My friend Rafa makes me proud. He recently participated in a panel of very high profile speakers in the Billboard Latin Music Conference in Miami. He is VP of Business operations at LatCel, the leading provider of wireless content services for U.S. Hispanic communities.
He broke the news about about the coming relaunch of their site Lo2Yo (LoTuyo) with a reggaeton and hip-hop-centered platform featuring animated characters set in a "Pimp-my-ride"-style garage. Currently Lo2Yo offers horoscope, dating, love tips and more content for Latino mobile users.
I am very proud of Rafa. He sure knows this market. He closed his statement by saying:
"There's a misconception outside the Hispanic world that the U.S. Hispanic market has to be addressed in Spanish, and that it's one single market."
LatCel's second-generation target audience "will use mainstream services, but they're proud of their roots."
I am now heading down to Miami to deliver a Search Engine Marketing training session (more specifically on PPC). If you have a need to get up to speed with Search Engine Optimization, paid campaigns or any of these important topics to have your web site come up among the top choices when potential visitors search for your products or services on Google or Yahoo!, contact us.
I will be back on Sunday... most importantly, with the FAMILY!! They are coming back from their trip. I am beyond happy! :)
I just learned the news today... The news is that the Full Sail web site now offers a fully functional RSS feed, so you can plug yourself into the latest happenings of our Entertainment Media School in Winter Park, Florida.
Well, that came out like a promotional post... it wasn't. I just was excited about the new feed, I admit.:)
It's been 30 days since the folks at 37Signals (the same guys who made Basecamp possible) launched Highrise. My friend Gustavo at work made me aware of it, and a few days after it launched, with a couple of Search Engine Marketing projects in the pipeline, I decided to give it a shot. Now, I won't go back.
Highrise is a simple web-based CRM system that lets you take care of your small business contact management needs. It provides you with a means to cc: it in your communications, so that they can be incorporated as part of cases, companies or contacts. You can also attach tasks to each of these, so that you can keep a running log of activities in regards to your projects and relationships.
It's really as intuitive to use as Basecamp: check it out and sign up for a free account (even the free version -which I am still using- is extremely powerful).
When you consider how much our society values the looks, what Roger Ebert is doing by, essentially, not giving a damn about what others (freaking paparazzi included) think or say about him while he's not pretty boy any more, you realize we have so much to learn about him.
The man talks openly about this current condition (with cancer of the salivary gland) and why, in spite of some people's advice to the contrary, he will be attending the Ninth Annual Overlooked Film Festival. He wraps up his column writing:
I have some back pain, and to make it easier for me to sit through screenings, the festival has installed my very own La-Z-Boy chair. Photos of me in the chair should be captioned "La-Z-Critic."
Aunque lo recordemos joven (no CHAVO, pero si joven), el tiempo pasa. En esta foto pueden ver a Roberto Gomez Bolaños, el autor y protagonista de El Chavo, El Chapulin Colorado y tantos otros increibles personajes de comedia con quienes crecimos en los ochenta. Tiene 78 años.
Si quieren saber como luce el resto del elenco del programa, vean las fotos de la mayoria de ellos.
Y para cerrar, no podia faltar el videito de rigor, con la intro del programa que aprendimos a adorar:
As described by the creator of the idea, in essence what SWF Objects does is:
Prepare an HTML element that will hold our Flash movie. The content placed in the 'holder' element will be replaced by the Flash content, so users with the Flash plug-in installed will never see the content inside this element. This feature has the added bonus of letting search engines index your alternate content.
So there goes an incredibly Search Engine-friendly way to deal with Flash sites, besides the previously discussed tips.
See SWF Objects in action in the Schematic web site, where Geoff Stearns (the guy who posted about it and one of its creators) used to work until this week... he's moving to San Fran to work with Google. :)
The most recent example of a so-called "Googlebomb" granted him this highly coveted status by having lots and lots of people link to this page using the words "Greatest Living American".
Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan was surprised to see this happen, because a "fix" made to the Google Rank algorithm earlier in the year was supposed to have made this impossible for pages that weren't relevant to the terms being linked, and Colbert's page only contained the term "American" on it, but not the words "greatest" or "living", which means it should have not ranked that well for the combination of the three terms. So it's ranking indeed was fundamentally based solely on link popularity.
Not what everyone will tell you in Search Engine Optimization class, but... Who knows? It's Google's algorithm: maybe they love Colbert! :)
I learned about Catherine Seda back in 2004, when she published her classic book "Search Engine Advertising" (read the review here). Earlier in 2007, she came back with another title, "How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders", one that handsomely complements her work and offers marketers and business owners alike a plethora of information to feed from and make the most out of the options available nowadays to catapult your business online.
With the assistance of contributing author Amanda Watlington (another legend in the Search Marketing space), Catherine covers PR, blogging, social networking, podcasting, e-mail campaigns, affiliate marketing, PPC and more sharing her knowledge while she interviews experts in each of the topics and wraps up each chapter with an insightful Success Story (read "case study") to drive the points home.
In the end, between the material covered and its relevance, combined with Catherine's fresh writing style, the book ends up being an enjoyable read that is worth thousands of dollars, if you apply her suggestions as a part of your marketing and PR efforts. Get your copy of the book and, if you need assistance with getting a Search Marketing campaign off the ground, contact Avance Associates: we can help you.
A little under a month after I won in Blingo, I just won again. This time it was thanks to my friend Gilberto, who won a $25 Gift Certificate for Amazon.com. So I won the same thing.
The way Blingo works is: you do your searches (they are powered by Google) using Blingo, while logged in with your account, and you can win. When you win, whoever referred you to Blingo wins too: this is what happened to me today.
The most amazing thing Who Killed The Electric Car? did for me had little to do with electric cars themselves. They are gone, and it becomes obvious in the movie that they are not coming back any time soon.
What the movie does is expose how economic interests on the part of the oil industry and car companies who have little incentive to change their traditional ways of doing business (they continue to make money as they operate), weak leadership at the Federal and State levels bending to these economic interests (how does it otherwise make sense to see such huge tax break incentives for buyers of Hummer vehicles) and comfortable consumers who refuse to acknowledge we have a problem with our low fuel efficiencies and are willing to do little or nothing about it, all come together to get in the way of evolving as a nation towards more sustainable and efficient transportation alternatives.
At the end of the movie, there is a glimmer of hope with talk about plug-in hybrid vehicles that could lead to efficiencies of over 150 MPG. Most definitely a documentary worth seeing, so you can see what you can and should do to help make a difference in your world.
Se acuerdan del personaje? Emmanuel, Jesús Emmanuel Acha Martinez: el artista mexicano que se agarraba el pelo y levantaba la "patica" cuando bailaba en Sabado Sensacional.
Que sera de su vida, se preguntan? Pues el hombre esta en un plan semejante al de Luis Miguel a hace un tiempo a la fecha. Su buena epoca a nivel musical ya paso: eso esta claro. Nos dejo grandes clasicos, pero creo que la ultima memoria que tengo de su musica no pasa de 1990, cuando saco su album Vida.
Lo que quizas no sabian es que Emmanuel es hoy en dia uno de los principales colaboradores de un movimiento ecologísta en México, a traves del Movimiento Hombre-Naturaleza que propugna el desarrollo equilibrado con el medio ambiente.
Three items sum pup the testimony by attorney general Alberto Gonzales in front of the Senate, yesterday:
1) This caricature by David Horsey: 2) A pretty comprehensive summary of the coverage by multiple media, compiled by Washington Post columnist Dam Froomkin, aptly titled "The Gonzales Clown Show".
3) Last, but not least, this segment by non other by Jon Stewart. Enjoy!
I would have normally posted this in my Urban Art Show blog, but given the events of this week, I thought I'd post it here to relieve some of the tension...
In the course of minutes I've read about a couple of things that simply left me speechless: -First, the news about the arrival of a package from the murderer at Virginia Tech to NBC in New York, with what appeared like a Multimedia Manifesto that included a video he shot between the two shootings. -Then, I read about the death of over 200 people in Iraq today, victim of car bombs going off...
These are such troubling times. Very, very sad indeed. I find myself without words to say.
> Virginia Tech family members across the country have united to declare > this Friday, April 20th, an "Orange and Maroon Effect" day to honor > those killed in the tragic events on campus Monday, and to show > support for Virginia Tech students, faculty, administrators, staff, > alumni, and friends. "Orange and Maroon Effect" was born several years > ago as an invitation to Tech fans to wear orange and maroon to > Virginia Tech athletic events. We invite everyone from all over the > country to be a part of the Virginia Tech family this Friday, to wear > orange and maroon to support the families of those who were lost, and > to support the school and community we all love so much.
As part of Google's shopping spree, they recently completed the acquisition of Tonic Systems, a provider of world leading Java PowerPoint automation products and solutions that will allow Google to offer web-based presentation software as part of their Google Docs suite... Or should I say SWEEET? ;)
So, the Arcade Fire ticket I put up for sale on eBay didn't go so I relisted it.
Pass this along if you know of someone who needs a good ticket. I am paying for the shipping: I just don't want to loose all the money of the ticket. :S
By the biggest of all coincidences, I happened to land on the profile of Ninah Mars, a very talented Venezuelan musician who graduated from Full Sail's Show Production program late in 2006 (I had no clue she was going to school there... I guess we are a larger school than we suspect we are)
She has a great sound, very punk rock if you ask me. Check out her music in her MySpace page. Below you can see her performing a few weeks ago in Caracas, at Bar 205 C.C. San Ignacio:
I was just reading about plans to pass legislation that would allow sales made through Amazon or eBay to be taxable starting next year.
I wonder the scope of this, whether it will apply to used goods as well, because I've always heard that selling some of your used stuff is much like an online yard sale.
I can only imagine this would affect businesses that conduct these kids of sales as part of their revenue... or not?
I was sad to learn that Leopard, the new Apple OS, was delayed until October in favor of focusing resources on iPhone. While this sends a clear signal of the importance Jobs sees on getting in the wireless communications arena, the article something interesting too.
The most important point made is one of resource limitation: how they may be doing more things than they can afford to, given the size of their staff. They are no small company: at 18,000 they clearly passed that threshold a long time ago. But could they be biting more than they can chew? What do you think?
The Decemberists: You probably know them. They come from Portland, Oregon and they have become one of the biggest acts in indie rock. I had a chance to see them recently at Hard Rock here in Orlando and was very impressed with the command of the crowd that lead singer/guitarist Colin Meloy exhibited, along with their great performance.
The Besnard Lakes: This is my new favorite band. They come from Montreal and sport a space-pop'ish atmospheric sound that reminds of a blend between My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, M83 and Beach Boys harmonies. They are unbelievable!
Beirut: imagine David Byrne singing Sufjan Stevens-type music... now make that sound lo-fi and throw in an Eastern European twist to it. That's the sound of Beirut in a nutshell, largely the result of European trips by Zach Condon, 21-year old musician who essentially IS Beirut in the studio.
Destroyer: I learned about Destroyer by way of The New Pornographers (both from Vancouver), given that Destroyer's leader (Dan Bejar) has collaborated often and closely with them. Though they've released quite a few albums since 1996, I just recently became acquainted with them through Destroyer's Rubies
My Brightest Diamond: as stated om their site, "My Brightest Diamond is Shara Worden, granddaughter of an Epiphone-playing traveling evangelist, fathered by a National Accordion Champion, and mothered by a classical organist." Sounds odd? Not really... she has a voice that will linger long after you've stopped hearing her sing. We did, when she opened for The Decemberists, and the only thing we could complain about was how little time she had on the stage.
Menomena: A trio (also) from Portland, Oregon, their music is highly experimental but doesn't go off the charts. It still stays roughly within indie rock territory. You can listen to their 2007 release, Friend and Foe, here. Here's a video of one of the tracks from their latest album, called "Wet and Rustling":
What are they feeding people back in Oregon? Just in this list, there are two bands, and in , I had mentioned The Shins and M. Ward.
Este video que me mando el primo Edgard me mando de vuelta al pasado. Un poco pavoso, pero trae buenos recuerdos. Era como el "We Are The World" Hispano...
In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.
You can see my alter blog here... it's a page translator that makes your page appear as if you are the master of slang. Like I (of all people) know slang, right? :)
Her point was basically how dire is the need for an improved design in the world of insulin pumps and blood glucose meters, two "gadgets" which diabetics depend on for their lives (you can live without a pump, by giving yourself insulin shots, but once you begin using the pump, it's your portable pancreas, pretty much).
In writing this post, Amy draw attention from technology blog TechCrunch, which featured her on the home page today. I am very happy this happened, because it brings attention to diabetes as a true issue, one that is lived by 20 million of us, yet seems to be continually brushed aside and underfunded by the government (this administration, at least) in favor of other uses for our tax money. A TechCrunch home page spotlight on diabetes is certainly publicity for the cause that can't be bought.
KUDOS to you and for all you do for diabetics, Amy!
To everyone reading this: help bring more exposure to the cause. Digg the story.
I just learned about a fascinating initiative involving celebrity blogger Jeff Jarvis, who recently set up a YouTube channel called PrezConference, to provide a platform for people to ask video questions to presidential wannabes and get them to (hopefully) answer them. It remains to be seen (as of today) how it turns out, but the sole idea deserves credit as one that is spinning Web 2.0 on itself in the benefit of democracy.
Honestly? You want to know what I feel about O'Reilly's comments on this video?
I think he should be embarrassed. Geraldo was right. Not only did O'Reilly (once more) loose his mind: his xenophobic mindset was evidenced in front of everyone.
If you are not a parent, an aunt/uncle or have any contact with any kid who watches Dora regularly, you may not get this. If you do, please, sit down and have a good laugh.
Preceeded by a campaign that defies typical promotional initiatives preceeding album releases, Nine Inch Nails fans all over the place anxiously await the release of Trent Reznor's latest work, Year Zero, which is scheduled to come out on April 17th.
If you can't wait until then, make your way to the Year Zero web site and, in exchange for signing up for the mailing list, you can stream the entire album prior to the release: not a bad deal, if you ask me...
My first impressions are simple: Nine Inch Nails is BACK!! The previous album was a bit on the weaker side. This one seems to pick up the slack and take Reznor's work back into the radar of what's relevant in the music scene.
Andreina posted on Flickr all the paintings she is now putting up for sale. I am incredibly proud of her work: I love it, and not just because she's my wife. I really think she's an amazingly talented artist.
By way of "en Negritas", I rediscovered a new format in business cards I had previously seen adopted by Kris Krug.
The folks over at Moo.com have partnered with Flickr and a number of other photo-centric communities, allowing users to produce professional-level business cards using their photos as background... sounds simple, but you've got to experience the quality so you can judge for yourself.
This coming May, along with the coming price increase of stamps to 41 cents, Star Wars fans will be able to enjoy a new stamp pane from the U.S. Postal Service, featuring 15 stamps in celebration of the Star Wars 30th Anniversary.
As part of the same celebration, the Postal Service is organizing a contest for people to win a Grand Prize VIP trip for four to the ultimate fan experience, Star Wars Celebration IV in Los Angeles or eBay Gift Certificates to use toward Star Wars collectibles!
