Sent My Dell Inspiron 1505 Back to Dell For Repairs

After way too many emails, I sent my unreliable Dell Inspiron laptop back to Dell this week.

It has had the following problems: slow boot times, frequent blue screens, unreliablity connecting to the Internet due to a flaky Internet card, weak and broken hinges due to a poor design in fact, the Inspiron line got rid of this altogether with the latest redesign, gee maybe it’s because it was a design flaw? 

This matter is made worse by the behavior of a certain inconsiderate Director of Dell’s community program, who rudely interrupted my conversation with a senior person from a major search engine last fall because he thought inspecting my hinges was important at that moment.

Dell was founded on reliable, highly tested equipment that was flawless, this experience and the experiences of others show that is no longer the case, they play word games and do not stand by their products and take responsibility for their design flaws - in fact my mahcine wasn’t even made in the US, which used to be one of Dell’s mantras.

This laptop is an unreliable and poorly designed machine. It is why people like Danny Sullivan and others are switching brands. I agree with my good friend Danny totally when he says:

 “My plea is simple. Empower your customer service people to simply replace things that don’t work rather than making them jump through whatever procedures you have in place that clearly don’t work.”

Best of Show: Chicago Global Food and Style Expo 2008

This year the Global Food and Style Expo did not have the FMI show co-located along with the All Things Organic, Fancy Food Show and the U.S. Food Export Showcase so it was a slightly smaller show with less foot traffic. But it was filled with innovative products and amazing entrepreneurial stories! it’s a shame most consumers do not have the opportunity to meet the creators of new products like this and hear their stories of passion and how those overcome distribution.

It gives me great pleasure to announce these items as best of show:

VinJus - A unique non-alcoholic grape juice drink! Not yet publicly launched, it is scheduled to be distributed shortly. It’s a unique drink. They describe it as:

NAPA VinJus™ - the perfect non-alcoholic aperitif! Refreshing virgin vineyard grape juice – created for your sophisticated palette as an alternative to soda, water or energy drinks. It’s unique balance of crisp, tart and sweet lingers with a hint of green apple, honeysuckle, wildflower and lavender.

Made in the beautiful Napa Valley from early picked varietals, such as Chardonnay and more, this delicious drink is but one single ingredient - mouth watering virgin vineyard grape juice and nothing more! Compared to wine it’s almost half the calories and compared to regular grape juice it’s about half the sugar! And it’s made by a GREEN company!!!

Lucy’s - Smart Cookies. Made with Love. Norfolk, Virginia based Dr. Lucy Gibney M.D. has a son with major food allergies. Lucy describes it best on their website.

Every crispy, crunchy, delicious Dr. Lucy’s cookie is baked without wheat, gluten, dairy milk, butter, eggs, casein, peanuts or tree nuts. But you’d never know it. They taste delicious! We use only high quality ingredients in our carefully controlled bakery to be sure our products meet our tight allergen testing criteria.

Lucy was amazed at the lack of food available to serve that market. Lucy turned to the kitchen in order to change that and once a few varieties were perfected she decided to solve the problem for others without her unique combination of talents. They weren’t even supposed to be at the show, they got added to new items section at the last minute. I’m glad they did, Lucy is a wonderful person and I know her niche product will succeed. Terry Starbucker is already a huge fan.

Blackwing Meats, Inc. - A variety of elk, buffalo, ostrich and other exotic organic meats as wide as I’ve ever seen! They get bonus point for having an highly functional e-commerce site to ship Roger Gerber’s creations directly to you. Even in the down economy Roger says 1st quarter sales were up 77% over the previous year. These items have momentum and the distribution to match it.

Bionade is a unique German based, non-alcoholic refreshment drink that is scheduled to be introduced in the United States later this year. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, but it is truly outstanding. In Germany the Elderberry is most popular, however I like the Herbs flavor the best (see picture here). If they are able to get shelf space and have an affordable price point, it could easily be a hit in the USA.

Leggio’s herb infused olive oil - Chef Joseph Leggio creates an “amazing” herb infused olive oil product. While there were others at the show with offerings in this vertical, none match the taste of Leggio’s. Joseph started experimenting with the concept several years ago. Then one day asked his wife to ask her dad, a wine maker, to bring over some bottling equipment for him to test with. Though she thought he was crazy, she did it anyway and his hunch paid off, his business is growing quite briskly and he claims to have some other innovative ideas up his sleeve, I can’t wait to see what they are.

Sheila B’s Popcorn (web site under development) - awesome butter flavor, ultra high pop rate, doesn’t dry out upon popping, no aftertaste like most popcorn has and best of all, not really more expensive than other popcorn on the market! Really nice folks too that taught me about the current state of agriculture.

BigHorn Extreme Foods - Peter Andrews has unique sausage offerings as well as tasty buffalo and elk burgers for restaurants and retail outlets.

WowBacon - Amazing clean cooking micro-wave bacon preparer. 6 years to perfect as an invention. Works extremely well as I’ve tried it out. Please note it will not stand upright in smaller microwaves. See a review here with some photos.

Tre Bella Foods Organic - Gail Tiburzi’s organic Italian foods were inspired by her grandmother’s original recipes. It’s not everyday you meet a former investment banker turned food distributor, my time with Gail was all too short as she had a meeting. I told her to call me if she had time during the rest of the show to compare projects, I guess she was too busy taking orders as I never heard from her!

For those needing last minute Mother’s Day gift ideas, there you go!

Remembering SOBcon08 - My House Guest Andrew Dubber…

I got a call from Liz Strauss to claim my apartment’s extra space a day or two before the event. It was determined that Andrew Dubber would be my house guest during SOBcon08. Andrew, pictured on the left below, has a personal blog and his primary blog, New Music Strategies.

Andrew was a fascinating guest! He was ultra low maintenance and had great stories to tell about living in New Zealand and then moving to the UK,  the music industry and his love for jazz (all too rare in the UK). He is the proud new owner of a Leica D-Lux 3 camera - which takes ultra sweet photos, even at high speed on Lake Shore Drive! More importantly I think I experienced several new things about Chicago that I never had before such as Chicago’s many jazz clubs and music stores. Andrew experienced Italian Beef (pictured below), Greektown and tasty BBQ ribs and cornbread! I’m glad he stopped by for a visit and I hope to see Andrew again someday soon!

Net.Finance 2008 - Retail Mobile Banking at Wells Fargo: Eskander Matta, Senior Vice President, Internet Services

Mobile phone penetration in the US is now 95%+ and data plan penetration is now 50%+

Modalities:                             Usage   Capable phones
Texting                                        50%     100%
Mobile Browser,                         25%      >60%
Downloadable Application        17%      >60%

Application download cons are pretty significant – carrier control, downloading, device management, etc

Browser cons – sign-on, complex navigation, lack of awareness

SMS text message cons - Simplistic UI, Security, Plain Text

Distributing services in the mobile ecosystem requires a highly complex series of relationships.

Wells Fargo and external research shows that there is adoption interest.

Most frequent uses presently: checking balances, fund transfers and activity monitoring

Browser usage presently 2.5 times per week, 66% active users (last three months)

Text banking – 83% of all mobile banking enrollees are including the text banking service. Sending 19 text messages a month overall, becoming more engaged with the accounts overall.

Mobile Contactless Pilot with Visa…

Mobile delivers strategically – when, where, why and how?

What is the potential value?
Customer retention, reducing servicing costs by controlling call center calls, reduced risk and fraud, customer acquisition and usage revenue (P2P, Panic Play, Mobile Contactless, etc)

Security order: SMS, Browser, Application

Mobile customers slant towards a desirable demographic overall due to the very fact they are heavy mobile users.

Future state is for SMS, application and browser to be ubiquitous and the three will be tightly integrated.

Well Fargo is trying to build usage of the channel, not charging for the service at this time. Getting techno-savvy users so servicing has been minimal.

Reaction: I’m highly impressed with the full deployment of SMS, Browser and Application download models as they will be fully able to determine which best meets customer needs based on actual usage data. I chatted up Eskander afterwards and he’s a joy to speak to.

Why Earth Hour Was Lame

Wow, we turn off some lights for an hour in some giant empty office buildings in downtown Chicago (which should be the case every night) and people lose their minds.

If people were truly energy conscious, wouldn’t they want these lights to be off in these empty buildings every night, all night? Wouldn’t that do something actually meaningful? Have we gotten to the point where the American media is so incapable of independent thought that a completely meaningless story like this gets way too much attention? It appears so.

It’ll be a real story when all of these empty office buildings have these lights completely turned off in the middle of the night, every night.

Why isn’t this the focus? It should be. 

Others are even more critical of the event.

Bryan Eisenberg Seminar: Website Optimizer: What Should I Test?

Check it out! There is a Google Website Optimizer seminar with Bryan Eisenberg on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 9:00AM Pacific Time is a great opportunity to try it out and learn about the Google Website Optimizer!

It’s also useful in Wordpress, if you haven’t downloaded the Google Website Optimizer for WordPress, now might be a good time to experiment with it before this valuable free seminar. It should be a treat as anyone who can analyze Amazon’s calls to action in the shopping cart and has literally written the book on call to action can surely teach you how to get more action from your website through testing!

See you on the call!

Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive and Other Potholes

The Chicago Tribune has a nice user generated content piece where they allow readers to input pothole locations. It is an open thread that simply says: “Tell us: Where are the worst potholes? Potholes seem to be everywhere this winter, but who has the worst — the city or suburbs? Tell us where you’ve seen the biggest and deepest.”

What’s upsetting is that just like the mismanagement of the CTA for decades, many of the comments allude to years of neglect and mismanagement by the government of the City of Chicago (along with visible disgust for the waste of resource on the Olympics 2016 bid instead of focusing on the basics). CBS put together a story on how to file a claim for damage. Why must everything become a crisis before anybody does anything about these things? Maybe the city and state will put in resources to fix the lack of easy access to entrepreneurial grants and angel investor tax incentives like Wisconson has next - while we still have an economy…

Here are a few answers Chicago Tribune readers gave (some make you laugh and cry at the same time):

Potholes on my entire way to work on Devon Avenue Between Northwest Hwy and Caldwell Ave. Noticed several vehicles with flat tires this morning causing a traffic jam

Westbound on North Ave, there are are at least 2 or 3 massive potholes just before and after Elston Ave. Stay out of the right hand lane

On Webster between Clybourn and Ashland. There is a fifty foot section with about 25 potholes

One more vote for Lincoln Ave. between Petersen and Devon — avoid at all costs if you care about your car

Central Road, from Milwaukee west to River Road. It is like driving a road in a third world county. Cars bob and weave into oncoming traffic. You can’t driver over 20 mph. Someone at county should be fired for letting a road deteriorate to this degree

Just as you get off LSD on to LaSalle North exit going south right lane is full of potholes

Park Ridge: Cumberland Avenue between Devon and Higgins

Worst — take your pick, LSD Irving Park Road to Foster. Second worst — Oak Street underpass northbound to LSD. Third worst. 47th underpass to LSD. Some of these above holes are a foot deep and several feet across

Cicero Ave and Lawrence, in the left hand turn lane on Cicero… it’s like an unavoidable abyss

On westbound Lake Street between Ashland and Western there are so many little potholes the drive seems like you are off-roading

Under the pass to get on Lake Shore Drive from Oak it’s been like that for over a year! Disgraceful! The CTA ride is awful and 311 doesn’t do anything about it! The drivers try to drive on the left side when possible as the busses bounce horribly!

Western bridge going over Belmont, southbound, west lane. They’ve been there for at least a month

Have you seen the pothole on the bridge at Division and Halsted… Big enough to make a person disappear

Westbound on Grand just east of Milwaukee Ave. The whole thing is one series of huge potholes

The pot hole at Archer & Cicero in the northbound lanes just cost me $550 in repairs - yeah lets spend some more $$ on the Olympics -idiots

Like others have said, Cicero between 21st and 51st is a landmine. It’s so bad, I saw a small car driving along and it just disappeared into a hole….lol

I CANT BELIEVE DALEY HAD ALL THAT MONEY TO USE TO TRY AND BRING THE OLYMPICS TO CHICAGO BUT DOEST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO FIX OUR STREETS. WHAT ABOUT THE BRIDGE ON 31ST BETWEEN PULASKI AND CICERO IT LOOKS LIKE MINES WENT OFF

Southbound on N. Clark Street, just north of Upper Wacker Drive, right lane swallowed my car. Still can’t find it

Right lanes of Ridge Road in Evanston. Very bad in both directions

The worst pothole is on the east edge of the southbound Fullerton entrance ramp to LSD. A close second are numerous potholes on Halstead between Chicago and Erie. You have to drive like you are going through an obstacle course

Almost all lanes of LaSalle Street between the Lake Shore Drive ramps and the intersection of LaSalle and Clark

4200 South Ashland. Even the CTA bus won’t go near it! And avoid at all costs Pershing Rd. between Halstead and Ashland

Bridgeport - 31st street between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Halstead (especially under the viaduct near Canal St) and the ENTIRE 31st St ramp getting onto the inbound Ryan. I’ve already replaced two tires this year.

Try driving on Cicero Ave. anywhere near the Stevenson. Pot holes deep enough to strand tanks. Been this way for weeks.

Plaxo 3.0 Problems

I was prompted to install this during my last use of Outlook. I’m extremely sorry that I did. Without my authorization, it downloaded my Linkedin profiles apparently through it’s new integration and created hundreds of duplicate entries with different email addresses. (Most people don’t have the same email address in Linkedin as they do at their business for a variety of reasons.) Anyone with a clue knows this, how did this get programmed this way?

Unfortunately, the one contact I had at Plaxo, Mark Jen, has left to join Tagged.

Someone from Plaxo needs to get in touch with me and rectify this problem and/or revert me to a previous version that I trust. I’m not very happy with you right now at all Plaxo, but I had previously found it’s service useful. The changing of the logo along with this is really destructive to their brand. I hope they do the right thing and fix this and give me a free dedupe for this incredibly foolish action on their part.

San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Commission Increases Nightly and Weekend Service in 2008

I’m planning an upcoming trip to San Francisco and I was startled by the massive difference in both service level and tone between BART and the CTA. As you likely know, the CTA here in Chicago is threatening major service cuts and fare increases($1.75 to $2.25 with transit card):

Due to insufficient state funding, the CTA will be forced to raise fares and eliminate service on January 20, 2008.

The CTA will eliminate 81 of its 154 bus routes; lay off more than 2,400 employees; and raise fares to record levels. In addition, with more than 700 fewer buses operating due to the bus route eliminations, the CTA will close three of its eight garages. Service on the remaining routes will be provided by other locations.

The CTA is fighting for funding to avoid these cuts. Contact your state legislators and tell them how important mass transit is to you. Go to SaveChicagolandTransit.com for more information.

Meanwhile, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Commission (BART) is scheduling a 33% increase in service while increasing fares a nominal amount (about 5%):

“Just as everyone is winding down with their holiday gift giving, we’re going to deliver our customers a goody bag of great service,” BART Board President Lynette Sweet said. “We hope our plans for richer service will put a big smile on the faces of all our 360,000 weekday riders.”

Starting January 1, 2008, BART riders will see enhanced service including:

  • More trains, more often after 7 p.m. Monday-Saturday & all the time Sunday
  • Double the trains to most stations on the San Francisco International Airport (SFO)/Millbrae extension
  • Faster commutes times and direct service from Millbrae to downtown San Francisco
  • Earlier start time for train service to SFO

33% SERVICE INCREASE MEANS MORE TRAINS, MORE OFTEN
The new schedule change will mean more frequent service after 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and all the time on Sunday. During this time period trains will run every 15 minutes instead of every 20 minutes.

“That’s a 33% increase in service,” BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said. “We’re extremely excited to be able to offer the same frequency of service at night that our customers currently enjoy during the day. This will be a boon for drivers who are becoming increasingly frustrated with nighttime and weekend traffic jams. We have plenty of parking during this time, giving people a greater incentive to avoid the traffic tie ups, save the environment, jump on BART and enjoy a hassle-free ride.”

FASTER, MORE FREQUENT SERVICE ON SFO AND MILLBRAE LINES
Starting January 1, the popular Pittsburg/Bay Point (Yellow) line will begin serving SFO at all times while the Richmond (Red) line will go directly into Millbrae Station starting January 2 (January 1, BART will run on a Sunday schedule). This means that commuters going from Millbrae to downtown San Francisco will see a six-minute (16%) drop in their travel time.

Which region is truly more green? Which region is more focused on quality of life? It’s amazing how two similar web sites in terms of function can send such massively different messages, isn’t it?

ReadWriteWeb’s 2008 Web Predictions

A nice list of the things related to search that might affect you next year.

Many of my thoughts are contained here and I’m kinda busy lately, so linking to this post will serve as a proxy.

I hope your 2008 is most outstanding and prosperous!!! :)

Tmobile Coverage Map Presently Inaccurate in Chicago

I presently can not get a good signal at my residence, yet Tmobile is showing an inaccurate map my area saying the coverage is the best they have. Well let me tell you, I’ve missed calls where the phone has not rung at all in the past few weeks - that is not excellent coverage or 5 bar signal strength.

I’d like to see this problem fixed by Tmobile preferably (or the map updated) no later than December 28, 2007.

The address is 1000 West Roscoe, Chicago, IL 60657 (Roscoe and Sheffield)

Microsoft Launches Mobile Advertising on MSN Mobile

Microsoft just announced the launch of mobile advertising on MSN Mobile.

I wish they would have given more details about the release instead of pointing us back to overly dated speeches on the mobile advertising subject. I would have expected to see more examples than just movie tickets.

Microsoft has the potential to lead this market with it’s array of assets if they are integrated in the right manner - see my post on Web 2.0 was NEVER a business strategy for ideas.

Maybe they will start a larger conversation on this subject once they see this post? We’ll see.

SES Chicago 2007 - Driving Local Sales with Internet Yellow Pages and Search

Moderator:
Charles Laughlin, SVP & Program Director, The Kelsey Group
Speakers:
Bruce Crair, President and Chief Operating Officer, Local.com
Scott Finholm, VP of Local Advertising Services, Marchex
Justin Sanger, Founder & President, LocalLaunch!
Tobias Dengel, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Website Pros, Inc.

Charles Knight from Alternative Search Engines also blogged this session

Websitepros, Tobias Dendel

255,000 customers/providers, 700 employees

It’s a mess to figure out how to position a small business online.

Do I spend money on radio, newspaper, whatever?

Even for a small business a web site is a critical factor in creating trust.

We don’t believe per action will be effective as it’s too complex.

Example, roofer in Indianapolis 15 unique calls and 15 qualified emails.

Local.com, Bruce Crair

1 million people advertising online, 18 million listings which shows the great opportunities still ahead.

Too many choices, the small business owner is confused. Even if they do understand the choices, the cost is hard. Then how do they create an ROI?

Most businesses don’t have websites, they need them to do the job. They need to figure out how to make the data accurate. All too often, it’s not.

Any business can do it. Just doing paid without organic is a waste of time.

Pay for placement, click bundles, pay per click, make sure you start witht eh simple stuff first.

Locallaunch, Justin Sanger

150 people, thousands of orders per week.

We intended to create the SME (Small Medium Enterprises).

Innovation outpaces adoption.

The innovation is amazing and significant. The SMEs don’t feel this. These enterprises are not yet able to take advantages.

Destinations and inventory abound.

Yahoo! local and Google local  provide new experiences all the time. Vertical search plays nice together with geos. This is pretty complex.

Who is winning?

Yellowpages are winning due to directional relationships

Pure Plays

RH Donnelly is a sales company. Google and Yahoo! realize this and are partners.

Margin pressure is intense and unsustainable.

Marketplace trends

Sales Organizations are driving the experience for SMEs

Content aggregation is a strategically vital business strategy

SME aggregators strive to collect and store richer, vertical-specific local business content

IYP is an old heading. It is now simply local search

Pure sales organizations are selling at non-sustainable margin – this is a critical driver of consolidation or service pressure

PPC pricing pressure will further compound an already fragmented marketplace

Marchex, Scott Finholm

We are a local online advertising company and leading publisher of local content.

Advertisers of all sides, we work with sales forces to teach them how to sell search.

Sites:

SEM and SEO aren’t the same thing

A great site isn’t necessary..but a “good” site is…

Services:

Can’t automate creativity

All businesses are not created equal

Clicks and calls both matter

Sales:

Small businesses look to trusted, proven providers

Simple product = more sales

SES Chicago 2007: Seth Godin Talks about Meatball Sundae

Seth’s talk was a more refined version of the teleconference he gave last month. I blogged that here. Three questions I want put out to the blogosphere for discussion are:

Should organizations be smaller like tree trunks instead of the traditional pyramids?

How can this change take place if most leaders don’t know it’s necessary and are not up to speed about what to do or how to do it even if they acknowledged the issue?

How will recruiting morph to put the generalist thought leaders in place to lead this change - perhaps those with competencies derived in other industries or through accelerated self learning?

Other coverage of Seth Godin’s Search Engine Strategies Chicago speech:

Meatball Sundaes and the Smelly Old Guard

Seth Godin Tells Marketers How to Avoid Meatball Sundaes

SES Chicago 2007 - Bryan Eisenberg - Redefining the Customer Conversation

Bryan Eisenberg gave a great talk on the multitude of issues surrounding the challenges of successful customer conversions and conversation.

Marketing (r)Evolutions

Mass advertising on passive customers was what used to work.

People sleep while watching TV, hard to pay attention to advertising when sleeping.

Sleeping while surfing the Internet is not something that happens.

Godaddy.com Super Bowl XL TV commercials didn’t use the same model on the web site. Did Godaddy leave money on the table.

Money is better than traffic.

Apple had to give rebates due to word of mouth on iphone pricing.

Marketers still think customers are dogs.

But search puts the power of when and how in their hands (the sonsumer).

Overcoming sales friction – 85% of car purchases start online – you arrive knowing more than the salesman in many cases. Attack of the blogs – Consumers trust other consumers more than marketers. 54% resist, 56% avoid, 69% block ads – yet we still want to buy.

Customers will control the conversation. People have forgotten how to have relationships.

The web is a major influencer, a mere 26% of consumers were SATISFIED with the experience. They are missing the BASICS. Conversation rates are continuing to fall.

All new brands are based on the experience model. Invest in the customer experience.

We are obsessed with the how many, not the who. This needs to change.

Customers desire great and meaningful experiences.

SCENT, ads must think it has scent to be useful.

80% of traffic dies off within three clicks.

GEICO – connects the story…

Zafu – bras in launch video didn’t match website.

Usability – Frederick Winslow Taylor is the father.

We are all connected and customers will control the conversation. It involves persuasion architecture!!!

Traffic generation is about money. Don’t imitate your competitors. It’s the tiny pieces that matter. Focus on making your service better.

Illinois Traffic Alert System Launches

I’m going to O’hare airport today to pick someone up, so as usual I check the Chicago area traffic page. I noticed something new in the upper right hand corner that stated IDOT free email alert system is available at http://www.iltrafficalert.com.

What you’ll find on that site is a rather revolutionary tool that allows you to set a custom alert for the expressway of your choice based on traffic speed. If the data is accurate this could be highly useful. Let’s say you normally leave to go somewhere at 6:45AM based on normal traffic. This tool apparently allows you to set up a 6:15AM alert if the road was moving below 20MPH so you could start your trip earlier. Sure this tool could still be more granular in both speed and in picking the exact section of road you want on that expressway but this trend towards a self-service, but a micro-controlled alert is nothing short of revolutionary compared to the traffic radio mass distribution model.

Chicago area commuters can now set up their own alerts here. I’d be interested in hearing about people’s usage stories and potential suggestions in the comment section, perhaps IDOT is listening. :)

Downtown Chicago Marshall Field’s Rally Sunday

CHICAGO - You’ve seen me write about the Marshall Field’s name change in the past. I only have one thing to add at this time that should send a chill down your spine:

I’ve learned that certain merchandise that was once carried by Kmart, yes Kmart, is now carried in the landmark Marshall Field’s store that is presently labeled Macy’s.

There will be a rally at noon Sunday to bring back the great name of Marshall Field’s, prior to the NY Gaints game against the Bears in downtown Chicago (60602).

Jim McKay had this to say about the Black Friday Marshall Field’s protest:

How successful was it? Over 8,000 leaflets and over 1,300 buttons were distributed on State Street over the two days. Friday’s distribution exceeded our previous busiest day (Saturday, December 23, 2006) by roughly two-and-a-half times! Part of this was due to an unprecedented number of shoppers on State Street. Another part of this was simply those former Field’s shoppers who came to check out what was happening in the building that used to house their favorite store and were unhappy. They came in droves to get leaflets in buttons. At more than a few times, people stood in line to get leaflets and buttons from us. A couple of times, the lines were 10-12 people wide, although 5-7 people wide was more typical. That’s right–people waiting in line for buttons that say, “Forever Marshall Field’s” and leaflets explaining why it is important to continue boycotting Macy’s until Marshall Field’s is restored in service and quality as well as name. It was quite unprecedented. What’s more, there were those who picked up a leaflet or button or both and then came back minutes for even hours later with other family and friends to get more.

Amazingly, it appears the movement to bring back Marshall Field’s seems to be growing stronger over time in Chicago!

Remember to 301 Redirect If You Own Your Domain Typos

I typed in facebooks.com this morning by accident. Got a dead page. So I looked to see if it was registered and sure enough it was. I’m completely amazed they aren’t 301 redirecting the typos that they own for user experience and other purposes!  

Registrant:
 Facebook, Inc
 156 University Ave, 3rd Floor
 Palo Alto, CA 94301
 US

 Domain name: FACEBOOKS.COM

Death of Blog Search Part 3 - Technorati Cuts Data

You’ve seen me talk about this before. Now the new CEO not only hasn’t fixed the Typepad duplicate counting problems, there are dozens of links that aren’t being counted. It is cutting the most useful asset. Historical data. Nobody cares about the past 6 months worth of links - total links and the historical reference of long tail terms matter much, much more.

I’m not going to rant about it, others have quite well…

Techcrunch

Kevin Burton

Zoli’s blog

Deep Jive Interests

WinExtra

Seth Godin Keynoting Search Engine Strategies Chicago and His New Book Meatball Sundae

In advance his upcoming speech at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, Seth Godin held a intimate conference call in regards to the conference and his upcoming book Meatball Sundae.

At first I was thinking this would be a long speech, it was in actuality a short, crisp presentation followed by a spirited, fun and playful question an answer session. It far exceeded my expectations and Kevin Ryan should be commended for having this type of community event.

Now onto a discussion of his new book, Meatball Sundae. The foundation for a new economy is being built. The past several years have laid the foundation for a new industrial revolution.

Told the detailed story of Josiah Wedgewood and his high standards for pottery.

There are 14 main themes occurring right now in the world - though there are many smaller and industry specific trends playing out. These 14 trends are (I typed them fast in a live blog situation so I might not have them exactly right):

- Direct communication with customers is creating massive change

- Individuals can amplifying their voice and become a critic - these are not hassles to be dealt with. The answer is building an organization that thrives and survives on this…

- Having an authentic story is vital

- We don’t have attention spans anymore (why are you still reading this post? ;) )

- The new marketplace long tail – very few organizations are embracing it

- Create innovation - If you can describe a job it can get done by somebody cheaper

- Google and the shredding of information and bundling

- Noise and infinite channels of communication

- Consumers can talk directly to consumers without the middleman or company

- The changing balance of scarcity and abundance – it’s hard to imagine people being bored

- Big ideas can reach many people quickly

- The shift from how many to who – the idea of being on the today show instead of a blog is higher value is over

- Democratization of the wealthy - the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider but the rich is going up

- Gatekeepers are more important as they distribute information yet less important as you can go around them easier than ever

After the short speech on the trends there was a free for question and answer session…

Is your marketing out of sync?

SG: They should say how change your marketing (what you do) so that it’s in sync with what the market demands.

Why don’t most companies get it yet?

SG: I spent many years selling advertising. People buy TV advertising, it’s fun and it’s not measurable. When the Internet came along and they went running to Yahoo! to buy ads that aren’t measuring. Google and Overture were used by small business people in the ad. The choice is Superbowl ads that don’t work and measurable ads that are harder to make work. It’s naïve to hope that they will shift in a month or a year. They will eventually have to shift. The prices will continue to go up. People still applaud the commercial not the SEM.

(At this point the Gmail javascript froze all of my browsers. I had to reboot and relaunch. OF COURSE THIS WAS THE MOMENT KEVIN RYAN CHOSE TO ASK THE QUESTION I SENT IN – SO I’LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE AUDIO THERE.)

Where do you find thoughtleaders to lead organizations and instead of hiring people with “experience”?

SG: I wrote a post on a similar topic about the loss of relevancy of credentials today. Basically, there are two types of leaders qualified to do this:
- People who have managed change before
- Idea people who don’t necessarily know better

How do make a corporate blog work?

SG: Blogs don’t reach people, people reach blogs… You need to be quick and candid. It’s all about change and being iterative in nature.

Everyone attending SES Chicago will receive a copy of Seth’s book. I look forward to continuing our conversation and maybe even hearing his answers because Gmail’s javascritpt won’t be interfering with his in person appearance!

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