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Misty and I want to get out of town the last week in December, but as of this moment we don’t see how. We’ve been tracking Southwest Airlines “Ding” fares and watching our nickles and dimes, but so far no joy. Oh, will we lose the Spirit of Giving, or will the Miracle of Christmas save us all? Stay tuned as the Design Ninjas turn.

Yes, the search for the fingerprint solution lasted days and seemed to take great effort. I might as well have cut my fingernail open and bled everywhere.

The main roadblock from most companies came when I mentioned authenticating to an Active Directory Domain. I finally found Digital Persona, but they didn’t make it clear how much their stuff cost or which stuff I needed to order. I called and left a message with Digital Persona and a day went by, I didn’t hear back. I called again and left another message and someone called back and was very helpful. I got the info and numbers I needed.

I’m not sure what’s going on with these companies and why they don’t make their websites easy to order from, or why their people don’t seem eager to sell their product. We talked before about Easy Process=More Money and that same thing applies here. So, here’s the wakeup call to all the Fingerprint Authentication companies: GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YOUR ASS AND MAKE YOUR SHIT EASY TO ORDER!!!!

A few days ago we posted about the Rise of Freeconomics and our Freemium Logos. Between those two posts, Alexholic told a sad tale:

long story short
i designed a logo for a buisness. said buisness owner said he would compensate me for the logo when the buisness got up and running. said buisness owner informed me the buisness would not be taking off, and thus, the logo was not needed.

recently i found out that said company did get started, and my logo was ripped off without any permission or compensation.

on a related note, i’m not going to be posting any more pictures of sketches, paintings, tattoos, drawings, etc. here on the lj, or any other internet source. the theft didn’t take place online, but i’m fed up.

Chris Anderson’s line — Understanding when to shift out of scarcity mode and start giving away what you once held dear is a core competency for our age — applies here. And the line about not cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Blowing smoke is easy, but breathing fire is hard. Let the fire of your passion inspire all that you do and all will burn brightly through the darkness!

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!