Giovanny Gutierrez is a technology evangelist, thought leader and serial entrepreneur. Gio is Founder of Chat Chow TV and is currently operating as Director of Interactive at Tinsley Advertising in Miami, FL.
// Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 10:14 am GMT -5 // No Comments » // Random
Scott Dadich, Creative Director for Wired describes the “revolution in the way people consume journalism” (well said) allowing consumption in many different places, “paper, mobile devices, iPhone, iPad…”, and that’s his whole list. (more…)
// Friday, February 19th, 2010 12:52 am GMT -5 // No Comments » // Random
I’ve had a few myself, mainly back in the high school hay days. Nothing quite as glorious as this. May I present the 67 year old man vs. young punk. Enjoy. (Be warned, there is bloodshed.)
// Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 02:54 pm GMT -5 // No Comments » // SEO, Social Media
Facebook’s VP of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion Chamath Palihapitiya shared the social networking giant’s current mobile strategy and its plans for the future. Read below:
- Facebook believes 2010 will be a watershed year for mobile
- The service is now actively used by more than 400 million people
- 100 million users (25% of total number of users) actively uses Facebook’s mobile products at least once a month
- 200 million people have interacted with Facebook on mobile at least once
- Facebook now works together with some 200 mobile operators – and they are striving to convince more about the added value of such partnerships
- Mobile users demonstrate twice as much engagement than Web users (2x the pageviews, interactions, consumptions and productions)
- They use the above as an argument to convince operators services like Facebook can help drive more sales for more capable phones and heavier data plans
- Facebook is traditionally strong in English-speaking countries, but that’s not all – for example,every single user in Indonesia apparently uses Facebook’s mobile products
* There are 3 key themes to Facebook’s mobile strategy:
- MOBILE WEBSITE: two versions, one for regular phones and one for touch-screen enabled phones – these have now been translated into 70+ languages, covering about 98% of the world population.
- SMS: interactions through Facebook using shortcodes – so far there are deals with 80 operators in 32 countries
- DEVICES: applications or ‘integrated experiences’, which means Facebook intends to hook its service deeper into the core OS handsets run on
* New developments:
- VODAFONE UK TRIAL: the carrier offered Facebook mobile free of charge for a week, which not only caused an expected usage spike, but also resulted in an increase of 20% of people who kept using and paying for heavier data plans after the trial
- FACEBOOK ZERO: stripped down, text-only version of Facebook’s mobile website – carriers can offer this free of charge for as long as they like, and attempt to transition users to a charged model at a later stage more effectively
- Facebook aims to turn FB Connect into a ‘foundational element’ of the web, whether accessed on mobile phones or not.
- In the future, Facebook Connect should become more of a core integration both on an OEM, app and OS level (naming iPhone, RIM, Windows Mobile and Android as examples)
- Facebook intends to play a more important role in the app developers ecosystem
- The company stressed that their goal is to keep pushing the envelope for users, operators, device manufacturers and developers.
// Monday, February 15th, 2010 11:23 am GMT -5 // 1 Comment » // Personal
Sugarcane is a great new spot from owners of SushiSamba. The place is beautiful, airy, big fans, very tropical. Decor is lovely, random chairs, tile, wood floors, very rustic and homey.
Sugarcane has 3 separate kitchens scattered through out:
• A Raw Bar
• Japanese Grill
• Hot Kitchen
Think tapas with an exotic/asian flare – not your typical spanish tapas. If you’ve been to Señora Martinez, you know what to expect except this was way more affordable and better tasting in every way. We tried 10 dishes and they came fast and prompt. Favorites were:
• Florida Tomatoes w/ burrata cheese, strawberries and balsamic
• Golden Beets salad
• Goat Cheese Croquettes w/ marmalade
• The Sugarcane Lobster roll w/ peanut soy
• Madagascar Shrimp w/ sweet chili
• Yellowtail Crudos w/ grapefruit and avocado
Last but not least, the Torrejas dessert which was soaked in custard for 24 hours and baked w/ fiji apples and served w/ vanilla bean ice cream.
Staff was wonderfully flashing smiles left and right. Our waiter came thru with every suggestion. Can’t wait to come back for Happy Hour and get a pitcher of the red sangria.
PS I added some pics so make sure to scope them out.
// Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 09:33 pm GMT -5 // 1 Comment » // Random
Step 1: Find your facebook username by going to: http://www.facebook.com/username/
Step 2: Open iChat Preferences in the menu under iChat > Preferences and click on the accounts tab
Step 3: Click on the + (plus) sign below to add an account.
• Choose Account Type as Jabber Account
• Account name is username@chat.facebook.com and your password
• Click drop-down arrow to reveal Server options. Enter chat.facebook.com as the server name.
• Enter 5222 as the port. Hit ‘Done’
Click done and you are good to go
// Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 11:02 am GMT -5 // No Comments » // Personal, Random
So I’ve come to the conclusion that not only do I want an iPad, but I need one. Yes, I’m a card carrying Apple Fan Boy. With that being said, here are the 3 things Apple needs to implement right now. There’s a good chance some of these wishes will have to wait until iPad 2.0, but we’re hoping Apple has some cards to play and will further enhance its device before the March launch-date.
The brief iWork demos showed how capable these apps are, but no mention was made about printing. We’re hoping there’s direct network printing from iPad apps, because without this functionality, iPad will sit squarely in the ‘peripheral’ category.
PS. I know you can print now from an iPhone but you need to install an app on your Mac/PC as well as the iPhone. This should be native using existing technologies such as Bonjour/Wifi/Bluetooth.
Only crazy people want to be able to use iPad for taking photos. A 10-inch flatscreen device is more than a little unwieldy for such endeavors. However, we already know a number of people that consider the lack of an iPad webcam a deal-breaker. Video chatting never became ubiquitous in the manner shown in sci-fi movies, but it’s popular with some, especially anyone with friends and family overseas via Skype, iChat etc.
If you’ve got a Mac or PC, you can back-up your iPad to it via a sync, just like an iPod/iPhone. Big hard drive space is now very much needed as your main computer has to store backups of these devices. There needs to be a optional way to backup wireless via MobileMe at prices similar to Amazon’s S3 storage.
// Monday, February 8th, 2010 03:25 pm GMT -5 // No Comments » // Wordpress
I’ll be attending WordCamp Miami 2010 and is something you don’t want to miss. With that said, I spoke to one of the guys responsible for WordCamp and he was generous enough to give me and my students an educational discount so now you really have a good reason to attend!
Tickets can be purchased via this link: http://wordcampmia.eventbrite.com/?discount=student15
Tickets cover the cost of lunch, t-shirts, goodies, and other misc. items and will allow you access to any after parties.
WordCamp Miami is a day event for passionate WordPress users, developers, designers and anyone else who is interested in learning all about WordPress. We’re hoping this event will be a fun, relaxing and educational event for everyone who attends.
The event will be hosting over 20 speakers from across the country and South Florida.
WordCamp Miami is worth your time if you are:
Please visit the official site at WordCampMIA.com. Event info is updated there. Constant updates: Follow WordCamp Miami on Twitter. The official hashtag for WordCamp Miami is: #wcmia
// Friday, February 5th, 2010 10:50 am GMT -5 // No Comments » // Personal
Netflix signed a frightening deal with Warner Bros, delaying new releases from going out to customers until 28 days of purgatory pass. TechCrunch dug through Netflix’s top January rentals, and they yanked any title that’s within 28 days of release. Over half (13 of 24) would be missing. Here’s an example:
1) Julie & Julia: December 8 — No
2) District 9: December 22 —- No
3) 500 Days of Summer: December 22 —- No
4) Angels and Demons: November 24 -– Yes
5) The Proposal: October 13 —-Yes
6) The Hangover: December 15 —- No
7) Star Trek: November 17 -Yes
8) Up: November 10 —-Yes
9) The Taking Of Pelham 123: November 3 -– Yes
10) Night At The Museum 2: December 1 -– Yes
11) The Ugly Truth: November 10 —- Yes
12) Public Enemies: December 8 -– No
13) The Hurt Locker: January 12 —- No
14) Inglourious Basterds: December 15 —- No
15) Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs: January 5 — No
16) Funny People: November 24 — Yes
17) G.I. Joe: November 3 — Yes
18) Harry Potter 6: December 8 —- No
19) Terminator 4: December 1 – Yes
20) Gamer: January 19 — No
21) A Perfect Getaway: December 29 — No
22) Extract: December 22 — No
23) 9: December 29 —– No
24) Transformers 2: October 20 — Yes
25) Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past: September 22 — Yes
Netflix has developed an amazing rental infrastructure. But they need to become as media savvy as Apple if they want to make it worth a damn. I personally take this as an insult coming from Warner Bros as they are giving consumers no alternate option than to purchase a $35 Blue-Ray movie that I’ll watch maybe two times. This whole fiasco is going to make people pirate (their) movies even more. Mark my words.
// Thursday, February 4th, 2010 08:40 am GMT -5 // No Comments » // Personal, Random
Wow… Japan never ceases to amaze me. Seriously, here’s some DVD for sale of women crying. I’m sure it’s some sick masochistic fetish to some but as a DVD for sale it’s well… unique and brilliant. I hope they make millions so please buy yours here: Crying Girl DVD Helps Men Feel Strong.
Straight from product page:
It may not be The Crying Game but “Crying Girl” (Nakigao, in Japanese) from Amuse Soft Entertainment has its fair share of crying. In fact, it’s almost ALL crying. One after another, 11 minor female celebs shed real tears as they recount some of the worst days of their lives.
The “11 stories of people crying in earnest”, as the DVD’s tag line states, include some that really don’t seem so terrible but instead reflect the rigors of being an up & coming model in Japan’s fiercely competitive “idol” culture:
- Marika, who was yelled at by her manager.
- Risa, who had been jilted by her boyfriend.
- Nana, who saw a bad picture of herself in a magazine.
- Shiho, who cried when her boyfriend said goodbye.
- Mai, who cried “touching the loneliness of the city”.
- Yutaka, who has a friend with breast cancer who’s engaged to marry.
// Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 05:41 pm GMT -5 // No Comments » // Social Media
Interesting post by Gavin Dunaway over at Adotas. I personally couldn’t agree more with this trend.
Engagement — the holy grail for marketers. As Twitter use swells and Facebook leaps past 350 million global users, marketers are increasingly foraging for this treasure in the social mediascape, subtracting funds from traditional media.
Alterian’s “Annual Survey 2009? — which included 1,068 marketers, 62% North American, 36% European and 2% from the Asia-Pacific region — found that 40% of respondents were shifting more than one-fifth of their traditional direct marketing budgets toward digital and social media channels. Another 21% said they were moving 10% to 20% thataways.
Overall, 66% of marketers plan to invest in social media, while 67% increasingly important or critical to success. Fifty-seven percent of respondents plan to use their budgets to improve their websites so that they can open dialogues and increase engagement with consumers.
However, while more money is being poured into social media, only 36% of respondents reported investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools, with 64% forgoing what Alterian noted was the key to an effective social media strategy. In addition, 42% of respondents don’t incorporate clickstream data into their customer database.
