Month: July 2007

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Mostly Everything

So I finished a book while waiting in the book store …

Alright i’m such a geek. While waiting for a friend at Fully Booked at the Bonifacio High Street, I was actually able to finish Seth Godin’s The Dip lying around the third floor business section.

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The Dip, a book I fondly call “the little book that quit” is a short (80 pages!) and tiny little number that talks about knowing when to quit. The Dip also comes with some famous doodles from Hugh McLeod.

The old saying is wrong-winners do quit, and quitters do win. [PS The Dip just hit #5 on the New York Times bestseller list.]

Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point-really hard, and not much fun at all.

And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you’re in a Dip-a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.

What really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.

This is my new book recommendation for the month as it talks about the art of quitting. It also pays close attention to quitting jobs and moving to something more productive to help you become more remarkable as a human being. Short story is, if you don’t feel remarkable with your current job, then quit.

I recommend The Dip because not only is it informative, it is also affordable and easy to read. You can finish the book in an hour or less.

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Mostly Everything

Bikini Female on Front Cover: Tatooed on Advertiser Mind?

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not a bikini, but you get the drift …

I was having a beer with a friend who works for a well known consumer technology company and we were talking about how having a bikini clad female on the front cover of a Philippine publication can be a deal breaker or a deal maker for some advertisers. Obviously, for magazines like FHM and MAXIM, the statutory bikini girl is already calloused to us. But for other publications that draw the line between geek and sexy (i.e. certain technology and men’s titles), do you really need to have a bikini clad girl on the cover?

Some advertisers have a reputation to protect and will pull out their ads on magazines that dare to include photos of bikini or underwear-clad women (note that this does not include “sexy” shots of women fully clothed). So this friend tells me of certain instances when they had to pull out of some magazines that went “sexy” — even if it was just for one issue.

I have two questions now:

1. Is this HARSH?

2. If you were an EIC, would you risk an attractive bikini clad female to grace your cover in hopes that sales go up in stall purchases, with the opportunity cost of letting one advertiser go, forever?

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Mostly Everything

The Narrow River of Content

Winthrop Yu, former head honcho of PC Magazine Philippines led me to this Forbes piece on how specialist blogs are stealing rich advertising from tech media – and I don’t just mean traditional tech publications, but their online counterparts also. In other words, if I were an advertiser, I’d actually see more value in putting ads in TechCrunch and Engadget than in CNET, PC Magazine and its online PC Mag website.

What?! Why the online counterparts? Because the surfing public is smarter now. They use popup ad blockers to get rid of annoying and unwanted ads that cram content into a funnel, you’d be forced to sprawl a 600 word article into 4 pages just to get more page views.

According to the article, Google Search revolutionized advertising, as searching for content in the form of products and services proved to bring in a sense of “demand” from the consumer and contextually targeting advertising to match content. Hence, Google AdSense is raking in tons of cash from just technology blogs alone.

In the “old model” of print, you’d need a publishing house and a printing press as well as your editorial, sales and marketing staff to run the business. On the web, you barely need an office. You don’t even need a sales team as the consumers themselves target ads for you via contextual search.

OK hold on. Before this post grows into a “new vs traditional media” rant, I kid you not, it isn’t. Let’s talk about traditional web sites.

Continue reading “The Narrow River of Content”
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Mostly Everything

Blogger Down!

So it finally hit me. The GTalk banter of CJ telling me to go to sleep were all unheeded as she would see me online at 3PM her time, which is about 12 hours in time zone difference.

Repeated late nights online and the preference to walk around the city (instead of taking a cab) under the rain with no umbrella has resulted in me catching the flu. Aching bones, nosebleeds, fever. Haha! And I’m still up blogging! (I’m crazy!)

But seriously, In really need to get some rest and figure out how I can best organize my daily tasks so I don’t end up working till 3 AM.

In this light, I’d also like to thank everyone who attended the first blogger food critique class I organized with the help of Christine and Markku. You can view some of the photos and experiences at Noemi’s blog.

I’m off to bed, with a blanket and drugged.

P.S. If you’re looking for really refreshing dalanghita juice (our local green orange), Juned’s family sells by the bottle. You can buy them in juice form or in the concentrate. I took five glasses so far and I’m feeling much better.

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Mostly Everything

Coming Soon: Yoga on the Nintendo Wii

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Been reading a lot about the upcoming peripherals for the Wii. One such interesting product is the Wii Fit peripheral that converts your Nintendo Wii into a personal trainer. Gamespot reports:

As we saw with the Reggie, you can’t play Wii Fit without first letting the game calculate your BMI. This figure is apparently a realistic indication of fitness based on height, weight, and age. Once the game has this information, it can set goals to help you lose or gain weight and reach your optimum BMI level. [SOURCE]

The Wii Fit will be available in the US come early 2008 but will debut in Japan sometime late this year. I guess if you’re a couch potato gamer and want to really work those flabs, Wii Fit might be a good way to reach a compromise. The game also comes with some yoga exercises:

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As well as “games,” the early demo build of Wii Fit includes some yoga and balance exercises. On the yoga side, you need to adopt poses such as the half moon pose, the tree pose, the single-leg stretch, and the sideways twist. The idea is to adopt the postures for as long as possible, stretching more and more as you progress. When you’re finished, you can see how well you stayed within the optimum zones with a line diagram that shows how much you shook and stayed within the parameters. On the balance front, there are two-legged and one-legged exercises, as well as an overall body test; but our limited time in the Nintendo booth prevented us from checking these out.

Hmmm, something Jane would like perhaps? I’m quite impressed with how the Wii has changed the way we play games. I’ve reorganized my room just to allow a wider space for me to play Wii Sports (I have a mean backswing!!). Next goal is a bigger television.

Wii Fit images courtesy of Gamespot