L.A.Update
I’ve been here in Los Angeles for one full day, now. And I have to say that I am really, really bad at remembering to carry my camera with me. Perhaps I feel that there will be an air of “tourist” look about me if I am carrying it all the time?
Need to think about that. I do know that if I set aside specific time to go for a photowalk, then I’ll at least start getting more into the routine of specifically having my camera with me for the express purpose of taking photos and improving my shot taking skill.
And speaking of shot skills, I was able to hit a nice LARGE bucket of golf balls today and while not a pro yet, I am continuing to improve small little increments of various parts of my game. My last time out, I really was able to work on keeping my head very still, which is so important for allowing you to strike the ball well.
This time I suddenly was very aware of my grip on the club. For several moments I really felt like I was able to hold the clubs without choking the life out of them, and at the same time maintain very nice control of the club head at impact. Maintaining consistency with the grip wasn’t as constant as my head and shoulder control, but I’m imagining that is going to come as well.
Neil also pointed out that I should keep my feet a little more quiet and work on balance. So, I’ll have plenty to follow up on when I get back home.
Oh, we met with GlobeCast today. An interesting experience sitting in a room with Rosie, the account manager, and two very French technical engineers. Half the fun was getting them to understand my concepts, and then figure out if we might be able to make that happen within their facilities. Not sure at this point, but we’ll have to get some information back from them to make any further decisions.
Tomorrow we are supposed to meet with Vic to talk about taking his company’s content online with Narrowstep. That should be an interesting interview. Will update you afterwards
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London Sightseeing for next to nothing
56 FREE attractions that would cost you much, much more than NOTHING if you don’t have a London Sightseeing pass the next time you are on that side of the pond?! Even if each site cost you a minimum of 5 bucks (not sure what that converts to in pounds or euros or whatever wampam they use over there
), FREE is a heck of a deal. Especially for the frugal at heart (me!).
As we are getting closer to launching The Fight Channel, I realize that a good part of my job is going to be traveling around the globe to participate in fight broadcasts near and far. When I start thinking about this, I realize there is a great opportunity for me to start seeing the world. When I come across offers like the London Pass I get excited. Then I bookmark the opportunity. And if I really have a high opinion of it, I’ll write up a quick little post sharing it with my friends.
Oh, and lest I forget, there are at least as many discount op’s on everything from eating places (that they don’t have in Cottonwood, AZ USA) to photo walking and brass rubbing. Not really sure I want my brass rubbed, but with the London Pass you can get £4.50 worth of it for free. I might have to try a brass rubbing when I get over to England just because I can.
I think my favorite part of the London Pass website, however is the map mashup with all of the attractions listed. I tend to be one of those types that likes to have everything planned out, mapped out, printed out, and clean itineraries created. Heck I can do all of that before I even leave the good ol’ USA. Me likey!
Implicit Web 3.0 Defragged!
Today was my “uh huh” moment. I guess it actually started yesterday with Jason Calacanis’ rather simplistic attempt to get the 3.0 definition space going. I can only imagine he now gets tons of back links and juice from that post and declaration. And that’s cool, don’t get me wrong.
And this morning I read Josh, the Redeye VC’s take on The Implicit Web. While longer, it is clear, and gets much more to the heart of what the next wave of evolution online is to be about. We clearly are in that slow dissolve from the 2.0 paradigm to whatever Web 3.0 Nonsense (according to Fred) title will be bestowed upon the phase.
And I’ve just read about Brad Feld’s emotional response 2.0 (to) Labels that mean nothing. And I think he has a good point, however, I also believe that those of us participating in these conversations are clearly the leading edge. The moniker is NOT for us! It is for all of the rest of the curve beyond the chasm we are going to help bridge. Those people need something short and sweet and descriptive in order to participate in the conversation (and all else which follows!)
However, for me, I’ve been wondering what the hell defrag “really” is to be about, as well as that concept of implicit web. All I can say is that if you are not “getting it” just keep receiving it. Subscribe to this site, and Jason’s feed, and Fred and Josh’s as well as others. Eventually all of the nebulous concepts will gel and you’ll get it.
Of course, just like college algebra and trig, you’ll probably lose the concept pretty quickly! (I still don’t know how I passed those classes!) But continuing to read about it from various sources will add layer upon layer of knowledgeable understanding.
Do you get it? If so, please share what your take on the next wave of online evolution might look like!
Online betting all day long
When I hit Vegas, I spend very little time in the casinos. Usually about a roll of quarters in the slots and that’s pretty much all the casino gets from me. I do however spend a bit more time in the Sportsbook betting facility. Not so much because I bet heavily on sports, but more that I like the betting environment when I’m in there surrounded by the television screens and the players looking to participate.
Online betting is a mega-dollar industry, and if you are going to fund part of it, you definitely want to be sure you are at a reputable, safe and highly efficient online site. bet365.com seems to be just one of those sites. I never realized before the total range of online betting services, and I think these folks have them all and then some. They have interactive games, live streaming of actual sporting events, online casino action, and even dedicated online poker areas.
Having that sort of range of services in one manageable account really sort of blew me away. Add to the fact that bet365 also provides a bevy of mobile services and I’m not sure I’d ever have want for another online betting provider. Check them out if this is your party. I’m betting you’ll have a good time.
Ecommerce Software
Some of you close to me may know that I am doing more work with one of my business partners as we ramp up towards the launch of The Fight Channel. One of the necessary areas of my research has to do with figuring out which shopping cart software we are going to use when we do launch that site. Additionally, I am also in the proposal phase of providing another Los Angeles based company with online streaming services and their current shopping cart, while adequate, is not really anything special, and so I’ve been able to use my online research time for double duty (always a good thing!)
If you’ve done any searching online at all you’ll realize there are literally millions of results for “ecommerce software” in Google:
Smorty asked me to give my opinion on ecommerce software by ashop. I have to tell you that I am favorably impressed by what they offer. Not only are you going to get almost overloaded by a ton of helpful information, there are four pricing plans that are sure to cover your ecommerce software needs.
In fact, I was briefly looking at the “starter” package, and I figured out that with all of the customization ashop offers its shopping cart customers, you could almost run an entire website off that plan for about what it costs to host your own server box at a decent hosting service. And why would you host your own box when you are going to have access to all sorts of features and benefits that you’d have to build on your own.
Things like: SSL security (that can be really tricky to set up, I know :’( ), SEO pages, back up services (I still can’t get CRON jobs right), SMS order alerts? come on! I couldn’t set that up and have it working right for what these guys are charging for entire ecommerce software packages. The list goes on.
I’m definitely going to check them out, especially since they have a 10 day free trial. Add to that they actively promote their own affiliate program, and you’ll likely have a favorable opinion of this ecommerce software provider also.
AZ DOT Pledge
You may have noticed that I posted via twitter and a couple of flickr pics on Monday, my experience going to the Arizona Department of Transportation to become fully “Arizona-ized”. Dread had been filling me ever since I moved to Cottonwood 3.5 months ago.
Why the dread you ask? Mostly because I was coming from California, and if you live there, or have ever had the “pleasure” of going to the DMV there, you’ll immediately recognize that it can be quite the ordeal to deal with that bureaucratic behemoth which wallows in the worst customer service climate for any business or agency on the planet.
In all fairness, perhaps things have changed in the intervening 3 and a half months. Doubt it. The last time I visited a CA DMV (with an appointment, no less) my goals were to register a vehicle and title/register a trailer. With appointment it took me nearly 45 minutes to do what amounted to about 10 minutes worth of transactions.
Compare that with the recent experience at the AZ DOT/MVD where I registered a vehicle and got an AZ drivers license. The entire process took about 20 minutes (and here’s the kicker) I walked out of their building with my new drivers license in my wallet, the plates for my newly registered car, and the actual official, legal title for the car registered in AZ!
There is to be no waiting for any of that to be mailed to me 3 to whenever months from now. I won’t have to be disappointed when I see my picture on my new license (I was able to be disappointed immediately!) Actually, the image was very nicely exposed and I actually looked like I looked in that moment (my happiness about that is the story of another post, I’m sad to say )
I should have known the experience was to be a very different one when I read their mission statement they display (proudly, I hope) on their waiting area wall:
“Division to be a world class customer service organization”
Mission Statement:
To provide innovative products and services to meet the growing motor vehicle needs of the “New Arizona”
How have your experiences with motor vehicle departments been in your part of the country/world? We’d be especially interested to know what happens in other parts of the planet!
Lazy Internet Marketing
One of the aspects of these blogging networks that truly concerns me has to do with the web site owners that become members and then stay completely internal to that network as they attempt to use the system to generate new traffic and actions to their site.
While it is possible that every single “shout box” entry I’ve ever gotten was placed by someone who logged out of the network, and then visited my site and then logged back into the network in order to leave a “shout”, I doubt it. That’s the beauty of how the BlogCatalog/bumpZee/MyBlogLog’s of the world work. You install their widget (hopefully customize its output to fit into the look and feel of your site) and that way others can see those whom have visited you pages of late.
When an email notification is delivered to my inbox and I spend the time to go to the blog network site, login and read the shout, private message, whatever, I’ve obviously invested some amount of effort to the process. And that’s how things are designed to work. No arguments there.
I get messages that say “Please come to my site, and leave a message about this that or the other…” (see image insert) and then I go to my home page to check on whether that person actually spent the time to visit my site, and leave any comments on any of my posts. When they haven’t, I immediately know they are just being a lazy internet marketer who thinks that I am going to be so impressed with the fact they left me a “personal” message at my (in this case) BlogCatalog page,
that I’ll immediately jump through hoops, click the two or three page views to get to their actual blog/web site, and spend the time reading and commenting there about whatever.
And to make it worse, if there is ANYTHING of interest at all that makes me want to click through to their sites, if they haven’t even taken the time to install the widget that shows others who has visited their site from that network, the browser window immediately gets closed and I move on with my work. Yes, I realize there are hosting sites that may not allow for the widgets to be installed. Whatever. Host the code on your own server. If you are going to be legitimate at some point in your online ventures, you are going to have to get to a host that will give you more flexibility or spend the $10 a month for shared hosting accounts that allow you to host your own. It’s really not that hard. Try it!
Get paid for blogging?
Are you crazy? Am I to believe that I can actually get paid to blog like I normally do for free? Apparently so!
I came across a post from someone talking about this site called Smorty.com and the post was written well enough for me to want to open it up in a new tab and learn more. Now please understand I don’t usually do that. If I see a post that makes it clear it’s talking about blog advertising, I’ll tend to click on to the next post. I mean, I need to be up to date (to the second(?) ) about what’s happening in the blogosphere. Right ?
Smorty.com made me want to check it out and see if it was real or just some blog advertising gimmick of the moment.
I do feel inclined to disclose that this is (potentially) a paid post, and most of you who read me on a regular basis know that I’ll speak my mind about the post topics I choose. And those of you I see at other sites also know that my comments tend not to sugar coat, nor hold back my opinions of ideas, products or services.
Regardless of what a site might be offering, if I have to sign up for it the experience should be a simple, straight forward one. There is plenty of clean, clear documentation about the service that Smorty.com provides to both advertisers as well as bloggers and in just a few short moments, I was able get a high level overview about how their system was set up and how it allowed me to earn a bit of money doing what I normally do.
FAQ’s, pages regarding the processes involved, and the rules one is expected to abide by were straight forward and understandable. I really didn’t have any questions regarding what Smorty.com was or what might be expected of me. That is a definite plus for me when exploring a new service. The terms page has a font size that is a bit smaller than the rest, but that’s due to the “legalese” nature of that content. I did read through it pretty thoroughly, and my eyes didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No red flags. Again, a good thing.
And to be completely honest, the only real challenge there came when I chose my country and the page refreshed itself (for some reason) and apparently the form thought it was being submitted. I got several red error messages about fields I’d not yet filled in, but I understood why that happened and finished the affiliate sign up with out a hitch. You’ll likely see Smorty.com banners rotating in on the bottom of my pages very soon as I like what I’ve seen thus far.
My application was accepted within a few short hours, and now this morning, I’ve decided that my first “assignment” would be to write about how to get paid for blogging and share my thoughts and opinions on Smorty. Please share your experiences here if you do go and check them out soon. I’d love to hear how things have gone for you.
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