Blogonomics

Well, ask and you (well, I) shall receive. I’m now interning with James Turner of One by One Media and working my way towards Blogonomics.Blogonomics is a 5 day blog conference in October where individuals like Jeremy Wright, Tris Hussey, Darren Rowse and Robert Scoble will be speaking (among many other people). This should be a great trip because it’s not merely a social opportunity, it’s a cruise! I didn’t even realize cruise ships had wireless. Personally, I’m looking forward to a day of (mini) golf and some great company.

Anyway, it seems pretty evident that anyone who has anything to do with blogs should be going to this event. You’ll obviously learn a lot and have a lot of great conversations. In addition, you can bring guests! Seems like a nice escape for folks because the conference is held during the ~~boring~~ down time on the ship.

With that said: I’m excited. Have you signed up yet? Apparently the slots are filling up pretty quickly. Plus, if you register now you’ll get a pretty decent discount. So… go register! Don’t forget to tell them devinreams.com sent you!

Biphasic Sleep (Napping) FAQ

63 Replies

I keep getting asked a few of the same questions so I thought I’d take a post to gather my thoughts on biphasic sleeping, also known as napping.

1. You sleep… when exactly?

I sleep twice in a day. The first time being sometime in the early evening (around 8:30) and this block of sleep is only for 90 minutes (at least, thats the plan, see #4). After my first block of sleep I’m extremely refreshed and ready to go another few hours. I set myself to be back up by about 6 so I either go to sleep again at 1:30a or 3a. Note these are in 90 minute increments again.

2. What does 90 minutes have to do with anything?

The 90-minute cycle actually refers to one complete sleep cycle. This includes going through REM sleep; the most important part of sleeping. Since I don’t force myself to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle I’m much more refreshed and it’s much easier to actually get up.

3. Is it hard to get up at 6 every day?

Surprisingly, no. I used to have trouble getting up at 8 or even 9 every day. I’m convinced it was because I was constantly pulling myself up out of the middle of a sleep cycle. Our brains get stuck down in ‘sleep world’ and have a hard time unnaturally coming back up.

4. Do you ever screw up your sleeping schedule?

On occasion, yes. It’s funny but sometimes I’ll mis-set my alarm and find myself taking a 3 or 4.5 hour nap. I actually wake up naturally at 3 or 4.5 hours. I smile because people who thought I’d be ‘back in a few’ or would ‘call them in an few hours’ end up going to sleep that night slightly confused. They know its something nap-related. Oh well. I just adjust my second sleep period. For example, last night I went to bed at 9:30p and woke up at 2a. Oops! I ended up working until 5a, slept until 6:30 and, well, here I am! I had a midterm at 9:30 and have felt fine all day.

5. Do you ever sleep in?

To me, “sleeping in” is anything more than 6 hours. My body is pretty good at waking itself up automatically after a REM cycle (end of a 90 minute increment). On Saturdays I treat myself to 7.5 or 9 hours of sleep. People who advocate 8 hours of sleep are nuts. Seriously.

6. Does this interfere with your (social) life?

Nope. If I’m not in a place where I can’t just decide to take a nap then I simply don’t that day. I will just sleep 6 or 7.5 hours that evening and pick back up the next day. It seems like the simplest solution and hasn’t given me any problems. I do start to yawn quite a bit though as the night wears on..

7. Are there any side effects?

Increased productivity, smaller todo piles, less magazines to read on my bookshelf (hopefully this will carry over to books). But seriously, there have been no medical side effects whatsoever. This is far from anything radical like polyphasic sleeping.

8. Would you try polyphasic sleeping?

I’ll try anything. I don’t see it as something feasable for me at any point in my life. I may be wrong though. If I ever have the ability to control my schedule like that (30m naps every 4h) then sure, I’ll give myself a month or so to try it out.

9. Where did you even hear about this?

I find neat stuff online. This happens to be one of those things…

Credit Question

2 Replies

Is it normal for a bank to extend your credit limit without any kind of request? I wasn’t able to effectively Google that particular question. Anyway, Wells Fargo just upped my limit a little bit today with no notice whatsoever. I looked around and their site said they don’t extend additional credit until you’re a customer for a year. I’ve only been around 4 months. Oh well, it’s still less than Dell Premiere is willing to risk on me, though.

Event Discounts

3 Replies

Why don’t awesome events have student discounts? I can start rattling off a list of big events I would kill to go to this year (or last, or probably even next). But, they cost something like $300, $500 or even $1000-plus. Jeremy pointed out Blogonomics today. It sounds like an awesome trip. Why don’t the folks putting on big events start setting aside some student tickets? We’d love to participate, too… unfortunately some of us have to pay for a lot of schooling though. How about a send-Devin-to-Blogonomics fund? I’ll sell my soul, I’ll do anything!

More GMail Features

Review: edgeio

3 Replies

I’ve had time to play with a new service called edgeio. Essentially, it’s a service that enables bloggers to post listings (job, help wanted, housing, etc.) to their blogs. Edgeio then crawls the blogs and finds the posts tagged ‘listing’ and will aggregate them. The service is free to use but will also provide publishers with additional paid services (to help increase exposure).

At first glance the website is a lot to try and navigate. I found myself not noticing some things that I should have. For instance when creating an account it was not very clear to me how to pick my location. I finally figured out that not only do I have to put in the zip code/city but I then have to click the corresponding city that pops up. I figured by putting in the zip I had done my part. This registration process took three times becuase the error message at the top didn’t stand out. I didn’t realize the captcha changed each time. Haha, I do know how to use the interweb, I swear.

The listings are pretty straight forward. If you click the thumbnail you can see that the listing basically pulls the text (‘I would like to sell…’) from the blog entry and any other information (price, location, tags). I had a few thoughts just looking at the listing though. For instance, when I ‘Subscribe’ what kind of information is going to be sent via RSS? I also thought that the ‘report spam’ button would be useful. But, I suspect (read: hope) edgeio will also have some mechanisms in place. I also like the fact that edgeio incorporates ‘Other Profiles’ like ebay and flickr.

Here is my sample listing which you can see to the right (the page where you manage the listing). Within a few seconds of adding my blog to my profile it had the listing added and a comfirmation email in my inbox. Managing listings are pretty straight forward. But, you can’t change any of the content through the edgeio website. From what I can tell all you’re able to do is change your tags, the listing status, and the price. I wasn’t able to determine whether or not an update to the blog means an update to the listing. I haven’t seen my update yet but they claim that once the blog is added it will routinely check up on it (every 24 hours). Luckily I can go to ‘My Edgeio’ and hit ‘Check for new posts’ under the appropriate blog. Interestingly enough my post was updated but I don’t see it on the page (it has the updates on the ‘Manage’ page, though). Update: It just took a little while…

Anyway, I feel this will have some interesting implications on how individual business is done online. No longer do we have to pay a buck to put something on ebay. This seems like craigslist meets web2.0 meets blogs. I’m interested to see what the paid services consist of. I guess my final thought is: will the blogosphere catch on? Personally, I think if I had anything of substance (services, jobs, stuff for sale) to add I would certainly use edgeio. It’d be silly not to.
[tags]tech, web2.0, edgeio, blogging, commerce, listing[/tags]

Carnival of Marketing

Advice for Grads

Market to College Students

7 Replies

Despite what most marketing consulting groups will tell you, marketing something to college students is not that easy. Sure, we have thousands of dollars in disposable income (for the most part). But, here’s the kicker: we don’t want to spend it on you…

…yet. It’s becuase today’s 18-24 year old still fits the ‘starving student’ model. Yes, some may have more of Daddy’s money to play with than others and that’s fine. There are also a number of students that work while maintaining little-to-no liabilities. I might fall under that category (and I might have just bought a 24″ LCD monitor). But I digress…

My point is, students look for value and they typically find it on a price tag. I can’t begin to explain how many friends will tell me “Wal-Mart is evil”. The second I tell them where I bought my $20 bookcase I’m pretty sure I can actually hear a paradigm shifting. They think to themselves “oh no…” because they just realized they can save their money when purchasing trivial things like a bookshelf. Sure, it may be essential, but as long as it shelves books they’re happy. Student’s like cheap.

What if you’re not in the “cheap” business though? How do you market yourself to these same individuals? Free stuff. It’s so simple, really. You attract people by providing the most value for the least money. Say you hand out slices of pizza all day at the student union. From my perspective I see the following: Value: $3, Cost: $0. Let’s do some math:

3 / 0 = Error

Handing out your $3 slices of pizza is so valuable that modern mathmatics can’t even compute it! I’ll let you ponder that for a moment…

Seriously, we’re smart people. We notice little gestures like this. The majority of us are loyal to those who treat us well. Coupons are great but we’re not going to go looking for them. You have to hand me the 20% off discount as I’m looking to buy something. Dell has mastered this art and, well, you know the rest of the story. But, keep in mind: if you hurt us, we’ll be sure to let people know…

In fact, we’ll let them know pretty freaking fast. Facebook, MySpace, AIM, GIM cellphones and blogs keep us connected to our friends even when we’re asleep. Friends trust each other, too. Why else would Dave Balter be making so much money?

Our constant connections coupled with high levels of trust result in powerful word of mouth marketing. Students are busy. It’s easier to have a friend-who’s done the research-to let us know what he found. With that said: your first impression may end up being three, four, or a hundred.

Let’s review:

Students have money, but they need a good reason to spend it.
Students are, for the most part, cheap. They like free.
Once you impress some students with cheap, they’ll tell their friends.
Their friends will make a decision based on the message you provided the first student with.
You will then reap the benefits of impressing just a few, influential students through additional sales.
You don’t want to violate trust, college students are smart. Many even smarter than you.

So, no, it’s not as easy as putting an ad in a college paper. It’s certainly not going to help you if you mail us some crap (email, facebook messages, direct mail). What’s the best thing you could possibly do? Host an event.

It’s as simple as a party. Show me a good time and I’ll show you my wallet. Talk to me as if I’m a real person, I’ll tell you the truth. Show me a movie for free and I’ll have money to spend on your concessions. Give me great prizes to win and I’ll pay attention. But, the second you abuse any information I give you… we’re through.

[tags]college, marketing, students, word of mouth[/tags]

Cheney Close Range?

2 Replies

Here’s an interesting report concluding that Cheney’s shot was between 15 and 18 feet, not the reported 90. My only question is: why would they lie? What difference does the distance make? Either way, as Jon Stewart so eloquently put it, the Vice President shot a 78-year old man in the face.