“What do you think of your Mac?”

This is a question I often get, which means it’s worth at least a half thought out post here.

First a brief background if you don’t know me very well. My parent’s bought the family computer in 1993, I was a Junior in High School. The next day we were on Gateway 2000 tech support for eight hours to fix what took me less than a day to break. We ultimately had to fdsk it and start from scratch. I was thrilled. I now had the tools I needed to destroy and bring back from the dead, the computer. Which I didn’t hesitate to do many times going forward.

Fast forward to my second year of college at DeVry where I was introduced to this crazy thing called Linux. I had heard about it, but once I had a demonstration, I knew I needed it. And once I discovered I could install an entire operating system with a 3.5″ boot up disk and the internet, I was in love. I was now a Debian user.

But alas I was a frustrated Debian user. I spent way too much time to keep this thing running and ran into trouble that other’s seemed to avoid somehow. So when Ubuntu “Linux for Human Beings” arrived on the scene, I couldn’t have been happier. Things that caused great frustration worked like I felt they should.

However, now the problem was that I couldn’t do a lot of things I wanted to. We had come a LONG LONG way, but there was still some room. Connecting to my iPod was a constant frustration, hardware incompatibility, etc. As a PHP developer and having all servers running Linux, I love having BASH locally so everything was seamless.

Now comes the Mac. It’s based on BSD, another Unix POSIX operating system which means it works just like Linux, BASH and all. And 600% improvement of it ‘just working’. Obviously there are no hardware problems on the Mac, obviously it connects to my iPod quite well, and everything else I want to do, it works like a champ. Not only that, it has video editing software that comes with it, and I never found any video editing software that I could get operational on Linux. Not to mention the screen on the Mac is BEAUTIFUL (I’m sporting the matte), the weight of the 17″ is the lightest computer I’ve ever had to haul around (and that is going back to my 10.4″ [largest screen available at the time] 486 DX4 75Mhz Gateway 2000 laptop in 1994 for $4000). And if that statement is not true in actuality, it feels like it. :)

All right, if I keep going from here it will be rambling so I’m stopping. But that’s my thoughts on my first year on the Mac.

Your thoughts?

Interested in WordPress the software, WordPress the philosophy, or the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg?

Simply watch this video from KTEHTV – Public Media for San Jose and the Bay Area.

It starts off, “What kind of guy turns down a $200 million offer to buy his company? The answer is a quiet visionary at the center of a revolution.”

I found this video via a Chris Heuer Facebook post.

Watch this and think about you, your company, and your place online in your niche. We can’t all be Jay-Z, but you can be an amazing you.

INFLUENCERS from R+I creative on Vimeo.

Thoughts?

I’m currently here at Blogworld. And I’m hearing a lot of great stuff, so I want to put it down on paper (so to speak) here.

Keynote: 7 Harsh Realities of Blogging for Bucks: Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, & Darren Rowse

1. Free is not a business model
   1. The more free content you give away, the more you sell. People will buy the exact same content.
   2. Tell them 90% of everything and they will pay for the last 10%
   3. It’s the bikini concept of marking
2. The push-button Internet Cash Machine is on the fritz
   1. You have to build up your audience and trust before someone will buy from you
   1. Build something that is real, and build something that matters
3. Didn’t catch it. ugh…
   1. Get real about how many meaningful conversations you can actually have in a day.
   2. Chris Brogan and Gary Vee are not human and have alien DNA
4. No one actually wants that much authenticity
   1. Set boundaries – nobody wants to know everything about you
   2. Brian: What is no one like the real  you. :)
5. Social Media hates selling. (and yet you have to sell)
   1. What you are selling is you – not ‘look how great I am’ – get people to market for you with great content
   2. People that are looking are your content are interested in you content, or trust the person who sent them to it
   3. Get people to pay attention to you over time
   4. Don’t pitch – educate on the value of of buying from you
   5. I don’t think of pitching, I think of offering
   6. People hate to be sold, but they love to buy
6. A blog is not a business
   1. Stop dreaming about your blog being a business, and start treating your blog as a business
   2. Start figuring out how to make your blog successful
   3. Stay flexible, but don’t forget what you are in this for
7. No one is reading your blog
   1. Give you blog time
   2. Have conversations, not just broadcasts
   3. You don’t need monster traffic, you need a focused group of the right people
   4. The number of people required to maintain a business is not that great
   5. Write about something people care about, and write it in a way that our intended audience wants to hear it
   6. Make it useful and funny, but make it more useful than funny
8. Extras
   1. If you want to do this, do it and commit to it
   2. Make sure you tell the world something important – advice from Darren’s 4 year old
   3. Partner with others to combine your strengths, or enhance each others strengths

I’m currently here at Blogworld. And I’m hearing a lot of great stuff, so I want to put it down on paper (so to speak) here.

Keynote: Moderated by Hugh Hewitt, and Reid Wilson,  panelists are Karen Hughes and Mark Penn.

Mark Penn:

• We all know all media is becoming digital media, well, all politics is becoming digital politics
• Surge in independents. This is not a red or blue country.
• The biggest party in many ways is no party at all.
• We are at a time again of ‘sustained voter discontent’
• The people favor more power to the people, not the politicians
• More people can be involved in politics now, due to the Internet.
• There is no more ‘off the record’ – anything can be recorded at any time
• Politics is one of the few things where there are only 2 choices. Things are trending toward more choices.
• “I hope that more people reach out and identify the center. The center are the ones whos ideas shape elections”

Karen Hughes:

• During the Bush/Gore race, we didn’t have a Blackberry, and though Gore weird for having one.
• We’ve moved from a 24hr news cycle, to a 1440 news cycle. That’s how many minutes are in a day.
• Those candidates that engage their constituents where their constituents spend their time, will success by using Social Media.
• She talks too fast to type much down…

Panel with Hughes, Penn, Hewitt, & Wilson

• Speed is essential in replying to opponents.
• False stories spread faster then ever before.
• – This went political awfully fast –
• Hughes: At the State Department, I hired a team of foreign language bloggers to engage in other languages online.
• Social Media needs to engage more effectively. Some candidates are just replacing New Media for Old Media.
• Engage, that’s the ability to persuade
• Hewitt mentioned that many comments are on Twitter about Hughes age comment. Which was that only those under 30 understand this medium.
• The center is underrepresented on the Web.
• Everyone has their news by the time the nightly news comes around
• Wilson: “How do American’s get their news” Penn: “That answer is in flux”
• The people themselves want more power.
• Penn: Saying you know which politicians are authentic and which aren’t is laughable
• Penn: Pain has an intense following, therefore and intense online following, but never able to gain a majority

Audio to come…

I’m currently here at Blogworld. And I’m hearing a lot of great stuff, so I want to put it down on paper (so to speak) here.

Scott Stratten – @unmarketing

• “People spread awesome”
• “Social Media is talking”
• “I was either Mensa or Mental”
• “It’s not my job to tell people how to consume my product, I just want them to consume it.”
• “Be mobile”
• CRO – Chief Relationship Officer
• “Tweet 3-5 great things a day, plan them out”
• “Do you market to people? Social Media is people.”
• “When you are your authentic self, you have no competition”

Jay Baer & Amber Naslund

• “Answer the new phone” – Companies used to answer a phone, some still do. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc are the new phone.
• 3 levels of listening (it’s a infographic in the new book, really interesting)
• Areas of possible Social Media engagement:
  • Awareness of your product or brand
  • Sales
  • Loyalty

Which of those three are you going to focus on. Suggest it is loyalty in most situations.

Brian Solis‘ Interview of Mark Burnett

• “Survivor is ‘The Lord of The Flies’” – This never occurred to me
• “The Need to be certain causes paralysis”
• “The need to be certain is a form of procrastination”
• “Be willing to jump in and take a risk”
• “The People who do big things don’t know, are uncertain, if it’s going to work”
• “Social Media is the electronic water-cooler”
• “Alaska is epic, and I’ve traveled the world”

Doug Ulman – @livestrongceo

• “We are just getting started”
• Nike, who created the LiveStrong wristbands, had originally decided to put “Just Do It” on each one, then decided to go with “LiveStrong” with a Nike Swoosh, but after the first 5 thousand (5 million in total were made) they took off the swoosh so that it could be even bigger.
• Both Lance Armstrong and Phil Knight thought that the wristband was a horrible idea. Which of course, they were both wrong.

Google recently released it’s updated “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” And it has some really good stuff.

My top 10 highlights

1. “Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website.”
2. Where do search engines get the snippet for your page displayed in the search results?
3. Make sure you are using the Meta tag. Make it useful.
4. Use words in URLs, (which is not the default of WordPress install, I don’t get why)
5. The guide actually says, “Offer quality content and services” Seems obvious, but just be real, don’t try to game.
6. Using text links vs. graphic links, such as in the menu.
7. What exactly does a ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ do for links?
8. Google has a separate bot for regular sites and mobile sites.
9. Make use of webmaster tools. It even lets you know that Yahoo! and Bing also have webmaster tools.
10. It provides links galore to dig deeper.

That’s what it has, but what does it mean?

Which one are you:

I only update content on our website

You need to read this. Some of it is technical, but you don’t need those bits, you need the best practices for how to structure your content. For example, number 7 on my list is about the rel=nofollow value of a link. Anyone updating content is going to link to other sites and this can be a valuable tool. It basically tells the search engine to not follow that link. What that does for you if you are linking to shady content as an example, or you don’t want to lend your hard fought page rank to that page, the nofollow is for you. If only you had known before know, right?

I’m a Web Developer

You most certainly need this guide. As a recovering Web Developer myself, this guide is mostly a review, however, after going through it, any website I’m involved with will be matched against this criteria. I know this is foundation, and even more SEO can be done going forward, but if you don’t have a solid foundation, you are only building on the shifting sand.

What is the bottom line? Good content

Do everything in this guide. If ‘you’ can’t, find a reputable Web Strategist/Web Developer/SEO Consultant to get your site to be the most effective it can be. The bottom bottom line is nothing beats solid content. I can’t say that strongly enough. Consider this, let’s say your content is the engine in a car. The way the car looks is what gets people interested, and that’s what solid Search Engine Optimization will do for you your site. If they can’t find you, all the great content in the world isn’t doing them any good. Attract ‘em with SEO, keep ‘em around with great stuff.

Keep in mind, this is the baseline. Search Engine Optimization can get more complicated because things change ALL THE TIME. It might be worth it to have an agency running your SEO, but if you are smaller, doing all of what Google recommends in this SEO Starter Guide combined with solid, regular content, especially in a niche, will be more than sufficient.

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, get the guide from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

Your thoughts?

Allow me to get this one out of the way:

Content is King

Almost seems like a New Media cliche now but it’s only because it’s the fact. It has been forever and it always will be. We will watch what we like, not because it happens to be on.

The TV is just a screen

But it’s not the only screen. Most new phones play video. iPads. Computers. These are the most prevalent and the most obvious. I watched the first two seasons of LOST on the original Video iPod. It’s a tiny screen compared to the “giant iPod Touch” known as an iPad (yuk yuk), but I enjoyed the content and it was a great experience. It fit my needs because I was living in my car for 15 months at the time. (making a good living mind you, it’s a long story) While I’m writing this I’m watching/listening-to “STOMP Live” on Hulu Plus on my iPad. And this is a great experience. But I could just as easily be watching it on my computer screen. I don’t own a TV.

Watching is getting expensive

I enjoy TV as much as the next guy but I limit it because I have too much to do. Actual TV shows I keep to just a few at a time. But I’m getting off topic.

Watching is getting expensive because everyone wants a piece of the pie. Back when I had cable, I paid $40 a month (I think). Now I have an internet connection for $40 a month. There is certainly plenty to watch for free, but great content isn’t free. Which is just fine by the way. We all have to make a living. Problem is the specialization. I’m trying out Hulu Plus. $10 a month. I have Netflix for movies, $9 a month. I just watched the Tour de France for three weeks on streaming video from Versus. It was awesome. It played fantastically on my iPad. It cost me $30 for that one race.

All of the sudden I’m paying more for TV-ish content than I ever have in my life and something tells me this isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Where do you seen TV going and are you willing to pay for it to come over the Web?

I’ve not talked about it here, but my big project right now is Web Strategy for the John McCain 2010 Senate re-election campaign.

I love this gig. It mixes two of my biggest passions, Social Media, and politics. I’ve learned so much more about both it is ridiculous and I need to start talking about it here more.

I was reminded today, in a huge way, about being authentic. You see, marketing has campaigns, politicians have campaigns, and there are similarities, but there are also huge differences. For example, to my knowledge, when a company is holding an event, the competing company doesn’t show up with video cameras to film it. This happens in politics regularly. For example, not long ago, I took this photo of the campaign manager of our primary opponent at a Town Hall hosted by Senator McCain.

This brings us to today. Between dropping by two fire stations, Senator McCain hosted two Town Halls and there was another prominent staffer of our opponent there to film. I was making small talk with him afterwords and said, “So, what horrible things were said that will end up on your blog?” He replied to a statement the Senator (not a poor man by any measure) had just made in the last few minutes, “I hate rich people just like everyone else.” So offending staffer replied, “‘I hate rich people,’? what was that all about? haha I know it was just tongue-in-cheek.” Which it entirely was.

So not much time had to go by when I see this tweet by tongue-in-cheek-statement-mentioning-opponent-staffer, “#AZ Sen McLame @ Tempe Town hall 2day: “I hate rich people.” Wait, is he running in the DEM primary? #azright#azgop#tcot“

Wait.. what?!

And this got me thinking more about authenticity. I don’t recall a time I was faced with such blatant disregard for what you truly think and what you say in public. In fact when I was talking to this individual that followed us around today, I kind of liked him. He was personable, friendly. But then to turn around and tell the Internet what he told them is inexcusable. I have altered my opinion of this individual 180 degrees and he is now in the untrusworthy human category.

I don’t have to go on and on and explain why you need to be true to yourself whether online or off. This story does it for me. In our commercials, there is a line that is always repeated, it says, “Character Matters” This individual’s actions tell me what kind of person he is, and by association, the person he represents.

Character matters. Integrity matters. Authenticity matters.

A topic I think a lot about is what motivates people to action. For some crazy reason, I’ve thought of this separately from this blog, but no more. Motivating people is what we are all trying to do. Especially those of us in New Media. So imagine my joy yesterday when I happened across someone who thinks smartly about such things to the point of writing books on them and doing TED talks on the subject.

Enter, Dan Pink.

Since yesterday I’ve been reading his blog, watching his presentations, and probably going to go buy a few of his books.

Non-monetary motivation. This is the thing everyone is striving for. Some have figured it out, i.e. Farmville. I play a game on my Droid called Pirate Wars. The game was free, but I’ve put more money into it than any other paid app from the Marketplace. Motivation.

So I’ve broken the ice about this topic here. I expect to have plenty more to say.

Watch Dan’s TED talk.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y[/youtube]