Indians and iPods

Many of you have already found this. This image was taken from space of a hill that looks a lot like A Native American Listening to His iPod. Google Inc.-- the same company that gives us Google.com, Blogger.com, Google Moon, and a host of other fun things I use everyday provides Google Maps for Free. This site is great fun, inspiring Andy Samburg to call it "the best. . . Double True." But I want to tell you that there are things to do on GoogleMaps even after you're done finding your house, your job, and cyber-stalking your exes from Global Satelites.

Google Sightseeing is one of many spin-off sights where people are posting the funny stuff they find as they mouse all over the planet. Sightings of UFOs and monsters, as well as rumors of amassing armies on the Chinese-India border abound, complete with KML coordinates and clickable photos. Here are some other funny sights at Haha.nu. Including the boy who built his own Location Balloon.

Fast Company labels Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) as an "authentic" brand and calls it "purpose-driven." Google is not humble about this, boasting a corporate philosophy that they "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Deeper into their homepage I found this: "You can make money without doing evil," and, "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." Busy, busy.

Company shares today trade at $487.11, way down from their high at $513 in Nov, but still well above the market's avg. share price-- I'm predicting a split this summer, like my YUM shares! I think we should all pitch in, buy Google stock, and drive up this share price! (NOTE: The writer is not qualified to give stock advice or counsel, as he knows next-to-nothing about any of this stuff.)

Midway through writing this post, I realized how much Google really does for me to make our modern, internet-facilitated world a better place. Thanks Google! Good luck on your mission of taking over the world! --Shawn Butler

Subliminal Marketing Revealed!

Is this guy for real?!?!? In the small business consulting "biz" and particularly in the restaurant industry, one gets onto some interesting mailing lists, but here's something I've never seen:

Now, Marketers are not always giving us a straight-forward sell-- we all get that --but subliminal sales triggers? This might be just TOO MUCH. So when my BS detector started going crazy, I did a little research into this guy... and couldn't find much at all.

And that's what bothered me. The guy's name is Kamron Karington, no clues there except that he has Utah roots; that state is famous for creative name mispellings. The 6 google returns for his website (click pic) and the 556 on his name search yielded unreliable results, most of them were his own or affiliated pages. He DID buy a full-page ad in Fast Casual's Apr/May Issue [What, you don't read Fast Casual magazine? ;) ] And I read the whole thing through. I was also seduced into reading this questionable source and his homepage here.

I call it questionable because the voice is similar to the copy on his homepage, convincing me that at least both endorsements came form the same author, if not the whole page. And I think the reason I am so interested in this is not that I am skeptical, but maybe that I really want this to be true. BECAUSE IF IT IS...

SB Marketing consulting just got a LOT easier, I simply have to get this guy's info [which is free, if you believe what you read] and then find clients willing to pay me to slowly recite Mr. Karington's Black Book of Guaranteed Subliminal Sales Secrets to them for two-hundred and forty dollars an hour...

It's almost too easy. I would be interested to hear from anyone on the success of the tactics espoused by Kamron's program. Anyone NOT affiliated with his company, that is. --Shawn Butler

What do you want to do with your life?

Fast Company asked, “What do you want to do with your life?”

I answered, “You mean specifically or just in general? I want to be famous. I’m in marketing and advertising, and that will get me rich. But nobody gets famous by doing advertising.

I’m actually a writer. I’d like to write a book. About the insignificance of human struggle. How we invent this full complicated machine of society and then strap ourselves to it. We are kind of like mice who would build our own little mazes, and then pat ourselves on the back for having made it through the thing. I would write a long book about insignificant conflicts being resolved by unimportant people who finally achieve a meaningless purpose.

It would be a history.

I think this would be an appropriate revenge. I want someday for some fourth grader to have to write a report about me and my life. So that people will reverence my choice of music and pay homage to my taste in breakfast cereals. My fourth grade teacher once told me, ‘By learning about people who have done great things, we learn how we ourselves can achieve great things.’

I remember that she had us write four-page research papers on famous people. For a fourth-grader, a four-page paper is like writing our own novel. She assigned each student the name of a person who did something meaningful and important in history. One girl was assigned Barbara Walters, a kid was assigned Sir What's-his-name, the guy who invented baseball. You see, she tried to match up each kid with the personality of some great person.

I was assigned to write my four-page report on P.T. Barnum.
He’s a famous person who lived a long time ago. He’s best known as the guy who said, “There's a sucker born every minute.” He spent his whole life tricking people, lying to them, and stealing their money. He is also the guy who started the Barnum and Bailey circus. I learned everything about P.T. Barnum for that four-page paper: where he was born, how he grew up, I studied all the tricks, all the deceptions, and all the great scams this man came up with. I read about his family life, his favorite pastimes and all the witty things he said when he was drunk. 

I remember that we gave oral presentations to the whole school dressed in the attire of our assigned historical VIP. There was a kid dressed like Jonas Salk, a boy dressed up like Roy Rogers, even a fourth-grade Jane Goodall. I gave a two-minute speech on P.T. Barnum. Everyone thought it was real cute how my mom had gotten me a sparkling bow-tie and a little tuxedo jacket with tails. I had a top hat with sparkles on it, and even a pair of spats mom had put on over my penny loafers. I don’t remember what I said for those two minutes, but I remember I was terrified looking out at everybody’s moms and dads and I thought, “What did P.T. Barnum do that I am going through all this?”
And I couldn’t lay my finger on too much.

So I knew then that what I wanted more than anything was for some fourth-grader some day, probably after I’d died and my grand kids were all grown up, to have his teacher assign him to write a report on me, and he’d have to look me up in the encyclopedia and study everything I’d done.”