If you’ve been looking for an effective way to communicate those company memos, look no further. Let me introduce you to Digital Memo. Imagine working in an office where the company bulletin board is the loneliest “tool”, the least used. If you’ve got an important message to say, hey, that’s the last place you’d publish it, right? Everyone just breezes by it! Unless you’ve got a memo announcing a bonus, a party or a cook-out! :)
Now imagine your message as the first thing people see when they turn on their computers? It’s a CEO’s dream. Instant communication from the head down the line.
Digital Memo is a system based on the power and convenience of instant messaging that notifies users each time you add a new post to your blog.
By integrating the RSS feed that is published with your blog into the Digital Memo system, Digital Memo enables you to use your blog as a tool to automatically send memos digitally. Get set-up in 3 steps:
Administrate your blog RSS feed into Digital Memo
Install Digital Memo onto desired machines
Start sending your memos digitally!
This tool has successfully integrated the “user-friendliness” of a blog software and the “formality” of a corporate communication system. Each computer belonging to the company network will surely receive every corporate memo, promptly alerting each user with the attention your memo deserves.
Digital Memo also has an online tutorial if you wish to see a demo.
Now, let’s see how the CEO “work flow” looks like:
Step 1: You come in the office, turn on your PC and fire up (or open) your blog.
Step 2: You compose a short memo informing everyone about something really important, or maybe inform them about their attendance to the company barbecue on Saturday perhaps. :) Or maybe write everyone a “good job” note for a change.
Step 3: You hit “publish”, and that’s it!
Your blog’s RSS feed will be monitored by Digital Memo and any new blog post you publish will automatically be fed into the Digital Memo system and distributed company-wide to everyone’s computer desktops.
Now I know what you’re thinking – Is this very secure?
Yes it is. You and only you would know what your blog user name and passwords are. Your blog can well reside in the company server, where presumably you’ve got that box all firewalled and tamper-proof.
Is it easy to install? Yes it is. The Digital Memo reader can be installed on multiple systems by using the MSI installer. Full instructions are provided with your documentation on purchasing.
Will the staff really see these memos in a prominent way? Yes they will. Every new memo you post will automatically pop up on everyone’s computer desktops. There’s literally no way people will miss reading your memo. No way.
What if I send say a series of memos in a day, will the staff have access to every one of them? Yes, they will. Digital Memo will appear only as one memo box (or a neatly tucked icon in the system tray) in everyone’s computer desktops with “next” and “previous” memos distinctly accessible with just a click of a button.
What are the other benefits of using Digital Memo?
It won’t clog everyone’s mailbox
It won’t trap any of your important messages/memos in crazy spam rules and folders
People can’t “loose” the memo. There’s no excuse like “I didn’t see that memo” from now on.
It’s turn-key, you install it and use it immediately
Oh, and it saves the forest too.. we don’t need to cut down more trees to make paper!
The only sad news is that Digital Memo is only available for Windows XP or Vista. Too bad for Mac users, but hey, if we can create enough demand maybe they can make a Mac version too!
Oh, and another thing … if your company’s communication structure is based on a strong policy that every memo should be “written on paper”… too bad. Maybe it’s time to change the policy? :)
The Test
We’re only 5 PCs in the company network, I gave it a try, and found that it is very “snappy”. There were no installation snags, the operation “CEO Workflow” (described above) was a 1-2-3 winning combination that even the most cyberphobic CEO would appreciate. Messages were instantly received by every PC.
The Recommendation
I’d encourage you to go and download the trial software, there’s nothing to lose, really. You may want to try it out on the IT department, to start with, and slowly add more departments in due time.
Digital Memo is made by Popuload Software. A company, based in Montreal Canada, noted for their innovative range of software solutions that help change the way users interact with the “usual” operating systems. A leader in providing RSS tools for communicating and tracking information, digitally.
The evaluation version is a fully functional and unlimited version of Digital Memo. The only difference this has from the purchased version is that each distributed post will contain a “trial warning message”. Not bad if you want to see how this new memo distribution method performs in “the long run”.
The full version costs US$195.00, it is downloadable right now by purchasing it online thru your credit card or PayPal.
Program updates are distributed via the Popuload website as well.
Honestly, I was both surprised and happy when I heard that Google’s taking on Microsoft head-on by introducing an open-source browser… Chrome. It will be launched tomorrow in close to 100-countries. For now, I believe it’s limited to the Windows beta version though. Rightly so if they’re taking on Microsoft first hand. But for the Mac and Linux fans, there is a promise of a special version for Leopard and beyond.
Google has published an online comics board to explain what Chrome is all about, you can see it right here.
I personally believe that doing a browser program as open-source from ground-up is a good idea. There’s nothing like user power. With the community behind developments we are all sure that every feature will be born out of a real-life need, or a user demand.
Check out the comics they’ve published, I’ve somehow related to my usual wrestles with browser problems.
Oh and do pass by their Wikipedia page for more information.
Seems that Amazon.com is growing their stake in books as they have recently acquired Shelfari (one of the biggest online book community). While it’s widely known that Amazon has been involved with Shelfari since its early beginnings, it is a natural course to solidify the relationship.
Amazon has been a long supporter of Shelfari. They’ve worked closely with us as we introduced readers, like you, to our global community of book lovers. They’ve been there each step of the way as we brought forth new features, like the cool Facebook application and our virtual bookshelf. And now Shelfari and Amazon will work hand in hand to continue to grow our dynamic community and create innovative new tools around the books you love.
The acquisition terms were not made public but it seems that Amazon is indeed cornering the online book cloud. This same month it has also acquired yet another massive online book community, AbeBooks.
What are all these you may ask? My personal opinion in these acquisition series points to the strength of online networks and communities. It would appear that market studies have added an additional “source of influence” for consumers. I remembered a good laugh late 2007 when a marketing questionnaire included the question “Would you change your (beauty product) if a person in your online network suggests you should?”.
Back to Shelfari… I would be interested to see what comes out of this news. While I read that there would be no significant change right now… Amazon must have something up its sleeves. hmmmmm….
Social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia.com is opening its doors to the open-source world. They have announced at Gnomedex 2008 that they would soon distribute their code publicly, akin to how WordPress.com has done for WordPress.org, the latter being a website that the public can download freely the full WordPress code.
This is a much anticipated move for the Ma.gnolia.com team as developments in technology are striding faster than the Ma.gnolia core tech team can handle. With their move to open-source, we will soon see a much improved service offering. Ma.gnolia’s Larry Hallf at Gnomedex 2008 says the following:
Some of the things to look forward to in this next version include:
A new stream view that shows you the freshest bookmarks of people you’re friends with on one single page.
Support for both OAuth and OpenID, with the latter making it easier for people to sign into hosted builds of Magnolia.
Sidebar customization
Theming
The open-source version won’t be available to developers until sometime in September, with a beta version (read: consumer friendly) on track for December and into the first part of 2009. In the meantime, if you’re a developer looking to get your mitts on the code it will be made available here.
I love Del.icio.us, I’ve been a loyal user of this well-loved social networking site. Today, I think I will love it even better. I just heardthat they’ve made my life a little better. I really had trouble entering their URL like, forever! I’d go deli.cio.us or de.licio.us or deli.cio.us arrgghhh… only to find out I’ve mixed the dots for the millionth time. NOW, I just head-on and put www.delicious.com …. now isn’t that easy. C’mon, I know it’s NOT JUST ME. (I know, I know, delicious.com has always forwarded to del.icio.us anyway, but hey, now the reverse is true! Yay!).
Delicious has a bold new design that is more powerful and easier to use, along with a revamped search that’s faster and more robust. It’s also full of useful features that people have been requesting for years.
The new site is LIVES(!) and now has softer blues and was reported to have a more user-intuitive interface. It’s now presented with the general public in mind vs. before when it mainly just made a mark on the techies.
The navigation bar is now organized into Bookmarks, People, and Tags.
A new MyTags page lets you see all your tags in an expanded cloud
The bookmark summary can be adjusted to show more or less detail and now shows a save count so you can see how many other people have bookmarked the page.
You can also see everyone’s bookmarks for that web page or just those people in your network.
The new sidebar improves tag and tag bundle navigation
I feel that the interface does make things look more organized. I appreciate the fact that my bookmarks now display in full width, showing me new info that are useful. Speedy too… Come check it out!
Read an article from Yahoo’s internet sectionregarding China’s censorship of websites for the duration of the olympic season. China’s internet law includes even foreign journalists, teams and even tourists… they would all find it a little hard to open what once was just accessible sites.
OpenNet Initiatives published a studyon China’s internet censorship law based on the 2004-2005 period. While access was restricted to basically blocking topics that are political by nature, sensitive and controversial, it has evolved to include many other topics a little less trivial.
“China’s Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world. Compared to similar efforts in other states, China’s filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated, and effective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control. It involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. It censors content transmitted through multiple methods, including Web pages, Web logs, on-line discussion forums, university bulletin board systems, and e-mail messages. Our testing found efforts to prevent access to a wide range of sensitive materials, from pornography to religious material to political dissent. Chinese citizens seeking access to Web sites containing content related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square incident, opposition political parties, or a variety of anti-Communist movements will frequently find themselves blocked. While it is difficult to describe this widespread filtering with precision, our research documents a system that imposes strong controls on its citizens’ ability to view Internet content. ” – from OpenNet
What I am curious of right now is how this will all work with a worldwide media event. Traditional media is one thing, the blogging media is another. Tourist flocking the games will surely be a little frustrated that they may be restricted to visit their own blogs to post their time in China. That is, IF their blogs have phrases or keywords that the Chinese government deem as “controversial”.
I would be interested to find out the impact to the blogging world. I would probably venture a “free the blogs” campaign in the offing? Who knows, it is likely to happen.
You can see more info on China’s internet policy here, here and here.
I’ve heard a few leaks (here and here) about WordPress setting to release it’s very own native application for the iPhone. Glorious that they’re tweaking it to work with WordPress.com and the standard installations. And quite frankly, with the current trend of iPhone prices vis a vis its features, I think the addition of a “WordPress-able” feature will set the icing on that great cake. I really like the tag “WordPress and the iPhone… your blog everywhere”.
It’s bringing your blogging craves anywhere… anytime! Got the urge to write about that sunset you’re viewing now, well just pop out your iPhone and write about it. Publish it in seconds alongside that sunset picture too (!) no problemo.
I know, I know… pro-bloggers who blog like crazy may find the interface a little (ok, MUCH!) on the downside. I’d imagine myself typing a 200-word blog post in say about 15-20 minutes VS. the 5-minute usual post publishing I do. BUT STILL, you’d agree that the iPhone-WordPress merge does have it’s own sweet advantages. I chuckle when I imagine popping out my notebook to blog about the sunset AND THEN running off to find a hotspot to publish it. Hee hee.
Oh, it’s not available yet, no release dates have been said, all I saw was the video below… check it out!
Just a few steps to create that blog post eh?
Type in the blog details (the title)
Type the actual post
Add pictures from your iPhone or media library
Type in blog settings like (categories, published date, password protection etc.)
Multiply.com has introduced its Premium Membership Account last June 25. Now, due to the millions of hi-res photos and videos they receive everyday, they are now charging US$19.95 for unlimitted storage space.
Here is a comparison between the free and premium membership accounts of Multiply.com in relation to storage space:
For free accounts – album sized photos are still free, and stored forever. But for hi-res/original photos it will only be stored free within 30 days. After that, automatic deletion.
For Premium Members – album sized photos, hi-res/original photos are stored forever.
Multiply.com has explained this move clearly right here.
As a Multiply.com user myself, I would understand Multiply.com’s move to start selling “idle property”. True that most users would choose to store the original hi-res photo versions just because the opportunity is there. I would likely agree with Multiply.com too that most of those hi-res photos aren’t viewed… ergo aren’t generally useful to the user, or the public. I guess not everything in life is or will remain free… except Wordpress! (of course)
Multiply users post millions of photos and tens of thousands of videos a day, and that’s a lot of stuff to store and manage… which costs money and resources. We’ve also learned that an overwhelming majority of the original photos and videos are never even viewed! Clearly, for many Multiply users, the album-sized photos and Flash videos are good enough.
So rather than spend resources supporting something that isn’t used, we feel it makes more sense to focus on making the site faster and better for everyone, improving the features that are used, and adding more features. For free. But if your original content is important to you, you have the option of sharing and storing that indefinitely by upgrading to Multiply Premium.
I just met a small town mayor here in South East Asia. He’s the mayor of a small agricultural city, rural as rural can be. I think I stood out of the crowd being naturally city-folk(country folks CAN tell). And it being a really small city, he heard from a friend that I was a computer person. He set up a meeting with me to pick my mind regarding “blogging”. I was a little confused with what he wanted to do (I thought he wanted to know what blogging meant) UNTIL he told me that he wanted municipal events, activities and other municipal news blogged. His primary audience? Former town residents who are now spread all over the globe. This mayor knew what blogging is and he had a specific project for it.
The mayor wanted former town residents to know what’s going on with their old town. He wanted to let them know what’s new… AND what they can do to help their roots develop in this new cyberworld.
I smiled… literally smiled wide! This is the kind of mind that aims at progress. Blogging about their small city is a great progressive step. He’s going to pass this project on to the youth council, who seem to be gungho about the entire thing.
I’ll probably start by dropping a few URLs about blogging and see where their interest brings them. I for one can probably demo what and how setting up a blog site is. Do you know any URLs that can help them?
Funny how blogging is taking its aim at even the rural communities of South East Asia. It’s the grassroots communities that, I think, can benefit from blogging. Tons of things may happen if they keep telling people about their small town. Opportunities, change, development… progress.
Keeping my fingers crossed that this will press on!
According to TechCrunch, Adobe has come up with a solution to the nagging problem of content within an SWF or Flash file from being indexed by search engines. Adobe has announced that they have released their solution to Google and Yahoo allowing them to crawl the content within these files. As for Windows Live Search, no dice! Since Flash is licensed by Adobe and is not an open standard, Adobe has the privilege of releasing this sort of technology to whom they see fit. A bummer if you ask me. Furthermore, Adobe has created a special flash player especially for these search engines which will aide in crawling the content.
It’s not that SWF files are not crawlable, as the article points out that there are over 73 million SWF files out on the web, it’s the text and links within the SWF file that has escaped the search engine spiders. It will be interesting to see the various articles from SEO experts out on the web which will explain the best ways in which to optimize your Flash content. (I bet they thought this day would never come)
You know, if this were to occur a few years ago back when Flash was ‘cool’, this would be huge news. Now, Flash is an annoyance on the web. I hate web sites that are using all sorts of different flash elements that I have no control over. The last thing I would want to see is a SWF file showing up as the first item of a search. Hopefully, Google along with Yahoo will create a filter for this type of content. That’s not to say I hate Flash entirely, as YouTube, Ustream.TV and other web services have made good use of the technology.
So, will you be optimizing your Flash files? How much content do you think is hidden within these Flash files that would be considered of use to the web?
3 Comments
If you’ve been looking for an effective way to communicate those company memos, look no further. Let me introduce you to Digital Memo. Imagine working in an office where the company bulletin board is the loneliest “tool”, the least used. If you’ve got an important message to say, hey, that’s the last place you’d publish it, right? Everyone just breezes by it! Unless you’ve got a memo announcing a bonus, a party or a cook-out! :)
