Aug
One of the main reasons why I haven’t been posting to the blog lately is because, well, it’s a chore.
No more.
From now on, all my posts will come from my Posterous. All (or almost all) posts will be syndicated automatically across Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, Flickr, and here at my blog. Gotta love convergence.
Oct
There has been quite a bit of chatter going on about the market meltdown and its effect on the startups of Silicon Valley. Funding will be increasingly hard to come by, especially from venture capitalists that are affected by the public market such as Sequoia Capital (they invested in Google, Apple, etc.). A number of venture capital firms have released presentations and emails of doom to their portfolio companies urging them to buckle down and control burn rates. They also advise to sell if the opportunity presents itself, even if it’s at a loss. The outlook has been grim, especially to those startups with light, or no revenue streams whatsoever.
It’s scary out there, especially to anyone that has been considering launching their own startup. I hold a different view on things. I think that this is going to be a time that will weed out nonsense and promote actual companies that actually add value and generate revenue. Anyone can launch a social network, but it takes a certain kind of entrepreneur to actually launch successfully and fulfill an actual need. Fulfilling a need is where it’s at for a while – it’s no longer enough to present a service that a user may just want. This paves the way for startups that make our everyday tasks easier, more productive, and more efficient. Those are the startups to keep an eye on.
Now is the time for great ideas to flourish while all the dumb ventures get flushed down the drain. Who needs social networks when all they do is weaken your productivity? Now is the time for companies that you simply can’t do without.
Sep
No, not RSS feeds. I’m talking about social feeds like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Fred Wilson’s post on feeds got me thinking. He talks about letting marketing into social feeds through accessible APIs by the networks. I’m not opposed the idea providing that there is interactive, relevant content associated with the marketing – something that grabs my interest and I might actually want to interact with.
While services like Friendfeed and Plaxo have been aggregating feeds from these social networking services, what about the other side of the coin? Let’s say that I have multiple social networking accounts: Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook. How do I update my status on all three of these? I’d have to login into each and every one of those and paste my update individually. Time consuming and impractical. What about online mavens that use 6 or 7 services, and all support status updates?
I have accounts on quite a few social networks and I don’t remember more than half of them. I’m sure that I’d be able to leverage them more if I can go to a single service that can send out my status to all of these networks without me actually having to log in to all of them which can take 20-30 minutes.
I think the time has come to think of a solution. Maybe then I’d actually use Twitter.
Sep
Ruh, roh. Looks like the one application that I had running all day on Firefox doesn’t like Google Chrome. I use CentralDesktop for collaboration at work so clearly this is an application that I need 100% of the time. I guess my goal of not opening up Firefox all day is no longer a reality.
On a side note, did you see how I referred to CentralDesktop as an application? Before Chrome, I would have just called it a website. Interesting.
Sep
I’m writing this post right in Google’s new browser – Chrome. It was officially announced here, via the Google blog. Here are my initial thoughts:
Aug
I usually bypass liveblogging posts from online marketing conferences since most of that info gets covered by day-to-day reads in my RSS reader. I typically go to the conferences for the networking opportunities (or free drinks) unless I come across a really interesting session.
But what about all those other readers that can’t make it to the conferences but know they can benefit from the sessions? Since they can’t make it to the conference, there is really no better alternative but to follow the sessions through livebloggers like Lisa Barone and Lee Oden. The readers count on these livebloggers to provide them with the most updates to almost every session in the conference.
My question is this: How many livebloggers pass the readership metrics back to the conference organizers? Or, let’s rephrase that question: How many conference organizers [politely] ask the livebloggers for this info? Considering that most companies that don’t consider online marketing as a 1st priority, they may not want to shell out almost $1,000 a /day plus air travel to have their employees attend the conference. That means that most attendees may actually be “virtually” attendending these conferences.
I’m sure that conference organizers like Kevin Ryan (although a bit off-the-wall at times) find attendance metrics very useful and determine future sessions based on this data. So why not get the full picture instead of just understanding the paid attendees physically attending?
Jul
I was cruising on my way to work this morning, listening to 92.3 KROCK in New Jersey and heard a radio commercial that kinda cought my eye (ear?). AT&T was advertising a website that was said to stream Lollapalooza live on August 1-3rd. Interesting.
Judging by the AT&T Blue Room site, it looks like that is exactly what they are going to do, and then some! They will stream Lollapalooza via a webcast on said days. Not only are they using such new-world (to them) technologies like webcasts, but they are also posting updates on Twitter!
It looks like the live webcast will be their major marketing stunt to get people to notice them. Everything else they offer is standard fare for a video/music portal. I’m not really sure how this ties to their core offerings but AT&T service advertisements are splayed all over the site. Seriously, they’re advertising 3 seperate services on one damn page.
From their official release (the service has actually been around for quite a while):
The blue room is part of a larger initiative in which AT&T is leveraging innovative tactics to connect consumers to its products and services. Through blue room, AT&T is able to reach demographics, particularly the highly coveted youth market, which are generally more difficult to reach through traditional programs.
Last year in August, it looks like AT&T’s Blue Room has drummed up some scorn from Pearl Jam when it last streamed the Lollapalooza event. Apparently, AT&T inadvertently censored Pearl Jam’s anti-George Bush comments.
Better luck this year I guess.
Jun
Here’s a quick walk through on how to use the AutoText capability and a couple of examples that don’t come included out of the box.
First, let’s discuss exactly what AutoText does. From Jeff Barr’s blog:
AutoText is a macro (text replacement) system with some built-in intelligence so that it can handle multiple languages and mixed case text. AutoText is responsible for some of SureType’s spelling correction features. For example, it automatically replaces “acn” with “can,” “ehr” with “her,” and so forth. Basically, the spelling correction dictionary is out in the open and … is also fully editable.
That sums it up pretty good and is a bonus because I didn’t have to type it out myself 
.
If you’re new to your Blackberry (god help you), here’s where you can find the AutoText settings and how to add a new instruction, step-by-step:
Now, onto a few uses of creative text that didn’t come pre-packaged with your Blackberry.
One important point to keep in mind with AutoText is that it only automatically replaces what you have typed once it recognizes a space after the word to be replaced. For example, it won’t replace “y” with “why” but will if you type “y ” (there’s a space after the “y”).
Jun
Leave it to Gmail to dwindle my spam count down to 843 emails from a probably record shattering 5683 a few weeks ago. The problem is that I never even had a chance to review those emails before Gmail took it upon itself to rid me of all that spam. This is somewhat of an issue for me since I’ve noticed that Gmail isn’t 100% perfect in identifying spam versus regular mail. I would like to have had the opportunity to skim through my spam stuff before Gmail deleted it.
On a somewhat related note, Gmail has a sense of humor. Here is what I saw after browsing through my spam folder:
Jun
I wouldn’t trust myself locating my car in the driveway without using a GPS. I’ve left the house in the morning on my way to work and have turned around because I’ve forgotten my handy TomTom OneXL (I’ve been making the same exact trip to work for a few months now and can get there blindfolded). Needless to say, I’ve become pretty dependent on that little piece of gadgetry.
GPS units have come quite a long way since the first models came out – but they still have a long ways to go. Below is a list that I, a heavy GPS user, have put together over the past month or so.
There. Now your GPS is actually useful.
