Tech. Business. Life.

So - wow - a whole summer with no posting.  I suppose you could say I’ve been busy, but really, I’ve just been lazy.  You can only do so much before something falls off - and this blog was it.

I’m working on several projects at the moment - not the least of which is still pushing to get HHOD off the ground.  I pursuit of that, I’ve moved back to working completely from home, cutting down my hours at the agency significantly.  This has allowed me to focus more on my clients, as well as new projects to enhance my personal life and hopefully help fund HHOD.

I’ve been looking in to a lot of personal development tactics to go along with this - and I can honestly say, over the last 6 weeks, my overall level of happiness and productivity has skyrocketed.

I’m also currently shopping for some sort of fitness program to get back into the swing of things - since I moved, I’ve been lax in hitting the gym.  Thankfully, I haven’t put any of the weight I lost back on, but I doubt very seriously if I could hit the sidewalk and cruise through a 4 mile run like I could have 4 months ago.

I’ll try my best to keep things posted here - lots of stuff going on to offer my completely unqualified opinion on

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Here’s another link to the Gmail Blog.

Folks - you can now synch your Google Calendar with your Outlook Calendar.

My life has officially changed. Now, if they could just make it where I could synch my date book with Google Calendar. A USB planner anyone?

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So, I tried to set up a Facebook Ad last night.  Several things went wrong, which happens.  My problem is how things get handled, and how the entire process goes down.

Maybe I should have titled this - “Facebook Ads User Experience - Worse than Overture Was”

Step one - I want to remove the old credit card from when I was running an ad for a client (pretty miserable failure, by the way, cheap but uneffective).  I can’t….why?  Apparently I have a payment pending.  Of course, I haven’t run the ad since December, but there is still something pending.  Whatever.

I figure I’ll step around this little hiccup by adding in my card, and making that my primary card.  I added in my credit card, but after looking around some, couldn’t find how to make it my primary card.  Great.

So, I set up my new ad - get an image, set up the landing page - submit…and - nothing.  No confirmation, no notifications, nothing.  Ugh.  I figure it’s going through an approval process, so I patiently wait till this morning.

I log in - nothing.  No new ad campaign running.  I finally stumble my way into the payment methods interface - and figure out I have to click the “?” to make my card the primary card.  Turns out, that card was “unverified” because I typed in the number incorrectly.  The issue with that - IF I HADN’T STUMBLED ACROSS THAT, I’D HAVE NEVER KNOWN!!!!!!

What kind of shoddy UI designer lets something HUGE like that get through?  If the credit card number is wrong, tell somebody.  Thank goodness this wasn’t some amazingly time-sensitive project I was working on.

End Rant.

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Here’s a link to some cool things that you can do with gmail. I especially like the thought of adding the plus to my address…i.e. scottrandolph+work@gmail.com. Then, I use that address to sign up for work related newsletters, and have those filter into the right place upon arrival in my inbox.

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So, I was reading (actually IN the magazine, not online, heck yeah!) this article from Fast Company.

Before I go off on this rant that I feel welling up, I’m going to make a couple confessions -

1) These guys are probably considerably smarter than me
2) I’ve never read “The Tipping Point” - I just listed it in my favorites on Facebook because I wanted to look cool.

Ok - so, the argument here is whether or not trends are started by “Influencers” or randomly created by the masses.  There are 3-4 books on the subject, billions of dollars spent “influencing” people each year, and 5 pages inside the magazine devoted to this.

To which I say - “BAH!”

Something that needs to be stated is that all this crap is just that - crap.  It’s stuff created by marketers to sell books to other marketers, to help them be better at getting clients to spend the aforementioned billions of dollars.  I can hear the boardroom now - “Bob, sales are tanking this quarter, what’s the deal with this big ad agency you signed us on with?” “Well, Mr. CEO, I know sales are slumping but our Social Strategist got us a mention on Scoble’s blog!!”

Phooey.

The only person in the world whose advice directly influences my actions is my mother - and that is more out of guilt than of any real thought that she may know what kind of shoes are in this season.  Here’s an idea folks - save your money trying to get in front of ‘influencers’ - apply that towards research, or great creative talent, or an amazing designer, or even…..*gasp* quality production.  Make something that adds value to other people’s lives and don’t rely on the fickle masses and their fads.

Because fads fade.  Great, meaningful, products and services stick around. Real marketing is discovering how and when to take those products and services to market.

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