Unboxing Squarespace V5: The Apple of Content Management

As expected, the long-awaited Squarespace V5 Release does not disappoint. This is the Manhattan firm's largest update since they came out with their popular blogging platform in 2003. The new updates might take some getting used to for new users but those who've been with the company for quite some time (as I have) will notice a tremendous improvement in their production efficiency.

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Magento Ecommerce Literally Giving Away the Store

Updated on Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 05:18PM by Ty

Ecommerce platforms be afraid. Be very afraid. Today I stumbled on a brand new ecommerce solution under development by the extraordinary team at Varien. On top of being free and open source, the platform looks to rival the functionality of longer established, (much) higher priced ecommerce solutions on the market.

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Telling Graph of United States Budget and Gross National Priorities

Have you ever wished there was an easy way to tell at-a-glance how your taxpayer dollars are spent? I'd venture a guess that most Americans are unaware of just how much of our taxes are funneled into the military. A man after my own heart, Jesse Bachman spent close to a year in scouring official documents to get the facts where the American government spends our taxes.

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What's the Point?

I'm constantly amazed at how my purpose for this site keeps shifting. MerelyHuman was originally intended to be my mental warehouse of sorts. The philosophical depths of which you could lose yourself in. As a professed blogger, the only thing I'm losing is my mind as paper keeps proving itself to be the more accessible medium. It'll get there, I suppose, I'm just coming to terms with the idea that it'll take time.

So on paper my best ideas remain, until I can master this particular juggling act. For now, I'm just going to have to settle for putting out average length blog posts. Don't cry, unless you're emo.

Blogging is hard. My advice to you if you have nothing to say: Don't Blog.

Breaking News: Will This Man Bring Legitimacy to the Blogosphere?

Ok, you might be wondering what this is about. Believe me, you don't want to miss this one.

Today the blogosphere welcomes it's biggest marketing celebrity since Bob Bly. Jay Abraham, one of the most respected minds in marketing is officially launching his blog.

The reaction in the blogosphere could, and probably should, be bigger than when Bob Bly, renowned author, copywriter and savvy businessman in his own right, started his blog. The difference it appears--and why "business bloggers" should pay attention--is that Jay is coming out of the gates with a game plan for making money out of this venture--and he has a really good track record of succeeding.

Will we pay heed and watch as one man co-ops the emerging architecture of the internet to geometrically expand his empire at almost frightening speeds? Will his efforts bring legitimacy to the dream that blogs can be richly profited from? Or will this prove to be another half-baked scam dreamed up by a marketer desparate for a piece of the action?

Whatever the case, the future commercial applications of blogging will be generously informed by the outcome.

Making Sense of the Blogging Phenomenon One Blogger At a Time

I have spent some time over the past two years researching blogging. And the longer I immerse myself the more convinced I become that blogs are merely a symptom of something much bigger happening on the web. No, let me restate that...happening TO the web.

Nobody's completely figured it out yet, but every day we are nearing closer to an approximate understanding of what their impact will be. The only thing we can conclude is that the question of what a blog IS isn’t so important as the question of what a blog CAN BE.

None of the conventional definitions of a blog are altogether wrong, but they are limited. And for anyone who has worked inside the industry, they will agree that the public advent of blogging represents so much more than just another distribution channel in a marketers toolbox.

In fact, I would venture to say, marketers at large are falling behind in their collective grasp of the evolving internet. Their pockets may be well-lined, but they have impoverished models of the new world.

Today, blogs are a still a blank canvas. Their uses are by no means set in stone, nor have all their possible applications been explored. I challenge people who think they really "get it" to stop concurring about what blogs are and start discovering what blogs can be.

Over the next couple of months I will be rendering my observations as lucidly as I can.

Making the Most of Yahoo! 360

What if someone handed you a network of high-quality contacts and prospects on a silver platter? Would you take it? Of course you would! Yet, day by day, business owners are signing up for Yahoo! 360 with the best intentions, only to sit on their account as if it's going to do all the work for them.

If you too are having difficulty deciding how to start building your presence, here's what I suggest:

1. Invite ALL your friends and professional acquantances to join your Yahoo! 360 Network. Sooner or later they will be invited by someone. It might as well be sooner and it might as well be by YOU.
2. Educate your contacts why it's in their best interest to not just grow, but groom their individual networks of contacts. Staying relevant is a low-key investment with high returns of ongoing attention.
3. Don't try to host your professional or business blog on Yahoo! 360. Treat it strictly as a social networking tool to keep people informed about personal affairs and dealings. Social Networking is a HIGH TOUCH medium. If you're thinking about starting a business blog as part of your onine marketing strategy, email me and I can get you started on the right track.
4. Take the initiative to chime in on other people's blogs. The best way to start any relationships is to say something. Yahoo has given us a preemptive head-start, if you'll just be proactive in taking it.
   

The sooner you start proactively building your network on Yahoo!360, the bigger your network will become.

I believe Yahoo is provisioned to become the d'facto social networking service on the internet. It's maintained its position as the largest internet property for years, and everything it touches turns to gold. It won't be long before all your friends and colleagues are invited to get their very own Yahoo! 360 account. But you can get in right now, and you can be the one to invite them.

It would seem Yahoo! replenishes your Invites as they get used up. In case anyone else is interested I have 70 more Invites to give out. You can email me about yours here.

Anyone Need a Yahoo 360 Invite?

Of course you don't need one. But you sure want one!

Yahoo 360 remains pretty unexciting at this point, but they promise a lot of cool features in the coming months. You'll probably want to get on the ground floor regardless, being that this is Yahoo! and they're almost certain to deliver a good combination of features and usability.

I only have 50 invites left to give out and I want them to go to people who appreciate their value. Please don't ask for one if you're only nurturing a short-lived curiosity.

Hopefully Yahoo! will replenish my Invites once they're all used-up, however since you can't be too sure you should think about grabbing yours now! If you like the idea of getting in on the action early, Email me. I would definately be interesting in getting back some links to Merely Human in exchange for free Yahoo! 360 Invites. 

Don't Pay For Philosophy

Blogs. RSS. Information aggregators. Human-friendly content management and delivery systems. These trends and more are a formula for the rapid proliferation of information and knowledge. Taken to it's logical conclusion, it's not hard to see how in the future all--or most--information will be freely obtainable from more than one media source.

There are too many gurus pushing the same information products. Too many books to read, magazines to buy, websites to check. Selling "make-more-money" information products is fast becoming a losing proposition because the information wants to get out.

What does that mean for people in knowledge-based businesses? Get out of the way and let it. People are suddenly in the market for execution. They're realizing that despite their best efforts to keep up with the knowledge curve, they aren't getting anything done by themselves. They want to bring in impact players who can do the things they read about.

Which is the basis on which I'm going to build my consulting practice.

Back to Square One

It seems like only yesterday that I signed up for a fledgling Squarespace and started writing for Merely Human. So many developments in the year leading up till now and yet I've done such a poor job reflecting them to my readers.

Well, it's back to blogging full-time. Three things have held my attention of late:

1. Human Potential & Psychology
   
2. Business Applications of Blogging
   
3. Starting A Marketing Consulting Firm
   

Between these three items my focus is a fairly even split. I've been wanting to separate my business blogging and consulting conversations from my human potential related one for a while now. Trying to encompass all three conversations here, on a single blog, while giving each one the coverage it deserves has been very limiting. Therefore, I'll be partitioning these conversations into three separate blogs.

Insofar as the first is concerned, there are going to be some changes around here, marked by shorter, more frequent posting habits. I'm one of those people who suffers from too-much-to-say and sometimes my mind gets clogged up with a zillion disparate conversations all clamoring to come out first. Overlay my perfectionism you have a recipe for full-on writer's paralysis. So the only way for me to continue writing for Merely Human is to narrow down its focus.

My goal is to give you more high-quality information on this blog than you would otherwise be willing to pay for. My whole gripe is that certain people on the net are aggressively pushing lame products and unoriginal content onto ignorant markets, thereby doing a disservice to all of mankind. Thus the "Don't Pay for Philosophy" philosophy behind my latest activity. Certain institutions and gurus must be exposed and I'm ready to talk smack.

Then, very soon, I will be announcing two new blogs which will serve as companion sites to this one.

PS: In the future I will try and tighten up my paragraphs for easier reading. As I finish writing this, I realize mine are the Esuvee's of blog entries.

Trying to Be Everything to Everybody?

That's your problem -- Defining your industry as say "Media" is too broad and not specific enough. Taking the opposite approach would be more advantagous to your company in the shorter and longer term.

For example, spinning off a unique sub-category of  "advertising" will yield far better for your brand than broadly trying to encompass the concept of  "media",  which has already been divided and sub-divided into many distinct categories (err... industries) in the minds eye of the consumer.

Much easier to divide and sub-divide your market indefinately than it is to collapse it all together under a single brand, which is what you may be trying to do.  Don't.

Even if consolidating your industry is what you're ultimately driving at, you must know that a market can't be collapsed under a single brand until you own numerous positions within that market.

It can't be an accelerated process and it takes an extremely savvy strategist at the helm to execute. It's highly doubtful even the Big Two-or Three  in your industry have this person, yet it's the kind of undertaking you should fear most by your competitors.

Vast resources and mass market acceptance has placed your industry's top-guns in the enviable position of being able to deploy customized solutions as and when new market opportunities crop up. Before less developed companies can organize a response, big companies have subsumed all viable niche opportunities into themselves. Sadly, the majority of advertising agencies operating today belong to but a handful of holding companies whose evil purpose it is to control everything.

Small businesses like yours have no such initiative of scale. Fortunately for us guys, most attempts by large companies to consolidate the market in such a manner fail. Despite succeeding in advertising, trying to concentrate on too many targets usually leads to hitting none. Therefore your marketing mandate is to deliver a more complete argument to narrower audience.

Your absolute best chance of dominating anything is to paint yourself into a corner. Stake out a niche and own it. Do everything in your power to make competition with you impossible. You can't succeed in that if you're trying to be everything to everybody--you must patiently cultivate authority and trust within a small crowd possessing well-defined consumer needs. Only after you own your segment totally can you think about encroaching on someone else's.

Them Solutions Are the Magic Bullet

There is in fact a magic bullet in marketing that will virtually guarantee your sale. Pay attention. It is a performance-assured solution to an acutely felt problem or need.

A marketing message armed to the hilt with sensitivity to a person's pain hits home every single time. It's just that some professionals get so absorbed in the smoke-and-mirrors aspect of promotion that they neglect the simple notion of Supply and Demand (should be redubbed Demand and Supply for the modern era. More on this later) that has driven  commerce forward since day one.

Fortunately, it doesn't take exceptional powers of discernment spot a humongous need. The marketer's job has been simplified with the advance of internet technologies. Many and populous communities of people across the net have organized for the expressed purpose of telling you what's missing from their lives.

Don't do self-indulgent advertising. The magic happens when you're attentive to other people's problems.

Now you know -- lock and load.

Tip: Your window into the market's collective conscious are high concentrations of critics. If you want to tune into their frequency you are handicapping yourself if you aren't paying attention to Amazon.com and other feedback enhanced portals.

Pettiness Is A Corporate Condition Too

So, in todays news...That's some shit over at Kottke.org

I can think of more than one community besides the bloggers that could greatly benefit from an organization which supports individuals through incidents of corporate strongarming, much as the ACLU mounts efforts against government agencies and corporations which perpetrate social injustices.

As it is, almost noone emerges victorious from a legal battle against a large corporation without more than a few wounds. A watchdog organization, rallied for the public good, could grant individuals access to the kind of legal resources that give large corporations a decided edge in legal matters.

When push comes to shove, the public can and will mobilize heavy forces.

This isn't the last we'll hear about this sort of thing. Rather, it's a sign that the system is just starting to adjust to the integration of powerful new technologies into the cultural fabric. The Blogosphere's going to get very interesting in 2005.

Start Your Engines

Since business is so misunderstood, I feel it's the responsibility of people who 'get it' to take pot shots at the pravailing wisdom until something happens and then spread those ideas which promise to have profound positive implications for people in commerce. I'm going to try to do that here on this blog.

Plus I will even create some original works of my own: Practical programmes and procedures for growing your business enterprise and honing your business acumen. I'll release useful aids, dispense free advice and eventually launch a weekly periodical.

All here on this blog for your convenient access and timely edification.

In the coming weeks, the information rollout will be fairly swift. Don't get too excited if there are days when three or four bits of content get posted. This initial spurt of updates is meant to attract the search engines and establish some positive momentum. After that I'll relax my posting to a level that's comfortable for everyone.

The Unintended Consequences of Simple

Until only recently, only people who had the proper technical expertise or access to a large budget could tap into the true potential of the internet. The introduction of blogs or, more aptly, simple publishing is changing all that, turning the tables on conventional content providers and forever altering the face of modern networks.

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Pearls From Her Pocket

Several days ago, while researching Squarespace's competition, I happened on a most informative read.

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Robotic Marketing

It is confirmed. Seth Godin is a Robot. He told me so.

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Arm In Arm

It's been a long time since I posted my last update. We'll try not to let that happen again. It's awfully tempting to try to play catch up, but I have a feeling that won't be necessary as I'm sure the important stuff will find a way to resurface in my future writings. A few things stand out about this week. My insolmnia for one. Distracted by the millions of little idea bugs dancing in my head, it was easy to overlook what all was causing me to be stressed.

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Ok, Don't "Sell" Anything

People who try to "sell" you their product are representing one that was created without any sensitivity to their clients' wants and needs. And now, one way or another, they're going to convince you to buy it. How do salespeople ever expect to sell you something you didn't have a prior need for? The problem is, you don't want what they have to offer, but you want to tell them to shut their inimical traps even less.

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Extra Productive, Off-Work

Ok, I have an admission to make. Instead of going to work today I let myself get stranded in a parkinglot with a Starbucks sitting right there in it, looking so inviting, beckoning me in for a drink, a hospitable refuge from the rain...But keep reading, something good did come out of my irresponsible ways. An illumination in the storm.

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