Category Archives: Uncategorized

Buzz off thanks

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Google Buzz, I tried it, and I was overwhelmed with people from China, Taiwan and other countries wanting to follow me. If I spoke Mandarin it might make sense, since it appears I have trouble with English sometimes maybe not so much. I was never bum rushed like that on twitter, but it was enough to make me stop. Buzz off.

Chris Penn wrote about how Brilliant Google Buzz is. I agree that less noise and better exchanges are great, but I thought friend feed was lots like that. Buzz seemed like friend feed light to me, or friend feed with fewer share channels. While I like friend feed lots, I don’t really think I need two of them. I also don’t relish the need to distract myself any further on a daily basis. Less being more of course.

If you need to turn off your buzz also see the CNET blog post below
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10451703-2.html it tells you in detail how to shut it down correctly. Not doing it correctly apparently leaves your personal info out there.

To tweetup or not to tweetup that is the question.

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My first foray into hosting a tweetup in Boston was an unmitigated disaster. I like 80’s music and I enjoy talking with people. I figured hanging out and listening to 80’s music and talking to people would be fun. I was wrong. This apparently does not a tweetup make. I am not certain what the proper “tweetup parameters are”, but I am sure there are people that worry about that somewhere. I thought I would give it a go, I had read the Stuart Foster article on how to host a successful tweetup after-all.

I had a good venue in House of blues, there was a 80’s concert going on afterward that people could attend if they wanted to pay 20.00 to go see some cool local 80’s bands. I had suggested to people to dress up, make it fun and send me a few 80’s songs they liked and remembered so I could add them to the play list… Crickets.

It wasn’t a total loss or waste of time for I learned much about the online hosting of events and how serious it is. I did learn much more about eventbrite, which btw is a real good platform for your event. They have great customer service and also send you guidance emails which assist in helping you with your event.

I also learned that there are two different tweetvite / twtvite entities. Both look good, and both have good analytic s. Twtvite is dialed into a whole suite of other products. and you can measure practically everything about your tweetup it appears. That’s a good thing right?

Ironically I had much better luck in the 80’s with groups and hosted events. Back then, we yelled our parties and event invites at the top of our lungs out in the Quad at NU. We also usually got about 100 or so attendees. Ahhh progress.

Do you like the 80’s Music?

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I was fortunate enough to attend College in Boston when Boston was the alternative music hub of the universe. I also spent lots of time at Spit and Manray dancing to New Order, The Smiths, The Psychedelic Furs, and many many others. I realized recently that when I decided to host a tweetup about 80’s music at the house of blues this Tuesday 2/11/2010 at 5pm. http://brilliantvideo.eventbrite.com/ that many of the people on twitter may not have been old enough to remember some of the 80’s music. Oops.

The 80’s saw all the great techno dance bands visit Boston. We also had the Cars, and J Geils band as the home team along with many many more great local club bands.

This Thursday the former 80’s music video channel V66 is hosting a reunion concert featuring a bunch of these local Bands from Boston’s 80’s. I encourage the younger twitter users to check out the tweetup and the concert that follows if you can. You will get a crash course on what started the 80’s music scene in America, because all of it started here in Boston.

For more info on the V66 reunion Concert check out House of Blues Boston Website here

God I hate being sick…

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Having an ailment sucks. It stops you in your tracks. I am a relatively healthy person, and as such it takes something like lack of sleep and strep to take me down. When I get taken down however I am a big baby also. Something about wanting to be taken care of emerges. This isn’t my norm, I like to take care of others, so that can be a struggle also albeit a good one I suppose. I am lucky to have a very nice woman in my life. She brought me soup, mashed potatoes and rice pudding today. While I could not taste any of it, I ate it all because it made her happy and made me feel good knowing she cared enough to get me the goodies in the first place. Talk about your chicken soup for your soul. Thanks Terri.

Massachusetts just says no…

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Yesterday was a huge day in Massachusetts and a large day for our country the ramifications may not be fully understood until much later on down the road. The late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat was up and the race was between Martha Coakley Democrat and Scott Brown republican.

The race was very tight about a week ago in some polls, and when democrats in Washington DC started figuring how they could get around the Caucus majority vote thing I thought Coakley was in big trouble and clearly she was.

Lots of money was poured into the campaign on both sides. I recieved phone calls from both camps (I am an independent) and I heard messages from Bill Clinton, President Obama and Vickie Kennedy. I also heard from Scott Brown.

Scott Brown ran the underdog race, and ran the cleaner campaign. When things got messy
it was the Coakley campaign that threw the first mud. When you are the presumed front runner maybe casting the first stone is bad, just FYI.

Scott Brown won and is now the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts. He will now vote on Universal Health care a cause that was very important too and is part of the late Ted Kennedy’s legacy the Senator he now replaces.

In addition to the Socialized Heath-care bill, Massachusetts has seemed disenchanted with Billion dollar bailouts as well. New Englanders are grinders, We don’t need bailouts we grind things out. Lots of people I talked with recently really regret the decision to bail some of those lousy companies out.

Massachusetts has said No to President Obama, billion dollar bailouts and universal heathcare will the rest of the country now follow suit?

Photo by megboudreau

Please Help Haiti if you can.

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As you know there was a devastating Earthquake in Haiti and there are 100,000 people feared dead and or missing currently. Relief will never come fast enough for this country. If you can please contribute to the 12k for 12 widget and donate what you can for Hope for Haiti.

You can read Hope for Haiti’s press release about their aid program here. Additionally, you can follow their progress in Haiti via the Hope For Haiti Twitter account.

Enclosed is the chip in widget to make a donation easier.

http://widget.chipin.com/widget/id/5352447caa8c88fd

In Defense of Conan O’brien

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In Defense of Conan O’brien

This poor guy is getting abused worse then David Letterman did when the original late show wars raged between Letterman and Leno over Johnny Carson’s throne. In Defense of Conan, he is right. He has not been given a fair shake, He has been given the NBC handshake ( do you remember that) and its NBC (nothing but crap) repeating their own sad sick twisted history.

Jay you gave up the seat that Johnny sat in. You gave up the Tonight Show. What were you thinking? You totally screwed up. Be the bigger man (ok maybe even huskier) and walk away. Ride your Indian motorcycle off into the sunset. Failing that, come back to Boston and do stand up, coming home might give you sorely needed perspective. Warming up Sunday nights in Manhattan beach clearly aren’t working anymore.

Let Conan have his shot. NBC let you have yours.

I will lose weight this year…

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As a matter of self preservation and determination I have decided to publicly announce one of my personal goals for 2010 which is to lose 30 pounds. I wish to get healthier, exercise more and get in shape for the Pan Mass Challenge 2010. I plan on riding the full ride and being in shape to do so. In years past I may have thought about it, talked about it but this year I am going to lose the weight.

If you have dieted in the past and you found something that works won’t you please share it with me?

Sadly my previous affiliations with fast food favorite franchises like McDonalds, Five Guys burgers and fries and others too many to mention are now concluded.

Here is to a healthy Start to 2010.

I promise to work smarter in 2010, less apps is more.

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In 2009, I found myself in constant learning mode. I learned lots more about social media, what works, what doesn’t and what I can use. I also learned about iPhone applications that work, don’t work and the ones I plan to use going forward. I promise to work smarter in 2010 and put iPhone and cool toy blinders on. I figure I cost myself thousands of dollars figuring out new apps when I should have been worrying more about being more profitable.

I have weeded out quite a few applications on the iPhone and I will share my thoughts this is a blog after all.

I will use TweetDeck for twitter on my laptop computer and iPhone. I like it, it can handle 2 accounts on twitter, does facebook and now also LinkedIn as well. As I personally transition to whatever is next in my professional life, I may need a few twitter accounts to pull it off with and with TweetDeck I think I am covered.

I plan to use Posterous. I plan on using it to post pictures and short blurbs too big for twitter but too small to blog. @chrisbrogan used it very effectively until he abandoned all logic and dumped his iPhone and went with an android and Pixelpipe . I give Chris credit however, I cannot for the life of me figure out Pixelpipe, and in keeping with work smarter not harder I pick Posterous.

I am torn between Qik and Ustream for mobile lives treaming of iPhone video partially because both are so new and both need work to make the video streaming better. I cannot therefore make a clear choice between apples and um apples. Maybe Livestream will blow them both away. Until then I will keep both and hope one improves greatly and makes my choosing easier.

I will stick with Foursquare over Gawalla or odwalla or whatever its called. @JoselinMane said to me early in April 2009 that foursquare had too many bugs in it to catch on. It did at the time. I was then using loopt on iphone. Anyone remember that program now? I blame @stevegarfield for my foursquare addiction thanks Steve.

For videos under 10 minutes I will use YouTube, for those over 10 minutes I will use Vimeo. Vimeo has great quality video, a good price point, and good analytics.

I chose Delicious over Stumble upon. I did not think I needed two bookmarking sites. Both are really good bookmarking sites that share the sites you like with others. You can bookmark an article, a blog or website that way and tell others easily.

I added Digg for news. I still have not figured out the blog RSS reader thing but hope to do so in 2010 (time permitting of course)

Other apps I deleted this year. I got rid of Tumblr, it was a good application and app on iPhone but I never used it. Another deletion was Joost, again nice application and iphone app but I just did not use it. Going is a good email about whats going on in Boston but was only a so so IPhone app again just my opinion. Boxee is another program I jettisoned. I was just able to figure out the install for mac TV when the Mac TV upgrade deleted it. Bye Bye Boxee…

I use Yelp and the application Around me to find stuff like restaurants when traveling. I will use around me first then see what people have yelped about it.

I also use the IPhone linkedin application at social media events, and other social events. Mike Damphouse at green leads @damphoux taught me that trick early on in 2009 and it helps you research who you are talking with. Knowing who your audience is certainly helps.

Anyway, I better get back to work I have already wrote too long a blog here and I have some accounting to do, some more wordpress blog to figure out oh joy. I am also working on my new book “Be Seen with trust agents crushing it” . jk

Have a very safe and happy new year.

Merry Christmas 2009

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Just a silly video sending Christmas cheer to everyone out there. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.4282768

more about “Merry Christmas 2009”, posted with vodpod