SES Chicago 2007 : David Isenberg on Net Neutrality

I’d like to think thank Kevin Ryan for bringing in this speaker and challenging the audience to think about this issue. Marty has a great summary of the session.

My follow up question to Kevin is how can the SES community be best utilized to be an activist catalyst for this?

The Meaning of is is

Michael Arrington ‘is contemplating the meaning of “is”.‘ As per a recent Facebook message change (that has now been changed back).

This issue of the meaning of “is” seems to be a recurring problem in our society. You might recall this statement by former President Clinton:

“It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.” –Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair

Dictionary.com says it’s this:
–verb 1. 3rd pers. sing. pres. indic. of be.
—Idiom2. as is. as1 (def. 25).

[Origin: bef. 900; ME, OE; c. D is, ON es, er, G, Goth ist, L est, Gk estí, OCS jestĭ, Skt asti]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Why is the meaning of “is” such a frequent area of discussion?

Is My Feed Formatting OK in Your Feed Reader of Choice?

Please let me know if it is or if it isn’t what you are using and what you are seeing. A few people have reported problems in the past 24 hours.

Thank you for your time and help in making my feed reading a positive experience.

Blogger Hasn’t Removed Other Blogs Violating Copyright

There is a big discussion going on this morning regarding Blogger taking down the Facebook Secrets blog that posted the leaked Facebook code.

I’ve got a better and far more important question, why the major inconsistency in what the Blogger team takes down?

On May 11, I wrote a post about a large splog hosted on the Blogger platform. Why hasn’t the Blogger team removed this splog yet? Why aren’t they being proactive when my Feedburner panel clearly shows this as an uncommon use? Why is Blogger apparently only responding to the requests of companies with significant legal teams? When will Blogger protect the interests of all blog content equally?

UPDATE: For another point of view, please visit my recent interview with Barry Schwartz regarding splogs.

March 31st is the New April 1st

Yep. Making a note to block off 48 hours in 2008.

Lost a Stack of Business Cards

I was waiting for some folks outside of the Peabody Hotel in Orlando today and while waiting I lost a stack of about 30 business cards.

If you gave me a card today please resend your contact information.

If you know of anyone that found a bunch of business cards in this location, please have them contact me. (I’m happy to make the new networking contact).

david_dalka4gsb at yahoo com tag:ctiawireless2007

Jonathan Krackehl From Real Magic TV Reenters My Life

Jonathan Krackehl, a magician and someone I used to talk to almost everyday during the musicfrisk.com era, suddenly reentered my life today after a multiple year absence. It’s almost surreal that he enters my life again now, when music content is reemerging as an important factor again in my life. I look forward to reconnecting with him when time allows.

Land of Link’in Association (LOLA) - Chicago Internet Leaders to Gather

Last week, I met with Jon Morris and some of his crew at the Internet Marketing Initiative about the return of an event called LOLA, with the goal of making it a premier event that will create a collaboration of resources that will enable Chicago Internet future success stories! We shared some potentially exciting ideas in this regard and I look forward to becoming an active participant in organizing and creating additional functions of value and deepening realtionships with all of you. I hope to see you at this event and many future events! Right now I guess I fit in the thought leader category, where will I fit in the month of March?

Here are the details:

Chicago Internet Leaders to Meet at LOLA

New Networking Event Brings Together

150 Chicago Powerhouse Execs
When:            February 22nd, 2007 (6-8 PM)
Who:              Land of Link’in Association (LOLA) will be attended by 150 of Chicago’s high-level professionals (Directors or above) in the interactive community. Attendees will represent dot-coms, investors, Chicago-based Brick & Mortars with a large internet presence, as well as thought leaders and service providers (i.e. web development companies, interactive agencies, etc.).
What:             LOLA will hold its inaugural meeting to assemble the movers and shakers in Chicago’s interactive community. LOLA is the brainchild of Jon Morris of Internet Marketing Initiative (IMI), whose goal is to create a meaningful interactive focused networking event that brings together people from different sectors, all related to the interactive industry.
LOLA will meet on the last Thursday of every month between 6 & 8 PM. Guests will be treated to free drinks and appetizers. .
Where:          Fulton’s on the River

315 N. LaSalle

Chicago, IL

(312) 822-0100 for directions
For more information regarding LOLA, please visit lolareturns.org

10 habits of happy couples

Keith sent out this good advice today….enjoy….

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Today Dr. Mark Goulston shares with us his new article “10 Habits of Happy Couples.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Keith Ferrazzi

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10 Habits of Happy Couples
by Dr. Mark Goulston
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Happy couples know that the real relationship begins when the honeymoon is over. Unless you maintain a garden of love, it will grow weeds and its beauty will wither and die. So let’s explore 10 habits of highly happy couples:

1. Go to bed at the same time. Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.

2. Cultivate common interests. After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

3. Walk hand in hand or side by side. Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode. If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong. If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work. Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused), and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.

7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning. This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel. This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

9. Do a “weather” check during the day. Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.

10. Be proud to be seen with your partner. Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

Even if these actions don’t come naturally, happy couples stick with them until they do become a part of their relationship. They know that it takes 30 days for a change in behavior to become a habit, and a minimum of six months for a habit to become a way of life and love.
Subscribe to Dr. Mark Goulston’s Usable Insights at
markgoulston.com/list
Subscribe to Keith Ferrazzi’s Tip of the Week at
keithferrazzi.com/subscribe

Major Ice Storm Predicted from Dallas Northeast to Saint Louis

If you know anyone in a line from roughly Dallas to Saint Louis - please IMMEDIATELY contact them to rush their preparations to completion. If this occurs as predicted, this will be a major event that will paralyze the region for several days, if not weeks. Worse, people will be in an almost complete news blackout as to what is going on.

How nasty can an ice storm be? Just look at these power towers that collapsed under the weight of the ice in Quebec in 1998! Power was not restored fully for months.

You rarely see a more frightening weather forecast than this one from the NWS Dallas/Fort Worth (I truly hope that it’s wrong):

Today: Periods of freezing rain. Some thunder is also possible. High near 31. North northwest wind between 10 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime ice accumulation of 0.2 to 0.4 of an inch possible.

Tonight: Periods of freezing rain, mainly after midnight. Some thunder is also possible. Low around 31. North northeast wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New ice accumulation of 0.5 to 0.7 of an inch possible.

Sunday: Periods of freezing rain. Some thunder is also possible. High near 31. North northeast wind between 10 and 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New ice accumulation of 0.5 to 0.7 of an inch possible.

Sunday Night: Freezing rain and sleet likely. Cloudy, with a low around 24. North northwest wind between 15 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.

Preepare for the worst, hope for the best.

Technology Evangelist Launches Mobile Complaint Site

Ed Kohler wants you to know that they now have a mobile complaint site.

I’m Superman, yet more Green Lantern than Calacanis or Arrington!

Historically, I rarely take part in the everybody is taking a survey surveys. Yet this superhero one seemed fun. I seem to rank highly as a superhero, maybe I should try that instead of search engines, mobile search marketing or financial services!

Like Steve Rubel, I’m Superman (apparently)! Yet, I’m more Green Lantern than either Michael Arrington or Jason Calacanis. Do those that know me find this accurate? I’m curious.
Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		90%
Green Lantern		85%
Iron Man		85%
The Flash		75%
Spider-Man		70%
Robin		67%
Batman		65%
Supergirl		65%
Hulk		60%
Wonder Woman		55%
Catwoman		35%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Great Last Minute Gift Ideas

The Never Eat Alone Blog (Keith Ferrazzi’s blog) has numerous good ideas for networkers.

I’ll add one of my own: Give the gift of your personal time to offer to help someone achieve their goals - that gift is priceless!

Networking tip regarding the Cardscan gift idea: When designing a new business card always check to see that it would work well in a card scanning device before printing them. Seems obvious, but you’d be amazed how many people do not consider this!

Networking Insight

It was such a great pleasure to see my good friend Jason Jacobsohn at the Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Center holiday party last night. That community does so many positive and good things and I’m glad I know many of them well.

He also launched a new blog this week, “Networking Insight” this week which I encourage you to check out. He did a good job of thinking about the blog before launching it - I’m sure he’d love to get your thoughts, encouragement and ideas.

My Recent Article in Website Magazine

Some of you may find my recent article, “How to Become a Conference and Networking Influencer“. Includes quotes from Jeffery Meshel and Keith Ferrazzi. If you have other tips you’d like to add, please leave a comment, I’m sure others would like to hear them.

Jason Calacanis Keynote at Chicago SES - Day 2

It was nice to meet and talk with Jason after his talk, I look forward to learning more about his future ventures when time allows. It was also interesting to learn about his background on the east coast. His speech talked on a number of his views on things - some of which sparked some controversy!

Video excerpt on businesspov.com

Audio on dailysearchcast.com

Many other people covered or commented on the event, so I’ll let you read them:

Chicago SES - Day 2 - Duplicate Site Issues

I came to this session to hear abouts splog and what Google and others were going to do about splog prevention (apparently nothing yet). I was also inerested how feeds affected organic listings as I’ve personally experienced some problems. What I got instead was a bunch of people developing business sites that needed redesign and/or clean up, certainly necessary, but not as interesting to me.

Jon Glick, Become.com

What is duplicate content a problem?

Google, Yahoo, Open Directory Project…

Confusing the Bot: Dynamic URLs

Confusing the Bot: 2 URLs

Don’t confuse the spider – chose one canonical domain and link all internal pages

301 redirects, your hero…

Yahoo! has transparency on whether your site is banned, check it out.
Shari Thurow, Grandtastic Designs

What is duplicate content?

The definition is unclear.

Search Engines do not want duplicate or near-duplicate content in their indices.

Duplicate content filters:
- content properties
- linkage properties
- content evolution
- host name resolution
- shingle comparison

siteexplorer.yahoo.com

example: 3 web pages, 3 unique URLs – robots.txt excludes the duplicate content or meta tag can do the same thing

Duplicate content is often copyright infringement.
copyscape.com

SES Chicago - Day 2 - Yahoo! Search Marketing Lunchtime Panel

John Slade speaks to an overflow crowd…

Says “Thank You!” to existing customers

Thanks people who have been early adopters

Web Publishers – everyone is a publisher in some way, even if they don’t think they are.

Consumer Context – Keep it in perspective

The Four Questions:
- How do I reach my desired audience?
- How can I effectively engage them?
- What mix of tactics should I use?
- How do I know its working?

Today’s offer model is a linear model, moves to multiple ad targets & calls to actions

Tip: Always get your keywords in your titles and descriptions.

Build calls to action: It’s a framework to continue

New Tools:
- Dynamic Account Structure
- Ad Testing
- Fast Ad Activation – building more automation and integrity checks into the process.
- Enhanced Geo-targeting
- Alerts – proactive keyword alerts to start shortly
- Share of Clicks and Forecasting
- Quality Index

Rank is determined by its bid and expected performance. Relevance is critical to preventing “ad blindness”

Five Reasons Marketers Should Be Exited:
- Improved user experience: intuitive, speed
- Faster impact and rewards for advertisers that optimize
- Focus efforts on what matters most to the marketer’s business
- Gives marketers the power create, test, and analyze campaigns like never before
- Leverage creative (missed the rest of the slide)

John stressed that one needs to be cognizant of thinking in new ways to get full advantage of the features of the new system.

Graham Harris…gives demonstration. Shows the automated keyword generator. This shows a huge change in magnitude that allows effective campaigns to be created by almost anyone.
Patrizio Spagnoletto speaks…

Upgrading Approach and Schedule:
- U.S. advertiser upgrades have begun
- Advertisers may chooser to upgrade post holidays
- Invitations will continue in stages to U.S. advertisers over the next several months

What to Expect
- Frequent Update
- Cheat sheet

Please look at the tutorials, customer solutions 1-866-YAHOO-98
It’s important to Yahoo! to make this house your home. We are successful when you are successful.

Question/Answer: Minimum bid for the US market is still $.10.

Question/Answer: Bulk submit is available.

International markets will occur sometime in 2007. John Slade said customer feedback was being sought on the best way to roll out.

How do you calculate relevance in a new ad? Dozens of factors drive us to a relevance to an ad, many of these come from Yahoo! search technologists. As data is available, this is factored in as well.

All in all, Yahoo! is demonstrating some positive attributes during this large conversion of platforms. These include a customer focus and taking the time to make a professional and transparent system migration that I believe will serve as a model in how to make a professional and non-disruptive migration. Stock analysts should look at the long term of what is occurring here.

Forrester Consumer Conference - NASCAR Presentation

Mike Helton, President of NASCAR, was a fascinating speaker. He talked about many things that as someone who was a big NASCAR fan as a kid, I was never even aware of that were amazing to learn. Two things stand out:

1. NASCAR is intensely focused on relationships and partnerships.

2. NASCAR has always been focused on customers.

It’s no wonder that they are so successful!

The thirty-one degree banking at Daytona built with customer experience in mind – being able to see the whole track at once! I never thought about it before, maybe the best customer experience involves things you don’t even notice.

NASCAR is now the #2 sport on TV only behind only the NFL, 75 million viewers

Mr. Helton believes that access to the drivers is critical piece of the success.

Recently opened a new LA office, NYC office, creating opportunities of NASCAR drivers to be in everyday life and making appearances in show business.

All of the sponsors work closely with licensing and headquarters. Sponsors are critical not only to underwriting the costs, but to other aspects of the sport as well.

NASCAR has always taken advantage of technology. (what a great mantra and it’s true)

NASCAR has racetracks, car owners and drivers who are independent – Mr. Helton expressed amazement that it all works sometimes.

All in all, when I saw Mr. Helton on the agenda, I truly had no idea what to expect, I saw a new side of NASCAR, one that made me appreciate the other side of NASCAR.