Our Monmouth Blog

Welcome to the third installment of the Sunday Coffee Cup. I sincerely welcome your comments and feedback.

This week really felt like spring. You know the summer must be coming because gas was up over 20 cents in what seemed like a week. I just filled up my Subarau Impreza and it cost me 42 bucks. With all of the rising costs of basic staples its no wonder why people are defaulting on loans and our nations economy is weakening.

Worth Repeating:
Liberty State Park to create 234-acre refuge for wildlife
by Brian T. Murray/The Star-Ledger

A fenced-off, long-contaminated chunk of Liberty State Park is about to get a face-lift to become what federal and state officials are calling an urban wildlife refuge.

The $32 million project is not a cleanup. It’s a green makeover, with 234 acres of wasteland in the middle of the 1,100-acre park getting remodeled into a mixture of freshwater wetlands, grasslands, hardwood forests and a salt-water marsh.

Now It’s the $6 Loaf of Bread
As prices soar, food has replaced oil as the big threat to the long-running global economic expansion.
By Rod Nordland and Daniel Gross | NEWSWEEK

It may seem insensitive to discuss the impact of high food prices in a wealthy economy in which obesity is rampant. But higher grain prices are having a serious economic impact in the United States. As the U.S. economy slips into recession, the Congressional Budget Office projects that a record 28 million Americans will require food stamps this year. And since this year’s allocations are based on prices as of last June, federal aid won’t go as far. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the prices for staple groceries have risen sharply in the past year: white bread (16.3 percent), milk (13.3 percent), eggs (29.9 percent). Americans don’t starve, says Stacy Dean, director of food assistance at the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “but we have a very significant chunk of the population that isn’t able to eat a bare-bones, basic healthy diet.” Food pantries across the country are feeling the sting of rising food and gas prices. Barb Prather, director of the Northeast Iowa Food Bank, estimates that her group’s food bills have increased 30 to 40 percent in the past year—at a time of rising demand.

Blog of the Week:
Small Fuel Marketing
10 Clever Ways To Wow Your Clients by Dave Navarro

But how do you turn an ordinary client into a raving fan? All it takes is a little understanding of their wants and needs – and some creative strategies for exceeding their expectations. Here are 10 ways to create raving fan customers who give the word-of-mouth marketing that your business needs to succeed.

Coffee Break:
5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online
by Sean P. Aune/Mashable

Since May 2007, we’ve [Mashable] been bringing you resources and tools to be more productive on the web. Due to popular demand, we’ve brought all these lists together into one gigantic meta-list: 5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online.

Inspirational Quote:

“Failure is success if we learn from it”. – Malcolm Forbes

Find out what I am doing on Twitter.

American Recreational Military Services (A.R.M.S), a 501 (c)(3) Public Charity

I am really thankful to all that have helped promote this fund raising drive to get it started. There really is a lot more that we need to do so your continued help and support is appreciated. Find out more information about the ARMS Charity Fund Raiser in a previous post.

I would like to take a moment to thank for following businesses and organizations which were among the first to make donations:
Contempra Electric, Jackson – Homestead Run, Toms River – The Dance Connection, Toms River – Outreach of Greenbriar, Jackson – Veterans of Foreign Wars: VFW Post 8885, Toms River

And to the following supportive bloggers:
Surviving NJ
Exit 117A

Please continue to help promote this fund raising event and charity our troops deserve and appreciate it.

Best wishes!

Hugo Vidal Teixeira of Compenent House recently wrote a fantastic blog post on the importance of good user interface design titled “Ten UI Lessons from the Real World”. Through excellent pictures of real life examples Hugo demonstrates how bad design can hurt your brand, confuse, or even be offensive. It is not only good information but really funny and entertaining. As you read the post I am sure you can think of a few frustrating websites where ultimately you did not do business with because of a poor UI.

A well designed website can increase your credibility and improve sales conversions.

Best wishes!

American Recreational Military Services (A.R.M.S), a 501 (c)(3) Public Charity

In order to help the local charity ARMS on its important mission we have volunteered to actively help promote its latest fund raising efforts. Any business or organization making a suggested contribution of $250 dollars or more will receive a thank you on OurMonmouth.com.
A special section on the homepage has been created just to show support from the local business community. Our troops and their families really deserve community support for their sacrifices. Please help us show them that we appreciate their service to our county. You support a great cause and we support your business! Any support or help in promoting this cause is appreciated.

For more information go to the business and community directory of Monmouth County.

Best wishes and thank you!

Complete Press release:

ARMS reaches out to fellow New Jerseyans to help “our own” deployed troops.
This year NJ will experience the biggest troop activation of our National Guard and Reserves since WWII. We cannot continue doing what we have done so well for the past 5 years without everyone’s help. 3,200 troops will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, they and their families will need comfort both abroad and at home and ARMS can supply this with help from all fellow New Jerseyans. Please help our campaign and donate a tax deductible donation to A.R.M.S.
Red Bank, NJ, April 14th, 2008: American Recreational Military Services (ARMS) an all volunteer 501c3 is asking for your help. This year NJ will experience the biggest troops surge since WWII. We cannot continue doing what we have done so well for the past 5 years without everyone’s help. 3,200 troops will be deployed, they and their families will need comfort both abroad and at home and ARMS can supply this with help from all fellow New Jerseyans.
Our biggest expense is packaging material and shipping cost. The average comfort package that we send to the troops cost about $10.00 in postage to ship. We do not get a shipping cost discount from the U.S. Post Office The content of the packages are all donated by the wonderful school children, parents, church groups, civic groups, veteran organizations and business owners, of NJ. Over the past 5 years we have shipped over 20,000 packages to the troops.
The impact your can make on these families lives with your support cannot be underestimated. Your donations either financial, goods, or time is critical to our success. To show our appreciation of your support OurMonmouth.com has committed to recognize any business, organization, or individual that contributes over $250 with a featured spot on the homepage. OurMonmouth.com is a local business and community directory of Monmouth County.
American Recreational Military Services (A.R.M.S), a 501 (c)(3) Public Charity was founded in 2003 by a group of grass roots volunteers who wanted to give something back to the military and their families. In a matter of months, this small organization had grown from just a handful to more than 325 volunteers throughout the tri-state area. A.R.M.S. continues to provide services to local armories throughout the region. A.R.M.S. supports the area unit Family Readiness Groups, as well as providing direct assistance to family members in need. In addition, A.R.M.S. has been working with the local military bases to address quality of life issues for soldiers and their families.
# # #
If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Ronnie Micciulla, please call (732) 890-4914 or e-mail ronnie@supportarms.org.

How Green is your office? Being a greener office is not a difficult thing to achieve. Look around your office and you’d be amazed what you can think of to become greener. Just follow a few suggestions and you are already helping the environment. First you can choose from a wide variety, not costly biodegradable packing peanuts, non-toxic erase markers, recycled scissors, fewer chemicals, especially “green chemicals”. Change the type of lightbulbs you use to compact fluorescent bulbs, This saves about 75% energy plus they last 10X longer. Use mugs instead of disposable cups. 1 person buys 3 cups of coffee a day, 5 days a week for 1 year, that equals 600 cups that end up in the landfill.
Unplug your technology when not in use. Up to 75% of the electricity used to power office equipment is consumed while the item is turned off, but still plugged in. Be sure to buy power saving office equipment. Recycle your paper, print on both sides. By recycling 1 ton of paper you have saved 17 trees, almost 7,000 gallons of water and more than 3 cubic yards of landfill space. Cut up your used paper, use the back for messages. Reuse office supplies like paper clips as much as possible. Place recycle bins around the office.
It takes 1000 years for your toner cartridges to decompose in landfills. It takes up to 6 pints of oil to produce 1 printer cartridge. By buying remanufactured ink and toner cartridges you are saving water, energy and material resources, plus you are saving money in the cost of the cartridge and even the landfill tax that is passed on to you the consumer.
Do you have any recycling tips? Please pass them along and they can be included in Cartridge Renewals Systems recycling tip newsletter. Email: Jackie [at] cartridgerenewal [dot] com.

Jackie Berman is the owner of Cartridge Renewal Systems.

Since today is Earth Day, I ask you what did you do to participate in Earth Day? Did you attend any events? What are some ways you are pitching in and doing your part to reduce your footprint of consumption and waste? What are some ways you run a greener business?

I ask you?

Today I removed the nofollow tag from comments on this blog and recently added the commentluv plugin as well. My goal of this blog has not only been to share information but to encourage interaction and community. I hope you take advantage of these features because your comments and feedback fuel this blog.

Some of you may be unfamiliar with nofollow (I hope this helps):

nofollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of spamdexing, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.
“nofollow.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 2008. Answers.com 22 Apr. 2008. http://www.answers.com/topic/nofollow

nofollow HTML example:
<a href="http://www.anofollowlink.com" rel="nofollow">A No Follow Link</a>

Comment spam will be deleted.

Best wishes

Richard Waters of the Financial Times recently reported a dead on article about Google’s lack of follow-up on its commitment to deal with privacy issues as a result of the DoubleClick acquisition. The article titled “Google resolve crumbles on ‘cookies’ pledge” reports

The privacy issue involves “cookies”, the small digital files which online advertising companies plant on consumers’ computers to track internet sites they visit. They use the information to learn about consumers’ interests in order to target advertising.
The issue came to the fore last April with Google’s announced plan to buy DoubleClick, an internet company which delivers many of the ads consumers see online and which plants many of the cookies that sit on personal computers. The combination of Google’s records of a consumer’s internet searches with DoubleClick’s information from cookies prompted complaints that one company would hold extensive data about a large proportion of the world’s internet users.
Google fended off the outcry partly with a promise to use technology to minimise cookies’ invasiveness. It later announced technology trials to try to come up with new versions of cookies that would pose less of a problem, for instance by breaking down the data it collected about each consumer into smaller pieces through what are known as “crumbled cookies”.

Also in a Cnet report by Matt Asey on his Blog called The Open Road posted:

European regulators cut Google some slack based on its word that it was going to immediately look into ways to boost privacy. A year into that pledge, Google has done little, by its own admission.

There is no doubt in my mind that Google will soon be facing a growing public concern if it does not address the issue of privacy. The public and industry insiders have been patient with Google but it does have significant reputation risk if it does not address these issues shortly.

Google is still the golden goose of Internet as reflected in its first quarter earning report with a 9% increase in net revenue growth beating Wall Streets expectations. As Google continues to grow and expand its influence it needs to remember its self-defined mission:

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

There is no other company in the world with a more important role is the distribution of information than Google. Global information flow and privacy are a tremendous responsibility for a young company. While I am confidant that Google can overcome all of the concerns with quality solutions it becomes more difficult to do what is right when it contrasts with the right business decision.

Best wishes.

Welcome to the second issue of the Sunday Coffee Cup. I sincerely welcome your comments and feedback.
Last week I missed this post because I was drowning in a Internal Server Error that was intermittently occurring on the site. While I was eventually able resolve the error it was extremely stressful and took a sleepless night to work through it. The moral of the story is to make sure your websites are properly backed up and you have a plan in the event of a technical emergency.

Worth Repeating:
Online Sales to Grow 17 Percent in ‘08

NEW YORK (AP)– Online spending is expected to rise a robust 17 percent this year, despite a sluggish economy that has bruised many brick-based retailers, according to an annual survey to be released Tuesday.

Retail sales online, excluding travel purchases, are set to grow to $204 billion in 2008 from $174.5 billion last year, fueled by sales of apparel, computers and autos, according to a survey conducted by Internet analysis firm Forrester Research for Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation trade group. That projection is below the 21 percent increase seen in the prior year, but industry officials attribute it to the maturing of the business, not the sluggish economy.

Blog of the Week:
Historical Marker Database

This website is an illustrated searchable online catalog of historical information viewed through the filter of roadside and other permanent outdoor markers, monuments, and plaques. It contains photographs, inscription transcriptions, marker locations, maps, additional information and commentary, and links to more information. Anyone can add new markers to the database and update existing marker pages with new photographs, links, information and commentary.

There is a post on the Route of the 1776 British & Hessian invasion in Tenafly, NJ.

Coffee Break:
Geni

Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives’ email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives.

Inspirational Quote:

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined”. – Henry David Thoreau

Find out what I am doing on Twitter.

There has been a recent flurry of blog posts about whether or not Industry Search Engine Standards (SEO) are a good thing. I initially thought industry standardization could be a good idea. By definition a Standard is a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence (Source: answers.com). The Internet has advanced and prospered through standardization. W3C has done a great job in organizing, communicating, and advancing web development through the excellence of its programs.
Since Google is the majority of the search engine opportunity it remains the focus of the SEO industry. Google has declared its own set of standards and most of the industry is already working within the Google defined frame work. Others have taken another stance and have said that they will run their business as they see fit. For example, John Chow does not follow the Google standards and continues to do very well and his successes are published regularly.
I have been recently critical of Google and worry about its role in the future of information. The problem is that Google has been not only vague and hypocritical about optimization practices. What I find more disturbing is that Google has a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude in its press and through its spokespersons. I touched this topic last month when I posted “The Google Hypocrisy”.
While standards might not be the best thing for a portion of the industry I do think it would ultimately benefit the consumers of SEO services. There are unfortunately a few bad apples that have given the industry a undeserved bad name.
Below is a few related articles I tagged over the last few weeks:
Bruce Clay
Search Engine Land
SEOmoz
SEO Roundtable
Aaron Wall
John Chow

What are your thoughts on SEO Standardization – Do we need a standard?