I pay homage to the poster boys of Windows 95, also know as Weezer. That’s right the Buddy Holly, 32-Bit Operating System Poster Boys are at it again with a new twist, but instead of spooning in bed with Bill Gates, they are paying homage to our boys at YouTube/Google.
I like Weezer, don’t get me wrong - I have watched their newest video 4-5 times and they have some awesome marketing tactics.
Good Idea:
Microsoft includes the Buddy Holly video from Weezer to show us that they are hip and cool.
Bad Execution:
Microsoft fails to realize that a video mocking “Happy Days” and the Cunninghams isn’t that cool.
A few introduction’s before we get started with Pork and Beans, because this video is laced with Internet Viral Superstars including the Numa Numa guy, Daft Punk and many more peeps that have been viewed millions of times for doing something funny.
and finally a little Pork and Beans, Weezer style…..
Ahhh yeah, I took a little break from writing but I am back by popular demand to appease my seven subscribers with tales from the south. The Friday leading into Memorial Day weekend resulted in an impromptu camping trip. First and foremost finding a place to camp on this weekend at the last minute was a chore, but we settled on Big Lake State Park (thanks to Google).
Saturday morning equals a 5 hour drive to the depths of the Show Me State; followed by the inability to get a campsite once we arrived. Luck was on my side (or so I thought) and they had available “suites” which were basically a crappy motel room. We settled as a 5 hour return flight to Iowa wasn’t an option. That is the highlights of the day as the remainder of the weekend went downhill.
7PM (Saturday) - We started fishing with the kids - the kids wanted to play in the park, we ended up fishing by ourselves (without licenses) and the MO MO PO PO (The Show Me State DNR) - said “Show Me” your fishing licenses! Oooops, we racked up $350.00 in fines and that ended fishing for the night.
12AM (Sunday Morning), I am being yelled at by my cousin (also staying in the same luxury suite) that someone is in our room. Yeah that’s right we left our backdoor open and a sleepwalker entered our room and crawled into his bed. They were screaming at here to leave the room, but she was too busy trying to put his shirt on, as pants. I guess they didn’t have enough impact on here, so they decided to bring in a super hero to save the day. (That’s me). I came, I conquered, I closed the deal, and the rather large lady left our room. I proudly thought to myself, it takes a real salesman to convince a sleepwalker to leave.
I wanted to leave you with a two tips when traveling to “The Show Me State”.
- Lock your doors while camping in “The Show Me State” - their have a high population of sleepwalkers.
- Pay $7.00 for a fishing license or you will be donation massive amounts of cash to the MO MO PO PO park fund.
The above is not a billboard, but I thought it would make a great one.
At first I was going to call this a subliminal message; but it’s not really that subliminal, is it?
Props goes out to http://www.dribbleglass.com
I am still trying to configure my answering machine to be as smart as this one!
Once in a great while, I come up with a million dollar idea for some other business or organization and this one was worthy of sharing with the world.
If you run a pet adoption, pet shelter, or work for a humane shelter, listen up - because this idea will save the lives of pets.
The first concept of marketing a website is called a “Call to Action“. A Call to Action funnels customers to a specific action, such as purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter, or calling your organization. Many elements can play on the call to action on a website and the idea I have for you will increase this call to action 1000%.
We all know humane shelters house pets and if they are not adopted, the end result can be fatal for the orphaned pet. The million dollar idea I have is “truth” in marketing that provides a website with a countdown to the day they are being “put to sleep”. I know, it sounds wrong, but why not spread the word about the reality if the pet is not placed in a nice home, the results will be death?
See this example!
Now we could get all Web 2.0 on it with RSS feeds, email subscriptions, AJAX Based Countdowns, the ability to sort shortest time left, and many more cool ideas.
If you are the webmaster for a shelter that house pets, the time is now to step up to the plate with this idea and save the lives of the pets you are serving. What I can guarantee you is a higher percentage of adoption.
Yeah, you know who you are! I was just searching google and it appears that I am listed in The Internet Movie Database.
The only piece of information about myself is the following:
‘Water skier and member of the California Water Bugs club in 1940s.’
I tried to update the profile but they want $30.00 a year to do this. If for any reason, I ever need to be listed #1 on Google, $30.00 seems like a fair price. Or…. If I get annoyed and people start bothering me about my ultra cool water skiing skills of the 40’s - I might just have to belly up the $30.00!
I originally wrote this post last Sunday and while on a business trip in Washington DC I had called a cab service to take me to the airport. While on the phone we negotiated the spelling of my last name for a good 2-3 minutes as I repeated the spelling. I was pretty sure that we had it right at the end of the dialog, but I was wrong. Will the real Aaron Thillits, please stand up. And will the real cab service please train the dispatch team to learn “P” as in Paul is just that.
It’s a little known fact that I generate 1 out of 100 good ideas during any given day. The good news is that I generated anywhere between 500-1000 per day, all powered by my dark liquid beverage called the coffee. Sometimes though my ideas see the light of day, just because “Someone” (www.somemansblog.com) says something like the following:
- That’s impossible.
- You know how many people have said that, but haven’t executed it?
- Your crazy dude!
- Don’t waste your time, your a loser and always will be.
Now, let me get to the point here. Another Mans Blog fell into one of the 4 above statement, I won’t tell you which one, but I can tell you I was instantly motivated to do it better, do it harder, and launch “Another Man’s Blog”.
When the hunter becomes the hunted, especially in the marketing world, you have a great idea! Without further delay, I would like to introduce………
As a veteran Blogger with almost 20 posts to my name, I am going to share some infinite wisdom here for “Yet Another Man”.
- Make sure you have your “About Me” page done or the readers will be upset. For some reason most people like to get to know you.
- If your gonna hang with “elite” bloggers like “Another Man” and “One Man“, don’t think 2 posts will be enough. You will be required to give up 2-3 hours a week for postings.
- Add a Feedburner Subscription Module.
- Be prepared to buy “yet another beer” next time we are in town. One Man buys “one beer”, Another Man buys “another beer”, and you my friend get the responsibility of buy infinite amounts of “yet another beer”.
- Add Woopra to your Blog, for me seeing the 40+ visitors has been exciting!
- Finally, if you want to be super cool and hang with the big kids, start working on your Texas Accent. Seriously, the public loves Texans (don’t ask why).
Welcome to the Blog-O-Sphere my humble friend - hopefully we see some action from your BLOG and not some empty shell of a word press theme, hanging in the background.
There are a few golden rules to playing dodge ball with your family, however the most important one to really consider is the following…..
If you play with a ball larger than your opponent, bad things can happen”
Here is a cool concept and “Green Hosting Providers” should appreciate the ability to fit 1,000 servers into a 40U rack unit. No, I am not going to pitch you on VMWARE or grid computing (I will save that for our upcoming face to face meeting that you will request after reading this post).
To get this up and running I am will need the following….
3.50″ 32 Port Panel USB - Quantity 12, Cost = $2015.52
USB Based Web Server - Quantity 365, Cost = $25,531.75
I will probably need something to connect these to and will need to learn the limitations, so I am going to need a development and server budget of around $25k.
Total Cost = $50,000 - $60,000 or about $165.00 per device.
If I purchase my own rack with a decent amount of bandwidth for $2500.00 per month, I could launch a new type of web hosting company offering “USB Web Servers” for $30.00 per month.
Revenue = $10,950.00 monthly…
The features of each USB Based Webserver are as follows:
HTTP server
Handles HTTP/1.0 GET and HEAD requests. Currently does not support POST requests.
FTP server
RFC 959 compliant FTP server built in.
ISAPI support
Supports Microsoft Internet Server API.
CGI scripts
Support for CGI/1.1 scripts. It should handle normal CGI scripts and non parsed header CGI scripts. Currently does not support POST request to CGI. Use GET instead.
PERL scripts
It should handle normal PERL scripts and non parsed header PERL scripts. Currently does not support POST request to CGI. Use GET instead. Recommend using Active State PERL.
Server-side includes
Supports server-side includes in specified directories with filenames that have a .shtm or .shtml extensions. Supports echo, flastmod, fsize, include, config commands. Does not support var and exec.
Document aliasing
Allows you to create an alias for a directory, so that all directories do not have to be under the document root. Also allows you to move directory locations, and not have to change the HTML links in your documents.
IP Address security (pop up)
Allows you to restrict access to specified URLs based on the request client’s IP address.
Username/password security
Similar to IP Address security, but allows you to require a username and password to access specified URLs. See IP Address security above and User/Group authenticaton below.
User and Group authentication
Used in conjunction with Username/password security. Allows you to create users and groups that can then be used as remote admin users, or for requiring authentication to protected resources.
Users (pop up)
Groups (pop up)
Remote administration (pop up)
Currently allows you to start, stop, or restart the HTTP server and the FTP server remotely via a browser.
Error customization (pop up)
Allows you to redirect error responses to a user provided HTML document, rather than using the default error message.
Common log format logging
WebServUSB can log to the screen and/or to a file using the Common Log Format (CLF). Does not support other logging formats.
HTTP Logging(pop up)
FTP Logging(pop up)
Configurable MIME types (pop up)
Allows the ability to add and modify MIME types. Several well known types are previously defined and required.
Directory browsing (pop up)
If directory browsing is enabled, it automatically creates directory listings for any directory, under the virtual root, where a default document cannot be found.
Anonymous FTP
Allows anonymous FTP access to the specified home directory.
Username/password FTP with home directory (pop up)
Allows individual user account home directories that requires authentication.
Configurable thread cache pool
Allows you to control the maximum number of threads the HTTP server will use. Also allows you to tune the number of threads that are in a thread cache that can be re-used. This eliminates the overhead of create and destroy threads for each request.
This is 100% a joke, I don’t even think it’s technically possible, but still cool to think about!
I have no idea why I like to single people out. First it was “One Man” and when I heard our buddy Matt Cutts was a the fan of a feline, I couldn’t help remember the Bonsai Kitten Hoax a few years back. If you were not lucky enough to see it, the basis of the hoax was the ability to pre-package a kitten into a jar with feeding tubes for display in your house. It caused a slight stir on the Internet with people complaining about animal cruelty. My version of Bonsai Kitten, includes Matt Cutts - but I had to get a little more creative with this since their is only “one” Matt Cutts.
A couple of things will need to take place for this to happen.
Task 1, get in touch with Rick Moranis and cross my fingers that the shrinking device he created is real!
Task 2, talk to Matt Cutts and see what price he could be purchased for - and if he would be willing to be shrink himself to fit inside the jar, and more importantly if he would accept a feeding tube.
Task 3, sell him on Ebay to the highest bidder. I am thinking some Internet Marketing Firm wishing to do some viral marketing could use Matt Cutts inside a Jar for trade show booths and maybe even advice.
Yeah, Yeah. We could do the “Matt Cutts” action figure - but how boring would that be. I would prefer to have an original miniature Matt Cutts in a Jar.
If you have interest in this, I can easily broker the deal. To get you thinking, I have created what a graphic to get you excited.
For those not satisfied with just believing my Bonsai Kitten story - visit Wikipeida:Bonsai Kitten for more info.
Also, I might start taking applications. If you have a desire to be 4-5 inches tall, live in jar, and be left on some executives office shelf for a period of one or more years, drop me an email.
