The Accidental Domainer


This morning I got an idea for a new web venture in the shower; not an uncommon place for such ideas. So I went into my Go Daddy account to see if a domain was available that fit and it turned out my first choice was open. Eight dollars later (got to love that DSC7 code) I owned it and put the project on my list of things to get to yet this year in my spare time.

While I was in my account I noticed I owned over 30 domains. Some are for client projects but most are similar ideas I’ve had over the years and for one reason or another have not yet acted on. Last year I decided to simplify my domains and let several expire so I estimate I’ve owned about 50 domains since I registered this URL back in 2002. I’m currently using only 3 of my 30 personal domains for websites or blogs.

I guess that makes me somewhat of a domainer although I have no intention to sell any of the domains I have accumulated. Maybe I’ll decide to do a venture or two or at least monetize the domains currently parked. What do real domainers do, I wonder?

Posted via email from Marketing Technopologist



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I’ve Gone Minimal



Inspired by Jon Gordon’s report yesterday about the Minimal Mac blog, I’ve cleared the decks and pared my Macbook Pro desktop down to the essentials. The dock has just my most used applications with some overflow in a stack to the right. XMenu is installed to get to the rest of my apps without digging through Finder. I’ve reduced the menu bar to the bare bones. Along the way I discovered a great script called Helvetireader and built a site specific browser in Fluid to create a very focused interface for Google Reader.



Yes, I’ve gone minimal.

We Are Living In The Great Releveling


Johannes GutenbergImage via Wikipedia


Years from now we will talk about living during the Great Releveling the way our grandparents spoke about the Great Depression. Times were tough, people tightened belts, many lost everything they had spent a lifetime building. But the Great Releveling will not be known only for gloom and doom but also for new and fundamentally different business models that emerged from this event.

The last time we had a Releveling of the sort we are now experiencing was over 500 years ago when an entrepreneur in Mainz, Germany invented a machine to mass produce books. His first product, The Bible, put a lot of monks out of work but also set the stage for an age of enlightenment that extended until just a couple years ago. Johannes Gutenberg democratized knowledge that eventually toppled the feudal systems of government that had evolved from hunting groups millennia before. His invention fundamentally changed the world and is still being felt today. Talk about a legacy.

I think the internet is doing this same thing right now. But the Royalty and Gentry are not the big losers but media companies who are not willing or can’t make the transition to a digital business model. Bob Garfield recently posted about this over at Ad Age and his main point — advertising doesn’t work anymore — is spot on. We are not living in a time where any business can rely on a single monetization strategy; welcome to the hybrid world.

You can see glimpses of the future now with services like Hulu, Amazon On Demand, Apple TV and Netflix. But each has issues to overcome before there is widespread adoption. On one hand, I like the simplicity of a monthly subscription that Netflix is selling. I can stream a selection of movies and TV shows to my Xbox or TiVo for a fixed fee. They even let me get DVD’s in the mail but this is a doomed model long-term and they know it. But I don’t have access to their entire catalog to stream at a moments notice which is it’s Achilles Heel. Amazon On Demand and Apple TV let you buy or rent content but their pricing model is too high. Why should I spend $4 to watch a movie when I can pick it up for a dollar at Redbox (or for free with their codes)? Hulu is an interesting idea — basically TV on the internet — but it will be doomed to failure since people will not tolerate more than just short interruptions in this post-TiVo world. They simply can’t run any more ads than they do now to retain viewers and I can’t imagine they are making much money for the short ads there now.

So how can information and entertainment be monetized?

I think it can only be a hybrid between advertising, it’s cousin product placement and subscription or purchase. So in this scenario a modest monthly service fee might be joined by short, “sponsored by” type product pitches. Hulu has most of this figured out today and should replace their interstitial ads in the programs with a straight-up under $15 a month subscription fee for unlimited, ad-free streaming. Amazon and Apple should adopt some sort of subscription model or just lower prices in order to be more than just a transitional service.

The days of broadcast and print advertising are over. The Great Releveling has begun. Get used to it.

I’m No Guru, But a Believer

I’ve been out here online for 6 years now since I started this site during my first job search ever. But it wasn’t until this week that I was attacked by trolls. Sure, I’ve had some critical comments and emails before but none of them depressed me as much as a post on an obscure wine blog did this week. I’ll be damned if I link or post a comment there but wanted to set the record straight on my 48th Birthday.

I’ve been called a guru of social media by some in the wine trade but don’t feel that this compliment really applies to me. A more apt description is that i’m a believer in social media. And an explorer looking to apply what I can learn to help wineries connect with their customers and, yes, sell more wine. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’m hoping to document more of my learnings here during my 49th year… and just about every day for a change.

Notes From The Real World

For much of the past two months I have been away from regular blogging on this and my other blogs. At first it seemed to be a result of being on the road for a week and a bit behind on my work but as I caught up it was clear something else was up.

I was burned out.

Yes, for really the first time since I started blogging 4 years ago, I couldn’t muster the energy to read or write blog posts. I disconnected from the blogosphere and did what most “normal” people do with their spare time: spend more time with their family, read books, watch the DVD you bought last year, get back into sports on TV. And that’s some of what I did instead of posting here or even on Twitter.

But I’m back at it and somewhat rejuvenated with an appreciation for what it’s like to unplug from all this… at least for a while. Going forward I’m going to spend more time reading and commenting before writing as this participation seems to be the best use of time for me. I’m also going to find my database backups and restore all my posts from 2004 forward here; gaps and all. It’s part of the story of my journey in social media and should be here.

So I’m back and just logging into my Google Reader after 6 weeks… let’s see how many posts are read before clicking on that “make all posts read” button ;-)

My First Computer

Apple //c

Wow, memories poured out when I saw this Flickr unboxing set today of a previously unopened Apple //c computer.

This was the first computer I actually bought with my own money in late 1984 (I know, I could have bought a Mac but it didn’t have any database software yet). I considered a no-name CPM box and the Macintosh before plunking down $1,300 on my new Apple credit card. In addition to the computer, I added a carrying case, AppleWorks software, a 300 baud modem and an Epson dot matrix printer. I think it was around $1,500 when all was said and done. I remember the unboxing and setup very well as I installed the system in my home office in Orange, California.

The //c was not the first personal computer I used as my father bought a Commodore VIC-20 when I was in college. I didn’t do much on that system and completed my undergraduate years banging out papers on my Royal electric typewriter. But when I went into the business world, I vowed to use the latest technology to help me be more successful and this was the reason for my //c purchase.

Since the key reason was managing a database of customers and spreadsheet work, I chose the best solution of the time, the integrated AppleWorks. This was a great environment to work inside where you started one program and had access to word processing, database and spreadsheet apps. The interface was elegant and very task oriented; think Palm OS on a desktop computer in text mode. Later on I bought VisiCalc for more demanding spreadsheets but my core “office” app remained AppleWorks.

This was my computer until I joined Kodak and they send me a Macintosh SE. This was in late 1987 so the //c served me well for 3 years. It remains in a box in my basement along with a replacement amber monitor since the stock green one died 2 years in. Every once in a while I pull it out and start AppleWorks just to go back and remember how cool this computer was some 24 years ago. Maybe I’ll do it again this weekend or just dust everything off and put it on eBay.

Thanks for the memories, Dan and Kathryn!

Photos by Kathryn Yu.

I’m a New Media Entrepreneur

One of the podcasters I really admire is Michael Geoghegan. He encouraged me in late 2004 to start my wine podcast while he was creating Grape Radio. Since then he’s always been responsive to my questions and great to spend time with at events like the Portable Media Expo.

Is Podcasting Dead?Since I didn’t attend PME last year, I was very much looking forward to listening to his speech, particularly since the buzz at the time was that he pronounced podcasting dead.  And while he did use the headstone graphic accompanying this post in his slides, he really doesn’t pronounce podcasting dead in his remarks.

No, his speech is really a call to arms for “podcasters” to choose to turn professional if they expect to make money from what they send down their RSS feeds. He also sets the expectation about really how much one can expect from a podcast using examples from his own experience with Grape Radio. About the only slightly controversial bit Michael addresses is the payment practices of the major podcasting advertising companies; but anyone with an understanding of how mainstream advertising works will not be too surprised here.

I also took away a slightly semantic use of terms where “podcaster” becomes “new media entrepreneur” in order to differentiate podcasts of high quality to potential advertisers. Since I aspire to create quality content in my podcasting, I’m on board with this change in terms.

So to all who have taken umbrage to Michael’s so-called “podcasting is dead” meme, I have four words of advice: listen to the podcast.

Photo by Michael Geoghegan 

Hybrid Imaging Lives On

Back when I worked at Kodak, I got involved with the ill-fated Photo CD project. If you don’t remember it, basically the idea was to digitize your photos from film to CD-ROM, all for a reasonable $20 per roll (I think processing was extra but not sure). The customer received their prints and negatives like before but also a shiny (real) gold CD with the same images on them in glorious hi-res.


The leaders of the company at the time heralded this as a “hybrid strategy” leveraging both film and digital. We did a bunch of other similarly ill-fated ventures in this same vein (anyone remember the “locket project” a.k.a. Kodak Picture Exchange? How about Kodak Shoebox?). The idea was to extend the ridiculously high margin film business and it didn’t work out so well for most of us in the trenches.


But I was reminded of this strategy when I visited my local Target store today to print out a digital photo. I took my SD card and put it into a touch screen kiosk and ordered a print. Twenty minutes later a print emerged that I paid 23 cents for. Digital meets silver halide; how great is that?


The hybrid imaging strategy lives on…

“…the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

My son is starting the speech season at school and asked for some recommendations of some less-famous speeches he could use to critique. I suggested Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech from a couple years ago.


I remember it inspired me at the time but today I found it even more moving as I continue looking for work.


The best quote:


“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”


I’ll be putting those last two words in a prominent place in my workspace to keep me from drifting in the wrong direction these next few weeks in my journey.


If you haven’t seen this speech, check it out here:


[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA[/youtube]

Warm Reboot

It’s almost been 11 months since I restarted this blog and I’ve not been very consistent posting of late so I’ve decided to reboot again. This will not be a drastic change but it’s going to be more about me and conversational marketing than a test bed for my other blog. I plan on posting daily and getting back on the fatblogging bandwagon.