This is a quick video of the good omen that I received when I arrived to pick up my registration at the 2010 SXSWi festival. This was shot the Thursday before South by South West interactive started.

This weekend, and up until Tuesday, we’ll be at South by Southwest Interactive media conference. There will be sporadic updates from the event, possibly pictures, videos, etc.
Last night, I had a great conversation with Scott Allen, Fernando Labastida and Alex Barrera. We talked about social media in Spanish and how come there’s not a lot of content being produced in Spanish that is actually useful. I have a lot of video from that conversation, I think we can have that posted sometime soon.

Go here to see a list of SXSWi …

As a general rule, most people, spammers included, want to avoid looking like spammers. Despite that, a lot of innocent people end up looking like spammers because they do spammy things.
Here are 3 things to do if you want to avoid looking like a spammer:

Avoid keyword stuffing. What does that mean? It means avoid putting too many of your keywords in your posts. You should also avoid having your key words close together. So, pay attention to the density of your target words to the rest of your …

I subscribe to Tech Republic emails, mainly for my regular job, but also because I’m a geek and enjoy reading geeky things. Anyway, one of the topics that I get Tech Republic emails about are  employment and HR issues.
In one of those HR related Tech Republic emails, they were talking about how employers could be held liable for making employment decisions based on social networking profiles.
In the discussion forum about the topic, people were arguing for both sides.
One camp was arguing that information posted in the public domain, such …

Back when I first started online, I subscribed to every thing. Every list, every blog, every product launch you name it I was on that list. As time went on, I discovered the “unsubscribe” button and learned to use it liberally.
Nowadays, I subscribe to fewer than 10 lists and I actually regularly read less than 5 of those. It’s not that the remaining lists I’m subscribed to aren’t good, it’s just that during any given week only 3 or 4 of those emails have a subject that interests me.
One …

I recently wrote a post explaining what SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is and gave you a very brief outline of how SEO is done. Today, I’d originally planned to talk about SEM, aka Search Engine Marketing but I received an email that I just had to share with you first.
The email, is from someone that I’ve never heard of, came completely unsolicited and is by definition spam. Here’s the text of the email for your perusal:
We would like to get your website on first page of Google.
All of …

Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is essentially part art and part science. Let me give you my definition of it, and a brief description of how it’s done rather than regurgitating or simply posting someone else’s definition.
Before I go into my definition, I want to make sure that I mention what the search engine’s job is. The search engine’s job is to find the content that most closely matches and is most relevant to what the person sitting at the computer is searching is looking for.
How search engines …

I was pondering the question of when product pricing becomes price gouging while performing some competitive intelligence. I was looking at what the competition charges for similar services that we provide here, and also looking at their page designs etc. to see if there was something worth copying, or shall I say “emulating.”
I’m always surprised at what some of the competition charges for services.
I know how much work it takes to setup a WordPress website and do some of the other related work. Seeing an offer to setup a WordPress …

A week or so ago, I participated in the “Great Interview Experiment.” This is the interview that came out of that post. Before we get to the actual interview, I want to thank Marla for playing along with me.
I liked this whole interview thing, so methinks I’ll do an interview every month or something like that. Without further ado, here’s the interview:

1. How long have you been blogging?
I started my first blog at the end of July of this year, so that makes it to be a little over …

These are some well known and well established guidelines to follow when writing copy. Whether you’re writing sales copy for your website or a script for a video, I believe that following one or all of these guidelines will help you come up with good copy.
Here are the guidelines:

Know your audience. It’s important that you know and understand who is going to read your copy and/or watch your video.
Have a moral or a point. I frequently lack this particular one. I tend to ramble and miss the point of what …