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The Mark & Marcuses of Content Marketing #mm11

The Mark & Marcus' of Content Marketing #mm11 -- Originally uploaded by LexnGer

I'm spending the day at Mesh Marketing and am delighted by the focus on content marketing.

Getting really passionate info from Marcus Wilson of Idea Paint and Marcus Sheridan of the Sales Lion, moderated by Mark Evans.

Loving the direct tie between content marketing and sales! No pussy footing around site hits, talking sales!

Longos Goodies Give Away Winner

[Testing out a new tool called Storify which lets you construct stories from a variety of sources and then embedded them into your blog. I’d love to hear what you think and/or if it worked for you.]

Cream Soda Smile

Cream Soda Smile -- Originally uploaded by LexnGer

The other day Saul Colt invited a bunch of folks over to the ZooCasa offices. Before Saul's presentataion on how How Building Communities Is Like Dating A Pretty Girl

The presentation was amusing and Saul had some excellent points about community building and the metaphor fit, though even at the end of the presentation I was at a lost as to why Social Media is like dating a "pretty" girl as opposed to a homely one. Or even why a "girl" versus a "woman". Or, for that matter, even why it was a female... but I digress along one of my standard paths of digression.

To the surprise of many, there were cans of Cream Soda along side the Diet Coke, Orange Crush and pizza. We had a lively discussion about how long it had been since any of us had seen, let alone consumed Cream Soda.

Then Miranda boldly reached out, grabbed a pink can, cracked it open and drank it! 

I wonder if Building Community is like serving Cream Soda to pretty women?

Copyright? What is This Thing Called Copyright?

So the copyright discussion seems to continue with this new chapter from my friend Al, (aka @brundle_fly) who tweeted a link to this email, which I am reproducing with his explicit permission.

He showed a lot more restraint in his subtle “UMMM No.” intro to this than I would ever be able to muster.

Correction this was found by Al, not an issue he had. But still! 

“Please put them back right away”  You’ve got to be kidding me!

Commercial or Journalistic? You Tell Me

In the final episode of the Toronto Life Creative Commons drama, we have identified the issue to be a difference of opinion about what constitutes “Commercial Use”.

After I sent in my letter to Toronto Life, I got a quick, respectful and reasoned response from Matthew Fox, Editor of TorontoLife.com.

We have resolved the usage issue by TorontoLife.com including a link to CheapEatsToronto.com where they use any of my images (and they have already implemented this.)

Matthew's reply to my letter stated that TorontoLife.com believes the use of the images was journalistic and not directly commercial, and thus did not cause a conflict with the Creative Commons license.  But I’ll let you read it yourself, since with Matthew’s permission, I’m including his response to my letter in entirety and a bit of our back-and-forth around this issue:  [Click to keep reading]

Non Means Non

Today I got the following Google alert telling me one of my photos had been used and accredited to me.

Google Web Alert for: lexnger

The new patios of summer '09: Fresh grazing grounds for outdoorsy ...
May 11, 2009 ... The new leisure class: Queen Street will benefit from some of the city's new patios (Photo by LexnGer). With spring heating up into summer, ...

Normally this is very exciting news and I'm delighted to see my photos used.

This time however I was a little surprised and more than a little annoyed.

My photo is used in a Toronto Life article by Davida Aronovitch in their online Daily Dish section. Toronto Life is a commercial enterprise and my Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial license states explicitly that my photos are available for non-commercial use only.

In fact, Toronto Life is one of the primary reasons I have a non-commerical license on my photos. They are a direct competitor to CheapEats Toronto since they publish a guide to cheap restaurants every year. If my photos are going to be used to promote a Toronto restaurant guide, it should be ours!   [update – I am the founder, editor & publisher of CheapEats Toronto for those of you who are visiting for the first time]

Truth is if Davida, or whoever added the photo to the article, had asked me I would probably have said “okay” because it's not really a big deal. But they didn't.

So I’m going to ask for them to either remove the photo or add a link to CheapEats Toronto.

---

(May 12 update) A friend just pointed out that Toronto Life is also using my photo on their article on Cluck, Grunt & Low

June is Nuts Round Up Part #1

This is the second year in a row where our June, especially early June, is jam-packed full of personal, professional, and fun events. And this year, after a cool spring,  our overloaded schedule is perfectly timed with the Extreme Weather Warnings too.

The excitement started just after I picked up the rental car.  Before we hit the road I had some pick ups & deliveries to do.  Which included picking up not 1 but 2 Dove Pleasure Kits from Matchstick! 

The second kit was a mistake and has already headed back to Pleasure Kit Central... but it was pretty exciting to get 2 big boxes when I was expecting 1 small box. Oh, and you can get one too if you want - www.pleasurethatsallyours.ca

They sent us 4 types - Milk Chocolate, Dusk (which is a blend of Milk and Dark), Dark and a bar of 71%.) 

We cracked open 2 of the Purse Packs - Dark and Dusk - on the way down to Kingston.  The Dusk was surprising. They've done a great job with it - great mouth feel and enough dark chocolate to create a subtle dusky flavour... seriously, it's the best way to describe it.

But I'm getting distracted by the chocolate... so I'll break the rest of our weekend adventures into another post.

Technorati Tags: dove, matchstick, dove pleasure kit, dove chocolate, because i buzz, dusk chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate.

That's Quite Enough!

I'm finally done testing this twitter->blog post tool. Thanks again for your patience and for putting up with a mass of tweets instead of real posts... which our recent couch surfers gave me a lot of grief about.

If you have a second, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Twitter and these twitter-posts.

• Wow, Lex, I love to hear where you had coffee and lunch every day, and those great one sided conversations! Keep'em coming. [interesting]
• Come on Lex, you're boring my socks off, and my socks are pretty tolerant. [stupid]
• Yawn... did you say something? [bored indifference]
• WHAT?!?  Did you say something?  Sorry can't hear you over this annoying twittering! [shut up would ya!]

A couple of notes to anyone interested in using LoudTwitter and TwitterFeed in this way:

• I've had major issues changing the configuration of the daily posts after I initially set it up.  I even got help from the guy who created it and still had problems. I've given up trying to make the changes stick.
• Yes, you do create an infinite loop!  The geek in me just loves a lazy infinite loop) and I set this up just to see what would happen.  Since it's on a 24 hour loop, it's not really all that impactful.  But it's not brilliantly useful either and if you don't stick on top of your twittering it becomes a self-referential infinite loop. 

Technorati Tags: twitter, loudtwitter, twitterfeed, blogging

Avoiding Introspection

Avoiding Introspection -- Originally uploaded by LexnGer

Ger's thoughts on the benefits of twitter are clear in this note he sent me... a twitter-type note in fact.

Hey, I wonder if there is a market for paper-based twitter tools?

I'll bet we could create a demand for paper and pencils if we leveraged the current twittering trend and spun it right.

Hey, we could even let people upgrade to premier users with journals and pens. Oh, this is a great business opportunity.

But what to call it?

Technorati Tags: twitter, ger, introspection, notes, business idea

Hand Made Noodles at Sun's Kitchen

Click to Play

One of the cool things we ended up doing this weekend with Rockr & Junkii was hitting the Pacific Mall. We've gotten lots and LOTs and LOTS of recommendations for the food there and we'd just been aching to sample what's available.  The food available covers most of the traditional Asian cuisines and when you reach the second floor it's hard to miss the smell of fresh waffles wafting down the narrow aisles.

 

After cruising all the restaurants, food kiosks and vendors in the food court, everyone except Stephen ended up in front of Sun's Kitchen ordering one of their noodle soups.  The noodles are made to order and with the smack-smack-smack sound of the noodles being stretched, and the guy across the aisle playing tunes on his small pipes, it really attracts a crowd. 

 

If you listen carefully you'll heard Rockr doing a quiet voice over describing where we are. You can also hear Gerry suggesting that we try noodle-making in lieu of fighting, and at other points you can hear us ordering our spring rolls and pan fried dumplings.  The noodle soups are definitely the way to go here.

 

Next time, I'll take a video of the Dragon's Beard Candy being made. Same approach but it results in thousands of tiny strands of candy thread which are then wrapped around peanut, coconut and sesame seeds.  (photos soon)

This video was originally shared on blip.tv by unsweetened with a No license (All rights reserved) license.