At some point in the last few months, Google Adwords decided to ding one of my Adwords campaign.  The campaign is for my Tortola travel guide site.

The ads used to do very well in Adwords - 4% clickthrus.  And I built each individual ad in the campaign to go to the proper page on my site, I followed all the Google guidelines.  I tweaked and tweaked the ads and overtime they did really well - Tortola was doing a couple hundred people a day via both organic search and Adwords.

But suddenly Google stopped showing my ads.  I don't know why.

The reason Google gives is that the ads are "rarely shown due to low quality score".  A trip through the Adwords Diagnostic Tool tells me that "Your keyword isn't triggering ads to appear because your bid is likely below the first page bid estimate. "  I used to pay $.07 per click, so I upped the max CPC to $1/click and nothing changed -- still "rarely shown due to low quality score."

What happened? I have no clue.  I changed domains over the summer - I purchased Tortola.net from Sedo.  That could be it - however I followed all the Google webmaster guidelines and my rankings haven't changed that much.

I had a similar problem with a campaign for my Martha's Vineyard guide last summer - the ads wouldn't initally show.  So went through the Adwords help process (dig through the site for the email form, then wait and pray for someone to help).  Eventually, I convinced a woman to make my ads show.  And they did wonderfully during the summer. 

So I tried the same process over the last few weeks.  This time I cannot get anyone at Google to respond.  I even emailed Larry Page - nothing.

It's really getting me angry.  Google can just decide not to show ads for some reason.  I can understand that. But give us some better support so we can fix the issue.  Everyone complains about Adwords & Adsense customer support - but Google has never done a thing.

The biggest problem is that there's no competition. Yahoo and Microsoft can't compare to Google search and Adwords.  But with that market leadership, the company that "does no evil" needs to step up support.

What can I do? Is the Justice Department is the answer?

Two years ago we launched the PackerBackerBlog.com in order to help build Feed.Us.  The original blogger bailed, so it's now been left to me (and a few others).  It's a decent site - but there isn't enough content in order to make it great (we need more bloggers... anyone??). 

But - thanks to Google, the PackerBackerBlog.com is considered a expert source when non-blog media outlets need to know something about the Packers.

Case in point... NPR and Brett Favre.  Last year, I did three NPR interviews regarding Favre.  And yesterday,  I did two more.  The audio embeds are below.

How does a little blog like this get regular radio requests?  Thank you Google. The PBB is the top ranked blog in Google for "Packer Blog" and "Packers Blog".  No tricks here... we followed the basic SEO strategy (URL, page title, h1/h2, and metatags) and, of course, Feed.Us helps make a site work in Google.

We've helped dozens of Feed.Us clients become Google's expert within their niche and along the way I've learned a few things:

1. Concentrate on a niche.
2. Location location location.
3. Have your focus in the domain and in the URL.
4. Page titles, H1 for the headline,  each article should have it's own specific page on your site. 
5. Match the page title to the headline and the meta description.

But most important, concentrate on your niche.  The niche-ier the better. 

Haven't updated in a long time.  But I've decided to get better about this site.  Here's the first one in a series about how to manage your website(s).

When I'm not working on Feed.Us, I create  travel blogs for Caribbean locations, like this one.  And in conjunction, I've been a regular user of Adwords. 

Recently I had a question from a customer about Adwords keyword pricing.  I thought I'd share a tip that will help you save money and increase your ROI.

The idea: use very specific phrases instead of keywords.

Google sets a minimal price on every click on every ad.  It's like $.04 on any ad.  The price increases when there are multiple advertisers on that same "keyword". 

Google also uses a quality score to increase pricing.  This is to keep out advertising viagra on "Britney Spears".  Google has a tendency to slap this on whenever they feel like it.  We advertised a Packers website on the keyword "Brett Favre retirement" and Google made the price $.50 (per click) even though no one was advertising on that keyword.

The goal is to have the most clicks at the lowest price.  You want to be one of the first 3 ads, preferibly the first.  Also, you want to use keywords that increase transactions.  How do you do all of this for pennies?  Very specific phrases.

It's more effective to use a very specific phrase than one keyword.  The problem is that it's more of a pain.  It's a pain to manage a bunch of ads  and keywords.  But you'll also have to direct those ads to very specific pages on your website. You'll also have to manage many more ads to get the same traffic.   But that traffic will buy more from you.

Example...  Say you're Orbitz.  You can put on ad on "cheap flights" or you can place thousands of ads on "cheap flight to [location]" and then have hundreds of locations (chicago, new orleans, paris etc).  You can also domisspellings of cities.   These ads should use a related URL on your website.  If I was Orbitz, I'd direct the visitor to a page using that city information. 

It's a pain, but your ROI will be much greater.  I've got keyword phrases that routinely have 10-15% click-thru-rates and that result in transactions 50% of the time.   I've figured out that I can turn $.05 into $.50, routinely. 

I hope this helps!

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Twitter and Facebook are replacing Google search.

Not talking about Twitter's search.  Just talking about the use of Twitter & Facebook in general and how they replace your Google activity.

I think that Google makes a lot of money when you are looking to buy something.  You do a search in Google to find out what is recommended, where/how to travel, what things cost, etc.  Advertisers pay Google a lot of money to get on the page where you do your research.

But now I see my wife and friends asking their networks these questions.  My wife was looking for baby bottles.  2 years ago she would have inquired via Google about what to buy.  This time she asked her friends and got better results (though maybe not as fast).

We trust our friends, even above Consumer Reports.  That's the way it works in the real world and I think it will be like that online, too.

So I think that Twitter and Facebook are going to put a dent in Google's future revenue, if they haven't already.

Also, I think this especially true for local purchase decisions.  (In my mind) Google's future earnings were dependent on getting local businesses to buy Adwords.  I think that we'll hit up our friends for local purchase recommendations.

So.... I'm long Twitter, Facebook and "social network bots".

I recently bought Tortola.net. I now have 3 Tortola domains that point to the same website: TortolaTourist.com, VisitTortola.com and Tortola.net.

All three domains go to the exact same site. But Google can't see that they are all the same exact hosting account - if I'm not careful (and I haven't been), Google will see these as three separate sites and then ding all three as a link farm type operation.
On top of that, BuyDomains.com used Tortola.net as one of those crap Google Adsense sites with no content. So there's a lot of crap in Google's cache for the domain.
Now that I've got the whole thing setup, I've learned a few things. Here's what you should do if you ever have a similar domain issue:
1. Got a lot of time? I'd probably recommend that you remove the domain from Google's search. Tortola.net has a lot of crap in Google's cache. It'll eventually clean out, but in the meantime it'll probably wreak havoc on my overall Google rankings. (I may be wrong on this suggestion.)

2. Setup the new domain as the main domain on the hosting account. Eventually all the other domain names are going to just "point" to the main domain. For me, I've got Tortola.net as the main domain, and the rest point to it.

3. Change the site to reflect the new domain. Page titles, meta tags, description etc so it refers to the new domain rather than the old one.

4. Setup the new domain in Google webmaster. From what I've learned you don't want to delete the old domain's webmaster listing.

5. Create a sitemap for the new domain and add it to Google Webmaster. This should help the old cache get removed and the new domain's links get discovered faster by Google.

6. Here's the last, important step. You want to make all the "other" domains do a 301 permanent redirect to the main domain.  For me this is difficult because the domains are all located in separate hosting accounts (long story). But it is a very important step, according to Google.

Google needs to know that these domains are not separate websites and this is (supposedly) the way you tell Google. Also, your previous rankings with the old domain should be maintained.

I think that's it.  Did I miss anything?

I missed this:   You want to have the main domain (in this case Tortola.net) as the "primary" domain in your hosting.  It shouldn't be an "alias" to another domain on the site.  So before you do anything, make sure to setup the new domain as the primary and then ALL other domains are 301redirected.

Pete Prodehl (@raster, rasterweb.net) helped me launch three Twitter bot websites recently:  MKEfood.net, BookTweets.net and WineTweets.com

I got Pete to create the three twitterbots in the Fall of 2008.  Basically anyone can follow the twitter account, then send it an "@reply" message and that message will bounce out to all the followers.  Winetweets took off - the other two have sorta languished.

From the beginning I thought about the way to store, save and filter the @reply messages on website outside of Twitter.  Twitter has a great search but even that search doesn't help you filter through a bunch of messages on a specific topic. Also, we all follow so many people and there are so many new people every day that the signal to noise ratio is getting worse and worse. That's where these kind of services come in handy.

We save all the messages and make them very searchable.  You can type any words at the end of /search/ and filter through the messages for specific things.  The best example is for "delicious" wines on Winetweets.com or  Fun on BookTweets.

Some of the inspiration has come from Stocktwits.  These guys are way ahead of people in creating a new way to search, find and discuss stocks & finance news.  What they've done is very impressive and the stocktwits site has a great streaming "people ticker" that I enjoy watching just flow by. Eventually there will be a stocktwits for every subject.

Coming updates:

We're going to add a link out to Google (on mkefood), Amazon.com (on booktweets) and WineLibrary.com (on winetweets) for any word or phrase that is put within "quotes".  We're also going to display any photos that are added to twitter via Twitpic.  And I hope to have a simple search form (although right now you can do it yourself by adding words at the end of the search url).

Where is this going?

I'm not quitting my day job to work on these.

It's more about learning from doing.  I am very intrigued by Twitter and its group publishing abilities.  Twitter is the "ultimate user generated content" system.   We all can cooperate and coordinate to publish a site together using Twitter.   The only setback is that there are many "lurkers", people that read but don't participate.  That needs to help.

I would like to make a community news Twitterbot service out of mkenews or/and milwaukeenews.  I think it would be really amazing to have people regularly submit news that they see: fires, bar fights, high school sports scores, etc.

I have been thinking about a travel twitter bot assistant to help you plan a trip.

Also, I'm interested in Facebook's new friend connect.  It would be great to open these bots up to Facebook and get Facebook-only people to participate, too.

I was asked a couple times, recently, for some suggestions on running a web political campaign (for political office).  I thought I'd summarize these suggestions here, on this site.

Probably won't get implemented (for one, I had to send a Word doc, so probably not) , but maybe these can help someone running for office in the future. 

(BTW, the "you" is the candidate.)

============

The Web is about spreading ideas: Some people would say it's about creating a community.  If you're Obama, then yeah, it's about community.  But you're not Obama. 

For you, it's about IDEAS. Your IDEAS. Communicate and sell and spread those IDEAS. 

And it doesn't have to be expensive.  But it's time consuming and YOU need to be involved (staff can help).

The Web is your network to communicate and spread your ideas using the tools at hand: your website, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, uStream.  Here are some suggestions on how to utilize this network:

Your Website: The depository for the archives of your campaign.  Remember to think about Google Search.

Blog: Where you can write about your ideas. This isn't a press release.  Reactions to current events, your ideas on improvements, thoughts on articles/editorials. Etc.

Twitter/Facebook: Twitter/Facebook for your "status" so people can follow you and learn more about your life. Also,  Publish links/notes to your blog, important issues, editorials, etc.  You need to reach out to as many relevant people as you can.  (Use an autofollow service on Twitter.)  

Twitter Search: Find people with similar interests. Also, track what people are saying about you, and respond when needed.

Flickr: Use Flickr as the photo archive for the campaign.  Use it for all the website's photos and link back to Flickr whenever there's a photo on the site.  Flickr is a great source of new, interesting contacts.

TV: Use the Web as the your TV network.  Regular, short videos from the campaign.  (Get a Flip camera.)

Live: Do regular live broadcasts, using uStream (campaign events or broadcast an interview with a reporter). 

Donations: Just has to work easily for contributor.  However it's important to be able to an "affiliate network" of sorts and track how/who the donations came from. Also be able access/import contributor info easily.

Campaign events: Use Google calendar and evite for public events.

Google Adwords: Make sure people can find you easily.

Mobile:  I hate campaign text messages. Don't do it.  Just use Twitter.

Track it all:

It's not about how much $ comes into the bank.  It's about people. You need up-to-date information about the people you're reaching.  Your followers in Twitter and your friends in Facebook. Use Google Analytics to track your visitors on your site.  Read about the Obama Houdini project and use 37signals.com's Highrise and Basecamp for contact and project management. And get a daily report of it all.

Website staff:  Get someone with CSS/xhtml ability.  If they can do CSS, they can do everything else you need.  Also, get someone that's handy with video editing.

I really hate that Feed.Us isn't "live".  It remains in a "private beta" almost six months after I hoped we'd launch.

(In case you haven't been following us, Feed.Us is a content management/syndication service that is 'hosted' and feeds content to your server.  It works with/on any platform (php, asp.net, jsp, asp, ror, etc) and was built to be integrated with just copy/paste of some code, ie no installs. It can work with any site, within other platforms, within applications and for content syndication.)

The main functions (writing/adding content and 'feeding' to sites) have been working really well for over a year.  Then we added other ways to import and export content.  Then finally last summer we started in on a clean, nice interface (screenshots here) designed by the guy who did Writely.

So why aren't we live?

One issue has been .Net and adding some of the "ajaxy" stuff (note: I did not say 'ajaxy goodness').  .Net has been a bitch with the ajax.  We went with .Net so that our core code would be really, really solid.  But .Net has not been fun for John and Cliff to add a lot of the interface stuff that I've asked for. 

But the main issue is that it's just not ready.  There's a widely accepted theory that we're supposed to launch early and often. I don't really subscribe to the theory.

One of the rationale behind the theory is that you need users to help start and improve the service.  And we have done this with all the sites I run, plus select customer sites (and a couple applications). And as of January, we even have  paying customers (several even have died, but that's a sad story that I'll save for a different post).

But we can't offer it for sale yet. Why not?

• We've found a bunch of bugs that are being fixed.
• The help isn't complete.  I'm personally making video help page for every function, and it takes a while.
• I haven't completely decided on our pricing.  I really want to make it 'pay as you go' but that might not be possible at first, so we need to decide on a price before we start, and then shift, later to PAYG.
• Image/file uploading has to kick ass and it currently doesn't
• Import functions that need to be completed (embed video from youtube) and twitter importing via API
• Our 'export' functions (to Facebook & Twitter)

BUT the main reason is that it's just not perfect, yet.  I don't want to disappoint people who try it. If it's going to be one of the best services you've ever used, then you can't be frustrated. And when I use something that isn't 100% ready, I get frustrated and I question why I paid for it.  And I don't want our customers to suffer like that.

I've added a new page and rss feed to the sidebar options.

Now along the right you'll see a link to "everything on the web" under "archives".  There's also a new RSS feed that includes the same content.

Basically everything I add on the web - this blog, photos/video on Flickr, videos on Viddler, comments on other blogs in disqus, Twitter and Facebook statuses gets imported into Feed.Us and then exported to the "ALL" page on my site and to a separate Feedburner RSS feed.

Not that anyone cares that much about me - don't think I'm that vain.  But it's just very cool to store all that stuff in one space and Feed.Us can do it all.

It would be especially helpful if you operate a 'brand on the web' and do a lot of social networking. 

(Just another helpful feature from your friends at Feed.Us.)

Google announces their 2008 4th quarter numbers next week.  If you care about how they've done, here are some stats from my Adwords and Adsense.  (FYI I have a bunch of Caribbean travel related sites that use Adsense and I purchase Adwords ads to promote the sites.)

My adsense is WAAAAAAY down this year.  I also was dinged by Google in their index (no idea why) so the organic traffic has dropped off.  (I need to do a little work apparently.)  But Adwords is the most interesting.  My budget and keywords and ads are essentially unchanged from 4th qtr 2007, so it's very simple to compare.

Clicks are down 36%
Impressions are down 24%
What I paid Google is down 36%

Some thoughts:

Obviously, trips to the Caribbean are not being planned.  So that means impressions and clicks have dropped off.  (FYI Click-thru-rate is actually better in 2008).  But the biggest issue is that Google can't seem to spend my budget for me.

I think that people haven't stopped advertising, but they've drastically reduced their budgets.  And at the same time, dramatically less people are searching for destinations.

These two issues are related.  But, because both are happening, it double hurts Google.  (Google does better when there are more ads being placed and when there are more searches being performed).

So it's going to be a scary quarter for GOOG.

Let's bail them all out!  Even the billionaires!  No one should be allowed to lose money... ever!!

"... the Securities Investor Protection Corporation asked that steps be taken to protect investors in the scheme, which has ensnared several major banks and prominent figures as victims and could result in as much as $50 billion in losses."

http://wcbstv.com/business/madoff.ponzi.scheme.2.888036.html

I recently gave a chat to a consumer product company about web stuff.  It was supposed to be about internet trends, but it was really turned into 'social media'.

I've written previously about using social media for personal explotation, etc.  And since then I've thought alot about how a company could use.

I'm sure Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc is a confusing place for most "brands".  How does your brand participate in a place that was built for individuals?  No one really wants links to press releases. Some people might want to know about a sale.  I doubt people really want to know what your CEO is doing for his birthday.

I think the opportunity is to listen and respond to customers.  It's not really to 'participate in the conversation', it's to react to what people think and say about your brand.

1 . Monitor 'live search'.

Google was built to give you the 'best' webpages for your search.  It wasn't intended to give you the most recent results.

But there are tools that you can use to do a "live search": a search about what people are saying about you or your company/brand right now, instantly.

I use Twitter search and Google Blog search.  Here's a twitter search for Briggs and Stratton:

I think it's really important to monitor your brand. Feed.Us is small so doesn't show up.  But big brands, like AT&T or even Windex  get mentioned a lot.  It's like a consumer 1-800 hotline, but it's free.

2. It's important to listen.  But it's also important to respond. 

You shouldn't just listen.  You should respond. For two reasons:

If someone articulates a negative result with your product, it's really nice to reach out and try to correct the issue.

Why else?  Because these days, everyone has an audience.  It might be 10 followers on Twitter or 15 friends on Facebook... but everyone has an audience.  If someone loves your product enough to mention it, send them a thank you note.  If they had a problem, it's really a nice opportunity to correct the issue.  Send them a product sample or a coupon.  Sending an @reply on Twitter is simple and not invasive.

Google Blog Search works well too. Since Feed.Us is small and isn't mentioned much (yet) on Twitter or blogs, I sometimes respond to people when they post about related products or related problems they have with CMS software.  I use the comments on their blog, if enabled. 
 

3. Learn and then reach out to folks who don't Twitter/Blog, etc.

The feedback you get from watching "live search" can allow you to build a response.  If someone is blogging or twittering a problem they have with your product, you can bet that folks are searching Google for the answer to that problem.

I use Twitter Search to help me create Google Ads for Feed.Us.  Example: I know a specific issue that a lot of new Drupal users have when they create a site for the first time.  I use that info to target an ad in Google Adwords that lets them have a free trial with Feed.Us.  On the landing page of said ad, I offer to help them personally - which appeals directly to the issue they have with Drupal.  So far it's been really successful.

4. Video:

Based on what you learn, you can also build small, quick "help" websites that feature usability videos.  For Feed.Us - I make 2 minute "screencapture" videos that shows how our software works.

For physical products, you can do this as well.  I think that "real" videos with "real" employees using "real" products can be an amazing sales/marketing tool.

For example, you're annoyed with the Toyota alarm beep beep when you lock the doors. It's not the easiest change.  What if Toyota realized how annoyed people were with the feature?  They could make a video and a website that showed exactly how to turn the feature off.  Throw it up on Youtube for Google optimization and take some $.05 per click Adwords ads.

Summary:

I think that listening and responding is really the way that brands can get involved with social media.  And it's a great path to make new customers and lasting customer relationships.

Advertisement: How can Feed.Us help? We think fits very well in the above 'social media' scenario.  Feed.Us has a couple of things going for it: (A) We enable you to build & launch websites very quickly.  (B) Feed.Us is great at handling content across multiple sites. (C) Feed.Us is built to manage embedded video from Youtube viddler, etc. and we will be working on a dedicated version of Feed.Us some time in 2009 for embedded video.  Talk to us! rick at feed.us.

I'm emailing this post to my site from my blackberry. I think it's really cool to be able to use gmail, outlook, a blackberry or an iPhone to post to a website. That is all!

I spent several hours reading about Obama's web success.  I have decided to write a summary of my research here.

But before I do, I want to address something that struck me.  There seems to be some myth that the Obama people created some sort of digital trojan horse that magically carried the candidate to victory on November 4. Omar Wasow wrote the following on theroot.com: "Like John F. Kennedy before him with his masterful exploitation of television, Barack Obama proved that a new medium can not merely impact, but completely transform presidential politics." Others describe Obama as the first 'open source' candidate.  

Surely Obama was able to harnass the power of his supporters online, but there is no secret Web weapon to Obama's success.  The folks from Blue State aren't eons better than the people at 3EDC. Obama and his brand clearly motivated more Americans to vote for him and that remarkable message also inspired millions of people to organize, collect, network, donate and proselytize for Obama on the Internet.

Here is my summary of the Obama campaign web efforts.  If I've missed something, please comment?

1. Campaign Website:
The official Obama campaign website barackobama.com is essentially the same as the official McCain site johnmccain.com

2. Social Networking   -
my.barackobama.com (MOB) was a secondary website, the Obama campaign's version of Facebook.  Just like Facebook (and created/run by Facebook founder Chris Hughes), M.BO.com was the place to meet and find other Obama supporters.  That was sort of the crux.  But the big deal was the tools available to Obama supporters on MOB:  registered members could create events, invite their friends/supporters to events/rallies, develop their own fundraising drives (with a reward system built in), and organize phoneathons (groups in MN called likely voters in NV etc).  This "member center" was also particularly important to fight the obama rumors (muslims, friend of Osama, no pledge, etc), it armed the supporters with defensive materials. According to TechPresident.com, MOB boasted 35,000 local organizing groups and over 200,000 events.

Facebook: Obama had an official Facebook page, but so did Mccain.  Obama finished with around 2.5 million facebook "friends" versus McCain's 625,000. Obama also gained 20% of that 2.5m  in the final weeks before election day.  

But Having a official profile is 1/10 of the power of Facebook.  The power of Facebook is when millions of people use Facebook to prosletize to their Friends.   I estimate about 1/2 of the Facebook friend-friend communications (status, wall posts, etc) was election related and a large majority was pro-Obama and/or anti-McCain.  (On the eve of the election, I asked via Facebook 'status' why folks were voting for Obama.  I received 15 replies in an hour and none in favor of McCain.)

3. Online video

Online video is probably where the most interesting developments happened.

The campaign paid for and organized videos and  films that popped up on Youtube, Facebook and other web video outlets.  Hollywood loves obama so there are plenty of talented people who could make videos and music that really resonated with the youngins.  Sarah Silverman's video is a great example, but there were scores of videos and films made about/in favor of Obama. 

Another example is the "nonvoter" video.  This was a late campaign move via MoveOn.org.  It was built to be passed on amongst supporters to undecideds.  But it was so well produced that two McCain voters sent it to me the day before the election.  This really wasn't anything new. That 'church sign generator' is about 7 years old.  But the timing and production value was brilliant. 

Ads: All of Obama's ads were uploaded to Youtubeand watched for 14.5 million hours, the equivalent of $47m on TV according to Joe Trippi. Also on Youtube, The Huffington Post's 'Off the Bus' group recorded everything that McCain and Palin had to say and uploaded to Youtube so that volunteers could fact check McCain and Palin later in the election. 

Live, online video from every campaign event via ustream was a really nice touch.  I'm actually surprised this wasn't/hasn't been used more.

The one thing Obama didn't do a lot of, but probably will, is create personal messages for supporters and distribute via Youtube, etc.  Quick, simple, effective way to reach a crapload of people directly.  Probably better to reach his own supporters than an ad or infomercial.  (Obviously the youtube nation was mostly Obama supporters - to reach an alternative audience, TV ads and that infomercial were still necessary).


4. Mobile:

According to Bloomberg, Obama campaign spent several million on last minute text messages to mostly young folks.

But Twitter is probably where the campaign did the most mobile activities.  A Twitter "account" was setup in late 2007 by the Obama campaign.  The 'official' Obama twitter sent personal Obama messages and event info to supporters via Twitter text message or on Twitter.com.  Each message was likely written by a staffer but felt as if it was coming straight from Obama.

But the real use of Twitter was the Twitter commmunity.  Again, like Facebook - Twitter's power for Obama was individuals sending messages amongst themselves.  I'd say that Twitter members were about 90% in favor of Obama and in an almost cultlike fashion. (I mentioned, once, that I wasn't going to vote for Obama and lost several 'followers' instantly.  Twitter isn't a democracy.)

Supporters also wrote Twitter API enabled "bots" and websites in support of obama.  Most interesting was votereport.us which tracked messages about Obama.  During election day, people texted messages to VoteReport via Twitter in order to signal their vote for Obama.  A nice animation of those messages appears here.

5.  Online Ads:

Obama spent a record amount of online advertising - more than $8 million. Which is actually not very much if you compare what was spent by both campaigns on TV.  But it's very telling where the campaign spent money online: Almost half with Google ($3.5m). 

That means search advertising.  It also suggests that other kinds of web advertising just don't work.  Search advertising was likely purchased to ensure that people found the right website after a search in Google.  I would assume that they did some pretty sophisticated search research so they knew what people were searching for and could redirect those people to the correct answers on Obama campaign websites.  For example - "obama muslim" search would route to a myth area of Obama's site.

6.  Houdini:

Newsweek first reported the existance of "Houdini", the Obama campaigns GOTV (get out the vote) tracker.  Basically it's a web based tracking program that allows the campaign to see who has voted where and when. 

A neat, personal description is here.  In a nutshell:  at each polling place, an Obama supporter watched the polls and checked off names in an mobile application (iphone).  That application sent the information to a central database.  And as people voted across the country, their names evaporated (like Houdini) off of the Obama GOTV list.  

"Every time someone came in to vote, their names were entered into a computer system and their names disappeared or escaped, Houdini-like, from the call and walk lists."  

The Houdini Project is likely just one of the campaign's internal applications.  They likely had lots of internal applications and databases that they could tap to see how the campaign was evolving.  Data mining is not new.  But the ability to see live data and visualize large amounts of data is one of the most interesting developments for future campaigns.  

7. Donations:

Like #1 above, Obama campaign didn't do anything really different than McCain/Palin in the donations area.  Yet Obama shattered all records and raised $150 million in September alone.  The average donation size was less than $100, according to campaign manager David Plouffe.  (That likely misrepresents the numbers.  There were probably plenty of $5 donations that offset plenty of $2300 donations.)

I haven't seen any data on this, but I would surmise that not only did Obama get more people to donate to his campaign, he probably received tons of repeat donors. I bet there were thousands of people who paid as much as they could every month.


Summary/Analysis

1. McCain/GOP demographics aren't web users.  These people trend older and more rural.  McCain could have had Google running his digital operations - wouldn't have mattered.  The target audience doesn't conjugate online.  Obama's core group however, is web savvy.   Of the 5 people that contacted me about Obama before the primary and election, 4 were 30ish, stay-at-home moms.

2.  Web creators lean left.  The people who invent, design and create web applications are predominantly liberal. 

3.  Power of the People.  Most of Obama's success isn't from whiz-bang new technology.  It's the candidate's connection with voters that creates the opportunity for those people to build a network for the candidate.  It's the same offline as online.  McCain's story just didn't resonate. I like what Seth Godin wrote about this.

4. Power of the People part 2.  The record donations weren't generated by some fancy new web trick.  More people gave more often.

I'm writing the TOS for Feed.Us right now.  Luckily, I've been gathering Terms of Service (or "Terms of Use") from different online services. 

The first TOS we had at 1871 was written by our lawyer and then heavily modified by me because I understood the service more than he did.  As you can imagine, we paid too much for that.  I knew that I'd have to write another one someday so I began collecting in order to save $$$.

Most of these are publishing-related because 1871 and Feed.Us are publishing services. 

All the files are text because I always save them into notepad files.  You can download them (right click) or view in the browser. 

30-boxes
basecamp
blogger
carbonite
dabble
electric-checkbook
gmail
godaddy-hosting
google-admanager
google-analytics
google-apps
microsoft-partner
num-sum
snipperoo
speaklight
twitter
wordpress
writeboard
yahoo-hosting

Please post a comment (below) if there's a problem with one of the links.

Every Google quarter I try to extrapolate my Google Adsense earnings and Adwords spending to try to determine if GOOG will beat analyst expectations.

I compare my Adsense (aka the "Google Network") from the same quarter of the previous year.  My sites (travel) are very cyclical. I've had some increase with better SEO, so I compare numbers that don't change: the click thru rates (percentage of visitors that click on an ad) and the price per click (that I'm paid by Google).

For Adwords (aka "Google Properties"), again I look at numbers that are comparable.  I look at the clickthru percentage (the number of google searchers that click on an ad) and what I pay per click.

(BTW I can't give actual numbers because that's against the TOS and I don't want to piss off mighty GOOG.)

Q2

When I looked at Q2 2008, not much changed.  My revenue via Adsense was level (more clicked in 2008 at a slightly less rate) but Adwords was up a little bit in 2008 (more clicks per impression at about the same price).  My data would have suggested a solid quarter (Google missed).

Q3

For 3rd quarter (again comparing 2008 to 2007), things are weird. With my Adsense, I'm making less money from Google this quarter vs 2007, despite making more on each click (ie less people are clicking on the ads).

Adwords is where it looks bad.  It looks like Google is struggling to deliver my daily budget.  Google had to give me more impressions because less people clicked on my ads. HOWEVER, I paid half as much for each click as I did in Q3 2007.  

So, my analysis is that it's not going to be a great quarter for Google. Google's network is probably about the same, but it's search properties are not keeping up with Q3 2007.

Disclosure: I own shares of Google that will be under water until $468.

Video below.  The cat jumps into my lap at one point in the video, in case you're wondering what the heck that was.

webisodes - my side projectTalkin' about milwaukee related web tv shows.

Here's a preview link to the show site

UPDATE: This great Ad Age article talks about the opportunities with web tv shows.

30 million people visit Facebook everyday.

4 million (15%) are kids ages 12-18.

13 million (44%) are 18-24 years old.

7.5 million (25%) are 25-34.

35% of Facebook users use FB more than a cellphone.

Facebook users average 3 visits per day.

Google me.  I'm the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th results on the first page of a Rick Stratton Google search.

Why is this important?  Because there's a gay porn star named Rick Stratton.  He starred in hits like "Bone Ultimatum".  (I won't link to any site for fear that it will jump that Rick Stratton up in the Google juice.)

There's also a hypnotist named Rick Stratton (aka the "hypnoRICK". Get it?!).  We compete for that top spot in Google.  And an emmy winning make-up artist named Rick Stratton.  There are 50 publicly listed Rick Strattons in the US, according to Intelius.

But I'm the master of the Rick Stratton google search.  It's a battle.  I own the top spot and I will control it.  It's essential to my business that people can find me.  If I can't make me the top spot -- how can Feed.Us customers hope to be the top spot in their industry?

But what about you?

I think that it's essential for you as well.  People Google you all the time.  What do they find?

If you're John Smith, you're screwed. There's little you can do to insure that people find you. (Hint pay for some google ads.)

If your name is less common -- how will people find you?  You may not want to show, that's fine. But if you want people to find you -- or you don't want people to find your gay porn star alter ego -- what do you do?

1. A website:  The key to my site is that I've followed some very simple google optimization rules.  And I own rickstratton.net.  I have neglected the important URL SEO rule, but that's a trick that I can add later on.

2. A blog:  The big blog services have mucho Google juice.  Just setting up a blog on Typepad or Blogger with minimal posts and you can get to the first page in Google within a few weeks.  Just make sure you put your name in the blog's title.

3. Linked in or Facebook:  These social networking sites have beaucoup google jugo, especially Linkedin.  Get a Linkedin or Facebook profile, and you will probably be on that Google first page within weeks.

4. Wikipedia: When all else fails, there's wikipedia.  I have a client that shares the same name with a pro golfer and a rock star.  He's Google screwed, right?  Thank you Wikipedia.  I started a Wikipedia page about him.   He's actually wikipedia worthy, a very interesting guy.  But it worked - first page of the Google results.

So remember, unless you want people to think you're a gay porn star, get some Google juice.

I took out an ad for a web designer on the 37 signals job board. I have been trying to find a regular "go-to" designer for projects that fall into my lap.

I have had mixed results with Craigslist in the past. I hoped that the folks who read Signal v. Noise would also be the ones responding to the ads.

I was not disappointed.  I think I found someone on the very first response.  And he's in Indiana, not India (if you've taken an ad on Craigslist you know what I'm referring to).

Of the 35 people who responded, I found six people who I would like to learn more about.  That's based on their response and the work examples they sent.  

Here are some other results from my search:

Location: London, NewJersey, Florida, Conn, Penn, Pakistan, Vancouver, Montreal, Serbia (2), Romania, Argentina (3), Madison, Miami, Germany, Georgia, Chile, India (2), NYC, Kansas, Utah

Developer, not designer: 3 

Poor grammar/misspellings:  4

Porn links: 1

Word docs: 4 (total turnoff!)

"Outsourced India IT Solutions: 1

Best line: "My WebFu is strong."

I've been sick for almost three weeks but finally feeling better.  So it's time to talk a little more about Social networking optimization.

While I was out, Seth Godin wrote a terrific post that has a lot to do with Social Networking Optimization.  It's a long article, but very worthwhile. 

I am often struck by the links, photos, graphics, articles, forwarded emails, etc that people in my network send to me.  Often I wonder why they bothered to share.  Other times I'm thankful that they did.  Seth speaks to this, with the following:

"A lot of the stuff marketers make is unanticipated, impersonal, irrelevant junk that consumers merely tolerate. But some of it is not spam, it's content. Stuff worth reading, worth paying for (at the very least, worth paying attention to.)"

Here's the idea: everything you share within your network should be worthwhile, valuable, etc.  

A video of your kid walking around would probably would only matter to his grandparents (however a video of your kid in a major wipeout might just be entertainment).  Any article, any link, Powerpoint presentation that you share, remember to consider...

Is it worth it?

This is the third post in a series about Social Networking Optimization (SNO) aka Social Media Optimization.  I am attempting to flesh out some ideas regarding social networking for personal marketing and career/business advancement. 

I spoke, this morning, with political consultant about social networking optimization. We are working on some ideas for a company that he is starting.

And then an idea popped into my head regarding search engine optimization (SEO) and Social networking optimization (SNO):

> SEO is for companies.  SNO is for individuals.

SNO is about YOU.  It's about optimizing your communications on the Web.

And it's not just for getting more traffic to a website, it's about reaching an audience, spreading your wisdon and gaining influence.

More ideas about SNO coming soon...

 
This is the second post in a series about Social Networking Optimization (SNO) aka Social Media Optimization.  I am attempting to flesh out some ideas regarding social networking for personal marketing and career/business advancement. Previous posts in this series are located here.

CC Sabathia doubles home Hardy and Fielder as the Crew down the Astros.

I'm working on a series of posts regarding "social media optimization" (SMO), also referred to as "social networking optimization" (SNO). I've been involved with a few projects recently that combine Feed.Us with social networking to help sell services or a product.  It's an area that has recently captured a lot of my attention.

WHAT IS IT?

You've probably heard of search engine optimization (SEO).  That's the act of optimizing a website so that Google (and the other search engines) can index a website easily and thus accumulate extra website visitors (traffic) "naturally" (without paying for it). 

SMO/SNO is the act of optimizing your social networking actions and communications to accrue more traffic to your site.  It can also be used to gain more notoriety amongst your network. 

Some examples:

> Forward a link to your Facebook friends about something you're involved with
> Upload a video to a variety of video sharing sites
> Use "Digg.com" to promote your website
> Blog daily about a subject matter in which you are an expert.

Sure you might have done something like the above before.  However, SMO is a calculated effort to mazimize your online social networks for personal and career gain. 

I will, hopefully, add a series of posts about SMO/SNO over the next 2 weeks.

I was on the NPR show "The Takeaway" to discuss the Favre situation.  Don't ask me how they found me, I have no clue.  But I'm more than happy to complain about my hero.  Click the "play" button to listen. 

The price of a barrel of oil has dropped almost $15 in the last 9 days.  That's like 10% drop in a week!

I can't stop thinking about a editorial that ran in the WSJ three weeks ago about the role of "perception" in the oil market, by Martin Feldstein.  Nutshell: Dr. Feldstein said that the perception of higher oil prices (at that time it was $140) drives speculation and pushes our prices higher, not demand. But, that some simple changes in perception will cause the price to sink and that price change will will then trigger a larger supply.  He's the economist so I'll quote him:

"When will an owner of oil reduce production or increase inventories instead of selling his oil and converting the proceeds into investible cash? A simplified answer is that he will keep the oil in the ground if its price is expected to rise faster than the interest rate that could be earned on the money obtained from selling the oil. The actual price of oil may rise faster or slower than is expected, but the decision to sell (or hold) the oil depends on the expected price rise...

...Hence, with no change in the current demand for oil, the expectation of a greater future demand and a higher future price caused the current price to rise. Similarly, credible reports about the future decline of oil production in Russia and in Mexico implied a higher future global price of oil – and that also required an increase in the current oil price to maintain the initial expected rate of increase in the price of oil.

Once this relation is understood, it is easy to see how news stories, rumors and industry reports can cause substantial fluctuations in current prices – all without anything happening to current demand or supply."

So how has perception changed? Well, it looks like we may get drilling in the US at some point in the future.  "May" and "some point".  Very powerful words - 10% drop!

The airlines drop flights. JoshJS sells his car.  People stop driving to starbucks.  SUV sales are in the dump (used small cars currently sell for more than similar mileage used SUVs). 

Huge changes in US demand caused what? The price to continue to go up!  But the annoucement that the US may start drilling at some point in the future and the price drops 10%!

I spoke to my dad about that editorial tonight. Of course he perfectly summarized the article.  He also added: "I bet that oil is under $100 soon". Interesting bet.  

Again if you have a subscription to the WSJ online, go read that editorial. It was great. 

Another house project.

Congrats to Ryan Hunter-Reay on his win today at the Watkins Glen Indycar race.

Ryan now has wins on oval, street and road circuits. 

The Mini Me (my 1 year old) is airplane-crazy.  And because of which, we are desperately awaiting this summer's Milwaukee Lakefront Air Expo.  Of course, that is, if it's still on.  We don't know.  The Thunderbirds say it's on. But there's no other reference to it, anywhere.  Wikipedia says it's off, due to lack of sponsor.

So I decided to call the old sponsor, TCF Bank, and ask them WTF?  Well, that was a mistake.

They're based in Minneapolis.  But there's no local business office number, except for a customer service line.  The customer service line is IMPOSSIBLE to get through without being a customer because you have to have an account number.  How do they get new customers, I wonder?

I finally got through only by incorrectly entering an account number that I don't have. The customer support rep. had no clue and was (surprisingly) instantly annoyed that I didn't have a problem for her.  She seemed relieved, actually and enjoyed telling me that she couldn't help me. When I asked her what I could do, she told me that I could hang up.  It's against policy to give out any kind of corporate information that would allow me to call the main folks in Minnesota (which I quickly found on their website).

The last thing I did was try to explain that banks make money by bringing in new customers, and since I wasn't a customer, I was an active candidate. "I don't deal with people who aren't customers" she explained.

At the very least I know not to bother setting up an account with TCF for any business stuff. 

Yes, we all will miss Tim Russert.  He was a giant. He will be missed this fall, surely.

But my goodness...  he wasn't President.  NBC get over yourself.

And meanwhile, Katrina part deux is taking out the Midwest.  People out here are losing everything.  Des Moines looks like New Orleans.

But back to Tim's legacy and how you can prevent heart disease.

Update:  Slate agrees!! 

So you want to move your blog outta typepad/blogger?

Congrats, you can't: the URLs are stuck in Google.  

(Fred Wilson has the best description of this problem.) 

There are two options, here:

1. Borrow the Typepad URL for a few months.

2. Call Google and have them update their PageRank for you.

Obviously, neither of these are viable. What do you do?  I don't know, but I'm searching for a solution. 

I'm offering a bounty: If you've got the answer, I'll pay you $1000.  You don't have to do the work - just tell me how it can be done.

email me at rick at feed dot us or comment.

I'm kind of addicted to Twitterbots.  I love the idea of crowd publishing for recreational endeavors like food, wine, books, music.  Anything where there's a huge supply and there's a need for recommendations.  Mkefood and NYCfood are now live and working.  Twit your food and restaurant recommendations for those cities, please.

Meanwhile, last week, I created WineTweets for Fred Wilson.  There are now almost 300 people following WineTweets and almost 100 wine suggestions.

The next one is BookTweets.  What are you reading? 

Also, keep track of twitter bots via TwitterBotting. 

Final stats on our Santa Fe Century:

> 103 miles

> 4000 ft of climbing.  Elevations changes from 5900 feet to 7300 feet

> 4 PB&Js, 3 cliff bars. 12 bottles of water.

> 6:04 of riding with 30 minutes of stops.

> Bad sunburn on the arms

Check out the photos and video on Flickr. 

I'm adding photos and videos (via the Flip) to this flickr set. Check it out.

On Sunday, I'm riding the Santa Fe Century in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It includes the 15-20% grade, 1/4 mile "heart break hill".

Below is the embed code from MapMyRun.com, a very cool google mapping service.  I'm going to download the map to my bike's gps as well.

Btw, when you wake up on Sunday morning, think of us as you're having that second donut (Ollie!).

I regularly get the "This disc is unreadable" error on the old xbox.  It happens pretty often.  It's pretty annoying.  

Since I got GTA4 (which is AWESOME!! LOVE IT!), it's been happening more often.

It's not a disc problem. It happened withing 5 minutes of putting the new DVD in the xbox.   It's a problem with the harddrive.

But not according to Microsoft!! Read here... Only causes that MS admits to are disc related.  That's bulls*%t.

It only happens with more intense game, like GTA4.  It only happens when the game is loading.  My theory is that the xbox HD heats up and can't hack it and then gives the error.

(I still love my xbox btw.) 

Every time I talk about Chipotle, someone goes, ‘Oh, Chipotle is delicious. Can you believe they were started by McDonald’s?’

Hello?!  McDonald’s is delicious, so yes... I can believe that. 

It’s not like Ben and Jerry’s opened up a lingerie shop. The world’s greatest restaurant chain taking a stab at another kind of food and hitting it out of the park.

- Todd Barry 

I'm addicted to Twitter.

I like short, simple, small, writing.  I have 4 kinds of posts:
> "here's what I'm doing even if you don't care"
> "I know some piece of news that you probably heard 3 hours ago"
> "I'm so funny and so very smart"
> Also the "look who I'm @ replying, I'm so important!"

All kidding aside, I try really hard to avoid posting things that are useless.  And I try very hard to be humorous.  And I am going to try to post some smart shit, too.  

I've also met some interesting people via Twitter. I am connected to other folks in MKE with web/software/media interests and actually made it to an event last week - all because of Twitter.

The main thing I like?  Twitter has opened up my eyes to the beauty of SMS.

Everyone can SMS.  Everyone has a phone.  It's short/simple and everyone has it.  So it's GIGANTIC.

I have begun to think about the services that can be built on SMS.  The first step is to build a couple Twitter services.  I'm trying to find someone to help me play with the Twitter API for this.

We're going to have a SMS adaption for Feed.Us.  An editor could approve content or a writer could make a breaking news story from a phone.  We'll probably use Twitter for some part of this.

But I've also begun to think of an SMS service that I want to build or would love if someone built.  Basically I want to use SMS to send and recall information to a central storage area. When my thoughts are more flushed out, I'm going to write a longer post.  But basically I'd want to be able to use SMS to send myself information and then be able to recall it later.  Example: I can never remember my car's license plate number.  I want to be able to text "recall car plate" and get it back via an SMS within seconds.  

I think the above service could be built on Twitter.  But maybe it should be on its own?

I just bought these domains - can you explain the relevance?

FRANKLINDELANOROMANAWSKI.COM
KRUGERINDUSTRIAL.NET
KRUGERINDUSTRIALSMOOTHING.NET
PENDANTPUBLISHING.NET
TYLERCHICKEN.COM

I made a few MP3 ringtones out of some college fight song wave files.  Feel free to download...

Michigan's Let's Go Blue and Hail to the Victors 

Notre Dame's Victory March

Wisconsin's  On Wisconsin and the Bud Song (you said it all)

USC's Fight On

Illinois' Oskee Wow Wow (for Jake) 

To download: point your phone to http://tachophobia.com/wireless/detail.asp?c=5315 .  Most phones should allow you to click on the link for the song and then, via the browser, download and install any MP3 as a ringtone.  It's especially easy to do with a blackberry, btw.

Lots of folks have written recently about pricing software & services at $0. 

Meanwhile, I spent some time today playing with the new Streetview Google maps for Milwaukee.  What a wonderful, useful and entertaining service.  All for free.  But Google can offer great crap like Streetview because they're so profitable on search. 

We've been working on our business model for feed.us.  Guess what? Feed.Us is going to be free.  It will be a simplified version. And we'll probably reserve the right to display small ads at the bottom of our customer's content.  But it will be free and still take advantage of our cache web service.

The main reason to offer Feed.Us for free is to let potential customers sign up and start using feed.Us easily/quickly.  The idea that we host the content and feed it to outside sites seems to be very illogical to a lotta people.  We'll have trouble getting people to try it unless there are very few strings attached.

So, all hail free! 

I have been fascinated by Microsoft's hostile takeover bid for Yahoo.  I find myself reading dozens of articles about the deal.  Probably because it's similar to last summer's Midwest-Value Jet takeover bid (which thankfully failed).

Mostly it's because I own a bit of GOOG and MSFT. 

The article that caused me to blog is this one by NY Times' Randall Stross. 

This is such a defining moment for Microsoft and Balmer.  They've got such a great business.  Vista is just kicking in and contributing to earnings.  They can't keep Xboxes in stock and XBox live is growing.  They've got people crying.  

But they can't seem to get anywhere near Google in search.  It's almost as if it just kills them to lose out to Google.  So they are going all in.

If they start to compete, it'll be great for MSFT and probably good for GOOG too.  But I worry that all they are doing is increasing their desire to not fail.  And trying not to fail is always a good way to fail.

Wisconsin primary is today, in case you didn't know.  We've got two primaries, here: President and Milwaukee Alderman.

Wisconsin is an open primary and with the lack of Republican battle...  I voted for Clinton to offset my wife's vote for Obama.  (I've never voted for a Clinton before.  Hope I don't have to do it again.)

I also voted for McGovern! 

Maybe I'm becoming a liberal? I came home and listened to some Springsteen...  

God help me before I start wanting more taxes!

A new photo via Engadet of the new Google android.

If I was starting something new today, it would be to make web applications for iphone, blackberry and android.

There are not many applications that truly combine the web with the medium.  I sound like a broken record, but that blackberry facebook app is the best example.  

At first glance, I was pretty excited about the potential deal.  With apologies to my friends at Google, I would like to see a little competition.  Especially an Adsense/Adwords competitor.

At second glance however... what a mess!

Microsoft: MSN, Live, Hotmail, Windows Messenger, City Guides, Money, Music (zune)... etc.

Yahoo: mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Flickr, MyYahoo, Travel/shoppping/autos, sports, movies, music, delicious, Hotjobs, Finance, etc.

Search is the key. They've got to create a powerful combined search service.  They need a search/adwords/adsense competitor that works. Overture and YPN suck but they're better than MS's version.

What to do with the rest of those services? Music, finances, mail.   Each one of those services has tons of customers.  Example... You can't cut Hotmail or Yahoo mail... yet you don't want to keep the status quo.  

Then there's stuff like Flickr and Delicious, things that were never really integrated (and probably not great buys).  Do these get spun off?

And what do you call stuff?  MSN sucks.  But you can't rename MS stuff as "Yahoo".  Do you make a new Cingular-style name?

Seems like a big mess.

Update: Gotta love Umair: 

It's not often that we get to witness fatal errors. Strategic errors, sure.  But bona fide fatal - company-killing, firm-vaporizing errors - errors? Almost never - they're the strategic equivalent of meteor strikes.

The Academy Award nominees were announced this morning and two Conn College Camels are competing for the documentary award.   Both are members of the class of 1996 and I am proud to say that I was friends with both!

18. Documentary Feature: "No End in Sight," "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience," "Sicko," "Taxi to the Dark Side," "War/Dance." 

Sean Fine's "War/Dance" is competing against Jesse Vogelson's "No End in Sight". 

Good luck to both!!

Over the holiday week I downloaded and installed the Facebook blackberry application.  Now I've tried dozens of applications on my blackberry and none of them live up to the blackberry's email abilities.

But this facebook application is different. 

As a married guy, I don't really use Facebook that much.  It's basically just for reconnecting with friends.  So the facebook blackberry app isn't that useful to me.  So that's not why I was impressed.  I was impressed because someone figured out how to intergrate facebook into a blackberry.  

Best example is the Facebook "site mail".  I'm always annoyed that I get an email to my inbox whenever someone emails me within facebook.  Then I have to go to the facebook site to view the email.  Well on the blackberry, there's a little facebook icon whenever there's a message (or friend request).  Open the blackberry app and read/reply to the email.  It's actually better. Viewing profiles works pretty well too.  I have to say: it's very cool. 

Why hasn't anyone else come up with great applications like this?  If I could start any new company right now, it would be to make Blackberry applications.  Applications that work like RIM's email system. Applications like:

Sports: I would love a sports scores that gives me score updates as they happen - just like RIM email. (ESPN's blackberry version is just a link to their mobile website.  It's not an application.)  

Financial:  I would love to get all my stock prices on my blackberry... not a mobile webpage but work like RIM email.   

News:  Headlines on my blackberry from AP, google news or even Drudge?  Have it look/work just like the RIM email.

RSS reader:  I use NewsGator on my blackberry all the time. And it works pretty well.  But again, it doesn't utilize the Blackberry.  I'm sure they built it for all mobile phones.  

Again this is part of the reason I think that 2008 is going to be the year of the mobile web. 

I made some t-shirts with a Feed.Us logo via CafePress.com.  I was hoping to send them as Christmas gifts.

So the order arrived with just one t-shirt.  Not the 10 I had ordered.  One shirt.  

(BTW, it looked great. MUCH better than the ones I made at t-shirts.com.)

So I called them up to find out just exactly what happened.  The customer service person informed me that they'd send the remaining shirts, at no cost!

What nice folks - FREE SHIPPING on something that I'd already paid for!  Thank goodness!

As I usually do when someone screws up an order... make it up to me.  I asked the customer service rep that, since the ONE shirt looked so nice, give me a discount and I'll order some more?

"Well, I already gave you free shipping" was the reply.  Oh, yeah... You're right, that was already a great deal for me. 

Why don't companies empower their customer service people to offer great customer service? Why not give your people flexibility?  If you think you've got a great product or service, why not make it easy for your customer service people to extend that greatness to their roles as well?

Howard Schultz to Larry King in 1997 interview: 

“People weren’t drinking coffee. ... So the question is, How could a company create retail stores where coffee was not previously sold, ... charge three times more for it than the local doughnut shop, put Italian names on it that no one can pronounce, and then have six million customers a week coming through the stores?”

Great article. 

As last year's recipient, I want to first congratulate him.  It's a true honor.  Maybe you should take this award to heart and start thinking about your country's freedoms, eh Vladimir??

Here's an update on the strange boat that ran aground off of our part of Lake Michigan in October.

Basically a Czech dude, named Pavel Bernek, bought the 30 foot sailboat in Chicago and planned to sail it to the Mediterranean (from Lake Michigan) to pick up his girlfriend.  Instead he ran aground right off Milwaukee's east side (North of Bradford Beach).

The guy fled to Europe leaving the strange, half sunk craft in our neighborhood.  It's been a fascinating sight for many passersby and even has snarled traffic.

Finally yesterday a local salvage company sawed the boat into pieces hauled it out and put it on a flat bed truck. The Journal Sentinel has the full story here. We thank Pirate's Cove Diving company for taking care of this.

The Journal Sentinel also has some great time lapse video of how they finally got it out.  Very cool stuff. 

Testing the way we import from Blogger.  This post comes from this blogger account.  It's imported to Tachophobia via Feed.Us.

Works perfectly.  Damn! 

I spent about 30 minutes too long in my local Walmart, today.  (The Walmart on Capitol Dr. is a scary place - people begging inside the joint.)  

I was hoping to find a copy of a new Xbox game, of course.  Usually Walmart has video games that the other retailers don't.

The "associate" informed me that they indeed had several copies but it was "impossible" to find them.  After a perfunctory search - the associate gave up.  And so I kept my $59.

Compare that with my trip to the dentist yesterday. My denist is always pushing new procedures on me.  Drilling, filling, crowning, cleaning, whitening.  She must have a lot of equipment to pay for.   (She is a good dentist, btw).

So, what's the difference?  It's not a rhetorical question - I would love to know more about encouraging people to sell and service current and future customers.

At 1871 Media, our pricing structure and software made it a pain to do new or more work for customers.  I'm sure the situation was similar to Walmart, at times. It was frustrating and I fell into the trap at times as well. 

Next time (FeedUs) we'll have a product that makes us love to do more work.  

I did a quick redesign of Tachophobia today.

I'm importing RSS feeds into Feed.Us and it has made the site a little confusing.  So instead of putting all of the content down the center, I changed everything up.  It really wasn't a redesign, because my CSS and XHTML didn't change. No, it was more of a content layout change.  I changed what Feed.Us feeds are being displayed and where.

Down the center, I've got the latest stuff from my site and from the FeedUsBlog.com.  Both of these orginate in Feed.Us and are syndicated to this site and the FeedusBlog via the Feed.us  web service. Then along the right, I'm pulling RSS feeds from Flickr and Twitter, and then reformating them using our web service.  (Also I made a new "XSL" that adds the "MORE..." as a link in every article 'teaser'.)

Probably the biggest change is that I've got the latest stories prominently on the top of the main page. 

Also, I made some new RSS feeds that are being used in different spots.  There's one that goes to Twitterfeed and posts all my main articles to Twitter. Then there's the old one... but it now pulls my photos from flickr, my twitters and my delicious bookmarks. 

I haven't really updated this site since I added the RSS importing functionality.  The site feels a bit neglected so here are some thoughts...

Importing Feeds:
I am working on a redesign of the content on this page.  I've been thinking about it for a while.  The feeds coming from Flickr and Twitter and Feedusblog need to have their own space.  Going to try to work on that this morning.

Ryan Braun:
I hope he  gets rookie of the year.  He saved the Crew from a miserable finish.

Packers:
No one... NO ONE would have picked the Pack to be 8-1 at this point.  Ridiculous!!   I keep waiting for the shoe to drop, and they keep reeling off wins.  Carolina at home, then Thursday games vs. Detroit and Dallas.  Going to lose at least one of those... I predict a 12-4 finish.  

Miller:
The merger with Coors is not good for Milwaukee.  If you live in Milwaukee you realize that it's a great place to live/work.  But if you're not from here you have no clue.  So guess what?  No way will Milwaukee win the Miller Coors headquarters.  Book it - they will be in Denver and I don't blame them.  Sad because it's like 300 people, and about 100 executives, many of whom are young and smart and we'll lose them again.  (As long as we can keep GE Healthcare, we'll be ok.) 

UPDATE: Ryan Braun named NL Rookie of the Year!! 

My site had finally worked its way up to #5 in Google... after 4 years of hard work.  Suddenly on Monday, it's back to like #30.

The only change I made was to insert the "no follow" attribute into all the outbound links.  I did that so that Google doesn't think I'm selling links, which I don't.  I did it per the official google blog and after the last PageRank update.

I wonder... because I now have so many no follows on my links... that they think "gee he sure sells links" and dinged me? 

UPDATE:  Back to normal by Friday.  Ranked 4th again.  Weird. 

A sailboat ran aground off of Bradford Beach.  It's been there for about a week. But with 50 MPH winds tonight... probably not going to be there tomorrow.

Full story here.

Welborn has been finishing up our new RSS Importing.  You'll notice on this site there's now Twitter posts and Flickr photos.  I'm also going to add an RSS of a specific tag in Delicious. (Jake - we could now do Saved Stuff even better.)

It's the first step in our importing project.  The goal with importing is so that our customers don't have to use Feed.Us to use Feed.Us. We hope that our customers can assemble sites from a variety of sources.  I think the big use is to allow writers to publish via their own favorite source, and then send an RSS feed to their editors.   (Next, we're going to do Metaweblog synching as well. Metaweblog would be really cool because you could 'pull' content from a variety of different CMSes and Blog systems, or use a variety of different publishing applications.  Then assemble and syndicate all that stuff to wherever you want.)

There are few tweaks left (not bugs, tweaks) on this RSS stuff, but email me for info. 

Update 1: The only problem I see, right now, is that Twitter seems to put the entire tweet in both the headline and the body of the RSS. Weird.

Update 2: I just saw that Tumblr got funding. Tumblr is a really neat blogging tool.  Basically it lets you 'reblog' all the stuff you create in other places and assemble it on one Tumblr blog website.

They import RSS like Feed.Us does.  Try it out.

As you are probably aware, the US Congress is set to have a full vote about the Armenian Genocide.  Per the bill, it's just a US Congressional "recognition" of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire between 1914-1920.  But to the 1.5 Armenians spread across the US (more than actually live in Armenia), it means more - a lot more.  Armenians have been working on this since before Clinton.  Never has our government tried to force the world to officially acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, even though it is generally considered the first genocide of the 20th century.  (Here's some good background info about the bill via USNews.)

So Erdogan responded via last Friday's Wall Street Journal.  Here is the editorial.  Reminds me a lot of what Sudan President Hassan says about what has gone on in Darfur.  

This part is the most offensive:

Many Turks lost their lives during the mutual killings. And despite an onslaught of Armenian terror that lasted decades and took many innocent Turkish lives (including in the U.S.) Turkey has always been the one extending the olive branch.

That quote is insanely offensive.  However, his threats look to be working: previous supporters are suddenly losing interest in the bill. 

Eventually, someday, it will pass. 

If you don't know much about the Armenian Genocide, here are a few links:

Wikipedia

ABC News' the forgotten

University of Minnesota's Center for the study of Genocides

PS: FYI, I am a little fearful of what Turkish hackers will do to my sites when they read this.  This is not a joke - I've had run-ins in the past. 

If you happen to be in beautiful New London, CT on Friday afternoon, stop by the "Plugged In" panel at good old Conn College. 

It'll be me, Andrew Margie (CSTV.com), Luke Beatty (AssociatedContent.com), Anne Holland (MarketingSherpa.com) and Tim Armstrong (Google).   

From Boston Globe:

No more waiting to bear witness to genocide truth

October 15, 2007

FOUR GENERATIONS of my family (of which I am the third) would not exist were it not for the courage and strength of one woman: my great-grandmother, Azneve Ohanian. As a 9-year-old girl, she marched through the deserts of Der-el-Zor with her infant brother strapped to her back, while the rest of her villagers were raped, mutilated and massacred by Turkish soldiers.

It was more than 90 years ago; the Ottoman Empire no longer exists. But its successor, the Republic of Turkey, shares in the human obligation to acknowledge the past. If we let Turkey erase it, how long until we erase Croatia? Burundi? Rwanda? Darfur?

The White House argues that now is not the "right time" for the United States to speak on this chapter of history ("Genocide vote sets a face-off with Bush," Page A1, Oct. 11). And Turkey, in keeping with its longstanding policy of intense lobbying and indignant posturing, has suggested that repercussions could be felt by American troops in Iraq should the resolution acknowledging the genocide pass the House.

I am not so incensed as to ignore the resolution's less-than-ideal timing. But I wonder when it will be the "right time," because in the last 90 years, we have yet to find it convenient. Perhaps, for the truth, it is always the right time.

When it began, the final solution to the Armenian question was "annihilation." Later, it was "a tragedy." Today, it is "unfortunate."

What will it be tomorrow?

DEREK J. JOHNSON
Brighton

Below is a summary of a couple of conversations I had about Facebook and use/impact for college administrators.

Facebook was created to network students together.  Conn College had a facebook before there was a facebook. (Tim Harrington utilized our 1992 facebook in order to find freshmen babes... Right, Timmy??).

Here are some thoughts on to effectively utilize Facebook for communications and networking amongst college alumni and students:

Facebook is the leader: 

Facebook is by far the best software platform for connecting people that are within a community (Myspace and Linkedin do better jobs of connecting people from independent communities).  It's by far the best way to connect students, alumni, administrators, etc.  It's way better than anything you could ever make.  And it will continue to improve.

That being said, Facebook is in the middle of a large bubble.  It's not really worth $100 billion dollars or whatever the news is reporting.  It's a bit of a fad.

Here's the big deal with Facebook: It has a wonderful audience of teens and 20 year olds.  90% of the students in classes 2011-2002 are not only going to have a "profile" but they're going to be logging in to Facebook daily.   And the older folks will continue to join Facebook, though probably never be more than like 50%.

The bottom line is that Facebook will be the best way to reach the people who are class of 2001 and younger.  You'll still need to use email and snail-mail to reach the older folks. 

How to use Facebook to reach students, alumni, etc:

Your network's page:

Each Facebook "network" (your college, your city, your work place)  has its own page. Conn's page is here.  Community members can post a lot of information to that page.  Events, discussions, even pay for "Flyers" that are a form of Facebook ads.  This is a great way to reach out to your network's members... however not many people realize they can go to that page.  

Groups:

Anyone can make a group in Facebook.  A "Group" is a network within a network or a network that compasses multiple networks.  Example:  "All Because of U2" is a U2 fan group.  Anyone can join.  I created a group within the Conn community called "Conn people in web" for students and alumni that are working in tech/software/media etc.  Only folks within the Conn network can join.  The downside is that it's kind of hard to promote a group, it has to grow by word of mouth.  But once you have a decent amount of members, it's pretty easy to publish news to your group.

Applications:  

The new Facebook "applications" are another way you can reach students, alumni etc.  Outside developers can build small programs that will exist in the Facebook system.  These "applications" can be added to Facebook members profile pages.  The popular applications involve animation, video, travel maps, photo, music related stuff, etc.  

A college or university could create applications for publishing news, events or even fund raising.  This area of Facebook needs further exploration - the application stuff is still very new.  

From the WSJ:

We hate to be the bearers of good news, but someone's got to do it: The Congressional Budget Office has released its preliminary estimates for Fiscal Year 2007 that ended September 30, and the federal budget deficit fell again, this time by 35% to $161 billion.

I was taught, repeatedly, by my Conn College professors that "trickle down" "voodoo" economics didn't work.  How many times were we told that the tax cuts early in Bush's presidency were going to wreck the deficit?  Too bad it's all bull----... the tax cuts spurred the economy and generated higher returns for the IRS.  It's one of the few successful ideas out of GW Bush's tenure.

The WSJ continues:

The overriding lesson here is that the best antidote for deficits is faster growth, not tax increases. The budget deficit has declined more rapidly this decade in the wake of the Bush tax cuts than it did in the 1990s in the wake of the Clinton tax increases.

So if you're a liberal and you feel guilty about having money, what should you do? Easy, cite the US poverty rate! Clinton, who reduced the deficit the right way, reduced the poverty rate as well!  While Bush's tax cuts increased the poverty rate.  From Wikipedia:

The official poverty rate in the U.S. increased for four consecutive years, from a 26-year low of 11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004, then declined somewhat to 12.3% in 2006. This means that 36.5 million people were below the official poverty thresholds in 2006 and that there was an increase of 4.9 million poor from 2000 to 2006 while the total population grew by 17.5 million. ^[12]

It's up 1% during the first 2/3 George Bush's tenure!  That must mean that he does all those tax cuts for the wealthy.

So when Hilary and her Congress takes power next year...  we should all feel enough shame about our money and give in to tax increases, especially on the rich because it's such a large group of people who don't do anything with their money anyhow!  Let the government distribute it for us.  We can all feel so much better about ourselves, and we won't even have to give more money to charities!

More on Bush's tax cuts from DircktheNoorman. 

My neighbor (5 blocks away, luckily) was involved in a very strange incident.  He and family were held at sawed-off-shotgun-point for an hour one evening last week by an extremely large black man.  The guy tried to rob them of cash, but after a few beers took off with just a laptop and iPhone.  No police were called; instead the guy calls the mayor the following day.  Still, almost 2 weeks later... police are not investigating because he won't let them.

The man in question is John Jazwiec, CEO of Red Prairie  (probably the only big software company in Wisconsin, btw). He's been a vocal critic against Milwaukee's taxes (ridiculously high taxes) and services (poor services).  Supposedly he's scared of the police too (the local police are really good, actually but don't visit our neighborhood often because not much goes on here).

Here's the background for you, if you are interested.  First is a J-S article.  The second is a summary of the emails sent between Jazwiec and the Mayor's office.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=670875
http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2007/10/john-jazwiec-and-not-your-typical-thug.html

Here are the things that our neighbors are asking each other...

1. What piece of information is missing.

2. Would someone fake a robbery in order to bring more attention to city's problems?

3. His next door neighbor was robbed and the police immediately caught the suspects.  He obviously knew this.  Still he's skeptical of the police?

I've recently installed the blackberry twitter application.  Pretty nice - works really well. 

It got me thinking about other blackberry applications.  NewsGator's blackberry feedreader works pretty well.  Google Maps on my bb saved my ass a couple weeks ago.

I tried to download a blackberry google calendar sync program.  It didn't install for me because my BB has older java software.  But everyone seems to think that it works fine. 

I would love an IM application that uses the blackberry network.  Is there one out there that works on a cingular phone?  

What about sports scores? That's the killer app. Why do I have to log on to the web to get the latest scores?  Why can't it connect and get the scores for me like it downloads emails?  And news headlines? Or a fantasy sports monitor?  I'd pay for that.

There's definitely opportunities out there.

I've been using Twitter pretty regularly.  It's starting to change the way I use this site.  In fact, I don't post as much.  All my stupid crap that no one wants to read goes into my Twitter posts.

Soon we'll be adding the ability to import RSS feeds into Feed.Us. That means our customers actually won't have to use Feed.Us to use Feed.Us.

As soon as that happens, I think I'll change this blog so that it's just a bunch of my RSS feeds... flickr, Twitter, feedusblog.com, Packerbackerblog etc.  This site can be a summary of what I'm publishing.

Meanwhile, I am starting to write more thought-out crap over on the feedusblog.  My first one was last week - how to add video.   I've started keeping track of the things people ask advise for... like ecommerce, html newsletters, what to do with those domain names you bought years ago, make an RSS feed, get on iTunes, that kind of thing. 

Anyway, look for this site to change, soon. 

Update: just changed my twitter to FeedUs.

Question:

For a while now we've been wanting to start shooting digital video and placing it on the Web site alongside our stories. We're planning to start small -- 30 second video interviews, sound clips, etc.  Can you give me an overview of how to get started?

My answer:

On September 9, 2001, Keeks and I were in engaged in NYC.  We flew back to Chicago late Sunday.  A weekend of food, engagement, US Open, more food, Yankees/Sox.  What a great weekend.

All that changed on the following Tuesday.  I was at my desk in our apartment that overlooked the Hancock and the Sears.  Right in the middle of my view was our TV - tuned to the Today Show.  Keeks was about to leave for work - she never went.  The Today Show switched the cameras to the Towers.  I remember wondering whether it was live or not (The Today Show is taped for non Eastern timezone markets).  

I immediately tried to call Josh Metnick Schneider and make sure he was out of the Hancock.  We thought for sure the Sears or Hancock was next. To this day, I feel a fright every time I see a 767 flying overhead. 

We were so far away from NYC but we felt so close. 

The car I most want to own is regularly on my mind. 

But the car's details regularly change.  Viper GTS, Lamborghini Miura, Ferrari Dino, 73 Porsche 911RS.

Until last week it was a Lamborghini Gallardo.  Not anymore.  I saw a couple of young high school punks looking in the trunk (front) of an orange Gallardo in NYC last week.  I honestly think they were looking for the engine up there.

So I've moved on.  It's now the Ferrari Maranello. 1999-2001 Ferrari 550 or the 2002-2006 575 Maranello.   

The 550 and its upgraded friend the 575 were Front engine Berlinettas with V12  5.5L (later 5.7L).

I would get gray exterior, classic Ferrari tan interior (see photo). I'd go for the GTC package with brakes and handling upgrades.  Oh, and a clutch, please - no paddle shifting nonsense.

eBay pricing places the earlier 550s in the low $100K range.  Maybe $110k for a decent one. Compare that to $500K+ for the current Berlinetta (ugly!). 

It's a good rule of thumb not to blog about one's sex life, finances or... fantasy football team.

I'll violate that third one, here.

Our annual draft was last night.  It was our first "online" draft - the 10 previous seasons have been manual.  This year it's on ESPN instead of Commissioner.com (sportsline).  For the most part it went well but there were some technical glitches when manager's computers froze.  It happened to 4 people.  The JRE stuff ESPN runs definetely has issues.

I cannot use ESPN's JRE as an excuse.  Here's my lineup:

QB Peyton Manning
RB Thomas Jones
RB Cedric Benson
WR Roy Williams
WR Calvin Johnson
WR Deion Branch
Packers D/ST
K Ryan Longwell
RB Warrick Dunn
RB Chris Brown
QB Jon Kitna
WR James Jones
RB Heath Evans
WR Steve Smith (giants)
TE Bubba Franks

We've got the pleasure of being able to watch tons of sports this week on the tube.  We've got Yanks vs. Sox and Brewers vs. Cubs (I'm not jinxing it).  

But I'd prefer to watch the US Open on Universal HD.  For some reason, the stuff on Universal HD is noticeably better than the HD sports on other channels.  Even ESPN.  The US Open night matches, outdoors... all in HD.  It's so perfect and we'll have it every day and night for almost 2 weeks.

Yesterday I added the Disqus comment system to my site (and here and here).  I was actually amazed at how simple they've got it working.  They really thought through their AJAX and their Javascript.  Hats off to them.

I immediately thought of all the newspaper/magazine writers and editors that I've worked for over the last couple year (at 1871 uxCast).  There are dozens of our old customers who would love to have this kind of comment system.  We made several attempts over the years, but it was never our focus.  

Then reader polls.  We had a nice reader poll through the years and every newspaper utilized it.  Now there's a widget reader poll from Qubblo that looks terrific.  They've done a really nice job.  

Surveys... i'm sure there's a nice Widget-based survey system out there.  Newspapers would love it to get feedback from readers about articles.  

Then there's the ad systems... all are javascripts.  And the video... newspapers love adding video.  Brightcove has the best player, in my opinion.  They did a great job.  Better than what we tried to do with flash video.

So here's my point: we have all this great software, just a copy/paste away,  but we rely on javascripts. 

There are all these companies out there making pieces of an overall publishing system.  They all focus on their individual component, and because of their focus, the product is WAY better than anything else out there. 

But all of them get added via a javascript.  And as most folks know... Javascripts dramatically slow page load time. For newspapers, it cannot be done.  Newspapers are already deathly slow because of the desire/need/fasination with placing EVERYTHING on EVERY PAGE. 

So adding all of the widgets I described above is a deal breaker.

Maybe...

1) Somehow combine a bunch of services into one javascript.  There are services out there for this, but I doubt it reduces the overall number of javascripts.  

2) Build a common API that publishers can easily implement. 

3) Do something "local" like we did with Feed.Us.

We built Feed.Us with the idea that we're a cog that works in a larger gear system.  But we'd rather be part of Audi's multitronic  CVT  rather than a Shimano 105. 

We think we've done a really good job of avoiding the pitfalls of javascript widgets.  I hope others will figure this out, too. 

Disqus.com... one quick javascript and I've got comments.  Goodbye SixApart!

Joe Leonard enjoys sour grapes...

We sought to acquire Midwest because we believe joining the two airlines would have created a unique, efficient, truly national low-cost carrier with tremendous benefits for shareholders, communities and employees. We hoped the Midwest board would come to share our vision and reach a consensual agreement - just as a majority of Midwest shareholders recognized the value in our strategic plan. However, we accept the Midwest board's decision.

A couple things...

Employees and shareholders wouldn't mutually benefit under what was his plan. If shareholders wanted this to happen, they would have expected more profits which only would mean reduced salaries.  That was the "synergy".

Also a majority of shareholders weren't in favor.  A majority of the shares were voted... but with the amount of funds that owned the company, there's no way a majority of shareholders were interested in the deal. 

Anyway, he can find another city to screw and the NY Times can help him then too. 

Finally the months-long saga of the Midwest Airlines acquisition is over, and Midwest's shareholders and customers are both  winners.

For those who haven't been paying attention... Midwest's board was fighting a hostile takeover by Airtran.  It was a cash and stock offer that was only appealing to the institutional owners. 

At the last second, a private equity firm, partnered with Northwest Airlines, swooped in to steal the deal.  Luckily for us, Northwest - a lifelong Midwest enemy - didn't want Airtran stealing more business that it had already lost to Midwest.   And the private equity firm saw an opportunity.

So instead of just shareholders winning, Midwest's customers win too.  We still get good food, nice people, short lines and the best care center.  Though we're probably going to lose our wider seats.

So Value Jet CEO Joe Leonard can go back to Florida, and Gretchen Morgensen can join him.  She wrote this press release for Airtran and got Joe Leonard his prime spot on the frontpage of NY Time's Sunday Business.  

Bottom line is that the board supported the majority of shareholders and resisted Airtran.  We all knew that Milwaukee would suck without  Midwest and that Airtran's stock was not a fair trade. 

And we won. 

The web is amazing.

I was looking for a quote from Seinfeld that was about George being divided against himself.  It's from one of those episodes where George is afraid of getting married.

I put in "george, seinfeld, divided" into Google.  Second result was some guys Seinfeld youtube with the exact scene.

"A george, divided against itself, CANNOT STAND!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp1tohmTx40 

19-4.  That's the brewers' score vs. the Rockies yesterday.  The Rockies.

I think the wheels officially have come off the bus.  

I believe I have significantly distanced myself from these Brewers in order to keep from getting too disappointed. 

 The internet is not a big truck; It's a series of tubes.  Big, tangled tubes.

In Nick Aster news...

"A representative for eco-blog TreeHugger has confirmed that the site has been acquired by Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel, The Science Channel, Animal Planet, and several other properties. A report of the deal initially surfaced in the New York Post today."

CNET Article here.

I love doing my Milwaukee accent for folks out east.  They think it's hilarious.  Since moving back, I don't think my normal accent and my Milwaukee accent are that different anymore. Still it's fun to put it on thick.   

Say this with a really thick Milwaukee or Wisconsin accent (there's a difference, a-na).   If you can't do a WI or MKE accent, just imitate Fargo - which is close enough.

"John ain't here -- he's on vacation.  He went by the Dells. No way I'd go to the Dells.  Nothing to do there --  Only fish, though.  You can't even ATV there even."

I've used Meebo on and off for about a year.  It lets you IM when you don't have one of the IM clients installed (or work won't let you).  It's browser based - nothing to download, install etc.

Meebo just added a chat widget (www.MeeboMe.com) and I've added it to the right side of my site.  It's really cool - any visitor can send me an IM.  Unfortunately, it goes to my Meebo account and not to AOL or MSN.  There must be a reason why they wouldn't want that part to work?  Maybe it's too difficult?

Anyway - shoot me a message if you drop by!

>> Update:  I added the same Widget to Feed.us and my facebook profile.  Pretty cool.   

I'm going to try to enjoy tomorrow's final 2007 Tour de France stage with extra gusto.  Because it will probably be the last one we see for a while in the US.

The final stage is really cool.  The finish is on the Champs in Paris.  The team in yellow traditionally enters the Champs in the lead and then makes way for the sprinters.  They do like 6 laps (I think) from the Arc d'Triumph to the Louvre and back.  It's beautiful and it's one of those sporting events that should not be missed in your life time.

But tomorrow will be the last time it's on live in the US, I believe.

There's just too much working against us.  No Lance, Floyd Landis's postive test. Discovery Channel leaving Tailwind Sports (Lance's team), waining interest for cycling, and now more doping scandals in 2007.

I feel for the OLN (opps Versus) guys.  They do a great job.  It's fun spending July with them.

>> Update... Keeks guessed, about 2 weeks ago, that  Livestrong would takeover for Discovery.  Rumors have it that Livestrong, Nike and some of Lance's drug company sponsors (Cancer drugs not EPO!) will take over.  Good call!

When I was about 10, my dad and I got a ride in Paul Poberezny's P51 Mustang.  It is one of the all time thrills of my life.  I puked.

On Friday, two P-51s collided at the EAA Fly-in.  One of them - the blue one close to landing - was the P-51 I got a ride in.   Scary! Here are the details.

This year's Tour de France reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live segment... "the All Drug Olympics...."  

"He's taken anabolic steroids, novacaine, nyquil, dervine and some sort of fish paralyzer.  Also I believe he's had several cocktails in the last hour or so.  All of this is completely legal in the All Drug Olympics."

 

It's disappointing to be sure.  But there's going to be a great timetrial on Saturday and exciting final stage on the Champs.  I'm still going to tune in.

There's a football (soccer) highlight show in England that is perfect.  I guess it's a little like Baseball tonight.  I can't remember the name, but I think it's on one of the BBCs.

It's what SportsCenter should be if ESPN was actually run by people who like sports. 

The highlights are maybe 5 minutes long, each.  Then the 2-3 hosts briefly discuss what happened.   Then another 5 minute clip.  

There's NO music, NO "5 questions" or "True or False", "Who's Now" etc.  

No gimmicks.  

Just the sports.

>> update: Jake Gibson says it's the "English Premier League Review Show" and it runs on FSN, here in the US. 

I swore off the tour after Floyd Landis got caught with extra testosterone in 2006.

Here it is almost a year to the day and I find myself glued to the TV every day.  I've got the Slingbox going... I'm getting up early with Beckett... I'm double-checking that the Tivo is working... all so I can catch every minute of this year's tour.

For the first time I find myself checking the GC for the first time in years.  The Mallot Jeune is up for grabs by about 10 different cyclists and it's going to go down to the line.

Oh, by the way, that photo is of a dog that wandered out in front of the back end of the peloton this morning.  Dog was fine -  TMobile rider went down hard avoiding him. 

The 1990 World Cup was on ESPN and finally we got cable. 

Also, for the first time, I got to see the NHL.  (Note to my mom: if I could have grown up watching the NHL on ESPN, instead of waiting till high school, I'd probably be finishing a nice, long pro hockey career.  It's all your fault.)

Over the years, Directv channel 206 (Now HD channel 73) has been my number one stop on the channel lineup.   I've loved the Tour de France, NASCAR, Formula 1, America's Cup, Sunday Night Football, Championship Week Basketball, Baseball Tonight, RPM 2nite, Sunday Night Countdown, Wimbledon, Sports Century, the IRL, NCAA Lacrosse championships and Sunday Night Baseball.

Notice what's not on that list... the ESPYs, "Who's Now", Poker,  The Bronx is Burning, Cold Pizza, ESPN hollywood, The Madden Tour, and "texting" to any ridiculous poll.

SportsCenter has become almost unwatchable.  The self promotions are awful.   I used to be able to sit through back-to-back Sportscenters, now I won't even bother with 10 minutes. 

When did the "E" in ESPN become more important than the "S"?

After the Floyd Landis fiasco, I thought I'd never be interested in the Tour de France again.

But it's stage 2 and I'm watching the whole stage. 

So I'm sucked in, whether I like it or not.  The TdF is one of the great sporting events, regardless of the scandals (or because of them).  

My bet: Kloden or Sastre... but I wish it would be Hincapie. 

It's the Beck-man's first fourth of july, and we're spending it in the car going far north.

I tried telling him that 231 years ago, today, a bunch of men gathered in Philly and signed a letter to the king  and declared the colonies independent from england.

Beck seemed more interested in a set of fake plastic keys.

However, he came alive during the red sox games's 7th inning stretch.  A woman from the boston pops sang God Bless America and she was really great.

The Beck got in the spirit big time but suddenly crashed out to sleep.

Happy first 4th, Beck!

I am lying here, in bed, reading on a Monday night.

The weather is such that I can almost perfectly here multiple bands performing on stage down at Summerfest, which is almost 2 miles south of our house.

I think it's Social Distortion playing on the Leinie's stage.

Tomorrow, July 3, is nightmare night.  Always the worst night because of the crowds.  John Mayer, Ben Folds, Buddy Guy, Weird Al, War, and Randy Travis.  And great fireworks.

After years and years of hoping our one guy gets in the game, the Crew actually is gonna have plenty of representatives in San Francisco.  The Brewers are sending:

Prince Fielder, starter at 1B

Ben Sheets

JJ Hardy

Francisco Cordero

My laptop crashed about 2 months ago.  I tried to go through Dell customer service, but it was pointless.  I knew the hard drive had crashed.  I didn't care that much because I back up everything so I didn't lose it all.  But Dell wanted me to do endless analysis instead of just sending me a new harddrive.  (Actually, I wanted a new keyboard as well because Bart took out the \ key).

So I gave up and just ordered a new HD.  It arrived and so I decided to load Vista and the new Office Unlimited.  Microsoft has a great program for software manufacturers (Bill Gates actually got us into it but that's a longer story).  We get a couple licenses for free in order to stimulate development.

So I loaded Vista for business and Office 2007 unlimited.  It went very very easily.  The only driver I had to find was the audio and it would have been very smooth if Dell's download system wasn't down yesterday.  (I actually downloaded it from Toshiba.) 

So the little laptop is now cruising on Vista.   And the new Word has a really nice "Blog Post" feature that we're going to get working for both Feed.us and uxCast/1871.  Basically you can create and save and publish "posts" from Word.  It's well done.

So kudos to Microsoft and I have officially put off getting a Macbook for a bit longer. 

I've been using Twitter for a couple months now.  I don't use it regularly like other people do.  Probably because I don't have much of an audience.

If a few of my good friends used it regularly, it would become essential, I think.  But I have a hard time convincing my friends to use IM, so there's fat chance they'll go on Twitter (notice how I wont use twitter as a verb yet).

I would love to see Twitter start some sort of group-type network thingy.  Where we could communicate within a group without others watching.  Right now to do this you need a separate Twitter account and then you can't send a text to it... so it doesn't work.  Maybe someone will create an app for this.

However I think that the big idea behind Twitter is not new.  It's very simple to publish.  Blogs did this for personal websites and now Twitter is doing it too.  When people can publish quickly easily and reach lots and lots of people (or none in my case), it's addicting.

So to sum up... the growth of blogging isn't about citizen journalism.  And the cult of Twitter isn't about cell phones, etc.  It's about freedom and the ease of communication.

Speaking of confusion... I generally have trouble telling people what Feed.Us does. 

Welborn and I have discussed a good, short description and we immediately decided on "Remote web page management".  But that confused people.  Lately I've started calling it a "content management web service". 

Feed.Us is a Web Publishing application that works like a Widget. No need to download or host Feed.Us locally.  Copy/paste a few simple scripts to any web page hosted any where and you can quickly/easily use Feed.Us to put text, images, audio, video etc on a website  remotely - without knowing any coding, or using ftp, etc.

But it's more than that.  It can publish to multiple sites from one account.  Or store your content all in one location.  Collaborate with others on Website(s).   Make RSS feeds on the fly.  Make a feed of display or text ads that can run on any Website.  There are a lot of options.

The immediate market is web developers and web designers who want to quickly add CMS functionality for their clients or co-workers who are not technically inclined.  But it's more than just a CMS tool, so we think the opportunity is greater.

If you'd like to try it - please let me know. rick at feed dot us.

We've been fooling around recently with building sites on several different company's hosting systems.  Godaddy, Mydomain, Yahoo, etc.

For Feed.us to work, we're going to need to know it works easily on your hosting service. 

But, I was surprised to find that it hasn't changed much since when i put up my first website in 1997.  In fact, it hasn't changed at all.  No one has figured out a way to make it simple.

Let's take Godaddy, for example.  Great deals.  I can buy a domain and hosting for an entire year under $45.  What a steal.  The bare-minimum hosting is all you need with Feed.us, so it makes it extremely affordable.

But, Godaddy won't make it easy on you.  First of all, you're bombarded by offers.  8 extra options that Godaddy wants to make you think you need when you're buying hosting.  If you're a beginner, all that stuff seems pretty necessary. 

Then the domain management.  There's a separate site with separate navigation for controlling domains.  It works nice, once you figure it out, but it's confusing.  Try to go "back" to the main account page? Sorry, Godaddy has figured out how to lock you into the domain admin.

Next you'll have to make a separate login for your hosting account.  It's great to have a simple login/pw for the hosting account and ftp that is separate from the Godaddy account.  That way you can give the hosting account access to a developer, and keep your godaddy account free.

However, you can't log into the hosting account without first logging into the Godaddy account.  So that doesn't work.

I just wish there was an easy option for hosting that we could recommend.  If you have any suggestions - rick at feed dot us.

The move to feed.us/godaddy is now complete.  I've added the RSS feed out of Feed.us and into Feedburner - that was the last step.

Thank you for your patience. (as if anyone actually reads this).

Thanks to some decent pitching, and Prince Fielder's Major League leading HR surge, the Brew Crew is back to winning.

Last week we took 2 of 3 from the defending AL champs.  Over the weekend we took 2 of 3 from Minnesota.  Then last night we held off the Giants. 

And Prince keeps knocking them out.  26 and counting.

So it's done.  Value Jet, errr Airtramp, errr... AirTran got their nominees elected.

Ousted are the two longest and largest individual shareholders.  

Sad and ridiculous.

You can't really tell from the photo, but that yellow blob over Bill Hall's left shoulder is my mom with her hat covering her face. 

Yes, it's that bad in Brewer-ville. 

We still are what?  5 games ahead in the NL Central.  But who cares when we can't seem to win a game. 

It's never as good as it seems and it's never as bad as it seems.  That's probably a good thing to keep reminding myself this season.

Today is probably going to be a sad day for Milwaukee, and for the majority Midwest Airlines shareholders.

At 10am this morning, AirTran will most likely get most of the hedge and mutual funds to help vote its 3 appointees (ie bribed yes men) to the Midwest board.  Air Tran is paying these guys $40k each to trojan horse Midwest Airlines.  If they succeed, I'm sure they'll get even more.

Meanwhile three of Midwest's best board members will no longer be looking out for the majority of Midwest's shareholders.

It's a shame and a crock, and should be illegal... but that's the way public companies are run now that Hedge Funds are in control. 

And our fabulous little airline will become part of horrible AirTran, aka Value Jet.  

Well, finally the move to Feed.us has begun for little Tachophobia.com.

Last night I purchased a transitional domain and 2 months worth of hosting from Godaddy.  Price tag = $5.

Then I downloaded a decent free CSS template.  With my limited knowledge of CSS, was able to change the layout enough to make it my own.  And then set about adding the widgets, including Feed.us's code.

Feed.us doesn't use a javascript or flash to display the content.  The content gets 'fed' via a URL and a file that sits on your website.  The pages have to be php or asp or jsp, etc but only so that the file works. 

So all I had to do is add one url of code into the XHTML, rename the homepage file to default.asp, and upload all the files, inlcuding the Feed.us file, to the Godaddy FTP.  And now this site is coming to fruition.

I still have to make the other pages.  It would help to actually understand ASP so I can use includes.  Hopefully I can learn that.

Feed.us is pretty amazing!!

Bob Marley is probably my most favoritist artist of all time (U2 is the greatest band of all time, btw).  All summer long, and during the coldest days of winter, my playlists are dominanted by Sr. Marley, and no it's not because of marijuna (I may be the only one). 

He was my introduction to reggae and I cannot remember a time without Bob.

My favorite Bob Marley album is easily "Natural Mystic".  I believe it's been re-introduced twice now because the album cover to the right is not what I have on my CD. 

Regardless, it's got a great track lineup: Natural Mystic, Iron Lion Zion, So Much Trouble, and the live Trenchtown Rock.

[btw, this is my last post on the 'old site'.  I'm working on a new one using a new design and the new Feed.us.]

I just found out that Twitter is built on Ruby on Rails.  Meanwhile it's generally getting bashed on the "blogosphere" (stupid, stupid word) for having infrastructure problems. 

That would seem impossible. If you hear all the stuff about Rails, Twitter must be extremely solid.   "Rails" is supposed to be extremely stable.

Welborn always says that it doesn't matter (much) what you build on, as long as you have knowledgable, solid developers working with a well-constructed plan.  .Net is typically considered crummy, but it's because there are soooo many coders out there making crappy code.  To work with open source or Rails type platforms, you'd have to be pretty experienced, according to Welborn.  Thus applications built on this stuff are better constructed.

I think that sounds right.