Dave Burke : Freelance .NET Web Developer specializing in Online Communities

New Everyman Post Title Format. I always liked seeing Everyman Archives all lined up in a neat little column, with the subject format of “Everyman Links for [date]” binding them together as a unified whole.  But there are some problems with a date-based title. The date tells you nothing about the day’s contents, nor does it create any motivation to open the post and read it. Another reason is for better SEO performance with more searchable keywords in the post and page title. We’re actually going full-circle back to how Everyman Links began in 2005 as “Geek Smatterings: [topics].” If you scroll to the bottom of the Everyman Archive list you’ll see what I’m talking about. Regardless the title, thank you so much for reading Everyman Links.

Flexible Pricing Strategies. A few pricing strategy nuggets in the new Ebook Fixed to Flexible from Todd Sattersten. One example used was Evernote charging two prices: $0 with constraints and $5 for pretty much no constraints, with 31,000 paying customers enabling 1.97 million to use it for free.  Another example of flexible pricing is a business that converts out-of-print texts into electronic documents for religious scholars, with customers declaring what they would pay to have the work made available. The bids are accumulated and when enough bids are placed to cover the cost of production, the company goes to work. With the real data from the customer bids the company can create a demand curve and determine what retail price will maximize profits. This is an interesting Jeff Bezos quote, “There are two kinds of companies—those that work to raise prices and those that work to lower them.”

Qualities of the Successful Freelancer’s Website. “A neglected website might not seem like a big deal if you’re flush with work. But what happens when, Zeus forbid, work slows?”  According to FreelanceSwitch qualities of a successful website include outlining the work process for prospective clients to give them an idea of what they can expect of you. Work examples are recommended, along with describing your projects in detail, the latter of which has always been my approach. Listing pricing is suggested, and I may add that in my services wiki. Having a blog is advised, of course, but “just having a blog isn’t enough if you want to build a community around your site. Regular posting of useful content will establish you as a trusted expert and extend your network of trusting fans and friends.” Usability, having a personality and easy contact completes the list.

They’re Turning Off Blog Comments. Interesting development in blog comments with Engadget and a few other mainline blogs turning off their comments. On the idea that “a blog is not a blog without comments,” I like the Engadget quote, “Our commenting community makes up only a small percentage of our readership (and the bad eggs an even smaller part of that number), so while they may be loud, they don’t speak for most people who come to Engadget looking for tech news.” Since restricting my blog comments to registered site members about six months ago I’ve received no complaints, no SEO link garbage and have been seeing no less traffic. Visitors who take a minute to register also mean a lot to me, who by the act of registering form a stronger relationship with me from which we both could possibly benefit.

On Saving Things that Shouldn’t Be Saved. Seth Godin at his best short, sweet and impactful. “Who will save book publishing? What will save the newspapers? If by save you mean, ‘what will keep things just as they are?’ then the answer is nothing will. It's over. We need to get past this idea of saving.”

Imagine there’s no website. It’s easy if you try. Mitch Joel takes a business from brochureware to content publisher. “As brands continue to try to out-design competitors, there could also be a bigger, scarier realization: your website is not important anymore.” “Brands still get caught up in the functionality and minutiae of what their website is. All of those shiny bells and whistles won't amount to anything if you're not constantly and consistently publishing content that adds value to the consumer's life.”

Four social networking pitfalls and how to avoid them.  Four Social Networking pitfalls tonight for you include 1) Not updating regularly. 2) Your profile is lacking in information. People want to know about you, what your interests are, and to see you. Always include a photo. 3) Not thinking relationships first, and 4) It’s not about sell, sell, sell. The more you share, the greater your results will be.

Scoble on addictive app qualities. The Scobleizer lists many of the features which makes apps like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare addictive. “On Foursquare, every time I check in it gives me points. If I check in a new place that it didn’t know about, it gives me a ton of points. It’s rewarding my behavior.” “Twitter puts all sorts of things in your face, like how many Tweets you’ve done, how many people you’re following…” “Anytime someone uses your @name in a Tweet you see it.” And he advises, 1) Serve your users’ narcissism. 2) Measure behavior and report it. 3) Add status for behaviors. 4) Make multiple status reports. 5) Make undesired behavior seem lame (like a default Twitter icon.) 6) Make it easy to share success with others. 7) Make an API for studying behavior. 8) Make it easy to invite others to join my addiction, and 9) Give people more hooks to addict their friends.

Must-see TV relationship. Someday I’ll load Foursquare on my iPhone, but in the meantime I can still be fascinated with the potential of the Foursquare Bravo partnership where Foursquare will integrate show personalities and their city tips and Bravo badges into the game experience. “The genius behind the Bravo deal is that, on top of introducing a plethora of new Bravo-themed badges, the cable TV network is turning the personalities behind its hit reality TV shows — think The Millionaire Matchmaker, Top Chef, The Real Housewives, Top Chef Masters and Shear Genius — into content creators. The reality show celebrities will share their tips and to-dos, essentially serving as curators of city-specific information that fans can follow and practice in real life.”

Social Influence Marketing Trends. That’s a fancy phrase alright (with it’s own acronym, no less! SIM, for Social Influence Marketing), but the slideshow will explain why it’s important. Good marketing food for thought, like allowing the community to shape and evolve your brand. Let go of your content and the sanctity of product pages. Reaching the customer through the three influencer types: peer, social and key influencers. The continuum of brand voice -> social voice –> social brand. Tweets are about influence.

iPad smatterings. This post pretty much captures the iPad basic value points as I see them. “It’s for consumption, not creation. It's a big version of the iPod Touch, not the iPhone. Perfect for watching stuff on, with some other functionality like email, but not a computer.” “Newspapers and magazines will be able to develop really engaging content, which is much more visual then the current versions. Allow people to subscribe like podcasts but for a fee. Remember this video that was doing the rounds before Christmas?” And he lists the very cool Sports Illustrated video we looked at in our 12/9/09 Everyman. Worth watching again as a reminder of why mainstream media publishers are salivating over the iPad as their chance for a do-over, this time with people actually paying for content.

Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge. Thought provoking article on the long-term storage of today’s electronic knowledge and how hard-drives just don’t cut it. Interesting anecdote on how a retired engineer was uniquely qualified to retrieve NASA images from magnetic tapes of the 60’s. “With some scientific experiments now generating petabytes of data, preserving it all is already becoming a major challenge.”

Blog as Hub. Again. We touched on this in our last Everyman, but using your blog as a social media hub is an important marketing advantage and brought home by an excellent post from Danny Brown who’s doing a series on Blog as Hub this week. “All you’re doing is renting space and abiding by a landlord’s rule with Facebook. But your blog – especially a self-hosted one – is your rulebook. For this alone, it’s the ideal platform to create a social media hub.” “But there’s a lot more to your blog acting as your hub than not giving over control to third parties. By using your blog as your home-base and connecting the dots to your social outposts, you’re essentially making yourself both resource and resource centre.”

Content Marketing Concentrate. 10 Tips for Content Marketing Success is concentrated advice on how to best use content in marketing our business. Advertising is content. Content is advertising. Ensure all content passes the “So what?” test, or what should the reader take away, what benefit, why should they listen? Speed and agility count. Personality is essential. Tone is more important than perfection. Content should forge connections. Consistency is key.

Conversion is Job #1. This DZone post lists 10 key practices for optimizing conversion rates, like design credibility, good navigation, memorable slogan, calls to action, and so forth. A scan-through of the points is a good reminder that conversion should be a driving force behind everything we do online.

Foursquare, the game. The more I read about location-based social services the more I see their potential. This MarketingProfs post lists some of the ways businesses can exploit Foursquare. The Mayor dines for free, local businesses can team up for scavenger hunts, deals for first-time check-ins. Check-in four times and get coffee on the fifth visit for free.

Blog as Hub. The main theme of this piece is worth remembering. Blogging should be the hub of your social media efforts. An accompanying slideshow gives examples of how to maximize your blog in social media. Basic but still a good use of 90 seconds.

Smart mud. I heard about this on various media, including the Wall Street Journal today podcast, how a mixture of mud and water could replace plastic and all that that implies. “Takuzo Aida and his team mixed a few grams of clay with 100 grams of water in the presence of tiny quantities of a thickening agent called sodium polyacrylate and an organic ‘molecular glue’. The thickening agent teases apart the clay into thin sheets, increasing its surface area and allowing the glue to get a better hold on it. This means that, while the mixture is almost 98 per cent water, it forms a transparent and elastic hydrogel with sufficient mechanical strength to make a 3.5-centimetre-wide self-standing bridge.”

Geoengineering tonight. This is bigger than smart mud. Consider the potential of large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. “Published in the most recent issue of the journal Science (sub. req’d.), researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands have discovered a copper-based catalyst that can literally pull carbon dioxide out of thin air.”

Rewarding best clients, but not with a Starbucks card. Pricing Strategies Gone Wrong describes Starbucks’ recent price increase of premium coffee drinks as a misguided pricing strategy, similar to the NYTimes plan to charge frequent readers. “NY Times executives 'want to create a system that would have little effect on the millions of occasional visitors to the site, while trying to cash in on the loyalty of more devoted readers.' Said another way, the Times wants to assuage infrequent users while gouging loyal readers.  This doesn’t make sense if the ultimate goal is to increase readership. It won’t be offering access to exclusive content, additional services, or any other value-added benefits for its fee.  It’s simply charging more for more usage.  Won’t this discourage additional usage?  Particularly when there are so many other sources for content? Why not, instead, institute a pricing strategy that encourages digital subscribers?  Make a digital subscription worth something and charge for it.”

The New York Times does growlers. The New York Times posts an article titled Growlers, the New Old Way to Tote Your Beer.  Now this is an article for which I would have paid to read!

The new community board. I liked this photo comparison of a traditional pinup community board to a TweetDeck screenshot. And you know the “TweetDeck community board” is going to evolve pretty radically in our future.

Top 7 Icon Search Engines. Because you can’t have too many icons.

Pitching the tent. The look on grandma’s face is the kicker to this Awkward Family Photo.

The Life and Times of an Event Website. An interesting account of how a website combined with social media was used before, during and after a journalism conference describing both successes and areas for improvement. An example of something in need of improvement was the “interview another attendee” pre-event effort, a good idea which failed because the tools to capture and post the interviews weren’t simple enough. Also, the site launch at two weeks before the event was far too late in the process. The event web site included an attendee list with the participants’ social links, a Twitter search widget showing a real-time feed, a Facebook fan box, Ustream video feed, a wiki and more. Post-event web media consisted of a LinkedIn Group so attendees could continue with the discussion.  Tips on helping things go smoothly during the conference included agreement on a hashtag for the event, performing proper meeting venue coordination to ensure Wi-Fi and port access, and a tech table with a dedicated laptop and projector to display the live Twitter hashtag feed.

Real World SEO. Justin Etheredge asks, ”What’s wrong with my blog and why does it rank so poorly with Google?”  He received a lot of high-quality site analysis for free from his readers. The result is an extremely valuable SEO learning tool to walk through the items mentioned in the comments and see how our sites measure up.

Twitter is a waste of time for… I enjoyed this post on who Twitter is good for and for whom it’s a waste of time. It’s good for businesses who sell “passion products,” things related to peoples’ hobbies, vocations and interests. It’s also good for celebrities and breaking news. And narcissists. The post continues, “On the other hand, Twitter is a waste of time for…Everyone Else.” Blogs are better for telling your story. The post conclusion is worth remembering. “Exposure is always good, but how hard we have to work to get that exposure may prove, for some, to be out of line with what they're getting for all the effort.”

China Ascendant. We all know how China is poised to dominate the world. Here’s a list of recent news stories on China and the phenomenal progress it is making in a variety of areas. Also on the topic of China, I listened to an excellent On Point podcast this week titled China as the New Global Power.

Website Approach One. This Duct Tape Marketing post describes Five Personalities a successful website must employ.  Some good things here. Strategy first, or what your web site should do.  Design supports strategy, moving the visitor effortlessly to the information and results you want. As for the Developer personality, “There are many ways to integrate widgets, plug-ins, communities, ratings, subscription, comments, customer portals, and membership only sections to increase engagement and usability. Successful web sites employ the right mix.” Marketing comes next. “The marketer is involved in all phases to some degree, but is ultimately unleashed for good when the site is live, keeping content and SEO plans moving forward, traffic and user analysis, and integrate the organization’s social media strategy.” Finally, it is the User personality determines ultimate success or failure.

Answer these questions for your website visitors. This Web Worker Daily post is about ways to market your business, but I think the best takeaway is a list of questions you need to answer for visitors when they experience your website. What is this site about? What does this person/company do? How much does the service cost? How does it work? What else do I need to know? How can I purchase it? How can I contact this person/company? Should I keep up with this person/company? If so, how?

Find what’s working and do more of it. The Simplest Secret to Business Growth brought to you by Duct Tape Marketing.

The Blogger’s Influence is Made Not Born. Jay Baer on how bloggers are different from reporters.  He lists an important point that I mentioned back in 2004, something Jay Rosen said at BloggerCon III, “Writers for a newspaper, for instance, draw off the credibility and trust of the newspaper.  In blogging, that credibility has to come from the writer.  The magic is in what successful bloggers learn about trust, integrity, building a brand, an audience, from zero.” Jay Baer writes, “Guess how many readers this blog had originally?  If you guessed zero, you’re right. And the truth is that every blog started the same way. Brogan. Mashable. MarketingProfs. Solis. All of them started with zero readers.” 

Branded Community Success Factors. Excellent guidance from Econsultancy on how communities based on brands can best succeed. Focus. “brands should identify how they relate to the lives of their customers. With that, they can focus in on building communities around subjects that are relevant to both their brands and their customers' lives.” Branding. “The brand can't be the experience; it has to be integrated into the experience.” Functionality. “To win, brands have to build functionality relevant to the community's focus that differentiates the community and gives members a good reason to keep coming back on a regular basis.” Participation and Moderation. Creativity. “Brands often have incredible assets that can be used to create compelling community experiences. Contests, exclusive content, special events and rewards programs can all be employed in creative ways to entice consumers to join and participate.”

More Photo Resources. I may be needing a lot of photos for an app I’m thinking about doing and will be checking out these 12 Amazing and Free Stock Photo Resources.  I use iStockphoto pretty much exclusively, but for a whole lotta pics even $1 per photo would be cost prohibitive. I’ll be happy to provide attribution, so this Creative Commons Flickr search service might become my photo resource buddy.

Let’s go mobile! The January 2010 Edition. This WebApp.Net javascript framework for creating mobile web applications looks good.  Check out the demo. And for lucky BlogEngine.NET users, check out rtur.net’s newest BE.NET mobile theme.

To Twitter Tolerance and Beyond. I’m going through a stage where I find Twitter to be damned annoying. It’s fun to interact with long-time cyberbuds and the cool Twitteratti I’ve met through Twitter, but the noise is becoming deafening. I am now using Twitter as more of a human-mediated RSS service and outbound as a marketing tool. Yet there are indeed smart uses for Twitter, 10 in this post that include interacting with customers, employees and the competition, organize tweetups, run special deals and promotions, look for leads and share expertise to build credibility.

Rubel Cubed. Steve Rubel in an info-rich video interview on the future of social media with several interesting concepts like “shared mutual gain,” a social media approach so that both you and your community members benefit. “RSS still works pretty well,” he says.  Agreed. Uses Instapaper on his iPhone. “The world is moving toward an age of streams.” “There’s no universal standard for Social Media measurement. Think about vectors of reach, engagement, reputation, all of which are ladders of trust.” “You have to understand people and business (along with technology but to a lesser degree) to see what trends are forming. I have a group in their 20’s and 30’s that I meet with regularly to help spot future trends.” “Digital is not optional, it’s mandatory. There’s not going to be any tangible media in five years.” It was a 9 minute video. Took me two sittings, but well worth watching.

The #1 Problem Most Brands Have. This is an important point from Mitch Joel, I think. “It's not about profit. It's not about customer service. It's not about inventory. It's about consistency.” “The brands that master consistency win. Especially when that consistency happens on top of a product or service that people love (and will talk about).”

Not better, different. A Duct Tape Marketing post titled Stop Trying To Be Better Than the Competition. “So many business owners or would be start-ups sit around this time of year trying to figure out how they can be better than the competition – better product, better service, better features, and, the real killer, better price. Heck, some even strive to be ‘best’ in class. What they should be doing is figuring out how they can simply be different than the competition.”

Approaching the Minority Report UI. Interactive projector instantly transforms any surface into a touch screen.

Treadmill possibilities. This crude version 1.0 of a treadmill-driven transport machine has definite possibilities.

Call to Action Vacuum. My web properties are sooo Call to Action deficient. It’s embarrassing and something I plan to address in 2010. Here’s a motivating post displaying a ton of Call to Action examples.

The AJAX Collection. I didn’t know about ajax.wespai.com, at present listing 570 AJAX, jQuery and otherwise juicy client-side controls and plug-ins. Arranged by category. I think I’ll subscribe to the RSS feed and hope the collection keeps growing.

More Google Penetration with Nexus. Smart observations from Mitch Joel on Google’s real motives for the Nexus phone. “The Nexus One's success in the marketplace is going to be predominantly benchmarked against how many units it sold compared to the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, etc... Big mistake. Google could care less about how many units are sold (or how much each unit sells for). Google cares about the data. Having a phone in every person's hand running Google applications on a mobile Google OS (hello Android) powered by Google search is going to give Google deity-like powers. It's not just going to know what you're looking for, it's going to know where you are, who you are connected to, what you do, where you're going, what you like, what you're taking pictures of (hello Google Goggles) and oh, so much more. What is that data worth? Even if the penetration of the Nexus One hits under five percent of the entire mobile marketplace, that's still going to be a healthy enough data sample to have some pretty astounding insights into human nature and behaviour.”

Social Media people know two things. A great lead paragraph to a post describing the simplicity and marketing value of sharing bookmarks in delicious. "Anyone who’s spent time in the social media space knows two things. You are what you share. And your product is your content. So it’s no surprise that agencies (of all kinds) are constantly attempting to create content, apps, tools and what not (in addition to their blogs) in order to show their chops, add value to clients and otherwise make it look like they know what they’re talking about."

Social Branding Nuggets. Guest Conversation Agent post on social branding with some excellent nuggets that I’ll package up for optimal effect. “You have to understand not only what you think you are, but what [clients] think you are and can be, as well as why they really care.” “Branding is, of course, the process of articulating your identity in ways people see, understand, and, most importantly, care about enough to pay for.” “Social branding means discovering how your customers perceive your brand as part of their brand. It means looking at why they use your products, and how, and then tuning what you do to resonate more strongly.” “Your message—the encapsulation of who you are, for whom, and why people should care—has to be short... and shareable.” “The more connected people feel to you, and the more included they are in the stewardship of your brand, the more powerfully they can leverage their networks on behalf of yours.” And finally, “Evolution is what social branding is all about.”

Play Foursquare anywhere. Opening up the city selection list is a pretty big deal for Foursquares, or Foursquarers, or whatever. Funny, I’m starting to hear more about Gowalla than Foursquare these days. Haven’t done the iPhone download with either, but will let you know.  On the other hand, I did download this pretty interesting-looking Discovery Channel app about a week ago.  Haven’t opened it yet…

Location Awareness Tonight. On the subject of Foursquare (and Gowalla), here’s a Duct Tape Marketing post on why location awareness in the mobile space can be a huge win for small business. Hyper local, tech savvy evangelists. People are physically checking in to your business. You can make offers. Track and reward. Automated Customer Relations Management data. Disseminating information about your business through integration with Twitter and Facebook.

Sneaky Seesmic. Quite the Wile Coyote move of Seesmic acquiring Ping.FM, whose users will be able to send updates to an Acme box-load of social networks through Ping.fm's email, SMS and IM gateways.

Definitive Community Measurement Guide. I don’t declare many posts as a “definitive guide” to anything, but this Outspoken Media post is as close as they come on measuring community.  When you may think your community isn’t growing as much as you think it should be, read through the various community metrics and see what areas you can build on.

Web Designer Pricing Guidelines. Also titled, “Be Careful Who You Feature.” A well-done Noupe post on pricing guidelines and featured web designers and their going rates. What was interesting about this post was that you started into the comments and began seeing a consistent flow of (I’m summarizing here), “Those designers SUCK!  They are WAY overpaid.”  One of the designers featured even threw up a “We’re currently undergoing scheduled maintenance.  Please try back later.” The guy’s a web designer, for christ’s sake. Scheduled maintenance?  Too funny.  That was two days ago and the “scheduled maintenance” page is still there. The moral is, market the heck out of yourself, charge what’s fair, and if you want to write an authoritative post on web design pricing, be careful who you link to.

The dog has had enough of that stupid baby. As usual, the subtitle of this Awkward Family photo trips the LOL meter.  I love those little legs sticking out.

Community Manager slash Chief Branding Officer. The roles of the Community Manager seems to overlap with those of the Chief Branding Officer. Many of us small business types have to perform the roles of both, though we don’t hold either job title. I know I wear those hats with Sueetie, for instance. Community Managers “combine Web expertise with the ability to filter and create lots of content, customer service, marketing, business development and media/public relations.” The Chief Branding Officer puts a name and a face on the business for the valued qualities of accountability and approachability. The CBO ensures a focused brand, knowing what to say, when and where to say it, and who to say it to. By listening in on the conversations, the CBO can shape them while giving the product a voice.

The Body Electric. Interesting images of machines infiltrating more of our day-to-day activities as well as our bodies in this NY Times Review of The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, From the Internet to Artificial Limbs. “With each delegation of power, we become more comfortable with computers driving our cars.  Why put down your cellphone when you can let go of the wheel instead? Driving is the distraction. Let the car do it.” As for machines and the body, “'The eventual payoff isn’t just parity with unreconstructed humans. It’s superiority. Some mechanical arms now exceed the reach of human arms. Last year, a disabled sprinter was forbidden to run in Olympic-level track meets on his carbon-fiber legs because they were deemed too fast. And computerized limbs can be networked. Belfiore recalls a recent conversation with an Iraq war amputee about whether his new hand could manipulate a mouse. 'Why do I need a mouse?' he asked. 'Why can’t I plug my arm right into a USB port?''

Underwater Gliders. Those in-the-know compare the success of the first robotic underwater glider’s crossing of the Atlantic as equivalent to Sputnik and Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight.

Marketing Trends To Watch in 2010. 5 “Non-Obvious” Marketing Trends for 2010 that warrant some thought. The Importance of When, becoming more relevant to the moment. Marketing with customer service through social media. “Sometimes the best marketing you can have is great customer service that delights your customers and gets them sharing their experience with everyone they know.” This is related to the rise of voluntary ambassadors. "In 2009 this term was often another way of referring to the practice of getting bloggers to write about your product or service. Amazon Top Reviewers and Power Twitter users are just two examples of big influencers who are not bloggers. A true ambassador program is about unlocking the passion of people who actually have some affinity for your product or service."

ReadWriteWeb Trends of 2009. This 25 page slideshow of 2009 trends is worth walking through. These trends are still emerging and will be affecting our strategic thinking in 2010.  More structured data services and standards. Real-Time Web as a new form of communication and new body of content. Personalization through filters and recommendations. Several good examples of Recommendation Engines on page 17. “The Internet is shifting to discrete units of information, organized in ways that are relevant and personal to each individual.”  Also covered, Open Data Standards, the Mobile Web and the Internet of Things.

More reasons why I could never survive in a real job. This Web Worker Daily post describes how web working allows us to enjoy the little things in our lives.  Flexible uniforms, wearing whatever we want. We can exercise when it’s best for us rather than squeeze it in during lunch. Personal appointments are a non-issue. Much easier to deal with unexpected events and illness. Dogs sharing the day with us. And a personal bonus not listed in the article, being there for my little girl when she gets home from school.

Ray Kurzweil’s Blio. I’m certainly looking forward to hearing more about Ray Kurzweil’s Blio e-book platform at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  Photos and details in this Wired article.

Social Media Perspective. Very important reminder from Duct Tape Marketing that social media can kill a business when it gets in the way of serving our clients and taking orders. “It’s all too easy to get sucked into building a big blog readership or twitter following and then wonder why your phone isn’t ringing. Social media for the small business is a way to create awareness and deeper engagement – it’s not a way to take orders.”

Beautiful Footers. 65 beautiful footers here to scroll through. Some web designers have so much artistic talent they even make footers a beautiful thing.

Data to ascend in 2010. A reminder from Mashable on the value of data as a marketing asset that can shape discourse and feed various channels. A look at the emerging role of metadata in marketing in this post as well. It reminds me of what Tim O’Reilly has been advocating as far back as 2005 that “Data is the new ’Intel side’ and owning the data is the new source of competitive advantage and vendor lock in.” Personally I’m hoping 2010 is when I start doing more interesting things with the aggregated data I’ve been creating over the years.

First, Organize 1000. One of those dense yet simplistic Godin posts that inspires to think long-term relationships and providing life time value in pursuit of the goal of building a tribe of 1000 people and seeing what happens.

2010 Predictivity. As one of many 2010 prediction posts over the last week, this Six Revisions post is good for scrolling over the headings and images.  “Content is king – no matter what. As seemingly redundant or over the top it might seem to have a screen built into the kitchen counter – if it doubles as a cutting board, all the better.” The article included a link to an Android 2.0 OS video that’s worth checking out. Very impressive little OS.  Another good 2010 Web Predictions post is from ReadWriteWeb, but the gonzo 2010 Web Predictive post is Joe Pulizzi’s 100 Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2010.  You’ll want to spend some time with this one.

Glitter-sized solar photovoltaics. Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used. The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing. In other words, 100 times less silicon generates the same amount of electricity.

Recommendation Engine. Hmmm. This Ecommerce SEO Tips post suggests incorporating a Recommendation Engine in the browse and purchase process, something which Amazon has perfected. In SEO terms, after the author added a Recommendation Engine on a client site, the effect was an increase in pages per visit, time on site and conversion rate with a reduction in the bounce rate.

jQuery links today. I think you’ll like this Infinite Carousel.  Nice Content Slider, which is very similar to this Image Rotator plug-in. Two other jQuery items you might find interesting are jTruncate and BigTarget.js. 

Hoping your Everyman Christmas 2009 was bright. I was going to write a post about my Christmas, but will capsulate for you here instead. For starters, you can anticipate a review coming for my new Christmas book, Inside Steve's Brain.  Logitech speakers from Santa now complete my Roku-enhanced kitchen TV experience, and a new Family Popcorn Maker puts us on the road to freedom from microwave popcorn. Other than that, Everyman Christmas 2009 was marked by what I didn’t get. No Zune HD was under the tree as I had hoped it wouldn’t.  My Zune 80 works just fine, thanks.  I also remain Kindle-less, which is perfect, since I wouldn’t buy a digital book at $9.99 anyway. That doesn’t mean Santa didn’t bring us any electronics at all.  I spent part of Christmas Day setting up my wife’s new PC, and while my daughter spent most of her Christmas Day with Sims 3, I’m hoping she’ll be as impressed with her new Flip video camera as I am. The Flip is an artfully designed hardware and software experience.

That’s it for Everyman Christmas 2009. Thank you for reading and for a great year. I hope you have a great holiday week and a Happy New Year!

Farewell, Roy Disney. The loss of Roy Disney gets Everyman top spot tonight. Roy was Walt Disney’s nephew and close to Disney’s work since he was a child in the 30’s. He was also instrumental in transitioning Disney from Eisner to Iger in 2005. Here’s a Six-Part American Television video interview with Roy, complete with chapter links and highlights.

Need an icon? Jaben Cargma tweeted this the other day. Search through 125,000 icons or browse 330 icon sets at Icon Finder.

Top PR Blunders of 2009. You may find this list of 2009 PR blunders interesting. Domino's had become "the latest company to learn how quickly a brand can be tainted in a Web 2.0 world - and how important it is to monitor social media."  Regarding the quickly rescinded KFC free grilled chicken meal offering announced on Oprah, “"if you throw in with Oprah, you have to be prepared to serve America - all of it, at the same time."

eBook industry and music industry do Dumb and Dumber. Apparently the $9.99 eBook price point is not a money-maker. “You need an orderly process to sell books and DRM makes that possible, mainly because it allows content creators and distributors to make money from that content." As Gerd Leonhard responds, “DRM is a total - and much discussed - nuisance and significant deterrent to legal consumer behavior, and it does ZERO to prevent sharing of copyrighted content online.” And bringing it home with, “Face it: the price point for digital books has to be lower - much lower - than the price point for a real i.e. dead-tree, printed, shipped, physical book. Just because you can't seem to figure out how to reduce your costs across the board, start to add significant value in new areas.”

Live Availability Checking with jQuery. Our recently-discovered jQuery Stud Strinivas Tamada brings us more jQuery goodness with a live username availability plugin.

Bitly.tv Interesting visual display of currently popular videos at bitly.tv. Nice integrated tweet and quick sharing video panel. You can check them out for yourself with this video of David Bowie meets Bing Crosby for a Christmas Classic.

Speed-up! Part Deux. We did a Speed-up! link on the November 24th Everyman, but it never hurts to skim though another one. Good reminders on reducing http requests to the server by using image sprites, contextual selectors and consolidating CSS and javascript files (called the on first site visit and then cached.)  For further study, here are 7 tools to optimize the speed of your website.

How to answer “What do you do?” This comes up from time-to-time for developers. It’s an issue that continues to entertain. Top 10 Ways [for Web Designers] to Answer the Question: What Do You Do?  "Me: ‘I am a web designer.’ Them: ‘Oh! My dentist also does web design. He is really good with Frontpage and stuff. He even has his own web site. It has something to do with Geocities…’ Me: ‘Yeah. I do dental work on the side, too. I even have my own drill and chair.’" My personal response isn’t on the list. “Them: ‘What do you do, Dave?’” Me: ‘I type. And people send me checks.’”

Lord of the Rings on Blu-Ray. Coming in April.  Should be incredible for you guys with HDTV.  My only consolation as an owner of a 35” Sony Trinitron that won’t die, it’s not the extended version.

ScottGu on SEO toolkit. Something to do to celebrate when my Virtual Server Host provider upgrades my server to Windows 2008. Speaking of host providers, apparently the SEO Toolkit’s caching enabled Phil Haack to restore a ton of images after his host server had a hard-drive failure.

Design Miscellany Sendoff. I do enjoy these Speckyboy Twitter Design News roundups. Nothing in particular to mention, but more here than web design stuff, valuable to scroll through for news, ideas and a bookmark or two.

World on Reset. This is an important ChangeThis Newsletter. “I keep saying that this is not a recession, it is a reset. What amazes me is how many brilliant people I know, in the US and around the world, who either don’t see it as anything more than a recession, or who don’t want to.”

The neglected HTML Sitemap. I haven’t composed an HTML Sitemap since 1996.  I’m good about XML sitemaps, but perhaps I should re-consider my HTML sitemap malaise. Good points on the value of good old fashioned sitemaps, including a tip on how SEO link juice on linkbacks to a sitemap page pass through all of the links on the page.

Geo-enabled everything. A short post on SEO and Social Media predictions for 2010 that brick-n-mortar businesses should read. “Can I get your street address so I can map my way to you? If I see your business and click the link on my phone, is your site optimized for me? Web development without a comprehensive plan for mobile is short-sighted at best, reckless at worst. If you have a premium product or service and don’t have a dedicated smartphone apps, you’re falling behind.”

Posting Secrets. Items to consider in protecting a bit of our privacy online. Home addresses with domain name WhoIS records, location tweets, our birthday, personal items on a screenshot, hidden document info for starters.

Eric Lawrence on Fiddler. Our pal Jason Haley referred to this video as a hidden gem from PDC. I’d have to agree. (I always agree with Jason, except about that geeky Reflector stuff which I don’t understand.)  61 minutes of Eric Lawrence on the evolution of Fiddler with insider debugging tips.  I watched half of it and really need to make the time to finish it.

Ray Kurzweil does Everyman. A surprisingly accessible article by Ray Kurzweil on the world in 2020.  I think one of his people wrote it.  Still, good stuff. One snippet, “We now have the software of life (our genes) and the means of upgrading that software. How long do you go without updating the software on your cell phone? Not long: it does it by itself every few days or weeks. Yet we are walking around with obsolete software in our bodies that evolved thousands of years ago. Within 10 years, that will change.”

Liking the popup login. I’m enjoying the great work of a young man named Srinivas Tamada.  His popup login control makes such good sense.  Note to self, there’s no need to go to a dedicated login page anymore.

Even Chris Brogan can do UX better. Interesting self-analysis from Chris Brogan on his website design. Some of his observations were too many calls to action, subscription options too plentiful, no real “path” for his posts and his readers’ learning.

JQuery page peel and your own twitter time line. Both are new to me. Page peel. Your own twitter time line.

Bottled water. Bad. Please take a quick look at this graphic on bottled water energy consumption compared to tap water. 10,000x’s the cost!  Please also mention it to your wife, cause I think bottled water might be more of a chick thing.  I could be wrong about that.

Gene Therapy Rodeo. An exciting roundup of recent Stem Cell and Gene Therapy progress. Targeting and killing HIV-infected cells, reversing the growth of lung tumors and repairing heart attack damage among other good work.

Give M&Ms this Christmas. Great gift idea for clients. 52 ounces of M&M goodness.

Why men shouldn’t write advice columns. Guys.