Garrick van Buren – Page 238 – About time. And product. And being more deliberate.

“You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.”

(originally published at MNteractive.com)

What the internet does really, really well is connect things through hyperlinks. The outcome of hyperlinks is connecting people. When people are connected, there’s a relationship.

Websites are an excellent marketing tool. Like any tool, they need to be used correctly. To do so, they need to build a relationship between the company and it’s customers.

This is a nice way to say what Microsoft’s resident weblogger Robert Scoble said:

“You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.”

Why are weblogs addictive and marketing sites not? Authenticity, reality. and relationships.

It still surprises me how many websites aren’t weblogs. There are mechanisms with most weblog systems you get the following for free:

Easy to maintain content management system
RSS feeds
Categories and sections
Searching
Permalinks
Commenting systems
and they’re Google-friendly

This means, these things don’t need to be build from scratch and it’s a fertile ground to build a relationship with customers.

Maybe like the old Tootsie Roll commercial, everything looks like a weblog to me. Then again, maybe weblogs are the most mature, effective mechanism to communicate news quickly to everyone that cares.

UPDATE: Dave Winer says not having RSS is like not having business cards. I completely agree. Considering the high percentage of my correspondance is through email, I’m frequently well into a working relationship before there’s an opportunity to exchange business cards.

The first thing I do before I meet someone, Google them. If a website with an RSS feed doesn’t come up, or worse – they can’t be found – I always hesitate.

Stowe Boyd over at Cornate’s Get Real blog, confirms my hesitation in his More Egosurfing post:

“…Google Juice is about people ‘voting’ on your relevance to the issues you have decided to wrestle with, and represents the degree to which you’d be missed if you stopped blogging.”

“…as an indicator of the karma that bloggers have built up, by crafting posts that make people think, link, and comment, Google Juice means something important.”

You Really Won’t Know Until You Build It

I caught Charlie Lazor, talking about building furniture and houses at the University of Minnesota this evening.

I found this quote on prototyping invaluable:

“We spent so much time arguing whether or not it work, and when we prototyped it, it worked remarkably well. We could have saved so much time, if we had just built it sooner.”

My full write-up on his talk can be found at: Your House as Furniture.

A Weekend in the Northwoods

Jen and I headed up to Bayfield this weekend for an enjoyable, off-season Northwoods weekend.

The moment we merged onto Highway 2 in Wisconsin, our mobile phones declared ‘No Network’. It took a moment for ‘No Network’ to sink in:

No using the phone’s bluetooth as a dial-up modem.
No calling people you’re meeting to say, “we’re running late”.
No calling for help from the side of the road when Something Bad Happens. (i.e. the car starts making odd sounds in the middle of the Chequamegon National Forest)

Though, we missed ‘Book across the Bay’, the cross-country ski race across the frozen Chequamegon Bay between Ashland and Washburn, we still took advantage of the winter-only real estate.

During the winter months, the State of Wisconsin plows a two-lane, pine tree-lined, road on frozen Lake Superior connecting Bayfield to Madeline Island.

After some difficulty with a small patch of ice outside the B&B, the Neon performed excellently on the Ice Road and had enough zip left for a full tour of the yet-to-be-fully-plowed island.

As isolated as I felt without T-Mobile service, I found the lack of TV and phone in the room refreshing. It made watching Anchorman off the PowerBook‘s DVD player that much more enjoyable.

We’d like to thank Sharon & Craig Locey, proprietors of the Thimbleberry Inn for a quiet, comfortable stay. Sharon’s enthusiastic hospitality, her apple bars, and her restaurant recommendations – all flawless.

She sent us to the Deep Water Grille, next to the South Shore Brewery in Ashland and Maggies in Bayfield. Both are islands of culinary joy in the Northwoods. At Deep Water, Jen enjoyed the black bean veggie burger and I’d go back for half a mushroom, spinach, and gorgonzola sandwich. If they’re out of whitefish livers at the pink flamingo-covered Maggie’s, get the spicy Thai peanut noodles.

After we got out of the lake-effect snow storm, the drive back went very quickly.

A Mac Mini in the Living Room

Since the release of the Mac Mini, I’ve been looking for reasons to pick one up. Currently, there’s a G4 tower in my basement and I’d like to return it to the 20th Century.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

Plug the Mac Mini into my TV, and use either the El Gato EyeTV Wonder or Plextor ConvertX as a personal video recorder.
Use the KeySpan Remote Control to control the PVR, the Mini’s DVD player, iTunes, iPhoto, and Skype from the couch
Use the Mini as a file server and WiFi base station to the rest of the computers on the network

In theory, it sounds pretty slick, a true Digital Hub. In practice, I’m less optimistic. I’d rather not have to navigate the Mac OS from the couch.

Two things require further investigation:

Can a specific key on the KeySpan can be mapped to each of the applications?
Are the PVRs reliable with broadcast, over-the-air TV?

Has anyone tried something like this in their own home?

The Creative Grotto Vibe

This morning Jen brought up the Temporary Office Space idea again. It’s something she’s brought up before. As a highly-mobile professional, the idea is very compelling. To have comfortable, secure place to send faxes grab a decent cup of coffee, and recharge off a good vibe for an hour or two, I think you can see how tempting it is.

This is why I’m tracking the next iteration of the Gate 3 Work Club.

On a smaller scale, I scanned the blogroll (opml) this morning, Brand Autopsy has a nice write-up on Po Bronson’s Writer’s Grotto.

If you’re interesting in this idea and closer to the Twin Cities, check out the Renaissance Box’s Writer’s Refuge.

Here’s a quick list of what I want from my work space (temporary or otherwise):

Wireless Internet
Chairs and tables fitting people over 6′ tall
Really good coffee
2 reservable conference rooms; 1 for 2-4 people, 1 for 4-8 people
An open lofted, studio area where everyone can work quietly, and be aware of others working quietly
Postal substation
High speed, color copier

More as it comes to me.

Coffee Goes Stale in a Week

Sam over at Afongen.com reminded me of something extremely important – How Long to Store Coffee:

“There is a marked decline in coffee’s flavor over the course of a week after roasting. If memory serves me correctly, something like 70% of the compounds responsible for coffee’s flavor are gone in that time, transformed into something far less pleasant.”

Here at First Crack central, we have 2 air-tight, light-proof containers. One for caff, one for decaf. Stored on the counter-top, never in the fridge.

This evening marks a week since I came down with that nasty something, and those containers haven’t been cracked open since. I’m a 100% – and a little nervous about the state of the beans.

Looks like I’m due for a trip to White Rock.

UPDATE: Yes, I can confirm the coffee in those containers is awful. Sour and sharp, Not refreshing and eye-opening.

First Crack 30. More Washboard, Less Cowbell

On the drive back from a Urban Hillbilly Quartet show, I interview Milo – the band’s washboard player, and his fiance (& my sister) Kari. You hear the history of his washboard playing, a washboard solo, what Kari does doing a show, and how to review a book in 5 words or less.

Listen to More Washboard, Less Cowbell [39 min]

Got questions about coffee or comments about the show? Call: 206-20-BEAN-1

Like the show? Support the First Crack Podcast

post-humorus

I just received verification that my newest addition to PseudoDictionary has been accepted:

post-humorus: Something that’s funny, only after the fact.

Better Email Tips

On MPR the other morning, they had consultant and author Marilyn Paul talking about ways to spend less time in your inbox.

Her suggestion is to institute email subject line tags. You include these tags in your email subject line. Here are the one’s I remember:

ty: thank you
nrn: no reply necessary
nbd: need response by date

More tips on increasing your effectiveness available in her book: It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys.