The red poster on the left is the Lululemon Manifesto from a company in Burnaby (near Vancouver.) While their product is athletic wear, the manifesto clearly shows their goals, as people and (as a result) as a company.

Now, I know a thing or two about branding. It’s not just that I have a masters degree in marketing, and that I still have friends from in New York ad agencies from the days of “Mad Men.” I was part of the Bufferin account team at Bristol-Myers, I have placed media campaigns for Procter & Gamble brands in Cincinnati, the corporate home of Procter & Gamble. And I can tell you that the Internet is most effective when you show your individuality.

Here’s how writer Maureen Johnson put it in BlogHer.com

MY POINT IS . . . it’s early days yet on the Internet, and lines are being drawn. We can, if we group together, fight off the weenuses and hosebags who want to turn the Internet into a giant commercial. Hence, the manifesto. It goes something like this:

The Internet is made of people. People matter. This includes you. Stop trying to sell everything about yourself to everyone. Don’t just hammer away and repeat and talk at people -— talk TO people. It’s organic. Make stuff for the Internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important. Put up more cat pictures. Make more songs. Show your doodles. Give things away and take things that are free. Look at what other people are doing, not to compete, imitate, or compare… but because you enjoy looking at the things other people make.

Don’t shove yourself into that tiny, airless box called a brand -— tiny, airless boxes are for trinkets and dead people.

For example, here is the current website of the oldest awning company in San Francisco. They’ve been making awnings since before the earthquake. Does this website tell the story of this family-owned business? The father-to-son training in measuring, sewing, selecting fabrics and getting logos to look great?

Here’s the website that I am developing… much more personal. Notice how I use testimonials to convey how long this family has been making awnings for restaurants and businesses. The pictures show the range of shapes and styles, but the text gives the visitor a chance to see the people who make the awnings, and how they bring creativity and craftsmanship to their work.

Awnings matter to them, and they matter to the businesses. They are hand-made. Each awning is custom made and one-of-a-kind. I think that’s what Maureen Johnson means by “organic.” This business was struggling because so many restaurants are being squeezed by the down economy. They were not going to attract more business with the sanitary, ordinary website, they need something to make them stand out. And we are going to leverage this so that businesses in San Francisco and find them.

It is safe to be ordinary. If you are extraordinary, open the kimono. Put what makes you extraordinary on your website. If you love what you are doing, sing out loud. Let people hear you. Let them hear that you are proud of what you make. It is a gift.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Branding Does Not Mean Boring

I register and manage my own domain names, and the domain names of many of my clients, at several registrars. Domain Registry of America is not one of them. I received a misleading “Domain Name Expiration Notice” from DROA for my own domain name indicating $30 to renew for a year, TRIPLE my current rate. A quick glance at the DROA Domain Name Expiration Notice does not reveal that the domain name is not registered with them. The notice is designed to confuse non-technical people into TRANSFERRING the domain name to DROA, and to pay triple the normal rate.

Then a client called. She received a DROA Domain Name Expiration Notice for their company domain name and she was puzzled because she paid me annually for the domain name. I’m glad she manages accounts so carefully and remembers annual payments. This kind of diligence is not widespread and DROA is preying on this. DROA even highlights “Reply Requested By” in a way that looks like “Payment Due By” and the date is several months before expiration so that TRANSFER can take place before normal renewal procedures kick in!

Beware of mailings from DROA. It is easy for them to get the address of the owners of domain names. My client originally reserved the domain name through the Yellow Pages (yikes!) and it took quite a bit of work to get it back from them, but I have managed the name for years. Unfortunately, this information continues to be on a contact database and the mailings will continue. Don’t fall victim to this misleading Domain Name Expiration Notice. It is predatory .

Post from: aNetGain.com

Domain Name Expiration Scam

Is it coincidence that Google’s Android phones also don’t play Flash video? Maybe phone carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile don’t want the network load. Maybe smartphone users don’t want to pay bandwidth charges for Flash ads appearing on their phones. The bandwith required for other types of online content created in Flash, including animated advertisements and online gaming may not be how cellphone carriers want to tax their network capacities.

Many online video sites have been experimenting with a new video format, called HTML5. Unlike Flash, which is a downloaded piece of software that can interact with a computer’s operating system, HTML5 works directly in a Web browser.

The popular video-sharing site Vimeo.com is also experimenting with new platforms, based on comments from its online community. “We received a tremendous amount of feedback from our users saying that they wanted to have HTML5 as an option for their videos,” said Andrew Pile, vice president for product and development at Vimeo, an online video service. Mr. Pile does not see this new format replacing Vimeo’s Flash-video inventory, but will instead offer it as an option for its viewers.

And while HTML5 may help standardize Web video, it does not necessarily address the needs of other types of online content created in Flash, including animated advertisements, short “adult” movies and online gaming.

What do you think? Is it Apple who left Flash video out of the iPhone and iPad, or was it AT&T and the other carriers? How would you feel about paying bandwidth charges for unwanted Flash video advertising?

Post from: aNetGain.com

No Flash video on iPad & iPhone?

In a blog post on Thursday afternoon, McAfee said that after examining the malicious software code used in the attacks, it believes a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser was an important pathway for the attacks, which were directed at Google and more than 30 other companies:

These attacks will look like they come from a trusted source, leading the target to fall for the trap and clicking a link or file. That’s when the exploitation takes place, using the vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Once the malware is downloaded and installed, it opens a back door that allows the attacker to perform reconnaissance and gain complete control over the compromised system. The attacker can now identify high value targets and start to siphon off valuable data from the company.

I urge you to take a look at Firefox security, and to download Firefox 3.5. It will not overwrite your Internet Explorer files, and it works fine with my online banking. Finally! It was really weird when I had to use the world’s least secure web browser, Internet Explorer, for my online financial transactions. Luckily, the financial community caught up with the times.

The German Government’s Federal Office for Information Security has officially advised web users to find an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer according to Sitepoint.com because of the same vulnerability involved in the Chinese attacks on Gmail.

My statistics show that only about 60% of visitors to my websites are using Internet Explorer. Firefox is gaining rapidly. I actually use Opera as my default browser because it is standards compliant, very fast, very secure, and (ahem) rather cool. Anything from Norway is cool. Opera is usually the leader with new features, such as tabbed browsing and being able to open or close a tab right from the tab bar. They were the first to offer a blank page start populated with screen shots of your most frequently visited sites. And they were founded by the guy who invented CSS. How smart is he?

Opera’s main business strategy is to provide a browser that operates across devices, platforms and operating systems, and can deliver a faster, more stable and flexible Internet experience than its competitors. Bottom line — make Firefox or Opera your default browser. Anything but IE!

Post from: aNetGain.com

Microsoft IE Flaw in CyberAttack

I first saw Tim Ferriss at WordCamp SF earlier this year.  In response to a question from the audience, he gleefully recounted how he outsourced finding a girlfriend.  I loved his sense of humor and respect for his own time and creativity.  We all know that hit-or-miss dating can be drudgery, and he could not afford the time to go through that, so he created systems and benchmarks and outsourced the work… most hilariously, to French-speaking Philippinas.

Creativity needs large blocks of uninterrupted time; things like designing web pages and coding websites are not activities that fit well with answering phone calls from India offering to list me in the Yellow Pages.  Tim offers concrete ideas on how to train capable people to perform repetitive task so that his creative time is not impinged by increasing maintenance demands.  His systems approach matches tasks to people with the right talents.  His customer response when callers interrupted him while he was coding or writing could be sub-optimal.  Tim shows how to redirect questions skillfully and effectively.

Creativity also needs time away from the grindstone.  When Tim lost some friends and relationships prematurely, he realized the “deferred-life plan” with retirement as the payoff for years of hard work was a cruel trap.  When he imagined his life in fast-forward (he calls it “telescoping”) Tim saw himself on track to become “the fat bald man in the red BMW convertible.”   Determined to unshackle himself from the cliché, and unable to find a book with the recipe to create a lifestyle that allowed maximum creativity, maximum cash-flow and maximum fun, Tim wrote the book himself.

The new, updated version of “The 4-hour Workweek” was just released and is available as an audiobook, a Kindle book or a hardback book.  I recommend it to every business person who needs  a fresh approach to balancing life, work, fun and creativity.

Post from: aNetGain.com

The Tim Ferriss School of Business

They knew that Madeline and Patrick Wallen’s wine cellar business jumped dramatically when aNetGain.com upgraded their website to make it easy to find on Google. As much as Madeline and Patrick wanted to share their good fortune with Millsap Degnan, search engines can’t see anything on the Millsap website because the entire website is in Flash. A 100% Flash website is like a movie on videotape. You know how if you hold up film to the light you can see something, but if you hold videotape up to the light you can’t see anything?

The Flash pages are images, not HTML web pages. I suggested Madeline check this out for herself by trying to highlight the “text” in their website as if cutting and pasting. You can’t. If you try it with ArtisticCellars.com you see it is regular text that can be read by search engines.

Search engines can’t see images, they can only see text. Madeline and Patrick’s old website didn’t have much text. It had a lot of pictures but… search engines can’t see images, so the page rank was poor.

The magic I worked for that website was to create new HTML pages with text where the search engines could find them easily, and to create navigation so search engines could see the old HTML pages already existed on the website.

The strategic challenge is making the choice between the luxurious, expensive Flash portfolio, and a construction website that is search-engine friendly, like McDevitt & McDevitt.

Flash elements in an HTML website can be excellent. If the objective of a business website is to be found by prospective customers, then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial. A well-designed business website should appeal to both humans and machines (search engines). One hundred percent Flash websites look good only to humans, but attractive, informative Flash elements in a professional website give a polished appearance. Here is one we did for OmniFlo, Inc., for an innovative dialysis machine. Here is another for Cooling Tower Resources, Inc. which successfully increased the per-order revenue by informing customers of the range of products offered.

Post from: aNetGain.com

How to Waste Thousands on Flash

See the list of new websites at anetgain.wordpress.com

Post from: aNetGain.com

WordPress Business Blogging Class

Matt Mullenweg, one of the founders of WordPress, put together a roster of speakers that were smart, articulate, experienced, and fun to watch. Matt Cutts of Google packed the house at 10 a.m., and I was dazzled by the “free lunch” courtesy Media Temple. UCSF food service certainly knows how to feed 700 people arriving at once! Attendance was roughly double the previous year’s. WordPress is becoming more accessible and easier to use. Innovations include Multi-User (MU) platform for multiple, linked blogs (like the NYTimes, Harvard Law Students, etc.)

I had a great time and learned a lot. I was thrilled to find myself sitting next to a Happiness Engineer who provides technical support for the VIP customers paying $500/month for WordPress.com hosting. He had some great ideas for the WordPress class I plan to teach this Fall at SRJC Community Education. I like these people!

Post from: aNetGain.com

Wordcamp San Francisco May 30

He also recommended multiple touchpoints for websites. That is, make your business website easy to find, not only through search engines, but also through Linked In and Twitter. Create a “branded” twittername like @anetgain. Use that name only for business info flow, such as news on the conficker virus. Use a separate, personal account to let your friends know where you are having lunch.

Of course, he pointed out that the strongest word in commerce is “free” and predicted the future will continue to favor those who offer great application free of charge, like Google and Twitter. What kind of feedback loop do you like to see on business websites? Product ratings? Polls? Leave a comment!

Post from: aNetGain.com

Web 2.0 – It’s Interactive!

Westec wanted an update with more movement, more product information. We added slideshows and video to the updated site.

Joe Belli, the owner, wanted still more. We just launched the new WestecTank.com website with dramatic product photos by Jim Belli and Mark McDowell. We moved the video to the home page. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Are Static Websites Obsolete?