Heath Ledger's father Kim has stated that little Matilda "will be taken care of".  However, Kim himself has been in litigation with his brothers, who accused him in 1994 of mishandling their grandfather's estate to the extent of $2 million.

This intriguing story also illustrates the importance and difficulty of valuing an estate.  News reports contain estimates from $2.5 million to $20 million, quite a range for an estate that spans at least two countries. 

No word yet on whether litigation will be launched on little Matilda's behalf against her exclusion from her father's estate.  Of course, other Wills may emerge...

Stay tuned.

Chris Graham

This interesting company has created organizational software that is much more than simply another “appointments calendar” program.

During the podcast, Eric pressed his guests on this issue and we were told about all of the different additional add-on features of what is a program designed to help busy families to better organize their world.

There are also additional add-on features with respect to access to the calendar from remote services and eventually access is apparently going to be created through your PDA and/or cell phone.
Famundo emphasizes the fact that the program will help to control and organize all of your family activities. In our busy world, a program of this nature makes a lot of sense to those of us juggling family and work life. As a result, we intend to look into the programming to try it out. Once we have done so, we will report back in a future blog.

All the best, Ian & Suzana.

The challenge is learning to understand what message you need to communicate, rather than the actual presentation of the message itself. Essentially you have to do your best to make sure there is no disconnect between who you are and what you are trying to communicate.

Throughout this podcast, C.C. and Mitch continually impressed the importance of finding the “real you”. In order to successfully accomplish this difficult task, you have to discover what your story is. Mitch makes it clear that a real story lies at the core of any good, transparent and authentic communication piece and the story is generated from your natural passion.

An interesting example of a corporation who has successfully driven home their message is the Harley Davidson Company. They truly tell a story. One would initially assume that the Harley Davidson Company simply manufactures motorcycles. However, they go much further to market their product. In fact, they market their motorcycles as components of a lifestyle founded on American values, specifically power and freedom.

The ultimate marketing goal is to become a mental tattoo on your audience or client base.

We hope that this introduction to the wise words of C.C. Chapman and Mitch Joel has been helpful.

All the best,

Suzana and Ian.

Talkr is a program which takes a RSS feed and converts it into audio.  You can take the feed from a blog or from a media source webpage, such as a headline in the New York Times, and Talkr will pull those feeds every hour and once a new entry is available, the text will be converted into audio format so that it can be listened to at your convenience, just like a podcast.

Another useful source of  Talkr is that you can include a "listen to this" button to your blogpage, and the Talkr program will convert your blogposts into audio and allow those listeners who would prefer to listen instead of read, to access your blog in an audio format.

If you are interested in trying out the program quickly, it is installed on the Talkr blogpage.

Good luck in your review of this interesting and innovative social media tool.

All the Best,

Ian and Suzana

The theme of this book is that big used to matter.  Working for big companies used to be enviable, as big companies could defeat small companies with large marketing and advertising budgets. People were obsessed over the economies of scale and no one ever talked about economies of little.

However,  Seth's view is that when treat people with respect and as individuals, you have the flexibility to react to different changes and circumstances, in a sense you are acting small.

Seth points out that it doesn't matter if you are a big or small businesses, rather he is saying that businesses must focus on how they act, and the way that they operate in their own economic environment. When you act small, you can eventually become big.

Therefore, Seth expresses that in his experience there does not seem to be any core relationship between the size of the business and how the business acts.

One of the significant changes over the past short while, in Seth's view, is that people will now seek out information that they think is either important or interesting to them. As there are more alternatives, people are pickier about what they will participate in. He notes that the minute that you treat the client or consumer like a cog in the wheel, you will find your customer/client immediately looking at another competitive alternative.

Markets are of course the trading of cash and goods and marketing is the art of telling a story people want to hear and believe. Now with the advent of interactive social media, we are beyond the constraints of focus groups and other relatively inexact resources, and when your story (i.e. marketing) is sent out, it is considered, reviewed, commented on,  often in a much broader and more interactive framework, mainly blogging and podcasting.

The challenge is to first craft a story that is authentic and real and then release it to the appropriate business environment, a group of people that want to hear it and have an ability to understand it.

In the process of telling your story/marketing, Seth points out that the story must be clear enough that it can be clearly understood. No one will spread your story/product to friends, if they don't understand it.

Seth uses the example of his own father's business which builds cribs for infants in hospitals. Although his business was growing big, his father had to think outside of the normal business parameters, as his cribs were so well built they were almost indestructible. Brainstorming, he went to one of the nurses at hospital who was a client, and asked her to imagine the perfect infant hospital bed. Those nurses gave his father a comprehensive input which resulted in a $10,000 crib.

This crib however had all the recent technological advancements built in, and while very expensive, the nurses using the bed were so impressed that they became its enthusiastic spokespersons and essentially its most successful salespersons.

The result is that this incredible infant crib has become his father's number one product line.

Seth demonstrated that it is a tremendous asset for businesses to think small and admit at times that you do not have all the answers.

All the best,

Ian and Suzana