DVD Capture is a new Applescript Studio Application that’s been released by digitallyObsessed. [download for Mac OS X] I haven’t played with it, but like the idea of a promise of actually being able to take screen captures of DVD movies (something that Apple has made impossible with the stock DVD Player application.
Monthly Archive for September, 2002
Page 2 of 3
Great commentary from Frank on this piece. Thanks for showing your bias Dave. Now I know how much stock to put into your writing in the future. Oh, and by looking at Dave’s corporate website, we can all tell that he’s a stellar marketer, and has the experience and knowledge behind him to critique a creative execution. Thanks Dave, I appreciated the laugh.
ps. I’m not attacking Dave’s abilities as a network admin guy, just pointing out that he probably shouldn’t be critiquing an ad campaign, especially one that is saying that Macs are easy to network. It’s true Dave, they are.
pss. Actually, I just realized something. I hate reading opinion pieces 99% of the time, even when I agree with them. So if you’re like me… don’t read my weblog 
Adrants latest ‘made up statistics‘ list is a great pick me up after an afternoon of drudgery.
My company is currently doing a big marketing push (it’s big for us, because its our first advertising buy in 20 some years of business). I found this list of Thirteen Great Ways to Kill Your Companyís Marketing and I thought to myself how appropriate the timing was.
Here’s the list:
1. Basing decisions on personal opinion.
2. Lack of follow-through.
3. Failing to do enough.
4. Procrastinating.
5. Refining it forever.
6. Getting everyone’s opinion before doing anything.
7. Jumping from one idea to another.
8. Lack of vision.
9. Short-term results.
10. Risk averse.
11. Waiting to see.
12. Turning to marketing only when the bottom falls out.
13. Waiting until the last minute.
Read the article for the explanations, but I can easily say that we’re guilty of at least 10 of those 13 ways to kill our marketing push. I’m pretty sure that we’ll not advertise again anytime soon, because this current push will end up not being measured a success, because we’re not measuring any of the things that the advertising’s goal were supposed to satisfy.
So, if you’re planning a marketing push for your small business, read this article, and be careful about doing it the wrong way.
excellent explanation of how a startup can profit on their employees backs, er, um, wages. (btw, sometimes I feel like I work for one of those non-startup, non-growth companies and am always looking for my next best opportunity.)
Due to some developments by Phil, and using his template and plugin for movable type, I’ve created a comments RDF feed for inluminent/weblog.
The URL is here:
http://www.inluminent.com/weblog/comments.rdf
So, if you’re interested in syndicating my comments (not sure why this is useful yet, but I’m sure Phill will point it out eventually) then drop that URL into your news aggregator.
Now to figure out what a FOAF feed is, why I’d want to do it, and if so, how.
Why don’t major news publications like MSNBC or rather, NewsWeek, include outbound links in their articles?
Take this one, which I just skimmed, In it you’ll find this passage:
And yet my GSM-capable phone didnít work in Asia. I was missing a removable chip called a SIM card. A little bigger than a fingernail, a SIM card identifies you to the local wireless network, telling it youíre an authorized user. Don’t make my mistake. You can buy worldwide SIM cards. Or you can buy country-specific ones. Either way, you need them. Enter “SIM card” in an Internet search engine to find a provider you might like.
See that last sentence? Why doesn’t it link to Google, or better yet for this publisher, MSN’s own search engine?
Wouldn’t this work better for the reader, and for MSN’s own branding:
And yet my GSM-capable phone didnít work in Asia. I was missing a removable chip called a SIM card. A little bigger than a fingernail, a SIM card identifies you to the local wireless network, telling it youíre an authorized user. Don’t make my mistake. You can buy worldwide SIM cards. Or you can buy country-specific ones. Either way, you need them. Search for “SIM card” in your favorite Internet search engine to find a provider you might like.
I mean, really? Isn’t that what the web is all about? Linking to related information so that others can find things more easily?
Look at the next paragraph in that story. There are two websites mentioned, with a url, and no hyperlinks. What’s going on here? Are they just too lazy to do the work? Did they really lay off all the humans behind the website?
I’m picking on MSNBC here, but the New York Times stories are just as bad, as are the Dallas Morning News stories, and even the San Francisco Chronicle (which I’d think would be more web friendly) doesn’t include more than one link in some of its more technology friendly articles.
Sort of pisses me off you know? I mean really? Are they scared to loose readers? Seems like if I found a friendly publisher that allowed me to just click and read other sources, I’d read them more often… maybe that’s why I read weblogs so much more than major publications now … interesting thought.
Scott gives us Fuzzy Search™.
and yes, I do highly recommend mnoGoSearch, but am waiting on Movable Type 2.5 which has search built in to it to add searching to this site (just want to be an end user).
Travel is the largest e-commerce category on the net, and yet it’s still the toughest nut to crack, and at the same time, the one with the most potential, in my opinion.
Reading about Nate’s most recent experience, I’m reminded of how hard it is to do something that’s traditionally been a completely hands-on experience in the past (you used to have to buy airplane tickets in person), in a new an completely hands-off manner (from the vendor’s perspective).
The air travel industry was regulated heavily for a long time, and is still quite regulated, regardless of what the industry wants to say. So, that being said, vendors can get away with things like not answering the phones, and a lot of that comes from the large political forces involved, but that doesn’t make it okay.
CheapTickets.com (who I refuse to actually link to) has the worst consumer experience out there, in my opinion. It’s a great service when it works, but when it doesn’t you’re pretty much fucked, as Nate is learning (by the way Nate, I’ll try to send you a phone number that’ll work tomorrow). Something that you may not know, is that fully 60% of CheapTickets reservations are still placed via phone. Why? Because people are still scared to spend a lot of money on the internet on something they can’t hold or touch. It’s fact… trust me. The vast majority of people ’shopping for airfare online’ aren’t buying it online… they’re just shopping.
Why is that?
I think it’s because of two things: 1) horror stories like Nate’s and 2) large companies that are trying to eke out every penny from every transaction they can. They don’t want to invest any more money in loosing operations (like large call centers to answer questions) and don’t want to invest in perfect human interfaces that are totally online. I see it everyday. Trust me on that one.
The online travel marketplace is huge, and isn’t going away, but it’s also just barely getting better on a weekly/monthly basis. Until there is some major investment in customer service across the board, and one really big player gets it right (none of them have yet) and they drag their partners kicking and screaming into that right place (think expedia gets it right, and drags Avis into that right place) it’ll suck for consumers. And that means that the airlines are going to have to be the ones to get it right first, and the big ones are too big to get anything done right. It’s going to take someone like Southwest to get it right, I think. We’ll see, but that’s my prediction (oh, btw, I think they’re pretty close, but aren’t in enough markets to make a big impact yet).
Sorry you bought your tickets through cheaptickets Nate. I’ll try to help out though.
Do whatever is neccessary to make it look like it was no effort at all.
This is the story that I learned from reading Todd’s latest post on his weblog.
FrontPage Sucks™. Any developer knows that. Even windows based web designers know that FrontPage sucks. Todd’s story really isn’t about Frontpage though. It’s about taking on a client that you can’t serve well (the guy that got thrown in jail did this) and choosing the wrong vendor (the resteraunt did this) and saving the day for the client (Todd did this).
I’ve been in all three situations to some extent or another, and it’s interesting to think about that. Why do people choose to use a vendor? Are they using the right criteria? I’d think that 90% of the people out there aren’t evaluating their choices very well, and that’s by people like Todd get called. At the same time, I’ve got a few clients myself that I’m probably not taking care of well. I’m starting to wonder, internally, why I’m not taking better care of those clients? Probably because I should have never taken them on in the first place. I just don’t have time to serve them adaquately at the rates that I quoted them.
So, what should I do? Tell them to take a proverbial hike? Tell them thanks, but no thanks? Start treating them right? I guess it depends on what I want out of them, really. I’d really like to recommend an alternative source for them, but I just can’t, knowing that what I quoted them isn’t quite enough for anyone that I’d feel comfortable recommending… ah, what to do?
Anyways, that’s my problem, not yours, but Todd definitely shows how to treat a client correctly.
I normally read technology related weblogs these days, so when I find a weblog with coding tips and great writing, I’m inclined to thank the writer somehow. I’d like to point you all to Scott Andrew’s weblog and this post about yellow jackets. It’s a refreshing read.
“I squashed it with a newspaper before it could warn the others.”
Great little short story. Thanks Scott.
(ps. he’s got a great little CSS tip above this yellowjacket post.)
It’s so hard to find good writers in the tech world, and I’ve been noticing that at work. I’m not a good writer, by any means, but I understand code (at least, I can figure out other people’s code reliably) and I think that means that I tend to think more linearly, or that I have a more linear brain, whereas the folks I work with in the marketing department of my employer all seem to be able to come up with good ’copy’ at the drop of a hat, but can’t follow code for shit. It’s refreshing to find someone like Scott how seems to be able to meld the two brains together. Writing for writing’s sake, and coding, or at least understanding of code.
Where the hell have I been for the past couple of weeks?
Since Vanguard declared bankruptcy and closed its doors, Hooters has formed Hooters Air LLC and is seriously considering launching an airline in Vanguard’s place.
Wow!
Now this would be a great marketing gig, though, I have a feeling that it’ll only work for two markets. 1) Kansas City (what else are you going to fly?) and 2) the male business person that isn’t embarassed to admit they flew on Hooters Air.
I mean really? Would you admit that you were a ‘frequent flyer’ on Hooters Air? Or would that be a new boast that males exchange while at the bar’s men’s room in some distant city?
“Yeah, flew in last night on Hooters Air. Love that Airline… Joined their ‘frequent flyers program’ too … (wink, wink)”
I can see it now. Divorce rates in this country will skyrocket. Women will protest. Men will do something stupid in mid-flight and we’ll major issues with sexual harrassment from this airline… or perhaps they’ll add that to their Carriage Contract (when’s the last time you read one of those before you got on a plane, or bought a ticket?)
Hooters Air. Sounds cool, but also a stupid business idea. Running an airline profittably is so far from the resteraunt business. You can’t just throw some good looking women on a plane, and hope men will flock to it. (excuse the pun).
Great marketing idea though. Sex does sell.
I’ve been using SpamCop as a non-paying member for about a year now. In that time, I think I’ve probably reported about 1,000 spammers, but you know what I’ve noticed? It hasn’t really helped me. I still get spam. Sure, I could sign up for the paid version, but that’s a little silly to me. I mean, why pay to not get spam, when the delete key is only a slight wrist movement away.
But this week, I’ve been getting a lot of enjoyment out of torturing spammers by using a new tool from EmailSherpa.
EmailSherpa is part of the MarketingSherpa product line and is “the newsletter
for responsible emailers.” It’s something that I find invaluable as a resource for learning new things about publishing email newsletters, or sending out direct marketing messages via email. The topics are always on topic, and always useful. For example, in this issue, they gave the results to a survey that they did on email marketing, which reveals quite a bit about what others in the email scene are doing, yet does so easily and quickly.
I sent Anne Holland, publisher of EmailSherpa, a few questions about their latest product Torture a Spammer, which is a game based marketing tool that was launched “as a combination of public service and promotion.” They launched it on September 17th, and have seen a lot of response from it.
If you ask me, this is a great viral marketing tool, that will do two things 1) help educate the consumers about email marketing and more importantly 2) help EmailSherpa increase its brand name in the same field. Anne expects the bulk of the people playing the game will be consumers, but thinks that “some people will hopefully be marketing professionals” that will opt to join their subscriber base. I’d like to think that they’re also counting on a percentage of those new subscribers to their mailing list(s) to buy some of their reports (which are excellent by the way).
Interestingly to me, they’re also offering shirts, mugs, and mouse pads through CafePress to people that ‘win’ the game. Great little afterthought as a way to keep the brand in front of people, and as Anne puts it, “If we are wildly successful, the t-shirt etc. sales will cover about $100 of expenses (which were in the thousands.)”
I’m quite interested in how the game ends up doing for the Sherpa folks, and will keep an eye on their blog for more information.
Go play the game, and buy a mug (they’re $3 off as of this writing).
I can’t steal the punchline to this one from Kasia, so go read the joke and the punchline at her site. Classic.
A couple of weeks ago, I read a post on Joel’s weblog from January about Knowledge Management and a software product called Six Degrees, that was coming out from Creo (made up of the guys that were the real brains behind Quark back in the day).
I was intrigued. Here promised to be a product that could really help me get my job done faster, and more efficiently, and it ran on Windows and Macintosh. I downloaded the eval version, and fired it up on my Windows 2K box at work. It took about 30 minutes to crawl all of the data on that machine, and index it. So far, so good. Then I started using it. Or trying to, I should say. First of all, the software requires a J2EE runtime environment installed, and it’ll do it for you, if you need it, but it doesn’t check the version number of one that’s already installed on your Windows box. It also doesn’t uninstall the older version, if it installs a newer version for you. Also, it doesn’t handle large amounts of information very well. Lastly, I hate my PC, so I tried troubleshooting it for about a week (the demo version mind you) but I never got it to work properly. Don’t get me wrong, it looks promisiong, but I’m not interested in helping them test it right now at work (just too damned busy) — but they were superb in offering me help, support, and requesting feedback on my progress. Angie, the customer service person that was helping me probably deserves a lot more than they’re paying her.
Then just this week, I was reading on Andy’s blog about ZOE. I was again intrigued. I downloaded it on my Mac at home, doubleclicked it, and whammo! it just worked (typical experience for Mac users, but you PC users might have a hard time believing that. really, it just works). I’m super impressed by its abilities, and need to spend more time with it to get more comfortable with it, but if it continues to work well after I start putting massive amounts of data into it, I’m freaking sold! (oh, but wait, it’s free). Andy loves it thus far, and I’m liking it, so you might want to check it out. (yes, it should work on a PC, check the FAQ)
inventory.overture.com – very useful tool for learning what to buy on overture. [via executivesummary]
So, today, I got a call from a client asking me to sell them all of my inventory for a particular target.
Woopee! Jump for Joy! right?
Not neccessarily.
As an ad sales person in today’s world, I know better. You see, today’s internet advertising rates are always negotiable, and when I say that I mean ALWAYS. If you’re looking to buy advertising, I can guarantee you that no matter what you end up paying on just about any site out there, someone is paying more than you, and someone else is paying less than you. Count on it.
So, this one client wants to buy all of my inventory in a very targeted area. You’d think that as they buy more ad impressions the CPM would go down, and that’s true, but when we hit 80% sold, the CPMs start going back up, especially in a targeted area. This happens for two reasons:
1. The sales person can’t really guarantee that traffic to that targeted section or page of the website they represent will actually be the same or higher than it’s been in the past, and all inventory projections are based on the past (and usually, only the past 30 days or so, which is flawed).
2. It doesn’t matter who the client is, when you sell all off one type of inventory, it makes that inventory even more valuable to the other people out there that might be interested in it, thus, it gets more expensive.
The client didn’t understand this completely. They wanted an extremely targeted buy, and they wanted as much as I can give them. This meant they were going to have to pay for it.
They asked if I could lower the CPM, to which I replied, sure, but I’ll have to lower the impression level to do that. The fact of the matter was that it is more important to them to have all of the inventory, that it is to have a lower CPM. It’s counter-intuitive, I know, but it works that way.
Ad space prices are like an inverted bell curve. Buy a small amount of impressions on a large untargeted area, and you’ll pay a small amount, and generally a small CPM (just tell the sales person you’re really just testing things. If they’re decent, they’ll say that they want you to be successful so you’ll come back, so they’ll cut the shit out of the rate). Buy a respectable number of impressions across a site, or a heavily trafficked area of a site, and you’ll pay an average rate, but it should be higher than a ‘test’ rate. Buy a whole lot of impressions on a site, and your CPM will start coming down (call it value pricing, like shopping at Sam’s Club, or Costco). When you start trying to buy out a while area of a website, you’re really starting to buy a sponsorship, and those are more expensive, therefore, the CPM is higher, just like it is with a sponsorship, but I guarantee you’ll get a lot of hand holding, and will be taken care of very well (or you should be advertising somewhere else).
So, plot the bell curve. It starts in the bottom left, goes up and to the right till it peaks, then comes down a little as it move more to the right, till its half the height of the peak, then shoots up and to the right violently. Along the vertical axis is your CPM, and along the horizontal axis is your % impressions and impressions. Make sense?
It’s the same as anywhere else. Advertising sales is really no different than selling soup, or potatoes, or silion chips for that matter.
So, don’t sell yourself short falling over that large customer that’s trying to buy all of your inventory, because when they’re gone, you might not have any other customers.
Keith Devens shows us his mod_rewrite rule for getting rid of extensions. Totally cool, though I don’t know much about mod_rewrite (yet)
Been working on our server for my new company a lot lately, and that’s taking a lot of time. As I work on it with our new sysadmin (who comes highly recommended by Scott Johnson) I’m starting to realize how little I really know about server administration, and for that matter network architecture.
I’ve always thought that I was just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous, while at the same time, smart enough to figure it out given the time, but I’m realizing more and more every day how precious my time really is. Thus, we’ve turned to someone else to set up our server the way that it needs to be set up, and with the speed that we need (and the price is right also).
It’s coming along nicely, but I also sort of fear that I/we are making decisions without having the time to research them, primarily because we’re already behind schedule (or so it feels). Decisions like sendmail vs. qmail? Apache 2.x vs Apache 1.x? MySQL 3.x or 4.x? What modules to include in apache? Bind?
I’m not knowledgeable enough to make an completely informed decision, and neither are any of my partners (yet). So, instead of holding up the project any more, we’re asking our friends what they think, and why, so that we can make a more imformed decision than we could before we asked them… but I still have a nagging feeling that I’ve got a lot (read a shit-load) of reading and tinkering, and asking to do this weekend…
The good news is that we should have FTP, http+php and mysql working by 9/19, and email up by 9/20 or so. So, things are progressing and our developer can get into the box and start tinkering.
Starting a business is tough. Being your own CIO when you know about as much as the Easter Bunny about the technology is just plain scary. But, I guess that’s what open-source is all about. Dive in head first and learn fast. Also, hire smart people to advise you, for those times when you just don’t have a clue, or the time to find one.
[later - ftp, httpd+php, mysql all done. Scott was right about the new sysadmin]
Amazon is Big Brother, posted over on the Amazon Weblog shows us all one more reason to not use Windows. The fact that they’re installing Alexa things by default (which was under serious attack by privacy organizations since they launched) without telling anyone anything is typical of the Windows mentality. Netscape 4.x embedded Alexa stuff also, but they at least told you what it did, and how, before you downloaded the software. Not so with IE 6 SP 1. Beware the Redmond Machine.
I’ve had an Earthlink account since I bought my iMac in August 1998. I signed up for that account for two reasons: 1) I was new to the dialup internet (having been a college student for the majority of the time before that, I didn’t need a dialup account) and 2) It was so easy to do using the script that Apple installed for me on my desktop.
I haven’t cancelled that account, even though I now have high-speed DSL at home, as it allows me the flexibility (for low cost/high quality service) to dial up from anywhere in the country, should I ever be on the road. I probably won’t ever cancel that account, unless the monthly fees become stupid, or free WiFi access becomes more entrenched (and I mean it’s available in rural America by that statement.)
So, when I read that Earthlink is now bundling their startup kit with every new Lindows PC being sold, I thought to myself that they’ve just won a major marketing coup. First of all, MSN will probably never run on Lindows without some customization to the software, and second Microsoft will probably break the access protocols for Lindows OS users, if someone invests the time to get MSN working well on Lindows (no, I don’t mean just plain vanilla MSN dialup service, but rather the AOL like MSN environment that comes with their package).
This might just be a good shot in the arm for Earthlink, though, something tells me their support call volume will go up considerably for a while, as the typical Lindows OS customer is very new to the computer world… and the $199 price tag at Walmart for one of these boxes is a very low barrier to entry.
During my college years, I was introduced to DoubleDave’s Pizzaworks, a great little local chain that started in College Station, TX (yes, I’m an Aggie) in 1984. DoubleDave’s seemed to be a staple part of the diet when we were in college. We’d eat there after football games, during study sessions, before Bonfire, and after finals. It was just something you did… “Lets go to DoubleDave’s” was a common battle cry it seemed. There’s nothing like the combination of great pizza and world-class beer to make your stomach happy. (They serve 100s of types of beer from all over the world.)
I haven’t thought much of the company or the eatery since leaving my beloved Aggieland, but there are some Aggies out there that still dream of the taste of a good pizza roll every now and them. One of them is a good friend of mine. He wrote the corportate folks an email, asking when a franchise might be opening up in our area, and I was totally impressed by the response, and the timeliness of it.
I normally don’t expect any company to get an official response to a silly thing like an email from a customer in under 24 hours, and normally I expect the response to take up to 5 business days (gotta check those policies, and make sure you’re answering the question correctly. Also, you don’t want the customer to bother you again, so if you answer the question badly, or slowly, hopefully they won’t think you’re a good resource, and won’t ask you again — which just wastes your valuable time, right?)
Anyways,the DoubleDave’s staff answered his email within an hour. WOW #1!
The DoubleDave’s staff person that answered the email was non other than the CEO of the company Chuck Thorp. Chuck included his office phone number, and his cell phone number. (What is this guy thinking? giving his cell number to a customer?) Wow #2!
Chuck also used his personal (not a @doubledaves.com) email address as the reply-to address in his email to this customer. Wow #3!
And to top it all off, Chuck explained that the company has recently “sold a 3-store package to a couple that plans to develop in that area. We have spent the past two weeks in negotiations with various centers in and around the XXXXX XXXXX area and have gotten no results. The rents are too high or there are already competitors taking up the good spaces. As a result, we are firing off a letter of intent on a location on XXXX XXXXX Blvd. Is that very close to you? It appears that this one will go through. The couple will continue to look in that area especially since we got your email.” WOW #4!
I’m so impressed with the way that Chuck, and the entire DoubleDave’s staff answered this little silly email from my buddy that I’m personally excited about them opening a store in the area, so that I can tell all my friends how great the place is, and really help them drive some good business.
That’s great corporate communication, and the best damned PR you can get. You couldn’t buy my endorsement if I didn’t think you were worth a shit, but DoubleDave’s has proven that it’s worth the recommendation. Take this lesson to heart PR and Marketing folks:
Quick, Honest, and Accurate answers to customers questions will get you further ahead than any other form of marketing out there.
(ps. I just noticed that they’re opening one up near my office soon. Can’t wait to go have a good pizza roll sometime soon.)
Nicholas Riley does a great job of summarizing the new Terminal application in Jaguar. He also told me how to find the MacMinute RSS feed (until Stan freaks out and changes it) and MacUpdate’s RSS feed.
diveintomark, among others, points out that Mac OS X 10.2.1 is coming out soon, we’re all sure.
MacOSXHints tells how to get iChat to recommend a new spelling to you.
Panic has released CandyBar 1.0.1 (if you own a Mac, check this app out).
Also, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to turn on the faucet, and have $5,000,000 come out of it? That’s what Apple’s done (conservatively) in the past two months with .Mac. Sign up now for the discount, if you want it.
Monday was a good day for incoming referrers.
It seems that Tony Pierce finally stumbled onto this little weblog, and thinks that I’m doing it better than him… Thanks Tony. That is terribly high praise, in my opinion. Most of you don’t know this, but Tony’s weblog was the key inspiration for inluminent/weblog. And, I think Tony’s doing a wonderful job on his site.
Rick mused about the reader reactions to this little ol’ weblog. I maintain that the photos might not make some of the potential readers out there happy, but at the same time haven’t received negative comment one, yet, though I’m dreading the day it starts. The goal here with the pictures of beautiful women is not to offend, but rather to spice up what would other wise be considered drab content. And at the same time, hopefully more readership will push me to produce better content… who knows… we’ll see somewhere long term what happens.
Jeremy says that inluminent/weblog is ‘beautiful’. Thanks Jeremy.
Andy’s vote of confidence helps… though I’m hoping he gets a little less busy sometime soon, so he can personally write more.
Scott Knowles reads inluminent/weblog “purely for the articles”. heh… nice one Scott.
The reverse cowgirl has been nice to me from day one (though I can’t figure out why I’m not on her blogroll sidebar thingy)
Just ordered a 512MB Compact Flash card from Amazon for $149 after mail-in rebates. Great deal, considering a year ago I bought a 64MB card for about $150. [via gizmodo]
I read this story today, about Virgin Atlantic Airways having to replace all of their mother and baby room table because passengers are using them to join the elusive ‘mile high club’ and thought to myself “is that good or bad PR?”
I mean look at it this way:
- Virgin gets in the public eye for something that not horrendously frightening.
- Virgin gets in the public eye of people that are looking for a good time (something Virgin is pretty sononymous for).
- Airbus gets it name mentioned again, even though they really just make a commodity that most people can’t even think of affording.
- Richard Branson gets to stroke his ego one more time (which he loves to do) for just having his company’s brand in front of people.
So, the question is, is this good PR? Well, it’s not bad PR, but it’s also not good PR, IMO.
If I were an airline company, I’d take it in a heart beat though, considering all of the bad press that industry has gotten over the past year… and it can’t hurt to be part of the water-cooler discussions can it?
You know, I bet its great PR in the UK, though, now that I think about it. The Brits have a great sense of humor when it comes to things sexual in nature.
I read all of MarketingSherpa‘s email newsletters religiously. Over the past month or two, they’ve proven to be just about the absolute best resource for new ideas that I have been able to find (and because they’re newsletters, I don’t have to continually search them out).
In the recent past, I’ve learned about ways that the SF Gate is increasing their advertising revenue, how to get famous, how the NYTimes makes more money on their content, and most recently how IBM transformed their website from old and stodgy, to useful and pertinent (not online yet).
That being said, they publish about 8 newsletters on a weekly/bi-weekly basis or so. They’re absolutely wonderful, but they always seem to have some weird little typographic issue. I sent Anne Holand, the publisher, a quick email about it, and she’s thankfully decided to look into the issue. They should be using TextSoap sometime soon, so that their non-ascii email becomes an ascii standard publication. It’ll help them now, and in the future I think.
The main issue is that curly quotes don’t stay curly quotes across platforms (windows vs. mac that is). It just doesn’t work. Typographers would kill me for saying this, but if you’re publishing an email newsletter that’s text only, and your targeting the marketing world, it’s probably worth it to make it work well on Macs and PCs. A lot of marketing professionals still use old Macs, and a lot more will in the future (that’s just my hope). If you’re making an HTML newsletter, then please use the HTML codes for curly quotes, as it’ll just plain be ‘more right’.
In HTML it would look like this:
“Who’re you?” becomes:
“Who’re you?” (but that’s a bitch isn’t it?)
So, download TextSoap if you use a PC, and publish an email, now! If you’re on a Mac, you still might be interested, if you don’t already own BBEdit. It’s also a great compliment to BBEdit in some cases.
It’s nice to see that Phil Windley (CIO of the state of Utah) likes his iBook and Mac OS X.
“Its beautiful and very well executed. Everything about it, hardware and software, makes you want to play with it. Some of its “gee whiz” but other stuff is useful and neat.”
Unsanity makes just about the coolest software for Mac OS X. They call their software ‘haxies‘ as the large majority of their applications are really just hacks for Mac OS X, but they also are much more than just hacks for the users that install them… they’re usually akin to total user experience upgrades.
Take Silk for example. One of the nicest part about Mac OS X is that all of the text is anti-aliased, and it looks really really good. But older applications that aren’t running as ‘cocoa’ apps aren’t always anti-aliased. Silk steps in where the Mac OS leaves off and makes all of those older applications (those older applications include new ones like Mozilla 1.1) have smooth fonts. Very cool.
Then, look at Apple’s idea of a smooth user interface, where some applications have a brushed metal look, and others don’t. Ugly and inconsitent. Metallifizer fills in and makes most of the Apple apps look the same (it doesn’t work on all of them, but most either end up having a brushed metal appearance, or don’t according to your preference with Metallifizer).
To top it all off, they’ve made it possible to bring back the old ‘window shade’ behavior of Mac OS 9 with WindowShade X, a great little haxie for those looking for the old school behavior.
ClearDock is a great (read ‘very very easy’) way to get the dock to sort of ‘hover’ over the background of your desktop. FruitMenu replaces the new OS X Apple Menu with more functionality (and is probably something Apple should have done in the first place).
Anyways… all of this praise for Unsanity comes for a reason. To help me highlight their new blog.
I love Unsanity, and am a proud paying customer, and hope you learn to love them too. (ps. most of their applications are totally free)
Sunday night, I went to the IRL‘s Chevy 500 at Texas Motor Speedway north of Fort Worth, TX. I’d received 15 free tickets to the event, and thus invited a bunch of friends to go wtih us. We had a blast.
This was my first race involving automobiles ever, and thus, I had no idea what to expect really. NASCAR is a big deal in the south, but Formula-1 “Indy” racing isn’t so the stands were really only about half full (which meant we got great seats (they were free vouchers that we had to redeem at the gate) and were pretty close to the finish line.
We didn’t arrive until very close to race time, and missed out on a lot of the pre-race festivities (all of the vendors outside the track were already packing up), but we weren’t there in time to here “Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!!!!” and the ensuing reverberation of 30 some odd engines all firing up at the same time. It was awesome! (and yes, there was one female driver, so the ‘ladies’ part above isn’t a typo.)
The race itself was a lot of fun to watch, but the noise of the race cars was something that none of us were prepared for. A friend went down under the grandstand and purchased ear-plugs for all of us. (Note to self, take ear-plugs next time). We watched the cars race around the track at speeds of 200+ mph. Talk about a testosterone/adrenaline rush. About 30 laps into the race, I leaned over to my wife and screamed “we’re stopping at the hardware store to buy some tools on the way home!” That’s what racing feels like. Instant manliness grows on your chest as you watch the cars speed buy, and the drivers try to out manuever each other at those speeds. The smell of the burning rubber, super octane fuels, and the sights of hundreds on barely dressed women hawking various products. It also helps that we brought our own coolers full of various beverages.
At the end of the race, Sam Hornish was declared the winner:
Sam Hornish Jr. edged title rival Helio Castroneves by .0096 of a second to win the Chevy 500 . It was the second-closest finish in IRL history. Pole sitter Vitor Meira finished third only .1096 of a second behind the winner.
The only name I knew, Al Unser, Jr., came in 4th, but put on a great race. Today, I read through the Pit Notes, and realized that so many things happened during the race that I didn’t notice. I could really get into following auto racing, if I had the time.
We had a great time, and will likely do it again sometime. The evening ended at the local Chili’s with more alcohol, and lots of great conversation.
i’m having issues with MT rebuilding the index files this morning… please bear with me while I try to figure it out… thanks.
Q: When should a salesperson just ‘shut up’ and tell the customer what he wants to hear?
A: Never, and always.
You see, a customer might ask you question A, but in reality, they’re asking this question to answer quesion B (which they probably haven’t thought of yet). It’s your job as a salesperson to answer question B foremost, while also giving an answer to question A, and make it seem like the customer got exactly what he/she was asking for in the first place.
Sound complicated? It is.
Take Joel’s post here on how a lot of his customers ask for a ‘feature’ in his bug tracking software, and he has to tell them that he doesn’t offer that ‘feature’ and won’t add that ‘feature’ for their own good. I totally understand where Joel is on this position, as I deal with the same sort of situation, only in an advertising sales environment.
The customer always thinks they want ‘A’ as their perceptions tell them that ‘A’ is worth something, but its the salesperson’s job/role to first make sure that ‘A’ is really a definable quantity/quality, and that it also fits their goals and needs. Also, you have to determine if you can satisfy the need and/or goal that requires ‘A’ with a product or offering or if what the client really wants is ‘B’ or is served by ‘B’.
This means that throughout the sales call the salesman is constantly trying to discover the root needs and goals of the client, and find ways to either 1) satisfy those needs and goals or 2) tell the customer that they (the salesperson) can’t adaquately satisy the needs/goals, so that the salesperson can move on to the next sale. (If the salesperson has adaquately defined the needs and goals of a client and has no product/service that’ll satisfy those, then it’s time to move on to a new client.)
So, always tell the client what they need to hear, and also never tell them just what they want to hear.
On Monday night, Jeremy Zawodny, an employee at Yahoo, announced the launch of remember.yahoo.com on his blog. On Tuesday, he posted a quick ‘i’m freaking swamped’ post.
Today, he came up for some air, it seems. He learned a while bunch about MySQL (and other things I’m sure) and he’s decided to share some of what he learned with us. Thanks Jeremy.
When I read his post on Monday, about remember.yahoo.com being run by PHP and MySQL on Apache, I was totally psyched. I mean, if Yahoo is using those three things, then shouldn’t everyone else be using them? I really don’t’ know all of the history of this project (and would love to learn more) but it sounds like Yahoo need a development solution that was a) easy, b) powerful and c) quickly implemented. I don’t know if those are in the right order, but that’s PHP+MySQL and Apache, in my opionion, and its nice to see those solutions employed by a company like Yahoo.
Jeremy, if you read this, please publish as many statistics as you can, so that the group of people out there promoting PHP+MySQL can point to your success there. People still look at Yahoo as a technology pioneer, and as a very wieghty one at that. Perhaps we should get the folks at Zend to do a case-study on remember.yahoo.com ?
Anne Holland shows us how to pick that day to end a special offer on… Anne rocks.
Tonight, I read this quick post over at the ContentBiz blog, and that prompted me to think about how we deliver our tutorials in-house, and how we might do then better in the future.
Writing a tutorial or ‘how-to’ manual has got to be just about the hardest damned thing in the world to write (especially for me). It takes [me] a lot of work to write technical tutorials, and I’m burdened at work by the requirement to write a lot of quick and dirty tutorials, for my fellow employees, or my boss. Most of the time, the main reason that its so hard, is that I don’t follow the proper steps for writing a tutorial, and I write for the wrong audience. Generally speaking, the tutorials make perfect sense to me, but the people that read them are totally lost. Almost 99% of my quick ‘how-to’ manuals assume some basic familiarity with the software package, and I usually find myself assuming more familiarity than is truly there.
I perform a lot of tasks, and its just hard to document all of them before we realize that someone else might actually have to do what I do, when I’m not around to guide them through the process. That person doing the task ends up muddling through a UI to a software solution that’s generally not well designed for the casual user, and/or also requires more familiarity with the steps involved than they have (sort of a once you fall off the bike, you better get back up on it, or you’ll never get back on it scenario for my co-workers).
I’ve slowly developed a process for creating these manuals. I’m still not happy with the process, but it is getting better. I started making the ‘how-to’ guides in plain text files, as that’s generally the cleanest form of file (and doesn’t require too many ‘formating in MS Word’ skills (which I’m absolutely horrible at understanding — why doesn’t the outline feature work the way I want it to?) and is very, very portable.
I finally started moving the quick how-to manuals to HTML, which allows me to control the layout, and insert image files, but due to restrictive security measures on our network (we use Windows to serve everything … so we’re hyper paranoid about security … cause we don’t trust MS as a whole to make secure products) I can’t really ever modify the documents outside of office hours (not easily at least) and I always find myself either 1) not interested or 2) too budy to update them while at the office (very fast paced environment generally).
So, I’ve started thinking that I should produce the documents in Word and then use Acrobat to turn them into PDFs which will give us the portability that I’d like to have, while at the same time allowing me to maintain control over the source files, so that I know when changes are made or required by the users.
I think its funny that the end result of the recommendation to people selling their tutorials, is to stick with what works Printed Manuals. Not interactive, this, or interactive that, but plain old PRINT. The one way to present a tutorial that I think the author might have not thought about is through a Flash tutorial. Macromedia’s delivery engine is superior to all other forms of interactive for 1) portability across platform and 2) usability (depending on the designer of the interface of course). I really think Flash would be a great way to deliver a tutorial, no matter how complicated the subject matter. Hell, Macromedia does a great job with their own embedded ‘how-to’ intros to their MX software packages.
To summarize: Writing a tutorial is a bitch, and deciding how to deliver it to the audience is even harder, as there are always too many variables to consider. Just print the damn thing, then concentrate on selling it and revising it.
This looks cool: GPGMail for Jaguar. [via Pat Berry]
The only reason I’m not really all that interested in downloading an installing it right now, is that it’s a hack, and there is a commercial piece of software on the horizon that’ll do the same thing (which means it’ll come with support) … then again … maybe the hack isn’t all that bad of an idea. I miss PGP.
I meant to blog this earlier in the day, as it’s a great example of why I love Kuro5hin.org.
The other side of greener grass
I don’t know about other countries, but many US homeowners are really obsessed with their lawns. I guess growing grass around your house is better than pouring concrete. Of course, considering the amount of water, pesticides and chemicals poured on lawns annually, maybe there’s a down side… unless you go organic.
Sometimes growing things organically can be more difficult and more expensive, but in the case of your yard, just the opposite is true: For the most part, it’s both easier and cheaper.
You may think reading about lawn care is about as interesting as watching grass grow, but come with me on a short (barefoot) stroll through the geeky side of organic turf maintenance….
There are 11 main points that the author of this article makes about the care of your lawn (which is a big deal to any homeowner in a decent neighborhood) that should be read. Great article. Great community over there. I love it.
Wow! Rick Bruner just pointed out an article on ClickZ, by Kevin Lee, about Google and Overture‘s CPC advertising programs.
Damn. I really wish I’d have read that article prior to a meeting I had with my boss earlier in the week. I was trying to explain how the adwords rankings in Google and Overture’s programs work, as we’re running some campaigns on them right now, and I just couldn’t really get to the bottom of it. I understood how Overture worked, but not how Google worked, until now.
The quick and dirty of how it all works is that Google really ranks their lsitings based on effective CPM, meaning that higher click thrus, and an average CPC bid will generally put you higer in the rankings than a low CTR and a high CPC bid. Wow. I had no idea that it was that easy to explain (I understand it that way, at least). A low CPC and extremely high CTR will probably perform well in the rankings game as well. It’s all about the effective CPM. Take Kevin’s example:
“… an ad with a 4 percent CTR and a $0.25 CPC ($10 CPM) will rotate into higher positions than an ad with a $0.35 CPC and a 2 percent CTR ($7 CPM). The higher CPC does not get better placement.”
Make sense? Good.
Overture ranks your results in search listings based on Maximum CPC bid, not click-thru. So on Overture, according to Kevin, the smart advertiser will try to pre-qualify searchers in their listings, and give a high CPC bid, to maximize their listing rank, and at the same time minimize the amount of money they spend on unqualified leads.
Great article. Go read it.
It had to happen: the iCal Weblog. [via Adam Curry]
iCal2blog can be used to publish your iCal events to a blog.
[Later] A webdav+iCal tutorial.
Today, Ranchero released a new beta of TigerLauch, which is a little menubar application that’s open-sourced, and free. The idea behind TigerLaunch is that it runs in your menu bar, and provides quick access to all of your applications (fully configureable). It rocks. [screenshot]
I’ve been able to get my dock back down to about 15 core applications at all times, and have the rest of the important ones in my TigerLaunch menu. The cool thing is that it ‘finds’ all of your Applications for you, so all you have to do to configure the application is go into a menu and check/uncheck what apps you want listed in the bar.
Totally cool. Thanks Brent. (Oh, and he’s looking for an icon for it, so if you know any talented icon makers, hook Brent up).
I’ve been reading a lot of complaints about iCal recently, but I’d like to point out that I think that most of them are people that are comparing iCal to other calendar keeping software that they’re 1) used to and 2) that they paid for. iCal is free. It’s a huge value add to the Mac OS, and when you add Mail, Address Book, iCal and iChat together, you’ve got a pretty damned good PIM/communication solution, especially at the price: $0. Show me that on a Windows machine.
On top of that, these reviews/first impressions of iCal that I’ve been reading just seem to be blatently wrong, and at least short sighted in my opinion. Take this first one:
Chuck La Tournous over at RandomMaccess pretty well sums up his dislike of iCal, but… he’s dead wrong on most points. Chris, if you’re reading, look in the preferences of iCal, and play with the settings. You can fix a lot of your initial problems there. I don’t have the display issues that Chris shows a screenshot of… I have to wonder if that’s just a bug local to his machine, or if its something I’ll come across sometime. To set up a multi-day event that happens at the same time each day, just set it up on the first day, and then make it a repeating event, with daily repetition. It’s that easy… really. Sure, it’s a little easier in other apps, but this isn’t that hard to get used to, if you’re going to actually try to use iCal in the future. I love this statement “Apple’s iApps have a well-earned reputation for being first-class, despite the fact that they’re often free.” Bullshit. Mail sucked when it first came out. iTunes needed a lot of work to get where it is. iChat sucked to me at first, until I started using my address book to store AIM names, and now that I see how well they all work together, I’m super impressed. Don’t blast iCal cause you’re a lazy bastard that doesn’t want to investigate how to get it to work.
Also, I don’t have a clue why Pudge is having such issues with iCal on his machine. I’ve got a 700MHz G3 iBook with 640MB of RAM and iCal’s only taking up like 5% of my RAM (according to Process Viewer) and only takes like 10 bounces to fully open, and that’s with a whole bunch of other apps open. Also, all of my calendars are under 24KB in size (except for one that I’ve subscribed to) but I really haven’t added all that much to mine yet. I like keeping my day clean… makes me feel like I have less to do
I have a recommendation for everyone that’s thinking of using iCal. Download it, then use it for two weeks before making your judgement public. It’ll make you look less stupid, and more informed. Investigate a little about what you’re saying or having problems with. Visit Apple’s website and check out the Library. Subscribe to some calendars. Test it fully, and then let people know what you think.
At least Reb seems to be holding his judgement until he’s played with it more.
And with all of these new iCal hints over at Mac OS X Hints (and more coming I’m sure) I have a feeling that iCal will be useful enough to those that take the time to learn how to use it properly.
Some other iCal links for you, now that I’ve ranted a bunch:
Are you still waiting for iSync? Well, you can wait, or you can read Rael’s instructions on how to manually sync your iCal entries to your iPod. Scott Hacker makes some poignant remarks about iCal that are on the money. Here’s a non-committal. Heck, Kevin Hemmingway has already made a MovableType-to-iCal converter (need to check that out later). Ev’s interested in the subscribe and publish parts of iCal.
Now, if you still want to bitch about free software that’s as good as iCal, go hold the button, and let me know how long you lasted.
Today, Steven Frank at Panic pointed me to Shoutcast DNAS as a solution to my MP3 serving woes…
I’ve played with it a little, and have some configuration issues to work out, as well as permission issues on the files (I’m an idiot sometimes… I unpacked the tar file in /usr/local/ but probably should have done it somewhere else…) and I need to re-read the installation/configuration files a few more times, before I play with it any more. When I get it all working, I’ll post a quick how-to here, but I’ll not likely be giving out the URL to many folks… not planning on running a public i-radio station, just a personal feed to keep me happy at work (I need something to keep me going).
And I’m probably going to end up buying Audion anyways, just as a ‘thank you’ to Steven.
So, at work this morning, I got a call from some guy at RealKeywords (they’re trying to do what RealNames was doing before Microsoft fucked them over). I let him take 5 or 10 minutes (of my not really listening) to give me his schpiel and then he stopped (to breathe I guess) and I slipped in a quick ‘we’re really not interested at this point.’
He promplty replied “thank you” and slammed the phone back on the hook.
Great salesman there… I’d definitely look forward to hearing them again.
(BTW, the thing that told me we’re not interested? He said that the service only works if someone installs their ‘plug-in‘. Not even remotely interested in that, sorry. Google works too well.)
Back on September 4th, I wrote about adding ‘live referrer tracking’ to this website using a bit of Perl and PHP. I pointed at a few sources, but didn’t provide any real details on how to do it, so I’m going to try and explain what I did, and how to do it yourself in this article… so that hopefully it takes you less time than it took me.
This all assumes that you know a little about PHP, and nothing about Perl (which is my case, though I’d say, I know a little more than ‘a little’ about PHP, but I’m by no means an expert). It also assumes that you aren’t afraid to break your MT installation, and won’t hold me liable for anything you do to your webserver, or self throughout this process.
1. Download Waxy Backlink v0.5. (Right Click: Save File to Disk… on your computer somewhere, the desktop is a good place).
2. Read these directions and these directions at waxy.org to familiarize yourself with the script’s stock instructions, but don’t get bent around the axle on them.
3. Login to your website using telnet, and navigate using cd to the directory where you want to story your ‘referrer log files’ stored. Type:
mkdir backlink
That will make a directory where you’ll keep your referrer log files that this script will produce.
4. We need to make that directory ‘world writeable’ so that the processes that control Perl on your webserver can write to that directory. Type:
chmod 777 backlink
(This might be considered a security risk by some folks, but to me, it’s not all that big of a risk… as the only think you’ll be keeping in that directory are log files or referrers, which you’ll be displaying publicly anyways, so big deal right?)
5. Open backlink.txt, and then modify the backlink.txt file line that says
my $backlinkdir = '/usr/local/apache/htdocs/backlink';
So that it points to your backlink log file diretory on your server (you should specify the full path to the server directoy).
6. If you’re going to use PHP to include this file then change the line that says
my $php = 0;
to say
my $php = 1;
7. You might want to adjust the number of referrers that are displayed now, and the number of incoming hits it takes prior to displaying the referrer now, and if so, change these lines:
# The total number of links you want to display for a single entry
my $max_links = 10;
# The minimum number of hits before a link is displayed
my $min_hits = 0;
So that the numers are appropriate (I’d wait to do this if I were you, till you know its working).
8. You’re almost done with this file for now. Save, and quite your text editor (I really hope you’re using BBEdit for this).
9. Now that the file is saved, change the name to backlink.cgi and then upload it to your website (it doesn’t matter where you put it really, but the same directory as your index file for your weblog is probaly the best place).
Now we just need to include the file, and check to see if its working.
10. Go back to waxy.org’s instructions on how to include via PHP here. See Brad Choate’s comment about ‘double quotes’. Copy this:
<?php echo `perl /path/to/cgi/backlink.cgi "$HTTP_HOST" "$SCRIPT_NAME" "$HTTP_REFERER"`; ?>
And paste it into a spare text document on your computer. Now, in Movable Type’s template interface, you need to select your ‘Main Template’ and paste that line in the sidebar somewhere, just so you can see if it works. If you’re still using the stock template for MT (v2.21), then you can copy this and paste my code:
<div class="sidetitle">
<a name="referrers"></a>Referrers
</div>
<div class="side">
<?php echo `perl /path/to/cgi/backlink.cgi "$HTTP_HOST" "$SCRIPT_NAME" "$HTTP_REFERER"`; ?>
</div>
But you’ll need to modify the ‘/path/to/cgi/backlink.cgi’ part so that it’s the full path on your webserver to your backlink.cgi file.
11. Save your Main Template, then, check to see that you’re template’s ‘output file’ field has a filename in it ending with ‘.php’ like ‘index.php’ if you’re working on your Main Template. Enter an output file name of ‘index.php’ if there isn’t one, and save the template again.
12. Now rebuild your site using MT’s rebuild function (you really only need to rebuild the index page).
13. Browse to your new index page (if you dindn’t have an index.php file in your Main Template before all of this, you’ll probably have to type it in manually, as you likely still ahve an index.html file that’s getting the traffic to your domain/directory).
You’re looking to see that where you’re including the call to the backlink.cgi file, there aren’t any visible errors right now.
14. Create a link to your index.php file on a domain other than your own (might need a buddy to help you out there). Click on that dummy link, then reload your index.php file to see if the referrer shows up. It should work fine, if you’ve done everything properly, like checked your template output filename, chmod’d the directory of your referrer log files, and not screwed up the .cgi file that you created.
If it’s working, then you should delete your index.html file now. You don’t need it (and don’t want it) if it’s winning in the Apache configs over index.php (apache controls which is served to the visitor first).
15. If its not working, check your work… you probably screwed something up by following the directions I wrote above (at an ungodly hour mind you), or your webserver doesn’t support PHP or Perl. I’m definitely not the guy to help you there, though, I doubt its a Perl issue if you’ve got MT working
Lastly. If this didn’t work, get me on iChat/AIM: johnenglerworkin — I’ll answer you when I can.
You can add the include file and change the template output file name for all of your templates if you like. I’ve only added it to my individual files and the main index so far.
Some more notes:
You’ll eventually want to add things to your blacklist of sites that you don’t want displayed in your referrer list. This is what mine looks like right now:
my @blacklist = ( $localhost, 'lycos.com', 'alltheweb.com', 'srd.yahoo.com', 'mail.yahoo.com', 'search.', '216.32.180.', 'sitemeter.com', 'ureach.com', 'netscape.com', 'bravenet.', 'mail.', 'radiocomments.userland.com/comments', '127.0.', 'www.weblogs.com/top100', 'radio.xmlstoragesystem.com' );
but that’s only based on a week of running the script, and there are things I’d like to add to it in the future, and maybe delete…
Note: All of the credit for this goes to Andy and Brad Choate and all the others that have written before me. I just read what they did, applied a little grey matter and elbow grease, and got it working for me… I don’t claim to be able to get it working for anyone else.
I’m looking for a way to stream my own MP3s from iTunes on my home computer, so that I can just type in a URL into iTunes at my office (or anywhere) to listen to them.
Macintosh Digital Hub:iTunes looks like a good starting point, but no quick apparent solutions.
Audion 3 supports Broadcasting, but requires a seperate server to actually send out the stream (though I haven’t read much into this). [later: this may end up as the best (cheapest) solution).
Rampell Software seems to make a product that’ll let me control my Mac using a web browser.
Apple needs to update their iTunes Apple Script pages (I’ll come back and read this later, to see if any of it is neccessary.)
This FM Transmitter looks like a great way to broadcast my MP3s throughout my house, but that will interfere with my Soundsticks operation, and also doesn’t solve the whole ‘listen to the MP3s at work’ problem, unless… maybe… nah, my neighbors would kill me if I built a big ass antennae, and I doubt I can get enough power from the residential grid, not to mention the FCC regulations that I’d have to break… just a thought.
iNet Stream Archiver looks like a cool way to save streams that I might be listening to, but not applicable to my immediate uses.
Look like Quicktime Streaming Server may end up being the best solution to what I’m looking to do, but egads that overkill, isn’t it? Alas, as I read futher, I notice that the requirements list Mac OS X Server… not gonna happen soon, maybe Quicktime Broadcaster? It only requires Mac OS X client, so I’m downloading it now… but it looks like Broadcaster is really only for streaming video in MPEG-4 format. I’d really like to use Quicktime Streaming Server, so that I can make cool playlists using a web browser… argh… time for an XServe in the house?
I did find these instructions for some command line work on MacOSXHints.com that will allow you to broadcast to an icecast server (what’s that?) Oh, and I need to remember to set up the iTunes Music Library (and our iPhoto Library) for multiple user use (why Apple hasn’t fixed this is beyond me).
End result of tonight’s searching for a solution? One step closer, not solution in sight yet (but I’m still looking).
This is probably the best commentary I’ve seen on iCal and why it’s important yet.
I know that my buddy’s had it bad, but this too funny not to laugh at. You have to understand that he works a a very large company, and this company probably has just as many problems as the rest, when it comes to beuracracy, but my buddy just left a small start-up environment and just isn’t fitting in:
On 9/10/2002, [email protected] seems to have sent an email that said something like:
It’s *been* that bad. Just got back from a meeting with ALL of the bigwigs overseeing this ‘e-vision’ project. Shit’s gone sour. They’re bringing in an outside project manager, pushing back launch date, yadah yadah. Just like Office Space.
>On Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:27:38 -0500
> John Engler <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> geez dude… is it getting that bad?
> what type of job are you trying to get there?
>
> work: xxx.xxx.xxxx
> cell: yyy.yyy.yyyy
>
> you can have them call either of those…
>
> john
>
>
AdAge published the results to a survey that they gave to advertising professionals recently, that deals with the ad world’s tech desires and needs and more.
It looks like the PowerMac G4 is still the favorite among creatives out there, which is probably the only reason that rich media companies are developing for the Macintosh. You see, I work with three different rich media providers (names withheld to protect the innocent) on a weekly/daily basis for my clients, and all of them support the Mac, but only in Netscape 4.x, or one other browser, if they support them at all. Why? Because the creatives that build the ads do so on a Mac 90% of the time, but they haven’t upgraded to Mac OS X most of the time (needless expense to a large creative agency especially when everything works under OS 9 still).
You see, the large percentage of the Mac faithful in the creative world don’t upgrade as quickly as the rest of us ‘techies’ do… Those of us that don’t make our living working 99% of the time (80 hour weeks are the norm) on our Macs have the luxury of upgrading as quickly as we can, and learning OTJ (on the job). those creatives that are out there working with an IT staff to support them have to get budgets approved, and require ‘training’ because so much of OS X is different than OS 9, that it’s just not cost effective for those shops to change yet.
I bet you that there will be a run on new machines from the creative shops out there that aren’t willing to upgrade around the Christmas season, because Apple’s moving all of its new machines to become OS X bootable only… sure things will still work in Classic, but not the same as they do right now. For example, you can’t just drag a .gif to the dock icon of Fireworks 3.0 to load that file into Fireworks, and that sucks. People just aren’t going to upgrade in the corporate environment if they don’t have to. Heck, my own creative department just bought 4 new Macs, and immediately reformatted and trashed OS X — because they really don’t need it, and it doesn’t work with all of their scanners, printers, or software yet.
Apple’s doing great right now in the creative world, but the true test is yet to come… who knows what it’ll be like in a year or two.
These books are on my ‘to buy and read’ list:
