Monday, 6 February 2006

Playboy Interested in Volkwagen's Kerri Martin!

I was looking through my visitors today and notices that someone at "Playboy Enterprises" ended up at The Basement after Googling for "kerri martin vw". They looked around over 9 minutes and clicked 8 times! Hmmmm. I wonder why. You know folks, I can't make this stuff up.

Posted by Matt Galloway at 11:13 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Tuesday, 10 January 2006

Goodbye Pay-Per-View! Hello TivoFlix!

For Christmas this year, Santa brought my wife a Tivo. Of course, she actually wanted it to time shift shows but I'm more interested in the geek factor. Tonight, we got out first episode of Rocketboom. Yulp. If you've Tivo's hooked-up to broadband, you can now get some very limited, very experimental programming from the Internet. In fact, Rocketboom is all you can get at the moment, but this is definitely shades of things to come.

Imagine one day soon... Tivo and NetFlix unite except instead of DVD mailers, your movies are downloaded to your Tivo during the day while you are at work. Hmmmm. Or imagine if Apple bought Tivo so that you could access iTunes through your TV. Tivo already has a couple of USB ports so it's even conceivable that it could serve as an iPod dock. Goodbye Pay-Per-View. Goodbye HBO.

2006 is going to be an interesting year.

Posted by Matt Galloway at 12:54 AM in Interesting Stuff
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Tuesday, 15 November 2005

Be Reasonable

I just stumbled onto a super cool blog - Being Reasonable. It's the work of Reason, Inc. - some kind of brand strategy, new wave motivational something or other company. The blog has a great format with a "reasonable scale" on each post. They love disagreeing with Seth Godin which is endearing because, hey, you gotta love the underdog.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 11:35 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Monday, 24 October 2005

If You're Gonna Pass Out During A Flight, Fly Southwest!

You know, blogging makes you do funny things - like when something happens to you that make you feel really stupid, your first impulse is to write about it so everyone and their dog can read about it.

For example, I'm in Sacramento. I flew here this morning from Tulsa. On the second leg of the flight, I started feeling funny. Specifically I felt like I couldn't completely fill my lungs with air - only about 90%. I didn't think to much of it. I needed to use the restroom and I though streching out a bit might help. I was near the front of the plane but the fore restroom was occupied so I went to the one in the back of the plane.

Right after I finished, uh, using the restroom, but before I had the opportunity to fasten my belt, I started feeling dizzy... like I was going to pass out.

I opened the door - the attendant was just outside - and said "I think I'm going to pass out." I remember her talking but I couldn't understand her words. It sounded like she had marbled in her mouth - but I think that was just me. She immediately got two other attendents and they got me to lie down on the floor in the back of the plane. Pillows under my head, feet elevated, and a cold compress on my forehead.

As my head started to clear a few minutes later, I heard them ask for any medical professionals on board to report to the back of the plane. As I came to they asked me if I wanted medical assistance when we landed. I declined.

Then they cleared the back seat of the plane and let me lie there. After a few more minutes, I felt fine. I don't think there was anything major wrong with me - maybe I was too hot or hadn't eaten or something. I didn't have any chest pains or other symptoms and I feel fine now.

At the time I felt really stupid. I felt like I was wasting people's time because my body decided to freak out. But the attendents were wonderful. They reacted quickly and professionally and didn't panic at all. They knew exactly what to do and were very organized.

I suspect that I would have been fine today either way - but it's nice to know that if something had really been wrong with me, I would have gotten excellent care.

So, if you're gonna pass out during a flight, fly Southwest!

BTW, if anyone at Southwest is reading - this was flight 2859 from Pheonix to Sacramento. 8:20am-10:20am on October 24, 2005. Please pass my thanks along to the crew!
Posted by Matt Galloway at 4:30 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Monday, 17 October 2005

Jon Gabriel Finds My Actionable Post Actionable

Jon "Chocolate Covered Cricket" Gabriel over at the Inkling read my recent rant on why I hate the word actionable. Jon doesn't like it much either, but he's got a laundry list of his own pet peeve words.

The whole thing is a good read but my pesonal favorite is...
110 percent: You can give 100 percent. That’s all. More annoyingly, offices are in the midst of metaphorical percentage creep. Since 110 percent is now expected, now employees are giving 150 or 200 percent. Until human cloning is commonplace, never cross the century mark.

Amen, Brother Jon!

WOMM BONUS POST: While you're there, be sure to check out this amusing post.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 11:36 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Tuesday, 27 September 2005

Dad Starts Wednesday!

My Dad, Dan Galloway starts his new job as City Manager of Stillwater, Oklahoma on Wednesday. Stillwater is the home of my alma mater, Oklahoma State University. This is quite cool and I'm very proud of him and I'm looking forward to visiting the old stomping grounds.

He has previously been City Manager for Bethany, Clinton and Owasso (all in Oklahoma). He worked for a short stint at the Army Corp of Engineers in Tulsa. He was a Resource Planner for the Upper Mississippi River Basin Commission before that. And with the Southwestern Illinois Metropolitan Planning Association Commission before that. He taught High School in his home town Pleasant Hill, Illinois while finishing up his Master's degree in Urban Planning or some such - this was right around the time I came to be so I'm a little fuzzy on the details - but it was from a state university in Illinois, I believe.

My Dad is brilliant and everyone I've talked with that has worked with him professionally says wonderful things - nicer than what's required.

Anyway, lot's of folks have ended up here after Googling him lately so I wanted to write a bit about him. If you live in Stillwater, don't worry, you're getting the real deal.

Good luck Dad! Oh, and be sure to stop in at Cooper's Bicycle Center and tell Mary that I said hi!
Posted by Matt Galloway at 1:20 AM in Interesting Stuff
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Wednesday, 21 September 2005

Would you prefer "A Prairie Whore Companion"?

I saw this unbelievable story about a guy who was selling some funny shirts that said "A Prairie Ho Companion". He got a Cease and Desist letter from Garrison Keillor's attorney. This is unbelievable to me. Here's a comedian who is generally considered to be liberal and who is known for parody and poking fun at the shortcomings of each and every town he visits taking legal action against (arguably) a fan for making funny shirts. Mr. Keillor, apparently, is a hypocrite and clueless. BTW – that's not parody, that's my opinion, based on the facts.

I sent Minnesota Public Radio this email...

date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 03:59:06 -0000
to: phc@mpr.org
from: Matt Galloway
subject: You have got to be kidding...

Mr. Keillor and gang,

I just read this

http://www.mnspeak.com/mnspeak/archive/post-733.cfm

It's the story about the "Prairie Ho Companion" shirt.

I've been a long time listener of the show and I even own PHC CDs. And I have to tell you that this is really pathetic. If you don't understand why this is moronic and hypocritical, then you are not the bright folks that I had thought you were.

Sure I'm just one guy, but I won't continue to listen - or to contribute to stations that carry your show - if you don't let this guy sell his last 10 shirts and be done with it.

If the Lutheran church can continue to take your jabs, you should be able to handle this.

Sincerely,

Matt Galloway
Tulsa, Oklahoma
http://www.thebasement.com

P.S. For what it's worth, I'll be blogging about this in a few days whether you respond or not. What would you like me to say?


I received no response, so apparently they don't care that they have lost me as a listener.

Oh well, in my experience Prairie Ho Companions are better off shirtless anyway.



UPDATE: Related funny bit here.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 8:28 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Thursday, 25 August 2005

Unexpected Technical Support (rarely, if ever!)

So it's like this, you sign up for the cool new beta service and something small doesn't work quite right. No surprise.

So you email support and then expect to hear in a week or so. That is, of course, unless you're emailing the kids over at BlogBeat. Jeff emailed me back in short order with the answer to my problem and I'm up and running. Now, I know that start-ups like this have to provide nearly instantaneous tech support service if they want to survive the influx of stat-obsessed-self-absorbed-beta-is-not-soon-enough crowd. But it seems that lots of start-up service providers don't understand this. Jeff clearly does. I haven't been able to critically look at the product yet, but between their fun error message and the fast and personal response - I'm already a passionate user. Kathy Sierra fans know what I'm talking about.

Thank Jeff! I'm up and running. The interface is Google-Maps-Ajax beautiful and I'm impatiently awaiting hits.

For all you non-RSS reading folk - consider yourself notified - Big Brother BlogBeat is watching you.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 11:13 PM in Interesting Stuff
Comments (3)

Unexpected Error (aren't they all?)

I've been looking at the new blog metering tool BlogBeat. It looks very cool, although I haven't yet gotten an email from my registration so I'm not yet recording stats. Anyway, I was clicking around and got an error that said "Unexpected Error (aren't they all?)". I love clever and/or funny error messages - they just take the edge off. The best I've seen is the BlogLines Plumber. You just can't help but empathize.

Software developers of the world take note.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 10:24 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Monday, 22 August 2005

Vogue Subscribers = Gluttons for Punishment Advertising

From Ad Rants...
Tipping the scale at four pounds, the September issue of Vogue contains 691 ad pages beating last years record of 651.

You've got to be kidding me. I don't know who is more dense - advertisers or subscribers.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 10:17 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Monday, 15 August 2005

Microsoft Stormtroopers at LinuxWorld

Just saw this. two Microsoft guys dressed up as stormtroopers and a third as Darth Vader at last weeks LinuxWorld conference. Between Robert Scoble and stunts like this, I might just start liking Microsoft a little bit. Dammit.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 11:28 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Martian McChronicles

Sometimes a blog comes along that is so mind-bendingly curious, that you just have to mention it. Today, that blog is McChronicles - Chronicling the McDonald's Brand Experience. This is a very interesting – and seemingly independent – look at the McDonalds brand. If you have customers like this guy – you should listen.

Posted by Matt Galloway at 10:11 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Friday, 12 August 2005

People Smarter Than Me: Matthew Hurst

I've been meaning to point folks to Matthew Hurst's Data Mining blog for some time. Matthew is a research analyst scientist for Intelliseek/BlogPulse and his blog is filled with brilliant bits on GIS, data mining blogs, data mining in general and his seeming endless stream of insightful random thoughts about information and analytics. He graciously mentioned my recent analysis of theiTunes 4.9/Podcast thing today and the least I can do is return the favor. Unlike me, Matthew actually knows what he's talking about.

He also mentioned another guy doing BlogPulse analysis - "James Fee at Spatially Adjusted (profile) looks at the impact Google's mapping applications have had on buzz about GIS and ESRI." An interesting post.

[UPDATE: From Matt via email - "We do actually have people at Intelliseek who are titled analyst versus those of us at the R&D lab who are generally called research scientists." I'm not sure if I insulted the scientists or the analysts but either way, I'm sorry - it won't happen again. Regardless of what they call you, keep up the good work. -Matt (uh, Galloway, that is)]
Posted by Matt Galloway at 1:53 PM in Interesting Stuff
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Friday, 5 August 2005

Influential Marketing: Matt Galloway #2, GfK NOP #25

Thanks to Jonathon Carson, CEO of BuzzMetrics for pointing out this sobering reality...

Although my last post lauds NOP as the granddaddy of influencer research, the same authority can't be ascribed to their search marketing strategy... Google "the influentials" and NOP is nowhere in the top ten results - whereas Matt Galloway, the self-described long tail blogger who started the interesting debate covered in the post below, shows up as result #2! Go Matt.

It takes a while to get to it, but the first link that actually goes to a GfK NOP owned site is #25 on the list – that's page 3. Welcome to the Long Tail. BTW - for those of you interested in how to get the #2 place for a search phrase on Google. It's simple - blog.

None other than Ed Keller, one of the co-authors of The Influentials, left this comment on the BuzzMetrics blog...

Jonathan, I'm not sure what you are referring to, but when I click on the Google link in your posting I find all of the top ten references to "the Influentials" relate to Jon Berry's and my book of the same name.

To which Mr. Carson replies

Hey Ed - Right, to clarify: you and Jon get great credit on Google's top results, as the other nine entries (besides Matt's post) are all info or e-commerce for the book. My comment was referencing the fact that NOP (who I assume hold the trademarks to the term, and for whom its a major marketing asset) do not have any content in the results.

If I owned such a great asset as the "Influentials" trademark, I would use an aggressive search marketing strategy to make sure that BuzzMetrics' corporate content was at the top of both the natural and paid listings - to ensure that anyone who was seeking info about "the influentials" was left with no doubt in their mind about whose intellectual property it was. I would also be concerned by the fact that the negative posts of a random blogger (no offense Matt) were listing #2, but my firm's point of view was nowhere to be found. Where is the NOP mini-site bragging about this valuable intellectual property!?

I would add that, to Mr. Keller's credit, that my posts have also been about his book – usually including links to Amazon I might add. At first I was a little puzzled by Mr. Keller's lack of concern about GfK NOP's interest until I realized that he apparently no longer works there. Also from BuzzMetrics...

I had an interesting conversation with Ed Keller this week about word of mouth research models. Ed, of course, is the godfather of word of mouth research - he wrote "The Influentials", his firm NOP (Roper) has been studying the topic for decades, and now that he's leaving NOP, no doubt he'll do many more exciting things in this space.

Also, GfK NOP does own a trademark and service mark on INFLUENTIALS, but just barely. They were just filed on June 9, 2005. I'm not sure this provides much protection against the e-fluentials or tech-fluentials. As for the process of identifying and measuring them – I can't find any patent referencing Roper, Influentials, GfK, etc. that seems related. I'm not an IP attorney, but since they outlined the process in the book (public disclosure) over a year ago, I think that ship has sailed. The process is now fair game. So Mr. Keller could be scarfed up by some one else – someone with a search engine strategy - or hang his own shingle and set up shop. I think we should start a pool on how long will it be before GfK NOP sees competition from "The Edfluentials."

So let's review. GfK NOP is #25 when searching for "The Influentials" on Google, I, the random blogger, am #2. GfK NOP has lost one half of the team that wrote the book. Hmmm. This makes me think of yet another thing Jonathon Carson asked on his blog...

In other words: Roper's Influentials are still alive and well - but do they matter?

I think GfK NOP is silently answering that question.

Posted by Matt Galloway at 12:46 AM in Interesting Stuff
Comments (3)

Saturday, 30 July 2005

Get a Chris Pirillo Link for $25...Kind Of

In his post How Not to get Fired for Blogging he mentions the domain ihatemyjobandmyboss.com. Don't bother clicking on it, there's nothing there...yet. But if you hurry over to Dotster and register it for $15 and the pay the $10 for DNS - you can be there.
[UPDATE: Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner. The domain of mention was registered by Anthony DeFreitas of Snellville, GA on Aug 1, 2005.]

Why haven't I done this already? Karma. I've already done it once today after seeing this post from Hugh Macleod and I want to spread the wealth.

When heavily read bloggers make offhanded references to unregistered domains they create an opportunity for someone to be standing where everyone else will soon be looking. And if you're wondering if you'd get any traffic...you would have gotten a hit from me.

So remember, if you're really desperate to get linked to by an A-lister just look for a link to crawl under.

Chris, if you happen to be reading this - I love your podcasts and, for what it's worth - my wife and I love listening to you and Ponzi. We also met on match.com and we laughed at how familiar your story sounds.
Posted by Matt Galloway at 1:16 AM in Interesting Stuff
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