Mike Seidle ...notes from the road

As the Mumbai terrorist attacks unfolded, I was struck by how much information hit Twitter - the 256 character microblog.  You could literally watch as people arround the events reported in little bits of information - resulting in a much more clear picture of what was going on. 

I'm in the middle of a business transformation from an internet marketing agency to a full service blogging agency.  I can't believe how powerful the process has been.  So far in order to get the new business right, we've had to look at everything, and one thing has really stuck with me:

For most of my career, I've been one of those people who believes in the two rules of marketing:

I use and love Mozilla Thunderbird for email. It's flexible, fast, compatible and with a little extra plumbing, slices, dices and cleans up the mess.  Here are a few add ons I've found indispensable.

NotTo - Ever want a way to make sure you don't send emails to a specific person? Even if they are on a list?  NoTo prevents accidental message forwards!

Having come off several awful business relationships that have just sucked the life and cash out of my business, I ran into an article that actually explains why people are easily duped. Turns out the culprit is a "circuit" in our brains called THOMAS - one that releases ocytocin when we are trusted.  In other words, the con man trusts you and your brain makes you feel good. From the Article:

Last year, we pulled the plug on MySchoolAlert.com, a system that was to be a text message alert system for schools.  The reason we pulled the plug on the project was:

High growth startups are particularly prone to bad news. One big question is how will social media respond.  LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman (who owns several other social startups) says LinkedIn is good to go:

This election is one of the most polarized elections in history, until you look at it with the eyes of a 12 year old. It's no longer about dubious policy promises and outrageous claims about how bad the opposing candidate is. It's suddenly a war hero, a single dad, a black man and a mom from a small town. The best part is that all of the candidates are the kind of people I would want my children to meet. The story is amazing when you look at it that way. And it's amazing that we are guaranteed that something extraordinary and historic will happen in the near future:

Why is it that sometimes the splat of a business failure is louder than it's launch? Witness Wallop - a social network built to compete with the likes of MySpace and Facebook. Wallop was built and incubated by none other than Microsoft - and the first I've heard of it was it's tombstone page:

I wasn't very old when I got started with computers. Ten years old to be exact. I took a BASIC programming class at Ball State University that used TRS-80 Model III computers. By today's standards, the Model III would have a hard time competing with a $30 graphing scientific calculator. It didn't matter. I loved it. And because of that, the small private school I attended got some Apple II computers and started teaching some literally BASIC skills.