Walkthrough Tutorial: Consuming XML Web Services in Excel 2013

I just uploaded a screencast video demonstrating a few methods to consume XML web services.

In the tutorial, I demonstrate how to use a simple currency exchange web service in  three different ways:

i) through a stand-alone requester agent

ii) through a web browser

iii) through Excel 2013 and its new WebService and FilterXML functions.

Here's the video. Let me know what you think...

How-To: Setup Free Voicemail on your Canadian Carrier Smartphone

For some time now, I’ve been meaning to explore options for free voicemail – especially in the Canadian context where customers may be charged $7.00 to $15.00 per month for various voicemail or call management options. Since my own contract with my carrier was coming to an end, I did some serious research and evaluated various options for getting “free” voicemail.

The caveat about “free” voicemail is that some of us might already have a good voice and data plan that we want to utilize for a voicemail system without having to pay anything extra for it. It just makes common sense – voicemail shouldn’t be treated as a paid add-on – in the current competitive market landscape, it doesn’t constitute a value-added service.

During my research, I came across two options that would fit the bill:

1. FreePhoneLine.ca which offers a free Canadian phone number and other complementary services such as voicemail and long distance.
2. Youmail.com which offers visual voicemail applications for various mobile platforms and uses it’s hosted communication platform for storage and delivery of voicemail.

I signed up for and tested both of these services and decided to adopt the latter due to the following reasons:

i) Youmail allows account administration through a website and a mobile interface (convenient);

ii) It provides a variety of options to configure alerts and notifications for voicemails and missed calls (SMS/Email/Push);

iii) It provides the option to deliver call receipts to people who leave you a message (could be a useful feature for some use-cases);

iv) I like the crowd-sourced community model being used for collaborating on new applications and sharing tips as well as voicemail greetings ; and

vi) I wasn’t bothered by Youmail’s sales team unlike FreeLine.ca who kept trying to upsell other products and services.


Hence, this How-To tutorial will discuss setting up visual voicemail through Youmail. If you’re interested in exploring what you can do with the alternative FreePhoneLine.ca solution, there’s a good blog post tutorial available here.



What You Will Need:


1.  A reasonably good data plan for the following purposes:


         a) to receive push notifications for the visual voicemail application (you can configure the type of notifications you wish to receive).

          b) to retrieve voicemails as electronic sound files (mp3) through the visual voicemail application or through your online account.

          c) to setup or modify your voicemail administrative options such as greetings.
              This can be done through the visual voicemail application or through your online account.

2.  A voice plan that will allow you to access one or potentially two phone numbers that may be long-distance for you (within Canada). One of the numbers is needed to forward to your calls to the voicemail system, while the other is required to retrieve the voicemail and setup your administrative options (greetings etc.). With respect to the latter, as mentioned in points 1b & 1c above, you can retrieve voicemail and setup your voicemail options through the app on your phone or through your online account, and in this case, you will not need to worry about the second long-distance number to retrieve voicemail.

Note: If you have a long-distance plan or an unlimited calling to/from specific phone numbers through plans such as the Rogers My5 / My10, you should include these number(s) in that list.

3.  Access to Call Forwarding feature through your carrier. To my knowledge, this is already included in many voice plans.


Procedure:



1.  Sign-up for a Youmail Account:

You can sign-up for an account through the Youmail website, or alternatively, you can download the Youmail app
(see links in step 6 below) on your phone and use it to register for an account.

2.  Verify your Phone Number and Youmail Account:

• The verification workflow involves providing your phone number and receiving an activation code via a text message on your mobile device. This activation code needs to be entered on the website to proceed with the sign-up process. In case you don’t receive the activation code (happened in my case), you can use the dial-in number provided on the website to confirm your phone number. This will allow you to proceed with the sign-up process.

• At the end of the sign-up process, you will receive a PIN that needs to be used to authenticate your login to the website and use the mobile app. This PIN can be changed later through the website or the mobile app.

3.  Skip the Call Forwarding Step for Now:


Once your account is setup, you may be asked to configure call forwarding on your mobile phone. I found the instructions provided by Youmail for this purpose to be inaccurate or dated. This is why I would advise that you skip this step for now. We’ll come back to this later (see step 5) .



4.  Login to Your Youmail Account & Configure Options:


Use your phone number and PIN to login to your account. Browse the Settings tab to configure your account and mailbox options. The left hand menu consists of several sections that you can explore for various options. Under the My Information section, you can setup personal information details, change your PIN and setup a username for the community forum. Additionally, you should also take a look at the options in the My Alerts section to setup how you want SMS, Email and Push Notifications to be delivered.




5.  Enable Call Forwarding:


Now we’re ready to configure call forwarding. In the My Phones section under the Settings tab, you will find two access numbers. 

As noted earlier, these numbers may be long-distance for you. Assuming you’re okay with this, you will need to follow instructions from your carrier to forward calls to the Forwarding Access Number provided by Youmail.


In my case, the forwarding instructions provided by Youmail were inaccurate or dated. In fact, I received an email from Youmail with different yet still incorrect instructions. After some online digging (thanks Google!), I tested various suggestions and figured out the correct key sequence for call forwarding on the Rogers network.


You will need to enter the key sequence on your phone dialpad and press the Call button. Don’t miss the asterisks and hashes. While I’m listing various options here, in my case, I ended up using the BUSY/NO ANSWER Transfer option listed below.

• To activate NO ANSWER Transfer:

* 6 1 * Youmail-forwarding-access-number # CALL

• To cancel NO ANSWER Transfer:

# 6 1 # CALL

• To activate BUSY Transfer:

* 6 7 * Youmail-forwarding-access-number # CALL

• To cancel BUSY Transfer:

# 6 7 # CALL

• To activate BUSY/NO ANSWER Transfer:

* 0 0 4 * Youmail-forwarding-access-number # CALL

• To cancel BUSY/NO ANSWER Transfer:

# # 0 0 4 # CALL

Important Note: It is worth re-iterating that the call forwarding instructions provided above were tested on the Rogers network. You may need to follow different instructions specific to your carrier. Additionally, if you currently subscribe to a voicemail service from your carrier, you might need to disable it to configure call forwarding as described above.

6.  Install the Youmail Mobile Application:


Download and install the Youmail mobile application for your smartphone. Links are provided here for your convenience:

• Youmail Android App on Google Play
• Youmail iPhone App on the App Store
• Youmail on the Blackberry App World

Once the application is installed, you can use your phone number and PIN to login to the app. Once logged in, use the settings menu on your phone to explore the configuration options (pretty much the same options are available through the website interface).

7.  Test Your Basic Voicemail Setup:


We’re done with the basic setup and it’s time for a test. Call your number from a different phone and let it ring until it goes to voicemail (hopefully). Depending on how you’ve setup your push notifications and/or email alerts and/or SMS alerts, you should receive an indication or message on your phone for new voicemails on your Youmail voicemail box.




You may also want to test the system in other ways to make sure all missed calls go to your new voicemail - e.g. call your phone and ignore the call by pressing the end key or call your phone while it is turned off or in airplane mode.




Through the push notification, you will be directed to the Youmail App interface where you can browse and retrieve messages in your voicemail and also view any missed calls.

8.  Setup a Custom Voicemail Greeting:


With a working setup, you can now play around with various options. You probably want to customize or record your own voicemail greeting – this can be done by logging into your Youmail account and browsing to My Youmail => Greetings. You can select from various standard greetings or even peruse some funny ones uploaded by the Youmail community.


That’s it for now… 


I hope this How-To tutorial will be of some use.
Do you have any other tips or alternative suggestions for free voicemail setup?
If you try the setup in this How-To tutorial, let me know what you think in the comments section below.
You can also fire me a tweet with your feedback on this article.

MBA Course on Enterprise Social Media Strategy

This summer, I’m going to be teaching an MBA seminar course titled: “Enterprise Social Media Strategy” - Link to Course Outline (PDF).

As a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, I’m delighted to say that this course uniquely positions us among the very few business schools in Canada that have a holistic course offering in social media management. I’m excited about offering this course at the graduate level and am looking forward to discussions with students and guest speakers about the various opportunities and challenges of social computing in business contexts.

While contemplating the course curriculum, I decided to structure the themes of discussion around four primary use-cases for enterprise social media – which include:

i) fostering dialog;

ii) promoting advocacy;

iii) facilitating support; and 

iv) encouraging innovation

During the course, I’m not only expecting to be able to draw upon my own experiences from various consulting engagements and research projects, but also to learn from students’ experiences in their own work contexts. Consequently, I’m hoping that these discussions can help the student audience cut through the hype and deliberate the key elements that are required in developing a practical social media strategy for customer-facing, external collaboration, and internal business contexts.

At a broad level, I’ve attempted to plan each course module within a framework that aims to advance the students’ understanding of:

i) goals and strategies for the use of social media in organizations, especially with respect to the value drivers for enterprise social media (encourage sharing, capture knowledge, enable action, empower people).

ii) maintenance and control of inventory of social media assets

iii) integration of social media programs for information sharing and decision-making processes in various business functions (e.g. marketing, supply chain, finance).

iv) coordination of employee tasks and customer experiences across a variety of social media channels 

v) measurement and analysis of key performance indicators relevant to specific social media use cases

As a strong proponent of constructivist teaching methods, I’ve planned most course activities to be interactive and student-centered. Toward this, the performance assessment criteria for students includes a component that expects and encourages reflective microblogging (using Twitter) on course discussion topics. Additionally, students will also draft and publish individual as well as co-authored blog posts on social media tools and business issues related to the implementation and institutionalization of social media in organizations. In the spirit of being social, all deliverables will be published on the public domain and will be open to comments by students as well as other website visitors.

This being an MBA course, the case method will be utilized for content delivery and class discussions drawing upon case studies from various industry sectors. Additionally, there won't be a prescribed textbook for the course which is befitting a subject area that is continually evolving. As a starting point, I’ve provided a list of academic and practitioner articles in the course outline. Students can read these to familiarize themselves with various themes and topics that the course will cover. I plan on providing readings on a week-by-week basis with the aim of keeping current with relevant issues surrounding the use of social media for business value.

To conclude, I’m offering this course because of my personal conviction of the important role that social media has to play in organizations of all sizes. While many business schools have started to offer some courses in social media to their students, a recent op-ed in Forbes suggests that many top schools are lagging behind. I’m glad to have the opportunity to offer this course at the Telfer School of Management and am pleased to say that our school – if not a pioneer in this area, it is certainly on its way to be a front-runner for advancing educational offerings in social media management.

Please feel free to share your comments about this course or if you have any other suggestions, I’m all ears. Please let me know in the comments section below, or fire me a tweet with your thoughts or feedback.

Facebook Timeline for Brands: Overview & Five Suggestions

As the March 30^th deadline approaches for businesses to update their Facebook brand pages to the new Facebook Timeline, marketers are busy trying to figure out how to best utilize the new layout of their profile pages to advance their social media marketing campaigns. I’ve already helped two organizations in the conceptual redesign of their profile pages and I thought I’d write a blog post to list some of the take-aways from our brainstorming sessions. Hopefully these suggestions can alleviate some of the pain points for businesses that are distressed over this transition.

1. The Cover Photo:

The Timeline based Facebook profile features a landscape oriented cover photo (suggested size is 851 x 315 pixels). For businesses, the cover photo provides an opportunity to express the tone and mood of their brand and their timeline profile page. While businesses can customize the cover photo to their liking, Facebook has prohibited specific promotional tactics such as calls to action for their customers (e.g. you can't ask followers to "like" or to click on certain tabs).

Brand managers should use the cover photo as a dynamic space to set first impressions for their products and services, and facilitate the right tone for an opening conversation with their future customer.

Example: I really like how Nissan has incorporated a really simple but powerful branding message “Our Most Innovative Year”. It gets people wanting to come back for the "reveal".

2. Milestones on the Timeline:

Since the Facebook Timeline changes the default profile page from a list of the most recent updates to a complete summary of an organization’s growth or its brand’s evolution, businesses should include events and achievements that symbolize various chapters in their development. This is especially important for what Facebook terms “Legacy Brands”, i.e. those brands that have decades of historical data that can be featured on the timeline.

In formulating the motif for a timeline, businesses should attempt to engage users through interactive rich media. The timeline should feature more than just status updates, and include photos, videos and location information where relevant.

If done right, the timeline should improve the stickiness for the profile page by allowing current and potential followers to scroll easily through the high points of a business – eventually creating more brand affinity.

Example: Check out Subway’s Timeline starting in the 1960s with the first use of the name ‘Subway’. 

3. Custom Tabs

Facebook’s older interface for business pages featured default landing pages that were invariably used for marketing campaigns and sales promotions. As a major change for many brands, the new Facebook Timeline will no longer allow directing visitors to custom landing tabs.

That being said, businesses can now select which of their tabs (icons) are displayed under the cover photo. These tabs provide the opportunity for businesses to feature the strongest aspects of their Facebook presence – whether it is stories or pictures from their customers, other content pages, or business-specific apps.

Brand managers should customize this space rather than accepting the default order of the tabs/icons along with the default fill images for these tabs. Positioning the tabs and using custom images should be considered to improve the look and feel of the timeline.

Example: Custom app images such as those created by Fanta offer a rich visual interface for the timeline.

4. Pinned Posts

To improve the visibility of selected content, brand page administrators can “pin” a post to the top of their Timeline. Pinned posts can remain at the top of a timeline for up to seven days. They can offer a useful means to broadcast critical information to followers as well as a mechanism to direct fans to contests and other promotions.

Example: Check out Starbucks’ pinned post publicizing its “Global Month of Service”.

5. Highlighted Posts

In addition to pinned posts described above, brands also have the opportunity to highlight important posts from their timeline. Clicking the star at the top right side of the post will increase the size of the post and make it span the width of the timeline, rather than just one column. This will garner more attention and make it very hard for followers to miss. Along with pinned posts, this feature allows brands to position their marketing and social campaigns front & center... literally :-)

Example: Oxfam USA uses a highlighted timeline post featuring a video that introduces the charity to its Facebook page visitors:

Hopefully this quick introduction to the Facebook Timeline for businesses will help you with your own transition to the new profile layout. While change is always painful, it is also inevitable, and there are benefits to be gained through new features and functions that weren’t available earlier. Some businesses have already started reporting improvements in their brand page engagement.

Have you already made the change-over? What are your thoughts? Please let me know in the comments section below, or fire me a tweet with your feedback on this article.

GOR'2012 Poster Presentation

I'm going to be presenting a poster at the General Online Research (GOR'2012) conference in Mannheim, Germany.

The poster is titled “Thinking, Planning & Operationalizing Empirical Mixed Methods Research Design” and it draws upon my Ph.D. dissertation research on member participation in virtual communities.

The rationale for communicating the methodological aspects of my dissertation is primarily to explicate the practice of mixed methods research design and to highlight the various stages comprising an empirical research project. Toward this, the poster content is delineated through four junctures of a mixed methods project – designated as the four Ps: Purpose, Plan, Process & Product.

Since the poster is based on a real-world research project, it provides examples of decisions, options, tools and techniques that were used through the various stages of my research. I’m hoping that the poster will provide some functional suggestions to those who are interested in mixed methods research. As a doctoral student who was just getting started with mixed methods research, I often found myself perplexed about issues of coming up with compelling research design, operational data collection mechanisms, credible & effective analysis techniques, and logical integration between qualitative & quantitative methods. In all likelihood, there may be other researchers with similar questions and I’m hoping that the poster will provide useful insights and perhaps some fodder for aspiring mixed methods researchers.

• The official abstract of the poster is available here: http://bit.ly/yAyC5K
• The poster can be found here: http://bit.ly/wocZcN (PDF – 2.5 MB)

If you saw the poster at the conference or here, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts or getting some feedback. Feel free to comment below or email me or connect with me on twitter.

Using the Embed Tweets Feature in the New Twitter Interface

In the newly introduced (Thursday, Dec. 8th, 2011) online interface for Twitter, there an interesting feature that facilitates easier embedding of tweets into other online websites and blogs. The idea is pretty similar to embedding YouTube videos through HTML snippets that can be copied and pasted into a third-party website.

 I had to initially look around for the embed options... they're somewhat buried in the interface.


Here's a quick How-To Tutorial


1. “Open” a Tweet:

• Mouse-Over Tweet 
• You can click the Tweet text or click the “Open” link that appears when you mouse-over the tweet.

2. Get Tweet “Details”:

• After opening the tweet, click on “Details”

3. Get to Tweet “Embed” options:

• In the Detail view, click on “Embed this Tweet”

4. Select “Embed” options:

• Select embed option: HTML , Shortcode or Link
• Select alignment option for HTML or Shortcode embedding.
• Copy the HTML snippet or Shortcode or Link: Your choice should be based on what works on your blog or website platform. HTML Snippets will probably work on most sites. Tweet Shortcodes are currently only compatible with a few select web platforms such as Wordpress.

5. Paste the HTML snippet or shortcode to the blog or website:

• Here's how the HTML snippet from the example above renders on my blog:
  

just got access to the new twitter interface. need to find my regular controls but looks cool overall. — Umar Ruhi (@Informatician) December9, 2011

• I can improve the look-and-feel by including my desired style formatting... such as adding a blue border - ooooh! :-)

just got access to the new twitter interface. need to find my regular controls but looks cool overall. — Umar Ruhi (@Informatician) December9, 2011

That's it... easy peasy :-)

Academic Use Cases for Social Media

Note: The slides for my talk are available here (PDF format with annotations). To view the annotations, you'll need to download the file to your computer (your browser PDF plugin may not render the comment annotations).

I recently gave a talk on the use of social media in academia. Most of the audience comprised colleagues from various faculties across the University of Ottawa and their extent of use of various social media applications varied considerably (I conducted a quick online survey a couple of days before the day of the talk). While I had a few colleagues who were very well-versed in the use of social media in various settings such as classroom communication and course delivery, others had never even used Twitter. This, of course, made my task as a presenter a little more difficult to be able to cater to all skill levels, but I was kind of expecting this to begin with.

Note: I have an earlier blog post on Twitter Basics which may be of use to some of you who're just getting started with Twitter.

I had structured my presentation around the use-cases for social media in an academic context, primarily drawing upon my own experience as well as what I’ve seen through other colleagues. I figured this would be a much better approach to talk about social media rather than to give a demonstration of different tools individually. I think it worked well overall, and many colleagues provided positive feedback on the talk through email as well as in-person.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the presentation.



Five Primary Use Cases


I listed the main use cases of social media as pertaining to one of five areas described below:

1. Monitor Conversations & Content:

This is, by far, my personal most common use case for social media. I use Twitter and Google+ to keep track of news, events, activities, and publications relevant to my areas of research. While talking about this use case, I touched upon tools such as Google Alerts and TweetDeck that can streamline the monitoring process through customized content feeds and activity streams.

2. Generate Content: 

In this use case, I talked about the potential of blogging and microblogging, and also described the various ways that we as academics can provide value-added content through chiming in with ongoing conversations and curating interesting and relevant content for our online associates.

While the applications in this use case pertained to the use of standard content generation tools like blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr, we had a good discussion about the significance of content curation within the user-generated content paradigm.


3. Share Information:

Continuing with the theme of content curation, I also demonstrated my use of social bookmarking and collaborative tagging tools such as Diigo, and also highlighted the use of twitter based curation tools such as paper.li and storify.


4. Connect & Interact with Others:

I didn’t really need to say much about this use case since my audience survey before the talk had indicated this to be the most common use-case for social media for my colleagues. Whether it is interacting with colleagues through LinkedIn, or keeping in touch with family and friends through Facebook, most people get started with social media for networking and relationship management.

I did, however, mention the importance of establishing and participating in communities of interest and communities of practice through the use of tools such as LinkedIn Groups, Google+ Sparks and Google+ Hangouts. There are numerous opportunities in academic settings where these tools ican prove to be very beneficial.

5. Manage Profile & Identity: 

I deliberately positioned this as the last use case in my discussion to build upon the idea of profile, identity, and reputation online. With a relatively straight-forward recipe for managing profiles through LinkedIn and Google Profile, it’s somewhat more difficult to conceptualize identity and reputation. I attempted to explain this difference through some basic definitions. Also, this is where I drew upon my own research on member participation in online communities and I briefly highlighted the components that lead to building interpersonal trust in an online setting.

The discussion on identities and reputations also lent itself to our discussion about social media influence scoring tools, and I briefly highlighted the main features, and pros and cons of tools such as Klout, PeerIndex, and TweetLevel. A special mention went to Connect.me that I had only started using recently and was finding very useful.




Multiple Use Case Contexts & Special Mentions

In addition to the use-cases identified above, and the various tools that exemplified them, I also talked about a couple of my favorite tools that span multiple use-cases.






I shared my use of Yammer as the primary course delivery platform for two of my courses. I shared my opinion about Yammer as a social learning platform and compared it to other platforms that I’ve used previously – including blogs, wikis, LMS platforms etc.  Perhaps, I’ll do a separate blog post reflecting on my experience with Yammer as a social learning platform.












I also spoke about the usefulness of Mendeley as a cross between a reference management tool and a social network that fosters collaboration among researchers working in a research areas or those working on specific projects. There seemed to be a lot of interest in this tool and I’m thinking about writing a blog post on how I’ve started using Mendeley & Google Cloud Connect to help me with collaborative writing projects.


So that’s about it for a summary of my talk. Thanks to everyone who attended, and those who encouraged and waited for me to post this summary online. The annotated slides for my talk are available here.Please feel free to provide additional comments and feedback.

App Review: Trello for Project Management

Ever feel the need for a project management tool that would help you manage other project management tools you’re currently using? I know the feeling all too well.

Whether it’s a software development project where you’re allocating tasks, managing revisions, tracking milestones & deliverables, or a collaborative publication project where you’re using wikis, emails, and to-do-lists, things get messy sometimes, and you might feel like reverting back to ad-hoc administration. Do I see heads nodding – yes? :-)

Enter… Trello : A productivity app that allows you to seamlessly combine project management functions like task workflows, checklists, work assignments and revisions, with collaboration  features such as memos, announcements, comments and votes. Additionally, the app also supports embedding a variety of online content from multimedia to data feeds in case your project needs to use it.

The overarching software metaphor for Trello is that of a bulletin board. You start with a blank board and create lists using different cards on the board. Each list consists of related cards and each card has a task or a message on it. People can be assigned to a card if needed (e.g. assigning tasks to employees or asking a question from a person). The bulletin board and cards metaphor is linked nicely to affordances like flipping a card, attaching messaging, posting notes, assigning people (through drag-and-drop), hence making the app very intuitive and easy to learn.

Overall, you can use the bulletin board to communicate messages, post information, organize tasks and track progress in one centralized location.

Trello is promoting itself as a horizontal app suitable for a variety of projects in different industry settings, and the homepage lists a few different use cases for its potential application.

In my case, Trello would be potentially useful for collaborative research with multiple researchers working in different but related areas through various stages of conceptualization, investigation, analysis, and dissemination. It would certainly be an interesting experience!

Here’s a quick 5-minute  video (errr... 7 minutes actually) explaining the features of Trello.
Take a look, and let me know what you think.

Business Analytics Digest

I started a bookmarks list for Business Analytics: http://www.diigo.com/list/informatician/business-analytics

Prominent themes that I've caught up on this month include maturity models for business analytics, real-time business intelligence, and collaborative decision making.

Tag Cloud for Business Analytics Digest (August 2011)

Social Media & Enterprise 2.0 Digest

I created a bookmarks list for Social Media & Enterprise 2.0: http://www.diigo.com/list/informatician/social-media

Prominent themes that I've caught up on this month include best practices, adoption frameworks, technology and strategy roadmaps for various types of social media and enterprise 2.0 initiatives.

Tag Cloud for Social Media & Enterprise 2.0 Digest (August 2011)

JCrew, Canada & Social Media (My First Storify Attempt)

I attempted to use Storify to compile some tweets about JCrew's stores launch in Canada and the backlash from its customers about the higher prices in Canada. Here is the "Story"

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Dot Whatever - Some Thoughts on the ICANN Announcement

In what may be the biggest development concerning Internet address spaces to date, this week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced its plans to approve new top-level domains (TLDs) to expand the current set of domain suffixes like .com, .net, .org, as well as country code suffixes (such as .ca .us .uk). A request can be made for any custom suffix that you desire, and can afford to pay for.

At $185,000 a piece and a 200-page application for approval and $75,000 maintenance fees, there are significant barriers to owning your desired top level domain, but this won’t stop the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google and Coca Cola to register a multitude of suffixes for their products and services. For these large corporations that already spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on defensive tactics to register domains just to prevent others from using them, we can expect to see a further increase in their spend on TLDs that are closely linked to their market offerings. There will also probably be a surge in registration requests for generic suffixes like .cars and .systems in a bid to command a greater mind share leading to superior brand equity. Unfortunately, such tactics will remain out of reach for the smaller players who won’t have the resources to register the same site for every conceivable TLD.

From an end-user perspective, it will be a difficult and tricky road ahead for ICANN to create awareness around these TLDs. Most businesses and end users still operate in a dot-com-centric environment, and even previous attempts to augment the .com TLD with others like .biz and .info have been rather unsuccessful. Additionally, the introduction of multiple domain suffixes can result in a relatively flat namespace configuration as opposed to the current hierarchical structure of domain names, and this can lead to confusion among end-users. Ultimately, a search engine might be the best bet to get to the end-user’s target website. While this goes somewhat against the TLD expansion philosophy, recent research shows the importance and use of domain names to be already diminishing as larger proportions of end-users use their browser search bars to seek website addresses of their online destinations, either by directly typing in the business name or by conducting a generic term search. So an argument can be made that actual site addresses and domain names are becoming less relevant with our increased dependency on search engines.

Whether the introduction of new TLDs offer people new ways to express themselves and enable higher levels of customization for brand management is something that we’ll have to wait and observe.  What’s clear though is the need for sound governance and careful implementation of new TLDs to facilitate an efficient and equitable Internet experience for all.

The 8Cs of Enterprise 2.0

While business use of social media has flourished over the past few years, there still is a hesitation on the part of many small and medium sized organizations in adopting enterprise 2.0 tools. I usually get asked about my recommendations for such firms who are interested in getting started with enterprise 2.0 but don’t know where to begin. Based on a recent conversation with a CIO of a medium sized enterprise, here are a few suggestions that I provided. While writing this blog post, I’ve tried to categorize my recommendations a little better into what I can refer to as the 8Cs of Enterprise 2.0.


1. Content:

Most people I’ve talked to already know the importance of good content, but it’s always worth repeating and emphasizing again. My own research on social media has shown high quality information to be a very strong predictor of use of these tools. Whether it is structured or unstructured content, it needs to be readily accessible, relevant to the person who needs it, and current and accurate to be of practical value. In the context of collaboration, if your employees trust the information to be relevant and useful for analysis and insights, they are much more likely to use the tools that you provide them to collaborate using these tools.


2. Context:

I’ve seen my fair share of enterprise 2.0 evasion due to a lack of context with the use of technology. Organizations need to train and encourage users to associate as much context as possible with various knowledge resources as they create and use them over time. For example, an up-to-date index of files in a document management system and discussion posts in an online forum tagged with the correct labels can help improve the use of these systems considerably. Similarly, having tools that create visibility into what their colleagues are working on can be beneficial to a workgroup’s collective functioning.


3. Connection: 

Efficient Connection tools are needed by employees to link with others across the organization and leverage the knowledge and expertise of their colleagues. Interactive employee profiles, org charts and company directories are a good starting point for this, but organizations can look at streamlining their knowledge flows by integrating these databases with other applications such as email, messaging services, and approval workflows.


4. Communication:

Suitable Communication tools should be in place to enable employees to send and receive information in a timely fashion. These tools need to go beyond enabling simple consumption of content and allow individuals to create their own content and personalize their preferences for receiving updates from various sources that are relevant to their jobs. In addition to email and messaging applications, tools such as blogs, microblogs, newsfeeds and notification spaces provide a useful starting point for communication functions.


5. Collaboration:


Collaboration tools are required to enhance organizational productivity by providing platforms that enable constructive knowledge sharing and information synthesis. Organizations have experienced success with employing tools such as wikis and community discussion forums, and many have also explored the crowdsourcing applications such as ideation platforms, polling, and surveys that facilitate convergence on strategies and actions (more on this next).


6. Convergence:

In my mind, a major reason why organizations struggle with the use of social media tools is that these tools are primarily used as a medium for divergent conversations around issues and concerns, and settling on specific decisions is often tricky. What needs to be understood is that collaboration is more than discussion. It’s also about converging on actionable conclusions to enhance the decision-making capability of the organization as a whole. Toward this, tools and applications such as polling, surveys and ideation platforms can support and facilitate the collective intelligence of the participants, consequently ensuring greater value from collaborative online interactions.


7. Control:


In addition to building the digital toolbox for social media, organizations also need to develop a governance model that supports their enterprise 2.0 strategy. In the initial stage, organizations can set out guiding principles for the use of social media by communicating their technology use objectives to employees. This may be followed by more formal policy training on issues such as the types of information that may or may not be shared through social media, and policies on the management of  personal data and the organizational brand.

A caveat about controlling the use of social media is to ensure that you don’t go overboard. Certainly, some oversight and policies are needed, but excess regulation can also discourage users from open discussions. The key is to foster organic growth of social media use in the organization while trying to curb the adverse effects associated with the unseemly use of these tools.


8. Culture:

Perhaps, the most difficult issue to address in the effective institutionalization of enterprise 2.0 is the that of fostering an open culture and a collective mindset that is conducive to collaboration. By leading by example, higher management needs to set the tone for experimenting with new tools and ideas and welcoming innovative attitudes. By encouraging information sharing and rewarding group efforts rather than individual problem solving capabilities, organizations can help overcome problems associated with knowledge hoarding. A culture of trust where employees feels secure and encouraged to propose new ideas and take collective ownership of successes and failures can provide an effective scaffold for the adoption of enterprise 2.0.


There probably are a couple of more recommendations that can be listed here... I can probably get up to 10 Cs if I think hard enough... but these were the top of mind during my talk. Please feel free to share your opinions and comments.

Some Twitter Tips to Get you Started

Over the past three months, I’ve started using Twitter a little more regularly than I used to. It’s grown on me and I’ve figured out the use-cases that fit my objectives as an academic. While upping the frequency of my tweets, I’ve also developed some familiarity with the conventions and terminology used on twitter.

In this post, I’m summarizing these conventions and terminology. Hopefully, you’ll find some of these tips useful.

What is Twitter?:

As a user, you will probably ascribe specific characteristics to Twitter based on what you use it for. Here are a couple of ways I think of Twitter:

• Twitter is a social networking platform that provides a microblogging service to its users. It allows users to post status updates called “Tweets” that are limited to 140 characters (including spaces and special characters).
  
  
• While many people would compare its functionality to that of a chat client, Twitter offers an open forum for many-to-many conversations.
  
  
• In addition to public messages, Twitter facilitates private communication among members (through direct messages)

·         For passive users, Twitter is a great monitoring tool to observe conversations among groups and posts regarding specific subjects.

Twitter Interface Basics:

Although Twitter can be used directly through its website interface (www.twitter.com), many people prefer using different clients to Twitter.com. My own favorite is TweetDeck (www.TweetDeck.com) which I use to monitor others tweets as well as to send my own updates.

• Your Twitter “Activity Stream” consists of you own tweets as well as tweets from others who you “Follow”. By following a user on twitter, you are adding that user’s tweets in chronological order to your timeline or activity stream. Following others is useful if you’re interested in the content and updates provided by them, and it’s also a recommended practice to foster reciprocity.
  
  
• It is also important to remember that tweets are public by default unless you restrict messages to specific recipients by including their usernames at the beginning of the tweets.

Essential Tweet Conventions:

Once you start tweeting beyond the basic / simple babble, you’ll start to realize the need for using direct reference to people, websites, and themes. These items constitute the three types of references you can include in your tweets:

• You can provide links to websites: While you can include the full URL of websites (http://...), you should get into the habit of shortening the URL. There are various URL shortening services available. My favorite is bit.ly (http://bit.ly).
  
  
• You can refer to other people of Twitter through a “Mention” by prepending the “@” symbol to their usernames. These mentions typically get reported to the person through an email or an alert within their activity stream.
  
  
• You can highlight specific keywords in your tweets by using the right “Hashtags”. A hashtag is a keyword with a “#” symbol prefixed to it. By utilizing relevant hashtags in your tweets, you can increase the searchability of your tweets by others. The key is to figure out hashtags that are used by others who talk about similar topics and utilize them within your own tweets if and where possible.

In addition to writing your own tweets, from time to time, you might feel the need to “Retweet” someone. By repeating a tweet from another user, you are amplifying their message and distributing it to your own followers. Again, this is a recommended practice to reinforce ties on your social network.  Remember that retweeting someone will make the original tweet appear in the activity stream of those who follow you on Twitter.

• You can retweet a message by clicking on the retweet symbol underneath that message. This is referred to as an automatic retweet.
  
  
• You can also retweet a person by copying the text of that tweet and prepending “RT @username” to identify that it’s a retweet from a specific username. This is referred to as a manual retweet.

Using Twitter as a Monitoring Tool:

• You can optimize your use of Twitter by creating “Lists” of different people you follow. For example, I have a list for my work-colleagues, and multiple lists that include professionals who talk about specific topics and subjects. This feature provides me with the capability to demarcate different social circles and communities of interest that I participate in. In the online Twitter interface, you can click use the drop-down menu underneath a person’s profile description to add them to a list (as shown below).
  
  If you use a client such as TweetDeck, you can display activity streams for your lists in different columns (I find this very useful for monitoring tweets).

• If you wish you use Twitter as a monitoring tool, you can save your searches and access them with greater ease at any time. Through the online Twitter interface, you can perform a keyword search using the search bar on the top of the screen, and click on the “Save this search” button.

This will make this search accessible to you through the “Searches” tab in your Twitter interface. Remember that the search results constitute an activity stream that will be updated as more relevant tweets keep getting posted.

• You can also mark tweets as “Favorites”. This is pretty similar to bookmarking important resources online. By creating your own list of favorites, you are really creating a catalog of tweets that you might want to come back to. The original tweeters receive a notification when you favorite one of their tweets.

Optimizing your Personal Interactions through Tweets:

You’ll probably get familiar with many customs and conventions of tweeting through your use of twitter, but here are a couple of tips to help you use the proper abbreviations and accepted vernacular.

• Use “via” to mention someone who pointed out something on Twitter. For example: “Here is a really great website http://shortURL via @username”
  
  
• Use “MT” to indicate a “modified retweet” when you are selectively quoting from a previous tweet. For example: “MT @informatician …”. While it is acceptable to use MT, it is good practice to ensure that you’re not changing the overall message.
  
  
•  Use a mention at the beginning of a tweet to direct that tweet to a specific person. For example: “@username hello how’s it going?” Referred to as conversational tweets, these messages will only be seen by accounts that follow BOTH your account AND the account you mentioned at beginning of tweet. Remember that if a mention is used elsewhere in your tweet, that tweet will be visible to all your followers.
  
  
• A variant of a conversational tweet is when you want to direct a tweet primarily to a specific person but also want your followers to see it. In such a case, you can prepend a period “.” before the mention. For example “. @username check this out: …”
  
  
• Use “cc” followed by a mention “@username” at the end of a tweet to get the attention of a specific person for whom that tweet may be relevant.
  
  
• While the above tips may be handy for interacting with others through Twitter, remember that you shouldn’t needlessly mention people in your tweets as this is considered a form of spam.

I think that’s about it in terms of a quick and light introduction to the use of Twitter. Like I said, you’ll probably figure out a lot more stuff on your own as you start using Twitter. These are just some tips that I hope you’ll find useful in getting started. Let me know what you think.

Happy Tweeting, and feel free to follow me on Twitter (@Informatician). I’ll certainly reciprocate.