Some of the shots from last weekend’s adventures in San Jose are up on Flickr, click the photo to check them out. And if you haven’t downloaded PicLens yet, what are you waiting for?
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Category: Daily Life
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Unlikely Champion – Amazon Unbox
I’ve complained a number of times before about not being able to get the television show Heroes on iTunes anymore. When I got the Tivo up and rolling last week one of the things I was looking forward to was trying out Amazon Unbox. I wasn’t expecting much from the service, I thought it was more of a media player that may have some commercials running prior to the show.
Instead, it’s a full featured media store. I downloaded a bunch of episodes to the Tivo and was surprised to see I had the rights to also download the episodes to my laptop. Even more impressive, they run without any trouble on my work laptop (it has a crummy graphics card and it cannot play an iTunes video, or a DVD without stuttering when running only on battery power). The good news is that it worked, the bad news is I then proceeded to watch 6 episodes of Heroes straight on a recent flight to San Jose. (For those who care, Season 2 is not as good as season 1 but is still a lot of fun).
It also says I have rights to download to a media player, such as iPod, which I should test but probably won’t get around to. The other good news – while on the road the connection at the Fairmont was good enough that I was able to pick up some episodes of Battlestar Galactica that I haven’t been able to get to.
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TiVo back in The House
It only took an extra week to get the Tivo rolling, I ordered 2 cable cards from my cable provider and had 2 cable boxes show up. Then a tech came and installed the cards, but one of them was dead. Verizon was good enough to send out another tech two days later, on a Saturday and now all is good in the hood. Carin has Masterpiece Theatre cranked up and I’m getting back episodes of Heroes and Galactica.
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IFDP – Internet Famous, Dirt Poor
I had a chance last week to chat with Mac McIntosh last week, I first met him a few years back when he was speaking at a MarketingSherpa event, he came away as the highest ranked speaker of the event and stood ahead of the rest of the crowd. I stole one of his techniques immediately – he was on the second day of the event and he kept notes of the previous presenters and integrated some of their points into his slide deck on the fly. By building on the presenters before him he had a distinct advantage over a presenter who just showed up for their time slot.
The reason I bring this up is that Mac has been doing consulting for years and doing it for a living. A sharp contrast from “social media experts” who sheepishly admit that there is not enough going around yet to “quit your day job”. This ties into two things that I’ve seen bouncing around lately – one is the idea of Internet Famous, Dirt Poor. There’s a growing number of people who have thousands of followers and are well know worldwide, yet have no way to monetize this. Unless you are famous for a reason that is going to bring you some money all you are left with is an overflowing inbox and maybe even some stalkers.
On the other hand, there is some karma at work. If you have a network of thousands, there’s some benefits that indirectly can help you out. The next time you are looking for a job you won’t have to wade through a bunch of Monster Postings or spend a lot of time digging. You can also get most questions answered quickly by tapping into the shared wisdom around you. But again – nothing concrete to pay the mortgage and bring the box of Yodels home for the kids.
The other thing rattling around in my brain lately is the idea of things that are boring, or incredible difficult (better yet, both) as things that generate value. The theory is that the more challenging or terrible the task, the better you can be paid for it. Anyone who’s had to call a plumber on a holiday after 10pm knows what I am talking about.
So here’s something to think about – are celebrities only walking and talking media products? Now that the amount of media that can be created has been expanded to everyone and the cost of transmitting it near zero, will celebrities be devalued the same way music has?
It’s all about boring. Talking with Mac
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Backup Plan
As part of the sales/marketing lifestyle we’ve talked about travel before, I had a road warrior tip bail me out this week. I always keep a $20 stashed somewhere in my gear. I’m lucky enough know that the battery bay in my Palm Centro is large enough that I can keep one in there (and a bonus, it keeps the door from creaking like it used to before I put the buck in there).
This Friday we were running out the door so that the lovely Carin could make it to the early train and I forgot my wallet. Thanks to the phone trick I didn’t have to go without my morning iced coffee or have to bum money off anyone for lunch.
The same goes with the tradeshow booth, I keep a small bag filled with some random tools, you never know what you might need, or how you might be a hero to your neighbor in the booth next door.
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Cable Company
So I ordered two Cable Cards over a week ago so I can set up the HD Tivo which arrived today. Instead of two cable cards I got 2 cable set-top boxes. We’ll see how long this takes to fix….
Lots of boring work this week, nothing exciting to report. The Microsoft/Yahoo deal dying is of no interest to me. There is a new M Show though –
And you can check out an hour of me talking about things like direct marketing over on the BeanCast.
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Weekend Update
The past two weeks have been much crazier than usual. The good news is that the weekend is not out of control, the bad news is that I’m not really up for writing about hardcore marketing stuff on the weekend. Here’s some interesting points from the last week.
TIVO is Returning to Studio N! I have thrown in the towel on the Verizon FIOS DVD, which cannot manage a season pass and has failed to record anything properly. For 4 years of discussion on why it sucks you check out this thead. For the lovely Carin’s birthday I took advantage of a Mother’s Day package of an HD Tivo, lifetime subscription and Wireless adapter, all for $700.
Netflix is leaving Studio N! Between Apple TV, XBox 360, and now Amazon Unbox when the Tivo shows up, we have enough on demand HD options that there’s no need for us to get regular DVDs in the mail. The last saving grace had been HD DVDs from netflix for the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive which will be out in the recycle bin this weekend after a funeral ceremony.
Banking Woes Continue! Buying the Tivo was tagged as a suspicious transaction by my credit card company who shall remain nameless. Let it suffice to say they are a big City Bank. Just like the Western Union frigtard festival last week, I got to play the “Who Wants Their Account Back Open” Game Show. At least for this one I think I had 3 tries to verify transactions and managed to peg enough of them. My personal favorite was “Identify the charge 2 weeks ago for $3.05 for computer software. The answer they wanted was MP3 downloads from Amazon. These douchebags are killing me. As I said to LM “Like a terrorist or identity thief really wants a wicker patio table that’s backordered on Target.com for 2 months”.
Red Sox start paying me not to go to Fenway. Normally I go to one game a year, for some crazy reason I’ve actually been to 3 already. The new Sox stat to watch is GWJIA – “Games with John in attendance”, which is 0-3.
Many readers have sent in comments in regards to the slowdown here and on The M Show for the new secret project. Thanks for all the kind words, the good news is that the project involves expanding the Marketing Over Coffee project beyond just the podcast and I know it will generate a lot of great content for everything else I do, so fear naught, much cool stuff ahead!
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The Next Writing Project
I’ve started a new project and as a result I can see that this blog will suffer. Hopefully you’ve been entertained thus far, and the good news is the next project has much more structure and won’t just be the ramblings off the top of my head.
As the quarter kicks off we’ve covered the new messaging and it’s time for me to execute. The same goes for Marketing Over Coffee, the program continues to accelerate, but the bad news is that means there’s more work to be done to lift it to the next level. Suffering through all of it is The M Show, it’s been more than 2 weeks since the last show, and there may be something else coming out this week, but the return on that investment is getting smaller all the time compared to the value that MOC is generating.
So, it’s time to put my head down and fade away for a while. Don’t worry, when I’m back there’ll be plenty of interesting stuff to talk about.
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Back to Normal
The WU alternative has been found and the Secret Project is back underway. Have a good weekend and enjoy the warmer weather. Next week is the Sales Kickoff, but this quarter it’s only one day and I’m not able to make the dinner out so it may actually be a quarter start without a lot of insanity!
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