One of the key tenets of using social media in marketing is to not just speak to your customers, but to listen to them. I had a recent experience that taught me the power of using Facebook to learn from others. My wife and I have written a book for teenagers called “What guys need [...]

Lots has been written about Apps versus the Internet. Today I heard Ben Galbraith speak on this topic and he said something like this (quoting from his blog): “What a fascinating time of change for our industry! The Web has been challenged as the dominant platform for mainstream consumer software experiences–though the contest with apps [...]

I was really interested in Salman Kahn’s recent TED talk (video embedded at the end of this post). There is much to love, and I’m going to try out some of his simpler videos on my 1st, 2nd, and 4th grade children. I was particularly interested in the concept of “flipping class.” Typically in class, [...]

I just finished the book Social Media 101, by Chris Brogan. I’ve heard some criticism of the book — that it reads like a blog and doesn’t have a strong, consistent narrative. There is some truth to that; however, I still got some good insights from the book. Here are the top 2: 1. Use [...]

One topic that has interested me for a long time is the possibility of college professors recording and podcasting their classes so that others could more freely listen to the class. It seems to me that while the audience for a lot of these classes would be small, extra exposure to good classes would be [...]

Recently, I’ve been in situations where I’ve been asked, “What do you think about this?” The “this” in the sentence is usually a product or service that is designed for a teenager or young adult (I frequently work with college and high school students). Although I would like to think that I have a pulse [...]

I have been working on some websites lately, and this is one comic that I have come back to again and again. Simple, but very thought-provoking. Thanks xkcd.

Lately, I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about the Internet and privacy. It started when I received an email from a relative warning about http://spokeo.com because it is aggregating information about you and putting it all online. My first reaction was, “Cool, I can use this to find people I’m looking for.” However, my [...]

I really enjoyed reading Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman. Here are some excerpts that I thought were particularly relevant: “It’s important to free your content from being trapped in a ‘walled garden’ because people have quickly grown accumstomed to the news finding them, and there is no turning back…People expect and demand easy access to their [...]

I’ve posted some of my feelings about copyright here. I wanted to share one of my favorite videos on the subject … in case you haven’t seen it yet.