Month: September 2009

  • In your last hour, what would you write?

    I took this photo across the street from Ground Zero earlier this year. Here’s the last piece I’ll post on September 11 for now. WTC2, the South Tower of the World Trade Center, collapsed after 56 minutes from fire. The people in that building who perished did have about an hour and some communications access

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  • September 11: Eight years later

    I took this photo from the Hilton Millennium’s upper floors. It’s been eight years since the towers fell, eight years since a morning that few of us will ever forget, nor should we. It’s been eight years, two wars overseas, a Great Recession, two elections, 34.1 million births and 19.9 million deaths in America since

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  • Marketing with iTunes 9, iTunes LP, and iTunes Extras

    No linkbait in that blog title, no sir. Anyway, yesterday Apple released iTunes 9, along with two new formats of media, iTunes LP (enhanced albums with art, interviews, text, interactive, etc.) and iTunes Extras for Movies (think DVD extra content and features). Some off the cuff thoughts about how these tools, when made available to

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  • A piece of home on the road

    In a ninjutsu dojo (like the Boston Martial Arts Center, for example), you’ll find a place of reverence called a kamidana, or spirit shelf. In traditional Shinto religious practices (the native, shamanistic religion of Japan), a kamidana is a place to honor your ancestors and their guardian spirits. In modern times, it’s a focal point

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  • One pixel away…

    … is the Marketing Over Coffee extra interview with Mitch Joel and his new book, Six Pixels of Separation. Go give it a listen and buy Mitch’s book. Disclosure: goes to Amazon, affiliate fee paid to Marketing Over Coffee. Did you enjoy this blog post? If so, please subscribe right now! Enjoyed it? Please share

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  • What World of Warcraft can teach you about gear and skill

    If you’ve ever played any character in World of Warcraft, you know about the diminishing returns of gear. If you’ve never played Warcraft, it works something like this: once you’ve reached the top level of growth for your character (currently level 80, soon to be 85), any gains you get to make your character better

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  • A crack in the glass

    Ever had a crack in your windshield? They tend to grow, from a little tiny scratch, barely worth noticing, to a monstrously large spiderweb in a fairly short amount of time, and what’s more, as the crack gets bigger, its rate of growth accelerates. The vibration of the car, of your driving, makes the glass

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  • How to fix the SxSW voting problem

    South by Southwest (SxSW) is a fairly large conference that offers attendees the opportunity to learn more about movies, music, and interactive (online) content at its weeklong festival. It’s become something of a giant party and simultaneously for a lot of people, a way for them to validate their projects and causes by being selected

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  • Subscriber drive, now with more pie!

    Please subscribe to my blog and share it with friends and colleagues. I was going to say it’s easy as pie, but if you’ve ever tried to bake a pie, it’s not necessarily easy. Whoever thought that expression up clearly did not take into account the lack of pastry skill that most of us have.

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  • To be general, be specific

    In a conversation today about how to best reach people, one author noted that she tries to be as general as possible to reach the widest audience. Here’s the funny thing about that – I’ve found that the opposite is true. The more specific you are, the more you reach people, at least in storytelling.

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