The first news was the announcement of the iOS 4.1, the latest version of their mobile operating system. This update includes fixes for bugs in the proximity sensor and for slowness on the iPhone 3G and a new HDR camera feature.

The focus of this update is Game Center, which features matchmaking, achievements, leader boards, friend lists and more. Apple has already provided developers with APIs to work into their games. Users will be able to track their games and friends next week with the release of iOS 4.1

The iPad is also getting a new operating system. The first version of iOS 4 for the iPad is iOS 4.2 and will be available in November. This update includes all the improvements over iOS 3 (folders, multitasking, etc.) but also includes wireless printing and a feature called “AirPlay” that will allow you to stream music and video from your computer to your iPad at home. iOS 4.2 should be available in November.

Next, Steve Jobs introduced a new iPod Shuffle, Nano and Touch. The new Shuffle is about the size of a US Quarter. This version brings back buttons and is closest in form-factor to the second-generation iPod Shuffles. This 2GB iPod will set you back $49.

The iPod Nano had a drastic change in form-factor. Looking more like a miniature iPod Touch, the Nano is about double the size of the new Shuffle and uses a scaled-down version of the iOS on a small square multi-touch screen. The Nano is $149 for 8GB and $179 for 16GB.

The new iPod Touch has the new retina display, A4 chip, Gyroscope, and front and rear facing cameras from the iPhone 4. FaceTime will work with iPod Touches and iPhone 4s over WiFi. The iPod Touch will be available next week and will be $229 for 8GB, $299 for 32GB and $399 for 64GB.

Steve Jobs then introduced iTunes 10. He first introduced the new logo, a music note on a blue circle. Steve expressed that the CDs on the old logo were no longer relevant because so few people use them anymore.

The biggest feature of the new iTunes is Ping, a new social network. After setting up a profile users can see and share what music they like, are playing and are buying from iTunes. Available on the iPods as well, Ping also gives users a Top 10 of what your friends like the most.

The last news of the day was about one of Apple’s least-known products: the Apple TV. Shedding the internal hard drive and dropping to a $99 price tag, the Apple TV now focuses exclusively on streaming content. With Netflix support and new content deals that make HD movie rentals $4.99 and HD TV episodes 99¢.

This video is sure to convince you otherwise. Social Media Revolution 2 is a refresh of the original video with new and updated social media & mobile statistics that are hard to ignore. Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

We’ve designed the form to more easily and efficiently get the information from you to resolve your problems!

That’s great, but how do I use it?

On every page of our web site, you’ll see a new blue button at the top right above the Social Media icons:

Just click that button, and the form drops down. Fill out the information (make sure to include contact information!) and we’ll return your request promptly!

So the big question most people might have is, should I buy one? Here’s the main list of main changes:

• Completely new packaging style! Following in the footsteps of the unibody Macbooks, the new phone is designed to be a sandwich of two pieces of ultra-strong glass with a unibody-style metal band holding them together. It’s thinner by a decent margin and feels denser and higher quality.
• Better reception! The steel band sandwiching the glass acts as antennae improving reception over the 3GS and resulting in fewer dropped calls.
• Better display! The Retina display is an ultra-dense display resulting in gorgeous renderings (Apple claims human eyes cannot distinguish between pixels, hence the Retina name).
• Front-facing camera and Face Time! This isn’t new technology, but Apple hasn’t been known for extreme innovation of new features; what they do is polish those features and bring them to the masses. Anyone who has used video chat while lugging around a heavy laptop should appreciate this technology packaged right into their cell phone.
• Improved rear-facing camera! This is a full 5 Megapixel sensor now, and while it won’t replace your high end DSLR, the image quality you can get from something that’s always in your pocket anyways is incredible. You can even record in 720p (high def video) at 30fps. It’s not perfect, there is still a bit of Jellyvision when moving quickly, but overall incredible quality from a phone.

Want to learn more?

Engadget has put the iPhone 4 through its paces, and while the site sometimes seems to favor Apple products, it was not shy in admitting this:

…the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now…

What now?

Need help migrating to your new iPhone or learning more about the new features? Give us a call today at 303-304-9507.

Why is this great news? Here are a few reasons:

• These accounts will be verified by Twitter (previously limited to individuals)
• Provides potential followers with much more detailed information about that business (allows for businesses to convey the benefits of following them, and potentially doing business with them)
• Business accounts can receive direct messages from anyone, regardless of whether they follow that person or not (huge for using Twitter as a customer service tool)
• Contributors tab allows businesses to add multiple users to the account so they can tweet on its behalf
• This shows Twitter is becoming more dedicated to getting businesses the tools they need to be successful on Twitter

Stay tuned. We will keep you updated.

Create one, standard ‘script’ for requesting testimonials from your satisfied clients and use it throughout these different mediums. *Make sure that somewhere in that script you ask them what benefits they have realized in using your product or service! Also, ask them if it is ok for you to use their recommendation on your website or in other marketing collateral.

• If you’re already connected to them on LinkedIn, simply send a request for a recommendation
• If they are your Facebook friend, send them a quick message asking them to post a  few words on your profile/page
• Email them a link directly to your Facebook business page and ask them if they wouldn’t mind giving you a shout out
• Create a quick, 5-question survey on a free online tool such as http://SurveyMonkey.com asking open-ended questions about their experience in working with you

Make it easy for them by choosing the medium they use most and request it from them there. Just remember to ask for their feedback every time you’ve delivered your product or service to your clients! You’re already providing consistent, superior value to your clients in all you do, now it’s just a matter of reminding them to tell you what they liked most about their experience!

Retail

If you have ever worked in retail (or been a customer in a retail establishment for that matter) you have seen the heaps of clearance/discontinued merchandise in the stock rooms, or tucked away on the back endcap in the back row of the back corner of the store. Some of it may have been sitting there, collecting dust for years. If a product doesn’t make a pretty display, or there isn’t quantity of the product, it won’t sell on the sales floor.

Or will it? What if the morning manager took a picture of one of these lonely items with their smart phone, posted it to the store’s blog (which is of course set up to disseminate posts to their other social media sites) and announced the one-day deal on the item (while supplies last) on all their social media sites, broadcasting it to their entire community! This would take about 30 seconds to do, and if done with 5 products each day, could reduce the inventory of these old items, sold to the fastest bargain buyer!

Content management is simply that: managing your content, whatever that may be. In the beginning days of web, you needed a custom web developer to maintain your site with much less content than we have today. CMS’s have changed that, and now websites with proper systems in place can manage vast amounts of information with ease.

Common Types

The specific CMS you choose can and should be influenced by the activity you want on your website:

• Blogs – in the text, photo, and video varieties
• Shopping Carts – Online commerce
• Wikis – collaborative information communities; these leverage large user bases to maintain vast amounts of information

Then there are general purpose systems which are more bare in their basic functionality, but offer more flexibility and extensibility to create custom solutions.

Benefits of a Content Management System

Although the benefits of a CMS could go on for miles, here are a few key benefits:

Consistency

Often with hand-coded websites, they feel distraught and different. Someone may change a font on one page, but it doesn’t populate to the others. Maybe your business address changes, and now you must scour every page footer to hope it gets changed.

CMS’s allow for the separation of components. For most, if not all, of our websites for instance, there is only a single footer file. Making this change in one place would populate it to the entire site.

Maintenance

To this day, I’ve never had a web customer who didn’t later request changes or modifications. This is completely normal. A CMS will put the power in the customer’s hands if they so desire and allow them to make the changes themselves. But even if they choose not to, the CMS will allow a web developer to more easily maintain these pages, because it implements stronger structure than raw files.

Reliability

Many sites require features, such as ads, feeds, search, and more. Without a CMS, all of these features must be manually coded per installation. With a CMS, the software is developed by teams and communities with testing procedures, bug reports, and upgrades. The functionality is seen hundreds or thousands of times before it’s even pushed live to your website. So, which would you pick? Custom one-off coding that nobody has verified or knows how it works other than the programmer? Or a properly maintained and reliable solution?

And even if there is custom code that needs to be done, CMS’s have extension framework in place to make the development of custom code even easier. And the best part is, even if that custom code does malfunction, simply disable the extension and the rest of your site will function normally.

Cost Effectiveness

Although not all CMS’s are free, there are some very good ones that are. For the majority of customers, the open source systems will do everything they need and more.

Non-free systems are also excellent options, although it typically results in more variability in your developer’s estimate. These are still cost effective considering the efficiency, reliability, and support you’re getting for your money.

Downsides

There’s always a catch, right? There are some extreme cases were content management systems do not fit the bill. On the low end, one must consider the overhead. If you have a very static, small, infrequently updated website, the overhead that comes with a CMS may not be worth it. In these cases, simple HTML files may be better suited.

On the polar opposite, if a site has incredibly complicated features, or has very heavy traffic, custom code may be required.

These are very rare cases, and the majority of websites will function wonderfully with a nice Content Management System behind the scene.