My late colleague David Broder once recalled how, when he began newspapering in mid-century, journalists embraced the credo that “the only way a reporter should ever look at a politician is down.” He said they “prided themselves on their independence, their skepticism, and they relished their role in exposing the follies and the larceny of public officials.”

For PR and journalism professionals to create such an air of collusion certainly doesn’t help engender trust in the public’s eye. What are your thoughts? Harmless celebration or poor professionalism?

• Create a speed dial/short cut on your phone for 911 and other emergency numbers.
• Add a label to your family and other emergency contacts, “ICE – theirname”. ICE stands for “In Case of Emergency” and first responders look for that in phones they find at the scenes of emergencies. I also add the relationship to the person in the contact notes. For example: “ICE – Marcela – Wife”.
• Every night before bed, I put my phone next to my bed and put the “speed dial” screen up… so if there is an issue, I can get to my 911 speed dial quickly.
• Put a list of emergency contact names and contact information on your refrigerator, ESPECIALLY if you have kids. That’s one of the first places that emergency services personell will look.

These tips may make a few seconds difference in an emergency situation. I’ve heard about a new tip that I may add to my security toolbox, an app called Guardly.

“It takes eight taps to dial 911 on the iPhone,” Sookman says. Should the Guardly user place the app in the device’s dock, that process is reduced to three taps, he says.

Although I haven’t used it yet, the app is supposed to help with a few issues with the normal “dial 911″ approach.

• Triggering an alert in the app dials 911 AND a customizable list of family that can be notified of your emergency. They can also be sent SMS text messages and emails.
• Your GPS location is also sent to first responders and family.
• There are also other features like a loud alarm, as well as automatic photos and video coming soon and some paid features.

Here’s a full review of Guardly on Mashable. Guardly’s pricing and feature comparison between the free version and the premium version points out that many of the best features are paid. That’s great from a business perspective, but at $10 per month, that gets a little steep for a family. I haven’t found info on pricing discounts for a family or multiple users, but will post in comments if I do.

I’ll be trying out the app and maybe the premium services before making a full recommendation, but it certainly looks promising. What steps do you and your family take for health and safety?

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

What are your favorite quotes or philosphies on action, execution and making-things-happen?

I loved psychology when I was in college, and I still read on the topic any chance I get… I find the perspectives a very valuable in marketing as well as business. I was fortunate to attend a presentation this week called “Your Brain on Websites – Maximizing Web Sales with Neuroscience” by Roger Dooley, author of the really fascinating blog “NeuroMarketing, Where Brain Science and Marketing Meet.”

Roger’s presentation covered a few topics and research points I was familiar with, and a few new ones, I’ll lay out a few that I took notes on:

• Priming – A subtle but repeated suggestion is a powerful influencer of behavior. Example: test subjects were shown several phrases that had a very subtle thread of advanced age, the words “Florida, Grey and Wrinkled” were in unconnected phrases. Post reading these sentences, subjects walked slower to a test destination. I found a link to this PhD dissertation research here, it’s a long read at 155 pages, but I look forward to reading.



• Evolutionary Psychology – Roger made several points on research relating to evolutionary psychology, some of them not really surprising: from “men making poorer decisions when attractive women are around” to “conversion rates on direct response cards being higher when attractive people are on the cards”… of course women were less likely to be influenced by these little tricks.
• Complex visuals, copy-heaving interfaces – Visual designers and usability specialists typically agree that an interface that’s too complex, even fonts or too much copy is bad for business… now they have support by neuroscience. Roger showed data regarding the amount of stress felt by users of complex interfaces, the more complex, the more stress and the less attractive/pleasant the experience was. This of course has implications for ecommerce conversion, but also in any user experience… the more complex, the more stress and a poorer experience.
• Complex looking fonts – Roger also showed an example of complex fonts, a serif italic example was shown next to a simple Arial/Helvetica I believe. Researchers showed subjects the same content (directions to accomplish a task) and the subjects were asked to estimate time of completion of these tasks. The complex font example was estimated at 15 minutes for completion, the simple font was estimated at 8 minutes. So complex fonts gave the impression of a longer time investment, nearly double… a powerful example.

• Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion; by Robert Cialdini
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• Yes! – 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persasuive by Robert Cialdini
• Of course I’d have to mention Paco Underhill’s books, the Why We Buy series too.

What are your favorite neuromarketing studies and topics? Do you find yourself changing your communications and marketing based on some of these insights?

Movember raises funds to fight cancers that affect men (and roughly one in two men will be diagnosed at some point during their lifetime). I have an uncle fighting late stage prostate and bone cancer, so it’s certainly personal to me.

Funds go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Livestrong. So please join the over 137 members of Team Austin and grow a moustache. Or, for the women, join Team Austin and not grow a moustache. We need your support either way.

Growing moustaches and participating in Movember events helps. So does donating. You don’t need to donate much. Can you donate a dollar? I’d like to see 100 people donate a dollar. Last year 50 people on Team Austin raised over $18,000. This year we’d like to do more. Even $1 per supporter could easily take us there. Click the button to visit my MoSpace, where you can join Team Austin, or donate, or both.

Thanks so much for your support!!!

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It’s by Maximiliano Firtman, the author of Programming the Mobile Web, what looks to be a pretty good book. I’ll have to pick it up.

Does your company’s website have a mobile-friendly version yet? Are you planning to enable customers to opt in to SMS notifications?

I just bought my first song/EP that was promoted directly by the artist on iTunes’ Ping social network. There are still issues with the Ping experience, like unclear linking and finding the Ping profile versus the artist’s page of products, but once you “follow/like” them, they start to show up in your iTunes Ping area. One of the updates that the artist posted included his track, and that’s where I listened to a sample and decided to buy the track.

Artists
I’m surprised to see that even major artists like U2 and Shakira only have a few hundred thousand followers on Ping. Are your favorite artists posting updates to iTunes Ping? Are they discussing and promoting songs there yet? I’d love to hear if you’ve found new artists or music via updates on Ping? Is it a threat to artists connecting via more proven social networks like FaceBook and MySpace?

Friends:
Have you found your friends and shared music on Ping yet? As of now, you have to search for their name and choose by city and music choices, if you know it, or you can email them to join you. I’ve only found a few friends via this method, so Facebook or other social network integration is a must before Ping really can grow. (You can search for “Charlie Browning” and find me in Austin, TX if you’d like to connect, but I warn you my taste in music is eclectic…

Apple will certainly have to put more effort into promotion and especially the experience of the Ping social network for it to be successful, but I’m excited about the direct connections to artist updates, in the context of purchase. Artists featuring a track, telling about the production or how it came about is very powerful, especially when users can purchase it and that information is automatically relayed to their friends… that social proof and sharing is very powerful.

BTW, the artist and track that I found was Krunksnatcher by Dom & Roland… great track if you like Drum and Bass.

– Mobile Web Design Blog “How to design web sites for the smallest screens on the Internet” – They have a great post on Mobile in Latin America too.

– Mobile Demystified, a blog by Waterfall Mobile, a leading SMS solutions provider.

– Nielsen Research’s Mobile Research Blog.

– Untether.tv – Great video interviews with mobile industry rock stars, by Rob Woodbridge.

– The Flurry Analytics Blog is a great pulse on mobile usage across all the apps and sites that use Flurry to track their efforts.

My favorite Mobile News sites:
– Mobile Marketing Watch.
– Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily
– Mashable Mobile
– MobileCrunch

Organizations:

– The Wireless Industry Partnership connecting mobile developers to information, resources and people. Some great resources and worldwide mobile industry event lists.

– University of Texas’ Wireless Network and Communications Group, they put on the Texas Wireless Summit, next one is 16 Nov 2010 in Austin.

– Austin Wireless Alliance

– Mobile Monday Austin new meetings coming soon! and Mobile Monday Worldwide site, so you can find your local group.

– The Mobile Marketing Association another great resource for events and research.

– The National Retail Foundation’s Mobile Retail Initiative research. The executive summary is really interesting.

What mobile sites do you frequently use? Please share in the comments and I’ll update! More coming soon!

The International Hospitality Council of Austin (IHCA) demonstrates community leadership for providing a broad array of intercultural services for international students and visitors to Central Texas. …the organization is a forty-six year old nonprofit designated as a Center for International Visitors and therefore is the local contact agency for the U.S. Department of State. It is also a member of the National Council of International Visitors.

Basically, they host international visitors on business or government missions and make connections to local people and culture, non-profit and non-partisan. They are famous for hosting a yearly Consular Ball in partnership with the Mayor of Austin’s office and the Texas Secretary of State.

Adrienne invited me to join her at a dinner for Ambassador Tran Van Tung and Dr. Nguyen Manh Ha of Vietnam, fresh from their meetings last week with Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissenger. They attended a conference in Washington D.C. “U.S. & Vietnam: Commitment to a shared future” discussing our countries’ history together and the future. They are introduced by Clinton in the second paragraph.

Tung and Mahn Ha discussed American and Vietnamese food with us, the climate and environmental differences between Texas and Vietnam (could they be any more different?) and also heavier topics of learning from the war, politics of war and personal experiences. They told stories of families split between North and South, sometimes by politics, sometimes by chance. The devastation that American deforestation chemicals wrought on agriculture, medical issues on both sides caused by Agent Orange and the loss of family members. They told us of a monument to mothers represented by a 106 year old mother that lost her 9 sons, husband and brother to the American/Vietnam war.

We also spoke a little about Vietnam’s economic future, education goals and trade. Tung said they are very focused on education, sending thousands of students abroad for advanced degrees to help build business back in Vietnam. He spoke enthusiastically about Bill Gates‘ recent trips to Vietnam to encourage health, education, manufacturing and especially technology innovation. In the next sentence though, they mentioned they were also both very excited to have purchased iPads to bring back to share with their colleagues.

Mahn Ha also let us in on how much of a soccer fan he is, from Manchester United to Argentina’s River Plate team… unfortunately, I had to disagree with him, as my wife (who is from Argentina) is a HUGE fan of River Plate’s arch rival, Boca Juniors. It’s a small world when an Argentina futbol rivalry extends to Hanoi, Vietnam and back to Austin, Texas.
Thanks so much to my friend Adrienne and the IHCA, it was a pretty amazing experience to meet and have such great conversations with such prominent figures on the world stage… and to share such simple and powerful connections. I can’t say I have a good hook to bring this back to some marketing topic, but it was a great connection experience and a reminder that we have so much in common with each other, no matter what our history.

Working as part of remote teams (does anyone work exclusively with people that are right next to them anymore?) these coordination and communication sessions are invaluable. We rely on each other more and more to handle complex tasks before, after or simultaneously with our efforts… how do we keep things moving slowly with a minimum of delays and inefficiencies?

A simple timer can kickstart tough work

I wanted to share a few resources I’ve found valuable.

Here’s a great article called “Doing the board” which is really close to the quick “daily scrums” I’ve been doing with some of the teams I work with. For those of you who know about Agile development, our scrums are a less technical version but still answer the basic 3 questions: “What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? and What roadblocks do you have?” Here are some resources to explore these concepts: Mountain Goat Software, Scrum Basics website, a blog post on some additional best practices in holding the meeting.

A good article on Lifehacker, (one of my favorite daily reads) “I procrastinate because I care“, which explains a lot about perfectionists and their productivity… the concept is pretty clear in the title. The article also talks about the “Pomodoro Technique“, a timer-based way to kickstart large, complex or intimidating efforts. The concept is “I can do anything for 15 min or so” and you set a simple timer to start, knowing that an end is coming… you won’t be swamped forever in the complexity. A little more info here.

How do you and your team track personal and team tasks?