Chris Pirillo on The Death of Email Marketing

Chris sent me a set of slides recently for a seminar on "the death of email marketing" that he's planning to offer.  Now coming from someone who makes his living largely from email marketing, that takes guts.  And you know what?  He did a just plain great job.  If I was still in marketing (yes Virginia, believe it or not, my business cards used to read "Director of Marketing"), I'd be running, not walking to take this seminar.  I don't know when he's offering it or how much he's charging but I'm positive its worth it.

Bias Disclaimer: There's no bias here.  You may have noticed that I've added the Gnomedex and Supernova buttons to the Feedster Images results page.  There's not business relationship between us -- I think these are just plain great events and I'm doing what I can to help them.

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Day 8 on Desktop Linux: Shocking Positive Events!

Well I'll be dipped in ... (excuse me).  But my god -- Red Hat 9 supports, out of the box, my USB digital camera.  Go figure.  Now I know this doesn't sound like a big deal but when you hear stuff about Linux its always about hardware.  This is what I did:

• Plug in cable
• Turn on computer
• Main Menu => Graphics => Digital Camera Tool
• Set my camera to Kodak DC 4800
• Drill down through the camera's folders to the images (stored in the intuitive DCIM folder -- Kodak is moronic)
• Select Copy Images to Computer button (it might have been called something else but there were only 3 icons -- hard to miss)
• Create a folder
• Click ok to save the files

Woo Freaking Hoo!  That's just like windows -- hell half the time on Windows I have to restart to get my USB camera recognized.   Now here was the downside -- Nautilus, the standard Red Hat file manager, mucked it all up. I then wanted to look at the pictures so I went to start Nautilus which uses Mozilla as an embedded component.  Of course I had Phoenix running already and Nautilus refused to launch and then Phoenix was pretty much trashed and had to be stopped with GTop -- it actually was running but had such window management troubles that it was easier to "kill -9 it and let root sort it out".  ;-)

But when I stopped Phoenix completely and then started Nautilus, I was able to drag and drop the pictures into The Gimp and the even drag them into an email client.  Pretty damn sweet.

So when I think about it, in a lot of ways -- for me -- Linux has been about as good with hardware so far as has Windows:

• Linux sound works out of the box -- Windows did a year ago and then magically broke and has been broken ever since
• My video card worked out of the box and autodetected right up to 1600 x 1200
• Digital camera works just fine

Next step in the hardware front will be printers and such but initial results are very, very positive.  The Mozilla / Nautilus / Phoenix stupidity was annoying but that wouldn't bother a more normal user since they'd never bother with an alternative to Mozilla most likely.

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How Times have Changed or "Little Kiddies Meet The Doors"

I took my Mom out for an ice cream cone yesterday for an utterly indulgent Mothers Day lunch*.  So we walked into J.P. Licks in Newton Centre, raising the average age substantially in the process, and I just started to chuckle.  My Mom didn't see why I was chuckling and asked.  Well .. The music playing was "Road House Blues" from The Doors.  How very, very sad -- from one of the most notorious bands in the late 60s with even a trial over public indecency to "Liitle Kiddie Ice Cream Parlor" music.  Too damn funny.

*Don't think I'm cheap -- dinner was shortly there after at Aquitaine.  And it was outstanding.

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Feedster Images : Or Something Even my Mom Liked

I'm a thoroughly digital guy while I have a thoroughly analog Mom.  Love her to pieces but she doesn't really get what I do professionally.  Still she's a dog lover so when Feedster Images brought up this picture for her on Mother's day, she was impressed:

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Betsy on Blogging Beach Blanket Bingo

Here are Betsy's thoughts on Saturday's outing.

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New Spring Clothes for that Old Blog o' Mine

Yup.  New templates for the blog finally.  Why?  a) tired of the old one and b) wanted a blog that more gracefully handled changes in width and was more "laptop friendly".  Please let me know of any issues.

This change wouldn't have happened without a generous donation of a template I could hack on.  Thanks man.

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Ten Things I Want in a Web Browser!

Dear Mr. Browser Developer,

All I'd really like for Christmas this year are these ten things:

1. Save-able Tab Arrangements.  I go to a lot of effort to open three (or ten) tabs just the way I want them.  And then I have to quit.  Or you crash.  Or whatever.  Is this really hard?
   
2. Cross Browser Bookmarks.  I'm tired of having different bookmarks in IE, Mozilla, Phoenix, Konquerer and Safari.  ENOUGH !!!!  I'd really like all web browsers to implement bookmarks this way:
   • Current normal bookmarks should stay
   • Release a simple php script which a bookmark could be sent to via xml-rpc right from the browser's bookmark command
   • Read bookmarks created from any browser
     
3. A Size-able Javascript Bookmarklet Palette.  Javascript bookmarklets are near infinitely useful but I can only have a handful -- why can't the place where these are dragged to just be a palette and I could resize it as large or as small as I need?
   
4. Mozilla -- Please stop slowing down the longer you are open.  I leave you open over night and when I return to you in the morning, you act more slowly and more tired then I do.
   
5. Internet Explorer -- Tabs dudes.  Tabs.  Don't you get it?
   
6. XPI restarting.  Mozilla's extensible XPI modules are cool but I have to exit the browser after installing them and restart.  I understand technically why this is necessary but I don't really care all that much.  Of course if you address #1 then this pretty much goes away.
   
7. Internet Explorer 6 -- Clean up the crashes guys.  You blow up on me like once a day and that's unacceptable and pathetic.  Deal with it.  And while you're on it -- do you think you might be able to add a feature or two?  I know you think you won the browser war but Mozilla / Phoenix are both outstanding and they're making you look like lazy redmond slugs.  Have you no pride?
   
8. Mozilla -- Please support the Internet Explorer proprietary extensions for rich html editing.  I think this is in progress and bloggers who don't work on Windows will be eternally grateful.
   
9. Please, please, please make the in page text search function work like a damn word processor.  I don't know why in page browser searches don't work the same way but they often don't.  Did I miss something ?
   
10. Internet Explorer -- Fix the damn printing problems!  I know you're kinda brain dead at times and I forgive you.  Really I do -- but why do you insist on clipping text on pages when they're printed.  You can verify this by going here -- and printing the text out.  Look at the right side of the page.  Why is the text clipped? 
    
11. Internet Explorer -- I'd ask you to make fonts resizable when they're set in absolute px values like every other browser on the planet but I guess that's just plain asking too much.  It must be hard to code or something -- even though Mozilla, Opera, Phoenix, Safari, Chimera and others all can do this.
    

Yes I've been a good boy this year.  Note that I didn't even bring up the issue of direct Feedster support even though it would be cool -- Konquerer already has it thanks to Rob's fine, fine work and its just awesome.

Thanks

Scott

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I Got a New Gig !

No, no, no -- I didn't join the Borg like Robert Scoble*.  Nor did I accept that advertised "Barrista" position at the local Peet's so I could be pissy, surly, nasty and mean while serving bad baked goods and too strong coffee (what is it with the Peet's in Newton Centre anyway?). 

I am ... drum roll now ... a Technical Editor for Sams Publishing on a new MySQL book due out in November.  More details on that as it progresses.  Since I'm only an editor about MySQL, I guess you could call this "Zawodny Very, Very, Very, Very Light" since my formal bow of MySQL demigod-hood is always directed to Jeremy Zawodny on the West Coast.

*That said, I wish Robert all the best and I'm just plain thrilled for him.  He's going to do great.

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