lux – Page 8 – Fiat Lux

Make Our Garden Grow

Growing up in New York, my main exposure to gardening was being told to weed the back driveway at Grandma’s place (and the above from Candide, but that got me hooked on Bernstein instead). As you might expect, the weeding didn’t do much to hook me. I did like Grandma’s rose bushes, but then one year they pulled them all out to plant tomatoes instead, and I pretty much lost interest in the whole thing.

Fast forward past years of apartment living in various rentals, and I’m finally in a place of my own with an actual patio. And finally I’m starting to understand why my grandparents (and now my parents) spent so many hours out in the garden.

It’s fun!

Best thing about having a patio instead of a backyard is that you get the fun parts of gardening — choosing and nurturing pretty and/or tasty plants — without the weeding and lawn care that I still find utterly uninteresting.

Since I’ve never done any of this before, this year is pretty much one big experiment. So far we’ve planted four different herbs, two kinds of impatients, three tomato plants, and some Spanish lavender. We don’t get full sun all day on the patio, so whether we actually get enough direct sunlight to keep them all thriving I don’t know yet. Everything seems to be growing and thriving so far – we even have 5 or 6 green tomatoes forming on the vine – but I’m not going to call this year a success unless we actually harvest some tomatoes and the rest of the plants stay alive.

Four scraggly pink rose bushes also came with the place. I’ve still got a lot to learn about caring for them, but they’re blooming like crazy right now, and I just LOVE being able to pick my own roses and put them into a vase at my table.

I guess it really is different when you own a place.

Facebook: A New Google or a new AOL?

As the dawn of Facebook as a publicly-traded company breaks, a few thoughts amidst all the hype.

It’s the beginning of a whole new chapter for Facebook, and I’m not so sure that their road will be as smooth as some have predicted. Robert Scoble, for example, thinks Facebook could be a trillion dollar company in five years.

Well, it could happen. But for Facebook to continue that kind of trajectory, they’re going to need to sustain a huge amount of growth. There’s only a few options that will get them there at that kind of scale. The most obvious are either successfully ramping up their number of users, or successfully ramping up revenue per user.

New markets, and loads of new users in those markets, are possible. China’s problematic, but India is certainly in play, as well as plenty of other nations. Can one social network can serve the needs and interests of so many different cultures? I have my doubts, but it could happen if Facebook invests enough brainpower into internationalization and localization of their site. (Hint: content translation is the start, not the end, of that journey).

If they can’t grow revenue enough through new members, then there’s always the path of extracting more revenue from the userbase. Which means either more advertising or finding things that users are going to be willing to pay Facebook for. This is where things get more problematic. For one thing, there’s only so much advertising users are willing to put up with. And while I’m sure Facebook would love to do more with Facebook Credits, to date they haven’t had much success on that front.

And there’s one other thing to consider when it comes to advertising. Competition. Facebook isn’t the only game in town when it comes to digital dollars. Google is right up there as well.

Advertisers now have more choices for where to direct their digital dollars – which means Facebook (and Google for that matter) will have to do more work to get and keep those advertisers. The news that GM is dropping all Facebook advertising is a clear sign that they are not going to be able to just sit back and collect cash.

It’s great for those of us in marketing. Not so great for Google and Facebook’s profit margins.

And this is where Google has an advantage over Facebook. Advertising is their cash cow, but they have had time to grow and diversify in ways that Facebook hasn’t. As big a success as Facebook is, they’re much more of a one-trick pony than Google.

Facebook is going to have a huge IPO and a great run in the near term, no question about it. But there’s still a long road before them, and no guarantees. Remember that AOL was once valued at $160+ billion. Where it is today?

Dear Blogger

Dear Blogger,

I get it. Really, I do. It’s a tough world out there and your personal brand won’t build itself. You need to be aggressive about building out your customer base. Upselling opportunities are important, and there’s no better time to do it than when a prospect is engaged with your content.

But here’s a very important point to remember: when the VERY FIRST thing someone sees when they come to your website is a full-page takeover with a marketing message, it is not smart marketing. It is greedy and short sighted.

You were smart enough to create content that someone recommended – that’s how I came to your site. Stay smart and let that content do its job before you ask a visitor to engage with you more deeply.

I’m seeing aggressive takeovers on page load happen more and more these days. Maybe you think that “the other sites are doing it” and that you should too, but please, don’t. It just make you look like you care more about me as a sales prospect than anything else.

Sincerely,

The visitor who just left your site thinking worse, not better, of you.

New on Kickstarter: Gotta Get a Vuelta

There’s a new Kickstarter project that I’d like to call out for some attention: The Padron Watch Company.

Leo, the guy Kickstarting his business, is someone I’ve known for 10 years now. I really admire how he’s taken a passion – restoring old watches – and turned it from a hobby into a business. And now he wants to take it to the next level.

People talk a lot today about where all the jobs in middle America are going. Talking is easy. Starting a business – and who knows, maybe someday creating some good new jobs – is a lot harder. I have a lot of admiration for Leo and what he is doing. And especially that he’s choosing to follow his passion for craftsmanship and creating not just another Internet site or mobile app, but something far more tangible and lasting.

I know not everyone who reads this is a watch fan, and may not feel inspired to contribute to his Kickstarter project. But if you have a friend who might want to contribute, would you please pass the link along?

And if you do contribute, you’ll be supporting someone who is going to work as hard as he can to see the project through.

Please consider helping out in any way you can.

Thanks!

Is It Time For An Upgrade?

How do you know when it’s time for a new camera, versus simply having a case of Nikon Acquisition Syndrome?

After 4 years with the D40, I think it might really be time for an upgrade. More and more I find myself getting frustrated with the D40 and even reaching for my Lumix when I want to shoot something.

I can still get shots like this:

But I’m finding myself fighting with the camera more to make it do what I want. It seems to me that I shouldn’t have to struggle so hard with a camera I’ve had for 4 years; if the equipment is getting in the way, that’s a problem.

So all in all, I think it’s time for an upgrade. The D5100 is looking pretty good to me.

Or do I just have a case of NAS? When do you know it’s time for an upgrade?