Technology Hints and Tips #123

In This Issue:

• Technology Term: Cloud

• Internet Marketing for Your Audience

• iPhone iPad App Recommendation: iA Writer

• Blogger Dashboard Update

 Technology Term: Cloud

The term cloud refers to a computing resource, like a Web site or application, that exists on the Internet and is not located on a personal computer or personal computing device like a tablet. You've probably used a cloud service for years without knowing it, if you've ever used a Web site to find directions with a map.

Maps - an example of how the Cloud works

For example, on your local computer, smartphone, or tablet (I'll refer to all personal devices as computers), the first step is to open the Web site for the map service (like Google maps, MapQuest, or Bing)  in the Web browser on your local local computer.

Once the Web site appears in your browser, it's usually just a matter of entering a 'from" address location and a "to" address location and clicking on a button.  Your computer sends the address information to the Web site via the Internet, and the computer on the other end (Google's Bing's, Yahoo's, MapQuest, etc.) calculates the directions and sends back the results to your computer to display on your computer screen.

They key to understanding the "cloud" is to understand which computer did the work, or in more technical langauge, provided the services. Was it your local computer that calculated the directions (NO), or the computers operated by the Web site that you used (YES!). The Web site provided a service (calculating the directions and creating a map) and sent the data to your computer, which only had to display the results on your screen (much less work than figuring directions). You've used the cloud to find directions and maps.

Why do we hear so much about the Cloud now?

Consumers and businesses have access to the Internet in more places, and we have more devices, like smartphones and tablets, that are portable and can access the Internet. So besides maps, we can access almost any Web site and if it can do work for us over the Internet, it's a cloud service.Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are big companies and they all want you to use their cloud for storage of your data, and if you buy books from Amazon, use a Web email service from Google or Microsoft like gmail or hotmail, or use an iPhone or iPad, you're might already using a cloud service to store books, music, documents, and more. The good news is that many of them make services available for free, the bad news is that they don't work together so you'll have to see which one you like best, which will probably be the one that works best with your devices and applications.

 Internet Marketing to Your Audience

I've been asking almost every class I teach how the attendees learned about the class. I first ask how many learned about the class from Twitter, then from Facebook, then by email, word of mouth from a friend, and last I ask if students learned about the class from the catalog that's mailed to homes. Even for my Internet marketing classes, the answers are Twiter - 0, Facebook - 0, email - 0, word of mouth, about 2%, and from the catalog, 98% Almost everyone who attends a class registers on the local school or organization Web site or is a walk-in attendee.

So what can we learn from this when it comes to technology and marketing?

There is still a large market of Web savvy users who still rely on print media to get information and catalogs, like the ones schools mail, are kept around for a while before they are thrown away. Knowing your market and how they respond to different media is what marketing is all about. It's not just one media, it's all of them. Measuring the results is a very important aspect for any marketing expense, so just becuase a new media exists, doesn't mean that it's the right one to use for a particular audience. Once you know your target, then you can start to get some informaiton on the media that audience uses and focus on that media.

 iPhone iPad App Recomendation: iA Writer

I've been trying out a popular app for writing called iA Writer. ia Writer offers a very simple design. A unique keyboard layout focuses on writing and removes distractions from the screen for the writer, which appears in a typewriter like text on the screen. The keyboard includes special keys for advanced the cursor forward and backward, which I found faster than using the magnifier cursor function on my iPad. Two special keys for advancing the cursor a full word forward or backward made it easier to move around a document I was writing. So far this app has become my writing app of choice.

Blogger's New Look Coming to Everyone

Blogger has been setting testing in draft a new user design for bloggers. Today they announced that after receiving feedback and making updates, all users will be getting the new dashboard in a few weeks. The new dashboard design fits with Google's redesign of almost all of their Web services and includes integration with Google+, Google's Social Networking service. I'll be publishing an update on the new interface but in the meantime, here's a link to the video with a tour.