microCHUNK.TV

Bill is always telling me how we need to be more transparent. This is a great picture of my darling, Ninja Bill, a.k.a the asshole. I got your transparency right here !

Fred Wilson in A VC describes the Freemium Business Model:

Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.

In this post we asked: What could Design Ninjas give away that we have been holding back? We have an idea. We now offer Freemium Logo Design — we design a logo for you for free, and look for word of mouth, referrals, and link love. We expect to make plenty of money from the folks who want additional design services from us. What do you think? Do you have any ideas about getting the word out on this? Let us know, and thanks!

I haven’t posted in a few days for a couple reasons. It’s been a bad few days…I crashed my computer a total of 3 times. I had a Win 2000/Vista dual boot setup…not anymore. Here’s what happened.

1. Decided to install a new burning program on Win2000 partition
2. Got a blue screen and thought, no big deal I use Acronis I will restore the image
3. Started Acronis restore, got an error, ignored it, it deleted my Win2000 partition, but didn’t restore
4. I was frustrated, thought about just not using a computer anymore, 5 minutes later decided I would take this opportunity to upgrade to WinXP…I’ve been holding off for awhile now
5. Installed WinXP on the former Win2000 space
6. It booted fine, but couldn’t get to Vista anymore
7. Attempted to fix Vista boot by booting to Vista CD and doing a repair, no luck
8. Thought screw this I’m going to get rid of Vista and wait until the final version comes out
9. Deleted Vista partition
10. Could no longer boot Win XP
11. Repaired XP (sort of) by running repair off the CD
12. Programs didn’t work right, things were strange, ran chkdsk and blue screen of death again
13. Keep in mind I activated XP when I first installed, after I repaired and now I was going to have to activate again (hold my breath and hope it works so I don’t have to call India and read a gazillion numbers)
14. I again pondered not using a desktop computer anymore and sticking with my laptop
15. 5 minutes later started a reinstall of Windows XP
16. Finished reinstall and started to activate and no such luck
17. I entered Activation Hell with Microsoft, so I did the phone thing and got that worked through..as a side note this was the 2nd time in one day I had to call Microsoft to Activate, earlier in the day I had to call for a customer
18. Spent forever reinstalling programs and such
19. Backed up the computer
20. Now I’m back !

We got this comment over at our Twin Lakes Computer Magic blog this morning:

Paste This said…
Holy cripes, I leave Baxter County for a few years (OK, twenty) and it goes and gets all geeky! I saw your YouTube presence while looking for Razorback clips. Congrats on the business and best of luck. I’m an MCSE and CCNA working the graveyard shift in a NOC in the Sacto area (Rancho Cordova)… also a proud Norfork High grad from, oh, back in the ARPAnet days. You should post how the hell Bill ever made his way to the Mountain Town, that must be a story. OK I’m out, off to smoke a Native American Black and continue auditing our company’s OBM list for about 200 sites.
Keep the ninja flag flying… if I can ever haul my L.A. wife back to float the Buffalo with our tots and visit Mom (it WILL happen someday) we’ll drop in on ya.

Yes, the future of marketing is being able to create stories other people will want to tell, so we’ll get right on it!

Yesterday we got down to Little Rock, AR to attend a Microsoft conference. We enjoyed presentations by Keith Combs, pictured above, and Charles Van Heusen. There was a ton of information and a bunch of prizes, such as an Xbox 360, and a good time was had by all.

We recently posted about the Rise of Freeconomics, and wanting to “Give It Away”, but we are still working out how best to do that. Any suggestions?

Last Saturday night was unusually warm, so Misty and I went down by Lake Norfork, started a fire, had some wine, and looked at the stars. I first got practice at building fires when living in Santa Fe, where the smell of cedar filled the air on cold winter nights. Practice continued later in Sacramento, where it wasn’t so cold, but the fires still warmed the spirits. And now, we don’t have a fireplace at home but we still get down to the lake for hotdog and marshmallow roasts with the kids. Starting a business is like starting a fire, you have to get the small twigs burning first, then larger branches, until finally it’s a roaring blaze. Come join in the fun!

As you may have read here, we had some problems with our first order of Moo Mini Cards. We sent in an email to customer service and although it took them a few days to get back they had no problem giving us two free orders to replace the one mess up. We love our Moo Mini Cards and will definitely order more!!

Chris Anderson posts an excellent article called The Rise of “Freeconomics”, and this line jumped out at me:

Understanding when to shift out of scarcity mode and start giving away what you once held dear is a core competency for our age.

It makes me ask myself, “What could Design Ninjas give away that we have been holding back?” Any suggestions? What could you give away that you have been holding back?

One day while driving down the road, we saw the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. Branding is everywhere, some do it consciously, like Oscar Meyer, and others don’t think that everything they do is creating their brand. So, next time you look in the mirror, think about what brand you are creating.

I have a MySpace.com profile you can check out here. Today, I checked my 3 friends profiles and Amanda has 20 friends, Josie has 36 friends, and Kari has 79 friends. I have 3, Holy Cow……I suck, I must be a Myspace loser!!!

Ok, let’s get real now. I don’t even like MySpace. It drives me freaking’ nuts. Every time I go to check a message it times out. Most of these people have music on their profile that plays when you open and is annoying as hell. Although, Kari has a cool song I now have stuck in my head……Thanks Kari ! I suppose this all means than I am truly an old woman now. Myspace is designed for the younger crowd, and here I am complaining about how annoying it is. Just what the young people want……to be annoying enough to keep the old people away!