Russian Haiku

A Decade's Birthday
In a few hours I turn 52. My Warholian fifteen minutes of fame happened quickly. I was the first baby of the new year in Aiken, South Carolina with a picture and feature in the paper. My father said I started costing him money from my first breath a little after midnight the first day of January 1958. Payback is a BITCH. I was born on my father's birthday :). In a few hours we lose a decade marked by our ability to take two steps back for every one forward. War, recession and acrimony seem to rule our NOW.

Poetry's Presence
Poetry exists. Against odds, hubris and entropy's pull poets continue to write. Here is a magical Russian Haiku featured on PBSNewshour tonight:

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret,
there, was nothing to desire.

Poet Vera Pavlova

Russian Haiku
Russian Haiku defines our mashup international times. This dying decade's not so hidden poetry is hearing Vera Pavlova's song. Her words sing across space and time directly into our hearts and minds. If this last decade was about building magical infrastructure the next will be a race to hearts and minds. As Steven Johnson suggests in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You both individual minds and collective wisdom improve.

We become smarter and faster not necessarily wiser and better. The hidden secret of Everything Bad is hidden optimism. If our trend is NOT mental entropy then the opposite is likely and Kurzweil's Singularity is Near seems within our grasp:

The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.

The House Poetry Built
Poetry exists against all modern odds. I write from a home at least partially paid for by Magnetic Poetry Kit. The company (Found Objects) and marriage are gone, but I love poetry because of what it does to me not for me. I miss sitting in Vassar's Rose Parlor drinking tea and reading poetry. I miss e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickenson. Perhaps these artists, poetry and afternoon tea are not lost but transformed.

Poetry's New Physics
Physicists teach energy is never lost. Is there a straight line from Wallace Stevens to the Rose Parlor and some previously unknown friend reading this post? If there is a line of thoughtful mental energy then recovery and progress, well hidden at times, is our decade's poetry. Money, jobs and government may be stuck, but our lives are free-er than ever. Is this what U2 means when these Irish modern poets sing about "...the best of us are geniuses of compression" in their masterful No Line On The Horizon?

Is there a better expression of poetry's physics than Hiroshi Sugimoto's Borden Sea photo used eloquently on No Line on the Horizon's cover? Sugimoto's clear horizontal lines lead our lives into a new physics, a genius of compression, a magnetic poetry, a Russian Haiku.

Happy New Year and decade to my friends, family and previously unknown friends reading their first ScentTrail post learning of Martin Marty Smith and wondering who will be the first baby of this new year.

Martin

Kudos for PBSNewshour for keeping poetry alive in their Poetry Series.

Russian Poet Vera Pavlova's moving site.

Learn more about Martin Marty Smith than you ever wanted.

Follow ScentTrail's own Russian Haiku on Twitter.


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Ian's Blog

Thanks For All The Fish
Ian Harris is an anomaly. Ian's brain functions pretty well on its left or right side. He is a techie whose avocation is photography. I am going to use a page from Fish to explain compositional balance to our graphic designer tomorrow. Many of Ian's notes apply to good web design too. Cool blog check it out and follow Ian on Twitter: @IanEHarris

Great job Ian!

Top 10 Keyword Search Groups

What keywords do people search THE MOST?
This is an important question if you are a Director of E-Commerce. If you are a marketer selling anything knowing how the giant online herd is moving is good to know. Even if your single involvement is shopping online reading what keywords people search most may fascinate.

I couldn't easily find the answer to the most popular keyword groups, so I created an index. I used the Top 500 Keywords list for the last 90 days ending 12.26 from a helpful site called Mike's Marketing Tools. That link will take you to a page where Mike keeps his link to a rolling index of the top 500 keyword searches for the last 90 days.

Little did I know how much I chewed off. I copied Mike's report to Excel to assign macro segments to each keyword. Some segments such as Travel, Jobs and online Porn were straightforward (after some searching). There were keywords in languages I've never seen. I categorized sites in Mongolian or whatever as "foreign". Teasing out differences between site names and a keyword's multiple meanings was tricky. Cancer, for example, is a medical term and an astrology sign. Smoothing data into segments took time. There all calls I made after midnight last night that should be changed, but answering the large question of what groups of keywords people search most is now possible (if never final).

Top Keyword Searches By Groups Chart And Table





































Top 10 Keyword Search Groups: 90 Days ending 12.26

1. Online Adult Video Sites (streaming porn)
2. Search (Google et al. )
3. Astrology & Horoscope
5. Pop Culture (Tiger Woods, iPod, movies, books, music)
6. Stores (Wal Mart, Home Depot, Amazon)
7. Social Nets (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter)
8. Email (Hotmail, Gmail, AOL Mail)
9. Video (YouTube, Hulu)
10. Travel

Top 10 Keyword Search Groups Conclusions
We watch streaming porn searching for celebrities while checking the meaning of our astrology sign before searching Amazon for an Aries book that we talk about on social networks and email to friends :).

The young, male and international bias of the data is evident. Streaming adult sites along with usually large breasted celebrities in skimpy bikinis, also known as the "Baywatch Effect", may be as close to a universal language as we get. Astrology and Horoscope search volume surprised me. Each Zodiac sign receives a large number of daily searches. Pop Culture's large volume didn't surprise, but the lack of brands and product names did. Wii, iPods, Netflix, and iTunes were the few branded searches in Keyword Ranking's Top 500 searches.

This Top 500 Keyword list is HIGHLY dynamic. Tiger Woods and Tiger Woods Girlfriends received large search volumes due to recent controversy. Tiger Woods is experiencing a negative "Oprah Effect" sometimes called a Streisand effect. The Tiger tornado will blow in and out just as fast replaced, no doubt, by some other star with a problem.

Our global obsession with celebrity is probably here to stay. Attractive women famous for being famous usually in bikinis speak the universal Baywatch language. Megan Fox, Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson top a long list of celebrity searches. Celebrity is fickle. Paris Hilton used to dominate. I coined the phrase "Paris Hilton Black Hole" to describe the giant sucking sound all of her PR made several years ago. Paris Hilton is barely in the top 20 celebrity searches now. This may be a sign of hope in the universe accept for how many others stepped in. Let's assume the best and agree to never contribute to such trite BS (yeah, right, curiosity will get us every time and what can you do?).

If you are selling a widget online and know Pamela Anderson, Jessica Alba or Tila Tequila (my favorite name) you may want to sign a deal over drinks. If, on the other hand, you have millions invested in a Tiger you may need to find a new spokesperson. Best of luck no matter what you are pitching. The Metropolitan Museum of Art came up in the top 500 searches providing a tiny source of light. I will follow that light and click on their link 5 times tonight to contribute to the cause and as my Hail Marys for putting a salacious picture of Pamela Anderson on top of this post (lol).

Martin

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Best Product Pages

E-Commerce Web Sites With Best Product Pages
Doing research on product pages. Will share findings for top product pages soon. If you have favorites please email to martinsellingzoe(at)aol.

Martin

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George Clooney is Up In The Air

Up In The Air Movie Review – 3.5 out of 5 stars

“We’ve fired a bullet and it’s a matter of time until it catches up with you,” my friend was told on her first day at Pepsi. Director and screenwriter Jason Reitman fires funny bullets at George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham through more than half of Up In The Air’s 109 minutes. Reitman’s movie could have gone bad, but yeoman work from Clooney and what can only be described as HOT smoldering sexuality from Vera Farmiga’s Alex Goran saves most of the film.

Clooney’s rudderless but kind character fires people for a living. In an Eckhart Tolle turn Ryan Bingham’s life goal is reaching 10,000,000 air miles. We’ve all been where Ryan starts the movie mentally. Ryan is sure life will change once his frequent flyer account hits a magical 10,000,000 mark. Life will make sense when the plane’s pilot sits down next to him to offer thanks for his loyalty.

Not so much it turns out. Ever want something so bad only to find achievement seems small and shallow? Life happens now not in some future time when a goal, usually set so long ago you can’t remember why it mattered, is achieved. George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham doesn’t see Buddha or understand life's meaning and purpose better once his plane passes Oz and the mythical 10,000,000 air miles goal. Bingham’s character is less in touch with life’s secrets sitting next to Sam Elliot’s wise knowing pilot (think God in a pilot's uniform).

Life’s purpose always happens now too. Ryan seems lost and confused. Putting off life waiting for an external force to magically bestow legitimacy after achieving something only six other people have accomplished sounds better than it turns out to be. Sound familiar? Let down happens to Ryan Bingham after a series of bummers I won’t spoil. Reitman’s deft touch with difficult topics, people being laid off, leaves the building in Up In The Air’s final twenty minutes.

I wanted more from Bingham. We do get a piece of an important conversation. Bingham calls the secret 10,000,000 Bat Phone and starts to give away a tenth of his miles to his financially challenged niece. This simple conversation reinforces Bingham’s desire to be here now for his sister and niece. This is a good sign as it builds on a previous moment when Bingham saves his niece’s wedding by at least partially repudiating his rootless uncommitted life sitting in a church speaking to his niece’s fiancé. Two more good signs and Up In The Air would be a solid 4 star maybe even a 4.5 star movie. Reitman’s script stops short. He keeps Bingham in suspended animation floating above 30,000 feet earning his next million miles. My friend told me her Pepsi story when we both worked at NutraSweet, so the bullet did catch up with her. You will enjoy many of Clooney and Reitman’s bullets in Up In the Air. Be prepared to want a little more toward the end.

U2's Beautiful Line

No Line On the Horizon
U2's collaboration with Brian Eno is wonderful. The album has a different feeling. Eno's "house music" combines beautifully with Irish rock (who knew). Eno is a gifted producer so stellar results from such a gifted group makes sense. I confess to downloading No Line On The Horizon and letting it bake. Today it shuffled its magic into my iPod. I loved the line "...best of us are geniuses of compression..." and am thinking about what that means.

Thinking led me to researching and I found this on a site:

Rated 0

"Squeezing complicated lives into simple headlines."

In a book called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, one of the characters is a retired war correspondent who has been around the world. He spent his life writing a bibliography of everyone he ever wrote about or read about. Every entry was one word:

Che Guevara: War
Tom Cruise: Money
Stephen Hawking: Astrophysics
Yasir Arafat: War
Martha Stewart: Money
Mahatma Gandhi: War ("But he was a pacifist," I said. "Right! War!")

"The worst of us are a long drawn out confession
The best of us are geniuses of compression."

You could never stop writing...it's something to think about.

Great song, great album, great post. Merry Christmas everyone.

Marty

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What is your favorite web site?

Crowd Source Web Site Design Vision Quest
We are going to pull our e-commerce sites apart in March, 2010 and you can help. Email a list of your favorite web sites to martinsellingzoe(at)aol. Please let us know WHY you like each site and what you would change if you could. We hope crowd sourcing will help us see our future better. Picasso said good artist copy while great artists STEAL. Please help us identify what to steal.

Thanks, Martin

Send Favorite Web Sites List To: MartinSellingZoe@aol
Please explain WHAT you like and why.
Subject: Favorite Web Site List (so we know it isn't spam)

TY, Martin



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Avatar Movie Review

Avatar's Electric Rousseau
Jame's Cameron may be our most painterly movie director. Avatar's 3D environment is so complete, its biology so immersive, it feels like a moving Rousseau painting. Avatar may realize every painter's dream. Every moment is alive. The forest is alive. Avatar's Pandora is a character in Cameron's movie. Pandora's environment may be the most fully realized character in Avatar, but let's put story weakness aside for a moment while we wander and wonder at Avatar's color, texture and fully realized movie magic.

Rosseau, Lari Pitman and Jackson Pollack are painters who create visual environments that move. Movement is everywhere and everything. We see and feel Avatar's environments. Avatar is a painting on LSD. This explosion isn't fully explained by 3D. Cameron's painting moves with such breakneck speed you can't keep up with visual bombardment. Avatar's visual achievement is so massive, so complete, any story may pale. Being fair, the story doesn't distract from watching Avatar's best character, its complete biology, come alive in 3D glasses and within your brain's popping synapses.

The film is a visual acid trip, a trip you can take without risking health. Cameron's visual achievement is sizable. Cameron, ever one to set expectations high, declared Avatar would revolutionize film making. On a visual level Avatar achieves every bit of Cameron's boast. Painting and art fade as film making rules. No mistake power painters such Warhol and Schnabel moved to film. Film's visual field is too tempting. Smart artists simultaneously lead and follow people. Avatar is a brilliant complete canvas created by an artist.

Avatar's emergent biology falls prey to easy targets. Story still matters Avatar reminds us in its last third. Avatar's story is as shallow as its visual field is deep. I am not saying don't see the film. I would NEVER say don't see Avatar. Avatar is a necessary masterpiece. Everyone needs to see Cameron's revolution for its visual wizardry. No art education can be complete without viewing Avatar at least in 3D and at most in IMAX, but there are limits to what forest as character can do.

Titanic, Cameron's other visual masterpiece, could afford thin story. We knew Titanic's sad journey. Titanic's visual mastery needed little support. Avatar's visual mastery needed less story not more, or less trite cliche. Avatar's story's ability to match its visual masterpiece may be an impossible idea. In Avatar we don't know where we are going and we never get there. We get swept along by what we are seeing much more than what we are feeling.

Story may be hard to develop in front of green screens. We see Cameron's Avatar painting before anyone who acted in the film. Actors couldn't fit characters into the film's visual magic. Avatar's forest as character came alive in the film's post production. I suspect it is hard to be appropriately in awe of something you haven't yet seen and could scarcely imagine. Context is so important. I noted how changing context changes everything in recent comments about Fred Wilson's art (Fred Wilson's Uncertainty Principle). Wilson applies simple changes to museum displays and every bit of a viewer's experience shifts. If context is so sensitive and determinant how can actors create characters in front of something as flat and dead as a green screen? Cameron's post production painting and painterly obsession, his creation of Rousseau's forest, all came about after Avatar's acting was in the can.

Can you make Citizen Kane in front of a green screen? Wells could have made Kane in his bathroom, but Cameron's limitations as storyteller show through Avatar's maligned forest. If actors could see what we can now they may have dialed their performances back. Less is definitely more in a world of such vast beauty and completeness. Cliche in Titanic work because we know the journey. Current cliche in a future world is inadequate. To think man would be so technically advanced and so small belittles man. Futurescapes in movies are always depressing, or almost always depressing. Only great thinkers (Asimov, Clarke and Kubrick) understand futures require new ideas about who man will become in his new context. They know man's current prejudices, foibles and limitations will be changed. Assuming current greed and pettiness denies an evolutionary truth. We are different today than 100 years ago. We will be different psychologically in a 100 years. Avatar's forest understand our different future better than its characters. The idea man would be so stunted when the forest is so wise may come to pass,but let's hope not. Let's hope, as Kurzweil suggestions in The Singularity Is Near, that in our inevitable future we are half as wise as Cameron's forest.

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Why Did Charlie Rose Kill His Web Site?

Open Letter To Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose had one of the best viral sites on the web until recently. Recent changes will kill what made Charlie Rose's site great. Charlie Rose current website link. Here is an email shared with Webmaster@ Charlie's show:

Why did you kill one of the best web sites on the web?

Elimination of easy embeds, poor internal searches, auto-play on page load (REALLY BAD IDEA) and a confusing home page layout are good examples of why LESS is often MORE in web site design. The previous Charlie Rose site was easy to navigate, welcoming and less confusing. I am not the only one to notice. Here is a link to a post by author Barry Ritholtz:

Why Did Charlie Rose Mess Up His Website?

Don't be fooled by the clueless comments, your site changes will hurt traffic, kill creation of distributed content supporting your site and the show and cut online buzz. I suspect you are moving to a pay as you go model. I wouldn't lock up the current shows. I would lock the archive and use a Freemium model. Let the few pay for the many as LinkedIn, Facebook and Google do so well. I would probably pay for a "pro" membership willing to pay several hundred bucks a year to freely download content into my marketing blog. It would be worth it to NOT worry about digital rights management and violating copyright. The web's law of large numbers means 2% pro memberships could pay for everyone else (and then some probably).

I'm a Director of E-commerce and would warn against killing the proverbial Goose as she lays golden eggs. You had one of the best viral feeder sites. It was easy to beat the Charlie Rose show buzz drum. Now it is harder. Some may be willing to work to promote your content still. I pulled Charlie's conversation with Alexander Karp off Karp 's site the other day, but few will jump through such hoops when content is flooding over the dam. We live in a time of new and never ending content Niagara. Make it hard to have an intimate relationship promoting your content and BELIEVE ME there will be four shows who step into the empty space. There is no unmatchable leads anymore (something Karp pointed out).

If Web 2.0 is about connection, something your previous site did well, mashing up content will define Web 3.0. Make it easy for sites to mash, combine and refeed your content. In Web 3.0 LINKS and REPUTATION will rule. I understand CR doesn't have much trouble getting either. We can debate how ethical is it to use PBS funds to create content you sell on AMAZON. The simple, quick and easy answer to that question is it is UNETHICAL to create barriers to data distribution when PBS viewers pay the bills in the first place. "Viewers like you" mean CR 's content is paid for. I understand rising costs as funding tightens pressures. Forcing loyal viewers pay twice is beyond the pale.

Yet I am willing to pay twice. BUT, don't cut off access with no notice or ability to subscribe and regain access. Such an action is a senseless slap to show supporters. I suspect you didn't mean to be half as aggressive as you appear. What do you have to gain from such action? Unintended consequences are a BITCH. The unintended consequences of your site changes is an appearance of aggressive elitism. Is being nasty to those who've help carry your water ever a good idea? Surely one of the lessons of recent history is no one is beyond a fall. Always a better idea to work with supporters than screw them to the wall (in my experience). I loved the old site and made sure to stay up on what was going on within the show in order to know what to mash up into projects I work on. Now it is so hard to understand who is being talked to when and about what. I don't have the time to find my way through a thicket in order to spread the word about the show.

There is so much information available now. Make it hard for supporters to work with your shows information and it will take about five seconds to find a new source who gets it and makes it easy....like you used too. The collective effect of a large flock whirling in midair and flying away from your site and show is popularity erosion, decreased site traffic, reduced donations and less relevance. Our PBS station, much to my annual displeasure, already messes with CR's time slot during donation drives. Moving CR to 12:30 means DVR or Web is the only way I can watch the show and maintain a job in order to make my annual PBS donation.

If you are going to create a "pro" version please get on with it. If not, please go back to where the site was. This new site is making it too hard to support the show. We all make mistakes. Making it hard to work with your information is a big one. Better to never have had easy YouTube embeds than have them then take them away. I'm willing to pay twice for CR 's content, within reason, but please get on with it. I see two responses to this email. One is stupid and the other smart. You may tell me I am in violation of your (c) and instruct me to remove your content from my little marketing blog. Be that stupid and it will be the shot heard around the world. Smart move is to THINK about how to help me (and the hundreds of other little bloggers out there who love CR) help you. Hope you guys fall into the smart group. Changes made to the Charlie Rose site make me wonder.

Good luck and let me know if I can help (when not ranting of course LOL).

Martin Smith
ScentTrail Marketing (http://scenttrail.blogspot.com)

Alexander Karp Scary Smart

"Software and technology is democratized espionage" Alexander Karp explains to Charlie Rose whose correct response is "this is very scary." We know instantly we aren't in Kansas anymore. Karp, CEO of uber-spooky Palantir Technologies, is beyond smart. My favorite quote in his Rose interview, "In Silicone Valley we build businesses around an idea and then figure out how to make money." I've never thought of how necessary such creative wandering is to certain kinds of business development UNTIL listening to Karp. He explains "the valley" lends itself to business creations unlike almost anywhere. Palantir took three years before it made a dime, he explained, but no one was nervous. They were creating an idea. Money would flow in time. Development of ideas takes a different kind of person, not someone "working for a paycheck."

Paycheck time is now for Palantir whose mission seems to be solving Rubik cubes of large tangled data sets. Finding proverbial needles in haystacks using Palantir's technology may be the most important work on planet earth since one of those needles may be the next 911. Palantir is so spooky there were topics Karp would not elaborate. He has a friendly, engaging manner and is beyond smart (Stanford Law and then some strange Ph.D.).

Karp's discussion about how underfunded teenagers can now ape what used to be elite government territory was scary. Inside a digital world ethics can be hard to recognize. New rules populate and die fast. Karp and Palantir live on some new front line as do we all, as do we all. Thankfully Karp is on our side. See if you don't find his interview with Charlie fascinating and scary.

Charlie Rose interviews Alexander Karp, CEO Palantir interview link (playing off of Palantir's servers so may be a little slow)

Palantir Technology

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Germ Free Travel Tips

"Hell is other people."
Normally I don’t agree with Jean Paul Sartre’s quote. I am not a French existential nihilistic. Travel is the exception to my “not Jean Paul” rule. Traveling with a depressed immune system such as mine can literally kill you. Germ free travel in a time of Swine Flue, H1N1 and Bird Flue is essential.

One problem. Total germ free travel is impossible. After we experience our first modern pandemic people may become more sensitive, but who can wait that long? I took life in hands recently to visit friends in San Francisco. I am exaggerating for effect. My immune system is not as strong as many, but I’m doing well. Visiting San Francisco, a favorite city, was worth some germ exposure. Life is risk, but I was determined to take simple steps to reduce exposure to germs and viruses during my last cross-country trip.

I took these simple steps to make travel as germ free as possible:

• Hand washing
• Wearing a mask
• Moving to avoid coughing children
• Wearing clothes to cover skin
• Performing nose care
• Taking vitamins
• Using eye drops
• Wearing ear plugs
• Sneeze Into Elbow
• Taking showers

Hand Washing Like Howard Hughes
If you normally wash your hands 10 times a day triple the number of times you wash your hands during travel. Become obsessive about hand washing. It takes a Howard Hughes like obsessive compulsion to accomplish this much hand washing. It requires a mental paradigm shift. You have to WANT to do it. Hand washing is one of the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) simple suggestions for limiting spread of infectious diseases. I wash hands carefully using soap and warm water and supplement with hand sanitizers such as Purell when it is hard to get to a bathroom.

Note to Purell’s makers Johnson and Johnson: Please make a smaller version of your hand sanitizer that meets TSA travel requirements (under 2oz). I put half of my big bottle of Purell into a smaller bottle in order to get it through security.

Purell FAQ Page

Wear A Surgical Mask
People stare at you when you are the only one on an airplane wearing a surgical mask. I got over it. The Journal of American Medical Association tested surgical masks vs. respirators in several hundred nurses in Canada finding no difference in flue transmission. They didn’t test mask vs. no mask because masks are clearly advantageous to keeping virus out of mouth and nose. I wore a hard formed mask and it was uncomfortable. I recommend a soft surgical mask with ties here is a link on Amazon:

Surgical Mask On Amazon with ties

When wearing a mask your face is hot and it sweats especially on an airplane. Keep a sanitized wipe and move to the bathroom, a smaller space, to wipe sweat and get some mask relief time. I wore a mask on the plane and in the over crowded waiting room. I took it off outside and any opportunity. Wearing a mask during travel is a pain but better than getting sick.

Move To Avoid Coughing Children
Irony is a bitch. I’m sitting in Panera writing this ScentTrail post about germ free travel. A couple with two small children just sat next to me. Their three year old started coughing with her mouth half full of food and wide open to no comment from a clearly worn out mom. I moved and you should too if you are in an airport next to a sick poorly tended child. Children’s immune systems are not as developed as adults. They have fewer antibodies. Viruses get in and can take hold.

Put your surgical mask on before you sit down in the plane. If you wait until your row mates show up it will seem personal. I was NEVER asked why I was wearing a mask. People don’t really care about your problems and there is enough H1N1 flu hysteria no one questioned me. If you are stuck in a row with an infectious poorly tended child your mask, some Purell gel, your iPod ear buds, a long sleeve shirt and frequent trips to the bathroom may be all the only germ protection you have.

Wear Clothes To Cover Skin
Dress for germ protection when traveling. Wear long pants, long sleeves, colored shirts, knee socks and a sweater or coat. Skin is porous. Mucous membranes in your nose and mouth are most vulnerable followed by eyes and ears, but exposed skin is an easy target to eliminate. I cover as much skin as possible when traveling. I dress in layers so I can control internal temperature by taking on or taking off. As soon as I arrive travel clothes go into a trash bag. Trash bag goes straight to the dry cleaner on returning home.

Performing Nose Care
A nose is a battle ground for bacteria and viruses. My sinuses drive me crazy. At home I use Simply Saline to keep sinus inflammation to a minimum. Note to BlaiRex, makers of Simply Saline, please make a 2oz travel version. Simply Saline doesn’t have a TSA approved size, so I found a smaller saline squeeze bottle. Squeeze bottles are a problem. They push mist into your nose while pulling bad things out into the bottle. Next time you squirt you could be moving virus right back into your nose. I dumped out my Afrin one squirt and filed it with saline from the squeeze bottle. I irrigated nostrils about half as many times as washing my hands during this last trip.

Simply Saline Link

Another germ free travel nose care tip is putting small amounts of Neosporin around the opening of your nose. Neosporin helps keep my nose moist and Neosporin is anti-bacterial. I use ointment because it stays where you put it better than cream.

Neosporin Link

Germ Free Travel Tip: No Nose Picking
Keeping fingers out of your nose during travel is a key germ free travel tip. If you can’t stand it and something must be inserted into your nose use a Kleenex or sterile wipe. Cover your finger with the wipe THEN pick your nose (lol).

Take Vitamins
About a week before travel I take supplemental C, E and D. My immune system doesn't make enough of these vitamins. The key is starting days BEFORE you get on a plane. Taking Emergen-C the same day seems futile and goofy. If you start days early you increase chances of strengthening your immune system (maybe).

Use Eye Drops
These days I can’t see without glasses and, at least during travel, wearing glasses may help keep germs and viruses out of your eyes. I don’t stop there. Eyes are vulnerable so I use eye drops to flush. I flushed my eyes about as many times as irrigating my nose (half the 30 times or so I washed my hands). Keep your fingers out of eyes too.

Wear Ear Plugs
I wear an iPod during about 90% of any airplane travel. I have special ear buds made by Etymotic that lock in and shut out. Travel is LOUD, RUDE and DANGEROUS so I tune it out whenever possible. When you arrive and before your shower Q-Tip your ears.

Etymotic Ear Buds Link

Sneeze Into Elbow
People made fun of Obama administration officials who emphasized sneezing into the crook of an elbow. I don’t understand poking fun at a good courteous idea. Sneezing on your hands just puts germs where you can easily spread them. Use the crook of your elbow or a Kleenex. Karma can be a bitch too, so protect others is protect yourself. Bless and thank those who show common courtesy by sneezing into their elbow.

Showers
Germ free travel means showering soon after arrival. Get those travel clothes off and into a trash bag then hop in a long hot shower. Be sure to hit all exposed entry points: nose, eyes and ears with a good rinse then relax since you’ve just come as close to germ free travel as is possible with current technology (lol).

I didn't get a cold or the flu after my last trip. Help may be other people when you are on the road, but a few simple steps can reduce the chance they will kill you....there I go exaggerating for effect again :).

Martin

Lobsters, Dolphins, and Super Freakonomics

I'm sitting next to plaintive slow lobster in a round Plexiglas cage at Tony Cheng’s restaurant in Washington thinking of emergent systems. What is more emergent than my being here? Not completely random or generated by hive mind like bees to honey or ants to food. I was steered to Tony Cheng's by the Marriott doorman for some of the best Kung Po chicken ever. What is more emergent than a quickly filling popular restaurant on a Washington Wednesday night?

I’m in Washington for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) PR training from WebPR’s Vocus group tomorrow. The lobsters sitting above my right shoulder remind me of SuperFreakonomics. I remembered the joy of reading economist Levitt and journalist Dubner’s Freakonomics years ago. Levitt and Dubner write engaging “data stories” about our true baselines something few care about in an over-hyped time. What are “true baselines”?

Levitt and Dubner look at mountains of data to cut through BS. Remember the SHARK ATTACK media frenzy in 2001? I wrote about just how scary life was in the water that summer in Dolphins and Sharks. Maybe it wasn’t the water that was scary that summer, but it is my story and I am sticking to it :). Levitt’s and Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics analyzed data to discover how many worldwide shark attacks actually took place that year – sixty-four. How many fatal shark attacks? Four. I was more likely to get killed by a news van than a shark Levitt and Dubner point out. Land sharks posed a bigger threat. Hindsight is always twenty / twenty (lol).

Levitt and Dubner’s new book, SuperFreakonomics, is about favorite ScentTrail themes:

• People respond to incentives.
• Humans are pattern recognition machines and much of what we recognize is wrong.
• Humans are predictably irrational.

You don’t have to teach an E-Commerce Director (me) people respond to incentives. Recently, while visiting friends near San Francisco, human response to incentives was illustrated by two women walking on a path. What you are about to read is a true story:

I am up early walking the public space paths at the end of my friend’s road. Buy in for this neighborhood is north of a million bucks. My friend created a website to download music before anyone knew that would be cool, sold it for a king’s ransom and bought a home a football field from some of the most beautiful walking paths I’ve ever seen. His multi-million dollar home is an hour CalTran ride to downtown San Francisco. I couldn’t afford the first round of poker here.

But I have feet and love walking steep hilly paths. After more than an hour up in the highest regions of this vast network of paths I end up walking behind two chatting women in their late thirties. One woman is holding forth about how she saved 50% on her walking shoes. She explains that her first pair cost x, but the pair she is walking aggressively in this morning cost 50% less. She is incredulous and proud. She speaks on this topic for over ten minutes or maybe it just seemed like ten minutes. If the surroundings weren’t so beautiful a door opened and Hell came a calling I would have thought :).

Dookie Dan Ariely in his secret marketing cult hit book Predictably Irrational explains anchors. Anchors are mostly fictional price points (read my 3 parter on Why Retail Prices Don't Exist Anymore) retailers create to have a millionaire women in Silicone Valley discuss saving 50% on walking shoes. She isn’t as proud of her children (I bet). Somewhere there is a retailer and a shoe company laughing their way to the bank.

Does everyone win in such an arrangement? Our millionaire gets to tell a great story, a retailer made a little money and a manufacturer made a lot of money. One day soon we may wake up to our predictably irrational ways stranding a certain kind of marketing….or maybe not (lol). Where these behaviors start is the problem. They start way back. We were running from dinosaurs and painting cave walls. Think about it. Our female shoe saver is demonstrating intelligence. If she were a bird her plume would be in full feather. Back in the cave she would dance about finding berries or snagging rabbits. Now she lives in a multi-million dollar cave and saves money on shoes creating a straight line through human history.

Can we respond to truth, justice and the American way? Outliers often predict the future. Patagonia, Tom’s Shoes, Ben and Jerry’s (when they were involved) and Burt’s Bees (when what’s her name was involved) look like exceptions proving predictably irrational rules. Maybe less manipulation and more truth is a building wave, a new marketing truth. Cut the BS, share and live your marketing truth and customers will buy rationally. One can only hope (lol).

Saying adieu to the lobsters and heading back to the Marriott. More on SuperFreakonmoics soon.

Marty

Future Comes to Ed Sullivan

I love this Sly and the Family Stone performance on Ed Sullivan. Sometimes two times simultaneously coexist. Here the fifties give up the ghost as Sly sings our way into the end of the sixties. You see youthful roots including Sly's show stopping Woodstock performance, only a few months away, in a television venue where audience and Ed are not sure what to make of what is happening. When Sly dances into Ed Sullivan's audience, don't forget the same theater is now used by David Letterman, audience looks and an awkward desire to join a too funky Sly as his sister holds the mike down by his tapping feet is amazing. Magical television, a rare moment when two distinct times live simultaneous. Restless wandering beat generation poets seem shunted aside by Sly's open speed rush. No wonder Ed couldn't figure it out. Bring on the dish twirling bears he must have been thinking (lol).

Sly & The Family Stone - Ed Sullivan Show (1968) - kewego
Sly & The Family Stone - Ed Sullivan Show (1968)

Keywords: sly the family stone ed sullivan show

Video from cerealspiller

Tribal Marketing 2

Serving Tea To Gandhi
Couple of weeks ago Seth's Godin's Tribes came up. I wrote a tribal marketing post to outline Seth's book. We were working on a special section for military customers. We wanted to say THANKS in some small way. Tribes, Seth's book on marketing to tribes, is subtitled "We need you to lead us". Today we refined what tribal marketing leadership meant such as:

• Leading is not old school selling.
  
• Listening is closer to leading than talking.
  
• Serving is leading.
  
• Authenticity is truth.
• Transparency is the order of the day.
  

Leading Is Not Selling
Salesmanship per se is not the problem. History is the problem. Selling old school was manipulative and too easily dishonest. Selling in a "used car" way means creating unilateral benefit. You stiff the poor hapless customer with the lemon and dance gleefully to the bank. How long can anyone adopting such an attitude last in a connected, fast and furious world? Detroit thinks their problem is imports, lack of cash or who knows what. Fact is we car buyers have just had enough. We aren't going to take it anymore. Cars aren't crack anymore and we know it.

Car companies created their own misery by hanging on to a clearly dead protocol. Their cars are now good enough we don't have to have them. Irony is a bitch. We've broken their advertising spell. We don't think owning a sleek, sexy car makes us sleek or sexy. Having significantly less in our bank accounts after buying a too expensive hunk of sculpted metal we understand. Treat enough people bad enough long enough and you create your own misery. So used car uncaring salesmanship is out. Salesmanship as a form of service works (and always will). Care, connect and serve and you lead in a tribal marketing way.

Listening Is Closer To Leading Than Talking
My boss at P&G told me an interesting truth. "Martin," Russ Mills said, "I've never seen anyone listen their way out of a sale but I just watched you talk your way out of one." Russ was teaching a valuable lesson. Great sales people connect to buyer's needs by listening. Selling is a form of service. Patient listening becomes non-proprietary connection to any information you know or can rake in.

Listening takes more courage than talking. This seems contrary. We think talking is putting ourselves "out there" and taking a risk. Everyone can talk until they are blue in the face. The number of great listeners I've met in thirty years of business is a small number, so small I don't need all the fingers on one hand to count them. Three quick listening skills P&G and M&M/Mars attempted to teach: summarize and restate, check in and clarify. Explaining deserves a post of its own.

Serving Can Be Leading
If old selling is bending someone to your will new selling serves greater good. There is always a greater good. When you help someone selflessly you serve a greater good. You act altruistically serving the intersection between you and an other. We tend to heap reward on confident talkers. The most impressive people I've met or worked with over the last thirty years are, without a single exception, smart humble people who make everyone around them better. J. Langdon at M&M/Mars, Mary Kay O'Connor at NutraSweet and Janet McKean at Found Objects lived to serve and they served to live. One of my favorite scenes in Ben Kingsley's Gandhi is when he takes a tray from a servant, bows slightly and serves his fellow revolutionaries. Confident talkers all, Gandhi's fellow revolutionaries accepted cups of tea from their new "servant". I've seen great leaders metaphorically serve tea many times and every time is as arresting and context creating as Ben Kingsley's action in Gandhi.

Authenticity Is Critical To Leadership
No one follows someone they can't or don't trust. Authenticity is truth. Truth needs to be defined and maintained. Jim Collins' excellent book Good To Great discusses how great companies set principles almost before they pay first month's rent. Defining values such as Google's "Don't Be Evil" and The Five Principles of Mars create organizational truth. Once truth is written down, all the better on tablets (lol), it creates a singularity, a black hole with an "event horizon" lip of authenticity.

Transparency Is The Order of the Day
Transparency exists. Transparency is here. In a Google-time when wisdom of crowds is easy to tap and everyone knows everything instantaneously transparency is the order of the day. If transparency is the order of the day then guess what you should do? Never do anything that will make you inauthentic. Never do anything that will make you appear inauthentic. If, for some reason, you break rule #1 and do something that is inconsistent with your core values admit your mistake and move on. Google may be God-like, but we humans will make mistakes. Our reach often exceeds our grasp. Our desire to lead will be marred by a stumble here and a flop there. Embrace stumbles and falls and no one will see them as anything other than a strong leader serving tea.

Amazon's Infinity

Jim Cramer is right. Amazon’s stock is going to $216. Cramer is right for more reasons than he realizes. His logic is former hedge fund manager logic. There is some secret formula hedge fund managers use to determine when a stock is under valued.

Jim Cramer ‘s Right
Cramer is right about Amazon, but he is wrong about why Amazon’s stock is so valuable. Yes there may be some double secret probation reason why Amazon is going to $216, but there is a better reason. Amazon may be the only web site in the world that really understands where we live now. We live in the middle of Google-landia. You know Google-landia. Find it by taking a left at life as you know it is over and a quick right at Infinite Inventory Lane.

Counting To Infinity
Artist Jonathan Borofsky’s desire to count to infinity doesn’t seem so crazy these days. Infinity was an impossibly large thing. In the fifties infinity was a clear line, a boundary between knowable possibility (anything below infinity) and never ending mysticism.

Neither Jack Kilby or Robert Noyce were mystics. Kilby worked at Texas Instruments and Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. They are the credit fathers of the integrated circuit. Kilby described his invention this way, “A body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated.” If you see our present future in Kilby’s statement; if you see the computer followed by the computer network you’ve read the tea leaves. You’ve seen our present.

The Future Is Infinite
Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail explained how worlds collide when brick and mortar shelves are easily replaced by bits flying through electronic pipe. Stores, you see, created a filter. You might argue Super Store’s were our first hint. Infinity, these 100,000 stock keeping unit (SKU) stores, proclaimed can be captured. Funny how fast our perspective changes. Super Stores, at introduction, seemed impossible large, cavernous and ridiculous. Not so much anymore. Now “Super Stores” seem normal, small and boring. Super Stores aren’t so super anymore.

If Super Stores helped us visualize an impossible number, web sites gave infinity a location. Ions ago, in 2007, I wrote Inventory Is Advertising after attending a conference. Barnes and Noble discussed having 1,000,000 SKU’s. Why, I wondered sitting in the audience, would any company carry 1,000,000 of anything. The light bulb that went off over my head must have been blinding to those behind me. Inventory was different. Inventory’s carry cost was pennies while sales potential could be dollars. Any investor understands turn pennies into dollars and life is good.

Books are physical things currently. Books are changing. Soon books will go the same way as music. Books will become just another stream of bits flying through electronic pipes. Music’s physical thing-ness is fading. Movies will follow most immediately. Books soon after. Take shelves away, convert thing-ness to bits and infinity or its closest idea becomes a reality. Amazon understands they shouldn’t sell books. They should sell every book ever printed on planet earth. Soon they will sell every book every printed AND every book ever typed. Soon many books will never make it to paper and hard cover. They will leave a writer’s fingers and brain in a digital stream, pass through an aggregator like Amazon or Google or Barnes and Noble land in your Kindle or Nook and fly directly into your brain.

Infinity as an unknowable mysticism is leaving the building. If it is theoretically possible and a company’s stated mission to sell every X widget on the planet then Infinity’s God-like mystery is gone. Once one bridge is crossed all bridges may and will be because we are natural explorers. Borofsky’s desire to count to infinity is art, science and reality. Soon infinity will be old hat. “Oh yeah,” some child will say, “I remember when infinity was new.” They will say this sentence with a tired boredom only youth can muster. Yes, we will think, we remember it too and Amazon is moving to $216.

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