Over the weekend I discovered Guy Kawasaki’s 10-minute YouTube video version of his new book Enchantment.

When the book came out I reviewed it on my blog. I loved it, I recommended it, and bought some extra copies for people I work with. It’s very easy to read, and full of good advice. I concluded there:

Guy is preaching what he practices. And, following his own advice, being a mensch, he wants to help you figure it out. And, since he is a gifted communicator, story teller, and simplifier, the book is one of those that I want people I know to read.

And here is Guy himself, with a 10-minute summary:

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If for any reason you don’t get the video here, you can click this link for the YouTube original. You might also like Guy’s own collection of slides and interviews, which is where I found it (with thanks to Guy on twitter).

(Sung to the tune of the old blues song, God Bless the Child (That’s Got His Own))

It’s a simple concept, really: own your own content. It’s like owning your own home. In web terms, that’s owning your own domain. My thanks to Liz Strauss for this back-to-basics common-sense reminder, posted yesterday, called Why It’s Smart to Own Your Content URL, Publish at Home First, and Only Share on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube . The key:

If you’re going to build and share online content, own the url where you house it. Put the link on Facebook, but the content on your own URL.

She quotes the New York Times on Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter. It’s about this:

“I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

Liz points out two problems with that.

First, “we don’t own the keys.” She recalls a painful moment when her site on blogger went down:

I woke up one morning years ago unable to reach my “free” blog because Google owned the server. I wasn’t paying them to serve me. My content was at the mercy of their willingness to keep their tool working and accessible to my readers.

Second, “we give up rights to what we own.” Facebook the like have to cut into your content copyright and ownership with terms of service; they can’t operate without it. So you don’t own them.

Of course, every online tool has to have it’s own rules to protect itself and to maintain its identity. Some of those rules make it deliciously easy to do it their way rather than put in the work to build a “home” of our own. Even the power of their longevity can make the Search Engine listings seem stronger to stay with them.

But the pride and power of ownership allows us to tell our own story in our own way. We can use those other tools to support us in building a powerful presence that is truly our own. But relying on them alone they can become less support and more “just an easy way.”

Liz puts the nugget right into her title: own the content, publish at home first, then link out. That’s good advice.

(Image: Haywiremedia/Shutterstock)

Honestly, I’ve been hearing how technology is going to revolutionize education since I first entered the high-tech world in the late ’70s. And I’m not saying it isn’t going to happen — in fact, I’ve believed it for all these years. The revolution in education is coming. It’s only six months away.

It’s been only six months away for 40 years. And it’s still there, just six months away.

For today’s newest note on this, watch this less-than-four-minute YouTube video as the London School of Business and Finance explains how its entire MBA course is going free online (if you don’t see it here, click here for the YouTube original)

And you have to love the Read/Write Web take on this, giving it a Facebook angle: “Study for Your MBA Via a Facebook App.” Apparently the courses are free, but the certification costs money; not a bad compromise, I think.

I’d like this to happen. It makes so much sense, transporting ideas via web logistics instead of having human bodies sitting in seats all the time. I’m in favor. I’ve done lots of webinars, online classes and so on. I’ve done conference-call elevator speech judging and, more recently, an online entrepreneurship curriculum. Still, changes in education — well, the structure of education, the institutions of education, the techniques of education — come very slowly. In my opinion.

Yes, a select few real people are making good money on YouTube, at least according to this Meet the YouTube Stars post on Yahoo Finance. Here’s the lead:

There are 10 independent YouTube stars who made over $100,000 in the past year, according to a study done by analytics and advertising company TubeMogul.

Yahoo Finance lists the 10 people, describes their videos, and estimates their annual revenues.

I don’t want to be too cynical here, but still, if this strikes you as easy money, think again. By my rough calculation, the odds of making more than $100K per year on YouTube are about the same as winning the lottery or finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Still, there you are. Some people are making good money on YouTube.

What’s much more interesting to me, from a business and entrepreneurship point of view, is all of the companies using YouTube as part of business strategy. Think about the Old Spice Guy series, which has doubled revenues for Old Spice in recent months. That’s where the real pot of gold is. And where it’s much more accessible.

A lot went on this week at Google’s developer conference in San Francisco. Google TV, for example (video below). I’ve got Comcast DVR and Roku these days, plus an iPad, and I’ve gone through ReplayTV and Tivo. But I guess I can’t get enough of this stuff, because now I want Google TV. Consider the video here (and if it doesn’t show, click here for the original on YouTube):

That’s only part of it. The rest of the story, as ReadWriteWeb put it, is Whoa . . . Chrome Makes an App Store for the Web where we see something like the upscale phone app stores showing up soon for Google Chrome, the Google browser. The Read/Write post summarized:

Chrome, Google’s web browser, is now adding an application store to help with discovery and sales of web applications.

That’s amazing. Apple’s App Store, the seductive jungle of little bundles of functionality that changed the mobile market, has also changed the open web. As Google said at the event, it can be hard to find good web applications. Now the Chrome App Store will make that easier, including posting user reviews of apps. It will also allow developers to sell full-screen, browser-based web apps. It’s one thing to experiment with charging for web content like newspapers are–but charging for casual consumer-level tech functionality on the web? That’s crazy.

It’s so crazy that it just might work.

Crazy like a fox, maybe. It’s an exciting world for startups. Apple’s products created a booming new app market. Now we have Google’s power joining in. Summary: Whoa!

Are you teaching a class on starting a business? If you are, then I’d like you to be aware of course.bplans.com.

That’s where I’ve put up a full curriculum/syllabus including lesson plans, exercises and assignments, online videos, and more than a dozen PowerPoint slide presentations complete with slide-by-slide notes and distribution-friendly photos and graphics.

This is material I’ve worked on for years, originally just for my own use as I taught a course in starting a business for undergrads at the University of Oregon. I’m not going to be teaching that course this spring, after 11 years of it, because I’m more involved with angel investment via the Willamette Angel Conference. But I do want to make it available to others. Why not?

The whole curriculum is free to professors on that site. And, just so you understand the motivation, yes, the coursework requires Business Plan Pro, Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, and my books the Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan and 3 Weeks to Startup (co-authored with Sabrina Parsons). So my company, Palo Alto Software, does make money by selling those to your students. But we have academic pricing, so your students can get all three for less than the $130 average cost of an entrepreneurship textbook. I’d like to think everybody wins.

That’s at course.bplans.com. You’ll find instructions there to get your free registration as a teacher. This was done especially for SBDCs, members of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, community colleges and undergrad business education classes. We’ve been a sponsor of the ASBDC network for 15 years now and of NACCE for two years; so we like to think we understand those needs.

Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, is one of the most interesting and useful books I’ve read in the last two years. It’s about how we use, lose, push, and forget ideas, stories, news leads and such. In short, how we make ideas stick.

I was browsing the Web over the weekend and found this very good six-minute talk by co-author Chip Heath. It’s a good summary of an important book.

If you can’t see that here, you can click here to go to the original on YouTube.

Remember the (stupid) “out of the box” cliché?  Yeah, I hate it, too . . . but a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities involve fixing broken things. Disruptions under way, and disruptions needed. I’m just thinkin’.

1. Disruption there, waiting for you: YouTube is free, powerful and extremely easy to embed in a website, and almost universal. Can Google support it forever? Can it support itself? Are you working with it yet? Will your competitors work with it?
2. Disruption needed: Textbooks are too expensive. When setting up my start-your-business course, just as an example, my students can get Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start for $18. Most textbooks on entrepreneurship sell for about $120.
3. Disruption disorganized, struggling to be born: something to bring entrepreneurs and investors together that isn’t illegal, isn’t haphazard and works. I’ve posted on this before. Angelsoft.net and thefunded.com are on the way. But seriously, investment falls, recession . . . isn’t it time for something new?
4. Disruption and now what? Doing the hard work in journalism, like investigative reporting, digging and getting paid for it. How’s that going to work in the future? Related note: the Huffington Post has full-time journalists on staff now; is that the news media of the future? (and disclosure: I’m biased; I post (proudly) on Huffpo).
5. Disruption needed: all those good blogs nobody notices. Finding needles in a mountain of needles. The scarce resource is not finding, but sorting through.

So, I do follow my own advice. Yesterday I posted here about how putting video on your site is relatively easy. So today I’m posting this video here. I did it last weekend. I confess; I was motivated in part by wanting to do something with my new FlipHD video camera.

The river seems to drown more people in the slow deep inviting part than in the crashing and splashing white water part. Similarly, unexpected Cash flow problems are more likely to catch the growing company that’s enjoying sudden growth than the declining company that knows it’s in trouble.

Here’s my video explanation of that, as posted on YouTube on Sunday. By the way, you can click here to go to the YouTube original, which includes an HD option.

Denise O’Berry’s post last Friday called Get Your Company on the Online Video Track – It’s Easy on her Just for Small Business blog is a good reminder, with good resources. The key point:

If you’re intimidated by the thought of jumping into the online video pond, don’t be. It’s a piece of cake to do and YouTube simplifies the process for you.

With a simple camera like a Flip and a few minutes, you too can add good value and content to your website or blog.

She also points to this simple YouTube tutorial from Small Business Trends:

If you don’t see it here, you can click this link to see it on YouTube.