Sambazon Drink Beverage Brand | Acai Berry Products
My mother is from Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River. The Brasilian foods and drink I prefer obviously all come from there. I grew up drinking Guaraná (the only soda I really ever drink). I’m crazy over bananas. I love tapioca. I miss eating river or sea turtle with farofa. And there are other local foods I miss (tacacá, pato no tucupí, and so on).
One thing I didn’t drink much as a child was Açaí. The way they ate (drank) it in Belém was like a soup. Açaí is purple and bitter – you need to add a lot of sugar to it (and they usually add tapioca). There’s some folklore that, despite what the article below says, you can’t drink booze and eat Açaí at the same time. My mother adheres to it religiously, while the younger generation laugh.
But, then again, whenever my mom is back in Belém, she drinks liters and liters of the stuff. I’m sure she doesn’t drink beer at the same time only because she doesn’t want it to compete for space in her stomach with the Açaí. 😉
Nonetheless, I believe that Açaí is the secret to my mother’s youthful looks and vibrant spirit and general good health.
Link:Sambazon Drink Beverage Brand | Acai Berry Products.
Acai pulp contains an impressive nutritional elixir. At the top of its nutrient list is anthocyanins, a powerful antioxidant, of which acai contains amounts 33 times greater than in red wine and significantly more than other fruits that recently have been gaining attention for their antioxidant content, including pomegranates and blueberries. Acai also contains omega-6 and omega-9 cholesterol-fighting fatty acids, more protein than the average egg, essential amino acids, and vitamins and minerals ranging from Vitamin E to calcium.
….
Acai, like Red Bull, is said to mix well with alcohol. [horrors!]
Rainy day wheat field
Rainy day wheat field
Originally uploaded by schickr.
12:53 Sunday, 28 August, 2005
Image 100 Just around the bend from where I live
Rainy day wheat field
Rainy day wheat field
Originally uploaded by schickr.
12:52 Sunday, 28 August, 2005
Image 099 Just around the bend from where I live
Mobile apps with tagging and categories
It goes without saying that tagging has become big. I’ve always considered tagging, or categories, or whatever you call it, to be important metadata that gives meaning to an item. This makes it easier to sort, find, highlight, and so on, the items in your collection.
Of course, the best time to tag is immediately, when you have the thought in your head as the item is created. Therefore, I want an app that lets me post to Flickr or my blog in the same way as Lifeblog (content-centric posting), but that also lets me tag or categorize the items I post. I can’t stand when I post to Flickr and then need to wait till I am back at my computer to add the tags (Flickr mobile doesn’t let you add tags either pre or post upload).
In a way, Lifeblog allows for tags in the caption field of each item when posting. But, no service provider uses that info for proper tagging purposes. Also, in Lifeblog, you can’t select a category for your blog post. In the current Lifeblog UI it wouldn’t be so hard to have a category field for the post and a tags field for the item.
Are there any client apps out there that let me upload to wherever I want and allows me to create and add tags that the server understands? Are the cool new photo services allowing folks to tag when they capture images or when they send them rather than making them return to a PC? Yes, I talk about the fusion of PC, mobile, and Web. But, in this case, the mobile environment is the best place to do this tagging.
Zoom meets Flash meets Digital Pen
I use a Nokia Digital Pen to take notes and draw with, occasionally beaming stuff to my phone. It’s nice. But, check out this Digital Pen called Fly. It’s really interesting.
Link via YI’s trend newsletter: FLY Pentop Computer.
The device seems cool, the tech seems cool, and the website is so cool too. All of it seems targeted at the Zoom crowd – tweens 11-15. I don’t know if an older teenager would still be interested in this (though I am – at almost 3 times a teen).
I don’t like highlighting gadgets, but this pen is good example of trying to fit into someone’s lifestyle rather than building a gadget just for the tech of it. And they are building a story aouond it, as well. Very good.
But, I have seen many children’s toys that are overdone and, while the marketing is truthful, there is nothing substantial to it. If I ever get my hands on one of these, I’ll be able to see if it truly is a mobile device or just the latest electronic gizmo craze for kids.
Bessemer Venture Partners – Anti-Portfolio
A must read. A great list of immensely successful companies that Bessemer passed up on for ‘obvious’ reasons.
Link: Bessemer Venture Partners – Our Portfolio.
Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation’s oldest venture capital firm, carrying on an unbroken practice of venture capital investing that stretches back to 1911. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.
The Supernova Mobile Apps Panel – Wasn’t
I missed this from Debi earlier in the month. I totally agree with what she says. Actually, she and I have had some great discussions around this topic of mobile myopia among the Internet leaders.
Yes, Debi, there is a need for mobile-savvy folks to start permeating all these Internet companies. In any case, it’s a business opportunity for mobile folks to leave traditional telecom companies and get involved with companies in different areas.
Link: The Supernova Mobile Apps Panel – Wasn’t | 8/8/2005 | mobile jones.
The only person on the panel to reference mobile audiences and the mobile life style was AJ Kim. This is an ongoing problem that is perceived in the view of Silicon Valley companies and not incorporating a mobile perspective in their product planning, and initially even in their language. This panel demonstrates the absence of comfort and ultimately understanding that these seminal user created content and social communication tools vendors have for mobile prosumers and their needs.
In the spirit of openness, I’ll give away my list of potential targets.
Companies who could use an infusion of mobility
– Six Apart – TypePad
– Yahoo! – Flickr, Search, Yahoo!mail
– Google – GMail, Search, Dodgeball
– Apple – iTunes, iPhoto, .mac
– AskJeeves – Bloglines
– 37signals – Basecamp, Backpack
– Kodak
– smaller companies – del.icio.us
And since this is a community, I have a list of people I know who get mobile and whom I’d call on to execute stuff with the companies listed above. I’ll keep that list to myself – to protect the innocent.
Where are all the open source marketers?
Laura Ramsey brings up a very interesting point regarding marketing of Open Source products (projects, things, stuff). The funny thing for me while reading (and re-reading) the post is that I kept thinking, not of ‘Open Source’ marketing, as in the marketing of Open Source products, but as on Open Source Marketing’, as in marketing in an Open Source way.
I think the answer to her question lies in my initial understanding of what she was saying – the marketing of Open Source has to come from the community in an Open Source way. Everyone feels passionate of the Open Source project they are working on and of the products they use that come out of the Open Source community. Why can’t some of the evangelist-inclined folks in the Open Source community run their marketing (or whatever you want to call it) like any Open Source project? The enthusiasm is from within, and the knowledge, too.
In a way, that was where I was going with my marketing with Lifeblog – I was trying to get others to own the marketing of the product, on their terms, and also to find others who would act as multipliers and do the same for me. Isn’t this how Open Source works? Organically grows from unguided, collective interaction in the community to create a self-organized, complex, organism with a life and direction of its own?
Sure, I greased my efforts with some money and gadgets, but it wasn’t all that necessary, it just sped things up, facilitated us getting off the ground. And, even with me gone, it’s still happening on its own!
So, my answer to where are all the Open Source marketers is: they are sitting right next to you. Use the tools you know and love to conquer marketing on your own terms.
Link by way of Kathy Sierra: Laura’s Box of Chocolates.
Creating Passionate Users: You ARE a marketer. Deal with it.
Neo-marketing, indeed. Kathy Sierra’s post and ensuing discussion point out a lot of issues I have been grappling with in the past 5 years since I was anointed Marketing Manager.
You see, prior to that, I was a writer and just before that a molecular biologist. Yes, quite odd.
Nonetheless, I have been able to kick some serious butt, getting folks excited about the products I was marketing, succeeding in spreading good will and positive energy, and in avoiding the regular pitfalls of standard Marcoms.
Why is that? I had no training in marketing principles or techniques. I had no clue on how to create a PowerPoint presentation or what Value Proposition meant. I never did a SWOT analysis or written up some USPs. Basically, I was less trained than a trainee. How did I do it?
Common sense. Honesty. Kindness. Trust. And a gut feeling as to how people really want to participate in the creation of a brand, the creation of a community around a product, in how they wanted to be respected for their opinions and not force-fed some rose-colored product-promise krap.
Sure, along the way I read some books and listened to some bright folks. But most of these just reinforced my beliefs into what makes good marketing PR outreach cheerleading evangelism oh, you know what I mean, What I Did.
In the end, I was doing a concoction of public relations, media relations, consumer outreach, strategic and collaborative business development, clever sponsoring of companies and events, and participating in the give and take of the community conversation (and all with way less money than the rest of the company). When I look back and see how these functions are so deeply separated in most companies, I can see why Marketing, Comms, and PR get a bum rap. It’s a half-assed, non-integrated, incomplete interaction with customers.
Enough of me. Go read the post and discussions.
Link, by way of our Chris Bouret: Creating Passionate Users: You ARE a marketer. Deal with it..
But the difference between what we now consider "old-school marketing" (otherwise known as The Four P’s — product, price, promotion, and placement — heavy on advertising and "branding") and the "neo-marketing" we’re doing here is frickin’ huge.
And don’t miss the rest of the blog – three braniacs write it and have some great posts on other topics.