We’ve taken a minimalist approach to the re-design process, and decided to start from scratch with a look that uses lots of whitespace, gets rid of all colors and gives priority to the main content.

We’ll keep doing some minor customizations as we go along and possibly add more features and sections, but only when we see a dire need for each addition.

What do you think of the new look? Let us know…

1 task at any time
140 characters per task
20 tasks maximum
drag and drop to change tasks order/priorities
Go!! and get things done

Next is a collaboration between Spinbits and CloudAppers , a result of Zero2Beta , which is a 2 days marathon of intense design and development of a web app from ground zero to beta launch.

Zero2Beta is an experiment on intense design and development of a useful web application from concept to launch in a couple of days, and release it to the public.

With the agile development platforms like Rails and back-to-basics approach to applications, the time to design, develop and launch an application has become impressively short. Zero2Beta is a collaboration effort between Spinbits and CloudAppers, with the purpose of pushing ourselves to create from scratch in a couple of days.

It enforces the practice of coming up with a unique idea, design an application around it, deploy it and get out in the public as soon as possible. We hope that the self-imposed limitations in terms of time and resources will push us to focus on what really matters and rise above trivial decisions into working on the absolutely necessary parts needed to have something working quickly.

The first application in this experiment “App1″ will kick off tomorrow, we will announce it here on the blog and start writing the story posts of our adventure in creating it from choosing the idea till launching the project.

You can follow the twitter account @zero2beta as we will post hourly updates throughout the next couple of days, links to posts in addition to some photos and videos as well.

Although you might not realize it, but your consumers and clients are already part of the Social Media phenomenon (as evident from the last part), and it’s already changing your business even without you knowing that.

BrandTags is a perfect example of social media power on a brand image, it’s an approximation of the collective brand perception, just pick a brand and take a look at what people feel about it and there you have it…

Even small companies and people have brands albeit Micro-brands, and their real value/image are determined by the people and community and no longer controlled by media or corporations.

Social media opened the doors to new opportunities and possibilities, which can be leveraged to achieve your goals by becoming part of the conversations taking place online and engaging the community in the context of their interactions.

Branding, marketing and advertising to commerce and product development and customer support are examples of what you can achieve through a proper social media strategy.

And above all it is inexpensive, efficient and far-reaching.

According to Charlene Li, Social Media research analyst at Forrester said P&G had results with their Social media strategy which were was 4 times more effective than traditional marketing.

Another interesting story is about one guy, who goes by the handle “Predator,” saved Dell at least $1 million by answering technical questions in its community forum.

The real question here is “can you afford not being involved in the process?” I didn’t think so.

Because of its roots in the inbred human behavior and the recent empowerment made possible the web 2.0 tools and services, Social media is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

Universal McCann, a division of the Interpublic Group did a global study of how Social Media is challenging traditional media and came up with very interesting findings:

- 83% watch video clips
- 78% read blogs
- 57% of internet users are now members of a social network
- RSS consumption is growing rapidly up from 15% to 39%

And according to Alexa, five of the top 10 global websites are social (YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Facebook, Blogger).

The numbers are incredibly revealing and insightful. People are increasingly migrating to social media platforms and adopting it in an accelerating pace. Social Media is already disrupting known trends and will only continue to rise.

Social media is changing all aspects of our world from branding, marketing and advertising to commerce and product development and technical support by introducing new ways of generating and consuming media online.

No longer it is just about broadcasting your message all over the place; instead people expect companies and corporations to engage with them through social platforms in a person-to-person fashion.

It is here,it is the future, and it is definitely going to affect your business… time to embrace it.

Social media is a web-enbaled social platform, a world built on ideas such as participation, openness, conversation, community and connectedness. A world where people are linking up with each other in various ways…

They write reviews for each other on Epinions and Yelp
They connect to each other using social networks like Facebook and MySpace
They upload, share and comment on each other photos on Flickr
They record, upload, share and comment on each other videos on YouTube
They collaborate with each other to create valuable information on wikipedia
They post their short thoughts and connect to each other on Twitter
They react to and help each other on forums
They organize the world information through links and tags
They post their ideas on everything using their blogs
They write, post and read their news on digg and Mixx
They save their bookmarks on del.icio.us
and many more…

In other words, Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to connect with each other, and share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives.

Social media has many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social media sites include blogs, social networks, forums, social news, podcasts, wikis, social video and widgets.

The web is a connection machine. It is connecting people with information, action, and each other. It is in those connections that value is created, knowledge is built, and relationships are formed.

Every action, every link and every click is an expression of a connection.

Social Media is the new web-enabled layer of easy, natural, instant and continuous connections over society.

Some of those questions we know the answers to and others we (as part of the industry) are still trying to figure them out.

We decided it would be a good idea to put the questions/issues and their answers here on the blog to help everyone quickly get educated, and provide them with proper info and details to pass around to their colleagues, bosses or clients.

We’ll start with the four basic questions, which are on everyone’s mind when we mention Social media:

What is Social Media?
Why does it matter?
What does it mean to my business?
How do I do it right?

The series is a continuous effort without an end in mind, it will updated regularly as we tackle further questions and issues, please bookmark this post and check back for updates.

On a closing note, you are welcome to send us any other questions you might have or issues on your mind regarding social media and its business applications.

1- Will it be fun?
2- Is it something new and innovative?
3- Will it bring good income?
4- Will it bring us closer to our goals?
5- Do we feel good about our client?

Projects have to provide two of the above to be worth taking, otherwise we say “No” politely and refer the client to one of our partners.

Of course there’s bound to be exceptions, like a certain project that carry one factor that significantly shadows other factors, but they are few and far between.

We believe that learning when to say “No”, matters more to our success than saying “Yes”.

And it’s not only because we have limited resources, but also because we (and you) should care about the output of our work, and any project that doesn’t carry some of the above rules won’t come up as good as it optimally should be.

Do you have similar rules in place? and if yes, what are they?

Here’s the list of apps and services that make the experience of running our business a breeze:

•  We’re using Macs as our machines (obviously!!)
• For accounting, tracking proposals, invoices and payments we use LessAccounting.
• For programming and development we use TextMate and AptanaStudio.
• For HTML and CSS work we use Adobe Dreamweaver.
• For FTP we use Transmit.
• For creating documents we use Google Apps, Scrivener and iWork.
• For Email we’re using Gmail.
• For Instant communication we use Adium and Skype.
• For Project Management we’re using Basecamp.
• For Contacts management we use Highrise.
• For Email newsletters we use VerticalResponse.
• For Internal Bug tracking we use Trac.
• For code versioning we’re using hosted Subversion (SVN) on hosted-projects.
• For creating mockups we use OmniGraffle.
• For image capture we use Jing.
• For graphic design and image editing we use Adobe Illustrator and Pixelmator.
• For Web hosting we use Joyent, ASmallOrange and BlueHost.
• For running our blogs we use Wordpress.
• For Blogging we use MarsEdit.
• For Analytics we use Google Analytics.
• For creating Forms we use Wufoo.
• For managing RSS Feeds we use Feedburner.
• As a development environment, we’re using Apache, MySQL and CakePHP framework.

What tools/software do you use for your work and business?

As a result of Market research, clients feedback and the influence of current partners, CloudAppers decided to become more focused on providing Social Media strategies for the web, combining web technologies, new media, and innovative ideas to create really cool stuff for clients.

In addition to Social Media, CloudAppers provides PR 2.0 services, which come as a natural extension to Social Media.

The Website has been updated to reflect the new changes, for more information about the previous services, please refer to the “Services” section for more info about the previous services.