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Tweet-Mapping Arrives, Along with the Twitter's Battle Against Google.

geo-location on twitter

Twitter's geotagging powers could transform the lifecasting service into something extremely powerful. And the company's just taken the first steps to making this happen through its own Web page: It's turned on Tweet mapping.

Twitter's geolocation code has been enabled since late 2009, ready for third part developers to build the right hooks into their smartphone app code that grab the user's location from AGPS tech and whizz it off to Twitter HQ. But that's about all that happened for a while, until just recently the company slightly adjusted how it deals with a user's geotagging data--making it comply with a common standard, and enabling a layer of user decision-making as to how much location data is revealed to the World.

But now Twitter's added the system to its Web page, and has turned on a little blue-colored icon next to Tweets in your Tweet stream that come with associated geotagged data. Hover your mouse over the icon, and you'll be rewarded with a pop-up map that reveals where the Tweet originated from, leveraging Google Maps tech from the search giant's own location-based APIs. You'll also get Tweet maps for people who merely assign their Twitter account location to one near you, even if they've disabled per-Tweet location data, and that may make things a little confusing.

The net result is similar to the effect you can currently get via some of Twitter's numerous third-party apps, and even in the augmented reality Twitter360 app, or AR browser Layar--via plug-ins like Tweetaround--giving a very neat "who Tweeted nearby" video-overlay view of the world through the smartphone lens.

The company hasn't implemented any sort of "search nearby" system yet, however. This would really be the secret sauce that could turn Twitter into a powerful hyperlocal news-discovery or PR-promotional vehicle, much the same way that I've already speculated Google could go with its Buzz lifecasting system. And this is where Twitter's geo-tags raise some questions. Because Google's loving the Tweet feed, which is powering its real-time search systems rather nicely at the moment, even while it's launching Buzz as a sort-of-competitor to Twitter. And Twitter could be aiming for hyperlocal news and possibly targeted advertising...which is very much Google's game. It's even using Google's code for the location-based data on the Twitter Web page. Pulling all this together, and what you've got is two companies, each with valuable assets, gently maneuvering to try to steal bits of each other's territory, while simultaneously collaborating to deliver a neat real-time Web search facility to the public. How this plays out, nobody knows. But as Twitter slowly ramps up its location powers as it certainly looks like it will (perhaps next requiring users to opt-out of transmitting location data, rather than opt-in) then the Google/Twitter relationship is only going to get more complex.

[Via VentureBeat]

Follow me on Twitter, occasionally with geotag data bolted in, to hear more news like this.

(03/11/10 09:00 AM)

Word of Mouth Versus Key Influencers.

Word of Mouth Versus Key Influencers

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareWord of Mouth Versus Key InfluencersThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 This summary of an article [...] (03/11/10 09:00 AM)

How To Use Surprise To Generate Word Of Mouth.

How To Use Surprise To Generate Word Of Mouth

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareHow To Use Surprise To Generate Word Of MouthThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Your customers [...] (03/11/10 09:00 AM)

The Soft White Underbelly of Referral Marketing.

The Soft White Underbelly of Referral Marketing

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareThe Soft White Underbelly of Referral MarketingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Not that I want [...] (03/11/10 09:00 AM)

MIT Media Lab Unwraps Its New Digs.

The building will now host MIT's most storied hothouse for interactive design innovation.

MIT Media Lab

Last Friday, MIT opened the doors on it's newest big budget building, a spacious complex for the MIT Media Lab. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki Associates, with project architect Leers Weinzapfel Associates, it's a departure from some of the bold experiments scattered around the campus, by starchitects such as Steven Holl or Frank Gehry. It's a fairly straight-laced building, designed to inspire collaboration.

MIT Media Lab

At six stories and 163,000 square feet, occupants shouldn't be squeezed for space anytime soon. The labs--ranging from the Tangible Media group, which focuses in interaction design; to the City Car project, which is designing on-demand transit systems; to Lifelong Kindergarten, which designs educational technology--each get big, wide-open, two-story studios. The architect dubs these "atelier style" spaces--that is, something as airy as a factory floor, but a bit more human scaled.

But the design's smartest features are quiet. The building is organized across a huge central atrium. But on either side of the atrium, the floors are offset. That simple detail means that denizens can look across the atrium, and see those from other labs, busy at work. The idea is that by making the community always visible, the architecture will be able to engender a cross-pollination of ideas. Here's a picture that hints at the effect, via Dwell:

MIT Media Lab

Meanwhile, the few splashes of color are reserved for the atrium's staircases--and the specific color scheme is borrowed from Piet Mondrian. (It also nods to the colors in IM Pei's original MIT Media Lab building, which is attached to the new one.)

Notice how the stairs are bowed out in the middle--they're actually an infographic of sorts, showing the stress loads borne by each section of the span:

MIT Media Lab

For more pictures and information, check out Dwell and CNET.

[Top two photos by Andy Ryan for MIT; bottom two by Tiffany Chu via Dwell]

(03/11/10 09:00 AM)

Battlestar Galactica Coming Soon to Fight With Star Wars and Star Trek MMOs.

Bigpoint and Unity Technologies announced on Tuesday that Battlestar Galactica Online will be released this Fall. The MMO (massively multiplayer online game) will debut on Syfy Channel's site first, as a 30-day exclusive, and will use browser-based 3-D software Unity. "We've always felt that Battlestar was the perfect IP for gaming. It's got all the elements that you would want: The various classes of characters, and weaponry, and ships, and dramatic storyline, and big worlds to play in," said Bill Kisper, the GM of the digital platforms group at Universal Partnerships and Licensing.

Battlestar Galactica Online

Players will be able to play as either humans or Cylons, in both ship combat sequences and away missions on planets. The developers are working closely with the production company at Universal that is behind the show, sharing sound and computer assets, and possibly more, "There will really be a link between the show and the game itself, with the characters and storyline. It's not just some starships flying around in orbit and we call it a Battlestar game," said Heiko Hubertz, CEO of Bigpoint. Details about what characters and stories from the show will be featured in the game will be forthcoming.

But can the game succeed in a market that feature both the recently launched Star Trek MMO and the coming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO? Kisper said, "It's a crowded and competitive space. We're a little bit different because, while those are more of a traditional MMO with a box product and an on-going subscription, we are coming into the browser-based space. We thought that made sense for Battlestar Galactica because the fanbase for the show is quite broad and spans a number of different demographics. We wanted to make it more accessible."

(03/10/10 09:00 PM)

Penguin's iPad Demonstration Asks: Are Kids Destined to Grow Up With Tablets?.

We saw Penguin speak about their conception of books-as-apps earlier, but now the publisher has released a beautiful, Apple-like teaser-ad showing their ideas in more detail--and there's a surprising emphasis on children's content.

In all our excitement over the iPad's possibilities for text, multimedia, and gaming, there's been hardly any consideration of the lucrative children's market. But the iPad is perfect for kids in a lot of ways--its larger screen is much easier for kids to manipulate than an iPhone or other smartphone, and the full-color screen and fast processor allow for bright, colorful apps with motion, which ebook readers like the Kindle can't handle. The iPad can act as a picture book, coloring book, audiobook, TV, educational game player, and visual toy--and Penguin's not going to let that potential pass them by.

Penguin's demonstration shows the company is dedicated to exploring this category; it opens the video with children's apps, and then spends more than a third of the video showing them. The children's apps are the most eye-catching part of the demonstration--we've all seen digital travel guides, constellation maps, and whatever kind of trend-hopping community app Vampire Academy thinks it is, but there are hardly any smartphone apps actually designed for kids. That's partly because the hardware is just designed for adults; it requires a monthly subscription, it uses a tiny screen that requires a significant about of manual dexterity, and it's easily lost. But a larger tablet is a completely different story, even if it does run a smartphone OS.

The iPad and its forthcoming tablet competition absolutely have the potential to become indispensable tools for children, replacing books with interactive, connected apps. And in the process, kids become indoctrinated with technology, adopting to new interfaces and developments easily due to early exposure to, well, the iPad Spot the Dog app. This is the way the world is moving, with younger and younger kids learning their way around technology, and the tablet may be the most important gadget category of this generation. It only makes sense that Penguin wants to stake its claim on the children's market.

[Via YouTube]

(03/10/10 09:00 AM)

Facebook to Add Location Data, Encourage Epic Levels of Oversharing.

Facebook

According to The New York Times, Facebook is set to introduce location sharing into their arsenal of social networking tricks this April at the F8 conference. I predict that 98% of my Facebook updates will read "My bedroom."

This is unconfirmed, but according to trusted sources, Facebook has been developing this location-based feature in-house for awhile now, tinkering until it's completely ready for release. There are to be two main aspects to the update. First is what you'd expect, a simple update from Facebook that lets you share your location. The second is actually an API, a set of developer tools that allow third-party developers to take advantage of this new feature. That could mean other developers, like Foursquare, would be able to input user information into Facebook.

It's impossible to predict exactly how this location-based update will look. The easy prediction is something similar to Twitter's location awareness, in which status updates are accompanied (if desired) by the location of the user. But the New York Times also says, with surprising confidence, that Facebook isn't going after Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt, but actually Google's dominance in small business advertising. What would that look like? We'll have to wait until F8 to find out.

Until then (and likely after then), I will remain in my bedroom.

[Via New York Times]

(03/10/10 09:00 AM)

5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend.

5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Share5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to RecommendThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 If I [...] (03/10/10 09:00 AM)

Build Your Brand So People Will Refer You.

Build Your Brand So People Will Refer You

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareBuild Your Brand So People Will Refer YouThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 As part of [...] (03/10/10 09:00 AM)

Author of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral Week.

Author of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral Week

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareAuthor of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral WeekThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest podcast featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Marketing podcast with [...] (03/10/10 09:00 AM)

Is Streaming Music Service KKBox the Chinese Spotify?.

Media companies worldwide are struggling with ad sales and budgets, desperately trying new business models like online pay walls to scrape by. But what if they moved into selling something other than journalism -- like, say, music?

Enter China's KKBox, which takes the unique approach of working as a streaming music service that happens to give away music journalism as a bonus. It sort of flips the Spotify model on its head, too. The music streaming isn't free. Users pay about $4.50 a month to access to a huge, Spotify-style library of the latest songs, available on the computer and mobile devices like the iPhone and Android phones. As a bonus, they get an online music and entertainment magazine.

KKBox has its own editorial staff of 30 or so editors, interviews Chinese pop stars, has columnists, hosts its own awards show and so on. Embedded in artist profiles and other places throughout the site is music, which listeners can preview a la Amazon's MP3 store or the iTunes preview feature or, presumably, go find and stream from KKBox's catalog if they're paid subscribers.

In other words, they come for the music, stay for the music coverage, says Stanford-educated founder Chris Lin. He says the site has about 200,000 paid subscribers but 6 million non-paying visitors. "They're here because this is a fun music destination. We've grown into a very popular media outlet" outside of selling music, Lin says.KKBox is the largest digital music service in China--and it's profitable. Lin says there's no magic secret to profitability, just common sense. "Per-stream royalty costs is what's going to suck you dry. You're giving your best service out for free, then asking people to pay later. That's awkward. If you can get all the music for free with ads, the willingness to pay for it is not very high."Right now the service is mainly focused on Hong Kong and Taiwan, but later this year, KKBox plans to roll out a North American version, targeted at the 8 million ethnic Chinese living here. "They are hungry for information about artists and entertainment news from home," says Lin. "We want to be a sort of entertainment Chinatown for them." Lin expects the North American service to run a little more expensive than its Eastern brother, but says the price will definitely be less than $10 a month, depending on negotiations with the labels in Taiwan.After the North American rollout, Lin wants to move the company's efforts to greater China starting in 2011, when 3G is more widely spread. "Smartphones and 3G have helped us in converting visitors to paid users," he says.

(03/10/10 09:00 AM)

What Would You Ask Nature? Submit to the Biomimicry Institute/Designers Accord Challenge!.

Thanks to a smart TED talk by biologist Janine Beynus that made the rounds a few years ago, books like Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and new online resources like AskNature.org, more and more designers are realizing a simple truth when trying to find responsible, ecological solutions: If we're trying to do it, chances are, nature already did it better.

Biomimicry is quickly becoming a cornerstone of sustainable design (read our story on biomimicry from 2008), but for designers who want to incorporate biomimicry into their work, many don't know where to start. Some famous biomimetic solutions have gotten passed around the mainstream press--including examples like self-cleaning surfaces modeled on lotus flowers, or the sticky repositionable tape inspired by gecko feet--but biomimicry isn't as easy as using nature as a crib sheet. "One of the big realizations that designers have when they play with biomimicry is that it's not a tool, it's a mindset shift," says Dayna Baumeister, who co-founded the Biomimicry Guild with Benyus in 1998. "Because of that--because of the fundamentally different way of thinking--it's hard."

Biomimicry expert Janine Benyus' 2005 TED talk

Even for biologists, it requires a shift in thinking, says Baumeister, from learning about nature to learning from nature, including how each of those processes fit within a larger ecosystem. In a way, it's examining nature's solutions for survival, but through a design lens, says Chris Allen, project manager for AskNature.org. "You can look at brilliant engineering and strategies for living over thousands of years."

A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGEThe Biomimicry Guild has worked alongside companies to help them achieve that shift in thinking, from a longstanging relationship with flooring and finishes company Interface, to a team currently on-site at an architectural project in India, where they're creating buildings that not only are made from natural materials, they actually behave like natural organisms. Currently there's a great deal of excitement bridging algorithms found in nature and information technology or "generative design," where we're able to extrapolate data from the way that nature goes through its iterative design process in evolution.

toucan A rainforest strategy in need of a real-life application: The bill of toco toucan acts as a heat exchanger to regulate body temperature by adjusting blood flow

And, using biomimetic principles, we've also been able to learn more about our own species: The Biomimicry Guild is starting conversations with global companies that manufacturer things like cosmetics--in which case their own in-house scientiststs have been studying hair and skin for decades.

Because biomimicry experts believe that designers play an integral role in making sustainable, nature-inspired decisions in a project, they believe that's where their influence is best appropriated. A biologist working in biomimetic design is known as a Biologist at the Design Table, or, in a biomimetic-appropriate acronym: a BaDT. There are currently very few BaDTs--only about 75 worldwide--since they have to undergo extensive training. But eventually, the goal is to have a BaDT in every design firm who can help guide the designers towards smarter, more nature-influenced solutions--and that's where we come in.

A lightweight chair design inspired by spiderwebs, by Linda Dong as part of the Student Design Sketch Challenge

A REAL-WORLD BIOMIMICRY CHARRETTETo start a larger conversation between biologists, designers and businesses, we thought we could help by seating at least three BaDTs at three design tables of Designers Accord adopters across North America. We've tapped teams from three firms: Smart Design, New York; IDEO, Chicago and Boston; and Taller de Operaciones Ambientales, Mexico City. Each team will be paired with a Biomimicry Guild BaDT who will lead them through a two-day biomimicry design workshop as they work to solve a business problem, documenting their processes and reporting back to us in a little over a month with their bio-inspired solutions and how they got there.

Now all we need to complete the puzzle is your company's challenge! Do you have a real-life design problem that you just haven't been able to crack? Do you have a system, material, structure, process in your business that's seriously in need of innovation? Explain your problem as clearly as possible in the form below, including what limitations have prevented you from being able to achieve your goals in the past. If we think your challenge is a good match for one of the firms, we'll contact you for more information. Your company could be featured on FastCompany.com as "clients" for one of three biomimetic challenges, and receive a solution for your problem--courtesy of nature, of course.

If you have any questions, feel free to add them in the comments, and be sure to submit your challenge by 11:59pm PST, March 17, 2010. We'll see you back here in a little over a week with an update.

SUBMIT YOUR DESIGN CHALLENGE

If you have a design and sustainability story to share, let us know about it! Check out the brand new Designers Accord Web site. And follow us on Twitter @designersaccord to hear what the Designers Accord community is thinking about.

Browse more Designers Accord Case Studies

(03/10/10 09:00 AM)

Tom Dixon's Burlesque-Themed Circus: G'hed, Order the Strip!.

You've never really dined until you've dined next to a stripper pole.

Tom Dixon Circus

Superstar designer Tom Dixon--whom we've covered frequently before--recently finished his newest interiors project, for a new restaurant in London called Circus.

Obviously, restaurants with a circus theme have been done over and over ago--there was the original Le Cirque, with monkey-drawings everywhere. And Aureole, in Las Vegas, features trapeze performers that fetch your wine. But where Le Cirque and Aureole are pure kitsch, Circus aims more for trust-fund cool-kids that wear Helmut Lang.

The building itself used to be housing for the animals performing for the Royal Opera House--a fact that Dixon and the Seven Dials restaurant group have used to inspire the design. Only this time, the performers are human: The wait staff does double duty, performing in cabaret acts.

Ergo, you'll notice the "Circus" theme referenced in the harlequin pattern on the wall below. And also the stairs attached to the long dining table, so that it can quickly become a stage:

Tom Dixon Circus

Meanwhile, the lounge actually has a stripper pole:

Tom Dixon Circus

Woodward in Boston: Where Ben Franklin Meets Supermodels

Restaurants of the Recession: The Wright, New York City

Restaurants of the Recession: Robert, New York City

(03/10/10 09:00 AM)

Lindsay Lohan Sues E-Trade. Sigh..

What narcotic cocktail would it take for you to recognize this baby as yourself? Actress Lindsay Lohan is suing E-Trade after recognizing herself in one of the company's baby ads. The ad features a baby named Lindsay who steals boyfriends and... Read more

(03/09/10 09:00 PM)

Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen.

Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t HappenThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Sometimes, what you do is [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)

Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model.

Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business ModelThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Have you ever [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)

17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business).

17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business)

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business)This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)

Amazon's First Response to iPad Hype: A Better Browser for Kindle.

kindle browser

Amazon is slowly stirring itself into action by improving its Kindle e-reader, just as I suggested it ought to if it's going to compete with the iPad and other tablet PCs. The first move: Improving the shoddy Web-browsing experience on the device.

We know Amazon is working on this thanks to a job opening in the company's Kindle division Lab126 seeking an engineer to develop an "innovative embedded web browser." The engineer in question must have expertise in Java software development, experience working with Linux-based embedded devices, experience working with Browser Engines, and (score one for cross-platform compatibility) "familiarity with current web standards." The job will be to develop and implement new features on the browser, support and improve existing browser versions and all the back-office documentation issues that go behind software projects like this.

Three things can be inferred from this job posting. First, Amazon is aware its current "experimental" Kindle browser is an embarrassing piece of naffness that barely functions even for static Web pages (and fails at displaying fast-updating content thanks to e-ink's slow refresh rate). Second, that old browser on older Kindles will remain, indicating Amazon may not be updating it and instead crafting a new browser for a newer Kindle--perhaps with features like speedier-updating that can't be supported on older hardware. Finally, and this is speculative but exciting, Amazon may be pushing to get this new gear on the shelves sooner rather than later. This comes from the text asking the job applicant to deliver "high quality work on tight schedules," which is seen pretty commonly...but with such seemingly long development cycles for the previous Kindle editions, you have to wonder if a "tight schedule" means Kindle 3 is on its way pretty soon.

So, congratulations to Amazon for making the first move to turning Kindle into a seriously useful cross-purpose device: This is absolutely vital for the future success of the Kindle as a hardware platform. And before naysayers chime in with a "dedicated devices will always have a place. I love my Kindle!" I know... I know. But Joe Public is going to look at the Kindle, with its relatively high price and mono-purpose skills, and compare it to the iPad and the host of tablet PCs en route and think twice, particularly when you'll likely get a Kindle app for iPad. Amazon could, of course, call it a day on the hardware (since e-readers may have but a brief time in the limelight) and pursue a software-only model for Kindle. But it would seem keen to play in the hardware game for at least one generation more of Kindle.

[Amazon via WebMonkey]

To hear more news like this, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter. It may even work on your Kindle.

(03/09/10 09:01 AM)

A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300%.

A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300%

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300%This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 I’m always amazed at [...] (03/09/10 09:01 AM)

Cleveland's Galleria Mall Turns Lost Retail Space Into Greenhouse Farm Stand.

greenhouse

Shopping malls, those bastions of American consumerism, have not been immune to the recent economic downturn. In a recent piece by our own Greg Lindsay, we looked at the impending decline of the mall, which is part of the "single-use environment" category of real estate development that will slowly disappear over the next thirty years, according to one developer. But what will replace these environments, and more importantly, what will happen to the massive malls of today?

One possible solution can be seen in Cleveland's Galleria mall. The mall lost many of its retail shops over the past few years, leaving gaping holes in the greenhouse-like space. So employees of the Galleria came up with the idea for the Gardens Under Glass project, a so-called urban ecovillage inside the mall that features carts of fruits and vegetables grown on-site. The project was recently given a $30,000 start-up grant from Cleveland's Civic Innovation Lab.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer explains:

Poole and Hamilton put in the first green stuff this week -- a 12-foot cart of lettuce and other greens near the Galleria's first-floor escalators. Their aim is to start an education center and store in a former candy shop, invite sustainable-product makers to display and sell their items, and sell produce to restaurants and individuals. They dream of hosting school groups and teams of volunteer urban gardeners eager to work beds of herbs and greens and vine systems raised hydroponically, aquaponically and in organic soils.

We can see it now: the malls of today turned into the suburban (and urban) farming powerhouses of tomorrow. And while we're at it, why not turn entire economically depressed cities into agricultural centers as well? It's already happening in Detroit, where entrepreneurs are turning vacant lots into factory-side farms. And if Cleveland's mall farm works out, maybe New Jersey can become the next big agricultural innovator--the state has the most malls per square mile in the country.

[Via Cleveland Plain Dealer]

(03/09/10 09:01 AM)

4 Things to Remember As You Twitter. Recently Alex Payne, an engineer at Twitter, posted the following message: "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You... (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week.

Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral WeekThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Marketing podcast [...] (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

Google Really Wants to Monitor Where You Are: May Link Buzz and Latitude.

google buzz latitude

Google's Buzz has hit the tech headlines in good and bad ways, but it's totally swamped other Google offerings like Latitude. Google's not forgotten it of course, and has revealed it may well intertwine Buzz with Latitude. LBS social networking FTW?

Google's mobile Buzz implementation has a location-based system built right in, which grabs your geocoordinates from the smartphone's AGPS system, whizzes it off to Google's cloud, and then drives location-sensitive data back to the app in the form of location aware Buzzes in the "nearby" view. As I noted before, this tech has the capacity to turn into something rather incredible (and slightly creepily unnerving) should Google take the concept to its natural extremes.

But Google has another location-aware social network already, and has had since February 2009--Latitude. Google's not deprecating Latitude, since it's based around slightly different systems, and is more of a location-based friend discovery system as opposed to a chat-based social networking system. Still, many of Latitude's features are emulated, or improved upon (or can be in the near future) inside Buzz. And that's why Google is noting, in an interview with eWeek, that while it's going to continue investing in Latitude since it's "extremely important," it's conscious of the public buzz about Buzz, and will be investigating "points of integration between Buzz and Latitude." In particular, there may be apps Google can "build that have certain compelling use cases" which may be enhanced by location-awareness.

This is fluffy, question-deflecting business talk, and it reminds us that Google truly is a giant organization pushing out innovative solutions in a thousand different directions all at once--sometimes without really thinking about the cross-product potential. But a liaison between Buzz and Latitude really does seem a smart idea, since the potential to enhance a friend-locator app with a sophisticated chat/info-sharing system has obvious benefits for the end users too.

And, don't forget the real motivator behind this idea: Money. Google's skills at profiling you as a user are legendary, and sometimes worrisome, and there would clearly be a huge new array of attributes it could calculate about your habits if it integrated the always-on location sensitivity of Latitude with the info-rich chat streams inside Buzz. And then it can use that data to sell ad space to interested parties who'd like to advertise stuff to you based on your location, or when visiting certain places or talking about them with your pals.

[Via eWeek]

(03/08/10 09:00 PM)

Vitra Unveils Its Stunning New Museum [UPDATED WITH 3-D TOUR].

The German furniture-maker maker adds another jewel to its starchitect-studded corporate campus.

Vitra

The Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, is already a mecca for contemporary architecture, featuring a design museum by Frank Gehry, a conference center by Tadao Ando, and another building on the way by SANAA. And they've just finished what might be the greatest of them of them all: a new building, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, to showcase the company's home-furniture collection.

UPDATE: Vitra has now thrown up an amazing series of 3-D images of the museum, offering you the next-best thing to actually visiting the building. A couple screen-caps:

Vitra

Herzog & de Meuron--who made a global splash in 2008 with their "Bird's Nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics--conceived of the building as an "ur-house." The individual volumes take the form of generic, A-frame houses, which are then stacked on top of each--creating an architectural symbol of Vitra's actual business, selling high-design through mass production.

There are 12 houses in all, and the stacking of them

Vitra

[For more stunning images by Iwan Baan, check out Arch Daily]

(03/08/10 09:00 PM)

Apple Debuts First iPad Ad During Oscars, Demonstrates a Dozen Ways to Hold the Thing.

iPad

Apple debuted its very first iPad ad during the Oscars tonight, showing off the tablet's various functions (with an emphasis on reading) in signature style. Oh, and if you were wondering how to hold a giant slab of screen with no kickstand, the ad makes sure to demonstrate about a dozen options.

It's a pretty typical modern Apple ad: soundtracked to inoffensive, perky indie rock, it shows the gadget's functions front and center, in this case committing to essentially a dead sprint through the iPad's uses. Newspapers, movies, calendar, maps, photos, email, iWork, and, of course, books are all given just enough time to register before the ad flashes on to the next one.

The ad, then, is a continuation of the iPhone campaign, rather than the MacBook ads, which typically feature a narrator explaining whatever change Apple's made to the line to warrant a new product. It makes sense, since the iPad shares the OS, software, interface, and (some) accessories of the iPhone, and has almost nothing in common with Apple's computer line--but it just reinforces the idea that this product is little more than an oversized iPhone. Apple doesn't even need to explain what it is--you can watch 30 seconds of a demo and realize that if you can use an iPhone, you can use this. That, of course, is to both its strength and detriment, but time will tell if people embrace the jumbo-sized mobile or not. The iPad will be released on April 3rd.

[YouTube via MacRumors]

(03/08/10 09:00 AM)

No iPad Tethering, but Games for Days: Steve Jobs .

ipad ad

It's just 25 days 'til iPad arrives on sale in some global locations, and the fever's mounting. To spur it on, Apple pushed its first ad during the Oscars, which Steve Jobs was at. He's also been emailing fans to confirm some details too.

The Oscars

The Oscars, like 'em or loathe 'em, count as one of the most viewed TV events around the World...making them an absolutely perfect platform for Apple to tease its upcoming tablet PC. The glamor, the glitz, the very media-centric nature of the show all tie in sweetly with the iPad phenomenon. And it all acts to accelerate the typical pre-launch hype Apple uses to get everyone excited in the several months between it launches a new product and it arriving on sale.

iPad-to-iPhone Tethering

When he launched the iPad back in January, Steve did a neat job of showing the World how cool the device is (without having to resort to his trademark "Boom!" either) but he also kept a lot of information back, leaving plenty of room for rumors. And for Apple to maybe add in some surprising "extra" features before it actually launches--just as it did for the iPhone.

One of the key features that Jobs (and Apple, on the iPad Web page) omitted was details on iPad 3G tethering to supply mobile Net to a PC. We know the iPhone can do it (mine's happily connected up right now to write this piece in fact--but then I am not in the U.S. with your ever-so-friendly AT&T) and the assumption as soon as we learned the iPad ran iPhone OS was that it would be able to too. Sure enough, code fragments inside the SDK have revealed it to be true--and frankly, it's not surprising.

But what we didn't know is if the iPad Wi-fi version could tether to a 3G iPhone. This concept also makes sense on a practical level, as who'd want to pay for two 3G connections if you're carrying both devices frequently. Well, we now know that lots of people will have to do this--Steve just did one of his famous short emails to a answer a question that a member of the public in Sweden put to him on this very matter. And all Steve said in response was "No," the iPad won't tether to an iPhone.

It's a shame, but it's probably a feature of business negotiations with 3G carriers who are concerned about potential lost revenue and network over-loading. Will this news play into user's decisions on which iPad version to buy? It's definitely influenced mine.

Battery Life

Another little gem Steve revealed by email (from his iPad--neat!) answered a question concerning the claimed 10 hour life of the iPad. The figure seems phenomenal--and it's been used as part of the long running Flash fiasco--and it's a key statistic in the iPad's battle to steal some of the Amazon Kindle's market, with its huge battery life.

So, when a skeptic quizzed Steve about the matter, he felt the need to step in: "... yes we are getting 10 hours in 1.5 pounds" of iPad weight. Of course, no one apart from Apple employees have really put the figure to the test yet, since nobody has gotten their hands on one for long enough. Only then will we see if the figures ring true. And for Apple's sake they better had, since all this hype will result in one or two (almost inevitable) class action law suits.

Games

As soon as the iPad's screen size was confirmed, it was clear that it'd be even more perfect as a gaming platform than the iPhone or iPod Touch--all that extra real-estate and resolution is just asking to be exploited. And now Secret Exit has revealed screenshots of its iPad version of the runaway iPhone success story Zen Bound, and they look utterly gorgeous. They're also the first big screenshots of an iPad-only game.

zen-bound

Zen Bound 2 does lend itself perfectly to the touchscreen and accelerometers in the device, of course. And though it's beautiful, it's hardly graphically intense. So we've yet to see how the iPad's A4 processor copes with serious 3-D graphics. It won't be long though.

To learn more about iPad as its launch date approaches, follow me, >Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

(03/08/10 09:00 AM)

The Referral Multiplier Effect.

The Referral Multiplier Effect

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

The Referral Multiplier EffectThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 After I read an early copy of [...] (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

Oscar or Not, "Coraline" Is a $65-Million Gamble That Paid Off for Phil and Travis Knight.

On the morning that Oscar nominees were announced last month, Nike founder Phil Knight called his son, Travis, at 6 a.m. They both had just gotten word: Coraline, the debut film by their studio Laika, was up for best-animated film. "Phil is a man of few words, but it was a nice conversation," Travis told me recently. "A great father-son bonding moment."

On Sunday, they're hoping for another such moment at the Academy Awards. Whether or not they walk away with a gold statuette, it's been a remarkable and improbable journey for the new filmmakers. Even Nike didn't reach the Olympic medal stand with its first shwoosh-emblazoned shoe.

As we chronicled in our story "The Knights' Tale," when Coraline was just starting production in 2007, Laika is a family affair. After rescuing the struggling animator Vinton Studios from financial ruin, Phil took control of the company and set his sights on building a movie studio, a Pixar rival. Despite no previous interest in management, Travis, then a talented, 29-year-old animator, came to embrace the leadership opportunity created by his father. Travis, who has since become Laika's CEO, was instrumental in bringing in Henry Selik, of The Nightmare Before Christmas fame, to direct Coraline, based on the best-selling young novel by Neil Gaiman.

They were determined to make a distinctive, darker-than-Disney movie that married old-fashioned filmmaking, stop-motion animation, and the latest technology, 3-D. The two had never been combined before. "People didn't gravitate toward us when we were trying to find partners," said Travis. "The film was weird, stop-motion was this odd thing, and we were an unknown quantity, a bunch of clod-hopping rubes up in Oregon. It's difficult to convince people that something new and innovative can bear fruit."

Coraline was a $65-million gamble for the Knights and Laika. "We knew it was very, very possible the film would tank completely," Travis said. Focus Features, however, was able to build early word-of-mouth by targeting niche audiences. The film went on to make $123 million worldwide at the box office ($75 million of that in the U.S.).

That revenue, and the Oscar nomination--not to mention 10 nominations for the industry's top animation awards, more than any other film, including Pixar's Up--have given Laika instant credibility and much-needed breathing room. "It definitely makes it easier to have conversations with [Hollywood] people," said Travis.

For now, Laika's second next project, scheduled to start production this spring, remains under wraps. What we do know is that it'll be introduced, "From the studio that brought you the Oscar-nominated -- or Oscar-winning -- Coraline ... "

Either way, that's an awfully nice head start.

(03/08/10 09:00 AM)

Today in Most Innovative Companies.

Daily news of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including BMW, Walmart, and Netflix

BMW Group DesignworksUSA: Alas, there's a fix to uncomfortable crowded planes: the Boeing Business Jet 2. Sure, it'll set you back $55 million, but with a luxurious interior designed by BMW, how can you resist? The plane was recently named the second most expensive private plane in the world.

Walmart: The Whole Foods-competitor is set to open a distribution plant that's 60 percent more energy efficient than other centers. The project will cost $115 million, and will feature high-efficiency LED lights, a "white roof membrane designed to deflect 85 percent of sunlight heat," solar panels, a wind turbine machine, and a pilot program for fuel-cell tech. I'm pretty sure Tom Friedman is drooling right now.

Netflix: Well, this isn't exactly about Netflix, but trust me, it's huge news for the online movie king. According to Yahoo Finance, Netflix-nemesis Blockbuster is going back to charging late fees, which had been costing the video-chain between $250-$300 million annually in lost revenue. The video-chain has been losing so much money that they've been forced to revert back to their old, bad habits. Do you still rent movies from the store? Why would anyone ever pay late-fees? A five-day rental now costs $5 -- that's half of the lowest Netflix plan!

I wonder who this mob will go after now:

(03/08/10 09:00 AM)

WANTED: Case-Mate Hug.

The Case-Mate Hug is a wireless inductive charger, a lot like the Powermat or Palm's Touchstone. Inductive chargers let you plop your gadget down onto a special surface for charging, rather than fiddling around with wires--and the Hug is one of the best out there.

Inductive chargers aren't magic, however. They work via a magnetic field, but gadgets (aside from the Palm Pre Plus) don't have the required magnetic parts, so you need to use a case. It's a little lame, but if you were planning on using a case anyway, Case-Mate's solution essentially adds wireless charging (which is undeniably cool) for just a bit more money.

The Hug is compatible with the iPhone 3G and 3GS only, for now--other models, including BlackBerry, will be coming out in a few months. The Hug's got a lot of great features, like smart charging, which switches the power off once your iPhone is fully charged to conserve battery life. It's also significantly better-looking than the Powermat, and is actually cheaper once the Powermat's required case is factored in (about $30 cheaper at Amazon). I played with the Hug at CES this year and was very impressed with the build quality of both the case and the dock; they've got a nice solid heft and feel to them, and the case feels like it actually would provide some protection.

The Case-Mate Hug is available starting today online and at most retailers. The kit sells for $100, and includes the dock, case, and a screen protection kit.

[Case-Mate]

(03/08/10 09:00 AM)

Weekend Favs March Six.

Weekend Favs March Six

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Weekend Favs March SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I have a weekend routine where I share a handful of favorite things I tripped upon online this week. I usually about three and don’t go into much detail but suggest you check them out. The image featured in the post is a favorite creative commons image [...] (03/06/10 09:00 AM)

Information About Tablet pc Games . You can see tablet PC games which includes crossword puzzles, Microsoft Sudoku, and many war games. These tablet pc games are quite advanced in nature. The significance of features and specifications ... (03/05/10 09:01 AM)

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Make Your Life Easy with Nokia N97-myluxphone. There have many recent Nokia mobiles which have created headlines due to having sold in fantastic numbers and also due to having been vested with features which are the latest ones to have come in the... (03/04/10 09:01 AM)

Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-Team.

Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-Team

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-TeamThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing As part of the Make a Referral Week 2010 Education Series I am highlighting the power of referrals and word of mouth marketing with a live event featuring the some of the brightest authors, speakers and thought leaders on the [...] (03/04/10 09:01 AM)

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Slow Scion Ad Illustrates Promise and Peril of Next Gen Ads. A new ad by Scion borrows the best and latest ad technology: It uses Facebook Connect to put viewers in a video where they are featured D.J. at a local club and driving to the event in their new... (03/02/10 09:00 PM)

Weekend Favs February Twenty Seven.

Weekend Favs February Twenty Seven

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareWeekend Favs February Twenty SevenThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I have a weekend routine where I share a handful of favorite things I tripped upon online this week. I usually about three and don’t go into much detail but suggest you check them out. The image featured in the post is a favorite creative commons [...] (03/01/10 09:00 AM)

Clear Channel Outdoor Offers Sponsored Traffic Data on Digital B’Boards. Clear Channel has launched what it is calling Total Out of Home Network, featuring traffic data on its digital billboard networks. The Illinois Lottery is the network’s first sponsor. The program has... (02/25/10 09:00 PM)

(Re)Discover Bizops and Ideas You’ve Missed. I’m excited to announce a a new site feature designed to help readers discover some of the content we’ve posted over the years. Called Random, this single link is a gateway to the thousand of posts on Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog. We’ve been posting business opportunities and ideas since 2001, over 16,000 of [...] (02/24/10 09:00 PM)

Inventors Eye: New Publication from USPTO. Inventors Eye is a new publication by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Inventors Eye is targeted at the independent and small entity inventor community. Inventors Eye will appear every other month. Each issue will feature information you can use, tips on working with the USPTO; events, organizations and meetings of interest to the community; [...] (02/24/10 09:00 AM)

Weekend Favs February Twenty.

Weekend Favs February Twenty

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareWeekend Favs February TwentyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I have a weekend routine where I share a handful of favorite things I tripped upon online this week. I usually about three and don’t go into much detail but suggest you check them out. The image featured in the post is a favorite creative commons image [...] (02/20/10 09:00 AM)

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Weekend Favs February Six.

Weekend Favs February Six

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareWeekend Favs February SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here [...] (02/06/10 09:01 PM)

Weekend Favs January Thirty.

Weekend Favs January Thirty

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareWeekend Favs January ThirtyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here [...] (01/30/10 09:00 AM)

Weekend Favs January Twenty Three.

Weekend Favs January Twenty Three

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

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Yelp! Changing the Local Game Some More.

Yelp! Changing the Local Game Some More

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

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Weekend Favs January Nine.

Weekend Favs January Nine

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

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Weekend Favs December Nineteen.

Weekend Favs December Nineteen

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

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Weekend Favs December Twelve.

Weekend Favs December Twelve

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

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Creating and Using Web Video Never Easier.

Creating and Using Web Video Never Easier

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Creating and Using Web Video Never EasierThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Video on the web has simply grown to become an expectation. Sites these days feature video for every imaginable use and visitors and users have grown to anticipate this engaging medium.The good news is that creating and using video on your websites and blogs [...] (12/11/09 09:00 AM)

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Two new web services from my inbox. Maybe these are useful to some readers: 1. Trade your contacts with others with the Reach Lead Network ala Jigsaw. Cool feature is that they can resolve ’social media’ contacts (i.e. Twitter followers) into real contact info. 2. If you are looking for new product/brand/company names to trademark, searching out conflicts is a pain. Well, until you’ve [...] (11/23/09 09:01 PM)

7 prospecting rules that produce leads. Need to improve your teleprospecting efforts? Check out my guest post for ZoomInfo, a blog that offers advice on all aspects of sales and marketing. The site features industry news, analysis, and surveys. And, from time to time they let... (09/10/09 09:00 PM)

B2B Marketing Zone launched . A new B2B marketing community that I am participating in was just launched. The B2B Marketing Zone is a marketing community site that was launched as collaborative effort between Tom Pick and Tony Karrer. The community features content from other... (07/02/09 09:00 AM)

June is Entrepreneur's "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month!.

For those of you who are not yet fans of Chase's Calendar of Events, you'll find that it's a great resource for you or for your clients when seeking those special holidays to tie your promotions to! In fact, there only ONE entry in the entire book with the word "marketing" in the title, and it happens to be in honor of Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month in June. Of course, that's reason to celebrate.

In order to do our part for the celebration, we've created a cool little e-book with some marketing planning tools and 30 ideas for entrepreneurs, along with a 30-day e-course starting on June 1st. What's even better is that there's different content and different ideas in the e-book and the e-course, so it's like you're getting two for one!

Learn more about Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month at: www.diymarketingmonth.com

Below is the press release signaling the launch of Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month coming up in June.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: DanaVanDen Heuvel
The MarketingSavant Group
888-989-7771
dana@marketingsavant.com

MarketingSavant Group reaches out to entrepreneurs with "DIY" marketing in honor of June's "Do it Yourself" Marketing Month

Green Bay, WI -- (May 13, 2009) Even in struggling economic times,
small businesses' entrepreneurial spirit continues to be a driving
force in the American economy.

A Green Bay, Wis.-based marketing consulting and training firm is
reaching out to the backbone of American business, providing a
Do-It-Yourself Marketing Plan customized specifically for
entrepreneurs. MarketingSavant is delivering free marketing tools just
in time for Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month in June.

"As an entrepreneur myself, I know how challenging it is to keep
marketing 'top of mind' and to stay front of mind with your customers
when you're wearing multiple hats," said Dana VanDen Heuvel, president
of MarketingSavant and creator of the month-long Do It Yourself
Entrepreneur Marketing Plan geared to small business. "But effective
marketing is even more pivotal to a small business' well-being than
their larger peers'."

Not to mention the sheer number of small businesses ripe for
marketing assistance. Small business is not equated with small
financial impact. Consider these statistics:

In 2008, there were an estimated 27 million small businesses in the U.S. (Source: Small Business Administration)

In 2008, 12 million people were involved in starting new firms. (Source: Small Business Administration)

For 90 percent of these beginning entrepreneurs, it takes more
than five years for an outcome to be determined. In that time,
one-third disengage, one-third continue in start-up mode and another
third implement a new firm. (Source: U.S. Small Business Administration)

Small businesses provide half the nation's nonfarm, private real
gross domestic product, and half of all Americans work for a small
firm. In addition, small businesses have been the primary job generator
in the U.S. economy, creating 60 to 80 percent of the new net jobs
annually from 1994 to 2004.(Source: Small Business Administration)

With numbers like these, there's a substantial audience that can
benefit from Do It Yourself marketing tools customized to their unique
needs. The MarketingSavant DIY Entrepreneur Marketing Plan includes
several resources that entrepreneurs can quickly put to use, as well as
tools to build their long-term marketing plans, including:

"30 Days of DIY Marketing" e-book, an excellent resource that
provides a marketing calendar and more than 30 do-it-yourself marketing
ideas to grow your business over the summer;

30-day e-course, delivered daily by email, highlighting marketing tips;

Eligibility to receive one of 10 free copies of the book, "Guerilla Marketing in 30 Days" by Jay Conrad and Al Lautenslager;

Free access to a BlogTalkRadio program featuring insights from Lautenslager, a well-known and respected guerrilla marketer

Tips for reaching out to the media to obtain media coverage on your event/product/service

Much more!

"Realistically, entrepreneurs want to take charge of their own
marketing, just as they take charge of everything related to their
businesses," said VanDen Heuvel. "The DIY Marketing Plan makes this
good intention a reality by delivering a comprehensive plan
specifically for entrepreneurs in an easy-to-implement, do-it-yourself
format."

To learn more about the DIY Entrepreneur Marketing Plan and/or to
participate in the plan for your small business' benefit, visit www.diymarketingmonth.com today!

(05/14/09 09:00 PM)

MarketingExperiments B2B Landing Page Web Clinic Contest. I will be hosting a MarketingExperiments Web Clinic along with MECLABS Sciences Group Director, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, this Wednesday, February 25 at 4 pm EST. This clinic is special because it will feature an interactive contest. Ten B2B landing pages... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

Top 10 Best and Worst Communicators of 2008 (by Bert Decker). Every year my father, Bert Decker (author, entrpereneur, 30-yr communications expert) posts his Top 10 Best and Worst Communicators of the year. This year you will see some twists and surprises. Read the entire blog post here.Ten BEST Communicators of 2008 Barack Obama Tim Russert Randy Pausch Colin Powell Mike Huckabee John Chambers Sarah Palin "New Communicators" -- Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin Tina Fey Anderson Cooper Ten WORST Communicators of 2008 George W. Bush Richard Fuld Rod Blogojevich Elliot Spitzer Roger Clemens Sarah Palin (yes...best and worst! Read how that's possible) Dan Rather Al Davis Rosie O'Donnel John McCain How is Bert qualified to post this list? Here's his bio:Bert Decker is a national communications expert, best selling author and entrepreneur, founding the communications training company Decker Communications, Inc. He has been featured in the NY Times, Business Week, 20/20, as well as being the communications commentator for the NBC TODAY Show for the Presidential Debates. Coach to Charles Schwab, U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, former Mattel CEO's John Ammerman and Jill Barrad, Olympians Bonnie Blair and Tom Dolan, SF 49er All-Pro Brent Jones, and dozens of other executives Founder, Chairman and CEO of Decker Communications, Inc., a leader in communications training and executive coaching. Consultant to Siemens, State Farm, Schwab, Met Life, and many others Professional Speaker and best selling author of "You've Got to Be Believed To Be Heard" and "Speaking With Bold Assurance" Co-producer of an Academy Award documentary Entrepreneur, founder of four companies,... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

New Event! What's Your Marketing Stimulus Plan?.

I've just launched the first of a series of marketing, thought leaderships and social media events that I'll be running in Wisconsin in 2009. If you're up for some 'marketing stimulus', I recommend that you check out this program!

The MarketingSavant Group invites you to attend the Marketing Stimulus Plan Boot-Camp, a one-day in-depth workshop that will jumpstart or revitalize your marketing efforts in these tough times. The best companies don't cut marketing spend in a downturn, they do the opposite. They know that even the toughest market conditions still provide plenty of opportunity.

Attend this one-day workshop to refine and revitalize your marketing strategy to help you swim upstream during the recession and position your company for long-term success.

Who: The MarketingSavant Group
What: What's Your Marketing Stimulus Plan? Workshop
When: January 27th, 2009 from 8:30 to 4:45
Where: De Pere, WI at the F.K. Bemis Center - St. Norbert College
How Much: $295 early reg / $395 after 1/9/09
Where do I Sign Up: At the Eventbrite website

Marketing managers, sales professionals, business owners, and executives within small to medium sized companies responsible for sustaining profitability and striving growth in a downturn will learn how to:

* Develop a road map for putting frugal, ethical and effective marketing strategies in place immediately
* Understand how new approaches in digital and social media marketing can catapult your company into new market opportunities
* Adapt your marketing spend for today's unpredictable economy
* Adjust prices and promotions without sacrificing market share or brand image
* Focus on accountability and obtaining measurable results from your investments
* Improve strategic and tactical planning with marketing ROI techniques and tools
* Manage your marketing budget and collaborate CFO and CEO

It's been said that "Every adversity carries a seed of equal or greater benefit." This program will help you and your business find the silver lining in those dark clouds by adopting creative, compelling, and low-cost/high-return marketing strategies. We'll discuss and learn new ways to devise new strategies to overcome economic turmoil, and execute new tactics to win, sustain and grow new business.
Bonus Item for Attendees:

All attendees will receive a copy of Marketing in a Downturn: Recession-Proof Strategies for Smart Marketers, a 90-page e-book featuring over 25 interviews with leading marketers, consultants, managers and business owners sharing their most effective marketing strategies for remaining profitable and sustaining growth during a downturn.

Who Should Attend?
* Marketing and communications professionals
* Small business owners
* Channel and brand managers
* Entrepreneurs and start-up managers
* Advertising and public relations professionals seeking new client solutions

You'll Walk Away With:

* Dozens of low-cost and effective ideas that you can implement immediately to jumpstart your marketing in the recession of 2009
* The tools, templates and action plans you'll need to succeed in the world of digital and social media marketing
* An idea packed e-book, Marketing in a Downturn: Recession-Proof Marketing Strategies for Smart Marketers, on how to make the most of your marketing in a recession

Register Now at Eventbrite

(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

New Event! What's Your Marketing Stimulus Plan?.

Attend this one-day workshop to refine and revitalize your marketing strategy to help you swim upstream during the recession and position your company for long-term success.

Register Now at Eventbrite

(12/17/08 09:00 PM)

Push vs. Pull Marketing.

The push marketing vs. pull marketing discussion is still alive and well. Check out this article on Adotas. It's been pretty popular so it's pegged as the lead article on the site for the last week.

Success Is A Tug Of War, Push And Pull To Win

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Site Update and New Feature.

This weekend I spent some time adding some great new resources to my site. Check out my What's New Page to see what I've added.

I've also instituted a new feature for these and subsequent new resources. Recently, I discovered Clipmarks, a tool you can use to clip and stash snippets from Web pages. I've been trying to come up with a way to incorporate Clipmarks on my site and decided to begin using it to highlight the new additions. A possible other use might be to incoporate it in this blog, maybe for a "Site of the Week" or "Site of the Day" feature. I'm still thinking about this, so stay tuned.

Now what you will see when you go to a page on my site where I've added a new resource is something like what is shown at the bottom of this post -- a clip from the Foundation Center website.

To see the clips for the new resources, go to any of these pages:

Business Plans
Grant Writing
Small Business
Grant Subjects
Grant Samples
Legal, Financial & Contracts

What do you think?

clipped from foundationcenter.org

"The subject of this short course is proposal writing. But the proposal does not stand alone. It must be part of a process of planning and of research on, outreach to, and cultivation of potential foundation and corporate donors."

(03/24/08 09:01 AM)

My 1997 Home Page & Resume...still alive!. Maybe with the new baby I'm in a nostalgic mood to share this with you... I was going through some old files on my computer tonight and found a local version of my personal home page I built in 1995 and abandoned in 1997. I clicked on one of the links and it went live! It's still at http://users.aol.com/samdecker. I have no idea why this is still live...I lost my free "SamDecker" AOL account in 2000. My home page simply featured my online resume and list of links live, but it's an interesting trip back in history, with an animated gif and .gif photo of myself (everything was .gif back then!). You can see some early Internet links, many of which are not live anymore. I don't call out some of those college accomplishments on my resume any more, but you can see my entrepreneurial roots! Also, as an aside, you can see my first corporate web site I built (with the technical skills of Raines Cohen). Here you can see the 1996 version of the User Group Connection web site. And if you want to see what I looked like with hair in 1995, here you go: Before: And after... If anyone tries to sell you something with these before and after pictures, don't buy it (as if I have to tell you)! (03/09/08 09:00 AM)

My New Toy.

My birthday is coming up soon -- it will arrive next week while we're in Maine. So my husband got me a new toy that I can play with while we're there. Want to see? Just click here.

This is my kind of toy. I've only had it since Sunday and already I'm in love. The toy does everything I need, or at least it will once I figure out how to use all the features. I played with it at home until yesterday morning, when I decided to give it a test run while doing some errands.

Get in the car, drive to the grocery store, pick up a few things. Uh oh, there's a long check-out line. No problem, I spend my time checking my e-mail on my new toy. Get back in the car to go somewhere else and I remember that I need to make a call. That's easy too -- I talk to the toy and tell it that I want to call Janet Smith. The toy asks me if I want to call her work, home or cell phone. Amazing!

Head over to Starbucks for a latte. I wonder what is going on in the news. I go to my Yahoo home page on the toy and get the latest headlines. I read a few of the news stories while drinking my latte. Then I send an e-mail to a friend.

It's not going to be too difficult to get addicted to this new toy. Goodbye Palm PDA, goodbye old cell phone. I've never liked either of you, and now both of you are history!

So Happy Birthday to me!

(03/01/08 09:01 AM)

My New Toy.

My birthday is coming up soon -- it will arrive next week while we're in Maine. So my husband got me a new toy that I can play with while we're there. Want to see? Just click here.

It's not going to be too difficult to get addicted to this new toy. Goodbye Palm PDA, goodbye old cell phone. I've never liked either of you, and now both of you are history!

So Happy Birthday to me!

(02/21/08 09:01 PM)

Top 10 Best and Worst Speakers of 2007. Every year Bert Decker (disclosure: my father), Chairman of Decker Communications, publishes his Top 10 Best and Worst speakers of the year. The top 3 speakers of 2007 are: Gov. Mike Huckabee Dr. Mehmet Oz Al Gore Click here to see all Top 10 Best Speakers The 2007 worst three speakers are: Attorney Alberto Gonzales Michael Vick Robert Eckert (Mattel Chairman) Click here to see all Top 10 Worst Speakers Bert Decker is a national communications expert, best selling author and entrepreneur, founding the communications training company Decker Communications, Inc. He has been featured in the NY Times, Business Week, 20/20, as well as being the communications commentator for the NBC TODAY Show for the Presidential Debates. Coach to Charles Schwab, U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, former Mattel CEO's John Ammerman and Jill Barrad, Olympians Bonnie Blair and Tom Dolan, SF 49er All-Pro Brent Jones, and dozens of other executives Founder, Chairman and CEO of Decker Communications, Inc., a leader in communications training and executive coaching. Consultant to Siemens, State Farm, Schwab, Met Life, and many others Professional Speaker and best selling author of "You've Got to Be Believed To Be Heard" and "Speaking With Bold Assurance" Co-producer of an Academy Award documentary Entrepreneur, founder of four companies, Chairman of Bold Assurance Ministries, NBC TODAY Communications Expert commentator, Advisory Board Salvation Army (01/05/08 09:00 PM)

Three Answers from the Web 2.0 Summit. I couldn't make the Web 2.0 Summit a couple weeks ago, but my colleague Jay Hallberg (Co-founder and VP of Marketing for Spiceworks) was there and answered my top three questions: If I were a brand company.... top three things... that would help my business: 1) Web 2.0 is moving into 'adulthood' and changing industries. There was a general feeling that web 2.0 has grown up. In fact, the Red Herring had a great piece on this: "Is Web 2.0 Growing Up?". Collaborative technologies are solving problems for enterprises and entire industries. It's no longer about whether your CEO has a blog or your company has a wiki. You better be paying attention to how Web 2.0 is helping your competitor or turning your company upside down. Half of the companies featured in the prestigious Launch Pad were "B2B": Cleverset optimizes website revenue, ClickForensics analyzes PPC click fraud, and Spiceworks (my company) has introduced free, ad-supported IT applications. Some of the crowd bemoaned the fact that Web 2.0 is no longer about the next YouTube or Flickr -- it's now about how it's impacting the bottom-line or up-ending industries. If you are still talking about blogs and wikis you may have missed the boat. 2) "Online" is everything. Brian McAndrews who runs Microsoft's ad business really nailed it when said that within 5 years online will be the center of all media, marketing and advertising strategies. It's where people should start. Frankly, it's hard to believe that this isn't already... (10/29/07 09:00 AM)

Yahoo Buys Zimbra for $350 Million. Yahoo has agreed to buy Zimbra, a startup that offers Web-based corporate e-mail (and a Next Net 25 company from 2006). The price is a hefty $350 million—one of the largest for a Web 2.0 startup to date. Yahoo is right to build up its portfolio of Web-based apps, but Zimbra is an enterprise app. Yahoo (YHOO) is a consumer company. So this could end up being a stretch for them (or its entry into a whole new market). Update: A senior Yahoo executive just told me that the acquisition was more for Zimbra's technology than an attempt to create a wedge into the nascent enterprise Webtop market. That makes more sense. So expect to see some of Zimbra's gee-whiz Webtop features appear in Yahoo's consumer e-mail, contact, and calendering apps down the road. (See my earlier coverage fo Zimbra here, here,and here) (09/17/07 09:00 PM)

Glide Mobile Lets You Check Out PowerPoint Slide Shows on Your iPhone. While Google (GOOG) is still supposedly fooling with the finishing touches to its Web-based version of PowerPoint, one startup already has it working on a mobile phone. Transmedia out of New York City is finally bringing PowerPoint presentations to the iPhone and other mobile devices with it's Glide Mobile service. One of the sorely missed features of the Apple iPhone is full compatibility with Microsoft Office. Out of the box, you can read Word documents on it, but you can’t edit them. And don’t even think about running a PowerPoint slide show. But starting later today, Transmedia CEO Donald Leka tells me, Glide members will be able to go over to glidemobile.com on their iPhones (or Blackberries or Treos or Nokias) and show people slide shows that they’ve uploaded to Glide. They can even edit them or create new ones from their iPhone (assuming they have a lot of time on their hands). They can also type away on Word documents to their hearts content—a feature that was implemented a few days after the iPhone hit stores. If a small startup in New York City can make Word docs and PowerPoint slides work on the iPhone, why can’t Apple (AAPL) or Microsoft (MSFT)? (09/17/07 09:00 AM)

Disruptors Video: One Laptop Per Child. In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I visit One Laptop Per Child, the non-profit building $176 laptops for children in the developing world. I think they are disruptive for many reasons, but foremost is that by trying to design a laptop that initially was supposed to be under $100 they had to rethink many things about computers that most of us take for granted, like the display, the networking, the power consumption, and the durability. (There's no hard drive in this thing). It's also one of the greenest computers on the planet. CTO Mary Lou Jepsen explains to me in the video how getting the power consumption down to a fraction of what a normal laptop needs was one of the main challenges. (It turns out they do this by turning things off when they are not in use to a greater degree than conventional computers do). Don't be surprised if you start seeing many of these features copied in regular laptops soon. Watch the video. (09/14/07 09:00 PM)

Disruptors Video: Changing the Face of Business Travel (DayJet). This week's New Disruptors video is about one of the most promising air taxi startups out there: DayJet. CEO Ed Iacobucci, the founder of Cytrix Systems, plans to use a fleet of small jets from Eclipse Aviation to offer charter jet service on a per-seat basis for not much more than the cost of a business-class seat on a commercial carrier. But he's trying to disrupt driving more than commercial air travel, since he is targeting secondary cities on the outer edges of the airline's traditional hub-and-spoke system. Watch the video. (Full transcript after break). (For more on air taxis, read the feature I wrote about DayJet and Eclipse last March). Subscribe to The New Disruptors Check out my weekly video series on CNNMoney and iTunes where I discover startups with the potential to overturn existing industries or open up new markets. (09/07/07 09:01 PM)

The Race to Buy Facebook Apps. Facebook only opened up its social network to outside applications last May, but already there are 2,960 of them. And the top apps are being snapped up by larger companies. For instance, Slide acquired an app called Favorite Peeps in June. The latest rumor in this regard is that TripAdvisor is paying $3 million for a mapping application called Where I've Been. That's would be a nice check for Craig Ulliott, the sole developer who cobbled together the Facebook app in his spare time. It used to be that a few smart engineers could build a Web 2.0 site, and if i took off, Yahoo or Google or some other large company would buy it after a couple years for as much as $30 million. Now all you need to do is build a blockbuster Facebook app, and you can be bought for $3 million after just a few months of work. If you are only one person, and you own the entire company, you could end up with almost as much on an individual basis as if you owned 10 percent of a larger company. The race is now officially on to buy the most successful Facebook apps. Still, the majority of these Facebook apps are nothing more than features. It's just that anyone can buy a features on Facebook these days, not just Facebook. Where I've Been is a widget you can put on your Facebook page and mark each country or state you've ever visited or lived... (08/17/07 09:01 AM)

Keeping Attention. Part of my post the other day, What should WSJ.com do?, included a little snippet about advertisements potentially distracting from the readability of the Wall St. Journal online. I understand that companies need to make money, but it never ceases to amaze me how prominently some major sites feature advertisements within their pages. We use to have the "banner ad", which we all learned to ignore, so it makes sense that ads drifted down into... (08/13/07 09:00 AM)

Social Startups Kaboodle and Clipmarks Get Snapped Up By Old Media. Old media wants some of that Web 2.0 mojo. Hearst, the magazine company that publishes Cosmo, Esquire, and Seventeen, is buying social-shopping startup Kaboodle. And Forbes is reportedly closing in on a deal to buy Clipmarks, a bookmarking site that lets you clip, save, and share parts of Webpages you find interesting No official word on the purchase price for either one, but the word in the Valley is that Kaboodle sold for between $30 to $40 million. Why are media companies buying Web software startups? Because simply feeding people information—whether it's stock tips or style tips—is no longer enough. If media companies want people to stick around their Websites, they need to give them something to do. And that requires Web-based software. Clipmarks makes it easy for people to share information with each other, while Kaboodle lets them create virtual shopping lists. What is not clear is whether these Web services will be better off as captive arms of big media companies than they are on their own. For Kaboodle, the risk is that instead of becoming the general social-shopping engine of the Web (it's previous ambition), it will be seen as nothing more than a feature of the various Hearst magazine Websites. That opens up the field for other competitors such as ThisNext (see earlier post), StyleFeeder, or Stylehive to pursue that goal. For Clipmarks, selling might be the best move, since it doesn't seem to be gaining much ground on other social bookmark services such as del.icio.us... (08/08/07 09:00 AM)

Facebook Widget Makers See Traffic Rise on Home Sites. Does it pay to make a custom app for Facebook? Some of the top widgets on Facebook from companies like Slide, RockYou, and HotorNot appear to be driving significant traffic back to the home sites, reports VentureBeat. It makes sense. Widgets tend to have limited feature sets and act as teasers to go to a bigger site. The question is whether traffic measurement sites like Quantcast incorporate widget traffic in their overall stats or just look at teh main sites. (Anyone know the answer to that, please tell us in comments). Compete shows a similar trend, but Alexa doesn't show quite as dramatic a jump (and actually shows HotorNot declining slightly). Still, if 10 million people added Slide's Top Friends widget onto their Facebook page, chances are a fraction of them will go and check out what else Slide has to offer. At the very minimum, widgets can be a powerful form of marketing. Once companies figure out how to make money inside the widgets themselves, then we might finally see the beginning of a true Facebook economy.... (07/24/07 09:01 AM)

AT&T Launches Mobile Video Sharing Service For its (Non-iPhone) 3G Network. From the folks who brought you the Picturephone, ATT now lets some customers (those with 3G phones in one of 160 select markets) stream live video over their mobile phones. Want to show your friend in LA how funny your dog looks in sunglasses? Turn on the video cam. Startups like Kyte.tv already allow you to shoot and broadcast videos from your phone, but ATT now let's you do it live, while you are still talking on the phone. I admit that is pretty cool. But is it worth an extra $5 to $10 a month? We'll soon find out. ATT needs to give people a reason to upgrade to their 3G network, and they hope this is it. Today, a cell phone without a digital camera seems crippled. Video is the next logical step, especially as wireless networks become faster. The problem is that it doesn't work with the iPhone because that is not a 3G phone (and the iPhone only takes pictures, not videos). So all those folks who just shelled out $500, if you want this feature you will have to buy another ATT phone (or wait for the 3G iPhone to come out and pay another $500 for that). I'm scheduled to discuss this on CNBC tonight around 7:30 PM ET.... (07/23/07 09:01 PM)

Picnik; The Slickest Pic App Out There. Temps of the World Unite Originally uploaded by Erick Schonfeld Yesterday, Jonathan Sposato, the CEO of Picnik.com, came by my office to show me the slickest Webtop application I’ve seen in a while. It’s a fully-featured picture editing app that blows away iPhoto in many respects and is completely browser-based. Picnik can ingest digital photos from your computer hard drive or from various photo-sharing services, including Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, and Google’s Picassa. Once you pick a picture, you can rotate, crop, zoom in and out, remove red-eye, resize, and add tons of effects from heat maps to sepia tones to doodles to borders. What is impressive is that it does all of this faster than a desktop application like iPhoto. For instance, it took me literally two minutes to create the image above from this image I had previously put up on Flickr. The breadth and quality of features on Picnik fall somewhere between iPhoto and Photoshop. Sposato is the programming whiz who managed the team that built the Halo videogame for the first Xbox. Then he created a startup called Phatbits which was bought by Google and became Google Gadgets. Picnik is free and has attracted about 300,000 users. Sposato plans to try to upsell members to a premium version to get access to some of the fancier effects that are now free in the beta version of the site (like heat maps and doodling). It's not clear how many people will end up paying for such extras, especially... (07/12/07 09:01 AM)

The New Disruptors, Now On iTunes. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I've been putting out a lot of videos lately. It's all part of a new Web video series I am producing on CNNMoney.com called The New Disruptors. Each week, I will profile a different disruptive startup or entrepreneur in a three-minute video. In the current episode, for instance, I visit Desktop Factory, a company in LA that wants to bring 3D, rapid-prototyping printers to the masses. Future episodes will feature entrepreneurs taking on industries as diverse as the airlines, energy, healthcare, media, manufacturing, and wireless. A new video will go up every Thursday on CNNMoney.com. You can also subscribe to the show for free via an RSS feed or, as of a week ago, get it on iTunes. (When I last checked this morning, it was the No. 15 business podcast on iTunes, neck-and-neck with Wallstrip). If you do download it from iTunes, please write a review there telling me what you think (or in comments below). All you folks who just bought an iPhone need to fill it up with free videos, don't you? For every episode, I will also do a blog post. (Advertisers interested in sponsoring the show, please contact cnnmoneysales@timeinc.com).... (07/10/07 09:01 PM)

Human-Powered Search Already Popular in Korea. ??? Originally uploaded by toan_sagittarius86 The most popular search engine in South Korea is not Google or Yahoo. It is Naver. And one of it's addictive features is the ability for searchers to post questions and receive answers from the crowd of other searchers, somewhat like Yahoo Answers (which itself originated from Yahoo engineers in Korea—Were they inspired by Naver?). Naver calls it "Knowledge iN." The NYT looks into it today. Excerpt:“When people I have never met thank me, I feel good,” Mr. Cho, the lottery ticket seller, said. “No one pays me for this. But helping other people on the Internet is addictive.”Each day, on average, 16 million people visit Naver . . . But Naver users also post an average of 44,000 questions a day through Knowledge iN, the interactive Q.&A. database. These receive about 110,000 answers, ranging from one-sentence replies to academic essays complete with footnotes.Naver has so far accumulated a user-generated database of 70 million entries. Typical queries include why North Korea is building a nuclear bomb, which digital music player is best, why people have cowlicks and what a high school boy should do when he has a crush on a female teacher.The question left unanswered is whether human-powered search yields better results, or whether it is simply the best alternative in a country where, as one analyst quoted in the story puts it, there isn't "enough Korean-language data to trawl to satisfy South Korean customers.” Can someone who speaks Korean post that one one... (07/05/07 09:00 AM)

Yahoo's SmartAds Offer Better Targeting. Yahoo is slowly but surely trying to make its display ads just as relevant and targeted as Google's search ads. It is beginning to test what it calls SmartAds, graphical Web ads that can be customized in an automated fashion to the demographics of the audience most likely to see them. Cnet gives this example:For instance, instead of just seeing a generic ad for a Toyota Prius, a woman in San Francisco who conducts research on hybrid cars on Yahoo Autos could be served an ad for a local San Francisco dealer, along with information on the types of Priuses in stock and their purchase price. The ad, which is configured on the fly, could also feature a background color targeted for women in her age range, as well as a Golden Gate Bridge logo.In order for this to work, however, the advertiser must provide all the different variations and permutations of the ad it might want to show That could get complicated. Will Toyota have to prepare iconic logos for every city—the Gateway Arch for St. Louis, the Sears Tower for Chicago—as well as different colors and copy for each demographic slice it is targeting? A typical Google AdWords campaign can involve hundreds of thousands of different keywords. There is a practical limit to what an ad agency can gin up for one campaign. Still, even if advertisers come up with just 5 or 10 different combinations of the same online ad, in theory it should be more effective... (07/02/07 09:01 PM)

Kevin Rose Pownces on Twitter. Digg co-founder Kevin Rose has launched a side project called Pownce that is a direct challenge to Twitter. With Twitter, people can broadcast short IM or text messages to anyone who wants to subscribe to them. Pownce, which just launched last week in an invite-only beta, is already garnering a lot of chatter in the blogosphere, as well as condemnations among hard-core Digg fans. Pownce combines instant messaging, file sharing, and event management, all in one application. So it is a bit more fully-featured than Twitter. With Twitter, it's all about broadcasting every inane thought you have to the world. With Pownce, at least you can restrict your inanity just to your closest friends (or you can tell the whole world, if that's what floats your boat). And the file-sharing sounds like a nice bonus feature. Of course, both services only work if all your other friends are on them as well. Here's a review of Pownce on Mashable.... (07/02/07 09:01 AM)

My Interview on Invincibelle.com!. Invincibelle.com just put up an interview they did with me. Check it out here and then check out the rest of the interesting interviews and site features. It's a very cool place and I am honored to be included. Invincibelle.com... (06/14/07 09:01 AM)

Your favorite posts of 2006. plex1825 openPlexo({ "container" : "plex1825" }); Anyone can add this feature to a blog. Takes about five minutes (except for the unhappy job of eliminating the hundreds of posts that didn't make the cut). Please go ahead and expand the... (12/22/06 09:01 PM)

Here comes the Long Tail of Reddit (and Digg...). It had to happen, and it's happening all at once. Several sites (a few links at end of the post) are launching very focused, very vertical Digg-like features. My favorite is probably Squidoo (of course) because we've been working on... (12/18/06 09:01 PM)

My New Toy.

My birthday is coming up soon -- it will arrive next week while we're in Maine. So my husband got me a new toy that I can play with while we're there. Want to see? Just click here.

It's not going to be too difficult to get addicted to this new toy. Goodbye Palm PDA, goodbye old cell phone. I've never liked either of you, and now both of you are history!

So Happy Birthday to me!

(12/12/06 08:42 AM)

[Darwin Magazine] Three Myths of American Business. http://www2.darwinmag.com/read/feature/feb05_myths.cfm... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

[salon.com] Amazon's 43 Secrets. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/02/08/43/ Remember that famous New Yorker cartoon "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"? Revise that. On the Internet, nobody knows you're Amazon.com, if you hide behind the friendly face of an independent start-up. more...... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

[ktoddstorch] Customer Service: How Can it Improve? Rosa Say. http://www.ktoddstorch.com/business/2005/01/customer_servic_6.html Day 3 of the "Customer Service: How Can it Improve" feature! Today's writing comes from Rosa at Talking Story. It is an adaptation from Chapter 6 in her book named Managing with Aloha. more... Please note:  Rosa is... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

Wolfgang's Vault. I'm sure you've heard of this by now, but just in case... Wolfgang's Vault is the company that owns and markets the archives of the late Bill Graham (the ultimate rock promoter). They've just opened the Concert Vault - which features 300 full concerts, all of which are 100% free to stream!! A sampling of the available concerts: David Bowie at Nassau Coliseum in 1976, The Cure at the Ontario Theatre in 1984, Elvis Costello... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

Boiling Quicken 2004 Down to Its Essence. When you boil Quicken down to its essence, it does six things: You can track your tax deductions. This feature makes preparing your personal or business tax return easier for you or your poor accou ...

(08/28/06 09:02 AM)

Using the Clipboard Task Pane in Word 2002. One of Word's nifty features, one that other Windows programs lack, is the ability to store more than one cut or copied block of text in the Clipboard at a time. So you can cut, cut, cut or copy, cop ...

(08/25/06 09:02 AM)

Looking at How Feature Articles Can Boost Public Relations. Placing feature articles with appropriate trade, consumer, or business publications is a powerful and effective PR technique. Unlike a news article, which gives a straightforward report of recent ev ...

(08/24/06 09:00 PM)

Becoming Familiar with the QuarkXPress Interface. You may notice that the QuarkXPress interface bears a strong resemblance to the features used by other Windows and Macintosh programs. If you use other programs, you already know how to use QuarkXPre ...

(08/24/06 09:00 PM)