1. New fan of @WalkingDead & now I’m referring to orphaned customer records in source code as “walkers”. Thanks a lot @pmabray!

  2. Refactoring the school desk chair. Brilliant.

    (Source: youtube.com)

  3. Move over SEO, SMO is in your wheelhouse

    In the post Move Over for the New Critics, Paul Mabray does an excellent job describing the ascendancy of the new wine critics.

    I was particularly drawn to the screenshot at the end of the post where Paul searched for Cornerstone Cellars on Google. Notice that all results “above the fold” are based on Paul’s social activity. No organic search results to be found! Think about what this means for SEO. This is a perfect example of how SMO (social media optimization) is at least as important as SEO. If your brand’s content, message, and locations are not socially engaged and shareable, they will not find their way into your social customers’ social graphs and search results. This is incredibly significant.

    The traditional “Field of Dreams” thinking of throwing up a website, adding some SEO tweaks, and expecting search referral traffic to find you is outmoded. The influence of the social web is finding its way into all corners of the Internet. Not even the mighty Google search engine is immune.

  4. I firmly believe the wine industry can learn a lot from the transformations that are already occurring in other industries as a result of social media.

    If you’re in the wine industry and are a social media skeptic (or even a proponent), please take the time to watch the following video. To make this a more interesting experiment, substitute recording industry terms with analogous wine industry terms as you watch and listen.

    Substitute “recording industry” with “wine industry”.
    Substitute “tv” with “distributor controlled selection” or “control state”.
    Substitute “grammy awards” with “traditional wine scores”.

    Granted the substitutions above aren’t perfect and the wine industry has its own unique challenges. However, I think they’re close enough to assess similar impacts, and more importantly, the opportunities in front of us.

    Your thoughts?