post

The Rush to the Z-list

Posted on December 30, 2006 ·

(Updated)

Seth Godin set up a Z-list of marketing-related blogs with the idea of sending some traffic their way.  It did not quite work the way he expected:

“Several bloggers worked hard to game the list I posted, instructing folks to vote other (worthy) blogs down. That’s sad.”

What a surprise.

smile_sarcastic  It somewhat reminds me of the fight that often goes on on reddit, where gangs of users downmod new posts only to keep theirs on top. (Hey, it’s only fair to pick on reddit, now that their owner, Wired picked on digg

smile_angry )   Another recent example is the 43 Best Blogs wiki, a social experiment that became quite a fight: people kept on deleting others and adding themselves several months later…

Of course I am in a convenient position, being a  life-long  Z-lister

smile_teeth

Update (12/30):   Steve Rubel’s New Year Resolution is to highlight new voices. So.. is that the … R-list?

And now I commit the despicable act of sucking up, sucking down, laterally ..etc, by linking to others posting on the subject:

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing / PR ·
post

Microsoft Handing Out Ferraris

Posted on December 27, 2006 ·

Microsoft is sending Acer Ferraris loaded with Vista to selected bloggers.

I’m trying to decode the hidden message here: I guess Microsoft would like us to think that with Vista we’ll get the performance of a Ferrari…

That’s not the first thought that comes to my mind though… try this: despite the underrated system requirements, you’ll need at least a Ferrari for VIsta to even chug along. smile_eyeroll

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing / PR, Personal Productivity, Software ·
post

Trapped in Akismet’s Blacklist

Posted on December 17, 2006 ·

I am unable to comment on WordPress-powered blogs.  It took me a while to figure it out – actually credit goes to Mike Arrington who dug up my buried comments from TechCrunch’s spam queue.   It appears that the word “zoliblog” as part of any email is blacklisted by Akismet.

I left a note using Akismet’s contact form six days ago, to no avail – so if anyone reading this has the power to help, thanks a lot in advance!

Update (12/31):  I few weeks later I am out of prison 🙂 

 

Filed Under: Blogging ·
post

Proof Positive: The Blog is the New Resume

Posted on December 16, 2006 ·

My friend Rod Boothby got his new job thanks to his blog.  I’m happy for Rod personally, and also because it proves a point I’ve made several  times: resumes are dead. 

Resumes are tailored for a particular job, and let’s face it, often “cosmetically enhanced”.  If you’ve been blogging for years, you certainly did not do it with a particular job in mind; your blog is likely to be a true reflection of who you really are, what you are an expert in, your communication skills, your priorities … YOU as a whole person, not as a candidate for a specific job.  Thus, as Rob concludes:

“…hiring a blogger is a lower risk proposition because you have more information and a better idea of how they are going to perform.”

Blogger%20Vs%20Non%20Blogger%20Candidates.png

        Source: Innovation Creators (I don’t have Rod’s charting skillssmile_embaressed)

 

I am not in active job search mode, but will likely join a startup one day. Still, I have not updated my resume for the past 2 years or so.  Why should I?  My life is (now) an open book: my blog reveals a lot about my thinking, knowledge (or lack of), and for more facts it points to my LinkedIn profile.  I was recently approached by a stealth startup… great, I thought, they must have found me through my blog, that’s a good start. But then they asked me to submit a resume, and I lost interest.   If the blog is not enough common grounds for a conversation, then I don’t trust this Founder is hiring the right people, so why would I be interested?

Now, I don’t deny the importance of resumes in certain situations, typically in larger businesses and for documentation, background check ..etc purposes, but that’s *after* there is a level of interest.  

Tom Peters has been saying for years:

“Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You”  

It’s never been easier to build that Brand Called You: if you’re still not doing it, what are you waiting for?  Start your blog today!

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Marketing / PR, Social Networking, Software, Technology ·
post

What Happened to Reddit?

Posted on December 15, 2006 ·

I’ve been unable to access Reddit for three days now.  I doubt it’s a major outage, as nobody seems to complain about it.  A Boston-based friend reported not being able to reach it for a day, but then it came back normal.  

I’ve temporarily changed my  DNS servers from Comcast to OpenDNS: same results.  

Any clues?

Thanks.

Update (12/15):  I’ve found the answers, perhaps not surprisingly, of all places on Reddit competitor Digg.  It was indeed a botched domain transfer, but the effect is taking longer than expected.  Oh, and while at it, they also had some backup media stolen. smile_angry  The reddit team feels “confident, however, that because we do not collect any personal information from our users, the ability to do harm with the data that was taken is greatly reduced.”   However, since userid, password and email data are compromised, they are warning anyone who uses the same credentials at other sites to change it all.

 

Tags: ,
Filed Under: Blogging ·
post

Yahoo Switching to Low-fat Peanut Butter?

Posted on December 5, 2006 ·

TechCrunch seems to know that Yahoo is switching to low-fat  peanut-butter this afternoon, in a company-wide webcast.  The trimming is expected to be about 20%, and starts at the top…

Quiz: what’s wrong with my peanut-butter metaphor?

(Answer: peanut oil is one of the good fats, unlike Yahoo, you don’t want to reduce it…)

Update (11/5):  If you read this post before and clicking on the above link took you to a 404 error page – my apologies.  Apparently TechCrunch did the absolute no-no by deleting their original post and replacing it with a new one.

Update (11/5):  TechCrunch has a new summary post here, COO Dan Rosensweig is leaving.

Update (11/6):  I may have been wrong about that low-fat peanut-butter: Good Mornign Silicon Valley thinks Yahoo added some chocolate to the peanut butter. That would be … Nutella?

Tags: , , ,

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Humor, Software, Technology ·
post

Redesigned Web-sites: the Good and the Bad

Posted on December 4, 2006 ·

Some redesigns are good, others are just plain ugly.smile_omg

(Oh, and this is my shortest blog-post ever.)

 

Filed Under: Blogging ·
post

Atlassian Founders Become Australian Entrepreneur of the Year

Posted on December 3, 2006 ·

My first thought was deja vu… I myself reported on Mike and Scott winning the E&Y Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award a few months ago. Then it hit me; this is not the *young* category; Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar won the real thing, Ernst & Young’s Australian Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Now, if you first win the *young* category, then a few months later the *adult* one (not *that* way… ) does it mean you grew up quickly and are no longer young?smile_tongue

Joke apart, congrat’s to Mike and Scott, in fact the entire Atlassian team. They’ve built a remarkable company… when I first met them in the spring, they had about 50 employees, now it’s 70+, serving 5,000 customers in 65 countries. Their first hit was Jira, an issue management system, the second product, Confluence became the market leading enterprise wiki. Of course there are a number of ways to measure leadership, one being a feature-by-feature comparison, but at the end of the day, customers vote with their dollars, and Atlassian outsells their competition lumped together (including pre-Google JotSpot, amongst others).

Here’s a short video from the award ceremony.

Successful millionaires or not (Atlassian is self-funded), these guys remain humble and likeable; just read Mike’s post here. Oh, as for the likeable part, they hosted the Enterprise Irregulars, a few analysts and their own competitors to dinner, and did NOT use the opportunity to pitch us smile_shades

All that said, I have to warn anyone thinking of joining them … they are a dangerous bunch. smile_wink


Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Software, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
post

SupportMagic: Running Out of Support, Waiting for Magic

Posted on November 30, 2006 ·

OK, I admit, that’s a tacky title…  I just couldn’t resist smile_embaressed

Seriously though, here’s a weird post on VentureBeat:

CRM company, Support Magic, for sale on VentureBoard

“Support Magic, out of Bangalore, is the latest company to put up a for-sale sign at VentureBoard.”

OK, let’s check out the VentureBoard listing:

“Launched on 09-November-2006, SupportMagic (www.supportmagic.com) is an on-demand customer interaction management solution that enables companies to deliver an exceptional customer experience online.”

Launched 3 weeks ago and already for sale? Wow!   Let’s clarify it on the company’s site:

Public BETA launch on 09-November-2006.

Gotcha.  Let’s check out the blog:

“Some are asking “Where can I download SupportMagic?”
Well, you can’t.
SupportMagic is an on-demand (remotely hosted) solution that runs on our server. There is nothing to download OR install. Register with us, follow the instructions we send you & simply map your “Support URL” to our application IP and you are ready”

Hm .. why would anyone want to sign up for a hosted application by a company already up for sale?  Oh, well, let’s now go back to the for sale ad:

“Competitors: RightNow, LivePerson & Talisma.”

Wow…wow…wow… 3 weeks into beta and competing with RightNow, a $100M company? Give
me a break smile_angry

But hey, that’s the ad, put up by the company itself. They may be full of it, but probably learned from #1 that in the CRM space you need a big mouth.smile_tongue   However, VentureBeat repeats the same statement in the front page story:

“Support Magic, out of Bangalore, is the latest company to put up a for-sale sign at VentureBoard. It is an on-demand customer interaction management software company that competes against RightNow, LivePerson & Talisma…”

Matt, I really like VentureBeat – this kind of fluff does not belong there… it dilutes your brand. smile_sad

   

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, ERP / CRM, Marketing / PR, SaaS, Startups ·
post

Machine-translated Blogs? No, Thank You.

Posted on November 29, 2006 ·

I made fun of the sorry state of machine-translation a few times before:
TechCrunch “Narcotic”:-) (or the state of machine translation today)  and
Sans Accent; Marc Fleury’s Feet in the Dish and the Walk of the Waiters  so when I received a Mybloglog invitation to check out the English version of a blog, the last thing I expected was a machine-translated version of the French original.

The motto of the blog:

“The transformation of our company thanks to information technologies deserves a lighting… and reactions! My DataNews deciphers without turnings the topicality of the information systems, technology, the WEB, and the associated trades.”

The most recent post title:

The point on the function “Dated Management” (Management of the data)

“…Although shy person, this recent evolution is very positive, because it more stresses from now on the contents (the data customers, products, markets, suppliers) rather than on a technical container (the data base)”

Although with great effort I could guess what the blogger is trying to say, as written, this is pure crap.  Crisptophe, whoever you are (incidentally, messaging “Hi Zoli ! You can now read my blog in English !!!” to a totally unknown person is not the best way of introduction), I’m sure you are smarter then this, and you write a quality blog.  But for now, if you want it multi-lingual, you have to do what Mike Arrington did at TechCrunch: hire translators – or do it yourself.  But do yourself a favor, remove the machine-translated version, it does not do you any good. smile_sad

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor, Personal Productivity, Software, Technology ·
« Previous Page
Next Page »