I know I haven’t been as active on this blog as I was a few years ago but a lot has happen since then and life just gets away from you sometimes. I’ll still try to get a few marketing articles posted, I have a few in moderation but they still need a little editing. I’m going to start posting small updates about my son Leo, his mom has been posting stuff since before the pregnancy; you can read her blog here.

So without further adieu, here is the addition to the Leo category.

Leo is really doing great, he’s had several big transitions lately like; getting a big boy bed, potty training, moving up in school to the pre-school class. The potty training is the biggest thing I’m most proud of! I had him all weekend and he would let me know when he needed to go, then take care of everything himself. I can’t tell you how excited I am to knock out the diaper expense every month. We’ll still need some for nap time and at night for a little while longer, but we’re done during the day.

Leo really likes trains and fire trucks like most boys I’m sure, we went to the Kansas History Museum this weekend, they have an old locomotive. Leo really enjoyed it as well as kids area that he could climb over everything. I was able to snap off a few pictures but Leo was on the move, so some of them are blurry.

Leo has been working on his words; he tends to drop the first and last part of some of his words. We read a lot of books and sing as many songs as we can. I’m guessing they sing songs in his school because sometimes it takes a little googleing to find out what it is he’s trying to sing..lol

We had a great weather this weekend; I think it was in the 80’s the whole weekend. His grandparents came up and we stopped by the park. He loves playing at the park, going down the slide and just running off energy.

Well I’m going to end this year, hope you enjoyed this and I’m looking forward to documenting this stage of his life.

-Brandon

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Here is a group of them and a website that has desktop backgrounds If you want to check them out.

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I’m looking forward to the future of this forum, the acquisition has been positive and the members are active.

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Akinobu makes architectural models for a living in Tokyo, but in his spare time he creates all matter of small objects in bottles. These pinky sized dinosaur skeletons are especially awesome.

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I found Brandons services via a forum and I am glad I found it. He is delight to work with very helpful, prompt responses and well researched. On top of that he is a very nice person to interact with even answering to my barrage of emails. I would strongly recommend him and will work with him in the future as well.

Here is the list.

• optimized vbulletin
• optimized vbseo
• gave other suggestions

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Here is the list

• setup vbseo
• optimize vbulletin
• updated vbulletin

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The phpbb site had a bad spam problem with 10’s of 1,000’s of spammers on the forum. I think we pruned 30,000 members before handing it off. I never really talked with the owner, I talked to his/her designer. Which btw, the style on this site look great, really nice look overall. I suggested photopost do the upgrade and they did just fine. I did have to transfer the gallery files the new server and that ended up being about 10gigs. (Google fiber would have been nice!)

• Here is the list of what needed done from me.
• Moved phpbb site/db to the new server
• Installed and imported into vBulletin
• Moved the photopost files/db to the new server
• Helped with a some mods and vBulletin questions

After a careful review, today we’re very happy to announce that we will build our ultra high-speed network in Kansas City, Kansas. We’ve signed a development agreement with the city, and we’ll be working closely with local organizations, businesses and universities to bring a next-generation web experience to the community.

Later this morning we’ll join Mayor Reardon at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas, for an event we’ll carry live on the Google YouTube channel—be sure to tune in at 10am PDT to watch.

In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We’ve found this in Kansas City. We’ll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext and the University of Kansas Medical Center to help develop the gigabit applications of the future.

Pending approval from the city’s Board of Commissioners, we plan to offer service beginning in 2012. We’ll also be looking closely at ways to bring ultra high-speed Internet to other cities across the country.

Over the past decade, the jump from dial-up to broadband has led to streaming online video, digital music sales, video conferencing over the web and countless other innovations that have transformed communication and commerce. We can’t wait to see what new products and services will emerge as Kansas City moves from traditional broadband to ultra high-speed fiber optic connections.

Now it’s time to get to work.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/ultra-high-speed-broadband-is-coming-to.html

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There are traditional offerings as well as novelty pieces all of which are incredible to look at but the choice comes down to a personal one. The game of chess itself is well known throughout the world and most people who see a chess board have an idea what it is and in many cases they will be able to tell you the names of some of the chess pieces. Usually easily established chess pieces by most are The King, Queen and Pawn. However there are many who are not always sure on the names of the Bishop, Knight and Rook. Many will also not be aware of the special rules and moves of each individual chess piece. What is more unusual is that avid chess players often have no idea why those pieces are named the way they have. The game of chess is said to have been conceived in India and all the chess pieces were all based on elements of war. Those elements being infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots all represented by the pieces such as with the Pawns, Knights, Bishops, and Rooks. Originally The King was referred to as the General and it was not until the game made its way to Europe that the pieces were redesigned with a more court like design rather than that of a military one and The General changed his name to The King.

A theory regarding the story behind the design of some of the current chess pieces are as follows: Pawns – First line of defense and represented the peasants from a court. Considered expendable as the game was built around protection of the court. It is said that during the phase of medieval chess the pawns were generally named relating to peasants occupations. This did not alter the use of the pawn only provided a more interesting story to go along with the game itself. Rooks – Symbolic of the chariot. It is said that Persian war chariots were often armored with fortified stone work hence the look of a mobile building. Eventually these were redesigned to the look of a turret and the modern Rook. Knights – Knights are usually designed as horses and that was their history in the game. Bishops – Bishops are generally given a tall hat much like a Bishop’s hence the name Bishop. The King & The Queen – Most often depicted with a royal crowns. Chess players will buy chess pieces as collection items with a versatile use as well as for actual play of the game. However you will often find in modern and even retro interior decoration themes that a chess board and chess pieces are used as designer objects rather than for the practical use. Many find beauty in the look of the board and pieces and even though they are missing the most important aspect of play itself there is no reason that everyone should not get benefit, in whatever form, from the board and chess pieces themselves. Whatever your reason for having your own chess set, there are so many different variations in material and design that there are almost limitless choices for your board and chess pieces today.

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Hello vBSEO Friends and Customers, we are happy to announce that vBSEO 3.6.0 Gold is now Gold and is available to all licensed users for installation on production servers with full support. You may download vBSEO 3.6 now from the downloads area for any active license.

Featuring the Likes Tree, updated Social Bookmarking System, Universal CDN Integration + MaxCDN Promo!

NOTE: Please read this announcement completely and carefully, as there are certain restrictions, changes to rules, and other important items that you should know about before jumping into 3.6. Pay special attention to the *Important* flag.

vBSEO 3.6.0 Gold Highlights

1. A full featured “Likes” system: A “Social Graph” for your community
The long-awaited Likes Tree integration is now available! Made popular by Facebook, and now making its way to forums and social web applications everywhere, the “Likes” system allows your users to effortlessly provide feedback to one another on the content they find most useful. Most importantly, this activity creates an underlying layer of data that works as a “Social Graph” for your community, opening the doors to a myriad of USEFUL features that have the potential to alter the way we interact with forums in different ways. One of them is enabling people to find the site’s most useful content more efficiently (see our “Likes Tree” feature below). Another powerful use for this data is the ability to surface the most popular and/or relevant content for search engines, be it via Search Engine Friendly pages that list this content, or by using it as priority multipliers for your Search Engine XML sitemaps (coming in vBSEO Search Engine XML Sitemaps 3.1).

2. The vBSEO “Likes Tree”: Redefining the way people interact with forums
It gives you (and your users) an instant “birds-eye-view” of the “Likes” distribution in a thread, allowing you to *quickly* identify the most useful/important content, no matter how long the conversation is. This new feature represents a new paradigm as it allows people to extract more value out of forums in less time.

3. Updated Social Bookmarking and Sharing system
The vBSEO Bookmarks system has been highly improved. It now appears as a pop-out link in the post bit to save space and better fit the postbit layout.

Important: With this update, the format for custom urls for your Social Bookmarking Icons has been modified. CURRENT CUSTOM ENTRIES WILL NOT BE CONVERTED. You will need to manually edit any custom rules.

Old Format:
Bookmark URL,Icon URL,”Bookmark Thread” Text,”Bookmark Post” Text

New Format:
Bookmark URL,Icon URL,”Bookmark Thread” Text,”Bookmark Post” Text,”Bookmark article” Text

See this post for more information on what formats to use.

4. CDN integration and MaxCDN Promo! – Faster Sites = Better SEO
Now for the first time ever, it is easy to set up your vBSEO-powered vBulletin forum to work with a CDN. Search Engines will love you and your users will love you too. It has been proven that sites that load FASTER, rank HIGHER. vBSEO has partnered with MaxCDN to bring faster load speeds to our clients. *New licenses* will receive an account at MaxCDN, valid for 1TB of bandwidth or 1 year of usage (whichever comes first). The package is valued at $39.95 and is being made available for FREE to vBSEO users who *purchase* a new license or *renew* an existing license (limited to ONE 1TB account per-customer). vBSEO 3.6.0 now features an easy (Universal) CDN integration via our dashboard settings panel.

Important: Certain restrictions Apply. Please read the following carefully.

1. 1 trial account per customer, regardless of how many licenses you have. You may use a single account for multiple sites though.
2. Details on how to claim your MaxCDN account will be presented to you at time of your FIRST purchase after this promotion goes into effect on your confirmation page. Print or write them down.
3. Important: You must follow the steps AT TIME OF ORDER ONLY. No exceptions.
4. Important: Staff cannot assist you with your MaxCDN account creation if you forgot to do it, or did it incorrectly. Your account will be marked as a CDN account holder and, any other new order will NOT invoke the promotional item again. Please do not open any tickets about this, as there is absolutely nothing we can do to change this. It is one-time, at time of order, only. If you get stuck or have problems, leave your purchase confirmation window open, launch a new tab/window in your browser to open a ticket/thread with any questions you may have BEFORE closing your order confirmation page.
5. Important: MaxCDN is a subscription-based product which has it’s own billing system outside of the vBSEO ordering system. You will be prompted to enter a credit/debit card, or PayPal* account to put on file with MaxCDN. Credit/Debit card users will NOT be billed. PayPal Customers will be charged $0.99 to cover the PayPal minimum transaction amount.
6. *NOTE: The PayPal payment option will not be available until mid-day Monday, 3/14/2011.
7. If you do not agree to these terms, you are not required to participate and can simply navigate away from the order confirmation page. If you accept these terms, please be aware that after your 1TB of bandwidth is used, or 1 year of service (which ever comes first), you will be billed by MaxCDN based on this payment information per their terms of service at their current regular prices at time of billing. If you do not wish to be billed, you may cancel your CDN service at any time before your 1 year or 1TB of transfer is used up. MaxCDN will contact you previous to the expiry of your PROMO period indicating when it’s going to expire, allowing you enough time to cancel the service shall you desire to do so. All MaxCDN account-related items are available to you in the MaxCDN dashboard: MaxCDN Control Panel.
8. If you are a current MaxCDN customer, you can still take advantage of this free promo item, however, you must make a new account via our ordering portal flow. Your current account will not be converted.
9. Past purchases, including those made just minutes before this announcement, unfortunately do not apply. A new purchase with our back end system in place is required in order to automate the process. You can renew for the future year even if you are not expired to obtain the free promotional item. All future-date renewals apply to the date of expiration, not order date.
10. MaxCDN is solely responsible for the CDN service and their servers. Our support will only offer help on problems with integration of the service in their vBSEO CP. Any technical issues with the CDN itself should be brought to the attention of MaxCDN through their authorized support channels.

The Free MaxCDN account promotion may be offered for a limited time only and is subject to termination without notice.

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1. Download greenpois0n onto your Mac. (Some users have been reporting the servers being down. If you can’t get it to download right away, just be patient. Their servers are probably just lagging from all the traffic. There are a few mirrors out there so be sure to check the comments for the latest updates on those.
2. Plug your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or AppleTV in via USB (make sure the power is off) and follow the on-screen instructions to enter DFU mode.
3. Greenpois0n will recognize when your phone is properly in DFU mode and start to do its thing. After it’s done, you’ll see a Loader icon on your homescreen. Tap it and install Cydia. (Note: This only differs for AppleTV jailbreakers. You’ll be done but need to continue accessing and installing apps via Terminal and SSH.)
4. You’re done! Restore all your stuff (if you choose to or were stock before) and enjoy being jailbroken!

Here is a video as well, for those that like to see the Jailbreak in action before trying it on their phones.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comment box below.

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Running on vBulletin for most of its life, VPL filled in a niche need: instead of having forums just to discuss one particular pet site, those who enjoyed the genre as a whole could come together. While it would never be as successful as the major forums, it was highly successful within its targeted audience.

While run out of passion for the virtual pet genre, a lot of important lessons were learned from its operation. The growing community resulted in lessons in dealing with customer support, promotion and handling unruly users. Naturally, these lessons were sometimes difficult to learn the hard way by experiencing problems firsthand, but accepting that you’re flawed is how you can improve. The years of hands on experience has led to overall stronger leadership and a likewise stronger forum. The site has survived numerous downtimes, including being hacked, and come back stronger each time. This is because the staff and owners are passionate about the subject matter of their forum, and thus have successfully crafted not just a message board, but an intentional community.

This is a point that can’t be stressed enough. Even if you’re good with SEO, marketing, connections and all the other business sides of things, if you’re going to start a niche forum you had either better be interested yourself, or find some interested people to help you run it. Niche audiences can tell when someone isn’t genuinely part of their group, and the community will feel the ramifications of your outsider status. Someone who isn’t much of a gamer can start up a successful enough gaming forum, but if you want something more specific like one for visual novels or virtual pets, you’ll never see your full potential realized if it’s nothing more than a cash grab to you. These sorts of sites live and die by their staff. It’s how they go from mere discussion areas to a second home.

Running this sort of forum can have its vexing moments. If you run a forum wherein you take a hands on approach, prepare to be compared to Hitler just for enforcing a rule. In a community where everyone knows everyone, disagreements can get very personal as well, and it will tend to be up to you to calm things down. Yet it’s knowing that at the end of the day you’ve provided the best experience you can to your users that makes any such hassles all feel worth it. And when you do your job right, users will spread knowledge of your forum via word of mouth, and you’ll have a dedicated and passionate user base. Ad campaigns and search engine rankings all help, but being a good admin is a key factor. Always remember that you’re not just an operator of the site, but a member as well.

Running a niche forum isn’t supremely profitable from a monetary standpoint, but it is incredibly rewarding from a personal one.

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Here are five companies and their strategies for handling social media marketing:

AT&T

Overall, AT&T knows exactly how to run social media marketing. Their blog posts relay updates about their products, and they respond to their customers’ ideas and concerns (positive or negative) promptly. They also have a Spanish blog for their non-English speaking customers. They have some videos of new products on Youtube and a video contest. On one website, they have pictures and short mentions of big celebrity events linking back to an entertainment portion of the AT&T website called U-verse. This is a company that models an excellent social media marketing strategy.

Best Buy

The CMO, Barry Judge, seems to manage most of their social media marketing. Most recent was a holiday charity. These always offer valuable improvements in business ethics and reputation. One thing I was really impressed with was his quick response to a controversial issue that was in the blog, which mentioned an alternative faith’s seasonal holiday. He updates his consumers and answers their questions quickly. With 15,800 followers on Twitter, this massive giant isn’t doing too badly.

Coca-Cola

While Coca-Cola has a blog, the majority of their customer communication comes from micro-blogging. Their Twitter account has around 154,000 followers. Excellent customer appreciation is when the company literally tells the customer that they love them back for loving their product. Aspiring bigwigs could learn something from this classic company. Coca-Cola also has a large facebook fan page campaign, that has been very successful, not to mention the extensive branding across the world. Coca-Cola is one of the oldest soft drinks in the world with a long and rich history.

Dell

With a blog that has millions of page views per month, Dell is doing something right.  They have implemented ‘Ideastorm’ to allow customers to talk directly with them about concerns or complaints. With this direct way of bringing customer dissatisfaction out into the limelight, Dell is compelled to respond because of how direct the medium of communication is. This is something that companies should consider doing as it builds trust between the company and customers. Dell is a company that tries to solve its problems and doesn’t hide from its customers’ dissatisfaction. That’s something as a consumer that I’ve come to respect.

Wal-Mart

The nice thing about Wal-Mart’s blog is that it’s well organized and has a friendly appeal to it. If a customer were to comment with a question or a concern, the organizers of this Wal-Mart blog would respond to the concern in their next blog post. They also have twitter and RSS feeds.

The strategies implemented by these companies have one major thing in common: showing appreciation for the customer through direct mediums of communication. Company strategies for social media marketing are always evolving, whether they are for big or small companies. On the web, people can gain equal footing with bigwig companies and share in the competition. However, before this happens, companies will need to think like bigwigs before they can hope to succeed in social media marketing.

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Here is the list of what we updated/fixed.

• updated the vBulletin forum
• updated vBSEO
• optimized vBulletin
• optimized vBSEO
• fixed a few bugs from a previous forum upgrade

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• Make family top priority
• Get hired on full time at the state
• Stop smoking
• Make 5k off my freelance work
• Put a garden in, cook better meals
• Make time to paint again
• Build my forum to a million post
• Lose 50 pounds

I think these are obtainable goals, the building the garden and forum to a million post will most likely be the hardest.

What are your goals?

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• optimized vBulletin
• optimized vBSEO
• setup a vBSEO sitemap
• setup Google analytic
• setup Google webmaster tools
• configured the robots.txt file to help focus the search engine bots

GB Riders and The European BMW K Club

What do you think?

Brandon it was a pleasure having you transfer our Forum from Phpbb to
VBulletin with over 80 thousand posts. Our users love the new Forum and the
Facebook Integration.  We would highly recommend Branden for any client
looking to set up or transfer the VBulletin Software.

David A. Williams
Marketing Director
Powder Buy the Pound

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