Do you remember when you were a kid and you got those brand new pair of tennis shoes?  I remember when I got my first pair of Chuck Taylor Converse.  They were not too unlike the ones pictured here, but mine were white.  I remember so vividly the fact that I thought I could run much faster and jump much higher with those brand new shoes.  I know now it was probably psychological, except for the fact that they didn’t have duct tape holding the toe part of the shoe on my foot.  They were also quite a bit different than getting those hand-me-down shoes, but I digress.

Those of you that have been following along here over the last 5 years know that from time to time we tend to make some sweeping changes to our look and feel of the web site and blog (terms I believe are synonymous).  This is the latest look and feel that we have made and I believe I can now blog better, write better, speak better and everything else has been taken up a notch.  Like that kid that could run faster and jump higher, I feel invigorated.  We will continue to always be testing new widgets and plugins and every tool out there, but for now it is clean and tidy here and I love it that way.

I have Debbie Lawrence of Lagniappe Marketing to thank for the new look and feel.  She is amazing and allowed me to participate in what she calls the “Sausage Making” process of watching the new design come together.  We are using Brian Gardner’s template and I recommend all of his work as he has some great themes to work with and to make your own designs.  In fact, Debbie was the designer and coder and all-around sausage making queen for the site over at the Modern Media Man Summit which is another of my latest projects.  That site is also a Studio Press theme.  Thank you Debbie!

I expect things to pick up here a little since I have this new running faster and jumping higher ability.  Take a look around and tell us your thoughts.

You can also see that we have added to the home page our sites at Bloggers For Hire and at Social Mediasphere TV.  We will be picking up the pace there as well so feel free to grab those feeds too.

I just came from a meeting where I was subject to a few “WOW” moments.  There are a few times in my business where I get to see some cool technologies that revolutionize the way we communicate, or listen, or perhaps the way we drink our coffee.  All of it is related to entrepreneurs that are taking their ideas and making them work.

The same should be for businesses that are already established.  We have been told the quote “innovate or die.”  We heard it as recent as the opening keynote at CES.  That is a mantra that all businesses should be paying attention to in the future.  Innovation is key to keeping your product or service fresh.  People will want to continue to buy if it changes and is better or changes their lives for the better.  I think Ford is doing that with its own innovations in vehicles.

I hope that in the coming weeks, we will be creating some “wow” moments for our clients and business partners.  We can use the “Wow” we are seeing as innovations and implement them into our daily routines to help clients and others change and make their own “wow” or awesome sauce or whatever buzz phrase you choose.

Stay tuned for some magical moments here at One By One Media, as we start on a mission of creating “Wow” and innovating our services.  I challenge all of you to have your own mission of creating “Wow!!”

photo via puliarf

I have been preaching about blogging for a long time.  I have been an evangelist and telling companies that they had to blog more they had to have a place for people to "join the conversation" and making it possible for them to connect with their customers.  Like some of the preachers of the past, I am my own worst sinner apparently.  I was reminded by people in my company that I am the worst person in the world to tell companies that they are not blogging enough or that they are not doing it right.

I am preaching from the pulpit so to speak and I am preaching to the choir perhaps, but I need to update more often here.  I am trying to get more and more content on here and those that are slinging arrows at me the most may be asked to also contribute now and then to what we are doing at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire.  I am also on Twitter quite a bit, and I am trying out Posterous, and I am about to start Social Mediasphere TV again.  Of course, you can always come and hear what we are doing at our new radio show at Blog World Expo Radio.

Now that BlogWorld & New Media Expo is over for 2009 I have a few minutes I can breathe, and I will be using that time to try to be more involved here rather than out on the road or on the phone trying to convert the latest in small medium or large business to jumping into the social media pool.  I guess I am like that life guard that actually never swims!

Photo via LeMonde1

Tags: One By One Media, Bloggers For Hire, Twitter, Posterous, Social Mediasphere TV, Blog World Expo Radio, Blog World Expo, Business Blogging, Evangelism

I have been traveling quite a bit lately and that has caused me to get seriously behind on a large amount of work that I need to accomplish.  I have finally caught up with my email inbox which usually hovers around 60 unread messages at any given time, which usually equates to the amount of Twitter bios I need to read to approve or discard.  I began digging into the RSS feed readers (yes plural) that I have disregarded that have been so overwhelmed that many of the search feeds I have for the likes of “business blogging” and “social media consulting” are defaulting to the most it will store.  In other words, I have much work and little time to get it done.  I know I play this off with the idea that I am also the stay at home dad of 4 kids at the ages of 9, 8, 4, and 3, and that has some merit but for the most part I have times when they are sleeping or are not in the picture that I spend catching up but I still think I can be more efficient. I know I need to explain the title of this post.  One of the things I need to catch up on that I have not been doing much of lately is finding what my mentors and friends and colleagues are talking about.  One of the people I admire and one that I think has his finger on the pulse of my industry is Robert Scoble.  I don’t intend for this to be a “Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah” about Robert, so let me explain using him as my example.

Robert is a busy person.  I thought that I was busy and had my hands in a lot of things and doing a lot of work, but for the most part I am not much different than your ordinary overworked and underpaid entrepreneur.  I have been to conferences and walked into that blogger lounge at 1:00 a.m. and have seen Robert’s wife Maryam begging to leave but he is still uploading the latest video and editing the last blog post before he turns in.  That is dedication and it is what inspires me most of the time when I am feeling overworked.  It makes me buck up and get things done more often.  Put to simple terms working hard makes you successful.  I know Gary Vaynerchuk preaches that from his own pulpit.  Working hard does actually payoff, but I must say I have worked hard for other people and all it did was make them more successful so I limit that to we entrepreneurs that want to get on top of the heap.  Sure I have been rewarded when working for others, but for the most part my hard work for them is just that, for them. I swear there is a point in here somewhere.

I just spent part of the morning reading blogs.  I have read all of the folks I love to read in my business, Chris Brogan, David Armano, Beth Harte, Amber Naslund, and yes the list goes on and on.  Many of them are also very much like Robert Scoble, and I could have used most of them as my title, but for me, Robert has been a blogger that has been cutting the trail for most of us in this business.  He is consistently good at what he does with his blog.  Let me give you some of the reasons he is good and why I often use him as an example to people when they want to know about how to be a good blogger.

• Consistency -  Even when he is inconsistent he is consistent.  He puts things up to read during slow news days and up when things are going crazy.  Sure he does not have a blog post every single day but posts when he wants and has something to say, which in itself is very consistent.
• Opinionated – He gives us his opinion.  He may be adding to the echo chamber of sorts but he always gets into his posts why he feels it is important.  Telling us why Twitter is cool is one thing but why YOU think it is cool and how YOU are using it or making it part of your life is another.
• Academic – He is a smart guy.  I have made fun of him in the past about being a “camera salesman” and I mean that more in jest than anything, but he is very smart about business.  He has seen the emergence of some very cool technologies that have gone on to be big players and he seems to know what works and has great insights into what businesses can do with their product or service.  I can see why he has VC friends.  They want to know what he thinks is cool.
• Human – He shows his human side.  I know when he is angry or when he is fed up or when he is happy about something.  I can see his humanness come through in his blog posts.  Not many people allow that or even begin to know how to impart that in their blog posts.
• Integrity – In a world full of “sponsored conversations” and sell-outs to the little tidbits of advertising dollars, he stays true to what he does, good blogging.  This has offered far more rewards than a $500 gift card or a free T-shirt.  This has also allowed his access to some of the brightest minds and has opened doors for him that others will never have offered to them.  He keeps his eyes on the big prize.
• Passionate – You can hear it in the way he talks about things.  His job, his wife and sons, and his friends.  I have this passion when I am a Daddy blogger and it helped me become a better blogger.  I have that passion but it does not always come out in my writing here.  Some days I write a post because I think Google might forget about me.  That is the wrong reason to put up a post.

As I indicated before, there are many many bloggers out there that have this very same resume and are doing it just as well in these areas or better.  I merely wanted to single Robert out as I had his RSS feeds on my list today and I began to feel very small in this big pond after reading and then looking back on my own blog and seeing how I have not been doing things well at all.  I have had some great posts and flashes of greatness in the past, but for the most part I can take what I have been taught by those doing it well and try to keep up with them.  I am not sure that is possible but I can hope to some day be like that. It took me back to a time when Robert called me out about my job as a blogger and I think maybe I need to go back to being better.  I am going to see if I can get into that swing and set out some goals for myself to add to the signal and not the noise.  For the moment I will leave you with that as I run into the next room to see if I can figure out what the kids just shattered on the kitchen floor.  Is summer over yet?  Thanks Robert, and when are you going to start that Daddy blog?

Photo via Wikipedia

Tags: Blogging, Robert Scoble, Scobleizer, Business Blogs, Social Media, Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund, David Armano, Beth Harte, Blog Posts, How To Blog

I have always been a child of television.  I was born at the height of when television broke on to the scene as the next big thing, and I was doused with it’s essence from day one.  To that end I have some things that are a part of my DNA I believe that makes me drawn to it like a moth to flame.  That lure is now spilling over to my job here at One By One Media.  I have taken One By One Media to the television.  In my own mind anyway.  I am feeling like Johnny Carson these days doing his thing.

I started Social Mediasphere TV as more of an experiment than anything.  I was already doing the Blog Talk Radio show for Social Mediasphere and then the show sort of transmogrified into what it is now.  I can speak into a camera much easier than I can actually write.  I can speak and it does not set off the spelling alarm.  I can look into the camera and know that I am talking to people. I don’t get that same feeling with the blog. It could just be that I am a child of television and it helps my ADD and other problems associated with growing up with Gilligan’s Island.   I am not certain it will continue on its current path but for now stay tuned.

Tags: Social Mediasphere TV, Jim Turner

I have recently launched Social Mediasphere TV and added it to my list of blogs including this one and including Bloggers For Hire in the long list of blogs I contribute to and provide.  Social Mediasphere TV is an extension of the radio I was doing on Blog Talk Radio.  You can still go over and take a look at my archives at that location and I may still continue my on location live radio using that service as it seems to be a very simple solution to the technical issues related to live radio.

I will be doing my show continuing here forward on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m. PST and 8:00 p.m. EST.  We will be discussing all things Social Media and as always we will have special guests, commentary and even you as listener can call in and ask questions make your own comments or just be a guest yourself.  I am still working through all of the issues with using the applications of the trade, but I have been given some good advice and help from many friends that are cheering me on to make this new project a success.  See you all on Tuesdays!

I am constantly finding reasons why I am not a proponent of hosting blogging plans. I am a WordPress supporter yet I don’t recommend hosting your blog on WordPress.com, and in spite of the Google mantra of doing no evil, I tell many to run away from Google’s application Blogger. In a recent article by Tech Dirt regarding Google’s unilateral deletion of blog posts I get another piece of the puzzle that causes me to continue my preaching. In the post, they indicate:

An RIAA source says that the group sends Google a list of URLs it doesn’t like, and Google “then deals with the problem.” Google says that it notifies bloggers after their posts have been taken down, in accordance with the DMCA. But it should hardly be surprising that many of those affected say they’ve gotten no such notice, nor that the offending material was either legally posted and/or supplied by the labels themselves.

I have always been a strong advocate for owning my own content. Be it good or bad content it is still mine. I have heard the stories of whole blogs being deleted that were around for years and all of the data that was in that blog being lost to a black hole never to be seen. I am just not that trusting of others with my blog. I am not keen on the idea of Google being able to subjectively judge a post and remove it without any due process other than an alleged email or notice they sent. Sure it costs a little extra than just the URL and some specialty template, but paying for hosting and controlling your own destiny is something that is worth the price.

I have been thinking about that title for a while and how i could turn that into a million dollar money maker as a bumper stickers for the new social media generation. I was actually thinking of making a blog post about how we crowd sourced the people in Twitter, Facebook, Friend Feed–well you get the idea, no need to belabor that longer, in getting a new logo header image on the blog here, and me a new looking brand for 2009.

I mentioned on Twitter that I was having some difficulties with photoshop and some other things I needed done, and the help we received from that “crowd” was tremendous. I had ideas of changing my company name and brand, and looking to do some different marketing, advertising and public relations for myself and mentioned that too. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of the whole experience. Many people from all over wanted to help me. It was a good old fashion barn raising, or in this case i guess a blog raising. I have been hearing the crowd sourcing phenomena for some time and now i know why it is so popular.

My entrepreneurial spirit being what it is, I’m thinking a t-shirt of the title or a bumper sticker. What do you think?

[Photo via Allison J]

We are trying out the a new template, we were using Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s, template before ad she is doing some really cool things. I look forward to her book coming out on WordPress For Dummies. There might be some dummy actually mentioned in the book.

We are trying some new things here to integrate some video and other media. I am also trying some other things because we have clients that need us to try them out as well. I suppose it is only right that I will be going to speak at Wordcamp in Las Vegas and have a new blog being developed with their application. We will be doing some different things and plugging is some new widgets and some new plugins will be installed.

Picture via “How To Make A Badass WordPress Logo” from 3nhanced.com

I was multitasking when it happened. When I mention the idea of multitasking, I mean serious business. I was once looked at by my old boss as someone that could teach ADD to a rock.

I was looking over my emails for the day and saw I had an inordinate amount of Twitter followers. I attributed the large amount of people recently using Mr. Tweet. I knew when I left the house to spend Sunday afternoon with the family at the pool I would have a number of emails to respond to when I got home. After supper I logged in and saw a few emails from people that told me the bad news. My Twitter account had been compromised. I had looked at my Tweetdeck and tried to send a message, it was also not working. The password changed on my account and the ability to send messages stopped. I had been hacked by a spammer. The irony of this was, I was on the lookout for spammers as earlier in the day I had tweeted about this very thing.

I tried logging into Twitter from the regular account on the application itself. I couldn’t. I needed to reset the password. Then I noticed that twitter themselves had indicated that the spammers had attacked many other people as well. The picture you must be wary of is on the Twitter blog and a copy of that I have posted below.

I had fallen prey to this because I wasn’t paying attention to what was happening. I was entering new followers from email and didn’t pay attention to what I was doing and found that I had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. I gave someone my password and login not realizing I had done so. Then I had left my house giving them access for a long time. The worst thing that could have happened. I always suggest people change their passwords on a regular basis just for this purpose. I’m the last guy that should be in charge of passwords. Just ask my assistant. She always gives me a hard time. Actually if she wanted she could probably hack my bank account and everything else I have that requires a password. I’m hoping we can come up with a new way of logging in to our accounts in the future. I am ready to install the retinal scan after this last episode.

In the meantime, if you find that you have been compromised like I have, please change your passwords immediately. Then when you feel safe and that your accounts are okay, change your password again. To those of you that had to deal with my account being hacked by these bad guys, I apologize. I hope that my Twitter credibility will hold up after this latest craziness. My thanks to the folks at Twitter for the quick response to this and for making it so we victims of this can keep things going. They responded quickly to this and should be commended. This was accomplished on a Sunday following a holiday. That is customer service at its best, and protection of their customers at its finest.

As of the time that I posted this they are still trying to work the scam and they will be getting into more and more accounts. I am not sure what is being done to help prevent this other than getting suers to recognize when there is a problem. I hope that they can get that taken care of. In the meantime, if you see a message from anyone with a twitter login page, please ignore it.
UPDATE: Pete Cashmore seems to think this is a rite of passage for Twitter. You have made it when your site gets Phished.
Update 2: Here is a picture of the screen shot taken from a follower that received a message from me. Thanks @ghozali at http://andyghozali.info/

I have been waiting for the newest release of Firefox as I understand it will help cure my memory woes with the boat anchor*.  I was glad to read on Techeme as reported by CNet News that Firefox has now come out with its latest version in beta.  I ran right over and downloaded the latest version before even thinking of the consequences.  Consequences?  Yeah its the new beta version and all of the extensions and add-ons and even client applications are no longer operable that I had installed.

I assume that companies are scrambling to make their toolbar applications work with this latest version.  I am not sure how hard it will be to update all of those companies like Stumbleupon or others that are no longer on my extensions but I hope they move quickly.  It is funny how we become accustomed to having things work.

The problems with the boat anchor?  Well, I’m sure that those troubles will continue until we have a burial at sea, but for the most part, the memory seems to work a little better. 

*What I like to call this joke of a laptop with little to no memory I am forced to use.

I had to jinx myself as a result of my bragging about touching everything and having it turn to gold.  The pendulum has swung as it relates to my quote:

Then after the 4 years we have been going here, I have a week like this one where everything clicks.  Everything I touch turns to gold and nothing could possibly go wrong.

I totally messed up my karmic balance.   You had to know that with a bold statement like that I had a slap of reality coming.

I decided it was time to upgrade my version of WordPress here at One By One Media and at its sister site Bloggers For Hire.  As he upgrades completed, the templates I was using for the design were not compatible with the newest version of WordPress.  My sites had to use a default template.  Not the best of signs for a blogging consultant try to impress prospective clients.  That would only serve to be the first of the payback.

For two days or longer, I have not been able to figure out, my email has been totally borked.  Yes, that is a really good term for it.  I can’t seem to receive email.  I can send it out but I cannot for some strange reason receive it in my Google application of Gmail.  The emails are making it to my server under the domain but then they are not pushed on through to my Gmail application.  I can read them using my Cpanel version, but I can’t make them go to Gmail.  I have no idea why and have as much technical skills in my body to have told you so far what I have found, but have no clue how to fix it.  So here I sit.  My WordPress install is an old version and probably open to being hacked and my email running on less than all cylinders.

I’m hoping with the posting of this blog the pendulum will swing again.  I don’t mind being in middle but the extremes of this spectrum are driving me to drink!

Some crazy things have been happening here at One By One Media since we walked into the airport in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Blog World and New Media Expo last year.  The craziness began as just a simple presentation at the Expo and has since snowballed into lots of new business, many new professional bloggers coming to our pool of talent, an east coast trip for another fun presentation, the holiday madness seasoned in with the year end, and finally ending the year with a change in leadership here at One By One Media.

Those that don’t already know of the leadership change I speak of, Tris Hussey my long time partner has gone on to tackle more exciting adventures with the very cool people over at b5 Media.  This move provided Tris with a little more stability and really focuses his talents on what Tris does best.  I am very sad to have this change, but we are striving to make the transition with as little mess as possible.

So where do we go from here?  I liken it to a new journey and a new beginning.  I have been making the adjustments to the transition, have been working with different people to accomplish some of the tasks Tris was doing, and have moved on to making One By One Media the leader in the social media consulting world.  That may seem like biting off more than I can chew, but then again, that is usually my case and par for my course.

I look forward to reconnecting with old friends and new friends.  I continue to help clients that are veterans of our services and clients yet to be discovered.  I’ll be talking more about them and what they do, and more about what we are doing for them.  I’m very excited to pick up the slack that has been the case here and I am blowing off the dust a little and cleaning up the rust. 

It may be a little late, but I wanted to personally wish all of you a Happy Holiday season and especially a Happy New Year!  2008 will see some changes here at One By One Media, and I will be following up on that more.  One of the changes will be the look and feel here and also at Bloggers Fore Hire.  This is right now a classic example of a Cobbler’s son having no shoes.  We have become very busy with a longer list of clients, and the holidays have been crazy as well as the travel I have been doing around the country speaking to groups and attending functions.  Stay tuned for a new rollout of new features to the site, and about other news we have coming up that should be exciting.  In the meantime, I need to get back to the grind.

Many of you have come by here and wanted to know what is going on in the world of One By One Media, and why we have been dormant.  There are many reasons( you know what they say about excuses), but the biggest of which is we are terribly busy, and suffice it to say that in this case, blogging here seems to have taken a back burner priority.  Those darn clients and customers can be so demanding!

We were recently out in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Convention Center attending, exhibiting and speaking at the Blog World and New Media Expo last week, and I for one am trying to get my feet under me again from what turned out to be a smashing success for us here at One By One Media and for Bloggers For Hire.  I am working on a recap post with photos and all kinds of information and I will be posting that shortly.  I was so glad to get to meet many people in our blogging industry, (yes we are now our own industry) and actually meet in the flesh those that I feel I have known as colleagues and friends online for a long time.  We are about to launch a new look and feel at One By One Media, so stay tuned for more of that soon.  For now, we are trying to get back into gear and up to speed.