Commentary

Will People Show Up?

by dldamore

How will you know?

Organize people, get them to commit to a date, time and place. Use software to get their commitment one way or another. If people change their mind or something comes up, they can cancel and people attending will know not to expect them.

Suggested Tools

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Plancast

Notes: There was a #Breakfastup tweetup (meeting of Twitter users) planned for this morning, Friday March 18, 2011 for 9 AM, and there were a bunch of cancelations and no shows. There was no way to know who would show up. Actually, it would have been good to see who still planned on going, it would have enabled the event to be rescheduled. In the end, only three people attended including me. We did have a good conversation.

Free Music – “SXSW Offers Free Festival Sampler on iTunes!”

by dldamore

Many bands played at the SXSW (South By SouthWest) festival in Austin, Texas. There is free music from twenty or so artists via the iTunes store.

See the post on the SXSW blog.

Below is a screenshot from iTunes as I downloaded all the tracks. believe I did this as the album and not as individual downloads. You can preview all the tracks and just download the ones you like too.

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Critical Customer Adoption Point

by dldamore

C-CAP : Critical Customer Adoption Point – Amount of users, also knows as paying customers, required to make a business or organization sustainable. Sometime this is a point in time that is not reachable with current funds on hand and there are no investors banging on the door with bags of money.

What can you do to survive longer so you can reach the C-CAP?

Get creative to legally acquire the funds you need to survive until you get to the C-CAP.

*Read the post by Fred Wilson on Airbnb.

Rent a Movie – Before It’s In Theatres – iTunes

by dldamore

As I was checking the weather radar this evening I noticed an ad at the bottom of the page, see banner images at the bottom of each of the images nearby. Apparently the iTunes Store from Apple will rent movies before they hit the theatre. There is a bit of a price premium, but if more than one person was going to the theatre, the $9.99 price to see it early is cheaper in most cases.

This could become an interesting play on exclusivity. The question I have is, is there a limit on the total number of households that can buy in on this deal? Some amount of exclusivity might drive word-of-mouth especially if there is a number that continues to fall towards zero as people buy the offer from iTunes.

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What if people could buy in on this even after it is in theatrical release for the same price …

  • Would total revenue be higher because of this unique distribution model?
  • Will more seats be sold in theatres because this distribution model starts a conversation?

Hopefully this is an issue to revisit in April as the movie is in theatres.

NOTES:

Movie: Ceremony via IMDB.com

This bottom banner as was seen in the AccuWeather app for iPad on March 10, 2011.

Google Feature Request: Priority Search

by dldamore

“Google should add a priority box to URL’s in search results. Let me curate the sites that matter.” I was about to tweet that when the idea moved me to write a longer post first.

Currently Google allows users to block domains from search results. Earlier today I was wondering if there was an easy way to get RSS posts out of Google Reader and into my Twitter feed. You can see the two results that looked relevant and interesting to me in the screenshot nearby. Here is a request to Google, create a ScreenClip(32)way to add the sites that are relevant to users, for example mashable.com and louisgray.com, to a priority list. This list would search these sites as well as all others, but would put their relevant posts higher up in results, possibly even to the top.

Facebook may be creating a similar system from their “Like” feature. As people Like more and more pages the content in their news feed will become harder to find. Facebook may add an element that enables users to search amongst all the pages that users have previously expressed and interest in. Google already makes much of the web available to us. If there was a way to add priority to the sites that truly interest us, that would be very useful.

Google Bookmarks was a good step, but Google Priority Search would be like putting a man on the moon as compared to what happened near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. Please make Priority Search a reality. Thank you.

What Is A Domino?

by dldamore

A game or a sequence of events. It starts as a pattern. It may not be clear upon a first look. There is always a first piece that tips and sets everything in motion. You put a product, service or idea out for the public to examine. If it meets their needs they might buy it. The key is for you to start, to not be afraid at how IT will be examined and judged. IT may fail. It happens. It’s very rare for a first idea to succeed without any setbacks. Setbacks and failure go with the territory. What you do as a result of those happenings is what matters. Does the idea that failure might, WILL happen scare you to not even try?

Start, start, start. That is probably a good mantra for someone with lots of good ideas but not quite the courage, yes courage, to apply their idea to reality. From dream to reality, now there is an idea. Apple seems to be dreaming and creating products into reality. iPod, iPhone and now, iPad. Those are three really good ones that have had and are creating a great impact on the market. Even the seemingly infallible Apple has failed. Remember the Newton? Here are some more product failures of Apple. 

The story of Thomas Edison working on inventing the light bulb usually includes the mention of 10,000 ways not to create a light bulb. That’s 10,000 failed tests! With that many failures one might think this guy will never achieve anything. Ah, there you would be mistaken. Edison is probably considered one of the top 5 inventors of all time. Here is a list of accomplishments of Edison as well some biographical information.

Personal Search Engine – (PSE) – Find Things

by dldamore

While looking for a twitter name that was hard to spell I decided to search Google Reader for a term that might have been used. Last I recall, there were a few Twitter feeds coming in to Google Reader. One is tweets marked as favorites and there is or was one for @ replies to my account. The hope was that the person using Twitter I was looking for used the word “Biggby” (coffee chain here in Michigan) in a message to me. As of this post the search continues, but the reason behind this post is that you can use Google Reader as a personal search engine (PSE) that will search all the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds you subscribe to. This would be similar to searching a single site using the advanced search features of Google but doing it for hundreds of sites that you subscribe to via RSS.

The search continues …

*The person I am looking for is on Skype and is logged in. Status is marked as do not disturb and in any case I want to learn how to find what I am looking for faster and more effectively using tools that are available. Will try Greplin next.

**Greplin came through after just two attempts.

Crap Ads Seen on The Wall Street Journal Online

by dldamore

When people tell friends about products and services that turn out to be crappy, the relationship suffers, trust is eroded away. That same erosion of trust happens to companies that associate with or promote low quality products and services (ads).

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Ads like those pictured above are not doing readers any favors. One might even say, ads like these damage the brand of The Wall Street Journal.

*The screenshot of ads above were from the right sidebar of the Wall Street Journal website on 2/28/2011 at 12:15 P.M. EST.