…Everything has changed.

Don’t worry all the same great content is still under the hood, we’ve just tricked it out with a new look and feel.

Interested in what people are saying about a post?  The three most recent comments are now on the home page, right below that post.

Want to find that old favorite article you loved?  Checkout the accordion menus on the left side.  No more gratuitous scrolling.  Or check out our search bar in the upper right.

Need some 140 character or less words of wisdom?  Check out our twitter feed, now easily found next to our RSS button for your tweeting and feeding convenience.

Wonder which John has the razor wit (Lynch) and which has just half of one (Rhea)?  Check out “The Herd” and see who these people are.  While you’re in the area, also click on over to Take it in-house, our one stop shop for resources to help companies take their digital marketing in-house.

Anything you like?  Anything we should have done better? Tell us what you think in the comments.

Yesterday, Arrington’s TechCrunch announced it was posting internal documents from Twitter sent to the online publication via an online hacker. TechCrunch has stated while they do not intend to publish the highly sensitive or “embarrassing” documents, they “are going to publish some of the other information that is relevant to Twitter’s business, particularly product notes and financial projections,” noted Arrington in a blog post yesterday.

What TechCrunch is doing is not just unethical, it’s illegal. Knowingly purchasing* stolen property and using it for profit is criminal and I truly hope they are prosecuted.

Online publications such as TechCrunch need to be held accountable for the information they choose to disseminate. Let’s not confuse this with muckraking or whistle blowing; this is gawking at stolen property to generate ad revenue and incoming links for search purposes.

What’s more bewildering is Arrington’s weak attempt to defend his decision to publish the content. Astonishingly, the primary image used in the post reads “Ethics 101. ” Arrington writes, “I feel bad for Twitter and I wish this had never happened. But it did happen and the documents are out there and they are going to be published somewhere on the Internet.”

Translation: If some scummy publication is going to publish this scoop, might as well be us!

Arrington then attempts to justify the decision by citing instances in which WSJ and Gawker posted a Yahoo Internal Memo and Sarah Palin’s email info respectively. In Arrington’s world, it’s not a crime if two or more people commit it. This argument is so ridiculous that I can’t possibly imagine Michael Arrington actually believes what he wrote. This begs the question: Did Arrington write this post in self defense or merely to further fuel discussion? I would guess the latter.

It’s important to prosecute so as to protect the private, proprietary information of individuals and corporations. In my opinion, it’s no worse than breaking into a home, stealing a bank account statement, and publishing it online under the guise of public interest.

*note: TechCrunch has not confirmed they purchased the material, but it is extremely likely that the hacker sold the material for profit.

I’m in Beijing at the moment and just saw an advertisement recruiting journalists who are native English speakers. CCTV, the English-language 24-hour news channel of China Central Television is actively seeking journalists who are native English speakers. Interested journalists should email their resumes to jobscctvinternational@gmail.com.

I find it odd that in the land of Baidu, the largest national TV network has a gmail account. On the other hand, it was CCTV who first reported that Baidu used fraudulent pay-per-click ads as its search results, for which Baidu apologized (“We put too much effort in competing technically with Google, and in doing so overlooked our advertising system and its management.”)

By the way, the origin of Baidu’s name is pretty cool. It comes from a poem comparing “the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles…’hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood’.”

So, you want to build a game, but all of that coding and leg work sounds too much like… well… work. Isn’t there another option?

The answer is a qualified “Yes.”

You’ve heard of this thing called “open source” which many penny-pinchers translate as free. While this is not the place for a deep discussion on what open source is or is not, one thing that must be remembered is that when you work with open source, you should honor the ideals of the original programmers.

Please either release your revisions with a similar license (whether or not you can release it with a different license is a question for a lawyer) and/or make significant contributions to the community whose work you are building upon.  A corporation/business taking open source code and repackaging it as their own is the antithesis of the open source movement (and possibly illegal). These are people, honor their contribution.

That being said, building on an open source game can keep you from reinventing the wheel. Even so, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

The greatest failing I have found in most open source programs is usability. Most of the time, programmers will program for programmers and will focus on functionality rather than usability.

This is great in that you can find a program like Gimp that has 90% (or more) of the functionality of Photoshop without the thousand dollar price tag. The down-side is that the interface isn’t very intuitive and can be really hard to use (particularly for someone who has no graphics editing experience).

Most of the open source games that I downloaded and played while researching this blog had great graphics and horrible gameplay and/or a poor user experience.

A Note About Me: The following reviews/thoughts will be tainted by three factors (at least).

1. I have a Mac so I only looked at games that would work on Mac (not all that rare considering it’s usually easier to port a Linux-based game to OSX than to Windows).
2. I have a fundamental belief that I, as a player, should not have to work to play a game. I can work while playing a game, but not in order to actually play.
3. I only have seven fingers. (This sounds like a joke but it’s true. I only bring it up because it affects my ability to hit certain key combinations. And, just because you’re wondering, the story involves a bar fight, a ninja, and an ancient prophecy).

N.B. I found all of these games using Wikipedia’s list of open source games.

Super Tux Kart: This Mario Kart style game was by far the best game I downloaded and the one that I often decided needed more “research.” I wasn’t a huge fan of the left-handed controls, but that’s probably more my lack of fingers than a fault of the game. Graphics –  were on the whole -pretty good although many of the tracks are textured with repeated and low-quality patterns.

Nexuiz: This multiplayer first-person shooter had some of the best graphics, but I’ve never felt more “pwned” than by the “easy” bots who riddled my character with bullets and various projectiles during the training level. I don’t tend to be a fps man, but I’ve held my own on Halo and its first sequel (no, not on Legendary). This felt overly hard to me, but I’m not 13 anymore with endless time to learn how to misspell “owned.” The controls were less than responsive and were difficult to use (especially for me).

Project: Starfighter This 2D shoot ‘em up had pretty good graphics, and an in-depth story.  But, the way they forced you to watch slow animations made me hate the game before I even played it. Gameplay was ok, but difficulty in precisely navigating the ship made it less fun than I wanted it to be.

Yo Frankie I’m not even sure what kind of game to call this. It has pretty good 3D graphics and a world you can walk around in, but little to no gameplay and lasts about as long as a blueberry pie in front of my Aunt Bertha. Load times are horrendous and there’s no explanation as to what you’re doing or why. This was probably built as a starting platform so that users could build levels and fill out the content (at least that’s what I’m hoping). They are in the midst of a level design contest.  But, from what I can tell there’s no overarching goal of putting out a “complete” game.

Which brings me back to the “qualified” of qualified Yes. If you want to use open source to give you a jump start on creating your game, great!   But, you must realize that there will still be a lot of work in developing a story, refining gameplay, creating graphics that are appropriate, and making the game something you’re ready to present to the world.

That said, using an established game engine might give you more time to focus on those things rather than starting from scratch and building every part of the game.

A word to the wise, taking an open source game, slapping your logo on it, and calling it done is worse than creating no game at all. In so doing, you’ll anger the programmers who made it, and – depending upon the game’s usability – you may also frustrate your customers/potential customers.  Please don’t do this.

Happy gaming and beware of skin sores!

In my last post, I referenced a magazine ad from an older issue of Business 2.0 (October 24, 2000) describing how interesting it is to time travel BACK in time to get a ‘gut-check’ of the present and maybe, even look into the future.

Perhaps, more interesting than that ad, in my journey back in time, was the large absence of Google on the business radar back then.

Not only was Google absent from the ‘Internet at a Glance’ page, but there was not even a mention of Google in the article about ‘buying ads online’ called ‘Open for Bid-ness, Round Two.’

The article opened citing a recent report that showed many online media buys took place by old school means: “faxes, phone calls, business lunches.”

The article described the abundant need for business/technology that worked for both ad buyers and ad sellers; a solution that addressed the concerns; and concerns about introducing new technology to automate the process.  Or, on the flip-side, it described the problems with having to beef up a sales staff, concerns about excess inventory, and big concerns with conflict of interest between publishers, sellers, buyers, and agencies.

Hindsight is so clearly 20/20.   Nice job, Google!  You saw the opportunity, the challenge.  And, you solved the problem.

So, perhaps a good resolution for me (and you) for next year (wow, is it that time already?) is to read these articles with a bit more sense of foresight – to try to figure out how the current big problems could be the next big solution.

I’m gonna be honest and I’m not gonna pull any punches.

We’re just not sure if this relationship is working anymore.

I mean, I know we’re witty and we’re great with analytics and marketing.  But, you’re just not reading us anymore. Sure, you scan us for a provocative headline here and there.  But, I’m just not sure you’re getting much out of this relationship.

I know I promised you three more parts on Video Games last time, and I’m gonna come through, I swear.  But, we never talk anymore. You rarely comment and we just feel like we’re talking to the wall (who, by the way, does not happen to be a particularly responsive piece of stucco.)

This is no Dear John letter.  The last thing we want is you checking out that hot little technology blog from across the Internet. No, we want to get back to that place where you’re thrilled to read our content. Where you get that twinkle in your eye after you finish a story.

But, how do we get back there? How do we catch your interest and keep it? We don’t want to just slip into a hot new site design (which will be coming to better match our redesigned corporate site) and hope you’ll stick around for the long haul.

We want to catch your eye and your heart with stories, content, and perhaps videos that interest you, inform you, and make your day. We want to talk with you again, really talk, and listen, and try to bring the passion and fire back to your RSS reader.

We’re in the process of a full-rethinking of this blog, and we’d like your–scratch that–we yearn for your input like a meat-eater trapped in Vegan country longs for steak. What do you want to see in this blog? Is there something we used to do really well, but don’t anymore? Is there something we do particularly poorly that you never want to see again? How can we help you better? How can we provide better content?

You, our readers, are our most important resource and we want to make sure that your voice is always heard. So, leave us a comment or send me, John, an email directly at jrhea (at) serengeticom (dot) com.

Let me thank you in advance for joining the conversation and helping us be the best blog we can be. A warm thank you to all of our long-time readers (I’m looking at you Nate’s Mom), and I hope we can serve you even better in the future.

In case you were wondering, here’s our blog strategy so far. Let us know what you think

Can searches on Google for flu-related keywords predict increases and decreases in the number of flu cases?  That is a question the folks over at Google wanted to find out. 

After compiling the search-related data, they worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to compare the data to actual flu outbreaks around the country.  What they found was that there was a very close correlation between the two.

Google decided to use this data to try and help individuals across the country find out the level of flu activity in their area.  They have created a Flu Trends tool through Google.org that displays the data in a chart that can be drilled into – to show individual states. 

One really nice aspect of the tool is that the data is current where as the data that comes from the CDC lags by a couple weeks.  Because of this, you can better anticipate oncoming flu activity before the CDC releases its data and have already begun to take preventive measure to help avoid catching the flu. 

To get a better visual understanding of how the tool works, I pulled a few screenshots from the tool.  The first one shows the overall flu activity throughout the country. 

As you can see, the level of flu activity has been low so far this year.  But, based on previous years, it is likely about to begin to increase.  You can see that in certain states such as Mississippi, Arkansas, and Kentucky, the flu activity has already risen to the moderate level.  

That got me thinking of what it looks like around my area.

Filtering the data for the DC area shows that flu activity has begun to increase, but is still at the low level.

This would seem to indicate that there isn’t much risk of the flu at this point.  But, that it is beginning to have an upwards trend.  So, I should start being a bit more careful in my attempts to avoid contracting the flu this season. 

I’ll probably continue to revisit Google Flu Trends to see if what I see living in the DC area matches with what the tool is telling me.  And, who knows, maybe it can be one way that I can try to avoid the flu this year.      

Yesterday morning, when I was thinking about this blog, it was actually shaping up to be quite a different post. But then, the events of yesterday changed things.

Originally, I was going to write about ways to encourage your customers to participate in your brand. I thought about some brands that I happily participate in. For example, having long been a Seth Godin fan, not just reading all his books and his blog daily, but occasionally posting a quote from him on our blog or recommending a book.  I’ve joined his ‘fan club’ and received his book ‘Tribes’ before it was officially released.

There are many examples in that one brand alone of great ways to encourage participation with your brand in a positive way.

But then, yesterday. Sure, it was election day. And, I was thrilled with the outcome (yay!!!). But then, it was also the day that I had quite possibly my worst ever experience as a customer (well, as a potential customer)…

Being relatively new to the area, I took the lazy, convenient way of finding a place to board my dogs (the Petsmart across the street). I won’t bore you with the exhaustive details but it started with three phone calls to their veterinary department, Banfield, to schedule a shot. (One that they are current on for every other kennel I have talked to since, but that is another story.) They ‘lost’ my information (apparently twice because I had to fill out a form that reiterated what I had told two other employees). 

I was forced (before any vet would see them) to watch their sales video (Sure, I get advertising to a captive audience [stuck in the exam room].  But please, this was more torturous than a time share experience).  I was told that my dogs (who, did I mention are current on all of their vaccines) needed hundreds of dollars of shots that Banfield recommends, ugh. I declined the ‘recommended vaccines.’  But, it got worse (didn’t think it could, but it did). So, I left.

I can’t think of any experience that I’ve EVER had as a customer that was worse. Apparently, Banfield has a system to generate the most revenue based on annoying sales tactics (the video), deceptive tactics (pulling up a list of vaccines that are not necessary), and trying other ways to charge for services that are unneccesary. So, I will participate in their brand. I will tell every pet owner who I talk to about my experience and never, ever even shop in Petsmart, as they must see this practice as not a problem.

My point is that there are two ways that customers who will participate in your brand can participate – and there are not that many customers who will. So, you can choose.  Choose by the way you treat your customers (or mistreat them).

Are you a big fan of AC/DC? 

Well, if you are then, you probably already know that their latest album debuted at #1 in the US despite only being sold in Walmart, Sam’s Club, and on the band’s website.  You probably also know that this album was their first album to ever debut at #1.  But, there is something that even the hardcore AC/DC fans may not know. 

Did you know that you can watch the video for “Rock N Roll Train” in Excel?  So, if you have a love for spreadsheets and AC/DC…then, you’re about to have your day made…or maybe even your week.

Check out the first music video made in an Excel Spreadsheet.

You can also download the Excel spreadsheet from the AC/DC website.

As fears of a deep recession increase, companies are beginning to tighten their belts in anticipation of the worst.  Many tech companies are among those realizing that cuts are necessary to stay afloat and survive the current economic situation.

In the past few weeks it has become increasingly apparent that executives at tech companies, many of whom lived through the bursting of the last tech bubble, are now heeding the advice of their funders and other advisers by shedding costs wherever possible.  Many of these cost cutting measures include layoffs.

Techcrunch recently began tracking the layoffs within the tech community and to date have tracked 3,689 employees being layed off from 22 companies.  To learn more check out the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker.