I’m leaving on Tuesday to attend the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, trying desperately to cover up the fact that I haven’t owned a console since Sega Genesis. 

If there are any bloggers who feel like getting together for a beer, give me a shout.  My email is ryan at this domain.

I think most bloggers would agree that the fact that a washed up nobody gold-digging ex-stripper’s death was the headline in most major newspapers in North America shows the irony of the condescending attitude toward blogs from the mainstream media. Of course, the entire situation was blown out of proportion, sensationalized and beaten into the ground.

Apparently, this point was not lost on Jack Cafferty:

“Is Anna Nicole still dead, Wolf?”

I’m torn. On one hand – wow. What an asshole. On the other, it’s about time someone on the inside called out the media on the way they drag out non-stories into a side show.

Either way you cut it… MAN – does Wolf ever look some pissed.

I’m about to do my first podcast today, as part of the content for the launch of the brand new website at Fuel.  This is somewhat unnerving, as I am fully willing to admit that I know next to nothing about it.  I could go on all day about blogging, but once we transcend the written word into the spoken, I gotta admit, I’m a bit out of my element.

Luckily, I have a lot of resources at my disposal.  I’ve got an entire audio department to work with with people who know far, far more about audio than I will ever know about anything.  They’re taking care of getting me the right microphone, software and everything I need to get things done.  I have web developers who are taking care of publishing.  I’ve even got a great interview subject, so all I have to do is introduce the podcast and ask questions.

Still, it’s something completely new for me, so I’ve got a bit of the podcast jitters.  So, this is going to be a learning process for me, and as time goes on, something I’ll be talking a lot more about, hopefully with some insight into best practices rather than my own neuroses.

In the meantime, anyone have any sage words about how to make a great podcast?

How do you keep your brand out of nasty blog mentions?  How do you keep good customers?  How do you stop people from railing against your company?  There are a lot of factors, but one of the most overlooked is the apology.

I can’t speak for every blogger, but my sense is that most of them don’t blog about terrible consumer experiences because they love being jerks, they do it because they’re frustrated and they’ve had enough.

I have a great accountant.  It took me a very long time to find a great accountant, and went through a few before finding the one I currently use.  He’s a wizard, knows all the questions to ask me to make sure I haven’t forgotten thousands of dollars worth of deductions (there’s a reason I went into marketing and not finance).  I’ve sent a number of my friends to him, and they’ve all loved him as well.

The other day, as I went through a stack of unopened mail (I loathe mail), I noticed a letter from my accountant’s firm.  Figuring it was a “don’t forget to do your taxes” letter, I opened it.  It was an invoice dated the same day I had a five minute phone conversation with him.  I wrote to the office manager, explained that when I emailed him a simple question about my upcoming tax return, and he phoned me with a quick answer, I never expected to be charged for a half hour of professional services.

The next morning, I had an email from the office manager apologizing for the mistake and telling me to disregard it.  I had my taxes done today, and the second I walked in, the office manager apologized again.  Of course, it was no big deal, but imagine if I had had to fight about this.  Chances are, I would have thought twice about referring more people there… I might have even looked for a new accountant.  But no, the office manager was helpful, prompt and apologetic and it turned a mistake into a non-issue.

Mistakes are interesting nexus points for organizations.  They give the opportunity to show their true colours.  Some companies never own up to mistakes and go out of their way to avoid correcting them.  Others use these opportunities to show their true customer service stripes, and show the customer they actually do care.

If keeping long-term clients isn’t an issue, it’s probably cheaper to do the former.  If on the other hand, the lifetime value of a client is important, a lot of trust can be built simply by acknowledging mistakes and fixing them promptly.

From a friend of mine who just took over an executive director role at a not for profit festival:

Hi, I’d like to cancel my Yellow Pages ad.

Okay sir, can I ask why?

Because it’s the year 2007.

…

Sounds like a good reason to me.

Much ado has been made by the next-gen DVD format wars recently, with Toshiba going head-to-head with Sony for who will control the future of high-definition home movies. While I have been leaning strongly in Toshiba’s direction in my predictions as to which format will prevail, a story on the Wired blog today may be the decision-maker.

The story was that the adult industry is practically unanimous in its adoption of Toshiba’s HD-DVD standard, due in no small part to the fact that Sony refused to license its Blu-ray technology to at least one porn distributor, striking a major blow (pun intended) against the standard.

If it doesn’t seem like a big deal, you haven’t been paying attention. Historically, the porn industry has been key in driving the growth in technology of almost every major medium. It has been instrumental in establishing online commerce technology, download-on-demand technology, and most industry experts agree that in addition to Sony hoarding the technology, the adult industry was key in securing the success of VHS over the superior betamax format for home use.

In this case, adult studios are choosing HD DVD because it’s cheaper to produce, and there are more units already in the market, thanks in no small part to the XBOX 360.

All biases aside, the reality of the format wars now looks like this:

1. HD-DVD is cheaper to produce
2. There are currently more HD-DVD players in the market
3. Sony is counting heavily on the PS3 to boost the number of Blu-ray players in homes, but sales so far have been poor.
4. Average consumers understand HD and DVD, and therefore HD-DVD
5. Early adopters and evangelists (AKA bloggers) have very little good will left for Sony after the rootkit debacle.
6. Sony is denying licenses to specific types of content

To Sony’s credit, it appears that the Blu-ray format is technically superior, but that will not be enough to win the day. Although many major studios have chosen Blu-ray, the largest of those have chosen to release both formats.

The future doesn’t look good for Blu-ray as far as I can see. Combine that with the fact that the adult industry is going HD-DVD only and the fact that Sony has lost every format war in its history (beta, minidisc, laserdisc, and UMDs are not selling at all) I don’t think it’s premature to declare HD-DVD the clear leader. Unless Sony pulls out some major stops, it’s a pretty safe the Blu-ray discs on the market now will end up in the junkyard beside the giant pile of laserdiscs.

I’m a little late to the party on the “what I’m doing differently this year” posts that I read every year, largely due to the fact that I try to spend every New Year’s Day completely unplugged. I consider this one a success.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, mainly because I hate the idea of waiting until an arbitrary time to better myself. Self-improvement is a constant evolution, and has to happen now. “The diet starts Monday,” is just procrastination.

Instead, I like to take the New Year to reboot. We (or at least, I) tend to put a lot of things on autopilot. It works fine for a while depending on what you’re automating, but it always leads to entropy. The first week of January represents to me a hard reboot on everything in my life – my house, my finances, my relationships, my calendar – everything.

I try to take some time to reach out to friends I haven’t spoken to in too long. I update my calendar, my project lists, re-evalutate long term goals, re-evaluate my budgets and try to start the year fresh. Of course, I do some of these things multiple times during the year, but there is something cathartic about doing it all at once. It means starting the new year fresh and clean, and making this year even better than the last.

It’s that clean slate that allows us to temporarily remove the stress of entropy, and to focus on improvement.

Faulkner said, “always dream and shoot higher than you know how to. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”

This reboot is an annual sweeping away of the cobwebs – one that allows me to shoot higher, and to attempt to be better than myself. That’s a resolution I intend to keep well past February.

I’ve been quiet for the last week, preparing for the holidays, getting work out of the way and preparing to travel to visit my parents. I’ll be back next week with a few changes to my own personal blogging life, but until then, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and a good ol’ fashioned whatever you happen to celebrate.

Mack Collier at the Viral Garden started this Z-Lister Meme, and I’m joining in.  I’ve actually found some pretty good sites out of this meme, so here goes:

Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman’s Blog About Surprise
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
darrenbarefoot.com
Two Hat Marketing
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly
Ryan Anderson: The New PR

Add whatever sites you’d like to see on this list, and copy the whole thing to your blog, and bring some attention to sites that deserve it.

Tony Walsh, a Canadian blogger whose Clickable Culture is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the sociology of gaming, has a great post today about the pitches he gets from PR people.  It’s a must-read for anyone including bloggers in their media lists, but here are a few of the great reasons he’s not writing about you:

“You have no idea what I write about”

If you’re pitching a blogger or mainstream reporter without knowing their beat, you’re not doing your job.  You don’t have to know their life history, but when you’re talking to bloggers, it’s not hard to give a quick read to find out whether they write about kitchen gadgets or movies.

“You’re talking but you’re not saying anything.“

This is something that most PR people are guilty of at least a few times in their career.  If you pitch something that isn’t news, or at least interesting, you’re probably wasting your time and your client’s money.

“You’ve sent me something I can’t write about yet.“
Okay, seriously.  Who the hell uses embargoes anymore?  Secondly, wouuld you trust a blogger not to break your embargo and spill your news early?  Rookie moves.

“Is it on the record or isn’t it?“
Tony Walsh is a very nice man for asking this.  Assume it’s all on the record and you reduce your chances of looking like an idiot.

“You seem to be passing yourself off as an anonymous tipster or are otherwise astroturfing.“
Another rookie move from PR people who like to pretend they’re spies.  Don’t do it… you make the whole industry look bad, and yourself look like a wanker.

Walsh finishes by saying:

I’m highly cynical, jaded, crotchety, and ornery. I might discuss one or more aspects of your product, service, client and/or company that will make you unhappy. I might use framing or language you’re not comfortable with. I appreciate you want to read stories that stay “on message,” but those aren’t necessarily the stories I write (unless my views and yours happen to match).

This is a very good thing to remember.  I actually did ask a blogger to change a story once, but it was because I had a very… shall we say… sensitive client and the blogger made it look like I personally had more to do with the product than the client did.  While I appreciated the praise, it likely would have thrown my client into another crying fit while I was on the phone with her.  It was worth it to give them the “would you mind” email to avoid that.

Again, I highly recommend Clickable Culture to anyone into online gaming, metaverse, or technological culture.