On a recent trip my family stayed at a Super 8 motel. It was everything we wanted – close to where we were visiting, clean, comfortable and at a great price. But above all, for me it had one of the best WiFi signals I have gotten in any hotel anywhere in the world, as you can see in the screengrab below.

The debate about the price vs. value for low and high-priced hotels will go on forever. Most all higher-end hotels charge for WiFi, and will even go as far as charge you for each computer you want to access it. And don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a Westin over a Super 8 any day, but at the end of that day, if I just need to briefly get online (as was the case when I was at this Super 8) I am not looking to go through a process and incur a US$15 charge to do so.

Where value is in the eye of the beholder, the last I checked WiFi doesn’t have eyes.

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Business • Strategize • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink

The next likemind will be Friday, April 16, 2010 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more information on likemind, you can read this great article on likemind from the New York Times.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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Announcements • Business • Technology • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

If you read The Hot Iron yesterday, you may have noticed my post for Thursday, April 1, 2010 was an outright April Fools joke. The idea that Google can predict what you want to search on is surely one of debate, but the connection between your brain and the browser is not quite there yet, at least at a consumer level.

After gauging the response to the post, as well as general commentary I saw around social media about April Fools Day and blogging, the question presents itself, “should you blog a joke on April 1?”

Analysis Paralysis

There is no shortage of opinion out there, and that can also relate to your blog as a whole as well as its individual post. When thinking about reactions to such a post of your own, there’s many angles to look at from. Some say you should ignore anything posted on April 1 in general, as it is a waste of time to sort through the jokes to find what is real. Others say your attempt at humor may not get through to an existing reader or a new reader, which could turn them off and away from your blog. Then others say that in a world where things are too serious, why not have some comic relief?

So summing it up, blogging on April 1 may be a no-win situation. But thinking about it more, isn’t that true for the other 364 days of the year as well?

Be True To Your Blog

My recommendation is to be true to the mission of your blog. By consistently writing relevant content and engaging with your community you should be in good shape. Over the long term, you should have increased readership – both in page hits and subscribers. Watching hits and activities on a day-to-day basis may not be relevant for you, as for whatever reason you may get people unsubscribing or a decrease in the number of hits. But like the stock market, you may have bumps along the road but over the long term you should gain.

Keeping true to The Hot Iron, I never try to take myself too seriously, so every once in a while snarky comments may come out, and yesterday that was in the form of an entire post. I will continue to strive to educate and engage in conversation, and hopefully you the reader will enjoy it as much as I do.

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Blogging • Business • Strategize • (0) Comments • Permalink

This morning when I opened my browser to perform a Web search I saw something different on Google’s home page – nothing but their logo. There was no search box or buttons, as shown below.

However, when I went to move the mouse on the page to make the other text appear on the page, I was returned a search results page for what I was going to search on!

So what happened – was I imagining this, or did I not have enough coffee? It turns out it was none of these. Rather, it appears Google has changed how searches are executed, as I found in this article on their search blog about the elimination of the search box.

“Google has adapted its predictive technology used for delivering relevant ads to how searches are performed. We can anticipate your search request without you manually typing in search keywords or phrases. This allows Google to provide a much richer, not to mention expedient, search experience, as well as optimizing our search indicies based on the collective thought of the world’s computer users, which we have been tracking for over the last decade.”

The article went on to mention this is not a beta feature and is live for all users.

Proof In Usage

So how well does it work? The search I was going to manually type in this morning was of “patriots” and I was returned a search results page with the first link listed being what I was looking for. When I paused after reading the Web page I got to from the search, another search results page was presented in the browser, this time for the search term “breakfast” which was what I was thinking about at that moment.

After thinking of several things and getting highly-relevant search results for each, I contacted a few friends and colleagues over Twitter to ask of their experience with this. One friend I was able to get a hold of on the phone in the Boston area said to me, “all I keep getting is search results pages in Google on the search term of 'porn'… wait a minute, that’s what I was, hey, I gotta go” and the call quickly ended.

Impact On Web Community

Though this was just released today, it will be interesting to see the reaction of the Web community to this. People who work in SEO, or search engine optimization, will probably all be out of jobs as what people want for content will be known ahead of time. Usability experts will probably be baffled as there is really nothing to be used on Google search anymore. Anyone developing for the Apple iPad will probably not notice anything different, as it is rumored there is an undocumented “feature” where the iPad blocks Google altogether.

What do you think about the new way to search on Google? How accurate are the search results for what you were thinking? Feel free to share your results in the comments, but you may not want to share everything you thought of.

Editor's Note: On 4/3/2021, changed the article link as the previous one was broken.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Technology • Web Design • (4) Comments • Permalink

Should a blog have its own domain name? The answer to this is obviously "it depends" as no solution fits for everybody. Let's take the idea of branding a blog step-by-step.

Start With The Brand

It is good practice to brand your blog. By giving it a name other than "company's blog" a brand name helps the blog stand on its own, which many times is the case. Many people come to read a blog based on its own content and not necessarily linked from your company's Web site. RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites may guide many readers to your blog, and people may be more likely to read it if they think there's a level of independence to the blog, and that it isn't just a mouthpiece for the company. If you are adding a blog to your existing Web mix, this is a way to add some energy and buzz from the blog, and to your Web presence overall.

The brand name for a blog can be something completely new to your company, or it could be something you already have. Many blogs are given clever names (like The Hot Iron!) or they can use the company's tag line for the blog name.

This also depends on how you may be marketing or positioning the blog. Many times a blog is the official company blog. In some cases, it is a company blog, but designated it is the opinion of an employee of the company. If you market your key people as individuals, you may want the blogs to have their name as the domain name, or some other phrase or moniker they may use. This will build upon their individual branding.

Then Add A Domain Name

If you go through the effort to brand the blog, ideally you want to acquire a domain name for that brand name, as you should for, at a minimum, to protect the brand. A unique domain name, separate from your company's main domain name, builds upon the momentum of brand name you have given the blog. This is not to say that if you call your blog companyname.com/blog it will not be popular or successful. A domain name also allows for additional blogs down the road.

Many times when a blog is added to a Web site, it may not be hosted along with the site and reside on different servers. If your company has the ability to manage the DNS of its domain name (if you don't know what this means, you probably don't have that ability!) you can add a unique domain name to the blog wherever it is hosted. If your blog is hosted at a blog service like WordPress, you can add a domain name or subdomain (e.g. blogname.companyname.com) and it is recommended to do so - otherwise the blog will have an address of blogname.wordpress.com; if down the road you want to host the blog itself or move it to another service, then its Web address will have to change. When a blog is added to a Web site, it may be running different technology than the Web site. Thus a simple way to manage this is to have a unique domain name for the blog. This actually reduces DNS management for the company's main domain name.

In some cases, you may not be able to add a domain name to a blog, and the reasons can vary. Some companies may have it as policy that you cannot use another domain name other than the main one for the company's Web site. Seriously, this can happen, and was the case with a former employer. Even though we owned domain names for all of our branded products and services, they were not used - yes, the domain names did not resolve to anything! They did not want the brand to be splintered at all, even though in reality the company itself was heavily siloed into separate business units. Other companies may have other policies about managing DNS you will need to be aware of before making such a decision.

Another nuance to consider is the continuously blurring line between Web site and blog. In some cases, the Web site is a blog. A good example is the blog Dunkirk Systems, LLC and Visible Logic, Inc. recently build for the soon-to-be-bestselling book OUIJA - For The Record. This site has a few content pages, but it is primarily a blog and forum. It has one domain name and this is all it needs. There are a few content pages, but the overall goal and design were about conversation about the book, so as it is structured it works well to achieve this goal.

The Brand Beyond The Domain Name

If you do choose a domain name for your blog, ensure to carry it through in your other uses of social media. You can use the domain name in association with Google Feedburner to aggregate and promote your blog feed. Register accounts with associated social media sites - Twitter, etc. - and social bookmarking sites - StumbleUpon, etc. - to carry through and reinforce the blog's brand.

Whether you use a unique domain name or not, the design of the blog may or may not be consistent with the company's Web site. As the flow of a blog can differ from a traditional Web site, the current Web site's design and layout may have to be modified to be used for the blog. If you want the blog to be highly integrated into the Web site, then you may want a consistent design. If you do not, or are not sure, then you may want a unique look for the blog, although the company's brand would be present in the new design. There is a lot more to consider with design, though this post is about the brand name more than the look.

Whichever direction you choose, it in itself will not determine the success of your blog. Unique, interesting and relevant content published for readers published on a regular schedule is still the sweet spot of any blog!

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Blogging • Business • Domain Names • Strategize • (4) Comments • Permalink