Eat at Subway today to help save Chuck!

 Since Subway advertises on Chuck, there's a grassroots movement to show support for the show by supporting a sponsor. So eat at Subway sometime today (the season finale is tonight) an let them know you're doing it because you want to save Chuck.

Speaking of, #savechuck is a trending topic on Twitter right now. Go geeks!

50,000

Sometime yesterday The Other Drummer had its 50,000th visitor (according to Site Meter).

Thanks to all my readers. I find it hard to believe you have each visited 10,000 times. You guys really rock.

P.S. Apple, I apologize for overshadowing your "A billion downloads from the App Store news."

New Twitter features in the sidebar?

As you can see from this screenshot of my oft neglected @livsimpl Twitter account, it looks like Twitter may be testing/rolling out a search box and Trending Topics in the sidebar.

Has anyone else seen this in their account? Or did I sign up for some service I forgot about that provides those things in the sidebar? :) Let me know in the comments.

This messes with your head

In a CNN article about whether or not Gov. Ahnold would be in the upcoming Terminator: Salvation movie, he said no unless they could CG him in. That's all well and good except the article describes the fourth installment in the Terminator series as "a prequel."

It's the fourth movie.

The events in the movie take place before the events in the first movie.

But it takes place in the future.

So is it really a prequel?

Discuss in the comments.

Help save Chuck from being cancelled

Word on the Interwebs is that Chuck may be on the chopping block. From what I read it's finishing fourth in its time slot. Granted, it's only in its second season and is going up against shows like Dancing with the Stars and House but that doesn't mean it isn't a great show. It's one of my favorite shows on right now and, in fact, of all the shows on TV it would be the one I miss the most.

"Blasphemy!" some of you my cry. I know what you're thinking: what about The Office and 30 Rock?

The Office is... I don't know what The Office is anymore. Jumped the shark? I don't know. But what I do know is that I don't care about it like I did a couple of years ago.

30 Rock... Yes, it's well-written and funny. But it ends there. There's more emotion involved with the characters in Chuck (in addition to being laugh-out-loud funny) which is lacking in other shows. (If you haven't seen Chuck yet, think Jim and Pam during season two of The Office - kind of like that.)

Click the image below to get the details on how to best save Chuck:

Proof that Twitter is now mainstream

Sure, Oprah's on Twitter. But so is Darth Vader.

Love Story (Taylor Swift) meets Viva La Vida (Coldplay) on the piano

Jon's got some mad skills. They really kick in around 3:25 so don't stop watching until at least 4:00.

Oh, yeah. If you like it, spread the word by posting it on your own blog or Facebook page. It's all about the social media love, right?

Shaq schools Oprah on web etiquette

Take that, Audi

In case you can't read it, Audi's billboard reads, "Your move BMW."


Someone at BMW's ad agency got a raise.

I am a mighty hunter

I was in Ogden last weekend and bagged this beaut' with nothing but a spork, some yarn and my keen animal instincts. Yes, I am that good.

Made for some great steaks.

Image courtesy of here.

POLL: Do you struggle coming up with date ideas?

It started in high school...wondering what in the world to do on a date. Things didn't change much in college and now that I'm married I still rack my brains over what to do on the (sporadic - sorry honey) date night. (Are you the same way? Vote in the poll.)

So let's do a little something about that, shall we? In one sentence list your five most memorable dates. For example:

Tandem biking into the canyon and a picnic dinner.

Or you can be more specific (If your date is location-specific please put the applicable city in parenthesis after the date):

Dinner at Cafe Molise and Phantom of the Opera at Capitol Theater. (Salt Lake City)

If ten people participate we all have 50 date ideas to choose from. Three cheers for crowdsourcing. Tell your friends.

Image courtesy of here.

Missing a golden opportunity

As you may have heard, Apple implemented its tiered pricing structure for music in iTunes: 69 cents for stuff nobody buys, the traditional 99 cents for good stuff and $1.29 for new stuff (that's my assessment of it anyway).

Apple is the worlds largest music retailer. They are the 700 pound gorilla. They are the Microsoft of the music distribution industry. The ones to beat. The king of the hill. (I was going to put additional increasingly ridiculous examples here but I decided against it.)

Amazon and Walmart are the ones competing with Apple in the download music business. And they both just blew a golden opportunity.

With the lack of DRM on all music nowadays (thank goodness) Amazon and Walmart lost their only point of differentiation with iTunes. Now that DRM is gone, why would anyone buy from Walmart's crappy online store when you can get the EXACT same product from Apple and have it automatically work in the beautiful ecosystem they've established?

Then Apple handed them a key differentiator: price.

When Apple was forced to do a tiered price structure Amazon and Walmart had free reign to steal one of the things that made Apple so successful in the first place: any song you want for 99 cents. The simplicity of knowing exactly what you're going to be paying is huge. iTunes used to be the one-stop-shop. Now I can get the songs I actually want cheaper somewhere else - Amazon or Walmart.

But instead of holding onto that point of differentiation and standing on their own, today Amazon and Walmart followed right along and also introduced their own tiered models.

If the tiered model was so great, why didn't they do it before?

Maybe the labels forced them into it like they forced Apple into it, although I find it doubtful since they were making concessions for Amazon and others on DRM.

If the music industry was worried about Apple's dominance and power in the market before they should be losing a lot more sleep about it now.

Thoughts? Did I miss something? Leave word in the comments.

Image courtesy of here.

No way! (Trashy moves again)

The Cleaning Guy walked in my office (on his phone), removed Trashy from his designated place, emptied him, and PUT HIM BACK IN FRONT OF MY DESK DRAWERS!

I'm sitting right here! Helllooooooo? Can you see me?

(In reference to this ongoing project.)

Coolest. Doormat. Ever.

I would most definitely put this outside my office door.

I also think they should make an "esc" one for inside offices.

Anyone want to buy me one?

Via Swissmiss.

Fw: How to properly forward email

I love my Uncle Clark. He's a very funny man. I could tell you all the funny things he's done but I'm guessing a few of them are illegal in some states so I'll refrain. However, Uncle Clark has a tendency to forward a lot of email. The types of email that have been forwarded to him and often include Comic Sans, multi-colored type and/or animated GIFs and almost without exception a plea to forward the email on to everyone you know. You know what I'm talking about.

Which is why I busted a gut when I got the following email forwarded to me:

How To Forward E-MAIL Appropriately.

A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails. Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedures.. 

Do you really know how to forward e-mails? Most of us DO NOT know how. 

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it?
 

---

Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every e-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! 

How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps:

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top).. That's right, DELETE them.Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever you know how to to. It only takes a second. You MUST click the 'Forward' button firstand then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don't hit the forward button first you won't have full editing functions. I particularly dislike having to scroll through 200 Email addresses before I get to the email. 

(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say 'Undisclosed Recipients' in the 'TO:' field of the people who receive it. That way you aren't sharing all those addresses with every Tom, Dick or Harry. 

(3) Remove any 'FW :' in the subject line You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading. Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent. These are the ones that often end up having picked up a virus from somebody. This is really important. 

(5) Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. 

A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email add resses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition. (Actually, if you think about it, who's supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don't believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just aint so!) 

(6) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say that something like, 'Send this email to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.' Or, sometimes they'll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen.

IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!) I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed. (Could be why I haven't won the lottery??)

(7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for Years! Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes. com/ 

Its really easy to find out if it's real or not. If it's not, please don't pass it on. So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.

Finally, here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know (but strip my address off first, please).

This is something that SHOULD be forwarded.

Needing the right advertising

In his post We Need The Right Advertising Chris Brogan says that advertising is losing its impact because, "Most advertising fell off its original premise: to inform." While I agree advertising isn't as focused on informing people as it once was (and I mentioned as much in my social media presentation) I disagree that's the reason traditional advertising is losing its oomph.

Chris goes on to say, "All that’s required next are the minds and the passions to deliver the new (and by new, I might mean very old) advertising to people who seek to be informed instead of entertained."

I disagree. The reason advertising used to be information-heavy was because it was really the only place you could find out about a product or service short of making a trip to the store. Nowadays if I want to know about any product I can jump online and find anything and everything about it.

The exception to that rule is introducing a new product: Doing a national TV campaign is much better than simply updating your website and hoping someone 1. notices and 2. cares enough to pass the information along.

Two examples of what I'm talking about:

1. Ford runs a TV campaign to announce its new cross-over vehicle, the Flex. This is good way to get the word out to a bunch of people because otherwise they wouldn't know it existed. (Although the ads are probably low on the concept/emotional spectrum. But I digress.)

2. Ford runs a TV campaign showing a F150 pulling a lot of stuff and driving over rocks saying it's "best in its class," gets 15 miles per gallon and has keyless entry. This is dumb. It's a bunch of information I didn't ask to for and is readily available to me online should I want to find it. It doesn't create an emotional tie to anything (straight information rarely does) and therefore does little to benefit the product or the brand.

Yelling the same thing over and over doesn't change minds.

If people already know about your product you don't need to pack an ad full of information about it. Knowing an F150's gas mileage, that it has keyless entry and even that it's "best in its class" isn't going to sell me on one. It probably won't even make me think of it more favorably.

However, if an ad engages me emotionally or intellectually (through humor, entertainment, etc.) and tells me no more about the product than where to find more information online the ad has accomplished something that most other ads won't.

Thoughts? Sound off in the comments.

Results of the moving trash can experiment

Alrighty. Monday I moved my garbage can back to its proper place. Tuesday morning it was where I left it...almost. It was sticking out about six inches further than it should have been. Considering it was 12 feet away the day before I consider this a small victory.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to have everyone in the office who has been affected by this to do the same experiment. Then we'd all move our trash cans back at the same time.

Who's in?

As a man, sometimes there is no correct answer

A few months ago my wife asked me whether or not she looked pregnant. (For the record, she was about five months along - due in May.)

My Man Radar kicked in immediately. I quickly thought about my options and decided that between saying a woman looked pregnant and saying she didn't look pregnant it would be better to go with the latter. Because, really, does a woman ever want to hear, "Honey, you look pregnant"? I doubted it. Feeling pretty good about my answer I responded, "Not at all!"

Wrong answer.

Despite my Man Radar calculations and the fact that, in my opinion, Amy was barely showing and as hot as ever this was the wrong thing to say.

"What? Seriously? Look at this!" She said as she stuck her stomach out as far as she could. "You don't think I look pregnant?"

"Uh...no," I backpedaled. "You look pregnant. Very pregnant! Nine months! Huge!"

I don't know if she saw the humor in my response because she changed the subject.


P.S. When I told my father in-law this story he just laughed at me.