The 9 iPhone applications that I use every single day of the year
Looking back at 2012 I received a lot of questions regarding what apps I use on my iPhone. Like everybody, I have my list of favorite applications but as I reflect on 2012 I started thinking about which apps I use on a daily basis and are now part of my daily activity. That list is much shorter than apps that I like.
I have broken this blog post into 2 sections. The first section covers the applications that I use every day and yes that means 365 days per year. The second section covers applications that I are my favorites and help me solve specific problems but do not fall into the 365 days per year usage category.
For the purposes of my top list I am not including the default apps of Mail, Message, Calendar and Clock that I use daily.
5 Additional iPhone Apps that I use everyday of the year
What I like about it: Foursquare is my historical view of places I have been. I use it daily to help me solve 3 specific use case; 1) it helps me remember some of the great restaurants I have been to and which ones I want to go back to in the future, 2) I use it to discover new restaurants that I want to visit based on my friends checkins/tips as well as the foursquare community and 3) it is always fun to save some money by taking advantage of FourSquare specials.
My tip for new users: there is an option in FourSquare to share your checkins on Facebook and Twitter. I recommend that you don’t post all your mundane regular checkins but instead reserve it for travel locations and unique places you visit. This way you don’t upset your friends or followers.
Some data points on my FourSquare usage. If you check out my tripsQ page (http://tripsq.com/darbysieben) – you will notice that as of this posting date I have travelled 481K kilometers. Other data points, I have been using FourSquare for the past 1060 days and have compiled 5507 checkins during that time.
What I like about it: Crowdsource traffic conditions and turn by turn navigation. My use cases; 1) when at home keeps me up to date on travel times and gives me recommendations if I should change my regular routes, 2) when I travel and rent a car my go to app for turn by turn directions and the ability to accurately predict my ETA to my location and 3) when I take a taxi this app keeps the cab driver honest and has saved my money in the past when taxi drivers want to take me on a different route.
My tip for new users: Carry a charger in your car. This app, if you run it all the time like I do, drains the battery just like any turn by turn / map navigation app for the iPhone. Second find a good spot to mount it in your vehicle. I am lucky as both my vehicles allow me to mount right behind my steering wheel.
Some data points on my Waze usage. I started using it everyday in Q3 of this year. So far I have posted 122 alerts for other drivers and have racked up 8810km’s in driving data.
What I like about it: This app keeps me up to date with all the industry news that I require to do my job as well as personal interests that I want to stay on top of. My use cases; 1) its my primary news feed – nuff’ said and 2) is the primary tool that I use to populate my twitter account twitter.com/darbysieben.
What I like about it: I do a lot of searches and viewing of websites on my iPhone. For me, Google Chrome is much better than the default Safari browser. My reasons for stating this; 1) syncs with my Google account so that I can move from desktop to iPhone and have my search history/bookmarks move with me, 2) search within the URL browser – I hate the fact that on Safari you have a website URL entry and then a separate search entry box and 3) faster – although I don’t have any concrete numbers to validate this, it appears to be faster.
Facebook App
What can I say about facebook; it’s always nice to stay up to date with friends and family.
Here is a list of other apps that I use regularly and solve specific needs.
Holy Data Harmonization Batman : What Does That Mean Again?
This is a follow-up post (I am few months behind actually getting this post up) to an announcement we made in 2011 with our data harmonization deal with FourSquare. Since that time we have done the same thing with OpenTable and TripAdvisor and have launched an internal DealsAPI (soon to be public, check out our DEALS API page) which aggregates local deals.
So what is data harmonization. In a nutshell, it is matching two separate databases and matching the records that are the same. In the case of local, its about mapping business “A” in one database to the same business “A” in the second database. Google was one of the first real data matching pioneers when they were aggregating local content from many sources into their place pages (remember those good old days).
What is really more important is the output of doing this. The output of matching data boils down to a creating a better and more robust user experience by combining presenting information from multiple sources to help users make better decisions.
So in practice here is what the end product looks like.
Let’s take a look at Tipperary’s Pub on YellowPages.ca. As an aside; if you like thick crust pizza, this is one of the best places in Calgary.
Here is an image of the standard information you would expect; name, address, map. Notice right above the map on the right hand side is the first indication that this listing has additional content from TripAdvisor.
When you scroll down the page the user has a couple of sources of reviews to look at. Reviews that comes from YellowPages.ca users and reviews that come from TripAdvisor
To the right hand side on the page, the user also has the ability to look at tips and who has checked into this location courtesy of FourSquare.
The mobile experience is the same thing. If you want to check out the Tipperary Pub mobile page.
On this page you will notice the reviews from TripAdvisor, checkins/tips from FourSquare as well as the photos from FourSquare.
So what’s next.
We are working on bringing more of these content partnerships into place. Soon we will be opening up the ID’s of our partner venue’s through YellowAPI which will then make it super easy for developers to mash up content just like we did on YellowPages.ca. If you have local content that can be mapped to a specific location in Canada that you think might be useful, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
[FIRST LOOK] Yahoo! Canada Integrates YellowAPI.com for Local Search
This is a first comparison of before and after screenshots of the new expanded relationship between Yahoo! Canada and Yellow Pages Group using YellowAPI to power Yahoo!’s local search in Canada. Yahoo and YPG have had a pretty long standing relationship in Canada that started with a customized version of YellowPages.ca built for Yahoo! users back in 2007. You can see this in action at Yahoo.YellowPages.ca. Then Yellow Pages Group provided it basic listing data to Yahoo for Yahoo! local property which was located at Ca.Local.Yahoo.com (NOTE; this URL now redirects to yahoo.yellowpages.ca). Then last March – Yahoo! Canada integrated with YellowAPI to provide local results for its mobile users, you can see my blog post, [Screenshots] Yahoo Mobile Integrates with YellowAPI. And rolling out now is the new integration of YellowAPI powering the local search results in Yahoo! web search and with the links going to Yahoo’s customized version of YellowPages.ca.
Click on any of the images below to see the full screenshot.
I also encourage you to visit Yahoo.ca and enter a local search query such as dentists in toronto, restaurants in calgary, etc. and play with this integration yourself.
Dentists in Toronto (Before)
Dentists in Toronto (After)
Restaurants in Calgary (Before)
Restaurants in Calgary (After) – Note the reviews, this is coming from YellowAPI
Lawyers in Montreal (Before)
Lawyers in Montreal (After)
Sushi in Vancouver (Before)
Sushi in Vancouver (After)
So what do you think of this new integration?
There’s Something About Weather; It’s Time to Get Hyperlocal
Like most Canadians my life is greatly influenced by weather. Knowing the forecast helps me make decisions on what I need to wear, what to pack when I travel and where to select a vacation destination. On the business side, I have always been fascinated with weather because it is one of those really boring businesses (nothing sexy about it), has high user frequency and is a pretty decent way to sell targeted advertising.
In fact, after I sold KS2 Solutions in 2005 I almost joined Pelmorex (known for TheWeatherNetwork.com or MetroMedia.com) to head up their sales in Western Canada. I ultimately decided to join Yellow Pages Group in early 2006. In January 2010 I ended up striking a partnership between YellowPages.ca and TheWeatherNetwork.com, read the post here – The Weather Network add Local Search and YellowPages.ca adds Weather – A Deeper Look at this Partnership.
Bottom line – weather has been an important part of my business and personal life.
My latest venture into weather is an investment in a new Montreal based start-up that is taking precipitation forecasting to a hyperlocal level, called SkyMotion Research. You can learn more about the company at SlideShare. They recently had some write-ups in popular blogs, check them out here:
TUAW –
Sky Motion for iOS lets you know what weather is coming on a very local basis
The Verge –
Sky Motion’s up-to-the-minute weather tracking app comes to the web
Mobile Syrup –
SkyMotion launches mobile web app to predict hyperlocal precipitation
Currently the application is iOS based with an Android version coming soon. See screenshot below which was a short-term forecast at my office in Calgary. You can download the iOS app here. You can also play with the online version at SkyMotion’s website, just enter your address.
I can definitely say that I am not alone when it comes to the importance of weather. Exactly how big is the weather market in Canada? Here are some stats you might find interesting.
What a waste! Failure to execute on mobile results in this.
This is 2012.
This is Canada.
This is the age of mobile.
Yet marketing teams continue to waste time, money and effort on deploying useless mobile engagement. The result of poor execution for the company; time, cost and failure to collect valuable user information. The result for the user; frustration.
What is most astounding to me is that during the entire process of building the strategy, mapping out the campaign and the associated collateral that somebody did not test this execution and say, “Wait a minute, this is not functional. We need a different execution”.
So, what has me going. Here is the scenario.
Early this week I met a long-time friend of mine for lunch at Original Joe’s in Kensington. I had the Fish and Chips and my friend had the Cob Salad. All in all the meal was good and the conversation even better. When we received the bill they included the following;
I was impressed that they included a QR Code on the survey. To me this makes a lot of sense to capture feedback at the time of checkout. What also is smart is that by including a QR Code, it gives a person immediate access to the survey on their smartphone. This is definitely going to generate a higher volume of responses than waiting for a person to get to their home/office to complete the survey at OriginalJoesSurvey.com.
As I pulled out my iPhone, ready to provide some good feedback, here is what I encountered. Read More…
Canadian Media Companies; Revenue Per UV and Thoughts on the Bell – Astral Deal
In the past 2-weeks some interesting news in the Canadian media space has happened. First, on March 16, BCE announced the purchase of Astral Media for 3.38B and second Borrell Associates has released its 2011 Revenue Survey, Benchmarking Local Online Media. There are 4 Canadian companies listed in the Borrell revenue survey which are Yellow Media Inc, Transcontinental, TorStar Digital and PostMedia and their ranking by north american digital revenues are #7, #14, #21 and #24 respectively. The largest 3 players in terms of revenues where AutoTrader.com, AT&T YellowPages.com and Groupon.
Borrell does some interesting comparisons in their report such as average online revenue per site by operator and average per-market ad revenue for local pure-play internet companies. In the latter category Groupon leads followed by Craigslist.org and AutoTrader.com. However, I wanted to take a more CDN view of this data.
First, I decided to take a look at the past 6-months average ComScore UV’s for each of the networks listed above.
The data is as follows;
Feels Good Heading to Boston for #ILMEast – First Time in the US in 7-Months
Well it feels good heading back to Boston this week for the ILMEast Conference. This is my first opportunity this year to head south of the border after spending the last quarter of 2011 in and out of the hospital.
Looking forward to the conference and hearing from some of the keynotes speakers; I am especially interested to hear what Leslie Berland, SVP of Digital Partnership for American Express. AMEX has really been active in the digital space around the deals segment. Some of other keynotes that should be interesting are Jay Herratti of CityGrid and Michael Silberman of New York Media to name a few.
Of course there are lots of meetings on tap with companies that Yellow Pages Group is interested in, companies we are already doing business with and of course companies who are interested in working with us.
If you happen to be at Kelsey and want to connect, send me a message via twitter @darbysieben.
That’s never happened before and how many miles I have travelled in FourSquare
Since joining Yellow Pages Group as an employee in 2006, I have spent a lot of time in airplanes and hotels. My airline of choice is Air Canada (yes, I am Super Elite) because of the upgrades to business class; which despite what some Westjet loyalists say (you know who you are) is important when you plan to do work. For the most part my experience has been pretty good, but then there are the odd times things get messed up.
I have had allot of firsts in the past 6-years (losing luggage, delays, getting spit on accidentally by kids, seen people get kicked off the plane, seats breaking mid-flight) but this past Sunday I experienced another first. This time, as I was boarding the plane, the attendant pulls me back and says, “sorry sir but you have been off-boarded from this flight by your concierge“. For context, I was on the 9am flight leaving Calgary to Toronto and was seated in 4A. After waiting until the plane was fully boarded the gate attendant spoke to my concierge service. Turns out she made a mistake by hitting the wrong key on the computer which off-boarded me that resulted in the gate attendant giving another person my seat. Anyway, I got my seat back after the gate attendant went onto the plane to tell the person sitting in 4A that they will have to move back into economy.
This day their might have been two firsts; getting off-boarded and being only minutes away from enjoying business class only to be bumped in the last minute. That person was definitely enjoying business case; they had already finished their pre-flight orange juice.
Speaking off travel I am also an avid user of FourSquare. Really interesting usage of the FourSquare API is by a company called tripsQ. Basically you connect your FourSquare account and it provides you with a nice visual of key stats regarding your travel. Since 2010 I have travelled 87% of the distance to the moon.
If I had data going back to 2006, I think I might be at the moon and back twice already.
Click here to see the my tripsQ page - http://tripsq.com/darbysieben
Messing Around With QR Code Generators and QR Code Usage in Canada
I will be in Boston attending ILMEast at the end of this month (March 25-28). I am seriously contemplating not bringing business cards to this event. Instead I am thinking of bringing only one card that contains a QR code with all my vCARD information and give this to people to scan with their smartphone. Of course I also use the LinkedIn and Bump apps which are both great ways to share contact information.
My motivation in taking this approach is three-fold,
- I don’t really need to be carrying more stuff with me when I travel,
- It is a convenient feature for potential contacts as they no longer need to enter my information manually
- I have to believe their is a positive environmental impact of not using business cards.
What do you think? Would you consider not bringing business cards to an event or conference?
QR Code Generation
A really interesting site that allows you to make a QR code that links to practically any source such as a vCard, webiste, email, Google Maps location, twitter account, etc. is QRStuff.com. Here is my QR Code that will take you to my LinkedIn profile.
QRCode to Darby Sieben's LinkedIn Profile (Scan it for yourself)
If are you looking for a quick and easy way to create a QR code, this is a great site to start with.
Canadian QR Code Data
Of course the first question any marketer is going to ask is what is the usage. I have some data that I compiled from the US that shows what people are using QR Codes for. I also have some Canadian Data of QR Code usage.
Pinterest – A Canadian Look @ The Web’s Hottest Social Site
This evening I was watching Calgary’s Global Newscast and they featured a story on Pinterest.com. Nothing says a popular social media website like being featured on a local news cast.
What is Pinterest? In a nutshell, it’s a digital pinboard for things that you love by “pinning” an image from a web page onto your own Pinterest board (check out my pinterest board). If you want a detailed overview check out the Mashable article; Meet Pinterest: A Private Social Pinboard That Collects Your Online Memories.
Pinterest is getting a lot of coverage because of its explosive growth and the fact that the site is attracting females between the 24 and 54 which is the key demographic that influences purchase decisions. According to Google Ad Planner (United States), 82% of Pinterest users are women with the majority of them (79%) that fall within this age demographic.
Does this hold in Canada? Read More…
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