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by: Anne Haynes

I received my brightkite t-shirt today from Zazzle.com. I took a picture - because a picture speaks a thousand words!

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The process of buying my shirt is interesting, so here it goes:

BigGuy: Brad and littleguy: Brad from bigguylittleguy.com (bigguy: @boffman and littleguy: @belpers) took a road trip to Brightkite in Colorado and they shared their trip on Brightkite. The first thing I noticed was the picture that was taken outside the Brightkite headquarters. There was Brad and Brad smiling for the camera with their thumbs up! Then came the Brightkite stickers! Oh man once I saw the stickers I had to have one. But wouldn’t a t-shirt be better? I posted a comment asking about a t-shirt. In minutes @brady (one of the founders of Brightkite) sent a message pointing me to Zazzle.com to buy a Brightkite t-shirt. I was done with my purchase in 2 minutes and my shirt arrived within a few days!

I spoke on the phone with littleguy tonight and he told me that Brightkite is about to open up the flood gates for everyone to join Brightkite. So, no need to ask me for an invite any more, everyone will have free access.

I’m looking forward to Brightkite opening up an advertising network because the already localized service it’s perfect for targeting specific geo markets. A little birdy and not twitter, also mentioned a video feature coming soon! I’m so excited and to think, just last week, I was talking about a Brightkite video feature being a natural extension of the already stellar service. Looks like I’m going to need to buck-up for additional memory on my cell phone now!

Think globally and act locally with Brightkite!

by: Anne Haynes and Twitter SEO Experts

Too many times I’ve seen SEO firms that use underscores or hyphens when constructing websites. So I sent a question to my Twitter network and following is what I received. It seems that us SEOers are all over the map on what works and what doesn’t. When I worked at SEOINC in San Diego, CA I was raised to use hyphens and not underscores. During the early SEO years the hyphen was considered a word separator when programming websites for Google.

In that last few years I’ve noticed the underscore has made a come back. My hat is off to @adamlevenson for finding this pretty SEO article from Matt Cutts on July 23rd 2007, but notice Twitter friend SEM_SEO states if you have underscores don’t go changing (heehee his name has an underscore).

In the CNET article Matt Cutts states that Google’s algorithm is referencing underscores as word separators. Which from a development perspective is developer friendly. I like that Matt Cutts is one of the experts in the SEO industry, but I know there are deep seeded constraints for an internal employee of Google to declare anything from a broadcast level. From a non biased SEOer perspective, it’s about testing and documenting results.

I’d like to see a study on this subject since Matt announced this algorithm enhancement in 2007. It’s been a year since his declaration and well, there have been multiple updates since this announcement. Any takers? Aaron Wall where are you?

Many thanks to the following friends that have helped me navigate through my question!

sem_seo: @AnneHaynes In the last Google webmaster chat they suggested if you have existing underscores don’t change, but going forward use hyphens. (about 6 hours ago)

kevinthompson: @AnneHaynes That used to be the case, but it seems most search engines now interpret both as spaces. I still use hyphens just to be safe. (about 9 hours ago)

adamlevenson: @AnneHaynes Yeah, check this out: News.CNET from AdamLevenson (about 9 hours ago)

gregspradlin: @AnneHaynes Hi Anne, I’ve been told that if given the choice, go with hypens over underscores. (about 9 hours ago)

by: Anne Haynes
I’ve been spending allot of time on Brightkite.com (if you need an invite I have 3 left). What I like about brightkite.com is it’s not just text communication – you create a connection with images. Additionally, the geographical “sign-in” feature allows you to connect with people in your area or people traveling in your area.

There are a few ways that I’ve been able to make brightkite more useful than twitter, facebook or friendfeed; I can watch someone cook and take pictures from my mobile using details in the subject, I can post pictures of my flowers and ask people to help me figure out what is eating on the leaves, when painting a room I can ask for feedback on colors. The number one reason why I like brightkite more than other social media services, brightkite feeds into twitter which feeds to friendfeed and facebook. Yes this was my number one reason for loving brightkite, but now the connection is true love. It’s the simple old saying – “a picture speaks a thousand words” – and it does!

What I see happening with brightkite is a video extension – and let’s face it as much as we like video it’s kind of a pain unless you live breath and sweat your productions. You need to have a true want to broadcast yourself on the YouTube. When you do the YouTube you need to think things through and well, I don’t have that kind of time. I just want to go the brightkite route, more personal not so much broadcast. I don’t want to be the LisaNova or the Freds in the video world; I just want some help with my daily projects; the things I make decisions on every day. Finding out I need to call 800-dig-rite before I started dropping electricity into my backyard was huge for me! I had no clue I needed to call someone - I just trusted the contractor, but my friend from brightkite @benneplex helped me navigate through my project. I seek the personal touch within the video world – I want someone to speak to me. I feel this personal experience is months if not years away because it’s only the young and tech savvy that are onto this medium now. Yes, eventually I will be doing video, but I want it to be personal and meaningful. What happened to all the video emails that were supposed to happen in our industry? I haven’t received one! Just links in emails that point streaming video on websites. Was it too expensive? Oh you can bet it was and still is…. Who has the secret codec?

Anyway, I love brightkite and again, if you need an invite, I have three left, just shoot me a message.

by: Anne Haynes

After a several hours of tooling around with Knol I finally sent an email to the Google Knol team asking several questions see the Knol questions in this blog post.

Following is the email reply that I recieved from the support team:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Knol Help
Subject: Re: [#311279072] Please Help - Anne Haynes
To: Anne Haynes Home

Hello Anne,

Thank you for your reply and continued interest in Knol. Please note that
what you’ve described is expected behavior for recently published knols.

While you can share the URL to your knol directly with friends, there will
be a delay before your knol is reflected in search results. Please note
that your knols will still be visible to you, the author, before they are
made publicly searchable.

Additionally, we have noted that for some folks one or more of the methods
of name verification are not immediately working properly. We appreciate
the feedback you’ve provided as we improve this functionality. For
questions about name verification, please take a look a this help knol for
further details:
http://knol.google.com/k/knol-help/name-verification-faq/3vd571esbn0f5/1#H0-I-ve-tried-and-it-does-not-work

Thank you for your understanding and support of Knol.

The Knol Team

by: Anne Haynes

I’ve been watching the O Games and I love the commercials. So many people want to fast forward with the DVR, but I just love to see how music and commercials make a difference in more ways than one. If you think about YouTube and how quick videos do so well, then you have a commercial already. On 08-08-2008, at the time of this blog post, this video had 7,080 YouTube views.

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by: Anne Haynes

I just spent the morning on LisaNova’s YouTube and she is one funny girl! On Fridays I’ve been making a habit of finding the funny stuff on the internet. I was watching my FriendFeed and this video showed up on TechCrunch “The Rise and Fall of Twitter”. Enjoy, a good Friday Laugh!

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