It’s that time again.  Google’s made a big change, and based on the conversations I’ve had with clients and colleagues and the endless stream of notes from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, everyone is scrambling to understand the new Google Places/Plus integration.  In the agency world, there are two types of responses that are happening. The [...]

It has been a sucky week to be a CEO.  First, JPMorgan’s CEO has to mention a $2 billion loss at the same investor meeting where they determine his pay package.  Steve Ballmer gets the dubious honor of “Worst CEO” by Forbes (because he has consistently thrown the baby out with the bathwater), Yahoo’s CEO [...]

Recently database firm Implied Intelligence (as reported by Greg Sterling) conducted an observational study to see which of the Local Search sites had the most, best data.  As part of the study, they looked at not only the Local Search foundations of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP), they also looked at some of the [...]

The entire issue around trademarked search terms is back in the news again. Rosetta Stone, the proprietors of the language software that you can buy at the mall – and apparently online, has been granted “go-forward” status on their trademark lawsuit against Google. The meat of the suit is the age old (at least Internet [...]

Google’s been playing in the cloud longer than most.  Their Docs features were one of the first true cloud-based tools I really utilized.  Sure, others had played in the space, but Google was the first to allow someone to truly “work” in the cloud.  The caveat was you had to use their apps.  Apple has [...]

I have a problem with Personalized Search.  I want it to stop defining me. So, for those of you who don’t know, the approach of personalized search is to take your search patterns, and provide you results, based on those patterns, that are relevant for you.  Specifically you.  Based entirely on how you have searched. [...]

Why? It really is that simple.  Why should I split my time between two social sites – one where I’ve already invested hours (if not days) in – I’ve got friends, profiles, and I know the rules (until they change them) vs. a technically more savvy startup that doesn’t have very many people engaged?  It [...]

In a recent article on Gawker, it was reported that Amazon may be looking to set up brick and  mortar locations to sell its Kindle.  Taking a page from Apple’s playbook (who took a page from Gateway’s failed playbook) is no big surprise for Amazon – digital download stores are becoming more and more prominent [...]

There was a great article a few days ago on the death/retirement of Urchin in Media Post by Ryan DeShazer.  It’s a very interesting, quick read on the current state of the Analytics industry, or lack thereof.  I hadn’t really contemplated it, but an entire industry built around analytics is pretty much gone, replaced by [...]

Pettiness is nothing new in the online world. Let’s face it – most of us in the space are geeks, nerds, or perpetual adolescents. With that comes low self-esteem, and with low self-esteem comes the type of oneupmanship you only see in computer labs on college campuses, and computer labs…well, in the valley. So, in [...]