I’m trying another plugin to link between the blog and twitter. This one is called TweetSuite (http://danzarrella.com/beyond-tweetbacks-introducing-tweetsuite.html). So far I like it. Since it’s a widget, it’s appearance is much better then including the code provided by twitter.

The only thing I’m missing, that I’ve found so far, is a Tweet This button doesn’t seem to show up on the base page post, only when you view an individual post.

Now I’m going to go see what shows up on twitter about this post

It’s been a bad week to be a celebrity. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Karl Malden all died this week.

Just last week I was reading a profile about Billy Mays and the impact he’s had on direct marketing. In the interview, it discussed about how he pretty much replaced Ron Popeil as the best known TV marketer. One of the big differences was that he was a marketer where Popeil was an inventor. Both rare talents, both necessary.

One of the things I find most interesting about the coincidence of Mays passing so soon after Ed McMahon was that, in their early years, they both worked the boardwalk in Atlantic City, pitching products to passer-bys. That’s got to be a tough sell with all the other attractions/distractions all around. It must also be a great place to learn marketing, sales, and people.

There have been so many bright lights dimmed in the past few years. I feel a loss from all of them. I never met Ed McMahon or Billy Mays but still learned a lot from them. Others that I have met miss even more are Mac Ross, Barney Zick, and Dottie Walters.

I met Barney Zick and Mac Ross through Jay Abraham events. Both were master copywriters and marketers. I remember Mac talking about the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”. His response was that if he could pick the thousand words, he could craft a mental image to convey almost any idea he wanted and add emotion on top. Barney was also a marvelous speaker and organizer.

Dottie Walters I met though one of Mark Victor Hansen’s writer/speaker events. She was a seven foot tall bundle of enthusiasm in a little five foot body and a major part of the professional speaking world. I don’t know know how tall she really was, but she was certainly a giant in my mind.

One thing they all had in common (among many) was that they were always friendly and willing to give good advice, even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear. They were busy, productive, had businesses and clients galore, but if they could help you, they would.

That was one of the biggest lessons they taught.

At first sight, I thought it was pretty good. The tweet was about as I expected. It used tinyurl instead of my prefered choice of bit.ly, but that was minor.

When I clicked on it to read the blog post, then I didn’t like it. At the top of the post was a full width banner ad for the plugin. If it had just been a small one, like maybe two lines worth, then that would have been fine. This, however, was about four or five lines high in a bold blue. Just a weeee bit too much.

Oh, well, I’m sure there is a similar plugin out there somewhere. I’ll keep looking…

I just loaded a new plug-in to see how well it works. The idea is that whenever I make a blog post, it tweets a notice with a short description.

It also has a widget to do the opposite, show my tweets on my blog sidebar. I deactivated that since it pretty much just filled the sidebar with text and you couldn’t tell one from the other. However, it was a quick try so it might have been operator error. I’ll try it again when I have a bit more time.

After I see how it works with this blog post, if it’s decent I’ll post the link.

Cheers!

I saw today on Ars Technica that Bozeman, Montana is adding a new requirement when you apply for a city job. Apparently just looking for your publicly available online posts isn’t enough. The report says that they actually want your log in name and passwords for all your social sites and websites!

Not only do I consider this to be way too intrusive, but risky. How many people have poor security policies and use just a few passwords for many uses? I’m sure they’re going to get some passwords submitted for social sites that are also used for online banking passwords or ATM pins. To me, having this information could open up great liability issues for the city. If they have a password that I use for my online banking and someone cracks my online banking account, whether or not that criminal has anything to do with Bozeman, I would have to suspect the leak came from them.

I don’t want to know someone else’s passwords. If something happens to them, and I don’t have it, then I’m safer.

Will the next employer want to see checking and credit card statements to see if I have any ‘unacceptable’ interests or have been receiving any specialized medical treatments?

Why money?

Some people are upset that others have an interest in making and having money. They seem to think that money, or wanting to make money, is bad. They point to the recent scandals and our current challenges in the economy as proof that people who want to make money cause problems for everyone.

My version of the truth of all this is that most of these have been caused by employees of large public corporations not business owners and entrepreneurs. Properly done, a business transaction benefits both parties. The seller provides a service or product in exchange for money. The buyers want that service or product more than they want the money that it cost. Buyers willingly turn over their money, no one is forcing them to purchase.

The root of deserve is ‘de serve’ or ‘from service’. If the seller does not deserve the money and the buyer does not value that more than they value their money, they don’t buy.

On a more basic, personal level, what does money get us? It provides food, housing, medical care, education for our children, support for charities, vacations, and other pleasures. When we spend the money we earn, that provides jobs for people and a return on the investment of businesses.

I remember reading several years ago that each millionaire creates 100 jobs. These are jobs for people who work for them directly and jobs for those who provide the services and products that they use.

One of my favorite quotes, though I’m paraphrasing, is from Benjamin Franklin who said “You can not help the poor by joining them”

Procrastination is such a sneaky thing. You think you’re just putting something off for a day, then another, and another, and soon you’re into months and wondering what happened.

That’s why planning and prioritization is so important.

In any event, here I am, finally back in the blogosphere

Tomorrow I’ll start looking at themes and plan to have one (or more) picked by Thursday and then the customizaton starts.

In the meantime, the goal is to start blogging several times a week. Let’s see how the prioritization goes for that!

BTW, the new wordpress dashboard is a really great improvement over the last one I saw. Kudos to the team!