I have just launched an online bookstore (through Amazon) perfectly filled with titles relating to life working on the web. From new marketing ideas, to working with the Facebook (or Flickr, or…) API - I have it covered.

The Matt Harwood Web Worker’s Bookshelf will have its own nice pretty link on the right, so you can always take a look. I will also post any additional items on this blog as the store grows..

If you have any ideas for books to include in the bookshelf, please do let me know..

OK, so your 30 second ad on television pimping your latest toilet bleach may be as good as worthless at this point. Your audience is actively ignoring your self-obsessed propaganda, and you know it. But it feels too scary to change the approach that has “worked” for decades.

Here’s a tip to make the transition smoother: you can lift that ad out of the useless pile ever-so-slightly by simply giving the viewer an incentive to want to pay attention. Give something back. Free X if you prove you want our product by doing Y. Here’s today’s top tip for saving money on cleaning products. Yes it’s counter-productive, but as our customer we love you and actually care about your experience from an altruistic perspective.

30 seconds of swirls and product images with branding is totally worthless. 30 seconds of improving my life makes me want to say thank you (and likely financially).

Today, I came to the realisation that a sales assistant for my personal bank had tricked me in to upgrading my account, by inflating its benefits, to help her commission quota. I am now offended.

The only viable commission scheme for any type of sales environment is rewarding representatives for doing what a customer wants. For making a customer happy. Not for making the bottom-line happy. Scam-esque sales like this do not help the bottom-line in the changing world of consumers taking charge.

While I’m on the soapbox, it grates me that we are lending money to banks day in day out and they act like they are the ones doing us a favour.

I passed a BT van today, which had the ‘openreach‘ logo delicately sprayed on its wing. I instantly realised my love for the word ‘open’, and became envious of not having the right to the name ‘openreach’ (pretty pathetic, maybe).

You take a word like ‘open’, and every connotation is positive. Open fields for children and dogs to run in. Freedom. Choice. “Go ahead, it’s fine, it’s open”.

Closedreach would be out of business within a quarter.

I’ve just had the frustrating experience of watching “The Truth According to Wikipedia“, featuring Mr Andrew “Buy My Book” Keen. Many of those featured in the video have valuable input, but Andrew seemed to wind me up somewhat (probably his aim).

He calls those that take part in Web 2.0, social media, etc. members of the “Cult of Amateurs”. That without “educated”, “experienced”, “authoritative” experts, the “truth” falls away. I wouldn’t hesitate to place Andrew Keen within the “Cult of Ignorance”.

An educated person does not have anything to university, degrees, 25 years training, or published papers. An educated person is someone that can make sense of valuable information, and apply it in a constructive and appropriate manner. Richard Branson didn’t attend university when society tells us to (and, let’s open our eyes, university is an extended night out on the town, more booze than books).

The main flaw in the argument against democratisation of information is the professed death of truth. To those in the Cult of Ignorance, truth is something definitive and authoritative, spoken by someone who went to Oxbridge and landed a job in the city, to a flock of sheep not trusted enough to speak for themselves. Truth is an absolute statement, albeit conveniently taken from someone just as likely to have the human traits of being mistaken, lying, or both as the next person.

If members of the Cult of Ignorance took a moment to question themselves, they would soon realise that truth is nonexistent (in the terms they talk about it). The closest avenue to truth is always a best guess. What Andrew Keen and his pals don’t realise, is that 10,000 people have better odds of creating that best guess, than one man in a suit trying to protect his status in academic society.

He mentioned that “no one would be interested in what an uneducated kid would want to express”. That “uneducated kid”, of course, being a member of the next generation to take hold of society, once our lot is 6 foot lower, Andrew. Yes, that’s right, us at our desks in our own bubbled-version of the “truth” often live in a different world than the most important generation currently alive, believing that what we know is what they need to know and any attempts to think for oneself must be stopped or woe is us.

I hate giving this guy any attention, but I need an example of a cultist of the ignorant crowd to use. And he was just convenient. For those interested, I’ve no formal qualifications above high school GCSE’s, and didn’t come from a rich family. I could see that university would be too expensive for me, so I took the initiative to find other avenues of education. Last year I earned more than my mother (HR Officer, blue-chip company) and father (Mainframe expert for international bank) combined.

Not to brag, but Andrew Keen and other cultists, you have been disproved a thousand times over.