Sunday thoughts
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on January 6th, 2008
Tagged as: Acer, Acer Blog, Copywriting, Dell, Language Is Free, Richard Binhammer
I’ve been giving DreamHost a really hard time of late and apparently they have not been acting without cause. For whatever reason, best left to techies, I’ve been abusing their procwatch program whatever that is - they even explained the way of the world with an emphatic “procwatch kills NG lingolook killed 30846″.
Good Lord. Lingolook was killed?
Tech support says it’s a combination of poor code (probable) and high traffic (improbable) which leaves me with the understanding that I have a duff site that no-one visits. I like to think positively so I’ve replaced that possibility with another opinion and it has something to do with my 2008 online resurgence. I have been murmuring about my projects for long enough and the hard-working Sarah from Blogging Expertise is finally coming up with the goods and her uploading and tweaking has put the cheap but oh-so-very-cheerful DreamHost contract I had under too much strain. So, despite all her hard work, it’s all her fault 
Still at least it brought me to my senses. I’ve upgraded my account to a Virtual Private Server which sounds like the IT equivalent of the Champagne Room and I’m sure will work out just as expensive but at least it should keep things running. If I disappear you now know why.
Don’t know about you but I’m really looking forward to 2008.
For starters I get to see whether my attempt at putting emotion into the Acer brand gets a warm or frosty welcome. Their annual kick-off is due at the end of January and this year it’s going to be totally different as it’s no longer a “one-nation-one-station” event but something more along the lines of “welcome Acer, Gateway and Packard Bell to your new home (Acer Group), allow us to present ourselves and show you that we’re a hip, smart, forward thinking bunch who know what we’re about, where we’re going and how we’re going to get there”.
Acer 2.0? Well that’s the plan…
Of course there’s a lot riding on this. I might be a master wordsmith but if the company doesn’t believe its own hype then the battle’s half lost. My guess is the company believes in itself but doesn’t yet fully understand its own hype and by that I mean the ability to measure the value of what it does beyond profit margins and market share, so anything designed to get it away from its “spreadset” (the habit of looking at the world through a spreadsheet) has got to be good for morale. Good for customers, good for products and, yes, good for Excel.
What else? Well I’ve set my sights on Canon’s latest HD gem, the HV20. In a few weeks I’m going to start filming multiple episodes of my free English language course site and see where it goes.
Allow me to explain a little about my past: like most English-speaking people who end up in Italy, my first job was teaching English. In fact I’ve been involved with my own language ever since just in different measures. Just check out my über glamorous career path:
Teacher –> translator –> creative translator –> copywriter.
That third category is an important moment in the life of any translator. Its like professional puberty and it comes when the translator’s balls suddenly get big enough for him or her to say: “Hey! This sounds crap in English (or whatever the destination language is). Why don’t you re-write the whole thing like this?” More than experience, this moment requires quite a lot of courage and really does separate the men from the boys or whatever the female equivalent to that is. From there on in, you’re good enough to write your own stuff.
Anyway, despite a stellar career as the world’s most invisible copywriter there is nothing like teaching. I think it has something to do with live feedback or something. Whatever. I really miss it so I’ve decided it’s time to get back into it, although in a version more in line with my way of seeing the world and that’s through a blog. I know how it should end up, but not how it should start so I’m just going to start recording and see where it goes.
Things to look out for in 2008?
I think Dell are going to take online conversations to new heights so expect to see Richard on Oprah in 3Q. I think 2008 will see Acer updating its frankly appalling website in tune with the newest kids on its family block. I also think this is the year flash memory notebooks finally go mainstream which means no or very few mechanical parts which means long, long battery life. Expect to see the word “longevity” come back into favour. How about calling it the UHT laptop (Ultra High Transportability)? Well it worked for milk…
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A busy month
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on January 27th, 2007
Tagged as: Acer, Acer Blog, Edelman, Vista
This has been an eventful month.
First Edelman woke everyone up with a carefully/badly planned media campaign for Vista and shortly afterwards word got out that my client’s operating systems were compromised by a badly-coded ActiveX application.
It was fascinating to watch. A single post was quickly picked up by The Inquirer and from there the story literally exploded. By the end of the day it was on the front page of Slashdot and The Washington Post.
I lined all the cases up over on Alexa, and the sum totals of average daily page views of these sites exceeded one billion (TWP accountd for more than half).
At that point it hit mainstream media and country managers started asking for official responses.
It was a tough test of our PR skills as my client has no official blog and therefore very little way of reacting. It was also 11pm.
However, we got a press release up (fortunately they had a patch ready) the following day and got it noticed on the sites doing the most chatting and let nature take its course.
And the problem died.
It reminded me of an event in Scoble and Israel’s Naked Conversations when a bug surfaced on the blogosphere (if I’m not mistaken) during the development stage of XP. Scoble picked it up, they repaired it and silenced it within 9 hours.
We weren’t that fast but then, like I said, my client doesn’t have a blog. Yet.
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Time flies but then a LOT happens…
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on December 22nd, 2006
Tagged as: Acer Blog, Dell, SEO
You ever get the idea that time flies straight past you?
That more or less has been the outcome of these last few weeks. Christmas is right there and I almost didn’t see it coming.
Before I go any further, I’d like to publicly thank the tech guys at Dell. My Workstation was well and truly KO. No safe-mode Windows trickery or system restore could pull it out of its frozen-screen hole.
After poking around for a few days, desperately trying to back up what I could (everything as it turns out), I made the call.
Actuall I made three. Each one took me to the next stagewith a level of professionalism and calmness that really struck me. Not because it was Dell, because it was so beyond what I’m used to from anyone it really stuck out.
So what do you think my opinion of Dell the company, it products and support services is after that? Hats off to them I say.
Right, with that off my chest it’s all-systems-go for some first hand SEO stuff this Christmas. First off TheAcerGuy is getting its own site. As much from the need for more space than a blog as to expeiment some SEO theories.
Then, my client’s own site. I had to force SEO on her as she knows someone high up in Google who assured her that the only way to stay at the top was to pay, heavily.
Sorry but that really irked me. I understand the need for Google to support its profitable business model but did they really have to go so far as to just plain lie??
So the challenge is on. First to prove to myself that it isn’t true (I already know that), and secondly to prove to my “boss” that her leg had been pulled so hard it should have hurt.
The other thing I have to do is set up an outline for an important corporate blog. It’s happening at last. First things forst, Wordpress or Moveable Type?
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Embryo-blog
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on November 4th, 2006
Tagged as: Acer Blog, Dell, Gaping Void, Richard Binhammer
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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