Underscores and Hyphens: One Important, Often Ignored Rule

I recently ran into someone on LinkedIn who was asking about some best practices when it comes to information architecture. I put in my two cents and, as an afterthought, added that he should make sure that he use dashes instead of underscores in page names when separating words.

The gentleman replied in a mildly irritated manner, asking how I knew that and if I was right that it would be bad for many of his colleagues who use underscores.

I've known this for a couple years, so in searching for a solid reference for the man, I stumbled upon a reference from Mr. Guru himself, Matt Cutts.

The thinking goes something like this: because of geek programming roots, Google wanted to be able to index the character "_" and still does. What does this mean?

Say you have a page on your website explaining your web design services and title that page

web_design.php

The name of that page will only be indexed by Google as the string "web_design" because the underscore is judged as a relevant character, just as if you put a "9" in there instead. It's people-readable, not Google-readable.

Note: this is not to say that the content on that page, title tags, etc. would not provide enough relevance for the page to be listed. It might. But we are talking strictly page name indexing.

Of course you know what's coming. You're going to create that same page but name it

web-design.php

Now Google gets that extra nugget of relevance that the page is named with the words "web" and "design." Ostensibly, the name itself will be triggered by searches for "web," "design," and "web design" whereas the previous name was bound with the "_" character.

It may just be a part of your overall relevance, but as anyone who works in web design and search engine marketing knows, leverage is leverage and every bit of weight on your side helps.

So now you're either saying "whew!" or "OMG! How do I fix this!" Relax. Take a breath. Have a cocktail. It is Saturday. Whatever you do, don't just rename all your files. That would be BAD. Yes, all-caps BAD.

On Monday morning we'll discuss information architecture restructuring and permanent redirects in order to minimize any ranking damage.

Google Street View Goes Wrong

Because Fridays are a little more aloof...


Run, Bambi, Run!

This is one of the images captured by the Google Street View truck. The rest are not so great. Hit the link below to see the sad story unfold.

Yes, it's as bad as you think.

h/t to Peng Xiao

Google Pushes in the Right Direction

Oooh, snap! I talked the other day about how Google was working its way in to the Obama administration. Prime mover: network neutrality.

Biased primer: without network neutrality, corporations and money will decide how fast you get access to what you want to see on the internet by controlling (tightening / loosening / freeing) bandwidth for whomever pays them money. It's like The Godfather, but for the internet, and at a point where you can merge TimeCop and Godfather III and you can go back in time and put a cap in that guy's --

So the point here is that Google is letting users search for those filthy blockers.

This is a potential technology disaster, and I welcome Google to put the pick-axe in the back of the skull of the guy wearing the cable mask. Even if all that means is the most basic horror movie tenet: Turning on the lights.

Local Cincinnati Poll: Abbreviations?

I've been living in Cincinnati for a little over 18 months now and I love this town. But I'm finding it difficult to locate a standardization when it comes to a "proper" abbreviation of Cincinnati. So through my Twitter account and using twitter.polldaddy.com, I created a poll.

So, local or not, what do you think the proper abbreviation of Cincinnati is or should be?

Top 10 Online Newspapers: Traffic +16% Since Last Year

Nielsen-Online (PDF):

New York, NY – January 26, 2008 – Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today reported a 16 percent year-over-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008.

NYTimes.com was the number one online newspaper destination in December 2008, with 18.2 million unique visitors. USATODAY.com and washingtonpost.com took the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, with 11.4 million and 9.5 million unique visitors, respectively

This article points to several different trends we've been seeing. More and more people are using the internet to get not just their news, but all information. More people are switching from print to online content in the way in which they get their news (which is why we see newspapers folding (hehe) everywhere. And even in this economy, companies all over the world are moving advertising dollars to online outlets, whether it is Google Adwords or site-specific adverts.

It's not just that it's good to be in the web business in this economy. The economic environment is serving as a catalyst for a move already in progress and when conditions improve, all these companies will be more than reluctant to return to an already-floundering print world.

Internet wins. I guess paper still beats rock.

World's Largest Snowball Fight: Epic Fail

As the Sioux City Journal (?) reported, organizer Mike Basak of the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to trump Michigan Technological University's 2006 record snowball fight involving 3,600 attendees.

Hey, more than 4,000 people joined the Facebook group! Only it was just a couple hundred that showed up. Reasons given were that it was too cold or there was a basketball.

Of course Mike, a freshman, should've been tipped off by his senior year Facebook group experience where 15 people joined "Hey Totally TP Michelle Oplatki's House Cause She Broke Up With Me" but he was the only one to show up to her house. That's if you don't count Michelle's dad, already on the porch with a shotgun.

The real life lesson here, while not uplifting, is that much of the world is well aware that some people already flaunt verbal commitment. Online gives them even more distance as in "I didn't even say anything, just clicked something on a whim."

Which returns me, yet again, to a theme that is apparently going to - rightfully - run through this blog. Technology is good for us. Web sites and search engine optimization and usability and social networks just...work for us. But it's not just a game. It's not just numbers and avatars and network connections. Every link is a person. And if we don't get off our asses and use this technology as a tool to connect in the real world, we will inevitably fall into a recursive pattern of leaning back, clicking, and occasionally smiling. But only occasionally.

Because quoting "Why's the carpet all wet Todd?" "I don't know Margo!" is just not that great unless you get that immediate recognition and - hopefully - chuckle.

I'm going to have to start a movie blog.

Google Pushes Into Washington

From the LA Times:

Its employees supported Obama, and four Googlers served on his transition team. Now the Internet giant hopes to win support for network neutrality and expanding high-speed Internet access.

Of course, Google is not just hanging out in Washington for purely humanitarian reasons. Both these goals will benefit Google in the long run. A quick look at both:

Network Neutrality

Network neutrality is basically the maintenance of things the way they are: When it comes to an ISP feeding the customer, no website's data streams get preference or get in the way of any other. If this is not solidified quickly, providers all over the US could jump in together and begin extorting all the big boys. "Everyone slows down. You pay $x, we keep your stream flowing to the customer. If not, they might just go somewhere else. Capice?"

Google, being the 800lb. gorilla, stands to pay the most from this shady practice. But it's bad for everyone. The big boys pay up and every small business site is suddenly dealing with degraded data getting to their potential customer. Smaller entities lose, as well as the consumer.

Expansion of High-Speed Service

This is a no-brainer. More access means more customers to use Google's services.

But it's also important because the connectivity many of us take for granted, the opportunities we have because of the availability of the internet is absent from much of American life in areas of lower socio-economic status. Grow the infrastructure there, present more opportunity, and you provide a potential solution for anyone who is willing to grab it and run.

Interestingly, the Pope made a plea for just this thing in his comments about Social Communication released the other day.


While Google is using it's power and proximity to ultimately get what it wants, I don't believe its goals are so different from our own. And it's nice to have the 800lb. gorilla on our side for once.

You've Been Poked by the Pope

Today, the 43rd World Day of Social Communications - taking place May 24th, 2009 - received a bump from the Vatican with the release of Pope Benedict XVI's public message for that day with the title "New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship."

In the release, he refers to "technologies" in reference to social networks as "truly a gift to humanity." From whom? Oh, I think you know.

He also, wisely enough, goes through a thoughtful examination of the double-edged sword that social media and internet communication in general has become. It has shrunk the world, allowing for instantaneous communication to...anywhere. But, as a consequence, it has turned many of us into a particular form of zombie, our unblinking eyes gilded by hard glow of the computer monitor. This type of communication is fine, but it should be harnessed to extend our human contact, not shut us away from it.

I'm not innocent or an objective analyst of these words, to tell the truth; On more than one occasion I've found myself blogging or searching for lost colleagues on Facebook until it was a question of should I even go to bed.

But will the Pope's words make a difference, today or May 24th or any day future or past to the tweens giddily adding Team Cullen images to their MySpace Twilight album or the guy down the street who's got a WoW poopsock weekend all planned? Does it matter to me?

I can tell you it should. For all the MySpace and LinkedIn and Twitter and Plaxo and Facebook connections I've made over the last few months, I have received 0 web-based leads that have resolved themselves into a client or business resource. It was only when I met people in person, when real, personal networking took place that I have reaped the rewards of connections. The best interactions happen not by IM but by me.

I can't say I'm the biggest fan of or agree with everything the Pope says, but I do believe he's got this one right. Maybe it'll hold a little more weight than a shouting - or worse: absentee - parent.

(FYI - I did search for Pope Benedict XVI on Facebook and MySpace but could find no credible representations. The Vatican's going to have to get on the stick on that.)

Nielsen Online Search Share Numbers

Last week, Nielsen Online came out with the search share numbers for December 2008 (PDF).

Guess who's on top?

% share of total searches
Google - 62.9%
Yahoo - 16.8%
Microsoft Live/MSN - 9.8%
AOL - 4.1%
Ask - 2.0%

While the number of searches overall jumped 19.6% from December '07, the only one of the top 5 above to lose out was Microsoft, dumping at -15.5% from the previous year.

I can't say I'm surprised. Ever since Microsoft slowly and cripplingly attempted a crossover from MSN to Live and dumped resources into mirrors of Google apps (that no one wanted because, hey, Google's already got an app for that), I've been watching the steady, systematic decline of what can only be looked at as: as X approaches infinity, Y approaches zero. We will never reach infinity in reality just as Microsoft will never reach zero. Because they're Microsoft.

Which provides a long, slow tail in which to enjoy Google walk away with their numbers like a thief in the night.

7 Mistakes - LinkedIn Guidelines Article

As I've been expanding my social marketing reach and getting into the ins and outs of many different platforms, it certainly helps to have someone to drop a couple of guideposts to help you along the way. Whether or not you're actively pursuing a position, Louise Fletcher has a great article about mistakes you're probably making on LinkedIn.

Indeed, LinkedIn now markets a service for recruiters that allows them to search profiles, store results and contact candidates, all from within an interface that they pay to access. But even recruiters who don’t pay for access, use the system to research candidates.

Worth the read.

And when you're done over there, say hi on the Eric Marschall (EJM Designs Limited) LinkedIn page.

Inauguration and Technical Competency

One of the joys of owing your own business - taking a break when it's important.

I watched the entire inauguration. I thought the opening prayer was a little over the top, the benediction touching, and President Obama's speech inspiring. But the thing that the cameras kept coming back to, the anchors kept coming back to, was the crowd, the undulating mass of people excited and eager and hopeful. The whole event was something amazing to behold, and I'm looking forward to the coming year.

But hey, you're not here to read a political blog, so here are a couple tech items to chew on:

• www.whitehouse.gov (above) did a complete switchover at exactly 12 noon. A well-planned, successful technical execution? That's pretty inspiring.
• Opening speech at the Inaugural Luncheon stated that the Recipes PDF was the most popular page of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Services website.
• Both the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Services site and 2009 Inauguration site have been having load issues all day
• Preliminary numbers are coming out at about 2 million - technical and logistical nightmare
• Security services numbered almost 40,000
• Despite every cell phone network going into today with the jitters, it appears that the networks held just fine.
• Amazing number from CNN.com like "3,000 people commented on the Facebook CNN feed per minute"
• And despite some reports that Twitter is running smoothly, I've hit several server timeouts during the day so far.

And yet the day is not over. First, the parade, then parties and balls and galas, oh my!

The Case of the Intermittent Wireless Signal

When it comes to network technology, I know enough to keep the lights on, to secure my wireless network, and to get a couple different computers to speak to each other. So last week when the signal from my wireless router started dumping into the crapper, I was at a loss. It had been happening for a month or two, but only for very short bursts.

I was certain that it was not my laptop or my wife's, as the signal itself would dump at exactly the same time on both and we're sporting different OSs and firewalls. Then the SSID would be completely missing (our network would not appear on available networks) for anywhere from a few seconds to an hour or more.

I talked to Time Warner. Or attempted to. After an hour on the phone and conversations with 3 different tech folks, I was finally forwarded to a wireless specialist who had a hold time of almost 30 minutes. He then proceeded to tell me that because the server logs were clean there really was no problem and began asking questions like was my card or maybe my eyebrows were on fire. And when he couldn't diagnose it and started repeating himself and I told him we'd already discussed that angle, my specialist became my ornery specialist. He actually said the words "I have no idea" and grunted.

I set up an appointment to have someone come out with the knowledge that if it were a computer problem, they would charge me, though the fact that they would probably have to diagnose that problem might be problematic for them.

Saturday, after two hours online with a friend over the problem, I got a call confirming that they were coming on Monday and I actually said the words "Yeah, my signal has been fine, actually just until you called." Later that afternoon, when my daughter was calling from her friend's house, I put it together.

I'm running the 802.11g Netgear router that Time Warner handed out. 802.11g routers run on a frequency of 2.4GHz. My wireless phone runs on 2.4GHz. And I have a 12 year old daughter. Case closed. Well, as soon as we get to Target and pick up a new phone.

Google Tool Increases Efficiency

The Official GMail Blog had an interesting post on Wednesday about a new function to Send and Archive at the same time:

Turn on "Send & Archive" from the Labs tab under Settings, and you'll see a new button in the compose form labeled just that. The button does what it says: it sends your reply and then archives the thread with one click.

Tasty. It might actually motivate me to get my disastrous inbox in the shape I know it could be. But as far as creating an entire blog post about it? Meh.

But then the Official Google Blog went and did this six hours later:

However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions.

Google's efficiency is unmatched; not only did they make the difficult decision to send away 100 people, they apparently used a newly-developed tool to do it while simultaneously moving the records of the newly-unemployed to the Google Archive.

Plaxo Me Sideways

Plaxo? Yes, Eric Marschall and EJM Designs Limited are now on Plaxo.

Next frontier: Orkut. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Ooh, poo. Now I have to keep writing.

Why?

Because I put this mirror watermark element in the bottom left of the content div and if I don't type enough then the top of the wisp does not terminate naturally and looks like sloppy design work.

Which it might well be.

Let's just declare everything in flux.

Technology Still Doesn't Do Parenting

Found at AFP on Google:

A high-profile task force formed last year to study dangers young people face on the Internet has found that fears of sexual predators are overblown and that technology alone won't keep children safe.

Every once in a while one of these stories comes out telling us that technology - whether it is nanny programs or parental settings or television programming in general - can't keep kids safe. That is to say: Technology will do nothing to replace good old fashioned parenting.

I have a twelve-year-old daughter. She does not have a computer. She does not have a cell phone. When she uses one of our laptops it is in plain view, not alone in her room. We talk to her about drugs and sex and sexual predators and have developed an open verbal relationship about all these topics. We are not perfect parents, but we are involved and draw boundaries based on responsibility and maturity.

People need to stop whining about how technology still falls too far from Rosie the robot in substituting for actual, personal parenting. If you don't have time to be a parent, you are doing something wrong.

Raising and protecting a child is #1. Maybe what some parents need is a computer program or call service to remind them of that fact. Technology does that quite well.

CNN: You Need a Web Presence

If you didn't believe it before, believe it now: You need a web presence.

Today, CNN Money tossed out a great business article. #10: Get online. Now.

It's the basis of the ideas that run EJM Designs: we provide an online presence, make an online presence usable, and make a usable online presence visible to search engines.

Over 80% of American adults are online now, and the internet has easily taken the place of the Yellow Pages. The difference between the Yellow Pages and the internet is that despite a simple listing of your business online, you need a presence. You need to be found when people are looking for you, especially locally.

If you are not online, especially in this economy, you risk limiting the value your business holds for others. You risk people who need your services, who would be your customers or clients not making their way to your door.

Contact us. Contact someone else. But get online. Now is more important than ever.

Extending the Extensions of Social Networking

For those of you who might have the idea that social-networking-up on your game means popping out an occasional blog and maybe a Twitter, you're mistaking a hot pan and a fridge half-full of random items for a savory, gourmet dinner. On a later post, I might go through each one of these in much more detail, but here's at least some bare bones to a good stew.

The home base and foundation, your purpose and landing platform for business (unless you're going with a different model) is the website. Sorry, the cooking analogy unfortunately passed away at the end of the last paragraph. From there, you add:

Your Blog.
If you do it right, it's the automatic second SERP link to you. I went with Blogger because it's owned by Google, easy to maintain, and I already have experience with it so there is a warm place in my heart, despite the bugs. I like to think of the website as the way you walk into a place ready to pitch your product or service or self. The blog is after-hours. A mild after-hours.

But just getting to express some of your personality is not all you need.

• Technorati Profile - Register with Technorati so you can be more a part of the community of the largest bloggregation site in existence.
• Template - unless you want to come across as a n00b, you better not settle for a provided template. Make it look like your site. Identify with it. And don't let people get there and question for a second where the heck they are.
• Linkbuilding - it is hard and time-consuming, but do it here. Now. Reach out in your community, "follow" other blogs of similar interest, contact authors, trade links.

Hold on a second. I did say "bare bones," didn't I? Just starting this post is enough to make me choke: I would write a month of posts expanding on things I've just touched on here. But not to abandon the mission:

Twitter is still relatively hot right now, not a killer to maintain, and worth someone's interest in your post that can lead to your site that can lead to a ...lead. But get out there. No one's going to go fishing for YOU. Post a couple times a day, do searches for other posts, check out profiles, and follow in the community.

Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, etc. Facebook's kind of a given because you probably already have one. Don't you? Jeez. MySpace is a lesser degree, but if you want to do it all the way, just do it. With MySpace, you're looking at another template to tweak, networking to do. YouTube means recording your expertise (read:rantings) and potentially editing it with computer capture video. LinkedIn is another extension as owner or part of a business, a place to talk about your services or products. Keep going? Okay, then there's also Plaxo and Orkut and Microsoft Live Spaces and hell, you can even set up an avatar and store in Second Life if you're that motivated to promote, but this is business, is it not? We have to do some triage of available resources and effective outcomes, no?

I have much more to discuss on each of these, and will perhaps even open an Orkut and SecondLife for the sake of the process and writing about the experience. But the goal is the same around the world: success. Or, at least in the world of social marketing, exposure.

And if you can use these tools to expand your online networks and grow your exposure and increase links to your sites and your satellites, then that is a modicum of success. Granted, if your site sucks, all of the extra work of social expansion is in vein. But that's a completely different set of posts.

Alarmism Over Google Search Tech - And a Snap Back

Yesterday saw the release by the Times Online that Google Searches are bad for the environment.

BS Alarm #1: The premise seems a bit absurd.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

BS Alarm #2: Does this guy have an innate understanding of how the internet works? Where is he getting his source data?

Truth is, there is no source data. The very next paragraph discusses how secretive Google is in its power consumption and server count and even locations of server banks. So what does this amount to? BS Alarmism over nothing, another attempt by someone to say "If X company says they care about the environment and they plug in a toaster then they hate the environment" and generally added as subtext: "so why should I care?"

Google was quick to respond to the foolishness:

In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query.

Recently, though, others have used much higher estimates, claiming that a typical search uses "half the energy as boiling a kettle of water" and produces 7 grams of CO2. We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast — a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don't reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.

So there you go. Stop it already. When it comes to environmental impact, there are very few of us - individuals or companies - who are not living in glass houses.

Snooping Bosses and Social Networks

Since I recently gave a talk about social networks and "What your boss already knows about you," it was interesting to see yet another article on the topic today, this one on MSNBC entitled One in five bosses screens applicants' Web lives.

Unfortunately, MSNBC does not appear to have their house in order:



What the article was probably about, if you are unable to glean from the title, is that more an more employers are researching their employees, easily finding them through MySpace or Facebook or LinkedIn, and sometimes taking them to task over what they find. NY Times wrote about the trend a little over a year ago, but the behavior has been around as long as social networks have been in existence. People are simply starting to notice.

Teachers, Managers, and police officers are getting canned by putting something online, attached to their profile, that someone does not like. And it's not just current employees. Employers are screening prospective employees as well, running ego searches to see what they can find out there about the people they might hire. Colleges are in on the game too, keeping an eye on the MySpace and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube social worlds of high school kids to make sure they are actually the right material. High school teachers are monitoring their students, parents their kids.

What are they looking for? What would they be looking for? Activities from underage drinking to drug use or foolish drunken photos or inappropriate pictures containing sex or nudity or "Hey that's me stealing that street sign! LOL!!1"

It shouldn't come as a surprise, nor should there be any outrage about it. If you put something on the internet where anyone can see it, then why get upset when the "wrong" person looks at it?

Unfortunately, when we're discussing employers who do not have to give an official excuse to an applicant, the line of fairness can be crossed. Imagine the following scenario: The HR Director of a large IT company, a staunch liberal with little patience for anything that is not, comes across the blog of his most qualified candidate. And that candidate spent July through November blogging about how the Democrats were going to ruin America. Even though company policy is to keep politics out of the office, the HR Director throws the resume in the trash.

Is that fair? No. But I'm certain it happens on a regular basis.

The crux of this whole discussion is that if you are out there, if you are trying to get a job or hold on to a job or get into college and are under or potentially under any sort of scrutiny, there are a couple things you should do. Right now.

• Do an ego search, entering your name into a couple different search engines. With and without quotes. Include nicknames, switch it up with a middle initial. This is what the prospective employer or school will be doing.
• If you find anything out there that you are not comfortable with everyone seeing, you should probably try to get rid of it.
• You know if you have a MySpace or Facebook. Get in there and clean up your space like you're having company over. Once it's seen, it can't be unseen.
• If you have a blog that could be found offensive by language or images or subject or politics, strip your name or identifiers from it. Use a pseudonym.

Is it fair that you may have to distance yourself from what you consider yourself, that you may have to hide your beliefs behind a pen name? No. But life's not fair. You have two choices here: get accepted, get hired, keep your job, or risk not.

Frisky Dingo: Debate

This is a couple months late for relevance, but hilarious every time.



"Why's he got a spirit animal?"

Hilarity ensues.

Who Doesn't Want a Myspace?

Continuing the flow of the day, I've added a MySpace account for EJM Designs.

Like? Friend me, of course.

Available logos for MySpace kind of suck, so I'm eschewing them on this one. Just imagine blue and Gort-shaped white bodies with circle heads...

Now Listening: "New York, I love you, but you're freaking me out." LCD Soundsystem. Delicious. Sirius 26.

EJM Designs on Twitter

How about some SEO/SEM/PPC/Design EJM Designs Tweets?



EJM Design Twitter. Love it.

Sidebar widget coming soon, if it's not already there by the time you see this (oh, my: there it is!).

Join the conversation. Pass the love!

EJM Designs on Facebook

Getting this journey off to the right start.



Check out EJM Designs on Facebook Pages!

Join the conversation, pass on the love.

Yay! Search Engine Marketing and All Things Web!

My name is Eric Marschall and I am the owner of EJM Designs Limited, providing quality web design, consulting, and internet marketing, based in Cincinnati, Ohio.



Background: I've been designing graphics for ten years now, having gone from television to print to web in the process. Web design and development have been my forte for the last eight years. And for the past five years I've been making clients happy through my expertise in search engine marketing.

Just because I focus on search engine marketing in my professional world, that will not be the sole purpose of this blog. I love all things tech and internet and regularly spend time devouring sites like BoingBoing, DVICE, and XKCD. I have an eclectic and distinctive taste in music which has been sitting on CBC Radio 3 (Canadian indie) for the past few weeks, and if I get thirty minutes to turn on my 360, I may just complain about how much of a pain it is to knock off a Big Daddy, even with the grenade launcher.

Not to worry - I also keep on the edge of what is going on in the search engine marketing world and will offer links, opinions, and original articles as they pertain to Google, Yahoo, Ask, and ...has anyone heard from Microsoft Live lately? Quick! Put a mirror in front of his mouth.

Obviously, in the coming days you'll see changes in the look and feel of the blog as I squeeze my own template into this architecture, add links, etc.

Join the conversation, post a comment, send me an email (visible in my profile) if you have an idea or opinion or insight or question. I'm looking forward to being a part of the community as myself.