The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters Column by Paul J. Sherman Published: December 15, 2008 “As important as the user experience of enterprise software is to a business’s success, why isn’t its assessment usually a factor in technology selection?” Over the past twenty years, the field of user experience has been fortunate. However, there’s one area that I believe has lagged behind: the enterprise software space. Just as the mass market has demanded and is receiving more usable products, so should businesses demand that their technology vendors make their software easier to learn, more efficient to use, and easy to remember. Consider this column a call to action to organizations that buy enterprise-level software. Your technology selection processes are incomplete. The rest of this column explains why this happens and what enterprise technology purchasers can do about it. Enterprise Software “Enterprise software products are complex, powerful tools. Enterprise software products are complex, powerful tools.
6 Random Social Media Tips to Help You Improve Your Marketing Today 2.5K Flares Filament.io 2.5K Flares × When it comes to helping you out with Social Media, we often like to categorize things. For example, we’d write about the optimal timing of your posts, or how to come up with the best headlines, and the like. What happened over the last few weeks though is that we collected a number of awesome tips to post on Social Media, that didn’t quite all fit together. So we thought, why not creating a list of unique tips, that might not have that much in common, but are hopefully still very useful for you! So, here we go, a list of 6 rather random Social Media tips to help you improve your marketing today: 1. Here’s a quick tip about a mistake that is made all the time on Twitter. Here’s Jay’s Tweet, which he used as an example: @HubSpot‘s reimagined blog is live! The mistake is an easy one to miss, but it all comes down to the very start of the Tweet. So, how do we solve this? . Gary Vaynerchuck even created a 44-page slideshow for this one Twitter mistake. 2.
Smart Transitions In User Experience Design How the Patriots' Julian Edelman Scores Social Media Touchdowns New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman is adding tech enthusiast to his resume, on top of being one of quarterback Tom Brady's favorite targets. The 27-year-old football player is not only active on social media, engaging with fans and pumping out content, but he recently participated in a Reddit AMA ("ask me anything" Q&A) and recorded a video of himself using Google Glass to show what it's like to return a punt wearing the high-tech connected specs. He's also among the growing list of sports stars turning to digital agencies to build his brand during the off season. "Ad agencies don't generally work with athletes in this capacity," Assaf Swissa of Superdigital told Mashable. Superdigital has applied the rules of branding and marketing to Edelman by developing his brand, designing logo treatments, growing his social presence and building out partnerships. "Social media is a great way for Julian to show his personality and interests to his fans.
A New Thermodynamics Theory of the Origin of Life Why does life exist? Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Kristian Peters Cells from the moss Plagiomnium affine with visible chloroplasts, organelles that conduct photosynthesis by capturing sunlight. “You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England said. England’s theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a powerful description of life at the level of genes and populations. England’s theoretical results are generally considered valid.
Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Social Marketing Startup Little Bird Raises $1.7M More Little Bird, the startup led by former tech writer Marshall Kirkpatrick, is announcing that it has raised $1.7 million in new funding. Kirkpatrick, formerly an editor at ReadWriteWeb (now ReadWrite) and before that a writer at TechCrunch, launched the company in October 2012. He told me then that his goal was to help companies find people who are influential on any topic, based on an analysis of who follows them on Twitter. Since then, Little Bird has changed in couple of key ways, he said. Kirkpatrick contrasted Little Bird with Klout — the main way Klout connects brands and social media influencers is through the discounts and deals of its Perks program, which Kirkpatrick suggested is “a crass, shallow way to engage people.” The broader trend, he added, is that “the line between sales and marketing is increasingly being blurred.” The new funding was led by the Oregon Angel Fund and brings Little Bird’s total funding to $2.7 million.
Why We'll Never Be Able To Let Our Beloved Magazines Go The magazine industry is on the decline, as anyone who's seen their monthly issues grow thinner and thinner knows. Thanks a lot, Internet. But much as we love style blogs, GIF lists, Pinterest boards and Instagram filters, we've still got a soft spot in our hearts for print magazines. The excitement of opening the mail box and finding that glossy waiting for you, the impossibly glamorous stars staring back at you from the cover, the obsessive act of reading and re-reading and re-reading every article, the careful tears you made as you ripped out the pretty shoots and ads to hang on your bedroom wall -- sorry, but none of that can be had from the Internet. Here are the magazines we've held onto and still cherish after all these years. Teen Vogue, February 2006 Michelle Persad, associate fashion editor: "I was obsessed with a pair of lavender Tsubi jeans she wore in the editorial. Sassy, April 1992 Anya Strzemien, executive lifestyle editor of HuffPost Live: "Sassy Sassy Sassy!
How to Stop a Social Media Crisis It can be hard to remember the digital world before real-time; the speed at which conversations and stories race through the Internet and their momentum add a new dimension to reputation management. Anyone active on Facebook, Twitter, or the likes will have seen at least one social media crisis unfold. And let’s be honest, there’s a certain schadenfreude to be had in witnessing a big brand endeavor to hold back negative tweets. But if it’s you, your product or your business that’s on the receiving end, it can feel like you’re on a runaway train careering toward the edge of a cliff. Create a plan before you need it Don’t wait until you’re in the middle of a crisis to work out how you’re going to deal with one. While you can’t plan for every possible scenario, you can take some proactive steps. When you’ve identified possible issues, think about the internal protocols. It’s worth taking the time to write out this plan. Act fast but don’t panic! Act, don’t talk Show your human side
Colossal | Art, design and visual ingenuity. | Page 2 Obariyon. 2013. Stoneware, antique hooks, glaze. 17 x 46 x 30″ Washington-based artist Beth Cavener Stichter sculpts human-sized animals from clay and other materials in both dramatically overt and subtly ambigous displays of emotion. Hung from ropes or pinned to walls, the anthropomorphic sculptures are infused with juxtapositions that depict the extremes of both human emotion and animalistic behavior: predator and prey, love and hate, fear and peace. Stichter collaborates with a variety of artists in her work, including Alessandro Gallo, who designed and painted the ornate Japanese tattoos on the nineteen-foot long anaconda snake depicted in Tangled Up in You seen below. Obariyon, detail. Tangled Up in You. 2014. Tangled Up in You, detail. The Sentimental Question. 2012. L’Amante. 2012. L’Amante, detail. The Question That Devours. 2012.