Now, I can’t say much for or against the Grove because I have never lived there personally. I know both my sisters have lived there and neither enjoyed the experience. I did assist them when they moved in and I can say that their apartment was completely filthy, the electricity didn’t work in one bathroom, the mattress had a huge brown stain that went clear through, the door to that bathroom didn’t open all the way because it hit the toilet, and there were insects breeding in the closet. However, I also must say the furniture was brand new, all the appliances worked, and when they called maintenance someone was there in less then 30 minutes on move in Saturday to help fix the various electrical problems. Overall, in my opinion, even with the various negatives it was far superior to the nasty old houses most of my friends lived in while I was attending EWU.

Anyway, enough background, now to my point. After discovering so many students disliked the grove I did a search to see if I could find a Facebook page for Grove residents sponsored by management. I was unable to find an official page but I was able to find a page called, “We ♥ The Grove in Cheney, WA.” This group only had 36 fans at the time of writing this. After doing some additional research the only positive information about The Grove I could find was from their poorly designed website that contained a wealth of multi-cultural photos and very little relevant information. Aside from what I found on Facebook I also found a number of negative Twitter posts and reviews on various review websites none of which had an official response from The Grove management.

Making an impression is important. Both of my sisters were very excited about living in The Grove last Spring when they signed their lease and now as the end of the year is coming they couldn’t be more excited about leaving. The Grove could’ve created evangelists and multi-year tenants but after a number of poor experiences they have created enemies, both of whom are willing to go out of their way from discouraging their friends from moving there next year. When your primary target audience is a tightly knit group like college students it is incredibly important to maintain a good reputation because word spreads very quickly about any problems that occur. Social media outlets like Facebook magnify this problem to an entirely new level. What does it say to a prospective tenant when the group against living somewhere has 900% more fans than the group supporting it? I think some reputation management would be a fantastic idea for the folks at the Grove. The Grove could be actively monitoring the Facebook, Twitter, and review websites and offering solutions to people that post about problems but instead they are nowhere to be found online. I suppose this is fitting, at least the online experience mirrors the real-life experience students are reporting. Every business should be monitoring their reputation online. There may not be much activity on a daily or weekly basis but if there is a negative review it is important to resolve that issue as soon as possible before it evolves into a social war like one The Grove is about to be fighting in Cheney.

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Please watch the video:

I kind of hope this is some sort of clever scam and not a real Microsoft endorsed video, Unfortunately, some credible news sources are reporting it is indeed legit. Microsoft has had some awful beer thirty advertising ideas in the past but this one may take the cake.

Ever since I struggled through this video, I have been trying to picture what a Windows 7 party might look like. A Windows 7 party is probably a great way to lose friends, although, someone throwing one is very unlikely to have any friends to start with. I would imagine most Windows 7 parties will take place in a dark basement, with a lonely 37 year old guy swearing into the darkness because his World of Warcraft just crashed due to a bug in the new Windows 7 OS.

How many parties do you think will actually occur? Of those what percentage do you think will be interrupted by a frozen Windows 7 machine? Does anyone, anywhere think this is a good idea? This cannot be good for the Windows brand that is already struggling with the young tech savvy crowd. Microsoft continues to fail miserably in its advertising efforts. To answer a question from the token black guy in the video, “Can you believe Microsoft put the launch of Windows 7 in our hands?” NO! I hope Bill Gates personally fires his entire advertising department for further destroying the Windows brand.

I have tested Windows 7 and it was a decent OS. It is what Windows Vista should have been. My question is, why ruin it with such a have baked advertising campaign? This idea is so awful I am now embarrassed to use Windows. I think I will switch my Windows 7 testing machine to Linux this weekend.

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So yesterday morning, Kayla and I headed out on an adventure to find some plants for my yard. We got started early to allow us plenty of time to find the 31 plants we needed to acquire before heading home. At about 10:30 AM Kayla was already hungry so we looked around trying to find a place to eat. At that time of day your options are limited, and the only viable option in sight was our friendly neighborhood Denny’s. I quickly remembered the February promotion and told Kayla about the “improvements” that Denny’s had supposedly made to their food and service. Against our better judgment, we decided to try it out.

I was optimistic as we walked to the door but I knew we were in trouble as soon as we entered. There were roughly 6 older men waiting in a cramped line to pay their bills and there was nobody waiting to be seated. We looked desperately for the “wait to be seated sign” most restaurants have but could not find one. There was no hostess, or anything that would indicate where we should be waiting. After a 4 or 5 minutes of trying to figure out where we should stand a male teenager walked up to us and asked us how many. I said two and he turned and bustled off without saying a word. We decided to follow him, hoping he would lead us to salvation. We made it about 10 feet before another older angry looking female hostess stole us away from the pimply faced kid. While most the restaurant was empty, she seated us at a recently cleaned and still sopping wet table between two couples whom were already waiting for their food. I understand it is easier for the wait staff to have customers seated in the same general vicinity but a little personal space is nice, especially, in an open restaurant. I hate being forced to listen to the conversations of the people around me. I don’t really care when the guy behind me last made #2. I am sure the next time won’t be too far in the future if he ate the biscuits and gravy. Perhaps, that is why so many older people eat at Denny’s. Moving on…

Once we were seated, we began to browse the menu. I was surprised at the prices. After the free breakfast promotion, I figured Denny’s would be a good value meal but that is not the case. The prices were completely out of line with the quality of the food. Kayla and I both got the Grand Slam, which, was the cheapest thing on the menu. The grand slam was about the only thing we could find under $8. At that price, I would rather go to Red Robin or have 3 meals at Wendy’s. Anyway, after a reasonable 10 minute wait our food arrived. Mine must’ve been done long before Kayla’s. My eggs were cold and overcooked may bacon was so thin it was literally transparent and I think they forgot to put my toast in the toaster before they buttered it. In defense of Denny’s, Kayla’s meal looked much better than mine. Her toast was toasted, her pancakes looked like pancakes, and overall she said it was edible.

After my experience, I feel like there has been no visible change to the quality of the food or customer experience at Denny’s. Admittedly, Denny’s Super Bowl promotion did get me to go in and try the food one more time, even though it was several months later. I expected more. I expected some real improvement to the customer experience but my experience was nothing compared to what was touted back in February. I don’t think I will be returning to Denny’s anytime soon, it was just as awful as I remember it. The only real positive thing I can say about my meal is that I didn’t get diarrhea afterwards.

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The video is from the Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) The rap is actually pretty funny. I have seen a couple other videos from the SEO Rapper but I hadn’t come across this one. Some of my favorite lines are:

“Don’t use italics use emphasis”

“Don’t duplicate it or you might face a litigation”

“Your photoshop functions, slice that design, do your layout with divs, make sure that its aligned”

“Please don’t use tables even though they work fine, when it comes to indexing they give search engines a hard time”

“The competition will get bitter, you’ll shine like glitter”

It isn’t every day you hear a rap song about web design. In fact I have only heard a couple and they were mostly done by white guys skinnier than I am. In all honestly I can’t believe this exists but since it does you have to check it out. If you’re really bored check out some of his other videos. I know some of you may have seen them already but if you’re like me and missed out on the SEO Rapper thus far, you need to check him out.

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I love blogs, but man, when you’re reviewing a full week of them at once you can really see how much useless information and “me too” content is produced. I know in the past, I have been guilty of posting “me too” content, usually focused on exciting new developments or new product releases. While this information is interesting, is there any new and exciting information or insight I can provide that isn’t already available on TechCrunch or Techmeme? Doubtful, I am just some guy in Spokane Washington. Almost all my related knowledge comes from other sources, most of which are simply reiterating information from the horse’s mouth, whoever that may be.

More painful than “me too” content is the constant creation of completely pointless “social media” articles. I don’t know if simply putting social media in your title will get you hundreds of clicks but almost every blog I follow had something on social media marketing this week. For example, 17 of the blogs I follow had an article on the new Skittles website. Some liked it, some didn’t, some speculated, some didn’t, and frankly I could care less what these people think. At the time of writing this there are 48,688 blog entries found on a Google Blog Search for “skittles website”. I do not understand why a company gets so much publicity for making their website impossibly difficult to navigate. Sure, it may be an outside of the box idea but it is a terrible one. They shouldn’t be awarded for ignoring the needs of their customer base.

The worst thing about social media is the thousands of people who have lost their pointless job at some company and now claim to be social media strategists, gurus, experts, or advisors. Having a Facebook and Twitter account doesn’t make you a social media expert. Don’t feel bad, I am not a social media guru either, I am just a social media user. Experts are out there though, people like Seth Godin and Chris Brogan could potentially make an accurate guru claim. Following 4,326 people on Twitter hoping some follow you doesn’t make you a guru.

I am going to try my hardest to avoid pointless content. If that means I don’t write anything for a day or two so be it. I don’t want to be another boring blog outputting the same boring drivel. I am going to attempt to write good useful content and I am only going to write when I have something to say. I am also going to start unfollowing all the “me too” bloggers and Tweeters that don’t provide anything useful and I encourage you to do the same. If you think I am boring or useless please unfollow me. Don’t waste your life reading about the same boring crap from 10 different people that don’t actually know anything about the topic. That’s all, I am out, I am going to go eat some M&Ms because Skittles are sooo last week.

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Realizing just how important personal development is to the graphic and web design industry, I’ve been seriously considering the implementation of a mandatory personal development policy for our employees at Zipline. What would it have in it, you may ask? The answer is, I am not quite sure. At this point I am thinking out loud. I have seen bits and pieces over the years about companies encouraging employees to partake in personal development. Some companies offer tuition reimbursement, others offer expense paid trips to conferences. While these are both great ways for employees to expand their skill set, they’re often cost prohibitive for small businesses.

My primary source of personal development is this blog. Every morning I get up at 4 AM and I read dozens of articles on marketing, advertising, graphic design, web design, and programming. After I have digested all of that content I will write an article relating to something that caught my eye, or something I experienced or learned the previous day. Then I will head into the office and attempt to put into practice the various interesting techniques, methods, and ideas I absorbed during my morning read. While I have learned a great deal by doing this, I am quite aware it would be unreasonable to ask my employees to work from 4AM – 5PM everyday, mostly because they’re a bunch of sissies.

So what if we paid our employees to blog, read, and network? During a time when many companies are banning social networking and other personal Internet usage it may seem counterintuitive to encourage employees to browse the Internet while on the clock. I think however that a couple hours of personal development per employee, per week would help the company become more innovative in the long run. I also think that this would help employees stay motivated. I know I personally feel excited and refreshed when I find new technologies or ideas to try. It helps to stave off the feelings of monotony that many developers begin to experience after their 1000th contact form.

While a personal development policy is an interesting concept, the question most managers will have is, how do you control it? In truth, I have no idea. Perhaps the first 30 minutes of every day is devoted to reading articles in a mandatory Google reader account and then it’s back to work. Maybe each employee is required to produce 2 work related blog entries a week. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer. Personally, I hate to try to govern creativity. Personal development should be something fun and enjoyable. I don’t want to have to stand over someone’s shoulder with a ruler like a Catholic school nun and force them to read Sitepoint or listen to BoagWorld. In reality, if they love what they do it should be something they want to do not something they have to do.

My intent with posting this article was get some ideas out there. I am sure some of you work at companies that have some sort of personal development policy. Please share any ideas, thoughts, or comments you have about what should go into a personal development policy like I described above. Whenever I get a good, comprehensive policy developed, I will share it on the blog open source style for all of you to read, adopt, and share.

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I haven’t had a ton of time to analyze the quality of the information but at a first glance it seems like there is some good information mixed with an unusually large number of commercials. I guess on the plus side a good portion of those commercials seem to be unnecessary self promotion advertisements instead of external sales advertisements but there is a mixture of both. Here are a few examples of shows available via Webmaster Radio:

- Webcology
- Search Engine Strategies
- Cover Story
- Life Tips
- PRSA
- Strike Point
- SEM Energy
- Webasters on the Roof
- Domain Masters

I will listen to it over the next couple days and then I will do a follow-up. In the meantime if you have any information about WebmasterRadio.fm please leave your comments. Also, if you know of any other good web design podcasts or information sources I would love to hear about them! If you’re bored listen to it here: http://www.webmasterradio.fm

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Anyway, getting down to business, I know it is a bit late but I wanted to complain about Denny’s Super Bowl promotion. I had built up a number of blog postings so I didn’t get around to sharing my thoughts on this promotion until now. For those of you that don’t know, if there is anyone, Denny’s ran a commercial during the Super Bowl and as part of it they offered free Grand Slam breakfasts to users on the Tuesday following the big game. While I will admit the interactive nature of this promotion was pretty cool, it did get users into the restaurants. In fact Denny’s estimated that they gave away 2 million free breakfasts on Tuesday. My question is, how many customers did this promotion create? Will they get a return on their $5 million Super Bowl commercial or all those free meals? I don’t know if you have ever had a Denny’s Grand Slam but they’re really awful. Giving away your product is a fantastic strategy if your product is so great your customer can’t live without it after trying it. It tends to have the opposite effect if your product is substandard and the free offer doesn’t create future demand or even worse creates negative demand. Not only that but I would bet that a very large number of the customers getting a free meal had previously tried a Denny’s Grand Slam and were only there for free food. Even if a customer hadn’t tried a Grand Slam before, how could you expect them to have a positive experience in a restaurant overcrowded with people fighting for a free meal even if the food is better now than it was in years past as Denny’s claims?

Some may argue that the enormous amount of social media exposure they have gotten from this promotion is worth the money. To this too I must disagree. Sure they had 28 million views of their commercial but how many new paying customers did the commercial actually get? How many meals will they have to sell to re-coup the cost of the $5 million commercial and the 2 million free breakfasts? Sure they got a lot of publicity from blogs and news outlets but how much of it was negative? Even if this campaign did turn out to have a positive ROI I still think it was a failure. I would argue that all of the bad publicity and negative experiences in over-crowded Denny’s restaurants on Tuesday did more damage to the Denny’s brand than good. What if they lowered the price of their Grand Slam meal 2 or 3 dollars and promoted that? It wouldn’t require the major cash outlay but would get butts in seats in this tight economy. Even still, mine wouldn’t be one of them, I like my eggs to come from a chicken not recycled tires.

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Most successful relationships I have observed are made up of two individuals with similar technological capabilities. My grandparents for example, worked together for over a half hour trying to figure out how to rewind a DVD. Fast-forwarding, my parents, both in their fifties have yet to fully embrace the Internet, email, or text messaging. In their defense, they did recently purchase a wii. My mom has made great strides in the last few years as my younger sisters have fully given up talking and have moved to solely communicating through text messaging. Although, there are many exceptions, generally as you age you tend to drift away from the new technologies. How will compatibility shift as younger generations age?

When Kayla and I started dating she was considerably less technologically savvy than she is today. To her credit she did have a MySpace account but she accessed it on a raggedy Windows XP Home laptop using Internet Explorer 6. Barf. She didn’t have Internet at her apartment, nor did she use text messaging. Thankfully, since we have been dating, I have convinced her to upgrade to IE7 and I am working on trying to convert her to Firefox. She has also become a skilled texter even mastering the use of T9. I am happy she has made great strides, my question is what if she didn’t? Could we have a happy long-term relationship if she didn’t evolve? If she didn’t utilize the same technologies I do, would she understand my need to spend so much money on the devices, or my constant need to use them?

These questions may seem a bit silly but what if the differences in technology are more severe? Could it be as detrimental to a relationship as differences in religious beliefs or financial strategy can be? To many, technology is incredibly important, it is how they communicate with the world. I rarely see most of my friends but I communicate with them online on a daily basis. If Kayla didn’t understand that, if she frowned on my constant connection to the online world would we be able to survive? I don’t really have an answer. I just thought it was an interesting topic to think about. In 2009, how important is technological compatibility to the success of a relationship? Perhaps they should discuss that in pre-marital counseling, just a thought.

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Yesterday, I went into Barnes & Noble armed with a shiny new gift card. I was locked and loaded, ready to purchase a book on jQuery. I have done a lot with jQuery but I really would like to sit down and read a book on the topic so I fully understand the syntax and capabilities of jQuery. Unfortunately, it was not as easy as I expected. I arrived in the programming section to find they didn’t have any jQuery books in stock. Disappointed, I started searching book by book hoping there was one out of place. My search did not yield any results. I got close, this particular Barnes & Noble stocked 3 books on Dojo but for some reason they had no jQuery in stock. They also stocked 13 varieties of JavaScript books and about 24 JavaScript/Ajax books and yet not on jQuery. Why they have so many different JavaScript books and no jQuery books is beyond me.

This got me thinking. In Meatball Sunday by Seth Godin, makes an interesting point. He says:

If you examine the sales of the 150,000 titles in a big store, you’ll see that they account for perhaps half of Amazon’s book sales. In other words, if you aggregate the millions of poorly selling titles on Amazon, they add up to the total sales of all the bestselling books in the physical world put together.

While it isn’t shocking news the big box retailers stock only the most popular products. It is somewhat shocking the number of non best sellers that sell on Amazon. I love books, I love shopping at Barnes & Noble and the Internet cannot replace the feeling of thumbing through all of those new books, although, they are trying. The Internet does have some very powerful advantages. The first is obviously selection. A quick query on Amazon.com shows several different books on jQuery. Another benefit of online shopping is user reviews. Right next to each of these titles are useful reviews on the quality of the book that help greatly in making the right selection. I would argue that even though I can’t hold and feel the book the online excerpts and reviews may be more useful in terms of making a purchasing decision.

This is why the Internet is winning. You can get what you want any time of the day. I would argue that if there was a way to get your book immediately from Amazon.com Barnes & Noble would eventually cease to exist, or would become a glorified coffee shop. These brick and mortar like stores like Barnes & Noble better work hard to block future developments in matter transfer technology or they’re toast!

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