Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

 

Share / bookmark

Community input for your business

In our first post about Twitter we made several important statements about the business opportunities on Twitter. One of the statements said: "Twitter is a space to gain real time feedback and a perfect research tool when it comes to find out customers’ needs and wants." We wanted to experience the potential of Twitter for our business.

Five days ago, we asked our almost 600 followers a simple question "What to-do applications do you use? Would you recommend it to your best friend?" As a full service creative web agency with a busy schedule we wanted to know what are the best to-do lists our employees can use.

We got about a dozen of great recommendations, while the first reply came in only three minutes:
@Uffekoch: "I have tried almost every possible method and app for both win and mac, but I keep going back to good old mindmaps in freemind."
@ppmw: GTDTiddlyWiki Plus, yes I do recommend it. I am also on GTDAgenda and Nozbe but they make limits I don't like
@hansnilsson: "The Hit List, just missing syncing with iPhone, otherwise the best app yet."
@mmartinov: todoist.com totally rocks! ;-)
@tbertram: Omnifocus for mac and iphone they are cool
@jonasmaaloe: nowdothis.com er min hemmelige nødbremse når alt andet fejler. til daglig bruger jeg things til mac (nowdothis.com is my secret thing, when everything else fails. On a everyday basis I use things for mac)
@perusio: My TODO app: Org Mode http://orgmode.org with Remember Mode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RememberMode #emacs is required.

In addition to great recommendations, our followers shared some of their oppinions about to-do lists and their utility:
@renejsum:  the perfect TODO app has yet til be invented, for a short while 10 year ago the Palm did the trick...
@ohhansen: @renejsum @uffekoch @propeople I keep thinking that TODO list is more like a guilt list - and what about all that is not on the list?
@Uffekoch: @ohhansen @renenejsum @propeople I agree to an extend, but as David #GTD Allen says: its great to look at a prioritized list of everything on your mind & know you are focusing on the most important, and then be able to say to the rest: you are not it!

In the end, we received a request to share our findings so our followers could benefit too. @ohhansen wrote us: "let me know what you find. I'm currently working on http://veloc.it/y and I want to add something great for #todo management" We love to share with the community and hope these findings will help @ohhansen make a better to do list.

Twitter is a great tool to get people together so they can help eachother. Our followers helped us to identify the best to-do lists, while we shared with them our findings. It's a win-win situation both for us as a company and for our followers on Twitter.

Keep tweeting and follow Propeople on Twitter.

P.S. Special thank you to everyone responding to our inquiries. You're helping us one tweet at a time.

Comment on this post

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

2

 

Share / bookmark

Supporting the Drupal community

DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 is coming in town. Propeople has the privilege to proudly support the Danish Drupal community by becoming a DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 Platinum Sponsor. The event is organized by the Danish Drupal Association and is now at its second edition (2.0). The first edition was organized in November 2008 and since back then Propeople has taken an pro-active role in contributing for the event.

Michael Koefoed Steensborg Drejer, Propeople CEO, believes the community is the core of Drupal's success. "As the leading Drupal development company in Denmark and an Acquia Platinum partner, Propeople has the responsibility to be a part of the Drupal community and to support it. Sponsoring DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 is a great privilege to support the Drupal community both in Denmark and around the world." says Michael Koefoed Steensborg Drejer.

DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 focuses to consolidate the Danish Drupal community, that is to bring Drupal developers together to discuss Drupal related topics to find efficient solutions. The event also aims to present Drupal to the Danish web-developer who are not yet famillyar with Drupal. There is a growing demand in qualified Drupal developers in Denmark, so web-developers can find new opportunities by addopting Drupal.

Looking beyond locally, another purpose of the DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 is to come up with a list of suggestions for the theming layer in Drupal. This already has been started at DrupalCon DC and a special theming group is already working on this issue. There will be several sessions at the DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 ending with a panel discussion that should summize the Camp 's suggestions for a better theming layer in Drupal.

DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 features such great speakers as Addison Berry, Todd Ross Nienkerk, Morten Birch Heide-Jørgensen and many others. This DrupalCamp is the place to meet great people and directly contribute to the development of Drupal.

Propeople will be live-blogging from DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0. Don't miss the DrupalCamp Copenhagen 2.0 live on Propeople blog on May 22-24, 2009.

Comment on this post

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

 

Share / bookmark

Where is the Web heading?

It’s in human nature that people never stop looking forward to see what’s beyond the horizon. I was amazed to read an older article written by Janus Boye in 1998 where the author tries to predict what the web will look like in the near future. He does a great job to envision community, technology and usability to become the most important aspects on the web, and we all know this is exactly what happened.

Periodically it’s worth trying to foresee the new trends on the web. Foreseeing is not predicting, it is just drawing a blurry sketch for what may happen… or what would be good to happen.

Users: Communication & Interaction
Since 1998 the Web evolved into Web 2.0. Now hundreds of millions people around the world communicate and interact through social networks. There are no borders and limits to access, share and exchange information between people, while communication and interaction is the drawing force for all social networks.

Users will look for new opportunities to enhance their communication/interaction experiences on the Web. In this regards, Second Life proposed a new approach to enhance users’ communication/interaction experience, but it’s not clear yet whether users will adopt the Second Life concept as “the Web”.

Technology: Compatibility and Integration
Over the last 10 years, web technology was made simpler and more user-friendly. Now the average Internet user has all the tools to make his voice heard by millions. People are becoming “Internet Rockstars” by writing blogs, sharing their pictures and videos, adding value to the existing technology, and simply exposing their daily life.

Next Web technology needs to get smarter so it will become an intelligent assistant for the user. Intelligent technology means the data would be aggregated and processed in a way that the user will no longer need to browse tens and hundreds of pages. Technology of the next Web should be able to allow users to make sophisticated operations in matter of few clicks or short voice commands.

Web industry: Open source and Open standards
Open source is the new and the next industry model of the Web. Open source standards replaced the commercial way to develop technology and conduct business. In order to make its way into the next Web, the open source technology needs to have an improved support and training, to adopt a long term roadmap and the velocity of change.

In terms of business, open source technology will be provided for free, but the money will come into play when extra-value is needed. Open source technology will improve and more paid-features will be provided for free, and businesses will innovate in offering extra-value for money. A new business cycle emerges: businesses propose new paid features that become free as technology evolves, and again businesses have to innovate for new paid features that would eventually become free, and so on.

Conclusion: Innovation
Innovation is the key in breaking the ground on the Web. Five years ago nobody would believe that a service that allows writing 140 characters only will become one of the most popular services on the Web.

The Web never stopped innovating and surprising, and definitely will never stop. The next Web is all about innovating ideas to provide unexpected solutions for always existing problems.

Comment on this post

Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

4

 

Share / bookmark

Welcome to Propeople’s new blog.

There are two great news at Propeople today. First, we re-launched our blog because we are committed to continuously communicate with our friends, supporters, partners and the community. This blog will not only be a way to present and share our projects, products and experience but also a means to gain your feedback, to find out about your thoughts about what we are doing.

Propeople blog is your ultimate gateway to the backstage of web-development. Here you will find lots of exclusive information and original and quality resources about web-design, CMS, Drupal, Microsoft EPiServer, virtual communities, e-commerce, blogging and Web 2.0. Here you will be able to read insightful reports from important web events and unique interviews with the best web experts and developers, as well as to ask your question and receive all the answers you need.

Second, Propeople has a new team member that will be taking care of the blog. I, Mihai Moscovici, am the new Propeople blogger. I started blogging more than two years ago and have developed several blogging start-up projects.

Recently I have earned my M.A. in Communication at the University of Texas at Arlington, and already had the chance to integrate into the corporate world while working as a Media assistant at IOM. However, when offered the opportunity, I was more than glad to accept to become a fulltime blogger.
I and the Propeople developer and executive team we will do our best to make this blog an extraordinary experience for every single visitor.

Now, subscribe to our RSS feed in order to be updated each time we have something new for you. Also, comment and tell us your opinion, let us know about your suggestions and expectations for the new Propeople blog.

Comment on this post