Apparently Martha Stewart has decided that blogging is a good thing, because she has jumped into the blogosphere with The Martha Blog: Up Close & Personal.
Ever the marketing whiz, she is having a blog contest--add your blog to the comment section of her blog and she will check it out and, if you're chosen as one of the winners, she will feature your blog. But hold up--don't think she's going to just read any old blog. In order for her to even consider reviewing your blog to decide if it's Martha-worthy, you have to add a link to her blog from yours.
Seeing as there are, according to Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008, 124 million bloggers in the world and an even more staggering 346 million reading them, getting scads of those bloggers to link to her blog is pure genius in terms of self-promotion. Talk about a way to drive traffic to your site--and for free.
How much traffic, exactly? Ok, well, maybe not EXACTLY, but just to give you a ballpark idea of how much publicity she could potentially be drumming up for herself with her "contest" consider the Internet World Stats' internet usage statistics. According to their data, there are 1,463,632,361 internet users. Go back toTechnorati's State of the Blogosphere and note that 77% of internet users read blogs. Then do the math. That's a LOT of blog readers. And therefore, at least theoretically, a LOT of free advertising for Martha, via links back to her blog from however many of those 124 million bloggers slapping the link to her blog up as I write this.
Just like I am.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
I Give Up--Sprint's Samsung Instinct Sucks
I've really tried hard these past three days to be patient and learn to love my new Samsung Instinct. What's not to love, right? The phone supposedly kicks the iPhone's ass--faster download times, voice to action, more memory for the price, etc. etc. According to Sprint's own ads, of course.
This video tells a different story--a more accurate story:
There's also another video on YouTube that points out ways that the Instinct sucks.
Now don't get me wrong--I couldn't care less that the Samsung is an iPhone rip-off; that's why I bought it. Frankly, the fact that it's NOT an exact replica of the iPhone is the main reason I don't like it. I wanted an iPhone but Sprint has me by the balls to the tune of three phone lines for another year, so unless I wanted to pay $600 in termination fees, switching to AT&T so I could get the iPhone wasn't an option.
So I bought into the Samsung hype and couldn't wait to get my new Instinct.
Kicking off my dissatisfaction with the phone was the horrific activation process. I had purchased the phone itself online, which was a breeze, and it arrived 3 days later (not "free overnight delivery" but free). Reason number one million why I love the Internet. Naturally I plan to activate the phone online, which I attempt to do about 1 second after removing it from the box. After maybe 3 or 4 tries it locks me out of the system and says I have to call to activate it. Great. An hour later--at least 45 minutes of which was spent on hold--my Instinct was finally activated.
Of course the first thing I did was check out the web browser. To put it simply: it sucks. Worse than sucks. Mobile pages are ok--e.g. Facebook mobile, but otherwise it's laughable how bad it is. The screen seems very tiny compared to the iPhone's screen and you basically have the option of viewing the entire page in a version so small it is virtually undetectable to the human eye or so large that it's like looking at the page under a microscope--you can see basically about 3 pixels at a time. I tried working around it by first making the page super tiny to get an idea of where I should be aiming, then enlarging it and trying to map my way over to the part of the page I'm trying to view. At least on my Treo you get the stripped down version of pages--CSS's don't work, etc--but you can get the information you need, however unprettily. Not with the Instinct, though-- even when you set it to view the mobile version of the web--you still get huge, crazy, un-navigatable pages.
Half the time, pages won't load--you either get an error message or the page times out. And when it does load, good luck trying to be able to populate any field you might be trying to fill out. If you can get your fingernail to tap the appropriate field, half the time you can't activate the keyboard. And when I say fingernail, I mean EDGE of your fingernail--because if you're viewing the page in anything other than 2x magnification, the fields are approximately the size of, say, the thickness of a quarter. If you're not coordinated enough or don't have enough fingernail purchase, your only option is the 2x magnification, in which case you can barely bumble your way to finding the field in the first place.
I digress--the last nail in the Instinct's coffin for me may be Twitter. How much simpler can a page get than Twitter mobile? A string of messages, right? Yes, but a string of messages meant to appear in real time and an update field that's meant to be interactive--e.g. you can post updates. Trying to use Twitter on the Instinct is like trying to grab a slippery little fish with fingers covered in Vaseline--next to impossible. You go to m.twitter.com and save it as a favorite. You log in and try to post. Nine times out of 10 your updates don't go through--you get an error of one sort or another. Then you exit the browser and, the next time you use it, you click on the favorite tab and it takes you not to Twitter mobile but the regular twitter--or a tiny slice of the regular sized page. Even though you saved the favorite as "http://m.twitter.com" it comes up as "http://www.twitter.com/home/page x." Yes, it comes up as a page from an hour or 14 hours ago. You refresh your screen in an attempt to view the most recent post--forget it. I have spent hours this weekend trying to get past this glitch and can't. Every time I think I've gotten it to work, I close out and go back in and--shocker--it doesn't work again.
Then the other stuff:
I'll stop there because I'm just pissing myself off worse thinking about the whole thing. My advice: if you want an iPhone, pay the early termination fee and switch to AT&T.
**Update**
Adding even more fuel to my fire is the fact that I now come to find out the calendar feature doesn't work correctly. Neither the reminder nor the recurring events features work. I Googled "Instinct calendar doesn't work" and apparently Sprint is aware that the calendar function doesn't work--and has known for a while--yet fails to mention it when you buy the phone. I especially like this Sprint representative's comment in response to a string of comments about how abysmal the calendar is:
Excuse me but--what? "Media phone"? Not, after all, a "smartphone" or PDA? Sure is new to me--and to PC World and the other 479,000 Google search result pages for "Samsung Instinct pda."
There's also another video on YouTube that points out ways that the Instinct sucks.
Now don't get me wrong--I couldn't care less that the Samsung is an iPhone rip-off; that's why I bought it. Frankly, the fact that it's NOT an exact replica of the iPhone is the main reason I don't like it. I wanted an iPhone but Sprint has me by the balls to the tune of three phone lines for another year, so unless I wanted to pay $600 in termination fees, switching to AT&T so I could get the iPhone wasn't an option.
So I bought into the Samsung hype and couldn't wait to get my new Instinct.
Kicking off my dissatisfaction with the phone was the horrific activation process. I had purchased the phone itself online, which was a breeze, and it arrived 3 days later (not "free overnight delivery" but free). Reason number one million why I love the Internet. Naturally I plan to activate the phone online, which I attempt to do about 1 second after removing it from the box. After maybe 3 or 4 tries it locks me out of the system and says I have to call to activate it. Great. An hour later--at least 45 minutes of which was spent on hold--my Instinct was finally activated.
Of course the first thing I did was check out the web browser. To put it simply: it sucks. Worse than sucks. Mobile pages are ok--e.g. Facebook mobile, but otherwise it's laughable how bad it is. The screen seems very tiny compared to the iPhone's screen and you basically have the option of viewing the entire page in a version so small it is virtually undetectable to the human eye or so large that it's like looking at the page under a microscope--you can see basically about 3 pixels at a time. I tried working around it by first making the page super tiny to get an idea of where I should be aiming, then enlarging it and trying to map my way over to the part of the page I'm trying to view. At least on my Treo you get the stripped down version of pages--CSS's don't work, etc--but you can get the information you need, however unprettily. Not with the Instinct, though-- even when you set it to view the mobile version of the web--you still get huge, crazy, un-navigatable pages.
Half the time, pages won't load--you either get an error message or the page times out. And when it does load, good luck trying to be able to populate any field you might be trying to fill out. If you can get your fingernail to tap the appropriate field, half the time you can't activate the keyboard. And when I say fingernail, I mean EDGE of your fingernail--because if you're viewing the page in anything other than 2x magnification, the fields are approximately the size of, say, the thickness of a quarter. If you're not coordinated enough or don't have enough fingernail purchase, your only option is the 2x magnification, in which case you can barely bumble your way to finding the field in the first place.
I digress--the last nail in the Instinct's coffin for me may be Twitter. How much simpler can a page get than Twitter mobile? A string of messages, right? Yes, but a string of messages meant to appear in real time and an update field that's meant to be interactive--e.g. you can post updates. Trying to use Twitter on the Instinct is like trying to grab a slippery little fish with fingers covered in Vaseline--next to impossible. You go to m.twitter.com and save it as a favorite. You log in and try to post. Nine times out of 10 your updates don't go through--you get an error of one sort or another. Then you exit the browser and, the next time you use it, you click on the favorite tab and it takes you not to Twitter mobile but the regular twitter--or a tiny slice of the regular sized page. Even though you saved the favorite as "http://m.twitter.com" it comes up as "http://www.twitter.com/home/page x." Yes, it comes up as a page from an hour or 14 hours ago. You refresh your screen in an attempt to view the most recent post--forget it. I have spent hours this weekend trying to get past this glitch and can't. Every time I think I've gotten it to work, I close out and go back in and--shocker--it doesn't work again.
Then the other stuff:
- When you try to close out of certain applications the phone often freezes up for a good 20 seconds or more
- The GPS, while cool, can be crazily inaccurate
- You can't forward your calls to another phone
- You can't make it so you can be alerted of new messages with a simple beep or no sound at all--you have to choose a ring
- The calendar is the biggest cluster F of a calendar I've ever seen--trying to select a time is like spinning the Wheel of Fortune and keeping your fingers crossed that it will land on the right number. I'm not exaggerating at all--the whole touch screen thing is a nightmare on the Instinct.
I'll stop there because I'm just pissing myself off worse thinking about the whole thing. My advice: if you want an iPhone, pay the early termination fee and switch to AT&T.
**Update**
Adding even more fuel to my fire is the fact that I now come to find out the calendar feature doesn't work correctly. Neither the reminder nor the recurring events features work. I Googled "Instinct calendar doesn't work" and apparently Sprint is aware that the calendar function doesn't work--and has known for a while--yet fails to mention it when you buy the phone. I especially like this Sprint representative's comment in response to a string of comments about how abysmal the calendar is:
"You have a 'media phone' in the Instinct. If you require full calendaring, OWA sync, etc. you need to buy either a Palm (I like the Centro), or a WM device, or the everpresent and highly functional Blackberry. "
Excuse me but--what? "Media phone"? Not, after all, a "smartphone" or PDA? Sure is new to me--and to PC World and the other 479,000 Google search result pages for "Samsung Instinct pda."
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Once it's out there, it's out there
If I knew how to make a video, this would be a video post. Since I don't, use your imagination:
Pan to a kitchen where a guy is sitting at a table in his boxers, eating cereal and working on his laptop. Suddenly the door opens and a bunch of people walk in. Guy looks startled, eying his boxers and half-empty bowl of cereal. "Hey--remember us--we went to high school together!" Then the door opens again and another group of people walks in. "Dude! Remember those crunk parties back at State?" Again, guy eyes his boxers and looks a little desperate.
The kitchen's starting to get crowded. The door opens again--it's his boss. And coworkers. Guy hurries to block his screen--he'd been blogging about how boring his job is. The room is very crowded now, everyone huddled around his computer screen, craning their necks to get a look at what he's writing. The guy is trapped at the table, can't even pull his chair back to stand up.
Door opens again--it's mom! And niece! And next-door neighbor! Now the room is packed. All eyes turn to the guy and the questions start coming: "Loved the pictures of your party--but why wasn't I invited? "Dude, that was a hilarious post about your boss--but what if he sees it?" Boss glares at the guy. Mom: "I saw your comment on that post about dysfunctional families--how could you say those things about me?"
The room is buzzing with chatter and guy at table is engulfed by the crowd. Screen fades to black.
My long-winded point: social media, formerly embraced by a pretty select few early adopters, is now becoming much more widely-used. This is ostensibly good, because it's becoming easier and easier to connect to long-lost friends, former classmates, childhood acquaintances, coworkers from former jobs--pretty much anyone and everyone. The world suddenly feels like a much smaller place.
It's great to catch up with people, keep in touch when real life is often too busy to keep up with even close friends. But the downside is that all those casual acquaintances--oftentimes people you haven't seen in years or who you were never that close to to begin with--are suddenly privvy to the intimate details of your life. Any part of you that you choose to put out in cyber space--photos, your blog, your tweets, your comments on other blogs, your professional affiliations--it's pretty much part of the public record. Without even realizing it you're suddenly "on" at all times.
Bottom line: if I wanted to be part of a perpetual cocktail party with everyone I've ever known, I probably wouldn't be spending half my life online. Granted, I'm the one who put it all out there to begin with--I just didn't realize anyone was actually looking.
Someone needs to invent a cleanup crew application--it goes back in time and erases all your connections and makes all your blog posts and comments anonymous. But then again, would I really do it if I could?
Pan to a kitchen where a guy is sitting at a table in his boxers, eating cereal and working on his laptop. Suddenly the door opens and a bunch of people walk in. Guy looks startled, eying his boxers and half-empty bowl of cereal. "Hey--remember us--we went to high school together!" Then the door opens again and another group of people walks in. "Dude! Remember those crunk parties back at State?" Again, guy eyes his boxers and looks a little desperate.
The kitchen's starting to get crowded. The door opens again--it's his boss. And coworkers. Guy hurries to block his screen--he'd been blogging about how boring his job is. The room is very crowded now, everyone huddled around his computer screen, craning their necks to get a look at what he's writing. The guy is trapped at the table, can't even pull his chair back to stand up.
Door opens again--it's mom! And niece! And next-door neighbor! Now the room is packed. All eyes turn to the guy and the questions start coming: "Loved the pictures of your party--but why wasn't I invited? "Dude, that was a hilarious post about your boss--but what if he sees it?" Boss glares at the guy. Mom: "I saw your comment on that post about dysfunctional families--how could you say those things about me?"
The room is buzzing with chatter and guy at table is engulfed by the crowd. Screen fades to black.
My long-winded point: social media, formerly embraced by a pretty select few early adopters, is now becoming much more widely-used. This is ostensibly good, because it's becoming easier and easier to connect to long-lost friends, former classmates, childhood acquaintances, coworkers from former jobs--pretty much anyone and everyone. The world suddenly feels like a much smaller place.
It's great to catch up with people, keep in touch when real life is often too busy to keep up with even close friends. But the downside is that all those casual acquaintances--oftentimes people you haven't seen in years or who you were never that close to to begin with--are suddenly privvy to the intimate details of your life. Any part of you that you choose to put out in cyber space--photos, your blog, your tweets, your comments on other blogs, your professional affiliations--it's pretty much part of the public record. Without even realizing it you're suddenly "on" at all times.
Bottom line: if I wanted to be part of a perpetual cocktail party with everyone I've ever known, I probably wouldn't be spending half my life online. Granted, I'm the one who put it all out there to begin with--I just didn't realize anyone was actually looking.
Someone needs to invent a cleanup crew application--it goes back in time and erases all your connections and makes all your blog posts and comments anonymous. But then again, would I really do it if I could?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Would you let Twittad pimp your Twitter profile for cash?
Twittad is a new service that, as described on their website "gives Twitter users and advertisers the opportunity to meet for product placement & website promotion on a Twitter user profile."
Sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?
Then you go to the "How Twittad Works" page and the first thing you read is "Post Twitter account for advertisers to purchase." Huh? Purchase your profile as in own it?
Apparently the marketing geniuses at TwittAd aren't familiar with the concept of personal branding; if they were surely they would realize that, for some, the idea of selling their Twitter profile is probably tantamount to selling one of their kidneys. These days, a person's Twitter profile can be--and probably is--an integral part of their personal and, therefore, professional brand. Would anyone consider "selling" their LinkedIn profile? After all, if you sell something to someone, isn't it then theirs to do whatever they wish with? Are people going to be ok logging on to Twitter to find that their personal brand is now porn or something?
Ok, then--say you are willing to sell your profile to the highest bidder--what kind of money are we talking? Take a look at the current listings of profiles up for sale. The highest prices is $20; most are $5 or $10. Is that price per "hour you serve the ad"--whatever that means--or is it what advertisers pay to take ownership of your profile, then you rake in revenue similar to what you'd earn with AdSense; e.g. $0?
I'm just baffled by the whole TwittAd website--I have no idea what "hours serving the ad" means and, as far as I can tell, they give no explanation. I suppose one way to find out would be to put my profile up for bid and see what kind of money it actually brings in--that seems to be about the only way to find out based on the lack of detail provided by their website.
Sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?
Then you go to the "How Twittad Works" page and the first thing you read is "Post Twitter account for advertisers to purchase." Huh? Purchase your profile as in own it?
Apparently the marketing geniuses at TwittAd aren't familiar with the concept of personal branding; if they were surely they would realize that, for some, the idea of selling their Twitter profile is probably tantamount to selling one of their kidneys. These days, a person's Twitter profile can be--and probably is--an integral part of their personal and, therefore, professional brand. Would anyone consider "selling" their LinkedIn profile? After all, if you sell something to someone, isn't it then theirs to do whatever they wish with? Are people going to be ok logging on to Twitter to find that their personal brand is now porn or something?
Ok, then--say you are willing to sell your profile to the highest bidder--what kind of money are we talking? Take a look at the current listings of profiles up for sale. The highest prices is $20; most are $5 or $10. Is that price per "hour you serve the ad"--whatever that means--or is it what advertisers pay to take ownership of your profile, then you rake in revenue similar to what you'd earn with AdSense; e.g. $0?
I'm just baffled by the whole TwittAd website--I have no idea what "hours serving the ad" means and, as far as I can tell, they give no explanation. I suppose one way to find out would be to put my profile up for bid and see what kind of money it actually brings in--that seems to be about the only way to find out based on the lack of detail provided by their website.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Buh-Bye Business Cards--Hello Dropcard
I read this post about the importance of remembering to bring business cards to business and social functions and was surprised neither the author nor any of the commenters knew about Dropcard.
I may not be the most eco-friendly person on the planet, but I do hate paper and try to have as little of it as possible in my life. (Would you believe I used to be the program manager for printing and writing papers at the American Forest & Paper Association?) This includes bills, bank statements, medical claims, appointments and, of course, business cards.
(Aside: I know I'm jinxing myself by saying this but, despite the fact that when I hold my Treo I literally hold my life in my hand by virtue of the fact that it is the sole container of my calendar and my address book, I have never synched it and if it dies or I lose it, there goes every contact and calendar appointment forever. I need to remedy this before the worst actually happens and I have to slit my throat over the loss of all my vital information.)
At any rate, with Dropcard, you create a virtual business card that you can email to anyone right from your phone. You just send a text with the intended recipient's email address to a number specified by Dropcard and your business card is magically sent to them. The dropcard is formatted to look like a real business card, and can include not only your traditional contact information, but your social networking details as well (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc). You can also create a personal card if you want to include different information for social purposes, such as your home address, phone number, email, etc.
And don't forget--if you ask someone for their card and they say they'll send you a dropcard, don't forget to do the white thing and say "Hey, thanks. Sincerely, The Earth."
I may not be the most eco-friendly person on the planet, but I do hate paper and try to have as little of it as possible in my life. (Would you believe I used to be the program manager for printing and writing papers at the American Forest & Paper Association?) This includes bills, bank statements, medical claims, appointments and, of course, business cards.
(Aside: I know I'm jinxing myself by saying this but, despite the fact that when I hold my Treo I literally hold my life in my hand by virtue of the fact that it is the sole container of my calendar and my address book, I have never synched it and if it dies or I lose it, there goes every contact and calendar appointment forever. I need to remedy this before the worst actually happens and I have to slit my throat over the loss of all my vital information.)
At any rate, with Dropcard, you create a virtual business card that you can email to anyone right from your phone. You just send a text with the intended recipient's email address to a number specified by Dropcard and your business card is magically sent to them. The dropcard is formatted to look like a real business card, and can include not only your traditional contact information, but your social networking details as well (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc). You can also create a personal card if you want to include different information for social purposes, such as your home address, phone number, email, etc.
And don't forget--if you ask someone for their card and they say they'll send you a dropcard, don't forget to do the white thing and say "Hey, thanks. Sincerely, The Earth."
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