Nina Simon – Museum 2.0
http://www.museumtwo.blogspot.com/

Erik Schmidt – The Perils of Punditry
http://ejschmidt.com/blog/

Shane & Peter
http://blog.shaneandpeter.com/

David Pogue – New York Times Technology
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/

Tim Ferriss – Four Hour Work Week
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Tutorial Blog
http://tutorialblog.org/

1. Don’t Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (Steve Krug)  Perhaps not a business book per se, but it is THE book I recommend more than any other.

2. The No Asshole Rule, Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (Robert I. Sutton, Phd)

3. Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works (Janice Ginny Reddish)

4. The One-Page Proposal, How to Get Your Business Pitch Onto One Persuasive Page (Patrick G. Riley)

5. Rapid Problem Solving with Post-it Notes (David Straker)

6. Peak, How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow (Chip Conley)

http://www.facebook.com/SaraIsenbergConsulting

Ironically, clients often ask me how to decide whether to post to a blog or enewsletter ,or Facebook, or twitter, and my usual response is “all of them” however I’m going to have to walk the talk, or come up with a new answer, or simply say that we do what we can do.

Happy New Year!
Sara

Here’s helpful and easy-to-understand information — in a video — about Facebook’s new privacy settings.

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/facebook-privacy-video/

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s next algorithm update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that Google Caffeine will be more than Google’s regular updates. It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that Google uses to rank web pages.

What is going to change?

Of course, Google hasn’t revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google’s next index:

• Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.
• Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.
• Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn’t good for your rankings in Google’s current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
• The over-all quality of your website: Google’s new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It’s not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.You’ll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.

Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google’s new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.

How can you adjust your web pages to Google’s new Caffeine index?

Although Google’s Caffeine update hasn’t been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google’s new index:

• Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
• Check your website design and the navigation of your website.Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders. You can test this with the search engine spider simulator in IBP (Select Tools > Search Engine Spider Simulator in IBP’s main window).
• Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google’s current algorithm and that role might increase.
• Check your links. You shouldn’t link to websites that look like spammers. It’s better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible.

Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google’s new index will be online.

Interestingly enough, I wasn’t looking for this case but saw it advertised on the Santa Cruz New Tech Meetup event page last month, and Pierce Buxton, VP of Business Development, was at the meetup, promoting his great new product.  Way to go Pierce!

Then, today at NextSpace, I happened to meet Ken Kannappan, CEO of Plantronics, and in the process of talking about blue tooth ear pieces, pulled out my new iPhone and got him interested in this case.  I’d love to find out if Plantronics connects with Backflipcase.

Click here to visit www.backflipcase.com

Resources

WordPress Support:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

Resources for beginners:
http://saraisenberg.com/2009/08/13/wordpress-for-beginners/
http://saraisenberg.com/2008/08/13/wordpress-for-dummies/

How to make a non-post (non-blog-looking) WordPress home page:
http://bloggingexperiment.com/archives/wordpress-page-as-home-page.php

How to Redirect a WordPress.com Blog [PDF]:
http://blog-well.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/how-to-redirect-a-wordpresscom-blog.pdf

Notes from Chris’s September 2009 presentation at NextSpace:
http://saraisenberg.com/2009/09/15/wordpress-resources-from-todays-nextspace-brownbag/

How to have a non-post home page [PDF]:
http://blog-well.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/how-to-redirect-a-wordpresscom-blog.pdf

Examples of some WordPress blogs:

http://bestblog.wordpress.com/ (review)
http://thisisindexed.com/ (humor site)
http://thisisindexed.com/2007/05/calling-in-sick/

Examples of some WordPress websites (as CMS, not blog per se):
http://saraisenberg.com/2009/09/25/30-great-websites-using-wordpress-as-a-cms/
http://wordpress.org/showcase
http://publisherblog.automattic.com/2008/09/16/10-examples-of-wordpress-as-a-cms/

WP Remix:
http://wpremix.com/

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THANKS for attending!

Sara Isenberg Web Consulting & Project Management

email: sara@saraisenberg.com
twitter: @saraisenberg
website: http://www.saraisenberg.com
blog: http://www.saraisenberg.com/blog
linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/saraisenberg
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SaraIsenbergConsulting

The Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce has a very popular new speaking series for Women in Business called Caffeineighted.

On Nov 5, 7:30-9 AM, I’ll be giving a presentation called Create a Free WordPress Blog in 1 Hour at the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, Women in Business, Caffeineighted Series.

[Click here to Register]

Full Details:

Women in Business will host its small-meeting networking series, Caffeineighted, Thursday, November 5, 7:30-9 AM

Location: New Leaf Community Markets
1101 Fair Ave
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

“Create a Free WordPress Blog in 1 Hour”

We continue with Web 2.0 Marketing tools with Sara Isenberg who will show us how to create a blog.

Sara Isenberg, principal consultant at Sara Isenberg Web Consulting & Project Management, has extensive experience in the corporate software industry, much of that as a technical account manager where she managed technical relationships between software engineering teams and strategic partners and clients.

Sara began working as an independent project manager in 2005, serving web producers and small businesses.In addition to working as a web consultant and project manager, Sara is a Technology Advisor with the Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center’s Technology Advisory Program.

Sara has a B.A. in Computer Science from University of California Santa Cruz and a B.S. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. She is listed by We Magazine for Women in “101 Women Bloggers to Watch for 2009″.

For more about Sara:
twitter: @saraisenberg

website: http://www.saraisenberg.com

blog: http://www.saraisenberg.com/blog

linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/saraisenberg

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/saraisenbergconsulting

Limited to 30 participants, the session will also include introductions and conversation. A light breakfast will be served. The cost is $15 for SC Chamber members and $25 for non-members.

Caffeineighted is held the first Thursday of each month. Caffeineighted is an outgrowth of the Chamber’s Women in Business programs, designed to create a more intimate atmosphere and an opportunity for teaching and learning.

I’m now offering two new services: Referrals to Experts and Training for Beginners

1. Find your Team — Referrals:

For more details, see: http://technicalprojectservices.com/services/training-and-sourcing/

Please contact me and let me know how I can help you!

Sara Isenberg
Sara Isenberg Web Consulting & Project Management
sara@saraisenberg.com
http://saraisenberg.com
831-334-0701