• Morning Keynote: The State of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
• Complete Website Strategy: SEO & Usability
• Customer Life-Cycle & Loyalty Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Strategies
• Big Brands, Big Plans Keynote Panel

Should any of you be in attendance (I know that there are a lot of Southern Californians who read this blog) feel free to chat with me - my nametag will identify me by my employer (SmartDraw.)

I don’t expect that any of the stuff that I’m going to hear will be mind-blowing or Earth-shattering, but I think I will be able to capture some working knowledge of how to implement social media campaigns and what the best practices are. I think the conference will allow me to contrast their experiences with mine (which have been interesting thus far) and perhaps it will even move me to try to implement some new stuff at work.

We’ll see - I also want to try to learn some stuff from the other attendees; I’ll probably end up attending the subsequent happy hour following the conference itself.

See you there (hopefully!)

In the process of preparing to write the article that I had intended to publish today I interviewed several of my friends, all Mac users, and asked about feature differences and similarities in my key areas of PC use. When it became clear that I didn’t know enough about OS X and my friends didn’t know enough about Vista, we decided to mix it up.

The Set-Up

My friend and I are going to switch computers for 48 hours - my XPS m1330 for his MacBook - we are going to try to complete routine tasks on the new platform and write our responses as to what was easier and harder with the new platform.

Expertise: I’m a computer science major and by all means an expert Windows user; my friend is a computer engineering major and an expert Tiger/Leopard user. We have roughly equivalent levels of experience with our respective platforms.

Hardware: I will be handing over my Dell XPS m1330 and I will be receiving my friend’s MacBook; we will also be handing over our TV tuners and remotes as part of the experiment. The exact hardware specifications are going to be different but that variable is somewhat out of our control. We’re going to do the best we can.

Use: We’re going to use our new laptops to perform routine tasks - no stress testing and so forth. We’re allowed to install new programs, save files, and do whatever it is that we’d do when faced with a routine task that we commonly perform on our normal systems.

My Tasks:

I’m not sure what my friend plans on doing to my poor XPS, but I’m going to have some fun with his MacBook. Here is what I plan on doing:

1. Routine Office Work
   • Using Mac Office 2008, I’m going to make some changes to my resume formatting, work on some papers, edit a PowerPoint for class, and so forth.
   • I’m also going to use a copy of SmartDraw 2008, which I need to use every day for work. SmartDraw does not have an Apple-compatible version, so I’m going to see if SmartDraw will run using Parallels.
   • I’m going to substitute Entourage for Outlook - I’m also going to try to sync Entourage with my clients’ SharePoint documentation servers, which is something that I routinely use with Outlool.
2. Create a New Blog Entry
   • I have no idea of Windows Live Writer works for the Mac or not so I may need to find a new desktop publishing solutions.
   • I will write and publish one complete blog entry using the MacBook to edit my images, write my copy, and publish.
3. Browsing the Web
   • I plan on using FireFox, which is what I normally use on the PC to begin with.
   • I may give Safari a try, but I’m not that interested to be honest.
4. Programming
   • I’m going to try to write one small program in C++, using GCC or whatever the most convenient/popular C++ solution for Apple systems is.
   • I’m going to try to write one .NET program using Visual C# Studio using Parallels. If there’s a better way of accomplishing this task, let me know.
5. Media
   • Using EyeTV as a substitute for Windows Media Center, I am going to try to record one episode of CSI.
   • I already know, and loathe, iTunes so I’m not going to bother using it.
6. Gaming
   • Using Parallels, I plan on installing Half-Life 2 and playing the first three single player levels. I know this experiment has been performed using Boot Camp with marginal success, but hey, I’ve heard a lot of great things about Parallels and running a 3-year-old game should be a piece of cake.
   • Using Parallels, I plan on playing 1 hour of multi-player Team Fortress Classic 2 - which is also part of the HL2 episode 2 package.
7. Restoration
   • My friend and I are both going to create new accounts and restore points using Windows Restore & Time Machine respectively - these restore points should undue all of the changes made to each other’s systems. At the end of the trial we are going to try to roll back our two machines back to the way they were before we used them - we’ll see how easy this is or is not.

So there it is. Look forward to hearing back from us in 10-14 days with our reports.

del.icio.us Tags: Apple,Apple vs. PC

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve performed some social media consulting for SmartDraw, namely helping them use their blog. SmartDraw produces versatile diagramming software, which I have used for years; you can see some of the diagrams I produced with SmartDraw in my popular post “How to Use Diagramming to Easily Organize and Plan Projects.”

I’m writing this disclosure simply because I will be posting on behalf of SmartDraw on some blogs and communities that my readers may frequent, and I just want them to know that I am, in fact, acting on SmartDraw’s behalf in some of those instances.

In addition to helping direct the content I have also been getting SmartDraw into the act of producing screencasts to help demonstrate how their SmartDraw’s features can be used in specific applications.

Most recently I’ve helped SmartDraw publish a series on How to Flowchart without Using the Mouse, which includes a demonstration on how to rapidly produce flowcharts using keyboard shortcuts and a real-world application, flowcharting e-commerce buy-path modifications using the SmartDraw’s SmartPanel.

I won’t be posting about my activity on The SmartDraw Blog regularly, but if we produce some content that I feel is relevant to you, the Marketing Ninja reader, then I might be inclined to link to it.

Thanks for reading!

Technorati Tags: SmartDraw,SmartDraw Blog,Consulting

And a word to the wise, I found JTK through StumbleUpon since the Google results for “Custom WordPress Theme Design” was disappointing. Who’s to say that social media doesn’t convert to sales?

Let me know how you like it!

Upcoming Posts

I’ll have some more posts coming up. I obviously deviated from my last schedule somewhat and I’ll have to sit down and scrawl out some more this week. I’m going to start taking the blog in a more “preach the practice” style about marketing, but I’ll also continue my thoughts regarding current events in web-based business.

I’m going to start work on a Field Guide to Social Marketing which explains some of the practices behind using social media tools to help drive business, so you may see some of that on the blog in the near future.

Technorati Tags: Announcements,WordPress Themes

Without further adieu, Marketing Ninja’s Post Schedule for 2/11/2008 - 2/18/2008

• 2/11/2008 - Yahoo Rejects Microsoft’s Offer, Market Isn’t Fooled
• 2/12/2008 - SEM Challenge: Marketing Country Music to a Geographically Localized Audience
• 2/13/2008 - Why Microsoft-Yahoo Won’t Be Anything Like Time Warner-AOL
• 2/16/2008 - Facebook’s Financial Outlook for 2008: Is the Honeymoon Over?

Normally I try and do roughly two-three posts a week but I have to make an exception this week simply because of the buzz of the MSFT-YHOO deal and some circumstances surrounding some of the other blog articles.

Also, I’ve enabled comment moderation temporarily

Akismet is having some issues so I’ve turned on comment moderation in order to spare you the misfortune of having to read spam comments. I think I’ll have it turned off again within a day or so.