Gathering Information on Technology, Software and Processes that makes life Easier and Better. Extensive coverage and tutorials of MindManager from Mindjet and Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 from Nuance a great voice recognition software program.
This was one of those weekends when James Bond movies are played in a marathon like loop. During one of the commercials in between they started talking about the top James Bond Cars ever.
I was somewhat surprised to see that they were almost entirely focused on recent James Bond Movies as opposed to the older movies with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. I kind of suspect there was a bit of commercial product placement going on. In my opinion the cars of James Bond movies in recent years have been a little tame.
Sure they are beautiful cars and can probably run circles around the cars from 30-40 years ago, but there is just something a little less dramatic about them.
Personally my favorite cars are the Aston Martin DB5 from Thunderball with Sean Connery, and then there is that submersible car that Roger Moore drove into the Mediteranean.
Those seemed like spy cars to me with all the romantic notions of suspense and gadgets and out of this world technology. The recent stuff like the BMW that Pierce Brosnan drove by remote cellular phone can be had by just about anyone these days.
The run flat feature didn’t even seem that cool. I had a humvee and a 5 ton truck with the same feature when I was in the Army, big deal!
Truth be told I will probably not end up with a submersible amphibious sports car, nor a DB5 anytime soon, but maybe someday I’ll pick up a car with the same number plates at least. That does seem to be one of those trends that just doesn’t let up. Accessorizing your techno thriller spy car just wouldn’t be the same if you end up with a less than cool number plate on the behicle.
This was one of those weekends when James Bond movies are played in a marathon like loop. During one of the commercials in between they started talking about the top James Bond Cars ever.
I was somewhat surprised to see that they were almost entirely focused on recent James Bond Movies as opposed to the older movies with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. I kind of suspect there was a bit of commercial product placement going on. In my opinion the cars of James Bond movies in recent years have been a little tame.
Sure they are beautiful cars and can probably run circles around the cars from 30-40 years ago, but there is just something a little less dramatic about them.
Personally my favorite cars are the Aston Martin DB5 from Thunderball with Sean Connery, and then there is that submersible car that Roger Moore drove into the Mediteranean.
Those seemed like spy cars to me with all the romantic notions of suspense and gadgets and out of this world technology. The recent stuff like the BMW that Pierce Brosnan drove by remote cellular phone can be had by just about anyone these days.
The run flat feature didn’t even seem that cool. I had a humvee and a 5 ton truck with the same feature when I was in the Army, big deal!
Truth be told I will probably not end up with a submersible amphibious sports car, nor a DB5 anytime soon, but maybe someday I’ll pick up a car with the same number plates at least. That does seem to be one of those trends that just doesn’t let up. Accessorizing your techno thriller spy car just wouldn’t be the same if you end up with a less than cool number plate on the vehicle.
If you are one of the minority of people that use a Mac, you may be extremely excited about the launch of the iPhone. If you are a devotee of the iPod, you may be looking to trade in your iPod and cancel your current cell plan paying the $100-$200 cancellation fee, in order to then pay $500 up front for a new iPhone.
The commercials look sexy, the gadget looks like a sexy gadget, its Apple and for the last 10 years(maybe a little less) Apple has been cool again. Apple has a problem with the iPhone and it has been under reported. People have been crazed over a product that has been hyped for almost 2 years and is only finally coming to market (while other cell makers have already rushed out devices that do the same thing and look the same but without the Apple name).
Apple’s problem is that they are working with AT&T and have given the mobile service provider an exclusive deal for 5 years. Mobile phone models, even iPods do not last five years. The product life cycle doesn’t last five years. Five years for an untested mobile product with an untested mobile phone maker was a stupid deal for At&t to make, if they want to sell iPhones.
Another possible hindrance for Apple is the nature of its agreement with AT&T, he said. AT&T gave Apple an unprecedented amount of say in how the iPhone will be sold and what the phone will feature; Motorola and other carriers, accustomed to obeying carrier dictates, would likely be envious. But Apple has also given AT&T a five-year exclusive deal to sell the phone, analysts say. Exclusive deals rarely run more than one year. Phonemakers want to build market share by selling through multiple carriers. “AT&T gave a lot, but so did Apple,” Hazelton said.
I’m sure they do but they win regardless of whether any iPhones sell. If they don’t sell, then Apple will have to pay the bill when AT&T returns the product or chops the price down to something normal like $99(A $200 - $300 per phone charge that Apple will have to pay.) At&t will win because they will be bringing foot traffic into their stores and their websites. If people can’t afford the ridiculous price of the iPhone, At&t can convince them to pick up another product.
The thing is though that At&t is a dud. Under the Cingular brand Bell South/ SBC did quite a bit to revamp a wireless business and then they brought in the albatross that was a mostly failing At&t. They then made the stupid decision of going with the At&t brand name because it is recognized. That is normally smart marketing, when the brand has no positive connotations, but At&t has a long and recent history of bad service, Bad quality, Bad customer service, Bad prices, Bad billing capabilities, and more.
Apple has a good image in most of those areas if you discount the crappy batteries and the iPod sudden death syndrome and ignore those monstrous junky Apple Box things with the jello colors from several years back (the ones that couldn’t be upgraded and got stuck in a bunch of colleges where they rapidly rotted away or became outdated).
So Apple has given an exclusive deal to a company with a brand name that is a dud in the wireless world. What is going to happen to all those Apple devotee types that get suckered into setting up 2 year plans with At&t and end up getting bad service with their cool looking phones?
Most of them will get very mad at At&t
A few will get mad at Apple
The ones that get mad at At&t will take their vengeance out on At&t vocally, and At&t will drop the iPhone as a stop gap measure.
At&t will pass along any pain and expense back to Apple and Apple will do what it always does when it makes a mistake, they’ll fight it in court.
But none of this is going to be good for the consumer and especially not for Apple fans. The iPhone may have the potential to fly, but its not going to fly well with an At&t albatross.
Blogitive has been working on some upgrades to their system. Blogitive is one of the oldest paid to blog companies on the internet. They have been running for approximately 18 - 24 months, outdaing PayPerPost by an easy 6 months, possibly 12 months, despite PayPerPost’s achievements at attracting investment dollars.
Blogitive has been working to upgrade their system adding a directory to allow advertisers to pick bloggers, blog by blog (as best as I can understand this program that is). If this is truly how it works, then it will be somewhat similar to the business plans first offered by ReviewMe, and then emulated by SponsoredReviews. Blogitive launched their next, but PayPerPost followed a few weeks later and seems to have launched a little faster, that $10 million dollar of investor capital has to be good for something, right?
See How to Setup a Blogitive Directory
Blogitive’s upgrade has brought their operations to a slow down this week. Their ad placements came to a halt about 7 days ago. They were running an approval backlog with bloggers dating back 2-3 weeks at that time for most bloggers with a few bloggers claiming a backlog of over a month and one claiming a backlog dating back to March.
Without approvals there is no payment, and payments were delayed as well as a result. A few partial payments trickled out last Monday for some bloggers including myself. Then everything was silent for several days with rumors that payments would start again after the upgrade on Friday.
Friday was yesterday and the new rumor was that it would be the middle of next week.
Today we saw some progress. A few advertisements were approved. Payments have not gone out yet as its Saturday and the PayPal processing probably will not kick in until Monday. Some bloggers still have a backlog of approvals so maybe Blogitive will continue to put in some overtime this weekend. They have been known to work around the clock seven days a week.
Today also saw the launch of a new theme for the site, once you are logged in. The external theme remains the same. Internally you get the same data, but its overlayed within a new theme. The look and feel is nice but would look nicer without the backlog.
PayPerPost and PayU2Blog also both launched new themes on their sites as well within the last month. PayU2Blogs new theme came with new functionality, or maybe a better way to describe it is that it came with functionality as their online system had almost no functionality before (it was email based to the bloggers running on what appeared to be an Access database in the background).
PayPerPost rolled out new functionality including PayPerPost Direct and added in a number of upgrades to their system, which always causes a major production full of problems and stress. Watching PayPerPost go through an upgrade is very similar to watching Microsoft come out with a new Operating System upgrade. You know you will get more once its out, you know it will crash things initially and be full of bugs, but they are the 800 lb gorilla for now and so you go with the flow.
Another paid to blog company PayU2Blog experienced a slow down in payments this week as well. Their slow down only last about 3-4 days and related to an issue with PayPal that was rapidly resolved.
The key thing to note about this is that PayU2Blog was very agressive about keeping the blogging talent informed about the slow down, while Blogitive has barely provided a response to anyone, and nothing official published on their site nor any other forums or blogger hubs.
PayU2Blog, which is only a few months old as a paid to blog company, definitely gets an A for communications and is rapidly becoming one of Bloggers favorite paid to blog organizations, largely for utilizing a business model that is in fact a clone of Blogitive’s model from over a year ago. Blogitive used to pay bloggers to include a keyword and a link and the bloggers could write anything they liked. It was basically an inline text link ad inserted manually.
Blogitive now requires write ups that are focused on press release provided by their clients. These often get widely circulated and end up sounding very similar. PayU2Blog has revived the freeform inline keyword business model and is thriving.
PayPerPost has continued to evolve over the last few months continually adding things to meet advertiser demand. It has grown the company into something that is more and more corporate and less and less ‘blogger’. Its a similar path that the older but less funded Blogitive has traveled. PayPerPost and Blogitive could have learned a lesson from PayU2Blog.
When you start trying to please everyone, you please no one. When they try and be everything to every advertiser, they end up losing site of the important element in the equation. The blogger talent!
There is a fine line between a talented blogger and a person running a program to randomly generate blog posts to throw them out on the web and provide one way links. When you do not cater to the talent, you are left with the robots.
PayPerPost is not in trouble yet. Blogitive is not in trouble yet either. However, both are missing their potential if they do not take note of this lesson and act on it. Its very important to listen to advertisers as they are the ones buying the service. The thing is blogging is more art than service, more freeform than reporting, and when you attempt to regiment that type of thing, you lose the art, you lose the freeform, you lose the interest of the talent, and eventually you lose the advertisers all together.
Then there is the LinkyLoveArmy. What they are doing is anybody’s guess, but it looks like they are going to try and sell 1 million Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows books amng other things, oh and of course, they launched a new theme for their site too!
