Evacuation Plan.

If ordered to evacuate, you know you have a finite amount of time. Here is our scratchpad list:

Evacuate in 5 mins :
- form a meetup plan if 2 cars (cellphones might not work)
- grab or call spouse/kids
- get car keys
- get pets
- lock box with valuable papers (insurance, passport, visa)
- credit cards/wallet/purses
- cell phones (if plugged in – grab charger too)
- run

Evacuate in 10mins : (do above)
- any medication
- pet food – and bowls
- kid snacks
- laptops/ipads/8TB NAS box
- sentimental box
- jewelry
- bottled water (could be stuck in car)
- shut off gas & power if you can
- run

Evacuate in 30mins : (do above)
- laptop chargers
- extra shoes – change of clothes
- overnight bag with toiletries and clothes.
- food & cooler
- turn off pool pump if you have one
- sleeping bag if handy

Evacuate in 60mins : (do above)
- cot or folding chair – sleeping bag
- flashlight
- radio
- games – cards
- shut off electricity and gas
- cable modem – router – plugs – it could be very important at some point
- Don’t wait 60mins – go now as traffic is backing up

If longer than that:
- take video camera around house – and get video of every room. (for insurance)
- go outside and video outside and in garage.
- pack the above stuff and get ready.
- if you can do the above and leave – then do so as traffic could be your worst problem.
- go gas up car
- get bottled water
- double check evacuation route
- flip on irrigation system to quickly wet yard (if fear of fire)
- call relatives/friends and tell them where you are going (do from land line as cell phone is probably not going to work)
- have 3 destinations in mind with spouse. You may not get to your first choice due to weather and/or traffic.

Whenever I am looking for a product, I always use search ads as a focal point when I am in purchase mode. To do that, I always rapid fire shift-control-click all the ads into background tabs and sort through them all one at a time. I can’t ever recall a time when I didn’t click all the ads in the list. Why?

1- There is zero difference to me between the top slot on AdWords and the last slot.
2- The actual text of ads is meaningless. Beyond useless. Less than zero value. I like the longer ad titles though as it makes for a wider link to click.

However, I realized that I rarely click anything top center in the premium ad slot on Google. I have found those ads to be:
1) Inappropriate. Often click through to a huge form page or a “scam form” where they ask your email address and then the 2nd page wants more info. (car related ads are notorious for the AdWords-2-step).
2) Just because they pay alot – doesn’t mean they are any better than the rest of the ads. I find pages at the top of ‘pay for placement’ lists like AdWords to be overly optimized and lack trust.
3- Often highly targeted on specific broad match searches. Such as a search for “leasing a car” just now, brought up a specific ad for leasing a Toyota Camry. It is a niche response to a broad query.

How do you surf ads?

There are many blog posts and tweets complaining about the new Google + name.

I think it is very smart. No one can refer to it by name. It isn’t a specific entity – just that Google social thing. That means they can be very aggressive at marketing it and it just looks like part of GOOGLE.  They can get away with rolling this puppy right into Gmail, merge in your contacts and PRESTO instant social network without anyone being able to point a direct finger at a product. It isn’t a question of getting you to switch to a new Google product. If you have a Gmail account, then you really already are a + user. You don’t have the choice.

The same thing happens in the car industry. You don’t tell your frinds you bought a 328i, you tell them you bought a BMW. Mercedes and others also do it with the numbers. Lincoln is also trying to do it with letters in the MKZ, MKS,  and MKX naming schema.

You don’t tell your friends you are on Google +, you tell them you are on that new Google social network. Google leaves it to you to do the heavy lifting for them. Google reaps all the rewards. They get the freedom of being able to roll the product parts out of, and into a myriad of existing Google services.

Remember the lesson of Mad Mens Don Draper and Lucky Strike cigarettes:

“We have six identical companies making six identical products, we can say anything we want.”

“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK”.

Google + is NOT Facebook, Twitter, or any other ‘social network’. Google +, well, umm, it’s toasted!

More impressive numbers being released from the Neilsen survey of tablet computer owners. The biggest data is from their tv viewing habits:

Tablet owners said 30 percent of their time spent with their device was while watching TV compared to 21 percent lying in bed.

If you haven’t heard, there is an explosion of activity going on in the burger industry. The revolution is being driven by organic and a move to fresher quality ingredients. Currently, there are four major burger outlets that have started up on the north side of Austin:

• Terra Burger
  Great burger, all organic beef. I had high hopes for this one, but service is regularly very slow. I’ve waited 10mins a couple of times at the drive up. It was a great burger, but I was not overall bowled over. They have sweet potato fries!



• Five Guys Burgers and Fries
  These guys are part of a chain outfit that has stores opening across the country. While it is a good burger, there is not much that is special about this place. The walls are peppered with awards and press coverage they have gotten. This place appears to be so busy trying to invoke a Bistro Meets 50′s air stream dinner, environment that they forget to just make a good burger. Beef quality is moderately good. Fries are excellent. I eat here about once a month. This is the least expensive of the bunch. However, they by far have the best marketing I have seen in the burger industry.



• Mighty Fine
  This place is just jam packed with volume. Expect to wait a few minutes to order. Good luck finding a table. This is created by the same folks that do Rudy’s BBQ. This is one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. Outstanding beef quality, but the burgers are rather a little small. A burger, fries, drink, and a shake will burn a $20 spot.



• Elevation Burger
  Another organic outlet. Best burger of my life. This was a juicy (but not greasy) burger with crisp fresh ingredients. Fries are overflowing and freshly cut. I actually looked into what franchise opportunities this place had, as I think it is going to rocket.

Neilsen survey says, that “U.S. Parents Say Almost A Third of the Apps on Their Phone Were Downloaded by Their Children”:

I get asked alot why I carry a PalmPre?

1. Small, light weight – fits in almost any pocket – including dress shirt pocket without causing undo sag. I am tired of carrying around bricks. It is less than half the weight of an iPhone.
2. Full qwerty keyboard. I have big hands and it is very tough for me to type on a virtual keyboard like the iPhones. The real kb is mandatory.
3. WiFi Hotspot. This just works excellent and I don’t have to carry another device with me for usage with XoomPad, laptop, netbook, wifes ipad…etc. I only using about 100meg of data a month, so getting a mifi, just doesn’t make sense.
4. WebOS. Quite friendly and full featured. The phone OS is solid and no major problems.
5. Replaceable battery. Battery life is short with the PalmPre, but having a battery small enough to fit in my wallet, means never being without power. I have 4 batteries I keep charged and in my laptop bag too.
6. Touchstone inductive charging. No more messing with cords or plugging in. Just set it on the magnetic charger and go. I have one near my bed, at my dresser, and at my office. I’d like to get one for my car too. I can’t ever see buying a phone you have to plugin again.
7. Verizon. I have never dropped a call that I can blame on my end. Also, Verizon’s 3g/evdo is quite zippy.
8. USB Drive: When plugged in via USB, the phone shows up as a USB drive on a windows desktop. Drag your pics right off your phone.
9. Cost: the Pre was almost free with a two year contract on Verizon.

I have thought alot about getting the new Palm/HP Veer. I love the idea of getting even a smaller phone. However, it is now known that Verizon has nixed the hotspot on the newer modles (unless you want to pay like $110 a month for the data contract). That is a deal breaker for me. I will replace my used Pre with an Android when my contract is due in November.

Downsides:

• Plastic Case: Rather cheapo case that has two cracks on the back cover already. This is my 2nd one after the first one’s speaker broke. The slider is slowly wearing out and starting to stick.
• The “button”: There is a touch type button on the front that you swipe left-or-right on. This button is often non-responsive or very slow. Worse than having one.
• HP now owns Palm: Nuff said. (not an HP fan)

Intel to get into making tablet based chips:

Regarding the emerging tablet market, Otellini said that Intel will have “quite a bit of tablet demonstrations” at Computex running MeeGo, Windows, and Android operating systems. “We’re heads down on a number of designs on tablets on all three of those operating systems,” he added. Regarding Android, Intel’s fifth CEO said, “We’ve received Android code – the Honeycomb version of Android source code – from Google, and we’re actively doing the port on that, and expect to be able to ramp those machines over the course of this year for a number of customers.”

Via Engadget

So on one hand, we have the internet where websites live and breath by traffic provided by the Google Algo.

Then we have the growth of App Space – where apps live and breath by the by the Apple AppStore algo.

More and more eyeballs are spending time in AppSpace. AppSpace is growing. I predict AppSpace will outgrow the internet – eventually.

So, it is time to open “The Second Front” – The AppSpace algo. We ? now have word, that Apple has updated the AppSpace algo last week.

“We’ve been noticing changes in the Top Free rankings for at least three days now,” said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, which serves 80,000 applications with its analytics product. “From our point of view, Apple is absolutely considering more than just downloads, which we believe is the right direction to measure true popularity of an app.” Other pay-per-install networks tell us they’ve been detecting these changes too.

This is so Deja Vu Florida Update as Apple is going after those that game the system:

This has allowed an entire cottage industry to flourish. Networks like Flurry, Tapjoy and W3i allow developers to pay for downloads, which bump their apps into the top of the charts where they can get even more downloads from having the extra visibility. If they’re good, they stick at the top of the charts. If they’re bad, they fall quickly.

My presentation at SFIMA last night.

In PDF format: http://www.pubcon.com/t/sfima-brett-tabke-april-14-2011.pdf

New survey out of tablet computer owners (iPads). Completed by Google’s AdMob advertising group:

•69% said they use their tablet more frequently on weekdays relative to weekends

•Tablets are used more during the night according to 62% of respondents

• 28% of respondents said that the tablet is their primary computer

Tablet prices are tanking in the wake of the IPAD2 release.

$129 at TigerDirect for a 7.1inch android 2.2 tablet.

Or $349 for a 10.1 incher.

I think we will see the sub $100 tablet within 2 years. That means they will become ubiquitous around our houses. They may even start to sell them in 2-3 packs for families.

Some think that the tablets will play out like the phones with a iPad vs Android battle. While that is certain to happen, the iPad has several things going for it, that the Android tablets don’t have:

• iPhone success was chained to the carrier distribution model
• iPads can be sold anywhere without being lashed to a wireless plan
• iPads have a strong 12-36month lead on the Androids
• Apple is showing that they are willing to cut pricess to maintain market share

Once we do hit the sub $100 barrier, the real problem becomes keeping our data in sync. HP has show a WebOS (palm) that transfer data quickly between devices. That type of sync system is going to be needed for all tablets. Apple is quickly develping AirPlay as a means of sharing data.

Today, Gartner put out a very short sighted post about iOS.

Despite mounting competition from other operating systems (OSs), Apple’s iOS will continue to own the majority of the worldwide media tablet through 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Due to the success of Apple’s iPad, iOS will account for 69 percent of media tablet OSs in 2011, and represent 47 percent of the media tablet market in 2015.

What happens as Pad prices fallout? Today, Tiger direct is selling a 10.1 inch Android pad for $299 and a 7.1inch pad for $129. That’s right – we are getting close to the sub-one hundred dollar range. If they can sell and make a profit off it right now at those prices, imagine what the price is going to be when they are selling 30-100million of those over the next few years! Given the current state of demand, I expect leading edge pad prices to drop below $100 within 24 months.

I expect the same process to happen with iOS vs Android that happened with Linux vs Windows NetBooks.  Just as Microsoft was forced to essentially give away WinXP to netbook makers in order to compete with linux based netbooks – a similar situation is going to play out on Pads. As Pad hardware becomes cheaper and cheaper, then the total cost of ownership is going to shift from the hardward to the software. Clearly, the open source Android is going to be able to trump the proprietary and relatively expensive to make iOS on a cost-per-cost basis. Apple will have to get aggressive at price cutting.

Scarcity Marketing is hot in the conference world. I have to laugh every time I hear a conference claiming “50 slots left for conference xyz”. Any conference – especially an older established conference – that uses this tactic, should be called out for poor conference planning. There is no excuse for it – other than poor conference management. If they can’t plan any better than that, shouldn’t their content be suspect as well?

We have found a left over box of  the famed 2003 Tie-Dye WebmasterWorld T-Shirts:

http://www.pubcon.com/blog/5000403.htm