CrapHammer

Time to put your dNeero where your Client is

CK has been going back and forth with Joe from dNeero.

dNeero is a service that pays people to take a survey and then pays bloggers to post the survey to their blog.

Since interacting with CK, dNeero has now launched the ability to have this money go to charity. 

Here is the survey I took today.  With the sponsor giving all the money to charity.

So here's my crazy call.

What about a private/charity partnership?  The corporation desiring the outreach/research gains good will and some data.  But they also agree to share a couple of points of data (questions) with the charity.  So the charity gets some needed data and money to boot.

Who is willing to consider this with a client?

Thoughts?  Is dNeero robust enough?

F the money (sort of)

What is the value that drives your business?

I was recently sent an offer from a blogging acquaintance.  He was offering to take 2 days of his time (including travel) and give a presentation on marketing to my team.  All I had to do was cover the flight and accommodations, both of my choosing.  Nothing more.

I went to tell my life partner about this offer and couldn't because a strange thing occurred.  Tears welled up in my eyes.  Not an easy thing to happen to a guy, let alone admit to the world.

It was an offer of kindness.  That simple.

So today, I spoke to this wonderful man and asked him if he was serious.  If I accepted, would he truly get on a plane and speak to my company for 2 hours?  And his answer was, "Yes."

Wow.

I recently traveled an hour across town to visit a brother of an acquaintance.  This individual was interested in social media and had a lot of intelligent questions.  What made this trip unusual was that there was no business opportunity, per se.  There was no meal purchased.  There was no money handed over.  And there was no sales pitch.

It sparked quite a discussion with a co-worker.  And I'm so grateful because it suddenly struck me just how much of my time is unknowingly spent treating money as the only form of transaction with any value.  It's the "bottom line" that drives almost every decision.

This person we met with gave us their respect and their attention.  What of these?  Do they matter?

What is the value that is driving your business growth?

Image Source: RebelBlueAngel

The BumLet arrives!

I am speechless.  But I can't NOT post it to the "craphammer" for reasons that will quickly become apparent.

http://www.cleanishappy.com/

Click on the face for Washlet 101.  Your life will never be the same.  ;)

Another great find from PixelPusher.

Announcing the Worst AOC Comment EVER

5 of them actually.

Everyone join me in recognizing these "AMAZING" conversationalists for winning my worst comment AOC contest!

Paul McEnany (an entire Care Bear script.  Priceless.)
Peter Kim (A spammer.  Who knew??)
Katie Chatfield (cheated)
Sacrum (barely made it... has trouble leaving bad comments)
Sean Moffitt (copied Katie)

Special mention to Bob Mcinnis whose comment was just too damn dead-on to be bad.

Anyone not wanting your book, send it to CK (who will give it away) , give it away yourself, or build a small table out of it.

Do you have YOUR copy yet???  It all goes to charity and it's an amazing book, folks!

Feel free to steal the badge on the left.  Please use it to help promote the AOC project!

If you are a winner, join in the promotions and display a badge for your new honors!!

Code for large version (195 x 258)

Code for small version (150 x 198)

The Age of Conversation Books Arrive!

We made a video of the occasion.

Enjoy.

Oh yeah.  Wait for the ending.

Link to video for RSS readers.

Remember, you can purchase your copy of The Age of Conversation today by clicking here.

If I go to jail...

This is where I want to go.

Link to video for RSS folks

Let's hope Conrad Black is this lucky.

As seen on PoeTV.  Thanks to the pixel pusher crew for the find.

BlogTV could have been amazing...

But they have systematically refused to: respond to feature requests, enter into any type of conversation with the community, or even respond on their support message boards.

But I'm not bitter.  Nope.  I'm just ANNOYED and AMAZED they are still at it.

To the point that I gave up on the service quite some time ago.  The fact that only Canadian's could participate AND watch the content produced pretty much sunk it, regardless.

But look what arrived in my inbox the other day  A wonderfully old-world email from the good folks at Alliance Atlantis (who I believe own blogtv.ca).

Not only is there no mention of functional updates (it's only been six months, guys), it's the ultimate in "pretending" to care.  Did I ever hear back from my emails, blog posts or any other actions?  Nope.  Not from anyone at blogtv, anyway.

With so many amazing online make your own TV shows, all 1 click away, I'm amazed blogtv.ca has lasted as long as it has.

• http://operator11.com/
• http://mogulus.com/
• http://www.stickam.com/
• http://vodpod.com/
• Know of any others??

Snapshot of email and annotations courtesy of the amazing little skitch.

Blog Monetization

Mack discusses blog monetization, a much visited topic in blogdom, but as in all things viral garden, he does so with style and substance.  And he directs a rather pointed finger at Jaffe and his latest sponsorship idea.

And he ends by raising a question to the rest of us.

"What are your thoughts on blog-monetization? Does an example like the Target blog work for you, or are you just fine with Jaffe's iPhone deal? Or can you think of other examples that could directly benefit readers as well?"

Time for me to come clean.  I'm all for monetizing a blog under certain circumstances.  CK and I have discussed it and I've emerged with only a slightly bloodied lip and blackened eye.  But I don't mean to take her on as I totally get and support where she's coming from.  The problem is in the definitions and by translation, the context.

Blogging is a bad term.  David Armano has called for us to not refer to people as bloggers.  And I finally understand his concern as the concept of a "Blog" is equally misleading and key to this discussion.  It's like referring to Time Magazine, The Economist, The Mary Peabody Association for Ants Newsletter, a personal diary and my craphammer blog all as the same thing.  We wouldn't think to do this.  We intrinsically understand they are each different.

Yet we refer to every blog as a single entity without meaning to do so.  As a blog.  And they are anything but a single thing.  There are so many different types of blogs which is further compounded by an endless number of purposes and intentions.

There are blogs that aggregate content by topic or area.  There are blogs that are looking to be an online 'zine of sorts.  And there are blogs that are basically extensions of the blog owner.  Just to name a few.

Okay.  Now I can answer the question.  Let's assume we are talking about an individuals site.  Not some multi-author zine with editors and online ads to fund it.

How do you deal with the bias?  We all have bias.  But when someone is giving us a gift or money, does this not change our evaluation of their site or offering?

To put myself on the spot, how do we handle this as consultants?  We're paid to asses a company's products, messaging, organization, what have you.  It's part of what many of us do. 

When a company brings me on board, I assume they want me to be real.  To be harsh where necessary.  Part of what they are paying me for is to mirror back to them what they cannot see because they are too close to it.

But, if I am truly honest with myself, it also means I am agreeing to play by their rules, however inane and subconscious these may be.  I am agreeing to provide them a certain level of service in a certain manner.  Anyone who has ever lost an account for "social" or "unusual" reasons has felt this quite directly.

Mack asks some great questions. I wish I had some better answers.  But hopefully there is value in having this conversation.

Oponia just spanked my bottom

I almost worked at a traditional agency.  I know, I know.  Hard to believe.  But I met an amazing woman and next thing I knew I was in an hour long conversation with the head of digital for McLaren McCann.  They were both intense, intelligent and wonderful.

I was offered a number of positions, but was used to the digital world and couldn't handle the pay cuts.

So cut to present where I find out that this amazing woman is now the CEO of a new software collaboration tool.  It's called "oponia.com".  And while it's still in alpha, it's a damn pretty little idea and a powerful piece of software.

There are two models commonly used for file sharing, if we simplify things:  Peer to Peer and Web based.  Peer to Peer is instantaneous for chatting and annoyingly slow for file sharing, not to mention great for stealing things.  So web based is all the rage for sharing files.  Upload. Download. Email them.  Etc.

Regardless of how you send a file to someone,  you have to wait for your file to upload to the server or for your file to get through to someone peer-to-peer.  But let's face it, peer-to-peer file sharing is beyond frustrating and unreliable.

It took me a while to realize just what oponia.com was.  But now I think I get it.  They're launching a port 8080 web delivery service on my little computer and allowing me to have the real-time nature of peer-to-peer with the reliability and accessibility of a web interface.  All without exposing the address of my little laptop.  Brilliant.

Come with me through this little slideshow demo and I will stop babbling about the technology and show you how it works.

SlideShare link for RSS readers

BRILLIANCE:

• Drag and drop something into a share folder and it's INSTANTLY shareable.
• That's right.  NO WAITING.  Blew me away.  I dragged hundreds of megs into a folder and then went online and played them.  Instantly.
• Easy to operate password controls on folders you share.
• Wonderful photo and music players BUILT in to the web experience.  GREAT for sharing things and not having to worry if users can view them or not.
• LOVE the fact that I can use local folders.  I don't have to run through an application.  I can use my finder to move files into my share spaces.
• Simple and quick install.  No AIR or any other crap required.
• Mac, PC and Linux support

NICE TO HAVES:

Let's remember that this is ALPHA software.  To say I was blown away is an understatement.  But in the hopes to provide feedback to the development team, here goes

• Skitch (what I used to grab all the snapshots) blew me away when I installed it because it instantly popped up an "introductory video" on first launch.  Brilliant.  Oponia loads up the help page as a good interim step but what about a video intro that starts to play?
• The shared folders have a lot of other crap in them.  Is there any way to hide all the HTML and CSS so that I only see the shared files folders?
• LOVE the music player.  Hoping you will expand the playable formats beyond mp3
• I didn't read the directions (never do) so couldn't understand why my mp3's wouldn't play.  Is there any way you can check for loose mp3's in the main share directory or warn users to put these into a subfolder?
• Be awesome to have forward and back and slideshow in the photo albums

My one question.  What happens if you disconnect your computer from the internet?  Is there any cache'ing of content planned or is your content then unavailable?  I'll hopefully get Leigh or someone to come in here and comment to answer this for us all.

Overall.  Frigging amazing.   I can't wait to see what the Beta and 1.0 versions bring!

You can request an alpha download here.

Link Tuesdays, Episode 3

Adliterate calls for a rethinking and move back to powerful brand monologues.  He argues powerfully that this shift towards working with empowered consumers is anything BUT an argument against brand monologues.  I give a lot of links to Richard cause he's f'ing brilliant (for an old timer - grin).  Worth a read.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Skitch is the SHIT.  I have been a long proponent of Snapz Pro X on the Mac.  But no more.  Skitch kicks its ass.  I can grab screenshots, annotate them and share them quickly, effectively and easily.  Brilliant.  Send me a comment if you want an invite.  But I only have 2.  Kate is rumored to have 50!  ;)

Do you have a Flogging program?  LOL.  Johnnie Moore points out this great link to a video on how to deploy forced blogging inside your organization.  If you enjoy, follow or support KM practices in any way, you have to watch this video.  Love it.

What can Jazz bring to planning?  The meme huffer brings it home with Mingus.

But to bring my list home is no-one other than the ubiquitous Gavin.  Want to understand what drives social media?  A very smart woman told me the other day that local is what is immediately available to us.  Gavin builds a smaller world for me to share.