I was recently asked by a great conservative Texan politcal movement what our strategy should be here. CDOT already has both a Fan Page and a Group, and new people volunteering to manage content come and go pretty often, so I felt I should re-research this topic again and break it all down for them. When Googling about it I saw most of the posts were 2 years old, but this one from Fathom had the best breakdown of the advantages of each. For the group however, I needed to streamline the advice. Perhaps this will help your organization as well.

Here is my summary as explained to CDOT via email about what is DISTINCT for each:

Fan pages (or simply ‘page’ in most of the FB headings)
1) ARE visible from the outside, which means the content there gets updated on Google. It is good to have this happening for issues of outside exposure.
- - that is why it is good to post our CDOT pages to it at least once a week.
2) Pages can be ‘liked’, thus James put the like box on the site. Good feature we should keep IMO.
3) Think of the Fan Page as where we post public announcements
4) Posts here are share-able. This is the power James has been referring to. The thing about it is that for the power to work (geometric exposure) people need to share the posts there on to their timeline as well. It is NOT automatic.
(being share-able makes a page pretty much like an FB ‘person’)

Group pages
1) ANY member of the group can post. That means it is a free for all regarding the content.
2) All posts put here are by default sent as a notification to other members.
3) You can as the administrator mass-mail all the group members. This is important for special events, etc.

So… STRATEGICALLY…
FB page:
I believe we should use it as a controlled extension of the site where we control the content focussed on violations and event announcements, our site page urls, etc.
For all involved with our organization, we should encourage regular sharing of the posts there.

FB group:
This should be promoted as a ‘get involved’ tool. Quasi-Inside discussions can be held about our focus, etc. but always be kept positive. This is the ‘next step’ for those who ‘like us’ (fans) to become part of the conversation

Exceptions to note:
- both pages and groups can have settings changed to share ’some’ of the attributes I declared distinct above, but the purposes of each are still intact.
- The notification options can be changed by the user for both pages and groups. They are simply defaulted to on for groups.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20104056-94/how-html5-may-become-the-standard-for-apps-inside-apps/?tag=topStories

HTML5 makes sense here of course. You still need to consider browser compatibility however, which too many people skip right over.

Give me a ring today and we can discuss how to make your next iPad/Iphone/Android project full interoperable over the widest array of devices and marketable to audiences both old and new.

What I wanted to point out in this post is a recent TechCrunch article covering Facebook’s Mobile ambitions. The read is a good one indeed, as it simultaneiously uncovers the dog-eat-dog underbelly of the big tech players and the absolute importance of the mobile web.

Mobile will become the big survival test for the big names of today, as well as the marker for whether your business will thrive or suffer in obscurity. Take this seriously. You should not think todays battles between the big players as isolated from the battles you will face to make your business the best that it can be.

Here is the comment from a fellow developer on the story that triggered this post:

Kevin Cawley · Boulder, Colorado
dude, you have lost your mind creating drama where there is none. mobile web apps will be the future - it is inevitable; everyone knows this, facebook knows this, and that is why they are pushing this project to accelerate destiny.

mobile web technology will catch up (just like it did on the desktop). as a developer I will massively benefit because I can build one app that runs anywhere. and my consumers will benefit because they can have a choice in mobile device and have a consistent and good experience. how can this not be clear to everyone?

the big losers will be the app stores (mainly apple) - google I suspect doesn’t care as they will make buckets of $ on mobile search.

Over the last few weeks however, the question has expanded beyond the value of expediting registration and login, to the more direct value of having key social “hooks” on your website. The ‘like’ button is fine, the share buttons are great too, but in terms of seeking to make your site a trusted destination, having a social login anchor point is the best. People have a strong anchor in Facebook now. It’s use is no longer a phenomena, but standard practice. The novelty has worn off, and in its place there is a growing desire for its practicality in what I call its ‘anchor window’ value. An anchor window is a window or tab you keep open on your browser while others come and go. Facebook is tops here. So while your potential users are opening closing various windows as they research new companies to do business with, which ones are they going to remember and come back to? The ones most closely associated with their anchor window of course.

So even if you don’t have an integrated database or application centered website, wouldn’t it be valuable to lay your social ‘hooks’ into your site visitors? We can put JanRain right into your contact forms. To your customers, it is an easy way to send more contact info with less effort. For you, it opens the door for more detailed, in-depth interaction. For longevity, if we build the right tools in for future visits, it creates shortcuts for your clients to streamline repeat business with you.

Isn’t that what you want?

Seth Godin says it best….

Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo.

Here at CGIPro, we have wrestled mightily with the dillemma of accepting work we know falls below our vision of innovative excellence. We have catered to too many people who are comfortable racing to the bottom. A new day is dawning however. We are leaner, and ready for an exclusive clientele seeking innovative, interactive presentation as a key part of their race to the top.

We don’t have to be a highly expensive digital agency to achieve this. We just have to be properly committed to working with the right mindset.

If you want to race to the bottom, you can post your project on guru.com and find an Asian freelancer to work for $12/hr.

For Wordpress integration, some of the more amazing things we have done in the last 2 years are:

1) I brought a fully pre-developed site design into a custom Wordpress theme, with all of it’s own session variables included, so the site has only one header/footer to edit.
http://treatmentsolutionsnetwork.com

2) Combined a fully functional member management system, built on our CGI codebase framework, that I have been tuning for ten years, into a wordpress environment, building in custom plugins and privacy security.
(you wont be able to enjoy seeing the details of course.. it’s private.)

3) FourthSpeaker.com is my company blog for a prior startup I founded where I built an auto mailer to go out to various groups of recipients. Blog content is protected by the ‘levels’ plugin, and the bulk mailer sends some groups a weekly newsletter, and staff a daily update.

4) Created a Wordpress friendly Google Maps reservation system for a storage facility that needed to work fully within a designers wordpress theme. Although I had to use an iframe at the time, for this to work on budget in wordpress instead of a plugin, (which I would likely not do again), I was knee deep in wordpress to make this work properly.

Take a look at the rest of the site (the blog still has a few tweaks outstanding) in a pinched width and you will see the style automatically adjust to fit.

As a quick side project, I also just launched my wife’s female voice over talent website from the CGIPro template using the same tools. I even changed out the audio player based on the screen width so iPhone and Android users will just have a link to the MP3 files, which enjoy native support.

This really matters most for mobile. As an android phone user, I can tell you that most websites I see (which of course applies to the growing iPhone community as well) have a terrible formatting problem when viewing them on the phone. I can take your site as is and transform it to be optimal on all types of today’s continually diverging media.

CGI Productions took on this challenge by designing a site which reflected their existing collateral materials (ads in the phone book and sales materials) in both color, layout and feel while integrating our ez-button content management system for ease of updating and managment of the site text. All of this was achieved within their tight budget and deadline.

The owners at SES can now update pictures and the flood of new testimonies coming in for the great work they do.

CGI Productions feels that our ez-button content management system is the best way for small businesses and managers to control their message to consumers at a reasonable price. While large scale CMS systems require hours and hours of programming, preset and complex database integration and exorbitant costs to clients. Our ez-button system is light on code, quick and easy to train clients to use, and is well worth the price. Often we hear from clients that it’s important to be self-sufficient as a means of saving money. We feel that by providing clients with this ability to manage their own content using our ez-button system, that we’re not only empowering them to be self sufficient to save them money, but it allows us to build better relationships with the client in helping them understand how their online presence is not something they should be afraid of but use to their advantage by easily editing and controlling it.

After lots of scratching and crawling for answers, I finally discovered that the culprit was this one setting in my http.conf file.

# KeepAlive: Whether or not to allow persistent connections (more than
# one request per connection). Set to “Off” to deactivate.
#
KeepAlive On

I don’t know who turned it on when we set up that machine, but there ya go.

Turn it off if for some reason it is on on your server. Then be free to Ajax away

The rapidly increasing number of web-enabled smartphones makes them an attractive alternative to PCs. Consumers are proving to be more willing to forego upgrading their existing PCs in favor of upgrading to the new generation of mobile devices. Even with the new, lower-priced netbooks increasing in popularity, subsidized smartphones are often more economical, not to mention more portable and personal.

We have placed a strategic bet in this area ourselves, and plan to announce the launch of HomeSafari.us, a web based mobile real estate portal next month, right as the awareness of the mobile web starts to hit a flood of new verizon droid owners. Home Safari is a partnership of CGI with Realty Pro of Vancouver Washington.

Now, what does this mean to you? Or, as I like to say, “What does this spark in your imagination?” It should spark a sense of opportunity in having your website ready now. You can web enable your field personnel to report over the mobile web on task completion, GPS based location tracking, etc. You can have your customers ping you regarding their needs on a customized app WITHOUT having to build a native iPhone or Android app. You can be THE go to source for mobile video and information in your industry and market, and we can help you in both the production and marketing needed to establish your business in a leadership position here.

If your imagination is not sparked by this, then imagine the dread of ignoring yet another key market/technology trend. If you wait two years, your web presence will in the minority of sites that is not optimized for today’s smartphones. Smartphone users will have already passed you by and bookmarked your competitors. Google and other search engines will marginalize you for not keeping up in this area. Smartphones are indeed going to outsell PC’s in two years, and this is not a fad, it is a movement toward a more personal and portable online experience.

Contact us today about ways to prepare you for the future. Now is the time to have your site optimized for the new screen, and it does not have to be as expensive as you might think.

I am going to prioritize 30 minute strategic sessions with each of you, recommending we acclimate you to waving, twaving and embedding these tools into the apps we have created for you.

Call me!

Here is the 10 minute version…

If you are using Safari or Firefox to see this, all the rough functionality of the app should work just fine. Of course, you should just go to http://simplefoodie.com on your iphone or android phone to get it installed instantly and you will see it styled with the webkit extentions for CSS3. Take the quick tour of the app here and watch for more iPhone / android webkit safari apps for real estate and cellecast in the very near future.

If you are on MSIE, run away now, or if you are a fellow developer, give me some tips on how to make this work smoothly on all browsers, as one goal is to make future single apps we created that have iPhone usage at the core, also have most of their web functionality piped into blog posts like this. Any advice is appreciated.

Since our best work is really on the back end of a website, where browsing around as a user only shows about 10% of our work, linking over to sites has never really been a great promotional tool for us anyway. With the blog however, we can certainly tell our story.

Please take a look at our portfolio now and get yourself updated while I talk about our new local web portal we are launching… which is really what I want to talk about anyway.

It was back in 1996 I had a vision of how the internet would not only revolutionize the way we do business, but also that it would be used to revitalize local economies that were otherwise hard hit and/or isolated. I was wrong about my idea in terms of timing, as at that time I started a local web service called victorvalley.com (see remnants here) and it simply came before it’s time.. and for the next decade the internet dispersed economies rather than anchored them locally.

Now that we are just getting into an especially funky recession, and our network dependent economy is leaving local business at a disadvantage, I believe the time is right to work on building the local web. People will still of course be using Google to research buying decisions and looking for value, but they will include local searches and should by now expect to be finding the answers locally, not elsewhere.

Enter LocaSource - crazy hot values from wise local experts. We expect to have 200+ of the best local business people, restaurants and retail outlets occupying positions as local anchored go-to resources for everything from home remodeling, to charitable giving, to night spots, realty and accounting. As long as it is local, and our partner can contribute relevant content for their category, then a new relevant blog is born.

We plan on always keeping this resource local, so as not to fall into the trap seen so often with empty, diluted national directories. We want to build something the community can gather around.

(the design is coming together soon. Stay tuned)

Well, the good news is that we are back on the market with a new set of wicked skills that can really give you the edge in your web presence this year. I am confident that once we let the cat out of the bag on our various combined business, marketing and programming skills, getting new clients will be no problem despite the shortfall in investments.

Now, some would say that getting new business is just too hard these days, no matter what your skills. To that I say, ‘horse hockey’! Smart businesses are not categorically suspending investment at all, but actually they are spending wisely on new ways to streamline their productivity for starters. This gives us great confidence, because this is our strength. We are experts in web-enabling processes that take up a lot of personnel time. Since the headlines are all about layoffs, companies need our services to close gaps in the operation created by these layoffs. We like to come into an operation, identify areas of inefficiency in workflow processes, and provide a quick solution. We can eliminate 2-3 FTE’s of waste in companies as small as 12 people.

Of course there are companies that spend well into 6 figures on these kinds of upgrades to their operation, but that is not necessary. Since CGI is a smaller operation, with long-term commitments to a short list of clients, we can perform at a much higher level of efficiency than our competitors, which translates into a better ROI for you. I will personally oversee your project and build a custom solution that fits your company values and mission. My team is available around the clock for support, but remains small and dedicated, which gives you direct access and zero bureaucracy.

Now, stay tuned for the next post that highlights our updated skill sets related to the media industry, mobile web, and data feed management. Plus, take a look at our recent SEO triumphs in getting 3-4 positions on the first two pages of a google search for Mobile Talk Radio. look for cellecast.com and fourthspeaker.com links there.

Mobile platforms are moving very fast, with the iphone and android, we will see a lot of mobile development in the near future, and internet on your smartphone will become cheap. There will be more and more mobile template for large scale websites. Front-end developers will have to adapt and make css template for mobile phones. Internet Explorer will lose ground, big time and be replaced with faster adapting services such as Firefox mobile and other newcomers.

For the developer, that means simpler designs that take advantage of the limited memory and screen space. The developer will need to adapt to become a ‘user-experience, usability’ guru as competition for simple yet elegant designs grow exponentially. Libraries that facilitate user-experience such as prototype.js and JQuery will make the jump to mobile web as well. Also, features that take advantage of geo-centric features that such devices afford will also come into the forground. The modern day web designer will fade into a more programistic genre of online design staff. Ease-of-use and simple style will regin suprime and crush the fading afterglow of Web 2.0.

The at home desktop personal computer will have its place in the in the new world of media - at least for now. But the stars that are about to take foreground and really shine are going to be the mobile devices that provide access to information to us virtually anywhere in the world. The future of the internet is the mobile web.