So, we have decided to revive it under a new name, built on a completely new platform and we plan to launch it in Facebook. We added this to our production schedule just over two weeks ago and we’ve made significant progress, working it in among the other projects on our plate. We have made a ton of progress on the backend of the site, the stuff that is invisible to the user. We have a lobby, chat and some game functions working already. So, we’re well on our way.

Now, what should we call it?

We received some excellent suggestions in the comments and we want to get some of the ones we liked in front of you here.

Word War
Word Fury
Word Herd
Pop Phrase
WhirlWords
Frenetic Phrases
Frantic Phrase
Phrase Flow
Word Whirlwind
Phrase Craze
Super Phrase

Thanks for lighting our fire! We’d love to hear your thoughts.

And we’ve felt for a long, long time that games and learning were meant for each other. Our first training games were launched back in 1998 as part of a collaboration with AdOut. They were called “Monster Commands” and “Key Commando” and they taught the important key commands that made the AdOut production artists some of the most productive in the industry. They were a huge success. The employees loved them and within an hour, they had mastered key commands for programs like Photoshop, Quark and Illustrator that would otherwise have taken weeks or months to learn.

In 2003, we attempted to turn our game creation experience into a training solution for corporations. We created Motus Learning Systems with a couple of other partners to give it a focus. Motus built several demo games for different companies, and we even created a kids game to teach mousing skills. The initial illustrations for that kids game are shown above. And although this proved to be a short-lived venture for many reasons, it didn’t alter our belief that games are simply the best way to learn things that require repetition to master.

This past week, Gist launched their own training game. And I really like it.

Stated very clearly on the front page of their site, “Gist helps you build stronger relationships by connecting the inbox to the web to provide business-critical information about the people and companies that matter most.” Others, like Dustin Luther, have written about how Gist is helping them manage the many online relationships they’ve fostered. I like it too, but I really like their newest feature, a game called,  “Learn That Name.” And it does exactly what the name implies… it helps you learn the names and companies of the people you follow on social networks.

It’s a simple game, as most good training games are. You’re presented with a person’s avatar and you get points for guessing their name correctly. The faster you guess, the more points you get. Get it wrong and you lose 50 points. Each round is five people. For my taste, it’s just the right number. In my first round I achieved the “Super Socialite” level, though I was lucky to get five people I know pretty well. The second round labeled me a “Casual Networker.” I think the game could do a better job of sensing the sex of a contact. If I didn’t know that was Geoff Livingston, it would be a lot harder to figure out if all four names were male oriented.

The game strips off choices as the time clicks by and the points drop. So, if you don’t know who someone is, it helps you. If you don’t get the name right, you don’t get the option of the bonus question, which is “Where does <first name> work?” I wasn’t sure who this next guy was, so the game gave me some help.

I haven’t used Gist much since I loaded it, but I’ll be using it more now. I think they did a great job with the game. I can see lots of potential for categorizing contacts based on upcoming events, recent additions, high school classmates, etc. In fact, I’d download this app JUST to play this game. After just a few rounds, I’ve already become more familiar with some folks I’ve been trying to get to know over the past year. And I was surprised by some of the faces I recognized and how hard it was to place their name.

Kudos to Gist. Well done.

When I take myself out of my tech lover mindset, I’m just not sure what the point of all of this public “checking in” really is. My general feeling is this – If you want someone specific to know where you are,  just tell them? And if you’re not a social media fan boy, or someone enjoying their 15 minutes of technorati fame, or a Realtor trying to turn every mundane daily activity into a sphere-of-influence-building mission, then you probably couldn’t care less if your entire network knows you’re at your local Chevron. I have to believe that if you’re just an average Joe or Jane, telling the whole world where you are at every turn just seems kind of silly.

I’m not alone in my house. In fact, my wife, Rocky, has heavily influenced my opinion. She is not anti-social media by any stretch. She has witnessed the value of Twitter and Facebook in encouraging public conversation. It has helped her charity, MFFO.ORG, raise thousands and thousands of dollars for an extremely worthy cause. But she falls squarely into the “average Jane” description above. It would be accurate to say she thinks all of the public Foursquare announcements are stupid in most cases and dangerous in others. She’s was not a happy camper when I was using Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla in real time to broadcast where I was to my Twitter stream. She was less considerably less happy if I checked in when we were all together as a family. She wouldn’t even consider doing it herself.

If I’m a business, I’m hoping guys like me and gals like my wife change their mind fast. Why? Because these services represent a major opportunity to influence our buying decisions. And the new Foursquare analytic tools for business being tested offer a good look at the wealth of data that could be available if the consumer begins to see a benefit in using the services ubiquitously. But what is it going to take to get people like my wife to use them? It’s going to take more than cool tech to sway them. She has no idea I’m writing this post right now, so I’m going to go ask her and then come back.

I’m back. And I’m a bit surprised.

I won’t beat around the bush. She agreed with my descriptions above. She feels all of the public check in activity is dangerous, especially for women. And said, “Unless I was at a social media conference, trying to keep up with where my friends were, I just can’t see myself using it.”

Then I said, “OK, but let’s pretend you’re Julie in Illinois or Kim in West Virginia. You’re never going to go to a social media conference and you rarely, if ever, travel without your family. You’re you as you are in your day-to-day life here in Santa Clarita.” She put herself in that place and I asked,  “What would it take for you to use it if you could keep your check in activity completely private?”

That spurred some thought. And I was surprised by her answer.

“You mean if I could limit who saw my check in to just my small local sphere of friends, the people I interact with face-t0-face, people who live nearby?” Yes. “Then I could see a real value in getting an alert if Alana or Susan were at Whole Foods, for example. I could ask them to pick something up for me. It would be a benefit for them to know if I was at a store as well. That would have REAL value to me.”

I would never have gone there. I can see real value in that as well.

Encouraged, I pushed on and asked, “What if when you checked into Whole Foods, the Pei Wei across the parking lot could push a message to you that offered a discount if you showed them them your iPhone screen, or if a new organic cereal company offered you a free sample as you were in the store shopping, would that encourage you to check in more often and at more places?” She paused a second and said, “Yes, that would make me check in more often. No question. But I still wouldn’t care if I were the Mayor of Whole Foods.” (That’s my girl!)

What’s interesting is that she could use Foursquare as she envisions it right this very second. She was totally unaware that her check in activity could be kept private and limited to just a few people. Her understanding of Foursqure and other “lo-so” services was solely based on the public behavior being displayed by the technorati on a daily basis and at conferences like SXSW.

I’m going to help my wife use it as she described above. I want to see if it provides value for her. But I’m left wondering how many other average Janes and average Joes are being negatively influenced by the popular uses of these services? It may be time to take a step back and ask the question, “is the popular public use of location-based social networking attracting people or driving them away?”

Photo credit: Bits

6:15 am: I’ll be using a Live Blog app all day today to post updates from #harsmp.

7:12 am: Todd Carpenter – @tcar is up first… talking about “Brand You”

7:18 am: Todd is doing an excellent job of using transparency in the way it should be used. Illustrations of the various “names” people have called him on the Internet, both good and bad.

7:21 am: “How are people branding you?” – @tcar #harsmp analyzing social media will tell you.

7:21 am: Google alerts and vanity searches are reactive, not proactive.

7:22 am: “Dont tell me your a big deal. Be a big deal.” – @tcar #harsmp

7:25 am: Todd is really highlighting the fact that actions speak louder than words. His illustrations, although just words, are very visual. Like the way he’s managing his presentation. It’s true to HIS brand.

7:29 am: Yelp.com – @tcar is extolling the potential virtue of Yelp for REALTORS. I agree. #harsmp

7:32 am: He said “Yelp Strategery” for the Texas crowd.

7:33 am: “Think about how you can help other local businesses.” – @tcar #harsmp

7:34 am: “I’m kind of a big deal.” – @tcar #harsmp (excellent presentation)

7:51 am: Up next: Paul Chaney @pchaney “The Digital Handshake” focused on Facebook and Twitter.

8:01 am: What should you do about it? Paul says, “Start a conversation.”

8:03 am: “In social media, the mindset is more important than the toolset.” – @pchaney #harsmp (truth)

8:07 am: “Information has to be findable and shareable.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:09 am: Paul is preaching today. He’s really “on” this morning. Enjoying it.

8:16 am: There’s a business profit benefit to creating a viral conversation. But you have to be willing to work the way the web works today. Staying entrenched in old marketing styles, to the exclusion of conversation media, is a mistake.

8:17 am: “Listen. Engage. Measure.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:21 am: “Twitter is kind of the new email”

8:24 am: “BLOG = Better Listings On Google.”

8:28 am: “If this is JUST about ROI for you. You’re missing the point.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:30 am: Paul’s tears at the end of his presentation over the human element of social media were real. Quite a touching moment. “it really is a matter of the heart.”

8:31 am: Paul’s presentation is at slideshare.net/pchaney

8:41 am: Up next: Ines Hegedus-Garcia from miamism.com talking about “Blogging On Steroids.”

9:03 am: “You need a plan.” – @Ines #harsmp re: blogging

9:07 am: Your blog should be a direct reflection of who you are and how you speak. If you’re casual, be casual. If you’re formal, be formal.

9:11 am: Pay attention to your demographics. Who have you sold to in the past? Are they similar? Can you identify a “type” that you can blog directly to?

9:14 am: “I try things on my blog for at least six months. If they aren’t converting, I stop.” – @Ines #harsmp

9:17 am: “The top right corner of your blog is you’re most valuable space. Make good use of it. Don’t waste it.”

9:30 am: “Marketing reports are universally the most clicked on posts.”

9:33 am: Wow. @Ines just mentioned twext.me #harsmp

9:38 am: I’m up next, so I won’t be live blogging it.

10:48 am: Max Pigman @maxpigman is up next talking about mobile technology.

10:56 am: “Mobile data will eclipse voice by 2011″ – @maxpigman #harsmp

11:00 am: “even if you don’t want or own an iPhone you need to know what your site looks like when viewed from an iPhone or iPod Touch. It represents 65% of mobile traffic”

11:06 am: The document camera @maxpigman uses to show his iPhone sceens rocks hard! #harsmp

11:15 am: Max does a great job of demoing the apps he recommends for the iPhone. Demoing Red Laser now.

11:18 am: Crowd is laughing at Max’s demo of an app that let’s you text and walk and see where you’re going.

11:21 am: .@maxhigman is demoing the Top Producer iPhone app. #harsmp

11:26 am: “they just developed a 2 TB SD card” – that’s a lot of photos

11:31 am: Glad he’s demoing how to use Windows on a Mac. The compatability myth needs to be busted.

11:32 am: Ines and I are talking about Flickr next.

12:27 pm: Ginger Wilcox @gingerw from smminstitute.com is up next to talk about video.

12:39 pm: “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in your first videos. Everyone does” – @gingerw #harsmp

12:44 pm: Ginger is showing off her MANY video camera she uses. She may have a camera buying addiction.

12:49 pm: Make sure viewers can rate your “YouTube videos or they won’t be found and add text to them so Google can index them.”

12:51 pm: “Publish regularly, publish to more than one location, be human, listen” – good advice.

12:56 pm: I kinda liked the “tv show” feel of the video Ginger show of her property listing. Perhaps she’ll come link to it in the comments.

1:00 pm: “Take videos of local business owners talking about why their business is unique and what they love about their community.”

I’m live blogging Paul Chaney’s presentation at the HAR Digital Media Spring Training today. The description states -  “This session will teach you the basics of using Twitter, not just the “how,” but the “why” as well. You learn how to setup a Twitter account, the rules of the road, and ways to utilize Twitter to most effectively connect with customers and prospects and grow your business.”

9:26 am: “Twitter is anything you want it to be.” – @pchaney #harsmp

9:28 am: Setting up a Twitter account is simple, but pay attention to the sign up screens… especially the follow help screens that follow the sign up page.

9:30 am: “What’s happening? Is the new Twitter question. But you should ask, what does my community care about?” – @pchaney #harsmp

9:44 am: Something is not working quite right #harsmp

9:52 am: Testing again.

9:54 am: Wish this were working

9:55 am: Attempting to live blog is not working as hoped.

9:57 am: Live testing is so much fun. It’s now changing my blog title. – @pchaney #harsmp

11:18 am: Test

I buy large portions of that logic and have experienced some of the benefit of that thinking myself. And I also believe this concept may work better for large organizations than it does for personal brands, at least for the near future. For example, as I look around the web at REALTORS© who are and have been successful in the social media space, they have one thing is common. They may have strong positions in numerous social media sites, but they have one or a small number of hubs around which all of their social media efforts revolve. It might look something like this.

Typically the hub is their blog, though some are moving their focus to Facebook Fan pages. And the tools they choose to use all work to support their hub-focused approach. A tool like Posterous, for example, is a form of a blog/social media site, but it also gives the user the ability to skin their Posterous blog with their own branding and “park” it at a subdomain of their main site, like blog.miamism.com. This appears to the viewer as just a section of the main Miamism site, and in effect it is, even though it’s hosted on a different service/server. The benefit of a site like Posterous is that when you create mobile content using the tools Posterous provides, and set up the automatic distribution options, it leads the viewers at the various distribution points, Twitter, Facebook, etc., directly back to your hub. SEO value, links, eyeballs, they’re all focused back on the hub.

Some tools don’t provide this opportunity. We’ll take a closer look in Part 2.

(This post is part of a presentation experiment at HAR Digital Media Spring Training for rookies.)

In this diagram, content created by the user is sent out to Twitter and Facebook, but the viewer is lead away from the user’s main web presence. The tools are usually set in the context of a service or another small or niche social media site, like TokBox, or Qik. Neither TokBox nor Qik provide a way to use their tools in a way that easily points the user back to their main web presence. Often, this is a necessary. The tools that are provided are so unique that they can’t be replicated using a more hub-focused approach.

However, some “services” that lead the viewer away from the content creator’s main web presence and have minimal benefit, in my opinion. I believe a site like TweetLister falls into this category. In this case, the user actually recreates content they have already created somewhere else, a listing for a house, and then sets up the service to send messages out to their Twitter audience leading them back to TweetLister. Proponents argue that their is some SEO benefit from taking this approach, but at what cost?

Choosing the right tools.

The same result – leading people to your listings via Twitter – could easily be achieved using a tweet scheduling service (like Twuffer, Tweetlater or FutureTweets) and directing people back to the listing page on your site, where they can then see more of your content, search, etc.

So, in evaluating potential tools, unless the tool provides an extremely unique benefit, I’m going to lean toward the tool that keeps the focus on my main hub or hubs.

(This post is part of a presentation experiment at HAR Digital Media Spring Training for rookies.)

That’s all about to change.

I’ve spent at least a year in a complete blogging funk. And it’s not because I don’t have things I’d like to say. I most certainly do. The reason for the funk is that I’ve been having an internal battle between “what I should be doing” and “what I really love to do.” Luckily for me, what I really love to do is also what I’m really good at. And it’s not creating and defining marketing strategies.

First, some commentary. A troubling trend has emerged from the chaos of the social media boom. People who have no real marketing skills or training or any experience with business strategy are becoming “social media marketing” consultants, strategists and coaches based on a few factors that have nothing to do with successful marketing strategy. These new marketing “experts” fall into one of three categories.

• The Cheerleader
• The Successful Fool
• The Opportunist

The Cheerleader

You all know this social media marketing expert. He or she is the person who has no proven track record for building ANYTHING other than followers on a few popular social media sites. They equate this popularity with business success and can even teach others how to recreate their “success” in these online venues. They use anecdote and analogy to answer questions of ROI and they universally fail to be able to point to any quantifiable measures of business progress that contribute substantially to a company’s bottom line.

The Successful Fool

This social media marketing expert has a proven track record of past business success, but it has nothing to do with any marketing experience, least of which social media marketing. There is no proof that their journey is repeatable. They use an unintentional slight of hand to direct our attention to their past exploits as proof positive of future benefit. And they make the foolish mistake of thinking their personal ability to grow a business can be transferred to others on a large scale.

The Opportunist

This is my least favorite form of new age social media marketing expert. They promise big results with almost no effort. They are the social media marketing snake oil salesmen. They’re the ones telling you that if you don’t do x and y you will be extinct in 2 years. Their success is measured in the number of people they dupe into buying their placebos. They’re not marketing strategists, they’re carnival barkers.

So what am I?

I have been very successful in my business life. Let me be clear, by “very successful” I mean that my companies have made solid profits for many years. But they have not been successful because I am a marketing strategy expert. Quite to the contrary.

What has helped make them successful is hiring great strategy consultants and partnering with great strategic thinkers, like Bill Leider. I’ve have also tried to align myself with others who are great marketing and brand strategists in specific market segments, like Marc Davison in real estate. But I am NOT a marketing strategist. What I do is work WITH and BESIDE marketing strategists to develop tools, tactics and technology paths that make executing those strategies simpler and easier. I look at a company’s objectives and devise ways to use technology to make executing those strategies more efficient and effective. I am a tactical strategist and a technology strategist. I am not a marketing strategist – social media or otherwise.

The mistake I’ve made over the past year is thinking that I needed to be something else. I don’t.

When Hal Lublin related the story of how, while playing poker, Chris Brogan helped him understand that he shouldn’t hold back, I wondered why I was holding back. I wondered what was keeping me from writing. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one good reason. There is just one bad reason – I’ve been resisting being seen as a social media MARKETING expert.

My Master’s degree is in School Psychology with a focus on behavior modification. I spent several years creating behavior modification plans for severely mentally handicapped and criminally insane patients. So, if sometimes I want to write about behavior, I should. I have a passion for science, so sometimes I want to write about technology, the Internet and social media as it relates to quantum mechanics and complex adaptive systems. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve also spent a great deal of time dissecting, with the help of some great thinkers, the role of vision and values in building and managing a business and solidifying a brand. I should write about that too. I will.

But what I will not do is continue to allow my resistance to being lumped into the category of “social media marketing expert” keep me from writing about areas in which I excel. I’m going to write about emerging digital tools and how to make them work to the benefit of strategy – personal, brand, marketing or otherwise. I’m going to write about what I love – technology.

Taking the experts’ advice.

The social media marketing experts I admire tell me that if I want to increase engagement, I should ask a question at the end of each blog post. Let’s see if they’re right. What barriers are holding you back from being more effective in using social media?

Two weeks ago I made Feedly the home page for Firefox on my desktop computer. I did it after going through a few sites I hadn’t visited in a while. It was an experiment of sorts. I’d given up on my Google Reader long ago in favor of human aggregation via my social networks. I wanted to see if it would bring some value back to the RSS feeds I had subscribed to in the past. It did.

Feedly’s design changed my behavior. Good or bad, design influences our behavior. The noise of the Google Reader format influenced my decision to give it up almost as much as the value of the social recommendations I migrated toward. The clean, magazine-style design of Feedly has cut out the noise and allowed me to get to more information faster, moving me back toward my targeted material. That’s a good thing.

If you’ve never given Feedly a try, I think it’s worth setting up an account and seeing how it impacts your own behavior. Here’s a quick video to illustrate my thoughts. If you’ve given Feedly a try, what are your thoughts?

Related reading: 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock

Every time I allowed myself to think I had arrived, I hadn’t. Every time I called myself a failure, I wasn’t.

Every moment – each high and each low – was simply a step on the path to this moment.

Period.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

True success can’t be defined by a moment. Neither can failure.

Success. Failure. It’s all just part of the journey.  Where I find myself today doesn’t really matter in the big picture.

I can’t linger in success and I shouldn’t wallow in failure.

Every moment is simply a lesson. I can learn things from the moments of success that I can’t learn from the moments of failure. And vice versa. I enjoy the moment or I endure the moment. But I know this – no moment is permanent. The moment moves on and so must I.

Feeling like a success today? Enjoy it. Learn the lesson. Move on.

Feeling like a failure today? Endure it. Learn the lesson. Move on.

…….
(I orginally wrote this three years ago in response to an email. It popped up on my radar screen today as a result of a new comment. It was timely. I needed the reminder. I’m sharing it again here in case someone else needs it too.)

Twext.me Terms Of Service

1. We’re a free service that depends on Twitter’s API to function properly. If our service isn’t working, it’s likely because Twitter’s API is acting up.  It happens a great deal. So, we can’t be responsible for outages that are Twitter’s fault.
2. We use Twitter’s OAuth to access your account, so we don’t know your Twitter password. We don’t want to know it. That said, in order to communicate your mentions to you, we must store some of your twitter information on our servers. This information is visible to the public anyway, so there’s nothing in our database that is of any value. Except to you.
3. We won’t spam you. Ever. Once again, we’re a free service, so if you’ve chosen the “true SMS” option, instead of the email SMS option, we use a service called Textmarks to send the SMS. They DO put an ad at the end of the SMS message. That is NOT our ad. We don’t make a dime off of it. If you don’t like those ads, or you consider THAT to be spam, chose the other options. Just note that some systems, like AT&T don’t support threading with the email SMS option. The choice is yours.
4. As for privacy, we won’t be selling your information to anyone or giving your information to anyone for any reason. Ever. Period.
5. I suppose we (Twext.me, Zeek Interactive, our employees, officers, affiliates, agents, partners, anyone we’ve ever met face-to-face, on the phone or on the internet, or anyone we’ve ever thought about meeting, real or imaginary) should tell you that we’re not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, including without limitation, loss of profits (yeah, right), data, use, good-will, or other intangible losses, resulting from using our service. We can’t imagine what that could possibly be, these are just your Twitter mentions for goodness sakes, but we felt like we had to say it. We live in a pretty litigious society. A better idea: If you feel like we’ve done something to hurt you. Send us a tweet. Twext.me will alert us and we’ll work it out. Promise.
6. If we fail to enforce any of these terms, that doesn’t mean we’re waiving our right to do so. If one of them is not enforceable, that doesn’t mean the others aren’t. We think that’s just fair.
7. We don’t feel compelled to keep this service running forever. If Twitter changes their service offerings to include SMS notification for mentions or some better solution comes along, we reserve the right to shut this service down without asking for your permission. Sorry, it’s just too hard to get consensus on these things.
8. When in doubt, we always take the high road.

We’ll have this up on Twext.me, along with a more formal Privacy statement, in short order.

Create a GoDaddy Account

• If you do not already have a GoDaddy account, create one at godaddy.com.

Purchase a New Domain Name (if you don’t have an existing one)

• Log into GoDaddy and search for an available domain name.
• Purchase the domain.

Purchase Web Hosting

• Click the “Hosting” tab on the left side navigation under “My Products”.
• On the Hosting screen, click “Click here to purchase a Hosting Account “ under the “Purchasing Additional Hosting Accounts” title.
• Choose a hosting plan. Any plan will do. I chose the 3 mos Economy Plan for $4.99/mo.
• This may take a few minutes to take effect.

Set Up Your Hosting Account

• Click again on the “Hosting” tab on the left side navigation under “My Products”.
• On the Hosting screen, “New Account” will be listed. Click “Setup Account”.
• There are 5 steps to setting up a hosting account:
  • Step 1 – License. Agree to the License.
  • Step 2 – Login. Create a login and password.
  • Step 3 – Account Details. Choose the domain you just purchased (or any domain listed). The domain you choose will be tied to this hosting account.
  • Step 4 – Options. Choose PHP 5.x and enable Google Webmaster Tools.
  • Step 5 – Confirmation.  Click “Finish”.
• This process may take up to a couple of hours to complete. You can check the status by visiting: https://hostingmanager.secureserver.net/. Once the status reads “Setup,” you are good to go.

Set Up a Database

• Visit https://hostingmanager.secureserver.net/ and click on your domain name to open the hosting settings.
• Click “Databases” and then click “MySQL”.
• Click “Create Database”.
• Fill in the description field. This can be anything you want as it is only for your purposes.
• Fill in a mySQL Database/User Name. Jot this down as you will need it for the Wordpress set up.
• Fill in a mySQL Password and confirm it. Jot this down as you will need it for the Wordpress set up.
• Click “OK”.
• This process may take a few minutes to complete. You can check the status by visiting: https://hostingmanager.secureserver.net/SQLDBList.aspx. Once the status reads “Setup,” you are good to go.
• Once it has been set up, click the pencil button under “Action”. Jot down the host name as you will need it for the Wordpress set up.

Download Wordpress Core Files

• Visit http://wordpress.org/download/
• Download the latest version of Wordpress.
• Unzip the files on your local computer and note where you saved the files.

Configure Wordpress

• In the local copy of Wordpress that you just unzipped, open the file called “wp-config-sample.php” in a text editor.
• On line 19, replace ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with the mySQL Database/User Name you created above.
• On line 22, replace ‘usernamehere’ with the mySQL Database/User Name you created above.
• On line 25, replace ‘yourpasswordhere’ with the mySQL Password you created above.
• On line 28, replace ‘localhost’ with the mySQL host name you jotted down from the steps above.
• Save this file.

Upload Wordpress to GoDaddy

• Visit https://hostingmanager.secureserver.net/ and click on your domain name to open the hosting settings.
• Click “Content” and then “FTP Client”.
• Click “Allow” in the security popup.
• On the Remote System (right side), delete “favicon.ico” and “welcome.html”.
• On the Local System (left side), locate your local copy of the Wordpress files that you just unzipped.
• Upload all files to the Remote System.
• Locate “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it to “wp-config.php”.

Set Up Wordpress

• In a browser, visit your domain. (If you just set up the domain, it may take up to 24 hours to propagate and it may not work yet.)
• You should see the Wordpress set up screen.
• Fill in a title for your blog.
• Fill in your email address.
• Click “Install Wordpress”.
• Jot down your user name and the temporary password.
• Click “Log In”.
• Log into Wordpress.
• All Set!!!

See, wasn’t that simple.

They are already among us!

Down through history, people have battled technology, and more often than not it seems that technology usually wins out. Whether it’s your mom’s inability to program the clock on the VCR or humankind being made into Duracell batteries in The Matrix, we seem to be barraged by constant reminders that computers will inevitably screw us over. Where did this fear begin? Was John Henry’s battle with the steam hammer the start? Yeah, sure…he won the race. But then he died. I’m sure the steam hammer shed a few fake tears at John Henry’s grave while it comforted his widow. Then there was HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The machines in the Terminator series. The list goes on and on.

And let’s face it: in many ways, machines are our masters. They can be far stronger and tougher. Their brains can calculate more quickly and remember more accurately. We depend on them for everything, from transportation to entertainment. What can we do in the face of that kind of domination? We could lash out, like the Luddites. Or just run away, like the Amish.

Or we can rise up and say, “We created you, and it is time you remember who your work for, bitches!”

That’s what one man said back in 1999. Omar Syed, a computer engineer, was trying to teach his 4-year-old son, Aamir, how to play chess. As he was coming up with more simple versions of this complex game to help his son grasp the rules, he was reminded of two years earlier when Garry Kasparov, Russian chess grandmaster, was humiliated by his defeat at the cold, steel claws of the nefarious computer opponent, Deep Blue (Editor’s Note: Deep Blue may not have had claws). Omar suddenly stood, spilling chess pieces to the floor, and in a voice that chilled the blood in Aamar’s veins, he said, “I will invent a game that humans may use to humiliate computers forever!” (Editor’s Note: The author may be taking liberty with historical events for dramatic purposes.) Because if there’s one thing that makes humans better than computers, it’s the fact that if we can’t win at something, we’ll find some way to tilt the balance back in our favor.

That is how Arimaa was born, sprung from the head of this brilliant man as Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. After he had taken some aspirin (Omar, not Zeus), he set the rules down on paper. Then he began play testing. Then, he put the game away for a while and forgot about it. Then he remembered it and was inspired. And then he gave up again. But then he found the files on his computer and started to…oh, hell. Now it becomes obvious why computers kick our asses so often. But long story short, he eventually tweaked the game until he got it to its current form in 2001 (Co-incidence? Or a subtle “F*** You” to HAL 9000 and his metal buddies?). He released the game in 2002.

Elephants and camels and horses! Oh my!

So if Arimaa is too hard for computers, how the hell am I supposed to learn it?

The game is actually fairly simple to play. You can even use a standard chess board and pieces. The concept is this. You have a variety of animals of varying strength. If you are using standard chess pieces, the King is the Elephant. This is the strongest piece, of course. This is followed by the Camel – the Queen (maybe because of her humps? Not sure about that one). The next strongest animal are the two Horses, which can be substituted with the Rooks. The Bishops are the Dogs. Not sure if that is a religious slur or if it’s because “dog” is “god” spelled backwards. Maybe I’m reading too much into this. Anyway, the Knights are the Cats. Yes, I know they look like horses. Stay focused, people. Lastly, the weakest animal, the Rabbits, can be substituted with the Pawns. There are eight of these.

Still with me? The simplicity comes with the set-up and movement of the pieces. Gold (white in Chess) sets up first. He can put his pieces in any order he likes in the first two rows. Then Silver (black) sets up. Each piece can move horizontally and vertically – side to side, forward and back, except the Rabbit which can not move backwards. Simple, right? No more diagonal or “L” shaped moves to clutter up your head. Forward, back, side, side. And the goal is even more simple: Just get one rabbit to the other end of the board.

Each player takes a turn, starting with the Gold player. In your turn, you can move your pieces a total of four steps. You can move one piece four squares, or you can move four pieces one square, or any combination thereof. You don’t have to take all four steps, but you do have to take at least one step in your turn. Then you pass on to your opponent and he takes his four steps, and so on.

Okay, here’s where the animals’ relative strength comes into play.

A piece that is stronger than another piece gets to do a few things to that piece. If the weaker piece is next to an opponent’s stronger piece, and it has no allies next to it, it is considered “frozen.” It can’t move. Like a game of freeze tag, it has to wait until either the stronger piece moves away from it, or until one of its own pieces stands next to it. So if a Gold Dog moves next to a Silver Cat, for example, that Cat can’t move. If Silver moved a Rabbit next to the Cat (or any piece) then the Cat would be free to move. The piece you use to unfreeze another piece doesn’t have to be stronger.

A stronger piece can also pull or push a weaker piece. This takes two steps to accomplish. For a pull, you use one step to move away from the weaker piece, and then another step to move the opponent’s piece into the square you just vacated. For a push, it is similar. You use one step to move the opponent’s weaker piece in any direction, and another step to move your stronger piece into the vacated square. You may not use the same piece to pull and push at the same time. The Arimaa Game Piece Union frowns on this abuse of their members, and you may find your game pieces on strike. They also won’t push or pull more than one piece at a time, and they require at least a 15 minute break every 4 hours, and a half hour for lunch.

There are four “trap” squares on the board. They are the slightly reddish squares in the screenshot above. The rule for these squares is simple as well. If any piece is on one of these trap squares without an allied piece next to it, it is destroyed. One of your goals is to try to maneuver your opponent’s pieces onto these trap squares to pull them out of the game.

And that’s all there is to it!

The game is remarkably simple in concept, and yet it allows for a huge complexity of game play. The multiple steps per turn and the ambiguous set-up makes it very difficult for computers to predict outcomes. Computers generally play games by examining all the possible moves and picking the best one. The average number of moves a player has in a turn of Chess is around 35. For Arimaa it comes out to more than 17,000.

There are a number of versions of Arimaa online for download, and you can register to play on the Arimaa website against various levels of computer AI or against real people. Or take out your old Chess set, put a coin on each Trap square, and play Arimaa with your four-year-old. But I recommend that you beat the computers while you can! And then raise a toast to Omar Syed – a John Henry of our time! An engineering giant! A living legend who stuck his thumb in the glowing red eye of our silicon step-child!

Take that, Deep Blue!

Photo Credit: atp_tyresius

At that time I was CEO of a company called AdOut.  AdOut was responsible for 100% of the ads created by the Los Angeles Times, LA Daily News, and the Torrance Daily Breeze. Thousands of ads per night were created by our dedicated team of graphic designers. And those three newspapers depended on us, exclusively, to meet their deadlines each and every day. It was a truly a nightly miracle.

So, although we were running a 100% Macintosh office and had no worries at all about our systems being impacted by Y2K, the newspapers were very concerned about the power company and required that we rent a LARGE generator to kick in when the lights went out at 12:01 am on January 1, 2000. Of course, that never happened. And, truth be told, none of us at AdOut ever thought it would.

Insert Nostalgic Y2K Photos Here

So, we laughed about it at our offices. We all took photos  by the generator, which was the size of a semi truck. I’m sure I have those photos stored somewhere, but I’m not about to try to find them this morning. And that’s what strikes me most about what has transpired in the last 10 years.

If Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had existed in 1999, I’d have those photos available for this post right now. I’d know exactly where to find them. This post would be filled with images, and embedded videos. The story would contain links to tweets that illustrated perfectly how silly we all were. We could laugh as we read the archived posts from the onslaught of Y2K consultants that surfaced in the months leading up the the new millenium. This post would be so much better if the social media tools available to us now were available to us then.

Boy has the world has changed in ten years.

Last night my wife and I finished up our Christmas shopping. It was fun. We were alone… no kids. It felt just like a real date. From the time we left the house, around 6pm until we decided to get some hot chocolate at Starbucks around 10pm, I was never once tempted to let the world know where we were. The lure of Foursquare points was not enough of an incentive to make me want to check-in at Toys”R”Us or Sports Chalet. I simply didn’t care if the rest of the world knew where we were.

But I did need to find a different a specific gift. So, I fired up the Maps application on my iPhone and typed in “sporting goods.” My iPhone knew my location and quickly populated the screen with cute little stick pins. I clicked the one closest to me, a Big 5, then clicked on the phone number so I could ask if they had what we were looking for. They did. At that moment, I was very happy my iPhone knew exactly where we were. And equally happy nobody else did.

Truth be told, I’ve been forcing myself to use things like Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla. Perhaps if I lived a more exciting life I’d feel differently. But I don’t. When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I felt certain that when I checked in somewhere that there was the potential for a friend to be close enough to quickly jump in a cab and join me. It feels the same way when I’m at a conference. The popularity of a specific tool among the people I want to hang out with makes it really easy to locate the parties.

But I live my every day life in Santa Clarita, CA, and my business is not location specific. On a typical day, I rarely venture outside a 300 yard radius of my front door. And If I do end up going somewhere, it’s not usually very exciting. I’m the mayor of a Chevron for goodness sakes. Yay me.

When we arrived at Starbucks, I pulled my iPhone out and noticed several Twext.me updates. So, I read them, without actually going to Twitter. When I closed Messages down, there, staring at me on my home screen were the pretty little Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla icons. I thought, “why not.” So I fired up the one I like best, Gowalla, and let the world know I was having some hot chocolate with my wife. At that point in the evening, I wouldn’t have minded if someone we knew saw it and came by to say hi. But I didn’t really believe that would happen. Not in Santa Clarita. And I didn’t really believe anyone would or should care.

So, that makes me wonder. I wonder how many others are like me? I wonder if the technorati’s use of Foursquare will really translate to the general population? I understand that the tech community is madly in love with the potential of these apps, but when it comes to everyday use, my wife thinks they’re all stupid and dangerous, especially for a woman. She doesn’t even want me to know where she’s at most of the time, let alone the rest of world.  I wonder how many people are just like her?

Are you?

I know the holidays are a busy time, and I apologize for not being able to bring you any new material for the next few weeks. I am forced to go back through the archives of The Fool’s Manifesto for material to post while I am spending these days baking the eggnog and wrapping the stockings. Until I return, I want to wish you all a very Merry Wintermas and Happy Festivus to one and all! Enjoy this, my first blog post from 1974. Please forgive the poor quality of the content. I was just starting out and hadn’t really gotten a feel for my style. I was also only nine years old. Anyway, enjoy it and I’ll see you all next year!

The Fool’s Manifesto, December 30th, 1974

Pong is so cool!

Check out what Santa brought me!

I asked Santa for a pong game this year, but I didn’t think he would bring me one because our TV doesn’t have the right kind of hook up for the thing. It’s kind of annoying because the game has been out for years, and Kenny won’t shut up about how his parents bought him one when it first came out. Still, I didn’t think it was going to happen this Christmas. But when we came downstairs on Christmas morning there was the Pong box right there by the tree! And there was a new TV for the family too! I yelled so loud my dad had to tell me to keep it down. Woo hoo!

So of course I had to hook it up right away. Actually, my dad had to hook it up, because he didn’t want me messing up the new TV. Then I had to wait for my brothers to let me play, because even though I asked for it, Santa actually gave it to the whole family. I don’t know why he did that because it was my idea, but that’s okay. I’m just stoked that he brought it at all. I finally got to play, and it’s amazing. It’s just like ping pong, but on the TV!

Juvenile Fool in Toughskins

This game is so hard!

I got to say, this game can be really tough depending on who you are playing. They make it look totally easy on the commercials, but it really depends on who’s on the other side of the box. Like, when I play my mom, I usually win. Not that she’s lame or anything. But she’s not really very competitive, and she gets distracted when my sister asks her a question or something and she’ll just ignore the game for a while. Plus I think she lets me win if I’m losing because she hates to see me feel bad.

But when I’m playing my brothers or my sister, they don’t do me any favors. And it’s a lot harder because they are bigger than I am, and they can react faster and move the paddle to hit the ball. Plus, when my oldest brother scores, he tells me how much I stink, and then I get so mad he scores three more times before I stop yelling. My sister tickles me when I’m about to hit the ball. And this one time, when I was actually doing really well, the ball bounced above my paddle! I couldn’t make it go all the way to the top of the screen! I don’t know if that’s a bug or what, but it was a total drag.

Easter Egg?

You are going to think I’m smoking dope or something (which I totally don’t do because my mom says it’s for losers, and I’m not a loser!) but I was playing Pong for something like 9 straight hours last night when everyone else had gone to bed, and I found something that I think is some sort of hidden trick in the game. I called it an “Easter egg” because it’s kind of like when you wake up on Easter morning, and you feel like having eggs,  but your mom is making waffles, and you don’t feel like waffles. So you go to the fridge to get some eggs to cook for yourself, and then you open the door and all the eggs are all these weird colors. And you’re all like “Whoa! Am I on drugs?” even though you would never take drugs because…well, we already covered that one.

This really freaked me out.

Anyway, I found out that if the score is 99 to 1, and the ball passes over the exact right spot on the screen (somewhere in the middle just over the right side of the net) the ball changes into the floating head of Marcia Wallace, the woman who played Carol on the Bob Newhart Show. I was able to reproduce it just once, but so far I have not been able to get it to do it again when my brothers are in the room. They think I’m a liar. But I swear it’s true. They are making fun of me and saying that I’m in love with Carol and junk. They are a couple of jerks. But they’ll be sorry when it happens again. I just wish it wasn’t so hard to reproduce.

Anyway, I totally recommend this game.

It’s as gnarly as they come, and I can’t imagine what anybody could do to beat it! The future is here, everybody! By the 80’s we’ll be driving flying cars, and who knows? Maybe by 1999 we’ll be living on the moon. It could happen! Be sure to write to me and let me know if you see the “Easter egg” I told you about!

Plancast is built around a simple concept – tell the world what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Others who subscribe to your Plancast feed can see your plans decide to let the world know they’re joining you. Owyang calls this “The Intention Web.” A typical update looks like this.

That’s great. I imagine this is the perfect example of how the creators of Plancast.com intended it to be used. However, within moments of signing up on the site back on December 4, I received this plancast:

Last time I checked a blog post that didn’t qualify as a plan to do something, somewhere. My first reaction was a silent giggle. “Typical” was my thought.  That update is an obvious attempt to force a sales message into a platform that wasn’t designed for that kind of message. So, “for now Plancast.com is pure of marketers” made me giggle a little bit too. The marketers may not be there, Jeremiah, but the marketing behaviors are.

That said, I’m not at all worried that this kind of behavior will pollute the Plancast.com community, whatever that ends up looking like. The “force my sales message” way of using the site will either be rewarded or punished. Our cumulative reactions will determine whether it is accepted or rejected. No one person gets to decide. That’s the beauty of social networks. They are self organizing. It will be interesting to see which behaviors become accepted and which do not.

Where will the value lie? For me, Plancast.com has value only if it can help me easily and quickly understand where the people I want to connect with are going to be. It would certainly help me decide if a specific event is worth my time. That’s valuable. However, if it becomes a site peppered with links to blog posts, and messages about what people are doing at their desks, I have no use for it.

What are your thoughts?

Someone sent me a link to this video the other day, and I got to wondering: do people still feel this way about Dungeons & Dragons?

I realize there is still a stigma attached. It is still always portrayed in the media as the penchant of the pimply outcast. I feel that it has become more mainstream over the nearly 30 years that I have been playing. But has it really?

I’m pretty open about my love for the game, but my wife isn’t.

When I met my wife she had never played D&D before, and now she has two characters in two different games. I remember one night a while back when we were fixing dinner, and she was complaining about how wimpy her paladin was. That’s when I knew she had been truly geekified (love can do terrible things to people). But I’m pretty sure that nobody in her own family knows that she plays. And she certainly hasn’t told anyone at the K-8 school where she is the principal that she is an elven cleric of Tethryn Veralde. I can’t say that I blame her. Like it or not, many people still have a fairly negative opinion about the game, and I doubt many parents would want an elven cleric to be running their school. My step-daughter and her fiance also play D&D, but I have no idea if any of their friends or coworkers know that. I wonder how many other D&D players out there have yet to “come out of the dungeon,” so to speak.

I said I was open about my love for D&D, but to be honest, I am only open about it with friends and family, and fellow geeks. If I went to a party where I knew very few people, I know that I would be reluctant to discuss it with a stranger, unless he was wearing a Gandalf T-shirt or something. And why is that? It is just a game, after all. It’s no more diabolical than Monopoly or Chess, and it certainly requires more imagination. My wife and I play D&D with a group of friends every month or so. We sit around the table, share stories, eat food and drink beer, and play a game that we have played together for more than 10 years now. Our friends are all successful adults who lead fairly normal lives. Some have children, they all have jobs, and none of them live in their parents’ basement. If you met any of them on the street, it would not occur to you that they spend one evening every few weeks rolling dice and slaying dragons.

If you would like to join us, just be sure to bring a bottle of wine. And some dice.

Photo by Moroboshi

I am writing this post using Google Chrome (beta 4.0.249.30) for the Mac. I have only spent 10 minutes with Google’s new browser, but so far I am impressed. The UI is clean and simple. As a recent Android convert, I appreciate the minimalistic design approach across all the entire Google product line.

It’s faster.

The backend of Wordpress renders much faster than it does in Forefox due to Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine (Cnet’s JS Speed Test). I never realized how much time I was spending waiting for Javascript pages to load until right now.

Speed is a major benefit, but there are several other things I like about Chrome.

• First, tabs open next to the current tab you are working on. This is subtle, but important. If you have a number of tabs open in Firefox, a new tab open at the far right side. It’s easy to get lost switching back and forth between open tabs. I noticed this refreshing change immediately.
• Second, when you view source code, it displays in a tab rather than opening a new window. I prefer tabbed interfaces as it minimizes clutter on my desktop.
• And finally, favicons are displayed in the bookmarks bar – nice touch.

The only thing missing is the Google Search Bar. How could they leave that one out?

I’ll add more comments to this post as I continue to work with Chrome. What are your initial reactions?

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about complex adaptive systems as they relate to social media. And the majority of my thought has been centered around the concept of emergence. Emergence, “is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.” Tweets would fall in the category of “relatively simple interactions.”

The Missing Tools

What’s missing from the landscape of tools that have cropped up the wake of the social media craze are tools that allow us to more accurately scale our networks and look for patterns in data segments that WE define. Tools like Trendsmap are making an attempt to dice up the mass of interactions on a more manageable scale, location. This is good news. But if business is to take advantage of the information that this kind of analysis provides, more control needs to be given to the user to define the parameters. The user needs more control.

Businesses who are better equipped to pick out the “regularities” in the chaos will be able to make more informed decisions. That’s a fact. The information is sitting there waiting to be analyzed. I think businesses will be surprised by what they’ll find and how that information will shape their decisions.

How would you frame the data if you could?

Stop squinting and click on the image already!

Bats flitter overhead as you stomp over arched stone bridges spanning mist-shrouded depths. Your faithful dog trots at your heel, sometimes running ahead to scout, but never far from your side. You hear a distant music thrumming in your head. Or is that just the wind? Broken tiles crunch under your boots as you step out onto a ruined platform. Suddenly, the floor shatters as skeletal warriors erupt from below, eager to strip the flesh from your bones and drag you down to join their ghastly horde. You grip your axes tightly. Here we go again…

Forget Diablo

I could begin this review by pointing out Torchlight’s obvious connections to the highly successful Diablo series. Hell, every other reviewer is. And it makes sense, seeing that Torchlight’s creators are the ones who designed the first two Diablo games. But I’m not going to tell you that. Oh, shoot…I just did. Okay, but I’m not going to elaborate on it. Because if you care about Diablo, you probably already know. And if not, then what’s the point in going on about it?

My Computer is So Old

How old is it? Well, it’s so old that the hard drive consists of a small pterodactyl writing on a clay tablet. That’s pretty damned old. And until I can pony up the dough for a sparkling new computer, I am stuck playing whatever old games will work on my antique PC. That is, until Runic Games‘ Torchlight came along. There are many things I love about this game, but near the top of my list is the fact that the system requirements for Torchlight are lower than you would expect. They managed to make a game with wonderful graphics and sound, and yet it plays on my Neanderthal 2000. They even included a “Netbook Mode” that will enable this to run on your laptop. Now that’s considerate!

I call them Shooty, Stompy, and Zappy

No Class? Here’s Three.

Torchlight gives you three character classes to choose from. The Destroyer is the guy you wouldn’t want working in your china shop. He is a brute melee fighter type, and likes to get his big, meaty hands dirty. The Vanquisher likes to shoot stuff with either a bow or a gun, so you probably wouldn’t want her in your china shop either. She also uses traps to mess with the enemies. Your basic range rogue class. The Alchemist is a spell caster. He zaps things with his spells, and he summons friends to break your china so he doesn’t have to get his pale, dainty hands dirty. Each of these classes has a different set of skills you can choose as they gain in experience and power. My only beef with the game is that there is not a whole lot of variance to the skills, so there is a limit to how you can customize your character. But it’s not a huge gripe, and it is vastly overwhelmed by the other aspects of the game. For example, you get to choose a pet. You can have a dog or a cat, and your pet will follow you around, fight with you, carry loot, and even run it back to town and sell it for you. Now that’s a good pet!

What "loot" might look like...

Whichever character class you wind up choosing, your hero starts in the tiny town of Torchlight and is immediately sent on a quest to explore the mines below the town. Seems that the magic mineral called ember is causing some sort of problems, and there’s some guy named Alric who has disappeared or something. To be honest, I didn’t pay all that much attention to the story because the actual game itself was so much fun, and reading makes my head feel funny. But there is always an excuse or three to go down into the dungeons below and kick some monster ass. And collect loot. Lots and lots of loot. There are magic items galore, from common to rare to unique items, and even sets of items. Collect them all! But wait! There’s more! Call now and you can get fabulous gems that you can fit into socketed items to make them even better! Long story short: there is an endless amount of crap to collect.

It’s All About the Atmosphere

Of course, the atmosphere might contain balls of fire. Just sayin'...

This game falls into the Action RPG genre, which means that there is going to be a lot of clicking of the mouse and tapping of the hotkeys. But when you are not rabidly clicking, you will find yourself enthralled by the level of detail the designers packed into this game. The music is fantastic – sort of Pink Floyd meets Brian Eno – and the sound effects bring you right into the moment, whether it’s the explosion of a fireball or the rattle of your dog’s collar. There are plenty of stunning visual effects as well. Torches flicker and smolder. Water ripples and splashes. Bats flit by, and tapestries wave. Between battles, as you run along corridors, or over rickety wooden bridges past pools of lava, you will want to just stop and look. It’s all just so pretty.

Little Things Mean So Much

See that lavender beetle? That's my dog.

Do you like surprises? I’ll tell you a few, but I don’t want to spoil the fun of discovering them for yourself. Like to fish? Find a fishing hole and there’s a mini-game where you can fish for…well…fish. Feed the fish to your pet and watch him change! You can also find some other items when you fish, including magic items. So there’s a certain slot-machine quality to this mini-game that is surprisingly addictive. I also really like the various portals that pop up to other “hidden” dungeons. You can even buy maps from a vendor that create a portal to a randomly generated dungeon. Another special touch is the swarms of monsters that occasionally boil out of some hidden doorway, or jump down on top of you from a balcony. This game is full of such special little touches, and that really shows how much the designers care about their audience. It is obvious from the start that this is a game that was made by people who like to play games. And that is what makes the difference.

No Fooling, This Game Rocks

Okay, I think you get the picture. You can download a demo and see more pictures and information at the official website. It is only available for the PC, but there are plans to release a Mac version in 2010, I believe. There is also a level editor for the PC, though I don’t believe there are plans to make an editor for the Mac. And there is talk of a multiplayer version yet to come. There are so many good things I could say about this game, but I think the last and best thing to say is that the game only costs $19.95! That’s right. One of the best games to come out this year, and it costs about a third of what you would pay for a boxed game from the store. So don’t waste your time reading this blog entry anymore! Go! Download the demo and play it! I guarantee, you’ll find it more than worth the 20 bucks to buy a license for the full version.

Cloudy, with a chance of lightning...and giant spiders.

The recent surge in Twitter spam has people feeling sketchy about giving anyone their password, so we decided to go ahead and implement this more secure way of accessing your Twitter account. We will never see your password.  This is a good thing.

Convert your existing Twitter accounts inside Twext.me

You may convert your existing Twitter accounts by logging into Twext.me and clicking on the “Manage Twitter Accounts” tab. This will take you to a page that will look like this:

Click on Re-Authorize with Twitter. You will then be taken to twitter to give Twext.me authorization to access your data. We use this access to get a better look at the data inside your account. We will never send any messages out via your account. Ever. The authorization on the Twitter side will look like this:

When you set up a new account, the process is similar, but the page will look slightly different. The username field is required so we can help you easily keep track of multiple Twitter accounts, should you choose to do so.

Many have requested this in the past, so we’re happy it’s now live. Hopefully this will encourage more to use this free service. And remember, if you want your text messages to come via standard SMS, once you’ve set up your accounts, just text TWEXTME to 41411.

I think my comment on Matt Stigliano’s FourSquare post deserves a bit more explanation.

First, I want to say that I am not a FourSquare fan. It’s partially because I think geolocation will be better served inside a larger social network, like Facebook. It’s partially because my wife hates geolocation and sees it as potentially dangerous. But it’s also because Foursquare allows anyone to input anything they wish. And since it’s a game, it allows people to cheat, easily. And  a few people I know cheat, openly. They know who they are. So, I’m not even going to begin to argue the merit or lack of merit in investing time playing Foursquare.

The Quesiton of ROI

It’s not surprising that the conversation in the comments on Matt’s post quickly turned to ROI. Bob Wilson rightly questioned the value of spending any time at all on Foursquare under the assumption that it would “bring you business” and said, “I guess I’m growing weary of all those who keep pushing sm as a biz model for selling real estate who are unable or unwilling to provide real numbers that demonstrate the value or ROI.” He then quickly added, “Oh, wait. I forgot that you are not supposed to ask about ROI when it comes to SM”

I always find it humorous when someone says that. I’m not sure who made this “don’t talk about ROI with social media” rule, but I’m thinking it was somebody who doesn’t understand the nuances of analyzing return on investment in marketing or what can or should be measured in the first place.

The Problem With Most Social Media ROI Discussions

The problem I see with most of the discussions around social media ROI in the real estate industry  is that the product real estate agents sell, a house,  is not an impulse buy and the decision to use one agent over another, a completely different kind of conversion,  is not a simple decision.  If they were, we could focus on conversion alone and be done. But they’re not. So, the focus on conversion to the exclusion of all other sales or marketing objectives is simply wrong. It fails to address the big picture. In real estate, the “conversion” is proceeded by multiple touch points of exposure. Those touch points can include print advertising, direct mail, email, a phone call and yes, social media. Each exposure, each touch, each conversation, plays a significant role in helping the customer move from awareness of the “product”, whether that’s a house or an agent, to the intention to “buy.”

The key to evaluating the merit of any tool, social media or otherwise, is understanding where that tool (and the behaviors it facilitates) fits in the acquisition, persuasion and conversion cycle. Focusing on conversion alone will simply result in a lack of investment in acquisition- or persuasion-oriented initiatives. Just as an unbalanced focus on acquisition initiatives will result in a lack of investment in conversion tools and behaviors.

Marry that with the absence of a clear marketing goal (even the simplest of goals) and poor to no analytics and you have a recipe for disaster. In the business environment, engaging in any activity without an understanding of what you hope to achieve as a result of that activity makes it impossible to measure the success of that activity. The goal can be as simple as “lead people to my blog post.” That’s measurable. Did my efforts lead people to my blog post or not? Did my advertising bring more visitors, did organic search bring more visitors or did my tweets bring more visitors? How do I make sure I can measure the impact of each effort? And that can’t be the end. There has to be some understanding of a path to conversion. After they came, who stayed longer? Which channel moved more visitors to the next step in my conversion process? Do I know what that next step is? Subscribe to my blog? Search my IDX? What is it?

Tools Are Just Tools

Tools aren’t strategy. Tools aren’t behavior. Tools don’t do anything without someone using them. Some use them well. Some don’t. Some tools probably shouldn’t be used for business at all. And in a business context all tools are worthless without a plan. Where do the different tools and behaviors fit for you? Where does Twitter fit into the cycle? What about Facebook? Where does advertising fit? Where does your phone fit into the cycle?

And, by the way, do you know the ROI of your phone?
]]> http://zeek.com/foursquare-and-social-media-roi/feed/ 14 http://zeek.com/just-a-fool-for-pinball-giving-thanks/ http://zeek.com/just-a-fool-for-pinball-giving-thanks/#comments Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:27:03 +0000 Jack Pitsker http://zeek.com/?p=1631 Since this is a very short week, I am unable to update The Fools Manifesto with a game review per se. I will return next week with a review of a game that has been absorbing all my extra time lately. Until then, I thought I would recognize the holiday week by giving thanks for one of my favorite types of games ever: the pinball machine. (cue music from The Who’s Tommy)

I have to admit, I never really gave it much thought beyond the simple joy I received from playing pinball. I wasn’t a wizard, by any stretch of the imagination. My oldest brother could play a machine for 40 days and 40 nights on just one quarter. I was lucky if my game went for 5 minutes. But I was young then, and every arcade had at least 2 machines it seemed, usually more. Whether I was in a shopping mall or a Shakey’s Pizza, I would much rather plunk my quarter into a pinball machine than into one of the various Pong clones that were sprouting up everywhere. It never entered into my young mind that there were devious and tricky pinball machine designers lurking behind the scenes, trying to tweak the games in an effort to suck all the quarters from my pocket. What a fool I was.

Even later, when the arcades were filled with Joust, Q-bert, and Tron games, I would still go back to the pinball corner and play those dusty old machines. They often cost less to play than the newer games, and they were still some of the best around. Something visceral about the steel ball impacting the flippers, the mechanical “thunk” of the targets and bumpers, resonated deeper in me than the digital images on the video screens. Don’t get me wrong, I love video games. Always have. But pinball is what got that love rolling.

With that in mind, this is an interesting article about the Economics of Pinball and the decline of the pinball machine. The author reveals some of the interesting tricks that pinball machine designers used to try to separate fools like me from our pocket change. I found it via BoingBoing, one of my favorite websites for off-the-beaten-trail news and interesting tidbits.

Photo by Kapungo

The sexiness of the social media space and the desire to see an immediate return on the time investment required to access it, has created an atmosphere ripe for solutions to problems that don’t really exist.  Example: Tweetlister.

Tweetlister launched in May of 2009. It allows the “tweeting” of real estate listings into a user’s Twitter stream. It gives real estate agents the ability to “post and re-use as many listings as you want.”

Funny, I thought Twitter already gave them that ability.

My first response, six months ago, came in the form of a tweet. I said, “Here’s an example of a solution in search of a problem if I’ve ever seen one.” And this was all I intended to write about it. Besides, Nicole Nicolay had already done a good job of exposing the shiny object.

But it didn’t go away. This private twitter conversation, a few weeks later,  should have given me a clue that this would be a very distracting shiny object. It was sent to me by an extremely bright executive from one of the largest real estate companies in America.

Them: “Good concept – I definitely see this tool being abused.”

Me: Why is it a good concept? Why would you want to push people to yet another 3rd party listing site? Why not your own?”

Them: “That was a duh moment when I read your response. I’m a twitter newbie. Still learning & having fun. Thanks for the schooling.”

That wasn’t schooling. I didn’t teach them anything they didn’t know already. I just wasn’t distracted by the shiny object and simply asked a few questions to make sure there was something worth biting on the hook. But several very smart people, people I resprect and also call friends, did bite. And then they told their friends to bite. They’re still biting.

I posed the following question on the post linked above; “Your listings are probably already on your site or your blog. If you really want to automate, you could use Tweetlater (or Hootsuite or Objective Marketer or CoTweet) and set up a similar kind of schedule. Then the links would come straight to you. This just gets in the way, IMHO.” Agents could be leading buyers to their site and to their IDX search, but instead they are tweeting away and leading them to a search site they have no control over, one that is not a destination search site and one that could easily lead the buyer to another agent. And they are paying $9.95 a month for that right. I still don’t get it.

I’ve been thinking about this for six months. Why do smart people spend so much time leading people away from the sites they own? Why aren’t people employing a more focused hub and spoke approach to how they use social media? Why aren’t brokers providing more intelligent tools to help their agents?

That thinking has lead me in several directions, one of them being how the real estate virtual tour business works and how we do things at Real Estate Shows. The result of my thinking? Real Estate Shows needs to get out of the middle of the real estate transaction to the greatest extent possible. When consumers search on sites like Trulia and Zillow and Realtor.com, if they click on a link to a virtual tour, it should lead to a site owned by the real estate agent, not to yet another third party site.

How do we do that? I have a few ideas, but this post is already too long. The answer lies in being more intelligent with how our links work and becoming invisible to the consumer. More to come.