Welcome to the Screen Pilot water cooler. Our team randomly posts things they find interesting, funny or just generally think might be of use to others. If you've come in through the side door, you can knock on the front door here.
To help hotels and resorts stay on top of mentions, chats or general dialogue that might be happening about their properties, Screen Pilot, a bleeding edge digital marketing firm, have compiled a Top 5 list of free tools that can be used right now to keep tabs on the social media-verse.
-Social Mention (socialmention.com) is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the social universe into a single stream of information. Social Mention monitors more than a hundred social media properties.
-WhosTalkin (WhosTalkin.com) is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics cared about most such as property brand name. Search and sorting algorithms combine data taken from over 60 of the internet’s most popular social media gateways.
-Samepoint (samepoint.com) crawlers encompass every conceivable type of social media service. Categorization breaks out results by type of social media.
-Surchur (surchur.com) is the ultimate dashboard to right now. The surchmeter shows how popular a keyword is on different sources: surchur, blogs and twitter etc.
-Trendrr (trendrr.com) allows you to track the popularity and awareness of trends across a variety of inputs, ranging from social networks, to blog buzz and video views downloads, all in real time. Compare trends to one another, monitoring and evaluating across a variety of sources.
No matter what tool you use, interpretation of the data is a different ball game. Screen Pilot’s social media services can help you translate what all these results mean. Not only does Screen Pilot position hospitality brands in the social media space, but we help track the impact and revenues generated as a result of social media and other hotel internet marketing efforts. For results, best-practice advice and incremental revenues visit screenpilot.com
According to PC World “Quickoffice” is one of the Top 10 Must-Have iPhone Business Apps”! If offers Office functionality on the iPhone with an impressive suite of features!
Quickoffice is available for iPhone and iPod Touch running on iPhone OS 3.0. Enjoy superior Microsoft® Word and Excel CREATE & EDIT functionality today in a powerful productivity suite. VIEW, EMAIL, and ACCESS attachments with the most popular file formats.
The core Quickoffice suite comprises four great programs which allow users to work on important documents such as contracts, business plans, sales presentations, financial reports and other documents sent as email attachments – directly on their phone. Plus, Quickoffice users can “push” their documents to a printer, fax, projector or back to a desktop with complete confidence.
Suite features:
Open, edit, and create text (.TXT) files, Word (.DOC, .DOCX) documents, and Excel (.XLS, .XSLX) spreadsheets compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows and Microsoft Office 2008 for Macintosh
Auto-save and auto-restore
High-fidelity rendering and crisp characters
Advanced notepad editor
Intuitive cut-copy-paste compatible with the iPhone OS 3.0
Set custom passcode lock to prevent sniffy people from running the app and much more!
Quickoffice is running a special offer of 50% off for the first 10,000 customers at $9.99 which is a steal! If you are on the go and work with Microsoft Office then you’ll find this app invaluable. To learn more and to take advantage of the special offer click here.
Social Mention is an alert tool that acts similar to Google Alerts but focuses it’s results from blogs, microblogs, networks, bookmarks, comments, images, news, video, audio and other social web information.
How can you search with Social Mention?
It’s similar to doing any search you would on search engines such as Google. You just enter a phrase you’re looking for, a product, company name or person’s name and you will receive a daily email alert when your keywords are triggered.
You can also track your topic easily by setting up a Social Mention breaking news alert or RSS feed. For instance you can do a real-time search on a topic such as “Walmart Black Friday Deals 2009” and choose from a variety of sources and I chose for this example “Google News” and it returned the following results:
As you can see it’s pretty powerful with lots of information. If you would like to give it a try, click here!
As the Holiday Season is fast approaching many of us will be on the road travelling to visit family and friends. If you own an iPhone below is a list of 11 apps that could just help make your journey that much easier and pleasant!
These apps will help you locate the nearest gas stations, hotels and restaurants. They will also help you to learn more about the local scene and current weather conditions.
Mapsbuddy – helps make search on Google Maps easier. Quick shortcuts to finding gas stations, restaurants, post office, and many other things you’ll need for the road.
SimulTravel GPS – an innovative application that locates hotels around you to plan travel while you travel. You can locate hotels that are not near your current location. There are over 35,000 hotels to choose from in other cities or near other airports.
Urbanspoon – if you can’t decide where to eat, shake your iPhone and Urbanspoon will pick a good restaurant for you to try. Keep shaking until you find a restaurant you’re happy with.
Yelp – Yelp the popular review-based social network also has an iPhone app. Use it to search for places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play then read reviews from an active community of locals in the know.
Road Trip – is the fastest easiest way to log your mileage and gas expenses. You can graph out trip expenses and even export the data in csv format into Excel. It has multiple currency support. It can also record your car’s information such as VIN, insurance policy number, emergency phone numbers and registration.
The Weather Channel – this app provides in-motion radar maps, traffic cams (select markets), improved graphics and more.
WifiTrak – this app will help you find FREE and open WiFi hotspots and public access points quickly and easily. Network list sorted from best to worst.
Road Trip Fun – this app contains a list of games that you and your family can play on a road trip! Helps keep the kids in the car busy whilst you drive! No internet connection is needed!
Flashlight – when you find yourself in a dark spot, Flashlight will illuminate where you are with a bright white light or you can customize the color of your choice.
When you have a team working from different locations and you need to collaborate on documents, DocVerse might be the tool you need!
DocVerse is a plug-in for Microsoft Office that adds functionality to the sidebar within Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint and Word. You can invite friends and colleagues to collaborate on any documents. As edits are made, the changes are synced to the cloud.
Apart from a hard copy, a web-based version of the document gets automatically save for team members to see making collaboration easier.
DocVerse also provides some great discussion and tracking features through the sidebar as well. It allows you to IM anyone collaborating on the document. You have the ability to track recent changes and who made them. There is a history tab that provides you with a larger view of the history of the document.
It’s real easy to use and great for employees who are already using Microsoft Office to get things done. Docverse is not free, however. It costs $49 per month for 10 users and 500 documents and $99 per month for 25 users and 1500 documents.
To learn more, watch the video below for a brief tutorial or visit Docverse’s website – http://www.docverse.com/
The Dropbox iPhone App is ready for free download! It is also available for Windows and Linux.
For those of you not familiar with Dropbox it’s an easy-to-use cross-platform cloud storage with sharing capabilities. Now you can also link to your Dropbox account from you iPhone. If you don’t already have a Dropbox account it will prompt you to create a free 2GB account when you download the app for your iPhone.
The Dropbox desktop version allows automatic syncing with your account online. Due to storage limitations on your iPhone, the iPhone app will not auto sync with your entire Dropbox account but it will sync through the use of a favorite Dropbox file.
Other features include one-click sharing of your Dropbox files by email and a photo gallery view for easy browsing of images on your iPhone. You can also upload photos and videos directly to your Dropbox account from your iPhone.
Still not sure if you need a free Dropbox account? Below are some reasons why you should!
Dropbox Features
File Sync
Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically.
2GB of online storage for free, with up to 100GB available to paying customers.
Sync files of any size or type.
Sync Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
Automatically syncs when new files or changes are detected.
Work on files in your Dropbox even if you’re offline. Your changes sync once your computer has an Internet connection again.
Dropbox transfers will correctly resume where they left off if the connection drops.
Efficient sync – only the pieces of a file that changed (not the whole file) are synced. This saves you time.
Doesn’t hog your Internet connection. You can manually set bandwidth limits.
File Sharing
Sharing files is simple and can be done with only a few clicks.
Shared folders allow several people to collaborate on a set of files.
You can see other people’s changes instantly.
A “Public” folder that lets you link directly to files in your Dropbox.
Control who is able to access shared folders (including ability to kick people out and remove the shared files from their computers).
Automatically create shareable online photo galleries from folders of photos in your Dropbox.
Online Backup
Dropbox backs up your files online without you having to think about it.
Automatic backup of your files.
Undelete files and folders.
Restore previous versions of your files.
30 days of undo history, with unlimited undo available as a paid option.
Web Access
A copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers. This lets you access them from any computer or mobile device.
Manipulate files as you would on your desktop – add, edit, delete, rename etc.
Search your entire Dropbox for files.
A “Recent Events” feed that shows you a summary of activity in your Dropbox.
Create shared folders and invite people to them.
Recover previous versions of any file or undelete deleted files.
View photo galleries created automatically from photos in your Dropbox.
Security & Privacy
Dropbox takes the security and privacy of your files very seriously.
Shared folders are viewable only by people you invite.
All transmission of file data and metadata occurs over an encrypted channel (SSL).
All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.
Dropbox website and client software have been hardened against attacks from hackers.
Dropbox employees are not able to view any user’s files.
Online access to your files requires your username and password.
Public files are only viewable by people who have a link to the file(s). Public folders are not browsable or searchable.
Entrepreneurs and business owners have to strategize and plan ahead for their business on the go a lot of the times. Ideas could come at any time to us. It could be whilst commuting to and from a meeting, whilst grocery shopping or anything else that we might be doing and it’s important to capture these ideas for later when we have time to come back to them.
Mind mapping is a great tool to help capture these thoughts graphically, quickly and clearly. There are a lot of both online and offline mind mapping tools available that are either free or paid. One in particular that stands out is Mindmeister.
Since Mindmeister is an online tool, users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world or in different rooms can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other’s changes as they happen. This is great if you have a team working on the same project!
Mindmeister offers both free and paid versions and allows you to create your mind maps online giving you the ability to access your thoughts anytime and from anywhere. They even have an iPhone version of it.
Some of the features of Mindmeister include:
Free Version
Have up to 3 mind maps
Share and collaborate mind maps
Import maps from Freemind and MindManager
Export maps as image in PDF/RTF
Publish maps to blogs and websites
For the Premium Version – $4/month
You get all the features of the free version above plus
Instead of 3 mind maps you get unlimited mind maps
Export maps to Freemind and MindManager
Add file attachments to topics
Create and edit maps offline
Full SSL encryption
Search in maps
Advertising free, logo free exports
The also offer two other paid versions for Business and Academic for $6 and $15 per month respectively with additional features. You can learn more about Mindmeister by clicking here.
As much as there is a multitude of social media sites outhere, there equally seems to be a great deal of tools to help you figure out what’s going on with your brand names, reputations, etc etc. So we’ve picked a few of the best free apps to help you measure, monitor and generally navigate your way through the social media forest.
HowSociable? – A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metrics http://howsociable.com
TweetMeme – View the most popular Twitter threads occurring now. http://tweetmeme.com
Addict-o-matic – A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presence http://addictomatic.com
Posterous – Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email. http://posterous.com
Pixelpipe – Upload photos, video, and audio files once through the Pixelpipe Media Gateway and distribute your content across over 100+ social networks, photo/video sites, blogs, and other online services. http://pixelpipe.com
eKstreme – is a keyword research tool with one simple aim: to find out who’s talking about a certain keyword.http://ekstreme.com/buzz
Keotag – making it easy for you to track if someone tags a page using your company or product name.http://www.keotag.com
Social Mention – search aggregation for various sources, from blogs to social sites. http://www.socialmention.com
