Great interface for seeing what’s up with the election…and don’t miss the button at the top called, “Create your scenario”.  You can view past electoral voting by State, change States from Red/Blue to see what would happen if…

Seriously…I can’t go on facebook and not see an Obama ad.  I couldn’t even read an article about McCain and not catch a glimpse of Obama on the sideline in a banner advertisement.

Between that and then Obama announcing his running mate over text messaging, I don’t even think the question of who is better utliizing technology is a fair question.  Obama is going after the tech friendly crowd and his Campaign Manager (David Plouffe) is doing a great job of it.

Check out this cool iPhone app…talk about grass roots marketing!

It’s almost like a virus that gets into your email client and spams all of your contacts…this little application makes you hound your friends and family by battleground states.  Is this the new “sign in the yard”?

So, We have been working on a new product over the last 8 months and it’s going to launch on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 12 noon (MST)!

Here’s the skinny, since someone already leaked info anyway, we have been doing a lot of Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimization, and plain Internet Marketing and we’ve been seeing some FANTASTIC success.

The problem is that we end up gaining a lot of clients that have already been through the wringer and truthfully “screwed” by other SEMs (not all SEMs use black hat techniques, just some - shame on them).

We decided that yes, we can grow our SEO/SMO Marketshare but we would have to grow our core group to handle the additional load - that’s fine but it doesn’t fit our business model, so instead we decided to create an Education Course called “Serious Internet Marketing.”  In this course we are actually using the same tools that we use to train in-house and selling licenses to other Web Developers, SEMs (Search Engine Marketers), Business owners, Marketers, etc. so that they can do the following:

1. Educate themselves so they do not fall into the lure of evil SEMs

2. Know what to look for in a Good SEM so that they can distinguish the reputable SEMs out there.

3. Increase their knowledge of verbiage, tactics, what’s good, what’s bad, etc.

4. Even start doing Internet Marketing themselves.  There are a lot of startups that can use this information but can’t afford to hire someone to do it.  Our course will go step by step (including videos).

Our only hesitancy is that we did not want to upset Development companies with these insider secrets being available to the public, so we are limiting the number of licenses to this course by State.  This way, the market will not be saturated but we can still help educate and give a small number of businesses and edge in the Internet Marketing game.

300 licenses per State…that’s it, 300 in each State and that State gets cut off from anyone else purchasing the course.

Serious Internet Marketing - A Web Development Insider Shares their Internet Marketing tactics - 300 licenses per State, opening on 10/28/2008 at 12 noon MST.

Stay tuned…

Mozilla calls Firefox the safest web browser…

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/security/

So, how is open source safer than proprietary code?   Well, it all comes down to motive.

For example…Microsoft has a specific amount of resources they are willing to pull in to code Internet Explorer in order to make it cost-effective and keep ROI where they want it.  There is a limit to the number of programmers they can hire.  Now, that limit is very high and that programmer base is quite large, but there is still a limit.

Open source leverages desire.  Anyone can help code or help test, and they aren’t paid for it.  So, Mozilla can rally the same number of programmers but at a much lower cost.

So, what’s this about intent and motive?  Well, if you are volunteering your time, then you’ve bought into the vision.  If someone is paying you, maybe you bought in or maybe you just like the paycheck, who knows.

So by Mozilla’s statement, their browser rocks…check out their risk chart:

An independent study shows that, in 2006, IE users were vulnerable to online threats 78% of the time. Firefox users? Only 2%.

When are you at risk?

Ah look at this…Android the Google Cell phone operating system is nearing release!  T-mobile may carry the first phones, but they’ll come with a marketplace just like Apple’s “App store” on the iPhone.

But Android is open source so you can get some really cool applications for it.

For example:

How about using the camera in your phone to take a photo of a bard code on the product you are looking to buy…then having it go out on the Internet and bring back comparative prices?  Yeahhhhh baby.

“Bye bye” new iPhone market share…I’m holding out for Android.

MSNBC News link about android: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26674814/

We all remember back in the day, having a walkman…a personal music player.  “Walkman” was created by Sony, they had the market and grew into the DiscMan, so what happened to Sony?  Anyway, this post is about Microsoft and Apple.

Everyone is talking about the new iPod Nano introduced today…it’s just a few more bells and whistles aimed at making you shell out your hard earned cash yet once again (The announcement wasn’t big enough obviously - Apple shares fell 4%).  Seriously, Apple…can you not do a hardware update for a while so that we feel like our iPod’s and Macbooks are not out of date the minute we buy them?

I’m in the market for a new iPhone…but when will the new ones come out?  When will they introduce the 32 GB model?  Rumors stated that due to the cost of Memory, we wouldn’t see a 32 GB iPhone until late 2009…but here we go with an iPod nano with 32 GB of memory…I figure it’s 4 x 8 GB chips, but who knows…maybe they’ll figure out how to fit that into an iPhone.

Steve…give us a break!

Microsoft (Zune) vs. Apple (iPod) in the portable music player market.

A few interesting features:

One box for everything
Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages. i.e. type in ‘neonrain’ and it will suggest neonrain.com or a search for ‘neonrain’

Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.  No more lists, you can actually “see” a visualization of the web site.

Shortcuts for your apps
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.  Integrating the web as if it were an application installed on your machine.  With Google Gears, you can even run apps while being offline.

Dynamic Tabs
Drag tabs to change the order or pull a tab into it’s own window.

Crash Control
Run an application in it’s own “sandbox”, so that each application has it’s own safe area.  If one application crashes, it does not affect another tab.  Includes a Tab Task Manager to view resource usage by tab.

Incognito Mode
Stops the storage of cookies and sessions after the window is closed.

Simpler Downloads
Downloads appear in the status bar and you can drag them from there to your desktop.  Hmmm. Just like Firefox, what’s new here?

Instant Bookmarks
Click a star to create a bookmark, again…what’s new here?

For more details on Google Chrome, here is a video from their developers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGmO7Oximw8

So, I went to Barack Obama’s web site today around 1:00pm MST (8/18/2008) to check out their web site layout - what can I say…we are truly web geeks!  Anyway, here’s what we found:

Fatal PHP Errors on Barack Obama's web site.

http://www.barackobama.com

Warning: main(header_items.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /usr/www/users/obamech0/bo/includes/top.php on line 75

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required ‘header_items.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /usr/www/users/obamech0/bo/includes/top.php on line 75

Someone messed up!

BrandDoozie - Do it yourself marketing , why not?  Actually, this could be kind of interesting.  Not everyone can afford to create great collateral when they are first getting started.  If you are a tech company, you should budget for it…if you are mowing lawns, you may not care.

This is kind of interesting….

• Create a Logo
• Use Stock art and templates to create a brand
• Create documents and publish them as PDFs

I had to create an account to test things out…they used Flash for interactivity, makes sense and it looks like a lot of work…unfortunately, the site would stall when making complex changes.  I finally closed it out and gave up.  It could still be a good idea…even though it’s all template based.  It would be nice to have some elements that are modified to suit your colors and then be able to upload your logo and create some simple sales sheets, etc.  Maybe soon, it’s still in beta.

If you are like me, your to do lists range from using your email inbox to using sticky notes.

I don’t have to tell you that none of those work very well.  In search of a better option to help organize, we started using Basecamp by 37 signals.  There are other GTD (Get things done) applications, but we use this for our business communication so it was natural to use it for daily organization and personal organization.

I started with creating a personal project…these are personal items I need to do, i.e. get the oil changed, take my daughter out on a date, you get the point.  From here, I can create To-do lists daily…and anything left from the previous days list I can move to the new list for today and then prioritize the to-do items.

This gives me rolling to-do lists and I can see what’s been carried over from last week and what’s new.  I can organize them by priority or when something is due by setting a milestone.  Each morning, I create a to-do list for the day and fill it based on appointments, emails, previous to-do lists, project tasks, or obstacles any of our programming teams are facing.  This let’s me see everything that needs done and let’s me choose what’s most important and get it done first.

In addition, I can also use Basecamp to track time for each item…I haven’t found a really good use for that yet with my personal lists, but I’m sure I will.

Remember to stay organized > stay efficient > make progress in business and your personal life.