My Amazon Plog

Posted on by under Blogging

I went to the Amazon homepage tonight and found Todd’s Plog.

Here is their explanation of a plog:

What is a Plog?

The Plog™ Service is a personalized blog. A blog is a straightforward and now widely adopted method of posting a reverse chronological diary on the Internet. Here’s a list of some of the best and most popular blogs:

* Boing Boing–A directory of wonderful things
* Gizmodo–Reviews and charts the latest gadget trends
* MobileWhack–Energetic discussions of mobile technology
* Megnut–Evolving communication through blogging since 1999
* John Robb’s Weblog–Thriving on rapid change
* Jeremy Zawodny’s blog–Daily ramblings on life and technology
* http://www.lileks.com–The Institute of Official Cheer
* Gina Smith’s BIOTECH–Tech/biotech journalist and author
* defective yeti–The musings of Matthew Baldwin, Pretty Okay Guy
* InstaPundit.com–The Blogfather
* Talking Points Memo by joshua micah marshall–A thoughtful contemplation of current affairs
* andrewsullivan.com–A respected intellectual columnist blogger
* Intel Dump–Near-real-time military analysis
* This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow–The cartoonist behind the masked penguin
* Six Apart–Six Log is the weblog of Six Apart, the company behind TypePad and Movable Type

Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we’ll post it to your Plog.

Here was my immediate feedback to them:

*I love the feature. Please keep it on for my account.
*It needs an RSS feed now! A personalized RSS feed!
*The descriptions are a little long on the web page, but I think they will work fine in a reader.
*I would suggest only showing new products using this method. If you starting mixing in existing recommendations, I think I will start to ignore it.

Has anyone else seen this?

Save the Penny!

Posted on by under Pennies

William Safire is the latest who wants to get rid of the Penny.

My reason for wanting to keep the coin is simple. If I have to change the name to “A Nickel For…”, I think people are going to expect five times more out of this blog. I don’t know if I can keep up with that sort of inflation.

The Rules of Virgin

Posted on by under Marketing

I like many have always been fascinated with Virgin. There are 50 companies that are a part of the Virgin brand (Virgin Brides is my favorite). What I never understood is how Virgin manages its brand and makes expansion decisions.

Enter Corporate Religion by Jesper Kunde. This is another one of the many books that Tom Peters recommended in Re-imagine. What made me bite on this book was that fact that Kunde is Danish. I really enjoy reading good business books with European perspective.

This from page 23 of the book:

A product or a service can only come under the Virgin umbrella if it matches the company’s founding values and profile. Thus the focus is not directly on product specifications, but on the “linkage potential” to a range of emotional values. Virgin’s policy is that new areas must as a rule fulfill four of the following five criteria:

  1. the best quality
  2. innovative
  3. value for money
  4. a challenge to existing alternatives
  5. “a sense of fun or cheekiness”

I am just about done with the book and plan to post a review over at the 800-CEO-READ blog.

Another site aggregating

Posted on by under Blogging

I was looking at my log tonight and noticed a lot of hits from business.updates.com. It seems to be a beta site of cnet that aggregates business information from all over, alot of it from blogs. I really couldn’t find any other information about the site.

I did a search on “penny” and found lots of posts from my blog. The sidebar listed white papers from a place called bnet. They seems to be a repository for business content. A free membership is required to view the content. Since I can’t resist a good penny reference, here are the articles that came up:

  • A Penny (or maybe a car) for Your Thoughts: Should You Use Incentives to Get People To Fill Out Online Surveys
  • Penny-Pinching Firms Add Insult to Injury
  • Penny Wise, Pound Foolish: How Under-investment Can Stifle Profitable Growth

Anyone else know anything about what business.updates.com is trying to do?

Links from Seth’s Blog Tour

Posted on by under Business Blog Book Tour

I have updated the Business Blog Book Tour page for Seth’s Free Prize Inside.

If you missed any of the tour (which was outstanding BTW), you can find all of the entries listed by tour stop.

In the next couple of days, we are going to announce the book and author for the next tour.

Stay Tuned!

KaosPilot at NextD

Posted on by under Business Books

Uffe Elbaek, KaosPilots Principal and author of KaosPilot A-Z, is interviewed at NextD.

The interview is outstanding. It give you another great look at the thought behind the Danish business school.

Read the interview, get inspired, and come back to get a copy of KaosPilot A-Z to find out more about this amazing place.

Prices are rising

Posted on by under Economy

I can’t understand how people keep saying there are not many signs of inflation in the economy. And if they admit there is inflation they will point to the price of oil and how it is coming back down already.

My father runs a small sheet metal fabrication shop. The price of steel and copper have almost doubled in the last 18 months. Aluminum is now headed that way. He has passed on those increases to his customers. It is only a matter of time before those increases ripple through the economy.

There was an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel yesterday that illustrated the rippling. Kopp’s, a local frozen custard chain here in Milwaukee, is raising their prices. “The price of materials- everything from plastic forks to custard mix- have increased about 20% over the last couple of months”, says manager Bud Reinhart. Later this week, the price of custard will go up about 12.5% and the price of cheeseburgers will go up 10%.

Printing Money at Pixar

Posted on by under Etc.

Pixar is the cover story in Wired Magazine this month. Like many of you, I have seen all of the films. The article does a great job of giving a look at the people behind the movies.

I was not familiar with the exact financial success of the digital animation house. The article states Pixar’s five movies (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., and Finding Nemo) have grossed $2.5 billion dollars. Those numbers make Pixar the most successful movie house of all time.

This section explains why Pixar and Disney had a falling out:

Since Toy Story, the fate of Disney and Pixar have been intertwined. Pixar makes the movies, and Disney distributes them; they cofinance the films and split the profits. But this January, when Pixar met with Disney to discuss their contract, an emboldened Steve Jobs decided to change the deal. He’s angling for terms like those George Lucas brokered with 20th Century Fox for the Star Wars prequels: Pixar would finance its own films (with budgets around $80 million), take 100 percent of the profits, and pay Disney a distribution fee. Not surprisingly, Disney resisted. Each Pixar movie nets Disney an estimated $200 million, and under Jobs’ proposed arrangement, the company would make less than half of that.

Go check out the new trailer for The Incredibles. They are going to have another hit.

It’s about the feed

Posted on by under Blogging

A VC hits it on the head. It isn’t about your blog anymore. It is about the feed.

I was talking with my graphic designing friend Tim yesterday. We were talking about an identity for Astronaut Projects and a possible facelift here. I told him that there wasn’t much point in upgrading the look to A Penny For…, because less people are going to be visiting the site. They are going to come looking for the feed and subscribe. They may be back on a rare occasion to get some additional information. As feeds provide more stuff, visitors will visit even less.

With the first anniversary of A Penny For… coming up, we will probably spiff things up a bit around here.

Wiki @ APenny

Posted on by under Wikis

I have been hearing all of these great things about wikis. I decided I needed to get in the game.

You will find the the A Penny For… Wiki at http://wiki.apennyfor.com

The first experiment is going to be a user maintained directory of business blogs. Feel free to jump over and add your blog or one you like. All the details are there.

If you have questions, email me at todd [at] apennyfor [dot] com.