Author: Shawn K. Quinn

An e-mail too good not to show off

I recently responded to an e-mail from an advertising bureau, asking if I was offering advertising opportunities on this blog right here.

I sent this reply, suspecting this might well be thinly veiled spam, but offering the benefit of the doubt that it might actually have been hand-typed and hand-sent.

This may or may not apply to the direction this blog will take in the future; it certainly applies to the way I’ve been posting to this blog over most of the past year. Of course, by the time some of you see this in the archives, it’ll no longer be at shawnkquinn.com but at some other domain name I’m still deciding on.

The original text portion of my reply follows. I simply felt it too good not to post and share. Comments are welcome, as always.

Most of the brutal honesty in my blog comes from the fact I do not have to worry about annoying sponsors. Were I to consider monetizing this blog, it would be done in other ways such as merchandise sales.

I also have serious doubts that advertising will “enhance [my] online users experience” as you put it. The people I have talked to seem to indicate they are more annoyed than attracted by ads.

Thanks for your interest, but I simply don’t see selling ads on shawnkquinn.com as viable.

The only constant is change

And now, a few brief words about other efforts of mine, which I have not yet brought to the forefront here. I try not to do this often; in fact, I think this is the first time I’ve made a post like this here, ever.

For those of you who do not follow what I do all around cyberspace, I started a local (Houston, TX, area) events blog about two months ago now called Quinn’s Big City (referred to as QBC for brevity). I’m going to explain a bit about QBC, how it relates to what I do on this blog, and what both mean for the future. And yes, as much as I talk about QBC in this post, this post itself belongs here, not on QBC, for the simple reason of preserving the latter’s intended role.

I was hesitant to post about QBC here at least prior to the official wide launch, scheduled carefully after the soft-launch so as to give me time to “get in my groove” and realize the full potential of what I had started. I meant to make this post here at least a week ago, partly to explain why my posting volume here fell off, partly to introduce the few people who haven’t already heard about QBC somewhere.

And I know what you are probably asking already. Yes, QBC is a large part of the reason I don’t post here as often. I’m not going to do what one other local blogger did and flat out shut down this blog. However, you will notice the content and character of my posts here change. Yes, the day finally came that even I got tired of my posting style. I hope I’m not pushing the rest of you away by saying it’s time for change; I do treasure the fact I have the readership I have given that the quantity of my postings has slowed down as much as it has.

Make no mistake about it: QBC was and is a rather big undertaking; big enough to have both its own Twitter account and Facebook page. I have not set up Facebook pages for either this blog/site, or my other blog Iced Tea and Ramen. Part of that, is I’m not sure where either of them fit in long term; I’ll get back to this later.

Some detractors may say “we don’t need QBC, there are other blogs/sites like it in Houston, the last thing we need is another one.” I disagree. There’s room for QBC alongside similar efforts already in place for Houston. Heck, there is room for another five, ten, twenty, even a hundred other blogs/sites like it, just for Houston. This is a huge city, and QBC being subjective on purpose will pretty much by definition not be for everyone. If you took a look at QBC and found out it’s not your speed, by all means, start your own. (Now, I assume if you already have your own, that defines what is your speed more than QBC or any other similar blog/site ever could, and you’d only be looking elsewhere out of curiosity.)

As if that weren’t enough, there’s another piece of news I may as well go ahead and break. I plan to move the blog currently hosted here to another domain, redirecting the previous URLs from here to the new domain. I need to use this domain for something else, probably more of a personal portal/clearinghouse which points to all of my other blogs/online sites. I haven’t decided what, exactly, but it needs to be something more representative and worthy of my future personal brand. I need a personal soapbox, but long term, it won’t be here.

That, by the way, is another reason I haven’t bothered yet with a custom style for this blog. I didn’t like what the new Ahimsa did, so I quietly went back to the WordPress default. I’m assuming nobody minded the change. I know it’s only temporary, otherwise I’d have gone hunting a new theme. The eventual goal is my own custom designs on all of my blogs/sites; QBC is just the first, and for reasons I won’t go into here, it had to be the first.

The posts I have made here will remain intact and online, somewhere. If it’s not here, the URLs here will redirect to where they’ve went. I do that on purpose; I believe cool URLs don’t change. And maybe I’m that weird 0.01% that actually cares about such things. That’s me; I will always just be myself, and I endeavor to be as transparent and honest as possible.

Okay, enough already, I lack the ego to make this post much longer. Questions, concerns, comments? Comment here on this post, or send me something via the feedback form if it’s not intended for publication.

A tasteless energy drink marketing move

I’m sure Pepsi (who owns the AMP energy drink brand) really wants this one back. And yes, I know I’m late to the party on this a bit; I have a good reason for that, which I’ll explain in a future post.

Mashable reports on AMP’s new iPhone app “Before You Score” that was apparently released with one of two assumptions: AMP is only bought and consumed by men, or the women that learn of this marketing gaffe would be willing to look the other way and buy Pepsi’s products despite it.

I don’t know what Pepsi could have been thinking. I have never been that big of a fan of most Pepsi products; this does not help.

Not only is this a marketing blunder, it’s likely the women will be able to memorize the lame pick-up lines this thing spits out, so the men who rely on this get a really bum deal in the process. Shame on you, Pepsi; why not resurrect the Pepsi Challenge and see if you can get Coke to change their formula again? It can’t go any worse than this disaster.

Dogs on film

Okay, so not really on film, probably more like videotape or DVD, but the pun on the old song title was just hanging out there.

A recent story reported by Fastcompany.com, NPR, and ABC News tells the story of Robert Stevens. Robert is an independent filmmaker who compiled films of pit bull dogfights made in jurisdictions where dogfighting is legal, most notably Japan. He sold the films commercially to promote the proper care of pit bulls. For this, he received a jail sentence of 37 months, under a federal law that prohibits “knowingly selling depictions of animal cruelty, with the intention of placing them in interstate commerce” which was passed in 1999.

Robert appealed his case, and won on First Amendment grounds. The government compares these videos to obscenity, or “patently offensive conduct that appeals only to the basest instincts.” And so the case winds up in the US Supreme Court, where it is still being considered as of this writing as far as I can tell.

What I find disturbing here is that Robert’s sentence exceeds Michael Vick’s sentence for actually running a dogfighting ring. This is in effect saying that selling videos of legally conducted dogfights is a worse crime than actually running an illegal dogfighting ring. That, and I fail to see why Robert’s actions should be illegal. I do side with the appeals court here.

This does not change my viewpoint on dogfighting, however. I believe wanton animal cruelty such as staged dogfighting is despicable, which has been my view for the entirety of my adult life. I could go on and on about how I’ve always been an animal lover (I prefer cats to dogs). Suffice it to say, there are certain places such as Japan where it’s legal to stage dogfights, and it is equally their right to make the law what it is there as it is mine to condemn it.

Take off? Take a leak first

Apologies in advance to the easily offended… but this story was just begging for a few really bad jokes to be made.

The London newspaper Metro reports on a Japanese airline’s very strange new policy, which may already have some passengers a bit pissed off.

All Nippon Airways is desparate to reduce their carbon emissions, and is thus requiring passengers to urinate prior to boarding. This policy was put in place for a trial period of four weeks beginning on October 1.

Personally, I think ANA’s management is just peeing into the wind here. This is probably going to lose them quite a few customers, and probably for longer than a month. Customers tend to remember bad experiences longer than good ones. Put another way, ill will lingers longer than goodwill. Case in point: anyone remember ValuJet? (They are still around, but shed the old name with near-zero or possibly even negative goodwill when buying up a smaller carrier named AirTran.)