Scott Thomas: Designing the Obama Campaign from 99% on Vimeo.

Great conference video from Scott Thomas on designing the obama campaign.  I was specifically intrigued by the form designing technique tips.

Kudos to Facebook for adding individual post stats for page admins.  These stats give some great insights into how many fans see posts and allow you to see the impact of sharing.

I bit the bullet and ordered the Nexus One and decided to use it exclusively for a week and see how I liked it. My thought process was that in a worst case scenario, I would hate it and would have to return/sell it, with the best case being that I would love it and begin to use it as my everyday phone.  In the end I certainly did not end up hating the device, but did choose to sell it and stick with the trusty 3GS.

Usage Background

Couple of notes on usage.  First of all, I have an iPhone 3GS already therefore I used my sim card from that phone during the week of usage.  The card worked like a charm with the only disappointment being that 3G was not supported.  Calls, EDGE data and wifi connections all worked great.

I primarily used the device while traveling in Philadelphia for a business trip, therefore relied heavy on mobile internet, maps/GPS and phone calls.  

Pros

• Widgets - being a first time Android user I loved the widget concept.  Have interactivity on panels is a great feature.
• Screen - The OLED screen was beautiful.
• Camera - The 5 MP camera with LED flash was a nice touch.
• Nav - Built-in turn-by-turn navigation was easy to use and one of the better GPS units I have operated.
• Build quality - Had a very sturdy feeling in your hand.
• Multi-tasking - Being able to run multiple apps was great; however eventually you will notice a slow down and app crashes with too much running at once.
• Gallery browser - I was surprised at how I loved the gallery browser application.  It displayed photos in a refreshing way and not simply a re-hash of iPhone apps.
• Soft buttons - The 4 soft buttons along the bottom were useful to always have present.  Haptic feedback was also nice.
• Google integration - A very deep integration with all Google apps, including Voice, Gmail and Picasa.
• Voice entry - I didn't think I was going to like it, but being able to use a fairly accurate voice entry proved to be very useful.

Cons

• Android - with all the great things Android has, it was surprising unstable and laggy.
• Smoothness - Nearly all motion seemed slightly jerky compared to the iPhone.
• Keyboard - I found the virtual keyboard to be very inaccurate, especially buttons towards the edges.
• Scrollball positioning - the scroll ball on the bottom is nice to have, but it seems positioned to low and too close to the bottom edge.  Felt awkward in the hand.
• Apps - There are certainly a lot of apps available, but the apps I use everyday were not available (i.e. Dropbox) and the ones that were available seemed much less functional and clean as their iPhone counterpards (i.e. Facebook and Evernote).
• Exchange - The phone supports exchange for email and contacts, but does not include calendar integration.
• Music player - it sucks.  There is just no other way to say it.
• iTunes support - I use music on my phone everyday and the fact that there is no iTunes support is a killer to me.  Using DoubleTwist and other alternatives are ok, but are very lacking.
• Memory - For over $500 you think they could have put in more than 4 GB.
• No visual voicemail - the lack of integrated visual voicemail was annoying.  Obviously you can use Google Voice, but that would require a phone number change.

Final Conclusion

At the end of the day my decision to sell the device and stick to the 3GS was due to three factors:

1. Exchange support - Not having calendar sync seems to very surprisingly overlooked.  Most people who use Exchange use it in a work environment, therefore calendaring support is essential.
2. Music playback and iTunes integration - One of the main reasons I switched to an iPhone in the first place was I was tired of carrying a phone and an iPod around, consolidating into one device was amazing. After a week of using the Nexus One I had the feeling that I would be moving back to two devices as the music player was so poor and the iTunes integration was non-exisistant.  
3. Apps - As mentioned above the app options were too limited and the apps available seemed to lack polish.

Our online voting partner Votenet Solutions recently launched blog and one of the first entries featured a Q&A about the Sounders FC's use of online voting and the embracement of "democracy in sports."

You can read the full Q&A here.  A second entry was also added outlining what other business can learn from our "democracy in sports" philosophy.

If you haven't already check out my mention in the October 12th edition of the Wall Street Journal.  The article entitled "Fighting Social-Media Con Artists" covers how brands, including the Seahawks and Sounders FC, are fighting identity theft on social media sites.  

The article discusses our use of Ez.com for the Seahawks and Sounders FC, a service I shared a month ago.

To read the full article visit: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574445502831219412.html