Month: November 2013

Worlds Colliding

I’m a big fan of Pawn Stars. It’s the one “reality show” I can watch (when I’m in a hotel or via the History Channel app on my Nexus 7). So, I was apprehensive about clicking this given I also love Paul Thurrott’s podcast “Windows Weekly” on TWiT and knowing his…um… love for Chromebook since I’ve been listening for over 5 years. Click to read his reaction to the Pawn Stars / Microsoft mashup:

So I was happy to see a great new “Scroogled” ad appear from Microsoft this week featuring the guys from “Pawn Stars.” It’s worth watching.

via Great New Scroogled Ad with the Pawn Stars | Cloud content from Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.

I use a Windows machine here in the office and love it as a “truck” to do things like Photoshop or intense projects.

However, my go-to device is a little Acer Chromebook that I love. Between the Chromebook and my Nexus 5, I can run my company on the go and “in the cloud” pretty effectively. I sometimes need to get to the office to use this powerful Windows machine (or if I need to play a graphics intensive game), but my computing work is pretty evenly distributed between the Chromebook and this PC.

No, I don’t think a laptop needs Windows and Office to be a “real laptop” as the ad calls out. I know Paul disagrees, but this just reeks of desperation and won’t be received well.

Microsoft should decide what to be and go be it rather than trying to point out what other competitors are and are not. That’s my $50,000 marketing advice to them heading into a very important 2014 for the future of their company. Embrace RT. Push us old “we want desktop!” users harder to the Modern UI interface. Lean forward into the future and make Windows (RT) the kind of polished product that the XBox One is on launch day. Be innovative. Make us smile again.

Oh, and stop making my favorite TV people talk smack about something I love 🙂

Got a call this morning from my hotel last night…

Very nice lady explained I had left my iPad in my hotel room when I checked out. I stumbled for a bit because I don’t have an iPad.

I asked her to flip it over and see if it says “Nexus.”

“Yes, it does!” she said, “what is a Nexus iPad?”

We had a nice chat about Android and iOS.

Fun tech convo thanks to my carelessness.

Stranger Than Fiction

This is just getting weird…

The truly amazing thing about this is just how pedestrian the NSA’s efforts are – according to NRC, they’re essentially running the same kind of phishing scams with false email requests that you’ll see from any other purveyor of malicious software. As an example, NRC points to how the British GCHQ used false LinkedIn pages to lure and infect Belgacom network employees. Just one more good reason to never click on anything sent from anyone ever.

via TechCrunch

Does Your Dog Love You?

Don’t read to the end if you have had dogs like my Schaefer or now Willie and Waylon in your life 🙂

You love your dog. Does your dog love you back? Is the love that an owner feels for her dog reciprocated? That’s the question that a group of Swedish and Danish researchers wanted to answer.

Clearly this was written by cat lovers…

via Does Your Dog Love You Back? | The Thoughtful Animal, Scientific American Blog Network.

Bringing Back the Blogs

I like this approach… I’ve been using it somewhat regularly here but need to be better about posting things like images or bookmarks here first and then letting them go out to the silos.

Networks like Instagram are still hard to do, but Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are pretty easy.

POSSE is an acronym/abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. It’s a Syndication Model where the flow involves posting your content on your own domain first, then syndicating out copies to 3rd party services with perma(short)links back to the original version.

POSSE lets your friends keep using whatever silo aggregator (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) they’ve been using to read your stuff.

It’s a key part of why and how the “IndieWeb” movement is different from just “everyone blog on their own site”, and also different from “everyone just install and run StatusNet/Diaspora” etc.

via POSSE – IndieWebCamp.

Commodified Authenticity and Social Media

Good read…

The demand for commodified authenticity is an expression of consumers’ nostalgia for a never-existing time when one had total control over the development of one’s identity. That sort of authenticity has always been a fiction, but the very real existence of goods that signify authenticity masked that fact. Consuming authentically could seem to prove fidelity to our “real self.”

via Google Alert for the Soul – The New Inquiry.

A/B Testing for Mobile Websites Webinar

Split testing is incredibly important as all good marketers know.

A/B split testing on mobile is extremely important as more marketers are realizing in 2013 and definitely into 2014. I came across this webinar this morning and thought I’d share as it’s always a good idea to hear tactics from others to improve conversions (especially in mobile):

In one hour, you’ll learn:

How the right mobile strategy can accelerate your marketing ROI

Key mobile web design elements that improve conversions

How to use mobile A/B testing to drive conversions through the roof

via A/B Testing for Mobile Websites: A Crash Course Webinar | Mobify.