Net Debris

Posted on July 5, 2007 Written by 7 Comments

I have felt so behind lately. I’ve been doing my best to keep up with the newest tools and social networks out there, to see what I can use professionally. I’ve been on LinkedIn, MyRagan, just joined Facebook, have arguably the coolest Twitter concept to date – yet I have done virtually nothing with MySpace or Pownce or Bougie. However, something happened the other day that snapped me to attention. It wasn’t me falling behind social media – I was leaving it behind.

It came in the form of a comment to my blog. Not, not this one. Accentuate the Positive. And not even the fancy-schmancy “2.0″ version that I self-hosted. This one went to my old Blogger account:

I feel for Scrushy. I know what he has been through and I know what its like to walk into Federal prison. Although in Scrushy’s case he was immediately taken into custody – something rarely done in a white-collar crime case. Scrushy has exchanged a life of prestige and power to living in a place void of most worldly distractions. But, prisons are places where real personal changes can occur. Certainly, over then next five years or so, Mr. Scrushy will have time for meaningful self-evaluation.

On a crisp October day in 1995, I took 23 physical steps… opened a door… and began a new experience that was life-changing. Thinking back 12 years ago, I would never have considered that I, a competent, well educated man, would be sitting in prison. That was a life educational experience where I learned, really for the first time, that there are consequences to every unethical choice we make. Though one might think that we can avoid the consequences, the reality is that they are unavoidable and certain. We just don’t know how or when we will face the inevitable.

I’m not sure Mr. Gallagher even bothered to see when I wrote the original Open Letter to Richard Scrushy – more than two full years had passed by. (For what it is worth, Scrushy did follow most of my advice.)

The crux of the matter is a realization that I’ve been littering the internets. I’ve got remnants of a blog that are still eliciting comments, as they are still ‘new’ for billions of people. I’ve got aborted blogs on Blogger, New Blogger, MSN Spaces, a LiveJournal page that I don’t update anymore, and any number of services and e-mail accounts that I signed up for just to keep someone else from impersonating me online. (Did you hear that, Steve Jobs?)

I’ve got friends in the communications biz who are sharing my same frustration about the future – poor Heidi had to go cold turkey because there isn’t a 12-step program yet. Others are wondering why social networks are exploding all of a sudden.  Joseph Thornley has advice on how to cope.  Heck – most of the people within my “virtual communications huddle” are spending half their time inviting each other to join something or other, and the other half kibitzing about the features and possibilities because they don’t have time to test-drive every one of them anymore. Yet I have yet to hear anyone talking about all the ‘net debris we’re leaving behind.

Even our junk has a Long Tail.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, social media, social networking, blogging, myspace, facebook, myragan, linkedin, pownce, atp2, Richard Scrushy, Steve Jobs, Heidi Miller, BL Ochman, Chris Anderson, Long Tail[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Marketing, Personal, Philosophy Tagged: , ,

The Fatal Flaw

Posted on June 29, 2007 Written by 4 Comments
New ATT logo

(Statement of Full Disclosure and Transparency: I do not have a non-working iPhone. I do not have a working one. I have been informed by my wife/CPA/CFO that I am not going to own one. At least not until we are out of debt and dropping crumbs in the kitchen on new flooring. I am an impartial spectator, and have not been bribed to blog in any way.)

New ATT logoApple and AT&T almost had it all figured out. The iPhone launch went off on time, and there seemed to be enough in the stores to satisfy the people who waited in line. There was enough frenzy and worry that by mid-afternoon, iPhone bids on eBay were topping $1,500.

But now the iHoneymoon is over. Already there are several reports of melancholy technohemes who have an iBrick: a shiny paperweight, devoid of cell service and functionality. Is it possible that Apple and AT&T were a little naive to think that Verizon, T-Mobile, AllTel, and the rest would ramp up their call centers in anticipation of losing business? Not only that, there have been internal issues lingering from the (old)AT&T/Cingular merger. Some are reporting that they can’t activate online because their number used to be a business line. That sort of obstacle should have been anticipated and eliminated. If nothing else, a separate web-portal to work around for those people.

The sword cuts both ways. Live by the iHype, die by the iHype. Assuming AT&T/Apple break every sort of record for establishing accounts in 24 hours, all it takes is a few well-placed high-profile complaint stories to be the one rotten apples in the barrel. (Anyone know if Jeff Jarvis got an iPhone operational?)

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Apple, iPhone, AT&T, Steve Rubel, Josh Hallett, Jeff Jarvis, salacious namedropping[/tags]

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged: ,

Spam Storm

Posted on June 27, 2007 Written by Leave a Comment
Cialis Spam

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. And that goes for good spam protection.

It’s been an interesting day at the office – I got a lot done, but I dare say I might have done even better without the deluge of spam that came my way. I even called it a “SpamStorm” to a co-worker.

Cialis SpamGiven that spam is more annoyance than anything else, who in their right mind would spend the time on such a low-payoff activity? Someone who understands the rules of internet business: volume, volume, volume.

The odds of actually generating revenue from a spam e-mail are quite low. Probably something on the order of 1-in-5,000,000. So, the proper thing to do is send out 20,000,000 messages. Sometimes the spammer gets paid based on an actual sale, sometimes just for getting enough people to “click through” to the checkout page.

The scary part is not just the increase in numbers of e-mails sent (one estimate calculated that 94% of e-mails sent in December of 2006 were spam.) Now the content is getting beefier (if spam had beef, that is.) The average size of a text-only spam e-mail is around 5500 bytes. That includes all of the biblical passages and random literary quotes they toss in to throw off the content-based spam filters. However, an increasing amount of spam is image-based: instead of putting the sales pitch in words, they are embedded in a picture file that averages more than 18,000 bytes. Not only is there more spam, it is even more unhealthy to “teh internet pipes.”

What provoked today’s spamstorm? A couple of co-workers thought our firewall might be down. More likely, it’s just the natural progression. Spam comes in waves.

So, what can you do about it? Here are my recommendations.

Turn off the preview pane in your e-mail program. Outlook, Thunderbird, whatever. The moment your computer tries to render the image in the spam e-mail, it sends back a request to the host server. In other words, by viewing the spam-pic, you have verified for the spammer that your e-mail address is valid. Just turn off the preview pane, or look for an option that blocks the images from unknown senders.

If you do happen to open an e-mail from a spammer – for everyone’s sake, don’t click anything. The act of clicking might just put a few pennies in a spammer’s pocket – and given the high volume of traffic they are dealing in, a few pennies here and a few pennies there add up to a ticket out of Mom’s basement.

Feel free to add your spam-stories or spam-suggestions below.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, spam, internet[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Marketing Tagged: ,

Top 11 Undocumented iPhone Features

Posted on June 24, 2007 Written by 7 Comments
iPhone

iPhoneThe Apple marketing machine is in the final week of a fever pitch. (Ordinarily, a phrase like “fever pitch” is just lazy cliché, but in this case it fits. Marketing does involve “a pitch,” the product is considered “hot,” and the collective drooling of the tech press accounts for “dehydration,” if not outright “illness.”)

Already, the mainstream media is heralding the arrival of a single device that replaces a cellphone, a Blackberry, and an iPod. Lost amid this excitement are several lesser-known features of the iPhone:

  1. Removes duplicates from address book
  2. E-mails daily call log to your account
  3. Universal remote control
  4. Voice-to-text recorder
  5. Wii-mote Wii-placement
  6. Stores passwords in Cyrillic
  7. Removes crabgrass from your lawn
  8. Performs minor outpatient surgery
  9. Emergency corkscrew, complete with suggestions from iSommelier
  10. SPF-50
  11. Saves your eternal soul (compatible with some Western religions; check with your carrier; some restrictions apply; see store for details)

If you “discover” any others, leave them in the comments below…
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Apple, iPhone, parody, humor[/tags]

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged: , , ,

Anagram Maker

Posted on June 16, 2007 Written by 5 Comments

Idea Grove logoThanks to Scott over at the Media Orchard, for finding me the Internet Anagram Server.

Without his help, I’d have never known that “Media Orchard” was really just a re-spelling of “Admired Roach.” You know – that adorable little pest that you can’t seem to shake.

There must be truth to these – as “Occam’s RazR” yields “Czar’s Macro,” loosely translated as “The shortcut fit for a king!” That’s making better communication simple.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Scott Baradell, Media Orchard, wordplay[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Marketing, Quick thoughts Tagged: , , , , ,

More on my pet project

Posted on June 16, 2007 Written by 9 Comments

I’ve still been plugging away in my quest to bring online tools and social media to the realm of disaster relief.

Here is a message I recently posted on the Red Cross Online Disaster Portal – which is being hosted at WordPress.com for the time being.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The links there roll back to my webspace – partly because you can’t upload mp3′s directly to WordPress.com – and partly because I am using a php-based link tracker to follow the downloads.

Twitter.comThe other piece of this project is still in Beta. (I’ve been waiting to say that for a while, heh heh…) The Red Cross Twitter channel is open. We’ll push that out in selected trials for evacuations and such, but we want to limit the traffic at first. We don’t want to establish it as a primary channel until we’re sure the traffic volume won’t crash Twitter.

The idea is that people in evacuation zones could “follow” the Red Cross Twitter feed from their cell phones, and find out about shelter locations and service delivery sites.

Please let me know what you think – or if you’d like to help us test some of this stuff.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, American Red Cross, Red Cross, disaster relief, communication, social media, Twitter, WordPress[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Marketing, Personal Tagged: , ,

Plating

Posted on June 14, 2007 Written by Leave a Comment

Somewhere down the line, there will be a rant about nouns that verbify, but that will have to wait.

While on one of my recent trips, I was struck by an observation: my food has suddenly gotten fancier. This would be easy to explain if it were a simple matter of giving up McWendy King for actual pay-at-the-table restaurants. But no, I can state for the record that my food – in presentation alone – is getting fancier.

Iron ChefI blame the “Iron Chef” series from the food network. I even found myself joking with colleagues that this particular establishment would have to work harder to get a full “5″ from me on ‘plating.’ “Plating,” of course, being the judging criterion encompassing the visual aesthetic of the collective ensemble. Or – for those of you who aren’t interested in looking up those words – the cooking equivalent of the Swimsuit Competition.

I can only guess that restaurants worth their salt (and only a fresh-ground sea salt will do) are banking that more of us are aware of this notion of “plating,” and are doing their best to ratchet up to the new expectation. Not that poor decoration and placement will cause me to walk out on my prime rib. It won’t. But a little attention to detail goes a long way. No, this was not my mealIt makes the difference between “carefully stacked pork medallions, arranged over a mound of creamed potatoes, with a pound-sign shaped cross-hatch (#) of asparagus lovingly woven across the top. I suppose that if my food is going to touch, they’d better prove it was Intelligent Design, and not accidental evolution caused by my server’s tectonic arm movements.

(Note – the picture above was not my meal. I did a Google Image search for “plating iron chef” and this pic was the second that popped up. I had already written the (#) line. Eerie.)

So, apparently I have been slow on the uptake, but I can see this trend has been gaining steam. I’m sure there is a generation of chefs that now feel empowered to be creative, but there is soon the very real threat that this will be considered a new expectation – a standard part of service instead of something unique.

The lesson for marketers – or anyone else who is selling something (like a message) – is stay alert to the demands, expectations, and intelligence of your clientèle. If your customers are getting smarter about how your service can be done, they will have more stringent expectations about how it will be done.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, marketing, Iron Chef[/tags]

Filed Under: Marketing, Personal, Philosophy Tagged: ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »