I saw a hilarious Geek-joke while reading the forums over at Search Engine Watch. It came from the signature used by SEW member Vayapues and, while it might be as old as the hills, it is the first time I’ve read it. Short, sweet and just punny enough to make me giggle every time I re-read it.
“10 types of people in the world. Those who know binary and those who don’t.”
Thanks Vayapues
Google appears to be experimenting with social tagging and expanded bookmarking; leading some to conclude that if successful, Google might integrate user-input data into future organic algorithms.
Last Sunday (January 30), Google released the fourth version of its toolbar for Internet Explorer (a Firefox version is scheduled to be released soon). Two of the features embedded in the toolbar suggest Google is moving towards incorporating views expressed by its users into its methodology for factoring search results. Read more…
For fans of US Football, the most important annual television event kicks off early Sunday afternoon, live from Motor City USA, Detroit. The Super Bowl is the biggest yearly sporting event in North America, rivaled only by European Football’s World Cup. More viewers are expected to watch the game for three hours on Sunday than are expected for any other scheduled program or event. That makes the commercial spots, which are billed higher than for all other time-slots, extremely important for the advertisers who purchase them. Read more…
Fierce windstorms have plauged Southern Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia for the past five days. Last night’s storm was the worst by far causing blackouts over much of the region.
StepForth’s downtown Victoria office is up and running again however several of our workers who telecommute (myself included) awoke to find our homes and home offices were without power. Suffice it to say we are compensating the best we can. Read more…
The rapid growth of search engine marketing over the past two years has firmly established the SEO and SEM sector as an important concern for the mainstream advertising industry. Lacking the long-term background and technical resources to properly serve the intense demand for search marketing from clients, the traditional ad agencies are starting to think about the search marketing industry. Read more…
Change seems to be the theme of our story these days with the Internet, search marketplace and our daily set of tasks morphing rapidly. Change is a good thing but never comes without its price. For us that price has been painful, literally.
The StepForth staff has just survived what has to be counted as the longest, most physically challenging weekend in the nine year history of our firm. Bill is still down sick, Scott is temporarily offline, Ross, Mark and I have just recently gotten back online, and our new offices are still turned upside down. Read more…
Google’s new China focused portal, Google.cn has been roundly and rightly criticized for censoring results shown in China at the request of the repressive Chinese regime. The absence of material deemed dangerous by the Chinese authorities leaves search results that tell the “right-side” of the story. This is the material open to viewing Chinese citizens. Read more…
StepForth is leaving its quiet, residential space in the Fernwood neighbourhood of Victoria and moving downtown to its new Bastion Square offices.
The move is prompted in part by the tremendous growth of our industry over the past few years. We’ve grown too, bringing on new staff, upgraded services and a growing list of marketing partners. Also, the new location is simply too nifty to pass up.
This will be our last full day in our current space. On Friday, we start the process of ripping out the servers, dismantling the office, disconnecting our computers and saying goodbye to the funkiest section of town.
We’ll miss the Thin-Edge of the Wedge pizza parlor, the George and Dragon Pub, and our downstairs neighbour, “Fast Sammy” the convenience store owner. Our free-range mascot, Hydro the death-defying squirrel will also be remaining behind.
Our new offices are located in historic Bastion Square overlooking Victoria ‘s gorgeous inner-harbour. Our new building houses some of the oldest offices in the Pacific Northwest region, originally built as a warehouse for supplies heading towards the Yukon gold-rush or to logging and mining interests on the north end of Vancouver Island.
Needless to say, we are all excited and a bit intimidated by the move.
As of Monday, our new address is:
StepForth Placement Inc.
#208, 26 Bastion Square
Victoria BC,
V8W 1H9
Please note that our phone numbers and email addresses will not change.
Toll Free (North America) : 1-877-385-5526
Local Phone Number: 250-385-1190
On behalf of the StepForth crew, I’d like to say thanks to the entire Fernwood neighbourhood. You’ve put up with a lot of parties, traffic, and general geeky weirdness from our space and we’re going miss it here. Thanks for the support, friendship and being such amazing neighbours.
Yesterday, the Bush Administration asked a federal judge to order Google to give the US Government access to approximately one week of recorded searches. Read more…
Mirror, Mirror, on the Web, Who has got the biggest head?
According to the egoSurf Top50 , I do, for the time being at least. I even appear to have a bigger syndicated ego than the truly great grandfather of search journalism, Danny Sullivan, though a slightly smaller one than someone named LawMoose.
egoSurf is a new vanity search/reputation management tool that allows you to check your placements on Google, Yahoo, del.icio.us, or Technorati in relation to the number of links back to your blog(s) or URL(s).
If a name is mentioned in, or associated with a piece of writing or a blog document, “ego points” are assigned to that name. The more verifiable references found, the more ego points scored. Apparently, my name is mentioned a number of times in a number of places, likely found by reading between the by-lines. My new found and totally befuddling big-headedness is entirely due to the nature of an environment that allows 2000 word musings to be instantly syndicated through live-feed RSS or human-edited copy/paste routines.
Writers will vanity surf much in the same way an actor will preen in all mirrors. Reputation management is part of the job. It is amazingly gratifying to confirm I do in fact, have a big ego, even if that knowledge is known to go straight to my head. (I’m gonna be mega fun to work with for the next few months eh?)
