MichaelValiant.com—Conversations on Ecommerce & the Social Web (& maybe a few other things)

My Daily Twitter - 2007-09-26

Michael | September 26, 2007

Thinking about how to manage many social media streams and effectively present them to the people looking for them… #
@chrisbrogan my experience says they need to know WHY they ought to do it… over, and over, and over again #
@chrisbrogan it took me 8 months just to get a blog implemented at work the first time #
ah, time to put kids to bed! #
Ah! how’d it get to be 2 am already?!?! #
lol, You know you’re too busy when you forgot your press release went out & you stumble across it on CNN! http://money.cnn.com/news/news … #
oops, broke link @@!*!*& Twitter http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/primenewswire/126848.htm #
@chrisbrogan I just saw a twitter you made earlier… Has another podcamp Toronto been scheduled? I hadn’t heard anything about it. #

2.9

In a nutshell… The Thirty Day Challenge is about making your first $10 online. For a full 30 days Ed Dale, Dan Raine and crew are going to show you exactly how to start your own Internet business and generate your first income online without spending a dime.

That’s right, this is going to cost zip, diddly, nothing, nada, ziltch. The entire training program is free, and you won’t have to spend a thing to get your business started and begin making money. No credit card required.

WHY AM I PROMOTING THE THIRTY DAY CHALLENGE?

‘Cause I want to!

Just kidding! I’m promoting it because I believe that Ed Dale, Dan Raine and everyone else who had a hand in putting this program together have done a great job.

I’ve had an ear in the Internet Marketing world for a number of years; have listened, watched and participated in dozens of different programs and products; have attended numerous seminars and shows; listened in on, and even hosted dozens of teleseminars; and have been lucky enough to be able to chat with some of the best in the business… So I know quality when I see it.

And the fact that Dan and Ed are giving it all away COMPLETELY free is incredible and humbling and when it comes down to it, that’s the kind of people that I want to be involved with and promote.

This isn’t a promotion for money (it’s free after all) this is heartfelt promotion in a quality product that can help beginners get a leg up online.

This also isn’t a one off sort of thing as I also agreed to act as a moderator in the Thirty Day Challenge Forum!

So, if you want to learn the basics of Internet Marketing, this is the program for you.

If you don’t really want to be an Internet Marketer, but want to run a ‘real’ (and by that I really mean a ‘more-traditional’) type of business online, this is still the program for you.

So what are you waiting for… it’s free after all!

Get Started with the Thirty Day Challenge here!

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2.9

Topics: 30 Day Challenge | Comments

Oops, my Ampersand was hanging out!

Michael | September 26, 2007

Thank you to the people who took the time to point out my shortcomings

Just kidding!

You may have noticed some odd characters (&nspb) in a couple places on the blog the last few days.

When I get into tweaking mode on my blog I just hand code my changes and looks like I made a typo which was displaying in my sidebar in a couple places.

This has been fixed and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who took the time to let me know!

Appreciated it!

Michael

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2.9

Topics: Conversations | Comments

Google Found My Facebook

Michael | September 26, 2007

Google found me yesterday.

Want to find me too?

http://www.facebook.com/p/Michael_Valiant/806222505

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2.9

Topics: Facebook, SEO | Comments

Testing out Comment Captcha

Michael | September 26, 2007

I really need some extra help filtering out comment spam on some of my sites. The 1ShoppingCart blog is particularly bad for Spam receiving floods of it everyday, and while Akismet is a life saver, there is still a ton of crap that gets through and eats into my time when I have to go and delete it.

So I am testing out ReCaptcha.net’s solution here. I think it looks great, I’ve seen it around more and more lately and most importantly, I’ve never had an issue reading the text it requires you to rewrite.

I also prefer Captcha software that requires you to retype an actual word. It doesn’t make a difference to a bot whether the image is a word or just a random jumble of characters, but it certainly does to your human visitors.

So, while I run this little experiment, tell me what you think:

Do you hate having to retype those squiggly letters?
Do you have any idea why these types of images are appearing all over the place in the last couple of years?
Do you have a preferred solution that you use?

Anything else?

let me know!

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2.9

Topics: Online Security | Comments

My Love/Hate Relationship with the Internet and Social Media

Michael | September 26, 2007

It’s true; the Internet, new media, social media etc… All of it… Bah, it frustrates me sometimes.

This coming from a guy who generally spends anywhere between 10 and 12 hours a day staring at a computer screen… Regularly has in excess of 20 tabs open per Firefox browser (often having two browsers open to handle the organization better!)… and both works, and plays in this industry.

First, what’s there to love about the Internet and Social Media?

Actually I could talk about that for a long time and I’ll likely lose you before I’m done so let’s just look at a few of the big ones:

Democratization of Data, Media and Public Expression
The never empty cornucopia of ideas and information readily available
The near-complete levelling of social strata and class access
To borrow from Wendy Harman, the ‘Realness’ caused by social media (even when it’s fake!)
My ability to join conversations and ‘participate’ while living in a small city in the middle of nowhere!

Now for some of the things that regularly frustrate me in the world of Social Media:

Even though I can join and maintain incredible online conversations while living in the middle of nowhere, I regularly find myself jealous of people living in the HotSpots of California and other larger urban areas who are able to connect with other people with similar interests in an offline setting through groups, unconferences, meetups etc. My conversations are largely restricted to the online worlds of Twitter, facebook, blog comments etc (which I’m grateful to have BTW!)
Trying to stay on top of the quickly evolving social media landscape is both exciting and frustrating. I read once that one year of business online is the equivalent of 5 years offline. And I think the disparity is widening as the online world picks up steam.
Trying to stay organized. Lifestreams, Datastreams, RSS feeds. We want to BE in as many places as possible (create your footprints!) but eventually it starts becoming cumbersome to manage all the data and various platforms creating them.

What do you think?

What do you love about the online world and where it’s going?

And what really chaps your @ss when it comes to Social Media and the online world?!?

(Photo Attributed to… oh wait, that’s my photo!)

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2.9

Topics: Conversations, Social Media | Comments

My Daily Twitter - 2007-09-25

| September 25, 2007

@christianBurns LOL That’s a very ‘lemming’ thought (re: heros) #
@christianburns I laughed mostly because I had the same thought last week #
I love Stoopid Criminals stories! http://mashable.com/2007/09/24/flickrbooth/ #
huh, anyone know anything about this? ttp://www.downloadablemedia.org/ #
Interesting! http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/app #
@kosso I think they are alphabetical… by name #

Topics: Tweets | Comments

What keeps you up at night?

Michael | September 25, 2007

I watched Jeremiah Owyang Interview David Parmet yesterday and loved his last question:

What Keeps You Up At Night?

David had a great response too, which basically boiled down to being excited by, but having a fear of not being able to keep up with the rapid pace of change the online world will experience over the next 10 years.

I absolutly agree. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where we are lately and trying to take stock of the union (as it were). I’ve been trying to remember where I was 15 years ago - university- and what I was doing from a technology standpoint - I had recently bought my first CD & my first LaserDisc, was using Pine Mail to check my email and was probably still using a BBS on a 2400 baud modem -

We’ve come a LOOOONG way in 15 short years, LaserDiscs are long since obsolete (although I still have a small collection :), CDs and even DVD’s are slowly following and thinking too much about using a 2400 baud modem WILL keep me up at night.

Thinking about how far we’ve come online from just four years ago - when audio and video were little more than an Internet pipe dream - makes my head spin. Trying to see where we’re going to be 10 years from now is equal parts exciting and down right scary.

Of course, that’s one of the main reasons I’ve started this blog now. This is my little corner of the Web to poke, prod, experiment, ask questions and otherwise look at all those things that ‘Keep my up at night’.

And I really want to know what ‘Keeps You Up At Night’ too.

Tomorrow I’ll take a closer look at some of the other things that are making my head spin lately and give you a bit of an idea of some of the things I’ll be discussing around here!

If you want to stick around for the conversation, subscribe to my feed here!

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Topics: Conversations | Comments

Babies Sleep!?

Michael | September 25, 2007

I’d love to meet the folks who first started using “sleeps like a baby”. I’d like to sit them down and have a long heart 2 heart; trying to find out exactly what they were feeding their kids that made them sleep so well.

My experience with kids and sleep is that they never do for long!

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Topics: Errant Thoughts | Comments

Why do we love social media?

Michael | September 25, 2007

Was just over at the the Buzzbin and read the interview with Wendy Harman of the American Red Cross. Social media is a forum that was made for non-profits and I’m always interested in seeing how they are taking advantage of available tools (read how the Red Cross is using Twitter to see what I mean!)

I love asking people what they like about the Internet, web 2.0 and of course the social web and new media and Wendy had a great answer:

I also truly enjoy the realness it encourages. I love the blurring of personal and professional personas, I love the democratization of media, I love the many gray areas it’s created in the world of intellectual property, I love its messiness, and I love the sheer gargantuan possibility for collective knowledge sharing. This is an exciting time. Plus, bloggers tend to be snarky and clever and funny and creative and I am easily amused by them.

Cheers Wendy!

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Topics: Social Media | Comments

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