Information Week reports on momentum by HP in the PC industry as compared to Dell’s poor performance as of late. From the article: “The decision to offer additional AMD products comes as Dell’s market share erodes. The company shipped 9.7 million PCs in the second quarter, for a 17.7% market share, marking 11.6% growth in units shipped over the same quarter last year. HP sold 8.1 million PCs in the second quarter, for a 14.8% market share, but racked up growth of 13.8%.”

With Dell having to recall 4 million hard drives because many blow up in flames, the company isn’t quite what it used to be. I used to swear by Dell, but the last PC I bought was an HP, and I love it. What brand do you prefer for your PC needs?

User-generated Super Bowl commercials, not to mention the mass amount of YouTube and online publicity, begin now for the world’s most link-to blog, Engadget. The gadget blog is soliciting home-grown commercials from its audience for airing during this year’s Super Bowl in exchange for a $3,500 laptop. Not a bad idea, regardless of the $2.5M 30 second spot.

Disclaimer: I write for AOL’s Weblogs Inc., the parent company of Engadget.

I’d like to think of myself as a resourceful web ninja. That is, when I need something, I’ll look online for some type of free offering or alternative prior to buying. Case in point: Late last year I heard a song by this band called the Pernice Brothers entitled “There goes the sun.” I found the track on iTunes and was just about ready to “splurge” on the whole $.99 cent track, then it hit me: “Go see if you can find a free online download that many bands offer, you web ninja!” It took me about 10 seconds of Googling to find the same song, free of charge (and legal), and at a higher 192 bit rate than the lower quality iTunes mp3 (mp3 here via Spin). While I can’t always vouch for “free,” here are some useful links either in full or in part:

• Free stock photos [Microsoft]
• Free online courses [hp]
• Free MS Office templates [hp]
• Free inbound fax/voicemail to email [k7]
• Free web hosting (including Ruby on Rails) [110mb.com]
• Free business forms [Office Depot]
• Free remote backup [Mozy]
• Free fonts [Da Font]
• Free national anthem mp3’s [Navy Band]
• Free WordPress plugins [Ping Mag]
• Free WordPress themes [Wordpress]
• Free invoicing [Blinksale]
• Free web hosting, emails, etc [Microsoft]
• Free file compression/decompression [Krunch]
• Free web-based conference calls [FCC]
• Free podcast music [Podsafe]
• Free RSS to email [Squeet]
• Free icons for your website [Maxpower]
• Free business consulting [SCORE]

What are some of your favorite online freebies?

Diagramming tools, the information architect’s hammer. Vitality Friedman’s has compiled a list of nifty diagramming tools, including tutorials on IA, free diagramming software, web-based diagram software (Gliffy and Ajaxio), and a list of commercial software programs. I use Visio on PC and OmniGraffle on Mac.

What do you use for diagramming?

Smooth Harold gets a lot of hits from the good ‘ole search engines on how to be a good salesman. But I don’t consider myself a good salesman. Well, at least a hard-selling salesman. Reason being is that my whole approach in driving new business has been the “good fit” method. That is, I do the best I can in the capacity I most enjoy using my work techniques. The client does the same. If those two approaches are aligned, and both parties feel comfortable with the relationship, it’s a go.

In my first year after starting my company, I ignorantly believed that I was the best company for every other business in existence. That’s just not the case anymore (nor was it ever), as I’ve tried to differentiate my efforts which inherently don’t work for everyone.

I’m not saying the “good fit” method works for all salesman, but it has made my closing efforts more enjoyable, less emotional, and more confidant.

Some dude named Jason has started a pretty interesting “social site” experiment dubbed MuteJason that’s a MillionDollarHomepage clone with a twist. From the about page: “After all the [website] adspace has sold, I will take a vow of silence for a year. Complete silence, I will be unable to talk to family, friends, even strangers. ANYONE. There is only one exception, and that will be the podcast I will do when the adspace sells out. In the podcast I’’ll talk about what its like not to be able to talk to anyone, how family and friends feel about it, funny things that happen, etc.”

I’m betting he’ll get the publicity, sell his adspace, and talk in private. Humans need vocal conversation.

[via Calacanis]

I’m a sucker for predictable 1980 plotlines. Or better yet, movies that are just extremely easy to follow. I still enjoy clever and smart films, but I really like the numerous simple ones that the 1980’s served up.

Enter the above clip from one of my favorite movies, Victory. It’s cheesy, has horrible acting, and terrible lines, but I love it. The movie is about a P.O.W. allied soccer team that plays against the German National Team in a “friendly” propaganda match during World War II. The clip shows the last 14 minutes when the allied team unexpectedly “wins” the match and escapes to freedom.

Another gem from the 1980’s: Karate Kid II. Great movie! What crappy movies do you like?

I was working with some large files in Photoshop today when I got the above message. I love when my computer taunts me like this. This error’s got nothing on me ’cause I keep my computer in tip-top shape and loaded with memory.

Oh, but how many times I’ve lost in battle with my computer…

… And don’t write long posts on how to be concise. Regardless, try and use the alternatives in parenthesis when you can:

1. additional (extra)
2. advise (tell)
3. applicant (you)
4. commence (start)
5. complete (fill in)
6. comply with (keep to)
7. consequently (so)
8. ensure (make sure)
9. forward (send)
10. in accordance with (under, keeping to)
11. in excess of (more than)
12. in respect of (for)
13. in the event of (if)
14. on receipt (when we/you get)
15. on request (if you ask)
16. particulars (details)
17. per annum (a year)
18. persons (people)
19. prior to (before)
20. purchase (buy)
21. regarding (about)
22. should you wish (if you wish)
23. terminate (end)
24. whilst (while)

Chutzpah. That’s Yiddish for “gutsy,” and I really like seeing human beings demonstrate it. My former partner and still good friend, Robert Bradford, is demonstrating lots of chutzpah this very week. After Robert decided to move on in his career late last year, he took a good paying job with a large home builder as a database administrator. I could sense early on that he just was digging it. The passion wasn’t there and from some of his comments, he just sounded like a fish out of water.

About a month ago, I got a call from Robert. He said, “I think I’m moving to up state New York.” “What’s in up state New York,” I asked, to which he replied, “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out” (kind of the same reaction when Ray told his wife in Field of Dreams he needed to go to Boston). Movie scenarios aside, Robert had a very strong impression that’s where he needed to be. So he picked up, bought a car due to his old one being run down, and made the several thousand mile trip from Arizona to New York not fully knowing where he’d live and what he’d be doing for an income.

I also had a friend whose brother went to school to become an accountant, only to hate life several years later working for one of the big four accountancies making a grundle of money. He quit his job and went back to school to become a teacher where he more than likely makes a third of what he did but enjoys what he does, and most of all, is passionate about it.

Be it moving cross-country or ditching a planned career path, what are some examples of gutsy moves in your life or the lives of people you know?

I use both Google Analytics and Site Meter for basic site stat tracking. While Google Analytics is more robust, Site Meter gets more traffic love from me. The reason? Site Meter pushes a weekly email to me, when I tell it so, summarizing my sites’ traffic. With Google, I have log in every time I want to track something.

That’s one of the powers of permission-based push technology: increased site traffic and loyalty. Don’t assume your customers love your site so much they instinctively go to it all the time. Provide a great service, and ask if you can remind them periodically to visit your site. Newsletters were the notable start to push technology (and still work extremely well for permission-based marketing), and now RSS and emailed stats, content, reports, etc. are the next. Be sure to use them.

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I’ve been using Gmail as my sole email client since last December and have loved it. I pop all my accounts (a total of 8) into one, and “conversations” is hands down the best thing to happen to email since email. But my gmail has been acting up lately.

When I archive a mail item from time to time, the item just vanishes without a trace. Not in the trash bin, spam folder, my custom folders, nothing. Sometimes my phone (that uses my gmail account) receives the email, but when I look on gmail.com, I got nothing.

Has anyone else had this funky problem, or is it that I just don’t have any professional training of email? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills…

This is a shameless self-plug for some new Griffio launches. Happy to announce two new releases today. The first is Web Evident 2.0. We did the redesign, branding, coding, and implementation. An interesting story regarding the site’s new style guide: After spending weeks trying to develop a new color scheme for the company, we turned to the CEO’s favorite sport, the NBA. He selected two of his favorite team colors, and we went with the Memphis Grizzlies as the final selection. We got some good inspiration, and the man-in-charge has an added social and personal attachment to his company’s branding.

The second release is the new Smarty Template theme we designed and coded for 10Speed Media. Though we’re sad to see the first site we developed for them go due to company restructuring, we’re happy with the more scalable site and better messaging that we helped create. Nice clean code!

For the full list of site credits, you can subscribe and view the details via our Recently Launched Projects feed. Let me know whatcha think if you’re into this sorta thing.

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”

– Samuel Johnson

Free business model idea: Being the quasi designer I consider myself to be, I cringe at the thought of web content being cluttered up with a bunch ads. I also appreciate the importance of a business model. So is there a happy medium between online content and online ads? I think there is, and I call it the “premium web ad.”

If I may steal a thought from the economics playbook, I believe there is a law of diminishing ad returns. That is, for every additional ad you place on a website, the less effective each ad becomes due to the added content “noise.” So a website hosting only one ad as either a top banner (720 x 90) or sky scraper (160 X 600, pictured) should be able to charge a premium, and maybe even earn as much, if not more, as the site might were it running several ads.

Granted, this model might only work with extremely high traffic sites (read: RocketBoom), but as more and more online ads fill our browsers, the price and feasibility of a one, premium web ad existence is sure to increase.

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Picture of my daughter Sadie (10 mos.) at the local pool: I’m betting if you don’t understand depth perception, you probably can’t read either.

Ma Bell ain’t gonna like this post. Newsweek writes: “In a recent report the Yankee Group, a research firm, reported that 4 percent of Americans say their wireless phone is their only phone, up from 3 percent last year….some 15 percent, or 6 million users, plan to ‘cut the cord’ over the next five years.”

I haven’t had a land line at my dwelling since before I was married some three years now. No telemarketers – unnecessary bill – zero portability = bliss. Have you dropped your land line? If not, what’s holding you up?

Overheard in the September issue of Business 2.0: “I’m sick of hearing about big, bad Wal-Mart. Sure, mom-and-pop stores eventually closed after Wal-Mart arrived in my town 20 years ago. But all of these stores were selling products at much higher prices than Wal-Mart. Now the shopping center where Wal-Mart is located has more stores and more competition, which means better prices. This is the American way. Remember that Sam Walton started with one store. The opportunity he seized still exists today. Blaming Wal-Mart isn’t entrepreneurialism. It’s sour grapes.” – Doug Sce, Yardley, PA

I can’t think of any other store where I feel as good as I do after leaving Wal-Mart. While everyday low prices are the catalyst, the real achievement is the great feeling of walking out of Wal-Mart thinking you didn’t pay enough. That keeps people coming back. That feeling of, “holy crap, I just saved a buttload of money, and it feels good. What else can I buy here?”

What do you think of Wal-Mart? Answer in terms of where you spend your money rather than the weak brand the company might have.

I was recently interviewed by Electronic Retailer Magazine for a piece they’re doing on RSS. Here are some of my thoughts on the technology, albeit introductory, for an unfamiliar audience. The issue breaks in early September, so it should be interesting to see if they use any of this.

1. What are the main marketing applications of RSS technology (for instance, podcasting, blogs, targeted newsletters)?
RSS is merely a new way of delivery content and information to your audience, either via a blog post, newsletter, or podcast. It’s also called “push technology” because rather than having your audience come to your content, you as a marketer push it to them. Don’t make them remember your content and offering, let them opt in and just push the content to them.

The more ways you can deliver content to your audience, the broader reach you’ll achieve. The cost of RSS implementation is very cheap in most cases, so there’s no excuse for not implementing it. Though email and web visit still dominate, RSS is one of the fastest growing forms of consuming online content.

2. a) Which of those applications are in widest use today? b) Which applications are most promising for the future?
Blogs really revolutionized the RSS movement and have proven their effectiveness in reaching your audience in a very personable and sincere manner. My blog ( smoothharold.com ) has generated way more business than my company site ( griffio.com) over the past year in terms of revenue, and I can only think of a handful of industries that couldn’t benefit either directly or indirectly from the implementation of a blog. As far as promising applications using RSS, podcasting and vidcasting are somewhat early in the life span, and have been doing extremely well. I think we’ve only scratched the surface of RSS and look forward to a day where just about anything could be served up via the technology.

3. What, if anything, do marketers need to know about RSS technology itself–that is, the technology, as opposed to its applications?
Marketers need to understand that this is a new way of presenting your message to a targeted audience, just like the internet was in the mid 90’s. RSS stands for “really simple syndication,” meaning that it’s easy to use and implement, and it’s a way to broadcast your content to those interested.

4. Can you cite one or two examples of marketers–ideally, direct-response marketers–who have made good use of RSS applications? What did they do? What results did they get?
Generally speaking, if you add RSS to your site content, preferably in the form of a blog or podcast, your site traffic will increase. Those results speak for themselves. While it’s difficult to gauge the direct results of RSS, you need not look far to see what RSS enabled content applications like blogs and podcasts have done in terms of driving traffic to a product or service or company. Most direct marketer understand how effective email newsletters can be in terms of driving site traffic. RSS enabled applications are no different.

One of my clients, Business Jive (businessjive.com ), is successfully producing one of the best business podcasts I know of. There traffic has been increasing like you wouldn’t believe and already have lined up key advertisers and podcast guests on their show. They are in a prime situation to capitalize on all their traffic now through the use of their RSS enabled site and podcast feed that have been streamlined. There are also several independent bloggers like SEObook.com and Kottke.org that have grown huge interest, opportunities, and following with their content.

5. How can marketers incorporate RSS applications into their web sites? Are there right ways and wrong ways to do this?
The easiest way is to set a blog, and use that as a platform to push all kinds of content to your audience (copy, images, etc). The right way is to ensure that you blog, or any content your pushing for that matter via RSS, is personable and sincere. It generally works best if the blog content is managed and edited by one or more individuals, not a company entity. No PR and marketing fluff here. Also, you’ll want to promote your new blog, podcast, or vidcast on similar sites with similar audiences. For example, if I was a company involved in selling Widgets and I just started a new blog discussing the impact of widgets on our culture, I would look for other websites that cover the same or similar topic, and make a thoughtful post on their blog regarding the posted topic, then linking back to my Widget blog. No spamming, just good link backs. In addition, Digg.com is a current must in driving traffic to your content.

6. Do marketers tend to have any misconceptions about RSS and how to use it? What are they?
A majority of web users, roughly 90% still don’t understand what it is and how it can benefit them. If I still manually visited all the website I’m interested in by typing in the url in my browser, it would take me way more time to remember, let alone consume all the information, if I didn’t use RSS. It saves me time, while increases my level of knowledge intake.

Out of the 10% that do use RSS or at least visit blogs, a lot of them don’t even know they’re on a blog, although the content still interests them.

7. Please offer one or two tips for marketers about how to use one or more RSS applications most effectively. What works and what doesn’t?
If, and only if, you’re willing to invest at least 30-60 minutes of your work day on posting new thoughts, articles, links, etc, start a blog. Then make blogging a daily networking priority. I owe nearly every business opportunity (over the last year), either direct, or indirect, to my blogging. Just do it.

8. How significant will RSS be as a marketing tool five years from now? And what will the most effective applications look like? (For instance, mainly text? Audio podcasts? Video podcasts?)
I imagine we’ll see its use dramatically increase in the form of blogs, syndicated websites like CNN, podcasts, vidcasts, maybe even support questions and online answers. For example, rather than having someone email you, you could set up an RSS feed where all specific answers go. Why would you not just use email? We’ll if you want you’ll probably still be able to, but RSS is seeming to be a better way to manage and organize information intake, whereas email general requires responses, calls to action, etc.

9. Do you have any recent data on RSS use (or could you point me to some) that would be significant to marketers?
Generally speaking, blog, podcasts, even vidcasting audiences have significantly increased, all of which are driven by RSS (usually). As stated above, about 8-10% of internet users consume content via blogs etc, and I’d argue a good 50% of those are doing so via an RSS reader (or feed reader). It was one of the fastest growing tech uses on the internet today, and you’d do yourself a favor by grasping on early to it’s uses and what it can do to keep you in-touch with your customers.

I can’t stress enough, however, that the real focus for direct marketers should be on content. Make sure you have great content that gives your audience something valuable to take-in, something worth their time. Then serve that content up via RSS and you’ll be well on your way to successfully leveraging the power of the technology in your marketing efforts.

Also, check out this non-technical guide to RSS ( http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/129) that might be a good starting point for those interested in the technology and its uses.

In case you didn’t know, Google has a nice little companion site to Google Analytics, dubbed Conversion University. The site has some good articles on several site optimization topics including driving traffic, conversion rates, tracking, and analytics in general. Worth a bookmark, at least.

Performancing explores the continuing idea that SEO has little to do with “tricks” and more to do with three things: copywriting, links, and online networking. From the article: “It’s become harder and harder over the last few years to game Google, and many SEO’s are now wondering if it’s time to give up trying to ‘manipulate’ G results and simply start feeding Google more of what it wants — the unfortunate result of which is a huge increase in workload, namely copywriting and Linkbaiting.”

Content optimization agencies, here we come.

Project management is not rocket science. I’m convinced, however, that it takes many, many years to master, if not a lifetime. I’ve only been doing it full-time for the past 4 years, and I’m still learning. I got burned twice this week on some mis-aligned expectations with two different clients, and now I’m eating the cost and kicking myself after not following the all important design phase, where specific scope of expectations should be defined. Maybe I’m just rusty after all the long-term projects I’ve been working on.

Regardless, how do you overcome getting beat on project expectations?

.NetMag has put together a nice list of 20 pro web design tips. The number one tip? Planning, which sadly is probably the number one most forgotten aspect of web design and software development in general. From the article: “Whether it’s drawing wireframes and site diagrams in OmniGraffle or Visio, or even on a scrap of paper, you’ll save time by having an overview of your design at the site and page level before you start building. Obvious errors can be detected and solved before it’s too late to go back and it makes explaining your ideas to clients and colleagues a lot simpler than waving your hands in the air.”

While Visio gets the job done, I loves me some OmniGraffle. Mmm…

[via Digg]

I have a good friend who works as a supervisor in an online customer service department for a local bank. He’s currently looking for new work. If anyone knows of a customer service opening, or has an opening in your organization, please let me know, and I’ll send him your way. I’ve worked with Matt before on some freelance projects, and he’s well qualified the world over. Email: blake at griffio.com

A Web domain enthusiast studies the roughly 47 million “.com” domain names and makes some interesting finds. Half of all domains are between nine and 15 characters long; the average length is 13; and a domain can have, at most, 63 characters. From the article: “While much has been made of domain names like business.com being bought and sold for millions of dollars, Mr. Forbes is dubious about the value of expensive domains. Most people now search for Web sites using a descriptive word or phrase, or else are introduced to a site by a friend or colleague who emails the URL. So, domains don’t need to be short and snappy the way they had to be in the earliest days of the Web.”

I blog for a website that gets close to five million visitors per month. Being the blog that it is, it basically is a genuine link farm to all notable content, summarized by a team of bloggers, with commentary. The reason I say this, is that if a site gets a link, they get a hefty traffic spike from us, which inevitably increases long-term traffic.

A few months back, I wrote an article linking to a site. Generally, I mention the publication’s name within the body of the post, then link to their corresponding story in what we call a “source” link that usually reads either “source”, “link”, or simply “read”. Well this time I used the phrase “This article says” forgetting to name the site but still linked out to them which is a conventional and expected way for most blogs. After catching the style error, I updated my post, but the linked-to site still wasn’t satisfied. They contacted us, even used the word plagiarism (which was way out of line), and just made a big fuss of a mistake and still don’t like how we use a “source” link rather than naming their publication in the actual link.

After talking with my editor, we decided to avoid linking to this site as much as possible, which we currently do. That’s sad because they usually point out good content, but now we just side step them and go directly to their source when we can. So even though we gave them links before, just not in the way they thought we should, now they get next to nothing. Moral of the story? Don’t be stingy when people are doing you a favor, be it free site traffic or a personal favor.

Chances are if you work online you’re familiar with the idea of The Long Tail which is you can still turn a profit on lesser-known goods like books, music, and DVDs because there is virtually no additional inventory cost to keep these items online forever. Basically, it’s a big, albeit old idea. Well, the book comes out this week, and it will likely end up being the biggest seller of the year, contrary to the book’s strategy of turning a profit.

Here are some of the more critical book review excerpts: “An amazing concept, but a little long-winded… [and] Good ideas, but trades ‘hipness’ for accuracy in places.” The idea of the long-tail was sitting right in front of us all this time, but credit to Chris Anderson (author and editor of Wired Magazine) for coining the term. Oh where would we be without business books?

Just one of the many reasons why I plan to visit Newfoundland some day. And it’s not even known for it’s city beauty…

I’m constantly amazed by all the social connections that are made on the internet, either new or revitalized old ones. Just earlier this week, I received the following email from a childhood friend who I haven’t spoken to since I was 12 years old:

“Blake: This is Brian Jones, of Stillwater [Oklahoma], former 6th grade Rebel footballer, crew of Jeff Berry, Travis Tyner, Barry Heald, Matt Holliday [the starting Rockies left fielder], and yourself at one time. I was online Googling: ipod video rockies, because I’m a video coordinator with the Colorado Rockies and was just seeing how far the story had gotten, and to make a long story short, I came across your Smooth Harold blog. Crazy to find you out there.”

Out of all the blogs I subscribe to, and most site feeds, I can’t think of one that doesn’t allow user comments. I subscribe to a gaming site that didn’t allow comments until late last year, but now they’re on some sort of weird “invitation only” thing (Gawker blogs seem big on that).

I recently came across a blog run by Mozy, makers of free remote backup software. Lack of content aside, they don’t allow comments on the “blog.” I may be alone, but I can only think of a handful of reasons as to why a blog shouldn’t allow comments, or better yet, when an organization shouldn’t have a blog (5% of organizations maybe?): 1. The person behind the blog is a celebrity and wants to avoid the abnormally high influx of comments, and 2. It is some organization that needs to be extremely careful in what is posted on its site, even user generated comments (think church site or something). The reason behind both cases seems to imply a community is not desired, so maybe the use of the word blog is not a good fit.

Blogging without comments is just a website of yesteryear with more frequently updated content. That’s fine in some cases. But if you’re trying to build a community, why would you not allow comments? They play such an integral part in the building of communities where editors and members collide on like subjects. Blogs are nothing more than democratized websites.

So can a blog be a blog without comments?

[I can “Digg” this]

After building websites for the past 6 years using Dreamweaver as my primary editor, I’ve had it with the bloated and resource-hogging Adobe software. I still use Notepad and Text Edit for basic fixes, and I don’t use design mode, so what would you recommend as a lean, fast-coding HTML editing machine? What do you use, fellow web geeks?

After a heavy and continuing first round of recruiting for a world history blogging project that I’m working on (beta blog here), I came across an interesting situation. In all due respect to the Jewish, German, and other communities affected by World War II fascists, WorldHistory.com is starting a new Adolf Hitler blog. Being done on such a controversial historical figure, the blog will serve more as a remembrance of extremest ideas rather than the added attention which is largely unnecessary.

After recruiting our first editor for the Hitler site, it came time to purchase a domain. Using a 1&1 (which is a German hosting company) account, I first tried “AdolfHitlerBlog.com” to no avail. “Fair enough,” I thought proceeding to try several other iterations, none of which worked. In frustration, I decided to try ” AdolfHitlerBlog92938473.com” knowingly expecting such a random domain name to be available, but it wasn’t. Strangely, I got an uncharacteristic “domain not available” message rather than the usual ability to transfer an already existing domain to 1&1 account which it currently wasn’t allowing either.

I jumped onto another domain registrar, only to find several of my previous iterations available. I then tried the public domain registration site at 1&1 (not being logged into my account) only to receive the following message: “ATTENTION! An error has occurred. This domain name cannot be ordered.”

Though the answer may be obvious, I wonder why the German hosting company won’t allow a domain purchase or transfer with the name Adolf Hitler in it. Regardless, I can appreciate the fact that maybe the name is something the company would rather not deal with at any level.

You might be married if you considered yourself a connoisseur of fine “original” rock ‘n roll music back in the day, only to later find yourself enjoying the dated sounds of Backstreet Boys and N’Sync that your lovely younger wife listens to on a consistent basis…

Yeah. That was me getting ready this morning while Lindsey was running on her tread-mill. Though I’ve only been married for a few short years, this marriage train is in full effect.

Though project management software is a commodity (if not customized), 37Signals’ Basecamp does a good job with the value add, though the web-based software is not sans problems (i.e . management notification of completed tasks and navigational quarks for starters). Enter ActiveCollab (in alpha), a free-open source PHP/MySQL alternative that is modeled closely after Basecamp and inspired from a blog post. You can install the platform on your own server and tweak it as you like, though it’s being reported that the alpha version is still buggy.

I may be preaching to the choir, but meetings are generally a waste of time. You’d be surprised what you can get done via an email, IM conversation, and/or phone call. Jason Fried writes: “If you’re going to schedule a meeting that lasts one hour and invite 10 people to attend then it’s a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. You are trading 10 hours of productivity for one hour of meeting time. And it’s probably more like 15 hours since there are mental switching costs associated with stopping what you’re doing, going somewhere else to do something else, and then resuming what you were doing before.”

[via Lifehacker]

After falling behind on my feeds over the last three days, I thought I’d point out some interesting links with my thoughts attached. Fancy any of the below?

• QUIZ: Do you have what it takes to be a US citizen? . A quiz in commemoration of July 4th. I scored a 75% (C’s get degrees, no?).
• Tutorials: iLife ’06 . Nice video tutorials for any Mac users out there.
• Wimbledon Comes To iTunes. The 1980 final is one of the best tennis matches ever. Now you can buy it for your iPod.
• The top 25 money tips of all time. Solid list of ideas. My favorite? Focus more on how you spend than how you invest.
• FIFA World Cup bit-sized coverage. This is the type of content I like to consume; short, to-the-point, and under 150 words per article. I’m going to see if I can monetize this type of sports content (which is lacking in the blogosphere) in a blog setting. Just outsource the content creation like ESPN does for their mobile World Cup news and split the earnings with the content provider (found via my Blackberry).
• Web 2.0 financial success: Easy as ‘two weeks and $700 bucks’?. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, on how he started the company: “I wrote a scoping document to a friend, who is a developer. The friend said it would take two or three weeks to create and cost 700 bucks, so I said, ‘Let’s go for it.'” Amazing.

I’m big on clarifying expectations. That’s what project management is all about and is where the nuts and bolts of communication take place. I’ve been fielding several hundred blogger applicant emails over the last few days regarding a new network we’re launching, and some of the respondents seem very trepid to asks questions. Why is that? I always try to be as candid as possible to encourage clarification, but it seems like some people confuse taking initiative with managing expectations. They both involve third-party collaboration but are two very different things. Here’s how I define them:

• Taking initiative. When you go above and beyond what’s expected but you know it will benefit the overall project and please all involved.
• Managing expectations. When you’re not sure what you need to do to meet a third-party’s expectation (either boss, employer, client, partner, etc), so you ask additional questions to clarify before preceding with any work or decision making process.

How do you define the difference between taking initiative and managing expectations?

I woke up to quite an experience this morning; over 50+ enthusiastic applicant emails for a new historical blog network in my inbox. I owe it all to Craigslist. I spent the last week and half looking in more specific “historical places” thinking it would return better results, but I was wrong. Once my ad hit the popular local search directory, it was lights out, and we’re well on our way to starting up several beta sites with the help of passionate historian-blogger hybrids. Should be fun to see where this goes.

Historical Bloggers Wanted [Craigslist]

Just look at these crazy growth and digital video numbers according to Fast Company:

• 18 billion videos were streamed online in 2005 (there were 9 billion in 2004 and 285 million in 1998)
• Visits to YouTube rose 170% from November 2005 to February 2006.
• $585,000 | Cost of a high-definition video camera in 1984 (in 2006 dollars)
• Cost today for the equivalent: under $6,000
• 4 million | Number of U.S. households that now use digital video cameras and editing software monthly
• In 2005, box-office revenue fell 5.2% (from $9.5 billion to $9 billion)

Also, be sure to check out the magazine’s article on the Four Eyed Monsters indie film that is a case study on social marketing and independent publishing. From the article: “Asked if they would accept a $2 million offer from a distributor for the rights to Four Eyed Monsters, Crumley [creator] says, ‘No.’ Buice [co-creator] isn’t so sure. ‘Only if we maintain control,’ Crumley insists. What if that wasn’t part of the deal? ‘No.'”

According to Calacanis, founder of Weblogs Inc., here is the new blog or publishing model for making money online:

1. Start a blog with adsense and make spare change.
2. Scale a blog to 250k to 1M pages a month and become big enough for Federated Media, AdBrite, and Blogads to care about you–now you’re making a living.
3. Scale over 1M pages a month and become big enough that you can afford your own sales group and fire Federated Media for taking 40% of your money because your cost of sales will be 15-20% as a stand alone business.

I’m currently making some decent “spare change” off blogging, and have one site that gets over 130,000 page views per month. If what Jason says is true, I’m more than half way there at “making a living” which I’d gladly accept given blogging’s ability to free up time for other projects, etc.

So let’s hear it readers; how many would trade-in their day job, business venture(s), or other projects to make a living off blogging full-time?

Man, big media networks don’t listen to their audience. A new article explores how ABC/ESPN treat their audience like they’re watching soccer for the first time, whereas Univision delivers the games straight during the World Cup coverage. NY Times writes: “ABC/ESPN is losing 15 percent of its quite large World Cup audience to Univision. And that loss is due solely to those viewers being driven away by the big American network’s approach to televising the World Cup.” This is despite the audience not even understanding the televised language!

There is always a smaller, faster, and better fish (Univision) that comes in an swoops up business from the big boys. Independent networks are a powerful thing. Now if we can only get a sports channel that just broadcasts the video feed with corresponding game sounds and crowds without the commentary. The crowd emits more than enough enthusiasm as it is, if only we could hear it better.

I’m heading up a new network of blogs that focuses on historical figures. The idea is to have one blog, edited by proxy, that comments on current events. It will be “in their own words, as if they blogged,” so to speak. From the press release: “WorldHistory.com is inviting bloggers to bring back the thoughts, words and knowledge of historical figures and blog about what these individuals would say today about current events or topics in the news if they were still living… if you love to write and you are a passionate and knowledgeable about a historical figure, you are a prime candidate [to blog].”

Just what might Ben Franklin have to say on the current issue of immigration? We’re going to try and find out in a sort of living-historical kind of way. If you know of any editors/bloggers that might be interested, please send them my way. Also, what historical figures would you like to see blog if they were still living?

How many site feeds do you subscribe to? If you have’t joined the feed revolution yet (though you really should), how many blogs do you visit daily?

[Sent from a wireless Blackberry]

Just how much of a traffic difference is there between the number one and number two natural rankings on Google? According to one searched term, an SEOer writes: “I can tell you that our site receives approximately 30k of visits on average per day from Google, just from keyword searches for Term X. There’s typically one or two Sponsored Links just above us on the SERP, and a few Sponsored Links on the right side column, too… When we dropped to second slot on the SERP for Term X, we lost approx 18k of visits per day. So, there it is: the difference between the number one slot and the number two slot for a major keyword term comes to about a 60% change in visits!”

Amazing.

[via ProBlogger]

Having watched several matches since the start of the 2006 World Cup, here are my thoughts on how to make the tournament (and soccer as a whole) much better:

• Stop the theatrics. Diving “fouls” have got to go. I’m tired of seeing mostly European or Latin American players (where the majority, though not all actors come from) throw himself down in a conveniently-landing way, hold his ankle in feigned agony, get carried off the field on one of those stupid stretchers, only to have the guy run right back on the pitch. Man up! Refs share a lot of the blame too. Hint to the refs: when a player really gets injured, they just drop to the ground. There is nothing grandiose about falling after an injury. Start paying attention!
• Standardized flags and foul calling. One of the great things about American football, is that when a foul/penalty is committed, a single yellow flag is thrown, after which refs commune for a few moments and make the call together. Nothing is decided in the heat of the moment like in soccer. Example, when a normal foul is committed, whistle, and then continue play like the current system does. In the instance of debating whether the act was “Yellow” or “Red” card worthy though, blow a whistle, throw a flag or some visual indication that added judgment is needed to make the correct call, and converse with the line judges to get it right. This would improve foul judgments by 95%.
• Hand out cards for too many off-sides and overall team fouls. Do something about this. When a player is called for the 10th off-side, card him. When a team has accumulated 25 fouls, do something to penalize.
• Make coaching native. Coaching plays a key role in the successfulness of a team. Why are non-native coaches allowed to coach different countries at the World Cup? Coaching talent, as player talent, should be from the native country.

I love soccer and the World Cup, but it could be so much better. I don’t expect to see any of the above changes made, but something has got to give.

Here is a new way to use your iPod video (assuming you’re a pro baseball player). The AP writes: “Three hours before a start against Florida, Colorado Rockies pitcher Jason Jennings sits in front of his locker, puts on his headphones and stares at his video iPod. He isn’t watching the latest Coldplay video… [He] is doing some last-minute cramming: The Rockies’ video staff has downloaded every Marlins hitter into his iPod, and Jennings is figuring out how to pitch to them.”

I mainly use mine for podcasts, music, movies, vlogs like Rocketboom, game trailers, funny internet clips, audio talks, and keynotes. How do you use your iPod video?

With the launch of Netscape Beta‘s “Digg killer” that adds human editors (maybe I was onto something with ContentDJ after all), social or meta-journalism is really  heating up. Reactions to the launch have been mixed and a little controversial, but AOL, who owns both Weblogs Inc (who I write for) and Netscape only has the product in beta, so improvements are likely to come. If there is anything Jason Calacanis (CEO of Weblogs and heading up the Netscape project) is good at, it’s soliciting and implementing user feedback.

One of the pros to the new site is that it combines moderators with the social aspect of Digg. Netscape also covers a wider variety of topics while Digg only focuses on tech related news. That will all change though when Digg 3.0 is released next week with more categories and some new features. Digg, while superior for now, has a lot less traffic than the entire Netscape community. It has been said that if Netscape takes off, and small sites make it to the homepage, the amount of traffic could easily crash servers left and right. Getting “Nescaped” would add a whole new meaning to getting “Slashdotted.”

Here’s hoping Smooth Harold is one of the first victims.

(end geek talk)