You Gotta Believe

I’ve never made a putt I didn’t visualize. Never struck a ball I didn’t watch to the barrel of the bat. Never swished a 20-footer I didn’t see in my mind’s eye.
Each takes belief. 
With enough practice and repeated success, belief becomes instinct, overtaking fear of missing, fear of falling short, fear of failure.
In many ways, [...]

Personal Brand & First Amendment Blogging

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester’s social media analyst, posed a question this week on how corporations respond to personal brands.
The two most interesting parts of the post:

Are there risks associated with personal brands?
Do you have a First Amendment right to blog?

The first idea of possible “risks” for the corporation made me immediately think of Dan Pink’s book, Free [...]

Happiest Gigs on Earth

Yahoo today listed the Top 10 gigs in which people are happiest.
Number 1? Clergy.  Included in the 10: actors/directors, special education teachers and firefighters.
Conspicuously absent: bloggers, marketers, journalists, flaks and designers. Surely they are in the top 20? Helping people look as great, hit the right message points and win coverage is satisfying. Look at [...]

Life Offline

Now that the kids are back in school, it’s time for me to get off my tail. Online activity can be habitual. I ventured offline this summer to see how much things might change in daily life.
Guess what? Nothing dramatic happened while I was dogging it. Yes, the 3G iPhone was released. And Yahoo continued [...]

Good Mantra

At a year-end concert last night in the gym of my local elementary school, there was lots of technology to record the moment: a camcorder, digital camera or cellphone camera for each musician. Parents gathered around to get the best angle during the “Kodak” moment for both orchestra and band.
I shamelessly did the same, but [...]

Attention Crash

Are attention spans linked to age?
This post by Steve Rubel poses the question in a Gen-X and-Gen-Y context.
Are we busy looking at what others are saying, trying to stay up with the latest buzz? Or are we OK with the amount of material we’re reading to stay current?
There’s multi-tasking. Then there’s time spent, time gone [...]

Urgency is Lazy

Deadlines in the news media business are legendary. And real. They’ve always ensured that content (news, especially exclusives) is edited on time and feeds the news hole. A reporter who misses deadline risks:
a) Seeing her/his byline story replaced by wire copy (think outsourced)
b) Disappointing her/his editor and publisher
c) Spending a career on the back pages [...]

Tuesday Quiz: Writing as Obsession

If you’ve ever been in the dark hole of a writing project, you’ll appreciate a pop quiz. Which author said this?
“I sometimes think it’s important for writers to have an unhealthy obsession. Besides writing, that is.
A. Carl Hiaasen
B. J.K. Rowling
C. Ernest Hemingway
D. F. Scott Fitzgerald
E. None of the above
Writing, said now-deceased newspaper [...]

Blogging To Death

This cautionary tale in the NYT may be a little over the top, but it illustrates the downside for bloggers trying to publish technology scoops.
I remember when news radio was a major player in the San Diego market. The competing stations — and their reporters driving from story to story — would get the headlines, [...]

Microbrand Monday: SightSpeed

Oil is over $100 a barrel. Reducing your carbon footprint is good. Google went dark to support Earth Hour.
So why not use video conferencing more and save travel for the only the most crucial business? 
SightSpeed is a Berkeley, California-based company that provides VoIP communications for reasonable rates. The company serves everyday folks at home, as well as businesses large and [...]