Value of Social Media Explained

Found a great article through StumbleUpon, a service I highly recommend, that really hits the mark on explaining the value of Social Media Marketing. The article is a great explanation of how social media sites work to increase your web site visibility and improve your search engine marketing efforts. The article also does a great job of explaining the viral effect of social media sites. Plus, the little graphics are a blast. Great job DoshDosh.com!

Biking to work blog

I have started a blog on biking to work with hopes of sharing my experience with others who might be interested in lowering their carbon footprint. I will be logging my journey through the east side suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio.

Flash RIA and SEO

Adobe announced today that they will be working closely with Google and Yahoo to improve rich internet application - RIA search indexing. What this means is that rich media content developers will be able to create more engaging experiences without losing search engine visibility. This is very good news for the RIA community. The only concern I have is where the content will rank relative to content that exists on a normal "static" web site. Also, now that Flash technology will be indexed, how does that fare to technologies such as Microsoft's Silverlight RIAs?

Marketing Mavens

Just put in my request to join the Marketing Mavens Linkedin group. Hubspot, the site which hosts the link above, also provides a great resource for web marketers.



If you haven't already joined Linkedin, I suggest you do. It's a great way to meet people in your industry, get organized and keep in touch with all your contacts. Linkedin is a great success story in the world of social media.

Powerset Semantic Search

Powerset recently released a "natural language" search engine for Wikipedia. The goal of Powerset's technology is to make search more intelligent. Over the next few weeks, I will be testing out this new technology just to see how accurate the results appear compared to other search technologies.

Mac Takes "Byte" Out of Crime

A "remote desktop" like feature on the Mac helps solve crime:

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9941279-7.html?tag=nefd.pop

Wouldn't this be a great feature to have on other commonly stolen items?

XRay CSS Web Standards Tool

A colleague of mine pointed me to an outstanding tool for inspecting web pages called XRAY. This Firefox bookmark tool allows you to inspect parts of a web page on screen and displays a small pop-up window with information about the page element. Simply drag the XRAY button onto your bookmarks bar in Firefox. Make sure you have your bookmarks bar enabled (checked) in Firefox. Enjoy!

Graphic Design Internship in Cleveland Ohio

The company my wife Candis works for Akhia is looking for a Graphic Design internship. This is a good opportunity to work with some great people and get real experience in the industry. Please read the information below for more details.

Akhia is now hiring a creative intern. This is a part time position with flexible hours. Applicants must be team players who have a willingness to learn and work hard in a fast-paced, creative environment. The intern will work closely with the design team, as well as the account service team. Candidates must have: - a great sense of design - exceptional attention to detail - ability to multitask - meet deadlines with high-quality delivery Interns will assist with basic print production/design tasks, as well as administration back-up. Macintosh experience mandatory. Knowledge in InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator a must. Additional responsibilities include: - Photoshop editing - Creation of mock ups - Upload/offload digital files from FTP site - Prepare files for release - Copy edits on collateral materials - Proofreading - Assist in research and brainstorming activities - Design edits.

Please send resume and cover letter to candis.hecking@akhia.com

jQuery UI site launched

I'm a big fan of the javascript library called jQuery. jQuery allows you to create cool animations that would normally take a technology with a browser plug-in like Flash or Silverlight to achieve. jQuery UI recently launched a new web site that is focused on user interface development with the jQuery javascript library. Looks like a good start for the user interface design and development resource web site. I'm looking forward to more good things! Check out some of their sample UI demos. Also, nice site design as well. Great job guys!