Nurture the Geek in You

We all have some latent Geek in us-a part of us that enjoys not just what technology does but that also marvels at the workings and ingenuity of the technology itself.  The WRM fully nurtures their inner Geek, bringing alive all the inherent passion they can for the exploding digital world.  The WRM strives for a hands-on sense of the breadth, the shortcomings and the possibilities of technology, insights into the experience and minds of their customers and a front row view of the imminent shifts in digital marketing.

The last decade was merely the birthing of the Digital Age.  Nascent working models for digital media components-social, mobile, broadband, music, television, advertising, search, Cloud, etc. reached wholesale adoption levels while in many cases reinventing themselves along the way multiple times.  These cycles of invention and reinvention will only continue this next decade and with this pace of change, there is no way to meaningfully predict the landscape even five years out.

Along the way, the media and the marketers have lagged these dramatic digital and cultural changes.  In the next decade those media and marketers who can catch up will be the winners.

The WRM must then become a digital enthusiast.  S/he must awaken the Geek within and learn to engage, immerse and find delight in the digital world unfolding around them.

To this end, I've assembled a list of 12 free applications and websites the WRM may want to explore, use or even adopt as a day-to-day tool.  (One great thing about the digital world is the amount of useful free stuff that is available).

This list is only a start.  The WRM should subscribe to some forward looking content like TechCrunch, Mashable or the technology section of the New York Times, including David Pogue.  Make it a fearless practice to look for new free things to try or join every week.  This is part of your new job.

Here are my suggestions-some are standards and some my whimsy:

This is the standard social media site with 350 million users. You must have a nominal Facebook presence and spend some time with it weekly.  Upload pictures and make some useful or fun posts, find some friends you really care about, join some groups

This is emerging as a standard (at least for now) with about 18 million users. You must have a nominal Twitter presence and spend some time on it weekly.  You can do it on your computer, you don't have to have a mobile account.  At the least, follow people you respect in your industry, news organizations or companies who have good Twitter strategies (e.g. Zappos).  It's OK to have a small following.  Cull the list so that they are people who will benefit from things you are likely to Twitter.  When you attend conferences or webinars, monitor the Twitter hashtag for that event to see how it is used and jump in if you feel compelled.  Remember, no fear!

    

This is a business standard with 55 million users. You should have at least a nominal Linkedin presence and spend time on it weekly.  It's worth completing your profile including recommendations-this is the new way people and resumes are found and shared.  Network with some colleagues from the past.  Join some relevant groups. Have fun answering some business questions in the "Answers" section.

Your browser is perhaps your most used app.  With the advent of Cloud computing, the browser will only become more critical.  I prefer light, uncluttered fast apps which is also Google's mantra.  You deserve to try Chrome, Google's browser-it's fast and uses far fewer resources than Internet Explorer and even Firefox.



You need antivirus protection.  But McAfee and Norton are complex and cumbersome...you can literally feel the drag on your computer, especially if it's older.  Panda Cloud is the first Cloud based antivirus solution.  All the heavy lifting is done on their servers, not your computer.  It's small and light.  Look at how simple the main screen is (above).  It even got a PC Magazine Editor's Choice award.


Skype has over 500 million users who use it for video calls, phone calls and instant messaging.  The application is free but you need a video camera, microphone and speakers to make a free video call.  Find some friends or family across the country or the world who you'd like to spend time with more often and give it a try.  Skype was just sold by Ebay to a group of technology investors who are likely to do some interesting things with it-for example Panasonic and LG just announced integrating Skype into their internet connected HD televisions.


Evernote is a place on the internet to store your life.  They call it "Lifeblogging".  You can store pictures, ideas, audio, notes, web pages, screenshots, PDFs, documents, etc. and access them from anywhere.  You can tag and/or geo-tag the items and organize them yourself or Evernote will index and search it for you.  Their technology includes OCR (Optical Character Recognition)so even handwritten notes will be searched.  You can upload from mobile devices too.  They just passed 2 million users.  The founder's ultimate vision is that we simply video our whole life, tag the events, thoughts and milestones and store it on Evernote.  Imagine that!

"Readability" is a tool that reduces clutter on web pages.  It's easy to use.  Of course it gets rid of advertising which doesn't help us marketers.  But hopefully, it will encourage us to participate in more tasteful and targeted advertising environments so that users won't find a need to use "Readability".

Pandora will stream music to you all day long for free.  You pick the artists that you like and they will play that artist and artists like them so that you can easily discover new music.  They actually use real musicians in a major music analysis project called "The Music Genome Project" to figure out which music is most like other music.  The music business has changed from CDs to downloaded music and will shift again to streaming music from the Cloud.  Pandora is a free way to experience music from the Cloud.  If you are willing to spend $5 a month for unlimited streaming music look at Mog -it's free for an hour with no credit card.

Understand firsthand how easy it is to create a personal or small business website.  Squarespace has a free 14 day trial, no credit card required.  Squarespace is a well reviewed website publishing and hosting company known for design quality and reliability.


As the Cloud expands with light, easy to use applications the large,complex, bloated applications that have to be loaded on your computer (e.g. Microsoft Office) will be relegated to big business.

There are now applications in the Cloud for virtually everything you can think of.  Zoho alone has a couple dozen web based productivity and collaboration apps most of which are free.

Google will be launching their own Chrome operating system this year designed for Netbooks to efficiently use Cloud applications. Netbooks didn't even exist a few years ago and in 2009 sales doubled from 2008 to 30 million units.

So Google docs is one of the current Cloud standards for creating and collaborating on documents, spreadsheets and presentations online.  I find the interface sparse but as with all these applications, the goal is to experience them firsthand.

Ironically, Microsoft Office 2010, due out later this year, will have a free ad supported Cloud version.  You can try the desktop beta for free now.


This is the icon for the "Snipping Tool" that comes with Vista or Windows 7.  I'm throwing it in here because it's so damn useful and no one seems to know they have it.  (Awakening the inner Geek includes exploring the  unused functions of the software you already have.)  The Snipping Tool lets you grab any size piece of anything on your screen to save or put into a document or email.  I've even used it to grab a frame from a video.  Oh, and by the way, if you have Vista, upgrade to Windows 7 pronto.  It's stable and faster.  Don't think of it as an upgrade, just an improved Vista.