Dive into the archives.
- GrandCentral Beta Invites
Sweet, I just got a beta invite for Google’s GrandCentral, a phone system that allows you to centralize all your phones on one number, get visual voicemail and lots more.
So far it looks pretty cool, but I’ll post a review when I’ve used it a little more (just started this morning). One thing I’ve setup already is the Webcall buttons you see in this post and in my sidebar, you put in your number and it connects us.
So if you want an…
- Stephen Colbert is for Sale and I Like it
I just watched the Colbert Branson Trainwreck (itunes timeshifted) and it was totally fake and not really all that funny.
In the freezer at the office, the only thing it holds really are two pints of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream: Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream and Willie Nelson’s Peach Cobler. The two celebrities discussed the flavors during an interview when Ben & Jerry’s rolled out the new ice cream.
You get my point, Colbert’s for sale,…
- Marketing with Lolcats for GeekFlirt
A few people have mentioned this idea before, but I’ve still not seen any actual lolcat advertisements out there.
In building my latest site Geek Flirt (a social network/dating site for geeks) I realized that lolcats would be the perfect vector for targeting geeky girls, so I gave it a shot. (click for larger images) I’d love to hear what you all think of these.
- Internal Corporate Blogging
From Hugh Macleod’s Hughtrain:And yes, this works with internal blogs as well, poking holes in the membranes that seperate people within a corporate culture; aligning “the conversation” internally etc.
The other advantage of internal blogging is that it organises conversation into a long-term manageable form. Two people sharing ideas via blogs is a lot more permanent, viral and useful for the company than two people sharing the same…
- Don’t Leave Conversion and Usability for Last
It used to be an easy target to warn against only thinking about search engine friendliness after a site was built, every few weeks another “seo expert” would come out and tell stories of entirely built sites that had to be re-engineered to allow spiders the best possible access to its content. And while, at least in my little corner of the web world, that lesson has been learned and is starting to sound redundant and obvious, those who refuse…
- 7 Chunks are Better Than 10
A while back I mentioned the cognitive science behind chunking and studies that show that 7 chunks of data is easier for humans to process. Then I asserted that information scenting means that articles with indications they’re chunked would do better on sites like digg. I was speculating that this is why “Top 10″-type posts work so well.
And now, study done by Russ Jones backs that up. He counted up how many “top 12″, “top 11″, “top 10″ etc,…
- Social Technographics and Cross-Segment Appeal
Forrester Research recently released a report, that I’ve been lucky enough to read, entitled Social Technographics that profiles adult US web users and their level of engagement with social media:
“Site features can also influence participation profiles. Not all Social Computing/Web 2.0 sites are created the same — the profiles for MySpace.com and YouTube differ significantly, given the activities available on those sites.”
The report…
- North End Boston Searches
I live in the best neighborhood in the world, so I got curious today what people search for when they’re looking for info on the north end. Clearly lots of searches are going to only contain restaurant or festival names, but the searches below give me some indication of what he overall niche probably looks like. As expected lots of restaurant, apartment and festival schedule searches, but one surprise (At least to me) is the hotel searches. I…
- Frank Luntz’s Words that Work and Youtube Dial Sessions
I just got finished audio-booking pollster Frank Luntz’s new book Words that Work. While I’m very different from Luntz politically (he’s the guy who renamed the estate tax to the death tax, and is anti-”illegal immigration”) I’m absolutely fascinated by his work with language, specifically his testing methods. The book is a great read/listen especially for an online marketing professional who relies on words and images entirely to sell a product…
- Political Search Marketing Experiment Part 1
I didn’t notice it until today, the 3rd but the perma link page for my boston city council SERP probe is 5th at google but nowhere in msn or yahoo. I had expected the homepage to show up first, before the perma link, but the page has a freshtag of Feb 1, 2007, the day after I made that post.
Incidentally I also made it in the evening on the 31st.
I further expect this page to disappear for a few days when the freshtag goes away.
