Mike Schorah

In the past 24 hours I've been on the receiving end of two great examples of social media marketing: Firstly, Italian Daniele Mauri sent me a message via LinkedIn with some tips on how to improve the search engine ranking of our videos at www.YouTube.com/StarfishCI - His not didn't cost him much more than time, but it certainly impressed me with its usefulness. It makes it likely that I'll recommend him to others; maybe use his services for our own company activities; and I was able to repay the compliment by providing him with a LinkedIn Recommendation. Secondly, I got a note from a California-based company who'd picked up on one of my earlier blog posts . They want to highlight their app and I thought this was a great example of how to get a positive mention from a blogger: Hello Mike,  I am reaching out to you in relation to an article you wrote called My top iPad apps on 2/25/2013  ( http://www.mikeschorah.com/2013/02/my-top-ipad-apps.html )  I work for Cent...

Over the past weekend we released Version 1.1 of Starfish CI to the App Store . Within hours we'd discovered that a bug had crept in between v1.0 and v1.1 - the app continues to work, but the screen resolution on Retina iPads is screwy and it doesn't look as good and professional as it did and as we want it to. We're embarrassed that this slipped through our testing. Now, with so few users of such a new app it was really  tempting to stay quiet about this and work hard on the fix before too many people noticed. After all, what we'd lose in short-term disillusion we'd gain in that there'd be no Internet history of the blunder for people to find through Google in future. But we think that's entirely the wrong approach. It doesn't sit well with our ethics; and it doesn't make sense in the Internet era - If we don't blog and Tweet and acknowledge our problems (as well as shout about our good points) then others will. And we'd look worse. ...

Some of us in the iPad for Business forum on LinkedIn have been observing the disruptive nature of mobile technology. By taking an iPad or two to replace paper forms on a clipboard, businesses can make their field staff so much more productive. But it doesn't stop there. As this video shows, incoming data can transform the business processes back at head office to cut cost, improve speed, reduce errors and gain competitive advantage. More details and examples are at Starfish CI Get more like this

Here's a 7-min video that acts as a memory-jogger for a customer with whom we were setting up a little workflow operation to send an email summary to the Branch Manager whenever an Inspector saves a new report item to the Inspections List on their SharePoint site. In practice, each of the inspections is carried out by the Inspector using a custom-built form on an iPad using the StarfishCI app available from the App Store here . The inspection is done on the iPad; the data gets saved automatically to SharePoint, over the air; then SharePoint starts to carry out workflow - sending summaries, escalation emails based on certain values, and more... Get the detail on the App, its costs and more Get more like this

It was super to get customer feedback yesterday that @StarfishCI is already helping them to work faster and better; now we're taking it to the next stage... The client has begun to replace paper on clipboards with electronic forms on iPads: already, the data gets captured straight from the iPad and stored safely and securely in the central database, run by Microsoft SharePoint, and with no costs of keying the data in, or correcting errors! Microsoft SharePoint Designer workflow rules Now, though, we've introduced some business rules: as soon as a new 'Contract Visit' inspection is carried out and reported via the iPad form, it is automatically Filed - so that everyone can lay their hands on the results immediately, from any computer Reported to the Branch Manager and the Inspector, in summary form. Acknowledged back to the end-user customer: no longer does the Inspector have to leave behind a carbonless copy, the customer will get a courtesy email. There...

The technology is simply great  at letting ordinary mortals do things that just a little while ago would have taken a whole army of specialists. Take a look at this 1-min video showing off the GPS Locator tool from the StarfishCI app. Previously we'd have needed to bring in a specialist company; but now with a bit of software and a good video camera, tripod and some other bits, we can produce the whole thing in-house. See other videos at our YouTube channel That saves us heaps of time; and quite a lot of cash; and gives us the flexibility to experiment with content and get things just as we want them, without running up a bill with a team that's on the meter. And the results? Good enough  - Absolutely not as good as the professionals would do; but good enough for this stage of things. However, the down-side to all this astonishing productivity is the sheer range of skills that one has to pick up, fast: It's amazing to me how much there is to get right: lighting,...

This is the first in our mini-series looking briefly at the StarfishCI Toolbox controls. This video features the last control on the right hand side, the Button, which is used to allow the user to save data in the form, firstly to the iPad and then to Microsoft SharePoint. Other brief videos will follow in the next few days; each looking at other controls. Get more like this