The Izea Insider program is currently in a bit of limbo.  It is unclear to those of us that were in the program last year (2009) whether or not the program will continue in 2010. 

Contracts were only for the 2009 calendar year, so technically we are all out of the program as of the 1st of the year.

That said, it would appear that Izea does have some interest in continuing the program, and it is probably more a question of

• (a.) whether or not to fund it
• (b.) the cost of winding it down -> lots of programming went into setting it up
• (c.) Refocusing the program for 2010 if it does continue
• (d.) whether to continue with some or all of the IzeaInsiders from 2009
• (e.) whether to bring in new insiders etc.

All of those points are my own speculations on the program as an IzeaInsider from 2009.

In general, those of us that were in the program last year did pretty much the same type of work in 2006, 7, 8 without any formalized program to support us with or without money.  We will likely continue helping people the same way in 2010 with or without the program. 

The program’s goals were a little soft.  One of the main goals seemed to be in blogger recruitment or education.

In this, I think Heather (@heatherinbc and Drew (@benspark) hit it out of the park recruiting more bloggers.  They are both naturals at this and even better at managing relationships online after they are created.

Several of us, myself included, always felt a little weird competing for blogger recruitment with people that are essentially our friends. 

It was always a bit of a zero sum recruitment game.  If I encouraged someone to sign up, that might take a recruit away from say Heather, who might have also helped the same person. 

I mention this because I suspect this same issue probably made it difficult to track in metrics and in $$$ the success of the program.  It was hard for us Insiders and Ashley, running the program at Izea, to develop a good understanding of what was working with our efforts and what was not while it was happening, I doubt that cloud has been removed after the fact.

On other fronts, speaking for myself, I did quite a bit to develop some improvements in the terms of service for PPP and SS about this time last year.  Some of those upgrades did happen, but some of them did not.  We had a lot of conversations online and on the phone with several people in Izea, but I suspect its hard to buy off in changing the status quo of something as mundane as the TOS in hopes of improving the culture and quality of the blogosphere. 

I still think it was necessary, especially as it concerned collaboration and multi-writer blogs, but I’m not sure that the energy spent on this really bore fruit. 

Throughout the year, I myself covered a lot of conferences, camps, meetups, tweetups, social media club things, startup weekends, brain storming sessions, think tanks and more.  Some of the expenses for these were at times partly or fully funded by my travel allotment from Izea of $1500.  I slept on floors and couches, hotel beds, my car, van, and airport terminals to save money and stretch that money as far as it would go.  I drove and flew more miles than I would like to count covering events all around the southeast in Atlanta, Raleigh, Durham, Orlando, Savannah, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Holden Beach and some to more distant locations including New York City, Peoria/Bloomington, IL and several trips to Las Vegas for 8 different conferences.

In short, I worked & traveled my ass off.  I was not soley working for Izea, I was working for myself.

During those trips, I rarely recruited bloggers.  Most bloggers that I ran into, were already monetizing their sites and knew what they were doing.  There were many that were new to the business, so new that they didn’t even have blogs at all.  I worked with quite a few companies and personalities as part of my business with Softduit setting up websites, blogs, and (hate the cheesy catch phrase) social media marketing plans.

In marketing and seo conferences in particular, I found myself primarily providing education and insights to fellow advertisers, marketing firms, marketing professionals etc in regards to blog marketing and Izea.  For the record, unless asked only about Izea itself, I almost always provided information about all of the blog marketing firms I have worked with in any capacity.  I even continued to give referals to PayU2Blog despite the fact they think I’m evil incarnate after I pushed a medium sized campaign to Izea instead of their network the year before. 

I simply referred people to the right network for any given type of job that would fit best in that network.

Most advertisers or firms seem to lack any blog marketing industry experience at all, let alone know which product or service to run with in any given circumstance.

My efforts to help companies and marketing firms understand blog marketing came to a bit of a crescendo with IzeaFest with the panel What Advertisers Want.  At Blogworld, an event that I attend every year, (podcast Expo before it every year as well), I also found myself working (sans pay) in the role of connector.  I helped a large number of companies come together and meet each other in October, knowing the industry and having worked with quite a few of these companies over the years, I saw the synergies and introduced people all over the show.

That was a whole lot of fun, partly because I helped so many people and companies.

SOOOOOOoooooooooooo……………

What’s next?

dunno 

I think the goals of the program need to be tightened up a bit.  I don’t think it should be shelved.

I think there need to be 4 roles targeted

1) Blogger recruiting
2) Blogger Training
3) Advertiser Recruiting
4) Advertiser Training

If the program continues, I think these are the areas that will reap the most rewards for everyone in and out of Izea or the blogosphere.

Some people can touch on any one of these areas at any given time, no one I know of, myself, Ted and Ashley included, can hit on all 4 cylinders all the time.

Also, there were some definite communications problems with the program.  A couple of these were technical in nature, like how to do a conference call type stuff, which I’m not worried about nor am I worried about the difficulties of getting a bunch of bloggers in different time zones and countries on a call together either.

But one of the bigger problems was How Izea can talk with Insiders about Anything that is not public?

There were several times where Izea launched a new system, service etc where we Insiders were shown the new whiz bang 24 hours before or less.  Yes we had a little advance notice, but as Insiders it was always questionable whether or not we were allowed to ‘blog about it’  (and we’re bloggers ) at the time we learned about it.

When contracts and NDA’s enter the business relationship issues like this get a little muddled.

But maybe more importantly, with only a few hours before going live, it was difficult to give any meaningful critique or feedback in a timely way such that a new system or service could be improved.

Case in point Sponzai

Great service, great product, love almost everything about it.  Over a year ago when I was working on my last major ad campaign through Izea (yeah been awhile!) Dan Rua asked me some questions leading up to whether or not that type of process (in PPP or SS) might be useful to me as an advertiser based on some real world challenges I was facing in both those networks at the time.  I essentially created a manual campaign based on the Sponzai concept and ran in through PPP.  Then I gave a whole bunch of feedback to the Izea team about that experience. 

A year later they developed and rolled out Sponzai.  Very cool to see the idea incubate go live, but there were some opportunities missed during production.  It was a long time coming that product, I was happy to see it roll out, but after so much time, even with my high interest and relatively high level of buy in as an Insider and as an advertiser that had given a lot of feedback, I felt (touchy feely word that has nothing to do with business) distanced from this tool.

Along the way, if asked I would have requested several different things:
1 – Include it in PPP and SS as functionality not as a stand alone product
2 – Name it with something that includes one or more of the words or root words ‘guest’ ‘guest article’ ‘guest post’ ‘guest author’ etc.

Izea Challenge Point

So look I’m not perfect, don’t claim to be, but here is a challenge point that Izea seems to have.  They work in a fast paced advertising business where knock off competitors pop up quickly.  Izea has a modus operandi of creating a thing in secret and then featuring a grand reveal to the world ala Steve Jobs. 

They are not great at taking conversations in social media, forums, blogs etc and bringing those discussions in house to work on them WITH the folks that kick them off whether they be other businesses, bloggers or customers.  There is something that is not transparent about the process and like a supporting character in a scary movie, the lack of communication about what is going on or what is needed, that lack of transparency about the situation, decreases the buzz, the momentum and the effectiveness of the end result.

Opportunities

A magician on YouTube is only as good as their latest trick.  Once you’ve done the trick and everyone has seen it, there’s no magic left until you create a new trick.  A master magician however can take a suggestion from the audience and work a trick on the spot.  That’s essentially what companies (not just Izea) but all companies working in this ridiculously named space of ’social media’ -> ‘people talking with each other media’ have to do.  They have to listen to their stakeholders, take their requests and suggestions and work some magic.

If that magic can not be done in real time, then it has to at least happen while the company/magician continues to talk with their audience, keeping them engaged in the trick, the potential of the trick, and the hope of future magic.

You can’t go into radio silence for a year and then come back with a trick and expect your audience/stakeholders to still be there and still be present with the same level of connectivity and buy in that they had before.

Too much media down the stream at that point.  In a world where attention spans are measured in 5-15 minute segments, a year is more like a millenia.

Sooo there’s my insights on the Insider program.  I have heard ruminations about some changes at Izea that might also play a role in whether or not the program continues or not or how it might morph.  I suspect money will play a role.

The former accountant in me, suspects that the program needs to tighten up significantly and maybe consider some alternatives to keep the program financed.

Less emphasis on travel and distant conferences and more emphasis on local/regional events (like this).

Less emphasis on blogger recruitment and more emphasis on blogger development.

More emphasis on advertiser recruitment and development, afterall that will drive new revenue and $$$.

Hell maybe even some out of the box thinking like trying to use Obama’s ‘proposed’ incentive providing $5k per new hire in tax credits paid out of payroll taxes.

Last Point

I wanted to mention that I did receive a big benefit indirectly out of the Insider program.  As part of the program we insiders were to get a blog makeover.  If you’ve ever seen some of the blog makeovers created by Izea and their partners, they are generally off the charts stellar. 

I received a mock up for a makeover of my own personal blog There’s Something About Harry.  (it was really ugly)  But the point is, that really drove me to figure out how to design wordpress themes myself and during a year when my blogging revenue dropped by half compared to the year before, I was able to makeup that revenue performing WordPress implementations using WP as a CMS with themes I started designing. 

I got a bit of a lemon and made lemonade out of it.  That was a huge opportunity, and I view it very positively. 

We bloggers have received a lot of ‘freebies’ over the last few years.  It has had the extremely negative result of creating a sense of entitlement by bloggers that is at best ugly, and at worst is completely disgusting. 

Out of necessity I had to fend for myself and I learned a whole lot more than I would of if I had not.  Yes, I did burn a lot of cycles learning yet another discipline, but I did Learn!  Offer me a freebie or an opportunity to learn and I’ll take the opportunity to learn every day of the week.

Tonight I’m checking out the new Artisteer 2.4 which just became available.  The new version (in beta still) supports to major feature advances:

Vertical Menus for WordPress or other CMS systems like Drupal, Joomla etc

You can essentially run two menu systems now (at first glance). 

In the image example above within the Artisteer design environment I have the option of both a horizontal menu and a (new) vertical menu. 

No idea yet how that will be managed in WordPress as I haven’t exported one of these puppies yet, but that’s coming up next!

Category Driven Menus

Update – I just heard through the forums that not only have vertical menus been added, but now category driven menus are possible.  There appear to be binary options for this.

• You can either have a Category based menu OR a Page based menu in the Horizontal menu or in the Vertical Menu.
• You can have a category in the horizontal and a Page based in the vertical or vice versa.
• You can NOT have a category AND a Page based menu in the vertical at the same time.
• You can NOT have a category AND a Page based menu in the horizontal at the same time.

All that said, this is just the post export (standard) options.  There are probably some easy ways to hack some additional combinations into a theme after the fact

Flash Header Support for WordPress Theme Design

There is also flash headers support for WordPress themes now.  I can add some very basic animation templates that Artisteer includes with the software, or if I have an .flv file I can import it into the theme header.

I haven’t tried that out yet, but I can’t wait to give it a go. 

Changing a Template from one System to Another (Ergo WordPress Theme to Blogger or Drupal)

Here’s a nice cool upgrade option.  If you have designed yourself a nice little template in say WordPress and you want to use the same exact design in Drupal or Blogger or Joomla or DotNetNuke or just an HTML page (for like a WP page template with modifications!) you can now do this with a click of the mouse (ok 2-3 clicks).

After you have the design you like, just change template type.  Then save file as something else if you don’t want to lose your original theme/template etc and you are off to the races. 

If you have a website powered by WordPress and you have a blog powered by Blogger, you could then easily cobrand the sites to look very similar as one working example.  Gonna have to ruminate on some additional practical applications.

Extending Free Upgrade License

For just over a year now, I have received free upgrades to Artisteer.  That’s part of the license.  Buy Artisteer and you get free upgrades for a year.  When I first picked up Artisteer in November of 2008, they were just moving to beta version 0.8 I believe.  1.6 versions later or from my perspective about 20 improvements, updates and upgrades later, it was now time for me to update my license.

For $59.95 I purchased another year of Artisteer upgrades, and now I’m cranking through the possibilities with 2.4.

In case you are wondering, it only took moments for my order to process and my old license became good for upgrades all over again.  There is a huge amount of value in this program, but every time I download another free upgrade (yeah I paid for it, but most software companies don’t give away free upgrades at all), it feels great and puts a smile on my face.  In total, I’ve invested just short of $200 in this software over the course of about 15 months, and I have earned a return on that investment of about 100x. 

You can check your own
upgrade subscription status here.

Artisteer Discount Code/Link

If you would like to get a 5% discount on a new Artisteer license (home/education or standard) feel free to use my referral link http://www.artisteer.com/?p=brett

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Let’s say you have 50 or 100 or 1000 old blog posts on one or more sites that were sponsored articles.  You were paid up front for a short time advertorial essentially.  That was years ago and those posts haven’t brought any revenue to you since. 

Plus, the FTC has changed the landscape of online marketing and now you have to go back and consider adding some new form of disclosure to an advertorial.  Lots of work for no revenue, all cost, no profit, plus if you don’t you risk who knows what from the FTC. 

QUICK TIPS (ok not so quick) to get those old articles earning money again!

There are several things you can do in conjunction with each other to get those old deep links earning you some money.

• First, realize that what ever work went into those articles in terms of copy, research, writing etc, is long sunk.
• The risk of FTC issues is as real as your geographical address if you reside in the US (If you live in Canada, the UK, the Pacific Rim, feel free to laugh at the FTC all you like.)
• Now, go over to Skimlinks.com and sign up for an account. 
• They essentially turn old deep hyperlinks going out from your site in to current working affiliate links if there is an affiliate program through their collection of multiple networks traversing the world. 
• They aggregate affiliate links through multiple networks at commission rates that are often higher than you can get individually. 
• Get your account up and going and load the javascript onto your site. 
• If someone clicks on one of your old deep links and buys something, you get a commission.  $$$
• Pretty easy for just copy/pasting some javascript in your footer!
• Skimlinks is a good option, BUT for advertorials, it will likely only convert if you had kick ass copy on a page that draws a lot of natural search results. 
• If your copy was written for 2006 and not 2010, it might not convert so well no matter how good it was. 
• If your page hasn’t drawn a new hit in 2 years, well then its really not good for much of anything, almost.
• SO, identify your articles that you want to target.  For example, I recently went through an old blog, I filtered for all articles that still had a CountTrakula.com link in it, an old PayPerPost tracking mechanism, then I further filtered for articles from 2006.  THESE WERE OLD AND TIRED! But some of those posts still have some power,
• Some have lots of incoming links
• Some generate traffic!
• So next, you need to install the Redirection plugin into your wordpress site. 
• Don’t have your blog on WordPress?
• Move your blog over to WordPress and stop fooling around. 
• Now, start redirecting those old links to either your home page or a category that is relevant for the post.
• Essentially you are salvaging those backlinks.  yes they are over 18 months old in my example, but a backlink is a backlink.
• I had a few hundred to do myself, not a job for one sitting.  So make sure you have a good audiobook to listen to or TV show to partially pay attention to, and then start copy/pasting/clicking away
• Once your redirects are set up in full or either in a batch, go back and check your redirection logs. 
• 
• Look for old posts that are logging actual redirects to your home page or categories. 
• If you have an old advertorial bringing traffic to your blog for ‘drug rehab’ and you don’t have a better destination for that traffic on your blog,
• then log into one of your affiliate programs and search for a new affiliate program that has a high conversion rate for ‘drug rehab’. 
• Get the link for the program, then go back to your site, and replace your redirection destination link with the affiliate link! 
• Now all that traffic that was coming into your blog for an advertorial and likely bouncing away, screwing up your stats, and not doing anything for you is getting pushed to a high converting affiliate program where it might actually do that Google searcher some good and
• make you a commission!  $$$
• Pay attention to your redirect stats.  If it stops bringing people in, then change that redirect to a new 301 redirect back to your home page to salvage backlinks.  This puppy is harvested!
• If for some reason you like the traffic on that particular topic, but don’t want to send it to an affiliate landing page cold, then write up a NEW blog article that covers that topic or category. 
• Then change that redirect from over to your new article.
• If you are smart, make sure the article includes an affiliate banner to something useful, or at least some chitika or adsense ads or something.  I don’t want you to starve! 
• Sometimes a Rewrite may work too…
• You will not want to rewrite every article, but every now and then your original article may be pretty damned good and still relevant.  If so, polish that puppy up, and republish it with a current date.  Remove the old sponsored/advertorial references and OWN that new article yourself.  Find some new way to mix advertising on that page for that article, especially if it is pulling in traffic! 
• Plus, if it is pulling in traffic, do something on that new re-written post to really try and lock in those readers to subscribing with you.  You already know that it is bringing people your way, do something good for them, and try and get them to come back or stick around.
• A large percentage of your old advertorial articles from years back will not be relevant, will not have traffic and will only bring you minor backlink boosts.  That’s ok, don’t sweat it, at least you removed the liability stemming from the doubt over the FTC’s poorly conceived and executed new rules. 
• For that 10% that can do something for you, well more power and a little extra revenue to you! 

Bonus – if you do leave old deep links in any old article, make sure you put a rel=”nofollow’ tag on it if you hadn’t already.  Might as well please Google while you are at it. 

Sometimes the best technology gadgets are not the most expensive, take the RCA Pearl TH1611.  It is a little MP3 player that runs on a single triple aaa battery.  It gets hours and hours of play. Much to the surprise of most people RCA actually came out with the first MP3 player, which I owned way back in the dark ages before iPods.  It was the Lyra and with a really large card it could hold a whopping 48 megabytes of music.

This little Pearl, which is about a tenth the size holds a gigabyte and plays for about a work week of time (about 40 hours give or take based on my experience).  In fact it plays for hours after the battery monitor shows that the thing should be dead.

Firmware update needed to listen to AAC files

Way back when I got it, there was something on the box that said I would need a firmware upgrade.  The device worked for everything I needed it for at the time, mostly Audible books and some music for running.  I never got around to it.

Then a couple weeks back I was trying to listen to an audio book a friend gave me with an AAC file extension.  I think it was DRM free as opposed to the DRM not free type.

So today I’m finally getting around to a firmware upgrade from 3.001.005 to 3.1.5.5-ish.

After all this time it wasn’t very easy to track down the download of the firmware.  That might have stalled me when I bought the thing actually.

I mistakenly followed the RCA support links here and here both trying to get me to download some easy rip software that I don’t really need. Sure its free, but who needs more software clogging up their pc?

Finally after walking through the process to contact RCA support, I came across their last bastion of defense against phone calls, a FAQ that mentioned

TH1611 downloads

Where can I get downloads for my TH1611?

To update the firmware of the TH1611 mp3 player  click here

To update the firmware of the TH1611 mp3 player to enable DRM free AAC playback click here.

To download the latest version of EasyRip Media^TM Software  click here.

As John Lovitz used to say in the 80’s, “That’s the ticket!” 

So I followed that link to the download page where I could actually download the firmware.  It doesn’t really make sense to me why they don’t update their product pages or support update pages with this information and save themselves the trouble of FAQ page updates or even phone calls, but I finally did find it (by luck and because it was early in the day and I was paying more attention, if this had been a middle of the night upgrade, I’d be on hold by now).

Couple tips about upgrade

• I had to re-run the firmware upgrade software 3 times before I actually saw the infamous start button become clickable. 
• This upgrade did threaten and probably will erase all of my device data including music and books, so I’ll need to upload those again.
• I have no idea if this will enable my player to work better with Audible Manager which is one of the buggiest programs I’ve ever seen, but I’m hopeful.  (OK that’s an exaggeration but it is buggy as hell and has been for the last 10-12 years)

Post Upgrade Issues

Note, even after I ran this upgrade, my AAC files still would not play, got the same message. 

 

So then I went back up and looked at the links again.  I noticed that I had clicked on the link to download the firmware that enabled AAC but not the firmware upgrade.  The file names are very very similar.  So this time I went back and uploaded the firmware. (click here)

This may all be a waste of time trying this again, because when I get to the firmware upgrade section it shows that I’m basically already upgraded. 

Note this time I tried to run the upgrade without formatting the data area.  It wouldn’t let me and in fact automatically checked the format data area and deleted everything without me really being able to stop it.  So be warned, if you hit Start it will zap everything on your player!  (sorry that warning is so far down in this article)

Differences

This time when the upgrade ran, it really deleted EVERYTHING on the player, didn’t leave any folders or anything like it did last time.  (First time it deleted files but left some of the folder structure).

Similarities

It still didn’t allow me to play DRM free AAC on my Pearl

After thoughts & Shortcuts

About halfway through this whole process, I was determined to figure out if it was even possible to turn on the AAC DRM free playback option.  I suspected that it wasn’t, so I also opted for the low tech solution.  I loaded up Sound Taxi (free trial download if you are interested and tired of fooling around too) and simply started converting the stupid DRM free AAC file to MP3 so I could load it on my device!  Note. I bought and use SoundTaxi Professional which supposedly runs faster (I don’t think so) but DOES allow you to convert more than 1 file at a time.

After catching up on my sleep after traveling back all night from Boston from one of the largest wordcamps that I have attended to date, I finally got around to editing and uploading some basic video I took.  The first video is a quick presentation i gave during an unconference session, showing people how to design their first wordpress theme using the software that makes it easy, Artisteer.

Videos of the WP theme design presentation in 3 parts…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Just caught some great prices on several gadgets at JR.com, including a Kodak Zx1 HD digital video camera for $75. (only available day of this post)

Save 16% – Kodak Zx1 HD Pocket Video Camera – Black – REFURBISHED $75.00	Save 26% – LaCie 1TB Grand Desktop Hard Drive for PC and Mac $89.00
$229.95 – Polar RS300X Training Heart Rate Monitor	Save 26% – Panasonic DMC-FS7K Lumix 10.1 Megapixel Compact Digital Camera with iA – Black $119.00

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Mavenlink. All opinions are 100% mine.

For several years now I have been looking for a more efficient means of collaborating with people, working on projects with clients, managing the deliverables and changes to those projects and monitoring and collecting the remuneration.  Basically, I just want a tool that makes it easy for me to work my magic, keeps my customers happy and gets me paid without too much effort!

I found something that may fit the bill called Mavenlink

Old Broken Process

When I work as a consultant, I work on a prepaid basis.  I do this primarily to keep things simple.  It works, and the type of consulting services I provide can be completed soon after I am paid.  With more complex multi-phase projects I stagger the pre-payments for each phase.

Here’s how the process works.

1. I create an Estimate in Quickbooks Online, a service that I pay about $25 per month for, which I find cheaper than buying and maintaining a full version of Quickbooks on my computer.
2. I send out the Estimate to my Clients as a means to initiate the Review, Discussion, negotiation and Finalization of the Project plan.  Once everyone is happy with the plan,
3. I create an Invoice which becomes the Project Requirement.  I Print this as a PDF and send it to the customer for their records.
4. I then separately send a PayPal invoice for the same items, referencing the Invoice number in the PDF.  This enables my customers to pay via PayPal or Credit Card if they so choose and generally makes my life easier than waiting for a check in the mail.
5. When I receive the payment, I then go back into Quickbooks and receive the payment and clear the invoice as paid.
6. Finally I complete the project and deliver what is required to the customer.
7. I repeat this process for additional phases of a project.

Its really a bit of a pain in the butt.  It is slow, cumbersome and can sometimes take more time than the actual project!  I purposefully DO NOT charge for small services because it is not worth my time to mess with the invoicing.

I’d love it if Quickbooks had PayPal Invoice integration, but they do not.  In general Quickbooks is overkill for my business needs on many levels, but it does provide me with scalability if business grows substantially.

So today I came across a service through a referral on SocialSpark.  The Service is called Mavenlink (which caught my eye as my first blog’s name is Maven Mapper’s Information). 

This service provides consultants with the capability to manage a project, pitch the proposal to a client, lock up the terms of the project agreement, track the progress and manage invoicing and payments via PayPal.

Project Platform

Its a one stop shop not just for what I use for the Estimate, Invoice, Billing and Collection but also the interface with the customer, the negotiation and the project planning (which I do separately in spread sheets and mind maps, yet another step in my old process).

Brand Enhancement and Social Marketing

Another cool aspect about this service is that as it tracks what and how you are doing, this is used to market you, your company, your results and abilities to other potential customers both through Mavenlink and LinkedIn.

Build Relationships with People that Help you Get the Project Done

Plus, as you are working through projects, if I understand the information correctly, you can also work with other consultants as projects tend to change growing and shrinking during different phases, making it easier for multiple companies, consultants, contractors etc to come together deliver a good result, break apart and reform in a different configuration to fit a different client’s needs.

Result –> Working Smarter

So that’s what I see with this service so far.  Proof is in the pudding, and maybe more importantly proof is in adapting your own work culture to any give system or tool.  I intend to try this service out.  At service rate plans of $20 and $39, I might even be able to save a little money if I drop my Quickbooks online service.  But if I could find a way to save all that time that I currently waste and dread wasting just to get projects off the ground, pitched and negotiated this service or any other that achieves my goal would be well worth this rate.

Sponsored Article Disclosure – I was provided compensation of $10 to review this site and service.  These funds are going towards my wife’s National Board Certification.  She teaches fourth grade for a title I school in North Carolina that needs the best teachers possible.  The state does not provide for this certification process.  So far we have paid over $2,500 for her boards and need an additional $1,700 to complete the next phase.  I do find this service interesting and will be trying it myself.  I am not being paid nor sponsored to actually try the service, the sponsorship simply provided for my new awareness of this service. 

This month I noticed a new service in Social Oomph a professional social media service that I have subscribed to at a cost of about $15 per month for the last year or so.  The service is called clout and it basically looks at your followers and identifies the top 50 people that follow you based on their own following/followers and number of updates.

I was surprised to see that of my top 50, I only talk on a semi-regular basis with Chris Brogan, typically when I run into him at a social media conference, which is ironic as he has a great message these days telling social media folks to get out and shake the bushes meeting people from other walks of life ‘Outside’ of Social Media. 

I have also talked with Depeche Mode a couple times on Facebook, but not on Twitter.  There are also a couple people like Rob McNealy, whom I know and have had some great conversations with in the past, but despite the power of social media, haven’t talked with him lately.  But the larger number of the people with the most clout, that follow me, don’t talk to me.    I’ve met Jeff Pulver at one of his Social Media Jungle events in Las Vegas and he gave me the impression that he’s the type of guy that brings interesting people together to do interesting things.  I’ve tried to engage Guy Kawasaki a couple times but the conversations did not go well, I’m sure more my fault on that than Guy’s.…

Note: Originally published at Maven Mapper’s Information.

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CES attendance has been dipping from its highs of past years.  This year did not recoup the attendance of years past, but it did happen to top last year at least during the first 2 days of the show, which are typically the busiest.

Gary Shapiro, president/CEO of CEA, said total attendance by the end of Day 2 was 112,515, higher than the 98,495 at the end of 2009’s Day 2.
The two-day total already surpasses the 110,000 attendance figure CEA, producer and owner of International CES, was using prior to the show to estimate the expected attendance. Audited attendance for the 2009 show was 113,085

source

Many people booking rooms and trips, noticed a lot of great deals right up until the week before, and no surprise that with the extreme glut of additional hotel space in Las Vegas, some of which is shut down to keep perceived vacancy lower.  That said, just a couple days before the show, rates spiked rapidly as it appeared that a lot of people booked trips and rooms at the last minute.

One of the worst customer experiences I ever had was through Verizon Wireless when I purchased a Palm Treo 700P back in 2008.  Verizon loaded up so much absolute crap software on that OS in order to ‘control’ the phone through Verizon’s proprietary system designed to get you to pay for things most phones and gadgets provide for free, that it rendered my brand new Treo useless. 

The phone could barely make or receive phone calls.  It took months to get email setup and once it was setup, then the phone really got buggy.  Long story short, I had the phone replaced 5 times under warranty in 7 months.  I still have the new one in the box sent the last time.  I’ve never used that last one.  It was such a bad phone, I wouldn’t even sell it on ebay when Verizon Wireless advised me to do just that.

“This phone doesn’t work worth a damn” me

“we know.  We can replace it again, or you could sell it on ebay and get a new phone” Verizon Wireless rep

“I would never sell a lemon to someone like that” me

‘we sold it to you’ unstated by Verizon Wireless

summary of my conversation with their customer service and technical service folks.

So today, when I saw the announcement that Palm was going to offer the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus through Verizon, I had to laugh and cringe at the same time.

I’ve had a Palm Pre on Sprint since about June.  Its a great phone and the service from Sprint has been surprisingly good (note I’m trying to get my Pre replaced under insurance today as I can’t hear people speaking on it unless I wear the earbud or use the speaker phone), but aside from mechanical breaks, the phone and service rock.

I cannot imagine gambling with a Verizon Pre Plus.  Aftre my Verizon Treo experience, I’d never get another smart phone through a carrier that overlays an OS with their own proprietary nonsense.  Sprint has some on the Pre, but it doesn’t interfere with functionality.  I wouldn’t even give Verizon a 6th chance, and I don’t recommend anyone else do the same.

I really like Palm devices, have for years.  Sure, its a royal pain to deal with Palm support if you have to (oh my god, that’s ugly!), but their devices are very good. 

You may note a number of ironies in this article.

So its painful liking Palm devices and Palm in general (I’m no longer a stock holder).  I’m sure making an offering through Verizon will help their business, but you won’t catch me getting suckered by Verizon again. (I still have 2 lines with Verizon but no smart phones on those lines, and I’ll likely switch those to Tmobile or Sprint soon). 

So there you have it, my advice if you are a Verizon customer and you have been waiting for the Pre to come to Verizon, congratulations! Now go switch to Sprint, save some money and get a phone that works. 

Addendum: the only mobile phone carrier that has been worse to me than Verizon Wireless is at&t hence the reason that I don’t use an iPhone.  You may think I’m not to keen on Verizon Wireless after a bad experience, that’s nothing compared to how much I despise at&t who ripped me off for over $1k when they slammed me into a mobile calling plan charging me $2.5 – $3 per minute without telling me or getting my consent. at&t sucks in my opinion, Verizon Wireless is just misguided.