ReachCustomersOnline.com

“Bonnie Smalley has Internet bragging rights: She has been blocked by Twitter for hand-typing too many tweets in an hour. They thought she was a computer program made to spew spam. Ms. Smalley, it turns out, is a 100 percent human customer service representative for Comcast. She is one of 10 representatives who reach out to customers through social networks, rather than waiting for them to find... 
Read the full story

“How do you find a new search engine if all you know is Google? Typing “search engine” into the usual box might lead you to Microsoft’s newly launched Bing, the combined search at Dogpile, or the former king of search, Altavista. But for those willing to dig around, searching for search engines can reveal a treasure trove: The net is rich with specialized search services, all trying to... 
Read the full story

“Even though the legal profession depends heavily on writing, legal typography is often poor. Some blame lies with the strict typographic constraints that control certain legal documents (e.g. court rules regarding the format of pleadings).But the rest of the blame lies with lawyers. To be fair, I assume this is for lack of information, not lack of will. This website tries to fill that void.... 
Read the full story

We humans prefer to be addressed in our right ear and are more likely to perform a task when we receive the request in our right ear rather than our left. In a series of three studies, looking at ear preference in communication between humans, Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University “Gabriele d’Annunzio” in Chieti, Italy, show that a natural side bias, depending on... 
Read the full story

“I recently restricted my Facebook account to close friends and family and “de-friended” 205 people. Click after click banished former and current managers, co-workers and other professional contacts. They can no longer access my page on the social networking site. I wanted to tell them, “It’s not you, it’s me. I just need more privacy. I know you don’t care... 
Read the full story

“ Alicia Istanbul woke up one recent Wednesday to find herself locked out of the Facebook account she opened in 2007, one Facebook suddenly deemed fake. The stay-at-home mom was cut off not only from her 330 friends, including many she had no other way of contacting, but also from the pages she had set up for the jewelry design business she runs from her Atlanta-area home. Although Istanbul understands... 
Read the full story

“There are numerous ways for brands to leverage Facebook but the overall branded experience is becoming increasingly integrated into a single offering as the new Pages product highlights. So what are the primary benefits and changes for the new branded pages?” From AllFacebook. This article nicely describes how to take advantage of Facebook for your business. It is extremely comprehensive,... 
Read the full story

Jeremiah Owyang, a social media analyst at Forrester, has started to compile a terrific list of questions and answers about all things Twitter. This includes the lingo as well as practical issues like how to use the service, who to follow, why only 140 characters for tweets, and so on. It’s really the most friendly and thorough FAQ I’ve seen. Plus you can ask your own question if you don’t... 
Read the full story

“Information architecture is an often misunderstood job title. Are they Designers? Developers? Managers? All of the above? In this article we’ll discuss what information architecture is, why it’s related to usability, and what are the common tools/programs used in information architecture. Along the way we’ll share some of the tweeters, books, and resources we found useful for budding information... 
Read the full story

“Having a good program manager is one of the secret formulas to making really great software. And you probably don’t have one on your team, because most teams don’t. Charles Simonyi, the brilliant programmer who co-invented WYSIWYG word processing, dated Martha Stewart, made a billion dollars off of Microsoft stock and went into space, first tried to solve the Mythical Man Month problem of... 
Read the full story

“If you’re a B2B marketer and you’re not using social technologies in your marketing, it means you’re late. We’ve seen a lot of excellent activity here from the likes of Dell and National Instruments (both won Forrester Groundswell awards) but a lot of the blogs, communities, and other social outreach from business to business companies is less than mature, to say the... 
Read the full story

“When contemplating an online marketing campaign there are dozens of questions that will start swirling through your head. Each question, in turn, creates more questions, and those questions create others that all will need to be answered before you are able to make a smart, sound business decision. Over the next several days I’ll outline some of these questions and provide a quick analysis... 
Read the full story

Google stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small, like eBay, which owns Skype, telephone companies and a string of technology start-up firms. Google Voice is an expanded version of a service previously known as GrandCentral, a start-up that Google acquired... 
Read the full story

“tweetCC started as a conversation on Twitter between Andy Clarke and Brian Suda. Andy wanted to show tweets and avatars for a new book on web design. His publisher needed him to get permissions to republish and that meant asking everyone. This was, not to put too fine a point on it, a pain. Brian agreed.” From tweetCC, a way to use Creative Commons licenses as part of Twitter. While not... 
Read the full story

“A personal portfolio website is all about promoting you. You are a brand, and your name is a brand name. No one is going to know about your brand unless you get it out there; and if you’re a Web designer, developer, writer, gamer or any other type of creative, then it’s essential that you have a good portfolio website.” From Smashing Magazine. A basic but thorough list of what should... 
Read the full story

“I’ll be straight up with you: I don’t profess to be an expert speaker. I’ve had my share of presentations that have been total flops, along with some very successful ones. But if anything, I’ve done quite a bit of speaking over the past four years (see the summary on my LinkedIn public profile), and therefore I’ve learned a few things about speaking along the way. Below are 20 things... 
Read the full story

“Amazon has caved into demands from the Authors Guild that it disable the ability of the Kindle to read a book aloud. This is very bad news. We had this battle before. In 2001, Adobe released e-book technology that gave rights holders (including publishers of public domain books) the ability to control whether the Adobe e-book reader read the book aloud. The story got famous when it was shown... 
Read the full story

“Something I knew: if you just put traffic on the Internet, it’s not necessarily going to go by the most efficient route. Something I didn’t know: that can make a pretty big difference. The default routes can be slow, clogged, and high latency. Think Cross-Bronx Expressway.” From Joel on Software. This item describes their experience using Akamai IP Acceleration Service to speed up... 
Read the full story

“Twitter is part of my overall online personal brand, but like one of the sections of a great orchestra, it’s only one of the parts. It serves a specific, yet important role. I use all the tools and when done in a collective way, they achieve more than they would individually. While blogs are great for long-form content and are easily found by search engines, Twitter is a more immediate... 
Read the full story

“To its true believers at small businesses, it is a low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand. That tool is blogging, though small businesses with blogs are still a distinct minority. A recent American Express survey found that only 5 percent of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have blogs. Other experts... 
Read the full story