Life of a Digital Entrepreneur

Mixmaster Colin was up late last night and whipped up a 15second video subsite on Viddler.

It’s super awesome and already 20+ people leaving videos.

One technical request that will be bigtime for all future stuff we do like this is upon recording, automatically setting the permalink to the 15s.viddler.com/sandieman/3e8653be URL so it links back to the 15s site as apposed to Viddler.com/explore/..

Which would you prefer?

My first 15 seconds:

First, I love you mom.

Second, this is an amazing technique. My mom doesn’t know I am listening to music and I can hear her very clearly.

When the technical team learns how to set Mac OSX’s time correctly, Apple’s world takeover will be complete. As I tweeted while in an argument with Microsoft Zune guy at New Media Expo, Apple is overtaking Microsoft and all Microsoft is doing is trying to PR this puppy, and should be manning all resources on building a better next version.

And for those of you on Brightkite, I didn’t check into Philly and posted this in Las Vegas instead of Philly. Anyway to got back and fix this?

It’s halfway through the New Media Expo and as you know I am real excited for all the video at this event.

If you have noticed my videos, I have taken out the Viddler brand and customized the player to really emphasize our positioning on Viddler. If you haven’t seen branding, check out this page with a few of the branded players.

With our “Brand Yourself” launch we have been switching the way we have been messaging ourselves to be a “Powered By Service” rather then a “Brand Claiming Service”. This is certainly a decentralizing our strategy but we really believe that supporting video podcasters is about taking away friction in this video space.

To point this out, Gary gave us mad props on this at his keynote (video still pending upload) but as Donna Papacosta points out, he was pretty adamant about it:

Our marketing on T-Shirt Distribution has the exact same messaging, check out some nice photo’s I found on Flickr of the shirts we printed out:

I love people using Viddler and cannot wait for all the rollouts we are going to push over the next month that are solving problems in this marketplace.

First of all, if you were even thinking about New Media Expo, you should be going.

If you haven’t introduced yourself yet and are going to New Media Expo, do it via Video. All you have to do is tag your video “newmediaexpo” or “newmediaexpo2008″ and it will go in general category of NewMediaExpo Videos. If you want to do an introduction, tag it as “newmediaexpointroduction” for it to go in introduction section.

New Media Expo is going to be a big event for Viddler. We are happy to setup our “virtual booth” up at the video section of New Media Expo, to help promote our next launch of “Brand Yourself” at Viddler. More information will come soon but watch the video for a sneak peak! forced teens vids: anime rape videos. public nudity movies nudity in public. teen lesbians toying in the shower christian sex toys.

This morning, this magazine arrived, and was happy to find an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary makes an excellent point in Affiliate Summit Magazine, Feed Front. It’s about being Genuine. He calls it being a RAT (real, authentic, and transparent). Now, I wouldn’t be big on this if I wasn’t caught up with all the spamming/real internet marketing occuring on Viddler. Check out Viddler Tag: Marketing, to see how big this has become on Viddler. It’s ugly. Cash gifting, lead generation, real estate marketing all seem to fit into this. Some of this has been brought on from TubeMogul, an amazing tool for podcasters to distribute high quality shows everywhere, but also a lead generators tricks of the trade.

At Viddler, we are a little conflicted with exactly what rules to put in place to prevent this and keep Viddler itself a “RAT”. Real Authentic Transparent.

Here is my metoday rant on this topic:

Would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!

And now for a genuine video from @clintus:

The iPhone is a very personable tool that I use to live. Now that it has been shattered I can’t help but feel the same way.

This was a result of my first time ever dropping the phone.

I have had the iPhone 3G for less than a month. It was a two foot fall (slipped out of my hand) directly on it’s screen on cement.

I went to the Apple store in Whitehall, PA and they denied my request for a replacement, saying that a 2 foot drop is my fault and they apply the same rules to handhelds as they do computers.

My options: consist of $500 to get a new one or the $300 to refurbish. There is also the factory warranty voiding perfoming (not worth anything anyways) $5 plastic replacement.

I have heard stories of different Apple stores having different policies on replacing these. And the good thing is that I travel alot for Viddler. Over the next few weeks I am going to be in NYC, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and I am going to try to find the cool Apple Genius that will replace this free of charge. I feel this is my only other option, asside from just dealing with it and joining a class action lawsuit.

If you can help out, and know a cool Apple Store Genius/employee, please email me: rsandie@viddler.com

Sorry for the cliche title, but Geni deserves it as it is one of the most genius services I have truly connected with in a while. I remember viewing the service a while back and thinking it was a good idea, but implementation was still lacking. Regardless, I added a few family members and tree more or less looked like this and I started with 4-5 family members (girlfriends I added as partners):

I recently revisited the application to see how well it was growing. First of all the application is 100x more functional then it was a few months ago. Major kudos to the Geni development team! Second, my family picked up on it. My mother added everyone in family tree. My mothers uncle Frank was adding people. As of now it’s 55 immediate and many more extended family members in the tree.

Check out family tree (via flash embed):

Using the site  I really think all Geni needs is a few minor extensibility product improvements and it could be a top 100 internet property within a year. These are the same feelings I had when I was one of the first users of thefacebook.com in college ;).

Product Suggestions for Geni:

1. Flickr Integration - I already upload my photo’s to Flickr and treat that as my management toolset for photo’s (yes I upload to facebook but who wants that). Machine Tags preffered. Importing would work as well.
2. Email Photo’s - 100,000% needed if you want me to keep on updating geni as often as I update flickr via my iPhone
3. Viddler Integration - last thing I want to do is upload more 150 Meg videos. Somehow I need the ability to store family videos on Geni. Machine tagging Viddler videos would be awesome use for this.
4. Family Privacy - after going over my girlfriends there was a few divorces and family history that she didn’t  want to get shared. Certain family members weren’t able to be put under a “unclassified person” so father-daughter relationships weren’t able to be fulfilled
5. Girlfriends - my girlfriend is not a partner, she is a girlfriend. I want the ability to be able to classify her as that on Geni.
6. Facebook Geni App - Hijacked - someone else sitting and profitting on Geni’s name on Facebook. I invited family to use the app without seeing the full functionality and painfully regret it. Geni should contact facebook and needs to develop a full on Facebook Application (none of this Gigya confusion).
7. BONUS: iPhone app similar to Facebook’s telling me of my families happening.