From Dimes to Dollars

by Ben Lopez

Another week, another recap.  So, who pre-ordered iPhone 4?  Not many of us, I imagine, seeing as it sold out in an afternoon (don’t feel bad, I missed it too).  But you’ve heard that already, let’s get to what you may not have heard this past week:

This week’s highlights:

 We have a lot of social media going on in our life these days, don’t we?  While it’s sometimes convenient and enjoyable, there’s a whole lotta noise making its way in with all those spammy Twitter updates, and damned Farmville notifications every 5 seconds.  I take a look at the top annoyances and how you can avoid them.

I share a great classic quote from Walt Disney on your work in relation to the time you spend with your family.  Family first, don’t let them slip away as you get caught up in your work.

 My good friend Phil Ricci shared a story that I thought was just completely ludicrous; the New York Times apparently things we’re just completely unprofessional to use the word “tweet”.  My question to them: what the hell else are you going to call it?  See my full response here.

Last, but certainly not least, a little something for iPhone users in celebration of the iPhone 4 this past week.  I’d been wanting to do it for a while, so I finally set aside some time to do an in-depth review of Opera Mini for iPhone.  Is it really “six times faster” as they claim?  Speed tests are explained in the review.

For tomorrow’s post, I wanted to get back to a more core business focus for a while, but damn it all, after reading one of the Tumblr staff blogs, it absolutely requires a response.  Don’t miss this one…

Oh, and if anyone happens to have a recommendation left at this point (unlikely) and would like to be kind to Dimes To Dollars, you can do so in the tech, startups, or entrepreneurs category by clicking on the respective link.  Thanks for reading!^_^

PS: Special thanks to Jon Lopez Photography for the awesome Dimes To Dollars Photo shoot! 

by Ben Lopez

The problem with social media these days is that we’re constantly being pushed to make everything connected, and encouraged to share exactly what we’re doing, buying, and where we are. What does this equate to? NOISE, and lots of it.

Perhaps you read somewhere in one of those dime-a-dozen SEO e-books that maximum exposure is critical.  Well, not when you’re scaring off users from your website and social media accounts, readers from your blog, and potential customers for your business with information overload.  You wouldn’t call someone 10 or 20 times a day to tell them you’re playing a game, would you?  Of course not, that’s just not socially acceptable.  When you post things online, think of it as a real life conversation, and remember this when considering how often you want to inform people of every minute detail.

It’s inefficient for all of us; the chronic poster loses subscribers, friend interactions, and it is more difficult to keep track of their own activities due to the very clutter they themselves create. For the rest of us, it clutters our friend feeds, RSS feeds, and inboxes like nobody’s business, good grief. Same concept as people that forward a dozen or more e-mails a day. You’re my friend, and I still like you as a person, but at the end of the day it’s just bothersome to delete all those e-mails. In the same way, it’s bothersome unsubbing/unfriending, hiding individual apps, and tweaking my display settings due to the pseudo spam of others.

My advice: DO NOT LINK TWITTER to your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Myspace account, or else we’re all doomed to suffer endless pages of “LOL yea i no” and “help me tend my crops in Farmville!”. Assuming you don’t post a new article every hour, auto updates from your blog are generally considered acceptable. If you play games, get rid of the ridiculous number of updates that flood both your wall and our friend streams.

Follow these simply rules and it’s entirely possible our planet may not be doomed (maybe). What do you think? Is there still a chance of redemption, or is society beyond hope?

by Ben Lopez

We’re hot off the heels of Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone 4, which I covered on D2D’s Twitter page, and excitement is still buzzing in the tech community.  There’s been some excitement in my own life as well, as I have recently stepped in as the Director of Marketing for App Collab, ideal for anyone interested in developing or investing in mobile apps.  As you can imagine, that has put my former schedule in a blender, so I wasn’t able to sit down and get out much original content this week.  Another fail, my bad.  This week, I’m vowing right now: more meat, less filler!  Leave me some digital-slap-in-the-face comments/threats below to keep me in line, won’t you?

That of course leads me to my one announcement of good news: comments are working again.  I had nearly become a hypocrite after making my plea to Tumblr users  explaining why comments should always be enabled!  When I upgraded to a premium theme this week, I wondered why I wasn’t getting any e-mail notifications for new comments.  But the problem is fixed, so let’s resume the conversation with the great community we have here at Tumblr!

This week’s highlights:

Less than 24 hours after I shared my predictions about Reblogging becoming a widespread standard, Wordpress announced they’re adding a feature to allow reblogs.  It won’t be long until you se this feature adopted by all major blogging sites.  Well, the smart ones, anyway.

A bombshell announcement was met with a surprisingly low-key reception in much of the tech community, when Skype announced they have finally been authorized to allow calls of 3G networks.  Naturally, I tried it out immediately like a giddy schoolgirl, and giggled uncontrollably when it worked like a charm.

RFS Claymations is not a happy camper after taking Microsoft Office 2010 beta for a test drive, and delivers a rant accordingly.

No comic strip for this week’s humour, we innovate here at D2D, gosh darn it.  A blogger introduces the new Myspace Pro service, which got at least a few chuckles from me.  It’s a shame this is fake, if there was a service really like this I’d pay for it…

If you found any of the above particularly interesting or useful, please consider recommending this blog for the tech, startups, or entrepreneurs category.  Thanks for reading!^_^

by Ben Lopez

It’s time once again for the week in review: for those that can’t be bothered reading all of those pesky articles in their entirety, this is the weekly post for you!  Of course, if you find one that strikes your fancy, just give it a click.  But enough with the patronizing instructions, onto this week’s highlights:

I decided to start off the new week with a bang and jump right into a topic that had been bothering me for a while now: Tumblr blogs that don’t allow comments.  I go on for a while on why you would never, ever want to do that.

 Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of 37 Signals, share their thoughts on business plans.  37 Signals is an excellent blog that I heartily recommend.  I also own their book, Rework, and can hardly put it down.  These two men will make 30-year CEOs question traditional business wisdom, and embrace technology like a new born puppy.

 Some of the other entrepreneurs had some excellent blogs this week as well, so I went ahead and reblogged Phil Ricci’s experience with a crappy business owner who is sure to fail miserably and added a few thoughts of my own.

 But that’s not where the reblogging (are we allowed to call it RBing?) ends; Mr. Postling himself, David Lifson reblogged some interesting thoughts on Tumblr and @Replies.  Naturally, I had to put in my two cents, so I reblogged the fella and did just that.  

 In this week’s humour, an animated office worker shows precisely how I used to be before I got (semi) organized.  Though I do still have a row of post-it notes lining the top of my computer monitor, so maybe I’m not quite there yet…

 Last, but certainly not of lesser importance, I cover the phenomenon that is Quit Facebook Day.  For those who aren’t quite ready to quit, but are fed up with the privacy issues and still want to show their disgust, I also share when and how you can do just that.

If you found any of the above particularly interesting or useful, please consider recommending this blog for the tech, startups, or entrepreneurs category.  Thanks for reading!^_^

I hate to be so disappointing with a lack of content this past week, I’ve just been incredibly busy trying to get my new project off the ground while still juggling my day-to-day tasks.  I elaborate a little on what’s been going on with my personal projects here if anyone has any interest (unlikely, but possible, I suppose).

This week’s highlights:

I shared some encouraging and insightful quotes from Steve Jobs and Tim O’Reily.  They lend a bit of advice for startups, and provide valuable wisdom on how to treat your peers.

 Google made a huge announcement this past week as they unveiled Google TV to the world.  I made it clear that in my opinion GTV will soon change the entire market, which I believe will lead to, at long last, custom channel packages.  I had some good discussion with other bloggers on this, and even had a brief interaction with Gary Vaynerchuk, who agreed on the custom channel packages.

 Twitter dominated the #1 spot in the iPhone App Store this past week.  It was dethroned after several days by a Farmville clone…which is pretty sad when you think of the implications on our society’s priorities.

 This week’s humour comes in the form of a very unique Twitter service, which I’ve sarcastically deemed “The most useful Twitter service in the history of mankind”.  No spoilers on what it is (little clue in the thumbnail), you’ll have to read the full entry and judge for yourself how useful it is.;)

Typically I put a small mention down here to recommend this blog if you find it useful.  However, I’m not going to do that this week because I don’t think I delivered the past 7 days.  In any case, I’d like to thank you all for continuing to read From Dimes To Dollars, I read every one of your comments and e-mails.

TOMORROW:  I get opinionated in a big way, and publish an open letter to Tumblr users.  I won’t say what it’s regarding, but let’s just say not everyone is going to be happy about it.  Get your trigger finger ready to send that hate mail!