I'll be traveling to Las Vegas this weekend for a friend's wedding (and hopefully taking some time to hike in Zion National Park, too). To compensate for my slow blogging, a trademark roundup:
- If you're not using Google's News Archive for competitive intelligence, you're missing out. It's an impressive resource, though I hope they continue to add sources.
- Speaking of roundups, Natasha Robinson is doing a fantastic job on her blog. She pointed out:
- Duggtrends, which tracks Digg stories predicted to make the homepage and those that miss
- From OMMA, an article on Models for Change in the world of marketing agencies
- Fascinating research about viral marketing from HP's Information Dynamics Lab
- Another great tool that we've been neglecting is MSN's Adcenter KW Tool. It's a solid competitor to Yahoo!'s and deserves more attention than it gets. As I plug in terms, I feel very confident it's giving me good numbers.
- Pay attention to Mr. Tabke's words of wisdom - Links within NOSCRIPT tags don't pass link love. I know some clever coders who are going to be very sad.
- Ugggh... Political corruption in San Francisco may block Google & Earthlink's efforts to provide free wifi. A sad tale of politics in the US.
- Seriously, no one wants the $6,000+ Marketing Pilgrim scholarship and recognition from everyone in the world of SEO? Send Andy your submissions, folks!
- Apparently, 1and1.com Web Hosting Sucks. Thanks for the heads up, Michael :)
- Jon Mendez is at it again, this time revealing the brilliant simplicity of limiting choice to promote higher conversion rates - Choice Kills.
- Ian McAnerin's on top of the links vs. content debate.
- If you want to really understand LSI and Co-Occurrence theory from a math perspective, Dr. Garcia's just released his latest fast track on the subject.
- According to Joe, search strategies are being taken more seriously by c-level executives and investors at the largest firms in the world.
- Kim's outing some of the tech world's sexiest writers; Nick disagrees and says blogging is never sexy, despite our narcissism (via Lisa).
- Paul Graham, one of my very favorites, has a new article on the mistakes that kill startups.
- Founder Jimmy Wales says that any editing of Wikipedia's entries by marketing, PR or SEO firms is dead wrong; Todd Defren thinks he's misguided - I agree.
- I was sad when Neil & Cameron's blog was down at the start of the week. Luckily, they've got it back up and running with a great post on creative advertising. I love how they integrated the Flickr slideshow.
- Oh dear no... Barry is running the SEW blog - run for your lives!
- Added - Dustin Woodard took up my challenge and ran some of his own analysis on a smaller sample of the analytics sites from yesterday.
That should be more than enough to keep busy with :) Any good ones I missed?
Geez, rand - we should have really coordinated this just a little better (i'm in SEATTLE for the weekend...) my bad, i forgot to let you know in advance that you needed to let down your really close friend getting married in vegas;)
speaking of getting married, my Fiance (you know, the one you like to argue about the value of degrees with;) - was talking about going down to Zion with some buddies this weekend in my absense- maybe you'll run into him:)
I was just in Arches last weekend - and a word of advice, southern UT has been experiencing crazy rain/flash flooding - just be careful where you go out there if it shows any signs of rain.
and don't worry - i can always take away Barry's keys to the blog if need be!
Rand, regarding Wikipedia, i can't say i agree more, been blogging about it here and here as well, and I am starting to get more pissed every time I read about it.
The noscript thing isn't quite that clear cut. I use javascript menus on a few sites and include the navigation in noscript tags with no ill effects. Thats what they are there for.
Rand, hope you have a great time here in Vegas. Weather is perfect right now (as well as the forecast). Zion's is probably going to offer great hiking weather too, but if you can't make it to Zion's, Red Rocks and Valley of Fire are both less than a 30 minute drive from downtown.
Cheers and we'll see your posts next week.
-Jason aka roadies
BTW - Csandb is right. Bryce is also great park to visit for any outdoorsman. As is Arches Nat'l Park (further North/East by Moab). And you'll want to catch Canyonlands sometime too. Sure you only got a weekend? ;)
Rand,
Thanks for the links. They should keep me busy for a while.
I live only a few hours away from Zion National Park. If you haven't ever done so you should check out Bryce Canyon sometime.
Far out! I only live about an hour away from Zion National Park. It is a wonderful place. The county CVB is one of my company's clients. Check out their site about the area at www.utahstgeorge.com, and I also do a humble daily blog for them.
Rand, I sincerely hope that you enjoy your time in the park. Oh yeah, Vegas is fun, too!
Eeww Vegas... too many lights.. the park sounds nice
Thanks for the shout-out,
For those that don't have access to Microsoft Adcenter.... if you haven't done so already, you should give the tools in the MSN AdLabs a whirl. Pretty cool stuff there (I know, I'm late, but I just saw the June write-up fromSEO Book recently).
Google website Optimizer