Dallas, U.S.A. — Social Media Club of Dallas, a premier networking and education organization dedicated to marketing and new media, along with platinum sponsor, Sprint, has announced that its August 16 meeting will feature a panel of social customer care experts moderated by Bryan Person, Director of Social Insights for Social Dynamx. Bryan and panelists Tony Turnage of FedEx, Sean Valderas of Nokia and Mike Cearley of Fleishman-Hillard will discuss the challenges that businesses and brands face in building a successful customer service operation in a social world, including:

• Customers’ impatience and expectation of instant responses
• Confusion associated with tracking posts across multiple channels
• Using social tools that weren’t designed to support customer service
• Tracking the elusive ROI of customer service
• Communicating with customers in a public forum

The panel will educate the audience on how to overcome these challenges and deliver exceptional social customer service to customers and fans.

“More than ever, customers are reaching out to companies on social media when they have customer service issues and questions,” said Bryan Person. “And when they do, they *expect* a response — and fast. I look forward to discussing how businesses and brands are adapting to this new reality during our panel.”

The meeting will take place from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 16, 2012, at the Angelika Film Center Dallas in Mockingbird Station. Guests are invited for more networking at a post meeting Tweet-Up at Trinity Hall. Early registration tickets cost $35 and are available through August 15, 2012. Tickets on the day of the event are $45, if available.

Please register here for the event on Eventbrite.

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Apple has officially announced its latest iPhone and it’s not an iPhone 5. The latest upgrade to the iPhone family has been dubbed the iPhone4S. The highly anticipated announcement came on October 4^th from Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, California in front of a packed auditorium full of high level executives and members of the press.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, was the first of several Apple executives to address the eager crowd.  Cook’s portion of the presentation was a bit lackluster it focused mainly on the history of Apple since introducing the iPod 10 years ago, public reaction to the launch of Lion OS X, and the integration of iPads in educational and workplace settings.

It was a testament to how far Apple has come in such a brief time span; while truly extraordinary this was not the  story people were interested in. Cook’s presentation was oddly void of anything iPhone related, with the exception of an off the cuff hint that iPhone news would come later in the presentation.

The logical guess would be that Cook in his first keynote address as CEO would deliver news of a new iPhone. However Cook threw a curve ball and deferred to Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of worldwide product marketing, to usher in the iPhone 4S. Schiller, a regular presenter at Apple keynote addresses, very subtly broke into the new iPhone news after reeling off some updates about the iPod Nano and iPod Touch.

There were several new but otherwise bland features introduced for iPhone 4S they included an 8 megapixel camera, 1080p filming capability, and inclusion of the A5 processing iPad2 chip into the iPhone. Each new feature is a technological step in the right direction, but none are close to being “blow-away”, the term used by Apple presenters several times during the presentation.

There were some more impressive upgrades as well, including a new antenna system which intelligently switches between two built-in transmitters to optimize call quality and data transfer speeds, boasting faster download and upload speeds on par with 4G, and the inclusion of CDMA and GSM chips which allows the 4S to be compatible on all networks across the globe making it a “world” phone.

Even these failed to possesses that familiar Apple wow factor that leaves you wondering how in the world did they do that. With the iPhone 4s presentation coming to a close, Apple had one last chance to blow our collective minds. The job of showstopper was left up to the highly rumored voice recognition feature, Siri.

Siri is being marketed as having your very own interactive intelligent personal assistant in the palm of your hand. Scott Forstall, Senior Vice President of iOS Software, demoed the new feature by saying, “What’s the weather like today?” and Siri spoke the current forecast in Cupertino; this garnered a huge applause from the crowd.

Even more impressive than being able to tell you the weather Siri can compose and dictate email, set timers, look up contacts, create notes, search the web, and search Wikipedia. Siri is definitely an impressive feature, but at the same time it’s not Apple jaw dropping impressive.

It’s destined to be a feature that it is cool for a while, but not one that makes scores of people camp outside of Apple stores the week before launch. The iPhone 4S will be available for pre-order on October 7^th and hit retail stores on October 14^th. It will be available in black and white, 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399. It will also be available on AT&T, Verizon, and for the first time Sprint.

This puts some validation in reports made by the Wall Street Journal that Sprint purchased 30 million iPhones over the next four years. It is interesting to note that Cook shied away from former Apple CEO’s Steve Jobs trademark “One More Thing” statement, a move that is being preemptively being dubbed the “Cook-tease”.

Who knows, maybe this keynote was one big Cook-tease for what we really want, an iPhone 5.

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Leaving your wallet at home will not be a problem anymore with the new application by Google. Google Wallet is an Android app, only available on the USA for Nexus S 4G and Sprint phones, which literally transforms your phone into a wallet. The application launched at the same time Visa, Discover and American Express announced that they will join Google´s project.

So far Google Wallet works with Citi MasterCard and the Google Prepaid Card. Moreover, Google wanted to thank people who are adopting this new method of payment before the end of the year by adding a $10 free bonus to the Google prepaid Card. From now on people will be able to pay with one action — simply tapping their phone on a reader.

Google Wallet uses the NFC technology (Near Field Communication) that allows simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices with up to a 10-centimeter distance.

Thinking about the protection of the ecosystem, the Google team created this app to help the environment. Instead of having a bunch of plastic credit cards, people will just need their phone. But that’s not all — Google Wallet offers a lot of other advantages such us having your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, even your keys attached to this app.

In addition, Google has created a web site, similar to the one that they created for Google Plus, where users can find tips and information about this new app. On this site, by typing in their zip code, people will also be able to look for the nearest location where they can use the new app.

Regarding privacy issues, Google won’t be able to know what customers have purchased. Google does record local transactions on the phone, but these transactions are only identified by amount and location and are only viewable to the users.

First reactions

Web site pages such as eWeek.com have already speculated in chances of failure of the new app. The site listed about four reasons why Google Wallet won’t succeed: The lack of knowledge from the users, the possibility that iPhone 5 release a similar application, the limited phone availability and the risk that Google Wallet won’t be rapidly adopted in the market.

On the other hand, the believers think that Google Wallet is a brilliant idea and they wonder why NFC technology has taken so long to be adopted in the US, since it already exists in Asia.

Moreover, the biggest opportunity that people see its use in is for Google Offers. One of the bloggers on Mashable.com published that “Google Offers as an app is a nice way to browse for deals, specials and coupons. You can clip those offers digitally to Google Wallet and then show the coupons at merchants, whether they are NFC-enabled or not.”

Over time, Google plans on expanding support to more phones. Google Wallet’s challenge will be to distinguish itself in a growing market. Some of its users also think that this is just the beginning of what is sure to be a great technology succeeds in less than two years.

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