Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch Features Camera, Voice Function

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• Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch Features Camera, Voice Function
• 5 Small Business Social Media Mistakes
• Brevity Is the Soul of Wit and Content Marketing
• Read “High Performance Browser Networking” for A Better Internet Experience

Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch Features Camera, Voice Function Posted: 08 Sep 2013 05:00 PM PDT Small Business owners and entrepreneurs on the go already look for mobile devices to make their lives easier. But in addition to smartphones and tablets, there’s a new gadget in town: the smartwatch.  The watch allows users to check updates “hands free” without even touching your phone.   Samsung has introduced its version of the smartwatch, called the Galaxy Gear. Galaxy Gear Introduced as Companion to Note 3 The Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch introduced last week at an unboxing event in Berlin is the next step for these devices. The new smartwatch was unveiled along with Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3, a next generation of the company’s so-called “phablet” device (larger than a standard phone, with features like a tablet). The watch is expected to work as a companion to the phone-tablet hybrid. A 1.63-inch display allows you to check updates from your phone at a glance to your wrist, and use about 70 pre-loaded apps, mostly with gesture commands. But what may be the best features allow you to initiate a phone call from the watch or take video or photos from a wristband camera both in conjunction with your mobile device. Make Calls or Take Video Using the watch’s S Voice feature activated by double-clicking a button on the side of the display lets you make a call or dictate a text message to your mobile device hands free. The 1.9-megapixel camera on the wristband can take photos or short videos that can be stored temporarily with about 4 GB of storage on the watch or sent directly to your mobile device. It’s not clear how wide the appeal will be for smartwatches.  As one commenter here at Small Business Trends predicted on an earlier article about smartwatches, it may be that the only people who are interested in smartwatches are the same people who bought a calculator watch a few decades ago when those were hot.  Time will tell. Image: Samsung The post Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch Features Camera, Voice Function appeared first on Small Business Trends.

5 Small Business Social Media Mistakes Posted: 08 Sep 2013 12:30 PM PDT Small businesses can use social media to boost sales and gain attention from potential customers. Unfortunately, a lot of small businesses make mistakes when trying to harness the power of social media. Some of those are rookie mistakes that are easy to avoid, if you just are conscious of them and work to handle them differently. Below are 5 of the biggest small business social media mistakes to avoid. 1. Trying to Do Too Much Using social media well takes a lot of time. That’s a resource that small businesses rarely have. It’s usually best to focus on doing one or two things well instead of using every social media platform available to you. Instead of doing a bad job on five social media platforms, focus on one that you already know how to use. If you have time later, you can always decide to branch out. 2. Wasting Resources on Ineffective Social Media Campaigns To use social media properly, you need to know what works and what doesn’t. That means you have to measure the success of your strategies. If you find that your Twitter posts don’t inspire customers, then stop wasting time on them. If you see that your website gets a lot of attention after you post a video on Facebook, then you should spend more time and money doing that, instead. 3. Missed Branding Opportunities Your company needs a coherent branding term that takes advantage of social media. When you set up profiles, make sure you fill out every piece of information. Most social media sites will give you the chance to include your logo, images, website links and business description. Taking advantage of these branding opportunities will help customers identify your business. Filling out your company’s profile can also help people find you online. If you skip any aspect of this, then you’ll lose at least one sale. That’s one too many. 4. Speaking Without Listening Social media isn’t about you constantly sending messages to your customers. It’s about starting a conversation. That means you have to pay attention to what people post on your profile. You should thank people for their kind words and address comments from disgruntled customers. It doesn’t look good for bad comments to sit on your page. If you address those comments with positive, affirmative messages, you can educate your target audience and placate unhappy customers. This is also a great opportunity for you to learn more about what your customers want. If you don’t pay attention to them, you’ll never learn from their suggestions. 5. Leaving Social Media Profiles Unattended or Inactive Social media is a commitment that requires a little time every day. If you don’t have time to submit a post or send a tweet, then you shouldn’t even bother getting involved. Yes, people expect businesses to have profiles on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, but it’s better to disappoint them than to ignore them. When customers see an inactive profile, they could assume that you’ve gone out of business. When they find out that you don’t have a profile, they think, “Why doesn’t so-and-so have a Facebook profile?” It might bewilder them momentarily, but it doesn’t keep them away permanently. What other small business social media mistakes have you seen? Images via Shutterstock: Struggling, Trapped, Fail, Talking, Napping The post 5 Small Business Social Media Mistakes appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Brevity Is the Soul of Wit and Content Marketing Posted: 08 Sep 2013 09:00 AM PDT When it comes to content marketing, it can often feel like more is better. More content means more sharing, and more sharing means more exposure and engagement, right? Turns out, not so much. In fact, even among notoriously short tweets, those that are under 100 characters tend to see more reader engagement than longer posts. The question of whether the long form article is a dying art or not is best left to another post. What's not debatable is the fact that a clear and concise piece of creative brief content often does far better than one that's lengthy and weighed down with unneeded drivel. Are you prone to producing long treatises on your blog? Are your Facebook posts more verbose than vivacious? If so, check out these three ways to keep your written content naturally brief, without losing key information. Producing Creative Brief Content Cut to the Chase A few different studies have found out that Web readers just don't have the attention spans they used to. While we could spend a good amount of time lamenting the effects of social media and video games on society, I think that time is better spent getting to the point. (Who knows, maybe my brain has been similarly addled by today's world of instant gratification). Make sure that every post focuses on one thing. You don't need sweeping introductions, miles of back story and giant tangents. Have another great idea? Make it another post. Want to include a bunch of history? Make it another post. Get my point? Have Faith in Your Readers See that right there? I cut a whole sentence or two out by letting you infer my point about splitting multiple ideas into new posts by letting you draw your own conclusion about it. You don't have to lay out every single thing for your readers to get it. If you do a good job with the lead up, your readers will carry the idea through to the finish line. Be Immediately Interesting You have a very small window of opportunity in which to grab your potential readers' attention. That means that your introduction needs to offer up just enough information to hook them so they'll keep reading. So that part about cutting to the chase? It's slightly less true when you're writing first lines. The one thing you don't want to do is give your reader enough information to get a full picture of your post before they click your "read more" link. If you're wondering how this helps to shorten things up, here it is: With your super interesting hook, you get to skip the lengthy lead-in. The post Brevity Is the Soul of Wit and Content Marketing appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Read “High Performance Browser Networking” for A Better Internet Experience Posted: 08 Sep 2013 06:00 AM PDT It's great when a new book on programming or technology surfaces online, so I was pleased when I discovered High Performance Browser Networking: What Every Web Developer Should Know About Networking and Web Performance by Ilya Grigorik (@igrigorik). Grigorik is a Google advocate and open source evangelist who has spoken at several O'Reilly conference presentation. I learned about the book while researching for an article on analytics and mobile devices. I was really impressed with an O'reilly video in which Grigorik outlined critical browser performance issues with mobile development. The result was my seeking an online version of his book. Good Networks Need Speed The reasoning for this kind of book comes partly from the growing demand for mobile devices and the increasing capability of apps.   It also stems form a growing number of plugins that connect browsers to useful applications. Business owners who have used Evernote or a Chrome plugin can see how a good application embeds itself into daily business activity. The book is meant for developers, but its readability makes it worth the page turns. A small business owner who wants a deeper understanding of how the Internet works will gain solid networking insights.  The text is written to help you understand what happens beyond just what is seen in a browser. Acronyms are shown alongside diagrams to visualize functions and ideas better. Take this explanation and visual for a TCP (transmission control protocol : All TCP connections begin with a three-way handshake. Before the client or the server can exchange any application data, they must agree on starting packet sequence numbers, as well as a number of other connection specific variables, from both sides. The sequence numbers are picked randomly from both sides for security reasons. [Figure 2-1 from High Performance Broswer Networking] Examples like this are a boon for those interested in app development, but need to consider how Internet protocols can impact decisions for future development or security. When Grigorik talks about latency – packet delivery between a browser and server – a reader can appreciate its impact if mobile devices are involved: Mobile devices have higher latency rates than that of desktops. This means a business developing a system to share data or files must consider how the volume of information transmits. That may seem straight-forward information given the recent rise of mobile devices. Yet Grigorik provides the elements behind that statement so that the reader knows what links to latency regarding those concerns and a few business examples to back it up, such as the following aside: Latency is an important criteria for many high-frequency trading algorithms in the financial markets, where a small edge of a few milliseconds can translate to millions in loss or profit. Good Networks Are Also Supported by Good Decisions The book gets divided into the nuances of networking protocols, such as Transport Layer Security, types of networks such as wi-fi and mobile, and API-related protocols. Grigorik has spoken a lot about the developer experience, and this book delivers state-of-the-art considerations that developers usually see, such as real-time notification, WebSocket, and WebRTC. The end result is a better understand of standards that can alter a project, because the segments contain terrifically researched information. Any reader will feel better about the decisions behind the details, even if those technical details really require someone who is beyond creating "hello world" programming messages. There are some books that get the basics perfect, but the reader must find resources to get into the nitty gritty. Even if you are not a developer, you may want to give High Performing Browser Networking a browse to increase your Internet sophistication so that your plans contain the best sophistication possible. The post Read “High Performance Browser Networking” for A Better Internet Experience appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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