Whether you call it the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Championship, March Madness, Bracketology, or the World’s Best Office Pool, every year office work grinds to a halt as millions of people sweat over their 63 game selections as they fill out their basketball brackets – hoping ultimately to win their local office pool.
Officially, the NCAA does not support using the grid in any form of gambling, and frowns upon the amount of effort thrown at filling out the brackets for monetary gain.
Got that? Good. Now that THAT is out of the way, let’s talk about the 10 BEST WAYS TO FILL OUT YOUR BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT BRACKET SO YOU CAN WIN YOUR OFFICE POOL.
(Okay, we may cover more than 10 rules for you to follow while filling out your bracket, but who’s counting?)
Seth Simonds has compiled the NAPOLEON DYNAMITE GUIDE TO SOCIAL NETWORKING, because let’s face it — anyone who is a new user to Facebook, MySpace, bulletin board discussion groups, business networking events, speed dating, or any other forced social intermingling activity really needs a hand to break through the pre-established cliques and get away from being that awkward wallflower to become a true contributer to the situation.
And who knows, maybe you’ll meet someone and get a date out of it.
The first three rules are:
Give, like, creative and real compliments.
Don’t let other people take up all your time or space or eat all your steak.
Put your connections to work for others so they get sweet stuff, too.
Take a look at Seth’s article for the other two examples and how Napoleon Dynamite applies to the points he is making.
The whole piece should really be subtitled, “EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT HOW TO SUCCEED IN SOCIAL NETWORKING I LEARNED FROM NAPOLEAN DYNAMITE”.
Don’t know if Seth will take my suggestion though. Maybe if I offer to draw him a liger, he’ll consider it.
Do you have friends who text-message you a lot, each time with more and more obscure abbreviations and short codes that are beginning to annoy you because you don’t know what they mean?
I know, it would be easier for your friend to just call you or send you a normal email instead of trying to thumb their way through a cell-phone keypad to tell you where to meet them for dinner.
Luckily, you can pop over to TRANSL8IT, type in the message you received, and have the site convert the undecipherable message for you into ordinary English. Plus, if you have text-addicted friends and you want to look like you have a clue about how to text yourself, you can type in your plain-English message and have the site convert it into text-speak.
The New York Times, for all its supposed stuffiness, sometimes has some odd offerings on its website.
Today’s entry: THE WEIRD BODY QUIZ, a 10-question test to see how well you know odd bits of human biology trivia. Like, the best way for you to tell if your own breath stinks.
If you’ve seen the trailer for the movie He’s Just Not That Into You, then you know the scene where Drew Barrymore is rattling off all the places that she needs to check in order to contact her date: MySpace, Facebook, texting the cell phone, voicemails at work or at home.
While it’s a good thing that we’re so interconnected with all these social networks, sometimes it can be a little overwhelming.
And scary.
So along comes a website that really shouldn’t need to exist, but it does – THAT’S NOT COOL. What isn’t cool? Electronically stalking somebody.
You don’t necessarily want to be poked, superpoked, searched for, friended, have friends befriended, sent a virtual beer, thanked for the add, or otherwise forced to interact with all these online folks. And sometimes, all that can turn into harassment.
There are a few different ways people can buy music online, but they are all basically the same whether it by the iTunes Music Store, eMusic, Amazon, ro any other retailer.
PEOPLES MUSIC STORE is a bit different, as it is setup and run by YOU, the music fan. And unlike that alleged Ponzi scheme BURNLOUNGE from a few years ago, you don’t have to pay any money to participate.
All you have to do is select the music you want to sell, write a few reviews and articles, and post your links for people to buy from you. You’ll be able to promote your store by including code on your own website, or by using Widgets on places like MySpace or Facebook. The better you are at providing reviews and commentary, the more visible and profitable your storefront will become.
I’d call the whole thing “MyTunes”, but that name is already taken.
Diana Freeman is a blogger specializing in social media and other related topics. I really like her stuff; if you have a chance to do so, bookmark her site.
She recently returned from a Walt Disney World vacation and wrote an interesting piece entitled DISNEY: A MODEL OF SUCCESS FOR YOUR PRODUCT OR WEBSITE, where she analyzes all the things that Disney does well, and how you can apply those techniques to your own business or website.
Here are the high points of what she talks about, and my brief interpretation: