February 23, 2006
b+w
Hugh MacLeod
Hi, I'm Hugh.
My life is committed to drawing little illustrations that spread messages, inspire people, help businesses kick butt & support causes.
Gapingvoid is based upon the science of how these cartoons work.
If we can help you or your business, please email us here.
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Archive for February, 2006
look for america
[PS:] Yes, I’ve started drawing with my new Motion Computing Tablet P.C.
February 20, 2006
free dvd’s?
So, do you think there is any merit in the idea of Sony giving away 2,000 “Young Adam” DVDs to bloggers? I mean, they cost about 40
ps:
[PS:]I love my new Motion Computing Tablet P.C.
I had an old Dell for years. It finally died.
My new baby utterly rocks.
big day at english cut
Today was quite a big day at English Cut. First, we launched the $300 shirts. Then Thomas announced that yes, we’re doing the “100 suits per year” thing, after all.
In spite of the controversy it created in the gapingvoid comment section, the e-mails so far from our existing clients have been very supportive.
Some people think we’re creating an “artificial” scarcity. I prefer to think of it as a “real and genuine” scarcity.
If we cut back our suit number in order to spend more time and effort on each order, calling it “artificial” doesn’t make sense.
Tom is only capable of producing so much, and it has to be be managed properly. That means a frank conversation with the market about supply and demand.
February 19, 2006
shut up and get your checkbook out
Congratulations to PR maven Steve Rubel on his new job. At another large New York PR agency, no less.
A marketing professional just sent me the following note:
Something I’ve noticed about the newest class of PR/marketing bloggers– most of them are in the bowels of big agencies and their writing and point of view show it. It’s a lot of “Here’s how to use blogs as tools for our wonderful PR programs”, and not at all about what blogging IS. Agencythink in new clothes; that’s all it is.
Rubel can’t ever truly be Rubel until he’s on his own– going from one overlord to another means more of the same commentary on business as usual. The sad thing is I don’t think he realizes that.
Well, I don’t think Steve Rubel is a hack [No worse than me, anyway]. I have nothing but respect for the guy. And not everybody likes being on their own. Some people are far better suited working for big companies. Different strokes etc.
Then again, my nameless friend makes a good point about some of the business blogs I’ve been seeing around.
I suppose any hardcore professional blog evangelist will invariably end up with the same pitch, like it or not:
“Blogs will disrupt and transform everything about your business. Except for the part where you pay me lots of money”.
Nice work if you can get it.
your sexy little cutting-edge blogware app has no excuse
[Shel Israel and Robert Scoble, co-authors of “Naked Conversations”.]
The big Web 2.0 event of the week was, of course, the launch party of Robert and Shel’s book, “Naked Conversastions”, over at Michael “Techcrunch” Arrington’s house. Flickr photo links here and here.
Something tells me this was more than just another Geek dinner. As Dan Farber wrote in ZDnet:
TechCrunch leads Silicon Valley Web renaissance.
The party atmosphere reminded me of the good old Internet days, overflowing with new ideas, optimism, and enthusiasm.
Of course, I would have loved to have gone. That being said, that didn’t stop me from getting 10 cases of Stormhoek sent over for the party. Michael was very kind:
I also want to specifically mention Stormhoek, who donated ten cases of their premium wine to the party. It is incredibly good wine, and their generosity in sending it has made me a lifetime customer.
Jeff Clavier was also there, and he ended up writing a nice review of it as well.
Both whites were fresh and pleasant, the Pinot Grigio being off dry and the Sauvignon Blanc having the dry and floral typical characteristics of that varietal.
Meanwhile, George Nimeh has done a stellar job figuring out my Stormhoek marketing strategy:
You can’t buy the kind of endorsement that Michael gives Hugh and Stormhoek, because everyone knows the deal. It is, for lack of a better word, cool. The relationship is transparent, and that matters. We all know what Hugh is up to, but that’s ok. That’s the way it should be.
In other words, honest transparent marketing and communication just plain works.
I personally don’t have a problem with bringing the dreaded “marketing” word into the Web 2.0 space. This isn’t 1998. Our kind, understanding VCs aren’t going to give us $20 million dollars to spend on TV spots. Whatever product or conversation we’re bringing to the Web 2.0 party, be it software, hardware, wine, Aeron chairs, real estate or whatever, we’re all going to need really amazing marketing, if we’re going to survive.
And hey, if a $10 bottle of obscure South African Wine can make a decent go of it, then your sexy little cutting-edge blogware app has no excuse. Rock on.
[MORE LINKS:] Robert Scoble writes about the party. So does Rick Segal [hilarious and sharp; recommended], Brian Oberkirch interviews Shel and Robert for a podcast.
February 18, 2006
just don’t be surprised when you get left behind
As I am doing nothing but make money via blogs, courtesy of English Cut, Stormhoek and some other projects, I find this Slate article, “Twilight of the Blogs– Are they over as a business?” rather humorous, for all the wrong reasons:
But as businesses, blogs may have peaked. There are troubling signs
February 17, 2006
the human condition 101
From Alan Gutierrez in New Orleans:
I said something skeptical about search engine optimization. She said that it must be important since someone had convinced her to spend money on it.
Kinda says it all, huh?
the hotbizz report
Joe Chapuis has an impressively professional, business-related video podcast called “The Hotbizz Report.“
I was very honored that he devoted one of his podcast to talking about “The Global Microbrand”. Thanks, Joe!
February 16, 2006
guinness blog
Guinness has a blog. Not perfect, not groundbreaking, but not bad for a corporate brand job, taking their first baby steps. I’ve seen worse.
The good news is, the marketing team decided to do it themselves, not hire the job out to an ad agency. Otherwise I’m sure the results would have been utterly disasterous.
The thing is, they don’t have the same luxury that most new bloggers have i.e. making their mistakes when very few people still know who they are. So kudos to them for having a go.
I guess the next issue is, as marketers, what are they REALLY trying to achieve here? Serious question.
[Thanks to Rachel for the link.]
journeyman vs. master
Martin over at Easyweb makes an interesting point about “The Three Ages Of Slavery”.
I’d love to draw parallels with the old Guild levels of Apprentice, Journeyman and Master, but I feel I’m still Journeying.
Yeah, I know the feeling all too well. Which is why I try to avoid consulting gigs like the plague.
The thing about consulting I hate is, you just get paid by the billable hour. So the minute you stop tapdancing, you’re dead.
A Journeyman gets paid while he works. A Master gets paid while he sleeps.
[Bonus Link:] From Kathy Sierra: “Where there is passion, there are stories.”
the magic middle
A groovy article in The Guardian about David Sifry and Technorati.
“This is one of those things that I think is fundamentally different about Technorati,” compared to Google or Yahoo, he says, since it is based on “understanding people and understanding time” — not just on static links between web pages.
Meanwhile, in David’s recent “State of the Blogosphere, Part 2″, he makes an interesting observation:
The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere.
I happen to agree with that. The very top blogs [The “A-List”] will start collectively resembling old media more and more, as the money involved for doing so gets more significant. But the Magic Middle [call it the B-List, if you will] will be the realm of the global microbrand.
This is because the real story of blogging, the big story, is not about blog hierarchies and blog inequalities. The real story goes back [yet again] to something Clay Shirky said a while ago:
So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this– the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.
[Nice follow up from Fernando Gros:]
It�s in this magic middle that we are seeing a breaking out of existing discoursive structures. It is here where the small church, the local educator, the niche business are able to find a new global market without depending up on the existing hierachies and gatekeepers. This is the really encouraging news for smaller bloggers. This is where the blogosphere is helping us break the tryanny of localism. This is the interesting news.
It is also where I would like to see us ask theological questions. Instead of being in thrall to power, to A-lists and to top –down hierachies, maybe we should start by looking at what is going on in this magic middle.
February 15, 2006
“the new way to launch your product or company”
I like this thought from Dan Dodge, particularly interesting as he works for Microsoft, dealing with venture captialists:
We now live in a meritocracy. Money, VCs, and the press no longer decide what will be successful. Great products/services with intuitive designs that solve a real problem win. Of course once the product catches on and other entrepreneurs take notice, then you need to scale up fast to cement your first mover advantage. That might be where VCs and money add their value in this new world.
I wonder what Rick Segal would say.
more stormhoeky goodness…
Stormhoek 100 Geek Dinners Update from Jason:
So, 4 days into it and we are about 22% there. That a lot better than I expected— but we are still a long way from 100. So far, based just on the wiki we’ve got dinners happening in: New York City, Cincinatti, Mountain Home Arizona, San Mateo, Seattle, Madison, Pittsfield, Ypsilanti, Flagstaff, Bellingham, Wa., Denver and a bunch of Canadians who we have no idea how we are going to help out.… but standby cause we are working on it.
All those who have written in, asking to join in the 100 Geek Dinners thing: Thanks for your interest. I’m utterly psyched by your response. I’ll be forwarding along the e-mails I’ve received so far to Stormhoek today (driving the total to much higher than 22%), so please keep them coming. Seriously.
I don’t know how closely the two are related, but it seems the more I get into the Stormhoek thing, the more interested I get in the whole Web 2.0 thing.
I never was a techie or a coder. But as a blogger, they’re around me a lot. Eventually their cultural DNA starts to rub off on me. And rub off on my clients, Stormhoek especially.
Frankly, I think it’s a good thing. The more non-techies that are using blogs to transform their lives and businesses, the more non-techies are understanding Web 2.0 better, the happier I am. If Web 2.0 had just stayed an internet/techie thing, it wouldn’t have scaled.
And that would have meant a lot less money and opportunity for everyone, techies included.
Rock on.
the master speaks…
Clay Shirky writes more about powerlaws, in response to all the recent “inequality” kerfuffle.
The power law is always there, any time anyone wants to worry about it. Why the worrying happens in spasms instead of steadily is one of the mysteries of the weblog world.
The only things that are different in 2006 are the rise of groups and of commercial interests. Of the top 10 Technorati-measured blogs, (Disclosure: I am an advisor to Technorati), all but one of them are either run by more than one poster, or generate revenue from ads or subscriptions. (The exception is PostSecret, whose revenue comes from book sales, not directly from running the site.) Four of the top five and five of the ten are both group and commercial efforts
February 14, 2006
happy valentine’s day etc.
[btw this cartoon is also available as a blogcard.]
“web 2.0 disrupting vc’s? clavier thinks not”
Shel Israel interviews Jeff Clavier:
2. How have today
while we’re on the subject of blog inequality…
New York magazine has just published a very long article about blogs and the whole inequality thing: “Blogs to Riches– The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom.“
But if you talk to many of today
February 12, 2006
shirky’s law: “equality. fairness. opportunity. pick two.”
The always thoughtful Seth Finklestein says the “New Gatekeepers Are Still GATEKEEPERS”.
This world is exactly the same as *every* *other* *media* *world*, in that there’s a few participants who have enormous reach, while most have little to none (“Power Law”). That’s just a mathematical fact. One obvious corollary is that if an A-lister (very high audience) writes a personal attack on a Z-lister (very low audience), the Z-lister has no *effective* means of responding, to any comparable extent. This is hardly life-threatening, but it’s not pleasant.
Not sure if I agree with Seth this time. If an A-Lister does something squirly against a Z-Lister, the word soon gets out. Nothing like the threat of instant mass-retribution from thousands of scalp-hunting bloggers to help keep you honest, regardless of your stats.
Besides that, he’s not exactly offering any solutions to the problem.
Of course he isn’t. Because there isn’t one. There is only “Shirky’s Law”:
Equality. Fairness. Opportunity. Pick Two.
[From Clay Shirky’s seminal essay on power laws, “Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality”:]
Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.
… Once a power law distribution exists, it can take on a certain amount of homeostasis, the tendency of a system to retain its form even against external pressures. Is the weblog world such a system? Are there people who are as talented or deserving as the current stars, but who are not getting anything like the traffic? Doubtless. Will this problem get worse in the future? Yes.
The fact is, the more closely the blogosphere resembles the real world, the more interesting and dynamic it gets. And that means inequality. To have the blogosphere as a place where lots of interesting people are doing all sorts of interesting things is far more preferable to me, than it ending up as a detached online refuge for “Pet Toys”, where nothing ever happens, except indignant people living vicariously through others, and whinging about their lack of traffic.
london girl geek dinner– march 14th
[UPDATE: There’s another London Geek Dinner on February 26th. With a raffle prize of free tickets to SXSW.]
There’s another London Girl Geek Dinner happening on Tuesday, March 14th.
I’ve been to one of them. They’re a lot of fun. Kudos to Sarah Blow for making it a regular fixture.
February 11, 2006
100 dinners
100 Dinners: 1 May until 9 August 2006
When we launched Stormhoek in the blogosphere last year, we sent out about 100 bottles to bloggers in the UK, Ireland, and France.
Now that we’re launching Stormhoek in the USA in the next month or two, we decided to up the ante.
We like sponsoring geek dinners. We want to do more. Lots more.
Ergo: 100 Geek Dinners in 100 days. Starting in May.
Are you a U.S. blogger? Fancy throwing a geek dinner? Big or small, it doesn’t matter. Let us know and we’ll try to send some complimentary wine your way.
Jason explains more on the Stormhoek blog:
We’ll supply the wine, the bloggers supply the people and the conversation. The events don’t have to be big, or at a fancy place, we imagine that they could be anywhere– a bar, a porch, a beach, park, whatever, so don’t limit yourself to a restaurant.
Sure, we want this to be about bloggers, although anyone who wants to invite a supermodel, rock star or pro athlete along is welcome to do so. We just want the events to be interesting. The local organizer will set the rules for the event, so please use your imagination. As usual, there is no need to blog or post pics about Stormhoek, but we do ask that you email us some pics of the event, because we’d like to have mementos of the dinners, maybe to post later.
You will need to post an idea for a subject for your dinner on the wiki
February 10, 2006
thingamy and hamish
Hamish, my old highschool friend and now one of the top SAP guru’s on the planet, says some nice things about Sigurd Rinde’s business software, a.k.a. Thingamy:
I had a look at Thingamy, and I was impressed by it. I’ll write more about it when I have time, but it’s one of those “Scissor, Paper, Stone” type of things. Simple, but with a lot of implications. A thoughtful tool, and I suspect it could be used to make some very elegant solutions. It might even encourage a bit of out of the box thinking.
Last weekend Sig and I were in Geneva, where Hamish lives. We all had a nice lunch at this fabulous restaurant, and afterwards Sig invited Hamish to take Thingamy for a test drive etc etc.
Sig explains the basic idea beind Thingamy here, and perhaps why he was so keen to show it to an SAP consultant.
Hint: SAP has millions of lines of code. Thingamy has a couple of thousand. Do the math.
[Disclosure: Sig and I are working together.]
February 9, 2006
web 2.0 malarkey
So you’re trying to keep abreast of all this “Web 2.0″ malarkey.
Well, first be warned, there’s a lot going on, so be prepared to spend a lot of time digging. And I do mean “a lot”.
However if time is scarce, and you just want a comprehensive overview, I’d just read these sites for now:
Scoble.
Rubel.
Techcrunch.
Memeorandum.
Om Malik.
Doc Searls.
And I’m also liking Jeff Clavier a lot these days. He’s not nearly as well known as the other six, but I think he’s on to something. Ergo, I’m watching carefully.
Rock on.
February 8, 2006
greetings from switzerland
[Yes, the cartoon above is there for a reason.]
Greetings From Switzerland.
My client, coComment recently released a blog tool in beta that allows the user to keep better track of their comments. It seems the blog world has already taken note.
Yes, it’s early days. Yes, there’s still some bugs. Yes, there’s a million and one things we should fix.
So what’s the plan?
Open Source, of course.
The first thing we want to do is make it intergrate it with as many other platforms as possible. That means plug-ins galore. That means partnerships with other Web 2.0’s. That means allowing open source coding and design. Collaboration. Co-creation. That means talking to people.
People and companies on the list to contact include, but are not limited to:
Six Apart. Loic, Heiko.
Alex King from WordPress.
Mozilla. Firefox, etc.
David Sifry and Kevin Marks from Technorati.
Joi Ito.
Fred Wilson.
Jason Calacanis.
Rick Segal.
Sigurd Rinde.
Robert Scoble.
Guy Kawasaki.
Thomas Madsen-Mygdal.
Michael Arrington from Techcrunch.
Jeff Clavier.
coComment was funded by Swisscom. So what’s going on? Is an interesting conversation about to begin among the Telco’s, the blogosphere and the Web 2.0 crowd? I have no idea. You tell me.
Feel free to add to the conversation by contacting Laurent and the coComment guys via cocommentmail@gmail.com.
Rock on.
pet toys
There’s a new term I’ve been using a lot recently:
“Pet Toys”. Passive-aggressive bloggers and blog commenters who spend a disproportionate amount of time making lots of little sqeaky noises, not dissimilar to those chewy rubber things you find in pet stores.
Pet Toys are first cousins of “Happy Trolls”. Go visit Scoble’s blog and you’ll find them by the hundreds.
[Bonus Link:] From Laurent: “Ten rules of blog fighting”.
googlejuicer
So it say here that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 can block Google Adsense.
Is that true? Does that explain why Google is so keen to join the browser wars? Does that mean internet users can block Google from becoming bigger than Exxon?
Thoughts?
state of the sphere
Dave Sifry publishes his latest “State of the Blogosphere” report.
* Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
* It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
Pretty much the same news as last time, except the numbers are bigger. Rock on.
February 7, 2006
cocomment
Euan says it better than I can:
OK, how much does it piss you off that you can’t track comments you have left on other people’s blogs?
Laurent, who organised LiftO6, has just shown us CoComment, the coolest thing since sliced bread.
I have just christened CoComment as “Technorati for Commenters.“
The interesting thing is, you don’t need your own blog to use it. Secondly, the startup was initially funded by Swisscom, a Telco [an industry not exactly well known for pulling off this type of enterprise].
Currently it’s in Beta. To use it, you first need to be sent an invitation code from a current user.
[Trivia:] Apparently this enterprise was heavily inspired by Jeff Jarvis’ post, “Who wants to own content?“
Distribution is not king.
Content is not king.
Conversation is the kingdom.
The war is over and the army that wasn
February 6, 2006
euan semple
Everyboy’s favorite British social software guru, Euan Semple, has a new business website.
Euan just left the BBC, where he was in charge of working on all the internal blogs etc. Eight thousand internal users, or something like that. So now he’s gone into business for himself. Good luck, Euan!
PS: Euan’s blog is here.
[MEANWHILE:] BMW gets banned from Google for messing around with its stats. You have been warned.
February 5, 2006
english shirtmaker
English Cut moves the “$300 shirt conversation” forward by revealing to the world who will be making them for us. Thomas also mentions why we chose the manufacturers we did.
To make a long story short, my favourite shirt is one I’ve owned for over eight years. It still hangs in my wardrobe. It’s all dog-eared and worn, because I’ve enjoyed wearing it so often. Sadly, the label only mentions the retailer who sold it to me, not the actual manaufacturer. The retailer I bought it from went out of business a few years ago, however there was something special about this one, so I kept it around as a reminder of how a real shirt should feel.
When I decided to start selling shirts, I promised myself that this old favourite shirt would be the inspiration. This old shirt embodied everything I was after.
I’m happy to report that after doing some digging and a lot of phone calls later, I finally discovered the manufacturer of the shirt. Rayner and Sturgess Ltd, based in England’s garden county of Kent, about an hour South of London.
English Cut is making no claims to being master shirtmakers [unlike SOME prominent English brands that I won’t mention].
What we are claiming to be is a most excellent interface between customer and shirtmaker.
If our customers go for it, they go for it. If not, at least our losses will be minimal. Rock on.
