On the way to revealing the iPad / iSlate Steve Jobs talked about "It just works!"
Steve Ballmer on the otherhand was pretty lackluster when trying to gen up interest in yet another WIN 7 device. Something he liked to call the Slate PC. Let's watch how his cloud comes out.
And one major reveal, at least to me. I say CRAP a lot. And even ass. And my kids hit me everytime I say either one. I am getting better. But clearly my blogging needs a bit of a clean up.@jmacofearth
My new demo Apple iPad is SWEEET! Being a pundit of pugnacity and loving all things Apple has it's rewards. When Mr. Jobs hits one out of the park, people like me shout our congratulations, and if lucky someone at Apple listens. Now, I can't really tell you this, under the terms of my NDA, but... I have had my iPad (yes I knew that's what it was going to be called back in December) for over three weeks. And I told Steve Jobs directly, via conference call, "Steve, the name is bad. iSlate is not great, but iPad, you're gonna take some heat for this!" It's almost as if he didn't hear me. But that's what they pay me... I mean, if they did pay me... That's why might pay me the big bucks. Now a loaner iPad, nobody's gonna claim that on their income tax statement. Me neither.
Sooo.... I can't show it to ya, and I can't really, (really) tell you that I have one... but... here's a sneak. Dang, I had uploaded these from my phone. But Steve called and told me I had to take them down or lose my Apple Developer Account. Dang! You can email me and I'll send you the real ones!
One: unboxing and shaking Steve Jobs' hand.
Two: Steve sets the scene, says the iPad is going to be huge, I caution him about the name.
Three: Editing this blog with the touch of a finger.
Four: Checking my posts on Delicious, navigating the web.
Five: Pulling up About this iPad.
Unseen One: Apple asks me to take down my Facebook mobile pics of my iPad. Then asks for the iPad back.
Unseen Two: iPad goes back into FedEx envelope and back to Apple.
The hardest part was not sharing the iPad experience with others. Not even my wife could know what I was doing... (heh heh) Seriously I wanted to call everyone I knew. "Hey, come over dude, you have to see this frackin HUGE iPhone."
Yeah yeah yeah, and I got Snow Leopard a week early too. wOOt!
Whatever!
I am so sick of the iTampon meme already. People are just looking for somthing to complain about. I personally was hoping for iNote or iWrite. But iPad, so what.
The big things that seem to be missed are:
1. It's $500 for the base system. (Holy crap, that's 50% less than said pundits!)
2. It's a HUGE frakin iPhone. (Everyone's like, Oh I wish it would do X, or they should've done Y with it.)
3. It's shipping in 60 days. Holy crap again. They're gonna have these things in people's hands before HP, ACER, DELL, Microsoft, Fujitsu, RIM, Nokia, Samsung or any other technology company will have anything remotely close. I'm thinking the "slate computer" that Ballmer showed from HP will be actually working by say Summer 10.
4. NOBODY MENTIONED STEVE'S HEALTH. And you know why don't you? The machine was so frackin cool that Mr. Jobs himself was not even part of the story.
5. Even Obama's SOTU meme paled in comparison to the iPad discussions.
image from Steven Fry's iPad Review
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/my-ipad
NYTimes whyPad by Paul Krugman
My new demo Apple iPad is SWEEET! Being a pundit of pugnacity and loving all things Apple has it's rewards. When Mr. Jobs hits one out of the park, people like me shout our congratulations, and if lucky someone at Apple listens. Now, I can't really tell you this, under the terms of my NDA, but... I have had my iPad (yes I knew that's what it was going to be called back in December) for over three weeks. And I told Steve Jobs directly, via conference call, "Steve, the name is bad. iSlate is not great, but iPad, you're gonna take some heat for this!" It's almost as if he didn't hear me. But that's what they pay me... I mean, if they did pay me... That's why might pay me the big bucks. Now a loaner iPad, nobody's gonna claim that on their income tax statement. Me neither.</span>
Sooo.... I can't show it to ya, and I can't really, (really) tell you that I have one... but... here's a sneak. Dang, I had uploaded these from my phone. But Steve called and told me I had to take them down or lose my Apple Developer Account. Dang! You can email me and I'll send you the real ones!One: unboxing and shaking Steve Jobs' hand.The big things that seem to be missed are:image from Steven Fry's iPad Review@jmacofearth
So I'm setting up my new mbp, loving the idea of starting fresh. No unnecessary FF addons, no apps I don't use, only what's necessary. And I'm doin my thing this morning and Tweetdeck (one of my essentials) comes up with this message.
Ah, I bet many of you have seen these messages right? Well, I had tweeked my Tweetdeck to poll things more judiciously on my personal machine. So now I'm locked out of my usability tool for Twitter. Yuk. Okay, so I'll do some reading and responding from Twitter.com. And right there at the bottom of every page is a teaser:
Oh is that right? I wonder. Maybe if you're following about 10 people. I understand that Tweetdeck is available on an iPhone, but I'm a BB thank you very much. So when I go swimming in the river of tweets on my phone, it's useless. I recall back in 2006 when Twitter launched at SXSWi, I, like everyone else that year, subscribed and attached the stream to my phone. But I didn't get it. And I didn't want to get it on my phone. I'm not that interested in where you are going for coffee at 2am. I wasn't back then and I'm still not.
Okay, so what about these lists Twitter has added? What are they used for? Here's what the Twitter blog says about them. (I'm sure Mashable has a very good how-to about them, but I haven't looked for it.)
So it is kinda cool seeing that folks have added me to lists that they have created. As long as I'm not on one called **sholes! How would Twitter deal with that? As in negative or slamming Twitter lists? Oh well... So here's the little button that I caution you before you start following LISTS rather than folks.
I tried a few list follows and my Twitter stream went all wonky. Suddenly tweets were showing up and I couldn't unfollow the person. Tweetdeck kept telling me, you are not following "@MoMoney." And so according to the explanation above you can follow lists, but you can't unfollow individuals from those lists that you follow.
So now, lists to me are interesting distractions if I'm looking to see who has put me in a group and who else they have added to that said group. Again, I am just waiting until the negative groups start getting attention. I'm sure they are already out there. But that will be another story. I'm sure we could all think of a few people we could add to a list like that.
Update: Twitter admits folks are getting random tweets in their timeline. Here's the post on their blog about it.
@jmacofearth
permalink on uber.la: http://bit.ly/lists-on-twitter
One of the signs of a great leader is how well they motivate their team and how efficient they are about doing it.
You can't fake excitement. An inspired leader is able to translate their vision and ideas into genuine excitement within the team that surrounds them. And then an effective leader goes on with their daily business and lets the team do the work. The opposite of micromanagement, a leader that has inspired the troops, and has built a trusted core within the team, is often hard get time with. Because they believe in the leadership of their people, the uber-leader assumes that the job/project/work will get done with little or no additional oversight from them. At that point they are empowering their team to succeed.
On the other hand, if the leader is more a manager than a leader, they may not have the enlistment of the energy and passion of the team. It's more than walking the talk, it's about being seen for something deeper than business or profit opportunity, it's about honest expression of passion.
I recall a manager I once had who appeared bored about leading our group. While it was hard to call them a micromanager, because they were often hard to schedule meetings with, they did not inspire by their actions. More importantly they were not inspired themselves. A job is a job is a job, was the message. Just get it done, report back to me, and don't ask too many questions.
On the issue of air cover. An inspired leader IS AIR COVER. The faith and energy they put into their vision lends influence and cooperation from other teams and other executives. A "boss-type" manager doesn't really have time to invest in promoting YOUR projects to upper management. And thus, when silos become the prioritizing factor in workload, the less-inspired-manager's team will most likely get less priority. And perhaps, if there is enough churn, no priority at all.
@jmacofearth
permalink at uberla: http://bit.ly/inspired-leadership
Harvard Business Publications: How to Make People Passionate About Their Work
I came to the realization a few months ago, while tuning into a "webinar," that the experience was much like some of the larger conference calls I was included in at Dell. We used MS LiveMeeting for the visuals and usually dialed in for the audio. Setting up an online meeting space and scheduling and running LiveMeeting conference calls was a snap. And for me, set the standard for what to expect.
So jumping forward to today, I've used GoToMeeting as well to set up a call, but had some problems getting it all to work properly. And at the moment I am waiting for a webinar (or webcast, what's the difference?) with Scott Berkun and they are using Cisco's WebEx. It looks great.
Cisco has made it known that WebEx was going to be their starting point for their salesforce-like development platform for interactive technologies. And I have to say this implementation looks great. My previous experience in setting up WebEx sessions is that is was not very intuitive. So what more is needed for a collaborative presentation space? I am looking for ideas on integrating work and creative review across several time zones and I am curious what people have had success with.
Some of the things I've tried with varying degrees of success are:
Is a shared desktop the way to go?
I have several primary requirements for an online collaborative system.
But far and away my most sought after feature for guiding projects and teams who are in different locations is: 6. An issue tracking system that allows the conversation to be threaded using traditional email. There is nothing worse than trying to manage deadlines or content assets via email. Especially when the volume, due to multiple projects, gets above 30 emails an hour.
So once I was part of a system using RoundUp the python-based "issue tracker" system. And it worked beautifully. The executives, who were unlikely to ever visit the "tool" could respond directly via "reply all" and it would get captured and threaded in the relevant discussion. And then when a new person to the project or sub-project arrived on the job, they could get "everything" they needed in one place. This system also allowed file attachments, that essentially functioned as pointers to data files on the server. [How many times have you asked someone not to email the file but to "put it on the server"?]
So as the Berkun web presentation runs on, I am aware of how I would like to participate both now and over the next few weeks [as if this were a project with milestones and deadlines] and it got me thinking about RoundUp and Basecamp and wishing I had access to a better integrated "platform" for collaboration.
If you have any ideas or "collaborative frameworks" please let me know either in the comments or by emailing me directly.
@jmacofearth
permalink on uber.la: http://bit.ly/team-collaboration
If you missed SideWiki like I have it might be, like me, you don't use the Google Toolbar in your browser. Well, thanks to buddy Michael Brito who published this link to is self-sidewikied entry to is own facebook page, I am now a SWiki-er. I've been a wiki fan for a while, but this takes things to a new level of content tagging and yet another disruptive technology from Google. 
So as we are moving forward we can tag, comment and post content about the page that we are viewing. This in and of itself is not new, but that Google has added this function rather than some "untrusted" third party. [I imagine your groans, but pause for a second. If you think Google doesn't already have all the information on you to make a VERY LARGE file, then you probably delete your cookies each time you quit FF. I have resigned myself to using Google Analytics, with Info Sharing turned on, Google Voice, iGoogle as my RSS reader of choice. Anyway, to me, Google already has the links on me so adding more info to my file is not a concern of mine. The "toolbar" on the other hand takes up a lot of screen real estate and I'm not a fan of toolbars, regardless of how innovative and useful they are.] Here are a few questions I have about SideWiki and how we, the browsing public [not the browsing marketers], might use SideWiki to enrich our browsing experience. So for now, I have the Google Toolbar enabled [wondering if there is a different SideWiki option] and I will add a few SideWiki entries as I go around. But I bet ya, within 24 hours I've hidden the Google Toolbar again and SideWiki will fall to the bottom of my internet toolbox. Until I NEED it. [Kinda like Google WAVE, IMHO, it will be neat when I NEED it. Right now I don't need it. I don't even really understand it, but I'm sure I will at some point.] So are you SideWiki savvy? If not, you might get on and check it out. Even if it's just to imagine how Google might use SideWiki content to influence search results. Go figure! @jmacofearth permalink: http://bit.ly/sidewiki-g Kudos to britopian for his new gig: 
Why are we involved with digital marketing? Cutting edge? Bleeding edge? It's where things are going? Advertising is advertising where ever it takes place? In seeing a tag line and list of speakers at IDEA 2009, a top Interactive Marketing conference I starting trying to imagine what ONE SHOW I would attend, which show would it be? What path would I choose as a statement about my passion and my creative vs. business acumen.
On the advertising and marketing side I have the IDEA conference. The presenters runs like a list of visionaries and people to watch in hip marketing, pr and advertising [yes there is a difference].
On the uber-visionary side I have TED. Yes it's expensive but just going sets a bar pretty high for your ambitions.
Then there's WOMMA and the InBound Marketing summit. More for the practitioners of social media and the monetary connections to be made there. People we are all addicted to like Chris Brogan, David Armano, Seth Godin.
And lastly is Austin's own SXSWi (South-by-Southwest Interactive). I still have a panel in the running for presenting in 2010, so wish me luck. [I know this is a limited and incomplete list, but this is supposed to be a short engaging post.]
And this year, my answer is... IDEA. Roy Spence from GSDM, Barry Diller, Paul Bennett from IDEO, Alex Bogusky from Crispin Porter + Bogusky. And the list goes on. The whole inspiration for this post was their tag line that touched a nerve or a vein [if we are characterizing passion rather than irritation].
IDEA 2009: Reinvention. The Velocity of Ideas. What are your thoughts, choices, additions? What ONE CONFERENCE would define your passion and core strengths best?
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/name-your-passion
From a high of 7,093 I have agressively BLOCKED spammy followers using TwitBlock.org, my new favorite tool. [I'm not sure how I got spam listed by 9 twitblock users, but I have some suspicions. Oh well. If you're in the neighborhood and would like to "whitelist me" as not spam I'd appreciate it.]
Well, my aggressive unspam blocking has resulted in a drop in my follower count to 6,870. Seems like the Tweespammers are agressive about unfollowing unfollowers. I say if you're gonna blast crap quote spam, MLM marketing messages and sexcam soliciations I think you should be blocked. Perhaps those folks can figure out who blocked them and block back?
No worries. Seems like the value of a tweet just got a little more easy to spot with Twitblocker.
Two great things about this tool.
1. It shows all your spammy followers on one screen allowing your to unfollow a lot of people at once. And the spammers are easy to spot, believe me. Especially when they are all lined up together like a police lineup.
2. As the tool gets more users and more accounts are rated as spam, the ratings will get better and the tool will be better at pulling spammers out of your flow.
Here's a sample output as TwitBlock began scanning my followers:
You can see I have not blocked sxpanel, but I am about to block Schwartz632. It's easy to spot the spammers, but TwitBlock makes it really easy to find them all in one place.
What we need perhaps is a kick ass Tweeter list. I've been wanting to build a matrix of folks I follow in different fields. Like a verification or a seal of approval for some folks I think are awesome. Starting with my very few #FF #followfriday nominations and Mr. Tweet recomendations, I'm sure I could produce a shortlist of recommendations. That will be my next task.
In the mean time keep it clean and add your account to Twitblock.org and get blocking. The twittersphere will thank you and together we can reduce the noise.
@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/twitblock-inaction
NOTE: If you think I'm spammy please let me know. I'd be happy to understand how I can provide more value for you. My motto is WIIFY (what's in it for you).
And an ON NO: In unfollowing so many peeps I just upset my follow/follower ratio and I can follow no more people. Gotta get out the wackin tool again. ARRRGGH!
See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right A funny post from Mashable on the Top 25 most spammy Twitter Avatar images.
Latest Twitter Posts
My favorite twittertools:
Everyone is new on Twitter. Everything changes and everything stays the same.
On thing that doesn't change is the flood of scammer twitter artists leaching on to your account. Here's what they look like and here's what they do. This is a collection of TwitterSpammers I BLOCKED from following me today:
Notice the last tweet was 2 days ago! For a tweeting tips service, you'd think they'd update at least hourly if not daily. Maybe they just don't have many good ideas yet. Notice the tweet is also nothing but a quote. [NOTE: QuoteSpam is alive and well on Twitter as well. After a while you tire of the people who think it is a good use of their time to cut and paste famous quotes into their Tweetstream. Well, it DOES up their tweet count, but the value of an Einstein quote to my daily interests is quite low. And if the quote is from Oprah... well, I think she stopped tweeting a while back.] 
Let's see two biggies: 1. no avatar; 2. random letters for name. Only tweet starts with "Make Money..." If someone would build an app that immediately unfollows and reports all tweets that begin with "Make Money..." 
Bad Twitter ID. Contains "f" and "_" to snag a real sounding name. But there's that first tweet again, with these magic words "internet marketers." And she's got "make money" in there too. Poor woman in the picture is probably a real estate agent and has nothing to do with this account. And lastly the last tweet was 21 hours ago. [Hey Twitter, could you give us a way to filter followers by "last tweeted?"] 
And the "making money" with "sexy torso" approach. This one adds "get paid" as a nice come on. So let's see, we've got SEX, HEALTH and MAKE MONEY. It's the San Diego address that really sets off the alarm bells though... (just kidding on that one) So there are two reasons these type of scammers join Twitter and follow everyone. 1. Just like spam, they believe that they can drive traffic to that "make money" or "teeth whitening" or "get out of debt now" link if you just click on it. 2. And they follow you in hopes that you will follow them back. [There's a funny consequence of Mr. 50k and his auto-follow auto-bot tool. He follows all the pornsters too. And he's SOOOO busy he doesn't even have time to look over his follower list.] And even if you don't follow them back, and I would suggest you don't unless you want a lot of their friends dropping by, they are hoping that visitors looking over your "followers" list and see their ID. You can report these abusive accounts by forwarding the tweet onto the @spam account. Apparently someone at Twitter takes that responsibility seriously. But please do BLOCK the scammers and save others from accidentally following them when they look over your stream of "followers." It may take you a bit longer to get to 100 or 1,000 followers if you are editing and blocking the scammers, but it goes with the territory. And until Twitter adds a BLOCK and REPORT AS SPAM function we'll just have to do it the old fashioned way. One follower at a time. UPDATE 8-15-09: I think my very mention of MLM in my post about TweeSpammers got me a lot of MLM related crappo followers. I woke up this morning with this smiling face along with about 15 new scammers trailing my tweets. 
In discussions with @michaelpearsun last night we were wondering, if Twitter and Co. are touting their phenomenal growth curve, what would be their incentive to block people from creating multiple and bogus accounts? To Twitter's stats it's merely another user. As Michael said, "If you have 28 million users with a lot of spammers vs. 2 million users of very clean users the proposition is very different." So Twitter says, "Gosh look at our amazing growth. Yes, we know there are some people gaming the system, but look at the growth rate on our monthly page views." And did you notice that to "manage" your twitter account you are forced to weed through users 20 IDs at a time. Now I'm thinking there are much better and more efficient ways of managing my users, BUT... for Twitter it's a ton of page views every time I go in, even just to clean out the spammers, Twitter racks up the stats. And what can we do about it, but comply and complain. Or not complain at all. I prefer at least giving a little bit of feedback. (grin) @jmacofearth
Scott Berkun has some amazing posts about managing Rockstars, leading the "smartest guys" and basically working with awesome teammates without pissing them off.
And sometimes the TEAM comes before the Rockstar.Here's Scott's Teams and Stars essay on the subject and a short excerpt.@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/teams-stars
A dear friend and Twitter marketer, contacted me late last night to voice concerns about my negative tone. I thought I had already had that conversation, but he probably doesn't "read me." No worries. So one of the pieces he pointed to was my recent trashing of the UX/UI changes on Twitter. I DID ping @stop and ask if he was the Creative Director responsible for the NEW TWITTER Friends and Followers pages. Here's what he said.
Okay, so perhaps I was being mean, I don't sense that was my purpose, but I do understand online sarcasm and humor can often be confused for bitterness, anger, vendetta, whateva... So here goes my ALL GOOD review... Let's see how this rolls.
+++ THE ALL GOOD REVIEW: Thank goodness Twitter has made some needed upgrades to their UX.
So Twitter's got a new pull-down action menu for dispatching some useful tasks.
Here we can see the new pull-down menu for taking action on followers and followees. With a simple click we can @, DM, Follow or Block any one. And this nifty feature is now available in the same flavor across all the "friends" or "followers" pages you visit. Even when looking at the "friends" or "followers" of other users. Nice! And convenient that you can see instantly, even without using the drop-down, that this person is "blocked" or "followed." [Oh heck, am I still following that silly old advertising agency that I used to work for. Let's see, CLICK: drop-down, PULL: Unfollow.] Nice!
So now let's look at the new and improved Followers and Friends pages.
Here is a shot of the "You Follow" page in LIST view.
So this pretty much looks like the old "You Follow" page. And conveniently the same drop-down box is available here too. [I wish we could choose the number of tweeps to view per page, cause following 5,600 tweeps using 20 tweeps per page... well that's 280 pages of goodness I have to page through to edit and cull my list. Just a thought.]
And here's the greatly improved "Your Followers" page in EXPANDED view:
Here we can see that @stop and company have added a little contextual information with each tweep. So you can see the person's last tweet, very helpful when deciding if you want to reciprocally follow back. And again the nice BIG pull-down button. And also a handy, ADD button.
So there are just a few things missing from the new interface. I'm sure @stop and his group are already hard at work on the next iteration.
1. I would like to see a RT option here. This must have been an oversight, cause that's such a simple fix.
2. I would also really like Twitter to add a "-!" Report Abusive Account feature. Where I can fast-track pornsters and scammers to the dustbin of Twitter Hades. And in the Usability department, here's one more suggestion.
Maybe there would be a good case for a drop-down something like this:
View By List
- 20 per page (default)
- 50 per page (efficient)
- 100 per page (uber user)
And for ultra.uber powerusers, there could be a TEXT LIST mode, with no pics. [That would be really fast, and I bet could relieve some of the server load on Twitter's cloud.]
Carry on @stop and company. Good work and if you need any further advice, feel free to ask. It's what I do, too.
Cheers,
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitter-good
The harsh-toned review from last night: Twitter UX Awakens: The NEW TWITTER Reviewed and Dissected for UX and
And the collection of Twitter Posts all in one place: The Twitter Way
[As is often the case, I was inspired by a post elsewhere and as I was writing my comment, I realized I had much more to say on the subject. So here is my longer comment on an article on Wired called, "Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?"] 
I sat in on this years SXSW Interactive panel on the Death of MSM. There seemed to be three camps within the panelists and in the audience asking questions.
The Huffington Post has done a fine job of not paying writers and basing giving the HuffPo lift to the writers to participate. So as a writer, we are on our own. It's a brave new "social media" world out there and you'd best sharpen your wit and look for your niche.
I keep getting asked, "How are you going to monetize your blog?" My answer, "By getting consulting work and possibly a better job than the one that just laid me off."
The papers won't die. Just as Rock didn't die. They will have to continue to evolve, be more agile, and embrace the "community manager" rather than "editor in chief." Long live MSM. MSM is Dead.
BTW: As a paper copy subscriber to the NYTimes (THUR - SUN) I can't tell you how happy I am on Thursday mornings when the thump on my driveway is double the normal local-only paper. Those two plastic bags, one blue one clear, hold the possibility of excitement, learning, drama, humor. Often I am let down by my overly imaginative projection. But mostly I just love the thrill of unwrapping the ATOMS of paper and getting the ink all over my fingers, keyboard, coffee mug. Yes, the newspapers must and are changing. Some will die. New one's will rise up in their place.
Just think, the "journalist" now has so many more outlets. More job opportunities. How you make your money from it, well... That's where you have to get creative.
@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/MSM-vs-Blog
Note: I would love your comments here. We can have a dialogue about this.
Also check out my collected Posts about using and abusing Twitter - The Twitter Way
[Thinking how to frame a dialogue without overburdening the writing with punctuation and he said then I said, I'm going to use one color for my statements and another color for my friend's statements. Hopefully that will make it easy to read quickly.]
On Saturday night a good friend asked, "So what do you do?"
He was somewhat serious. And it got worse from there.
"You are the only friend I can think of who I have not given work referrals to. If I were to sum up what you do in one sentence what would I say?"
I tried a few ideas on him.
I am a Social Media Strategist. "Nah, you've got people like Brian Solis, Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang doing that gig."
I can build communities. "Really? To what effect? To make money? To save money?"
I know how to guide companies to... "No. What's a guide? What does that get them?"
I can assemble the creative and technical teams to do social media projects. "Oh really? Like what kind of projects?"
Launching a B 2 B portal or a B 2 C portal. "What's social about that?"
Okay, so I know how to do online marketing programs. "Boooring. You and the other 100 companies in Austin. What's your value?"
I have these training sessions to teach businesses how to work within the various aspects of social media. "Great. What do you call that?"
Uh, the sessions? That's not very good is it? Hmm... "Not too good. I can't get a handle on that. When I have a client and they need what you do I can say... JMac he's the <insert cool name here>. And make the recommendation and you get the work."
How about a Virtual Chief Social Media Officer? "That's great. That's it. That's what <name of local dude> does. That's his job. Yeah, that's good. Nobody else is doing that. A VCSMO!"
Now I just have to figure out how to tell that story and put the "value" in that proposition. And educate my friend and my potential clients on what a Social Media Officer does, virtual or full-time. So I'm building the DECK on it. Maybe I'll do the book, the podcast and the video presentation on it.
Here is the hero slide of my presentation What Is A Social Media Strategist. Once I get that nailed I can move on to showing the ROI on social media projects that I've been involved in and how that success can and will translate into similar success for YOUR COMPANY.
I will share the entire presentation when it is done. But until then here is my tenant of what I do, or what a Social Media Strategist does:
It is a lot to navigate. And depending on the size of the company the leadership or lack of leadership can get quite complex. But that is the task of the social media strategist at any level. Stealthy and effective, the winning social media ninja can move projects through the darkness and opposition forces to achieve victory. Victory with or without the support of the entire cast of characters involved in the process, but victory (launch) nonetheless.
@jmacofearth (socialmedianinja.net)
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/socialmedianinja
[Tim Walker posted the following question. Can genius and social media go together? on his What I've Learned So Far. And in my infinite cheekiness I could not resist an answer. And in my own self-aggrandizement I could not stop at the mere comment, I have to turn the idea into an entire post. So much for 140 characters! So here is a crosspost that might grow beyond the initial discussion with Tim's blog.] 
Is posting an answer a form of braggadocio? I am no genius. I am constantly working on patience.
That said, the social media system is inherently interruptive in nature. Twitter being the most insistent model, blink and you'll miss the entire conversation. But is that a bad thing?
So today a study revealed that 10% of Tweeters produce 90% of the Tweets. They can't all be geniuses, and they most certainly would be doing something other than tweeting if they were geniuses.
So... Social media is wonderful within limits. It is important for your sanity to put a bounding box around the influence and interruptions you are willing to tolerate from Twitter, email, IM, blog commenting and such.
Here's a pop quiz, gather up all of your 140 character messages for the last month and put them in a document. Delete all RT's and conversational @ messages and ask: Now, what is the percentage of genius on the page of what YOU created? Original wisdom? Wit? Or shite?
It is increasingly important to turn off the social media interruptions when you are trying to create something of value. Unless your value is in the form of 90 second sound bites, I would suggest you focus your genius on the longer form. How about the genius of Blog commenting, or actually writing the full blog post?
Still genius is everywhere among us. Some geniuses focus their intelligence more effectively than others. And even us sub-geniuses can learn to be more efficient and effective by putting what mental resources we have on the task of posing or answering questions. And that activity leads to a better possibility of creating something of value in the dialogue between us.
[end of blog comment]
Okay Mr. Mac, good idea. So do it. First I used Tweetake to download my last 1,002 tweets into a csv.
And then pulling them into Excel I deleted all blip.fms, RTs, and conversation specific @s to come up with my original content, for better or worse, it's all I got.
And so, from 1002 total tweets I have 347 tweets where I actually created original content. (35% content) The other types of content break down like this:
And let’s see, any genius in there… uh… Well, here are my top 6, self-selected.
Nope. But not ONE ADVERTISEMENT and NOT ONE GHOST TWEET. That's right, NOT ONE!
@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/my-tweet-makup
What I Believe:
But where that person's efforts are going is probably the ADs. (I'm not saying the ADs are good, I'm just saying they are not working on the UX and UI of Facebook.) Because they keep making changes to things that WERE previously working and they mess it up. [And of course the ultimate irony, is I am going to post and promote this on Facebook itself. Betcha $100 I don't hear a word from any of Zuckerburgs folks. I didn't last time... Heh heh. Perhaps they're working on it and don't want to tip their hand. Perhaps!]
The biggest MISS for me lately has been the "friends" status views. How do you get back to seeing the updates and not the "what they updated?" Okay, so Facebook has added Lists. Great, but they suck. Here is my view of my "close"list. Why oh why aren't they showing me the latest status update from my "close" friends?
A friend recently opined, "It's clear that the people work ON Facebook don't actually USE Facebook or they would not make such stupid changes." Well put.
Okay and here's All Friends. Same problem. I am clicking on "FRIENDS" to see their status, not to see if or how many lists they are part of. This is just BAD BAD BAD. UX FAIL.
But still the #1 UX FAIL on Facebook today is,
... drum roll from wipeout please ...
The "Recently Updated" Friends Status page and guess what. Not a single STATUS is available.
You can see what parts of FB they updated but not the updates. It's this kind of shoddy UI and UX that makes me less and less likely to open Facebook at all. With recent API loving twittertools like Seesmic Desktop, Twirl and Tweetdeck, you may never have to open your Facebook page again. Unless of course you like the games or you want to browse someone's photos.
Does this kind of BAD DESIGN make anyone else MAD? It's like following a HUMMER in rush hour traffic. WHAT'S THE POINT! #@!&*?
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/facebook-UI-2
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[In a quick interview with Steve Ballmer, the NYTimes shed some light on corporate culture and problems with innovation and meetings. Here are a couple of things he said that triggered further ideas for me.]
SB: "I race too much. My brain races too much, so even if I’ve listened to everything somebody said, unless you show that you’ve digested it, people don’t think they are being well heard. Sometimes you really don’t hear because you’re racing. It’s just the way my brain works. My brain is just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And so, if you really want to get the best out of people, you have to really hear them and they have to feel like they’ve been really heard."
Comment: I suffer from this malady some times myself. Type A mode is 'gitturdun gitturdun gitturdun' I want to cut to the chase and understand what is being asked of me. And sometimes the "listening" is as important as the action item. I can say with confidence that in family discussions with kids and spouse, that the "listening" is the MOST IMPORTANT part.
SB on the old way of doing meetings: "You come with something we haven’t seen in a slide deck or presentation. You deliver the presentation. You probably take what I will call “the long and winding road.” You take the listener through your path of discovery and exploration, and you arrive at a conclusion"
Comment: Yep, I think this is what people expect from a "meeting." And corporate culture expects two types of presentations.
Presentation Type 1: FYI - we are telling you this and getting you up to speed - we are NOT asking for feedback or input.
Presentation Type 2: Working Session - the presentation is to outline the situation and solicit input. Action items may or may not be assigned during these meetings.
SB on the new style of meeting at MS: "I decided that’s not what I want to do anymore. I don’t think it’s productive. I don’t think it’s efficient. I get impatient. So most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: “I’ve got the following four questions. Please don’t present the deck.” That lets us go, whether they’ve organized it that way or not, to the recommendation. And if I have questions about the long and winding road and the data and the supporting evidence, I can ask them. But it gives us greater focus."
Comment: Agility sets in when the meeting is a follow up on the presentation. Two things have to happen in this scenario:
1. The presentation has to be good enough for the executive to read it without the presenter standing by. The case must be stated clearly and supported with facts and data.
2. The agenda for the meeting must be expressed before the meeting is accepted. Without an agenda the "focus" of the meeting can be lost. If I get an agenda well ahead of time, I have time to read the materials and bring any supportive documents I would like to add to the discussion.
Now you can see how presentation TYPE 1, is less supported by this model. Because the winding presentation and "discovery" process will happen BEFORE the meeting takes place. The great part about this is 100% of the "meeting" then is about interaction and collaboration. Again, those may not be the objective of the FYI presentation. But if you just want to present to me, just send me the deck. I'll let you know if I have any questions. Otherwise, I'll stay out of the way and you can proceed.
It often seems like that is the goal of the Type 1: FYI meeting. Here's what we're doing, we just wanted to let you know, please don't interject or slow us down. Now I believe there is a huge difference between nay-sayers or as Bob Pearson used to call them "anti-bodies" and healthy discussion. But in the corporate world, perhaps your role is not ON the immediate team, and you are being given a courtesy "update" on the progress and direction of the project.
There is a slight catch-22 that causes Type-1 presentations to be less effective. Inside the corporate team, especially if you are being given a presentation by a different group, the tendency is to go with the flow and not be an anti-body. So you listen and you say nothing. The problem is, in some cases, your silence is taken as approval and acceptance.
I remember a team call with one of my managers who said, "You were on the call, why didn't you speak up?" So you speak up and risk being an anti-body or worse a loose cannon. Or you comply and send an email to the presenter or team after the presentation. Or, the most common path, because it does not directly affect your work you hold your tongue.
In the "hold your tongue" scenario, the only problem is, you have to hold your tongue outside the meeting as well. So many corporate silo wars come from the "unsaid objections" that are voiced outside proper channels. The buzz or back channel can and will hurt you if you speak dissension. So you are stuck. And often the best course of action is to observe. If you are not asked for participation, if you are not invited to the Type-2 presentations, then your role has been defined by the presenting team as one of FYI. It might not make you happy, but if you're not involved, trying to get involved can be a dangerous move.
Here are a few more nuggets distilled from Steve Ballmer's interview.
SB on job candidates: "I try to figure out sort of a combination of I.Q. and passion. I just ask somebody to tell me what they’ve done that they are really proud of and tell me about it. And if it’s something you are proud of, you should be able to answer any question I can come up with, at least at a level that would satisfy my interest. I ought to be able to see your passion. It might be quiet passion; it might be bubbly passion. But I should be able to sense that you are one of those people who just sort of throws themselves into things."
Comment: In speaking to a friend this morning about a "side project that is taking up part of his valuable Sunday morning" I asked him, "Is this a passion project or a payola project?" He said, "Well, it started as the latter and has sort of moved into the passion thing." My response sort of shed light on my perspective. "Passion is one of those things you can't fake or manufacture. You either have it or you don't."
SB on skills and qualifications he's interested in: "But compared to 10 years ago, technology is more complex, products and services span people’s lives in new ways, and our business is much more global. So it’s more important that people can think outside the confines of their individual expertise and their product group and connect the dots between technologies, customer needs and markets in new ways."
SB on challenging aspects of his job: "Finding the right balance between optimism and realism. I’m an optimist by nature, and I start from the belief that you can always succeed if you have the right amount of focus combined with the right amount of hard work. So I can get frustrated when progress runs up against issues that should have been anticipated or that simply couldn’t have been foreseen. A realist knows that a certain amount of that is inevitable, but the optimist in me always struggles when progress doesn’t match my expectations."
SB on global business challenges: "At the same time, the need to be more efficient drives us all toward sharper focus on what is important and what can truly move the needle in terms of meeting customer needs and taking market share. Of course, we need to be innovative, but we also need to be efficient."
SB gives his choice advice: "My dad worked for Ford for 30 years. When I was a kid, he’d say: “If you’re going to do a job, do a job. If you’re not going to do a job, don’t do a job.” What he meant was, if you really want to accomplish anything, you have to be committed, motivated, tenacious and smart about what you do."
SB on leadership: "I’ve come to believe that to be a great leader, you have to combine thought leadership, business leadership and great people management. I think most people tend to focus more on one of those three. I used to think it was all about thought leadership. Some people think it’s all about your ability to manage people. But the truth is, great leaders have to have a mix of those things."
Comment: So combining thought leadership AND action is the key. But back to the top of the discussion, sometimes you also need to LISTEN. Get out of the rush rush part and listen. Then you can understand the type of presentation you have been invited to and from there you get to define and refine your response.
@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la post: http://bit.ly/agile-leadership
Corner Office column from the New York Times on Steve Ballmer.
Twitter is a wonderful beast. All changing, scamming, Oprahing millions of us trying to figure out how to use it to... What? What are YOU using Twitter for?
Does "microblogging" mean anything to you? In the year (s) of tweeting behind me, I have developed some strategies for engaging my tweetstream that I hope might be helpful to you. The illumination/discovery path for today is going to be the dreaded and most valuable tweet technique the RT, or ReTweet. So here's how it works.
Part 1: Discovery - Someone tweets something you find helpful, amuzing or dumb.
Part 2: Use the RT feature in your Twitter app du jour. (if your not using a Twitter app to manage Twitter, well... That's another post: Putting a Dashboard Around Twitter.)
Part 3: Be Additive and Subtractive.
Part 4: ReTweet.
So let's look at Part 3 more closely. Additive: Adding your comment or twist on someones tweet to add value/humor/meaning/dialogue to the twittersphere. I'll pull one off the stream right now and give an example:
So I will hit the RT button in Tweetdeck (my Twitter app of choice, you can see that Alex is using Tweetie -- probably on a trendy iPhone!) and being my additive process.
[Here's the RT without any work from me] RT @BaldMan RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine.
But I am interested in adding to Alex's tweet in some way, usually to join or josh with Alex himself. And also, by ReTweeting Alex at all, to introduce my followers to BaldMan as a cool person to follow. Since I am following him and clearly ReTweeting with some joy his somewhat mundaine "gettin coffee" tweet. (no offense Alex) Some folks are happy to RT without modification, and I will do this occasionally if I am in a hurry and I REALLY DON'T WANT YOU TO MISS SOMETHING. But if I am connecting with BaldMan/Alex in any significant way, then I am will do my part to Twist or Comment on his Tweet via my ReTweet. (Have I lost you yet?)
[Here's my Additive RT of Alex's "gettin coffee" Tweet] RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring a warm up and pastry for me? Dang, I'm at 151 characters. (Tweetdeck shows -11 in RED, so I know what I have to cut] So I have several choices. I can shorten my response.
Since Alex and I no longer work together, my plea for a warm up is ficticious. And inside joke for us and a "connector."
Or... I can get subtractive of Alex's part, and fit my ADD by shortening his original Tweet.
So now for the Subtractive:
[Here's my Additive and Subtractive RT of Alex's "gettin coffee" Tweet] RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring a warm up and pastry for me? (Okay -1 still to go.)
RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring a warm up and pastry for me? (Okay +1 let's do it.)
Now I will often use different "offsets" to separate my comment from the original Tweet. Here are a couple examples.
Double Carat: >> RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring warm up and pastry for me?
Brackets: [ ] RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I need my caffeine. [Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring warm up and pastry for me?]
Slash: / RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I need my caffeine. / Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring warm up and pastry for me?
I'd love to hear your retweeting strategies and "offsets."
It's a bit like English grammar and poetry. It's part of the ART of Twitter. And by being creative we can make people smile. It's not about business, it's about spirit!
@jmacofearth
permalink on uber.la: http://bit.ly/ReTweeting
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So now comes before the twitterverse the honorable yet questionable Biz Stone on the Twitter Blog!
Small Settings Update (They are kidding Right?) We've updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it's a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option.
So effective immediately is you will no longer see your friends @ replies to folks you don't follow.
Holy FAIL WHALE! This is absolutely the primary way I find new people to follow. Discovery on Twitter is part of the Magic.
Let's review DM biz (nobody but Biz sees) // @ replies @biz (everybody sees) // so what about RT's let's see, perhaps a minor update removing the RT feature all together. Or perhaps RT will only show up if you follow both the Tweeter and the Original Tweeter. UG!
Here is what they have to say about that in the same post:
The Importance of Discovery
"Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you'll still see mentions or references linking to people you don't follow. For example, you'll continue to see, "Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff" even if you don't follow @biz. We'll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space."
Or maybe delete features that were working fine without really thinking of the impact of something that seems so "SMALL!"
Oh, okay, trust the company that can't keep their servers up to release more features that will fill this void they are creating. Oh, let me guess, the "paid Twitter account" can control all kinds of cool functions. Like seeing all of the @ replies!
So folks, here is a tipping point. Twitter has removed a feature, "Based on usage patterns and feedback" that was far and away the most useful discovery process I had. Follow someone interesting and see who they are tweeting with. It's easy enough to click on the @-ed person's profile to see what the rest of the conversation is about. But now you CAN'T.
The spermy blast of the ?WTF Whale blows hard today.
permalink to uber.la post: http://bit.ly/wtf-whale
[A Mother's Day Post from Amanda Steinberg of DailyWorth care of Get Rich Slowly << one of my favorite blogs of all time!]
Recession talk is everywhere, even on Mother’s Day. At work, at home, at the supermarket, at the library, at soccer games, and on play dates. Everyone hates this recession, and most everyone is being affected by it. Especially mothers. Why? Because we are on the front line of the budget wars. Let’s face it, as far as we have come in our efforts to shore up equality among the genders, moms are still largely in charge of household budgets for food, clothes, birthday presents, discretionary items, track-team uniforms, new tennis rackets, and so on.
So when the economy heads south and prices go north, it’s mom who usually decides what the family can do without. But instead of being the financial heavy on this day of all days, look for the silver lining: An opportunity to teach our children about financial responsibility. Maybe you’ve had to tighten your monthly budget or take a less expensive vacation, stay in and cook rather than eat out, forego new additions to your summer wardrobe or your house. Instead of just saying “no” without explanation or example, use the recession as an educational tool.
Here are some practical things you can do with your children from ages 4 to 18 to teach them about the value of money.
Age 4: Dollars and Sense Most four-year-olds can count, recognize letters and numbers; some have even started to read. What better time to introduce the concepts of an allowance, spending and saving? A couple of books, The Berenstain Bears Dollars and Sense and Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday, illustrate just how quickly that weekly payout can burn a hole in your pocket if you’re not careful.
Age 7: Amortize Your Cherries The next time you’re in the supermarket with your kids during cherry season, buy a pound without choking on the price. That’s what Fran of Dallas, TX used to do. Then, when her hungry offspring started scarfing down the cherries, she would point out that they could either eat them all at once and have no more for a long while (with a gentle reminder of the price), or they could eat just a few cherries at a time and enjoy them for several days. You can also ask your children to help pay for those things they really want out of their allowance. They seem to have a better understanding of the value of money when they’re spending their own.
Age 12: Future Entrepreneur Encourage your child to start her own business. What better way to understand the ins and outs of cash flow? Some jobs for a 12-year-old include dog-walking, plant & animal care, mother’s helper, gardening and more. You’ll find that kids get more excited about earning money — and saving it for something special — when the enterprise and the earning power is theirs alone.
Age 15: Checks and Balances Take your son or daughter to the bank and have them open their very first checking and savings accounts. Remind them to bring cash or a birthday check to deposit — half in savings and half in checking. And then remind them that when the checking account runs dry, they’ll probably be paying a monthly maintenance fee until they put more money into the account. Just a little incentive to spend more thoughtfully.
Age 18: You Can Never Go Home Again… At 18, let your kids know that after college, they’re not allowed to move back in. Shelly of Philadelphia, PA told her daughters that when they graduated from college, there would be no moving back in with mom. Once they were done with school, they were on their own, because she respected their ability to find their own way. “I told them that my love was deep and constant, but that nudging them out of the nest to deal with life on their own would prepare them for anything that came along,” Shelly says. “Roots and wings are the most precious gift a parent can give.” Maybe you can’t go home again, but you can always stop by, have dinner and do your laundry.
Be an Example Kids can learn the value of money at pretty much any age. It just takes some thought, a little effort and plenty of credibility. That means we, as mothers, need to practice what we teach. If we expect our children to tread the path of good money sense and fiscal responsibility, then we have to set the example. Starting today, the day when we all celebrate our mothers and what they have done for us. How hard can it be? Okay, it may be hard. But the payoff will be a whole generation of kids who know how and when to save and spend — thanks to Mom.
To read more from Amanda, check out DailyWorth for “practical tips, empowering ideas, and the occasional kick in the pants.” [The link appears to be down at the moment, maybe she's getting too much traffic.]
--- Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:
The Last Word on Kids and Cash
The Money Savvy Pig: A Piggy Bank for the 21st Century
“I have felt overwhelmed many times. And I have not always been able to breathe, walk and reset my way out of the overwhelm. But when I HAVE been able to catch the runaway freight train near the top of the slope, I can often reset, apply the brakes, and move with a much more effective and intentional goal in mind.”
“Forgive yourself when you don’t make it to a panel or two you intended to attend. While Plancast and my.sxsw.com were good tools to announce your intention to attend certain events at SXSW, it is okay to NOT GO. I found myself having an hour-long conversation with a developer from NZ, now working in the UK, and launching a calendaring app. I missed the “party” I wanted to attend, but I made a friend for life.”
“Yes, there is money to be made on Twitter and Facebook. And yes, you may be able to unlock the code that kicks your business into gear using social media. Setting up some accounts and blasting coupons may be easy for Dell Factory Outlet, but not so easy for everyone else. It takes a coordinated strategy, a team of people willing to spend time creating tweets or Facebook updates. It is true that Dell has been very successful with the coupon factory for refurbished computers. But many more Dell-on-Social-Media projects have launched and failed. And this is due to the fact that people ARE online looking for deals on computers and electronics. People may not be online looking for your product or service.”
“That’s a wrap folks. The interactive festival in ATX, SXSW 2010, is done. Bring on the rockers and mods and let us geeks be awed by the sheer volume and volume of the partying that is about to kick off with the coming of the MUSIC FESTIVAL. Cause that’s how it all started. Music baby, music. // But before we roll along, let’s compare notes and see if what you got is close to what I got.”
“So the geeks are leaving and the freaks are arriving today. When the music part of SXSW cranks up the whole city turns into a zoo. The bands, roadies and fans heading towards Austin at the moment are massive and rowdy and ready to party. The concept of not partying must seem pretty alien. While the sessions at the convention center are all about business and connecting and promoting, the music portion of the SXSW festival is a PARTY. Like 5 days of Austin City Limits Festival, only bigger. Not a club will be unrocked, not a dark alley will be unpissed upon. That’s just the way it is. Austin’s been hosting the festival for over 20 years at this point, and it stays the same, even as it gets bigger.”
“So somehow Mr. Gowalla himself won the Texas Social Media Awards. And I’m sure he checked-in and checked-out for that event last night. But I hope he kept the “I am at…” tweet to himself.”
“And I hear from a close friend that: “6pm. Gingerman. Green bloggers. Be there, man!” My GREENWASHING post on DELL has begun to make some waves, I’m sure I will try to be at the Gingerman. (Now if I can just find out where they moved it.)”
“And then today I had a new-met-in-the-parking-lot friend tell me that “hookup” meant “having sex.” I had said, we’ll hookup later. She also knew of the drug-fix hookup concept, but we both agreed that neither of the prior terms were in play in the way I used the term. I loaned her $2 for the parking meter, she bought me a cup of coffee. HOOKUP. See we, connected. THAT IS ALL.”
“I’m tired, the coffee is not having the intended affect (or is that effect?). Dang! I’m even too lazy to look it up. But I’m also kinda blissed out at the Social Media Club HOUSE or Clubhouse!”
“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, ReTweet!” — JMacofearth. “If sustainability is the goal, then social media will be an enabling technology.” The panel included myself and Jon Lebkowsky, Emily Gertz, and Rob Reed. And with permission I will put”
“Sooooo… what is it about the geo-frenzy that is happening right now that does not inspire me? / Well, let me ask you first. What about the geo-aware apps and geo-hyper phones that has YOU excited?”
“Sooooo… what is it about the geo-frenzy that is happening right now that does not inspire me? / Well, let me ask you first. What about the geo-aware apps and geo-hyper phones that has YOU excited?”
“This is geek heaven. SXSW Interactive 2010 has started, I’ve got my badge, my coffee, my wireless, my digital nomad sticker and loads of friends stopping by this table saying hi.”
“I mean they’ve got to have a story to tell at the dawn of the iPad era. They’ve GOT to tell us how great their device is going to be, how FLASH is critical to our enjoyment of the WEB or MOVIES or getting-stuff-done. If you look at the HP “slate” video below you can see how Apple has already set the bar so high that HP/Dell/MSFT/Google/Adobe are all getting in bed together to try to stop another runaway hit. Cause if the iPad is to “slates” what the iPhone is to “phones” you’ve got to be a little pugilistic about it. Don’t you think?”
“But what I want express is think about what you tweet. Think about the “value of the tweet.” If your stream is full of “I’m at…” and “I’m the mayor of simpleton…” well, I’m just not that into your status-update-auto-geo-gowalla-4sq stream. I anticipate that some tool soon will be able to selectively filter all tweets by some criteria, perhaps it always exists. A but until that day turn off the auto check-in or auto-tweet-my-location setting. Or let me know you don’t appreciate me telling you how or what to tweet.”
“Now, it was my understanding that BUZZ was all done via the GMail interface. And since I don’t really USE GMail, as much as forward through GMail, I was surprised to see the screen above. And to see that I’d been BUZZing all along.”
“Using social media and social good will and social capital, Alan has built a foundation of health for the people who cannot afford health care. Meals, cold-night triage, out-reach. I am proud to call Alan a friend and look forward to watching him smile into the spotlight this Sunday night when the AAS staff makes their pick.”
Jason Mraz’s If it kills me has to be one of my all time favorite songs. Listening to the acoustic version is just heavenly.
Jason,
The truth is… I don’t know “How long, can I go on like this, Wishing to kiss you, Before I rightly explode?”
“We’re looking for the Force. And I can hear the words of the Storm Trooper, “These are not the droids you are looking for.” Sorry Google. But hey, let’s make the WAVE happen. We need some good applications of the WAVE. Not more pretty movies about how cool the WAVE CAN BE. But actual use of the WAVE to bring an EVENT or SUBJECT to LIFE.”
Repeatedly arriving at patience.
If I retweet myself, then I retweet myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
