UPDATE: I just got a call from Bob Collins, owner of T&A Alignment, and he tells me that replacing the “2001-2003 BMW 530i Radiator Coolant Overflow Tank (E39 Chassis Type)” fixed it — I am ready to roll!!! Woo-hoo!

I really don’t drive enough in the desert or everyday to know not to stress test the coolant system of my 2001 530i BMW “e39″ sedan, but now I know what not to do: Idle in noonday, historically high, 105F heat, AC blasting, while taking a business call on my cell because I was afraid to drive for fear that the West Nebraska cell phone service was going to be too spotty.

Well, the result was pretty catastrophic, or so I have been fretting for the last couple days. The above picture is taken in the first bay at T&A Alignment, owner Bob Collins.

Here’s the deal that I wrote down to post onto the BMW enthusiast forum, Bimmerfest, Overheat to Red and then Fail During Idle and Crack in Radiator Coolant Overflow Tank:

Of course I am already freaked out that this is a cracked cylinder head but let me just post what happened.  I am driving through Nebraska and got a call so instead of staying in the restaurant and taking the call, I jumped into the car and idled and had the AC running for 20 minutes in the noonday heat.  I noticed the AC was off and just the blower/fan and then noticed the temp was not in the middle, like always, but in the red, with the light on. All the way in the red. Instead of turning the car off, I started driving to get some air in it and it got worse, so I stopped the car, opened the hood, and there was coolant all over the inside of the hood/bonnet. The temp gauge went all the way to hot and turned off, actually. And stayed all the way right.  I had a rural mechanic come over and look at it and it had cooled but there was no coolant in the reservoir.  I drove 1/2 mile to the garage and their first diagnosis is a crack in the Radiator Coolant Overflow Tank, which I will replace, so they can do the test to see if it is, in fact, just that crack or if the pressure backup from a cracked cylinder head.  What is your intuition.  I know that I should not have been idling in 100F heat in the car with the AC on — and I also know that I should have turned the car OFF when I saw the overheat and left it there for at least 1/2 hour.  But I didn’t.  But I will do from now on.  What does your intuition say? Replace the Radiator Coolant Overflow Tank or the whole engine?

They’re going to check a couple things to make sure there’s structural damage to the engine — a real possibility — or if replacing the cracked Radiator Coolant Overflow Tank with the one that I ordered and had drop-shipped from 1A Auto (I had a feeling right away that Bob wouldn’t be able to find one so I made sure there was a plan B) fixes everything or will I need to take advantage of my 200 mile tow with AAA Premiere and have her towed to Tom Dinsdale BMW in Grand Island, Nebraska, for some more serious work.

Wish me luck!

And yes, indeed, I am still in Ogallala, Nebraska, where everyone’s really nice and friendly and the beds in the Comfort Inn are the comfiest because they all have pillowtops. I am sleeping like a very worried and neurotic baby.

Back in July of 2009 I wrote about Scitable for AdAge Digital, A New Model for Digital Publishing … From an Academic Journal?, and have so much to tell you about it — and I am driving Ed Zitron crazy to write the follow-up article — but I have been so busy that I have not had the time.  So, to throw this amazing company a bone, here’s their latest news:  Nature Education’s Scitable Launches Mobile Version to Broaden Global Access to Science Information

Cambridge, MA – August 25, 2010 – Nature Education, the educational wing of global science publisher Nature Publishing Group, today announced the launch of the mobile version of the open-access science library Scitable. Scitable’s free library of scientist-authored overviews of key concepts in the life sciences is now accessible to users on a broad range of mobile devices, including the iPad, Android, Blackberry, and basic feature phones.

“Our mission is to democratize access to science education” said Vikram Savkar, SVP & Publishing Director at Nature Publishing Group. “Through our website, we’ve grown to reach more than 500,000 life science students in 165 countries. However, we’ve been working to find a way to put our high quality content library in the hands of the millions of students throughout the developing world who don’t have consistent access to personal computers or broadband.  With the launch of our mobile site, any student with a cell phone, even a very basic device, has access to a simplified version of the site that includes a wealth of quality, citable information. At the same time, students in the U.S. and similar countries who have feature-rich smartphones or iPads will have access to a more robust version of Scitable, with full video/audio capabilities, built-in glossary, and in some cases full ability to network with thousands of researchers and fellow students.”

Scitable, launched in 2009, combines a library of science education resources in the life sciences with classroom management tools and a collaborative community of scientists, instructors, and students.

For more information about Scitable, visit http://www.nature.com/scitable.

About Nature Education
Nature Education, the educational division of Nature Publishing Group, is dedicated to developing innovative science education resources for undergraduate and high school science students and faculty.

About Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a publisher of high impact scientific and medical information in print and online. NPG publishes journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical, and applied sciences and clinical medicine, including Nature (founded in 1869), the leading weekly, international scientific journal, and Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the US and the leading authoritative publication for science in the general media. Online, nature.com provides over 5 million visitors per month with access to NPG publications and online databases and services. Part of Macmillan Publishers Limited, NPG is a global company with principal offices in London, New York, and Tokyo, and offices in cities worldwide including Boston, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Hong Kong, Madrid, Barcelona, Munich, Heidelberg, Basingstoke, Melbourne, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, and Washington DC. For more information, visit www.nature.com.

Anyway, I still want to write that article — and plan to — so to Ed Zitron and Vikram Savkar, bear with me — your platform and mission and your vision are so admirable that I can’t just dash it out.

Hopefully I will have the time to spend more time with the notes and emails and the press releases you have sent me and I will be able to convince other people why I believe Scitable is such an amazing, essential, and game-changing venture for the future of science education — and a model for all forms of education, an exemplar for the future of teaching.

I personally believe that 2010 is the year of mobile-centrism: location-awareness, mobile media-consumption, and real-time communication.  Great corroborating news from Pandora (a service I don’t use but people love): Pandora: 24% Of Our Users Signed Up on a Mobile Phone:

Fully half of the company’s first-time users are now signing up via mobile devices, he told me, and since Pandora arrived on the iPhone in July 2008, 9 million people have created new accounts on smartphones, including iPhones, BlackBerrys, Palm and Android phones. That’s 24 percent of Pandora’s total user base, which is currently at 38 million and growing. Pandora has been installed on 13 million smartphones to date, meaning that about 70 percent of its smartphone users didn’t have desktop accounts previously.

Twitter For Dummies should be called Twitter for Everyone. I may be considered a pretty heavy Twitter user and was #herebeforeoprah but even I really enjoyed getting into the heads of Laura @pistachio Fitton, Michael @gruen Gruen, and Leslie @geechee_girl Poston.

If I were to boil Twitter for Dummies down, I would say that you can’t dumb down Laura, Michael, or Leslie — they’re leaders in Twitterville and you really cannot be disappointed if you grab the book.

For me, the entire book only took me the length of a Hollywood movie to read because I am pretty advanced; however, I must say that I they threw in kitchen sink in this book, extending into lesser-used features such as the Public Timeline and really geeky command-line access to Twitter such as “d chrisabraham” or “follow chrisabraham,” etc.

In fact, there’s a whole chapter on rocking Twitter via SMS text-messaging, something that may be less relevant to the Twitterati but is very important to 75% of all cell phone users (and yes, I did make up that nuber, I think it is closer to 90%) who don’t rock smartphones — just be sure to make sure you get the unlimited texts plan if you plan to go with SMS or you’ll be screwed.

Of course, everything is covered and covered again and you really need to be a moron if you can’t sort yourself out with Twitter by the end of Part III — but this is Twitter for Dummies and not Twitter for Morons (and, publishers, I am super interested in writing that book — also, Twitter for Effen Morons) so there you go — it is what it is. (Strangely enough, however, is that there isn’t one mention of my beloved Android G1 phone! There’s mentions of the iPhone, the Blackberry, and even Javascript phones but where the hell’s my G1! OK, I am done.)

Well, at the start of this review, I said this was all about Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen, and Leslie Poston, and it is, but there’s not a whole lot of them in I-III chapters. Part IV is when all the good stuff comes a-pouring through. Who else but the best of the best would engage issues like “Finding Your Tweet Voice,” “Twitter for Business,” “The Social Side of Twitter,” and “Changing the World, One Tweet at a Time.”

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to rename this book from “Twitter for Dummies” to “Twitter for Everyone: From Total Newbie to Total Rockstar.”

(Via Socialmedia.biz and Marketing Conversation)

Abraham Harrison‘s favorite Intern, Miss Liza Peiffer, wrote a post over at Marketing Conversation because I asked her to.  Mr. Bob Garfield has asked me to blog over at his new book’s new blog, the Chaos Scenario blog, and I seem to be a blank.

So, I was on a call yesterday with Ken Pearce of HMH and after I shared a little bit about what we do at Abraham Harrison, he said, without knowing that I have been tapped by Bob, “this reminds me of Bob Garfield’s new book, Chaos Scenario.”  What?

Well, I asked Liza to please dig through the entire site to collect all the poop she can on the project to help give me the confidence to man up and contribute!  I mean, how intimidating, right? Bob Garfield of On the Media (awesome), AdAge’s The Boboshere, and Comcast Must Die!  A living legend.

Well, Liza did a phenomenal job, if I do say so myself, We’re living in The Chaos Scenario’s “Brave New World”:

So I wrote a short blog about the decline of newspapers a few days ago, and blogger Liz commented and referenced Bob Garfield’s “The Chaos Scenario” (thanks, Liz).  More specifically, she mentioned the chapter “The Death of Everything,” which surprisingly makes reading about the demise of everything we’ve known for the past 100 years quite pleasurable.

“The digital revolution is already having far-ranging effects on every aspect of our lives, from socialization to communication to information to entertainment to democracy, and these Brave New World effects will only be magnified as the Cowardly Old World collapses before our eyes. Not that this will happen. This is happening. Right now.”

This quote from the Garfield’s introduction is one of the best ‘in a nut shell’ explanations of what we’re dealing with.

It is not a matter of how quickly technology advances, but rather how quickly new generations can overturn the old ones.

Think of this “Brave New World” as the new frontier in the Old West.  Not everyone has arrived, but eventually it will be fully populated.  Everyone will be comfortable in their online communities functioning together like the Internet has existed since the dawn of time. Very soon no one will see the frontier as scary or an uncharted territory.  I’m mainly referring to Baby Boomers and older who are the most likely to resist the digital revolution, although many are active participants.

The new generations are completely digitally trained, almost born with a cell phone in hand.  I know my cousin was texting in the 4^th grade.  I didn’t get a cell phone until 7^th grade, and even at that age it was such a privilege (and really ugly, too).  Garfield says that “just as young people no longer listen to the radio, they simply don’t buy newspapers.”   Not only newspapers, but the young will dictate what happens to other industries like music and television as they grow up and replace those who still cherish records and their un-flat screen TVs.

More important in The Chaos Scenario is the realization that advertising once ruled.  It’s now having trouble keeping itself and its media children alive.  With television fragmentation and the decline of radio popularity, people see advertisements as pests more than ever.  No longer does your music have to be rudely interrupted by Dr. Swartz’s miracle pill, just hit shuffle on your iPod and relax.  You never have to suffer through watching another toothpaste commercial while waiting for your show to return just “use TiVo to skip past the ads.”  Many refrain from advertising in these places if no audience is even being reached.

“The unspoken compact between media and consumers — having to endure commercial messages as the quid pro quo for free or cheap content — has never applied to Generation Y and will be difficult to impose ex post facto. Never mind that the generation’s intellectual-property ethos — ‘All Content Wants to be Free’ — is stupid and criminal on the face of it. They truly believe that malarkey, and aren’t apt to change their minds.”  So I say good luck ads, there’s a rough road ahead and it doesn’t appear those Ys will show you any mercy.

Go read the intro on The Chaos Scenario site, because that’s all you need to want a copy of your own (right hand column, CHAOS ON US).

I didn’t do the book justice nor did I scratch the surface of its enlightening perspective into the crazy media world we’re living in.  Remember, “This is happening. Right now.”

Part of having an intern is trying to figure out what cool things she gets to do every day so we have Miss Liza Peiffer writing for Marketing Conversation.  Now we’re conspiring to fill her CV with lots of cool experience — my entire team is conspiring!  Tonight, though, I got a gift in the form of the interview that Liza did of me last week.  What I love about this post is that while it may be her interviewing me about social media, it is also a pretty awesome analysis in its own right — she really groks it!  I am very happy to have her on our team! Learn more about Liza here.

Social Media Marketing: The lovechild of work and play? With some thoughts from Chris Abraham

Where is social media going? Everyone has their opinions, but no one really knows. Still, it sure is fun to predict.  I took some time to talk to Chris Abraham, your favorite Marketing Conversation blogger,  about a little of what he sees in his crystal ball for social media.

But before you can reach the future, I suppose you begin with the past and present.

Chris was part of an online community back in 1984. We’re talkin’ when Ghostbusters premiered, Madonna was still “Like a Virgin” and when we were first introduced to the Macintosh computer.  He continued to work on online community development in the 1990s with The Meta Network (TMN), an offspring of the pioneering Caucus Systems, and basically watched online networking grow from a baby into what it is today.  As President and Founding Partner of Abraham Harrison, LLC that specializes in Digital PR and everything social media, I think it’s safe to say Chris Abraham has earned his expertise. (Find out more about Chris Abraham in his official bio).

Recently, Chris has been personally invited by Bob Garfield, co-host of NPR’s “On the Media”  and writer of “Ad Review” on Advertising Age, to blog about his third book: The Chaos Scenario, released this past spring.  Because of his innovative and creative approach to marketing, Chris is one of a select few that will have the chance to speak about the book.  Keep an eye out for his posts: http://thechaosscenario.net/blog/.

Ok. Now the future.

The strategy of product/service promotion through social media is becoming contagious among businesses everywhere.  However, with so many companies taking advantage of such marketing, the line between business and pleasure becomes blurred on the Internet. When I questioned if social media culture would eventually merge the two realms for good, Chris noted that the best business people wear both their “bowler hats and baseball caps”–so this fusion is somewhat probable.

In other words, it will become more difficult to maintain two distinct work-home personas if you want to utilize social media marketing to its full potential.

“We hit a point when you put on your suit of armor then have a private, personal life,” he said. “It’s harder to keep that separation for those who embrace social media.”  Chris stresses the importance of being a ‘person’ online as well as in the business world, and without putting yourself out there through means such as social media, “it’s hard to remain relevant” in the workplace.

Chris also says that “portable” sites like Twitter and Loopt (one of his new favorites) are both socially fulfilling and surprisingly good at forming business connections. “It’s strange. Twitter has encouraged more face to face meetings with me.”  He also says that there is “a constant urge to share your narrative,” and asks the question, “how is that going to become easier?” To answer this, Chris suggests it may not even be computers that revolutionize social media, but rather the mobile phone.

Well I completely agree.  We love to tell everyone else exactly what we’re doing at any given moment via Facebook statuses or Tweets or whatever– not to mention the heavy sharing of personal pictures.  Does anyone necessarily care if you just ate really good macaroni and cheese? Maybe if you’re Miley Cyrus they do? Hmm.  But regardless of who you are, real time sites satisfy people’s need to instantly connect to the world.  If this is what people crave more of, then this is what they’ll get.

Read one of Chris’ blogs comparing Twitter and SecondLife if you haven’t yet:

He sates in the blog: “The biggest mistake that social network services and online virtual communities make is being too invested in the outcome of how the community will grow and develop. To be successful in community development and community creation, one must be committed to the communit y and meeting their needs versus being committed to giving them what the community producer thinks the community wants and needs — often very different things.”  So considering this, I’d say that the future of social media is in the hands of those who use it.  If portability and simplicity are what works, then that will be what sticks.  If people find it beneficial to wear both their “bowler hats and baseball caps” from a business perspective, then that will become the growing trend.

And this is why marketing through social media flat out works—it targets people.

So when the dawn of technology fed the public with fear that humans would eventually become too impersonal, it seems it will cause just the opposite to happen. Or who knows, maybe in 100 years we will be marrying robots…but that’s a different story.

Whether it sets out to distort the distinction between what is professional and what is personal (the value of which is subjective) or continues to make people bigger and our world smaller, the online community is one hell of a place to live.

I have been selling SEO and online reputation management services since 2003 and I have been using SEO strategies since 1997. I have been doing “social media” on The Meta Network and ArtsWire since 1993, when it was called “virtual community” and only nerds did it. Actually, before then. In 1982 I was all about the ANSI BBS dial ups in Honolulu! Well, anyway…

Well, this afternoon, DomBrady said, on Twitter, “I had no idea there were so many Social Media marketers and SEO folks until twitter picked up last year,” and I replied, “@DomBrady There are a lot of SEO ‘experts’ out there. Not that many gurus, though. Lots of hustlers out there. Look for references.”

Well, this seems to be something that is in the minds of many people on Twitter and online. I tell my clients, “those folks who sold cell phones, then got Microsoft Certified, then became Mortgage Brokers, are now reinventing themselves as SEO and SEM experts. Be sure to check references.

Well, Kat French has it right when she wrote this over at 5 Social Media Topics I Could Do Without:

1. Fake, sleazy, bad or just under-qualified, social media “experts.” Yes, I know they’re out there. Yes, it’s irritating. Yes, it makes it even harder for experienced practitioners to get credibility. Stop whining already. Life coaches, massage therapists, yoga instructors, SEOs, real estate agents and a dozen other career fields have been dealing with the same issue for way longer. All of them (except maybe SEOs) have realized ignoring them and doing great work is the best policy. Let’s follow suit.

. It took me while to figure out how to make my Skype ID hyperlink, <a href=”callto:chrisabraham”>chrisabraham </a>.  It renders as chrisabraham.

Makes sure you select “Associate Skype with callto: links” in the Skype Menu>Tooks>Options>Advanced options.

It also works with telephone numbers like +1 (202) 352-5051 if you have SkypeOut. <a href=”callto:+12023525051″>+1 (202) 352-5051</a>.

Cover of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

I picked up the book Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold at Barnes and Borders the other day and am through some of it… But partway through I did what I always do — I see if I can SMS all of my friends to their cell phones.

I have SMS down (even though I am too old) because I dig this kind of stuff. I use T-Mobile and have a “world phone” using GSM. Periodically I try to get this kind of stuff to work — send out GSM SMS messages — but in the past, there has always been a US-based interoperability problem — the different service providers (T-Mobile (nee VoiceStream), Verizon, Sprint PCS, etc) could not text to eachother unless they used an email gateway, which is not texting/SMS but emailing.

SMS doesn’t work the same way email does. The way email works is similar but based on a different standard. SMS is based on your mobile phone number, and instead of using a top-level domain (.com) and then a domain name (zdev), an @-sign, with the user name (chris), an SMS address is based on a country code (+1 for the US, +44 for the UK, etc), your city code (202 for DC, 171 for London, etc), and your mobile number as sopposedly — or so the GSM-standard was supposed to go — a Global phone and texting number. My phone can be sent a Short Message here in Washington, in London, Berlin, etc, all with the same number, +12023525051. As in all things telephony, we in the US have been stuborn and have been trying to implement our own Standards. T-Mobile (nee VoiceStream) and AT&T are two examples of US-based companies that have embraced GSM (albeit at a different Frequency (1800MHz instead of 900MHz) — nothing’s perfect) and I am sure there will be others.

While I was reading Smart Mobs while at the reception area awaiting my Mum’s check up, I sent out a barrage of SMS text. I was received by 2/3 of the receipients, from Verizon to a friend in London, to another T-Mobile. I don’t know what the other services are, but the funny thing is that for 2/3rds of the people who could receive my SMS I was their first, and for that 2/3rds, 2/3rds called me to tell me that they had received the message, now knowing how to use the texting part of the mobile. Quelle Bizarre! You can SMS me at +12023525051 and I can reply!

I have been a pretty happy customer of AT&T Wireless since 1996 and have had very much the same phone the entire time. First it was the Nokia 6160 and now it is the Nokia 5160 with an orange face plate. It might be the perfect phone, but I am aching to add a load of cool features to my mobile that the 5160 cannot support.

I have been pretty excited when looking around at all the cool technology available in Europe, and especially about the Japan’s iMode ala DoCoMo.

I ache for SMS and Web Clipping and WAP and file access and GPS and whatnot. Many of these things have been available in Euroville since 1995-1996, but GSM is pretty new here.

So, Sprint PCS has a lot of bells and whistles, but I am the kind of man who likes the way the Nokias and (less so) the Ericsson handsets look and feel.

I was looking at Voice Stream wireless and didn’t quite know what to do, although I might have my eye on the Ericsson T28 World phone.

Any advice on Mobile Phone services providers and plans and World Service? What kind of experiences have you had with your WebPhone and whatnot?