Another Use for WiMax - Spy Service

As WiMax evolves and the chips get smaller and more efficient, someone's going to build a flying apparatus that will be WiMax enabled with a really small video camera mounted on it. Something like this only on a much smaller scale.

What good is that? Imagine this...

Having a very small flying device, equipped with a small survellience type of camera and a WiMax chip. The WiMax ability will allow it to transmit a live video feed, wirelessly to the base unit that could be 20 or 30 miles away. Using the camera, you could effectively control the little device like you were actually sitting in it while flying.

With this little flying "eyes in the sky" you could rent your services to spy on suspected cheating spouses... etc. You're hired by a suspecting spouse. You get details from that spouse as to when the cheating spouse usually leaves. You fly your little spy device to their house and you land on a roof adjacent to the target house and you sit there and wait for the target car to leave the driveway. You then follow the car with your spying device, hovering 100 feet or whatever over the car, following it to wherever they go. Meanwhile, the video feed can be fed through your website live to the spouse that hired you. She (he) could watch in real time where their spouse goes. If the spouse stops, you land somewhere where you can maintain visual on the car or perhaps even be able to see through open windows... etc.

This same thing can be hired out by parents who are suspicious of where their teens are going.

There are going to be sooooo many uses that we've not even thought of yet, for the WiMax technology. It has so much potential. The bandwidth, coupled with the non line of sight range, just opens it up to so many uses.

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Make $150+ a Day Removing Bumper Stickers

How many cars do you see now with the 2004 election bumper stickers on their backside? I see LOTS of them. They're everywhere. I was smart enough to put my Bush/Cheney sticker on my back window. Putting them on the window allows for a much easier removal.

But what about those poor saps that put them on their bumpers? How many do you think will still be there when they trade in their cars? Again... LOTS!

Why not learn how to easily remove bumper stickers then put together a tool box full of the proper equipment and head off into middle class America's neighborhoods.

Talk about cherry picking. Wow. Just walk down the streets and spot cars sporting outdated bumperstickers and ring their door bells. If you look professional, clean cut, maybe even make up an identification badge and hang that from your shirt. Tell the owner that you're in the neighborhood removing bumper stickers and you'll be glad to do theirs for your standard fee of $6 for the first sticker and $2 for each additional. Tell them you know exactly what you're doing and you'll leave the paint underneath as good as the paint around the sticker and they'll never even know they had a sticker on their backside to begin with.

This will work particularly well with anti-Bush.. uh-hum, I mean Kerry supporters. I suspect they will want to remove any and all evidence of such a hideous memory from their backsides as quick as possible.

I would imagine your closing ratio on this would be pretty high. Perhaps even as much as 50% of more. Particularly if you work the middle to upper middle class neighborhoods that won't miss $6 and will want to have their nice cars back in apolitical condition without having to get down on their knees AND risk scratching their cars because they don't know what they're doing. Find just 25 customers a day and you're making $150 a day without breaking much of a sweat.

Of course, you'd want to upsell your services to increase your revenue while you're there. Tell them for an additional $7 you'll spray both license plates with a substance that will make their plates virutally impossible to take a picture of by those photo (Nazi) radar detector devices. Do up a little flyer that explains how the photoblocker spray works and give it to them and tell them to take a look at it while you're taking care of their bumperstickers. Then they can let you know about the license plate spray job when you come back to the door to collect your payment for the bumpersticker removal. If they want it, they'll tell you then. If they don't, no big deal. Move on to the next car. By asking, though, you'll probably increase your daily revenue by 40%-50%.

There's opportunity in almost everything you can see, touch, hear and even taste. But you gotta be thinking in those terms at all times.

I mean ALL THE TIME!!!

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Michael Moore Uncovers Christmas Plot to Stiff the Naughty

Oohh... I just said, "stiff" and "naughty" in one sentence. Gotta love that.

Anyway, if you view life out of the right eye more than the left, you simply must go over to Cox & Forkum. They have the best editorial cartoons on planet earth. Here's their latest:



I absolutely love this. I laughed and laughed and laughed when I saw this cartoon. Good stuff, Maynard.

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CrispAds Update #2

More on my CrispAds testing. It seems to me that this is a good way to swap traffic with other bloggers without spending hardly any cash.

Let me explain. One of my ads currently running (as an advertiser) is for this blog (dansherman.com). This means other bloggers are showing my ad through their CrispAd insertion. When their visitor clicks on my ad, I get charged.

When one of MY visitors clicks on an CrispAd that I'm displaying here on my blog, I make money.

To date I've earned $1.88 in CrispAd revenue but I've only SPENT $1.50 to bring traffic to my site through my CrispAd advertisement. Of course, I've had CrispAds running on my site for a few days more than I've been advertising dansherman.com through CrispAds, so that could a bit skewed, but I'll report how it goes over time.

If this continues, I'm essentially swapping money with other bloggers through CrispAds and exposing my site to more people in the process. What I'm really doing is growing my readership without spending any (or very little) money. Assuming that visitor comes back over and over. :-)

That's a great plan. Traffic for almost nothing. I can dig it.

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"Bye Bye Ink" Launches

My post a few days ago about the demise of the daily newspaper and how a saavy journalist-type person can take advantage of that demise, got me thinking and researching.

So, henceforth, as if I didn't have enough things to do, I will be blogging the demise of the newspaper industry. I'm calling the blog, Bye Bye Ink. The introductory entry has been posted.

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CrispAds Update

I've been using CrispAds now as a publisher (see ad in this post) as well as an advertiser. I've made a whopping .46 cents so far as a publisher (thanks to the two people who have clicked on my crispads.)

The amount I've made really means nothing because it's really only relative to how many people have viewed my ads. That is the statistic that one should look at. My stats so far are actually fairly promising, given the absolutely untargeted nature of the ads being displayed. The ads I'm displaying are getting a .54% clickthrough percentage. That's nothing to write home mom about, but let's run the numbers for instapundit.com. If Glenn Reynolds were to achieve the same percentage I'm getting, instead of .46 cents, he would be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 to $300 a day in revenue from CrispAds.

Those are the numbers as a publisher. As an advertiser, I'm doing better. I've since added more ads for other things I do, but the one ad I've had up for a few days now is actually getting a 1.45% clickthrough ratio. That's freaking incredible considering the product I'm advertising is just about as untargeted to a typical blog audience as you can get. (It's a "general population" type of item.)

This time I'm putting it in the middle of the post instead of at the bottom. Hmmm... how does it look?

BTW: Please look at my ads, but don't click on them just to earn me money. It's not fair to the advertiser. Only click on them if you are truly interested in what's being advertised.

I'd like to close with a suggestion... I'd love to spend more as an advertiser but they need more publishers to DISPLAY MY ADS. Come on bloggers, get with it... I'm begging to give you some money through CrispAds. Sign up and start displaying some Crispys, shall we?

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Calling All Bloggers

This post is meant for my fellow bloggers out there. Please check out a new service I will be launching shortly at blogTshirts.com. It's not fully functional as of yet, but I'd like to get a core group of bloggers signed up and get their own blog's t-shirt up on the site before I go forward with the hard launch.

Also, any feedback you would be willing to provide would be appreciated.

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CrispAds.com - New Blog Advertising Service

I thought I would be the first to market with this concept, but someone else beat me to it. It's called CrispAds.com and they allow you to insert text based ads in your RSS or ATOM blog feeds. (I've inserted an ad into the bottom of this post.)

I think this is a marvelous idea. (Of course I think so since I'm working on the same type of service at my domain blogtextads.com.)

CrispAds is a bit sparse from a feature standpoint. But that's to be expected since they just launched. We'll give them some time to implement better reporting features as well as better instructions. There's absolutely no "help" links in either the advertiser or publisher login screens. Plus, I ran into some troubles trying to create a new ad in the advertiser's login screen while using Firefox. But the folks at CrispAds were quick to respond and they might even have that glitch fixed as I write this. I haven't tried it with Firefox since I reported the problem.

Part of the reason I don't allow full text of my blog entries to be seen via blog readers is because the advertising isn't carried over. So with the advent of ads that can be seen through RSS feeds, this will be good for all parties. It will allow readers to read entire posts via the convenience of blog feed readers like bloglines.com and other such services while at the same time allow bloggers the chance to be paid for all their reader traffic, not just the traffic to their hosted blog presence.

I'm really surprised Google hasn't already entered this space in a big way especially since they own blogger.com. Curious.

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Goats and Sheep

I was just listening to the radio in my garage while packaging up Santas and I heard the talker discussing the difference between sheep and goats in the experiments they were conducting on some human subjects regarding skepticism...etc. She said they called the people who were willing to be guided basically anywhere, sheep. Whereas the people who continually questioned things and chose their own way were called goats. Presumably because this mirrors the personalities of the actual animals the groups were named after.

I was thinking how this relates to the entrepreneurial world. Entrepreneurs are goats and all other people are sheep... that is when it comes creating value in exchange for compensation. I don't mean this in a derogatory fashion. The world needs sheep and the world needs goats. I'm just labelling the two.

Us entrepreneurs are always in search of something that will change our world and we're willing to move (or climb) mountains in order to implement/start/create/initiate it. Whereas sheep are very happy looking down and following the herder's directions, content to keep with the herd for fear of being devoured by any stray lion. In essense, they are motivated by the fear of what might happen to them if they strike out on their own. Whereas goats are motivated by what they might find on the other side of the barn. If the lions eat me, all well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I know this is a loose theory, but I think you can follow my line of thinking. Bottom line, be a goat in life, not a sheep, if you want to see something other than the rear end of the person in front of you in life.

Now go make a net profit.

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Profit from Late Fee Frustration

I just recently signed up for Hollywood Video's MVP program. For a set fee per month, you get to check out 3 movies at one time without paying for them. Only if they're eligible for the MVP program, of course. Which eliminates many of the latest ones. (Our store is the only store in the nation that gets it cheaper than everyone else because the national headquarters for Hollywood Video is here in Wilsonville, right down the road from where I live. I guess they want to be neighborly. Whatever.)

Anyway, it's a great deal if you have youngins who like to watch the same thing over and over and over. However, it's ONLY a good deal if you remember to bring the stinking things back in time. If not, you pay for the rental of the video for the next 5 days, whether you like it or not.

I came across my latest idea because of the HEFTY late fees I incurred recently. I was so pissed about them, I was determined to think my way into a business by solving this consumer problem. Lesson... whenever there is something in life we find unpleasant, there's ALWAYS a potential business there somewhere.

So I was really motivated to think of a way to make money and at the same time reduce Hollywood Video's cash cow, called "late fees."

Here's something. As with all my ideas, I'm sure it will evolve and morph the more I think about it. Provide a service to people in your town for picking up their movies the night they are due and bringing them back to the video store.

Just do a nightly run along a pre-planned route circuit in your town. Sign people up for your service by putting stickys on their car while it's parked outside the local video stores. (Be careful with this. This is a guerilla tactic as you will be told not to do it after a while.) But you could also go door-to-door in middle class neighborhoods, putting stickys on their doors, as well. Keep your customers geographically grouped so as to be able to do your nightly run quickly.

After someone signs up, all they have to do is put their video(s) out on the doorstep in a mutually agreed upon place on the night their movie is due and you can pick it up and return it for them while on your nightly run. Each time you do this for them, they are charged a flat rate of $3, or something like that. Regardless how many videos they are turning in. Your late fee is typically $3.75 per video. If you have 3 videos, that adds up. Not to mention the convenience of not having to get into your car and drive down to the video store in the middle of the night. Heck, you'd have people using your service not only to save on late fees at the last minute, the night their videos are due, but also people who just want the convenience of not having to worry about returning them physically.

There's a lot of details and numbers that would have to be crunched on this idea. But that's what it is at this point, just an idea.

Some thoughts... you could have them keep the light on their porch if they have a video out so you can do a quick drive by without having to get out at every house. That would be crucial from a time standpoint. You'd also want to make sure they put their videos out by a certain time so you can be sure to catch it. There's even an online service that will allow you to place a text box on your website where people can type a message and send it to your cell phone via SMS messaging. You could save a lot of time by requiring that your customers send you a text message by going to your site (make it REALLY simple for them to accomplish) and typing their address or some other prearranged code so you can know that they are ready for a pickup.

I could go on and on with little improvements on this. But I'm sure my smart audience gets the drift on the idea. Solve people's problems and you're in business.

Oh, and if Hollywood or Blockbuster were smart, they'd JOIN you and support your business by advertising your services in their stores. But, of course, that's not what big businesses do. They are in business to HIDE stuff like that from you, counting on your laziness and ignorance to continue to fill their coffers with sideline profit centers like late fees. It's just so short-sighted.

But when big businesses are short-sighted, opportunities are waiting to be discovered by those of us that want to solve customers problems and not create them. :-)

Now go make a net profit. (That's my new sign off... kinda like Dr. Laura's, "Now go do the right thing.")

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Cool Biz Tool

Just came across this over at Dane's blog. It's a business card cutter. No more hanging chad looking roughness on your home printed card edges. You can use the business card template built into any word processing software (or even design software like Publisher) to design your card and print your cards on to any paper you want. Then use this new business card cutter to make clean edges. I haven't tried it, but I would imagine it works fine. Pretty cool.

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The Energizer Vampire Strikes Again

The liberal movement in this country is like the energizer vampire. They just keep sucking and sucking and sucking and sucking the lifeblood out of our culture.

They won't stop until we're all moving around like zombies with a blank stare in our eyes and absolutely no belief in our hearts.

I'm so angry, I could spit. I'll let you be the judge.

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Capitalizing on the Demise of an Entire Industry

I've been talking about this with my friends and family for a little over two years now.

Daily local newspapers will be dead within our lifetime (if you're in your mid 40's or younger.)

More and more news is coming out of the newspaper industry that is VERY bad for them.

I have my own testimony. I used to subscribe to the Oregonian. The only option we really have here in Portland. It's an ultra liberal rag so I stopped subscribing. (I had this ongoing fear that I would spontaneously puke while reading it.)

Evidently my cancellation didn't mean much to the Oregonian as I continued to get the paper. I won't get into the full story here because it's long, painful and full of expletives on my behalf. Suffice to say, we FINALLY stopped receiving the damned thing, but only after months of multiple phone calls and much yelling on the phone. They were bound and determined to keep me on their circulation, regardless whether I actually read it or not or whether I actually paid for it or not. This is a good example of just how desparate they are to keep their perceived circulation numbers high. I say perceived because I'd be willing to bet you that a VAST percentage of the papers that go out now-a-days end up being used as bird cage liner without one eye being laid upon the text.

Here's a test. Call and cancel your newspaper subscription. I'd lay 10 to 1 odds that they will offer you a reduced rate and if you continue to insist, they will finally offer it for free. Try it. You can always subscribe again later. (God knows why. Perhaps you have a bird.)

Eventually, advertisers are going to start getting a good whiff of the smelling tablets and awake from their love affair with the local paper. This will drive them in droves to the internet, radio and TV. Of course, that will be the end of the paper as we know it. In order for a paper to be viable and have compelling articles, they need to have a certain number of subscribers. If they fall below that number, they are history. It doesn't matter if there are still X number of readers. If they don't have critical mass, they are dead. That's the problem.

So, it's really just a matter of time. As the internet generation gets older and more used to reading their news online, in real time, newspapers will fall like flies. Think about it. We can get our top local news on our TV. As for all the other news, we're not going to want to read about it 12 to 24 hours later. We want to read about it NOW. As it happens.

Here's the entrepreneurial angle... identify this future trend and think of a way to position yourself to capitalize on it. Advertisers are still going to want to reach local audiences. That demand is not going to go away just because print newspapers are going away.

Here's my take on the future of news delivery. We're going to have a few people in each community that step forward (perhaps good names who were also top reporters left over from the newspaper implosion) and they will deliver news, in real time, via their own blogs. They will specialize in a very local angle. For a city the size of my own (Wilsonville, suburb of Portland, pop. about 14,000) we could have just one or two people who are the focal point of all news that is going on in Wilsonville. If a bank is robbed, a local person knows to email or call Mr. Wilsonville Blogger. He in turn gets it posted on the blog within minutes of the robbery. Locals who have this blogger in their bloglines list (or whatever RSS reader they are using) will see an updated posting. They read it and that bit of news is done and over with. In this particular case, the news could get out so quickly that the robber could be spotted by someone who just read the blog and looked out their window seeing a suspicious guy matching the description of the robber. He calls the police and viola!, the guy is caught. All because of NEAR REAL TIME reporting via a local newsblogger.

That same scenario could never have happened under the 24 hour wait that newspapers are hopelessly locked into.

You wanna start a blog? Start a local news blog. You'll be way ahead of the pack and you'll be in place and in perfect position to take over when your local newspaper exits the news delivery space. I suspect there will be a lot of little 5 person newsrooms with the blog as their method of delivery. They will be able to specialize in your community and have great, up to the minute news as well as good commentary... etc. It's not only doable, it's inevitable. Mark my words.

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Replaying Your Life

I just got done reading a really interesting book called, "Replay." It's the story of a man who dies at the age of 42 (or something like that) and right after his death, he awakes again in his dorm room in college. Essentially, he relives his life over and over and over, each time dying at the very same time and date when he's 42 years old. He even tries to prevent it one year by checking himself into the hospital the day before and he STILL croaks.

It's interesting the things he chooses to do each time. Incidently, during all his lives he's conscious of the fact that he's reliving it over and over. So, mentally, he's lived over 100 years by the time the story ends.

It got me to thinking about what I would do if that happened to me. Can you imagine living your adult life again, not to mention 5 times. It would be cool knowing all the things you know about history. Just the financial markets alone. Wow!!!! He does do a lot with what he knows about what will happen on the stock market... etc.

Anyway, check it out. It's a great book.

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