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.