The ideas I’ve been playing with over the last few years came together over the last few weeks… and my funnel post was a small part of that.

This new ebook (3 versions, 18 pages each, PDF format) explains how I believe some of the new Web 2.0 tools (flickr, del.icio.us, squidoo and others) combine with ideaviruses and the Purple Cow.

Here they are. Free to download from this site, free to post on your site… or to email to your team and colleagues.

Download Flipping the Funnel

That’s an edition of the ebook optimized for corporations and traditional marketers.

You can also download a slightly different edition for politicians: Download FlippingPolitics

and a third one for non-profits: Download Flipping non profits

I love looking at alexa.org

check this out:

The red is Yahoo. The blue is google…

traffic over the last two years.

Now, google’s value proposition is very different from Yahoo’s. But if you’re an investor and you see this chart, it’s easy to panic. Without attention, it’s hard to deliver value.

With a rabid passion they hate it.

Noted.

Maybe you’ll get used to it. Maybe I’ll change it back. But it’s an interesting experiment in how hard it is to change stuff.

Thanks for noticing.

PS okay, that experiment served its purpose. You can stop emailing me now.

Yesterday’s seminar was one of my favorites ever. We had a great group (this photo is probably insufficient evidence… too many folded arms… but hey. Several intrepid seminar attendees were game enough to wear a fez, even.

Here’s Mary Ann’s take on it. I had enough fun that I might do another one in March… but let me catch up first. Thanks to all who made the trip from near and quite far.

Tim’s thoughtful take on the seminar is here.

At a seminar last week, a woman asked me what to do if her bosses in the pharma industry insist on her doing ads she knows won’t work. "They won’t let me!" she said. I asked if she wanted that on her tombstone.

And then there’s Gerry Mooney, who’s quite rightfully proud of coining the ubernerd phrase: "Gravity: It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law."

The History of The Gravity Poster.

The 83 year old inventor of the Kalashnikov rifle (which has probably killed more people than the atomic bomb) traded his name for 30% of a company that makes umbrellas. Next up: mineral water and vodka. BBC NEWS.

I’ve gotten more email about Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Homepage than almost any other specific topic, ever.

Most of the people who write believe:
a. they discovered it
b. I didn’t know about it
c. there was a big lesson to be learned

I hesitated to post about it, largely because I didn’t have a lot to add to the hooplah, unil I read Steve Yastrow’s post on tompeters!

The interesting ideas in a changing world are those that inform us about how to behave in the future. New rules are worth learning.

On the other hand, if someone breaks a rule in a way that can rarely be duplicated, we don’t learn a whole lot–unless there’s a pattern.

I think Alex brilliantly manipulated the current architecture of the web in order to earn a substantial profit. And he did earn it… his investment of cash and time was substantial.

When I see the 10,000 copycats out there, all I can do is sigh. Why do they believe this is a new trend? Why do they think it’s going to become an important part of the marketing mix, and are they really so naive to believe that they, and they alone, will earn even more than Alex did?

Yes, "? and the Mysterians" hat a hit song and wore masks, but that doesn’t mean that wearing a mask and naming yourself after a punctuation mark is a new rule.

I’m frequently reminded of the lemming gene in mankind when I clean out my spam box. A subject line will show up and within minutes, it will be copied by 100 other spammers. Because copying the new rule feels easier and safer and more profitable than inventing a new rule. And in the world of spam, it guess it probably is.

In this case, though, I don’t think you should quit your day job (Alex should, though, and apparently has).

The talented Mary Ann Davis has a thoughtful post about the opposite of globalization: davistudio: Techno Swadeshi.

Just got the cover for my new book, out late summer. It’s more than 100 of my most-linked-to blog posts, essays, columns, etc. I really pushed the publisher hard, and I want to thank them, out loud, for being patient and doing great work. Especially Joseph.

The title post is here. It took a week to write… the short ones always do. Worth noting that Jeff Jarvis used the same phrase just a day before I posted mine–synchronicity is easy to find online, if you look for it. When I found his post later on, I dropped him a line, concerned that he’d be concerned about provenance. Like all great bloggers, he shrugged and smiled at the coincidence.

This might be the last time you see orange on one of my projects. Or maybe not.

Robert Jackson submits www.followthefrog.com for "worst commercial website of all time" award (my title, not his).

Here are the rules:
a. must be in English (so we’re qualified to judge)
b. must have an AdWords campaign to get traffic (to indicate that there’s money on the table, at least at some level).

Here’s the Google ad:

Here’s what it looks like on my browser (Firefox on the Mac… no, this is not stretched):