Yesterday flyte welcomed Carolyn Phillips to the crew as our new project manager.
Right now she’s job shadowing Beth, learning about flyte, our clients, and the projects we have in the hopper. However, with over 10 years in project management and the experience that only comes from running your own business, Carolyn will be ready to fly solo any day now.
Plus, she’s got some kickin’ mittens.
Learn more about Carolyn and the rest of the flyte crew on our staff page.
Are you looking to market your business on the Internet, but your concerned about being labeled as a spammer? Or you’re not sure how you can compete against companies that may hire "black hat" search engine optimizers to rank artificially higher at Google?
Are you interested in finding ways in reaching out to like-minded consumers who value social-responsibility in a company?
This Friday (December 1st, 2006) I’ll be putting on a workshop called Internet Marketing for Values-Based Businesses. It’s part of the all-day Fall Leadership Conference put on by MEBSR (Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility).
The theme for this year is "Practical Tools for Business Success." Now that’s something everyone can get behind, no matter how socially responsible you may be…or how far you have to go.
Besides my workshop, there will be two keynote speakers, Kevin Hancock of Hancock Lumber and John Warner, the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry at UMass Lowell.
Date: 12/1/06
Time: 8am – 5pm
Place: University of Maine, Hutchinson Center, Belfast (Directions)
Cost: $150 members, $175 non-members, $35 students, $0 if you sneak in the back.
Just kidding about that sneak in the back part. That wouldn’t be very socially responsible of you now.
You can call 207.338.8908 or download the conference PDF.
Hope to see you there!
Clients often ask me why their opt-in email newsletters are getting blocked, while emails targeting under-endowed men and promoting penny stocks are getting through.
eWeek, which is become one of my must-reads, has an interesting article about the recent spam surge and finds that much of it is being generated by Russian hackers that are exploiting–what else?–Windows computers.
One thing that’s frustrating is that these hackers are getting email addresses off of infected computers, so that it’s impossible to hide any email address, even if you don’t post it to the Web.
You can read ‘Pump-and-Dump’ Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders here.
Although it’s been a few weeks since we’ve moved into our new abode at 136 Commercial St., Portland, Maine, we’re still not 100% settled in.
Regardless, I thought I’d share a few photos before we head out for Turkey dinners with our loved ones.
Enjoy!
Our front office.
One view of Commercial St.
Why Rich isn’t getting as much work done as he used to. It’s hard to make out, but in the top right quadrant is DiMillo’s floating restaurant. Closer up is J’s Oyster bar, which has free oysters during happy hour during February.
Mmmmm…free oysters.
Tonight I’ll be on 207, Maine’s evening news program, talking about Web sites that make finding the perfect gift easier, or locating the watch or earring a celebrity was wearing (or a cheap knock-off), or how to find the best price on that new XBox 360 video game for your favorite Web marketing blogger.
I even get off a cheap shot at Tom Cruise…unless they edit it out.
If you’re in the southern Maine area tune into channel 6 (NBC) at 7pm.
The other day I blogged about a new site flyte launched for Stress Directions. I mentioned that this was the first of several Web sites we’re launching using a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla.
A CMS allows Web site owners with little or no HTML skills to be able to add, edit and delete content on their Web site. This may include changes to copy, or adding photos, uploading PDFs, adding streaming audio or video and more. You can even set publish and remove dates for press releases, calendar events or special promotions.
Many CMSs (including Joomla) allow different levels of access to the site, both on the front and back ends. Contributors may be able to add or edit pages (with or without administrative oversight), while administrators can make changes to the navigation, choose new page templates, add or remove contributors and more. In addition, creating member-only sections and providing unique username/passwords to site visitors is built into the product.
We chose Joomla in part because of the fact it’s open-source and has a big user group; that ensures that if Joomla proper doesn’t have a functionality a client is looking for it’s probable that a 3rd party has created a module that can be plugged in to enhance the product. Examples are events calendars, e-commerce options, contact forms and more. If you can imagine it, someone’s build it.
One very cool Joomla feature is that the site’s content is held in a database and served up into multiple, attractive page templates (designed by flyte…’natch). This makes it easy to create printer-friendly pages. In fact, Joomla allows you to print or save every page as a PDF if you choose.
It also makes future Web site redesigns less costly as you can just apply a new template and appear to have a fresh new look to your site.
We have another two or three Joomla sites in production right now, and possibly a few more coming down the road. I believe this is because people are looking to take more ownership and responsibility over their Web sites. The idea of being able to update your site as you see fit is a compelling one. If you do find that you’re constantly sending updates to your Web developer, a CMS may pay for itself. However, for a small site or one that doesn’t change often there may be no return on investment.
If you have a question on whether a CMS would be right for you please let us know.
Search Engine Roundtable reports that there has been a documented case of a site being banned from search engine results because of using a link exchange.
The search engine in question was Live Search (the artist formerly known as MSN search.) The email from the MSN Spam Team (as republished from Search Engine Watch forums) goes:
Your site is acquiring links through posting to or exchanging links
with sites unrelated to your site content. Techniques which attempt to
acquire unrelated spam links in order to increase ranking are
considered spam and your site has been excluded from our index as
results. Please contact us once you’ve removed these links and we will
reevaluate.
SE Roundtable goes on to say that they believe Google doesn’t ban sites for using link exchanges, but that unrelated links to your site are just not counted.
The bottom line: find relevant incoming links to your site and don’t bother with link exchanges.
Rich Brooks
Link This
I noticed something interesting this weekend as I was preparing for a 207 segment on online shopping. There were a couple of articles I wanted to read that were at the NY Times Web site; unfortunately, they were archived and cost $5 to get them. Since I’m paid $20 for each appearance (you think I did this out of the goodness of my heart?) it wasn’t in my budget.
Hoping that someone had reprinted the article or quoted it at great length, I Googled the title.
It appeared to be the article as it appeared at the NY Times. I clicked on the link and…
Voila! Instant access.
I’m not sure if this is a glitch in the system, but if you need an article on the NY Times and can’t pony up the $5, be sure to Google the title first.
Unfortunately, some really cool projects we work on aren’t easy to show people. They’re behind a member only section or it’s backend programming that’s only exciting to us geeks.
Recently we completed a programming job for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA.) Some of the highlights included:
Like I said, not much in the way of visuals, but cool tools that make people’s lives easier. If there’s too much administrative work on your desk, why not give us a call and we’ll see if we can’t automate your workload a bit.
Are you an HR manager dealing with high absentee rate, sick employees and an unproductive workforce? Did you know stress might be the problem?
On Monday, flyte launched a Web site for Stress Directions, The Stress Knowledge Company™. It was our first site build entirely on the Content Management System Joomla, but more on that in another post.
Stress Directions (SDI) works with BellSouth, IBM, Gillette, the U.S. State Department and other companies and organizations to identify the patterns and costs of organizational stress.
How much is stress costing your company? Take SDI’s Stress Cost Calculator to find out. Did you know that 50% of absenteeism is due to stress?!?
SDI offers a host of products and services for the HR professional to understand, manage and reduce stress in her workforce. If absenteeism, turnover, health care costs or worker comp is hurting your bottom line, be sure to check out Stress Directions today.
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