Scott Fish

The Hawthorne street fair is coming up this weekend!   PDX Pipeline has a few tips & suggestions to help make it a successful weekend!

It is always nice to get one of those outside tables at Bagdad & watch the people. Also, Dollar Scholar: If you like hot dogs (had them last year) and cheap items, be sure to stop by there. Message from Cora @ Ladd’s Inn: Come on down to lower Hawthorne and get a nice table at the Ladd’s for our stage! PCG (Pure Country Gold), Rapids, Sprinkles and MORE! Starts at 12pm!

Read more about the Hawthorne Street Fair and check out the schedule.

Pop giant Michael Jackson, who took to the stage as a child star and set the world dancing to exuberant rhythms for decades, died on Thursday, TMZ website reported. He was 50.

There was no official confirmation of the reported death and spokespersons for Jackson could not be reached for comment.

“We’ve just learned Michael Jackson has died,” TMZ said.

“Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back,” the entertainment site said.

Michael Jackson Dies at age 50

It added, “A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived.”

Earlier, the Los Angeles Times said the singer had been rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital by fire department paramedics who found him not breathing when they arrived at the singer’s home.

The newspaper said paramedics performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation at the scene before taking him to the UCLA Medical Center hospital.

Jackson had been due to start a series of comeback concerts in London on July 13 running until March 2010. The singer, whose hits included “Thriller” and “Billie Jean,” had been rehearsing in the Los Angeles area for the past two months.
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Go Grizz!

A few weekends ago, my family flew over to Missoula, MT to see my youngest brother, Ryan Fish, graduate from the University of Montana. While the graduation was the focus on the weekend, another big event popped into the weekend when he decided to pop the question to his girlfriend, Lauren.

The weekend started last Thursday with a flight to Spokane, then a long drive(about 3 hours) through the panhandle of Idaho, including Cor’d’lane, Idaho and all the way to Missoula. The city of Mizz is really a cool spot – the high desert landscape and sheer mountains, formed by glaciers, is quite spectacular. The landscape reminded me of Boise, but the atmosphere is very different. Lauren’s parents and grandparents live in the area and have for some time. We were able to spend the evenings and afternoons at their houses for graduation parties and get to know their family, something that I haven’t really had the chance to do yet.

The city of Missoula is pretty fascinating and it reminds me of a mini-Portland. The suburbs are long and the downtown is spread-out, but at the center of the city is a beautiful river that gives whitewater kayakers a playground during the summer time. We ate lunch at a great little place and we had one of the best breakfasts at an older restaurant on the river.

I recently came across a unique usage of a .cc domain. The Monarch Hotel & Conference Center in Portland was unable to obtain the .com for their hotel, so they went to next best thing (which may even be better than the .com!) - MonarchHotel.cc - perfectly branded for their use.

I wonder how many other conference centers will use .cc as their domain extension for better branding.

Have you met your Marissa?  My brother did…at Nuvrei Pastries on 10th st in downtown Portland.  She wasn’t at a stuffy pastry business or in one of the “trendy-twenty-third” spots….nope, she was, well, as Kevin puts it, at a business where “there is no fancy store front, no fancy café style seating.”  Interested in learning more about how Kevin’s run-in with Marissa lead to a chewy flourless chocolate cookie and a cinnamon danish?

Read Kevin’s Nuvrei Pastries Review.

Jesse Liebman and Tyson Braun at EngineWorks spent hours combing through the hottest SEO blogs in order to compile their list of the top SEO blogs - in true March Madness style, they’re listed in bracket format!

Find out which is the Best SEO Blog.

I recently tried to look up where a Hallmark store was in Portland and of course I first searched online.  Perfect… I found one that was close enough to stop by and grab a card.  We headed out and went to the mall where the Hallmark was listed to be at, and much to our surprise, when we asked a local mall employee they said it wasn’t there any more.

That got me thinking, with all the commercial foreclosures that are piling up, there’s a ton of incorrect content online - so where does this content go when a business closes its doors?  Who’s responsible for taking down a business listing or updating a new address for that business listing?

The current commercial real estate market is a nearly $8 trillion industry that is having its troubles.  “Really since the start of the year the trouble is coming out of the woodwork as far as notices of default, foreclosures, bankruptcies,” said Bob White, founder and president of Real Capital Analytics, a real estate market research firm. “It’s growing alarmingly fast.” Currently, some $50 billion worth of commercial mortgages are in default or foreclosure. White and others in the industry say the worst is yet to come.

With $1.72 trillion of commercial real-estate loans outstanding in the U.S. today, and $300 million of that sum coming due this year alone, the Federal Reserve hopes to launch a program by next month to refinance large commercial properties such as office towers and malls. Although the sector isn’t in big trouble yet, rents and occupancies are starting to fall, and the Fed aims to provide up to $1 trillion of new credit to head off a “looming crisis” of spiraling commercial foreclosures.

It sure looks like a lot of commercial property address listings are going to be changing over the next few years.

Blackwater Worldwide has decided to change their name to “XE”. Here’s more on the article about the blackwater name switch.

So, we all know about xe.com, a currency conversion website.  My initial thought is that there’s no way that Blackwater will be able to get their hands on that domain, so what’s second best?

XEsecurity.com - nope, this was registered by XE.com Yesterday.

XEinternational.com - nope, this too was registered by XE.com Yesterday.

XEinc.com - There it is! This one’s been registered by the Blackwater group since 2004.

It should be interesting to see what happens here, I could easily see XE.com really pushing this trademark issue considering that they are making defensive domain registrations based on the news of the Blackwater name change.

What do you think?

Over at the EngineWorks Blog, Tyson Braun just posted a very interesting blog post discussing his interview with Dan Harbison, Interactive Marketing & Media Director for the Portland Trailblazers.  They discussed the importance of strong presence within online social communities and how it has helped the resurgence of the franchise.  Harbison joined the Blazers in 2005, and from the beginning, he imagined a Web site that enabled fans to better connect with the team and its players.

Click Above to Read Tyson's Interview

Today snow fell on Portland, during a very cold weekend with temps in the low 20s. Haley and I spent the day getting Christmas things up around the house, including our Christmas tree and Dept. 56 houses!

Haley and I made our way up to NW 23rd, venturing out in the cold, being kept warm by Moon Struck Mochas. Here’s some sweet photos from our stroll.

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We went… we saw… we’re sad.

Haley and I went down to the Civil War game this weekend, on a beautiful Saturday, you would think that things would go well, but they didn’t! If you don’t know already, the Beavers lost in the Civil War game that had the most points scored ever.

It was really nice to see our friends Bart & Lexi Crawford, and Nancy & Dave.  Also, we went to the McMenamins downtown and meet up with Chris Mathews and his wife.

Here are some photos from the weekend!

There’s a poker game tonight…any of my friends are invited.  We’re kicking things off at 6:30 - buyin $25, with rebuys for the first hour.

Send me a message for the address on twitter or facebook.

The PDXPipeline has a great list of election watch parties in Portland.

Here’s a sample…
The Laurelhurst Theater, located at 2735 E Burnside St, Portland, Oregon 97214.
Living Room Theater/Theatre located at 341 SW 10th Avenue.
Check out the West Cafe located at1201 SW Jefferson.
Doug Fir Lounge located at 830 E. Burnside, 97214 which starts at 6:00.

Recently I have building several new blogs that are community focused and local.
I have found myself looking around for some new WordPress Plugins that make the community a little more friendly and customized.

Here’s a few that I found worthwhile to install:

The Binary Moon Custom Admin Login Plugin

Binary Moon’s plugin allows you to easily customize your admin-login section of your blog - this works great if you’re trying to move your blog away from looking like a blog and more like a site, that’s community focused. 

Check out the BM Admin Plugin

Wordpress Role Manager & Admin Member Modification Plugin

I needed a plugin that allowed me to create custom Roles within the WordPress admin section - basically, I wanted people to be able to create a new blog post and upload a photo, then send the post to me to be moderated.  The problem is that the best Role classification didnt allow users to upload photos - so this plugin allows custom role creation and it is perfect for what I needed.

Each Role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities. This Plugin allows you to define and manage multiple subscriber profiles - called Roles and their Capabilities. Also you can create new Roles and Capabilities. Check out the WordPress Admin Role Customizatio Plugin

FlickrRss for Wordpress

I know this plugin is simple and old, but it’s still useful!
It supports user, set, favorite, group and community photostreams, and is relatively easy to setup and configure via a settings panel. The plugin also has cache support, allowing you to save thumbnails on your own server.  Check out this Flickr Wordpress Plugin.

I Love Social Bookmarking Plugin

I have spent my fairshare of saturday afternoons sifting through social media plugins that are a dime a dozen.  It’s really hard to find one that loooks good and is customizable.  This one fits the bill -

Which social media services are supported?  Currently supported: Blinklist, Blogmarks, Digg, del.icio.us, Furl, Ma.gnolia, NewsVine, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati.

How is ILSB different? There are other social media plugins that do a similar job. ILSB aims to keep things as simple as possible for both you and your readers, to run with minimal system resources, and to look good whilst she’s at it. The plugin features attractive icons provided by FastIcon.com, is easily customisable to fit your blog’s theme, is XHTML standards-compliant and is SEO optimised by using the “nofollow” tag.  Check out the I Love Social Bookmarking Plugin.

It’s pretty darned important to take your name, company name, and brand names at popular web 20 sites.  Why?  Well, its simple, if you don’t someone else will and even worse, they will control the message and branding that the page has, and it won’t always be positive.

Take a few minutes to check out a new service called UserNameCheck.com
This service does take a while to ping all 68 websites, but it will give you some great info on which sites you need to sign up for.

The counter at the bottom of the page says usernames have been checked 138,818, was one off them yours

Thats right, CNN quoted me and put it on their TV channel today…

I sat down to eat lunch this afternoon and flipped on the TV to see what was going on in the stock market.  On CNN, Treasury Secretary Paulson was speaking, and CNN was following it live.  All of sudden, on the right half of the screen CNN was pulling quotes from Twitter.  After a few quotes, I realized that this was going to keep on going through out Paulson’s speech.   I noted that by messaging Rick Sanchez’s ricksanchezcnn twitter account, I would be included in that mix.

After watching a few of the quotes, I got the urge to try and be included.  So I watched to see the tone and type of messages that were being included an noted that there was a tone of “confusion” or “we’ve heard this before”.

Two Tweets later, and literally within 15 seconds, CNN broadcasted my Tweet to the world…

This is a pretty amazing thing to think about.  CNN is really taking advantage of Social Media and if you thought Digg was a game changer for media, I think Twitter is giving them a run for their money!

Tuesday, October 14th, SEMpdx will be holding their October Hot Seat Event, of which I’ll be on the panel.  Come check out a “Back to Basics” event, highlighting the fundamentals that every website needs to have.  The panel is jam packed, Scott Hendison, Scott Fish (myself), David Mihm, and Leisa Hall.

Event Details:
Location: Hotel deLuxe
Address: 729 SW 15th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97205

Schedule:
Networking: 5:30am
Hot Seat: 6:00pm - 8:00pm

This week I’ll be traveling to San Francisco to speak at the E-Tourism Summit, which will be October 1-2 at the Hotel Nikko.  This event will be a lot of fun and should be great for networking!

Topics of discussion will be search marketing, e-mail marketing, dynamic packaging, third-party booking engines, affiliate programs, research-based Web design and general interactive marketing.

The event that I’ll be speaking at is called the “SEO/SEM-360.  A 360 degree look at Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.”  The speakers my pannel are Paul Coutts, Account Strategist, Google; Marla Johnson Norris, CEO, Aristotle; John Dussling, VP of Business Development, .ComMarketing.

Today is the Software Association of Oregon’s September Tech Pub, which features a Hot Seat event, modeled after the SEMpdx Hot Seat Events.  I’ll be on the panel in Corvallis along with other SEO professionals in Oregon: Andre Jensen and Lisa Williams.

Agenda:

5:30 - 6:15: Business Networking Time with finger food, no host bar
6:15 - 6:30: 30-Second Mic (give us your technology business elevator pitch!!)
7:00 Program: Search Engine Marketing Hot Seat

Location: Hewlett-Packard Campus
Building 4 Visitor’s Entrance (off Circle Blvd.)
1000 NE Circle Blvd
Corvallis, Oregon 97330

What does nano-film deposition technology have to do with Business?

My brother, Kevin Fish, whom just finished up his MBA at Oregon State University could tell you that answer!
Kevin competed in several MBA and entrepreneurship competitions over the last year, touting his nano-film deposition technology concept to the eyeglass industry for improved application of anti-reflective coatings.

If you want to get to know what Kevin can bring to YOUR business, here’s his LinkedIn Profile!

I just saw Ben Lloyd’s tweet about Danny Sullivan being the Keynote Speaker for Search Fest in 2009. SEMpdx has held Search Fest in 2007 and in 2008 and it has grown exponentially each year. It looks like it’s confirmed that the 2009 SearchFest Keynote Speaker will be Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com and 3rd Door Media. (more…)

A strong earthquake shook Southern California on Tuesday, and the jolt was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego, and slightly in Las Vegas.

Preliminary information from the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the quake at magnitude 5.8, centered 29 miles east-southeast of downtown Los Angeles near Chino Hills in San Bernardino County.   Follow the news on Twitter Trends. (more…)

An Oklahoma City media outlet, KOCO-TV, has reported the city’s relocated NBA team will be named the Oklahoma City Thunder for the 2008-09 season.

The “Thunder,” formerly the Seattle SuperSonics, are in the middle of a full-scale move from the Northwest to Oklahoma. According to KOCO.com, the NBA’s Internet division — through CSC Corporate Domains — secured the domain names of “okcthunderbasketball.com” and “okcthunderbasketball.net” on July 10.

The “Thunder” were officially granted permission to leave Seattle last month, the result of an out-of-court settlement between Sonics majority owner Clay Bennett and the city of Seattle. In return, Seattle gets to retain the “Sonics” name, logo and team colors (green and gold) and could receive up to $45 million in the next several years, as penalty for Bennett breaking the lease agreement with KeyArena, the Sonics’ home for nearly two decades.

The city of Seattle originally wanted to keep the Sonics at KeyArena for two more years. The Sonics’ season-ticket holding base even filed a class-action lawsuit against Bennett and the other team owners at one point.

Microsoft thinks that they have the answer to PageRank, by releasing a new concept called BrowseRank.  From the researcher’s paper about BrowseRank…

We propose computing page importance by using a ’user browsing graph’ created from user behavior data. In this graph, vertices represent pages and directed edges represent transitions between pages in the users’ web browsing history. Furthermore, the lengths of staying time spent on the pages by users are also included. The user browsing graph is more reliable than the link graph for inferring page importance.

“… The more visits of the page made by the users and the longer time periods spent by the users on the page, the more likely the page is important.”

- I would think that google doesnt need to shore up this piece, they give Google Analytics away for free and they already have these metrics.

Everyone’s Buzzing about it…

Microsoft’s BrowseRank Aims for Better Results than PageRank
Microsoft Goes After Google’s PageRank With BrowseRank

BrowseRank is worse than PageRank

Can BrowseRank best PageRank?
Microsoft tries to one-up Google PageRank
Microsoft dreams up a new kind of search with BrowseRank

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Think about this for a second…

Google has the ability to display text ads on millions of websites that have a reach of millions of vistiors every day.  These sites include well known media outlets, blog networks, and niche communities.  With Google’s content network you have the ability to tap into these sites with targeted and relevant ads.

So why wouldn’t you want to?

Historically Google’s Content network has really had a hard time driving conversions, rather they would drive a lot of clicks, but all of that traffic had a hard time converting.  In the middle of 2007 that all changed, Google started cleaning up the content network and advertisers have been flocking to re-try the advertising medium.  One of the big changes that Google made was allowing you to see which URLs your ads are showing on.

Ok, So How do I Optimize for the Google Content Network?

Daniela Araujo is an expert at optimizing for the Google Content Network and she has some excellent tips on how to drive up conversions within the network.

Here are some tips from Daniela:

* Include in an ad group, not only very specific keywords, but also generic keywords that describe the specific industry or field for each product or service; (more…)