Was at a B -B-Q recently, and I was the burger flipper. Not such a bad job … I could probably get used to it … maybe even saying “would you like fries with that” 500 times a day.
On the other hand … maybe not.
But it was interesting to see who went for the vegie burgers and who went for the beef. I’ve seen a lot of people who are on low-carb diets. A lot of people on low-protein diets. And a lot of people on all kinds of other types of diets.
There’s one constant: they’re all fat.
There’s gotta be a lesson about human nature in this. Or one about marketing.
Or if not, maybe one about food.
[tags] diets, marketing, john koetsier, human nature [/tags]
Scoble’s interview with the Google program manager:
This is huge … an environment for building applications locally that will sync globally. I can see thousands of major and niche applications for this.
[tags] google, gears, offline, sync, scoble, john koetsier [/tags]
Do you have one of those cheesy motivational posters on your wall? In your company, somewhere? It’s probably something about teamwork, or hard work, or persistence, or excellence, or …
Boring! Old hat! Cheap! Manipulative!
Welcome Demotivators from Despair, Inc. Now these are fun. Their customer (dis)service page says “We’re not satisfied until you’re not satisfied.”
I like the one on consistency … “it’s only a virtue if you’re not a screw-up.” Or the one on consulting: “If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”
At least they make you laugh. And that might be the best motivator of all.
[tags] funny, motivation, demotivator, despair, joke, john koetsier [/tags]
While not straying too far off the beaten track for this blog, I just had to post a great quote.
It’s from Smoke Blanchard, mountaineer, hiker, traveller, guide, climber, trekker, truck driver, and about a thousand other things in between … and appropriately enough, it’s about life and career choices.
Most choices at the crossroads of life are made under weak starlight with a feeble lantern that illuminates poorly the farther stretches of trail.
I’ve just finished his 1984 memoir, Walking Up and Down in the World: Memories of a Mountain Rambler, and had to mention it here because it rings so true.
[tags] career, books, quote, smoke blanchard, john koetsier [/tags]
Was just reading in Isaiah tonight and came across this passage:
“But you, O Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
You descendants of Abraham my friend …
I took you from the ends of the earth,
From its farthest corners I called you.
I said, “You are my servant,”
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
So do not fear, I am with you.
Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
That’s great news for Christians. God will strengthen us and help us. He’ll uphold us with his righteous hand … which is especially good news for me, being full of unrighteousness!
[tags] bible, isaiah, christians, john koetsier [/tags]
I hate Russians.
Not all Russians – just the ones who keep ruining the internet for the rest of us by running half the spam zombies on the planet.
The software that runs this blog (Wordpress) notifies me every time I have a new registered user – someone who can post comments, even write posts. A couple times a day, I get a subscriber from Russia.
Every time I do, I know it’s some jerk who’s not reading my posts, not writing comments, and not contributing story. Rather, it’s someone who is going to make Akismet work harder to keep this blog clean of comment spam.
Bah. Humbug.
Perhaps it was better when they were the Evil Empire and we were were allowed to hate them.
[tags] russia, spam, comment spam, zombies, akismet, wordpress, john koetsier [/tags]
Free business idea of the week, coming right up …
- Rent a warehouse. Your bedroom will do until you get swamped with business.
- Advertise that you will send people’s gifts to their loved ones after they die.
- Collect people’s articles and store them safely. (OK, maybe the bedroom won’t work after all.) Charge them a small monthly sum, payable 3 time per year so the credit card fees don’t kill you. Something like $10/month.
- Tell them that the second month their credit card is declined, the articles will be shipped to the loved one of their choice, set up when they send you the goods.
- Sit back and collect the cash.
Please note that I didn’t say it was a particularly good idea. Just one that happened to come to me a while back.
[tags] business, idea, innovation, entrepreneur, john koetsier [/tags]
I just got reminded today that you can’t sell someone the solution before they’ve bought the problem.
Which is why so much marketing is selling real or imagined problems.
[tags] problems, solutions, marketing, john koetsier [/tags]
I was just wondering: what human needs drive web 2.0?
- Participation
Wanting to be part of something
- Belonging
Errr, sort of like participation but if participation is dating, belong is getting engaged
- Creativity
Wanting to make something
- Believing
Wanting to believe something
- Meaning
Wanting to matter. Related to believing but is more the result of believing.
- Becoming
Wanting to grow
That what I could come up with in about 30 seconds or so. I’m sure there’s more there …
[tags] web2.0, human needs, john koetsier [/tags]
OK, so I called my father a savage today. Trust me, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
He called with a computer problem: he’s trying to install some application on his PC. Problem: he’s completely clueless about computers. So I’m doing the familiar dance … what happened, what does it look like, what do you seen on your screen.
Seems to me that the application might actually be installed – he just doesn’t know it.
So I ask him to search in his Programs folder. Doesn’t ring a bell. Open up his computer’s hard drive. No response. Doubleclick the icon where all his files are. Nope.
That’s when I called him a savage. Actually it was more of an analogy. I compared him to a savage with a machine gun … as likely to be looking down the barrel when pulling the trigger as aiming anywhere else.
Not knowing anything about how computers work – even the slightest bit – is becoming more and more of a handicap.
[tags] computers, user friendly, clueless, savage, machine gun, john koetsier [/tags]
Well, add one more piece of data to the debate about whether Amazon hikes the prices of items that you put in your shopping cart but don’t buy.
(I’d link to the original story, but the LA Times is an SEO idiot.)
Every single one of the 5 books in my shopping cart is up … usually just under $1.00. Interesting … that could do nice things to gross margin, I guess.
Quite the coincidence, isn’t it, that all of the 5 are up? I mean, if it was just random cost fluctuations, wouldn’t it be a lot more likely that at least one of the 5 would have gone down in price? I suspect that Amazon keeps track of how many units of a particular title are in clients’ shopping carts and nudges the price north when it crosses a certain threshold.
Perhaps the moral of the story is: put nothing in your shopping cart until you’re ready to buy.
[tags] amazon, pricing, differential pricing, shopping cart, LA times, john koetsier [/tags]
Remember that …
totally innovative never-been-done-before six-figure customer support, training, and marketing initiative for a multi-ten-figure product line with extremely high gross margin
… project that I was pitching a week or so ago? It’s a go. Just completed it via conference call a few minutes ago. I am pumped!
Now, of course, the real work starts.
[tags] project, management, woohoo, john koetsier [/tags]
… here’s a hundred places to start:
Top 100 Open Courseware Projects
And they’re all free.
[tags] online, education, courseware, free, john koetsier [/tags]
My brother-in-law Jeroen Vermeulen is an amazing artist … one of his 8′ x 5′ paintings hangs in my dining room. Here’s a site that I recently put up for him:
More content to come, as per usual. We’ve only got his recent paintings up … nothing before January of this year. That’ll come with time, however. It was important to get this up as soon as possible as Jeroen just had a show in the Netherlands, and some of his paintings are going up for public display and sale here in Vancouver next week.
Enjoy!
. . .
. . .
PS: Jeroen is pronounced yer-roon. It’s a Dutch name (as is mine, sort of) and Jeroen is originally from the Netherlands.
[tags] jeroen vermeulen, art, website, john koetsier [/tags]
Text Link Ads just informed me that (yay!) they’ve sold another ad for me. (You can see ‘em down near the bottom of the right column under, appropriately, text link ads.)
This is cool, because it pays the hosting bills and because I make more from TLA than I ever did from Google AdWords. It’s even more cool because text link ads are incredibly aesthetically better than AdWords. But it’s uber-cool because the latest one is for VentureThree.
Naturally, when someone wants to market themselves on my blog, I check them out. And VentureThree has the coolest interim site I’ve ever seen.
The title at the top says Branding | Brand Consultants | Strategic Identity Consulting Design, and the page looks like this:
Simple. Direct. Powerful. Intriguing. Bold. Clean. Smart. Beautiful.
I love it. I want to work for a company with that kind of strategic aesthetic vision.
. . .
. . .
In case you’re wondering, I haven’t posted anything about any of the other advertisers on this site … so it’s not like you buy an ad, you get a puff piece. Just so you know!
[tags] venturethree, branding, consulting, brands, john koetsier, adwords, text link ads [/tags]
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
