Keys to your Domain

Just to add as a side note, you can use QuarkBase to help research the whois information about your domain.

Marketing Your Website: A 12-Step Program

Is your website simply languishing in the corner, failing to deliver on the promise of the Internet? Change your online strategy and learn the tactics that actually deliver results:

• Identify the REAL target audience of your site
• Optimize so Google knows who your are
• Leverage the power of social networks
• Get site visitors to raise their hands

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: Cost: $30 for PC members; $35 non-PC members/advance registry (includes tax and gratuity) + cash bar; $40 at the door.

You can register at the Women of Wit and Wisdom site or check out the event page at the Philadelphia Business Journal. As a side note, you don’t have to be female to attend!

Want to know the IP address? Hosting company? Server platform? Domain registration information? Alexa traffic rank? Company information? Social network popularity? And on and on and on…

Where QuarkBase shines is its presentation. It takes a very simple approach (just type in the domain name) and it serves up all of this information for you in an easily digestible way.

“How do I reach my target customers?”

The typical answer (old) is to buy a lot of ads in hopes that millions of people will see them and somewhere in the millions, your target audience will respond. Don’t have that much money? Do the same thing but focus the ads locally.

And this strategy is essentially the same on the Internet: get the top position on Google.

But Seth Godin suggests a different way.

This seems great for products, but what about service-based businesses? I think that you just have to get more creative. And the Internet is only one tactic to use.

Example 1 - Landscaper: Find a handyman that is busy and ask if you can tag along. People that hire handymen typically hire landscapers. Support this with

Example 2 - Allergist: Sponsor “Back to School Night” at as many schools as you can by supplying coffee, tea, snacks and such. And then be there for the conversation and give free advice. And have your appointment book with you.

Example 3 - Graphic Designer: Hold a contest for high school seniors and offer a $500 scholarship. Make sure the local papers cover it. Side effect: intern program.

What other “small” ways can you think of that could get big results?

Before email, postal mail arrived (and still does) only once per day. What if email only arrived four times per day? How would this affect your productivity and your stress level?

(Post your comments below.)

• I raised the floor in the room off of our kitchen so that it is at the same level. This involved sealing the concrete, building floor joists and laying the sub floor. Also included adding insulation to some of the exterior walls (which weren’t insulated!) and replacing the drywall. Then the room was also repainted.
• In preparation for painting our entry hallway and other rooms downstairs, I ripped out all of the drywall in the hallway. There had been 2 coats of paint, wallpaper, then more paint, another layer of wallpaper in some parts, and paint over that in other parts. And it was ripping away. And there was a hole from where Danielle kicked the wall. New drywall was a much better choice, and that is now up. In the process, we also put in the wiring for recessed lights (which will come later) and coax for wiring cable TV into the room that will eventually become the family room. And we added a light in the hall closet which is a surprise for my wife.
• I reinforced the shelves in the closet in our bedroom with L-brackets. Thankfully, it was a 15 minute task which mostly involved taking everything off the shelves and then putting everything back on.

So, what hasn’t been done that is still expected by my lovely wife?

• The new drywall in the hallway needs to be spackled and sanded. That will be the job over the next few days.
• The room off of the kitchen (soon to be dining room) needs to have some minor paint touch ups and the new floor installed. Paint touch ups today, floor Monday night.
• I need to assemble our new grill. I’ll do this at the last possible minute before Danielle gets home just for the sport of it.

My Dad deserves some seriously special kudos for giving two of his Saturdays to my insanity. Four hands makes for faster work and better conversation.

Next summer, I think that I will remodel the kitchen and put new flooring in the entire downstairs area. I have to up the ante somehow.

But that got me thinking. If Apple designers added the thickness all the way around, what improvements could have been made?

• Battery life - 20% more time using the phone on 3G or GPS would be good. Perhaps Apple wouldn’t advise you to turn off all of its new features in order to get the most out of the battery.
• Camera - an upgraded camera would certainly be appreciated, a little higher resolution and a little better optics would make a huge difference to many people. It still wouldn’t be an SLR, so people will complain anyway.
• Antennas - there are at least four antennas inside the iPhone, so a little extra space would have allowed for slightly larger antennas to improve reception for 3G, WiFi, EDGE, Bluetooth, etc. And better reception helps everything.

What else can you think of that would be a welcome addition?

As the dutiful husband, I offered to go back and rectify the situation. So I called the restaurant to let them know that I was coming back. The manager got on the phone, apologized, and offered to drive the replacement pizza (plus a couple of free deserts) right to the house.

And even better, the manager himself made the drive and apologized again. Even though it wasn’t perfect with the original order, the recovery was great.

Too often, we blog about bad experiences. That is why I wanted to post this story. It is a simple example of customer service gone right.

Someone like WebEx or Citrix (GoToWebinar) would be the natural choice to develop this. As an attendee, you could call in on the phone and then view a shared screen, allowing you to zoom in for details. And add the chat window to complete the experience. I could see this requiring 3G or Wi-Fi access for speed reasons.

I would see this as a free application, since the goal is for attendees to participate from a mobile platform.

Does this make sense to you? Post your thoughts in the comments.

Norman Lear, TV writer/producer of “All in the Family” was born on July 27, 1922.

So this post is being written from a new iPhone application now available. While it doesn’t give full administration, it does let me add new posts.

It also lets me add photos to the post, in this case a screenshot from the application.

Also nice is the ability to schedule posts, add tags, set categories and preview the post. One major problem is the lack of cut and paste on the iPhone, but that is certainly not the fault of this app.

It will be interesting to see how this application improves over time as well as whether I find myself posting more often.

One of the keys to being an email Ninja is the tools you use. For many people, the choices are Outlook or Gmail. Lifehacker brings us the following post:

• Outlook vs. Gmail - The Definitive Comparison

They talk about everything useful, from search to folders/labels to rules/filters to contacts to spam and more. Gmail is getting better all the time and I find myself appreciating it more and more. I gave up on Outlook years ago when I switched to the Mac.

• Google Alerts

All you have to do is enter the search phrase or keywords, set the type of search, set the frequency and enter your email address. Very simple to do and a nice way to monitor your online reputation.

Edmund Hillary was born on July 20, 1919.

Even though my day to day has more to do with strategizing with clients, I still love to roll up my sleeves, fire up my graphics programs and code editors, and get under the hood for some good old fashioned website development. With that in mind, one of my favorite tools is Iconfactory’s xScope.

Think of xScope as a graphics Swiss army knife. It helps with all of those little jobs where there is no really good way.

• Rulers - measure horizontally and vertically and even angle the rulers on the screen.
• Dimensions - measure the inside dimensions of any element on the screen, which is great for figuring out the margins or padding of objects.
• Screens - this gives you an overlay of standard browser windows at a variety of screen resolutions, which is perfect for design mockups.
• Loupe - magnify anything on the screen which also shows you the exact color of the center pixel and gives precise coordinates for the point.
• Crosshair, Guides and Frames - vertical and horizontal tools for additional ways to measure screen areas.

If you use a Mac and do anything design related, this is a great tool to have at the ready,

Patrick Stewart was born on July 13, 1940.

After exploring the new features of the device, here are a few of the highlights:

• I have multiple email accounts setup on the phone. In your settings, you choose a default mail account to use as the “send” account when you click on links from websites. To forward a picture from my phone to a friend, I had to have a personal account set as default. To forward a link to a client, I had to have a work account as the default. With the new firmware, I can select from the message itself which account the message is coming from. For people that have both work and home addresses on the phone, this also allows you to reply using your personal account when your friend sends something to your work address.
• One of the very cool applications for the iPhone is Apple’s remote control application. From this new application you start by pairing your iPhone with iTunes, Airport Express and AppleTV on your local WiFi network. From there, you can use the phone as a remote control. The content doesn’t play through your phone, but rather its original source.
• There is now a “Contacts” application, rather than having to go through the phone application to the contacts area. And in this, you have contacts search. So when you start typing a person’s name or company name, the phone immediately shows the results. This is great if you know the company that you want to call, but cannot remember the person’s name. I’d love to see this extend to a partial phone number search as well.
• As good as web based games can be on the iPhone, native iPhone games are amazing, and there will be lots of them. The one game that all iPhone owners should get is Trism, a puzzle game similar to Bejeweled and Tetris. The twist is that you tilt the phone to slide the triangles into place. It is very addictive and this game can only be played on an iPhone.

I’m very excited about OmniFocus for the iPhone, but I want to spend some more time with it before giving it a more in depth review.

Perhaps they are going to purchase a new iMac or MacBook?

So, for all of those people ready to jump from the PC to the Mac, here are some good resources for you to ease the transition:

• Some General Tips for Switch to Mac From Windows – Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
• Mac 101 – Apple’s website
• Hack Attack: A Guide to Switching to the Mac – Adam Pash, LifeHacker

And if you still need some convincing, perhaps Ellen Feiss can help.

Three guys discuss awkward moments and bathroom humor, with a Masters degree.

You can listen right from the website or you can subscribe in iTunes.

What also makes this special is the community that is forming around some of the wonderful topics discussed on the show. So they have setup ways for fans to share with each other.

• YLNT on Twitter - 140 Characters of Emotional Hygiene
• YLNT Flickr Group - Photos of Emotional Hygiene
• YLNT Tumblr Group - Tumblelog of Emotional Hygiene
• YLNT Vimeo Channel - Videos of Emotional Hygiene

You might want check to see what the Jobbo says about your career path or post a video of you doing the new dance craze (the fishstick), but definitely listen to You Look Nice Today.

(Looking forward to the opening of the new restaurant in Butte, MT.)

This got me thinking: Did he just post 18 ideas for startup companies? Yes, I think that he did.

So, what ideas do you have for mixing contextual data? And how can this be delivered on mobile devices, like the iPhone or the Android platform?

Post your thoughts in the comments.

The Dalai Lama was born on July 6th, 1935. Coincidentally, President George W. Bush was born in 1946 on the same day. Irony has a sense of history, doesn’t it.

Over the last decade we saw two things: one of the greatest cyclists of all time and some of the worst garbage in professional sports.

Coverage for the tour starts today. No short prologue to start the race, but a full on stage with a sprint finish.

It’s a shame that last year’s winner (Alberto Contador) is not in the tour because his new team was being punished for its prior actions around drug abuse. Last year’s race was so bizarre as we watched several amazing performances followed by withdrawals for drug use. It was truly sad. Even the winner from the year before (Floyd Landis) still doesn’t have the credibility because of his alleged drug use, something he still denies.

What is important this year isn’t going to be the man on the podium on the last day. What is important will be what we don’t see: professional athletes cheating.

I have a feeling that by the time the race ends this year, we will know whether to continue to love and respect the sport, or just let it vanish until some young American rider captures our heart with a story as powerful as Lance Armstrong did.

Over the past month, everyone who knows me has been asking me about the next iPhone. Usually, it includes the obvious question, “Are you getting the new one?”

For me, the answer is simple. “No.”

Here are my reasons:

1. Many people are excited about the 3G speeds for the network, but the coverage is still pretty scarce. Yes, it is in my area, but I don’t have to drive too far to be outside of it.
2. Many people are excited about the GPS chip in the new iPhone, but it is not a replacement for a turn-by-turn directions device, like a Garmin or a TomTom.
3. Running the 3G and GPS will kill your battery life, and Apple recommends turning these off when you don’t specifically need them. Chances are that in the moment that you want to quick check a website, the 7 seconds that you will shave off from having 3G speeds will be replaced with 20 seconds to turn on 3G and then jump back to find the link and then… oh, never mind. I’m willing to trade a few seconds here and there when browsing the web on my phone for all day battery life. Not to mention that WiFi is very pervasive and faster than a 3G network.
4. The new pricing plans are significantly higher than the existing plans and text messages are not included. If did the same exact plan that I have now, I would pay an extra $360 over the 2-year contract plus an $18 upgrade fee plus the cost of the phone itself. Yes, the plans are still reasonable compared to Blackberries, but I like my current deal.
5. With the original iPhone, Apple revolutionized the activation process by doing it through iTunes. My experience was flawless and it took less than 8 minutes while I was surfing the web in another window. With the new iPhone, activation must happen in the store. If you want to try to avoid the 30 minutes of annoyance that it takes to purchase and activate a cell phone, AT&T has provided a “Get iReady Checklist” PDF file.
6. The compelling feature of the new iPhone is the 2.0 software update, specifically ability to have third-party applications. And the original iPhone will run these perfectly. There may be some applications that will benefit from the precision of a GPS chip compared to cell tower triangulation, but I will be able to live without that. I’m most excited about the productivity apps and games (not-so productive apps) that will run locally on the phone.

All that said, the new iPhone will be great and I highly recommend it. But if you have the current original iPhone, wait for the 3.0 iPhone that will probably ship sometime in July of 2009.

This summer is the Home Improvement List of Death.

Hopefully not literally.

Most people have a negative view towards sales people. And no one likes to be “sold.”

But everyone likes loves to buy.

So would you go out of your way to actually help out someone in sales?

Would you help the nice family that owns the wonderful Italian restaurant by recommending it to a friend?

Would you help your niece or nephew that just graduated college by passing along their resume to a colleague?

Would you help your co-worker by speaking on their behalf to your boss?

No one feels dirty helping out someone they like and trust. So maybe the job of marketing is to create an environment of trust and friendship.

How deep is your email inbox? Seriously, how deep.

I’ve been there from time to time, but I’ve been proactively working to keep my inbox as close to empty as possible.

If your inbox is over 2000 messages deep, you might need to do something radical.

Perhaps you should declare email bankruptcy. Here is how:

• Step 1: Select all messages in your inbox. (Ctrl+A on a PC or Cmd+A on a Mac)
• Step 2: Delete the selected messages.
• Step 3: Send an apologetic email to your close contacts and ask them to resend anything important.

It is quite refreshing. Don’t worry, people will understand.

Networks like Facebook or LinkedIn require that connections be mutual. That is to say if I want to connect to you, you have to accept and then connect to me. So when I “friend” someone or “connect” it is a two-way street.

Twitter is different. On Twitter, you can follow anyone. (At least anyone that has a public profile.) If you want to follow my “tweets” you simply click the “follow” button and you are set. I’ll receive a notification that you are a new follower, but I don’t have to return the favor.

The results are interesting.

Guy Kawasaki and Merlin Mann both have very interesting Twitter streams: useful and fun. Guy followed me back, Merlin didn’t return the favor. But it doesn’t matter. I still like reading both.

There are people who follow my Twitter stream that I don’t follow back. But if there is an opportunity to have a conversation, I will follow back. I’ve even dug into some other interesting conversations to “meet” new “friends” on Twitter.

I’ve had some fun, interesting, educational, goofball conversations with people from the Twitterverse. And some of these conversations have spawned communication beyond Twitter, both email and phone conversations.

But once the conversation becomes two-way, you realize that there are a lot of very good humans out there.

And this “Not a two-way street” that is Twitter has spawned new friendships and even some new poetry.

Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

Is it 12 or 73 invitations that you have received from LinkedIn so far? You have either ignored them or perhaps created an account. So now what do you and you 4 connections do next?

Learn to use LinkedIn to improve your reputation online:

• Create powerful connections for business networking
• Give and receive recommendations
• Promote yourself by answering questions
• Create opportunities for new business

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: $35 advance registration/Pyramid Club Members; $40 at the door. Cash bar.

On Friday, NPR’s Morning Edition ran the following segment:

Can you go a day at the office without e-mail? Employees at U.S. Cellular try to do that every Friday. A policy implemented a few years ago gives workers a respite from the e-mail avalanche.
Click to read and listen…

Interesting story considering the topic of my recent post about choosing the right messaging medium. I appreciated that the story points out the initial resistance from people, but ultimately, people made additional connections with others.

While you might not be able to force your organization, you can do this yourself, perhaps for a whole day, or even just a couple of hours.

The Inquirer ran a one-day campaign to prove a point: print advertising still works.

The piece was seriously hysterical and I had fun sharing it. But you wouldn’t believe the letters to the editor in the Inquirer. People really need to lighten up.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Sometimes you just have to take a step back and point out the obvious.

Today was one of those times. I was in the middle of typing out a detailed email message that was going to be longer than five sentences when a blinding flash of the obvious hit me: pick up the phone.

So I did and it worked. I’m glad that I started typing the email, but very glad that I didn’t click send. Starting to type things out allowed me to collect my thoughts around a difficult conversation. When I picked up the phone, I was clear and concise and convincing. And I think the person that I talked to appreciated that.

Many business professionals carry around an iPhone, Blackberry, Treo or other smartphone. So there is the opportunity to talk, text message or email right from the palm of your hand. But it doesn’t take an email ninja to know when to use the right tool, just one simple rule:

Respect the recipient.

If you have something difficult to share with someone, don’t hide behind an email message. Yes, write a letter or create an outline to organize your thoughts at first. Hiding behind the email message will actually make it more difficult for you in the long run. My rule is that if you are having a hard time picking up the phone, you probably really need to pick up the phone.

If you need an answer right away, email is not the best choice. Yes it is true, email is seriously fast, but it also creates email inbox clutter. Most people leave hundreds or thousands of messages in their email, so if you can simply send a quick instant message with your question, you might just get an immediate answer!

Text messages are great for the one-liners that are time sensitive. Examples such as, “Caught in long meeting and running late,” or “Please stop for pizza on the way home,” or “Do not cut the blue wire.” SMS is relatively instant and if for some reason it doesn’t get through, it keeps trying. For the recipient, they get some form of a beep. If needed, responses are typically very short, such as “No prob,” “OK,” or “Too late.”

What are your best suggestions that “respect the recipient” for phone, email, IM and text messages?

For those of you that work in an office, you know that around 3pm you start getting just a bit tired. So what to do? Another cup of coffee or get more rest at night? Nope, take a 20 minute nap.

Mind you, it may be hard for you to convince your boss that a post-lunch siesta will increase productivity. My suggestion is that you point her to this article at Ars Technica and then make her read the entire Sleep Journal to locate the study.

My suggestion is that you get more sleep at night, drink a ridiculous amount of coffee in the morning and then sleep through afternoon meetings.

• Build Your Network Before You Need It

If you want to feel part of it early, simply go and pledge your support…

And set yourself a reminder to download the software from your desktop, laptop, home machine, kids machine, etc. Let’s see if we can obliterate Internet Explorer usage and have Firefox reach a 35% market share.

“A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.”

New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging
Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human life span, a new report suggests.

• 16 GB and 32 GB versions of the phone at $399 and $499 respectively and yes, there will be a 3G chipset as the entire world is predicting.
  Apple stuck with the 8 GB and 16 GB versions of the phone, now with 3G, but with a severe price cut of $199 and $299 respectively.
• No internal GPS chip, but the 2.0 software will support external GPS devices through Bluetooth or through the dock connector. GPS kills the battery life and I don’t think that Apple would be willing to trade battery life for handheld GPS when they have a good solution with triangulation and WiFi locations.
  Internal “Assisted” GPS is onboard with the new phone.
• The iPhone will be a little bit thinner and perhaps a little lighter from an upgraded glass used for the touch screen. There are mixed rumors about the iPhone getting thinner and some saying that it will get thicker. Remember, Apple would rather make it thinner and lighter. Can you really picture Steve Jobs going onto the stage and saying, “The new iPhone is 2 millimeters thicker than before and I think that our customers are really going to appreciate the added girth.” Seriously.
  Steve downplayed the size other than to mention that it is thinner at the edges. The case is now plastic and the upgraded glass allowed it to be mostly the same weight.
• No ‘haptic’ touch response. Totally useless feature to have the phone vibrate a little when you touch it. Seriously, the touch response is built in to your actual fingers. If they include this, there better be a way to turn it off.
  Correct on this.
• There will be a way to search your contacts database on the phone that is similar to Spotlight search where you just start typing part of a name, company, address, phone number and it narrows down the contacts as you type. I need contacts search all of the time as I remember part of someone’s name or a company name.
  Mostly correct. Hard to determine if you can search business name or address from the demos.
• The 2.0 firmware will have a task application that works with the Leopard task service. I think that the reason this wasn’t included already has more to do with getting tasks to play nicely with Outlook on Windows machines.
  No task application, although the App Store will certainly get a full collection.
• Along the same lines the Notes application will get more useful and will synchronize with the Leopard notes that are in Apple Mail. My way out theory on this is that it will support in-line voice notes. If Apple doesn’t do it, I’m sure that a third-party developer will go for something like this.
  This may just arrive, but nothing for certain with today’s announcement.
• The 2.0 firmware will include a built-in game, something like Solitaire. There will be a LOT of games released with the 2.0 firmware and the AppStore for the iPhone. iPod Touch users will be thrilled as well for the new games that will turn the iPod Touch into a viable player in the handheld gaming space.
  No built in game, but the App Store will have at least 3 very cool games at launch as demonstrated yesterday. iPod Touch users will have to pay $10 to upgrade to the new firmware.
• The really interesting news is going to be from third-party developers and what they release for the iPhone. Apple can focus on the core feature set knowing that there are thousands of developers just waiting to create cool applications for a very hungry market of consumers. Personally, I want Yojimbo to sync with the iPhone.
  We saw demonstrations from a collection of companies including a music application from a single developer and very cool medical applications.
• For email, each account can have its own default signature, perhaps even sync this with Apple Mail. I have no reason to expect this, but it is a little wishful thinking.
  Still wishful thinking. We did get some better email management and saving image attachments.
• This may sound really basic, but there will be a way to copy and paste text from one application to another. This is more a challenge with the touch interface than anything else as there isn’t a logical gesture for this that doesn’t require a little bit of training.
  Not yet as far as I can tell. Perhaps in iPhone 2.1 or 3.0.

All in all, yesterday’s announcement is a bit of a yawn for me. Really, the big difference with the new iPhone is the plastic case, the 3G speed, GPS and a price cut. Functionally, my current iPhone will be able to do almost all of the same things (not the GPS or as fast) as the new model. Launching it in 70 countries is pretty special as well, but since I’m here in the USA, that wasn’t an issue for me.

The interesting announcement was revamping .Mac into MobileMe, and as a subscriber to .Mac, I’m curious to get my hands on the new features when this rolls out next month.

Post in the comments if you can repeat the experiment with your phone.

When opening the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday (actually, my wife saw it, I rarely open an actual newspaper), I saw a full page advertisement for Derrie-Air. So I went to their website to learn more:

Mission Statement
Derrie-Air is the world’s first carbon-neutral luxury airline. We will offer our passengers the finest luxury experience in all the world’s skies and the freedom to enjoy it with a clear conscience.

As it turns out, they will base the rates on the weight of the passenger and baggage! Only $2.25/lb. from Philadelphia to Los Angeles!

And I was amazed by the available amenities!

What amenities will your jets offer?
First of all there will be no class distinctions inside of a Derrie-Air jet. Every passenger will be treated like royalty. Every seat will be first class. There will simply be too many extras and treats on our flights to list here, but highlights will include: gorgeous air hosts and hostesses, golden-age Rat Pack films, top-shelf vodka Martinis, on-demand video blackjack, spacious private washrooms outfitted with porcelain fixtures and gilded faucets, gourmet snacks, on-board masseuses, loofah scrubs and, of course, digital cable!

Please note that this was a joke, although there actually was a full-page ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer and there is a website, although there is a note at the bottom to let you know that it isn’t real. Quite a bit of fun though.

So what would you do if this was real? Post your comments below…

What is great about 37signals is that they keep making Basecamp better and better. Little by little they roll out new features to Basecamp, sometimes minor enhancements, sometimes huge changes.

But the real result is the change in how we work with our clients.

With Basecamp, we keep our clients in the loop at all times throughout the entire project. Our customers definitely appreciate the open approach and our employees have a central location of “truth.”

If you manage a few projects or hundreds, sign up for a free trial account and give Basecamp a try.

Enter Plurk.

I have to say, the experience of Plurk is quite good. I really enjoy using Plurk - it is actually quite fun. And the timeline interface is a great way to browse through the plurks of others. But after the “work” to get over the hump of Twitter, attracting followers and following interestng people, do I want to start over?

Post your comments below.

From the about page…

“… I sit here thinking about what it means to be a part of something like this - an endless, senseless, interactive book - and i come to the conclusion that it’s really a very cool thing. To have tons of random people just vomit out what’s on their minds at the moment - kind of connects them all, just for a second, y’know?…”

“… These plots with no endings and interrupted by small snippets of other people’s thoughts and worlds… It’s very much like life, but who said that art could imitate life and still make sense? …”

The unfortunate part is that spammers sometimes put in garbage, but I guess that it is all part of the collaboration.

• So the next time that you are about to email the entire world…

And if you receive these emails from family or friends, send them the above link as a kind way to teach them the right way to do it.

From any phone, simply dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411). It is all voice activated and the couple of samples that I tried worked perfectly.

Here is a little video from the wacky people at Google.

More information about this service is available on Google’s site.

What I like about this video is that it is very much an overview of social media, rather than a focus on one particular technology. That might be its weakness as well as I think that it might be just a bit too long, even though it is less than 4 minutes.

• The 3 Cs of Lead Generation

He talks about blending advertising, public relations and referrals to create a balance between cost, credibility and control.

My 2 cents was about making sure that advertising, PR and referrals worked together to create a continuum. Most businesses isolate these activities rather than designing a strategy so that one amplifies the other.

What makes this interesting is that SEPTA’s website is pretty inconvenient for finding train schedules, but this iPhone optimized website is quite brilliant. You simply enter the start and end points and it shows you what trains and the schedules of the next five running. Even though it is a small audience, more public transportation services should see this example.

The application is executed perfectly. It answers the user need: “I’m in Berwyn and I need to get to 30th Street Station…(tap…scroll…tap)…Ah! The R5 and it leaves at 10:34am. Thank you, iSepta.org!”

Time to unplug for the weekend.

No blogging, no web surfing, no email, no Twitter, no LinkedIn, no RSS feeds, no podcasts.

And now, my haiku for the Internet.

This infinite cloud
of technology creates
possibilities.

Time for a weekend of hotdogs, tents, marshmallows, dirt, sleeping bags, pointy sticks and lighter fluid.

Wish me luck.

From the bottom of the article, the author writes the following:

Another radical shift for Microsoft would be to make Windows a more open platform where the company would give away the software to collect revenue from transactions and advertising. “The only long-term solution is for Microsoft to make a radical shift and turn Windows into a truly open platform,” says Werbach. “Eventually, the big money is going to come from services and transactions, not software licenses. Microsoft understands this and is moving in the right direction, but it will eventually have to go much further. As long as it has the DNA of a software company, it will be weighed down in the new era.”

The problem is that Microsoft’s products have gotten bigger and more powerful, but not necessarily better. Wouldn’t it be great if the next version of Windows was super fast and sleek so that a 3-year-old laptop had a fabulous experience with the software, perhaps faster than with XP

A suggestion: create a light-weight client edition of Vista that is free, but not eligible for technical support from Microsoft. If they must, charge $50 for it. Give the user an incentive to remain a Microsoft customer and keep it cheap enough so that users stay legal. More powerful editions of Windows would have specific target audiences, such as business users, home users, gamers, and creative professionals.

Otherwise, Macintosh and Linux will continue to make significant gains.

A full rainbow spans the horizon looking east over North Broad Street after a brief rain shower in the early evening of Thursday, May 22, 2008 in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Tom Mihalek)

Known for his vignette operas such as Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, and Der Ring des Nibelungen (a.k.a. The Ring Cycle).

One of my favorite memories at Eastman School of Music was when my composition teacher, Christopher Rouse, asked me to listen to the entire Ring Cycle (16 hours) over the course of two weeks to discuss as part of my studies.

So with that in mind, grab a nice glass of German Riesling and cuddle up to four hours of Wagner opera tonight.

Now onto my experience. After receiving my private invitation to the service, signing up with BrightKite was simple.

Finding Friends

With any social network application, the overall experience gets better as more friends participate. BrightKite is no exception. Fortunately, they have developed a tool to discover existing friends from your Twitter network. During the private beta, you have a limited number of email invitations available for sharing. (Let me know in the comments if you are interested in trying it out as I have a few extra invitations available.)

Searching for Locations

Searching for locations was quite easy as you can put in an address or a business name in your search. Once you find a location, you can add it to your “Placemarks” for easy recall. In my testing, I found that searching was very good and I was always able to locate the business or address without any problems.

Posting Photos

Posting photos is seriously simple. If you are online, you can upload a photo a create a caption through the web interface. Since BrightKite is about being mobile, posting a photo is just a matter of emailing the photo from your phone to a special email address at BrightKite. The subject of your email becomes the photo caption and the photo is posted to the place where you are currently located. That said, it would be nice if they included a quick instruction about the subject line becoming the caption for the attached photo.

Mobile Interface

BrightKite has a very nice iPhone interface. For this reason, I didn’t use the SMS capabilities for updating my location with BrightKite. I found the iPhone interface very responsive and very nicely designed. It wasn’t an afterthought, rather it was clearly designed to include the bulk of the functionality that you would want when you are on the go.

Scientific Findings

The downside of the service is that it is new. It will obviously get better as more users join the party. You can totally tell that some people are posting the equivalent of “Hello World” while others are posting constantly. Over time, the novelty will wear off and posts will be more interesting.

One thing that BrightKite made perfectly clear: I have a boring social life. Basically, I go to work and I go home. Yes, there were a couple of times where I actually went out and I posted my location to BrightKite and posted a photo or two. But for the most part, I wasn’t the party animal that BrightKite is targeting.

If you own a restaurant or a night club or other venue, you should be on BrightKite. Take pictures and post with captions to BrightKite even if you never move. When a user gets near your location, BrightKite lets users know that you (or your venue) are close by and your “Placestream” becomes a marketing message for you.

Suggestion