Radio Free Enterprise

Have you ever wished that you could just leave a voice mail for someone without risking them actually answering the phone? Well now you can, with slydial.

This free service somehow manages to put you directly into a person’s voice mail box without their phone ringing or displaying your phone number (most of the time, read below). All you have to do is dial the slydial phone number (267-SLYDIAL) and then type in the number of phone you want to leave a message on. After that just leave a message as usual.

What’s the catch? Well, there are actually two ways you “pay” for the service. First off, every time you call you have to listen to a 30-second commercial before being connected. Secondly, in order to access enhanced features like abbreviated dialing and web access (neither of which strike me as big benefits) you have to register with the site, providing a great deal of personal information including your phone number.

The slydial web site does a great job presenting examples of how and when to use the service. Like the chance to just give your side of the story without the other party having the opportunity to waste your time by giving theirs. Or checking in with your boss from the golf course without risking being assigned with a new task to complete before the end of the day. The potential uses are almost endless and some of the best are provided by users on the slydial blog site.

In testing slydial, I came upon an issue you should be aware of. Sometimes your call is not entirely stealthy. I contacted the company and received a very prompt email response regarding this apparent problem. According to Gavin Macomber of MobileSphere, slydial’s parent company, with some mobile phones

“…the recipient’s phone may emit an abbreviated “half ring” before going directly to voicemail (after all .. you did try to call them). In any scenario, rest-assured that the person you are slydialing cannot ‘answer’ your call.”

One last caveat: slydial only works when calling to mobile phones.

All in all, I think slydial is great and I’ve already saved it in my cell phone’s directory. Give it a try and then come back and leave a comment.

Networking of all kinds fascinates me. Whether it be business networking groups like BNI, network marketing companies like Mary Kay or Isagenix, or social networking applications like MySpace and LinkedIn, this type of distributed messaging really piques my interest.

While researching a post on the use of social networking sites for marketing purposes, I came across a company that is not only doing it but teaching others how to supercharge their sales through the intelligent use of these sites. They’ve even coined the term Social Marketing.

Stomper Net has posted this video as a viral marketing device for their services. Whether or not you choose to employ their services, I highly recommend you spend a few minutes watching it.

The first few minutes are a little hypey, and the animation is a little cutesy, but once you get to the statistics on the growth of social networking sites and how marketers are using them to explode traffic on their sites, the video becomes nothing short of compelling.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Recent posts have gone from monkey to donkey, and now I’m moving from TWiT to Twitter.

I am seriously investigating Social Networking as it relates to Small Business Marketing. I’ve been on LinkedIn for a couple of years and am now experimenting with FaceBook, MySpace and, most recently, Twitter.

As with all Social Networking tools, Twitter can be a little difficult to explain to those of us who were born before 1990.

In a nutshell, Twitter allows you to let everyone in your group of friends know what you are doing from minute to minute.

This may not sound appealing to those of us who feel the Internet age has left us naked from a privacy standpoint. Sadly, this is something that we’re all just going to have to accept and, in my opinion embrace, since the idea of personal privacy is not just going the way of the Dodo bird, it’s already long gone. And Twitter is less invasive than many other Internet information sources. What you post about your life and actions is up to you. You only need tell the people you want to tell, what you want to share, when you want to share it. Some people go crazy, posting info ever time they have a meal or leave the house. Puh-leeze resist the urge to do this.

Instead, look at Twitter as a great free tool to help stay top-of-mind with your sphere of influence. Twitter posts are short text messages (limited to 140 characters) which can include links back to your blog, website, ecommerce site, etc. which can also potentially increase your page rank on Google. I have just started “Tweeting” but intend to tweet every time I post something on my blog or do something else I think the folks following me will be interested in knowing.

Just for kicks, why not set up your own Twitter account and choose to follow my actions. I’ll do the same for you and we’ll figure out whether this thing has any longterm value together.

One of my favorite podcasts is TWiT, This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte.

Leo has a great radio voice (and years of “real” radio experience) and his ever-changing panel of thoughtful, funny guests makes for a very enjoyable listening experience. Frequent contributors include John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton, and Jason Calacanis. He also often has surprisingly famous one-time guests like Steve Wozniak and Roger McGuinn.

Leo is constantly pushing the edge of the envelope when it comes to distributing audio and video content and frequently shares tidbits on how he does what he does. For example, he uses Skype to connect his panel from across the country and around the world in a real-time, relatively high quality production. He has also recently added live streaming video.

If you ever wonder how I stay on top of all the cool new tech products and services that I blog about, give a listen to TWiT. Every week you’ll learn about the latest happenings in digital video, social networking, blogging and podcasting - you name it.

You can subscribe via iTunes or just listen online via the TWiT website.

Hope you enjoy it - and don’t say I never gave you anything!

Last time it was monkeys, this time it’s a donkey (pronounced DUN-key if you’re Tony Kornheiser).

As someone who has seen his share of challenges over the past couple of years, I really appreciated the moral of this story of a donkey who fell down an open well. If you’re a believer in the power of persistence, you’ll love The Donkey Story.

We all encounter difficulties of one kind or another. But what really matters is not what happens to you, it’s how you respond.

In this story the donkey finds himself in a spot none of us would wish on our worst enemy - and then learns that the people he’s depending on to rescue him have decided to not only turn their backs, but actively make his situation much worse. His patient, creative and unexpected response is one for the ages.

The narrator is Alex Mandossian, an Internet Marketing guru whom I have followed for many years.

Give it a listen.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I’ll explain in a moment, but first a quick Economics lesson.

Economists talk about how every person, corporation - and living creature - arranges their affairs in the fashion that best suits them as part of what is called their Personal Utility Function. In other words your purchase decisions, choice of employment, food selections, etc. are based upon your personal tastes and beliefs regarding your likes and dislikes.

It has been shown that even an amoeba will move from a nutrient-poor environment to a nutrient-rich environment in pursuit of its own Personal Utility Function. But does that mean that animals engage in commerce? Read on and decide for yourself.

In this story from Time Magazine’s web site, researchers describe how female Indonesian Long-tailed Macaques engage in prostitution in exchange for grooming services from males. There is even a sliding price scale which reacts to the number of females available and other factors in the immediate environment.

I’ve often said that the Personal Utility Function aspect of Microeconomic Theory is almost a law of Nature. I guess the fact that monkeys are engaging in the world’s oldest profession proves me right.