I did a search for Don Cornelius, creator of Soul Train, on Google. At the top of the search results, there’s a note that tells me here are 20 personal results, or 20 links or posts that mention Don Cornelius by people in my Google+ circles.

If I click on personal results, I see the full search results list, but with the personal links at the top of the list. Holy smokes! That means that the Washington Post article on Don Cornelius, which was previously at the top of the page, just got overtaken by a link on nerdist.com because someone I follow and interact with a lot posted that link on his Google+ page!

This is just another example of how Google is heavily favoring its Google+ social network and another giant reason to:

• Create a Google+ page
• Encourage social sharing of your content across all social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google+), but especially Google+

A study by Nielsen back in 2009 found that 90% of people 25,000 people surveyed “trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.” This makes intuitive sense. Think of all the people in your Facebook network who ask for recommendations for a contractor, camera or pediatrician. And consider the crazy, huge influence of mommy and wedding bloggers.

So, what’s your social sharing strategy? It could be as simple as making sure there is a Share This link on all of your articles, meetings and products. Or you could actively ask your customers and members to recommend your products and service to their networks in your e-mails, tweets, and e-newsletters.

On Monday, Google opened up Google+ and allowed companies and brands to create corporate pages.

If you haven’t done it already, I encourage you to create a page for your organization, company, brand or initiative by going to the Google+ Create Page.

Even if you don’t know how or what you’re going to do on this new social media platform, I think you need to be on it because:

• Google+ has 40 million subscribers and that number is growing fast. It’s nothing compared to Facebook’s 800 million subscribers, sure, but 40 million is still a big number.
• Google+ users tend to be early adopters. According to Target Marketing, in the first few months of the network’s presence, the users were mostly young men, a third of users were between 25 and 34 years old and 59 percent of all visitors were male. This will surely change over time.
• Just as there isn’t one TV network or channel that dominates anymore, chances are your organization’s target audiences are on various social networks so you probably need a presence on all the major platforms.
• Google likes to drive traffic to its web properties, like YouTube and Blogger, so having a corporate presence on Google+ will be good for search engine optimization.
• Google likes to integrate its offerings, so there will surely be really neat tools to tie together Google+ with Google Analytics, Google search, AdWords, Google Reader, Gmail, etc. For example, there’s already a way to +1 an article in Google reader. +1 is Google’s version of the Facebook “like.” I’m especially excited about Ripples, which is an interactive graphic of the public shares of any public post on Google+ to show you how a post has rippled through the network and help you discover new and interesting people to follow.

My dilemma right now is that I don’t know how the Matrix Group Google+ page will be the same and different from our presence on Facebook. If you’ve ever heard me speak or if you follow this blog closely, you know that I preach a layered approach to social media where each platform has a different purpose and content strategy. There is overlap to be sure, but it’s best to have a different strategy for each platform to encourage your target audiences to follow you in multiple ways.

As your marketing team ponders this same question of market positioning for your Google+ page, be sure to create your page early to reserve the name and have a presence for the early users who will be looking for you.

Have you created your company’s Google+ page? How will you be using it to connect with your customers, prospects or members?

It’s not that I don’t like Google Plus. On the contrary, I like the interface, I like that it’s so easy to add people to circles and post updates to only specific circles, and I like that the interface is (for now, at least) nice and clean, not cluttered with ads.

It’s just that I’m feeling saturated. I already have my routine of posting interesting news items to Twitter, posting personal updates on Facebook, uploading my weekly video interviews to YouTube, checking into FourSquare when I go out to eat or visit a new place, and blogging once a week.

The question for me has become: what place should Google Plus occupy in my life?

I guess I could simply post the same updates to a bunch of social networks, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m connected with the same people on multiple networks, they would see the same posts and that’s no fun and a waste of time.

Perhaps Google Plus will become, like Twitter, another public persona for me, whereas Facebook is the network I reserve for family, friends and close network.

Sean Parker, a co-founder of original music file-sharing service Napster and a prominent Facebook shareholder, says that, “power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+.” Could this be true? In my case, my techiest of friends and co-workers seem to be more active on Google+ these days but my network is still firmly on Facebook. And yet, Google+ is grabbing subscribers fast. GooglePlusWiki says that there are now over 20M people on the network.

After pondering this issue for a while now, here’s where what I’m thinking. Although the majority of my network is still not on Google+, I need to be on it. Because no one network will dominate and it will be hard to ignore Google+. Just as I tell clients that they need to be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr because their audiences are on these networks, I know that I need to be on all the major networks personally. I will figure out where to find the time to post to Google+. I will repeat some posts because there is some overlap in connections but it’s not 100%. I will hope that HootSuite will soon let me post to Google+ in addition to Twitter and Facebook. And I will figure out what brainspace Google+ will occupy.

How about you? Are you on Google+? What is Google+ doing to your Facebook and Twitter updates? Are you posting different things? How are you integrating Google+ into your day?

One of my Project Managers said she was having a tough time reaching a client. I suggested she try the client’s cell phone since that client is almost never at her desk but she’s almost always available via cell phone.

I have a friend who almost never answers his phone, but if I send a direct Tweet, I get an instant response.

Egads. With all of these communication channels, what’s the best way to reach someone these days?

On any given day, I check multiple devices for voice mail, e-mail or text messages: work e-mail, personal e-mail, home phone, work phone, cell phone, Twitter and Facebook. Some of these channels overlap.  For example, direct messages on Twitter, Facebook messages and work voice mail all end up in my e-mail.

But with so many devices to check for messages, I invariably favor certain methods (work e-mail, work voice mail and cell phone), to the detriment of others. Case in point: I completely missed a friend’s voice mail on my home phone because she called while I was upstairs with the baby one Sunday. Since I was home all day, it never occurred to me that I might have missed a call, so I didn’t check voice mail for several days. Eeek.

Many of my friends and staff have consolidated communications on their cell phones. They have no land line at home and do everything on their smartphone. But my husband Maki and I won’t give up our land line because in an emergency, my trusty land line phone (an AT&T Trimline 210 from 1989) that does not need a power source will still work (unless the central office is out).

I thought Google Voice would save me. Google Voice gives you a phone number that’s tied to YOU, not the device. Currently, I have a Google Voice number that rings on my cell phone and home phone; by the end of the week, it will also ring my direct extension at work. I can program Google Voice to ring on specific phones during certain hours of the day. And I can make free calls anywhere in the US and around the world to other Google Voice subscribers. Pretty cool. Currently, only Maki, my mom and the nanny have this number because they’re the people who MUST reach me when they NEED to reach me. But here’s the rub: Google Voice gives me another mailbox to check! Ick. I hope I managed to disable that feature.

All of this thinking about how to reach me and how to reach other has got me thinking. Are we making ourselves crazy by always being reachable and having the expectation that everyone should be reachable at all times? If you’re an NCIS fan, you know that Gibbs’ Rule #3 is “Never be unreachable” so I guess I need to continue diligently checking e-mail, voice mail, text messages and social media messages. <sigh>

How about you? What’s the best way to reach YOU? And how do you let friends know the best to reach you?

Have you ever noticed how long these Web addresses are?  Ever wonder why these URL are so long?

The answer is simple: tracking codes. Tracking codes are strings of text added to the end of a URL that let you track the source of a click.  For example, if your organization has an e-mail newsletter and you want to know how many people click on the links in your e-mails, you add tracking codes to the URLs.  Your usage tracking software will almost always treat the URLs with the tracking codes as unique from the same URLs without the tracking codes.  So, when looking at your usage reports, you can look at usage overall to specific pages and then figure out how much of the traffic came from the e-mail newsletter.

If you usage Google Analytics for usage tracking, Google has a terrific URL builder that create properly formatted tracking codes to track the source of clicks, specific campaigns, even the duration of your campaign.  Here’s an example of how it works:

Let’s take the URL to my recent blog post on magazine subscriptions on the iPad.  The URL looks like this if I navigate directly to it:

http://www.thematrixfiles.net/blog/am-i-really-going-to-pay-4-99-for-one-issue-of-time-magazine/

When my marketing team promotes this blog post e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, etc., we use the Google URL builder to add tracking codes.  Here’s a sample URL:

http://www.thematrixfiles.net/blog/am-i-really-going-to-pay-4-99-for-one-issue-of-time-magazine/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SM&utm_campaign=blog

If you look at the codes closely, you’ll easily decipher that the source is Twitter, the medium is SM (social media, as opposed to e-mail or a banner ad) and the campaign is blog (as opposed to events, news, jobs, etc.).  On a regular basis, we filter our usage reports in Google Analytics to see how many clicks we’re getting to the blog post from our posts on Twitter, as opposed to direct traffic and traffic from other sources.

Oh, btw, since these URLs are crazy long, I use a URL shortener service like TinyURL or Bit.ly to keep my links manageable on sites like Twitter.  I don’t bother shortening the URL when I’m posting links on Facebook, Amplify or this blog.

Bottom line?  Tracking codes are key to tracking the success of your outbound marketing campaigns.  I recommend never linking to pages on your Web site without some type of tracking code.

How about you?  Are you using tracking codes in your campaigns?  What services are you using?  How are tracking codes helping your measure the success of your campaigns?

Here’s an example of an all Flash site that is annoying and borderline useless. I was scheduling lunch with a friend, who asked me to recommend a restaurant and send him the physical and Web addresses. No problem, right? Wrong.

Check out the Web site for Kora in Crystal City - http://www.korarestaurant.com/ The Web site is pretty, but if you’re trying to get an address and send it to a friend, it’s not user-friendly at all!

• It took me 5 minutes to find the address.  It’s not on the home page, nor under Hours and Directions.  It’s under Contact Us and Reservations.
• Because the site is entirely in Flash, I couldn’t copy the address and paste into the e-mail I was sending my friend.
• I also could not copy and paste the address into Google maps so that I could send my friend directions from Reston.
• Forget being able to bookmark specific pages because the URL never changes in the single Flash file for the entire site. So I couldn’t send my friend the URL of a menu page.  Aaaargh.
• Oh yeah, you can’t print Flash pages either unless print-friendly pages have been specifically created; most designers don’t bother.  So if you want to print Kora’s Hours and Directions page, you’re out of luck.

Since I’m lazy and did not want to re-type the address, I simply went to Google, typed “Kora Arlington, VA” and got a link to a map and directions from Google maps.  God bless Google.

I’m sure Kora paid good money for its beautiful, all Flash site, but I bet it’s a pain to update and it’s not very accommodating for visitors who just want to copy and paste an address.  Good grief!

How about you?  Got your own rants against an all Flash site?  Post links and comments!

• The Pew Research Center has some of the best research about all kinds of trends shaping the US.  The Pew Internet and American Life Project has great information about technology adoption, Web 2.0, social media and the technology divide.
• Ad Age is one of my favorite sites.  The daily e-mail newsletter is one that I read nearly every day.  This article on Where Digital Marketing is Heading in 2010 is a must read.
• When I’m looking for numbers and visitors demographics for a particular Web site, I go to Quantcast.  For example, Quantcast estimates there are 23.3M Twitter users, of which 53% are female, 44% are between the ages of 18-34, and 75% are Caucasian.  The data can be a stale by a few months, which is a problem for fast-growing sites, but the data is usually pretty solid.
• Although I live in the DC area, I’m a huge New York Times fan.  Check out the 9th Annual Year in Ideas (the best!) and an awesome infographic that shows search terms related to cooking and Thanksgiving, by region of the country.
• TrendWatching.com puts out a monthly briefing on trends related to consumer behavior, marketing and advertising.  Although I’m underwhelmed by their 10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010, the site generally has good onsight into what’s hot or will be hot.
• Ars Technica is one of the best tech news sites/blogs on the Web.  Check out this August 2009 article that showed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer now has a less than 67% market share.
• We often think of Nielsen when it comes to TV ratings, but the company has amazing research about consumers, technology, marketing and advertising.  A study back in March of 2009 reported that social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity, ahead of personal e-mail.
• If you love data visualizations, you’ll love Flowing Data.  I love the perspective you get when you plot data points on a map; the insight grows when you are able to see data change over time, or across geographic boundaries.  I love this data visualization of the State of the World.
• Google Trends shows you the top search terms in the Google search engine and lets you compare the world’s interest in topics of your choice.   Google even maps flu trends based on people googling for search terms related to the flu.

These are just some of my favorite trends/statistics Web sites.  If you’re interested in seeing what else is on my bookmark list, check out my account on Delicious.

How about you?  What sites do you rely on to know what’s hot, what’s in, what’s not, and in what direction the winds of change are blowing?

Google has been quietly scanning the world’s books for inclusion into Google Books, which is both a search and a library.  Here’s how it works:

• Users like you and me and go to Google Books and use the Book Search, which functions just like a regular Google search.
  
• If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given Google permission, you’ll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it’s in the public domain, you’re free to download a PDF copy.
• Books that are still in copyright can sometimes be previewed; you’ll also find links to sites where you can purchase or borrow the book.
• As long as you have a Google account, you can “add” books to your library for later viewing and downloading.
  

For example, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is in the public domain.  I can download a full copy of Huck Finn from Google Books.

As you can imagine, Google books is controversial and has angered many publishers and authors.  In fact, a lawsuit was filed against Google by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers.  The lawsuit has been settled and authors can now opt-in or out of Google Books.  Note to authors and publishers: please contact Google and let them know if you want to opt in or out of the search.

For me, I’m pretty excited at the idea of being able to search the world’s books; I love being able to download some of my favorite books; and I appreciate having access to out of print books.  How about you?  Do you think Google Books is a good idea?  And are you using it to search and download books?

But then I got to thinking. Gmail is a seriously good e-mail service.  Google Analytics is so ridiculously good that yes, I would pay for it; in fact, I would pay lots of money for it (don’t get any ideas, Google.)  And before Google bought Postini, it was already a best of breed, commercial anti-spam service.

So I did a little more research on Google apps.  It turns out that the Google apps, terms and conditions I’m familiar with are for personal use.  But Google also markets its services to companies and schools.  Google offers the same services (Gmail, calendar, docs, Web site hosting, and Postini) to companies for a really low price ($50 per user, per year).  So why is the corporate version of Google Apps not free?  For the money, you get a 99.9% uptime reliability guarantee (for Premier Edition users), mobile device support, 25 GIG of storage, and the Google promise of security and compliance.  Phone support is supposedly also available, but I can’t find reference anywhere in the Terms of Service to back-up and retention of data.

So now I’m intrigued and impressed.  Google apps look great, work great, are easy to use and are super reliable. But I still remember how my Magnolia bookmarking account just vanished last year.  And  while I wasn’t out any money, I was out all my bookmarks.  Thank goodness I was able to recover some of my data from an RSS feed!

So are Google Apps truly ready for the corporate prime time?  Would I trust Google with my most important and mission critical data and functions?  How about you?  Would YOU trust Google with your calendar, e-mail and docs?

Tonight’s focus group was amazing.  Nearly two dozen people gave up two hours of their day to discuss why they are members of an organization, what they like about the Web site, and what would make their jobs easier.   Some of the ideas were mind-blowingly simple, while others were flat out brilliant.  If half of the product ideas prove economically feasible, this organization has a product road map for the next year.

Speaking of product road maps, I am in the habit of calling a couple of customers after each release of our association management software, MatrixMaxx.  I call to check-in, get feedback on new features, and, most importantly, ask them for  the one thing they would like to see in a future release.  For the 9.1 release, the suggestions were all spot on, some were so easy to implement we wondered why we hadn’t done the work earlier, and some proved to be blockbusters.

But what do you do when you have zillions of customers and you get a flood of customer requests on a regular basis?  Google Moderator allows communities to post suggestions/questions and then vote on all ideas submitted.  President Obama used Google Moderator to accept questions for an electronic town hall meeting; citizens submitted and then ranked questions; the President answered the most popular questions.

Dell’s IdeaStorm allows customers to submit and rank suggestions to the company. The most popular idea as of tonight is to allow consumers to purchase a computer without an operating system.  Presumably, Dell will act on the most popular ideas.  Both IdeaStorm and Google Moderator are terrific ways to capture, validate and rank customer desires. I’m thinking of using Google Moderator to allow customers of MatrixMaxx to suggest and rank ideas for future releases.

How about you?  How do you solicit direct feedback from your customers? And how can you use a tool like Google Moderator to generate user feedback and validate the ideas via voting from the community?

What do the iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and Google have in common?  They have great platforms

Wikipedia defines a platform as “a place to launch software. It is an agreement that the platform provider gave to the software developer that logic code will interpret consistently as long as the platform is running on top of other platforms.”

I’m convinced that Facebook zoomed past MySpace because it launched a developer platform earlier.  The developer-friendly platform lets developers create zillions of cool apps and suck more of our time, energy and loyalty.  How many quizzes have you filled out on Facebook?

The iPhone is no different.  Apple opened up its platform, hosted a user-friendly store and nine months later, iPhone users had downloaded 1 billion applications, most of them free or under $5.  My husband says he can purchase or download apps for his Blackberry but it’s not easy and the apps are on multiple sites.  No fun at all.

Twitter’s platform lets developers capture streams of data from the millions of tweets posted every day.  Born from these streams are apps that let us visualize tweets, manage tweets, search tweets, map tweets.

Finally, the Google  app engine lets developers build and host applications on the Google infrastructure. Here at Matrix Group, we created a Google Earth app that lets us visualize where network traffic is coming from and we use the Google Maps API to plot the location of association members, George Washington portraits, and more!

There are lots of other companies that host platforms, but to me, it’s been interesting to see how a company like Apple, a company NOT in the phone business, redefined the mobile phone.  The open platform movement also feels like an extension of the open source movement; both capitalize on the skills and interest of lots of dispersed developers to create a larger, more dynamic and more interesting whole.

So how did I become a cool kid?  I had been coveting the iPhone for a long time but I refuse to switch my service to AT&T.  For Mother’s Day, my husband and son got me an iPod Touch.  Yep, I spent part of Sunday downloading apps for my sleek, new Touch.  Yippee!  I’m officially a cool kid.  Don’t forget to send me your favorite iPhone apps.

Some call it ORM – Online Reputation Management – or the art of managing how you and your company are perceived online.  ORM starts with tracking mentions of your company on the Web, anywhere on the Web, in every nook and cranny.  So how do you that?  There are tools and services, but I like:

• Google Alerts.  Google lets you create e-mail alerts for keywords and phrases.  Every time Google indexes a new page with your keyword or phrase, you get an e-mail.
• Of course, you should also be checking how your company shows up in the main Google search and the Google blog search.
• Twitter search.  This is a real-time search of Twitter posts that Google doesn’t necessarily index and certainly not fast enough.  You can even create an RSS feed out of specific searches.

Ultimately, ORM should be part of your overall company branding strategy.  What do people think of when your company name is mentioned?  You need a strategy for getting the word out about your company, for distinguishing the company from competitors, and responding (or deciding when to do nothing) when negative things are said about your firm.

I was intrigued by this company – Online Reputation Management – which claims to “specialize in removing and suppressing all negative and unfavorable search results that can impinge on your online reputation.”  Hmmm… can anyone really do that?

I was amused by this story about Cash4Gold, which tried to bribe a blogger whose blog had unfavorable mentions of  the company and was turning up as one of the top search results in Google.  Talk about bad publicity.  Instead of suppressing the negative post, the blogger actually blogged about the e-mails from this poor company.  So this is the story of how NOT to kill a bad blog post.

Sometimes, the best way to kill a story is to bury it.  Unfortunately, things have a way of resurfacing on the Web.  If the information is wrong or misleading, you can and should file a complaint.  Otherwise, investing in some searh engine optimization will at least get your presumably accurate and positive company information higher up in the Google rankings.

But first, let me tell you about Chris’ speech, which was terrific.  Among the things he talked about:

• What is Google’s secret sauce? Chris says that Google has become a powerhouse because they take really talented engineers, present them with really big problems, and then give them lots of computing power to solve those problems.
• The 20% Rule. Evidently, everyone at Google can allocate 20% of their time to whatever they want, so long as: they log their actiivities in the projects database and they present their work to their peers every few weeks.  If a project is deemed worthy, the responsible staff will be given more staff time and computers.
• You only get laughed at when your ideas are too small. Google leaders Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page want all Google staff to think big and use their brains and computers to solve really big problems.
• The 150 feet rule. In addition to having over a dozen cafes on the Google campus, there are snacks every 150 feet to feed the body, feed the mind, and encourage socializing and networking.
• Search is going to get a whole lot better soon. Although the Google home page looks the same, the search technology behind it is getting better every day.  Google now tracks what we click on when we search; in the future, the search results for the same keywod may be different for you and me, based on our individual preferences and past history.
• Google Trends is not only cool, it’s surprising what we can learn from search patterns. Chris says that Google Trends can predict the box office success of a movie and where the flu will hit.

Okay, so back to stalking Chris.  I had read about FriendFeed (FF) a few months ago and decided to give it a try.  FriendFeed users can see what their friends are reading, listening to or viewing on the Web as a continuous stream of updates.  You can view the updates on a Web page, in your Google personalized page, via IM, or Facebook.  In a New York Times article, one of the founders, Bret Taylor, calls it a “blog that writes itself.”

None of my friends seem to be on FF, so I’m following just a couple of Web celebrities.  Chris Sacca provided his FF address so I started following him.  FF is like a firehose of information about the people you’re following. I follow 180 people on Twitter and love the updates and the diversity and randomness of the links posted.  I have 101 friends on Facebook and can easily scan the status updates and links.   I’m only following 3 people on FF, but every day, I get pages and pages of updates. I get tweets, blog posts, comments, links, favorite photos and videos, and comments from their friends.  I feel like I’m stalking Chris Sacca because I practically know where he is and what’s he’s reading and watching.  Do I really need this much information on one guy? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch said last year that FF is better than Twitter, but I’m overwhelmed. I think this is going to take some getting used to.

Anybody out there on FF?  How are you using it and what tools do you use to wade through the data?  Is it cool or just TMI?

1. Your Browser as the New Operating System. The Web browser is increasingly the platform for mission critical applications, like association management systems, intranets, document management systems and e-mail.
2. Conversation is King. We used to talk about creating a communications strategy.  Today, we need to create a conversation strategy because customers are interested in engagement, in two-way conversations.
3. Unified, Integrated Data. I call this the Amazon Effect.  Our customers expect us to know who they are, communicate with them in a personalized way, and give them personalized offerings.  We can’t do this unless we have a unified view of their activities and interactions.
4. Zen Tech Warrior. These warriors want information on specific topics, when they want it, on the device(s) of their choice.  Take me, for example.  I might want my magazine in print, news via e-mail, and alerts via text.  Can your database handle these preferences and can you execute on this information?
5. Green Computing. We all know that we need to do our part to reduce energy consumption and save the planet.  Data centers represent 1.5% of the electricity demand in the US.  Think green when you buy computers and peripherals.

Since my session was an Idealab, I got terrific comments and questions from my audience.  The liveliest discussion centered around creating a communications strategy because it intersects with the need to create a social networking strategy.  My top tips here?

• Monitor what is being said through Google Alerts and Twitter searches (that you can RSS).
• Create a social networking response team.
• Have a blogging strategy.  Even if your organization does not host a blog, what should you do when your organization is mentioned negatively in a blog?

Here’s a link to the handout from my session.  What about you?  What big trends are coming your way and how you are dealing with them?

I typed “joanna pineda” into Google tonight and this is what I found:

• An interview that I did for The Washington Post back in 2003 is the number one result.  This makes sense, given The Post’s Google page rank.  Here’s a wikipedia page on how Google page rank works.
• This blog, The Matrix Files, is the 3rd listing.  This is great, exactly what we wanted.  The blog strategy is working.
• The About Joanna Pineda page on the Matrix Group Web site is the 4th listing.  Fabulous.

So far, so good, but wait, here’s some bad stuff that I found:

• My “public” Facebook profile included a list of my “friends.”  I was very surprised because I was positive that I had made my profile viewable only by friends.  I quickly found the search setting and made only the existence of my Facebook profile public.
• Jigsaw.com has me correctly affiliated with Matrix Group International, but it lists Stephen Brown as the CEO.  Aaargh.  We have tried numerous times to get this listing corrected, but to no avail.  Time to try again.
• Spoke.com has me correctly affiliated with Matrix Group International, but it lists random people I don’t know as my General Manager and Operations Manager.  <sigh>  It’s going to be a challenge to get that listing corrected.
• Huffington Post shows the corner where I live and that I donated $500 to the 2008 presidential election.  So much for paying the phone company for a private listing and being super careful to always use my work address on applications.

So what’s the lesson here?  I’m not actually sure because so much of our lives are public these days.  Heck, many of us do a lot of the broadcasting deliberately through blogs and social network sites.  But I do know that it’s important to review what the Web is saying about you on a regular basis because you never know who is going to google your name.

BTW, check out some new additions to my blog, including:

• New project profiles in the footer
• A feed of photos from the Matrix Group Flickr feed on the right
• A feed of bookmarks from the Matrix Group Ma.gnolia account on the right
• My latest Twitter post

Yeah, I know, I blog, I tweet, I’m on Facebook and I’m complaining about what you can find out about me on Google.  Silly me.

Google flu trends, a service from Google.org, the search giant’s philanthropic arm, analyzes search terms that are related to the flu and creates maps of the US that presumably show where there are outbreaks of the flu. So, if I type “flu symptoms” into my browser, Google will take my search terms and my IP address, and interpret that someone in VA has the flu. In typical Google fashion, typing in the words flu symptoms, aches and pains, chest congestion and other terms will register in Google flu trends because the analysis has shown that these search terms tend to go together and they are indeed related to the flu.

Just think about it. How many of us wait a few days before calling our doctor? Instead, how many of us go to Google to try to figure out what is ailing us. If we “google” before calling our doctor, then Google has the leg up. In fact, Google.org’s FAQ claims they were one to two weeks ahead of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) last February when the CDC reported a spike in flu cases in the mid-Atlantic states.

Intelligence and analysis through mob behavior? Sounds crazy but consider that Internet search has become an important part of our everyday life. When I do a search, it represents what I seek and need NOW.

Now if only Google could predict when the real estate market and retail sales will rebound. On second thought, I bet there are geniuses at Google already at work on this.

You’ll be glad to know that there is a whole movement devoted to changing the content of the Internet from ephemera to artifacts. Internet libraries are springing up everywhere to catalog and preserve Web pages, images, even audio and video files.

The largest (I think) Internet Library is the Internet Archive, a “nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library, including an archive of Web.” The archive is a collection of snapshots of Web pages from the around the world, taken at various points in time.

Use the Wayback Machine, type in your company’s URL and try not to cringe as you browse pages from five years ago. Check out the archive for the Matrix Group Web site; talk about a trip down memory lane.

The Internet Archive also has special Web collections (or links) for specific topics, like the Asian Tsunami or the 2002 Election. Just think about how much content is online from this year’s election and how much of the news and information you relied on to make your choice is online. The question is: will it be online next year and what will we have lost as a society when that content is gone?

Other terrific Internet libraries include:

• Online Computer Library Center
• Alexa Internet
• Library of Congress
• Project Gutenberg
  
• World Digital Library
• Alexandria Digital Library

In addition, Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up. That’s why every search results page on Google has a link to the page and the cached version, which is what Google indexes and searches.

Thank goodness for libraries!

My Election Decision is aimed that the coveted undecided voters. You take a quiz and the system tells who your candidate should be.

I think the New York Times has the best election coverage of any of the major news outlets.

The Washington Post and CNN also have a good election centers.

Google has created a series of Google maps that chart the timeline of both candidates’ lives, map Twitter posts about the election, and show where the candidates are on the campaign trail. Be sure to reload this page a couple of times to see all of the possible maps.

The 270 To Win interactive electoral map lets you make your own predictions about how each state will swing.

If you are a poll junkie, you’ll love this Presidential Poll site, which aggregates polls announced by the newspapers and other media outlets.

Twitter has created an election page where anyone with a Twitter account can Tweet on the election. There is a new post every two seconds. Stay awhile and you’ll see some interesting posts.

7-Eleven lets you vote for your candidate with every coffee purchase because you get to pick your coffee cup: McCain vs. Obama. Nationally, 7-Eleven coffee drinkers are voting 58% for Obama vs. 42% for McCain. Get out there and vote and vote often!

If you want some historical perspective on the issues of the day, here’s a great PBS microsite that highlights different Presidents from the past century and their views on the economy, military service, the US role in the world, and other issues.

We normally think of Google as a really terrific search engine where you type in a keyword or phrase and get results, but here are my favorite tips for getting the most out of your Google searching:

• You can use Google as a calculator; simply enter the calculation you’d like done into the search box.  Example:  5*9+(sqrt 10)^3=
• If you want the status of a flight, enter the airline and flight number.  Example:  American 2182
• If your caller ID is showing an area code you don’t recognize, just type it into Google. Example:  415
• Want to know how your favorite stock is doing?  Type the ticker into Google.  Example:  MSFT
• Come across a word you don’t know? Type define before the word.  Example: define obsequious
• If you’re mobile and need information, simply text message your search query to 466453 (Google on most devices)
• Looking for a the closest Chinese restaurant, go to maps.google.com and type the address + Chinese (or pizza or Italian or hardware store).  Example: 1033 N.Fairfax Street Alexandria, VA  22314 pizza

Finally, if you want to know what Google knows about your Web site, try these:

site:www.matrixgroup.net
shows indexed pages in your site

link:www.matrixgroup.net
shows pages that link to your site’s front page

cache:www.matrixgroup.net
shows the current cache of your site

info:www.matrixgroup.net
shows information Google has about your site

Learn more about how to get the most out of your Google search experience by checking out these helpful guides:

• Search Features
• Google Mobile – SMS for your phone

Happy searching!

My son begged me to purchase software based on the Dr. Seuss ABC Book. We had previously seen the program at the Apple Store.  Even though I have a Mac at home, CJ’s computer is a PC and I wanted the PC version for him.

• So I went to Amazon.com and typed “dr. Seuss alphabet software.”  I got nothing. I tried “dr. seuss alphabet” and didn’t get any software.
• I should have typed “dr. seuss ABC software” but somehow, I had alphabet on the brain.  It was late and my normally decent searching skills were not kicking in.
• So I went to Google.com and typed “dr. Seuss alphabet software” and yes, you guessed it, Google found the product I wanted on Amazon.com; it was the second link.
• Google’s legendary search algorithms did it again.  Alphabet got equated to ABC and I got what I needed.  I bet I’m not the only person who has gone to Google.com to find the content on another site.  If I wanted to, I could have asked Google to search for “dr. Seuss alphabet software” on the Amazon.com site by typing “dr. Seuss alphabet software site:amazon.com.”

Lesson for all of us who build Web sites: make sure your site is visible to Google and other Internet search engines (more on that topic in another post).

Google recommends setting up Google Alerts to:

• monitor a developing news story
• keep current on a competitor or industry
• track medical advances
• get the latest on a celebrity or sports team (yeah, we all need more news about Britney)
• watch for new videos that match a specific topic

Me, I set up Google Alerts for my name (Joanna Pineda) and my company name (Matrix Group International, Inc.). I had to experiment with using ” ” to get the right alerts; otherwise, I was getting a lot of false alerts on news items with the word matrix.

Tonight, I received a Google Alert on my name, which showed up on a new listing in the business directory Jigsaw.com. Trouble was, the ownership information is wrong and the CEO is some guy I don’t even know! As a result, we have sent an e-mail to the company, asking to view the full directory listing and to make corrections. Without Google Alerts, we might never have known about this incorrect listing.

Maria Lima, Director of Client Services at Matrix Group by day is a published mystery author at night. She uses Google Alerts to learn about any mentions of her and her book on the Web. Through Google Alerts, she learned about a Filipino book club that was reading her book last summer!

This type of news clipping service would never have been affordable to individuals like Maria or small business like Matrix Group in the past. But with Google Alerts, anyone can be alerted when they get their 15 minutes of fame on the Web.