Disqus - Latest Comments for Stephen

Re: A consumer complaint about Consumer Reports (Scripting News)

Stephen — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:29:04 -0000

How frustrating! And admirable that you want to cut down on clutter.

You could always donate the magazine to a school, library or neighbor, I guess.

Re: Generational Marketing

Stephen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:04:21 -0000

Great post and a great question!

I just missed getting a razor by a few years, but this seems like a great campaign. Gillette pretty much owns the razor market now and I'm sure this is one reason why.

I suppose the other examples one can give (though one not as positive) is the sending out of Lucky Strike cigarettes and Hershey bars to soldiers at the front during World War II. That certainly cemented brand loyalty for both for that entire generation of soldiers.

I'm sure other companies did the same thing, with the thought of building a brand among the generation who went to war.

Re: The Major Celebrities are TAKING OVER TWITTER! Here’s the List!

Stephen — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 01:17:42 -0000

@brentspiner and @wilw (Wil Wheaton/Wil Crusher) and also @georgetakei from TOS.

That other fellow from CNN Headline News, Lemon or Limon something. He mentions twitter and reads from his account on air all the time.

Raving CNN lunatic Jack Cafferty is @jackcafferty if you want to participate in his daily (boring, tedious) "bash the Republicans" commentary on Wolf's show.

Re: Sing a song of politics

Stephen — Thu, 17 May 2007 07:13:56 -0000

People talk about me, baby

Say I'm doin' you wrong, doin' you wrong

Well, don't you worry baby

Don't worry

Cause I'm right here, right here, right here, right here at home

I'm a joker

I'm a smoker

I'm a midnight toker

I sure don't want to hurt no one

Re: AUSTRALIA-PEOPLE-PARIS HILTON

Stephen — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:02:38 -0000

LOL The "(L)" was needed here? Seriously, was that a joke? Bec. it was a good one!

Re: How to Destroy Your Twitter Brand in Minutes

Stephen — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:54:17 -0000

Obviously a major meltdown. But why were so many of his followers deleted?

That bit of Obama-arrogance was just a delicious bonus. But I guess we can't fault him, since there's a HUGE amount of that going around, right? ;-)

Re: 2009/02/04/hollywood-gaming-social-media/

Stephen — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:42:29 -0000

It's actually pretty implausible, if only for the small fact that it was highly damaging to his name, and to his "brand" if you will.

Otherwise, the *concept* of a fake outburst is surely plausible, but I'm not sure even Hollywood is that cynical that it would put out a big star's filthy rant and expect it to be accepted as a positive for his film.

Re: 2009/02/05/bush-shoe-throwing/

Stephen — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:28:56 -0000

Bush is gone. Will you people PLEASE give it up?

You don't see Righties creating Clinton/Monica under the Oval Office desk apps. That's over, too.

As the first poster says, get over the Bush Derangement Syndrome, please.

And yes, it obviously violated the TOS, as well as common sense, to be glorifying the act of throwing anything at a sitting (or even past) president, which is illegal in both the US and Iraq.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Stephen — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:46:07 -0000

I don't have the answer to monetizing short URLs. Obviously, or I would have sold it to tr.im, which was also my shortener of choice. But what this should open up for discussion is the future of "free use" online. The idea that a business can give away all of its services - bandwidth in this case - and still survive is a very flawed business model. I'm including twitter itself in this. I'm sure investors in twitter are doing so because they want to be "part" of this thing when it begins to make money. What will that be, I wonder? I bet the INVESTORS are wondering, too.

Re: Mashable on Tumblr - New Windows Ad Kills with Cuteness Me: awwwww ...

Stephen — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:51:48 -0000

That is incredibly adorable. Also brilliantly illustrative of how supposedly easy the software is to operate.

As to WHY she's emailing her family. My guess is that she has been kidnapped and is sending the email along with an attachment of her captors' ransom demands. That's the best I can come up with.

The second mystery is to WHOM she is talking. I suppose the answer to that one is obvious: her imaginary friend. She's 4 1/2 for God's sake. It's plausible.

Re: Gary Vaynerchuk - I had a wild day, you? Turning negatives into...

Stephen — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:33:45 -0000

I really enjoyed the video response to your site getting hacked. Telling the truth and getting facts out there quickly is actually the essence of PR! (Not to rag on him, but your PR guy should have been out there immediately, not 24 hours later, BTW. Immediate Response is the new reality, and you had the good sense to know that. Perhaps he does, too.)

I also checked out your video at the 2.0 Expo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4

Wow. Great wisdom there. Very quotable. I quote great people on my twitter account (@nhprman) all the time, and folks will be seeing about five quotes from that one event alone. Now I'm off to YouTube to seek out more of you!

You should write a book about not just wine, but focusing on your motivational talks (I hope you didn't just cringe at that word, because you ARE motivational!)

Later,
Stephen A.

Re: President Obama

Stephen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:48:53 -0000

As an American, I'm rooting for David Cameron to save the world, myself. (Odd reading that, isn't it? Welcome to the world of an American conservative!) Cheers!

Re: Fireside Chat: Google and Tim Ferriss

Stephen — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:55:53 -0000

Hi, Tim. Bought the book this week.

Your quote here, "I don't really believe in personal happiness. I believe in interpersonal happiness." Is profound. I am also glad to learn you didn't outsource the writing of your book.

Question re: the cover: Why is the guy in the hammock? You stress in the book that working 4-hour (or "shorter") weeks is not all about being lazy, but instead, it's about doing what you want to do (languages, travel, etc.) So why the man in the hammock "chilaxing" as the kids say today?

Also, do you think spending time talking to Google and tech conferences is worthwhile? You minimize and somewhat disdain the use of email, PDAs/phones and other technologies, and clearly, these folks can't start working 4-hour weeks, as you acknowledge. You say in another video your target market isn't someone who can't pay the bills. Why not? Surely they are the ones who most need it, not snarky overpaid techies.

Re: 5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People

Stephen — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:55:43 -0000

Tim, I know you place tremendous value on your time so I’ll be brief.

I liked this post.

Your book is quite inspiring to me and has been for others with whom I've shared it.

I have launched a few microbusinesses and am testing out which ones are going to be moving forward and perhaps one day soon becoming my “muse.”

I was curious whether you have any suggestions about what you have used, and what micropreneurs with NO cash or little cash can use, in the way of new media and old media guerrilla marketing techniques.

Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Yours,
Stephen A.

(I realize, of course, that this response is probably too cute by half. But nevertheless, the question is a serious one.)

Re: Trading Places with Indian Outsourcers

Stephen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:21:16 -0000

I think some of the critical comments here make some important points.

Americans who are thinking that exporting the jobs overseas will be easy are often in for a rude awakening about just how “foreign” the culture of the new workers are (as if we would expect them NOT to be “foreign”?) To ignore the caste system, different values, a wildly different work ethic (some positive, like not complaining as much, some not, such as deciding deadlines are just about meaningless) is extremely short-sighted.

The appeal to greed, i.e. “we can get it done dirt cheep” is indeed an appeal to near-slave-like labor, at its core. Let’s not kid ourselves. We can rationalize it, as these videos do, but for many CEOs obsessed with next month’s bottom line rather than the long-term value of high wages and a growing middle class HERE, that’s exactly as they see it. To say “Well, 20 cents an hour is a LOT more than they used to get” seems to cut out all the morality in the decision. While it’s not *technical* slavery, the comment above that we aren’t getting the full picture with this one family is a valid one. I’d like to see the guy struggling on extremely low wages interviewed. Some shows (Dateline, I believe) have shown these workers and how they’re treated.

Exporting menial tasks like research, email and phone banking may be easy and may even make sense. But if ALL jobs, including white collar jobs, can be exported to India and China, exactly WHAT are Americans going to be doing to create wealth? Sell junk on eBay? Surely someone must realize that dramatically falling wages, which we’ve seen in the last decade, leads to more debt and eventually less BUYING. Where will China be without a strong US middle class to buy their stuff? Unemployed.

I’ll also briefly note that in Tim’s book (chapter 8, p.114 US edition) Esquire editor AJ Jacobs hails outsourcing and specifically praises his Bangalore-based digital assistant “Honey” as a wonder worker. He cites an email that she writes to get a tourist board off his back. To end their constant stream of emails, she writes, in part: “Currently, these mails are not serving right purpose for both of us. Thus, we request to stop sending these mails.” This is illustrative of the cultural divide that separates us from other cultures. But what’s actually appalling about this is that the editor of Esquire magazine gushes about how great this letter is. Apparently, he couldn’t seem to get an American (of any nationality) to write an equally polite, but more grammatically correct “no, thank you” letter. It’s cheaper to find one overseas rather than pay a decent wage to an assistant here, I guess.

Re: Trading Places with Indian Outsourcers

Stephen — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:06:53 -0000

@Wayne. You've got to be kidding by using Boeing as an example of an engineering outsourcing success. Google "outsourcing disaster boeing" and learn that outsourcing 70% of the parts for the new 787 "Dreamliner" was an unmittigated disaster because of the very Time Zone formula you mention for software applied to hardware as well.

Another sobering thing to consider is that, as the engineering outsourcing strategy DOES begin to work, it will mean that Boeing and other companies can proudly be the "assemblers" (or as an "integrator" of parts made elsewhere, as Boeing says even now.) That leaves the head office further and further detached form the REAL engineering decisions, eventually leaving it in simply a managerial role. And at that point, what's the rationale for it staying an American company at all?

A Boeing engineer said in a news story: “Boeing developed much of the materials, manufacturing processes, tooling, tolerances and allowances, and other design features, which are then transferred to suppliers in Japan, Italy and elsewhere. Over time, institutional learning and forgetting will put the suppliers in control of the critical body of knowledge, and Boeing will steadily lose touch with key technical expertise.”

For some, all this is academic, but for others, it highlights the suicidal nature of willy-nilly outsourcing of high-paying jobs from a pure greed motive. The CEOs had better understand that once the high-paying US jobs are gone, their future as over-paid CEO/managers will be going overseas too, as foreign companies simply demand more seats on the board of companies they will virtually (or literally) own anyway.

Re: What Every American Needs to Know (and Do) About FISA Before Wednesday Voting

Stephen — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:31:23 -0000

I submit to you, Tim, that laws allowing up to 45 days of detainment without charges being filed for British Subjects (note: not aliens) and recent calls to make it even longer, are far more restrictive than in the US. If rights anywhere were under seige, they are far more endangered in the UK under Gordon Brown and in the US under Bush/Cheney.

But even that has proven to be much hysteria over nothing, thus far.

There are people like Ellsberg who make a career out of predicting gloom and doom. (Remember hearing about the book "The Great Wall Street Crash of 1990?" peddled back in the 80s?) Don't fall for such Chicken Little nonsense.

And yeah, this is a Right/Left thing, when the Left denies all threats from the Middle East are real, and the Right (the TRUE Right) accepts them as real, but have only taken 1/3rd the measures necessary for fear of appearing jackbooted. Maybe its just as well, but the fact remains that it has NOT gotten out of hand. The Left is using this for poltiical advantage. Simple as that.

Re: Escaping the Amish - Part 2

Stephen — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:33:24 -0000

I am very pleased that Torah has taken the time to answer directly some of the questions that have been posed here. Unlike her, however, I believe some of the early posts pre-emptively scolding anyone who DARED question her account were way out of line. All things and all people may be questioned. That's how truth is uncovered. Shutting down discussion is popular in politics and even science these days, but it's not really productive.

That said, she answered the questions that came to mind, and did so thorougly and with grace. What a lady! My main question was whether her parents were notified right away that she was okay and safe. I'm not a parent, but I suppose if my daughter had disappeared in the middle of the night, I'd be terrified. She appears to have answered in the affirmative in a post above that her parents were called by her uncle.

The story truly is inspiring, and while I have heard rumblings about Amish children being rather severely dealt with when it came to punishment, I've never known any Amish personally. This was, therefore, a very personal and moving account and I think her for it.

Comparing the photo of her in Amish dress and a photo of her and bio on her Website's "about" page, she has clearly emerged as a beautiful, talented and well-traveled woman (20 countries visited!) I can see why Tim was attracted by her story, since she is a bit of a Renaissance woman, doing a LOT of things (boxing?!) and enjoying life to the fullest, just as Tim seems to be doing.

Best of luck with the book!

Re: Escaping the Amish - Part 2

Stephen — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:36:29 -0000

@Bruce

I also recommend a visit to Winter Park, FL. It's a charming little town with quaint shops that seems plopped down in the middle of a state that can in places seem a bit plasticky and fake.

When I lived in Orlando, my family and I used to go there every weekend just to walk around and take in the scenery there.

Re: Stop Rationalizing and Make Hard Decisions: Learning from Dr. King

Stephen — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:59:13 -0000

While I enjoyed the King quote - the man had a great deal of wisdom - I have to wonder whether it's wise to mix business and politics.

I think, Tim, you get a 'pass' for doing this on a blog - a blog is more of a personal statement than a business setting. However, if you decided to make anti-FISA or other political statements at business conferences, meetings or on TV, you would seriously limit your message and effectiveness, not to mention that you would quickly become a pest (or a darling of the media. Depending on where you came down on the political spectrum.) Either way, your business message would be lost in the political controversy of it all, or at the very least, the message would be less effectively delivered, and find fewer receptive ears.

Just like you'd be rather ticked off if you had to hear from a vendor, each time you spoke, "Oh, by the way, have you been saved by the Lord?" or "I need you to sign onto this plan to save Africa." or "I want to take 15 minutes of your time to tell you why we should be boycotting [business name here] because they donated to ___'s political campaign," your comments are alienating to some readers and potential book buyers.

One can choose to frame their political activism in terms of "bravery" if one wishes, and sometimes it certainly is, because it carries with it a cost - lost business, for one.

There's a time and a place for political wrangling. The workplace? Probably not. A work-related blog? Tough call, but probably not.

Personally, I find it's getting tiresome to discuss politics at all. I throw my talking points to the other guy, and he throws his back at me. Boring. Pointless. Convinces few, alienates many.

I also find it hilarious that someone would quote that Spanish Marxist leader here. I wonder what she would have said about the 4-hour workweek. Or capitalism. Or outsourcing to Third World nations. I do wish people would think things through before they post.

In the interest of balance - and perhaps idiocy - here's another inspiring quote: "Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep." - Mussolini.

Re: Brink's Home Security Changes Name As Firm Goes Public | AHN

Stephen — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:05:10 -0000

I'm sorry, but color me totally unimpressed. How does THIS name and logo, which sounds and looks like a Broadband Internet Provider, tell me about their "legacy?" I fail to see the connection.

It is a terrible shame that the name couldn't remain Brinks, but this new name conveys nothing, other than perhaps weakness, blandness and dullness.

The employees must be devastated.

Re: In The News: “Meet candidate … who IS this guy?”

Stephen — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:30:27 -0000

Yet another snarky, liberal reporter trashes a conservative. Perfect.

Don't believe this dismissive little reporter. John Cox is a conservative worth considering, and his campaign is gaining strength across the nation.

Re: tr.im R.I.P.

Stephen — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:51:14 -0000

I'm feeling very badly for you guys at tr.im, and not just because I relied on this service to track hits to my Websites - both personal and business.

I think this raises a lot of issues, one of which is whether "free use" services like this can exist in the long term. I question who would invest in a company with no plan for monetization, and wonder how services like twitter manage to do just that.

For what its worth, I would have paid a small amount to use the service (say, each time I would create a link, or monthly) if there was enhanced content for URL tracking added. But this is a tough decision and a tough business to make profitable.

I feel your pain.

Re: It's A Fake, Fake, Fake, Fake World

Stephen — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:43:51 -0000

This is a well executed and well defined ad. The "fakeness" of the city, aside from being extremely clever, visually, illustrates the uncertainty and "fake" nature of the financial climate we're living in.

The ad hits the right notes, and reinforces the solidity of the brand quite well. I'm sure these ads are backed up in print advertising, and in-bank messages should reinforce it as well.

Re: Video: Kirsten Powers Disagrees with Obama on Honduras

Stephen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:47:17 -0000

Yea, KP! Thanks for posting this. She makes some good points. Buried under some really Leftist and disgustingly biased comments, one Reuters "news" wire report notes that the ex-President failed to even submit a national budget in September last year, as required by law. What was he doing with all that money?

Re: Cool Stuff: Save the Clock Tower T-Shirt

Stephen — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:44:47 -0000

And now the set of BTTF is gone. Save the Clocktower, indeed. What a shame.

Re: Small Business? New Study ID’s Your Problem

Stephen — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:08:52 -0000

And don't forget to mention it on Twitter, your blog and facebook and on other social networking sites, linking back to your Website.

The White Paper sounds like an invaluable tool. Thanks, Mike for this great Website!

Re: How to Achieve Success: 21 Tips to Live By

Stephen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:14:36 -0000

All of these are great secrets to success but I LOVE your additional success secret: Do good for others without expecting anything in return! My personal motto is "Others First" and it works as a great philosophy in business and in life.

http://twitter.com/nhprman

Re: Full Maia Campbell Cracked Out Vid

Stephen — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:41:31 -0000

Gibberish. Just gibberish. Crazy ho. Too bad, though.