We’ve decided to consolidate all of our Internet Marketing, SEO, Business and Social Media pages from The Moxie Maven, Moxie Mafia and from Kettlewell.net into one primary location at our new main site, located at Mox & Dom

We took The Moxie Maven and The Dominator, and combined them into “Mox & Dom” and has been serving us quite well from an image perspective, and our ability to bounce ideas off each other better, and combine our specialties gives our clients and audience a better picture of online marketing in one location.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be transferring the three blogs into Mox & Dom, but all the content that you’ve found valuable on this site, will eventually be located over there.

The only exception are personal opinions, blurbs, and fun things that I as a father, friend or funny-man have put up here, will remain here, and this will turn into my personal blog for me, about anything I want to rant about.

If you’ve never visited us at Mox & Dom, I highly recommend that you take a few minutes and check things out.

See you there.

Matt  aka ‘The Dominator’

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of optimizing elements of your website so that your website will rank higher in search engines like Google.

It seems that many a web designer has realized that offering SEO and Internet marketing advice and services will somehow benefit their clients.  So they find some old articles on the subject, and type out a pretty, well formatted article, and declare that they are experts in the matter.

Even in my own town of Grand Junction, Colorado I’ve recently seen a swarm of web designers that are entering the field of SEO.

Here’s the problem….

They have no proof that they can accomplish what they are talking about. I ran Google searches on a variety of related topics that they should be ranking on, but they are no where to be found.

They don’t really know how it all works, so they write up a few articles on information that they found, and call themselves experts.

But the information given in some of these articles is old (sometimes defunct and even dangerous) and not keeping up with the ever changing algorithms and structure of search engines and how they operate.

Google and the other search engines realize that they are being gamed, and that the game is changing.  Since they own the game, they get to set the rules and change them when they want.  Typically we notice major changes on a quarterly basis, and minor changes continuously.

Learning SEO (and maintaining your skills) is a nearly daily learning activity. It’s a fast paced activity, and can’t be done by reading a few well crafted articles. There are myriad resources of SEO books and videos to buy ( and some for free) that need to be read/watched and then analyzed and absorbed. It’s not unlike going to school where you read from books, do research, and then submit a final project. It takes time and energy.

Think about this, Twitter is now streamed directly into the search engines for results. Social media friends within your own social media circles  was introduced recently.  These are things that we’re possible 6 months ago.  They are new, as the game changes.  This means that you now have to optimize your site to compete with Twitter, FB and all the other social media circles.

Ideally, a web designer should either partner up with and SEO company, or hire someone in-house that only does SEO and Internet marketing.  SEO is a full-time responsiblity.  There is no way that a web designer can be an expert artist, and keep up with the changing rules for SEO.  There’s just not enough hours in a day.

I don’t actually optimize this blog anymore, but I bet if you Google Grand Junction Marketing I’m still on page one!

As the old Latin phrase goes “Caveot Emptor” – Buyer Beware!

One of the first things that we need to address, is “How does someones account get hacked?“  This is common thinking, especially if they haven’t given out their password to anyone.  But the truth is that most people HAVE given up their username and password, and don’t even realize it.

Twitter Phish

I wrote up an article a few months back about twitter security, and it was a huge warning to folks on what would happen if they didn’t mind there P’s & Q’s.  Apparently  my message didn’t reach out  far enough  (Note the share buttons above and below this post)

Today alone I’ve had over 200 DM’s that were directing me to various sites about IQ tests, claims of me in videos , and other sites that I have no interest in.  But it seems that others (ahem) do enjoy such tests and videos, and are willing to supply their Twitter username/password to get the final results.

I’ve not taken any of these tests, but they usually are the same type. In the end, you are giving up your username and password to an untrusted source.  Do you know who’s on the other end? Is it an angel, or the devil?  We’ve all gotten fairly accustomed to popup warnings about security with 3rd party apps with Facebook, but we always tend to ignore what it’s talking about, and clicking through.  At least Facebook has a warning, and it’s there for a reason.  You’re giving private information to a programmer that you don’t know.  He could be collecting your data (name/email/password for example) and selling it to some spammer… or worse!

In the case of today’s DM spam, everytime they get a username and password, they DM everyone on your friend list a link to go take an IQ test (which is an affiliate link that makes the spammer money)

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t ever use a legitamate 3rd party app, but I am saying that you need to find and use applications smartly.  Third party apps that have a reputation in the community.  But don’t take stupid IQ tests (was that an oxymoron?) and jeapordize your twitter account.  What it they spammed your boss with hatemail?  or used your twitter password on your bank account?  In theory, you should have a unique password for every account you have, but I have a feeling that if you took the IQ test and gave up your password, you’re probably using the same password for everything.  So now your boss has fired you, and a hacker just wiped out your bank account.  Maybe it’s time to Google soup kitchen.

OK, you get the idea.  Don’t give up username & password to untrusted sources.

How do you get out of hot water with this Twitter DM spamming stuff?

Protect Yourself In Two Simple Steps:

1. Change Your Twitter Password!

2. In Twitter, go to settings->connections.  Revoke access to all 3rd party apps.

You’ll need to regrant access to the ones that you know and trust, but for now, just dump em all, and sort out the mess later.

I hope that clarifies a bit about how you got hacked, how your hacked account effects others, and how to clean up your hacked account.

Leave comments below if you find any more updates to these DM’s.

I finally made the switch to Gmail today.  Yes, my tech friends have been pushing, prodding and even calling me a sissy for not using Gmail.

Well folks, I finally did it, and brought The Moxie Maven with me.

Why did I do it, and what’s it have to do with the clouds?

What's In A Cloud, Anyhow?

Let’s start with the clouds Cloud computing is when your computing is somewhere else – “in the clouds” so to speak.  So things like web based email (MSN, Hotmail, Yahoo, GMAIL – etc) are cloud computing services for email.  The physical contents of the email are on another machine that you don’t have to maintain or upgrade.

So why did I do it?  I finally had enough administering a mail server that wasn’t behaving, and I needed a fast solution to keep emails from being bounced.  So I forwarded my emails to a Gmail email address, and all is good now.

So setup was easy enough, but there were other reasons to want to make the shift to Gmail too (besides the constant snickering of peers).  My iPhone was only checking the main Inbox of my IMAP folders, and not my presorted folders, so I’d wouldn’t get any updates on the other folders, unless I would manually check them out.

But now I have all my contacts synced up in one place, my calendar is all in one place, I can drop Microsoft Word and Excel, and do it all online, and have access to all my files anywhere in the world that I can get an Internet connection.

That’s the power of Cloud Computing.

Thanks Big G and a big hand to HelpMeRick for suggesting the change as a powerful business changing way of life.

So here’s my take.  Given enough time and money, anyone can be traced back to the source. But for the average Joe that’s ranting about political agendas, or making rude comments about their teachers,  no one is going to spend the time, money and effort to find out who you really are.

So how do you hide the identity of your website?  Most domain registrars, like GoDaddy , allow you to privatize your domain name, and for all intents and purposes, hides your identity.  They put your real contact information into a proxy database, that allows a generic name to be found in the WHOIS database, but hides the real owner to the general public.

But there are two sources of real identify that you can’t hide (well, not legally!).  And that is that to pay for your domain registration, and your hosting, each of them requires a credit card with a real name and address.  So you really have to trust who you’re doing business with if you’re trying to hide who you really are.  But beware, even the most trustworthy companies will have to turn over your data if it’s subpoenaed to do so.

The long and short of it is that for 99% of those that I deal with, GoDaddy’s private domain option is more than enough, and they have hosting as well, so you can keep your real identity to a minimum number of places that need to know.

I’m glad that I have such courteous clients,  but without them, I’d be nowhere, and have a lot of unpaid bills to boot.

Looking at your own business, are you giving the impression that you’re too busy for your customers?

This perception of not needing new clients has prompted me to look back at the things that I’ve said, and how I’ve said them.  Turns out that there are a few subtleties that I’d overlooked.

For starters, when people ask how business is doing, I’ve always said that I’m doing great and I have all the business I need to survive.  But that’s not entirely accurate.

Our business has been struggling, like many in these turbulent times, but the pride of telling someone that business is rough isn’t always the easiest thing to say.  But by fudging the truth, you’re telling others that your business is thriving, and you may not have time for new work.

Swallow your pride, be truthful with others and let them know that business is slow, and you’re welcoming new clients with open arms.  Reminds me of some medical offices that have a sign that reads “Now accepting new patients“.  A good phrase indeed to let everyone know that you’re in business for them.

It also seems that with all of our preparations for new training, seminars and programs, that my clients (and potential new clients) think that I don’t have time to take out for them.

My solution?  Shield clients from our future projects until the project is ready to go live,  otherwise they see a whole bucket of projects in the works, and they can’t possibly imagine how I have time for them.

Are you giving the same perception in your business?

Now I’m no rocket scientist, but if you have too many clients perceiving your company to be too busy, how are you going to have enough business to pay the bills?

The moral is this:  Make sure that you make every client and potential client know – without a doubt – that you have time for them.  Never, ever give the impression that your schedule is booked,  unless it is really truly full with paying clients.

So to paraphrase from the medical offices:

The Dominator Is Accepting New Clients!

It doesn’t get any easier than that.  Try it out in your business,  in whatever medium you have available to you, be it a sign in the window, your newsletter, or simply your blog.

Good luck, and let me know how it works out for you.

OK. All marketing philosophy jokes aside, as we target our markets to get our message out, we realized that there might be a subtle difference between “Internet Marketing” and “Online Marketing” or “Marketing Online”.

What do you think? Are they the same? Or are they different.

I’ll post my opinion on the matter later, but I wanted to get some un-biased feedback before I do.

Please leave a comment below with your opinion on the matter.

Thanks

They also allow for scheduled tweets, but the interface is a bit awkward at first. Once you know what’s going on, scheduled tweets are a Hoot! (ok, bad joke)

Take a peek at this video, it’s less than 2 minutes long, and easy to follow. (if not tell me, and I’ll redo it after I cry!)

One of the things that’s The Moxie Maven and I finished, and is ready for the public, is her  Moxie Mafia Social Media Training System.  This site uses the Wordpress blogging framework with a slightly modified Revolution theme.

Included at the Moxie Mafia site are tons of videos, articles about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all your social media favorites.  And if you become a member, you get access to monthly lesson plans to get your business aligned with social media, expert interviews,  special reports, and member-only videos.

And if you’ve been paying attention to Moxie Mafia, you’d know that there was an entire blog there that that had The Moxie Mavens Blog Talk Radio show podcasts too… so what happened to it?  We moved it of course!

You can still find the same content as before, but at the new “The Moxie Maven” blog that is still an adorable site, with some very real social media content.

But what else is going on that’s kept me away from this blog?

For one, we’re in the process of finalizing our brand – us being me “The Dominator” and she “The Moxie Maven”

And part of this brand shift means creating a few extra sites, and getting the right content in the right places.  We’re breaking our Wordpress services off into a completely new realm at Blogging Emergency, where we’ll be taking our existing Wordpress offerings, and combine some how-to videos, discussions and articles with it.

We’re also going to break-out our seminars and training services into a combined Mox&Dom label.  We seem to do more seminars together, and the name has been really successful, so we decided to not push our seminar services separately, and combine them together, since we were rarely giving speaking engagements independently anyhow.

Neither Blogging Emergency nor Mox&Dom are ready for prime time yet, but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up on why our blogs have been silent for the past few weeks, and to let you know that we’ll be providing you with more avenues to learn what’s important to you.

And as always, if you have a question,  use our contact form, or leave a comment at the end of any post, and we’ll do the best we can to address it.  Likewise, if you’d like to see us writing about something specific, let us know that too, and we can write up special articles, just for you.

I’m looking to leverage my marketing expertise with the expertise of those in a variety of industries to put together highly profitable membership sites that are valuable to the community at large.

What kinds of industries do I need?

Just about any, so long as you have information that is valuable enough that people will want to pay for it.  Examples include Programmers, Stock Traders, Insurance Agents, Realtors, Fortune Tellers, Fitness Trainers, Dietitians – and these are just a few of thousands of examples.  Any industry that can be leveraged to sell things to the public on a continual basis.  Don’t let this part throw you off, contact me, and let’s brainstorm.  90% of industries can be leveraged to make money on a continual basis.

Are there industries that you already have ideas for?

I do.  I’m actively looking for WordPress experts, Programming Experts (especially AJAX), and Financial Indicator Programmers (TradeStation, NinjaTrader, etc).  I have programs that I could have up and running in a weeks time for these programs.

What kind of money will we make?

Great question, and it all depends on how successfully we can work together.  The idea is that all profits will be equitably split 50/50 between the 2 of us, minus expenses like marketing, PPC and other advertising.  The idea is the have a subscriber base of over 300 members in a years time.  To put that into perspective, if we were to charge out $30/month that’s $9,000 or $4,500 each – per month! Some industries and concepts will allow for a higher priced monthly charge, say $100/month.  With 300 members, that’s $30,000 total, or $15,000 each – per month!

What kind of commitment is there?

Every site and concept will be a little bit different, but I would figure at least 20 hours per month, and maybe up to 40 hours per month.  So there is a commitment, but with the possibility of a large payout in the end.  Your commitment will consist of writing.  If writing scares you, then this won’t be the right opportunity for you, unless you can convince a friend to do your writing with your oversight.  Some programs might require daily intervention, others will only require weekly or monthly attention.  We can discuss specifics and put a quick plan together to see if it’s still something you want to pursue.

So what is my role in this whole thing?

My role is to handle all technical and marketing aspects of this joint venture.  This includes setting up the membership site, getting the site laid out professionally, hosting, graphics work, get video&audio feeds put together, and to market the site to assure that we gain the necessary exposure, including banner ads, print ads, PPC, social media, SEO, and other Internet marketing techniques.

Do you have an example membership site?

Our latest membership site is the Moxie Mafia Social Media Training System.  As you can see, it is very professional, informative, and inviting.  This is a great example of the kinds of sites that we’re aiming to have put together.

I’m interested, what do I need to do?

I’m glad you’re interested.  All you need to do is call me (Matt Kettlewell) on my cell phone at 970-261-2684 , or call the office at 970-985-4192 or use our contact form and I’ll call you back to discuss our opportunity.

Use this as a gentle reminder to be careful what you say through social media outlets

I have 4 advisers- a middle schooler, a kindergartner and twin pre-preschoolers, so I have a wide range of inputs of which to receive.   Sometimes they have so much to teach me, that I become quite overwhelmed, if you know what I mean.

One night in particular, I was serving a steak dinner to my family.  With the little ones, we  cut up the pieces of meat, and serve it to them in a “ready to eat” format.

My youngest daughter, one of the twins, likes her food to be cut up a little bit more than the others.  It’s a convenience for her really, but if we don’t cut it up small enough,  she’ll eat so fast that she can’t swallow her food fast enough before she adds more.

Before we know it, she’ll have a big wad of food in her mouth that she can’t swallow, and we have to help her get it into the trash, and start over.  The problem is that she becomes disinterested in eating, and thinks that she’s done. Not good for a growing little girl.

As parents, we do everything that we can to help our children grow, be successful, and get the most out of life.  Which is why we cut her food into really teeny tiny bites, when its something chewy like steaks.

When her food is cut up into the right size bites, she eats, and eats and eats… she consumes her dinner until she’s full.  And then some.  By taking away the distraction of eating, she focuses on the enjoyment of eating, and looks forward to it.  And then she feels like she’s earned the right to dessert!

Let’s think about the lesson she’s teaching.

Imagine breaking down your product or service into bite size chunks – the easiest most basic pieces that a client can use, making it as easy as possible for your customers to get what they want.  Enticing them, and giving them they want, all in a single action.

Let me give you an example.  One of our local Grand Junction news stations is semi active on Twitter.  They give updates on breaking news a couple times a day, but when they have an exciting story that they are Tweeting about, they give a link to the homepage.

Giving out a homepage link is great for the news stations own brand, but lousy for a reader that wants to  get right to the meat of the story that they were just told about.  This becomes an aggravation to the reader, and eventually, they may give up if the search for the article isn’t directly linkable from the homepage.

Specifically, I was trying to get a link to the online live coverage of President Obama at the Grand Junction town hall event.  I mean, it’s our own town, and I wanted to catch some of it while I was writing out some outlines for a project.

They tweeted a link to there homepage.  I went there, and looked around, but couldn’t find a link to the live coverage.  I even had the Moxie Maven help me out… nada, nothing, nil.

I tweeted a request to a direct link.  My response was the homepage.   Arrggggh!   Should I be thankful for a response?  Thankful isn’t what I was feeling.  I was annoyed, discouraged, and went to CNN.com.

There was someone on the other end of Twitter that knew the answer, but they didn’t help.  I even asked a very specific and direct question.

And the plot thickens!

CNN wasn’t streaming live for this event… so I was forced to go back to my Grand Junction news station to keep searching.  I did finally find the link (which mysteriously appeared in an article I’d read previously) but there was still a problem…

I couldn’t get it to connect to their video feed in FireFox.  I tried Internet Explorer.. I just upgraded it to version 8, so all should be good right?  I mean, there site says that they recommend IE 5 or greater.

But I still couldn’t view there live stream of President Obama’s town hall meeting.

I asked Moxie Maven if she could try it on her machine, which I knew was running Internet Explorer 7.  Voila!  It worked. Perfect.

Now our local news agency has not only urked me, but her too.  She had to stream the town hall meeting for me, while she worked on her own project.

The point is this.  Putting obstacles in the way of your customers isn’t the best way to build your business.  In fact, it’s a really lousy way to build a reputation that you can be proud of.

What could be done differently?  I’m not in the loop of what resources they have available, but there’s a few things from this article that I’d at least address.

First, I’d make sure that all links are direct links to the story itself,  and not the homepage.  Branding will happen no matter what page you land on for a news channel site.  I’m especially referring to Twitter here, since that’s where my interaction occurred, but all links (no matter the media)  should directly link to the story that’s being referenced.

Second, I’d take out the limitations of browser compatibility.  According to this W3C Consortium statistic on browser usages,  Internet Explorer (all versions combined) is no longer the leading browser.  Tying your site to a certain browser is a sure way to turn potentially loyal fans into raving critics.  Is this what you’d want for your business?  Especially if it’s the browser that’s not in the majority?

Browser incompatibility problems are so 10 years ago.  There are so many compatible systems now that a big business like a news station really has no excuse to not use them.

Third,  I was having problems, and expressed that on Twitter.  But they left me hanging.  No reply to help.  They alienated me, as a customer of theirs.  In business, customers are always number one.  No matter how large or small the customer is.  They should have replied and tried to help.  It’s a public forum, they could have been the hero.

They need better training on customer support.  Putting customers ahead of your own business is a sure way to build a solid relationship with clients that will grow your business for you.  Nothing is more important to a business than it’s customers.  Without customers, you don’t have a business.

My advisers…err my children, taught me even more about the way I serve dinner.

When I give my children large, unmanageable things, like perogi’s (potato filled pasta), they like them whole.  It’s a kid thing I guess.  They want the whole sandwich, or the whole steak.  They don’t want it cut up into bites or have half a sandwich.  They want the whole thing.

But the whole thing isn’t good for them.  It’s just simply too much food, and it goes to waste.

So after a few years of parenting, I’ve been able to figure out what foods are to be cut up, and what is given whole.

Now there are certain foods (like perogi’s) that if I give it to them whole, they’ll ask for me to cut it up.  They’ve seen the benefit of eating it after it’s already managable and easy to eat.

Let me repeat that, it’s important:  If I give it to them whole, they’ll ask for me to cut it up.

They like it this way. Just like a client can’t handle the entire contents of your business in one sitting.  They just want a piece.  The piece that fulfills their needs at the very moment that you met them.

And the next time you see them, they want only the piece that they care about at this new time.

Think of it this way – if you are a hardware store, and a customer comes in for paint, Would you take them to the lumber section? or just point them to the front door and say “There you go – it’s in there!”.  Of course not.  You’d take them to the paint isle, and help them pick out the right paints, paintbrushes, colors, etc.

Same thing online.  Take your customers to where they want to go, not to the parking lot.  Make it easy.  In today’s instant gratification world, it’s all too easy for potential clients to become clients of your competition, all in a matter of seconds.  And making clients happy couldn’t be easier.  Be their friend, and give them exactly what they want, and they’ll be there for you forever.

That’s right, in 3 states, Bresnan Communications is down for Internet and VOIP digital telephone.  Three States!!  How the heck did this happen?

With the worlds lessons of redundancy, how is it possible that a single catastrophic event can take out service in three states?

The answer?  No One Knows!  It took 12 hours, but look at the message that they leave us on there homepage:

Thanks for pointing out the obvious Bresnan!!

Several of the local news media tried to contact Bresnan, and they were in the same boat as us – the phone lines were so jammed up, that they couldn’t get through.

Absolutely no communication with customers is bad for business.  I first recognized the problem at about 8PM.  I decided that it was a glitch in the system, and I’d look into it in the morning.

Morning rolls around, and I have partial Internet.  Fortunately I was using a public DNS server so that I could browse without relying too heavily on Bresnan.  That’s all I needed.  It was enough for me to get on Twitter, and see what the heck was going on.  And they were just as clueless as me.

Bresnan made absolutely no attempt to communicate with it’s customers about what’s happened.  They had over 12 hours (and counting) and we’ve heard nothing from them.  I’ve gotten Internet, but mail is flaky and phones are still out (business phones mind you).

And no ETA on when service will be restored.

The lesson to you:  Always keep you customers informed.  Help them.  Love them.  They are your real stockholders.  They are the reason you are in business.  Treat them better than your employees and your family (which should already be super-duper).

Leave them in the dust, and they will leave you.  Treat them well, and they will remember you forever.

I still don’t know what’s really going on, and I have enough redundancy in my plan that I’m not overly effected, just inconvenienced.  But it would be nice to have an update as to when things will be back to normal.

With President Obama visiting our town this weekend, I’m almost bound to throw a conspiracy theory out there that someone cut the hard line in the name of national security….

Remember, I treat you well by keeping you in the loop… now if I could just convince you to remember me forever

I kindly point out that in marketing, it’s all about planning your funnel.  Where does your business make money?  When they call to speak with you?  When they email you? When they visit? Every store has a unique money funnel, resulting in every business having a different business plan.

For instance, if a customer calling your on the phone is where you make sales, then you need to be funneling all your Internet traffic to a page that has a direct call to action for visitors to call your business, where you finish the sale with some one on one communication.  You may have hated Billy May’s OxyClean commercials, but the call to action of “Call Now” is tried and true.

A blog is a great example of how to be informative, show authority in your industry, and to drive traffic to your webpage to get them to call you.  There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of ways to funnel traffic to where you make money.

Your plan is going to be unique for your business, but the important thing is to make sure that you have one that is written, well laid out, and designed to funnel all your advertising to one focal point that drives a call to action that makes you money.

Call The Dominator Now! Let’s discuss your money funnel, and get you the online traffic you deserve. 970-985-4192 (Thanks Billy Mays!)

I was recently commenting on an article that asks, “Should you pay for AVG?”, of which you can read my full response, but the essence was that free is good, but they should still have a business model in place that will allow them to survive while giving things away for free.

It wasn’t 2 minutes after I made that comment, that the free URL shortening service tr.im made an announcement that it was going to have to discontinue services, because there is no business model that will monetize URL shortening services.

Their “plan” was to sell the tr.im URL service for money once the service was completed.  The problem?  They couldn’t find a buyer.  Not even a “token amount”, as they put it.

So the real problem is that they never had a real plan on how to monetize the service, or make it truly viable for another company to buy the URL shortening service.

This reminded me of the dot com boom days when money was handed out left and right, but there was no substantiative business plan that went with the funds… 2 years later, the big dot com bust, and all the equipment was on the auction block for pennies on the dollar.

It doesn’t have to happen this way, if a plan is created first.   But a plan is apparently “too much work” and a “waste of time” to many businesses.

I utilize free all the time.  But I always have a plan.  Free seminar?  OK.  As long as I get to pitch Moxie Mavens book, or upsell my consulting services, or even an affiliate product that’s worthy.

Sometimes free can be used for branding… if it’s part of your business model and plan.  But don’t give everything away and expect people to pay for premium services that don’t really exist.  If your front end is that great, then either make your front end a little less special, or make the back end premium services that much better.

Monetizing free isn’t impossible.  In fact, it can be really fun, and easy.  Just get a little creative, and plan a little, take some action, and see what happens.

Have a free idea, but don’t know how to monetize it on the backend?  Leave a comment below, or contact us with your idea.

BTW – If tr.im sold me the URL shortening service, I’d be making money within 6 months of purchase, either directly or indirectly.  That’s what The Dominator does…

But one of the things that Adam taught me was the best (and only) use of the “I’m feeling lucky” button that Google provides on their search page.

For people that still use the Google search engine as their address bar, it’s a great way to (virtually) guarantee that they are going to go right to their page that they’re trying to get to, without having to see the intermediate search results page.

I think that training people to use the address bar is even better, but as Google’s own investigative team found, only 8% of users even know what a browser is, so training on the address bar might getting a little bit ahead of myself.

In the mean time,  go to Google, type in your web address, and go feel lucky, punk!

This time, the issue is a little bit more serious… according to Twitters original status updates, all they could say was : “Site is Down”.  They later went on to update us that they were in the midst of a DOS attack.

FaceBook experienced delays, a short outage, and links not working.  There are reports that FaceBook is looking into this problem, which in itself probably means that they know something’s going on, but they aren’t addressing it publicly yet.  Time will tell.

LiveJournal reportedly also had some downtime as well this morning.

I found a link at one point this morning that indicated that there was a link with Verio or Amazon Web Services that was the problem, and would be effecting several social media sites.  I couldn’t confirm this link, because it was posted in FaceBook, and FaceBook was having an issue with internal links at the time.. go figure!

As of right now (9:45 MST) Twitter is back up, and appears to have recovered from this DOS attack… for now.  FaceBook is allowing me to update status, and check out links… maybe I’ll go find that Verio link that didn’t work before.

EDIT: (9:47 MST  – 2 minutes later) Twitter is having more problems… I suspect that the worst is over, but just remember that there really is more to life than online social media… even for an online addict like myself.

EDIT: (9:52 MST) FaceBook is down… I’m seriously thinking there is a link.  Good luck to all of their IT staff… it’s gonna be a really long day for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I use Twitter…. a lot.

Mashable seems to be the first to have reported on the twitter compromise, where they claim up to thousands of Twitter accounts have been hijacked.

If in doubt, login to your Twitter account and change your password right now!

But here’s my real gripe about Twitters 3rd party applications that get compromised…

None of the accounts had to be compromised!

Any time that you use a 3rd party twitter application (and there are hundreds of them) asks you for your Twitter username and password, you are asking for trouble, and increases your likelihood that your account will be hacked, and used against you.

Why do I say that it doesn’t have to happen?  Because Twitter updated their API long ago so that applications don’t need to ask for the username and password.  I don’t know the details of what it does need, but Twitter was smart enough to realize that this was a security hole, and fixed it.

Twitter itself, being a high profile target, is always on guard, and on the lookout for hack attempts and break ins.  Their system is designed to be more secure than the average bear (not unbreakable, but much better than average), and I would actually trust my password to be stored on their servers (in encrypted form of course).

But how do I feel about some 3rd party app that I haven’t built a relationship with?  My instant feeling is a resounding “HELL NO!”.  I never give my user name and password out to 3rd party apps.

I used to be a software developer (before I realized my good looks could be used in internet marketing ), and I know that there are complexities beyond complexities for making sure that an application is secure.

So not only do I need to trust the programmers, and the talent that they have for creating and testing a secure environment,  but I also need to have a trust with the service as well.

What is the intention of the owners of the application?  What if they are just grabbing usernames and passwords?  That would be bad… but a quick way to gain a large number of compromised accounts in a short period of time…

So here’s my quick advice to you.  Be wary of where you use your Twitter account information.  Encourage 3rd party Twitter apps to use the API in manners that don’t require username and password inputs.

There may be only certain instance that the API without a password works.  I’m not sure of the internals, but I know for sure that I don’t give up my password under any circumstances… which is really a shame, because there are some awesome applications that I’d like to use, but I’m holding off until they don’t want to hold my password

Go ahead and follow @Kettlewell or @JenKettlewell right now….but do it after you’ve read this article to make sure that your account doesn’t get compromised to send me a flood of SPAM tweets from a hijacked account

One of the greatest reasons for using a blog is to gain instant report and feedback from your visitors.  Did they like what your article had to say?  Did they hate it? Did the have more information to add?

Blogs are a great way to receive that feedback, because they can enter a comment at the end of each article or post, and instantly tell you what they think.

As you can probably tell,  I use WordPress as my blog of choice,  and have been using WordPress for almost 3 years.  I have no reason to use any other blog platform.  I’m happy with what it does for me, and the ease with which I can add a plugin to do what it doesn’t do out of the box.

One of the things that WordPress doesn’t do out of the box is to allow comment notification of replies.   And this is a problem if you want to create an open line of communication that is visible to the public.

Essentially, when a visitor leaves a comment, they have no reason to return when you, as the admin or author of the article, leaves a reply.  That’s where a comment notifiaction plugin comes in real handy.  If they choose to subscribe to the comments on your blog post, they’ll receive your comments via email, and be inclined to return and either leave another response, or check out more of your blog posts.

Here’s how I made comment notifications work on my site:

There are 3 plugins that I installed onto my blog that all work together to gain maximum traction.

Subscribe To Comments

Subscribe to comments is the base plugin that allows a commenter to elect to be notified of new comments on this blog post.

Download Subscribe to Comments

Installation is as easy as upload and activate.  Adjust your settings to taste, with the minimum being to change the “from” email address and sender.

Comment Luv

Comment Luv is a plugin that will look at the website that was entered, and check if the website is a blog.  If it is, it will list out the title of the last blog post that the author wrote, and provide other readers a direct link to the post.

Comment luv  is great for encouraging bloggers to comment on your site, since they will get some extra link traction back to their site.

Download Comment Luv

Installation is as easy as upload and activate.  No need to make any settings modifications, but there are a few to play with, like the heart icon.

Ozh Absolute Comments

Absolute comments allows you to post comment replies directly in the WordPress dashboard interface.  Otherwise you end up having to go directly to the post comments and making your comment responses on the blog page.

This is a convenience plugin that rocks.  There are other things that this plugin does, but the big one is the ability to reply directly in the dashboard, and that the notifications you recieve will now have a direct link to “reply now” that takes you directly to the dashboard.

Download Ozh Absolute Comments

Installation is just like the other two plugins.  Upload and activate.  There is a settings page, but nothing that requires modification to get started.

So essentially, just download the 3 plugins from each of their sites, upload them to your server, and activate all 3 plugins.  After that you’re in business.  It took me about 10 minutes to get the whole thing configured, tested and considered finalized.

Go ahead and leave a comment below to test the new system.  Leave your blog address in the website section to see how Comment Luv works, and check the “notify me of comments” and you’ll get a message when I leave a response.

Good luck, and let me know how it works out for you.