Google is currently offering “millions” of music singles for $0.49/track or $4.99/album. Usually this type of music sale is just a bunch of unwanted tracks but so far the selection for this sale is far and wide! The music is all DRM-free and can be used on any device including Apple devices (iPod, iPad, etc). To download the music, you can either do a browser download (limited to 2 times) or use Google Music Manager. The nice thing is that it appears the music will always be available in your Google Music Library and you can stream it anytime and/or download it to your device.

A warning: you will spend a lot of time browsing the millions of songs on the deal. From what I can tell, the songs on sale include every genre of music and seems to include all of today’s top hits.

Some of the artists/songs include (the whole albums are available too):

• Nirvana – Smells like Teen Spirit
• Hanukkah Music – this cd has 25 tracks so buy the cd for $4.99 – includes popular hits Dreidel and Dayenu
• Katy Perry – Last Friday Night
• Beastie Boys – No Sleep Til Brooklyn
• Rachel Stevens – Negotiate With Love
• LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem
• Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby
• Other artists include: Guns ‘n Roses, Elton John and every other artist you could imagine

I am not sure how long this deal will be running for so make sure you grab the songs that interest you asap.

Find more stories about: Android, Google, mp3, music

Most times deals are discussed as they launch or briefly before launch. On November 20th, an upcoming offer began to circulate that, from what I can tell, has generated the most discussion pre-launch of any deal since Al Gore invented the Internet. What makes this deal discussion even more odd, is that most of the specifics related to the deal haven’t even been shared as of yet.

UPDATE: DEAL IS NOW DEAD – Link removed for clarity. Looks like they sold about 100k or so max.

All we know at this point is that Google Offers will run a deal with Newegg for $20 for $40 at some point. We don’t know specifically when they deal will launch, how long it will be available for, how many deals will be offered, what the restrictions are, etc. Yet even knowing so little about the deal, it is discussed like people won’t be sleeping until the deal comes alive.

Here’s what we do know based on chatter and the promotion pages on both the Google Offers and Newegg websites (displayed below). The deal will be for $40 worth of Newegg credit for $20. I have to assume that Google will be strong on enforcing limits unlike early national deals on Groupon and Living Social. Since the promotion of this deal started over a week ago, I am going to guess that this deal will be available on Cyber Monday. I don’t have any confirmation of this but it just seems like the perfect time to run the deal and I can’t see Google wanting to pimp an upcoming deal forever. On the flip side, this upcoming deal has probably helped Google get a ton of new opt-in Google Offers members.

UPDATE: This deal will go live at 9am Pacific (Noon Eastern) so be ready!

If the deal does go live tomorrow, I think it would be comparable to the Old Navy deal that Groupon ran this weekend and should beat out the Office Max deal that Living Social ran. I am still looking forward to seeing if any of the 3 deal sites offer something better than their sub-par Black Friday offerings.

I will update this post once the deal goes live – everyone that has discussed the deal believes it will be short lived so you will need to be quick. My suggestion is to make sure your Google account is hooked into Google Offers and you test out the ordering process so you know where to click and don’t have to read a lot of text as you place the order.

Find more stories about: Cyber Monday, Google, Google Offers, Newegg

This evening I received the below email from Google – they have announced that in early 2012 (no firm date provided), Google Checkout will be merged into the new Google Wallet service. Chris Ziegler at Verge posted about this announcement a few hours ago as well.

We just moved off of Google Checkout (and Paypal) at CloudContacts earlier this month. I will eventually post about why but the short version is that I found that our customers were a bit confused as to what exactly are the payment options on both Google Checkout and Paypal. Also, to use Google Checkout you need a Google account and I didn’t want any barriers to sales – not everyone has a Google account and forcing a potential customer to create one before the purchase was a big barrier. In case you are interested, we are now using Stripe for our transactions and in the first two weeks since the conversion went live, I have been extremely pleased with their service.

Here is the full email I received (URLs removed for clarity):

Thank you for using Google Checkout. We’re writing about an important change coming to Google Checkout over the next few months – Google Checkout is becoming part of Google Wallet. To help you learn more about this transition, we’ll be hosting a webinar.
Please note that space in the webinar is limited, but we’ll have a recording posted for those who aren’t able to attend.

Google Wallet is a virtual wallet that securely stores payment information and makes paying fast both online and in-store. On the web, buyers simply click a Google Wallet button to make quick and secure purchases with their saved payment information. Buyers can also use the Google Wallet mobile app to make purchases at thousands of retail store locations with just a tap of the phone.

Google Checkout buyers will now manage all Google Checkout and Google Wallet orders at (redacted). Buyers will be able to make purchases with their existing accounts at sites that accept either Google Checkout or Google Wallet.

At this time, there’s no action required from you. In early 2012, we’ll ask merchants, organizations and developers who use Google Checkout to sell items or collect donations to change any website text that talks about Google Checkout to Google Wallet. No additional integration or other technical updates will be necessary. If you use Google Checkout through a third party shopping cart, your cart provider will make any necessary changes.

If you have questions or want to learn more, please attend or view our webinar and visit our website. We’re looking forward to bringing these new Google Wallet features to your customers and will email you again in the next few months to let you know when to expect the Google Wallet button.

Find more stories about: Google, google checkout, Google Wallet

Another day, another battle of “Google+ is the future” vs. “Google+ is dead”. I am guessing we will see these back-and-forth posts for a long time. This week the hot thing to do on Google+ is to make circles of the same brands everyone else has and then share those circles with your followers who have probably already created the same brand circles.

One of the earliest supporters of Google+ was Edelman EVP Steve Rubel. Steve heads up the Global Strategy and Insights division for the global agency. Steve is a good speaker and I have always found Steve to have interesting insights and enjoyed our in-person conversations. He seemed to post/re-share to Google Plus numerous times every day throughout the earliest days and summer. Then slowly his postings started to become less frequent. If I remember correctly, Steve held multiple internal conferences with his colleagues to educate them about Google+ shortly after launch.

In early September, Edelman announced that they were selected as Twitter’s new PR firm. Did this new client signing influence Steve to spend more time on Twitter than Google Plus? Some of the conversations I had since the announcement seemed to think so but I am not sold on this idea because Steve’s job requires that he understand all of the networks so he can position them properly to Edelman’s staff and, in-turn, clients. Google evangelist Louis Gray noted the new Twitter-Edelman relationship when Rubel shared a post that questioned whether Google+ would be around for the long-term.

On October 20th, Rubel asked if, “Anybody Home” and he received over 20 responses including one from me. There have been no posts from Rubel until one early this morning where he posted the following message:

I have decided not to post here for the time being. I will leave my profile up. Google+ is great. I wish them luck. Really i do. But I have to make choices about where I spend my time and for me that’s Twitter, Facebook and soon Tumblr – where I will be doing more so. It’s where I get the most value for the time invested. So, adios for now. See you on one of those networks. I may change my mind one day, but right now this is my plan. See you online. / Steve

Some have asked me if this is a bad sign for Google+. I am not sure if this should be considered any sort of death sign because I know Steve is crazy busy as it took me quite a while to get on his calendar a couple of years ago. It would be interesting to hear from Steve about how he will position Google+ to his colleagues and to all of Edelman’s clients going forward. I guess I will have to find him on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr to attempt to get the answer to this very important question.

Find more stories about: Google, Google Plus, NYC, social media, Social Networking

Developer Daniel Treadwell has created a public blog using the Google+ API. What’s neat about Daniel’s test is that the content is available on the blog as real, raw cotent and HTML – it’s not just a Javascript include.

You can view Daniel’s blog here. The blog correctly links to a Google+ profile when Daniel has tagged a person.

This will eventually mark the fork in the road between Google+ and Facebook.

You can change the ID on Daniel’s blog if you want to see what your stream would look like as a blog. Here’s mine as an example – you can find your ID in the URL on your Google Plus profile page. Of course should this test go live, we probably want to make sure that someone can’t just hack the URL and make a person’s blog look very different – you can imagine the potentially evil possibilities there.

I could see blogger Robert Scoble replacing his WordPress blog with his public Google+ stream once this application is completed. (confirmed: Scoble notes, “I would love to use this on my own blog, which is based on WordPress.”) He goes on to say that he would pay $50-100 for a WordPress extension that has the same functionality.

Perhaps the right solution is similar to how Disqus handles comments – when you use the Disqus comment plugin on a WordPress blog, Disqus saves the comment to Disqus but also back to the source blog so you can remove Disqus and keep all of the comments left on your blog. The Google+ plugin could work the same way allowing you to remove the plugin but keep the content created on Google+.

In addition, considering the amount of resharing that takes place on Google+, I wonder if this type of API usage could become a competitor to Tumblr?

Find more stories about: blog, Google, Google Plus, social media

The big Google+ news today wasn’t that the message board service increased their traffic by 1,269%, nope, the big super huge mega news is that you can now share your circles with your circles (see what I did there?). Circles are the apparatus that Google+ uses (most services call them lists) to help you organize your people, friends, friends of friends, required marketing parties, people who are acting as brands, bloggers who you need to circle to help you get press later on, etc.

The truth is that many people will be emotionally joyous or very hurt by their status, or non-status, in a specific circle. For example, let’s say you think you are a person who is a great, news breaking, tech blogger. And one of your popular friends shares her circle called, “Great, News Breaking Tech Bloggers”, you are listed in there and are very excited. Naturally you +1 the thing straight away and re-share the previously shared circle which helps you show off how great and how news breaking you are.

I do wonder how many of the reshares of shared circles come from people who are listed in the circle – somehow I’d bet it will be a very high percentage.

But what about when you are left out of a circle that you think you should be a part of? What do you do? One person I follow on the Google Plus message board noted upon sharing one of her circles, ” If I missed you, leave me a comment so I can consider adding you!!” Oh gee, thanks, let me send you my resume and my linkedin so you can consider adding me to your circle, thank you so much for this consideration!!! I sure hope my Klout score is high enough so she will add me to the circle!

So here’s the new service we will be offering at CenterNetworks – it’s called the “Google+ Circle Representation Service“. If you are left out of a circle that you believe you rightfully and dutifully belong as a part of, myself or one of my team of circle experts, will contact the party hereunto who controls the circle you want to be added to. We will work with the other party to help them understand why you should be added to the circle. By allowing us to represent you, your chances of being added to the circle go up dramatically. We will also work with Google on your behalf to get extra top-down pressurized pressure applied!

To-date we have a 92% success rate and we guarantee you will be added to the circle of your choosing (or we will create a circle with your selected name and add you to that which will allow you to share the newly formed circle with the same privileges and benefits as the original circle you wanted to be shared with).

Pricing varies depending on the person you want us to communicate with. For example, if we have to contact someone named Chris Pirillo, the charge will be higher since he only deals in Star Trek Legos (serious: you should click that link, the post is very touching).

So if you are feeling blue because you aren’t listed in the circles you desire, contact us today to signup for the CenterNetworks Google+ Circle Representation Service!

Find more stories about: Google, Google Plus, social media, Social Networking

Last night I was out clubbing in Austin…trying to get my mack on (I do a mean cabbage patch) and finally find the future Mrs. Stern. While I was standing at the bar, (no I didn’t find an iPhone 5) I noticed a piece of paper on the bar that looked interesting so I grabbed it. Turns out it appears the paper seems to be a job posting for a position with a “newly-launched” social network message board. It feels like a job posting for Google+ Suggested Users but I have been unable to confirm. Unfortunately the bartender told me he spilled Milwaukee’s Best on the paper so some parts are unreadable and my scanner is dead so I can’t post an image. Here’s what I was able to put together from the paper…

Job Title: Elite Users Wanted for (word missing) — a Newly-Launched Social Network

Job Description: Are you looking to grow your fan base on a (word missing) network?

This position is perfect for you if you have more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. (partially missing word)ogle is looking for people (or cats, dogs and other non-perishables as long as you meet the 100k+ requirement) to join our (something)+ social network. You don’t need a (something)+ account to apply and even if you don’t have a real name, we will still take you as long as you have more than 100,000 Twitter followers.

Please note that we do not actually care how you obtained your 100,000 Twitter followers – if you were given them as freebies because you are on the Twitter suggested user list, if you bought them on Canal Street, or if you worked really hard and earned them.

Your role within the social network will be to publicize the network in your efforts. For ex(partial word missing), let’s say you are going to be interviewed on MTV – you should note in the interview that you love our (partial word missing)ogle+ social network and that your fans should come join the network immediately and then follow you. Or just mention a few times a month on Twitter your profile on our network to help get people to transition over. Extra bonus will be awarded if you mention our network on (partial word missing)book.

Please note that your viability to remain a member of our Elite Suggested User List is dependent on how much you can bring over – you will be replaced if you can’t maintain a good level of introductions. Don’t worry, we will work with you to help integrate our messaging into your online and offline networks.

Position requirements: Priority membership to the elite suggested user list will be given to those who meet the following requirements:

• has more than 100,000 followers (over 1 million and you will be given security clearance level 1 priority access with a dedicated account rep)
• is willing to pimp our network in media – TV is preferred but we will take tech bloggers who can get our social network on (missing partial word)CHmeme and Hacker (missing word)

Compensation: commensurate with # of Twitter followers. One of the people we’ve already initiated into our (missing partial word)gle+ Suggested User List has noted that he has been, “given thousands of dollars.” And he’s a tech blogger – you can imagine what type of fat wad you can make if you are a celebrity. Also, your face will be shown to millions of people as they signup for our social network. And most importantly, when we put out press releases about the network, we can include you in the release as one of our top users.

Application instructions: Applications should be sent to Br(partial word missing) Horo(partial word missing) care of his Twitter account. Make sure to include your Twitter handle and number of Twitter followers. Please note that due to the high (word missing) of applications we have received for these positions, we will only reply to you if you have more than 100,000 Twitter followers and can help further our goals on our newly-launched social network. All others should continue to do what they are doing and we may eventually find you.

We at (word missing) appreciate your interest in joining our Elite users list and allowing us to mutually benefit! Our success (word missing) on your success!

If you made it this far, you realize this was just a joke based on the absolutely ridiculous tweet posted on Friday by Google VP Bradley Horowitz. The tweet (shown below) made it clear that Google upper management only cares about gaining users who have large Twitter followings which was very shocking to many. Bradley’s comments certainly have made me think twice about what Google’s goals are with their message board.

Find more stories about: Google, Google Plus, social media, Social Networking, suggested user list

Aardvark founders Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz have just announced that the Aardvark service will be closing as of the end of this month. Apparently the shutdown is part of the larger Google Labs shutdown that was announced earlier this summer. Aardvark was acquired by Google in early 2010 for $50 million.

Max and Damon note, “We’ve been excited to share these lessons within Google over the past year, especially as part of the effort behind Google+.  It has been gratifying to see how well this project is doing — even in these early stages, Google+ has already become a great place to share knowledge online, eclipsing the original vark.com! — and there is much more to come very soon.  In this and other projects at Google, the Aardvark team remains committed to developing powerful tools for connecting people and improving access to information.”

Since I don’t use Gmail or Gtalk regularly, I don’t see many Aardvark requests. Although every once in a while, I get a popup from Aardvark inside of Google+ asking me if I want to answer a question.

You have until September 30th to copy your data or ask Aardvark for an export. After this data the data will be deleted forever.

Find more stories about: Google, startups

Google has just started informing developers who use Google App Engine that the service will be leaving preview mode in late September. I’ve included parts of the email received by developer Darren Stuart below. From viewing the new pricing link, it appears that the cloud services offered by Google will now be known as, “Google Cloud Services”.

The biggest change comes to the pricing model in which Google notes, “…this includes lowering the free quotas for all Apps. Almost all applications will be billed more under the new pricing. Once App Engine leaves preview this pricing will immediately go into effect..” Pricing will fall into three tiers: free, paid and premium. The paid plan will be $9/app and the premium plan will be $500/account. It is important that if you use Google Cloud Services/App Engine that you review the pricing because Google notes that the pricing will go into effect immediately once the preview mode is turned off in September.

Some important bits from the email:

• “In May at Google I/O we announced that Google App Engine would be leaving Preview status later this year. As part of Google’s long-term commitment to App Engine, we are also updating our policies, pricing and support model to reflect its status as a fully supported Google product. We plan to roll this out in the second half of September but we wanted to let you know what this will mean for you and your App Engine applications.”
• “App Engine has a 3 year deprecation policy. This policy applies to the entire App Engine platform with the exception of “trusted tester” and “experimental” APIs.”
• “We are introducing new Premier Accounts that will have access to Operational Support, invoice-based billing, and allow companies to create as many applications as they need for $500 per account per month (plus usage fees).”

Google has created an optimization faq to help you streamline your apps to keep the costs down. There is also a billing faq to help understand the new pricing model. Google is also offering a $50 credit if you modify your budget or setup billing on your Google Cloud Services/App Engine account.

Find more stories about: cloud computing, Google, Google App Engine

A couple of days ago, I created a fun, fake joke post about how you could attend my seminar on how to become a Google+ expert. Most thought it was real (no idea why) and some were very upset and/or angry that I would offer a course for a social network that has been live for less than a month, has already been notified changes are coming and is only used by social media experts to talk about social media experts and Google+. Of course once they realized that it was a  joke, everyone had a good laugh.

But apparently one person saw a gold rush and decided to actually offer a one-hour course so soon post launch — that person? Chris Brogan. Before I continue, let me say that while I have never met Chris, he does come across as genuine. I’d place him second in terms of being able to round up the sheeps – and unlike the person I’d put first, Chris appears to have built his following organically which is awesome. He’s also been one of the few people to be able to post paid affiliate links into his streams without huge backlash. My issue isn’t that he is offering this course, but rather that he should have waited at least six months for the network to balance itself.

Chris is offering a one-hour session for $50 on, “How To Learn Google+ for Business and Networking”. He plans to teach attendees the following:

• Profile tips and tricks.
• Organizing people in circles.
• Finding the good stuff.
• How to post engaging material.
• Keeping up with comments.
• Making the most of your time.

Funny enough some of his agenda items match mine – and the others on his list are very general. He is also going to offer a Q&A session for an hour after the learning takes place.

I currently follow Chris on Google+ and he’s done a great job of posting content that helps him maximize and build the farm. He posts silly posts, silly polls, photo posts, etc (he does post a lot of useful content as well) and with the size of his audience, these posts provide him with amazing stat padding (shares, +1s, comments) as well as to recruit new users. The casual user has no idea that there is more going on than just, “post a photo of yourself right this minute.” I am guessing he will teach attendees some of these tips during the course.

Why do I think it’s absurd to offer a paid course for Google+ at this point? Here are just a few reasons why:

• Google+ is not open to the public — you still need an invite to get in.
• Business pages for Google+ haven’t launched yet and we don’t even know how long before a regular, non-suggested business will be able to register
• So far the users are basically social media experts and agency people, normals aren’t even interested yet
• Once the normals arrive (if they do, I still question this), Google+ will be a very different place rendering Chris’ course even that much more off-base
• Everyone has said that major updates are coming to Google+
• Somehow Chris has logged over 250 hours on Google+ since it’s launch less than 22 days ago as of the time of his seminar ad posting

At the end of the day, this is America and Chris has a right to peddle his wares anyway he wants. Is he taking advantage of his farm? Sadly I do agree to some point (and I hate to say that). I think the attendees would be better suited donating the $50 to a relief organization. There’s plenty of time to become a Google+ expert once the system stabilizes.

Nothing in his agenda is anything the attendees won’t pick up just by using the service (without any extra effort!). I think his decision to jump so quickly will tarnish his reputation a bit but in this Internet world, that should only last a quick minute.

And trust me, Chris’ course is just the beginning — we will see plenty more people who want to get some of the Google+ gold.

Further Reading: Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks covers the discussion very well – I suggest reading the nearly 250 comments as well.

Find more stories about: Google, Google Plus, social media, Social Networking

Two years ago I created a history of online experts – everything from the early “html experts” to the more modern “social media experts” and everything in between. Sadly I’ve been up way late at night recently and have seen television infomercials that can help you become an eBay expert, Facebook expert and even how to make buckets of cash pushing products on Twitter.

Since the launch of the new Google+ social network and subsequent explosion in users (apparently the count is going up faster than the U.S. debt), I realized that it would make sense for someone like myself to offer a Google+ Expert Course. You see I was one of the earliest users, I have an avatar and I understand the difference between share, like, vote +1 and comment.

UPDATE: The first city has sold out – we filled up the 50,000 seat arena in just two days. Stay tuned for the second city launch or join the waitlist (there’s a $100 waitlist fee)

The Google+ Expert Course will be offered in 4 cities in 2011 – the city list will be announced shortly as I want to make sure we secure a space that can hold at least 50,000-100,000 in each city. The course will also be offered as a “hangout” on Google+ for the 10 people who can get in before space fills up.

What will you learn at the Google+ Expert Course? We are still finalizing the course materials but here’s a taste to get your saliva going:

• How to add the right profile pic to your Google+ profile
• How to optimize your profile for maximum SEO rankings
• What city should you set your profile to? You might be surprised at the answer!
• How to instantly add 1,000 followers to your account
• The one secret word to get Scoble to share your post
• How to generate revenue using affiliate marketing inside your Google+ account
• How to get your Google Plus profile into the top 100 so you can show how much of an expert you are
• How to post baby photos and what to do when the kids grow up
• For agency folks, how to convince your clients to pay you lots of money to create a Google+ account
• How to get your Google+ threads listed on Techmeme
• How to create silly “poll” threads to get lots of comments
• Tips on maximizing pageviews outbound from Google+ to your blog
• How to cancel your blog, Twitter and/or Tumblr and live within Google+

Currently the price target for the Google+ Expert Course will be $4,995.00 with discounts offered if you purchase a table of 10 seats for your team. As a bonus, the first 25,000 people to pay full price will receive a signed Google Buzz invite.

If you would like to pre-register, follow me on Google+ and then the URL to the pre-registration page where you can register to be notified once registration opens will be sent to you. Those participants who register will be added to a new circle which I will closely monitor for one year post-event, a $2,500 value.

Google+ is here to stay so why not learn how to become an expert today?!?

Find more stories about: Google, Google Plus, social media, Social Networking

Well the holidays came early this year for early adopters with the clinical field test trial of Google+ (or is it Google Plus?). I like to think of myself as an early adopter who acts like a normal and frankly so far Google+ seems a lot like Friendfeed.

There is a video feature which will be a huge hit in the adult sector once/if G+ makes it past the e-adopter set. Last night I watched Robert Scoble eat some fried chicken while he and 10 others talked about some technology – I can certainly see why this is the future now.

In all seriousness, I find the interface a bit confusing in terms of where to find updates and if they auto-refresh in real-time but I am sure I will get it at some point. The nice thing I hear about Google+ is that there is no much richness in terms of all the apps and friends and stuff that you may never want to leave!

Of course next week Facebook is apparently launching some video tool so look forward to posts that explain why G+ is dead.

Based on my investigative research along with the CN international team of researchers, here are the companies that are clearly dead because of the Google+ launch:

• Facebook – duh, enemy #1
• Skype – who would want to use Skype anymore now that you got this Hangout video chat?
• Email services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and all the other X Mails – clearly email is dead thanks to Google+!
• Yelp – business profile pages are apparently coming to Google+
• Friendfeed – oh wait, I think FF has been killed 3.14 times previously
• Twitter – c’mon, the celebs are totes gonna head over to Google+ so they can spend hours in meaningless chats with their fans (Google needs a suggested user list Tout de suite) (Allen’s note, the celebs will join because it’s hot right now)
• Tumblr – post a quick photo via Picasa to Google+, to replace the huge Tumblr porn section, see Hangout video chat comment above
• Foursquare – Google+ has checkins
• Social lending – rather than using a social lending service, you will just ask one of your circles for a loan
• Uber – no need for a cab when you may never want to leave home ever again?
• Quora – why ask a question on Quora when you can ask your circle?
• Color – use Picasa instead?
• SEO – just push your people to +1 the heck out of all your stuff so you can influence the search results directly
• GroupMe – you can totes group sms inside Google+
• Flickr – why pay for a Flickr Pro when you can just make a Picasa album which you can then selectively share with a circle or multiple circles which you can then share?
• Path – isn’t sharing within a circle privately what this team was working on?
• Blogging – who wants to blog anymore when you can plus instead?

Please feel free to leave your suggestions on dead companies due to the Google+ launch in the comments.

I sure hope you realize this is a just a fun sarcastic post — naturally a new service rarely (if ever) actually kills existing services. Now get out there and grill up some dogs and hamburgs!

Find more stories about: Google, Google Plus, social media, Social Networking

During my corporate days, my team attended several leadership workshops led by John Maxwell.  Over the next few years I realized that John became my favorite leadership/motivational speaker. His ability to draw in an audience and keep a story moving is great- since I left corporate America, I miss his workshops.

Early on in one of his workshops, he explained something that had everyone from my team looking at each other wondering if we should stick around because clearly this guy was off his rocker. He said that everyone does something 80% well – whatever that thing is. Yet in life we try to work on the other 20% – why? For those of you who have worked in a corporate environment, you know what this means. Your yearly progress reports always want you to work on the areas that your boss thinks you need to improve on. But Maxwell said this really makes no sense – what would happen if you focused on the 80% and made that part absolutely amazing? If we work on the 20% we aren’t good at, the best we can do is probably a passing grade, but if we focus on the things we do really well, we would own those areas. Take a minute and think about that concept…

I sit at my desk and day after day I read another blog post or journalist explaining that Google either needs to get into social to compete with Facebook or they are doing a crappy job with the efforts they have put forth to-date. Today Google soft-launched Google+ which Danny Sullivan calls a Facebook competitor.  So here’s what I propose…

GOOGLE…FU** SOCIAL.

I am dead serious – stop trying to fix the 20% that you aren’t good at and focus on the 80% that made Google the powerhouse company that it is. I get that Facebook is the sexy social marketing superstar right now and you are a boring utility company and want to feel sexy – forget it – it’s your 20% and it’s a short-term play anyway. And guess what – the utilities stick around for a long time.

Why not kick even more arse in the areas you already do? Why not move us forward on those areas (and guess what +1 isn’t what I mean in terms of moving forward). Google has the financial and human resources that can accomplish these tasks – give us the next generation ad product, office product, maps product, etc. Fix the enormous spam issue on YouTube, clean up the sites you messed up (like this one) in the Panda release. Clearly you believe in looking forward with your launch of Android.

Lastly, if you do want to launch a social network of some sort, I’d suggest waiting until late 2012 when the term “friend” returns to its roots and leaves the current definition of “person who I can market to”. The problem today is that social is more about marketing and creating the largest network rather than networking with only a person’s friends and family. In many of the reviews I’ve read today of your + product, it seems you want to focus on just the close, personal network. Frankly that will last a week – the marketers will want into those circles and once that happens, you won’t be any better than the mess that is a person’s Facebook friends list.

So please Google, put on the horse blinders and focus on making your 80% amazing for the next decade.

Find more stories about: Google, social media, Social Networking

I’ve been to hundreds of conferences over the past few years and I am always interested in watching how the check-in process is handled at each conference. It always seems like the check-in process at the SXSW interactive festival is the worst in terms of time and length of line. SXSW has moved the check-in location a couple of times over the past five years to allow for more volunteer positions, but the check-in process is still a pain in the butt and frankly a waste of valuable networking time.

Most recently, I suggested that SXSW setup stations along the hallway where 50+ laptops would be setup to allow for individuals to check-in to the conference. You would enter your registration ID, confirm your name and company and submit. Since SXSW has so many different types of badges, you would then have a printer location displayed on the screen and when you get to that printer, the SXSW volunteer would hand you your badge. This would nearly completely eliminate the lines and the time involved waiting on the check-in line.

Well it seems Google was reading and listening because the Google IO check-in process was the smoothest I’ve seen in a long time. When I entered the Moscone West conference center, Google had 3 check-in pods. Each one had about 15 computers (apparently they were the CR-48 netbooks), a Google employee and a badge printer. You could scan the barcode from your printed receipt, enter the code manually, or scan the barcode image directly from your smartphone. After I picked up my attendee badge (I was attending as a CloudContacts employee no press pass for CN), I stood nearby and watched how long the process took for others who wanted to check-in. The process was less than a minute for almost of the test subjects with many completing the process in about 30 seconds.

The Google IO badge included a small barcode which was used to claim the freebies (i.e. Galaxy Tab, 4G modem, etc.).

I understand that SXSW prints a photo on the badge for security and also has more types of badges than Google IO offered. This is why I suggest that the printer stations be centralized to make it easy to manage the different types of badges – the check-in program would be able to tell that I am registered as press and send me to a different printer station than a person registered for the Music portion of SXSW.

As a side note, I also like the process CES uses whereby they send your ID card in the mail.

The check-in process that Google used for the Google IO conference is exactly the process all conferences should use. Reduce the time to check-in and get conference participants to sessions and to general networking as quickly as possible.

Find more stories about: Conferences, Google, Google IO, sxsw

As soon as the announcement was made at Google IO this morning that all 5,000 attendees would be received the yet-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ tablet, I joked around with some friends that tonight we would see the first batch listed on eBay. I figured they would be priced at about $1,000 if we assume that a “limited edition”, “not for sale” version would bring in about a 30% premium.

Well I was wrong on both fronts…the first two auctions are now online on eBay for the tablet.

The two auctions are:

• Auction 1 – A buy-it-now price of $1,699 plus $10 shipping, currently with no bids. This is a one-day auction. UPDATE: This auction has ended with a final price of $1,358 with 25 bids.
• Auction 2 – A buy-it-now price of $1,999 or make best offer with free expedited shipping. This is a three-day auction.
• A few more tablets have started to appear on eBay – ranging from $900-$2,000.

Update #1 – the first tablet has hit Craigslist – the best deal so far for $800.

I will update this post as I see more auctions and listings appear online. My guess is that we will see about 100 of the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets appear for sale within the next 24-48 hours.

Find more stories about: eBay, Galaxy Tab, Google, Google IO, Samsung, tablet