I just stumbled across this (Mac) feature and it made me give out a little school girl gasp. You drag your finger around on the mouse pad to move the cursor. All mouse pads work this way. Use two fingers on the mouse pad, and it scrolls the web page up and down. Okay, that doesn’t sound cool when you read it. But it feels very cool and a wonderful way to move navigate on the page.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Newsworld has produced a series call The End, in which they explore the forecasted looming death of television, print, and radio. I think a more apt title might have been “The End of Radio As We Know It.” I don’t think anyone thinks radio or TV or newspapers (well, maybe newspapers) are really going away. They’re just undergoing big changes. You can watch the special on the CBC website (about 25 min). Look for the little video icon on the right side of the page. [I Love Radio]
If you’ve visited smays.com more than once, it was because of something you read here. Some idea that I expressed or someone else expressed and to which I linked. Frankly, there’s nothing else to do on this blog but read what I have written or pointed to.
Our company just spent a few sheckels (I have no idea how many) on some new brochures for one of our new business units. They look terrific. And the copy is pretty well written. But –if we believe Seth Godin– nobody is going to read them:
The thing you must remember about just about every corporate or organizational brochure is this: People won’t read it. I didn’t say it wasn’t important. I just said it wasn’t going to get read. People will consider its heft. They might glance at the photos. They will certainly notice the layout. And, if you’re lucky, they’ll read a few captions or testimonials.
He’s right of course. And we all know this because we don’t read the brochures that others hand or send to us. We put them in drawer or file until the next “clean up” day and then we haul them down to the dumpster. So why do we spend the time and money? Because we need something that tells people about our company/product/service and a nice brochure can be farmed out and done once and everyone stays “on message” by reading or handing out The Brochure.
The best brochure is stillborn. Dead at birth. A good business (or personal) blog, on the other hand, is a living thing. It grows and changes and reacts and responds to the world around you. I happen to believe this is equally true of “brochure websites.” That’s why good blogs get so much more traffic than static, change-once-a-month websites.
Anybody with a copy of PageMaker and a color printer can make a brochure. Some nice photos…a cool font…a clever logo…we’re done. Blogs are never done.
But I’m betting your customers –current and prospective– are more interested in the idea you have today than the ones you had six months ago that made it into The Brochure.
Update: It took just a few hours for Andrew to demonstrate that there are times when a nice brochure or flyer is the way to go. In this instance, he’s developing a piece of property and he needs a way to show people where it’s located and what the site will look like once it’s complete. Today’s Lesson: Not everything is a blog (and I must not be so quick to generalize).
“My other superpower is that I don’t mind embarrassing myself in public. If I had to pick one quality that best predicts success (other than wanting to be successful) it would be the willingness to risk embarrassment.”
— Scott Adams
In January I replaced my 30 year old couch with a home-made window seat/day bed. This is the one I’m tyring to cover with bumper stickers to hide my shitty paint job. Boing Boing points to a much cooler solution. A “computer bed” that starts out as a hinged desk with room for a PC, printer, and so forth. When you’re ready to sleep, the whole desktop swings to the floor and a bed with matress swings down from the wall in its place, converting it to a bed.
I think I cooperate and collaborate well, but I’m not good at being on The Team. Coaches and Team Leaders tell us, “Come on! We can accomplish so much more if we work together as a Team. We gotta pull together!” Once a Team is formed, one of the first orders of business is to choose a “team captain” who tells the rest of the Team what to do. They tend to have the greatest appreciation for the need for “teamwork.” This is exactly the kind of thinking that makes me a poor team player.
But I love to play the game. Hated Little League…loved playing Indian Ball in the field in front of our house. Hated varsity basketball…loved pick-up games at the park. We had teams but they were temporary. We’d play a couple of games and then switch up sides. If the game was too one-sided, we’d adjust the teams to get a closer game. It was about having a good game, see? Not which team won.
Religion has teams (Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc.) and leagues (Christians; Jews; Muslims; etc.). If you are “on” a team, it’s okay to hate –and sometimes kill– members of the other team. Usually God (yours, not theirs) says it’s okay to do this. Sometimes you even have to die for your team.
There are only two teams in the game of politics: Republicans and Democrats. If you want to play, you have to be on one of those teams. Recently, politics has gotten all mixed up with religion. The star player for the Republican team is a dim-witted good old boy with a rich daddy, but very religious. If you believe the polls, almost nobody –including the folks on his own team– thinks this guy is doing a good job. If the other team (in this case, the Democrats) wasn’t waiting in the dugout to say “we told you so,” most people on the Republican team would send W and his pals back to Texas where he couldn’t do much harm.
The United States Congress is hopelessly fucked up and it’s all because of the teams. Is there even anything in our constitution about Republicans and Democrats? I don’t think so. So here’s what I’d do. At the beginning of every session of congress, we divide up into two groups, by random drawing. Instead of parties or teams, we’ll call one group the Chipmunks and the other the Ground Squirrels (so they won’t take themselves so seriously). If you get reelected and come back next year, you might be in the other group so there’s no point in fucking them over this year. Since we’re reshuffling the deck every year and you don’t have any permanent “team members,” it becomes more about the game than the teams.
All of which explains why I was always chosen last.
Bill Page says he’s packing it in after 20 years of radio. Got a job as a police dispatcher. I’ll bet I know a dozen radio guys that became dispatchers after leaving radio. There must be a Association of Police Dispatchers Who Were Formerly Radio Guys.
Bill would email me from time to time with updates from Kennett and the local station, which was my first and last radio home. Doesn’t sound like he was having much fun near the end.
“Anytime you have to vomit before you go to work guess that’s a warning sign that you need a change.”
Yes. Yes it is. My guess is, Bill will post for a few days and then, as he gets on with his life, he’ll let it slide. But who knows.
A couple of months ago I posted on the idea that blogging might be the best way to cover some events. Andy Vance (Buckeye Ag Radio Network) makes the case nicely with his recent posts from the Ohio FFA Convention. Check out his posts on May 5 and 6. Sounds like he had some wifi and was blogging away in real time.
“The anticipation is finally over! The 2006-2007 State Officer Team is taking the stage at this very moment!”
I wish he had created a category tag for this series of posts, and maybe a few images and a sound bite or two. But those are nitpicks. All the meat is there. I still have trouble understanding why the event organizers, in this case the Ohio FFA, don’t have an “official blogger” to do this as well. I could find nothing of the sort on their website. At the very least, check to see if someone like Andy is blogging and provide a link. Call it the “unofficial” blog.
I’m sure the thinking is: “No, no… we can’t do that. We have no idea what this Andy person might say about our convention.” Well, guess what? He said it anyway. And I found it and read it. And it was all positive. Well done, Andy.
I seem to recall reading that JetBlue is one of those companies whose customers have good things to say about them. The MIT Advertising Lab blog posted a photo of a JetBlue booth at Rockefeller Center in NYC, where people can record their experiences and thoughts about the company. Perhaps for use in TV commercials or podcasts? One would think that JetBlue is expecting to get more positive stories than negative. This is what all companies and organizations should strive for, right? Loyal, happy customers. So I gotta ask myself, what would our clients (advertisers for the most part) say about their experiences with our company? Are we even willing to ask? The JetBlue booth offers a degree of anonymity. A less-than-satisfied advertiser probably wouln’t say so to the sales rep that sold the schedule.
My point is, if we really believe our product or service is good (great?) and it really works? Why wouldn’t we ask our clients? Now it’s starting to sound like a customer satisfaction survey and those are almost always bullshit. But if I were walking down the street and saw booth where I could go in and record my experiences with (Toyota, HBO, XM Radio, and now Mac)… I’d do it. I’d take the time. I want people to know I like these companies. And really shitty companies (and you know who you are) don’t even think about building little booths. Bottom line, it’s probably pretty easy to find out if your customers love you or hate you. Anything between is tougher. And I’m betting most companies really don’t want to know.