What is a friend?

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Business, and especially online marketing, is all about trading. Advertisers, publishers, agencies, networks, and exchanges trade ad impressions, clicks, and conversions for money. A deal takes place when supply meets demand. Simple economics. This is why in business you sometimes work with people that you don’t really like. It’s all very rational, mostly about numbers.

In my personal life I want the complete opposite. I don’t want to negotiate deals and I certainly don’t want to spend my time with people that I don’t like. I want to be with good and honest people, not worry about numbers, and simply have a good time.

Still, I feel I’m sometimes surrounded by people that treat personal relationships like business. They have this “what’s in for me” attitude and constantly try to get the most out of you just for themselves. They mostly demand and hardly don’t offer, they usually take and don’t give, they consume and don’t contribute, they talk a lot and act very little.

Even if you think these people are your “friends”, they are really not. They are just acquaintances and will be around only as long as you have something that they want. Once you have nothing to offer to them anymore you will never hear from them again. So don’t waste your time with these bullshitters, life is too short.

What is a friend then? It’s actually quite simple:

A friend is a person who does something for you without expecting anything in return, in the present or in the future. A friend is happy to help you out and will never ask you to return the favor. He will leave it up to you to show your gratitude.

Let me give you an example:

Last week I went to dmexco in Cologne, Germany’s main digital marketing exposition and conference. Originally I was planning to go there on Tuesday, do some meetings on Wednesday and then leave to be back in the office on Thursday. So I didn’t even bother getting a ticket for Wednesday night’s big party (OMClub).

It turned out that I had to stay until Thursday and do all of our meetings. All the people that I knew were planning to go to that party and all the tickets had been gone for days or weeks already. So I just called a friend of mine and asked him whether he thought he could organize an extra ticket for me.

Here is the important part: Without even thinking about it he immediately replied saying that I shouldn’t worry and that he would sort me out. He told me to call him once I get to the venue and he would get me in. And it all went exactly as he promised. I gave him a call and there he was with an extra ticket. He was happy to give it to me and didn’t ask for anything in return.

That is a friend.

An acquaintance would have asked for something in return, trying to get something out of my situation. Maybe not that night, but sooner or later an acquaintance would have brought up the ticket story for his own benefit. Now think about it, of those people that you usually hang out with, who are your real friends?

Thanks Ingo, I owe you one.

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Free Turn-by-Turn Navigation for Your iPhone

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Do you have an iPhone and want a free GPS navigation app? Here is it.

A couple of months ago I was researching iPhone navigation apps for the United Kingdom as I was going to be driving a rental car over there for a long weekend. Of course The first ones I found were the good old TomTom and such. However, I also discovered something called NavFree which was absolutely free to download. I thought this couldn’t be so I tried it out.

NavFree is really free. Map data are coming from the OpenStreetMap project. That’s why the developers don’t have to pay hefty license fees to TeleAtlas or other commercial vendors of map data. The quality of NavFree’s road data is really good and the software always guided me well to my destinations. You don’t need a live Internet connection as all the map data etc. are included in the actual app. The UK version is about 300 MB, the U.S. close to 2 GB. So you want an iPhone with plenty of memory.

As I said, apparently the OpenStreetMap project has come a really long way already. I was impressed with the level of detail. Recently I also used the U.S. version which worked fine too. It had the tiniest roads in the most remote villages. Points of interest such as museums and airports are included as well.

One essential accessory I recommend to buy is a holder that plugs into the car’s electric outlet and also provides an FM transmitter. That way you can receive the audio commands of the navigation system through your car radio. The iPhone speaker is not good enough on a noisy road, so this makes a huge difference. Also this lets you play your music and podcasts through the car’s audio system. You can find these on eBay for very little money.

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Wanna-Be Clients

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Whatever business you run, sometimes you realize that a potential client is not worth the effort. Sometimes that is because they have nothing to offer. But very often it is also the case that they are just looking for a free ride.

These people or companies are not really clients because you’re never going to get any substantial business from them. I call them “wanna-be clients”. You need to avoid them like the plague. They are vampires, sharks, whatever you want to call them.

Here are some very typical indicators of a wanna-be client:
- He doesn’t know his own product or service well enough.
- He has no significant references.
- His business develops very slowly.
- He wants everything but doesn’t want to pay for anything.
- He constantly tries to bring your price down.
- He wants a lot of free consulting without ever having done any business with you.
- He is not willing to make any prepayments.
- He never pays on time, or even worse, he doesn’t pay at all.
- He says all of your competitors are better and cheaper than you.
- He always complains about everything.

My advice: Stay away from those people. They are bad luck. They cost you so much time and you’re never going to make anything off them. Rejecting a wanna-be client is not a missed opportunity but an avoided nuisance. Leave this junk up to your competitors.

I’ve lived and worked according to this principle for many years now. As a result, I work with people who know what they’re doing and who are willing to pay good money for good service. Remember, life is about quality and not quantity.

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Google ends prohibition

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I’ve just read the news about Google’s ad network now allowing the promotion of alcohol. It just makes sense.

In most countries I’ve been to I can see advertisement for alcohol everywhere in the offline world. Most major sports events are sponsored by beer brands. It seems that Google want their share of the advertising budgets of those companies.

This move also gives retailers a chance to sell good wine and spirits via AdWords. These can be luxury items with high profit margins for vendors. I suspect this results in good bid prices and higher revenues for Google.

Tell me when you see some ads with the Budweiser frogs or the Jäger deer.

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Retiring from Twitter

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I’ve decided to give up on Twitter. I haven’t used it in months now and I don’t seem to miss it. I’ll keep my account but I won’t be using it much. I hate to say it, but Facebook rules the world now.

About three years ago Twitter was the greatest thing. It was one of the first products allowing to share short status messages with other people though a website, a desktop application, the mobile web, mobile applications and even SMS. The great idea behind Twitter was to build not just a website but a service which is accessible from many interfaces through an API.

But Facebook, back then just a website, transformed into a service too. These days Facebook has status updates, a location-based check-in feature, apps for various mobile operating systems and APIs. Most of my friends are on Facebook, hardly anyone uses Twitter. For me, Facebook wins over Twitter.

Twitter as a search engine provides limited value too. Over the years It has become a place for spammers and SEOs (which is pretty much the same thing). There are so many fake accounts even advertising networks for paid tweets. Whatever you search for, the results are full of junk.

Nowadays I mainly use Facebook updates to stay on top of my friends’ lives. The only extra value that Twitter provides at this stage is communication during events like conferences and trade shows. It’s a very powerful way to monitor what’s happening where. We will see when that functionality is being adopted by Facebook.

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Porn Goes HTML5

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In my last post I argued that HTML5 will replace Adobe Flash as the main technique of delivering videos online. YouTube supports HTML5 already.

A current post at ConceivablyTech reports how the porn industry is moving the same way.

There is a lot of money being made in adult entertainment. It’s always worth keeping an eye on these companies because they make choices very carefully, simply because of the amount of revenues. If these guys give HTML5 a go, it must really mean something.

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Who needs Flash anyways?

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You’ve probably heard about Apple’s Steve Jobs’ war against Adobe’s Flash. Jobs thinks or at least proclaims that Flash is an insecure and outdated technology and that it will not find its way on Apple’s mobile devices. Others say that the whole internet relies on Flash these days and that the web would be mostly without Flash.

Well, it’s not! After having surfed the internet with my iPad for several weeks I can honestly say: I don’t need Flash anymore, and soon no-one will need Flash anymore. Most websites that I personally use don’t make use of Flash at all. Google, Facebook and even YouTube, they all work without Flash. The only Flash elements I noticed not working where banner ads. I can live without them.

Facebook has created a slick web interface using JavaScript. And YouTube uses HTML5 to display videos on modern browsers without Flash. I can watch YouTube videos on my Apple devices without any problems.

I’ve played around with HTML5 a little bit lately. It makes a lot of things a lot simpler, including the integration of audio and video content. Finally there is also an “audio” and a “video” tag. No need to implement 10 lines of code to display a video using Flash anymore. HTML5 can store data locally and even run offline.

If you are a Flash developer, let me tell you: It’s time to learn something new unless you want to be a dinosaur in a couple of years. In five years Flash will have become mostly irrelevant as most services will have switched to HTML5.

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Google’s Reaction To Bing

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Google must be living in fear of Bing. Maybe not, but it made me wonder why they rolled out their most radical change in ten years today: They got rid of the black/blue on white screen.

The cool thing is that you can customize the background and use your own pictures. But in order to make that work you have to be logged in and let Google collect all sorts of information about on the side.

I still like the Bing backgrounds better though. What do you think?

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iPhone Apps on the iPad

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In general it’s a nice idea to be able to use the mobile applications we have purchased for our iPhones and iPods on our iPads too. However, the user experience is pretty bad because iPhone apps are designed for a 480×320 screen.

The bottom line is: You are better off using a website instead of an iPhone app. Unless you are using a made-for-iPad app you should use your browser instead of these applications. Running regular iPhone apps on an iPhone is pretty lame.

Here is what you get when you display this on the 1024×768 iPad:

And here is what the corresponding website looks like on the iPad:

Which version would YOU prefer?

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