NBC is leaving iTunes

It seems as if NBC has decided to not renew its contract with iTunes with what appears to be an attempt to bring everything to hulu.com.

Why kill a revenue stream? I have downloaded plenty of Office episodes on iTunes and liked it alot. Some have the argument, that watching the episodes on an iPod is not what it was meant for, but those are short sided in that I can watch them on my 20″ iMac or stream them with appletv.

Anyway..sounds like NBC is getting greedy and doesn’t want to play in the sandbox nicely with everyone.

Hey NBC……I have a saying that I tell alot of people: “Pigs go to slaughter and hogs live forever”

Seems like NBC is being quite the little pig.

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Happy Birthday Cisco….

I read that today in 1984 Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner, 2 Stanford staff computer employees established Cisco Systems.

I currently use Cisco products and I find them to be really great. So happy 23rd birthday Cisco.

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cisco, routers, switchs, security, wireless, network management, networking, virtualization

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How to run a corporate blog.

The Wired How To Wiki has a blurb taken from Steve Rubel about how to run a corporate blog.

I think I would add into those thoughtful comments:

A. Engage in a 2 way conversation with the readers

B. Find out and interact with those who read your blog and invite them to guest blog with you.

C. Collaborate. Collaborate. Collaborate

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Spiceworks..The Free IT Desktop

Nick over at Techcrunch is reporting that Spiceworks rasied over $8 million. Ok..so big deal right…..right……

What the real story is that Spiceworks offers an IT Desktop suite that is completely free and ad supported. Basically, as people use the software they are served up ads via a sidebar using AdSense.

My take….so long as the software does what it says it will do and provides value to an organization, then why the hell not? I wish Spiceworks all the best. Must be fun to work in their marketing department…cause the main goal is to seed and infiltrate the market with free software.

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spiceworks, techcrunch, AdSense, google, free software, new markeiting, business, IT, help desk, monitoring, inventory

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Don’t hate spam…..embrace it.

You get spam and I get spam. Some get more spam than others.

Personally I love spam….ok..I don’t really love it, but I kinda find it funny. I think its hilarious that there are so many rich former kings and barristers willing to give me money. I find it great that someone has found out that they can increase my penis size naturally and let me have a longer erection. I find it funny that some company that I have never heard of is about to explode in the market and that its only 15c right now. I find it interesting that Shauna..the uber hooker is willing to meet up in my area and even willing to show me herself on cam.

I can go on and on..but one thing is for sure…..I know spam from a million miles away and rather than getting mad at it, I just laugh it off. So here is my experiment…c’mon you spammers..show me what you got. I just set up a new email address…..I challenge you….lets see how fast you can fill it up. I aint afraid of you.

So here is it: sendmeemailplease@yahoo.com

Bring it you goofs.

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A Google Phone?

A completely unsubstantiated rumor surfaced today indicating that Google is 2 weeks away from the launch of a GPhone.

Some are saying that it would be a marketing disaster, but I think it would be a marketing homerun. Nothing like keeping things a secret and then springing it on everyone. Look at the iPhone…it was hyped for months and has done well. If Google wanted to hype this thing, they would have been overdshadowed by the iPhone hype.

If this rumor is true, Google will hit a homerun.

What are your thoughts?

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Virtual Trade Shows…

Quest Software (where I work) is venturing into the virtual trade show world this coming fall. We have set up an awesome event catered toward Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, Migration and Archiving IT folks. Its a one day virtual event where we also have some great sponsors in Avanade, Cognizant, Microsoft, Unisys and Dell.

Virtual Trade shows I believe are the wave of the future for connecting without leaving your desk. It provides and non invasive way for folks to come and learn more about their industry and vendors who provide some great products. Sure, you don’t get tangible swag like the real trade shows, but you also don’t get jet lag, hotel beds and be away from your family.

I am excited for this event and if you are someone who works with the above technologies I encourage you to check it out. The only thing it will cost you is your time and you just might actually win some really cool swag (like books or xBox’s).

You can learn all about this event here. If you are interested in also hosting an event, the company that we have gone thru is Unisfair who have so far done an outstanding job at assisting us in setting up this event.

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virtual trade show, microsoft, unisfair, cognizant, avanade, unisys, dell, sharepoint, exchange, windows, active directory, IT, network admin, email, email archiving, migration, managment, software, web 2.0, virtual events

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What company would you work for?

I don’t have that much to say today..so I will be make this brief and get to the point. Despite your current position at your current company…is there any company in particular you would want to work for? Either because its cool, they have a free lunch, naptime, game-room, benefits, higher pay or location.

My dream job: My own company making me a decent living…nothing fancy..I don’t need a bazillion dollars…but that I was able to work from my beach house somewhere in Maui and then transfer to somewhere in the mainland with lots of trees and great scenery. My command center would have a birds eye view of something pretty and I would be content to work and watch life pass me by.

Tell me your dream job.

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Happy Birthday Blackberry….

Today in 1984 RIM was founded by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin. Most notably they created the Blackberry which I am sure most of us use. So thanks RIM and Happy Birthday…..

Regards,

A Loyal Crackberry User

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Direct Mail to C-Level and VP folks

Looking at a scenario where we are looking to send a direct mail piece to VP and C-Level folks to invite them to an Executive Level Seminar. Curious as to the success of these direct mail pieces as I have not had too much experience in direct mail to a higher level audience.

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A complete list of Web 2.0 Offerings

Do you have some time to kill? I mean..do you have like the next 3 months straight to do nothing but explore Web 2.0 technologies? If so or if you want to see a really complete list of just about everything out there nicely laid out in a directory style, then visit GO2Web20.net

Crazy long list, but worth the visit.

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Flotzam

Ever hear of Flotzam? Its a Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and RSS mashup. You can either have the app or the screensaver.

Kinda of a cool concept if you are a social network freak. Its not for me, but I am sure there are a ton of folks out there than can get some benefit from this.

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The Big Book of Email Marketing

I was surfing last night and came across something that might be of interest. Its called The Big Book of Email Marketing and its published in pdf format for those that register. It is published by a company called IPT. If you have read it, let me know if its worth the read. If not, wait till I read it and I will let you know.

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The Five Stages of Marketing Accountability

Jon Miller at Marketo has an awesome post on the 5 stages of marketing accountability.

They are.

1. Denial

2. Fear (changed from Anger in original post)

3. Confusion

4. Self Promtion

5. Accountability

See the entire post by him that goes into detail of each stage. Truly good stuff Jon.

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marketing, accountability, ROI, CMO, CEO, CFO, cost center,

Twitter….for business?

There is an article today written by Brian Watson over at CIO insight about how Twitter can be the next cool thing for business communications. According to the article “Though not designed for business, the Twitter micromessaging system could work well for distributed teams and in-conference environments”

I completely disagree with this. I managed a distributed team and I see no value in anyway for them to use Twitter to communicate with me. Call me old or not cutting edge, but what is wrong with the phone, email or even IM to communicate? The very notion of having another platform from which to communicate with a distributed is a bit ridiculous.

If you manage a distributed team or if you have an opinion on this, please let me know, cause I see no value in Twitter in a business setting.

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Great email marketing

I receive alot of email and I often critique vendors on the usability, look and feel and general warm feelies I get when I read their email.

Adobe is one of those companies that I really really like receiving email from. Granted, I don’t use their tools very much, but I do dig their email marketing. Case in point..this email below is super simple and as a great call to action. It’s visually pleasing and I know within 5 seconds what they want me to do.

I have said it before and I will say it again…simple works.

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MEGAVIDEO – Beats YouTube????

I was introduced to a new video site yesterday called MEGAVIDEO. According to their About page “Megavideo is aiming to replace YouTube as the leader in online video.” Hmmmmm…lofty goal and I wish them the best of luck, but it also seems like they are trying to climb Mt. Everest in a swimsuit. I think that instead of preaching that that they want to “beat” YouTube, why not think of a different marketing strategy like “a better alternative to video”.

They have a “10 reasons to use MEGAVIDEO instead of YouTube” video posted on their front page. To me..this is like giving free advertising to YouTube….you never want to say publicly why your product is better or why others should use it over something else…especially when it comes to this stuff. Granted, MEGAVIDEO has a few advantages like 5 gig upload’s, earning money for vids without rewards program, download files and last not but not least “MEGAVIDEO loves you more” (said with a wink and a smile)

I think the pitch of we are better than YouTube will fail and fail big time. Rather than the in your face we are better pitch, differentiate yourselves on your features and let the users decide that this is a better place. Don’t stick your pitch up front and center on your site..its tacky and educated web folks like me can sniff this tactic out.

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Viral Video update…..63,000+ and counting

Chris over at Raw Stylus asked that I update him on our viral video status with YouTube.

I believe the last post I had on this was on April 6th, where I mentioned that we had 21,000 views on YouTube of Quest Software Videos. As of today, we have over 63,000 views on the 51 vids we have posted on YouTube. Some of the most popular videos that I have seen have been the instructional ones where we had an expert presenting. For some reason however, I don’t consider any of these videos viral. I consider this as a part of doing business in the new Enterprise 2.0 model. If one should happen to go viral great, but its nothing that I am counting on.

One of the things that we have learned in doing this process is to keep them simple and educational. Most of the videos that we have on YouTube are recorded webcasts that we have done in the past and all provide a high level of technical knowledge and training. We never set out to have this account to pound our chests and let everyone know how great we are. We simply want to educate folks in our recognized areas of database management, application management and windows management.

I have tasked my team to ensure we have fresh content posted consistently as we do have quite a few people subscribing to our channel. I believe fresh and engaging content keeps our numbers respectable and hopefully people want more.

I am excited to see how our account will progress in the next 6 – 10 months, but I can honestly say I am very optimistic and proud of our current accomplishments.

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7900 emails…

I was on vacation last week. On a whim and because the hotel I was in last week had free wi-fi in the room, I logged on Friday night. To my surprise, I had over 7900 emails in various accounts that I have with my company. I was only gone for a week and this is how many I received. Now granted, I don’t have to, nor would I ever read this many emails (I deleted alot of them due to bounce backs on email campaigns that we ran) but nevertheless, I had to go thru and sort and see which ones needed my attention.

After alot of sorting and deleting, it turns our that about 1200 of them needed my attention and needed my eyes to read, respond and whatever.

Think you get alot of email?