A fine morning to you one and all from Radio CBM 98.6, all Arlo Guthrie all the time. And the next Dead Pool winner is... Michael Jackson, who is survived by three children, Bubbles the monkey and various assorted unidentified life forms:
NetSuite has announced the appointment [1] of Edward Zander to its board of directors. Zander, most recently chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Motorola, will handle lead guitar and backing vocals for the band, according to NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson.
Before joining Motorola in 2004, Zander spent 15 years with Sun Microsystems, rising to president and chief operating officer. Lead vocalist Nelson said he and Zander would collaborate on songwriting.
"We are really thrilled to have Ed join our board, and I am personally excited to have the opportunity to work with him again," said Nelson. "Ed's incredible background and track record in all of these areas will bring enormous benefits to NetSuite as we bring the promise of Cloud Computing to businesses on our next world tour," kicking off at Radio City Music Hall next month and slated to play arenas across the country before moving to Europe and the Far East.
"I am excited to join such a dynamic company as they reach greater heights in the industry," Zander said, adding that he was "impressed" with NetSuite's latest CD, Love In The Cloud.
Nelson said they'll recruit a new bassist before the tour and are rehearsing possibilities now, including ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. "We hear Michael Jackson's band is looking for work too," he added.
Does this sound like you, friends—"marketers and businesses getting into the online marketing game but with no clue about how to succeed?" You don't have to raise your hand, but you may be interested in No Starch Press's latest book, Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook, slated for October release.
Written by Darren "Running" Barefoot and Julie Szabo, who've run social media marketing campaigns for national retailers like Best Buy, Future Shop, and Brother International, it's described as "a tactical guide filled with tricks, tips, and real-world case studies" showing marketers "how to increase their companies' visibility and traffic, create viral campaigns, craft a compelling social media pitch and market effectively within social media channels."
The rules of marketing have changed, No Starch officials say: "With viral videos racking up millions of views and Twitter mavens influencing tens of thousands of their friends, social media marketing, where honesty and connections are far more important than the size of the marketing budget, is here."
Topics include how to cram everything worthwhile about your company into 140 characters—and why even that might very well be too long for the average attention span today.
In politics President Barack Obama said that while his health care plan would cost the country "at least a trillion more dollars on top of the trillions in debt I've already piled on future generations to pay off my political allies today," it was crucial the measure pass Congress because "right now, we've got a lot of celebrities like Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson dying." When asked how that related to his health care proposals the president said he needed to step outside for a smoke.
Entrepreneur Graham Ede has expanded his new customer management company [2], Blueview, created in March 2009, with two new acquisitions, adding digital agency Glass and demand generation specialists Logicall Results.
Key management from both organizations remain in place, according to Ede. Blueview builds bespoke products to "identify and retain areas of excellence, and only outsources elements of the client's marketing and customer management activities that are not working optimally," according to the Blueviewers.
The Blueview Group sells customer development strategy and infrastructure "helping clients understand customer value, behaviour, loyalty and profile," according to Ede, who added Blueview is "in the process of exploring further acquisitions and joint ventures to enrich our offering still further," saying they'd like to add a keyboard player and backup singers.
In sports French international rugby player Mathieu Bastareaud admitted that he was not attacked [3] on the street of Wellington during a tour of New Zealand this week as he had initially told police, but was actually falling-over drunk.
On Wednesday Bastareaud said he received the facial cuts and heavy bruising from being attacked by "a number of men" outside his hotel. A couple days later, confronted with video evidence showing he entered the hotel injury-free he admitted that actually he hit his head on a table after excessive drinking following yet another French loss to the All Blacks.
Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast said there was "clearly collusion" by the French rugby team over Bastareaud's false claim: "There were other players involved, the team doctor's involved and the coach because he got sent back to France so quickly. And let's face it, historically the French are quite good at collaborating."
The French Rugby Federation said they would surrender Bastareaud "unconditionally."
San Francisco-based NetBooks has announced a partnership [4] with Earn.com to "broaden and enrich the services both companies offer to small businesses."
Specifically NetBooks will provide its WorkingPoint online suite for small business management as a co-branded offering for Earn.com's online membership network for entrepreneurs.
"We looked at all the online applications for managing a small business and nothing came close to the breadth and scope of WorkingPoint by NetBooks," said Joel Blakley, Director of Operations at Earn.com, calling WorkingPoint "so much more than an online bookkeeping application, it's a complete management product for small businesses."
Tate Holt, CEO of NetBooks, said together, "we create a powerful resource for people who are just starting a business. It's everything people need to make their small business work—in a single place. Customers sold separately."
That's the show for today, we're off to collect an easy $16,500 [5].