All Things Cahill

Friday Music Video: Mission of Burma

15 Aug 08 | Personal | Comments (0)

Forgot to Log Out…

Stalked by those closest

Yup, I left my home office yesterday and didn’t log out.  Not generally a big problem…unless one has a nosy and intrusive wife.  In my case, this is a huge issue.

At some point during the course of the evening, as my wife sifted through my computer looking for evidence that I’m having an affair, or something (for the record, I’m not), she came across Skype.  In addition to contacting one of the members of my Ukrainian development team, she also managed to find the “Live” button.  Skype Live is a free form chat service that is just one feature of the Skype Voice Over IP system, a system I use to keep my phone bills down, to chat with my widely disparate team, etc.  I don’t use the “Live” service.  Never have, never will…

About Skype Live Skypecasts:

Skypecasts™ are large, hosted calls on Skype with up to 100 people participating from anywhere in the world. They let you join live conversations, connect with new people and have fun. It’s free to create, host and join Skypecasts.

Apparently the Skype Live service allows you to chat with other people around the world, and as with many chat services, the topics of discussion are apparently UFO’s, Freemasons and, as you’d expect, sex..  So of course you’ll find users like “Big t*t Girl 34d” on it.

If my wife had bothered to talk to me, I’d have explained, after questioning her as to why she feels the need to rummage through my computer.  She didn’t ask.  Instead she’s left me a pile of torn up pictures and letters filled with virtually incomprehensible ramblings.

The wife has been watching too many Lifetime movies. Here are three important points that Lifetime (and my wife) have gotten wrong:

• It is unacceptable to destroy personal property (photos) just because you are angry.
• It is unacceptable to rummage someone’s computer, especially when it is used for work.
• It is most assuredly unacceptable to spy on those you supposedly care about.

If you wanted to know, ask…so I can tell you to your face that most of what you want to know is none of your damned business.

Oh that this were the first time, but I have suffered similar indignities over the Meebo Rooms feature in Meebo, my preferred chat service, etc.  I’ve also had every phone number in my cell phone called at 2am in the morning…so if you get a call from my phone and it’s a woman asking “who’s this”, it’s Mary Jane.

Yes, I password protect everything.  If I’m not utterly diligent in turning on security, logging of, etc., this is what happens. Frankly, it’s becoming obvious that there is only one effective solution.

(Update: I found later in the day that she had attempted to turn on a service for Skype that would record all my phone calls, called Pretty May which isn’t really designed to do what she wanted.  I simply have no words to express my dismay.)

Tags: having an affair, Mary Jane Cahill, ramblings, skype, skypecasts, spying online\, voice over ip service

07 Aug 08 | Personal | Comments (0)

To Edit or Not To Edit…

I was listening to This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte this morning and the gang got onto a topic that I’ve been thinking alot about lately: as bloggers, what should we do when we need to edit live posts?

The topic was prompted by Xeni Jardin’s purging of every single reference (among the hundreds) to Violet Blue on BoingBoing.com with no notice. That matter’s been covered to death but you can catch up with the story here in the LA Times.

Where I come in is this: I received an alpha software push yesterday, and since I hadn’t checked my personal email, I didn’t realize that’s what it was. I thought the software had gone to regular release, so I blogged about it. A little while later my buddy who pushed the software gave me a ring at the behest of his PR firm. They were a little concerned that they might lose some of the more mainstream press if they realized I’d scooped them.

My thinking was very simple on this issue: if I’d read my darned email, I never would have published. So I went ahead and unpublished the piece. Now I realize that would send a Journalism School professor into absolute fits. But my position is that I reserve the right to correct my mistakes, and I will do my best to make sure where it actually matters (such as a factual correction) to make a notation. Similarly, I do my best to disclose if I have a vested interest in something I right about.

So let’s take the case in point of my post on the Tampa Tribune last week. Morris noted that I’d had their name wrong in the first version of the post via my comments feature. So I commented back, saying that I’d fixed that. The question is, does merely noting the change (a day or two later) in the comments suffice? Or should I be noting changes in the body, say at the bottom with italics? Some suggest using the strikethrough to show that it’s been changed, but I really don’t like that.

Further to the point, I will frequently publish a post, then continue to edit, usually fixing formatting, spelling, etc. That’s exactly the case with this entire paragraph which I’ve added after I hit the publish button. In many cases, I fix things because as I give it a read, I find that I made absolutely no sense, or didn’t make my point as well as I could have. Does that actually necessitate a note? Or can I invoke the “15 minute rule” wherein editing anything I post is fair game for 15 minutes.

The bigger question is that as a blogger, how much time should I be spending trying to adhere to the old school standards of journalism?

Tags: bloggers, blogging standards, journalism school, leo laporte, this week in tech, violet blue, xeni jardin

15 Jul 08 | Personal | Comments (0)

Social Media - Participation Rates Much Lower Than We Thought…

Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester has a great post up entitled ” Why Some Don’t Need to Join the Conversation“. The basic premise is that even though social media has been so very hot in the past year or two, actual participation by users remains at a relatively low percentage of overall visitors.

To prove my point, let’s start with data: In most markets, (even youth) there are no bars that span 100% for creators. In fact, 18-24 year olds in United States only are creators 39% of the time. 45-54 year olds in UK only create online content a paltry 6%, although they are critics 11% of the time.

So what does this tell us? Not everyone is part of the online dialog exchange. Not everyone will ever be part of the online conversation.

This point has really been driven home lately to me as I’ve become more directly involved in the Reel-Time Community again. In discourse with a few readers, I’ve mentioned “well, you’ve only been a member for the past two years,” only to be told that they were actually lurkers back well into the last decade. In two distinct cases, that means they waited at least 8 years before registering or posting on a site they use almost daily.

So what’s it all mean? My feeling now is that you’ve got to assume that the active participants on your site are the tip of the iceberg. They’re responsible for helping to make the experience rich and vibrant, but you’ve got to realize that many of your dedicated users may actually never really contribute.

New information? Not hardly…we’ve been discussing the lurker factor on online bulletin boards since pre-internet days.

Tags: bulletin boards, forrester, jeremiah owyang, lurkers, participation rates, social media

10 Jul 08 | Online Media, Personal, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | Comments (2)

Twitter, FriendFeed and Overexposure of the Personal Brand

I’ve said it before, but this post especially requires that I state it clearly again: I am a New England Yankee.

That means that I possibly have a heightened sense of propriety and generally would consider a lot of things marketing-wise as crossing the line that some of you might not have a problem with.

I’m noticing lately that a lot of marketing types are spending a lot of time on micro-blogging tools such as Twitter, FriendFeed (the new darling), Plurk, etc. I’m sure many have convinced themselves that a lot of what they are doing is “creating social media brand awareness” for their products. The truth is that Twitter is more about branding for the personal brand, and as such I find in most cases, it creates a level of over exposure that’s downright harmful to your personal brand.

Think about Jason Calacanis, who was for a while offering all kinds of contests, giveaways, etc. via Twitter, trying to increase the awareness of the Majalo Search Engine (disclosure: I signed up to contribute when it first started, but honestly never did produce any results for them). For a time, it seemed that the Twitter stream I was getting was all Jason, all the time. “I’m going to have lunch with xxx here. Burritos, yum” or something like that. The signal to noise ratio was so high that I really began to dislike what Calacanis was doing. I didn’t even know him and I was starting to develop a strong dislike.

Jason mentioned on the This Week in Tech podcast this week that he has a lot of people who can’t stand his online persona, but actually become good friends when he meets them. And for the record, I really enjoy hearing Calacanis on podcasts, and I’m sure I’d like him if we were to sit down for a beer sometime. However the Twitterati Calacanis was, for a time, utterly annoying.

Similarly Jeremiah Owyang - he’s been a perennial link in my posts, but when Forrester did their conference in March this year, I had to un-follow him for the time being, I just didn’t need to know whenever anyone decided to go to the bathroom at the conference, or what specific CEO he was talking to.

On the other side, I see a lot of the Twitterati catering to prurient interests to build their following. Yes, sex sells, for the most part, you’re selling yourself here. Do you really want the interest that brings? If you’re even thinking about that, you might want to talk to Ariel Waldman, community manager at Pownce, who’s now got her own stalker, with all the fun that brings. Oh joy!

The problem we have is that so many of us are making the mistake off blending our personal and our professional lives. In business, I prefer not to be known for my ability to consume Mojitos…although personally I really like them. Yet, I blend my Twitter posts with a weird mix of both professional and personal information (yeah, do as I say, not as I do).

I think too many of the Twitterati are making the fundamental mistake of overexposing their personal brand via social networking, to their personal and professional detriment. Your thoughts?

Tags: ariel waldman, blogging tools, brand awareness, crossing the line, jason calacanis, jeremiah owyang, personal brand, signal to noise ratio, twitter

09 Jul 08 | Online Media, Personal, Social Networking, Web 2.0, marketing | Comments (0)

Steve Rubel: A Perfect Storm for Print Media?

It’s getting to the point of irrelevance…but yet another good piece with yet another reason print media is doomed…this time from Steve Rubel at Micropersuation (and Edelman Digital).

Consider this a rather simplistic theory for a Saturday morning. However, it’s my view that - as if they didn’t have enough to worry about - newspaper and magazine publishers may see a perfect storm accelerate if gas prices continue to escalate. There are three factors at work here - some go beyond the current economic situation.

For starters, as gas prices go up, so will the distribution costs. This could have a significant impact on margins. However, there are larger societal factors at bay here too.

Second, there’s a greater awareness among consumers of their environmental impact. At the Forbes Online Brand Summit earlier this year, Jeff Cole from USC Annenberg predicted that as this broadens, consumers will cut back on print in favor of digital media. I think he’s right.

So at the very same time that they’re under the toughest pressure for cost cutting they’ve ever faced, the distribution costs will go through the roof.  In fact, throughout the organization, print uses a whole lot of petrochemicals.  Think ink, think lubricants for presses, and obviously the delivery trucks.

I could go on, but this isn’t even fun anymore.  The model is broken, time to find a new delivery mechanism…oh, wait…;-)

On the other side, I’d heard about a focus group run a few years ago at The Washington Post.  As thanks for taking part, they wanted to give the participants a free subcription.  A good percentage refused.  They asked why.  The people said they didn’t want to have to deal with the old papers.  It was such an eye opener, the Post actually began looking into taking the papers back, but they found most readers didn’t even want to have to put them back outside their door to be picked up.  While anecdotal, you can see where the green concerns may really catch up with them.

Tags: doomed newspapers, gas prices, newspaper recycling, print media, steve rubel

05 Jul 08 | Personal | Comments (0)

Harvard Business Review Criticizes “Long Tail”

Yup, apparently the fine folks at the Harvard Business Review have been looking, and the mantra of web marketing, “The Long Tail” apparently may be long, but it’s also very flat, almost impossible to monetize and it smells really bad (okay, maybe it doesn’t actually smell…).

The patterns that emerge in my research suggest that we won’t soon leave what Anderson calls “the water cooler era.” These patterns are far from new: They were described by William McPhee in the early 1960s, in Formal Theories of Mass Behavior. McPhee’s “theory of exposure” (see the sidebar “Consumers in the Head and Tail”) offers two relevant empirical generalizations: First, that a disproportionately large share of the audience for popular products consists of relatively light consumers, whereas a disproportionately large share of the audience for obscure products consists of relatively heavy consumers; and second, that consumers of obscure products generally appreciate them less than they do popular products. McPhee explored his theories in settings that typically provided fewer than a dozen alternatives. But my research reveals that his findings also hold true for the enormous assortments found online, even when sophisticated recommendation engines aim to stimulate demand for long-tail products.

Yeah, what he said… From what I get, he’s saying that we ought to concentrate on our popular products.  The  folks who by the strange deep catalog stuff are a flash in the pan.  It kind of makes sense to me…

To make it even more interesting, Long Tail author Chris Anderson responded :

Let me start by saying that the paper looks rock solid and I’m sure her analysis is accurate. But there is a subtle difference in the way we define the Long Tail, especially in the definitions of “head” and “tail”, that leads to very different results.

The best example of this is in what she describes as a growing “concentration” of sales around a relatively small number of blockbuster titles. In the Rhapsody data, she finds, the top 10% of titles (out of more than a million in that data sample) accounted for 78% of all plays, and the top 1% account for 32% of all plays. That sounds pretty concentrated around the head, until you reflect, as she notes, that “one percent of a million is still 10,000–[...]equal to the entire music inventory of a typical Wal-Mart store.”

Basically it comes down to the matter of defining “head” and “tail” which Anderson notes in his piece.  I strongly suggest reading both if you’re into marketing. After all. who doesn’t like a good marketing rumble.

Okay, I’m now wondering why I am blogging from my office att 5:45 on a Friday…see ya.

Tags: chris anderson, harvard, harvardbusinessonline, hbr articles, hbsp, long tail, new marketing

27 Jun 08 | Personal, marketing | Comments (2)

Friday Music Video: Grace Potter & the Nocturnals

Yes…again…I love Grace…

Tags: friday music video, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

27 Jun 08 | Personal | Comments (0)

Wordpress Security 101

Last Wednesday I delivered a presentation entitled “Wordpress Security 101″ which got the discussions started in earnest about Wordpress Security among our team.

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Here are the takeaways:

• Keep your blog up to date
• Don’t use plugins that aren’t in general public use unless you know who wrote them or have thoroughly reviewed the code
• Forms for reader upload/feedback are the single biggest point of attack - be sure if you code one you use the Wordpress “Nonce” function to keep junk off your server
• Watch out for other programs you may add to your site
• Keep up to date on both OS and DB - if your host doesn’t do this, get a new host
• Keep your Wordpress installation up to date.  Recent versions will warn you that there is an update available
• Remove the XML-RPC file if you don’t use an external blog editing program.

Tags: blog security, Wordpress, Wordpress Security

23 Jun 08 | Personal | Comments (2)

Performance Review Season

Have some fun, when asked for your accomplishments this year, send these to your manager:

1. Successfully engineered soft landing of Phoenix Space Craft on Mars.  Monetized image feed via Nasa website, singlehandedly allowing corporation to double revenue projections.
2. Developed and released vaccine for AIDS, saving millions of lives in the African subcontinent alone.
3. Developed plan for World Peace, which will be implemented in 3^rd quarter this year.
4. Successfully attained copyright for the word “The” allowing the company to profit from virtually every written communication ever made.
5. Invented Velcro, perhaps you’ve heard of it.;

Also, I plan in the next quarter to be the first astronaut to walk on the Sun…

12 Jun 08 | Personal | Comments (0)