Going Mobile | The Emergence of Mobile Cloud Services
“Out in the woods
Or in the city
It’s all the same to me
When I’m drivin’ free, the world’s my home
When I’m mobile.” The Who
The Cloud
Cloud computing or “The Cloud” is Internet-based computing, whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and data to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, service-oriented architecture and utility computing (and certainly a phrase that many believe have hit the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” in Gartner’s Hype Cycle).
Journey to SEO Nirvana | Step 1 of 5
In my recent blog post “This Cobbler’s Child Is About To Get Some New Shoes“, I aired my dirty laundry (and what is known of most Consultants, Teachers and Parents – “do as I say, not as I do”) in that despite offering strategic and practical online marketing advice and services for my clients, my own website is not well optimized for search engines. (There are reasons for this, such as my business is driven through relationships and my professional network, not the website. But I still feel like I should have a site that adheres to best practices I espouse). Alas, I’m going to chart a very practical path towards search engine optimization (SEO) bliss! Come with me . . . it’ll be fun (or if not fun, hopefully relatively painless).
So Step 1 is some “Housekeeping”. This consists of getting the site prepared for measuring (hopefully) the astounding improvement we’ll witness in the coming weeks and months. This is key so we can baseline current patterns and measure future performance.
Yelp’s Douchebaggery Issue
January 3, 2011 by admin · 5 Comments
Yelp has a douche bag issue. This is not new. But a recent experience made me think about it in a new light.
Savvy Cellar Wines, a local wine bar located in Silicon Valley that my wife runs, has been relatively active with social media: facebook, twitter, location-based services, review sites, etc. In theory, I believe that social media and the act of putting publishing tools into the hands of the masses is a good thing. However there are aberrations and, in practice, the theoretical ideal is sometimes not achieved – businesses can being unjustifiably vilified by anonymous (or semi-anonymous people), left with little recourse. Let’s walk through a humorous example. (Warning: some of the language is colorful and not for the proper or feint of heart.)
This Cobbler’s Child Is About To Get Some Shoes
This High-Tech Cobbler is intent on making shoes for my children this holiday season. Let me explain. As a busy consultant and owner of several small independent businesses, I rarely get to focus on the online marketing efforts of my consultancy, SmokeJumper Strategy. I often hear from clients who I’m delivering SEO, SEM or Social Media services to that my website must be super well optimized for search engines. I have to embarrassingly tell them “no actually.” Well like the Cobbler who is so busy making shoes for paying customers that his own children run around barefoot, my website runs around the Internet with no SEO-optimized shoes on.
Checkin Madness
November 30, 2010 by admin · 6 Comments
So I claimed all my business’s local listings: Google, Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo, Bing, MerchantCircle, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc, etc. Check!
I see that many of my customers are checking in when they come to my establishment. Check!
The zaniness that follows those on the endless pursuit of Foursquare badges (I still don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to unlock the “Douche Bag” badge) seems to have merged with the daily deal / flash sale phenomena. And now all these vendors want me to post deals to attract “newbies” (I was told I couldn’t use the term “virgin”), reward frequent “checker-inners” (is that even a word? Why the hell did WordPress spell checker accept it?) and/or lavish seminal riches upon the “king” (or “Mayor” given we ridded ourselves of Monarchy some time ago), being that person who checks in the most frequently. Read more