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