White-Hat SEO tactics

Here’s an SEO article I can actually get behind:
How I Got Our Web Site from Page 5 to Page 1 Using ‘White-Hat’ SEO

SEO in general makes me nauseous – the web equivalent of spam. The tactics in the article above, however, are exactly what a reputable web professional should do. Favorite part: item #1 is “Write Compelling Content”.

For an abbreviated version of the above (and my all-time favorite SEO blog post), read Aaron Mentele’s “Humans first, please“

Free Rolando app (with BBY purchase)

Best Buy is offering the Rolando iPhone game for free with the purchase of an iPod touch or a iTunes gift card.

Rolando 2 is coming out soonish (June?) so this is sort of like the discount-priced bags of ripe bananas. Still the original Rolando is a lot of fun and makes great use of the iPhone’s tilt and multi-touch controls. ngmoco is currently releasing new Rolando levels weekly in the run up to R2 release.

[While this is news worth sharing, this post is also intended to test twitterfeed's rss to twitter gateway. We'll see what turns up at @kcmarshall]

More meeting optimization

Seth Godin posts today with ways to improve meetings.

Getting serious about your meeting problem

My favorite? #7

The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.

Which tip would most improve the meetings you are in? What key meeting improvement practice did he miss?

Emergent meeting management

Sometimes life can be an unending stream of meetings. I often wonder just how much a company could improve productivity through better meeting practices.

I’m a fan of Esther Derby for a variety of reasons. Here’s an (older) article she wrote about how to improve the meetings you attend even if you’re not in charge.

How to Improve Meetings When You’re Not in Charge

And, yes, please do use these strategies for meetings I call.

Uncle Joe commands you to dance!

Video from Stalin vs. Martians

Nothing more needs to be said — besides Dance!

Gizmodo: classic arcade game ties

I like the Asteroids tie and I think I could pull it off in a client meeting:

Sweet arcade vector deliciousness

From Gizmodo

MSP dev project on Google App Engine

Followed a link from Joe Gregorio’s blog to a video of about an interesting online wishlist app built on Google App Engine. A minute or so into the video, I thought, “That sure looks like the DJEdna guy.” Sure enough, it’s Thomas Bohmbach (Jr).

I enjoyed Thomas’ Django (& DJEdna) presentation at MinneBar 08. I’m geeked to see a perfect overlap of: MSP guys make a splash, a real-world cloud computing application and Python.

I want to keep my eye on Giftag. I don’t quite grok BestBuy’s angle on the project but the notion of a cross-website wishlist is cool. I can’t put my finger on it but something in the way Giftag works feels properly weblike: Browser plugin + social features + Atom/RSS feeds

Funny video of the day

Teh Funny: The Matrix Runs on Windows

Article on data quality – emphasis for marketers (in ‘08)

Not sure how this worked out for ‘08 but it looks like a priority for my ‘09.

Marketers: Clean customer data a priority in 2008

Note the emphasis on view of customer and the need to cross applications (ERP, CRM, POS) and org silos.

Forrester report on Community Platforms

Lots of good stuff here – my highlights:

• The POST methodology puts the focus in the right place – and technology in the proper, supporting role.
• “[B]rands seek solution partners–not technologists”: Solutions partners must be more than just out-sourced technology providers.
• See the short list of 9 vendors as well as the long list of vendors Forrester compiled