Company decision makers and social media

The past few months I have been thinking more and more about how social media is creeping into my everyday life.  Watching a TV show or having a conversation and I’m looking for the “like” button.  But I’m also seeing more companies try to connect with their customers even if it is just a “I’m here” kind of connection.  Even the kids’ school district now has a Twitter account.  Moving to the practical though, I think the company I work for has some very valid uses for social media.  They currently are not doing anything, but I don’t know how to approach our decision makers with the information.  I am curious as to what might be the best way to do this.

As a technical person, I am capable of actually doing some of the things and as a social media consumer I understand some of why it makes sense to engage.  However, as a grunt, I do not know how to verbalize that how and why to management in a way that makes sense to them.  What I do not want to do is make an attempt that is not correctly targeted and end up doing more harm.  I cannot be the only one in this position and it makes me wonder how others have approached this issue.

The upside could be incredible and building products with end user feedback would be an enormously powerful tool to help set us apart.  I just wish I knew how to start.

Initial thoughts on sobees beta

I’m trying out the sobees beta on my home computer and thought I’d get my initial thoughts down.

Pros: It looks pretty cool.  This is the first time I think I’ve used a WPF app and the ribbon across the top is very clean.  The amount of functionality they have put in is pretty sweet, along with the different windowing layout possibilities.  The search has some intriguing possibilities, because you enter a keyword and it gets back hits from twitter, flickr, and others.  Another benefit is that this is the first one that gets all my networks in one place (friendfeed, facebook, twitter).

Cons: It takes a ton of memory, though I’m not sure if that’s because it’s beta or not.  The data is confusing as it pulls out different information from facebook than say seesmic desktop and I’m not sure why that is.  Also I’m unable to comment on the friendfeed portion and that is the main benefit of friendfeed.  It could be that I just can’t find it.  One other issue is that media isn’t displayed, so if a photo is posted in friendfeed it shows up as a gray bar instead.

Overall, I want to like it, but there are still some things that need to be addressed before it would become my view into my social world.  Until then it’s sessmic desktop and a browser window pointed at friendfeed.

Some updates

I’m realizing it’s been practically a year since I really actively posted, so thought I’d throw out some updates.

The Mazda 3:  Still absolutely loving it!  I’ve been relentless in trying to keep it clean, though Seattle winters make it tough to really keep it clean.  Mostly been annoying the kids and the wife about what they do when they’re in and around it.  No, it’s not weird to watch where your feet are going when you get in the car and for me to panic every time they open a door!

The Zune:  Also still loving it!  I have everything we own ripped now and on the Zune.  Gotta be careful though about letting the daughter play Kidz Bop since it shows up on the recently played list.  However, what’s made it even better are the changes to the Zune pass.  I didn’t even think about that until they allowed you to keep 10 songs per month.  I have done more music exploration since November than anytime I can remember in my life.  I know everyone raves about the iPod, but I wouldn’t give up my Zune now.  Extra bonus, the Mariners flagship radio station KIRO has now moved to the FM dial so I’ve been able to listen to the spring training games at work.  Try that iPod!

Car Update

Well, called the financing company today and it looks like they just aren’t wording their letter very well.  My payment is actually going down!  Ok, by 95 cents a month, but hey down is down.  Still a little bit puzzled though, one would think the contract couldn’t be changed either way without a lot of new paperwork.  I guess mine is so new they haven’t got all the documentation on record, so I’ll call next week just to make sure everything is correct.  Craziness.  Back to enjoyment!

New car!

I can’t believe it! Unfortunatley, the old Mazda B2200 truck was getting down to it’s last legs.  I don’t blame it after 207,000 miles it was probably getting pretty tired.  Did some looking/research and settled on getting a Mazda 3.  A week ago Monday the wife and I decided to drop by the dealership and low and behold there it was.  A black mica 2008 Mazda 3 with the spoiler, leather seats, 17″ alloy wheels, and 6 disc changer with the auxillary port.  Some minor negations later and we were driving it off the lot.

I’m absolutely loving it!  Trying to remember how to keep it clean and shiny!  I haven’t been this excited about a car since my first one, a ‘75 Chevy Luv.  I’ll have to post pics at some point, but the weather hasn’t been that great to get it really shiny.

Only bummer is that I just got a snail mail stating the monthly payments were “wrong”.  They should be higher.  Contacted the dealership and they said my original pricing was correct, so I’ll have to contact the financing company.  Guess I’ll see how that goes.

Other than that zoom, zoom, zoom!

Firefox 3 beta not working with Google Reader solution

Thanks to this post I’m able to use Google Reader again!  Just press ctrl+0 while on the page and you should be good to go.  See the original post for more details.  Thanks again!  It’s been terrible having to use another browser.

Video card went belly up

I came home last night to my computer sitting very quietly.  At first I thought the power went out, but when I tried to boot it back up I got a long beep followed by three short ones.  The smell of magic smoke escaping filled the inside of the case.  I was and am still not particularly thrilled.  The video card, heck, the whole computer is less than a year old; but I’m jumping ahead a bit.  This is not how I wanted to start the week.  So I used my wifes computer to see what that POST message meant.  Says it means my video is not working (most likely).  So unplugged it, booted up and got the same message.  Plugged it back in and got the same message.  Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m the only one in the family with a PCI-E slot so I wasn’t going to be able to swap it out to make sure that was what the problem really was.  So I made sure everything was off and played Guitar Hero II.

So today I went down to Fry’s during lunch to see if I could get a new card.  The service department was really helpful, putting it in a machine quickly to see if it would work.  They confirmed the diagnosis and I set out to get a new one.  Once again I was impressed as a sales associate helped me get the card I needed and pointed out burn mark that I had missed on the back side of the card.  So I now have BFG made GeForce 7950 GT OC.

So far so good, but now I’ll have to get a hold of PNY who made the card I originally had and see how good their warranty is.  I’m hoping that it was the video card itself and not something else inside the case that caused the problem.  Considering the fact I only have the motherboard/processor and video card in their I can’t imagine what else could be wrong besides the card itself.

Grrrrrr

Does it ever seem like your career is going backwards?

Foldershare is back

It was back up by the next morning, but that was pretty weird.  Nothing on their site mentioning it either.  Oh well, at least it’s back.

Foldershare down?

I’ve been using Foldershare for a bit now to keep some stuff on my multiple computers up to date, but I noticed earlier today that I wasn’t connecting. I thought it was where I was working, but even at home I notice it isn’t working. In addition browsing to the site won’t even work. There doesn’t seem to be any notice from Microsoft either. Guess I’ll see what happens.