Just joined Technorati

I'm not sure if it's a sign that I know a little about what I'm talking about or not, but I'm proud to at least know where to look to get the right information. It's like, I may not actually be cool, but I know people who are... oh yeah I do.

I'm currently following @mitchjoel, President of Twist Image, on Twitter. His post this morning in his blog Six Pixels of Separation was a great outline of several of the top tools for managing, or at least monitoring, your business reputation online. One of those means, which I have not explored thus far (and the only one to date - yay me!) is Technorati.

So this is how I spend the morning... 5:30am, signing up for new profiles in new online spaces while drinking a very large coffee. I'm still working on laying a foundation online to represent myself. For the record, www.michelleevans.com is not me.

Want to see the real me? Check out my Technorati Profile :)

Google Rant

Dear Google,

I'm very frustrated by your assumed understanding of my needs (or my own lack of understanding of your capabilities, anyhow). I'm especially frustrated with the new automatic login to analytics. That would be uber helpful if I didn't mostly use google for personal reasons. Just because I have analytics and adwords accounts for work doesn't mean that's all it's good for - my google reader, my gmail and my igoogle are all on my personal account, as is that AdSense stuff that served me up canadiancheeserolling.ca... nice AND this very blog.

So I spend a good portion of each day logging out of my natural persona and logging back in as my alter ego: the business woman. I think I'm starting to actually develop some serious mental illness over this point of contention. I can't keep flip flopping back and forth! I'm already at risk of having the shortest attention span on the planet, but make me do it under two different identities and the fragmenting is almost unbearable.

Please, please find a way for me to have two accounts simultaneously. For the love of all things digital.

Sincerely,
A Dissatisfied Customer

PS - if anyone out there knows how to make Google understand my two separate logins from this one machine, please let me know via comment.

It's always something with Telus...

I just hate them. I hate Telus with every fiber of my being. I have hated them since their sales people lied to me to get me to sign up for Telus TV (they told me I'd be able to get all UFC PPV fights, but the truth was they were still in discussions over licensing) and I have hated them since one of their customer service reps told me, "My manager is only here to make sure I get a pay cheque," when I pointed out their error and requested to speak to someone who actually gave a you-know-what. Apparently, if you do get through their automatic talk-to-a-machine-but-it-can't-figure-out-what-I'm-saying system to a human being, you can't get past the power-tripping CSR who was clearly in the right place at a time when there was a labour shortage in the service industry... oh, like now.

Today I decided to bite the bullet and add a data plan to my mobile device. I have the HTC S640 Iris. I don't mind the PDA, but I still haven't figured it all out even though I've had it over 6 months. I suspect it's actually harder to use than the Blackberry, but I figured I'd be impulsive... what else is new?

Having added the unlimited everything plan I decided to add the Telus Mobile Email. Sounds logical, right? Get my email to my PDA... it's unlimited data, so why not? Well... in the process of installing their handy-dandy software and trying to connect my work email to this thing, it ended up clearing all my contacts and my appointments on my Outlook. Nice.

I now have lost every single contact I had in both my phone and my Outlook - that's all my personal AND business contacts. Not only that, but the lovely Telus Mobile Email says it's working just fine, but it's not actually sending any email to my phone. To make things even more annoying, Telus Mobility said there was absolutely nothing they could do to retrieve the lost records; they referred me to HTC Tech Support. Guess what? Yep. HTC Tech Support can't do anything for me either.

I'm at the mercy of my IT guy. Please let him know what to do. I'm nerdy, but this is really beyond me. I think I'd like a drink...

$3. 30,000 people. 2 months... an interesting concept

This might just be one of the most exciting examples of fundraising out there… just simply asking for money. And asking for a personal cause, none less. “Brendan B” from Vancouver, BC is trying to build a network of people using a Facebook group and a website to generate $90,000 in donations to get him to Oxford. The concept is to just simply ask friends and family for money, ask them to pass it on to their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. If he doesn’t actually raise enough to go, he’s committed to forwarding what he does raise to some other worthy causes.

A New Challenge: Squidoo

So I was browsing LinkedIn Q&A's and came across a recommendation for a site called squidoo. Well, there was no way I could see a word like that with a hyperlink and not get sucked in. Here's what I found:

The idea behind squidoo is that everyone can be an expert on something, so anyone can build a page, or "lens", about it using their own knowledge, web-based sources, rss feeds, content from Amazon, Flickr or YouTube. The first lens I saw was by a woman who I found on Twitter - mynameiskate - who built one on cool laptop bags. I kid you not, it's an entire page on some really cool laptop bags! Oh the irony. Anyway, the point of this is awareness. The more a piece of content is referenced on the web, the more likely it is to be popular, the higher the search ranking. Here is the description of a squidoo lens, as posted on the squidoo site:

• An insanely easy-to-build, single page online.
• Your signpost about something that matters to you.
• A place to recommend your favorite stuff.
• A popular way to get found more on the web.
• A free (yes, free) way to earn a royalty. For you or for charity.
• Word of mouth at your fingertips.
• Squiddylicious.
• Something you should have if you care about getting the word out, about selling something, about changing minds, about sharing info, or if you just love to create, express yourself, and play.

About that royalty... the revenue from the Google content ads on the squidoo lenses get paid out however the author of the lens chooses: they will pay to the general squidoo charity kitty, to the charity of choice of the author, or directly to the author in cash. Brilliant idea for generating a user-base.

So anyway, I got to thinking, what do I know about? Well, interestingly enough I know all about the Grouse Grind and am, in fact, mandated to spread the word about it. So why not build a Grouse Grind squidoo lens and see if it does anything for search engine ranking and increased visitation to the Grouse Mountain website. You really have to check it out to understand it. It basically just amalgamates a bunch of information from wherever you find it in one place. I do think this particular page now has to be the most informative single web page about the Grouse Grind anywhere on the internet.

If it makes any money I'll consider it commission ;)

Seeking Balance... for real.

So here I am, at work... working diligently at setting up Facebook ads and a company twitter. I think it's my ADD... no, really. I think if I had come into the world 15 or 20 years later than I did, I would have been medicated for it. I was browsing Google's latest widgets, looking for anything I should be considering for business, and I decided to set up a new gmail account. Then I figured, while I'm at it, I should delete my hotmail account... so really I needed to transfer my contacts over. No problem... a quick export, a quick import and it's done. But then I had to email a bunch of people who still use my hotmail to contact me. Archaic I know... I'm on Facebook every day for heaven's sake! And then I realized my hotmail is my login for a bunch of things... so I had to go and change my email address in those things, like Blogger and Twitter. So then I thought oh I should add my blog URL to my twitter - after all, it asked for a URL in my profile that I was updating. Then I noticed I hadn't blogged, and my blog name was related to my hotmail account... so I had to delete it and start all over again. Okay I digress...

I think I spend too much time online. So I thought I'd strike a balance in my life by starting a blog. Yeah... that makes sense. I'd better get back to work...