Influence Map - Episode #109 of CloudFocus Weekly

Machine transcript generated in 2026 from the episode audio (Whisper speech-to-text with automatic speaker separation). Speaker labels are automatic and may be wrong in places. Timestamps shown every few minutes.

00:00 Jason Atwood: This is the 109th episode of CloudFocus Weekly for the first week of October 2012. This episode is titled, Influence Map. I am Jason Atwood, almost sounding like Mr. Burns. Influence map. Joining me for the 109th time, co-host of the podcast. Justin, I'm playing with my mic, Eddlestein.

Justin Edelstein: I gotta get it right. Yeah, get it right. Oh, I think I did. How you doing?

Jason Atwood: All right, I'm recovered. You're recovered from your dream force sickness. Yeah. Never got mine.

Justin Edelstein: Oh, that's good for you. Pretty much. Good on you. Excellent. moment.

Jason Atwood: Also, I just had Diet Coke. Just letting you know. Alright, well we have an agenda. First thing I wanted to say is for the people who are the winners of the CloudFocus Weekly Dreamforce giveaway, your stuff will be going out this week. You don't have all your names and stuff because we haven't gotten all the names back, but your prize will be going out this week. So you might actually get your prize. before we announce who won. Well, we don't need to even announce who won. We're not even going to announce who won. You're just going to get it. You're going to get it. We know who they are. We know who they are. And you know who you are because you've been contacted by us if we didn't have your mailing address. And then we're going to ship it to you.

Jason Atwood: So congratulations to all 10 of you. Moving on. Alright, this week we have the blog post. I think one of the last of our Dreamforce blog posts as dictated by the Blogmaster. We have LinkedIn which launches actually two different upgrades programs in the last two weeks. We'll talk about both of them. We'll talk about the kerfuffle. over Apple Maps. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about the iPhone 5 since everybody has one now, so we can talk about it. And Google Apps goes crazy with over 20 million users. Google Apps for Education. The free one. And then we'll do our CloudFocus app for the week. Let's kick it off, Blogmaster, with the blog post, Dejure.

Justin Edelstein: Alright, I didn't write it, but I did assign it. So we had one of our associates here, Roger, speaking at Dreamforce for the first time. He got to write a few of these types of posts. He wrote a post about attending my second Dreamforce, speaking for the first time at Dreamforce. My first beer. Like... My first yeah, exactly. I was gonna go in the bad place. Don't go. It's not explicit podcast notes not but So I'm not gonna read through the blog post or or you know You guys should go read it if you're ever interested in speaking at dream for is they find that you find it at blog that our cuz Inc calm very well done and If you ever interested in speaking at dream force or ever Wanted to get a little bit more behind the scenes look at what happens To you as a speaker at Dreamforce the preparation that goes into speaking at Dreamforce You know we sat here and we're like yeah We're going to Dreamforce, and I'm speaking twice and you're speaking once and Roger speaking twice, and it's like oh whatever, it's not a whatever thing.

03:31 Justin Edelstein: There's a lot of preparation that goes into it. You're standing on a stage in front of a lot of people in some cases. Some cases. And there's things that are going on that a lot of people don't know about. It's definitely a time commitment. I would say he has- Oh, it certainly is a time commitment. He has five tips for users.

Jason Atwood: And again, the blog post will be up on Friday, tomorrow. But he- He has five tips. I would say the one tip is, while speaking in Dreamforce is great and a lot of fun, you should know that in the weeks, months leading up to Dreamforce and even the days, it is a time commitment. I would say 20 to 30 hours worth of your time before just leading up between slides, getting ready, you know. presentation stuff, even when you're there, there's a lot if you're doing one of the And I think a the the guy who's running it, sometimes they'll make you run through the times and meet every week for three months.

Justin Edelstein: I happened to be running one of the sessions. That was to show up and let's do it. And the other one was a weekly standing meeting for about six weeks. But that one also had like 1200 people in it.

Jason Atwood: It was a bigger one. I thought you knew by the size of the room. the room by how many people signed up for it? It's such a revenue radio, it's not even right, yeah. Alright, so- Alright, so let's go on to LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually launched two new stuff. You know, LinkedIn is sort of the anti-social network, but it's sort of the, you know, your corporate social network. But they launched two new features, one which showed up is called influencers. a Wine enthusiast a social media spoke the dream force 11 and a jet fan and now the chance fan, which is helpful I actually tweeted out of my studies. He's gonna go the game on Sunday maybe we catch up and endorsements and you can see like for us it's like salesforce.com, project management, and then people can endorse it and then the bottom of your profile it'll show you sort of like a hit list of all the people.

08:26 Jason Atwood: It's very much like clout and cred. So in that you know you have clout and cred it's that sort, sort of thing you like you can give someone a I- I gave someone co-out in sales force, this is sort of I endorse them. What's interesting is it's a little bit more, it's obviously based on not just your social presence but your professional- your professional presence.

Justin Edelstein: Can I give you some opinions? I like one and I really don't care for the other. Go for it. I like endorsements. I the like I feel like endorsements on your professional profile. What is in essence your resume these days? And. For people that you know to endorse you is more meaningful than writing something I And Those people endorse you in certain skills actually very meaningful and brings another level of I guess

Jason Atwood: Meta data to your to your profile which is I think the more the most interesting thing is this is linked in Getting into this game. I mean again linked has doing really well, too Well, they have been on the outside of this game. They are on the outside of the Twitter. you know, they kind of connect, they kind of cut off. They've a doing updates and stories. They've been doing, they've been kind of building on this platform and things like Cred and Clout, which we've talked about before, from the other places you are. I mean it's connected by read your profiles, but this is so connected to what people already are looking at. I think people, because I think people go in and look to my profile on cloud, very, very small. I look at the one in LinkedIn and I know that 10 to 15 people are looking at it a day.

Jason Atwood: Like. That to have people endorse me there, it's. I love that they make money, I love that they are taking some of the best things from these other social networks. I love that they're kind of getting into this and they're becoming their own. They're really, I think, making a play to become a social network, which is interesting.

Justin Edelstein: Well, I always have considered them a social network anyway, but my second opinion was this following influencer thing. Yes. I'm not a huge fan of it. I just don't... I mean, how many places can It follow the same person? So I'm just not a huge... fan of Why do I have to do this in LinkedIn too? I don't really LinkedIn is for for me not for that. It's not for following influencers It's not for aggregating news It's for connecting to people that I have worked with in the past or have a professional relationship with so this following I don't really care for it.

12:29 Jason Atwood: Right, but you're putting your blinders on that, oh, I have these other places that already have that. That's not the point. The point is, LinkedIn is saying, that's great. There is Twitter out there if you want to follow them there. This is another place, and we're going to do it differently. You can't follow everybody. We're going to pick the people, and we're going to make them... and we're going to do it, you know, again, differently. For people who don't use Twitter, there's plenty of people out there in the world that don't use Twitter, for people who don't think that following pages on Facebook, this is the place that they can do it. Again, LinkedIn is trying to take a piece of that pie. That's why they're copying features of other places or putting their own spin on it, whether you use that or not.

Justin Edelstein: Have you followed anybody yet? I did Gary Vaynerchuk. What does it look like?

Jason Atwood: To be honest, I haven't seen what it looks like yet because I haven't... Because he probably doesn't care. No, no, no, he does because they picked 150 of them. He actually wrote an article, the article that we're going to talk about, he wrote an article talking about how it's important. So it's a connection. It's yet another connection. These places are all getting built in together. Yeah, LinkedIn's influencer program wins when people understand its DNA. So anyway, that's the article that we're We were referencing, but you should check it out. Again, I'm more and more impressed by LinkedIn's strategy, or a social network, or they're a, I don't

Justin Edelstein: Next up, a little bit about Map In New Jersey. Yes, live in New York and Had no idea how to get there and have my new iPhone 5 my shiny white iPhone 5 Yep, and I punched in the address where I was going it found it It gave me three three routes to drive. I said I want this one. I used the turn by turn the whole way and I got there And I got there in what I thought was the right amount of time to get to the place I presume it took me on the right highways. It took me on the right turns to get to the place. So What is the issue here there's our maps inaccurate absolutely inaccurate there's things me I haven't experienced that yet. Well because you tried to go from one place to one

Jason Atwood: Place People who have been all over the country are saying they're completely... For example, near Jets home... near Jets? They have the Mountain Hofstra. That was four years ago. There's things that they're just wrong. Like, I searched for 550 Madison Avenue the other day. And whatever number it was. And like put me on the middle of nowhere like it went to it didn't pick the Madison Avenue that was close to I went had To put New York, New York didn't do that then I went New York City I had to give it the zip code to put the place that's close to me Then the one that was like I've hung out in Long Island interesting because I also Go ahead. No, no public transportation, which is huge a lot of people and no Street View So, Street View is something that a lot of people like to use as a way of seeing things.

15:46 Jason Atwood: Where am I? I can see, oh, that's the place there. And then public transportation is something that I used constantly. Now I just use it by the web. So, I think the point is like, the kerfuffle is that unlike Siri, which they announced, and they said, oh, here's Siri, it's in beta. It's either going to work or not work. We're going to make it better. It's going to get great, you know, someday. But right now it's in beta, which is the corporate speak for... It's gonna not work all the time and it's not the greatest thing in the world. Apple got up on stage and and said This is the greatest maps we've ever created and then it was saying and saying is really best map experience You've ever had in your life Well when you're inaccurate right when you don't have the features that other maps have that were on the phone and then when you take Away those other feature take away those other maps so you can't even get to them.

Jason Atwood: I think that's the kerfuffle And I get it. Would it be nice if they left the old iPhone map on there, the Google one, and just left it or worked with them a little bit better to leave a version of it? That would have been nice. Would it be better if they put a beta on it so they would say, listen, we're going to take the next year and we're going to make it the best ever and not come out of the gate saying it's the greatest thing there since sliced bread? that would have been nice because they basically came out saying this is the greatest thing ever and it's not it's just missing a lot of stuff and it's inaccurate and for maps being inaccurate is kind of like that's it it's like i have the greatest stock screener ever the prices are off a little bit

Justin Edelstein: But it's the greatest ever so that's sort of the kerfuffle i see i haven't experienced it yet Everything that I've tried to do is work.

Jason Atwood: I mean it's beautiful. It's fast. Yeah, and the 3d on it is amazing I was using it. I'm taking a vacation to Vegas in a bit which we're just talking about for the podcast and I used it to go over there and use the 3d over Vegas It's just unbelievable that they can render they basically take these screenshots and they render these 3d, you know pictures of stuff So what what is being used?

Justin Edelstein: Underneath the covers to actually get the data. It's not Apple.

Jason Atwood: No, I think they've, they've, I know turn by turn they talked about they worked with TomTom. I think for the, for the mapping data, I think they've been buying a lot of, they've been buying a lot of companies over the last couple of years. I've also noticed if you hop into the store,

Justin Edelstein: The app store, that they've now highlighted like on the homepage like Map apps other than they definitely never highlighted in the past

Jason Atwood: Because they had because they wrote this letter that was like a fuffle They wrote a letter they put it on on apple.com saying we're sorry Our map app is going to get better. It's not the greatest now Here's some other one use Bing just kind of like oh, that's interesting ours isn't so great. We had to write a That's how you know it's a big deal, is that when Tim Cook has to write an apology letter to Apple fans because their product was not up to snuff. So interesting. I'd love to hear your feedback if you guys... Again, everything I've used it has been fine, but when I've been... Except for that one little hitch. But not having a couple of features, kind of annoying. And then I've had people show me and just pull things up and go, look, search for this and it just...

18:56 Jason Atwood: It won't find it. So... All righty, well next up the last of the last in our pretty much Salesforce free Podcast Google Apps for Education has 20 million users. That's pretty awesome I'm pretty happy about that

Justin Edelstein: Because Google Apps is a really great product and they give it away for free to non-profits. They call it the education suite or education edition, but it's not just for education. Like they, you know, they target higher ed institutions and schools, but any not-for-profit can use it. And you get the full suite of services. is. I think you get a little less storage than if you were to pay the 50 bucks. But still, to get the sites and to get the email and to get the drive and to get all the other fun stuff that comes with the Google Apps experience, the integrated suite of... applications on the marketplace whatever they call it now Google Play or I think that's what it's called. Pretty exciting that they have that many users out there students, faculty, staff all running on Google it's got to be saving

Jason Atwood: Tons of money for institutions across the country. You would have thought that they had to do this before themselves and have email servers and all that now to sort of wire them.

Justin Edelstein: Well they did. When you and I were in college, I mean I had an email. I had an email. I had a.edu. I still do. I address. I'm sure I still do too. I just have no idea how to get to it. I'm sure it still exists. But... Man, I have no idea how to log into it, but yeah, it was their own like webmail thing.

Jason Atwood: Yeah. So, you don't have to do that. Now thinking back, like if I had a Google Drive in college and every course I had had their own folder and they could, and they could just drop stuff into it. Here's homework assignments. Here's paper. Here's handouts. And they would just show up on my thing and then have a, I mean all that, the amount you guys. Bye bye. and I was just at the beginning of the, I graduated, all the time you spend with paperwork and shooting stuff back and forth and, let's meet in the library to make copies, like all this stuff so electronic now, it's an incredible offering. Again, we pay for it and don't tell Google, but I think it's way under priced. Comparatively what you get for the feature set, That's all for today.

Jason Atwood: It's extremely under priced for almost any other tool we use. You compare it to our phone system that we pay for. You compare it to our sales force. You compare it to whatever. It's incredible functionality and very, very cheap. But hey, don't go raise it and then blame me. In other news, Google raised their prices based on JSON. That was feedback. All right, well, that's it. No other real sale. There's a couple Salesforce stories. We'll leave them for next time. We're kind of doing Sales for free episode. But let's get to our CloudFocus app.

22:09 Justin Edelstein: Pick of the week. And you're writing something in the Google Docs? I'm writing an ink so I didn't write it in. Okay. So go ahead Justin tell me your pick of the week. I've got a fun little iOS app nice Not really very productive kind of counterproductive.

Jason Atwood: Oh you use this with me today. I did use this with you. I was like What was that? Yeah, all right kind of cool, right?

Justin Edelstein: It was kind of cool So there's a free version and there's a 99 cent version. Did you pay the 99 cents? I did because first I got the free one okay and said, oh, okay It's a little taste And then I was like, yep, there's enough here for me to pay the 99 cents to get full darn those premiums Well, it's called text pics right all one word and it puts like It harken me back to the days where you'd be on like aim and you'd be like typing out all those little characters to make a picture and well they've got a bunch of bunch of those stored up so like I sent you like a let's get in a drink and it was like in a mug or something like that bunch of characters were bunch of characters that make shapes that look cool like there's like what we did before we had emoji icons yeah before we had emoticon there's a number of different sections in the in there there's animals, there's celebration things like like my girlfriend sent me a happy birthday one yesterday.

Justin Edelstein: This was my birthday yesterday.

Jason Atwood: Happy birthday to me. I wasn't gonna mention that because you are getting kind of old. Damn, got some grays.

Justin Edelstein: There's like messages ones like call me which I hate that by the way. If someone texts me, call me. That annoys me. It's like no, you call me.

Jason Atwood: Really do that old I hate it because we're going back and forth. I'll be like hey no no no say it's not a back And forth thing it's a one. Oh, just the first time first time call me.

Justin Edelstein: No you call me Anyway though the things called text pics. It's either the free trek get the free one.

Jason Atwood: It's free So the free one let's wait the free one is free free ones $10 try it out.

Justin Edelstein: You'll get a few little topics and a few pictures within each topic see if it's worth your while. It allows you to copy them, it allows you to send the message right from the app. Nice.

Jason Atwood: So you can do a bunch of things with it, it's pretty cute. Does it take pictures and turn them into things? Nobody can take text and turn them into things. Okay so you can't take like a picture of a dog and have it turn into a picture.

Justin Edelstein: That would be cool but you can type things into it and it has a number of things that it'll transpose it. So you can type something and it'll send it upside down or inverse it or in Japanese or all sorts of like silly things. Please don't do any of that stuff today. I'm gonna send every text to you upside down. That would make me upset.

Jason Atwood: All right, text pick by some company. All right, text picks.

Justin Edelstein: 99 cents. I will find that URL for people. Mine's a little bit more than 99 cents.

Jason Atwood: It sure is. Do you have one of these? I do and I've actually had it for months now and I've been waiting to make it my pick because I've been actually testing it. My father has one of these. Yes, so my pick is something that I haven't had forever. I bought one for my mother-in-law for Christmas last year because she had some backup problems and then you know and I we've talked about I've written a blog post about backing up and the theory of three, which is if your data doesn't exist in three places, it just doesn't exist. So it has to exist in three places. So in iOS, the new mountain lion, one of the features that There's two features that make this why I bought it. One is that you can now, there's something called Power Nap when your computer is asleep and powered down, asleep but not off, it can do things.

26:00 Jason Atwood: Like still check for mail, it can do backups, it can do back ups to time machine, it can do it while it's closed. So while it's asleep, you can still do these things, which is very cool. That's one. And two is... in mountain lion you can now back up to multiple time time using time machine you can back up to- multiple places so you can have one that's one drive and I know that's another place so I bought the time capsule put it in the house threw it up and replaced my airport extreme and time capsule for all users I know it's apple time capsule it's basically a hard drive and an airport extreme put together.

Justin Edelstein: You and I have talked about the airport extreme, we love it.

Jason Atwood: This is just a little bit bigger and it has a 2 gig drive in it. And, you know, so it has all the networking stuff, but then it becomes a backup place. So it sits wherever it is, and then one or multiple computers in your house... can just be constantly time machining backing up to it. So all of a sudden you'll see the little thing spinning and you're backing up over the air. Something happened you could get it very fast right there's a copy right there Just a great, great thing. I'd buy a refurb one, because there's no reason to buy a new one, from Apple. It's called the Time Capsule. Again, I back up to four places. This is one of them use it. So that's it for the CloudFocus Weekly episode 109.

Jason Atwood: Remember to go to blog.arcasync.com for the blog and the podcast. Remember to follow us on tour.com at or Jason M Atwood or just Edelstein remember to go to iTunes and subscribe to the podcast which is where you'll find it we and the numbers going through the roof I'm not sure if everybody has a new podcast feature on their phone or something but I think people are triple subscribed I think they are. Maybe it's me, I'm subscribed.

Justin Edelstein: Or maybe we're just that awesome. It's just the numbers are going through the roof.

Jason Atwood: We love the feedback there. Come to the blog post and leave us feedback using discuss. Love it. Until next week, we'll be back with another episode, 110th. And this is Jake, or Jason and Justin. That's my name. name. Your alter ego. My alter,

Justin Edelstein: Your alter ego seems to be creeping into this podcast.

Jason Atwood: We'll see you next week and enjoy those cloudy days. Bye bye.