Archive for the 'Ideas' Category

Lane Hartwell, Reputation Management and Your Google Permanent Record

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

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There’s a big debate in the blogosphere right now involving a parody video from Richter Scales and photographer Lane Hartwell. A photograph Lane took was used without her permission, she was not credited and not compensated. Richter Scales feels this falls under the fair usage act. I’m not going to take sides in the copyright issue, however what I do want to look at is the reputation management angle.

Lane Hartwell, Reputation Management and Your Google Permanent Record »

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I Need to go 3G

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Ok I’ve resisted the call of crackberry long enough and I need to go 3G. I’ve sidestepped the lure of the iPhone I’m just not a Mac kind of guy, but I’m totally lusting after the big screen. I need a keyboard and I have to be able to connect it to the laptop to do the internet thingy. So my minimum requirements are decent sized screen, full keyboard and laptop connection.

So lets hear it readers what are you using that love? What are you using that you hate?

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How do You Edit Your Documents

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

I’m working with some outside writers on some projects and having some real issues finding a WYSWIG that works in an HTML programmer free blog world. How do You Edit Your Documents »

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How Easy Do You Make it to Consume Your Content

Friday, May 25th, 2007

I was reading Small is the New Big by Seth Godin, and I came up wit the following question, “how easy do you make it to consume your content”?

How Easy Do You Make it to Consume Your Content »

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Competing for Attention or You’ll Never be Paris Hilton if You Aren’t Good Looking, Rich and Famous

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

Recently I was reading a book that a friend sent me (thanks Greg) and although it has absolutely nothing to do with the internet or marketing, it grabbed an open piece of mental Velcro.

Competing for Attention or You’ll Never be Paris Hilton if You Aren’t Good Looking, Rich and Famous »

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MyBlogLog Does the Right Thing

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

The MyBlogLog Blog: Everybody hurts… sometimes

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Ajax What’s it Good For

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

OK can anybody please tell the advantage of Ajax aside from the eye-candy and the ability to say it’s “Ajax”? Ajax pages don’t load faster, in fact I think they load incredibly slower. Maybe that’s because I design my pages with CSS to load and move like a greased pig and not bloated down with nested tables and javascript (this blog is not an example of that) I notice the hang time. I don’t get any extra functionality from it, in fact it works less efficiently since it breaks the back button and other established web conventions. So I ask you Ajax what’s it good for?

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LinkedIn Needs a Blocking Feature

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

Before the days of the interconnected web 2.0 world things were easy you could always disappear, but now things are different.

LinkedIn Needs a Blocking Feature »

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Finding Your Inner Jerry McGuire

Monday, February 19th, 2007

Publishing a blog on a regular basis teaches you many things, you experience the highs, and you also often become the victim of people who try to take pot shots at you and bring you down, however in the end it depends on how well you can channel your inner Jerry McGuire.

Finding Your Inner Jerry McGuire »

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What I’d Like to See Added to MyBloglog - Categories

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

I’m spending more and more time on MyBlogLog and one of the features I’d really like to see is categories. Yellow Page Optimization is not really that meaningful when I’m trying to be social. For example wouold you want to look for other blogs about say public relations or blogs that start with the letter P? I know the myBlogLog folks are around and checking things and making improvements hopefully they’ll catch this post with some ego surfing.

 

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Kevin Federline, the Super Bowl and Blogging

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

When I speak with clients about blogging one of the key point I try to stress is that they should try and not only write about their niche, but try to take advantage of and tie into current events. The more widespread and front of mind the news or event is the better. To illustrate this point I’d like you to consider the Super Bowl which is coming up this Sunday.

Kevin Federline, the Super Bowl and Blogging »

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Google Sitemaps for Large Scale Sites

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006

If you’ve got a any first hand experience working with and submitting sitemaps for sites with over 50K pages drop me an email I’d like to talk with you.

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Looking for Mashup Testers

Friday, October 13th, 2006

Allrighty so I’m getting ready to push out my ultimate mashup. I combined some news feeds, youtube, flickr, amazon, AOL, and technorati API and data all together into one site. The result is about 150,000 pages of web 2.0 mashup good-ness. I’m looking for a handful of people to take a look at it next week and give me some feedback. No you don’t need to write a report or anything just cruise around tell me what you like, dislike, or things needs to be fixed. I’m looking for a small group between 5 and 10 people, if we’ve ever carried on a conversation IRL, via chat or email you have a better shot a being chosen.

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Flickr API Help

Sunday, October 8th, 2006

Does anyone know of resource that shows you how to use flickr’s API that’s written in english so that actual people can understand it. Something with examples is always helpful. This from Flickr is about the most god awful thing I have ever tried to read in my enitire life.

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Princess Leia Slave Costume for Dogs

Thursday, October 5th, 2006


via amazon fit her with a nice dog harness and your dog star wars fantasy will be complete

we will never speak of this moment again ….

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Profiting from Social Media

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

Since you’re reading this chances are you know I’m a big fan of social media, and while I do like to ‘get down with my bad self’ keeping up with all the latest trends, I see lots of other people beating up on social media because they can’t correlate actions directly with profit. Profiting from Social Media »

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Competing for Attention Against Politics

Sunday, October 1st, 2006

A view of the homepage of Netscape.com for Saturday September 30th shows anybody competing against politics is having a tough time competing for attention. (click image to enlarge). Incase your wondering the cool screen shot was taken with the Pearl Crescent Screen Saver plugin.

Home-Page-»-Netscapecom

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How to Win an Election With Keywords

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Every few days I go through my “junk suspects” email folder to see if anyone got flagged as “spam” that shouldn’t have. I noticed a large increase in spammers using political topics as subject lines things like :

“URGENT: Bush admits Al-Quada and Iran Link False”
“IMMEDIATE ATTENTION: New White House Plan Endangers All Americans”
“ACTION REQUIRED: Show Your Support for an America Against Terror” How to Win an Election With Keywords »

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Turning Bad Customers into New Business

Sunday, September 24th, 2006

Many moons ago before the tubes of the interweb occupied my days I worked in retail. At that time this retailer was legendary, some might say world renown for their quality, selection and most importantly customer service (sadly this is not the case today). At that time the “old man” worked with each of the managers to make sure they understood this important lesson, when a customer complains what they are really doing is giving you the opportunity to be exceptional. They are giving you the chance to turn a negative into a positive, and turn a detractor into an advocate. It’s good to be reminded about this with examples of good customer service from time to time.

Here’s a little bonus for you, when you’re unclear on exactly how to solve any customers problem, the best question is also the scariest “I’m sorry, what’s can I do to make this right?”

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Most Venomous Creature

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

Tangentially Related Search Posting Ahead …

So for my oldest daughters school they have a weekly assignment to teach them how to search for things on the internet. Last weeks question “what is the most venomous creature“. After doing initial research I my own I sent her back with a clarification question was it most poisonous or most venomous, and it was most venomous. So after checking before hand and then guiding her on the way we reached the answer of “sea wasp” or “box jellyfish” (same animal). Yesterday my daughter informed me the answer was poison tree frog. So I printed out and highlighted the following pages

California Academy of Sciences - Venoms: Striking Beauties

Poison vs. Venom

These terms are often used interchangeably, but they actually have very different meanings. It is the delivery method that distinguishes one from the other. Poison is absorbed or ingested; a poisonous animal can only deliver toxic chemicals if another animal touches or eats it. Venom, on the other hand, is always injected.

California Academy of Sciences - Venoms: Striking Beauties

Poison Dart Frog Dendrobates azureus

These frogs secrete a toxic substance from their skin, causing sickness or even death to animals that touch or eat them. But the frogs have no way to inject their toxins: they’re poisonous, not venomous.

and

Sea Wasp - Box Jelly - Marine Stinger

But what we’re talking about here are the venomous creatures; those whose bodies manufacture toxins that can be rubbed off, ingested (swallowed), or injected into another, causing severe illness or death. Just to name a few, there’s the poison dart frogs of the Costa Rican jungles, stonefish, cone shells, the black mamba snake, and even a tiny octopus that lives in tropical waters. When creatures are rated for the “deadliness factor” there’s a couple of measures that are taken into account:

1) How many people an ounce of the creature’s venom can kill

2) How long it takes you to die from the venom after being bitten, stung, or stuck

In both cases the grand prize winner and world-record holder is the creature known

as the sea wasp, or marine stinger. The name sea wasp is misleading because the creature isn’t actually a wasp or insect at all.

and lastly from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park whom I think we can all agree is is an authorititive trusted website we get

Animal Records - National Zoo| FONZ

Most Venomous Animal
A single sea wasp (a kind of jellyfish with 60 tentacles, each 15 feet long) has enough venom to kill 60 adult humans.

The response was “my research came from the National Geographic Poison Control Center” (who curiously doesn’t have any information online about venomous animals) and she was looking for creature not an animal.

I might be willing to concede that in some narrow interpretation a creature is not an animal, although you would have to provide some good verifiable evidence, however poison is clearly different from venom and the frog is poisonous not venomous, so if we’re going to split hairs on definitions the frog doesn’t make the cut either.

Some of you say hay Gray just give in it’s not worth it, to you I say do you want your teacher spreading the wrong information to your children?

Ok for those of you who stuck through, here’s the gold at the end of the rainbow, Google indexed my delicious bookmarks for ["most venomous animal"] think you might be able to find a use for that ;-)

Update
So we got a call tonight from the teacher who said she called the poison center and they explained the difference between venomous and poisonous to her and she admit she was wrong and would tell the class tomorrow. Cool Beans! There is some value in paying high taxes and having all the schools in your district certified as blue ribbon schools of excellence!

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Does Your Follow Through Suck

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

This weekend I was cruising through digg and came across an example of how you can completely “ruin the ride” by not giving me what you promised. Does Your Follow Through Suck »

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Got an SEO, SEM or Social Media Question?

Sunday, September 17th, 2006

Ok I’ve got some creative funk rattling around inside my head, so if you’ve got an SEO, SEM, or Social Media question drop it in the comments. Use you noodle before you ask a question, asking ‘whats the best way to spam google?’ is probably not going to get you an answer, mmkay.

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Firefoxies.com - Using Sex to Get Market Share and Affiliate Commissions

Friday, August 25th, 2006

I came across Firefoxies.com today via a link on digg. It combines the “hot or not” concept with spreading the useage of the firefox browser (with some affiliate links to boot). Kinda goofy, but definitely clever, definite viral potential.

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Targeting Children with Adsense

Friday, August 25th, 2006

I’m not speaking about the information in this post as something I approve of dissaprove of, it’s just something interesting I came across that made me think.

Targeting Children with Adsense »

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Chicken Noodle Soup Video

Monday, August 21st, 2006

Do you Know what the Chicken Noodle Soup Video is? Well you should …

Chicken Noodle Soup Video »

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Wikipedia Versus Squidoo

Monday, August 14th, 2006

I’ve mentioned Squidoo here a few times, and if you aren’t playing with it I think it’s time you start. It’s starting to look more and more like Wikipedia’s little brother and you can still get in on the ground floor.

Wikipedia Versus Squidoo »

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The Pirate Hunter: Book Review

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

Avast ther’ ya scallywags, ther’ be non search related information ahead …

Being something of a grayhat SEO it’s probably no surprise that I’d find a book about pirates enjoyable, in fact Mutiny on the Bounty and Treasure Island are two of my favorite books. With this being the season of excessive pirate marketing i received a copy of Richard Zacks, The Pirate Hunter for Father’s Day.

The Pirate Hunter: Book Review »

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Stop Buying New Domains for SEO Development

Friday, July 28th, 2006

Is it even worth buying a new domain and spending 12-24 months developing out link worthy content anymore? I mean Google has the authority knob locked up tighter than the gold at Fort Knox. I haven’t seen any changes in their love affair with the Amazons, EBay’s and Cragslist for some time. So rather than fight the enemy embrace it and feel it up for any weaknesses.

Stop Buying New Domains for SEO Development »

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Open Office and Thunderbird Not Ready for Consumer Use

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

About 4 months ago I started an experiment to see if I could go 6 months without using Microsoft Office Word, Excel and Outlook. I tried using Thunderbird and the Open Office Suite instead. This past weekend about months in I called it off and returned to Microsoft Office.

Open Office and Thunderbird Not Ready for Consumer Use »

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Danika Patrick

Friday, July 21st, 2006

Sometimes it’s not important that you be the best in your game. Sometimes if you’re above average but are distinctive and set yourself apart you can work the magic and get lot’s of ink. Case and point Indy Race Car Driver Danika Patrick. Danika came onto the Indy Race Car scene a few years ago as a driver for Rahal Letterman team (Pro retired driver Bobby Rahal and David Letterman, yes that David Letterman). In her rookie Indy year she qualified at the Indy 500 with the fastes time however lost the pole position (first position for the start) due to a technicality. She did lead for few laps but ended up finishing fourth the highest position for female driver for the Indy 500. While Danica’s racing career has advanced it’s clearly been left in the dust by her publicity campaign.

Danika Patrick »

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How McDonald’s Screwed Up the Pirates of The Caribbean Game

Friday, July 7th, 2006

Used to be fast food restaurants giving away free prizes was a great way to build the love, however McDonalds’s screwed it up royally with the new Pirates of the Caribbe