If you are like me, you woke up thinking about meta tags role in SEO. Probably not, but I had a meeting with a guy last night and he had 1999 understanding of the web, and he proceeded to question my statement, “Meta Tags don’t matter anymore.”

If you keep up with SEO, you probably will tend to agree with that statement, but meta descriptions, on the other hand, still have a role in search results. I like to think of the meta description as the elevator speech of the page. Why is the page here? What is the page about in a very short succinct sentence? How is it going to benefit the reader?

<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Insert Elevator Speech here.”>

Meta descriptions, you probably know, are generally used for the page description first when displaying search results.  If you don’t have a meta description, the search engine will likely take some text that is cached from the page. Be creative, but be accurate because the browser is making split second decsions.  Just like your elevator pitch of a new idea, set the hook and beg the click.

I was playing around with ping.fm tonight because I spend, oh about, twenty minutes a day updating different statuses * exageration *.  Then I happened on this SUPER url shortener roundup over at SEO Moz. The pros and cons is very comprehensive.

Obviously, ping.fm doesn’t fit squarely within the “url shortener” hole, but I really like that I can microblog the full URL and the service will shorten, microblog, status update, and bookmark with a single stroke of submit.

Read this line today, and thought of my brother.

A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be decived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

-C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time”

And by the way, I think I am going to start calling the Internets “the great cataract of nonsense.”

Last night, I went to the Tennessee Valley Fair last night and was sending twitter updates through Twinkle, only Twinkle wasn’t working. Boo. Anyway, here they are for your pleasure:

At Tennessee Valley Fair. Truly an E. TN experience. Gotta run best mullet starting in five.

The smoking policy at the fair is: smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Tennessee Valley Fair aka TN Lottery player appreciation day.

Touching moment as a father reaches over and lights his adolescent daughter’s smoke.

Pretty sure I have what it takes to be a carnie, and a damn good one I’d be.

Didn’t see it coming, but a rat tail won the mullet pageant.

That’s all I got.

I am “soft” launching my new internet marketing website. Take a look. Let me know thoughts here.

Eluminare

As Category 4 Gustav clips Cuba and tracks towards New Orleans, people from all over are sharing stories about the brewing storm on Twitter.  If you load this page, by the time you read the first tweet you will see 10 new tweets. CNN is using the live feed to report information online with Rich Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn).

I have been talking about the use of Twitter in business lately. Being a lazy ass twitter user for a few years, I know there is power in the ridiculously short conversation system, but I just don’t know what it is. One of the best uses that I have seen is with Twinkle (an iPhone app). I am able to see tweets of those that are within a 50 mile radius.

Duct tape marketing offers this whitepaper for newbie business twitter users, which is totally worth the read.

And tonight, I ran across David Armano’s post on brand guidelines for Twitter, and I really like his use:

I’ve used Twitter as an extension of my “personal brand”. I share links, talk to people and in general be myself. In return, I’ve built relationships which transcend digital limitations and get insights into human behavior.

As iPhones change the paradigm and all cell phones move into the next generation, SMS sized blogging will become the mainstay, and as Doug has said, a restauranteer is going to have an employee that is just monitoring twitter to see customer feedback (in real time).

I tend to agree with David in that twitter allows me to be authentic and genuine in my feed. I can spew Faulkneresque stream of consciounce to all my follwers. Join me.

Reading this post by Seth today, I thought that the “reviewer” raises a very interesting point about luck in life’s success. In response, I liked Seth’s response:

But I can’t imagine how lonely and depressing it would be to view myself as nothing but a pinball, batted around by forces over which I have no influence.

Unfortunately, I can’t really agree with either. I simply don’t believe in the randomity nor my ability in life to overcome  odds. It seems that success or failure is somehow outside myself.  I agree that I would rather be pressing my nose to the grindstone and receive a windfall than sitting on the couch waiting for a never-realized miracle, but what about those (like my brother) that have always done the right things in life but apparently get screwed?

I do believe in prosperity and oddly enough suffering.  I  believe that my investments pay off but not always in the areas that I expect. I believe that despite my best expectation, I am deserving, at best, to squawk out the most meager of existence, but somehow I am surrounded by luxury greater than most of the history of the world. I believe I am blessed, and hence I am thankful–my life is not a chance nor is it by my own creation.

Who knew that NBC’s greatest challenge to broadcasting their “exclusive” of the 2008 Olympics would not be the censorship but the new media?

while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

I have always had people ask, “how can I import the auto-fill email addresses in Outlook?” Usually, this question arises after the previous installation is gone, and the only backup is a PST file. 

Microsoft offers this solution:

1. On the computer with the saved AutoComplete names, go to drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
2. Right-click profile name.nk2, and then click Copy.

    

   Tip  You can copy the file to removable media, such as a floppy disk or a CD, and then copy the file to the correct location on the other computer. Or you can attach the file to an e-mail message and send the message to yourself. On the new computer, open the attachment in Outlook, and then save it to the correct location.

    

3. On the computer where you want to populate the AutoComplete feature, copy the file to drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
4. If the Outlook user profile name is different on the computer where you are moving the .nk2 file, you must rename the file with the same Outlook user profile name after you copy it to the correct folder. For example, if you move Kim Akers.nk2 from the original computer with an Outlook user profile name of Kim Akers, and you copy the Kim Akers.nk2 file to the new computer, you must rename it with the Outlook profile name being used on the new computer.
5. When prompted about replacing the existing file, click Yes.
6. Open Outlook to view changes