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What's the best way to develop a content strategy that reflects the reality of today's buyer journey? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ashley Faus, who is the Content Strategy Lead for Software Teams at Atlassian, shares why she thinks a playground provides a better analogy than a funnel for marketers looking to develop their content strategy, and how to use the concept of a content playground to provide your customers and prospects with a better buying experience. Highlights from my conversation with Ashley include: Many marketers use the concepts of the linear funnel and the looping decision journey to develop their content strategies, but Ashley says that those don't reflect the reality of how people buy. Much like in a playground, where there isn't a singular goal (get to the top of the jungle gym!), your prospects aren't always ready to buy and may have other interests. For this reason, a playground offers a better analogy. Rather than forcing prospects to follow a specific journey that we as marketers have determined is ideal, Ashley recommends focusing on creating strong content depth that allows your prospects to follow their own journey, wherever it takes them. For smaller teams that are just getting started, Ashley recommends identifying your "hedgehog principle" - that one thing you do better than everyone else - and creating a very in-depth piece of content on that. Then, you can use that content to repurpose into a variety of assets that can be used on social media, for your trade shows, in the sales process, etc. The key is to find a topic that is substantive enough to support the development of this amount of content.  In terms of how this content gets presented on your website, Ashley recommends ungating it, and then being very explicit with your CTAs so that your website visitors know exactly what they will get if they click a button.  She also suggests adding a related content module on your site to encourage visitors to browse through your content. The best way to begin measuring the impact of your strategy is to use simple tools like Google Analytics in combination with UTMs. As you grow, you can use more sophisticated marketing automation software like HubSpot or Marketo. Resources from this episode: Visit the Atlassian website Connect with Ashley on LinkedIn Follow Ashley on Twitter Check out Atlassian's Team Playbook and Agile Microsite Listen to the podcast to learn why envisioning your buyer's journey -- and their interactions with your content -- as a playground is a more effective way to approach the development of a content strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Ashley FOSS, who is the content strategy lead for software teams at Atlassian. Welcome Ashley. Ashley Faus (Guest): Nice to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to have you here. Ashley and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: And, and for those who are listening, you can't see it. But Ashley has an awesome virtual Zoom background of the golden gate bridge. That's one of my favorite things about the pandemic is that it is revealing people's personalities through the Zoom backgrounds that they choose.  Ashley: It's been interesting. I actually think didn't have the latest version of Zoom. I got scared that if I upgraded and something went wrong, I wouldn't have access to it. So for a long time I was the lame person that didn't have a background and it was just my kitchen the whole time. So yes, I finally upgraded. Tell any of the listeners that are hesitant, you can upgrade. And it's not going to ruin your computer. And you, too, can have a nice virtual backgrounds. Kathleen: Oh yeah. For our all hands meetings at my office. We've been having so much fun with just seeing the backgrounds that people come to these meetings with. It's, it's awesome. It reveals so much about their personalities. About Ashley and Atlassian Kathleen: But so we have so much to talk about. And the first thing I want to talk about is really have you explain to my listeners what Atlassian is, and then also your background and what led you to your current role as Content Strategy Lead. Ashley: Sure. So Atlassian is a collaboration software maker. A lot of people are very familiar with JIRA, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, Status Page. We have a number of different products that people use all the time. JIRA especially is a staple for software teams. So I actually started at Atlassian two and a half years ago and I moved among a couple of different teams. My background is primarily marketing, but I actually started on the corporate communications team, moved over to editorial, doing a mix of content strategy, social media, thought leadership for the corporate side, and then just recently made the move over onto software teams. One thing that's kind of interesting and great is having that diverse background has given me that ability to move across different areas and go where my skills can be most useful. So I'm excited to dive in. I'm fairly new to the role, so it's been an interesting transition to try to onboard from home and then also start to get up to speed both from a content standpoint and a strategy standpoint, and then also from a tactical standpoint of where are all the different boards, where's the JIRA tickets? Like what's the process, what are the meetings? So, um, it's been fun. It's been fun. Kathleen: I will definitely say as far as Atlassian is concerned, I've been a user of so many of the company's products. I've used Confluence and JIRA. I'm currently using Trello. I know our dev team uses a number of products as well. It's a great company and a great suite of products, especially for anybody who's practicing agile, which I have done a few times. And so that was another reason I was excited to talk to you. But one of the things I think is really interesting is, you know, you mentioned you're relatively new in the role and we were just talking before we came on and you were explaining how your fiscal year, it's going to change over pretty soon. And so not only are you relatively new in the role, but you're being thrust into the situation of having to plan and strategize for a whole new year in the middle of the pandemic, no less all of these things happening at once. Your current focus is on content and I was really fascinated by how you think about content and content strategy planning and this concept of the content playground. So could you talk a little bit about that and what do you mean when you say a content playground?  What is a content playground? Ashley: I started thinking about it because I needed a new metaphor. Everybody that I talked to was talking about primarily the linear funnel. And you know, you've got your three phases with your editorial calendar and you say, "I need three content, three pieces of content per phase. I'm going to do one per month. Cool. Now I have nine months of content strategy, if my math works out". Most of your listeners are probably sitting there going, "That's not how you do content strategy. You can't just say one piece of content per phase and then call it". Kathleen: Wouldn't it be nice if you could though?  Ashley: You bought a calendar, write three articles and you're done. Then, you know, I know a lot of people have moved on to the looping decision journey where you basically add a fourth phase in there. And you're kind of almost recycling these people, but now there's a cross sell or upsell, but somehow you're dumping them back into that awareness phase from the linear funnel. If you look at the Google results for both the linear funnel and the looping decision funnel, it's kind of terrifying. It's very confusing. It basically just shows that we all agree that humans don't work this way. Nobody just goes politely down our little funnel. The 10-3-1 conversion was kind of the standard for a long time. You get 10 people in awareness. A certain amount of drops. So you get three into consideration to be able to get one to that kind of purchase decision. I was really wrestling with this because I was like, how do you create content in a way that allows people to do what they actually do, which is enter and exit and go sideways and all of that? So I had originally come up with this idea of a jungle gym. But there's two problems with that -- mainly that there's only one objective. It's either to get to the top or, if you're my three year old nephew, it's to go across without touching the lava below that. It's still me as a marketer forcing you into what I want you to do and it's taking all these touch points and saying, what's the fewest number of touch points that I can use to get you to a purchase? And yes, ultimately we need to sell products. Ultimately we have to make money as businesses, but it feels bad to everybody to just constantly be like, are you just trying to sell me something? Like what's the catch? I don't really trust you because I know you're trying to sell me. So if you look at an actual playground though, what's the point of the playground? Is the person who's sitting on the bench just enjoying the sunshine? Are they enjoying the playground the wrong way? No, actually perfectly acceptable. Sit on the bench. Again, you know, thinking about what the right way is to play on the playground for the adults and the playground designers, going down the slide is the right way. Three year old nephew, every time wants to go up the slide. If you translate that to content strategy, I recently had an example of this where in the traditional funnel, pricing is considered a very bottom of funnel action. If I'm asking you about price, man, I'm ready to buy. Well, in my case, I needed to go ask for budget before I could even do the RFP and I had no idea what that budget should be for. It was going to be a SaaS product. So understanding, you know, the subscription, SLA, the licensing tiers, all of that. And so I started reaching out to some vendors in the space asking them for just ballpark pricing so I could go get budget. And so many of them were like, well, allow me to send you a white paper about why this matters a lot and you know, Oh, you need to do a demo. And I'm like, Nope, I don't want to waste my time going through your traditional funnel when I don't even know if I have a budget yet. Kathleen: I have to just interject there and say amen because this has been a frustration of mine for so long. I had this recently with a marketing software product. It was exactly what you're talking about. It was last November and I was working on my budget and I knew that I was not going to purchase this product until halfway through 2020. And that was even before all this craziness with the pandemic hit. But I needed a placeholder number for it in my budget. So there's no chance I was going to engage in, like multi meetings and demos and hours long calls with people to pitch me what I know I'm not ready to buy yet. I just needed a price. There's nothing more frustrating than companies that make it that hard and it wasn't a one time thing. I just found myself doing this yesterday. Somebody started talking about email signature software and they mentioned the name of a new company, and I literally Googled the company name and pricing because I was like, I don't even want to waste my time looking at everything else and getting excited about it if I can't afford it. Ashley: Yeah, well, and it's interesting too because once I got the budget approved, I was already completely sold that this problem needed to be solved. I just needed to get management on board that yes, we are committed to solving this problem. So then I actually got into the sales process and you know, I started kind of at the top of that and I just said, look, I'm bought in, draw me all the way down to the bottom of the funnel and I want you to just pitch me. Kathleen: Yeah.  Ashley: It blew the sales people's minds. And they're like, well, let me just go through the deck. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't know how many slides you have, but I'm telling you I'm bought in, I agree with you. This has impact. It solves a problem that I have. I have money, here's what my budget is. I'm BANT qualified. I need you to drop me all the way in and I need you to sell me. A majority of them just froze because they didn't know how to go through there. They only know how to do this step by step. And that's where I think the content playground comes in. Obviously there's a sales component to this too. When you do get people who just want to jump right in, I wouldn't send them to play on the swings. That's what we're doing right now. We're spending all our time on the swings. Let's just do it. Quit trying to force them to go down the slide. It's so funny because people have this idea that there's a specific way that you're supposed to build the relationship and you're supposed to, you know, okay, let's get you through the marketing funnel and get you through MQL and then SQL and then a sale. And it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you meet somebody and they come at you and they're like, no, I'm literally ready to sign on the dotted line, whether it's you or one of your competitors. So why should it be you? Kathleen: Yeah. And not only is that an issue, but it's like I'm going to sign and it's going to be fast. So if you can't meet my fast timeline, just get out of my way. Exactly. That's so interesting. I love that concept. How to use the concept of a content playground to develop your content strategy Kathleen: So give me an example of, conceptually, how does that play out in terms of developing and executing your strategy? Ashley: I've done this at a number of different companies and then we also, you know, do this similar type of thing, whether you see whether you recognize it and call it a content playground or not. When you start to recognize companies that do it because you go through and there's a nice experience to say, Oh, I've kind of landed in this problem space or solution space and now I have the ability to go explore. So we've done that quite a bit in it last year and moving into this content strategy role on software teams, I'm getting exposed to some great ways that they've done it. So for example, we have this agile microsite and then we paired that last year with this agile coach series. This is all work that has been done that I'm excited to come in and kind of optimize and see how can we replicate this across other content types. And it basically says, you know, yes, JIRA helps you run in an agile way, but if you don't have the right practices set up and you don't have that mindset in those processes, a tool is not the thing that's going to fix it for you. And so sure we can sell you JIRA, but if we don't show you the right way to set up the workflows, if we don't help you have acceptable standups, if we don't help you improve your retros, having these things on a board is not going to solve, you know, your agility problems. And so putting that together, if you look at it from a content depth standpoint, instead of organizing around specific phases of the funnel, organizing it around content depth. So from a conceptual standpoint, what the heck is agile? Why does it matter? What kinds of success, you know, have people seen with it, what are the problems from a strategy standpoint, what are the practices and rituals? So that's where you get into some of the standups. That's where you get into some of the retros. And then from a tactic standpoint, how do you actually do those things? And so we have a number of things from the agile coach series, from the agile microsite and also our team playbook, which talks about things like my user manual. So how do you work together as a team? Um, putting together project coasters for kickoffs. And then yes, there's some product demos in there. There's some guides in there, there's some tutorials, there's here workflows that you can set up to do that in JIRA or to do that in Trello. But it's really that full content experienced to say, I just need help figuring out how to run my standups or my retros. And then, cool that I can do that in JIRA as well. So I previously worked at Duarte, if you're familiar with Nancy Duarte's work. Um, she wrote Resonate, which was, you know, a big game changer for a lot of people. They do workshops, they do presentation design for tons of big names and Fortune 500 companies. So we did this in a number of ways. When we launched her slide decks book for example, we put that as a free, ungated version on SlideShare. And then we linked over to this kind of more traditional inbound strategy page where you've got a landing page with a form, you give away a free piece of content, show good faith that this is good quality, and then you've got a form fill out to download some templates that people could use that would then drop people into a drip campaign where we would showcase more templates, we would showcase some use cases that we had built and give them more content to ultimately lead them to say, "Hey, if you want to buy a workshop to learn how to do this at a pro level, here's how you can do that." Getting started with your content playground Kathleen: So if I love the whole concept here, and I love the notion of content depth because I do think that there are so many marketers that almost try to cover too much and they skim the surface on everything and it doesn't work. I think the thing that could be challenging about this is hearing that, like, where do you start and how do you, how do you get there? Because you can't snap your fingers and have a lot of depth in all these topics right away. And also, how do you know what those top level topics are? If you were teaching this to somebody, how would you walk them through that? Ashley: So there's a couple of ways that, uh, we've been able to do it at Atlassian. Obviously we're fortunate we have a large team and a ton of experts that have complimentary skills. So for example, we have done a ton of keyword research to understand both search intent and the specific wording of that. From a market standpoint, agile came in and changed the game, and it turns out that JIRA was actually a really good fit to run agile. So we already kind of were keeping a pulse on the market and we started to see that agile is becoming this very mainstream thing, that our tool and our technology is really useful in helping people run. So let's focus on agile. Okay, where do we focus? And that's where things like SEO and keyword research, that's where focus groups, that's where digging through the feedback that your customers are giving you and asking like, what are the top questions in terms of workflows? How do those map to things like running scrum teams or running Kanban boards? How does that now map to workflows and guides and onboarding tutorials that we would share with somebody who starts with your product or working with Trello products, for example? So I would say I'm doing a listening exercise and there's a number of tools. You could do it on social media as well, particularly for software devs, which is one of our core audiences. They hang out on Hacker News, they hang out on Reddit. And so go look there. That's, that's another core tenant I think as marketers is loving the whole human and not just who are you as a buyer? I only care about you as a buyer or user. How do I get you to engage in the product every day or buy more of the service? Okay, these people have lives. And so if you can figure out what do they love, what are they passionate about outside of the one thing you're trying to sell them, that also gives you an entire new space to explore for thinking about what topics could you engage in. And so, when you think about engineers, efficiency, optimization, clean and concise process is something that's very important to them. Well what are some of the frameworks or what are some of the topics that deal with optimization that could potentially lead you to lead you to something like Six Sigma or manufacturing for example, right? There's a lot of ways that you could think about it if you just know what do engineers generally like? And it's like, they really like efficiency. They like optimization, they like tight, elegant solutions and just jump off from there to see, okay, what are the specific topic areas that would coincide with your product offering? And with the things that they generally care about, what does that mean? Kathleen: And if you don't have an enormous team and you want to take this approach, how do you do it? Because I imagine you'd have a choice of like, okay, I've identified 10 areas that I want to go deep on, you know, and I could either take area number one and fully play it out and develop all the content. Or I could do one article for each of the 10 areas and then go back and do the second article. Like how would you tackle it? Ashley: Yeah. So one of the things that Nancy Duarte actually talks about a ton, from Jim Collins book Good to Great is this concept of the hedgehog principle. And that's if you can do one thing and be the best at it, just do that one thing. So instead of trying to spread yourself too thin across all of those 10 topics, I would be ruthless initially in what is the thing that we actually have the ability to talk about without having to spend a ton of time and energy going and finding that expertise? What's the thing that leads most to the product market fit, or the service market fit, whichever of those that you're selling? And then what's the thing that has depth? This is something that I see a lot, is people start throwing topics on the board and you're like, okay, but how many words can you actually say about that thing? And for the most part, people were like, "Whoa". And it's like you can't even say one sentence about it. How are you going to write a full article? And then that also gets into, it's not just one article, it's okay, how do we also turn that into a video? How do we turn that into an infographic? How do we turn that into a social media post? Because this thing has to live for a lot of time. Nobody has time to keep creating net new content all the time. And so if this piece can't be repurposed or broken apart, it probably doesn't have enough depth to chase. So I would say if you're very first, starting from scratch, to limit it to probably two, maybe three topics that are related to each other and that you know, have depth. And I would say especially if you're dealing with a small team, like you're at a start up and the founder is kind of the only person who could talk about this, I'm definitely limiting that to two topics that you know you have in house expertise and then doing a good job to capture that from a conceptual, strategic and tactical standpoint the first time. And then go with the repurposing strategy. So instead of saying, "Oh my gosh, we have to cover it, a thousand words or a 20 minute video every single time", think about it as, no, nobody wants to read that, nobody's going to scroll through all of that. So let them pick their journey of how deep they want to go. Repurposing your content Kathleen: So can you dig in a little bit more to that repurposing topic because I was interested to hear you discuss all the different ways that the content can manifest, because I think a lot of people might hear this and think it's a bunch of blogs, but it's, it's really not. Ashley: One of my favorite campaigns that was super successful, there was a startup that I worked at that got acquired by Oracle called Palerra. Palerra was a cloud access security broker, which, you know, doesn't matter as much to the majority of the audience if they're not in tech, but, basically they're kind of a complimentary security product to a lot of cloud offerings. We were primarily an enterprise solution. Technology is a really heavy topic. And so what we did, when I came in, there was this raw word doc of just random customer interviews, and problems that they had faced. And so for example, we all know on a personal level we should update our passwords regularly. A lot of companies have that installed where it's like 72 days time to change your password. So at an enterprise security level, there's a similar concept for your keys to your different cloud services. And so we had a scenario where there was a customer that hadn't rotated their keys in like two years. It blew our minds. So our product actually found that. So we actually were talking about cautionary tales and focusing specifically on AWS because that cloud offering is quite ubiquitous among our customers and these are a lot of common pitfalls that our products can help solve. So we called it a cautionary tale. We turned it into an ebook first that then became the basis for our booth graphics at AWS Reinvent. And then we had a booth giveaway. We put an Amazon Tap in a clear box and then we had a bowl of keys sitting next to it and they looked identical. And so you drew a key and if it unlocked the box, you won the Tap. And so that was able to lead us into, "Have you rotated your keys? How are you doing password management?" But not just those basic tactical issues, but also like how do you know there's even a working key in the bowl? How do you know that Kathleen is supposed to have the key and not Ashley? What happens to the keys after the show? So let's say Kathleen and Ashley both leave and the bowls just sitting there. Now what happens to the keys? Right? And our product can help with that. And from a security standpoint, those are a lot of blind spots that at the time people were missing. And then the nice thing about that being at a security conference, people were very skeptical that there were any working keys in the bowl. Right? There's no keys. Yeah. So every time someone won, we took a picture and then we put it on the company Twitter feed. And then if they had a Twitter handle, we tagged them and ask them to retweet. And so there were people, and I mean we had people, well, again, they're very methodical about this. They're like, okay, it looks like roughly once an hour people are winning. So the last time somebody won, they just won. Okay, well I'm going to come back and try again later. Kathleen: Like people play slots.  Ashley: Yeah. It's like slots. But that was a great way. And then we were also able to share that ebook on Twitter as well to say, "Hey, if you're curious why we're taking pictures of the food, you can read this ebook." And then we were able to send that as well with some deeper case studies to anybody that we had scanned at the booth. So it was a really nice integrated online, offline and social media experience. That's another one of my pet peeves is people who are just like, come to booth 123. I'm not at the conference so you're just going to spam me for three days. So making sure that you have content that tells a story to your social media audience, whether they're attending the conference or not. Kathleen: That's great. That's a really good point about the shows too. Because yeah, you do so much marketing. And if somebody is not going, it's just annoying. How to share your content on your website Kathleen: So if you've created all this content, what does that look like on the website from an experience standpoint? Are there content hubs? Is it a resource center? How do you organize this all for presentation to your audience? Ashley: I think it really depends on the audience. I think HubSpot, obviously from the hub and spoke model that they've done, is amazing so that you can kind of see, you can dive in deep per topic, you could dive in deep from an integrative marketing standpoint, you can dive in deep from a tech stack standpoint and obviously they have solutions for that. So the way that they've organized it is actually really great because it allows people to kind of slice and dice how they want. One of the things that we've done that I think is really great and it lasts and is, for example, on the work-life blog, which is like a corporate level, so deals with things like teamwork, practices, leadership, et cetera. We've got a related articles function. And so when you get to the bottom of the article, yes, there's a CTA. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, you want to um, go talk in the community. Or in some cases where we're doing product focused content, it's go to the product tour or something like that. But then at the bottom there's related content. And so we have a mix of collections, a mix of tags, and then those get fed into the related content. And so there's always a next step for people to take. I think that's the biggest thing, whether you organize it as a hub, whether you organize it as a resource center that's done by topic filtering or content tagging, that ability for somebody to always take the next step and to, to only force that next step to be a buying action if they're in a head space for buying action. So if you're on a product tour, the request a demo or the sign up for free, or the do an evaluation for seven days or 30 days, whatever it is, that makes perfect sense. But if you've just read an article about productivity, it's a really hard landing to talk about five tips to manage your time and then all of a sudden be dropped into, you know, by the way, you need to buy Trello. It's like, why would I do that? So making sure that there's always a next logical action that either takes them deeper toward a purchase or deeper tool, words and practices that will help them or allow them to say, I don't know how I landed here. How do I get back to the first thing that I clicked so that I can get back on the path where I think I should be? Kathleen: Yeah. How do you execute that? Because you just gave the example of somebody who's just poking around and then they're all of a sudden getting pushed to buy. You know, being that it's a playground and people can go in any number of directions, how do you craft those next steps so that they make sense? Ashley: I think the biggest thing is, there's obviously an ideal customer journey and that does include some post-sale engagement. That could be things like documentation. It could be a support community. But really, I mean even from like, um, practically accessibility, labeling your buttons with what it is you're doing. Are you downloading this? Are you reading this? Are you clicking to do an evaluation? Are you starting a trial for free? What is that? And then that way people are very clear whenever they get down there, they know what they're clicking on. I know I've had this experience a few times where it's like, see more. And I'm like, yes, I wish to do that. And it automatically takes me into this form where it's like put in a credit card. And I'm like, you didn't tell me that's what I was doing. That's not, I didn't agree to that. So having really clear navs and in the resource center, not having buy CTAs all over the resources. For example, Intercom does a great job with this. They're a messaging, communication growth platform. You can go over to their journal section or their resource center and it's all thought leadership. It's all very high level and they state at the top, "This is free content. It's educational, no sales." And so, you know, when you're that part of the website, you're not going to get sold to and there's a nice handy button at the top. It's like go back to home. And that's where, you know, you could either be directed down an education path or sales path and you can kind of choose. So I think just being really explicit. We're past the point of I'm going to trick you into sales. It might've been on LinkedIn. I saw a discussion that maybe you and somebody else were having about, "Oh, I got a thousand leads from this form. And the question is, are they qualified?" Jay Acunzo actually has a whole rant about this. Stop gating your best content and then pretending whoever fills out that form is a lead sales lead. That's not what they agreed to. And so don't try and trick your audience. If they want to buy, they'll let you know. If they want to be educated and they want to form a relationship with you, they'll do that. And so giving them a clear path to let them either do sales or build a relationship makes them feel empowered. It gives everybody good feelings and it doesn't clutter up your sales process with people that are junk, that are not qualified or that are not actually interested in buying. Kathleen: So true. I find it's counterintuitive because, I started a few years ago ungating as much content as I possibly could and just putting it on the page and then adding like a little field just for email saying, "Want to get the PDF? Put your email in." And that was it.  What was fascinating to me is that not only did conversion rates not go down, in many cases, they went up. It's really psychology if you think about it. There's so much crappy gated content out there and the problem with gating it, first of all, is people are very jaded and a lot of them will think, I'm not giving up my email only to find out that this is junk. And so then they don't convert at all. Whereas, if you give the content away and then give them the option of downloading, you're basically allowing them to try before they buy. You're proving that what you're giving them is really good and if they do think it's really good, they are going to convert because they're like, "Well, it's no skin off my back. This is great content. I don't mind giving up my email address for it." And so the people that wind up converting on the ungated content are more qualified because they've self qualified. The other thing I've found, it goes back to your thing about being explicit, is especially when you don't have things gated, like on the page before or in the marketing you're doing for it, just coming right out and saying, "No need to fill out a form to get it." Ashley: Yeah. Kathleen: You don't have to give us your email address. People are so naturally almost defensive or they're like, Oh, Nope, Nope, Nope. They're going to ask for something. And if you can just come out and say, I'm not going to ask you for anything, that goes a long way. Ashley: Well, and I think what's interesting in this, in this thought about building relationships and giving that content away, a great example, there's a company that I worked with, they were an agency for us. We were a startup. We were using, you know, a lot of agencies and freelancers and they host these dinners and it's basically, you know, just get five, six, seven people together, have dinner, nerd out about marketing topics. And yes, we all know full well some of us are current customers of this company. Some people are prospects of the company. But I don't have budget or need to work with them anymore. But every single time I meet somebody that says that they have the need that this company services, I refer them and I refer probably three or four clients to them. I would continue to do that and we have a great relationship. They still invite me to the dinners. I sent one of my colleagues to a dinner to basically make a connection to say this might be relevant for you to meet some people that we might want to put spokespeople on panels with in the future. And so that willingness to connect with each other. I'm loyal to that company even though I have no budget and no need to buy from them right now. But I'm referring, I'm still giving them revenue because again, it's, it's fine for, for me, when I meet somebody at a conference and they're like, how would you do this? I'm like, actually this is a great company. Would you like an intro? And so a buying action may not necessarily be the person who downloaded the content buys. It may be, I mean, again, I talk about Intercom. I love the content that IDEO puts out. Again, I have no need to buy their services at this point, but I tell everybody, go look at HubSpot's content or go look at Intercom's content. And so there's no way for them to measure that. I'm just another random name on their list that hasn't converted, but I'm a brand champion for them and they don't even know it, you know? Measuring the ROI of your content playground Kathleen: That's awesome. So speaking of measuring, you get this all set up. You deploy it. How do you track and measure whether it's working, how it's working, et cetera? Ashley: So I've done this in a number of different ways depending on the company and the strategy and the bandwidth and all of that kind of stuff. If you're just starting out in your tiny little team, and you don't have the ability to do, you know, Tableau or Databricks or kind of all of these fancy data pipelines, at minimum just start out with your Google tracking. Google has free stuff that you can put on. Use your UTM codes to understand if these things are getting tracked from a social media standpoint, what's the referrals, if you are using any pages with forms from any of the marketing automation providers. Again, I'm pretty partial to HubSpot just because I think they do amazing content. The platform is great. We've used Marketo in the past, and other companies. So any of those are great to really understand what are the trends. I think that's the biggest thing. Making sure that you're looking at a correct trend level. I've worked a lot on the social media side and people get freaked out per post. "Oh my gosh, we did 10 posts last week and this one did, you know, half a percent better than this one." And it's like, let's zoom out and look monthly. How are things trending? Let's do some testing to see if we post more. Does our engagement rate go down if we, um, the other big thing is optimizing the CTA is for what you want to happen. So it's going to be really impossible for you to get somebody to like, comment, retweet, follow, and click through all in the same posts. Like there's not enough words for that post. And so making sure that each CTA belongs where it should be. So if you're asking for a poll on Twitter or Facebook, that's the goal. Responses in feed is the goal versus explicitly asking someone to click through. Make that explicit and you need to make sure that you're putting in some sort of hook or benefit. I see this a lot with people who are just starting in social media, for example, that they just give the title of the article or they just say, read these five tips. Well, what are they? On the opposite extreme, they give it away and they say, here's the five tips. And then they laid them out. And I'm like, well, now why do I need to read the article? You already gave me the tips. Give me the first tip that you think is the most interesting and then say, click through to read the next four tips. Kathleen: Right? Ashley: So, from a measurement standpoint, being very clear on a per post basis about what your goals are, if you're looking at click through rate or engagement rates and what type of engagement. So that's kind of more from a social media standpoint. If you're doing YouTube, if the answer is subscribe to the channel, if the answer is watch the next video, if the answer is go visit the page, those are very different actions. And so making sure you're optimizing those. And then obviously looking at things like organic traffic is always great. Looking at whether you have emails or product tours. From an email standpoint, looking at the open rates and the click to open ratio. So a lot of people look at the CTR, but that's a little bit out of whack. If there's a thousand people that opened it, but you sent it to 5,000, it's not very fair to say what's the CTR on the 5,000? Use it on the thousand. In some cases we've gotten really granular to look at which pieces of content get the most clicks. And so that helps us to understand, it's great that you want to put 10 pieces of content in the newsletter, but if only the first five ever get clicked, you need to find something else to do because you're not amplifying those things. Kathleen: How do you get people down further? Ashley: Yeah, exactly. What kinds of results can you expect? Kathleen: So any examples of like, what kinds of results does taking this approach yield in terms of pipeline or engagement or revenue or any of the above? Ashley: Yeah. From a scale standpoint, it depends. It's not very fair to say like, Oh, you'll get a thousand leads. It's like, okay, well if your revenue goal is 10,000, that's a struggle. Or if you're a billion dollar company, a thousand leads doesn't do you any good, right? So, we've done content pairing for example, where we've done a mix of gated content and ungated content. When we did that at Duarte, the ungated piece has over 300,000 views. Now it's been up for a couple of years, but it's got over 300,000 views. We were getting roughly 10 to 15% download rates of people going and getting that content. And so that's something where you're still getting the benefit of the people looking at it for free and ungated, but then you're starting to see higher engagement, you know, 10, 15% on that. Whenever I've done newsletter sends that have been more thought leadership focused with very light touch sales, we've been able to see 20, 30% open rates, 15 to 25% CTOR rates. Again, because we're serving that content that they've requested, not trying to shoehorn in sales. Whenever we've done sales, as a piece of content, like, "Hey, get a trial" or "Use this code" or "Refer" or "Here's an eCourse and then we'll give you one module for free because you've signed up for this newsletter" or something like that, those do have a much higher conversion rate for whatever the next buying action is. Again, it depends on the scale. So like the Palerra one at the time, you know, that ebook and we were a tiny little company. I mean we only had, I think when we got acquired, we had maybe 60 employees total. So very small company, 10 by 20 booth at AWS Reinvent, which is a massive conference. And we got, you know, almost 2000 views on that small ungated ebook. And then we got substantially higher open rates, and then our lead scans at that booth, I mean it was ridiculous. I want to say we scanned like 500 people and at most shows we were only scanning probably a hundred to 112 and so it was huge because it all tied in. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: That's awesome. Well shifting gears because we're gonna run out of time. I have two questions that I like to ask all my guests and I'm really curious to hear your answers because you've worked with some really interesting companies who are very good at this. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? Ashley: So I will do the shameless plug for Atlassian, A, because I work there so of course I think we're doing a good job. But truly, I think one of the biggest examples of this, we have our team playbook and this is something again where we connected our work futurist Don Price, has done a number of different keynotes around the world and always promotes the team playbook and that has led to this health monitor -- the team health check, understanding where your blockers are. That led to a large engagement with ANZ bank, which is a huge bank in Australia and they have now done a case study with us. They're huge champions that come for our conferences and speak about how this one tiny little interaction with this health monitor has led to this entire agile transformation across their business. It's a mix of the tools, the people, the practices, it all came together perfectly. So, yes, that had a revenue result for us, but it started with that ungated content at a conceptual level about how do you do your team work better and that's what Atlassian really tries to empower. I mentioned Intercom as well. They have a ton of great content. They've got sales manuals, they got marketing manuals that talk about a variety of different ways to think about content marketing, sales, the interaction between sales and marketing. Highly recommend their content for both sales and marketing practitioners. And then, IDEO, just like if you want to elevate your creativity and you want to kind of think outside of a traditional business or products. I work in tech, so of course I'm in this little bubble that everything is SaaS and everything is ARR. IDEO has none of that. And so every time I go to IDEO and just like, this is fascinating, how does the world work when you're not in your little bubble? And so I would say, no matter what bubble you're in, IDEO will help you get out of it. That would be three that are a mix of marketing focused, tech and then a design consultancy that's just completely out of my wheel house.  Kathleen: I can't wait to check some of those out -- particularly IDEO. It sounds really interesting. Well, second question is, the biggest pain point I was here from marketers is that digital is changing so quickly and they feel like it's drinking from a fire hose to try and keep up with everything and stay educated and on the cutting edge. So how do you personally do that? Ashley: Yeah, so from a broader view, kind of outside of marketing or just business chops, which I think is really important, it's how do we fit in and especially as you move up in your career and you become COO or something like that, understanding that business acumen is really key. I love MIT Sloan review for that content and they've been killing it lately. Every single thing that's come out from them over the last probably six or seven months, I'm like, "Yes, one hundred percent fascinating". So I love MIT Sloan from a business standpoint. There's a couple of marketers that I think are a little bit contrarian and I joked about going on rants about things and I'm like, "Yes, ranting. I love it." Katie Martell is somebody that I've been loving her content lately. Jay Acunzo I think is great. He's really honing in on podcasting and show running over the last year or so. But just in general, his thoughts on content marketing and strategy are great. I love Scott Berkun. He is primarily a designer, and more on that design thinking. He has a new book out that I need to get because it looks amazing. It's like How Design Makes the World, I think is what it's called. And it's looking at how all of these interactions and everyday things influence our path, our actions, et cetera. So Scott Berkun is great. And then I would say just like a book that I always come back to is this book called The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson. It's primarily about intersectional thinking and divergent thinking. And so yes, there's an element of understanding the tactical nitty gritty from a digital standpoint. I think there's a number of, you know, Marketing Profs, CMI, HubSpot, all of those do a really great job of that. But how do you think about change? How do you think about a problem space? How do you think about a solution space? The Medici Effect is just every, it's like I come back to it kind of annually. It's like, okay, somewhere in there I'm missing something. I should probably just reread the The Medici Effect. In fact, I should probably just to think about the concepts and The Medici Effect to jolt myself out of being so focused on, okay, what does this button on Twitter do or what does this ads do? Like are we doing AB testing? We're doing multivariate testing, what's our competence interval, whatever. We're pulling those things down. Like I don't know what the best practice is. It's like I'm clearly thinking about it in the wrong way. If I'm so twitchy about such a small detail, you get lost in the weeds pretty easily. Kathleen: Those sound like some really good resources. I will put links to all of them in the show notes. How to connect with Ashley Kathleen: If somebody is listening and they want to connect with you online or follow you or learn more about this topic, what's the best way for them to do that? Ashley: I would love to connect on LinkedIn. I'm Ashley Faus. For the most part, I think I'm the first search result for that. And you can also follow me on Twitter also @AshleyFaus. Kathleen: Great. I will put Ashley's links to her social accounts in the show notes. So head there if you want to find them. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you are listening and you liked what you heard today or you learned something new, and how could you not because Ashley shared so many good ideas, head to Apple podcasts and please leave the podcast a five star review. That helps us get found by more people. And if you know somebody who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next interview. Thanks so much for joining me this week, Ashley. Ashley: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's always fun to nerd out about marketing. Kathleen: Yes!

Alexa podcast is a thing. Really, it is. We podcasters need to start thinking about where the industry is headed. Now that podcasts can be listened to on Smart speakers like Alexa, there are a handful of things that I can think of that we need to consider in order to make our efforts more widely usable, which will include those kinds of devices. On this episode of Podcastification I have a few things for you to think about when it comes to Alexa podcasts and the distribution of your show through those platforms.   Okay so we're talking about smart speakers on this episode. Do you even know what I mean when I talk about smart speakers? Smart speakers are like Alexa or the Amazon Tap is like a mini version of the Alexa. The Tap is really just a fancy bluetooth speaker. We happen to have one of those that we were actually given through a drawing at a podcasting event that I was at a little while back. But that's all beside the point. We're talking about Amazon Alexa and Google Home and all of the smart speakers they're starting to come out with. They are all connected to the internet and they are able to play audio for you through voice commands. My wife uses our Amazon Tap quite often to play Spotify - the speaker has really good sound so it's a great little application of a smart speaker. But you can also speak to it because the Tap functions in many ways like an Alexa because you can connect through an Alexa app, which then connects to the internet, which you are able then to ask questions just like you would Alexa herself. So, we say things like “Alexa, tell me a story,” and it starts telling us a story. How is this is relevant for us is podcasters? It’s very relevant. We are on the cutting edge of a digital change of behavior for most people in the Western world and we don’t even realize it. The voice command features of these devices are going to make it easier and more common for people to listen to podcasts. So as the title of the episode says, Alexa podcasting is a thing. Will Alexa podcasts work for your particular podcast name? Maybe not. I did some experimentation with my little smart speaker - the Amazon Tap. I tried to get it to play a my particular podcasts - I have quite a few of them. I would say something like this… “Alexa, play Podcastification.” And it actually started playing a podcast but it wasn't a my podcast, it was something else. What I think happens is that because the name of my show is not very clear and distinct and easy to pronounce and understand even for humans, the little smart speaker ain’t so smart. It can't quite find my podcast because the name is not easy to decipher. Could the technology improve in the future to the point that saying it by that name it might actually find and play my podcast? Yeah, maybe. But at this point it's not able to. So what's the principle we can draw from this? It may be better to keep this identification issue in mind when it comes to naming our podcasts. It should be something very distinct, very clear, very easy to pronounce, very easily understood so that people using smart speakers can easily say the name of your podcast to their smart speaker and have it understand what they're saying. Now you can always go back and rename your podcast if you're up for that. Or maybe not. There's one other thing I think we should think about when it comes to podcasting and Alexa... When we’re thinking about these smart speakers and listening to our podcasts on them, there is an important issue to consider: loudness levels. I was noticing the other day when I was working inside Auphonic that podcast levels are recommended to be at what's called negative sixteen LUFS - L. U. F. S. That's nothing more than the measurement used for loudness of a digital audio file. Podcasts are recommended to be at -16 LUFS. But there’s a different recommendation for Alexa and other smart speakers. The loudness level for them is -14 LUFS. It's two points difference and that's actually in the louder direction. So these smart devices - or their developers - are wanting us to submit audio for them to use that is louder. Now why might that be? Well, given the context these smart speakers like Alexa are in, you may have background noise going on in the room. You may also have the speaker sitting on the other side of the room. So they are wanting the original audio file that's being drawn from to be louder to begin with - so that it's easier to hear on those devices. That makes total sense to me. So. If you're even aware of the loudness level of your podcast you may want to consider adjusting to negative fourteen LUFS. Yes, negative sixteen is still what is recommended for podcasting, but because smart speakers are becoming more and more prevalent throughout our society, negative fourteen may be what we need to go to. I'm considering it for all of my shows, including my client work because we want to optimize things the very best we can. What are you doing about loudness levels? Anything? Amazon Alexa Amazon Tap Google Home Alexa Skills Auphonic Leave your question for me to answer! Connect with me… Carey(AT)PodcastFastTrack.com On Facebook On Twitter  

End of January already??! This episode, I share with you my favorite things that I’ve been enjoying this month. We’re talking technology, apps, books and more. Let me know your thoughts about anything mentioned and especially if you try anything. Comment and share and don't forget to subscribe too for more! Website - www.thinkrandomlybig.com Instagram - @thinkrandomlybig Email - info@thinkrandomlybig.com Ps: 1. Amazon Tap can be purchased from Amazon.com 2. Find out more about Verses - http://getverses.com/app 3. Anderson Cooper & Gloria Vanderbilt - “The Rainbow comes and goes” 4. Find out more about Economic Street - http://www.economicstreet.com Enjoy and keep tuning in to #ThinkRandomlyBigTuesdays

Black Friday 2017 Another year passes, another Black Friday approaches. This year there are some exceptional deals out there. The question is where to you put your focus. We are focusing on TVs since many want to upgrade to 4K HDR. There are some really good ones out there. We also throw in some UHD Players and home automation to round out the list. Resources: www.blackfriday.com www.blackfriday.fm www.bfads.net Target Samsung 65" Flat 4k UHD TV (HDR) - Black(UN65MU6300) $849.99 Regularly $1,100 LG 55" Class 2160p 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (Dolby Vision) - 55UJ6300 $499.99 Regularly $549 Polaroid 32GSR3000FC 32" Flat Panel 720p LED TV $89.99 Regularly $129.99 Amazon Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote $24.99 Regularly $39.99 Google Chromecast $25 Regularly $34.99 Sony Blu-ray Disc™ Player with Wi-Fi - Black (BDPS3700) $49.99 Regularly $74.99   BestBuy Sony - 75" Class (74.5" Diag.) - LED - 2160p - Smart - 4K Ultra HD TV with High Dynamic Range $1999.99 Sony - 65" Class (64.5" Diag.) - LED - 2160p - Smart - 4K Ultra HD TV with High Dynamic Range (No Model Mentioned) $1499.99 Samsung - 65" Class (64.5" Diag.) - LED - 2160p - Smart - 4K Ultra HD TV (No Model Mentioned) $749.99 LG - 43" Class (42.5" Diag.) - LED - 2160p - Smart - 4K Ultra HD TV (No Model Mentioned) $279.99 Sharp - 32" Class (31.5" Diag.) - LED - 720p - Smart - HDTV Roku TV $149.99 LG - UP875 4K Ultra HD 3D Blu-ray Player - Black $99.99 Pioneer - Elite 7.2-Ch. Hi-Res 4K Ultra HD HDR Compatible A/V Home Theater Receiver - Black $349.98 Regularly $499.98 Sonos - PLAYBASE Wireless Soundbase for Home Theater and Streaming Music - Black $599.99 Regularly $699.99 Sonos - PLAYBAR Soundbar Wireless Speaker - Black/Silver $599.98 Regularly 699.98 Google - Chromecast $19.99 Regularly $35 Google - Home Mini $29.99 Regularly $49 Wal*Mart Samsung 58MU6070 58" 4K Ultra HD Smart TV (HDR) $598 (Special Buy) LG UP870 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Player $99 (Special Buy) Google Chromcast $20 Plus $5 Vudu Credit Regularly $35 Google Home with $25 Google Express Offer $79 Regularly $129 Netgear Arlo Wireless 3-Camera Bundle $199 Regularly $399 Sears This is the first year we didn't find any electronics in the Sears Black Friday Circular. There are great deals on appliances, tools, and clothing however! Costco (Items available now through the 27th of November) Samsung 75" Class (74.5" Diag.) 4K Ultra HD LED LCD TV (HDR) - $2279.99 LG 49" Class (48.5" Diag.) 4K Ultra HD LED LCD TV (HDR) - $379.99 TCL 55" Class (54.6" Diag.) 4K Ultra HD Roku LED LCD TV (Dolby Vision HDR) - $449.99 Sam's Club Vizio 65-inch 4K Smart TV (Model E65-E) — $598 Note: Vizio is now selling this set for $899, which might make this the best Black Friday deal on a TV yet. Polk 2.1 S1B Sound Bar — $129.88 Hitachi 49-inch 1080p TV — $278 XBox One S Console — $189 PlayStation 4 Console — $199 Vizio 80-inch 4K Smart TV (model E80-E3) — $2,498 (online only; free shipping) Hitachi 60-inch 4K Smart TV w/Roku inside: $498 (online only;free shipping) Samsung 85-inch 4K Smart TV (Model: UN85JU7100FXZA) – $1,200 off (online only; free shipping. Note: This Samsung TV normally goes for $4,698 at Sam's Club so, presumably, it will be priced at around $3500 for the Black Friday sale. JC Penny LG 65" Class 4K UHD HDR Smart TV $799.99 Regularly 1399.99 LG 55" Class UHD 4K HDR Smart HDTV $499.99 Regularly $799.99 Samsung 40" Class Ultra HD 4K Smart TV $329.99 Regularly $449.99 Google Home $79.99 Regularly $129.99 Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit $149.99 Regularly $249.99 Amazon Save $20 on Echo Dot, only $29.99 – the lowest price ever for Echo Dot Save $20 on All-New Echo, $79.99 Save $30 on Echo Plus, $119.99 Save $50 on Amazon Tap, $79.99 Premium brand 40-inch smart TV,$279.99 Sony 75-inch 4K Ultra HD smart LED TV (2017 Model), $1,999.99 Sony 70-inch 4K Ultra HD smart LED TV (2017 Model), $1,199.99 Samsung UN65MU8000 65-inch 4K Ultra HD smart TV (2017 Model), $1,297.99 Sony 65-inch 4K Ultra HD smart LED TV (2017 Model), $1,499.99 Samsung UN55MU8000 55-inch 4K Ultra HD smart TV (2017 Model), $897.99 Sony 55-inch 4K Ultra HD smart LED TV (2017 Model), $999.99 32-inch 720p TV, $69.99 49-inch 4k TV, $159.99 Save up to $40 on Schlage Smart Lock – Works with Amazon Alexa Best TV Deals 39" & Under 32” Polaroid LED TV for $89.99 at Target 32" Vizio Smart LED TV for $199.99 + $50 Meijer Coupon at Meijer (in stores starting 6am on Black Friday only) 40" - 58" 43” Vizio 1080p TV for $198 at Walmart 43” Samsung 4K Smart TV with HDR for $429.99 + $100 Dell Promo eGift Card at Dell 48" Element LED HDTV for $199.99 at Meijer (in stores starting 6am on Black Friday only) 48" Vizio Smart LED TV for $199.99 at Meijer (in stores starting 6am on Thanksgiving only) 50" Samsung 4K UHD Smart TV with HDR Pro for $424.99 with promo code BF17FLYER31 at Newegg.com 50" RCA HDTV for $199.99 at Stage Stores 55” Haier 4K UHD HDTV for $299.99 + $90 Kohl's Cash (doorbuster) 55” Sharp 4K Smart TV for $298 at Walmart 60" & Over 60” Sharp 4K UHD Smart TV for $549.99 at Best Buy (now available!) 60” Sony 4K UHD Smart TV for $599.99 at Best Buy 65” Samsung 4K UHD Smart TV for $749.99 at Best Buy 65” Samsung Smart 4K UHD TV for $849.99 at Target 65” LG 4K UHD Smart TV with HDR for $799.99 + $150 Dell Promo eGift Card at Dell (online exclusive doorbuster available 11/23 at 11 AM ET) 65" LG Smart 4K UHD TV for $799.99 at Meijer (in stores starting 6am on Thanksgiving only) 75” Sony 4K UHD Smart TV with HDR for $1,999.99 at Best Buy

Hello and welcome back to the Early Stage podcast, where we listen to some of the most dynamic Founders in the startup scene talk about the origins of their companies, what makes them special, and the unique challenges ahead. I'm John Valentine, resident startup nerd, and I host this humble pod. I'm glad I was able to sneak in a few hours of editing, because I'm really excited to introduce my conversation with Vesper CEO, Matt Crowley. A technology founded in a University of Michigan lab by Bobby Littrell almost a decade ago, Vesper has built the first zero-power listen-to-wake microphone built with piezoelectric materials. This always-on technology can help an Amazon Tap run for years without being plugged in. Matt and I talk about how voice interfaces will enable the next class of business concepts, forcing people to think more creatively about their own products. As machine learning and AI systems reduced errors in voice analysis to make the tech comfortably usable, Vesper' digital transducer could usher in the IoT revolution. Accomplice and Amazon's Alexa Fund seem to think so too, and they put money into Vesper's first big funding round. They have truly built a full stack solution with their sensor, MEMS, mechanical devices, complex analog circuit, digital signal processing, and voice interface algorithms. This team turns sound information into digital information better than anyone else in the world.

The Ladies share summer fun ideas.

The Ladies share summer fun ideas.

Painter, art critic and historian Interview starts at 15:00 and ends at 41:14 “I remember your talking on one of your programs about Jeff Bezos's insisting on a one-second [Alexa] response when his staff said, “We can get this down to three seconds,” and he said, “That's not good enough.” That makes a huge difference. It shouldn't--we're so impatient, I'm so impatient. But the fact that it is more more conversational and that I don't have to wait and think about the fact that this is a machine processing it, makes it much more real to me.” News Jeff Bezos's 2016 Letter to Shareholders - and the 1997 letter (PDF) “Over 550 Amazon Employees Are Pressuring Leadership to Cut Advertising Ties With Breitbart” by Charlie Warzel at BuzzFeed - April 13, 2017 Tech Tips How to connect Amazon Tap to a new wifi network (Amazon help page) Ask My Buddy skill for Alexa Interview with Kesler Woodward Painting in the North, Kes's web site Western States Arts Federation Kes Woodward on TKC 50 - July 1, 2009 iPad Mini 4 Bufo Calvin in VR on TKC 453 - April 7, 2017 Content Audible Range “About” page with email signup Next Week's Guest Naomi S. Baron, author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Technology Reporter at Observer.com Interview starts at 10:30 and ends at 42:19 "That's why I call this whole printed book thing fetishism. What's more important? Is literature and writing important or is this object more important? I think literature is more important, and writing is important. I don't really care how people read it. I just really want to push back on this idea that there's something sad that we've lost because print books are fading, when what I care about is not print or first editions. I care about people reading and the act of writing and that creative work." News “Amazon Alexa Voice Service Coming to DTS Play-Fi” - September 28, 2017 “Why Amazon is the World's Most Innovative Company of 2017” by Noah Robischon at Fast Company - February 13, 2017 “Amazon.com Takes Aim at Victoria's Secret With Its Own $10 Bras” by Khadeeja Safdar and Laura Stevens at The Wall Street Journal - February 10, 2017 “AWS Announces Amazon Chime” - press release February 14, 2017 Amazon Chime Tech Tip “Owners of first and second generation Kindles can't register them” by Andrew Liptak at The Verge - February 11, 2017 “Amazon Tap's new hands-free Alexa update means it's actually useful” by Lauren Goode at The Verge - February 9, 2017 Interview with Brady Dale “Despite What You Heard, The E-Book Market Never Stopped Growing” by Brady Dale at Observer.com - January 18, 2017 “Titans of Kindle” series by Brady Dale Podiobooks “How to reach me secretly and securely” by Brady Dale at Medium - February 12, 2017 Google Authenticator Mailbox.org Sync.com ProtonMail “On Twitter, Users Shouldn't Need a Name” by Brady Dale at Observer.com - February 14, 2017 Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

In this episode, I discuss the new disabling feature of the Prime Photos app on the Fire TV. I also talk about upcoming changes to the home screen revolving around recommended content. Then I show off the new hands-free capabilities of the Amazon Tap portable Alexa speaker. The episode concludes with a Q&A session where … Continue reading AFTVnewscast 71: Updates to Fire TV Photos & Home Screen

In this episode, I discuss the new disabling feature of the Prime Photos app on the Fire TV. I also talk about upcoming changes to the home screen revolving around recommended content. Then I show off the new hands-free capabilities of the Amazon Tap portable Alexa speaker. The episode concludes with a Q&A session where … Continue reading AFTVnewscast 71: Updates to Fire TV Photos & Home Screen

Because of My Podcast I Got Media Passes - Cheri Field Cheri Fields has at least 7 children, and produces the Creation Science for Kids Podcast http://creationscience4kids.com/ What Podcaster's Can Learn From Amazon.com Amazon is an amazing company. Recently I purchased an Amazon Echo, and Later and Amazon Dot. These devices allow me to do things through voice activation system known as Alexa. You can control Alexa with an Amazon Echo, an Amazon Dot, and Amazon Tap, and now you can control your Amazon Fire TV.  If you're interested, check out my Buyer's Guide. The item that made me purchase the Echo? The ability to say “Alexa, add eggs to the grocery list.” The more I examine the Amazon company, the more I believe there are tips we podcasters can learn from them. Amazon Makes It Easy To Find Stuff Their search is at the top of their page. You don’t have to search for the search. Amazon understands their customer may want a number of things, so they make it easy to find. Podcasters you need a search button that is easy to find, if you provide topics that are more of a reference. Podcasters you could use categories to create filter to only show those episodes that are categorized a certain way. Customer First Mentality Any research into amazon and you will read how they make all decisions based on serving the customer. They are spending money on items that will better serve the customer. So when you are thinking about purchasing some equipment for your podcast you need to ask yourself who the purchase is serving, you or your audience? Amazon project lead Ian McAllister has described a sort of reverse engineering that happens frequently at company HQ. “We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it,” he wrote on Quora.com. When someone approaches you to to be a guest on your show, you need think, “Will my audience want to hear this content?” Personalized Recommendations There are plugins that can add related links to other episodes on your site. So when someone listens to an episode about Topic A there could be links to more Topic A shows at the bottom of the post. There are plugins such as Yet Another Related Wordpress Post Plugin (which has lots of features, but can be a bit of a resource hog), and Related Wordpress Posts is a lighter weight plugin with an easy setup. If you’re using Appendipity themes, this is a built in feature They Don’t Always Win, but They Try I completely forgot that Amazon launched a “Fire Phone.” That tells you how much of an impact it had on the phone space. They’ve done quite a few things that didn’t land well. It wants to infiltrate people’s lives to such an extent that they can’t imagine living without it — that they don’t even try to imagine living without it. We always joke that "No one will punch you in the face," here at the School of Podcasting. Your podcast is a recipe, not a statue. One of the cool things about being cloud based, is they are constantly adding new features to the Alexa system Keep Your Pages Loading Fast After analyzing the ratio of sales to website performance, Amazon discovered that for every 100ms of page load time there was a 1% decrease in sales. So how fast does your website need to be? Many usability experts propose that the ideal page load time is 2 seconds or less. You can easily test the page load time of your own website by using free tools such as WebPageTest.org So podcasters be careful loading tons of plugins if you're using WordPress. Some of those may slow down your site. Make it Fun Google the phrase "Alexa Easter Eggs" and you will find a giant list of goof things you can get Alexa to say. There are Make it Easy The one thing the Amazon Echo and Dot do is they make it super easy to ORDER STUFF. With a few phrases, "Alexa order Angel Soft Toilet paper" it is pretty much on the way. She will state what size the package is and the price and ask me if I want to order it. There are safeguard can put in so your kids do order every thing under the sun. Podcasters who are saying thins like, "Find me in iTunes" are missing a golden opportunity to lead their customers by the hand and show them exactly how to subscribe to their show. One of the things I did as a young grocery clerk was if someone asked where something was, I would take them to it, and make sure they could reach it. I wanted to see that product go into their cart. I would also ask if there was anything else they were looking for before I returned to whatever I was doing before. Make it easy. You can do this by finding your show in iTunes, and right clicking on your art work and copying the link then add a button to your site and attach that link to the button (there is a tutorial for this at the School of Podcasting Amazon's Ultimate Goal - Routine Amazon wants to be your right arm. They want to be integrated into your life. When I recently traveled without my Amazon Dot, it was weird not to wake up, check my to do list, get the weather, and hear my custom news. If you can podcast on a regular schedule, you become part of your audience's routine. Podcast Glossary "K" I couldn't think of any "I's, or J's" so we are moving o the the K's. kbps - This is stands for kilo bits per second. This is a measurement that you use when you are exporting your files. Typical settings are 128 kbps - Stereo (if your primarily music) 96 kbps - mono (for those doing speech, and want a slightly better sound than 64 ) 64 - kbps mono (same as 128 stereo, but mono) When exporting you do not want to use VBR (variable bit rate) as you mp3 file may not play on all players. Podcast Rewind - I Was On the SoloPreneur Hour with Michael O'Neal I appeared on episode 509 of the Solopreneur Hour with Michael O'Neil. We talked a little music, we talk about my early days of training people on office equipment, getting fired after busting your butt, and how I ended up in Podcasting. Check it out HERE You can hear Michael on this show sharing how he stands out from other podcast when I interviewed him on episode 542 Podcast Launch the Mark Nelson Show Mark is going to help you with your negotiating skills. Check out his show at http://www.marknelsonshow.com/ or Subscribe in iTunes Mentioned in This Show Computer Tutor Podcast Solopreneur Hour Podfest.Us (use the code Dave to save) Alexa Cast Amazon Alexa Buyers Guide Building a Better Dave Quora.com (questions website) Horse Radio Network Ready To Start Podcasting? Join the School of Podcasting. You get 16 courses Priority Email Support Group Coaching Private FaceBook Group 30 Day Guarantee  Join Today

Mike Elisa and Kevin talk Voice Recognition, Siri, Apple Photos and more

Mike Elisa and Kevin talk Voice Recognition, Siri, Apple Photos and more

Black Friday Preview 2016 If you're going to set up camp and secure a great spot in line for Black Friday sales, you probably want to make sure you're at the right store. There may be one killer deal at one store, but ten almost killer deals at another. We've done all the research so you'll know where to camp out Thursday night. Looking back on years past, in 2008 a 50-inch 720p plasma was going for $900. In 2009 you could get a 50-inch 1080p plasma with a Blu-ray player for $1000. Fast forward to last year when the lowest price for a tier one brand HDTV was a 49" Toshiba 1080p LED for only $149.99. That might be worth camping for. Our research came from our favorite goto sites for Black Friday circulars, including: www.bfads.net, www.blackfriday.com, and blackfriday.gottadeal.com. CNet put together a list of Cheap TV deals of Black Friday 2016 (plus our favorite picks) - in case you don't trust our research. Camp Worthy Deals The lowest price tier one brand HDTV over 40” is at Best Buy Toshiba 49" 4K 60Hz LED HDTV w/ Built-in Chromecast (49L621U), $199.99  (this is $50 more than last year, but last year was 1080p, this year is 4K) The best prices on the largest TVs are at Best Buy Best Buy - VIZIO 70" 4k LED Smart Ultra HDTV w/ Chromecast Built-in, $999.99 Best Buy - Sony 75" 2160p 4K Smart LED TV, $2,499.98 Other stats The list still has multiple 720p TVs 32 inches or larger, more than we expected to see. There were 12 last year. There are 8 this year.  All are 32”. There are two 4k Blu-ray players, both at h.h. gregg Samsung 4K Upscaling 3D Wi-Fi Smart Blu-ray Player, $84.99 Samsung 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player, $199.99 The list has multiple 4K TVs as well. Best Buy - 23 (last year: 10) Wal-mart - 4 (last year: 2) Target - 6 (last year: 3) Sears - 5 (last year: 6) h.h. gregg - 22 (last year: 24) Deal lists: Best Buy Samsung 50" 1080p 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN50J5201AFXZA), $299.99 Sharp 55" 1080p Smart LED HDTV (LC-55LB481U), $249.99   Samsung 55" 4K 120Hz Smart LED HDTV (UN55KU6270FXZA), $479.99 Samsung 50" 4K 120Hz Smart LED HDTV (UN50KU6300FXZA), $397.99 Toshiba 49" LED 4K Ultra HDTV w/ Built-in Chromecast (49L621U), $199.99 Insignia - 32" - LED - 720p - Smart - Roku TV - Black, $99.99 Samsung 50" 1080p LED Smart Black HDTV, $299.99 LG 60" 4K 120Hz Smart LED HDTV (60UH6035), $599.99 Insignia 32" 720p 60Hz Smart LED HDTV (NS-32DR310NA17), $99.99 LG 50" 4k LED Smart Ultra HD TV, $399.99 Toshiba 49" 4K 60Hz LED HDTV w/ Built-in Chromecast (49L621U), $199.99 Samsung 55" LED Smart 4K Ultra HD HDTV (UN55KU6270FXZA), $479.99 Insignia 39" 1080p Smart LED HDTV (NS-39DR510NA17), $179.99 LG 65" 4K 120Hz Smart LED HDTV (65UH6030), $799.99 LG 43" 4K 120Hz Smart LED HDTV (43UH6030), $299.99 Insignia - 39" - LED - 1080p - Smart - HDTV Roku TV - Black, $179.99   LG 60" 4K Smart Ultra HDTV (60UH6035), $599.99   LG 40" 1080p LED HDTV (40LH5000), $149.99 Samsung - 32" - LED - 720p - Smart - HDTV - Black, $157.99 Samsung - 58" - LED - 1080p - Smart - HDTV - Black, $427.99 Sharp 55" 1080P Smart LED Roku HDTV (LC-55LB481U), $249.99 Samsung 55" 4K 240Hz Smart LED HDTV w/ HDR (UN55KS8000FXZA), $997.99 VIZIO - 48" - LED - 1080p - HDTV - Black, $249.99   Samsung 50" 2160p 4K Smart LED TV, $397.99 Samsung 40" 1080p 60Hz Smart LED HDTV (UN40J5200AFXZA), $247.99 VIZIO 70" 4k LED Smart Ultra HDTV w/ Chromecast Built-in, $999.99 LG 50" 2160p 4K Smart LED TV, $399.99 LG 65" 2160p 4K Smart LED TV, $799.99 Toshiba 55" 4K LED Smart HDTV (55L621U) + PlayStation 4 Pro Bundle, $749.98 Sony 65" 2160p 4K Smart TV, $1,399.99 Samsung - 40" - LED - 1080p - Smart - HDTV - Black, $247.99 Sony 55" 4K 120Hz Smart HDTV w/ High Dynamic Range (XBR-55X850D), $899.99 VIZIO - 70" - LED - 2160p - with Chromecast - 4K Ultra HD, $999.99 Samsung 32" 720p Smart LED HDTV (UN32J4500AFXZA), $157.99 Sony 55" 2160p 4K Smart TV, $899.99 Sony 65" 4K 120Hz Smart HDTV w/ HDR (XBR-65X850D), $1,399.99 Sony 75" 2160p 4K Smart LED TV, $2,499.98 Samsung 65" 2160p 4K Smart LED TV, $1,497.99 Insignia 7" Portable DVD Player w/Swivel Screen, $39.99 Insignia 2.0-Ch. Black Soundbar w/ Digital Amplifier, $39.99 Vizio SmartCast 3.1-Ch. Soundbar System w/ 24.2-in. Wireless Subwoofer, $249.99 Klipsch Reference 5-1/4-in. Bookshelf Speakers (Pair), $124.99 Klipsch Reference Dual 6.5-in. Floorstanding Speaker, $174.99 Klipsch Reference Dual 8-in. Floorstanding Speaker, $224.99 Klipsch Reference 12-in. 400W Powered Subwoofer, $224.99 Logitech Harmony 700 8-Device Universal Remote, $49.99 Samsung White SmartThings Hub, $49.99 Insignia Smart Plug, $19.99 Amazon White Echo Dot, $39.99   Amazon Echo, $139.99 Sonos Play:1 White Wireless Speaker, $149.99 Wal-mart Philips 55" 4K 2160p 60Hz LED Smart HDTV (44PFL5601), $298.00 Samsung 50" 4K LED Smart HDTV (UN50KU6300), $398.00 VIZIO 60" LED HDTV (D60N-E3), $398.00 Samsung 60" 4K HDTV (UN60KU6270), $648.00 TCL 32" 720p Roku Smart TV (32S3750), $125.00 Samsung 32" LED 1080p 60Hz Smart HDTV (UN32J5205), $188.00 Samsung 65" LED Smart HDTV (UN65J6200), $798.00 Hisense 40" 1080p LED HDTV (40H3B), $125.00 Hitachi 65" 4K 2160p 60Hz LED HDTV (65L6), $599.00 Samsung 24" 710p 120MR LED HDTV (UN24H4000), $98.00 Element 40" 1080p LED HDTV (ELEFW408), $125.00 Samsung 55" LED Smart HDTV (UN55J6201), $448.00 Emerson 50" LED HDTV, $225.00 Element 50" 1080p LED HDTV (ELEFW504A), $225.00 Samsung 40" LED 1080p 60Hz Smart HDTV (UN40J5200), $248.00 Roku Express+, $25.00 Target Samsung 50" 4K 120Hz LED HDTV (UN50KU6300), $397.99 Hisense 50" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV, $249.99 Element 43" 4K LED Smart HDTV, $199.99 Polaroid 32" LED HDTV (32GSR3000FC), $85.00 Samsung 60" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (60KU6300), $697.99 LG 55" 4K 120Hz LED Smart HDTV, $499.99 Samsung 40" 1080p LED Smart HDTV (40J5200), $247.99 Samsung 55" 4K 120Hz Curved LED Smart HDTV (55KU6500), $697.99 Samsung 55" 1080p 120Hz LED Smart HDTV (UN55J6200AFXZA), $447.99 Sonos Play:1 Compact Wireless Speaker, $149.99 RCA 9" Portable DVD Player, $89.99 Apple TV, $149.99 Sears Samsung 65" 4K LED Smart UH TV, $999.99 Samsung 65" LED Curved Smart 4K HDTV, $1,099.99 Samsung 32" 720p LED HDTV (UN32J4000), $149.99 Samsung 65" LED Curved Smart 4K HDTV, $1,599.99 Samsung 55" Smart 4K Curved LED HDTV, $699.99 Samsung 40" Smart 1080p LED HDTV, $249.99   Samsung 55" Smart 4K LED HDTV, $599.99 Samsung 60" Smart 1080p LED HDTV, $579.99 Amazon Tap, $89.99 eMatic 7" Portable DVD Player w/ Carrying Case + Headphones, $49.99   Amazon Echo, $139.99 K-Mart Samsung 50" 1080p LED Smart HDTV (UN50J5200), $349.99 Samsung 40" 1080p LED Smart HDTV (UN40J5200), $249.99   Samsung 32" 1080p LED Smart HDTV (UN32J5205), $189.99   Samsung 58" 1080p LED Smart HDTV (UN58J5190), $429.99 Samsung 48" 1080p LED HDTV (UN48J5000), $299.99 Sylvania 7" Portable DVD Player, $39.99 Samsung 2.1 Channel 120W Bluetooth Soundbar w/ Subwoofer, $84.99 Nakamichi 2.2 Channel 500W Bluetooth Tower Speakers, $249.99 h.h. gregg LG 43" 4K HDR Ultra HD Smart TV (43UH6030), $299.99   Samsung 40" 1080p LED HDTV (UN40H5003), $219.99   LG 55" 4K HDR Ultra HD Curved Smart TV, $1,999.99   Samsung 55" 4K HDR S LED Smart HDTV, $999.99 Samsung 40" 4K Smart HDTV, $299.99 Vizio 70" 4K Ultra HD Smart TV (E70UD3), $1,199.99 Samsung 60" 4K HDR S LED Smart HDTV, $1,199.99 Samsung 55" 4K Curved LED Smart HDTV, $1,099.99 LG 55" 4K Ultra HD webOS 3.0 Smart TV (55UH6030) + Blu-ray Player, $499.99 Samsung 58" 1080p LED HDTV, $429.99 Samsung 70" 4K HDR Ultra HD Smart TV (UN70KU6300), $1,299.99 LG 55" 4K HDR Super Ultra HD Smart TV (60UH3500), $1,299.99 Seiki 1080p LED Smart HDTV (SE60FYP1T), $399.99 LG 65" 4K HDR Ultra HD Smart TV, $2,999.99 LG 65" 4K Ultra HD webOS 3.0 Smart TV + Blu-ray Player (65UH6030), $799.99 Sony 55" 4K HDTV, $899.99   Samsung 65" 4K HDR S LED Smart HDTV, $1,499.99 Samsung 55" 4K HDR Ultra HD Smart TV (UN55KU6290), $549.99 LG 65" Curved 4K HDR Ultra HD Smart TV, $2,999.99 Proscan 40" 1080p LED HDTV (PLDED4018A), $129.99 Sony 65" 4K HDTV, $1,399.99 Haier 65" 4K Ultra HD Smart TV (65UF2505), $549.99 Samsung 65" 4K Curved LED Smart HDTV, $1,599.99 Proscan 55" 4K Ultra HD TV (PLDED5515A), $299.99 Sony 75" 4K HDTV, $2,499.99 Samsung 50" 1080p LED Smart HDTV (UN50J5200), $349.99 LG 55" 4K HDR Super Ultra HD Smart TV, $799.99 Samsung 32" 720p LED TV (UN32J4000), $149.99 Amazon Echo Dot, $39.99 Amazon Echo, $139.99 Onkyo 700-Watt 5.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver, $199.99 Samsung 2.1-ch. Soundbar w/ Subwoofer, $84.99 Klipsch Dual 8-in. Floorstanding Speaker, $224.99 LG 2.1 Channel Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer, $69.99 Klipsch 4-in. Bookshelf Speakers, $99.99 Klipsch 210W 2-Way Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer, $199.99   Klipsch 5.25-in. Bookshelf Speakers, $125.99   Samsung 3.1-ch. Soundbar w/ Wireless Subwoofer, $229.99 Klipsch 400W 12-in. Subwoofer, $224.99   Sony Streaming Wi-Fi Blu-ray Player, $49.99   Onkyo 5.1 2-ch. Dolby Atmos Ready Network Home Theater, $549.99 Samsung 4K Upscaling 3D Wi-Fi Smart Blu-ray Player, $84.99   Polk Audio 100-Watt 10" Monitor Series Powered Subwoofer, $99.98 Samsung 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player, $199.99 Chromecast HDMI Streaming Media Player, $25.00 Apple TV 32GB w/ Siri, $129.99  

Kevin, Mike, and Elisa talk music and what we would buy.

Kevin, Mike, and Elisa talk music and what we would buy.

Author, Poet and Associate Editor of TeleRead   Interview starts at 22:08 and ends at 43:10   This [Kindle Oasis] basically gives Amazon its BMW or its Mercedes Benz, which is a pretty powerful draw for the entire range. It has produced a very fine, high-end E Ink eBook reader which caters very well to really serious readers.   News Amazon's First Quarter earnings report - April 28, 2016 Motley Fool Money podcast on Amazon earnings - April 29, 2016 (Thanks to David Enzel for the link) "Amazon was profitable for four quarters in a row" by Jason Del Rey at re/code - April 28, 2016 “Jeff Bezos Sells $671 Million of Amazon Stock in Biggest Sale Ever” by Aaron Pressman at Forune.com - May 6, 2016 “Jeff Bezos to personally match up to $1M in donations to Mary's Place homeless nonprofit” by Todd Bishop at GeekWire - May 2, 2016 “Mary's Place receives $2 million thanks to matching donations from Amazon's Jeff Bezos” by John Knicely at KIRO7 - May 4, 2016 Mary's Place link for Amazon wish list “Video: Jeff Bezos at the White House promotes plan to hire 25,000 veterans and military spouses at Amazon” by Kurt Schlosser at GeekWire - May 5, 2016 Joining Forces web site   Tech Tip How I am using Amazon Tap   Interview with Paul St John Mackintosh Amazon Author's Page and Facebook page Project Gutenberg The Musical Box of Wonders by Paul St John Mackintosh (paperback only) published by H. Harksen Producitons Following is the complete text of the poem recited by Paul St John Mackintosh at the end of the interview:      Mackintoshes   I'm writing this to tell my baby daughter —who took my pen to chew just now—about her rambunctious forebears, Papists or Dissenters, before they were Glasgow artists or inventors: nine hundred years of sanguinary glories, blood-fuelled vendettas, feuding feudatories, feral mosstroopers, breekless in the heather, sleeping out plaid-wrapped through all Highland weather; conveniently detained during Flodden, second at Bannockburn, first at Culloden; Jacobite malcontents, staunch in lost causes, schooled by reverses and misfortune's tawses; clan wildcat totem for crest and supporters, red lion, boar's head, heart in hand, ship quarters; proud bearings passed through gentleman and peasant, from those ancestral mountains to the present ludicrous days of raincoats and galoshes: ferocious, feckless, fearless Mackintoshes.   Next Week's Guest Peter Korn, accessibility architect at Amazon   Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.    Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

En esta ocasión aprovechamos que Roberto Pérez de Paz andaba por Madrid para hablar de las novedades de Amazon en cuestiones de accesibilidad, todo aalrededor de su asistente ALEXA, y de sus altavoces de streaming AMAZON TAP y ECHO, aunque aquí mostramos más el TAP. Acaban de salir a principios de Abril de 2016 en USA por lo que cuando hemos grabado esto, era solo con 20 días de vida del dispositivo. Os soprenderéis de lo que este dispositivo es capaz de hacer, incluso para gente no iniciada o mayor. Y sewguro que os gusta la idea de que los desarrolladores pueden hacer aplicaciones para ALEEXA, justo lo contrario que pasa con SIRI: Así, Dóminos PIZZA o UBER tienen ya aplicaciones o SKILLS para este equipo de forma que podemos encargar un coche o una pizza solo con el altavoz sin usar más que la voz. Nuevos tiempos vienen y competencia que nos favorecerá. OJO a AMAZON que viene fuerte.

The inside story of how Amazon created Echo, the next billion-dollar business no one saw coming Alexa Hardware Echo - $179.99 Echo Dot - $89.99 (only available through Alexa) Amazon Tap - $129, portable Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) Alexa Skills Quick Start Sample Code alexa-skills-kit-js Score Keeper Declaring Intents Custom Slot Type alexa-skills-kit-java Standard Slot Types Alexa Fund Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Alexa on a Raspberry Pi hackster.io Alexa Skills contest

In this episode Chris demonstrates the new Amazon Tap.  The Amazon Tap is a Bluetooth and WIFI enabled speaker.  The Tap uses the Alexa voice service and can do the same things that can be done with the original Amazon Echo.    You can listen to music, use Alexa skills,  and read Audible books.  Chris and Kim touch on the Echo Dot as well as discuss the relevance of the Mystic Access Echo Tutorial with the introduction of these new devices.    

In this episode Chris demonstrates the new Amazon Tap.  The Amazon Tap is a Bluetooth and WIFI enabled speaker.  The Tap uses the Alexa voice service and can do the same things that can be done with the original Amazon Echo.    You can listen to music, u

In this episode Chris demonstrates the new Amazon Tap.  The Amazon Tap is a Bluetooth and WIFI enabled speaker.  The Tap uses the Alexa voice service and can do the same things that can be done with the original Amazon Echo.    You can listen to music, use Alexa skills,  and read Audible books.  Chris and Kim touch on the Echo Dot as well as discuss the relevance of the Mystic Access Echo Tutorial with the introduction of these new devices.    

In this episode Chris demonstrates the new Amazon Tap.  The Amazon Tap is a Bluetooth and WIFI enabled speaker.  The Tap uses the Alexa voice service and can do the same things that can be done with the original Amazon Echo.    You can listen to music, use Alexa skills,  and read Audible books.  Chris and Kim touch on the Echo Dot as well as discuss the relevance of the Mystic Access Echo Tutorial with the introduction of these new devices.    

The Kindle Chronicles' first listener   Interview starts at 14:54 and ends at 43:13   I should have known that we'd be building our life around it like we have other things that you've done. I've gotten used to it. I should have known.   Intro Whill wheelchair site   News “Amazon is the ‘most reputable' company in the US” by Julie Bort at Business Insider - March 29, 2016 Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown Echo Dot and Amazon Tap arrive!   Tech Tip An ethical question about borrowing eBooks from your library with OverDrive   Interview with Darlene TKC 1 with Baratunde Thurston TKC 208 with Jeff Bezos Darlene's art quilts page   Next Week's Guest Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity - recorded at South by Southwest Interactive   Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.    Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Kid Friday is back with a special guest.  His name is Steve and he hates his Android phone.  He's also not a kid. iPhone SE, Amazon Tap, Bad USB-C Cables, Apple cables, Amazon Warehouse Deals, Interrogating Steve if he "Read" or "Heard" about something, learn how to podcast mis-communication, iCade Arcade for iPad, months of the year that are also first names of people, U.S. States, and a whole lot more. You're A Kid in a Digital World℠ Websites, Apps, Gadgets...Fun! Coverage of new websites, apps, gadgets. computers, mobile phones, iPads, iPhones, Android, tablets, and more. We talk tech, but always end up somewhere else. Write to us!  Visit KidFriday.comThanks for making Kid Friday the number one technology show for kids. Kid Friday is brought to you by StoryCub - Preschool Video Picture Books. Copyright 2016 KidFriday.com  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This week, GM buys big into driverless cars, Google AI beats a Go grandmaster, Amazon Echo repeats itself, Oculus won't be on the Mac, Tech encryption vs. the Feds in the news again, and Nike self-lacing shoes are here!...All this and more on The Drill Down. What We're Playing With Andy: The Aliens (Channel Four UK), Knee Deep Tosin: Knee Deep Dwayne: MPow Bluetooth Selfie Stick & The Little Prince Headlines Amazon adds the $130 Amazon Tap and the $90 Echo Dot to the Echo family Oculus Founder: Rift will come to Mac if Apple “ever releases a good computer" PlayStation VR Will Arrive in October for $399 Xbox Live now supports cross-platform multiplayer with PS4 General Motors Paid Over $1 Billion For Self-Driving Startup Cruise Google's DeepMind defeats legendary Go player Lee Se-dol in historic victory AlphaGo's victory means the world is about to change Google's AI Wins Fifth And Final Game Against Go Genius Lee Sedol Audible Book of the Week Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain by Timothy Verstynen, Bradley Voytek Sign up at AudibleTrial.com/TheDrillDown Music Break: Zombie by The Cranberries Hot Topic: Feds vs. Tech Encryption Prosecutors push back against Apple defense in new court filing Apple's Brief Hits the FBI With a Withering Fact Check Justice Department debating how to resolve standoff with WhatsApp over encryption in non-terrorism investigation Government Can't Let Smartphones Be `Black Boxes,' Obama Says Music Break: Get It Together by The GO! Team Final Words Silicon Valley Residents Leave for Greener Grass, Cheaper Housing Email pioneer Ray Tomlinson dead at 74 The Drill Down Video of the Week Nike will sell actual self-lacing sneakers, just like Back to the Future Subscribe! The Drill Down on iTunes (Subscribe now!) Add us on Stitcher! The Drill Down on Facebook The Drill Down on Twitter Geeks Of Doom's The Drill Down is a roundtable-style audio podcast where we discuss the most important issues of the week, in tech and on the web and how they affect us all. Hosts are Geeks of Doom contributor Andrew Sorcini (Mr. BabyMan), marketing research analyst Dwayne De Freitas, and Box product manager Tosin Onafowokan.

We talk about the Echo Dot: http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=14047587011 And the Amazon Tap: http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-PW3840KL-Tap/dp/B00VXS8E8S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457557922&sr=8-1&keywords=echo+tap It's unknown if either contains dormant cyber pathogens: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/san-bernardino-da-says-seized-iphone-may-hold-dormant-cyber-pathogen/ New York state officials are kinda losing it: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-counter-terrorism-chief-calls-apple-article-1.2554502 Fleksy is an iOS keyboard and more: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fleksy-+-gif-keyboard/id520337246?mt=8 Apple loses its e-book case appeal: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-07/apple-rejected-by-u-s-high-court-in-450-million-e-book-case Now you can tweet at Apple Support: https://twitter.com/applesupport Apple approved then pulled FlexBright: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/09/apps-adjusting-display-temperature-not-allowed/ The BitTorrent client Transmission was infected with ransomware: http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2016/03/new-os-x-ransomware-keranger-infected-transmission-bittorrent-client-installer/ Our thanks this week to Mack Weldon (https://www.mackweldon.com). Mack Weldon makes glorious underwear to hold your bits in the way they deserve, anti-microbially. It is truly awesome stuff. So go to mackweldon.com and use the promo code "REBOUND" to get 20 percent off your order. Our thanks also to Casper (https://casper.com/therebound) for sponsoring this episode. Casper makes mattresses from responsive materials to ensure great sleep for nearly everyone. You spend about a third of your life sleeping, make sure it's on a good mattress. Go to casper.com/therebound to start your 100-day money-back trial. You'll get $50 off by using the code REBOUND.

The growing and ever expanding business of wearables and the mobile health boom. The industry continues to explode with a 50% usage increase in just over 18 months. The creator of email, Ray Tomlinson, has passed away at 74. We look back at his contributions and the lasting impact he left in our industry. Ransomware hackers are targeting Apple users, something that is new to the face of cyber security and is being taken seriously. And finally, Amazon offers up a few new products based on the popularity of Alexa and Amazon Echo - the Echo Dot and Amazon Tap.

Hosts: Jacob, Steve & Daryl Today we chat about a number of interesting news stories. News Slack voice calling ariving http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/02/slack-calls/ You Can Now Tweet Your Tech Problems Directly To Apple http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/people-can-finally-tweet-their-tech-problems-directly-to-apple/ Trolls who use fake profiles will face prosecution http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-03/03/trolls-criminal-prosecution-facebook-twitter Facebook Messenger adds music, starting with Spotify song sharing http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/03/facebook-messenger-spotify/ Amazon removes encryption support in latest Fire OS update http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/03/amazon-removes-encryption-support-in-latest-fire-os-update/ Echo Dot and Amazon Tap bring Alexa's voice smarts to cheaper hardware http://www.pcworld.com/article/3040291/consumer-electronics/echo-dot-and-amazon-tap-bring-alexas-voice-smarts-to-cheaper-hardware.html Techwebcast https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/tech-webcast/id927260685?mt=8 Twitter https://twitter.com/techwebcast -Brad

Filmkészítés kölköknek, ikerűrhajós, atomvillanás-fehér, IoT-mosdatás, médiacenter-revival, Amazon Tap, Gear VR, ingyenwifi, Apple VR, angol büntiadó multiknak, low-tech-net és sörpodcast. Sok mindent meg lehet tanulni - ebből amúgy van egy vadul sikeres Gladwell könyv is, amiről nem beszéltünk, meg hát egy kicsit gyanús is - és ezt bármikor el lehet kezdeni. Van például gyerekkönyv, ami olyan … Continue reading #132. Gazsnap adás

English Translator of Winter Men by Jesper Bugge Kold   Interview starts at 20:10 and ends at 41:14 I like the fact that I can tell an editor there [at AmazonCrossing] that this book is something that you should really look for, and they listen. And in this case, from start to finish, I suggested this book, and it became a reality and now I'm sitting with it right here on my desk.   News Amazon Tap - pre-order available at Amazon.com for $129.99, with delivery march 31, 2016 Echo Dot - Order from your Alexa or the Amazon app on your Android or iOS smartphone “Amazon Tap puts Alexa into a portable Bluetooth speaker” (with video demo) by Lauren Goode and Dieter Bohn at The Verge - March 3, 2016 “Amazon's Echo Dot lets you put Alexa inside any speaker” by Lauren Good and Jacob Kastrenakes at The Verge - March 3, 2016 “Amazon's smartphone flop was the best thing that happened to Alexa” by Lauren Goode at The Verge - March 3, 2016 “Amazon Fights for a bigger share of the AI Assistant Pie with Echo Dot and Amazon Tap” by Anthony Karcz at Forbes - March 3, 2016 “Amazon Introduces 2 Alexa Voice-Controlled Devices” by Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times - March 3, 2016 “Amazon's Alexa will be able to control Nest and Honeywell thermostats this month” by Jacob Kastrenakes at The Verge - March 3, 2016 “Amazon, Federation of the Blind Reach Agreement on Accessibility” by Michele Molnar at Edweek - March 2, 2016 “Amazon Will Partner With Advocacy Group to Make Its E-Readers More Accessible to The Blind” by Ashley Gross at KPLU.org - March 2, 2016 “Amazon Decrypts Fire Tablets in Latest Update, Invites the FBI and NSA to Come On In” by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader - March 3, 2016 “Amazon stops encryption on Fire tablets, leaving data vulnerable to attack” by Nathanial Mott at The Guardian - March 3, 2016 “Amazon quietly disabled encryption in the latest version of Fire OS” by Ashley Carmen at The Verge - March 3, 2016 Full Disk Encryption explained (yeah, right) at source.android.com “Recall on CHARGER for two Amazon-UK Fire Tablets - possible risk of electric shock” by Andrys Basten at A Kindle World blog - March 2, 2016 “ALERT: Amazon recalls Kindle charger over electrical shock fears - is YOUR child at risk?” by Katie Mansfield at The Express - March 2, 2016   Tech Tip “The Benefits of an Amazon Giveaway for Kindle” by Chris McMullen at Digital Book World - March 2, 2016 Amazon Giveaway - How it Works   Interview with K. E. Semmel Winter Men by Jesper Bugge Kold, translated into English by K. E. Semmel (Free download available with Kindle Unlimited) “How Amazon came to dominate fiction in translation” by Allison Flood at The Guardian - December 9, 2015 The Seventh Child by Erik Valeur, translated by K. E. Semmel “Writing While Translating” by Idra Novey at Literary Hub - February 25, 2016 Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones An Untamed State by Roxane Gay   Content Technically Literate, short stories published exclusively on CNET.com “Reading Literature in the Digital Age” - a free online course via University of Basel Pry   Comment by Eolake Stobblehouse   Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.    Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!