In this interview Dave Balter explains word-of-mouth marketing. Balter founded BzzAgent in 2002. His company has provided word-of-mouth media services for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and on National Public Radio. He is also co-founder and current board [...]
Storyline: Gaming company sends corporate plane to bring nerd to Vegas to speak to casino execs. Don't get the impression that this is my usual lifestyle--I'm only blogging about this day because this never happens to me. The first stop: Executive terminal of SFO. This is north of the airport. Never been there before. There's [...]
I am in pursuit of the world's greatest sidebar badges for Alltop, so we're sponsoring a contest here. The top five entries will get a iPod Touch. Legal residents of the U.S. only (it's a long story having to do with tons of legal issues). Looking forward to seeing your entry! By the way, if [...]
Are you interested in the role of personality in a company's marketing? I recently interviewed Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy PR about this subject. You can read the interview here at Sun Microsystem's small business blog. He covers topics such as the creation and use of brand personalities, good and bad examples, and the role of [...]
Pamela Skillings is the founder of Skillful Communications, a career and communications consulting firm in New York. Previously, Pamela spent more than twelve years as a marketing executive for companies including MasterCard International, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup. She recently published a book called Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of [...]
If you're searching for a Father's Day gift that a traveling dad (or mom) will truly appreciate the whole year, consider a Clear card. This is the card that involves pre-screening of your background so that you can get through airport secureity faster. My experience is that I get through security at every Clear airport [...]
This is a cool idea. I would buy one in a second. No picture. You have to trust me and click here. More cool gadget here too.
Launch: Silicon Valley is coming up in less than a week. The regular price is $199, but you can get a discount by clicking here. The event is on June 10th at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, California. Thirty companies will be launching their products and services to an audience of venture capitalists, press, [...]
Most people in the mid eighties used personal computers for three primary purposes: spreadsheets, databases, and wordprocessing. Thank God that Paul Brainerd came up with the idea of PageMaker and desktop publishing, or we'd all be listening to music on cassette tapes. The principle that I learned from Aldus is that ultimately customers decide how [...]
I wrote a list of pickup/opening lines to use on venture capitalists for the Sun Microsystems small business blog. Please check it out here. The post lists the most common lines and what a venture capitalist would think when you utter such drivel. For total venture capital news coverage, try Venturecapital.alltop.com.
Holy cow, am I the last person in the world to see this? Forget Cathay Pacific's first class seat, this is the way to make a speech in a far away land: Cisco/Musion Systems TelePresence holographic video conference. John Chambers (left) is in Bangalore. The other two guys (Martin De Beer and Chuck Stucki) are [...]
There are approximately thirteen million CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom. They are use to monitor people for security reasons--not all the time, though. A band called The Get Out Clause played their music in front of eighty cameras, requested the footage citing the Freedom of Information Act, and put together a music video. This [...]
My buddies at TechShop are holding an open house this Saturday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. More info about the event is here. These are pictures from my recent visit there. Essentially, TechShop is geek heaven with all sorts of tools and machines for people to build stuff. If you liked Maker Faire, you'll [...]
I recently spent forty hours in Kuala Lumpur to speak at the 16th World Congress on Information Technology. Wow, what city KL is. I hope you enjoy my pictures. Kuala Lumpur means "mouth of the muddy river." The city is located at the confluence of the Sungai Gombak and Sungai Klang (rivers). It was established [...]
Darren Rowse, Mr. Problogger, gave me a great interview about making money with blogging (or not), Seth Godin's "no-comments" policy, ValleyWag's "ask us permission to comment" policy), blogging tools to use, his personal favorite blogs, Google PageRank, Technorati's future, and the uses of blogs by small businesses. It's a long, eclectic river of blogging commentary. [...]
Jerry White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His life changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 this organization, Jerry, [...]
In 2006 I wrote about Vyew and asked the obvious question: “Does the world need another web conferencing product?” I guess the answer is "yes" because the company is now profitable and has 100,000 registered users. Vyew combines real-time (synchronous) conferencing and desktop sharing with always-on (asynchronous) collaboration such as highlighting, drawing, text and sidebar [...]
A few weeks ago I was in Charlotte to make a speech for Network Solutions, and I met Justin Ruckman. He handed me his business card--which I just loved. For once, a business card that cuts to the chase and is readable. Hallelujah! So I asked him to make business cards for me. Take a [...]
I went to the Maker Faire in San Mateo this weekend. I had no idea these things are so popular--so much so that I gave up the first time and returned in the early evening when there was more parking and a shorter ticket line. Think: Macworld Expo meets Burning Man meets MythBusters meets Woodstock. [...]
Roger von Oech is the author a classic book about innovation called A Whack on the Side of the Head. Believe it or not, this is the twenty-fifth anniversay of the book. When I was young(er), this book was the rage for the personal-computer generation in Silicon Valley. Join me on Sun's site for an [...]