The Piano Inside My Brain

Check out my post on the World Wide Web Communications company blog:

Keys to your Domain

Just to add as a side note, you can use QuarkBase to help research the whois information about your domain.

For those of you that live in the Greater Philadelphia Area, I will be speaking at the event for the Women of Wit and Wisdom on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 5:30pm at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia.

Marketing Your Website: A 12-Step Program

Is your website simply languishing in the corner, failing to deliver on the promise of the Internet? Change your online strategy and learn the tactics that actually deliver results:

• Identify the REAL target audience of your site
• Optimize so Google knows who your are
• Leverage the power of social networks
• Get site visitors to raise their hands

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: Cost: $30 for PC members; $35 non-PC members/advance registry (includes tax and gratuity) + cash bar; $40 at the door.

You can register at the Women of Wit and Wisdom site or check out the event page at the Philadelphia Business Journal. As a side note, you don’t have to be female to attend!

Want to know the IP address? Hosting company? Server platform? Domain registration information? Alexa traffic rank? Company information? Social network popularity? And on and on and on…

Where QuarkBase shines is its presentation. It takes a very simple approach (just type in the domain name) and it serves up all of this information for you in an easily digestible way.

It happens at least once per week, if not more. A friend, colleague, client or prospect asks for the silver bullet.

“How do I reach my target customers?”

The typical answer (old) is to buy a lot of ads in hopes that millions of people will see them and somewhere in the millions, your target audience will respond. Don’t have that much money? Do the same thing but focus the ads locally.

And this strategy is essentially the same on the Internet: get the top position on Google.

But Seth Godin suggests a different way.

This seems great for products, but what about service-based businesses? I think that you just have to get more creative. And the Internet is only one tactic to use.

Example 1 - Landscaper: Find a handyman that is busy and ask if you can tag along. People that hire handymen typically hire landscapers. Support this with

Example 2 - Allergist: Sponsor “Back to School Night” at as many schools as you can by supplying coffee, tea, snacks and such. And then be there for the conversation and give free advice. And have your appointment book with you.

Example 3 - Graphic Designer: Hold a contest for high school seniors and offer a $500 scholarship. Make sure the local papers cover it. Side effect: intern program.

What other “small” ways can you think of that could get big results?

If you are reading this, you may have figured out that I’ve been taking a little posting break since the beginning of the month. While you are relaxing at a BBQ this weekend, consider this…

Before email, postal mail arrived (and still does) only once per day. What if email only arrived four times per day? How would this affect your productivity and your stress level?

(Post your comments below.)

With less than a week before my wife gets back from Los Angeles, I’ve made significant progress on the Home Improvement List of Death. Let’s review what has been done.

• I raised the floor in the room off of our kitchen so that it is at the same level. This involved sealing the concrete, building floor joists and laying the sub floor. Also included adding insulation to some of the exterior walls (which weren’t insulated!) and replacing the drywall. Then the room was also repainted.
• In preparation for painting our entry hallway and other rooms downstairs, I ripped out all of the drywall in the hallway. There had been 2 coats of paint, wallpaper, then more paint, another layer of wallpaper in some parts, and paint over that in other parts. And it was ripping away. And there was a hole from where Danielle kicked the wall. New drywall was a much better choice, and that is now up. In the process, we also put in the wiring for recessed lights (which will come later) and coax for wiring cable TV into the room that will eventually become the family room. And we added a light in the hall closet which is a surprise for my wife.
• I reinforced the shelves in the closet in our bedroom with L-brackets. Thankfully, it was a 15 minute task which mostly involved taking everything off the shelves and then putting everything back on.

So, what hasn’t been done that is still expected by my lovely wife?

• The new drywall in the hallway needs to be spackled and sanded. That will be the job over the next few days.
• The room off of the kitchen (soon to be dining room) needs to have some minor paint touch ups and the new floor installed. Paint touch ups today, floor Monday night.
• I need to assemble our new grill. I’ll do this at the last possible minute before Danielle gets home just for the sport of it.

My Dad deserves some seriously special kudos for giving two of his Saturdays to my insanity. Four hands makes for faster work and better conversation.

Next summer, I think that I will remodel the kitchen and put new flooring in the entire downstairs area. I have to up the ante somehow.

Yesterday, someone was showing me his new iPhone 3G, perhaps in a slightly futile attempt to make me jealous. He was talking about how it felt in his hand and how he liked that it was thinner. I reminded him that it was thinner “at the edges,” but thicker in the middle. His is still cooler.

But that got me thinking. If Apple designers added the thickness all the way around, what improvements could have been made?

• Battery life - 20% more time using the phone on 3G or GPS would be good. Perhaps Apple wouldn’t advise you to turn off all of its new features in order to get the most out of the battery.
• Camera - an upgraded camera would certainly be appreciated, a little higher resolution and a little better optics would make a huge difference to many people. It still wouldn’t be an SLR, so people will complain anyway.
• Antennas - there are at least four antennas inside the iPhone, so a little extra space would have allowed for slightly larger antennas to improve reception for 3G, WiFi, EDGE, Bluetooth, etc. And better reception helps everything.

What else can you think of that would be a welcome addition?

Another gem from Common Craft…

The other night, we ordered takeout food from California Pizza Kitchen. So I drove across town to pickup the order and back through traffic with the food. But when everything was unpacked, something was missing: the tostada toppings for my wife’s pizza. Needless to say, she was bummed.

As the dutiful husband, I offered to go back and rectify the situation. So I called the restaurant to let them know that I was coming back. The manager got on the phone, apologized, and offered to drive the replacement pizza (plus a couple of free deserts) right to the house.

And even better, the manager himself made the drive and apologized again. Even though it wasn’t perfect with the original order, the recovery was great.

Too often, we blog about bad experiences. That is why I wanted to post this story. It is a simple example of customer service gone right.

Now that the first wave of iPhone applications has basically hit, I’m anxious to see what the next wave brings. One application that I would like to see would be the ability to attend webinars from the iPhone.

Someone like WebEx or Citrix (GoToWebinar) would be the natural choice to develop this. As an attendee, you could call in on the phone and then view a shared screen, allowing you to zoom in for details. And add the chat window to complete the experience. I could see this requiring 3G or Wi-Fi access for speed reasons.

I would see this as a free application, since the goal is for attendees to participate from a mobile platform.

Does this make sense to you? Post your thoughts in the comments.