No-Follow has been placed on all comment signatures. Additionally I have gone through and purged all comments in the database that have keywords in the signature.

Future comments with keywords in the signature will be flagged as spam. If your posting a comment, use your name or create a nick name but do not spam.

Those of you who follow my blog probably have noticed I’ve been absent for the past few months.  The good news is I am still alive and doing well, the bad news is I’ve been so busy lately I have not had even a second to construct a decent blog post.

The other week I wanted to write about the new Presidency.  For a few days I could not get this idea out of my head:

 Is it possible for us as a nation to keep taxes low enough to attract new business growth and deter business owners from moving their corporation’s overseas while at the same time provide enough resources to social welfare programs which many Americans need at this time?

That being said, the product launch of BOTW Local has kept me extremely busy. So busy, ideas like the one above will have to wait.

 In only a few months we’ve had thousands of new signups. Thrilling as this is, providing a high level of support to all these new users has become our number one focus at this point.

To paint a quick picture, whenever a user contacts us for support we have to create new policies, procedures and tie all of this into some sort of seamless automated sequence. This way all reported issues will not affect the rest of our users while at the same time preventing them from occurring again.

Our policy is to review each and every listing submitted to the site. With thousands of new submissions coming in we’ve had to completely create new backend administration tools so our human editors and customer support staff can personally manage each and every user.

Simultaneously we have been listening to all the user feedback we’ve been receiving from the community. With one hand orchestrating what we define as world class support we have the other hand conceptualizing, designing and building new elements and features for the front end of the site. 

Putting all these things together while striving to provide users with a positive experience on the site can sometimes feel like we are hosting a tea party in the middle of a rodeo match. Needless to say we’ve set the bar real high for excellence and it is our intention to create a sensational product.

For those of you who have emailed me asking why I am not blogging, I suppose you can now understand why addressing corporate tax and social welfare issues are not currently a priority on my mind.  At least it is not right now.

On a side note if you’re an SEO or agency that represents businesses, feel free to contact me to discuss how Local can help your clients.  

I’m thrilled to officially announce the beta release of a project that has more or less consumed all of my energy this past year and a half, BOTW Local.

Now weighing in at 16.5 million pages, this site has been by far the most intricate and most complicated project I have ever worked on. Our team is continuously finding areas on the site we want to improve, and by all appearances, this project will continue to evolve. Although we’ve only just launched Beta, we have our eyes set on developing many-many more cool features.

Launching such a large site is no small feat. Because there are thousands of working parts, we’ve been careful with its release. Over the past few weeks we have slowly opened up a handful of major markets Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Chicago and Austin. We’ve been monitoring user experience, bot crawling and indexing in efforts to allow us to debug unexpected errors and seamlessly complete our coverage of the entire United States.

If you’re a business owner then we invite you to claim your business for Free with JumpStart. And if you’re responsible for managing the marketing for a business that has multiple locations, feel free to contact us directly so we can help get you setup!

Of course all feedback is welcomed!

While in Seattle I met up with Jim Hedger of Webmaster Radio and answered some questions about LA Mixers, the newest mixer to hit the Los Angeles scene and one of the fastest growing groups on Facebook. (If player does not work, click here)

Webmaster Radio
LA Mixers Learn about an exclusive networking group that holds social gatherings in the Los Angeles Area Show Host: Jim Hedger Show: Search Marketing Expo Channel: Conferences

Ryans bust caught on YouTube. This is what happens when you double book sales! Moral of the story, companies like Dunder Mifflin probably don’t need Web 2.0 social websites. What a hilarious idea,  social for the paper company. (Somewhat reminiscent of Charlie Sheen playing Bud Fox in Wall Street)

I received an email from IndexTools informing me that my accounts with them are now free, thanks to Yahoo acquiring them.

So moving forward from here and upon your acceptance of the Yahoo! Master
Terms & Conditions and Program Terms the product will be provided to you
free of charge.

Thats great news! Although I am not sure how new sign ups are handled.

Wow, this is quite amazing. The father called out some countries I would have a hard time finding so quickly. The fact she has a map in her room is brilliant parenting work.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???  You really sent me a check for $1.07?

Lets break down all the costs associated with this:

1. Ink
2. Paper
3. Stamp
4. Mail processing resources (Sorting, Bagging)
5. Mail transportation costs (Bag loading, Gas, Time spent placing check in mail box)

And there is my costs:

1. Time spent opening letter
2. Time spent going to bank
3. Ink wasted endorsing  check to bank
4. Gas & Auto resources waisted going to bank

Other costs associated with check:

1. Bank tellers time to process check
2. Bank time to clear the check
3. Postage costs to send cleared check back to state.

It is no wonder our state is in trouble.

This past weekend I attended the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. For several hours I sat overlooking Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger as they answered unfiltered questions from the audience.

Some would say that Buffett and Munger are our modern day equivalent John D. Rockefeller, Benjamin Franklin or Andrew Carnegie. To be in the room with these guys was a real thrill even though I was among 31,000 other devoted followers.

Throughout the day Buffett and Munger addressed issues about the current state of the United States economy, the housing bubble, the U.S. election, China, the pharmaceutical industry, education, investor education, diversification, parenting, sin, nuclear threat and what they will not invest in.

Buffett and Munger kept coming back to one common thread. These two titans of industry are addicted to reading. Munger commented that the greatest teacher / fathers in his life are the authors of all the books he reads. If you wish to peek in the mind of one of the most fascinating modern day Americans, check out Books Recommended by Charlie Munger

One common discussion I had this weekend revolved around the idea of surrounding yourself among people who are smarter than you. Especially if your young and are in the early stages of your career. If you are always the smartest person in the room, you are stealing prime hours of your life in which you could be absorbing knowledge from others.

If you have not seen the press release come over the newswire then allow me to be the one to break the news and shed some light on the details. Recently I have formally accepted an executive position with Best of the Web.

Just over a year ago I began having confidential discussions with Greg Hartnett, President and Brian Prince, CEO of BOTW regarding a new web offering that was in the very-very early phase of development.

Over the course of a couple weeks we had multiple lengthy conversations regarding the general aspects about the new product. After some “big brain” strategizing I was offered the opportunity to take the reins & tasked with “make it happen”.

These past fourteen months I’ve been working directly with some extremely smart and highly spirited entrepreneurs on the build-out of what we now publicly call “Local”. We have recently completed major development work and are progressively rolling out nationwide within the United States.

With Local now a notch on my BOTW belt, Brian and Greg approached me a few weeks ago about coming on permanently. Once again we jumped back into having “big brain” strategy conversations and a formal agreement has been made.

As the press release mentioned, I will be responsible for interacting with agencies, identifying distribution opportunities, and project managing new offerings. Since we have already been working with each other for over a year these new responsibilities although challenging are a natural fit.

On a more personal note, I am thrilled to be joining such a great company. Those who regularly attend search conferences are very familiar with the genuine vibe and kinship BOTW exudes. Being able to share in this energy on a daily basis has made this past year highly enjoyable and productive.

I invite my readers to jump on Local and help spread the word of our latest web offering.