iPad 2.0 is Here, long live the iPad 3.0

At this point you will have seen the iPad 2 announcement, unless you just got back from space.  Apple is the world's best Buzz Machine, Wow.  Seems like a nice incremental improvement over the original.  Nothing to get me so worked up that I will upgrade, but nice stuff, now the iPad 3 will really be sweet.  My rule is always skip over the next generation of upgrades.  Though eBay and Craig's list are reporting that sales of the original iPad are brisk with people getting ready for the iPad 2.  In any case the team at MakeUseOf have come up with a nice little guide for the iPad.  If you are an iPad believer you will find this useful, and it is free.

DOWNLOAD iPad: A Magical And Revolutionary Guide

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ipad-magical-revolutionary-guide-pdf-guide/

As a reseller, you need to be adding software for the iPad and Android pads to your portfolio.  The space is growing to fast to ignore.  Bug your vendors for products to run on these devices.  Security for these devices is a big hole.  There is a future headline "Organization XXX, just lost an iPad with all of the world's social security numbers in it".  Then the pitch forks come out and somebody looses their job.  Don't let it be your client.


As a vendor, the same argument exists, these are viable platforms, develop for them, even if you are just doing it to show that your product line is modern and relevant.  


Okay, lots happening in the world that does not include iPads, here is a cross section.

Articles of Note

Social Media

Socialcast Town Hall Promotes Transparent Management

by Chelsi Nakano

Now that the Web’s biggest microblogging-based enterprise solutions are catching up with each other, what’s next?

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What is Chatter.com?

by Damien Scott

If you tuned in to Super Bowl XLV on Sunday, you were inundated with images of will.i.am, and not just during the Half Time Show. In several featured commercials, the Black Eyed Peas frontman wound up digitized and pitching a new service called Chatter.

The 4-Hour Startup: Marketing It
by Loren Burton

The "four-hour" title is a bit misleading, but Loren started a quick site selling "Snowpocalypse" t-shirts during the U.S. East Coast snow dump. This post details the marketing tactics he used to achieve 3,730 Facebook likes and tens of thousands of visitors to his site in a matter of days. 

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The Knack for Getting Money
by Sebastian Marshall

If you are a technical founder, what you need to look for in a business person is a "knack for getting money". You need someone not afraid to hustle, has skills, works hard as hell, and has enthusiastic drive. Just make sure their morals & values are all there too. 

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Never had an angry user? It's likely they don't care.
by SupportBee & Wufoo

We love Wufoo and use their product (check out our new signup form for the Reading Lists). They spend a lot of time and energy on customer service and this post highlights some of the channels they use and how they handle angry users. 

Instagram Raises $7 Million, Hits 1.75 Million Members
by Lauren Indvik, Mashable

Instagram is a photo-sharing app for the iPhone that has exploded in popularity since its launch in October. The news of the financing round is meaningful for anyone working for large brands, who can now work directly with Instagram to build social marketing campaigns (like NPR and Charity: Water are already doing) around the service's new hashtag feature.

Corporate/Startup

Cleantech investing hits $4 billion
by Matthew Lynley, VentureBeat

Investments in cleantech companies in 2010  are up 8 percent over 2009.  Most of the investments are going to late-stage cleantech startups, but a new group of internet cleantech companies are also raising capital to build online marketplaces to facilitate the sale of “green” products & services.

How to Get Your First 1,000 Users
by Vinicius Vacanti

This is an awesome tactical guide on customer acquisition, especially when you are just realeasing your product.