February 28, 2006
" The 34-minute time and expense app - thingamy"
For the last few months, I've been helping Sigurd Rinde market his software, "Thingamy".
Dennis Howlett just took it for a test drive and posted his thoughts:
Last week I set Sigurd Rinde the challenge of creating a time and expense application. I didn’t give Sig a lot of detail but enough to see if something usable would come out the other end - it did. We were supposed to review progress yesterday but I had to put Sig back until today. There’s one word to describe this - awesome.Prepare Ye the Can of Worms etc.[...]
The only thing it really needs to know are the process flows. Everything else is up to you. You’ve got some learning to do but that’s true for any new application. In this case though,. you’ve got a tool that can go one heck of a distance. there is one proviso - everyone should use it because that’s how you get the best value. It won’t take you long to see that but it will challenge your preconceptions about how applications are meant to work.
[UPDATE:] Dennis has some new Thingamy thoughts here.
tecnorati "favorite" list
Technorati has a new Top 100 list, based on people's "favorites". I'm Number 24 [for now], apparently. Neat.
near cannes
I'm writing this from Antibes [near Cannes] in the South of France.
Here on business. Long Story.
So... Anybody want to buy a yacht?
[And while we're on a French theme:] Here's a podcast from Mardi Gras, put together by famed New Orleans blogger, Brian Oberkirch.
February 27, 2006
hello, jeremy
I live nowhere near Dallas. But if I did, I would call Jeremy over at TopGeeks every time my computer needed fixing. I have never met Jeremy; in fact up until about five minutes ago I had never even heard of him. But thanks to this blog post Jeremy gets all my future Dallas business, if and when etc.
[Insert new "Power of Blogs" thought here.]
"interpublic, where are your blogs?"
Great post from MarketingMonger:
Interpublic Group. 91 companies. $6 billion in annual revenues. 43,000 employees. 3 corporate blogs.So how come advertising agencies aren't getting into blogging? I've said it many times before:Great design still matters. So does branding. And pr. And marketing. And these companies do all those things very well.
But social media is coming and it's going to affect them and their clients.
Blogging, when done correctly, is CHEAP and EASY. Ad agencies are in the business of selling stuff that is NEITHER.[Bonus Link:] I love this tagline for The Obligatory Blog:
These days, if you run a software company, you have to have a Blog. This is mine.
"geo-localization of tags"
Jon Husband, of "Wirearchy" fame made an interesting point recently in the gapingvoid comments:
Blogging will get much more *local* in the next few years, in my opinion, in a range of interesting ways, and then one of the questions will be how to get global microbrands to become more effective and responsive on the local level and in local ways.Thoughts?This issue may become, for blogging, the equivalent of the *centralization / decentralization* pendulum swing issue that larger organizations continually re-visit as their markets or the org's capabilities change.
Watch for geo-localization of tags.
heiko's new job
Heiko Hebig, my favorite German blogger, no longer works for Six Apart. Seems he has this awesome new job at Burda.
In order to maximize these efforts, we are currently in the process of setting up "Burda Labs". At this stage "Burda Labs" is a working title for a small team of experts from various fields of expertise. The aim of this operation (call it skunksworks if you buy into conspiration theory) is to connect the unexpected. Now what does that mean? Honestly, I don't know. Not yet. At this stage it's way too early to predict the outcome.Godspeed, Heiko!
February 26, 2006
shaveblog
Corey Greenberg, a presenter on NBC's Today Show, has a blog devoted to old-fashioned gentleman's shaving:
The thing is, I got such a good shave with the Israeli blade I kept shaving with it all week. I get scary-close shaves with the Swedes, but in the this dry winter weather they can be a tad too much for my puss. The underside of my chin has been feeling kind of raw lately, but man, what faceturbatory shaves I get from these Swedes loaded in my 40's Gillette Super Speeds. I play with myself all day long, stroking my chin and cheeks and marvelling at the total lack of feelable stubble.Corey and I were college buddies. Wicked smart, is he.
more on the 100 dinners...
Right now I'm getting very excited about the Stormhoek "100 Dinners" idea.
We'll supply the wine, the bloggers supply the people and the conversation. The events don't have to be big, or at a fancy place, we imagine that they could be anywhere- a bar, a porch, a beach, park, whatever, so don't limit yourself to a restaurant.
Why am I getting so excited?
1. How about if it scaled? How about instead of doing a hundred dinners as a one-off, it becomes an ongoing thing? Hundereds and hundreds of blogger dinners [Thousands?] over the next couple of years?
2. How about if the idea really gelled with everybody, and suddenly having Stormhoek at a blogger dinner came pretty standard, as ubiquitous as say, wifi at a Mashup?
3. How about if it worked well enough that we could justify spending ALL our marketing budget on the dinners, and forget about all the other options- advertising, in-store promo's, product placement and all the other marketing methods I utterly despise?
I can think of worse way to make a living.
When I launched the whole Stormhoek thing, I said:
Will the idea-virus spread far enough that suddenly, instead of one or two people knowing about the wine, suddenly tens of thousands of smart connected people in the UK know about it, and are talking about it?What? Using the blogosphere to launch a national wine brand... and nothing else? Puting ad agencies out of business? Huh?Is that enough to launch a national brand?
If it isn't, well, no great loss. We will have gotten some PR out of it, and maybe a few long-term Stormhoek customers out of the blogosphere.
But if it is, then I'm thinking, Holy Shit, what we're doing might put a lot of traditional ad agencies out of business. Seriously.
I'll admit it- when this whole idea began it seemed very "out there".
But since The Telegraph article came out now I'm starting to think, Holy Shit, this is actually starting to work.
And that's scary. In a good way.
Next steps?
stormhoek in the sunday telegraph
Nick Dymoke-Marr, the big cheese at Stormhoek just got a big article written about him and this whole Stormhoek blogospheric thing in the business section of The Sunday Telegraph, on of the big UK national papers:
Last May, six months after Stormhoek launched, Dymoke-Marr despatched a bottle of his mid-price Sauvignon Blanc to 150 of the UK's most frantic-fingered "bloggers", the burgeoning community of internet diarists.Rock on, Nick. Nice to see Big Media finally starting to pick up on it.It was a plan that didn't lack bottle. After all, since their emergence at the end of the 1990s, bloggers have become a nightmare for businesses the world over. Microsoft, Tesco and McDonald's have all fallen victim to vicious blogs written by irate customers or seething employees.
But Dymoke-Marr's gamble elicited barely a sour grape. "We were just really honest," he says.
"We didn't say we were selling the best wine in South Africa. We just said: 'Here's a nice wine, reasonably priced, tell us what you think.'"
The bloggers got to work, tapping away about the virtues of the vino. Estimates of how many bloggers there are around the world range from 15m to 30m. Up to 80,000 blogs are thought to be started each day. If you had punched Stormhoek into Google last June, 500 references would have popped up. That figure stood at about 85,000 last week.
That being said, I'm more interested in the US launch these days; in particular the "100 Dinners" idea. If you have an idea for that, please sign up on the wiki and/or send me an e-mail. Thanks.
February 25, 2006
preston reed is blogging.
The result of a successful composition should be satisfying, entertaining, involving, and, on some level, edifying, whether it be long or short, simple or complicated, easy to listen to or not. Some compositions require multiple listenings to digest and enjoy. Some are instantly pleasing. But there will always be something that feels right -- natural, organic, alive -- about a good composition.[Live-streaming music samples can be found here. My fave track is one called "Flatonia," but that's just me.]A good composition gives back energy. It continues to evolve inside the listener over time.
[Here's an AMAZING hour-long video of Preston performing live at The Kennedy Center. Watch his technique. Wow.]
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I thought legendary acoustic guitarist, Preston Reed, should start a blog:
What Preston realised is that what paid his bills wasn't percentages on record sales, but the relationship he had with his audience.A few phone calls later, he was on the case.So he and his wife built up a nice wee "Global Microbrand", which includes lots of playing, lots of touring, lots of real time connection with people who dig his work.
Like I said, this conversation was pretty seminal. Turns out what a lot of bloggers are now trying to do online, Preston was already trying to do the same via live music. His philosophy certainly helped confirm what I was trying to do with my work, back in those early blogging days- bypassing big media, building one's own sovereignty from the ground up etc. Even though I'm not a musician, his hands-on M.O. proved to be a real long-term inspiration for me.
So I wrote him an e-mail earlier today, telling him he'd be a perfect candidate to bring some music into the Blogosphere. Maybe I get him to play live at a Geek Dinner, blog confab or something. Just an idea.
Rock on.
February 24, 2006
everybody wants love
Rick Segal's new V.C. idea, as told by Shel:
He's a believer in micro financing and has become convinced that small investments spread over a large number of entrepreneurs with the right talent could be very lucrative for the right investors.
gender politics
A wee spat between Gia and Anina seems to have broken out. I know and like them both, so I'm staying WELL out of it.
Still, it's good to see gender politics entering the Blogosphere- it's a remarkably asexual place, by and large. Maybe that needs to change.
kiwi something
Jack Yan is trying to launch a global fashion magazine brand not from Paris or New York, but from New Zealand.
That's right; New Zealand. Hey, with the internet, anything's possible.
stormhoek cartoon
Looks like Stormhoek's marketing is starting to work. Heh.
[Note to self: Is Guy Kawasaki a wine drinker? Is he planning on throwing any Web 2.0 parties?]
The one thing I'm REALLY glad that me and the Stormhoek folk did is, when we started the first European wine promo back in the summer, we made it available to ALL bloggers, regardless of "influence" and/or traffic.
It made it a lot more interesting and fun than the usual "Let's give out some freebies to some A-Listers and start some buzz" routine.
Meanwhile, the Stormhoek 100 geek dinners thing is up to 39 parties. We want to get the number up to 100. If you have a interesting "Web 2.0" event coming up, large or small, Stormheok would perhaps like to sponsor it. Thanks.
malcolm gladwell has a blog
"Tipping Point" and "Blink Author, Malcolm Gladwell has started a blog. Thanks to Steve Rubel for the pointer.
February 23, 2006
biz school questions
[PS: Yes, the new M-Tablet PC drawings were all drawn in the last 24 hours.]
A business studies student just sent me the following questions, for his class. Anybody else want to have a shot at answering?
Below are some questions I had. Please consider them guidelines only. Feel free to add anything that you think might help.My answer to all eight questions: Read my blog and find out. Everything's there if you do your homework.Questions:
1) How would you describe your profession/work? What do you do (for money)?
2) What exactly is a “global microbrand”? How does it differ from a traditional brand?
3) How does one go about creating a “global microbrand”?
4) What is the difference between marketing by blogs for small business, and large corporate b-blogs?
5) In such a saturated blogosphere (where most blogs have relatively few hits), how does marketing by blogs reach out to customers?
6) In the world of blogs, where entries become obsolete within a matter of hours, is marketing by blogs sustainable?
7) How do you think marketing by blogs will change the way people perceive of marketing/advertising?
8) On gapinvoid.com, Stormhoek is mentioned as a success story. What other success stories do you know of? Unsuccessful stories?
[UPDATE:] Some good answers over at Eric's MarketingMonger, and there's also good stuff in the comments below. Thanks for the input, Everybody!
quality online content experiences are best!
Dennis Howlett does the great job of explaining just why traditional, paid media just-doesn't-get-it:
“We don’t allow self promotion - It’s not in our commercial interests to send people away from our site.”Of course not. It's in your interests to get advertisers to pay you lots of money by offering the consumer a quality online content experience. Lucky you.
February 22, 2006
February 20, 2006
free dvd's?
So, do you think there is any merit in the idea of Sony giving away 2,000 "Young Adam" DVDs to bloggers? I mean, they cost about 40¢ apiece to make.
Just curious.
[Note to Self:] Another blogvertising campaign, maybe?
ps:
[PS:]I love my new Motion Computing Tablet P.C.
I had an old Dell for years. It finally died.
My new baby utterly rocks.
big day at english cut
Today was quite a big day at English Cut. First, we launched the $300 shirts. Then Thomas announced that yes, we're doing the "100 suits per year" thing, after all.
In spite of the controversy it created in the gapingvoid comment section, the e-mails so far from our existing clients have been very supportive.
Some people think we're creating an "artificial" scarcity. I prefer to think of it as a "real and genuine" scarcity.
If we cut back our suit number in order to spend more time and effort on each order, calling it "artificial" doesn't make sense.
Tom is only capable of producing so much, and it has to be be managed properly. That means a frank conversation with the market about supply and demand.
February 19, 2006
shut up and get your checkbook out
Congratulations to PR maven Steve Rubel on his new job. At another large New York PR agency, no less.
A marketing professional just sent me the following note:
Something I've noticed about the newest class of PR/marketing bloggers- most of them are in the bowels of big agencies and their writing and point of view show it. It's a lot of "Here's how to use blogs as tools for our wonderful PR programs", and not at all about what blogging IS. Agencythink in new clothes; that's all it is.Well, I don't think Steve Rubel is a hack [No worse than me, anyway]. I have nothing but respect for the guy. And not everybody likes being on their own. Some people are far better suited working for big companies. Different strokes etc.Rubel can't ever truly be Rubel until he's on his own- going from one overlord to another means more of the same commentary on business as usual. The sad thing is I don't think he realizes that.
Then again, my nameless friend makes a good point about some of the business blogs I've been seeing around.
I suppose any hardcore professional blog evangelist will invariably end up with the same pitch, like it or not:
"Blogs will disrupt and transform everything about your business. Except for the part where you pay me lots of money".Nice work if you can get it.
your sexy little cutting-edge blogware app has no excuse
[Shel Israel and Robert Scoble, co-authors of "Naked Conversations".]
The big Web 2.0 event of the week was, of course, the launch party of Robert and Shel's book, "Naked Conversastions", over at Michael "Techcrunch" Arrington's house. Flickr photo links here and here.
Something tells me this was more than just another Geek dinner. As Dan Farber wrote in ZDnet:
TechCrunch leads Silicon Valley Web renaissance.The party atmosphere reminded me of the good old Internet days, overflowing with new ideas, optimism, and enthusiasm.
Of course, I would have loved to have gone. That being said, that didn't stop me from getting 10 cases of Stormhoek sent over for the party. Michael was very kind:
I also want to specifically mention Stormhoek, who donated ten cases of their premium wine to the party. It is incredibly good wine, and their generosity in sending it has made me a lifetime customer.Jeff Clavier was also there, and he ended up writing a nice review of it as well.
Both whites were fresh and pleasant, the Pinot Grigio being off dry and the Sauvignon Blanc having the dry and floral typical characteristics of that varietal.Meanwhile, George Nimeh has done a stellar job figuring out my Stormhoek marketing strategy:
You can't buy the kind of endorsement that Michael gives Hugh and Stormhoek, because everyone knows the deal. It is, for lack of a better word, cool. The relationship is transparent, and that matters. We all know what Hugh is up to, but that's ok. That's the way it should be.I personally don't have a problem with bringing the dreaded "marketing" word into the Web 2.0 space. This isn't 1998. Our kind, understanding VCs aren't going to give us $20 million dollars to spend on TV spots. Whatever product or conversation we're bringing to the Web 2.0 party, be it software, hardware, wine, Aeron chairs, real estate or whatever, we're all going to need really amazing marketing, if we're going to survive.In other words, honest transparent marketing and communication just plain works.
And hey, if a $10 bottle of obscure South African Wine can make a decent go of it, then your sexy little cutting-edge blogware app has no excuse. Rock on.
[MORE LINKS:] Robert Scoble writes about the party. So does Rick Segal [hilarious and sharp; recommended], Brian Oberkirch interviews Shel and Robert for a podcast.
February 18, 2006
just don't be surprised when you get left behind
As I am doing nothing but make money via blogs, courtesy of English Cut, Stormhoek and some other projects, I find this Slate article, "Twilight of the Blogs- Are they over as a business?" rather humorous, for all the wrong reasons:
But as businesses, blogs may have peaked. There are troubling signs—akin to the 1999 warnings about the Internet bubble—that suggest blogs have just hit their top.This is the trouble with journalists. Because they generally don't do anything, except write endlessly about the people who do, their opinions are always based upon second-hand sources. Which makes for a pretty murky lens to view the world through.
Hey, guess what, Big Media? Unlike your poor, sorry excuse of a career, making money via blogs is all about doing interesting things with interesting products and ideas, and not about getting invited to all the right parties.
What? you mean there's no secret "In Crowd" validation committee telling you which table you're allowed to sit at? Shock! Horror! Still, this would explain why you've never properly understood blogging from Day One.
So to Big Media, Madison Avenue, journalists, bloggers and citizens everywhere, I say: If you think this is just a game of bubbles, bandwagons, favoritism and knowing the right people, as opposed to having good ideas and plain old hard work- Fine, go ahead and believe it. Nobody cares. Just don't be surprised when you get left behind, same as you did every other time the world changed.
February 17, 2006
the human condition 101
From Alan Gutierrez in New Orleans:
I said something skeptical about search engine optimization. She said that it must be important since someone had convinced her to spend money on it.Kinda says it all, huh?
the hotbizz report
Joe Chapuis has an impressively professional, business-related video podcast called "The Hotbizz Report."
I was very honored that he devoted one of his podcast to talking about "The Global Microbrand". Thanks, Joe!
February 16, 2006
guinness blog
Guinness has a blog. Not perfect, not groundbreaking, but not bad for a corporate brand job, taking their first baby steps. I've seen worse.
The good news is, the marketing team decided to do it themselves, not hire the job out to an ad agency. Otherwise I'm sure the results would have been utterly disasterous.
The thing is, they don't have the same luxury that most new bloggers have i.e. making their mistakes when very few people still know who they are. So kudos to them for having a go.
I guess the next issue is, as marketers, what are they REALLY trying to achieve here? Serious question.
journeyman vs. master
Martin over at Easyweb makes an interesting point about "The Three Ages Of Slavery".
I'd love to draw parallels with the old Guild levels of Apprentice, Journeyman and Master, but I feel I'm still Journeying.Yeah, I know the feeling all too well. Which is why I try to avoid consulting gigs like the plague.
The thing about consulting I hate is, you just get paid by the billable hour. So the minute you stop tapdancing, you're dead.
A Journeyman gets paid while he works. A Master gets paid while he sleeps.
[Bonus Link:] From Kathy Sierra: "Where there is passion, there are stories."
the magic middle
A groovy article in The Guardian about David Sifry and Technorati.
"This is one of those things that I think is fundamentally different about Technorati," compared to Google or Yahoo, he says, since it is based on "understanding people and understanding time" - not just on static links between web pages.Meanwhile, in David's recent "State of the Blogosphere, Part 2", he makes an interesting observation:
The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere.I happen to agree with that. The very top blogs [The "A-List"] will start collectively resembling old media more and more, as the money involved for doing so gets more significant. But the Magic Middle [call it the B-List, if you will] will be the realm of the global microbrand.
This is because the real story of blogging, the big story, is not about blog hierarchies and blog inequalities. The real story goes back [yet again] to something Clay Shirky said a while ago:
So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.[Nice follow up from Fernando Gros:]
It�s in this magic middle that we are seeing a breaking out of existing discoursive structures. It is here where the small church, the local educator, the niche business are able to find a new global market without depending up on the existing hierachies and gatekeepers. This is the really encouraging news for smaller bloggers. This is where the blogosphere is helping us break the tryanny of localism. This is the interesting news.It is also where I would like to see us ask theological questions. Instead of being in thrall to power, to A-lists and to top -down hierachies, maybe we should start by looking at what is going on in this magic middle.
February 15, 2006
"the new way to launch your product or company"
I like this thought from Dan Dodge, particularly interesting as he works for Microsoft, dealing with venture captialists:
We now live in a meritocracy. Money, VCs, and the press no longer decide what will be successful. Great products/services with intuitive designs that solve a real problem win. Of course once the product catches on and other entrepreneurs take notice, then you need to scale up fast to cement your first mover advantage. That might be where VCs and money add their value in this new world.I wonder what Rick Segal would say.
more stormhoeky goodness...
Stormhoek 100 Geek Dinners Update from Jason:
So, 4 days into it and we are about 22% there. That a lot better than I expected--- but we are still a long way from 100. So far, based just on the wiki we've got dinners happening in: New York City, Cincinatti, Mountain Home Arizona, San Mateo, Seattle, Madison, Pittsfield, Ypsilanti, Flagstaff, Bellingham, Wa., Denver and a bunch of Canadians who we have no idea how we are going to help out.... but standby cause we are working on it.All those who have written in, asking to join in the 100 Geek Dinners thing: Thanks for your interest. I'm utterly psyched by your response. I'll be forwarding along the e-mails I've received so far to Stormhoek today (driving the total to much higher than 22%), so please keep them coming. Seriously.
I don't know how closely the two are related, but it seems the more I get into the Stormhoek thing, the more interested I get in the whole Web 2.0 thing.
I never was a techie or a coder. But as a blogger, they're around me a lot. Eventually their cultural DNA starts to rub off on me. And rub off on my clients, Stormhoek especially.
Frankly, I think it's a good thing. The more non-techies that are using blogs to transform their lives and businesses, the more non-techies are understanding Web 2.0 better, the happier I am. If Web 2.0 had just stayed an internet/techie thing, it wouldn't have scaled.
And that would have meant a lot less money and opportunity for everyone, techies included.
Rock on.
the master speaks...
Clay Shirky writes more about powerlaws, in response to all the recent "inequality" kerfuffle.
The power law is always there, any time anyone wants to worry about it. Why the worrying happens in spasms instead of steadily is one of the mysteries of the weblog world.Personally, I'm with Doc Searls:The only things that are different in 2006 are the rise of groups and of commercial interests. Of the top 10 Technorati-measured blogs, (Disclosure: I am an advisor to Technorati), all but one of them are either run by more than one poster, or generate revenue from ads or subscriptions. (The exception is PostSecret, whose revenue comes from book sales, not directly from running the site.) Four of the top five and five of the ten are both group and commercial efforts — BoingBoing, Engadget, Kos, Huffington Post, and Gizmodo.
I'll just add that, if ya'll want to subvert some hierarchies, including the one you see me in now, I'd like to help.Anything that subverts hierarchies gets my approval. Mainly because it's good for traffic.
February 14, 2006
"web 2.0 disrupting vc's? clavier thinks not"
Shel Israel interviews Jeff Clavier:
2. How have today’s startups changed from five years ago?[Jeff Clavier's blog is here.]They are cheaper to start (open source infrastructure, low cost hardware/bandwidth, off shoring), hence cheaper to operate. Online advertising has developed to a point that allows small companies to get to profitability provided that they address a specific demographic that can be effectively targeted with relevant advertising.
while we're on the subject of blog inequality...
New York magazine has just published a very long article about blogs and the whole inequality thing: "Blogs to Riches- The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom."
But if you talk to many of today’s bloggers, they’ll complain that the game seems fixed. They’ve targeted one of the more lucrative niches—gossip or politics or gadgets (or sex, of course)—yet they cannot reach anywhere close to the size of the existing big blogs. It’s as if there were an A-list of a few extremely lucky, well-trafficked blogs—then hordes of people stuck on the B-list or C-list, also-rans who can’t figure out why their audiences stay so comparatively puny no matter how hard they work. “It just seems like it’s a big in-party,” one blogger complained to me. (Indeed, a couple of pranksters last spring started a joke site called Blogebrity and posted actual lists of the blogs they figured were A-, B-, and C-level famous.)Ok, so you're wondering why your plan to copy other people's formats hasn't been that successful. Hmmmm... maybe you should blog about it.
February 12, 2006
shirky's law: "equality. fairness. opportunity. pick two."
The always thoughtful Seth Finklestein says the "New Gatekeepers Are Still GATEKEEPERS".
This world is exactly the same as *every* *other* *media* *world*, in that there's a few participants who have enormous reach, while most have little to none ("Power Law"). That's just a mathematical fact. One obvious corollary is that if an A-lister (very high audience) writes a personal attack on a Z-lister (very low audience), the Z-lister has no *effective* means of responding, to any comparable extent. This is hardly life-threatening, but it's not pleasant.Not sure if I agree with Seth this time. If an A-Lister does something squirly against a Z-Lister, the word soon gets out. Nothing like the threat of instant mass-retribution from thousands of scalp-hunting bloggers to help keep you honest, regardless of your stats.
Besides that, he's not exactly offering any solutions to the problem.
Of course he isn't. Because there isn't one. There is only "Shirky's Law":
Equality. Fairness. Opportunity. Pick Two.[From Clay Shirky's seminal essay on power laws, "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality":]
Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.The fact is, the more closely the blogosphere resembles the real world, the more interesting and dynamic it gets. And that means inequality. To have the blogosphere as a place where lots of interesting people are doing all sorts of interesting things is far more preferable to me, than it ending up as a detached online refuge for "Pet Toys", where nothing ever happens, except indignant people living vicariously through others, and whinging about their lack of traffic.... Once a power law distribution exists, it can take on a certain amount of homeostasis, the tendency of a system to retain its form even against external pressures. Is the weblog world such a system? Are there people who are as talented or deserving as the current stars, but who are not getting anything like the traffic? Doubtless. Will this problem get worse in the future? Yes.
london girl geek dinner- march 14th
[UPDATE: There's another London Geek Dinner on February 26th. With a raffle prize of free tickets to SXSW.]
There's another London Girl Geek Dinner happening on Tuesday, March 14th.
I've been to one of them. They're a lot of fun. Kudos to Sarah Blow for making it a regular fixture.
February 11, 2006
100 dinners
100 Dinners: 1 May until 9 August 2006
When we launched Stormhoek in the blogosphere last year, we sent out about 100 bottles to bloggers in the UK, Ireland, and France.
Now that we're launching Stormhoek in the USA in the next month or two, we decided to up the ante.
We like sponsoring geek dinners. We want to do more. Lots more.
Ergo: 100 Geek Dinners in 100 days. Starting in May.
Are you a U.S. blogger? Fancy throwing a geek dinner? Big or small, it doesn't matter. Let us know and we'll try to send some complimentary wine your way.
Jason explains more on the Stormhoek blog:
We'll supply the wine, the bloggers supply the people and the conversation. The events don't have to be big, or at a fancy place, we imagine that they could be anywhere- a bar, a porch, a beach, park, whatever, so don't limit yourself to a restaurant.Sure, we want this to be about bloggers, although anyone who wants to invite a supermodel, rock star or pro athlete along is welcome to do so. We just want the events to be interesting. The local organizer will set the rules for the event, so please use your imagination. As usual, there is no need to blog or post pics about Stormhoek, but we do ask that you email us some pics of the event, because we'd like to have mementos of the dinners, maybe to post later.
You will need to post an idea for a subject for your dinner on the wiki – any idea will do, and not every event has to have a different topic. We might provide a few ideas. Some of the Stormhoek folk will try to attend some of them, if we can. The 100 days will run from 1 May until 9 August 2006.
If you fancy participating, please sign up on the wiki and/or send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com. Thanks.
Some thoughts:
1. We'd like to do 100 dinners in 100 days, but we're not married to the "100 days" part. We just thought it had a nice ring to it. If it takes longer, no big deal. And yes, more than one dinner happening on a single day is allowed.
2. U.S. liquor laws vary from State to State. It can get quite complicated, but we still have to keep it all kosher within the law.
3. As with the 2005 European blog promo, the idea is not to turn bloggers into wine pimps. It's more a case of what I call "marketing disruption".
4. It's nice when big events get Stormhoek coverage, however both me and Jason prefer taking the "Small Is Beautiful" angle.
A large, multinational alcohol brand covering an internet idustry party is nothing new. But a small, South African winery covering a small, intimate, random event in say, Phoenix, Arizona is much more interesting. Because it's on a more human scale.
AND YOU WANT TO REACH PEOPLE ON A HUMAN SCALE. That's what Madison Avenue keeps forgetting. That's what Madison Avenue can't get their head around, because their business model has no credible answer for it.
5. This idea is still evolving; it's still in its infancy. If there's something important we haven't thought of yet, please feel free to sare your thoughts. We'd love to have the feedback.
February 10, 2006
thingamy and hamish
Hamish, my old highschool friend and now one of the top SAP guru's on the planet, says some nice things about Sigurd Rinde's business software, a.k.a. Thingamy:
I had a look at Thingamy, and I was impressed by it. I'll write more about it when I have time, but it's one of those "Scissor, Paper, Stone" type of things. Simple, but with a lot of implications. A thoughtful tool, and I suspect it could be used to make some very elegant solutions. It might even encourage a bit of out of the box thinking.Last weekend Sig and I were in Geneva, where Hamish lives. We all had a nice lunch at this fabulous restaurant, and afterwards Sig invited Hamish to take Thingamy for a test drive etc etc.
Sig explains the basic idea beind Thingamy here, and perhaps why he was so keen to show it to an SAP consultant.
Hint: SAP has millions of lines of code. Thingamy has a couple of thousand. Do the math.
[Disclosure: Sig and I are working together.]
February 9, 2006
web 2.0 malarkey
So you're trying to keep abreast of all this "Web 2.0" malarkey.
Well, first be warned, there's a lot going on, so be prepared to spend a lot of time digging. And I do mean "a lot".
However if time is scarce, and you just want a comprehensive overview, I'd just read these sites for now:
Scoble.And I'm also liking Jeff Clavier a lot these days. He's not nearly as well known as the other six, but I think he's on to something. Ergo, I'm watching carefully.
Rubel.
Techcrunch.
Memeorandum.
Om Malik.
Doc Searls.
Rock on.
February 8, 2006
greetings from switzerland
[Yes, the cartoon above is there for a reason.]
Greetings From Switzerland.
My client, coComment recently released a blog tool in beta that allows the user to keep better track of their comments. It seems the blog world has already taken note.
Yes, it's early days. Yes, there's still some bugs. Yes, there's a million and one things we should fix.
So what's the plan?
The first thing we want to do is make it intergrate it with as many other platforms as possible. That means plug-ins galore. That means partnerships with other Web 2.0's. That means allowing open source coding and design. Collaboration. Co-creation. That means talking to people.
People and companies on the list to contact include, but are not limited to:
Six Apart. Loic, Heiko.coComment was funded by Swisscom. So what's going on? Is an interesting conversation about to begin among the Telco's, the blogosphere and the Web 2.0 crowd? I have no idea. You tell me.Alex King from Wordpress.
David Sifry and Kevin Marks from Technorati.
Michael Arrington from Techcrunch.
Feel free to add to the conversation by contacting Laurent and the coComment guys via cocommentmail@gmail.com.
Rock on.
pet toys
There's a new term I've been using a lot recently:
"Pet Toys". Passive-aggressive bloggers and blog commenters who spend a disproportionate amount of time making lots of little sqeaky noises, not dissimilar to those chewy rubber things you find in pet stores.
Pet Toys are first cousins of "Happy Trolls". Go visit Scoble's blog and you'll find them by the hundreds.
[Bonus Link:] From Laurent: "Ten rules of blog fighting".
googlejuicer
So it say here that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 can block Google Adsense.
Is that true? Does that explain why Google is so keen to join the browser wars? Does that mean internet users can block Google from becoming bigger than Exxon?
Thoughts?
state of the sphere
Dave Sifry publishes his latest "State of the Blogosphere" report.
* Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogsPretty much the same news as last time, except the numbers are bigger. Rock on.
* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
* It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
February 7, 2006
cocomment
Euan says it better than I can:
OK, how much does it piss you off that you can't track comments you have left on other people's blogs?I have just christened CoComment as "Technorati for Commenters."Laurent, who organised LiftO6, has just shown us CoComment, the coolest thing since sliced bread.
The interesting thing is, you don't need your own blog to use it. Secondly, the startup was initially funded by Swisscom, a Telco [an industry not exactly well known for pulling off this type of enterprise].
Currently it's in Beta. To use it, you first need to be sent an invitation code from a current user.
[Trivia:] Apparently this enterprise was heavily inspired by Jeff Jarvis' post, "Who wants to own content?"
Distribution is not king.[Disclosure:] I am writing this from Berne, Switzerland, at the CoCommenter office, brainstorming marketing ideas with Laurent and his colleagues. Intense stuff. Yes, it's a professional gig.Content is not king.
Conversation is the kingdom.
The war is over and the army that wasn’t even fighting — the army of all of us, the ones who weren’t in charge, the ones without the arms - won. The big guys who owned the big guns still don’t know it. But they lost.
[Speaking of Technorati:]¨It looks like the bloggers are talking about it in great numbers already.
February 6, 2006
euan semple
Everyboy's favorite British social software guru, Euan Semple, has a new business website.
Euan just left the BBC, where he was in charge of working on all the internal blogs etc. Eight thousand internal users, or something like that. So now he's gone into business for himself. Good luck, Euan!
[MEANWHILE:] BMW gets banned from Google for messing around with its stats. You have been warned.
February 5, 2006
english shirtmaker
English Cut moves the "$300 shirt conversation" forward by revealing to the world who will be making them for us. Thomas also mentions why we chose the manufacturers we did.
To make a long story short, my favourite shirt is one I've owned for over eight years. It still hangs in my wardrobe. It's all dog-eared and worn, because I've enjoyed wearing it so often. Sadly, the label only mentions the retailer who sold it to me, not the actual manaufacturer. The retailer I bought it from went out of business a few years ago, however there was something special about this one, so I kept it around as a reminder of how a real shirt should feel.English Cut is making no claims to being master shirtmakers [unlike SOME prominent English brands that I won't mention].When I decided to start selling shirts, I promised myself that this old favourite shirt would be the inspiration. This old shirt embodied everything I was after.
I'm happy to report that after doing some digging and a lot of phone calls later, I finally discovered the manufacturer of the shirt. Rayner and Sturgess Ltd, based in England's garden county of Kent, about an hour South of London.
What we are claiming to be is a most excellent interface between customer and shirtmaker.
If our customers go for it, they go for it. If not, at least our losses will be minimal. Rock on.
February 4, 2006
in geneva
I'm still in Geneva. Having a very jolly time.
Right now I'm at Hamish's house with Sigurd. As I write this, Sig is across the room, demonstrating Thingamy to Hamish.
Pictures of LIFT can be found on Flickr here, and hear what people are saying about it via Technorati here,
The video footage for LIFT is already up. So you can watch my presentation if you feel like it.
Kudos to Laurent for putting on a really good show.
Meanwhile, there's only one gapingvoid t-shirt design left [the CFA one above]. Once they're gone, they're gone etc. You can order it here.