By the numbers:
2010 (year I got married)
16 (blog posts since I got married)
414 (blog posts before I got married)
29 (age when I started this blog)
38 (age currently)
This blog has been on my mind for the past year or so.
With all the events of quitting our jobs and going to Africa and then relocating our lives to New Hampshire, I just thought I would have more to say here.
Has marriage made me non-communicative? Soft?
Yes. Yes it has. To both.
I've changed.
I will say what is on my mind. I had been looking for something for years as a bachelor that I now have: a deep, regular connection and accountability with someone.
And it has taken an edge off me that was driving me toward connectedness to others.
There's something about pain and pursuits that run together. At least for me.
If you know me, the total drop off of my blog posts is probably not a surprise.
But I'm a bit sad to see my most used tag on this blog (activism) has pretty much dried up.
Work takes a lot of personal energy.
That's what it comes down to.
It just does.
And I just never was able to get paid for my activism. I think I would do it in a heart beat if I were to get paid to change the world. Yes. As silent as I've been... I still remain that guy who just wants to change the world.
I just find that I don't have the time or energy to talk about it.
In the end, all Jen and I are doing is donating cash to causes that we hope keeps us in the realm of helping people while we do our daily battles in the corporate (or educational in Jen's case) worlds.
It's not much. Well, it's not much to us.
But perhaps it's a lot to some of the people we are contributing to.
Did you know that the cost of a semester in college in Kenya is about $600 USD?
Did you know there is no such thing as student loans in Kenya and Tanzania? Only the rich attend college and only college grads can escape poverty there.
For the price of a mid-level laptop or an nice ipad, a high school kid can start to make it in Africa.
There is so much we can do with American cash. It can save a life or take one in so many cases where I've been.
It's one of the biggest (and only) tools in my chest right now. The US dollar.
Saturday, December 01, 2012
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
To my friends who feel crushed and frightened for America
It was true 4 years ago and it bears repeating...
First, I want to encourage you. This is *Not* the end of God's love for you and He's not going to let go of you and this country because Barack Obama is President. Please think carefully before you adopt that belief. This happens every 4 years for *somebody*.
Somebody loses every 4 years. And God still loves and blesses all of us who love and bless Him AND those who *don't* love and bless Him. That's what Grace is.
Please, don't give into the sense of apocalyptic and dreadful doom prophecies that always follow things that don't go toward what many people believe to be God's will. Remember the Christian paranoia over the year 2000 millennium bug? None of the apocalyptic predictions came true. I could go on quoting from things like "88 Reason's Jesus will Return in 1988" and claims that the 10-headed dragon from the book of Revelations was the USSR (just before it fell), and predictions that Gorbachev was the Anti-Christ, etc. If you didn't know any of this, I am probably not speaking to you but to a unique community of Charismatic Christian circulating beliefs from the 80s & 90s.
Why are there beliefs that a cultural and economic and spiritual meltdown is coming to America every time a new presidential election comes around? I remember feeling that everything was over when Clinton became president twice for 8 years. But life went on... and actually I would say God was very much deeply involved in my life during those 8 years... how could that be? What if we made as much of our day to day knowledge of injustice issues and ministering to suffering people for the intervening 4 years of a presidency that we do every 4th "magic" 2nd Tuesday in November?
Everything is gonna be ok, friends... no matter how frightened you are of Obama. Remember that your work is not over nor is it destroyed without McCain. It is laziness and learned helplessness to think with a duality that God is with us or against us based on candidate popularity. God is still here. God is still love. He can still be counted on. Follow your Lord and fear not, ok?
Saturday, January 21, 2012
"Singularity: What is it?"
This is an email sent to me by my buddy, Jason M. Adams explaining Singularity (at my request). He is a very smart, thoughtful and trustworthy person in my experience over the past 9 years of knowing him. He blogs here: http://mendicantbug.com
"Singularity: What is it?" By Jason M. Adams
Singularity is the "technological singularity". A singularity in physics is a black hole, basically an end to time and space where both merge and become one or nothing or who knows what. So Kurzweil and vernor venge, two noted futurists and transhumanists, came up with this theory that as time progresses, the distance between life-altering breakthroughs is gradually getting shorter. At some point in the not-so-distant future, we'll reach a point where the distance between breakthroughs is in days or minutes. At this point, we will become something we can't even imagine, because we will be advancing so quickly. The theory is, the singularity will be achieved by a super-intelligent benevolent AI that will give mankind all the gifts that God has refused us.
It's horse shit.
the evidence is starting to suggest technological progress is slowing, not accelerating. we'll probably reach the end of our resources long before any of this, but if we don't, we'll probably max out the learning capacity of the brain to the point that further advancements come very slowly (sometime in the next 100-200 years).
If you're interested in other's who agree with Jason's rebuttal (he's not alone in his "horse shit" synopsis), check out any of the posts in this google search.
"Singularity: What is it?" By Jason M. Adams
Singularity is the "technological singularity". A singularity in physics is a black hole, basically an end to time and space where both merge and become one or nothing or who knows what. So Kurzweil and vernor venge, two noted futurists and transhumanists, came up with this theory that as time progresses, the distance between life-altering breakthroughs is gradually getting shorter. At some point in the not-so-distant future, we'll reach a point where the distance between breakthroughs is in days or minutes. At this point, we will become something we can't even imagine, because we will be advancing so quickly. The theory is, the singularity will be achieved by a super-intelligent benevolent AI that will give mankind all the gifts that God has refused us.
It's horse shit.
the evidence is starting to suggest technological progress is slowing, not accelerating. we'll probably reach the end of our resources long before any of this, but if we don't, we'll probably max out the learning capacity of the brain to the point that further advancements come very slowly (sometime in the next 100-200 years).
If you're interested in other's who agree with Jason's rebuttal (he's not alone in his "horse shit" synopsis), check out any of the posts in this google search.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
HOW TO: Boost sales with Social Media Monitoring and Contextual Advertising
A colleague recently asked me a question. He asked, "How can I advise a new client to get the buzz started on the web around their product."
Here is my response:
For your client....
2 a) Second: Compile a list of "detractors" and "angels" and send directly to the CEO and senior leadership. Then the senior leadership needs to start an action plan (from Crisis PR management and product redesign to corrective advertising and customer retention/recovery, etc.). Action must consistently be implemented by Senior Leadership for as long as the chatter is non-existent or bad and at a high priority every week until a Social Media Manager can be hired. Social media chatter never stops-- it's 24-7. And therefore keyword monitoring cannot stop it's 24-7, too (negative keyword monitoring needs to happen on weekends as well). Studies have shown that negative social media reviews are forcing senior business leadership worldwide to craft "viral failure" strategies and crisis management strategies. Once hired, that manager can then take over the crafting of the "viral failure" and crisis management strategies and recommend and implement new safeguards.
2 b) Next, they need to start rewarding any socially connected "product champions" (angels) who already tend to promote their products for free. Whether they are using Social Mention (free) or the Fortune-100 standard, Radian6 (paid), they need to give their Social Media Guru/staff the responsibility to follow and connect with every possible "Champion" and offer them new products or ask for their pros and cons about existing products. Then the company needs to focus on these champions as their primary and objective sales influencers. More on that next...
3a) Third: Influence Monitoring.
Pick an Influence Ranking tool with an API Both http://www.tunkrank.com and http://www.klout.com have APIs (full disclosure: I'm the Co-founder of TunkRank).
3b) If there are "detractors", start a damage control strategy by determining the Detractor's Influence Ranking." Learning a Detractor's Influence ranking is easy to do and I will walk you through a strategy I wrote for GEICO here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/50983361/How-Tunkrank-makes-you-money
4) Fourth, After your client has created LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare accounts, they need to start cross-promoting their product message to the social media world across all those sites using HootSuite: www.hootsuite.com (best in class right now and free for up to 4 social media accounts). And also tell them to put the "Add This" widget from "addthis.com" prominently onto their web site.
5) Fifth, Advertise (from higher-end all the way to free). If they don't have some kind of social media advertising budget, tell them that they need to carve some money out of the regular advertising budget immediately. Tell them contextual advertising is totally the big bang for the advertising buck because it's true narrowcasting based on targeted and known interests in their products. Once they're on board with contextual advertising, tell them to pick some of the most product-applicable "long-tail" of media that they can find on http://www.federatedmedia.net and take out an ad or 2. Or, if their advertising budget is to small to afford them, tell them to do the same thing with the "long tail" of bloggers here: http://www.text-link-ads.com
RESOURCES
Here's the biggest research collection on Social Media Monitoring (a.k.a. "sentimate analysis" or "text analytics") that I've seen yet:
http://socialmedia-listening.
Also, here are a collection of gem tools I've found over the years that may also help you:
http://www.delicious.com/
Please let me know if this post was helpful to you. It has been successful for others and I hope to make it better with your help.
Here is my response:
For your client....
1 a) The First priority (whether they use a paid product or a free one): they need to buy (or register for a free) "listening platform" product. See Resources below for a list of both free and paid listening platforms. Also, here is a $2000 Forrester report (now free) below about Listening Platform software:
1 b) Then they need to dedicate at least 1 full time employee to Monitor for their product's "detractors" and "angels." Then Create Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts representing the most talked about product(s) (good and bad). Then start "friending/following" (or at least monitoring) those who are "chatting" about the product (both good and bad).
2 a) Second: Compile a list of "detractors" and "angels" and send directly to the CEO and senior leadership. Then the senior leadership needs to start an action plan (from Crisis PR management and product redesign to corrective advertising and customer retention/recovery, etc.). Action must consistently be implemented by Senior Leadership for as long as the chatter is non-existent or bad and at a high priority every week until a Social Media Manager can be hired. Social media chatter never stops-- it's 24-7. And therefore keyword monitoring cannot stop it's 24-7, too (negative keyword monitoring needs to happen on weekends as well). Studies have shown that negative social media reviews are forcing senior business leadership worldwide to craft "viral failure" strategies and crisis management strategies. Once hired, that manager can then take over the crafting of the "viral failure" and crisis management strategies and recommend and implement new safeguards.
2 b) Next, they need to start rewarding any socially connected "product champions" (angels) who already tend to promote their products for free. Whether they are using Social Mention (free) or the Fortune-100 standard, Radian6 (paid), they need to give their Social Media Guru/staff the responsibility to follow and connect with every possible "Champion" and offer them new products or ask for their pros and cons about existing products. Then the company needs to focus on these champions as their primary and objective sales influencers. More on that next...
3a) Third: Influence Monitoring.
Pick an Influence Ranking tool with an API Both http://www.tunkrank.com and http://www.klout.com have APIs (full disclosure: I'm the Co-founder of TunkRank).
3b) If there are "detractors", start a damage control strategy by determining the Detractor's Influence Ranking." Learning a Detractor's Influence ranking is easy to do and I will walk you through a strategy I wrote for GEICO here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/50983361/How-Tunkrank-makes-you-money
4) Fourth, After your client has created LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare accounts, they need to start cross-promoting their product message to the social media world across all those sites using HootSuite: www.hootsuite.com (best in class right now and free for up to 4 social media accounts). And also tell them to put the "Add This" widget from "addthis.com" prominently onto their web site.
5) Fifth, Advertise (from higher-end all the way to free). If they don't have some kind of social media advertising budget, tell them that they need to carve some money out of the regular advertising budget immediately. Tell them contextual advertising is totally the big bang for the advertising buck because it's true narrowcasting based on targeted and known interests in their products. Once they're on board with contextual advertising, tell them to pick some of the most product-applicable "long-tail" of media that they can find on http://www.federatedmedia.net and take out an ad or 2. Or, if their advertising budget is to small to afford them, tell them to do the same thing with the "long tail" of bloggers here: http://www.text-link-ads.com
RESOURCES
Here's the biggest research collection on Social Media Monitoring (a.k.a. "sentimate analysis" or "text analytics") that I've seen yet:
http://socialmedia-listening.
Also, here are a collection of gem tools I've found over the years that may also help you:
http://www.delicious.com/
Please let me know if this post was helpful to you. It has been successful for others and I hope to make it better with your help.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Monday, February 07, 2011
The legality, adavantages and how-to of jailbreaking
The legality, adavantages and how-to of jailbreaking
A friend just asked me what jailbreaking her Verizon (CDMA) means... Here is my response:A basic primer to the legality adavantages and how-to of jailbreaking your iPhone. This should get u started:
http://www.appleiphoneschool.com/what-is-jailbreaking/
(one thing wrong in there is that it "voids your warranty"-- that's only if you return your phone to apple or verizon for repair *without* restoring it to factory default settings first-- which is easy).
FCC also recently ruled jailbreaking to be your LEGAL RIGHT:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/ytech_wguy_tc3236
According to this, you should be able to jailbreak your verizon iphone now:
http://mygadgetnews.com/2011/02/06/verizon-iphone-4-ios-4-2-6-jailbroken-with-greenpois0n/
HERE IS HOW:
http://mygadgetnews.com/2011/02/04/how-to-jailbreak-iphone-4-iphone-3gs-untethered-on-ios-4-2-1-using-greenpois0n-rc5/
A couple cool things jailbreaking allows you to do:
1) Talk FREE (not using you minutes) anywhere in the world using skype *without using any of your service plan minutes* (using the jailbreak app in the Cydia store called 3G Unrestricter)
2) tether to your iPhone and use it as a "thumb-drive" type storage unit and as a wifi-hotspot (an anywhere mobile connection to the Internet for an unlimited number of users) by downloading anf using the jailbreak app in the Cydia store called "my-wi")
LASTLY, here is a post I wrote recommending going 100% paperless by downloading to your iphone and using finarxfax (faxing) and zosh (signing):
http://www.wheresmystapler.net/2010/08/goodbye-paper-it-been-good-36-year-run.html
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