Stories

I was reading a post on BernaiseSource called Putting a Face on Social Networks: Corporate Facebook Pages. It is another chapter in the ongoing discussion of whether to build your own social network or participate in existing social networks where your users already exist.This post focuses primarily on deploying of a business social network profile on Facebook. There are 3 company success stor...

Was readng a post on CopyBlogger about Catablogging. What is catablogging you ask? Do we really need new terminology for the way you blog?A catablog is basically a blog that is designed to mix content and commerce in a very deliberate fashion. It's looking to attract people who are interested in buying things, but who are also interested in immersing themselves in the lifestyle...

I am reviewing about 8 resumes that were submitted for a social media marketing consultant. I made sure that when the resumes came in I responded to each letting them know I received and were reviewing. Once I reviewed them all and was in the process of presenting them to the client I emailed each one personally and let them know where I was in the process.One of the applicants emailed me saying how he appreciated the communication. Made me think some more...

Was just watching a great video on Jeremiah Owyang's blog about a Social Media Case Study from Jake McKee who used to work at Lego.It was very interesting to see how entrenched and distance from customers a company can be. Also how resistant to change a company can be when it comes to opening up to new ideas, change and ultimately their customers.Of course Lego is a very l...

I was just playing with Cinch which is a new voice to RSS service. It allows you to call a number and it records a podcast for you. It is more focused, but similar to the voice translation service Jott that I have been using.It gives you an RSS feed of the calls you make which you can easily blend into a Feedburner tracking RSS feed.There is no li...

I was just playing with the new Google Talk Chatback Widget. It allows you to allow anonymous chats from your web page for your customers and site visitors. I was just researching using this last week for a client who was asking for it and didn't much care for the Boldchat they were using.It is a great FREE or low cost web site chat and support module. Just yet another innovative use for t...

Been doing some work on various Bebo Social Network Profiles as part of a social media marketing campaign. Since I am spending some time here I thought I would share some thoughts and strategy.First off Bebo is a very European focused social network. There are a lot of US users, but definitely heavy on the European market.I got setup and have my profile all filled out from my social media profile content platform. Wish I had some d...

We are now offering custom Amazon EC2 Research and Development services. If you are in need of custom EC2 instance deployment, feel free to contact us.Timothy Meredith and I will be pioneering several custom deployments for clients and figured we'd offer these services to all other interested parties.Pretty much any type of EC2 deployment on the Linux platform is where we are focused. Some examples are:Web ServerDatabase Server...

Had a meetup with a fellow developer friend of mine. He has been programming for years, but in the last 3-4 years become a real linux distribution and deployment expert. He works primarily on developing very specialized linux installs for specific purposes such as mail server, spam filtering, specialized web applications, and very focused utility solutions.We are going to be working together to offer extremely specialized linux EC2 installations.I have really got exc...

Starting to see some ad networks and ad models moving beyond traditional views or clicks. Videoegg launched a new pay per engagement video model.Advertisers pay only on an "engagement" basis or when a user rolls over the ad and the advertisers full screen is displayed.It is a first for this type of true engagement model and really focuses your advertising.

Was just reading a post on ReadWriteWeb about Olympic Committe Rules Revealed: No Posting of Media Allowed.They say they are embracing blogging because it is a form of personal expression and not a form of journalism.However they are prohibiting the usage of pictures, sound or moving images in any blog or other method.It is amazin...

I have historically played around with many online marketing and social media marketing techniques. I play around from time to time to see what works and what doesn't. Last year I was walking around with my daughter and taking pictures for our Eugene Local Search web site. I am trying to have pictures of local attractions and business around Eugene, Oregon. I took this picture of the Read more →

Part of your syndication strategy for your blog should be alerting blog search engines that you have made an update.I found a service today called Ping-O-Matic that you can put in your blog name, home page, and rss URL and choose which services to ping that your blog has been updated.This is a great tool to get the word out there regarding your blog.

Every time I discuss syndicated content to other sites and platforms I get the question, well what about getting in trouble for duplicate content? This is a topic that has been over-hyped and discussed way to much. It is true if you just programatically build out multiple sites all with the same or similar content you will get dinged for this. The problem people have is they are too focused on what search engines are thinking and forgot about their #2 users..."HUMAN...

I like using whiteboards to sketch out ideas. I love drawing elaborate graphs and visuals to try and convey my point. I usually take pictures of my drawings so I have a digital copy, and I have even played with a few smartboards that record my drawings.I came across a web 2.0 whiteboard created by GE today called Imagination Cubed. It is pretty cool. Just a well done simple application. You can draw your thoughts an...

I haven't spent much time on Flickr until recently. I have had an account for years, but only upload every once in a while.Tonight when I logged on to check out the mobile features I notice they are getting more social. It asked me to complete my profile and upload a profile picture and tell a little more about myself.Didn't fill out much about myself, really get tired of putting information about myself. Need a tool to do it automatically.

Amazon Web Services experienced an outage this morning across all their systems. There is a flurry of posts on this forum about the Amazon Web Services Outage.This is the first actual outage I have seen or heard of on the Amazon Web Services Platform. Definitely a black eye for Amazon Web Services and building credibility with the community to use them as the core of their networ...

A new startup called PageOnce makes an attempt to create a single social interface. This doesn't appear to be too much different than Netvibes or Pageflakes. However since it is in private BETA I can't really take it for a test drive.Definitely a common problem for social networking and other web application fatigue when y...

I have blogged several times about web 2.0 applications and what I look for in them. I have been evaluating a lot of applications lately and a good application really stands out.I have been looking through Image and Photo sharing applications all day and comparing them against each other. Man there is a lot of crap.One appliceation that I think truly reflects a quality Web 2.0 applications is the image sharing site 23. The have the...

I am doing a lot of research right now on quality web 2.0 applications for specific purposes. It really is frustrating when I find the perfect aplication with all the features we are looking for except for one. An API.Why the hell do you go an build a really sweet application with killer features and you don't add an API. It just seems like it goes against all logic these days to release a partial or no API at all.

I use quite a few different Firefox Add-Ons. I use Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer, EC2 UI, Google Notebook, coCommnet, Shareaholic, just to name a few. My right click, tray and toolbar is just getting very crowded. It would be nice if someone logically built out a framework for these to display. I hope with Firefox 3.0 coming out they find a solution. It would be nice if I could manage what showed up where.

Amazon just launched a new analysis tool for Amazon S3 called, S3Stat. This tool uses the log files generated by S3, analyzes them using Webalizer, and generates a variety of reports. Take a look at the sample reports to learn more. There's a one-month free trial and usage after that costs just $2 per month. Take a look at the Read more →

I came across this picture of the undersea cables running around the world. I thought it was real interesting to see how our I...