Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Essentials of Social Media Strategy

My last post included a social media response chart for positive activity, negative, and breach in policy.  The chart was taken from a research paper I recently wrote entitled,

The paper's intent is to help social media managers build a strong social media strategy for their organization.  By summarizing the opinions of fourteen industry leaders, I was able to compile some forty important components of social media strategy suggested by these industry leaders.  I then ranked the key components of social media strategy by taking the leaders' most frequently mentioned themes.  The paper seeks to help social media managers identify the "must-haves" as they begin to develop their organization's strategy.  
You can find the paper here.
Enjoy!


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Monday, July 28, 2014

A Social Media Engagement Road Map for the Good Times and the Bad


Businesses jump into social media for a number of reasons, namely because they realize it is a powerful tool.  Still, (those of you who like FDR and/or Spiderman) you have heard it said,  

With great power comes great responsibility. 


As a social media manager, I have had to think about this responsibility in great detail and meet it with strategy.  Social media strategy is a giant of its own, so for now I want to share with you a road map, so-to-speak, of how you might go about managing user engagement on your platforms. Enjoy!





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Thursday, May 1, 2014

Oh the Places We Will Go...

Last week I met with one of my favorite professors from college just to catch up.  He asked me what I was doing these days and was shocked when I told him that I landed a job in digital marketing.  He asked, "how did you get into that?"  I started thinking about it, and I think my journey toward digital marketing was a long time coming.  I've been an avid social media user since 2005ish when I signed up for a Myspace account and have spent every day since connected to social media.  Maybe it all started in 2006 when I, as a senior in high school, signed up for a Facebook account because I was so excited to college I had to connect with other incoming freshmen.  Or perhaps, even more likely, it may have really started my last year of college when I studied abroad in 2009, that is the year I started blogging.

I didn't have a blog like I have today; instead, I had a Photoblog.  So you've never heard of Photoblog?  I'm not surprised.  Let me preface all of this by highlighting the fact that social media has changed drastically in the past decade.

Photoblog was (and is) a very basic form of social media; it is a blogging website that would allow the blogger to upload photos to their blog giving the world instant access to the blogger's experiences.  Blogs like this were revolutionary for the time, not to mention a huge deal for me when I was traveling. Sometimes I would post a picture with a quick description of something I had experienced, while other times I would post a picture and explain it in great detail, a full on blog.  I would then post the link to Facebook and my friends and family would be able to follow me on my adventures.  This might seem commonplace today with platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Blogger, Tumblr... People take pictures and share it with their friends and family on different sides of the world all the time these days but back then it was significantly more uncommon.  Let's not forget, in 2009 Twitter only had 18 million users (3.8% of adult Internet users), while it now has about 750 million!  Instagram hadn't even come out yet, and wouldn't be released until October, 2010.  So, though I may not have been reinventing the wheel, I was certainly doing something that was a little ahead of its time and I was excited to be able to share my adventures.  I continued to post on this Photoblog when I lived in Puerto Rico the next summer.  From there I landed a coaching job at Point Park University, followed by a job in the School of Business managing a few social media accounts.  My love for social media grew each day and expanded into other forms of digital marketing.  A year later, I got a promotion and my role became digital marketing for the School of Business, I've been ever since. Looking back, I'm a little sad to see that the Photoblog site I used so much never really took off.  Still, it is exciting that there are now so many other great ways to share pictures, posts, etc. from different corners of the world.

Reminiscing on my old Photoblog, I found a bunch of pictures that I'd like to share. I've posted them HERE on Flickr.  Enjoy!




Tuesday, April 29, 2014

CBS Pittsburgh Features My Use of Google Glass at Point Park University

Today was an exciting day for us in the School of Business at Point Park University.  KDKA-TV/CBS featured our use of Google Glass in two segments.

Pittsburgh Today Live!


The Nightly News - View a recap of the story HERE.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

NISM Study Guide: Social Media Compliance, Governance, and Law


To get certified in Social Media Strategy through the National Institute for Social Media, I spent weeks researching compliance/governance issues that surround social media.  The following is a summary of what I found related to compliance/governance in social media, which I believe will be helpful to anyone who manages social media for business/commercial use and/or is taking the NISM exam:

FTC Guidelines

  • Truth in advertising - consumer protection laws apply to everyone who advertises or markets to consumers
  • Disclosure! "As with all truth in advertising laws, the consumer must know he or she is being sold to before reading something or taking action to purchase." -Sara Hawkins

The FTC on Endorsements and Testimonials -
The FTC gives guidelines that essentially point out that endorsements must reflect truth. A statement from the FTC.gov website guidelines says,  "Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser. Furthermore, an endorsement may not convey any express or implied representation that would be deceptive if made directly by the advertiser."

Endorsement = advertising message, endorser = someone other than the sponsoring company.
 "For purposes of this part, an endorsement means any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser..." For more info. on the subject of endorsements/testimonials, visit this site.

To summarize the FTC Guidelines:

  • Endorsements must be truthful.
  • Testimonials must disclose typical results a consumer should expect, and companies can no longer use best-case scenarios or "results may vary."
  • Endorsements must provide disclosure of payment for advertisement or research funded/provided by the sponsoring company.  Disclosures must be clear and conspicuous.
  • Bloggers are often endorsers.  Payment = endorsement and must be disclosed.
  • Celebrity endorsements are a little bit different.  TV commercials and other platforms which are obviously paid endorsements do not require disclosure as the audience assumes the celebrity is being paid.  Other areas that are less clear, such as Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, may require that a celebrity mentioning a product or service in a post must also disclose their relationship with the company of the product or service.
  • Expert testimonials must come from true experts and make claims that are generally accepted amongst other experts in their respective field.

Digital Millenium Copyright Act - DMCA

Taken from this article on Wikipedia: "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet."


Fair Use


Another Wikipedia definition for you, FAIR USE is "a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test."

Want to know more about fair use? Visit this fact sheet on fair use by the US Copyright Office.

The fact sheet mentioned lists four determinants of fair use:

  1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work
  3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
  4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work
Examples of fair use:
  • Quotations or excerpts that are cited and used for illustration, such as in the beginning of this blog when I reference Sara Hawkins.
  • Quotation of short passages used for illustrations, such as the paragraphs I used from wikipedia.
  • Summary of an address or article with brief quotes in a news report.
  • Use in a parody of the content.
  • Reproduction by a library to replace a damaged copy.
  • Reproduction of a portion of a work for educational purposes.
  • Reproduction for legislative/judicial purposes.
  • Incidental reproduction in a broadcast of a work located at a scene being reported.

Copyright Law and Copyright Infringement


Clickandcopyright.com gives a great summary of copyright law in this article.

What can be copyrighted?

  • Visual Arts
  • Literary Works
  • Sound Recordings
  • Audiovisual Works
  • Architectural Works
  • Sculptures
  • Dramatic Works
These works are automatically protected by copyright law and do not require that the author register their copyright.  As I mentioned earlier in this blog, the article above points out that copyrights protect the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.  

What rights are reserved for the author of the copyrighted work? Again, referring to the link above, this article, the website says:
To paraphrase, copyright law (outside of a few exceptions) generally provides the following exclusive rights:

  • The right to perform or display it publicly
  • The right to create an offshoot or sequel (called a derivative work)
  • The right to copy it
  • The right to distribute copies of it

This great article from the same website explains some examples of copyright infringement.

Some examples of copyright infringement were:

  • Using someone else’s material on YouTube without permission
  • Posting a picture (without permission) from Google Images
  • Publishing a translation of someone’s foreign work
Generally speaking, copyrights are good for the author's lifetime + 70 years.


Trademarks

The following is an excerpt from uspto.gov:

"TRADEMARK, COPYRIGHT, OR PATENT
What is a trademark or service mark?
• A trademark is generally a word, phrase, symbol, or design, or a combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.
• A service mark is the same as a trademark, except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than goods. Throughout this booklet, the terms “trademark” and “mark” refer to both trademarks and service marks.

Do trademarks, copyrights, and patents protect the same things?
No. Trademarks, copyrights, and patents protect different types of intellectual property. A trademark typically protects brand names and logos used on goods and services. A copyright protects an original artistic or literary work. A patent protects an invention. For example, if you invent a new kind of vacuum cleaner, you would apply for a patent to protect the invention itself. You would apply to register a trademark to protect the brand name of the vacuum cleaner. And you might register a copyright for the TV commercial that you use to market the product." -For more information, view the full site here.

I also found a great publication called, "Trademark Issues in Social Media." Check out the publication HERE, written by Janet Garetto for Nixon Peabody.


Creative Commons Licenses


I was not familiar at all with this area of social media compliance.  The following excerpts are taken from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/.

What our licenses do The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.
License design and rationale All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators — we call them licensors if they use our tools — retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially... A Creative Commons licensor answers a few simple questions on the path to choosing a license — first, do I want to allow commercial use or not, and then second, do I want to allow derivative works or not?...
Lastly, this wikipedia article explains Creative Commons Licenses in the following way, "A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. A CC license is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use and build upon a work that they have created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of their own work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work, so they don’t have to worry about copyright infringement, as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work. There are several types of CC licenses. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution."


If you are studying for the NISM exam, I hope this helps!  Don't forget to read through the handbook and know ALL of the sections thoroughly.  Good luck!



Thanks for reading.
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Monday, March 31, 2014

Point Park University's 1st Virtual Fieldtrip Using Google Glass

If you read my last post, you know that last week I went to Carnegie Mellon University to conduct a virtual field trip using Google Glass for students in the School of Business at Point Park University.

Prior to the trip, I had concerns about whether or not Glass would actually work as intended.  One of the glitches Glass has yet to overcome is its often inability to work around interference.  When Glass is surrounded by other technology such as computers, other WIFI networks, phones, etc., it runs the risk of not working properly.  Being that CMU is one of the most technologically rich universities in the world, I was a little worried that Glass would basically explode.  Fortunately for us, it did not!




I walked around the whole campus wearing Glass, giving the Point Park University students across town a virtual campus tour of CMU via a Google Hangout.  What sets Glass apart from a computer or a smartphone when using Google Hangouts is that the perspective changes.  Rather than seeing what the computer or smartphone camera would see, which is usually just a person's face, Glass projects what the wearer is seeing.  This first-person perspective gives the person on the other end of the Google Hangout the feeling that they are actually there!

We ended the virtual campus tour in the Office of Admissions for Heinz College, with an interview of the Director of Admissions who was able to talk about the new partnership between CMU and PPU.  The partnership awards Point Park University students accepted into graduate school at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College a scholarship of $6,000 per semester to help pay for their studies.  Check out CMU's website for more information on this partnership.

Though the trip was successful in its own right, the real success lies in the possibilities for the future; Glass can now be used for virtual field trips all over the city of Pittsburgh and even for virtual fieldtrips all over the world! We plan to use Glass to make Point Park University's School of Business even more hands on than it already is by literally bringing our students into the field they are studying.  Follow me as I continue to post about Glass and its use in higher education and go where no university has gone before!




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Sunday, March 23, 2014

Google Glass in Action at Point Park University



This week and the weeks leading up to it have been both an exciting and a scary time. I have spent a great deal of energy preparing for a big event that will happen tomorrow, the day when I finally have the opportunity to show off Google Glass to Point Park University.  In order to obtain this new technology, I recommended Point Park spend over $1,500 to purchase the device and own this cutting edge technology; tomorrow will tell us if my recommendation paid off. 

Let me go into more detail about what happens tomorrow: first, I will arrive to work at Point Park University with only a few hours to test Google Glass. Glass will be tested with the new phone that will be paired to it via bluetooth, a Galaxy S4.  I did not get a chance to test Glass last week with the S4, as I was busy going through two other phones and two different carriers that just didn't work right with the device so I'm crossing my fingers that this third time is a charm.  Assuming the test works, I will successfully use Glass to test a Google Hangout with an empty classroom at Point Park.  Then, in the afternoon, I will head across town to Carnegie Mellon University.  There I will do a virtual tour of the campus again through a Google Hangout.  I will be "hanging out" with that classroom back at Point Park, only this time it will be full of Career Prep students in the Sports, Arts and Entertainment Management Department, a major in Point Park's School of Business.  The tour will conclude in the Office of Graduate Admissions for Heinz College, where the Director will speak to these students about graduate school and the new partnership between Point Park and Carnegie Mellon.

If the technology works the way that it should, this will be one of the most unique ways Point Park has ever used new technology.  We will be ahead of the curve, doing something that very few, if any, are doing in the world of higher education.  We will not only have a cutting edge technology, we will also have a cutting edge learning environment for our students with endless possibilities for the future.  For example, we will be able to have guest speakers from some of the most impressive positions and organizations in their respective industries.  We will be able to do virtual tours of facilities that would otherwise be off-limits or outside of our resources.  We will be able to connect with students via social media with literally a blink of the eye (Glass can take pictures merely by winking and then share the picture with the world wide web through a quick tap or a simple voice command).

Still, there's a good chance that something will go wrong with this new technology.  If you've read any of my previous posts, you know that I believe Glass is not yet perfect and it's a long way from being ready to hit the shelves.  So, tomorrow's failure or success is really anyone's guess but I'm crossing my fingers everything goes the way both Google and I would want it to.  Check back for updates, I'll let you know how it goes.


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Friday, March 14, 2014

Google Glass Frustrations


Google Glass is an amazing device and a great start to a totally new computing platform.  That being said, the device really has a long way to go before it is ready for consumers.

One of my greatest frustrations with Glass is that it does not have its own internet capabilities.  Instead, Glass must run off the data of a personal hotspot (i.e. it must sync to your smartphone and pull the data via bluetooth tethering) or it must be connected to wifi.

Not only must Glass be connected to wifi however, it must be connected to UNPROTECTED wifi.  This means that it can only work with wifi that does not require a passcode, thus the majority of wifi networks are off limits!

I had several issues setting up my iPhone 4S to Glass and the Googlers I spoke to on the phone were simply not versed in iPhone so they were unable to help me.  I had to struggle through it, try many combinations, to finally find the answers by shear coincidence; for the average consumer, struggling to set up the device might mean they return it to the store before even testing it out.

After struggling through setup with my iPhone, I did eventually get it set up only to realize that the MyGlass app for iOS would not rotate the screen, so when projected onto a screen, the entirety of what I was seeing on Glass was flipped on its side.

Thinking I might have been better off with Android all along, I was able to get an Android work phone to test out with Glass.  Little did I realize, however, that the Spring service I would have with Android would put me in "roaming" mode in the room I need to do presentations in, and Glass apparently does not work while roaming.

Battery life is probably the worst of my frustrations, coupled with the fact that after using Glass for an hour with normal use, the device gets very hot.  An hour later, the device will be dead.  So, two hours with Glass and it's useless.  Obviously, that will have to be fixed before Glass hits the shelves.

As a Glass Explorer, I've had to constantly remind myself that I am not a consumer, I am a beta-tester.  This is something that is harder to do than it seems though. I haven't had experience with beta-testing, but I have had plenty of experience as a consumer.  If you're like me, you've bought products for years and determined subconsciously the value of the product.  Was it worth what I spent?  Am I satisfied with the product?  Does it meet or exceed my expectations?  If the answer was "no" to any of those questions, in all likelihood I returned the product.  Being a Glass Explorer on the other hand, I cannot simply return the product; instead, I am tasked with consciously determining where Glass falls short and how it excels and then returning that information to Google in the hopes that it makes the product better and closer to consumer readiness.

Like I said before, Glass is not ready to hit the shelves.  The general public would be extremely unsatisfied with the many glitches and the entire project would be a bust.  
If Google is as smart as I know they are, they will wait.
They will be patient, and then this product really will change the world.  If they do not, their brand will take a hit and this product will be nothing but a toy, and worst, it will be just a fad that no one remembers.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Google Glass Demos For Mac/iPhone Users


One of the things I plan to do with Glass is to demonstrate the new device for students, faculty, and staff at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA. Though this has always been the plan, I didn't know what I would have to do to make that a reality, so I had to start completely from scratch.  If you are planning to demo the device yourself, take a look at what I did, and hopefully you will also find it useful:

My first step was go to the MyGlass app for iOS/iPhone, which I had to download initially to setup Glass.  The app comes with a convenient "Screencast" tool, allowing whoever holds the iPhone (the same thing applies for Android users) a chance to see exactly what the person using Glass sees on their Glass device.  This has been a great tool for giving demos to one or two people, but obviously wouldn't work for a large group due to the small screen.  The Screencast tool has also helped allow others to try out the device, as it enables me to see what they can see, and help them navigate on the device.



I tried a couple things using the Screencast tool on MyGlass app for IOS.  First, I scoured the App Store for a good app to display what I had on my iPhone screen, in this case the MyGlass app, on a desktop PC or a Mac wirelessly (without having to have the USB cable that comes with Glass plugged in).  I thought if I could display to a computer, I could then connect the computer via VGA cable to our projector.  Unfortunately, no such app really exists for iPhone to Mac or PC, and if it does, I couldn't find it.  After calling Apple, they wouldn't recommend any of the reflector or mirroring apps out there, so I decided to go a different route. 

Next, I tried using a 30-Pin to VGA Adapter from the Apple Store to display my iPhone and the MyGlass app onto a projector via VGA cable.  I plugged the adapter into my iPhone 4S, and into the projector through the VGA cable; it auto-recognized and got so close to displaying what I could see on Glass!  Unfortunately, the MyGlass app is only able to display on iPhone horizontally and does not rotate when you rotate the phone.  This meant that the MyGlass app displayed to the projector, but on its side.  Since projector was only able to flip vertically, I still had no effective way of displaying what I was seeing on Glass to a large group because I couldn't exactly ask the audience to just tilt their heads at a 90 degree angle...  Then, for a fleeting moment I thought about using our portable projector and just put it on its side, hoping the video quality wouldn't be completely distorted or the projector wouldn't explode, but I decided that would be a last resort.

Last but not least, I plugged the device directly into my Macbook and decided I could live with the chord running from my head to the computer while I gave the demo.  Unfortunately for me, the device did not auto-recognize to display what I was seeing in Glass so I had to go a little bit further and install Android Debug Bridge, turn Glass onto debug mode, and then download and run Droid@Screen, a screen mirroring tool. If you're not a software developer, it's a little bit of a tricky process but it's definitely doable.  For detailed instructions on how to go about setting up ADB to work with the Droid@Screen and display Glass to your computer, check out this great post.

After all of that, I was up and running directly from Glass to my Mac, mirroring Glass' "cards," Google's name for each display screen.  They look like this: 






The next step was to head back to the Apple store for a new VGA adapter, this time a Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter which allows a VGA cable to work for MacBooks (Pro and Air) from 2011 onward, as the adapter uses the Thunderbolt input.



Again, the projector auto-recognized my Mac and this time it displayed perfectly, just as it did on my computer screen. 


Thanks for reading and good luck.

Follow me on Twitter @AmandaMunsch

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Day 1 with Google Glass




Two days ago I was selected to participate in the Glass Explorer Program, a program to beta-test Google's new eyewear computer system, something I requested to be a part of nearly a year ago.  Initially I had no thought of how I would come up with the $1,500 to pay Google for the amazing device, as the probability of being one of 8,000 people worldwide to be selected was seemingly slim to none.  Still, as the term "Google Glass" had all but been lost from my memory, Google came knocking at my door.

The news came via the World Wide Web of course; Google e-mailed me with the great news.  The e-mail was short but sweet, and a code to purchase the device was included.  For the first time since hearing about Glass, I was finally forced to think about what that $1,500 price tag really meant to me, and more importantly, if I could possibly come up with it.

Ironically, the first thing I did was go to Google.  I "Googled" what Glass was going for their online marketplace, otherwise known as "Google Shopping" or the "Shopping" option next to the other options like "Web," "Images," and "Maps" on Google.com.  Sure enough, there are tons of Glass offers out there, mostly on eBay, Amazon, and similar sites.  Even codes like the one I was sent were being sold on these sites; I might mention, the codes alone were going for some $300 on Amazon and Glass itself was being resold by Explorers for some $2,800!  I thought for a minute about both of these options.  I thought maybe I should buy Glass, test it, then resell it once I have reviewed it and waited for the pricing to cool down with its public release.  Maybe, instead, I should just sell the code on eBay or Amazon and cut my losses.  Alas, this broke my heart so I did absolutely nothing on the first day but think about how badly I wanted the device.

Yesterday morning I told my boss about Glass and what had transpired in order to have been selected to the Glass Explorer Program.  Soon after that I told a few more people and the conversation really begun.  I started setting up a Kickstarter page, hoping that a few friends and family members might chip in if I could come up with a good review or good project to do with Glass.  As I begun the lengthy Kickstarter sign-up process I started to think that maybe this project wasn't the sort of thing I could get funded.  Just as my hopes were dashed, the phone began to ring.

Not only had my boss been intrigued about the new device, his boss and a few colleagues had been intrigued as well.  Soon enough, I was given the green light to purchase Glass on behalf of our university for the purpose of educating students on the new technology and using it for virtual field trips and creating some marketing content on the world wide web.  By the afternoon I was given a credit card to purchase the device with and less than five minutes later, Glass was purchased.

My boss and I joked about how Glass might arrive.  Maybe it would come like Hedwig, the owl from Harry Potter, and fly up to our window and tap on the glass.  Maybe, instead, it would just teleport here or pop out of my printer, it is a Google product after all.  Though we joked, neither of us thought it would actually arrive only 12 hours later by mail.  This morning I arrived to work and it was already here.  Somehow Google managed to get the device here, out of whatever warehouse it was in, all the way from Kentucky, in exactly the color I ordered, all in a blink of an eye. 

...

I was like a kid on Christmas morning; I wanted nothing more but to rip open the package and try out the new toy!  Instead, I had to muster up some patience.  We wanted to wait for our videographer to film the entire thing: the opening of the box, the parts, everything.  The idea is to create some sort of documentary-type film or perhaps a promotional piece that highlights Glass' implications in Higher Education.


 

After the videographer arrived, I opened the box with shear pleasure.  Inside were only a couple of things: an earbud for the headset, a USB charger that also plugs into a the wall, and a bag to protect Glass.  There was no manual, just a couple questions written on a piece of folded up paper.  

One such questions read:

Q  Can I use Glass while operating a jackhammer?
A  Use caution.

Thank you Google, how profound!

...

The set-up should have been easy enough, but the fact that I have an iPhone (not a Google Android phone), not to mention I'm located in a building full of wifi interference, made setting up Glass a nightmare.  It was quite evident that though Google's staff is probably the nicest customer-service staff out there, there are still a lot of unknowns with the product.  I ended up going through three different Googlers, none of which could pinpoint the problem, but I figured it out in the end.  I had to reboot Glass a few times, "forget" every wifi network on my phone, sync with Bluetooth and even "forget" that as well at one point, make sure my personal hot spot was on and working, all before being able to get Glass up and running.  In the end, it was worth it!

A couple of professors asked if they could try Glass on and it was truly priceless watching their faces as they Googled "Bacon Dog Video," the Google term to find this Youtube Video:

 

I wished I had captured the look of amazement on their faces on video... but I will leave that for tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Follow me on Twitter @AmandaMunsch

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Google Glass Explorer Program: Just the Beginning

In July of 2013, I wrote my first blog post.  The topic, "wearable technology," was something I had been reading about, but it was fairly new to me and, in fact, it was more or less a new concept to the world at large.  In my post I stated that I had both a fear that this new technology would consume us, yet a desire to embrace it nonetheless.  Still, that new adoption of technology seemed a long way off and, at best, would be delivered in the form of a smart-watch or something similar, a small step up from the smart-phones already seemingly glued to our hands.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have believed that less than a year later, I would be selected to participate in the Google Glass Explorer Program.

Yesterday, I received the e-mail I had long forgotten I could receive: the e-mail indicated exactly that.  I was selected for the Glass Explorer Program, and now several dollars later, I have begun to create a project to explore Glass both in its practical application in every day life, but also, for its implications for Higher Education.

I hope you will continue to follow me as I explore Google Glass in the coming months.  



Thanks for reading.

Follow me on Twitter @AmandaMunsch