This is the second post I’ve written using Zemanta, a blogging tool that recommends content based on what you’re writing. I tried installing their Wordpress plugin and got glitches so I tried the browser extension and am very impressed… it recommends pictures, articles, and links in real time as you write your post. The articles and links seem reasonably intelligent, but need to get better to be truly valuable. The pictures are decent as well… I thought that the pic above was absolutely stunning, not very relevant, but stunning. Lol, I also thought it was funny how a Zemanta logo didn’t pop up. Regardless of the strength of the recommendations, its the UI of the tool that excites me and makes me want to use it again… you realize that all the hype about semantic web technologies is cool, but it’s always a great user experience that paves the way forward.

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When I started working in the wine business in the summer of 2007 I knew a few things about wine. First it was exponentially better to drink than the Natural Light my contemporaries were imbibing at the time. It provides a great way to meet women and convince them you’re more sophisticated than you actually are. And finally there was something I desired to learn about wine culturally, historically and socially; anyone can order a martini and look good doing so but in the world of wine you are constantly finding out new and interesting things. Yet for all the knowledge I thought I had gathered nothing was more humbling than going to work in a wine store, where the people above you spent most of their lives buying, selling and learning about wine. From my time with them I’ve learned a lot about spotting good wines.

First of all, labels mean absolutely nothing, so when you go to buy wine don’t even look at the front label ignore it, there is more useful information on the back like a good importer. In this era of opulence and visually stimulated purchasing, Louis Vutton and Cadillac, take a more refined and dare I say classier approach. I am reminded of the movie Tommy Boy with the late great Chris Farley. Tommy is selling Callahan Break Pads; one of his retailers says there isn’t a guarantee on Callahan’s box. Tommy says you can put a guarantee on shit and its still shit, same thing with wine - creative picture means the winery spent all the money on a design and not the juice. Like a guarantee vs. the actual product. There can and often will be a cute picture on the bottle but the juice, more times than not, is still absolute Swill (a colloquialism used to describe wine not worth drinking). Read the rest of this entry »

After our recent post highlighting a recent duplicate content issue we faced, we decided it would be a good time to start giving out free advice for building your web rankings.

One of our most commonly requested services is web site optimization. Unfortunately (and fortunately) web developers are just now starting to implement a better practice of building sites to be search engine friendly. As web development continues to be outsourced, many developers just don’t feel like putting in that little bit of extra effort that truly does go a long way.

You may be familiar with some of the following issues, as I’m trying to keep this list simple, but hopefully there are a few gems that may help you on your way to the top. If you have any questions, don’t be shy to comment and we’ll help in every way we can. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been following Twine for a good bit now, and are very excited to see it finally open in Beta. Twine is a tool that allows individuals, and more importantly, teams, to send items such as emails, notes, presentations, documents, webpages, pictures, and any other material involved in your personal and professional life to a twine or personal page. Their cutting edge semantic inferencing engine will then organize the data for you, helping you to gain a clearer perspective on what you and your team are working on, and also bring in creative recommendations from other individuals and teams with statistically and linguistically correlated twines.

We are especially interested in this because as a startup team, Twine’s system will prove invaluable in increasing productivity and creativity by having an outside party/unbiased mediator (their semantic inferencing engine) analyze our information and help align our thoughts and ideas. As a team, there is a commonality and vision that brings us together and binds us, but unfortunately without a purely unbiased outsider, the differences of each persons’ perceptions will leak into the project and slow it down due to self-interest. However, if you are sending your data to a team page/twine and their inferencing engine is what it is cracked up to be, then it will undoubtedly show us the most important linguistic and semantic components of our project, allowing us to creatively and productively move forward at a faster and more competitive pace. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend of ours, Ryan Allis, is launching his book Zero to One Million today, and it comes with our strong endorsement.

We highly recommend the book for anyone who wants to become a multimillionaire entrepreneur. If there’s ever a book that has the potential to be life changing, Zero to One Million is it. Ryan is trying to reach a lifetime goal and get to #1 on Amazon.com today and has created a compelling reason to buy the book today.

Ryan built three companies to over $1 million in sales by age 21, raised over five million dollars in venture capital at age 22, and today at age 23 runs an 85 person company in North Carolina called iContact that does over ten million dollars in annual sales. Ryan knows what he’s doing when it comes to business.

The full title of the book is ‘Zero to One Million: How I Built a Company to $1 Million in Sales… And How You Can Too.’ If you want to become a multimillionaire entrepreneur, this really is a no-BS step-by-step guide.

Today, Ryan is running a promotion to help him get to the #1 spot on Amazon.

When you buy Ryan’s book for $11.53 on Amazon today you will receive six bonus gifts including a video from Ryan on how to raise $5 million in venture capital at age 22 and valuable DVD and PDF report bonuses from Buck Rizvi, Derek Gehl, Carlos Garcia, Shawn Casey, and Tom Bell. Just email the Amazon receipt to bonus@zeromillion.com with The Pay it Forward Chronicles in the subject line to receive the bonuses.

You’ll also receive a special video from Ryan: How Our Generation Will Change the World… A Plan for the Future.

NOW HERE’S THE PAY IT FORWARD KICKER: All of the proceeds from Zero to One Million are going to Ryan’s non-profit organization The Humanity Campaign, which works to reduce poverty and hunger in developing nations by increasing access to education, healthcare, and technology. You can read an article about Ryan’s efforts to give back at http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/900111.html.