On Wednesday, November 15. I’ll be speaking on Search Engines at the Chamber of Commerce Mid-Day Forum. If you’re in town stop but from 12-1:00p.m 
From the Chamber
This presentation is designed for both novice and experienced Internet users who want to quickly and easily use the Internet to find relevant web pages, news articles, pictures and other resources.
The speaker, Aaron Schaap, is a highly accomplished and award-winning developer and has expertise comprising of information architecture, interface design, accessibility and web standards deployment. These rare skill-sets enable him to present brands in new and innovative ways, while understanding the technological rules that apply. Aaron is the founder of ElevatorUp.com, a web hosting company, and lead Web Strategist for The Image Group.
The Mid-Day Forum will be held on Wednesday, November 15 at the Haworth Inn & Conference Center from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. Cost is $18 per person for Chamber members and $25 per person for non-members.
posted on October 30, 2006| 3:15 PM EST
Everyone’s been talking about Podcasting and Vi/Vodasting so much (especially with Google’s recent $1.6 billion purchase of YouTube) that I think a lot of people are forgetting about other emerging communication mediums and how to start using them in our everyday lives.
Podcasting and vicasting is still young and the biggest hurdle these technologies have isn’t going to be making tools easier to use - it’s getting people to have something meaningful to say and encouraging them to do it in such a way that others will actually want to see or listen to them.
With the number one fear being public speaking (according to Seinfeld), it’ll be interesting to see how close podcast or vicasts creation will actually get to the family living room.
Another area that is quickly growing is text messaging. It’s one of those mediums that people seem to take for granted and the media doesn’t get all that excited about (at least so far). What seems to be fascinating to me is the current growth with this medium and some of the new ideas being brought to an old concept of texting.
Twitter
Twitter is a new company that snuck out of a few guys working at ODEO (a podcasting website). Twitter’s whole concept is being a community of live updates from around the world — all of them answers to one simple question: What are you doing? This is great for quickly blasting a question to a group of friends to see if they want to see a midnight showing of Man of the Year.
Dodgeball
Of course Twitter’s concept isn’t terribly new - Dodgeball (recently acquired by Google) did something close to this years ago. I remember using it in Austin, Texas last year while at SXSW trying to catch up with people I had just met earlier that day. It was a great tool (still is) but the learning curve felt a bit steep. I did catch on a bit quicker after I bumped into the main developer of Dodgeball at a bar, but not everyone gets that opportunity.
Google SMS
The other one playing in this field is Google with their “Quick results” using SMS. I came across this a few weeks ago but didn’t pay much attention until I was hanging out with a group of friends and we didn’t know what time a movie started. Google SMS makes is easy to text a message (the departed 49423) to 46645 and get a quick listing of times. Not only that but a lot of other things are literally at your fingertips.
NowNow
Of course Amazon is jumping on this with NowNow. NowNow is a service that mobile users can use to find answers to any question via mobile email. It’s a good idea but it’s a bit frustrating that it’s not an immediate response. Amazon is planning on paying users who will search the web on your behalf.
IOHU Money
Others are allowing people to be notified of things via text message instead of an email. As long as they keep the message extremely short (something like: “We’re Live now at www.site.com”) it hopefully won’t be annoying.
As you can see - texting is starting to pick up and I’ve only pointed out a few people that are providing good ideas. I expect to see quite a bit of movement in this area over the next year.
For me personally - I have a few ideas that I’d like to try hacking away at. I see a few of my (slowly being developed) apps adopting simple SMS capabilities - that is once we finish with the main development.
posted on October 28, 2006| 11:59 PM EST
I never thought I would be telling someone about a splash page but here I am… telling you about one.
I took a snapshot of this, not because it looks good (it’s terrible), but the concept is possibly good (something we recommended to a client but more direct in this case).
I got to this page by clicking on a SEM ad on Google. Instead of bringing me directly to their website, it brought me to this splash page and showed me exactly what they told me I was going to get. They didn’t make me figure out where it was on their website, they simply said - here it is. There’s more but here’s really what you asked for.
Side note: We’ve seen this type of stuff before (in Web 1.0) and it annoyed people. The difference here is that it’s relative results.
posted on | 9:02 PM EST
Something that everyone tells you when starting a business is to “Stay Focused” or better yet, “Understand who you are and where you’re going”. This is great advice but I don’t think people understand this until they’ve been in business for a few years, if at all.
I think I’m starting to figure out what this means and thought I’d provide my understanding of it in hope of possibly clarifying it for myself and others.
You see - “Staying Focused” is important but where people fail is understanding the different paths available in taking you there.
The best way I can explain this is through a personal example.
I have a few visions (still being clarified) on where I want to take Elevator Up. Part of this vision relies on working more for myself than for other people/clients. That said, you need money to do things that will get you there.
So how can you get money? Well, it’s tempting to do what I’ve done for years - create websites. There are a lot of people needing small $3,000-$5,000 websites and it’s quick money.
Herein lines the problem though - My goal/focus isn’t on developing small websites and they aren’t helping me in any way other than some extra cash to do something else.
That may sound ok to you but the reality is that it also distracts me from getting closer to my true goals. The quick money I make is nice but it wastes a few months of time that I should have been using to get closer to my goals.
So how do I get to my goals? “Stay Focused” or “Understand who I am and where I’m going” - If I remember this and keep moving forward - I’ll actually achieve something I want. Not something I don’t care about like a small website.
What’s the next step for me? To say “NO” to people. It’s an extremely hard thing to do because I see their need and I know how to solve their problems. However, if it’s not helping me, I’ll never be able to move forward.
So figure out what you’re trying to do in life and do your best to keep that focus and quit wasting your time on the other stuff - because it’s not where you want to be.
posted on October 13, 2006| 5:33 PM EST
Coming home to a family that loves and cares for you is one of the most gratifying things I’ve had in my life. It helps me forget all the stupid work stuff that consumes my mind all day and let’s me refocus on life as a human being and not a working machine.
That all said, every once in awhile you need some time to get through a lot of work and put together plans for your business and/or company you work for.
Jodi and I talked about this a few weeks back knowing this was needed and instead of me just being gone a lot, she came up with the idea to visit family in Washington State for a week. So 4:30am this morning we woke up and the drove the girls to the Grand Rapids airport so they could go on their little adventure.
Meanwhile, I’ve already started working through some stuff with a few things already getting checked off. I’ll be honest with ya though - it’s sweet having time to focus. Not only that, but I got some serious sleep in and I haven’t done that for months.
Needless to say I’m going to miss coming home to a wife and little girl running up to you saying “Daddy, Daddy!!!” - but having the freedom to relax and accomplish some things has been frigg’in sweet and I’m excited for the week.
posted on October 7, 2006| 9:15 PM EST
