MWGblog

(Will & Nick model their Trunkis)

The Trunki has got to qualify as one of the all time greatest purchases my Wife has made. When I first saw these I was skeptical, but after our recent trip to Hawaii, I am sold. These are a must-have for parents who travel with young children. They are hard plastic suitcases with 4 wheels and leash. Built for carry-on use, they fit perfectly under the airline seat in front. Because of their design, kids can manage them eliminating the need for Mom or Dad having to wrangle the kids’ carry-ons. They have three basic modes of use: a leash that allows the kids to pull them, the ability for the kids to “ride” them powered by their feet and finally if the kids get tired, they can ride while someone else pulls the leash. (For adults, the leash also converts to a shoulder strap)

On our trip, the kids loved the fact they had their own luggage that they were responsible for. However, what blew me away was the spectacle the Trunkis caused at the airports. We constantly had people coming up and asking what they were are where to get them - everyone from the flight attendants and gate agents to our fellow travelers. For those too shy to approach us, you could hear them pointing us out and discussing our kids’ suitcases, it was an interesting experience. The pictures do not do these justice, once you see kid’s use them, you’ll want one. Whoever invented these things has nailed it. Kid friendly and parent approved. If you are going to travel with young children check out the Trunki.

I was cleaning some photos off my hard drive and found this one of me with Tito Ortiz at a fundraiser a few years back. (Just posting it so I can refer to it later.)

I first posted about the ADM on April 17th. They had just released their “Advertisement Unit Standards and Downloadable Measurement Guidelines.” I got a lot of heat for my “critical” comments. (My Post is here.) Interestingly, apart from 3 quick puff pieces on April 18, 22 & 23 the ADM has gone silent. If this was such a monumental achievement why have they gone quiet for 2 months?

Again, my criticism is simple, there is a lack of leadership in the ADM. They acquiesced to a bunch of Venture Funded companies who - given recent activity - can’t figure out exactly what they do - much less lead an industry trade group. I wonder where your $1000 or $150 went?

Some might say I’m against the ADM - not at all. I like the basic premise though I have to admit, a bit of “I told you so” comes to mind. Anyone who wishes to criticize my comments, make sure you first address the over 60 days of silence from this “game changing” trade group.

Update: For the record, I like those who are in management positions in the ADM, my honest opinion is they realize they need to focus on keeping their startups afloat rather than the trade organization. I am curious - given the anniversary, will most members be quick to pay this year’s fee?

Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine is set to play Coverville 500 August 15th during the New Media Expo in Las Vegas. I’ve been a long time Richard Cheese fan subjecting countless friends to his music as well as dragging many others to his concerts. If you’ve never seen RC, you are in for a treat. He is a lounge singer who performs his “unique” versions of songs such as: Baby Got Back, Hot for Teacher, She Hates Me, 99 Luftballoons and the Britney Spears classic Crazy. If you are curious about his albums, I’d suggest looking at Tuxicty or I’d Like A Virgin as a good starting place.

You can hear some samples on his website or check out this performance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. If you are going to the New Media Expo, this is a must attend event.

Cable broadcasters have come out with some great original series recently. The Shield, Rescue Me, Damages and many others. One of the surprises was the USA Network show Burn Notice that aired last summer. (New season begins July, 10th)

I like this show. It is smart, funny and you learn some spy tradecraft along the way. The basic premise is that Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) is a spy who receives a “burn notice” - effectively he is cut off, no money, no aid, no communication - he is hung out to dry. He decides to figure out who burned him. Meanwhile he is stuck in Miami aided only by his ex IRA/gun runner/special ops girlfriend Fiona and ex shadow warrior Sam. The cherry on top? Bruce Campbell as the hard drinking, kept man, ex-spy Sam Axe. USA has re-runs on right now in anticipation of the new season, and last night I discovered the whole season one on iTunes. An easy $19 purchase. (Also available on DVD.) Check it out.

While one of our partners was off in New York accepting our James Beard Award, the rest of the GrapeRadio crew attended Auction Napa Valley 2008. This is the wine event of the year in Napa and GrapeRadio is pleased to be able to cover it for the 3rd year in a row.

This event is put on by the Napa Valley Vintners and as their website states: 700 Guests, 500 winery owners and winemakers, 250 auction lots, dozens of parties, all to be enjoyed within 68 hours. Once again, it was an amazing event!

As far as working conditions go - this is about as good as it gets! Non-stop parties and some of the best food and wine in the world. We worked hard gathering tons of interviews and the highlight, as always, was the gala auction event on Saturday evening. Jay Leno served as host again this year and it included a moving tribute to Robert Mondavi who passed last May.

We made sure to get interviews with all the movers and shakers attending including even Oprah. I’d like to thank everyone who welcomed us but the list is long, between the group we probably attended over 20 separate events hosted by countless wineries. That said, special thanks goes to Departures Magazine and American Express who allowed us unprecedented access as well as the Tudal Family Winery who graciously hosted us at their enormous vineyard home. (We lived like kings, this place is incredible!)

I’m convinced I’ll be sweating pure Cabernet Sauvignon all week during my workouts. Best of all, $10.3 Million was raised for local Napa charities! Thanks again to all. Can’t wait for next year!

Along with my partners at GrapeRadio, I am excited to annouce that we have won the 2008 James Beard Award in the category of webcasting!

The James Beard Foundation Awards are the nation’s preeminent honors for culinary professionals. Often referred to as the “Oscars of Food and Wine” more than 60 awards are given out each year in the categories of cookbooks, restaurants and chefs, design and graphics, broadcast media, journalism, and achievement. Award winners are selected by their industry peers, with more than 600 culinary professionals involved in the voting process. This year’s award ceremony in New York was hosted by Kim Cattrall and Bobby Flay and other winners include such name as Mario Batali, Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi and Top Chef.

Thank you to all of our fans who have given us such great support over the years.

Click the image below to see our video that won the award: Stewards of the Land

My “stroke of insight” came suddenly yesterday morning: something fishy is going on with a campaign to promote Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, “My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey” published by Viking Adult, part of the Penguin Group.

Over the last two weeks four comments have appeared on my post from last March about Dr. Taylor’s fantastic TED 2008 presentation. While individually the comments might not have caught my attention, collectively they seemed a little too perfect, too polished, too promotional - like they have been through the review process for a press release. Yesterday morning I got curious about them when I saw the fourth one arrive. You can see Ellen, Dwight, Tammy and Bridget’s comments here. (Ryan’s comment is genuine.)

None of the commenters left links to their homepages or blogs. Reverse IP lookups were a bust. Their emails are the usual Hotmail stuff, but Dwight’s is from an @fontdrift.com domain. A quick search for that domain turned up all kinds of references to a fakemailgenerator.com. A site that “changes the domain frequently in order to prevent the address from being banned.” No need to explain what their service provides.

I decided to Google some of the key phrases. Mind you, there are some real winners, but I still think the best is Tammy’s, “I laughed. I cried. It was a fantastic book…” Wow - 833 Google hits! Wouldn’t you know the search also revealed that this exact same comment shows up on 100s of blog’s that reference Dr. Taylor. Only trick - different names each time for the comment author. In fact all four comments show up word for word all over the Web under all kinds of different names. The comment using the phrase above was on countless sites; everywhere from The New York Times (commenter Jennifar) to O’Reilly Radar (commenter Joseph) to The Indiana Statesman (commenter Jocosa) to Peterme.com (who got just the four basic comments including this same one from a commenter Bowman.)

Since the original comment on my site had an Amazon link, I first thought it was an Internet Marketing gimmick focused on increasing affiliate sales. However, I realized there was no affiliate ID in the link URL and no links in the future comments. No Internet Marketer would be that subtle or patient. That got me thinking, this is being done by someone who has an interest in the success of the book at a macro level. This narrows the list considerably.

Something like this requires time, resources and money. This is an organized effort to get these comments past moderation queues, spam filters and all the various preventive measures blogs and sites have. Someone has worked hard to give the “appearance” of being genuine, interested and supportive readers of the book all with goal of tricking you. My understanding is that this book has done quite well on its own and is by an author who is well respected. It is sad that someone felt further promotion warranted employing deception.

Make no mistake about it, whoever is behind this made a conscious decision - let’s try to trick those social media/blog types. However, the fact they went through all this trouble to use fake names and phony email addresses to spread their message about the book just betrays their own understanding of the fact that they are up to no good.

So who is doing it? I don’t know but I certainly have my suspicions. What I do know is whoever is behind it feels just fine using my site and the readers I work hard to serve as part of the playground for their deceptive marketing gimmick. As such, I feel just fine calling them out.

Lesson: I know what book I’m not buying.

[Note: I intentionally did not link to the book but did leave the link live in the original comment for context.]

Mark Ramsey points to the newest Edison Research report from Tom Webster on Podcasting which was presented at PodCamp NY last month. Once again, some good info for the Poderati to pay attention to. Mark, a well known radio consultant, points out that radio stations need to be producing their content as podcasts. I have been harping on this for years! As my friend Eric Rice once said, “13 year olds are doing this in their basements - what’s your excuse?” I could write a long post but I’m a talker, it’s why I like podcasting. Instead, here is a roughly 50 minute presentation I gave to a private group of radio and television executives in Minneapolis back in August, 2006 discussing the need to “jump in.” (Click the image below.)

I have often referred people to the Common Craft video explaining Twitter. Now they have published an episode for podcasting:

I have upgraded the blog to Wordpress 2.5.1 and deployed a new Theme. Yes, it looks the same but it is a complete rebuild and now sports a new wider main content area. Some stuff will be broken for a few days as I sort through it all. Feel free to send along any problems you notice. Thanks!

For those who attended my presentation at PodCamp NYC here are the slides from my presentation: PodCamp NYC 2008.

As I mentioned earlier, I am heading off to PodCamp NY this week. I’m looking forward to it. The only change to my plans is that I have agreed to do a presentation along with Tim Bourquin on Friday at 3PM. We’ll be talking about growing your audience and monetization. My part is a condensed version of the presentation I gave last week at NAB. This one just tuned for the PodCamp audience.)

Best of all I was able to score some last minute reservations at Gordon Ramsay’s at The London (Thank you Amex). As a long time Gordon Ramsay fan it should be a good way to kick off a great event.

After much anticipation the ADM (Association for Downloadable Media) has released two proposed guidelines and standards: Advertisement Unit Standards and Downloadable Measurement Guidelines. Both documents (available here) weigh in at just 3 pages and are open for public comment. If the new media advertising space is important to you I suggest you pay attention, the ADM presumes to speak for you. That said, I have to tell you, I read them both and wondered where was the rest - the important part? Looking at the “Downloadable Measurement Guidelines” I can sum it up in three words “use Apache logs.” We’ve always know that, what a let down.

What the ADM completely avoided (and it appears this is intentional) is the huge elephant standing in the corner of the room: what counts as a listen/view? Does 33% file delivery count for delivery of a pre-roll? 60% for a mid-roll? Is 100% file delivery required to count as a “complete” view/listen? How are automated downloads counted, i.e. what discount metric is used for iTunes subscriptions to determine a consumption metric over delivery? How are multiple requests from a single IP address counted? All of that, the important part, is left up to the company or producer you are dealing with. Put simply, we are exactly in the same spot as before: use your Apache logs.

When I see “standard” and “guidelines” I expect just that but these documents completely miss the mark. I don’t know if they expect the producer community to provide the important part via the comment period or if they will just completely avoid it.

This is a simple leadership issue. There are some smart folks at the helm of the ADM, but I was surprised that they allowed these documents to be released as their first “official” step into the arena. The ADM has been terrific at PR, but that is not their core responsibility, this stuff is. Bottom line, the ADM needs to take a stand, put up with the flack and develop a complete standard. It won’t be friendly, people will have cross words and it might upset some of the “Board of Advisors” and “Committee Chairs” who have proprietary approaches but that is the real work that needs to be done. When it comes time for the heavy lifting - the ADM can’t drop the ball like this.

Now granted, I’m not a member and I didn’t run for the board. When asked, I chose not to, only so many projects I can do at one time. I take this stuff seriously and only agree to participate when I know that I can give something the attention it deserves. Believe me, this stuff is important. I know in some sense I’m being critical when I could have contributed. But to be plain, these documents are open for public comment - I hope they’ll consider mine.