It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally finished the new twintrview website and are opening it to the public. I would share some details on the website here, but I’ve already done that over there. So why not just head over and check it out?

Tonight our first twintrview will be with Pamela O’Hara from BatchBlue. There’s a live chat going along with it, so be sure to stick around at 9 PM Eastern.

Twintrview.com Twitter Interviews

In an article released today on Brighthand.com, the percentage of people expecting to buy a Palm webOS device apparently dropped down to 0% last month from 3% in March. Zero Percent. That’s not very much.

For what it’s worth, Matt Parrott is correct about one thing with webOS (in a discussion we had yesterday). Here’s the tweet I’m referring to:

I don’t agree with him that Android is the future, or that we lost all of our talent at Palm. If anything, we’ve gained a lot of talent by being acquired by HP. What I do agree with, though, is that webOS is currently a fan-driven market, and that it is the community that is currently keeping it alive (for the most part, anyway). That’s why I went on small rant yesterday to get people to stop talking so negatively about the operations at HP/Palm – it doesn’t help anything.

ArsTechnica (where I found the opening image) published an article earlier this year about it being over for Palm, but I’m starting to see the problems that they pointed out turning around, and it’s all thanks to the new acquisition and community involvement.

Turn It Around (good things for webOS)

1. We’ve nearly reached 3000 apps and I expect several thousand more in the next few months as HP engineers get more involved.
2. The marketing team at HP is pretty decent (better than the borg queen team, at least) and we should see good things from them soon. Beyond that, though, the community has stepped in several times to fill in gaps in the commercial sector.
3. The Pre Plus shows that the hardware could be solid, and with HP behind them we’ll start getting even better hardware than before.
4. Palm isn’t necessarily trying to win this game, it’s trying to create a new game altogether.

I think that the last point is the important one here. Yes, HP wants to make money, and a lot of it, on webOS. They’ve thrown out every other mobile OS now to focus on webOS, so you can bet that they want to see it succeed in a big way. But they want to do it in a different way than most people think when they look at the other competitors in the smartphone market.

webOS is not just trying to be a good OS for consumers, it is trying to innovate the mobile web and the internet as a whole to be more open, more standards compliant, and more efficient than ever before. Palm is developing new technologies (like db8) to make this possible, they’re pushing a webkit based Operating System out to developers so that people focus more on building up the mobile web, rather than building up apps on a single proprietary system.

Opening Up the Mobile Web

Yes, as ArsTechnica said in the article, Palm is taking a big risk by not locking down customers into their platform. But to me, this is actually a good thing. Look at Google, Yahoo and Windows Live. Years ago (as was pointed out to me by Dion Almaer) we chose our search engine based on how large its search database was and how fast they could bring us the results that we wanted. Today, most search engine competitors are out of the race, and the few that are left are either niche-based or are so huge that no one cares to look at those numbers anymore. It just doesn’t matter.

In the same way, people are choosing which smartphone they get based on the features that are available and the apps that have been developed for it, rather than the ease of use and the flexibility of the OS. Palm cannot win the App race game, even if it does get a few thousand more apps into the catalog. They can’t win the ad game either, unless something really good happens soon. What they can do, though, is change the game.

It’s not chess anymore, it’s RISK. In chess, if you’ve lost all of your main pieces, you’re screwed. But in RISK, you just need to hold Australia for a little longer. It gets the least number of reinforcements per turn, and grows very slowly. But no one cares to take it until they’ve already conquered the rest of the world. Palm has a very small but very strong fan-base right now that is growing very slowly.

But get ready for a major push. Luckily for Palm, it’s going to be even easier than that analogy makes it out to be.

The Push (with some help from everyone)

It is inevitable that at some point in the very near future people are going to begin demanding changes to the way the mobile web works. 10 years ago we saw major issues with web development and standards compliance in browsers. People built websites that only worked in one browser and not in the others, and everything was scattered. We are having that same problem today in mobile tech.

You can either develop an app for iOS, or you can develop it for Android, or for RIMM, or Windows Mobile or for Palm. But if you do it for all of them, then you end up spending a lot of time, money and resources trying to reach every potential mobile customer out there. At some point, people are going to want apps that work across all devices (including upcoming tablets).

Palm has put itself in a position to pioneer that movement and to create an environment that developers can lean heavily on to create apps that span across the entire market. As more developers build and support the technologies that Palm has created, there will be more articles written about the company and more investors willing to look into its potential.

As more word is spread out among the enterprise world, the regular consumer will begin to feel the effects as well and the desire for Palm to win will trickle down (just as the desire for browsers to be more standards compliant took 10 years to finally reach the public’s concern).

What this means is that Palm is in a great spot to thrive in the future, if not in the very near future. But for right now, we’ve just got to be patient and help see it through. Look at the potential for changing the mobile market, not just the potential for getting another new cool device to play with.

It’s not over for Palm. Not by a long shot.

Every day I hear these same words from key figures in the Palm webOS community (not employees- fans), “When is HP/Palm going to announce new hardware! I need new hardware now before I decide to switch!” To which I have taken to saying, “Will you please shut-up?”

You might say that my reaction isn’t very nice, and you would, in fact, be correct. But I can’t really be too sorry about it, because it’s exactly how I feel. People who are leaders in the webOS community, who are more than just your average power user, are creating an atmosphere that is not conducive for strong community growth. In my opinion, people who plant seeds into a community that cause disorder and dissent need to either change their attitude or leave – because it is only going to cause bad things to happen.

Before anyone gets too defensive, let me explain why I feel this way about those types of statements. It’s not about having a desire to see a new device announced (we all want that), and it’s not about only saying good things about Palm and webOS (every company should be held accountable for their flaws). Here’s a list to show you what this IS about:

What Everyone Wants:

1. It’s about seeing a new device released
2. It’s about seeing new features added to webOS
3. It’s about enhancing the mobile web as a whole with standards that webOS thrives on
4. It’s about creating a larger community that can make anything possible in the tech industry

Everyone in our awesome webOS community wants to see these things happen. However, for any of those things to happen, we need this list to be fulfilled:

What webOS Needs:

1. We need more consumers to buy devices.
2. We need more developers to create applications.
3. We need more investors to see the potential in the OS
4. We need more journalist (and bloggers) to share news about it

If any of those four things begins to succeed, then the other three will as well. If none of them do, though, then webOS will just stagnate and HP will once again fail in its pursuit of mobile device market dominance. How can HP hope to win in this game, though, when the people who have been converting people to webOS over the past year are now creating an atmosphere that is hostile towards the company and less-friendly to newcomers?

If you walk into a crowd and everyone is complaining about the person who is about to present, you may decide to walk out or tune-out the presentation. Here’s my final list to demonstrate the effects of that continually repeated phrase:

What Is Going Wrong?

1. Consumers aren’t buying because everyone keeps saying that a new device is coming soon. If they wait too long, then they end up just going with a different phone (like Android).
2. Developers aren’t building applications because people currently in it keep complaining about the lack of consumers and the lack of financial income (which is mostly their fault, actually, cause many of them are marketing to each other rather than to the consumers – but that’s another blog post).
3. Investors don’t see any potential because no one is saying anything positive about what is to come, only that it hasn’t come yet (and now there are rumors that it won’t be coming at all, so why should they take it seriously?)
4. Journalist and bloggers aren’t writing about it because it’s not popular for people to read. AND because the people in the community aren’t writing anything unique about webOS (it’s all the same circulated stuff that everyone else has already read or wrote about elsewhere).

Yes, it is up to HP and Palm to release a new device. In the meantime, it is up to us to spread the word about the great things in webOS that make it better than the competition. The more we spend time complaining about not having any news from HP, the less time we spend creating cool wallpapers and apps exclusively for the Pre or getting into development or even just writing about cool people in the community.

So yea… shut-up. We’ve got better things to do, and you’re just getting annoying. When you cry louder and more often you don’t make Palm hear you any better, you can’t force them to release a product that they don’t believe is ready. All that you do is create a bad environment for new people to get into.

We Need More of This:

We need more videos like these to start getting attention from consumers (not current Palm fans). The only way to do that is to get out into the community and talk to other people about the good things that are happening, not sit here and complain about the bad.

Palm Commercial from Arno Arni on Vimeo.

UPDATE:

MrKal_El created a thread for this article over on the Precentral forums. There’s a nice discussion going on over there, so check it out.

Had a few nice replies show up on Twitter:

Photo Credit

I’ve put together this short clip so that you can have your own Old Spice Man voicemail greeting. Enjoy, and be sure to say thanks to the Old Spice Man when you see him next.

To download, click here. http://anotherguy.us/old_spice_man_voicemail.mp3

Old spice man voicemail by anotherguy

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Let me share with you a lesson that I learned today. Please, take my advice, and don’t do what I just did… ever. It feels as dumb as it really is.

As some of you know, I am working on an eBook called ‘Building a Great App for webOS‘. It’s been coming along well, and this week I was supposed to have it close to completion. I’ve been using my Palm Pre Plus (and an app called Scratch) to write the book, since I can take it to a coffee shop with me and work pretty efficiently on it.

Everything was going perfectly, until I decided to switch back to my other Palm Pre on Sprint to send the Plus to some friends in New York. Obviously, switching profiles on your Pre does a reset of the other device, and all of my data was erased. Including the entirety of the eBook which I had assumed I had imported into Google Docs befre doing the reset.

It was a dumb mistake, and one that’s going to cost me even more time (and money). Looks like it’s gonna be a few days late from being completed.

I suppose on the bright side, though, I’ll be able to write the entire book even better now. And now you know to always double check your backups, too.

With everything else that’s been going on for him lately (featured on CNN.com, launched Wingman University and been going to various events) I thought it would be appropriate to share a testimonial that I sent him to put on his website. This is straight-up truth about the guy, no fluffiness involved.

“There are guys that you respect, and then there are guys that you look to for continued inspiration and encouragement. Thomas has been one of those guys on more than one occasion for me, and I always look forward to coming back and talking to him about that next step in my life. Whether I’ve needed his advice on doing the right thing in a new relationship or even just getting a boost in confidence to take a much-needed step in my life, Thomas has been there. I look forward to someday introducing him to my wife and saying ‘This is the guy who helped me become the man I am today.’” - Tim Stiffler-Dean, Dayton, OH

I’m not the only one who feels this way, either, and I can tell you first-hand that the testimonials on this page are from real people who have had real problems solved by Thomas. If you want to know more about Thomas, click any of the links throughout this post or go to his website at:

http://theprofessionalwingman.com/

25 years ago, today, Marty McFly pushed a button that would forever change the flow of time. If you are a classic movie fan, then you have probably heard of (and seen) the movie ‘Back to the Future’. Today, my friend, we see the future that Marty beheld in his travels, and marvel at the advancements of technology that have brought us thus far….

Wait a second. I don’t see any flying cars, a Mega Cities or any of the other awesome things that were shown in the film. But I suppose that could be because Marty then went into the past and flubbed things up. Now we’re dumber than we are supposed to be.

Thanks, Marty.

The Winners:

Maggie Besterman (Twitter Follower): Won the Ultimate Music Pack with selections from Ernie Halter, Michael Buble, Jared Mahone, Shinedown, Throw The Fight and more.

Miriam Washington (Facebook Fan): Won the $50 Amazon Music Gift card.

More Coming Soon

I think I’ve already shown that I love giving away free stuff (first the Palm Touchstone Charger, and now a bunch of music with James). You can count on me finding something else to give away very, very soon.

Maybe it’s time to send out something cool to the book lovers that I know are waiting patiently on the side for their turn.

Yesterday was the 3rd Anniversary (or, Blogoversary) of the day that I started my blog at anotherguy.us. It has been a very long road, with many ups and downs, winding paths and dark tunnels to travel through. I have written close to 500 articles on this website over the past three years, have met several dozen amazing people with great ideas on what life has to offer, and have been opened up to a world with no limits.

It seems that someone has always been around to tell me to constantly be learning from my past. That it’s the only way to do great things (and not fail) in your future. There’s plenty of examples that I could share to prove that this is truth, but on this memorable day in my own life, I thought it would be appropriate to share what I’ve learned from blogging on AnotherGuy.us for 3 solid years.

Here are some of the lessons that I’ve learned by looking at my past. Hopefully, you will learn something from them as well.

1. Consistency in Content Creation

I didn’t name this section ‘Consistency in Content Creation’ because it sounded funny when you say it fast. Those are also the best words that I can use to describe one of the most important aspects of blogging that I have learned (and am still learning).

Being consistent in any of your duties, blogging just being one of them, is very important to being successful in your endeavors. You can see first hand how powerful this idea is when you look at my blog statistics from the last three years. In times that I wrote regularly, I had many more visitors than in the times when I had writing spurts (7 articles one day and then none for a month).

By updating your blog as often and regularly as possible, you are showing your visitors that they can trust you, and you are keeping yourself relevant to the information highway surfers. It’s also a great practice for discipline to force yourself to write regularly, even when you don’t want to. To many people call themselves “writer’s” but can’t write consistently on their blogs or other projects.

This should change.

2. Design is important, but don’t let it kill you

One of my biggest problems has been in letting my blog design alone for long enough that people can start to enjoy it again. It seems that once every few months (sometimes shorter) I go through a phase where I need to re-do the entire design of my blog… again. I have honestly lost count of how many times I’ve put my site into maintenance mode so that I could rebuild it (structurally and with aesthetically) from the ground up.

Tip: Your visitors hate that.

If you get into the habit of redesigning your website every few months because you’ve grown tired of it, then you had better start checking yourself. My statistics have shown, every time in the past that I’ve done a re-build, that I lose a ton of visitors who were finally getting familiar with how my content was being presented.

Besides that, though, you lose a lot of the SEO ‘juice’ that you’d been building up with the previous articles and links, you waste many hours in the development process (rather than in writing) and you actually burn yourself out on working on your website, because you’ve already spent several days on the code that holds it all together.

At some point, you just need to pick a template and a CMS and get to writing. If you’re not writing, you aren’t being consistent, and now you’ve broken two rules.

3. Visitor numbers don’t amount to everything

About 4 months ago I finally gave up my statistics tracking software, HaveAMint, and decided to just use plain old Google Analytics to keep track of everything. I hardly look at my stats anymore, and then only to get an idea on what articles are more effective in getting the attention that I want from specific groups of people.

Other bloggers are stuck in this same spot, and won’t stop checking their analytics every few minutes to see if anyone else looked at their latest comment. Besides the fact that you’ve stopped writing to check your stats (and so have thrown off your groove), you also become increasingly un-productive, you start to get obsessed with numbers that may or may not be showing up on a specific day, and you’ll start killing people in cold-blood because you need some crazy-awesome story to get more attention from other crazy people to get more visitors each month.

If you don’t manage to get yourself thrown in jail, you will manage to get yourself thrown out of people trust circle. You can have all of the visitors that you want, but if you aren’t influencing them to do anything but glance at the site and then leave, then you haven’t accomplished anything.

4. Pick a topic you love, not one that you think other people love

Unless, of course, you love the same thing that other people do. Then it’s a win-win situation. If you are unsure, though, just keep writing. There are billions of people in this world and the web is growing any day. There are people out there who are dying to read a blog just like yours, but they’ll only come if you are consistently writing on that blog.

The first version of this blog was all about Windows Vista and how awesome it was (oh… what childish ways I had). Then I transformed into a blog about my faith (which was a dud from the start). Soon I was blogging constantly about Joomla, then WordPress, then advertising, social media, computers…. and most recently about Palm webOS and the community of gadget lovers most like myself.

This last version is one that I actually really enjoy writing about, and I do so on a semi-regular basis over at webOSroundup.com

5. Always evolve (learn, grow).

As much as you MUST remain consistent and trustworthy by posting about topics that you enjoy and that others will be interested in reading, you also have to be able to change with the times as new software comes out, breaking news is made and history books are re-written. You never want to be stuck like I was, talking about how amazing Windows Vista was and not doing my research to find out that Mac OSX was, indeed, a much better OS than I had originally believed.

If you aren’t learning something new about your topics of interest, then you won’t ever attract the new visitors that you believe you deserve. If you don’t have something relevant to the times on your website, then people’s eyes will quickly glaze over and they’ll click over to some other page that you don’t want them to see (like your competitors blog).

Bounce rates, my friend, are a scary thing to behold.

6. Writing is about communication, so be sure to say thank you.

Whenever I stick to those five things above, and I write about the best topics, join a great online community and watch the stars align perfectly in the sky, I always tend to see a huge increase in subscribers, unique visitors, and my all-time favorite, commenters. The more you are open, honest, and communicative to the people in your community, the more that people will want to be a part of what you are creating… even if it is just a blog.

That means getting on Twitter, creating a Facebook profile (and possibly a fan page), joining Digg and subscribing to other websites that have interesting articles about your favorite topics (and then commenting on them). Hopefully, you’ll see those numbers increase, too.

Anything else?

There is a lot more, but anything else that I have to say can wait until a future article. If you want to find out more about the things that I’ve learned in the last three years as a blogger, send me an email, follow me on twitter, or subscribe to this blog (and don’t be afraid to ask questions!).

How long have you been blogging? What have you learned?

Cake is coming, and it’s not a lie.

No seriously, today (July 4th) is a true American Holiday – everyone celebrates the birth of my blog.

What an awesome Third Blog-versary it will be. Prepare to celebrate on my return Monday (I’ll be celebrating with other people tomorrow, sorry).

In the meantime, enjoy the fireworks.