Monthly Archives: March 2006

Mixed feelings about MIX06

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OK, it’s still WAY too early to tell, but I can’t help but feel a bit like this conference is Microsoft *pretending* to care/respect the changes swirling about and typically called “Web 2.0” rather than *really* caring.

In response to O’Reilly’s request for an appearance at his November conference, Chairman Bill said “maybe it’ll be Web 3.0 by then”. I think this remark was telling in that Bill sees all this as “more of the same” rather than what many would describe as a significant shift in direction – the beginning of a world of ubiquitous connectivity, community, and voice.

Are blogs and mashups just clever little devices or are they a window into human info evolution? I’m kind of thinking if you belive the former you should tie your rowboat to the USS Microsoft ship of change but if the latter you should be cautious and just … keep … rowing and fishing for the exploding number of competing technologies that seem to be adapted more specifically for and with respect for the implications of Web 2.0.

But jeez, I haven’t even been to the party yet at TAO, the Venetian’s monstrous nightclub. That’ll change my perspective….?….

Atlas and AJAX

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… talking up Atlas now with the geeky demo.  If this makes AJAX more accessible rather than creating just another MS overlay to learn it could be great.
My favorite conference quote so far by the Atlas guy:
“it’s hard to type when you have 5 cups of coffee in you – fast but not accurate”

IE7 plus Vista are looking good at MIX06

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Here at MIX06 we’re getting early views of how IE7 will interface with the web.  The security items look robust yet simple.  Anti phishing is strong and “trusted sites” will show in green in address bar.  More money for verisign but that’s OK if we can get rid of the junk.

I remain concerned MS may have been so worried about all the security problems with IE that these items may eclipse what I’m more interested in at this conference – API and Web 2.0 and mashup support from MS.

MIX06 – Bill Gates on Web 2.0

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Here at MIX06 in Las Vegas we’ve learned that the MS vision of Web 2.0 remains…. unclear.   Bill Gates shared his enthusiasm for upcoming MS products like the Vista OS, and now Dean H is talking up IE7.

O’Reilly asked great Web 2.0 questions but I’m not clear that Bill sees this as the new world – more as a rapidly evolving extension of the world MS helped pioneer over the past decades.

MIX06 lesson ONE. Don’t walk to the strip from the Airport….

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Yes, I have been to vegas several times but after finding that the stupid strip shuttles they have from the Airport could take an hour to get to my place I thought “hey, I’ll just WALK”. I walk about 2-3 miles every day so how far could it be? FAR. I suppose if I had not had backpack and a suitcase it would have not been all that bad -approx 3-4 miles I’d estimate. I walked for about 90 minutes.

But the good news is I’ve got all that excersize under my belt and now I can eat with reckless abandon. I was here in November for WebmasterWorld and boy was the food and drink ….. GOOD.

And more good news is there are some WIFI spots here so I don’t have to sign up for the usurous 9.95 per day at the Imperial Palace. I’m with Scoble in being pissed at all the high WIFI charges at Airports and Hotels. At SLC Airport I couldn’t even use the spring PCS WIFI because though I’m a sprint customer, and a PCS Vision subscriber, I’m NOT a SPRINT+ PCS VISION+ WIFI subscriber.

Show me some ads and give me free WIFI!

$253 Million per month in Online Ad spending for Jan 2006

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This from the ClickZ network. 

Vonage is forking over 1 million a DAY for online ads.  I’d still argue that this number is very, very low compared to what it will be in the near future as advertisers are still misunderstanding how favorably online ROI compares to offline.   I’m glad to be an online rather than offline publisher these days.

1 Vonage 31,707 Tech

Off to MIX06

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No Mom it’s NOT about the glitz, glamour, and free huge nightclub tabs picked up by Microsoft!  It’s WORK and SOMEBODY darn well better get down to Las Vegas and do what has to be done!

MIX06 starts tomorrow morning with keynote by Bill Gates and leads into a large number of concurrent sessions which appear to be focused almost exclusively on how MS applications and future developments can be used in online applications.   That’s OK because this is put on by MS, but somewhat ironically I think the concept here was to have a very “open” environment that tried to get feedback from the community about what they need, want, and where they are going.   I’m anxious to see if MS is sincerely interested in ….. us.

Yahoo and Google certainly are interested as evidenced by the way they interact at other conferences.   I think part of their corporate culture is to say “damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!” even when that approach could threaten some aspect of the company’s revenue.  I’m not expecting this from MS but I’m hoping for greater responsiveness than they’ve shown the web community in the past.  

Sitemap submission for NMohwy.com

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Using the excellent free online sitemap generator HERE I created and have uploaded and verified a sitemap for the approx 3000 pages at NMOHWY.com.   I’ve noticed that using site:nmohwy.com currently yields almost all supplemental pages with VERY old Cache dates – usually Feb 2005.

Now and I’m trying to get Google to revisit the site.

Interestingly about 3 weeks ago when I uploaded pages that had the old names and data in a simpler database format Google pulled in the new pages and indexed them very quickly and did NOT seem to put them in Supplemental Index.   Now they are using OLD page with OLD cache dates.
The overall idea is to take the OLD pages from the time Google liked us, strip out links that are no longer relevant and other extraneous stuff, reformat some of the text in the hopes of avoiding duplicate content problems, and see if we can regain traffic for this domain and figure out why Google seems to hate the site after loving it for so many years.

The NMohwy.com Experiment

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…. and so another chapter in the saga begins….sort of….my ambitious – some would say reckless and foolhardy – attempt to regain the good graces of Google search for a part of what was once one of Google’s favorite travel websites – www.OHWY.com

This chapter began a few weeks ago when I resurrected NMohwy.com which for about 8 months has been 301 redirected to www.ohwy.com/nm/   The redirection was thanks to recommendations by Google support, Google Engineers, and a major SEO firm.    So why defy all that brilliant conventional wisdom?   

Because things still aren’t working.   So I’m taking the blogged advice of Matt Cutts and “experimenting”

The basic story is that our major travel site – OHWY.com or “Online Highways”, was downranked by Google on February 2 of 2005.   The drop in traffic was severe – about half gone, and we had to lay off people and restructure the company.   On February 1 we had about 50,000 visits from Google searches and on February 3 we were down to about 5,000 which fell over the next few months to about 500.

The site had been growing for years and we’d set up domains like NMohwy.com which were specifically targeted to states – in this case New Mexico.   After the drop we were advised that consolidating the 12 or so domains into our “mother ship” of OHWY.com was advisable and we did it.