purdue purdidn't

Purdue? PURDON'T. I predict burn-out, foul-out... tournament-out.

saw the movie "Control." I never knew about Ian Curtis & Joy Division preceding New Order. I bet undercover goth Analisa knew, though.

Albert Einstein On Experimentation, Investigation, and Internet Technology

Albert Einstein didn't just pioneer modern physics with his enduring and revolutionary theory of General Relativity, he also said some smart stuff about the value of independent curiosity and experimentation.

http://cdllc.blogspot.com/2010/02/albert-einstein-on-experimentation.html

Let's apply some of this to how you can use the internet to help your business.

Words of Wisdom

1. "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
2. "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

If Al's second quote scares you, fear not; we're talking about research on our dime, not making mistakes with clients' time and money. Here's what it all boils down to:

• Ask, ask, ask, inquire, question, and ask some more.  Then experiment, test and do some more experimenting.
• Investigate and Innovate—don't be afraid to lead rather than follow. Then when you've got it all figured out, be sure to keep testing—and verifying results.
• Never settle into a finalized "method," because the only constant in the internet world is the light-speed change (get it, physics people? light speed... constant?). Yesterday's thinking never works for today's internet.

At CDLLC: we've already done the research. The experimentation, the investigation, the trial and error for you, on our dime. We've got close to fifty combined years of experience with this stuff. And we keep doing the research. It's part of our business.

Tested results are what matter, not just copying what you read in an instruction manual, or delivering the status quo, or doing what everyone else is talking about and doing. With the internet, any documentation on the right way to do something, especially SEM and SEO, is outdated by the time it's published.

And Google's "what matters and what doesn't" rules aren't published at all; experimentation and ongoing research are the only way to ensure the great results we deliver.

We're fond of saying that most of what we do isn't rocket science. Dr. Einstein, tongue planted firmly in cheek, would have said the same about his work. And he's still the guy we all go to when it comes to relativity... and space... and time.

It's time for your business to get serious about its Internet Presence. We're here to help.

-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC

-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President, Answer Guy Central Business Support Services

Posted via web from crockettdunn's posterous

ooh! http://ping.fm/8YCi0 I've always wanted to race on a NASCAR track without a helmet!

SEO/SEM: Are People Searching For the Words You're Paying For? http://post.ly/RkoM

SEO/SEM: Are People Searching For the Words You're Paying For?

http://cdllc.blogspot.com/2010/03/seosem-are-people-searching-for-words.html

Business owners generally have a pretty good idea about what to say to their customers and what's important to them. Why? Because they know them.

But what about web-based, potential customers? Can you know customers you don't have yet, can't identify, and even once you acquire them might never meet?

Internet search-engine-based marketing (or SEM, of which SEO is a part) is different than making yourself available to people on terra firma. You need to know what people are looking for and how that relates to your business. It's not for the faint of heart, either.  You almost certainly want to hire an experienced, expert SEO/SEM consultant (and yes, that's us)

We could turn this post into an advertisement for what we do, but let's instead point you at a freebie: here is some information on "choosing key phrases". Go ahead and read it; we'll wait . . .

Head spinning? Asking yourself how you can check all that stuff? Let us explain the process:

When you hire CDLLC to do your SEO, the first thing that we do is look at the key phrases you're thinking about marketing. We look at your site, your industry, and similar or competitive businesses, and we create a list of keywords that we know we can use to boost your presence.

Why? because if you're an obstetrician (for example) and want to rank high for the phrase OB/GYN, OB-GYN, OB GYN, or OBGYN you'll find three problems:

1. competition for high rankings on generic phrases is tremendous
2. most people who search on any of those phrases are not really the people who are seeking your services
3. the four phrases look the same to humans, but are all different to Google.

We address these issues by gathering information on the words that you believe are important. We tell you how many people are searching for these words, and how competitive the fight for each word is.

Here is a simplified version of what it looks like:

Top of the list (competitive, popular phrases):

Bottom of list (unpopular, noncompetitive phrases):

And then the fun begins: we make sure you're spending your money going after the right traffic, in the right way. Which is fun for you because we do it for free, and fun for us because we understand and like this SEO stuff.

It's only after you have a good strategy and can spend your money wisely that we go to work. Yes, that's right; the research phase is on us. Contact us now if you like. We love working this magic.

-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC

-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President
Answer Guy Central Business Support Services

Posted via web from crockettdunn's posterous

today I met a llama in calistoga and it kissed me on the face.

doc has me doing exercise called woodpeckers... looks like a crazy person taunting the wall. A mom & toddler were making fun of me.

today is good.

reading http://ping.fm/azCMg Turns out physicists don't care which model of time is 'real.' only what works for explaining reality.

reading http://ping.fm/azCMg . Promises to define "time" as a real "something" (not an abstraction). We'll see.

"Zen and the Art of Restoring your Work Enviromnent."

http://cdllc.blogspot.com/2010/03/avoiding-6-hour-windows-7-hunker-down.html
"...hoarding.  That's what this all boils down to.  The human desire to hang on to attachments and not lose anything— that's what keeps us stuck and creates a problems.  And letting go of attachments?  That is the key to, "Zen and the Art of Restoring your Work Environment."

 

This month, many power users found their pre-release copies of Windows 7 expiring. As with many software pre-release-becomes-the-real-thing software events, a smooth upgrade (you know—so you keep your apps and settings?), was not an option.

Time for the dreaded custom/advanced installation. The "clean install."

Let's step back a moment and begin to look at this Zen view of upgrading one's OS and restoring one's work environment.  Over the years we've done hundreds of OS installs for ourselves, and hundreds more for clients. So, yeah, we're qualified to speak a little on the topic. Here goes:

Change is painful. We all like to be settled. We have routines we're comfortable with, we like knowing where things are, how things work, to whom what responsibilities apply, and when things happen. This applies in both our "real" and virtual worlds. (And of course, telling those apart seems to get harder every day.)

So when you boot up your computer after a clean operating system installation and see a blank slate (no email, apps, bookmarks, memorized passwords... none of your precious "stuff!"), it can be a little overwhelming. And the temptation is to hunker down and reinstall everything just exactly perfectly right back where it should be.

This is what we call, "The  6 Hour Hunker-Down."

RESIST! Yes it may seem like the right thing to do, but if you can tolerate a little discomfort (that which does not kill us . . . ), you will be rewarded.

Take it easy, one step at a time. If you have planned properly (see below*), there is no rush.

Here's the big secret to keeping your sanity and not withdrawing from the world for hours, maybe days.  This is the trick to a Zen method of reinstalling your work environment:
 
REINSTALL YOUR STUFF ON AN AS-NEEDED BASIS.

Seriously: you will save a lot of time, and likely some misery. And you will have avoided the all-too-common mistake of copying all of your old garbage (you know the stuff you have been meaning to "clean up" on your hard drive, in your bookmarks/favorites, on your email system?) to your new work environment.

Quick case study:

Installed Windows 7. Everything is different; all my stuff is missing. Most of my day is spent in a web browser (hosted software services are no longer just a VC buzz-word and a promise), but there are some things I don't use the web for.  Some desktop apps I depend on.  For example, I still use MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, and a handful of other programs that don't have web-based alternatives I like (hey that's just me).

So this afternoon I reinstalled my favorite business tool, MS Outlook. I configured my email accounts, restored/configured my primary and archive PST files, and then I stopped.  Seriously I just stopped and resumed my business as usual.

There's lots more to do, but none of it is immediately critical. For example, my email handling "rules" included a lot of outdated, no-longer-necessary stuff, so I chose to trash them all and rebuild each rule AS NEEDED, when I see emails come in that would have previously been sorted, moved, or whatever.

This time I even trashed my web bookmarks/favorites and re-built those as I went about my real business (of course I have an emergency backup). Seriously: why carry with you hundreds of links you've long forgotten about, and may even point to resources that no longer exist?  In the physical world, that would be considered a borderline mental disorder.  Compulsive hoarding I think it's called.

Web development software? Graphic design apps? I'll install these when I next use them. And it'll happen, but . . . I don't need everything today.
Back to hoarding.  That's what this all boils down to.  The human desire to hang on to attachments and not lose anything— that's what keeps us stuck and creates a lot of problems.  And letting go of attachments?  That is the key to, "Zen and the Art of Restoring a Work Environment."

That's my $0.02 on reinstalling a work environment. Now please read the fine print that follows.

*Although this article talks about a philosophy for reinstalling one's work environment after a clean OS install, it DOES NOT cover process specifics. Always back up everything on your computer and work with a consultant before performing any software upgrade.

-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC

-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President
Answer Guy Central Business Support Services

Posted via web from crockettdunn's posterous

Hey look my Windows 7 is labeled made in Puerto Rico.