The Black Dog

This poem was included in the newsletter sent to me by Steve Andrews who is the organiser behind the Black Dog Rides:


Black Dog

When the black dog comes calling
You lose track of reason
For it’s darkest of winter
No matter what season

When the black dog comes howling
You’ll wonder what hit you
For it’s hard to think straight
When the black dog has bit you

When the black dog is hunting
It’s you that he’s after
He will steal all your joy
He will still all your laughter

When the black dog is growling
You will think the sky’s falling
When you’ve lost all your hope
It’s the black dog that’s calling

For the black dog will eat you
One bite at a time
And he feels no remorse
For committing this crime

And the black dog will grip you
His jaws like a vice
His breath like a fog
His touch just like ice

When the black dog comes sneaking
Your will must not break
For the black dog’s a coward
Just a mean shabby fake

When the black dog sits down
It’s a sign and a warning
But hold on one night
And he’s gone with the morning

For the black dog depression
Comes hunting us all
It’s hard to resist him
But don’t follow his call

The black dog can’t take you
If you understand him
If you can’t fight him off
It’s your life that you’ll hand him

So banish the black dog
Or bring him to heal
But you must understand that
The black dog is real

Marc

OFFICIAL: 1 in a Million [the first Million] on LinkedIn

I got a email from the founder of LinkedIn this morning. Nothing unusual about that - LinkedIn writes to me all the time - I ticked the "send me stuff" box when I joined. The email was about the impending 100 Millionth member of LinkedIn... and I thought I remember when there were on 10 million on LinkedIn.

But... apparently I was in the first 500k on members - an earlier adopter!! WOW! So thanks for the shout out Reid Hoffman!!

Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Rumored To Sell $500M

Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Rumored To Sell $500M

Posted by Jackie Cohen on March 21st, 2011 3:18 PM

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Henry Blodgett says he heard that Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin sold $500 million in Facebook stock.

He didn’t name his source and said point blank that Business Insider hasn’t been able to confirm the rumor.

Good luck with getting that confirmed, Henry. We know that Facebook has a policy of not commenting on matters of speculation, and we said as much in our request for a comment from the company. If we hear anything other than a variation on “no comment,” we’ll be sure to update you all.

We completely understand why Facebook’s spokespeople don’t want to comment about matters of speculation. For instance, back on March 3, rumors circulated that one of the co-founders of Facebook was trying to unload 10 million shares. That same Friday, another rumor had it that General Atlantic may have bought 2.5 million shares. The following Monday, SharesPost announced it closed an auction of Facebook holdings at the second-highest price ever fetched for the shares.

Many people assumed that the rumors preceding the SharesPost announcement might have transpired during the auction. So maybe it’s not too big of a leap to wonder whether we might learn that Saverin’s sale might have occurred on SecondMarket, for instance.

Readers, what do you make of the latest rumor about Facebook shares?

6 Best Twitter Apps For iPhone

The official Twitter app for iPhone is fantastic! Or, well, was was fantastic until Twitter shoved all those promoted tweets into the top of your timeline. If you’ve been so annoyed with the dickbar that you want to ditch the official Twitter app, here are six of the best non-Twitter Twitter apps available for the iPhone.

Echofon: Echofon is the most similar in style to the official Twitter app, which to me, makes it the best alternative. In fact, it was my go-to Twitter app before Twitter took over Tweetie. The app is so familiar – the white background, the similar panels – that you might even think you’re using the official Twitter app! One huge plus though: Echofon displays outbound links within your timeline so you don’t have to jump into another screen to click the links. Saves you a millisecond, you know? But seriously, if you enjoyed the official Twitter app, Echofon is the app to download. [iTunes]

Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck’s infamous column-based layout stays true in their iPhone app. And because those columns that can be rejiggered to show any feed, Tweetdeck is the best app to use if you juggle multiple accounts. Hell, it even throws in Facebook support! The “compose-a-tweet” screen offers a ton of options from hashtags to contacts to photos to landscape mode and more. One thing though, Tweetdeck isn’t updated for the iPhone 4′s Retina Display which can sometimes make you want to rip your eyeballs out. [iTunes]

Seesmic: It’s one of those all-your-social-networks-in-one type apps but it’s still really great for Twitter. They call their home screen “spaces” which is a four-icon grid that lets you jump into different accounts. This method may actually be more effective than Tweetdeck’s columns because it’s quicker (a tap vs a swipe tap) and looks a little better. If you have multiple accounts, Seesmic can post to all of them at the same time too. [iTunes]

Twitbird: Twitbird offers the best compromise between a simple layout and deep features. The layout is easy-to-read (no ads in stream!) with your timeline being transformed into chat bubble-esque updates. You can even throw in custom backgrounds, if that’s your thing. The tweet screen has a ton of “hidden” options which you can either ignore if you don’t need them or pull out from under the keyboard to use. The only problem? It’s just a tad bit slower than the other apps. [iTunes]

Hootsuite: What’s great about Hootsuite is that its feature set is pretty unique. It has everything the other apps have plus the ability to schedule tweets, see stats on who’s clicking your links and see what all those trending topics mean. Supports Facebook and Foursquare too. [iTunes]

Twitterrific: The old dog of the iPhone Twitter apps still has some tricks. Twitterrific offers a unified “one stream” timeline for tweets, your @replies, re-tweets and DM’s which I kinda like (though I don’t get a ton of @replies). I’m docking off some points for the size of each tweet in the app, it just takes up too much screen real estate. But! Links displayed inline and the ability to translate tweets are big pluses. [iTunes]

11 Really Good Twitter Tools & Services / Twitter / Splashnology - Web Design and Web Technology Community

Archivist

Visualizations are graphic representations of the data your archives. Visualizations generated by The Archivist may not represent a complete historical record. Use The Archivist to help you understand trends such as the number of Tweets over time, top users and words, sentiment, and more. Check out our handy visualizations page for more info or see what types of visualizations The Archivist creates below…

Backtweets

Twitter analytics to help you understand how people interact with you and your content.

Birdherd

BirdHerd makes it easy for groups, teams and brands to update a single Twitter account. Posting is as easy as sending a direct message to the group twitter account.

Buffer

Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule tweets. Work out all your tweets at one point in time during the day. Then fill up your Buffer with your tweets and Buffer schedules them for you. Simply keep that Buffer topped up and you will then be tweeting consistently all day round, all week long.

Chirpstats

Chirpstats.com* is a Twitter follower analytics package built to help you track and learn more about your follower-base. To use chirpstats, simply follow @chirpstats on Twitter and we will message you with your first update in a couple of days!

Digitweet

Dlvr

dlvr.it provides bloggers, publishers and brands a way to instantly syndicate content and expand their reach on the social web and into new channels.

Our tools make it easy to manage and measure the flow of your content everywhere your audience is. dlvr.it publishes your media, your blogs, all your content to your social channels, ensuring your audience sees it instantly.

Feedlooks

Feedlooks is an innovative blog and Twitter reader that focuses on modern feed reading verticals, namely, Follow, Share, Filter, and Discover.

Grouptweet

GroupTweet turns a standard Twitter account into a group communication hub where members can post updates to everyone in the group using direct messages. When the group account receives a direct message from a group member, GroupTweet converts it into a tweet that all followers can see.

Hashtracking

Track Campaigns. Measure Reach. Calculate Influence. Create Beautiful Presentations

Just tweet it!

Just Tweet It was created to make it easier for people using the popular micro-blogging service Twitter to find other “Tweeters” with similar interests.

Manageflitter

Clean up and manage who you follow. Find out who isn't following you back. Find out which inactive accounts you follow. Easily search inside your Twitter stream.

Seriously... can I get a double helping!!

eMail received yesterday: From: Andrew Bill [mailto:andrew.bill85@yahoo.co.uk] Sent: Wednesday, 16 March 2011 9:19 PM To: undisclosed recipients: Subject: QUEST TO INVEST Hello Sir, I am an accountant by profession, and acts as a private consultant to some clients in the United Kingdom ranging from top business personals, serving and retired Army. Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel and top Government functionaries whose privacy is shrouded in topmost secrecy. As stated above I have a client's mandate to seek for a reputable, and well-established individual to help channel some funds into profitable investment abroad. The proposed funds is an estimated ($25m usd) And he his specific in investing these funds outside the UK.I hope you will treat my request with expediency as time is of great importance to my client. Thank You, Andrew Bill  My answer: --- On Thu, 17/3/11, Wayne Mansfield   wrote: Subject: RE: QUEST TO INVEST To: "'Andrew Bill'" <andrew.bill85@yahoo.co.uk Date: Thursday, 17 March, 2011, 6:32 What absolute BULL SHIT!  and my friend Bill's reply: Hello Wayne Mansfield, Thanks so much for your interest My client who trades big time on Alcohol, liquor and tobacco across Europe is presently been incarcerated for tax related crimes and with all our accounts and assets frozen. This fund in question is our only living hope and we wanted to do everything to ensure it is well secured and every interest will be protected. Everything about this fund is legal and without any likely legal implication(s).It is very pertinent that this fund be moved out completely out of Europe as soon as possible so that the authorities here would not have it linked to my client. The funds are clean and of no criminal origin. We are not very particular in great returns on investment but on the security of the funds. Be as it may, we want this money out immediately, possibly within the next two weeks. As soon as the money is out to you there we can now be relaxed in drawing up our investment plans and strategies. My client deserves every cover of confidentiality and secrecy I can accord him so I certainly would not compromise that for anything and it is our conviction that whoever we are dealing with shall accord us some great deal of trust and confidence as much as we give too. 1.The funds are in a private security vault and not in the banking system for security reasons. So the funds would not be traced or linked to us we decided to have it deposited under a private arrangement with the security firm as family possession of high value. 2. I am sure it's already clear to you that the fund is individually owned. 3. You have my words that the funds are clean and of no criminal origin. 4. Any secured investment will be in order. 5. I would of course provide you with the direct contact of the security firm in the Spain to verify with them and we would give you all legal empowerment and documents to be able to claim this fund. To do this deal securely we would have to surrender the beneficiary and custodianship of this asset to you. In this regard you would personally have to visit the security firm in the Spain to sign and have it released. Once released an account will be set up there under your personal or company's name and the funds deposited and sitting in the account. Once that is settled you will then be able to initiate transfers in trenches at your discretion to your home account(s).This way every form of connection or link of the funds to us will be completely erased as this will simply indicate you are transferring funds from your account in Europe to your account back home. I am sure you get my drift? We have to take these cautious steps in the face of our present circumstances. I again confirm that you can directly contact the security firm in the Spain with the direct contact info of the Operational Director which I will forward to you upon the receipt of your positive reply. Can we really do this together; your thoughts? Thank You, Andrew Bill

Fast Eddys - not so fast and not 24/7 anymore

Fast Eddys Not so 24/7

My morning routine was to walk to Fast Eddys Morley for its famous always open 24/7 and enjoy a coffee at the half way point of my 5km walk..

At the start os February a sign appeared that from then - no warning - they were only going to be 24/7 Friday Saturday Sunday. No reason but you can only imagine - poor support from their customers... it's always the customers fault!!

This morning I thought I would go later for my walk... getting to Fast Eddys just after 7am and enjoying a coffee and some scrambled eggs. So I ordered and paid... at 7.05 am and waited... coffee arrived very quickly but at 7,25 I asked the waitress if she could hurry up the eggs to which she said that she had just asked the chief to hurry up.

at 7.40 I decided that I couldn't waste any more time and I told the young lady that I was off... I was pleasant and didn't ask for my money back.

So I wonder when Fast Eddys Morley will close because the customers stopped coming?? It will be of course the customers fault... not the poor service!!

Wollongong Steel City

Here is a great image of Wollongong taken by Aussie photographer David Wallace

Steel City Wollongong

Stop Rewind Start Again - but too late!

If you could jam those words back into your mouth…

I had one of those experiences this morning where I wish I could retrieve the words I had just spoken… you know what I mean.

I had been playing Telephone Tag yesterday with a late booker to our NegotiationPower seminar in Sydney for today. 4 calls got message bank and as I hadn’t got a details message of what he was calling about I could reply to those messages.

Well this morning I got a returned call from him. He explained that because he hadn’t been able to talk to me he wanted to cancel the booking we had precessed the previous day. And then he proceeded to tell me what I felt was unnecessary about service etc.

My easy option was to listen, agree and say “no problems, all’s well” but something in his tone got to me. I explained I had tried 4 times the previous day to talk with him, and that being a Public Holiday in Perth the paperwork hadn’t been processed.

His reply, enhanced by what I perceived was criticism in his voice, was “It wasn’t a holiday here in Sydney” and to expect him to act on a confirmation email I had sent on Monday afternoon and attend the seminar.
Well I couldn’t stop the words from coming out… I justified what action I had taken, and the difficulty tasks I performed and I wasn’t taking his comments as what actually happened. I was fired up and told him in no uncertain terms that we [I] had done everything to process and confirm his order, and I didn’t agree with his commentary of events.

So, with that off my chest, he really served it up to me. His parting shot was “and you take your seminars and jam them up your…”

On reflection I should have let him have his sound off, smiled sweetly and moved on!

Qantas pricing..

Captain Travolta and Qantas!

What gives you the tom tits??

A particular bug bear of mine is when Qantas have No seats on their planes and the only “available” are FULL FARE business.

Give me an example I hear you saying… I needed to fly seminar present Cris Popp from Melbourne to Brisbane on Sunday to host our sessions TimeShifting and NegotiationPOWER – the cheapest ticket on Qantas was $1,100 where normally you could get them for $150-$200 ish… so Virgin Blue got some of my business – they were an expensive $389.

So I could review Cris’s presentation style and audience reaction, I flew to Brisbane on Sunday evening and wanted to come back Monday evening… the normal fair is a=bout $320… cheapest Brisbane to Perth was $2,150!!

That’s how come I am writing this whilst returning to Perth on Tuesday morning for $309. So even staying at the Sebel in Brisbane overnight, booked with Wotif’s MYSTERY stay for $202, the total was much less than flying Business class.

Whilst waiting in the Qantas lounge to board my Perth flight, I was again trying to get Cris Popp from Sydney to Melbourne – NO FLIGHTS between 5.15pm and 10pm available unless Business Class at $1500. So again it was Virgin Blue for just $398 [“just”  is said with tongue in cheek.]

Of by the way, Brisbane to Sydney was just $109 on Qantas for Cris on Monday evening.

My question to Qantas is “how does that work??”

Ted Wisdom - The 18th Camel

After listening to A Ted Talk this morning - The 18th Camel I went to find it on the net and found this blog entry from Bryan Lewis...

The 18th Camel

This is a story that I listened to this morning from a TED talk given by William Ury.

"There once was an old father who had 3 sons and 17 camels. When the old man died, he left 1/2 of the camels to his oldest son, 1/3 of the camels to the middle son, and 1/9 of the camels to the youngest son. They realized that you can't divide 17 by 1/2, 1/3, or 1/9, so the began arguing and tension started to rise.

They found a wise old woman and asked for her help. She thought and thought and finally said, "Well, that's a difficult situation, but if it helps any, you can have my camel."

So the three brothers took the old woman's camel and now had 18 camels. The first son took 1/2 of the camels (which is 9), the second son took 1/3 of the camels (which is 6), and the third son took 1/9 of the camels (which is 2), which comes to a total of 17 camels.

So they returned the 18th camel back to the woman."


Interesting story, isn't it? He used this story to explain how many problems to our solutions come from sitting back and trying to look at the whole picture.

Accidential Billionaires, Seminars, books & Weather [Bloody Hot!]

Looking for a good read, some feedback on life and what "hot" really means let me know with comments here or on Facebook...

Epiphany: No more Consulting Jobs - They Are NEVER Happy

That's It - I have had enough

What is going on!!

This week I have had three people unhappy with what we are doing for them. Apparently they have had advice from other people that the stuff we do is "shit" and can't possibly work.

Now, let's get this straight... these people have asked me to show them how I make money [by the way I actually do!] and then take advice from someone who DOES'T make any?

My income from Internet marketing first passed $1million a year in 2005 [ when a million was a million! ] and in the years since, I have used my skills for various third parties to replicate that success. Due to my battles with the Ozzie Government I am semi-retired until 2012 BUT the strategies that I teach are those which are and were and still will be successful. [The seminar company I consult for banked $10k before lunch today!]

But hey, I don't know what I am talking about according to sister Louanne who is getting Social Security payments because her Internet earnings aren't enough for her to stop being eligible for Family Support payments!! [Give me a break]

So, from yesterday, NO MORE CONSULTING CLIENTS! Whilst that coaching money is easy to get, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have people happy.

This is what happens:

When it DOESN'T work the excuses are:

1. Take 3rd Party Advice - and then don't do what they should
2. Don't do anything once money paid!!
3. Cant use computers - have trouble finding GREEN button
4. Cat ate the computer
5. Mother, father, daughter, son or neighbour has been sick

When it DOES work:

1. Gee I could have done that - you charge too much
2. Nobody is worth $2,000 an hour even if they get 5 times that in extra profit!
3. We are happy with your work BUT the brothers kid is a computer whiz and cheaper

So, I am sworn off coaching, consulting etc... I wont miss it!!