Disqus - Latest Comments for Ed Kohler

Re: Public speaking and the importance of not killing yourself through over-preparation

Ed Kohler — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 18:26:20 -0000

Great tips. Speaking in public is hard enough without trying to stick to a strick outline. Spending that energy on tracking audience feedback would be a much better strategy in most situations. Hit the high points, have some stories that you can use to get across those points, and call it a wrap.

Re: One Click Submits Your Post to Multiple Social Bookmarking Sites: Onlywire

Ed Kohler — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:55:54 -0000

Interesting tool. I've wondered about the value of self-submission to social bookmarking sites. It seems like that may be frowned upon by some in the social bookmarking community.

Re: Dembot - Why Mahalo is Fundamentally Flawed

Ed Kohler — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:08:48 -0000

I've found Mahalo valuable from a Wikihow, or HowStuffWorks perspective, but not as a search engine. If you define it as a search product, it's easy to rip apart, but it's turning out to be something different than a Google alternative.

Re: Google Checkout Drops ZeFrank’s “GimmeSomeCandy” Micro-Promotion

Ed Kohler — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:59:10 -0000

If Ze's ads aren't products, what the heck is Google selling with AdWords? Am I to believe that Google wouldn't accept themselves as a client for their main product?

Re: Nick Carr is a smart guy - but he’s wrong

Ed Kohler — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 16:33:53 -0000

The Ghostbusters reference really nails the absurdity of the anti-democratization of content creation arguments. Just because everyone can publish doesn't mean everyone's worth reading. Everyone can be their own editor, and use technology (sites like Techorati, Digg.com, or Del.icio.us) to help them figure out what's worth reading.

Re: Does Google need adult supervision?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 18:35:38 -0000

One would think that Google, if anyone, would understand the difference between public and private information. If this is how Google manages their own privacy, what should Google's users expect from Google privacy-wise?

Re: Does Google need adult supervision?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 22:29:39 -0000

"Mistakes Happen" would be a tough justification to rely on if Google accidentally removed Gmail password requirements for a day.

Re: Rubel vs. PC Mag — bizarre

Ed Kohler — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:12:52 -0000

I can't figure it out either. Why apologize for making an honest remark about the value of the print pub. to him?

Re: Craigslist: blocking a leech, or a feature?

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 01:30:32 -0000

Unaware of the bandwidth issues? That seems rather disingenuous. Someone capable of writing such an app would have a good feel for how much bandwidth is involved in serving all those images.

Re: Baseball blogging ban: dumb, dumb, dumb

Ed Kohler — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:06:15 -0000

I've live blogged sporting events I've been at, and if I was asked to leave I simply wouldn't come back. I'm not interested in participating in events I can't talk about when and how I want to.

Of course, I'm doing this as a fan rather than as a paid reporter when it comes to sporting events. In the case of true reporters, I don't see what's lost. More coverage, and more interesting coverage builds team loyalty.

Re: Whistling past the graveyard?

Ed Kohler — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:43:37 -0000

Competing against free has got to suck. It's not that they're doing anything wrong. It's just that others are willing to do the job for less.

Re: What Second Life is really like

Ed Kohler — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:38:42 -0000

That looks like a must-be place for progressive businesses. :-)

Maybe some PR firms can pitch that concept and charge an arm and leg for building a Second Life for businesses? Oh wait. That's already happening. How is that working out?

Re: Google wants newsmakers to write the news

Ed Kohler — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 11:17:35 -0000

It would be nice for people being written about to have something similar to a single location where they could respond if they felt misquoted or wanted to add additional insight beyond what made the story. It becomes impossible for people to do this if the same story appears in hundreds of news sites.

Re: Facebook search: What’s the big deal?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:02:16 -0000

a few people will surely be embarassed by something someone stumbles upon thru search engines. Big deal is right.

It's smart for Facebook because they'll probably be able to leverage their member's names for 1 or 2 visitors / month per user from search engines.

Re: Flickr Commons: A great idea, but…

Ed Kohler — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:04:37 -0000

The value of any photo's tags grows as more photos are tagged. For example, in aggregate, typos in tags can can understood and corrected for.

I suppose Flickr could create a certification level for tagging by professional taggers, but I don't think that's going to be necessary.

Re: Want to buy a video-sharing site?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:11:06 -0000

Revver has benefited from picking up shows from YouTube, but it seems like they'd eventually lose those same shows once they got large enough to do their own ad deals.

Re: My first attempt at a podcast

Ed Kohler — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 23:08:30 -0000

Great post. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I just starting to experiment with podcasting and stumbled across this post while doing research. Good luck with your podcasting plans.

Re: Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul?

Ed Kohler — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:28:19 -0000

Sounds like a good time to me. Count me in.

Re: MinneBar 2008 – Recap

Ed Kohler — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:57:17 -0000

Hey Rick, sorry I missed you today. Not having free WiFi is kind of a bummer, but it sounds like WiFi was available for $5, which seems pretty darn reasonable for a day's access. Personally, I was running on a Sprint card which worked better in the back of the building than the front (opposite of what I would have expected).

Re: HuffingtonPost.com raises $5 million, but East Coast money

Ed Kohler — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:35:28 -0000

I can't figure out why someone with her money and friends with money would go to a VC firm.

Re: Will Outside.in nail the community Web site? Maybe

Ed Kohler — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:04:54 -0000

Pretty much every click and youâ€™re off-site. Even IF the sites manage to gain traction in their local markets, there really isnâ€™t any inventory to sell.

Yeah, sounds like the same problem Google has. :-)

Re: Taking A Step Back From OpenSocial

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:47:58 -0000

Great point that this is still speculation. I don't understand how much control this, as a consumer, will really give me over my data from one social networking type site to the next.

Re: Earthquakes In The Bay Area And Their Relationship To Bubble 2.0

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:50:05 -0000

It seems like people are simply too busy to worry about natural disasters in the Valley.

Re: Travel Nightmare: Lockdown on plugs

Ed Kohler — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:09:31 -0000

Thomas, thanks for the mention. Love the hierarchy of geek needs. Another peeve of mine that needs more attention: Hotels that hide outlets behind furniture.

Re: Fake following in social media: Yay or Nay?

Ed Kohler — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:19:31 -0000

Great write-up. If people don't understand that they're losing their audience they'll never improve the quality of their messages.

Re: Todays SPAM message

Ed Kohler — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:41:38 -0000

It's about time America takes Spam back from the Nigerians. We were the first to spam, and while we may have slipped a bit in the rankings, it's great to see our soldiers being used to bring spamming back to the US of A.

Re: One Click Submits Your Post to Multiple Social Bookmarking Sites: Onlywire

Ed Kohler — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:55:54 -0000

Interesting tool. I've wondered about the value of self-submission to social bookmarking sites. It seems like that may be frowned upon by some in the social bookmarking community.

Re: The Mysterious Art of Selling Real Estate: Linkerati

Ed Kohler — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:12:57 -0000

Thanks for the link, and great job as usual with the site. Keep cranking out great stuff.

Re: The Starbucks Effect

Ed Kohler — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:01:49 -0000

But what happens when Starbucks closes hundreds of stores? Does that have a negative impact on nearby home values?

Re: The Starbucks Effect

Ed Kohler — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:03:12 -0000

LOL, looks like three of us left essentially the same comment. My guess is this is because comments are shown below the comment form, which gives the impression that no one had left a comment yet.

Re: The Mobile Internet: QR Code Marketing & Life on MARS

Ed Kohler — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:12:26 -0000

QR code seems like a solution in need of a problem. Why not just SHOW the phone number or use tinyurl.com to shorten URLs? It's making things LESS usable.

Re: http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/cool-tools/how-to-create-your-own-search-engines-for-your-blog-or-website/2008/12/20/

Ed Kohler — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:04:26 -0000

Custom search engines created through Google AdSense can also be a solid revenue generator.

Re: Project Detail Systems

Ed Kohler — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 13:31:19 -0000

Given the definition of applications on top of applications, would Ning fit this definition of Web 3.0?

Re: Hard Drive Failure, Vista, and My Middle Finger

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:06:49 -0000

Man, that sounds rough. I've been trying to do more and more of my work online using things like Google Docs for this reason, and backing up my media files to an external HD. I'd like to get those online too, but haven't found a reasonably priced service for my gigs yet.

Re: Finding a Virtual Assistant

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:09:16 -0000

If she's from Minnesota she has to be good. :=)

That's a great explanation of the challenges. Thanks for summarizing your experiences.

Re: The Travel Blog for travel bloggers

Ed Kohler — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:10:25 -0000

That sounds like fun. What are the popular ways for people to blog their trips? Are they photo blogging? What kind of trips are the most popular for blogging?

Re: Do You Need 2-Way Communication on Twitter?

Ed Kohler — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:52:00 -0000

Let's say some of the first people who follow you on Twitter just happen to be people who read your blog, love your blog, and are considering doing business with you. Then they start following you on Twitter under the assumption that they'll get nuggets of wisdom from you. But instead, they hear 5% social media & tech discussions with a 95% mix of movie, dining, and @replies.

There are obviously people who like that mix, but they may not be the most valuable people you could have following you. This, of course, assumes that the only goal of your Twitter account is for business.

If you avoid the non-biz talk yet still build an audience, it's really clear why they're there and what they're interested in hearing about.

Basically, I think what we'll see is people splitting their Twittering between different accounts for work, hobbies and personal with little overlap between them.

That, and content can be truly interesting without interaction. For example, TV, Movies, and Music all seem quite popular without 2-way interactions.

Re: Do You Need 2-Way Communication on Twitter?

Ed Kohler — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:23:56 -0000

This isn't personal. I could care less how you use Twitter. If I find what you have to say valuable, I'll follow you. If I don't, I won't. But businesses interested in building large groups of loyal followers may find better results and much less churn if they keep on topic and post in moderation.

Re: Wikipedia and Me and a few other people

Ed Kohler — Fri, 26 May 2006 01:38:15 -0000

NPOV seems like one of the trickiest issues to enforce. They obviously want people who are knowledgable about a subject to contribute, but anyone who's really knowledgable about something will probably have some level of passion about the issue based on their experience that may draw it in some direction other than dryly neutral.

I really hope neutrality doesn't mean balancing the opinions of nut jobs with facts.

Re: Your site will succeed or fail in the first 10 seconds

Ed Kohler — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 11:46:40 -0000

Great points. It seems important to analyze what pages people are spending the least time on to see if those pages are particularly troubling, or if they're pages where people are getting what they're after quickly.

Re: German operator: Steve, we want the iPhone for everyone!

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:24:52 -0000

I don't think I want to know what Cingular had to do for Apple to get exclusivity on the iPhone. It's a GSM phone, so should work on T-Mobile if it can be unlocked. That shouldn't take longer than a week.

Re: gamecock

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:12:10 -0000

A great reminder on why you should always be nice to the editors.

Re: Have You Heard of Tumblelogs?

Ed Kohler — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 12:22:21 -0000

Great explanation of Tumblr. It looks like a more user-friendly way to publish bookmarks and other fun stuff. I could see this getting more traction than del.icio.us.

Re: Daily Tweets for 2007-06-04

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:29:50 -0000

I ran into a similar issue with my tweets after a trip to Croatia. Over 1000 fresh ones had come in. I've since switched to using Google Reader to keep up with most of my tweets, which is really helping my phone's battery life.

Re: 20 Tips For A Personal Blog Success [Part 1]

Ed Kohler — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:18:22 -0000

Great list. I think a lot of bloggers miss out on connecting with their audiences by not personalizing their blogs enough. Photos, as you mention, are one of the easiest and most effective ways to do this.

Re: 10 Reasons You Are Not Getting Comments

Ed Kohler — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:23:31 -0000

Great points. The most annoying to me is when I'm reading articles on the front page of a site, then have to scroll back up to find a comment link near the headline. That's not where people need that particular action link.

Re: 2006/09/28/netweather-weather-badges-for-myspace/

Ed Kohler — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:19:15 -0000

I think anti-widget is right about this one. Low cost, low risk, but probably also low-uptake. I can't picture the MySpace crowd jumping at the opportunity to add weather to their profiles.

Re: What is so special about this photo? » Ajay - On the Road called Life

Ed Kohler — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 12:05:28 -0000

What a cool photo. I'd much rather be in the plane than walking across such an arid region of the world. I'll concede it to the camels.

Re: Where Not To Advertise

Ed Kohler — Wed, 24 May 2006 12:24:54 -0000

I think bottom of a coffee cup ads are fine. A good campaign would use a variety of different ads leading to a discussion of the different ads among people sitting around Starbucks or whatever coffee shop did it. I could see a rainbow of Apple logos on the bottom of coffee cups getting some serious buzz (pun intended).

Re: More Google Punishment After PageRank Penalizing?

Ed Kohler — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:34:00 -0000

I'm glad to see that this was only a technical glitch.

Re: Damned Slow Wifi In My Room

Ed Kohler — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:35:42 -0000

I can relate. I've never seen it worse than at CES in Las Vegas, where pretty much everyone in town is a heavy web user that week.

By the way, if you're having issues with Flickr uploader (sounds like it from your post) try juploader. I don't know why, but it works a LOT better than Flickr's own uploader from hotel rooms, in my experience.

Times like this justify EVDO cards.

Have fun. Looking forward to more photos.

Re: The Age of LIVE Internet TV

Ed Kohler — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:20:11 -0000

Great post, Chris. Interacting live with people who share common interests is powerful stuff. Video brings people much closer than any other form of media available today.

Re: Do it for the traffic, or not?

Ed Kohler — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 17:01:34 -0000

It wouldn't hurt for bloggers worrying about traffic spent more time worrying about creating content that readers may find valuable.

Consistent posting seems to help, which seems odd to me since I tend to read blogs through Bloglines so get around to reading what a blogger has to say when they get around to saying something.

Re: The technology evangelists video show rocks

Ed Kohler — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 13:54:15 -0000

Thanks, Robert.

Deanna, we're playing around with formats all the time. In this case, we decided to publish a 3-part interview with quite a bit or rearranging of the raw interview to create a logical flow of content. For example, one of the last questions we asked Nicholas was about the nature of PCF's funding but it made sense to use that in part one rather than at the end.

Other times we'll make different editing choices. Feedback really helps build a better product.

Re: Steven Levy of Newsweek blogs

Ed Kohler — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 19:08:14 -0000

I heard that Levy started his blog specifically so he could gain access to the Bloghaus. Thanks for the bandwidth this week. It really helped us a lot.

Re: Hoax

Ed Kohler — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:37:04 -0000

You got it, Marie.

Re: Hoax

Ed Kohler — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:01:05 -0000

Robert, it seemed like you were at least a bit skeptical since you included a question mark in the headline of your post. April the 13th would be WAY too late for something like this, but the 12th with a hint that it's 11 days late? Sure.

Re: Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years

Ed Kohler — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:21:38 -0000

Interesting videos, Robert. You brought up a lot of interesting issues.

Personally, I look at Google's analysis of link popularity and PageRank calculations and think, "they're already doing what you propose, but on a much larger scale." They're already measuring link popularity, and - as you know - give more weight to links from trusted sources.

They also adjust their mix of results based on the type of results, so you'll see a different mix on a commercially focused search such as a product search than you will for a research based search.

So, with that in mind, I fail to see a breakthrough for web search coming out of the companies you mentioned. They all provide valuable services, but in no way threaten Google's web search dominance.

Re: SMX Notes - Duplicate Content Summit

Ed Kohler — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:15:37 -0000

It seems like blog platforms could to a better job helping bloggers by addressing more of this stuff in their default themes. For example, avoid republish full posts in category pages.

Re: When Viral Videos Don’t "Blend" As Planned

Ed Kohler — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:24:00 -0000

the power in BlendTec's commercials vs. most superbowl commercials is their ability to be memorable AND show off the power of their products. One without the other falls short.

Re: Paid Video Out, Ad Video In

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:10:56 -0000

I can't picture this working for movie downloads. Personally, I'd rather pay my Netflix fee than have to endure ads in a movie.

Re: PR 8 Links from Google.com Only $1,995

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:33:07 -0000

The link is certainly something of added value beyond the product being purchased.

Re: SMX Video - Google’s Matt Cutts Discusses Themes and Latent Semantic Indexing

Ed Kohler — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:56:38 -0000

In other words, search engines are getting smarter.

Re: Google’s Video Search Engine

Ed Kohler — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:20:05 -0000

While this is a good step forward, no video search engine will be particularly good until they can index the content within the videos.

Re: Vanessa Fox Leaves Google for Zillow

Ed Kohler — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:22:48 -0000

Sounds like a great pick-up for Zillow.

Re: Four Questions About Mahaloâ€™s Part Time Contributor Scheme.

Ed Kohler — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:14:38 -0000

Well thought out questions. I also wonder about page maintenance over time. Surely the iPhone page will need many revisions as new versions are released, information about tech support comes out, and carriers change. How will that be handled?

Re: Microsoft Launches New Design for MSN Mobile

Ed Kohler — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:17:39 -0000

I've found that I'm not really interested in a mobile portal. It's really easy to bounce between bookmarks for the best versions of things like maps, movies, and news on my Treo.

I love mobile browsing, but I don't think this is the optimal layout of services from my perspective.

Re: Four Things You Should Know About Collecting User Reviews

Ed Kohler — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:46:25 -0000

Reviews really help breathe some life into a site. It makes it feel like you're not the first person who's ever been there. Reassurance is good.

Re: Google’s “Sicko” BlogStorm

Ed Kohler — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:07:42 -0000

Great summary of the issue. The biggest issue I have with the post was the sales-y nature of the post. Does Google really need to use their blogs to pitch advertising? I hope not.

Re: New Yahoo SmartAds Offer Behavioral Targeting

Ed Kohler — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:09:18 -0000

The biggest thing they need is larger market share so people will quickly add on Yahoo advertising after setting up an AdWords account. No amount of improved targeting will help without enough market share to justify running a campaign.

Re: How to Get 1,000,000 Links to Your Blog

Ed Kohler — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:10:51 -0000

It's amazing how well written and thorough the content on SEOmoz is. They sure know how to crank out valuable - and linkable - content.

Re: User reviews increase sales by 26% at NetShops

Ed Kohler — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:23:55 -0000

I question the methodology too. Best sellers tend to have more reviews, so that could be the correlation here.

Re: Google Integrates Google Notebook in SERPs

Ed Kohler — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:27:09 -0000

I'd love to hear from someone who actually uses this feature and finds it useful. Personally, I haven't reached that point.

Re: Listen-Up! Not Everyone is a Facebook Friend

Ed Kohler — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:43:10 -0000

I don't mind giving full access to anyone. I already have a personal blog and my phone # and email address on the web. Personally, I think it's odd when people are very open on their personal or business blogs, but less so in Facebook. It's inconsistent.

Re: New York Times Archives Causing Google Reputation Nightmares

Ed Kohler — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:26:44 -0000

With only one complaint a day, why not stick an intern on this?

Re: Microsoft to Roll Out New Live Search Today

Ed Kohler — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:23:14 -0000

One organic result above the fold? Agressive, but not necessarily bad.

Re: Has Google Started Using AdWords / AdSense Data in Ranking Organic Results?

Ed Kohler — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:27:23 -0000

What if, because of AdSense, Google stumbled across something that was really spammy and tipped off their spam police colleagues? That seems like a case where participating could effect their natural rankings.

Re: Digg for Greens = Hugg

Ed Kohler — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:09:32 -0000

I've been working on a similar style site for Minnesota based blog and news content - anything with an RSS feed - called Walleye.mn. All communities that have a shared interest in a select set of news or blog sources will probably end up with something like this.

Re: Is Relevance . . . Relevant?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:34:36 -0000

Until I ALWAYS click on the first result, search engines will have a ways to go in the relevance game. Are you confident enough to click "I'm feeling lucky" every time you search today?

Re: Sheep-Throwing Coming to MySpace?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:15:17 -0000

Strangely, I think some Facebook style apps would make MySpace LESS annoying.

Re: NBC “Unpulls” YouTube Clips

Ed Kohler — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:45:11 -0000

This could be a cost issue as much as a traffic one. YouTube doesn't seem to have a positive revenue model yet. Hulu may be realizing that it costs a boatload to serve full episodes with a handful of ads compared to TV.

Why not let YiuTube supplement the cost of bandwidth?

Ed Kohler's last blog post..Top Blog Posts for April

Re: Microsoft Steals HP “Default Search Engine” Partnership from Yahoo

Ed Kohler — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:20:22 -0000

It's a shame that HP would stoop to this level for revenue from MSFT over a better experience for their users with Google.

Ed Kohler's last blog post..Micro-Optimism: The Slow Drip of Disappointment

Re: New Apple iPhone Coming; Twitter Expects to Go Down?

Ed Kohler — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:04:59 -0000

Call me crazy, but I think my life will be fine without Twitter for a day. And I still think I'll manage to figure out what's happening in SFO.

Ed Kohler's last blog post..NowPublic.com's Community News Building

Re: Pay-Per-View the New Revenue Model for YouTube?

Ed Kohler — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:22:23 -0000

I don't understand why they don't offer a way for video publishers to create their own PPV videos. Instructional videos, for example, would do well.

Instead, I see videos on YouTube promoting instructional videos that can be purchased on DVD.

Re: Big Media Publishers Want More from Google

Ed Kohler — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:26:20 -0000

Interesting perspectives from those companies. Frankly, a lot of bloggers present better information than the original sources, which is why they tend to rank higher. A write-up of a product on Engadget often does a better job explaining a new gadget than the original site - or at least does so in a more consumer friendly manner, which is why it gets linked to more often than the original source.

The only reason comparison sites have done so well online is because brands do such a horrible job explaining their products in consumer friendly manners. So sites like cars.com, shopping.com, etc. pop up to fill the void.

Ed Kohler's last blog post..Restaurant Web Design Done Right

Re: Lipstick style USB Flash drive

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:03:29 -0000

That's pretty slick, but I've given up on USB drives. Personally, I prefer SDCards with integrated USB ports. They achieve the same thing as USB drives and can be used in cameras. And they're smaller.

Re: Could this be the biggest TV in the world?

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:04:43 -0000

That's one inch larger than the 109" LCD HDTV Sharp launched at CES in January.

Re: SXSW Interactive Day 2: Audience Revolt at the Metrics Panel

Ed Kohler — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:28:28 -0000

Interesting turn of events. Why not just walk out if things turn out to be crappy? I imagine some people were still getting some value out of the presentation (whether it was what they were expecting or not going in), so why interrupt things?

Re: REALTOR.com Still Atop the Web 2.0 Heap and . . . The Leviathan Grows

Ed Kohler — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:55:27 -0000

What is Google Base had all of the fields agents currently have access to in their MLS systems? And what if it had MORE listings than the MLS by aggregating MLS and FSBO content? Would the MLS still be more valuable than Google?

Re: Vatican to Get Solar Energy

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:48:00 -0000

It's good to see the Vatican taking a pro-science stance on this issue.

Re: A Debate between the Arctic Refuge and Oil

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:49:28 -0000

I've been to Prudhoe Bay, AK and have to say that the area outside of where there is oil drilling is extraordinarily beautiful in an undisturbed wildnerness sense. That's impossible to recreate once it's gone.

Re: Author Bylines for White Papers? ASK MIKE

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:31:04 -0000

If a white paper is meant to represent the perspective of a company, it should obviously look like it represents the entirely company's philosophy on an issue rather than the opinions of one person.

Re: Do Fictional Stories Work to Pull in Readers? ASK MIKE

Ed Kohler — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:41:17 -0000

White papers, to me, are about providing information rather than a direct sell. Stories like the one desceibed above seem to be designed to make an emotional appeal, which seems to sales-y to me.

Re: Making Your Message Stick

Ed Kohler — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:46:07 -0000

I love the concept and highly recommend the book Made to Stick. If even one idea from that book sticks with you you'll get you money and time's worth out of it.

Re: Lead Generation Insight From the Fair

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:07:52 -0000

On a recent trip to Croatia, my wife and I made a lot of purchases based on the bandwagon principle. We figured it was a good way to decide which vendors at markets were the good ones since we had little other information to go on.

I wonder how one could recreate this bandwagon appeal online where it's harder to tell whether others are interested in the same thing? Do bestsellers lists pull this off?

Re: Placing Cart Before Horse Actually Works!

Ed Kohler — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:52:59 -0000

I've heard of company growth initiatives that included contests for new product ideas, but never in association with white papers. Strange.

Re: Marketing Lessons from Apple’s iPhone

Ed Kohler — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:36:50 -0000

It was interesting to see who got iPhones pre-launch. The NYT & Wall Street Journal did, but had to hold their reviews until a specific date. No bloggers got one. Powerful stuff. Although they did a good job of releasing information on it worth talking about ahead of time.

Re: Doubling White Paper Registrations, Study

Ed Kohler — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:46:53 -0000

That's a great point. People don't see to realize how much of a burden long forms can be for people. And leaving fields as optional doesn't really help. People feel obligated to fill things out.

Re: The Thank You Marketing Strategy

Ed Kohler — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:20:55 -0000

Never underestimate the power of personal connections.

Re: 55 Active RSS Directories to Help Promote Your RSS Feeds!

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:17:50 -0000

Wow, that's a great resource you've created. Nice work.

Re: Received the First Tribal Fusion Check

Ed Kohler — Thu, 25 May 2006 16:50:42 -0000

Getting checks in the mail is always a fun thing. It helps counter-balance the bills. :-)

Do you have any negatives/frustrations with Tribalfusion that you'd be willing to share? We haven't tried the service yet, but are thinking about adding it into our add mix too.

Re: What If Media 2.0 Is Less Profitable Than Media 1.0?

Ed Kohler — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 22:42:53 -0000

I don't think I've ever seen an ad on MySpace that's geotargeted or personalized in any way to me, so they could surely increase their CPM by using some of the information they know about me to display ads I may actually find relevant.

Re: When Will Google Be Honest About Its Enterprise Ambitions?

Ed Kohler — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 11:44:05 -0000

I think there's a difference between, "being honest" and being totally forthcoming about where they see their company heading in the future. Why boast about taking over the enterprise Office software business before you have the services in place to do it? And even the, what do you gain from selling hard versus letting people discover for themselves a new way of managing their work? However, the biggest challenge for Google is there is no guarantee that SaaS will generate the income and growth GOOG investors expect.

Re: Facebook’s Core College Student Users Laugh At Attempts To Use It For Business

Ed Kohler — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:43:03 -0000

It will be interesting to see how Facebook evolves as more of the core college users join the workforce.

Personally, I don't see why it can't be many things to many people. Everyone's network is different.

Re: Facebook’s Core College Student Users Laugh At Attempts To Use It For Business

Ed Kohler — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:02:37 -0000

Scott, in comment #6, I think a more appropriate analogy that illustrates the point is the interstate highway system. Kids use it to visit friends and get laid. Adults use it to conduct business, visit friends, and get laid.

Re: What Is The ROI Of Requiring User Registration To Access Online Content?

Ed Kohler — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:07:16 -0000

I wonder how accurate the data is? In my case, I always use a real email address but everything else could be whatever gets me through the form fastest, such as the first options in the drop-down menus.

Just yesterday, I was an 18 year old graphic designer who was registering his first iPod with iTunes. :-)

Re: Quickly Open Websites

Ed Kohler — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 01:19:46 -0000

Great tip. How many times do I have to use it before I knock myself over the head to remind myself to use bookmarks or bookmarklets?

Re: 5 Most Unique High-Tech USB Gadgets

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:12:59 -0000

Wow, those are great. Much cooler than yet another USB jump drive. The microscope would be great for kids interested in science.

I think I need one of those coolers.

Re: Poll: What Do You Use To Make Your Phonecalls?

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:55:04 -0000

I use a cell phone for everything but podcasts. For those, I use Skype because it's easy to record calls and the call quality is a bit higher assuming I have a decent Internet connection to work with.

Re: Sagem Partner With Porsche To Launch P’952 Mobile Phone

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:08:30 -0000

Associating your brand with a cell phone and all that includes like poor reception, dropped calls, marginal customer service, etc., seems like a risky move for Porsche to me.

Re: MyBlogEarnings For October 2007

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:48:26 -0000

Impressive stats. Keep up the great work.

Re: How to Achieve Blogging Immortality

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:15:27 -0000

LOL. Great point. Maybe someone should figure out a way to automatically age avatars?

Re: Top Posts on Video

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:14:19 -0000

Great explanation of this this plugin. I'm going to have to give it a try.

Re: Google is Dead

Ed Kohler — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:45:58 -0000

If MSN drove traffic like Google drives traffic today, would MSN be ignored by search engine optimizers (of any shade of hat)? How do they know whether MSN is prepared to deal with SEO spam if they haven't encountered it first hand? Strange.

Re: Paid Search Can Be A Bitch

Ed Kohler — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:25:13 -0000

LOL, thanks for asking, Lee. Unfortunately, I'm going to miss out on the fun since I'll be in San Jose for Where 2.0 next week.

By the way, check out the new Trader Joe's on Excelsior Blvd while you're in town.

Re: Monetizing with Feedvertising

Ed Kohler — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 16:47:59 -0000

Nice interview. I've tested a few different services and have had the best luck with Feedburner and Amazon affiliate ads in our feeds to date. I haven't has a change to try Feedvertising yet.

Joe, I think people use feeds so they don't have to deal with bookmarks. Adding ads to posts doesn't change that formula as far as I'm concerned. If the feed has posts that are purely ads, that could be more of a problem, but generally that's not the case.

And RSS users are a good crowd to keep happy. They may not make you the most money directly from advertising, but they're probably some of the most loyal readers and are going to link to your best posts more often than people reading your site through non-RSS channels.

Re: Getting Listed in News Search Engines

Ed Kohler — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 23:53:43 -0000

It looks like Google News is working on integrating Blog Search. At this point, it's been promoted to having its own tab within Google News. That's not the same as appearing within News itself whether though your blog being included or through press releases, but something to consider traffic-wise.

Re: Blog Comment Policy

Ed Kohler — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 22:51:31 -0000

Great post, Lee. This issue has been on my mind lately too. I've decided to edit the names of relevant posts with irrelevant names down to "Anonymous."

Re: 5 Myths about SEO

Ed Kohler — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 14:47:50 -0000

Selling SEO to people who don't yet get it is a painful exercise. Luckily, enough people have reached the point of getting is to do quite well in this business without pounding your head against the well.

Re: Search Blog Stories of the Day

Ed Kohler — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:02:41 -0000

Hey Lee. Thanks for the plug. We had a blast, had a great time hanging out with fellow bloggers at the Bloghaus, and saw a LOT of cool stuff at the show. We'll have more footage rolling out over the next few days.

Re: 5 Tips for Content Distribution Networks

Ed Kohler — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:52:57 -0000

But, Lee. This stuff takes time and talking to other humans! Who has time for that? :-)

Re: Vintage Tub and Bath Party SES New York

Ed Kohler — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:41:56 -0000

Great shots. I've moved a couple vintage tubs lately through the affiliate program, so I guess I helped pay for the beer, eh? Rock on.

Re: The Future of Search Engine Innovation

Ed Kohler — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:38:43 -0000

Great recap, Lee. When I read this, I hear, "create great content and you'll be fine." The mobile content is one exception, since that's more of a platform upgrade to make the great content you're already creating mobile friendly, so basically an indexing issue.

Re: Reader Poll: Best City for Conferences

Ed Kohler — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:04:34 -0000

Gotta go with NYC. Great food. Lots of stuff to do. And you can get to everything without a car or even taxi.

Re: Bye Bye Marketing Sherpa’s SEO-SEM Buyer’s Guide

Ed Kohler — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:20:44 -0000

It's great for businesses included in the guide, and provides good guidance on how to shop firms, but I think they're right that an objective measure of firms would be nearly impossible to create.

Re: What Not To Do With Your Business Blog

Ed Kohler — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:19:56 -0000

Great points, Lee. I think the ad placement one is particularly interesting. That really comes down to how the blog fits into the business. Is it to generate credibility, which generates leads, which generates business offline? If so, advertising could be costing the business money in the bigger picture.

Re: You Make Me Sick – Viral Video Response

Ed Kohler — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:55:44 -0000

It wouldn't be that hard to do a similar type of video without the racism and violence. What happened to being funny?

It's surprising to hear about the PR firms promotion of the video since PR people are supposed to be the experts at what's cool.

Re: You Make Me Sick – Viral Video Response

Ed Kohler — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:19:06 -0000

If viral means 200 views, they've achieved their goal. :-)

Re: Digital Donations: Can I Put My ATM Receipt in the Offering Plate?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:25:03 -0000

Sounds like a great idea. I believe some churches are already doing something similar with their websites where they offer tools for automatic withdrawal of donations weekly or monthly. But the ATM in the church would probably reach more of the prospective donors.

Re: 49 The Clip Show - Hak this Clip Show

Ed Kohler — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:49:37 -0000

Nice work and very fair reviews of both sites. Rock on.

Re: 50 The Clip Show - Fifty!

Ed Kohler — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:01:33 -0000

Holy crapoly. Great milestone, and nice whiteboard work.

Re: Sisterhood of the travelling Bra

Ed Kohler — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:34:46 -0000

Sounds like that bra is going to earn some serious frequent flier miles. :-)

Re: Cold day? Listening to your iPod?

Ed Kohler — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:42:00 -0000

Wow, that's taking iPod accessorizing to an entirely new level. I think the Louis Vuitton cases were a little crazy, but this one actually has some practicality to it.

Re: Real Player 11 can catch web videos on DVD

Ed Kohler — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:09:13 -0000

Interesting. I'm trying to imagine when I'd actually use this feature. Nothing's coming to mind off the top of my head.

Re: YouTube Users Angry Over New Player

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:18:45 -0000

Well, they had to start bringing in revenue at some point. Maybe it's time to start making some video ads?

The accidental trigger of video previews is quickly learned and adjusted for nag. No biggy.

Re: Movie Rentals on iTunes coming soon?

Ed Kohler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:27:43 -0000

That sounds pretty interesting. I'm more of a Netflix user, but this may be a decent alternative.

Re: Gmail can now view PowerPoint Presentations

Ed Kohler — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:28:37 -0000

I used this for the first time yesterday and it worked great. It's a major time saver vs. downloading and opening PPT.

Re: Google to connect with Multiple IM Networks?

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:17:30 -0000

Personally, I've had better luck with Meebo. Especially due to memory leaks in recent versions of FireFox that seem to be due to Gmail.

Re: Google Integrates AdSense with FeedBurner

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:15:10 -0000

I kept trying to figure out how I could create a script to show AdSense ads when they were likely to pay better than FAN. Not I won't need to. Sweet.

Re: Google Video Starts Indexing Videos from all over the web

Ed Kohler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:15:46 -0000

This is what Google Video always should have been.