I consider myself almost a full-blown digital native, so seeing things like this are almost comical to watch. The best quote from this is: “we’re not in it to make money, we’re probably not going to lose a lot but we aren’t going to make much either.”

Remember the downtown video blog I did for the opening of the first grocery store here downtown in Kansas City? I was there recently for my usual super-quick-in-and-out shopping run for Orange Gatorade and some lunch meats and ran into John Cosentinos (he’s the owner). He was complimentary of the vblog (suh-weet!) but more importantly provided this thought-provoking quote:

“The video blog you shot was great, I’ve had more people mention it, or contact me after watching it — more than when I’m published in the Kansas City Star.”

Just think about that for a moment, [pause].  While this is not a scientific measurement by any means, it’s still worth noting.  Every marketing expert out there; bloggers and traditional journalists are all screaming how the ‘marketing and PR’ rules have changed.  What a great mini-testament!  Sometimes the reach in numbers isn’t as important as the effectiveness of the quality of the message.  It is further proof of the decline of the effectiveness of old media that used to be if you ask me.
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So while I was in Boston, I had some time to kill after I got off my flight before I could check-in. For those of you who follow me you may remember the Twitter message I sent out:

…minutes after I hit the ‘send’ button, both my followers from Boston responded to my message (see their responses below) and other folks who are simply tracking “Boston” responded to my tweet as well! @ChrisBrogan even sent me a direct message I knew that the advice of what to do in Boston from real people on Twitter was much better than those silly marketing brochures sitting at the information booth.  So thanks to Twitterville’s help — I ended up checking out the view at the Prudential building, went and visited the Apple store (and recorded a video blog on an iMac there) and grabbed a snack at Faneuil Hall.  Thanks everyone!

Flew into Boston today and myself and Ben (friend I work with) had some time to kill before we could check-in to our hotel. When we saw how big mammoth the Apple store here in Boston was, I couldn’t help but want to check it out. While we were there, I figured why not shoot a video blog on a new iMac and have some fun with iMovie!

P.S. while I’m a PC fanboy at heart, I don’t hate Macs — they’re great computers.

There’s a new restaurant here in Kansas City opening on the Plaza called Fogo de Chao (pronounced fo-go dee shown). They asked me to come taste the food before the grand opening and of course I brought along my camera to snap some photos and recorded a video blog with my flip.

The place is considered a “Brazilian steakhouse” — they serve over 15 different types of roasted meats in which “Gaucho” chefs cut and serve right at your table. Basically you sit at your table and have a card that has both a red and a green side. When a chef passes by and notices your card is flipped to green, he will ask if you would like the particular meat he’s carrying — and then serve the meat to you. The whole dinner is a pretty interactive experience.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised. The salad bar was unexpectedly awesome (you’ve gotta try it), but you can’t fill-up on salad because there’s so many meats to try and you really need to save room for all of it. The best part is all of the meat is served warm and tastes so fresh (unlike some of my backyard grill creations). It’s a bit pricey at $24 for lunch, $42 for dinner, but it’s worth it.  I’d say it’s probably not a place you’d want to go to every week. However, it is a great place to take a group of friends large or small. You can read more about the story of the restaurant on their website.

Be sure to check out my video blog to see what it’s like or the photos I posted to my flickr page.

I’ve ran across this quote from a great advertising consultant thinker, Sam Meers.

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
– General George Patton

Sam continues by writing, “When was the last time someone challenged your thinking?” In a corporate environment, it’s easy to fall subject to groupthink (just ask “the bobs”). This quote really hits at the concept that while you shouldn’t challenge everything just for the sake of it — make sure you are thinking from all perspectives and asking the right questions (even if it is just to yourself). If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. Don’t let that person be you.

I recently got my camera back from the shop — and today I decided to take a photowalking trip. What is photowalking you may wonder?

Wiki says; “…it’s the act of walking with a camera for the main purpose of taking pictures of things that the photographer may find interesting.”

Since I was feeling fairly patriotic after watching the inauguration concert “We Are One”, I figured why not head over Kansas City’s own super-awesome-easily-under-appreciated-by-local-residents National Monument, the Liberty Memorial. I ‘jocked some tunes on my iPod and had a blast snapping some pics. I was even lucky enough to get a pretty good sunset! You can view all the pictures I took on my flickr account here.

I did an interview earlier this month with a journalist from Sun Publications. Oddly, today, while getting my car washed — I noticed the newspaper sitting on a chair in the lobby (it was the first time I had actually seen it).  You can read the full article here.

Burger King recently launched and shortly had to shut down an insane, creative, brilliant Facebook Application called “Whopper Sacrifice“. This marketing idea was simple: delete 10 of your friends on Facebook and you get a free Whopper. Your News Feed also lists all of the friends you’ve deleted so everyone knows who you “sacrificed” for just a free burger.

While this Facebook App doesn’t put any cash into the pockets of Burger King, the PR and viral potential alone is worth the cost of paying for the free Whoppers, I’m almost sure of it.

I tried it out for myself.

While the app was really “heavy” in regards to it’s usage of Flash, overall it was well executed. I also found most of my friends (who have extremely short attention spans) didn’t actually add the App to their account, but a lot talked about it or heard of it’s existence from at least one person.

Sadly, FB shut it down as it violates a privacy policy, which is “notifying people when a user removes a friend”. Although, 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week before it was removed.

I did take screen-grabs when I shamelessly reluctantly removed 10 of my friends from Facebook.  …if you’re on the list, uh — sorry. I really wanted a free Whopper

Back in August, I video blogged the American Idol Season 8 Auditions right here in Kansas City.  Last night on Fox, American Idol aired it’s first episode for the new season and I’ve noticed in the past week that traffic to my photos and video blog have sparked since the show has started.

What’s interesting to notice is a concept in motion that Chris Anderson from Wired published in October of 2004, that is “the long tail”. While my video blogs may not be a direct representation of his concept — it is in the sense of a content niche long tail. This “long tail” concept may sound like just jibber, jaber — so to make sense of it read this white paper by Chris you need to, it’s worth your time.

Meanwhile, you can relive the video blog I published last year.  I’m curious myself if anyone I shot in the video will make it through to any of the later rounds!  Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

My audio blog of the event:

I’m curious why out of the millions of blogs that exist, why “inline” blog commenting isn’t more common than it is? Most people are familiar and comfortable with the concept already in Microsoft Word — it’s pretty common to turn on “comments” in a document (see my technical drawing illustrated below).

I’m sure there are several things to think through in regards to the overall usability design in handling multiple comments for a single sentence or area on a blog post (or how you view every one’s comments instead of just one area of the blog post). However, the concept of clicking the area in which you would like to comment is an intuitive interface behavior, rather than putting comments at the end of a blog post.

LineBuzz seems to be the only developer that has tackled this idea so far (I could be wrong, that’s all I could find). Frankly, I think their execution sucks. It’s a great stab at a “first try”, but their interface misses the mark. My own personal opinion is that inline commenting would be well adopted if executed right — rather than what other seem to think is the future of commenting, which is video blog commenting programs like Seesmic.

Just some thoughts…
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Have you ever tried bike rolling?  It’s harder than I thought it would be…

I finally got my DSLR camera back today.  I’ve been waiting for what feels like FOREVER for it to come back from the factory.  It was displaying some weird “error 99” whenever I took a photo.  Turns out — they replaced the entire shutter mechanism on the camera.  Whoops.  Good thing I purchased that thing called a warranty.  I’m stoked to have it back so I can start snapping pics with it again!

It is January 6th. Everyone is officially off the couch and back to their daily routines. This week most everyone will share or think about their own “New Years Resolutions”. Anyone who knows me will attest I’m a positive person — but a part of me is pessimistic about people’s attitudes when the New Year starts. Disclaimer, I know this blog post may completely contradict my previous post

It shouldn’t take an event like the New Year to make you make a change in your life.

Aristotle once said, “We are what we frequently do”. This plain obvious quote supports my argument that those changes and goals you have should be assessed frequently — not just at the beginning of the year.

Don’t put it off.

Time is finite.

Life is too short.

If you’re driving down a path you don’t like in your life, talk/think about it first do something about it NOW. If there is something you want to accomplish, have the passion and patience to dream and dream big. Have the patience to piece together “the ladder” in what it takes to get you there. Have the passion to follow through with doing what it takes to accomplish that dream.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve switched things up and tried something different if what I’m doing now isn’t working (work + personal life). Daily routines, organization of my desk, habits — the process for me goes something like this, “Well that didn’t work — so I’ll try this. [sigh] I failed at that so now I’ll try this, OK now this”. Rinse, wash and repeat.  I’m far from perfect myself, but I think being cognitive about it is important.

So don’t buy into this “New Years Resolutions” rubbish. Frequently assess what you need and want to change, then do it. And if you don’t know where to start, it’s OK to stumble into the first step, you don’t always have to understand how it’s going end or where it will go.

The greatest possession you have is the 24-hours in front of you. And there are 359 more “fresh starts” you have.  Get inspired.  Go do it now.
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