Back in February I talked about an online course I was taking on “unprocrastination” and one of the exercises was to create a new habit and stick with it for a month. The habit I chose was to come up with a potential blog topic for The Hot Iron every day for the month. If I thought of more than one in a day, then I would log them as well, but as an extra, not for the next day.

Now that we are at the end of March, you may be able to guess how well the course was for me overall! But I did stick to the habit, and as shown in the accompanying photo, I did log the topics. I was tweeting them with the hashtag #28d28bt but I found I was not able to find them all when I did a search on the hashtag – not sure why, so I curtailed the tweeting after a few days.

A List Of Ideas

At the end of February I had a list of 35 potential blog topics, or ideas. And they are just that – ideas. It will not be until I write a topic around it that it becomes a tangible blog post.

This is why I have chosen to share them here. Even if someone else takes the idea, they wouldn’t write the same thing as me. And I have to be honest, not everything I have written about has been a purely unique idea, though they have expressed my point of view which is certainly unique.

Here’s the list by day, and concluded with 7 extra ones.

1. What is a gTLD and Why Should You Care?
2. GiveBackBox Makes Donating Excess Easy
3. Fever is my #RSS Reader of Choice and Here’s Why
4. Nothing is Forever
5. CentUp Offers Unique Profit Model For Bloggers
6. OwnCloud Gives You Control Of Your Data With Style
7. Rivet News Radio Offers Local News By Mobile App
8. Odiogo Still Reads The Hot Iron To You
9. My File Backup Strategy
10. The Project I Didn’t Politically Work On
11. Being Removed From It All And Thrown Back In
12. We Spend Most Of Our Time Around Our Work
13. How The Web Once Gave Me An Attitude Adjustment At Atlanta Airport
14. Few Apps Leverage Promotional Opportunity With App Store Update Description
15. High Demand For Winter Indoor Kids Play In Chicago
16. Phone.com Is My Home Phone Service And More
17. Why Don’t You Carry Business Cards?
18. Everything I Learned About Management and Leadership I Learned Working In College Radio
19. Hailo Taxi App Gets Me Around With No Worries
20. 2 Things To Consider Before You Start Blogging
21. Do We Need Better Stock Photos Of People Or None At All?
22. Discover Offers App-Based Card Freeze For Better Security
23. My College Internship Experience And Why I Don’t Care I Didn’t Get Paid For It
24. Results of 28 Days 28 Blog Posts #28d28bt
25. When The App Doesn’t Do It All For Complete Customer Experience
26. Don’t Get Used To A Desk
27. Procrastination And The Course On It I Am Catching Up On
28. Have You Googled Yourself Lately?

Over the course of the month, I came up with 7 additional ideas.

1. Cardmunch App Working Again And I Am Cautious On Its Use
2. Dryv Dry Cleaning And Laundry Delivery Service Is What I’ve Needed
3. When Is The Last Time You Exported Your Connections From LinkedIn?
4. 5 Blog Post Topics from 2007 That Still Matter Today
5. 3 Things Microsoft’s New CEO Must Do To Win With Mobile
6. My Next Daily Activity Of One Task A Day for March #31d31t
7. Build Web Content Management Systems Since 1997

Off To The Races – Both Sprints and Marathons

Looking back at the list, I feel I have a good set of ideas to work from not only in the near term but over the course of the year. Some of the ideas I have already used, and regular readers of The Hot Iron may recognize them. This is not to say this is all I will write about, but if I am every short for inspiration or simply want to use something good I already thought of, I will refer to this blog post. I like it so much I may do it next February as well, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

I welcome not only your thoughts and comments on this endeavor, but on the ideas I came up with and if you are interested in me writing on something. Don’t be shy – really.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Though today is March 21, 2014, I am finally publishing what I learned for the previous week. Just as I was about to pass on the list from last week and focus on this week to be current, I get the latest newsletter from CentUp, which featured several items from the last few What I Learned posts! Needless to say this piqued my interest in finally typing up last week’s list. And the ego stroke wasn’t bad either.

• The Pringles brand of potato “crisps” is now owned by cereal giant Kellogg’s and has been since 2012. Is it only a matter of time when the Pringles breakfast cereal comes out?
• I pre-ordered a domain name with one of the new global top-level domain names (gTLD). I won’t say what it is as I don’t want to jinx it in case others registered it. But if I get it, it will be put to major use.
• I don’t know who Victoria Carpenter is, but I have no idea why or how she is liking my Facebook status as being “so cute” over and over and over again, especially as I quit Facebook over a year ago. Yes, I realize it is spam, and it’s clearly not working.
• A new app was announced to pay for parking meters in Chicago. Where it will offer the convenience of adding more time to your parking from the app remotely (aka not running back to the car), I can only imagine the problems that will come from this. Currently in Chicago you buy a paper receipt to put on your dashboard for your time to park. Even with this “foolproof” system, many parking tickets are issued to people who have paid for parking – I know some personally. The only way to fight it is to go to court. I have no idea what the app or software that the meter checkers will use, but I can only see more headaches for parkers.
• Most people do not know how to take a screenshot or screen capture from an iPhone, let alone a PC or a Mac.
• Despite what Dr. Seuss wrote in his first children’s book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” Bliss Street does not intersect with Mulberry. I know, as I used to live near THE Mulberry Street in Springfield, MA.
• The domain name digital.com is up for auction. It’s last major use was as the primary domain name for Digital Electronics Corporation, or DEC for short, the former mini-computer and PC manufacturer based in Maynard, MA. As someone whose first mini-computer was a DEC PDP/11 and grew up knowing many people who worked for DEC, it is sad to see it for sale. At an opening bid of US$100,000 I am not sad enough to buy it myself.
• I have been asked to be part of a career-mentoring group for a trade organization in Chicago. The group is one of several “pillars” the group is building to work with young people starting in their careers. I am excited to get started with it and will surely report more on it soon.
• The week before I mentioned my good friend Andrew Cornelius who is a talented actor, comedian and improviser. He has created a new demo reel of his work, and present it for your viewing pleasure. I would have included it in the last installment, but it was trumped by the Name.com video featuring me. There’s that ego again.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Blogging • Business • Domain Names • Social Media • Technology • Thrive • What I Learned • (2) Comments • Permalink

Editor's Note: CentUp is no longer in operation, and this post was edited to remove links to their Web site and embedded elements that are no longer functioning, as well as links to a similarly no-longer-active Vine video.

How much would you pay to read this blog post?

Ok, I hope you are still with me and not rolling on the floor in laughter. In all seriousness, I am asking the question – how much would you pay to read this blog post, or any blog post for that matter, here on The Hot Iron? No, I am not going to put up a paywall and start charging people to read here as I don’t believe in such a thing.

As it takes time to come up with ideas, write them, edit them, come up with some original visual to go with them and post them to the site, that time is some value to me. That being said, I do not do this for direct financial gain. Where I do enjoy doing so, getting a little something in return can’t hurt. And for good measure, how about help a charity in the process?

What I just described in the last few sentences is the idea behind CentUp, a service which has been around for almost a year, which provides a button – similar to a social sharing button – where you can contribute a few cents to a few dollars to a content writer directly on their site. If you scroll to the bottom of this post at The Hot Iron you will see a CentUp button below the row of social media sharing buttons, so I can speak to CentUp with first-hand experience.

Click a Button, Help a Writer and a Charity

The end-user experience of CentUp is very straightforward, and its elegance comes from its simplicity, as you can see in the embedded Vine video above. If you cannot see the video, you can view the video of me pressing the CentUp button at Vine. You simply click on the CentUp button on a Web page or blog post that you would like to give to (or pay to or contribute to or whatever term you deem appropriate). Half of whatever amount you choose will go to the publisher, and half goes to a charity selected by the publisher from a list of charities affiliated with CentUp.

To use the button, you need an account with CentUp. If you click on the button and don’t have an account, you can sign-up on their Web site, put funds in your account, then log in and contribute. As I have the button on my site, I have an account with CentUp, and whenever I see the button and providing I liked what I read, I will give at least 10 cents to a publisher. If you’re thinking, “not another account to setup,” read on as you’ll learn more of the value a CentUp account delivers.

All clicks of the CentUp button on The Hot Iron are shared between myself and the Women With Drive Foundation, a great organization who provides women with transportation means to get to their jobs. I truly did not do them justice with that boiled-down description and I encourage you to visit their Web site for more information. There are a number of charities that content publishers can choose from and this list has expanded over the last year I have used CentUp.

The Point Is Not Early Retirement

By so far earning under a dollar per blog post, I am not considering CentUp part of my overall retirement strategy. But that is not why I use CentUp. First and foremost, I believe there is plenty of content out there on the Internet that is of value. This includes blogs, news sites, and Web sites in general. That being said, I or anyone else is not going to go through the process of registering for every site out there and paying some amount of money for content of what quality I really don’t know until I explore and read it.

In other words, if I read something and find value in it, I can offer payment for it, a true value-for-value model.

CentUp offers a one-stop payment method for Web content. I don’t need all of those accounts and logins and passwords, and sharing my credit card information all over the place. I also don’t need large sums of money to register for varying content. If I like something, I can give them a little bit of money. If it is good content, many people will do that. Right next to the button is how much money has been given so far, which is a transparent way to see how potentially popular and relevant the content may be. CentUp is a simple model that makes sense, and one I have embraced.

There is no fee to join, and adding the button to your blog or site is technically straightforward. You can tag an entire site or individual pages or posts on a blog. Again I am not doing CentUp the best justice they deserve, and I encourage you to explore the CentUp site for more information and if you have any questions on it conceptually or technically.

Unique Community of Content

There are several dozen sites now using CentUp and that number grows whenever I check back on the site. CentUp has taken advantage of this collection of content and has built a community of writers and publishers, including a newsletter of curated content on a regular basis. I have now started to subscribe to many of their RSS feeds of these blogs and sites to read their content directly. They recently added a reader app to their site within your account, but I still prefer my RSS reader for aggregating all of my content.

Do you use CentUp? Have I piqued your interest in it? Would you avoid it like I avoid Facebook? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and feel free to ask any questions you may have about CentUp as I may be able to help, or someone from CentUp may even respond themselves as they are readers as well.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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I literally took a page out of my blogging notebook – a blank one – to log what I learned and observed for this the last week of February.

• It almost seemed like for a while I was replacing CFL bulbs almost monthly, like they just weren’t lasting anywhere as long as they were supposed to. As this was a hypothesis, I decided to record the date on them that I I actually changed them, and this past week the first of them went out. Maybe I need to write install dates on a lot more things I own?
• This past week Jim Lange, known best as the host of The Dating Game, left this mortal coil at the age of 81. Interestingly, most of his peers – game show hosts from the 70’s and 80’s – are still alive and kicking, including Wink Martindale.
• Three words – beer pretzel caramels! This past week my lovely wife and I stopped by The Nosh at Block 37 and she saw someone she knows from our old church who now has her own confections business, selling at such events and online. The only problem with these caramels is they seem to disappear pretty quickly.
• Amtrak announced this past week that it was starting a residency for writers to write aboard train trips. I think this is genius, as I personally have written many of the posts here at The Hot Iron aboard the Hiawatha train between Chicago and Milwaukee, and I once took the Metroliner from Boston to Washington, DC and got a ton of reading and work done. The seats they will be offering probably would have gone otherwise unused, so what is the added cost, compared to the benefit, for having someone aboard ideally plugging the fact they are on an Amtrak train. This would also extend nicely to my friend Arie’s HugTrain as well as what my friend Leyla did when she took the train west for vacation.

• The first ingredient listed for Goldfish crackers is smiles. Can your product make a claim like that?
• I find myself making product buying decisions based on whether they have Box Tops for Education on them or not.
• After several months of driving by it while it was under construction, I was eager to see the inside of The Godfrey Hotel here in Chicago and we visited it last weekend. It is a beautiful space with an amazing indoor/outdoor patio with an amazing skyline view, a great restaurant with cocktails that are made in the kitchen, and after a great meal we asked for a tour of the hotel room and got to see some of the very stylish rooms. I am looking forward to a staycation getaway there some weekend.
• Puffs Plus Lotion facial tissues are just right. Puffs Plus Lotion with the scent of Vicks is way too much.
• Words that came up in conversations pronouncedly this past week include eminence and polymath – something I am hoping to achieve high levels of both.
• Seeing is believing, and I learned that when I saw first-hand the craft of Gentry Design Company which makes handcrafted gemstone jewelry. It is run by a colleague’s wife, and when he told me about it I was like, “ok, she makes jewelry” until I saw some of the pieces she has made and I was extremely impressed Of course what I wrote here doesn’t do the same justice as seeing the photos for yourself on her site.
• GiveForward is a Web service based here in Chicago where you can contribute to the medical expenses of people. It can be compared to a KickStarter or IndieGoGo but for quality of life. I met someone who works there and as I don’t know anyone who has a fundraiser on the site I did a quick search on “liver” and saw many real stories of people’s medical needs. If you are looking to make a donation to truly affect someone’s life, I recommend visiting this site.
• I have been trying to write at least 2 blog posts a week – my “what I learned” posts as this one is plus one other. This past week I did write one on the Web service CentUp which offers a unique revenue model for bloggers, writers and publishers while also helping charities. The only problem was the first draft was dry as a bone, and would not do justice to this amazing Chicago-based start-up. Especially one which would make a great video as they did for their IndieGoGo launch last year. So I will work on the blog post for next week and in the meantime you can watch it embedded below or watch the CentUp video on Vimeo.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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So I got me some of those MOO MiniCards.

When it comes to business cards, some people always carry and offer them, others feel it’s 2014 so we should just digitally connect only, and probably the majority of the people out there are indifferent to them. As someone who is of the first group, I try to always carry cards with me, as you never know who you will connect with and where.

As the name goes, they are business cards, and those cards are all, well, business. It has my business title, phone, email, etc. It doesn’t list my blog, my Twitter account, or have other identifying information about me, personally. So if I meet someone personally and want them to reach me personally – or the converse for business – shouldn’t I have separate cards for that?

That was my thinking when I ordered MOO MiniCards. Now these slim cards – which measure 2.75” x 1.10” (or 70mm x 28mm) – are nothing new, and I began getting them from people as far back as 2008, and maybe even earlier. I felt these cards would be perfect to share the basic info I want to offer to someone, as well as the best identifying information about me, my face. Someone doesn’t need my home address when they first meet me, and if they want to send me a Christmas card, they have my email address to ask me for it. I also thought it would be a good idea to get MOO cards before I turned 50.

In the past I used to carry personal business cards, even before the days of free business cards from the likes of VistaPrint came along. But that was also in the 1990’s, when texting someone your contact information was not an option, for most likely the person you met didn’t have a cellular phone.

For full-color, good stock cards MOO MiniCards are affordable. You can get 200 cards, full-color and double-sided printing, for under US$40. I also chose the optional rounded corners. You design and order the cards through their easy-to-use Web site at moo.com. Of course you can find an online coupon code or get on their email list for specials. They sent me a coupon code with my order – 2RB2CK – for 15% off. I don’t get anything if you order, that is unless you give me one of your cards.

So did I convince you to also get MOO MiniCards? Do you already have them? Do you think they are not worth it, or are you indifferent? I welcome your thoughts in the comments to this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Business • Social Media • Thrive • (2) Comments • Permalink