There are some very interesting things going on in the world of Web2.0. Such as Photo geotagging. The ability to index your photos, based on tags and geographic location allows the online world to develop a fantastic database of everyone’s photos - all browsable on a map of the world, based on where they were taken. Flickr is a great place to geotag, and already has over 6 million pictures indexed to locations around the world. The main problem I see is that its rather time consuming.

Geocoding is where the web 2.0 stuff gets interesting. There is enormous potential for a true geocoded search engine. Geocoding is data mining applied to geotagging. For instance, a true geocoding search engine would not only index the web, but mine all the geographical data available, and organize it all on a map. Taking location data from IP addresses, postal codes, whois data, addresses and names, you could create a search engine that displays pages sorted geographically. Because of the economy of scale, this would be a venture likely launched by a major search engine.

There are great possibilities here. Imagine you want dinner, and you’re staying in Seattle. By opening up an online geocoded search, you can view a map of the city, find restaurants on a particular street, their menus, blogs reviewing the dining experience, and maybe some photos people took there. All the data is waiting for someone to organize it.

Chances are that if you do business on the internet or if your organization has communication goals for your web site, then you’ve probablly heard something about Search Engine Optimization. SEO activities attempt to increase a web sites’ page rank or listing on ‘organic’ searches. Some activities, such as consistently updating your content, using proper formatting, creating descriptive headings and properly authoring your pages will greatly increase listings on search engines. This is ‘white hat’ SEO. These activities make the web a better place. On the other hand, black hat SEO is dirty work: from installing spy ware to typo-squatting. In a recent Google Blogoscoped post, some order is added to the ethical spectrum of SEO activities.

From evil to good they write:

• Black Hat SEO: Spreading spyware maybe typo-squatting too.

• Dark Gray Hat SEO: Stealing content from other sites and posting it as their own to steal search traffic.

• Slate Gray Hat SEO: An SEO creating automated link farms to exploit search engine algorithms.

• Light Gray Hat SEO: This SEO creates original content, and lots of it, but the content is still only aimed at search engines.

• Off-White Hat SEO: This SEO not only ensures the site is search readable – they also make sure to get lots of back links from friends.

• White Hat SEO: This person puts up the content that people are actually searching for, and prepares the site to make it very accessible. White Hat SEOs only optimize those of their pages they deem worthy to be ranking top in search engines.

• Luminescent Pearly White Hat SEO: Not only does this SEO do everything the White Hat SEO does, the LPW Hat SEO also makes sure pages will not show up for irrelevant queries.

This all comes down to ethics, and there sure is a lot of grey area. If you’re SEO goals are to help people find what they are looking for and making sure what you have to share is available to the world, then you’re helping yourself and everyone else.

When we were redeveloping the WeManageYour.com web site, we wanted to create a web presence with great usability and functionality for users. We needed to communicate about ourselves and make it easy for visitors and clients to reach us and get the information they need.

So we were naturally excited when we discovered and deployed the Meebo chat widget, which is displayed directly on our contacts page. When this light-weight web application pops up, the visitor is instantly connected with our team here – it will say if we’re online and it functions just like any other IM chat, giving the user a private session to ask questions and get information directly from our team.

So drop by our contact page to check it out and say hi! We’re online during EST office hours.

Dearest Google Analytics,

Have I told you about my love for your empirical data lately?

Last night, I was thinking about you after my company had purchased some ad space in a local business publication. In the past, it’s been difficult for them to measure the success of their ad placements - save the odd phone call. Well with you, they’ve been able to clearly see any unusual activity as a result of their placement. Not only have you given them clarity on how people are using me and my parent sites, but also how they can monitor our effectiveness on the ground.

I barely know you, but you’ve already given me so many reasons to come back! Just think of the return on investment that we can share together. *Sigh*

Looking forward to seeing tomorrow’s results.

xoxo
wemanageyour.com web site

I can’t help but think of the irony in launching our new web site this week. In an age where Content Management Systems (CMS) have saturated the marketplace, I feel like we’ve sort of taken a bit of a sidestep in offering clients good, old human-powered skills.

The fact is, many of our clients use CMS’s. But, like many things, time is of the essence. They still need to get that content up there - and usually quickly. At the risk of turning this post into a shameless self promotion, I’ll close quickly by thanking you for dropping by. I agree with my colleague Derek, that our desire is to see this blog mature into a great resource for clients and visitors alike.

Here at the WeManageYour.com / SUM incorporated office, we are very excited to announce the official launch of the WeManageYour.com web site.  After years of work updating and keeping organizations’ web sites accurate and looking new, we have created a responsive service using our economy of scale to provide dynamic, current and professional web site updates while generating great value. We think wemanageyour.com provides a solution to a common challenge facing organizations everywhere.

The purpose of this blog is to create an open source of information and best practices used in maintaining a professional and credible web presence, and to serve as a node of dialogue between us at WeManageYour.com and the world. We invite clients and visitors to post their comments here.