No emails on my iPhone. Damn you Lotus Notes.

Dear Lotus Notes - I don't like you. Not only is it unintuitive, I find out today that it's nearly impossible to get it on my iPhone. And I do not jest when I say "nearly impossible," because it is.

Long story short - the only way to do it free is through a completely unsecured way of forwarding your Lotus Notes emails to Gmail and Google Calendar using a rule and tweaking some settings on your iPhone using instructions which make creating nuclear fission sound easy - kidding. But if you want to try it, here are the instructions: http://lntoiphone.blogspot.com/2009/05/lotus-notes-to-iphone-email-and.html As for me, I'm too lazy to go through the hassle and deal with the complicated steps, especially considering I'm completely unfamiliar with Lotus Notes.

There is another "free" method, but you would have to join IBM's Lotus Greenhouse (I'm assuming it's a developer/software engineer group) in order to this next option, because so far, IBM has only announced "plans to support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync in version 8.5.1 of Lotus Notes Traveler." In human language, this means that you can get Lotus Notes through Microsoft Exchange on your iPhone. Sigh. This one's a complete out for me.

Then of course there is iNotes Ultralite which lets you access Lotus Notes through the Safari browser interface, looks decent but the price tag is enough to give you sticker shock, at least for a consumer. According to the web site, it ranges from US$76 - $150.

Other third party applications out there that will let you use Lotus Notes on iPhone include PocketMac (US$24.95) and Notes Pro for Lotus Notes (US$14.99) but again, I'm not entirely sure how they work but these were recommendations that I found on the web and through Twitter. So far, reviews for Notes Pro isn't great.

PS: A Google search on "I hate Lotus Notes" comes up with more than 70,000 results.

Twitter Stats Simplified

via informationisbeautiful.net

I love it when good information is beautifully represented.

13 Things to Do on Twitter Besides Tweet

The next time someone asks, "So what's so great about Twitter? Isn't it just status updates?", you'll have a brilliant answer to share with them!

From exchanging business cards using twtBizCards to sharing files with FileSocial, check out the full article from Mashable: 13 Things to Do on Twitter Besides Tweet

Great. New iPod nano shoots video, my stupid iPhone 3G does not.

via apple.com

Twestival Cities 2009

via vimeo.com

Creative & fun. Be sure to head down to your local Twestival this weekend! http://twestival.com/

Posted via web from I am Audrey.

Tech21 iBand: Giving me a reason to go "nyeah nyeah" to my friends

via youtube.com

If there's one reason to throw my iPhone against the wall - this would be it. You have to check out the video on the iBand to believe it! I wonder if it comes in Toki Doki design or in turquoise?

Seriously, I would love to get this band just so I can throw my iPhone against a wall and stick my tongue out (plus lots of nyeah nyeah-ing) to my friends who still insist on using their Nokia N97s or BlackBerries.

I have to say though, every time the guy throws his iPod Touch, my heart skips a beat because I'm super concerned for the screen. I wonder how many iPods/iPhones suffered premature deaths during testing?

Posted via web from audreytang's posterous

The 10 biggest Wikipedia hoaxes

I love Wikipedia, can't imagine life without it but like they say - don't believe everything you read!

The 10 biggest Wikipedia hoaxes: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6809313.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1515793

Why & how PR should play a leading role in social media

Interesting article on why and how PR should play a leading role in social media and get the digital dollars. The article makes quite a few valid points, ones that may even appear obvious to most PR professionals -- however, the biggest issue I see with PR and social media is that at times, agencies and clients rush into the digital space simply because "everyone's doing it" and completely forgetting the basics of good PR.

Extracts from the article below. I very impressed with the points highlighted by Chris Perry, EVP, digital strategy and operations, Weber Shandwick.

Why PR Excels at Social Media

1. PR owns storytelling and content. That's the heart of what PR does, stresses Jason Mandell, partner and co-founder of Launch Squad. PR professionals understand how to present a story in a compelling, credible, inspiring way...The technology allows the PR professional to tell client stories directly in ways never before possible. But it always comes back to the story," he notes.


2. PR pushes participation. "...Of all the marcom disciplines, PR is the only one that's most about participation rather than disruption," says Charlie Kondek, director of new media relations at MS&L Digital.


3. PR reacts in real time. "...the PR function has always involved real-time improvisation based on opportunities or issues of the day. Being in the moment is in PR's DNA," says Chris Perry, EVP, digital strategy and operations, Weber Shandwick. [Think crisis communication.]

Social Media Best Practices for PR Firms

1. Determine audience and objectives first—not social media channels. [How often have you heard someone say, "Oh, can we use Twitter and Facebook for this campaign?]


2. Focus on building a body of results-driven work—not building your "social media brand." [In other words, do more, talk less.]


3. Innovate and experiment internally — practice what you preach. [Besides point #1, this is my favorite - you have to walk the walk, and what better way to encourage everyone in the company to learn about how social media works than by participation? While this is a risky move, at least you learn from your mistakes. Social media is risk.]


4. Instruct and inform—educate clients on social media. A key to remaining top-of-mind with clients and prospects looking for new ways to communicate with stakeholders is to proactively offer trends, best practices, and recommendations for succeeding in social media.


5. Cultivate relationships—not just numbers. "Building a massive but ultimately uninhabited database of bloggers is not as useful as sustaining relationships with a narrower slice of them," says Kondek. But keep in mind that social media PR is "much, much more than blogger relations and other influencer outreach," he adds. It's building and contributing to social media channels in a way that's meaningful to your client and your audience.


6. Remember that while clicks may be queen—content is king. "The core of what we do is find out how to get a company's story out through the media," says Mandell.

Full article: Nine Ways to Star in the Social Media Role: Why and How PR Firms Can Trump Other Disciplines for Digital Dollars

My Multiple Personalities

I doubt anyone's noticed, but I had a bout of obsessive compulsive behavior yesterday and decided to re-organize all the post on my blog. I really like how Pat categorizes her posts on Blankanvas, and like they say, imitation is the highest form of compliment - so I've plonked all my posts since 2005 into 7 categories (for now!).

Each of categories represent a side of me - at one point, I was tempted to add category #8: The Opinionated Loudmouth / The Bitch - but that might include most of my posts, so #8's on hold for now. Here's a run-down of what each Mutiple Personality / category means, so all related posts can be found in its lil' box. The common denominator is of course, moi - whatever amuses, interests or pisses me off will appear on this blog.

• The Film Snob: Everything related to the latest movies, actors, TV series, general celeb gossip, as long as it's a movie/person that I'm digging. I can only wish that this was my life - everyday!


• The Accidental Geek: This includes posts on the latest gadgets that I'm oooh-ing over or interesting new social media tools that are useful or just plain fun. Why "accidental geek?" Well - I never started out wanting to be geeky or technical, but somehow fell into it when I wrote (yes, wrote in HTML) my first web site when I was 15, worked on Yahoo! and VMware for the past few years and tech comes quite easily to me. And I like my toys!


• The Malaysian: Ahh, I think one of the reasons why I'm this random, this confused and this contradictory is because I'm Malaysia. This category answers the big question, "What does it mean to be Malaysia?" At least, most of the time, but always from my perspective.


• The PR Girl: This is a strange label but I guess when your work consumes 12 hours of your day, your work becomes a large part of your life. So, interestingly enough, tech & social media items would fall under this category as well, along with other marketing related items that inspire and made me go, "what didn't I think of that?" I hope to one day The PR Girl will meet The Film Snob and then, I'll live happily ever after.


• The Quirky Fashionista: I love beautiful things, especially clothing & accessories that are lovingly handcrafted. Again, items that I'm ooh-ing over will appear here. While it's unlikely that I'll be checking out the runways of Milan anytime soon, I appreciate people who have their own sense of style as long as they're fierce!


• The Queen of Random: There are days when the weirdest thing will catch my attention - whether I'm complaining about microwaved frozen PB&J sandwiches or an escaped ostrich - this is my blender of random things that cross my mind.


• The Girl: This is where my inner girl lives - she cries, she vents, she swoons, she loves (oops, loved) her boybands. I guess this is my sprinkle of fairy dust section.

PS: I meant to take shots of me for each category but erm, maybe next time!

Star Wars in San Francisco!

I heart San Francisco! Since the Bay is home to Lucasfilm, it's only fair that if Star Wars was real, it'll drop by the city. :)

Check out really cool Star Wars inspired photos of San Francisco created by Mike Horn. Love! I'm using the image on this post as my current desktop wallpaper. There are more, and it's all free for download from Mike Horn's Flickr page.

[Source: /Film]

How to Track Your Twitter ROI

When it comes to PR and social media, measurement is one of the trickiest item to define and almost every agency out there has a different way of measuring success. Interested in using Twitter for your campaign but not sure of how to measure its effectiveness?

Here's a quick and simple listing some useful tools, extracted from an OpenForum article on Tracking Twitter ROI by Jennifer Van Grove:

1. Define Your Goals: Do you want to increase the number of followers? How many are active vs spammers? Some of the Twitter goals you can measure include Twitter giveaways, hashtag campaigns, link sharing, retweets, referrers, total followers, total following, and tweets per day, week, or month.


2. Tracking Tools:
   
   Trendrr: This free tool lets you track Twitter search results over time, as well Twitter user stats for following, followers, and updates per day. You can also get graphs to visually track change over time.
   
   Tweetmeme: If your company has a blog, you can use the Tweetmeme retweet buttons to encourage visitors to retweet your posts, and then track shares via retweets and bit.ly analytics.
   
   The Archivist: Use this Windows-only tool to export Twitter search results. This is especially handy if you're conducting a Twitter campaign or giveaway using a hashtag or specific tweet criteria. You can then export the results to excel and slice and dice as you please. Note that with regular Twitter Search, yo only go back a certain amount of time and/or number of tweets for a given search.

Read the full article, which contains more Twitter tracking tools: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/how-to-track-your-twitter-roi-jennifer-van-grove

Thanks Belinda for sharing!

I'm a DC and you're a Marvel!

How will Ryan Reynolds fare as both Green Lantern and Deadpool? Check out the Mac vs PC -inspired video from /Film.

Posted via email from audreytang's posterous

Twitter moves from Geekville to Hollywood

From Mashable: As social media tools become more mainstream, they generally move from technology-focused content to a wide range of general topics. With Twitter though, it's taken on a whole life in the entertainment world, if top trending topics on Twitter (phrases most twittered on) is any indication. Current top trending topics include: Miss Venezuela (who was recently crowned Miss Universe 2009) and two of the most-talked about movies the past week - Neil Blomkamp's underground alien feature District 9 and Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

Perhaps this is why I'm a big fan of Twitter - it's my very own social network that lets me connect to friends, favorite film bloggers, tech gurus, gossip & mainstream news outlets and "direct access" to celebs such as Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and directors such as Jon Favreau - there is no differentiation. At the end of the day, they still get the 140 characters just like the rest of us folks. Names above hyperlink to the celeb's Twitter pages. For more Celeb Twitterati, see Celebritytweet.com

I like where this is going - simply because it's a good sign that I may one day be able to combine my two loves: curiosity for new tech and passion for good films. Yay!

Read full post from Mashable here: Trend Topics Signal Twitter’s Turn Towards Entertainment

True Blood Twitterverse

True Blood is turning out to be juicier than expected! Check out the True Blood Twitterverse created by fans of the HBO series and of Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries. The group is not affiliated to HBO but they basically "role play" the True Blood characters on Twitter, responding to their followers and gives other fans background based on Harris' novels and the HBO series. It's quite neat, and some carry the "voices" of their characters quite well - with @VampireGodric taking on a softer, philosophical tone (2,000 years of being a vampire probably does that to you) and @SookieBonTemps sounding confused and Southern as ever! I do wish that @EricNorthman would start being the older soul than he is - now he's mostly "licks fangs and bites" on Twitter.

The best way to describe it is to imagine that you were Sookie and you can hear what everyone in the True Blood universe is thinking - and that's exactly what you get with the this fan-created True Blood Twitter (www.truebloodtwitter.net).

The official HBO True Blood Twitter accounts is @TrueBloodHBO.


On a side note, the writers on True Blood are doing an amazing job creating cliffhangers episode after episode. My boyfriend thinks it's hilarious that I'm screaming in exasperation at the TV screen ever Sunday night, as an episode of True Blood ends and the screen fades to black. Kast week's True Blood episode (S0209 I Will Rise Up) had some of the best lines of the season - I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't started watching Season 2, but here's a sneak into a conversation between Sookie and Jason:

Jason: I'm a dumbass and a fuck up.

Sookie: But you wouldn't be if you used your brain instead of letting it take up space in your skull. That's not dumb, it's lazy.

I've always wondered why vampire Godric looked really familiar - and then someone tweeted that Godric looks like American Idol David Archuleta! Now I can't get the image out of my mind. Arrggh.

Coffee Clicks!

• Unique design always inspires! Word of the day: Recycleart. Products recycled into functional art. Old tables as shelves! [TreeHugger]


• 3 reasons to break news on Twitter first! [Mashable]


• Why are scientists so obsessed with zombies? Maybe because it's an extreme view on what would happen if a biological threat / virus was unleashed in today's world - can the human kind survive a zombie attack? [TreeHugger]


• Why won't the Saw franchise die? Can't believe they're making a Saw VI! [Joblo]

Coffee Clicks! is a compilation of random items on the web that catches my attention as I have my morning cuppa.

Coolest wedding invites ever!

Randomly came across the Offbeat Bride web site and wow, talk about unconventional weddings! Say goodbye to boring white wedding dresses, store-bought wedding invites and multi-tiered wedding cakes that look like the florist attacked it. Some of my favorites here!

Talk about creative - when two graphic designers decided to tie the knot, they made 3-D Viewmaster invites (yes, 3-D!) and sent them out to their friends and family. Isn't DJ Domo the cutest?





I love this late-night B-grade movie invite!

Explaining social media

Came across this presentation on social media by marketing agency Espresso on Ben's blog. It's a long slideshow, but the meat's from slide 57 onwards.

One of my biggest pet peeve is that organizations and businesses don't understand that social media is more than another marketing channel, it's an entire universe that lets you build your brand, speak directly to consumers, get unfiltered feedback and reach out to an unimaginable number of people, worldwide. My favorite line from the presentation: If your product sucks, social media won't fix it.

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

A Photo A Day, Everyday

This is too good to not share. It's the story of a photographer/filmmaker Jamie Livingston, who took a a photo every day for eighteen years, until the day he died, using a Polaroid SX-70 camera.

From Mental Floss:
He called the project “Photo of the Day” and presumably planned to collect them at some point — had he lived. He died on October 25, 1997 — his 41st birthday.

After Livingston’s death, his friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid put together a public exhibit and website using the photos and called it PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997, 6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence. The physical exhibit opened in 2007 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College (where Livingston started the series, as a student, way back when). The exhibit included rephotographs of every Polaroid and took up a 7 x 120 foot space.


For me, photos have always been a hauntingly beautiful way to tell a life story, and an even better reminder of the things and people that matter to us while we're living and the memories that we leave behind when we're long gone.

Read the full story at Mental Floss.

Check out Jamie Livingston's Photo of the Day web site.

Coffee Clicks!

• One of the best lines describing Facebook username regret from Mashable: "When Facebook first rolled out custom usernames, we cautioned that much like a bad tattoo..." Well, you now have the option to change your mind. Find out how to change your Facebook username. [Mashable]


• Some great Twitter tips for businesses and non-profits. Twitter 101 for Businesses and Three Keys To Non-Profit Success In Social Media.


• How The New York Times home page gets made. [The NY Observer]

Coffee Clicks! is a compilation of random items on the web that catches my attention as I have my morning cuppa.

Coffee Clicks! Comic-Con Edition!

With San Diego Comic-Con (#SDCC) kicking off tonight, I figured it might be fun to feature some tidbits and upcoming items that I'm looking forward to the next couple of days.

• Ooo, Official Comic-Con iPhone App - I'm downloading it just for the heck of it.


• James Cameron will show footage of the sci-fi film Avatar, his first feature film since Titanic was released back in 1997. LA Times describes it as "a futuristic “Dances With Wolves” about a tough-guy Marine (Sam Worthington) who goes native on a rain-forest planet populated by big blue beasties." On a side note, if Worthington looks familiar, he was last seen as Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation. Be prepared to see more of him in the coming year - besides Avatar, he plays Perseus in the Clash of the Titans. [LA Times]



• 10 Ridiculous Comic-Con Costumes. I am not looking forward to the Dr. Manhattans this year. Eww, blue weiners. [Total Film]


• Ugh, Twilight New Moon stars Rob Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner will be appearing at an off-site press conference. Great, just what we need - more photos of Rob P. [Variety]