Sheldon Says the F Word!

April 29th, 2008

I was shocked.
What did he think he was doing?
Well, I looked deep into his recent activities and discovered …

Another aspiring writer.

Sheldon is attending college online and is writing for a scholarship.

He has written a series of provocative articles, designed to garner eyeballs and elicit responses.

The headlines include such doozies as:

• Just a F******* Word?
• Arguing the Other Side - Same-sex Marriage
• Should the Murder be Punished?
• Bloodberry, Will You Marry Me?
• Side Effects May Include

He is holding down the fifth and final spot and is looking for your help.

[Update]

Sheldon was awarded a $1,000 Scholarship.

Thanks for your support!

Everyone who registers at collegenet.com can support his writing by sending him a vote.

I’ll let him tell you how you can help him:

Hi Everyone,

Here are the instructions for sending a vote for the scholarship:

1. Go to Create Account

2. Fill out all the information, but leave the ‘Make me a candidate in the CollegeNET scholarship election.’ box unchecked so it creates a voter account.

3. Once you receive a code on your cell phone, login to the new account and enter the validation code to validate the account.

4. Go to my profile and click on the vote button.

5. Click the link to send a vote code to your cell phone and insert it into the box (it usually only takes a second, but it might take up to a minute).

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Sheldon

Posted in Musings | 2 Comments »

And I Quote

April 28th, 2008

“
Talk about the hidden web! Some of the best writing is buried in comments, replies and user-supplied content.

Just as we have repositories of the best quotes, compilations of commercial jingles and collections of the most memorable movie lines, we should have a searchable database for the best comments ever made.

He Said

A searchable archive might give us a way to get fresh quotes. If the comment is linked, it would give the author exposure - which may not always be welcome!

I see some misdirected comments, the thrust of this is that the “Death by a thousand cuts” of browser based tools is slowly killing them.

And its Microsoft’s own fault, putting all their eggs in their own basket, relying on everything being tied to the Windows operating system, then releasing a total turd ( Vista ) that no one wants.

I say good riddance, ding dong the witch is dead!

- Posted by Todd, April 11, 2008 on readwriteweb.com

She Said

At the very least, a searchable archive could provide a few minutes of entertainment with random comments.

Eyje.com is one example of a fun comment archive.

However, it’s trying to be too many things and it takes itself a bit too seriously:

You can comment in every eyje page. Eyje’s aim is to be widely-know commenting platform. We believe that one day, politicians, artists, companies will follow their pages(and your comments) at eyje.

To be more than just a passing fad, though, a comment archive has to serve a bigger purpose.

It also must be transparent. Eyje requires you to join and then do something else to get your comments archived.

That’ll never do. We’re already up to our necks with bookmarking and tagging.

Enter Big Brother 2000, aka Lijit.com.

Did You Hear What “They” Said?

In one of those serendipitous moments that make life so enjoyable, it turns out that readwriteweb.com, where I happened to see Todd’s comment, also has an article about Lijit:

One of the selling points for Lijit to publishers is that the widget provides a bevy of useful statistics about your readers: where they’re from, what they’re looking for, which of your content they found most useful. (Example stats.) Adding comments to the mix should help Lijit mine more useful metrics for publishers about their readers and how they interact with their blog.

The context of the quote concerns Lijit’s acquisition of BigSwerve:

Personal search engine provider Lijit, … acquired BigSwerve for an undisclosed sum. BigSwerve, which was formed in 2006, has indexed more than 400 million comments from 3 million authors. Lijit plans to integrate the BigSwerve technology into their personal search engine product to learn more about the sphere of influence that publishers in their network have.

:

“BigSwerve’s technology helps Lijit further discover the implicit and explicit expertise surrounding a publisher,” said Lijit CEO Todd Vernon in a press release. “To date, blog comments have represented a huge amount of user-generated content that has gone largely undiscovered and underutilized.”

Hmmm, is this the same Todd who dissed Vista?

Whatchu Talkin’ ’bout, Willis?

We are all richer and more colorful than our posts.

If you could have archived everything you ever remarked upon on every blog you’ve ever visited, how much more would we know about you?

More importantly, would you be pleased with your comment “profile”?

”

Posted in High Tech | No Comments »

Stirring the Stockpot and Digesting Gore

April 19th, 2008

Photo by azrainman

The Book

I skimmed The Assault on Reason, by former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore.

The introduction was disturbingly profound, given that he pinpointed my reasons for not voting.

He basically states that democracy, as a form of government in the United States, has been derailed by the loss of two-way communication between the elected officials and the erstwhile well-informed citizenry.

He blames mass media, which pre-empted the printed word as the means by which citizens became informed.

Basically, Gore posits that the marketplace of ideas is moribund.

Short of screaming at the television, we have no voice in the unilateral bombardment of sound bites.

Little wonder, then, that Gore is co-founder of Current TV, an interactive television network.

The Chapter

Gore has a wonderful way of writing, using analogies and anecdotes to get his points across.

The common thread throughout the book is the pervasive hopelessness of one-way communication.

Why should we care who runs the government, if nobody listens to us, anyway?

The sad thing is that savvy politicians are able to exploit human behavioristic reaction to mass media messages.

Gore shared the following:

I vividly remember a turning point in that Senate campaign when my opponent, a fine public servant named Victor Ashe who has since become a close friend, was narrowing the lead I had in the polls. After a detailed review of all the polling information and careful testing of potential TV commercials, the anticipated response from my opponent’s campaign and the planned response to the response, my advisers made a recommendation and prediction that surprised me with its specificity: “If you run this ad at this many ‘points’ [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5% in your lead in the polls.”

I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5%. Though pleased, of course, for my own campaign, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder. To the extent that money and the clever use of electronic mass media could be used to manipulate the outcome of elections, the role of reason began to diminish.

The Verse

Manipulation. Exploitation. Devastation.

From genetics to politics, from the bedroom to the boardroom, imposing your will on another can get you in trouble.

Consider the financial world.

I believe that we may be about to witness murder in the marketplace of stocks.

Psychological investing, covered in a Popular Science Magazine article,

How to Psychoanalyze the Market, represents the evolution of technical analysis.

Imagine this: a hedge fund that uses linguistics to exploit mistakes in the pricing of stocks, currencies and commodities.

Richard Peterson, the guy who developed this software, actually went to medical school to learn “qualitative and emotional explanations for the way the market moves.”

A trained psychiatrist, Peterson uses the irrational impulses of investor behavior to make money.

Ironically, the basis for undertaking such an endeavor can be found in the work of Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and others.

In 1759, Smith, a behavioral economist, published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He described the way in which humans influence each other’s behavior.

Keynes, considered the leading proponent of macroeconomics, in 1936 published General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes expounds on what he called aggregated production to explain the cure for national economic depressions such as those of Britain in the 1920’s and America in the 1930’s.

The Point

By studying systems, it may be possible to learn how to manipulate them.

With the ability to harness the massive powers of computing and information gathering, technical analysis of the stock market is a foregone conclusion.

Psychoanalysis of the market, on the other hand, is nothing short of amazing.

Actually recognizing aggregate behavior is one thing.

Timing its effect on the marketplace requires an exquisite understanding of signals embedded in earnings reports and other daily writings.

Exploiting these predictions may lead to short-term profits.

However, it won’t be long before hucksters begin to reverse-engineer the process and start churning out bogus reports to be ingested and regurgitated by the analytical software.

An ominous foreshadowing has already darkened the financial landscape:

Pump-and-dump

An investment scheme, sometimes illegal, in which false recommendations are made concerning a stock’s future performance in order to drive share prices up. Investors making the false recommendations intend to sell their shares when the share price reaches a higher level

- from investorwords.com

Posted in Tea Leaves, High Tech, Musings | 11 Comments »

Staccato Snap - Entry 002

March 27th, 2008

Photo by Mitch (weekly? what weekly?)

Staccato Snap is a weekly journal highlighting my return to Network Marketing.

WHY?

Multiple streams of income is not an abstraction.

Watching little rivulets dry up and evaporate is starkly concrete.

What I need is a raging river.

My Thought Processes

Fun things that happened this week:

• Kathryn and Matt sent us a welcome card and some yummy brownies
• Jessica did up my logos
• My wife, Toni, came up with some fantastic marketing ideas
• My internet connection was stable enough for me to send out a handful of cards

How can I be different from Hallmark?

Customer service might be a good idea.

This is such an old chestnut that it doesn’t seem to bear repeating.

Yet, this week, Heidi sent us a team email about following up and taking care of customers.

So, my goal is to continue learning the system and adhering to the three simple daily steps.

Lessons I Learned

SendOutCards is definitely more than just a greeting card company. Here are two cool things I learned about the company:

• Reminders for birthdays
• Resources for artists

  Kathryn’s Birthday is coming up. Since she is in my contact list with that juicy tidbit, SendOutCards sent me a reminder.
  
  The link that came with the reminder sent me to the card shop! (gasps and clutches face with both hands in shock!)
  
  At first, I thought Kathryn was sending me a link to some cards that she made, but when I noticed all were birthday cards . . .

  
  Pinhole left a comment on last week’s entry, asking if the company buys original designs.
  
  I asked Kathryn and she showed me just how SendOutCards works with artists and freelancers.
  
  That’s huge!
  
  Sure, there’s other venues online for artists, but the thing about sending out cards is the frequency factor.

  
  Here’s how Kathryn explains this potential river:

  If you’re an artist, especially with a following, you could make your own line of cards and be an SOC distributor. Your fans could sign up for their own card shop, including your artwork-cards, through you. Seamless, double stream of income.

  Inspiration

  Sometimes, you just gotta go through it to get to it. The following list is a bit self-indulgent, but if you can relate, you’ll “get” it.

  I look back over the past five years and I realize that I’ve accumulated the equivalent of a Bachelor’s Degree in Sales and Marketing.
  
  My syllabus included more than three dozen books, nearly one hundred ebooks, countless email subscriptions and blog feeds.
  
  My courses consisted of Network Marketing 101, 103 and 201 (see Empire of the Niche).
  
  Business classes were held in a real estate office, a radio station and on the streets of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
  
  Advanced Management training took place at the Philadelphia Police Department.
  
  Customer Service class was a grueling, but rewarding stint as an email technical support person for 8,000 bloggers (WritingUp.com)
  
  Marketing electives: writing for Blogitive.com, building HubPages, creative writing on blogs and at FanStory.com.
  
  Sales Labs were conducted on eBay, a half dozen pay-per-action systems, twenty-two affiliate promotions and, of course, web design.

  Extra-curricular activities involved networking in restaurants, listening to sales pitches, planning joint ventures online (only one worked out.)

  Finally, no college education is complete without exploring spirituality.
  I learned about the Law of Attraction, read The Secret, pondered the evils of capitalism and embraced the concept of good karma.

  With all that, I’m still learning.

  The main post-graduate course for me is

  FOCUS:Follow One Course Until Successful.

  I don’t know if Robert Kiyosaki coined this or just repeated it, but it works for me.

  Feedback

  It’s your turn!

  ---

  
  If this is your first time reading this series, the title, Staccato Snap, was my entry into a onedollarjackpot.com twenty-five words or less competition.
  
  The question was, “What’s the best thing in the world to hear when you wake up?”
  
  Check out the introductory Staccato Snap post.
  
  You’ll learn more about this series and, the goofy verse is at the end!
  
  Click these Posts!
  • Staccato Snap
    Photo by Mitch (believe it or not) Staccato Snap* is a weekly journal highlighting my return to Network Marketing. Each post provides a glimpse into my SendOutCards business. There will be ...
  • Staccato Snap - Week 001
    Photo by Mitch (mad skillz, huh?) Staccato Snap is a weekly journal highlighting my return to Network Marketing. WHY? Your card arrived today. It was just wonderful. Damn near cried. Thanks so...

  Posted in Journal, Opportunity, Networking, Websites, Marketing | 4 Comments »

Multimedia Memberships

March 25th, 2008

Movies and Music. Two of the three M’s required for a fulfilling life.
I’ll present these two and leave the third to you, as there is no satisfactory way to present that on a family blog.*
Movies are covered by Hillard Allen, my dad.
Music is covered by Todd Arsenault, my friend.
Both fellows are freely sharing their passion online.
Pop is a movie buff. He runs a very popular movie trivia game on AOL.
Todd is a guitarist. He runs a hot new membership site devoted to teaching guitar.
They’ll do the writing today.

Click image to read more . . .

---

* You twisted reader, you! The third M refers to March Madness: college basketball.

There is no way to present that on a family blog, without violating broadcast copyrights.

Posted in Membership Sites, Best of the Web, Websites | No Comments »

The Fish, the Bait and the Club

March 20th, 2008

Photo by Mitch

This post comes with a bonus word game!
Yours to keep, even if you skip the rest of the story!

Fish

I was hunting around for a program that could simplify the management of my growing library of WordPress themes.
Here is what I want this program to do:

• Catalog the library
• Indicate price paid and usage license
• Flag all active themes
• Track any changes to the original files
• Track plugin and widget incompatibilities
• Store image sizes
• Allow new tracking fields to be added later

Bait

I chose keywords like “manage multiple WordPress themes”.

Google returned some interesting results:

• WordPress Cloner plugin
• Manage Multiple Blogs
• Blog Matrix Pro

While none of these seemed to deal with themes alone, they sounded like an even better solution.

The reason was that they promised to allow me to maintain multiple blogs from a single control panel.

I studied each of them in turn. I quickly decided that WordPress Cloner was not going to help me.
As its name implied, it focuses on duplicating parts of one blog throughout a network of related blogs.

Manage Multiple Blogs was not what I needed, either. This program simplifies the task of posting to multiple blogs. It did expose me to the concept of the WordPress Remote Procedure Call API, which I thought was cool.

Finally, I took a look at Blog Matrix Pro.

Club

Actually, Blog Matrix Pro, poked me in the eye with that red-hot Sales letter Headline:

Create And Run MULTIPLE WordPress Blogs From Just ONE Simple Install!
Initially, I was excited by the possibilities.

I do know that multiple blogs can share a single MySQL database, so the one simple install made sense.

Scanning past the hype, the testimonial and the proclamation of authority, I headed straight for the benefits:

With Blog Matrix Pro and WordPress™ (weblog software) you can quickly and easily build your own empire of niche blogs… entire websites based around any topic or market to just about dominate specific targets within that market.

• Automatically Create Unlimited Numbers Of Blogs
• Always Stay Updated
• Complete Management Flexibility
• Push Button Blog Management
• Automatic Plugins

Complete Management Flexibility was the deal maker. The sales copy let me know that

Each Blog has it’s own WP Admin area even though there is only one set of WP Files, so you can customize each blog independently and add as many themes as you wish.

Catch and Release

Once I recovered from the sales letter-induced trance, I realized that I didn’t need this product.

In one of those “duh” moments, I reread the Complete Management Flexibility bit and thought,
“I already manage as many themes as I want!”

WordPress makes it ridiculously easy to change themes.

I don’t want an empire of niche blogs*, I want one Empire of the Niche.

Besides, as far as I could tell from the sales letter, Blog Matrix Pro doesn’t do what I was looking for!

I think I’ll fire up my old Visual Basic compiler and get to work.

---

* I have no desire to bash this product. It may do what the developer claims.

It sounds really cool, from a technical point of view.

Just remember, Spidey: with great power comes great responsibility.

Posted in High Tech | 8 Comments »

Staccato Snap - Week 001

March 13th, 2008

Photo by Mitch (mad skillz, huh?)

Staccato Snap is a weekly journal highlighting my return to Network Marketing.

WHY?

Your card arrived today. It was just wonderful. Damn near cried. Thanks so much. I love you.

Pop

My Thought Processes

Many things happened before I decided to return to Network Marketing.
Here’s a bit of it.

Networking, Friendplaying

If everyone had to wait two years for results, we’d all be broke.
What’s not broken, though, is the bonds of friendship.
Given without expectation of return.
Or - having put the cards on the table - we should let our friends pick them up when they’re ready.
My friend, Kathryn Spencer, did that in style.
She sent me cards.
She gave me a free account to play with.
When I sent my first card to my dad for his birthday, I was thrilled.
When I got his email the day after, I was sold.
Of course, I was in no position to become involved in yet another business.
My original plan was to use the system for keeping in touch with my real estate clients.
I told Kathryn all of this.
And she accepted that.
That’s a friend.

Tempus Fugit (Boy, Does It!)

For the next two years, Kathryn sent me surprise cards, birthday cards and even an enclosed gift card.
We corresponded.
I helped her with a bit of web design planning.
She kept me informed of all of the exciting things happening in her card business.
I invited her to network at various online communities.
She introduced me to Heidi.
Both ladies started sending me cards.
Friendplaying is the true end result of Networking.

Change of Plans

Life happens, get over it, right?
Real estate market tanked soon after I got involved.
I turned my attention to building websites.
Meanwhile, I got sucked into the make money online mess.
Scams and spam didn’t bother me.
It was the borderline stuff and the complex legitimate opportunities that wasted my time.

Through the Ooze, You Lose

I was weary of wading hip-deep in hype. Tired of tripping over chaff while reaching for wheat.
The wacky world of Internet Marketing threatens to surpass grazing bovine as the number two threat to our ozone layer.
Combine the rapid pace of innovation with the avalanche of information and you have a graveyard of obsolescence sprouting evergreen ideas, morning glory tactics and a rare cherry blossom or two.
Time to plant some solid oaks.

Don’t Reinvent it, Just Roll

Having gone down the Network Marketing path before, I know better than to reinvent the wheel.
I let Kathryn and Heidi know that I wanted to get my own card making account.
The first thing I did was to make a checklist of things Kathryn told me to do after joining.

Identity Thrift

We want to come up with the perfect domain name for whatever website we are building.
Trouble is, so do 256 million other people. And they usually beat us to the punch.
Here are some that I tried:

• heartfeltcards.com (so awesome, it’s been registered since 2003!)
• tellheryoucare.com (too restrictive - not necessarily a card theme, either)
• tellhimyoucare.com (ditto)
• mycardwizard.com (too geeky - sounds like a Microsoft product)
• cardinalcards.com (Nice, from Virginia, but not available)

Once I started thinking about birds, the butterfly was next!
I chose MorphoGreetings.com after much consideration.

Let Me Direct You

One of the cherry blossoms in our graveyard of Internet Marketing ideas is the pre-sell.
I’ve never liked the url that companies give their distributors for the corporate websites.
They’re just as SEO-hostile as a free website from your ISP.
Although the websites themselves tend to be serviceable, folks just aren’t going to type in all that stuff!
By registering the “perfect” domain and building a small pre-sell website,
you get a chance to warm up your visitors and give them a compelling reason to click through to the website that does the heavy lifting.
A tempting short-cut is to redirect the domain to the main website.
I think I’ll use anchor text for the time being.

Brand Your Product, Not Your Cattle

Heidi’s daughter owns ChrysalisLogos.com.
She’s helping me to consolidate my brand with a smashing new logo.
I will put up a Morpho Greetings blog that will harmonize with Morpho Designs.

And that’s it for thoughts.

Lessons I Learned

The way to a man’s heart is supposed to be through his stomach (gross!)
But the way to his wallet is through a great product or service.
At least, that’s what works for me.
Kathryn and Heidi have proven that this is a great system for me.
Back in the dark ages, my family designed cards with PrintMaster.
This is waaaay more fun.

Inspiration

Since I’m just getting started, this is the best time to share the energy.
Whatever your dreams are, don’t limit yourself - leverage yourself!

Anyway

You can’t write, You can’t draw

You can’t do a thing at all.

You don’t have these skills today,

But, You will do them, anyway.

You can’t speak, You’re too shy

You’re afraid to even try.

You don’t know the words to say,

But You will learn them, anyway.

You can’t teach, You can’t lead

You don’t think You can succeed.

You’re not even sure You’ll stay,

But You will show them, anyway!

Samples

Since I’m just getting started (do I hear an echo?), I’ll skip the rest of the sections. I’m working on a few images to send out.
Just as soon as I post this.

Feedback

It’s your turn!

---

If this is your first time reading this series, the title, Staccato Snap, was my entry into a onedollarjackpot.com twenty-five words or less competition.

The question was, “What’s the best thing in the world to hear when you wake up?”

Check out the introductory Staccato Snap post.

You’ll learn more about this series and, the goofy verse is at the end!

Posted in Journal, Poetry, Networking, Marketing | 7 Comments »

Saturday Story, March 2008 Edition

March 8th, 2008

This month’s Saturday Story is titled “Djinn“. Our young protagonist meets a different kind of magical creature. He also gets a special peek into his mother’s childhood adventures.

I like sharing this story. It brought out the kid in me, both in the subject matter and the presentation.

It’s the result of participating in my kids’ home-school creative writing project, a few years ago.
Rated T for Tame. The strongest language is “Dag!”

Posted in Fiction | No Comments »

Staccato Snap

March 6th, 2008

Photo by Mitch (believe it or not)

Staccato Snap* is a weekly journal highlighting my return to Network Marketing.

Each post provides a glimpse into my SendOutCards business.

There will be eight parts to each post:

• WHY?
• My Thought Processes
• Lessons I Learned
• Inspiration
• Samples
• Statistics
• Recommended Resources
• Feedback

WHY?

Why? As in, “What is your ‘Why’?” Each post starts off with this life-affirming question.

My thought processes

This is the diary portion of the post, where I may think aloud or simply list a sequence of thoughts that lead to a particular action.

Lessons I learn

Here’s where I share what I learn from trainings, conference calls, meetings and “in the trenches”.

Inspiration

Hey, it is me, after all. That’s what I try to do whenever I write.

Samples

I’ll showcase some artwork and verses. (Glance down to see an unlikely verse!)

Statistics

I’ll show some relevant numbers, dress them up in pretty colors and help you analyze them.

Recommended Resources

If you’re inspired to take action in setting up your own online business, I’ll give you some recommendations.

No affiliate links will be used here.

Any links to the business opportunity will be on the main blog, probably under Creative Sites.

I want this to be a commercial-free experience.

Feedback

I hope there will be lots of conversation following each entry.

---

* Staccato Snap also was my entry into a onedollarjackpot.com twenty-five words or less competition.The question was, “What’s the best thing in the world to hear when you wake up?”

I think my response was Andrew Beeston’s least favorite but, who knows?

It may wind up on a humorous birthday card!

The staccato SNAP

of synovial sap,

and the creak of my ankle, too!

Posted in Law of Attraction, Opportunity, Networking, Websites, Marketing | 2 Comments »

Six Simple Sounds Summarize Self Story

February 24th, 2008

Photo by Ella’s Dad

Blogging’s more fun when you have friends over.

Breakfast’s more fun when you have fried eggs over easy.

Pinhole tagged me for a tough meme. I have to write a six-word memoir.

Damn! That means I can’t sell it. Well, here it is, for free:

Doleful Loser Won - Followed No Rules

Here are the rules for you if you got tagged:

(From the original post)

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post , if possible, so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag five more blogs with links.
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I tag these four fine folks:

• Bobby Revell
• Domestika
• Sharon Hurley Hall
• Nate Shaw

Posted in Musings | 10 Comments »