Good info…especially for noobs…

Seems that Google might have a pretty big backlash in progress over this one. Telling people how they’re going to run their site and control the equity of those sites is unacceptable -

More on SEO Class

In an effort to combat spam, Matt Cutts is coming up with more warnings about paid links. I think they’re starting to realize they are fighting a losing battle and they’re trying to do anything they can to control links. Michael Gray seems to think that maybe Google is out of touch with reality. I agree.

Paid advertising should be allowed to exist in any form for any purpose. If a company can afford paid advertising and continue to afford that advertising, they are most likely doing something right. If they are doing something right, shouldn’t a paid link on an authority site count as a vote toward the quality of the site?

Picked up a MacBook Pro over the weekend. I used to swear I’d never get a Mac, but this thing is really nice and has a ton of cool features. Right now I’m writing this post in a widget called WordPressDash. If you see this post, it worked

I keep coming up with things that “should” improve the development process at work. Why does it seem like the more of those things that I come up with, the less that gets done by me? Seems like there are all kinds of big ideas coming up and being implemented, but then I become the bottleneck because the processes all include having to rely on me for input or supervision. How do people get around that? I really want to hand some of this stuff over to the programmers, but they’re so damn busy that it might not get the attention it should be getting. We hired someone to handle QA and I’m hoping that he fits in where I need him. So far he’s pretty detailed about stuff…almost too detailed, but that’s what I like.

At least I can look at World Cup Blog and see how well everything can come together. We’re kicking some ass with that thanks to Bob, all of the writers, Chris and everyone at BootsnAll that has put an effort into it.

Maybe I need to rethink this 2 foot high stack of books and papers on my desk marked for future reading…

The Myth of Keeping Up

I went to Vegas this past week for PubCon. The guys from BootsnAll(Sean, Chris, and Nick) and I managed to fit alot of fun into a short time.

Monday night, we met up with Jen Leo and her friend John and had sushi at Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel. After dinner, we drove over to Mandalay Bay and had drinks at Mix. From there, we ended up at the redneck casino, Silverton. It was themed around the outdoors and was tied in with Bass Pro Shops. I really enjoyed the overall atmosphere. Good looking “mermaids”, inexpensive tables, and a custom chopper with a Bass Pro Shop theme to it. Jen made a good call on that one.

Tuesday we spent most of the day at the conference sessions for PubCon. Many of them were boring and some were a repeat of last year. Robert Cringely delivered an excellent keynote in the morning, but there wasn’t much exciting beyond that. That evening, Yahoo! had a party at PURE in Caesars Palace. The portion of the night that Yahoo! put on was not as exciting as last year’s party at Rain, but once that party was over and people started dancing, everything picked up. We had a ton of fun dancing with the girls from LinkConnector. I will be joining them as an affiliate . Around 1am, we left PURE and went to the sportsbook in Caesar’s to watch Australia qualify for the world cup.

On Wednesday morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed to go listen to Matt Cutts from Google answer some questions in the morning session of the conference. As usual, Matt was great to listen to. Sometimes it’s easy to get frustrated with Google, but overall I think they’re really out there to make a good product. I had a few opportunities to talk with Matt one on one over the course of the week. What a great asset Google has in Matt. That evening, we met up with the girls from LinkConnector for sushi at Caesar’s Palace. After dinner, we went over to Rum Jungle at Mandalay bay. Chris and I weren’t overly impressed ($7+tip for a domestic bottle of beer), so we headed over to the Hard Rock Hotel to do some gambling.

Thursday we slept in a bit, had breakfast in the hotel and took care of some business we had been discussing over the week. Around 1, we made our way over to New York, New York where PubCon was happening. We drank, and drank, and drank…then decided to walk the length of the strip to Slots-A-Fun…where you can play $1 blackjack and craps. Someone decided they were up for some Mexican food, so we went to the Hard Rock Hotel (again…that place kicks ass) and had dinner at the Pink Taco. Sean, Chris, and I sat down and played blackjack. I made just enough to almost break even for the week…lost money playing 3 card poker…bad luck with that so far.

Overall, the week kicked ass. Thank you Sean, Chris, Nick, Ioan, Jen, John, and everyone else who made the week fun.

Other than a few minor issues, the new house is coming along nicely. The estimated completion is the end of February.

We’re going to be doing tile in our current house this weekend and hopefully new carpet will go in next week. Once those are done, we will be ready to get it sold. Not sure where we’ll move after that. I want to get a rental house until at least a month after completion of the new house so that we can put new flooring in. We didn’t upgrade any of the flooring from the builder because they wanted a rediculous amount of money for the upgrades. They also didn’t have bamboo flooring, which Christie and I are leaning towards for the hard surfaces in the house. Originally I wanted 24″ travertine, but after looking into bamboo and seeing some samples at Home Depot, I’ve decided that it is a great look.

I’ll be in Vegas next week for PubCon. It’ll be a great time. Sean, Chris and Nick from BootsnAll will be there and they’ll be bringing Ioan with them. Should make for a wild week.

We’ll be in Tucson at the end of the following week for a wedding and some relaxation. I’ll also be going to Portland for the BootsnAll Party.

I have been working for a few months with the guys at Bootsnall.com on a travel gear site. We soft launched it about a week ago and are planning to do some heavy promotion of it starting on Tuesday, October 4. It should kick ass. There is already alot of travel and outdoor related equipment, clothing, and information available and we will be adding much more in the near future. Check it out and let me know if anyone has any input:

http://gear.bootsnall.com

I have been using Backpack by 37 Signals for a few weeks now. What a great tool for keeping track of alot of disorganized information. I used Basecamp for about a year, hoping that I could adapt to it. For a single user situation, I felt that it was overkill. Backpack has all of the features I need and alot that I didn’t know I needed but kick ass. When I originally signed up, there was one feature I really wanted but was missing – Recurring reminders. Thursday, they added it in. Now it really kicks ass. My favorite features are:

Recurring reminders – remind yourself to backup data, pay bills, brush your teeth

Ability to create a page for each project/idea – great for managing tasks and notes specific to each project

Email to-do’s, notes and files – Just email things to the address specific to the desired project and backpack sorts it out for you

Page sharing – You can share any of your pages with other backpack users. I have a personal to-do list setup for Christie to add things to