Livia Iacolare

I’ve always wanted a nice secretary who could remind me what to do (and I bet I’m not the only one out there). I have completely fallen in love with Sandy, a very interesting productivity tool that doesn’t require you anything but sending an email with all the instructions written in a simple language, as if you were writing to a human being.

I’ve tested many similar tools before but I’ve always found that their major drawbacks were the absolute lack of simplicity and the extremely mechanical approach. I used to waste a lot of time to set them up and make them work and plus I always felt like I was dealing with something fake.

Fortunately, Sandy is smart enough to listen to me. I just need to send her a short email saying “Remember that I have to buy milk tomorrow at 9am” and she will alert me on time. Additionally, I can snooze reminders by replying to her messages and saying “Remind me tomorrow, next week, in 12 minutes” or whatever I feel like. And guess what? She does it.

Sandy will send reminders to email addresses, Twitter, Jott and mobile phones (US only for now). If you cannot access your mailbox you can send messages straight from Sandy’s website. Moreover, I think that the cutest feature is the one that lets you decide how you want to be called by Sandy by choosing a nickname.

What else to say? Sandy is free to use, efficient and requires no download.

Also, she never complains.

“The Catholic Church is the depositary of Truth, but without arrogance”
That’s what I heard him say on TV.

I took this picture while I was on a bus in Glasgow.
Couldn’t believe my own eyes and I laughed so loudly that I’m still ashamed of it.

Photo: changturtle

Viral videos are in the news recently and apparently they generate lots of inbound links. I’ve heard many stupid things about viral videos up to now, but the one that makes the top of the list is that “content is NOT king” (and it’s laughable because it has been said by an “expert“). First off let me give my personal explanation of what “viral” means: it’s something that spreads without control. And you know why it happens? Because its content is awesome and just makes it look brilliant.

I personally don’t care whether a viral video is created to advertise a product or not: as long as the content is interesting I will watch it and pass it on to my friends. Here is an example: the other day I was logged into Seesmic and I was watching some videos posted by mollyberry, a very funny girl. This video in particular made me think that she might be there as an early adopter of Seesmic to endorse her employer JetBlue, especially after I read this post on her blog (6th paragraph). Nonetheless, I’d keep on watching her videos because I like them.

But, hey, that was just my impression and I might be totally wrong; it’s just that I like to observe details and I’m a woman, so I tend to be hypercritical. However this fact made me realize that the more viral videos look amateurish the better chances they have to succeed. Mainstream media always showed us that amateur videos were crappy and poor in quality and if you wanted to produce video ads you had to provide high definition images and special effects. Internet, instead, taught us that amateur videos are great for communicating certain messages.

It’s easy to pay people to do and spread videos but it’s very hard to create something that can really blow their mind.

One of the things I learned in the pas two years is that video matters a lot when you want to make sure your message is delivered to the world. A good screencast is much better than a plain, boring FAQs page to present your product and plus it has two great advantages:

1. A screencast is the best integration to a FAQ page because it shows how the tool works, and doesn’t just talk about it. There is a big difference between the two things.
2. FAQs remain onsite, while videos and screencasts can be distributed over multiple platforms and they can also be placed on other sites, thus increasing the viral potential of your message.

Nowadays text is not the only mean you have to showcase your creations. We’ve entered the age of multimedia; Google also started producing great video demos of its products… why should you still stick to old fashioned promotion techniques?

My humble suggestion is to invest money and time in producing a good video presentation of your product.

Another thing that matters a lot is personal exposure: I’ve met several entrepreneurs who were afraid of recording a video interview to present their product and their startup.

This is sooo uncool.

The most successful businesses in the world are run by entrepreneurs who don’t run away when they are in front of a camera; they rather consider any occasion to show themselves as an opportunity to leverage.

They are prepared to face it and if they are not good at it they train themselves (or someone else) to be confident and enticing.

Conclusion: invest your money in a good video demo of your product, get some help and consulting from people who do that professionally… and don’t be shy!