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Mercury News, Team San Jose and the Pink Poodle

Posted by admin | Posted on 30-08-2010

Category : Content Producer, Off The Cuff, TSJ Articles

Tags: internal affairs, mercury news, pink poodle, sanjose.org

The following is in regards to my posting on the Things to do page on SanJose.org here

Team San Jose supports Pink Poodle “… sort of

“Have you ever been to a strip club that let you hose down a fully nude nubile in a shower tub only inches in front of you?”

Nope? Neither has IA, but that didn’t stop the folks at Team San Jose, the beleaguered nonprofit that runs the city’s convention center and several downtown theaters, from listing a visit to “the lovely ladies of the Pink Poodle gentleman’s club” as a top recommendation on the group’s website, www.sanjose.org.

IA found a disclaimer on the site: “These pages do not in any way constitute official Team San Jose content. The views and opinions expressed in the pages are strictly those of the page authors.”

But we’d bet most casual readers might not realize that.

Also, IA has to note: even though a jaunt to the Pink Poodle and other “adult’s play” activities are listed on the website under the category, “Things to do in San Jose,” the infamous strip joint actually sits in an unincorporated pocket of Santa Clara County. We’re just sayin’.

I had to laugh at the Mercury News’ Internal Affairs section mentioning this. They seem to forget that SanJose.org, and Team San Jose, exists to promote all of San Jose’s, and to an extent much of the Bay Area’s, activities, nightlife, culture, etc. and this includes the Pink Poodle. While TSJ has always been a little more conservative than sites such as SanJose.com which features the club with photos of the dancers and has a directory of adult places, it doesn’t make sense to try and ignore these legitimate businesses that many visitors and locals enjoy going to.

And as far as the Pink Poodle being in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County…really? The intersection of Bascom Avenue and San Carlos is smack in the middle of San Jose, so I really don’t see how anyone would dissociate that corner from San Jose at all, regardless of this small block’s zoning.

Maybe the writers of IA should try visiting this venue more often, my wife and I would be more than happy to pay for your first semi-private dance.

Oh, Print, you’re still here?

Posted by admin | Posted on 29-07-2010

Category : Design, Social Media

Tags: print is dead, web typography

Recently I was talking with someone who was of the mindset that print is not just an essential media but will always be required. His reasoning wasn’t knew, it was based on people liking something to hold in their hands, and when I asked about his experience with devices such as the Kindle, Sony E-Reader or the iPad he admitted to not looking into them nor was he interested in these devices. His opinions on news-related topics when it comes to the Web were in a similar vein, as he felt that there is nothing that will replace print media yet because there is no one singular technology that has encompassed all of the things he likes…

I chuckle inside.

He’s right in that no one form of online media has replaced print, but that’s not really how the internet and online technology work. We have news sites which distribute up to the minute news; we have blogs that spout out everything from opinions on facts to celebrity gossip to fabricated stories. We have social media sites which connect individuals to these stories, and we can do all this from our mobile devices. At this point email seems to be an old hat tech. The only real piece to hold back online information from print is the typography and design aspects associated with migrating printed material to the web, assuming you’re not counting PDF or flash readers.

Of course online text hasn’t always been as easy to manipulate as printed text, ask anyone who has worked as a designer with your major Adobe suite tools like Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and tried to convert the text to a readable, non-image format. It’s a significant challenge at worst and an inconvenience at best. But today I see our savior has released their Font Preview web typography tool, which allows designers to easily, from a visual perspective, adjust the kerning, tracking and shadowing of their fonts as if they were adjusting it in any other print tool. Granted the terminology is different, as Google prefers to refer to tracking and kerning as letter, word and line spacing – but it’s a small price to pay to create great looking online text on the fly.

So I hate to call out the white elephant in the room, but, Print…uh…you’re still here?

What CMS is right for you? Tell me.

Posted by admin | Posted on 17-05-2010

Category : Content Producer, Design

Tags: Business Catalyst, CMS, Content Management Systems, Drupal, Wordpress

Over the last couple years the company I work for has been working on the development of a site using a CMS (Content management System) platform, a good change in my opinion and something that many companies are moving towards with their sites now as it allows for quick and efficient changes to a site without requiring a full time developer or web designer on your staff.

That said, as CMS platforms become more popular, more choices for systems begin to pop up. It was only a handful of years ago where we were limited to Drupal or WordPress, but now we have a plethora of new emerging alternatives, though in all honesty these are still by far the most popular and efficient platforms to date.

So who are these emerging platforms and why should I care?

For anyone who has to be a decision maker for choosing a CMS, it’s going to happen that at some point, someone in your office will ask you why you chose brand X over Brand Y.

So what are the alternatives to WordPress and Drupal?

The third most popular CMS is probably Joomla, though that popularity isn’t all positive. Many users seem to have a strong love and hate relationship with the platform, but based on the amount of third party modules, plugins, and themes, there are definitely enough users out there to attempt to rival the big two.

While there are others that various groups will mention such as Silverstripe, Radiant CMS, Concrete5 and Frog; I’ve recently taken a look at two I thought may be worth watching as well, Modx and Business Catalyst (BC).

My first impression of Modx was that I liked it, but I liked it for the wrongs reasons. It has a lot of control over the code handled by each page, as well as assigning individual templates to my pages; however, the interface and controls are built based on the assumptions that someone with a web design background who has a good grasp of HTML and PHP would be facilitating the changes. This in my opinion is not always the person behind the CMS. Similar to Drupal, you’d probably end up having to hire a developer to build the initial layout and functionality and then hand it off to someone to manage the content.

Business catalyst on the other hand is much more intuitive and friendly, while still allowing its users to touch the code if needed. Very similar to WordPress in the feel of it, but the thing that makes me hesitate is the price tag. Yes, “BC” as it’s referred to has a free version, but it comes with some limitations and the whole model of the organization is to make a big push for developers to buy into the partnership and then sell it to their customers. While it may work for some, I don’t think BC would be the most appropriate CMS for every customer, but if I’m financially invested in it, it’d be hard in my mind to NOT want to push it on all my customers.

I’ll continue to take a look at other CMS platforms as they pass through my inbox, and I’d welcome users to comment about their experiences with any of these platforms and tell me what they like best about each, or even what they don’t like. In my mind, I’m still a fan of Drupal and WordPress, though for two different groups and two different reasons, but feel free to tell me why others are better.

Twitter Follower Strategies

Posted by admin | Posted on 06-05-2010

Category : Social Media

Tags: Twitter, twitter strategy

A couple years ago if you had asked me what the best high level strategies were for Twitter followers I would have given you two examples.

John Doe is following 4 people / 1,002 people are following John Doe

On one hand you have celebrities, who follow only their close friends, if any, perhaps a business associate as well. While they’ll interact with their audience they won’t follow them back. This is also a popular trend among people who have signed up for Twitter to chat with friends, or some other personal reason, and are not seeking to leverage it for business, though their followings tend to be celebrities, news or entertainment.

Jane Doe is following 2,876 people / 2,893 are following John Doe

The other side is people who have an affinity to be social online or perhaps are marketing and public relations professionals who desire to connect with everyone they meet. While there is arguably more interaction on these accounts, they don’t boast the clout that celebrities or the one way street folk seem to have.

But lately I’ve discovered a third.

A while back, before Twitter updated its policies to fix this, there was this desire and belief that if someone followed a lot of users they in turn would get followed back. This was somewhat true and it led to the creation of many tools that automatically do this for you. From a viewers standpoint it also gave the appearance that the account was spam, regardless of what was posted. Ultimately the rule has become that one never wants to follow more people than are following them.

I’ve found an exception that I think works.

Over the last few months I’ve been working with my city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, the organization responsible for helping to bring in shows, conferences, exhibits etc. to our city. One of the many things they do is also connect visitors to local businesses and from a social media standpoint, promote local businesses to visitors and locals.

The way we did this was to ensure that any restaurant, bar, nightclub, attraction, cultural venue, etc. was followed by our CVB’s Twitter account. But we didn’t stop there; we also decided to follow as many local San Jose folks as we could too. The purpose for this was so we would have a stream of information coming in on our side that we could spot check to see if there were any trends developing in the dialogue of both locals and businesses that we could bring together.

The ultimate goal here is that we will be able to connect locals and visitors with businesses who have something that will interest or benefit them. The result is that we have used our Twitter as more of a data-mining and connection tool than a content distribution tool.

Silicon Valley Tweetup – social media done right

Posted by admin | Posted on 01-05-2010

Category : Adventures, Social Media

Tags: Charity, Social Media, tweetup

I attended my first Silicon Valley Tweetup the other week and overall I have to say, this is one of the best uses of social media I have seen.

For those who haven’t jumped on the new social bandwagons there is a group based here in San Jose known as the Silicon Valley Tweetup. It’s based around a group of Twitter power users who group together once a month, the third Wednesday of each month, in order to raise funds for a local charity organization. The past meetup was hosted by Rosie McCanns for Relay for Life and by 7:30pm the venue was overflowing with Twitters.

The format is pretty simple. The group contacts any venue that can hold between 10 to 250 people peek and has their meeting there. On arrival guests are asked to donate $10 at the door to the charity being highlighted that evening. Flyers and workers of the organization are available to discuss what the organization does and how they help different groups. At this last event I learned that Relay for Life is a group dedicated to helping those going through Chemotherapy and Radiation live healthier lives through exercises and diets appropriate for those dealing with cancer. They also have post-remission based groups that help those who currently do not have cancer and want to curve the risks of any re-occurrences.

While the donation is optional, it is usually worked out with the venue that those who donate get their first drink free. All of the money at the door goes to the charity group. Once inside various sponsors, companies and individuals are invited to have their booths within the venue or speak during the brief thank you portion of the evening. The event lasted from 6pm to 9pm and around 7:30pm is when the founders of Silicon Valley Tweetup thanked everyone for coming and allowed their sponsors and Relay for Life to talk briefly about what they do.

From 8pm until 9pm it was mostly a mixer, with the venue reaping the benefits of the Food and Beverage purchases of their guests and many of the Twitter users mingling and exchanging contact information. During my time here I was able to meet a man named Arvin (not sure if I am spelling his name correctly), while he had never experienced cancer first hand he had many friends who had been affected by this disease. I was able to meet with a couple of the sponsors, visual search engine provider LeapFish and a financial organization offering 401k and IRA information. There were others from Cisco, Tumble and Robert Mondavi as well.

I left a little early, around 8:30pm as it was a work night for me and I had an early morning meeting the following day, but in my brief time here I was very impressed with the turn out and how social media is being used to help make life better for others. As someone who uses social media mostly as a way to push out information or connect businesses to customers, it was refreshing to see an alternative use that benefits others.

Facebook Like Button

Posted by admin | Posted on 23-04-2010

Category : Social Media

Tags: Facebook, Like Button

I’d find it hard to believe that anyone hasn’t heard about Facebook’s new bag of tricks popping up all throughout the internet like a wildfire through the California hills.

That said, here is why you should care about Facebook’s new “Like” button.

The Like button is a great feature to offer your website visitors as it allows everyone who visits your site a one click opportunity to promote your site to their friends. It takes no effort on their part, and from a web facilitator it takes very little effort on your end to offer this.

But Mike, I don’t have a Facebook account so I don’t care about Facebook!

That’s fine if your company or you don’t have a Facebook page, it doesn’t change the fact that many of your visitors more than likely do, and why wouldn’t you want your visitors to promote your business? If it helps, think of the Like button as Social Media outreach for dummies combined with an Affiliate system that doesn’t require you to pay anyone and you’re on the right track in your thinking. If it really matters to you, you can add in the code and still not have a Facebook account.

But I looked at their developer page and saw the word developer in the title and got scared because I don’t code!

While Facebook has given many sites a ton of features that integrate anywhere from fully to not really, you don’t need to be a code master to add a Like button to your website. Below is the code from Facebook’s Developer page.

scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″

style=”border:none; width:450px; height:80px“></iframe>

Simply paste this anywhere in your site to have it show up and work. The only change you need to make is changing the bold sections for the URL and the Style. So change http://example.com to the URL you’re trying to promote. For a blog like this I just use http://www.michaelghurston.com as I have this code above my sidebar widget on every page. For places like SanJose.org it makes more sense to personalize the URL a bit more such as http://www.sanjose.org/visitor or http://www.sanjose.org/meetings The width and height can be adjusted as needed. If you’re unsure what 450px versus 300px wide is, simply keep playing with it until you’re happy.

The only downside I’ve come across so far is the widget likes to show a white background (no matter how I change the code) in IE. Safari, Firefox and Chrome all display it fine though.

But I don’t want to support this as Facebook is just going to turn into a giant scary entity like Google and the Borg!

Resistance is futile.

The Wall

Posted by admin | Posted on 12-04-2010

Category : Content Producer, Marketing

Tags: FourSquare, hotels, Marketing, shops, walls

In my attempts to come up with new ways for our city to promote its businesses and ultimately bring in sources of revenue I’ve recently felt as if I’ve been hitting a wall. Not walls with my ideas mind you, but rather a wall with what the city and the organizations that surround me are willing to do.

One idea I recently had was to partner with a hotel who would be interested in reaching out to local or foreign businesses that could set up mini “shops” within the rooms of the hotel instead of in a meeting facility. Essentially businesses could set up a bar in a hotel room for people walking by or another place could be selling clothes and another novelty items.

This would on one hand create immediate revenue for the hotel given its rooms would be filling quickly, but it would also give them a lasting exposure with the foot traffic and word of mouth that would spread with such an event.

We could do an event like this once a year, once a quarter, or maybe even once a month and keep moving it from hotel to hotel, rotating through all those who would participate.

Unfortunately, I have lots of people who would like this to happen, but we don’t have anyone who can make it happen, and to top it off it’s something that falls outside of the model of the company I work for.

And to reference my previous post I still can’t get a hold of anyone at Foursquare to set up a special badge for people who have checked in at all of our venues or to talk with about working on a promotion no matter how many times either myself or my boss fill out the forms on their website or post on Foursquare’s GetSatisfaction.