AIAIO: Our Blog

We are witnessing an historic event, ladies and gentlemen. Captured on film for the very first time is the birth of a Twitter Spam Bot. Why, this is spectacular! Look at the rate at which she’s growing.
Shh, quiet, as we get a bit closer to her and watch her spawn followees and followers. Stupendous! In just 30 seconds she’s followed over 100 people and almost doubled her followers.
Rejoice with us in this momentous occasion:
http://www.screencast.com/t/ZQWkpIeTmvo

A couple of weeks ago, I had some time to kill before taking my son to Webop! class at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  Ever the technophile, we dropped into Best Buy, found a few items we didn’t really need, and were on our way to the checkout counter.

We were stopped by a innocent-enough looking woman, not clad in Best Buy attire.  She told us, “You better stick around for 10 minutes, something great is going to happen back there.”  (She motioned towards the always awe-inspiring flat panel section in the back of the store.)  Ever the skeptic, I asked, “Will we receive a free flat panel TV?”  “I can’t promise you that,” she replied, “but trust me, you’re going to like it.”

We hung around for 10 minutes and proceeded to the back where we stumbled into another customer talking live to Oprah Winfrey via Skype.  We quickly deduced that Oprah was doing an entire show on Skype, and we were her unknowing, but very willing, participants.

The woman who approached us 10 minutes earlier ushered us into the camera view.  Fearing the stigma of being labeled “that guy” who stood behind a customer talking to Oprah in Best Buy, I attempted to exit the frame.  But the woman ushered me back, whispering, “Stick around,” “She’ll talk to you next,” “She’s coming back.”

Oprah cut to London, and again at the woman’s urging, we stuck around for another few minutes.  As predicted, Oprah cut back to me and my son idling around the TV and web cam:

Oprah: “Hi Mr. Best Buy.”
Me: “Hi.”
Oprah: “It’s Oprah on TV.”
Me (to my son): “Say Hi Oprah.”
Son: “Hi Oprah!”
Oprah & Audience (collectively): “Awwww”

Oprah: “This is as fun as twittering.  This is a step above twitter twitter.”

Watch video of Mr. Best Buy and son talking to Oprah.

After the airing, Oprah was blasted by numerous people about her flagrant promotion of Skype.

So, what’s the point of sharing all of this?  First I thought I would write a blog entry defending Oprah for her promotion of Skype.  Then I thought maybe I would call @oprah out for saying “a step above twitter twitter.”  Finally I realized I just wanted to write this blog post to show people that I was on the Oprah Winfrey show with my son.  Enjoy!

<blatant self promotion>

Watch video of Mr. Best Buy and son talking to Oprah.

</blatant self promotion>

Last week I received in the mail an appeal to support the World Wildlife Fund. This is an organization I generally respect. Its motto: “WWF’s ultimate goal is to build a future where people live in harmony with nature.”

Yet the mailing I received from WWF contained 17 pieces of paper. Every piece is bright white, none are noted as recycled or post-consumer, and most have four-color printing on them.

I’ve never given to the WWF, but I have a membership at the American Museum of Natural History, so I guess I’m a good target. To curry my favor, the WWF thought it best if it sent me

• an appeal letter
• a blow-in showing the impact of my donation
• five “occasion” cards (Thinking of You, etc.) for my use
• five envelopes for the cards, bound by a piece of gummed paper
• a sheet of wildlife stickers
• a sheet of personalized return address labels (attached to the donation form)
• and an envelope for sending in my donation

I know direct marketing works, so I’m not going to debate whether I should have gotten mail from the WWF. But that doesn’t absolve the mixed message this envelope sends.

How can an environmental organization send 17 pieces of paper, unsolicited, to potential constituents? How many envelopes did they send out–10,000? 100,000? This campaign could have used a million sheets of paper, or more–98 percent of which were summarily thrown in the trash (or, hopefully, recycled). All of which runs directly counter to the organization’s stated mission.

I actually came away from this mailing less inclined to support the WWF, not more. That’s a serious misstep for a marketing campaign.

As an avid fan of new (well maintained) web based software, I’ve noticed a common attribute: it changes often, and it changes fast. Yesterday, Alex and I were testing a twitter application we created. He was certain that his followers were not seeing his replies to other followers and I was certain that they could. It turns out that I had enabled a setting in twitter to allow me to see them. We discovered that 98% of users did not have this enabled. This did not fare well for our application. It was back to the drawing board.
To our surprise, and not even a day after, we received news that twitter had removed that setting completely, and in favor of our application!
If you find yourself wishing that a software feature was different, try again soon, it may just be there next time.

Welcome back to our OmniGraffle tutorials, run by Mike Piastro, Ai’s senior information architect. This is the sixth and final (for now) in a series of short videos designed to help users get the most out of OmniGraffle with the least amount of confusion.

Today’s video is about tables. Watch the tutorial here.

Previous tutorials:
Part I–template setup and variables
Part II–shared layers
Part III–stencils
Part IV–actions
Part V–sub-graphs