Monthly Archives: May 2008

Notes from Tech Cocktail

9 Tips to Profitability: How Squidoo Did It
Brian Williams & Corey Brown
1. Lean Teams
2. Be agile
3. Monitor Metrics and react
4. Beta Perpetually
5. Listen Carefully
6. Be open – use open source
7. Communicate Authentically
8. Spend Less
9. Patience Pays

Designing With Users In Mind
John Zeratsky & Matt Shobe – Feedburner/Google
1. Be Yourself
2. Be fast
- people think that your app is better if it loads fast
- minimize the number of requests, use image or css sprites
3. Be willing to give up control
- getsatisfaction.com
- involve your rabid users, if poss
4. Be engaged
5. Be Polite
- respect privacy
- have good navigation
- give your user a way out if they mess up
6. Be Surprising
- respond directly to users – not scalable, but try

Innovate in 30 Minutes
Mike Macadaan – AOL/Bebo & Ant Creed – Intuit
- How to follow up with all those biz cards
- use a SN to follow up – linkedin
- incorporate linkedin to registration process

SEO Is All Grown Up: My Quest to be the #1 Douchebag on Google
Micah Baldwin
slides – http://www.scribd.com/doc/3167777/Douchebag-SEO
Secret of SEO
- Focus – its about ranking organically
- 13 clicks before a customer buys
Young foundational SEO
- 3 parts of seo
- code, content, context
robots.txt page in site files
- tells search engines not to search any of the images, etc
- exclusion standard
site map file
- be careful as hackers can use this to find sensitive files
popularity plugin for wordpress, sem plugin
rexswain.com – http viewer – what a search engine sees when it’s searching your site
use a 301 redirect from www to regular
302 is a temp redirect – be careful as search engines will wait
duplicative content – be careful to not go over 20% same content on pages – cross posting
sticking content on bottom of page for seo, search engines will see as seo strat

Alex Cox – author of Inner CEO
- Capture those flashes of insight whenever they come, as they melt away quickly
- Courage is someone who flees forward
- Dont give counsel to your fears
- “I am…”, “Life is…”, “My Central goal is…”

Saw a great end of a session on GTD and Productivity, but didn’t take notes as I do most of thse thing.  Really, if I get more productive, I will time travel.

Cloud Computing and Scaling
Jason Rexilius
slides – http://hades.phparch.com/files/tek07/jason_rexilius-geo_distributed_apps.pdf
- a single application runnign simultaneouly in multiple locations around the world
Steve souders 14 rules for high performance web

Addtional notes
- minimalist approach to ppt slides  :)

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What I bookmarked today

Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen: 5 things that make your social network monetize like crap

Blogging from San Francisco on startups, venture capital, interactive advertising, viral marketing, game design, and other topics

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Get Satisfaction – People-Powered Customer Service

Really great site that I have used and I am surprised I have never bookmarked. Way to outsource your customer service for your site, so you achieve that user feedback goal without necessarily having to staff it yourself.

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Lijit | Home

Micah, the #1 douchbag, the CEO spoke at Tech Cocktail about corporate branding, personal branding and how to use SEO to bridge those two.

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What I bookmarked today

Emma Email Marketing | Email Marketing Solutions | Email Newsletters

Create, send and track customized and stylish email newsletters to your customer or clients. Emma Email Marketing is a simple and affordable solution that allows your business the ability to track email campaigns, send trigger emails and more. Agency accounts and pricing also available.

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FITC Chicago 2008 – A Design & Technology Event

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What I bookmarked today

Dimdim: Free Live Meeting, Web Conference, Net Meeting, Online Meetings, Online Training, Desktop Sharing, Web Meeting, Free Web conferencing, eLearning, Presentation Software, Web x collaboration, Collaboration software

Dimdim: Free Live Meeting, Web Conference, Net Meeting, Online Meetings, Online Training, Desktop Sharing, Web Meeting, Free Web conferencing, eLearning, Presentation Software, Web x collaboration, Collaboration software

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Boom times for virtual playgrounds

Research suggests that there are about

158 online games and virtual worlds in development or up and running designed specifically for children.

While some of that total are recognisable games, most should be classified as virtual worlds, said Joey Seiler, editor of Virtual Worlds News, who drew up the exhaustive list.

Although these worlds, such as Club Penguin and Neopets, have games in them they are more an environment children can explore via their avatar.

“There are things to play with, like monkey bars or virtual snowballs, but it’s up to the kids to figure out what to do with them,” said Mr Seiler.

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What I bookmarked today

Kids Will Rock You / We Will Rock You – Totlol

– Your kids will rock you!!!

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About – Totlol

Totlol is a community-moderated video website designed to be enjoyed by those between the ages of 6 months and 6 years.

Launched for beta testing in May 2008, Totlol is an independent website made in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

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hippo and dog – Google Search

hippo and dog videos on the net

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konstructionzone.com Blog » 10 Recommended Toys for Gifted Children

Imaginative Play

* Playhouses
* Puppets
* Art Supplies

Construction Toys

* LEGOs
* Rokenbok
* Capsela
* K’NEX

Brainteasers

* Rubik’s Cube
* Jigsaw Puzzles
* Wooden Labyrinth

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Worlds In Motion – ION: Successfully Managing a Community Emergency

With MMOs, community is everything – so how can you ensure your community remains happy and healthy with content changes, server down time or even just a developer misspeaking able to lead to a full meltdown?

They can happen no matter what is done to prevent them, and in this panel at ION the best methods to employ to avert disaster were explored.

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Worlds In Motion – GoFish Reports $657,000 Revenue Jump For Q1 2008

Online youth entertainment and media network GoFish Corporation has announced its first quarter results, reporting an increase in revenue to $657,150, as compared to $24,074 for the same period in the previous year. GoFish attributed the year-over-year increase to higher sales from advertising sold across its network of owned and affiliated publisher websites.

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Bacon of the Month Club | Uncrate

some deserves this.

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msnbc.com video: Moms! Check out these top blogs

Mommy blog segment from Today Show, where Kathy Lee Gifford was a bit of a moron.

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A Gamers Wedding | STARFEEDER | GAMERIOT

mario wedding cake, video game cover table markers, I love it!

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J!NX : Clothing for Gamers & Geeks

J!NX is a clothing company for gamers and geeks. You are required to visit if you are into gadgets, gaming, computers, robots (really big ones), ninjas, eskimos, stuff with blinking lights, and/or pretty much anything technical. We ingest a healthy dose of all these things on a daily basis.

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Flickr: The Biscuits & Cookies Pool

i love flickr. here is a cookies group

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GuildCafe: Player Profiles, Free Guild Hosting for MMORPG, FPS, RTS, gaming clans

GuildCafe is free service where you can form guilds and clans, publish your gaming accomplishments and connect with other players who like the things you do.

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characterparallax.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

demo of new 3d flash capabilities

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Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3 » SlideShare

This is the Social Media Research done by Universal Mccann including 17,000 people in 29 countries

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FTC Staff Proposes Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Principles

FTC starts to think about imposing new rules regarding how we track our users. Especially the kiddos

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Gamasutra – What Gamers Want: Family Gamers

top 10 features to think about when designing a family targeted game

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QlikView

QlikView provides fast, powerful and visual in-memory business analysis – without the limitations, cost or complexity of traditional BI tools. QlikView can be deployed in days and users trained in minutes.

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Gallery – Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall

concept and design work for the fusion fall gaming world

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FT.com / Home UK / UK – Commercials cause concern in the virtual Barbie world

In the US and elsewhere, public discussion of virtual worlds has been dominated by potential threats to children from sexual predators and from violent images in online games. The media and toy companies have responded with an emphasis on site safety, with limits on what messages a user’s avatar can send.

But Sara Grimes, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada, says there has been very little attention paid to the commercialisation and marketing elements of digital play, including the collection of data that can be used for advertising linked to online behaviour. “It is easy to get distracted from these issues . . . The sites also play on that by promoting themselves as safe havens and tapping into parental concerns,” she says.

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The Work of Edward Tufte and Graphics Press

Edward Tufte home page for books, posters, sculpture, fine art and one-day course: Presenting Data and Information – WHILE I LOVE THIS MAN AND HIS WORK, HIS WEBSITE DESIGN DOESN’T REALLY DRIVE HOME MANY OF HIS CONCEPTS, EH?

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About State of Play VI: Chicago

State of Play is coming to Chicago! This year’s State of Play, the only conference about the serious study of virtual worlds, will take place October 20-22, 2008, at the River East Art Center in Chicago.

Organized by New York Law School in conjunction with the MacArthur Foundation, the conference invites experts across disciplines to discuss philanthropy in virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds are crucial building blocks of global civil society. As such, they harbor great potential for relationship building and cooperation across national borders. We hope you will join us for this important interdisciplinary conversation.

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Design Benign

Design Benign is an on-going research project about the role cuteness plays in the appearance, use, and perception of the products we use every day- from iPods to cars to food.

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Cute-Object.jpg (image)

This is a cute-ness chart. I am in love with it.

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What I bookmarked today

Mac Buyer’s Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

Mac Buyers Guide – Know when the next Mac, iPod or iPhone will be released.

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mooColorFinder – retrieve all website colors

Script to retrieve any color information of a website, reads all CSS files and produces a cloud of colors.

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Online HTML Form Builder Software – Create Free Forms & Surveys

Wufoo’s form creator makes collecting information online easy. Our web-based
software builds HTML Forms, Surveys, Event Registrations and more.

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Marketing & Commercialism in Virtual Worlds « Izzy Neis

Or at least this is often the sentiment I find online from awesome people willing to speak their mind about things that bother them. I respect those peeps and I understand their mentality. I do. But I am not on that bandwagon of anti-brand-immersion. Forgive me, but I’m not. Knowing that these environments cost a LOT of money (not just at first, but continuously– they’re living/thriving environments that need constant attention, supervision, and care), I understand the need for ulterior methods that do NOT cast higher fees onto the user.

To me, it’s the responsibility of the individual in CHARGE of the youngling minor to teach them the difference between idolizing brands, and recognizing brands. And really– to me, the important things to look for in virtual worlds are safety & quality of content/environment– is it fun? Do they get to play and explore? Are they free to be themselves in whatever storyline/epic adventure the virtual world/MMO has to offer? Those are the important things.

Marketing & Commercialism in Virtual Worlds « Izzy Neis

Yeah, yeah, I a bit behind in my feeds.  But I read them all, so it takes awhile.

GREAT post by Izzy with great dialog in the comments.  This is such a big topic and I am on Izzy’s side here on pretty much every point, especially in that taking the extremist view on anything gives you a pretty good chance of losing the battle.  Not always, but more often than not.

That is to say, “no ads – ever” is a bit of a pipe dream, especially in no subscription communities.  These virtual worlds are expensive to produce and run, as Izzy said and as I have said about communities in general for years now.   Maybe sponsored clothing/areas/games isn’t the answer.  But rather than flipping out and lambasting the virtual worlds for being creative in how they keep their doors open, why don’t these groups help figure out a way for the world to pay their employees and stay on the ok side of marketing.  There are solutions that will sit well with everyone that just haven’t been figured out yet.  It’s great to point of problem areas, but let’s take the next step and help determine solution sets as well.

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What I bookmarked today

What Would Madison Avenue Do? Marketing to Teens – 5/1/2008 – School Library Journal

Whether you work for Nike or in a library, it’s tough to attract an audience. And that’s where smart marketing can make all the difference. Even though libraries don’t have millions of dollars to spend on slick Madison Avenue ad campaigns to entice today’s teens, you do have access to the media that kids love, and that’s a great place to start.

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Worlds In Motion – YNK, PayByCash Offer Alternative Pay Method For Online Games

The Ultimate Game Card is an alternative to paying with credit cards online and can be used when making purchases within Seal Online and Rohan: Blood Feud, as well as in over 150 other online games. The cards are easy to use and available for purchase in a number of major retailers across the United States, and will be available in Canada this summer.

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Worlds In Motion – Javien, GCG Partner for MMO Total Commerce Solution

Javien Digital Payment Solutions has announced a partnership with MMO customer service provider Game Center Group to offer Javien’s Total Commerce Solution to MMOs in need of subscription, billing, and virtual merchandise management.

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Shaping Youth » Moms Who Inspire & the Non-Moms Who Support Us!

great resource of parenting and mommy blogs

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My wired family

Can I take a minute to write about my family? I try to keep this blog professional, but it has to do with many of the topics I write about often, so I will let this slide.

Over the past year, my family has leaped, no dove head first, into the digital age. Sure, I am still the geek of the clan, but each one has embraced this digital world we now live in and I wanted to take a second to give them their individual props.

My sister, Jesica Savich, got married a couple years ago and fell in love with her wedding video (after her husband , of course). She then taped my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding and was hooked. Within an amazingly short amount of time, she started idoproductions.biz, and is now earning part-time wages (and I would venture to guess, soon full time) from helping tape peoples weddings for them. She designed her site herself, bought and taught herself how to use a mac and as well as some very intimidating video equipment and has successfully self marketed herself. Bravo Jesica!

My brother, Taylor Podgorny, is an audio engineer, who dabbles in concert promotion and manages a Chicago band called Metrovox. He is trying out different kinds of viral marketing techniques to help promote the band, including events on the different social networks and marketing on different event sites.

Another sister (I have 3), Gabrielle, joined Facebook just before entering college and within days had over 100 friends. I think she has over 300 or 400 now, but this is a gal who was too busy working part-time jobs and doing mission work to be connected in high school. Now she keeps touch with friends back home and friends she has met on missions all over the world via Facebook

My dad, John Podgorny, is a successful career network marketer was chatting with me last month about starting a help community online for people getting started in his business. My dad’s gonna be a chat moderator! :D

My mom, Sheri, who has famously called me to ask every minute computer question (only to figure it out five minutes later on her own) now has a Blackberry, is driving a Prius, and finding wifi spots for her new laptop. HA!

All I have to do is get Linus P Alexander a wifi detector collar or something and I will have the most connected family I know. Actually, Linus has a Dogster page, so I guess we are already there.

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