What can you really get for a dollar?
Michael | April 15, 2008
Apparently you can gain access to the video recordings and take-aways of Matt Bacak’s previously (very) expensive seminars.
I think I’ll pay my buck just to see what he has to offer, although there is very little any of the Internet Marketing ‘gurus’ have to say that suprises me anymore.
That being said, I met Matt last fall down in Georgia and have to say he was refreshingly down to earth and I enjoyed hearing about his process at the time. That and the fact that all monies are apparently being forwarded on to Habitat for Humanity are good enough reasons for me to part with my dollar.
I am curious though what Matt’s affiliates are gaining from this. I’ve received email from a number of different marketers regarding the event, and some of them are offering various perks for using their link. Not a new tactic of course, I suppose it just proves that the list rules!
Anyway, I’ll offer some kind of review once I’ve had a look through, so stay tuned, or go pick it up yourself here.
| 2.9 |
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The Dao of Twitter
Michael | April 14, 2008
I almost titled this post: “How I hate Mondays” but Twitter came to my rescue and what started as an idle search actually ended up making me feel a little better about the beginning of the week!
This all started off with a headache on a Monday morning… here’s a personal confession for you: I hate Mondays. Not JUST because it’s Monday or because I don’t like my job or most of the typically cited reasons… actually, my hatred also extends to the first day back to work after more than 2 days off; there are a few reasons I hate Mondays, but lets just leave it at the fact that I love spending time with my family so hate to see the end of the weekend 
So here we are on another Monday and I thought I’d try and make myself feel a little better by checking out the TwitterSphere to see if there was anyone else down on the Mondays. And I have to say, I was surprised to discover how much hate there actually was floating around so early in the week… Here is a small selection of the Monday hate notes that jumped out at me (Names withheld to protect the innocent haters):
I hate Mondays.
Ugh I really hate Mondays,
I think I hate Classmates.com
I hate her “food” and I use the term loosely
I hate money
I hate getting my oil changed
RAWRRR I HATE SCHOOL
I HATE the internet
I HATE sport
I hate most musicals. TALK OR SING. I hate sing-talk
I hate all things Adobe
I hate insurance companies
I hate stupid people
Did I mention I hate this airport? No? Well, I hate this airport
I hate job hunting
Switzerland… Crap. I hate going there…
argh! i hate flickr
I hate it when you open a foiltop yogurt and it spatters you
I hate buses
Now, I’m a big believer in Karma and Vipaka, what goes around comes around, do unto others… etc, etc, etc. Whatever your nationality, the colour of your skin or your religious beliefs, it’s been my experience that you’ve likely heard some variation of this…
Basically, <sidetrack warning> we humans generally know that it’s a pretty good idea to conduct ourselves in a moral and positive manner. (unfortunately for too many people, daily life gets in the way and we tend to react instead of acting)</sidetrack>
Where I’m (eventually) going is that reading this list of Monday morning hatred actually made me feel more down than when I started (although there were some, like “I hate sweating”, that DID make me laugh), and I figured that the Universal Karma of Twitter couldn’t let this list go unanswered; Twitter, by the very laws of the universe, must balance itself out in someway…
so I did another search and found that I was right, the Twitterverse has balanced itself out:
| The ‘I Hates’ | The ‘I Loves’ |
| Switzerland… Crap. I hate going there… | I Love NYC. or (runner up: ‘Dear Canada: I love you and your wonderfulness’) |
| RAWRRR I HATE SCHOOL. | I love this school thing. |
| I hate all things Adobe. | I love InDesign |
| I hate it when you open a foiltop yogurt and it spatters you. | <who can refute that!?> |
| I hate her “food” and I use the term loosely | I love linguine al pesto and pasta fagioli. |
| Did I mention I hate this airport? No? Well, I hate this airport. | I love flying Jet Blue |
| I hate getting my oil changed. | I love it that the place I get my oil change is next door to the bakery. Bear claws for bfast! |
| argh! i hate flickr. | I love the pics you used in your latest post! |
| I HATE the internet. | God I love the Internet. |
| I HATE sports. | I love Kickball… |
| I hate most musicals. TALK OR SING. I hate sing-talk. | I love My Fair Lady! |
| I hate money. | I love money |
| I hate job hunting | I love job postings that are unintentionally accurate: |
| I hate insurance companies | |
| I think I hate Classmates.com | i love woot. |
| i hate stupid people | I love when people are hella stupid. (I know… doesn’t exactly refute the hate… but funny) |
| I hate buses, | I love the transit. thats how I plan my bus rides. |
| I hate Mondays. | <wait for it> |
| Ugh I really hate Mondays, | I love Mondays… Fresh start. Fresh Perspective. |
This made me feel much better… The Dao of Twitter has taken care of itself this Monday morning. And I hope there is a small lesson in this for everyone… Always look on the bright side of life (I can’t even TYPE that without hearing the Monty Python song!)
I also want to say thanks to jacoutofthebox for the ‘I love Mondays’ quote. Fresh start, Fresh Perspective. I like it and will be making an attempt to start loving Mondays a little more.
Do you have a good reason to love/hate mondays too?
| 2.9 |
Topics: Dao of Twitter | Comments
Observations of a New(ish) Parent # 228
Michael | April 9, 2008
It really is amazing how many common and even household words SOUND like cursing when coming from the mouth of a 1 or 2 year old.
| 2.9 |
Topics: Errant Thoughts | Comments
60 days of silence
Michael | April 7, 2008
Wow! it’s actually been 2 months since my last post… (last post on this blog anyway)
What happened? well, 2 days after my last post my wife gave birth to our third child (3 in under 3 years!), work has been crazy, oh, and we had a flood and lost almost everything in our basement… ouch!
Suffice to say we’ve been busy.
But things are finally starting to calm down (yeah right… I hear that won’t really happen till the kids move out to university; about 20 years or so left and counting).
The good news is, I’ve had lots of time to sit (or more often pace) and think, and I have a notebook full of ideas to get all of my sites up and racing.
The game plan is to focus this blog a little more on the social media side of what I do, and how small and medium businesses can take advantage of the free and cheap tools to stand toe to toe with the big guys online… of course there will still continue to be some loosely related topics discussed from time to time…
Until then, have a great read!
| 2.9 |
Topics: Conversations | Comments
What if the internet just stops?
Michael | February 9, 2008
A few weeks ago a conversation floated back and forth around my office about how reliant we all are on our technology and what would the reprecussions be if anything would ever happen to affect our symbiotic relationships.
Then, last week, undersea cables carrying massive amounts of Internet bandwidth (as well as telephone service) started getting severed.
The first cables to go, off the coast of Egypt, caused huge outages from Egypt to India. Then later in the week, another cable was severed off the coast of Dubai. And yet another was damaged between the UAE and Qatar over the weekend.
And no one knows how or why this is happening but apparently there were no ships in the area.
And while there are some great theories spreading this week around why this happened or who could have done it, it really sheds a different colour light on that office meme I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
What would you do if you were suddenly disconnected?
Picture the poor sap on the Rogers commercials who’s always dropping cell connection everywhere he goes. Now picture that being you. Now picture that being you ALL THE TIME.
The thought probably sucks. And if you’re someone like me… the thought REALLY sucks
I can’t live in an unconnected world for very long anymore. As much as I don’t want the Internet to morph into a cloud, I’m submitting to the concept more and more all the time. I twitter and upload photos from my phone. I use Google docs so I can easily share, collaborate, and access my work. My address book, years worth of email communications and blog posts are all online. I have ultimate trust in the internet to protect my data for me.
So what happens if it just stops one day?
There are people who claim the Internet is reaching it’s maximum capacity or even an end of life and we shouldn’t rely on it. There are others who claim the Internet is one of the more reliable of modern ammenities. I think (fortunately) this event proves the latter. Despite losing more than half of it’s internet capacity initially, India had managed to rerout its bandwidth and had regained most of its capacity within 3 or 4 days.
But what if the infrastructure is aging… and what if the bad guys fly their planes into a couple of major datacenters next time? What if an act of nature takes it all out?
I don’t know, but I think I’m going to go export my Google spreadsheets. 
| 2.9 |
Topics: Conversations, Online Security, Technology | Comments
#1 Mistake in Product Management
Michael | February 5, 2008
Hi I’m Michael Valiant. You may recognize me as a Product Manager staring in such corporations as 1ShoppingCart… (sorry, I just watched the simpsons)
A new quarter has started, we’re looking at product road maps, and I’ve been thinking a little about Product Management; just in general.
It’s amazing how easy it is for employees inside a company to become institutionalized. I don’t mean that negatively, a good employee SHOULD become institutionalized to some degree and live the dream so to speak. It’s important, it benefits the company in a number of ways…
But, if you’re not careful, it can also lead to the number 1 (this may be a bit subjective of course, but it’s definitely up there!) mistake in Product Management (after Not HAVING a Product Manager )
Confusing Yourself with Your Customer.
Think about it. You, and your fellow employees show up to work every day, you live and breath your product. You know how to use it inside and out. You know where the all the strengths lie. You know exactly how you would use it every single day if you were the end-user.
But you aren’t.
And being institutionalized, we all wear our rose-coloured glasses as we go about our jobs supporting, enhancing, or improving our products.
The problem of course is that your customers and prospects don’t have your glasses on. They’re not immersed in your world and in all likelyhood, when they pick up your product for the first time they’re going to be overwhelmed, frustrated and bewildered. And depending on the complexity of your product, this ’stage’ may last days, weeks or longer.
…Oh, and did I mention that to your prospects, your weaknesses jump out long before your strengths?
And while you may be eagerly anticipating the next release to take advantage of the new added widget, most of your customers dread the thought of having to spend time to learn something new; even if it IS going to totally revolutionize their world!
But Wait…
There is hope!
And it all comes down to talking and listening to your end-user and taking their thoughts into serious consideration when planning your product roadmap or specifications. Each end-user is going to have a different opinion on what needs to happen within your product, and you’ll get plenty of suggestions that border on the unthinkable; but they help keep us on track and honest!
(and with all the social networking tools available for free online today, it’s easier than ever to accomplish… but that’s another post!)
| 2.9 |
Topics: Product Management | Comments
If You MUST Date Wordpress
Michael | February 1, 2008
photo by j.reed
Further thoughts on Dates within your blog (original post)
I’m no developer, but fortunately I can read php well enough to munge together what I need most of the time if I have enough examples of what I want.
And, in order to add the dates back here the other day, I had to go and figure out how to do it first which got me to thinking about different ways to incorporate a date within your blog…
How Do You Display the Post Date in Wordpress?
Here’s the code:
<?php the_time(’F j, Y’); ?>
You could mix up the variables of course, (this info was all dug up in the WordPress codex) depending on how you want it to appear:
l, F j, Y- Thursday, January 31, 2008F j, Y- January 28, 2008
m/j/y g:i A- 01/31/08 4:38 PM1, j F Y- Thursday, 31 January 2008etc.
How Do You Display the Last Modified Date?
While I’ve never used it, apparently WordPress has a built in merge code for displaying the date and time your post was last modified but only works within the WordPress Loop (the post generation code). So:
Published on: <?php the_date(’F j, Y’); ?> | Last Updated on: <?php the_modified_date(); ?>
Would look like:
Published on: January 14, 2008 | Last Updated on: January 28, 2008
Adding to Your Blogs Byline:
In the end I decided to add the dates back where I had removed them from in the first place, in the post meta data.
In wordpress, I simply edited my template (Presentation >> Theme Editor), opened up the Main Index Template file and added this:
| <?php the_time(’F j, Y’); ?>
Mixing it Up Within the Text:
While a little more work, you could also intermingle your posts date information right within your content:
CES was incredible this year, it started on the <?php the_time(’jS’); ?> of <?php the_time(’F'); ?>. What a great start to <?php the_time(’Y'); ?>!
Which would look something like:
CES was incredible this year, it started on the 14th of January. What a great start to 2008!
Adding the Date To Your Ending Byline:
Byline basically just refers to your posts identifying information and depending on your template may appear (as is the case with this blog) below the post title, or at the end of the post content.
Same code, different location!
| <?php the_date(’F j, Y’); ?>
And while we’re talking about it… stick this code into the copyright (*sidenote - I just tried to write that as ‘copywright’ and it took me a minute to figure out why it just didn’t look right!) that probably appears in the bottom of your template (in the footer!)
Copyright Date
Generally, if you have a copyright built into your blog template, it’s probably hardcoded. Now, I prefer to do everything online under a creative commons license, so I don’t have any copyright info on this blog, but if YOU do, save yourself the trouble of having to worry about updating dates every new year and stick to the following code:
Copyright & copy; <?php the_time(’Y') ?> <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?>
Which would look like:
Copyright © 2008 Michael Valiant
I think that pretty much covers it! Can you think of any other GOOD uses for dates within wordpress?
** update: arg! I hate that wordpress tries to ‘Help’ with code sometimes… Just leave what I put in damn it! I’ve had to edit this post 20 times because wordpress seems to randomly change some of my html! I think I’ve got it now…
| 2.9 |
Topics: Blogging, Wordpress | Comments
Building - or is that growing!? - Sprouts
Michael | February 1, 2008
I love what the team at sproutbuilder.com has put together. They’ve barely launched and have been struggling with server-load issues but the product is incredible (or remarkable as Seth Godin may say)
Basically, if you know what you’re doing (and I don’t!) you can jump in and create great flash widgets for your site in just minutes… it took me an hour to do the widget below!
There are a few things I really wanted to do, and the functionality simply isn’t there yet, but OMG! I am amazed at what these guys have accomplished with this…
It’s times like this that make me sit back and spend a couple minutes thinking about how I likely would have reacted if I could go back and tell myself (around 1980-85) about this product…
A time when I was using a Tandy 1000TX with 24 meg hard drive (I’d convinced my dad to upgrade from the 12 meg hd despite the salesman insisting we’d never need more than 12 megs of space!) and struggling to get my first 1200bd modem working so I could access a local BBS that had great .gif based games :)I never would have believed myself…
Go check out sproutbuilder today! (or take a look at their blog)
** update - having issues displaying the flash within wordpress… wondering if it’s just me
| 2.9 |
Topics: Blogging, Social Media, Technology | Comments
It’s Official, I’m Dating My Blog…
Michael | January 31, 2008
No, I’m not talking dinner and a movie.
If you look at the title of this post, you will now see a date stamp following my name.
Personally, I like not having the date stamp, but let’s call this an experiment.
And if it’s an experiment, we need some background and rulez…
Why Date Your Blog?
Why not you may ask? That’s the way they come after all right?
But did you ever stop to question why? What purpose does that date really serve?
I don’t think very much.
In most cases the blog date is just holdover from the ‘my blog is my online journal’ days (sort of like your little toes or nipples on guys; sure they may look good, but you don’t really need them any more!)
In some cases there’s a perfectly valid reason to date every post. For instance, if you’re using your blog as an online journal, or to report on niche news that may be date relevent…
I don’t think they need to be banned from blogs, but I also don’t think dates should be turned on as a default; in most cases it’s pretty much just evolutionary holdover.
Why Not Date Your Blog?
- It makes your blog look like a journal (which is perfectly ok… if your blog is your online journal!)
- Relevency
Relevency you ask? Yes, relevency.
The internet has trained us to consume content fast and fresh. And dating your blog is pretty much the equivelent of slapping each post with a ‘Best Before’ date.
One of the first things most readers do on a blog post following a topic search is look to see when the post was made. If the post is older than a couple of months, there will automatically be questions as to how relevent your content is.
In some cases this is good, but most of the time it just doesn’t make any sense. Why bother put any effort into SEO for your blog when you’re content is questionable after a couple of months anyway?
And while we’re on the topic of SEO, while writing this I did some searching to see if there were any conversations going on around this topic… T
There arent! so you may very well be hearing it here first (and i really would LOVE to hear what YOU have to say on the topic, so leave a comment below or look me up on twitter or your prefered network).
BUT… I did find a recent related SearchEngineLand article by Aaron Wall; and I quote:
Everything you do has a chance to provide a clean or dirty signal of relevancy to search engines and searchers.
And I paraphrase:
- Dates convey irrelevant information
- Dates suggest old, stale news
So When Should You Use a Date on Your Blog?
I would say the only time you should use a date on your blog is if you know it serves a purpose. Of course, this should be the philosophy guiding pretty much everything you do online…
But unless you are running some type of news service, I would rather see the date worked into the content when necessary, not earmarked on every single post just for the sake of “Just ‘Cause”
So, you said something about an experiment?
Here’s the deal…
I removed the dates from my blog in November. And since then, my incoming search engine traffic has risen by about 100%, especially from Google.
Now, this site is still relatively new and I do put a little effort into SEO once in awhile, so I would naturally expect my search traffic to increase…
But there was a definite jump starting in December and I want to know how much of that may be due to dating my blog (or not dating it as the case may be).
So at least for awhile, you’re going to see some dating going on around here.
| 2.9 |
Twitter and Social Media
Michael | January 25, 2008
A new friend on Twitter, Christine Taylor, or MouseWords as I know her on Twitter (if you are on Twitter you should friend Christine!), recently asked me a few questions after I live-Twittered the birth of my third kid…
A daughter, born January 11!
I’m going to dig (that’s dig with a single ‘g’) into the whole social media question more in the coming weeks and thought these questions were as good a place as any for me to get started…
Why Twitter our child’s birth:
This was our third child and one of the things that we noticed the first two times through was that there were always people we forgot to phone right away.
Social media provided a great way to remedy the problem.
From my cell phone I uploaded images to my flickr account, and sent regular updates via twitter.
I also setup my twitter account to forward to my facebook profile status.
It turned out to be a great way to include our family and friends (new and old) through the whole process without having to worry about who to call next!
An unexpected side benefit was the fact that it was really exciting for us to read the real-time encouragement and congratulations sent back to us via facebook and twitter (funnelled back to my phone via text messaging).
We were really happy with how it turned out and happy to share with everyone!
What is your opinion of Social Media’s influence on society in general?
For the general public, Social Media provides a variety of great and fun tools to stay connected with friends and family as well as connect with lost friends and acquaintances. I think SM services are getting more savvy all the time and we’re going to see more and more platforms that ‘do it all’, which will be a good thing; preventing us from having to log into 10 different sites to check up on all our friends.
From a business point of view, Social Media is becoming more and more valuable as more of the general public integrates their lives in the social web. SM is quickly changing the way we look at and think about media and its influence on our buyers.
Look at it this way… When most people make a purchase, it’s an emotional decision, and logic generally only enters to justify the transaction. As a company, we need to connect with our customers more powerfully than our competitors have in order to create a brand loyalty that will see people through a transaction. The better the connection we’ve made, the greater the emotional tie people have to our brands; and social media provides incredible ways to communicate and connect directly with the people who are already looking for us.
I like to tell people that in the wild pre-internet days companies would communicate with their customers via ads, in print, TV or radio; a communication style that isn’t unlike standing on top of a soapbox and yelling through a bullhorn, hoping your voice will be heard by the right people. All the advances, and globalization of TV and Radio that occurred by the end of the last century didn’t change any of that… they just provided bigger and bigger bullhorns to yell at audiences through.
But SM HAS changed all that. Social networks and social media and the internet in general allow us to find the people who are already interested in us and our products; talk to our customers one-on-one; and even proactively find disgruntled or dissatisfied customers instantly!
SM will likely never replace the 30 second spot (TV commercial), but any company that doesn’t invest a little time and energy to at least BE where their customers are, are going to find themselves losing out to their more savvy competition who realize Social media is an increasingly integral part of any marketers toolbox.
| 2.9 |
Topics: Conversations, Lifehack, Social Media | Comments
