Netizen

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Heritage Lists

American Heritage Data Corporation is among the leading list companies in America.

Mailing lists stand toe to toe with search engine optimization as essential marketing in today's online economy.

American Heritage Data Corporation serves businesses of all sizes. It integrates mailing lists with broad marketing solutions. It has assembled some of the top minds in direct marketing. It has more data than the competition, "the most active, unique, and responsive in the industry." Get your no obligation first consultation.

American Heritage Data Corporation not only has the best lists in the industry, it is constantly updating those lists, and constantly conducting data mining into those lists to refine them and better target them. Lists get assembled, expanded, polished for better results.

Are you in the Inbox yet?

Webimax

Webimax is a name associated with Search Engine Optimization. SEO is key to online marketing. If you can not show up in the search results that go with the key terms associated with your business, it is as if your business does not exist. You don't have a storefront.

Search Engine Optimization is not necessarily about gaming the system. It is about making sure you are doing the best you can to help the search engines find you. The search engines do want to find you. With a little help from your side, they can find you better, easier. That is where Webimax comes into the picture.

Webimax is a top name in the SEO game. "The owner, Ken Wisnefski, was recently named to the Philadelphia Business Journal's 40 Top Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 40."

Monday, August 31, 2009

Firstrade

Firstrade: Online Brokerage Firm

Simple and affordable. For you. For the casual and serious investor alike. One of the lower charging online brokers. 10,000 types of mutual funds offered.

Firstrade: Online Brokerage Firm

This is a great online only place for early investors. It is cheap, it is easy. They don't ask for a minimum amount in the thousands of dollars before you can start investing.

The site is very easy to navigate. It scores high on functionality. Firstrade does stocks, bonds, mutual funds. Many reviewers have ranked it above Schwab, Ameritrade and Etrade.

Anil Dash On Google Wave

Image via CrunchBase

Best Of Anil Dash

Anil Dash:

What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way

Google Wave is an impressive set of technologies ..... whether Wave will succeed as overall in becoming a popular standard for communications on the web ...... I think the answer is no, and the reason is because the Wave way is not compatible with the Web way. ...... When RSS feeds were new, it was easy to understand their potential immediately ........ Combines chat, document editing, and message threading — wikis + blogs + comments + IM ....... Delivered as a very polished rich user interface

Bill Gates, Chrome OS, Natal, Wave
Blog Carnival: Google Wave
The Google Wave Developer Community Will Be Vibrant
Five Blind Men And Google Wave
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy

September 2009 NY Tech MeetUp

A special talk by Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the spreadsheet, followed by an interview with web luminary Anil Dash.

Demos of mind-blowing tech developed at our local universities:

- GreenDot (computer vision tech developed at NYU)
- CuZero (advanced video search developed at Columbia)
- Musically Intelligent Machines (developed at Columbia)
- "Teaching Robots to See" (technology developed at NYU)

What's The Big Deal About Real Time?

Image via CrunchBase

Real time has been all the rage. Twitter opened up the Pandora's box. Now everyone wants to do everything real time. The fact that something is real time seems to be more valuable than the content thus delivered. I think this whole thrust for real time is the web wanting to reach its promise. If some event took place 10,000 miles away, I should know about it in real time. That just makes sense. So, no, my attempt is not to belittle real time.

I have tried to content from another angle. What if there were a search engine that would take minutes to find exactly what I am looking for, or even days, months? What if I am doing cutting edge research and there are unanswered questions. I don't know where the answer will come from, but once it does, I want to be able to know, in real time. But can I put my query in now, and have my search query result delivered to me when it is finally available? The result should come to me no matter where it pops up on the web. That is real time, but then it is not. That would be a really smart search engine that knows exactly what I am looking for, and that keeps searching, and that is still searching when the right result is not available yet. But once it is, the engine delivers me the result. In real time.

I want to be talking to people I don't personally know, I want to be talking to dead people, I want to be talking to people not yet born. With real time, sometimes you can get caught among people you already know. That is not a bad thing, but that is such an incomplete circle.

Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google
Search: The Human Vs. The Machine
InRev TwitIn Now Does People Search
Dynamic PageRank And Real Time Search
Microblogging Search: What Took Google So Long?
Square Search
Blogger Search Gadget: What Took You So Long?
Wolfram Alpha: An Answer Engine, Not A Search Engine
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It

Friday, August 28, 2009

CubanSpeak: Controversial Take On Entrepreneurs

Success & Motivation: What Entrepreneurs Should NOT Do Mark Cuban

If you got a billion dollars, and you claim you have people pitch business plans to you every day, I believe you. But I don't have to take the rest of the rant.

Cuban's blog post tells me it is as hard to be an investor as it is to be an entrepreneur. How do you figure out which horse to bet on? Even the obvious ones are not obvious, or Yahoo would have bought Google when Google offered to be bought not long after launch.

If you want to keep your money safe, keep saying no. You will have your treasure minus the inflation. But if you are wanting to grow your money, or even grow it like crazy, then not being able to find that dark horse must really itch.

And as for tall talk, only a handful of companies engage in paradigm shift products and services in each generation. It is hard to spot them, it is hard to get in once you do spot them. But a young Steve Jobs always talked in terms of changing the world, and changing the course of world history. He did deliver. He invented an industry.

How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? That is harder than picking the winning stocks on the stock market. You need instincts, instincts that deliver.

On Business Models: Free Is Not Always Good
Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Memory Upgrade

For memory upgrades for your Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Sony and Toshiba machines. For your server, laptop, Mac, or PC.

The upgrades are factory original. Ensure peak performance. Upgrade now.

LinkBuildingWiki.com

I don't know if someone told you, but we now live in a link economy. You might have great content, you might even be a big brand from the pre-web era, but unless many many websites and blogs link to you, you are not going to show up high in the Google search results. And if you don't, it is like you are not even around.

Links are all the rage. Links are the currency that the web economy thrives on. Link building is a fundamental activity. If you are convinced link building is important, and are now looking to learn how to do it, one great option you have is to visit LinkBuildingWiki.com that lists hundreds of articles, blogs, and websites that will help you with the exercise.

CubanSpeak: Change And The Internet

The Internet is about to change Mark Cuban WebHooks or PubSubHubBub

The Broadcast.com billionaire is bold in his assertions as usual. He is not always right, but he is always confident. More often than not, he is right. He likes to challenge assumptions. He likes to break away from the flock.

I don't think the internet has been dead and boring at any point. It has gotten more and more exciting over time. But I can sure do with more excitement, if that is what Mark means.

WebHooks and PubSubHubBub look promising. Sure. But there is some hyperbole in the original declaration. Hey, but then that is Mark Cuban talking.

The two promise to take real time to a whole new level. That sure is exciting. I am sure the two will be but members of a large family of similar applications. These are exciting times we live in.

On Business Models: Free Is Not Always Good
Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The FriendFeed, Facebook Merger

The Would-Be FFugees Shouldn’t Pack Up And Find A New Home Just Yet TechCrunch

Facebook buying FriendFeed has been one of the more exciting developments in tech as of recent. There has been much speculation as to if Facebook did it for the talent or the product. It has to be both. Facebook had been copying little features here and there from FriendFeed. So why not go all the way and acquire?

Image via CrunchBase

If you think social media is a sideshow, possibly even a distraction, then this is hum-ho news. But if you think social media is no hype, that it is a big deal, like I do, this is a huge deal. This merger is a big deal.

Image via CrunchBase

But this is not a Twitter killer merger like some have been suggesting. Twitter is in a slightly different space. FriendFeed was half way between FriendFeed and Facebook in terms of functionalities. It was a choice between imitating Twitter and acquiring FriendFeed. Facebook made the right choice.

Facebook Landgrab: A Friday Midnight Call
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Facebook's Ad Space Is Different
Facebook Faceoff Firefox
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
What Should Facebook Do

Facebook buys FriendFeed: Is this a big deal? CNet
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Updated) TechCrunch

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Bing + Yahoo + Wolfram Alpha

What Wolfram Alpha Really Did This Summer: Struck A Deal With Bing. TechCrunch Google, which has a geek rivalry with Wolfram over the growing area of using structured data to improve search results. ..... Wolfram Alpha is not as approachable as Bing ...... Wolfram Alpha is the “technological equivalent of a boring uncle ...... In the end, Wolfram could have more luck licensing its data to other search engines than bringing people to its site, despite the surge in “fall traffic” Stephen Wolfram is still hoping for.

Ganging up on Google, eh?

I guess it makes sense for three small search players to gang up and see if they can dent Google's huge lead. But ultimately it is about the user experience. If Yahoo is at 20% and Bing at 10% and Wolfram Alpha at 1%, if they gang up, it is not necessarily true that the combined property will take 31% of the search market. Combined they are still but one product. And users are going to decide if they want to keep using Google for search, or they want to switch to this other product.

Bing has been more of a presentation of search results rather than core search innovation, but that still counts. And, boy, the marketing. I guess that is also innovation, just not in search.

Search is raw. There is so much room for growth and innovation. And Google knows that to be the case.

Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google
Search: The Human Vs. The Machine
InRev TwitIn Now Does People Search
Dynamic PageRank And Real Time Search
Microblogging Search: What Took Google So Long?
Square Search
Blogger Search Gadget: What Took You So Long?
Wolfram Alpha: An Answer Engine, Not A Search Engine
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It
Distributed Search

Monday, August 24, 2009

Something's Rotten, It's Not The Fish

The Truth: What’s Really Going On With Apple, Google, AT&T And The FCC TechCrunch how the Google Voice application hurts “the iPhone’s distinctive user experience.” ..... over the last few months Apple expressed dismay at the number of core iPhone apps that are powered by Google. Search, maps, YouTube, and other key popular apps are powered by Google. Other than the browser, Apple has little else to call its own other than the core phone, contacts and calendar features. The Google Voice App takes things one step further, by giving users an incentive to abandon their iPhone phone number and use their Google Voice phone number instead (transcription of voicemails is reason enough alone). Apple was afraid, say our sources, that Google was gaining too much power on the iPhone

This is a generational conflict. Apple and Google belong to two different generations of tech. This small iPhone app conflict is symbolic. The larger conflict between the two brands is to be seen in the smartphone arena where Apple sees the phone as a smaller desktop, and Google suggests there is nothing much to download, all apps should be web-based.

A happy ending would be if the costs for calls start sliding down dramatically. How do you do that? Serve ads like for search.

Weekend Reading

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Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Monday, August 31, 2009

Friday, August 28, 2009

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Monday, August 24, 2009