photo credit: lemonyellowsky13

A few years ago, Yale University did a study which revealed the twelve words in this post title as the most powerful words in the English language. Marketers were quick to add a powerful thirteenth word — free. Internet marketing has managed to severely dilute the efficacy of the word “free”, but it still manages to get people’s attention whether it is on a billboard, a web ad, or a newspaper circular.

Ashley Morgan at Upstart Blogger makes a good point about driving traffic to your blog by giving something away for free.

Physical swag, like free iPhones [and] MacBooks always draws the crowds, but thankfully for all those bloggers who can’t, or simply don’t want to, want to dig deep into their pockets it’s free downloads that really make the page counters spin. Instant gratification is the name of the game.

Indeed. Even the mention of something free on your site will draw traffic from Internet searches. I would not be surprised to see this post grab a fair share of incoming traffic thanks to that one simple word. Who knows what the title and the tags will do.

So What Am I Giving Away?

Nothing.

Okay, there is a little something to share, but you must read on to get to it.

Upstart Blogger will occasionally do a premium giveaway contest, but the traffic is really maintained by the free WordPress templates, the Futurosity Magazine theme being one of the most popular.

I wrote about Avon Blake before. The irony is that the post involved a free iPhone. He dropped off the map for a short while, but now Avon is back. This time, he has set his sites on Tim Ferriss of Four Hour Work Week fame.

Picking up on some of the wisdom shared over at Upstart Blogger I’ve decided to give away free copies of The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, the unabridged eight hour audio book version and a handy PDF version that you can print or read on screen.

Why am I doing this?

photo credit: nyki_m

You can read more about it on his Four Hour Work Week post. Did I mention that the post also has instructions for a free give-away?

The other benefit to this type of post is the amount of backlinks it generates. Often, the revenue can far outweigh the cost of the item being given away. Of course, giving away a copyrighted audio book and PDF for free raises some ethical questions, so it will be interesting to see if anything comes of this contest.

Perhaps the goal is to get the attention of Tim Ferriss and provoke a public rebuttal on his blog. Could you imagine the traffic that could bring? How does that old saying go?

Any Publicity is Good Publicity

This is especially true if you’ve got good marketing in place. After all, even the bad news can bring in potential customers.

So how about one more contest?

Christopher Ross has a great contest for creative types. He is giving away $1000 and a copy of Adobe CS4 Creative Suite. It gets better. There will be more than one winner. The breakdown looks like this.

Prizes:

1. First Place wins $500 and a copy of Adobe CS4 Creative Suite (Production or Web).
2. Second Place wins $250.
3. Third Place wins $100.
4. Most commented video wins $75.
5. Most linked to video wins $75.

It is called the Winter Wonderland Flash Animation Contest. Be sure to read all of the rules and get your entry in.

Onward and Download

Seth Godin started a community several months ago called Triiibes. He first wrote about it in July.

I’d like to invite you to join a members-only tribe. A tribe for marketers, for leaders, for those focused on building communities or creating products or spreading ideas.

This online community will live on a site we’ve created that will feature blogs, forums, social networking, comments, photos, videos and a job board. And it’s by invitation only until October. Spots are limited and early members get privileges and bragging rights.

photo credit: torley

Part of the membership involved pre-ordering his new book, Tribes (which I am currently reading), and then participating in the community. It was well worth the investment of ~$14 in the book. The community has given back tenfold or more.

But I’m not here to tell you about an invitation-only community where the invites have closed. I want to share with you one of the results of this awesome group of people. I received an e-mail today from Seth. It read as follows.

In honor of today’s publication of my new book, Tribes, I asked the people who joined the online triiibe group to write an ebook.

And they did. It’s more than 240 pages long, and it’s free.

Download CurrentTribesCasebook.pdf

Context: Three months ago, I posted just once about joining a private online group (it’s on Ning… sort of like Facebook, but by invitation only). Well, quite a few people joined in, and about 10% became seriously active. On good days, there’s a new post every minute or two. There are hundreds of groups, thousands of discussions and a lot of energy. The triiibe taught me a great deal about the dynamics of a group, and they’ve been a terrific resource, not just for me, but for each other. This ebook represents some of their thinking. The group remains closed, but feel free to start one of your own.

PS the photos on the inside flap of the book are not just the people in the triiibe. They are every photo I could squeeze in that got sent to me by readers in May. I have to confess I’m inspired every time I see it.

You can get it from the link above. Feel free to share it or post it or print it, but please don’t sell it.

Once again, there is that word — free.

Please, download and read The Tribes Casebook.

You’ll love it. I guarantee that you will find proven results within. You can read it in the comfort and safety of your own home. It may not improve your health, but you will save money because it’s free, and the discovery of some great ideas along the way make this easy to read new eBook a no-brainer to download.

Free Download
The Tribes Casebook

McCain’s campaign videos constantly yanked from YouTube as someone sends in bogus DMCA take down notice. Obama putting himself into video games. Huge Spambot net shut down. Apple says no to Blu-Ray. Sharp, meanwhile, will have a Blu-ray recorder in a new TV. Garriott in space! Open Office 3 now native to Mac. Intel earning said to be both good and bad. Vodaphone wants tiered Internet.

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The site exists to explore society’s silent rules and regulations: updating the etiquette of old whilst unboxing strange new laws from the Digital Age; forever questioning the need for bizarre guidelines; recommending, where appropriate, that you ignore the really silly ones.

Do read the rest of the about page. Nick is not only hilarious, but terribly insightful as well. I’ve got an article on tap concerning another method of his that I have adopted recently. Until then, dig into the 44forks site, and be sure to read up on how to convert from digital shackles to pen(cil) and paper freedom.

No aliens have landed. Apple shows new versions of MacBooks. Apple goes to the LED displays finally. Microsoft finally gives Windows 7 a name! LCD to be huge market by 2012. Doing Google searches may improve brain function. Yeah, right. Free wireless broadband takes a turn. Have patch releases sunk Microsoft stock? Researcher says yes. Google web accelerator not working. Samsung plans to re-enter the USA PC market. God, why?

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RIM may be acquired according to rumor. AMD says no action against it for anti-trust accusations. Oracle will continue buying spree. Cell phone celebrates its 25th anniversary. CBS throwing in with YouTube. T-Mobile ordering up 1.5 million G1 Android Google phone. Richard Garriott to go into outer space. OpenOffice 3.0 appears to be a big hit. Congress pushes RIAA Copyright Czar bill, Bush signs it.

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Extinction watch continues. Tech stocks are down but IBM looks good. Apple will show a new Macbook. Palin hacker pleads innocence.. Google all over the news with new advertising schemes. Cripes! Google eye in the sky taking pics of everything from space. Yahoo investors seeking a savior? Yang seen in NYC.

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Extinction watch continues unabated. I’m thinking this has something to do with an upcoming movie. Sarah Palin’s hacker indicted and faces 5 years. RIM’s Blackberry Storm getting a lot of play because it has a touch screen. Unisys hires turn-around artist from Gateway. MySQL falling apart. XOHM chips to be in Lenovo and Acer notebooks for WiMAX. Wii HD is a rumor.

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AMD looking good after describing new business model. Mammal kill off story keeps coming. Woz says it is the end of the road for the iPod. Solar panel company collects $600M funding. Hulu streaming the debates live. TC3 Asteroid about to pound N. Africa. TiVO wins Dish network lawsuit. Google goggles prevent drunk e-mailing.

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Mike Vardy wrote this limerick. It is spot on.

Spot.

On.

There once was a country well-feted
Then went all crazy with credit;
The feds helped out the rich
With a 700 billion dollar sandwich;
And they think the public should feel indebted!

eBay cutting 1600 jobs and HP cutting 1400. Were they important in the first place if they can be cut like this? One in four mammals are doomed says the NYT. RealNetworks DVD ripper blocked from sale. Gag order imposed for unknown reason. Apple iPhone 3G users gah-gah over AT&T? Steve Ballmer gives Windows XP 6 more months to live. Microsoft going to Europe for search research. Why? Get your Genome for $5000. Apple making MacBook directly from aluminum brick and lasers. Vista Capable lawsuit continues. Ballmer deposed.

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Gumshoe blogger finds Steve Fossett crash site on Google Earth. Gamespot does not like the new Nintendo DSi. I don’t like the camera. China capturing all the Skype text chats in China. Everyone is logged. Train engineer shown to be text messaging causing the wreck. T-Mobile jacks up estimates to 2M in sales. Ballmer using the term Goliath when referring to Google. Nokia has new music deal. People switching to 16:9 ratio computer monitors. Fujitsu and Western Digital are in hard drive merger talks.

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Microsoft hints that there is the Microsoft Cloud OS. Details to come, we hope. True vaporware, eh? Ballmer floating around the SF Bay Area. Apple pulls NDA off the table for iPhone developers. Google Android may be part of the reason. More Xohm reviews coming in and people are liking it. T-mobile getting buzz over Android. Sarah Palin has even more email accounts. Why are 3D displays so in the news? Is it a true trend or a everlasting on again off again fad? I say fad.

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Why is it still in my wallet throwing my hip a further 0.1 mm out of alignment? Because it was ripped straight from the lyrics of a popular Andrew Lloyd Weber song, and I found that to be quite funny.

Have a look for yourself.

It is horribly blurry, so for those who cannot see it, the fortune reads,

“Open up your mind. Let your fantasies unwind.”

For those unfamiliar with musicals and theatre, the two lines are lyrics from the song Music of the Night in the musical The Phantom of the Opera.

At first, I kept the little slip as a bit of humor that I could refer to whenever I opened my wallet. Jennifer 8. Lee points out that fortune cookies are an American phenomenon, so it should not come as a surprise that a popular song’s lyrics should eventually find their way onto one of the fortunes.

In August, Jennifer wrote an article in the New York Times online Diner’s Journal about how attached we Americans are to little bits of wisdom found inside these mass produced cookies. The Chinese were confounded by the absurdity of it, as shown in this YouTube video which accompanied the article.

Buddha Says…

One of the users whose updates I receive on Twitter is named tinybuddha. The updates consist of wise sayings from some notable historical figures and past prophets and religious leaders. An update from tinybuddha back at the end of July stated,

“Fear is the concern over events that might happen in the future. Now is the only time we have, the only time we have control over”

This profound statement stuck with me and as I reached into my wallet a few days later, I read that fortune again and made a connection. Suddenly, these borrowed lyrics were coming into their own as a useful piece of advice.

What does fear do to me? Does it prevent me from having an open mind? Does it stop my creative side because some of my fantasies or dreams may not be practical?

This fortune was gaining some traction… some meaning for my life. Is there a reason beyond the humor for my keeping the fortune?

A Teacher Expounds

Shortly thereafter, I was found a book titled Art & Fear after reading an excerpt on a web site.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Of course, this does not mean that we should eschew taking the proper amount of time and effort to ensure quality work. What it does mean is that we need to keep churning out the work no matter what. It also means that we should be trying new things, learning from mistakes, and taking creative risks on those lessons learned.

And the little slip of paper? It still continues its journey inside my wallet because first it made me laugh, then it made me open my eyes, and now it is making me ponder the possibilities. Perhaps the fortunes inside those cookies do carry some weight and meaning. Then again, I could just be a silly American.

Be well.

Real Networks sued by MPAA. It snows on Mars. Charles Simonyi going back into space. Microsoft thinks that it’s a killer app or two away from beating Google. Har. Lotus Notes to run on the iPhone. Microsoft attacking "Scareware." Good for them, hear all about it here. Lenovo wants to buy another company. I think Sun Microsystems would be ideal. IPO’s hit 30-year low. You cannot do an IPO in the USA thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley.

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Xohm rolls out in Baltimore. Prices revealed. New devices arrive. A private company has launched a satellite. TiVo my PC. Nero rolls out a desktop DVR for PC’s. New Nintendo DS has camera. Motorola jumping on Android hoping to save the company. Nokia may also jump on the bandwagon. Web radio folks get reprieve. Google has weird new patent for oddball phone service. Ballmer thinks mobile will be won by Microsoft because they are "separatists."

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T-Mobile lifting the 1GB limit on Android phones. China phonies up rocket launch. Ridiculous. Oldest rocks on earth found in Canada. Slingbox Pro-HD released. Dell finally going to LED backlights in laptops. Is this taking forever or what? Dell also says things are looking up. HP laying off 9300 people overseas. Craig Mundie says the cloud is the future but won’t say why. Visa plans applications for Google and Nokia phones. Adobe Photoshop for cell phones? Cripes. EFF suing USA.

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Android phone news never-ending II. Look for new term: “Radical Openess.” New phone will unlock your car (and everyone else’s?) No indictment on the Sarah Palin hack. Sun’s solar winds hit 50-year low. SanDisk story about its new music distribution scheme keeps coming. NBC will rig set-top box for GE TV. Hmm. Microsoft has its own bus lines. IBM on the no short list. What a crock. Hubert Chang says he was a founder of Google. Cloud computing term is going to be replaced, you watch, with “Smart Grid.”

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Android phone news never-ending. I’m sick of it. Hadron Collider shut down until the Spring because it is too cold in Switzerland. Email hacker continues. Creative Suite 4 rolled out by Adobe. GE getting back into the TV business with Internet-ready TV with Blu-ray. Xohm to roll out in Baltimore. I’m baffled about sharing books online. Lots more blog according to experts. Passport snoop might be thrown in jail. Windows 7 getting a head start on ruination. Cell phones to be recycled. Start-up helps your find what you are not looking for. What? I already get that.

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Google Android to cost $199. Already too much PR for this thing. Palin hacker found by FBI. So why can’t they track down serious online scammers? Track them down! Large Hadron Collider shut down for two months. Geez. Dubious World Federation of Advertising protesting the Google-Yahoo deal? Microsoft pushing big iron? Meanwhile the company is doing a $40 billion buyback? Wow. HP doing an $8 billion buyback. Apple sold 5 million iPhone 3G in 3rd quarter. Pentax camera trying to make a comeback.

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Okay, so I am not exactly a PC. I am typing this on my PowerBook. Unless of course you consider a Mac to be a personal computer. I do, but it has long been the decision by American culture that a PC is anything running the Windows operating system and a Mac is made by Apple and is the perfect computer (PC?).

Anyhow, we’ll stick with popular consensus. Linux also goes on PCs, but since I administer a lot of Linux daily, I’ll talk about it some other time. Sorry fellow penguin-heads.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably seen the Get a Mac commercials for Apple, Inc. They feature Justin Long as the Mac and the hilarious John Hodgman as the PC. The ad campaign is a direct attack on Windows marketed under the guise of a Mac’s ease of use.

Suffice it to say the Get a Mac ad campaign had been a success for Apple. The phrase “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” has worked its way into consumers heads, and it is an instant psychological link to Apple. Not only that, but the ads have also become popular enough to spawn parodies.

Wherefore Art Thou, Microsoft?

The success of Apple’s ads began to make tech pundits wonder where Microsoft had gone. Why were they not firing a return shot? Did they not care that their operating systems, particularly Windows Vista, were being smeared?

Microsoft remedied their silence two weeks ago with the release of a new set of commercials starring the now retired Chairman, Bill Gates, and the comedian Jerry Seinfeld. You can watch them below.

Shoe Circus

New Family

The ad spots left technology media baffled, but the ads also stuck in our heads. There were articles that blasted the commercials, articles that claimed the commercials “bombed”, and a lot of technology writers, podcasters, and reviewers blathering on about Microsoft’s ineptitude at creating a decent marketing campaign.

I Disagree

John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, has written a piece about the commercials. In it, he says,

As entertainment, the spots are good. Both are well-shot, well-cut, well-acted works of cinema. And they’re a radical departure for Microsoft insofar as they completely dropped the meaningless corporate doublespeak that’s been the hallmark of their advertising for the last decade.

But they “worked” only insofar as they said nothing and dropped the pretense of saying something. The spots said nothing and reveled in the nothingness.

I agree with John on the point that the commercials are of a high production quality. I began to think that he might be going all Apple fanboy on us until he continued.

It’s not necessary for effective ads to directly sell anything. An effective ad simply has to make a point. Some of the best ads, rather than establishing facts or planting ideas, instead create a feeling. Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign didn’t tell you to buy sneakers. Apple’s “Think Different” didn’t even mention computers. But those campaigns created feelings about those brands that were so strong that they still feel new.

Good point. Those slogans have stuck so well in the popular psyche that they will forever be linked to those brands, even while the companies try to formulate new catch-phrases.

So where’s the disagreement? It turns out John did turn into an Apple fanboy with a little closing dig.

The reaction to the ads wasn’t bad, it was mixed (and/or baffled). But the spots were undeniably successful in one important regard: they were noticed and discussed. I suspect what sparked the panic is that the Seinfeld ads were too good, too accurate at capturing just what it is that Microsoft, as a company and brand, stands for: nothing.

At least he has always been honest about his Apple bias. I do not agree that the Microsoft brand stands for nothing. The most widely used desktop operating system and office productivity suite does not seem like nothing to me. As a software company goes, they have hugely successful flagship products. Products that have made Microsoft a household name — one that is used interchangeably with PC.

Microsoft does make peripherals, but does not make PCs. Apple even maintains that strong branding of PC = Microsoft in their Get a Mac commercials. Microsoft’s brand may be tarnished, true. “Nothing” is not the word for it, though.

What Happened to Jerry?

It’s arguable whether the Seinfeld spots were yanked prematurely or whether the ad progression was planned this way. Matt Maroon makes a good case that the commercial distribution was planned. Three new ads using the tagline “I’m a PC” have shown up on the airwaves.

You can view the new ads over on TechCrunch (or on YouTube at one, two, and three).

Matt wrote about the Seinfeld ads.

Microsoft’s main objective with these ads is to get back the mindshare that Apple has totally stolen from them in the last 5 years. They can’t do it by just splashing some ads up that say “Vista is good.” They’re targeting consumers (and businessmen, but businessmen with their consumer hat on watching a football game) so to get any attention at all they have to come out of left field, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Microsoft got our attention with the Gates/Seinfeld spots. They got us talking about it. They got their name on our lips and in our heads, and there’s been little talk of anything else since the ads were released. Now that we’re watching, Microsoft is starting phase two with the I’m a PC commercials.

I believe that there may be some more Gates/Seinfeld ads yet to come. I also believe that the marketers for this campaign have made one big mistake. It has nothing to do with ads that are confusing. It has nothing to do with using a big name comedian and the founder of Microsoft in miniature sitcoms.

The mistake is using the phrase “I’m a PC” for the second wave of the campaign. Apple has already used this to great effect as part of their Get a Mac campaign, and I cannot help but think of Apple and John Hodgman’s portrayal of PC every time I hear that phrase.

So it is not that Microsoft has a bad campaign on their hands. They simply picked the wrong slogan for it, and that is a good reason to go back to the drawing board.

Every September 19th, you too can participate in this meme and talk like a pirate. That is, if you’re strange like me. My friends and co-workers usually just roll their eyes and walk away. But that is no deterrent to my enjoyment of the day.

If you need a little primer, head on over to the official International Talk Like a Pirate Day site and have a look at “The Basics”. If you are more visually oriented, the site’s founders, Ol’ Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy, have posted a YouTube video called Talk Like a Pirate Day: The Five A’s.

Even Google jumped in on the action this year by adding the “Pirate” language version of Google Search. I be feelin’ lucky, are you?

Microsoft in the news over various reports about what they are going to do with their odd advertising campaign. John Hodgman clone coming. IBM going extra fast towards 22nm. Nobody has even done 32 nm yet! Rainn Wilson headed to Microsoft meeting. Oracle profit skyrockets, look for Tech rally. Hadron Collider not working. Google in love with Yahoo. eWaste a scandal. nVidia does big layoff. Amazon into a new content business. EFF sues Bush over wiretaps.

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Google Android secretly shown in London. Pics of phone all over the net. Company buys Valve software to develop games for the phone and online. Brad Pitt now the top malware lure. Sarah Palin more popular than porn. Meanwhile her email was hacked. NY to add RFID to drivers license. Luckily it is optional. Canon doing DSLR with 1080p movie capability. Nice. Xbox360 tops in Japan. Congrats. Kodak rolling out an OLED wireless photo frame.

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I was driving to work this morning and I passed a couple of seventy-somethings in a convertible out for a nice, cool cruise. It was a beautiful morning, and I must admit my jealousy at these two elders out for a leisurely jaunt.

In the state of Pennsylvania, we only require a license plate on the back of the car for legal registration, so any plates on the front are for sheer vanity — and fun. It’s not often that I see them and when I do, it is frequently one of those bourgeois, airbrushed deals that are made at a mall kiosk.

That’s a fun word to say aloud — kiosk. Try it.

Anyhow, it was to my surprise and astonishment to see the words “Bite Me” pressed into an old style PA plate attached to the front of that convertible. The one with folks who are the same age as my grandmother.

Perhaps it is my upbringing, but I found the plate to be downright repulsive and tacky. Bite me? Really? I just don’t get it. I tried to imagine it on my grandmother’s car. Not her style.

The vanity plate reminded me of a story I recently heard about another spunky seventy year old. It’s called Carmen Agra Deedy: Spinning a story of Mama. Back in 2005, Carmen gave this talk at the TED conference.

Carmen’s talk is about the craft of storytelling, and in it she manages to spin a yarn that captivates us, enlightens us to the finer points of the spoken word, and provides us with a little bit of truth about life when it’s gone and done.

The video is ~18 minutes long so it is not a quick watch, but you need not watch, just listen. You can download it here if you want to put it on your MP3 player or save it for later.

While we are on the topic of storytelling, Dereck from I Will Not Die has a good story to tell. It will only take a few minutes of your time and the video is well worth watching.

His story, titled Who Will Be Caesar, is about a dream and achieving that dream. Dereck’s story is also still in the making, and you will have the opportunity to participate.

So take a little time out of your busy day, sit back and relax, and listen to some stories about life, love, and dreams that we never give up on. Be well.

Google-Yahoo deal to be eyeballed by US Justice Dept. Android phone launch coming soon. The latest Pew research indicates that games are good for you and good for teens. Apple doing its own processors. The beginning of the end? As of today social networking trumps porn on web searches. New Blackberry hype beginning. Microsoft and Cray to do a Windows Supercomputer. I want a Cray desktop. HP doing huge layoff no thanks to EDS. Mozilla EULA to change. Tech stocks in the dumper.

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Tim Berners-Lee starts new foundation. EU probing the Google-Yahoo deal. iPod apps store getting flak. Big deal. Crappy Microsoft ads getting some good PR. Spammer released over First Amendment rights. DRM crappy on Spore so people are stealing DRM-free version. Some are shocked that employers check Facebook. Of course they do. HP doing its own Linux. Windows 7 beta due within 8 Weeks. eBay having issues.

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