In Facebook I originally started off by creating an event.  As we have evolved, setting up a group became necessary.  Now we are a page because to streamline the donation process, RSVP, vote on the charity to support, and collaborate on other group decisions I realized we needed far greater flexibility.

I’m also talking with a few hosting companies to see if any of them would be willing to provide a domain name and hosting so we could go ahead and launch a microsite to spread the word.  Still waiting to hear back from Westchester.gov on the trail maps I requested, but I will make sure to keep all hikers posted.

I have decided to extend the vote on what charity we will be supporting until the end of next week.  A formal announcement on the group’s decision will be made Friday, March 12th at 5:00pm.  Even if you can’t make the hike on May 29th this project is totally open participation.  We take suggestions and feedback from everyone and allow all fans to take part in our decision-making process.

Please help us spread the word by telling your friends and people you think might be interested in being a part of the event by sending them to our fan page.

If there is anything you would like to do, provide, or assist with in making this event happen please let us know. We welcome you to our community, and look forward to working together in providing much needed aid to Haitian orphans.

Best Wishes,

Dustin

After spending a little more time with it we realized that it could be just as effective doing an event on a slightly smaller scale, possibly in our own backyard in Westchester.

Last week while I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink down at a bench situated along the RiverWalk in Croton-on-Hudson, a thought occurred to me: “What if we were to hike this entire path?”  Tracing the trail map, the entire Westchester RiverWalk stretches 46.6 miles from Yonkers to just north of the Bear Mountain bridge where it meets the Appalachian Trail.

Now I don’t believe this feat could be accomplished in one day, so I was thinking that we could plan out a spot at Croton Point to setup camp.  Once we get a group together a pledge sheet will be distributed to every hiker and upon completion all funds will be transparently donated to a charity we agree on via an online poll.

A few of my early choices are Haiti Children Mercy & Sharing, UNICEF’s Haiti Earthquake Children’s Appeal, A Child’s Hope Foundation, and Haitian Orphans Wish (HOW).

The hike is scheduled for May 29th-30th.  If you want to join us feel free to RSVP over at our Facebook group.  Between my blog and the Facebook Event page you can stay up-to-date with all of the latest news regarding the event.

If you are interested in being part of the organization of this event please let me know, or if you have some suggestions join the conversation.

Related Articles

Westchester RiverWalk: A continuous trail along Westchester’s Hudson River shoreline (Westchestergov.com)

How To Help Haitian Earthquake Orphans (Articlesbase)

Hopefully this post will help you get started.  Here are several actions you can be taking right now to build your name and reputation out in the social networking landscape if you are operating under a shoe-string budget.

Rock Out Wordpress

So many companies who closed their doors in 2009 were comprised of linear thinkers, anchored in a single-minded methodology.  A blog is key to an effective social media campaign.  By posting to your blog, burning your blog’s rss feed in Feedburner, and automatically sending tweets through the Socialize option your blog will gain more exposure immediately.  Think keyword titles, catchy hooks, but most importantly write good relevant content.  As for plugins I recommend using Intense Debate to make commenting more accessible.  You may also want to use these 16 Interesting Wordpress Plugins to maximize Traffic and Followers from Social Networks.  For some great free themes check out WP Crunchy and Smashing Magazine’s 100 Amazing Free Wordpress Themes for 2009.

Tweak Out Twitter

I believe in smart social automation.  Whether through auto-follow or feed syndication not always having to press a button is important if you want to run your business while building your presence on Twitter.  Use a web app like Socialoomph to schedule tweets.  They also have some excellent premium features and at $29.97 per month it’s a great deal.

Keep in mind, most followers are not interested in being flooded by constant updates and shameless self promotion.  I heard a suggestion a while back that 1/3 of all your tweets should be about your business/professional life, 1/3 about the recreational activities you enjoy, and 1/3 miscellaneous.  Also, you gotta check out SNS Analytics.  It is a tremendous free Twitter analytics tool.  What’s the point of using Social Media if it isn’t measurable and actionable?

Fuel Up Facebook

Easy tiger.  Remember these people are your “friends”.  If you’re going to promote any place on the web through Facebook either create a fan page or do it discreetly through your public profile.  I don’t have a problem adding a link to my personal wall so long as I’m not overtly soliciting people to visit my site.  Be engaging, funny, post something worth discussing relevant to what you know, and then see who drops by.  Facebook users should seriously consider the Networked Blogs app to allow their latest blog publications to show up within their profile.  The greatest challenge will always be how will you bridge the gap between the conversation you have going on through wall posts and having those comments show up on your blog.  This is where integrating Facebook Connect comes into play.

What are some of your favorite free and/or cheap social media tools that you would recommend?

Related Articles

Measuring Social Media Marketing: It’s Easier than you Think! (Search Engine Land)
ROI, Not Always the Determining Metric for Social Media Success (Blind Acre Media)
Social Media Strategy Uncovered: How To Market My Blog With Twitter
Geo-Target Google Real-Time Search Results With a Keyword Optimized Social Media Strategy
Yahoo! Pipes, Twitterfeed, and Common Sense to Brand Yourself on Twitter

It is an interesting predicament that the W3C and WHATWG have found themselves in.  Keep in mind that the W3C first started drafting the specifications for  CSS3 in 1998,  and it remains under development at the time of this publication.

Just to quickly fill you in as to what is going on behind the scenes right now:

Many of the so-called leaders in the development and implementation of HTML5 are having a hard time placing principles ahead of personalities with respect to the CANVAS and OBJECT tags as they apply to proprietary video codecs.  Underneath it all the issue is really about people in power at browser vendors like Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google to key player like Larry Masinter and Ian Hickson at Adobe and W3C respectively, who wants to single-handedly lead the charge and take all of the credit.  Early money is on Google.

I have recently started working on developing a Wordpress template based on Quasimo’s Love Today Theme and see the enormous potential when teamed up with CSS3 for far more lucid, semantic code, but if the past ten years have been any indication, most influential Internet properties and software companies along with web standards pontiffs stay stuck in gridlock because of overbearing egos, not an overabundance of ideas.

Do you think there is any hope left for HTML5 and CSS3?

Although the origin of the snowman is still widely debated by snow sculpture enthusiasts, supposedly the first anthropomorphic frozen fellow (or lady) dates back to medieval times.  As we put the finishing touches together I had a compelling thought: the building of a snowman falls into a nifty metaphor for success in life.

Quality Snow Is Key

Like so many other things in life, the climate has to be conducive for making the man.  Trying to make one out of powder is impossible.  Why bother trying?  Wait until the moment and temperature are right and then begin putting it all together.

Start With The Big Stuff First

I always hear it in my head: start with the big rocks first, then the gravel, pebbles, and pour the sand in last.  A solid foundation will hold up the torso and head of the snowman.  However we choose to go about making progress, whether it be personally, professionally, academically, or elsewhere we need to grasp this concept.

Don’t Settle For Mediocrity

I have seen so many snowmen in my 28 years on the planet.  Some gigantic and larger than life, others a vain attempt to personify a winter storm.  Put some effort into it.  Building one should be fun.  This can apply to any task: taking out the garbage, writing a report, repairing your car, or just about anything else.  Do the best you can do and have fun doing it.

It’s In The Details

What’s a snowman without a nose, eyes, hat, scarf, pipe, and other accessories?  Just a ball of snow.  Paying attention to the finer details always shows that you care.  Hey, it’s never about being perfect, but even if it takes a little longer showing that you care goes a long way.

Everything Eventually Ends

I know, kind of a morbid thought.  Just like the life of a snowman is indefinite so is our time here.  It’s so easy to take life for granted sometimes that we miss out on all of the really great things going on all around us right now.  I really enjoyed going outside today even for just five minutes to take some pictures of Frosty because it was such a great time with Darius and Eric.

My Final Thoughts

I think it’s incredible that there are websites dedicated to the history of the snowman and that they have managed to be a winter pastime for many different cultures for over a century.

Maybe I’m taking the whole snowman metaphor to an extreme, but it’s cool when you actually spends some time to think about it.

What do you think?

At the same time, social network users who send out tons of updates on a daily basis invariably are blacklisted by Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks or they get marginalized by their social community.  We are witnessing a convergence of SEO and Social Media in the process of manufacturing content with pop.

The question then becomes: how much is too much, and how little is too little?

This dichotomy is what a social media consultant has to balance managing a campaign.  While maintaining a Twitter and Facebook presence, users should be sending roughly 10 tweets, and 5 Facebook fan posts a day.  If you are a small business it’s important to post to your blog almost every day, even if it’s only 150 words.  Corporate executives and self-employed business owners don’t really have time to manage their online reputation, and are becoming increasingly reliant on ghost bloggers and social media consultants to manage their online reputation for them.  This does work, but there is one caveat: approve everything  before it hits the airwaves.

Has the quality of content on the web diminished due to pressure for mass production?  What do you think about ghost blogging?

Related Articles

The Ghost Speaks (Entrepreneur.com)

Google’s strategy is fairly simple: consolidate everything that most computer users access on the web into one central hub.  They are looking to become the Walmart of the web, an Internet superstore of sorts.

Today’s growing number of social networks and web 2.0 applications with little practical use and originality reminds me of Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy, in which Luke Wilson portrays Private Joe Bauers, the definition of “average American”, selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes 500 years in the future only to discover a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he’s easily the most intelligent person alive.

When we look at innovation we must consider the intended use and whether or not it will be an enhancement or a distraction.  Unless Google Buzz ties into other applications like Analytics and Feedburner to more effectively streamline a social media campaign from start to finish, it will have little room to compete with Facebook and Twitter.  Even still, is there really any more room another social network?

Feel free to tell us what you think.

Related Articles

Review: The full buzz on Google Buzz (Computerworld)
Google’s New Buzz: Not Exactly Light Years Ahead (TechNewsWorld)
Is Google Buzz The Twitter Terminator? (Jeff Bullas)

Some regular attendees skipped out on joining the party this year, like Pepsi, who opted to invest more of their ad dollars ($20 million to be exact) in launching a more targeted social media strategy.  At the same time, we saw some companies like E-Trade stick to their guns, unveiling new baby spots.  Only time will tell if Pepsi will regret their decision.  Don’t get me wrong, social media is great, but I’m always skeptical about any ad agency who puts all of their eggs into one basket.

For the first time, we witnessed Google actually advertising on TV.  What a shocker!  Unless I missed ads that went under the radar in previous years please correct me if I’m wrong.  The spot was great.  No pop, no fizz, no sizzle.  Just Google taking us through the entire life cycle of planning a trip to France from start to finish.  The theme was necessity, and how our lives have become so dependent on more than just their search technology.  I found myself totally in shock as I watched the ad.  As I sat back smoking a cigar at Schlesinger’s I propped myself out of the crater I created in the couch, turned to my friend Richard and said, “Wait, is this a Google ad?”  I guess the competition with Bing and other search engines is starting to become a little more fierce.

My absolute hands down favorite though was the Betty White Snickers ad.  Funny, clever, and making me crave a snickers, they sold me from the beginning.

Whether controversial, witty, weird, or blatantly obvious, it seems like advertisers seize this opportunity to make a name for themselves, or simply to remain a household name.  In the end it really doesn’t matter how good a commercial is.  If it is not memorable, and lacks a cause of action the end result will not justify the means.  That’s my take on it.

What was your favorite commercial for Super Bowl XLIV?  What was the lamest?  Are there any that you just didn’t get?  Feel free to share your thoughts.

Related Articles

The Best and the Worst of the Super Bowl Ads (MSNBC)
Watch Super Bowl Commercials Online on YouTube & Bing (Search Engine Land)
2010 Super Bowl Commercial Lineup (superbowl-commericals.org)

I encourage you to create your own chain by adding your comments at the end of this post:

Web Wars In An Era of Talking Dolls, Tubaruba, and Human Triumph

What is the fighting really all about?  Engaged in two wars abroad, the great threat to American freedom may not even be terrorism anymore.  With cyber attacks on the rise, leaving Google to enlist the help of the NSA, security has become a matter of self-responsibility.

Just the sheer fact that companies have to develop and implement comprehensive e-mail and web use policies to address the risks that employee use of e-mail, blogs, wikis and social networking-sites present to corporate America is pretty ridiculous.

This piece though is not meant to invoke fear, sleepless nights, panic attacks, and recurring headaches as the result of taking too much Xanax.  No need to panic.  I have a Talking Pee Wee Herman Doll and Tubaruba to cheer you up.

It’s our memories of our most cherished yesterdays that keep us here in the present moment.  Magical thinking may take us further ahead in the direction of tomorrow only to leave us empty.  I once was told by an old soul that, “Projection is the dark room we develop our negatives in.” Amen.

The Appalachian Trail spans roughly 2,174 miles or 3500 km, stretching from Dahlonega, Georgia to Malinocket, Maine.  Todd had a great social project idea: get a group of people together to hike the entire trail to raise money for Haitian orphans.  I say, “Let’s do it.”

It took me forever how to learn CSS sprites on my own.  I am a do-it-yourself kind of guy, and I’ll admit, I would probably be better served asking for help a little more often.  In my countless hours learning how to implement CSS sprites on my own site, I figured I could do some good for someone else who is bashing their head trying to figure this stuff, tirelessly reading complex tutorials with no avail like myself.  So here is a basic guide to help you implement an Advertising Sponsors Widget like the one I display in my right column in Wordpress using CSS sprites.

Why CSS Sprites?

According to the Yahoo! Developer Network Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site, combining files is a great way to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your hosting server.  By combining all scripts into a single script, and similarly combining all CSS into a single stylesheet. Combining files is more challenging when the scripts and stylesheets vary from page to page, but making this part of your release process improves response times.  Even though this post does not concern itself with combining and minifying CSS and JS files, Wordpress users should check out Thaya Kareeson’s Wp-Minify plugin.

CSS Sprites are the preferred method for reducing the number of image requests. By combining your background images into a single image and using the CSS background-image and background-position properties to display the desired image segment you can essentially make one HTTP request to your image directory instead of 15.

Affiliate Marketing On Your Blog

So how do bloggers make a living? They either have a full-time job and blog part-time, or generate enough donations and advertising revenue from visitors to make a career out of it (I’ll be honest, that’s where my head is at).  Regardless of whether I make a dime from blogging is totally irrelevant.  My only responsibility is to be as resourceful as I possibly can.

In terms of affiliate marketing programs, I use two of the more popular ones: Linkshare and Commission Junction.  They seem to have been around for quite a while and offer a ton of advertisers and creative formats.  I chose eight 120×60 icons from both Linkshare and Commission Junction and saved them to my computer, making sure to note the corresponding link for each image.

Creating Your Widget Using Sprites

Using a CSS Sprites Generator like the one created by Stoyan and Chris Coyier I was easily able to combined all eight icons into a single image.  I made sure to copy and paste all of the background-position values for each image in the sprite.  I downloaded the image and renamed it “sponsors.png”.  Using my favorite FTP client Filezilla, I uploaded it to my server and into my current theme’s image folder.

When you go to your style.css file in your Wordpress theme, make sure you create a div container that will only call the background image once.  I named mine “sponsors”.  This container will become the parent for each child element in your anchor tags.  The children are each logo position you will pull from the larger image when you put them into your html as anchor tags.  This is exactly what your CSS should look like.

Now for the html:

Your html is going to structured as previously mentioned with your div container id being “sponsors”.  If you look carefully at my CSS you will notice that  I labeled each anchor tag child from top to bottom of the image sprite, pairing it in sequential order with the corresponding background-position provided by the CSS Sprites Generator.  That means the anchor tag id for the Dell Small Business logo is “#firstad”, Electronics Expo is “#secondad”, and so on.

From this point the process is pretty straight foward.  Go back into your affiliate marketing websites where you got your logos and copy and paste each link into it’s proper anchor tag, using target=”_blank” to have all click through open up in a new window.

That’s about it.  You will immediately notice that your sponsor ads load tremendously faster than before when you were making eight HTTP request to pull images from Linkshare and Commission Junction (or whatever affiliate marketing sites you use).  Below is a picture of the html I placed into the text widget.

Hope that was helpful.  If you have any questions or would like to add something please feel free.

Related Articles

• You: Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started ” Smashing Magazine (smashingmagazine.com)
• Page Layout 2010 (slideshare.net)
• How To Make Your Website Faster – Part 2: How To Optimize Your Website Code For Speed (masternewmedia.org)

Feel free to send information via Twitter or Facebook too.  Please make sure to either send a direct message or include @Dustin_Schmidt in your tweet.  For Facebook submissions you may post directly on my wall.

If you find really cool, funny, insightful, quality content, or have something from your own blog or website you want to share, get it to me by any means necessary, and I will fuse it into a thematic blog post with a back link to the source.  Send over anything you want.  From a Weekly Wrapup of Web Technology to an article from The National Enquirer on Boozy Rip Torn Robbing a Bank, all content is fair game.  The post will be live by Friday February 5th at 2:00pm EST.

My goal is to accomplish a few things:

1. Hear more about what my friends and followers are checking out on the web;
2. Highlight and promote websites and blogs that might be under the radar; and
3. Exercise my creativity by having to focus on specific material that you provide.

This should be an interesting experiment and I can’t wait to see what everyone passes along.   Let the sharing begin!

Before I go any further, please feel free to join the conversation and share your thoughts with us.

With multinational corporations seizing a lot of business away from small companies during the first round of globalization we witnessed in the early 90’s, local businesses are having to adapt to an overwhelmingly competitive marketplace by forging stronger alliances closer to home.  Even bloggers need a pose to be in if they plan on building their online reputation.

In a recent post on his blog titled “Think Niche“, James Piecowye says,  ”We collectively think too much about the big picture and the latest and greatest technology FAILING to realize that we live, work and breath the small picture and that most of us are using old tech (over a year old) to do most everything!”

James really gave me a little bit of a reality check.  I will be the first to advocate the latest and greatest technology, and will occasionally rely too heavily on it.  Alliance building starts with personal relationships around your neighborhood using whatever technology you have and showing how you can help others.

Now if only I could syndicate my blog on Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, and Clickz.  I could take over the world… or I can just keep dreaming.

Related articles

• TinyChat Eyes Live Video Broadcasters With TinyChat.tv (mashable.com)
• Google Local Adds Status Updates (smtusa.com)

I love parodies especially when they’re not so tongue-in-cheek like Mark Logan starring as the Twitter spokesman in this video by Comedy.com.  It also led me to questioning whether or not Twitter users become self-appointed brand ambassadors once they make an endorsement of a product or service in a tweet.  Being a social media marketing consultant advising both individuals and corporations on how to build their reputation on Twitter this is a pretty common question I find myself addressing.

I know based on my own experience, there are several websites, SEO tools, web 2.0 applications and services I regularly endorse and support.  Sometimes cleverly orchestrating a barrage of adjectives to highlight there value in the marketplace, my soul aim is to hype up these websites because I believe in their mission.  I will be the first to admit that I have mistakenly endorsed some total duds and have made errors in judgement.  This is what Twitter is all about: authenticity.  If you make a mistake it’s always easier to just admit it, make amends, and carry on (if only more major league baseball players who played during the steroid era could be so candid).

Recently, I have been tremendously impressed with Domino’s advertising and re-branding campaign in which they acknowledge customer complaints and pledge their dedication to improving their pizza.  Some marketers have considered this tactic to be a mistake because if a company ranks #2 in a $36 billion pizza market then what could possibly be wrong with their product?  Like the 800 lb gorilla in the room,  the answer is enough to make it worthy of addressing.  Ultimately this will create an opportunity to improve their reputation by committing to the creation of an even better product.  What consumer does not appreciate a company who says they want to be better and are willing to do what it takes to win their trust?

Social media in general is a great place for co-marketing and co-branding, but should we also be held accountable by our followers for a product endorsement that ultimately lets them down?  I think only to a certain degree.  With an abundance of resources available, web surfers have nanoseconds to determine the validity and reliability of what is right in front of them.  In that same vain, it is crucial to cite information from reputable sources if you want to be taken halfway seriously by the followers in your particular industry or practice.  With web applications it’s best to test them out for a little while before promoting them.  Twitter is about being social, communicating, and building trustworthy relationships in a web 2.0 atmosphere.  The only way this type of environment can be created is if there is a mutual understanding, and a willingness to set things right if you realize what you endorse proves to be something contradictory to what you introduced in the beginning.

What do you think?  Do you become a spokesperson once you tweet about a company, blog, product, or service on Twitter?  We’d love to hear about some of your own experiences.  Tweet on!

Related articles

• 10 Commandments For Standing Out in The Instant Age (ploked.com)
• Finding the Right “Brand Voice” on Twitter (Mashable)
• The Tri-Fecta of Opportunity: Personal Branding, Social Media and Inbound Marketing (Personal Branding Blog)
• How to Value Your Following on Twitter (Personal Branding Blog)

Using Social Media To Promote Your Blog

There are quite a few incredible web 2.0 tools and applications you can use for free to help expose your blog to the readers you are looking to attract.  Social bookmarkets like AddThis have now been around for a few years and are still a fantastic way to get your content out to a variety of social networks.

I firmly, emphatically, and unequivocally believe that Wordpress is still the superior open source blog publishing platform available today.  With a wide variety of social media plugins ranging from TweetMeMe button integration, Facebook Connect and Twitter Tools, as well other plugins that allow the conversation on your blog to pour out into other arenas, the continuous improvement of Wordpress is supported by a dedicated community of developers.

Creating a Cult Following On Twitter: Manually and Automatically

There is a somewhat time consuming yet high yielding follow farming one can do on Twitter.  Simply by cycling through your followers you can examine the followers of your followers.  By choosing to follow your follower’s followers (no more than 100 per hour) you will begin to receive quite a few auto-follow backs. Try saying that five times fast!

I am constantly amazed by the volume of free, high quality Twitter applications available to help you gain more followers and creditable ones too. TweetSpinner is a fantastic tool that I utilize pretty frequently. It allows users to purge followers who do not follow you back, follow users based on specific keywords, and it also allows users to cycle through multiple descriptions and links presented in your profile on Twitter. I like teaming TweetSpinner up with the free edition of Socialoomph and I validate users who follow me with True Twit, a validation service that keeps rogue spam followers away  while allowing people really interested in what I have to tweet about in.

Tracking Your Effectiveness Through Clicks, Conversions, and Results

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Yahoo! Pipes, Twitterfeed, and Common Sense to Brand Yourself on Twitter, how users can take advantage of a free RSS feed manipulator application like Yahoo! Pipes and parse information through Twitterfeed that will be auto-tweeted on Twitter based on the timetable you select.  You can also select rss feeds from sites relative to your blog and post their updates in real-time.  It was really a no-brainer for me recently as I transitioned to Google Feedburner since they now allow users to socialize their feeds to Twitter and provide outstanding data tracking for all of your feeds.  I still use Twitterfeed for auto-retweets because Feedburner still cannot parse rss from Twitter Search correctly.

When I manually send out tweets, TweetDeck is usually my Twitter client of choice.  I believe that it blows all other Twitter clients out of the water.  I also highly recommend shortening your urls with Bit.ly and registering an account at their website. Once you have a bit.ly API key, simply go into the setting on TweetDeck, put in your Bit.ly API key, and all shortened links sent out through TweetDeck will be tracked over at Bit.ly. From that point you will begin to better understand the tone, sources, and length of tweets that are the most effective in generating click-throughs.  In my experience, most followers seem to appreciate you sending tweets out from multiple sources.  I suggest experimenting sending tweets from Twitter’s website, a client, from a mobile device, and url shortening service.  I believe the hybrid model of automating some tweets while manually sending out others combined with multiple distribution channels will give you the appearance of being directly connected even while some of your tweets are being automated.

Trying to Keep up the hustle while carrying out your day-to-day business tasks it would be impossible to expect yourself to maintain a 100% personal, authentic presence on Twitter.  Do your best, automate a little bit, and remember, there is no reason to create stress and friction while branding yourself on Twitter.  Just have fun with it and be yourself.

If you have anything to add, got a question or totally disagree with my approach feel free to share your thoughts with us.

Related articles

• Five Twitter Tools You Have To Have In Your Social Media Tool Belt
• Bit.ly Screams Fb.me: Facebook And Goo.gl Get Into The Game (techcrunch.com)
• Sadness. Google May Have Just Killed TwitterFeed (And Bit.ly Too) (blogherald.com)
• 6 Easy Ways to Track Your Blog Success (rotorblog.com)
• 10 Tips for Beginning Bloggers (edtechpower.blogspot.com)

Behind the scenes I’m currently fine tuning the technology for our e-commerce store which will be making it’s grand opening on this site in February.  Having been in conversation with several information technology and electronics manufacturers my goal is to offer hard-to-find software and gadgets at below market prices.

I’m more interested in hearing what types of products and or specific items you are looking to invest in during 2010 and seeing if I can address your needs at the best available price.  I would greatly appreciate your feedback regarding any suggestions.

Looking Forward to Connecting With You and Best Wishes in 2010,

Dustin

Here are a few methods to effectively drive more traffic to your site using some basic geo-targeted search engine optimization and social media tools in real-time. I will focus primarily on Google Insights for SEO and Twitter for social media.

Using Google Insights To Gage Recent Keyword Density Locally

Let’s say you are a Social Media Coordinator in Manhattan or Westchester County New York (I figure a personal example goes further). It’s important to first have a very clear idea of what your potential site visitors would be searching for when looking for your company.

Here is an example. I started off by simply doing a broad search through Google Insights for “Social Media” within a defined location “New York” over a one year period. You want to think of search queries as being similar to trading stocks. Like the Eliott wave principle a trader uses when performing technical analysis, keyword values ebb and flow based on the tendency of searches. Based on the chart to the right, it is likely that there will be a growing number of searches for Social Media by New Yorkers in the coming weeks.

The question then becomes: what should I tweet, how often, and how can I measure the metrics?

The Neighborhood Twitter Bird

I have talked to quite a few people who are hesitant about getting involved with Twitter to promote their business because they don’t want to compete with larger companies. This is what I like to refer to as “The Mom and Pop Dilemma” many small businesses are confronted by on a fairly regular basis. This has usually led to the “Oh Well Syndrome”, a concession and settlement for continuous mediocrity by smaller companies because the competition is too great. Marketing and advertising through social media and social networking, especially Twitter, bridges that gap in many ways, especially at a local level. A local TV repairman will always have a tough time going head-to-head with the Geek Squad at Best Buy. However, he can make a name for himself in his neighborhood with the right approach.

If you consistently tweet keywords that are rising in popularity and have something interesting, funny, and relevant to provide that makes your company possess professional as well as human qualities to it, I’m sure you will gain more followers and more conversions. The local TV repairman who repairs TVs at the customer’s home wants to include the town/village/city he’s working in and be real about the project without full disclosure (i.e – unexpected problems that surface, etc).

Some Important Considerations When Tweeting About Your Business

Sound Like An Authority Because You Are One – You are always walking a fine line on Twitter. Be yourself, but remain confident. Make sure that if you are consistently tweeting keywords relative to search queries a customer or client would conduct to find your product(s) and/or service(s) that common sense would suggest you know something about said product(s) and/or service(s).

Sculpt Your Tweets – You want to be personable while having something halfway intelligent to say in less than 120-130 characters (link included will put you at the 140 max). Obviously you want to include highly relevant links in your tweets along with keywords that are being commonly used. Utilize hashtags to have your tweets focused to people tweeting about a similar subject. This increases the likelihood of your tweets being retweeted, hence more exposure. Stay away from snake oil tactics or hard sells. State the facts, sound excited, but most importantly, be yourself.

Be Flexible, Dynamic, and Engage – People want to interact on Twitter. They want to communicate, not just be force fed links to your site. Ask questions, get your followers involved in your business, allow access to what goes on behind the scenes. Include miscellaneous tweets and personal tweets as well as those focused on your business. I believe many people are searching for something more than business as usual.

Understanding The Metrics

By using a url shortener like bit.ly to measure the click-throughs on the links you provide to your followers, you will invariably have a better idea of what keywords and tone are the most effective in generating user engagement.

Another option is to syndicate your website or blog’s RSS feed through Feedburner and allow auto-tweeting through the Socialize option after you burn your feed. Feedburner has some excellent analytics that can accurately gage the effectiveness of your social media campaign on Twitter.

If you have additional tips to better geo-target Google in real-time search queries using Twitter please let us know!

Related articles:

• The Four Spheres Of Social Media Strategy
• 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010
• Develop a Social Media Strategy in 7 Steps
• How SEO, Web 2.0, New Media is Changing PR
• New years resolution for bloggers
• Why You Should Use Twitter and Tweet for Your Business

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“Being a webmaster myself, I always know how important keyword ranking means to us,” said Kevin Zhou, marketing director of CuteRank.net. “and I also know how inconvenient and time-consuming it is to check keyword positions in a browser, needless to say checking keyword positions on multiple search engines. So the idea hit me and our team started building this software. Then I figured out that we can provide this software for all webmasters, free of charge.”

Key features of CuteRank include:

Check keyword positions on multiple search engines, and in different languages;
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Export keyword ranking data in multiple format including csv, HTML, and pdf;

CuteRank is free for download at the company’s website. There are 3 different editions of CuteRank, the Free Edition, complete free but limited to one site; the Standard Edition for serious internet marketers who have no more than 5 sites; and the Professional Edition with no site limit, ideal for SEO companies or consultants.

About CuteRank.Net

CuteRank.net is an innovative and serious provider of easy-to-use, necessary SEO software for webmasters, internet marketers and SEO professionals to boost their working efficiency, achieve SEO success, and earn money.

In the process of continuously searching for more and more places to list my domain name in order to create more inbound links to my blog, I found a list of several site traffic evaluation sites that you can easily get free links.

In order to get the links you simply visit the site and type in your domain.

Here is a list of sites that provide free inbound links:

http://www.statbrain.com/
http://www.cubestat.com/
http://www.aboutus.org/
http://www.sitedossier.com/
http://www.thepagerank.net/
http://www.siteadvisor.com/analysis/
http://www.websiteoutlook.com/
http://hindi.avadhwebs.com/
http://www.similarsites.com/
http://www.hotaweb.com/
http://www.sitelogr.com/
http://www.talkreviews.com/

If that was not enough here are more than hundred more sites where you can list your domain for free.

If you know of more free link directories please list them below.

Related articles

• SCRM – Social Analytics (slideshare.net)
• The Glamorous Domain Of Wordpress! (ronmedlin.com)

When I was Head Sailing Instructor at the Croton Sailing School and E.A.S.T. Sailing Academy five years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to teach a bright-eyed twelve year-old named Shannon how to sail. Shannon was one of my best students and was willing to work harder than everyone else despite a birth defect leaving her with no fingers on her left hand. Never once did I hear her complain that the weather was too rough, the task too hard, or any number of many common complaints I have heard while teaching adults and children how to sailing for close to ten years.

I have been thinking about Shannon quite a bit, and realize she has motivated me to help anyone who is physically or mentally disabled or simply do not have the financial mobility to learn one of the greatest passions I have been given access to learn.

Starting today, The Blog of Dustin Schmidt will be donating 25% of all contributions we recieve from donations to Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating (CRAB), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to making the thrill of sailing a reality for physically and/or developmentally-challenged individuals and for those individuals whose financial circumstances preclude their participation in recreation on the waters of Chesapeake Bay.

CRAB was founded in 1991 as an offshoot of the National Ocean Access Project of Newport, Rhode Island.

The organization is principally staffed and run by volunteers, though three positions – Executive Director, Program Director, and Administrative Assistant – are nominally compensated. The Executive Director is full-time, the latter two staff positions are part-time and/or seasonal.

Volunteers, as well as the ED and PD, participate in every aspect of the program’s operation, including maintaining the fleet, assisting individual sailors, work with school and other groups, serving as skippers, crewmembers and dockhands during the monthly “Sail Free” events. Volunteers also perform clerical functions, including newsletters, membership, fundraising and grant writing.

In the spirit of transparency, a receipt will be sent to you showing the distribution of funds from your donation and we will regularly track the progress we make towards our goal of raising $5,000 by the end of 2010.

Thank you for spreading the gift of sailing!

By all means, if you have more to add to the list feel free to send them are way and we will be sure to include them!

So, if you’re light in the wallet, have an open mind, are battle-tested and have the patience to learn the profession here are some excellent resources to help you get started.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc., written by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt is a no-nonsense book about developing and implementing a search marketing program for your business. It has been my holy book of reference when re-evaluating actions I take regarding SEO for my blog.

The second edition updates all chapters with the important developments in search marketing, including the sea change in paid search toward hybrid auctions, the advent of sitemaps to index your organic content, new keyword tools, and more. In addition, two brand-new chapters have been added:

• Explore New Media and Social Media: Find out how videos, podcasts, and other new kinds of media are suddenly showing up in “blended” search results. And learn how you can get customers to pass along your marketing message through social media.

• Optimize Your Web Site Search: You’ve already learned so much about how organic search works. Why not apply that knowledge to improve the results of the search engine on your own website? Find out how a little extra knowledge can send you on your way to help your customers find what they are looking for once they are on your website.

The SEOmoz toolset – Includes over twenty SEO tools designed to help with every aspect of Search Engine Optimization, including On-Page Targeting, Site Crawlability, Competitive Analysis, Rank Checking and Keyword Difficulty.

SEO Site Statistics Tool by Xinu Returns – Check PageRank, Backlinks, Indexed Pages, Rankings and more.  This is a phenomenal web application that will also help with validation and usability.

SEO Software by Web CEO – Improve SEO workflow with an outstanding Keyword tool and Partner Finder tool.  You can promote your blog in Blog Search Engines and Directories and get registered with Blog Communities with the help of their Submission tool.

20 SEO Tips for 2010 – SEO Design Solutions outlines some basic tricks of the trade that will help you rank higher in competitive verticals.

21 Link Builders Share Advanced Link Building Queries – Link building and link baiting are two very important aspects of creating effective inbound links to your pages. Search Engine Land presents how 21 different companies were able to generate more inbound links through a variety of techniques.

10 Free Google SEO Tools Everybody Should Use – Who knows better how to optimize a website for Google than Google? Here you can learn more about Keyword Density, Link Popularity, Fixing Broken Links, and how to better optimize your site for indexing.

To piggyback on that, I would highly advise following Google Engineer Matt Cutts and the videos he puts up on YouTube. This is a great way to keep up with Google’s indexing trends and new developments.

I hope you found these resources helpful. If you are a do-it-yourself SEO with a toolbox you would like to share please let us know about the free SEO tools you use to effectively generate higher page rank and better placement in organic search results.

We are looking for qualified bloggers to help us out.  Our mission has always been to appeal to small businesses or self-starting entrepreneurs working towards building a greater web presence.  Since we are still a start-up, I will be clear from the beginning that we cannot offer financial reimbursement to start.  However, our goal is to eventually pay for outstanding content, and fully believe that work completed should always be fairly compensated.  While you blog for us, I would like to place a free advertisement for your blog/website on our homepage, place a link to your site in our business link directory, and have a background profile that tells our readers a little bit more about you.

If you or anyone you know are interested in hearing more about some of the details please feel free to send us an email at info@dustinschmidt.com

I look forward to hearing and sharing your experience,

Dustin

First Chrome, for some reason my radio buttons and checkboxes keep randomly dissapearing, making it painstaking difficult to addresss content management on my own site, access email through hotmail, and fill out forms.  Secondly, on IE 8, my toolbar keeps turning black, losing accessibility to any bookmarks.  This has been an active bug fixing discussion on numerous tech forums.

If you are losing radio buttons and check boxes in Google Chrome 3.0.195.38 on your pc here is the temporary quick fix.

The Caveat: you will have to do it over and over again until Google finally eradicates the bug.

Right Click on your Desktop  → Properties → Press OK  → Refresh Chrome

Similar to Chrome, if you are experiencing the Internet Explorer 8 black toolbar display bug here’s what you need to do.

The Caveat: you will have to do it over and over again too.

Right Click on your Desktop  → Properties → Reselect your theme  → Press Ok  → Close and Re-open IE.

What ever happened to the glory days of Firefox 3.0, when Mozilla was the only reputable open-source project on the web browsing scene?  Very few bugs were present and most of them were hardly visible to the naked eye. Ahh, those were the days.  IE has always had problems and that’s why Microsoft is beginning to lose a considerable portion of the market.  Now that Google has virtually taken control over my life like Walmart, Home Depot, and other commercial chains, I am left with fewer viable options.  Sigh!

I will be the first to admit that I use Google Chrome as my current go-to browser based on speed, and speed alone.  I have dabbled with the development release that allows you to play with the extensions available shortly for the stable version, and although can attest to the fact that they are pretty cool, they are not nearly as flexible as extensions available for Firefox.  It is still a browser under construction, littered with many bugs: one of the most frustrating of which is the checkbox and radio button disappearing act mentioned above.  Chrominium, the open-source project that contributes to Chrome, has been documenting this bug for over a year now and still no permanent solution.  So where do we go from here?

Choosing a browser is like picking a restaurant for a date.  You know there are so many out there, but the truly great ones are hard to come by.  Most people value quality and service when they choose a restaurant, willing to pay a little more for a memorable and fulfilling experience.  I’m sure consumers would be willing to pay for a web browser that had the speed of Chrome and the consistency and flexibility of Firefox if they could test it on a trial basis first.  That browser has yet to be created, but when it does there will be a lot of happy consumers.

Was this information helpful?  Is there anything you would like to add?  Please feel free to share your comments.

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Ever since the Robert Downey Jr issue of Esquire magazine hit newsstands last month there has been a ton of buzz regarding the advent of augmented reality as an emerging media technology that could revolutionize the advertising industry.  The true question is what else does it do?  A pretty typical question for the modern American who by many standards could be labeled “tech crazed” attempts to answer this question almost on a daily basis.

Here are three areas where augmented reality will have a significant impact:

1. Arts and Entertainment – Take a look at this video of Marco Tempest doing an augmented reality card trick.

2. Virtual telecommuting – Allowing presenters to be present in the meeting room while working from home.

3. Behavioral Targeting – From a social marketing standpoint, adjustments relative to the metrics will be made on-the-fly.

Despite the initial fascination and novelty of augmented reality, some have argued that the concept is struggling to gain momentum. This situation may be changing though, as Japanese startup Tonchidot recently landed $4 million in funding for augmented reality development. The firm will use mobile technology to display its augmented reality marketing, potentially allowing vendors to sell virtual goods from a real-world retail store front.

As a medium enhancement for art, the new technology could build an even closer personal connection between the artist and the observer.  Here is a documentary of an interactive art installation at Symbiosis Gathering 2009, held in Camp Mather, California, Adjacent to Yosemite National Park.

The mural uses augmented reality where digital information is projected onto a real world surface, in this case a painting. The painting is colored with projected light, and using photoshop, vdmx ad particle illusion software, the mural becomes interactive.

For further analysis, take a look at the Digital Information Architecture Visualization of Demographic Statistics in Augmented Reality by Michael Zoellner, a researcher at Fraunhofer IGD in Darmstadt, Germany.

Is AR just another fad like bell-bottoms and the zip drive or does it have lasting power?  Let us know what you think.

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I’m sure you are familiar with the short story Rip Van Winkle by 19th century American author Washington Irving.  After taking a nap for twenty years during the American Revolution, Rip wakes up to lament, ‘‘The very character of the people seemed changed’’ and although there is still a crowd gathered around the local inn, the conversation carries ‘‘a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity’’.  Rip’s ignorance and sheer laziness are irony at it’s best in light of the political activism that surrounds him.

So what does this analogy have to do with Twitter?  Well, some might suggest that there was a synapse in communication, a disconnect within American society, that led us, like Rip, into a deep sleep.  From this unconscious state social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and eventually Twitter were born to serve as catalyst of what I like to call dialogue activism.   Now don’t get me wrong, I am a strong advocate of social media and web 2.0 (I help launch these types of campaigns and still believe in them), but at the same time the enterprise will reach it’s peak soon because we are beginning to realize some of it’s limitations.

Despite it’s enormous popularity, Twitter clearly still has security issues (remember the DDOS attack this summer?) and the pretentious  merit-based system follower acquisition is based upon lends itself to credibility issues.  Those are some of it’s drawbacks.  The “I rub your back, you rub my back” approach to building a following in one’s rise to fame and users who auto-tweet quality content condemned as “robots” are at the underbelly of the social network being propelled even further.  Syndication is a vital part of web 2.0, and stereotyping this methodology of content delivery stagnates the flow of information.

Here are my two main considerations I take into account when deciding whether or not to follow someone on Twitter.

1. Quality of their content – In particular I look to follow people or businesses that have a personal side as well as a professional authority within their respective field.  I also don’t believe in unfollowing someone who is not following me.  If they are not interested in my goods and services (namely what I had for lunch and Wordpress plugin updates) I can still sleep soundly at night.

2. Network Flow – If I choose to follow this person or business will I be expanding or contracting my presence to persons or businesses I am looking to reach?  You can have 20,000 followers and follow someone with 20,000 followers, but is there any real potential for developing meaningful relationships?  Yes the odds are better, but believe me there are plenty of users with tons of shadow followers that cannot serve any meaningful purpose should I follow them.

Now I know you might be saying to yourself, “Stop your #Twhining“.  You’re right.  There should be more positive messages being sent across the social media (and mass media) airwaves right now.  This is a call to action to continue the ongoing quest to share freely, be of service, and not always look for what’s in it for me.  There is a reason why Facebook continues to soar and why Twitter has recently gone sour.  I might be a little idealistic, but I believe there is still hope.

With the birth of virtualization and cloud computing, it’s been suggested that there is an infinite supply of data space and bandwidth, just like we believed the same was true about electricity for centuries.  Only now are we starting to understand the necessity for green energy and conservation.  The fluff has to be dusted away to allow the meaningful conversations to take place, and for people to gain credibility not because they re-follow everyone, but because they are breaking news or are sharing something completely unique.  Humor, step-by-step guides, insightful debate, new technology updates, and events are important to pass along.  Whether I used 1% or 2% milk in my cereal this morning is kind of irrelevant.

I wanted to share this video with you because utilizing Yahoo! Pipes and Twitterfeed have been enormously helpful personally in building my presence and brand identity on Twitter.  This is one of the best step-by-step techniques to auto generate retweets from Twitter search queries that are relevant to organic keyword searches one would ultimately use to find you or your business on the web.  If you’re finding it difficult to follow (I know, the information moves by fast) I would suggest pausing it during each step.

There is a disclaimer: your followers don’t want to be inundated with thousands of tweets per day (also known as Twamming) so when you create a Twitter bot you want to use this technique with some discretion.  Fortunately, Twitterfeed allows you to monitor how many tweets you send per hour per feed.

Easy right?  Ryan Price also outlines a very detailed plan for utilizing Yahoo! Pipes to aggregate RSS feeds and setup automatic re-tweets. I actually use a combination of both techniques while sprinkling in RSS feeds from some of my favorite marketing, SEO, Organic Link Building, Social Media, and Web Design for Wordpress sites.

I have learned three valuable lessons about Twitter followers and what is important to them.  All Twitter followers appreciate and expect:

1. Reliable and useful information – links to tutorials and breaking news that are accurate and helpful.

2. Personal Recognition – acknowledgement as an actual person, not a machine, and being re-tweeted.

3. A Casual Conversation – keeping in touch regularly on many levels: professional services, personal insight, and miscellaneous ”stuff”.

Using a Twitter bot to auto generate retweets is Whitehat Social Media by my standards as long as it is done in consideration of the followers recieiving the tweets.  The key is to tweet frequently without over-saturating, and this is a matter of common sense.  If you see your followers are dropping off, tweak the frequency of auto tweets to either ramp up or tone down the number of tweets being sent.  Also, regularly change the keywords used in auto re-tweeting.  Above all else, just like blogging, create a brand and stand by it.

Team up all of these steps with the Five Twitter Tools You Have To Have In Your Social Media Tool Belt article we posted earlier this month and you will be well on your way to building and marketing a brand while spreading your sphere of influence on Twitter.  This is not an entirely new idea, but one that is constantly evolving so stay tuned.

Some other important Twitter tools to start using right now to get yourself out there and shamelessly self-promote your profile with are:

Twitter Grader

Tweet Spinner

WeFollow

If you found this useful please let us know or if there are tools or trick you would like us to add by all means clue us in.

Cohiba is a really funny dog.  He loves to talk, and sneak his favorite outdoor toy football into the house even though he knows he’s not supposed to.  At roughly 115lbs he is kind of like a bulldozer in a museum, but absolutely harmless.  When my nephew Darius was about eighteen months old he loved to ride Cohiba like a pony in a petting zoo.  I’m still confused as to why many larger breed dogs like German Sheppard’s get a notorious reputation for being aggressive when in fact they are amazing with kids, and are genuinely sweet, affectionate companions.

I know my time with him is somewhat limited since German Sheppard males live typically on average 10 years, but Cohiba is in great shape, maintaining vitality and a playful spirit despite showing some signs of aging (i.e – mild arthritis, and cataracts).  As my good friend Richard once said, “Pets really are an extension of ourselves.”  I couldn’t agree more.  I look at Cohiba as being a kindred spirit and really a special dog.

Now if I could only get him to not run into outdoor furniture…

Feel free to take a look at some of the other photos I have taken over the years.  If you have a special dog you would like us to meet please feel free to share!

I love the line: “We are at the forefront of capitalizing on a social network that is even larger than MySpace.  We are about to tap into real life.”

Besides the hyperbolic effect and comedic relief, I believe there is certainly some link bait quality to it too.  For anyone new to the term, link baiting is when you strategize your SEO and search engine marketing plan by creating easy and effective opportunities for acquiring backlinks to your site. Zeke Shore, who wrote, directed, and produced Life 2.0 got his link bait right here in my blog.

Generating backlinks on top-level pages, like an index/home page, should be a primary focus for search engine marketers, but not their only cause of action.  Google has always been eager to see both quality and quantity of backlinking, but other search engines like Yahoo! and Bing do not weigh backlinks quite as heavily.  With the growth of social media there is a plethora of ways to get the link to your homepage out to highly ranked pages.

Here are some basic link bait strategies:

1.  Create a Wordpress, Firefox, or Chrome plugin/extension and distribute it free of charge.  When the plugin is activated a backlink will be automatically created on the user’s homepage.

2.  A viral video teaser like Life 2.0 that prominently displays your site’s url at the beginning and end.  If the clip has mass appeal and can drive traffic to your site, provide users with exclusive access to the full video as long as they place a backlink or send the video to ten friends.

3. Set up a link exchange on your site.  I am an advocate of what Matt Cutts at Google calls page sculpting, only accepting links from a homepage with a page rank above a certain level.  All other links would receive the rel=no follow attribute otherwise.  If you use Wordpress check out WordPress Link Directory by Sean Bluestone.

Believe me, there are far more creative ways of getting backlinks to your site, one of which is building your brand on the web in a variety of places all funneling back to your homepage.  If that was not enough for you here are 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity, but remember to always follow the golden rules.

Ahh, you can never take life too seriously.

Have some SEO success stories you would like to share? By all means comment away!

Feel good.

Meet iYobo, founded by Ayman El-Churafa in November 2008 (launched publicly in November 2009), a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest live updates.  An update is limited to 140 characters (similar to Twitter) and can be posted to the web in real-time.  The iYobo development team is currently in the lab working on having the status update feature accessible through text messaging, as well as through a mobile web app.   iYobo is a place where users can share cool stuff online, spreading the content to various social networks such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.

Currently iYobo is in beta launch and will be rolling out several major features shortly. Some the goodies to look forward to are photo and video streaming tools that enable users to upload and share their own pics and videos in real-time.  Users can then comment on, vote, and earn points simply by participating.  Supported by the iYobo chromeless player, the video component will allow users to upload their own personal videos or import YouTube  videos from the web.

Having walked through the site with Ayman the other day, I see iYobo being more than just another social network looking to step into the crowded Web 2.0 playground. Of course there are some bug fixes that need to be worked through and additional user functionality that will need to be in place before iYobo can really take off, but the framework nevertheless remains exemplary.  I’m looking forward to seeing how iYobo will use the point scoring system and popularity ranking for it’s users.  The possibilities are endless and I will make sure to follow-up with a full review as iYobo prepares for their stable release.

I believe it is a fair assessment that the legal counsel for Microsoft Corporation did it’s job pretty well back in 1998 when they thwarted a total breakup of the company after reaching a settlement with the federal government, a minor slap on the wrist in comparison to the possible alternatives. That being said, U.S. prosecutors brought litigation pursuant to the Sherman Antitrust Act in United States v. Microsoft and Bill Gate’s brain child has not been quite the same ever since.

Having to split publicly-held shares of the company, and loosen a proprietary barricade towards competition in the web browsing industry allowed for the birth of open source competitors like Mozilla.  It is quite clear that even despite a highly touted release of their new Windows 7 last month, Microsoft still has an uphill battle to return to the glory days of the 90’s.

Fast forward nearly a decade later and the same questions are rising to the surface again, but this time with Facebook and Google.

The reason: Both have an overwhelming majority of the market share in the social network and search industries respectively, and as 19th century English historian Lord Acton once said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

According to comScore data, Facebook still has a firm lead in the race to be King of the Social Network, tallying 97.4 million U.S. users in October 2009, more than double the amount a year earlier.  Twitter dropped 7.9 percent in October from September, marking the second monthly decline for the social-networking site this year.  MySpace still stands in second place at roughly 50 million users.

Google controls approximately 65 percent of the search engine market.  Last month, Google ranked 1st in unique visitors again (shocker, I know)  with just over 164,000 unique visitors and the Google Ad Network ranked 3rd at 87 percent reach, narrowly behind AOL and Yahoo!  Today Google shares are trading at $584.84  (NASDAQ GS: GOOG), $6.00 above their 52-week high.

I understand the argument, ”If someone else’s products or services are more reliable and/or of better quality a free-market economy should allow for the cream of the crop to rise to the top.”  The problem is both companies are liquidating the competition by absorbing significant web properties such as YouTube and Feedburner in the case of Google and Friendfeed in the case of Facebook.  That is just a starting point.  Imagine what will happen as both Android and Google Chrome OS start to commandeer the operating system business?

Joshua Palau, contributing writer over at Search Engine Watch wrote a compelling piece “Google: The Accidental Monopoly“ in which he argues that you cannot fault Google for playing an active role in American Capitalism by making great products and crushing the competition.  He has some valid points, but one must not forget that whether it be accidental or intentional, as the old saying goes: if it walk like a duck, acts like a duck, and talks like a duck it’s probably a duck.

The facts cannot be ignored when bringing up monopoly or anti-trust in the same sentence as Google and Facebook.  I don’t believe that I’m a paranoid New Yorker cynical of big business and capitalistic expansionism.  I will be the first to praise both companies for creating outstanding software that has been tremendously beneficial to me both personally and professionally.  I do believe that if either company gains more power at the expense of their competition the quality and reliability of their software will ultimately pay the price.  Just take a look at Internet Explorer.

I would love to hear your thoughts on whether you believe Facebook and  Google are on their way to establishing monopolies or anything else you want to talk about.

Here are a few tips and plugins that I have found have worked quite well. I cannot take full credit for these so please make sure to check out the developers associated with each tweak for further information.

1.Install All-in-One SEO Pack by hallsofmontezuma and Google XML Sitemap plugin by Arne Brachhold. Post titles should appear before site name and sitewide keywords should mirror Google Adwords for relevant keyword searches. Also, regularly resubmit and update your xml sitemap and robot.txt files. I know this goes without saying, but it’’s something I sometimes forget to do.

2.Install Wp-Super Cache by Donncha O Caoimh. This will greatly speed up page load times. If you use firefox I would install ySlow to see where your site is prior to installation and your load time once you have gzip compression and page caching in place. To make this plugin even more effective check out Askapache’’s Hacking WP Super Cache For Speed. His re-writing of the .htaccess file has proven to be quite effective.

3.Make the most out of your .htaccess file – by enabling Gzip Compression, adding an Expires Header, and disabling ETags you can definitely give your Wordpress blog a needed boost. Here is a glimpse at some of the things I do with my .htaccess file.  This accomplishes quite a bit and I also block out known malicious IP addresses for additional security.

# Use PHP5CGI as default
AddHandler fcgid-script .php
# CONFIGURE media caching
#
Header unset ETag
FileETag None

Header unset Last-Modified
Header set Expires "Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT"
Header set Cache-Control "public, no-transform"

#####################################################
# protect the htaccess file

order allow,deny
deny from all

# This prevents web browsers or spiders from seeing your .htaccess directives:
# End of file

# BEGIN WPSuperCache

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*[^/]$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*//.*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*(Android|2.0\ MMP|240x320|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|hiptop|IEMobile|iPhone|iPod|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.0|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo\ Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera\ Mini|Palm|Playstation\ Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian\ OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|Windows\ CE|WinWAP).*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*[^/]$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*//.*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*(Android|2.0\ MMP|240x320|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|hiptop|IEMobile|iPhone|iPod|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.0|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo\ Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera\ Mini|Palm|Playstation\ Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian\ OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|Windows\ CE|WinWAP).*
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html [L]

# END WPSuperCache

# END WordPress


4.Add a php opcode cache – eAccelerator and xCache are two popular systems. You need to have a good working knowledge of .ssh terminal commands in Linux and must have root access to your server to effectively utilize php optimization and opcode caching. This will help with your blogs ability to perform server-side php functions by creating a stored cache.

5.Make your Permalinks Pretty – SEF canonical urls are a no-brainer yet a lot of blogger still don”t get it. I”m always surprised to find major corporate sites that have sloppy link structure.

6.Make your code Valid XHTML and CSS, consolidating Javascript and CSS into two files – This can be laborious, but it is essential. I am a big fan of semantic tableless CSS. However from what I have read and heard it seems that Googlebot and most other bots don’t really have a problem indexing tables.

7.Write compelling content with solid back links and make sure to ping! - This is not really an optimization technique. It’’s more or less a pre-requisite. RSS snippets that leave your readers wanting more is important. Check out Searchengine Land’s 25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers and Search Engines for more.

8.Deactivate unused plugins – There are several plugins I used every so often for maintenance purposes, but that don’t serve an everyday purpose such as WP-DB Manager, DB Optimize, and Wp-Maintenance (to launch a quick maintenance splash page.)

9.Add rel=no follow to all sites you display in you link directory that have a page rank of 5 or less – This might be considered controversial, but to keep up with the big boys you have to pay careful consideration to who you back link to and why. Back links should fall into a related genre to what the mission your blog desires to achieve. Blogroll links need to also be site related.

10.Marry Facebook and Twitter on your blog – I encourage integrating the Facebook Connect API so users can login with their encrypted Facebook account and add a follow me on Twitter link either in your sidebar or at the bottom of your post page. Including the Sociable social bookmarking plugin by Joost de Valk is also a suggestion. It’’s important to create meaningful footprints. If you provide relevant information that readers appreciate they will want to talk about it, share it, and thank you for it. It’’s pretty simple. Of course shamelessly self promoting your blog on Facebook and Twitter is a must! That is if you believe in what you write…

I would like to thank askapache, Joost de Valk, and everyone else that contributes to making Wordpress a better and more reliable blogging platform. Their knowledge has helped me become better at what I do.