CRM Update – Apr 30 : 1:42 pm

Are you all swimming towards the same goal?
We talked a little bit last time about how companies are like machines and need to be tuned up every now and again. This time we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into what that really means and how it will play out within your Social CRM.
This post pulls a lot on imagery from the military (hence the title), schools of fish (hence the picture), and flocks of birds (not shown, but drawn upon). In each scenario, a group of individuals, with individual feelings and goals, all work together to form something of a unified collective, all progressing towards a common goal…

If you thought job hunting was difficult today, imagine how painful the process would’ve been in the past, without the Internet.
This video, created by Squirrel-Money, conceptualizes what LinkedIn would look like if it were a software program from the ’80s. Rather than quickly signing up and getting started, you would need to print and fill out the membership form to receive the “LinkedIn CD-ROM.”
The video also shows how far we’ve come in web design. We’re skeptical that today’s professional would take a site with such low-quality graphics seriously…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday to introduce a feature that “could save lives.”
The program teased the segment by noting that Zuckerberg “doesn’t do much TV” and then asked, “So why is he inviting [GMA news anchor] Robin Roberts to Facebook’s headquarters? What does he want to share that could save lives?”
Facebook reps could not be reached for comment on the announcement. The social networking giant has introduced tools of late that could be described along the same lines…

The weekend flew by here at Mashable, where we encountered a variety of stories and topics. Taking those topics and creating features, reviews, roundups, videos and posts for you resulted in this burgeoning Mashable Weekend Recap.
Missed all the fun? Understandable, especially when there was a wonderful slate of mid-spring weekend activities happening all over the world. Not to worry, because all the stories we covered over the past couple of days are easy to find, right here on this page.
So go out there and make it another productive and enjoyable week, but begin by starting things off right with these 40 memorable and engaging stories we published for you over the weekend:
News & Opinion Essentials

Future of TV Apps, A Sensitive and Popular Topic [VIDEO]
Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]
Magazines Get Serious About Ecommerce
Historic Navy Ship and CIA Barge to be Auctioned for $100,420
5 Startups Using Tech To Do Good
Do People Really Want Self-Driving Cars? [VIDEO]
Apple ‘Sidesteps’ Billions in Corporate Taxes, NY Times Reports
Interest in Pinterest Reaches a Fever Pitch [INFOGRAPHIC]
Where CISPA’s Going: Everything You Need to Know
8 New Apps You Don’t Want To Miss
Researchers Create Glare-Free Self-Cleaning Glass [VIDEO]
How Samsung Became The World’s Top Handset Vendor
Winklevoss Twins Start Up a Venture Capital Firm [VIDEO]
The iPhone Almost Had a Physical Keyboard [REPORT]
The Hobbit’s 48 FPS Format Ruins Film’s Artistry, Previewers Complain
Google Maps Adds More 3D Goodness with Parallax Views [VIDEO]
Apple Flirting with Epix for Streaming Video From 3 Major Studios [VIDEO]
Women Are More Likely Than Men to Have a Blog, Facebook Profile [STUDY]
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Tech is in the House
Free Online Human Translation Service Takes On Babelfish, Google Translate
Forget Emoticons — Skype Wants You to Use ‘Humoticons’
HelloFax Turns Google Drive Into a Fax Machine
George Zimmerman’s Website Closes After He Raises $204,000
Watch Leonard Nimoy Welcome Space Shuttle Enterprise to New York [VIDEO]
Jack White Concert Asks Viewers to Create Digital Photo Mosaic
Falling Bear Fallout: Student to Sue School Paper over Viral Photo
Yahoo Escalates Patent War With Facebook

Helpful Resources

Students Studying Abroad: Take Advantage of Video Job Interviews/a>
7 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Business Computers
51 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed
How to Leverage Applicant Tracking Systems To Land a Job
Top 6 Mashable Comments This Week
5 Tips for Great Content Curation
How to Maximize Your Facebook Engagement

SEE ALSO: All the Weekend Recaps Ever Published
Weekend Leisure

25 Most-Followed Users on Instagram [PICS]
12 Funniest ‘Animals Being Dicks’ [GIFS]
JoeyBra: The Perfect Under-the-Shoulder Smartphone Holder? [VIDEO]
Pokémon Art Tumblr Reimagines 151 Original Characters [PICS]
Top Health and Fitness Apps to Improve Your Workout and Diet [INFOGRAPHIC]
Top 10 Twitter Pics of the Week
Google Maps Cube Game is Live Now, You Should Play It

Here’s last week’s Weekend Recap…

B2Bs can build sales and awareness by participating in international trade shows.

Eight simple rules to make certain that your boss appreciates your contribution.If you are the boss, you’ll want to share this column with your team because it will make your job a heck of a lot easier. And if you’re not the boss, memorize this column–because it contains the key to long-term success.Here are the rules for keeping your boss happy:1. Be true to your word. Your boss wants to trust you. Really. Therefore, whenever you accept an assignment, follow through religiously, even fanatically…

Jonathan Gardner is director of communications at Vibrant Media. He has spent his career at the nexus of media and technology, having worked in communications around the world. Follow him @thejongardner.
If you let your imagination run wild, innovations such as Google’s Project Glass suggest there will come a time when we’ll no longer converse with each other, but instead exchange data like a bunch of GPS-enabled cyborgs.
While that may not be quite how it plays out, a highly-connected future is definitely on its way…

Achieve your revenue initiatives by closing the growth gap.

Instead of adding another “happy birthday!” comment to your friends’ Facebook walls, a startup called Wrapp wants you to post a free gift certificate for stores such as Gap, Sephora or H&M — as long as your friend meets the brand’s target demographic.
After a successful pilot in Sweden, the startup is launching with 10 brands in the U.S. on Thursday.
Brands offer gift certificates through Wrapp to gain exposure online. They already spend money on special offers and discounts…

Depending on which reports you may read when it comes to lead nurturing, approximately 60% or more of B2B businesses do not have a formalized lead nurturing program. Yet, depending on these same reports from the several research organizations benchmarking such effort, companies who perform effective lead nurturing enjoy a better than 25% higher return on their efforts than those who do not. Which begs the question: why are companies slow to adopt to lead nurturing?

Confirming its recent announcement about the possible Nook business spinoff, Barnes & Noble has entered a strategic partnership with Microsoft in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, focused on ebooks.
The new company, which will marry B&N’s digital and college businesses, doesn’t have a name yet.
Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will invest $300 million at a $1.7 billion valuation. B&N will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary.
Customers will soon see benefits from the partnership in the form of a Nook application for Windows 8…

M. bought a five-year Complete Care Warranty from Dell, and this somehow led him to believe that he would receive five years of warranty coverage. Crazy, right? Consumers can be so foolish. But just because the site will sell you a warranty, and documentation on the Dell site says that you have almost a year left on that warranty, that doesn’t mean that you actually have that warranty, because the Complete Care warranty that includes things like accidental damage is only an add-on to the regular warranty that has already run out…

Software giant Microsoft launches dozens of products and services every year.The company typically relies heavily on advertising and PR to get the word out.But for its Office 365 product, the team took a different approach.Using partnerships and social media, Microsoft connected specifically with women business owners – a key audience group.Rather than directing promotional messages toward them, Microsoft involved them in the process from start to finish.“It’s definitely innovation within a large matrix organization like Microsoft that hasn’t really done this in the past,” said Penny Delgadillo, senior product manager at Microsoft…

BlackBerry World, Research In Motion‘s once-a-year event to evangelize its brand, kicks off today in Orlando, Fla. Most of the attention will focus on the coming BlackBerry 10 software, the backbone of RIM’s coming suite of smartphones. RIM’s future depends greatly on BB10, but there’s another software factor that’s playing a large and growing role in the company’s strategy to recover: HTML5.
One of the many problems that RIM is facing is that its current phones are a dying platform…

More than three years ago, comedy duo and self-proclaimed “internetainers” Rhett & Link set out to find great local businesses all over the country, and make great local commercials for them. “That’s nice, Consumerist,” you say. “But they can’t possibly still be doing this three years later and producing new ads.” That’s where you would be wrong, imaginary hypothetical reader!

Last year, Rhett & Link even briefly had their own TV show on IFC about the local commercials project…

A terrible roommate can make your life unhappy in a lot of ways. But let’s say you have a financially irresponsible roommate who never pays their bills. Do their bad habits affect you … other than constantly having to chase down the rent?

Credit.com lays down the facts. Credit bureaus track you every financial move based on what you do–not on what other members of your household do. Married couples’ credit info is comingled only if they have any joint credit accounts.

Your roomie’s slackerdom isn’t supposed to affect you…

Microsoft and Barnes & Noble just became unlikely allies, settling a patent dispute and forming a new subsidiary in one fell swoop.

All work and no play? You may be missing an opportunity to tap into your true genius.For America to maintain its place as a leading world economy, we need to get back to our broad-based entrepreneurial roots. Creativity can be considered a numbers game: When more of us are generating creative ideas, better ideas are discovered, and we need our best ideas now more than ever.Duke University professor and author Carl Nordgren says that a creatively entrepreneurial revolution has been brewing for years…