Harmony One Channel Icons / Graphics

Santa left me a Logitech Harmony One Remote for Christmas. After about an hour I had my entire entertainment system setup and tuned on it. the "help" feature was a big selling point for me to assist my Wife when I was not home.

Then I wanted wanted to get fancy and setup icons for my favorite channels. After a little research, I found an amazing and free Web site for Harmony One Icons. Great work! I setup some of my favorites (DisneyHD for Joey, HBOHD SciFiHD Paladium CMT for me, and Vh1 for my Wife.

Online Marketing Course For College Credit

I have been very busy developing an online marketing course that will be used by several Universities for College credit. This will be a video course. Once available, I will start promoting it. For the record, I did have to wear make up during the shoot. I was not a fan...

Jay Berkowitz and the Team at Ten Golden Rules is also very involved in this project. It is always great to collaborate with Jay!

I am working on my Pubcon 2008 summary. I just need to wrap up my presentations for this course first.

I Like Ike! Hurricane Coming Could Be Great For Florida Economy

I grew up in the garbage industry, most people do not realize the far reaching affects a nasty hurricane has on the local economy. The number of new jobs (roofers, clean up, home repairs, food, gas, cable, electricians, new construction, etc) created is great for pumping dollars back in the economy! Lets not forget getting a few days off work.

Baby Joey's First Fish

While I always expected my son's first fish to be a saltwater fish, it turned out to be a trout. We just returned from a secluded week in the North Carolina mountains. The weather was perfect and DSL worked well enough for me to keep up with my work. I do have a few interested marketing comments about the area up there, but this post is for my son's first fish. I held the rod and he reeled it in completely on his own!

Yahoo Says Higher Gas Prices Mean More Sales Online

Yahoo did a great blog post predicting an online boon to the rising gas prices: http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2008/07/01/high-gas-prices/.

There are days that I will not drive to certain restaurants anymore because I feel it is wasting gas if they are too far away. I happen to live very close to a mall, but I totally agree with Yahoo. If a can save a trip to a specialty store, it makes sense to buy online. The only caveat to their prediction is increasing shipping costs due to the increasing fuel costs.

Online marketing should be very strong for the 2008 holiday season regardless of high fuel costs. Fueling the fire of high fuel costs (intended pun) may be a nice way for SEOs and SEMs to more easily sell their services this year!

Panama: Copa Airlines, Land Deals, and More!

I just got back from a few days in Panama. The trip was a nice blend of vacation and work. I spent a 1/2 day at Copa Airlines headquarters. They have an amazing facility with a great Web marketing staff. I had the pleasure of consulting for them on the natural and paid strategies for search. If things go well, there will be more trips from Miami to Panama in the near future so I can do some SEM training down there.

I also had time to visit the property in Colon, Panama that I am promoting with my compradre, Mark Livingway. The land is pristine and sits on the Caribbean coast. It hard to explain the natural unspoiled beauty. For more information visit http://www.panama-land-for-sale.com or my Panama Blog http://panamalandforsale.blogspot.com/

Soapnet.com WOW Celebrity User Generated Content

I am sitting on the couch working while my Wife is watching the Daytime Emmy Awards. I hear the announcer say that each table has Video cameras for the celebrities to use and all the content will be uploaded to Soapnet.com. That is AWESOME content! I am really impressed with the hooks here: user generated content, famous user generated content, appeal to see insider info, possibilities to feel like you were there.

This is the convergence of Social Media and TV. I am not a fan of Daytime TV (unless SciFi HD channel is running a Stargate marathon), but I will have to check out how soapnet.com uses these videos.

A Great Article on Google's Personalization of Search

http://www.sitepronews.com/2008/04/25/google-previous-query-reason-for-crazy-google-rankings/

I reference Google's personalization of Search quite frequently in my Search Engine Training Classes. One of my favorite live examples is to do some searching on "Bugaboo Strollers". This is a very expensive item, so the correlating CPCs are also high. Then I will do a search on something like "Baby Diapers", and very frequently Google Adwords will display a Bugaboo stroller ad. I think it is very impressive. I think it is a practice that not many people are familiar with. The article above delves into the topic even further and how it is being used in natural search.

South Florida Fishing Report - Big Mahi Are Here!

I played hooky from work yesterday and took a quick fishing trip out of Haulover with my Dad. The weather was great, seas were calm, and the fish were ready to bite. Florida Sportsman's forum (http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/zeroforum?id=106) had tons of large dolphin (mahi mahi, dorado) catch reports from last weekend. I wanted to get my shot.

We trolled the first gulfstream edge (500ft water) for a little over an hour with no action. We headed east to find some birds or flotsam. We found another current edge about 11 miles off in 1050ft of water. Almost as soon as we turned north on it, the Penn International 20 with a 2 ounce blue and while seawitch and ballyhoo combo got nailed. This huge dolphin comes flying out of the water and we knew we were in for a great fight!

I set the hook, and my Dad proceeded to fight the fish for the first 30 minutes. We cleared all the lines and took our time. I took over for the final few minutes after Dad wore out the fish and he took the gaff shot! The mahi weighed in at just over 41 pounds and is one of the biggest ever caught on my boat. Here are a few pictures:


We ended up catching another 6 fish or so. We only kept two more and let the little guys go for another day. While filleting the big boy, I found a fresh 7/0 hook with a broken eye. Someone else probably had this guy hooked up over the weekend and didn't know how they lost him.

Google Founders Plan Earth Exit

"Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars."

Learn More at: http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html

Best Pizza Commercials of All Time!

This was sent to my by a WebmasterWorld colleague. It is a blend of Sopranos meets Papa Johns.

http://www.adverblog.com/archives/003428.htm

I had to post it to my Blog, just to point friends to it!

Enjoy

Blue Shield of California Internet Marketing Seminar

A few months ago I was contacted about doing a Webinar for Blue Shield of California's agents. I immediate saw the opportunity to include a few other South Florida online marketing experts. John Lawlor of Webinar Academy took over the reigns since he was going to produce the event. Karen Talavera of Syncronicity Marketing also joined the group to speak about email marketing.

The goal was a free, quick education on the benefits ad channels of Online Marketing. It is available online by clicking here: Internet Marketing Seminar.

Please contact Joe Laratro if you are interested in setting something up like this for a large group.

SEO 101 Training in New York

Two weeks ago I taught 4 basic SEO classes in NY. Two were in the Time Square area and two search engine optimization classes were in the Wall Street area. It is very interesting to see the different types of companies that attend these events.

The first day included a guy that suffers from "Google Paranoia". This is a disease that some of my colleagues also suffer from. It's symptoms include delusions of grandeur about how important a Web site's data is to Google, that Google will use what they learn about a Web site against them, and a complete distrust of Google. I think Google paranoia is silly unless you are Ebay or Amazon. In any case, a member of the audience sparked a debate about it.

The second day included an owner of a hair salon. I was really impressed with this. Hair dressers are realizing the value of local search marketing. He had a Web site that ranked well for months but got stale and lost its positions. Attending the class should have given him the knowledge to develop a winning strategy.

I tend to be teaching more and more SEO classes these days. The best part about it is how unique each session can be based on the attendee's questions.

New Star Trek Teaser and Mini Site

Paramount has put the new Star Trek Movie's trailer online. I was fairly impressed to see links for hd, ipod, and iphone as download options.

Check it out online here: http://www.paramount.com/startrek/

And yes... I am a Trekky

Search Engine Optimization Training in Dallas

Last weekend I went out to Dallas, TX to speak at the yearly All My Sons Moving Convention. It was a great event filled with motivational and educational speakers. I did a presentation on Local Search Engine Optimization and building out content for the long tail. If you are interested in a copy, drop me an email.

Ormando Gomez gave an inspirational speech about client care and handling that applies to any business. The moving industry has been suffering since the decline in the Real Estate market. Two years ago there was a waiting list for movers. Today every lead is precious. Moving is a stressful event for anyone. Ormando was teaching the attendees the little things that make a difference. Some of the take aways were: better initial call handling, good follow up, and caring (and conveying that emotion) about the prospects move.

Do We, Online Marketers, Welcome 2008?

I wrote an article about the struggling Real Estate Market and how it was time to turn to online marketing for the answer a few months ago. At the time, the real estate market could have been replaced with almost any industry and the sentiment held true.

Now the big question is could a recession in 2008 cause a drop in online spending? I would normally get on my soap box and proclaim to the world that if your business is in a slump, try marketing online, try search engine optimization, test the waters with PPC advertising or even a Blog. While I still want to be bullish on my industry, the fact of the matter is that a real recession could also affect marketing budgets. The reins may be pulled in and business in general may down size and down scale through the hard times.

Could online marketing help prevent a full blown recession? That is a complicated question that Alan Greenspan would probably love to debate. We can not control the cost of gasoline... but what if we could improve our (USA) products? What if companies could get more lean, efficient and profitable? Those are changes that could start strengthing the US dollar worldwide. Internet marketing is certainly a channel for companies to maximize their ad spends.

I welcome 2008. This could be another amazing year for the SEO / SEM industry. Even if there is a pull back, good marketers will still be in high demand. 2008 will be a year to partner with our clients and make sure that their online marketing campaigns maximize every dollar they spend.

Happy New Year!