Had some time to kill this weekend and drove around looking at the number of For Sale signs in yards within Valpo.  No big surprise that there were still a tremendous amount of them, but what was interesting were the number of FSBO’s…For Sale By Owners have gotten a huge increase as I’m sure many can’t or decided not to pay a realtor their commission due to the economy.  Be that as it may, what a large increase.  Fix the home building and real estate markets and we’ll see a huge upswing in the economy.  Someone has to throw the first pebble to get the ripple flowing.  Who’s it going to be?

Porter County and the real estate community have to get their act together on taxes.  I’ll vote for a GOP candidate that has this high on his/her priority list.  It’s out of control as to the amount of laziness and stupidity currently running a loser of a system.  Complexity of appraisal procedures is just an excuse for someone not willing to get off their lazy ass, drive around town and talk to property owners who are getting killed with a system that has gone bad.  This isn’t rocket science here gang, start doing your jobs or I’m voting your ass out of office.  At this point I don’t care if you’re a republican or democrat anymore, first one to do a good job and not spend a large amount of money doing it, is creative and gets out and talks to some people to find out how they feel gets my vote.

Last night Chicago, and the many fans around the world who grew up around the early years of Chicago sports, lost two of the greats in Chicago Bulls history.  Johnny “Red” Kerr and “Stormin” Norm Van Lier both passed away within hours of each other.

Kerr’s history of Chicago basketball dates back to the beginning, being the club’s very first coach.  He spent his entire life around the game of basketball and was adored by, not just sports fans, but many outside the game of basketball.  His relationship with players he coached, knew and admired were legendary, as noted in the recent tribute the Bulls organization gave him.  He will surely be missed and there will not be another one like him.

As a life long Chicago sports fan, even prior to the Michael Jordan era, the likes of Jerry Sloan (no relationship but I told everyone he was my uncle) Chet Walker, Bob Love,  Garfield Heard, Bobby Weiss, Tom Boerwinkle, and coach Dick Motta where the players who single handily resurrected Chicago Bulls basketball.  That team’s performance in the 1974 playoff season against the Lakers (they took them to game seven and then lost in last two minutes) single handily changed the direction Chicago Basketball as we know it.  Van Lier’s performance was amazing, his very best game and series.  He went on to be a very good announcer, told it like it was and continued to be close with the organization to his final days.

Life long Chicago fans around the globe will feel the same as I do, we lost some great hardworking people yesterday.  Johnny, Norm we all hope you have the very best seats in the house now!

God Bless

Sorry everyone, been gone on a traveling spree as of late and not a lot of time to actually type.  New client eating up a lot of time…I’m fine with it…anyway, got me to thinking about the rest of my clients.  I think we all have come across people that have been let go of their jobs in recent months.  Its ashame, but the economy has forced many to down size.  But what happens when your clients are extremely high maintenance to the point they are eating away your profits.

Was reading a good article on bnet.com today and they addressed many of these issues.  As tough as it may be they simple say…FIRE THEM!  Probably some good advice shareholders need to say when looking over their investor’s Annual Reports!

 
Have you ever wondered if blogging would help your business? A blog is a simple content-management system that allows you to publish information onto the internet quickly and easily. Because new posts are located at the top, readers can conveniently check for updated content. Here are a few benefits to creating a business blog:

• Promote your business. Not only will a blog show visitors you are active in your business, it will also give them an immediate sense of your personality and show your expertise in the business. Be clear and concise in every post, as you never know who is reading.
• Drive traffic to your website. Posting current blogs will keep the content fresh on your website and help to improve your search engine rankings.
• Build a community. Blogging will enable you to establish your own “online voice” and write about unique topics. Keep the blog open to comments to encourage discussion and comments. Promote your blog whenever possible in your printed materials, such as billing statements, direct mail pieces, etc.
• Establish yourself as an expert. Share tips and tricks that may be helpful to your readers, write tutorials on your favorite ideas, and use the blog to your advantage by showing readers you are an expert at what you do.
• Encourage trust. Consumers naturally distrust unfamiliar companies. Blogs makes you seem like a person instead of a company. It shows you’re not afraid to step into the spotlight and speak with people about your business and your products.
• Appeal to tech-savvy readers. Blogs not only appeal to the younger generations, but they will also show you are interested in keeping up with new technologies and trends.

Blogging is a new-age way for your business to interact with and build a community around your prospects and customers. Blogging also makes it easy and quick for people to post, comment, and update posts – making it easy for everyone to participate.

Information provided by Digital Printworks

Metadata is “data about data.” Adding key information such as search words, title, author, or subject to your digital images, documents, and other electronic files allows for faster, more efficient archival and document retrieval.

Some metadata is automatically generated when a document or image is created. For instance, a digital camera will add metadata such as the date and time when the photo was taken, image size and dimensions, camera model, image type, and details of the camera settings (such as focal length, exposure, aperture, etc). Additional metadata, such as title, author name, and keywords, can be manually added by the user.

Metadata is very useful for:

• Database storage and retrieval.Metadata makes it easier to find the images or documents you’re looking for using a simple search by keyword, title, etc.
• Search engine optimization(SEO).It is much easier to find your documents and images using an online search engine if you’ve included metadata information such as title, author, and keywords.
• Copyright information.You can use metadata to store copyright data. This is an ideal location for copyright information, because it is not readily visible within the body yet it is attached to the document, thus providing proper copyright notice.

Here are a few tips when adding metadata to your files:

• Be consistent. Develop a team standard to ensure everyone follows the same guidelines.
• Minimize keyword ambiguity. Select keywords that are as clear and relevant as possible. Many words can mean the same thing or have multiple meanings, so choose your keywords carefully.
• Prevent accidental unwanted disclosure.If your metadatacontains sensitive information, be sure to check and remove info from the metadata that you do not want to share before sending an important document.

It may take a few extra seconds to add metadata to your files, but you’ll be glad you did the next time you search through your files. For more information on adding metadata to your electronic files, check out the following USA TODAY article:  Metadata for images means always knowing your subject.

Information provided by Digital Printworks

Going to take a bit of a lighter side to the end of the week.  Blogo gets thrown out, 59-0 WOW, Obama doesn’t get a single Republican vote in House, and well, teenagers are and will always be…teenagers!!!

Had to go back and find some good TV spots.  Bud Lite has some great banned commercials but I have to say that Ameriquest Mortgage is right up there, and with their tag line “Don’t Judge Too Quickly”, I just thought this rang true with the state of the economy.  Threw in a few others as well.  Enjoy the weekend and the big game.

Here is a very simplified yet good interactive look from US News.com at the problem of credit as it pertains to a global issue.  Just keep hitting the red arrow.

While it was a good day for the Republican Party yesterday, I’m a bit puzzled at the lack of talk about the struggling housing market in all of this.  Very little is being said.  Why?  It is a lead story when talking about the ill that plagues the US, but when it comes to including it in the stimulus package it goes relatively mute.

Here was a break down of the package from The Boston Globe, mind you, a very libreal slant publication…only 5% goes to infrastructure?  Didn’t we hear Obama proclaim…”this will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.”  Guess this new math in DC is a bit more difficult to understand these days.

Guess charm isn’t going to win over the other side of the aisle either.  Now President Obama is going to witness that the real issues that disturb the American people, and are voiced by our elected representatives, actually matter…but how dare we disagree with their way of thinking, and they call this non-partisan thinking…hog wash!!!  Just because you reach out (is that what we call it?) doesn’t mean we have agree with what amounts to crippling the future of our children.  Politico had a pretty good piece. 

You want to create jobs, long lasting jobs, great, I’m all for taking a hard look at those proposals, but there wasn’t much in this plan that creates these kinds of opportunities.  You want change, ok, Obama, for the next 90 days, lets release some, if not many of the restrictions on mortgage applications.  I’m not saying that these people actually get a loan, but let’s just see how many of them come to the table.  Let’s do a pretty sizeable PR blitz and see what happens…hell we were going to spend how much on re-sodding the national mall?  Seems that this money could be used better used.  Here is another one.  We have a huge glut of existing new home construction specs on the market, lets use some of this stimulus money and move these things.  For every home purchased in the next 90 days, the home buyer can write off ALL of this purchase from it’s 2009 taxes…not just the interest, but the entire purchase!  There’s some tax relief!!!  Now there may be some flaws in doing these things, but my point is that at least its an agressive, immediate and specefic plan with a time table to measure it rather than a lot of chatter.  I’m not seeing nor hearing any progressive movement…nothing.  Let’s get aggressive or is this too much change & hope for you on the other side of the aisle to swallow! Leadership leads…and lets not forget that the housing market is one of the largest infrastructure industies out there!!! 

Read an interesting article today on Inc’s website on how search marketing & rich media are working to help expand the entrepreneurial spirit.  Having had  a host of experience in this type of medium, wasn’t called rich media then since the internet wasn’t a spec in the global regime yet…opps, showed my age, oh well…it shows that there are some very compelling arguments why short moving and sound clips will still be the best form of invoking a response, be it choosing a brand to use, buy or inquirer about.  In today’s fast pace world of information, companies have to get noticed first and most importantly, have this information be retained for more than 5 seconds!  Go to Google, Yahoo or a host of good search engines and you’ll see an ever increasing amount of rich media happening.  At PointRoll, there are some great examples.  Why, it plan and simply works.  It cuts through the clutter and draws one into it’s message.  Good article and good links.

Got together again with the same group of athletes today and it turns out that after they (B Team) were separated from their A team members for Thursday’s night game, they had to endure the so called “lack of effort” these A members showed and had to run laps on Friday.  Now if we have a separation of team members but the entire team runs laps?  These seems to be a contradictionhere!  We’re not promoting team sports in my humble opinion but supporting a division of competitive levels, a division of team continuity surely! 

I say once again…VALPO WALK UP, these kids aren’t being groomed for the NBA, NFL, etc.  If these kids are good, have some talent and can make it to the next level, by all means lets support that, but not at the sake of tearing down team athletics.