Ted Murphy Ted Murphy’s Personal Blog

Before you read this post let me say that I am happily in love with Tara. Sorry ladies… I am taken : ) I am simply trying to help out my single buddies.

Last week I finally got my iPad.

I picked it up from the office Sunday night so I could have it with me on my trip to California. From the second I got it I couldn’t put the thing down. I suddenly needed even more email, more tweets… more web content. I was alone on my trip and had a lot to do so I took it along with me when I went to eat. The first place I went the waitress said “ohhh… is that an iPad?” and proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions about it. I didn’t think much about it until it happened again at a different restaurant the next day. I chuckled and thought to myself it must be a California thing.

Then it happened again.

Yesterday Tara and I went to grab a burrito at Tijuana Flats. I brought my iPad along because we wanted to do some planning together (and Evernote for iPad rocks).  The waitress walked up to deliver our food and BAM! “Is that an iPad!?!” — No freaking’ way! I told Tara what had happened earlier in the week. Who knew that the ladies would be so amazed by a little computer. It is the ultimate conversation starter.

Single guys do all sorts of stupid things to meet girls. We all know the puppy trick… but that is so 2009. If you are a bachelor and really want to meet girls I say get yourself an iPad. I am going to have to hide mine so I don’t feel awkward.

I have put my second work of art up for sale (see the first here). I started this piece in January and it has taken me until now to finish it. I worked on it little by little each night (I was home anyway) and I am really happy with how it came out. If you like Where’s Waldo you will like this piece. Hidden in the detail are 100 faces… some happy some sad.

Q: What do you get when you combine an ATV with a Jet Ski? A: The most bad ass thing I have ever seen. Check out the Quad Ski by Gibbs Technologies. This puppy is capable of traveling at 50mph on land and water and makes the transition at the flick of a switch. They aren’t available for purchase yet but I have added this to my wish list (along with a jet pack).

I am throwing a party at my house at the end of the month (woot woot). May is going to bring some bring news for IZEA and it is time to celebrate! I started putting together my pre-party check list and came to the topic of beer. At my last few parties the beer has gotten kind of warm, the keg lines were long and there was too much foam. I went online and did a search for “keg coolers” to keep the beer cold for my guests. I clicked on the first link and landed on a site called Keg Works.

WHAHAHAH?!?! This is an entire site dedicated to serving beer at home and parties. It’s not your ordinary e-commerce site, it is filled with tutorial videos, tips, detailed product descriptions and comparisons. These guys know how to serve beer. I spent a good 30 minutes engrossed in the site before I made the leap and bought a jockey box kit. I had no intention of making that big of a purchase when I started searching, but the content on the site compelled me to do so.

Problem : Warm beer, long lines and too much head.
Solution : Jockey Box
My guests : Happy

Own Your Niche

How did they sell me? Every product listed on the site is beer related, which is one of the reasons that they ranked #1 when I did a search. When I landed on the site they had what I thought I needed (a keg cooler), but other (more expensive) items that offered a better solution. I was able to do research, find easy instructions and feel comfortable purchasing a product that I hadn’t planned on buying.

Massive e-commerce stores like Amazon are great if you know what you want to buy, but they tend to fall short when you are looking for a more specialized product. If you are a web entrepreneur that represents a huge opportunity. Chances are you won’t be able to compete with Amazon on selection, but you can compete with them by focusing on a niche and serving that niche better than they can.

In the social media age everyone thinks what they are doing or saying is newsworthy (guilty as charged). We are shouting our news through our Twitter streams, blogging our hearts out and vying for attention from anyone that can validate the worthiness of our announcement. The problem is that 99.999% of this “news” doesn’t really matter in the long run. It isn’t going to change the world and it is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Will anyone care social media marketing 10,000 years from now? Will it change the way in which all of us live that far into the future? Maybe…. but probably not.

You want news? How about this?

• It’s estimated that by 2050, the number of centenarians worldwide will reach nearly 6 million. And some say that half of the babies born in the U.S. today will live into the 22nd century.
• Today, humans speak to each other in nearly 7,000 languages; it’s estimated that 90% of those languages will be gone by 2050, displaced by English, Spanish, or Chinese.
• In 1971, President Nixon declared “war on cancer.” In the forty years since, the U.S. has spent some $200 billion on research, but we’ve only cut the death rate by 5% (measured since 1950). Cancer still accounts for 13% of deaths worldwide.
• In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000.

The above news is from longnews.org, a site dedicated to sharing the news stories that will still matter fifty, one hundred or ten thousands years from now. In other words it is the news that REALLY matters. I discovered the site from the TED video (no relation) below: