Voice Messaging Margaritaville

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Speech is the most fundamental kind of human communication. There have been many societies in history which were illiterate. None have been speechless.

Children learn how to speak just by living and listening. Babies respond to their mothers' voices. Sounds actually cause our ear drums to vibrate. The process of hearing is very direct, and physical.

And, unlike reading, we can listen to something when we are looking at or doing something else. Hearing is intrinsically highly efficient, and open to multi-tasking.

It is unsurprising, then, that voice marketing - literal, long distance word of mouth - is such an effective marketing tool.

Vontoo voice messaging makes it easy to create, send, and track voice messages to potential customers. Vontoo doesn't require the purchase of software or hardware to use its system - you can use your telephone or computer (VoIP - voice over Internet Protocol - or your voice through an Internet connection) to record and tailor your message. Then you send it, and track it.

An important feature of this marketing system is that it is "permission based" - meaning your customers have to "opt in" to receive your message. This insures that your message will not be intrusive or unwelcome. Your voice marketing will therefore be not only ethical but effective, because you won't be irritating recipients with your message.

Vontoo is a good way of marketing concerts and media events. Circle City Tickets sold a complete block of Jimmy Buffet concert tickets via Vontoo Voice Marketing.

Whether you're in Margaritaville or anywhere, you'll Vontoo use it ... (sorry, couldn't resist...)

GPS To The Rescue

I like driving to places and appointments and events and arriving just a minute or two before they begin. I even like going to the Post Office this way - driving right up, parking, and getting in to mail my stuff just before the place closes up for the day, just under the deadline.

This adds a certain zest to the process.

I even like doing this when I'm driving long distance. A few years ago, I had a book signing near Harrisburg, PA. I drove three hours to arrive about three minutes before the event. This was a little close, even for me. I might have arrived sooner - but it was the first time I had driven to that bookstore, and I wasn't 100% sure exactly where it was.

This is why a GPS can be a lifesaver - or, at least, an event or appointment saver. My Prius came with one. I would definitely get one now if I didn't have one - a Garmin, a Magellan, or a TomTom.

TigerGPS.com is a good place to get a GPS online. Hey, even if you don't cut things as close as I do, it's a good thing to have in your car, on your side.





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How Thoof.com Got Its Name

Thoof.com is a new online news service, specializing in personalized news. It does this by keeping track of what stories users read and like, and serving them similar stories in subsequent visits. Thoof has badges which can go on the web or blog pages of submitted stories, and display the story's Thoof ranking.

There has been much speculation about how the name "Thoof" originated...

As fate would have it, I was waiting to cross the street at a quiet intersection in Manhattan earlier this evening, and a man standing next to me started telling me this story....

One day, on a crisp autumn morning at an outdoor cafe, the designers of Thoof were discussing what name they should give their new creation. They understood the importance of coming up with a name which was at once memorable, but distinctive, and sounded like nothing else. They tried out all sorts of possibilities, but could not come up with a name they all liked.

As they were preparing to leave, and get on with other business, they were joined by a man, with a strange accent. He looked familiar, yet none of the group could say where they had seen him. He spoke of the new system they were designing, and how important it would become. He explained how crucial the organization and personalization of news was in this new age, in which there was so much news, and so little time to read, see, or hear it. He spoke with an odd, intense conviction, as if he knew this to be true, from the experience of many years.

The designers listened with rapt attention. Finally, however, one of them spoke to the visitor. "You speak wonderfully about our new system. But it lacks a name. Might you-"

But the stranger rose, smiled, and before the question was finished, he had vanished. All that was left of him was a rustle of leaves, and a thoof-

I wanted to learn more. But a honking taxi distracted me for a moment. And when I turned back to the man who had been standing next to me, talking, he was gone too ... with just a thoof.

Eye of the Dolphin

I've been keeping an eye, in my mind, on dolphins for a long time, for at least two reasons. As a student and professor of communication & media studies, I can't help but be fascinated by this sea-faring mammal that communicates with a level of sophistication greater than any other species on this planet - except, perhaps, us. And as a reader and writer of science fiction, I think I recognize the dolphin for what it is: the closest we humans may have down here on Earth to come to know an intelligent alien, an organism with an intelligence clearly very different from but overlapping with ours.

That is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to Eye of the Dolphin, a family movie opening in theaters on August 24. And the story looks to be sensitive and inspiring. A 15-year-old girl is obliged to stay with her father, a dolphin researcher, in the Bahamas. Now this may not seem like such an unpleasant development, but Alyssa (played by Carly Schroeder) has been tossed out of high school in Los Angeles, and her father doesn't have much time for her in the Bahamas. Fortunately, Alyssa befriends a wild, orphaned dolphin...

I just saw the Eye of the Dolphin movie trailer, and wished I could have seen the whole movie....



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Rob Zombie's Halloween

I admit that my favorite horror movies go back to when I was a teenager - 14, 15, 16. If I could get a girl to go with me to the Allerton Theater in the Bronx, and it was to a horror movie, there was a pretty good chance she would cuddle close during the scary scenes ... Hey, I was a kid ...

Among my favorites back then were The Blob - a science fiction horror movie about a big amoeba - and Vincent Price in The Tingler. That one featured a skeleton that rolled out of the screen right at the audience on a rope ... Like I said, I was just a kid ...

More recent horror movies play with your mind as well as your adrenalin, and Halloween is at the top of the list. That tinkling piano music alone is enough to make you run for cover, which you can never find.

John Carpenter's Halloween was a masterpiece in 1978. What can Rob Zombie's remake bring to it?

I would look for the special effects. They've progressed a lot since 1978. Indeed, I would say that horror movies are the best genres for remakes. Bela Lugosi's Dracula was a 1931 masterpiece - but so was the Christopher Lee in 1958 (I saw that one in the Allerton Theater, too...) Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956 was a great movie - but the special effects in the 1978 version were unbelievable (that shot of the dog with a man's head)...

So I'm looking forward to powerful sequences in Rob Zombie's Halloween the movie, driven by the explosive magic of today's special effects. Here's a taste in this trailer ...



Oh yeah, Rob Zombie kept in that tingling piano in his Halloween the movie. It opens August 31. Just what I needed to hear at eleven o'clock tonight, on a sultry summer evening...

The Ties That Happily Bind

I love a good tie. Not that I get dressed in a shirt and tie all too often, but when I do, it's the tie that does it for me. I tie them in a Double-Windsor - that's what my father taught me, and what I taught my son - and I'm feeling good and ready to take on anyone, including Bill O'Reilly.

That's why I was so pleased to find Belisi.com - with ties as distinctive as you'll find in London, at much lower prices. There are a lot other cool fashion and lifestyle items on the site - silk scarves, pocket squares, and check out the Handbags shop by Belisi Fashions - great for gifts.

And speaking of gifts, a portion of every purchase you make at Belisi - regardless of how large or small - is donated to your favorite cause. That's what I call paying forward, to borrow Robert Heinlein's term. I really like that, and it's why I decided to write this post.

Belisi Fashions was started by Peter Belisi, who was bartending in Palm Beach, Florida, and struggling to make ends meet with a newborn baby and wife. A real rags to silk tie story!



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Fire Ants...

They seem like something out of a horror movie - and, in a sense, they are ... They look like the kind of ants you find in your garden, on a picnic table, in your house ...

But these things sting, causing fiery blisters, which can get easily infected.

The fireant entered the southeastern part of the United States after World War II. They're now in residence in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia - and they're starting to show up in California.

Whether you live in one of those states or a nearby area, or are a science fiction writer on the lookout for a horror story that's quickly coming true, you'll find lots of useful information on www.controlfireants.com - how to control them, recognize their mounds, be ready for them. In this case, as in so much else, knowledge is power.

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Online Furniture

I don't know about you, but I find shopping for furniture the old-fashioned way, in stores, a real pain. You have to drive to the store, of course. You see a sofa or an arm chair you like - but another customer is sitting in it. You can stretch out on a bed, but, let's face it, you can't really sleep or even nap on it in a store. And, if you're lucky to find something you like, you have to make arrangements to have it delivered.

On of the great things about Web shopping, and about Furniturefromhome.com in particular, is you can look at sofas, chairs, beds, anything you sit, relax, or dream on, as fast or as leisurely as you like, at your own pace. Whether you're looking for furniture for the home office, bedroom furniture, or bar stools, it's all there online for you.

You can browse and shop by room - living room, game room, dining room, bedroom, etc. You can specify your color preference - cherry, brown, black, neutral, and more. And can look at styles and categories - like bookcases, which I can never seem to get enough of at home or in the office.

The bar stool selections are especially cool - I counted over 90 items for sale. I wouldn't mind grooving in a swivel bar stool, jiggling a glass of ginger beer and lime, right now.

Furniture from Home has lots of sale items, too. I saw a Vanilla White Leather Living Room Furniture Set, a Cherry King Queen Sleigh Bedroom Furniture Set, an Espresso Dining Room Furniture Counter Height Table Set, and a lot more.

All from the convenience of the rocking chair I'm now sitting in and writing from. Shopping for Furniture from Home. I can't think of a more relaxing and effective way to go shopping. Score another real convenience for the digital revolution.

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Provincetown

Cape Cod's the most beautiful place on Earth. And, though I haven't been off this planet as yet, I suspect the Cape would be hard to beat out in the cosmos, too. We go there every year. We just returned from a splendid month on the bay.

Part of the charm of the Cape is that it has both ocean and bay shores. The ocean has waves to rival Maine's. The bay is peaceful, with sunrises setting in the water and not to be believed.

The bay and the ocean merge in Provincetown, at the very tip of the Cape. It's the tip of a magic wand, but the spells it casts are its bounty of restaurants, galleries, bed-and-breakfast places in Provincetown - all in addition to the shores, of course.

There's so much to do in Provincetown - whether watching whales on a boat off the shore, or dining on the finest tuna, cod, or clams you ever tasted in your life - that it always helps to have a menu of opportunities before you get there. That's where http://www.provincetownlive.net comes in handy - you can get there on the web, or via http://ptownlive.net on the cell phone. It has 75 listings for restaurants alone ... (yeah, I love that seafood).

So give yourself a treat. Take a drive, take a fast ferry from Boston, get yourself to Provincetown. And before you do, or even while you're on the way, check out what's in store for you at provincetownlive.net - hey, the whales were really in fine form in June!

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PayPerPost

Hey, some of you may have noticed the little This is a sponsored post note at the top of a few of my posts here, or the spiffy grey box you see at the bottom of this post, or that purple badge about half-way down on the right-hand side ... All of that comes from PayPerPost.

Here's how it works:

I signed up about a month ago - all you need is an active blog that's been alive for three months. You get to look through offers - "opportunities" - of events, products, web pages, etc to write about it. You get paid $5.00 and up, depending upon the offer.

Now, although I'm decidedly not allergic to money - hey, it buys good things in life - I value my name as a writer even more, and would never write about something I didn't want to write about or did not believe in. And that's the really cool thing about PayPerPost - you're not obligated to blog about anything you don't want to blog about.

In my case, for example, I was delighted to find an opportunity just a few weeks ago to write about The Police - they've always been one of my favorite bands, with their unique syncopation and melodies. Or, I took a PayPerPost opp to write about a new online news feed - thenewsroom.com - which I'm happy to actually be using on this site right now.

But that said, you should know that I would never do a PayPerPost for, say, a political candidate - even if I agreed with that candidate. My political posts here, in other words, are 100% sacrosanct. And the same is and will be true for anything I write about television series and motion pictures that I've seen. Those, like the political posts, are the very essence of Infinite Regress.

But if I see an opportunity to blog about a good new tomato plant - hey, why not, I love gardening and I'll be putting in some tomatoes in the next few days. And you'll always know when a post is sponsored, because you'll see an advisory.

So far, I've made over $100 from this great new kind of blog marketing from PayPerPost. Not enough to give up the professoring or the novels and my other books - which I'd never want to, anyway - but, hey, I was born with my foot not a silver spoon in my mouth, and every little bit helps. Better in my pocket than someone else's...

But I wouldn't mind if it was in yours. If you have a blog, I strongly recommend this!

thoof.com and outer space

There's an excellent new site - thoof.com for personalized news - where you can easily get news stories, video clips, photos, etc suited to your interests. If Digg is a bustling, often frenetic department store, think of thoof as an inviting boutique.

Once you sign up and start reading (free, and the easiest sign-up I've ever seen), thoof keeps track of your interests. They serve you a personalized page of stories, vids, links, etc that reflect what you like.

When I logged on for the first time, at least half a dozen a stories caught my eye - a time.com piece about the worst sites on the Web, Harry Potter's first long kiss, and (of course) a story about iPhone were among them. But I decided to check out A Better Purpose for N.A.S.A. Space is one of my passions, and I've long thought that NASA could indeed be doing a much better job.

It's always a kick to find an article that you agree with wholeheartedly. Phil B. argues that NASA needs to set a much more ambitious agenda and framework (I won't say groundwork) for space colonization and settlement than it has done thus far. We need to learn how to work and live beyond our planet, not just explore. Efforts like the Biosphere II in Arizona need to be revamped and taken off of this world.

I also agree with Phil, and argue extensively in my own book, Realspace, that our efforts in space need to be less dependent on politicians. This is no easy task - government funding can launch a lot of space ships - but we have to make those ships and our habitats in space less hostage to a politician or party being voted in or out of office.

Had it not been for thoof.com, I would not have seen this important article - it was posted on the philforhumanity blog more than nine months ago. I'll no doubt be contributing articles of my own to this great new site. Count me a happy participant, reader, and writer.

Garage Life

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If you're anything like me, you never have enough room where you live.

We lived in a big apartment for years. We didn't have enough room. Too many books for the shelves, too many papers for the file cabinets. We moved to a great big house in the suburbs. For a little while, we were ok. But pretty soon, we ran out of room again. Too many books for the shelves, too many papers for our file cabinets.

I thought the digital age would definitely help.

It didn't.

Even with so many texts of various sorts online, we still have - right - too many books for the shelves, too many papers in the file cabinets.

Wait, maybe garage storage could help!

We have a big garage, and we usually park our cars outside.

Room for garage storage cabinets. A place to put books, store paper documents ... Carguygarage.com carries over 1,000 different products for garages - their focus is on making the garage another room in the house.

I'd fill mine with storage cabinets and storage systems.... on all four walls. I'd keep my cars parked outside, permanently.

Would it solve my problem, once and for all?

No way ... but it would stem the tide, at least for a little while...

Police ... in the Material World...

Hey, you know with a title like that I won't be talking about the police here - but about The Police - that uniquely melodic and syncopated group led by Sting ...

There's something about the voice and lyrics and the music of The Police that's almost not of this world - and that's what makes them so good.

I wrote previously about "I'll Be Watching You," but on many days Police's "Spirit in the Material World" is my favorite song of theirs, and on some days it's close to my favorite song, period...

The Police are really getting into the material world these days - they released a Police CD - a two-disc compilation - on June 5th, and you get a vintage poster when you buy it.

You'll find a lot more about all of this by looking behind this poster....



Please click on this to go and view an awesome banner where you can watch The Police's videos, listen to tracks from The Police's new 2 cd hits collection, enter to win a trip to NYC to see The Police in concert and even view details about their current world tour.

The tracks contain all their best recordings, and you can click on some of them to listen. I just listened to "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" - another masterpiece of music, lyric, and syncopation. You can also see The Police's fine video of that, along with "Roxanne" and "Message in a Bottle," two of my other favorites.

They got a contest going - if you win, you get to see The Police live in concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City - you'll be right there, in the audience. Hey, the site has details on The Police tour, a way to send all of this info to friends, and you can even download Police ringtones....

Every little thing they do is music ... and now they're out really there in both the virtual and the material worlds...

Endless Vistas

You could say the television screen is an endless vista, and that would be true, but before the television and the movie screen, there were skies, seas, and sandy beaches...

Which is where I went walking today ... sun and cool breeze in my face ... rivulets of water on my toes ... my brain on vacation, but thinking of a scene from the novel I'm writing, a time travel story, with maybe a castle from some bygone age ...

Looked something like this ...



How did I take this picture of the contents of my mind?

Easy ... I logged on to Sandcastles - a great online site, where you can create your ideal sandcastle, download it as wallpaper, and/or e-mail as a postcard to your friends...

The tools are so easy, a little child could use them. Our kids are a lot older than little children, but I'm still a kid at heart, and I found this free virtual-castle-building tool a breeze to use ... You choose your castle type, you pick the color, can add turrets and flags ... You have a selection of starfish, shells, and crabs for the beach (I was in a clean-slate mood, so I left the sand critters off camera). You can throw in a ball - as I did, because I like motion - or a pail and shovel.

But speaking of motion, I think I like the birds the best ... they looked just like the seagulls and magical rays of light I saw flying off into the sunset today...

Britain Launches New Site for Unsigned Bands

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I'm in favor of any development that allows creative people - authors, rock bands, film makers - to get their work right to the people, their potential fans, rather than having to go through publishers, record companies, and film moguls.

The Beatles, after all, were turned down by 25 different record companies before they landed their first contract. Think about what the world was almost deprived of...

That's why I was pleased to learn that tourdates.Co.UK, Britain's fastest growing new music website, has launched a chart for unsigned bands.

Their press release explains how their
unsigned chart with free music downloads works...

tourdates.Co.UK, Britain's fastest growing new music website, has launched a chart for unsigned bands.

The site allows new bands to upload promotional tracks, announce gig dates and create profiles to promote themselves alongside major artists such as the Artic Monkeys and The Twang.

Tourdates' Jarrod Robinson says, there are some fantastic unsigned bands in the UK and we wanted them to know how much our community likes their music, an unsigned chart seemed the perfect answer.

Chart results are announced on the site at 19:00 every Sunday, the same time as the No1 single of the week is announced on BBC's radio 1.

Hey, maybe we'll hear the next Beatles there ...

Stranded in an Unknown City with No Resources...

What would you do if you were stranded in an unknown city with no money or resources? How would you eat? Where would you sleep? What about the weather?

Let's assume, to make this even more challenging, that no resources meant no form of identification, in addition to no credit cards or access to any kind of electronic transfer of funds.

Here's what I would do to eat:

I used to have an acquaintance - this is true, let's call him Alan - who would pride himself on going into diners, waiting until a patron left the table, then quickly sitting down and gobbling up anything that was left on the plate...

I know, it's a little hard to stomach, but it beats starving to death, and I'm pretty sure it's not breaking the law (since the food was already paid for, and the patron left it, uneaten, on the table). I should also point out that Alan seemed pretty healthy, and never got sick from his diner poaching, at least as far as I knew...

Let's move on to sleeping. That's far easier. If the weather is warm, hey, you can find a nice quiet place in some park to sleep. (I once did this when I was a teenager - long story.) Deserted beaches would work well for this, too.

But let's say it's freezing cold outside? In that case, I'd recommend catching some zzzzs on a subway car - if you live in a city with all-night train service. Or maybe cuddling up with a good book deep in the stacks of your biggest public library, that you were able to quietly sneak into...

Of course, you could also easily solve both your food and sleeping problems by making friends with some nice person - but that assumes, for your safety's sake, that you are an excellent judge of human nature.

So ... what would you do if you were in such a predicament?

Starting June 28, Michael Weston, a CIA Operative on USA Network's new TV series, Burn Notice, will show us how he deals with a similar situation.

I haven't seen any of it, yet, but I certainly intend to.

Hey, you should, too ... USA Network's Burn Notice ... you never know ...

Think about what happened to Frank Converse in Coronet Blue...

Newsroom.com

I just signed up for a cool new news service - The News Room ...

Here's how it works -

You can put feeds on your site - entertainment, politics, science/technology, campaign-2008, sports, business, health, much more - which come from major news sources (AP, Reuters, national and local TV stations, etc.) This costs you absolutely nothing, and you get to add timely, important video and other content to your site. (I added the campaign-2008 video feed.)

And, in addition, because the news comes packaged with ads, you get to earn money - on a cost-per-thousand basis - every time someone plays the feed on your site, starting at $1 per thousand (this, by the way, is far better than what you get from other cost-per-thousand providers). And not only that, but your readers can "mash" your feed - they can easily copy it over to their own sites - and you get paid a little for every play on these other pages, too. A fine "viral" payment plan.

Here's an example of a technology news feed ...

To put this on your page, just click on the Mash button in the top right corner...

I've always thought the Web at its best is a multiple win-win situation - more information, people being paid for their services, everyone benefits in a mutally escalating "viral" spiral. The News Room looks to be continuing in that important tradition.

I'll Be Watching You...

I always loved The Police - Sting's band, that is. It's rare to hear something that strikes you as utterly original and appealing, and continues to do so every time you hear it, for decades.

At first encounter, "Every Breath You Take" struck me as a new take on the age-old obsessive love song. But before the song was over, I was realizing that the "I'll Be Watching You," which also felt like the title of that song, was more than personal. It was social, and the "I" was the omnipresent Eye of Big Brother.

That was 1983, just a year before 1984, so of course I was thinking of Big Brother. But 1984 came and went, and the song stayed, just below the surface but somehow always relevant, and it was just recently that I realized how it really applies:

It was and is a harbinger of YouYube, of cams and videocams in cell phones, or the personal media that make every one one of us a producer who can take clip of you and put it up on YouTube where it can be viewed by millions in a few minutes.

"I'll Be Watching You" is a mantra to this new all-seeing transparent world. I enjoy it - I like being public, that's why I write and go on tv and radio. But it doesn't really matter if you want to be a star in someone's video or not. The point is that you can, and that getting on YouTube is becoming as natural as someone looking at you as you walk down the street...

So "I'll Be Watching You - Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make" has more relevance than ever. It could be programmed to play in every cell phone, and that would be all right.

In the meantime, you can hear it in the new police cd - 30th anniversary, double disk. "I'll Be Watching You" is by no means the only great Police recording. "Spirits in the Material World," "Roxanne," and lots of other gems are on this police cd.

Hey, don't surprised if, as you're listening to it, and grooving to it, someone will be watching you...

Win a New York fly-away to see The Police live.

The Night Sky

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There's nothing like the night sky. When the sun recedes, a universe is revealed. We go from binoculars to telescopes. It's only at night that we can truly get a glimpse of who really are, and where we stand in this cosmos ... an intelligence looking up and out at a vast realm of stars, and possibilities.

The night sky has no doubt fascinated us throughout the ages, inspiring poets and astronomers, painters and anyone interested in the music of the spheres.

But how do we know what we're looking at? So many stars in the sky. Who knows their names, their distance from Earth?

Astronomers know. But we're not likely to have an astronomer at our shoulder when we look at the stars. Meade MySky is an answer - a multi-media guide, a personal planetarium, that instanly identifies over 30,000 celestial objects.

The future of our species is in the stars. It's good to know what we're looking at, when we look at our future...

Bug Coming

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Bugs seem to hold a strange fascination for us. Maybe because they do a lot of good for us - like bees and honey. Maybe because they also do us damage - like bees and stinging. Maybe because, like all living things, we share some DNA.

Bugs have great history in the movies - Vincent Price's 1958 The Fly is one of my all-time favorites. Talk about sharing DNA! After Price's performance about his mad-scientist brother slowly becoming a fly, I could never look at a fly again without seeing Price's moustache....

But as much as I love Vincent Price on the screen, I'd much rather look at Ashley Judd. Her new bug movie opens next week. Take a look at those two posters for Bug. The one on the top blends curly hair and insect tendrils into a flowing, turn-of-the-last century art nouveau form. The one below, with its subtle interplay of light and perspective, is an Impressionist's dream.

Horror movies at their best work like dreams - we can allow ourselves to be scared out of our wits about them, because we know they are fantasy ... though perhaps not completely. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge said about poetic faith, we willingly suspend our disbelief....

I have a feeling this bug movie will make it hard for us to scamper back to reality. Here's a trailer...