Ericast 35 - "Admiring Carrie Fisher"

Once again, I'm skipping the notes here, so you'll just have to listen to the podcast to hear all exciting content it contains. Enjoy, and remember to visit www.ericast.com and e-mail or call 206-339-ERIC with any and all comments!

Ericast 34 - "Back from EduCAUSE!"

What happens when a show is posted with no show notes? I have no idea. Let's find out! Visit www.ericast.com, contact me with one of the contact venues listed there, and let me know if you want notes back. :)

[Ericast Update On-The-Road] 10/21/2005 03:06:00 PM

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Posted by emlarson to Ericast Update On-The-Road at 10/21/2005 03:06:00 PM

[Ericast Update On-The-Road] 10/19/2005 12:48:09 PM

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Posted by emlarson to Ericast Update On-The-Road at 10/19/2005 12:48:09 PM

Ericast 33 - "Off to EduCAUSE!"

Jetting off to Orlando in the morning for the EduCAUSE conference, from which I hope to phone in some updates, so I didn't put much together tonight.

Thanks to Garrick and the PodcastMN.whatever crew for a fun get-together, and to Brandon for some excellent comments phoned in to the Ericast Listener Feedback line at the ever-popular 206-339-ERIC (206-339-3742) phone number!

I also spend some time in this episode venting about something incredibly annoying that's happening over at my blog. Four -- count 'em, FOUR -- times, someone from RenoSEO.com has posted nearly identical junk comments:

Hello there, how are things there? I design web pages in Reno Nevada. I like what you did here. I can help you anytime if you ever get stuck doing updates or if you want to learn to make money with this blog. The only thing I ask in return is post a few links on this site from me. It's about Reno Homes For Sale. I also have the best link to Reno Land For Sale updated every day. By the way, Reno Nevada real estate prices are still making millionaires everyday! Check out Reno Nevada Luxury Homes For Sale. Take care, if you need my web design company it's Reno SEO

Note that, in reality, the comments just happen to have no fewer than four links to the same site!

I was sure that I'd turned on comment-SPAM filtering (the thing that makes you type in the goofy bent-out-of-shape word before you can post), but I just checked and it looks like I didn't on that blog. Yet, my comment links are buried in dynamic Javascript text (to clean up the appearance of the blog), so it should have been hard to just auto-post comments there... but maybe SPAM programs can see past that?

As an aside, RenoSEO.com appears to mask its domain through GoDaddy, so you can't do a WHOIS lookup on it to find out who owns it. But there are two contact names listed on the page. Amazingly, renoseo@sbcglobal.net doesn't turn up in Google. But kungfu4@sbcglobal.net turns up Zane Durant's name on this mole-related press release and on this advertisement for RenoSEO. So I think when I get back in town I'm going to have to give him a call and do an interview for the Ericast. Whaddya think?

(For those of you who don't catch the significance... search engines rate sites in part by how many links they have leading into them. So, because of this... "gentleman"... my blog has now provided eight links into this Reno property site, which in a computer's eyes must mean it's really wonderful and popular site, so Google and Yahoo! should rate it more highly, right? Wrong!)

Now, when Blogger e-mails me an alert about a comment, it doesn't give me the title or the date that the post was commented on. (At least not by default; I wonder if there's a tweak to the template for that...) But I have an excellent memory, and I remembered that I once jokingly posted about Reno when someone there was searching in vain for Kari Byron posts.

Go ahead and check out the text there; I removed the links, but posted the text so you could see it in all its SPAMmy glory.

Basically, Zane is off doing Blogger searches for "Reno", and then dumping in real estate ads into any post that comes up. Brilliant! It's almost admirably evil!

Man, I haven't felt this worked up since I got my first piece of e-mail SPAM years and years ago!

Anyway, enjoy the podcast, and listen this week for updates from EduCAUSE...

[Ericast Update On-The-Road] 10/14/2005 05:31:34 PM

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Posted by emlarson to Ericast Update On-The-Road at 10/14/2005 05:31:34 PM

[Ericast Update On-The-Road] 10/13/2005 08:59:18 PM

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Posted by emlarson to Ericast Update On-The-Road at 10/13/2005 08:59:18 PM

Ericast 32 - "Social Proof Attention"

On-time with a single topic -- a rare event in the history of the Ericast! After you listen, remember to e-mail me at ericast.com, or call 206-339-ERIC (that's 206-339-3742) and comment... because, believe-you-me, there's lots of comment-worthy stuff in this one!

Thrilled? Ticked-off? Let me know!

Anyway, as is becoming tradition here, I'll paste in my raw show notes to try and fill in the gaps and explain what on earth I was actually talking about when I recorded the podcast...

Social Proof seminar (http://www.productlaunchformula.com/prelaunch/)
If others jumped off bridge, would you? Yes! (No!)

Personally, I'm very sales-adverse; Would that make me a good salesman, because I don't get suckered in? Or a bad one, because I "don't believe the hype" and thus am not sincere? Is this how Amway works? Those who drink the Kool Aid can sell it to others?

Remembering an old Zig Ziglar "Get Motivated!" event

• Attention.XML -- where do we give our attention?
  
• Remembering my earlier comments on tagging/etc for attention.
  
• StumbleUpon as a potential solution? Doubt it works
  
• Amazon recommendations?

PodcastMN.com discussion on the Matthew Effect -- the rich get richer
Those podcasts that are popular stay popular.

Speaking of Matthew Effect, it comes from Matthew chapter 25 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=25&version=31).

The New Testament has four gospels. Matthew/Mark/Luke are the "synoptic gospels". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_gospel). John is different, and most folks think that's where Jesus spends his time talking about himself as God. But he's pretty clear about it in Matthew as well!

Matthew 24, NIV (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=24&version=31).

"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

"Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master is staying away a long time,' and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

(Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.)

Note, by the way, that those links aren't live, because I don't want iTunes or other podcatchers to get confused and follow them. (Ever since that Menards PDF showed up in my iTunes feed, I've paid attention to that.) But, if I were a good social marketer, I'd bounce all those links through a redirect on my site so I could see what you were clicking on and... track you attention! Hey! Yet some would call that an invasion of privacy. Oh, the tangled web we weave.

Ericast 31 - "Sounds like 1988!"

WOW! A packed episode of the Ericast this week, thanks to a surprise guest caller -- who, literally, was a surprise guest, because he just called me up when he guessed I might be recording this week's Ericast, and he was right!

No guest/guessed pun intended there, by the way.

(For those technically inclined, here's how the interview was recorded: Our caller phoned in to our land line, and I grabbed one of our phones with a headset/boom mike. I then took that phone off hook, nestled the boom mike of the computer into the padded earphone of the telephone handset, started recording, and left the room, and did the "interview" talking into a regular phone. So, the handset phone nicely recorded both sides of the conversation, which means you have to hear me "telephone style", but it was the quick & dirty & functional solution.)

God willin' and the crick (read: pond) don't rise (more than it already has) they'll be an Ericast next week... but as you'll hear us discuss, we're getting a ton of rain up here. Nothing like the flooding that the poor folks in the south-east half of the U.S. have to deal with when their weekly hurricane blows through, of course, but it's out of the norm for us up here! So I'm hoping to not deal with a flooded house in the coming days.

Since it's getting late, I can't do really complete show notes, and I can't do complete show notes anyway because I don't know what we talked about! But here's what I started out with:

It's Raining!

Garrick's commentary on VRML

Albert disappeared -- but he's back!
My missing update was about his new intro
Maybe I jinxed him? Maybe both my update and he disappeared into the ether?
Probably missed the update because I think I hung up rather than hitting "#"

Last of SitePal-based voices to grace the Ericast. Awesome demo at
http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example_sp_v2.html. (Click "Try Now" near the bottom of the screen)
Check out "Kate" and "Mike"! "Paul" is really good. "Susan" isn't bad either.

Commodore music and demos;
pondering an 8-bit based revival as a great "business" idea with no business model.

Work at Berean this past Sunday with Seth Naicker
Bethel University story at http://cas.bethel.edu/admissions/mcr/tapestry/spring/05/seithnacker.html
Running PowerPoint -- keeping up is hard!
Closing song "Bayete Nkosi"

That's what I started out with. Among the other things mentioned, I promised a link to an Apple II Oregon Trail emulator. How's that come up? You'll just have to listen to find out!