Friday Videos: Generic News, Pants on the Ground, and Gibson/Kimmel

Here's your videos for this Friday! We've got a generic template for a news report, Pants on the Ground, and Gibson doing the Jimmy Kimmel Story. Enjoy!

The world's most generic news report - Charlie Brooker's Newswipe




Pants on the Ground from American Idol




Gibson does Kimmel




Have a great weekend!

Monday Motivation: Know Thyself, Know Thy Day

Can't find your motivation in the wee hours of Monday morning? You're not the only one.

Despite the morning rituals I've put into place, despite the practice of resolving chaos, some days I can't - laying there in my comfortable bed - fire up that drive to get moving.

On those days, I find my inspiration elsewhere.

No, that doesn't mean a bottle of Jameson or anything; it means knowing my day.

The Practice:

When you wake, when you're lying there in bed, when you can't get yourself to move: use that time. Imagine your day.

First: Put together a workable list of things you need to get done. Imagine yourself not only gathering those things but making sure you get them done. Do a quick thought experiment on how that would happen, how you'd knock out those items. See yourself happily done with your day, and what will follow.

Let that focused, visualized success drive you, move you, then - Get out of bed!


Unless you're afraid of success (perhaps next week's topic), this should help you get moving, get going, and get ready to change the world (and make some money in the interim).

Have a great day!

There Is No Try

Even in "Empire," Luke was a whining mess. "OMG No! We'll Never get it out!"

And Yoda smacked him down: "No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."



When I was an entering freshman at Valley Forge High School in Parma Heights, OH in 1990, I recall our principal giving us a speech at which the crux was: Try. I thought then that that speech was BS and it wasn't until I remembered Yoda's quip from "Empire" that I got philosophical about it.

"Try" means half-assed. "Try" means "I'll give it a shot." "Try" is a non-commitment that ends in "Well, I tried!"

Wrong.

As Yoda says, you either do or you do not. When it comes down to success, when it comes down to achieving, you either do or you don't. "Try" is a cop-out. So stop making excuses and get out there and put yourself out there and succeed - or fail. Either way, you've learned something so you can make even more out of it next time.

But don't "Try." If you do, you set yourself up for easy failure. If you fail, make sure you failed because you "did not," you didn't accomplish your goal. Fail is okay. Making excuses is not.

I wish our principal had gone all Yoda on us. I was fine. But I think it may have made a difference in other lives.

Hitler, Hitler, Hitler - Social Media!

Same clip. Different subtitles. For your Friday Video enjoyment.

Best: Hitler checks Toyota Yaris Social Campaign (read = funniest):




Hitler gets angry about Facebook:




And Hitler gets angry about social media in general (read quickly!):



I don't pretend to think that Hitler's legacy is anything funny. But the parody is. And turning it into a post-modern mashup? Brilliant.

Why? Because turning evil into a cartoon is a way of taking ownership back. A way of not just killing it, but humiliating it.

Let me know your thoughts.

Know Your Partners: A Cautionary Tale

When you own your own business, you can work the social networks, you can imbue every part of your work and practice with integrity and you can view the entire world as your growing oyster.

But people will take advantage. If someone can - or has for a while - gamed the system, turned things slightly unethical to get a buck into his/her pocket, they will always be that person.

Allow me an example: I got into business with a friend and her business partner. The parameters were pretty straightforward: Nice niche, I build the site, they handle the logistics, and I get a cut of the profit after a down payment. Pretty normal. She seemed to trust this guy, so I was fine with it.

Business dramatics aside, I got a call from my friend yesterday. She had received a text from her business partner: "Tell Eric we sold the business and get the passwords so I can have this guy in India work on it." Luckily I have a friend first and a business partner second. We'll be making our own move soon.

Logistics of selling a business aside, who does that? Who thinks that kind of business practice is even reasonable?

Answer: No one you want to deal with.

Lesson learned: Spend time - hours and hours if necessary - before getting into business with anyone. People have the potential for anything. Hope for the best, but get to know them. And even then, prepare for the worst. Always have something in iron-clad writing.

I wasn't burned this time, but I have been before. And fool me once...


What are your experiences in business? Do you have any horror stories? Magnificent stories? What advice can you give based on your business or life experiences?

Wednesday Twitter: Obama, Bill Gates, Terrorism, and Celebs!

OMG! CELEBS!

Every week: celebrity drama. Let's get it over with. Awww-dang. Bow Wow's mom's on Twitter and he's not happy. He tells her to get off or he will. Ooh! And Carolina Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart announced on this Twitter account that he will have surgery on his foot today. Woo! Oh, and someone conned Gordon Ramsey of Hell's Kitchen to take a course so he could start tweeting. I feel sorry for Ramsey's money.


Bill Gates

Wait, does this belong in celebs? Looks like Bill Gates joined Twitter. Ooh, and he even did "Hello World" as his initial tweet! How quaint! Why don't you start getting into Modest Mouse 3 years after their 5th studio release?


Obama on Twitter?

Don't get all excited. He posted on someone else's account:

Early this week, US President Barack Obama posted his first ever tweet on the website during a visit to the Red Cross Disaster Operations Centre in Washington, DC to engage in a little social networking asking people to help Haiti.

His tweet simply said – "President Obama and the First Lady are here visiting (the Red Cross) disaster operation centre right now".

But he did send a tweet, which is something when it comes to politicians and technology. (See: "It's a series of tubes!")


Twitter Slows Down

I'm not sure if the fact that a technology that has held so much hype for so long settles into reality is really a news story, but Twitter's Growth is Slowing.

HubSpot, a Cambridge, Mass.-based Web analytics company, said in its latest "State of the Twittersphere" report that the growth rate dropped to 3.5% in October compared to 13% just seven months earlier.

But it's still growing? Yep. Okay then, on to...


Twitter Terrorist!

If you're pissed at the state of air travel do you:

1. Deal with it like the rest of us.
2. Whine about it like the rest of us.
3. Threaten to blow up the airport.

The man in question tweeted "Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your sh** together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

(answer:3)

Okay, I can understand the frustration if you're stuck in -- wait, what's that you say? He was just hearing reports about airport delays on the telly a couple weeks before even entering that airport? And he tossed what might be construed as a terrorist threat into the aether of the internets and thought that would be OK?

Some people should not have access to technology.


But that's it folks! The end of another week of Twitter news and events and laughs. Are you surprised? Granted, I was feeling a little smarmy, but hey, that's how it turned out this week. I guess when Twitter news presents something serious, we get serious.

Let me know your best Twitter headlines. I'll take your comments into next week's blog post!

A Tale of Google, Foolishness, and the MCC

I'm currently managing several Adwords accounts and it was about dang time to set up my own My Client Center. Google's My Client Center is a wonderful interface that allows you to manage several independent Adwords accounts in one place. Hey, I've already got an Adwords campaign set up for EJM Designs, so how hard could that be?

Yeah.

Turns out that if you have an Adwords account associated with a Google Account, you can't use that account to create an MMC. So along with my personal Gmail and my professional Gmail and my site running through Google Apps email, I was forced to create an entirely new account to handle my MMC.

Okay, I understand that. It's not ideal in any sense, but if that's how they're driving the bus, that's how they're driving the bus.

But then I tried to adjoin an existing account I was managing to my MCC. And I got a message to the effect: In order to link this account to your MMC, you will have to Contact Us. Hrm?

So I emailed and contacted them and about 4 days later got this back:

Hello Eric,

[sic] for emailing me to link a client account (Customer ID xxx) to your MCC (xxx). You weren't able to link the accounts because the would-be client account is using a beta billing interface, which makes it unable to be managed by an MCC. The new interface is being tested on just a limited number of new accounts, and we're working to give them full functionality as soon as possible. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and I wanted to offer you a couple of options. Please reply to this email and let me know which you'd prefer.

OPTION 1: You can create a new account through the link in your My Client Center

...

OPTION 2: Ask us to move this client account to the previous billing interface

...

Please let me know which option you'd like to take, and we'll continue from there.

Thanks for your understanding.

Sincerely,

[CSR] B.
The Google AdWords Team

(I picked option 2 because I'm not reinventing an already well-oiled wheel.)

But what? When I initially created the account, there was no mention of "Hey, we're testing a new Billing Interface!"


So this post is not intended to poo-poo the Google that I know and love, just to bring some of those more interesting glitches and hoops to light so when you're about to do the same thing, you don't wonder why something didn't work or get fired up about WTF is going on.


Short version: Have Adwords? Don't try to add MCC to that account, and always add new accounts through your MMC to guarantee compatibility.


Oh, and I guess this came to light last year, but Google Adwords is not supported on the Opera Browser. Looks like all other Google applications are fine, but just not Adwords. Again: weird.


So what are your thoughts about my tale? Have you run into this? Do you have any other advice for others, your own warnings, so to speak?