Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

I love promoting awesome people, great causes, events, and organizations/businesses that are doing interesting things. My favorite tech tool to help me do this is the Apple iPhone 3Gs.

There’s a reason the iPhone 3Gs is such a hot seller, it is a mobile promotion machine. I use it to check email on the road or at home when away from my laptop. I use it to take pictures that I post to my Twitter and Facebook status feeds and to various blogs. The built in video allows me to post to my YouTube Channel, post via email to my Posterous account, send short videos via 12seconds.tv, and to live stream using Qik.com and UStream. With this single tool, I can immediately share what’s going on with my life or at an event.

Here’s an example of how I used my iPhone for shameless self-promotion. A couple of months back, I noticed Nancy Rodriguez’s Twitter update where she mentioned that she and the crew from Q1047, the local Hip-Hop and R&B station, where going to be live broadcasting from a nearby McDonald’s. It was around 7am so I grabbed a fast shower then zoomed over to McDees. I had chatted with Nancy before via Twitter so it was great meeting her and the rest of the Rico and Mambo show. I took a couple of photos of them in action, posted the pictures to Twitpic and Twitter, spoke to Nancy, then headed back to go home.

Now, I’ve been listening to Q1047 since I moved to Ventura County and it’s my favorite station. So I was glad to post pictures and tweet about them on Twitter. But as I headed back to the car I realized that I could have plugged my new online blogging course. So I decided to grow a sack and went back to ask Nancy to send a shoutout to my BuildYourFanBase.com readers and she kindly did so.

Fifteen minutes after I left the live broadcast, I had uploaded the video shoutout to YouTube and had already tweeted out a link to my blog post on the event. Minutes later Nancy retweeted the link and gave my blog and new blog class an on-air shoutout.

Now that’s promotion at the speed of light!

Do you have any other mobile promotion tech tools that you swear by?

The Apple iPad will start shipping in about 3 months and the tech industry is buzzing. Many people were disappointed after the Steve Jobs presentation because they expected a new wizbang technology that just didn’t seem to be there. Others have been cautiously expectant.

I think the iPad will be very successful and Apple will ship 8 million units in 2010 for the following reasons:

1. The iPad will jump all over the Kindle market and greatly expand the mobile reader market
2. The iPad will open up new types of mobile interactive media. It will finally create the first “electronic book” that we have been expecting for years
3. We’re going to see a lot of activity from the developer community in the form of expanded iPhone apps and new iPad applications. People are already coming up with ideas for the next great games.

So there you have it, my prediction for the future of the iPad. In case you’re wondering, I did have a prediction on the iPhone and I was largely wrong. The biggest thing I learned from the iPhone launch was that Apple addresses weakness very quickly.

How do you think the Apple iPad will fare? Will it be wildly successful like the iPhone or fizzle like a Mac Book Air that slides into the envelope of oblivion? Once you blog your prediction, leave a comment here so we can follow up in a few months. Or, if you’re not blogging yet, leave a comment with your prediction and key reason(s).

Are you in?

Photo credit: Apple Computer

Animoto, the video creation company, has an iPhone application that allows you to create a video out of pictures on your iPhone. The iPhone version requires at least five images and an audio selection from the Animoto library then you are all ready to create the new video.

The iPhone application gives you the option of creating a 30-second or a Full-Length video. The 30-second video is free but does not allow you to include video snippets or post it to YouTube. I didn’t try the Full-Length video so I’m not sure if those features do show up there.

Unfortunately, the video you create on the iPhone does not show up on the regular Animoto.com web site under your account. They have a message saying that developers are hard at work on that.

Besides these minor limitations, the free Animoto iPhone app is easy to use and makes a great dynamic video.

Some great uses:

1) Great for photographers who want another way of presenting their photos

2) Realtors could snap a few pictures, add music, and create a great video for a home listing -ON LOCATION

3) Great for sharing pics from any event. You’ll be able to share something much sooner than by uploading and tagging pictures via Flickr

4) Mix in pictures of a loved one and a message then send it to them for their birthday. A nice surprise!

5) Great quick way to share the happenings at a political rally to keep people engaged.

The following video was created using the iPhone application and pictures I took on my trip to Denver. I used the “share” feature, emailed the resulting link to my email address, ran the video then used the embed code to place it on this post. Enjoy!

If you like this post you should totally either subscribe to the RSS feed, sign up for the email version, or leave me a juicy Comment below.

This is so awesome! You can submit your 12seconds.tv stream and have it show up as a video podcast in the iTunes directory.

Submitting my 12seconds.tv stream to iTunes never occurred to me until I went to check for iPhone app updates via my desktop iTunes. I did a search, saw the three flavors of 12seconds apps, then noticed some 12seconds feeds. Wow!

This year, the name of the game is Own Your Stuff. In this case, by creating a Podcast out of a 12seconds.tv, users can repurpose and redistribute the content that they have created. And the best part is you get to tell folks that you have an iTunes Podcast.

So let’s get to the good stuff and describe the process to get things listed.

1. Go to the Apple iTunes “Making a Podcast” page and review the process.




2. Test your feed. Open iTunes, under the “Advanced” menu, select “Subscribe to Podcast” then enter your 12seconds.tv feed and click “OK.” Your feed will look like http://12seconds.tv/channel/jesseluna/feed, but you will substitute your username instead of “jesseluna.” Doing this should bring up your latest 12seconds update.




3. Submit your podcast. Open iTunes, click on the Podcasts tab or main link. You’ll see a “Podcast Quick Links” section on the top right hand side. Click on “Submit a Podcast.” It will take you to the “Submit Podcasts to the iTunes Directory” view.




4. Note: Before you continue you need to have an iTunes account and be logged into iTunes.




5. BEFORE YOU SUBMIT THE FEED, make sure your avatar is the one you want to show up in the directory. I submitted before double-checking that and when I went in to change my avatar in 12seconds, I found that the change did not cascade through to the iTunes store.




6. Submit the feed by entering the feed URL and clicking on the “Continue” button. You may be prompted to log into iTunes.




7. If there are no errors, you will receive confirmation that the feed is being reviewed and you will receive an email. It took 24 hours to receive the confirmation that the feed was approved and for it to be accessible from the iTunes directory.

This worked for me the first time so that bodes well for other efforts.

Follow Up:

1. Add me as a friend on 12seconds.tv




2. Leave a Comment if you have questions or use the FormSpring “Ask Jesse” box on the right of this page to leave an anonymous question.




3. Once your feed is set up, come back and tell us about it so we can check it out




4. Subscribe to my 12seconds Podcast (opens iTunes)




5. Make sure to keep your 12seconds.tv account updated or iTunes will remove your feed from the directory. Update at least every 3 days.

You just learned how to add your 12seconds.tv video stream to the iTunes Podcast directory!

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You can now read and post to WordPress.com blogs using Tweetie2, a third-party iPhone Twitter application.

This is cool because it’s like having mobile Twitter but for blogs. You can read and post to your blog and also read other WordPress.com blogs.

This is an overview of how it works, for specific instructions view the WordPress.com blog post on this new feature:

1) Set up a new account in Tweetie2 for your WordPress.com blog. Tweetie2 charges $2.99 for the app. I didn’t have it yet so finally ponied up the cash and it’s rockin so far.

2) Change a setting so that it uses the special link to a Twitter WordPress API. This tells Tweetie2 that you want that Account to do WordPress things, not Twitter things. That means that you will not be able to tweet from that Account, which makes sense since it’s pointing to your blog and not Twitter.

3) Set up your blog using your WordPress.com username and password information. You’ll still be configuring this new Account at this point. Since WordPress.com allows multiple blogs under one account, your default blog will be the one that Tweetie2 can post to. But, you can change that setting by going to your WordPress.com site’s Profile page (see below).

To change the “controlling” WordPress blog that will be updated from the Tweetie2 Account, just select the blog from the “Status updates will be posted on this blog:” drop down menu.

4) Configure geotagging. While you’re in the WordPress.com Profile page, you can also decide if you want to allow geotagging which attaches location information to your blog posts. You must have geotagging turned on for the specific “controlling” WordPress.com blog for this to work. If you want more information on geotagging, I created a video tutorial on how to turn on the geotagging feature on a WordPress.com blog. My tutorial was also picked up by WordPress.tv.

I tested this and posted an update to my geotagging enabled WordPress.com blog. After a while, the post showed up on the Tweetie2 Account but it took a little longer for it to show up with a little red flag next to it. The red flag indicates that if you click on the item you’ll also see a map.

5) Add in your friends! Not only can you read and post to your selected blog, you can also read other WordPress.com blogs. In order for that to happen, these WordPress.com blogs must be added to your “Blog Surfer” list. You can access this area by logging into your WordPress.com blog site then going to My Account > Blog Surfer. If you’ve previously added blogs to this list, they should already show up in your Tweetie2 WordPress Account “stream.” If you want more to show up, just enter the URL in the “WordPress.com url” text box and click on the Add button.

This is a view of the Blog Surfer page:

Once you add your favorite WordPress.com blogs, it takes a few minutes for them to show up in your new Tweetie2 WordPress Account feed. Refresh Tweetie2 if you don’t see them after a few minutes. Items appear in the stream in chronological order so you may have to scroll down to see older posts – yes, just like Twitter.

6) Post away! Now you can post to your blog just as you would compose a tweet for Twitter. You still only have 140 characters, there are no attachments, and no special fields for adding links. You’d have to type or paste in any links you want to include in your post. Once again, if you have geotagging turned on for this blog, that information will show up for that blog post and will show up for any of your friends that subscribe to your blog via the Blog Surfer feature.

You’ve just learned the process for creating a new Tweetie2 Account to give it Twitter-like connectivity to your WordPress.com blog network.

So tell me, will you use it? If so, do you think you’ll post to your WordPress.com blog more?

[Updated July 19, 2010: Added specific instructions on sending Voice Memos to Facebook.]

Yesterday’s iPhone 3.0 software download from Apple included a new Voice Memos application. The Voice Memos application allows you to record sound, save it, and email it.

Of course, the first question I asked was, “How can I get it into my Twitter feed?”

Here’s how:

1) Set up a free account with Posterous.com. Posterous allows you to post text, video, big pictures, or audio from remote sources such as your phone.

2) Configure your social networking feeds on Posterous. If you only want to send your voice memo updates to Twitter then you only have to set up the Twitter account. Make a note of your posting email address.

3) Record your Voice Memo using your iPhone.

4) After you’ve saved the Voice Memo, open the memo item and click on the Share button and select “Email Voice Memo.”

5) Enter your Posterous posting email. If you configured several social networks, you can just use the “post” email and it will post to all at the same time. I only set up Twitter for now so I will only post to the “twitter” version of the Posterous email.

This is the tweet that was generated when I posted late last night:

Testing iPhone Voic[e] Memo to Twitter via Posterous http://post.ly/sZA

The second time you need to post a Voice Memo from your iPhone, you only need to follow Steps 3-5, and can easily do so while on the go!

Post iPhone Voice Memos to Facebook

To post iPhone Voice Memos to Facebook:
First, set up your Posterous.com account as in #1 above.

Posting voice memos to your Facebook profile

1. To post to your Facebook profile, go to the Manage | Autopost page on Posterous
2. Click on the big “Add a Service” button
3. Select “Facebook” (not “Facebook Page”)
4. Click on the “Connect” button. You’ll get a pop-up window asking you for permission to connect. Click on “Allow.”
5. You’ll be directed to a screen that will ask if you want to post to your Stream or to your Status. Select your preference. You can also select if you want to post videos to your Facebook Videos. By default, Posterous will post pictures to your Facebook Photos. You can deselect that option if you choose. You should be connected now.

This is an example of a Voice Memo post to Facebook via Posterous:

Posting iPhone to Facebook profile page via Posterous

Posting voice memos to your Facebook Page (a.k.a. “Facebook Fan Page”)

1. Go to Facebook and your Facebook profile
2. Go to Applications (available from left tool bar link on Profile)
3. Click on “Applications Directory” link at the bottom of the page
4. Type “Posterous” in the “Search Apps” box (top left) and hit “Enter” key
5. Click on the “Posterous” link to go to the Posterous application page
6. Click on the “Add To My Page” link. You’ll see a list of your own Applications, Websites, and Fan pages.
7. Click on the “Add to Page” button next to the desired Facebook page.
8. Close the pop-up window.
9. Go back to Posterous, Manage | Autopost
10. Click on the “Add a Service” button
11. Click on the “Facebook Page” button
12. Go to the bottom of the page and you’ll see your Facebook page in a drop down list. Click on the “Add Facebook” button.
13. You’ll be asked for permission to post to Facebook. Click on the “Allow” button. That should do the trick.

Next time you’re on the road or away from you computer, you can take out your iPhone and send over a Voice Memo to your social network. Just make sure you’re not driving, m’kay?

I’m always honored to receive your feedback and comments. Let me know if there is anything I can do to improve this blog post or blog in general.