Razoo Speed Granting - Good Doesn’t Go on Vacation

Razoo is a niche social network, still in beta, aiming to be the platform for social good. It joins a growing number of other socially conscious network-based sites, including Care2. For a round-up and some commentary on those, check out a post by Ogilvy blogger Qui Diaz
Back in June, I attended Razoo’s public unveiling party […]

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Search Engine Deoptimization

I now present to you an alternative view of SED…Search Engine Deoptimization. And yes, you read the title right. Please don’t excommunicate me from the web community. I promise…I’ll be good (well, maybe not).
Sometimes there are cases where search engine optimization can really bite you in the butt (ouch, that hurts). An optimized site can […]

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Web Analytics - An Hour a Day

In the ye olde days of web analytics, Internet marketers spoke about hits and pageviews. The web has changed, however, and the metrics to measure success are evolving (not dead…yet). Enter Avinash Kaushik, the proclaimer and educator of what analytics should be — and at an hour a day.
Avinash hits home an important fact. […]

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Site Experience Optimization

Some people are not friendly to Search Engine Optimization. They think it is all about gaming Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines. There is some truth to that.
Jason Calacanis’ new project — Mahalo – aims to eliminate traditional SEO. He’s got 5-years of funding to create a human powered search engine, SPAM free and […]

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SezWho - A Step Toward Reputation Management

SezWho is an interesting new tool that helps blogs and bloggers establish comment credibility. It works via a plugin (presently only available for the WordPress and MovableType platforms). By allowing blog comments to be rated, SezWho helps: 1) Readers, who benefit from the ratings next to each comment. 2) Commenters, who are able to […]

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Reactive and Proactive Online Customer Service

My dry cleaner recently did NOT have my shirts ready on time. So, I had to come back another day to pick them up. I was less than pleased and was prepared to ask for a discount when I returned. The next day when I was rung-up, I said, “How about a discount for it […]

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7 Reasons Why Facebook is Rocking

Facebook is doing some amazing things - and it’s not just because it is a smart social network. Innovation is constant and is heavily influenced by Facebook members. As time goes by, Facebook is solidifying its grip on a very loyal userbase and attracting new members because…it’s just better.
Take a look at some of the data out […]

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Google Juice, Google Juice, Google Juice

How many minutes ago did you google yourself?
I once read a good productivity tip that spoke not about a “to do” list but a “NOT to do” list. Not Ego Surfing made the list. Don’t google yourself one day. I dare you.
There’s a bit of buzz about a WSJ piece that talks about choosing an unborn child’s […]

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Making a Blog Less "Bloggy" and the Re-launch of TECHNOSIGHT.COM

Blogs frustrate me - and they probably frustrate you too. They make life easy for their authors by allowing them to easily post content.
But they make life difficult for readers by, for the most part, providing a single time-based reading option, with the newest content at the top of the page.
If, for example, you previously stopped by […]

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The Pre-emptive Killing of the Pageview

If you know anything about web analytics, then you probably have heard of the term “pageview” before. It’s a metric to represent the number of times a web page is loaded in a browser and is one of the primary stats used to determine the health of a web site. Historically, it also has been […]

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Google Apps…for FREE!

Check out what this scammer is doing:
1. Bidding on the term “google apps” in AdWords.

2. Utilizing a hosted Google Page, selling the benefits of Google Apps.
3. Directing visitors to get Google Apps for free, simply by clicking on a Google Apps link that just so happens to be an AdSense ad…for Google Apps.

It […]

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Twitter me this, Twitter me that

Twitter - the “what are you doing?” service - is far and away the new craze of today’s early adopter crowd. The idea behind Twitter is simple; send mass updates about “what you are doing” to the Twitter community via SMS, IM, or the web.
There are some powerful uses for Twitter. For example, imagine […]

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Pickle Releases the Channel Player

Photo and video sharing Pickle.com just gave word about a major upgrade to their “Pickle Player”, which they are now are calling the Pickle Channel Player (disclaimer: Pickle is a client of Viget Labs, although I have had very limited involvement in the engagement).
The Channel Player is very innovative on a number of levels: 1) […]

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Compete.com Grades Google

The last two years, Forbes.com has graded Google on the performance of its Search Properties (see 2005 and 2006 Google Report Cards). Compete.com’s Jeremy Crane took a more quantitative look at how Google did in 2006. The results: major growth in the Video, Blog, Scholar, and Desktop Search Properties.
According to Jeremy’s analysis, Froogle, Local, and Directory fall into […]

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7 Ways to Successfully Pitch Bloggers

I get “pitched” throughout the week to write about different product releases or updates. Over the past few months, a growing number of these pitches have been less grassroot efforts and more professional and PR like. And many of them have not been good.
While I admit I am somewhat of a snob when it comes to what […]

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On How NOT to Build Trust via the Internet

By now you probably have read the stories about Lonelygirl15 (read description on Wikipedia), a YouTube superstar that turned out to be a huge fraud. The quick-and-dirty synopsis is that Lonelygirl15 was a young 16-year-old who posted a video blog detailing her journey through the always fun teenage years. The problem was, Lonelygirl15 really wasn’t […]

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7 Ways to Get Quality Links

Links aren’t easy to get. Let me rephrase that, quality links aren’t easy to get. With RSS that’s even more true because your special sauce (i.e., the content of your site), can often get picked up by spammers and scammers and repurposed as their own. So, without further ado, I present 7 Ways to Get […]

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2007 "Predictions" You Won’t Read Elsewhere

In the blogosphere today, there is a whole lot of chatter about 2007 predictions. This time a year, you see a lot of these ideas (right now, Richard MacManus’ 2007 Predictions are the talk of the town).
I’m not one to make predictions but I do observe trends and opportunities (as I did last year - […]

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Reflecting on 2006

2006 was another big year for the web. It saw the rise of YouTube, the dominance of MySpace, and more generally a focus on social networks and social networking on the web.
I didn’t make predictions about this year. Instead, I noted that there were several big opportunities for established online players and their start-up counterparts to go […]

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Pamela Sorensen on ‘Why She’s Blogging’

Pamela Sorensen stopped by our offices last week to do a blogging workshop. Our CEO Brian Williams knows Pamela through ExecutiveBiz - she’s the VP of Corporate Development. Pamela is a very well connected trendster who recently started a blog and was looking for some pointers.
If you want to learn about the upscale hot spots of D.C., then […]

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Frank Felker on What Video Internet Means to Biz Owners

Frank Felker is the proprietor of Radio Free Enterprise and is a seasoned marketing veteran who literally sees the complete marketing picture from blogs and the Internet through radio and print. The scary thing is that he has executed well across all those channels.
Frank and I worked on some projects in the past including Jerry […]

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Avinash Kaushik on the Real Conversion Opportunity Pie

If you are just brighter than a rock, you have some sort of stat tracker or analytics package on your website or blog. If you are smart and dilligent about your web presence, you actually analyze the stats that are collected.
There’s a lot of data to pour through, especially if you use something like Google […]

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The Whole Web 3.0 Deal

Sometimes the web world makes me angry.
My peers need to stop creating crazy words like blogging, vlogging, podcasting, and wikis. And please, it’s time to end the coining of terms like mash-ups or folksonomy.
Technology is thankfully pushed forward by those on the edge. But advancements need to be communicated to those in the mainstream. It […]

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Blogging ROI - A Framework

If you are a smart business owner, then you probably do things methodically. You likely try and weigh costs and risks against benefits when it comes to any new organizational initiatives.
There is no ‘quick fix’ for determining if blogging is right for you but a good starting point is answering the following questions:
What benefit(s) - […]

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A Simple Look at Web Strategy

After asking the question Do you have a Web Strategy?, I thought it was important to give a closer look at what the term really means.
My first post on the Viget Labs blog is entitled Defining Web Strategy. Here is the definition I came up with:
An organization’s web strategy is an actionable plan devised to […]

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Do you have a Web Strategy?

Regardless of if you are a small business, Fortune 500 company, politico, or a private individual, you have a web strategy even if you have not formalized it. All web strategy is not created equal.
Many who fall into the ‘private individual’ category possess a simple strategy - to have a place to communicate with friends […]

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Serious Problems with RSS - Part 3 (Content Ambiguity)

Besides the fact that RSS subscribers can feel less connected or loyal to content creators (see The Wire Effect), content on a per source basis can also face ambiguity problems.
RSS feeds are published based on timestamps and not on relevancy or interest. That means that one of my better posts could get buried beneath a handful of […]

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Serious Problems with RSS - Part 2 (The ‘Wire’ Effect)

You don’t create communities in RSS readers. You can’t really engage with readers. You really can’t do anything except consume raw content.
- Phil Sim, Why I hate RSS readers

Phil Sim made several great points when he wrote the piece quoted above. Another problem with RSS is that in many ways it turns content providers into […]

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Serious Problems with RSS - Part 1 (Accurate Metrics)

Like some of you, I’ve tried just about every RSS reader out there. I’m more or less using Google Reader and Rojo now, which leads to one of the first serious problems I see with RSS: getting accurate metrics.
There are tools out there to help but many of them don’t have the ability to […]

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95-5-0.1

Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1.
- Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors
I can’t say I’m really surprised by Jakob Nielsen’s observations about the percentage of lurkers on the web. I need to look […]

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Your Blog is (or should be) a Coffee Shop

Many of us enjoy the free WiFi offered at today’s Coffee Shops…but Coffee Shops are not popular because of WiFi. In some ways, they are not even popular because of coffee. After all, you can get a Cup of Joe at 7-11, Dunkin Donuts, a local Deli, or any number of other locations. The defining draw […]

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If You Build it, Will They Buy It?

Written by Joseph LeBlanc
With recent eBay auctions of websites like Kiko and Huckabuck, there’s a lingering question as to how many new web services will sell. In the past, large companies like Microsoft, AOL, and Google have purchased smaller ones as a way of either removing potential competition or acquiring talented developers. In both cases, […]

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Webtop, RIA, and "Webified"

There were some interesting discussions late last week regarding Rich Internet Applications (RIA), a new term called “webified”, and the webtop. If you recall, I’ve been doing a series on the webtop and how I disagree with it being called a WebOS (thus far, I’ve pointed to Bubbles and SimTimer as examples of what I […]

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MySpace Blog Export Tool

I’m not sure why a handful of blogging services haven’t yet developed an export feature for MySpace blogs. It only would make sense to do so, since many of them are appealing to the MySpace user base. Of course, it would be a hack but I’m certain it could be done.
In particular, I’m thinking about […]

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MyBlogLog Community - Building Your Professional Peer Group

Peter Davis ran with a theme I wrote about in The Long Tail of Linking - building a professional peer group. As I thought about this idea over the last week, I had what I considered an ephiphany: What if I could create a social network that was based on bloggers - a much more […]

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The Long Tail of Linking

Back when the Internet and subsequently the blogosphere was in its infancy, there were two concepts that seemed to win the day: link exchanges and blogrolls. Each provided a way of gaining more traffic and visibility.
As each matured, however, these models went from being mutually beneficial to annoying. High-volume traffic websites and “A-list” bloggers became […]

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HitTail - The Long Tail Applied to SEM

The Long Tail has been quite the subject of late. The concept behind the long tail was popularized by Wired Editor’s Chris Anderson and is pretty simple (although I’ll allow Wikipedia to describe it for the sake of being concise):
In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events—the long tail, represented here by the […]

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Sonific - Tracks for your Digitial Life

Sonific is a music service - currently in private beta - employing the widget strategy. It caters to bloggers, MySpacers, and the like. Users are able to add Flash players or “SongSpots” to their desired web properties.
From a business perspective, the goal of these SongSpots is to introduce people to new artists with the hope that […]

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YouTube - MySpace’s Fiercest Competitor

Last week, YouTube began adding customized URLs to their site. While a cool feature, many just waived their hands at it. But combine that with stardom (http://youtube.com/ParisHilton - no, I won’t link to that) and a fledging (and innovative) advertising model and it becomes a bit more important.
I’ve been talking with a very web and marketing […]

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Attention VCs - Please Read Before Funding Another Social Network

Here’s a bit of free (yet unsolicited) advice for VCs. And I’m not trying to be too presumptuous, pessimistic, or mean but if you are trying to fund a new social network - whether niche based or otherwise - I’d seriously reconsider.
As part of that target market and a web strategy consultant, I have the […]

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Webtop - The Future of Computing

A number of people have thrown around the word “webtop” - but in doing so, I think they miss what the future of the web might have in store for us. Web 2.0 purists believe a Web 2.0 world where all functionality, all true computing occurs within the browser or some form of it. But […]

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MySpace Adds “Slides” and Increases Photo Storage

MySpace now has the option for users to add “slides” to their profiles. This feature has been serviced by companies like Slide and RockYou to this point. Coinciding with this new feature, the 12-photo limit restriction has been lifted. MySpace could easily get into the photosharing business if they felt like it.
This move is not […]

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YouTube Down - A Layman’s Explanation

YouTube is down…of course, these are the things you see on the Internet when surfing the web at all hours of the night.

There are a lot of empty YouTube spaces around the web tonight.
tagged under youtube

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USA TODAY - Xanga Launched in April 2006?

Opened up the Life section of USA Today, where they’ve decided to inform readers that Xanga launched in April 2006. I was surprised that when I visited the web version, this information was still incorrect.

Considering the site has been around since late 1999, that’s pretty embarrassing for a major paper, even if it’s not […]

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MySpace Begins Marketing MySpaceIM

Back in May, MySpaceIM finally launched after much anticipation. But it really hasn’t caught on - I downloaded it then and to this point, virtually no one I know is using it.
Well, it looks like MySpace is ready to change that. MySpaceIM is now prominently being advertised on the home page of the site.

One […]

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Smart Social Networks - Defined and Compared

As I’ve seen more and more social networks launch, there definitely seemed to be an evolution happening. The concept of the “Smart” Social Network dawned on me after I learned about Multiply. At that point, I already knew about Vox and previously wrote about imbee, so I decided to write a post on what I […]

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MySpace Shows Widgets No Love

TechCrunch is reporting that third-party MySpace widgets such as those by the ever popular YouTube are no longer allowed to have link throughs. This move is due to recent past security issues, including a flash based worm “that had spread far and wide through the site and sent users to an off site page claiming […]

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Supcast - A Review from the Service Itself

I’ll allow my Supcast to do the talking on this one:

via Mashable*
(and yes, there is some stuttering at the end of the recording - but I never claimed to be a professional and I also should be in bed by now)
tagged under supcast

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Cambrian House - Crowdsourced Software

Cambrian House is a very interesting idea - “crowdsourced software”, as they call it: “It’s like Open Source, but with Money!”
Their goal is to leverage the wisdom of the crowds to both receive as well as filter business ideas, code, and creative content (more specifically products need to be ‘realized’ over the Internet/web).
How Cambrian House […]

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Lead Generation for the Complex Sale

Lead Generation for the Complex Sale is a new book by Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch Incorporated. In the book, Brian focuses on providing a proven process for generating business-to-business leads for complex sales, where ‘complex sale’ is defined as a sales process occurring over a period of 6- to 36-months.
Brian is probably one of […]

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Imbee - A Safe Place for Kids

Imbee - a project of Industrious Kid - is the “first secure social networking and blogging destination for kids.”
Unlike most social networking sites today, it has features that ensure it is a safe environment for kids. Users can’t just connect with each other by browsing profiles. They need to know the e-mail addresses and/or […]

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New Media Becomes Old Media All Over Again

I was chatting on Skype with Pete Cashmore last week and I was glad that he came to the same conclusion I have about the current state of the blogosphere. If you haven’t noticed, the rich are getting richer - big blogs are getting bigger. They are getting more eyeballs, pageviews, and advertising dollars. The […]

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DatingAnyone.com and SingleStat.us

Two interesting “MySpace Services” that have popped up in the last week are called SingleStat.us and DatingAnyone.com.
The goal of each is to inform users when other MySpacers become single. Each have some interesting features. SingleStat.us, for example, allows you to see who others have been checking. DatingAnyone.com allows you to import your entire friends list […]

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MySpace creates X-Space

Check out what I highlighted yesterday at the Corante Web Hub - MySpace creates X-Space: The New World of Marketing:
The promo for the movie is quite smart. By adding the X-Men profile as one of your “Friends”, MySpace empowers you to alter the number of friends you can display in your “Top Friends” section…In essence, […]

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Thou Shalt Hang out at Wells

I’ve been at the Buzz Conference the last two days - an event hosted by National Community Church (NCC). I pointed to NCC in an earlier post, in how they used Xanga to promote their Week of Justice. This morning I went to a Bloggers Breakfast at their coffeehouse Ebenezers.
One of the core convictions of […]

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Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business - Concluding Thoughts

There are those of you out there that have read through my series on Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business and thought to yourself things like, “Yarmosh, you’re crazy.”, “You’ve completely missed the boat here.”, or “Web 2.0 is just a buzz word. It doesn’t mean anything and is going to have no […]

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Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business - Knowledge Building

In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing.
- Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business

In today’s job market, employees come and ago. But hopefully all of the knowledge they […]

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Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business - Knowledge Sharing

In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing.
- Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business

Knowledge sharing is what enables employees to get their jobs done everyday. Without the knowledge […]

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Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business - Knowledge Discovery

In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing.
- Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business

My series on Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business has been defunct for quite […]

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Building your Virtual Presence

Back in December ‘05, I had to prepare for a presentation on “websites and technology” to a room full of campaign folks. There wasn’t a lot of direction on what they wanted me to cover.
I racked my brain and thought the most pertinent information would be to share what I consider the elements needed to […]

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Silas Partners and Web 2.0 in the Christian Community

Churches and ministries are really getting into blogging, podcasting, and yes, even social networking sites.
Over the past three months, I’ve been working more and more with these types of organizations through a company called Silas Partners. Silas Partners’ aim is to help churches and the like to use the web more effectively.
As an Internet […]

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Dennis McDonald on Corporate Resistance to Web 2.0 and the Gartner ‘Hype Cycle’

I had lunch with Dennis McDonald yesterday. We were initially introduced through the LinkedinBloggers Group, where he is now one of the moderators.
Dennis is a consultant focusing on “strategy, assessment, planning, and project management support to organizations that manage information technology (I.T.) and the business processes that I.T. supports.” As he described to me […]

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Video Podcast of Jack Black in Nacho Libre

Nacho Libre is a new film by Jack Black, coming to theatres June - but you can watch his video confessionals via his video podcast (requires iTunes) or an Internet exclusive trailer now. You can also add a clip of that to your MySpace page from the code they provide.
Technology can be used to […]

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The New Way to Brothering

I have four younger sisters, who are all over the place. The youngest is seven. Since leaving the house back in 1998, it became increasingly difficult to play the role of Big Brother (no, not that one, this one). Luckily, I’ve found a way to infiltrate their little worlds - through IM and social networking […]

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University 2.0 and Boston College’s John Gallaugher

As a Computer Science undergrad at Boston College, I regretfully admit that I only took one business class. But the one class I took was more than worth it.
Professor John Gallaugher taught me how to think about the Internet and web strategically. His eCommerce class in some ways put me on the career path […]

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Empower a Steve 2.0

Two weekends ago, I went on a little trip with some of my old buddies who I rarely see any more. We caught up on a lot of things, including what I had been up to with TECHNOSIGHT. Yes, the geek jokes flowed but they also were really interested to learn more about blogs, podcasts, […]

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Why Experts are Rejecting ‘Generic’ Memetrackers

Last week Scoble explained why he was unsubscribing from Memeorandum. More recently he wrote:
One thing I’ve enjoyed recently is just reading feeds and staying away from the Memetrackers (although, I’ll be honest, I’ve peeked at Memeorandum a few times, it’s a very hard addiction to break).
Pete Cashmore also says that he has “eased off on […]

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Seth Godin on the Future of Blogs

I don’t necessarily agree with Seth’s premise that multiple posts per day “make it easy to lose loyal readers.” I think it is too generalizing. It really depends on the quality of the content. I’m happy to keep subscribed to a blogger that does multiple posts a day, as long as the content is relevant.
To […]

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Pete Cashmore on the Edge

I normally am on board with Pete Cashmore but he’s making some brash comments on a couple of his latest posts.
First, he called coComment the best Web 2.0 service launched this year (if need be, check out this refresher on coComment):
I love, love, LOVE CoComment! The idea is a good one: bring together your widely […]

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Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business - Knowledge Collection

In the case of the Web 2.0 Watermill, there are primarily four areas where technology is beginning to facilitate a vastly improved Internet: knowledge collection, knowledge discovery, knowledge building, and knowledge sharing.
- Ken Yarmosh, Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business

Traditional collaborative and communication efforts in the business environment are soon to be numbered. Web […]

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Giving Blogbeat a try

Brian Benzinger’s post on Blogbeat prompted me to give it a try. I’ve disabled MeasureMap for the time being.
I actually heard of Blogbeat prior to MeasureMap - I think via Steve Rubel, although I can’t remember - but they were closed to the public until recently.
While I’m generally quite a big fan of MeasureMap, it […]

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Small Businesses Need to Harness the Internet

I’ve just been too swamped to call in for my small business Ultimate Small Business Marketing System over the last two courses. I’m now making an effort to go through the material - thankfully, John provides digital downloads, including audio files.
The most recent course is called Harness the Internet. First off, I’ve got to applaud […]

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Opportunities 2006 - Usefulness

2006 is going to be a year where the creators of web technology have the opportunity to make their services better in terms of integration, usability, and usefulness.
- Ken Yarmosh, Looking towards 2006

I recently saw a man walking through the airport while on his cell. He had a hands-free device, where the microphone was located […]

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Opportunities 2006 - Usability

2006 is going to be a year where the creators of web technology have the opportunity to make their services better in terms of integration, usability, and usefulness.
- Ken Yarmosh, Looking towards 2006

Usability - Web products and services must be dead simple to use
Have you ever tried to show a non-blogosphere, non-techy person how to […]

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7 Ways to Avoid Blogging Burnout

A quote often attributed to Robert Frost reads, “If there is no discovery for the writer, there is none for the reader.” Indeed, blogging is tremendously rewarding on a number of levels. But blogging is largely a labor of love. Only a relatively small subset of bloggers generate any substantial revenue from their advertisements. Even […]

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Opportunities 2006 - Integration

2006 is going to be a year where the creators of web technology have the opportunity to make their services better in terms of integration, usability, and usefulness.
- Ken Yarmosh, Looking towards 2006

Integration - Web 2.0 services must be seamless
Yahoo! has the opportunity to be the poster child of an integrated Web 2.0 world in […]

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Looking towards 2006

2006 will not be a year of massive Web 2.0 adoption
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from my countless non-geek interactions this year is that we are far from reaching mainstream penetration of Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, RSS, tagging, social bookmarks, wikis, podcasts, etc.). Web 2.0 services are too disconnected, unintuitive, and often are impractical.
2006 will […]

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Call it what you want, the Web is Changing

The tech blogosphere is troubling lately. Lots of echoes, as seen by the Yahoo! acquisition. Lots of silly debate, as exemplified by the current discussion about Web 2.0 being dead.
I’m not against an old-fashioned dustup amongst geeks but debating the legitimacy of Web 2.0 doesn’t seem to be a worthwhile use of our intellect. […]

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Reflecting on 2005

2005 was a big year for the Web. It consisted of a slew of conferences, a seemingly unending amount of product and service launches, significant acquisitions by major players, and an incredible adoption of many new technologies. Before looking towards 2006, I’d like to make several high-level observations about what has occurred in 2005. These […]

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Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business - The Web 2.0 Watermill

The historical origins of the watermill are quite simple: innovators sought a way to harness the force of water to accomplish work more easily and efficiently. Mechanical energy could boost production and reallocate human resources to other efforts. But prior to rotary motion, the watermill was not possible. Water existed and milling existed. Yet the […]

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Web 2.0 Powering Verticals

Take a quick survey of the ever changing Web 2.0 landscape and you will notice that the most successful services have two key elements. The first is that they offer some sort of compelling value proposition to users. The second is that this value proposition is driven by a laser focused service offering.
If we define […]

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Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business - First Steps

Here is my first post in my new series on why “Web 2.0″ matters to your business.
I’ll start by speaking to the concept of “Web 2.0″. Note that I am making no attempt to define it because I do not believe it to have a formal definition. Most definitions used by the larger technical […]

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Web 2.0 Business Models

Today’s Web startups are not entirely unlike their dot.com predecessors when it comes to the way they are thinking about making money. The differences for “Web 2.0″ type companies stem not from their preferred business models - models that are very similar to their dot.com counterparts - but in the forces influencing the implementation of […]

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Show Me the Money

Last week, I had a really great discussion with a really great (non-blogosphere) friend. We had a long talk about blogs, RSS, podcasting, and all these crazy new web technologies.
This particular guy (who I’ll call ‘B’) is in sales and sells business intelligence solutions to federal agencies. He is responsible for bringing in some […]

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Educating Potential Clients

As many of you know, the TECHNOSIGHT website and this blog in particular is essentially my virtual office and gateway to potential clients, colleagues, partners, and those interested in learning or following the latest technology trends. I have to admit that I have been amazed at the success I’ve had as a consultant simply because […]

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Bloggers are the New Marketers But Not the Way you Think

If you are a business blogger, chances are you have heard the idea of using a blog to make your customers into ‘evangelists’ for your products or services. While the term ‘customer evangelist’ just rubs me the wrong way, the idea is to get your customers so excited and passionate about what your company or […]

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The New Face of Blogniscient

In my latest interview with Ben Ruedlinger the founder of Blogniscient, I mentioned that there were some significant and exciting changes on the way. Well, the changes are done and I’m happy to announce the new face of Blogniscient.
In working with Ben as my first official Creating the Buzz Web 2.0 client, we honed in […]

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Bootstrapping Web 2.0

David Hornick continues the discussion about the problem facing Web 2.0 start-ups - a business model built around “buy me”. I’ve wrote about similar sentiments in the past. He opines,
there are a large number of “companies” being created again for the express purpose of being acquired. I certainly have seen it. I have met with […]

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What do I do for a living?

After the second session of my Ultimate Marketing System I took a step back from what I’ve been attempting to do through TECHNOSIGHT to ask myself, “What is it that I do for a living?”
John believes that the answer to this question is critical in communicating the real value of your service or product to your clients. It’s simply not […]

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Who Am I Reaching?

Through my blog, I attempt to -

Gain credence with my peers.

Gain credence with my clients (or potential clients).

During the first session of The Ultimate Marketing System, I was challenged to think about my target market and realized that I couldn’t achieve those goals based on the organization of my blog. My writings […]

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Blogging The Ultimate Marketing System

John Jantsch is a proven leader and innovator in the small business marketing space. His Duct Tape Marketing website is a Forbes Best of the Web selection. I’ve been reading his and other blogs about small business marketing via the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel for the past several months. As an independent professional, I’ve […]

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The Great Web and Web 2.0

If we learned anything from “Web 1.0” (no, this term wasn’t ‘Web 1.0’ until recently, sort of like how World War I was originally just ‘The Great War’), it was the demolition of the Field of Dreams mentality – if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.
While I spent the better part of last […]

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A Real World Example of RSS

One accepted definition of RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”. While not necessarily used in everyday language, the last word of RSS - “syndication” - should not be a foreign concept to people.
Radio talk show hosts are often syndicated. Their shows are picked up by local radio stations, so that a host based in Los […]

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New Internet Vernacular

Vlogs And Wikis And Pods, Oh My!
Funny but true. The New Internet is moving faster than a speeding bullet and its vernacular is anything but intuitive.
webpronews contributing writer Sandra Stammberger does a great job in putting this jargon into more comprehensible language:
Wikis. Wikis are websites that are editable by the site users. Content becomes […]

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Big Blue Jumps In

Blogs may have just moved to the next level. IBM is set to include a blogging tool in its Workspace 2.6 software collaboration platform.
IBM knows first hand the benefits of blogging. Being an early adapter of this technology, they have tapped into the power of dark blogs (see The Power of Dark Blogs). That […]

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Great Content

The New Internet can make adding great content to your site a breeze. Great content is critical to the success of your online presence. But don’t just take our word for it.
Chris Alden, a seasoned business man and CEO of Rojo states
Content is the third “killer app” of the Internet, after email […]

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The Power of Dark Blogs

An interesting article highlights a fundamental belief of TECHNOSIGHT, the power of dark blogs. Dark blogs are blogs that exist solely within an intranet (in more technical terms, behind the firewall).
Many companies and organizations are obsessed with having a blog presence, simply for having a blog presence. They believe a blog is crucial to the […]

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