Mobility, social media, and cloud computing are taking the world by storm. Consumer IT is affecting everyone from enterprise-level organizations to small businesses, and back to the consumers themselves. It’s a rapid and sometimes vicious cycle in which failure to follow the trend could cost companies much-needed momentum.

Here are five ways you can stay on top of these emerging trends.

1. Make a mission statement
Everyone should have a mission statement for online marketing, businesses and individuals alike. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want people to buy products, sign up for your email newsletter, visit your blog? Explain how you are uniquely qualified to help. If you’re marketing yourself rather than a business, your mission is to demonstrate to employers how you are uniquely qualified.

2. Contribute value
You get out of social media what you put into it. Follow people with valuable content and contribute valuable content of your own. Note that the converse is also true: you can and should stop following people if they do not provide you with information you find useful.

3. Seek balance
If you’re not posting often enough, people will lose interest. If you post too often they’ll be overwhelmed. Find the right frequency for you based on your mission and target audience. This is where mobility and social media go hand in hand. If you think of a good LinkedIn status, use your smartphone and post it. It takes far less time to actually do it than to write “Update LinkedIn Status” on a to-do list.

4. Delve in
Don’t be afraid to experiment! Sign up for Facebook, add some apps to your iPad, and most of all read, read, read about these emerging technologies.

5. Subscribe to Tech Tips by email, RSS, and Twitter
And here’s a good place to start. Follow Tech Tips and get your feet wet with someone who isn’t going to laugh if you make mistakes. Email subscribers receive bonus tips and product reviews. Be sure to follow me @trionaguidry on Twitter for breaking tech news and other geek goodies. If you’re not on Twitter you can visit my blog where you’ll find my Twitter feed in the right sidebar. Don’t know how to RSS? Check out my info on RSS here.

How are you planning to use mobility and social media in the new year? Comment and share your thoughts!

Increased use of mobile devices only makes matters worse. Vendors are embracing the cloud as a simple way to synchronize between devices of differing manufacturers and models. What is easier for them is not necessarily better for you. I’ll use Apple’s iCloud as an example, although the problem is industry-wide.

Until now, the way to sync a mobile device to a computer was to connect the two with a cord – in the old days it was a serial cable, now it’s traditionally USB. Connect the cable, run your software, and you’re synced. But there are drawbacks to this method, especially when you have to sync more than one device, and it’s not always an intuitive process.

Enter iCloud, which promises to let you sync all your iDevices with ease. Apple’s web site proudly states, in classic Steve Jobs style:

“iCloud stores your music, photos, documents, and more and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices. Automatic, effortless, and seamless — it just works.”

Yes, but what does that mean, exactly?

Where once your data went through a simple cable from your mobile device to your computer, now it traverses miles of network and resides in one or more data centers. Syncing one contact between two devices sitting less than an inch from each other now involves millions of dollars in IT infrastructure. Creepy, when you think about it, and not very environmentally friendly either.

Consumers seem willing to make the trade-off, if mobile and cloud revenues are any indication. To be honest, I don’t think most people think about it. This complacency can easily lead to increased security risks. Imagine the stuff on your phone: contacts, calendars, all sorts of information you’d never trust to a complete stranger. But that’s exactly what you’re doing when you using cloud services to sync. New services like iCloud let you sync even more information. Pretty soon everything you do on an electronic device will be on the Internet.

Or has that already happened? I described my recent experience evaluating iPad RSS apps and my realization that the only decent products, not to mention all the award-winners, required the use of Google Reader. This means that you have to put all your feeds – the blogs and web sites you subscribe to – on the Internet. Never mind the free speech issues and Big Brother implications that the government could watch and/or censor what you’re reading, what if I don’t want to put my feeds in the cloud? They only need to reside in two places: my computer and my iPad.

But the apps with the features I wanted required Reader, so I held my nose and accepted the inevitable. That is becoming the only option if you want the functionality these products promise. A few – a very few – vendors include options that allow you the same functionality without using the cloud, but the process often feels like a kludge. They don’t want you to do it that way. They want you where it’s easy (and cheap) for them to deal with you and your data.

I’m in IT, so I’ve got computer security on the brain. The average person doesn’t and that concerns me. For most people technology is a black box that they hope, as Jobs said, “just works.” The cloud makes that easier, but at what cost? I think it’s important that we think about the implications of technology before diving headlong into its use.

First, the basics: recommendations on security software. These are all reliable vendors in the security arena and have mobile products available for a variety of platforms.

• Kapersky Mobile Security
  http://usa.kaspersky.com/products-services/home-computer-security/mobile-security
• ESET Mobile Security
  http://www.eset.com/us/products/mobileantivirus.php/
• Webroot Mobile Security For Consumers
  http://www.webroot.com/En_US/consumer-products-mobile-security.html
• Intego VirusBarrier iOS (Apple iOS only)
  http://www.intego.com/virusbarrierios/
• Trend Micro Mobile Security (Android only)
  http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/personal/mobile-security-for-android/

Next, I wanted to expand on what I said about using mobile technology to keep up with the latest threats. One of the best ways to do this is to subscribe to technology-related RSS feeds. I’ve talked about RSS before. It’s like getting regular headlines automatically updated to your computer or mobile device. There are a wide variety of RSS apps, but you’ll find most of them will require you to use either Google Reader or their own cloud-based technology to sync your feeds. And speaking of feeds, here are some to try.

• Triona’s Tech Tips RSS Feed
  • You can also subscribe via email by clicking here or sending a message to techtips-request@guidryconsulting.com, subject subscribe.
• Security Feeds For Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and US-CERT. Note that these might change as this post ages.
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/rss/bulletin
  • http://rss.lists.apple.com/security-announce.rss
  • http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/feed/atom
  • http://www.us-cert.gov/channels/alerts.rdf
• Sophos Naked Security
  • http://feeds.feedburner.com/NakedSecurity

One last piece of advice. Go into the settings of your mobile device and turn off any sharing that you’re not using. Periodically monitor your privacy settings on mobile devices and online sites, because they won’t necessarily stay the way you set them (thanks a lot, Facebook).

Case in point: I recently evaluated RSS readers for iPad. Leaving aside my annoyance that almost all of them require Google Reader (what if I don’t want to put my feeds in the cloud?), it wasn’t possible to test the apps without buying them. I ended up buying a couple of apps that couldn’t do what I wanted, which is great for the developers (and Apple) but not so good for a budget-conscious citizen.

I don’t expect something for nothing. Developers put valuable time and skill into creating these programs and they should be compensated. But I don’t want to buy software I can’t use, either. Even if its only $0.99 (and most of these apps were in the $5-10 range), the cost adds up. Some developers offer “lite” versions which is great. I’d like to see more of that.

While I’m on the subject, developers need to create decent Web sites that describes their apps’ features in full detail. Check out the site for Reeder, which is an excellent RSS app, not that you’d know it from the site. There’s a whole lot of design without much substance. For pity’s sake, could we have a feature list, a support page, maybe even some frequently asked questions? There’s some information here, but not enough and it’s hard to find. You need to tell people at a glance what they’re getting for their $0.99 or $5 or $10, or whatever.

In other words, today’s developers could stand to grab some nostalgia from the old days, when software came in a box that told you everything you needed to know.

Which may seem odd to today’s Internet generation, but back in the 1980s it wasn’t cool to be a nerd. Steve helped change that not only by being enthusiastic about computers, but by making them easy for everyone to use. That may seem obvious now but at the time it was revolutionary.

Of the original Apple pair, Steve Wozniak was more of a nerd’s nerd. He loved the technology for its own sake. Steve Jobs saw the business potential. That man could sell you dirty dishwater and make you think it was champagne. I guess we should all be glad he wasn’t a used-car salesman. But he wasn’t one to sell you junk. An Apple computer, to use their marketing phrase, “just works”. And that made us love him all the more.

I doubt I’d be where I am today without Steve Jobs. Not only did he have an enormous influence on my career as an IT professional, but he also demonstrated the joys (and pitfalls) of entrepreneurship. When it came time for me to consider starting my own business, I was inspired by his example. He believed that work and play don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and that the best job in the world is the one you love.

I’m not worried about what’s going to happen to Apple without Steve Jobs. His spirit infuses the company he created, and his philosophy will continue to drive the business. Of course there will be changes, but Steve himself was never one to sit still. He would be the first to tell us all to keep innovating.

Steve Jobs taught me that you can keep your nerdiness while still being a savvy businessperson. But I think his most important lesson was that you can live your dreams and inspire others to do the same.

“I think there was a lot of expectation – anybody’s in a difficult situation to follow Steve – but I think it was pretty lackluster,” said Triona Guidry, a freelance technology writer and owner of Guidry Consulting in Cary. “In my head, I was trying to compare it to the season finale of a TV series* – every season finale has to be bigger and bigger until it gets to the point that you can’t do it anymore.”

“For whatever reason, they decided not to do an iPhone 5, and the initial reaction is that’s a big mistake,” Guidry said. “As one person said, they could have quite easily put it in a different shiny case, and none of us would be the wiser. But that’s not what they decided to do.”

What struck me most about Apple’s unannouncement was how bummed everyone was. It’s hard for Apple to keep topping last year’s Biggest Event Ever, but you can’t alienate the masses, either. By failing to deliver (or to manage expectations ahead of time) Apple has lost ground. With no boost from iPhone 5 sales it may be a bitter holiday season, especially with the Amazon Kindle Fire on the iPad’s heels.

If, at their next event, Apple can pull off something so crazy-stupid-awesome we all forget about what happened yesterday, they might regain some of the ground they’ve lost. But I don’t think this is necessarily indicative of Apple without Steve Jobs. As I said to the Northwest Herald:

“The question is why they would do it that way, especially with so much expectation on this,” she said. “But then again, Apple’s smart. Maybe there’s something behind the scenes going on that we don’t know about. That’s the only thing that’s going to turn this around for them.”

Apple does make mistakes** but I’ve learned not to underestimate them. For all we know they did this simply so they can sit back and chuckle while the rumor mill REALLY goes into overdrive.

* Like whether a second Big Bang tops a bomb that will destroy all of reality. I won’t even get into what happened this season.

** Let’s hear it for the Newton, the Lisa, the Mac IIvx, and all of Apple’s less-beloved products.

But first you should know the difference between a tablet and an e-reader. Tablets like the iPad offer more than just e-books because they have apps which expand their functionality. But these features come at a price: tablets are usually more expensive than e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook.

Reading books electronically is simple. You buy your books online and download them to your device. You flip pages by swiping your fingers, and you can create multiple bookmarks or make notes. You can buy just about any book in digital format. In fact, e-books are often less expensive than their paper counterparts. You can even get many free e-books online or via your local library, and you can switch your magazine and newspaper subscriptions to digital for additional cost savings.

In general, I recommend an iPad if you want maximum features, and a Kindle or a Nook if you are on a budget and primarily interested in pure reading. While other tablets exist, the iPad is by far the most popular. Not only can you read books but, thanks to the App Store, you can perform all manner of light computing tasks (and, yes, play games). Apple’s iBooks is positioned to become to books what iTunes is to music. If you want the best in newspaper and magazine subscriptions, go with the iPad.

Amazon is the existing e-book giant. Their Kindle technology is well-regarded. They specialize in making e-reading an easy experience, and the quality of their electronic ink is second to none. Barnes and Noble’s Nook also gets high praise for the quality of its electronic ink. There’s the standard Nook and the Nook Color, which is a bit like a stripped down iPad. There are some apps available for it, whereas the basic Nook is only an e-reader. The Nook Color also supports video. However, reading newspapers and magazines on e-readers can be a disappointing experience compared to the richness of the iPad versions.

Does buying one device over the other tie you to that type of device forever? You’ll be buying your books through the service of whomever you choose, so bear that in mind. There are apps that allow you to read your Nook or Kindle books on your iPad, iPhone, or computer, which expands your options. And books in the standard ePub format can be read almost anywhere, as can PDFs.

I decided to go with a Nook Color for now, with a plan to buy an iPad 3 (or iPad 2 Plus or whatever they’re going to call it) when it becomes available. All in all, I’m enjoying the e-reader experience. I can carry around 3,200 pages worth of George R. R. Martin in my purse and not strain my shoulder. An unexpected benefit is that I no longer have to worry about having enough bookshelves… but I do have to watch my wallet, because the ability to buy books with the swipe of a finger is far too tempting.

I think one of the things that caught me is that iCloud will be on by default. I wonder if people will know where their information is, and if they care… The landscape is going to alter more toward continued mobility and communication from mobile devices. We’ve really blurred the line at this point between entertainment and communication and news and TV and music. It’s all mixed together.

Which made me wonder: Where is all my data now? My first thought was, “On my server and its backup devices.” But then I got to thinking about the music and TV shows I’ve purchased, the blogs I’ve written, the remarks I’ve made on LinkedIn and Facebook… not to mention all the personal information about me and every other consumer that is lurking in various corporate databases worldwide…

Okay, not so simple an answer.

Cloud computing isn’t the future, it’s now. Does iCloud change things? Not really, although it does make them easier for the average person to use, which may be more important. Apple has a proven track record of providing wildly popular ways for consumers to use technology. As the Northwest Herald article points out, Microsoft is adding similar features to its popular Xbox game platform. I’ve talked before about my concerns about cloud computing for consumers, which boil down security and accessibility. Our ability to use this technology is progressing faster than our understanding of its risks, but as long as you go into it with that knowledge, feel free to explore. I’m already thinking about ways these new technologies might be helpful to me, and I’m sure you are too.

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In cloud computing, all programs and files reside “in the cloud,” or on the Internet. This means you don’t have to spend as much in hardware, because you don’t need the processing power of a traditional computer. The same data can be accessed from any device that can surf the Web. Even if, say, your smartphone dies, you can still reach your files with another device like an iPad or a netbook.

But there are disadvantages to cloud computing, as I mentioned in a previous Tech Tips article. You don’t know where your files live nor whether they’re secure, and if your Internet or cloud computing service goes down, you’re out of luck. Users of Microsoft’s Office Live discovered this to their dismay recently, when the service went down on two occasions (here and here). As I said before, I personally don’t want to lose access to basic word processing just because some server happens to fail.

For the moment, we’re seeing a mix of both approaches. Most small businesses are continuing to use traditional approaches while exploring new technologies, and I predict that’s going to continue for a while. We’re not quite at the point where people are willing to commit their computing world to the cloud, but we’d better get ready because our world is becoming more mobile, more social, and less private than ever before.

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Antivirus for smartphones is where antivirus for personal computers was back in the mid-1990s: most offerings are rudimentary and most people don’t worry about it. I predict mobile security is going to become more and more of a headache for small businesses and consumers.

What can you do? If you think your phone may be infected, the surest way to deal with it is to wipe your phone and restore from backup. But viruses are very fast at swiping your information and sending it who knows where, so the damage may have already been done.

It’s better to secure your phone so it’s harder for viruses to get in. Follow manufacturer’s instructions to lock down your phone’s security. Firms like Symantec, Kaspersky and Eset have smartphone security programs available. You should also make sure you are running the latest version of your phone’s software.

Subscribe free to Tech Tips and receive bonus tips, tricks and product reviews. Click here to subscribe or send email to techtips-request-at-guidryconsulting-dot-com, subject “subscribe”.