You can read more about it on the Twitter blog.

So when will Twitter be announcing a future business model and/or advertising platform?  For now, according to Mashable, “Williams says Twitter is still mainly focused on creating the best experience for users and businesses.”

My thoughts on Buzz are that Google is trying to simplify people’s workflow by giving them more of what they already use elsewhere, inside of a single location – Gmail.  They’re really testing to see how many people use Gmail as their primary communication tool, and how many are willing to make it even a larger part of their communication schema.  For me personally, similarly to Twitter, I use Gmail as a service, not a website.  I very rarely, perhaps once or twice a week, go to Gmail.com.  I get all my messages via IMAP sent to Apple’s Mail application on both my iPhone and on my Mac.  So for users like me, there’s no real benefit to using Buzz because I not only never visit Gmail.com, but I also don’t use Google contacts for any other reason besides Google Voice.  However, for anyone completely engulfed in the Google experience, that is, users who use Google Docs, Chat, Wave, Gmail, Voice, etc., then Buzz is just one more service added to your current toolset to simplify your life.

If you’re interested in giving Buzz a try or learning more, check out http://www.google.com/buzz

- Apple has invited select members of the media to the now confirmed media event on January 27th at 10:00 AM PST.  The title of the event is “Come see our latest creation.”  Will it be the much-rumored tablet, iLife/iWork 2010, iPhone OS 4.0 with true multi-tasking?  We’ll have to wait and see.  I will be writing a long wrap-up at the end of the day on the 27th.

- Apple released BootCamp 3.1 today for Intel Macs and finally includes support for Windows 7.  Apple promised that by the end of the year 2009, but they missed the mark.  It was finally released today.

- A rumor was published today claiming a new version of iTunes, combined with Apple’s recent LaLa acquisition, could allow iTunes users to move their entire library to the cloud so they can play their music on any device on the web.  Neat!

How it Works

Readbility is super simple to install into your browser.  Simply go to their site, choose your options (formatting, style, and appearance), and then drag the bookmarklet into your browser’s bookmarks toolbar.  Then when you’re on a page you’d like to read distraction free, simply click the bookmarklet.  That’s it.  It’s super easy to use and incredibly effective at eliminating clutter.

How much does it cost?

Readability is completely free and is currently being offered as a beta service at the kindness of arc90.  It’s in beta because it’s still being perfected.  There are a few times where it renders the clutter-free view incorrectly.  In arc90′s defense, however, it’s usually the source site’s fault for forgetting to close a tag or something of the sort.

Demo

I made a little video to show you how it works. Click the thumbnail below to see the movie.

Give it a shot and see if you like it. I personally saw a little bit of a productivity boost – I’m easily distracted by the media embedded into usual articles. This provides a clear and easy way to read on the web. Leave a comment below letting me know your thoughts!

(I apologize for the gap between posts.  Last week was the last week of my semester at RMU, so I was extremely busy.  I’m also trying to learn to play the piano over my break in addition to working back at Fox Chapel Area School District.  Now that I’m on break and have more time on my hands, you can expect more regular posts like before.)

Google Wave is a communication tool aimed at making it easy and simple to collaborate with multiple people. There’s really no other way to describe it besides to direct you to this video, and to the site, which has a nice introductory video on Google Wave and what it’s about.

To be entered in this contest, you’ll need to do one of two things: tweet the post, or comment on it.

1.) Tweet This Post

All you’ll need to do to tweet this post is to click the big button below, and click the “Update” button to post the tweet. Thats it! If you win, I’ll send you a message on twitter.

If you submit, I’ll follow you. Plus, if you post your twitter account name in the comments section below, I’m sure other readers would be happy to follow you.

Get on twitter, log in, and then click the image above with a link to this post. Its that easy!

2.) Leave a comment below!

This should be self explanatory.  Just leave a comment below telling me why you’d like an invite, and you’ll be entered into the drawing!  Please use the e-mail address you’d like the invite sent to when leaving a comment on the post!

Here’s the run down on Chrome OS in bulleted form:

• The entire OS is web-based and runs in the Chrome browser
• USB drive contents show up in a browser tab
• The notepad actually creates a Google Docs document
• Web apps are launched from an apps panel that sits off to the left of the web page tabs
• Some apps included right now include Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Hulu
• Background apps like Google Talk can be minimized to “panels” that sit in the bottom of the screen
• Local storage is just used to cache information.  Everything is stored in the cloud. (YIKES!)
• Google also said it’s “very committed” to Flash, and that it’s looking to hardware accelerate whatever code it can
• Google admitted that Chrome OS won’t be for everyone – mainly for people who are very web focused and those who do most of their daily activities in the cloud already
• Chrome OS won’t run on everything.  There will be specific hardware requirements. One major example is that Chrome OS will only run on Solid State Drives.  This is apparently to boost performance.
• Google is supporting both x86 and ARM CPUs
• Release date? It’ll be on a few netbooks in the second half of 2010
• Offline access?  TechCrunch summarized Google’s answer by saying: “WiFi is the use case we have in mind. But having said that, there will be ways to plug in and play media (listen to music and read books, etc) And with HTML5 there is offline support.”  Perhaps Google Gears?

Check out Engadget’s gallery of the event here, and watch the Chrome OS preview video below:

The two keynote speakers, Hall Davidson the Director of the Discovery Education Network, and Milton Chen, the Executive Director for Edutopia, both gave fantastic presentations.  Halls was slighty more engaging and humorus, but that’s probably because Milton had to be Skyped in from California because he was too ill to make it to Pittsburgh.  Hall used a piece of Web 2.0 software, PollEverywhere, in his keynote.  It’s one of the coolest pieces of software I’ve ever seen.  It allows you to conduct live, real-time polls via text message and it shows the results coming in, in real-time.  Needless to say, I created an account when I got home and I’ll be using it to impress a professor or two at RMU.  PollEverywhere follows the fremium model, so go check it out.

When not presenting in the Digital Playground, I was able to attend two sessions.  The first session was called “Cloud Computing – Teaching and Learning With Web 2.0.”  It was presented by an Apple Distinguished Educator and Google Certified Teacher, Dr. Chris Penny.  I learned about a super cool new presentation software called Prezi.  It will completely redefine how you think about presentations.  No more slides.  No more bullets.  It’s a large canvas that rotates and spins to show your content.  Super cool.  Again, it follows the fremium model, so go check it out!  The second session was called “Social Tools for Collaboration” and was presented by Mr. Rich Platts and Mr. Ben Alhtof.  I didn’t know Ben, but Rich and I had been communicating on Twitter for some time.  He’s a super nice guy and a very dedicated teacher.  He gave a great overview on Twitter.  Check out his site here.

So overall, TRETC was great yet again and so was the food/dessert served for lunch.  For those of you who took my business card, please feel free to keep in touch.  Subscribe to the feed to get all of my latest entries pushed right out to you.

Did you attend TRETC?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

SPECIAL WEBNOTES OFFER FOR TRETC ATTENDEES
http://webnotes.net

Use the code “TRETC” at checkout to get 50% off

I’d like to thank all of the companies that spoke with me, including Webnotes, Zeo, Comcast, Verizon, SurpassHosting, Discover, The PNC Financial Services Group, and Robert Morris Univeristy.  You can find all of the interviews here.  The Verizon and Zeo interviews have the most substance – they were hour long phone interviews.

You can download the final paper here.

Please leave a comment on this post letting me know your thoughts!  If you’d like permission to print the paper or copy anything out of it, please contact me using the contact page.

What is your name and official title at your company?

Alex King- Director of Marketing

What is the name of the company you work for, and what does it specialize in?

WebNotes – We provide research tools to academics and public relations professionals.

When did your company decide to create its online, social media presence?

About a year ago, when I came on board.

Why did your company choose to establish that presence?

Honestly, because everyone else was doing it. We didn’t have much experience with anything other than Facebook, so starting a blog, twitter, etc were all experiments for us.

Which social media tool or service (twitter, Facebook, youtube, etc.) has proved most beneficial to your company and why?

LinkedIn has been the best because it has allowed us to find and talk to market professionals who have been able to give us guidance. All of our market research has been spread between immediate contacts and networking on LinkedIn, so it’s been phenomenal.

Is your company using multiple services? If so, which ones?

Yup! Twitter, LinkedIn, and our corporate blog are the primary ones. We do have Facebook and Youtube pages, but those are less helpful for us right now.

If the answer to the above question is yes, do you feel there is a benefit to having a presence on multiple social media outlets? If so, why?

There’s the phrase “fish where the fish are” that comes to mind. You have to be where your target consumers are, and engage in the mediums that they are engaging. Our target customers happen to be all over twitter and LinkedIn.

Is your company using these services mainly as a marketing tool, customer service outlet, or just as a way to connect to its customers in general? In other words, what’s your overall objective for social media strategy?

Twitter is one of our customer service outlets for interacting with people, but it also helps in our goals to find end users and pick their brain. LinkedIn is purely a market research tool and our blog is purely a marketing tool.

Do you have someone on your staff entirely dedicated to managing your online presence? If so, what do you feel are the benefits of having a dedicated social media staff member?

Nope. Just me, wearing all sales/marketing hats :-)

What sort of clients or customers do you see embracing these social media tools? Is it just the geeky type, the brand evangelists, or are you starting to see average everyday people using them to connect to your company?

Public Relations professionals and students just happen to be fairly tech savvy, so we are lucky that they happen to use these tools fluently.  That said, I think everyday people are picking them up and seeing the value that can be created.

How does the volume of communication from social media outlets compare to that of traditional communication sources for your company such as e-mails and telephone communication? In other words, are more customers calling you, or are they communicating with you through social media?

Most customers find out about us through our website, via word of mouth, twitter, our blog, google searches or other tech blogs.  From there, nearly everyone converts into a more “traditional” correspondence. For this reason it’s hard to say which is a better form.

Do you give the customers that contact you through social media means any sort of special treatment such as priority customer service or special incentives? If so, why?

Nope. We treat every customer exactly the same, which we hope is the most authentic thing we can do… after all, social media is all about authenticity

Thanks so much, Alex!

Michael Ley; vice president, e-business & payments

What is the name of the company you work for, and what does it specialize in?

The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.

When did your company decide to create its online, social media presence?

2009

Why did your company choose to establish that presence?

We developed Virtual Wallet in 2008 to create a product specifically designed to meet the wants and needs of young, tech-savvy consumers. For this specific segment of customers, who spend the majority of their time online, it just made sense to create a social media presence so we could interact with our Virtual Wallet customers in a more personalized way.

Which social media tool or service (twitter, Facebook, youtube, etc.) has proved most beneficial to your company and why?

We currently have a Twitter account and a YouTube channel for PNC Virtual Wallet. We find YouTube valuable to share demos with our customers and to house all of our Virtual Wallet videos. We have also found our presence on Twitter to be a useful way to alert customers of new features, product updates and useful tips, to hear directly from our customers what they want, and to also help answer customer questions and issues.

Is your company using these services mainly as a marketing tool, customer service outlet, or just as a way to connect to its customers in general? In other words, what’s your overall objective for social media strategy?

We are using social media to connect with our customers and to provide them another channel to get information and useful tips about Virtual Wallet. It also provides a great forum to engage in customer conversations and to help customers with questions they may have.

Do you have someone on your staff entirely dedicated to managing your online presence? If so, what do you feel are the benefits of having a dedicated social media staff member?

We have a team of employees who are responsible for our Twitter and YouTube channels.

What sort of clients or customers do you see embracing these social media tools? Is it just the geeky type, the brand evangelists, or are you starting to see average everyday people using them to connect to your company?

We are finding that customers appreciate the direct contact that we can provide using social networks, but there is no specific trend in the type of user we are seeing. Although Virtual Wallet was built specifically based on the wants and needs of Generation Y, we are seeing other tech-savvy customers embrace Virtual Wallet and, in turn, our presence on social networks.

Please feel free to add anything else you feel is important.

PNC is committed to meeting the needs of our young, tech-savvy Virtual Wallet customers. We use social media as another avenue to connect with our customers and provide them value-added service.

Thanks so much, Mr. Ley!  Also, thank you so much to Gina Madison for putting me in touch with him!