Our new primary domain is up! As of now, EntrepreneursMeanBusiness.com will still bring you here, but here is really AskEMB.com. Welcome.

I've had our newest feature stewing for a while, and I decided to make it my first post at the new domain.

The idea goes like this: I like to read business magazines. In the bathroom. I make pretty good time on them because I skim a lot, but I also dog ear pages that I want to come back to. But who are we kidding? I'm not going to keep a bunch of ratty old magazines around that only got read in the bathroom. Seed 1: It's a good thing that most magazines are digitizing all of their content these days. Seed 2: I should really share a lot of this stuff.

And that's how Jake's Maggregator was born. Welcome to Volume 1.

Wired, Dec. 2007: How to Get Bought by Google, and Funky Ways to Lace Shoes.

TED 2008 wrapped up just a couple of days ago. The Internet can be such an echo chamber that I try not to re-post links from BoingBoing, but this one was too good to pass up.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo, administrator of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, spoke at TED about how evil is in many cases brought about by bad institutional settings. Abu Ghraib is his chief example on this point.

This quote, caught by BoingBoing's Mark Frauenfelder, who was attending the event and live blogging it, leapt out at me:

"What can be done about this? Zimbardo offers heroism as the "antidote
to evil." Teach kids to be ready to act heroically when the see evil.
We need to give them real role models. Comic book superheroes are bad
models, because they have super powers. A hero is the soldier who
reported the Abu Ghraib abuses. People wanted to kill him. They
threatened to kill his wife and mother, too. He had to go in hiding.
Teach kids hero courses, teach them hero skills, make them
heroes-in-waiting. "

I was struck by this paragraph. I've been thinking about it daily since I read it five days ago. I'm a father. I hope that my actions translate into powerful lessons to my kids. I hope that they'll be heroes-in-waiting.

Watch this psychology class video on the Stanford Prison Experiment, if you've never seen it before. 

I need to put up a quick and easy post, so an AskMe roundup it is! Have at look at these gems:

Help Me Redirect My Old URLs (In WordPress)

I've Got A Meeting With Venture Capital People On Friday, Help! (VC questions are fun)

Finding Funding For A Movie? (Paging Richard Dutcher)

Help Me Get Bought Out

How can I sell something that is not selling in the traditional ways, such as eBay or Cragslist?

Sorry for the silence around here lately. We've been gearing up to move to our new primary domain, AskEMB.com. The new site comes with a new posting back end, and for the time being, I'll have to create all of my new posts in both places. The shock of it has put me right off of posting for two weeks. Or at least that's my excuse. It's not a good one. How about I just start posting again? Good? Good.

By way of making up, I humbly offer the following. 

• How to Behave on an Internet Forum.
  This is a lovely little animated vid. Really well done. The animation
  looks like it was done by the same folks who did the intro for The I.T.
  Crowd.

• Ars Technica's review of  RIAA's "Reefer Madness" for the Digital Age. This is the best film review I've read in a long time. Snip:

"This
highly entertaining film isn't destined for theaters and was actually
intended for use as a training video to familiarize district attorneys
with the complexities of anti-piracy enforcement. The video was leaked
and made available on the Internet. When we saw it for ourselves, we
just couldn't keep a straight face. Instead of reporting on the facts
surrounding the leak (first noticed by p2pnet), we thought it would be
more fun for all involved if we treated it like a theatrical release
and reviewed it accordingly."

I also attended a screening. I
LOLd, I cried, I was physically ill. This film is a masterpiece for its
powerful use of irony. If you're not into irony, it's worth watching
just so that you'll be socially literate when all the geeky references
to it start popping up in your favorite media. Yes, it's that meme-ey. 

• Revo Uninstaller.
  Have you ever noticed that Windows doesn't do that great of job of
  uninstalling the crap from programs you'd like to have gone forever?
  Revo is what the Windows Add-Remove Programs applet should be. And it
  comes with extra features. Oh, and it's free as in beer. You want this.

I just happen to be watching this unfold from the front row; I'm one of Amazon's customers who ordered the new Leatherman Skeletool CX back in early December 2007.

The Skeletool's original release date before it went on sale was supposed to be November 2007, but they weren't offered for pre-order until December with a release date of early January 2008. Then the release was pushed to late January, then early February, and now the best we can make out is mid March. I feel like I'm waiting for Half Life 2 to hit shelves again.

Amazon has a discussion page about the tool where customers have gathered to talk about the delays. For a while, there was someone who was posting nearly every day, claiming to be an Amazon employee. He spoke of his communications with Leatherman, and how he expected the tools to come in any day. Then suddenly, Amazon deleted all of his posts. Nobody is quite sure of what's going on over at Amazon, and people are canceling their orders because of the delays and bad communication.

It's so sad that Amazon has built these great community features and yet seems to know bupkus about supporting a community. I'm the second community member so far (the first is here) to post about the idiotic situation that Amazon has created. Please Digg Here to show your support.

It's almost Valentine's Day. What better time to show the love for your fellow entrepreneur? The newest ones are at the bottom:

How to verify state-issued sales certificate/tax ID?

How do I go full time on my start-up?

Press release etiquette?

Client asked me to remove a link to their website (Wow! Pretty stupid client.)

Is this SEO technique dodgy? (Probably)

Need to find a good survey on small business owner's IT concerns?

How much is my new business worth?? (I got a Best Answer in this one!)

how much for "as seen on TV"?

The demand is there, the money is not.

Need X income, therefore business must by Y profitable? (Shades of no-brainer.)

Customized Wikipedia Interface (Hm, interesting idea.)

Feed Title: Cheap Stingy Bargains
Feed Link: http://www.cheapstingybargains.com/feed/
Content Link (Non RSS Feed): http://www.cheapstingybargains.com/
When I Started Reading It: Again, years now. Before this feed was Cheap Stingy Bargains, it was Cheap Stingy Bastard. I was there.
Update Frequency: Several new deals every single day.
Core Demographic: Gadget buyers, PC parts buyers, and strangely, women's shoe buyers.
What I Get Out Of It/Notes:

Now here's a killer business
story, and I'm pretty sure I've got the broad strokes right: A guy
starts a website where he posts good deals he finds on things. He gets
linked to a couple of times by bigger sites and he starts getting an
established readership. Soon, he starts getting affilliate deals with
some of the shopping sites he's linking to. Now all or almost all of
the deals he posts are also affilliate links and he makes money with
every single click or buy. The whole thing goes from a fun little hobby
to a serious career in the space of about three years.

That's
not bad. I don't know why he thinks that I'm going to buy women's shoes
or linens at Sears, but hey, sometimes he finds a really great price on
just the item I'm looking for. It's well worth my time to glance at
what's coming through every day.

Here we go, this is the last installment. Enjoy!

Toshiba: More ad money wasted.
Felt like a boring Best Buy commercial. Oooh, look....a TV! And guys
are watching it! And there's a boring voiceover! Let's buy one!

Toyota Motor Sales USA: Two ads, probably liked by someone, but they just didn't grab me.

Unilever: Life Can't Wait.

What do you say in the face of utter confusion? The Life Can't Wait
ad could have been visionary for targeting female viewers during the
Super Bowl. Instead, it's a train wreck of incomplete messages and a
completely disconnected voiceover and URL at the end. The message I got
was, "Not only did we let the ad agency throw these bits of fluff
together for our ad, we also completely forgot what gender our market
is!"

Under Armour:
One spot, produced in house. Looks like every sporty men's deodorant
spot I've seen in the last five years. Next year, hire an ad agency so
that you can blame them for your commercial looking like the same old
stuff.

Victoria's Secret: Super Bowl '08. (One heckuva creative title, that.)

Ok
let's be honest. If Victoria's Secret can't muster a compelling ad for
the Super Bowl, then something's gone wrong with the male populace and
procreation as we know it can't last long. That or the company has
completely lost the plot.

What caught my attention about this
ad is how...well, cerebral it is. I mean, I've seen far more scandalous
ads than this for shampoo and razors. It seems like the people at
Victoria's Secret suddenly woke up one day to the idea that a woman's
allure isn't all about boobs and legs. Adriana Lima's close-up shots
are on her face. And her facial expressions--alternated with text about
how a silly football game is about to end and the larger, more
important game of Valentine's Day is afoot--is really suggestive.

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy: Drug Dealer.

A recent episode of South Park that made fun of the video game, Guitar Hero,
had a character walk away from a practice session after saying, "No
way, I hate that bubblegum crap!" The supposed drug dealer in this spot
is too bubblegum to be believable, and his message is infinitely less
effective for it.

I'd love to leave it at that, but I can't.
What's really frustrating here is how out-of-touch the National Drug
Control Policy people clearly are. There are going to be roughly as
many teenage boys watching the Super Bowl as fathers of teenage boys,
and while the spot soberly warns of the dangers hiding in your medicine
cabinet to dads, the sons are hearing, "Hey kids, looking for a cheap
way to get high?!" I'm awestruck at the density exhibited here. Won't
someone please think of the children?

Whoops, I forgot to re-introduce this series on the last installment. Sorry. That was Part 2, and this is Part 3. There will be one more.

It's generally my policy not to pay attention to SuperBowl-related things, but I like critiquing the ads from a business standpoint. I also like to embed the ones I find noteworthy. So here we go!

McDonald's: Unremarkable spot for Ronald McDonald House. Too bad.

NFL: Mr. Oboe.

I
am not an NFL fan. I don't know who Chester Pitts is, or who Ephraim
Salaam is, for that matter. It makes no difference to me though,
because this ad made me care about these two neat guys. It reached me
even though I'm not a member of the ad's core market. That's a hell of
a good ad. But I'm still not going to watch football.

Pepsi-Cola North America: Magnetic Attraction (and three others, all ok but not great).

Justin
Timberlake headlines in this ad, and I fully expected to hate it from
stem to stern. It gradually got better and then took a sudden turn into
lowbrow country with a long segment that could have been filmed just
for an episode of "Ow My Balls." Justin finally ends up in front of a
pretty girl who says to him, "Hey." His sly, lothario delivery of "Hey
to you," (with cocked eyebrow, of course) seemed so genuine that I
found myself having a good laugh at his expense. The fact that this
tiny slice of off-putting reality is probably accidental makes me like
it even more. You know, for the irony? Hey guys, wait! I'm really cool
if you give me a chance!

Procter & Gamble: Interview.

Remember
that ad where cockroaches seem to crawl across your TV screen? This is
another spot that tries to annoy you into using a product. Like the
cockroach ad, I didn't enjoy it much, but I'll remember it.

SalesGenie.com: Panda. (Sales Hero was about the same, but I saw Panda first.)

This
is a great counterpoint to GoDaddy's awful, stupid, awfully stupid ad.
SalesGenie's ads told me what the site is about, and then gave me a
reason to type the URL into my browser. So I did. SalesGenie got a hit
from me, GoDaddy didn't. GoDaddy wasted a lot of money on a SuperBowl
ad, SalesGenie didn't. Easy, right? But a lot of companies get it all
wrong.

Taco Bell: Taco
Bell's lone ad had a mariachi band in it, and still managed to be
forgettable. The concept needed more work, and this 'good enough'
iteration translates into a missed opportunity.

T-Mobile: NBA My Faves.

I'm
really wary of cell phone companies and the promises they make these
days, but Charles Barkley was a lot of fun here. Sometimes over-the-top
works.

Coca-Cola Co.: Jinx, Jockey.

Jinx
was a nice spot with a classic, simple message: Coke is fun. The
depiction of two political rivals putting rivalry aside and enjoying
Coke together around D.C. is well executed due to
Keep-It-Simple,-Stupid-type editing. Light done right.

Jockey
is the first ad I'm going to mention here for its awfulness. Long,
contrived, extravagantly bad, and long again. This is way too much ad
for far too small an idea.

Dell: A single, inscrutable, moronic ad. Avoid.

eTrade: Baby Trading 1, Baby Trading 2. (Wow, two good commercials and no bad ones. Sadly uncommon.)

eTrade's Baby Trading
spots had me laughing with the light humor, and appreciating the
straight, campless performance the little guy gives. These would have
been really easy ads to screw up, but they kept the CG to a minimum,
the potty humor to a minimum, and the kid's performance to a minimum.
Two masterful works in understatement.

FedEx: Over thought, over executed, contrived.

Frito-Lay: Intended to pull heart strings, but the high sap index and the repetitive music ruin it.

Gatorade: Unremarkable with Derek Jeter (I thought his 15 minutes ended a couple of years ago?).

Garmin GPS: Napoleon.

A
small idea carried to appropriate proportion. The main actor spends all
of four seconds onscreen, the punch line is delivered, the capper is
presented and it's over. The message is quick and well presented. The
weakness I see here is there is no brand differentiation present. Why a
Garmin over a Magellan or a TomTom? No idea from this ad.

General Motors: Why Push.

Overwrought
ad for the GMC Yukon hybrid. Further proof that Detroit has no
intention of giving eco-loving car buyers (which comprise more of the
total market all the time) viable choices. This is an ad about change
from a company that is making no real changes because innovation is too
risky. Better to die slowly.

GoDaddy.com: Over the top pretty-girl teaser aimed at getting you to GoDaddy.com to watch another commercial. Yeah, right.

Hershey's: Star power with no substance. Carmen Electra's nice and all, but isn't there anything else here? Hello?

Hyundai Motor America:
Hyundai marketing folk, please take note: 1. Fire your ad agency, they
wasted your Super Bowl budget. 2. If you want to eat some of that
luxury car BMW/Mercedes market share, you need ads that exude culture
and understatement. These flops came across like bad Buick ads. 3.
Telling me to "Think About It" doesn't sell me a fake luxury car. 4.
Not even when Jeff Bridges (aka The Dude) is the person saying it to me. Sure, he gives good voice, but that won't cure rotten ads. No links for you.

Kraft: Perfume.

Ugly girl draws guys in by using Planters nuts as perfume. Awesome. She makes me shudder, but it's a cleansing, deep shudder.