Postseason Predictions
My avatar's
Postseason Predictions
My avatar's
One more time...
Sure... why not. We can play along. I can't wait until Rocky 7 where he starts selling the Rocky Balboa Grill.
Mets - Dodgers Schedule
Orel Hershiser is retired, right?
Good, then I'm not worried about the Mets playing LA.
Wednesday, the Met's will play the Dodgers in the late afternoon at Shea. Of course, the Yankees get all the primetime games. All I know is, Kenny Rogers owes me a win for walking the Braves past us in '99.
By the way, now that I'm looking at box scores for the '99 NLCS, how in the hell did Masato Yoshii start in the playoffs over Orel Hershiser? Yoshii turned it a cruddy start in game one against the D-Backs... Orel was a money pitcher... sure he was fading into the sunset, but he had a pretty similar year and his experience should have counted for more. I'm glad we're righting that by throwing El Duque in Game 1.
So El Duque goes against Derek Lowe in Game One on Wednesday at 4PM EST. Then, Thursday night, here's a matchup for you... Greg Maddux vs. Tom Glavine.
Then, they're off Friday and play Saturday. The Game Three starter hasn't been announced, but either way, I go with John Maine.
Well, this is it... Let's go Mets!
Commercialize? No. Participate? Yes.
If you are doing anything in interactive marketing, you should be reading Rohit's blog. His position at Ogilvy gives him a lot of insight into how the role of PR and marketing is changing as digital media changes.
The other day, the terms he used for the role of brands in social media really struck me.
Participate
Commericalize
At the end of the day, brands all want the same thing... influence, attention, sales... whatever. This is capitalism and we are all aware that all the free stuff on the web comes at some kind of price.
But how we encounter those brands can vary dramatically.
"Participating in a conversation" is a very human thing... and for a brand to do it, they need to act more human. This includes sharing, mutual respect, openness... all sorts of things we come to expect by the actual people around us. If brands can't do this, it is unlikely we are going to sacrifice any attention that we normally give to our friends in social media.
Every brand manager out there should take out a piece of paper and write down three ways that their brand "participates in a conversation". If they can't think of any, they should talk to people like Rohit, because they're probably commercializing.
links for 2006-09-30
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Great example of using user gen content in advertising in a way that elevates, not intrudes, on users.
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So, do you use Evite for this? Which theme?
Playing with Live Writer
I like this insert a map feature, and its sort of disturbing that I can insert a bird's eye view of the street I grew up on. So Bill Gates has been watching me by satellite this whole time, huh?
No Pedro, no problem
I think we all need to be realistic about this Pedro news.
Mike Vaccaro from the post puts it best...
"...they didn't lose PEDRO MARTINEZ... Because the truth is, the Mets haven't had the italicized, capitalized version of that player in an awfully long time. The Mets don't lose the 1969 edition of Tom Seaver, or the 1986 version of Dwight Gooden, or even the 2000 versions of Al Leiter and Mike Hampton.
When he was on the mound, the Mets felt like they were practically unbeatable. But the reality is, their winning percentage since the first day of the 2005 season is over 40 points higher on days when Martinez doesn't pitch than on days that he has. It's true. You can look it up."
The rest of the team needs to step up, like they have all year. Realistically we just need five innings... If every playoff start from someone not named Tom or Orlando was 5 innings and 3 runs, I'd be happy.
Sitepal avatars pitching Russian brides... another creative marketing usage
And you thought I was kidding.
I think we should have a contest... what is the most bizzare *legal* service you could sell with a Sitepal avatar.
I have to admit, this site is slightly compelling if for nothing else than the fact that Russian accents are sexy. I think it's a James Bond thing...
"She loves me... she stabs me in the leg with a poison tipped shoe-knife... she loves me... she stabs me in the leg with a poison tipped shoe-knife."
We've got a money back guarantee on these characters, so I'd like to issue a challenge for someone to come up with a product a Sitepal can't help sell...
And you thought the first Facebook showdown was rough...
Facebook has a new ad model...
"The new Sponsor Stories ad unit will initially be placed in the third position within each user's News Feed - as either a small banner-like placements or video clip. When users elect to click on these ads, their entire network of friends will be automatically alerted and then given the chance to interact with that particular marketer's group."
Something tells me that if Facebook users didn't like it when others were notified when they left a note on someone's wall or added a friend, they're not going to like it when everyone can tell they clicked on an ad for Bad Credit, Victoria's Secret, or GMHC. This just sounds really... weird.
A Maven at Work
Literally, as I'm reading the mavens section of the Tipping Point, I see this guy on the train telling this other guy what to do, who to see, and flipping through his notebook getting the info. This info broker "doesn't know how to work that internet" though.
What's in a name?
So we're having some serious issues naming our upcoming consumer product.
We came up with three names. One that is related to our company. One that I made up that was inspired by something a naming consultant gave us. And then one that the naming consultant came up with.
One name is Oddpal. I don't know why we didn't come up with it before. It is so obvious, but it was never on any of our lists.
So I circulated the name around in an informal survey:
"Oddpal – don’t like it, hard to remember"
"Oddpal makes the most sense but is boring."
"Oddpal - u said u own this one but out of the three i wouldn't pick it it doesnt seem catchy enough"
"
Ok, so that's out... or is it....
"I really liked Oddpal because it's cute and I can see someone saying like, "Did you get your Oddpal?" lol its cute"
"I think because this is so new and people who aren't as tech or new-media saavy as say, you and I are, they can relate more to this name. It's an explanation of charachter or product. It's your pal. Essential, your pal who is going to lead you through the site. That's my take on it. "
So, it isn't fancy and it tells what it is... but maybe it is too close to Sitepal or not catchy enough.
So, then I came up with a totally made up name and this was the response:
"Cool idea - nice combo of word smithing. I would rank this at numero 2, on my favorite scale. There is a ski company that has a similar name, but I think this one could be fun and is completely separate from the Oddcast name. It def stands out and you almost have a back-story/history for your character just solely based on the name alone."
"love it! its catchy u right away think of vocals and there could be like a cute lil *** character or characters could be named ***'s which is also really cute and i would totally make one"
"sounds like fun, irreverent, spunky."
Awesome! Score one for me!
Or not...
"sounds like an item on a sushi menu. I don't like this word"
"Simply not like it...I guess it sounds weird..."
"– dislike it. Looks like a Russian word and not sure how to pronounce it."
Then we had a third word that everyone loves.... everyone who is a 12 year old girl...
"It could work if you were skewing this to more of the younger tween generation. I think that could get a nice buzz. I mean we are talking about the youthful generation that went from Barbie to Bratz Dolls"
"it's cute"
"too cute, too toddler, too tickle me Elmo"
"adorable"
"there's something feminine about it - i just can't imagine most guys wanting to say "oh yeah, i'll leave a message for you on my ***"
Great... so, we're kind of at square one. I think Meez and WeeMee and these people have pretty cornered the market on Me words...
Does it even really matter?
You know, part of me thinks of the name that I created as like a Chrysler 300C. A lot of people, including me, don't like it, but just as many people love it. Maybe you need a brand that illicits a strong reaction either way. Would someone really not use a product because it has a name they don't like.
And does the product have to describe what it is? For every Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Wordpress there's Skype, Google, Yahoo! and Napster... names that have nothing to do with the product.
Throw on top of that the fact that namesquatters... scurge of the web that they are, have pretty much covered almost ever prounouncable word in the english language. Just mash your fist onto the keyboard and try and secure the domain name of the random letters that came out. I guarantee you it is taken.
Ideas?
I really really want to use Performancing, but it never works
I love the little popup blog posting thing from Performancing... but 3/4 of the time I click Publish, it doesn't do anything.... I click and I click and I click... nada. Plus, I really dislike forums that require me to login. I don't want to register to be able to get tech support.
Click click click. Dammit. Select. Copy. Typepad. Login. Paste. Publish. *smacks head*
Ok, maybe it wasn't me... No Sleep 'til Google?
The last few days, I've had trouble using Google at home over Time Warner (sold through Earthlink) Cable internet in Brooklyn. Google Search, Gmail... have either been really slow or completely non-responsive. I thought it was a Google issue until I saw this. Plus, it is working fine in the office.
Are we seeing the beginning of the pipeheads tiering the traffic... testing out some filtering? Did anyone else experience this? Is the net neutrality debate coming to a head in Bay Ridge?
Du Hast UPnP
I don't talk about music a ton on this blog, but I do like music... just never really been that good at discovering new music. Plus, I could never tie together all of the different ways I listen to music. I used to have XM in my car from GM, and really liked it, but let the subscription slip after I changed addresses on my credit card. I guess I didn't really like it that much.
I like Pandora, but never really listen when I'm sitting in front of the computer, so that's pretty much out. I've found some cool bands on MySpace, like Deep Metal Mechanic, but I can't do anything with them except put them on my page... can't stream them anywhere... can't even pop the player out of the page. Kind of useless for really empowering my music discovery.
Breaking my music free from the computer is important to me, so I bought two Netgear MP-101 routers and have been really happy with them considering how much I paid (less than $100 each). That's been nice, but the real break is that all of the great discovery services out there don't work well off the computer.
If you visit my site, you'll notice I now have a Last.fm
badge on the right sidebar. It contains the last ten songs I listened
to, plus after it has enough data, I guess, my most popular artists of
the week. Think of it like del.icio.us and Google. Google is run by a machine that eats data as is Pandora. The results are certainly good, but people powered stuff like del.icio.us has the potential to be even better. That's what last.fm is. If someone out there listents to similar stuff, it recommends the things that they listen to that I haven't found yet. Last.fm promises to be a great discovery tool for me, except for the fact that I listen to my stuff through the Netgear routers and my iPod...never on the computer itself. So, getting it my music listening data isn't easy.
Jscrob solved the iPod issue, which is why you can now see what I listen to when I ride my bike and go to the gym. It sucks all the data off my iPod when I sync/charge, so you'll be sure to see lots of dark techno, industrial, and movie themes... but don't think that I turn on Rammstein when I get home at the end of a long day... this is only half of my music story, lest you think I'm peculiar.
I need to solve the apartment problem. Enter UPnP. Universal plug and play compatability promises to allow me to stream my music to other devices... so I just needed a UPnP server that was compatible with Last.fm and I was good to go. I tried Tvedia and that looked really promising. It works with Last.fm just by getting me to enter my Last.fm id/pw, but I haven't gotten it streaming to the routers yet. The company keeps telling me its something on my end, but I can easily switch back to the Netgear server and that works just peachy. I'll keep plugging away... hopefully, I can get it working. I also tried Winamp+this plugin but the plugin didn't seem to install properly. I wasn't sure if it was on, installed, working... whatever... nothing happened.
So that's where I am... hopefully, I'll be able to get the music I play in my apt into Last.fm through one of these UPnP solutions, and also get Streampad working as well. Then I can get some better music recommendations than what I get from these Arctic Monkeyheads. Bring on the hard stuff!
Call me a purist, agist, or whatever...
But now that Facebook is more open, I've gotten a lot of invites from very cool people that I know professionally. I haven't accepted them yet and probably don't think I will. So, sorry, Fred. Nothing personal... It's more a matter of maintaining a community identity.
To me, Facebook is very college-y... very my generation. The actual physical "facebook", which we called the "meetbook" or "meatbook" depending on how you looked at it, was a very important document as a college student.
I'm not really a fan of the "open" Facebook, but I'll admit that it works to Fordham's advantage, b/c they can't get their act together to give us alumni e-mail addresses (seriously, how hard is that.. its just e-mail forwarding...). So, at least this way, my Fordham friends in my year can join. I'm going to keep my Facebook connections within a generation, if that's ok with you folks. You can still connect to me on LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace, MyBlogLog, Last.fm, and del.icio.us.