Who needs a relationship? I've got an iPhone.

"Dr., I have a problem. I think my iPhone is cheating on me." And so it goes. I love the iPhone, but so does everybody else. Millions and millions of everybody elses. It makes Tiger Woods' escapades look like kitten-play. "But it's an object", the Dr. responded. "I know", I said, "but I can't live without it." And neither can a lot of the rest of the world. iPhones, Blackberrys, Nokias, Samsungs and whatever smart-phone happens to be the flavour of the moment are not only taking over the world, they're taking over our attention spans. Even in the darkest corners of the globe, and I saw this in Mali, Africa last year - where the computer penetration amongst the populace could be as low as 10%, the cel-phone penetration is normally 90% and even people who don't have much of a proper home have a phone - and boy do they love em'. It's liberation and status and communication and education for the masses, even if your choice of education is the newest 50 Cent video. In Mali at night I would watch 4 men on the street on small wooden seats with a wooden table, all with their heads nodded down, peering into their mobiles - not talking at all, just jamming.

And here in Vietnam it's no different. Walk into any bar on any night, even one with live music and you'll see a fair portion of the audience just poking at their phones.

I was talking with a businesswoman a few weeks ago and she was lamenting that she spends 60+ hours at work every week and then there's the mobile once the office is left behind. "You know, you just have to turn that thing off every once in a while", I told her. And she looked at me like I was crazy. Meanwhile, people in bars and restaurants don't talk to each other. People in cabs don't look at what's outside. Couples don't even communicate with each other (maybe because they don't want to anyway) - they communicate with others on phones - or usually just check Facebook and Tweet. Smart-phones don't demand, don't complain, don't ask you to do 'honey-dos' on the weekend. You can even kiss em'. Who needs a relationship? I've got an iPhone.

Now, where's that sex app?

No accounting for taste

I was talking with a client recently about their website. It was terrible. And this particular client works in the luxury travel industry. Their properties have been named some of the best in Asia by prestigious magazines and their levels of service and food have been praised by the same. So why make a website that doesn't match their other levels of industry standards? Budget I was told.

Here in Vietnam I think many clients are misled by the belief that everything is cheap when the truth of the matter is that cheap things are cheap and good things cost more. I find it positively baffling that this particular client spent more on the bathroom in my hotel room than they did on the website that supports their entire business in country. Foolish, I think.

When an entire business rests on the image of a company it makes positively no sense to look cheap or low tech on the web. Poor writing, poor photography, sites that function clumsily all contribute to a brand's personality and having them contribute negatively just doesn't make any sense. Not even if you think you are saving money, because in reality, you are loosing money - potential sales that might be more successfully made if a quality product is represented from the start with a quality look and feel in all communications.

There's no accounting for taste, but there should be. Call the accounting department and double your budget on that website. It's one of the least expensive elements of your marketing campaign and may provide one of the best returns.

Saigon/CreativeMornings?

900,000 people per month check into the SwissMiss blog for tasty design tips and commentary from Tina Roth Eisenberg, AKA SwissMiss. Along with running the blog and her studio, she manages a creative speaker forum that brings thought leaders in a number of creative disciplines in to speak and illuminate the creative process on a monthly basis. Free. Her series has become a huge hit and reservations for the 50 or so spots go in an hour of posting. A number of us thought we could use a forum like this on the Saigon creative scene. And so we had our first organizational meeting on beginning the process on November 19. I hope to have good news shortly on a 2011 schedule for these Saigon/CreativeMornings.

What's the most important statistic on your website? - How to write the best damn blog in the world IV

Is it how many hits? Or how many unique visitors? Is it how many click-throughs from some other online activity you're involved in or your number of subscribers - or just plain how much money you make from the damn thing? The truth is, is that the most important stat is different for all of us depending on our businesses and our business objectives.

		Visit Length
	130	Less than 5 secs
	1	From 5 secs to 30 secs
	23	From 30 secs to 5 mins
	9	From 5 mins to 20 mins
	3	From 20 mins to an hour
	41	Longer than an hour

For me, in the business of writing, the statistic I like most is 'Visit Length', the amount of time people spend on the site, reading I hope. That big green piece of the pie that you see is called 'bounce rate' - at what rate do people check in and check out so quickly that you know they weren't interested. That's 62% today. But that leaves a balance of 38% who stick around - and the part of that pie I'm most happy with is that yellow, almost 20%, part of people who stay longer that one hour. Now if you were in the business of selling something, you might like that number too, because the more time people spend on your site, the more chances you have to hit them with advertising. But I'm in the business of writing, and to do that, I need readers and even those who stay for 5 minutes are good readers. Those who stay for an hour or longer are better. Thanks all.

"This parrot's not dead! It's resting." - Monty Python

"Dear David, Thanks for sending the book. My feedback is it's very well-written, your voice is clear, entertaining. I didn't read it all, but enough to tell you not to give up, and there's hope."

This note came to me yesterday from a publishing strategist and coach in regard to my book Wild Wild East. Admittedly, I've back-burnered it for some time but have gotten back on track in search of an agent. This kind of feedback does help.

Holy Huffington Post!

We just got picked up by the Huffington post, The #1 Internet blog! And we add to that, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Technorati, and New York Magazine. Maybe something going on here. The Wild Wild East is in the house! And not a single one of the other publications I write for can say that!

Post 400

Welcome to post 400. No candles. No fireworks. No band. No nothing. It's just work. And joy. And dedication.

That's what people don't understand about the Internet and social marketing. It's called do the work, shut up and sit down. If I had a dime for everyone who asked me how I do what I do, I'd be a wealthy man - but all I can tell them, is if they only did 10% of what I do, they'd be in a whole lot better shape than they are now. (and yes, they bitch and moan about that). Babies.The Wild Wild East Dailies is now rated #29,626 in the world - and in a world of over 100 million blogs we feel good.

But not that good. Our Technorati ranking is at 125. Okay, let's give that some perspective. The Huffington post is #1 at a ranking of 935. Seth Godin, a certified marketing guru and ten times published author gets 757 and my friend, Hugh MacLeod, a one time published author, scores a 535. Do I feel bad? No. Most blogs don't bust above a five. We're on our way. Happy 400! Want to score? You do the work. And I'll work on getting that book published.

Chef-a-gogo goes to Danang

I met a wonderful chef last weekend at Life resort in Danang. Chef Shane Brierly hails from New Zealand but has spent serious time in Sydney, Tasmania, Dubai, Thailand and now Vietnam. And in a hotel where nothing much stood out, Shane was a real ray of light. "I love to travel, to cook, to open my eyes and mind to the world around me and fill my senses with the world and its beauty, imperfections, trials and tribulations", he says on his blog, but a look at his menu and a bit of a sampling show you his passion. I have a theory whenever I visit a new restaurant. Rather than order the more adventurous things on the menu, I order a simple thing, like a Caesar Salad or a Gumbo in Asia - and if they can ace that, I will work up the menu. Shane's Caesar was not only interestingly presented, it was spot on for flavour. And how many chef's can't get that right? Hundreds. Literally hundreds. So we enjoyed his presentation of handmade, while you watch, lemongrass liquid Nitrogen ice cream, the first in Vietnam - and then worked our way through the menu for the rest of the weekend. Shane's Chef-a-Gogo blog is here. Check it out for recipes and fun to follow.

Mouse on Mars in Vietnam

And that's a little bit like the mice actually being on Mars, only weirder. Looks from the crowd on their sonic noise opening went from hysterical love (young Viet teens) to joy (old foreigners) to confusion (average Vietnamese) to flat out yawning (twenty-sumthing foreign girl) but there's no mistake about it, Mouse on Mars got their houseful, outdoors, in Vietnam tonight.


Arriving with a crowd of thirty-sumthing foreigners with me being the old cat in the crew we immediately sauntered up to the bar for a few brewskies. This took the staff by surprise. "5 minutes", we were told. Somebody at the venue forgot to sort out that beer was usually a staple at rock concerts. So they sent out for it! Ha. Leave it to the folks at the the Ho Chi Minh City Youth Cultural House to not figure out that people go to concerts to have fun. Honestly, none of these people had any idea who the band was, what they were doing there, and why the government (the German Government, actually) was sponsoring a couple of German DJs to come in and tear up their rice paddy for the night. But that's what made it all so much fun as well. It was as close as I had come to seeing the Ramones tear up Texas in 1980 and there was even a German guy with a Ramones t-shirt there. Oh how us oldies won't give it up. We're not going on that golden cruise ship until they come and haul us away!

Things got going in a foghorn sort of way with one of the members holding his mic up to a loud car-horn and driving away at least the pussies from what should have been a 2000 seat venue but only seemed to have about 700. Good. We didn't need those people anyway. The crowd, seemingly 50% foreign and 40% 'we have no friggin idea why we're here' Vietnamese was nicely bolstered by a tiny 10% of Viets who really did seem to get it. Did they do their Wiki homework before the show? Because I certainly had to.

Mouse on Mars is a German techno duo who did time with Stereolab in the 90s. And that means they met Sean O'Hagen of The High Llamas, who's group would make one of my 'Desert Island Disc' selections if needed. I spoke with Mouse, Andi Toma after the show and he confirmed that he really does know O'Hagen. Shit. Just one degree of separation away from one of my heroes in Vietnam. Never forget that.

Once the decomposed noise intro shook the life out of most of the crowd and the soundboard guys, things settled down into an hour's worth of heavy downbeats with distorted and looped vocals from the pair and a healthy throng of young Viets throwing their hands up in the air and dancing emphatically. If I had had kids by now, they would have been mine. Very cool.

One small missed bit of subtlety was a rear projected video screen that ran looped phrases through the eyes of an illustrated woman's face. The passage I remember most, paraphrased of course, was, "The state is not an expression of your liberty, the state is an affront to your liberty". I'm not sure the band, and I'm absolutely sure not the crowd, understood the gravity of that statement in a communist country. Brilliant. Subversive. Thank you mice.

On the last song a crew of Vietnamese break-dancers, 16 years old at most, came up and put on a show in front of the stage. The band took notice and came back with an encore that let the local boys strut their stuff. Oh to be so young. But I could never dance worth a shit anyway. Thank you mice. You helped me remember and maybe showed a few new recruits, that all this stuff really does matter. It really does.

On the way home I was passed by a white stretch party Hummer marked Saigon Limo with some Viet dude inside pumping his fist to a pulsing beat. Where was he when the real party was happening? Oh how money fucks them up. The Mouse show was free.

Props to The Word magazine in Saigon for picking this up.

The Bitexco Financial Tower Conspiracy Theory

It's a 74 storey tower with 3 basements, wait, it's a 68 storey tower with 7 basements. It's the tallest building in Vietnam according to Wikipedia on their 'Tallest Buildings in Vietnam' page but wait again, that fact is quickly usurped by the Wiki page for Bitexco Financial Tower which claims the Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower to be the tallest, but it's not finished yet. Depending on the websites you visit the stats vary accordingly. It's the architectural equivalent of penis measurement depending on whether you count floors or metres or whether you count floors below ground the same as floors above ground. I shudder to think how the inverted pyramid design, submitted for the Chicago Tribune Tower Design Competition in 1922 would have been counted, had it been built - a pyramidal negative space buried deep into the earth.

But on Bitexco in Saigon one thing is clear, it will not be the tallest building in Vietnam, it will only be the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh city. The tallest building in Vietnam designation seems to be owned by Hanoi, now and for the foreseeable future. And that's where methinks a conspiracy has taken hold. A conspiracy to nip Saigon's newest phallic symbol in the bud so to speak (the tower is fashioned as a lotus bud) to keep Hanoi on top of the building boom around here. Take a look at the difference between the architectural drawings and the actual building. Doesn't it seem as if a few planned storeys have been lopped off the top? I certainly think so - and various accounts about the development of the building support that. I wonder who will be arriving on the helipad for the grand opening, since only military helicopters are allowed in Vietnam - the Americans again? Doubtful, although the building's architect, Carlos Zapata is based in New York. Conspiracy? You decide.