Then, I learned of an even cooler transportation option with iPhone service — Uber. It’s a network of sedan cars and drivers, and you summon them using the Uber iPhone app. It’s faster than calling a cab, and since I already put my credit card information into the app, when I arrive at the destination, you just get out of the car.

Here’s how it worked when I tried it yesterday.

I stood near Waterfront Station and opened the app. Right away (see image below), I could see that a car was within a few blocks. You can zoom in quite closely with the app so the driver even knows exactly which corner to pick you up on, if you’re at an intersection. Just press the Request Car button, and — here’s the coolest part — you can watch as the sedan makes its way to you, showing you its real-time location as it moves.

I’m told by Uber that they’ll send a text message to your phone when the car is a minute or two away, but none of the texts made it to my phone — sounds like a problem with the Canadian SMS gateway, which occasionally does cause issues. They’re working on a fix now.

The app also shows the name of the driver, their photo, the car’s licence plate number, and their five-star rating. (Though the first time I tried this, the app kept changing driver names and photos — the service is still in beta in Vancouver.) You can also click the Call Driver button and you can chat directly with them (tested this with my driver and it worked great).

Hamza was friendly, helpful, and very courteous. The car was spotless and even smelled nice.

The pricing model is this: Your trip starts counting from $8 (compare this to about $2.50 for a taxi). Then, it’s based on both time and distance. There’s no tipping required.

At the end of the trip, you simply get out of the car! There’s no fumbling for your credit card (to start using the app, you have to give it your credit card number), no waiting for the cab’s system to authorize the charge, no grumbling (“You don’t have any cash?!”) from the cabbie, and no trying to calculate tip. (Another nice bonus: You can add multiple cards, and name them Personal or Business.)

After you leave, the next time you launch the app, you get a chance to rate the driver (incidentially — on their version of the app, they also rate passengers, so be polite! <grin>).

And within a minute or two, you get a very detailed email containing the fare breakdown, and all sorts of infopr0n like average speed, exact trip duration (to the second) and exact distance. It even includes a map showing you what route you took. VERY cool.

I do wish that the app would lets me enter a name or note for the pickup location (like “To dinner with ABC client”) for later documentation for tax or expense reporting purposes.

Only a few downsides — first, it’s not cheap — you’ll pay about 50% more than a taxi trip would cost. They do offer flat rates between the north shore and the airport. You also can’t book in advance — it’s strictly an on-demand service.

But overall, it was a very positive experience.

Now then. When will I be able to get cat litter delivered to my house via an iPhone app?

Is the school system working? No, according to Tod Maffin of Vancouver, a leading communications expert, and keynote speaker at the Mighty Peace Teachers’ Convention last Thursday. Although Maffin said he doesn’t have an intimate knowledge of school systems, he spoke as an employer, and said the current system is killing the future of education.

He compares it to the Rock Tumbler educational toy. The toy creates polished, rounded rocks from jagged stones. He believes through this process, the rocks lose their uniqueness.

He said the school system in its current form doesn’t cater to independent learning. “Students learn enough math to balance a pocket book, enough history to play Trivial Pursuit, and enough English to communicate,” he said. “Turn by turn, day by day, the rock is scraped…the real stone is scraped away.”

As an employer, he looks for the “jagged rocks,” not the jack-of-all-trades, but the ones who are highly specialized. “I look for people who can do one thing they know extraordinarily well,” he said. “We need more rocks with sharp edges.”

Despite his success in radio production and web development, he said the government sees him as a failure because he dropped out of high school. He was frustrated he couldn’t learn what interested him, and spent his days at libraries learning on his own instead, and later graduating from university.

According to Maffin, industries are looking for highly-specialized people. Gone are the days of being hired in the mailroom and working up for 30 years to a managerial position.

Read the rest of this article at the Daily Herald Tribune.

A while back, Google made a very subtle change to its results page. Say you do a search for moving companies vancouver — now, in addition to the search results, you’ll see a summary of consumer reviews submitted.

This is a bigger deal that it seems. Think about how you look for services — you won’t Google the name of a company, you’re likely to Google the category: “laser eye surgery vancouver” or “interior decorators dallas.” Now, presented with a list of companies — some with five star ratings, and some with lower ratings — you’re probably more likely to click on the listings with higher ratings.

As a business, you’ve got to be actively on top of those ratings — claiming your business in Google Reviews, Yelp, and other review sites, then responding quickly to feedback. Not responding and leaving a negative comment to stand on one of these sites looks like your  company couldn’t care less to respond.

Yelp has some great tips on responding to negative reviews:

1) Check Your Reviews Regularly
It’s important to respond to negative reviews in a timely fashion. If you respond quickly, the person who wrote the review is more likely to respond positively because you showed that you care. Also, other Yelpers who are reading the negative review will have the opportunity to read your comments and see how you responded.

2) Thank the Reviewer
We should always thank Yelpers for taking the time to share their experiences. Often, they are providing valuable feedback and suggestions. Treat your negative reviews like a suggestion box. In some cases, they can help you improve upon your customer service or business.

3) Acknowledge the Problem
If the gripe is legitimate, apologize for the situation and invite the reviewer to come back after you have rectified the problem. You may offer them a refund or an incentive on a future visit [if the situation warrants this type of action.]

You can read more at their full article.

I’m sometimes asked by organizations to present some strategies on countering negative reviews online (my keynote presentation: The Facts of Strife: A Senior Leaders’ Guide to Crisis Management Online) but sometimes the solution can be simple.

Recently, I worked with a dentist in Vancouver who wanted to find a way to build more reviews on these review sites, so we developed a simple card they could hand to customers.

Staff have been instructed to ask patients to give “a fair review” — never, “a good review” or “a positive review.”

By building up reviews on these important sites, and responding to criticism in a transparent manner, you’ll be much further ahead in the race for customers.

[ois skin="Book Signup"]

Two days ago, I stopped using Google’s search engine for searching the web and switched to a new contender, DuckDuckGo. The last time I changed search engine loyalty, Altavista was still relevant.

DuckDuckGo, as it turns out, provides very solid results, ad-free, and — most important — what you search for is not tracked and reported to third parties. It also has a great set of advanced search operators.

Of course, Privacy vs Convenience is the great uneven of technology. The more you want of one, the less you can get of the other. But DuckDuckGo’s quasi-infographic (below) reminded me that — despite Google’s best intentions — sometimes your private information gets out beyond its control.

If you’re using Chrome and want to switch easily to DuckDuckGo:

1. Right-click the address bar (where it says todmaffin.com).
2. Select Edit Search Engines…
3. Find and select DuckDuckGo in the list and click Make Default.
4. It should then move to the very top and say (Default) next to it. 

Here’s DuckDuckGo’s explanation of Google’s “privacy”:

When you search Google,

Those sites usually have third-party ads,

and those third-parties build profiles about you,

and that’s why those ads follow you everywhere.

That’s creepy too, but who cares about some herpes ads?

 Your profile can also be sold,

and potentially show up in unwanted places,

like insurance, credit & background checks.

But there’s more.

Remember your searches?

Google also saves them. 

Don’t believe it? Go view your history right now.

Your saved searches can be legally requested,

and then come back to bite you (it happens).

Or a bad Google employee could go snooping (happens).

Or Google could get hacked (happens).

That’s why DuckDuckGo doesn’t send your searches to other sites.

Or store any personal information at all.

That’s its privacy policy in a nutshell.

So don’t get tracked when searching.

Use DuckDuckGo instead.  

• my cell phone provider
• my cable and Internet company
• the courier company that comes to my door every month
• a major department store
• the pizza joint
• and the list goes on.

But let me back up a moment.

A Brief History of Customer Complaints

Prior to the web, if a company did something to earn your ire, you might be likely to tell a few people, stew to yourself, and perhaps fire off a letter to their head office. In some cases, you’d get a form letter back that read something along the lines of:

After web sites but before social media, the quality of corporate responses to consumer comments actually declined. Under the guise of routing your email to the appropriate department, you’d be asked to fill out a lengthy form, after which you would usually hear nothing. Your “valued feedback” would go into a black hole. By way of illustration, at the time of this writing, clicking on the Continue button (to get their “priority email form”) at Air Canada’s customer support centre gives you a File Not Found error message.

So when social media sites came along, and yelling at a company meant that at least others would hear, I suspect many people thought the deluge of other people’s complaints would all but drown out their own. So they yelled louder. They took to Twitter and Facebook in the hopes that their loud shouting somehow got heard among the clatter.

Which brings me to Sears.

Two months ago, I ordered a vacuum cleaner from Sears. They told me to be home on a specific date for it to arrive. They even confirmed the date by phone a couple of days before. (Can you see where this is going?) The box did not arrive. Nor did it arrive the next day. Nor the next. It was only when I learned they ship through UPS (a quagmire in its own right) and not only didn’t bother to get a tracking number from UPS, they also didn’t put my buzzer code on the box (which is why, it turns out, UPS couldn’t deliver it).

So, I took to Twitter and yelled. (Charitably, Twitter’s search isn’t very good, so I can’t find that, uh, series of tweets.)

And then, to my astonishment, both UPS and Sears reached out to me via Twitter and email. Within a couple of days, I had my package and a $60 gift card from Sears for the trouble.

Oh. Thanks.

And, uh, sorry about the yelling.

Turns out, maybe companies are getting better at service after all.

Then I thought back to the other nastygrams I’ve fired off over Twitter to companies.

• My cable and Internet provider — for a CSR snapping at me to “chill out”
  Result: A response within minutes, an email apology from the CSR within a couple of hours, and a handful of free channels
• My cell phone company — for “incorrectly” dinging me for text messages
  Result: A Twitter DM and phone call within a day reminding me that I hadn’t bought the right package but offering it to me anyway

As it turns out, most big companies are getting pretty good at responding quickly and fairly. Compared to the pre-Twitter age, where your email would generate a form letter response — if you were lucky — I would say, more than fairly.

In 2012, I think I’ll be a little more gentle on the people behind the Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Related articles

• FedEx delivery video: Package thrown. FedEx apologizes on YouTube. (csmonitor.com)
• Social media disaster recovery: A first responder’s guide (infoworld.com)
• Responding to a Social Media Crisis: #Intuit Outage Takeaways (hubspot.com)
• Customer Service Through Social Media (customerthink.com)
• The dangers of not responding to customer complaints in social media (freshnetworks.com)

I try not to change my avatar (the thumbnail icon that accompanies your posts on social networking sites) — people come to recognize your icon and changing it too often might disrupt that.

For the longest time, my avatar was the one on the left — me, in a blue shirt, looking right into the camera. But the photo taken a couple of years (and pounds) ago, so I thought it was time for a new one.

I haven’t fully settled on the left one yet, so for now I’m using the one on on the right which, at the least, incorporates the two colours in my new branding. I’ll probably get a non-creepy photo taken soon enough.

But if YOU are having trouble picking out which photo of yours would look best as your avatar, here’s a tip: Use OK Cupid‘s My Best Face web application. Yes, the dating site.

Here’s how it works. You upload three or four candidate photos to the site, then other users on the site rate how much they like your photo. (They actually put a photo of you up against another random photo and ask people which one they prefer. They’ll make you do this too for 60 matches to get your report. It only takes 2-3 minutes. Do this away from your significant other.  )

One note: To get voters of both genders (which you almost certainly want), tell the site you’re bisexual when it asks for your sexual orientation. Don’t worry. It won’t report that to your mother.

Once you get your report (it takes a few days), you’ll have a better sense of which photo of yours people prefer. Then, use that for your avatar and delete your OK Cupid profile, lest you answer to those “Um, honey? Why are you on a dating site? Aaaaand why do you say you’re bi?” questions.

Here is my report — click it to zoom in:

One of the many items of bacn I receive are notifications of when someone “favourites” one of my Flickr photos. This morning, someone favourited a photo — taken years ago — of one of the kittens I owned who, only a month or two after the photo was taken, died of feline leukemia.

I’ll admit, I was in a low mood already when I got up this morning, but this email kind of put the nail in the day.

Later, an Instagram photo I tweeted months ago while in a bad mood jumped back into my “today world” when somebody found the old tweet and replied to it. There was nothing mean about her tweet, it was good-natured — but it was a tweet I was happy to leave behind.

Sometimes, I don’t want to be reminded of the past.
Social networks don’t help.

This “bubbling up” of the past seems to be happening more often these days, and we have sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter to blame. Conversations are meant to end at some point. But social sites want to keep a “conversation” going, long after it should have stopped.

I am most happy to leave conversations be after a few exchanges or a week or two of dialogue. But, no, just try to do that on Facebook. A discussion that started on Facebook years ago can jump right back into your Notifications stream like the conversation never ended.¹

It’s only going to get worse.

Facebook’s new Timeline (the site’s replacement for personal profiles) actually let you pick a month and year in someone’s past and dive right back into a discussion they might rather leave in the past. Take, for instance, that embarrassing story I told on Facebook about my first kiss. (Sorry, you need to be a Facebook friend of mine for that link to work.)

Imagine someone who got divorced three years ago, is only getting over it, getting a friendly “Hey, are you two back together now?” from a friendly, if out-of-touch Facebook friend.

We need an automated solution.

Even basic blog systems these days have a way to halt commenting ability after a certain number of days. Developed to prevent drive-by spam posts, they also have the side benefit of keeping our social past where it belongs — in the past.

I really do wish these sites offered a way to disable notifications or commenting after X number of months or years.

Or, at the least, have a “that kitten is dead now” filter.

What do you think? Are bringing old conversations suddenly back something you like about social media or wish there were a way to turn it off?

1. Facebook lets you “Unfollow” a discussion, but it’s a manual process.

As you may know, Google has launched a social network. I suspect it’ll be a major force in the social media world — rivalling even Facebook soon enough. Why? A number of reasons, but tight integration with the search engine most of the world uses is a huge part.

Today, by putting a + symbol in front of a brand name, the brand’s official page will immediately jump to the top of the results.

So imagine — people would just have to type +Tod to reach you in an instant. (Well, they’d type your name, of course.)

For now, this program (which Google calls Direct Connect) is limited to large brands that Google invites. But your web site can be in the next batch of those allowed to do this if you follow these instructions.

1. Start a Google+ page. (See Google+ webinar for a full hour-long presentation on building your brand on G+)

2. Link your Google+ page to your web site by clicking the profile icon at the top of the page, clicking Edit Profile, and on the ‘About’ tab, click Links. Then Click Add custom link, enter a title for your web site and its URL, and click Save.

3. Now, link your web site to your Google+ page by following these instructions.

Presto! Now, besides being eligible for Direct Connect when it launches, you’ll increase your ranking in the organic searches in Google.

To help you shave off the excess, I use a great free tool called TheTwitCleaner.com. Give it access to your Twitter account and it’ll run through who you follow and give you some suggestions of which accounts are dodgy:

• All they do is tweet links
• They haven’t tweeted in months
• They don’t interact with anyone
• They just re-broadcast a RSS feed
• Self-obsessed

Here’s what it found of people I follow:

It also will show you how YOU appear on other people’s reports! Luckily, I passed!

Once you get your report, you just click the account of the person/brand you want to unfollow and it does it for you! Give TheTwitCleaner.com a try.

Image via Wikipedia

It was hard to hear at first, what with all the usual acoustical clutter of a busy U.S. airport, but when I strained to listen I was able to make it out. “We’d like to welcome our SkyLine First, StarAlliance Gold, SkyPRO Elite and Super-Elite Passengers, Fly Higher club members, Fly Higher Gold and Silver, SuperClub, SuperClub Platinum, Diamond-Level GlobalSkies and NationalSkies members, and SunBrand Super Happy Lucky Fortune Golden Dragon passengers. ((I’m exaggerating. But not by much.)

Youch.

Sometimes, I wish all the airlines would get together and agree on a single, common term. Bronze, Silver, and Gold would be so much simpler — heck, it worked for Participaction.

We’re Over-Branding Stupid Things

I get why executives and branding experts prefer “SuperSkies Platinum Members” to something simpler — when you can make it your own, it’s easier to make clear the difference in service quality. If everyone called their top level “Gold,” then the crappy Gold service would ruin it for the good Gold service.

But companies are taking it too far. And, in doing so, making it difficult for their customers to connect with them.

I called my cell company the other day. To their credit, their response tree has just two branches: Self-sevice and Human Operator. But that’s not what the latter was called. My choice was “Or to speak to a real person using Fido Answers, press 2.”

I have no idea what Fido Answers is, but it sounds like some kind of automated system to me. Why can’t it just say “To manage your account using your touch-tone keypad, press 1. To speak to a real person right now, press 2.” I couldn’t care less what your Fido Answers is. It’s confusing.

My cable company does it too. “For Shaw Phone using Shaw Plan Personalizer, press 1. For Shaw Internet using Shaw Plan Personalizer, press 2. For Shaw Cablevision using Shaw Plan Personalizer, press 3.

Why do companies think we care about their special little brand names for everything? We don’t. I want clarity. Something like: “To order a home phone, press 1. To get Internet service……”

Is that too much to ask?

If you expect your brand to be found online a year from now, you must attend this fast-paced, information-packed online webinar.

Date/Time: November 23, 2011 — 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern)

To be covered on the webinar:

• A Five Minute “Beginner’s Guide” to Doing Business on Google+
• Creating Your Brand’s Page on Google+
• Migrating Your Facebook “Fans” to Your New G+ Page
• Moderating Your G+ Brand Page
• Using Live Video Hangouts to Engage With Your Fans
• Integrating Your Google+ Marketing Efforts Into Your Existing Web Site
• Adding Compelling Media (Photos/Videos) to Your Page
• Automating Content Publishing to Google+
• The Seven Critical Keys to Marketing Your Brand on Google+
• Plus, a live Q&A session, and more…

BONUS: If you register today, you’ll receive a detailed Negative Response Strategy flowchart card which you can print out and know how to respond if your brand is attacked online.

100% money-back guarantee.
Start your brand page on Google+.
If you don’t see results, you’ll get a 100% no-questions-asked refund.

Subscribe to receive notifications of future events by Tod

Tod Maffin is one of North America’s leading experts on effective social media strategies for business. He speaks at more than 40 conferences around the world each year, is a published author, and was once called “one of Canada’s most influential futurists” by the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.

I recently asked a Facebook rep if there were truth that Facebook favours content published via its own platform over other applications which post via Facebook’s partner API. She said probably not, and that the results were likely because people tend to post on multiple platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) and thus use the lowest common denominating type of content — a simple, short message with no or limited multimedia.

I decided to try a little experiment to see if the research proved true.

I run a fan page on Facebook with nearly 70,000 fans. Such a large pool of fans gives me a pretty solid base upon which to run tests. So first, I posted a status update right on the Facebook web site. Then, I posted nearly the exact same update via Hootsuite. Both updates asked people to simply click “Like” if they saw the update on their news feed.

Here is a screen shot of the results:

If you accept that people clicked “Like” on either or both updates, it’s obvious that after just 40 minutes on the page, considerably more people saw the update that was posted directly on Facebook.

Roughly 23% fewer people saw the post that went out via Hootsuite — not an insignificant number.

There are, of course, many caveats to this, including that Facebook’s algorithm of what makes it to the news feed is complex and is largely based on your social graph. That said, the posts were nearly identical and so the social graph wouldn’t come into play here.

Conclusion: I’m still going to post manually on Facebook pages, because it appears that it simply reaches more people to do it that way than any third-party provider.

Note: I’m a huge fan of Hootsuite, know some of the team there personally, and still recommend it to clients for monitoring, scheduling, reporting, and much more. Posting on Facebook pages is really only a part of what Hootsuite does.

One of the most popular keynote presentations I give — Deconstructing Viral: How to Build a Killer Viral Marketing Campaign — comes from about a year’s worth of research into the 50 most successful viral marketing campaigns out there. In that research, I discovered that there are six elements common to nearly all successful viral campaigns.

Against the advice of a lot of “experts” in the professional speaking business, I’ve decided to let you see that material in its entirety — to watch the full presentation, just sign up for my free 30 Days to Social Media Marketing Awesomeness video course.

• It’s free. Always.
• There are ten lessons — a new video to watch comes just every three days
• At the end, you’ll get a Certificate of Completion
• Unsubscribe any time with a single click

Not convinced to sign up? Here’s a preview of the first key to viral marketing — ACC Matching.

Want to watch the whole presentation? Sign up for my free 30 Days to Social Media Marketing Awesomeness video course.

Get Alerted When Each Show’s Out!

Want to get an email as soon as each episode is released? Just sign up here — it’s 100% spam-free and your information will never be shared with anyone else. It’ll only be used to alert you to new episodes, once a week.

Taking Crazy Back: Episode 2 “Bi-Polar Disorder and Psychosis” by todmaffin

Last Week’s Show

Listen to Episode 1

Tell Me Your Story

Call in to the show’s voicemail and leave YOUR story about your journey through mental health. 1.206.309.8572

Links from the show:

• Song: Crazy by Barenaked Ladies
• Terry, the Bi Bi-Polar Polar Bear
• Interview: Bi-Polar Babe
• Andrea Paquette on Twitter
• Bi-Polar Disorder Association of British Columbia
• Interview: Erin Michalak, Crest BD program at the University of B.C. (funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research)
• Song: Crazy covered by Nelly Furtado
• Spoken word piece: Crazy Like a Fox by Darren O’Donnell
• CBC Radio‘s Outfront show no longer airs, but you can listen to selected past episodes
• Songs: Didn’t I See This Movie, Seconds and Years, and Better Than Before from the Next to Normal soundtrack
• Amaya Thompson and Uncle Seth

If you, like me, are one of those “It’s new! It must be better” people, then chances are you’ve already enabled Facebook’s replacement of the Personal Profile page, which it calls Timeline.

Timeline, it turns out, sucks. It lets anyone dive way deep into your past online history much, much easier than before. Plus, it breaks many perfectly good browser extensions which help you control your privacy on Facebook — extensions like Better Facebook (soon to be called, thanks to a Facebook cease-and-desist letter, Social Fixer).

So, if you want to go back to the old profile, here’s how.

1. First, you need to have a Facebook developer account (which you do, because that’s how you enabled the Timeline in the first place).
2. Go to the Facebook Apps page.
3. Click on the app you have created where you have enabled Open Graph from the left hand side navigation menu.
4. Click on Edit Open Graph then delete all three Open Graph settings by clicking on the buttons shown in the below pictures (courtesy of dreamsrain.org)

For the next five weeks, I’m producing and hosting a radio series about mental health and addictions. It airs Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m. on Great Talk AM 1110 KWDB. This is episode one.

Click the yellow play button on the right to play. Show runs 55 minutes.

Taking Crazy Back – Episode 1 by todmaffin

Links from the show:

• “Booked for Safekeeping” police training film, 1960
• Brian Wilson, Barenaked Ladies (rare live version)
• Next to Normal musical
• Song: Who’s Crazy / My Psychopharmacologist and I, Next to Normal soundtrack
• Song: What Sarah Said, Death Cab for Cutie
• Stand Up for Mental Health
• Jonathan Granirer, 12-year-old stand-up comic’s full performance

Any Facebook member now may post on your brand page without first clicking Like.

Wait, what?! This means anyone can put whatever they want on my brand page?
Not quite. You still have absolute control over if people are allowed to post something directly on your wall. You’ll find that control under the Edit Page button on your page. If you want to prevent people from posting on your wall (regardless of if they Like your page or not), just find the Manage Permissions tab and make sure that all four checkboxes below are unchecked:

I also recommend you change the Profanity Blocklist to Strong and add some terms specific to your industry to block. For instance:

• Hotel industry: Bed bugs, thief, stolen, party, loud, cold, hot, thin walls, rude
• Paint store: Thin, slipped, streaky, cheap, miscolored
• Software company: Crashed, crash, erased, error, bug, buggy

Putting terms in your blocklist won’t prevent anyone from posting them on your wall, but they will hold their comments for you to approve or delete.

So, should I stop encouraging people to click Like?
Not at all! Having people indicate they Like your brand is important for a number of reasons — you get a rough measure of the number of fans you have online and your content is more likely to make it to the news feed of people who Like your page. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the way Facebook prioritizes content (they call this “Edgerank”) hasn’t changed substantially.

How does this change the way I run my Page?
It’s going to be even more important to create compelling content — content that invites engagement. Ask questions, do “question” polls, post videos and photos (we know that will increase the likelihood of you appearing on your followers’ news feeds). But above all, don’t overdo it. The number one reason people Unlike a brand is because they post too frequently.

How do I monitor my Page for inappropriate content?
Facebook does a pretty good job of screening for profanity (if you set it up to, see above) and spam links so that filtering will continue. I also recommend you add a second level of alerts. I use hyperalerts.no. It’s free and will alert you when anybody posts on your company’s wall — even if it’s another administrator of your page.

Oh and by the way, if you’re interested in more information about how you can get your brand (or that of your association members) to become more visible on Facebook’s all-important News Feed, have a look at my presentation: EdgeRank: Exploiting Facebook’s Secret Sauce.

I hate Lion so bad that I wish it were still shipped in a box so I could punch it right in its grinning, cardboardy box. And I’m not the only one.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

When I said on Twitter that I thought Lion was Apple’s version of Windows Vista (a much-maligned OS by Microsoft), I got tweets and DMs back that bordered on hate mail. “How could you possibly hate Lion?!?!” one said.

So, I’ll tell you.

1. Versions never worked. Ever. There was never a pull-down menu in the title bar like all those pretty screenshots.
2. They took away Save As… as a menu item. They took away Save As! This meant you either had to guess where
3. Resume: I thought I’d liked being able to just quit an application without any prompts and have launch next time with the documents you had on the screen, it actually turned out to be a pain in the ass. Preview, especially. If you had a number of PDFs, you’d need to manually close each file or else it would show up as an open document.
4. Elastics: Like Apple’s iOS for iPhones and iPads, when you scroll beyond the boundary of a page, Lion would give you an elastic “snap.” It’s a minor point, but when I get to the end of a document, I want it to end. Not jump around.
5. Scrollbars: They took scrollbars away! Yes, I know you can turn them back on, but sometimes that just didn’t work — depending on the application, your scrollbars were gone forever. I like being able to see where, relatively, my position in a document without having to jiggle my mouse.
6. UI Bugs Changed: For no real reason at all, they removed the “chicklet” — the long oval button in the top-right which collapsed the toolbar and sidebar on demand. They buried the functionality under a right-click, then a second click. Why? No real reason. Just to change things. On the other side of the window, those Red/Orange/Green buttons on the top-left shrunk, making them a little harder to click. Again, for no real good reason. I predict they’ll be entirely gone in the next OS.
7. Multitouch was too multi-touchy! If my little finger so much as barely touched my magic mouse, my entire desktop would get swept off the screen, revealing the Dashboard. Then, just a quickly, it would come back. <sigh>
8. Full-Screen: The new full-screen mode of apps is pointless. You were always able to make an an app full-screen if you wanted. In fact, going full screen with Quicktime took twice as long because it, too, swept your desktop out of the way. A little overboard on the UI.
9. Launchpad. Why would you bring a menuing system that was designed for a finger-operated, small-screened device to a full desktop OS? It was harder to use and any apps you picked up from the App Store would tantalizingly drop there then disappear just as quickly. Why not just drop them in the Dock like before?
10. Sluggishness. Things are just slower. Try opening TextEdit, then trying to save it. It’ll take a few seconds for Lion to even drag its sorry ass together to show you the Save dialog box. On Snow Leopard, it’s nearly instantaneous. The overall sluggishness means that Lion also gets caught up on itself. There were so many times I would type before a window was ready and it would empty that buffer with characters completely out of order. On Snow Leopard when you were typing into the buffer, it least it emptied out properly.

Related articles

• What do you think? Should I dump MacOS Lion? (zdnet.com)
• How Apple’s Lion won’t let you trash documents (go.theregister.com)
• Report: One in six Macs run OS X Lion (macworld.com)

He was right. Even today, you’d be hard-pressed to find the media report that a death was a suicide, unless the individual was famous or the suicide was undeniably public.

Rick Rypien

In the days following Rick Rypien‘s suicide, reporters bent themselves into etymological pretzels trying to come as close as saying as much, without actually using “the S word”:

• “died suddenly, and lived with depression”
• “his family was stunned by the news, but police don’t suspect foul play”
• “unexpected, but non-violent death”

There is some logic to not reporting suicides — studies show that people with existing suicidal ideations are at higher risk of killing themselves when exposed to news about the suicides of “others, such as family members, peers, or media figures.”1 

But I wonder if, in our attempt to protect those at higher risk of suicide, we do a disservice to the wider community in making it seem that suicides are not common. They are — a lot more than you think. Ask any police officer.

The media, for better or worse, are the glasses through which we understand what happens around us and what it means. If we continue to pretend suicides don’t happen as frequently as they do, then how can we blame governments for underfunding research and services for people with mental illness? Worse, the stigma will live on and be reinforced.

(It is changing, slowly — just this month, Australia media lifted the self-imposed veil of secrecy, saying people are finding out about suicides through social media anyway.)

We keep things on the hush-hush when we’re embarrassed about them.
Mental illness should not be one of those things.

1 http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-us-statistics-and-prevention/index.shtml

UPDATE: As I was writing this post, the CBC reported that it had confirmed from multiple sources that Wade Belak, who died today in Toronto, did so at his own hand. He was the sixth hockey player to do so since 1978.

Like many speakers, people come up to me after and will ask me to follow up with them on some issue or another. I used to try to remember (a lost cause, in my case) or write down what they wanted but often I’d end up with something like “Send b-dop. Tue smed?” and I wouldn’t have a clue what it meant.

Then I stumbled upon this idea which has worked flawlessly since I started it. I realized that, in most cases, people wanted me to follow up with them about one of three topics:

1. “Send me a copy of your slides.”
2. “We want to work with engageQ.” (formerly “tMedia”)
3. “We might want to hire you as a speaker.”

So I assigned each corner of my business card to one of these three reasons, then added a fourth “Other.”

So, if you give me your business card and you ask me to get back to you about having engageQ (formerly tMedia) help you with your online digital marketing strategy, you might notice me surreptitiously folding back the bottom-right corner.

There’s actually a second-level on this — all folded corners go to the back of the card, unless it’s an urgent request, in which case I fold the corner to the front of their card.

Triple Your Brand’s Facebook Visibility Using Edgerank — Without Spending a Dime

So you’ve got a Facebook page for your brand, but it’s just not getting the traction you keep hearing about. You post something to your fan page and, a minute later, it’s already dropped off the bottom of your fans’ News Feeds.

There’s a reason for that. And it looks like this:

E=u_ew_ed_e

That is the algorithm behind Facebook’s most viewed page — the News Feed. And once you decode and understand this remarkably simple equation, your brand will become immediately more visible and will stay on your fans’ news feed longer. This algorithm — called EdgeRank — is based on three factors: the relationship between the creator and user, engagement with the post (likes, comments, etc.), and timeliness.

In this fast-paced seminar, Tod reveal how social media pros use Edgerank to keep their brand much more visible on Facebook’s all-important News Feed. Content will include:

• Which day has the strongest engagement for your specific industry?
• What is the best time of day to post for maximum visibility (and why 90% of brands are doing it wrong)
• What content generates the strongest engagement? Photos? Videos? Status updates?
• Tod’s highly effective PEDB (Praise/Escalate/Delete/Ban) flow-strategy for managing your brand’s social media presence
• How to improve your Facebook brand page’s Edgerank
• How to check your Edgerank online
• What types of statistics you should check to ensure an improved Edgerank
• Examples of highly relevant content that will boost your Edgerank
• Using Facebook’s Question to dramatically increase your visibility on the News Feed
• Best practices in encouraging your fans to create content for you

This presentation can run from 45 minutes to two hours, depending on your agenda, and can include a full Q&A session and interactive demonstration with Internet access.

QR Codes, for the uninitiated, look like that strange dot thing on the right. When you scan it with an app on your mobile phone, it will show you some text or send you to a web site. (Leading me to wonder why the company didn’t just use that space to print the URL of their web site!) My favourite QR screw-up was the company who used QR Codes on their billboards that were displayed in the New York subway system. Underground. Where their phone couldn’t pull up the QR Code’s information. Awesome.

QR Codes do seem to be this year’s shiny object, though — even Facebook is playing around with them — and at many of my digital marketing workshops, I’m asked what I think of them. So while most implementations of QR Codes are a waste of space, there are some uses of these things which have impressed me.

The T-Shirt Twitter Search

At this year’s Northern Voice (Vancouver-based blogger conference), the back of conference t-shirts had a QR Code on them, dead centre in the middle of the sponsor logos. Sitting in the audience with lots of people in front of you, it was easy to scan the code surreptitiously. The URL, cleverly, went to a live Twitter search with references to the event. Sure, something like bit.ly/nv2011search might have worked just as well, but given the audience’s makeup (a lot of nerds and lots of smartphones), this was a smart call.

Tracking Food

Buying local is a well-established trend in the produce retail business, and the growing number of farmers’ markets shows that. In Japan, some supermarkets have already started to use QR codes on the label of fresh produce. Shoppers snap a picture of the head of lettuce’s code, for instance, and then is shown sent to a site with all the supplier’s details. An example of the label is to the right.

Connecting With Conference Attendees

Okay, I’ll admit this has the possibility of being a little creepy. (“Excuse me, may I scan your chest?”) But having a QR code on your nametag might be a quick way to add connections to your LinkedIn account. (That said, adding people on LinkedIn you’ve never actually worked with isn’t a great idea. My LinkedIn B2B workshop has more on this.) Remember that most QR Code apps will store a history of your scans, so you can end up with a healthy list of Twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, web pages, and so on. That said, Bump is a way, way cooler option.

Selling Houses

It’s been a while since I saw the old-fashioned brochures stapled to a realtor’s sign outside a house.² But I’ve seen more and more QR Codes printed on those signs. Scanning the codes will send you to a detailed web page about the property — this makes more sense than relying on realtor’s domain name to stick in someone’s brain. Once scanned, the URL of the property also stays in the app’s history, letting the potential home buyer get back to the page easily.

Promotions to the Tech Elite

Unless you live in Japan, chances are you’re not going to have a QR Reader app on your smartphone unless you’re an early tech adopting nerd. And that group is probably the only that’ll scan a “blind code” — a QR Code that’s printed by itself with no other explanatory notes. Sadly, if I saw a code just up on a building, like the one to the right, with no explanation as to where the code would send me, I would probably scan it. I can also pretty much guaranteed I’d be disappointed with the destination. The end result has to be interesting as well, remember, or people just won’t bother scanning any more.

1. Don’t mark those words too carefully; I once infamously debated Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake on CBC Radio with the position that blogs were just a fad and would blow over. Ahem.
2. I guess they’re getting ripped off for the underground paper market?…

Companies working in the B2B space are already using LinkedIn as a key driver of solid leads to reach business targets. Why aren’t you exploiting this incredibly effective, yet under-used tool? Your competitors are!

In this information-packed and interactive half-day MasterClass session, digital marketing strategist Tod Maffin will show you everything you need to know to start generating measurably profitable B2B leads entirely within LinkedIn.

This is a roll-up-your-sleeves, half-day session (length can be altered to fit your agenda) where Tod will walk you how to generate, actionable real leads. Here’s how a sample half-day will flow:

9:00 a.m.

• Everything You Need to Know About LinkedIn in 108 Seconds
• Building Your Profile to Attract Prospects
• The Eight Top Mistakes People Make On Their LinkedIn Profile
• Finding Out Who’s Stalking Your Profile
• Three Examples of Perfect Profiles From Your Industry
• Reaching Out: Getting Strategic Testimonials to Gain Traction

9:45 a.m.

• Interactive Q&A session (live demo on screen)
• In-Room Stretch Break

10:00 a.m.

• The Right Way to Connect People to Your Network
• Adding Leads to Your Network Even If You Don’t Know Them
• Qualifying Leads: Reaching Out to the Right People
• Reaching Buyers Through Your Network
• Reaching Buyers Using LinkedIn InMail

10:45 a.m.

• Interactive Q&A session (live demo on screen)
• Regular Break

11:15 a.m.

• Measuring Profitability of Leads Captured on LinkedIn
• Micro-Targeting B2B Leads Using LinkedIn Ads
• Monitoring Companies for News You Can Use
• LinkedIn Groups As Lead Generation Tools: The Right and Wrong Way

11:55 a.m.

• Interactive Q&A session (live demo on screen)
• In-Room Stretch Break

12:10 p.m.

• Starting and Curating Your Own LinkedIn Group to Generate Leads
• Secret Ninja Tips Only the LinkedIn Pros Know
• Going Pro and Paying for More Access: Pros and Cons

12:40 p.m.

• Interactive Q&A session (live demo on screen)
• In-Room Stretch Break

1:00 p.m. — MasterClass ends; Tod is available the rest of the day for informal “hallway questions”

But it’s not over when the four hours ends — your attendees will walk away with:

• a full copy of Tod’s slides with room for notes
• worksheets to connect and calculate LinkedIn activity to lead profitability
• a ten-page special report about finding and closing B2B on LinkedIn
• access to Tod’s library of LinkedIn tutorial videos

If you’re interested in having Tod present this MasterClass to your company, association conference, or corporate meeting, just fill in the form below:

Except in one case.

Most people don’t know this secret little trick in that Facebook “Approve App” window — one that can keep your email address away from the app developers!

Still, there are so many types of dress styles out there on the speaking circuit. I finally did a little research into the different styles of everything from business casual to resort casual. Let’s go from best-dressed to least-dressed. No, wait, least-formally dressed.

NOTE: I am no expert in women’s clothing, so this post only applies to men. If you know of a similar post for women, let me know and I’ll link it here.

“Full Business Attire”

Sometimes this is referred to as “Suit and Tie” and it means exactly what it says — something you’d expect a high-end lawyer to wear. Clients aren’t expecting you to wear expensive brands necessarily, just fit in with, say, a bunch of accountants at a banking convention (pre-cocktail reception, of course). Go for a dark-blue or black suit jacket. You do have one of those, right? If not, get a good one. Spend some money to get it tailored properly then wear it for the next 20 years. (We guys have it so good when it comes to hair and clothing.) Wear a simple tie — one colour or a simple pattern. And a white or light-coloured shirt. For slacks, make sure it matches your suit colour exactly and add a very sharp crease.

“Shirt and Tie”

Next level down is Shirt and Tie. This is, essentially, the same as Full Business Attire, just minus the shirt. If you’re asked to speak in Shirt and Tie attire, never, ever, roll up the sleeves of your shirt. Wear a suit jacket into the room and take it off when you sit down at a table or are about to present. Don’t take it off on-stage. Arrive on-stage with your jacket off. Leave it at the head table, behind the black curtain, or whatever. Same shirt, tie, and slacks as above.

I suggest adding a tie for Business Casual

“Business Casual”

This is probably the most common attire request I get from clients — it’s also the least understood by most people. Business Casual does not mean casual. It does not mean jeans, even if they’re nice. Here’s the secret: It still means Shirt and Tie for you! The main difference between Shirt-and-Tie attire and Business Casual attire is what the audience will be wearing. They might indeed be wearing dress shirts with no tie or a golf shirt, but you should still dress up. In your role as the presenter, Shirt-and-Tie and Business Casual should mean the same thing. The only other differences here is that I’d say it’s okay to roll your sleeves up (only to the elbow and never past) and here you can wear beige- or light-coloured khakis.

“Smart Casual”

Okay, back to the jacket for a moment — this is the time you’d want to wear a blazer or a sports jacket. It still needs a collared shirt and dress trousers. Depending on the industry and country you’re in, a tie is usually optional. I usually don’t wear one if the attire is Smart Casual. Here, you can use less formal shoes like clean loafers but never sandals or running shoes.

“Resort Casual”

Often, I’m asked to speak at nice resorts — especially if I’m helping a group of senior leaders and CEOs understand how to manage a social media crisis. Many times, the client will request Resort Casual attire for speakers. This is code for “You don’t need a tie.” Here, aim for the ‘well-dressed golf player’ look. Nice slacks and a casual but professional shirt. It does not mean you can wear shorts (never wear shorts on-stage) or a busy Hawaiian shirt.

“Cool, You Know, Like Young Looking”

Seriously, I get asked this from time to time. I really have nothing to offer here. Like every guy, my wardrobe consists of about eight items that I wear until they require duct tape to keep together.¹ The only time you should even consider wearing something other than the above is if your speech topic or your personal brand lends itself to something less formal. But think very carefully before doing it. Try it out at pro-bono speaking events and ask the client for honest feedback.

In short, always dress one level up from what the client asks of you. If they say shirt-and-tie only, wear a suit jacket. If they say business-casual, wear a shirt-and-tie.

1. Sadly, I am actually serious about that. When I went camping this past weekend, I wore jeans that needed a duct tape patch to keep them together at the knee.

Image via Wikipedia

It was a slow, summer news week, so Amy Winehouse’s death was covered non-stop, with cable news pundits lining up to ask incessantly “Why didn’t she just quit?”

I used to wonder that about addicts and alcoholics too.

And then, I became one.

A lot of heartache and destruction occurred as a direct result of my addiction to alcohol and over-the-counter sleeping pills:

• I lost the two jobs I loved the most.
• I nearly lost all my income.
• I lost my serene Port Moody house that backed onto a salmon spawning creek.
• I lost most of my savings.
• I lost my three cats.
• I lost a lot of friends.
• I lost a lot of respect in the local tech community.
• I was beginning to lose my health, quite seriously.
• And, worst of all, I lost the woman I loved, my wife.

I’m sober now — have been for about two and a half years — and I sometimes share my story in a speech about mental health and addictions in the workplace.

When people learn I’m a recovering alcoholic, I’m often asked why I didn’t “just quit” before. It’s sometimes phrased something like “But when *I* go out for dinner, I just don’t order more than two drinks. Did you try doing that?” Of course I did. It didn’t work.

In the interests of perhaps helping you “normies” (alcoholics’ affectionate nickname for non-addicts) understand a bit better about why people like Amy Winehouse and I “couldn’t just stop” drinking, here are a few questions answered.

.
Why didn’t you just quit?

The simple answer is this: When you are physiologically addicted to a substance (or, for that matter, a compulsion or behaviour), all you think about is that substance. It is a loud and endless stream of non-sensical chatter in your mind that fills your head with all-consuming thoughts about the drug or alcohol to which you are addicted.

In the course of just 30 seconds, my mind would loop non-stop with thoughts like (read this out loud really fast to get an idea of what it sounds like in the mind of an addict):

• How much wine do I still have?
• Is my wife going to find that empty bottle?
• Can she smell the vodka on my breath? Is that why she’s grimacing instead of smiling?
• Seriously, how much wine do I have left?
• Damnit. I’m running out. What excuse can I make for sneaking out?
• What time does the liquor store close? If it’s closed, where can I buy offsales.
• What’s that law about driving with open alcohol in the car again?
• Do the liquor store clerks wonder why I come in every morning at 10am to buy a litre and a half of wine?
• Do they know I drink too much too? Can they smell the vodka on my breath?
• Will they refuse to let me buy this wine if they think I’m addicted?
• Am I addicted? No, I can’t be. Alcoholics sleep in the streets and drink out of paper bags.
• Shit! My wife is going to find that bottle I hid under the bed.
• What will I say if she confronts me?

I am not exaggerating that stream of chatter. That would run through my head in just 30 seconds. And then, like the devil’s möbius strip, it would start again. That is all I could think about, day and night. It became an obsession so strong that I could not finish sentences because my mind would pick up the chatter again where it left off.

.
Couldn’t you see what it was doing in your life?

Yes and no. I knew there was conflict in our marriage and I knew it was affecting the quality of my work, but that’s really all I was able to put together. The addicted brain develops a defence mechanism so strong that it simply won’t connect the dots.

• Conflict in the marriage? Must be just because I didn’t take the garbage out.
• Trouble focusing at work? I probably just need a vacation.

Remember, addiction is a brain disease; it is not a “lifestyle choice.” The medical community now recognizes that addiction primarily interferes with the brain’s survival instinct. So, at my sickest, my brain had re-wired itself so that the only thing it believed it needed for absolute survival was alcohol. Near the end, alcohol was all my mind believed I needed — not my house, not an income, not friends — just a cheap $10 bottle of lousy merlot.

And when anything got in the way of my being able to get alcohol — anything — I experienced a panic entirely out of proportion to the situation. My brain had tricked me into thinking that the removal of alcohol would, quite literally, kill me.

That is what addiction feels like. And that is why it is so hard for addicts like Amy Winehouse and I to quit. Because, at our sickest, our brain tells us that quitting will kill us. So a massive panic sets in, and the most reliable way we know to quiet down the panic is… our addictive substance. And the loop repeats.

.
How did it start?

While many addicts begin their addiction in their youth, mine didn’t kick in until my late 20s. And it wasn’t with booze or drugs or anything like that.

My addiction began with Neo Citran. I had a cold one day and took some Neo Citran — and it made me feel nothing short of amazing. I felt lighter than air. I physically felt all my worries and stresses slide off me like I was coated in a warm teflon. For the first time in my life, I felt invincible.

Normies, I gather, don’t feel that way when they drink Neo Citran, so I thought I had stumbled upon a great secret. I started to drink it daily. In short order, I needed it to go to sleep. Then I needed it to wake up. And, at the height of my career — CEO of a publicly traded company and host of my own national CBC Radio show — my brain told me it would be a good idea to switch to wine. And there was no turning back.

Alcohol gave me wings, as they say. And then it took away the sky.

.
How did it end?

It’s true that nearly all addicts need to “hit rock bottom” before they finally get help. As did I. I’m pretty open about my addiction and recovery — I feel the more people talk about it, the less stigma it will have — but there are some things I still keep for myself, and one of those are the specifics of my “bottom.”

I was too sick to stop putting alcohol into my bloodstream three times a day. But I was never too sick to make the decision to get help. I just didn’t think I needed help until that rock bottom showed up. I eventually checked in to a residential treatment centre and spent several months there trying to re-wire my brain.

.
Was it hard to quit?

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and staying sober continues to be the hardest thing I do. Three weeks after I completed the treatment centre’s program, I relapsed. It took me two years before I was finally able to get it stopped. It’s true what they say — if you try to stay sober just one day at a time, it’s a lot easier.

Here’s another thing most people don’t realize about addiction — those first few months clean and sober are absolute hell. I was tormented by horrible nightmares, didn’t sleep for what seemed like weeks on end. And, like most people newly recovering from alcohol dependency, I went through Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS).

For me, PAWS lasted about six months. During that time, my thinking was clouded, I would get to the end of a sentence and miss the word I was aiming for (substituting a different, random word instead), my words sometimes slurred, I would lose my balance a lot (at one point, my doctor raced me into a neurologist thinking I might have a brain tumour), and developed agoraphobia.

This is why it is hard for newly recovering addicts to stay quit.

.
Are You Still Ever Tempted?

All the time. It’s a lot easier now going out for dinner with friends — for the first year clean I couldn’t do that at all without sparking days of obsessing and craving. Today, it almost doesn’t affect me. Almost.

There are still some things that will send my mind racing back into the obsession, and it’s mostly when people do a kind of ritual around wine: A slow pop of the cork. The passing the cork around to inspect it. The sound of the wine being poured. The way people hold the glass up to look at the “legs” or swirl the wine around. That whole “ritual” part still gets to me and I’ve sometimes had to excuse myself to the bathroom so I just don’t see that part. But really, that’s about the only thing that kicks my brain briefly back.

.
Will You Ever Drink Again?

I don’t know.

I don’t know because all I focus on is staying sober today. I’m sure I’ll make it to the end of today sober because it’s 6:30 p.m., dinner is in the oven, and I’m already in my pajamas.

But tomorrow? Who knows. Tomorrow I have to go downtown for an appointment. Like all alcoholics, I can, by memory, still tell you the exact locations of all licensed restaurants and liquor stores. Nothing would prevent me from stopping in. After my dentist appointment today, out in the sunshine, my brain told me to walk over to Earl’s and sit out on the patio with a nice cold chardonnay. And, to be totally honest, I gave it some thought.

My brain is still trying to get me to drink. It just gives up faster these days.

.
So, now what?

I’ve been sober 880 days so far. (No, I don’t keep track on a daily basis. I have an app for that.) If you ask me about how long I’ve been sober, I’ll get a goofy grin on my face when I tell you. I’m pretty proud of those days.

I know one thing for sure — if I relapse, I will die. I can almost guarantee it. It took all my strength and energy to come back from my last time out there. I don’t know if I would have the fortitude it takes to claw my way back to help this time.

And that, at least for today, kept me sober.

• Recommended Video: Dr. Drew Pinsky video on why the prognosis for addicts is often worse than cancer patients.

I asked my Twitter followers the other day “What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?” Here are their responses:

ricepoint1
“Be patient, wait for the buyer to change, die or finally give in and buy from you.”

williamvavrek
“Start small.”

wtoddkeller
“Don’t give up.”

sparks_on
“Never think you’ve made it. Continue to improve your skills.”

suzemuse
“Quit whining and keep working. It will pay off.”

mvboronowski
“Unless you’re an accountant, get an accountant.”

jenarbo
“Pay yourself first. And do free (donated) or full-price; don’t do discounts.”

dr_suze911
“Baby steps.”

RobboMills
“Run away screaming.”

Paulnixey
“Double-nothing is still nothing.”

TheSpitter
“Work for yourself.”

Image via CrunchBase

Canada has a law on its books which, each election, gets more media attention. Simply put, you’re not allowed to “broadcast” live election results until the polls have closed across the country.

This wasn’t a big deal before the Internet came along, because broadcasters obeyed the law. But when the web, Facebook, and Twitter showed up, everyone seemed to jump on this law saying it was outdated and silly in the reality of today’s communications universe.

Despite what much of the Twitterverse would have you believe, the rationale for the law is actually quite sound.

Let’s say you live on the west coast and plan to vote around 6pm after work. You’re in your car driving to the polling station and you hear the radio announcer say that — so far in poll results — it’s looking like a landslide for a particular party. And it’s the party you wanted to vote for. So, you don’t bother to vote. Heck, you have kids to feed and a lawn to cut, and it looks like you’re going to win anyway, so why make the effort?

That decision of yours could cost the party that landslide. Or even a majority government.

Besides, only people west of the Atlantic have this benefit. It’s unfair to those for whom the polls close first.

It’s tempting to live-tweet results before polls close, but only in an immature, sophomoric way.

In attempting to “stick it to The Man” (i.e., Elections Canada), those who will do this end up sticking it to each other.

Really: What actual benefit is there in broadcasting the results early? How will that actually help democracy? It won’t.

The closest thing to logic that proponents of breaking the ban have is “We should, because… uh… we can.” Just because we have the technology does not mean we are compelled to use it in every circumstance. The Flying Spaghetti Monster gave you free will.

There is a better idea, of course.

And that’s to have all the polls close at the same time across the country — for instance, 7:00 p.m. in Vancouver and 11:00 p.m. in St. John. Then we wouldn’t have this conundrum.

But until then, resist the urge to publish the election results as they come in until all your fellow citizens have had a chance to vote, unencumbered by exit polls, predictions, and media forecasts.

Our common welfare depends on it.

Tod will illustrate how to set measurement ROI “markers” up using free Internet tools, tie those metrics directly into your campaign, and how to report a campaign’s return-on-investment to senior management.

“Tod Maffin is one of the most dynamic and insightful social media and technology visionaries of his time. His natural charm and witty humor had the audience in stitches. Many people said they liked his presentation better than our other keynote speaker (Malcolm Gladwell!), which speaks for itself. Tod’s approach guarantees that your audience will walk away feeling inspired and ready to take action.”
Lindsay Smith, F5 Expo

These are actual, verbatim quotes from Charlie Sheen on Monday night’s Piers Morgan Tonight (CNN).

• “Can’t we just be in a pink cloud all our lives, and just be be super bitchin’ and be focused like cross-rays into the universe?”
• “I feel more alive. I feel more focused. I feel more energetic. My workouts are really intense.”
• “I’m on a quest to claim absolute victory across the board on every front…”
• “I have a 10,000-year-old brain.”
• “I’ve been riding on a mercury surfboard…”
• “I’m on a mission. It’s an operation, actually…”
• “I’m at the dead epicentre of every single moment…”
• “I’m on a rocketship to the moon…”
• “I heal really fast…”
• [Did you get out of control?] “Well yeah! I don’t have another gear!”
• “We live in an evil world.”
• “I’m fighting a war. There’s no room for sensitivity.”
• “Every great movement begins with one man, and that’s me.”

If you know someone who lives with bi-polar disorder and you hear phrases like the ones above (grandiose, paranoid, “Suddenly everything is clear” statements, or other out-of-touch phrases), they are in trouble. Find a way to get them to medical attention immediately. It’s not a joke. And it’s nothing to make fun of.

UPDATE: A couple of additional quotes — these aren’t harmless, everyday “metaphors,” as some have claimed. These are pathological statements. He may not be bi-polar, but he’s clearly manic:

• “You borrow my brain for five seconds and just be, like, Dude, can’t handle it, unplug this bastard because, yeah, it fires in a way that is maybe not from this particular terrestrial realm.”— Charlie Sheen on ABC
• “I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it once you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”— Charlie Sheen on ABC
• “Newsflash, I am special and I will never be one of you.“— Charlie Sheen on the Infowars radio show

NOTE: ABC Television gave Charlie Sheen a urine test for drugs, including cocaine and amphetamines — he came up clean for at least the last week. This isn’t drug-induced, at least not short-term use.

“Most individuals with bipolar disorder do not perceive their manic episodes as needing treatment, and they resist entering treatment. In fact, most people report feeling very good during the beginning of a manic episode, and don’t want it to stop. This is a serious judgment problem. As the manic episode progresses, concentration becomes difficult, thinking becomes more grandiose, and problems develop.” — PsychologyInfo.com

Features of a Manic Episode

• Extreme irritability & distractibility
• Excessive “high” or euphoric feelings
• Sustained periods of unusual, even bizarre, behavior with significant risk-taking
• Increased energy, activity, rapid talking & thinking, agitation
• Decreased sleep
• Unrealistic belief in one’s own abilities
• Poor judgment
• Increased sex drive
• Substance abuse
• Provocative or obnoxious behavior
• Denial of problem

If you wouldn’t make fun of someone with cancer, you shouldn’t be poking fun at Charlie Sheen.

Addictions doctor Drew Pinksy on Charlie Sheen’s mania:

Note: This doesn’t work for all applications — some developers may choose to not make a trial version available — but most seem to.

Related articles

• Apple: No demo, trial, or beta software on Mac App Store (venturebeat.com)
• Apple Confirms no Trial Software or Demos in Mac App Store (slashgear.com)
• Ten changes we’d like to see at the Mac App Store (macworld.com)

Here’s my current workspace and past workspaces. Once you get to the photo page, just hover the mouse over the photo to reveal notes about everything (and hyperlinks to things, where appropriate).

What does your workspace look like?

The great thing about databases is that, by their nature, they permit customization of the content within them. If I wanted to (read: “If I knew how to program better”), I could have a window pop up on this site asking you what sort of content you wanted to see and, based on your answer, the database that drives this site would show you just the content you want.

It’s just like how a human would operate. I’d ask you what content you were interested in and I’d give it to you.

So why is the web still so static?

Here’s an example: At my company, we use Basecamp — a widely used and respected project management tool. The pricing page of their site recommends I use their $99 package — the “sweet spot,” as they say.

Except here, the thing: How do they know what the sweet spot for my company’s specific needs are? They don’t. They present this plan to everyone. It’s a static page.

In fact, the sweet spot for our team happens to be the “Plus” option.

There are scant few web sites customizing content like this.

One example of a company that’s done a great job is Are My Sites Up, a white-labeled service for Internet agencies to alert their clients when their web sites go down. When I clicked Pricing, I got this message:

And, once I punched in that information, it gave me this:

Of their four primary plans, they recommend the low-end — for our specific needs. Brilliant! And simple to program.

Even better, the site calculated that based on the information I gave it, that I’d lose money and should consider charging our clients more:

Given your 4 sites and the $5 that you’d like to charge for site monitoring, your recommended plan is: One Custom.

You’d make $20 per month, and we’d charge you $40 per month.

Since the amount we charge is higher than the amount you’d make, you should consider charging more for your site monitoring. We recommend $5 a month per site for our regular plans, and $10 a month for our custom plans. If you charged $10 with your current 4 sites, you’d make $40 per month. If you sell all 20 sites in your account at $10, you’d make $200 per month.

Is your business web site acting like a human would?

If you’d like to grow your page zero to 48,000 fans, here are some tips I recommend:

Set Up an Auto-Publishing Twitter Account

Facebook lets you automatically tweet out page updates onto a Twitter account, so I established @aboutcbc on Twitter and it serves as a promotional channel — whenever I post something on the Page, this account tweets out the post with a direct link to the post. This reminds people to check the Page and, if they’re not already following the page, to Like it.

Follow Lots of Obscure Content Sources

In my feed reader, I have a tonne of sources that publish content about the CBC — sources like the CBC’s official news web site and some program web sites. But I find the links that generate the most engagement come from sort of obscure sources. For instance, I follow this great (but horribly designed) blog about the Canadian radio industry, this blog for a band called Peter Mansbridge and the CBCs (totally unrelated to the CBC), and follow an RSS search for CBC on eBay. I find the more random and offbeat the content, the more engagement happens.

Here’s an example of a recent eBay find:

I wish eBay had an affiliate program — usually things I post from eBay on the Page sell within minutes. Here’s another example: Note the last comment of someone telling everyone they’d bought it:

Actively Engage

A few hours after I post something on the page, I usually try to go back and engage in a little conversation with some of the commenters. This, of course, drives more comments and the engagement loop remains solid. Putting a little bit of you in the page goes a long way to humanizing the content.

Actively Moderate

While 99.9% of the people who comment on the page are respectful and have thoughtful opinions, every so often someone will post a totally off-topic, promotional comment or link. Facebook lets page administrators remove the content and, if they keep doing it, I ban them from commenting further. It helps keep the signal-to-noise ratio in check. For instance, here’s a comment that just landed on one of my posts:

I get this periodically — people posting links that have nothing to do with the CBC. Even if I might agree with the sentiment posted (in this case, how could you not oppose a page about killing Jews), people who post off-topic links or comments are immediately banned.

Create “Columns”

Just as how a newspaper or magazine has regular columns in each issue, I’ve created columns of sorts — “Cool eBay Find” is a regular feature, for instance, as is “InfoPr0n” (occasional posts about the demographics/stats of fans on the page), and the self-explanatory “Breaking News.” To indicate it as a column post, I simply type that column name in caps, like this:

Over time, your fans will recognize the column names in their News Feed and dive into reading it. Which brings me to…

Pay Attention to Your Insights

Every Page administrator gets access to basic statistics about their page’s fans and interactions. By looking at the stats periodically, you can make sure your content is in alignment with who’s on your Page. The Insights tool also lets you see which posts got the most engagement (likes and comments) — all good data to have that should inform what you produce. If you’re a Page administrator, you can see your Insights here.

Don’t Be Afraid to Post Marginally Related Content

When you’ve got a good sense of your audience, sometimes you’re able to make an educated guess as to the kind of content they may like — even if it’s not directly related to your Page’s topic. For instance, I know that many CBC Radio fans consider themselves grammar aficionados — so I posted this short poll, which generated a lot of engagement and comments (the semi-colon won by a landslide, btw):

Things I Plan to Still Do

1. Use a Custom Landing Page: Right now, when you land on the page for the first time, you hit the Wall page. In theory, if you wanted to just follow along, you wouldn’t have to Like the page at all — you could just visit it (you wouldn’t be able to comment until you Liked it, mind you). But by creating a custom tab that welcomes people to the page and encourages them to Like it, you’ll drive up the number of followers. Here’s an example.
   .
   UPDATE: I’ve now added a landing page. My favourite tactic, which I’ve employed, shows a blurred-out version of the Wall (it’s a static image, not live), with a note to Like the page. Here’s what it looks like to non-fans:
   .
   
   .
   The FBML code to make that work, in case you’re curious, looks like this (note that you have to off-set the top margin of the non-fan content the same number of pixels as the height of the fan content):
   .
   <fb:visible-to-connection>
   <img src=”http://www.todmaffin.com/uploads/landingtab_2.jpg”>
   <fb:else>
   <p style=”margin-top:-1000px;”><img src=”http://www.todmaffin.com/uploads/landingtab_1.jpg”></p>
   </fb:else>
   </fb:visible-to-connection>
   .
2. .Send More Messages: Facebook lets you send messages to all the followers of your page. Unlike friend-to-friend messages, these Page messages drop into a separate “Other” Facebook inbox. But still, with 48,000 fans, a few will read it and, with some creative copy they’ll be driven back to the Page.
   .
3. Use Polls More Frequently: Polls are a great way to get quick engagement. I’ve only used polls a few times because I can’t find a poll application that doesn’t make users approve adding another application — this tends to confuse a lot of people and drives down the number of people who take part in the polling. .

.

Related articles

• Several Useful Facebook Post Writing Tricks (marketersdaily.com)
• How to Get Facebook Fans: The Easy Way and The Hard Way (searchenginejournal.com)
• #1 Mistake Made By Facebook Page Admins (profitonknowledge.com)
• 5 Tips to Improve your Facebook Business Page (penn-olson.com)
• 5 Facebook Rules of Engagement (insights-group.com)
• Facebook Fan Pages need Facebook Monitors: How to add an administrator (insights-group.com)

Anyway, one of the advantages to this is that I’ve found the Your Friendship With feature is much richer now.

For instance, when I browse my friend John Biehler‘s Facebook page, it shows us photos we were in together, things we both like, and so on:

Clicking See Friendship displays events we both attended, discussions with each other on our respective walls, and mutual friends.

For now, it just makes interesting lazy reading, but it’ll be interesting to see if Facebook begins to exploit this information commercially. Already, ads sometimes show me that a Facebook friend likes the brand being advertised. I kind of shudder to think what depth this connection information will eventually bring us.

1. I know, a novel concept. Such is the curse of owning your own company.

15 min audio — click the Yellow play button at the right end of the bar below to play.

Image via Wikipedia

I hate my mouse. Okay, not the mouse itself, I’ve got a fancy high-tech mouse. I just hate mouses¹. I know it seems silly, but I find it a waste of time for me to move my hand over to the mouse, move it, and return my hand to the keyboard.

I came from the DOS world, where mouses didn’t exist at all. Later, in the Windows era, I relied on the many keyboard shortcuts — like being able to pull down the File menu with ALT-F, something the Mac still doesn’t provide a shortcut for.

Needless to say, I’m not fond of bookmarks for that very reason. You can only get to them by clicking a mouse.

And then I realized something.

Last night, in a sudden spark of cola-infused inspiration, I realized that by creating subdomains on my company’s domain setup, I can provide our team with nearly instant shortcuts to the tools we use most often.

Take the online calendaring tool we use — Google Apps’ Calendar. The URL is https://www.google.com/calendar/b/1/render². Obviously, I’m not going to type that in, and while I do have it bookmarked (it’s even a link on my Bookmarks Toolbar) I tend to not click the link.

Here’s how it works.

I’ve set up the subdomain cal (as in cal.todmaffin.com) to point to that long and ugly Google Calendar URL. This requires a tiny bit of technical knowhow — or, at least, being able to spend a few minutes on the phone with your domain provider’s tech support. But it’s not much more complicated than telling your domain the subdomain you want to use and where you want it to send people. (You can also “mask” the URL so that when people are sent to the site, they don’t see its “real” URL there. I don’t bother with masking.)

And presto! My team now has a whole slew of keyboard shortcuts. Some of them are (don’t bother trying to use them — you’d need to know our login accounts and passwords to get anywhere past the front door).

Better Branding for Clients

We use 37signals’ excellent Basecamp web app as our project management tool. One of the reasons I selected Basecamp was that nearly every page on the site has its own unique URL. This makes it easy for me to create a tMedia-branded subdomain which takes clients directly to their own portal within our project site.

Action-Based Keyboard Shortcuts

Then I realized that some actions, like composing a new email in Gmail, have their own specific action URL³ and created newmail.MYCOMPANYNAME.com to launch a blank new email compose window. Try it if you have a Google account. It should open up a blank new email.

Related articles

• How to add links with a keyboard shortcut (savvyblogging.net)
• I hate mice! (ask.metafilter.com)
• How To Navigate Google Search Results Using Your Keyboard Only (makeuseof.com)
• Switching from Windows to Mac? Here’s what you need to know. [TNW Apple] (thenextweb.com)
• Compose Gmail Messages with Automatic CC: and BCC: with Semi-Secret Shortcuts [Keyboard Shortcuts] (lifehacker.com)

1. I struggled with this one — “mice” or “mouses” in the computer context. Turns out the both are acceptable.
2. It’s the same URL for any Google user. If you click that link, you’ll probably get to your own calendar if you have a Google account.
3. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#compose to be specific

We don’t like lengthy Terms of Service, so here is our version in short :

• We will not use any of the data you give us access for anything else than giving you access to it.
• We store logs for few days (actually Google App Engine does).
• We cache some of your data for few hours maximum on our sever to serve you as fast as we can.
• We store your email, Highrise domain and secret key on Google’s server.
• We will never give or sell any of your information.
• We don’t like spam either, so we might send you email, but no more than once a week, probably once a month. You can opt-out anytime.

Like many nerds, I watched the live feed of Facebook’s announcement regarding its new messaging platform. I had high hopes for it but, alas, not only is their product fairly basic, turns out it’ll actually be bad for the Internet. Here’s why.

Facebook Can Shut Your Email Off. Forever.

Let’s say you decide to use Facebook as your primary email service. Your email address of davesmith@facebook.com is entirely within the control of Facebook. They could, for any reason they like, disable or delete your account, preventing you from accessing your email. Facebook has been notorious for disabling accounts without reason or explanation. To this day, my account is banned from advertising on their service for a reason they won’t tell me. Since there was no mention of the POP mail protocol at the announcement, it’s an easy assumption that Facebook won’t support the downloading of your mail to your own hard disk.¹

Other providers are much less punitive. Plus, you can get your own domain (like my todmaffin.com domain) and use it as a pointer to your real email address. My actual email provider is Gmail, but I use a @todmaffin.com email address to forward emails there. But here’s the trick: Gmail will send my emails as if they’re coming from the @todmaffin.com address, meaning in theory my actual Gmail address isn’t locked in people’s address books.

Facebook’s new messaging system will almost certainly only send emails as the @facebook.com address, meaning if Facebook decides they don’t like your username (or any of the other hundreds of seemingly arbitrary account-deletion decisions they’ve made), your email just dies.

UPDATE: By total coincidence, today Facebook seems to be randomly disabling the accounts of women, claiming their profile isn’t authentic.

You Thought One Spam Folder Was Bad…

Facebook’s new email system actually introduces a second spam folder, called Other Messages. Basically, emails from your Facebook friends and people you manually designate will go into your inbox and everyone else will drop into an Other Messages folder where they’ll live in obscurity.

One More Island of Data To Search

We already have more islands of data to search through to find what we’re looking for. Our personal email, our work email, our phone’s text message history. This would introduce yet another island to search through.

In an attempt to keep my email all consolidated in one place, I’ve taken to responding to any Facebook email I get with a macro that says:

Thanks for emailing me on Facebook. This is an automated message. I have NOT seen your message.

I am trying to consolidate my email, so please send your email to:

EMAILADDRESS@todmaffin.com

I will not see your email if you don’t send it to the above address. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks.

Is it really automated? No. I paste that in manually. And of course I could very well read and reply right in Facebook, but I don’t want to have yet another place to search. (As it stands right now, the ability to search your Facebook messages is sorely lacking.)

Of course, you can’t simply turn off Facebook email. What I’d love is a way to set up a never-expiring vacation message that replies with the above, but it’s not there now, and it won’t be there in the next version.

Facebook Could Have Reinvented Email As We Know It

The system that drives the a lot of the Internet’s email is actually a relatively small Unix program called sendmail. Except for some security patches and minor updates here and there, it really hasn’t undergone an overhaul since its development. Compare that to the countless other web apps which keep adding features and functionality. (There’s a reason for that. sendmail exists in hundreds of thousands of places. Giving it a large-scale update would require all the other installations to upgrade as well, a task that would be a logistical nightmare.)

This is why Facebook, with its closed email system, could have reinvented email and really made it something useful. For instance, we could have the ability to “recall” emails if they haven’t yet been read (as some corporate email systems like Exchange and Groupwise can do), emails could have an expiration date/time where they just deleted themselves from inboxes if they expire, or any of the functions I wrote about in my article Email 2.0.

But, no. It seems Facebook’s email system is, essentially, Hotmail with a pre-populated whitelist. That’s it.

Get Ready to Be Drowned in IMs and Text Messages

Facebook’s engineering lead was positively giddy when he described how Facebook’s new email system will offer a “seamless” messaging experience. If you’re at your computer and logged in, replies show up as IM chat windows. If you step away, replies get delivered to your cell phone as a text message.

Frankly, I couldn’t imagine anything worse.

I rather like leaving my emails in an inbox for me to come back to. If I need to get someone’s email forwarded to my cell phone, I’ll set up a filter thankyouverymuch — big surprise: no mention of any filtering ability in Facebook’s system. Don’t hold your breath.

Can you imagine sending or replying to a half-dozen emails over the course of a morning, then watching your Facebook tab flash, your cell phone start chiming, your email box filling up. You’ll yearn for the days of Hotmail 1.0.

What do you think? Will you use Facebook’s messaging system?

1. They claim IMAP support is coming. I don’t expect this is high on their priority list.

Ok.. So even though we have the fan base now, I still need a stinkin phone number so Facebook can verify I am a human and then I can set the various url’s for both the account and the page.

Any clever ideas of who has an unused number? I already used everyone including _____’s… so.. yeah.. I’m at a loss here.. any suggestions?

Facebook seems to insist on having a unique phone number attached to every page. Or at least it seems that way.

Problem is, we’ve used all the phone numbers we have!

Does anyone know a way around this?

I thought it’d be fun to type each letter of the alphabet in there to see what it suggests (i.e., which site starting with that letter I frequent the most).

aircanada.com

• Looking up flights, adjusting plans, etc.

bit.ly

• I use their custom domain service to give my short links the todmaff.in domain, so I visit here to create the links.

calendar.engageQ.com

• Google Apps calendar for my company

delicious.com

• I’m actually surprised this came up, because I don’t manually visit delicious that often. I guess I just don’t visit that many “d” sites!

elegantthemes.com/gallery/

• I just recently found this gold mine — it’s a great membership site of premium WordPress themes. The themes are gorgeous, great back-ends, and you get full download access (including PSDs!) to about 50 themes for $39! Compare that to twice the price for three themes at WooThemes.

facebook.com/thecbc

• I started this unofficial fan page about the CBC and it’s grown to be the largest CBC page on Facebook by far (nearly 45,000 people). I check it several times a day to moderate the page and add content.

google.com/analytics/

• Checking site analytics for our clients a couple of times a day, tweaking conversion markers, etc.

highrisehq.com

• This is the CRM system we use at tMedia. I’m not thrilled with it, to be honest, and we may end up moving to BatchBook or something a little more adaptable, but for now this works.

istockphoto.com

• This site used to be $1 per web-sized stock image. Images cost about $2.70 now, depending on how many credits you buy, but it’s still a great bargain.

jfklancer.com/dallas10/

• I know, this is a weird one. One of my hobbies (alongside amateur magic and photography) is studying the JFK assassination. This link is to the annual conference of conspiracy buffs, which I’d been considering going to.

knowyourmeme.com

• This is just such a great site that investigates the source of most Internet memes like Double Rainbow and ICanHaz, then does a pretty good job explaining the meme’s viral trajectory.

linkedin.com

• Obvious.

maps.google.com

• Also obvious.

netflix.ca

• I have a subscription to this video streaming service. Even though it’s only $8/month and has a pretty big back catalog of movies and TV shows, it seems the shows I really want to watch aren’t in their Canadian catalog. Considering cancelling.

O

• Client’s URL (confidential)

pinboard.in

• A great alternative to Delicious. Cleaner, quicker, more attached to external APIs, and ability to make saved links private. Costs a bit of money, but worth it. This is what we use at tMedia.com

qik.com

• Again, not sure why this would rank, since I’m barely there. There just aren’t that many sites that start with Q.

rememberthemilk.com

• I keep trying to use this, but it’s just not that adaptable. I’ve tried todoist and todoledoo (or however it’s spelled) but still can’t find a to-do app that I like.

soulistry.com

• My mom’s blog.

twitter.com/todmaffin

• For some reason, I never trust that Hootsuite (or any of the Twitter clients) actually posted my updates on the sites, so I manually go to check each time. <sigh>

us1.admin.mailchimp.com

• This is the admin page of Mailchimp, the email marketing platform I use. It’s worth checking out — you can email 1,000 people a month for free. Sign up free here [affiliate link].

wufoo.com

• I love Wufoo.  It’s a web form maker. Speeds up development time on forms by a huge amount. And it’s actually fun to make forms there.

xmradio.ca/online/

• A subscription music site — basically, a scaled-down offering of XM Radio’s satellite line-up. I usually hang out on BPM (dance hits), Electric Area (progressive/trance), On Broadway (showtunes), and 1st Wave (classic 80s alternative). There are free alternatives, like Accuradio, but I just don’t find the music lineup to be as good.

youtube.com

• Obvious.

zoho.com

• This is where I’ve created a database to keep track of my speaking engagements. I’d tried to customize a CRM tool, but none of them have the level of customization I need (basic things, like removing certain fields and adding custom fields) so I built my own CRM. Of course, it lacks tasks and email integration, but it’s free.

So… what does your browser say about you?

How it works: You segment groups of Facebook friends into lists — Close Friends, Work Colleagues, Family, or however you want. Facebook then lets you publish status updates specifically to those groups. Until now, I had been routinely publishing personal information using this method.

For instance, if you were on my Close Friends list, this is what you’d see on my wall (I always put the “Visible to Family and Friends” note in there manually, to prevent people from replying with “Are you sure you want to post this on your wall?!”):

But if you are NOT on the list I published to, you would see the Canucks note on the top.

But there is a bug which will reveal your private posts — something the Facebook privacy policy doesn’t address.

The bug comes from the API (application programming interface) which other web sites use to tap into your wall posts. The API appears to reveal ALL your posts, regardless of any restrictions you’ve set up.

For instance, as you can see below, I set this status update to only be visible to people on my “Close Friends” and Family” lists:

When you’re in Facebook, this works as it should. If you’re not on either of those two friend lists, you won’t be able to see the post.

However, if you use another site which taps into Facebook’s wall, those posts will be revealed, regardless of any restriction you used!

I use Mailchimp for my email newsletters. One of the codes you can use in Mailchimp will pull information from your Facebook profile. It will reveal your private posts! See arrow below:

While I’m not a programmer, I’m fairly certain that this is not specific to Mailchimp (which, for the record, is an awesome service) but rather common to all services which use Facebook’s APIs.

What does this mean for you? If you don’t permit any web sites or services to access your Facebook wall, you’re probably fine. But if you’ve given any other site permission to view your wall, it is almost certainly exposing this private information of yours.

Auto-Tune the News is a series of music videos which are mostly taken from real news coverage and set to music. But the real genius behind these incredibly popular viral videos is that the voice of the main person in the video is manipulated using Auto-Tune software to sound like they’re singing.

Here’s an example of how this works.

I’m Not a Witch

First, watch this video — it’s the real 30 second ad for Christine O’Donnell, the candidate running for the U.S. Senate (and infamously known for having once said on a 90s talk show that she dabbled in witchcraft):

Actually, I thought it was a pretty good ad. Then, enter The Gregory Brothers, a quartet folk/rock group who are behind the Auto-Tune the News videos. Here’s what they did, using the above ad as the main content:

Amazing, eh? And catchy as hell. The Gregory Brothers have a knack for coming up with very catchy tunes.

Enter the Swedish “powerpop” band Roomie, who did a cover of The Gregory Brothers’ video:

Pretty amazing work. I hope Christine O’Donnell has seen these!

A couple of other Auto-Tune the News songs:

The Rent Is Too Damn High

This candidate for New York Governor drew a lot of media attention because of his over-the-top platform. Here’s are the original clips:

And here’s what The Gregory Brothers did with it:

Backin’ Up

Unfortunately, YouTube has pulled down the original newscast that was the source of this next song. Basically, it’s from an interview of a quirky woman who witnessed a convenience store robbery. The song pulls from the portion where she tells the interviewer how she managed to get out without being spotted (She backed up, because her daddy taught her good.)

Bed Intruder

By far the best Auto-Tune the News video, in my opinion, is the Bed Intruder song. It’s from a newscast covering an attempted assault on a woman in “the projects.” But it’s her flamboyant vigilante brother who captured The Gregory Brothers’ interest. Watch the original video — her brother comes in at about the one-minute mark:

And here’s what they did with his interview:

Genius! And Antoine became a genuine star! Here’s the newscast’s follow-up story:

Eventually, he was invited on BET’s awards show. Watch how many people in the audience are even singing along:

And of course, the money started coming in. This local radio station hired him to make a commercial for a local mortgage company (skip to 2:10 to see him tape the ads):

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be doing a rare webinar later this month. Details:

So you’ve got a Facebook page and you’re tweeting occasional specials. Isn’t it about time you add fuel to your existing social media efforts and start to convert clicks to real buyers walking into your store?

In this information-packed session, you’ll learn how to drive increased foot traffic to your retail storefront using the latest ROI-producing tools like:

• Twitter e-couponing strategies
• Foursquare location-based customer loyalty campaigns
• Mobile check-in promotions
• Facebook-based customer VIP email list-building
• Group couponing
• Review sites (Yelp, UrbanSpoon, etc.)
• and more

You’ll learn step-by-step how to launch an online campaign targeting your exact customer profile, and how to measure which social media methods are driving the strongest in-store traffic.

THIS WEBINAR IS NOW OVER.

I’m doing some research for an upcoming presentation and checked the latest stats on how many Canadians had a Facebook profile — 17 million! That’s nearly half the Canadian population.

Here are some other comparisons:

• 17 million Canadians are in the workforce
• 17 million Canadians have a pension plan
• 17 million Canadians own some kind of life insurance
• 17 million Canadians watched the 2005 series of Canadian Idol
• 17 million Canadians have access to recycling
• 17 million Canadians have some form on chronic disease or condition
• 17 million Canadians received blood from a donor
• 17 million Canadians use wireless services of some kind
• 17 million Canadians hold a passport
• 17 million Canadians filed their taxes online in 2008

Wow.

Sources:

• http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/15/lorne-gunter-castros-cuba-%E2%80%94-proudly-leading-the-way-in-public-sector-cutbacks/
• http://www.cppib.ca/News_Room/News_Releases/nr_06020801.html
• http://www.fin.gc.ca/toc/2002/health_-eng.asp
• http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/idol/CTVShows/20050811/CI3_PR_HighNotes_CD_050811/20050811
• http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/community/classroom/c3-knowledge-ans-e.html
• http://rabbit.he.net/~cmcd/sketch/prevmed/market.html
• http://www.innisfilscope.com/news/2007-06-06/news/024.html
• http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mOF3qI4Sh8kJ:www.ottawawirelesscluster.com/media_lib/docs/Presentations/CWTAOttawa_Wireless_Cluster.ppt+%2217+million+canadians%22+-yahoo+-recycling+-pension&cd=17&hl=en&ct=clnk
• http://www.blogto.com/city/2009/07/morning_brew_honour_killings_bike_rental_program_emergency_council_meeting_agenda_american_tourists/
• http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=b2207d82-4479-4ff6-a11f-bc12be2216e7&k=26662

So I started doing it and, in a very low-tech storage strategy, simply rubber-band them together with a piece of paper on top indicating what group they were from.

But honestly, besides getting their email addresses to email them an abbreviated copy of the presentation, I’m not really sure what to do with them. The archivist in me, however, insists that I keep them.

Why? Should I throw them out? What do you do with the business cards you collect?

Related articles

• Fictional business cards to fill your scifi Rolodex [Concept Art] (io9.com)
• Geeky Business Cards for Fictional Companies (geeksaresexy.net)
• Edible business cards? (izitso.net)
• Why Your Business Card Is Crucial To Your Business (ronmedlin.com)
• How to Network Without Business Cards (epiclaunch.com)
• Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards (lostateminor.com)

1. he does this by offering to send a copy of the presentation to anyone who gives him their card

It’s a podcast series. The Onion News consistently produces some of the funniest news parodies I’ve ever seen. Yes, even better than The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. What they’re especially good at is staging scenes like news conferences and person-on-the-street interviews so incredibly convincingly. (My favourite episode is New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone to Talk At About Mac Products.)

The other day, I noticed they were selling a special episode called The Onion Future [iTunes link]:

More than 125 years into the future, the Onion News Network remains the world’s most powerful media empire, dispensing the finest news, commentary, and swooshy graphics 24 hours a day directly into the right eye of every viewer through technology called ‘EyeStreaming.’

The Onion Future is the first time they’ve sold digital content directly to consumers. It costs USD$1.99. I bought it. I watched it. It was hilarious.

This show will change television forever.

Shows like The Onion Future are absolutely where television needs to go if it’s to remain relevant.

They’ve taken their existing loyal fan base and are converting them to paid consumers.

What’s even better, the episode is 12 minutes and 24 seconds long. It’s not padded out to 30 minutes or 60 minutes. It’s exactly as long as it needs to be — not a minute less or more — because it doesn’t have to fit within the rigid blocks of a television schedule grid.

And now… a bit of heresy.

One of my favourite podcasts is the George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight podcast (formerly The Hour). George is a great interviewer and the show producers book fantastic guests.

And I do not understand why it’s free.

The CBC, which has not had a permanent funding increase from Parliament for more than 30 years¹, struggles with finding new revenue models to produce its programming on an ever-increasing number of platforms, including podcasting and satellite radio. The funding gap is largely responsible for the increased number of repeats in the CBC Radio schedule.

Let’s say the CBC puts a weekly highlights podcast together and sells it for just $1.49 a week. Even if only 1,000 people subscribe, the money would pay for a year’s salary of a producer on the show.

Not surprisingly, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon gets it.

Fallon, obviously a technology and social media buff, sells a weekly show that doesn’t ever appear on television. It’s just a weekly highlights package [iTunes link]. For USD$14.99, you get the most recent weekly package immediately, followed by the next nine weeks’ worth. Sometimes the show lasts 41 minutes, other times 52 minutes, and other times 47 minutes and 12 seconds. It’s brilliant. Listen to his audience erupt in cheers any time he mentions Twitter (which is a lot). They’re ripe for the picking.

Most important, these bite-sized programs are perfectly positioned for the mobile age.

With no commercials, direct delivery to your iPod/iPhone/iPad, and the ability to resume watching exactly where you left off, programs like this are poised to further dilute viewership from the major networks.

I hope the VPs of network programming have iTunes installed.
.

Hat tip to the amazing Mitch Joel, whose small-and-bold alternating paragraph style I have shamelessly ripped off.

• Mr. Beaks Peers Into The Onion’s “Future: News From The Year 2137″! (aintitcool.com)
• Onion News Network’s ‘Future: News From the Year 2137′ (nytimes.com)
• How Could Cheap iTunes Rentals Change Television Online? (newteevee.com)
• The Onion Charging For Latest Online Video ‘Future: News From 2137′ (socialtimes.com)

1. accounting for inflation

Audio Player: This creates a tiny Flash audio player in the post. All you have to do is add the URL to the MP3 file you want it to play. Great for simple podcasting.

Facebook Like: Facebook’s massive online domination makes this almost a mandatory these days for bloggers. Some blogs report their traffic boosted considerably when they started using it. This creates a small Facebook-style “Like” button on each post. When a reader clicks it, a note goes up on their wall saying they liked the article. This alerts their Facebook friends who might come check out your article too!

RSS Footer: This creates a footer at the end of all your RSS-distributed posts. In case some bot is scraping your content, this at least lets you force a message pointing people back to your original post. Despite its name, you can have the message appear at the top of your post, if you want to deliver a harshly-worded “If you’re not reading this on yoursite.com, this site is stealing my material!”

This is what my footer currently looks like:

TinyMCE Advanced: WordPress’s visual editor is okay and its toolbar does have quite a number of tools, like Bold, Upload Photo, and Styles. This plug-in adds even more to that toolbar, like Advanced HR, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Full Screen, IESpell, Layer, Media, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters, and XHTML Extras.

Editorial Calendar: This is such a cool idea — rather than displaying your draft posts as a simple list, this gives you a calendar where you can schedule your upcoming posts by just dragging your stories from one day to another. Chris Brogan has a great description of it. Here’s what my current upcoming editorial calendar looks like:

I make no promises that I’ll keep this schedule, but it’s really neat to be able to see it all laid out like that.

WordPress Footnotes: I believe footnotes were society’s most important discovery. After penicillin, of course. This makes it crazy-easy to make footnotes. Any text you enclose in double-parentheses will show up at the bottom of the post, along with a numbered and linked (!) footnote at the insertion point. Here’s an example:¹. This is what that text looked like in my editor:

WordPress Super Cache: A recent article of mine was lucky enough to be featured on Lifehacker.com, an incredibly popular web site. Even if you have a fast server, the volume of traffic that Lifehacker sends can be crippling to an unprepared web server. Because WordPress uses dynamically-generated pages, it takes more time to serve them than static HTML pages. Super Cache essentially creates phantom static pages so visitors don’t notice any slowdown.

Bonus: Zemanta: Zemanta isn’t actually a plug-in for WordPress, it’s a plug-in for your web browser. It reads your post as you edit it and suggests images and related articles that you just click to instantly add! The Lifehacker image above got there by me just clicking the Zemanta box.

The image to the right shows you some of the articles it suggested for this post, and indicates that I clicked on two of them (which you’ll see below).

Zemanta places a plug for itself in the form of a small orange logo at the bottom-right of your post. I’ve left it in for this post, but you can easily just delete it if you’d prefer not to have it there.

Related articles

• 10+ Must have Plugins that are Ready for WordPress 3.0 (tripwiremagazine.com)
• How to Dislpay Related Posts in WordPress (chasingeyes.com)
• 20 Useful WordPress plugins, widgets and social media blog … (anw.in)

1. To make this example work, I actually placed this text in double parentheses.

This is an interview I did with Donna Papacosta, as part of the Grand and Toy Small Business Podcast series.

Podcast and transcript removed at the request of Advantis Communications.

Related articles

• The Bookshelf Apartment (neatorama.com)
• Bookshelf Porn: the joy of shelves (telegraph.co.uk)
• the bookshelf as memory theater (text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com)
• Bookgasmic Image Collections – Bookshelf Photos for Lovers of Bookshelves (VIDEO) (trendhunter.com)

First, find a unique-sounding phrase from your post/article — you’re looking for something that shouldn’t appear anywhere else on the Internet except for in your document. For instance, in my popular Ten Things I Wish I Knew When I Started as a Professional Speaker post, this phrase…

“By total fluke once, a speaker after me happened to select the same case study I presented”…

…didn’t, at the time of my post, appear anywhere else on the Internet.

So I went to Google Alerts and created a running search for that exact phrase. Important: Make sure you put the unique phrase in quote marks, so Google searches for that exact phrase, not just uses of all those words. Set the options however you like (my preferred settings are in the example below), and hit Create Alert.

And that’s it! Now, any time someone uses your content online, you’ll get an email from Google. Enjoy!

I hit the Submit button, and the site barfed out this:

<sigh> Oh, governments. Why do your Interwebs haz so much of teh fail?

But, as usual with many federal government web sites, the layers of redundant clicks and processes is mind-boggling.

Check out what happens when you try to apply for the program.

Step One

• Click the “Application Form” link.
• Gives you the choice of downloading a PDF form, another PDF that’s a “guide” to the form, and seeing an HTML page with locations of where to send the form. (Okay, first… PDF forms?! Still?! You know, web pages can handle forms on their own. And how about putting all that info in a single document?)

Step Two

• I select the “Form” link, and you get a page with a single link on it: “Request this document.” Well, that’s what I was doing when I clicked on the link!! It’s like every time you click a result link in Google, it gives you an intermediate page with just a link on it that says “Go to this site.” Well, duh!
• I clicked the link and did I get the form? There’s no way to download the form — you have to give them your email address.

Step Three

• This is where it gets absolutely stupid. The feds then send this email: “Confirmation of receipt. Thank you for submitting a document request.  We would like to confirm that we have received your request. The document you have requested will be sent in a separate message to this e-mail address shortly.”
• Then, literally one second later, they send the document in a separate email.

I tried to link to these pages directly, but the site prevented me from doing that¹.

Honestly, are the programmers there trained at some other school? Only on government web sites do I see this kind of nonsensical user-interface insanity.

Am I missing something?

1. it uses a unique URL for each site visitor; if I gave you the one I used, it would have timed out by the time you got there and barfed on you

Like a lot of folks in the social media space, I follow a lot of blogs, Twitter feeds, YouTube accounts, and other content. According to Google Reader, I average 537 articles a day. I don’t just skim them, I actually have a pretty well-defined system for organizing, reading, and taking action on many of the articles. I call it the “four buckets” system. Here’s how it works.

Organize

I subscribe to feeds in Google Reader — a very versatile feed reader that can even subscribe to pages without RSS feeds and let you know when there’s been a change on the page.

My feeds are organized into a dozen or so folders. Each folder name is preceded by a number so they sort in order of priority. In this way, if I don’t have a tonne of time, I’ll just start at the top and be assured I’m getting what I need.

• 1 Top List
  My #1 priority feeds – blogs and Delicious feeds from my closest friends, MacZot, Lifehacker’s Gmail category, a couple of public radio blogs, The Oatmeal, and so on.
  .
• 2 Daily Business News
  Some technology and social media news sites: Mashable, Techcrunch, MarketingProfs, Techvibes Vancouver, eMarketer, and more.
  .?
• 3 Friends
  This one’s self-explanatory. In addition to blogs, my friends’ Flickr feeds, Delicious feeds, and YouTube feeds¹
  .?
• 4 Companies I Follow
  This is where I put official company blogs. Besides the blogs of the main online players, I also try to subscribe to the blogs of the makers of software I run on my system. This is a great way of finding out about updated versions.²
  .?
• 5 Weekend Reading
  This is where I put my fun reading – stuff I want to follow, but know that if I read it on a weekday, my productivity level would dramatically sink. Stuff in here includes: Holy Kaw, Improv Everywhere, Noise to Signal, Photoshop Disasters, the Ryerson Review of Journalism, and more.
  ?.
• 6 Sharpen the Saw
  I use this category for content that helps me improve my skills.³ Copyblogger, ViperChill, Zen Habits, and similar sites fit in here.
  ?.
• Other topics: I’ve got some miscellaneous topics as well that I don’t visit that frequently but still want to keep track of.

Read

For whatever reason, I’ve always found it difficult to stay focused while reading feeds in Google Reader itself on the desktop. That’s why I do most of my reading when I first get up (and, sadly, usually before I even get out of bed) on my iPad with the most excellent Reeder app (Gizmodo review | iTunes link). It’s $5, but well worth the money.

First, Reeder is beautiful. A light grey background, thoughtfulness paid to typography and leading, and intuitive controls to help you move through a river of news. A forceful swipe down pulls up the next article, while you’re scanning the headlines a left-swipe marks it as read and a right-swipe ‘stars’ the article.

More importantly, as you can see above, when you click the Forward icon, a menu flies out where you can send the article to any “bucket” you have set up (see below). In my case, I use Note (Google Reader shared items), Delicious, Read It Later, and occasionally Twitter.

Here’s a video demo of the app:

Act On (the “four buckets”)

It’s not enough to just read, though, if you’re not going to do anything with the content. I have four “buckets” into which I place articles that I am going to use or want to store. Here’s how it works:

• Bucket 1: “Act On Today”
  Star: This is my highest priority flag. I’ll ‘Star’ posts that I plan to take some kind of action on, like use it as background for a blog post, remind myself to call the author, read in more detail that day at work, and so on. I’ve set Google Reader to first open on the Starred page. This means when I sit down at my desk and open up Google Reader, it first shows me a list of items I had flagged to take action on today. I try to clear the Star list by the end of the day. ((Sometimes I Star a whole whack of stuff; in those cases, I rely on the Postrank plugin to help show me which items are gaining the most traction.)
  ?.
• Bucket 2: “Share With Others”
  Share on Google Reader: Items that I don’t need to act on, but want to share with people who may follow me, get shared on either Google Reader (business topics) or my Posterous blog (fun stuff).
  .?
• Bucket 3: “Don’t Lose This Information”
  Send to Delicious: If there’s an item that I don’t need to act on and doesn’t warrant sharing with people, but I still want to keep track of it in case I need to reference it again some day, it gets put in my Delicious account (subscribe to my Delicious feed). What I especially like about Delicious is the ability to add “tags” to items, making them easier to find again. What was that site with great Facebook stats? I just do a quick search on my Delicious page for the tags Facebook and stats and up it comes.
  .?
• Bucket 4: “Read This Later”
  Send to Read It Later: Sometimes there are articles I want to read at my leisure, don’t need any action, and I don’t feel like sharing the content with anyone. They get sent to my Read It Later list. Read It Later is exactly what it sounds like – a place to store articles you plan to get around to reading one day. They’ve got a great mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Blackberry, and have extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari.

This might sound like a complicated system but once I got into the habit of flagging things in this manner, the number of articles I could process increased, as did my productivity in using them.

What system do you use to keep track of all your feeds?

1. YouTube doesn’t make feeds of its users’ videos easy to find. Here’s how to subscribe to feeds in YouTube.
2. If you’re a Mac user, the excellent AppFresh is a great automated tool to update your software.
3. The phrase is taken from the Stephen Covey book Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and means continuous improvement.

Many years ago, when I was enslaved to the Windows platform, I used ACT! — a great contact and task management tool. One of the things I loved about it was you could easily create a follow-up task each time you contacted someone. Then, if you haven’t heard from them for a week or so, you could ping them a reminder.

After losing track of too many emails I needed to hear back from, I developed this system in Gmail. Here are the steps you need to set this up.

.

Setup (you only need to do this once)

.

Step 1: Create the 1 WAITING label

In Gmail, Click the Settings link in the top-right of the page, then click Labels, as below:

Look for the Labels section down the page. It will look like this:

• Type 1 WAITING into the box and click Create. (You’ll wait to put the 1 in front so that it sorts to the top of your labels list, making it easier to click.)
• Go back to the main Gmail page by clicking the Mail link in the left navigation area.
• Look for 1 WAITiNG on the left and click the small box to its left. Assign it a colour. I recommend white text on bright red background so that emails you’re waiting for really stand out in your inbox when they arrive.

.

Step 2: Set up Multiple Inboxes

To keep your eyeballs on emails you’re waiting for a response from, use the Multiple Inboxes feature in Mail Labs. Here’s how to set it up.

First, click the Mail Labs icon at the top right of Gmail (it looks like a small green beaker to the right of your email address):

Scroll down the long list of labs features until you find Multiple Mailboxes.

Click Enable. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click Save Changes.

Click the Settings link at the top of the page again, then click the Multiple Inboxeslink.

Type in the information exactly as it appears below:
is:1 WAITING — note: make sure there isn’t a space between is: and 1.

Click Save Changes at the bottom, then ?bo back to the main Gmail page by clicking the Mail link in the left navigation area.

.

Usage

Now that it’s all set up, here’s how to use it.

Step 1: Send your email as usual

.

Step 2: Apply the WAITING label in Sent Mail

• Go to Sent Mail and find the email you just sent (it’s probably the one at the top).
• Click the checkmark box to the left of the email.
• Pull down the Labels menu.
• Click the box beside 1 WAITING.

Your email should look like this. Notice that it now has a bright red 1 WAITING label.

Go back to the main Gmail page by clicking the Mail link in the left navigation area.

.

That’s It!

You’re all set up! Your screen should look something like this:

You now have two areas on your screen — regular emails and important emails that you’re still waiting for a response from. I like this view because it keeps those emails front-and-centre in my mind.

When someone replies to one of these marked emails, it’ll show up in your main Inbox as per usual, with the bright red flag. Reply as per usual and, if you no longer need the flag, just select the Labels menu again and click 1 WAITING to turn the flag off or click the X beside the red label.

Enjoy!

I gave a lecture today at BCIT about digital marketing and the law and noticed a lot of glowing white Apple logos staring back at me. Struck by how many Macs were in the room, I asked the students to hold up their computers.

Here are the number of Macs in the classroom:

Here are the number of… er, is the only PC in the room.

‘Nuff said?

Related articles:

• Microsoft Losing Big To Apple On Campus (apple.slashdot.org)
• Macs Reign At College, Microsoft is In Trouble! (lockergnome.com)
• Apple overtakes Dell, HP as student laptop choice (zdnet.com)

Click here if you can not see the embedded video above.

Can blind luck be reproduced? Absolutely, says Tod Maffin.

Today’s viral campaigns may seem like jackpots in a one-in-a-million lottery, but it turns out they are well within the reach of any marketing team’s grasp. All it takes is knowing the secret ingredients behind some of the world’s most talked-about campaigns.

Download PDF

By reverse-engineering each element of a successful viral campaign in your industry, Tod Maffin will show your audience the key markers that can launch a campaign into the viral stratosphere — markers that can be programmed into the smallest budgets.

He will literally “deconstruct” a viral campaign, piece by piece, then show your group how to re-assemble a campaign for their own organization.

And, using his ASSURED ROI™ methodology, he’ll detail for your attendees each of the seven action steps required for launching an impactful and measurable viral campaign.

You will never look at a viral campaign again the same.

Kevin Rose had a fever. And, because he’s a nerd, he tweeted about it. That prompted the writers behind the deadpanned-but-hilarious TV ads for Old Spice to create a video response just for Kevin. You can see it below:

This video has been the talk of the web in the last few days — not so much for its content, but that the company would pick one person to direct a response to. But Kevin Rose isn’t just any ordinary nerd; he’s a well-connected and highly influential one. More than a million people follow his Twitter account.

The amount of publicity Old Spice has generated from this single well-directed message is incalculable.

Can you do the same with your business? Absolutely. And you should.

Take Canadian coffee chain Blenz. It reaches out to specific people through its Twitter account — sometimes rewarding them with gift certificates. While Blenz apparently pings random people, you may want to consider being more strategic.

Tools exist today to let you determine who the most influential people who follow your brand are.

Klout.com, for instance, gives you a score between 1 and 100 that estimates a person’s level of influence. It calculates everything from how often they are retweeted, how many influential people follow their social media accounts, and so on.

The recent release of the excellent and free Hootsuite social media dashboard now lets you filter tweets by Klout. In other words, you can see a stream of people who are tweeting about your brand — and can tell Hootsuite to only show those people who are very influential on the Internet. These are the people you should focus on. Invite them to participate as advisory board members. Send them a gift certificate. Invite them to your next staff party.

This screenshot shows one of the Hootsuite columns I run — a search for any time someone mentions my Twitter username, but only people with more than a Klout Influence Score of 39. These are the people who others trust to bring them valuable content. They are paid attention to.

When you randomly surprise influential people with something of value, they’ll talk it up. And your brand wins.

Have you ever randomly surprised one of your brand’s followers/friends? What did you offer them?

NB: You can do surprise your fan base and customers offline too — this summer, some Virgin Mobile customers will get replacement phones hand-delivered right to their door. To kick the program off, Sir Richard Branson made one of the first deliveries in Toronto earlier this week to an unsuspecting Virgin Mobile customer. “I don’t even know what to say right now. I can’t believe you guys did this!” said Morrison.  “I got my new phone right away and Richard Branson is here. He’s the coolest delivery person ever – and I didn’t even have to tip him!”

Related Links:

• Shirtless Old Spice guy replies on Twitter with hilarious personalized videos (thenextweb.com)
• Old Spice Guy is social media rockstar (cyberjournalist.net)
• Old Spice Man connects with the Web (news.cnet.com)
• Hootsuite Just Took the Lead in Third Party Twitter Apps (dannybrown.me)
• How Your Business Can Twitter Better with Hootsuite (windmillnetworking.com)
• Unpacking Klout: True Measure of Influence? (conversationagent.com)

I realized the other day that my most best tips all seem to come in pairs, and I thought I’d pass them along.

(Today, an accompanying video I did about my business travel rules of two is up on Chris Brogan‘s ManOnTheGo.com web site.)

The Taxi Two-Step
Whenever I step out of a taxi, I now do two things: First, I look back at where I was sitting to make sure something didn’t slip out of my pocket (I’ve lost two cell phones this way over the years), and second I look on the outside of the cab for its taxi number, which I try to remember. I almost never have a need to be able to identify the taxi afterwards, but in the rare case when you need to, knowing the specific cab you were in can help. (In Las Vegas once, I left my MacBook Pro in the backseat. I didn’t know the specific cab I was in, so all I could do was hope that the cabbie was honest and returned it to the cab company’s lost and found; he did. As I was a flagged cash fare, he could have easily made off with it without any record of me being in his cab.)

Two Keys
When I check into a hotel which uses those magnetic-stripe cards as keys (don’t they all now?), I always ask for two keys, even though I’m the only person checking in. I stuff one card in my wallet right away as a backup. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left the room without my key or lost one along the way. This little trick has saved me some time here and there.

Two Wake-up Calls
Some hotel chains, like the Fairmont, ask if you want two wake-up calls — usually spaced 15 minutes apart. I always opt for this, just in case I answer the first one then slip back to sleep (jetlag can be a bitch). I’ve almost always been awake and moving when the second call comes.

Two Oils
Studies have proven that certain scents can have an effect on our brains and I’m a huge believer in this. I always travel with two essential oils — rosemary and clary sage. Rosemary is known to promote better concentration, alertness, and a general sense of well-being. It’s a great oil to burn if you’ll be working in your hotel room on your presentation or a report. Just bring along a small tealight candle diffuser or a ceremic light-bulb ring to burn it. At night, I use Clary Sage, a rich, musky smelling essential oil which gives me a very calming sense of rest. Put ten drops of Clary Sage into a hot bath — it’s more of an absorption oil than a burning oil — soak in it for 15 minutes, and you’ll be asleep in no time.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Take Time for You When Traveling (chris.pirillo.com)
• Elevate Your Mood with RubyBlaise Essentials Aromatherapy Mists (mindfulmomma.typepad.com)

Back in 2006, I had one of the most popular podcasts on the Internet — the How To Do Stuff podcast. I always tried to make it a quirky, entertaining, and informative how-to series on all sorts of random things. Things you wouldn’t hear or read about on any of the many how-to sites out there.

The podcast came to an abrupt halt in September 2006 when I became ill. Well, I figured, now is the time to re-start it! And so HowToDoStuffPodcast.com is back up and running! New episodes will come every few days. So far, here’s what’s on the site:

• How to Wax Your Ass (by far, the most popular episode)
• How to Train Your Voice
• How to Hammer a Nail Properly
• How to Do a Sit-Up Properly
• How to Draw the Perfect Relaxing Bath
• How to Make Great Beer at Home
• How to Tip a Doorman
• How to Plant a Tree

I hope you’ll visit, listen to a few, and share the word about it. If you have a Twitter account, you can use something like this:

Tod Maffin’s quirky, entertaining, informative podcast is back! http://HowToDoStuffPodcast.com

If you’d like to receive an email each time a new episode/post is published, you can sign up here.

SOLD Nikon 70-300mm (f/4-5.6G) auto-focus lens — $70

This is a great lens to have in your kit.  I’m selling my great Nikon 70-300mm (f/4-5.6G) auto-focus lens. It’s in fantastic condition. Only selling it because I’m using a 18-200mm lens a lot more these days.  This is a superb lens for shooting portrait/single faces from a distance to get beautiful depth-of-field behind them.

This is one of the lightest distance lenses you’ll ever have.  Comes with mount cap, lens cap (with tether), and lens hood. $70 firm. You can pick it up any time and start using it right away!

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Nikon 52mm Prime Lens — $40

52mm prime lens takes outstanding shots with soft depth-of-field.  This is a manual lens, giving you fast and complete control over the focus — no need to wait for the auto-focus to spin and whir until it locks in.  Super light-weight and small. You’ll never notice it in your camera bag. Easily fits in your pants pockets for quick change.  Comes with mount cap, lens cap (with tether), and UV filter which protects the lens glass.  $40 firm.

.

SOLD Nikon SB-600 Speedlight/External Flash — $150

Best price you’ll find on a SB-600 flash. ONLY USED ONCE! Sells new for twice as much [see Bestbuy price]. Uses regular AA batteries, so you can replace on the fly without waiting hours for a lithium ion battery to charge. This can be used as a slave remote flash to extend your lighting area. $150 firm. Pick it up any time and start using it right away.

BONUSES:
– Comes with small, light-weight stand.
– Comes with light diffuser.
– Comes with batteries.

Let’s see if I have this straight:

1. Sensational Headline: Bi-polar patients can become violent.
2. Actual story: Bi-polar patients probably won’t become violent.

Come on. A little factual headline writing would be nice. In j-school, you’d get a failing mark for crap writing like this.

It’s this kind of sensationalism that continues to perpetuate the stigma behind mental health issues.

Email sent to Patricia Graham, Vancouver Sun’s Editor-in-Chief:

Hi Patricia,

I was disturbed to see your paper’s recent headline:

“Bi-polar patients can become violent, prof says.”

What disturbed me was not the headline, but that the article, just three paragraphs in, counters the headline:

“Often there is stubbornness and inability to cooperate, but that doesn’t mean the patient will become violent.”

Which is the truth? Clearly, the latter.

People skimming headlines — as is increasingly the case in a digital news world — will come away with an inaccurate sense of the reality here.

Will the Vancouver Sun publish a correction?

Tod

Her response (which was refreshingly quick):

I agree with you about this headline. It appeared in our first (early) edition only, and was caught and corrected for the second edition. The revised headline says:

“Bipolar patients rarely become violent, prof says”.

This was an unfortunate error; the second edition goes to the majority of our readers, but Vancouver Island and rural areas would have got the first edition.

Patricia

I used to keep my speech resources (contracts, notes from client calls, links to web resources, research, slides, etc.) in a bunch of different folders on my hard disk. Then, I’d change the system mid-way through the year because I thought I’d come up with a better way. Inevitably, I’d lose important stuff along the way.

I switched over to eSpeakers [free trial link here] several years ago and won’t ever go back.

eSpeakers is a powerful database made especially for professional speakers. It manages everything from travel details (hooks into Tripit.com via API), scheduling, details on your topic, number of attendees, contact info, package tracking (if you’re shipping books), expenses reporting, and tonnes more. If you have a number of common jokes or stories you tend to use in many of your gigs, this can even keep track of which ones you’ve told!

Here is a screen-by-screen walkthrough of the program.

This is the main screen, which contains the barebones information. The Status pulldown menu contains Lead, Hold, and Confirmed. Once you’ve put a date on hold, a secondary pulldown menu appears, letting you indicate how strong a hold is — a nice touch, if you have several potential clients interested in the same date.

The Bureau pulldown menu contains hundreds of speakers’ bureaus, and the list grows all the time. If you get presentations from a number of agencies, this will help you keep track of which ones give you the most business.

The Notes section below automatically references every change you make in the database, and you can also add notes manually, like each contact you have with the client.

The Contacts page is pretty straight-forward. You can have it automatically populate the field from your computer’s existing address book, and there’s a place for the details of your pre-event client call.

The Travel tab is very detailed, letting you input both air and ground transportation details. One very nice touch is that if you use TripIt.com for your business travel, eSpeakers will automatically import all your details in from that site. Very handy indeed.

The Action list is, essentially, a to-do list for the event. You can create different action lists for each stage of the pipeline. For instance, when a date is listed as a “Lead” in my database, my action list is pretty small — contact the prospect, forward their contact info to my agent, then follow up periodically. When you convert an engagement from Hold to Confirmed, different actions are required. eSpeakers comes with a set of pretty standard actions, but they are easily customizable (as I have done, above).

When an action becomes due, you get an email that morning.

The lists generate action dates based on the event date itself. So rather than entering due dates automatically, it will set them based on proximity to the event date — for instance, one week prior to the event, my system will prompt me to email my bio to the person introducing me. Two months after the event, I double-check to be sure I’ve been paid.

Unfortunately, for now the action list only lives in the database and can’t update any of the popular online task managers like Toodeloo or Remember The Milk.

There is, of course, a place to track the fee, the agency commission, and taxes. If you sell books, CDs, or other products at the event, there’s a place for you to record how many sales you made, and a spot for you to track the shipment of those items to the venue.

If you speak a lot and sell a lot of products, you could export this data to an Excel spreadsheet, then run any kind of calculations, such as which bureaus book you at events which generate the most number of product sales. Lots of number-crunching possibilities here.

The Custom tab comes pretty much empty, with ten short (one-line) fields and four longer entry fields. You can customize the field names to your own needs. This is how I’ve customized mine: The name of the agent who booked the event, the contract number, and so on.

I like to track the industry name (e.g., Human Resources) to be able to provide me with a simple year-end look at revenues generated from each industry. This can help me know which areas industries it might be more profitable for me to focus on in the future.

It’s also helpful for me to know who the keynote sponsor is so that if it’s Microsoft, I can avoid telling Bill Gates jokes.

The Library tab is where your documents live. In the top section, you can upload the contract, notes, conference graphic images, or really any small document. (Unless your slide deck is pretty small, I’ve found those files to be a little too large to be handled in this area.) Like the rest of the data, this lives online in eSpeakers’ database.

The real power, though, lies in the bottom templates section. You create a mail-merge Word document and it will fill in all the information it needs from the fields in your database — even your customized short and long fields from the Custom tab.

As you can see above, I have a Word template for the first time I contact them (“I’m glad to hear we’ll be working together…” then a few other templates. When you click “Merge For This Event,” Microsoft Word (and, sadly, only Word for now) opens and fills in the details. I then just copy the letter to my clipboard and paste it into an email. (Kind of wish it could open up in a simple text editor, since Word is overkill for an email.)

Finally, the Misc tab contains the name of the presentation, how you should dress, audience size, whether the general public can attend, and whether this presentation would qualify for your Certified Speaking Professional designation.

My favourite section in the whole database, though, lives at the bottom of the Misc. tab. If there are certain stories or jokes or case studies you tend to re-use in different presentations, this will let you tick those off to indicate you used it. That way, when you’re invited back to speak three years later, you’ll know not to repeat the same material!

eSpeakers is a great program which has totally helped me keep my speaking engagements organized. It’s not cheap, coming in at $74.95 per month (or $809 annually), but for many professional speakers, this is a fraction of a single event and more than pays itself off in the long run.

You can get more information from the site by signing up for a free 30-day trial account.

* Disclosure: The link above will give you a special discounted rate and me an affiliate commission.

I’ve been lucky to have been speaking professionally since 1997 (when I was nearly chased off stage by the audience of teachers for suggesting the model of classrooms segregated by ages was outdated). Along the way, I’ve made my share of mistakes on the circuit.

Here are ten things that I wish I had known when starting out:

Attend as much of the conference as possible.

If your schedule permits it, be there for as much of the event as you can. Even if you have to cover hotel and other costs on your own dime. Clients really appreciate it when you’re up to speed on what’s been presented earlier, so you can tailor your comments to make the day feel more seamless for attendees.

Though it doesn’t happen often, occasionally a speaker before you will use similar material — you’ll want to remove or change that material in your own presentation. By total fluke once, a speaker after me happened to select the same case study I presented and for five minutes basically duplicated what I’d already said. I guess the event organizer thought it would be too awkward for someone to let him know, so he continued and pretty much lost the audience for the remaining hour he had after that.

I also like to stay after my presentation as well. This is prime time to connect individually with attendees who may have been too shy to ask a question in session.

Really, there’s no downside to attending the whole event if you can.

Ask to speak to groups in the same city.

If you’re looking to promote yourself and get more gigs, when you have your first conversation with the organizer ask them if there are any local business groups who they’re connected to that you might be able to speak to (without fee) when you’re in the city. Often there’s a marketing association, Rotary group, or Chamber of Commerce that would be more than happy to host you to present one of your prepared keynotes to their group. They get great value, and more times than not there’s someone there who is connected to a group that has a budget for pro speakers. If nothing else, you can collect business cards to add to your newsletter.

Record your pre-event client calls.

Of course, it goes without saying to always have at least one pre-event call with the event organizer. In that call you’ll confirm details like the time they want you there for an A/V check, how long they want you to speak for, expected attire, and so on. I spend a lot of time with them learning about specifically who’ll be in the audience — main age groupings, gender split, and what their jobs are.

I used to do the calls while trying to take notes, but I’m just not that skilled at it. I always insist on placing the call (as opposed to them calling me) so that I can call with Skype and use the great Call Recorder app to record the conversation. And I do not take notes during the call — I just focus on the conversation. The goal is to extract as much information as you think you’ll need down the road when putting the presentation together.

Don’t hand out copies of your slides.

Almost always, someone will ask for a copy of your slides. I almost never give them out. This is for two main reasons:

1. Most of my slides are images, not text. A copy of the slides would be meaningless without the commentary.
2. I use a lot of licenced stock photography and video in my slides. I’ve licenced them for presenting it to a group, not for distributing them to others.

Don’t forget that sometimes people want your PowerPoint/Keynote slides so they can basically give your presentation back at their company. Wouldn’t you rather they hire you to give the presentation, instead of giving them part of what they’d need to do your job?

If they insist on getting a copy, don’t put the slides up on your site. Instead, collect their business card and, when you email them the deck, ask them if they’d like to join your newsletter.

Give them something in exchange for their email address.

Though I don’t usually give out my slide decks, I do prepare a PDF document with some notes on what I presented. It’s often about four or five pages long, contains a summary of some highlights, links to things I presented, and so on.

At the end of my speech, I’ll invite them to drop their business card off on a table near me and will email this document to them and add them to my newsletter mailing list. (Always be sure to disclose that they’ll be signed up to your list in exchange for getting the summary, but that they can unsubscribe with a single click at any time.)

Keep a separate copy of each slide deck.

I used to have one basic deck of slides for each presentation, and I’d customize it and save it as the latest version. But this meant that I couldn’t go back years later and see the exact slides I presented to a client. If you have a main deck, open it then save it as a separate file for that client alone.

Record every single presentation you give.

Though most of my clients and audiences don’t realize it, I record the audio of every presentation I give. That way, if I ever need to go back and hear something, I can.

Besides helpful for listening back to yourself so you can improve, it may also help resolve more difficult situations. One time, a client complained, saying an audience member was offended because she heard me use the racially charged “n”-word; I was able to go back and reassure her I’d actually mumbled the word “figure.”

You don’t need any fancy equipment or hookups to the room’s sound system for this. Just start an audio recording going (I use QuickTime) in the background when you leave your computer on the lectern and let it capture whatever it hears through the mic. Even if you don’t speak at the lectern, it picks up the sound system fine. Then convert it to MP3, put it in that event’s folder, and forget about it until you need it.

Backup, Backup, Backup!

This goes without saying, but it surprises me how few speakers have redundant backups. Just last month, I was keynoting a conference and had to go on stage early because the presenter before me couldn’t boot her computer and she had no accessible backup.

Here are the backup methods I use and recommend:

• Turn on auto-backups in your presentation software, that way you always have two copies of your slides; in case your computer crashes while saving it, you’ll always have the most recent uncorrupted version.
• Sign up to Backblaze — it’ll back up everything on your hard disk automatically without you prompting it. It’s only $5 a month. Backblaze is the only system like this I found which can restore a Mac file to a PC and vice versa, if that’s important to you.
• Before leaving, upload the slides to Dropbox.com or something similar.
• Finally, if you’re on a Mac, tell Keynote to also save an additional copy as a PowerPoint presentation and upload that to Dropbox.com too.

But backups aren’t just for files — I carry my own backup wireless mic, fresh batteries, and a separate cheap GSM cell phone, so that in the event mine craps out I just have to pop my SIM card into the new phone and I’m back in business again.

Carry a paper introduction at all times.

Every once in a while, the only introduction I get is something like “And now, here’s our next speaker, Tod Maffin.” Ugh.

The introduction you receive prior to taking to the podium is more important than many speakers realize. It’s what establishes credibility in the minds of your audience. A bad introduction can have your audience write you off as a know-nothing before you even utter a single word.

I prepare a separate introduction for each client (the introductions vary and highlight different parts of my career depending on the topic I’m speaking about) and be sure to meet the person giving the introduction. Nowadays, I just give it to them without asking if they already have one. Always better that they use your material than something they’ve come up with on their own.

Have hidden stat and screen-shot slides

Every single one of my slide deck contains slides that almost never see the light of day. They’re charts or stats that back up some point I make in the main presentation, and screen-shots of web sites I mention.

They’re there because every so often, during a Q&A session, someone will want you to elaborate on a point you made. It really blows the audience mind when you can jump to one of these slides to bring up.

It takes some learning in PowerPoint or Keynote to do this, but it’s well worth the effort.

What are some of your lessons learned on the speaking circuit?

This is a great little app that for people who have lots of videos on their computer, but want to watch them on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and an iPad. Previously what I had to do was to convert the videos to MP4 (often a very slow process), import them into iTunes, and tweak the metadata. Only then could I watch the movies I have on my iDevices. That still wasn’t a great solution, since those videos then took up space on those devices.

This app is really a tiny file server that runs on the same computer on which your videos are stored. You can point it to any number of directories containing your videos, including attached servers, and it’ll stream them live to any of your iDevices. The other great bonus is it’ll convert from basically any video format — on the fly. Brilliant.Appfresh – Free

I’ve always been an early adopter and, probably to my detriment, I always want to try the latest versions of programs. Appfresh will scan your Applications folder and compare your versions with the latest versions. Within a minute, it’ll have a list of programs that need updating. You can always pick and choose which to update — it suggests beta versions, so if you’re not up to a pre-release version, you can opt to not update that app.

Keep vigilant, though, for big upgrades to paid programs (i.e., from 3.1 to 4.0) — they may drop a new version that wants you to pay for an upgrade, leaving you to manually find and re-install the old version (if it’s still available on the developer’s site!).Caffeine – Free

Several years ago, I was speaking at a conference in the afternoon and I had time to attend the whole day’s events. The fellow doing the morning keynote had his notebook up on the stage and he had slipped out the back to make a last minute visit to the restroom. As his computer had been waiting there through a 15-minute coffee break, his screen saver kicked in. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except it was one of those photo slideshows of everything in his iPhoto collection. He didn’t have much in there, except racy photos of he and his wife! I’ve never seen a conference organizer run up to the stage so fast to slam the lid down on the notebook.

Caffeine puts an icon in your menu bar that, when activated, prevents your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen, or starting screen savers. It’s a toggle switch so you just click it again to go back to normal settings. I use this when my MacBook Pro is sitting on stage waiting for me to get up and give a presentation, so I don’t suffer a similar fate.Call Recorder (Skype) – $19.95 U.S.

This is such a great little app, I tell as many people about it as I can. It’s a tiny recording window that pops up any time Skype is activated. Whenever you place any kind of Skype call (Skype-to-Skype, Skype-to-phone, or videocall) it records it as a .mov file on your hard disk. You can tell it to not record calls that are fewer than, say 30 seconds long, and it comes with a MOV to MP3 conversion tool. (The problem with that tool, though, is it resets the timestamp of the file. The program really should offer a save-in-MP3-format option.

I now do all my pre-event client calls using Skype. Once the recording is finished, I just save it into that client folder so I can review it whenever I want. (Another nice touch: It can also save automatically to an iTunes playlist.)JumpCut – Free

Whenever I re-install my operating system (luckily, this has been a pretty rare necessity since switching from PC to Mac) JumpCut is the first app I reinstall.

JumpCut is a fast, low-memory clipboard alternative. Instead of using Command-V to paste, if you do Shift-Command-V and keep that combination held down, you can use the cursor keys to navigate between the last 99 things you copied to the clipboard. Release the keys and it pastes your selection in place as if it were the last thing you copied.

Another nice, probably accidental, function is if you use the regular Paste, the Mac will paste using the formatting of the originally copied text. If you use the JumpCut Paste, your pasted text will inherit the destination formatting.JustNotes - DonationWare

CatherineOmega has been talking up the great little web utility SimpleNote. Simplenote replaces the Notes app on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. When you download Simplenote, you get free access to their web app, so you can access your notes from anywhere. Simplenote really is just a simple online database.

While, of course, you can access your notes by logging into the web site, this service really shines when you access it through simple desktop apps like JustNotes. Catherine uses Notational Velocity on her Mac to access her notes, but I prefer the cleaner UI of JustNotes. Both sit in your menu bar. Click it to see your notes, use the simple search function, and any changes are automatically synced back to the web database, so your iDevices are kept in sync as well. My grocery lists moved here when I first started using them and they haven’t left.Levelator – DonationWare

If you do any audio work — especially when there are uneven levels — you really need Levelator. This program analyzes your audio file and carefully adjusts the volume of all elements so they’re more or less the same. This is a process called “normalizing” in the audio business. Levelator’s normalizing is one of the smartest I’ve seen — it even slowly starts to fade up a level in advance of low-level portion of audio, so that you don’t really notice any background audio changing suddenly. Very clean and simple operation — just drag your audio file onto the window.

There are two downsides. First, the program only handles uncompressed AIFF and WAV audio files. You’ll have to convert any other files, like MP3, to another format before processing, then re-compress after processing, losing a bit of fidelity, depending on how compressed you’ve set your MP3 compression. Second (and I know this is picky), you can only drag the file onto the window the app creates. You should be able to keep Levelator in your dock then drag files on top of there, have Levelator open, process the files, then close. Nothings perfect in life though, right? RescueTime - Free for basic account

In case you’ve ever caught yourself on a Friday thinking “Man, where on Earth did this week go?!”, RescueTime can tell you exactly where it went. This tiny menubar app quietly watches what you do on your computer — which web sites you visit (um…), which programs you run, how much time you take away from the keyboard, and so on. Then, you can pull a report at any time.

What’s even more cool is you can set “productivity levels” for each activity or web site. For instance, when I surf tmz.com, it scores that as -2 productivity. When I’m working on my own web site, it scores that as +1. When I’m in Keynote, that’s +2 productivity. You can even set targets — very cool when it emails you to say you just achieved four hours of productive time (which, oddly, makes me want to call it a day!).RSS Menu – Free

Like most avid blog readers, I use a RSS feed aggregator (Google Reader, in my case) to follow my favourite blogs. But there are a handful of blogs that I want to be alerted as soon as they publish. That’s what RSS Menu, another menubar app, does. You just give it the RSS feed URL of the blogs you want to track, and it’ll check them every few minutes (you control the frequency). If there’s new content, it’ll alert you via Growl (and optional speech) — click on the notification and it’ll take you right to the new post.

RSS Menu is donationware and can integrate with iTunes podcasts and Safari RSS feeds.XSlimmer – $14.95 U.S.

Back when Apple switched from Motorola processors to Intel processors, all the applications had to switch as well. The way most developers did this was to distribute a “universal binary” which contained the instructions to run on either microprocessor.

It’s been years since any Motorola processors were used to run Macs and there’s a 99% chance you’re on Intel. (Any Mac bought in the last five years or so runs Intel.) But many apps still contain the universal code. Xslimmer basically checks to see which applications still contain the old code and removes it — recovering disk space (sometimes a significant amount!) in the process.

Xslimmer is very safe. It has a blacklist of programs it knows about which can’t handle removal of the old code, and I have never once had a problem with any “neutered” program.Bonus: DropBox – Free for basic 2GB box

Dropbox is basically your own personal hard disk on the Internet. When you drag files to the Dropbox folder on your computer (it looks just like any other folder) those files are automatically synced with your Dropbox folder on the Internet. Then, you can access them from any web browser, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc. You get 2GB of storage free just for signing up — if you haven’t got an account yet, sign up free here and you and I will both get 250MB of extra space!

Shaw — like many cable providers, to be fair — bundle their most popular channels, forcing you to pay arbitrarily high prices for the single channel you want.

• If you want HBO — just HBO — you’ll have to pay for four movie channels.¹
• If you want just TSN2, you’ll be forced to pay for channels 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, and 87² even if you never plan to watch them.

This bundling is pitched to consumers as offering “better value.” In reality, it’s a way of obfuscating the price.

My Dream Ad Campaign

Just once, I’d love to see an ad from a cable provider in which the CEO, straight to camera, says

“We know our bundling makes ordering services from us confusing. That’s why from now on, each individual channel costs $3. Order as many or as few as you want. And take only the channels you want.”

The Sound of Shaw’s Silence

But we won’t hear this from Shaw. Actually, we never hear much of anything from the company. Shaw is a notoriously tight-lipped, family organization. It’s privately held and only the CEO-Owner, Jim Shaw, speaks on behalf of the company. Or, I should say, doesn’t speak. When covering technology for the CBC, I occasionally had to call Shaw for comment on related stories — not a single call for comment was returned.

Photo J McIntosh/CP

And good luck finding any social media channels — I couldn’t find a single Facebook page or group for the company, and the variants of Shaw’s name I guessed on Twitter clearly aren’t owned by the company.

Ordering Is Broken

Let’s say you opt to take your chances with the bundling game and add channels anyway — you’ll be doing it by phone since there’s no way to activate channels online. Shaw’s online customer care centre, at the time of this writing, actually returns a web server error. Classic.

Shaw would do well to get some basics underway — a monitored Twitter account and a Facebook page at the very least — and start listening to customers. It wouldn’t take much. For the time being, I’m holding http://twitter.com/shawcablevision. Jim, when you’re ready…

UPDATE: Apparently, Shaw has just hired someone to handle social media stuff. (Hat tip to Colleen.)

1. Three separate Movie Channel channels, plus a high-def version of one of the channels.
2. Canadian time-shifted channels

But there’s one big flaw in Apple’s design of the iPhone and iPad that still hasn’t been fixed — the onboard speakers.

On both the iPhone and iPad, the speaker is located on the rim of the product — which means that when you’re looking at the screen and listening to audio, the audio is shooting out away from you. This isn’t a problem for audio that’s recorded at decent levels, but so many videos out there (especially those on YouTube) are recorded with levels that are way too low. Cranking up the volume doesn’t help.

I often end up having to hold my iPhone in this position:

Although silly looking, this actually increases the volume significantly. On my audio test, cupping your hand in front of the speaker increased the decibel level from a peak of 70db to a peak of 78db. Since dB levels are logarithmic, this is quite an increase in the volume.

All Apple would have to do is locate the speakers on the front to provide better quality audio. (Misdirected audio also tends to drop a lot of the high-end frequency ranges, making the audio also sound muddier and duller.)

I’ve MacGyver’ed a solution for my iPad — tin foil (folded over several times to make it thicker) taped to the back and shaped in the same hand-cup form. It’s goofy looking, but works like a charm and makes listening a much better experience.

Griffin, which makes excellent ‘iProduct’ accessories, has an acoustic amplifier that looks great, but isn’t quite portable. ThinkGeek has come up with a simple but awesome solution — the iPhone Audio Booster is a simple piece of plastic that clips onto the bottom of your iPhone and essentially forms a plastic cup that does the same thing. Genius. And only $8.

Still, the right solution is for Apple to simply locate speakers on the front. Steve? Please?

N.B. On the iPad, speakers on both ends would also be good to provide stereo listening. But I’ll take what I can get.

I notice that some of my social media friends in Vancouver have put together an excellent day tomorrow called WordCamp (a day about WordPress). There are sessions on using WordPress as a CMS, being curious for a living, SEO tips, and the inimitable Dave Olsen presenting “Art and Technology Are Old Pals.”¹

I want to lovingly offer some constructive feedback to both their day and a trend in Camps I’ve noticed.

Are Camps Getting Too Expensive?

Tickets for the Vancouver event are $55 for the day. This surprised me. Generally, Camps in other areas/topics are free or priced low enough for most people to attend. Obviously, nobody’s making a profit here — the organizers are well-respected peeps in the local social media scene who donate a lot of time to various causes.

The Vancouver event includes a couple of coffee breaks, lunch, swag, and a social following the day. I’m not sure how much these cost, but my sense of Camps is that they’re meant to be an alternative to larger commercial conferences where tickets for a similar day might run several hundred dollars.

Are Camps Getting Too Organized?

But more to the point, I would argue that despite the title, the Vancouver event isn’t really a “camp” by the usual definition — self-organized on the day of the event.

Wikipedia’s definition:

“[Camps are organized by] sessions proposed and scheduled each day by attendees, mostly on-site, typically using white boards or paper taped to the wall…. BarCamps are based on simplified variations of Open Space Technology (OST), relying on the self-organizing character of OST.”

Vancouver’s WordPress tomorrow has a fantastic pre-set lineup — but does that not inherently make it not a Camp, by most definitions?

Last year, I trained to be an Open Space facilitator. BarCamps borrow heavily from Open Space. Their success is primarily based on the fact that those who attend drive the curriculum.

Do Camps Need a Mid-Course Correction?

Obviously, there is no official Camp company which protects its trademark. The use of “Camp” in an event name can be used by anyone, regardless of how the event is structured, how much it costs, and so on.

But perhaps events which are priced more than, say $20 or so, and those which have a pre-set agenda, shouldn’t use the “camp” designation?

What do you think?

1. Locals still talk about Dave’s über-inspiring “Fuck Stats. Make Art” presentation at Northern Voice a couple of years ago for which he received a lengthy standing ovation.

As I envisioned it, cell towers would be used to locate our phones and we would receive something similar to a text message when we neared an establishment with an offer to make like a special or time-limited discount.

That’s pretty much come true, although so far there aren’t any truly “push” marketing messages out there — the kind that show up on your phone suddenly, like a text message does.

Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla are pull-based — you have to be in the app and ask to see any nearby specials if they’re available. Clearly, a much better solution.

Still, though, I’m beginning to see what can only be called location spam appear on our phones.

Take, for instance, the deal Starbucks made recently with Foursquare. Any time you’re within walking distance of a Starbucks outlet, a special offer appears to give the mayor² a discount.

I live in Vancouver. There are more Starbucks in this city than stop lights. One intersection even³ has two Starbucks! That means that pretty much any time you use Foursquare in Vancouver, you’re going to get an offer from Starbucks.

Problem is, the Starbucks offer is lousy. It’s only for the person who has checked in the most — and even then, it’s a cheap offer: $1 off a limited number of their cold beverages.

I’ve stopped touching the “Special Nearby” banner because I know it’s just going to be a Starbucks promotion I can’t take advantage of.

I can only imagine this getting worse.

The real problem is that Starbucks — and other places that offer Mayor deals — aren’t being particularly strategic about their Foursquare placements.

Foursquare lets you offer a special to people who’ve checked in x number of times — a far more rewarding offer to your loyal customers. Or for a new store, offer a discount if it’s the first time someone’s checked in.

These cheap and prolific Mayor deals will be piling on top of each other soon and, if that happens, the whole concept will become pretty much unusable.

UPDATE: Rob Cottingham has some excellent thoughts on this here.

I’ve just started booking my new presentation Using Location-Based Marketing to Drive More Revenue: Six Key Strategies for Mobile Commerce. If you’re interested in booking it, please inquire about a date.

1. I used to own the domain mobilecommerce.org; I really should have kept that.
2. the person who has checked into that location the most
3. Robson and Haro

While helping a friend determine which stores had iPads in stock (here’s a hint: None!), I ran across this graphic on London Drugs‘ web site. It was in a block of rotating graphic.

It got me thinking how absolutely out of date the phrase “See in-store for details” is.

Print or broadcast ads, of course, don’t have enough space or time to list all the details like technical specifications, so this phrase was necessary. But is there really any need for it in the age of the web? Why didn’t London Drugs just put those “details” on a hyperlinked web page? It’s not like they were trying to get people to call for the price and rope them into coming in — Apple’s retailers aren’t allowed to discount.

It got me wondering — are there any other retail practices that are obsolete?

It reports on a new computer virus that can sneak onto your computer from other infected computers via unencrypted wireless signals, like the ones typically found in Internet cafés. From there, like most viri these days, it plants adware. The only difference between this and other viruses is it spreads from computer-to-computer on unencrypted networks, not by you opening an email.

Oh, and one more thing.

It doesn’t actually exist.

News releases from universities and computer-virus software manufactures are a kind of virus unto themselves. When you cover technology, you get them all the time. The formula is the same — a provocative headline saying there’s a new threat, that everyone needs to (a) download the University’s white paper, or, (b) buy/upgrade your anti-virus software.

Somewhere, buried several paragraphs down, is the confession that the virus doesn’t actually exist; it’s actually just a hypothetical one created in a lab. (To its credit, at least the University of Calgary’s news release calls it a “potential” threat in the first paragraph.)

You’ve got to hand it to whoever wrote the news release, though. They compare the (non-existent) virus to Typhoid Mary, the first person to contract and spread typhoid fever. Typhoid fever it transmitted over the air — hence, the likeness to the potential computer virus. They even coined the phrase “Typhoid adware.” Clever.

The best part, though, is the graphic the white paper uses to explain how the virus works:

Man. That’s one mean-looking virus!

The paper Typhoid Adware can be found: http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/papers/eicar10.pdf

The basics of the presentation focused on what “it” was — you know, that little something, that thing on the end of your tongue, that makes you know if you like a radio piece or personality or if you don’t. We all know if a host has It, but I tried to outline exactly what It was so one could duplicate it. Here is how I defined It:

• It is intimate. You are speaking directly into someone’s ears — even more so when they’re using earbuds… you can whisper to them. Radio listening is almost always done today by one person at a time; families don’t gather around the radio any more. And yet so many podcast hosts talk as if they’re speaking to a room — they use a hyped voice, or they call their audience “everyone.” Remember, you are only speaking to one person. There may be thousands of these one-person audiences, but aim to speak to just one.
• It breathes. One big mistake that many beginning podcasters, radio reporters, or audio editors make is they edit out the um’s and ah’s, and the long reflective breaths that sometimes inteview guests make. Unless they are completely distracting, you should aim to leave breath in. Breath is emotional punctuation. It gives richness to the words being spoken. One long, thoughtful breath taken before answering a tough question can say so much more than just the answer.
• It seeks the Universal Truth. The great radio shows, like This American Life, are always seeking a Universal Truth in their stories. It’s not enough to report the flow of what happened — try to find out why it happened and what your characters learned from it. In short, great stories give us pause for reflection. Great storytellers draw out those moments of reflection and give us the space to reflect.
• It takes time. It’s said that the best portrait photographers throw away the first few rolls of film they’ve shot with the subject. Why? Because in those first minutes, the subject isn’t as relaxed or comfortable with the photographer, so they appear stiff and uneasy. The documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is famous for interviewing people for hours at length, even if he’s only going to use a short clip, because he knows the longer one stays with a person, the more comfortable they’ll feel, the more they’ll tell you, and so on.
• It is everywhere. Always take your digital recorder with you, because amazing audio will happen when you least expect it. Even if you’ve got a podcast coming up but no ideas on what to talk about, just look around, take in your surroundings, examine the patterns you do each day. Content is everywhere if you know how to find it.
• It does not abuse music. Great music under a podcast should sound like the scoring of a film — like harmony to the melody of the words. Avoid recognizable songs because your listeners’ mind will be transported from your narrative directly into whatever memories those lyrics evoke. Avoid songs with words that “comment on” what you just said — for instance, don’t play “Life Is a Highway” just because you finished talking about hitchhiking. It’s predictable and a cliché.
• It is phony. Realize that the best storytelling employs a lot of tools to make the  a podcast or radio story really come alive. It’s okay to add a pause where an interview guest thinks. It’s okay to “act” while reading a script — in fact, it’s very much your job to make that script come alive.

Rob Cottingham, who pens the hilarious Noise to Signal cartoon, was in the audience of my session and did up this great cartoon summary of my points:

Embed this on your own blog or web site:

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Live Twitter Reactions

Unedited live Twitter reaction to Tod Maffin’s Taking Crazy Back keynote at F5 Expo, April 7, 2010:

Blog Reactions

“Tod Maffin was incredible. This is the second time I’ve seen him speak and he outdid himself with a very raw and thought-provoking keynote. My biggest take-away was when Tod asked the question how we, as managers, can reverse the damage our multi-tasking demanding world is inflicting on employees.”
– Amanda

“Perhaps the thing that makes Tod’s talk so powerful is that he isn’t one of those individuals you see on pedestals who have overcome all obstacles with relatively ease. Tod is human. Tod is like one of us. The fact that he continues to struggle with his inner demons, makes him someone everyone can connect to.”
– Henry

Inquire About Having Tod at Your Event

About the Keynote

With depression rates soaring in the workplace, do we need a radical new way of providing mental health services to our employees?

Tod Maffin [bio] thinks so.

Once the founder and CEO of a multi-million dollar technology firm, Tod’s workload and always-on personality finally caught up with him and over the following years, he was crippled by a devastating depression and addiction — all the while struggling to appear to be productive to employers and colleagues, and happy and healthy to his friends and family.

In this provocative keynote speech, Tod will reveal to your delegates how this always-connected landscape has seduced all of us into endless multitasking and infinite email — all the while pretending that this increasing workload is the best thing for “productivity.”

In fact, this hyper-connected economy may be both destroying the productivity of workplaces and eroding the mental health of companies’ most valuable asset — their people.

Tod will outline his own bold strategy for bringing mental health discussion out of the shadows in a way that will challenge your attendees for years to come.

Tod’s story is emotional — at once funny and poignant, sad and hopeful. Nearly all audiences give him a standing ovation for his work on the podium. He has spoken for the Canadian Mental Health Association, universities, companies, and many more.

It’s not the first time some organization has tried to capture and store forever the Internet’s content. The most visible is the Internet Archive‘s “Way Back Machine”, which visits web sites several times a year and archives what it finds. (Head back in time nearly a decade ago to see what my web site looked like on August 16th.)

The one thing I miss about life pre-digital are photo prints and flipping through a photo album. Oh, I know I can head to any drug store or electronics store, shove my SD card in, and get as many prints as I like… but, really, who does that?

Last week, I found myself flipping through memories in a photo album of my trip to Cuba, installing email systems in rural Anglican parishes across the country. I wonder if I’d have bothered to have gotten prints done had that trip happened today. Likely not.

The problem, I suspect, with most people is that because once you’ve bought a digital memory card, it’s free to take as many photos as you care to. So we take lots of photos. Way more than is probably necessary. Then, back at home, we end up with hundreds of pics. Rather than sorting through the best and getting them printed, we throw them up on Flickr or some other photo storage site and say to ourselves I’ll get prints of these later. And we never do.

What do you do to preserve your digital memories?

Over the last month, I’ve been undertaking a little project to simplify my living space. Part of that process has been to try to lower my living costs. Here are a few lessons in frugality I picked up that I thought I’d pass along:

You Don’t Need Paper Towels.
I’m a little embarrassed about this particular “revelation.” I’ve not used a paper towel in a month. And yet, I’ve done my windows, cleaned up spills, cleaned countertops, etc. Over the years, I somehow ended up with the erroneous belief that paper towels cleaned better. It’s not true. A couple of clean handtowels and rags work just as well. Besides being cheaper, you gain some storage space from where the paper towels took up residence.

Make Your Own Microwave Popcorn.
I love popcorn. Along with Shreddies and Corned Beef Hash (the canned kind), microwave popcorn has, sadly, been a staple in my diet. I’ve never liked popcorn that came from a hot-air popper (I find the consistency of hot-air popped popcorn stale). Turns out, you can make your own microwave popcorn with a paper bag. Put half a cup of popcorn in a paper bag and triple-fold it closed. That’s it! I assumed the fold closure would give and popcorn would fly everywhere, but that’s not the case at all — the fold holds the popcorn in tight. Who knew.

Kiss Cable Television Goodbye.
It’s been almost a month now since I dropped cable television.¹ I don’t miss the programming because I can still watch most of it on the web sites of the major broadcasters (Links to shows: Global TV, CBC, CTV). I’ve also gotten back in touch with some of my favourite radio shows via podcast like This American Life, The Ethicist, The Moth, On The Media, and plenty o’ CBC podcast lovin’. (Another nice thing about radio — you can walk around and do things while listening, which you can’t really for television.)

Rethink the Heat in Your Bedroom [insert dirty joke here]
I used to keep the temperature in my bedroom at 22 degrees, regardless of the season. I’ve since taken to turning the heat off entirely and, in fact, leaving the window wide open. I just started using a warmer duvet. Turns out the old advice of sleeping in a cold room is true — I do get a better sleep.

Eat What You Have
At the start of this simplification process, I vowed to not go grocery shopping for anything more than the essentials (milk, juice, bread, etc.) and that I would eat what I already had in my cupboards. My cupboards weren’t exactly bulging, but there were perfectly good items in there that I keep ignoring when doing the “what should I eat tonight” inspection. Tins of tuna, a box of Hamburger Helper, cans of chili, a bag of rice — I promised myself I would start eating these items away. It’s been a month and I still have plenty of them to go. As a result, my grocery bill is about a third of what it used to be.

What’s your best frugal tip?

1. When I called to cancel, Shaw said they would keep billing me until they could get a technician out to neuter my connection. If you argue long enough, they’ll stop billing you the day you request the service to stop. Which, of course, they should.

It struck me that many of the questions I get in Q&A sessions following my speeches were more about etiquette than anything technical. The most common:

• Should I insist my child add me as a Facebook friend?
• Is it okay to call someone to tell them that I just sent an important email they need to read?
• Is it okay to deliberately delay replying to an email, in order to keep someone’s expectations of how quickly I can get back to them in check?

One of the blogs I follow daily, AllFacebook.com, has posted a great little video about the etiquette behind tagging Facebook photos:

While there are folks, like Modern Manners Guy, updating the etiquette of daily living, I’ve yet to stumble across someone doing helping us all out with etiquette for our digital living.

In your books, what’s the biggest digital-etiquette faux pas?

Just when we tell them to get on Twitter, we make them learn our strange character codes that mean things on the service. DMs, RTs, @replies, #hashtags, ^codes… it’s not exactly the easiest learning curve.

That said, I think we need another tag.

Here’s an example. I follow Klout‘s Twitter account because I’m keen to learn when they have some news — an enhancement to their service, an announcement of downtime, that kind of thing. But Klout’s Twitter posts are almost all either @replies to people or automated robot posts. There’s got to be a way to filter those out… some kind of universal tag, like how the ^ tag became a way of indicating which person authored a tweet on a multi-author account.

And that tag should be [drum roll] the ~ symbol.

When used at the beginning of a tweet, ~ would indicate that that particular tweet was devoid of personal @messages and was a corporate announcement.

Okay, not really.

Clearly, there must be an alternative to this tongue-in-cheek proposal. Some companies have established different Twitter accounts — one for news, one for chatty things — but somehow that’s not the answer either.

Because filtering isn’t doing the job quote yet. So far, only Tweetdeck (to my knowledge) lets you filter out characters across a stream. For instance, you can (and I did) filter out RT from streams because I didn’t want to see any retweets. But that was for an entire stream, and not account-specific. And Tweetdeck forgets your filter as soon as you shut the program down. Hootsuite, the Twitter manager I use now, doesn’t even have that function (as far as I’ve been able to tell).

Is there a better solution? Am I missing something?

You’ll get an instantly downloadable PDF file, formatted just like a real book, that you can read or print out to take with you to read during those slow time in an open house. All you need to read it is the free Adobe Acrobat reader. There is no copy protection or digital rights management. It’s a simple, regular PDF file.

.

100% No Questions Asked
Money-Back Guarantee

Read Drive! and if you’re not completely satisfied, just let me know and I’ll refund your money — no questions asked. You won’t find a better return policy than that anywhere.

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Inside DRIVE!

The ASSURED ROI™ Model
You’ll learn how to deploy Tod’s system for launching a profitable social media campaign: Assume Nothing… Set SMART… Soft-Launch… Understand… Record and Measure… Engage Audience… Deliver Next Round.

Making a Better Online You
In this chapter, you’ll find out how to present yourself and your brand most effectively online — from the selection of a username to how to pick (and stick with) the perfect avatar.

The Tactics
This is the meat of the book — covering how to market yourself and your listings in social media spaces like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. It also covers why you shouldn’t overthink your web site, how to set up online focus groups, and how to launch an email marketing campaign.

BONUS: Tame Your Life
In this extra, you’ll learn how to set up your voicemail so that messages left for you are delivered directly to your blackberry (or any email address), and how to use an online ‘productivity tracker’ to get more done in the day.

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About Tod Maffin

Tod Maffin speaks to thousands of realtors each year about how to make get new leads and sell properties faster using social media like Facebook, Twitter, and more. He has spoken to:

• Association of Real Estate Licence Law Officials, Florida
• RE/MAX Edmonton
• CIR Realty
• Maxwell Realty
• Ontario Real Estate Association
• Banff Western Connection Conference
• Ottawa Real Estate Board
• Association of Nova Scotia Realtors
• Toronto Real Estate Board
• Canadian Real Estate Association
• …and many more

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What Audiences Say About Tod’s Presentations

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Despite grand platitudes of how Twitter is ‘shepherding a new era of corporate transparency and a spirit of engaging with customers,’ the fact remains that even the best corporate examples of such engagement on Twitter remain trivial at best.

Just because a company launches a Twitter page and assigns a marketing intern to tweet replies back to anyone who tweets them does not mean they have engaged in any kind of conversation or dialogue. They most certainly haven’t changed any paradigms, shifted any culture, or launched any new eras.

An @Reply Is Not a Conversation

Social media “evangelists” frequently fall into the mistake of trumping up this kind of direct contact as more than it is.

A conversation is not an answered question nor a thrown kudos. An example:

This friendly response to someone’s tweet is, to be sure, a nice little gesture on Rescuetime‘s part. But it’s just that. A nice gesture. Good customer service. Put down that pipe, Shaggy; it’s too early to spark that bad-boy.

What do you think?

Tod Maffin and Malcom Gladwell have been selected as the two keynote speakers at the upcoming F5 Expo in Vancouver. Hear Tod’s story of how he went from being an always-on multi-millionaire dotcom executive to crashing into depression and addiction. A story of hope and recovery, with a lesson to everyone in the tech industry; Tod will outline his five key tools to surviving in the techno-busy lifestyle.

More about Tod’s keynote • Register Now

What the Meeting Planner Said

“This event more than doubled any other event we have ever had so we were very pleased. The feedback from the evaluations provided was very positive… Everyone enjoyed Tod’s sense of humor and the way he gave the presentation. On a more personal level I enjoyed working with Tod thoroughly from the beginning with calls and emails as I was getting prepared for the event and when I met him. Tod was very accommodating and helpful. I have organized events for many years and I can honestly say that Tod has been one of the most accommodating and friendliest speakers I have ever had the pleasure to deal with.”
– Vickie Keeley, Medicine Hat HR Association

What The Audience Said

“I just wanted to let you know that I was at the Leading the Facebook Generation seminar [in Medicine Hat], and being 22, I thought you were hilarious and pretty much right on the money. I look forward to seeing another seminar should you ever come back to town!”
– Julia Jordan, Medicine Hat AB

“I really enjoyed the presentation. It was one of the best presentations I have ever been to, the information was great and you have an amazing ability in keeping the audiences attention. I have already taken a lot of what you said in your presentation and used it in my day to day communication with the older generations in my life. You are awesome. Thanks for making the stop in small town Medicine Hat!!!!”
– Lacey Amen, Medicine Hat AB

• “Very funny”

• “Look forward to more in the future”
• “Awesome!”
• “Great presentation!”
• “Excellent speaker!!!”
• “Awesome presentation; very informative; thanks”
• “Bring him back”

A number of providers can do this for you — it’s likely that your phone company offers this kind of service, where people leave a voicemail and the audio is emailed to you.

I use a great service called PhoneTag that goes one stage beyond that — it actually transcribes the message for you. You forward any calls you miss from your office or cell phone to the special number PhoneTag gives you. To the caller, it sounds like any normal voicemail, complete with your voice prompting callers to leave a message. When they do so, a human being somewhere transcribes their message and that text is sent, along with an MP3 of the actual voicemail, to your regular email box.

Google Voice and others offer something similar, but their systems rely on a computer program to try to decrypt what someone is saying. As such, it doesn’t know when a comma or period goes, can’t figure out when someone is spelling out a name, and so on. The people at PhoneTag are usually very good at trying to accurately transcribe the message. They’ll even put [?] after guesses if it’s not clear. If you’d like someone else to take a whack at transcribing the voicemail, just hit Reply and Send.

I’ve found voicemails come to me transcribed less than five minutes after they were left. I never, ever actually “dial in” to pick up my messages.

The other advantage to this is that because it arrives in your email box, you can store the message and audio forever. Search your email for someone’s name and you’ll get their emails and voicemails sent to you. It will even put their actual name in the From line of the email if you upload your address book to the system.

PhoneTag comes with unlimited voicemail box storage, you can still dial-in and pick up messages if you like, and 24/7 customer support. You can pay in any of three ways:

• $0.35 per message

• $9.95 per month for up to 40 messages a month ($0.25 for each message over 40)
• $29.95 for unlimited messages

Whether you are in a meeting, showing off a home with a client, or on the golf course, you can instantly see who called, what they said, and you won’t have to listen to all of your messages to find out about an important missed call. I often hit Forward and reply via email to the person who left the voicemail. They’re often pretty amused to see their words in text form.

You can watch this video if you like. It’s only about a minute long.

It struck me recently, that the screen you show to the security people when getting your carry-0n bags screened is pretty easily faked. You just need any barcode and you can type in the info you need below it. This would be about a 30-second job in Photoshop.

Save it to your cellphone and bingo — you’re into the “security” area.

Why would this work? Because the person checking boarding passes to get you to the x-ray lineup doesn’t actually scan anything. They just eyeball it — they’re looking to make sure you’re flying on that date, and they wave you in.

Of course, once you’re about to b0ard, they scan it and will figure out pretty quick that you’re using a fake screen.

But that could still get someone dangerous into what’s supposed to be a very secure area.

Is this something that hasn’t crossed their minds?

I thought I knew the right thing to do in the event of an earthquake — dive under a car or desk, right? Apparently, no. Not according to an email making the rounds, ostensibly from the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI).

Here in Vancouver, we live near a major fault line. We’re overdue by about 10-20 years for “the big one.” I thought I’d pass this along for anyone who lives in an area where an earthquake could occur.

Myth: You should dive under a desk or car when a quake strikes.
Reality: Most everyone who simply “ducks and covers” WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

Myth: If you’re in a “weak-framed” building, like a wood building, get out as fast as you can. Try to find shelter in a more stable building, like something concrete.
Reality: Wooden buildings are actually the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

Myth: If you’re in bed when the quake hits, roll under the bed.
Reality: Simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

Myth: A safe place to be during an earthquake is under a door frame.
Reality: Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed.

Myth: Take the stairs during a quake — never an elevator.
Reality: Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different “moment of frequency” (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads – horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn’t collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

Myth: Stay away from the walls and outer edges of buildings during an earthquake.
Reality: Actually, you want to be near the outer walls of a building, or outside of them if possible. It is much
better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

Myth: If you’re driving when the earthquake happens, stay in your car. Don’t leave your car for any reason.
Reality: People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway… The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

* Bonus survival tip: If you’re in an office which has lots of stacks of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper. It’s a good place to position yourself.

So, you need to convince people to turn on images. Of course you could always ASK them to, but you’ve not offering any real incentive to do that.

That’s where the ALT tag comes in.

Create an image and put in its ALT tag something like “To tell if you won the contest, turn on images!” or “Turn on images to see this photo of our CEO drunk at our last Christmas party.” (Okay, maybe not that last one.) Your “sell” has to be something that your email target would really want to see, and something that you can deliver only in text, like the URL of a special web site that only your subscribers would get access to.

That way, they’ll only see the information if they turn on images. And up go your visible open rates!

Thank you for your Facebook Ads payment. The details of the charge are below. Please note that, due to processing delays by some credit card companies, this charge may not show up on your statement for a few days.

Transaction Details:
Payment: $51,313 CLP
Date(s) of advertising services provided: December 23, 2009 at 12:00am to Today at 12:00am (Pacific Time)

WTF? I owe $51,313 to Facebook for running two relatively small ads for three weeks?!

I currently have two ads running on Facebook. They look like this (and yes, please feel free to click them; thank you!)

Together, they generate a fair number of impressions but relatively few clicks. Certainly not $51,313′s worth!

And then I remember that Facebook is frequently confused when it comes to its advertising.