11/26/06: Atlanta shows us how to live
With all of my traveling, I like to have a few places to call home around the globe. There is no hotel that can match the feeling you get when you open the door to a place you call home. Once I find a place, my assistant does a great job setting it up with all of my creature comforts, including my table lamp, wireless connection and a bottle of Makers Mark Whiskey.
While in Atlanta last week, I stopped by some great condos just outside the city in a very cosmopolitan town called Lindbergh. While I enjoyed the flats, I was really impressed by their marketing.
All throughout the residences, called Eon at Lindbergh, there were mannequins. These mannequins were in various poses throughout the Eon, sitting having coffee or walking through the courtyard.
After filling my camera with pictures, I started to wonder if the flats shared space with a mannequin factory. I finally asked the person showing me around what the story was.
She shared with me that these mannequins were all part of a marketing campaign entitled ‘Bring Lindbergh to Life’ where they wanted to show prospective buyers how vibrant the community would become once everyone moved in.
Pretty creative approach to doing something that has quickly become very difficult: selling homes. While I felt that Lindbergh is too close to Buckhead for my own good, I knew that it would be hard for any other place in the area to top this one.
While in Atlanta last week, I stopped by some great condos just outside the city in a very cosmopolitan town called Lindbergh. While I enjoyed the flats, I was really impressed by their marketing.
All throughout the residences, called Eon at Lindbergh, there were mannequins. These mannequins were in various poses throughout the Eon, sitting having coffee or walking through the courtyard.
After filling my camera with pictures, I started to wonder if the flats shared space with a mannequin factory. I finally asked the person showing me around what the story was.
She shared with me that these mannequins were all part of a marketing campaign entitled ‘Bring Lindbergh to Life’ where they wanted to show prospective buyers how vibrant the community would become once everyone moved in.
Pretty creative approach to doing something that has quickly become very difficult: selling homes. While I felt that Lindbergh is too close to Buckhead for my own good, I knew that it would be hard for any other place in the area to top this one.
Back to our PBD (PBD is what Hugh calls them when he texts me about plans). The dinner is a chance for us to finish off last year’s vintage to make room in our cellars. We rotate the location amongst our homes, and the event has grown quite a bit over the years. The menu is up to the host, but we only drink Beaujolais from that year. In fact, we each set aside a few bottles when we first get the wine specifically for the PBD.
So we were enjoying our PBD at Hugh’s wonderful house in Montgomery County Maryland when my phone buzzed. The call was from my dear friend Robin, who minds my house in Delaware while I am away. Apparently there was an issue with the roof on the guesthouse due to the strong wind and rain. Neither one of us knew a contractor, but she had a few names from friends.
I went to find out more about these contractors online prior to calling. Doing a little research in Google, I was presented with numerous results, but none were from the site of the contractors. Google had a local listing, similar to a phone book listing. Complete with a map, phone number and details about hours, payment, etc.
Other results came from third party sites, such as Angie’s List and Service Magic. These sites offered more details about contractors, as well as opinions from previous customers. Highly optimized for search engines, these sites appeared above the sites of those few contractors who had web sites.
Reading through the sites, I talked to a contractor and connected him with Robin to handle the repairs. The experience highlighted something that we should all consider: there is a lot of content being written about your company that isn’t on your website. You would be well served to research these results and confirm the accuracy. Many simply infer the information from other databases to get the process started. Most of these sites offer you a chance to review/modify your information. One of our restaurant clients did this and noticed that their headquarters was incorrectly listed as a location. That might explain the frequent visits by dressed up couples from out of town.
With the roof repair well in hand, I was able to get back to the party just in time to join in on the ceremonial opening of the final bottle. Tradition has it that everyone circles around the host singing ‘American Pie’ while the final bottle is uncorked. Hugh raised the bar this year, and I look forward to hosting it next year under my new roof!
I just finished up at the wonderful Web 2.0 summit in San Fran. This is my third year at this event, and I have to say that this year was the best. It felt like 1999 all over again with all the companies hyping their ideas for the web.
My favorite part of the show is entitled ‘Launch Pad’ where 13 companies showcase their ideas to a packed house of interested parties. If you have ever suffered a case of ‘the demo demons’ you know the panic some of these folks had as they tried to get their presentations fired up.
The presentation that was generating all the buzz was Photosynth by Microsoft’s Live Labs. This nifty idea takes photos of a place and maps it to a 3-D environment. You can walk through it and zoom in on everything. It was impressive and worth a demo look.
During one of the breaks while someone was having trouble with their laptop, we all stepped out ot stretch our legs. I met a nice fellow from a company which I wont mention. We exchanged cards and promised to reconnect.
When I got back to my room, I checked out his website to learn more. It was a very clean and impressive site, complete with the Web 2.0 mirrored logo that we have come to expect.
There was one problem: the site told me nothing about the company and why I should work with them. A site certainly should look good and be usable, but I went to it for a reason, to learn more about him and his company. The big question that didn’t get answered for me was, why should I want to work with him?
People visit a web site for a reason. When you consider a redesign of your site, be sure to take a look at the words on the page and who your customers are. Does your site speak to your customers? Or does it simply look good to you?
After about 5 minutes, I went back to Photosynth and enjoyed my wine while viewing photos of Piazza San Marco in Venice.
My favorite part of the show is entitled ‘Launch Pad’ where 13 companies showcase their ideas to a packed house of interested parties. If you have ever suffered a case of ‘the demo demons’ you know the panic some of these folks had as they tried to get their presentations fired up.
During one of the breaks while someone was having trouble with their laptop, we all stepped out ot stretch our legs. I met a nice fellow from a company which I wont mention. We exchanged cards and promised to reconnect.
When I got back to my room, I checked out his website to learn more. It was a very clean and impressive site, complete with the Web 2.0 mirrored logo that we have come to expect.
There was one problem: the site told me nothing about the company and why I should work with them. A site certainly should look good and be usable, but I went to it for a reason, to learn more about him and his company. The big question that didn’t get answered for me was, why should I want to work with him?
People visit a web site for a reason. When you consider a redesign of your site, be sure to take a look at the words on the page and who your customers are. Does your site speak to your customers? Or does it simply look good to you?
After about 5 minutes, I went back to Photosynth and enjoyed my wine while viewing photos of Piazza San Marco in Venice.
11/04/06: Can search results offer more insight?
I got to spend Halloween with Bill Gross, the founder of IdeaLab. I went as Flav-o-flav, which I think scared a few kids away from Bill’s doorstep. For those of you that don’t know Bill, he created this great technology incubator that brought dozens of companies and ideas to life in the dot com heyday of the nineties. Some worked and some didn’t. Google owes its cost-per-click revenue model to IdeaLab and their company Overture (which got purchased by Yahoo.)
There is a lot of talk these days about social networking, with sites like MySpace and Facebook where people communicate with each other to increase the content on the site.
What I am most excited about are the sites that offer more context to enrich results to make them more relevant. Sites like Flickr let readers apply keywords to images that others can than use for searching. Simple keyword searching is no guarantee of finding what you are looking for.
I was at Billy’s house because he was telling me about his exciting new site, Compete. This site takes Yahoo’s search results and applies additional information to give you a better picture of the site. Now I still think Billy has some work to do with this, but it definitely has the potential to better help searchers find what they are looking for.
The last time Billy and I were together, we were celebrating the eToys IPO with champagne and steaks at the Palm in NY. After we turned out the lights this Halloween, Billy put 100 Grand candy bar in my Flav-o-Flav coat and said ‘Bob, Will this cover your losses on eToys?’ I chuckled as I opened it up and took a bite. I forgot about my fake gold tooth, which got stuck in the candy bar. We both had a good laugh and shifted the conversation onto more interesting.
There is a lot of talk these days about social networking, with sites like MySpace and Facebook where people communicate with each other to increase the content on the site.
What I am most excited about are the sites that offer more context to enrich results to make them more relevant. Sites like Flickr let readers apply keywords to images that others can than use for searching. Simple keyword searching is no guarantee of finding what you are looking for.
The last time Billy and I were together, we were celebrating the eToys IPO with champagne and steaks at the Palm in NY. After we turned out the lights this Halloween, Billy put 100 Grand candy bar in my Flav-o-Flav coat and said ‘Bob, Will this cover your losses on eToys?’ I chuckled as I opened it up and took a bite. I forgot about my fake gold tooth, which got stuck in the candy bar. We both had a good laugh and shifted the conversation onto more interesting.
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