Do you remember Steve Martin in "Father of the Bride?" Certainly you remember Martin Short who played Franck Eggelhoffer, the wedding planner. But wait a minute; this movie is now 19 years old, so maybe you don't remember it or the characters. Yes, it is Saturday morning and I thought I would share some personal news and show you how if your planning a wedding your wedding planner no longer needs to hire an executive assistant, as we are discovering that the "Father of the Bride" role of Howard Weinstein can be replaced with Google, Franck's New Virtual Executive Assistant.
But first things first...Dennis' and my oldest son, Aaron, became engaged to Allison (Alli) Gubanich on October 15, 2009. Dan and I were in Las Vegas when all the excitement happened. As I understand it, Aaron set up the Scrabble board (both of his Grandmas would be proud) to welcome Alli home from class/work and the words spelled out "Will you marry me?" (Of course, I questioned how those words could ever really come together on a Scrabble board- to which Aaron rolled his eyes and shook his head - he is really a romantic!)
Aaron and Alli, the A Team, have known each other for quite a few years, but started dating in the Summer of 2007, at the time they both worked at Bluepoint. Alli is from the Philadelphia area. Her parents are Kathy and Chris Gubanich. She has two sisters, Nikki and Jessica. Dennis and I had fun meeting the Gubanich family when Alli graduated from the University of Arizona in May 2008. And of course since we moved to Tucson in March 2008 we have really enjoyed spending more time with Aaron and Alli.
Ok, so now you know the engagement happened October 15, 2009, and by the morning of October 17, 2009, Nikki Gubanich was sharing a Google document with members of both sides of the family! Nikki is Alli's older sister and she just finished her MBA this past Summer (congratulations by the way) so she volunteered to be the Project Manager. What is funny is that Alli said to me "I had never heard of Google documents and how you can share them!" So now we can all participate real time and keep each other informed.
This morning it occurred to me that this past week has been so crazy with returning from Las Vegas, catching up on work, that we (Dennis and I) really have not taken time to call and congratulate Kathy and Chris! I haven't even sent them a Gmail or written on their Facebook walls! I promise to do that today; however, I also decided to create a Picasa Album (Google Product) and share it with the family members. This album will allow us to enjoy old memories and chronicle the new memories over the next year. Google (AKA Howard Weinstein) will assist with Blogger, Gmail, Google Documents, and Picasa Web Albums. And that is just for starters.
So here's to the A Team (Aaron and Alli), Chris, Kathy, Nikki, Jessica, Dennis and Dan...congratulations one and all!
P.S. The picture on the Photo Album cover was taken Halloween 2008!
The last few weeks your Webconsuls' team has been busy and our blog has been quiet. I don't know about you, but it is amazing what you can learn in a month's time. Here are this month's five most interesting bits of information that I learned and I want to share with you:
1. Did you know that Gmail has a send limit? About a week ago we received a call from our client saying that she was sending out an email broadcast to her customers asking them to participate in a fundraiser for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami. All of a sudden she noticed that she could not send any email or receive any email. She called us and here is what I learned:
"In an effort to fight spam and prevent abuse, Google will temporarily disable your account if you send a message to more than 500 recipients or if you send a large number of undeliverable messages. If you use a POP or IMAP client (Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, e.g.), you may only send a message to 100 people at a time. Your account should be re-enabled within 24 hours." (Go here to learn more and keep in mind that many email services have a send limit, this is why some clients like to stay in contact with their clients by a newsletter service like or similar to Constant Contact.)
2. Twitter 2.0 seems to be just around the corner. Rather than have me rehash what someone else has discussed so eloquently, I will point you to the article. "Are We Ready for Twitter 2.0?"
3. Blogger does provide great on-line support. The other day I was on their site and I saw a section called "Recommended Articles and Discussion." One of the discussions was entitled "Too Many Good Bloggers are Giving Up" . Now, this caught my eye!!! So I clicked on it and enjoyed the conversation. If you have a blog and you have given up or you are thinking about giving up, I invite you to read the posts and join in the discussion. You might just refresh yourself enough to keep on BLOGGING!
4. During the past few weeks our team has been discussing the nature of our Webconsuls' blog. The questions raised are these: Should it be more technical? Or, do our readers want to learn more about the team as people and read anecdotal stories, as well? I will tell you that the team was split on this, but today I read an interesting article on an SEO/SMO newsletter. The article had to do with Social Networking pitfalls the 4th pitfall to avoid was this: "It's not about sell, sell, sell! If all you're doing when you visit the various sites and post your updates is pitch your latest program, product or service then it's no wonder you're not seeing results. Share information with your network, whether that's your own information or you're passing along information from clients and colleagues. The more you share, the greater your results will be. Whichever social networking arena you're active in (and it may be more than one) remember the "social" in social networking - it's to build relationships, make new contacts, and socialize. Inform your network, not sell to them." I think based on this guidance and our own practical experience from being part of Social Networking sites, new clients may come to you naturally.
5. Finally, as this Columbus Day Weekend gets underway, I know that our New England innkeeper, hotelier, restaurateur, livery, and entertainment clients will be busy beyond belief as the autumn brides and mountains blush and foliage season peaks; but won't they be surprised to learn that Tucson, AZ has its own foliage season! And yes, Mt Lemmon is 2869 ft taller than Mt. Washington!
This week's photos are from my days in New Hampshire. The one of the children is of Aaron and Dan enjoying a "Tom Sawyer" moment with children who were guests at the inn. Aaron and Dan were "teaching" them how to rake the autumn leaves and make Leaf People!
"Teach Us to Delight in the Simple Things"...Rudyard Kipling
Let me know what you think of Judy's "bytes"...see you next week.
This week we are the world. The world was all a twitter with tweets about the death of three American icons. These were three people from three generations.
On Tuesday our blogger honored Ed McMahon, who passed at age 86. McMahon was a gentleman that we welcomed into our homes for more than 30 years as Johnny Carson's sidekick among other roles.
Yesterday, our blogger honored Michael Jackson, who passed at age 50. This iconic legend who most of us have watched for the past 40 years, from a little boy to a grown man, always surprised us with his talent and creativity, among other things.
I will not let the week go by without honoring Farrah Fawcett, who passed at age 62. For those of us who are Farrah's peers by age, we remember her smile and her gorgeous hair. All the women wanted hair like Farrah and all the men wanted the women in their lives to have hair like Farrah. She was a fine actress and you would know this if you saw some of her more serious movies. Now she will be remembered as a brave woman who was willing to share with all of us her struggle with cancer to the end.
In this world filled with technology...twitter, plurk, tagged, YouTube, my space, facebook, emails, blogs...today is Saturday and it is just a day to remember that in January 1985 Michael Jackson collaborated with Lionel Richie and produced with Quincy Jones a song that touched us all. We are the World! (United Support of Artists for Africa) We listened intently, we bought the album and together we tried to help save a continent, most particularly Ethiopia.
As this day closes, I will remember that Dennis and I played this album with our children when they were quite young. The album is still in our home carefully preserved for whatever reason. Maybe because it made us think, hope and assure ourselves that we are all part of this world and this week We Are The World making a choice.
Enjoy this remarkable YouTube video of the studio recording of We Are The World. I'd would love to hear from you!
....change can only come...when we stand together as one!
You've seen the Digg button on most blogs but how often have you seen a tweet button?
Twitter has been growing since it was developed and is more of a social trend to be on twitter more than anything else. Now you can allow your business or personal blog posts to be tweeted.
Here is how it works, Website http://tweetmeme.com/, allows you to tweet a specific page or a specific blog post and provides the code for it (very friendly). What it does not show you is how to add it on a blogger template.
Here is how you can modify your blogger template to include a tweet button how we have here (look on the top right).
1) Locate the following line: <BlogDateHeader>
2) Place the following code: <div style="float:right;">
<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_url = 'STEP-3';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"> </script></div> </script>
3) change STEP-3 to <$BlogItemUrl$>
A bit of HTML or blogger template experience may be required.
Contact Webconsuls to get a FREE quote on a custom personal or business blog.
Social Media has gone mainstream and one needs to look no further than Youtube, or Twitter to see that. With a budding new war in the middle east Israel has taken to these social media sites not just to get their message out but to also to take part in the conversation. The democratization of information is in full swing folks, if you are waiting for someone else to get your message out, WHO ARE YOU WAITING FOR? With tools like Blogger, Youtube and Twitter anyone can easily take part in the conversation.
In 2009 don't be shy, click the comment button, take part in the conversation, you will be glad you did.
We regularly get requests from clients and prospective clients who say that they want a content management system for their web site. However we find that few clients that take the time to manage their content.
Some our clients do take the time to update their web sites. However, more often than not, the content is not updated as the client is too busy running a business to do the updating.
Content management systems require extra work to set up when compared to a web site that is updated by web development professionals. Search engines may have issues with finding all of the content. And if the updated content is not proofed, it can contain embarrassing errors.
This is not to say that content management systems are useless, only that if you want one you need to have the time and discipline to use it. Properly done a user updated web site can provide up to date information and fresh content which grows and grows providing rich source material for search engines.
Scheduled blog post publishing, which was first talked about on Blogger in draft last month, is now live for everyone. So if you set a post's date into the future, Blogger will wait to publish until that time comes!!!
It is now a cool Sunday morning in Souther California, I have a hot cup of coffee, and I am putting together Monday mornings blog post. So for all of you reading this Monday May 5th Happy Cinco De Mayo!
Scheduling a post is easy to do: on the post editor page, click the "Post Options" toggle to show the "Post date and time" fields. Then, type a post date and time that's in the future. When you click the "Publish" button, your post will become "scheduled." When the date and time of the post arrive, it will be automatically published to your blogger blog.
"Scheduled" posts appear in your Edit Posts list alongside your drafts and published posts. To un-schedule a post, simply save it as a draft any time before it gets published.
One quick note: If you want to give a post a date in the future but have it appear on your blog now, you'll need to add in an extra step. First, publish your post with the current date and time. This will make it appear on your blog. Then, edit the post to change the date into the future and publish it again.
Dallas Taylor the drummer for Crosby Stills Nash & Young was kind enough to have Webconsuls come visit and take some video with our new "Flip" video camera. 6 min, 1 take, Dallas is a true professional.
For all you visual learners who want to add features to your blog, but don't have the patience to browse bloggers help articles, we've created the new Blogger Help YouTube Channel. There you can find videos that show you step by step how to use Blogger features.
There are only a few videos at the moment, and we've decided to start with the basics:
In the coming months they will be adding more videos. If you have a suggestion for a video you'd like to see, let them know by posting in the Help Group. In addition, you can give feedback on each video's comment form. They are always trying to find new and better ways to help us use Blogger and they appreciate our feedback - thanks!
Google has often heard that sometimes we would like to write a post now and have it automatically published at some time in the future. Like big posts that we would like to post into smaller sections. Some of you like to go on vacation in a dead cell zone! They listened, and are pleased to say that this feature is ready for us to try out on Blogger In Draft
Remember: Like all features described on the "Blogger in Draft" blog, Scheduled Posts only work when you've logged in thru http://draft.blogger.com/.
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