Full disclosure: I admit I am a technology geek and, unabashedly, a Google fanboy. I am always fiddling with my gadget of choice (my Google Nexus One phone), customising my Google Chrome browser and I constantly try to outsmart the office’s laptop and its ‘restrictions’. You may ask why do I spend valuable time and effort on activities like these?

Well, I demand technology to work for me, to get the most value out of pieces of technology I own or paid good money for. But most simple technologies are made available to me for free, so being Singaporean, free is holy. But, above all, the driving motivation for this is to increased productivity and efficiency, both for my personal and professional uses. (Particularly useful when I was studying too).

Consider these very simple examples:

And there are many more little tricks and simple tools that are waiting for to be discovered and used daily. Technology (even weaponry) are meant to help us in some way or another to improve our lives. The computer, the telephone and even the humble toothpick (care for a twig?)

All This Is Fuddy-Duddy to You?

Are you saying these to yourself “That is too difficult!”, “Oh, I don’t think I am savvy enough”, “I am afraid of the Internet”, “I don’t have a smartphone”, etc.? Well, heard about the 99-year old grandmother with an iPad? Or the 1-year old iPhone-savvy baby?

Believe me, you too can take advantage of simple technologies like these and make your life a little more productive and efficient. As long as you have a computer, work with a computer or simply surf the web on a computer, you deserve the opportunity to harness the power of simple technologies.

Everyone has a right to simple technologies to enhance their lives. Every second saved through being efficient really adds up. (In a year, how many hours do you waste in total waiting for your favourite news website to load every morning?)

The Truth Hurts

To be frank, I keep company with young and technologically-savvy people (maybe an old-age inferiority thang!) Many of them understand the power of simple technologies and use this knowledge for their own benefits. They are school-leavers (could possibly be your child, nephew or niece), below the age of 26, equipped and exposed to iPhones and iPads and also totally understand and exploit the value of online social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

In a few years’ time, they will slowly and collectively change the culture in your workplace: they have Twitter on their iPhones so they are getting news as it is breaking. They have placed their trust in cloud computing because they know it is efficient, timely and cost-friendly. They will make lightning-quick and well-informed  decisions and will be the main driver and steward of a real-time and social economy.

Where will you be then? Can you catch up?

My working experience in the world’s biggest enterprise software company has been quite telling. Despite the technology-driven environment, a large majority of my former colleagues are not taking advantage or leveraging on simple technologies to help them in their work and learning. Even for something simple and efficient like RSS for reading. If folks from a top technology company are ‘not getting it’, what about the rest of us?

No one I knew in school (I used to attend part-time classes) uses RSS for reading or research.

The digital divide is alarming. And here are my plans.

Why Am I Doing This?

I will write a more in-depth post soon on my future objectives and my conviction on why I should set out and do this. But here’s a short explanation in a nutshell.

Recently, I did some thinking and had a ‘A-HA!’ moment that totally changed my focus and perspective.

An empowered and enabled employee will do more wonders for an organisation than state-of-the-art software or a roomful of high-end servers. Period.

Throughout this blog, I have written about how businesses should adopt and adapt the ‘open’ business model through social media and online marketing.

I was totally missing the point.

It is people that should matter first. Develop the people, then develop the business.

Didn’t they say the most efficient and productive workforce keeps the economy running smooth and healthy?

I leave you now with one of my inspiration. Watch this (a little dizzy at times) video to understand what I mean.

Video Credits: Dan Pink’s animated talk: ‘Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’

Thanks for reading this post. If you have any comment or would like to share your ideas, thoughts or even to give input on how I can improve on the survey and study, do feel free to use the Comment space below.

Being the avid foodies that we are, the wife and I are always on the lookout for new food joints to satisfy our cravings. Our problem is, being Muslims, finding halal establishments in Singapore can be quite a challenge. The halal foodie depends heavily on word-of-mouth recommendations, googling the Web and physical ‘stumbleupons’ to discover new food places (sometimes food blogs such as ‘Yok Makan!’ offers great recommendation). But most times though, halal food places remains top of our Google search list.

Not for much longer though. The mobile web will save us all.

Introducing BuUuk: The Mobile Foodie App

Things have gotten easier since we discovered BuUuk for our Android phones (Nexus One FTW BTW). BuUuk is a restaurant guide utility application available for free on the iPhone App Store and also for phones running on Android (get it from Android Market on your phone or click this to dowload .apk file and install). Interestingly, BuUuk is a homegrown, Singapore-made product and has also been featured on CNN Go’s list of ‘11 Crucial iPhone Travel Apps’.

Key Features of BuUuk You Should Know

- BuUuk is a location-aware app. Wherever you are (local or overseas), BuUuk uses your GPS or AGPS location to provide you with Nearby food recommendations. This, I think, is a really cool feature, saves travel time obviously. BuUuk even tells me that I am ‘142m’ away from the Toa Payoh Bus Interchange’s McDonalds outlet (I am at my workdesk at home right now).

- BuUuk currently has a database of restaurants in 50 cities in Asia and Pacific and Middle East (including Seoul, Langkawi, Osaka, Vientiane, etc) Wherever you are, BuUuk will come to you with information.

- BuUuk has both ‘Featured’ (paid listings?) and user-added restaurant listings. You can also add a new discovery to the list. A great way to recommend your favourite chef to friends, family and all foodies out there.

- BuUuk has Best lists. Cuts decision-making time efficiently and more time to enjoy your food.

- BuUuk provides a restaurant page for the food place you are searching for. What’s great here? Cuisine info, contact number, address and directions (running on Google Maps engine). You won’t get lost for sure.

- You can also vote for your favourite foodie hangouts (or find out which joints you should avoid)

- It also looks like BuUuk has an active ‘mobile forum’ section called ‘Ask BuUuk’.

- Here’s the great bit for the wife and I: BuUuk shows if a restaurant is Halal or not. There is also a Categories feature for us to check out all the Halal food joints in Singapore and travel out to these places. ( Other categories are Hawker, German, Filipino and even Dutch among many others.) Note to the Halal Foodie: Please do a quick Google search or ask around to find out if the place is indeed Halal. As a fair bit of the information on BuUuk are user/customer-generated, error in highlighting a place as ‘Halal’ might occur. As with all user-generated recommendations, do a little more search. Start with Google.

My verdict on BuUuk: It is a very promising mobile application with great potential as long as content are fresh and relevant to service users. I would also suggest an editor to audit the restaurant information submitted by users. Nothing biggie there where user-generated content is concerned.

The Age of the Halal Foodies has arrived, rejoice!

Follow BuUuk on Twitter

(Non-marketing folks, perhaps the following might bore you. You may leave if you wish to do so.)

Part II: Why Mobile Marketing Is Important for Business, Big and Small

Can you, the Singaporean food business owner, afford NOT to be on BuUuk?

Here’s an interesting statistic featured in Straits Times yesterday: 80% of ALL phones sold in Singapore in the last 6 months are smartphones.

These are mobile gadgets that allow anyone to access the web any where and everywhere. Consumers have now been freed from the shackles of their desktop to search for content and information wherever they want and whenever they need to. From a personal experience, I have hardly needed to lug my work laptop around or access the web on the desktop computer at home after receiving my Nexus One. The smartphone meets my informational and computing needs adequately.

Where Are Consumers Heading?

Consumers are going to reach out to the nearest businesses they can conveniently reach digitally and those who have taken the effort to market and create presence on the mobile web platform. Those who do will certainly acquire the edge and headstart over others. Consumers are also making specific and targeted search, (such as halal food) and, without online content to optimise search results, businesses might be on the losing end in the long run. With location services such as Foursquare and Gowalla proving extremely popular with the smartphone crowd these days, the consumer retail industry will need to transform itself quickly to cater to these new realities.

No Love for SMS Marketing

Okay, by default, I am going to ignore SMS marketing, be it traditional or interactive. I get irritated by them for interrupting me at the most inconvenient moments. My theory is, advertisers and networks are moving (or jumping in) on the mobile marketing space because traditional advertising has failed. Mobile is just another channel for advertisers to interrupt with noisy commercial messages. I have not seen something I appreciate for ages! (Having said that, markets, such as India or Indonesia, do work and possibly have a need for SMS marketing because of the lack of mobile web infrastructure and slower technologies. Still, no condoning for interruptive tactics from me!)

Mobile Content for Consumers: Utilisable, Reusable and Shareable

The future of mobile marketing should lie in reusable and consumer-utilisable content. Only by developing content can companies capitalise on effective branding (recall and engagement) and generate long-term customer retention. Like BuUuk. I am a fan. And I am sharing with all of you.

More thoughts and ideas on mobile marketing coming to this blog. Watch this space.

This post was inspired by my 3-day attendance at the Mobile Marketing Association Forum (Asia Pacific) 2010. The Mobile Marketing Association is a global non-profit organisation that is leading the growth and adoption of mobile marketing among businesses globally. I fancy what they are doing to keep it sane and do have a read of their Global Code of Conduct (PDF) for mobile marketers. We are in good hands.

Share your thoughts and comments below on BuUuk, mobile marketing and even better still, the best Halal food joints! Let me start, where to find authentic halal dim sum in Singapore? :P

Credits:

Food image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laruth/

BuUuk images: www.pcworld.com, iridianstudio.com

Nexus One image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mackarus

How can a company who gives its product away for free be extremely profitable (billions in revenue!)? Chris Brogan says it nicely here on how Red Hat does business by involving the community.

In a really connected world, no one can go it alone. Apart from the community that supports and develops your products (in tech at least), listening to your customers (end-users) must be the easiest way to gain insights, to polish your wares. But sadly, that is not always the case.

This Red Hat video says it very well and succinctly. The community-driven enterprise: it works!

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By now you must have realised my fascination for augmented reality. It has all been really ‘cool’ without much real-life application (yet) outside of games and layering the real world with the internet. Fancy but still too techy for most folks.

This is something else. The United States Postal Service has come up with a brilliant use for augmented reality. For the CUSTOMER. Not an exhibition.

A breakthrough perhaps in a real life use for augmented reality (anyone else seen anything similar being developed? Please comment if you have.) So, have you ever wondered if that teddy bear gift you bought will fit in a packing box for shipping? Now you can find out yourself with a camera and internet connection. No need for ‘guess-timation’ or looking out for that measuring tape that is never around when you need it.

Can SingPost develop something like this? I say it would be the norm rather than a novelty in the not-too-distant future.

Excellent, this is technology for the customer. Watch video below and be convinced.

If you are in Settings in your Twitter profile page, have you noticed…

Funny thing is, I have never received a newsletter from Twitter. Nor any other communication since signing up.

Or you have and it is really just me?

Maybe they haven’t figured it out yet. Probably thousands of others like me have explicitly given them the permission to speak directly to me. And they’re not jumping on to this? They need to read a Godin.

Or they haven’t hired anyone to do this. Or set it up? Too busy on the technology or how to monetise perhaps?

Here’s the official line from Twitter’s own help page.

I have been a user far much longer than 6 weeks, spill the beans already!

A slides primer on Social Media below for those still grappling with its enormity (ie. Bosses). I like this for its simplicity AND for the cold hard facts and stats on social media. VERY important for any business decision making. Especially crucial when you need to convince your dino-boss on this thing called Social Media. And don’t ever forget to remind your boss when he “gets it”: its always a two-way thing.

Maybe social “media” is a misnomer; it should indeed be “social conversations”. Much prefer that actually.

More from the author, Marta Kagan on Slideshare. Check her out.

I can see the future of Augmented Reality technology. It’s a a matter of time. See videos below for my absolute conviction:

Was just commenting this on a colleague’s post on Web 3.0. Indeed, the possibilities are endless. A bit intrusive, but like how Tat‘s technology has showcased in the video above, that can be easily remedied. Simple, like changing profile on your mobile phone.