Listening to this song on the ipod in my new cube wishing there was a way to be more productive about being less productive. What happens is this: creativity is something that breathes not something that happens. You can no more stop it than you can change it’s nature. Which brings us to punctuated equilibrium. the idea that when–not if–things change, they do it in a drastic way, or at least more so than you thought they would. Who can know.

Still the character in Davin Byrne’s song Make Believe Mambo is someone I used to be, and in some ways still am. I wanna wear footy pajamas, not care that everyone can see my underwear, say things that are the strangest in the room and what everyone is thinking.

Is that a personal brand?

-M

this is a semi-ongoing series I’m doing now that I am a Social Media Marketing Expert. Tell me what you think. Hopefully I can come to some conclusions that will make me look smart.

Presenting and linking to photos

Photos are awesome. Even though “text attracts attention before graphics,” you have to have pictures in your web content or people will get scared and run away. And by run away I mean click over to youtube to watch skiBASE jumping Videos.

Social Media Marketing is about a lot of things, but also about multiple content vectors . (I made that up just now…) OR, it’s about having lots of ways into and out of your site, all while keeping the user looking at your content.

Example: Photos. What good does it do to have your own image folder on your server that’s not searchable, or viewable? Proprietary photo galleries are a little better, but still locked to your website. If you use a photo hosting service like Smugmug, Picasa or, my personal favorite, Flickr you can extend your content without much effort. These services are cheep, easy to use, and have MILLIONS of users viewing, commenting on and searching for pictures that interest them.

Use your website to give people what they want, to click around and look at pictures, read captions and make comments. And use the photo hosting service to funnel traffic to your content.

So here’s my statement: Always use a stand alone photo hosting service for your photos. Always link an image embedded in your content back to the image in your photo stream. And always have a way to get from your photo stream back to your content. This lets you maximize links and SEO, provide a better user experience, and foster community.

There. What do you think of that? (keep in mind that I AM an expert…)

Up next: Why long, rambling, authoritative, search-baiting, header-riddled, ZERO graphic blog posts with no examples or practical solutions are lame…

-M

Yeah, I hope fiction wins. Reality is over rated (I’ve seen the video on youtube).

Here’s a link to a local blog “Evolution of the Me.” A great post. Something I can’t steal, but I can link to it.

And since I like to have visuals and it fits the topic:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPqVMYPU2L8]

-M

it’s pretty incestuous here… -Kyle Kozar

So yesterday I was chilling with the RBP drinkin’ PBR and chatting with Kyle, Noah, Mike, Reid, and the gang. The above quote came from me asking questions about how they came together, got hooked up with the people they’re hooked up with. (more…)

This is what blogs are for.-M

Read in the RGJ today about the two sites for a proposed Minor league ball park. One site is downtown and one is on the Grand Sierra Resort. First con listed in the sidebar for the downtown site is:

“A sold-out game will generate 1,000 vehicle trips downtown, assuming 4,000 take the bus, walk, taxi or a bicycle, according to the traffic study.”

Then there are the typical knowitall comments criticizing Renoites for driving too much and calls for more parking. But holy crap! If we can get 5000 people to go to an event downtown and have 4000 (that’s four fifths) of them leave their cars @ home it would be freaking awesome!

You can’t swing a dead cat downtown without hitting a parking garage. I can’t see paying tax dollars for redundant parking under the assumption that people are too worthless to walk from the Silver Pleagueacy to 2nd and Evans. At some point it’s got to be cheaper to telecast the game so people don’t have to leave their homes.

-M

completely unrelated photo of me provided @ no extra charge.

It had broken down the night before, and I thought surely someone would have come along and driven me into Tonopah, but no one ever did. Towards morning it became a game, and I stayed awake just to prove that no one would come down the highway. I was alone, so I wasn’t sure who the proof would have fallen on, but it ended up not mattering much. I eventually fell asleep sitting against the flat tire. The grit from the road ground into the skin of my butt so that I could feel it cold and numb when I finally stood up. (more…)

Sometimes, something comes along and it isn’t immediately clear if it is coming or going, positive or negative, like a titration with an ambiguous endpoint. Once the liquid starts to change it is neither one nor the other until it has completely become something else at which point you’ve leaned something fundamental.

I’m not sure I feel the need to debate which is which, but it’s ambiguous art that will ultimately force us to examine our own circumstances.

With that, a video posted to The Holland Project’s blog:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iOw8LD7Igc]

-M

So here’s the dillema: cable TV, $60/month (or some shit); Youtube, free. You make the call. For now, this is better than any recent sit-com I’ve seen, plus it only takes a minute or two to watch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q29CY76Mo9U]

plus it has boobies.

-M

Found a cool blog. This is the best post I’ve read there. One of the things I loved about LOTR all the years was the maps. Even in the paperbacks without color. It’s amazing the amount of thought people are able to put into things!

-M