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An historic blizzard in blasting the Northeast and is shutting down air travel, affecting emergency vehicle response rates, and forcing many to stay indoors.

In classic social media style, Twitter users respond by tagging blizzard related tweets with #Snowpacalyse and #Snomageddon hashtags.

Some tweets are light-hearted:

Other tweets are serious requests for assistance:

Two Twitter Superstars, Cory Booker and 50 Cent have very different approaches to dealing with the resulting blizzard crisis.

CORY BOOKER – Public Service
Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker (@corybooker), is using Twitter as a sort of radio dispatch system to connect Newark citizens with updates on snow plow activity and to help with emergency services. With over 1 Million Twitter followers, much of the Twittersphere is seeing him in action and the media is taking notes.

Mayor Booker actually rolled up his sleeves and went out to dig people out.

50 CENT – A Lesson on Hustling
In a smaller scale shoveling endeavor, multi platinum rapper 50 Cent (@50Cent) shoveled his way out of his Connecticut home then said he intended to go into the shoveling business.

50 Cent later told his 3.7 Million Twitter followers that he was scaling up his shoveling operation and had hired 3 kids to help with door to door sales.

Whether or not 50 Cent was really charging and hiring people for his ad hoc business or just having some fun with his followers remains to be seen. But his tweet stream does provide a lesson on how to flex one’s hustle muscle.

Final Thoughts

I can personally relate to both Snowmageddon approaches. On the one hand, I’m all about public service and helping others in times of need. Cory Booker is definitely one of my role models. On the other hand, as a someone building my own consulting business, I appreciate 50 Cent’s startup hustle mentality.

I think that the snow fall and our response to it is a larger metaphor for strategies on how we’ll approach the new year. Will we work collaboratively and negotiate our way through the recession, job loss, and home price collapse or will we focus on our own personal islands?

Related Articles
* Mayor Hacks Snowmageddon With Epic Tweets- Wired Magazine
* 50 Cent Shovels Snow for Money After Northeast Blizzard – Billboard.com

Photo credits
* 50 Cent on Plixi
* @douglasingram on Twitpic
* @AgingBackwards on Twitpic
* @hijofrizbe on Twitpic

When I first saw Shel Israel’s (@shelisrael) tweet and the iTunes store description off of his link, I was skeptical, as was Shel. Visual translations via an iPhone app?

Word Lens is the real thing.

I just conducted a quick test on the iPhone app.

On-screen text message:

iPhone screenshot of the Word Lens translation:

The application has a “Pause” button which takes a still of the translation. In still mode, the translated words become hyperlinks which allows the user to click through to see the translation of the specific word.

How much is this app?

The actual Word Lens application is free and it comes with a Word Reverse and Word Erase tools.

The English-to-Spanish and the Spanish-to-English translation engines are $4.99 each. To access those libraries, you click on the white oval at the top of the screen (it will read “Demo:Reverse Words”) and you are taken to a Languages screen which shows the installed items and the “Available to Download” items.

VIDEO: Word Lens in action – Santa Paula, CA

I photographed the “Smile at the camera” sign at the La Unica bakery then showed the owner how it worked. She was amazed by the translations.

Notes

* I’d rate the translation accuracy around 70-80%.

* The app doesn’t work very well with full pages of text but it will parse through and try to translate what it can.

* The app doesn’t have Spanish regional settings so it won’t know whether to translate “potatoes” to “papas” or to “patatas.” There are hundreds of such words that vary in usage from country to country.

* According to the iTunes listing, the requirements are:
– Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPod touch (4th generation). Requires iOS 4.0 or later.

Is the Word Lens application a game changer in the translation world or is this just another app?

I received two security-related emails in the last 24 hours. One email was from Gawker Media, stating that there was a breach via its commenting system. The second email arrived this morning from LinkedIn, asking me to reset my password because my account was disabled for “security reasons.”

According to this Gawker blog post, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot were all affected by the security breach.

This Lifehacker blog post has more details on the compromised accounts.

When I saw the LinkedIn email, I thought it might be a phishing attempt so I double checked the the URL in the “From” then did a Twitter search to see if there was chatter on the password check. As expected, Twitter was buzzing with early morning complaints about having to reset passwords. This is also where I saw the Gawker connection (the Gawker Media email was still unread in my Inbox).

This is the email I received from LinkedIn, early this morning:

I still wasn’t clear on the LinkedIn/Gawker tie in until I saw this tweet from the official LinkedIn Twitter account (@linkedin).

What should you do?

• If you have a Gawker login account, change your password and don’t use the same password on other sites.
• If you have a LinkedIn account, reset your password following the instructions in the email (go to Linkedin site, click “Sign In” then click on “Forgot Password” linke and follow directions.

Even though changing passwords is inconvenient, I’m glad the news is spreading quickly to help us protect our social Web accounts.

Due to a number of factors, a great number of people (friends, supporters, participants) cannot make it this weekend to San Luis Obispo. But we still expect a very good group, so we have decided to hold a big meetup in town and postpone the formal event for early 2011 when more people can make it.

Come join the Latino2 speakers and organizers and Central Coast leaders to discuss the formal launch of LATISM 2012 and help us plan the Spring event.

Lunch is on us at the Native Lounge in San Luis Obispo — a truly unique dining experience — and the conversation will be good. We’ll meet at 2PM and stay as late as we have a crowd.

I’d like to personally thank everyone who has been so supportive of the Latino2 conference and the LATISM 2012 Initiative. I look forward to meeting with you at the tweetup and discussing how we can build this into a bigger event.

Tweet-up information

Native Lounge – San Luis Obispo
1023 Chorro Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401-3222

Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010 – from 2pm to 4pm (or later, as long as we have a crowd)

Lunch is on us!

Sincerely,

Latino2 producers and LATISM,
Jose Huitron @josehuitron
Giovanni Rodriguez @giorodriguez
Jesse Luna @jesseluna

Photo Credit: rx_kamakshi on Flickr – License

I’m pleased to announce that I am now a business consultant for the Economic Development Collaboration in Ventura County (EDC-VC). I’ll be helping small businesses in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties formulate and clarify, their marketing, technology, and e-business planning.

This past Monday I did a presentation at the Moorpark Community Center as part of the Small Business Forum entitled “Marketing Your Business for Success.” I presented to almost 30 small business owners plus the Moorpark Mayor Janice Parvin, City Councilwoman Roseann Mikos, Ph. D., and Patrick Ellis, President of the Moorpark Chamber of Commerce. It was a great way to step into the role. I’m glad everyone was awake and energized at 7am! Thank you Daylight Saving Time!

What I love most about this opportunity is that I get to do what I love – working with small businesses and organizations. Additionally, services are free to the businesses. These are your tax dollars hard at work. Strengthening existing businesses and growing new enterprises is an important part of our economy’s engine. I’m proud to be helping with this endeavor.

This is the end of the personal part of the post. If you’re a small business owner, or in the process of starting one up, then you really should read on, no matter where you live in the U.S..

————

Small Business Development Center – SBDC

The EDC-VC also hosts the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. The national SBDC program assists more that 1.3 million businesses through over 950 Service Centers. The SBDC is funded by the Small Business Administration. The EDC-SBDC center provides free consultations and low-cost training sessions in these key areas (I highlighted the areas in which I’ll be counseling):

• Business planning
• Start-up assistance
• Capital sourcing
• Government contracting and procurement
• Financing/Loan packaging assistance
• Human Resources
• Legal issues
• Marketing/Sales
• International trade
• Managing a business
• Technology
• E-commerce
• Social Media

Small Business Forum Events – Also Free!

The EDC-VC and SBDC offers a host of small business forum events. There’s an upcoming presentation on Planning & Financial Management Tuesday, November 16, 2010 in Moorpark. Click here for more information.

These are great networking events and extremely informative.

Need business advising?

For businesses and start-ups in Ventura and Santa Barbara County, you can contact the EDC-VC here:

EDC-VC
1601 Carmen Drive, Suite 215
Camarillo, CA 93010
(805) 384-1800
info@edcsbdc.com

Join the EDC-VC email list for updates on business events throughout Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

Follow the SBDC LA Twitter account. This covers the Los Angeles SBDC area which includes the Ventura County Center.

Call to make an appointment. It’s not really a drop-in type of center. Tell them what type of support you’re looking for and they will set up an appointment for you to meet with an adviser. If you need support in one of my areas of expertise then they will schedule a time for us to meet, either at the Camarillo center or at your business site. I’ve started working with some of the other advisors and they’re amazing. You will be in good hands. Please tell them you heard about the Center from me, Jesse Luna.

Centers throughout the country



You can find your nearest SBDC center via the Small Business Administration SBDC Locator tool.

I love sharing information, including technology trends, social media How To’s, breaking and local business news, and information on advocacy groups. On Twitter, I’ll share 5-10 items per day, sometimes in a rapid fire method. On Facebook I’ll “Like” or “Share” several posts a day. Multiply these activities by the number of Twitter and Facebook users and you have an unprecedented amount of sharing and re-sharing.

So why limit the scope of your message? Let it run wild!

Here are five tips to help you set your message free.

Give Your Email Legs

Ok, so you spent two weeks working with a team to create the perfect email message. Maybe you’re about to launch a new product, announce a new conference, drive donors to your non-profit site, or share your latest video creation.

There are three important items to add to your email deployment checklist:

1. Do you have an online version of your email with a link to that page on the email? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received a juicy email that I want to share with the world and struggled or have been unable to find the online version. If I don’t have a link, I can can’t share it with my online network. What a missed opportunity.
   
   If you do have an online version, please think clearly before deciding to host that content on the email management tool’s site. Do you want to drive content to Constant Contact’s site or to your site, for example?
2. Do you have a Twitter or Facebook share feature on your email? This makes sharing one step easier. With the click of a button, your message can flow to two of the most supercharged sharing sites in the world.
3. Is it easy to forward the email to a friend? Some email messages have nifty “Forward to a Friend” features that make it easy to share content. I rarely use this feature but there are some people who like it, especially if it is from an authority site like a news agency or major publication. If the email is breaking news or highly relevant to your personal or business contacts then this could help your message take off.

This Kodak email has an online version and ways for users to subscribe to Facebook and Twitter. The email could be enhanced with actual tweet buttons that automatically format the Twitter and Facebook messages, so posting is only one click away.

Let’s look at this from a numbers perspective. If you send out your email message to your permission-based list of 10,000 contacts and you don’t add any sharing features, then your message is limited to the number of recipients plus the number of times your email is forwarded to other contacts. Let’s be generous and say that 100 of the emails were forwarded to contacts. That’s a reach of 10,100.

If you add a link to your online content and have a Facebook and Twitter share then the numbers shift. Your initial contacts receive the message and can then re-post the message to their followers via Twitter or Friends on Facebook. If I tweet about an item, the message is instantly available to over 8,400 followers! That’s almost double the reach from ONE contact. Factor in retweets and other people sharing and the reach can get to 100,000 very quickly.

From your Website to the World

1. Add a Tweet button and Facebook Share and/or Like feature to your Web pages and blog posts. Yes, this is the same tip as for your email messaging but it’s important to give your site/blog readers a way to share content with their networks Clear a path.
2. Do you have a compelling image on your web page or blog post? A good photo or graphic will catch a persons attention and make it more share worthy. On Facebook, the image will show up as a thumbnail picture. Your Facebook friends will be much more likely to Like the post and to re-share it.
   
   Note: if you don’t select a photo to go with your page/post and someone “Facebooks it” then they will either get a selection of random image options (icons from your sidebar or unrelated content) or they won’t have any option.

(Link to The Spice Spoon blog.)

Review

We just reviewed how to clear a path for your important messages. If your message is clear, relevant, and timely then these tips can help your message spread like wildfire.

Do you have any other design tips to help your messages spread?

Photo Credit: Vestman on Flickr – License