Lingolook

Man time is really becoming the new gold.

It’s been a busy busy week but there is definitely light in this tunnel. I’m not sure whether it’s coming through cracks in the wall or there really is an end but it’s definitely light.

I have spent the best part of this week exploring Second Life, and have to admit I’m not sure I’m any wiser now than when I started.

It’s a magical place, filled with intelligent, polite avatars alongside some real fruitcakes.

I had a wonderful sandwich at my local “real” bar while my avatar gyrated on a dancefloor for $LIN2 every 15 minutes.

But that aside, I’m beginning to see the potential, and there’s certainly plenty of that. Like any unexplored world, the opportunities are limited only by our own imagination.

Yet in the world of corporate missions, Second Life really rocks the boat.

If only there were 48 hours in a day, then my own personal second life would stand a chance.

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If you look down on the right you’ll see a new addition to the toolbar..

It’s called a Swiki and the aim, according to its creators, is to fine tune searches within a specific community. SEO copywriters in my case.

Essentially it’s a “new kind of search engine that allows anyone to create deep, focused searches on topics you care about. Unlike other search engines, you and your community have total control over the results and it uses the wisdom of crowds to improve search results”.

I’m still tweaking it (RTM) but it should be interesting to see how it develops.

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It’s been a while, and I apologize to myself for lacking the discipline (spelt: energy) to keep the thoughts flowing.

There’s quite a lot in the air at the moment.

More than anything else, I’ve discovered there’s a back-end to copywriting. And like an iceberg, there’s more to what you don’t see than what you do.

I’m speaking about search engine optimization, and it’s fascinating. I’m learning terms like latent semantic indexing, prominence, proximity and stop words.

I had no idea…

I’m learning a language that goes beyond selling content, it changes the position of sites that speak it in a way that actively brings them closer to the people looking for them.

I apologize if this sounds lame, but like I said I had no idea. The world was flat before this, now it can bent anyway I want it.

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I have been slowly drawn into this argument to the point where I can no longer sit and watch.

It’s an age thing. When you’re young you live and learn but now it feels live I’m learning and hardly living. At least my wife knows where I am, even if we go to bed a vastly different hours.

Change is definitely not for the weak-hearted. The way it opens your mind while at the same time numbing your senses is really quite unique. I can see why companies are reluctant.

Today I used my abolutely brilliant website builder XSitePro to build my first ever website. Once I had finished the tutorial site, I realized I was missing graphics, layout, backgrounds, even copy! I downloaded this handy header tool, and the journey got a little bit shorter.

This is all very exciting, but with age comes the little alarm bell that sounds when you just ain’t gonna make it. I now know how Lance Armstrong felt when he decided to break three hours in the NY Marathon.

So at what point does age transform you into a manager? Ever since I decided to open three blogs in two languages on the same day. When does my brain reach the level of maturity to know when I’m exaggerating? I’ll let you know if and when it does.

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I’ve just had a thought.

It came to me while reading the December 2006 CAR magazine.

In the bulletin section there was a pretty alarming article about the envoronmental impact that undoes just about everything I’ve ever understood about eco-friendly automobiles.

I can’t find the report on the magazine’s website but I did find it here.

Normally, we’re led to believe that a car is green by looking at it’s fuel consumption and emissions. However, Oregon-based CNW Marketing Research took a step back and looked at it globally. What they discovered was in my mind astonishing in its obviousness.

If you look beyond fuel consumption and take into consideration a car’s “dust to dust” environmental impact, factoring in fuel consumption, factory manufacturing costs, parts manufacturing costs, plus the energy used in R&D, the energy used by the workers communiting to the factories, the car’s recylability and it’s durability, the traditional references are turned on their heads.

By way of illustration, the greenest car available in the UK is, according the Greenpeace, the automotive incarnation of Beelzebub, the Jeep Wrangler 4×4.

The previous envoronmental champion, the hybrid Toyota Prius, has a “dust to dust” energy cost five times higher than the second-place Toyota Yaris.

Art Spinella, president of CNW, sums it up quite nicely. “If a consumer is concerned about fuel economy, it is perfectly logical to consider buying high fuel economy vehicles such as hybrids, but if the concern is the broader issues such as environmental impact of energy usage, some vehicles with good economy actually cost society more than conventional or even larger models over their lifetime. Basing purchasing decisions solely on fuel economy does not get to the heart of the energy usage issue”.

How painfully obvious is all this?

How much does discovering a truth that exposes our short-sightedness for what it is burn our pride and uproot our intelligence?

Couldn’t see the woods for the trees?

Winning the battle but losing the war?

Taking an even bigger step backwards, it made me wonder if this oversight also applies to marketing.

For example, how often consumers fed solutions that resolve the problem but neglect the cause? How many products and ideas (and remedies for that matter) have been introduced that do nothing more than smear away the stains left by the previous mistake?

In my own little world of IT solutions, I can’t help thinking if there’s a bigger picture we’re missing.

The fact that Greenpeace is putting pressure on electronics manufacturers into making their products more environmentally friendly is a case in point.

How much of the efficiency comes from the machine itself?
- If manufacturers busy making computers work faster forget that humans have to live with the consequences.

Does the pursuit of increased efficiency/performance in one area damage another?
- I’m thinking of the Sony battery disaster but I’m sure there are other more distant relationships.

How much human-involvement is missing from the equation?
- Is technology improving yet becoming so complicated in the process that we as humans are being blinded by it? If SatNavs and GPS phones take away our ability to “see” where we’re going, and SMS text-messaging is undoing one of civilised man’s key qualities (literacy), just how much is technology driving us towards a catatonic state of high-tech dependency?

Breaking down the barriers between people and technology might not be a bad thing, as long as we don’t put up others along the way.

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You’ve seen the little widget on the right no?

Very clever thing created by Hugh Macleod over on his Gaping Void site. Sort of like daily guidance for geeks
I’m sort of in need of guidance myself right now. I’m just about ready to call a meeting and bring in the big boys to discuss their corporate blog.

It’s been a long journey helped no end by Richard@Dell (you’ve gotta love that surname!). I have already thanked him in an earlier post but as one of the (public) driving forces behind our single biggest “competitor”, his generosity and openness puts him (and Dell for that matter) at the very top of the social tree. Maximum respect.

I’ve got 2 brochures and a whitepaper to deliver by Monday (fat chance), and then it’s full speed ahead with the blog preparations. Now or never..

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