Green is trendy.

Definitely. Go Green.
The greenhouse effect is impacting our everyday life. We all know this trend.
I am not going to explain you that we are all going to be fried, and that in fact, Netherlands'red light district will be more like rows of aquariums.
Nor that penguins will go mad and attack people. We all know that.

Do you feel guilty?
Well you should not. You did not know, and nobody told you except hippies and that guy claiming that the end was near. Who could have told they were right?
Are you going to trust Rael and begin to build an embassy to welcome the extraterestrials? No.

Now is different. People realize that what they are doing has an impact on the future.
That's a huge marketing opportunity. Green Marketing really works because it makes people feel guilty.
"You are not a GreenCar user? If not, you are killing the birds, the earth, your children and their children (Ok let's assume they grow old enough to have children and leave them orphans). You are definitely a horrible person."
Guilt is such a powerful driver, it could drive your car.

How to ge beyond that ? Use it to your advantage.
Always put a "sustainable development" part in your business plans, or in your casual talks. People like it, it is very responsible talk, and you are indeed a very likeable person.
Ask people to drive you to work and back. You already sold your car, and you lower your carbon emission this way.
"It does not really matter, we are all gonna die." is a good catch phrase. Quite unusual, but works well with girls and various audience. It creates a pause where you can actually pass a message. (use the bridging technique.)

Example:
"It does not really matter, we are all gonna die."
Begin bridge.
"Yes, we are going to die. Green house effect is creating heat waves, which make the north pole melt, so that the sea is going to flood all the land. Living creatures will gather on the few parts left in a terrible compact crowd, and fight for survival. I wonder what is worse, being killed by the heat or the flood.
End of bridge.
"By the way, fancy a drink?"

I would finish that post by a thoughtful thought:
"Think of the children!"

How to crash into parties

Here are some good advice about how to get to know people during parties:

-Wear a watsit! (what's it?) It is a fancy item you wear, which give people the opportunity to come and talk to you.
"Those are great shoes, where did you get them?"
"Nice tie. I can't believe they actually sell these and have people buy them."
"You have ketchup on your cheek"

-Talk to the lonely prey. If people are standing alone, take that opportunity to talk to them and start your own group.

-There's no need to know who's right or who's wrong. Nobody cares. Don't start an argument. Unless everone wants it to happen.

-Have a glass in your hand, but don't eat. I don't feel like talking to someone who is swallowing a whole egg. Do you?

-Look in the eyes (and nowhere else). Even if you are drifting away, people will still think you are caring.

-If you are lost, repeat the last word you heard, as if you wanted more details. You can raise an eyebrow in the process.

-Remember the names! It is not so hard. Try to associate the names with ideas, or people you already know. (e.g michelle->beattles, see the person, have the song in your head)

-SMILE! Really, don't use that fake smile. Just smile because you like meeting people.

-Touch. Touching people while calling them by their name means that you are really talking to them personnally.

-Always bring something. Even if it is the flower you picked up on the way... and have a story with it. People love the attention.

-Be like a butterfly. If you are enjoying yourself in a group, it means your job is done. You have to start another conversation somewhere else. You have to be restless. Don't look back at that party and realize you only met 2 persons out of 20.

-Listen! Listen to what people tell you and use it in other conversations.
"John told me you were a good singer! Wanna sing something to me? Please?"

-If you came to find a partner, don't stick to one person. Don't let that person be bored of your presence. Leave at the right moment and talk to other people. Come back later and play hard to get. If you're easy to have, then you're not worth it.

I have so many things to say about that, I think I'll continue later on the same topic.
Stay tuned.

Long tail theory or why bother reading a book

Yesterday, as I was in Amsterdam I just bought a book.
In the train station, there were some english books -which you would not find in France, for that matter.
Anyway the cover was a good attention grabber: the natural successor to the "tipping point" in the field of business ideas.
I remember the tipping point theory left me quite unimpressed.

Anything can happen, don't be surprized...
Behavior, messages and products can behave like outbreaks of infectious disease.
Start your own "positive " epidemics.

Ok. Nice message. I understand it has the bestseller potential: easy to understand comparison, impossible to prove wrong (it is after all just an image), and quietly surfing on the viral marketing effect. But I think that's all. Allow me to criticize, this is my blog, after all.

Chris Anderson, with "the long tail" develops a fantastic idea.
"How endless choice is creating unlimited demand"
Yes! Now that everything is sold online, the catalogue can be almost infinite. -No stocking fees, no racks where one inch is one inch.
But then what?
-More niches products will be produced. (Long tail producers -any specialized producer)
-More niches will be distributed (Long tail aggregators -e-bay, amazone)
-People will find their niches easily (Long tail filters -google)

So where the sales used to be concentrated on a few hits, the distribution will be spread more evenly, giving more importance to the long tail (if you rank the products by their sales, you will see a bump at the first products, then a steep slope, and a tail that decreases slowly).


Niches markets as a whole are becoming more and more valuable. And the old 80/20 wouldn't work any more. (20 products totalize 80% of the revenue).

Have a nice day.

Managing website content positionning

I suppose it is no news for anyone, websites can make money.

It is true. I can prove it.

Up to now, I had a whopping 32 cents with my Adsense (or Add Cents). 32 cents in 2 months.

I think I can start thinking about resigning and work 100% on my blog.

Making a good blog is like making a good show. If it is entertaining, with renewed exciting content, people will come back. But they have to know about your blog. They have to have an incentive to come to your blog. A short pitch with the right keywords grabs the attention. Pictures for lazy websurfers and quickstreaming video.

Obviously I am not addressing them right now, am I ?

I can see that the average time spent on my site is close to 2 minutes. I quite like that, because 2 minutes is quite a long time in our easily bored minds. I aim to provide value to the reader, and if you look at the chart just down there, you might be wondering: "Why, the hell, is he writing in english?"

That's quite a fair question.

I have 76% to 88% of my audience who speak French.

And certainly less than 10% whose native language could be English.

But that would not be looking at the global picture.

If you look at the bigger picture, I could say French people like my website because it is written in English . I could say that I want to address an international audience and not to stick only to France, Canada, Maghreb...

Of course, my Engish is not perfect, but it will get better, and after all, I am really having fun writing this blog.

War rooms and Competitive Intelligence

The term "War room" comes from the military practice.
It refers to the HeadQuarters where the officers would decide how many soldiers should be sacrificed, and how to avoid the so-cynically-called "friendly fire".
Now War has somewhat changed. It's all business related.

Nowadays information is power. Only connect. Information streams are everywhere and you make your own mashup of it. You base your decisions on what you think you perceive of the situation and what you believe the right methodology is. For the best decision to be chosen, you would try to have identified the situation and the proper solution accordingly to the most objective point of view.
Reading multiple sources of information gives you multi-layered intelligence, and this way you can gain the edge against a less informed competitor. (e.g a market need, a Request for proposal, whatever can make you rich).
The problem is that if information is money, people tend to rush and soon your so precious information becomes outdated. Monitoring what is happening in real time is indeed the thing you want to do if you consider Business situations like War Games.

During presidential campaigns, a specific war room is often created, and all the thinking heads gather to coordinate the actions, the counterattack to be as efficient as possible.
Mediatic noise is always hard to follow, it can spread in minutes, and get out of hand.

In the specific case of French presidential campaigns, Segolene (left wing) has been under the constant pressure of the right wing War room, making each of her blunder visible on every blog, every newspaper articles, giving each right-wing politician the exact counter arguments to bash her. She has been so much attacked, that she spent her time trying to defend herself to gain a bit of credibility. She could not pass a single positive message. And each person defecting under her, was immediately interviewed and exposed to the journalists.
Nicolas Sarkozy (right wing), made some blunders, as well. But no blunder was left without a justification within the hour, and famous politicians would be podcasted on youtube explaining, or refining what the leader exactly meant.
Example:

A journalist asks Segolene,
Journalist: "how many submarines does the French army have?"
Segolene: "uuu? one?"
Journalist: "You sure?"
Segolene:"two?"
Journalist: "No, seven"
The day after, journalists were wondering if a woman like her should be given the power to use the atomic weapon.

But Sarkozy was asked the same question.
Journalist: "how many submarines does the French army have?"
Sarkozy: "four"
Journalist: "You sure?"
Sarkozy:"Yes, it's four"
Journalist: "No, it's seven, France owns 7 submarines"
Sarkozy:"You're wrong. There are four submarines"

The following minutes, the war room went up a few degrees.
"We have actually four submarines at sea, the three others are not at the moment. Can we use that?"
"Not credible. Anyone has something else?"
"Yes, 4 of them have the ability to launch nuclear weapons. I think that's the right argument".
"Let's go for that".
Finally, everyone admitted that the journalist didn't ask the question properly, and that Sarkozy answered correctly.

So don't forget to bring your War room with you. It can be very handy.

Lonely planet

I recently used Google touchgraph. It's a very useful tool.
Gives you a very handy mapping of a certain concepts, putting them in similar clusters. If you investigate new stuff, don't hesitate, it might give you a competitive advantage.
As you can see first thing I did was to investigate my name.
How important am I in the world of "Vinh Ly"s ?
Thanks to ziki, I reached the first result of "vinh ly" on the whole multilingual web (Google, Pagerank).
Now I am the third (like Shrek).
But creating a mapping like this one:

makes me realize that I should do something to link my Blog to other concepts related to "Vinh Ly". Because it does feel a bit lonely here, when all the other "Vinh Ly"s have fun clustering.
I don't know who that Vinh.k.Ly is... (except he's an attorney at law), but in a few months time, I'll completely kill his internet presence.
Don't hesitate to use touchgraph for your searches... It even found me, given the very little effort I spend advertizing, I think it's noticeable enough to be emphacized.

Good day to you all.

Ultimate Blog Killer !!

Where's my added value ?







What's the most common thing you find in a blog ?
What you find is:
"huh, found this link on youtube, thought you might like this"
"check this, that's keeeewwwwwwl"
"Man, that miss America is so stupid!"
"Ohhh Web 1.0 is sooooo outdated. Is 3.0 here or what?"

The blogosphere is just an eternal memetic echo.
Who invented the joke you've been hearing around for quite a while?

Just to say that I just love those useless links, that just replicates useless contents.
By the way, visit my brother's website: delirium.sanhly.com

Why such a title? Oh yeah the ultimate blog killer!!
A bit tedious isnt't it?
Here's the thing. I am currently creating an automated blog content feeder. Why bother updating your content? It could be automated! Just fill an online form, and your blog will be automatically updated with random picks from youtube, googlenews, delicious, whatever according to your tastes. As well, your personal thoughts will be automated as well. "Such a stupid day, I wish I stayed in bed". "My parents don't understand anything. Avril Lavigne rocks. I really have to see High School Musical 2".
This way, you're cool. You have your blog. You have no added value, but you are Internet-compliant, with mediatic echo. You are visible, and girls fancy you. Yeah, they fancy you because they like the "banana" on your blog. You nod, but you run home to check.

"
Check this out !
I can't believe it was made in 2000.

here
This is so cool. I couldn't get this song outta my head.
Even cooler in Family guy.
here
That's even more stupid.
here
PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME
PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME
PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME
"
You even have to keep up with what's in your blog.

Vinh
re-Delivering useless content

Memetic theory

Have you ever watched that scrubs episode where someone starts to hum that stupid song, and the day after, everyone sings in the hospital ?
Cultural evolution resembles genetical evolution. Some genes mutate under external or random pressure. If they are well-suited, they tend to propagate easily and soon you find it everywhere. (e.g Bart Simpson brings an american frog in Austrlia. The frog makes friend with kangaroos. Kangaroos protect the frogs in its front pocket. The frog finds a great environment to reproduce. Australia is invaded by frogs.)

Meme is a unit of cultural information, just like DNA is a piece of genetical information. It will tend to survive, propagate, disappear, reappear, thrive in changing environments. There will be cross-overs, and memes are most of the time found in groups (memeplexes), forming more complex building blocks of cultural information.
Survival can be overwhelming and short. Look at "Pokemons", "Pogs", "Beanie Babies", anything that's supposed to be hype at a certain moment.

Genetic algorithm to find out what's hype ?
Why not? It is true genetic algorithm are a bit magical. It can optimize anything, because all it does is try, select, try, select, try, select, until the user is bored.

I personally don't think I am optimized. I hope next generation of Ly doesn't have to wear glasses and that special headset you have to wear at night to have your teeth straightened and scare your girlfriend. I hope next generation doesn't have to use two different annoying keyboards (a qwerty at wotk and an azerty at home) . But that's another story.

How to survive in Koh Lanta (Survivor)

Many people think it's easy. I don't.
Living on a desert Island, forced to eat worms and leaves, anyone can do. But the social tension and hunger bring out the worst of everyone.
Over the years, some patterns can be consistently spotted.
1) You must be insipid, predictable and say that you do the game just for fun. You don't care about money.
2) Never break a pact to join the ennemy, you will be sanctionned in the final round.
3) Say that you like everyone, but it breaks your heart to vote against him/her. Spot minor injuries, signs of homesickness, hunger, anger, mosquito bites, anything... and talk the others to get that person out for their best. You'll end up being considerated like a compassionate person.
4) Stay with the group leader, and instil paranoia with "innoculous" comments, like "Well done at the immunity test. Too bad John didn't congratulate you for that. He must have been too exhausted after it anyway. He did his best I think." After a few of those (max 3 per day, but you can do more as people become more and more receptive to your words because of exhaustion. Same technique as brainwashing), the group leader will have a personal vendetta to fulfill and a worthy companion, which role you'd be happy to endorse. Don't try that with John (the other guy), or with a lot of subtelty. Be receptive and wait for the tilting point, the change of balance of power is an important turn of events.
5) Use a vocabulary that works. It should be food related at best. "Something is fishy" "It will be a piece of cake". You address their subconscious mind, their stomach and you are identified as "food provider". That's the best role you can have in the game.
6) Never complain. Don't be a nagger. Don't be perceived as one. People suffer enough to have extra pain, especially a pain in the neck.
7) Don't be identified as a potential winner. You should always underperform. And save energy for the last round.
8) Let people talk. Don't talk. Unless it is a relevant compliment. You have two ears and one month. You should be hearing twice more than you talk. (Confucius)
9) If you get transferred in the other team... this is bad! Try to get the immunity, prove yourself useful, create disorder... try to understand how teams are structured and find the weak point. The weakest link is the one who stands alone after lunch. Go talk to him about the weather and tell the others that he asked you to vote against one of them. And that you are too honest to do that. You're such a frank person. But this case is the worst case scenario. The other rules can still be applied adequately.
10) Don't try to find a partner on the island. Everyone gets jealous, and the best guess is that in the next two turns, you're both out. You should go to "temptation Island" for that, with a fake partner. But that's another story.

Hope you'll apply to that show and make it worth seeing. Quote me and send me some money if you win.

If you have any other ideas, feel free to share.

How to answer an anti-smoking lobbyist

1) Your studies are outdated. You are studying the effects of cigarettes that have been smoked more thant 20 years ago. You can't tell me that with all the regulations and technological advances in cigarette manufacturing, the cigarettes have the same effect, don't you ?
2) Okay, smokers are more likely to have lung cancer. Okay, doctors tend to have sick people around them. Does that mean that cigarettes cause lung cancer and doctors make people sick ? Or could it mean that smokers have a specific lifestyle (alcohol, stress, fun) which makes them more prone to cancer?
3) Do you know any other way to remain slim, without effort, that adds extra pleasure ?
4) Roger Bullock, a specialist in dementia and director of the Kingshill Research Centre in Swindon, proved that nicotine had a beneficial effect in order to prevent various form of dementia.
5) Smoking looks cool. What is cooler than someone who harms himself just for a few minutes of pleasur ?
6) Smoking keeps you awake, and really goes well with sex, coffee and a nice meal. (or the three at the same time, if you wish.
7) You can always say "Yes, take one in my pocket", to a nice girl asking for one.
8) You can say "go for a fag" without looking like one. (means smoking in British slang)
9) You have a nice sexy voice.