We are members of SIPA, the Specialized Information Publishers Association.

About SIPA: “SIPA is the international trade association dedicated to advancing the interests of for-profit subscription newsletter publishers and specialized-information services.”

They have been a great organization to be a member of and helpful to our company as we have been to the membership with our services.

They have a feature on the website:

“The Road Taken
An inside look at a SIPA member, the choices he or she has made on the road to success, and the challenges ahead.”

And I was asked to do this week’s interview. You may find it interesting and entertaining. They asked me some good questions, got me thinking… You can read the entire interview here:

Tom Lynch SIPA Interview

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Tom Lynch Categories: General

Astek is sponsoring the 8th Annual Silver Room Sound System Block Party with a webcam monitoring the first ever collaboration between renowned Chicago artists Ray Noland and Hebru Brantley. The “WE COME IN PEACE” mural on Evergreen just west of Milwaukee began production on Monday, July 19, and will be finished tomorrow during the Block Party. Come check it out!

Check out the real time footage throughout the creation of this 52-foot by 13-foot mural.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun

Mobile marketing has changed a lot in the past couple of years. Geo-targeting uses your smart phone’s GPS to find out where you are, allows you to “check in” to a location, and deliver targeted messages to you based on that information.

Leaders in the geo-targeting space include Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt (plus LooptStar). They are similar in many ways, but each offers a different twist on an increasingly familiar theme. They enable local businesses to find and attract consumers in new ways, such as offering coupons or special offers to regulars based on how many times they’ve come in. Like many start-ups, none have mastered the monetization aspect of mobile marketing, but there are clearly endless opportunities here.

In order to give people incentive to use the apps, various forms of social “rewards” are used that essentially turn exploring your city into a game. We are social creatures, and while some of these rewards may seem meaningless or frivolous, there is an attraction to them as they create an element of social status within communities. A large part of the appeal to people in large cities with lots of friends is to make sure you never miss the action, but I believe the jury is still out as to the real social value of this once the initial allure wears off a bit.

While this isn’t intended to be an in-depth review, I’ll discuss some interesting distinctions of each:

Foursquare – I’ve been on Foursquare for about a year now. It’s been amazing to watch the database of local places grow since it depended on the community to enter locations. Now it’s rare that I go somewhere that isn’t already there. The person who frequents a location the most becomes the “mayor” and some establishments give benefits for that position. You collect virtual badges for achieving certain things, like being in a place with at least 50 other people (Swarm) or hitting 4 clubs in one night (Crunked). You get the idea. Foursquare made a gamble by creating a new database of locations and friends, but it seems to have paid off. The most compelling thing about this is the special offers that are based on your location. When you check in somewhere, the app will tell you if there is a nearby special, or one at the place you are (a free drink for 10 check-ins for example). While Foursquare has exploded in the past year, I haven’t seen a congruent explosion of the specials offered by businesses.

LooptStar is a spinoff of Loopt, which was historically a more informational type of app. Their new entry enters the “rewards” space more heavily. The thing that LooptStar does that I believe will give it an advantage is use Facebook Connect to leverage the largest existing social network rather than wait for everyone to find their friends on yet another new one. They were later to the game, but I believe this will give them an edge in the long run. In LooptStar you become a “boss” rather than a “mayor.” But the rewards look to be more tangible than FourSquare.

Gowalla benefits from being on all major mobile smart platforms, including Blackberry and Palm. They also rely on partnerships with existing travel-related services to offer “trips” and share those with your friends. While Foursquare provides community tips based on your location, Gowalla focuses more on directly exploring your friends’ favorite locations to learn more about what they like rather than the community at large.

All of these apps feature basic sharing with your Twitter and Facebook feeds to let people know what you’re up to. Yelp has entered the space by adding check-in to its feature set and you can bet that Google is going to be all over this with its massive business database and Android mobile platform. The problem these sites have is that they have established brand and culture that make it harder to break into new areas.

While this space is fascinating to watch, it still has a long way to go. The apps depend largely upon smart phones such as iPhone and Android, which represent the minority of the mobile market. Also, I feel that any app that requires you to actively check in to a location rather than simply knowing where you are is going to appeal more to geeks and early adopters than the majority of people. It can be very distracting to interrupt your social experience. “Wait guys… I have to check in here first…”

What’s the alternative? Remember Minority Report, when Tom Cruise’s retinas were scanned everywhere he went? In that version of the future, you didn’t even need a device to tell the network where you were. Cameras were so ubiquitous that they knew anyway. Scary? A bit. Possible? You bet.

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter | Other ePiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, ePiphany Featured Story

If your business has a website, you want it to be accessible to the widest possible audience.  In terms of viewing it in a web browser on a standard desktop computer, this means testing it in a wide array of browser (IE, Firefox, Safari, etc) and operating system (Windows, Mac) combinations.  The site design then often needs some tweaking so that it functions as consistently as possible across those combinations.  This cross-browser testing is a standard part of the site creation process, and something that a company like Astek will handle without you having to worry about it much at all.

In order for a website to display in a way that is at all useful on many mobile phones, a wholly separate site design is needed.  See Katie Hawkey’s article in this ePiphany for more on the actual details of mobile website formatting. The decision as to whether a mobile format for your website is necessary requires some cost-benefit analysis.  Lets consider some statistics and trends.  The percentage of total web traffic over mobile phones was at 1.26% by the end of 2009, having doubled over that year (source).  I was unable to find any more recent numbers, but given the trend it would be reasonable to put it near 2% by now.  A more telling number is that 35% of US adults say they access the internet with their phones, up from 25% in 2009 (source).

So, a really significant number of people are using phones to look at websites, although they probably still use their computers more often.  But if they check your website once and it comes out all jumbled on their phone, you have left a bad impression.  Another wrinkle is whether a visitor’s mobile browser even needs a separate mobile-formatted design.  Smartphones like those on the iPhone and Android platforms have web browsers which can view websites pretty much the same as desktop web browsers.  Other phones, including all current Blackberry models, have web browsers with a very limited way of presenting websites.

Read more »

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Gadget, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

As you may have heard, Astek recently launched the iPhone 4 App, Light Beam! We’ve been having fun finding all the amazing uses for the app including flashlight (duh), strobe light, bike safety flasher, a way to help your friend find you in a crowd (at night the flashing light can be seen more than 2 blocks away!) and most recently as a “brush” for drawing in light.

We recently asked Astek staff and friends to use Light Beam in front of a long exposure camera to draw original light art inspired by a series of 1949 LIFE photos featuring Pablo Picasso drawing in the air with just a flashlight.

http://www.life.com/image/72386434/in-gallery/24871/picasso-drawing-with-light

We couldn’t be more pleased with the results! Our “Light Beam Artists” used the steady beam as well as strobes at various speeds to create some really cool works! We video taped their movements to produce these images as well! I can’t decide which I like looking at more, the video of the “light dances” or the beautiful final images! Please check out our videos and let us know what you think! If you want to submit your own Light Beam drawings we encourage you to do so at our Light Beam for iPhone 4 Facebook Page!

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology

My Samsung smart phone is missing.

Liz and I went camping and fishing this past weekend and it’s gone.

It could have gotten into the trash inadvertently while we were packing up camp. I dunno. Maybe it fell out of my pocket into the Rock River while night fishing, and leaning over to dehook yet another inedible (non-Asian) carp.

Not knowing where it is I can only imagine…

I imagine it was for a short time at the bottom of the Rock River somewhere near Dixon IL. Within minutes it probably ended up in the belly of some hungry, indiscriminate, oversized catfish and is now much closer to the Mississippi River.

Catfish eat practically anything you know. Some of the locals bragged of catfish over four feet long and over 100 lbs. Big enough for a smart phone (smelling like night crawlers) snack.

If I had GPS on the smart phone, and it was waterproof, I probably could have tracked the journey. There has got to be an app for that right? Lost phone, underwater, in-fish, tracking app.

Did a little research today. There’s over 360 fishing apps at the app store. I don’t have an iPhone but’s that’s where the app’s is at. So I picked one to get acquainted with. The app: “The iSolunar – Solunar Tables iPhone App”.  The theory – certain times fish are more active – so fish then and you’ll catch more fish.

I got a stand-alone moon/sun thing like that for Christmas and I didn’t catch any more fish when it was going crazy with alarms or not.

And even if the app can tell you “when” the fish are eating, they can’t tell you “where” or “what” they are eating. You have to dangle something in front of their face. Maybe they want it and maybe they don’t. Keep trying until they do or accept defeat.

My dream smart phone app for fishing is a social media play with some very smart phone technology.

It would have to be body of water specific, real time like I caught this fish with that lure, line, pole, technique and so on. And it would have to read the message out loud so I wouldn’t have to take my eyes off the pole. And it would have to convert speech back to text – message back – thanks for the tip – look at my whopper big mouth bass. Embed photos and all. I hold my freshly caught four pounder up to the phone – tell the phone to take a picture and it sends back to my helpful fellow fisherman. All hands free and no eyes off the pole.

Not holding my breath for that one… But not putting it past Crowe to come up with something either. For now I’m an “app-less” fisherman.

At least soon I’ll get a refurbished version of my Samsung smart phone back. Fortunately I have the lost and stolen insurance with Verizon. Everything backed up on the PC so no big loss, except not knowing the real journey of my smart phone.

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Tom Lynch Categories: General

Mobile sites are a totally different beast than websites meant to be viewed on a personal computer. An ideal mobile site is lean in content and file size. Stripped of superfluous information, ads and text, it’s designed for small screens, quick access to key information and minimum page loads. The design techniques for mobile-optimized sites often require a completely different layout than your typical website.

If you want to have a website that is truly optimized for web browsing on both personal computers AND mobile devices, you need multiple versions of your site. Just the idea of maintaining multiple versions of a website may be a non-starter for many companies. But wait! Did you know you can update multiple versions of your site at the same time?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Content is Water, Templates are Vases
A Content Management System (CMS) is key to easily managing multiple versions of your site. To understand how this works, let’s look at your site content – the text, images, pdfs, etc. – as being separate from the template it is wrapped in. This is the essential principle behind any CMS (check out my article on how a CMS works). Web pages consist of a template with a header, footer, and sidebars that surround the content. For example:

Think of your content as water that will fill the shape and size of the template you pour it into…

You can make your mobile template a completely different shape, size and layout from your original site, but, if built correctly, the exact same content that is populating your original site will “pour” in and fill your mobile site perfectly. When you make a change to your content in the CMS, that edit will “pour” simultaneously to both your website and your mobile site. In other words, you make a change in one place, your CMS, and it updates both sites.

Of course, like a small vase, your mobile site cannot handle as much content as your larger site. You will need to carefully select what content is available through your mobile site. Once that decision has been made, the template for your mobile site can be designed and built to only request certain kinds of information from your Content Management System. For example, perhaps your mobile site will only show upcoming events, contact information and an about page and will not show newsletter archives, board minutes or other less visited content.

Example: Fandango
Let’s look at one of the progressive, early adopters of mobile technology, Fandango, and how they “pour” their content into their regular website and a completely different mobile version of their site.

Here is a screenshot showing the content you’ll find on their regular Website under “In Theatres”/“Opening This Week”:

Here is the same content on the iPhone App:

You can see instantly that the App runs from the same central Fandango CMS as the website but the iPhone App uses templates that pull limited types of content and format that content in a way that is most easily browsable for mobile users. Notice how much more information about each film is given to the iPhone user upfront? This reduces the need for them to load multiple pages to gain that information. You can also see how the Fandango App has limited ads.

Can I Do That?
As Fandango shows, the same content can be “poured” into very different templates to give the user the impression they are having a completely customized experience. This idea can be applied to any website, (even yours!) If your site runs off of a CMS, like Astek’s Webany, then you can pour your existing content into a mobile template. All you have to do is choose the content you want to feature and build a few additional templates!

What are you waiting for? Create your mobile site today!

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Katie Hawkey Categories: How To, Marketing, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

The Astek team is pleased as punch about our latest iPhone app, a flashlight that takes advantage of the new LED camera light in the iPhone 4.

But Light Beam is much more than just a flashlight! It’s the app that could save your party AND your life!

Light Beam is the iPhone 4’s brightest and easiest flashlight using the built-in LED flash! It includes a strobe light and SOS emergency beacon.

Features:

• Uses iPhone 4 built-in LED for brightest light possible.
• Intuitive, elegant design.
• Flashlight: Auto-on when app is opened for quickest access.
• Strobe Light: Bring the party with this ultra-bright strobe light. Or increase visibility for extra safety on your bike at night. Easy-touch slider allows you to control the speed.
• Emergency SOS Signal: Activate with the tap of a button. Beams a repeating SOS Morse code signal via the LED light.

Download Light Beam for iPhone 4 now!

Here’s a screenshot of Light Beam:

Check it out and if you don’t have an iPhone 4 please tell your friends!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Gadget, Technology

There was a lot of buzz this morning about when exactly iPhone users could get the iOS 4 update via iTunes since Apple gave no time for the release today.  It seems like it was made available at 10 AM PST.  And yeah, I know that because I was checking with some frequency.  I have a 3GS version of the iPhone, which is the last hardware version they made, before the iPhone 4 which is just being delivered this week to the early adopters.

3GS owners get most of the benefit of the new system update, with the exception of the Face Time videoconferencing feature which uses the new phone’s secondary camera.  The new iMovie app will also only be available for the new hardware apparently due to intensive processor requirements. 3G users get everything else except multi-tasking, and strangely, no wallpaper configuration either.  And 1st generation iPhone users are totally out of luck here.

In any case, I’ll say that my favorite thing about the new OS so far is the All Inboxes feature, which combines my work and personal email in one place.  So I no longer have to poke poke poke between them.  It also collates your email by thread, which is something I’m used to as a gmail user and appreciate.  Folders for organizing my apps is also nice, and I like the ability to now easily set the background for my home and lock screens.

The multi-tasking functionality seems pretty cool too.  I’ve played around with the interface for browsing and switching among concurrent apps.  It’s a pretty slick UI, no surprise.  I’m looking forward to the ability to listen to audio outside of the native iPod app while browsing email, the web, etc.

Here’s a couple good rundowns with more information about what iOS 4 is all about:

• A higher-level list of 6 highlights.  #1 is very important – update your apps in the app store to get the full benefit of multi-tasking!
• An in-depth walkthrough of almost everything that’s new in this version.  Very readable though.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Fun, Gadget, Technology