AIM Pittsburgh

So, I spent about 2 hours today working on an efficient Facebook Calendar export to work with my Google Calendar. No luck. It seems with the recent upgrade of Facebook, the export feature no longer exists (except on individual events – not the entire calendar). Maybe they’ll fix this… I do hope so. This will help with many of my clients’ Facebook integrations.

If you are familiar with a way to make this work, please let me know!

Oh, while I’m here, the reason that I was curious about this was because of all the Palm Pre commercials talking about syncing your phone with Google Calendar, Facebook, and other calendars all into one. Oh well. Perhaps I’ll be able to do this soon… only time will tell.

Bloombox + $3000 = Energy Efficiency

Is this true? That’s what they said on 60 Minutes. Bloombox is a brand new (well, it’s been in development for several years now) energy source that should be able to power your entire house for much less than what you currently pay for electricity… get this… using natural gas and oxygen. After watching the entire video interview here on 60 Minutes they said that the cost of this would ideally be set at $3000 for installation, however the cost savings over time (by not needing Duquesne Light or any other electricity provided) would add up and make it far worth the investment — besides the fact that the government has incentives for green investments.

What Bloombox does is it uses it’s patented technology to cause a reaction between the fuel and the oxygen to create electricity.  Each fuel cell should power a light bulb, while a bank of fuel cells could power your whole house (it’s actually 2 banks, according to the inventor – apparently we use 2x the amount of electricity than households in Europe).  It’s really that simple.

So, let’s think about this?  Who becomes the reseller here — Duquesne Light, GE, or other electricity providers?  or does it come from our fossil fuel providers like Dominion or Equitable?  Personally, I foresee companies like Equitable jumping on this before GE, kind of like how satellite television companies jumped on DSL and Fios to provide internet, allowing them to compete more strongly with cable.  All-in-one bills are all the rage, install a new Equitable Gas Bloombox and NOW get your electricity from your gas… if only they could figure out a way to get internet, cable and cellular service too, Gas companies could take over the world!

So, tell me your thoughts? Could the future of energy that is currently powering the Google servers we search everyday be for you too? Comment back and tell me what you think…

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

Today, I read an interesting article that got me thinking about how the iPad and the new market of tablet computers will change the way we receive newspapers and magazines.  Currently, every magazine has an online presence, but they reflect the way they are viewed via a laptop or desktop computer… not an interactive touch screen display that can be held in one hand like a real magazine.  Fortunately, the pre-existing market is full of iPhones, Androids and Blackberries that utilize the envisioned interactivity of the new tablets, so developing this new media will not be an entirely foreign venture.  However, taking it from a 3″ screen to a 10″ – that’s going to be a challenge.

So here are some of my thoughts… I think advertising needs to be a lot more interactive and slick.  HTML5 should be able to allow a lot more interactive advertising without the immediate redirection of your page.  When you touch an ad, it should be able to grow on top of what you’re looking at, and not take over the full screen or redirect you to a separate Safari page, allowing you the ability to interact with it, print it, or close it.  Another thing that would be nice is to have advertising throughout, as opposed to side banners and such.  We have learned to ignore certain existing advertising methods – and if ads were more effective, that would increase their value and require less of them.  The thing I think I like most about HTML5 is that it’s single handedly going to kill Flash – Flash ads are incredibly annoying and abusive (see MySpace), they need to go.  Lastly, with books, I think it would be great to see more “product placement” in books, hyper links to real products and embedded adds – thus keeping the eBook prices low.

What do you think would be a good idea to incorporate into the eBooks, eMags, and eNews?

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

According to Nielsen, Facebook is the #1 website ever… yeah, pretty much. In 2009, the study they found the following (from Mashable’s “Facebook Is the Web’s Ultimate Timesink” by Ben Parr):

Back in June 2009, Nielsen estimated that the average U.S. user spent four hours and 39 minutes on Facebook per month. That’s about 9.3 minutes per day in a 30-day month. In August, that number rose to five hours and 46 minutes, or 11.5 minutes per day.In January 2010, though, the amount of time the average person spent on Facebook jumped to more than seven hours. Each American Facebook user spent an average of 421 minutes on Facebook per month, which amounts to more than 14 minutes per day. Even if you lump together the time spent on Google (1:23), Yahoo (2:09), YouTube (1:02), Microsoft/Bing (1:35) Wikipedia (0:15), and Amazon (0:22), it still doesn’t beat Facebook.

Truth is, I’m typing this, but I’m on Facebook too.  I’m on it all day long.  Granted, the study shows that only about 14 minutes a day is normal, but I’m sure people like me are skewing that number.  I have 3 computers in front of me at almost all times, so it’s very easy for me to have one computer dedicated to my Pandora, iChat and Facebook, while I work on the other one.  And with the “tab” feature in modern web browsers, you can have your Facebook open in the background and continue to chat with friends all day long.

It’s quite clear that we live in a more and more connected society than we ever have before – and for those of us that have embraced it (at running speeds) we probably couldn’t imagine it any other way.  Really… what did I do with my time 5 years ago?  I can’t remember, I know I wasn’t on anything like MySpace or Facebook, and I surely wasn’t blogging… hmmm.  Oh yeah, I went to a lot of movies.

So, tell me, readers, how many hours a day would you say you’re on Facebook?  Please leave a comment and let’s compare…

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

View the MIRROR of this post at Faded Industry’s Blog, here.

This weekend, I found myself making the trip to a movie theater. Kind of a sad week for the movies, not too many things I really wanted to see. Out of all the wonderful selections, I selected Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. All in all, I’d give it a 6 out of 10, but I wouldn’t say that it was bad – just not my taste. I did enjoy my time, not too bad for a kid’s movie.

The movie was about a typical NYC high school kid who finds out that Greek Gods aren’t exactly myths and that he happens to be a demigod – that is, the offspring of a God and a mortal. At the same time of learning who is father is (Poseidon), he is also blamed for stealing Zeus’s lightning bolt… and thus the adventure begins.

From what I understand this is based off a fantasy book series for children, so I wasn’t expecting thick plot lines and intense characters, but, like I said, it wasn’t too bad. At points the story dragged, but soon enough the action would pick back up.

Full Review
Story: 6 of 10
Action: 6 of 10
Acting: 7 of 10
Effects: 9 of 10

If you go see this movie, you won’t be upset, but maybe you’ll want to wait for it at Red Box or Netflix.  I’m curious to see what sequels lead to…

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

View the MIRROR of this post at Faded Industry’s Blog, here.

I just found out today that over the weekend famous film director Kevin Smith was booted from his Southwest Airlines flight for being too fat.  I really don’t know whether to feel bad about this or say LOL.  Truth is, I’m not exactly in shape either, but I’ve met Kevin and he’s a house (or at least, WAS a house when I last saw him).  However, on the flip side, what kind of customer service is that????

Southwest, you need to get your policies straight. I’m all for charging double, selling 2 seats or whatever if you weigh over a certain weight.  I mean, if I’m 250 lbs, and have to pay extra for my 2 5o lb bags, don’t you think someone weighing 350 lbs. should be paying that extra fee?  It only makes sense.  But you gotta have it thought out. You can’t just go and pull people off airplanes for being fat – and not such a smart idea to choose to do it to a famous film director with a nationwide following.

That’s just sloppy Southwest… you don’t charge extra for bags, I know, but as a company you guys are starting to suck – hit up Expedia or Travelocity, and note that Southwest is no longer coming up the cheapest flights.  What happened???

Kevin, we love you in Pittsburgh, you looked great when you lost all that weight… we don’t want you to die man, get your head on straight and you won’t be kicked off any more flights!

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

View the MIRROR of this post at Faded Industry’s Blog, here.

Are you a Pandora listener?  If you are, you know you’re probably killing radio stations with every click… but that’s fine by me.  I truthfully haven’t listened to broadcast radio stations in years – ever since getting my iPod (which is on it’s last leg as we speak).  Now with my iPhone I listen to Pandora Radio nearly all day long.  If you haven’t tried Pandora, you absolutely should, you have no idea what you’re missing.

Pandora Radio uses a thing called the Music Genome Project. Basically speaking, it uses this system where it breaks all music down to their “genes“, there are around 400 genes that a song can have.  Using these genes it analyzes a song or artist you like, to find similar songs -  for example, if you enter artist, Black Eyed Peas, you’re likely to hear songs from Sean Paul, Rihanna, and Maroon 5.  When you enter and artist, it becomes a station, from there you can rate your music – thumbs up or thumbs down, this tells Pandora whether or not to play that song again.  You’ll listen to music that only YOU like, and get to discover more music that you might never have heard before! Pandora is awesome. Oh, by the way, it’s free through single advertising breaks between every few songs.

Recently I have found a small hiccup, the FREE version only allows for 40 hours a month of playing.  Either this is new, or I haven’t neared this number in the past year of using Pandora.  Pandora can be listed to via mobile phone and/or your computer online.  Since I have been listening almost all day long while working, I guess I flew through my free hours.   It then prompted me to pay either 99¢ for the rest of the month, or $36 for the year (which would unlock additional features).  So, out of respect for the musical artists, and to no longer hear advertisements, I opted for the $36/yr.  If you are a Pandora user, you might want to consider this option, as you can now access their Adobe Air stand-alone player (which I have installed on all of my computers).

If you have any questions, post a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

View the MIRROR of this post at Faded Industry’s Blog, here.

As I suspected with yesterday’s post about Google Buzz, today was all about Google Buzz… talks about new features they should add, who they should integrate with and much more.  You may not be surprised to hear the top ranking suggestions were about Facebook and Twitter.  Today they also added a counter to their plugin, now it resembles the similar functioned ReTweet and Facebook Fshare buttons.  It seems like Google’s off to a good start, we’ll see how it goes, maybe soon you’ll see some of those buttons on this blog too.

FourSquare launched a sister-app recently SquarePik, now you can upload pictures of your favorite locations when you check in with FourSquare.  If you’re reading this thinking, “What the hell is FourSquare?” you need to grab your iPhone, Android or Blackberry and download the app now!  It’s sort of a game, while also an important social media tool that ties in with your Facebook and Twitter accounts.  Whenever you go somewhere, you open the FourSquare app and “check-in”, you get points if it’s the first time you’ve been somewhere and you get points for going to multiple places per day.  The more points you earn the better you are.  Also, if you’ve been to a place the most, you are named Mayor, of course, until someone else has more visits than you.

Some predict that as more and more businesses start taking advantage of social media, we’ll be seeing benefits for getting involved.  One thing I read was that bars or restaurants would have a special deal for Mayors, free appetizer, private drink special… it can be as creative as you want, the sky is the limit.  So, get in now! (and add me as a friend – adamsinnovative, you can find me as a visitor at Carson City Saloon in the Southside)

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

View the MIRROR of this post at Faded Industry’s Blog, here.

So, today’s social media news leads us to a couple things that I have found interesting, first of all, Windows 8 talk and secondly, a new product from my favorite company, Google – Google Buzz.

It doesn’t seem like Windows 7 – the twin sister to the retarded Windows Vista – has even been around for all that long and already talk of Windows 8… that seems a bit shady.  Quite honestly, I’ve been hoping that Windows would just throw in the towel already, they could shut down all operations and start selling slap bracelets.  But, I guess that’s why I’m not on their board. The news spreading is that they’ve a whole new look, vision and feel… well, I should hope so.  Considering the only good operating systems they’ve ever created were Windows 3.1, Windows 98 and Windows XP (and saying that might be a stretch), it’s definitely time to start putting users in mind and stop worrying about the safety padding the operating system for all the computer illiterate.  Cause let’s be honest, it’s not Windows’ fault that people are stupid and fall for these ridiculous phishing scams!  We need to move on.  I do have 2 Windows machines in my home office of 13 computers, don’t force me to install yet another Hackintosh system and get rid of Microsoft completely.

On to the brighter news… Google’s buzz of launching a new product to integrate more social media and several of it’s services has just launched across the web, and quite heavily on Mashable.com, ironically called Google Buzz.  I’ve still got to play with this new product, but it seems that it’s an expansion to it’s RSS Reader service that will allow people to actively follow information around the web – not exactly revolutionary, but now with the Google logo we’re all so used to seeing. More on this in future blogs, I’m sure.

Now, lastly, my rant about President Obama.  No, this isn’t against him, but for him.  I can’t believe that people have the audacity, “and that means nerve”, to blame Obama for the current decline in jobs across the US.  Seriously??? I’m quite certain the this started before he was President.  I mean, not that I’m politically in tune, but let’s be honest here… that’s like, if your car was rolling down a hill cause you left it in neutral and you yelled to the guy 2o ft away, “Hey can you help me stop my car from rolling down the hill and crashing into that wall?!” and as he uses all his strength to push it back up the hill, the force was too great and it inevitably continues on it’s path to destruction… then you blame that guy for not being strong enough.  TYPICAL AMERICAN ATTITUDE

Look there are only going to be a few things that can bring our economy back…

1) realize that we were living in fantasy land, families that make $60,000/yr cannot afford a $3000/mo mortgage, 2 $500/mo car payments, top-shelf cable TV, unlimited cell phone family plans and the ability to eat out 2-3 times a week at the Outback… it just doesn’t add up.  You can’t afford it, it’s time to start living within your means.

2) spend money – no, don’t buy an expensive car only to drive it to work and back because you don’t have enough money to go out and enjoy life – get an economy car, then go to the movies, get dinners at family restaurants, buy DVDs, get a new computer, buy music, take a dancing class, go to the gym… do things that lead to an active lifestyle and support others working.

3) don’t be bummed about losing your job and blame the world, blame yourself for not being indispensable. If you think you have a talent, start your own business, there are many advantages to working for yourself (like tax breaks and write-offs).  Suck it up and take that job a McDonalds… if nothing else you gain character and maybe it will lead to something else.  America/Americans are facing tough times, many of our jobs are being outsourced across the globe to places that all they need is a telephone or a computer and the ability to speak English (as poorly as it may seem at times), bottom line is, we are living in the land of opportunity in the middle of the information age, we have to start using our brains, being more innovative and creative.  Remember, you could always be living in Baja Mexico in a box on a hill-side, granted you might have a great view of the ocean, but you won’t have any food to eat.  Suck it up, even at the worst of times, you can get a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger for a $1.

We’ll that’s it for now.  Hefty post, I know… they won’t all be like this.

Remember, if you’re business is looking to boost your online presence, visit www.adamsinnovative.com and schedule a free review of what we can do for you.  We also offer custom graphic design and video production at the most affordable professional rates in Pittsburgh (maybe even the entire US).

View the MIRROR of this post at Faded Industry’s Blog, here.

As of 12:30am on February 11, 2010, Adams Innovative Marketing (AiM) has launched their brand new blogging system: WordPress. While we will be supporting the use of all three main CMS providers: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, our main company blog will be held here. We will also be using Google’s Blogger from time to time as well, but for other simple dynamic content purposes. I know this is all technical talk as of right now, we can explain exactly what you need to know during one of our free consultations. Please contact us for your next project.

Thanks,
Bud Adams
Adams Innovative
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