Some great excerpts from the article:

They will also have a unique navigation system. “The navigation system currently used is a head tilting to scroll and click,” Mr. Weintraub wrote this month. “We are told it is very quick to learn and once the user is adept at navigation, it becomes second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users.”

The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby, according to the Google employees. The glasses are not designed to be worn constantly — although Google expects some of the nerdiest users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed.

They are expected to sell for between $250 – $600.

You can read the whole article here.

Here it is again.

Anyhow, here is a link to the original article and video.

Today I received an email from Airmiles offering me 100 bonus reward miles if I spend $100 or more at Safeway before the end of October 2. Kudos to Safeway and Airmiles for creating a near perfect promotion.

Here are some of the features that I noticed:

• A direct email piece to someone who has opted in
• A reasonable offer of 100 Airmiles points that gets my attention
• A criteria for obtaining the reward – spending $100
• An element of urgency because the offer expires at the end of October 2nd – about 60 hours after the email was sent
• And an easy way to redeem the offer – just print it out and take it with me when I go shopping

What more can you ask for in a promotional offer? Not much.

Receiving these types of offers is fairly routine; I get these emails all the time. I’m a card carrying member of Airmiles and I often shop at Safeway, in part because I get Airmiles and also because Safeway is close by.

What seems to be a new feature in the email is the fact that I can see which of my friends Liked this specific offer on Facebook. Notice the arrow and circled area in the screen shot below. This is an interesting disclosure of information. On one hand it is no big deal. 17 of my friends thought this was a good offer and Liked the post. Cool, I might be interested in the offer because they are. Of course it is fun to see what other people are interested in and Like.

On the other hand, do I really want to know that they have an Airmiles card and that they shop at Safeway? In this case it seems innocuous. But it does feel like I’m on an old fashioned telephone party line where I can listen in on the conversations of everyone who is on the line. It is possible that at some point the disclosure of information could be in the territory of “too much information”.

I can think of a possible situation involving airlines (Westjet promotes Airmiles) and hotels (Best Western and Delta are both members of Airmiles) which could make for some interesting discussions between couples or even business associates. The implications between couples are obvious if one person is in a city and a hotel without the other’s knowledge. But a similar scenario could occur between a buyer and a seller. Imagine this situation:

One person is a potential buyer for a substantial purchase from a vendor. They connect on LinkedIn and because they hit it off well, they also become friends on Facebook. No issues so far. Then Airmiles sends out an email for Westjet offering a special promotion of Airmiles to a specific city. The buyer Likes the offer and clicks the button. The supplier receives the same email and notices that his potential vendor is planning to use Westjet to fly to another city. The city of destination happens to be the headquarters of a significant competitor. Now the buyer knows that the suppler is going to that city. Oops for the supplier – he may lose the relationship with the original buyer and may never get the deal with the potential buyer in the city of destination. Like I said, disclosure of “too much information”.

Doug wrote and excellent summary of the session in his regular column with The Star Phoenix.

A quick quote in Doug’s own voice, “This week I had the privilege of helping put on a social media seminar for First Nations communicators. Representatives from the Siksika Nation and the Piikani Nation, both in Alberta, were in attendance at our Social Media Strategy for First Nations “Quickinar.” Jeff Nelson, my partner in producing Quickinars, and I received much help in producing this seminar from Wayne Courchene, a social media success story in his own right.”

Doug also mentioned our collaborator, Wayne Courchene. We would not have been able to host this event without Wayne’s effort, guidence and connections. We are grateful. Wayne writes a blog of his own at: Iskote.

In Doug’s article he quotes some of the case studies that we reviewed including:

• AFN Chief Shawn Atleo and his blog at nationalchief.blogspot.com
• Excellent videos by various students encouraging others to vote: http://firstnationhelp.com/
• The Alberta Saskatchewan First Nations Metis Nations page on Facebook with over 14,000 Likes
• Two tourism sites developed around First Nations culture: Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatchewan and Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump in Alberta (great video on this site)
• A Facebook page created by Nechi Training, Research & Health Promotions Institute
• Self-described Urban Native Girl Lisa Charleyboy has a fabulous blog that was “born out of a love for writing, fashion, film, beauty, pop culture and all things Indigenous.” Lisacharleyboy.com

But don’t let me steal Doug’s thunder, have a look at the article which was also published on Social Media Today.

• Company’s can’t stop their employees from talking about them via Social media outlets. They can though, put a plan and policy in place to deal with it.
• Treat the Social web the same way you would treat a product. I don’t entirely agree with this. What about companies that don’t have products? We would have a tough time convincing the oil change place down the street to pay attention to what their employees about them on Facebook. However for larger companies, I would agree.
• Are you hiring the right people? Are you hiring people that will represent you online? I suppose this is something that company’s need to consider now. This is an interesting shift in perspective that has taken place in the last few years.

In the article Gillian Shaw analyzes various online stats for 5 candidates in the BC Liberal Leadership vote on February 26, 2011. Her concluding comment is that so far, “There’s no Obama in this group” and I agree. Too early to tell.

Later in the article she links to the social media data that we collected with respect to the Calgary mayoral campaign that ended on October 18th, 2010 – Naheed Nenshi won the crown. See: Social Media Analysis for 2010 Calgary Mayor Candidates.

One of the “secrets” that I have learned about Nenshi’s campaign is that the team focused on political keeners. Guess what? This group are avid users of social media. So the objective was to build a strong presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube during the first 4 months of the 6 month campaign. Nenshi did all his own Tweets and added 510 followers between May 25 and August 30th. His main competitor, Ric McIver, added 284 followers. The third primary contender, Barb Higgins, started early in August and added 664 followers in one month – impressive.

But the real push from the Nenshi team was from September 1st to October 18th. During this short period they switched tactics and focused their resources on building a presence (brand) through traditional channels including lawn signs, coverage in newspapers and TV and attending lots and lots of events. The campaign team didn’t hold back on social media efforts. Instead social media supported traditional marketing by quickly communicating on events with avid social media followers. The result is that during the last 7 weeks Nenshi added 2,932 Twitter followers compared to 468 by McIver and 1,006 by Higgins.

I agree with Gillian Shaw’s analysis that Twitter followers are fickle, at best. To me a better bellweather of success is Facebook Fans (or Likes). Between May 25 and August 30th, Nenshi added 1,206 fans, McIver added 97 and Higgins went from zero to 628. Again the real story is during the last 7 weeks. Nenshi added 10,291 fans (665% increase), McIver added 2,614 fans (155%) and Higgins jumped up 1,139 fans (181%).

Earlier I mentioned that Nenshi attended “lots and lots of events.” A surprising number of those events were to high schools – an audience that isn’t old enough to vote. So why focus on a non-voting audience? The answer isn’t obvious until you hear it. Sure teenagers can’t vote but they know how to communicate and communicate quickly. Their word of mouth power is extremely volatile.  If they love something every friend on Facebook knows about it. And they have the time and energy to be interested – even in politics. Believe it or not teenagers also talk to parents – face to face over the occasional dinner. Politics is a great arena for them to either differentiate themselves from their parents or even influence their parents.

Here’s a scenario that I imagine was happening all over Calgary:

Daniel (my teenage son): “Who are you voting for?”

Me: “I’m not sure yet. I like Wayne Stewart because he has great integrity but no one seems to be interested in him. I think Ric McIver will win but he is too conservative to me. Barb Higgins lacks substance. I like Nenshi but I can’t see how he can win – he’s too young.”

Daniel: I like Nenshi. He’s cool. If I was voting I would vote for him.

In the end, I voted for Nenshi. Not because he was “cool” (although I think he is) but because he has a great smile (meaning he loves what he is doing), policies that I agreed with (I learned about these on YouTube and Policies), and a strong presence in the market (meaning he is a leader and can influence city counselors and city bureaucrats).

Evvi-Lynn is a student at Mount Royal University in the Journalism Program.

I especially like the video that she found that goes along with the article. Enjoy.

Great article, Evvi-Lynn. Thanks for contacting us.

She recommends that we all check our privacy settings from time to time because Facebook has a habit of changing settings as well as launching new applications, which can leave your profile wide open to all kinds of creeps and lurkers out there.

The link to your privacy settings is at the top of the right hand side of your page. Click on ‘Account’ then choose ‘Privacy Settings’:

Here we are at the main privacy page, now click the ‘Customize settings’ button to start changing things around:

This is where you can control who can see what in your profile. Settings range from me, which means that ONLY you can see these things to Friends of Friends, which pretty well means that everyone in the world can see this.

First, I would highly recommend disabling ‘Friends can Check me into Places.’  The default setting for this application is enabled, which means that if you are out for coffee with a friend and they check in to Starbucks they can check you in – so that every one of your contacts will know where you are. In the context of the Calgary Women’s shelter, this is pretty serious business. But what if you are out for a bachelor party and are at a location that perhaps you don’t want your boss to know about? Keep it simple and disable this setting.

Secondly, I would recommend changing the settings for your cell phone, other phone and address to ‘Only me.’ Why broadcast all this information to everyone on the world if you don’t have to?

So I was very pleased to hear about Google Maps new feature that was recently release in Canada – biking directions.

See the little bicycle icon below?

Now when I click on the bicycle icon notice how Google Maps highlight all the bike paths in green. There are 3 kinds of bike paths indicated, from Google:

• Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
• Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
• Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes

I’m looking forward to when they have the Street view version of the bike pathways – right now this option isn’t functional.

Matt