How to catch a Marketing Virus from a Donkey

You are probably looking at the title of this post wondering if I have gone loopy.

“How DO you catch a marketing virus from a doneky?  What does virus have to do with marketing, let alone a donkey?

There is an overflowing torrent of resources on the web and in blogs about viral marketing, what it is, how to manage it , the good, the bad and the ugly.

What I am talking about is a very special viral marketing project called “Where is Basil?” Hosted by Ben Yoskovitz, from IGotNewsForYou, this project tracks the travels of a code-writing donkey called Basil as he winds his way around the world visiting an ever-growing list of bloggers.  The “host blogger” get the display their creative writing skills, benefit from increased awareness of them and their blog, and even gets the added extra of having a copy of the Fawlty Towers series DVD for a week.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would be one of the future hosts of Basil the donkey.  Well the future has arrived.  This week I have been blogging about Basil visiting Sydney (specifically Arncliffe and the southern suburbs).

Previous hosts of Basil have included Bill and Kathee Austin (in Scottsdale Arizona), Easton Ellsworth (in Meza Arizona) and Terry aka Starbucker (in Connecticut)

I still have a few days to show Basil around Sydney and a couple more posts to go and am looking for some inspiration from you (there are even prizes for the most creative suggestions).

What would you do with a code-writing donkey in Sydney?  If you don’t know much about Sydney what would you like him to show you?

Leave your suggestions below.  The most creative answers will win a one-year subscription to the IGotNewsForYou electronic mock newspage (if you haven’t tried this yet pop over now – it is a very, very funny and more interesting than sending the boring old e-card).

Tech Tool – How to Protect Your Photos with Watermarks

"I would like to embed a watermark into the photo to avoid copyright issues. Any ideas?"

This was the question that I got from Normajean Gasking at Quamby Falls Lodge earlier in the week.  (Wow – This place definitely needs some investigation.  It looks just like what might be required after a very busy year).

There are a number of ways to place a watermark on photos.  If you have Photoshop, GIMP or any other number of image applications who can easily add what appears to be a watermark by using text that would generally be white (or a light shade of gray) and applying a very light transparency.  This is a manual process and is normally only something you would do for occassional photos.

If you are looking for a way to automate the watermarking process or even apply a watermark across a large batch of photos then I would strongly recommend using an application designed for that purpose.

My recommendation for a cost effective softwatre application that does this batch processing is Watermark Factory - www.watermarkfactory.com.  The program supports batch renaming, resizing and conversion. It also includes other features such as rotating, batch cropping, control over your output size, and a built-in watermark gallery.

They offer a 15-day free download trial and after that it is a very reasonable USD$29.95.  Well worth a try!

Outstanding Example of Online Community-Focused Learning

According to a study by the Team at Intel’s People-Centred Research facility :

A key driver of worldwide adoption of technology for the past two decades has been the human desire to connect with other human beings. The most rapidly scaling services — email, instant messaging, cell phone adoption, and text messaging on cell phones have all been about people connecting with people.

Not suprising really.

I have also found that one of the secondary drivers in the adoption of technology has been for the purposes of learning – parents providing online access for their kids, seniors doing research on family history and areas of interest, business owners using online sources to stay up to date or learn new skills.

Many times this will happen in isolation – a single reader learning from a single source – but sometimes the benefits of the learning are amplified when a single source provides multiple voices and perspectives.  That is what is currently happening at the Joyful Jubilant Learning Forum hosted by Rosa Say at her Talking Story blog.

Rosa is hosting a forum on Learning during September and has gathered together 27 guest writers to talk about learning.  There are perspectives from around the globe and I am pleased to say that I am the current guest author.  Even though there were many aspects of learning I could have share I decided to stick with my passion for demystifying technology and wrote a piece called "10 Ways to Become Fluent in Technology".

Even if technology is not what you most enjoy learning about you will find many other articles that will engage you in a learning conversation.

Why not head on over there now ….

Go Out Doing What You Love

It hasn’t been a good week in Australia for some of the urban heros.  The news this afternoon that Peter Brock, Australian motor racing icon, has died in an accident at the Targa West has knocked me around some this afternoon.

Much like the recent death of Steve Irwin, Peter Brock died pursuing his passion.  He set the standard in Australian motor racing for skills, professionalism and exposure and was a mentor to many in the industry.

He displayed many of the qualities not just of a racing driver but also what contributes to success as an entrepreneur – passionate, dedicated to his vision, strong sense of purpose, self-confidence, strong support team, ability to communicate your message with others, the ability to ask for the things you need.

These qualities were not just focused on motor racing but also in recent years to the creation of the Peter Brock Foundation and the support that he provided to kids less fortunate than most.

I spent many, many hours over the past 25+ years admiring his skill on and off the racing track and feel a certain amount of loss at the sad of his passing.

Vale Peter Brock!