Brian Mark - Guitaraholic

I've been rather busy lately. We hired some new programmers at work, which have both been working out great. We're all excited at work, because I'm finally going to have some time to look at strategy again instead of being caught up in details. I've also been busy with the podcasts. They were going well enough that we now have 2 podcasted shows each week on WebmasterRadio.FM (Monday and Wednesday at noon central), followed by a live show on Thursdays. Of course, this means I want to get the process down so it sounds as professional as possible, but it's really tough when trying to get that many done along with having a full time job and two young boys that want to be a part of my life. Top that off with a PC that crashed and it's tough doing much else, so my blogs have suffered. I'm not gone, this blog isn't dead, I'm just busy right now. I'm hoping that all settles down someday, but it probably won't.

Hey, I finally got a custom theme for this blog. I've been using free ones from around the web. This was originally developed for use at oneboxer.com , but I ended up using it here. There's a more "Googlish" theme coming for oneboxer. So now I've got to say some thanks to Robert Garcia ( Rumblepup ). He's not really doing design work any more, but rather high end e-commerce consulting . I think he really just got tired of looking at the drab gray blog that I had and made a decent creative... all 2.0ish... just for me.

We all know that it's considered evil to click on ads displayed on your own site, right? What if you're getting CPM ads? Is it then evil to view your own pages? I haven't quite figured this out. Anyone care to shed some light for me?

I decided to start podcasting my other blog. This has meant a pretty big learning curve, but I already had the hardware I needed and much of the software. I've had several people ask what I'm using, so I'm going to list everything I can remember for now and I'll do some follow-ups later. To begin with, I'm using a Shure SM58 microphone . This is sort of the vocal standard in our local bands, and it works quite well for what I'm doing. I send this into a Behringer Ultra-Voice Pro . Like I said, I had the equipment. This item is discontinued, although most any vocal pre-amp is going to work fairly well. Just look for something that has a compressor, enhancer, noise gate and a voice optimized EQ. From there, I have some vocal effects that I'm not using, so I send the signal directly to my M-Audio Delta 1010 . This thing has really come down in price since I paid for it. I think list was around $1000 at that point, and I grabbed it for just under $600. This is p...

For those of you wondering why I haven't been posting much here, I've had a bit of a distraction over at my new blog, oneboxer.com. I'm talking Google Base optimization techniques over there for showing up in the onebox results. I've got posts done for the next two weeks, so I'm going to do some posting here once again. I just wanted to give everyone a head up as to what's happening here.

Yeah... incrediblehelp, I mean Jaan Kanellis , blog tagged me. It took me a few days to get through my RSS feeds to see that he had done it, so here goes. 5 things you (probably) didn't know about me. 1. I never finished college. Much like Jaan, I didn't finish. In fact, I took 2 semesters of Chemical Engineering from UNL right out of high school, didn't really take a 3rd, then went through most of the management training at Radio Shack before going off and really getting into computers. I took some classes at Metropolitan Community College for web stuff later, although I just ended up helping other students (and the teachers) most of the time. 2. I play tennis. I started in grade school, didn't take it as serious as I should have in high school, didn't play in college at all, and took some years off. Last year I started up again and now play a couple of nights per week on an organized league. 3. I've built ToolBarn.com and ToolPartsDirect.com mostly on my own. ...

My dad decided he wanted to blog about his Jeep a while ago. So we got him set up on blogger and gave him a real simple template. Some of the little things that get him excited about his blog is a real hoot. They all seem so "normal" to me now that it'd be annoying if it didn't work. For example, we got him hooked up with AdSense last night for his blog. He had to email me today to say "It's showing Jeep ads now". Uh, what else should it show. But last night it was PSA ads, so this was a change that just "Happened", and it got him excited. Excited enough that he made 2 posts today. Something that I find refreshing when he makes a blog post is that he's not concerned with SEO (oh, I'll change that... eventually), so his articles come out more "Genuine". I see so many blogs any more that are so SEO focused that they're tough to read. Some seem to be so centered around Keyword Density that they just don't make sense to r...

Being overwhelmed with work most of the time, I don't do a good job of cleaning off my desk. This ends every so often with a 2 hour sort through everything and trash most of it session. So when my dad decided to start blogging, I think he remembered my desk when choosing a topic. He decided to do some organizational tips . It's not that organizing is that hard, but getting started is always a problem for me. I don't ever know where to start, let alone how to keep it up. I think I'm going to need to get some hanging files and start sorting documentation from code samples and marketing ideas from magazines. The main point of this post is that my dad is starting to blog and needed someone to announce this to the world. That someone just happened to be me.

I'll be speaking at 3 sessions in the upcoming SES show. I spoke for the first time 1 year ago in NYC at the Shopping Search Tactics session. In San Jose later that year, I repeated at the Shopping Search Tactics and also did the Vertical Creep session. In Chicago, it was the 3rd round of Shopping Search along with a Search Ad Buyer's Forum. Coming up this time in New York? Well, I'll be busier, and I'll miss a few that looked fun. 1) Shopping Search Tactics (4th time) 2) Search Ad Buyer's Forum (2nd time) 3) Retailer SEM Tactics (New session) So, what will I be missing? The Search Ad Buyer's Forum is up against a few good ones. Eric Ward is someone I always enjoy hearing in the Link Building Basics. Since I've seen that one already several times, I'm not going to worry about missing that. Practical Copyright & Trademark Guidance for Webmasters and SEMs Your competitor is bidding on your trademarked name. Some splogger is profiting off of your cop...