Unless you've been living under a rock the last few days, you know that Apple released the iPad on Saturday. Paul Groepler, the unrepentant, bleeding-edge, early adopter, had to have one, of course. Here are his initial thoughts.
Saturday at 10am the UPS guy showed up at the front door with my iPad. I’ve taken a few wacky photos to show you what’s in the box...not much actually.
It was great to see you speaking at the Apple event yesterday. You've lost some hair and some weight, but as you said, you're vertical and you're back at Apple. I'm glad you're there. Hopefully the health problems are behind you for a while.
The web is on fire this afternoon with the news that Amazon is buying Zappos. The deal is reportedly worth more than $800 million in cash and stock.
From the Zappos perspective, the deal makes a lot of sense, at least in the short term. I expect the recession has been hard on Zappos, and things probably haven't been comfortable there since before their layoffs last November. The backing of a behemoth like Amazon would certainly be welcomed. And as long as they are allowed to operate as an independent entity (which will certainly change at some point), the day-to-day impact should be reasonable.
Most of you know that I’ve started a new internet marketing firm called ionadas local. It provides search and social media services to local businesses. These will tend to be smaller businesses than the national brands I’ve worked with in the past.
As part of the ionadas local website, I have created the ionadas local Marketing Blog. It will address marketing news, trends and techniques for the geographically focused company.
Some of you have already heard, but effective immediately, I am taking a sabbatical from Apogee Search.
The economic seas for the last year or so have been quite rough, and the Apogee Search ship was buffeted just like everyone else. Going into this recession, the search marketing industry was rather arrogant. "We're the trackable part of marketing," we all said. "No one is going to cut back on us."
In the article, I explain how to get the most out of using paid search to promote events. Due to the time-sensitive (and time-limited) nature of events, they do require special consideration.
I'm always amazed that companies can't learn one of the basic lessons of public relations: If you try to hide bad news, you're just going to make things worse. As soon as people begin to pick up on the deception, they will just assume the worst case scenario. And if/when you do fully disclose, people won't believe all the bad news is out there.
Take Steve Jobs and Apple Inc., for instance.
As we surmised, Steve Jobs' health was more complex than previously disclosed. He announced this week that he is taking a six month medical leave.
Jobs said:
Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.
Does the man on the left look healthy?
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs announced Monday the "reason" for his substantial weight loss throughout 2008. That's Jobs from June 9, 2008 on the left, and from January 11, 2005 on the right.
From his open letter:
As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.
Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.
