studio J

Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

It’s all about ME.

Isn’t that the message we tend to get from everyone these days? We all have a website, a blog, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, a Twitter feed, a podcast… We customize our computers and our cell phones… All so that we can express ourselves and voice our opinions and hopefully people will hear what we have to say.

Of course if everyone is talking, who is left to listen?

Soon, all of our technology will not only be listening, but it will be paying attention:

You get home after work and start dinner. Your digital recipe box shows you recipes based on what foods you have in the house (no sugar, since it knows you used the last of that in your coffee this morning). It notices that you made something with garlic in it but knows from your home inventory that you don’t own a garlic press. It tells your TV, which later recommends a cooking show that has convenient product placement in it. When you log in to your email, your browser lists a few recommendations that might interest you. Among them is a website where you can order that Slap-Chop that you saw in the cooking show. Of course your digital recipe box in the kitchen will know when your order arrives and will download other meals you can make with that new Slap-Chop (and the free cheese grater that comes with it)!

While this may be a little over the top, I don’t think it’s too far off the mark. (Facebook is leaning that way with their latest customization, but there is a ton of backlash in the privacy department.) Technology is merging and combining. Look at computers and phones. It used to be that you had a home desktop computer and an on-the-go phone. Now, they’re interacting with each other, sharing information and soon may just merge into one device. Vizio is already marketing a TV that has internet apps to access Facebook and Twitter to tell people what you’re watching and gives you the weather report along the bottom while you watch Mythbusters.

Here are a few things that I hope will come of this:

• Comcast DVRs will get a recommendation engine that looks at what programs I watch (both on TV and online of course) and suggest other shows or movies that I might like.
• My refrigerator will recognize that I’m low on milk and put it on my grocery list. When I head to the checkout lane, my phone will text me, reminding me that I forgot to get said milk, thus saving me a trip the next day when I finally remember.
• Next time I’m watching Rachel Ray whip up a batch of amazing-looking potatoes and steak sandwiches, I will be pleasantly surprised to find those recipes in my suggestion box when I next check out the Food Network website.

What’s your wish list for this connected and personalized future?

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

A few months ago, while having dinner with a friend, we got to talking about Google. Personally, I am a Google nut. I have an Android phone, I use Gmail and many of the other tools that go along with it, I often use the Chrome browser and I’m super excited to see Chrome OS and the possibility of a tablet running either Chrome or Android. Then, we touched upon one of Google’s latest creations, Google Translate, which apparently hit a nerve with my good friend; you see, she is a college educated French Translator.

Google Translate is a very powerful tool that can interpret typed conversation almost instantly. Select your ‘from’ and ‘to’ languages, type text in the box and as you type, it will provide a real-time translation. To go the extra mile, it also allows you to listen to the translation in audio format.

Is Google an evil corporation that will eventually put translators out of business? Here’s where my friend and I had to agree to disagree. She said yes, but I firmly believe that this could be the future of communications. The study of language will, over the next decade or so, be forced to evolve. Instead of translators and interpreters, the world will need linguists that understand how languages have come about, branched off into various dialects,etc. Basic etymology will become the new hotness for communications. These folk will be at the front lines.

Now imagine tools such as Google Translate integrated into social media and being widely available to anyone with an internet connection. I could make friends on Facebook with a woman in a third-world country who wants to learn about starting her own business. Non-profits can get real time information from war-torn countries in order to better provide aid to those in need. Going with the trends of recent years, information will flow even more freely across international borders as easily as it does across state borders now. The world will continue to shrink, and soon the family of five in Congo will be able to carry on a conversation with their pals in Arkansas as easily as picking up a phone.

Social media has done a lot for business communication in the past few years. Businesses can talk to their customers in real time, offering deals and specials for those ‘exclusive’ few. We can hear what customers (as well as ex-customers and non-customers at times) are thinking and what is being said about our brands. We can get instant feedback on how to make a product or service better and it can be used for customer service to improve the experience after the sale. All in all, social media can be a powerful marketing tool if done right.

But what about internal communication? In the past 10 years we have seen the emergence of company intranets where information can be shared company-wide, even crossing state and international borders just a easily as across the hall. For the most part, however, this is a one-way communication. Now we are faced with this strange new tool called social media, which allows employees not only to get information, but to give information as well; and all of this is taking place in real time. I’m interested in hearing what your business is doing, if anything, with this new frontier:

• How is your company using social media internally?
• Are the ‘Big 3′ being used or are new platforms being created just for this purpose?
• What are the benefits and pitfalls of using real-time communication in the workplace?

He thought he was asking me a simple question: “Do we need salt?”

Oh but he was wrong. Dave asked me this the other day when I was cooking dinner, as he could see I had the ‘big box’ of salt out to refill the smaller shaker container. It was an innocent question with helpful intentions that he most likely regretted.

I started in on how yes, we do need salt, but since I needed a new shaker container (the little disposible kind that I refill even though you aren’t supposed to) I needed to buy one of those instead of the big box (which I buy because its cheaper from a per-unit cost perspective). But wait, because I wanted to get one of those wooden salt cellars and had it on my holiday wish list and it would be easier to refill from the box… And it continued from there.

I’m honestly not sure what the final answer was, since as of right now I haven’t bought either the box or the shaker of salt. And since it isn’t the holiday yet, I do not have my salt cellar. I do, however, feel incredibly silly and told Dave so today, trying to explain my logic through the whole thing. I think he’s even more confused than before.

I do try not to be the crazy irrational chick, though I never claimed I was successful. It’s just a classic case of male vs. female brain at its best.

Copyright © 2009 Jeanette DeHoff