Ain’t it nice?!  So I shouldn’t be bragging about $100 from Google.  I mean, OfficeSpares may have transacted $5,000 this week, RamPrint.com now pays my bills, and it’s not like Google took me any less work per dollar.  But there’s something about completely residual money, no matter how much time it took to get set up, that’s beautiful.  I came home from work one day this week and there was $100 in the mail, which, for those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, is residual AdWords revenue from ads I’ve allowed Google to place on my websites.  Thank you, Google.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Keeps Banning AdWords Advertisers (seroundtable.com)
• Try To Use An AdWords Guide To Overcome Pay Per Click Woes (ronmedlin.com)

Related articles by Zemanta

• 5 questions you should ask your future MLM sponsor before joining him or her (dreamteamformula.com)
• Why Business Opportunity Seekers Are Needed (wealthyways4you.com)
• The Two-Fold Problem of MLM (tokitover.com)

So people want to know more about what to do with your life if you’re an ENFP, they want some help being organized reading their Book of Mormon, they want to talk about Adobe CS4, and they want to know why pharmaceuticals have such dumb names despite their being billion dollar products.  And a couple plugs for Latin, Safari Pet Shop, and martial arts consulting (I need to remember the ones at the bottom of the list are still statistically significant.)  Ironically, the two winners (ENFP Consulting and the 365 Book of Mormon), are my most personally neglected holdings.

Maybe I should combine the 365 Book of Mormon with ScriptureForum.net somehow… anyone?

I have moved probably 30 times in my life, and I’m not a banker’s son or an army brat.  Most of the time I’ve had to rediscover radio stations in the new area, and realistically that takes me a year.  When I travel, I end up listening to NPR or 80s music, solely because I know I can find it without a hassle.  And when I go on a roadtrip, I hit seek frustratingly every 5 minutes.  What the world needs is a way to plan your radio usage as you plan your trips, to search possible stations relative to your location.

It seems that from the FCC or online you could easily get a database of every radio station in the nation and their signal strength–even every broadcast antenna and its strength.  That, by definition, has to be public information.  I want someone, and I think Google itself should do it, to mashup that database with a map, a la geolocation.  Three axes, two for location and the third, normally the size of the pin, would be the strength of the signal.  That would basically give you a good map of which radio stations are in your area, and which radio stations are strongest in your area.

Granted, signal strength gets boosted and wanes throughout the day, but if that’s pretty even-keel across the market, that should be graphically negligible (they’ll all go up, they’ll all go down, but what you’re looking at is the relativity.)  Some stations can reach hundreds of miles at certain times of the day, but if not dismissed that variable could be approximated with a gradient.  Mountains get in the way, but again, people will understand that.  If we could factor in all that stuff we’d be making coverage maps for Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile.  I’m not proposing a “can you hear 102.7 now?” guy driving up and down the street–that wouldn’t be viable–not even for Google.

What I am proposing is a simple mashup, financed in the usual ways, and with a huge emphasis on usability.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A guide to regional English (guardian.co.uk)
• American English vs British English (andrewmccall.com)
• ‘Overloaded’ With U.S. English as the Language of Diplomacy: Izvestia, Russia (themoderatevoice.com)
• On the Bastardization of Language (voodoomedicineman.blogspot.com)

I would like to start a business as a small-time business-writing editor for technical manuals, marketing pieces, theses, and self-published books.  So proofreading, copyediting, etc.  I would lead with my own niche strengths and competencies: in my case a degree in hardcore mathematically-sound grammar, an auditory brain development conducive to an unmatched fluidity in writing, and a comfort-level with ambiguity that is attracted to the nuance of diction.  I am not qualified to discuss what publishers like to see, whether the tone of your work matches your intended audience, or who eats at what restaurant.  But I have run a magazine that printed 30,000 copies per issue; been to grad school; been a college president; produced ads and marketing pieces for a living my whole life; and obtained a major, minor, and 4 teaching credentials in language teaching.  That lovely pile of resume fodder has gotta’ be worth something!  I would be quite justified in saying, “Nothing should touch the public that doesn’t go through me first.”  So if you’re a successful businessperson who just can’t spell, a programmer who hates writing your FAQs and policing your wiki, or someone who wants proofreading for your memoirs, give me a call at (415) 827-5630.

This has seemed obvious to me for years, and I just can’t find anyone who does it.  A full-service business that puts a 3D rendering of your business onto Google Earth.  That program was all the rage, and is still pretty cool, and allows users to submit 3D renderings of famous buildings, etc.  The obvious part is the amount of traffic that will come inherent to any random dude who puts a crappy version of his house on there–in a few minutes you can put a box on there, call it your house, and everyone who looks at your city from then on will see a giant 3 dimensional box called Colin’s house.  It seems, with so little oversight, one could easily springboard a basic knowledge of CAD, etc. into posting people’s businesses onto Google Earth.  So someone would hire me to come out, measure their business, possibly with nothing more than a tape measure and a GPS in hand, and then render it beautifully in Google Sketchup.  It’s a precise enough skill that there’s an inherent barrier to entry, so they can’t just call the architect who did their house and have him save his CAD file in Google Sketchup format any cheaper than I can do it.  So call me, people, and I’ll launch this business.  One SWOT benefit of mine is that I already have multiple employees with solid CAD experience (now being used to render blueprints, etc. at my shop.)  (415) 827-5630.

Thump!
“Based on the Caldecott Award winning kids’ book, the new qubo series My Friend Rabbit chronicles the wide-eyed adventures of Rabbit, his best friend Mouse, and a group of other colorful characters from across the animal kingdom. As Mouse says, Rabbit means well…but somehow just can’t avoid getting into sticky situations! But if they work together, they can solve each dilemma with ingenuity, creativity and, most of all, friendship.”  This show plays on Saturday mornings on qubo and on ION during the week, and the main character, the loving Rabbit, screams “Thump!” whenever he has a good idea or other cause for interjection.

Anyone like this idea, or have any suggested words?  Fetch!, fiddlesticks!, shazaam!, zargles!, …?

I’m serious about this project, and in order to build my empire I just bought the Adobe CS4 Master Collection.  I’ll disclaim didn’t really just buy it for that purpose, and I got a 94% discount (yes, the full retail version and yes, legally), but still…  it’s a $2500 program, and more powerful than the software driving the special effects of any movie more than 5 years old, enough that I could doctor any photo in 15 minutes at a level indiscernible to voters 10 years ago, and enough that I can keep pumping out websites with the same exact software package with which they design Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft, eBay, Wikipedia, and every other major website, no exceptions amen.