Nicholas Putz | Digital Strategy | Milwaukee

Picked up my new iPhone 5s today and replaced my iPhone 4s. What an incredible difference. So far my favorite part of this phone is the slo-mo video feature. Here are some samples of me playing with my 10.5 month old dog in the yard. 

Slo-mo iPhone 5s with Patrick from Nicholas Putz on Vimeo.

Playing a game with Patrick from Nicholas Putz on Vimeo.

Playing games with my 10.5 month old dog Patrick and using the iPhone 5s slo-mo video wit olloclip

Having a little problem recently with Google Chrome and YouTube being insanely laggy and annoying? Well, there's a fix for that. 

In your address bar, type: chrome://plugins

Next, Disable the following: 

Chrome Remote Desktop Viewer

Adobe Flash Player

Warning: Some videos will work, some will not.

You should be good to go, otherwise!

Oh yeah... don't forget to restart your browser. :)

I decided it would be a good idea to go through the hours of video training and teach myself some pretty great new tools as a digital marketing professional and become HubSpot Inbound Certified through the HubSpot Academy! 

Inbound marketing trends and standards are constantly evolving. I can tell you I certainly learned a lot of great new tactics for moving forward and continue to look forward to learn more as this industry rapidly evolves. 

I'm looking forward to continually staying on top of trends in this industry and applying my knowledge of best practices to clients, colleagues and friends. 

I'm going to be quite brief and to-the-point here.

If you are in college and have no job, no plans to get an internship, or even so much as volunteer at a company in your field of study to gain any real-life work experience, you are going to have a big problem when you graduate.

You see, your diploma is not your passport to a job. It simply fulfills one of the requirements to be considered.

Landing a job is dependent on your ambition and the passion you portray in the industry you want to work in. No experience? Start volunteering. Don't know how to get in? Connect with a manager (On LinkedIn) or C-Level exec at the company and beg to work for free to get the experience. Can't volunteer? Start by becoming an industry expert on your own. Create a blog, join the communities and share your knowledge and experience as you gain it.

Do what you have to do to gain crucial experience while in college. Businesses are no longer looking for graduates who are looking for a "learning experience" on the company dime with no real world experience or signs of passion that you can quickly grow in the role you are applying for. That was your job to do so while in college so you could come to market prepared and ready to contribute to the bottom line and hit the ground running.

Show enthusiasm, drive, and proven ambition to learn and excel on your own time in the market you are most passionate about.

It is hard to imagine, but I along with many of you have had our Facebook accounts for nearly a decade and in that time, so much has changed… and not in a good way. When Facebook first came out, it was for individuals with a college email address to sign up and basically find and make new friends, find dates, or find out about a cool party and just overall have a good time. As with everything with time that has potential to earn a profit from advertising, Facebook had sold their proverbial soul and all of our lives in data form to the devil and the NSA.

The funny thing is that I really don’t care about that so much as I care about the way Facebook has fundamentally altered and destroyed the way we communicate with one another as human beings. It has eroded our personal boundaries, the tact people exercised in person when telling a story, and has made everyone a wanna-be narcissistic celebrity, armchair lawyer, politician and comedian. I myself am in no way innocent of this, but I have come to realize how it’s changed me, and I want to go back to the way things were. When I cared and did not hate what my life was beginning to revolve around much like so many others are allowing today.

I remember being in college and using Facebook as a scrapbook of sorts, to share my party photos and keep the conversation simple with my friends. At the same time, remembering by heart their phone numbers, birthdays, and who we were as people so our online discussions in context were never so egregiously misinterpreted as they are today. A single generation was a part of the original Facebook -- a generation that understood one another at a fundamental level. Then it all changed…

Soon the forum began opening up to people who did not understand technology and how interpersonal communications with the system worked. Once the floodgates had opened, these other generations did not know how to interpret and abide by the inherent rules the original Facebook generation possessed. Grandma started telling personal stories on TGI Friday’s corporate Facebook wall about her colon, mom began scrutinizing and misinterpreting everything you did and said, judging you as a heathen disgrace to the family. Uncle Buck would post perverted comments about the girl you were posing with in a photo at last weekend’s party that you were hoping to ask out on a date. What the hell is happening? Now managing our online lives on Facebook just got that much more difficult.

Then at some point along the way, people lost their couth and standard traditional norms that brought us together as human beings before any of this ever existed. Responding to a Wedding RSVP no longer mattered to them. No, they did not care about the stamp you paid for and so carefully placed on that return envelope. No, these people turned to Facebook to send you an informal, undignified note that they would be attending your jubilee. Of course they never showed up. What would you expect from the ilk of individuals Facebook is morphing into degeneration?

Everyone on Facebook suddenly became a celebrity or 170IQ expert in their own little circle of friends. Arguing and expressing their feelings on political and human rights issues? Let’s be real here for a moment – that brilliant person you’re bantering back and fourth with, is also spending an insane amount of time on Google researching the subject matter further to prove his/her point against yours. Want to take the conversation and debate to a face-to-face meeting of the minds? I can tell you what that would be like - It would be like the Mock-Ing-Bird scene from Dumb & Dumber annoying the living crap out of the one in the middle who can’t stand the garbage that’s coming out of your mouth.

So now we have the biggest website in the world filled with multi-generational communication breakdown, insta-celebrities, armchair politicians, narcissistically hyper-sensitive, uncouth assholes in pissing matches that can’t remember your phone number and don’t know what RSVP means.  

It’s not “cool to not like Facebook.” It’s refreshing to not be a part of a cult-of-personality that has no ability to function socially any more. 

I find myself looking back from the outside now. It’s only been a month since I’ve no longer contributed to “The Social Network” but I can say with a clear conscience that I don’t want to go back. It made me a miserable person. I began to look at what some people have and think to myself “I want that” and maybe get a little sad about it for a moment for some stupid reason. Perhaps you have too. Envy is not a part of what defines me. Why do I give a crap about what these people have? They only show off the superficial parts of their life. Hence why Facebook makes people miserable and think that life is a competition. I have news for you – we all have our own path in life.

I have a great life, I have true friends, I have love, I have a family that cares about me, I have dogs that make every day an adventure, I have a great job, I have reliable transportation, hobbies, and I have a roof over my head.

I see what was happening and it’s no life I want to live for myself and frankly, I don’t want it for anyone else either. I want to be closer to my friends and family like I used to be. I want to be able to pick up the phone and tell a story, listen to theirs, and not assume one another simply read it on their timeline.

That’s why I stopped using Facebook. Unfortunately I need to keep my account active so I can use Spotify.