Years ago I read an interview of Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee where he said he was surprised people and business would promote URLs, displaying them in print, advertising, et. al. Not surprising as the idea of the Web is all about linking. Some URLs are better for this as they are short and easy to remember, and others are long and cumbersome.

It is the long URLs that are made easy with services that all you to create a unique, short URL that redirects to the long one. This presumably started to make them easy to type and handle, and they became exponentially popular with short messaging services like Twitter. And Twitter actually automatically rewrites short URLs using the original service, TinyURL.

But have you seen some of these URLs? Where in some cases you can pick a text string, most common ones are taken and the new URL is structured as a domain name followed by random characters. It is short but not memorable. And do you have control over it? Unfortunately no. That is, unless you manage your own.

This is exactly what I decided to do – create a Web application for creating and managing short URLs. I call it psURL.com. For example, the short URL to the Dunkirk Systems, LLC Web site is http://psurl.com/dk. You’re probably wondering why anyone would want to do this? Here’s a few compelling reasons:

• Control your own destiny – I have written on controlling your own destiny before and it something I firmly believe in, especially in turbulent economic times.
• Brand your short URLs – You can choose your own domain name to synchronize branding with your company and give further meaning to them.
• Choose the URL string – No need for random characters, as what goes after the domain name is under your control.
• They can be changed – Did the long URL itself go away, or do you want to redirect the short URL to something else? You have the ability to easily change the destination URL.
• They are measurable – From basic logging and reporting to third-party analytics tool integration, you can measure them like any Web page or Web site.
• You can monetize them – Where this is not in place right now, it is possible to add interstitial pages to display ads before redirection is complete to the final URL.

Dunkirk Systems, LLC has developed the first release of its short URL application and is offering this as a hosted service. Of course you would have to choose your own domain name, but many good names are still available. Whether you choose to manage your own short URLs or not, it is good to know this is an option that works to your advantage.

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Business • Domain Names • Technology • (7) Comments • Permalink

A while back I wrote on a Budweiser campaign for their Bud Light Brand and questioned the promotion of the 'drinkability' of the beer. Apparently I wasn’t alone in this query, as it has been one of the top-read posts on The Hot Iron! The other day I saw a commercial for Bud Light, which appears to have been created in response to queries like my own. You can view it here, or by clicking the screen shot of the video from the Bud Light Web site. Note you will have to enter a birth date to prove you are over 21.

According to the percentages they present, nearly two-thirds of people who responded to the ad said drinkability described the physical capability to drink the beer. The ad concludes by saying the brewer’s definition is about taste.

In other words, this is a commercial about commercials. The word drinkability already has a definition to most people and this fact was missed in the development of this ad campaign. I am sure Budweiser will continue to try to drive this point home, and good luck to them. In the meantime, my preferred brand will continue to be Harpoon, where the question of taste or drinkability has never come into question.

And the guy from Boston they refer to in the video, I am sure I know him.

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Recently I responded to a question about email newsletters through LinkedIn from Kathryn Neal Odell, the CEO and Founder of Sales-Onsite, LLC, a Chicago-area business development, sales lead and sales nurturing consulting firm. I was pleased to find out I was included with others in a white paper published on the topic. You can find and read the PDF white paper here.

You can find my thoughts at the top of the second page under the heading Content. For those who know me or read The Hot Iron, you would not be surprised I pulled the answer up to the 50,000 foot mark, ensuring to address the needs of your target audience, then execute appropriately. My statement reads:

It really depends on your target audience. Many people are just learning about blogs and RSS. Some have issues with Web 2.0 usability, especially those who are visually impaired. A happy medium is to have your newsletter be an aggregation of content posted on your Web site, blog, other Web sites, etc. Content is not "locked" in the newsletter, and is searchable on the Internet.

It is with this in mind I am planning on launching my own email newsletter in 2009 for Dunkirk Systems, LLC – watch for it!

Thanks to Kathryn and her team at Sales-Onsite for including me with this great group of thought-leaders.

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Business • Technology • (2) Comments • Permalink

The next likemind will be Friday, December 5, 2008 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Spa Cafe, 112 W. Monroe, between Clark and LaSalle Streets in the Loop at 8:00 am. Check out the Spa Cafe Web site for more information, and you can find your way with a Google Map to Spa Cafe here.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al.

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

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Announcements • Business • (0) Comments • Permalink

There are about 469,000 search results in Google for the phrase “is dead long live,” which only has meaning if you put the same word at the front and tail of it. We have all probably seen this in some form or another – “AM Radio is dead, long live AM Radio” and so forth. The phrase is commonly used by someone to state that a particular thing – service, product, industry – is no longer viable, or is on the way out. In a lot of cases, the person stating this is in a position to benefit or profit from the successor to whatever they are proclaiming as dead.

When I originally scrawled notes on my whiteboard on this blog post, I had listed a number of industries, products and companies that I felt were “dead.” After looking over those notes, I realized that these entities weren’t dead at all, they were simply dead to me.

Take for example the newspaper industry. Sure, sales of all major daily newspapers are going down. But in rural areas, newspapers thrive, as they are the main source of information. Before you start hearing dualing banjos in your head, this has nothing to do with the people themselves, just try to get DSL or broadband Internet more than a few miles outside of a small town in north central Wisconsin, let alone even a weak signal on your mobile device! As a result, the mediums of the newspaper and local AM and FM radio are successful in these areas. There may not be a Tribune Tower in the center of these towns, but the handful of people who work there are gainfully employed. Even if you are nearby the Tribune Tower, it's not that people don't read newspapers anymore, there may be simply less of them. With the exception of the day after the presidential election, of course.

As someone who remembers a time before email, I keep that in mind when working with my own clients at Dunkirk Systems, LLC in the strategy and decision-making process for their use of the Internet. I work with graphic designers who understand both print and online – why create a logo that looks good online that you can’t possibly put on a fax cover sheet in black and white? Understanding that people who are not technically savvy still have credit cards and if it’s easy enough they will buy from your Web site is important not to forget.

So the next time someone says something is dead, you need to seek your own meaning in it. If what is being called dead or dying is what you do for a living, you may want to explore it a little further – the alternative may not be too much out of reach. Or it may be still viable but just not for everybody.

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Business • (2) Comments • Permalink