Month: November 2008

The Valley Still Doesn’t Get Performance Marketing

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Nick Denton, head of Gawker Media (which is the umbrella for such wide-read and influential blogs as Lifehacker, i09 (one of my favs), Gawker, Valleywag, Fleshbot, etc) writes about the coming online advertising apocalypse…

Doom-mongering: A 2009 Internet Media Plan: “Internet advertising is by no means immune. Advocates of the internet claim that the sector is both more mature than it was during the last downturn; and it’s more ‘measurable’ than other media. They hope to avoid a repeat of the 27% decline in 2000-2002. Good luck with that. The sector’s maturity also means that its underlying growth is more sluggish than it was in the late 1990s. In 2001, internet advertising swung to a 13% decline from 78% growth the previous year; this time the sector starts from a growth rate of 27%; I would hate to see what a swing as violent as the dotcom burst would look like. As for the measurability of internet media: sure, marketers and their agencies can track engagement and clicks in great detail online; but it’s still only television advertising that can demonstrate a correlation between spending and a boost to a marketer’s sales.”

What Denton and Calacanis, etc fail to come to grips with is that the model of ad welfare which has supported the Silicon Valley lifestyle and worldview over the last 5 years of web2.0 is not (and has never been) the reality of actionable advertising or marketing.

Despite Calacanis’ dire predictions of affiliate marketing’s irrelevancy at Affiliate Summit West ’08, there is a brighter future for the industry compared to what the Valley will have to endure in the coming years.

Welcome to reality. Have a seat. Enjoy the view.

You Got Your Basecamp in My GMail

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I talk about Basecamp a good deal here.

And there’s a good reason for that… it’s essential for web workers (which means all online marketers and/or entrepreneurs) as an end-all-be-all of productivity, project planning, organization, todo lists, whiteboards, etc.

Now, you can add your Basecamp projects to GMail via Periscope via Labs. I’ve tried it… it’s tremendous:

Gmail Gadgets: Add Your Basecamp Projects to Gmail: “To enable this gadget, you’ve got to have a Basecamp account with the API enabled, a Periscope account (which stores your Basecamp login information), and Gmail Labs’ Gadgets by external URL feature enabled. Got all that? Once you’re there, head to the Gadgets tab in Gmail and copy and paste the Periscope Basecamp Gadget URL in, and then your sidebar will display your Basecamp projects as pictured.”

Yes, my GMail tab looks like a crazy narcissist took over the place since I have my Calendar, Docs and Remember The Milk Gadgets going along with the occasional chat (I use GTalk within GMail for AIM and Google chat)…not to mention the steady deluge of email.

Nevertheless, I feel as if I’m getting somethings done with this approach.

“iPhone Apps are my Crack”

My pal Joe Magennis does a weekly podcast called “Overflow” with Cameron Watson and it’s a must listen if you’re into the tech/geek/marketing space.

This week is all about the iPhone App platform, but they do a great job of covering various topics:

iPhone Apps are my Crack | Overflow: “This week our topic is about the iPhone apps that we are using and how the device has changed our lives. “

We all need more podcasts to listen to, so add this one up to your queue along with GeekCast, GeekTo.Me and AffiliateThing.

Plus, the music on Overflow is A+ b/c of Joe’s excellent taste.

GeekTo.Me 7: Essential Geek Skills

geektome

Episode Seven: Macbook's Kill Switch, Token iPhone Discussions and Essential Geek Skills (about an hour)

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pb2e3acc9ba1f8b7cc1a808c9e1115191bF98QFREYmN8&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap24

MP3 File

Show Notes:

– Tethering
– More on iPhones and Blackberries
– Macbook Self Destruct Mode
– 50 Essential Geek Skills

In all honesty, this is the best GTM yet. Check it out and let us know what you think!

GeekTo.Me 7: Essential Geek Skills « GeekTo.Me

Jim Kukral Rebrands as TheBizWebCoach

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Jim Kukral, a veteran of the performance marketing world, MC of Affiliate Summit and serial entrepreneur, has rebranded himself as TheBizWebCoach and is writing a book called Blend This Book! about attention economics.

Hi, I’m Jim Kukral, The Biz Web Coach! I’m doing something different here. It’s revolutionary! I’m offering my 12+ years of experience and expertise in a new way, through Web coaching on a membership program.

Why?

Jim sees this as the future of business web coaching and understandably realizes that coaching is becoming a major niche for individuals with enough social capital and know-how to help businesses (and/or individuals looking to start them) in these troubled economic times.

It’s hard to explain the totality of what Jim is doing, but it is quite interesting. Beyond being a “business coach,” Jim rightly sees that experts are moving into the one-on-one type help situation (instead of ebooks, etc).

So, is membership the next big thing? I think it may be.

Hopefully, I’ll be doing a podcast with Jim in the next few days where we talk about his ideas and goals for the rebrand and where he sees this space going.

As a part-time consultant, I’m interested in hearing his thoughts and you should be too.

Roman History and Google Earth

Amazing times we live in, folks.

And simply amazing for those of us called to teach…

Google LatLong: Roman history comes to life in Google Earth: “Were you someone who struggled to stay awake in ancient history class? If so, perhaps this was due to those uninspiring ‘artist renditions’ in your textbook. Reading countless pages that described how a monument, building or city may have appeared at the time can be pretty difficult to imagine.

Well, today we introduced a new approach to learning about ancient history: the ability to go back in time and explore Rome as it existed in 320 AD — in 3D!”

Amazing.

I love Google and the interwebs.

Tonight’s the Night


I listened to Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night again last night. Amazing.

A comment on Amazon likens the album to Robert Johnson’s rawness and the Wikipedia article hints at the personal nature of the artistry behind the songs:

Tonight’s the Night (album) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “Included with the vinyl release of Tonight’s the Night was a seemingly strange insert that added to Neil Young’s claim that Tonight’s the Night was the closest he ever came to art. Emphasising the personal nature of the album, the self-penned liner notes contained an apology: ‘I’m sorry. You don’t know these people. This means nothing to you.’ The original inserts/liner notes included in the vinyl release were quite cryptic in their conveyance.

On the front of the insert is a letter to the mysterious ‘Waterface’ character, no explanation is given to their identity, although in Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography by Jimmy McDonough, Young says that ‘Waterface is the person writing the letter. When I read the letter, I’m Waterface. It’s just a stupid thing – a suicide note without the suicide.'”

The album has actually crept into my “Top 5” list which goes something like (in no particular order):

– Tonight’s the Night: Neil Young

– Heartbreaker: Ryan Adams (even if it is named after a Mariah Carey song.)

– The Beatles (The White Album): The Beatles (sure, Abbey Road is a/the masterpiece, but I’ve always loved the chaotic underbelly of the Beatles…for me, this is pure music perfection.)

– Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan (if you haven’t listened to this album all the way through with headphones on, you haven’t lived.)

– Nevermind: Nirvana (the album that made me like music and changed my life and my generation.)

It’s difficult to nail down a “Top 5” but it’s really difficult to nail down a Top 10 or a Top 25. We’ll do that another day.

That’s because today, It’s Neil Young’s birthday. So do him and yourself a favor and give “Tonight’s the Night” a listen today (or tonight).

Zoho and the Cloud Stability Question

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I’ve been a long time proponent of “cloud computing” and can’t imagine trading in my GMail or Google Docs on any machine I’m using for Outlook or Office tied to one machine or one OS.

Whether I’m on my Blackberry, Ubuntu laptop, Macbook Pro, Nokia N800, iPod Touch, Mac Mini, my wife’s Vista laptop, etc I can get to every piece of email, every document, every note (through Evernote) every task (through Remember The Milk) that I need.

It is beyond liberating and the type of freedom that any heavy user of computers should seek out. I simply cannot wrap my mind around people that continue to tie themselves to one desktop or laptop or even one operating system.

Firefox is my operating system.

However, the biggest concern I hear (and I have) about using “web apps” like GMail is whether or not they are stable and secure. What happens when their server goes down? What if you can’t get to your GMail because Google is doing maintenance? It’s a very good question and something I consider a cost for having the freedom of mobility.

This morning, Zoho is launching “Zoho Status” which monitors the health and stability of all the Zoho web apps (and they are numerous)…

Zoho-Status: “Today, we are adding a new section to our website – Zoho Status – which displays the health of all Zoho Applications. You can visit http://status.zoho.com to see if our applications are running and responding fine. The site provides you availability & response times for the past week along with downtime, if any. “

I find this highly important and relevant to web workers like affiliate marketers because many of us do use GMail or Google Docs on a daily, if not hourly or minute-ly, basis.

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Zoho is, yet again, pushing ahead past Google or other web app providers here just as they have done frequently in the past. If you’ll remember, Zoho was the first to integrate Google Gears with its word processor to allow for offline work that syncs to the server when you are back on the network. Google Docs now offers this. Just recently, Zoho released Zoho Mail. I honestly think it’s a superior product to GMail because it takes the best of GMail and melds it with the functionality of Outlook, all in a web interface, complete with Google Gears for offline mode. GMail doesn’t have Gears integration yet. I’m not switching just yet, but it is tempting given Zoho Mail’s range of functionalities that GMail is just starting to catch up to with its own Lab features.

So, as a web worker, if I’m looking for a stable suite of web apps to use in place of Outlook and Office, I’m looking closer at Zoho today. Much of what I do on the web is mission critical in one way or another, and having the peace of mind that Zoho Status provides (at least in a placebo effect way) is calming.