Shameless self promotion

Go see my newest blog. Any self respecting foodie will love it.

Now testing - Lively

Just a quick note for you guys to remind me to review Lively. Lively, is Google's response to Second Life, though it seems a lot campier. I downloaded the Beta last night and will give it a week or two before I post a full review.

Here's the promo video



I've actually never tried second life, so I'll need to get into that as well. What has me wanting to try Lively? To be honest, I like to try EVERYTHING Google puts out into the general market. I really enjoy the openness of their platforms and love the idea of adapting all of these free Web tools and services into a business and marketing environment.

Can't wait to get started on this. Do you have experience with Lively? E-mail me your thoughts.

On Blogging

At one point in time, I was a much more dedicated blogger. I started blogging in an early form back in 2000. Only back then, I was constantly updating an AngelFire HTML template that was my second attempt at a Web page.

I got into the whole programming and designing end of digital thanks to my JRN 101 professor. My first Web site was done in Microsoft Front Page. It took me forever as I recall now. I also remember fumbling a few times learning to use FTP software. About a year later, I stumbled onto Blogger and loved the freedom I had to only have to worry about tagging my text breaks and things that I wanted to bold or italicize. I also became addicted to the daily writing process. I am convinced it made me a better reporter in the long run. I'd write, write and write. It also got me into scouring the web constantly, trying to find the next cool thing to write about (thanks for the free investigative reporting class blogger!).

During my weird and wild journey through blogging, I got hooked on a few writers, one of them being Regina Lynn, a blogger, author and all around lovely woman who has been writing for Wired.com for more than five years.

Now Regina is bowing out. I'm bummed. I've read, laughed, nodded in approval and learned new things with her every Friday for the last several years. Here's to you Regina. Thanks for being a bit of an inspiration.

On Digital Strategy, Powerpoint

I work at an agency that loves its "decks," which is a really dumb way of saying Power Point. I find deck writing very frustrating - mostly because the people you'll inevitably present the deck to have no desire to sit through 20 to 50 slides of what you're already telling them anyway.



Sure, strategy is really important, and I'm of the opinion you shouldn't even bother creating concept creative without it, but there is a point where you just need to tell a client what the hell you're going to do for them.

I learned this first hand during a recent presentation to a group of people that I would classify as "light-tech" clients. I believe you can classify people in the modern business environment into three tech categories:

*Non-Tech Adopters
*Telecom Adopters
*All Tech Adopters


I, unfortunately, was presenting a very long, strategically sound deck for an "all tech" audience that was very clearly a group of Telecom adopters. How do I know? They were all furiously typing away on their Blackberries, as I presented on some very cool Web 2.0 applications we planned to use to build their brand. Not to mention, when I asked how many of them knew what a "blog" was, only two of the 10 in the room raised their hand.

So, we ditched the deck after five slides and proceeded to wing it on the strategy. In the long run, it went very well. Maybe I need to ditch the deck more often.