Many of our readers are well aware that we use WordPress as the CMS platform for a number of our clientele. We thus thought it would be fun to compile a list of our favorite WordPress plugins. (more…)

Yesterday I streamed a recorded webinar from MarketingProfs titled "Beyond Trade Show Metrics: Improving Your Event Marketing ROI," conducted by Skip Cox is CEO of Exhibit Surveys, Inc.  This interested me since we had a booth at the Personal Democracy Forum for ImpactWatch last month.

During the webinar Cox discussed the concept of selective attraction.  This is basically a smarty pants way of describing the importance of attracting the trade show attendees who are the most interested and in most need of the product that an exhibit is pitching.  These people are much more likely to purchase the product or service than other attendees, and devoting time to someone who isn't interested is a waste of time when a potential client is left alone.

This makes sense since, considering our recent experience, not everyone who is attending a politics and technology conference is interested and/or in need of a media monitoring program.  For instance, I met plenty of great folks at our ImpactWatch booth, but some didn't need what we offer.  However, I hope we attracted the people who were interested in our product.

So how am I going to tie trade show exhibit metrics and search engine optimization together?

Well, selective attraction is also an important concept in SEO.  For example, we may optimize the ImpactWatch site to rank high for searches for a general keyword like "news," but a very small portion of these searchers are interested in a media monitoring product.  Perhaps they simply want to know how the stock market is doing or what Punxsutawney Phil did on Groundhog Day, not reputation management. 

Thus, it sometimes is wasteful to invest in ranking well for a general keyword.  That's why the long tail of search is an important factor to consider.  Although focusing on appropriate long tail keywords may attract fewer site visitors, if a greater portion of site visitors is coming from a more niche term are likely to convert from a visitor to a customer, that is a better practice — especially since it is probably less competitive to rank well for a niche term.  

To learn more read our SEO Basics white paper; we discuss selective attraction in the keyword section.

While E3 is declining in popularity and prestige thanks to the Internet's ability to ruin any surprises that game developers may have up their sleeves, it is still a great time to preview all the new software and hardware in the gaming market.  This year is no different, especially thanks to the announcement of Nintendo's two new attachments for the Wii console.

The list of Wii additions is getting quite long, with the Wii Zapper, Sport Set, Wii Wheel, and numerous third-party additions all being part of the growing family.  That family will soon welcome two new members: the WiiSpeak and the Wii MotionPlus.

(more…)

We just recently finished updating most of the Wordpress sites we maintain to Wordpress 2.5, so our normal process would be to monitor for security issues and wait a bit before upgrading again.  However, in reviewing the features of Wordpress 2.6 we may have to make an exception and upgrade sooner rather than later.  Seriously, it is like they read my mind and added the new features I wanted most.  Specifically:

(1) Wordpress now tracks your revision history, so you can now revert to old versions of your posts should you desire.  This will come in handy.

(2) You can now add captions easily to your images in Wordpress.  This feature is already present on the Wordpress-driven CNN Political Ticker (see image on right for sample).  (more…)

David All points to a new website from the Republican National Committee (RNC), GOPPlatform2008.com, which seeks input from Republicans in developing the GOP platform.  Following is the intro paragraph announcing the site:

Welcome to the most grassroots-driven platform development effort in the history of American politics!

The Republican Party is seeking your input as we develop the policies and principles upon which we should stand for the next four years. On this website, you can share your thoughts, participate in polls, and communicate directly with the policymakers who will be shaping the party’s agenda. All comments and feedback will be reviewed and taken into full consideration as we prepare for our convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

We hope that this process will guarantee the greatest amount of public input into any platform in American history!

Based on those words, I hoped to see something truly powerful and transparent like Dell IdeaStorm or MyStarbucks Idea, which are truly open platforms where users can submit, vote on and discuss ideas on how the respective companies can better serve their customers.  Both Dell and Starbucks have given customers tools they can use to actually organize against the companies if they choose.

The GOP Platform website is much more limited than the Dell and Starbucks tools.  Users can submit and browse ideas, but there is no way to promote an idea or to really have a discussion around it.  Also, according to David, the RNC appears to be reviewing ideas before making them viewable to the public.  So basically all you can do it submit an idea and review the ideas of others that have been vetted by the RNC.  So controls have been put in place to prevent things from getting out of hand.

My issue here is really with the packaging.  Like the DNC’s McCainpedia, GOP Platform promises one thing and delivers another.  It is sort of lame to hype something with the vague promise of openness and then neuter it so that the grassroots can’t truly share their thoughts in an open way.  If you don’t want to be truly transparent, don’t launch tools that hint that you are.  It is disingenuous.

To me GOP Platform seems like an effort to replicate the magic of the truly open My.BarackObama.com, while removing the risk of something like the FISA uprising happening.  You can’t have it both ways.

Update: The RNC wrote to David All regarding moderation.  They say the moderation policy is “only to prevent liberal bloggers from taking over the site.”

Also, Nancy Scola from TechPresident likes GOP Platform site a lot more than I did, calling it “mediated crowdsourcing.”  Also, the DNC plans to launch a similar website.

Admittedly, I am a Google fanboy. I use Gmail for the bulk of my correspondence, and keep track of deadlines in Google Calendar. I get all of my RSS feeds through Google Reader, and collaborate on documents with others using Google Documents. It's scary how much of my life is driven completely by Google products — but until somebody offers something better, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yesterday afternoon, there I was, going about my day-to-day business, when something interesting (read: disturbing) popped into my reader.

Google Labs announced this on their blog:

"[...] excited to announce today's release of Lively by Google - a 3D virtual experience that is the newest addition to Google Labs.

The Lively team wants to help people experience another dimension of the web. We hope you will use the product to express yourself with and without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the web."

When I came to, I thought it had just been a horrifying nightmare. But there it was, still on my screen: Google released their own browser-residing version of Second Life. Reluctantly, I installed the plugin enabling me to take part in the "3D virtual experience". Toying around with it for a bit, I created the Bivings Lounge. After the break is my list of why Google Lively is unsuitable for just about anything beyond making a cool-looking-bear-pirate avatar.

(more…)

Earlier this month, Leah Messinger wrote an interesting piece on "quality swag" and its potential ROI.  For those who do not recognize the terms, "swag" is a gift or free service that a company offers to potential clients, typically at events such as trade shows.  Some award shows package all of the gifts together in ‘swag bags' for the guests.  ROI stands for "return on investment," the rate of return which is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment.  The ROI of swag is important because once the products are created, they are a sunk cost, and I am sure many companies find themselves tossing pens and highlighters that were never given out at any shows.

(more…)

U.S. Congressmen John Culberson (R-TX) has gotten a bit of online fame lately for sending real-time updates to constituents and Internet geeks via services like Twitter and Qik, sometimes straight from the House floor.  Culberson has gotten attention for his efforts from tech blogger Robert Scoble, TechPresident and many others.  I follow Congressmen Culberson on Twitter and have been watching his experiment with these services with interest.

Today his Twitter account included messages about what Culberson says are efforts by Democrats to censor the content he sends out from the Floor.

Here is his first tweet on the topic:

I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them <link>

This was followed a short while later with this clarification:

They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!! <link>

This afternoon, Culberson’s staff put out a statement on their website protesting the proposed action. Culberson’s release provides the following explanation:

Millions of Americans today utilize free, unregulated and uncensored websites like YouTube on a daily basis to not only obtain information from their elected leaders about what’s going on in their government, but to also give feedback and easily share that information with others. The advent of new media technology has empowered American citizens with real-time information about the policy debates and actions being undertaken by Congress. This has increasingly forced Congress to become more transparent and made it easier for American citizens to hold their elected leaders accountable.

The Committee on House Administration is considering a new rule that could bring this trend to a screeching halt. The Committee is considering the adoption of new rules that would require outside websites such as YouTube to comply with House regulations before Members of Congress could post videos on them. Under the proposal, the House Administration Committee would develop a list of “approved” websites, and Members of Congress could post content only such websites.

If the proposed rule is adopted, the free flow of information over the Internet between Americans and their representatives will be significantly curtailed. Americans who currently use free websites like YouTube to obtain uncensored daily information about congressional policy debates will instead be forced to go to websites “approved” by the House Administration Committee in order to continue getting such information. This would amount to new government censorship of the Internet, by a panel of federal officials that is neither neutral nor independent.

I did a few searches trying to find more information on what is happening exactly, but so far the only info I’ve found is from Culberson himself.  This story will be interesting to follow.  If you find more information please post it in the comments and I’ll update the story.

Update: Here is a link to the proposal Culberson says will cause him to have his tweets reviewed prior to being posted.  The proposal sounds fairly innocuous to me, but I don’t have a deep enough understanding of the law to know the true ramifications of what is being proposed.

Update 2: Techdirt has a post up that claims Culberson is misrepresenting what the proposal will actually do in an effort to score some partisan points against the Democrats.  Earlier in the day before Culberson’s Twitter mobilization efforts, David All weighed in against the proposal on TechRepublican while Soren Dayton wrote a post critical of the proposal on The Next Right.

Update 3: Mashable has a post up on the topic as well.

In many ways, I've learned more while explaining a concept than I do reading or listening about it.  That's why it is always intriguing to explain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to someone who doesn't work in the realm of web development. 

Over the weekend, I was explaining SEO to a librarian I know. During this conversation I was trying to explain the field to her in terms that I assume she would understand.

For example, I explained that a search engine is like a librarian whom people approach to find the most relevant information about a topic.  In the case of search engines, people ask by using a keyword.  Then the search engine provides a list of sites in order of relevance.

To do this, I explained, that search engines gauge many factors of each information source that a librarian must also consider.  These factors include: the age of the source, who cites (links to it on the Internet) it, how often it is updated, etc. 

During this discussion she mentioned something that intrigued me.  Librarians, like us all, need to conscientiously work to avoid providing biased information.  For instance, a patron may ask a librarian for a book about the librarian's religion, and the librarian may feel compelled to refer the patron a book written by someone who sheds a positive light upon the religion.  Whether this is truly the best book or not, the librarian must refrain from unduly emphasizing one factor of relevance over others.

Likewise, search engines must also work to avoid providing biased information.  This was the case years ago when they weren't as selective with the link factor when assessing a site's relevance.  Many web developers would create virtually useless sites to a human that were chock full of links (aka "link farms") to sites that they were trying to get ranked well.  The search engines eventually became more discriminating when assessing links to prevent such manipulation so that they could provide less biased results to those who used them to search for information.

Although I've understood the concept of link farms before my discussion with my friend, her comments helped me understand SEO in a better way.  Thus, I would suggest to anyone to explain the complexities of their field to someone else.  It helps.

As someone who was born in the generation that lives, breathes, writes, eats, sleeps, and drinks the Internet, I have become jaded with how many useless and uninteresting websites that I have found over the years.  It seems like every time that I sign online, I am bombarded with a flood of websites that I could easily do without.  There are certain sites, however, that are so useful and innovative in their clean design and functionality that I would be at a loss on the Internet without them.  As an Independence Day present to the readers, I decided to share these with you. (more…)

As a loyal technology fan and social change enthusiast, attending my first Personal Democracy Forum (PDF08) in NYC excited me. The ability to mingle with others who share my interests and desires to use technology to make changes in the world and ease our lives is an unbelievable experience that I couldn’t pass up. As I walked into the Lincoln Center Rose Hall, with the grand glass windows and stunning views of Columbus Circle and Central Park I instantly thought WOW – what an amazing place, just based on the location this conference is going to be great! I then walked into the atrium where many of the sponsors/exhibitors had their booths, and went to join my colleagues at our ImpactWatch booth. As I surveyed the room, I took in the beauty of the floor to ceiling glass windows and looked at the various booths around me. From the previous grand technology conferences/trade shows/exhibition fairs I’ve attended in the past, I assumed that this conference would be like all the others, packed full with booths with insight on new products and ideas and tons of swag, but when I looked around, I realized I had the wrong assumptions. Now, while I will say that the booths in attendance did advertise excellent products, including ours =), I had previously thought this conference would have had more companies in attendance advertising the other great products that are available to the online political community. After this realization, I decided to sit in on my first session and recognized what PDF08 really is all about. (more…)

Due to scalability problems, the micro-blogging platform Twitter has struggled mightily to stay up and running the last few months.  As a result of the problems, a lot of folks are threatening to abandon Twitter for the social aggregator service FriendFeed.

I personally won’t be abandoning Twitter for Friendfeed.  Here’s why:

(1) There is too much noise on FriendFeed.

I’m currently following around 160 people on Twitter.  Some of these people I know well in real life.  Some casually.  Some not at all.  I’m able to follow and learn from this large group of  people because all I see is what they type in their Twitter status bar periodically.  Sure, some people tell you what they had for breakfast.  But most people exert some level of editorial discipline on themselves, and only write when something at least semi-interesting happens.

They don’t tweet about every meal they have, just the really, really good ones.  They don’t share every item they come across on the web, just the interesting ones.  The result is a usually compelling stream of anecdotes that is updated throughout the day.

FriendFeed has no such editorial discipline.  In addition to receiving those few choice anecdotes each day about the people you follow, you also learn what they are listening too on Last.fm, what is in their Netflix queue and what they dugg on Digg, among other things.  I might be interested in knowing that stuff about my 10-20 closest friends, but certainly not about all 160 people I follow on Twitter.  It is just too much.

(2) I have no desire to recreate my Twitter network on FriendFeed.

I’ve been on Twitter for close to a year and a half now.  I’ve amassed a modest network of followers and, more importantly, have developed a good list of people I follow.  This happened organically over time and I have no desire to start over on FriendFeed.   I’m not Robert Scoble - I can’t just say I’m going over to FriendFeed and have everyone move with me.  I’m in the same boat as Patrick Ruffini, a fellow poli-tech blogger who wrote:

But the main reason I can’t brook switching to FriendFeed is the sunk cost of building up my Twitter network, and the fact that FriendFeed is still mostly for elite tech blogger groupies. I now have 898 followers on Twitter, and my posts still generate far more conversation on Twitter than they do on FriendFeed. That’s because most of my followers are interested in politics, and political users aren’t (yet) over on FriendFeed.

(3) For whatever reason I don’t like the FriendFeed user experience.

Tantek Celik wrote a great post a while back about how Twitter is successful due to its dead simple interface that minimizes keystrokes.  On the occasions when Twitter is working, it feels much less like a website than a utility that is part of you.  For me FriendFeed still feels very much like a website, and a slightly disorienting one at that.  It is just not the same.

The other day I came across this little number by Christopher Null of Yahoo!, discussing seven legitimate issues with Apple's latest version of the iPhone. And there's in-fact more than that.

A while back, I talked about whether waiting for the newest run of Apple's showpiece mobile device was worth it. But that focused mainly on some favorite alternatives, while Null delves into the details of the iPhone's shortcomings.

Highlighted are the cost (roughly 160 bucks more over the next two years), the wimpy 2 megapixel camera, a battery you can't replace, no MMS capability, no ability to stream live TV, and limited storage space. And as one heady commenter pointed out, there's an eighth pretty annoying problem; no memory removal or expansion. In a world of SD and micro-SD-ready options the iPhone is inexplicably lacking, again.

These issues, standalone, may not be deal-breakers for some. But combined, how can they not be? Especially for the kind of money Apple expects us to shell out.

I had a great time at the Personal Democracy Forum earlier this week since I met wonderful people and learned about interesting projects.

The whole point behind PDF is to discuss how technology can help individuals participate in the political/governing process and improve governments' ability to serve their citizens.  While attending the Design Principles for Online Democracy panel discussion, Tom Steinberg of mySociety in the UK discussed various projects that his organizations have done for the British government. 

In my opinion, the coolest project so far is fixmystreet.com.  On this site people living in Britain can report sections of road that need repairs or attention.  These problems can run the gamut from potholes to "fly tipping" (Brit-speak for "littering").  Local governments can then use this site to determine where they need to deploy their employees to make repairs or correct problems.  Further, this site allows the public to make sure that the problems reported are corrected.

I think that this is a marvelous idea.  This site enables citizens to work directly with their local governments to ensure that important tasks are accomplished, and that makes fixmystreet.com a great example of what PDF is trying to accomplish — use technology to improve government.

Elizabeth Edwards spoke to guests at the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum about how the internet is influencing the world of politics. But it was husband John that later stole the show with his surprise (even to him) appearance.

(more…)