The screenshot below is a quick glance at what is in my reading queue on Instapaper.

What do you plan on reading?

I’ve heard negative buzz that the iPad is just a giant version of the iPod touch. My question to everyone saying this is: who cares?

With that kind of thinking one might look at a small house:

and then a much larger house:

and come away saying, “ah who cares? It’s just a larger house.”

Just because a product isn’t revolutionary in design / build does not mean that the product is unnecessary. The iPad is, in my opinion, another great launch by the Apple team. I hope those who dismiss the iPad at first glance take the chance to actually use it before entirely writing it off as a failure.

This is meant to be a quick review that may highlight a thing or two you won’t find from an official review. If you are curious about my feelings towards the iPad before reading on here you go: As of right now, I love it.

Nice, simple, clean design.

Typing on the iPad, on a flat surface using two hands, is actually rock solid. Maybe my experience with the iPhone has made this experience far more enjoyable the first time around.

Opened up the store, like how it immediately prompts me to download a free copy of iBooks.

Reviewing the Apple Store terms & service, I wonder how many people actually read all 58 pages.

I can’t emphasize enough how much I respect Apple’s ability to create an amazing user experience.

Opened up iBooks, they gave me a free book, Winnie-The-Pooh. Nice touch.

iBooks is gorgeous.

Buying my brother’s book on Vook. This is one of the applications (Vook) I was looking most forward to, seems like the iPad is a dream for this company.

While it downloads, taking a look at the paid apps, first impression: seems like the market is inflated, not seeing too many $.99 apps.

Browing through apps, there is one app in the sports category called BasketballMat. This is awesome – the ability for coaches to whiteboard out plays using the iPad – brilliant!

Vook on the iPad is amazing. Beautiful, beautiful display of content.

Just played a round of TapTap Radiation on Hard with the song Quiet Dog by Mos Def. Fun game, beautiful experience. Makes me all that more confident that the iPad will become a big time mobile gaming system. Wish I had this when I was younger, forget gameboy!

The lack of titles may hurt iBooks in the beginning. Just search for the book “Rework” to no avail.

One thing I really like about the iBooks app compared to the kindle is the fact that when you are reading a book you have an idea of what page you are on. The kindle (as far as I know) only shows you the % of the book you have read. I like to know I am on page 7 of 200 rather than 3.5% of the way done. Also like the little note on the bottom right for where you are in the chapter (2 pages left in this chapter). Another point, bookmarking on the iPad is fantastic. Simply press down on a word, and bookmark it. You can also drag and select a sentence (similar to iPhone) and bookmark that.

Thought coming to mind, the iPad is the perfect travel computer. Could I get away with having a laptop at the office, a laptop at home, and simply carrying my iPad around? Hmmm, tough investment, but may be worth it.

Final though, great effort in innovation by apple. I am sure there are shortcomings with this device, but it is a MAJOR step in the right direction.

What it is:

Rather than repackage various tidbits about this service from around the web, here is Techcrunch’s succinct and perfectly acceptable description of formspring.me: a site where “you invite people to ask you any question they want (they can opt either to leave the question anonymously or leave their user info). Then, the next time you log into the site, you’re shown a list of pending questions in your inbox. You select which questions you want to answer and delete the ones you don’t. Your answers can be a word long, or you can write a few paragraphs if you want to.” Source

Why it caught my eye:

I heard a little bit about formspring.me but never took a good look at the service. Then SXSWi 2010 came by and I started hearing more and more about the massive growth the community had been experiencing. After hearing about the round of funding the service closed, and the investors involved, I decided to give it a stronger look.

Review of my initial usage:

The site is shockingly entertaining. I signed up for my formspring.me profile and sent a tweet out to my followers inviting them to ask me questions:

Since that tweet I have received a nice variety of questions. Users have asked me about my personal interests, different aspects of VaynerMedia, and my general opinion and thoughts on different topics within social media.

Why it works:

Users log-on to formspring.me for two reasons: 1.) to see if they have a question waiting for them and 2.) to see if their friends have answered any interesting questions. Content is consumed and produced at a personal and engaging level.

Deeper into why it works:

From what I can see this is a play on our own, secret desires. (just like Myspace, DailyBooth, and many other successful social networks) We want to talk about ourselves and want to know everything about our friends. Formspring.me is simply a great and clever vehicle for accomplishing these goals without being rude or obnoxious.

Where it can grow:

Like many other social networks, formspring.me will excel once it is embraced by celebrities. In the coming months / years we will surely see professional athletes, actors, singers and more join formspring.me. People love to know as much as they can about “famous people” and formspring.me will be more effective in providing this kind of info than many gossip rags / blogs / and twitter accounts.

Potential Business Model Idea:

Sponsored questions. Brands (at least good ones) would have a field days provoking responses to their products for users to share to their communities. These brands can target their demographics and have their message and brand spread throughout the user communities in a reasonably authentic and engaging manner.

Example: Brand A has a new product coming out that is ideal for 18-25 year old women. Why wouldn’t Brand A sponsor a question that automatically appears in every 18-25 year old female’s formspring.me inbox? Maybe something to the effect of “What is your favorite feature of the soon to be released Brand A Product X?”

Thoughts?

Please note: My brother and co-founder in VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk, is an investor / advisor for Gowalla

This weekend I will be heading down to Austin, Texas to attend the interactive portion of South By South West. This will be my 3rd trip down and every year I have attended, my networking experience has been dominated by mobile. The first year? Twitter. Year two featured a combination of Twitter and Foursquare and this year will most likely be 40% Gowalla, 40% Foursquare, and 20% Twitter. In preparation for this usage, I went ahead and downloaded the latest versions of both Foursquare and Gowalla. After playing around for a bit I figured I would add some input regarding the major points for both release:

Gowalla made a major update to their user experience. The app focuses much more on the check-in experience and friend activity, and far less on items. The major improvement to the overall experience is the inclusion of comments and pictures with check-ins. This update will definitely improve the SXSW experience.

Foursquare’s major play was the inclusion of “trending locations.” I am not sure if this was included in a previous update, but this functionality alone will make Foursquare a must use during SXSW. Gone are the days of texting around to see which party is either too packed or too empty – nice touch.

Have you downloaded the latest versions of Gowalla and Foursquare? If so, let me know what you think!

Going to start using Tumblr more often as I continue my quest to produce content on a more consistent basis. You can check my Tumblr out here. My Tumblr will have less original content and will be more of a resource where I reblog others content and post photos, videos, and links I find interesting. You can also find some of my thoughts on Twitter. Lastly, I also blog on the VaynerMedia blog here

Mixergy is a video blog started by Andrew Warner focused on interviewing entrepreneurs. Andrew has done some wonderful interviews, including: Seth Godin, Jimmy Wales, Tim Ferriss, Dennis Crowley and many more. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Andrew last week discussing VaynerMedia and branding (video embed below).

Over the past few months my blog has received thousands of hits a day from users looking for information on how they can link Twitter to Facebook. The following is a brief collection of links that will help all of you find what you need:

Twitter’s official page on how to add Twitter to Facebook. The Twitter app for Facebook integrates Twitter into your Facebook experience.

Here is the most popular Twitter Facebook Application.

A blog post from a Facebook employee discussing Publishing to Twitter from Facebook Pages.

The Facebook application Selective Tweets. Selective Tweet Status lets you update your Facebook status from Twitter – BUT you can choose which tweets you want – just end a tweet with #fb when you want to post it as your Facebook status – simple!

A nifty Facebook Page that helps you manage your Facebook Fan Pages connection to Twitter accounts.

Hope this helps!

I truly believe that the best way to manage your inbox is to be proactive. Instead of letting email pile up, I recommend “attacking” your inbox by creating a system in which you categorize every email you receive into one of many (when I say many, I mean a few) folders/labels.

The first step is to decide whether or not the email requires action. If the email is actionable, move it into one of two folders: “Today” or “This Week.” With that in mind, try to have an empty “Today” folder by the end of the day, and an empty “This Week” folder by the end of the week.

If an email does not require action, move that email into a general folder. This folder should be glanced at daily, and does not necessarily have to be empty at a certain date or time.

The above is just the beginning of being proactive with email. Every inbox is different and you may find a running theme within your received emails that will inspire you to create more folders. The key is to make sure that your inbox logic is consistent, and to stay lean with the amount of folders/labels you use.

Just for reference, I am playing around with the formatting of my blog.  During that process I accidentally screwed things up.  I’m sure I will be able to have one of my developer friends fix it for me soon.  Until then… sorry!