Hey, I’m not here anymore!

Okay, I’ll leave the blog up as it is so far, but I’ve moved!

Go to www.somecallmejim.com to see my new, regularly updated blog. Your very sould may be in danger if you don’t.

And sorry for forgettin to post that here, for anyone who has been wondering.

Now go and subscribe to my new rss feed there!

The big move is coming…

Yes it is…

I’m in the process of setting up a brand new shiny website, and in a matter of days, everything should be fully functional…I hope!

Would you like a preview? So sorry! Can’t do it! But I still love you.

Why is the US Airways crash such a big deal?

Seriously. I understand it’s a sort of big deal, but all-day coverage over a 150 person vehicle crashing, where there were no casualties and very few injuries? What’s up with that?

Actually, I know exactly what’s up with it. The bottom line is that it’s a story that the media can sensationalize. Really, that’s it. Why is it so amazing?

• Planes rarely crash. It’s a unique story.
• The story has a “hero”. The pilot did a good job landing the plane. Kept it together and everything.
• It was in New York. The last time a plane made the news in New York was 9/11.

I’m sure there are a couple other points, but essentially, that’s it. The news smelled blood, and they pounced.

The honest to goodness truth is that this isn’t really all that amazing a story. If a Charter bus in Kansas carrying 100 passengers on their way smeplace went off the road and crashed, but everyone survived, it probably wouldn’t even make it out of local news, or maybe it would get a 10 second blurb at 10. This is big and sensational, and therefore it’s getting nonstop coverage.

Okay, enough ranting. Hey, a new website is coming soon. Details coming soon.

I keep getting older!

While I haven’t seen “Benjamin Button” yet, I have to admit that sometimes I wish I could turn the clock backwards as I aged. Give or take a few hours, it was 28 years ago on this very day when I started slowly dying. And somehow I’ve survived another revolution around a 865,000 mile wide mass of hydrogen releasing more nuclear energy every second than has ever been created by man through all human history, all while strapped by unseen forces to a 13,169,754,100,000,000,000,000,000 pound rock being hurtled through space at almost 67,000 miles per hour.

I specifically wrote it that way so it sunded like a real accomplishment.

Now if you’ll excuse me,  I’m off to go buy a tub of frosting (and maybe a crappy guitar. I need to learn sometime, and ideally before I’m dead.), and then I’m off to party with Martin Luther King Jr.

Zune2K? Blown up zunes, anyone?

When I read this, I thought it was a hoax, but it’s serious as a heart attack.

At 2AM this morning (Apparently in each time zone) The 30GB version of Microsoft’s Zune, their iPod wannabe, simply stopped working. No, I’m not joking, and yes, this is real. Check it out – Microsoft’s official zune support page goes into great detail on it. Many of the zune support boards are being flooded with posts that their zune quit working.

 

And in a dark, unlit corner of Apple world headquarters, Steve Jobs lets out a long, sinister laugh.

My guess? Microsoft programmed the Zunes to go out of service when the world ends in in 2012, but a pogrammer accidentally wound back the software by 3 years.

Quick update: As of this moment, this is CNN.com’s number 1 story of the day.

New Years Resolutions

So, what are your New Years resolutions? Do you even make resolutions? Have you ever kept a resolution?

This year, my top 10 resolutions are as follows:

1. I resolve to be less of a loser.
2. I resolve to father at least one child.
3. I resolve to lose 50 pounds or more.
4. I resolve to hit the 10,000 subscriber mark on YouTube.
5. I resolve to get mentioned at least once on a national TV show.
6. I resolve to be a better husband.
7. I resolve to go back to school.
8. I resolve to find a job that is both enjoyable and fiscally rewarding.
9. I resolve to invent something useful.
10. I resolve to write a book.

There they are. My top 10. Let’s see if I can manage to pull off even one of them.

Later! :-D) <—That’s my double-chin smiley. See resolution #3

Merry Christmas!

Now, I know that some of my readers don’t hold to the same beliefs as I do, and that’s cool. Without diverse opinions, the world would be a boring place, right? To those viewers who don’t share my beliefs, I wish a most fulfilling holiday season to you and yours.
For anyone else, I want to just remind us what the season is all about. It’s not about shopping, or giving presents to your family. It’s not about buying cards or standing in lines at 3AM. It’s about love, coming down to Earth clothed in humanity. It’s a love that was willing to sacrifice everyting, just to save us. In a little town called Bethlehem, love came down one night, and in that we can place our hope.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

6k&Under – Keep or kill?

So a couple weeks ago I started a program on my YouTube channel called 6k&Under, a program featuring lesser-known faces on YouTube who are far more talented than you’d guess by looking at their subscriber base. I really enjoy doing the show, but I’m having problems:

1. Production time – Ever tried finding talent in the seas of less-subscribed people? Finding a needle in a haystack is easier, and it’s probably more fun, too. I can spend 8 hours researching for a 4 minute video. User submissions are helpful, but I either don’t get any, or I get 70, and I can’t sort through all of them right away, which means they get lost in the shuffle.
2. Low viewership – The people gettng featured are watching, and a few of my regulars are watching, but nobody else is even coming over to say hello. When in it’s first day, my stupid Viagra video gets more hits than the latest 6kU episode got on day 1, I have to wonder if it’s worth the effort.
3. My third point – Because all good lists need three points or more.

So help me decide if the show is worth keeping on life support, or if I need to pull the plug. Answer a few questions, and then comment below. Be honest! (See more to complete the survey!)

The face of Social Media & Marketing in 2009

Do you enjoy social media? Do you enjoy understanding the benefits of social media to the worlds of Marketing, PR, and Customer Service? Are you a social media junkie who wants to position yourself in a way to appeal to corporations looking to get with the times?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then this paper is a must-read. It’s predictions for social media in 2009, written by some fairly well-known players in the growing industry. I loved this paper, in part because it’s great insight, but also because most of it has been what I’ve preached all along.

If you’re a little ADD, and 23 pages freaks you out, here are a few things that stood out to me:

• Human interaction trumps all. For the last…oh, forever, businesses have taken a “create an ad, dump it someplace, and don’t touch it” aproach. In 2008, businesses started using social media to connect to customers, and there was this revelation: Consumers LIKE interacting! In 2009, expect to see many more businesses adopting this approach to social media.
• A problematic economy will INCREASE social media marketing. Think about it: Ad agencies, TV, radio, and newspapers all cost money, and in some cases a lot of it. How much does it cost to set up social media accounts? Virtually nothing, and the entire planet has access to your company. Not bad.
• Realization that quality of friends & subscribers is more important than quantity. For the last year, there has been this mentality that the best way to get your product seen was to promote it with the most popular bloggers, YouTubers, etc. Slowly, some businesses have realized that this doesn’t really work effectively. In many cases they’ve learned that 5,000 subscribers that fit your target audience is better than 100,000 subscribers who don’t fit at all. In 2009, many businesses will put down the shotgun, and pick up the sniper rifle.
• Spectators are people too! Spectators are those people who watch your stuff, but never subscribe. For example, while I only weigh in with 2,200ish subscribers, almost a million people have viewed my material. The trend in 2008 was to ignore the people who didn’t “sign up”; in 2009, businesses will realize that the ones who don’t sign up to follow have great value.
• Redefining the metrics of advertising value. Many businesses are realizing that page impressions, clicks, CPM, unique views, etc, are all so 2007.  Social media is about satisfaction, engagement, and viewer retention. A blog or video that 1,000,000 people watch for 5 seconds and click out of is less effective than the one that gets 5,000 loyal viewers coming back each time, who watch all the way to the end. Expect more businesses to put to bed the use of traditional metrics to determine what’s valuable.
• Big business gets back to small-business approaches. Businesses that have grown so big to become faceless corporate entities are slowly realizing the value of good old-fashioned principles, like friendship has to be earned, fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and people want to connect to real people. Social Media in 2009 will draw more businesses into to world of real human interaction.

That’s the general gist. There’s a lot of great stuff that I didn’t put in here. One could honestly blog about 30 posts from notes on this paper. It’s good stuff. I also liked their prediction that Google will buy twitter. One can dream.

Bush gets a shoe, you get a game.

You know you want to…