It’s Sunday.  What have you got planned for the day?  Nothing?  Me either.  But if you have an iPhone outing ideas are just a click away according to Mashable.com! Read more

Brand management in the current era means not just keeping an ever-present eye on the social web, but also engaging in meaningful ways with brand advocates and detractors. Professionals in the field have come to accept social media as crucial to their jobs, but most know that managing a company’s brand on the web is so much more than setting up shop on social sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Here we’ll give you an inside look at the strategies of avant garde industry leaders who’ve spent years figuring out how to move beyond social media hype and implement practical management practices into their daily work routines.

Brad Nelson, Jeremy Thum, Joel Price, Joel Frey and Bowen Payson are all marketers behind big brand names. They’ve done the dirty work. Their lessons and words of wisdom range from finding ways to unify digital assets to knowing your niche, and each tip should be heeded by those looking to follow in their footsteps. Read more

This March, a report on chronic disease and the Internet by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation showed that people fighting such illnesses are using social media to find information and connect with others who suffer similar ailments.

While the research showed that people who have chronic illness are less likely, on average, to have Internet access, once they’re online they are more likely to blog about chronic disease and participate in online discussions or other forums. According to the report, “Living with chronic disease is also associated, once someone is online, with a greater likelihood to access user-generated health content such as blog posts, hospital reviews, doctor reviews, and podcasts. These resources allow an internet user to dive deeply into a health topic, using the internet as a communications tool, not simply an information vending machine.” Read more

Umberto Milletti is the CEO of InsideView, which brings intelligence gained from social media and traditional sources to enterprise and B2B sales. The company’s SalesView app delivers fresh, complete and relevant information directly within CRMs and mobile devices to increase sales productivity and revenue.

Today, there’s more pressure than ever to shorten our sales cycles and show measurable results to our boss. There’s an imperative to consume, analyze and utilize more data about leads and prospects than ever before. And on top of that, we’re now selling to a smarter and more active prospect — call him Customer 2.0 — who uses the web to learn nearly everything about our companies, our products, and our competitors before ever engaging with us.

Read more

The iPhone 4 has some reception issues when held a certain way. The problem — which partially stems from iPhone 4’s newly designed external antenna — can be viewed as more or less serious, depending on a number of factors. Is it serious enough to spawn a class-action lawsuit? It appears that it is.

Read more

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Read more