The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

What's the impact of social media on business growth?

A reader writes to me:

"As an empirically-based economist, I would like to know whether there are studies that show the impact of twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites on business growth. I have a client (I do a small bit of consulting) that is pushing hard to get "into" social networking to grow the business. I am a bit reluctant, because there is no way to "control" the message. If there's even one former customer that is unhappy with my client, the negative effects can be explosive. I also wonderwhether paying Google for per-click exclusive use of specific words can really grow a business. Your thoughts would be most welcome!"

I'm so intrigued by this question and its implications that I thought I'd offer up my answer here and also ask you, dear readers, for your two cents too.

First though, are there non-empirical economists? What would that mean? That they follow economic theories even when actual real-life data proves them wrong? Hmmm...

More seriously, the first comment I have about this question is that the writer is already out of step with modern reality. As merchant after merchant has demonstrated, there is no controlling "the message" any more and the sooner marketing and PR people accept that, the sooner they can start helping their clients in this brave new world. Control always was an illusion anyway.

Given that fact, it also means that your customers, your competitors and your marketplace are already having discussions about your products, services and employees, and they're having it in online forums, whether it's a protest group on Facebook ("United Airlines Sucks!"), a persistent hashtag on Twitter (#attfail) or just a meme that travels from blogger to blogger.

The question then isn't whether it makes sense to delve into social networks even though you can't control the message, the question is whether you're paying attention to a medium where the message has long since escaped and has a life of its own. This means that your customer defines your brand. It's not about expensive TV spots, it's not about the right Pantone color in the logo when printed, it's not about the company at all.

This is both terrifying and exhilarating because it means that good companies with good products -- like Apple with its insanely popular iPod line -- can benefit even without any branding or marketing efforts, and bad companies -- like United Airlines -- are going to suffer from a bad reputation even as they spend money advertising and trying to position themselves as a market leader.

My take is that it's "step zero" to monitor what's going on in the social media space. Even if you don't want to participate, which is a mistake, you should at the very minimum be paying attention to what people are talking about. You can use individual services like search.twitter.com, but far smarter is to use a more sophisticated monitoring tool like Filtrbox or Radian 6.

There are many studies, some apocryphal, others actual more rigorous scientific research, on the topic of social media on business growth, and a quick search of Google will reveal quite a collection of data on the topic. Intuitively, though, if your customers are already talking about your product, service or competitor, how can that discussion not have an impact on your business, for better or worse?

My take away is this: if you are truly going to help your clients succeed in the brave new world of 21st Century business, you need to enthusiastically embrace social media, jumping in and learning best practices from such books as Trust Agents, The New Community Rules, The Tipping Point and Groundswell, along with by participating in the communities. The key is to remember to engage with your customer base, not just join these social media sites to create new bully pulpits for your marketing and sales messages.

First things first: Sign up for the Blogsmart News so you can stay up to date on the latest insider tips and ideas for your Internet business and marketing efforts. Better yet, sign up right now and you'll get a free copy of my "Insider's Guide to Blogging" ebook too!

Interview with PR expert Deirdre Breakenridge

I recently had the pleasure of listening to Deirdre Breakenridge talk about the future of public relations, and was quite impressed. The co-author of the book Putting the Public back in Public Relations, she's smart, accessible and has a great, pragmatic view of social media, marketing, customer service and public relations. I asked her if she'd mind answering a few of my questions and, well, she's a writer, so we've ended up with a nice novella. Please enjoy, and if you have further questions for Deirdre, please feel free to post them in the comments. -- Dave

Discuss your background and professional experiences.

I've been in public relations and marketing for over 21 years. I knew in college that I wanted to practice PR and started my career at an agency in New York City after interning there for two summers in row. My background has mostly been small agency PR. When I was running a very small firm for my employer in Northern, NJ, I realized that I could start my own PR/communications company and build a business for myself. I launched the Breakenridge Group with two employees in 1997, while I was still studying to receive my MBA degree.

The Breakenridge Group lasted a little less than a year, when one of my clients, at the time, PFS New Media, asked me if I was interested in becoming a full partner of their agency. They acquired my firm and the rest is history. I've practiced so many different kinds of PR over the years, working with brands in healthcare, broadcast electronics, non-profit, HR, technology and telecommunications. I've always enjoyed working with different types of brands and organizations both large and small. Every company, no matter its size, has unique challenges.

continues...

My upcoming speaking gigs Oct, 2009

I can't believe how many speaking gigs I have coming up, really. Wondering what's on my agenda? Here's the list:

Aren't we all just wasting our time with social media?

Thurs, Oct 22 at 7pm

I'm speaking as a representative of Boulder Digital Arts at the Goozmo open house in downtown Boulder. This is a free event, and you're definitely welcome to show up for my thirty-minute talk / discussion.

More information: Goozmo Open House

What's the Point of Social Networking?

Friday, Oct 23 at 9am-11am

This is a two-hour breakfast discussion / networking meeting in South Boulder, a part of the Stay Sharp! series I'm doing with Joyce Colson, Liz Ryan and Jeff Finkelstein and it's a nice, informal event at a fun venue: Eggcredible Cafe. There is a nominal fee for attendance.

More information: Stay Sharp!

Should I Blog, Or Should I Tweet?

Tuesday, Oct 27, 5:30pm-6:30pm

This is a free, public discussion I'll be hosting at the Techstars Bunker in downtown Boulder, and it's my vision to spend more time having a discussion than to pontificate on my own opinion. I will say this, though: I do both.

More information: (please email me for details)

The Impact of Social Media on Cable Television

Wednesday, Oct 28, 12:30-1:30pm

This is a closed event for the cable industry, but it's going to be a very interesting panel and we will be live-tweeting it. One of my great fellow panelists? Filtrbox's Ari Newman.

More information: (sorry, it's a closed industry conference)

Front Range Blogger Meetup, Broomfield CO

Wednesday, Oct 28, 6:30-8:00pm

This is a discussion and social networking group that meets monthly, alternating between Boulder/Broomfield and Denver. Generally 30+ people show up and it's always an excellent discussion and great fun too. We're very welcoming to new folk, and even if you're just getting into the blogging space, you'll get great value from attending. Join us?

More information: see our meetup page

Holy cow, I'm exhausted just thinking about this! But I do hope you can join me at one of these venues and let me know what your thoughts are on these various topics!

Worried about the FTC going after your blog?

One of the big discussions both here at Blogworld Expo and in the blogosphere in general is the implication of the new Federal Trade Commission's new regulations for online advertising practices from the Bureau of Consumer Protection.

The regulations seem to address the issue of disclosure: if I give you a copy of my book and you write about it, you have to let your readers know that. If I buy you dinner and then you write about my book or reference my site, you have to disclose that. And so on, and so on.

Problem is, this FTC guideline has gotten more and more onerous in the echo chamber of the blogosphere, and bloggers are getting a bit paranoid about the implications.

Luckily, it appears that this paranoia is misplaced, so you can all take a deep breath. Earlier this week - Oct 14th, 2009 - Mary Engle, associate director for advertising practices at the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, had a conference call with reporters to clarify the situation and here's what she said:

"We're not going to be patrolling the blogosphere, we are not planning on investigating individual bloggers."

Engle emphasized that what they've released are new guidelines. "They aren't rules and regulations, and they don't have the force of law. They are guidelines intended to help advertisers comply with Section 5 of the FTC Act [PDF]" which focuses on unfair or deceptive practices.

So it's not the rebirth of the Blog Police as the Disclosure Police, as I tweeted earlier while listening to a panel on this subject here at Blogworld, but it is nonetheless a reminder that you should still be transparent anyway. If a vendor pays $200 to write about their product, don't run away in terror, just let your readers know.

And that's what this brouhaha is all about anyway: just be transparent and disclose what's going on, and you'll be in the clear from both the FTC and ethically on the right side of things too.

Twitter "virus" via video, I don't think so!

I don't get it. Are people really this clueless in the social media world?

I woke up this morning to boldface warnings New virus on Twitter! Don't click on video links in DMs!

Of course, it didn't take long for me to get one:

Being the reckless tech guy I am (and running on a Mac, not PC, so far, far less susceptible to viruses), I clicked on the link anyway, and got this:

Ah, okay, so, duh. Here's an easy rule of thumb:

Surely you, dear reader, aren't so daft that you'd click on a link to see a video and then blindly log in to what appears to be Twitter to do so?

Btw, if you're curious, enter random user credentials on the phishing (NOT virus!) login screen, then you'll see a failwhale screen, then you'll be bounced to some random blogspot.com blog that doesn't even have an entry.

Why DVD rental is such a tough biz: it's a commodity, stupid

I'm all for supporting local mom-and-pop businesses, and this evening, on the enthusiastic prompting of my girls, we went into a local video rental place (though 95% of what they rent, of course, are DVDs). After much deliberation on their part, they selected the Disney film Tinkerbell.

Okay. Last few times I've paid for a rental it's been through Redbox and that's $1/night, so inexpensive that you can forgive the tiny selection in the box.

At the local video rental place, however, it was $4.95 for a rental, and due in four days to boot. Five bucks? Seemed kinda steep, and when I got rave reviews from my little one of this movie I decided I'd buy a copy for her.

A quick visit to Amazon.com and here's what I found:

Can you see the price? $3.75 + $2.98 shipping. For less than $2 more than a short-term rental, I can buy and own a clean used copy with original packaging. Makes it hard to not just buy things that you might want to watch some day, doesn't it?

The problem is two-fold. One, most movies are worth a viewing and maybe, possibly, two, but how many movies have you watched a half-dozen or more times in the last decade? (and I'm a film reviewer with my own film blog, so I know movies pretty well).

The second is that the cost of the product doesn't reflect the cost of production as much as the cost of the studio system. A brand new DVD costs, what, $15? $18? but the disk and packaging cost less than a dollar. Therefore the item itself doesn't retain any sort of value once sold and the used DVD market floats down, down, down, to where you can get just about any movie for $5 or less.

Do you still rent movies, especially in a world of all-you-can-eat streaming services like Netflix and Hulu?

Great presentations at the ESPRIT Innovation Alliance Breakfast

I've written before about the Technology Transfer Office at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and I attend as many of their events as I can manage with my schedule. They address the greatest challenge that a modern research-based University has, which is how to "get it to market".

More interesting is that here in Boulder we also have a second organization that acts as the "receiver" to the Tech Transfer group's passes, the Boulder Innovation Center. Between them there's a clear path between professors and grad students inventing and viable commercial marketplaces. Not many universities can boast that (and not many research centers in general. See Xerox PARC for an example).

This morning was the quarterly (annual? It's a blur) breakfast where a few of the companies get to share what they're doing and where they see their business going. It's almost like their Quinceañera. :-)

Anyway, I was impressed by the companies this time. Every one of them seems like it's going to be a home run in it's field. Here's who presented:

Xalud -- they're developing novel therapies for the treatment of neuropathic pain and other diseases of the central nervous system. Apparently, it's quite common for people to still feel the pain from an injury, infection or even a cancerous growth after it's been otherwise healed. Xalud ("salud but with an 'X' because it looks cooler") has a non-opioid-based therapy and they estimate it's a multi-billion-dollar market.

TechoShark -- I've written about these chaps before: they're focused on the intersection of location-aware advertising and location-aware social networks. A competitor to Foursquare and others, they have some very interesting back-end algorithms that are going to start being revealed as they unroll some of their newer features. In the meantime, join me on the Techoshark network by grabbing hoozat [iTunes link], their free iPhone app.

Tusaar -- here's one that I'm really interested in, though I have zero clue how it works: they have a patented system that creates much more efficient methods of purifying metal-laden acidic water. It doesn't create toxic sludge and utilizes readily available raw materials from industrial suppliers. They also apparently have a broad patent which will help them profit from our need as a nation to clean up a lot of terribly polluted areas, mines, wells, and more.

Quest Product Development -- the most boring name hides a very cool group that's development and marketing "MicroFlex" technology, a new and far superior ultra-slim endoscope for non-invasive surgery. It's pretty sci-fi, really, offering digital control over the shape of the endoscope, allowing it to fit in areas where traditional endoscopes just aren't viable.

Mentor InterActive -- the last presentation of the morning was a company that's trying to tap into the desperate need for greater literacy in our youth in a world where they spend tons of time on video and computer games, watching TV and other passive activities, and rarely if ever have someone read to them. They've developed a line of reading games under the brand "My Virtual Tutor" and just a week or two ago released their first game, for the popular Nintendo DS.

All of these companies are worth watching. In their own way, whether they're rockets to the moon or evolutionary stepping stones for further developments, they're all going to make the world a better place. And that's a great thing to see...

Webinars are great, but face-to-face meetings are better...

I travel a lot but truth be told, I'm rather a bit of a home body: I like where I live, I like hanging out with my kids, and I have a ton of great friends. Heck, I live in a place where tons of people come on vacation (Boulder, Colorado), and the fact that I can sit in my office and have virtual meetings with colleagues via video, webinars, and teleconferences is pretty cool.

But it's not really the same, and I know that every time I fire up GoToMeeting, jump onto Skype or log in to Calliflower (yeah, that's its name). Like it or not, I believe it'll always be the case that to be successful in business you need to get out of your office, get out of your house and neighborhood, and meet people face-to-face. The more important the deal, or the more you're "fishing for opportunities", the more important it is.

I've written in the past about how attending conferences is all about the social, not the presentation (even though I'm a professional speaker). Certainly when I travel now, I try to use Twitter, Facebook or something else to arrange for some meetings with local businesspeople both to socialize and to see what possible business connections I can make.

That's why when online marketing firm Izea contact me about an opportunity to help promote the British Airways "Business Opportunity Grants" program, I was intrigued and willing. Yes, that means that this is indeed a sponsored post on my blog, but please, read on...

Basically, British Airways is trying to combat the business meme of "with teleconferencing you never have to get on a plane again", for obvious reasons: they're an airline, teleconferences aren't so good for their business. However, as I've said, I already know that they're right and that while many meetings can indeed be held digitally, there are also a lot of meetings that go far, far better if you can look someone in the [real, not virtual] eye and really assess them and whether the deal will be a success.

BA's idea is that to promote face-to-face meetings, they're holding a contest and have a very sweet prize: their Business Opportunity Grant will cover an entire year of business class travel and access to a suite of business services both. More specifically:

• British Airways airfare for 10 round-trip Club World business class flights.
• 5 free British Airways World Cargo freight shipments of up to 500 kilos to worldwide destinations
• $1000 toward accommodation at Courtyard by Marriott
• 5 Regus Businessworld Gold Cards providing access to business lounges worldwide
• A Canon PIXMA MX860 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer

I mean, that's a pretty sweet deal, and they're giving away 100 of them, not just one, so I encourage you to go apply before 1 October, 2009 when the contest ends. You might not win, but if you do, it'll sure help your business and you might just find that those old fashioned face-to-face meetings are useful after all.

Join Me at The Social Media Briefing for Executives

As a professional speaker and gadabout, I get involved with a lot of workshops, seminars and conferences, but it's only the occasional one that really sparks my imagination and has me looking forward to the event, not the late night parties.

I am psyched about going to Blogworld and New Media Expo next month in Las Vegas (and I'm speaking too, on the awkwardly titled "Are You Getting The Most Money Out Of Your Blog As You Can?", along with Tim Jones, Chris Pirillo, Michael Jenkins, and, probably, Jim Kukral moderating us. Still, Blogworld's more about parties and socializing than sitting in a room with hundreds of people, listening to presentations.

That's why my friend and colleague Doyle Albee (head of Metzger Associates, a leading PR agency in Colorado with a strong social media practice) and I came up with the Social Media for Executives mastermind briefing the day before Blogworld, also in Las Vegas.

It's exactly the kind of event I most love: a small group of very, very talented people will be hiding out for a day, brainstorming their businesses, rising to their current and future industry challenges, and learning tons from each other. The lineup of speakers? It's world class, really, A+ listers:

• Paula Berg is the manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines, the nation's leading low-fare air carrier and the largest domestic airline in terms of customers carried.
• Jessica Berlin is the Social Media manager for the Resident Shows Division of Cirque du Soleil based in Las Vegas.
• Deirdre Breakenridge has been in PR and marketing for 20 years helping senior executives in mid-size to large organizations communicate to their stakeholders. She has written four books, most recently Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, which she authored with Brian Solis.
• Linda O'Neill is the general manager for Customer Operations with EMBARQ. Linda is a seasoned community manager and customer operations professional with nearly 30 years of sales, customer care, marketing and vendor management expertise, including leadership and training & development experience.
• Liz Ryan is an expert on the new-millennium workplace, a former Fortune 500 Human Resources executive and the author of Happy About Online Networking: The Virtual-ly Simple Way to Build Professional Relationships. As an advisor to corporations on workplace and leadership issues, she has worked with Omnicom, Tyson Foods, General Electric, NBCi and a long list of global employers.
• Ari Newman is a passionate entrepreneur who excels in creating value in ideas and technology and thrives on the challenges and opportunities that define early stage companies. He is president and founder of Filtrbox, a real-time social media monitoring service that helps companies listen to and engage in online conversations.

Sponsored by Filtrbox, this is going to be one of the best small, private workshops available this year, the best place to really learn the strategy of successful social media, not the how-to that your employees or agency can manage. Aimed at senior executives, I'm really looking forward to this amazing day - and great surprise evening event.

If you'd like to join us, you really do need to act right now as we have a very, very limited number of seats available!

      ----> Click here to register for Social Media for Executives <---

Don't delay, we'd hate to turn you away because it's filled up.

Disney's Blu-Ray Movie Club: The Economics Don't Work

I'm an unabashed Disney fan so when I get an offer via email from the company, I'll give it more than a cursory glance, though it's rarely an interesting deal.

The most recent was the announcement of the Disney Blu-Ray Movie Club, which explained that the offer, as with most 'club memberships', was for a couple of movies at an exceptionally good rate, followed by a requirement to buy more films at a jacked up price to balance out the deal.

In this case, the initial offer is for three Blu-Ray discs for $4.95 each. Not a bad deal for Disney films, but then what?

"As a Disney Movie Club member, all you need to do is buy 5 movies at regular Club prices in the next 24 months (starting at $29.95 per Blu-ray disc), plus shipping and processing of $3.95 for the first title in each order, and $1.49 for each additional title in that same order."

So let's assume that you buy five Blu-Ray discs, at once, for $29.95 per disc, after having bought the initial three at $4.95 each, with free shipping.

That's:

    ( 4.95 * 3 ) + ( 29.95 * 5 ) + 3.95 + (1.49 * 3) = $173.02

Given that's for eight DVDs, that works out to $21.62/disc. Not bad. But then again, a bit of research on Amazon.com reveals that Wall-E on Blu-Ray, for example, costs $19.99 for the two-disc set, Bolt three-disc set is $23.99 and the adult No Country for Old Men is $19.49.

So how does this work? It's all about the mailing and the default action. The "Club" sends out a mailing every four weeks and when you receive that mailing...

"You can choose to receive the Featured Title, an alternate, or no movie at all. If you do not inform us of your choice within 10 days or by the date specified on the card (either by returning the card, visiting the website, or by calling the 800 number on the card), the Featured Title will be automatically shipped to you."

In all likelihood, the featured titles are not going to be the lower-priced $29.95, but rather $35.95 or even higher. Now, let's do that math again, with the assumption that four of those five discs you buy are actually $35.95 instead. Now the grand total for those eight discs is $197.02. Divided out, that's $24.62.

But wait, if you are going to be getting these discs by default one per month, then your shipping goes up too, from $1.49 to $3.95. New total: $206.86. New per disc: $25.85.

And did I mention tax? They don't say, but I expect that with the proliferation of Disney Stores, people in just about every state are going to pay at least 8% sales tax, pushing up those discs to $27.92 each.

Suddenly those $19.99 discs via Amazon.com sound pretty good after all. Get free super-saver shipping from Amazon and you're looking at a total savings of $63.49.

Now those monthly mailings can be pretty fun, I admit: I was a long-time member of the History Book Club because I liked to browse through the catalog, but is it worth $63.49 for that privilege when for $9.95 you can get a year's subscription to Disney Family Fun magazine and, I'm sure, get all the ads and a few decent articles too?

Now I admit that there are probably some errors in my calculations here, and clearly some assumptions about pricing differences, but I'm always intrigued by these sort of offers, so it's quite illustrative to run the numbers and really understand the reality of an offer of this nature.

But that's just me. Perhaps you're already a member? If so, how's it going for you?

Learn about Twitter over breakfast this Friday!

I'm excited to launch a breakfast training series here in Boulder with three of the smartest people I know in Colorado, a series we're calling Stay Sharp! My co-conspirators are Liz Ryan, Joyce Colson and Jeff Finkelstein and we're offering the series of workshops to help you, our fellow Coloradoans, gain the skills and expertise you need in the modern business world to make your business a success and get the job you want.

This Friday, Sept 18, I'm going to be talking all about Twitter and in case you haven't attended any of my workshops before, you'll get a sense of the mood of the workshop when you learn that the title is actually "Twitter? What the heck is Twitter and why should I, as a businessperson, care?"

Our venue of choice is the yummy Eggcredible Cafe at 5397 South Boulder Road and I might even steal a few bites of something while I'm talking and showing people exactly what is so darn interesting about Twitter and also some of its weaknesses and some of the ways that it's growing faster than is perhaps beneficial to us online folk.

On Sept 25 the Stay Sharp! program features web and marketing expert Jeff Finkelstein
who will be talking about Search Engine Optimization: What Really Matters to Search Engines. I'll be there for that one too!

Details and registration information on the Stay Sharp! program

In case you don't know my Stay Sharp! colleagues, here's a succinct bio for each:

Jeff Finkelstein is the founder of Boulder-based, Customer Paradigm, an interactive marketing firm that has helped clients including Xcel Energy, 3M, Level 3, BP achieve top rankings through search engine optimization and web marketing. Finkelstein is an adjunct professor for Colorado State University, and has been profiled as a Web Guru in the New York Times.

Joyce Colson, of the Boulder law firm Colson Quinn, has thirty years of experience in the legal trenches, providing corporate and IP advice to a wide range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to startups. Her experience includes negotiating license agreements with most U.S. major energy companies, advising in the sale of a $140 million software company, and providing legal counsel for numerous start-up companies (including her favorite--an organic chocolate company).

Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 HR exec and leader of the 30,000-member Ask Liz Ryan online community, a syndicated columnist and career expert for Business Week, Yahoo!, NPR and BBC Radio.

I hope to see you at our Twitter workshop in just a few days!

Heading to Vegas? A list of the best buffets...

Yeah, this is a wee bit off my usual topics here on the Business Blog @ Intuitive.com, but since I find myself in Las Vegas 2-3 times each year and since I'm heading there in just a few weeks to co-host an executive workshop (shhh! details to come), followed immediately by speaking at Blogworld and New Media Expo [aff], I paid attention when hotel review site Oyster's PR team sent out a list of its top buffet options in Vegas.

Without further ado (muchly because I haven't been to most of them!) here's their list:

Best Vegas Buffets, 2009-2010

1. 
   The fabulous Bellagio Buffet
   Bellagio -- Centrally located on the Las Vegas Strip, Bellagio's buffet is widely considered to be the very best. Its carving station goes beyond the usual prime rib to include St. Louis barbecue ribs and chicken Wellington. The large variety of cuisines includes Italian, Japanese, Chinese seafood, and American. It's not the cheapest -- $14.95 breakfasts, $19.95 lunches, $23.95 weekend brunches, $27.95 weeknight dinners, and $35.95 dinner Saturdays and Sundays, when the buffet includes Kobe beef -- but it's worth it.
2. M Resort Spa & Casino -- Studio B, the buffet at the newly opened M Resort, serves upwards of 200 dishes a day. At lunch and dinner, the buffet even includes free beer and wine -- perhaps as incentive to lure diners to the hotel's location, 10 miles from the Strip. In terms of quality, the food is on par with other top Vegas buffets, including the highly touted one at the Bellagio, but the prices are lower (breakfast is $11, compared with $14.95 at Bellagio, for example).
3. Rio All Suites Hotel & Casino -- The remarkable all-you-can-eat Village Seafood buffet at the Rio is well worth the short trip from the Strip. Serving snow crab legs, Cuban shrimp stew, Baja fish tacos, mussels, and fresh-shucked oysters (all flown in daily), the buffet bests the 300-plus mediocre dishes at the hotel's Carnival World buffet. A new sound and light system in the dining room accompanies videos about ocean species, fishing, and the culinary arts. At $38, it's pricey, so swing by the lobster station to get your money's worth. (This one I've been to, actually, and I'd agree that it's a lot of variety, but the quality of each individual dish is nothing to write home about. A good place to get stuffed on a wide variety of food, tho.)
4. Wynn Las Vegas -- The buffet at the Wynn, the ''Las Vegas Review-Journal's staff pick for best buffet in Las Vegas in 2009, is on the high end of Vegas buffets ($34.95 weeknight dinners). But for that price, diners get 16 staffed cooking stations, including ones serving seafood, Italian, Mexican, and American cuisine, and an impressive dessert spread. Plus, in contrast to most Vegas buffets, the grand dining room is large and airy.
5. Paris Las Vegas -- The whimsical, Disney-esque Le Village Buffet at the Paris -- voted best buffet by the Las Vegas Review-Journal three years in a row -- has five cook-to-order stations, each serving a different regional French cuisine. Lines can be long, and the gooey pie filling on top of the Belgian waffles is no substitute for real fruit, but Francophile diners with American appetites won't find such a vast spread of French food at a better price ($15 breakfasts, $25 dinners). (Actually, I've been here too and it was good. Less choice, but better food, and the decor in Paris is nicely done too.)
6. Flamingo Las Vegas -- Unlike most Vegas buffets, which tend to be dark and windowless, the scenic Flamingo Paradise Garden Buffet overlooks the streams, gardens, and live flamingos of the hotel's wildlife preserve. For food, your best bet is the $20 champagne brunch: some 60 different breakfast foods, including made-to-order omelets and waffles, corned beef hash, and smoked Norwegian salmon. The $22 dinners, however, are no better than average (except for the crustacean corner).
7. Treasure Island -- The Treasure Island buffet is not the biggest on the Strip, but with a chef who makes salads to order, a custom pasta station, sushi chefs on the floor, and barbecue, it's definitely a notch above the typical Vegas all-you-can-eat spread, and all for a reasonable price ($14-$22 breakfasts, $22-$26 dinners). Plus, the food is fresh and the servers are attentive.

Next time I'm in Vegas, I think I'll try the Bellagio. Who's in?

To pay the piper, here's a blurb on Oyster Hotel Reviews too:

Why would you want to go "In Jodie's Brain"?

I've known Jodie Gastel for years and years, and always thought she was one of the "good peeps" of the Internet. Her life journey has had some periods when she's gone through the rapids, but she's remained unceasingly upbeat and optimistic. She's also gone through a number of different businesses - as we entrepreneurs do - trying to find the synergistic combination of her interests, skills and market needs.

The latest business she's working on she calls "In Jodie's Brain" because, as she explains, that's what she lets people do: get inside her brain and use it move forward online.

In a nutshell, through IJB Jodie helps customers clarify what they want their websites to DO, then holds courses to teach people exactly what they need to do to create their online presence - click by click all the way from buying a domain name, to getting hosting to creating the site itself so that when they leave class on the second day, they have a website they built themselves.

Cool, simple and understandable idea. I like it.

Jodie's also passionate about showing people who have no experience with website creation just how easy it is, without having to spend weeks learning code. And for those folk who can't pop up to Canada to attend her classes, she's also just published a book that covers all the key materials too.

Yet another how to get your business online book? Wait, read on...

An interesting application for the $15k Microsoft Surface

Years and years ago, when I worked at HP's R&D Labs in Palo Alto, California, one of the projects we had going on was a "write on image" desktop where the surface of the embedded display was touch-sensitive. Super cool and way ahead of its time. Zoom forward over fifteen years and a few years ago at the Consumer Electronics Show I saw, and wrote about, the Philips Entertaible (see: Philips Entertaible: terrible name, great product).

A few years ago Microsoft also introduced a touch-sensitive embedded display "smart table", calling it the "Microsoft Surface". Being familiar with the segment, I was quite interested to try one and was surprised and intrigued to learn that it was all based on cameras and a projection device underneath the "display" surface: in fact, the table doesn't have a display in the traditional sense of the word. Here's a slick illustration to show how it's actually a projection device and a number of cameras that work in conjunction to "sense" touch and gestures:

[source: Popular Mechanics]

With a price point of $15,000 it's hard to figure out who would by a Microsoft Surface, however cool it may be (and don't get me wrong, these devices are phenomenally cool!)

That's why when my friends at Turner PR in Denver contacted me to see if I'd want to see how the high-end real estate sales team at the Four Seasons Denver were using one, I was quite interested to check it out, camera in hand...

A typical sales office for high-end real estate, yes? Attractive, stylish, but check out the coffee table. Yes, that's the Microsoft Surface, handsome and fitting in quite nicely with the decor (though I'm guessing the couch wasn't quite as expensive)

A closer view of the device shows you that it's one piece of rounded-edge glass perfectly fit into an outer glass table edge. The outer edge, at least, is about 2/3-inch thick and the entire device has a solid feel to it. Further, the seam is tight and there's some sort of epoxy or other filler to make it a perfect seal. It is supposedly watertight, but - no surprise - no-one's tested that by spilling a cup of coffee across the Surface.

You can see, there's not much computer sticking out. Interestingly, the little gizmo stuck into one of the USB slots? That's so you can use a wireless keyboard. That's right, by default, Microsoft assumes that you will plug in a wired keyboard to use this incredibly expensive gizmo. Maybe someone should tell the boys in Redmond about Bluetooth?

Here's the Microsoft Surface playing a video interview with one of the architects of the Four Seasons Denver. While playing continuously, the video window is resizable and can be tilted to any orientation through simple and obvious gestures. This is one of the most impressive features of the Surface, actually, its ability to live twist and resize visual elements.

Ultimately, though, this is the million dollar benefit for the Four Seasons Denver of having a Microsoft Surface Table: the ability for customers to sit comfortably, sipping a cup of tea and flipping through floor plans and walkthru's of the (stunning) residence options. And it's a very good solution because it lets the customer sell themselves on the product rather than having to put up with a salesperson pitching them.

In this final picture, you can see Kelly Carbajal, Marketing and Sales Manager for Four Seasons Private Residences Denver, showing off the RSS reader feature of the Microsoft Surface. Rather to my surprise, this was just about the only application on the Surface that actually reached out to the Internet for information.

Summing the experience of seeing the Microsoft Surface in situ at a commercial facility, I'd say that it was a good fit, but that the Four Seasons Denver is definitely not using it to its fullest extent due to difficulties working with the device and the lack of savvy developers. For example, I'd have liked to see animated 3D walkthru's that would have given me a sense of what it's like to walk in the front door into the lobby, up an elevator, down a hall, and open the door on what could perhaps be my future residence.

I nonetheless applaud the Four Seasons team for acquiring and integrating a Microsoft Surface into its sales process. It's the only Microsoft Surface Table in the entire state of Colorado, which tells you that they're not only innovating by using it, but being on the very cutting edge of integrating advanced technology into a commercial setting.

Now bring it down to $2,500 and I might just replace my current coffee table with one of these too. Oh, and yeah, could we run Mac OS X on it, Microsoft? :-)

Duplicate content? Complain to the hosting company

A few days ago I got a note from a reader that they'd found an exact duplicate of one of my more complicated articles on Ask Dave Taylor hosted on a second-tier blogging platform. Not so good, but honestly, I figured that it was probably more trouble to try and shut it down than it was worth, because it's not like copying one part off my 2500+ page site is going to adversely affect me in the online world.

However, theft of intellectual property is still theft, so I composed a quick message to the "abuse" account of the hosting company:

---

Hello. It's come to my attention from a reader that one of the blogs on your site has a page that's a direct rip-off of a page of my own. His page:

http://harbic.blogsome.com/2008/07/05/how-do-i-install-windows-xp-on-my-mac-with-parallels-desktop/

And my original page:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_install_windows_xp_on_my_mac_with_parallels_desktop_1.html

Rather than hassle with DMCA takedown notices, filing complaints with Google, etc, I'd appreciate if you can just drop this page from this user's site, along with a warning to him about wholesale theft of content.

Thank you for your prompt attention.

---

Much to my surprise and delight, I received the following message from from their administrator within 20 hours:

---

Hi Dave,
We've deleted the blog in question. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Regards,
Roger

---

My kudos to the Blogsome team for dealing with a nuisance complaint in a speedy and appropriate manner, and I encourage you to also take at least this first step of complaining to the hosting company of a site that's ripping off your own content to see what happens.

Ya just never know, it might be just that easy...

Should stores match their own Web site prices? How Target failed.

I'm a movie buff. Just about everyone who reads this probably knows that, but if you don't, check out my film blog to see what I mean. Back? Good.

When Zack Snyder's Watchmen came out on July 21st, I was psyched. I have all the gear I need to really enjoy the film in all its 1080p Blu-Ray fidelity and a day or two before even went to a couple of Web sites to compare prices.

I noted that target.com had the best price: $21.49, so that morning I popped into the local Target and was a bit dismayed to find that it was priced on the shelf at $25.99.

I asked the customer service people if they'd match the online price, and they said "no, we can't do that."

"But," I said, "Let me show you: on the Web site it says that the $21.49 is the in store price." I showed her this:

On the site, as you can see, they're promoting that it's available in the store. Click on the ad graphic and you get to the price:

"Ah," the manager explained, "you'd have to pay for shipping if you bought it from the Web site, so it'd end up the same price anyway."

I wasn't impressed. Seems to me that even if they want to price things differently online versus on the shelf, the store should at least have a policy of matching prices with its own Web site. That's a customer-centric perspective, and apparently Target is more focused on preserving the integrity of its business silos.

So I walked out and went over to Best Buy, where, to their credit, the assistant manager pulled up the Target.com site, found that they were indeed offering Watchmen Blu-Ray for $21.49 and matched the price. The price tag on the Best Buy box? $29.99. Their online price for the movie on the bestbuy.com site? $22.99.

Big difference? Target said "no" and didn't match prices with its Web site. Best Buy said "sure" and not only matched its own online price, but came down another $1.50 and matched the Target.com price.

Target, you might need to rethink this policy. Otherwise it seems like you're ripping off your in-store customers without any recourse when one of them is savvy enough to catch on to what's happening.

Eric Ries brings "Lean Startup" to Colorado

I haven't actually been sucked into the maelstrom of a startup for a while now, which is probably good since I find myself incredibly busy with what is already on my proverbial plate anyway. When I have been involved, however, I've always wrestled with the question of funding versus organic growth.

It's a key question for startups: do you need to raise money to grow? Few people have put more thought into this question than Eric Ries, whose Lean Startup concepts are apparently quite the hot topic in Silicon Valley, where there isn't much angel capital floating around anyway, from what I hear.

What's great for us in Colorado is that one of our local startup gurus, David Cohen (founder of TechStars), has arranged for Eric to come into Boulder and offer up both a half-day workshop and a separate dinner lecture. I'm attending the latter and am looking forward to hearing what Eric has to share with our entrepreneurial community.

It's not too late, but the seats are selling quickly, from what I hear, so don't delay if you're interested:

• Lean Startup Dinner with Eric Ries
• Half Day "Lean Startup" Workshop

Hope to see you there!

Interview with Luc Tremblay of Cirque du Soleil's KOOZA

The residents of St. Paul, Minnesota already know about KOOZA, one of the traveling Cirque du Soleil shows as it's playing there currently. In a few weeks, however, they'll be packing up their gear and tent, and packing it all into a staggering 50 semi-trailers and driving to Denver. It'll be set up again on the grounds of the Pepsi Center for six weeks of performances for Coloradoans. When they're done here, the next stop is Santa Monica, California.

As part of the advance publicity for the show, I was given an opportunity to have a chat with Luc Tremblay, the Artistic Director of KOOZA. Though not a performer, Luc is one of the creative geniuses behind the KOOZA show, previously having been involved with La Nouba (based in Orlando, Florida) and Delirium, another of the Cirque traveling shows.

I should disclose that I am a big fan of the Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil troop and find their shows both trippy and thrilling. I've written about the group and its shows before and even had a behind-the-scenes tour of the Vegas production "O". Here's some of what I've published about the troop:

• Review: Cirque du Soleil: The Beatles LOVE
• Review: Cirque du Soleil "O"
• Cirque du Soleil "O" -- Behind the Scenes

If you're thinking they're just a group of casual street performers, you've never been to a Cirque show. Their shows are amazing and quite technologically sophisticated. KOOZA will have 53 performers under its blue and yellow Grand Chapiteau tent, with 15 technicians running everything. In total, KOOZA has a traveling crew of 125 people and the 175 costumes and total of over 1000 props.

Help rename Colorado's tech industry

When Colorado Governor Ritter visited Silicon Valley a few months ago, the best he could come up with for a name that represented the collective entrepreneurial zeal and accomplishments of the state was to refer to us all as the "Colorado information and communications technology (ICT) sector".

Ugh, that's pretty ghastly and certainly not memorable.

On the other hand, when I said "Silicon Valley" in that first paragraph, you knew exactly where I was talking about, and as someone who lived and worked in Silicon Valley for years (Palo Alto, Los Altos, Sunnyvale, San Jose, Cupertino, Los Gatos, etc) I know exactly where that region is and how having a snappy name has helped its identity.

So a group of us are seeking to tap into crowdsourcing and come up with a better name for the Boulder/Denver tech corridor. Is it tied to Highway 36? Is it "Flatirons" related? Is it a cowboy theme to reflect the exciting history of the region?

This is your chance to help decide! Nominations are open for the Help Rename Colorado's Tech Industry challenge, and entering is super easy: either post it on Twitter with the hashtag #nameCO or email it to Chris Vincent at RockyRadar: nameCO@rockyradar.com

You can read more perspectives about this challenge by following some of the top bloggers in Colorado's tech space, including: Brad Feld, David Cohen and Chris Vincent.

And my vote? I really like Dot Colorado as a collective name.

Startup Seed Capital workshop, Monday 7/13

Just a quick one: My friend and colleague Karl Dakin is offering a workshop on how to prepare your company presentation to raise seed capital, the small amounts of money that let you grow your business to the point where you can raise larger rounds from venture capitalists, through the Greenwood Village Chamber of Commerce at the Denver Tech Center in Denver, Colorado.

If that's where you are in the growth of your company, be it a new startup or a biz that could just use a cash injection to take it to the next level, this could be a terrific way to spend Monday morning: it's $79 for Chamber members and $119 for the general public.

But you're smart. Use the discount code DK3C and you'll save a cool 10% on the price of admission!

Here's how Karl describes the event:

Seed Capital - Seed capital is the money needed in the early part of the business life cycle to get started and reach critical momentum. It is a high risk to the investor and expensive money to the business. However, seed capital may be the key ingredient in the recipe for success - the difference between an idea and a business.

Investment in a Recession - A common question is whether investors will put money into a new business during a recession. The short answer is yes. They cannot afford for their money to sit idle. It needs to work. However, the scrutiny of investments and the competition for money is greater. Businesses seeking money need to do a better job of presenting themselves and matching with the right investors.

Are You Read to Receive Capital? - Do you have your story? Do you know who wants to invest in your business? Are you in compliance with the law? Have you placed a value on your business? Have you developed a capital campaign plan?

Sound good?

> > Click here to create an account on the Chamber site and sign up < <

(and remember to use code DK3C to save a few bucks on your admission)

Introducing the Google Chrome Operating System

Really not much of a surprise given the direction that Google's development team has been going over the last year or two, especially with the release of Google Chrome, their slick Web browser, but check it out, Google just announced Google Chrome OS.

The company describes it thusly:

"Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve."

Can you run it on your laptop? Possibly. They say "Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year."

If you've been paying attention, Google now has Google Docs (including a Word, PowerPoint and Excel competitor), Gmail (an Outlook competitor), Google Talk (competing with MSN Instant Messaging), Google Calendar, Picasa, Google Maps, and, soon enough, Google Drive (which hasn't yet been released, but now we know why, I surmise). Oh, and today, Google also announced that most of these have come out of beta. Coincidence? I don't think so. (and there's more too. Check out the full list of Google apps and Web-based services)

And don't forget the significance of Google Gears, which lets you run many of the core Web-based applications while you're offline. Want to work on a document, fine tune a presentation and respond to a half-dozen email messages while on a flight to NYC? Not a problem.

Now the question is... when will it be available for download? I have an Asus Netbook that's just begging for a new operating system.

By the way, if I were at Microsoft, I'd be getting very, very anxious.

Do the numbers: there are thirty million active Google Chrome web browser users. If that's 85% Windows users and 20% are willing to take the jump and try Chrome OS, that's 5.1 million users, computer users who aren't therefore using and buying new versions of Microsoft Windows...

Mike Arrington doesn't understand PR at all...

It's been a quiet July 4th weekend and I was relaxing and catching up on my RSS feeds (for me, at least, Twitter hasn't taken over the world) when I bumped into a new article by tech provocateur Mike Arrington entitled The Reality Of PR: Smile, Dial, Name Drop, Pray.

The premise of the article is that a company that's launched through us tech bloggers and, specifically his news service TechCrunch gains visibility faster than a company launched using traditional non-blog social media channels (as he says of the non-TechCrunch launched firm: "I'd say this experiment in a pure social media launch failed.").

The story is about a startup that I haven't heard of, Wordnik, but that's not what caught my attention. Frankly, the insanely low barrier to entry for new Web 2.0 companies means that oddly named firms crop up like weeds on a weekly basis -- and I'm only half-joking with that statement -- so not hearing about a new company isn't worthy of even a short blog entry or tweet. (for the record, I haven't heard of Topsy either)

No, what bugged me about Mike's self-congratulatory article was his dismissal of the entire field of public relations with this statement:

"PR firms today ... are paid to perform a service. They like to think of themselves as core to the strategic action of their clients. But more often, they're just there to spin whatever happened in the most favorable light possible. Then they smile and dial and pray for coverage. Occasionally they are called in to smother a story, which is mildly more exciting, I imagine. But when a CEO is wondering what she should do next to drive her business forward, she generally doesn't call her PR firm for advice. Or at least I hope she doesn't."

Fair disclosure that's germane to this discussion: in addition to running my own consulting business and a busy tech blog, I also sporadically work with the talented team at Metzger Associates, a hip public relations firm here in Boulder, Colorado.

And what do I do for them? Mostly host strategic planning meetings with clients, where we talk about the shortcomings of their existing products and services and brainstorm about how to introduce cooler, more compelling, and more exciting offerings to their market segments.

Public relations is to the diss "there to spin whatever happened in the most favorable light possible" as tech blogging is to "regurgitating whatever press release happens to catch your attention". Both are inaccurate assessments yet both have a sliver of truth to them. Nonetheless, Arrington is falling into the common mistake of thinking that PR = press releases, that it's a matter of service providers throwing information sticks into the news river. PR is not about press releases but about something far more fundamental: how a company is perceived and interacts with its public.

As an influence leader in the tech space, I am constantly surprised and a bit saddened by Arrington's constant drumbeat against mainstream marketing and public relations. This is by no means the first time he's come out against an industry of professionals who are not easily categorized by the smug dismissal of it being "old school", and I think that a lot of worthy companies are being inappropriately ignored by his bias and the reflected bias of many others in the tech community.

Not all great invention comes from the rebel underground and not all great startups include people who know how to play the modern media game and gain visibility for themselves in the ceaseless tsunami of information that washes over us every time we power up.

But apparently Mike believes that if these same firms need to hire someone to help them gain visibility, they're already dead in the water. It's all about eschewing those evil public relations people, not adding them to your team and valuing their savvy counsel.

And that, ultimately, is a disservice to their communities, because I rely on news service like TechCrunch (and yes, Mike, TechCrunch is a news channel for me just as the BBC and Variety are too) to help me identify the best and the brightest, what's cool on the horizon, and the more I learn about his institutional bias, the more I discount what's written there.

How about you? Do you think that being hip more important than doing a good, comprehensive job?

Bad PR Pitch #7132: From Baskin Robbins?

I dunno if it's just me, but this marketing communications from Paramount PR, the public relations agency for popular ice cream company Baskin-Robbins, sure comes across as presumptuous:

Subject: Cool Down this 4th of July with Tasty Treats from Baskin Robbins

Hi,

I hope you're doing well today! Please post this information on your blog, and let me know if you have any questions.

No Fourth of July celebration is complete without ice cream and cake! What better way to add fun and flavor to a July 4th fireworks celebration or backyard BBQ than with a delicious ice cream cake? Starting at just $9.99, Baskin-Robbins has an ice cream cake to please every palate and every budget. Stop in at one of your Chicagoland Baskin-Robbins locations and try one today!

Please let me know if you have any questions or would like more information.
Have a great holiday weekend!

Lindsay Scully
Paramount Public Relations, Inc.
www.paramountpr.com

Now realize this is not someone with whom I have had a long-term relationship. In fact, as far as I can tell, this is the very first time I have ever seen a message from anyone at Paramount Public Relations.

Further, what is the news here? That they have ice cream cakes starting at $9.99? So what? I'm also based in Colorado, so the "Chicagoland Baskin-Robbins" bit is a bit odd. Am I in their blogger database as living in Chicago?

So what do you think? Sloppy, lazy PR without any effort put into motivating the blogger to take the desired action, or am I just too judgmental today?

For Sale: The "Firedog" Brand

Imagine my surprise when I saw the following graphic in the middle of my evening update from TWICE, the consumer electronics industry publication:

It's not a terrible ad for industry insiders, but still, a bit of a surprise. Check out where it leads:

streambankllc.com/engagements/firedog.html

As the site explains:

• Brand Strength
• Number 2 market position
• Multi-service offering under one brand
• National footprint with coverage of over 80% of the US population
• Market-leading customer satisfaction scores
• Generated over $272 million of sales in F2008
• Achieved 28% revenue growth and more than doubled EBT in F2008 vs. F2007


• Current Offerings
• PC Services - PC repair services, new computer set-up, remote service plans, and networking support
• Repair In Home/Depot - In-home TV repair, warranty/OEM repair services, and service depot
• Home Theater & Audio Services - Flat Panel installation, surround sound/ home audio, TV Projector mounting, custom A/V solutions


• Future Potential
• Significant opportunity for growth within the $26 billion consumer electronics services market
• Unlimited brand potential to go beyond consumer electronics

Really, rather interesting. If they're doing so well, though, with $272 million in sales in 2008, why are they in bankruptcy in the first place?

You interested in the company? It's not too late to bid! You can learn more about the auction here: Firedog Intangible Asset Sale.

Mainstream media wasn't asleep during the Iranian election!

I know that it's a popular pastime among the social media cogniscenti to talk about how real-time information sources like Twitter are constantly trumping the so-called mainstream news media's ability to cover stories, but I have to say that the current drumbeat of Twitter vs. CNN on the Iranian elections is a bit too much to bear without some sort of reality check.

As you should be aware, the last few days have seen a surprisingly controversial election for the role of President of Iran, with moderate candidate Mirhossein Mousavi believing that he had a substantial lead over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The poll results were dramatic: Ahmadinejad got 62% of the popular vote, while Mousavi only got 33%.

If the election wasn't rigged.

Meanwhile, flash to the social media types who are crowing about how CNN apparently wasn't aggressively covering the growing story and how that just demonstrates yet again how mainstream news sources just don't get it. (For a few examples, see Robert Scoble's piece on how "Twitter kicked CNN's butt", or Daniel Terdiman's piece about the "#cnnfail" Twitter hashtag, or Marshall Kirkpatrick saying "CNN should check Twitter for news about Iran").

The problem is that all of these self-appointed pundits are missing that CNN isn't the entirety of the mainstream media and that all the other sources were right on top of the story. This was a CNN failure, if it was anything, not a failure of mainstream media.

To demonstrate this point, check out this graph from Google News on who had this story, when:

In this graph, A = ABC News, B = Wall Street Journal, C = New York Times, D = The Washington Post, E = Dar Al Hyat, an Arabic-language news outlet, F= Reuters, G = BBC News, H = PRESS TV, and so on. More importantly, though, notice how many outlets were following this growing story as it transpired: On June 12, almost 2000 stories were filed in various news media.

This is "missing the story"?

I'm a bit of a social media snob too, so I get the zeal to show those old-school journalists how they're missing the boat, but in this case, it just isn't true.

The micro-land rush of Facebook Custom URLs

I succumbed, as you can see with this sequence of images:

Finally, the seconds count down and ...

Whoo hoo! Imagine a digital version of settlers in their wagons rushing across the plains to stake down their prime real estate. Um, kind of. A click on the "Continue" button and:

What the hell? Seven seconds have elapsed and someone's already nailed "DaveTaylor" (and "dave" and "taylor" and "dave.taylor") custom URLs? I surmise someone had a name reserved for them, somehow.

Ah well, I have another one that I commonly use, "d1taylor", so that's what I try instead:

Success!

Done. Now you can click on facebook.com/d1taylor to find me.

Now, does anyone care?

Car navigation system with TV tuner, from Mio. WTH??

I read the following press release this morning with increasing disbelief:

(FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -06/03/2009) - When your passengers sleep as you drive, do you feel lonely? Mio, one of the leading makers of PNDs (Portable Navigation Devices), has insightfully launched its first comprehensive range of PNDs with built-in TV tuners - Mio Moov V500 and V700 range at Computex Taipei 2009 today. Featuring 4.7" and 7" widescreens respectively, the two devices are expected to bring a new vision to the world of navigation.

I can only assume that the Mio design team doesn't ever actually drive at night because I can't imagine anything more dangerous than a dashboard-mounted GPS system that is serving as a TV screen while you're barreling along at 80mph.

You can see what they're thinking by this product shot:

Um, please, Federal Trade Commission, do not let this product be sold in the United States any time soon. It's bad enough when people are screwing around on their cellphones while driving at night, do we really want to encourage them to watch TV while driving so that they're not "lonely because their passengers are asleep?"

The mind boggles.

Jeez.

Tropicana and the importance of consistent package design

Let me start with a photograph so you can see what I'm talking about:

It's Tropicana orange juice and you've probably seen it (well, the old packaging, on the left) in the local supermarket. Tropicana, it turns out, is a division of Pepsi Corporation (NYSE:PEP) (just as Minute Maid is a division of Coca-Cola Corporation (NYSE:KO), but you knew this, right?) and a few months ago it had a remarkable misstep with its packaging design...

If you do have a chance to get the packaging on the right, buy it and save it. It's a collector's item.

Turns out that in January of 2009 Tropicana introduced the new package design as part of a $35mil advertising and branding campaign, with the theme "Squeeze it's a natural", created by Peter Arnell. Within weeks loyal customers were complaining about the new package, saying that they missed the orange-and-straw graphic of the original. By the end of February The New York Times was reporting that Tropicana had changed its mind and was going back to the earlier packaging.

And über-designer Arnell's explanation? "emotionally, it's still very, very difficult to, and it still remains difficult, for everyone to grasp the importance of the [packaging] change because it's so dramatic." Uh, um, yeah, okay Peter.

That's old news, really. I mean, four months in Internet time is like five years in academia, right? :-)

What's interesting is to go back and really think about what transpired, why, and what it implies in terms of the ceaseless vox populi drumbeat of the Internet.

Let's be candid. A tiny but vocal minority of customers didn't like the new packaging. But so what? Does that really matter in this modern age? Would people really stop buying a product simply because the packaging changed?

Surprise! Yes they would: AdAge reported that "After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars."

That's where it becomes important and where it's a story worth thinking about carefully. By changing the packaging of a commodity beverage product, Pepsi lost tens of millions of dollars. This isn't a brand new package with a poor design either (consumers will often forgive poor package design if the product's good and if the design improves over time), but a strong existing brand (Tropicana sees over $300mil in annual OJ sales).

Unlike the earlier debacle with New Coke, there was no reformulation or change in the product itself. Just the picture on the carton.

I love this quote from a FastCompany article on the subject:

"Sometimes you land in a great place, and sometimes you don't. And when you don't, you need to find a better place. Fast," Pepsi's CMO, David Burwick conceded. At the end of the table, one of his lieutenants could barely conceal a snicker. "Words like 'tweak' are in order," he said. "Or beyond 'tweak.'"

If you're involved in the visual design and layout of your company's Web site, marketing collateral or packaging, this should all make you take a deep breath and feel, perhaps, just a tiny bit anxious. Customers really are that fickle, really are paying attention, really are that brand disloyal.

Next time you think about a redesign, it'd be smart to keep that in mind.

Apple launches the PlayTV DVR and casual gaming console?

I'm not the only person to remember the ill-fated Apple Pippin, launched in conjunction with gaming company Bandai in the mid-1990s. Yes, you might be surprised, not everything with an Apple logo on it is a success.

But quite a bit has changed since then, perhaps the most important of which is the tremendous success of the gaming side of the iPhone Application Store. How important is that? Check out the following quote from this Reuters article:

"With around 30 million devices on the market -- 17 million iPhones and 13 million iPod Touches -- and access to thousands of games at their slightest whim, consumers are buying and playing games by the tens of millions."

You read that right, tens of millions of games have been downloaded - many of which were purchased - and are residing on iPhones and iPods throughout the United States and any other country where the devices are sold and supported.

When I counted, I have 45 games on my own iPhone, of which about 20% were paid, a number of which cost $9.99. I figure a total investment of perhaps $50 for games on my iPhone. I am probably not a typical iPhone user (yeah, I admit it) but still, if you just do the math, there are tens of millions of games being downloaded, representing tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions.

Remember, that's in less than a year: the iPhone App Store only went live in July of 2008, so it's been around for less than a year.

Just as one example, game developer Gameloft offers almost 30 games in the App Store and tells Reuters that it's sold 2 million copies so far. Even at $0.99/game that's two million dollars in revenue. Not too bad.

Nay-sayers aside, I think this demonstrates that in the handheld arena, at least, Apple's figured out how to effectively and successfully penetrate the gaming arena.

The other piece of this puzzle is the AppleTV, rather a sleeper device. It's not a best seller, but that's because it remains somewhat of a one-trick pony. But what would it take for Apple to make it a digital video recorder (a DVR), slap a much bigger drive into it (the biggest you can get today is 160GB, but I'd want a 500GB drive, personally) and add Netflix, Hulu and/or Amazon video support in addition to the iTunes store, and you've got one heck of a great gizmo to hook up to your video sources.

AppleTV + iPhone Games = Apple PlayTV

What if this device could directly play iPhone games too? What if iPhone game developers were offered incentives to redo their graphics to support a larger HD display and resubmit them to the PlayTV store in addition to the iPhone store?

Imagine we can somehow put 'em together while retaining a focus on casual games that are primarily intended to last 10-15 minutes maximum (think of Tetris, Bejeweled, card games, simple strategy title, or something aimed at children) and you have one heck of a cool device and system, don't you?

Better yet, by focusing on the massive and growing casual game market, this leaves Apple able to sidestep competing with the hardcore gaming platform systems (e.g., the Microsoft Xbox, the Sony Playstation-3 and the Nintendo Wii) which, after all, are also essentially one-trick ponies too.

Gamers won't buy the PlayTV, but do we care? I would be delighted to have an all-in-one unit that offered all of the features and capabilities I list here, including a library of thousands upon thousands of fun, casual games, many of which were free and some of which were anywhere from $0.99 on up.

The market's proven. The companies are already writing the games. The software development kit (SDK) is in the developer community. And we all have TVs, most of which are now HD-capable.

Will Apple take the plunge? I hope so. I'd buy one.

Would you?

"Ask Dave Taylor" is now a registered service mark!

Many years ago I watched the international thrashing over who owns which domain name, especially the World Intellectual Property Organisation involvement, with great trepidation. Then I got into various legal scuffles with large corporations like Southwestern Bell and Porsche and decided that the time had come for me to lock down ownership of my own intellectual property.

Most entertaining was my legal dispute with the litigious Tommy HIlfiger, but that's a story for another blog entry (or, better, a more amusing story to be told in person).

As a result I applied for and ultimately received a registered trademark (well, service mark) for the domain name intuitive.com. Yes, that should properly be written as "intuitive.com®".

A year or two ago as I watched Ask Dave Taylor.com really take off and become a popular, successful site, I decided I would seek to trademark the Ask Dave Taylor brand too.

This week I received notification from the US Patent and Trademark Office that I'd been awarded just that, and now if you look on the site you'll see that it's "Ask Dave Taylor®".

What I realized when looking at the legal documents from the USPTO is that precious few people - particularly in the entrepreneurial space - have seen a trademark award document...

Reclaiming my Twitter Experience with the "un" project

I wrote a few weeks ago about my experiment to follow people randomly and to see how it changed my Twitter experience: Is following someone on Twitter a social contract?

This afternoon I realized that the reason I was enjoying using the new Seesmic Desktop was because it gave me the ability to create a new "friends" column that just showed tweets from a select few friends, rather than my full Twitter follow stream.

Here, let me show you what I mean:

Seesmic Desktop: leftmost column is "friends"

Why would the ability to earmark friends out of your twitterstream be useful? Because there are too many non-friends on the list, too much streaming past you ever minute or two that just isn't of interest from people who aren't interesting to me. Of course they're quite likely interesting to other people who find me uninteresting, but that's what should be the core of social media at its most fundamental, don't you think?

Hence The "un" Project.

What's the project? For me to reclaim my Twitter experience by unfollowing uninteresting people.

Easy enough, right? Well, maybe not. Seems to me that with the addition of more and more celebrities and with the average Twitter gamer having 30k or more followers now, perhaps everyone has lost the ability to unfollow others. :-) Or maybe Twitter is evolving and growing in a direction that just isn't congruent with my own interests in this particular real-time social media.

Be that as it may, I invite you to join the un Project and see how things change.

Oh, and here's how you unfollow someone:

Find a tweet from the person you're not interested in (and, again, there's nothing wrong with these people, they're just not interesting to me, that's all):

Click on their Twitter handle or name (in this case, it's "dujourmag") and you'll go to their Twitter profile page:

Click on the tiny little triangle adjacent to the word "Following" under their profile picture, and a little window opens up:

Now you can see how to proceed. Click on "Remove" and...

That's the secret. It's kind of liberating, actually. Find people who just aren't interesting and give 'em the boot.

Spread the meme: The un Project to take back Twitter.

Dear PR Companies: Please use meaningful subject lines

I'm a writer, journalist and reporter for both print and online publications, I attend lots of trade shows and register (as press) for even more. As a result, I get a lot of press releases. Most are so-so (I've complained about 'em before) but sometimes there are releases that are remarkable in their unfriendliness.

Like this one:

From: 118.50410.61@em.taitra.org.tw (MIC)
Subject: MIC news releases

I follow consumer electronics, so I get releases from Taiwan, China, Korea, and other Pacific Rim nations. Not a big deal.

But the subject line? it's almost a guarantee that no journalists or writers will even open up the email to see what's inside. Who is MIC? Why are they sending me more than one release? And, most importantly, why are they making it necessary for me to open the email to find out what's going on?

Of course, when I open it I find that the first release has the scintillating title of

Wireless DSL Router and IAD Shipments Continue to Play Key Role in Taiwan's DSL Industry in '09

Since I don't actually know what "IAD" stands for, I might not actually be exactly the right audience for this release anyway, but why not have a subject line like

MIC: DSL Router and IAD Shipment News

which would at least let us categorize things and have a sense of whether we'd want to learn more as we skim over our latest wave of releases.

So here's a homework assignment for PR people: look at the subject lines of your latest email press releases you're issuing on behalfo of your clients. Are they succinct, informative, and helpful to someone who gets 30-75 releases emailed to them every day?

Memo to blogger relations PR folk: Follow the example of Crocs

Living in Boulder, Colorado, I am surrounded by entrepreneurs and startups, but we don't have a lot of national brands based in our small town. There are two that you've heard of, however: Celestial Seasonings and Crocs.

The former makes tea. Really good tea. The latter? They make those ubiquitous rubber shoes with the holes punched in 'em, and a whole lot more.

As far as I know, Celestial Seasonings has zero presence in the social media world, but Crocs has George. George Smith, Jr., the head of its social media work (actually, I don't know his exact title).

A while ago George asked me if I was interested in receiving any of the new shoe lines that Crocs had introduced in the last few months and I said "yes". He sent them, shoes for my children as well as myself, I thanked him, and I also added the following postscript:

Now, tell me, George, what can I do for you/Crocs as a thank you for your generous gift of shoes to my family?

His response is one that modern public relations professionals should study and seek to emulate:

As far as doing something for me/Crocs - that's up to you. I didn't give you the shoes expecting anything in return. But if you feel there is a way that you can still be Dave Taylor and do something with us, let me know and we can work it out. Our objectives, for the most part, are really about showing everyone that we're not just that one shoe anymore. It's starting to tip toward that - so it's a good thing. Any way you feel you can help that is awesome! And if you need anything more from me to do that, just ask. But - don't feel obligated to do anything.

He continued with an interesting observation about a charity effort that the company is developing:

We do have our SolesUnited campaign that is about donating shoes to people in need domestically and worldwide. Still developing our rebranding of that - but if that's something you're interested in working on as well - that could work too.

Finally, a postscript of his own:

And seriously - don't worry about anything. I'd rather have you feel inspired with a great idea than me offering up the boring things I think of. And if you never get that inspiration - so be it, at least you have shoes.

I have to again compliment George and Crocs on this response. It's straightforward, candid, and professional.

To be frank, there is a nuanced and implied contract between companies that offer up products for review and the independent reviewers, one that can easily subtly bias the reviewer to be more positive about the product than they would if they'd spent their own money on it. I've written about it before, actually. See: Pay me to blog about your products, for example, so I won't readdress the point here.

I will simply say nice job.

Is following someone on Twitter establishing a social contract?

I am fascinated by something I am seeing on Twitter, where I have recently changed my following strategy. Until a week or so ago, I basically wouldn't follow anyone unless they were a close friend. I called it my "house rule", that is, that I wouldn't follow someone unless I knew them well enough to invite them into my house.

Now I am consciously and experimentally following completely random people, upwards of 50-75/day, by letting the digital zeitgeist point me towards them. I find someone who is an interesting Twitterer and then scour the list of who they follow to see if I can find others who are also worth following. A click of the "Follow" button and blamo, I've added someone else to those I am following.

When I constrained myself to following friends, I never got a single auto-DM (a direct message to me from their Twitter account sent by a 'bot of some sort) and was blissfully ignorant of what others were complaining about. By spreading my net wider and having almost random follows I now understand what people have been kvetching about vis-a-vis the corruption of basic Twitter functionality.

What am I seeing? Here's a typical message (and yes, the names are not changed to protect the innocent. After all, there's no implied confidentiality for someone who doesn't know me sending me a DM marketing message that I did not solicit, is there?)

@stephen_botkin

"Thanks for the Follow! Would You Like to Know How To Dramatically Increase Your Followers? http://bit.ly/LNb7x"

(I'm not going to make those clickable links, you can explore these on your own)

Now before I go further, let me say that I have two motivations for spreading my net wider: I would like to gain more followers and I have now verified experimentally that a meaningful percentage of people who you follow will indeed follow you back.

More importantly, I am very aware that there's a resource location problem with me having an incredibly narrow set of people I follow: I never stumble across new and serendipitous information or ideas.

It's a classic computer and information science problem, actually, and one I've been chewing on for many years in my various projects, including my time years ago as a research scientist at HP Labs.

If the above were the only marketing DM I'd seen, that would be one thing. I'd think "okay, it's cool to explore ways to monetize Twitter this way", but what's amazing is that I am seeing about 4-5% of the people I follow have a marketing auto-DM that they're sending me.

Here are a few more:

@WordPressRocks

"Thanks for the follow! Increase your Twitter following and make some extra $$! http://bit.ly/4pSb5"

@jcwinter

"Thanks for the follow! Check out my free traffic secrets unleashed ebook at my site! http://linkbee.com/unleash"

@stevepohlit

"Hello and Welcome! Thank you for the follow and I am likewise Free biz report @ http://b2cmarketing.biz"

@joey_smith

"Interested or New to Internet Marketing? Take a Look at this IM and Social Media Training Power Blog - http://bit.ly/1ZlvdP - love feedback!"

@furniturer

"Thanks for the follow! Earn $$$ With The Fastest Growing Site. http://bit.ly/x1yrP"

There are more, plenty of 'em, but I have to wonder, are they all pimping the same Twitter ebook at the end of the day? :-)

More seriously, is following someone an implied relationship wherein they can reasonably respond by pushing out some aggressive marketing material my way? Am I at fault for either a) following them or b) being surprised that they would push these marketing tweets out to me?

I believe this is a core dilemma of the social media age: what kind of relationship is implied when I follow you on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, subscribe to your RSS feed, or even bump into you on a location-aware iPhone app?

The easy way to be added to the Media on Twitter database

I'm helping out with the Media on Twitter project and would like to get your assistance building a large and useful database for reporters and new media folk alike.

It's easy: just fill in the following TrackVia entry form:

Media on Twitter Submission Form * = required field
Media First Name Media Title/Beat * Media Twitter ID * Submitter Twitter ID *	Media Last Name Media Outlet * Media Country * Submitter Email Address *
Powered by TrackVia, an online database.

So, for example, I'd use Dave Taylor, Business and Marketing, The Business Blog at Intuitive.com, @DaveTaylor, United States.

Join the directory and get your Twitter ID out there, and when you're done, send out a tweet about the project with the hashtag #mediatweet and, ideally, a mention of @DaveTaylor as how you heard about it. :-)

Thanks.

HD Digital Radio Alliance crash-burns, but won't admit it

I'm reading through the consumer electronics trade journal TWICE and bumped into this fascinating article: HD Radio Ads Combat Perceptions.

The story's really summed up in this sentence, that the Alliance's new "radio-ad campaign will combat the mistaken perception by many consumers that they already own an HD Radio."

That's an extraordinary problem to have, isn't it? Apparently the higher clarity, greater dynamic range digital "HD" radio is a baffling proposition to consumers, who either think that if their radio has a digital tuner they're set or that it's somehow related to satellite radio (Sirius/XM).

The metaphor that comes to mind is that it's like the rats organizing and having a rally as the ship they're on slowly swirls through the whirlpool and into the briny depths.

For better or worse, AM/FM works pretty well, it's cheap, pervasive and now that there are so, so many different alternatives for listening to music (for example, I have an 80GB iPod plugged into my car stereo so I have an enormous music library on the road and far more flexibility - and sound quality - than any on-air alternative) it doesn't need to be supplanted.

That's the core problem that Sirius/XM have been having for years too. It's just alien for the vast majority of consumers to think about paying for radio. I mean, it's just airwaves, right?

Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the HD Digital Radio Alliance explains that the ads are intended to make people go to the HD Radio.com Web site so that people will view HD station guides because, as she explains, "we know if listeners find a station they want to hear that is not on the AM or FM dial, they will buy a new radio."

Uh, no. If they realize that there's music that they want to hear but don't have access to on their radio dial, they'll create a playlist on their music player, plug their smartphone into their stereo and turn on Pandora or Slacker or otherwise sidestep the entire over-the-air infrastructure.

That's not the only place they're out of touch with reality, though. Alliance president Diane Warren explains that “In this economic environment, being able to receive all these extra stations around the country for free is immensely appealing.� Unfortunately Diane forgets that you have to buy new radios to get these additional channels, and the cheapest option is almost $100.

Then again, perhaps I'm wrong and lots of my friends and colleagues have their HD Digital Radio devices and are happily listening to all the additional high quality channels. Are you?

One question with Tim Jackson of LendAround DVD swapping service

I recently bumped into Tim Jackson and after talking about films, he invited me to join his nascent online DVD swapping social network LendAround.

A DVD swapping service? Ah, well, those are harder to pull off than it might seem. The other attempts I've seen fail due to a mismatch of movie quality and gradual attrition.

Tim's response, which he's generously let me republish here:

---

This is the first time anyone's really thought through how a lending system can actually work, and built it.

Three reasons why it's different, three why it's better.

DIFFERENT

1. It's lending, not swapping or trading: that means it's about sharing stuff you like, not dumping stuff you hate. You get things back afterwards. Our early user research discovered that if you ask people to list things they want to swap, they basically just reveal 10% of their collection (ie the stuff they hate). Ask them what they're willing to lend, and they reveal 90%.

2. It's about friends, not strangers. Our research revealed that people need help getting used to borrowing and lending. Asking everyone to open their collections to the world right from the start doesn't work. We have built in little messages so you can say something directly to your friend when you lend to them or borrow from them. You can of course add (and silently remove) friends dynamically and individually; there have been previous systems of closed groups (eg students at x university) but these missed the point that you may not trust someone you've never met just because they study at the same college as you do.

Note: if you're thinking that sounds like Facebook, yup: we've also built a Facebook app, so you can invite FB friends and they can see your collection and learn about what you're watching and borrowing.

3. We've built technology to support pass-ons. This one is subtle and you only discover it after using the system a bit, but it's incredibly important. Suppose I lend Fight Club to my friend Michael . You're also my friend, but you don't know Michael at all. What happens when you ask to borrow the movie while Michael has it? In previous lending systems, he'd send it back to me, and I'd send it on to you. But we've set things up so that if you want it, Michael can send the movie onwards to you without even knowing you.

Here's how it works: you get an email saying please pass on the DVD. When you click on it, you download a printable letter-sized sheet that folds into a wrapper showing Michael's address. You simply put the DVD inside (in a clamshell or sleeve -- we're sending them out free to beta users later this month), and put a 43c stamp on it. (Or if you're a student on campus, a wage slave in a big office, or a resident of a big apartment building, you walk it round for free.)

Here's why this is a really big deal: fast-forward to when you have 50 friends who've each lent out five movies. Without pass-ons, once things start working, you're soon going to start feeling that you have an unpaid job dealing with returns and requests. With pass-ons, your 5 DVDs can circulate among your friends without you knowing or caring who has it (remember that you can always instantly excommunicate anyone, find where each of your DVDs is, and request an immediate return, and that your friends can't pass on your DVD to their friends). And from your perspective, the service begins to look like Netflix for free -- you receive a disk, print a wrapper, and pass it on. The only work you have to do is in connection with new movies that you're enjoying watching.

Also, think of the speed and environmental benefit. With rental-by-mail, each movie makes two journeys per viewing: out and then back to the warehouse. With us, it makes one journey -- twice as fast, half the environmental impact. Instead of going in to the center and out, our users' DVDs go round -- that's why we called it LendAround.

This will raise lots of questions in your mind (eg I don't have stamps, when will you start to print the postage on the wrapper?), and I'm happy to answer them. But we've taken a strategic decision that you only have 30 seconds to explain to potential users what you're doing, and so it doesn't make sense to shout about this now. What we'll do instead is gradually introduce people to the functionality we've built as they become first members and then active members.

BETTER

1. No credits, bucks or fake currency, and no fees. Other services worked by giving you credits for each item sent; some added a charge to you when you receive something, eg a 'mere' 79 cents fee for each swap. We think quasi- or real currencies reduce usage and promote abuse and attempts to game the system. Our focus is about encouraging people to be sociable and friendly.

2. No need for simultaneity. Some attempts at swapping have relied on bilaterality (ie you want to find someone who's got Fight Club and wants The Ten Commandments), or have created complex multilaterality, where they build a chain of people who can each pass an item around so that everyone gets their request. Such complexity reduces the probability of successful matches, and hence the number of 'transactions'.

3. Network, not personal requests. Once you invite some friends, you'll probably find I'm not the only person you know who has Fight Club. In other systems, requests are made directly from one user to another. What we do is different. When you request Fight Club, we can check to see who's got it, and make an intelligent decision about where to request it based on not only availability but also other factors like the reliability of the other person and outstanding balances of borrows and lends. The result is that while you make only one request, we can work in the background to find the smartest way to fulfil it. And if someone you know only buys Fight Club after you requested it, then your loan request can still go to them.

I know it's hard to convey the subtleties of all this in a 500-word post. But we're convinced that once a user signs up, there's a much higher probability of our being able to give them a reliable and useful service that they love.

---

The jury's still out, but have a quick peek at LendAround and tell me what you think.

A tour of 3D model fabrication company Archetype 3D

I had an opportunity this morning to meet with the team that runs Archetype 3D, a 3D architectural modeling company based in Louisville, Colorado.

What's a 3D modeling company? Well, have you ever seen those incredibly intricate and detailed models of upcoming buildings or building complexes at sales offices? Or perhaps at City Hall? Or maybe you've seen a 10-foot three-dimensional terrain map of a National Park or similar? Those are all the kinds of things that Archetype 3D makes for clients, ranging from relatively simple jobs that are in the few hundred dollars to amazingly detailed work (like what I'll show, below) that cost tens of thousands of dollars and is used to sell multi-million dollar works.

Archetype 3D describes itself thusly: "Since 1984, we have been building professional scale models in Colorado. We started making 3d architectural models for the ski industry and for residential developers within the state and have grown to include work building industrial design models, satellite / aerospace models, museum and display models along with courtroom models and graphics."

I'll start with a photo of the model they were just wrapping up today, after six weeks of detailed fab and modeling work. It's the proposed Ritz-Carlton hotel for the beautiful ski resort town of Vail, Colorado. Looks like the real thing, doesn't it?

In this picture you can see more that it's a scale model. But look at the detail: even within the entrance carport you can see the doors from the architectural plans.

In this one you can see shop manager Mike Johnson etch some fine details on one of the windows in the Ritz-Carlton model.

This model is approximately 6-foot by 5-foot, took six weeks to produce and costs $50,000. As I clarified, they do not tend to play frisbee on the fabrication floor. :-)

This is pretty interesting too and considerably smaller in scale: it's a (theoretical) model of the Sun, being produced for the Space Science Institute. It cost about $1000 and will be part of a traveling exhibit shown in libraries around the United States.

This is the illustration upon which they based the Sun model shown above. Quite impressive to go from a 2D drawing to a 3D model!

This is a model used to sell a mixed-use facility in Beaver Creek, Colorado, another ski resort town. Once the models are used and the project sold, they often end up at Archetype3D rather than just being trashed, so the company has a nice wall of display models representing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of incredibly detailed work. (If you've been to Beaver Creek and can identify this building, please do leave a note telling us what's in the structure now!)

So how do they make these incredibly detailed models?

The first step is what they call their topo machine (topo for topographic). What you see is a device that lets them cut urethene foam in three dimensions to whatever shape is needed. The device works with urethene ranging from 3lb to 20lb density, and I imagine it's quite noisy, though we didn't see it actually in use (I also worry about the employees breathing the dust from this process, but imagine that they follow full OSHA regs in that regard).

One of the most interesting machines to me was this behemoth: their 3D modeler. Yes, it actually creates highly detailed 3-dimensional models based on computer data fed to it. The raw material is a combination of plastic and wax and it's created with the help of industrial lasers. On the earlier Ritz-Carlton model, this is how they created the incredibly intricate window railings, for example. No human would want to do that by hand for hundreds of windows!

To create the nuances and appearance of reality, the Archetype 3D team also has quite an array of paints, as you can see. One of the other modelers told me that as best they can, they use the exact color swatches from the architects, for maximal realism. The exterior yellow on the Ritz-Carlton model, for example, is based on an exact color specified by the client.

Much of the paint work is done by spraying paints evenly on parts before they're added to the model, but there's also a lot of work done by hand. While we were there, an employee was adding touches of snow by hand, something that made me think of the character Slartibartfast, who, in the great Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "specialises in fjords, having won an award for Norway."

If you have any knowledge of HO train layouts and the people that work ceaselessly to make complex, rich and incredibly detailed models, that's what this is like. In fact, as you can see in the above picture, they also utilize model elements from train hobbyists.

And, finally, one more picture, showing the full Ritz-Carlton model and some humans for scale. Or was it Attack of the 50-foot Guys?

Anyway, many thanks to the team at Archetype 3D for both sharing what they do and helping me get all the facts right in this blog entry too.

How do you know when CEOs are being paid too much?

There's an interesting - though not surprising - debate happening on the Web site of my local paper, the Boulder Daily Camera. The article that started things going is New Crocs CEO Getting $850K Salary Signing Bonus and it's tied to a local shoe manufacturer, Crocs, Inc (NASDAQ: CROX).

The debate is about whether an executive is worth their paycheck, basically, and I'm being generous calling it a "debate" as most of the comments are of a considerably more hostile nature.

For example: "It is obscene that one man - John Duerden - make that kind of income while this company disregards and disrespects those who actually do the work." or "No wonder this company is broke." or "People are starving. This is awful."

And the most unhinged of all: "CEO's, Enjoy your dishonest wealth and mansions here on earth, while you still have breath. Because, in HELL you won't find mansions or luxury, just pure torture, terror, and torment." That one makes me wonder about their personal story, but not so much that I'd risk having tea with them, since I'm one of those capitalist people.

Fortunately, there are some people who seem to understand that as you work your way up the executive ladder at a company your salary naturally increases too. People leaving comments like "Tough job, seems about right to me......" and even backhanded swipes like "Crocs is a bad company with a fad product that probably should never have gone public; but this CEO is hardly in the upper echelon with this compensation package"

What I want to examine here isn't whether new Crocs CEO John Duerden is underpaid or overpaid but rather to explore the idea that executives should be paid whatever the market allows.

We're not talking about the manager of the local Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), note, but a large publicly traded company with a global presence.

This is quite relevant for another reason too, because with the bailouts and other government attempts to shore up our broken industries, the question of how much is too much for CEO pay immediately comes into question within that context again, and vociferously.

Anyone being paid millions for doing their job seems hard to justify, but it's like athletes: if you're playing at the level where you should get $4mil/year, why would you take a job offering you $500K instead?

And if you, as a top athlete, won't take the offer that's undervaluing your skills and expertise, who would take that kind of job offer and would they really help build a winning team? You know the answer: someone less capable, someone less valued by the industry at large.

This is directly relevant to executives. If you're looking for a new CEO to take over your publicly traded company and try to restore the stock value for the many shareholders, isn't it your fiduciary and moral obligation to find the very best person you can to fill that job?

It's clear, I hope, that you can't get top quality people by offering a second-rate salary. Ergo, Duerden at Crocs being offered what seems like a tremendous salary but in fact is probably an average salary for a clothing company of the size of Crocs. If he were #1 at

Yet when we hear about the executives of major corporations like General Motors (NYSE: GM) being paid huge salaries even as the company goes to Washington to ask for bailout money, people go apoplectic. I just ask that you think about it for a minute instead of being enraged.

Do you really think that a company like General Motors can attract the top-notch people it needs to reinvent itself by offering salaries that are 10x what a line worker makes? I don't.

And the consequences of getting an inferior candidate because you can't offer a competitive salary? Well, that should be obvious.

Contextual ad shoot-out: Infolinks versus Kontera

I've had a very good relationship with Kontera and have been a premier advertiser through the use of its ad network on my Ask Dave Taylor.com site.

Many people in the online advertising space eschew the kind of contextual pop-up ads that Kontera run, however, because they say that it's confusing to users: is a word in a different color, underlined, a hypertext link or a pop-up ad? Here's how one looks:

My use on Ask Dave Taylor is perhaps even more confusing because I generally have it customized to be a single underline and to have the same color as a regular link (and my regular hypertext links are italicized, not underlined at all). Since the ad pops up on "mouseover", I believe that it's quite unusual for people to accidentally click on the ad. I will also say that I have served up millions of these ads since I started working with Kontera and never received a single reader complaint.

Other contextual ad networks have seen my busy site and asked me if I'd switch and generally I say no. The folks at InfoLinks.com persisted, however, and I decided it would be very interesting to test Kontera versus Infolinks on the site. They swore they could earn me significantly more money than Kontera was paying me and that sure got my attention.

I told each company they were going to be part of a test and that I would publish all the results, including actual earnings. Both companies agreed and were excited (and perhaps a little bit anxious) about the test.

I ran the A/B split test for the month of February, 2008. I used the following code to split ads 50/50 between the two networks:

The result? I've taken a 20 day slice to compare between the two, from Feb 5-25, and here first is the result from Infolinks:

The second result is from Kontera:

Though you might initially think that the total amount earned is the most important, to me the key figure is the eCPM (effective cost per mil -- where "mil" in this context is actually 1,000). With this figure you can see that Kontera offered up more valuable links: $4.39 versus InfoLink's $4.23.

The two networks had exceptionally similar earnings: $1939 for Kontera and $1905 for Infolinks. Notice, though, that Infolinks had a higher click-thru rate (CTR) and more ad impressions to generate this slightly lower revenue when compared to Kontera.

The winner? Kontera, but only by a hair. We're talking about a difference of about 1.8%, after all.

If you're looking for an ad network to experiment with, Kontera might well be just what you seek. And if they don't work out for you? Perhaps Infolinks would work instead.

Either way, my thanks to both companies for letting me run and publish the results of this test. I hope you find it interesting!

Affiliate communication should be exciting, not banal, Amazon!

I've been a member of the Amazon Associates affiliate program for years. In fact, as a book author, I probably signed up and joined when the program was first released. It feels like I've been working with the company forever.

Even after all these years, though, I'm constantly astonished at just how boring and uninspired the communications from the group are. Just this morning I got my Amazon Associates statement and from the subject of the message to its content, the way it presents my earnings to the fact that there's no individual signing the message, is shockingly banal.

I mean, really, guys, the subject title Remittance Advice from "Amazon Accounts Payable <noreply@amazon.com>" just seems like the poster example of what happens when accountants run a program, not marketing people. This should be "Great news from Amazon Associates!" and should come from the head of the program at Amazon, or at least the Associates program itself.

Then the message itself? Holy cow, it needs an injection of some sort of positive thinking. Here's what you get instead:

In case you can't read it, it's basically just accounting talk, details about how payments are processed and, at the bottom, barely even recognizable, is the actual amount you've earned. Not even a "$" is included to help you see it in a glance, though.

If I were reframing this email, I'd start by saying thank you to the associates for helping Amazon sell products and be a bit more enthusiastic about the actual amount earned. For example:

"We're pleased to tell you that you earned $152.04 on this payment cycle through the Amazon Associates program. We at Amazon.com thank you for your help in selling our products and will be mailing you a check (or initiating an electronic funds transaction) within the next 48 hours."

Doesn't that seem a bit more friendly and perhaps a bit more motivating to Associates who you really want to be excited about the program?

In fact, why not include 3-4 bullet items that highlight exciting changes to the program, new product lines available for promotion, and even case studies on people who are doing very well in the program?

But perhaps I'm just a lone voice in the wilderness. Are you in the Associates program, and if so, does their current email earnings notification work just fine for you?

Bad PR Pitch #317: Shaklee / Lippe Taylor Brand Communications

I don't know why I keep writing about these bad pitches that are mistargeted and demonstrate such an appalling lack of research on the part of the PR agency. Maybe it's because one of my tentacles extends into the PR world through my work with local agencies seeking to understand and properly utilize social media, but maybe it's the same reason people slow down at a car wreck: morbid curiosity.

The pitch this time? A competition sponsored by multi-level marketing (MLM) based Shaklee Corporation. The title is "Shaklee Announces the Cinch Biggest Loser Challenge" and the pitch email message starts out "Dear Dave" (good so far) then continues with " I thought some of the moms reading your site may be interested in this opportunity."

As Piglet would say, "dear d'dear dear dear". I do not run a mommy blog (my parenting blog says right on top "run by an attachment parenting dad...") but even if I did, why would anyone think that I only have female readers? This is an example of where it would be sooooo easy to say "I thought some of your readers may be interested..." and be more inclusive.

The bigger gaffe is that I am just not a fan or proponent of MLM or network marketing companies. I've written about it more than once, most recently What's wrong with MLM as a business model?, and any PR professional who has done their homework would be clued into the fact that MLM pitches are best not sent along to my mailbox.

And yet, I get this pitch that starts out:

"It’s been hard for many people to stick to their New Years resolution to lose weight, but between cooking dinner, doing laundry, reviewing homework and attending baseball practice, this task has been especially difficult for moms."

Now, as a single Dad, I find this pretty darn offensive. This just feels like such a 50's perspective, that it's Mom's work to raise the children and Dad's work to just earn the money.

Dunno, maybe I'm just getting cranky about this stuff now that I get 30-50 "blogger press releasses" and similar each day, but please, PR agencies, do your homework and focus not just on the big categorization of "parent bloggers" or "mommy bloggers" but also the more narrow demographics. Heck, there are tools that you could use that would tell you if a given blogger ever writes about a specific topic before you bother them.

(And here's a free tip: most of the women I know who blog, even about their families, do not consider themselves "mommy bloggers" and find the concept insulting and belittling. I mean, men who blog about business, tech, and parenting aren't "daddy bloggers", they're just bloggers. So what's the diff anyway?)

The hard truth is that PR isn't the same as it used to be, and that you can't be measured by the number of releases you send out, but by pickup and mindshare.

That's not an numbers game, it's a targeting one.

Those companies that can more accurately target are the ones that will get consistently better results and be the winners in this pony race.

Guys & Dolls: Fighting the Economic Slowdown on Broadway

Got an interesting query message from a publicist associated with the hit Broadway show Guys & Dolls that's a fine example of a short and sweet PR query to a blogger:

I represent the Broadway Musical, Guys & Dolls (currently starring Lauren Graham). We are running a special offer for families during Presidents Day week that we think your readers would enjoy. The full details of the offer can be found at this address: http://www.guysanddollsbroadway.com/offer.html. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

The publicist is Kristie (next time, include a last name, please) and she's with the entertainment agency spotnyc.com. Their client list includes some terrific organizations, including Cirque du Soleil, Paramount, Dreamworks, MTV, and more.

What I like about this query is that it's short, to the point, and professional. No intro letters, no blather about the show itself (I have seen and greatly enjoyed Guys & Dolls, though it was the traveling show, not the Broadway production), just a straight pitch.

And the deal? This week they're offering kids see the show for free and there's a buy-one-get-one-free ticket deal too. That's a smart way to deal with economic tough times on Broadway: a family of four can go see the show for the price of one ticket. Why would you NOT do that?

It's a sweet and funny play, too, revolving around "Nathan Detroit, the organizer of the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York, who bets fellow gambler Sky Masterson that he can't make the next girl he sees fall in love with him. The next girl he sees happens to be Miss Sarah Brown, a pure-at-heart Salvation Army-type reformer, and the stage is set for an hilarious evening of complications." [src]

What is "net plus thirty" on an invoice?

Had an interesting experience this morning. I sent a standard email invoice to a client company (whom I shall not name) that included the line

Payment: Net Plus 30

His response was "is that who you want the check made out to, Net Plus 30"?

me: "no, those are the payment terms: I am stating that I want to be paid within thirty days of receipt of my invoice"

he: "Wait, so you want to be paid the amount you billed us plus 30?"

me: "skip the "net plus thirty" and just ask accounting to process my invoice, please."

Now, I've been doing business - including processing invoices and purchase orders - for a long time, so for me, an invoice that says "net + 30" or similar is well understood. It's basically saying "don't pay me in three months, please. Just issue the darn check."

Obviously, though, that's not common parlance, at least not with the organization to which I sent the invoice this morning.

Which leads to my question: how much jargon, how many common catchphrases or acronyms, do you use in your daily correspondence that aren't being clearly understood by your recipients?

A great example of this, of course, is with culturally-contextual metaphors. If I say "that's a home run!" would you understand? Probably, if you're in the United States of America and are at all familiar with baseball. But if you're not? If you're in Madrid and are obsessed with soccer (which you'd call futbol) or if you're in Mumbai and are a cricket fanatic? There a "red card" or a "sticky wicket" would make sense, but then most Americans would be completely clueless about the reference and its implication in your communication.

That's your exercise for the day: pay attention to how you're communicating with others and ask yourself the question what metaphors, what jargon am I using that might be getting in the way of clear communication?

Do it right and I promise you, it'll be a touchdown. :-)

The importance of good titles and headlines

One of the aspects of writing online that I am constantly surprised so few people pay attention to is the critical importance of writing good headlines, good titles that help readers identify the topic of the piece and whether it's something they should read or not. There's a secondary benefit too for those of you savvy about search engines, but even without that, I wanted to just write briefly about the critical importance of good titles.

At its most basic, a headline is intended to draw you into the subject, to highlight whatever it is you're saying and give people a very, very brief synopsis of the content of the article.

The title to this blog entry, for example, wasn't "don't be witty" or "good titles = good" or "brevity is not your friend" or even "blog entry for Thursday", was it? By my writing The importance of good titles and headlines you knew immediately what I was going to talk about, you were given a promise, in essence, that it's now my task to deliver. If you weren't interested in headlines, you knew you could safely skip it too, an added benefit.

This subject came to me as I read through the 200-odd RSS feeds that I consume daily through Google Reader. Here's a snapshot of what I see in the mix:

Let's start by picking apart a classic grammatical mistake...

Grammar? Yes, grammar.

This gaffe shows up on the otherwise terrific Marriott on the Move blog written by company leader Bill Marriott. The title? Courtyard by Marriott Opens its 800th Hotel in Shanghai, China.

This is a really good title, actually, telling you exactly what's going on. Except it really desperately needs a comma because I'm pretty sure that there aren't actually 800 Courtyard by Marriott hotels in Shanghai. Instead: "Courtyard by Marriott Opens its 800th Hotel, in Shanghai, China"

Picky? Yeah, probably. But you need to pay attention because your blog title is going to be out there forever.

What If You're Recommended?

The next title I want to pick on is Fan-Shaped view of what opened what. What the heck does that mean? Knowing it's from Liz Blankenship's engaging TabViz blog, where she's talking about the design and implementation of tabs in user interfaces (how's that for a narrow topic?), gives us a context, but I suggest that instead the title itself should give us more information. How about "Tabs as visual cues: fan-shaped view of what opened what" as a way to tie the title to the blog topic?

There's an interesting secondary issue with this blog title too, because I don't subscribe to Liz's weblog. This showed up in my reader because my friend Andy Edmonds had recommended it. Titles therefore cannot be written assuming the reader has a known context: until I dug further into the blog I'd never seen her weblog before.

To spin this another way, how much attention do you pay to the serendipitous discovery of your content by people who aren't already subscribers or fans?

Brevity? No thanks.

Now I do read, and greatly enjoy Brad Feld's Feld Thoughts weblog, but his latest entry Making the Rounds is not a good example of a functional title. What rounds? Where? What's the metaphor he's tapping here, an intern at a hospital?

The first sentence in his blog entry tells the story, actually: "I've been spending more time talking in public recently." I suggest that a much better title for the article itself might have been "Spending more time talking in public..." or even "Speaking, speaking, speaking" if brevity and wit are also desired.

If you have an international audience, also be careful of your metaphors. A classic Americanism, for example, is to use a baseball or football metaphor like "make a touchdown" or "hit a home run" and then be surprised when your overseas audience has absolutely no idea what the heck you're talking about!

Technology Can Prove a Barrier

BusinessWeek's Amy Choi has a delightful example of how brevity - and technology - can be your worst enemy. On the Small Biz blog, her latest entry comes up in my RSS reader as What I Learned in the Trenches.

To understand why this is a problem, check out this screenshot of exactly how it appears in "expanded" view in my reader:

It's not until you click through to the story itself that you get the subtitle "Veterans-turned-entrepreneurs offer advice". Suddenly there's a context and it sounds like a very interesting story to boot! Military veterans who have become entrepreneurs and the advice they offer up to the rest of us small business owners? Well worth reading.

Why, though, isn't that part of the title of the piece? Without taking the time to click through, I'd never have had a clue about what "trench" Amy was talking about and why I'd care.

When you're creating titles, remember that your reader is busy and overwhelmed by information sources so you do need to put in the extra effort to create something both informative and engaging.

Good Titles Convey Key Information

Even über-blogger Robert Scoble isn't immune from pedestrian titles. His latest blog post is entitled Keeping Kids Online Safe. Read the piece itself, however, and you find out it's really about "How Symantec aims to help keep kids online safe" (or, more grammatically correct, "help keep kids safe online").

Again, there's the sense that you can omit some critical information in the title because you just know people are going to click through and read the article. But what if they don't?

Since Robert spends a lot of time writing about startups, knowing that a major corporation like Symantec is getting into this space is more interesting than the generic headline "keeping kids online safe", which could go in any of a hundred different directions.

Search Engine Optimization Is Your Friend?

Notice in this entire discussion I haven't said a word about SEO. For many people who are hip to the online world, ensuring that you have a good keyword or two in your title is of utmost importance. Ironically perhaps, it's also a smart way to ensure that you end up with a good title for humans too.

Think about it: the titles that haven't worked are those that lack a specific noun or subject. This also means that they lack a keyword or key phrase. Instead, focus on the single most important concept, idea, product, vendor or topic in your blog entry or article and then ensure that appears in the title too and you'll be well on your way to creating good titles.

Final Thoughts

A few more quick thoughts: how long should a good title be? Well, not too long but not too short. "good titles" is not as good, for example, as "how to create good titles", which can still be improved with "how to create good article and blog titles". Get to "Everything you need to know about how to create good article and blog titles for both human readers and search engines (SEO)" and it's probably grown beyond a reasonable length. :-)

I won't say I'm the end-all expert on titles and headlines, but I hope these give you some things to contemplate next time you're working on crafting the perfect title for your blog entry or online article.

What's wrong with multi-level marketing as a business model?

Let me preface this by saying that I am not involved in any multi-level marketing (MLM) business, nor do I have an interest in joining one, whether at the top of the pyramid or somewhere in the downline. The very fact that I feel the need to include this disclaimer, though, is part of what I want to talk about in this essay. Why does MLM have such a bad reputation, what's wrong with it, and can it be fixed?

If you're a salesman, you're already quite familiar with the challenge and opportunity of working on a commission basis. It's easy: the more you sell, the more money you're paid. If you're selling $500 gizmos and you're paid a 5% commission, selling 3 in a day nets you $75, not much at all. But sell 20 in four hours and you're doing very well, earning $500, or a delightful $125/hour.

This business structure is so well established that many of the businesses with which I consult have "pure commission" salespeople on the team, people who are paid a very healthy fee for each closed sale, but who are paid zero if they can't close. Since few businesses can afford to be philanthropic efforts, good intentions inevitably meet harsh reality at the sales desk, so it makes sense.

No sales = no income = no company.

Take a step up the food chain in a typical corporation and you'll find that the sales manager gets a bonus based on the performance of their salespeople, and that the VP of Sales also gets a bonus based on the aggregate sales of the team. Indeed, the CEO of the company is also likely to get a bonus based on the growth of the company revenue year over year.

In essence, a pyramid system where that $500 product might well produce a $25 commission for the sales person, a $10 commission for the sales manager, a $10 commission for the VP of sales and (more likely than not) a $20 commission for the CEO. In other words, $65 (13%) of the $500 sale might well go to commissions in this sort of scenario.

Harvard Business School, for example, lists three basic ways to pay your sales force:

1. Salary plans pay fixed rates of compensation and are appropriate when measurements of performance are difficult to ascertain.
2. Commission plans pay salespeople in direct proportion to their sales and are appropriate for maximizing incentives or for predicting sales costs in direct relationship to sales volume.
3. A combination plan includes all variations of salary plans plus other monetary incentive plans. This plan is more complex to administer; however, it allows for greater incentive and flexibility.

Even in that bastion of business capitalism, HBS, commission based sales is a recommended strategy.

Let's go a bit further down this business scenario too. Now try to imagine the motivation for the sales manager when she (or he) is interviewing a potential hire. What's their primary motivation? That they can sell the heck out of the product/service. In essence, the sales manager (and VP and everyone else in the company) is going to act based on enlightened self-interest and hire the candidate who seems most likely able to close on product sales.

Many large companies also offer a bonus or reward for new employee referrals too, which extends the incentive for finding good salespeople who can close deals down to the front lines. Now everyone in the sales loop is trying both to help sell product and find new salespeople who can maximize product sales.

(well, some salespeople might be concerned about new folks adversely impacting their own sales, but that's typically addressed by sales territories, where each salesperson is assigned a different geographic or demographic customer group)

With a typical company, then, we have salespeople who are paid to sell their product and to find new salespeople, managers who are paid partially based upon the ability of their sales team to close sales and, through ESI (enlightened self-interest), also motivated to find new and better employees to continually maximize sales and revenue, and so on, up the chain to the CEO.

Now, tell me how Avon (NYSE:AVP) or Amway are different?

They also have a distributed sales team where each team member is paid on a commission-only basis and are also paid based on a percentage of the sales of their team (in the MLM space, they call this your "downline"). The sales manager has a similar structure and sits one rung higher up on the ladder, on and on, up to the Amway or Avon corporate team itself.

There are two core differences I see between a Fortune 500 sales team and the folks in my neighborhood who are selling an MLM product, though: first, traditional corporations don't have an ever-growing org chart. Imagine if every few weeks another level of management was added to Kodak (NYSE: EK) or Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX). It'd produce chaos and, more importantly, would continually dilute the accountability chain. If sales drop, who is actually responsible when the sales team could be arbitrarily wide and deep?

The second difference, and this is the big one I think, is that in a traditional sales group, your incentive for bringing someone else on the team is a one-time bonus, not a percentage of their sales for a specified -- or endless -- period of time.

The first problem can be addressed by disciplined MLM organizations, of course. They can just say "after we're four levels deep, we can't go any deeper". This makes intuitive sense if you think about each party taking a slice of the pie: even if each party only gets a 5% commission on a sale, eventually you'll run out of base revenue and be paying more commission than the profit on a given product. That's a recipe for bankruptcy.

Which leads us to what is the core problem with multi-level marketing companies: offering a percentage of transaction revenue from your downline or sales team without a specified duration.

The math is easy too. If I can earn 5% of every sale you make as part of my sales team or 10% of any sale I make, I'd rather just get you on board and take some leisure time while you do the hard work of closing the sale.

This is the core of where MLM breaks down, obviously, when members are incentivized by the very structure of multi-level marketing to find new team members rather than sell the individual products (and that's times ten if there's an "initiation fee" that's split by the existing organizational members).

But what if there were an MLM business where both of these problems were addressed? Where it couldn't grow arbitrarily deep (or wide, depending on your metaphor) and where people are paid a sales commission bonus for bringing new people on board, but only for a very finite amount of time?

As I said, I'm not involved with any MLM business, but when I do think about the fundamental business structure, I'm always intrigued by its extraordinary parallels to sales teams in traditional corporations along with its few core differences.

Seems to me that there should be hybrid MLMs that enjoy the benefits of a highly motivated, distributed affiliate-only sales team while avoiding the trap of motivating your team to the wrong end goal: finding more team members rather than selling products. Is there?

MLMs generally have a miserable reputation and even asking a question about MLM businesses structures on Twitter quickly elicited sarcastic and hostile responses. People don't like 'em, but most of the commentary seems to be more about the people who are the most vocal proponents / salespeople rather than about the business itself. One way to look at that is that Avon, for example, sells a good line of products, has its own R&D team, etc.

Nonetheless, there is a stigma around MLM. Is it justified when you just look at the business structure?

For that matter, if I include an affiliate link to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) or a redirect through something like Clickbank that pays me a commission because you decided to buy something through my link, is that really fundamentally different to me selling you some Avon skin lotion or a carton of Amway dishwasher soap?

What's your take, dear reader?

My favorite Superbowl XLIII Advertisements

Generally I've watched the Superbowl more to see the ads than to watch the football game itself (I'm a lot more enthused about World Cup soccer than American football, personally), but I have to admit that this game, the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. the Arizona Cardinals, was darn exciting!

Nonetheless, I'm hardly a football commentator, so instead I thought I'd talk about which of the rather large number of TV ads I liked.

Here's my short list: GE: Wind Energy, Hulu: Alec and Huluwood, GE: Scarecrow, Coke: Heist, Bridgestone: Hot Item, NBC Heroes: Football, Teleflora: Talking Flowers, Pedigree: Crazy Pets, Doritos: Power of the Crunch, and Doritos: Crystal Ball.

Coke: Heist advert

Of these, if I had to pick one or two that were my favorites, I'd choose Coke: Heist for its creative brilliance, GE: Scarecrow for its creative use of a very well-known visual metaphor (The Wizard of Oz), and Doritos: Crystal Ball for its wry surprise twist and splendid situational humor.

Escape to Witch Mountain

I was also surprised about the movie previews for both G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Race to Witch Mountain, they're both films I'm definitely going to want to see in the theater after these exciting trailers.

I'll also add that there were a few ads that I thought were particularly ghastly, particularly given that one hopes entire families watch the Superbowl, not just adults, and they were all pretty much from NBC itself. Specifically, there was a spot for NBC's "Medium" show that had an image of a man holding a dead child (looked like an 8yo girl perhaps?) that was just the wrong imagery for a family sporting event on TV.

It's bad enough that we have to put up with what I consider oft-inappropriate sexual and violent imagery on TV programs (for example, I turned off the Rose Bowl after an ad for My Bloody Valentine 3D, a film that does not need to be advertised on a daytime sporting broadcast!) but images of death - especially the deaths of children - are way over the top. Sorry, NBC, this was a big, big fail to me.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the ads, and while I read on Twitter that many parents were upset with the GoDaddy ads for being clearly both stupid and sexist, I just thought they were dumb. I am sure that the imagery of a buxom model will be far, far less upsetting to my child than the advert for The Medium would be.

Anyway, congrats to the Pittsburgh Steelers for a great, great Superbowl game, and to the Arizona Cardinals for one heck of an attempt. They came really, really close to winning their first Superbowl game ever.

---

Tip: if you seen an "unavailable" error from Hulu on the adverts, it might be because their server is overloaded. It's also a problem - for Hulu, not me - if you live outside of the United States of America. Sorry, that's their limitation, not mine!

My experience of buying a car in a down economy

After months of research and a lot of time spent online, I traded in my 2004 Toyota Prius for a 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid yesterday. Well, I bought the Highlander, knocking a bit off the price with the Prius, realistically.

First off, I bought the car because I found myself at a point in my life where I owning two cars: the Prius and a 2004 Volvo XC90. I really didn't want to have two cars, so when I envisioned a vehicle that had the best of the space and bad-weather capabilities of the Volvo and the energy efficiency and general design panache of the Prius, I identified two possibilities, the Highlander Hybrid and the Lexus 400h hybrid SUV.

Problem with the Lexus, though, is that it's darn expensive, more expensive than I was prepared to pay. The Highlander priced out, even with every option, at least $10k cheaper.

So I spent time online, went to the Toyota site and requested bids from dealers throughout Colorado, and tried to work directly with Boulder Toyota, the local dealership.

Now I'd had a bad experience with Boulder Toyota when I bought the Prius back in 2004 (they refused to omit a $900 "high altitude prep package" which was them etching my VIN on the windows and doing an undercoat, which would have cost them about $80, if that) and ended up canceling my Prius purchase and buying it from a Denver dealer instead, so I was unsure how the down economy would affect their interaction.

In fact, they were still unpleasant and untrustworthy salespeople. This time the salesman didn't say a thing about prep packages, but when we'd emailed back and forth I said that I was expecting $13-$14k for my Prius trade-in. I drove the Prius in and while he offered me a good price on a dealer demo Highlander Hybrid (approx $40k) he also offered me $10k as a tradein on the Prius. Not acceptable.

I called up the used car manager at Boulder Toyota and asked him about how much it'd cost if I wanted to buy a used Prius from the dealership and he told me that an '04 would cost me about $17k. That's quite a profit on my little used vehicle!

I wrote an email to the Boulder Toyota car salesman:

The Highlander Hybrid VIN JTEEW44A182019389 is an acceptable deal at $40k, but $10k for my 2004 Prius when your dealership is going to sell it for $17-$18k (according to your used car manager, who I talked with this afternoon) is unacceptable.

I expect a minimum of $14k for my car as a trade-in and know it has strong market value: you only have one used Prius on your lot and it just showed up a few days ago, which tells me that they're moving well for you.

Please advise how we can proceed.

A week later, I still haven't received an answer. Apparently they aren't as hungry to make a sale as I had expected.

Fortunately, I'd also been communicating with the online sales guy at Stevinson Toyota West down in Golden (about 45 minutes drive from my house). We talked on the phone and I shared the $40k for an '08 Highlander Hybrid deal, to which he said "that's just dealer cost minus the current rebate, we could do that." Sweet!

Stevinson Toyota West, Colorado

Yesterday I dropped off my son at a pal's house and drove down. We met and the Internet sales guy at Stevinson Toyota was pleasant and friendly, but when the time came for him to show me numbers, he presents me with $45k for the Highlander Hybrid and $10k for the trade-in value of the Prius.

What the hell?

I said that was not acceptable and that we'd already discussed the price and he was way off what I was expecting to pay, and way off on what I believed was the trade-in value of the Prius. I offered him $40k for the Highlander against a $13k value for the Prius.

He came back with an offer that was about $800 less than the previous.

I said "Apparently I wasted my time coming down here today. We're done. Please go grab my Prius keys and I'm outta here."

He leaves and comes back with The Manager.

Ho hum, I thought, more games, but let's see how this plays out.

The floor manager (according to his nametag) offers me the car for $42.8k and a trade-in of $10,500 for the Prius. I say "this is pretty ridiculous: your salesman and I talked about this and he told me he could sell the Hybrid for $40k. That's the number I need to see. And the Prius trade-in is unacceptably low too. You're wasting my time and your man isn't telling you what's going on."

He says "let me see what I can do" and, surprise, wanders off, salesman in tow, to talk to The Big Manager.

They come back and offer me $12k for the Prius and the Highlander Hybrid for $41850. I stand up to leave and he changes the '1' to a zero. I figure "good enough" and we have a deal.

So the 2008 Highlander Hybrid, fully loaded with all the option packages and with 33 miles on the odometer, I bought for $40850, against a $12,000 trade-in value of my Prius. Not bad.

But we weren't done yet. Of course not, because then it was the finance guy's job to try and upsell me an extended service warranty, clearbra, "Karr Alarm" (whatever that is), etc. He presents me with this hand written sheet of different warranty options and how much my monthly payments would be with each one.

I look at the way he's presenting it and ask "what's the base monthly payment again?". Turns out (thanks to my iPhone calculator) that they were asking $5,460 for an extended warranty, clear bra and karr alarm package by making it seem like "only $91/month more * 60 monthly payments". Insanely overpriced!

I laughed and said "you're really asking $5460 for this package? I'd think about it for $1000, maybe, but not this price."

He looked at it, looked at me, pulled out his pricing book, and said "I could sell you just the warranty for a thousand, but not the clearbra and karr alarm."

me: "If it's just the warranty, I'll offer you $900."

He looks it up again and says "that's lower than employee cost on it. I'm not authorized to go that low, I need to get approval" (pauses for a few seconds, to "think" about it) "Oh, what the heck, better to just do it. Okay."

So I figure that the extended warranty was probably still padded, but not by much.

And that was my car buying experience yesterday. Approximately elapsed time, three hours. Had you have been following my Twitter stream that day, you would have seen the blow by blow along with a ton of hilarious and supportive comments from everyone else in the Twitterverse. It made the experience far more amusing, which helped me stay calm and focused on what I wanted to attain. Thanks, gang! (You can find me on Twitter as DaveTaylor and my film alter-ego at @FilmBuzz).

I will say that it's disappointing to have dealers use the Internet as a honey pot to lure buyers in and then game 'em anyway, rather than honor what they communicate with potential buyers and simplify the process.

Thoughts on Joining a Stale Board of Directors

A friend of mine recently emailed me asking for advice: she's joined the Board of Directors of a non-tech organization that's well known for being staid and more interested in maintaining the status quo than leaping boldly (or even timidly) into the future.

We went back and forth with ideas about how she could have impact, and at the end, she kindly agreed to let me republish our interchange. My hope is that you, dear reader, can go through what we discussed and add some additional ideas of your own about how she could proceed.

She asks:

I'm on the Board of Directors of "Organization X" and the big reason I was brought on is because the association isn't focused on green -- and have had comments made to them about that short coming. I don't know the best way to approach them with the reminder they need to be greener and thought you might have suggestions for me.

I frequently make suggestions that involve greening their image but am brushed away. I volunteer to do "green things", with little results (some but not enough for my taste). I even volunteered to be on the marketing committee, telling the lead that I had some ideas that would promote the group and show we are getting greener. But after numerous reminders of my interest to the leader I don't feel I can say anything more.

But we have a Board meeting coming up in a week or so and I would like to make a bigger impact than I have. As the new kid on the block how can I get my message through in a way that will be palatable and heard?

My response to her:

Sounds like a tough situation. I fear that you might be facing an almost insurmountable challenge. Further, my experience is that it's always better to *do* than to talk or suggest, so perhaps you should be putting more of your effort into just demonstrating what you've been talking about? Further, it might well be possible that the group is too stuck in its ways and that there is no way to change them. Perhaps in that case you might find it more beneficial to propose a "green committee" that you head up or even just find a different outlet for your enthusiasm?

For groups comprised of individuals who have been part of the status quo for any length of time, anyone new, anyone with different ideas, anyone who suggests that "same as it ever was" isn't working, is a huge and frightening threat and the normal reaction is to reject, deny or just ignore them.

It's not about what you can *say* to make your message heard, after all, it's about having them *see* what you're doing and *see* results that are important and valuable to the organizational members. Ask yourself "how can I do this without stepping on toes or even implying that the current board members aren't doing a brilliant job?"

And finally...

This is a common challenge for innovators who join existing organizational management or strategic teams: how do you encourage change without threatening the people who are already part of the organization?

Twenty Great Tips for Public Speaking

When I received the following set of tips on public speaking from the organizers of Affiliate Summit West, I knew it was good enough to put online. And so, here it is. This is originally written by Bill Hoogterp, who kindly granted me permission to republish it.

Even the most experienced speaker can use a primer on public speaking tips from time to time. Please read through the following as you prepare for Affiliate Summit

PREPARATION

1. Become your own best teacher. This list gives you 20 tips to do that, but you must acquire your own. Learn how to analyze a presentation and you will be able to learn and improve every time you speak at a conference.

   If you hear someone speak and didn't even learn one thing, then you have wasted an opportunity. Everyone has something to teach and something to learn.



2. Space and room set up are important to speaking. For example, in the Affiliate Summit Ask the Experts session, it's a casual, roundtable atmosphere, and this environment is ideal sitting when speaking. If you are giving a solo presentation in a classroom, it is better to stand, so that your voice can project better and because you command more presence, which you want to do.


3. There is no substitute for preparation and practice. The best speakers practice each sentence in their head many, many times before they speak it. They try it over and over until the timing is just right, and it begins to feel natural. Often, it looks like they are sitting there thinking, but really they are practice speaking in their head.


4. The cure for stage fright is to get emotional or tough. Allow yourself to feel very happy or very angry and your stage fright will go away. Allow yourself to laugh and it will also go away. Stage fright is like fog. A good breath of emotion or laughter will blow it away.


5. Observe other speakers. Other speakers can be excellent teachers. Pay attention to what you admire and respect about other public speakers. At the same time, notice what distracts or bores you about other speakers. You can see previous speakers on video at affiliatesummit.tv.
CONTENT
6. Use an introduction, body, and conclusion in your presentation. All three of these should tie directly to your main theme. The goal of any speech is to help the audience understand something, and having an introduction, body, and conclusion helps your audience understand your theme, and tie it back into everything you say.


7. The introduction has two purposes: first to secure attention, and second to orient the audience toward your theme. Most audiences will pay attention to any speaker for the first 20 seconds. In that time, you must grab their attention and orient them.


8. Develop the main theme or message you want to communicate. Often, when we try to get through too many themes, it gets confusing and the audience doesn't remember any of them. It doesn't matter if you are making a point in a class or delivering a full scale speech. Develop your main theme and keep developing it to get that message across.


9. Use stories rather than statistics. Statistics appeal to the head, but stories touch the heart. Most people can't relate to statistics. The human brain processes images and emotions, not words. Words and symbols are used to create images and convey feelings. People can understand statistics, but are not moved by them. Everyone, however, can relate to stories. Start with a story if you can.


10. The conclusion has two purposes: To summarize the speech and to motivate the audience, the summary should restate the theme clearly. The motivator should focus on what they want the audience to do. End by asking them to do a specific thing.


11. Improving you public speaking means developing your own style. It does not mean learning to speak like a newscaster or someone else. It means strengthening your ability to say what you want to say.


12. Know your audience. Know what they want to know. Know where they came from. Find out what interests them and makes them laugh. If possible, know them by name and use their names in the speech. One study indicated that the sweetest sound in any language is the sound of your own name. Know your audience as well as you can.


13. Body language is good if it agrees with your message. It is bad if it distracts from your message. Slamming your fist in your hand when you say how angry you were emphasizes the point you are making, so it is good.

    Swaying while you talk distracts the listener from what you are saying, so it is bad.



14. Make eye contact with the audience. Allow yourself to smile. Definitely use emotion when it is real and sincere. Real emotion and feeling allows your audience to relate to you. If you let your guard down and speak from the heart, then the audience will let its guard down and listen from the heart.
15. There is no one right way to speak, but there are some wrong ways. Don't read from a script unless you absolutely have to. Also, don't repeat things. If you want to reinforce a point, say it again, but in a different and creative way.

LANGUAGE

16. Build in strong language to your presentation. Strong language is language that paints pictures in the mind of the listener. "Red" is regular language, but "fire engine red" is strong language. Strong language is more descriptive and helps your listener understand.


17. Cursing is bad, because it stunts the speaker's mental growth. The definition of cursing is when "A feeble mind tries to express itself forcefully." Human beings do not have feeble minds. Every time somebody curses, they are stunting their own mental development. Instead of developing higher reasoning powers and the ability to communicate more complex thoughts, a curse poisons the brain in a tiny way, keeping a person from developing intellectually as fast as they could.


18. Identify and eliminate weak language from your speaking. Weak language is any word or phrase that does not add anything to what you are saying. Any word that does not make your message stronger makes it weaker.

    When you analyze a sentence, cut it down to as little as you need without cutting out the message. The most common example of weak language is the word "um." Other examples of weak language are "basically", "well", "that is to say", "I mean", or "in other words." We use weak language like a crutch. We say words like "basically", not because they mean anything, but because they help us stall until we can think of something to say. It is far better to be silent that to use weak language. Be comfortable with silence.



19. Vary your tone. A person who speaks in one tone is monotone. That's what monotone means. One tone. Get a little loud sometimes and then get soft. Vary the tone. Don't be boring.


20. Vary your speed. Mono-speed is as bad as monotone. It does not matter whether you talk more quickly or more slowly. What is critical is that you vary your speed and practice your timing. You don't actually speak in sentences. Phonetically, we speak in groups of words. Speed up some groups of words. Pause after important points. Practice improves timing.

Anything to add, those of you that have either sat through a great (or boring) presentation? Or how about those of you who have given a presentation at a conference, for better or worse?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:53 AM on January 15, 2009 | Comments (4)

Breaking Down an Expo Hall: Affiliate Summit West

As someone who has been in the tradeshow business -- or at least attended trade shows -- for over twenty years, I've helped set up and break down booths at expos many times, and hung out and kept exhibitors company during the slow times too. Heck, I've worked in various booths over the years too.

What I realized this time, as I was walking around watching companies disassemble their booths from Affiliate Summit West's vendor expo, is that most people have probably never seen how the booths are put together and taken apart.

And so, with my trusty iPhone camera (which, alas, isn't very good), I wandered around and took a few photos. I hope these are interesting:



Usually right behind a curtain or temporary wall there's a massive pile of cartons and wooden crates piled up. This was a small show so the pile is quite modest, but the storage area behind the enormous CES show, by contrast, is a veritable city of crates stacked 15-20' high. It's quite something!



Often the people who work in a booth are not the ones who have to assemble or disassemble the booth. In fact, in most big cities, the halls are run by strong unions and it's quite a big mistake to start working on your own booth. That's another story, but anyone who has worked a trade show knows exactly what I'm talking about, where you pay $200 for someone to run an extension cord.



Did you know that Google has an affiliate program? They do, and that's what this booth was focused on, before the show wrapped up and the union guy started pulling it apart.



And sometimes the company employees are responsible for pulling things apart, which often looks like an exec standing around "supervising" while the actual employees, who are all exhausted from working a multi-day trade show, do the work.



Finally, even the simplest booth needs to be taken apart gently because they cost rather surprisingly large amounts of money and you hope to be able to use them for years to come.

One thing I didn't catch here was something I've always found amusing at trade shows: when the show actually ends on the last day, there's a cheer raised from the booth workers before the flurry of disassembly activity. Next time you're at a trade show exhibit hall, try to time your visit so that you're there when it ends. You'll hear.

(and a tip: if you want to score free stuff, it's the last 30 minutes of the show that are the best time to walk around and ask: most companies find it cheaper and easier to give things to potential customers than pack them and ship them back to the office)

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:15 AM on January 14, 2009 | Comments (1)

Listen to Larry Magid Interview me on CBS News

I'm here in Las Vegas attending the Consumer Electronics Show (see my coverage here, here, here and my photostream here) and was pleased to bump into my long-time friend Larry Magid. Among his many projects, Larry's a busy radio commentator for CBS News, and we took advantage of meeting up by recording an interview. This interview is also online at CNET.com.

Here's a link to his index page: Larry Magid Interviews Dave Taylor

or you can just listen directly: Listen directly to Larry Interviewing Dave (mp3)

One really cool thing that Larry works on, by the way, is PC Answers. If you can't find what you want on my site :-) check his out. Also, Larry's on Twitter: @LarryMagid. Check him out!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 1:07 AM on January 11, 2009 | Comments (0)

Homage to the smart folk at Google Calendar

We all tend to spend much of our time criticizing technology, and picking on vendors, be they large or small. Heck, my most recent post on this blog addresses how Google Mail / Google Toolbar tracks which links you click on in your email messages.

Nonetheless, it's nice to occasionally be delighted by smart little features that a company has added to its product without any fanfare, something that just makes sense, just works, and makes you smile.

Tonight this moment of delight was brought to me by the Google Calendar team, of all thing, when I opened up my calendar in my browser, having altered the timezone on my computer clock to reflect that I wasn't in my home timezone (Mountain time) but rather in Pacific time.

Here's what it said:



It may not seem like much, but the attention to detail that is demonstrated in this simple feature is delightful and why Google, like Apple before it, is winning in its market. It's not about spending more, it's not even about being faster, it's about paying attention to the gestalt of the user experience.

Great job, Google Calendar team!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:23 PM on January 6, 2009 | Comments (1)

Google, why are you tracking links in my Gmail messages?

I don't know if this has always been the case or not, but I found a very worrying "feature" of Google's popular Gmail service this evening, one that should make you very concerned about your privacy if you're also a Gmail user:

It appears that Gmail logs all external links you click on that were embedded in your email messages.

Yeah, that's a problem. That's a big privacy problem.

Let me show you what I noticed when I received an email from the Hilton Honors program that had what appeared to be a very innocuous link within.

First, the message:



Innocuous enough, right? Notice within the link to "hiltonhhonors.com". I clicked on it and was surprised to see that the new tab opened in Firefox showed a Google URL for just a fraction of a second, rather than the Hilton URL which ultimately was displayed.

What the heck?

I tried a bunch of ways to capture it and finally just got a quick screenshot in. Here's the URL:



A second later, of course, the URL was as I expected:



Was Gmail rewriting the messages, I wondered? Turns out that's darn hard to ascertain because of how Gmail uses AJAX to present messages. I finally used "File" --> "Save Frame As..." to get to the source code:



As you can see, it's clean, there's nothing odd or suspicious going on. Therefore the logger must be associated with some sort of "OnExit" event, buried deep in the JavaScript of the Gmail system. I got lazy at this point, I admit, and didn't poke around any further.

Needless to say, this is highly concerning to me, as someone who has been using Google Gmail for years, and has brought literally hundreds of other people into the Gmail fold.

Google, can you tell me exactly what's going on here?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:45 PM on January 2, 2009 | Comments (17)

A Twitter channel you should be following: FilmBuzz

While I try to stay pretty tightly focused on business and marketing on this weblog, those of you that also read my parenting blog have noticed that every so often I'll write a film review or publish an article about something happening in the world of movie production or technology.

What you might not have realized if you haven't talked with me in person is that I'm actually a big huge fan of movies in an intellectual, business and purely visceral sense. Let's face it, a good film is a wonderful thing, a sheer delight and something that can impact your speech, thinking and even dreams for years to come.

Film also serves as a fascinating communications medium because it engages us on so many levels and with more senses than just about anything else I know. You can dabble with this by listening to a movie without watching it, or watching a movie without the sound, or even comparing the sensory experience of an evening movie in a packed, excited theater versus watching that same movie mid-afternoon at home while laying on the couch.

It's also the case, in my experience, that the more you know about editing, pacing, cinematography, soundtracks, and such, the more you can appreciate a brilliantly crafted film. Go watch the crowd scene in Alfred Hitchcock's master work North by Northwest (they're in the cafeteria at Mt. Rushmore) and freeze the frame. Then ask yourself "why are these people dressed in these clothes with these colors?". Remember, any good filmmaker composes every element in every scene of a film. From the cars that "happen to be" parked on the street to the skirt length of the lead actress, nothing -- nothing -- is just random coincidence.

Movie making is also a very unusual business because it operates on so many levels and seems to be such a crap shoot. $85 million to produce and market a film that collapses its first weekend in the box office? Is that a failure? Quite probably not, at the end of the day. You might be surprised how Hollywood can account for costs and recoup losses in many instances. From a business perspective, it's amazing to see the risks of moviemaking and the resultant risk averse strategies used by the major studios (hence, for example, the preponderance of remakes).


Click to follow
FilmBuzz
And finally, there's something about seeing a brilliant, heart-warming, exciting film like Slumdog Millionaire that invigorates my soul, makes me glad to be part of the greater humanity, and helps me recognize that there's a bright new tomorrow trying to peek out of the muck that we're surrounded by. Or, failing that, just makes me feel like it was a few hours very well spent!

That's some lead in to my informing you that I've launched a new business called FilmBuzz that I call "movie news for the mobile generation" built entirely upon the popular Twitter service.

Here are a few recent messages that you could have received on your computer or even your mobile device yesterday if you were following FilmBuzz:

---

Haven't even heard of this one: Universal just signed to bring "Bakugan Battle Brawlers" to the big screen, it's a Cartoon Network show.

---

Universal confirms this surprising fact: "Mamma Mia!" has become the highest grossing film of all time in the UK box office. Impressive!

---

"Tron" sequel continues to move forward for its 2011 release, now has female lead cast: Olivia Wilde. TR2N is the marketing name for it.

---

Director James L. Brooks and Reese Witherspoon set to team up on an as-yet untitled comedy for Columbia Pictures. Photog to start in March.

---

Film Trivia! Was the movie "Memento" released in 2000, 2001 or 2002?

---

Careful, Lionsgate: they just bought rights to "Loving Frank", a historic novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, by Nancy Horan. Could be very cool

---

Just got the greenlight: "Halloween 2" (aka "H2") from Rob Zombie and Dimension Films. Scheduled release date? Halloween 2009. Zoom!

---

Luis Berdejo and Gold Circle Films are reteaming for "POD", a sci-fi thriller that Berdejo will write and direct. It's his first English gig

---

As you can see, it's not focused on celebrity gossip but rather the industry, the business of filmmaking and cinema. If you want to be the one in your social circle who knows what films are coming out in a week, a month, a year, for example, its a great service for you.

That's all. I just wanted to invite you, dear reader, to also subscribe to FilmBuzz and feel free to spread the word too, especially with your movie industry connections, if you have any.

And don't be surprised to see FilmBuzz live-tweeting some film festivals in the next twelve months...

Posted by Dave Taylor at 7:30 AM on December 18, 2008 | Comments (0)

Is Jeremiah Owyang an analyst or is Aaron Brazell right to call him out?

Okay, today's tempest in a teapot is centered around Chris Brogan who, on his Dad blog dadomatic did what I have done at least a half dozen times: wrote a sponsored post, receiving payment from Izea (formerly Pay Per Post).

You should start your adventure by glancing at his posting: Sponsored Post: K-Mart Holiday Shopping, Dad Style.

Back? Now, did you realize it was a paid, sponsored post to the weblog, and that Chris made some $$ for doing so? Yeah, I thought so.

Apparently, some folk got into a bit of a twitter-uproar and started assailing Chris and questioning his integrity and position as a thought leader in the social media space. As a result, Chris wrote a new blog entry about the situation, entitled Advertising and Trust.

One of the people who called Chris out for his sponsored posting was Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. His Twitter message on the subject stated "Transparent, yes. Authentic? debatable. Sustainable? no." People had a strong reaction to Jeremiah's tweet and he ended up writing a blog entry about the situation, entitled Understanding Izea's Sponsored Blogging Service but it's really more about the Brogan brouhaha than anything else.

Still with me?

Enter another friend of mine, Aaron Brazell, better known online as technosailor. For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, Aaron has really gone after Jeremiah over this situation, notably in an aggressively titled blog entry Jeremiah Owyang Inserts Foot in Mouth (Again) Over IZEA Sponsored Posts.

Okay, now we're caught up. Now I'd like to add my two cents to this situation.

First off, as I insinuated earlier, I am a publisher through the Izea network and have posted a couple of blog entries that were sponsored by one of their advertisers. I have done this to see how it works, write about their service and, yes, make a few dollars in the process. I am not an idealist, I can't pay the mortgage off of good intentions and positive karma, and neither can you, dear reader. Even bloggers need to make a buck.

So fundamentally, I have no problem with Chris Brogan writing a sponsored posting on his terrific Dadomatic weblog. In fact, I'm already a subscriber to the blog, and I saw the post when it first came out. And didn't think twice about it.

Further, I have had a number of good conversations with Jeremiah Owyang, most recently over beers after the Thin Air Summit in Denver, and he's a very sharp industry analyst who understands -- and probes - the edges of the modern Internet and its intersection with commerce and business. That's his job.

I'm also friends with Aaron Brazell and find it highly ironic that as I write this blog entry, I'm also coordinating meeting Aaron for dinner while he's here in Boulder. I imagine we'll talk about this issue while we're gnawing on sushi together.

Nonetheless, this really is a tempest in a teapot and I'll say that a lot of the criticism comes from what I believe is a place of idealism, not reality. What I mean by this is that pragmatic people recognize that other people need to earn a living, so rather than complain about the ads on TV, for example, they pay to support public television or subscribe to a commercial cable channel (or skip it and go to Hulu, but that's another story).

Jeremiah was right to call Chris on this issue in the way he did. He didn't say Chris was a loser, he didn't say Chris was unprofessional, he didn't say that Chris had sacrificed his integrity and was forevermore a shill for K-Mart and he didn't say that Chris shouldn't earn money. All that I see Jeremiah said was that a pay-per-post model of online publicity is not sustainable. And I agree.

Aaron's the one I have the proverbial bone to pick with, and I started this posting by writing a comment on his blog, but realized that it was gong to be wayyyy too long and moved it here instead. So, finally, with all that said, let's get to what I want to say.

(does that qualify as the world's longest lead in to a blog entry?)

Aaron complains about Jeremiah's original tweet, saying that he "depart[s] from the typical role of an analyst, where neutrality and objectivity are key in providing unbiased advice, and instead insert[s] himself into a conversation as a subject matter expert on a topic he really knows nothing about."

Analysts analyze. And no-one is unbiased, which is why we have the "scientific method", among other things. But the fact is, Jeremiah's very job depends on him being able to both analyze and probe the edges of his area of expertise, and, yes, he is most certainly a subject matter expert on social media and marketing.

Aaron continues:

"Jeremiah is, as a representative of Forrester Research and in his function as a research analyst, expected to be a thought follower, not a thought leader. That is, his role is not to editorialize, or offer public opinion in such a way that exerts his influence outside of his Forrester client base."

I almost gasped at this comment. Jeremiah is absolutely supposed to be a thought leader in his role and indeed, every industry analyst is supposed to not just know the aggregate statistics (which is the "thought follower" part) but understand their implications and be able to draw conclusions and make recommendations based upon them. If that's not thought leadership, what is?

I don't want to pick on Aaron, though, because these guys have all scuffled enough at this point, but I do want to highlight that as leaders in the social media space, it's their (can I say "our"?) job to push the edges, to test the boundaries, to "eat their own dog food", and that not only includes doing things that might be questionable, but also criticizing and analyzing what's been done and the community response.

What I haven't seen in this entire discussion, for example, is whether the original post by Chris on behalf of K-Mart was successful by their criteria?

Go back again and read Chris' sponsored blog post: was it worth $500 (or $1000) for the company?

Now also go back and read what Jeremiah actually said in his twitter messages on the subject (start here) and ask yourself: isn't it the role of media analysts to ask questions and make pointed observations about unusual occurrences in the social media space?

Frankly, it always amazes me that bloggers have these thrashing discussions around what I see as a sense of guilt over the incursion of capitalism into the blogosphere without noting that there are plenty of bloggers who are making good coin writing not just about what they want, but what they perceive their readers -- or advertisers - want them to write about. It's just part of the landscape.

I have no strong conclusion, no great moral to this story. I just wish we'd have a bit more of a civil discourse when we are all discussing what does and doesn't work in the blogosphere.

How about you? What's your take on this whirlwind?


Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:34 AM on December 16, 2008 | Comments (9)

Nice job, Macy's! An example of how to approach bloggers for a campaign.

I have often written about the challenges of how to query bloggers and ask them to get involved with public relations campaigns, and generally tend to highlight poor examples, awkward queries, and downright stupid campaigns.

Like the email I got the other day from a company representing a really big client that started "Dear Brian". Ooops.

That's why I was so pleased to get a really good query email from Deana Burke of YouCastCorp.com on behalf of (troubled, but that's another story) client Macy's (NYSE: M).

She visited my Attachment Parenting blog and used my contact form to send her inquiry, a form that has some rather whimsical categories. Here's her message in its entirety:




Hey Dave!

I love your message choices! I wish I could've picked 'that crazy weekend in cabo' instead of 'something else, alas, not quite as exciting.' How boring!

I'm writing to you today on behalf of Macy's. This holiday season, Macy's wants everyone - from the most enthusiastic to the most cynical- to Believe in and embrace the holiday spirit of love and charity. As a parenting site, the Believe project may be of interest to you and your readers.

Writing letters to Santa Claus is an age-old tradition for children all over the world. Macy's is collecting these letters in a special Santa letterbox at all Macy's stores. For each letter received, Macy's will donate $1 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The Believe Meter will measure America's belief, based on our collective spirit -- including the amount of letters received and other current events that reflect the season's generosity.

We are asking bloggers to help draw attention to the Macy's Believe campaign. We are also sending out $20 Macy's Gift Certificates to interested bloggers as a thank you for considering the story.

If you do decide to post, all assets (including high res images and link to the Believe meter) can be found here: http://www.youcastcorp.com/macys/

I look forward to hearing from you!
Best,
Deana

What I like about it is that there's a nice sense of engagement and a sense that she at least spent the 30 seconds necessary to write the first paragraph before she copied and pasted in the form letter that comprises the bulk of this message.

It may not be much, but I think it's a great query, respectful, transparent, and for a good cause. In fact, I encourage you, dear reader, to click on the above link and consider adding a Believe meter to your site too if you have the space.

Oh, and the $20 certificate? I've written to Deana asking if the money or certificate can be donated to a homeless shelter instead.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:13 AM on December 11, 2008 | Comments (1)

Mattel finally has the chance to axe the horrid Bratz line

I'm going to guess that there's a good chance you don't track the doll market, but there's been a very interesting intellectual property case that's been brewing for a few years, pitting toy colossus Mattel (NYSE: MAT) against upstart MGA Entertainment. The dueling dolls? Barbie versus Bratz.

I've actually written about this case before, on my parenting blog, muchly because I so loath the Bratz line and all it represents for young girls and its terrible impact on both their self-image and understanding of how their sexuality allows them to fail or succeed in modern society. See: Hey Mattel! Now you can put Bratz to sleep once and for all. (yeah, it's a bit biased)

After a few months of legal arguments and deliberations, let me quote the Wall Street Journal's report of the outcome:

"U.S. District Court in Riverside, Calif., essentially handed over MGA's pouty-lipped, hip-hop-themed Bratz franchise to Mattel, the maker of the iconic Barbie, whose sales have been undercut by the upstart Bratz in recent years. Judge Stephen G. Larson's ruling came several months after a federal jury found that the Bratz dolls were originally conceived by a designer who worked at Mattel and surreptitiously took the concept to MGA."

Of course MGA is complaining and saying that they'll appeal, but I mean, come on, guys, if you want to complain about fairness, then maybe you shouldn't have hired the Mattel toy designer and started manufacturing dolls that he designed while at Mattel.


I'm really pleased at this ruling and hope that Mattel either completely shut down the entire Bratz brand or, at a minimum, retool these dolls to be a bit less pouty sluts and a bit more cute young girls that actually don't reinforce all that's messed up about our cultural view of girls and sexuality.

This can be done through Mattel ultimately licensing the Bratz line to MGA and requiring that they make it a bit more wholesome or bringing the brand in-house, but either way, now's your golden moment, Mattel Brand President Neil Friedman. Do what's right for your brand, your corporate image, and the millions of girls who enjoy the Mattel doll lines as playthings.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:05 AM on December 5, 2008 | Comments (12)

The Future of Blogging is the Future of Interpersonal Connectedness

I was asked by Joel Comm to write about the future of blogging for his newsletter, and here's what I came up with. I'm republishing it here with their permission.

Joel asked me to write about the future of blogging, but the more I thought about that topic, the more it felt like asking an architect to write about the future of nails or hammers. There are small technological increments in metallurgy and even the shape of nails have changed in the last hundred years (not to mention the materials science that have made better hammers) but, really, I mean, they're hammers and nails and in a hundred years the Jetsons will be using the same basic tools to make Jane her art studio, right?

Blogging is the same way. A weblog, at its most fundamental, is just a tool, a slick way to organize and manage the content on your Web site, both that which you produce and content generated by users as comments. In the biz, we call blogs content management systems (CMS) to remind us that it's not Valhalla, it's not a Brave New World, it's just a software tool just as Microsoft Word is a tool.

I am sure that in the next few years blogging tools will continue to evolve, but what will happen is that the very concept of "blog" will continue to get more and more fuzzy as more and more ideas are embodied in the software systems, notably the popular open source Wordpress utility. In the software world, evolution starts with the addition of custom hacks, then those become standardized as "widgets", little plug-in applications that extend and add functionality to your site. Finally, the most popular widgets then become a part of a subsequent release of the main software application itself.

You can predict the future of blogging, therefore, by looking at what plug-ins and hacks are popular today, and those are almost all about spam control and the addition of social networking and social media capabilities. It's no surprise that the best spam control tool in the blogging space is from the same company that produces Wordpress either: Akismet, from Automattic. Sure enough, that started out as a separate application, then was a plug-in, and is now integrated into the Wordpress (and Movable Type) blogging applications.

Social networking is still a mess, however, with lots of duplicate functionality and many, many companies trying to solve a facet of the fundamental human question of How Can We Connect? From the shared bookmarks of De.licio.us to the popularity contest of Digg, the collegiate interpersonal networking of Facebook to the ceaseless stream of trivia big and small on Twitter, all social media elements are migrating into blogging content management tools, along with the ability to register users, rate them based on community feedback votes and number of comments, and allow your blossoming community to grow through interpersonal links and connections.

The future of blogging, in other words, isn't blogging. It's a grand web of social elements that will make sense and be wonderful on some well organized sites, but overwhelming and baffling on other sites. It'll be a foundational element of the new, more highly connected Web that'll be a pervasive part of our lives, be it on our mobile devices, our transportation or our homes and offices.

Are you ready?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 12:12 PM on December 1, 2008 | Comments (3)

Why "Black Friday" fails to actually benefit retailers

Every year we suffer through the so-called "Black Friday", the day immediately after Thanksgiving that's supposed to kick off the Christmas shopping season and is also traditionally the single biggest shopping day of the year. This means it's a very important day for retailers, of course, but if you dig into the numbers, Black Friday is one of the worst days for retail establishments, not one of the best.

Let me explain...

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, average modern retailers have about a 5% margin on products, be they a pair of sneakers or a flat-screen television. The same story explains that typical Black Friday discounts are now 40-50%.

I understand the logic, that one or two extraordinary deals will bring people into the store and they'll also buy non-discounted or lesser discounted products, thereby making up the difference in profit. But what if that no longer holds true?



Read the papers, you'll see that across the United States people who went shopping at all on Black Friday were very careful about their purchases and were much more likely to go into a store and buy the one or two super-specials than a basketful of goods.

The result? Instead of getting a nice boost on profits and a good jump-start on Christmas / holiday shopping, the entire experience was more likely a complete bust for retailers, losing them, rather than earning them money.

While some analysts will doubtless peg this to the 2008 recession, I suggest instead that it's the inevitable result of the increasing commoditization of our world, the reduction of everything to its cheapest possible manifestation.



This is what Linda Sanford and I wrote about in our book Let Go To Grow [aff], and it's fascinating to see how it's become a more visible retail phenomenon in the years since we wrapped up the manuscript.

Every time we shop at Wal-Mart or Target to get our product a buck or two cheaper, every time we pop online to save on sales tax, every time we research products to identify the lowest-cost outlet, we're all contributing to the problem.

With a retail economy built on the need for a substantial profit to cover overhead and costs, pay city and county taxes, health care for employees, and offset theft and so on, this trend towards an ever-more-commoditized world is a scary one. If followed to its logical extreme, we won't have any retail stores at all or we'll have to impose online store tariffs that offset the dramatically lower overhead of online drop-ship companies. What choice will we have?



Meanwhile, we'll have to see. I predict that retailers will report that gross revenue from Black Friday sales were okay, but that profit from these sales was down significantly from prior years. And next year, even if the economy is in better shape, won't jump back.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:22 AM on November 29, 2008 | Comments (5)

Does The Media look for rifts and bad news? You bet it does.

Reading through the always interesting Help A Reporter Out and I bumped into the following query from an online journalist:

Summary: Gen Y's Opinion of Elders after Disaster

"How does Gen Y see the Boomers and X-ers in the wake of unprecedented screw ups (the economic meltdown, climate change etc.)? And how is this emerging generation poised to wrest control of our culture and rewrite badly warped rules?"

The subject of the query isn't too bad, but the agenda, the axe to grind, is made apparent in the query wording itself. What's "unprecedented" about what's going on? Is the new generation going to have to "wrest control" (which certainly sounds like a violent and aggressive act) and are "the rules" "badly warped"?

Understand that I'm not saying that we aren't in a troubling place in human history, but pick a previous era, dozens or hundreds of years ago, and there were also lots to be concerned about. Most people just didn't have the luxury of a) knowing about it and b) having time to contemplate it.

What bugs me about the query is that there's such a big assumption that things are indeed broken, and terribly so, and that it's going to take an act of physical or psychological violence to "wrest control" of the situation by the next generation. I just don't believe that's true and it will be no surprise at all to me if the resultant interviews and story don't reinforce this clearly biased and skewed perspective.

The old saw about "dog bites man isn't news, but man bites dog certainly is news" is all too true. In the same vein "as with every previous generation, the next generation will have challenges and will be cleaning up some of the mess of previous generations. How do you feel about that?" is much less newsworthy than "next generation screwed by excess and idiocy of current generation. are we all doomed?"

And you wonder why news = bad news.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 1:44 PM on November 26, 2008 | Comments (2)

Join me at the Angel Capital Summit this Friday!

Rather amazingly, I'm actually going to attend an event where I'm not scheduled to speak, but I am still excited about the Second Annual Angel Capital Summit coming up this Friday, Nov 21st, at the Denver Marriott City Center in Denver, Colorado!

There are some very interesting speakers I'll be listening to, including restaurant entrepreneur and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Anita Burke of the Catalyst Institute and 42 presentations by Colorado startups and entrepreneurial companies throughout the state, all vetted by the Rockies Venture Club and other participating organizations. Finally, the Summit will end with a Town Hall Meeting entitled Disrupting the Recession: Colorado's entrepreneurial response to the financial crisis, election, energy and sustainability.

Note: On-line registration closes at midnight tonight, November 19. Walk-ins registrations will be available at the door. While we'll make every attempt to accommodate walk-ins quickly, please bear in mind that last year's Angel Capital Summit sold out, and some walk-ins were unable to register.

Entrepreneurial success is more important to our society now more than ever. Come to the Angel Capital Summit, and be one of those who "disrupt the recession" and build the future!

Cost: Town Hall Meeting only: $25.00. Angel Capital Summit (which includes the Town Hall Meeting); $129 RVC members, $159 non members.

For event info and registration, go to angelcapitalsummit.org.

I'll hope to see you there!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 12:41 PM on November 19, 2008 | Comments (0)

Does Social Media Really Connect You to Humanity?

I originally published this article in the Phi Kappa Phi Forum and am reprinting it here for my online friends and colleagues. I hope you enjoy it and find it thought-provoking. I realize that it's quite possible you won't agree with my viewpoint. That's good. Explain why you view it differently in the comments section please!

Let me start out with a confession. I'm about as plugged in to the computer networks as anyone you're likely to meet. I first connected to the Internet back in 1980, when it was the ARPAnet and commercial use was completely verboten. Yes, it's come a long way, and so has our society.

Nowadays professionals are just as likely to have their Facebook or LinkedIn URL on their business cards as a phone number, and entire conferences seem to be run simultaneously in the physical world and as a running, often snarky, flow of consciousness dialog on the Twitter microblogging service.

But all of this begs the question: are we really more connected? Do computer and social networks really make us more connected as human beings?

That's what I'd like to talk about in this article.

MYSPACE REDEFINED FRIENDSHIP

One of the first phenomena you notice when you start to connect with people through Web sites that are designed to memorialize connections is that the word "friend" takes on a different meaning. In the physical world -- what people in the virtual reality world of Second Life call "RL" or real life -- friends are generally defined as those people you have a personal relationship with, not anyone you happen to encounter, anyone at your college, company, or other organizations. The latter are colleagues or acquaintances or just people with whom you have something in common.

The first popular sites to delve into the world of friendship, of letting you quantify and identify your circle of friends, were Friendster (which is now essentially defunct, having long-since fallen out of the zeitgeist) and MySpace. On these sites every connection you made had a similar strength, so your best friend Mike is considered just as important in your life as Aunt Flo, to whom you've connected to stop her complaining at family gatherings.

In real life, of course, everyone has close, important friends, intimates who are privy to the highs and lows of your life, a larger circle of what we can call pretty good friends who can help out in a crunch but with whom you don't interact with regularly, and finally "almost friends" who are people with whom you feel an affinity, but geography, time or other logistical issues prevent from becoming closer. And then there are the decaying circles of acquaintances, colleagues, and so on.

ENTER THE KEVIN BACON EFFECT

Very little research in sociology has caught the public fancy as much as the early work by Harvard social psychologist Stanley Milgram, in which he hypothesized that we are all far more connected than we realize. His famous experiment of randomly choosing Midwesterners to hand-deliver letters to Bostonians they didn't know through a chain of friends produced the conclusion that people in the United States are separated by about six people on average.

There are a variety of flaws with this research, but whether we're connected through six hops, eight hops or seventeen, the basic idea that social chains are sufficiently all-encompassing that you and I can find a sequence of friends or acquaintances that connect us is fascinating. Make the end point well-known actor Kevin Bacon and you have "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" or "the Kevin Bacon effect".

It was this question of how to gain access to your friends' friends, or, more accurately, the connections of your connections, that has become the basis of LinkedIn, a social network that lets you answer the question "I wonder if any of my friends know someone who..."

The numbers quickly grow at an extraordinary rate. I have 705 connections on LinkedIn. Take one step out onto that social network and that gives me over 330,000 people in my immediate network. One further step out (we'd call this friends of friends of friends, I suppose) and the number is a staggering 8,392,600 connections.

What does that mean? Am I obligated to send holiday cards to them all or keep track of their birthdays? I sure hope not!

In fact, they're not friends. While they offer up a tremendous professional resource, they don't in any fundamental way expand your social or personal network. They don't connect you with the greater humanity.

Since I know you might be wondering, Facebook isn't any better in this regard. You can certainly join many, many different circles of common interests through mailing lists, applications, etc., but it's still a very abstract, intellectual world. I have 358 Facebook friends and at least 25% of those I wouldn't recognize if we bumped into each other at the local Starbucks.

DO ANY SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

If we're trying to ascertain what helps you become less isolated rather than gaining the appearance of more friends while still leaving you just as disconnected, perhaps the answer lies in dating sites? After all, those are sites where you connect with others because of either an existing or desired personal connection. No, still, that's not right because, with the exception of novel sites like Ignighter.com, they are focused on who you want to know, not who you know.

Another possibility are lightweight social networks like Twitter, to which I admit a personal addiction (you can follow me at @DaveTaylor). The idea behind sites like Twitter are that it'd be useful and interesting to be able to keep tabs on your friends as you all go through your day. Spontaneous meetups, collaboration, and mutual support all easily flow from this sort of connectivity.

Twitter indeed fulfills some of these daily needs for people to be connected, especially with its great strength as a mobile application. It's interesting to see how this evolves too, however, particularly in light of our quest for online tools that help you truly connect with humanity: I keep track of just over 100 friends, all of whom I would recognize at a party, but over 3000 people keep track of what I am saying and doing. It's kind of weird, actually!

IS IT ABOUT MEASURING FRIENDSHIPS?

As we've traveled through the landscape of social media and social networks, whether it's the immediacy of Twitter or the business-like utility of LinkedIn, what has become clear is that these tools need to let us differentiate between close friends and acquaintances, to rate the strength of our connection. Without that capability, everyone's in the same proverbial pool and my connection with my close friend Richard is identical to my new connection with PKP magazine editor Margaret Lisi.

That being the case, you need to make a decision, preferably before you proceed to enmesh yourself in a social network, regarding whether it will capture everyone you know and have more than a passing acquaintance with or whether you will reserve it to your closest friends.

In the social network world we refer to this as quality versus quantity, and there are strong arguments for each approach. But what I want, predictably, is both. The quality gets me the connection with humanity, the ability to stay in closer touch with my intimate friends, and the quantity offers me all the benefits of our modern, highly-connected world. How to attain both? Well, we're still at the veritable infancy of social networks so I'm pushing their edges and watching it all evolve on a weekly basis.

How about you? How will you choose to utilize these many online tools to expand your own social and professional circles?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 2:46 PM on November 17, 2008 | Comments (5)

PR Tip: Exciting products should have exciting press releases too

Last week I survived my visit to the lion's den with my talk on "PR is Dead" to the Public Relations Society of America's Colorado chapter retreat. No brickbats (what the heck is a brickbat anyway?), no scars, and rather a surprising number of PR professionals from major agencies coming up to me afterward saying "you were spot on, Dave!"

My main point in the talk was that modern public relations is about getting journalists and the media (which of course includes us bloggers too) excited about products, services and companies, but while also recognizing that we need our autonomy. It's not about control, it's not about being the gatekeeper for corporate info and communications. I can't really summarize a 50 minute presentation in two sentences, but that's the gist of my main idea, at least.

In this modern world where there are thousands more "journalists" than ever before, there are nonetheless similar challenges that have faced PR since the profession was created: standing out from the crowd.

That's why I'm so amazed by the release I got this afternoon entitled "***Worlds Collide as Midway Unleashes Eagerly-Awaited Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe***".

So, with that title, you expect something at least mildly visually interesting, don't you? And yet, here's what I got:



This is so boring it's painful to even get in my inbox. We're coming into the second decade of the 21st century, guys, isn't it time to start creating communiques that are visually engaging already??

Mostly I'm just so struck that this major media news for the gaming world that's built upon dozens of very well known comic book figures has been boiled down to the most boring, uninteresting, unengaging press release possible.

Do they really expect any pickup at all??

Posted by Dave Taylor at 2:27 PM on November 17, 2008 | Comments (0)

Is PR dead? You tell me....

Hi y'all. I'm giving a talk to the Public Relations Society of America later this week, with a working title of "PR: 0, Bloggers: 1", and rather than retread the same tired examples, I'd like to ask if any of you have interesting examples of either expensive PR campaigns that were a fail or very inexpensive grassroots blog/social media-based campaigns that were a huge success.

I'll share my notes post-event.

Oh, and if you think PR is just completely dead because "we are the conversation" or whatever, or think that PR's just as essential as it has been for the last 100 years, I'd like to hear from you too!

Thanks.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:55 AM on November 11, 2008 | Comments (50)

What was SanDisk thinking when it introduced the SlotMusic format?

This might seem confusing, but in a world where more and more people are obtaining music through digital means, notably the iTunes Music store, a consortium of music companies have introduced a new physical music distribution format called SlotMusic. The idea is simple: a read-only MicroSD card that has an album's worth of music on it, along with - hopefully - additional digital information.

But is it the right product at the right time? I don't think so. Let me explain why...

As we have seen again and again with the introduction of new media formats in the consumer electronics industry, there's a classic chicken and egg problem when it's released. That is, the industry won't release lots of music on this new format until there are lots of players, but people won't buy players until there's lots of music available. The slow adoption of Blu-Ray and demise of HD-DVD are both examples of how this expensive problem plays out in the marketplace.

Clearly there needs to be a compelling reason for anyone to adopt a new music format like SlotMusic and while the vendors talk about simplicity and ease of use, the true key feature is that the music is available in the common MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

Market penetration of MP3 players demonstrates that people really like digital music, but having a collection of tiny, fragile chips as your music library? Doesn't seem like it's going to work.

Further, there's a classic pricing error in the positioning of SlotMusic too: at $14.99 suggested retail, it's compared to the suggested retail of CD music, but a quick glance at someone like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) shows that in fact almost all of the most popular CDs are $9.99. Why that price point? Because that's exactly how much an album's worth of music costs on the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes Store too.


SanDisk's SlotMusic player. Notice the tiny card: that's the MicroSD device.

The only place I can find online that's selling SlotMusic music is consumer electronics powerhouse Best Buy.com (NYSE: BBY), for, yes, $14.99/gizmo. (Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is supposed to come online with SlotMusic material within a week or two).

To be fair, while it appears that you need to buy a new SlotMusic player to enjoy this new medium, each actually includes a USB adapter, making it easy to read them on your computer or laptop device (and then, presumably, copy it to your Mp3 player). There are cheesy low-end SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) players that are cheap at $19.99, but do you really want to buy another player?

Nonetheless, even with the included USB adapter, it's hard to imagine why anyone who is sufficiently plugged in to care about copying the material to their computer wouldn't just use one of the many online music stores, skipping the MicroSD device entirely. (and note that while many users are unhappy about the DRM limitations of music downloaded from the iTunes Store, there are plenty of alternatives)

I'm not alone in being down on the future chances of SlotMusic either. A quick spin through the blogosphere will reveal that GigaOM, The NY Times, NewsOK and Technologizer and Engadget all agree that SlotMusic is destined to fail, not succeed.

I can only wonder why savvy tech company SanDisk even bothered with this half-baked technological effort that doesn't address the cost of music, the percentage of the sale that goes to the artist, or the extraordinarily inefficient distribution channels and costs imposed therein. A way to distribute and sell CDs for $4.99, where $1 would go to the artist would be revolutionary.

A SlotMusic MicroSD physical distribution device for music in the age of digital downloads that retains the $14.99 collection of songs from popular artists is dead on arrival.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:08 AM on November 10, 2008 | Comments (2)

How do you use social media to promote your business online?

A friend of mine sent me the following question:

"What sites do you use / recommend using to promote content (i.e. blogs, articles, etc.)? I'm re-tooling our business website and blog, and want to make sure I get the most effective (popular?) ones, along the lines of Technorati, Digg, etc. Your answers will help me pick the buttons I'll use..."

I have heard this same basic question again and again as I have gone to different conferences and it's one I think about too: how do you use all this stuff in a coherent fashion?

There are definitely some people who say "you should just do it all" and some of them even have a presence on dozens of social media sites. To me, that's not a viable answer because most people -- myself included -- want to focus on their core business, not the promotional tools. It's like someone who forgets that in addition to nice print ads, their restaurant still needs to serve a good meal. Not a good long term strategy, needless to say!

My view of things is that you need to have both a "destination" and pointers to that destination in the online world. Further, I believe that each of the major social networks (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) is its own little universe and that you need to have some sort of presence on each of these where your potential customers participate. (let me explain that a bit further: if you have a restaurant, yes, you should have a presence on MySpace. If you're a lawyer, however, LinkedIn is more likely to be your core constituency).

Your destination is where you tell the story, where you sell your product or service (gently, please), where you actually try to close the sale. My recommendation for this is a weblog (not surprisingly) where you can create search-engine friendly content and retain control of its design and presentation. I also recommend that you have a standalone blog, rather than using, say, the "notes" section on Facebook or the crude blogging tools available in MySpace.

Once you've created the destination content, it's time to think about what additional sites can help you promote and gain traffic. There are two categories of these: bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and separate universes like Facebook and MySpace.

For the former, there's a never-ending wrestling match between having them be valuable and having them be polluted by people trying to game the system. In particular, Digg has had a lot of growing pains in this regard and I've spoken with "top diggers" who candidly say that they sell their popularity: you want visibility on Digg? Pay them.

Nonetheless, if your audience is sufficiently tech savvy to know what these sites actually are, then there's no reason not to include a few of those bookmarking buttons. I suggest you include Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon, or use a consolidation bookmark tool or widget like Socialtwist, which I'm using on my busy Ask Dave Taylor site.

Don't go crazy and list ten or more of these. There are sooooo many me-too bookmark sites but listing too many causes confusion for readers, the old "embarrassment of riches" problem. It's not going to gain you additional visibility.

In terms of separate universes, of the social networking sites (as opposed, as I said earlier, to bookmarking sites), I think almost everyone should have a meaningful presence on Facebook and if it's a professional product or service, LinkedIn. If your target demographic includes the under-18 crowd then you also need to be on MySpace.

On many of these sites you can automate things so that when you post a new blog entry it shows up on these sites too (for example, see my article about How to hook your blog RSS feed to your Facebook profile) which certainly makes life easy. Automation is good.

The problem is that I don't think that every single blog entry I write is appropriate for every social community within which I'm a participant, so my suggestion is that if you write something really good, manually promote it on the other sites too.

That's a perfect use of Twitter, for example: not to think of Twitter as a purely promotional channel (which will fail) but rather to intersperse an occasional pointer back to your core content with your other Twitter comments. This is exactly applicable to, for example, your Facebook status updates (ditto MySpace, LinkedIn, etc).

If your material includes video, YouTube can drive traffic, and if you've photographs or still images, putting them up on Flickr can produce yet another traffic stream.

Finally, after this crazy long entry, I will say that my plan for promoting this particular blog entry is to mention it on Twitter with a clickable URL link included, to post the same status message on Facebook and to write a brief summary - with "read more" link - and post it to my MySpace blog area. And, hopefully, a few of you will bookmark it too, but I don't pre-bookmark my own entries.

...and the fact that you're reading this shows that the strategy works, at least at some level. :-)

---

Btw, if we haven't yet hooked up in these online worlds, you can find me online quickly and easily through Dave Taylor Online.
Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:48 AM on November 8, 2008 | Comments (4)

My busy, busy next seven days

It's good that I like being busy, because I sure am right now! Tomorrow morning I'm opening up the Thin Air Summit with the keynote address on "Finding a Voice: The evolution of personal media through history", then Monday afternoon I'm a judge for the Colorado Inventor's Showcase in Denver. A few days to recharge my batteries and Friday I'm back on the podium, offering up the keynote address for the Public Relations Society of America's Colorado Chapter meeting in Denver. My topic is "Social Media 1: Public Relations 0 - Understanding, tracking and managing the message in a highly connected world".

I'm also going to be moderating a (recorded) panel discussion for Blogger & Podcaster early next week, with author Michael Webb, ClickBank Director of Marketing Bob Dunlap, and blogging affiliate marketer Miles Baker, which I'm looking forward to quite a bit: they're just the right people to discuss the challenges of commodity marketing. (the discussion will be made available through Blogger & Podcaster magazine a few weeks later)

In the midst of all of this I'll have a complete change of pace by accompanying my delightful 4yo daughter on her class Martinmas lantern walk. If you don't know what that is, the holiday is based on the legend of St. Martin of Tours, who was born in 316. He's honored for having apocryphally sharing his cloak with a beggar and represents brotherliness. According to custom, as the days become shorter and the stars appear earlier, children would walk with lanterns through the streets singing. As the world grows darker, the inner light of man wants to shine forth. That's what I'll be doing mid-week.

Then it'll be right back to business and social media and the online world, 2008AD. Kinda Jekyll/Hyde, actually. Everyone who is a parent and businessperson, however, knows what that's like!

Sheesh. I think today I should just stay in bed and sleep, so I can be caught up for what's going to be a fun and exciting, but tiring, next seven days! I hope to see you at one or more of these events.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:01 AM on November 7, 2008 | Comments (0)

Malaria kills a child every thirty seconds...

A bit off my usual beaten track, but I'm a big proponent of much of the work that the United Nations does, especially through UNESCO and UNICEF. If you've read my writings for a while, you've probably seen me talk about this before, and if you've ever gotten an Intuitive Systems holiday card, you won't be surprised that they're all from UNICEF too.

Generally I feel that the United Nations is misunderstood and greatly maligned in the United States and that most people have no clue about the tremendous work that the organization does above and beyond the often empty pontification of the General Assembly. Fact is, though, the UN is trying to make the world a better place through so many different avenues it can make your head swim. From sexual abuse to childhood illnesses, poverty to giving downtrodden a political voice and control over their future, there's quite a bit going on every week at UN offices throughout the world.

This week marks a very interesting conference that's the subject of this blog post: The Safer Alternatives to DDT meeting in Geneva.

The UN release describes it thusly: "Some 80 delegates from governments, industry, research institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) today kicked off a three-day United Nations-backed meeting in Geneva focusing on cost effective and environmentally-friendly alternatives to DDT, a controversial chemical used to control malaria."

What you might not realize about malaria is just what a major problem it is around the world. According to the US Center for Disease Control and World Health Organization, 300-500 million cases of malaria are reported annually and over one million people each year die of malaria.

Far more shocking is that in Africa, where it's rife and mostly affects younger children (as it does throughout the globe) a child dies from malaria every thirty seconds.

It's safe to say that, yes, malaria is a major health problem, and it's really amazing that in the 21st century when we have cellphones with more technological capabilities than the original Apollo lander and a global Internet that makes sharing information unbelievably simple and efficient that a disease transmitted by mosquitoes remains such a plague around the planet.

If you're a cool-hearted businessperson and can read these statistics without any sort of emotional reaction, think about this: "Because malaria causes so much illness and death, the disease is a great drain on many national economies. Since many countries with malaria are already among the poorer nations, the disease maintains a vicious cycle of disease and poverty."

Break these cycles of poverty and the world will unquestionably be a safer and better place.

This is the perfect example of a diseases where a vaccine would be a good solution (certainly better than DDT) but, as the CDC explains: "There is currently no malaria vaccine approved for human use. The malaria parasite is a complex organism with a complicated life cycle. Its antigens are constantly changing and developing a vaccine against these varying antigens is very difficult. In addition, scientists do not yet totally understand the complex immune responses that protect humans against malaria. However, many scientists all over the world are working on developing an effective vaccine. Because other methods of fighting malaria, including drugs, insecticides, and bed nets, have not succeeded in eliminating the disease, the search for a vaccine is considered to be one of the most important research projects in public health."

I urge you to take a few minutes off today to think about the plague of malaria and what you can do to help out. Perhaps it's a donation (there are a number of charities focused on breaking the malaria cycle), perhaps its just praying for a cure and for the souls of the twenty or thirty African children that died while you were reading this blog.

In this day and age when we seem to focus most of our attention on a small number of big issues, I find it helpful to expand my mind and my attention by remembering the less glamorous problems we all face too.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:51 AM on November 3, 2008 | Comments (6)

Subway seized for want of a $2919 tax payment

I don't know if this is a harbinger of things to come, or whether it's just someone whose franchise dreams died, but yesterday at the Flatiron Crossing Mall in Broomfield, Colorado, I was struck by the rather alarming sign on the door of the local Subway franchise, as shown to the right.

As it happens, I had been in that particular Subway franchise and had a conversation with the owner about his experience as a franchise business owner. He was, like so many people are, retired from another profession and had invested in the Subway franchise because he thought it would be a sure fire way to make money and have a half-time job as he went into his retirement. As I recall he wasn't that old (late 40s?) but it's a very common story in the industry.

Problem was, as he explained, he didn't quite make enough to be able to hire other people to work: by doing the work himself, he avoided taxes, health care and wages, so it was a cross he was bearing, working 60+ hours/week trying to keep the business afloat.

As the sign attests, he didn't succeed and the business is not afloat, it's down in Davey Jones locker with all the other failed businesses and franchise opportunities.

What most struck me was how little he owed: $2919.00:



That was enough, however, that when he missed six weeks of tax payments to the City, Broomfield seized the business and shut him down.

Peeking inside, it's clear everything's been moved around and inventoried, and indeed, the auction house that's going to sell off hardware and equipment to try and recoup the lost tax payments has a business card on the window:



Certainly, one company's failure is another company's opportunity.

I see this as a cautionary tale and can't but feel for the owner of this particular Subway sandwich shop. He went into it with his dreams and hopes for a brighter tomorrow and somehow, year after year, the dream slipped away, it became harder and harder to make ends meet, and finally, one day, he just didn't open up shop again. He walked away. And then The Man came and for want of less than $3000 in taxes, took away any chance for him to resurrect it and come out ahead.

With that in mind, how's your business doing? Are you realistically, pragmatically assessing its state, or are you living in dreamland as your dreams slip through your fingers too?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 1:27 PM on October 24, 2008 | Comments (8)

Join us at the Thin Air Summit, get my book for free!

I'm very excited to not only have been involved in the planning process for the upcoming Thin Air Summit, coming next month in Denver at the beautiful downtown Sheraton, but to also be invited to give the opening keynote talk for the event too.

My talk is titled Finding a Voice: The evolution of personal media through history and my (working) description is:

New media isn't new at all. Whether it's a hand-cranked printer hidden in the basement, a bootleg radio station or a can of spray paint, people's need to express themselves and make an impact on their community has been a pervasive part of history. What is new is that we, the public, ARE the media too now, and that your blog might well have a greater readership than a traditional media outlet controlled by a homogenizing corporation like Clear Channel. We'll look at these topics and explore the key questions of What's going on?  How did we get here?  And how can you gain more influence in this ever-changing marketplace?

Sound interesting? I hope so!

In addition to my keynote, we also have my friend and colleague Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research giving the second day keynote too, entitled "The Future of Media in the Social/Digital Age", which I'm eager to hear: he's very plugged in to trends and forecasting with his position at Forrester.

Additional speakers and sessions are shown on the Thin Air Summit site, so you can read 'em yourself.

What I want to announce here is that I'm offering a special promotion: the first twenty people who sign up for the Thin Air Summit using the special registration code "dave" will get a free signed copy of my book Growing Your Business With Google. That's a good deal, and doubly so if you're joining us!

I hope this serves as a good additional incentive to join us Nov 8-9 2008 at the Sheraton Denver for the Thin Air Summit!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 4:21 PM on October 22, 2008 | Comments (0)

Microsoft Zune versus Apple iPod: Components don't make a gadget valuable!

I'm a bit baffled by this query I got from a PR agent who is working on the Microsoft Zune account:

"Between November 2006 and May 2008 Apple iPods have outsold Microsoft Zunes 38: 1. Has America chosen the best device? As the economy takes a turn for the worse, it is important for consumers to truly understand the value of a purchase. What are you getting for your money?

I have an electronics expert who can comment on the quality of each device (iPod and Zune). Aaron Vronko has recently disassembled the 4th generation iPod Nano, the 2nd generation iPod touch, the iPod Classic 120 GB, the Zune 120GB, and the Zune Flash to determine which device is in fact a better value."

I'm really trying to figure out the logic behind this query. I mean, the value of a consumer electronics product is not the sum value of its components, so what's the point of offering up an "expert" who has torn all of these gizmos apart?

Zune Internals (Image credit: zunerama.com)

It's like saying that the value of one book is greater than another because it has more pages and more words. Last I checked, however, people don't buy books because of their word count.

In terms of the Zune versus the iPod, the components are almost completely irrelevant. People don't say "I was going to buy an iPod but when I found out that the audio plug isn't robust, I bought a Zune instead".

Am I wrong? Do you care about value of the components inside your electronic gizmo or gadget? More to the point, perhaps, would you be more likely to buy a Microsoft Zune player if you knew it had better quality components inside than a comparable Apple iPod?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:53 PM on October 21, 2008 | Comments (5)

Public Relations in the Age of Blogging: Good Pitch, Bad Pitch

Just so happens that in my mailbox I have two lovely examples of how public relations professionals in different agencies are trying to work with bloggers, one that I believe is a poor example of how to pitch, and one that's spot-on good. I have scrubbed the names clean because it's not about the specific agency as much as the concepts here. As usual, I also have my editorial commentary like this as we go along.

Ready? Here we gooooooo....

First off, here's the initial pitch I, a daddy blogger based in Colorado, received, about a children's book signing event:

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I am following up on a previous email and my voicemail today regarding the below (and attached) event at Bloomingdales which will be taking place tomorrow.

Do you think this is something you would be interested in covering for your blog?

---

Huh? Why would I care about something going on 1700 miles away, something with a 24 hour deadline? She didn't have information "below" within the text of the email she sent me either, making me have to open an attachment to even remember what we're talking about. I asked just that question...

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Nice contact, but what makes you think I’d be interested? Did you go and read my parenting blog, or am I in a contact database you have?

With regards,

Dave Taylor

---

to which she responded

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Hi Dave,

Thank you for getting back to me.

We read your parenting blog and thought you may be interested in covering as it is an event geared towards children.

Do you think this is something you would be interested in?

---

I will give her points for consistency, but if she read my parenting blog she'd know that I wouldn't give a hoot about a promotional event in Manhattan on my weblog. In fact, I almost never write about anything that I'd get from a publicist or PR person. I do, however, occasionally review things, which could have been her angle (e.g. mailing me a copy of the book in question), but wasn't.

Now, contrast that with this other pitch, made to someone else, not me, by Lisa at Metzger Associates:

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Subject: CSG Systems CEO would like to talk to you

Dear Jeff,

I'm the Lisa Everitt perhaps best known in the Rocky business department as the person for whom Joe Nacchio autographed a can of paint in 1999. That was a bizarre era. Now I work for Metzger Associates. Did the paint make its way to the new building?

Peter Kalan, the new CEO of CSG Systems, would like to sit down with you, on the phone or in person at their office, to talk about CSG's broader outlook beyond billing, statements and customer service support for cable and DBS companies. He's available the week of Oct. 13, specifically Tuesday 10/14 and Friday 10/17. If those days don't
work for you, we will wrangle calendars until something does.

As you know, CSG has been an influential company in the national and local cable scene, with customers that include Comcast, Time-Warner, Charter Communications and a raft of smaller players.

What's new with CSG Systems...

---

[Dave again] What Lisa's done here is explain who she is, remind Jeff of a previous interact they've had, then succinctly detail exactly what the pitch is and why it should be of interest. It takes a total of, what, 15 seconds to skim this and identify the who, what, where, when and why. That's respectful and always appreciated.

Contrast that with the email I received from the other PR person, who had none of that useful information readily accessible in her email. The only thing she included was a rather naggy reminder that she'd already emailed me and left me voicemail (which I don't actually appreciate, as it happens). How much better for her to have said "To remind you, I'm talking about person X from company Y doing event Z and inviting you to ..."

But even there, the pitch never included "would you like to interview my client?" or "would you like a copy of the book for review?" or anything that suggested that I, as a blogger presumably sufficiently interesting to be on her short list, was anyone more than an additional one-way publicity channel.

This is, as I said in the beginning, a bad way to pitch bloggers or anyone else. A journalist wouldn't be impressed either.

Meanwhile, you'll note that even with this posting I still haven't offered up much information about the event at Bloomingdale's. Because... I just don't have a clue about what's going on. Still.

So you tell me. Good pitch? Bad pitch?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:01 AM on October 8, 2008 | Comments (1)

Disney, Sloppy PR and "do you have a degree?"

A while back I wrote a piece about sloppy PR from Disney Corporation and it's sat there for a while, garnering comment and thoughts.

Today I got one that I thought was particularly interesting, from Kate Runyan:

"I am curious about your comments about Disney's sloppy PR. I am interning there and trying to learn as much about it as I can... from every point of view. Do you hold any degrees and if so, what field? I hope to hear from you via e-mail as soon as you get a chance out of your busy day. Thank you so much! Cheers!"

Let me tell you a bit about the original article, then answer Kate's question and make some observations about how she's structured her query...

Basically, I got a clumsy pitch from Disney's Family.com travel team that started out "Dear Apparanting, I'm contacting you to let you know about a new travel site Disney Family.com needs your help promoting!"

Even pasting it here, you can see how clumsy and lame this is. 30 seconds of work (scroll to bottom, see © notice) would have revealed my name as the author of the parenting blog, but they didn't do that. That's a cardinal sin in blogger/PR relations.

The pitch was also ridiculously long and clueless about what motivates people to want to help you join a publicity effort without pay. For example, how different it would have been if they said "We know you travel with kids: can we send you a book that highlights how to travel more easily next time?" or "We'd like to invite you to be a Disney.com VIP by helping us spread the word" or "we're focused on making travel more green. If you help us, we'll donate $20 to Plant A Tree" or, well, you get the idea.

However loved the brand, people don't generally help a commercial business out of a sense of philanthropy or noblesse oblige. Like anything else, you need to give them an incentive and of all professionals, Public Relations pros should know this. And a big corporation like Disney can afford to hire the best. That's why I wrote about that in the first place.

So, Kate, I'm glad you asked me how and why I thought the pitch was clumsy. I hope I've addressed that here. What I also want to ask you is why do you care if I have any degrees?

As it happens, I do. A BA in Computer Science, Masters in Education and an MBA. But I think it's dangerous to suggest that one person's feedback is more or less important than another's simply on the basis of how much they've spent for their education. Uh, how much they studied. Um, well, you know what I mean. :-)

Then again, PR is a profession where I think you have to create heirarchies to survive. If there's no "A List" and no "key media outlets" then it's all a quantitative game and sending out a $200 prweb release might just be more valuable with its 300 links from press release archive sites than $10,000 on pro PR to get a small mention in the Washington Post. Hmmmm.....

Anyway, dear reader, what do you think? Was Disney sloppy in its original email to me and was Kate demonstrating a perhaps dangerously hierarchical mind in her query?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 1:57 PM on October 3, 2008 | Comments (5)

YOU can help out with the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge

First things first: I ask that you forego your next latté or bagel and instead donate a few dollars to this very worthy cause, helping out teachers and kids throughout the United States. Easily done, just click on the "Colorado Bloggers Challenge" text in the ad graphic below:

Now, let me tell you how this ended up here and in my sidebar too: My good friend Micah Baldwin of Lijit asked me to add it. Well, he asked a couple of us Colorado bloggers and we've all added the widget with the hopes we can raise some serious cash for a worthy cause.

I asked Micah for the back story on his relationship with DonorsChoose, and here's what he explained...

About a year ago, I was beginning to read VC and tech blogs. During that time, I came across Fred Wilson's blog. I had no idea who Fred Wilson was, other than a lot of people seem to read his blog. He was linked to Brad Feld, and Brad was someone I trusted, so I assumed Fred's content was equally trustworthy.

For a period of time, as I read Fred's blog, I began to find most of the content pretty interesting and on topics that I found interesting.

Then one day he had a post about joining a "blogger's challenge" by DonorsChoose. I was a new blogger, and was just learning what a widget was, etc., plus the power of blogging.

Having been an educational fundraiser for years early in my career (mostly colleges and universities), I always have held any philanthropic effort to help education in high regard, so I took a closer look at DonorsChoose.

It's a really interesting charity. It allows teachers to self-identify things that are important to them. So music teachers will choose things like new guitar stands, a history teacher might select a trip to a local museum, an English teacher might select a series of books. Then individuals can contribute to whichever cause they find particularly interesting. The amount doesn't matter, and the contributor can designate the entire donation to go directly to the cause (with DonorsChoose getting zero).

I decided to participate and help Fred out. It didn't hurt that the winning blogger would get a lunch date with Jerry Yang, which Fred had decided to give to the participant who provided the best reason for giving. My dad, having recently retired from Stanford University, would love to have lunch with Jerry, so I jumped in.

DonorsChoose allows you to pick a school by geography, and I was very excited to see that my middle school, Morrill Middle School in San Jose, CA had a fundable project. So I sent in a small amount ($500 I think), to fund that project.

Fred did win the lunch with Jerry, and selected someone extremely worthy to get the lunch, but I had found a site that I felt had all the pieces of a biz that could make a real difference. And over the next year, I made several donations, usually in the name of a family member. (In fact, for Christmas, I gave everyone a donation in their name rather than gifts.)

A couple of weeks back, I got an email from Kris Murray, DonorsChoose's Deputy Director, Northwest Region. She happened to be from Colorado and was out visiting family. She asked if we could connect, and, like a good Boulderite, we met over coffee.

She told me that DonorsChoose was going to have another Bloggers Challenge this year. She asked me to join Fred, Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Kara Swisher and others in the challenge. I knew that I would never be very effective on my own, so I offered to help in any way I can, which I knew was getting more people involved than just me.

In truth, its one of the best parts of the technology scene in Colorado. We are all more than happy to help one another. Unlike the coasts, where often the individual is the center, in Colorado its is usually a collective effort. TechStars is a great example of that. Lijit is a great example of that.

So, I asked the premier bloggers in the state: you, Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntire, Jason Mendelson, Andrew Hyde, Alex King and David Cohen; created a giving page called the Colorado Bloggers Challenge, and asked everyone to join in.

I am glad to see that everyone has decided to be part of the effort.

Thanks for the kind words, Micah, and thank you, dear reader, for your efforts to help us raise some serious money for DonorsChoose. Spread the word!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 11:03 PM on October 2, 2008 | Comments (0)

The latest tech companies emerging from CU Boulder

I just returned from the Fall ESPRIT Innovation Alliance Breakfast, hosted by the non-profit Boulder Innovation Center and it was, as usual, a fascinating morning.

In cooperation with the University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office, the Boulder Innovation Center helps take great ideas and inventions out of the university and into the business world. They wrestle with a fundamental challenge for any university that has a strong research base: how do you spin out companies while still retaining at least some of the IP for the benefit of the University and its students, faculty and staff?

This isn't much different from the tensions, challenges, and harsh reality I encountered at HP Labs when I worked there. Like many other corporate R&D facilities (Xerox PARC, DEC's Western Research Labs, Interval Research), it's hard to take blue sky and turn it into pragmatic for-profit businesses for both the benefit of the inventors and institution.

In a format similar to DEMO and other startup events, the BIC breakfast format gave each company approximately 8 minutes to present and 2-3 minutes for questions. Fast and furious.

Here are my notes, with my commentary and thoughts in [italics]...

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Intro: The CU Innovation Alliance

David Allen: You're going to see some wicked cool technology. This is the stuff that's right on the edge. We get about 100 invention disclosures from the Boulder campus each year, so we have 100 opportunities to figure out what it's all about. Our faculty are some of the very best people in the world in what they do, and here we are trying to figure out what they're doing.

We (The CU Tech Transfer Office) pay $50k year for the Boulder Innovation Center, which lets our investigators -- the inventors of these technologies -- have access to the BIC and its expert management and professional services teams.

Our first goal is to get a grip on the technology so we can protect it (patents), then we have a definable asset and then look to the tech platform to find business drivers.

[ I read this somewhat as "we get solutions, then have to identify a problem" which is accurate, and classic research. "Here's something cool. Now what?" ]

[The CU Tech Transfer Office also offers these Proof Of Concept Grants (they refer to these as "POCg" internally), so inventors have two shots at proving their ideas to the marketplace before seeking funding]

Allen posited that CU is the most active university in the US with its self-funded Tech Transfer Office, a university that's putting 3.5 million into proof of concept programs. [it's very interesting, this concept of University as angel capital investor and incubator!]

Tim Bour: Often the advisors that we (BIC) find become the principles of the newly formed company. We wrap a community around this young company with the goal of making it successful.

[In that sense, then, it's not like a traditional incubator, but it's one heck of a way for smart execs to get plugged in to hot new companies just coming out of a strong research institution]

Suvica

[Presented by Tin Tin Su, Association Prof Molecular, Cellular, and developmental biology, Suvica uses drosophila to create a tissue micro-environment that significantly improves the discovery of new anti-cancer compounds]

We're working on discovering novel combination therapeutics against cancer [Amusing to see that the title slide had "confidential" written on it] We're trying to find combination therapies, because combining radiation with chemo works better than either does individually. Their success is based on synergy between agents: result exceeds sum of individual therapies, but the challenge is: how do you find combinations that work?

They're trying to avoid clinical trials because they're costly and time-consuming. Suvica offers screening technologies for drugs that work well with radiation.

We're accomplishing this by radiating common fruit fly (drosophila) larvae to see what happens: the fruit fly is similar to cancer tumors. Through extensive research, we've identified that you can use drosophila to find agents that are effective against human cancer. Dros is 100x better predictive model than any screening system in existence, and there's potential to find drugs that act on mutants but not normal tissue

The presentation addressed scalability, competition and barriers to entry. They've filed patents, done a pilot screen, secured $381K grant to test on mouse model, screening commercial library (20k compounds), seek: equity finance, management, commence screening service, partner with biotech/pharma to screen their libraries.

[I found this exciting research, the idea that specifically trying to screen combination therapies for efficacy can produce better cancer treatments that have less side effects and work faster and more effectively. It also seems like a solid business idea, mostly likely a small biz that'll find revenue through licensing and testing with big pharma]

Ion Engineering: Colorado Carbon Capture

[Presented by Jason Bara, Colorado Carbon Capture develops technology that improves the efficiency of carbon capture from power plants and natural gas wells through the use of "green" solvents. CCC promises to bring dramatic improvements to the energy efficiency of current processes, as well as provide innovative, new and cost-efficient approaches to carbon capture.]

The market for CO₂ capture already exists:
- natural gas "sweetening" (removal of H₂S and CO₂). billion dollar market in US alone
- carbon capture from point sources: billions of tons of CO₂ emitted from burning coal, potential multi-billion market

We replace the water in the process with an ionic solvent
- improves energy requirements - reduces energy to process CO₂ 1/3 to 1/2
- faster reaction rates
- cleaner process (less corrosive, reduced loss and waste
- can open previously unviable gas fields

initial focus on natural gas application: $5 *billion* spent on new natgas equip each year, with an immediate market in Colo and Wyoming

24 month scale up: lab -> pilot -> wellhead

income sources: royalties on gas volumes, direct solvent sales, equip design

Have management and engineering team in place: CEO, scientific staff [Tip: a CEO is not a management team]

Q: What is your ionic solvent and what does it cost? It costs anywhere from $100-$500 gallon to create ionic liquids. room temperature ionic liquid - a family of organic solvents

Q: Is the solvent consumed or recycled? It is not consumed. The chemical process occurs to consume the co2, and since its not volatile, it doesn't evaporate.

Q: How is the carbon captured? When it''s captured from nat gas you vent it back out into the atmosphere. The h2s you have to turn it back into sulfur or some other product because it's toxic.

[I admit that I didn't fully understand this solution, but it's clearly a very big market and though we like to sweep industrial waste and pollution under the proverbial rug, it's a growing problem and there's a lot of money therein]

TissueFusion LLC

[Presented by Michael Larson, Tissue Fusion develops laser devices to "weld" biological tissues together for wound closures. This device is an improvement on existing technologies using sutures in an array of standard surgical procedures]

Laser tissue fusion is an alternative to sutures -- it's a medical device that's based on using laser energies to fuse tissues together and close wounds. Their product is called LaSept, and it's a device for helping with septoplasty and rhinoplasty surgeries: over 500,000 of these procedures are done annually in US. $100mil worldwide market

They also have a vision about follow on products: minimally invasive surgeries (laparoscopic procedures), their product will also prove a boon for procedures needing immediate, water-tight closure.

"The first FDA approved laser device for wound closure will create excitement and will transform the market"

[This company is definitely savvy: they picked septoplasty & rhinoplasty surgery because it's a fast FDA approval since the inside of the nose is considered the outside of the body. Yeah, that's a weird idea, but that's the FDA for you]

They have successfully fused horse mucosal tissue in a manner similar to the human nose. Have completed pre-clinical phases. As he explained, the science is proven, engineering is done, FDA approval process is straightforward.

Company has Larson as founder, two product designers, two academic otolaryngologists, but no management, no marketing, etc, The identified need for growing to the next step: a CEO to do fund raising.

[Again, my expertise is not in medical products, but this seemed like a neat, handheld product with a specific use and defined market. Not exciting, but a solid business opportunity.]

LineRate Systems

[This was the token geeky software presentation, made by John Giacomoni. LineRate Systems has a software network appliance platform that delivers 10 gb/s application layer processing capabilities on commodity servers and blades]

"Rethinking Network Appliances" - the plumbing that connects your machine to the Internet. When the equipment that they have to put in front of the machine costs more than the machine itself, that's a serious problem. Our focus is on low-cost no hassle sales model.

In 2009 we are going to bring our products to market. The idea came up in 2003, 2006 initial proof of concept, 2006-2008 they filed patents, 2007 got first gigabit appliance functioning, 2008 got 4gb/s.

These speeds mean each frame has to be processed in a few hundred nanoseconds max. In 2009 we've been talking with Intel and we should be able to hit 10gb/s system and enter the market

process: built upon open source building blocks: xorp, nginx, snort, RIsense (?), leveraging hw Intel, amd, dell, sun, hp. Missing piece: the glue: Line Rate acceleration software

There are 40 appliance manufacturers in the marketplace already. Total market $30 bil by 2013, $16bil today.

[This is where it got a bit confusing because John's answer to how they compete is "there's a great apathy in the market for new competitor entries because of the high cost of goods", yet his slide showed that the cost of goods was about 23% of total sales, nothing out of line for a hardware-based product line.]

They believe they can deliver the end product for the basic cost of goods of competitors, forcing the competitors to license their system.

Need: rest of business team and funds.

[I was intrigued by LineRate Systems and its idea of rethinking network backend appliances but I get a sense that the company needs to rethink its business vision. The cliché error of "we have no competition" wasn't quite visible, but having identified 40 big competitors (including Cisco and Juniper Systems) then claiming none of them can innovate at the software level, well, that's hubris at best and naive at worst.]

3QMatrix

[Presented by Johan Baeck, 3QMatrix focuses on the development and commercialization of novel wound healing and drug delivery products using a proprietary product platform. This was the most interesting company I saw this morning and I believe there's a tremendous opportunity here]

"A novel wound healing company: advanced biomaterials for enhanced quality of life"

Their market: 5-7 million US patients with chronic wounds -- wound care is $1 billion market.

Today's solutions don't meet clinical need, which is for a solution that:
- provides high performance at a lower cost
- minimizes the pain
- reduces hospital stay

Traditional solutions are low cost, but low performance (think special ointments or salves applied to wounds). Interactive solutions are high performance but have a high cost ($2000-4000 per application). 3QMatrix offers a low cost, high performance solution.

Their solution is an advanced synthetic biomaterial which creates a 3-dimensional mesh that lets the neighboring cells begin to rebuild the skin and tissue. It biodegrades and is bio-absorbable. They can also "functionalize" it by adding antibacterial, growth hormones and other medications to the material itself.

3QMatrix has a management team, scientific advisory board, and has received proof of concept grant from the CU Boulder Tech Transfer Office to solidify patents. Submitted two grants to NIH and one to DoD.

Seeking $2mil in seed money to further product development and clinical studies.

[To me, 3QMatrix is a perfect example of how ingenious technologies can be invented in a university research setting with high applicability to the real world and then can evolve into a commercial business. I have high expectations for this company]

XenoPur Systems

[Presented by Mark Hernandez, XenoPur Systems provides metals decontamination in water treatment processes. The combination of low-cost ingredients, low energy requirements and lower waste disposal costs will allow XenoPur to lower total process costs to industry]

Radionuclide and metal removal technologies - removal of heavy, precious and radioactive metals. Water and nuclear pollution is increasing worldwide. Over $1bil spent on treating industrial wastewater in US alone.

Their product is called the XenoPur "Liquid Magnet" and it's essentially impregnating carbon with corrosion inhibitors. Mark liken its primary industrial use to an "industrial wastewater Britta filter", and noted that the other primary configuration is as a "tea bag", cleaning passive water (from, for example, the contamination of acid rain).

It's a cost effective way to purify acidic metal-laden waters, including high efficiency removal of all EPA priority pollutants: copper, lead, silver, uranium and other semi-precious (silver) and toxics.

Displaces conventional sludge generating technology through solidification of dissolved metals [In other words, the end product pollutants are far easier to deal with and process]

The solution has to be cheap: water purification applications must deal with billions of gallons of water effectively. One patent has been issued, one tech continuation patent submitted.

Tested / field optimization in SAE Circuits, Boulder (industrial wastewater), Rockford Mine, Idaho Springs (mining reclamation) Los Alamos National Lab (radionuclide sequestration)

Incorporated in 2006 has received the following funding: $400k from NSF and US Air Force, $100k from State of Colorado

[The technology here is very cool. Imagine a device that could be lowered into a polluted mountain lake and actually filter out all the contaminants. Then it's pulled out and those contaminants can be easily processed and broken down into non-toxic elements. A solid business, I'm thankful smart people are working on cleaning up our environment after 100+ years of the waste from the industrial revolution]

Kapteyn-Murnane Labs (aka KMLabs)

[Presented by Dirk Muller, KMLabs was founded by Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn. This presentation was more of a TTO success story as KMLabs has been around since 1994]

KMLabs is a manufacturer of femtosecond lasers. They've built a very successful business, founded in 1994 and profitable every year since. Now has 20 people and a 21,000sf research and manufacturing facility in Boulder, Colorado.

[Tip: a femtosecond is one millionth of a nanosecond. As Dirk said, a femtosecond is to a second as a minute is to the age of the universe. Amazing, really]

The great advantage of femtosecond lasers is that they generate zero heat which gives them many interesting capabilities.

The company vision: bringing highest performance ultrafast laser systems to the research community. KMLabs was the first company to develop a reliable 10 femtosecond laser, and are a cornerstone in the NSF Engineering Research Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology.

Global customer base, applications: ultrafast spectroscopy, nonlinear coherent light sources, coherent x-ray generation, attosecond pulse generation, optical coherence tomography. future apps: micromachining, sensors, lithographic mask inspection, biomedical, soft x-ray microscopy and metrology

[Femtoseconds weren't fast enough for you? An attosecond is 1/1000th of a femtosecond]

KMLabs are global leaders in high average power ultrafast lasers, cryogenic cooling for 10-100W (military applications), carrier envelope offset phase stabilization of high average power ultrafast lasers and coherent short wavelength light.

[I don't much know about femtosecond laser system and what they're used for in the research setting (my own research has been with people and computers, not cool laser gizmos) but, damn, pretty cool stuff, and KMlabs is a splendid example of tech transfer done right]

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Those were the companies that presented. Fascinating stuff and it makes me glad to live in a college town with a thriving research community and the desire and passion for those research findings to make it out into the world and help make everything faster, safer, cleaner and healthier.

If you have questions about these companies or want to get in touch with either the Boulder Innovation Center or CU Technology Transfer Office, please visit their Web sites: BoulderInnovationCenter.com and CU.edu/techtransfer.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:21 AM on October 1, 2008 | Comments (1)

How I Created The Aloha Social Media Summit

If you follow me on Twitter (@DaveTaylor), have attended any of the conferences at which I've spoken in the last few months (most notably Blogworld Expo), or generally keep track of my activities and exploits, you'll know about the Aloha Social Media Summit. It's a unique event with top-notch experts and a limit of 25 attendees. Why? Because the emphasis isn't going to be on the experts -- though I have an amazing lineup of speakers -- but on the needs and interests of the participants.

I view it as an unconference, but it's really sort of the anti-conference more than anything. No Powerpoint, no podium, no "audience" and "speaker" but instead a mastermind event where we'll all be sharing as peers and talking about how to market and promote your business through modern social media.

To be fair, I am involved in planning many events, including having co-hosted Blogworld Expo and being on the program and planning committee for the upcoming Thin Air Summit, but the more I attend large events, the more I see the appeal and great value of smaller, intimate, private events like the Aloha Summit. It's like my preference for parties: I'd rather hang out with a half dozen good friends than 250 of my peers or colleagues. Just don't tell anyone I said that, okay? :-)

How I Came Up With the Aloha Summit

At the beginning of 2008 I was planning a three week holiday in Hawaii with my children and thought "wouldn't it be cool to have a small mastermind event on the Big Island of Hawaii while I'm there?" And so, the Aloha Summit was born.

I threw out a few queries and my friend, colleague and fellow industry and marketing expert Andy Beal popped up and said he'd like to get involved as he was already planning a trip to Hawaii. He did, we co-hosted the event and it was a small, but inspirational success. Our speakers were Roxanne Darling's partner Shane Robinson, Andy Beal, Debra Micek, and, via video conference, Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and Roxanne Darling, who was in Florida at the time on a family emergency.

This time Andy and I decided to try holding it in my backyard, Boulder, Colorado, and seeing if we could up the ante even higher, having the very top people in the industry all in the room at the same time, not for their benefit (though I know they'll all have a great experience) but for the benefit of participants. As I said, it's the anti-conference.

Who'll be Joining Me in Colorado

Who did we get to join us in the room? Om Malik, one of my favorite experts in the entire blogosphere and social media spaces and founder of the powerhouse GigaOM, Biz Stone, super-smart serial entrepreneur and founder of a bunch of slick Web 2.0 startups notably including co-founding Twitter, Susan Bratton of Personal Life Media, where she's focused on building a network to target the "cultural creatives market segment" (I'm sure Susan and I will have a chance to talk about Richard Florida's Cultural Creatives book while she's in town!), Peter Shankman, PR guru and outspoken founder of the invaluable Help a Reporter Online service, and -- a special guest just added -- Shama Hyder of After The Launch, someone who knows more about how to market your business and service on Facebook than anyone I know.

Not enough? We also have two special guest stars via video lined up: Charlene Li, industry expert, former star analyst for Forrester Research and author of the terrific book Groundswell, and Roxanne Darling, who has done a masterful job of turning a hobby video blog into a thriving video production business and, this time at least, is in Hawaii.

That's who Andy and I have managed to line up to join us. Just as importantly, or perhaps even more so, are the participants, who will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend two days comparing notes, sharing their frustrations and challenges, and getting expert advice and tips from the best and the brightest.

Here's the best news of all: we still have a few seats available.

It's not too late to join us and attend, no, help shape the very best social media event in 2008 and learn how to take your own business to the next level with online social media visibility and marketing expertise.

I know I'm excited to have us get started already!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:07 PM on September 30, 2008 | Comments (8)

Interview with Tom Taulli, Founder of BizEquity.com

When Tom Taulli of BizEquity.com approached me to talk about his business, I was intrigued, but I also thought that it'd be fun to mix things up and ask my friend and colleague Klaus Holzapfel of Concept Bakery to conduct the interview. Klaus did, and here's the result. I hope you find it informative as we travel through these difficult financial times...

Klaus: We know that the Credit Rating agencies are in the line of fire right now for apparently not understanding what they were rating. Many of the underlying financial instruments take at least three highly trained scientists to decipher them.

You might ask: How about some common sense in evaluating risks and businesses?

BizEquity focuses on evaluating business on criteria that we can understand, and, as founder Tom Taulli explains, the focus is on smaller businesses. If you are a small business owner, investor or simply would like to learn about small business valuations, you might find BizEquity.com a valuable addition to your toolkit.

Here is our Q&A:

Q: Tom, what's your "elevator pitch"?

If you check out the web, many of the resources on valuation can be tough to understand (you almost need an MBA to understand the finance details). Yet, valuing a company is very important, such as for estate planning, raising capital, the death of an owner, partnership disputes, selling a business and so on.

So, with BizEquity, you can get a rough valuation of your business – with a few clicks. At the same time, you get some valuable trend information about the industry. And, if you want a more refined valuation, there is a form you can fill out.

Q: Why do you focus on small business?

There are anywhere from 25 million to 30 million small businesses in America. For the most part, this is the driving force of job growth and innovation (just look at Google, which started just ten years ago).

However, it can be tough to run a small business nowadays, in light of the regulations, slow growth and credit squeeze. In other words, we believe there's a big need for small business tools.

Q: How do you get the data for all your evaluations?


It comes from well-known sources like D&B, Experian and so on. Although, we are finding that this data can be spotty. So, we are going to add a feature that allows users to rate the data. Moreover, if your valuation is wrong, you might want to check with the credit bureaus. It might be a reason why you are not getting credit or having difficulties with vendors/suppliers.

Q: Do you have any adjusting mechanisms? Evaluations in our volatile days could change rather quickly…

As mentioned above, we will have a rating system. We also plan to have a way for a small business owner to claim his or her business. We think these user interaction features will make the site much, much better.

Q: What is your revenue model?


At this stage, we have no revenue model. Our goal is to build a useful site. Then, as we learn along the way, we'll be adding services and relevant ads.

Q: Who benefits form your services besides investors and companies gearing up for an IPO?

Our focus is not on the large companies. They have CFOs and investment bankers to handle the complexities of valuations.
Instead, we are looking to the small business owner, who wants some knowledge and help. For example, on our blog, we have a feature where you can ask questions to a valuation pro.

Keep in mind that a professional valuation can cost $2,000 to $20,000 or more.

Q: Do you have any strategic alliances or partnerships?


We have recently launched, so we don't have any right now. But, now we are aggressively pursuing partnerships. We think we can be a big help to a variety of organizations, such as business brokers.

Q: What are your next steps?


We want to make the data better and valuations more accurate. This will be a short-term and long-term goal. If not, we will have failed.

We also want to provide more useful content for business owners. For example: what are the ways to improve the valuation of your business?

Q: What do you tell investors in a time when investment banking seems to drop off the planet?

Yea, amazing times, huh? Things have happened so quickly there really hasn't been enough time to let things sink in.

Unfortunately, the fall of the major investment banks and the credit squeeze are going to be big problems for the economy. I can see things protracting for a while.

Thus, for small business owners, it's more important than ever to focus on the key drivers of your business.

At the same time, when there is lots of upheaval, there is usually lots of opportunity.

Tom, thanks very much for taking the time to answer these questions, and Klaus, thanks for helping out with this interview!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:15 AM on September 30, 2008 | Comments (0)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Mark Moseley and Voyeur

Another entry in my series on iPhone app developer interviews. Haven't had a chance to read the others? You can do so through this link: The iPhone App Developer Interview Series. This time I'm talking with Mark Moseley about his slick new Voyeur application to let you watch the public Flickr photo stream...

Q: You wrote Voyeur. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program?

Voyeur was my first foray into anything Mac related for development. I've done .NET and Java in the past, but Objective-C was something new. It probably took me a week or so to get up to speed on the language and another week to get a rough version up and running. It took another week or so to really work out all the bugs in the app. It seems like a lot of apps in the store are "almost" bug-free, but I wanted to make sure that Voyeur was as stable as possible. The app itself is around 1500 lines of code.

Q: Tell us a bit about the application, including your target market and what problem or problems your application solves?

Voyeur is strictly for entertainment. It presents a slideshow of recently posted images from Flickr. The intent is for the user to simply start it up and let it go. I "use" it a lot at work - start some music, switch to Voyeur and start working. It's a nice distraction every now and then to look up and see something strange, funny or interesting. You can also save the image to the device, visit the image's page on Flickr or e-mail a link to anyone in your contact list.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

I'd say about 90% of the SDK is extremely intuitive, well documented and easy to understand. the other 10% of the SDK was a little mysterious to me, but I think that was more of a result of my newness to Mac programming in general. There were very few times during development that I was stuck for more than a few hours on something specific to the SDK. That said, Objective-C took me longer than I thought it would to get used to.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

The process of getting the application in the store was an exercise in patience for sure. I had previously registered with Apple as an individual developer into the program. When I signed up as an individual, I got accepted almost immediately. My business partner and I wanted to launch Voyeur under our LLC, so we had to apply with Apple again for the development program, this time as a company. That approval took around 2 weeks. After that, we had to submit a contract to be able to sell applications - that was another 2ish week wait. During that time we submitted Voyeur as an application. It was bounced back once for a bug (a newbie mistake for sure) after 7 days in review. I fixed the bug and resubmitted and was live about a week later. I really didn't have to demonstrate anything to Apple - I just submitted the binaries and they ran with it.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

This app really relies on the images pulled from Flickr - there isn't much of a UI at all. All the menus are default iPhone SDK menus. The one image we have (the splash screen) and the icons were done by my wife, who's a graphic and web designer in her day job.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

The app is $0.99. To some extent, I wanted to see what people felt was fair for a small app like this. $0.99 is the least you can charge for an application, so that's the price point I chose.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

My partner and I are absolutely interested in writing more iPhone applications. In fact, we have so many ideas for things to write that it's hard to concentrate on a single project. We're both gamers at heart, so we're probably going to concentrate on a game next. Now that I'm more comfortable with the SDK we hope to move it along quickly.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

By day I'm an application architect/programmer for a large corporation. I work exclusively in Microsoft .NET there. It's a challenging job, but no where near as fun as iPhone development :)

Great stuff, Mark. Thanks for sharing this! Are you an iPhone app developer? Then I'd love to hear about your experiences with the development and publication of your application in the iPhone Application Store!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 12:38 PM on September 29, 2008 | Comments (0)

Should the Fed bailout failing corporations like AIG?

As an investor and citizen, I have been following with increasing concern the shenanigans in the financial market. First it was the huge problem with greedy banks and an overextended Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) that had underwritten loans to more and more risky borrowers, gambling that the upside of high-interest-rate loans would offset the tremendous risk of default.

In retrospect, that was a sucker's bet and no surprise that we're seeing financial institutions failing because of their inability to conservatively balance and manage their portfolio.

The demise of Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH), fire sale of Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) and probable demise of American International Group (NYSE: AIG), sidestepped by a massive government bailout, show another facet of the same greed and poor business strategy.

There are a number of problems that got us here, but one big issue is the lack of regulation: strong Federal regulation would have tempered the unbounded greed of these institutions and helped avoid the troubles we now face. But a part of me says that the trouble is really because we're afraid to have a truly free-market economy based on pure capitalism.

I know, you're probably saying "we've never had pure, free-market capitalism in the United States" and I concur. Between tariffs, export controls, market regulation, business practice laws and the RICO laws, there have always been a lot of ropes fettering business practices in this country.

That's a good thing, even though I recall reading books in business school that argued quite vociferously that unfettered capitalism was the only path to world economic stability and, ultimately, world peace. I never bought it, however, because it's predicated on all countries allowing free access to their markets (though some economists have projections of how a free market trumps constrained markets in a global economy. It's just never been borne out).

We all do better and have a better standard of living and more "contentment points" in a strong, healthy, growing economy, so controls and regulations that help us move in that direction are obviously and de facto a good thing. Let's face it, as much as the late 90's might have been the "dot com bubble", it was also a very good time to be in business and I know I enjoyed the largess of the marketplace.

Which is why I find it so interesting that when I read the WSJ headline that Feds Plan $85 Billion Rescue Deal for AIG [sub required] or the Bloomberg report that the government is considering an AIG conservatorship plan, I dislike the notion and feel that if we really were a free market capitalist economy, we'd let the companies fail, knowing that new ones will spring up to replace them, stronger, smarter companies that will avoid these poor management decisions.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bailed out by the government. So was Chrysler, years ago, in a quite hotly debated rescue from mismanagement, Lee Iacocca's hubris, and poor strategic planning. But Enron wasn't bailed out and the Enron investors were left to their own personal financial nightmares.

The rule seems to be that if it's a big enough company or enough people are adversely impacted then the never-empty wallet of the Federal government opens up and billions of taxpayer dollars are allocated to alleviate the impending crisis.

One place we can perhaps assign blame is with President Ronald Reagan, actually. He was the first to have such a deep faith in the free market and a general mistrust of government and federal controls that he restructured the market. We've been in that financially conservative place ever since. Heck, it was President Bill Clinton who signed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), which removed the walls separating banks, securities firms and insurers. Not good.

Since then both Clinton and Bush aggressively promoted home ownership, even for homeowners who couldn't afford it. The magic solution? adjustable rate mortgages that had a low interest rate when the prime rate was low, but could rapidly grow to create unmanageable mortgage payments as the rate went up. Now those high risk subprime loans back almost 40% of private-sector mortgage bonds and that's the root of the financial problem we now face.

Back to the central dilemma, though: should we bail out AIG or not? Should our hard earned dollars paid to the government as taxes be used to prevent these massive corporations from facing the dire consequences of their stupid, myopic actions?

I have to say that, yes, I think that we should. Or at least, we should have some sort of program that helps out those most affected by the demise of these companies. When mortgage holders find that their adjustable rate mortgages prove a nightmare because the rates have gone up, that's one issue, but when a large corporation actively and aggressively markets to these subprime borrowers without fear of consequence, that's very, very bad for the market.

The consequences are what we're feeling today, with a dramatic drop in the financial market, the bankruptcy of Lehman, Federal bailout of AIG, and more to come as the ripples affect other markets and industries. Bailout because too many regular Joes are affected by these failures, but for goodness sake, tighten regulations and fix things so that we can prevent this happening again in the future!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 5:39 PM on September 16, 2008 | Comments (25)

To follow or not to follow, that is the essential Twitter question

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?

A few days ago I sent out a message on Twitter (I'm @DaveTaylor on the service) commenting that I was just a few people shy of 2000 followers, a big milestone as it has occasionally been the top limit of standard Twitter accounts. Someone I didn't know responded thusly:

"@DaveTaylor You are probably not following them. Many of us clean out the non-followers now and again"

Well, that was a bit of a surprise, the implication that the best practice use for Twitter is to automatically follow everyone who follows you? I don't agree, which is clear when you notice that I currently follow 130 people, while I have 2028 followers now. If you're calculating, that means I only follow 6.4% of the people who follow me.

I responded to Jill (kiwichamp) with a question of my own: "That's interesting. I follow less than 10% of the people who follow me. Why do you expect reciprocity?"

Jill's response surprised me:

"cause social media is a two way street -- otherwise it is not social"

As you can imagine, the conversation blossomed from there...

Me: To me it's about stemming the tide of information. I interact with everyone, I follow my friends.

Jill: I would give priority to those who do treat me as a friend -- that's what this latest move towards social mktg is all about

Me: So you wouldn't do business with me because I don't follow you on Twitter? (raises eyebrows) Um, okay.

Jill: How can you trust as a friend when there is not much two way communication?

Me: Ah, but isn't it important to differentiate between "treating you as a friend" and *being friends*? Not geeky, just ethics?

and on and on it went. In fact, Jill has a good point: if your philosophy is to engage with everyone you encounter, to connect to every person you bump into in the digital world, then yes, you should probably follow everyone who follows you. This, of course, is the quantity over quality approach to social media and it's certainly one way to approach things.

As someone with high visibility in the marketplace and industry, however, I have learned to use the opposite approach, of quality over quantity. In fact, I know every single person I follow on Twitter, and would invite all of them to my home for dinner without thinking twice. They are, truly, friends and I know them all personally outside of the digital world too.

I don't think that either approach is better or worse than the other, just different.

But, then again, maybe I'm wrong. To find out, I canvassed my Twitter followers and got some very interesting answers, in no particular order (and some are slightly edited for brevity, mea culpa):


@sizzler_chetan:

You don't follow me as you don't know me well and so there is no necessity for you to follow me. But am following you because I like to be updated with all your tweets.

Reciprocating the follow in Twitter is not necessary.

And it is not helpful, as you would be following a person who is following you but you are not sure who he/she is. So better follow those who you know and like to follow and let others do their job of following.




@SteveOuting

I think everyone can have a slightly different experience with Twitter, so there's no one rule that works for all, such as you have to follow everyone who follows you. If you're a college student and your Twitterverse is strictly friends and family, then you probably will have Follower-Following reciprocity. If you're a journalist with a lot of readers, it's impractical to follow everyone who follows you; you'll probably limit who you follow to your contact network (friends, colleagues, people you've interviewed, met at conferences, etc.).




@freelock

I'm relatively new to this twitter thing, but see no reason to follow all of my followers. Do you follow every blogger who reads your feed? Why is Twitter any different? Tweet what you want, follow tweeters you find interesting. It's so easy to start or stop following, and there are so many different reasons you might want to follow somebody--but nobody should take it personally if they're not followed back.




@RobertFowler

When I first started, I did and wanted to. Several reasons. One is I don't like to be rude or disrespectful, offline or online. Also, just because someone is "new" or does not have a website, does NOT mean they are not worthy etc.

That being said, I have found it is not possible to follow everyone, because I can not realistically keep up with all the tweets. I have ADD like everyone else, lol... Now, I look at the person's profile and website(s) and see if interests me, ie do we have anything in common, do they seem to be into something I have wanted to learn about etc. Obviously, you have to review to make sure it is not a spammer or bot, that is why I do not use the Tweetlater autoresponse function and Manually thank all my followers.




@NextInstinct

You follow people because enough of their tweets really inform or entertain you (and hopefully both), not because they'll follow you back.




@IreneKoehler

I tend to follow more often than not. I’ve been both pleasantly surprised and sorely disappointed once I’ve had the chance to be a part of others’ ongoing twitter streams. People I’ve never met have turned out to be fabulous resources of information and useful nuggets of advice. I had high expectations of the benefits of following others, but found myself drowning in endless tweets of what they’re eating for dinner, how many frappa-whatevers they’re getting at Starbucks every morning and so on. I really don’t need to know this.




@ClayFranklin

I would say it is not important to follow everyone that follows you. I would say it would be nice if you follow everyone that follows you. Unless tweets are not what you want to see on your feed then I always follow.




@GutzyWoman

My answer is NO. When I get follows from a tweeple that doesn't bother to put up a picture or avatar, is obviously promoting a business or opportunity, follows 2,000 people but only 10 follow them back and their tweets are nothing but spam, it only wastes my time and pisses me off.

If the person seems legit, I check out their tweets and who else they follow and check out their website or blog to try to determine if we have anything in common. If so, the decision is easy. If I determine them to be borderline, I'll usually give them the benefit of the doubt. One can always unfollow if necessary.




@bbspress

No -- you shouldn't try to follow everyone who follows you. Your goal should be FOLLOWERS. When you follow someone, their tweets show up in your panel. Follow too many people and you get slammed with tweets. Important ones scroll off too fast. Follow those you WANT to hear from or send and receive direct messages.




@JohnJaworski

I follow people that have something to say that interests me. Follow everyone and you really follow no one. Too much noise!




@Jonathan_Gunson

I always try to reciprocate and follow ... unless they're clearly a badass. Why? Because then folks feel truly part of my 'tribe'. My own Twitter tribe is very tiny right now, but it will grow. This is an increasingly social environment because the personal connection or referral is ever more appreciated in an ocean of deception.


There is no universal answer, but at least with the people who answered my query I think the strategy is clear: follow poeple who you find interesting or want to know better, don't just blindly follow everyone who follows you in Twitter.

But then again, you, dear reader, haven't chimed in yet. What's your opinion?

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:24 AM on September 11, 2008 | Comments (17)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Boris Zhukov and SlovoEd

Another in my continuing series of interviews with iPhone application developers. Boris talks about "SlovoEd", but it's really a series of different dictionaries, as you'll learn. I highlight the terrific English/Spanish in the graphic below, but encourage you to search through their offerings for many different choices. To read the full set of interviews, please click on: The iPhone App Developer Interviews. If you're a developer and would like to participate, please drop me a note via the contact form on this site!

Q: You wrote SlovoEd dictionary. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program?

Development takes about 2 month and SlovoEd consist of about 30,000 lines of code.

Q: Tell us a bit about the application, including your target market and what problem or problems your application solves?

SlovoEd dictionary line for iPhone/iPod Touch contains 110+ dictionaries for 30 languages The most reliable linguistic dictionary content from world leading linguistic companies: Merriam-Webster, Oxford, DUDEN, PONS – to name a few and Paragon’s advanced SlovoEd dictionary engine have been combined to bring premium traditional dictionary content to iPhone users directly on the mobile device screen. Paragon's dictionaries under the SlovoEd engine allow iPhone users to take advantage of the iPhone's superb user interface, easy-to-use on-screen keyboard and many other device features, which work together to increase look-up speed even more over paper
dictionaries.

No Internet connection is required – simply download the dictionary once and use it on the iPhone/iPod Touch without any additional expenses. Audio modules contain nearly 40,000 live voice pronunciations prerecorded by native speakers, and having them directly on the iPhone helps to improve pronunciation and ease the mastery of a new language. The “History� feature shows the last 15 translated words, and the “Cross-Lookup� feature is an easy check of language comprehension.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

For our purposes SDK mostly is OK, but few things works different against our expectations, in one case native(Cocoa) functions were dramatically slowly compared to ANSI.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

Apple approval has taken some time, something about 1-2 weeks. We still have some difficulties with Apple & iTunes team approval of our applications (it takes too much time), but hope, that these will be solved soon. We are sure, our applications were tested to comply with Apple requirements, but we have not done any demonstrations - we only had to upload our titles to iTunes Connect backend.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

All our graphics develop our in-house designer.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

We have different prices for our dictionaries - $9.99, $14,99 and $24,99 depending on dictionary edition (Compact, Classic, Deluxe). Price point has been chosen according our understanding of mobile dictionaries market and iPhone apps average price. August sales show, that we have made right decision

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

We are more than inspired to write more applications – we have made a good start and now planning to keep on our development for iPhone/iPod Touch devices. First, we would like to finish all our activities concerning dictionary development and its submission to App Store.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

We are full-time iPhone application developer.

Great stuff, as always. Thanks for your informative answers, Boris. Need help with your iPhone? I got ya covered with that too, I have lots of free iPhone help online.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:24 AM on September 10, 2008 | Comments (0)

Jason Cormier of Room214 on the basics of social networking

The following are my notes from tonight's presentation. I apologize that they're a bit rough and I didn't include all the links I should, but I hope you'll find this interesting and helpful reading.

Jason Cormier, co-founder of Room 214 gave a presentation on the basics of social networking and social media for The Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group. It was, as you might expect, a bit basic, but Jason did a nice job of giving attendees an overview of this new space, which was - rather surprisingly - new to at least 20% of the approximately 40 people in the room.

Before we started, however, RMIUG exec Josh Zapin asked the audience a few warm-up questions: how many people use social networking for marketing? (answer, less than 30%) How many people think that it's just a buzz and not anything real? (2-3 people raised their hands)

Then we jumped into Jason's presentation.

The premises of social media and social networking are that

• Markets are Conversations (from, of course, The Cluetrain Manifesto) (markets are dynamic, ongoing conversations where fluctuations in credibility and visibility are common)
• Word of Mouth Spreads (monologue has become dialog)
• Search Engines are Media (keep them updated and attracted to what's relevant)
• Content is Still King (but the kingdom only grows if the king is relevant, dedicated and available) -- the point: just creating an account doesn't do much for you: you have to update the content!
The return on investment and measurement of how social media programs can be successful tends to weed out "the clowns" and leave the professionals. There must be some accountability for corporations. Jason relates clients saying "I know because we spent our money, I see metrics and a return, or I don't want to pay for it at all."

At this point there was an interesting question from the audience: What metrics are established in the industry?

The short answer from Jason: they're not very well established. The Association for Downloadable Media is trying to get standards in place for things such as the value of a podcast. An ROI that everyone can agree to. If we all abide by those standards then it'll help the industry grow.

Next, he explained how social media is mainstream, and that there are 80 million blogs "and we do know that most are garbage", as Jason mused, and that 69% of all social media users have participated in user generated content (leaving comment on blog, etc). Live prime time TV viewing is also down 10% year over year.

There are four main pieces of social media:

• The Aggregators - examples: friendfeed, flock, plaxo
• The Connectors: LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace
• The Feeders; YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps
• The Publishers: Twitter, Jaiku, YouTube, Flickr, Digg
As an aside, we talked about the importance of RSS as part of your strategy, with a focus on how Google has evolved to not just use Googlebot's Web scraper as input, but also scan millions of RSS feeds too. As Jason says, Google's latest strategy (e.g., input from Googlebot + RSS) confirms that you should be looking to RSS as the future of your own marketing and communications efforts.

Another question from the audience was: Can you explain RSS more?

Answer: It's "extensible markup language", a structure that provides a news feed. An example: the difference between a blog and a web page on which someone is keeping a journal is really the RSS feed. It's the idea that you can "subscribe" to receive an update to content. It's a one-way update and completely anonymous, unlike an email newsletter.

Stepping back, social media objects are:

• Listening: build sentiment measures and listen to the larger web - tools include Google Reader, Collective Intellect, Filtrbox, BuzzLogic, Google Alerts. He used the example of how Anthony Bourdain of The Travel Channel said "bitches" on a recent show, and now TTC is monitoring the online buzz, which has much discussion about his profanity.
• Talking: Build a content plan to speak about the overall space, leverage blogging, podcasting, twitter, etc, learn how NOT to pitch bloggers. You need to "give a little" first. Room214 has the 80/20 rule: 80% of Digg'd articles should NOT be about the client or vendor.
• Energizing: add social bookmark links to your most important pages, offer embeddable players, spread good ideas with reblogging, bookmarking, vote them up at social sites but be a good citizen
The reality is, you need to meet people where they are. If there's a facebook group, you need to be on facebook. Anthony Bordain has 30,000+ fans on Facebook, even though he doesn't DO anything about it. It'd be a mistake for The Travel Channel to say "no, all content needs to be on our site"

Next up were some thoughts on planning your social media campaign:

• Identifying Options and Requirements
• Identifying and Establishing your Baseline
• ID/Prioritization of Distribution Channels
• Audience and Influencer Identification
• Assets (content, people, web properties)
• Tactics (blogger outreach, video widgets)
• Programming / Integration Measurement
• Response Protocols

Speaking of measurement, we saw both qualitative and quantitative measures that can be applied to social networking and social media:


Qualitative metrics relevance rankings sentiment sentiment vs. competitors performance vs influencers share of voice influencer rankings % of influencer's engaged theme impact

Quantitative metrics Total conversations activity levels (# of postings/reach) total inbound blog links search visibility virality authority installs and views friends and registrations

Jason then showed some examples of the great work that they do at Room 214:

• Blog, produced by Room 214: "Bernina Blog" -- he highlighted the "Subscribe via Email" in addition to RSS button.
• Sample podcast: alltel racing -- used to highlight that you can subscribe with an "rss" feed OR click on the "iTunes" button. Explained that on the page that the "iTunes" button is clicked on more frequently than the "rss" button and that, unsurprisingly, more people are also clicking on the "play" button than the "download" link.
• Sample widget: a mockup of a very slick widget for the Denver Broncos -- can reside on MySpace, Orkut, Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, iGoogle, etc. As he said, wouldn't it be neat if you could have the Broncos schedule, headlines from bloggers, etc, in centralized widget?
• A very cool demonstration of keyword-based RSS feeds that they built for MTV (they called it "roll/mash your own feed"), but to date, MTV hasn't actually implemented it yet. That's dumb on their part, this is a very slick idea.
• The Facebook page they created for The Travel Channel
• Sample Twitter profile for Anthony Bourdain, who, in the screen shot, has 392 following and 444 followers [today he has 525 following him and 740 followers, FYI] Worth noting is that the Twitter account is "NoReservations, not "Anthony Bourdain", and it's second person, about Tony. Sample Tweets: "Saudi Arabia episode on at 10pm EST." and "Tony heads to Saudi Arabia tonight in the FAN-atic casting call winner. You don't want to miss it: http://tinyurl.com/2lmlra"
During this same period, we also talked about the example of local Colorado business EventVUE and how he tracks occurrences of the phrase "conference registration" on Twitter, then personally connects with people and says that he offers those services. He's seeing a 90% response rate (albeit not always a positive response)

A question from the audience: From a marketing psychology viewpoint, what needs are being met with these social media services?

Answer: at a very basic level, people want to be a part of something. They want to feel like they are contributing, or connected. Feeling connected inspires them to contribute. There are a lot of public relations firms, etc., who have been busted for adding cheesy marketing messages on blogs. Then they're caught by the rest of the community who polices their own community. Used example of a client company who had an employee from an ad agency who astroturfed (masqueraded as someone else to plant fake comments). It was like "blood and sharks". Blogger did research, found the real name, and posted an entry "I hate deceptive marketers" and the employee was fired the same day.

There were some additional questions, but I'd run out of battery by that point. Jason did a great job and the audience very much appreciated his knowledge and candor.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:34 PM on September 9, 2008 | Comments (1)

Live Tech Support: An easy business to launch, or a tough one?

With great enthusiasm, a young man named Bill Egert contacted me asking about reciprocal linking between his LiveTechs.com site and my own Ask Dave Taylor.com. I rarely reciprocally link (among the reasons is that it doesn't help either site with SEO in most cases) but I was intrigued by his idea of a live tech support business and arranged to interview him to learn more about his business...

Q: Tell us about your day job, to start off. What do you do, where do you work, and what's that experience like?

My day job. I'm an IT consultant for a private firm in Central New Jersey. Our demographic is mostly Catholic churches and schools or the "ecclesiastical" demographic. I've been there for about one year now and despise it. Don't get me wrong, I've formed some pretty awesome relationships with the parish workers and even a few deacons and priests. It's my boss who gets to me...

Q: What's your background in tech? What credentials or certifications do you have?

I went to the Chubb Institute in 2005 , and have more or less worked tech intern positions (my church, a skincare company) until I landed my job in 2007. I have my CCNA, my MCP, my Network+, and my A+.

Q: What motivated you to create LiveTechs.com and how is the business structured?

LiveTechs.com was largely motivated when I read the book "The Four Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferris. I realized the untapped potential to make money on the internet. A little brain storming is all it took, and it wasn't long before I hired a web designer create the website.

I should actually mention now that after some research, we are going to be making the switch from LiveTechs.com to ITHelpDesk.net. ItHelpDesk.net is a keyword rich domain that is very relevent to what we do: provide business' with outsourced IT support. I have a 301 redirect from LiveTechs.com to keep my link popularity =)

Also, LiveTechs or ITHelpDesk.net is now targeting the business sector. Let's face it, businesses are just ready to spend more.


Bill Egert, Founder, LiveTechs
I privately contract a call center in Dallas Texas and am in a long term agreement with them currently. We provide the client:

- An American, 24/7 call center
- Their own 800 number
- Access to a database of client/customer information
- A unique "brand name" experience where our service simply runs silently in the background.

We are in talks with a large online university and a website for Independent films. SLA's have already been sent and we are close to sealing the deal on these.

Q: How many other people are involved in your business?

My two close friends, Jon Macapodi and Scott Basgaard.

Scott is innovative and constantly comes up with great ideas in terms of what would make our site more appealing. He's also quite saavy in HTML/PHP.

Jon is excellent with the clients. He was the one who single-handedly landed this deal with the online college. He's ultra-professional, great on the phones, and an excellent communicator.

Q: Walk us through a typical transaction. How do customers find you? How do you connect with them and manage their computer to diagnose and fix it?

Customers have typically found us on Adwords thus far. (90% of our calls are people that think we are Dell tech support, Linksys tech support, AOL tech support, you name it. The content network hasn't been doing us much good. I'm just getting my feet wet with Google Adwords, and I believe what's really been causing my problem has been "broad" phrase matching.)

When we connect with a legit customer - we provide them an initial quote. If accepted, we draw up an SLA and send to the client. An initial training period takes place where reps from my call center in Dallas and myself get familiar with the client's systems and proprietary software. We then implement a base/per incident price structure: A base price is offered which includes X amount of incidents, followed by a per incident premium.

Q: How are you marketing and promoting your business, and how's it going?

Adwords and pay-per-call. It sucks. However, IT Help Desk is a targeted phrase that gets about 2000 hits a month so it shouldn't be hard to get rankings there. Also there's less competition for the SEO phrase "help desk" then there is for the term "tech support".

Thanks for your candor, Bill. Dear reader, if you have a problem and need live tech support, why not give their biz a shot and see how it works out? Then come back here and report to us!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 10:59 AM on September 6, 2008 | Comments (0)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Brandon Bogle, Bill Trost and Koi Pond

There are a lot of very cool applications in the iPhone application store, but few offer such a delightful reaction from people than the simple, but beautiful Koi Pond app. You kind of have to see it to appreciate what they've done, but I'm really glad to have Brandon Bogle (the programmer) and Bill Trost (the designer) share their experience writing this slick little application....

Q: You wrote Koi Pond, How long did it take you?

[Brandon Bogle] We started some early shared development when the iPhone SDK was initially released, so we were somewhat familiar with the development process, which ultimately saved us some time.

Unfortunately, we soon realized we weren't going to be one of the luck few accepted into the beta developer program (which meant we couldn't develop using the actual hardware), so we put iPhone app development on hold. Development on Koi Pond was started just after the app store went live.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

[Brandon Bogle] It was pretty straightforward, even having no prior experience with the Cocoa framework or the Objective-C language. The Cocoa framework itself is very complete with good documentation, and Apple provides enough sample applications and instructional material that we really didn't have any problems at all.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

[Brandon Bogle] Once again, we had no problems submitting our app. We were a little surprised there was not a definitive submission checklist detailing what you can and can't do, best practices, etc...

We did some basic profiling, checking for memory leaks, things like that. The approval process itself is still a complete mystery. Koi Pond was in the queue for about a week until it was approved for sale.

We didn't receive any feedback during or after the submission process other than the email notification that it had been approved.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

[Bill Trost] Kurt Klockau created all the graphics for Koi Pond. Kurt is a very talented, experienced, illustrator/digital artist and is a core member of The Blimp Pilots team.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

[Bill Trost] Koi Pond sells for $.99. We just thought that was a fair price for a quality mobile application. We really didn't want price to be a barrier to purchase. We hoped that Koi Pond was going to be an application that iPhone owners would want to show off to their friends.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

[Bill Trost] Most definitely. We have several in the pipeline, some more ambitious than others, but we are taking our time with them and can't really talk about them quite yet.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

[Bill Trost] We are professional PC/Console game developers by day, working for Trion World Network Inc. in San Diego. We love what we do there, working on the cutting edge of server-based gaming. We all just totally dig our iPhones and thought it would be a fun hobby to make applications that really show off its unique capabilitiies.

We are totally stoked that Koi Pond seems to have struck a chord with so many people.

Thanks a bunch, guys, for this interview. Even at $0.99, I have a sense that your hobby of writing iPhone applications is starting to pay off too as you deliver popular, high quality applications.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:28 AM on September 5, 2008 | Comments (2)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Michael Alvarez and Showtimes

Another entry in the iPhone application developer interview series, this one's a favorite of mine because it's about a movie-related iPhone app that I use regularly and because both Michael and I are such movie buffs. As always, please feel free to spread the word about this interview series...

Q: You wrote Showtimes. How long did it take you?

Showtimes is one of Avantar's most popular app, and the #1 downloaded free application, which finds your local theaters and movie showtimes with a single tap of your finger. My developers wrote it and it took a team of one designer and three developers to design the interface, setup the servers, find a good host, manage the data, and write the application. It took one month just to write the application, not including everything else stated above. After launch there was still a lot of development needed optimize the app and to add new functionality.

How many lines of code is the program?

Showtimes consists of 8,000 lines of Objective-C.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK?

It was hard to learn it, especially because the it was difficult to search the documentation for desired topics. Once learned, it's easy to use. The interface builder also is not very intuitive, but once you learn the tricks it's a easy to use.

We were able to solve every problem we encountered, but for the most part some there was a lot of frustration with the documentation. We are sure the documentation will get better now that there are so many developers providing feedback on the matter.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval.

There are two approval processes you have to go through before submitting an app.

1) Applying to become an iPhone Developer. All you have to do is fill out a simple form to apply. What was hard was not knowing what criteria we were being judged by for the approval process. We assume that having had a Mac account for years helped, and also having a website that explained clearly what we do.

We were one of the few to get approved before the launch of the App Store so we consider ourselves very fortunate because it gave us an immediate leg up on our competition.

2) Once we were approved as iPhone Developers, submitting a new program is fairly simple. It took us a week to get our apps approved.

Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book?

Not really. I don't think it's possible to have two programs running at the same time. Some of our apps like Yellow Pages, AirYell, and Munch don't access the Address Book information, but they do allow you to add a new contact to the Address Book and we had no problem with the approval of that feature.

What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

I believe that what they really look for is that your app is as bug free as possible. If the person reviewing the app finds a bug or that it does something out of the ordinary it will be rejected.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

All were created in house by our creative team. We have years of experience in web usability and optimization, so this helped to get the look-and-feel and usability just how we wanted it.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

Showtimes a free application. Our intent is to ask for donations for that app, but haven't set that up yet. Our paid applications are OneTap Movies ($1.99 USD), Yellow Pages ($.99 USD), and Munch ($.99 USD). Since we submitted these before the App Store went live, we had no competitors to analyze so we picked a number that we though would be supported by iPhone and iPod touch users.

For future applications we now have a lot of applications, and their popularity rankings, we can study before setting a price.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

Definitely! We don't disclose future launches, but what I can tell you is that soon you will see a very useful application for college students launching shortly and hopefully a few new games. Not only that, we are committed in making each one of our applications the very best, so we constantly improve them (based on user feedback) and launch new releases as soon as they are ready.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

Avantar, the company, concentrates solely on developing iPhone apps, but we are also looking into developing for other mobile platforms like Google's Android.

Very interesting and candid responses, thanks! If you would like to learn more about iPhone application development, please read the entire iPhone App Developer Interview series. Need help with your iPhone? I got ya covered with that too, I have lots of free iPhone help online and, finally, if you're into movies like Michael and I, you'll want to be following @FilmBuzz, my film alter ego, on Twitter.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:09 AM on September 4, 2008 | Comments (0)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) training via DVD. For free.

I've been working with the Stompernet team for years now and have grown to both like and respect the group involved. From Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon to Dan Thies, David Bullock, Jerry West, Ed Dale, Don Crowther and Sherman Hu, I am happy to count these folks as good friends.

Further, when I started getting involved in the world of Internet-based marketing and sales I thought "isn't optimizing your site for search engines kind of like playing games and tricking the search systems?"

That's when I learned about the amusingly named black hat and white hat efforts you can use to help your site, your content, your product and your services be more visible, more findable in the search engines. "White hat", of course, is 'good guy' stuff, and it's basically just applying best practices as suggested by Google and other major search engines (search for "google webmaster seo guidelines" to see what I'm talking about, if you'd like.

"Black hat" SEO techniques are where I - and many other people - draw the line. It's when you play various tricks and use stealth techniques to artificially boost your relevance for a certain keyword of set of keywords. I know that there are people in the Stomper team who know this stuff, but it's definitely not how we collectively teach people to gain the benefit of being more easily found by potential customers.

The Deal: Stomping the Search Engines 2

It's exactly because I know the people behind Stompernet that I am so flabbergasted about the offer we're introducing today at noon Pacific: The entire DVD training course for the brand new Stomping the Search Engines 2 along with a copy of the premier issue of The Net Effect, our new print magazine on SEO and online business best practices, are both available for free.

No kidding. No tricks. No "request a refund" stuff. Go to the Stomping the Search Engines 2 page, watch the amusing video of Brad and Andy sharing their vision, read the deal, and sign up to receive this pretty darn sweet offer on the spot.

The real story? The real story is The Net Effect, and I'll speak as a contributing author that it's chock full of very interesting and useful articles on how to grow and expand your business, with action items and pragmatic help. Heck, have a very close look at the cover when you get it and you'll burst out laughing when you realize how I figure in that image too. :-)

All you have to do is try the magazine, and the first issue of the publication (with a highly amusing cover too!) is free too. You don't like it? Cancel it. No sweat, no problem.

But I suspect you won't. I suspect that you'll find it an extraordinary value, especially when you think about how much even the mediocre newbie SEO "consultants" charge to share even a fraction of the knowledge we'll send out each month.

'Nuf said, I hope. Really, there's no reason not to sign up and get the terrific DVD training materials and the premier issue of The Net Effect free.

Learn more and take action: Sign up for Stomping the Search Engines 2 today!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:44 AM on September 3, 2008 | Comments (0)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Arthur Kinsolving and Motion X-Poker

Q: You wrote Motion X-Poker. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program?

Fullpower MotionX technology platform has been in the works for several years. It includes three core components that are part of MotionX-Poker. So it took 6 months for a team of six to build MotionX-Poker thanks to the MotionX core technology platform.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

We are very impressed with the SDK. There are a few incremental improvements that would be nice such as the ability to run in the background and turn the screen on and off for better power management. It's a great development platform.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

Apple has been great to work with. Given the magnitude of the App Store project and its complexity, we are very impressed.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

Everything that Fullpower does is designed and developed in Santa Cruz, California. Technology, graphics and sound.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price?

MotionX-Dice is free and MotionX-Poker is $4.99 in the US. Apple helped us get to that price point.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

Yes we have several more applications in the works. There is a sequel to MotionX-Poker of course and some really cool new games and applications all designed around the MotionX technology platform.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

We are all part of Fullpower and the iPhone is one of the key platforms that we are foucsed on. MotionX is the leading technology brand for motion-enabled mobile devices.

Cool stuff. Can't wait to see the sequel to the amazing Motion-X Poker game! Thanks for answering these questions, Arthur.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:26 AM on September 2, 2008 | Comments (2)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Tucker Roth and EccoNote

Another in the continuing series of discussions with iPhone app developers here on the Business Blog @ Intuitive.com. I encourage you to check out some of the earlier interviews too. This one, with Tucker Roth, is a bit different because he just jumped into the full set of topics rather than following the Q&A script. I hope it'll mix things up nicely.

I wrote EccoNote, and EccoNote Pro, voice recording apps, allowing you to make note (or whatever) recordings via the microphone. I was startled that the iPhone didn't already have this functionality, and wanted it for myself. I started out developing this application long before the App Store was launched, but didn't devote much time to the application during the initial phase. Just didn't have the time. I then saw, in the App Store, that some other folks had done recording apps. I had a choice to make: forget about developing this app, or forge on and complete it. I really feel that I could do a good little recorder, and so I decided to complete it, and post it for all to see.

The rest of the answers to the questions will concern themselves with EccoNote Pro. Took roughly 100 hours to get it the point where it's at now. It's written, of course, in Object C, the only language one can write iPhone apps for now.

First of all, you should know that I come from a background in development on the Mac. I have worked for Quark, Inc. as a programmer and manager of programmers for several years, and have worked after that in Objective C on the Mac for other companies. Apple's iPhone Dev Kit and tools are very much like what they, Apple, have been putting out for Mac Developers for years. Having said this, there were several areas where I had to learn new concepts and how to deal with them. For example, the iPhone is obviously much smaller, so the whole UI paradigm changes. Where you might use a menu, you need to use a 'pick list'....etc. So there was some real learning to do about the various new UI related changes.

Regarding the Application Store: it is relatively straight-forward to get your app up there. There are a lot of little logistical hoops to jump through (put this ID in this box, put that ID in that box...etc). But, as long as you follow the steps, you can get your app up there. It really works. The only hard parts to application submission to Apple are the lack of feedback, and the waiting. Once you submit your app, it's like dropping it into a black box. You just wait and wait for 'your baby' to get published.

I did develop all of the graphics myself. Although, I must admit, EccoNote hasn't required that much in the way of artistic creativity.

I put EccoNote out for free to begin with because I didn't feel that it had quite a rich enough feature set. First off, I noticed that a lot more people downloaded the free application than I had anticipated. On the order of thousands in the first couple of days. So I worked very hard to put more features into the application to bring it to a place where I thought it worthy of a price-tag. Although there are/were many voice recorders at the time, I felt that adding the ability to FTP your recordings was worth it. So I priced it at the lower 99 cents, and uploaded it. I have since been adding features... and those will be free upgrades to those that have bought the app.

I would love to continue developing other applications for the iPhone. The iPhone is an amazing piece of technology, both from a hardware and software standpoint. However, development is always very time consuming, and I do have a day job. I work as a programmer at Thought Equity Motion, the world's leader in providing access to high quality film, music, and video content.

Thanks for your valuable input here, Tucker! I have to say that I am finding this entire sequence of events quite enlightening. And you, dear reader, while you're enjoying these interviews please don't forget to check out my extensive free iPhone help over on Ask Dave Taylor.com too!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:50 AM on September 1, 2008 | Comments (7)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Keith Shepherd and Imangi

I hope you're enjoying the iPhone app developer interview series, dear reader! I've had a lot of fun learning more about the experience of developing a program for what's probably the hottest delivery platform around! This time we have a highly polished game written by a professional iPhone app developer, Imangi, written by software developer Keith Shepherd...

Q: You wrote Imangi. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program?

The first release of Imangiâ„¢ was developed in about a month and half with one senior software developer working full time 40-60hrs a week. This release was around 2000 lines of Objective C code. This includes everything from learning objective C and getting up to speed with the iPhone SDK API to writing the actual game code, developing the graphics, testing, and polishing everything for release.

Q: Tell us a bit about the application, including your target market and what problem or problems your application solves?

Imangi is a unique word puzzle game that challenges your vocabulary and spatial reasoning skills. Some people have described it as playing Scrabble or Boggle on a Rubik's cube. Our main goal in creating Imangi was to develop a fun and original game that would mesh beautifully with the iPhone's touch technology. Imangi accomplishes this by combining a brand new word puzzle concept with a unique piece sliding motion.

The ultimate goal of Imangi is to create the highest scoring arrangement of words possible. Players accomplish this by sliding rows and columns of letters on a 6x8 Imangi board to form words. Words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. We found the game dynamics to be very natural for the iPhone and the sliding motion adds a new layer of complexity to traditional crossword puzzlers. Many combinations of words are possible for each game, and Imangi is sure to be challenging and fun for puzzlers of all ages.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

The iPhone Software Development Kit is a dream to work with. Prior to working on Imangi, our professional experience was primarily with Java, C++, and C. We had never done any work with Objective C or the iPhone APIs. There was a bit of a learning curve, but the documentation and example code that Apple provides with the SDK are outstanding. We were able to get a basic working prototype built and running on this new platform in about a week.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

We submitted the final Imangi software about a week prior to the opening of the App Store. The submission also includes all of the marketing materials that the end user will see in the App Store (High resolution icon, screenshots, application description, etc). Our application was approved and available for the grand opening of the store.

We don't really have any visibility into what takes place in the review process, so I can't really comment on that.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

The look-and-feel and graphics for Imangi were all created in-house.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

Imangi is currently on sale for $3.99. Prior to the opening of the store, we had very little information on how other similar applications would be priced or what prices the market would bear. The only price points that we had were the products announced at the Apple World Wide Developers' Conference.

We knew that Super Monkey Ball would sell for $9.99 and we decided that any price under $5 would be a fair price for our game. We decided to go with $3.99 and after the store opened we were able to compare our price to others. The price still seemed fair, and perhaps even a bit low compared to other apps. We decided to keep the price, and we've had quite a few customers comment on what a great value Imangi is for the price.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

Absolutely! We are currently working on a major update to Imangi, which we hope to release sometime in the next month. This will be a free update to all of our existing customers and will include the following:

1) Speed Imangi - A timed version of our puzzle.
2) Daily Challenge - A new Imangi puzzle will be available every day for each language we support. This puzzle will be the same for everyone in the world. You can play and submit your score to the online leader board as many times as you would like within the 24hr window.
3) Friend Challenge - Challenge a friend or a group of friends to an Imangi puzzle.
4) Online High Scores - You will have the ability to submit your score for any completed puzzle to our online leader board.
5) Internationalization - We are planning to release Imangi in additional languages.

We plan on releasing a free trial version of the game as well.

We have a number of other titles in the works, but I can't comment on any of them yet at this time.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

Full-time iPhone Application Developer.

Doesn't Keith make this sound fun? :-) Thanks for your candor and for sharing your experience with us, Keith. And a final tip: if you're still learning about your iPhone, my companion Q&A site has tons of free iPhone help for your edification.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:01 AM on August 29, 2008 | Comments (0)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Eliza Block and "2 Across"

Another installment in the iPhone App Developer Spotlight series, this time it's a young woman who is also busy working on her graduate degree in philosophy (of all things), an inspiring example for other female coders who are thinking about the opportunity presented by the App Store...

Q: You wrote 2 Across. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program?

It took about 4 months to get it ready for the initial release, and since then I've done another 2 months' work on improvements and updates, and it's still a work in progress. It's a little over 10,000 lines of code, and written in Objective C.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

Yes, I found it pretty straightforward to get up to speed with the SDK. The documentation provided by Apple is excellent. There were gaps in functionality for the initial release of the SDK, but as it evolved they got filled in and in its current incarnation, it's quite complete. There are still a few "known issues" lingering that hinder functionality, but you run into them very rarely.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

My app was accepted three days after I originally submitted it. No demonstrations were required; I just submitted the binary and it was quickly approved. I have no idea what is involved in the approval process; I've heard stories about apps being sent back repeatedly, but I don't know on what grounds. All of my apps and updates have been approved within a week, and on the first try.


Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

I did it all myself. But once my app was selected by Apple to be "featured" on the iTunes store, I asked a graphic designer friend, Jason Ramirez, to make a nicer looking graphic for the little poster they put up.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

My app costs $5.99, but I also recently released a free version to let people try it out. I settled on $5.99 because $9.99 seems like the de facto upper limit for the app store. Apps priced at $9.99 or above get a lot of negative reviews from people who seem to spend their time giving 2-star ratings to apps they view as too expensive, without even trying them first. I wanted to avoid falling victim to this, and also to encourage people who don't already do a lot of crosswords to make an impulse purchase.

I'm pleased with the decision; the app is selling very well, and has a fantastic user-approval rating.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

Yes, it's been a great experience! I have another app in mind that I'm planning to write together with Eric Maland, the author of pTerm. It will be an attempt to popularize a really awesome kind of logic puzzle that isn't yet well known. I don't want to say more about it because I don't want to get scooped!

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

I'm not a full-time programmer (although I've been doing it full time for the last few months). I'm a graduate student getting my PhD in philosophy. I'm about a year away from finishing the degree. But this has been such a great experience that I'm seriously considering leaving academia to do some kind of programming full-time.

Thanks for sharing your great experience and enthusiasm, Eliza! As a reminder, if you're still getting your arms around using the iPhone my companion Q&A blog has tons of free iPhone Help too!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 8:47 AM on August 28, 2008 | Comments (0)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Barry Schwartz and Siddur

Another in my continuing iPhone App Developer Spotlight series, brought to you by The Business Blog @ Intuitive.com

Q: You wrote Siddur. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program? Written in what language?

Objective C, using the Cocoa. It took us about two weeks to launch with limited features, but we are currently on our fourth week of development. It is a lot of time, if I had to guess, 200 - 300 hours, so far. The lines of code, about 9,000 so far, specifically 1164 header file lines 7378 implementation lines.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

It was a bit difficult to get started, but once you get to learn all the rules, it moves smoothly. There is a lack of documentation out there, since it is so new. But after working threw it, it gets much easier. We are much faster at coding this now.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

This might have been the most stressful part of the project. We first submitted our developer application under our company, RustyBrick. But it just went into the queue, so Ronnie, the co-founder of RustyBrick, decided to try submitting a new application to Apple, as an individual. We were approved right away. So then we uploaded our application to the iTunes Connect area and noticed that we had to wait for Apple to approve the app. So we waited, the wait felt like it was forever, but it was just 4 or so days until we got a rejection notice, due to a feature that was missing. So we immediately added the feature and resubmitted it.

About four days after that, it was approved. But no, the app did not make it to the iTunes Store, it was on hold due to Apple having to approve our legal contracts. Two days after the app was approved, Apple approved the legal documents and it finally went onto the iTunes store. It was a very stressful process and we emailed and called Apple, at least 5 times, to urge them to hurry, but it did not help.

The issue then was adding upgrades. The people who downloaded the app, wanted more. So we released a much richer version, submitted it to iTunes connect and it was rejected about four days later. This time due to a document saying, "iPhone Siddur," as opposed to "Siddur on the iPhone." We corrected it, resubmitted and four days later it went live. People were ecstatic, they loved the new features.

Now that people are happy, we are less stressed about waiting on Apple to approve the next releases. We submit new versions often and keep our customers up to date on what we are doing.

We have two spots where we talk about this, with detailed info on what we submitted to Apple and when. We also have an active groups area for for feedback too.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract
with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

We did everything internally. We do web design and software, so we have a staff to facilitate the branding and design of the app and logo.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

We charge $9.99, we wanted to price it very competitively. There is nothing like this out there yet, but similar products for the Palm device run closer to $30 or more and have less features. We didn't build it for the money, but rather for the community. If we make money on it, great - but that is not our goal with this specific application.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

Yes, we have built out a few more Jewish apps, including Tehilim and Tefilah Pack. We plan on doing more Jewish apps and we have some cool ideas for generic apps any iPhone user can use.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

I run a web development shop in RustyBrick. Although iPhone dev is not our full time thing, we do think this will pick up and we might make a division just for it. I also write about search, search engines and search marketing.

Very interesting, thanks for your candor and participation, Barry!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:48 AM on August 27, 2008 | Comments (0)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Ben Smith and Heap Dashboard

This is another entry in the iPhone Application Developer Spotlight series here at the Business Blog @ Intuitive.com. I hope you find it interesting and enlightening.

Q: You wrote Heap Dashboard. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program? Written in what language?

It took about three days to write Heap Dashboard. 2526 lines of code. All iPhone apps are written in Objective-C.

Q: Tell us a bit about the application, including your target market and what problem or problems your application solves?

Heap CRM provides a central location to store everything related to your customers, potential customers and past customers. It also has automated systems that help with communication with customers throughout the sales process and beyond. You can then improve your sales process over time as Heap tells you what's been effective in the past.

Heap Dashboard solves the "offline" problem for mobile users of Heap. While our iPhone web app for Heap is full featured and fast, Internet service isn't everywhere. And really the most important data that a sales agent needs is the contact info, and most recent conversations of the prospect. Which is exactly the data the Heap Dashboard stores offline. You can also create a message immediately and have it sync back to the main service when you get Internet access again.

Q: Where did the name "Heap" come from?

I was trying to give people the impression that there was a lot of ways to get data into Heap and it was ok to save information in a somewhat disorganized manner. One of the reasons (if not the primary reason) CRMs fail for companies is that people don't want to enter data into them. So Heap is really focused on giving the user a whole bunch of ways to get data into it. And sometimes that data isn't in the right area or isn't saved in a category, etc. In addition to systems that automatically detect relationships, detect different types of data, etc; Heap has a search systems that I would put up against anyone: heap find.

Which brings us back to the idea that as long as you get it in there, you'll be able to find it. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

The SDK is fine (in fact quite well documented), but I already knew Objective-C. I spent way more time fighting to get into the developer program (and the contract/approval process) so I could release the app.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

There wasn't any list of requirements that I had to meet. My app was approved once it was looked at by somebody. It's just a matter of getting someone to look at it. People say there is a big line to get approved, but that's not right. Because a line would work on a FIFO (first in, first out) method. The app store approval process seems to work randomly.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

Heap Dashboard is a productivity app, so I just used the built in interface elements so that it matches the rest of the apps.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

It's free. It's an "alternative interface" to our web based Heap CRM (customer relationship manager) product which we do charge for.

Pricing was never a decision. We just charge for the core web app [you can learn more about Heap CRM at wbpsystems.com --DT], all the things that connect to it we give away.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

We have a number of things in the pipeline for Heap CRM and our other web app, Torch Project Management. The next iPhone app will be Torch Dashboard.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

My primary focus is on improving Heap and Torch.

Thanks, Ben, for your insight on your own experience with the iPhone application development process!

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:49 AM on August 26, 2008 | Comments (1)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Deepak Mantena and Chores, Wordy, Fright and Gratuity

This is another entry in the iPhone Application Developer Spotlight series here at the Business Blog @ Intuitive.com. This one's fun because Deepak has already had a burst of productivity and has four applications of his own in the iPhone App store! I hope you find it interesting and enlightening.

Q: You wrote a bunch of apps for the iPhone. How long did it take you? How many lines of code are each program?

I've been planning and thinking about Chores in some form or another since September of 2007, before the SDK was even announced. I thought of the other applications (Wordy, Fright, and Gratuity) after the SDK was released. Completely designing all aspects of your application before diving into development leads to a quicker implementation period.

The design and testing took up the majority of my time. Thanks in part to the documentation Apple provided, the implementation period for the apps was pretty short. I feel that lines of code is a pretty poor measure of app complexity, especially when working in such an expressive language as Objective-C. That said, Chores is about 3000 lines of code, Gratuity roughly 1000 lines, Wordy about 800 lines, and Fright about 400 lines.

Q: Tell us a bit about the application, including your target market and what problem or problems your application solves?

All of my apps are targeted to anyone. Chores is a simple todo app that can be used for making lists of anything. I was frustrated by all the complicated todo apps on the market, which mostly required intimate knowledge of GTD (Getting Things Done). I was also frustrated (along with everyone else) that Apple's Notes app on the iPhone didn't easily sync back with your Mac. I wanted Chores to be easy enough for anyone to use and allow users to sync their todos back to your Mac. I made Gratuity because I wanted a drop dead easy to use tip calculator. Wordy is 'word of the day' on steroids. I feel it's both an educational tool and (in an upcoming version) a utility, allowing you to access the entire dictionary at your fingertips. Fright I made as a fun application that merged my interests in making short films with the iPhone. It's a fun way to play a little joke on your friends by spooking them with some videos. It's a real social application.

I think the best apps are the ones developers make for themselves first. When a developer makes an application to address a need they have, it's an extremely personal connection, and typically results in a great product. It's most often the case that plenty of other people in the same situation will be very interested in an application if the developer approaches it selfishly at first, ironically enough. All of the applications I created so far (and have planned for the future) are apps I use myself.

Chores		Wordy

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

The documentation and sample code that Apple provided was phenomenal in helping to get started with the iPhone SDK. Before the SDK, I had no experience with Objective-C, Cocoa, or OS X programming. It didn't take me very long at all to get off the ground reading Apple's docs.

Whenever learning anything new, there are of course moments where you are stumped, but thankfully those moments were few and far between when developing for the iPhone. I attribute the ease getting up to speed with the SDK to Apple's well designed and thought out frameworks, programming language, and documentation. I have a lot of respect for Jailbreak App developers, who made some fantastic apps without the wealth of resources Apple now provides.

Fright		Gratuity

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

Submitting my apps to the App Store was actually a pretty no-hassle process: we developers just have to ensure that our applications are compiled meeting certain criteria that Apple has clearly laid out and then simply send our binary their way along with some related metadata. Wordy was my first app officially approved. After submission, it took less than 24 hours for Wordy to be approved. This was about a week before the deadline Apple set for iPhone apps that wanted to be in the store at launch.

Chores and Fright were submitted closer to the deadline and took about 48 hours to be approved. There was a minor issue with Gratuity that the Apple engineers emailed me about before it could show up in the store. My experience talking with Apple engineers throughout this process has been really positive. I don't know too much about the approval, but it seems Apple has a pretty stringent method of testing of our apps before allowing them to be in the App Store.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

While my education is in Computer Science, I have a real affinity for graphic design. For that reason I decided to keep all of the design and development of my applications in house. In the future, I'd love to work with a professional designer for the art assets in my applications, but not without my input. I'm hesitant to let someone else dictate the entire look-and-feel of my apps.

When you're creating an application, there has to be a purpose to every feature. There has to be a purpose to every button and piece of text. Every choice you make as a developer must be to serve the application. This includes the very way the application looks, which is why I feel most comfortable making design choices with my apps.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

Chores is $4.99. Wordy, Gratuity, and Fright are all $0.99 cents. The pricing of the desktop version of Chores for OS X hasn't been announced yet, but will be soon at tapeshow.com. For a limited time, those who buy the iPhone/touch version of Chores will be discounted its full price should they decide to buy Chores for OS X when it's released. When deciding on prices, I thought about what I would be willing to pay for what I've written and also asked people whose opinions I respect that same question. I want everyone to be able to enjoy my apps, so they are very affordably priced.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

Absolutely. There are a lot of ideas I've been sifting through, both free and paid apps. I've also had lots of great feedback from users of my current apps. I have several really great updates planned to the apps I've got out now. I encourage everyone to sign up to the newsletter at tapeshow.com and send me feedback. I want to democratize the whole process of software coming to market. Hearing many different people email me an idea that I've had floating around myself really encourages me to want to make an app. I've also got some great web apps that are brewing.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

I want to make iPhone and Mac OS X software for the rest of my life. That is why I decided to start my software company TapeShow last year, even though I'm still in college. I want writing software for iPhone and Mac OS X to be my day job. I want to make the best software I can - things people enjoy and want to use. So far it has been an exciting experience. Thousands of people are using my software and have been sending me some great feedback. It's very encouraging.

Great stuff, Deepak. Really inspiring for other people who want to turn an avocation - programming and hacking little apps (and I obviously mean hacking in the positive sense) - into a revenue stream and, perhaps, a profession.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:09 AM on August 25, 2008 | Comments (0)

This is the future of advertising: The Audi A4 Driving Game

Have a look at the Apple iTunes Store in the iPhone Applications area, most popular free applications, and you'll see marketing evolving before your very eyes. The number three most popular application in the iPhone app store is:



For years advertisers have explored different methods of pushing advertising into the mobile space, and various attempts to have ad sponsored phone service, ads before calls, ad-funded dialup services and even location aware ads pop up as SMS messsages as you travel around have all basically fallen flat.

Now savvy car company Audi shows us how it'll be done in the future with Audi A4 Driving Challenge. Here's the opening screen, you can see they've put some effort into this:



Here's the thing: it doesn't matter if it's a fun game or not, it doesn't matter if it's better than the other driving games (like Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Card 3D), what matters is that while Ford (NYSE:F), Toyota (NYSE:TM), Chevrolet (NYSE:GM), Mercedes and other automotive manufacturers try to figure out how to utilize and leverage the ever-evolving marketing landscape, Audi has leapfrogged and taken the next step.

You watch, this is just the beginning. Soon we'll have bar-branded drink mixing iPhone apps, cookware-sponsored recipe management, rental car agency-built driving directions applications, and much more.

And along the way, I already know of some films that are developing iPhone applications to help promote and market their upcoming films. Brilliant!

We're on this road to stay, the road of moving the computer from our office to our home, from our desk into our pocket (by way of our laps).

Kudos to Audi for this revolutionary application. Oh, and try it too, it's pretty fun: Audi A4 Driving Challenge

Posted by Dave Taylor at 4:30 PM on August 23, 2008 | Comments (2)

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Darren Andes and "Baby Tracker: Nursing"

What started out as a pleasant chat with someone who was writing some iPhone applications has rapidly blossomed into an extraordinary outpouring of interest from the iPhone developer community. As a result, I've decided to run a series of developer spotlights, probably 20 or more, over the next few weeks. It'll offer you insight into the time involved, complexity and rewards of developing a game or utility for one of the most interesting software sales environments on the planet: the Apple iPhone. I hope you enjoy the series!

I'll kick it all off with an interview with Darren Andes, who wrote Baby Tracker: Nursing

Q: You wrote Baby Tracker: Nursing. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program? Written in what language?

A: Baby Tracker: Nursing has ~2,500 lines of code, and I've spent over 100hrs creating the application. Baby Tracker: Nursing was written in a language called Cocoa (Objective-C) which is an Object-Oriented that extends the C language. You can get all the technical information here.

In layman's terms it is simply the language used to write all Mac OS X (Apple's OS) and iPhone applications.

Q: Tell us a bit about the application, including your target market and what problem or problems your application solves?

A: Moms have a lot to remember when bringing a new baby home. The stress of caring for a newborn, the sleepless nights, along with keeping track of breastfeeding sessions can be overwhelming. Baby Tracker: Nursing, a new app for Apple iPhone or iPod Touch, will effortlessly track your baby's breastfeeding sessions with a few simple clicks, allowing mom to relax and focus on feeding.

Baby Tracker: Nursing allows mom to easily record important details of the nursing session including the duration, and side nursed on (or both) while always noting which side was nursed on last. This complete nursing history is permanently stored in daily logs for future reference and doctor's visits.

Toss out your lists, notebooks, stop watches, safety pins in bras, extraneous ribbons and bracelets! Since your iPhone or iPod Touch is always with you, a complete detailed nursing history is only a click away.

Baby Tracker: Nursing is a real time tool and available on the iPhone App Store.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

A: Apple has a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), which makes it hard for developers to talk much about the SDK (Software Development Kit). Because of this, information is sometimes hard to come by and can make programming difficult. Unfortunately, there are not many ways to find solutions or help. Apple does, however, supply excellent documentation, videos and examples, and also provides the SDK for free. This is a great way to start learning how to develop for the iPhone; all you need is a good idea, lots of free time, and obviously a Mac computer...which I find to be the best computer out there (but I digress...) There are also lots of great online resources and books available to learn Cocoa.

To create applications for the App Store, either free ones or those for purchase (70% goes to the developer /30% goes to Apple) you must pay $99/yr to be a developer. This will then allow you to install your application on your iPhone or iPod touch for testing as well as attaining the ultimate goal of getting your application out to the world.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book?

A: The experience was a lot better than I expected: just a lot of specific directions and steps to go through to make sure everything was in order. I heard rumors of the process taking over a month, but for Baby Tracker: Nursing it took less than a week. You do need to fill out a contract before you are allowed to sell your products so I recommend doing that as soon as possible since that did take a few weeks to approve.
As for demonstrating what the application does or what APIs it uses, Apple only wants to know if you are using encrypted information because they are selling Applications globally. Baby Tracker: Nursing uses its own database to store the information. Baby Tracker: Nursing does not use the internet or other external protocols so it is a fairly straightforward Application.

It was very exciting and rewarding to see Baby Tracker: Nursing live on the App Store! Reading the comments by mothers who are against timing is interesting but I would prefer it if the comments section was not used like a debate forum to give personal opinions about one's individual nursing beliefs. It would be much more useful if the postings were real reviews by people who actually purchased the application and then gave their critiques.

Q: Did you create all the graphics yourself or contract with a designer to make the look-and-feel of your application?

A: Yes, I created all of the graphics for Baby Tracker: Nursing. I have a graphic design background, which helped immensely in this department. I think Apple sets a very high standard with the iPhone and it is important to create easy to use applications, and also ones that are enjoyable to look at.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications now that you've released Baby Tracker: Nursing into the wild? What's in the pipeline?

A: I have lots of new ideas in the pipeline and I am currently working on a new iPhone app that I hope to have out in the next few weeks. I think eventually the App Store will be flooded with Applications and it will be difficult to stand out from the crowd, so I'm working hard to get quality products out as soon as possible.

Q: What's your day job anyway?

A: When I am not working on Baby Tracker: Nursing I am a User Experience Lead in Web Design and Development for a Fortune 500 company.

Thanks a bunch, Darren, for being our first featured iPhone application developer in the spotlight series! If you're interested, I also have a companion interview on my parenting blog with Darren's co-developer, Heather Bancroft, which you can find here: Why track your nursing schedule?. Finally, if you're an Apple iPhone developer, please contact me if you'd like to join the spotlight series.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 12:30 PM on August 22, 2008 | Comments (2)

Crowd sourcing overwhelms SXSW panel voting?

Got this email just now:

---

Dear Dave Taylor,

Apologies for the form letter and for any cross-posting.

We want to thank you again for being a part of the Panel Picker process for the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival.

We are overwhelmed by the tremendous response we have received on this year's interface and very excited by the overall quality of the ideas submitted. Again, we thank you so much for your participation!

We wanted to take this opportunity to pass along a few helpful tools and reminders to allow you to make the most of the Panel Picker interface.

-- We have now created a couple of "Vote for My Idea" buttons that you can place on your blog or website (to drive more traffic to your proposal). These buttons are attached below. Feel free to modify to your liking.

-- In addition to using this button, we encourage you to make full use of the "comments" section of the interface for your proposal. What do we mean by full use? For example, you can use this space to tell readers what other speakers might be on this session, or why you are qualified to lead this panel. You can also give readers more information about what you want to cover in this session. The more information you can give users of the Panel Picker about your proposal, the more likely you are to catch their attention.

-- Voting for the 2009 Panel Picker will end at 11:59 pm central time on Friday, August 29. We hope to make the first batch of programming announcements in early October.

-- If your programming idea is accepted to be part of the 2009 SXSW Interactive Festival, you will be given a complimentary Gold badge to the event. However, if you know that you are going to attend SXSW whether or not your panel is accepted and are concerned about getting a downtown hotel, we recommend that you go ahead and register now. SXSW does NOT grant refunds -- so please do not buy a registration unless you are absolutely sure that you will attend the event. If your programming idea is accepted and you have already bought a badge, we will allow you to transfer your badge to another person at no charge.

-- If this registration stuff is too confusing (and it probably is), please e-mail us at interpanels@sxsw.com and we will try to explain it in greater detail. You can also e-mail us at this address if you have any other SXSW-related questions.

Thanks again for being part of the Panel Picker process for 2009!

Best regards,

Hugh Forrest
Kathryn Lasater

---

Very interesting, but what struck me was the sentence We are overwhelmed by the tremendous response we have received on this year's interface, which doesn't surprise me because when they first opened voting the system couldn't keep up and people complained that they couldn't vote.

They've fixed things since then, but still it'd be darn interesting to know the raw numbers: how many votes have they received to date, what's the average number of votes/panel, and how many panels have received more than 5x the average vote count and how many have received less than 1/5th. I imagine there are still some at zero or close to it.

Fortunately, the entire conference isn't going to be decided based on the virtual popularity contest of the panel picker: in fact, that's only going to factor in as 30% of the total decision making process.

Now, it would only be fair if I ended this by asking that you vote for my panel too, right? Here, click on one of these spiffo new buttons:

Or... don't. :-)

Posted by Dave Taylor at 9:34 PM on August 18, 2008 | Comments (1)

Ideas needed: how do you market a breath mint?

I'm rather stymied on this one:

"I am marketing a new product, it's a special mint that completely eliminates alcohol and tobacco breath. The website is AntiPoleez.com. Could you please recommend appropriate sites or blogs to inquire regarding review of my product; or PR agencies that will efficiently place articles/reviews on the web for me?"

In a nice demonstration of why social media systems are so wonderful if you actually participate and build up a community of colleagues, I simply posed the above question to my Twitter followers (you could be one too, just follow @DaveTaylor).

Here's what they had to suggest:

	thatsoftwareguy @DaveTaylor Lots of super hot women. And a monkey. Always add a monkey to maximize sales and profits.
	leslierohde @DaveTaylor - alcohol breath is from systemic out gassing of metabolites so i doubt mints alone does the trick
	ksowocki @davetaylor how about giving them away for free for a few months at restaurants the way breath mints are now?
	AndyAE @DaveTaylor "Who Else Wants to Beat a DUI" ? ;)
	marcfuller @DaveTaylor - Gotta do it as the "real lifesaver" A part would be short personal reenactments via YouTube videos, alt enuf to go viral.
	Jymsym @DaveTaylor it's a miracle!
	PATTIwithAn_i @DaveTaylor ....I would use it! ......isn't word of MOUTH *no pun intended* the best form of PR /ADV.
	jillwhalen @DaveTaylor and of course to SEOs at conferences ;)
	stadol @DaveTaylor "Hey, you'll die of cancer---but you'll smell minty fresh while doing it! Try "Delusion", the best mint around!"
	jillwhalen @DaveTaylor I think marketing it to bar owners to sell to their patrons.
	skeptech @DaveTaylor Signs at eye level in bar toilets.
	mobienthusiast @DaveTaylor for the word of mouth videos you can tagline it with something like "it's not like kissing an ashtray"
	VincentWright @DaveTaylor If it completely eliminates alcohol & tobacco breath, I'd start with a word of mouth "challenge campaign" See WOMMA.org
	mobienthusiast @DaveTaylor re: mint I would go word of mouth and hand out samples in bars, video it for youtube viral, make it funny

Now I'll be the first to admit that not all of these ideas are the mark of genius, but there are some very powerful ideas here, ideas that could really help market this company. I think that the team at AntiPoleez.com could definitely be inspired by this.

To be fair, the original question was about what bloggers might review their product, but I think that's a tough one. Generally I am in favor of inviting bloggers to review products because word of mouth marketing is so powerful, but short of finding college bloggers who write about how much they drink - and few of those are influential to any greater population - I think that having a more creative approach is exactly what's needed here.

Just as importantly, note how a simple question to Twitter produced a wave of interesting and thought-provoking ideas. These services aren't about how to pump your URL out to others, how to easily produce more traffic to your site, but rather about how you can create an online community of people who are willing to help you out as needed - if you also help them.

Something else to keep in mind, fellow Twitter users.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 6:40 PM on August 13, 2008 | Comments (5)

What I'll be talking about at Blogworld Expo next month

I'm quite honored to be given a keynote slot and a regular speaking slot at the upcoming Blogworld Expo conference next month in Las Vegas. After much chewing on it, I've also finally nailed down my topics and session descriptions too:

KEYNOTE: HOW WE GOT HERE: The State of Blogging and Where It's Heading

Starting as online personal journals, participatory media has exploded in the last few years and is now widely viewed as a credible and legitimate avenue for corporations, groups and individuals to spread their viewpoint and perspective. Bloggers are the new investigative journalists and op-ed writers, podcasters are marginalizing commercial radio and video bloggers are offering a meaningful alternative to the same old industry pap. In this engaging session, I'll talk about what I see as the state of blogging and new media and offer up some ideas about where we're going and how you can be a part of the future of human communication

Ten Things You Need to Know about Search Engines & Findability

You've probably heard the mantra that "it's all about producing quality content", but you and I both know that without the ability for people to find you when they look for information in your space, the best content in the world will languish and wither. In this session, I'll take participants on a whirlwind tour of how search engines work and offer ten critical tips to help you maximize your findability in Google and everywhere else online. Circle this one: You won't want to miss it!

I hope those sound interesting and will entice you to join us in Las Vegas! I will also hasten to share that the early bird discount on conference registration ends August 22, so don't waste too much time waiting to register if you are going to join us!
Posted by Dave Taylor at 11:22 AM on August 10, 2008 | Comments (0)

Hollywood's Achilles Heel: Movie Print Quality


I just got out of the theater from seeing Hellboy II, which I enjoyed quite a bit, but was really struck by how poor the film itself was. Not the storyline, not the effects, not the audio, but the print quality, the celluloid that they project.

If you've seen a modern movie, you know what I'm talking about, jerky cuts, rough focus spots, dirt in the print, and more. A very analogue experience, but not in a good way, especially for a film that just begs to be in true, clean, pristine high def.

After the film ended, I went and talked with the manager (of the AMC Flatiron Crossing Mall theater, in Broomfield, Colorado), and she really didn't give a damn about my complaint about film quality.

Me: "Hi. Just wanted to talk about the surprisingly poor print quality of Hellboy II, which I just came out of the theater from watching. Are you aware of the problem?"

She: "We just replaced the Hellboy II print last week. It was in pretty bad shape prior."

Me: "Maybe, then, you need to tell corporate that you need new prints every week so that movie patrons have the best possible experience."

She: "Do you know how much those prints cost?"

Me: "The problem is that if you can't project a very clean image, it becomes harder and harder for you to compete with my fancy home theater, where my HD player looks gorgeous."

She: (shrugs)

Me: "When are you going to be able to go digital in this theater?"

She: "Oh, gosh, not for at least three or four years."

Me: "Ah, well, thanks for listening."

I also peeked in at Journey to the Center of the Earth and saw that this fancy, expensive, new theater didn't have the 3D projection system upgrade (called RealD, it requires a new projector and new screen) either, which surprised me. The Century Boulder theater got the upgrade for Journey, and it's a smaller market.

Film projection quality is a major issue for Hollywood and the continued health of the movie theater business. When I can patiently wait a few months for a Blu-Ray high-def release of a movie for about the price of two evening-showing tickets and then keep the film forever, I can't duplicate the full sensory experience of a large theater, theater sound system and sense of community that comes from sharing a movie watching experience.

But if the films are going to be visibly dirty, choppy or otherwise marred, then I will continue to be jarred out of the requisite suspension of disbelief, the need to be involved with the movie world and storyline, and be brought back to the theater room itself, and that's a big problem.

This is why savvy people like Mark Cuban, owner of the Landmark Theater Chain, is pushing so aggressively for movie theaters to go all digital. Once that happens, they can have dramatically higher resolution than Blu-Ray and there's zero degradation of the print from projection to projection.

Ironically, it's exactly like the transition from LP to CD or VHS to DVD. Digital wins over analogue and it's time Hollywood got on the ball.

Posted by Dave Taylor at 1:51 PM on August 9, 2008 | Comments (1)
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