slamboard

SEPTEMBER 2007 UPDATE: We now have real pictures of Kimmer. As many people suspected, she is a morbidly obese woman — not the svelte 118-pound diet success she has claimed to be. See the pictures here: Kimmer surveillance picture, Kimmer at the Kimkins.com mail box, more surveillance Kimmer photos.

If you have been in a supermarket checkout line this month, you may have seen a headline on the cover of Woman’s World about an Internet diet phenomenon called Kimkins (the cover breathlessly reads “Better Than Gastric Bypass!”). This cover story helped to fuel over $1 million in sales revenues this month alone for the website Kimkins.com.

Kimkins.com is the home of the Kimkins diet and its mysterious creator, “Kimmer.” Depending on whom you’re talking to in the diet world, Kimmer is a weight loss messiah or a dishonest charlatan. I think maybe she’s both, and I have a unique insight into the controversy.

You see, at the 2006 launch of Kimkins.com my wife Catherine was a 50% partner. The other 50% was owned by the woman known to the rest of the world as “Kimmer.”

The partnership became a series of twists, surprises, triumphs and disappointments that provided a challenging but worthwhile business education to us both — and it’s one hell of an interesting story to boot.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to present the Kimkins.com story in installments as a case study in business partnerships. Tentatively, the road map looks like this:

• Kimkins.com Part I - The Kimkins.com Business Partnership Case Study (this post)
• Kimkins.com Part II - What is the Kimkins Diet and How Did Kimkins.com Get Started?
• Kimkins.com Part III - Kimmer: Who Is She Really?
• Kimkins.com Part IV - The Kimkins.com Early Days
• Kimkins.com Part V - Celebrities on Kimkins?
• Kimkins.com Part VI - The Partnership Buyout and the Post-Buyout Backstabbing
• Kimkins.com Part VII - Business Lessons Learned
• Kimkins.com Part VIII - What Now for Kimkins.com?

Stay tuned for a fascinating inside look at a viral marketing success story that may be a house of cards waiting to tumble.

Next: Kimkins.com Part II - What is the Kimkins Diet and How Did Kimkins.com Get Started?

I have taken up snorkeling as a hobby. I was looking at videos that a SCUBA diver had made in the waters that I play in recently. The diver wrote in his blog that his visit to Gozo had made him change his mind as to where the nearest good diving is from the UK.

Most people think of the Red Sea as the closest and most economical diving trip that offers enough underwater plants and animals to make it worthwhile. I have experienced the life under the Mediterranean and it is amazing. I am sure the Red Sea is spectacular too. Holidayhypermarket.co.uk can hook you up with bargain holidays to Sharm El Sheikh. This is the resort town in Egypt that helped make diving in the Red Sea so popular.

Holidayhypermarket.co.uk has a great holiday search engine that you can use to help you find bargain holidays and late deals from some of Britain’s leading brand Tour Operators such as First Choice Holidays, Thomson and Thomas Cook.

I used the search to find a package that I could recommend. I stayed in Mellieha Bay for a month once. It’s quite a nice spot, except you have to go up a long hill to get to shops and restaurants. During high season though, your every need is catered to near the bay.

Nobody is going to read my blog today unless I am talking about the iPhone. Just about every blogger on the planet will be posting about the iPhone, so my comments will be lost in an ocean of commentary. Ironically, I have just arrived at the point of not caring anymore about the iPhone.

I’m sure it is very nice.

I have another confession to make. I was the owner of a wooden house for about four years without ever buying house insurance. It had wood burning stoves in it. I suppose that, since it did not burn down while I owned it, I technically saved myself hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It really wasn’t a smart risk.

It is against the law to drive a car without some amount of car insurance in most places. I have always complied with these laws. I once had a collision with a lady who was not insured. I was nice enough to pretend that the accident had never happened. The only damage to my car was to the bumper and license plate holder.

I have varied the amount of life insurance that I hold based on how risky my life is. If I was foolish enough to think that there was no risk of me dying tomorrow, I would probably go without insurance.

Check out www.ThriftyScot.co.uk for interesting advice about insurance.

iPhone will have the largest screen of any phone ever. iPhone will have an operating system with the intuitive seamless feel that Apple is famous for. iPhone will not make you feel a deep sense of personal fulfillment. Well, it might… if you are Steve Jobs.

I just read that one function of the phone, making a phone call, takes several steps. That is being pointed to as a disadvantage. I am not so sure that it is. I lend my phone to the kids when they walk dogs for the local SPCA. Once a jumping dog managed to press the call button three times while it was in my kid’s pocket and a call was made to my house. My son was at home and apparently had a 2 minute, 50 cent conversation with a pocket. I like the slide to unlock feature of the iPhone. I wouldn’t be lending any future iPhone to my kids when they walk dogs.

The biggest American city that I have ever spent time in is Seattle. One evening, I went with my colleagues from the Fair Trade Coffee Roastery looking for an authentic and interesting Chinese restaurant in China Town. We weren’t exactly lost on the way there, because we didn’t know where we were going. At one point, my boss asked a homeless guy for directions and one part of the answer was “Don’t go DOWN THERE!!!”

We managed to find a pretty funky place with lots of melamine decor and elderly relatives parked in the corner.

On the way back to out hotel, my boss decided we should go splits on a cab. I opted out saying that I would walk. this was partly because I was being cheap, but I also wanted to ditch the old guys and go clubbing at least one night while I was there. It wasn’t to be that night, because my production manager decided he would walk too. I have made this story a bit long, sorry. The point is the two of us got lost at night in a strange city. It wasn’t that bad, we just ended up walking more than we would have liked.

If I was ever in a situation where I was finding my way through a larger, scarier city, I would want some to play it safe with a map. PublicRoutes.com has a great tool for creating a customized New York city map. You key in your destination and mode of transport and you get the ideal route map.

The coolest thing about the service is that it is available for your PDA. I have often thought that GPS devices were overkill for navigating around a city. PublicRoutes allows you to create a document with the travel information that is relevant to your trip.

I have to wonder if there will be a blip on the graph that tracks absenteeism for white collar workers?

The iPhone are to begin there journey from store shelves to consumer pockets this afternoon.

I will not be in any of those lineups. I am not a sheep. Also, I don’t have $500 cash on hand.

The main focus of FHABook.com is the FHA loan system in the USA. There is a counterpoint and it is the Subprime Loan Market.

The author behind FHABook.com is not too found of the Subprime Loan business and I can’t say that I blame him. Ther is a Current Events entry in Wikipedia about what has been dubbed the Subprime Meltdown. It is very extensive. This FHA blog has posts about news related to this bad circumstance that has resulted in a rash of foreclosures. It also examines efforts to reform government legislation in a way that might help the people who are caught up in this mess.

I entered a contest to win an iPhone. Part of the requirement was to make a YouTube video showing an obsolete phone being either creatively destroyed, or else used for an unconventional purpose.

I couldn’t destroy my phone. I am personally offended by the phone destoying videos. These phones contain some very persistant toxins that are harmful to the environment. I am trying to minimize my carbon footprint. One thing that I will do is keep my old phone until it is so outdated that it cannot be used to make a phone call. I only use my phone for making phone calls.

I noticed that some of the phone smashing videos may have featured fake phones. That’s ingenuity. I think that if I don’t win an iPhone I will buy a toy one this December. That way I can enter another contest a few years down the road an make a video on whatever replaces YouTube where I smash my ‘iPhone’ creatively in hopes of winning whatever is way cooler and newer than the iPhone.

You can find instructions and a download to make your own fake iPhone at the iPhone Blog.

I have a confession to make. I am quite possibly the absolute worst person for starting home improvement projects and then never quite getting them finished. I used to have an old fixer-upper that never quite got fixed up. I haven’t lived in that house for four years. I haven’t owned it for three. I still have anxiety dreams about unfinished projects in that house.

All-Tex Exteriors are Houston windows experts. They also are certified installers of James Hardie exterior siding.

Getting new windows isn’t just about improving the aesthetics of your home. Modern, technologically advanced windows can save you money on your heating and cooling costs. They can even make your home more secure. There is contact information on the AllTex website, they offer free consultations.