Archive: December, 2006

We’ve all been present at some party or event at which someone trots out the funniest part from a Monty Python sketch, or even worse attempts to do the entire 200-line routine in two or more poorly punctuated British accents. If this hasn’t yet happened to you, you obviously haven’t been a techie long enough. There are, you see, 10 types of techies in any organization. There are those who repeat Monty Python jokes and those fated to listen to them over and over again.

Generally speaking there is no median, no in between. It is either A or B, on or off. Nothing but dead air separates those who trot out the old skits and listeners politely repressing their inner psychopath. One should consider that frightening fact before leaping into the frivolity of the dead parrot sketch but since we’re talking about the closing of the Open Directory Project, or DMOZ, today I think it’s worth taking the risk.

So this guy walks into a pet store, or more realistically, blogged a complaint about DMOZ in 2006…

Customer: … I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

Rand Fishkin and Rebecca Kelly from SEOmoz have compiled a graphic novella detailing the fun-loving chaos of an SES insider’s experience. The SEOmoz graphic recollection of SES Chicago is not link-bait as much as it is art, sort-of. Actually it is link-bait but what isn’t these days eh?

Whatever it is, it is also hilarious. Back in a bit after I stop laughing.

2006 has been the most interesting year in the past decade, at least for the search marketing sector. So many things have changed over the past twelve months it is sometimes difficult to see the forest for the individual trees found in that forest. Search has expanded as a function in more ways this year than in the ten previous ones. In turn, the search marketing industry has also expanded to offer services for the expanding number of search applications. Google is getting into facilitating context based advertising for both print and radio. So what does SEARCH mean these days?

A number of new search related venues established their presence this year including Social search (MySpace, Linked-In, FaceBook, etc…), Image search (Flickr, Pixsy), video search (YouTube) are the most well known of a multitude of information distribution platforms that have a direct impact on the business of search marketing. Other examples include the community-influenced news site Digg and RSS-fed information propagators like the blog-roll at Searchbrains.com. Mobile search is thought to be ready to break-through into the North American market sometime in 2007.

According to Danny Sullivan’s keynote speeches at both SES Chicago and PubCon Las Vegas,

This is just a short post before writing a longer one.

Victoria and our generally happy neighbours are dealing with the third major Pacific storm in a week and the umpteenth massive weather disturbance in the past month. Along with half the small city, I spent yesterday in the dark. We are expecting yet another evening and night of heavy winds, downed trees (we have huge trees out here), flooding and blackouts.

The Metamend office, located as it is on the second floor of a building on high ground in the north end of the city, will be just fine. Back in a couple minutes with a longer post, assuming of course the power stays on. :)