December 2011
1 post
Watch#creepybutawesome
November 2011
2 posts
December news is just... too good →
September 2011
1 post
Interesting points (and free docs) on advisor... →
April 2011
1 post
Expectations...
Last weekend Delta failed miserably and treated my nearly 90-year-old grandparents terribly. They delayed flights by a combined 8 hours, one of which was a 5 hour delay followed by a cancellation. After the first delay and cancellation they left them to walk all the way across the airport, by themselves, to a shuttle that never came, to go to a hotel that was filthy for the night. Only to have...
March 2011
3 posts
NYTimes.com's Plan To Charge People Money For... →
This is hilarious - best Onion news brief in a while. And regardless of what you think about the current state of publishing, you have to laugh at the fact that we’ve gotten to a point where we assume content should be free without ever thinking about how new/disruptive that concept is… at the very least we should all have a better understanding of why the content is free to us. (and...
Investing Like It's 1999 - NYTimes.com →
A more serious follow-up to the previous commentary on bubbles…
November 2010
1 post
iPhone vs. Droid Incredible Review - If they were...
Conversations about smartphones are funny things. They seem, at least to me, to be far more subjective than reviews or comparisons of any other type of device. The problem is - everyone takes a side and conforms to predetermined comparisons without taking the time to question why two particular “features,” approaches, or qualities should be at odds with each other at all.
Some...
February 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Conan's Farewell... belated commentary
Sometimes you get a nugget of good advice in an very unexpected place.
Regardless of the spectacle going on around him, Conan managed to deliver a “speech” that I assume made a lot of politicians envious. There wasn’t a person watching that wasn’t moved by his words, or at the very least reminded that we have all become much too arrogant about where we find wisdom.
A...
10 tags
PC Delivered, No Remorse
Less than a week removed from the iPad frenzy, I received my new laptop today. Nothing special, but for the sake of the forthcoming comparison, here are the basic specs:
Dell Inspiron 1464 (14 inch)
Intel Core i3 330m processor
500GB hard drive
4GB ram (installed)
HD display (integrated graphics)
HDMI Port
Windows 7 Home Premium
I un-boxed it and had it set up and running within 10...
November 2009
2 posts
6 tags
E2.0 - What the heck is going on?
Do you remember “show and tell” day back in the 1st grade? I’m pretty sure that many children who went on to find marketing careers were out sick during those sessions.
Dennis Howlett gave the whole E2.0 world a piece of his mind recently, and some well-respected E2.0 rock stars struggled to react last week during an apparently well-attended session at the Enterprise 2.0...
13 tags
Looking Back: The Motorola Droid Launch
When doing a scan of the headlines about the Droid launch, you’ll find fairly consistent reviews across the board. When it is reviewed with regard only for the features, functionality and usability of the device itself, it seems to do very, very well. When compared to the iPhone - it takes the back seat 9 times out of 10.
A lot of what I’m reading is that it’s just not quite...
September 2009
1 post
Austin - Land of the Business Model?
I had a good conversation about Austin start-ups recently. Specifically, we were talking about the differences between Austin start-ups and those in Silicon Valley.
My point in the conversation was that I was in love with the Austin start-up scene because “Austin start-ups have these really cool things called business models.”
Now, I know that there are plenty of exceptions to...
July 2009
1 post
Tom Watson and Generations
Tom Watson pulled off one of the most unexpected performances in the history of golf this weekend. Yeah, so he didn’t quite get the job done on the 18th, but I think the performance as a whole teaches a valuable lesson - particularly to marketers and corporate management around the world.
A 59 year-old almost won one of the most difficult tournaments in all of golf. How is that possible? ...
June 2009
2 posts
Dog Training and Good PR
It has been a very interesting week here in Austin. On Thursday, we adopted a second dog. This one wasn’t so much adopted, as it was inherited from extended family that didn’t really want to deal with the little bugger anymore.
Derby, the mini poodle, is not quite the second dog that I had been dreaming of. For starters, he’s about 100 pounds smaller than the dog I had...
March 2009
2 posts
More Skills New PR Peeps Need
Sarah Evans has an great post on the Top 4 skills all new PR professionals must have. I really like the post - and every point rings true to me. But I do want to add my 4 favorite skills to the list. Yes - this is a far more snarky, sarcastic set of skills, but I think they have their validity. Perhaps they are not really skills - but I think all of them can be learned, and therefore I see...
I Actually Look Forward to an Email Campaign...
Golf Galaxy (a golf equipment chain) started a pretty awesome e-mail campaign recently.
I created an account with them to save a few bucks here and there and to get updates about new products. It’s actually pretty useful considering how many golf balls I lose on the course and how many clubs I break over me knee after losing all the balls…
The cool thing is that they send me an...
February 2009
4 posts
Readers, Writers, and Beowulf
I think the idea of a “PR Major” is great. But I often wonder (mostly in ignorance) - does learning how to write a press release really prepare you for a career in PR?
I wouldn’t know - I was an English major. And by “English Major” I, of course, mean a college student that was fond of wine.
As it turns out - this job is made up of such a wide variety of odd tasks...
Drinking the Bailout
I just finished a pretty interesting post-dinner discussion with my fiance, who is, suffice it to say, a bit disappointed in some of the “lavish” events that bailout companies have held in recent months.
I’m really not sure where I stand on all of this stuff - and to be honest, I desperately want to separate the political from the business-oriented stuff. I’m not really...
Technology Review: TR10: Intelligent Software... →
Congrats to the whole team at Siri - This is well-deserved recognition and beyond exciting.
(Siri is a client)
Facebooks API Stuff, Twitter, and what we should...
Okay - so FB opened the API a bit to make it easier to share the news feed and status updates.
Of course - Techmeme has been flooded with ongoing discussion about other services dying. No, it’s not surprising that the reaction to the “new shiny thing” is really overblown, nor is it surprising that people are firmly defending Twitter and FriendFeed as if any of this was a real...
December 2008
3 posts
Mac sales: Undone by the calendar - Apple 2.0 →
This is really interesting to see. Also, BusinesWeek had an article on the growth in sales of netbooks recently. I have to say, the price-point on netbooks and affordable PC’s make them very attractive right now - and if you toss in HUGE discounts for the holidays, you’ve got yourself some pretty awesome options out there for some great gear. I’d love to see Apple make a smart...
Walmart Is Set to Sell a $99 iPhone - Advertising... →
These are exactly the kind of moves that many companies will need to make if they are going to keep the dollars coming in during the next year, or so. But as the article points out - it may not be the best move for their “brand.”
Either way - I can’t imagine someone not being interested in a $99 iPhone!
Readers React to David Pogue’s Review of the... →
Interesting that Pogue got such intense feedback. I didn’t really have any issues with his review and thought it was quite thorough - although I have not tried the Storm yet.
Perhaps the tide really is shifting, and this reader feedback is an indicator of consumers shifting some loyalty away from Apple?
Nonetheless - it’s nice to see that people can be passionate (maybe too much so)...
November 2008
3 posts
Black Friday, Apple and Selling "Cool"
I’ve been thinking about what makes people passionate about (or fall in love with) a company and its products this week. This is mostly because it’s “Black Friday” today and everybody knows that Apple products are making an appearance on almost every wish list in the country.
But this season always makes me ask: What makes people LOVE certain companies or products?
The...
Brainstorming and The Moderator
I’ve been having a lot of discussions lately about creative thinking and brainstorming - something that I think is critical in PR, but really critical to any job that involves “abstract thought”, “fresh ideas”, or requires that one be a “problem solver.”
I started looking into some of the research and science related to brainstorming and found that there...
The inventor behind CNN's election 'Magic Wall' -... →
I was really happy to stumble across this story on CNN today. If you’ve seen any of John King’s segments in the past few weeks, you’ll know precisely how helpful Percpetive Pixel’s product has been in giving really clear, conscise and visual explanations of the Presidential race.
This is also a very welcome feel-good story to see about a tech startup during a rough...
October 2008
2 posts
What if Google said they "miss the old days..."?
David Carr has a GREAT article in the NYT today. It’s titled: “Mourning Old Media’s Decline,” and I think it he makes a great point, via Eric Schmidt, in closing the article:
“At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism — the trusted news sources readers have relied on — were to vanish, then the Web...
Social Software To Take a Break In The...
There’s some talk going around the software world that suggests that social technology in the enterprise is going to slow down during the down economy. I can see why people would say that, but I would argue that in many cases this economy is being used as an opportunity to belittle the validity of the software by people who never took it seriously in the first place.
I would also point out...
September 2008
4 posts
Five Best Cities for Job Hunting →
I couldn’t help but post this article from SmartMoney as a follow-up to last week’s post on Boulder. For all the Boulder lovin’ that “The American” published, should I be surprised that I don’t see Boulder on this list? You already know what I think about that…
Ps - I still really love Boulder.
Geography 101-TC50 Takeaway
So I left TC50 wondering why the valley thinks that it’s necessary to be IN the valley if (as an entrepreneur) you want to succeed.
I put it out of my mind for a few days, because it bothers me to think that geography has anything to do with your startup’s success (aside from acquiring talent…for now). But as I was flipping through The American Magazine, I found an article...
Silicon Incest - TC50 Takeaways
I don’t think anyone will disagree with me when I say that TC50, this year, was all about how a startup plans to make money. I think that’s great - it presses these entrepreneurs to push the limits, get creative with business models, and ultimately forge forward into the future with true innovation (both technological and business-wise).
That being said, I still have a profound...
August 2008
1 post
Where Are We In The Hype Cycle? →
Hype Cycle charts remind of when the superlative awards were given out in high-school yearbooks. They’re nearly meaningless, but people care a lot about them, and can’t wait to chat about who got what and who got snubbed.