BradPace.com

So this morning I am just getting started with my morning RSS feeds.  Scanning hundreds of headlines and summaries to keep up with the industry.  I note an interesting post by Google’s Matt Cutts on how he suggests you get links to improve your SEO.  And I was just on the verge of a great idea for how to get links for WorldVitalRecords.com.  You know that feeling when you know you have a great idea in the works but it just hasn’t arrived at the front of your mind.  I had seen the lightning but had not heard the thunder.  Right at that moment my computer starts to shut down without any warning.  No pop up, nothing.  At first I thought something was wrong with my computer.  Maybe it had overheated or something.  But then after all the windows are gone there is a windows screen that says that Microsoft is installing 3 system updates.  It took 2 more re-boots to bet back up and running.

Anyway my great link building idea never came and it’s all Microsoft’s fault!  I feel violated for having my PC taken over. What makes this any different that a hacker taking over my system?  I am thinking that I should sue Microsoft for taking away this great idea.  I’m sure it was a million dollar idea Just one more check against Windows.  Add it to the list!

As anyone who know me knows by now I purchased an iphone about a month ago. Now I am not an Apple zombie (never even used a Mac) but I have been a long time iTunes user and have loved my Ipod video. But as I tell my wife almost everyday, “I LOVE MY IPHONE!”. Here are a few thoughts now that I have used it for a while now:

What I love about the iPhone

1. It looks great. I love the UI and the design of the device. The first thing I did was purchase the super protective cover from Shield Zone. I hate cases and like to just have things in my pockets. This has kept it looking like new. Well worth the money. I also love the touch screen. You can do so much with it.
2. The internet rocks on the iphone. I saw a stat that iphone users use the web 3x more than on any other phone. That’s because it works! The safari browser goes to any website and it has worked on all of them. The only sites it does not work on are some video streaming sites. Like hulu.com and the streaming feature from Netflix. More on this on the salvation part!
3. I love the map, integrated youtube, weather, clock (I had to install a world clock on my treo), and the rest.
4. Email works! I was never able to get my treo to work with email very well other than webmail clients. I tried several programs and hated them. But the email is slick on the iphone. I setup 3 accounts (yahoo, gmail, and my familylink account) in less than 5 minutes and they all worked great. Yahoo has a great push feature for the iphone that is nice (but I since have turned off to save battery). Gmail also works very well.
5. iTunes integration is very nice. You can download music via a wi-fi connection and select which music, videos, and podcasts you want on your phone. I listen to many podcasts regularly and it works great.
6. Business can get done. With the great email and safari support I have been able to do a lot of business on my iPhone. I can access and respond to email. I can get to all our sites and use them. I can even use our facebook app on my phone. I have been able to get work done in the off hour and while traveling.
7. Wi-fi access. I always thought that my Treo should have just come with wi-fi built in. The iPhone easily connects to a wireless network and provides faster access to the web and to email.
8. Lastly is the upgradability of the iphone. They released a new version of the software a few weeks ago and added some great new features. This is what is going to make the iphone rule the world. No other phone I have ever had has actually added features. As Apple opens up the iPhone to 3rd party developers it will only be more popular. When that happens many of the things I don’t like will be fixed by Apple or 3rd party apps.

What I don’t like

1. Battery life is just OK. My Treo had a great battery life and often I did not even charge it for days. The Iphone I have to charge every day or it is dead. If you watch a movie and really use it for several hours the battery goes fast.
2. The headphone jack has a little indent. This makes it so you have to use their headphones or get an adapter. Even though the size is standard the headphone jack hole is set in the phone. This just bugs me and seems like a ploy to force people to buy accessories from them. I bought a $6 adapter and it works fine.
3. Chat is missing. There is no instant messenger client with the iphone. It just seems crazy to me! I am hoping this is fixed when 3rd party developers can get their apps on the iphone. But I have been using meebo.com and it works great. They have an iphone specific version and allows me to chat on all the different IM networks through the safari web browser. But if the browser is not open you cant get chats.
4. Every time I plug the iPhone into its cradle to charge it or to sync, I get a windows popup asking me what I want to do with the photos and files on the phone. I’m sure there is a way to get around this but it just bugs me.
5. iTunes non-music stuff is poor. With my Treo I had the Palm software on my PC. This allowed me to work with my contacts, calendar, and notes on my PC and sync them back to my Treo. No such thing in iTunes. Notes and contacts are kind of an after thought. I have had a hard time importing my contacts into my iphone because there is no feature to do this. The iPhone will do it via the web and a yahoo account. But I want to see them on my PC as well. This also makes the notes app on the phone almost useless. I have started using yahoo notepad and it works pretty well. I hope that Apple fixes this soon.
6. The ring tone scam! The iphone comes with a dozen or so ring tones built in. But there is no way to get a custom ring tone into the phone. You can make clips from many itunes songs into ring tones for $1. Even if you have already paid for the song you have to pay again for the 10 seconds of the song for the ring tone. And I hate ringtones from songs! But I would like more choices of just sounds for funny clips. They don’t even sell anything like this in iTunes.

Salvation through the iPhone

The coolest thing I have found so far is the phone’s ability to access LDS.org via safari. The LDS Church has a great site with tons of great info. They have recently been adding a bunch of audio and video to the site. All this is available via the iphone. The other day I watched a CES fireside video streamed directly to the phone. I also can watch or listen to general conference talks. Read the lesson materials and do searches. Just access to all the info on this one site makes the phone worth it for me.

This week at am at sunny Las Vegas attending the Webmaster World / Pubcon conference.  In the past this conference has has some of the best content/classes on internet marketing and web development.  I will be posting on each session I attend.

Yesterday they opened with a keynote address from Craig Newmark the founder of Craigslist.com.  I have to say I had high expectations for this keynote.  I hate to say I was very disapointed!  Craig is currently doing Customer Support at craigslist and even reports to the director of CS. He was very clear about his limitations that he as not a good manager or a good programmer.  He talked about how craigslist was started and their history.  BORING!  The basic story was that he lucked into it.  He just built a small service for his friends (that he acted like he didn’t even really like) and grew it into craigslist.  He was clear that they made many mistakes and that their only advantage was they where first to market.  There was no strategy behind it.

Then he went into a very strange rant about Gutenberg being the first blogger and that Martin Luther Kink Jr. was also a blogger.  Somehow trying to convey that the technologies we consider new aren’t. It was out there and hard to follow.

So if you read my blog you will also see that I was also not happy with the Keynote address at SES this fall in San Jose.  This one was even worse.  I think that a keynote speaker needs to be just that a “GOOD SPEAKER”!  They need to attend one of Guy Kawasaki‘s speeches and learn what a good speaker sounds like.

Pricing elasticity is defined as “In economics and business studies, the price elasticity of demand (PED) is an elasticity that measures the nature and degree of the relationship between changes in quantity demanded of a good and changes in its price.” At In2M we experimented with the cost of our subscription service several times and found that we could charge more and not have it effect our conversion rate. People where willing to pay more.

But there are limits to how far you can stretch you pricing before consumer’s “snap”. That happened to me today. I had to run an errand at a local mall and decided to get lunch at the food court while I was there. I chose a very large slice of pizza for $2.99. I then asked them to add on their large drink. The total was almost $7.50! “How much was the drink” I asked. $3.19! I almost fell over. Luckily they had not filled the cup yet and I was able to have them take it off my order. Small water please! If you ask my wife I am one of the least frugal people on earth. But even I have my limits on purchasing a soda.

While at the mall I had a poor customer service experience. Last week I purchased a knee board for my kids to pull behind my Dad’s boat. He ended up buying one that same day so we decided to take ours back. Be bought it at “Sports Authority”. We had not used it and I had all the original tags and the receipt so I thought it would be an easy return. Well the customer service girl was giving me a hard time and finally called her manager on the phone. Here is what she said to her manager on the phone with me standing 2 feet away “He says he never used it but I think he did!”. That was without ever really inspecting the board. If she had she could have seen that the UPS sticker was paper and would never have survived a trip to the lake. I was floored that she would make such a statement right in front of me! The manager came up, did not even look at the board and told her to give me my money back. Anyway, next time I go to Big 5 sporting goods!

Today I attended the class “A Crash Course in Internet Marketing” by my boss Paul Allen. It was the first class of a 12 week course. The main reason I wanted to attend was learn more about blogging. I have never heard Paul’s blogging pitch before. I found blogging more difficult that I thought it would be. What to write about, how to make it interesting, and still seem somewhat professional. Paul had some great insight and suggestions for blogging that I found very useful. If I get the lesson notes from the class today I will post the specifics. But one of the main reasons he listed for blogging was to simply force yourself to write down your ideas and think things out. Paul gave me some good ideas and helped me want to energize my blog. I need to post more often. Simple as that. Whether people actually read anything here does not realy matter. My goal is to post at least 3 times a week. I have a few things in the works already.

One thing I just noticed is that it is good to have many categories to place your posts in. And make sure you have good keywords in your category names. But I was searching for “internet subscription models” in google and what is the 3rd spot? PaulAllen.net! It just so happens that Paul has a category with this exact set of keywords. Paul does a great job of assigning each posting to multiple categories. Great SEO!

That is my one line review of the Blue Man Group. My great mother-in-law Helen gave me tickets to this show for my birthday. It was on Monday night in the Delta Center. Becki was not too interested in going so I took my son Jairus. The seats where excellent on the floor on the 17th row. We would have been at about half court in the middle of the court if the Jazz had been playing. We could see the actual people better in real life than by watching the big screens. It was awsome. Here are a few observations from the show.

1) They do an excellent job of mixing modern media. They use all kinds of high tech stuff in the show. The lighting and effects are amazing. They have 3 big screens and many small LCD type screens all over the stage. They use video and audio together to make a complete experience. They even have what they call a MobKast that uses text messaging on the phone to include the audience. It was fun to feel involved in the show and the group also asks everyone to participate in several parts of the show.
2) It has a little of everything. It was funny of course. The blue men are silly, stupid, naive, smart, energetic, artistic, musical and wise all in one. The music was great and it was fun to see them play all their crazy instruments. But the show also has a serious side. Most of the songs had deep messages that relate to society today and tried to teach everyone something. They covered subjects like self-image, corporate life, finding yourself, being unique, saving the environment and finding happiness in our modern world.
3) It was very “stylized” in that there was a visual theme to the entire show. They stayed true to the stick man theme. Their music was consistent and high energy. Also all the screens often matched up with various colors and images. During the big guitar solo all 20 of the screens on stage showed fire burning for example.
4) Did I mention the music. It was loud (too loud). But all of it was great. The musicians where all amazing and the man and woman singers were great. And the blue men did their part to amaze and entertain.

With all those reasons, that is why I call this modern art. It has visual and audio. It has participation both physically and mentally. It makes you think and laugh. I totally enjoyed the show and would love to see them again sometime. Thanks Helen!

Ok. It is 12:30 am and I have already added 2 posts to my blog tonight. But I just have to keep going. I had a few nick nacks I had to add before they left my mind:

1. I was shocked when I was driving to work the other day on I-15 and saw a large sign that read “BLOG for Lease”. What? How can that be? How would that work? My mind went into high gear thinking of new revenue models and reverse engineering. Then I saw that it actually read “BLDG for Lease”. I was angry. Spend the extra $20 to buy the vowels (and an N)!
2. You may have noticed I have created a rotating image in the header. If not just hit refresh on your browser and you will get a random new image. These are just interesting or striking images I found in my Internet voyages that deserve to be shown. I am also addicted to creating new images to use in this area. I have 15 right now but I can’t stop adding them. This is my artistic outlet at the moment.
3. I am doing another Fear Factor activity on Thursday for the young men in my ward (I did a fear factor party last year for Halloween for family and friends). I don’t know exactly what I am doing to do yet, but there is a wonderful feeling of power that comes with knowing that these young men will do anything I tell them to because it is fear factor. Eat anything, do anything! I don’t kid myself, this is pure peer pressure. Can’t look weak for the others. If I could only use this power for good instead of evil (like eating worms). It is interesting that peer pressure only works one way, to make bad choices. I think this is an example of Satan’s way of removing free agency. Forcing them to do something they don’t want to. But in this case it sure is fun! Anyway, here is the invitation I whipped up tonight for the event.

I just realized that I never blogged about this. But last Friday was my last day at In2M as their Directory of Internet Marketing. Over the last 2 months my job has been split into 4 new positions. You read that correctly! That either means I am so amazing that I can do 4 jobs or that I did not do any of them well. Probably a little of both. Here are the 4 new job titles: Director of Internet Marketing (strategy and manager), Web development manager (to manage my team in India), Channel Sales Manager (PPC and affiliate manager), and Channel Marketing Manager (project management). Anyway I was missing the opportunity to wear many hats and to do lots of different things.

So when Paul Allen offered me a position to work with him at Provo Labs I jumped at the chance. Provo Labs is a web incubator located in, well, Provo. My dad asked if that means we hatch and raise spiders. Close! But there are about 10 companies that are owned or partially owned by Provo Labs including LDS Media, LDS Library, LDS Audio, World Vital Records (genealogy site), and the Provo Labs Academy. I won’t go into all of these right now. I will be doing their Internet Marketing. Starting with launching affiliate programs for all these sites. Most of these sites have had little or no marketing so they are primed for successful marketing by me. I am very excited about this.

I just finished my first week and it went very well. I really like everyone I have met so far there. I told my friend Gulshan that they have about 6 months of work just waiting for me. I am sure that I can come in and get things started quickly. It is the perfect environment for me.

I will also continue to do a bit of contract work and to build my affiliate business. I am working on a killer tool that will make it easy to make a million bucks managing my PPC campaigns for my various affiliate programs. I am very excited about this as well.

Well for any readers (like I have any ) who know me, know that I feel that I can both think creatively and strategically as well as execute those ideas. So my motto fits right into my skill set. It is very convenient! But I would like to write about what Intelligent Execution actually means to me.

When it comes right down to it, intelligence is making correct business decisions. It is much more that just being smart or having a high IQ. To me true intelligence also means having fresh and creative ideas. Coming up with “stuff” out of thin air. Intelligence is also being able to break a problem down into manageable parts. With some things you just have to resort to trial and error. This includes testing, tracking and changing. But many battles can be won just in the mind. This is especially true in sales and marketing. The whole thing can be competed with firing neurons before anything ever needs to be done. (that rhymes. I should write a poem)

Complete it with firing neurons
Before anything needs to be done
That is how you go from none
To shooting for the sun

Execution is the ability to effectively execute on ideas. Duh! But it is much more than that. It is the ability to understand HOW things get done. It does not mean you have to actually do all the work. Just that you understand what needs to be done and how. That may seem obvious but just think about it for a moment. There are many, many “idea people” who have every good idea in the universe (according to them). But how many ideas actually get implemented. I will be the first to admit that I have a million ideas that site uselessly in files on my PDA. (I have outlines for over 15 novels and have never started one.) The point is that for the best ideas you need to actually do something with them.

In my new job I have the opportunity to meet and interact with entrepreneurs. Most of these are very much is the mode of doing everything themselves or working with a partner. They are doers! But I have met a few who have the idea and just want someone to “build it”. “Oh I will just hire someone to do it.” This does not work out. This is one reason that many partnerships succeed. One is the intelligence and one is the execution.

Real magic happens when both intelligence and execution come together. There is a synergy that happens when both are well understood from the beginning. If you look at anyone that has had real success you will find that they do both very well. That is why this is my motto and goal.

Well it officially feels like fall here in Utah. With a drop in tempatures and rainy and cloudy weather for the last week or so it seems that fall if officially here. And I love it! I have just been soaking up the fresh cool air. Jairus had a flag football game and Xakoi had a soccer game last night and I just totally enjoyed being out in the cold weather.

I am glad that I live in a place with 4 distinct seasons. It really makes you greatful for the weather you have. I love all the seasons. Utah is a pretty great place to live.