Google’s New Content Rankings Can Hurt or Help Your PR

Google announced today it will begin tracking and ranking individual content creators. (You can read more about it on ReadWriteWeb). Authors will be ranked, not just content on individual websites. If your business is gunning for organic search placement (and who isn’t?) what could this mean for you?

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Who Broke the Bin Laden News and Why You Should Care

By now, it’s common knowledge that the news about Bin Laden’s death broke on Twitter and set new traffic records for the site. Donald Rumsfeld’s Chief of Staff, Keith Urbahn, was the first credible source to break the news last Sunday. READ MORE

“Our Computers Just Do That”

There are a few phrases I hear as a customer that really get me. They include: READ MORE

Why I Hate Social Media

I might get fired for this post.

I’m a little burned out on social media. Every day, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and a dozen or so other online communities in which I’m involved, I am awash in a sea of noise. And that’s all it is: noise.

Sure you might manage the noise with any number of fancy-schmancy APIs, security settings, or even just screening your phone calls, but what’s left? Which noises do you pay attention to once they’ve navigated through your complex system of filters and privacy settings? More importantly, why? READ MORE

Good-Bye Flip…

Today it was announced by Cisco that they are discontinuing the manufacturing and marketing of the popular Flip camera. (Here’s the story as reported by Mashable this morning.)

I own a fairly new Flip camera and, as a self-proclaimed video hack, I enjoyed the ease of travel and the quality of the video on the Flip camera. I did find the editing software a little weak and archaic, but it easily integrated with iMovie, so semi-professional editing could be applied to the video. READ MORE

I eat way more Chipotle than ever before… thanks to the App!

I hear of lots of businesses that want to build “an app.” They don’t really have an idea for what the app will accomplish for their business, they just think they want “an app” because it seems like a neat thing to do.

Let me be direct: having an app just for the sake of having an app isn’t going to move your needle.

Enter Chipotle.
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Think Before You Tweet: Two Tweeting Disasters in the Fashion Industry

Whether you are tweeting for yourself or tweeting for a brand/company it is important to make sure that you are putting the right message out there. Since Twitter allows you to send just about any message in 140 characters or less, that is plenty of space to influence your followers. However, it also leaves plenty of space to create a disaster of epic proportions. READ MORE

Small changes, big differences

I had a professional fit done on my road bike last summer. They did not change any single thing by more than one inch, but in the end, it was like getting a new bike.

That’s what the iPad 2 is like. No major changes, but the little things add up to something big.

I picked up my iPad 2 around 7:30 last night, and because I have about 50 GB of data, the transfer took a little while. After that, the experience was outstanding.

When I got the iPad 1 last year, I was very impressed. Honestly, I almost held off on this one, since none of the changes were revolutionary. Taken as a whole, however, the changes made a great device even better. READ MORE

When Your Accounting Department Makes Customer Services Decisions, You Lose

I rented a car from Thrifty this week in Las Vegas. I like Thrifty, and the woman who waited on my was great. Until…
As I told her I didn’t want to pre-pay for gas, she informed me that I was required to bring a receipt from a gas station within 10 miles of the airport or I would be charged $12.
“So, if the gauge reads full, I have to prove to you that I really filled it? Nice way to treat your customers.” READ MORE

Watching a Brand Unravel in 8 hours

I think the Kenneth Cole Twitter comment this morning is a great example of how fast social media can damage a brand and how a quick response is key to effective damage control. This blog was posted about eight hours after the original @KennethCole Tweet and it will be interesting to see how things evolve in the next few days. Below is a timeline on how fast the whole thing unraveled. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion… READ MORE

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