a business model public transportation firms have been using for decades. And obviously there will be problems I haven’t even considered. But I am sure there are ways to solve them without breaking the bank.

Facebook launches Messenger App; the end for Blackberry?

August 10, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Last night Facebook launched their new Messenger App. The app is a stand separate app that allows you to quickly exchange messages with your friends. It has notifications and it allows you to send out group messages. These features make it an instant competitor for SMS and other messaging apps that try to provide an alternative to SMS. However, it comes from Facebook, instantly taking along its 750 million active users. These users need to decide whether they want to keep all their communications in one place -Facebook- or whether they are going to spread it over several different services. And I bet you can guess what the answer will be.

Not only will Facebook’s Messenger app be annoying to the telecom providers that see yet more SMS income seep away through its data services, but it might also mean the end to Blackberry. Over the past years Blackberry has been building its userbase more and more on their Blackberry messaging app. And that has gone great so far. Well, except for the occasional London riot. Many people have taken the plunge and spent a good amount of cash on getting a blackberry, because you don’t need much money to have a data connection and sending your text messages is then free. So you are just as connected, only cheaper. The Facebook Messenger app is going to change the reasoning. Now you can grab a cheap Android phone, which are priced below the Blackberry. You can run a Facebook messaging app on, which will do the same as the Blackberry messenger app. But now you can continue your conversation on your computer. Or any other online device. And with the full Facebook app added, you have all the access to your friends online as well. Great for users on a tight budget. And great for Facebook as well, as you only need to connect to be able to message. That makes you want to be friends.

A great step by Facebook. And it leaves me to wonder what will be their next. Though I have a thought or two. For now the Facebook Messenger app will only be available in the US, but it will become more widely available in the future. You can check it out now at the American iTunes store and Android Market.

Love your customers, pro-actively

August 9, 2011 / Arne / 1 Comment

You can run a good business and offer great customer service. That will make your customers love you. However, they are basing their love for you on how you solved a negative situation. There is no argument about whether this works. Because it does. People enjoy a good solution and they will share it with their friends.

There still is an issue though. Every story will start with where it went wrong and they had to ask you for a solution. You can not rule out problems altogether. After all, we are all human, so we make mistakes. But try to be ahead of your customer. Be pro active about it. Talk to them as soon as you notice the problem, even though they haven’t said anything about it. Tell them what went wrong, how much you regret it and offer them a solution.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend at a great restaurant near the beach. My friend ordered the fish salad. After all, we were looking at the sea. During our lunch she noticed a piece of plastic in the salad. She didn’t make a fuss about it, moved it to the side and finished the salad. Some time after, we asked for the bill and when it was brought, the waiter told us that he was sorry to see that we had the piece of plastic in the salad. He told us that he had ordered the cook to throw out the rest of that batch of fish and as an extra he gave us a ten percent discount on the bill. As you can imagine, we left the place more than satisfied and happy to eat there again. And over time, what will remain will be the gesture of the business, not the plastic. Because we never thought that was much of a problem anyway.

Be pro active. When something happens that you would consider to be a problem, solve it. Solve it before your customer makes a problem out of it. That will make you a winner with that customer. And with every friend he will tell it to.

Apple’s App Store; a briliant way to get nothing?

July 22, 2011 / Arne / 1 Comment

Ok, I admit, this is a personal frustration. But personal is the way of the web these days. And in fact, I know there are many more that have faced the same problems. Just browsing Twitter on #Lion and #Lionfail show enough of that.

So, what am I talking about? It is about buying a larger software package through the App Store. To be honest, I I haven’t used the App Store much to buy software. However, I did buy a couple of apps for Mac. None of them were very big, but functional enough. However, yesterday I decided to take the plunge and purchase Lion. The first time ever for me to purchase an operating system that did not come with DVD’s. Yes, I even bought Snow Leopard on DVD.

Apple’s idea is that everything can be updated through a simple process of downloading. But at 3,5 Gb there are risks. In the good old days of the internet downloading had its risks. You would avoid bigger http downloads choosing other alternatives. A little later we got downloaders that could resume the download. You would expect Apple to at least incorporate some of that technology. However, after my seventh attempt at downloading Lion, I long back to the days of booklets and DVD’s. Yesterday I tried it five times and every time the download got stuck on ‘waiting’. This mornings’ three attempts all stranded in ‘unable to reach the server’.

Offering a new cloud based service is great. Honest. But as one of the worlds’ leading technology companies Apple might have been able to create a better experience. Or not? Is this the new Apple strategy? Is the waiting and the failing downloads Apple’s online equivalent of newly released products being out of stock after lining up at the store for hours? Either way, as a customer I feel insulted. I get pulled in to make an effort to purchase a product and then I get nothing. Well, I get the bill. Because that part is sorted by Apple. As soon as I click the “buy now” button, it charges my credit card. And the rest is up to my own patience. Apparently.

Google+ might be heading where we want to go

July 11, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

It has been a week and a half since Google launched Google+. As soon as they launched, the discussion started on what Google was trying to achieve. Are they trying to migrate everyone from Facebook to Google through their circular approach? Are they trying to force other networks to be more open for data portability? Or is there something else?
In my personal opinion, Google+ might just be heading where we want to go.

Ok, enough with the cryptic nonsense. What am I trying to say there? Google is aiming at the complete integration of everything. Yes, everything. Once they were just your search engine. Then they became your main source for internet information. Whenever you had a question you turned to them. You asked and they answered with a multitude of possible answers. Then they started to help you out trying to find that obscure email from your mailbox. And you started to trust them with your correspondence, your collaboration documents and your contacts. Google+ only builds on the trend that has already been started. The trend that is called integration.

People like their friends. Fact. We like to spend time with our friends. Fact. We love to share things with our friends. Fact. And when our friends say something is good, we believe them. Fact. In my opinion Google+ is the next step in friend integration. Now Google+ and my friends turn up everywhere. In Gmail, in my calendar and even between my search results telling me who recommended any of those sites. That means that I am being more and more connected. Combine this with Google’s Android phones and Google’s Chrome laptops and we are looking at a fully integrated approach to geo-sensitive inter-friend communication. The future? Probably. By Google? Perhaps, but the race has not been run just yet. We will just have to see.

Je fans zijn jouw goud

June 16, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

Dit is nog ouder dan de weg naar Rome. Mensen verbinden zich graag aan iemand of aan iets. Deze mensen zijn je fans. Dat geldt voor producten net zo goed als voor mensen. Jouw fans geven om je. Ze zijn loyaal en volgen wat je doet op de voet. Ze houden van je en willen graag die relatie met je onderhouden. Soms schrijven ze je, mailen ze, vullen ze formulieren in, of klikken ze op je Like buttons. Maar bovenal relateren ze alles wat ze in dezelfde branche zien aan jou. Jij bent hun maatstaf. Jij vertegenwoordigt kwaliteit voor ze, je vertegenwoordigt waar voor je geld, je vertegenwoordigt het goede gevoel dat ze van je krijgen. Maar wat doe jij?

Social media verandert de maatschappij. Langzaam, maar zeker. Ik geloof dat voor iedereen het gebruik van social media net zo gewoon zal worden als de mobiele telefoon nu. In de komende tijd zal de manier waarop mensen communicatie ervaren ook gaan veranderen. Zeker als we het hebben over corporate communicatie waarbij het gaat om merken, producten en diensten. Langzamerhand raken mensen gewend aan de persoonlijke aanpak. De verantwoordelijkheid ligt hier dan ook bij de communicerende organisaties om hier op in te springen.

Gisteren kreeg ik mail. Een mail van een merk waar ik stiekem nog steeds fan van ben. Ik heb al een aardige berg Nokia’s versleten en tot de iPhone kwam, keek ik niet eens naar een andere telefoon. Toen werd ik verleid door iOS en heb inmiddels ook een Android toestel. Maar toch volg ik Nokia nog steeds. Toen ik een mailtje kreeg om de nieuwe C6-01 te testen, leek me dat dan ook wel leuk. Ik las door het onpersoonlijke mailtje heen en besloot toch het formuliertje maar in te vullen. Want mijn interesse voor het merk won het nipt. En daarna werd het stil. Heel stil. Nu, bijna drie weken later, ontvang ik een mailtje met een euforische titel. De testers zijn bekend. En ik ben het niet. Natuurlijk vind ik dat jammer. Ik heb er moeite in gestoken. Maar wat mij nog meer steekt, is dat Nokia het niet eens nodig vindt om mijn naam te gebruiken in het mailtje. Of iets anders persoonlijks. Het begint met ‘Beste,’ en daarna gaat het bergaf. Het ‘beste nieuws’ dat ze me in dit mailtje geven is dat ze mijn gegevens hebben bewaard. En dat ze me misschien ooit opnieuw zullen gaan vragen om zo’n zelfde formuliertje in te vullen. Om dan weer afgewezen te worden. Zonder naam. Ik twijfel of mijn gegevens bewaard zijn, of alleen mijn e-mail adres. Zodat ze me meer mailtjes kunnen sturen. Zonder naam en zonder gevoel.

Je fans zijn jouw goud. Zij zijn het die je merk, je product of je dienst haast op handen dragen. Zij zijn het die geld over hebben voor jouw inspanningen. Die interesse hebben in jouw hersenspinsels en die vaak bereid zijn om zelf ook tijd en moeite te steken in jouw succes. Waardeer dat, want er komt een dag waarop dat de reden van je succes zal zijn. Het zal je helpen om te groeien, om je omzet te verhogen en uit te breiden naar nieuwe doelgroepen. En het zal je helpen om hobbels glad te strijken. Hobbels die er zullen komen als er iets aan je product blijkt te schorten, de wachttijd te lang blijkt of de prijs te hoog. Maar je fans zijn je fans. Ze zijn jouw goud. Wordt fan van jouw fans. Luister naar ze, praat met ze. Zorg dat je weet wat ze beweegt en als je contact met ze zoekt, doe dat dan met hun doelen in jouw vizier. Dan blijven ze jouw fans en dragen ze je merk uit naar iedereen die ze kennen.

If dreams could fly…

May 29, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

…they would fly on solar energy.

Last Monday I visited Solar Impulse at their hangar at the airport in Brussels. I could summarize the whole visit in one word: impressive. But, I won’t stop at that. It would not do it justice.

Walking up to the hangar I could feel a sense of anticipation within the small group that received the invitation for an exclusive visit to the plane. We had all seen the site, watched the landing in Brussels and followed Solar Impulse for a while. But nothing prepared us for the actual plane. It is huge. You can write about the wingspan as big as the Airbus A340, but if that huge A340 fuselage is not in between the wings, that makes for a completely different look. A look that is emphasized by the fuselage of the Solar Impulse that looks light and thin with a huge tail.

We were a privileged group. After taking some general pictures, we were invited ‘backstage’. We were so close we could have touched the plane. For me, this was a special moment. Not because you are on the other side of that line, but because behind the line, the sentiments were different. You could feel the excitement. You could feel the era of the early pioneers all over again. I believe this is the way you would have felt the excitement in the garage of the Wright brothers many years ago. Because that is the scale of the impact this project can have over time.

I believe in this project. Do I believe that we will all be flying in solar airplanes in, say, 20 years? No, I don’t. However, I believe that this project is one of the biggest steps in alternative power sources for transportation. If we look back into history, aviation and space technology have changed a lot for our cars and even our bikes. If we sit up and pay attention, this can do the same.

Solar Impulse is an inspiring project and even though one of its goals is to circumnavigate the world in 2014, their main goal is to inspire others. Unfortunately, that was where their display in Brussels fell short. When you see the plane from a distance, it is impressive, but you can also be deceived into thinking it is ‘just a plane’. Personally, I would advice them to create more of an experience around the technology that makes up the plane. It would not be hard to put a high-rise next to the plane, so you can see all of the 11628 solar cells instead of just seeing a little row before the curve of the wing. Also, it would be great to show the technology behind so many parts of the plane. Just put a huge styrofoam blok in the display for people to touch and lift up, so they can all feel how light the housings of the engines are. And a display case that shows the construction of the fuselage would be nice as well as it is mainly a sort of aluminum foil that is stretched onto a frame. Not to mention the fact that the wings do not have the solar cells stuck to them, but the solar cells are part of the actual construction. These are things that trigger people and make them understand that this plane is beyond what they have seen before. And it triggers that feeling of pioneering for a greater future.

Bertrand, if you read this, hat off to your efforts. I love it, but already knew I would after our interview in Paris at #LeWeb10. Elâ and Stephanie, thanks for hosting the visit. Sorry I couldn’t make the breakfast. I hope I can be part of the inspiration you want to give others through the blog and my suggestions. And naturally that also includes my suggestion to have Solar Impulse take a package on one of its next flights to make it the worlds’ first solar cargo plane as well.

May the project soar to unknown heights!

Don’t hide what you are doing

March 31, 2011 / Arne / 3 Comments

You are a passionate company. You do something and you do it well. Your customers are pleased with your products and you are doing well. And you ran a basic site telling about your product and how your customers can enjoy it. But as you grew, people felt you needed to become more serious. You contacted an advertising agency and they told you, you needed to restyle your site to grow and better reflect what you do.

After two months of intensive meetings, numerous designs and many changes, you are ready to launch your site. A great moment and a great step forward for your company. You strongly believe it is the right thing to do. However, when a client visits your site, they learn more about your commitment to your internal processes than they do about the products you build. They find out more about your last annual sales report and your chairman than about the service you give. It turns out your new site kills customers´ interest instead of cultivating and growing it.

Three rules for your new site:

Show your products
An open door you might think, but many sites have turned into corporate mazes. Show your products on your front page. Make it specific as well. Start with your main sellers and make other versions quickly available from your home page. The quicker people can get to their product, the more they are triggered by it.

Make yourself available
Do not hide your support, your sales services or other contact details somewhere in the seventh level of your fancy menu. Make sure it is easy to ask questions. Make sure your visitors can see how your support treats its customers. And be there. Don’t just offer a form. Offer a possibility to chat, to get called or to call your offices. Be available. It will take time, but it will deliver customers.

Facilitate their wishes
Your customers have clear ideas of what they want to be able to do. Both with your products as well as on your site. Facilitate it. You should not jump through their every hoop, but often small changes go a long way.

Just a couple of quick ideas you can benefit from. Right now, I am waiting for a parcel. If I want to see where it is right now, I need to use their track and trace option. However, that is not displayed on the home page. I need to do a search on the site, as that seems to be the only way to find it. As a customer, that is a way of working that will put me off. It means that I might choose another shipping firm next time. Make sure your customers choose you. Again. And again. And again.

Friday Five – Five things your online project cannot do without

March 25, 2011 / Arne / 0 Comments

So, you are embarking on something new. You have just gotten that brilliant brainwave, or you are starting a new online project for your organization. Here is a list of five things that are vital to include in your project.

Friends
Whatever it is, it is better with friends. You need to keep in mind that friendships are very important to everyone. And that includes your users or potential users. It almost does not matter what your project is about, but something you need to keep in mind that your users love to do it with their friends. So, think of a way your users can involve their friends in what the are doing at your place. And make it easy to include them. Connecting to a platform where people already are in touch with their friends makes it much easier for them to include their friends in your project. So, connect to Twitter, Facebook, a google account and that will make interaction much easier.

Mobile
Over a third of internet traffic currently is mobile in one way or another. That makes mobile essential to reach your target audience. Make sure your project works on mobile devices. If it is done right, it often does not involve more than templating for mobile devices. An easy step for an easy gain.

Location
Now that you have included mobile, include something to do with it. Connect your project to physical locations. You might think that is a tricky one, but many locations are already charted through Foursquare, Facebook Places, Feest.je and other location based services. Choose to do something with locations of a certain kind or to do something related to your product at a location. Yes, it might involve some creative thinking, but it is often possible.
Something else to consider is incuding geographical meta data in as many parts of your project as you can. If you are not using it today, someone else may if you allow them. Just look at the way third party data has been by people to create layers of information for augmented reality application Layar. That is something that your target audience might benefit from as well.

Achievements
People are more willing to invest in a project if there is something they can achieve. So, make sure they can. Make sure you offer a possibility to earn a status, to be part of a leaderboard competition, to allow them to make more of what they have done on your project. If nothing else, it will bring them back to your site/app/project to achieve more.

Sharing
If someone values what you do, they will share it with others. Make sure they can. And make sure they have something to share. Help them to share more than a link, but help them share a trigger for their friends, for their followers, for their contacts. Help them be ahead of others in the fields they love, so they are the first to share it with others. The lead you give them is the lead they will give you.

Good luck on your new project! I hope it will be incredibly succesful. If you have something you would want my opinion or my help on, don’t hesitate to ask.

On Fridays I post short lists of things. Things to do, things not to do. Things to change or things you should not be without. The Friday Five will reflect my personal view on many things. And as it is Friday, it can be serious, but it might not always be.