Quality is really good and you can write stuff on the back of them too. Now I’ve seen that MOO.com offer businesscards too. I’m really really tempted to try them… but I think I’m gonna wait till I have at least a dozen of good pics to print on them.

I took these shots as soon as I opened the package. As useless as they may seem, you can’t really explain their charm and appeal until you hold two or three in your hands.

So today I found these two interesting blog posts, one on Dumb Little Man and the other on ZenHabits.

With today’s divorce rate climbing faster than you can swallow a slice of wedding cake, it seems that we need a lot more than just a bit of love to make our relationships go the long haul.

There are 6 ways to improve your relationship and 7 Deadly Sins of a Relationship.

Let me sum them up here with the 6 hints…

• Give exactly what you want to get
• Remember your partner is not a band-aid
• Being in a relationship never made anyone blind
• Say what you mean, mean what you say
• Always assume your partner’s intentions are good
• Remember the virtues of friendship

…and with the deadly sins (which are now 8)

• Resentment
• Jealousy
• Unrealistic expectations
• Not making time
• Lack of communication
• Not showing gratitude
• Lack of affection
• Bonus sin: Stubbornness

Enjoy your relationship. Have fun. Life is good (no… really!)

Meanwhile this blog should remain 80% usable. Happy reading.

The fastest method to get it is to grab the torrent file and download it with uTorrent (or any other torrent client you may use) or download from the mirrors. Needless to say that the net is now clogged.

I’m going to try it with Wubi, the Installer for windows, without repartitioning my hard drives. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application.

UPDATE
The Windows UBuntu Installer is not yet ready. The updated wubi will probably come out in a week or so. There are alpha stages setups around the net but unfortunately it does not work as it should (otherwise it wouldn’t be an alpha build…).

As of now I am limited to the good ol’ resize-and-repartition way. And just in case, should you ever need to delete the grub os selector and restore the old MBR, there is a little command line utility available for free on the net, it’s called MBR Fix.

Happy Linux!

Street Fighter IV has been recently announced. It’s the continuation of Capcom’s long-running Street Fighter series, one of the most famous games ever created. It’s been announced yesterday in London at a press conference Capcom was holding.

The teaser trailer showed Ryu and Ken squaring off in a pre-rendered 3D brush stroke-painted style, but no actual gameplay was shown. Capcom has stated that the game recently entered development. It is currently unknown which Capcom studio, designer, and producer are involved.

Speculation has commenced on whether the game will feature 3D CGI-style graphics or traditional Street Fighter 2D hand-drawn animation.

- Street Fighter IV on Wikipedia

Less is more

The Joomla setup file (tar.gz) is about 1.9MB for version 1.0.13 and 3.12MB for the 1.5RC2. This is well above the 733KB and 935KB of Drupal version 5.2 and 6.0 beta 1 respectively. Joomla 1.5RC2 is 9.79MB when unpacked while Drupal 6.0 beta 1 is 2.87MB.

I’ve chosen the RC2 and the Beta 1 from Joomla and Drupal.

Setup

The setup went on quite smoothly with both products. Drupal even asked me to choose among pgsql or mysql. Joomla is bound to mysql (like wordpress, another tool I use a lot). I’ve studied pgSQL at the university and I’m pleased to see it in action somewhere, anyway, for the sake of comparison, I’ve chosen mySQL for both platform.

With Drupal the database must exist on your server before the script can be installed; Joomla created it. Also note that Joomla database, right after the installation, is about 200KB in 35 tables while Drupal is storing a good 700KB of mysql database in 46 tables.

Manual Adjustments

Remember to delete the installation folder after installing Joomla. Note that both scripts returned some sort of warnings: on my Windows machine, with the Apache2Triad server bundle, I had to set up chron jobs for Drupal. You have to change some apache/php setting for Joomla too but both will work just fine even if you “simply install them”.

Front-End

The Drupal initial layout is clean and tableless while Joomla is a little bit more “cluttered” and willing to “show off” all of its sample content. Drupal is XHTML 1.0 Strict while Joomla uses the Transitional DOCTYPE. Also I can see tables in the main template for Joomla.

Back-End

The back end interface of Joomla has a lot of options and can be confusing while the Drupal interface has a lot of powerful options presented in a clean and neat way. Both scripts come with lots of themes and modules to expand the scripts capabilities.

More on this topic

As I just finished installing both scripts, I’ll start using them and exploring their flexibility and features. Maybe I’ll post more on this. My advice? Try them out.

But last Tuesday Buddhist monks and nuns, revered in Burma, began marching and chanting prayers. The protests spread as hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and public figures joined in, finding the hope they’d lost. Now they’re facing crackdown – so please, show your solidarity to this movement towards reconciliation and democracy and sign the emergency petition supporting the Burmese people — it’ll be delivered to United Nations Security Council members and international media all week.

In the past, Burma’s military rulers have massacred the demonstrators and crushed democracy. The world must stand with the Burmese people at this time, to show the military rulers that the world will not tolerate repression and violence.

Right now, global leaders are gathering in New York for the annual United Nations summit. In speeches, press interviews but also in real actions, we need them to show Burma’s military junta that the global community is willing to act in solidarity with the protesters.

Show your solidarity to this movement for peace and democracy and sign the emergency petition supporting the Burmese people. It’ll be delivered to UN Security Council members and the UN press corps all week:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/

Also take the time to digg the news.

Do we live in exponential times?

Greg is a 10-year veteran of entrepreneurship, a true serial entrepreneur. His previous startup ventures have included a 3 year run in the music industry as a concert promoter, starting a touring food vending business, and running a small web design firm. He took a one year break to work for a fast growth startup in Baltimore’s Emerging Technology Center in 2000, and left in early 2001 to launch Blue Sky Factory. He amounts all of his past businesses as just practice and experience for Blue Sky Factory, learning something unique from all of them.

Greg received his B.A degree in English from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in 1996. Today, he is actively involved with the advancement of the university, sitting on the board of directors for the alumni association and various strategic committees.

Something most folks don’t know about Greg is that he is an avid blogger and a podcaster. He has been authoring www.thetrendjunkie.com, a popular weblog on media, technology, and marketing since 2003, and has been involved in many corporate podcasting projects for companies like GM, Disney & Verizon Wireless.

His current podcast is called ROI Radio, a show focused on the online marketing and media landscape. He talks with CEO’s and senior management of technology, media and marketing companies on a variety of topics around online marketing and emerging mediums.

The Interview

What do you think about Entrepreneurship and how did you get involved? Is it a way of living? Is it something more, like building wealth? Tell us your personal vision and meaning of Entrepreneurship. Tell us if you “heard the call” …or just liked the idea.

For me entrepreneurship is definitely a way of life. Looking back from where I am now, there is no doubt that I have always marched to the beat of my own drummer. A big part of entrepreneurship for me, over almost everything else, is the ability to have the freedom to, in at least some ways, control my own destiny, and be accountable for myself and the company I have built.

When I was a kid, for years my Father always had a subscription to Entrepreneur Magazine, and I remember reading every edition that came in the mail cover to cover. In many ways that had a lot to do with my thinking growing up. I would read each edition and think to myself “I really want to run my own company one day”

What have you learned from your past businesses? Mistakes (if any), decisions, fortunes…

Tons :-) I think it goes without saying that all entrepreneurs learn from the mistakes they make (At least I hope they do). When I graduated from UMBC, I went right into the concert promotion business on my own. It was an extension of the work that I did at the university. I really loved putting on events. I started a production company with no capital, rode it out for 3 years, and sweated it out in a VERY competitive and extremely tough industry. Made money, lost money, and rode that roller coaster for quite a while. It gave me thick skin for sure.

The most important thing I learned from that business was to just GO FOR IT, and not sit around and think about starting a business, but rather act on it. I also did it right out of school which I think was important for me. At the time, I really wanted to be in the music business, I loved live music and events (still do), and wanted to be involved with that industry, versus going out and getting a regular 9 - 5 job. Also, my experience as a concert promoter made me get used to taking risks as an individual, and that can be a good thing in terms of entrepreneurship. No risk, no reward holds true every time. When you basically have no money and your guaranteeing what you do have to an artist to come play for you in a secondary market, thats faith, and thats risk :-) it worked out sometimes and other times it didn’t. I learned that this wasn’t the business I wanted to be in after a few years. Plus technology and the web was really starting to get exciting, and it was something I had always been close to.

I then started a touring food vending business, which did the likes of the Tibetan Freedom concerts, and Woodstock 99, and then finally got into developing small business websites and getting into internet related activities. These were all small businesses where I was learning more of the ropes of running your own show, exposing myself to different experiences and business interactions. I made money with them but nothing earth shattering. I finally put them to bed for a one year run at a tech start up in 2000. There, although not the owner, I learned TONS of lessons about starting up, managing, and growing a business. For the most part, I learned what not to do by the then CEO. I am grateful for the experience.

Speaking of Entrepreneurship, do you think that the “social” part and the marketing part is as important as the “get the job done” part? I’ve read the Marketing 2.0 post on your blog and it was pretty inspiring… I mean: things are changing. Businesses are adapting to new ways to communicate, correct?

If you’re talking about marketing and exposure, I do think that the “social” part of entrepreneurship is very important. People want to truly know the companies they are working with, to whatever extent you can put a face or a voice to your business the better. That includes in person, online (ie. blog, video, audio, etc). This is all important stuff especially as it relates to your brand and your overall marketing. This is a big part in the shifting media landscape taking place around us today. This affects not only consumers communication and interact but also the way that businesses will communicate.

In regards to the world of business changing, sure its a continuous evolution. However, I would say above all else, the one thing that will continually separate successful entrepreneurs and businesses, from others, in regards to momentum and success is their ability to “Execute” The get the job done part is key. People talk a lot, and have a lot of ideas, but in order to succeed you need to always be executing.

Now let’s talk a little bit about your job: how did you get involved in email and RSS marketing?

When I started Blue Sky Factory, Inc we started as a “web development” company and quickly realized that was WAY too vague, and the fact that we started in 2001 at the peak of the bust didn’t help us either. Email marketing was something I had experience with and was still an emerging channel for marketers. We got in on the ground floor of this industry, and still to this day, we are pushing the envelop for our clients through email strategy and our leading email marketing platform, Publicaster. In fact, email is getting more and more interesting every year. 6 years later email marketing generates one of the highest ROI’s of any online marketing medium. When you can offer that to clients, and show them the success, its very rewarding.

RSS as you know is a recent addition to our arsenal of services, and we are still building out our RSS product solutions. RSS is very complimentary to email in the sense of content delivery to end users. RSS gives users more control over how and when they receive their subscribed content. We want to embrace these new mediums and bring them to the table to our clients. RSS will not kill email even though many people preach that it will. That is simply not the case. RSS and Email are, as mentioned, very complimentary to one another, and its one of the big reasons we bought RssFwd.com last month - many people want content that is offered up via RSS but they want it delivered to their email inbox.

Overall, its an exciting space to be in, and in the direction we are heading there is an amazing opportunity for growth.

Where are you going? I mean: where is the whole online marketing business going and how do you think you’re going to keep up with its evolutions? Any new tool? Any new approach?

I am not sure where the whole online marketing business is going, its a moving landscape in and of itself. Where I see Blue Sky Factory in the equation is positioning itself more as a communications service provider vs only being seen as a email service provider. So, our viewpoint is to look at the various ways that a company or an organization can communicate online, and provide a centralized technology platform that allows companies the ability to share their content via multiple end points. That can be email, RSS, audio / video, mobile, etc.. We want to provide the dashboard for companies to publish and track their content in various ways, and be in a position to clearly see whats working and whats not. Our next version of Publicaster (our proprietary app), will be very much headed in this direction.

How did you get involved in podcasting and how the whole creation/publishing process evolved?

I consider myself to be an early adopter, so when podcasting first emerged on the scene I was tuned right into it. To me, over anything else, I was just blown away by the possibilities of what RSS, and subscription based content (audio/video) would do for individuals, and corporations in regards to entertainment, education, marketing, advertising, PR, etc.. its certainly making a huge impact on the changing corporate landscape. I cover this in depth in my upcoming book, Podcast Academy: The Business Podcast Book - Launching, Marketing & Measuring Your Podcast. You can see the Amazon link here

Tell us something about the General Motors and the Disney experiences then.

I was part of some of the very first corporate podcasts being produced for large corporations. It was an incredible opportunity to learn and get involved. Up until that point, I really had no experience whatsoever with anything of the kind :-) Through those experiences I have met some really great people and have had the opportunity to get involved with many other podcasting projects. Those exact opportunities to me are once in a lifetime experiences.

We recently heard your interview with Rick Klau (Feedburner) on ROI Radio, your tech and marketing podcast. What do you think about the recent acquisition from Google? What’s the difference between Google buying all of these services and the good old Microsoft? Do you remember when people used to say “Microsoft is trying to eliminate competitors”? What about Google? Do you want to be bought by Google? Do you want to buy Google?

I think the acquisition is a good thing, it was inevitable if you tracked it since the beginning. Google was the natural acquirer for Feedburner. The difference between Google and MS in terms of their recent acquisition strategy is that Google has a lot more momentum, and is getting the deals done. MS is behind, and they have yet to make any significant acquisitions in the social software space, which is really hurting them. MS is still rounding out its overall online advertising strategy where Google’s is, as you know, very well established and highly, highly profitable.

We are not aiming to be bought by Google, but I would never rule anything out. If Google came to me with that checkbook of their’s and gave me the multiples that they are paying out recently, I would of course consider it :-)

Blue Sky Factory is in growth mode, we are just trying to build the company ourselves and not focus on being acquired.

In that interview Rick Klau told that email is more “action oriented” while feeds are just passive readings. Is that your vision too?

If you live in your inbox, then email is definitely more “action oriented” - it invokes a need or desire to respond. I agree with Rick. Feeds on the other hand are “I will get to it when its convenient to me” - which is the beauty of RSS. Its on demand tailored content based on ones own unique subscription preferences.

Rick also said that content filtering is another practice that is growing now. As we are overwhelmed by information, we tend to select and redistribute, and others then have less content to select, based on our choices… so they actually have a filter (and we have too). Good thing? Bad thing? What do you think about it? Do you rely on feeds selected by people you trust?

I think content filtering or shared feeds is a good thing. Rick hits the point, if you become a trusted source of content or links to solid content that others are also interested in, you become a “node” of good content. The good news is, you can always unsubscribe if your sources lose their flare :-)

A quick hint, warning or suggestion for wannabe entrepreneurs.

Never let anyone tell you you cant do it. The only obstacles are the ones in your mind.

This concludes our little interview. Hope you got a better understanding of who TheTrendJunkie is. Thanks for your time and patience Greg, see you soon.

I’m now officially addicted

Import from Firefox

I’ve imported everything from Firefox with the automatic wizard. Then I’ve installed some extensions too: Adblock Plus, DownThemAll and FasterFox are working great. Other extensions are getting better support. I started surfing and then found out something unbelievable: I found “integration”.

Finally the web came to one place. It’s like all those technologies like RSS and APIs finally found sense. You just fire up Flock and start blogging without the need to log into your WordPress dashboard. You can review the latest photos from your Flickr contacts without leaving the site you’re browsing. You can tag and edit your del.icio.us bookmarks… and much much more.

You don’t need to set up all the accounts during the installation method (in the previous versions you had to). Now you simply log out and re-log in into your web accounts and Flock automagically detect them and enable them.

Browser 2.0

You can do all the above stuff with a standard browser, yes. But the Flock experience is way better. Flock is simply better. We had Web 2.0, now it’s Browser 2.0. It’s a browser for people who actively uses the web to communicate, for those who share their lives and create content, richness over the networks. The web 2.0 was build with people in mind and this is a browser built around the users. Finally you don’t just surf the net anymore. You are using it effectively.

What I’d like to see in the future

Flock is great but it lacks features. You can’t find these features in Firefox or IE7 but you we are supposed to find such features in Flock. Consider deviantArt, It’s a big community and flock could be just the perfect tool for such a community (you could use the mediabar, the blogging tool and the RSS reader… all for stuff you do in deviantArt).

Let’s consider eBay or Amazon. We need integration for such tools. We also need some sort of instant messaging feature… and I’m thinking about Meebo. Netvibes integrated Meebo in their custom start page, why can’t flock do the same with a more elegant (side)bar?

Let’s see if they can improve the Flock experience. I’m really enthusiast about this browser so far.

Links:
Flock
DownThemAll Beta Version
AdBlock Plus
FasterFox