26 Miles

Google Mashup-O-Matic

// June 8th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

Well…almost.

For all of you aspiring to make your first million by wedding your livelihood to Google’s P&L’s … they have a new product for you.

Google has released the Google Mashup Editor to beta.

Simply put, it does this:

The Google Mashup Editor provides simple tools and features that allow you to create mashups in minutes.

• A set of tags that compiles into AJAX UI components
• Syntax highlighting
• Autocomplete of gm tags by pressing the tab button
• Quick access to documentation for any tag by pressing F2
• File upload and management
• Error checking and notification

So, Google once again has made it stupid-simple to begin monetizing SaaS PIG’s and launch a Micro-ISV empire! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Automating SEO, PPC, and Landing Page Optimization

// June 7th, 2007 // No Comments » // Online Marketing

Yield Software is a (fairly new) company whose software promises to simplify and automate “the process of search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click bidding (PPC) and landing page optimization.”

If it works, I can see this having real value in the market – especially for small businesses who have no in-house expertise and can’t (or won’t) hire a full-service web marketing firm to manage their online marketing and optimization. I’m curious about the technical details and will wait for the reviews to start coming in to see if it proves itself in the market.

Many will argue that you can’t automate SEO in any significant way. Time will tell but I’ll keep an open mind to the possibility that parts of it probably can be automated. Having worked with some of the major SEO firms, I can tell you that at least a few of the “experts” I’ve met could indeed be replaced by a very small shell script.

jQuery Plugins

// June 6th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

My friend Geof over at McKinney Station Design pointed me to jQuery Plugins a few weeks back. I’ve been really impressed with some of them.

I particularly like the Thickbox image gallery popup, the Ajax tab navigation, and the client-side table sorter.

SEO Title Tag WordPress Plugin

// June 5th, 2007 // No Comments » // Online Marketing

NetConcepts has a WordPress SEO plugin to help make make your WordPress page title’s SEO-friendly.

Some of the features include:

• Allows you to override a page’s or a post’s title tag with a custom one.
• New for v2.0 A Title Tag input box in the Edit Post and Write Post forms. (Previously in version 1.0 you had to use the Custom Field box.)
• New for v2.0 Mass editing of title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages, archive by month pages, — indeed, any URL — all in one go.
• Define a custom title tag for your home page (or, more accurately, your Posts page, if you have chosen a static Front Page set under Options -> Reading), through the Options -> SEO Title Tag page in the WordPress admin.

It’s always nice to have an SEO babysitter when you can get one.

11 Tips For Better Candid Photography

// June 4th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

I actually read this a while back, and am just now getting around to posting it.

Digital-Photography-School.com has a good article for “the rest of us” who fill 99% our camera’s SD cards with blurry pictures of the spot our kids were standing just 2 seconds ago.

11 Tips For Better Candid Photography has several “well duh” tips we amateurs may not think about when pickup up our point-and-shoots to capture the latest “DAD! WATCH ME!” moment.