Ok, I shouldn’t joke around. I’m very familiar with Midwestern cities after living in Kansas City for 3 years. And by the definition of Midwest cities: This town is great! The locals are friendly (even though the Colts lost a close one tonight). The climate is enjoyable. There are so many great places to eat within walking distance of downtown. We actually decided on Ruth’s Chris steakhouse for dinner. I forgot exactly how pricey that place was. Guess we’ll be doing Steak’n'Shake for the rest of the trip.

I’m here for the ExactTarget User’s Conference. We’re attending their advanced training tomorrow, and the rest of the conference will be Tuesday through Thursday. We’re hoping to glean some helpful email marketing tips and advanced strategies. We recently added an advanced module to our account, and so far it has enabled us to do a lot of fantastic things with our account. We’re hoping to learn even more about it. There’s also some great keynote speakers lined up that I’m excited about, including Tony Dungy (Head Coach of the Colts) and Christopher Gardner (author of The Pursuit of Happyness). I have to give major credit to a man who can come back from such a disappointing loss and deliver a business related speech. I know it’s the furthest thing from his mind tonight, but I certainly am looking forward to what he delivers.

So hopefully I’ll be able to come back each night with a few take-away items and post them here. My apologies to all the readers of my blog (Hi Mom and Dad) for ditching a few nights in a row. I actually ended up letting go of an employee on Friday, and for anyone who knows me this isn’t a process I take lightly. I was pretty bummed out about it and blogging was the last thing I wanted to be doing. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing I’m a nice guy by nature. I have a hard time letting people go, especially ones that I have become friends with. However, as a good friend of mine once said: “We’re not in business to make friends”. I certainly wish the best to that employee and hope that she can become the rock star for a firm who needs someone with a skill-set like she has.

Costumes, pranks, decorations, scary stories, horror movies… not sure exactly what I’m going to put on the domain. If it ends up like most of my blogs, it will have a wide-variety of content. What would be ideal would be if I could figure out a way to get user generated content. Any ideas?

Today there are several services that offer the streaming “personalized” radio similar to Echo. The major players are Pandora, Slacker, and Last.fm. All of which offer personalized radio stations, though none offer the true social component like Echo did. A couple do have “friend” capabilities, but it is very limited what friends can do. However, as far as creating a station around tastes that you like, I think all of these services have evolved tremendously in the past few years.

Another cool feature is that some of these stations will travel with you offline. Pandora offers several ways to make your music portable, via mobile phones (including the iPhone) and stereo add-ons like the Logitech Squeezebox series. Slacker has a cool offline offering too: a proprietary wi-fi enabled player.

I have been a long-time Pandora user, fan and supporter. There have been so many times where the music Pandora offered had matched my mood that it could have created a mashup album. Some of the suggestions are pure genius (although I’ll admit sometimes it can be off). Example of a perfect match: The Beatles “Blackbird” playing on my Modest Mouse station. Another example: Led Zeppelin on my Pearl Jam station. Want another example? Check out my bookmarked songs, you’ll see a few different patterns.

Even though I’m a fan of Pandora, I decided that during the next week or so I’m going to give the other two a valiant test. I’ve used Last.fm a few times. I think I finally understand their UI. Slacker is much easier to use, but I just never got around to creating an account for their free web-based player. I’ve done that now and tomorrow will be the first full day of Slackerdom.

I’ll post my observations on the services, once I feel I’ve observed something.

Oh, by the way, Comcast made it out to our house yesterday. Yeah, our wiring was all f’d up. The copper in this house is just old and frigid. The tech pulled some new cable, and they’ll be replacing the green box out back in the next week or so. And hopefully this will be the last Comcast update…ever!

Oh yeah, another sidenote: Comcast Cares replied to my previous post. It almost shocked me because it truly sounded like genuine concern for the customer. I haven’t decided if I’m going to reply back or not, but kudos to the Compast brand managers for catching buzz online and taking action towards it. Reputation management is not a passive game. Its always best to be proactive, but if something get mentioned and you need to react, do it fast and promptly. In this case, the consumer (me) felt like someone was actually listening to my complaints, even though I wasn’t complaining to anyone in particular.

Ok, that is all. G’nite!

I’m discovering I’m quick to jump on the bandwagon with those that have kinda similar belief-systems as I do. But the minute I feel like someone is about to join the conversation who has a strong persuasion in a different direction than I do, I start setting the conversation on auto-pilot steering it to avoid a conflict of personalities. Conflict isn’t my game. Maybe it should be.

I wouldn’t always say that I’ve voted the popular vote. I’ve proudly voted for independents and third parties in elections past. I have long believed that a third major party would be good for this country. It seems that “moderates” make up a large population of the electoral, and I would definitely classify myself as one. Things aren’t as black and white as a bipartisan system would have you believe, and the way the system is now there is too much infighting happening within both parties prior to the general election. Then they expect us to “unify” behind a candidate which may be very difficult if it wasn’t your candidate of choice for the party. This happened to me the previous two elections. Luckily it wasn’t the same this time.

However, when it comes to politics there is one issue that I do feel strongly about: technology. This election Obama clearly has the stronger technology platform IMO, although I must admit that McCain’s tech policy has evolved somewhat in the recent months going from almost nothing to being a fairly strong offering. Obama has had tech issues as a strong priority from the start, and I feel that he is more passionate in protecting these crucial elements of American society. I learn my living online, and have for over the past 10 years. Technology impacts my lifestyle directly. Oil, foreign policy, environment, fiscal policy: all these items are important to me, but I’m a realist and know that most issues can only be changed mildly in 4 years time. Even in 8 years time isn’t enough for most of the issues. However, when it comes to technology 4 to 8 years is a lifetime. The wrong decisions can impact us immediately and drastically. Sales can get more taxes, access can be limited by monopolistic ISPs, forms of advertising can regulated, and someone can claim they own rights to something you have (like a domain name and/or website). One crazy act of congress, and the rules change overnight. So this is something I watch intently and closely so I can continue providing for my family doing something I’m good at.

And damnit, I want to play online poker and not feel like a criminal (thanks GOP!).

Something that gets me everytime I have an idea for a new project is that I always think it will require less time than it actually does. I have close to a hundred projects I’ve started over the past 4 to 5 years. Only a dozen or so of those ever came to a point I’d call completed. I’ve found that working on projects follows the 5-90-5 rule. The first 5% and last 5% are the most difficult pieces to accomplish by far. The middle chunk of time is usually used for non-decision grunt work that really just requires punching in a clock and getting it done.

The middle 90 percent is never my issue. My issue with new projects is always the beginning and ending process. The first 5 percent involves answering the what, the why, the how, and the who. This is the planning of the project. In my opinion, its the fun stuff. All the What-If scenarios get played out and the decisions of how you’re going to go about the project are made. This stage is when I find myself the most excited about a project. However, I have found myself never make it past this stage on many occasions. Either I get too excited about a trivial project and later realize that it wasn’t a worthwhile endeavor, or I discover that I don’t have the resources I want/need to get it done right.

Phase two of the project can be either dead simple or burdensome, depending on how much of the project you carry yourself. For almost all my hobby projects, I take 100% of the load. This can be crushing on my self-esteem on anything that lasts more than a month or two (I find that 3-4 weeks is my ideal project timeline). If I have others involved, whether friends working together on the same project, or resources I’ve outsourced, I find that my “excitement” timeline can last for a couple of months as long as I see progress. If I don’t see progress, then I usually end up shelving the project because something *better* has come along.

Phase three, the final 5%, is killer. This is usually the “alpha” stage. The stage just before you release it as “beta” (because all projects are “beta” during at least their first 90 days, sometimes longer. This is the “Jason Murphy Golden Rule of Product Launches”). Your project is “almost done”. You choose a few people to give a sneak peak to. You ask their opinion, and you take their feedback seriously. Sometimes too seriously. Other times you get involved with plugins, and advertisements, and marketing campaigns. The focus needs to be intense during this final phase, and if you can’t devout the proper time and energy necessary because you’re focusing on other projects, you may just end up launching a dud. All website producers have produced duds at one point or another.

Now the tough part about trying to wrap up a blog post a year after you started it, is you really aren’t sure what direction you originally had planned for it. I know I had a killer conclusion for all this based on examples of some sort, but I’ll just end with this: Quality time is more important than money when planning a new project. Stay focused, follow-through, and you’ll be glad you didn’t move on to a “yet another project”.

(BTW: This is advice mostly for myself, but it’s free advice if you’d like to borrow from it).

Past two days were frustrating to say the least. On Thursday evening I had a nicely done blog post all written up about some of the additional troubles I am facing with Comcast. I’ve been using Opera on my Blackberry because it simply out-rocks the BB default browser. But for whatever reason, this time when I used Opera to type my post and hit submit, it crashed on me and puked a javascript error.

So I typed a shorter version and tried again. Bam. Same error.

Frustrated, I said F* IT and went to bed.

The following day I woke up with some residual resentment to my ISP, mostly since I missed a day of blogging. On Thursday, we arranged for a tech to come to our house on Friday between 2 and 5. Thursday afternoon, their help desk called me and “confirmed” this appointment.

My wife sat home waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Finally 6 o’clock bore round and she called Comcast to ask what the hold up was. “We’re sorry ma’am, we don’t show you as having an appointment today?” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This was mentioned on at least 3 phone calls with their call center, AND they called me the day before to confirm the appointment. Well, my wife went nuclear on them and they promised to come out the next morning.

I came home from work and noticed that more lights were blinking (”Yah, das blinkenlights!”) on the modem. Hopeful, I called Comcast to see if they could ping the modem. The first time, the tech who sounded extremely sleepy (it was about 11:00 PM by the time I called them) put me on hold for about 5 minutes while she “worked on my modem”. Without warning, the hold music turned into the voice-prompt operator and I was back at the front of the phone tree. I went through the hoops again, told the tech that the call was dropped when the other tech was working on my modem, and was put on hold again. This time, it was only about 30 seconds and my call was dropped completely. I called again and refused to be put on hold while they worked on my modem. This tech was actually nice and friendly, unlike the other two who really sounded irritated that I’d call them and ask for them to do their job (tech support). She understood and obliged my request to stay on the line. She talked me through the steps she was doing and realized that she couldn’t get access to my modem at all. She said it was Offline. As in non-existent. I said that’s ok, I have a tech coming in the morning. But when she went to look at the appointment to confirm it, she informed me that no one was coming Saturday morning and the earliest they could make it was Monday. I was furious but I realized that it wasn’t the tech’s fault so I graciously thanked her for her help (she was by far the most helpful), hung up and made a series of calls to AT&T and Earthlink to check DSL prices. I then went to bed. I wasn’t about to try to blog on a thumbpad after that series of events. I was already at the end of my rope and I didn’t care if it didn’t happen.

Saturday, I wake up and take my son to get a haircut and some McDonald’s. We take our lunches and go to my office. What can I say? A net junkie needs his fix. He thought it was cool that I had “3 computers!” (but it was really just three monitors) and really liked the music we listened to. I actually had some work items I needed to follow-up on, but while I was there I did check on other ISPs in the area. Seems like fixed wireless is not a popular choice of access in South Florida. I understand with all the storms they have here.

When we got home I decided to play with the cable modem some more. Since the modem was found to be offline by the tech from the night before, I thought it might be the jack it was plugged into. I take it into the middle of the living room by the TV, plug it in, and sure enough I have full-on Internet.

Don’t you hate it when you have deal with a ton of shit for no good reason?

I have to give my friend James credit for pointing me towards a presentation Ashton did recently where he promoted his latest project at the TechCrunch50 Conference. I heard about Ashton’s project, but I had already dismissed it simply because I felt Ashton was out of touch with Internet audiences. (Had James not given it a mention, I would have missed it completely.) Turns out I was wrong and that Ashton and his partner “get it”. They nailed the conference presentation with their product launch of BlahGirls. If you are an advertiser, publisher, or fan of celeb gossip: you’ve got to see this.

By no means am I a Kutcher fan boy. I feel his reality TV projects are hot to market, but then get stale pretty fast. His movie projects are a more decent offering IMO. And while I really wanted to see Ooma take off, he doesn’t really seem to have much personal interest vested into the project anymore. On the other hand, taking his production company Katalyst Media online and making wholly-owned web properties has turned out to be a very natural fit for the team. He said it best in his presentation when he said “We know our markets, we know how to target them” citing Punk’d and Beauty and the Geek as examples. I’m going to watch Katalyst the same way I watched Gawker Media when I first heard about their network (at the launch of Gizmodo). BlahGirls is just an initial offering. I’m more excited to see what they come up with next (and hope they don’t enter my verticals).

I saw one comment online that said something along the lines of “BlahGirls are just South Park bitches. Ashton never comes up with anything original”. To which I have to say “who cares?!” Originality is such a 1999 pitch. This day and age, there is nothing original. There is always someone who had some piece of some idea before every success. The reason the successes are such is simply that they took the BEST ideas, and executed on them BETTER. If we take Kutcher for example, he hasn’t produced a single “original” formula since day one. Punk’d = Jamie Kennedy Experiment = Totally Hidden Video = Candid Camera. Beauty and the Geek = The Bachelor = The Dating Show. It’s not about being original. It’s about taking a formula, updating it, and proving it to market all over again.

There isn’t a single tech company doing something “original”. Try me.

I also heard one of the panelist, an Angel VC, comment about the fact that BlahGirls doesn’t bring its target audience out of their comfort zones of existing social networks. Ashton’s reply was that his content moves with the audience. It’s a video, it has advertising placed in it already, and they want their users to copy, share, distribute it however they can. This is what kills me and why I feel some angels are out of touch sometimes. The issue isn’t whether Katalyst can get users away from their existing habits or not. The issue is whether Katalyst can create a product, gain traction, and become profitable to an exit. The fact that they have advertisers and content distributors already lined up before the demo and official launch of the product is a huge early indicator of guaranteed success. If I were an angel investor, I’d be lined up at the Katalyst Office doors with a check in hand.

But I’m not. I’m a publisher and advertiser. My product doesn’t match their audience, at least on this offering, so I’m just going to sit back and watch and enjoy the show. If I were MTV, Nintendo, Hot Topic, Limited, OK Magazine, or any other advertiser trying to reach teenage girls, I’d be all over this.

On a related note: since I am a publisher and an advertiser, the Adgregate Markets presentation at Techcrunch50 was completely awesome to me. There’s another example of someone taking the best ideas and making them better.

So far, Hanna sprayed us a little rain, and Ike missed us completely. Now I can stop worrying about the weather and start focusing again on getting everything lined up for an awesome fourth quarter. I expect this to be one of my best holiday seasons ever, both for my employer and my personal projects.

Oh, btw: I’m about ready to launch my Halloween project this week. I haven’t been more excited about a domain in years! Too bad it’s a seasonal project, but I could think of some less-exciting seasons to work on. How’s that President’s day project coming along?

I was debating whether or not to go into length as to the withdrawals I’m going through. I decided against it.

I had a great weekend with the kids. And my wife had a great weekend when she realized she could ask me to do more honey-dos. In my rebellious way, I still found a way to escape to the pool when she wasn’t looking.

The “internets” is still down. Found out today that it wasn’t from the bad weather Friday, but from the dumbnuts doing construction on the guardhouse to my community and cutting the cable line. ironically, not having access made my ears more receptive to a radio commercial promoting AT&T’s dsl for $14.99/mo for 2 years. After hearing that, I’m having a hard time convincing myself that I NEED cable. Only thing that might suffer is xbox live and skype. I’ve run skype on a pretty bad connection before (sprint mobile) and it coped surprisingly well. So it looks like a DSL test is in order.

My apologies to everyone participating in the 30 day blogging challenge. I’ll have the tracking page updated as soon as I have access to a full-size QWERTY. I’m not touching HTML on this tiny screen.

Internet access: gone
Tropical Storm status: gone
Hurricane status: incoming
30 day challenge: saved by blackberry?
WP-admin from blackberry: interesting, but appearantly working
iPhone vs. Blackberry: iPhone wins
iPhone purchase: imminent

But when it comes to WordPress themes, I’m a whole different being. I scrutinize EVERYTHING. The color scheme, the layout, the “extended options”, the fonts used, how many images load, what the sidebar is doing, where the navigation rests, how it handles subpages; basically whatever the template handles, I’m on top of it with a microscope.

To help you understand how anal I am about this: picking my children’s names was an easier task than picking a new template. I’ve spent months looking at new templates that can handle the latest version of Wordpress, and have been reluctant to upgrade to the 2.6.x series until I found the right visual vehicle that would allow me to do so. After all is said and done, I narrowed the choice down to three “free” themes. There were many paid themes that interested me, but I shied away from them because I could see myself changing my mind a couple of times after I paid for a theme and ultimately costing me a couple hundred of dollars.

The final choices for new wordpress themes were the following:

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace theme

Statement Theme

Statement Theme

DailyPress

DailyPress theme

In the future, I do plan on experimenting with a couple of paid themes that I’ve found that I like more than the above. But for the time being, these three themes are high quality AND free. Thus they are perfect for my means.

This post is part of My Own 30 Day Challenge, Numero Dos

Alexa used to make me laugh. Everytime I saw an Alexa rating in the millions, I couldn’t help but think of “One Million Dollars” scene from Austin Powers:

However, Alexa has since grown up. Almost. It’s stats are less tool-bar centric and utilize a lot more ISP data. So where Alexa was a decent benchmark for the value of one of your own sites (since you wouldn’t game the system and inflate the value of your own sites, right, right?), it is become a better gauge within which to evaluate other sites as well.Taking John’s suggestion, I’m taking a look at everyone’s Alexa score who is participating now and we’ll compare it to later to see how valuable consistent and regular posting can be to an average blog. While I’m at it, I decided to lookup Google PageRank and Compete People Rank data as well.

Ranking Values:

• Jason Murphy - Alexa 1,230,318 - Google 3 - Compete 356
• John Hawkins - Alexa 616,280 - Google 1 - Compete 943
• Jake Ludens - Alexa 2,229,922 - Google n/a - Compete 508
• Jane McFadden - n/a - unfortunately these analytics services don’t work on subdomains of blogspot
• Omnicron - Alexa 18,150,236 - Google 1 - Compete n/a
• Portagame - Alexa 242,063 - Google 3 - Compete 1,989
• Imported/Geek - Alexa 1508496 - Google n/a - Compete 574
• Shirtwatch - Alexa 2463039 - Google n/a - Compete n/a
• MoneyRemix - Alexa 736790 - Google 3 - Compete 1,924

Theory is: “with the rising tide all ships will rise”. We’ll see how accurate that theory is at the end of the month.

Best of luck to all!