The Out-Smarts Blog and Podcast

We just got back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and what a blast that was with over 2,700 vendors showcasing everything from the latest, skinniest, largest TVs to desktop clocks of all things. I went to the show with great intentions of blogging from the floor but alas my laptop died en route. Not to worry I thought - I’ll be able to access the Internet at a booth and indeed that was the case but my intentions were thwarted once again as I was unable to find the site because I had a symbol in the wrong place of my long convoluted login URL. What a cheek I have to call myself a blogger when instead of real time posts I am reduced to this - 2 days later….

Still the whole experience was good as it gave me focus at an otherwise overwhelming event. My focus: to find the device of my dreams that would enable me to easily blog regardless of where I am. In my hunt I looked at smart phones, laptops and other PDA type devices and I want to share my 2 favorites - those that I drooled on at the booth and dream about using to make my blog life easier.

The first is Sony’s latest Micro PC the VGM-UX490N/C. At about the size of a book and opening to a small keyboard and screen I could easily carry this device to blog anywhere and even better, it has the full functionality of a laptop 3 times the size. Sony gets around the issue of the small screen being difficult to read by incorporating a neat zoom mode.

The other device of my dreams was the Samsung SPH-P9200 another micro PC this time with an extendable keyboard that would make blog input much easier. Unfortunately Samsung had a blanket ban on photography at their booth (why this is I have no idea given that its images are freely available to anyone who cares to Google it) so I can’t share any more of my own grainy images :o) but check it out anyway and you’ll see what I mean. Unfortunately the device doesn’t seem to be available in Canada yet so I’ll have to be patient on that one.

Next time I go to CES I’ll be taking one of these sweet tools with me and I will blog from the floor…. I wonder which one it will be?

Something on the light side for the weekend from a great cartoon strip about a 5 year old who uses voice recognition software to blog.

I often get asked about web acronyms and what they mean. If you’ve spent any time in chat rooms or if you text regularly, you’ll have no doubt seen some of these wonderful abbreviations. If you haven’t, I’ve listed some of those I see most often along with their meaning:

B2B - Business To Business
BBL - Be Back Later
BTW - By the way
FAQ - Frequently Asked Question
FUBAR - Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition
GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out
IOW - In Other Words
LOL - Laugh Out Loud
L8R - Later
OMG - Oh My Gosh/Goodness/God
TTYL - Talk To You Later
WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get

There seems to be an abbreviated form or acronym for everything. If you come across one that you want to decipher go to The Acronym Finder for clarification

Funny Pictures

In celebration of International Blog Day, I am going to digress from my usual Internet marketing focus to share with you 5 blogs that I enjoy.

1. As an amateur rock hound I love to dig around and find interesting rocks and gems in the BC countryside which I then tumble to polish. The Rocktumbler’s blog has some great tips for troubleshooting the process so that your rocks come out with a brilliant hue.

2. I traveled to Belgrade three years ago and would love to go back soon. The Belgrade blog is a great blog in English about what’s going on in the city - with a humorous slant.

3. Sometimes its good to get inspired and John’s Place blog is great for this with short anecdotes that help you live up to your potential.

4. When I was planning a vacation to Hawaii earlier this year I came upon this Hawaii Vacations blog which regularly makes me yearn to return.

5. For something out of the ordinary check out Oddee.

HAPPY BLOG DAY!

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Our new web site and logo brings the need to use our new brand image across all touch points expecially business cards. In preparing a design template for the new business cards, I thought I’d get creative with my title to see if I could come up with something better - more souped up if you will. I found this great site that automatically suggests daft titles that you can use to create monikers. I am thinking of using “Dynamic Marketing Orchestrator”…. What do you think? Perhaps I should I just stick with Founder, stop farting about and get on with the task at hand!

We’ve talked in this blog before about the rise in prominence of social networking and its implications for serving the needs of diverse communities. Well the latest hit social network is aimed at the an even younger audience. The phenomenon sweeping through elementary schools is Club Penguin. It’s a site developed here in BC that kids can go to and create their own penguin avatar and play games (for money), meet and chat with other penguins and generally hang out. If you are a member (costs about $6 a month) you can buy pets (puffles) for your penguin, furniture, accessories even pizza and coffee. It’s becoming so popular (700,000+ registered users adding thousands more everyday) that Disney themselves recently bought the company that created it for between $350 - $700 million depending on the sites growth in the near future. It will be interesting to see how Disney intends to use it’s new acquisition and how long it will be before we see Disney branding in Penguin Cove. For now its definitely more popular for social networking in my household than Second Life (the grown ups say so!).

Recently I had a very negative experience with Gmail - Google’s e-mail offering. My young son asked me to set up an e-mail address for him and, having used iGoogle for quite some time, I thought it would be a good excuse for me to try out Gmail to see if it really does cut down the spam. So I went through the process of setting up an e-mail account to link to my iGoogle so that I could make sure my son wasn’t receiving some of the dreadful spam I get. Once done, I went to set up an email address for myself only to discover that my sons address was the primary address and that there was no way to change this. So I deleted the address to try again since I wanted his as a secondary address but apparently to no avail. At this point I am awaiting feedback from Google support, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Now I have an e-mail that doesn’t exist as my primary e-mail and its telling me if I want to start again I have to sign up for a new account. If this means I have to set up my whole account again then I can tell you, Yahoo! will be my first port of call. Google, you really need to take your strategy for web site look and feel and apply it to the other services provided and keep it simple (for stupid?).

Now I’ve wasted a bunch of time trying to fanny about to fix my problem and I still don’t have an e-mail for my son and I am getting tonnes of spam. Talk about a bear with a sore head.

I really hope that some of you Google champions out there come to my aid to resolve this! When they do I will let you know all if it solves my spam problems.

I’ve been exploring Second Life recently to find out if it really has any potential as a marketing vehicle and I have to say, I can’t fathom what all the fuss is about.

Firstly, it took a new computer to actually have the capacity required to run the damn thing and secondly even with a souped up super computer I still find it slow, sporadic and painful to manoeuvre through.

I managed to graduate from the orientation island quite easily and was set free in the Second Life world. The look and feel is pretty cool but so far there seems to be no one out there. Nobody at the church I came upon (even although it was Sunday!), no-one at Club Wildebeast the crazy dance place and no-one at the Second Life Telus store (where are you Sparkle Dale? - where’s the phone for my avatar?).

The most disappointing Second Life aspect of all is that beyond the cool images and environment, Second Life is senseless and by that I mean: you can’t feel, smell, hear etc. Each time I visit I come away with the feeling I have just been wasting my time……

I’ll be keeping a close eye on Second Life but right now the barriers to entry and the time wasted lead me to deduce that it will be a while before Second Life can be considered as a viable medium for effective marketing. And by then the fad crowds may have moved on to the next big thing - or maybe they have already.

It seems I am not the only one with this sentiment read this post from Darren Barefoot for more.

The next big Internet phenomenon seems to be Twitter . The people at Twitter call it a “global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?”. You can answer the question by IM, cellphone or online on the Twitter site.

To me, Twitter appears to be simply a paired down instant messaging system that allows bored people to spend some time on whimsy. However Twitter is not to be taken lightly. With an astounding growth rate (in one week in March its traffic increased by over 55%) its definitely taking off with the online community.

I decided to take a closer look for myself to size Twitter up from a marketers perspective:

The Twitter registration process is simple and speedy (I am Outsmarts if you want to look me up). Once you get in, its easy to enter your one liner and read those of others. I made the mistake of adding the BBC to mine and was inundated with million messages about what seemed like every BBC TV show ever produced! So beware who you add.

From a marketing perspective I can see Twitter as being a way to promote a consumer product and it has great potential to enhance communication between remote team members but beyond that I am afraid the Outsmart jury is out. I’d like to wait and see on this one.

That said, my favorite Twitter is that of Borat whose satirical one learners have me in stiches. It’s light relief and for now thats all Twitter means to me. For now.