SEO Tips: Great post on Hx tags and how they are important in your never-ending quest for better Search Engine Rankings. Read more at Search Engine Guide.

Web News: For those of you that use Google’s iGoogle as their home page of choice, know that you can customize the themes and put your own splash of personality on it. Today, Google launched the beginning of letting users decorate their space with the works fromm over 70 reknowned artists from around the world.

What I thought was really great, was that the artists were not paid, however, Google donated an undisclosed amount of money to each of their favorite charities. The inaugural artist is Jeff Koons and Google had him fancy up the Google homepage for the occasion.

They say a few artists turned down the opportunity. Huh? Oh well. Read more here at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The weather is finally nice. Steady nice. Mid 70’s, sunny, breezy. The perfect weather for golf. Charles and I have a tournament this Friday up at our club, Butternut Creek in Blairsville. I have way too much work to do though, so I’ll have to work late this week and over the weekend to make up for playing hooky. We played this past Sunday and for the first time, on hole #7, a par 4, I made it over the water and just off the green to the right. 214 yards. YES! I usually lay up as I don’t have the confidence in my driver, but the previous week, I used an 8 iron and sent the ball right into the water, twice. Ooops. So this time, Charles suggested I might as well give it a go, I had been swinging the club pretty good, so I went for it. Boy it feels great when you hit one good.

Work: I’ve been doing some research this week and today I’m off to take pictures of an auto body shop in Buford. I’m working on their online presence and they need some up close and personal photos for their website. It’s a gorgeous day here in North Georgia so the lighting should be great.

Tech News: For those of you out there that use ActivEdit as your WYSIWYG of choice to integrate into your website, the company that sold it, Zrinity, no longer sells it. The open source version is now available on their website. I’ve been working on upgrading the 3.0 version in my content management system over the past week and will hopefully be done by next week.

My site of the week: GolfLink.com for the golfers out there! Been using it for quite a while and it’;s a pretty good resource for golf courses, playing tips and general golf news.

Mark Widawer wrote a brilliant post on his “Bad Advertising” blog about Ford’s new advertising campaign and why testing and calculating the ROI of your marketing efforts are important.

Now some would argue that even a negative post is good publicity, but still …

Check out the “Ford: Drive One” post at Mark’s blog.

I try to spend as much time as I can marketing and researching and furthering my “reputation” or “Googleability” by using the social networking sites, posting on this blog, contributing to forums, etc. Yes, self promotion as often as possible. I do after all have a business to promote.

I have noticed in my internet wanderings, that many people have been wondering “Why Twitter?” And deep down inside I get Twitter, and I longed to try and put it into words that the layperson could understand, but I was always hit with writer’s block. And my particular understanding was from a pure Search Engine bias. The more backlinks you can get and the more you are “out there” then the probability of people finding you or your services on the internet increase. SEM 101.

Today, the best response to “Why Twitter?” came to me out of the fog …

It’s elearning in tiny bite size morsels. Learning about your friends, learning about resources, learning about how other people work their daily schedule. It can also be elearning on an entirely subconscious level. You aren’t aware of the tiny little facts that enter your brainstream until at some point in the day, week or month, someone mentions something and you’re like “Oh yeah! I just read that on Ed Dale’s Twitter” or “Wow. Michelle MacPhearson just twittered all about that!”

The possibilities for those interested in expanding their online knowledge increase exponentially with Twitter.

Back to my moment of revelation when it finally dawned on me WHY anyone would want to use Twitter…

I was checking my Twitter Followers the other day and making sure I was following them too. Trying to figure out who they were and how they found me. After I pushed the “Follow” button on a bunch of them, I woke up today to a stream of so many great Twitters I was just astounded. The reach of these Twitter friends from around the world and the wealth of knowledge is so fantastic, it literally leaves you a bit gob smacked.

Sure, some if you might of heard of, there is a lot of idle water cooler chat and sometimes it’s not earth shattering, but I picked up more great new sites and ideas in the span of 10 minutes than I had all week in my usual day to day activities.

“Why Twitter?”

Twittering has the infinite possibility of exponentially increasing your knowledge of the wide open and far reaching internet as well as keeping you in touch with friends, family and colleagues in a relaxed and friendly environment. - Erika L. Walker

I would love to hear what you all think about what I said or your particular reasons for using Twitter.

Not sure where I came across this, but I thought it was great. Read and think about it …

The F-Word

What word in the English language scares us the most?

Death? – No
Cancer? – No
Terrorism? – No
The word we fear the most is: failure.

WHY ARE WE SO SCARED OF FAILURE?
Because failure means rejection. It means weakling. It means second class. It means useless person. Right? WRONG! Failure doesn’t mean any of these stupid things.

THE TRUTH IS: FAILURE IS ESSENTIAL.
Without failure, very few scientists would achieve anything. Without failure, most of our famous actors or pop stars would be nobodies. Without failure, many of our richest entrepreneurs would be broke. For example, according to a recent survey, more than 50% of the richest businessmen in Europe & America were failures at school. And almost 30% have suffered bankruptcy on their way to the top!

WHY IS FAILURE SO VALUABLE?
Because failure is the No 1 learning method. We fail. We learn. We do better. For example, if you watch a child doing a jigsaw puzzle, you won’t see him slot everything in correctly, first time, will you? Of course not. He’ll make mistakes. He’ll try this piece, then that piece, then another and another, until he gets it right. Well it’s the same for us adults when we do something. We need to make mistakes before getting it right. See what I mean? Failure isn’t a bad thing: on the contrary, providing we learn from it, it’s actually very beneficial.

FEAR OF FAILURE MAKES US FAIL AGAIN AND AGAIN
Fear of failure stops us from succeeding. Why? Because it paralyzes us! We become afraid to take risks. We become afraid to commit ourselves. But unless we take the occasional risk – unless we commit ourselves to something – we will never succeed at ANYTHING!

CONCLUSION
Failure is not the terrible thing we think it is. In fact, by helping us to learn, it can be extremely beneficial. But fear of failure paralyzes us and stops us achieving anything.

In other words: QUIT WORRYING ABOUT FAILING!!

I’ve been buying Dells since 1999 when I bought my first server. I still have it and it still works. I’m very fond of it. In 2003 I got a Dell Latitude C840. Nothing too special, just a workhorse to replace my desktop and keep me mobile. 2 Gigs of RAM, decent graphics and away I went. Made sure I kept the extended warranty on it too. Not only can I be a klutz, but obviously computers can decided to go pear shaped at any moment in time.

Fast forward 5 years, 1 LCD screen, 5 motherboards, 4 keyboards, a CPU, a hard drive, a complete new outer casing, a new LCD screen hinge assembly and palm rest replacement, and the C840 had finally had enough. Try as we might, no one could get it to speak anymore. So after much back and forthing with Dell Business Support, and a botched attempt by their repair facility to fix it, they shipped me a replacement!!!

I am the proud new owner of a Dell Latitude D830! And she is pretty! Surprisingly light and slim, bigger screen than the C840, DVD R+, 80gig HD, only 1 gig of memory (soon to be upped), XP Professional, and well, just a lovely workhorse of a laptop! I’m tickled pink. Now I have to find the time to load her up and get her back to work!

So those of you considering warranties on high ticket items like Laptops where an LCD screen can almost be the price of the laptop itself, get one. Not only will you have peace of mind, but if things really go wrong, the company is responsible for making it right. Of course all warranties (and their terms and conditons) will vary, but I know Dell’s is the best as far as I am concerned!

It’s been slow as far as posting new and exciting things here, but one of my brethren on CFCommunity posted this hysterical tidbit in deference to The Spaghetti Monster Religion:

In Linguine chapter 12 verse 69 (hehe) it says: “He who desecrates his sauceness shall have his own noodle cooked, at a rolling boil for 10 minutes, or until al dente, and the last meat balls he shall dine on will be his own”.