I wear black t shirts almost exclusively. They’re probably the most versatile article of clothing out there. Pair a black-t with dark jeans and you can hang with billionaires or the kids at the local dive bar.

This is really just incredible. Read the whole thing, no seriously.

from Maddee Miller <englepph@gmail.com> to englepph@gmail.com date Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 1:59 PM subject MOI! mailed-by gmail.com signed-by gmail.com

hide details 1:59 PM (48 minutes ago)

HEYYYY SOOOOO sorry for not emailing sooner babe.. how u doing? jesus
this computer has been such a pain in the butt u have no idea.. i
wanted to email you sooner actually i tried too but it keeps freezing
on me.. i need a new dam laptop ASAP… anyways if you get this more
than once i am really sorry lol…im trying my best here! so anyways
like i said im gonna be moving sooooon like 3 days and you’re the only
person im gonna know there.. i guess its better i know one person than
NOBODY.. its kinda scary to think about thats why im counting on you
to help out.. thats if you dont mind of course! I wanted to chat
longer before but i was starting work and just didnt have the time.. i
really wanna chat wiht u more and get to know more about you and tell
you more about myself before i move so ok where is it that you
work? are you single? do you party a lot? what do you do for fun or in
your free time? play any sports? have any fuckbuddies lol??????? I
want to know all of this so that when we hang out I will feel like we
have known each other for a while ya know? I babble ALOT.. you will
see that when we chill lol so im not worried about awkward silences
lol
I’ll probably know tomorrow what day Im movign exactly so I will let
you know for sure. are you sure you do not mind helping me move that
day? i SOOOO appreciate it you have no idea! I’ll owe you one BIG
TIME.. whatever you want hehe! The reason I am moving is well because
I just need a change really. my current situation SUCKS.. just
recently got single, my rent is too high here, i hate this city and i
want a fresh start already! Also i owe like 5 grande still to student
loan PLUS I need to lend $ to my sister for her tuition ALSO lol! so i
just wanna move, start from scratch and meet new people and find a new
job.. which remind me, do you think you can help with that? do you
have any buddies who own restaurants or bars? thats kinda where id
like to work, just somethign where i can interact and be social and
maybe make some tips too.. im good at that so if you could help me
find a NORMAL job I’d love u even more hahah! So like I said I am
single as of last month, my ex was an ass and was terrible in the sac
anyways lol. i am not THAT needy but one thing that matters A LOT to
me is you need to satisfy me in bed. i am a pretty sxual person and i
play wiht myself a lot so i expect to be played with a lto also. i
also dont mind giving in return in fact i find that really hot. i am
prettu k!nky too ill try anythign really.. i am into chix and all
that.. pretty much I will do whatever turns my bf on kinda thing. i
like seeing him happy but he has ot please me also! wanna know
somethign kinda embarrasing? its been over two months since i had ANY
kinda fooling around im about to go CRAZY here lol…feel free to
help out lol! i mean assuming we have good chemistry in person like we
do online hahah! so u got some cool friends to introduce me too. id
like to meet lots of new people,..guys or girls like i said i am INTO
chicks too hahah! Anyways how about I tell you some more information
on myself? WELL i am a super good person when ti comes to my friends
and fmaily. i love my kittykat BREE shes soo cute.. im 24, virgo,
blonde, smooth and sassy lol.. i am pretty indpependant, i love fast
cars, the bach, chilling, socializing, babble, chatting online, makign
out, cuddling, riding horses, watchign movies, cooking, shopping and
pretty much everythign else girly gurls like to do hahahah! Like i
said i am pretty sxual so i like toys and games andjust hot stuff with
the person im seeing..As for my job! I know you probably want more
info on that right?? WELLL ok so i basicly chat online right.. and i
get paid for it.. the only thing is im nude well I do it and i touch
myself.. but if u think about it, id do all that stuff for free
anyways so why not make some dough at it right? lol.. of course some
people judge or whatever and think less of me but those are the type
of people i dont care to mingle with anyways! im sure you udnerstand,
you seem cool even though we only chatted briefly. so on my site,
every month I have 3 special links to give to anyone I want.. and with
these links u can signinto the site without paying.. i usually dont
give any out, no one to give them too.. or i let my sisters boyfriend
have one lol but if u want i dont mind letting you have one.. basicly
with this special VIPass you can see me whenever u want withou being
b!lled or anythign like that. NOW IF I GIVE U ONE YOU HAVE TO SWEAR ON
OUR FRIENDSHIP UR NOT GONNA LET ANYONE ELSE USE IT… thats important
cause i can and will get in MAJOR trouble. so im trusting u… so do
not share it MISTER or im gonna bitch slap you when i see u hahahahah!
im crazy i know but im trusting u… so when u go to sign in with
this.. u will see $0,00 for the price thingy.. others see $5 or
whatever cause they dont have the special passlink like u do.. so can
i trust u not to share it? this is the best palce to chat me cause my
piece of crap laptop keeps fresszing adnd my email acocunt sucks.. i
dont think im getting any or all of my mails.. and me IM programs just
shut down CONSTANTLY thats why i may not reply on there.. since im
mvoign very soon u can find me in my chatroom basicly day and night..
i dont sleep all that muchWe really need to chat so i hope to see u
inside shortly hunny! im gonna go sign in now.. if you come in and
theres other chatters in ther eill just kick them out so me and u will
be alone…to login you have to usee a CC but its just for age
ver!ficat!on….ok im waiting babe.. msg me ASAP when u sign in dont
go looking for other hotties to chat with lol.. MWA kisses times a
million! here ya go —>   free4invites .com/adminvip <—   (remove
the spaces) LUV ya madison

Last year, about this time, JetBlue announced the All You Can Jet (#AYCJ) pass. They didn’t really promote it but it became a phenomenon. I suppose I helped make that happen for them (through Twelve Hours in a City), at least they thought so. As a “Thank You” they’ve given me a 100% FREE pass for this year’s AYCJ awesomeness extravaganza. They just announced a couple of hours ago (6am est. 8/17/2010) that they’re doing it again this year. With a couple of differences:

Last year’s pass was $599 for unlimited flights (kinda) from Sept. 8th – October 8th. This year customers have TWO options:

AYCJ Pass types

AYCJ-7: $699* for 30 days of unlimited travel
AYCJ-5: $499* for 30 days of unlimited travel (excludes Fridays and Sundays)

• Pass travel valid on JetBlue-operated flights in the JetBlue route network only
• Domestic taxes and fees included
• International and Puerto Rico taxes and fees not included
• On sale now, while supplies last
• Travel dates: Tuesday, September 7, 2010 through Wednesday, October 6, 2010
• Each flight must be booked and ticketed no later than 11:59 p.m. EDT or 11:59 p.m. local time, whichever is earlier, three (3) days prior to the flight’s scheduled departure
• Last seat availability
• Nonrefundable/nontransferable/no name changes permitted

I’ll be doing it again this year BUT I’m looking to add a special twist to the plan. Stay tuned for more info.

It’s about that time again. Time to take a deep breath and erase that line we’ve drawn in the sand. Think back 10 or 15 years when cell phones had finally become portable and affordable enough for almost everyone. We all did it, we said “Fuck it, I guess I’m going to let people call me whenever they want.” Well now we’re at another tipping point and it’s name is Location.

I hear a lot of people say things like “I don’t want people to know where I am all the time” or “What benefit can FourSquare possibly have?” Well, when it comes to the latter, a lot. Not only are businesses starting to offer discounts to location Mayors, but as a business owner you can promote events and daily specials through the application to people that are ACTUALLY WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE OF YOUR BUSINESS. It’s the most targeted, targeting advertising gets. And it’s only going to get better.

With Facebook launching location based services soon, we’re going to see how half a billion users are going to impact developers of location based advertising. Since Facebook will be utilizing an API for location, companies like FourSquare are going to grow more exponentially than we saw happen to Twitter. That means bigger discounts, “swarm” discounts and real value to offer business partners.

It’s also fun to track where you’ve been and see your travel patterns using tools like weeplaces.com

FourSquare Visualization by WeePlaces.com from Eric Wu on Vimeo.

I’m sure we’ll see a lot of localized companies (here’s looking at you BlockClub) take advantage of Facebook’s API and start to really interact with their customers in ways that 5 years ago seemed crazy and annoying (remember the short lived TXT Marketing concept?).

Sure, we’re going to experience some growing pains with location. That’s to be expected, in the early days we’ll see 50 companies doing it totally wrong for every one brand that “gets it.” But like with Twitter, brands and users will come around and the disparity between “power” location users and the general public will start to shrink. Before you know it you’ll be walking into the mall and your smart phone will buzz and using your previous check-in history as a guide will let you know that Store X is having a sale today, and you’ll be happy about that.

Location sharing is a good thing. For consumers, for businesses and for the evolution of this thing we call social media. So take that deep breath, say “Fuck it,” and turn on location.

Please feel free to Re-Tweet this to your friends. Email me if you think I’m way off base or just wanna chat. If you’d like to publicly mock me you can find me on Twitter.

Cheers.

A lot can happen in a year, the past 365 days have certainly cemented that concept for me. A year ago I was sitting behind a desk running a marketing department for a mid-sized financial company in Buffalo, NY. As I write this I’m self employed, living in Austin, TX. In the past year I’ve taken over 90 flights and traveled over 100,000 miles. I’ve given countless radio interviews, dozens of print interviews and I’ve been on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. Well most of that happened in just 31 days.

What really amazes me though, is what we’ve seen happen in the business world in the last 365 days. We’ve seen giants like Toyota and BP fall from grace. Facebook crossed 500 million. Corporations finally figured out that twitter is a word-of-mouth machine. We saw FourSquare explode. Location based marketing on mobile devices has started to become a reality.

Unfortunately what hasn’t changed is what really needs to change for businesses. It’s not enough just to acknowledge that social networks exist and they need to exist on them, to be a successful business you need to create your own communities within these networks. Consumers are getting easier and easier to reach if you’re smart about it. That’s what successful businesses will focus on in the next 365 days if they’re smart.

I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s going to happen in the next 365.

It’s arrived. I’m pretty pumped about it. I’m 30,000 feet above the ground using the internet. That’s pretty cool. Now I really wish I had an iPad b/c it’s risky typing on the MBP with a drink sitting next to the trackpad.

If nothing else, I’m a salesman. I always have been, and—with any luck—always will be. I look around at businesses in all sorts of industries (real estate, publishing, banking, whatever) and it’s shocking to me that people are so shitty at selling their products and at taking advantage of the consumer outreach channels available to them. I’m not sure exactly why these companies miss the boat, but they’re really letting opportunities pass them by.

What I’ve found in most organizations is that people forget the most important rule: everything is marketing, and all marketing is sales. Period. I don’t care if you’re fielding customer service complaints—you work for the marketing department. If you’re a receptionist, you work for the marketing department. Any aspect of a company that has any level of contact with the public is either helping or hurting their marketing efforts. Here’s a very simple example: I can walk into a car dealership wearing either a suit or a T-shirt. If the cute girl they’ve hired to greet me chooses to dismiss me because she thinks me and my T-shirt can’t afford one of their cars, she just wasted the thousands of dollars that the dealership and manufacturer spent to get me into their showroom. Try fitting that into your ROI formulas.

That’s point number one. Point number two: why the hell are you spending so much money yelling at potential customers when you could be talking to them? If you’re running a full-page print advertisement that isn’t event-specific (a sale, for example) or is merely for branding, you’re seriously throwing away money that you might want to put into a medium where you can actually talk to your customer. (Let’s be honest here, don’t bother with creative for a branding ad, just print the name of your company and website in huge letters—it’ll work just as well.)

I shouldn’t have to say this—because it’s a pretty well established fact by now: the old way of doing business is dead. It’s not because Twitter and Facebook are the new cool things. It’s because outlets like Twitter and Facebook allow people to find what they want with user-based search features. It’s a better way to communicate with potential customers—just don’t be an asshole about it. If you’re selling insurance, don’t use LinkedIn to find the COO of a company, friend him on Facebook and then try to sell him via private messages. Do, however, find out who he is, learn about the culture of his company and whatever you can about his personality. Then you can tailor a cold-email or cold-call and watch your closing rate soar.

What’s the easiest way to identify people who need your product using new media? Set up some Twitter searches that cover your product’s features, solutions, etc. Guess what? It doesn’t cost a damned thing—but time—and it’s a great prospecting tool. I just did a search for a hash-tag that no one should be using, #carinsurance, and came up with dozens of hits from users looking for quotes. If I sold insurance, I just saved myself a hell of a lot of money that I would have wasted on direct mail in order to find 20 people who are looking for car insurance.

This stuff is easy, people. Get on it. Want more? Need help? Got a question? Think I’m totally wrong? Email me: joedinardo@gmail.com.

First thoughts…

The new Apple iPad (C) 2010 Apple

It’s official, the Apple tablet product has been launched and it’s called the iPad. At first glance it seems like a large iPhone which, I suppose it pretty much is. But think about what you could do with a larger iPhone for a minute…

Yeah you could do a lot of REALLY cool stuff and that’s exactly what Apple is hoping for. From a UI standpoint I can see why some people are upset that it’s not running a full scale version of OS X, but what kind of device would that have given us? You would have had to choose a lesser of two evils scenario: Expensive and fast or inexpensive and slow. I think Apple made the right decision to use an OS based on the iPhone OS. It’s sleek, simple, millions of people already know how to use it and you don’t need a super processor to run it well.

What really gets me excited about the iPad isn’t the fact that almost all of the AppStore’s 140,000 apps will run on it or that all the apps you’ve already downloaded for the iPhone will transfer right over (both of which are true by the way) I’m most excited about the revisions to the apps and new apps Apple includes on the device. Mainly Mail, Calendar and the Book Store.

Mail Application on the iPad (c) 2010 Apple

It’s kinda funny that the mail application on the iPad is significantly better than the mail application that ships with OS X. Messages on the left pane with the reading pane on the right? Who would have thought that it’s the best layout? The drop downs are beautiful and the rotate to focus feature is very nice (if you move from landscape to portrait the message pane disappears allowing you to focus on the email you’re reading).

Calendar Application on the iPad (c) 2010 Apple

The calendar app is also beautiful. Leaps and bounds ahead of iCal in terms of looks and from what I can tell so far, function. These visual and functional improvements are things that could only happen on a touch based device and what really allows them to work is the fact that the OS focuses solely on the application you’re running. There’s no menu bar in the way, no dock taking up screen space. A lot of people complain that this OS doesn’t allow for multi-tasking but that’s what makes devices running it so wonderful to use.

iPad bookshelf and bookstore (c) 2010 Apple

The book reading application is exciting for several reasons. First, the “self” layout is very simple to understand and use. Second, the built in bookstore seemed from the presentation to fit in seamlessly to the application (no need to go back out to home and then into the iTunes store to buy a book). Most exciting though is the format that Apple is using for the books, they’ll be using the ePub format so the possibility is there to import your own eBooks into the device.

What’s it good for?

Typical thoughts on tablet devices has always been that they’d provide a way to migrate away from desktops or laptops into the “future” of computing. While I don’t necessarily disagree I don’t think that the iPad is meant to be a step in that direction. The iPad to me is more of a device meant to, from a work perspective, consolidate your desk and make your daily work life more streamlined and less bulky. Enter the Notes application:

Notes application for Apple iPad (c) 2010 Apple

With it’s fast processor and near laptop sized touch keyboard the iPad is the perfect meeting companion. Tablets in the past have relied on a stylus to replace the keyboard for note taking since their touch interfaces have always been pretty crappy. The reason this never caught on? People don’t really like to write, when they do it almost never translates well on screen and most conversion software sucks. With the iPad I can easily see it replacing my laptop in meetings where I plan on taking any sort of notes (I gave up on paper and pen a long time ago). Not only will it be more compact and less of a visual distraction but the fact that you won’t be hearing every click of the keyboard (assuming you turn off the sound when in meetings) means meetings can flow better and seem less like lecture halls.

People have their own opinions on LED lit book readers. Personally I’ve never had any problems reading lots of text on an LED backlit screen so I’m obviously excited to read books on the iPad over a Kindle (I could just never get used to the jumpy screen).

What really makes this device special is that you’re not limited to doing ANYTHING on it. With 3rd party app developers working constantly to churn out new products from games to organizers the amount of uses the iPad will have to offer are truly almost limitless.

Pricing…

This is really where Apple stepped up to the plate. They’ve offered 3 different configurations with the 3G add-on available on each. 6 total versions might seem like a lot to some people but think about it this way: they’ve given almost every market a way to dive into the iPad. Schools don’t need the use of 3G but they might need more storage, especially if they decide to build certain curriculums around the iPad. Imagine a science class taught with the iPad where images come to life as videos in a class specific app. No need to go to a planetarium when you have the cosmos infront of every student. Here’s the pricing:

• 16 GB WiFi – $499
• 32 GB WiFi – $599
• 64 GB WiFi – $699
• 16 GB WiFi + 3G – $629
• 32 GB WiFi + 3G – $729
• 64 GB WiFi + 3G – $829

With a $499 base price and a sub $900 ceiling this device fits into almost anyone’s price range.

What’s Really Remarkable…

What I find most impressive about the iPad is how much muscle Apple flexed in terms of 3G support. Apple has been able to get AT&T to agree to a data plan that is unheard of in the US. $15 for 250MB and $30 for UNLIMITED data usage all without a contract. Yeah you heard that right. There’s no 2 year, 1 year or even 3 month contract to sign. No initial pricing plan, no BS. It’s $30 pre-paid cancel whenever you want for UNLIMITED 3G data. What’s even more impressive is you even get FREE access to AT&T wifi hotspots with your $15 or $30. It’s clear that Apple is without question one of if not the most powerful company when it comes to consumer wireless.

Now for some disappointment…

The only thing I’m really let down about so far with the iPad is the lack of camera. You have a beautiful screen and a device that’s so portable it’s at risk of being lost and you didn’t include a camera? I mean come on Jobs, how did your ego not force a camera into this device? I could only imagine the applause you would have gotten had you live demoed a Skype or iChat video chat. That would have pushed the iPad from “great new device” to “we’re living in the future.” Keynote presentations with video chat would really have made this device a must have for anyone in the consulting business. Lack of camera was a real let down from Apple, especially considering the multiple price points they are clearly willing to deal with.

Video…

Tech Specs…

Size and Weight

• Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
• Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
• Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
• Weight: 1.5 pounds (.68 kg) Wi-Fi model; 1.6 pounds (.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G mode

I figure I need to do some more writing now that I have the lifestyle to do so. Hopefully I don’t ramble too much and somethings I post you’ll find useful. Mostly though I hope I can entertain. See ya soon.