the sephone blog

This year instead of driving or flying or cruising to a ‘far-away’ destination for the DiStefano family vacation, we invited my brother and his family from NJ to come up to Maine.  Now that isn’t any thing new, as they have come up before and we went to our camp on Cold Stream Pond- but that isn’t a vacation, that is a normal weekend in the Summer for us-

So this year we made reservations in Old Orchard Beach.  OOB for native Maine-ahs.

OOB is the quintessential New England beach community complete with a Pier, Amusement Park and all the rest that goes with what you have in your mind of a summer beach community.

We have been to OOB a few times over the last 3 years.  But never for more that a weekend or so.  But when we began our planning for the 2010 Family Vaca, we had just been there and had a great time.  The year before we were there around the same time when the biggest Storm of the season was coming-  waves were breaking so close to the shore that the water was almost up to the floorboards on the Pier.
For those that know, the Pier at OOB is about 20 feet above the water at high tide!

Anyway- OOB it was.

Searching for a place to stay wasn’t too difficult-  being in the web business we have several client sites, (did you think I’d write this without a shameless plug for our valuable clients?, really!) like the Maine Tourism Association (http://www.mainetourism.com) and our own Maine Events (http://www.maineevents.com).   After searching and viewing the lodging section and reading about the accommodations we selected the Waves Oceanfront right on the beach.  Adjoining rooms so the kiddies could visit non-stop and so that my bro and I could enjoy a brew and cigar on the patio at night.   It was a very pleasant week.  Oh, did I mention that the Waves were part of the Lafayette chain (another shameless plug!)  But I did not know that at the time and was pleasantly surprised upon check-in that this was a recent acquisition along with the SeaView just up the block.  Danny-  nice place, cant wait to see what you do with the new properties-  Next year we may take the ‘Governors’ “mansion” and have the entire DiStefano clan drive up!

Between all of the different places to eat, we really enjoyed Jimmy the Greeks on Route 5- Nice selection of beers from around the world, brick oven pizza and a fantastic spread of Greek food I haven’t been exposed to in a long time.  Uppa!  My 7 year old had her fill of spanakopita (SPINACH!) and I had a Gyro-  YUM.  But wait, there is more!

Breakfast at the Beach Street Cafe was interesting-  the owners(?), very attractive eastern European women, were very friendly  who know how to make breakfast AND by noon are closed and on the beach(we think)!  Tom’s breakfast shack was also an experience (BINGO!)-  we at there al fresco and enjoyed it as well as Joseph’s By the Sea!  Very nice.

Ok-  you think all I did was eat breakfast and drink beer and smoke cigars all week, right?  Nope-  we went to the beach of

course, Fun Town Splash Town USA, too (there were 3 kids 7,9,14); walked up and down Grand Avenue (a lot) and went for assorted drives to get ice cream, dinner and a trip to Portland for lunch at DiMillo’s.  And on Thursday night there were Fireworks on the beach with the amusement park all lit up -  very picturesque and fun.

There was more to do than we had time for, although my brother and I did steal away to Westbrook to visit the Victory dealer-  unfortunately- by the time we got there it was a little late for a test drive on a new 2011 Vegas.  A boy and his toys!

The weather was perfect, even though we got a bit of a scare from Todd, Jarrod and Co -  (WABI-TV) The rain we heard was coming our way only arrived for the drive down from Veazie, and disappeared in the afternoon on Monday-  Even WeatherBug had it wrong the whole way down.  Thank you Mother Nature for changing your mind!

Now with any family vacation, there were ‘those times’ too, where one kid was making too much noise for the other, or someone was being a nudge to a sibling, you know, that’s what being a family is all about.  But all in all we had a great time, and we were sad to see it go by way too fast.

Cant wait to plan for next summer-  Maybe the Seaview, maybe the Governors mansion.

But Maine for sure (pronounced “Shore”)!  And we are back just in time for the American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront! and some  Waterfront Concerts to see Tim McGraw and Jason Mraz.

What a summer!

disclaimer:

If any of my comments are incorrect, or mis-leading- I am sorry- All comments are mine (Joe DiStefano) and I thoroughly enjoyed our time in OOB.   All comments were meant in the most positive way and no disrespect was intended!

Facebook has just reached over 500 MILLION active users and people spend over 700 BILLION minutes on it in any given month. If you are interested in some more statistics you can go here and Facebook will tell you themselves.

I know you are tired about hearing about Facebook.  It is on national news, it is written about in publications, it is discussed at pubs all over the place and of course it is talked about at most of our kitchen tables.

One thing that cannot be overstated is to remember that you need to always be aware of your Privacy Settings.  AND be sure that your profile photo doesn’t show something less flattering about you. (Friends and non-friends can always see these.) Since we are in the “web business” and social media is all about web and marketing, we are always poking around making sure we know what is “coming down the Pike.”  Our last post discusses privacy and not really realizing who may or may not be aware of where you are and what you (or your kids) may be telling to whom.

There is a blog I read frequently by a man named Peter Shankman.  He recently posted this very cool screen shot step by step instructions  “How to Avoid Being Checked In by Your Friends on Facebook’s Places.”

Peter recounts amusing (because they didn’t happen to me) tales from Gawker.com and the trials of Facebook’s NEW location finder – Gawker always has great headlines, so here is one definitely worth a look.  It is about etiquette and Facebook – not enough posts about that either.

Facebook’s often makes changes and you really need to make sure you are up to date on your Privacy Settings.  This customized one just slipped in and if you check your account you may find you haven’t disabled it. Just like you may not want the world to see your photo with a beer bottle in your hand, or in a picture where something may be taken out of context, you probably don’t want someone of your 300+ friends tell the Facebook world of 500,000 that you were at the gym, when your office thinks you were at a meeting.   Here is another reminder.

You, your friends, your kids, pretty much everybody you know has a cell phone. There are 500 million users on FB and a bunch on Twitter and endless other social networks that can all post in multiple places at once.  So what you may be sharing to your FRIENDS on Facebook may cross over to other accounts that you may not realize, showing your personal business to the internet audience.  Or more importantly, your kids may be doing it.

We are big proponents of Social Media and cell phones and we have posted many things on this blog that encourages people to use these tools.  We tell people to “Try it, you’ll like it.” How you can build your business, reconnect with friends, stuff like that.  Maybe you haven’t started, maybe your kids have-so please listen to this.

Whether you know it or not, a cell phone can be a “spy” and can track your every move if you let it.  I am not going to repeat all the great posts I have read about this, but I will link a few here so you can read what they have said better than I can. From the Daily Beast,  I LOVED this post! It tells it all.

If you are telling people where you are and what you are doing using applications like foursquare or twitter others can know where you are or where you are NOT.  Like you aren’t at home and you are taking a family vacation — this is a great way to get your home broken into -did you know your phone may tag a location where you took the picture if you have the right (or wrong) setting?

I Can Stalk U really is a wake up call and it has very helpful tips with multiple cell phone interfaces so you can disable the most often default geotagging features.

We aren’t saying don’t use social media sites or your cell phone, we aren’t saying be AFRAID of social media sites.  Heck, we use them all the time, but just keep in mind what you provide and that you may be providing it to more people than you thought you were – and if you have kids at home, they maybe providing information to a predator.  Predators know how to use these tools better than you do and certainly bring a whole new level to “stranger danger.”

If you are like most of us, you probably have one (or more) of the following:

• A monthly sizable cable bill or perhaps satellite
• A netflix account
• A bank of movies stashed someplace for a rainy weekend.

I know for me, there is nothing more frustrating in cruising through the channels and seeing nothing interesting or even worse those darned infomercials!

If you have a computer, smartphone*  and a connection to the internet, then I have a couple things to share with you.

Hulu.com describes itself as “Watch your favorites. Anytime. For Free.”  Alex Baldwin had done some commercials around superbowl time, so you may have heard of it.  There are a variety of channels, Home and Garden, Games, Sports and lots more.  There is even a tab where you can see the most popular ones.  You create a profile, (user name – which is your email address) and a password and it is free.  After you tell it your interests, (during the profile process), it will even suggest things for you to make your search easier and you may get a suggestion of something you never thought of!

Then there is another thing that I really enjoy and that is called USTREAM.tv.  These are LIVE feeds that you can watch on a variety of things one of those things is that awful oil leak that is spewing nearly 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.  But not all of it is bad, there are some great wildlife LIVE cams, one of my favorites are the Peregrine Falcons that are up here in Maine it is managed by the Biodiversity Research Institute. Now, keep in mind there is no editing, these are live cameras.  AND there is the opportunity to chat in a chat room next to what you are watching if you want.  But again, there is no censorship, so keep this in mind, if you are watching with kids. I can honestly say, there hasn’t been anything too bad, except this BP Oil gusher seems to have “unleashed the hounds”  in the chat rooms.

AND if you would like a LIVE Broadcast of your own, your son or daughter’s soccer game or recital, you can have your own shows.  For those of you with iPhones, you can film right from the event and tell your distant family members and friends and they can enjoy what is happening LIVE!  Once you stop filming it stops broadcasting.

So give it a try, there will be a lot of summer events worth sharing and rainy days may make for some down time to check out Hulu and USTREAM.tv

*check your plan for potential data charges.

Sephone has been developing and supporting Real Estate sites for many years.  Most recently- our clients have been using our product called RE/SourceMLS.  As a vendor to MREIS (Maine Real Estate Information Services) we receive hourly updates to MLS data that is reflected on our clients websites who use this service. (Note: they need to be registered with MREIS too!)

Recently, MREIS has made some changes to their offerings, like more images per listing and a few other perks-  Well, RE/SourceMLS has some too-

This service is available now to sponsoring clients!

Coming Soon to RE/SourceMLS
Reflecting the only non-MREIS map search web-based MLS listings engine around, RE/SourceMLS now supports the ability to override map coordinates.  Available in July 2010 ALL RE/SourceMLS subscribers will be able to override push-pin coordinates to make viewers aware of properties as they are closer to water frontage, roads or other notable areas.

For more info on this product, visit the website !

If you read this blog frequently, we talk about random things on the internet.  Security, getting good deals, saving time – stuff like that. But we also talk about how to promote you and your business in a cost effective way.  Sometimes the cost is “TIME” which we all only have 24 hours in each day, so that is precious, but it isn’t CASH out of your pocket.

In the passed 3 weeks we have had 3 clients that have had ideas about “getting their word out”, interestingly enough 2 of them were not specifically related to their businesses, but to causes that they find dear to them.  They want to do something good, share an experience, raise some money for their cause.

Many people that use social media tools like Facebook and Twitter all ready have had success creating buzz, getting people to attend an event, raise cash for a cause, this is nothing new and the people using these tools, in a few clicks they have spread the word to people that want to listen rather than to waste time with those less interested.

You can do this with girl scout cookies or a PTO event, saves lots of time and money on the phone.

If you have a long term project or cause that you are working on, perhaps a blog may work. (Here’s a “How To” Link) Blogs can keep people engaged over the long haul. Friends and family far and wide.  One of my friends used “Caring Bridge” while his wife was in the hospital and in treatment for breast cancer.  Hearing the perspective from a husband with a family struggling through this time was inspiring and was so different from many others having these experiences.  A young husband, with twin boys helping mom (and wife) through the fight of their lives, the good news is they are winning the fight now!

Even if you haven’t embraced these tools quite yet, people that have are seeing results.  You may be amazed at how many folks you know are and how “out of the loop” you may be by not participating!

Can you believe this!?

This is the same as our friend from Nigeria who is looking for a trusting soul to move his uncles money-  Only this time it is a “a supposed Captain” in the United States Marine Corp.

For those who are already savvy- please excuse me as it is my obligation to inform the others…

DO NOT BELIEVE “capt.” Collin Lachappelle!  THIS IS NOT REAL, NEVER WAS REAL and WILL NEVER BE REAL!

From: IMCEAEX-_O=BRIDGEWATER+20STATE+20COLLEGE_OU=BSC_CN=
RECIPIENTS_CN=CLACHAPELLE@bridgew.edu
Subject: Personal
Date: February 8, 2010 8:17:52 AM EST
To: noreply@contact.com

I am Captain. Matthew Stamford with the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Hard to believe but, I have $900,000.00, found at the start of Operation Khanjari on July 4 2009, in Poshteh Afghanistan. I need to move this money out to a safer place. Can I trust you to receive it on mybehalf upon its evacuation from Kabul? Contact me on matstamford@admin.in.th

Thanks, I needed to do that-

It is a repeating effort that these low-life’s are using-
hoping that an unsuspecting individual, usually a senior citizen who is unlucky to receive this notice and thinks they are helping- will respond.

My first thought is, “Why did it take so long to retire that guy, the former Prime Minister, Prince, Son of the Prime Minister, Nephew to the Sultan? ”

The fact that they have moved on to US “soil” is disturbing, can they really believe that Americans are that gullable?
Again, unfortunately there are some that are, especially since it relates to patriotism and $900,000.00
So-

Pass this along, share it with your web-connected family and friends. If they want to help someone, donate to the USO, find their local Troop Greeters organization, or send $10 to Haiti;

Karma will know.

Technology and the Web are constantly evolving and changing. It seems like every day there’s something new to learn. We know it can be tough to keep up with, and while we try to make our products easy to use, we know some of you might need a helping hand to step into Geekdom.

Sephone Resource Center - for people who feel like this when editing their website. (Photo from http://lolcatz.wordpress.com)

And so the Sephone Resource Center was born! We often have similar questions about the “how-to’s” for the person that is just learning, or if there is a new person doing the job.

The Resource Center is a collection of tutorials for how to do common (and some uncommon) tasks in services like our content management system, datAvenger and datAvenger pro. This list of tutorials will continue to grow with new text and video tutorials and will continue to cover even more Sephone services.

Here are some examples of tutorials that are currently available:

• Adding links
• Adding images
• Uploading images and documents
• Managing User Accounts
• Reordering navigation

Check it out! Visit sephone.com and click on ‘help’.

Last year Facebook raised $100 Million in capital to scale up their service by 50,000 web servers, recent best estimates put their current number of servers at about 30,000 (apparently they haven’t spent all of their money yet) but they are continually scaling up to meet the needs of their growing user base which currently stands at about 109 Million active users.   In comparison Business Week estimates that Google is running in excess of 1 Million servers and Microsoft over 200 thousand.  These are big numbers and it takes a lot of space, bandwidth and power to keep datacenters of these sizes up and running.   Facebook has a population of a decent-sized country, Google by some estimates is responsible for about 16% of consumer bandwidth, and Microsoft…. well Microsoft is gunning for Google with Bing (in the same way the gunned for the iPod with the Zune… but that is the subject of another blog entry).

Let’s think about Google for just a minute.   100 Million servers means web servers, database servers, application servers, file servers; lots of different computers all working together to serve all of Google’s web properties, Search, GMail, YouTube, GoogleDocs,  etcetera, etcetera.  Some fast facts gathered from doing a Google search:  1.  Google claims it takes 1 kJ of energy to answer a typical search query.  2. Their data center in The Dalles, Oregon uses enough energy to power Tacoma, Washington  3.  Google’s estimated monthly bandwidth usage is 184 petabytes (a petabyte is 1000 terabytes or if your counting 1 Million gigabytes) and 4.  Google’s annual bandwidth cost is 344 Million… about a 1 million dollars a day.  These are really, really big numbers.

So, aside from just being astounded at the enormity of Google (or Microsoft, or Facebook) there is a very practical reason for talking about it.   Today’s websites demand much more server horsepower then in days past.  Not long ago, at the beginning of the decade, it was quite possible to host hundreds of websites on a couple of reasonably powerful web servers.  But web servers up until then were merely file servers doling out images and HTML as simple independent HTTP requests, a really simple task.   And remember that web servers are just computers and can only do so many things at one time.  When they try to do too many things at once, they slow down… or worse.

The last five years has seen an explosion of complexity in websites with much more intricate designs, increased functionality, improved user experience and enriched media.  All of those things that we now take for granted when we shop online, update our Facebook status, or pay our Credit Card bills online.  Today’s websites need need to talk to database servers to deliver dynamic content, or talk to media servers to deliver video, or talk to Ad servers to delver banner ads, or talk to external websites to grab RSS feeds, Tweet streams, or Facebook status updates.  As users we expect more.. in fact we demand more from the websites we visit.  All of this means that web servers have to work extra hard to deliver what are now considered basic sites.    Multiply that by ever-increasing Internet traffic and all of the sudden you might actually need a dedicated server to support just a handful websites or in some cases several servers to support just one website.   If your website is complex and gets a fair amount of traffic, you just might need your own server.   Think about it… Google has over 1 Million web servers, Facebook 30,000.  Those are WOW numbers.

Lots of customers will call us for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because when they “Google” something their site isn’t where they think it should be.

Here are just 3 quick reasons why this may be so:

1. The site was designed several years ago and doesn’t conform to Google’s latest search engine practices.
2. The content doesn’t change on it very often.
3. Your company has changed and the look and feel of your site just doesn’t match what goals you have in your mind for your recent marketing efforts.

These are all easy things to have happen. And these things are all things that can happen to anybody.  Looking at your site objectively is just as challenging as looking at your business objectively.  It is like a parent thinking, “My child is ugly.” – that just doesn’t happen!

A website needs a “facelift” using SEO and most often a new design if any of these 3 things are the case.  Oftentimes you can do all the perfect SEO things and still your web traffic isn’t what you want it to be.

Why?

Is it because your website may be “ugly?”  I don’t mean “ugly” from the definition of “ugly,” but I mean Google can rate you top on the list all day long, but if people continue to get to your site and decide it wasn’t what they thought it may be, or it was frustrating to find their way around, Google finds out and you will slip in your rankings. 

This is because your website no longer makes the user engaged when they get there. They have no reason to care to learn more.

And hey, that’s good information to have!  If your business isn’t growing or changing with the challenges of the times, then you are not doing business!  One way this can really pop out at you is to be engaged in marketing your company online, you insert a link to it, once people get to the site, they “BOUNCE” off it.  (Maybe you are doing some social media, Facebook fan pages, etc.) The visitor doesn’t like it, it isn’t what they thought it might be, they could be confused by your message.

Who was the person that said, “Part of the problem is recognizing there is one” ?  No one is telling you, your business is bad, your company is bad, you don’t even know who these people are!  But they are telling you something needs to change.  Either a new look and feel, spruce up your logo, change the content on the front page, add some new things that draw them in .  What is your competition doing? When you change the message so it reflects how your company is NOW. – Depending on your company perhaps people want to interact with your website?

A website isn’t meant to look the same, be the same, act the same for eternity.  How people are using the internet today is different than they were 5 or even 3 years ago.  You probably are too!  So spice it up a bit.  If you are marketing a site that isn’t really who you are or isnt being found, all the programming your web developer can do to get your ranking in Google better may not matter because once your potential customer gets there he may be saying, “Ewwww.”

We talk about Search Engine Optimization on this blog all the time.

Here are some links if you would like to read more:  Click here

Here is one about Site Measurements

Remember “Search Engine Optimization” is like painting a house. A fresh coat of paint looks nice from the outside, but if the house is falling down and in bad repair, then you need to look at the HOUSE (your website) itself.