Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments

Now the Department of Transportation is Blogging T...

Not to be outdone by the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration), the U.S. Department of Transportation (the DOT) has now started a blog. 

Is this how we know when something is officially passe?  When our government entities jump on the bandwagon, maybe it’s a sign that blogging is no longer cool. 

I mean, what’s next… a MySpace page for Fed Chair Ben Bernanke?  “Just upt intrst rate 4 fun. LOL!”

Anyway, back to the point… The DOT now has a blog, which you can see here.  Wonderful. 

The U.S. Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters, has decided the DOT needs to step into the technology age.  From her first-ever blog post:

“After all, if I’m going to insist on 21st Century solutions for our transportation system, I better communicate in a 21st century way!”

Right on, Mary!!  Blogs are the one thing that can instantly make you modern and hip.  I mean, governemnt agencies starting blogs is a bit like my mom getting a Facebook page. 

I think it’s important to know that some elements of this blog will be censored.  From the article:

“Comments are reviewed to make sure they’re free of personal attacks, slurs or inappropriate language. If a topic attracts hundreds of comments, an agency spokesman said a representative sample of them may be posted instead.”

So, if you use hate speak or attack anyone personally, or use slurs, or swear…. your comment may be deleted.  But if you ask me, “inappropriate language” is a pretty vague thing to pinpoint.  So, don’t be surprised if readers of that blog start complaining that they have a criticism comment that’s been censored. 

Also, it appears they may censor comments if they simply get too many of them, which is weird.  They’re going to post a “sampling” of them instead–yeah right… a “sampling” means “the nicest and most complimentary comments only.” 

See, the whole point of a blog is that it builds discussion… builds community… encourages dialogue.  But censoring comments simply because you already got a hundred others seems strange and counter-productive.  “Oh, there’s just too much discussion going on here… we’re putting a stop to that.”  Bizarre. 

According to Wikipedia’s page on the DOT, their mission is:

“to serve the United States by ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.”

They may need to ammend that mission statement now to include some mention of their new 21st century tactics.  Maybe just a “… by blogging” at the end of the mission statement.  That should cover it. 

Or maybe not.  Seems that the DOT is also going to be starting their own YouTube channel.  Wow.  Talk about riveting!  DOT officials talking about transportation issues?  Sign me up now!  Where do I subscirbe? 

Right now I seriously can’t think of anything more boring than DOT’s YouTube channel.  Perhaps if the Department of Housing & Urban Devleopment started Twittering… maybe then that would be more boring. 

So do we give the DOT props for at least trying to be relevant and hip?  I guess we have to.  At least they’re trying.  I mean, what technological advances has the Department of Agriculture embraced?  Yeah, that’s what I thought. 

Anyway, you can view the DOT’s official site here, which is badly in need of a makeover.  Or go straight to their awesome new blog here–which appears to have been specifically designed to look like a blog from 1999–stealthy.  Looks like one of their first orders of business was to let Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley write a post, which is WAY less boring than you might think.  Or not.

Am I being to hard on them?  Probably.  Is mocking them too easy a thing to do for me to resist it?  Almost certainly.  I guess I’m generally in favor of government agencies embracing cutting edge technology and communication tools, but it feels so forced, and more than a little behind-the-trend. 

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Posted by Jeremy Scott | 2 Comments

Why Do I Keep Receiving Non-Delivery Receipts for ...

Have you been getting a bit more spam lately?  Yeah, we all have. 

There’s a new kind of unwanted email that we’re all seeing a bit more of lately, called an NDR.  NDR stands for Non-Delivery Receipt.  It’s that error message you get telling you that a previous message you sent was unable to deliver.  Only lately, many people been getting NDRs for messages they never actually sent. 

So the email says something like “The message you sent to Steve could not be delivered because….”  But you don’t know any Steve, and you never sent a message to Steve.  So why are you getting this error?

Easy.  It’s spoofing.  We covered spoofing back in January, letting you know that messages you may receive that appear to come from yourself are just some hacker’s attempt to “spoof” your email address.  Apparently, with a little ingenuity, you can make an email appear to come from whichever email address you wish. 

It’s become a favorite tactic of spammers, because most Average Joe’s are more inclined to click on something or reply to an email if it’s coming from a sender they trust.  So spammers started spoofing real emails to try and entice you to let your guard down.  Having your email spoofed doesn’t in any way mean your computer or your server has been invaded or compromised by hackers.  It just means someone (or some automated program) either guessed at your email address or scraped it off a website someplace where it was published.

So the new issue is that some of these messages the spammers are sending are going to email accounts that don’t exist–or at least don’t exist any longer.  And that causes the email server to spit out an NDR back to the sender.  And since the sender spoofed your email, you’re the one getting the NDR. 

Postini–our preferred email filtering service–is actively pursuing a fix to this problem so that your inbox isn’t overflowing with NDRs.  And we know that many of you currently have inboxes that are filled with NDRS because several of you have called us to ask what’s going on.

Rest easy.  The fix is coming soon.  Until then, you can just ignore the NDR–assuming it’s for a message you didn’t initially send. 

Every time email and email filtering gets more sophisticated, the spammers respond by creating a new wrinkle in their tactics, resulting in a new kind of headache for you.  Spam isn’t going away, folks.  In fact, it’s only going to grow more prominent and more advanced.  Thankfully, you’ve got us to help keep you informed–and hopefully you have a powerful professional spam filter like Postini, who are on the cutting edge of the technology used to fight the spammers. 

If you’d like to learn more about Postini, you can do so here on our website. 

We know the NDRs are annoying you–we’re getting them too.  But it’s a temporary thing that will be sorted out soon enough.  If you have specific questions, or if you think your NDR problem is not the same as what we’re describing here, feel free to shoot us an email or call our office and we’ll be happy to take a look. 

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Posted by Jeremy Scott | 14 Comments

Guerrilla Search Engine Marketing–Golf Ball ...

Myself and several of my co-workers had the privilege of playing in Monday’s Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce Golf Tournament at the Bluegrass Country Club.

The weather was perfect, the golfers were jovial, and the birdies were flowing–for some teams more than others.

Any of you who participated in the tournament have probably already heard about our guerrilla marketing golf balls. For the rest of you, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

See, one of our fastest growing services is Search Engine Optimization–or, helping websites rank better on Google.  And we wanted to highlight that service to a tournament field filled with our core demographic… small business owners.  So we conceived of and designed some specialty golf balls. They were really nice golf balls, some of the nicest Nike makes. On one side we printed our logo, and on the other side was a catchy marketing message:

“Finding golf balls is easy. Finding your website on Google is hard. We can help. FoundGolfBall.com“

At 8:30, an hour or so before the groups all teed off, Eric and I hopped in one of the spare golf carts and headed out. We drove the whole course, “losing” 7 or 8 of our special guerrilla golf balls on each and every hole. Some were “lost” in the rough. Some were “lost” in the sand traps or near the edges of water hazards. Others were “lost” in the trees and wooded areas. Heck, we even managed to “lose” a few on or near the green on several holes.

The idea was that golfers are always on the lookout for free golf balls. Anytime a golfer hits a ball into the woods and stumbles upon another ball that someone else lost… it makes that bad shot just a little easier to take, because now he got a free golf ball out of the deal.

So we assumed that our Found Golf Balls would be found… often.

Anyone whose interest was piqued went home Monday evening and typed into their Internet Explorer address bar the website URL printed on the ball: FoundGolfBall.com, which took them to this page here on our website.

There they learned that the ball itself was a coupon, good for one free hour of Search Engine consulting with one of our Search experts (a $100 value). We’ve already had a few people email or call to take advantage of that offer.

What’s even more fascinating is the requests we’ve gotten to give estimates on recreating this Found Golf Ball promotion for our clients. Guess we should have seen that coming, as there were plenty of folks talking about it at the tournament’s reception.

So we’ve put together a nice, affordable package for any small business owners who want to make the biggest sponsorship splash of your next corporate golf tournament:

• 2-4 hours consulting time with our concept team. We’ll help you pick the perfect marketing angle and slogan for your guerilla golf balls
• 144 custom printed Nike golf balls
• A free web page to promote a specific service, product, special offer, or just your business in general. We’ll print the FoundGolfBall.com URL and a promo code on the ball, and anyone who visits the site and types in the code will be redirected to your special promotional page. This includes hosting and web design
• A handy PDF guide we authored with special instructions, tips, tricks, and suggestions to help make your golf ball promotion a rousing success

There isn’t a business or industry that these golf balls can’t help promote. Here are some examples:

Churches: “If only peace was as easy to find as this golf ball. Come join us on the journey at First Community Church.”

Golf Instructors: “If you were a better golfer, you probably wouldn’t have found this ball.”

CPAs: “Finding a CPA is like finding this golf ball… easy. Finding a CPA you can trust? Now that’s hard.”

So on and so forth. You see where we’re going here… any business can take this novel approach to marketing and, with the right guidance, come up with the perfect slogan.

Sure, you can sponsor the par-3 17th hole, like you do every year, and sit there giving away bottled water… like you do every year.

OR… you can do something that’s truly unique and totally memorable with the Found Golf Ball promotion from Keystone Business Solutions. Make a lasting impression on the CEOs and decision makers of local businesses in your area, and have some fun with it at the same time.

Give us a shout today to find out what it might take to get the ball rolling on your own amazing golf ball promotion.

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Posted by Jeremy Scott | 1 Comment

Windows XP Devotees Organize Protests & Petit...

XP users are a passionate bunch. 

While not yet at the discipleship level of, say, Apple fans, the XP-loving crowd is getting more vocal and organized by the day. 

You see, Microsoft is set to discontinue the 6-year-old OS in June of this year, and it will then no longer be available for purchase (off the shelf or pre-installed on new PCs).  For those not yet ready to embrace Vista, the looming retirement for XP is cause for concern. 

Vista has been plagued by bad reviews, from experts and users.  The biggest complaints are about Vista’s steep hardware requirements (it’s got more bells and whistles, so it needs bigger and faster hardware to run), incompatibility issues with some common software (such as the occasional crash of IE when trying to open an Adobe PDF file), and the annoyingly frequent security warnings. 

For some XP fans, those adjustments are just not worth the switch.  After all, they say, XP has been one of the most reliable and secure operating systems Microsoft has ever produced.  It’s the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” argument. 

Of course, once XP goes away, so will a lot of the official Microsoft support for it, such as security patches and system updates–but Microsoft has already said that support and updates will continue for XP through April of 2009. 

The movement’s unofficial leader is Galen Gruman, who started the website SaveXP.com.  The site has an online petition that asks Microsoft to extend the life of XP (something the software giant has already done before).  So far, over 140,000 people have signed the petition.

But Microsoft, so far, has no comment on the issue, except to issue a standard-sounding quote that says they:

“…will continue to be guided by feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs.”

The SaveXP folks make a decent point about the majority of Windows users still running XP.  From the article:

Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, estimated that at the end of 2008 nearly 60 percent of consumer PCs and almost 70 percent of business PCs worldwide will still run XP.

Gillen said efforts like Gruman’s grass-roots petition may not influence the software maker, but business customers’ demands should carry more clout.

“You really can’t make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you,” he said.

Well, that’s all well and good… but if 69% of PC users are still on XP… then where are their digital signatures on the petition?  69% of Windows users would come out to a number in the tens of millions–140,000 signatures then represents a sad minority. 

So are XP users simply not aware that their favorite operating system is about to become extinct?  Have they not heard about this petition?  Or could it be that they are maybe just… ambivalent?  Unconcerned? 

The current target for the release of Microsoft’s next OS (Vista’s successor) is 2010, so this battle over XP and Vista is likely to end soon enough either way. 

But plenty of XP fans are fired up right now… hoping to keep it around for those next two years until Microsoft can release another–hopefully better-received–OS. 

My two cents?  I recently bought a new Dell laptop, and chose to get one with Vista pre-installed.  So far… no complaints. 

I learned how to turn off the nagging security warnings (and yes, they are annoying… until you turn them off).  I haven’t had any crashes of any programs or files.  Sure, I bought a machine that can handle the hardware requirements (and then some), so maybe I would have more issues with a tinier processor or a lot less RAM.  But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed Vista. 

The visual bells and whistles that the added hardware makes possible are quite slick (preview images on task bar mouse-overs, sweet transparency graphic effects, etc.). 

I think Vista was a bit more of a mess when it launched last year, for certain.  But now that we’ve passed the Service Pack 1 landmark, the Windows updates and patches will only make it more secure and more efficient. 

So while I may be in the minority, I’m not ready to call Vista a waste of time.  I would even go so far as to recommend it.  And I loved XP–loved it!  But after six years, and with Vista improving by the day… maybe this is a case of people just not wanting to change. 

I would love to know what some of our readers think… those still using XP and those who have made the switch to Vista.  Please feel free to let us know what you think below.  And if you’re still an XP devotee, then by all means… go let your voice be heard. 

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Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments

Just Born, YWCANashville.com

YWCA Nashville is a local nonprofit organization dedicated to erasing racism and empowering the women of Middle Tennessee. They offer employment and career assistance as well as a wide array of educational opportunities. From their website:

Day after day. Year after year. For women and children caught
in multi-generational cycles of poverty and abuse, violence is
as familiar as their own skin. At the YWCA of Nashville and
Middle Tennessee, we’re here to help people transform their
lives through safety, counseling and education services. We
understand the cycles of abuse, poverty and racism – and work
to eliminate them through empowerment.

We have had a great time meeting and working with the staff at YWCA Nashville. They asked us to design a website that would be clean and crisp and would speak to the empowerment of women. It’s modern and bold, yet simple in layout and easy to navigate. Pay them a virtual visit at YWCANashville.com.

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