Category: Post

January 4, 2008

  • My Super-Clean Inbox

    Over the holidays I took some time to rethink my inbox strategy and I thought I’d share my current approach with you.

    For reference, that’s my brand-spankin’-new inbox you’re seein’ here.

    IMAP

    I’m now using IMAP for work and home accounts. Up until now I’ve been a POP-guy — more out of habit than anything else. With POP you check your mail server and download anything new since the last time you checked. Typically the server then deletes its copy and what you downloaded becomes the only version you’ve got.

    IMAP is wonderful as it allows you to keep all your messages on the server (“in the cloud”) and pull down synchronized copies on as many machines as you’d like (as well as checking messages via webmail). Essentially you’re doing everything on the server and just keeping local copies for back-up and offline use. This is much safer and much more convenient.

    Providers

    My “Work” account is (naturally) my Tucows email account running on the Tucows Email Service (yes we “eat our own dog food”). For my “Personal” mail I’m trying Google Hosted Apps for comparison purposes. I also have a separate Tucows Email Service-based address via Domain Direct for a domain I host there but haven’t actively started using.

    Folder Strategy

    As you can see from the screenshot, I’m going for extreme simplicity. Besides the default Inbox, Draft, Sent, Trash, and Junk folders that come with both accounts, I have only added three folders to manage my messages — Actionable, Archived, and Waiting For Reply.

    Zero Inbox

    I use (and have for many years now) used a “Zero Inbox” approach as recommended by Merlin Mann.

    I process email through-out the day, dealing with each message in turn.

    1. Things I don’t need to act on and can’t imagine ever needing to reference again, I delete.

    2. Things I don’t need to act on that might (even remotely) be of use someday gets dragged to the “Archived” folder associated with the account.

    3. Messages that require action but will only take a few minutes to resolve get dealt with immediately. The original message gets Archived.

    4. Messages that will take more effort than I have time for are marked Unread and moved to the Actionable folder associated with the account. That means that I have a clean inbox and two folders that show the count of things I need to work on related to each role in life. In my example here you can see I’ve got 16 work-related messages and 2 personal messages I need to deal with. I tackle these as quickly as I can but within the context of other daily priorities so I don’t let my inbox drive me.

    5. Any time I send a message that I expect a reply to, I drag the sent message to my Waiting For Reply folder. I check this every few days and follow-up with the recipient if they didn’t get back to me in a reasonable amount of time.

    “Read The Feed”

    One of the best things about moving to OS X Leopard is getting my RSS feeds directly in Apple Mail.

    As you can see here, I subscribe to a bunch of feeds and group them in folders by theme so that I can check feeds in context as I have time.

    “On My Mac”

    One compromise on my system is this small group of folders (closed in this screenshot as they usually are in real life) that contain messages I downloaded via POP but haven’t bothered to re-upload to the new IMAP Archived folders. I have about 30,000 non-IMAP message that I can search via Apple Mail if I need to reference them, but otherwise they’re out of sight and mind in this closed folder list.

    That’s it. I’d be interested in how others are dealing with their inboxes these days or in answering any questions folks have about my system. It works for me but (as always) your mileage may vary.

January 2, 2008

  • Twas The Night Before Tucows

    (I got a poem from Lucy for Christmas and — with her permission — I’m sharing it here)

    Twas the night before Tucows, launched their domains,
    Ken Schafer was stirring, simply going insane;
    The plans were all there, displayed on his macable,
    In hopes that domains, will soon be unhackable;

    The macs were all snoozing, with screen savers in sight,
    While visions of starbursts, were haunting him all night;
    With Ken in his office, and Elliot abroad,
    He was checking the URLs that seamed slightly odd,

    When out on the roof there arose such a clatter,
    Ken sprang from his desk to see what was the matter.
    Away to the window he flew like a flash,
    Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

    The moon on the slush, that covered Mowat,
    Gave a dinghy appearance to objects below it,
    When, what to his wondering eyes should appear,
    But a miniature sleigh, and eight cows, instead of reindeer,

    With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
    Ken knew in a moment it must be St. Click.

    More rapid than elephants his coursers they came,
    And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
    “Now, Betsy! now, Martha! now, Ilsa and Daisy!
    On, Patches! on Ellie! on, Moo Moo and Lazy!

    To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
    Now clop away! clop away! clop away all!”
    As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
    When they meet with an awkward, mount to the sky,

    So up to the office roof the coursers they flew,
    With the sleigh full of hard drives, and St. Click too.

    And then, in a twinkling, he heard on the roof

    The stomping and Clacking of each little hoof.
    As Ken drew in his hand, and was turning around,
    Down the heating vent St. Click came with a bound.

    He was dressed all in red, from his head to his foot,
    And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
    A bundle of hard drives he had flung on his back,
    And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

    His eyes — how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
    His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
    His droll little mouth was drawn up like a truffle,
    And the beard of his chin was as white as his shuffle;

    The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
    And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
    He had a broad face and a little round belly,
    That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

    He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
    And Ken laughed when he saw him, in spite of himself;
    A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
    Soon gave Ken to know he had nothing to dread;

    He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
    And filled all the offices; then turned with a jerk,
    And laying his finger aside of his nose,
    And giving a nod, up the heating vent he rose;

    He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
    And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

    But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

    MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

    This is the second Internet/Ken-related poem I’ve been fortunate enough to receive, following my mom’s poem a few years ago.

December 31, 2007

  • Move Complete

    It looks like everything is moving smoothly post migration to Typepad. DNS propagation took longer than I expected but my goals was to have everything in place for the end of the year and it looks like that is the case.

    I’m sure I’ll be fiddling more with the look of the site and with tweaking the content, but I’m pretty happy with the results even as they are now.

    Let me know if anything looks funny or is broken from your end!

December 26, 2007

  • Back To TypePad!

    I took a few hours this morning to move all the posts I did on the WordPress version of my blog over the last six months to this TypePad version of the blog.

    I’m pretty happy with the move (back) to Typepad and I’m looking forward to playing with the site again (something I couldn’t do with WordPress because it really needs to you to understand basic coding to get things looking the way you want).

    Next step is to update DNS to point here to make it all official.

December 20, 2007

  • Back To TypePad?

    I’m thinking about it. I like my WordPress blog well enough but it’s probably more horsepower than I need. 2008 will be (once again) a year where I focus on simplifying and going with what I care about rather than what I “ought to do”.

December 2, 2007

  • A Young Person’s Guide To Punk Rock — Siouxsie & The Banshees

    Not all punks were guys. Siouxsie Sioux was part of the Bromley Contingent along with Sid Vicious and Billy Idol and started a band called Siouxsie and The Banshees very early on. At the start I think the band was more a concept — a desire to be in a band rather than a band in fact.

    But after a while they got the hang of it and became on of the few bands to move out of the early punk days and have successful careers as “punk” became “new wave”.

    Hong Kong Garden was always my favourite from the early stuff:

    https://www.youtube.com/v/PF0OjrFIVWY

  • Dear Podcasters — I’m Not Listening

    I have a very long commute to Tucows every weekday. I generally spend two and a half to three hours in the car each day. Crazy, I know. But my family loves our little village (as do I) and the commute is just a fact of life.

    Rather than resign myself to losing 10 to 15 hours every week to mindless FM radio, I decided I’d use the time a little more constructively. For the first year and a half of commuting I listened pretty much exclusively to podcasts in the car. This was great. I listened to Across The Sound, For Immediate Release, Daily Searchcast, Six Pixels of Separation, Marketing Martini and several podcasts each from CBC, New York Times, and Slate. I highly recommend all of them.

    But after a while I realized the the signal to noise ratio on podcasts was leaving me frustrated. To much “welcome from…” and “here’s how you can subscribe…” and “to recap last week…”, and “here’s what I’m doing/did/won’t do…”. It was information for sure, but not information that was useful or enriching — and that was kind of the whole point.

    I also found that most podcasts suffer from diminishing returns. Once I’m inside the head of a podcaster and understand their world-view I get less and less from each new podcast. But finding new podcasts is a daunting task that can’t be done in the car, so I kept listening to the same podcasts despite the decline in useful insights per hour in the car.

    Then a few months ago I basically flipped a switch and decided my commute would be filled with audiobooks and it has been a wonderful, revelatory experience. I’m now consuming one or two books a week. I’m tackling business, science, modern fiction, and classics.

    Essentially audiobooks act are incredibly high signal-to-noise podcasts. Or maybe more accurately, books are like really poorly written and produced audiobooks.

    So sorry podcasters, until you figure out how to compete with Harper Lee, Walter Isaacson, Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, Bill Bryson, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Chip & Dan Heath I don’t think I’ll be listening anymore.

November 10, 2007

  • A Young Person’s Guide To Punk Rock — The Undertones

    Punk for me (I was a teen when it all started) was always very much about my generation. At the time I don’t think I noticed how incredibly young we all were.

    Behold the zit-filled faces of The Undertones, looking like they had to ask their mums if it was okay to go out on a school night to shoot this video for Teenage Kicks:

    https://www.youtube.com/v/wAtUw6lxcis

    And because the Internet is making everything instantly available, here’s footage of the band actually recording the song:

    It’s quite incredible that what is arguably one of the best pop songs ever just happened to be used as an example of how records are made!

    Yes, I do mean it when I say I think Teenage Kicks is one of the “best pop songs ever”. Who can argue with lyrics as unpretentious as this:

    Are teenage dreams so hard to beat
    Everytime she walks down the street
    Another girl in the neighbourhood
    Wish she was mine, she looks so good

    I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight

    Get teenage kicks right through the night

    I’m gonna call her on the telephone

    Have her over ‘cos I’m all alone

    I need excitement oh I need it bad

    And its the best, I’ve ever had

    I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight

    Get teenage kicks right through the night

    I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight

    Get teenage kicks right through the night

    I only saw The Undertones once, opening for The Clash but I’ve always had a soft spot for them.

  • Did I Really Say “Good Vibes”?

    Nestor E. Arellano (the “E” is to avoid him getting confused with all the other Nestor Arellanos out there — sorry Nestor I couldn’t resist) interviewed me on Thursday for an ITBusiness.ca article called “Good Vibes Stem The Tide Of Talent Turnover”.

    One of the things I’ve learned as a manager is that my team has to understand why they are doing what they are doing, see challenge in the work, and enjoy the physical act of working (i.e. like the people and environment the work gets done in). If you don’t get those right, it’s very tough to keep anyone engaged. If they’re not engaged, they might stick around if times are tough but given options (as people most definitely are being given right now), they won’t stick around for long.

October 20, 2007

  • A Young Person’s Guide To Punk Rock — The Sex Pistols

    For most people, the Sex Pistols were punk rock. We loved the Pistols but I never connected with them the way I did with The Ramones, or The Clash or even The Buzzcocks. The Pistols were one of the few influential bands of the time that I didn’t see live and I think that always made them a bit more of an abstraction for me. Punk was so much about the live experience it was harder to identify with a band you hadn’t seen live.

    https://www.youtube.com/v/gZchl4OAYIo

    Now we would have seen the Pistols live had they come anywhere near Canada. Malcolm McLaren (“The Manager” as Johnny refers to him) was determined not to do anything by the books and booked the first (and only) US tour in the deep south, playing dive bars and honky tonks rather than hitting the major urban centres that had already established punk scenes.

October 7, 2007

  • A Young Person’s Guide To Punk Rock — The Ramones

    Of all the classic punk songs, I think “Blitzkrieg Bop” by The Ramones is probably the most recognized song these days.

    https://www.youtube.com/v/Be7Nt5qnBsw

    This footage was taken at CBGBs — the New York City dive where many of the NY punks got started.

    I never got to see the Ramones at CBGBs but I was lucky enough to see them very early on at one of Toronto’s most famous dive bars — the El Mocambo.

    The show was absolutely packed but we where there early enough to get a spot directly in front of the stage. So close we could see Joey’s face despite his eternal mop-top and downward glare.

    Johnny dropped a pick at one point and I snapped it up. I’ve still got it in a box in the basement. Johnny knew a thing or two about posterity and was nice enough to have “RAMONES” inscribed on all his picks making for instant memorabilia.

October 1, 2007

  • A Young Person’s Guide To Punk Rock — The Clash

    Dear Young Person:

    If you’re going to understand Punk, there is no better spot to start than “White Riot” by The Clash.

    The Clash didn’t invent Punk but to many they are “The Only Matter That Matters”.

    It was tradition at Clash concerts in the early days that they would end shows with White Riot. Fans would storm the stage, all hell would break lose. While I think you can find better video of The Clash in action, this footage gives you a sense of the frenzy and chaos that was a Clash gig.

    https://www.youtube.com/v/7BYYdcuoj2Y

    It’s amazing watching Joe Strummer just barely holding things together — at least for a little while.

  • A Young Person’s Guide To Punk Rock

    A few weeks ago Lucy and I were in the car when she asked if I had The Clash on my iPod. Turns out she’s really getting into punk these days. We went from The Clash to The Ramones to Iggy Pop in about 10 minutes (all hail the three minute pop song) with both of us bopping in our seats with the windows down in the parking lot at the mall. We must have looked like demented bobbleheads.

    Her interest got me thinking about Punk and what a profound influence it has had on my life. Punk Rock absolutely changed my life. It is surely one of the all time top five things that shaped me into who I am.

    I’m not sure “the kids these days” know much about Punk though. Green Day seems to pass as Punk and I guess from 2007 that make some sense. But there was Punk. There was the Punk that shaped me. And I feel like sharing it with any of you who might be interested.

    Welcome to “A Young Person’s Guide To Punk Rock”.

September 29, 2007

  • Mathematics and Social Networks

    That title is entirely aimed at getting my geekier readers to see this joke Zoe and I came up with.

    Zoe: “I can’t believe Dylan would rather hang out with one sixth grader than three 8th graders.”

    Dad: “I guess that means that he thinks you’re in Grade Two.”

    Zoe: “Wah?”

    Dad: “Well, do the math.”

    1. 3 x Grade8 = 1 x Grade6
    2. Grade8 = 1/3 x Grade6
    3. Grade8 = Grade2

    Zoe: “Great Dad, why don’t you just blog about it instead of teasing me.”

July 23, 2007

  • Back In Blog

    Well, that took much longer than I thought!

    Since I sold One Degree a few months ago I’ve been on a blogging sabbatical. My goal has been to reboot the blog I ran at schafer.com from 2001 until 2005 and at the same time bring together a lot of the scraps I’ve left littered around various other blogging outposts since then.

    With a little help from James, I’ve managed to get settled in here pretty nicely — once I put my mind to it.

    So consider this a “Hello Again World” post!

May 29, 2007

  • Why I Sold One Degree

    833 days ago I did a “first post” to One Degree — a classic Hello World. 1430 posts, 1351 comments, and 40 plus contributors later it’s time to say goodbye — or maybe more accurately, “see you later” — to One Degree and the community that has grown up around it.

    Today I’m announcing that I’ve sold One Degree to my good friend and long-time One Degree Contributor Kate Trgovac.

    Since taking the role of VP Product Management and Marketing at Tucows about a year ago I’ve found that my ability to give One Degree the attention it needs to keep it alive and vibrant is increasingly limited.

    My goal with One Degree has always been to foster a stronger Internet marketing community in Canada. That’s really the goal I had as a co-founder of AIMS and as a volunteer and teacher for the CMA. To me, it’s always been important that we had a place to share ideas and raise the profile of local success stories. It’s too easy to get caught up in the hype about what’s happening in “The Valley” or New York without realizing all the great successes springing up all around us.

    I hope that One Degree had — and will continue to have — a small role in helping Canadians understand the transformational power of the Internet for both business and culture. This is an exciting day for me as I know that Kate is the perfect person to take over the community we’ve created and carry on that mission.

    I’ll leave it to Kate and Co. to talk about what may change here at One Degree but I know that this story is just beginning. I’m writing the final sentences of Chapter 1 here but I know we have many chapters to go.

    And I plan to drop in occasionally to add my two cents worth so this is by no means a “Goodbye World” post!

    Or possibly more accurately titled, “Why I lead the charge on buying One Degree and dragged three other investors kicking and screaming along with me.” (But that’s a pretty long title).

    I have been posting on One Degree since the early days and have watched as Ken’s vision for the site took hold and a community began to grow around it. Canadian marketers posted, read, shared their unique POVs and created a body of work that is a valuable resource for new and veteran marketers alike.

    When Ken mentioned that he was thinking about selling One Degree, I immediately put up my hand and said, “Me, me, pick me!” I’m a huge fan of what he has built and hated to think that it might disappear from our toolkits, or worse, pass to someone who didn’t have the passion and vision for it.

    Over a couple of martinis, I managed to convince a few other folks, who also hold One Degree in high regard, to come along with me for the ride. They are:

    1. SpinGlobe headed by Sean Howard of Craphammer.ca fame — SpinGlobe is our design and technical team plus Sean will continue to write articles for us.
    2. Daniel Ponech, User Experience Architect extraordinaire — Daniel is heading up our business development including site sponsorships, event & job listings and other partnership opportunities.
    3. Rosemary Rowe, Copywriter and Content Maven — Rosemary will be point on content and contributor wrangling, ensuring we’re readable, coherent, and well-indexed as well as creating some of our new features.

    It’s kind of a different mix, but we’re hoping to shake things up a bit. Ken will continue to contribute his wisdom and insight to One Degree. Arieh, who has been for many of you the day-to-day voice and contact of One Degree leaves us as Associate Editor but will continue to offer his valued perspective as a contributor as well. Ken and Arieh — thank you so much for all that you have done for One Degree!

    So today, officially, One Degree becomes a reinvent! Communications publication. Look for some tweaks, enhancements, changes, and hiccoughs over the next few months as we wrap our heads around what we’ve taken on and start to get a better understanding of what the community wants and needs.

    I would be thrilled to receive any feedback you have; we will be conducting a survey in the next few weeks, but personal notes are always welcome. You can reach me via the contact page or at kate[at]onedegree[dot]ca.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on May 29, 2007.

April 22, 2007

  • Bell Takes Bat and Runs Home — DigitalHome.ca says “Na-na-na-na-boo-boo”

    Seems like there’s a battle royale brewing between Bell Canada and Digital Home Canada — one of (if not the) online resource for those interested in digital entertainment in Canada.

    A few weeks ago Digital Home ran a post called New ExpressVu HD Receivers Expected By July that was a bit of a scoop for them. It included detailed information from internal Bell communications.

    In a March bulletin, Bell informed its dealers that it would be introducing brand new ‘MPEG4’ receivers in July 2007. Dish Network currently has several HD receivers that can decode MPEG4 for sale in the U.S. including the VIP 211 and the VIP611. It is our belief the new ExpressVu receivers will be re-branded DISH VIP211 and VIP611 receivers. Digital Home will post further details and pricing information when ExpressVu formally announces the new receivers. In the interim here is a brief overview of the Echostar receivers.

    Bell threatened to pull all advertising from the site if owner Hugh Thompson did not remove the article. Thompson refused saying it was accurate reportage and the next day Bell pulled their ads.

    Yesterday, I was contacted by a press relations representative from Bell Canada and was informed that Bell Canada “might” pull its advertising from Digital Home Canada if the article was not removed from the Digital Home site. The PR representative explained the request came from Pat Button, the Vice President of Marketing at ExpressVu. The representative said Mr. Button had seen the article and demanded it be taken down from the site because it was having a negative impact on dealer sales. The representative also said that it was impossible for Bell to be releasing new HD receivers this year because a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the receivers had not even been issued by ExpressVu. These comments were in direct contrast with information that I had received from multiple ExpressVu dealers which I shared with Bell and asked them comment on.

    What makes this more than another marketing exec getting his hair mussed up by a leaked announcement is the fact that the site in question is an online forum that is primarily driven by reader-generated content. Repeat after me folks — online communities are NOT a good bunch to pick a fight with.

    Digital Home responded with Readers Lambaste Bell Over Decision To Pull Ads which pulls together some of the scathing comments readers have been submitting to the site. Things like:

    “It is also a sad commentary on Bell management that they would so ‘attack’ what should be seen as a key demographic for them — the expert users, first adopters, and ‘informed’ customers that frequent forums like this…. Yet another case of a large corporation that can’t even get the basics of PR 101 right. And thanks Hugh for making a disciplined and informed stand.”

    “Uhm, that reprint of the bulletin basically calls BEV’s bull about no new receivers and invalidates the reason for their ad pullout. They seriously need to stop lying to their customer base and stop treating people like they are. I can easily switch to local cable and their HD PVR offering. They are getting better and have been providing better support and channel options as of late and I am willing to sacrifice things in favour of a company that doesn’t treat me/us like ****”

    “Whoever this Mr.Button is, he should be relieved of his duties at Bell. It only takes one ignoramus in a higher management position to bring down heavy unwanted bad PR for Bell Canada. This will spread like wildfire, and watch Bell taking a bigger hit due to their ignorant stance. Kudos to Digital Home — don’t get bullied.”

    “I for one will be canceling my ExpressVu non-contract account, my home phone and business phone service if they do issue new receivers in 2007. I will sell my 9200 and my other receivers. I refuse to do business with BLATANT LIARS.”

    Ouch. These “I’ll pull my ads if you don’t do what I say” things always seemed to show a lack of good sportsmanship to me but in this age of social media and user generated content it strikes me more like having a death wish. Can anyone get away with this in 2007? Besides, what would Frank And Gordon say?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on April 22, 2007.

  • Help Me Make Marketing Matter For Little Guys

    I got an Ask A Marketer request last week that really struck a chord with me. Rick Couture of Go-Mango Fitness sent in this question:

    OK, I’m still fairly new to the world of online marketing, and I rely on the many wonderful marketing e-newsletters I get to help with my education. What I have not seen is info on how to get started with online advertising. I keep getting calls from my newspaper sales reps to try advertising on their websites. Problem is I have nothing to compare their rates to elsewhere online. Can you provide any resources to see CPM ad rates for banner ads? I can’t help but wonder if $30 per thousand for an “in story” ad that is only mildly targeted (Health section editorial, our business is fitness equipment) is asking too much. Has anyone done a real comparison of newspaper online ads vs other websites rates and effectiveness? Are there places I can compare prices for similar levels of targeting? Is that what DoubleClick does?

    I see this kind of confusion and concern in small business owners ALL the time. They can find lots of pundits punditing (guilty) but where do they turn for the basics? How do they know they’re not being ripped off? How do they determine value? I’d love to see some feedback from you folks on what you tell small businesses and those new to the business in terms of this kind of stuff.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on April 22, 2007.

April 14, 2007

  • BREAKING NEWS: Twitter Hacked

    Something VERY odd is going on at Twitter right now. A user called JehovahOne created an account about two hours ago. Nothing strange there, BUT in those two hours JehovahOne has added over 2,550 friends! That number appears to be increasing by about 20 per minute. If a two-hour old account with one tweet and no picture adding 20 friends a minute isn’t a hack, I don’t know what is! (Apparently, I don’t know what is — see updates below) Worse still, many people seem to be on auto-pilot and are following JehovahOne simply because they’re returning the favor — friending a new friend back. 200+ followers as I post this! I’ll do updates if/as I learn more. Add a comment letting me know if you received the friend message.

    Update 1: An hour later we have 3,242 friends and 242 followers.

    Update 2: A few people have commented here and at Digg that this is a ‘bot rather than a hack. I guess that’s correct but I meant it in a broader sense as in someone’s found a way to use Twitter that will be perceived as a hack by many. By this I mean 3200 people now have a friend message in their inbox. Not bad on it’s own but if this becomes rampant a big mess for Twitter.

    Update 3: Looks like this is being driven by a script that’s taking names from the Public Timeline at Twitter. I checked about a hundred of JehovahOne’s “Friends” and all of them have posted in the last five hours (i.e. one hour before the user account was created). The Timeline updates every four minutes with the 20 most recent posts. Looks like anyone whose posts get there will get an invite.

    Update 4: Now that it’s been four hours since the account was set up the number of friends went DOWN from where it was after 3 hours. Not sure how friends would go down other than the user starting to remove people. I don’t think you can shake someone who’s following you on Twitter — or can you? I’m about to call it quits. Interesting watching this happen in real time.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on April 14, 2007.

April 12, 2007

April 10, 2007

  • Embedding Functionality = Viral Business Models

    Here is a simple but critically important thought for anyone thinking about building web-based services: Websites aren’t nearly as important as they used to be. Some of the most interesting services online these days have learned to move beyond the web by making easily embeddable code. This allows site functionality to spread well beyond the boundaries of the site itself and makes every user a potential distributor. For example, here’s a widget that tells you all about my Twittering:

    This one offers you the top artists I’ve played on my Mac as tracked by Last.fm:

    <app lost due to link decay>

    And maybe most interestingly, here is a 45 song set of stuff I used to play when I was a club DJ in the early 80s courtesy of Finetune:

    Widgets, feeds, embeddable code, badges — all of these trends make it far easier for sites to extend their reach. If you’re not thinking about this, how will you compete with sites that do?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on April 10, 2007.

April 3, 2007

  • MarketingProfs Says Sorry

    James Carroll at “Ceridian” sent us a quick note today:

    Don’t know if you’ve seen the e-mail blast(s) from marketingprofs.com. I liked their apology, plus it makes me feel good that not everyone’s perfect! It appears that most (all?) of “MarketingProfs” subscribers received numerous messages, all with slightly different offers or messaging. Here’s what my inbox looked like earlier today:

    James is right, the apology they sent out as soon as they realized what had happened was a good one.

    It probably wasn’t the nicest message to have to write, but Sharon Hudson did the write thing and handled it professionally and in a warm, personal manner. I think Sharon might have to add a comment to our “Question of the Day — Your Biggest E-marketing doh?”

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 7, 2006.

March 30, 2007

March 27, 2007

March 20, 2007

  • Has Web Dev Changed In 10 Years?

    Alex Pejcic is President & Co-Founder of “Sonic Boom”, an interactive agency in Toronto, Canada. We’ll be following up this question with five more for Alex later this week.

    One Degree: Has the business changed since you started “Sonic Boom”10 years ago and if so, how?

    Alex Pejcic: Yes it has changed! Here are 10 profound changes that I have experienced over the last decade:

    1. Clients are much wiser and therefore better understand the value of interactive media in their marketing or IT mix.
    2. The increasing importance of brand, user experience and psychographics in the strategic makeup of interactive campaigns.
    3. The unquestionable need to qualify and quantify the success of interactive campaigns to prove ROI on client spends.
    4. With respect to Sonic Boom, large-build projects are less in demand, and smaller (but very significant) “campaign-focused” assignments are more requested.
    5. The paramount role of customer service in retaining clients. Since interactive media is a living, breathing organism, our company required being modular and responsive in order to manage such business. This was the formula Sonic Boom used to secure the agency’s survival and ironically stimulate growth.
    6. Online audiences are becoming much more demanding and therefore the “big idea” is king. Creativity in content and technology is a must in order to demonstrate prominence over our clients’ competitors.
    7. The emergence of online guerilla marketing tactics such as viral messaging, blogging and opinion polling. Who would have thought that clients would be comfortable in allowing consumers to provide insight to other consumers on their behalf in such a transparent manner?
    8. Broadband connectivity, digital display mechanisms, and mobile communication are becoming the norm in Canada and likewise gaining wide acceptance across the world. This will continue to open many doors for our industry.
    9. When we started Sonic Boom in 1996 we were all part of a pending gold rush, then the bubble burst around 2001. Now here we are in a professed “renaissance” all in the period of 10 years. Are we on the verge of another revolution?
    10. Words that had never existed before like searchability, usability, blogging, podcasting, texting, spamming and actionability have become an everyday part of my life.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on March 20, 2006.

March 15, 2007

  • Google Plusbox Makes Life Harder For Marketers

    Google loves to experiment with features and UI (User Interface) by providing different features to a limited sub-sets of users. Recently you may have heard that Google is starting to integrate alternate content into search results using something called a plusbox. For example, they’re testing adding Google Finance information inline with some results.

    I happened to find one of these in action (for my employer Tucows no less) when searching for software on Google. Here’s what a Plusbox looks like closed:

    And here’s what it looks like open (i.e. after clicking on the ”+”):

    This raises an interesting challenge for marketers in publicly traded companies like Tucows. Now you have to worry about the impact of your stock performance on the perception of searchers. You also have to pay extra attention to those normally bland and generic descriptions of our company because it may just end up (like ours did) representing your company in Google!

    I’d be interested in feedback from others who might be starting to think about this kind of stuff. And may I also say publicly — Damn you Wikipedia! Tucows has been the number one result for “software” longer than Google has existed. Now we’ve been bumped by the collective hive intelligence! 🙂

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on March 15, 2007.

February 28, 2007

  • Can You Imagine The Internet In 2020?

    Leona “Flackadelic” Hobbs posted this must-see CBC news segment about “Internet (no “the” in sight) from way back in October 1993:

    Now that you’ve had a good laugh at what we thought about the Net 13 years ago, watch this must-see video from 2007:

    Can you imagine how laughable our view of the Net in 2007 will look in 2020? My guess is it will look even sillier than that CBC piece!

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 28, 2007.

February 26, 2007

  • Can You Really Make A Viral Campaign?

    At the Consumer 2.0 Conference last week I had the pleasure of spending some time with Steve Wax from Campfire. The firm was the subject of a really interesting Fast Company article in November 2006 and I found Steve’s ideas very refreshing.

    Campfire — founded by Steve and a few of the guys behind the Blair Witch Project — does these really complex online events/games/virals like Art Of the Heist: Steve made me stop dead in my tracks when he said (roughly) “people have to stop saying they’re going to ‘make a viral video’ because you can’t decide whether it’s going to be viral or not. It’s the same as saying ‘I’m going to write a hit song’ or ‘produce a hit TV show’ — it just doesn’t make sense”.

    I’ve always said that viral marketing was the conscious use of word-of-mouth as a marketing tool but I really see Steve’s point. You can try to be viral, but can you really say something “is viral” before it has in fact “gone viral”?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 26, 2007.