Your Citizens for May 2007 are…

Glen: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/N376
Julie: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/genglo
Margaret: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Margaret_Schaut
GiddyGabby: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/giddygabby

Feel free to ask them for help, steal inspiration from their lenses, get ideas for promoting your own, and more. They’re true experts. And, perhaps even more importantly, they’re gracious, helpful, and proud of the spirit of content and recommendation that is Squidoo.

Staring at the “Add A Tag” - Mind Gone Blank?

These sites are great for finding other popular tags for your lens, if you draw a blank.

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

New!!!!

A travel module and a Flickr Plexo, neat more stuff to play with.

Happy New Year!

From all of the Squidizens, to everyone who uses Squidoo - we wish you all the best in 2007!  May peace, joy and properity bless you!

Good News for Verizon Customers

According to the New York Times. Verizon is planning to “allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and other Internet sites that users visit and display on their mobile phones.”

This can only be good for the consumer. All broadcast television is paid for with the occasional 30 second commercial which we can TiVo past. The entire internet is brought to you by Google for the cost of small text-link ads which are easily ignored. (Unless, of course, they look interesting.)

Banner ads on your cell phone will surely lower the cost of access.

Otherwise: “Bored, offended or inconvenienced consumers could quickly blame Verizon and leave for another service, hurting the wireless carrier’s core business and reducing its monthly subscription fees.”

Thanks Seth for the heads up!

Update: I had an even better idea than banner ads: Ringtone ads! Let users use commercials as their ringtone for a discounted rate. It couldn’t be any more annoying than Mosquito Ringtones.

Harry Potter Secret Revealed!

Pssst! Want to be one of the first to learn about J. K. Rowling’s newest Harry Potter book? Check out this lens!
Jo Rowling has announced the title for the final Harry Potter book at her site. As usual you have to solve a puzzle to see the announcement. Mugglenet has instructions on how to get to the hangman game which reveals the title.

Read on to see links to information and speculation about the book. (Over the holidays I’ll find the best information on the web.)

Post your theories about the title below. Do you think Harry will die? Answer my survey at Hogwart’s Giant Squid.

Harry Potter
JK Rowling

http://www.squidoo.com/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows/

Why Turn On “Allow Contact” In Preferences ?

Because you might get an e-mail that will improve your lens ,cheer you up or just make you smile, below is an example of an e-mail that did all three for me today.

“Here’s one you might not have heard yet: Cows don’t have upper front teeth. I’ve verfied this several times by letting our cows try to eat my hand. It still hurts when they bite you though.

Those magnets are a lot nicer looking on your lens than they are in real life. There is nothing in the world like shoving one down an irate cow!

BTW, I love the lens!”

Cow Decor Lens

“An open mind is playful and willing to be silly because the best ideas often hide deep within our minds away from our watchful, judgmental selves.”  Author Unknown

The Wii should be purple

I admit I have purple on the brain. I’m reading Purple Cow, by everybody’s favorite squid. But that’s not all I have on my mind. My family occupied a space in line all day Saturday, and got our Nintendo Wii at midnight. We’ve been playing ever since. (In shifts!)

The Wii is the purplest cow the gaming industry has brought us since– since– whatever came after pong. This year, gaming changed forever. After decades of the industry trying to come up something close to virtual reality, Nintendo has finally crossed the line. By comparison, the PS3 and the Xbox, with all of their fancy graphics and shoot-em-up capabilities, are just boring.

The Wii doesn’t have a two-handed game controller. Instead, it has a remote that you hold in one hand. And when you want to swing a sword, a bat or a racquet, you don’t push joysticks and tap buttons. You swing.

Last night, I stood in my living room, held the controller in my right hand, and became convinced it was a (pleasantly lightweight) tennis racquet. I served, got some great backhand shots, and missed some. I also bowled a pretty good game, when my remote became a bowling ball. And I have to say that the weight was a lot better on my aging elbow than my old real-life bowling ball would be.

I tried the “Fitness” part of the Wii Sports game. It took me through a drill including batting baseballs, hitting tennis balls, and bowling, and I felt my heart-rate go up. But I admit I didn’t really break a sweat until I tried the boxing. Gruesome, yes, but it was also a great workout. I just kept telling myself that the “person” I was hitting was just a com. Just a com. (Oh. That’s short for “computer player,” for the non-geeks.)

I’m overcome with the urge to contact the parents of all my kids’ friends–the ones who don’t mind too much that their kids are gamers, but also really don’t get it–and make them play Wii Sports Tennis, just so they can get a clue.

Nintendo’s hype about the Wii (called the “Revolution” during its development) was about how it would be different. It wouldn’t be the same old games with smoother graphics and faster load-times. This console would be something new. It would revolutionize the gaming industry.

And they believed their own story. They made it come true.

I think that if Seth is right (and he is) the Wii is going to be very, very successful.

Angela Harms

Permission Marketing makes the world a better place.

NSFW - Not suitable for stuffy work environments. But it’s okay for normal adult people.

I was looking at a news site a few weeks ago, and an ad got my attention. It showed a pair of fuzzy kiwi fruit, and asked “What if you could shave anywhere?” Even better, the kiwi jiggled when you moused over the ad.

I couldn’t figure out why I’d want to shave at the grocery store, but I couldn’t resist clicking those kiwi. They took me to shaveeverywhere.com (NSFW).

[Edited November 5 to correct the url. Oops!]

I must have spent 10 minutes at that website. Citizen Squid Jeffry reminded me about it today, and I went back and spent even more time! It’s a lot of fun—I’m grinning as I type this.

What an absolutely brilliant way to get permission, and make a pitch!

Don’t forget to watch the music video.

—Angela Harms