Is technology reducing the need to learn new skills? Do you think it undermines talent?

Recently I downloaded Instagram. Yeah, a bit late to that party, I know. It quickly became one of my favourite apps. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a simple app that enables you to take a photo on your iPhone and apply filters to produce images like the one above.

Not too long ago this kind of manipulation of images used to be limited to a talented, minority group of people who had worked to attain technical and creative skills, usually photographers and designers.

Today, I bypassed any study and produced the same results by clicking a button.

The pace of change

In my distant past I studied photography. We learned the technical process of developing film in darkrooms and experimented with manipulation of chemicals to produce effects not too far from those replicated by Instagram.

Shortly after I learned those skills, they became redundant, as digital technology overtook the photography market and enabled the process and manipulation of images to take place in the camera, PC and products such as Photoshop.

Today, I need no training, no time investment. It happens in an instant.

Instagram is not unique in providing this ‘leg up’. There is a proliferation of tools and products available today that enable you to take a short cut to results – the WordPress content management system springs to mind, and even Rock Band or Guitar Hero!

The role of talent

So, does this simplification of the process by technology make us all artists or is talent still the differentiator?

Clearly, the quality is not always there (my one and only attempt at Guitar Hero, a case in point). However, is it good enough for people’? If so, isn’t there a danger that the need for trained professionals will diminish in the face of commoditised skills?

There will be an impact. As with most things there are winners and losers. Specialists suffer as their skills are diminished by technology, but the masses have the means to become creators and producers themselves. New businesses and outlets (e.g. blogs, music, video) have appeared and creativity has been unleashed as individuals are no longer shackled by their technical skill set.

What technology doesn’t do, however, is remove the need for talented people. Talent is still the differentiator. Anyone who has ever worked with a good web designer and then built their own website using WordPress, will know the difference talent makes. The template of this blog you’re reading looks good because of the talent of its designer. When I first installed it, I was impressed with how it looked – I was even able to modify parts with some basic code editing – but there are still parts that I’d like to change – if only I had the skill set to do so.

Ultimately, Instagram and WordPress are just tools – very clever creations that have distilled something very complex down to a simple process. They have reduced the skill gap, but are no substitute for talent.

What do you think?

I’ll leave you with Baby Nico playing Rock Band…

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photo credit: marfis75

If you’re a customer of the shopping behemoth, you can’t have failed to have noticed that Amazon let competitors use their website to sell their products. Known as Marketplace, like many others you’ve probably thought it’s a little odd. A bit counter-intuitive, isn’t it?

I’m just guessing, but I suspect you don’t let your competitors do the same?

Why not?

It’s a calculated move by Amazon and it’s very clever. Whilst it might seem barmy, if done seamlessly it can establish your site as the single place to go to buy your industry’s products.

Why? Well, crucially, it reduces effort on the part of your customers, which will ALWAYS improve your conversion rates. As a consumer I don’t really care where the book comes from as long as it doesn’t require any extra work on my part and I still get the assurance that comes from buying via Amazon.

The Pros and Cons

So how can that help your business?

There are many reasons why you should consider such a bold move:

• Your customers will stay loyal because you always have the product they need

• They’ll repeat purchase

• You’ll establish a reputation as the authority in your industry

• You’ll receive more referrals as your customer satisfaction increases

• You can generate a revenue share from competitor sales

So what are the risks to your business?

• Amazon is successful because the majority of sales come from their own listings, not via Marketplace. So Marketplace is an additional option for the customer, not the main one. If you don’t have many products and a customer frequently views or buys items from competitors on your site, they may begin to question which brand is the authority.

o Tip #1: counteract this by limiting the product listings from each competitor

o Tip #2: Ensure your site features a sufficient number of your own listings

o Tip #3: Place your products first in search listings, ahead of competitor products

o Tip #4: Only pull in competitor listings if you have insufficient listings of your own for that product

• Be wary of the user experience. Be careful not to compromise it for the sake of making a few more sales.

o Tip #5: Make the process seamless with no (or minimal) variation to your standard user experience (particular the checkout process). Ideally you don’t ask the customer to register again on a second site.

Promoting your competitors’ products is undoubtedly a bold move. You’ll need to balance the pros and cons, but it’s a strategic decision that could fundamentally shift your position within your market.

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photo credit: William Hook

• ebay sell 1 item every 2 seconds via mobile
• In 2014 there will be 300m mobile coupon users
• 7.1 million Brits now access the internet through their mobile

(If you’re just here for the mobile stats, scroll down, I won’t be offended)

In my recent ‘60 second mobile review’ post, I explained a very simple health check for your business to determine whether you should be building a Mobile offering. Even though you may feel your company or industry is not ready, your Analytics may prove otherwise. A quick check will illustrate just how popular your website already is with mobile users.

If you’ve tried accessing your website on a mobile phone, you may have already realised that those visitors might not exactly be getting a premium customer experience. You may already be deliberating which is better for your business – a mobile site or smart phone apps.

However, to get your mobile site or app built you’re going to need to present a business case. You can pull together your supporting evidence – including existing mobile statistics – from both internal and external sources.

Three of which include:

• Existing site analytics data – use this to illustrate how your audience already wants to access your service via a mobile device. It could also highlight the need for a mobile-specific interface, if the mobile stats don’t paint a pretty customer experience

• External data / case studies – sometimes the biggest impetus to getting something signed off comes from showing the successes of others. The whole ‘its working really well for them, so it should be okay for us to do it too’ thing. It’s about confidence – if you can show how its worked for others it makes it easier to feel comfortable with any associated risk

• Survey customers / prospects – sometimes the easiest way to get an answer is just to ask the question. Just be careful how you ask the question though. Asking ‘Do you think we should have a mobile site and iPhone app?’ will probably get you plenty of ‘Sure’ answers but won’t be very enlightening. You’ll be better off trying to understand their behaviours and needs via your questions and their answers.

The important thing to remember with the business case is to be clear why you need a mobile site or app. Just having one isn’t enough. Why should your company foot the development bill? What is the return on investment?

If it’s going to be a mCommerce site and generate revenue (selling products / services / access) then justify it with a financial forecast to offset the development costs.

However, it doesn’t need to be revenue generating to justify development. Adding value to the customer experience could be your reason – my favourite example is the Sky+ App that enables you to record your favourite TV programmers remotely. Sky doesn’t make direct revenue by charging for the App but it does contribute to the loyalty and retention of their customer base.

The final reason is innovation, or experimentation. This may seem a little fluffy, but for many it is justification enough to have observed the behaviours and trends and to want to experiment with a new product or service to see how customers respond. You may hit on something and grab market share with first mover advantage. Just be wary of the development costs with this approach, in case you have a few misses.

Mobile Statistics that may help your business case (or just interest you)

The majority of the following mobile stats came from Google’s recent Think Mobile seminar at the Royal Opera House in London. Others have come from a variety of sources. I have credited the original source where known, otherwise apologies, let me know and I’ll update.

• 2 million iPads were sold in the first 59 days after release (that is one iPad sold every 3^rd second (Apple, 2010)
• Mobile advertising is expected to grow to £355m in Britain by 2014 (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2010)
• 24% of mobile users have a smart phone
• Today’s mobile phone would have cost £1 billion to build in the 1970s and would have been the size of a house
• In 2014 there will be 300m mobile coupon users
• 50% of mobile users start their activity with a search
• 90% of all apps are deleted in 30 days (so make it a good one with real value!)
• 25% of Android searches are made using Voice search technology (Google, 2010)
• 48% of US smart phone users have used a mobile browser
• Mobile search is growing as fast as mobile apps (
• ebay sell 1 item every 2 seconds via mobile
• 10% of all PaddyPower sales come via mobile
• 1 billion mobile phones were bought in the first 14 years – 1 billion mobiles sold in the last 12 months
• 11.5% of all UK shoppers use their mobiles to research before they shop (ITPro.co.uk)
• 48% of social media users check Facebook / Twitter after they go to bed. 7% said they’d even check during an ‘intimate moment’ (SF Gate, 2010)
• In the UK, 81% of mobile media users access mobile media more than once a week with 46% using it daily (MobiAd News, 2010)
• 7.1 million Brits now access the internet through their mobile phones (Internet Monitor Survey, 2010)
• Each month in the UK, 4.2 million consumers visit retailers’ websites using the mobile internet (GSMA & Comscore, 2010)
• Despite the recession, over the last year m-commerce has accounted for nearly £123million worth of goods sold in the UK and this is predicted to double by 2013 to £275million (eBay & Mobile Marketing Association, 2010)
• iPad applications have downloaded over 35 million times (Apple, 2010)
• More than 1 in 10 mobile users will download or buy mobile tickets in the next four years (Juniper Research, 2010)
• There are more than 150 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile devices (Facebook, 2010)
• People that use Facebook on their mobile device are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users (Facebook, 2010

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I have sticky finger prints smeared across my flat screen TV.

They’re not mine, I might add. Rather they belong to my two year old son. Unlike his other random markings around the house (walls are a particular favourite), these are deliberate and with purpose.

He tries to operate the TV like he would my iPhone. That is, he competently swipes and pushes objects (buttons) on the flat screen as a means of navigating to the content he wants.

When the TV doesn’t respond he gets annoyed and airs his displeasure. For instance, a favourite programme of his starts and ends with the characters entering a lift (elevator) – the top floor housing a fun play room. One day, as the programme was coming to an end and the doors to the lift closed on the departing characters, he began to furiously ‘swipe’ the doors on the screen, yelling “no, no, no!” – desperately trying to open the doors so the programme wouldn’t end.

But end it did, and in tears.

It struck me watching this, that he’s two years old and already he’s frustrated with the speed of technology advancement. To him, there is no reason why a TV shouldn’t work in the same way as Daddy’s iPhone.

Which makes me wonder, how fast will technology evolve in just the first couple of decades of his life?

Flash back

When he’s old enough to understand, he’ll probably laugh when I tell him about the technology I had when I was growing up.

Two main broadcast technologies, TV and Radio – three channels on the former and mainly national stations on the latter. As a kid, the height of cool was owning a twin deck radio cassette player (for recording the Top 40 Charts on Sundays). And…, well, that was about it for the early years.

Then came the technology revolution, as the (top-loading, not front loading) video player burst on to the scene to change the entertainment world forever. Not that our family was an early mover on this one. We were well into the Late Majority before I discovered Vader was actually Luke’s father.

Consumer-owned computers appeared in my teens in the 90s but I barely touched them until I left college (mid 90s). Then of course technology exploded again, as we marched in the new millennium, with the next wave of game changers – the iPod and iPhone.

The odd thing for him is that these new technologies are all standard devices. They are so everyday in our house that he doesn’t understand why the other (older) shiny things don’t work in the same way.

Flash forward

Being fortunate (unfortunate?) to have a parent working in technology, there is a good chance that he’ll adopt emerging technologies and activities quite quickly. From a school perspective, it’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

I still remember the excitement of being allowed to use a calculator in class for the first time, I can’t imagine being able to open up a browser to access the web via the school WiFi.

Much will depend on education funding, but isn’t it likely that within just a few years all school children will be working from laptops or iPad-like devices in class, rather than with books and pens?

Much of this technology is already available, but what else is to come? How about:

• User Generated Content Story books, placing the child within the (e)book (viewed on a Kindle-esque device, naturally)

• Desks and ‘blackboards’ using Minority Report style interfaces?

• 3D experiences of faraway places, visiting the Pyramids or back in time to ‘witness’ historical events?

• Virtual classrooms, with remote teachers delivering lessons by teachercam or holographic projection?

• Collaborative projects using wiki-based platforms?

• Start-ups formed as part of the Business studies or Economics curriculum (with Intellectual property rights shared with the school, of course)

All of these things are achievable within this next decade. I can’t even comprehend what it will be like by the time he reaches his teens.

I have no doubt children of his generation will readily adopt any new technology and application that emerges – perhaps the biggest question will be how will we keep up?

photo credit: foundphotoslj

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Let’s be honest, you can milk your Cash Cow for quite some time. However, like oil, one day it’s going to run out. Then what?

Well, by that point it’s too late. One, or several, of those pesky start-ups who launch good looking websites with shiny, multi-featured products, will have figured out how to monetise their passion and will be waving at you in slow-mo as they pass you by.

You’ll be left to wonder what happened and at some point you’ll look at your new market leaders and will lament “we could have done that”.

Ideas needed – apply within

So, you’ve seen the future and you don’t like it. What are you going to do?

Firstly, look to your customers. And particularly to those who aren’t your customers. Don’t start building anything until you understand what they need. Not necessarily what they say they want – or what you want – but what they need. There is a big difference. Answering a need secures a customer for the long term, answering a want will have you following fads and wasting resources.

Secondly, embrace the creativity in your workplace. Great ideas are not limited to the executive suite. The Support Assistant on the phone speaking to the irate customer may have the greatest insight of all in your business. A cliché it may be, but employees are the business’ greatest asset. Tap into it. Treat your employees like citizens, let them join the cause.

This is a cultural thing. Much like your brand in the social sphere, is your business happy to relinquish ‘control’ to the ‘masses’?

Consider it. It can produce exciting results.

A case in point

At the 2010 Onrec Awards for the online recruitment industry, Jobsite.co.uk won in two categories – one of which was for its candidate services. Amongst the products included under that banner, were Jobs-by-Twitter, BeMyInterviewer and RecruitRank.

Jobs-by-Twitter is an API integration between Jobsite and the micro-blogging platform. It was created as an experiment to understand how we can reduce the searching workload of jobseekers by delivering relevant jobs to a platform they were already using daily. It was also a direct response against the torrent of untargeted job tweets gushing into the Twitter sphere

BeMyInterviewer is an interactive interview practice service that utilises video to enable jobseekers to rehearse with top industry professionals, including the likes of Dragons’ Den mogul Duncan Bannatyne.

RecruitRank is a jobseeker feedback system, enabling applicants to rate recruitment agencies for the customer service they received. It came in response to research that revealed over half of jobseekers find the process of job hunting frustrating and demoralising.

All three products came to life through the creativity of Jobsite employees – be it initial concept or enabling the idea to flourish into a fully featured – and useful – product for our customers.

It was possible because the culture promotes such creativity – to step beyond the paint-by-numbers approach that has littered the industry with commodity products.

Be a market leader

Seth Godin, in his book ‘Linchpin’, defines a Hierarchy of Value as follows:

Lift, Hunt, Grow, Produce, Sell, Connect, Create

For your company to be (or continue to be) successful it will need to deliver at multiple levels across the hierarchy. However, to lead your market into the future you need to excel at creation, at innovation.

Take a look at what you offer your customers. How is that different to what your competitors provide? Now find out what your customers actually want and throw some grey matter at finding solutions. It’s crowd-sourcing on a company level. Get everyone in a room – physically or figuratively – and throw away the job titles. Leave them at the door, they’re not needed here.

Now start creating.

photo credit: Locomotive Stillstand

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Have you seen our iPhone App? Do you have one? No? Really?

Been asked that recently? I wouldn’t be surprised if you had, mobile seems to be on the lips of everyone. If you haven’t got an iPhone app, some would have you believe it’s a minor miracle you’re still doing business.

So, should you be rushing out to find a mobile developer?

Yes, no, maybe, well, it depends.

Don’t be a lemming

First of all, you don’t have to follow the crowd. Just because Mobile is cool and trendy, doesn’t mean it will be successful for you (see the ‘popular’ kids at school as an example). There are some fundamental questions you need to ask of your business first, before you can determine your mobile strategy.

Five Questions to ask of your business:

Does your business lend itself well to mobile?

You have to be realistic. There are just some businesses that don’t lend themselves well to the mobile web – certainly the App market – and you have to ask yourself, is yours one of them?

Anecdotally, the average lifespan of an iPhone App is 2 weeks – in all likelihood because the App is pointless or poorly thought out or designed. To justify the expense of developing one you need to be sure it will be used.

Brainstorm a few ideas and share them with your customers. Feed the response back into the decision process.

Can you improve the customer brand experience via mobile?

If your customers access your product via the web, could you make their life easier by providing mobile access too? The key here, is to ensure that the mobile and web version are integrated, otherwise there is a disconnect and you compromise on the customer experience.

Should I do something in Mobile right now?

Tricky one. Ask yourself whether you’ll be left behind if you don’t – and if your brand will suffer if you release a shoddy product. Rushing doesn’t guarantee the latter, but it’s a risk. You need to find a balance between speed and quality. ‘Bells and whistles’ could always come in the version1.1 update, whilst you gather feedback from the initial release.

Which first – iPhone, Android, Mobile or other?

Ah, the hot potato. There is a lot of information out there on mobile use and many of the numbers are conflicting. However, what all the Mobile experts can agree on is that big things are about to happen in the market.

In a nutshell, we can thank Apple, their iPhone and their marketing budget for kick starting the smart phone market. That got consumers interested, now Google are coming along with Android to mount what is expected to be a serious challenge.

So which should you do first? Well, it depends on your business. If you’re ready to go now, it could be worth launching an iPhone App to go with market surge. Once live you might want to get started on the Android version pretty quickly to jump on that bandwagon as the platform gathers traction.

Conversely, you might find that your niche is already a little overcrowded in the iPhone App store, so you could dive straight into the Android space and be the big fish gobbling up market share before your competitors get there.

Or to continue with the nautical metaphors, perhaps you’d be better off swimming against the smart phone tide altogether? Whilst apps may be sexy, the mobile web (i.e. sites accessible via mobile browsers), may be where your biggest wins could be found.

Would you be better off making a great mobile-friendly site so any internet enabled phone can access it? It’s certainly a bigger market.

Do my audience want a mobile offering from my product?

Exactly how big a market is actually an important consideration. The global mobile uptake is huge, but that doesn’t really matter to you. How big is mobile in your market?

Try this. Go to your analytics package and look up the Browsers/Operating System report. You probably don’t delve in there too often and you might be a little scared by what you find when you start adding up the number of visits from Mobile devices.

Look at the data over the past year or two – how much has it grown? One site I worked on recently, experienced a 136% increase in mobile visits in just a 9 month period and nobody knew.

So the worrying thing is you may already have a mobile audience and they can’t use your product. Is the audience big enough to jump the smart phone Apps in the development queue?

Decision time

It’s clear when you consider the answers to the five questions that it’s not as simple as just responding to the excitement of the iPhone with an App of your own. What’s in the best interest of your company?

It’s an important time for businesses as we adapt to the changing media consumption of our audiences. We must move swiftly, but not hastily, and embrace the opportunities new technologies provide.

So what will Mobile mean to you?

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It’s well established that a great experience can make all the difference in keeping a customer beyond their initial purchase. The best customer experience is when you can make their interaction with you so pain-free and simple that it becomes a no-brainer to return for more.

Healthy stock levels, useful product info, error-free payment processes, and prompt delivery – they’re all hygiene factors if your business is to provide a good customer experience. However, for a great customer experience, you need more. You need to think smarter.

Intelligent Shopping

Talking of smart, there are undeniably smart people at Tesco. Anyone familiar with the brand will know their Clubcard is a thing of CRM legend. Some very smart thinking went into that, understanding that utilising customer data to increase spending, whilst offering relevant discounts and additional rewards for being loyal, was going to be key to growth and market dominance.

That Clubcard has now arrived, to much acclaim, in the Apple iPhone App Store. Whilst its convenience is undeniably smart, it is the less heralded Tesco Finder App that caught my eye.

If the Clubcard App is the popular and attractive Prom Queen, the Tesco Finder App is the geeky Maths Club President who probably goes on to develop the next Google.

To be clear, this is not a sexy app. It doesn’t look spectacular and it undoubtedly has its flaws. It appears to be a work in progress, an experimental plaything of the Tesco R & D team. However, there is a smart idea behind it.

What they have done is to look at their internal tools and have asked themselves whether opening them up to their shoppers would improve the customer experience. In doing so, they realised that a tool they had built to speed up product selection for their Tesco.com Home Delivery Pickers, would in fact, make an ideal tool for those less familiar with store layout and content– such as their customers.

So now using the App, you can type in Green & Black’s Maya Gold Chocolate and you’ll be able to find it in-store in ‘Aisle 8 on the right side counting 15 units along then the 8^th shelf up from the floor’. Simple, but very smart.

Your Hidden Gems

Now think about this for your own business. What internal tools or information do you have access to that make your life easier? And now what would happen if you put those in the hands of your customers?

In this digital world, we have an abundance of data. We probably only use a fraction of it. How could you use your data and tools to improve your customer experience?

Here are a few ideas to start you off:

Stock levels – how many items do you have left in stock? Can you save time and frustration for a customer who will discover their item can’t be delivered when they want it?

Expected delivery dates – internet retailing is about speed and convenience. Make this information clearly available to inform the buying decision

Best time and day to advertise – if you deal in classifieds (jobs, cars, dating, etc.) share this data to help your customer get the best response to their ads

Help guides / instructions – don’t make me ring a call centre to order a new copy of the instructions that were missing from my flat pack wardrobe, put them on the website for me to print off

Appointment availability – if you run a hair salon, doctors/dentist surgery, or MOT garage put your booking system online, so I can secure my appointment slot when it’s convenient for me, 24 hours a day

Hotel room selector – your may know which room overlooks the great sea/mountain view, but why not empower your future guests and let them select the vista they want? (Whilst you’re at it, add panoramic video views so I can really tell what it’s going to look like)

New product development list – you don’t want to give away all your plans, but why not make customer suggestions more freely available to others and collect votes to determine priority?

Think about how many of the above (or variations on the theme) could save your business money through reduced manual servicing, as well as producing happier, more satisfied customers.

You already have that ability in your hands; you just need to put it in someone else’s.

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photo credit: coquetboy

And that was 2009.

Hopefully yours was a good one, it certainly was for me.  On reflection, much happened in 2009 – both from a personal and web perspective. So much, in fact, it’s hard to imagine it all happened in just 365 days.

I felt like I learnt a lot this year. Much of which, I can say was due to Twitter. On the 5th of January 2009 I wrote my first blog post, entitled ‘What’s the point of Twitter?‘. I’d heard about it, wasn’t overly enthusiastic about it, but thought it was worth a go for a month. I never looked back and now check it at least a trillion times a day via my laptop or iPhone.

Twitter gave me access to the minds of brilliant people. Particular favourites being Chris Brogan, Brent Payne, Brian Clark, Lisa Barone, Scott Stratten and Steve Rubel. I’ve learnt a tremendous amount from them all (many thanks!), impacting my day job and the handful of personal endeavours that have spawned over the year. It’s been an incredibly enriching experience.

It makes me very excited about the prospect of 2010 – what on earth will we learn and acheive this year?

As we close the book on 2009, I’d like to thank everyone that has read my blog this year (or at the very least, come looking for images to re-use). It’s been a very enjoyable experience – one that I need to dedicate much more time to this year.

For one final look at 2009, I’d like to share with you the Top 10 It’s Digital Marketing posts this year. Enjoy!

1. Twitter Statistics: UK traffic increased 22-fold in a year (24th June)

2. Google Profiles to take on Monster.com in job market? (7th May)

3. 10 Insider Tips to win a Search Agency pitch (2nd March)

4. Ryanair: Cheap flights and cheap service (24th Feb)

5. Building an App for Twitter (2nd July)

6. 10 Signs you’re addicted to Twitter (25th March)

7. Social Proof: The wisdom of crowds (15th Sept)

8. To find a job think like a SEO (13th Feb)

9. Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll: Google Maps Mashup Style (23rd Nov)

10. Social Media Innovation (9th Oct)

Have a happy and prosperous 2010 everybody!

Gary

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Sex toys, crime statistics and the Artic Monkeys.

Words I never thought I could unite in one blog post. Take a moment to consider where this could go…

Nothing quite so sensational, I’m afraid, but interesting nonetheless.

Anyone who knows my geeky side will know that I have a penchant for Google Maps Mashups (If you don’t know what they are, take a quick Google Maps mashup detour. Just remember to come back).

They don’t need to be all bells and whistles, fantastically designed or integrated. It’s the idea that always fascinates me. The imagination and breadth of subjects poured into Google Maps mashups seems to be infinite.

We can't help ourselves - we have to know!

I’ll produce a list of some of the best ones at a later date, but for now I’ll share three that have caught my eye recently. And perhaps shed some light on the cryptic start to this post.

The Sex Map from LoveHoney.com – If you’re at work reading this, don’t worry there aren’t any images here that you don’t want your Boss or Tech guys to discover. LoveHoney is an online retailer of adult toys, lingerie and associated paraphernalia.

They have been really clever with their Google Maps mashup. They have tied together sales data from their own site, data from the UK Census, competitor and manufacturer accounts, and internet traffic monitoring services, and mashed it together with the Google Maps API. The end result is an amusing, yet fantastic bit of linkbait, which no doubt has brought a few extra pennies to the pot from inquisitive visitors.

Oddly, I felt somewhat disappointed to find my home town ranked only the 530th sexiest place in the UK. What goes on in Upminster (ranked #1) is anyone’s guess though?!

The Drugs Map – okay, not just drugs, but all kinds of crime, be it robbery, homicide or car theft. Crimereports.com say the U.S. site was created to help law enforcement agencies make crime data accessible to the public. It standardises the data from the different agencies and enables individuals to monitor what is happening in their neighbourhood, right down to their specific street or block.

I think this is a great example of how technology can be utilised to harness disparate information, organise it and communicate it in an easy to understand way. The participating organisations should be commended for supporting the scheme.

My one concern would be how obsessed a worried user could become with monitoring crime outside their front door. However, on a more practical note, it would be a useful evaluation tool when house hunting.

And finally, the Rock & Roll Map. Whilst not a big buyer (or listener) of music, I’ve always been appreciative of good album cover design. So I found it interesting to discover this Google Maps mashup the readers of UK music mag, Word Magazine, have been putting together.

The Google Maps mashup plots the locations of where iconic album cover photographs were taken. Whether its ABBA at Barkaby Airfield, the Beatles at Abbey Road, or The Verve lounging in Richmond Park, flicking through the list is a quirky and fascinating tour of music’s historical landmarks.

These are just three of the thousands of Google Maps mashup examples out there – and I’m sure there are many more brilliant than the ones I’ve chosen here. If you’ve seen any, let me know. I’ll be featuring more mashups here at a later date.

Have you built a Google Maps Mashup you want to share? Seen one you loved, but secretly wished you’d had the idea yourself? Or maybe you’re just rueing the day you skipped programming class and have to wait for the day when Google can make a simple wizard, so you can build one of these cool things yourself? Whatever, just get in touch.

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Now is the time to innovate, not stick your head in the sand and wait for the storm to pass by.

That is the theme of my article on social media innovation in this quarter’s edition of Figaro Digital Magazine.

Front Cover design by pod1

The takeaway thought from the article was that whilst budgets are being cut left, right and centre, that doesn’t mean that you should just bide your time and wait for the sales figures to look a little rosier before you start being creative again.

In fact, if you do that it will probably be too late. At least one of your competitors would have had the gumption to use this difficult time wisely by experimenting. As soon as the market picks up they will be able to break into a full stride whilst you’re still crouching to tie your laces.

You may be thinking that you can’t afford to experiment when your budgets are so low, but who said anything about spending big? You don’t even have to take big risks. You just need to do something different.

For instance, look at where you spend you budgets right now. Like the majority of marketers you’ve probably had to reduce budgets over this past year. What did you cut? Did you look at your activities and wonder what their return was? Did you keep some things because ‘we’ve always done that’?

It might be worth having a look again. It’s very easy to keep doing the same old things, but as the saying goes you can’t really expect a different outcome if you keep putting the same stuff in.

As noted in the article, you can do something very different for your company – and at little expense – if you can get involved in social media. It’s a wild frontier land at the moment, where the rules are fluid and the pitfalls and rewards are as diverse as the possibilities.

In essence, it’s an opportunity. You can shape, innovate or change. You can influence your company’s reputation, your can engage with a new breed of customer and you can discover incredible new ways to do business.

And you can do that without spending a penny.

Related posts:

1. Unfollow the anti-social media policy
2. Social Media: Are you listening to the good stuff too?
3. Social Sports: the ball is in your court