3 months ago Microsoft spent $100 million to launch BING search.  And now Yahoo! has followed suit, spending another $100 million for their own branding campaign.  All the while Google and Facebook are laughing at the big company mentality for marketing– to spend money on traditional advertising.

If your search quality hasn’t changed, then invest the $100 million to build a better product, not to just advertise.

Yahoo’s new ad campaign is called “It’s You”, which harkens back to the Life Engine campaign of several years ago– lots of purple.  What I want to know is– how is the new Yahoo! about me, as they claim?

Every couple years there is a product innovation that just changes the game.  The new XBOX has no controller, so forget about buying a Nintendo Wii.  The new XBOX has facial recognition and voice recognition– so it can spot you among a crowd of players.  They show an example of a skateboarding game where the kid holds up his skate deck and it scans both sides into the game.  Watch the 3 minute video here:

I predict that:

• Sales of keyboards and controllers will go way down.
• Porn companies will find clever applications to hack the box.
• You will be wasting a lot of time and money replacing your old stuff.
• Voice and facial ID will supplement password recognition.
• Uncle Sam and Big Brother are already excited about what is possible.

What do you think?  Are you scared?  Excited?

A few dozen of the top internet marketers got together for 3 days at this exclusive event in Del Mar, just north of San Diego. Great food, plenty of drinks, and even better sharing of Internet marketing secrets.  Invite only, since it’s not a conference, but a place where already successful people get together to network and share. The other thing is that we all had to sign NDA’s, so I’m not able to spell out exactly what I learned here.

But what I will tell you is that the $3k entry fee is a fraction of the value of what I received in terms of knowledge and relationships. It’s the best learning that I’ve had in the last 3 years, with no disrespect to Shawn Collins, Danny Sullivan, or Barry Smyth– largely because of the close networking

I also got to wrestle with Robert Drysdale, 6 time world champion in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.  Yes, he kicked my ass– see pictures below as proof.  Looking forward to spending more time with Robert and Sean at their Las Vegas Jiu Jitsu facility at PubCon in a couple months.

Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit sings a tribute to BlitzLocal.  What do you think?  Go to 9:30 in the clip to go straight to the original song!

This past weekend, ThinkTank attendees stayed at a beachfront hotel– a beautiful resort on the coast, north of San Diego.  A perfect stay, except for the scene created by a rude hotel employee.  In his defense, he’s got a stressful job– working 80-90 hours a week, primarily wandering about the bar and being social with drunk guests.  This is a story of a guy who made a bad thing worse, deciding to take his anger out on professional Internet marketers.

Jeremy Shoemoney was sitting in the hotel lobby, wearing no shoes at this beach resort.  This punk employee yells at him to put his shoes, on in front of a dozen friends.  Treated like an idiot in front of his wife and friends, he refuses– and the punk goes nuclear instantly.  He calls over multiple security guards and attempts to throw out Jeremy.  By now, everyone else is interested in the disturbance– it’s become an ego battle.

Shoemoney Vs. The Incredible Hulk

Fortunately, George Avery steps in help, getting in the middle of two yelling men, in the process being threatened to be thrown out, too.  The hotel employee threatened to throw me out, too, which was irritating, but I kept calm.  Certainly, this fellow was quite important, as he kept asserting his right to throw out anyone in the hotel.

Now there’s a blog at ChristopherPuffer.com– it ranks #1 for “christopher puffer” on Google, by the way, since so many people are linking to the site.  And the hotel management continues to deny that Puffer was in the least bit out of line or slightly aggressive.  Even Puffer continues to say dumb things.  I’m surprised the hotel management hasn’t swooped in to silence him, issue an apology and have the situation go away.

Remember the video on United breaks Taylor guitars?  Or perhaps the untied.com site?  Those customers were so pissed off that they took the effort to write songs and build websites, which in turn, were picked up by the press.  All the while, the company sat on the sideline, continuing to deny any wrongdoing.

Can you think of examples where you had a bad experience and wanted to tell others?  Amazon has a book on how satisfied customers tell 3 friends, while unhappy customers tell 3,000.

I’m surprised that more companies aren’t including social media training for employees.  But an ounce of courtesy would prevent such situations from flaring up in the first place.

If you find this interesting, put a link to this story on your blog– or just link to ChristopherPuffer.com. I’ll keep you updated with what I hear from the hotel staff and their PR agency.  The PR agency’s site is a 404, by the way.  And next time you see Shoemoney, tell him to keep his shoes on!

Update:

Have you seen the parody site about whether Glenn Beck murdered a young girl in 1990?  Obviously, he didn’t.  The site’s author put up the site because Glenn Beck used rhetoric to pin Representative Keith Ellison, a Muslim, to offer proof that he wasn’t working with the enemy.  Outrageous claim, of course.  So this guy gives Beck a taste of his own medicine with this satirical blog.

If you’ve got 6 minutes and 31 seconds, give this a shot from my friend Alex, who has the most popular paper airplanes site on the web.  If you’re one of those folks who likes to watch cooking shows, but doesn’t actually get around to following along– don’t worry, you can do this no sweat.  The plane is called the Cobra– and it took me only one sheet of paper (proof below) to do it, although I had to pause and rewind a couple times.  Flies perfectly as claimed– like a dart.

Check out Alex’s personal blog, as well as his cocktail making site.  If you’re really brave, try making the sweaty bollock recipe, which has 3 shots of absinthe.  If you don’t know what bollock are– look it up.  Perhaps making cocktails and paper airplanes don’t mix!

Some pages on his site, such as the types of paper airplanes, don’t have page titles  (SEO ooops!)– but all is forgiven for the man who is in charge of Facebook’s own SEO and online marketing. You can learn a lot from this man– not just about paper airplanes and cocktails.

Recently seen and heard again, starting anything with the words: “Do you need” or “Do you want” are big spam flags.  It’s mostly applicable to email, but also on web pages.  This will affect you in organic search and possibly paid search Quality Scores.

A lot of the rules that trigger spam flags in email will work for web, too.  Think about it.

Bruce Forbes of Equation Audio sent us 3 sets of his awesome headphones for review.  In his words….

The RP-22X’s were developed after we had perfected the RP-21’s as far as that design topology and material integration would allow.  The thing that is selling these headphones is they compete extremely well with many competitive models that are more expensive, yet considered inferior in performance.  Subjective?  Yes!  But the total numbers chosen at blind shoot-outs held around the country don’t lie.  RP’s win over 80% when compared to headphones at or above their published MSRP.  And well over 50% when compared too competitive models costing as much as 40% more.  Granted, there will always be subjective opinions that vary per headphone and even dependent on the sound source, type of music, etc.  But there is often a pleasant surprise to hear such great reproduction in general from a new brand, because there have been no serious alternatives to the major brands, only an increasing number of confusing models designed for arbitrarily designated applications.

The majority are purchased by musicians for tracking during sessions, same for engineers and they are very popular when the tracks go through the final mix and mastering process, particularly on the growing home studio front, where many DIY artists and engineers master their own CD’s.  Our number one application for the RP’s is tracking, with growing use in the HiFi market.  The RP-21 is smooth throughout the frequency bandwidth (about 20Hz-22kHz). Although they respond below and above that, the roll-off considerations make listing them useless for most practical applications.  We make fun of the ‘hype’ in the industry by listing a fantasy or some other comical response specification, because many companies list response frequencies below 10Hz, even 5Hz (more a feeling) and above 22kHz, in ranges bats and porpoises have yet to verify.

The public response for us taking the ‘let’s get real’ position has been overwhelmingly positive. Overall, the RP-21’s produce low aural and physical fatigue, generating pleasing, relatively accurate reproduction of most sources.  There’s very little ‘hype’ though some have remarked they felt the bass was augmented a bit.  We would agree except during in-house tests with similarly priced and type competitive headphones, the 21’s tend to get high marks for bass response sounding closer to a good pair of soffet mounted or larger near-field speakers in a well treated room.

However, the RP-21’s didn’t seem to deliver sufficient ‘ballistic’ response such as those associated with percussions and bass instruments requested by many extreme users, especially drummers and bass players, so we decided to create a product with those applications in mind.  We started with the RP-21 ear cups and added a higher mass diaphragm, coiled to accept more power and added a dual element ear pad that has a port or ear opening designed to compliment the acoustics and deliver more low frequency punch.  This enhanced low frequency response along with the added power handling capability provides an increase in percussive ballistics and bass signals of all types, without adding the typical sack of mud that some other competitive models reportedly add to the mix.  Bear in mind this added bass and percussive response does not compliment mixing multi-track recordings or listening to a well recorded orchestra.

RP-22X’s are not as flat or smooth as the RP-21’s, though you can boost the drum (ballistic mixes and bass instrument mixes) and rock on, The X is for extreme.  Remember to carefully elevate the volume to prevent accidental dangerous SPL- you rarely recover from nerve damage, never return to ‘good-as-new’ when you damage the tympanic membrane (ear drum), so I harp on the be responsible theme, even on the packaging.  Be kind to your ears and your future – use headphones responsibly!

The only time I prefer the 22x’s is when I want more kick and then I EQ or add the highs and mids I want to compensate for, producing quite an energetic and pleasing mix, though this is for limited use, due to prolonged higher SPL applications.

All things considered, the RP-21 and 22X headphones sell at a street price that literally blows away same priced headphones and seriously challenges many headphones that are priced higher.  That’s our mission and with these two products, and we have well achieved our goal.

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Dennis’ comment: If you want us to review your stuff, send it to our office address at:

BlitzLocal LLC
1490 W 121st Ave, Suite 101
Westminster, CO 80234

We don’t guarantee that it will be a positive review, but you will get at least a PR5 link.

In Flagstaff, Arizona, there is a problem of obese donkeys being fed by tourists.  And in Spanish, “burrito” means little donkey.

Makes you want to go get some Chipotle now, doesn’t it?

Then sit down to watch Super Size Me.

And wash it all down with some Acai Berry tea– or join a weight loss site.

Do you run your own company?  Doesn’t matter if it’s just you.  Some people like to say that everyone is an “executive”, since being one has nothing to do with title or how many people are “under” you.  After all, if you are the Chief EXECUTIVE Officer, your job is to execute– to get things done better than anyone. And anyone can execute.

Thus, even if you’re a peon in big company, you can still be an executive.  It’s not about fancy suits, big offices, and private jets– it’s about getting things done with massive efficiency.