For the longest time, I’d been using the registered Lockergnome logo for my projects. Then, someone designed a “cool” Chris Pirillo logo – and I started to use that one with more personal endeavors. Dunno. I’m having fun with both of ‘em! One’s a bit more cartoony, and the other is a bit more comicky. Dean Bailey took the time to share his thoughts regarding the use of these logos on real-world products. His email gave me a few chuckles…

In response to your query about the marketability of Chris Pirillo throw pillows, I have to confess that I wouldn’t buy one. I also wouldn’t buy a finder pillow, a Tux pillow, or any other sort of product like that. They’re unfortunately just too much geek for me despite me not only trying very hard to be the best geek I can be, but always wishing I was even better than I am in that respect.

I say this as a fellow Apple fan, however, I have to admit that if there was a slick enough Gentoo logo pillow and it didn’t involve a trip to the post office to pick it up, even though I’m not even running it on anything right now, then I would by a couple of them – if I had a place to put them and my wife let me decorate. It’s something I might even consider doing without consulting my wife or refusing to move the pillows if she didn’t like them.

My main reason for writing, other of the ramble, was to recognize that despite it being something that there may not be a big market for, that there indeed would be one I would imagine. I wouldn’t know what the profitability (or lack of it) would be for you, obviously. More importantly, I thought I should emphasize that the ‘cool Chris’ logo seems to me to be a better marketable item than the ‘fuzzy Chris’ from Lockergnome. If I were to get lost in geek products to the extent of Pirillo throw pillows, I’d want a more tightly crafted ‘Cool Chris’ pillow with a bit of stiffness to them in comparison to the Mac icon pillows, and if I wanted a fuzzy Chris pillow then I’d prefer it to be bigger and fluffy.

The size in your video made the Mac icon pillows look not really functional. As a guy, when buying a functional and comfortable pillow to mould to the shape of my back or stick between my legs while watching a movie, or lay my head on or whatever, I’d rather it not have another dude’s face on it. If the pillow was round and stiff that I could prop a little of my arm on it or stick a corner behind my back, or when I did lay my head on it I found it wasn’t incredibly comfortable, then that would feel more acceptable to fearing what people might think about my geeky affair that I may or may not have with the soft and comfy Pirillo pillows I have on my couch… or worse, on my bed, which by the way is a place they would never be.

I think you’d have to go with the cool Chris pillows that were stiff and shaped like a really short cylinder rather than a shape that just involved two pieces of round material.

Most importantly, as for ‘Cool Chris’ vs ‘Comfy Lockergnome Chris’, I think you’re really short changing yourself by believing that cool Chris is too much. We are geeks, we know we are cool, you have made a thus far successful business of just being yourself as it looks from outside appearance and while there might be women out there that would think a soft squishy Pirillo pillow is cute, funny, lovable, and even sexy, there’s a lot more guys out there who know that despite you appearing to be a physically skinny guy, that like every other red blooded male in the world (and especially geeks) you are a master in Jedi mind tricks, Bruce Lee-style kung fu, and Samurai-sword fighting because every geek out there is naturally skilled at these things through visual osmosis – and has many hours of real life practice with all of these things, and The Force, through all the time we spend working at developing our skills while we dream at night even if we don’t even remember those dreams in which we train to be true masters.

To many people out there, you are a god among dorks. Sorry to word it like that, but I can’t really qualify you as a god among geeks without qualifying myself as a real wanker – since no one is a god, but the point is that there’s a lot of people that look up to you and a lot of them would presumably, by the nature of being a fan, have at least some part of their self image invested in you as the centerpiece of your web based community.

I can’t tie all this crap together. I’ll just say short and simple that you know full well that the cool Chris pillows are just as justifiable in design of persona and furthermore if you can without your head getting too big then its probably good for others. It seems like there’s indeed a place for both presentations of yourself but that “Fluffy Cute Chris” might not be the best thing for a Chris Pirillo fanatic to be looking forward to in the mail, maybe a cool Chris though, if you are actually going to do it.

Now that I’ve typed this, it seems all of a sudden incredibly irrelevant, its still my opinion though, and you asked.

So, the question remains: should we put my caricature’d face on pillows?

• Where Can You Download a Company Brand or Business Logo?
• Your Audience Doesn’t Know About You
• Microsoft Windows Accurate Naming Platform
• Do You Want to Have a Pillow Fight?
• Google Hates Apple
• What is Brand Loyalty?
• Want Your Face on a Color-Changing Mug or T-Shirt?
• Digg is Worth More than $60m
• Decompressing
• My Caricature

This is Mark Davidson’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

What do Apple Macintosh users and Harley Davidson owners have in common? Those products have become a part of people’s lives and self-identity. They feel a sense of ownership in the company. They form communities around the product, and in essence become salespeople and marketers for the product. They have a fierce loyalty, and they are vocal about it.

Ideally, as successful business owners we should want people to feel a sense of ownership in our sites and blogs. We should want our social media sites to be a part of their lifestyle. One of the ways to accomplish this is to create a sense of community and inclusion. The goal should be that our users should feel as though they are not only part of something bigger than themselves, but something that they feel they are invited to join.

It’s important that we figure out ways to promote communication between users on our sites. We should arm them with promotional tools to help promote our sites—for example, by creating a widget (clickable button) for their blogs that link back to our sites. Another example is that one day a week, we could host an open comment night on our blogs where users can ask questions, give suggestions, communicate with other users, and interact with them online. We could then additionally interview different users on our blogs, and by doing so we can take an active interest in the lives and businesses of people who are not only interested in us, but in others with similar interests. It allows for the creation of a cyber-fanbase-community, much like those that Apple and Harley-Davidson have.

We can also start looking to identify things that our users have in common and help them to make connections with each other. This is similar to how sites like Facebook and Ning help create a sense of community among users by allowing users to create groups. Another thing sites like those have deployed successfully is to allow users to search for each other by interests, occupation, marriage status, and geographical location.

Businesses could also encourage and foster meetups based on their social network—this way users can meet each other face to face. The more we can promote communication and interaction between our users online, the greater the sense of community they will feel. This is critical to both retaining active users and having our users virally market our sites through word of mouth. Mini Cooper is unusually adept at this, and have both regional and international meetups on a regular basis that are based on online social networks.

If you have a social networking site, you’ll want to make it easy for your users to invite their friends, family, and work associates to use your site. However, there’s a lot to be said about initial exclusivity and creating desire. One of the things that Google did right with Gmail was to make it exclusive. Google gave each person a limited number of email invites to give out to friends. When Gmail first launched, a buzz was created online as people actively sought out invites.

Remember, each mention of your site on a message board or social media site is a mini-advertisement. The more we can get users to talk about our sites and blogs in their emails, IMs, social media sites, message boards, and blogs, and the more we can get users to mention our brand(s), the quicker we’ll see our user bases grow and the more active users we will be able to retain…and the more customers and clients we will reach.

As successful business owners, we should want to engage people, create two-way dialogs, encourage participation, listen, and respond. The only way to create a sense of ownership in our sites and blogs is actually to give away ownership. Let others have the spotlight. Our blogs are not about our egos. Our blogs are about our audience and readers. They aren’t about us.

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What happens when you need to find a graphic… let’s say a logo for a company? You might go online and do an image search. The problem with that is that you’re not finding the high-quality logos that you most likely need. Now what do you do?

In this case, you’ll want to turn to a website that I found out about years ago. Scott emailed me the link to BrandsOfTheWorld, which has vector and high-res logos for many big name companies. I found out about this site several years ago, when I was putting together the second Gnomedex convention. Microsoft is one of our annual sponsors, and we were having trouble downloading a graphic they were sending us to use. We found the perfect high-quality version we needed over on Brands of the World. Since we already had permission from Microsoft to be using it, we simply saved it from there. It made our job much easier in that instance.

You’ll never find a better repository for this type of image. Pretty much everything you can think of, you’ll find. You can download the images with relative ease, for free. If I’m looking for a company logo, this is the website I head off to. If you’re in any kind of print work, you’ll want to bookmark this website.

• Stock Photo Expert.
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Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hDR7nIkxy1g"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hDR7nIkxy1g" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a>

• Chris Pirillo vs Lockergnome Logos
• How to Create an Icon
• Do You Want to Have a Pillow Fight?
• Google Hates Apple
• What is Brand Loyalty?
• Want Your Face on a Color-Changing Mug or T-Shirt?
• Your Audience Doesn’t Know About You
• Microsoft Windows Accurate Naming Platform
• Digg is Worth More than $60m
• Decompressing

For months, I’ve been claiming that brand is becoming increasingly decentralized – and emails like this further prove it:

My name’s Ewan and I’m in rainy Scotland, in the UK. I just wanted to let you know that I’m a fan of your show and tell you how I got into it. I don’t usually have the time unfortunately to stay in the chat room or watch the live stream but I do drop by occasionally and I watch the videos through the RSS feed in Firefox. The reason I became interested in the show was through the laptop giveaway. I didn’t “apply” to win the laptop, but I think I was looking for a laptop at the time (still am, think I want a MacBook :D). and somehow I stumbled upon to your giveaway and followed the links back to your main site and the live stream. I think it’s a pretty interesting setup you’ve got going, and whilst I find I already know a lot of what you cover in the videos, they’re still entertaining and usually present a different angle from what I’m used to. I’m actually a student at high school (17), and I do a lot of technical stuff within the school and do advanced higher computing studies as well.

Anyway, I digress. I just wanted to drop you a line to say how I got into the show (that might help you “target your marketing” as it were), and to encourage you to keep up the good work. I understand you probably get a lot of emails every day so don’t worry if you don’t have time to reply, but if you get the chance it would be nice to hear from you.

If you’re a videocaster, podcaster, videoblogger, etc. – you need to have a live presence, and you need to be pushing your stuff onto YouTube in some capacity. Your audience is still trying to discover you, but you have to go to where THEY are and not expect them to come to you in any other way.

• Chris Pirillo vs Lockergnome Logos
• Microsoft Windows Accurate Naming Platform
• What is Brand Loyalty?
• Where Can You Download a Company Brand or Business Logo?
• Digg is Worth More than $60m
• Decompressing

Which sounds more exciting to you: “Atlas” or “ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions?” I certainly understand the need for having descriptive product names – but I still call “Windows Presentation Foundation” by its original (beta) title. Not only is “Avalon” easier to type, but it’s easier to remember as well. Why does Microsoft suck at naming things? Simple: partners and platforms typically come before the user.

And lest you think I’m insane, think about why “Xbox 360″ wasn’t called “Microsoft Windows Media Extender Games and Entertainment Edition.”

I hear all this talk about how Zune is going to kill the iPod, but… that really remains to be seen. The only thing that’s going to kill the iPod is the iPod itself. At least “Zune” sounds better than what “Zune” rumors to be. But it’s not too late! I’m willing to bet that Zune will be renamed “Microsoft Portable Windows Media Wireless Extender Networking Pocket Communications Edition” before it actually sees the light of day.

• Chris Pirillo vs Lockergnome Logos
• Your Audience Doesn’t Know About You
• What is Brand Loyalty?
• How Did Your Parents Find Your Baby Name?
• Where Can You Download a Company Brand or Business Logo?
• Digg is Worth More than $60m
• Decompressing

The Kevin Rose cover story in BusinessWeek magazine has been receiving a lot of attention in the blogosphere. The cover claims that “This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months.” Pundits are largely taking umbrage, as collected by ValleyWag:

• How Paul Scrivens, Mike Rundle, Colin Devroe, and Tyme White All Made Billions In 12 Months
• The Users shouldn’t be paid… but I’ll take $60M
• Business Week on the Valley Boys
• The New Brat Pack of Silicon Valley
• Forget Paper Millionaire, Digg Founder’s A Vapormillionaire
• OMG, Like, Totally, Digg
• Don’t believe BusinessWeek’s bubble-math

I agree with what some of these guys are saying: the number is wholly inaccurate. Kevin and the Digg brand are likely worth twice that amount.

1. Community is worth its weight in gold. So, let’s have every Digg member submit their weight and then compare that resulting number to today’s gold prices. My guess is that it’s slightly more than $60m $200m. Bubble or no bubble, COMMUNITY LIKE THIS DOES NOT DISAPPEAR!!!
2. Brand is worth twice the amount of your community. Again, let’s do some weight measurements here.
3. Kevin’s a good guy – genuinely. I knew this from the first time I met him on the Call for Help set (he was sitting with Cat and Morgan in the chat area for TSS). And you know what? I’ll trade one Kevin for a hundred Silicon Valley snakes any day of the week. A good guy is priceless (especially in this industry).
4. I bet any businessperson on this planet would give up their testicles (or ovaries) to have the power of Digg at their disposal. How much is that worth? Digg is just getting warmed up.
5. Let’s just stop and think about how much revenue has been generated from the sites that have been digg’ed. Not Digg, itself – the pages that get featured. That number is likely in the millions, I’d imagine.

Now, for those who would quibble over BusinessWeek using the word “made,” I offer you a definition from Answers.com. According to them, “made” is an adjective:

• Produced or manufactured by constructing, shaping, or forming
• Produced or created artificially
• Having been invented
• Assured of success

Uh huh… so, what’s the problem with “made” here? As with any word defined in the English language, it only needs to assume a single meaning. I read it as “Assured of success.” And yes, I believe that Digg (and its entire community) is worth more than $60m $200m today. Then again, I’m an idealistic sonofabitch. Even if Kevin was a billionaire, I’d still insist on buying lunch for him.

I went back and corrected the numbers – though my position still stands. The value of both Rose and Digg are beyond imagination.

• Decompressing
• Walk Loud and Carry a Soft Stick
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• The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth
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• Are You a Victim of Wanderlust?
• Unraveling the Mysteries Surrounding Community

OMG, I don’t know where to begin. I have so many posts that need to be written, and so many emails that I need to respond to within the next couple of days. I love the Lockergnome community dearly, but I absolutely [insert stronger-than-love word here] the Gnomedex community – two separate communities with very little crossover. It will soon be time for me to elevate the Lockergnome brand to the Gnomedex level. I can’t wait. I’m drained, but (at the same time) energized. I’m tired, but (at the same time) fully aware. So many conversations, so many experiences, so many ideas, so many possibilities. Thank you, everyone.

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