BowieNet was available as early as end of Q3 in 1998. David Bowie owned his own Internet service provider business. We signed up for and used BowieNet to get access to exclusive content for about 7 months. Lycos, during that time, was our favorite search engine because its newsfeeds were available via BowieNet.
We were fans of David Bowie because he showed young people that they could be whatever they wanted to be, and they could reinvent themselves any time they wanted. He kind of gave them a sense of confidence, if you know what I mean. We had an email address at one time, something like carverkids at davidbowie.com. We were enthralled because of live chats with our favorite music celebrities.
I forgot about this experience from my past until David Bowie passed away January 12, 2016. Actually, one of my students from 1999 called to tell me how much she loved learning to use the Internet, and now she works for Google. Google? Nice! We recalled how BowieNet reminded us of MySpace, kind of heavy feeling and slow but really fun.
David Bowie was not only a real inspiration for the young people that I had the joy to teach but also to anyone who wanted to evolve from pure technical dev to business dev to the arts and back, kind of "Renaissance-ish"!
Take me, for instance. I think that David Bowie was one of the many people who have inspired me to be more than a 1999 DotCom startup co-founder, English teacher, website developer, and social media networker. I've co-founded my own fashion brand called Suzahdi. Who knows where that will go? It's scary, fun and rewarding to reinvent.
Some present-day philosophers believe that the popularity of hipster culture may be important for American economy. How? The US needs to more high school graduates with potential, attitude, and curiosity necessary to be software engineers, graphic designers, and Wikipedia editors ... who mix the best of the old with who knows what is new.
Life as a hipster is complex. They keep online sex diaries and play with Instagram incessantly on old Tandy desktops (or Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and the lastest i-Whatever when no one is looking) in an Occupy Low-tech/analog Media and Device World. Institutional management in growing a country's economy may be detrimental and claustrophobic, at best and counter-productive to a world that needs more ideas and shockingly practical innovations, but self-starters like hipsters could meet this criteria, maybe ... especially with social media mass surveillance as is, in place, but not really.
A Cracked magazine writer's words about Hipster Douchebags (coined by the Slays), "This is about looking like you traveled back from the not too distant future. A future populated by douchebags."
If you are 25 - 35 years of age or act like you are, have larges sums of disposable income and have not bought a house yet, then you are the demographic that Apple markets to. You could be a hipster. If you mostly use your smartphone on speaker mode in public, you are not hipster material. They only do that in private. If you watch Doctor Who and listen to George Jones in your attic and, LOL, suddenly have an epiphany of who you really are, you should have been a hipster. They wear ear plugs at concerts and wear their skinny jeans with hems folded neatly three times under and tucked up behind that great big tongue on Chuck Taylors.
Study Slavoj Žižek. He is the most popular philosopher of hipsters. Wikipedia writers share that critics believe he "constantly recycles old ideas which were scientifically refuted long ago." Like low-tech gadgets, that is seductive. It saves hipsters from information-overload, massive stimulation, and the often depressing anonymity of fast-paced city life. Besides, no matter how often people say we are never alone with Facebook, online social networks do not replace street corner, front porch, and neighborhood cafe conversations and community. In fact, hipsters are not afraid to strike up conversations with people they do not know, and they don't mind sitting at communal tables German-style at restaurants. Pass the currywurst, maybe.
Speaking of German things, the July, 2012 Hipster Olympics was held in Berlin. Over 8000 opt-out kind of people gathered to cheer on lackadaisical participant competitions. What did they do? They built mustaches out of duct tape, cello tape and construction paper. They sprinted around turntables. They did the standard broad jump with relaxed textile shoulder bags. This year 2013, they should add a pseudo Mash-Up event where each participant brings found low-tech and high-tech materials with an objective to create new wearable tech that doesn't look like tech. (Opposite of steam punk fashion!)
It's hard to look back at you, baby, but here's my number (to my favorite thrift store), so call me, maybe.
I remember buying a dot matrix printer also and hating it because the holes never matched up. The computer's memory could be expanded to 640 kb. This would be accomplished by placing a memory expansion card, which came with 128 kB, in the expansion slot and adding another 256 kB (for a total of 384) kilobytes in memory chips to this board. I brought this Tandy 1000 HX into my English and gifted studies classes at G.W. Carver Middle School. We actually practiced taking it apart and putting it back together whenever discipline got really bad and also many times during a Power Puff Mechanics class. ;-)
I wonder where that computer is now? I don't even remember what I did with it, but I miss it sometimes. Where is that Introduction to Computers teacher?
The only reason I wrote about this is that Denzil Daniel, my Facebook friend and engineer, based in Dubai, was talking about negative experiences can actually inspire. I agree ... if you let them.
I heard that my Introduction to Computers class professor is in his 80s and lives in Atlanta. I think I'll sign up for Peachtree Petals' Atlanta Floral Gift Club and set up one reddish-black rose to be delivered to him on a monthly recurring basis with, "Thank you so much for telling me I would never be able to understand computers."
Oktopost, a hot, new social media marketing platform for business looks like it fits the "effective use of social media" bill. It enables you with the least effort to publish social messages, converse with prospects and generate leads. It lets you use its computational techniques and software in the cloud for analyzing huge volumes of data that even the best multi-tasker in your organization could never begin to achieve.
Several of my industry friends at DIDX, at conferences I participate in, on Skype, Linkedin, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube and TelecomYou have recommended Oktopost to me, so that is why I checked it out and am now sharing it with my readers. My friends talk about how difficult it is for most of them to use social media effectively and how Oktopost has made their work lives less stressful and more productive. Most of them normally feel lost in the swamp of LIKE, FOLLOW, PIN, and THUMBS UP or DOWN and would love for trusted, automated algorithms to take over.
Perry Nalevka, a friend of mine since his MobileMax days, works with Oktopost, so I have some inside information about how it works. He gave me a tour which showed some great features such as truly leveraging all of Linkedin's best networking and business development tools that most of us do not have time to work with.
Oktopost saves time and effort and gives promising leads that we don't even realize are waiting for us in social media. Also once a company sets up an Oktopost account with the social profiles of all the people associated with the company, each of those people can participate in posting to the company account. In turn, Oktopost enables one to post to all connected Linkedin individual accounts and Linkedin group accounts that one is allowed to access.
Let's say we post to 100 different Linkedin groups a certain discussion question. The Oktopost social inbox would collect those messages. Instead of wasting time, logging into Linkedin and opening each Group and each message from any Individual; all is collected in one place on Oktopost. We can answer each from Oktopost, but those answers post back to the correct location in Linkedin. Cool!
What is the difference between Oktopost and Hootsuite or Oktopost and TweetDeck? Social inbox and post to call to action to leads' conversion, for one. Oktopost seems to pay more attention to detail, almost as if its automated algorithms are smarter. I mentioned how much easier that Oktopost is to use than other platforms like it that I have tried. It has scheduled messaging available and in addition, a message manager where one can save message templates to use over and over.
The analyses tools are the best such as the ability to see how many clicks on each message, see which social media platform is more effective for each type of message, which Linkedin groups were most interested, and to keep track of one's calls to action and the resulting leads. How does Oktopost do the last item? It gives the Oktopost user some code to include on their website and elsewhere that automates the conversions! What would normally take a marketing teams days to complete ... can take as little as ten minutes with Oktopost.
It is also possible to integrate Oktopost with Sales Force, Google Analytics, BaseCamp or Marketo.
I think Oktopost will not take the place of a company's marketing team regarding social media, but it will make it so much more efficient, ROI-friendly, and able to convert "calls to action" to leads. Social media is big data that is begging to be mined for the benefit of businesses and their customers.
(Stream the car podcast, or download it.)
Keep in mind, the number one selling car for the past 14 years in Canada has been the Honda Civic. The 2004 model, which is exactly one of my cars, won the KBB Award # 1 Best Used Car under $8000, the Honda Fit (Jazz) is #7 among Coolest Cars under $18,000, and the Honda Crosstour is # 2 among top 10 Head Turners.
Mr. Mierins says, "If you asked me my favorite car ... I drive a Honda Pilot because I have four kids and a dog ... it's one of the only sports utility vehicles that fits eight people. But if you want to talk about a favorite car, how about the S2000? It is not produced right now, but it is a convertible and was available a few years back ... Honda was able to get the most horse power per liter of any regulated * aspirated car which means it didn't have any turbo chargers. This enabled high fuel efficiency and really high horse power ..."
We discuss the hottest car technologies in 2012 and forward such as navigation tools, ability to plug in one's iPod, back-up camera and back-up assist, heated/cooled option seats, awesome traction control systems, satellite radio, and dual audio and video entertainment such as audio in front seat and video in back seat at the same time. The back-up camera and back-up assist set-up, for example, is plugged into the navigation system. There are two choices, to see downward behind your car or straight across. It saves time and provides increased safety.
Jeff discusses the Honda Jazz (called Honda Fit in North America). The one that is currently available is not an electric car. He mentions Honda's hydrogen vehicles being tested in California, but with the cold weather of Canada, the car's tail pipe that would normally drain water, would instead be filled with a big popsicle stick. Plus the infrastructure for electric cars and hygrogen cars is not quite universally ready.
About a decade ago, Mr. Mierins visited the Honda development site in Tochigi, Japan. This is the the world’s first indoor, all-weather, omni-directional, vehicle-to-vehicle crash test center, built to increase research in safety technologies that will help vehicles withstand real-world traffic accidents. Jeff saw and was able to discuss first-hand the progress of the hybrids and other futuristic Hondas. The most important difficulty in the hybrid and electrical cars is finding charging stations to "refuel." The 120 volt electrical system in the typical North American home is not compatible. A vehicle would need to complete charging in an overnight period! A minimum of 600 voltage is necessary to charge in an hour or less.
An interesting bit of Canadian automobile trivia is that the Honda Civic was the first hybrid to be introduced in the nation of Canada.
Jeff compares the marketing and fashion strategy of Toyota Prius and Honda Civic hybrid introduction. (First person to comment correctly to this blog post as to the two tell-tale signs if a Honda Civic is hybrid or not ... will receive a complimentary @AstraQom ball cap. Jeff gives the answer in the audio podcast around the 12.08 mark.)
Want to know the basics of success in selling, buying or trading a car? The advice Mr. Mierins gives is no-nonsense, practical and so true: keep it clean, maintained and avoid smoking in it.
A side track we took in the conversation is concerning the issues of SMBs in the middle of peripheral road construction, the tax perspective, and the detrimental effect on sales and customer visits. We discussed a KPMG business report showing Halifax, Trois-Rivieres, and Charlotteltown as the top three cities in Canada, but obviously there are extra layers of bureaucracy in Ottawa which slows business momentum. Those layers are municipal, provincial and federal even, since Ottawa is the Capital of Canada.
As an aside ... I accidentally called Mr. Mierins' company ... Dow Jones when informing the AstraQom CEO of my plan to itonterview. Jonathan Sowah's jaw dropped when I said I was interviewing the owner. ;-) Dow Jones? The Dow Honda dealership is open for service at 6:30 AM and for sales at 9 AM. They have extended hours during pre, during, and post "snow days" for tire changes. Dow Honda's website is http://www.dowhonda.com, and its popular Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/DOWHonda.
Expect more interview collaborations with Jeff Mierins on his Mercedes Benz (love my C280 4matic) center and power vehicles dealership! We'll cover communications and IP technologies and applications in relation to cars also. Isn't the ITEXPO West 2012 car giveaway a hot blue convertible Mustang?