Blogging Gap

There will be a blogging gap from this evening until Sept. 7 while I move.  I'm sure I'll have many things to share from the experience.

Stay tuned.

Mobissimo

Sort of a airline price aggregator, Fast Company Now has a post that links through to Mobissimo.  Since I happen to be planning many trips, I tried Mobissimo vs. Expedia.  Mobissimo was never significantly cheaper than Expedia, but think the Google landing page vs. the MSN landing page and that gives the perfect idea of how much more no-frills and direct-to-the-point Mobissimo is to use.

Mobissimo returns results from all kinds of major sites and lets you know which site is providing the best price and who the carrier is; results are automatically ranked from cheapest to most expensive.  Additionally, there is a cool e-mail option that allows you to shoot the fare information directly to someone else via a simple java script application.

Note that Mobissimo does not actually handle any of the ticket purchases for you; it only redirects you to the site of the ticket that you pick.  Further, note that Mobissimo pulls prices from non-US sites that charge in foreign currencies.

Pretty cool find.

Gmail Invites

It's that time again, I have 4 Gmail invites available to give out.  I know that some of you e-mailed me before looking for them when i ran out, but I don't want to send you an invite if you've already received one.  If you previously sent me an e-mail requesting an invite, didn't receive one, and still want one, please paste in the original e-mail you sent me so that I can take care of you.

First come, first served; I'm sure they'll go fast.

Thanks for reading!

Including WiFi with cell plans

Mixed reviews though it may be receiving (here and here), the HP h6315 is a PocketPC PDA/phone with integrated GSM, GPRS, WiFi, and Bluetooth that is being exclusively offered by T-Mobile.  What's interesting outside of the phone hardware is the fact that the promotional rate plans from T-Mobile include unlimited WiFi access at T-Mobile hotspots.  If you use hotspots a lot, that means you are getting a $30 per month fee included in your cell phone service fees, so for $99, for example, you get 1500 whenever minutes, unlimited GPRS, unlimited WiFi, unlimited text messaging, unlimited IM, and for an extra $10 per month you can get access to corporate e-mail (note that there is no mention anywhere of unlimited nights and weekends).  I wonder if we'll start to see the same kind of deals from AT&T Wireless or if the Cingular merger will kill any sort of discussion of that kind of deal.

Blog Money Making

Wayne over at Blog Business World has a post regarding controversial ways to make money from blogging.  This ties directly into my post last week regarding putting ads on my blog.  From Wayne's post, here are some other money making ideas:

• Product Endorsements. Write favourable comments about products in your blog; perhaps even including them merely in passing. A link to the company website would be part of the package.
• Product Placement.  A more direct product endorsement would arise from using, reviewing, and recommending Brand X to your customers.

Interestingly, if you were endorsing and reviewing products on your blog and you had contextual advertising running, you might actually be help a different company also advertise on your blog simply based on the context of your endorsement.  So do you have to choose?  If product endorsements and placements take off, would you be required by those sponsors not to run contextual advertising?  Even better: could you get them to pay you not to?

Another small bit on quotes

For some reason Blogjet doesn't seem to like my pasting in from Word; turns the quotation marks and apostrophes into weird numerical/symbol strings.  I am going to try to fix this issue, so bear with me.  To all of those of you that read the blog via RSS readers, I apologize for the republishing.

Ross

Small Interjection on Quotes

A lot of the quotes I have posted so far list certain people as being CEOs.  In a class a took in business school a lot of CEOs came and talked to us; in 1996, these people were the CEOs of their respective companies.  I, admittedly, have not taken the time to verify their current employment, so I may very well be mis-stating their positions or companies and for that I apologize.

"The trick is to survive, not to be right."

"The trick is to survive, not to be right."

-- Michael Hora, CEO AT Kearney Management Consulting

"The key to greatness..."

"The key to greatness . . . is subordination.  Always look to be subordinated to something greater than you . . . Be subordinated to the truth, but be willing to accept other's truths as well."

-- Michael Hora, CEO AT Kearney Management Consulting

"You'll never surprise everybody..."

"You'll never surprise everybody -- don't spend a lot of time feeling guilty . . . change it or forget it."

-- Michael Hora, CEO AT Kearney Management Consulting

"Always establish expectations."

"Always establish expectations.  You can never exceed anyone's expectations if you don't know what they are."

-- Michael Hora, CEO AT Kearney Management Consulting

"Develop an ability to be a reasonably high risk-taker..."

"Develop an ability to be a reasonably high risk-taker . . . stepping into a situation that is uncomfortable . . . the dividend can be incredible."

-- Clark Johnson, CEO Pier1 Imports

"Proper use of power is..."

"Proper use of power is . . . to do things that make other people feel powerful."

-- Clark Johnson, CEO Pier1 Imports

"Attitude is the single most important thing for getting ahead."

"Attitude is the single most important thing for getting ahead."

-- Clark Johnson, CEO Pier1 Imports

"In America, if you don't believe in miracles, you are not a realist."

"In America, if you don't believe in miracles, you are not a realist."

-- Clark Johnson, CEO Pier1 Imports

"When in doubt, as the leader of an organization, change it."

"When in doubt, as the leader of an organization, change it."

-- Craig Weatherup, CEO PepsiCo

"I was willing to work hard..."

"I was willing to work hard . . . I was always willing to take risks . . ."

-- Gary Countryman, CEO Liberty Mutual Insurance

"You can never have a career if you approach..."

"You can never have a career if you approach what you are doing as a job."

-- Bernie Milano, CEO KPMG Pete-Marwick

"Don't get out of school and have it in your head..."

"Don't get out of school and have it in your head that you are making your one final choice on your career and company . . ."

-- Gary Countryman, CEO Liberty Mutual Insurance

"People must sign up in HHH..."

"People must sign up in HHH -- head, heart, and hands.  If you work for me, that's what I expect from you."

-- Craig Weatherup, CEO PepsiCo

"You have to differentiate yourself from your competition."

"You have to differentiate yourself from your competition."

-- Bernie Milano, CEO KPMG Pete-Marwick

"Look for differentiation in everything you do."

"Look for differentiation in everything you do."

--Richard Knowlton, former CEO Hormel Foods

"It is easier to buy than to hire and make."

"It is easier to buy than to hire and make."

-- Steve Luczo, CEO Seagate Software

"Only god creates miracles. NOT TRUE."

"Only god creates miracles.  NOT TRUE.  Plan miracles by keeping youthful tenacity.  Don't be afraid to take a risk."

--Mark Brown, CEO Best Western

"Have conviction in your belief..."

"Have conviction in your belief, but know the difference between right and wrong."

-- Steve Luczo, CEO Seagate Software

"naive simplicity + savvy = successful businessman"

"naive simplicity + savvy = successful businessman"

-- Mark Brown, CEO Best Western

"Success is on the far side of failure."

"Success is on the far side of failure."

-- T.J. Watson, founder IBM

"The significant problems we face . . ."

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

-- Albert Einstein

"To strive. To seek. To find. And never to yield."

"To strive.  To seek.  To find.  And never to yield.  These are the marks of excellence."

-- Mark Brown, CEO Best Western

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

-- Peter Drucker; Warren Bennis

Business Quotes

I collect quotes from business books; I keep them in a Microsoft Word file aptly titled, "Business Quotes."  While I find the quotes useful many times for presentations, papers, etc. I found myself questioning why else I was collecting these quotes.

Quotes are wonderful because they are free to collect; the only investment is the time that I put into reading a business text.  More than that quotes are wonderfully easy to share.

So here's my plan: Starting today and continuing through the next few weeks I am going to post every business quote that I have collected.  You will note that a lot of the quotes are from Tom Peters -- Tom was the first business author that I read when I discovered business books and I honestly feel that a lot of his writings helped me greatly in getting through business school.

As an added bonus, I will also share all of the quotes that I have collected that are not specifically related to business; these quotes are stored in the aptly titled, "Quotes" MS Word file.

I hope you enjoy.

Free Conference Calls

That's right, free conference calls on Freeconference.com.  So what's the catch?  Here are the big points of using the free service (Web Scheduled Conference):

• Maximum number of people that can call in: 100
• Maximum duration of call: 3 hours
• Phone number: a long distance number that is assigned when you set the call up

In addition to the free scheduled service, you can also using the free Reservationless System, but this system has the following parameters:

• Maximum number of people that can call in: 25
• Maximum duration of call: 3 hours
• Phone number: a number chosen from a list of available numbers
• There is no guarantee that there will be space for everyone that you want to have call in.
• You may receive a busy signal

This service is a big deal.  Chances are that your company (or you) are paying a conference call service some sort of monthly fee plus a per minute charge per participant for conference calls.  The thing to consider with the free services described above is that your long distance rate per minute is probably much lower than the price per minute charges.  Furthermore, if everyone dials long distance to get into the call, then the cost of the call is being borne by each individual caller rather than the company or person who is setting the call up.

I must say that I have yet to try this service myself, but I guarantee you that I will be using it soon and will post the results of my experiences.

As a side note, they do seem to provide a pretty aggressively priced 800-number option.

Is free conference calling the new instant messaging?  I feel that free conference calling is the perfect voice-driven complement to instant messaging.

Another reason to use Gmail

MarketingVox has a post with some great information about Gmail:

ClickZ's Al Diguido considers Google's Gmail service to be a burr under his saddle. It rasps his sensibilities that email marketers could have their communications displayed next to contextual search listings that could include competitors. Among the possibilities he considers is stopping delivery to customers who have Gmail addresses, although he suggests testing emails first to determine if there's an adjacency problem first.

Fine by me if you don't want to send spam to my Gmail account.  In fact, I remember even suggesting something like this back when Gmail first came out.  In fact, here's a quote from that post:

Here's a suggestion for 3rd parties sending e-mail to Gmail users: set your spamming, I mean e-mailing engines to not send mail to *@gmail.com and *.*@gmail.com. By doing this, you will be able to opt out of having your e-mail scanned.

Treo 650

For those of you that use a Treo 600 and are looking to see pictures of the upgraded Treo 650 version, they can be found here mirrored on Treonauts.

Watch the banned Corvette commercial

According to this post on Adrants, Chevrolet banned this commercial after it was shot because they were concerned that people might not realize that it was a dream.  You can see the spot here.  Apparently they were still concerned after they put the language, "This is a dream.  Do not drive without a license." on the letterbox frames.

I wonder if Chevrolet is smart (devious?) enough to pull the commercial and then circulate it on the internet in order to get people to opt into watching it rather than interrupting them with a TV spot.  The funny thing is, at least for me (and for all of you that clicked through the link), it seems to have worked.

Flipper

Do you need an umbrella stand?  I certainly don't.  But after looking at the Flipper umbrella stand over at this post on Funfurde, I think I might change my mind:

It's not an umbrella stand so much as it is a statement, a piece of art, and a conversation piece.

Trying to save interruption advertising

According to this post on Adrants, Jane Magazine has started a promotion where readers can earn prizes by using their camera phones to take pictures of ads that appear in the magazine and send them back to the magazine.  I guess this allows the magazine to tell advertisers not only the number of impressions an advertisement may have made based on subscription and newsstand sales, but also gives them an additional metric to report back on.  My point is this: Being able to report on the number of people that take a picture of an ad wouldn't convince me that people were really seeing the ad; prove to me that a camera phone picture of an ad is producing a $3 return to a $1 advertising investment.

As a side to note to interruption advertising in magazines: Those stupid new Virgin Atlantic tear out advertisements drive me nuts!  Not only are the huge and bulky, but they leave behind a strip of stiff cardboard that's been bound into the spine of the magazine that, unless removed, causes the pages behind it to fold around all weird.  It's bad enough that you've stuck this massive ad in the magazine, but I can understand the economics of the magazine business; what pisses me off is that when I remove that ad, it is not really fully removed and impacts my reading experience until I spend even more time to remove the strip.  Grrrr.

Manifestos

The 2 most generally useful manifestos that I have read over at ChangeThis are:

1. This I Believe! - Tom's 60 TIBs by Tom Peters
2. Do Less by Seth Godin

Read them, absorb them, pass them around.  The great thing about the portability of a manifesto is its absolute ease of sharing; it comes as a PDF so you can e-mail it and there are links within the manifesto to make the e-mail and sharing process even easier.  There's no more trying to keep track of your book if you loan it to someone or having to purchase multiple copies of a book so that you can share it.

The 2 manifestos are in no particular order -- Seth's is a bit shorter -- and you should not necessarily read them in the order I have them above.  What you should do is read both of them in a close period of time because they are extremely complimentary.

For those of you that have read all that Tom Peters has written, this is a great summation of topics that you will recognize; for those of you that are not at all familiar with Tom, this is a great introduction.  For those of you familiar with Seth Godin, this, much like Free Prize Inside, is another big idea in business (not just marketing); for those not familiar with Seth, hopefully this will inspire you to become familiar with him.

It used to be that there was a cost of entry to access the knowledge of of Seth and Tom: the price of the books, the price of the seminars, etc.  I am not saying that the books and seminars are not useful or worthwhile, but the cost of immediate entry just went to zero, and believe me, all of your competitors can afford that price.

Blogger's AdSense

So maybe this is old news, but to be honest, unless I do a major revision to my blog page template, the majority of my interaction with Blogger is through Blogjet, with which I author all of my posts.  In any event, those of you that read my blog via a web browser may have noticed that Blogger replaced all of the Adsense advertisements at the top of the blog with a Google search toolbar that searches the content of my site; exactly the same as the one located in one of the lower boxes on the left of this site.  Why did they do this?  Well apparently Blogger actually wants to make it my option as to whether or not to put the Adsense advertisements back on the site and to give me a cut of the revenues should I choose to put them back; this is pretty amazing for a free blogging service.  From Blogger:

You may have noticed that we recently removed our ads from Blogger powered blogs. We were making money from those ads but you weren't getting any of it. Now, we're inviting you to set up your own Bloggerized AdSense account so that you make the money. What's the catch? We're going to take some of the action. Based on what we have learned from AdSense so far, this will work out very nicely for both of us. Please note that this program is optional and that it is not required for you to have a Blogger powered blog—all bloggers are invited.

Note: As it says above, all bloggers, Blogger users or not, are invited to add Adsense to their blogs.

So will I do it?  I'm not really entirely sure.  Readership of my blog is hovering around 300 people per day that are visiting the site directly and I have no way of counting the number of people reading via RSS/Atom.  The Adsense items really only affect those people that do not read the blog via RSS/Atom, but I'm still not sure if I'm ok with putting advertisements on the blog.  I never started blogging to make money from it, although it does take some amount of time for me to produce the content that I do produce, so it is tempting.  Furthermore, I do know that Adsense is not going to affect the RSS/Atom readers by pushing ads via RSS, so that becomes a bit more attractive.  Finally, Adsense at least provides relevant advertising to the topics I blog about, so I don't have to worry about random banner ads about items that I would prefer not to be associated with.  And my absolute final thought is that we are willing to put up with Adsense as part of Gmail, so why not on my blog.

Any thoughts on this topic would certainly be appreciated.

Disabling the Windows XP desktop cleanup function

Here's the best guide I've seen on how to disable this function:  Eliminate XPs Desktop Cleanup Wizard.

Browse Happy

Browse Happy is an online evangelism site.  What it's profiled users are evangelizing is not using Microsoft Internet Explorer; the different users tell their stories about using browsers other than IE, so the site is not a marketing tactic by an individual independent browser producer.

The cost of entry for buying a domain, creating, and hosting a site is astoundingly low compared to just a few years ago.  Imagine if people united against a bad product in your industry.  What if the name of the site was "Enjoy Theme parks" and it was maintained by a group of people that were evangelizing not going to a certain major theme park because of poor quality.

In so much as aggregating real life stories to make an idea more personal, Browse Happy could easily be compared to Apple's Switch campaign.  Of course, Apple has millions to throw at the switch ad campaign and the ability to seek out influential people to profile in their campaign. 

The most scary thing for industries and businesses should be this:

If you are producing an inferior product, beware!  Your customers or potential customers will no longer put up with it.  They will blog about it and they can very inexpensively set up whole websites to evangelize about alternatives to your product.  They can easily create logos that others can use to quickly pass on the message of the campaign to thousands of others.  This is the viral marketing that you think you are looking for, but not the kind of viral marketing you want; it's viral marketing against your product.  And the old adage of "any publicity is good publicity" does not hold water in the lightspeed viral environment.

 

By the way, in case you haven't read, I switched quite some time ago to Firefox myself.

FlashMeeting

The Center for New Media has an interesting site that is dedicated to a piece of video conferencing software they created called FlashMeeting.  FlashMeeting, as the name implies, runs a video conferencing solution as a Macromedia Flash application, making the implementation usable by both Windows and Mac users.  Looking through the quick guide, FlashMeeting seems to have a lot of the function of Microsoft Live Meeting, but appears, of course, easier to use and doesn't cost anything (at this point).  I'll let you know how it works after I try it out, or if any of you have tried it, please let me know your experience.

Great Quote

Found this quote on the Business Opportunities Weblog, which was originally published on Brewed Fresh Daily and came from Howard Aiken:

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

OnStar + Verizon?

Apparently the new versions of OnStar equipment are digital-compatible, so Verizon Wireless has teamed up with OnStar to provide cellular calling via the OnStar equipment powered by Verizon.  This is actually pretty cool because the personal calling offered by OnStar leaves a little bit to be desired and operates over the old analog cellular network; this would actually make me consider switching to Verizon, but, of course, it's not available in my area.

Here's the short deal on how it works:

You pay the yearly OnStar fees for whatever plan you want (don't pay for the personal calling!).  You pay a monthly Verizon Wireless charge for calling service.

It seems that this is a version of a "family plan" where 2 phones share the same rate plan and pool of minutes.  In addition, you can forward all of the calls from your regular Verizon cell phone to your OnStar phone either immediately or after a 4 ring delay.  No voice mail or call waiting is available when the wireless phone has been forwarded to the OnStar phone.  In-Network calling does apply to the OnStar plan.  From the language, it seems that you will pick a home operating state and all of the rest of the states will be "roam" states for the OnStar service.

From the Verizon/OnStar site:

"On July 12, 2004, the America’s Choice with OnStar plans will be available in Atlanta, Detroit, Kansas City, New York and San Francisco. The plans will continue to roll out in many markets through the fall and will be available throughout the Verizon Wireless markets by the end of the year."

For those of you that do not have nor have you ever seen OnStar, the personal calling is all voice-activated; there is no longer a phone handset or keypad to enter in numbers.  In most newer models, there is a button on the steering wheel (or a little white button on the OnStar pad) that allows you to activate personal calling.

Note:  Verizon and OnStar already work together as Verizon owns the analog cell network on which OnStar services currently operate.

How do you keep your computer secure?

Here's how Robert Scoble of Microsoft does it.  From his post and with my comments:

1. Install Windows XP SP2.  I personally haven't had any compatibility problems; of course I haven't yet upgraded at work.  The security is very much increased in SP2.
2. Get a good anti-virus program.  You can still read my earlier post about getting 12 months free of Computer Associates EZ Armor Virus protection and Firewall.
3. Get a good two-way firewall on every machine. See above for the link to EZ Armor or go to some of Socble's free recommendation of the Sygate Personal Firewall or pay for Zone Alarm.
4. Get a hardware-based firewall or NAT at point of network entry.  You can get this on a very cheap Linksys router for your house or business.
5. Turn on automatic updating.  If you follow the first tip, SP2 tries to do this for you at every turn.
6. Run the latest email and Web clients.  New clients traditionally have the best updates and most security.  Run Firefox as your web browser; not only is it secure, it's got great features.
7. Visit www.microsoft.com/security regularly.  It's the official Microsoft site for security, but chances are that you will get a lot of what you need via Windows Update.
8.  Run at least one good anti-spyware program like Adaware or Webroot's Spy Sweeper or Spyware Blaster.  I like Spybot Search and Destroy and Adaware myself.
9. If you visit high-risk Websites, turn off ActiveX and scripting in your browser.  This includes turning off scripting in Firefox.
10. Don't run in administrator mode.  This is super-hard to do; I tell everyone else to do this, but can't seem to get there myself.  If you are a casual user, don't need to install software or tinker with things, consider using a Power User account on a day-to-day basis.
11.  Keep an install partition on each of your machines.  Hard drives these days are big enough to accommodate this without a problem.  Even better is to image your main drive to an external drive so that you have a snapshot in time that you can back-up in minutes.  The best software for this, hands down, is Norton Ghost.
12. Use better passwords.  Stop using your birthday or your last name or silly words that are easy to crack.  Random numbers and letters and random capitalization will make it hard to guess your password; I use something to that effect and it is surprisingly easy to memorize.
13.  Backup your data regularly.  If you are not going to image your whole drive, consider buying an external drive and using offline files so that every time you disconnect from that external drive, you get a copy on your computer and a copy on your external drive.  Even better, run a weekly back-up program.

You can never be secure enough and most of the items above require little to no investment.  If you need to buy hardware such as routers and hard drives, keep your eye on your Sunday paper for sales and mail-in rebates.  For software, peruse Amazon and look for mail-in rebates; sometimes you can get good software for free after mail-in.

 

10 Things to be Optimistic About

Dave Pollard has a great list of things about which you can be optimistic.  Great way to start the week!

• There are more people writing, articulately and eloquently and with the weight of excellent information and argument behind them, about the need for radical change to our culture than ever before. This is a groundswell of awareness and deep caring, possibly unprecedented in the history of man. Something important is happening here.
• The Internet has given us two powerful weapons for change: knowledge exchange and organizing capacity. We're learning to use them well.
• Women are slowly gaining power and influence in our society. Young women are better educated and better informed than any generation in our history.
• Not having children is no longer, for the first time in our culture, considered selfish or anti-social.
• The Wisdom of Crowds.
• In the next decade much of the baby boom generation will be retiring. That means a huge number of people, a generation with a penchant for change, will suddenly have an enormous amount of time to think, to learn, to do things for reasons other than financial gain.
• Stories have immense power to change minds. We are learning the process of crafting astonishing stories.
• The Power of Community.
• In our search for models and leaders and inspirations, we are becoming skeptical of arrogance and glibness and the cult of personality, and looking instead for humility, honesty, flexibility, collaboration.
• A World of Ends. There is a large and growing appreciation that small and decentralized just works better. And is smarter and more agile.

New Overtime Rules

Via USAToday:

• Almost all employees who make less than $455 a week ($23,660 a year) are eligible for overtime. The old rule set