January 2010 Archives
Full disclosure: I am not a designer. I cannot select color palettes. My favorite textures involve brushed steel. Whenever I walk by, our design team seems either out for coffee or in a meeting. That said, even I can recognize colossal web design blunders. It's amazing how the perfectly wrong photo will rip the eyes out of your sockets and whimper them off from a web page's correct eye-tracking path. Design is subjective. You see the world like no one else. What seems like a perfectly comforting image to you and me might creep-out an animal rights activist or a
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Continue reading Have You Been A/B Tested Recently?
Who says on-the-job research can’t be fun - and heavily caffeinated? Last week, Portent Interactive took a field trip to the Seattle headquarters of what is quickly becoming our tastiest new client: Zoka Coffee Roaster & Tea Company. In the Name of Research A field trip seemed like the logical thing to do - even the biggest coffee junkies among us admitted that drinking four cups of Folgers a day did not a coffee-expert make. And getting to know our clients - their passions, their work ethic, their product - is a huge perk of the job. So who were
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Continue reading Portent Interactive Visits Zoka Coffee
Todd Mintz interviewed me for Search Engine Journal. If you’re looking for a chance to embarrass me at the next internet marketing conference, this interview has lots of good material: Read the interview here. You can follow Todd Mintz on Twitter at ToddMintz. Recommended reading! Also, best title award goes to @AlanBleiweiss:
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Continue reading Interview on Search Engine Journal
It appears that Google’s new infrastructure, code named Google Caffeine, is rolling-out live to data centers. Why is this important? Expect to see ranking changes. Don’t freak-out. We’re not talking 2012 or Alderaan upheaval here. That said, expect disturbances in the force. While most well and legitimately optimized websites should remain unscathed, it’s likely that others could experience some organic ranking unpleasantness. What is Caffeine? Caffeine is an infrastructure change. Think of it like upgrading from XP to Vista or from Vista to Windows 7 or from Snow Leopard to Windows 7. Google seems to make infrastructure changes every three
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Continue reading Google Caffeine - Don't Let It Keep You Awake at Night
In January of 1995, I took my one credit card, purchased a Pentium 75 PC (running the latest version of Windows 3.0) and a business license, and launched The Written Word, Inc. That company is now named Portent Interactive. The date on that first business license is January 7, 1995. So, as of tomorrow, we’ve been around for 15 years. For perspective, when I started my company: There was no such thing as wifi; My 2800 baud modem was state of the art; Google and Yahoo! didn’t exist; Actually, neither did Firefox, Blackberry or cell phones that weighed less than
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Continue reading 15 Years
