The Mason Technologist

Who Gets More Ink? - See For Yourselves!

I found this cool website called customscoop.com. If you want to know who's getting more press -- good or bad -- this service was made for you. They search 21,000+ online sources (newspapers, magazines, blogs, trade press, press releases, and more) from 107 countries in 18 languages.

I was having all kinds of fun playing with their online custom report generator. It gives you a snapshot of how many times your terms were in the media. Try it yourself - create your own custom trend report!

Looks like Bewitched was a flop…

First Brand Trial Blog Post - Check it out at: http://www.mason23.com/blog

OK, so the design template isn't done, BUT we have gotten the ball rolling with Harry's first ever post to the Mason Brand Trial blog. Mason Inc has decided to start blogging on our area of expertise in creating trail. We will be blogging our ideas and also soliciting input from the marketing community. The goal is to make the Brand Trial blog a valuable resource for marketers all over the globe.

Congrats to all for getting this off the ground! I look forward to reading all the cool stuff.

Robin Dindayal has found a whitepaper from Market Sentinel called Search is Brand.

This is a very interesting perspective and is a strong case for companies to blog, RSS enable their sites and make sure they appear in the major search engines through both organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. Good stuff!

Check out his post at: Blogs, Search Engines and Brand Awareness

Feedreader - Totally Free RSS / ATOM Newsreader / Aggregator:
This is cool, here is a small free fully customizable RSS reader that we can use for our feed reader list project. We can offer a download the OPML list OR the OPML list embedded in this application! This will Make it really easy for our clients, prospects and media contacts if they already have a preferred RSS reader then they can download the OPML list, but if they don't have a reader yet, no problem, you can download ours.

Simple: Feedreader's functionality is focused on the main task - reading and organizing RSS feeds and offering seamless user experience.
Lightweight: One of the main goals of Feedreader architecture is to keep its footprint small. Say goodbye to bloat: installation file is under 1.5MB.
Free: And we mean free, no caveats here. Feedreader is licensed under GPL and its source is available for download.
Customizable: Build on it, tailor it to your needs or even re-brand it for your customers. "

Stupid Lawsuit Department
Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal

OK, this is just dumb anyway you look at it.

1. The guy with the wireless router should turn on basic encryption. It's simple and it keeps out the common riff-raff. Just about every wireless router on the planet has WEP or WPA built in. Use it!

2. The guy "stealing" the bandwidth was dumb for sitting in his car to snatch a signal. Go to Bruegger's or the local library for FREE access!

3. The police were dumb for actually arresting the guy. Come on!

Thoughts? Post em...

I read Robert Scoble's post today on how he is having his son Patrick record his own podcasts as a punishment for downloading inappropriate material. I think this is really a cool way to use this as a "teaching moment". His son gets to learn about how to record and post a podcast of his own but in the process he is clear on the fact that his dad does not approve of his listening to those podcasts.

When I saw his post , it immediately reminded me of my dad would discipline me when I was a kid. He would make me read "positive thinking" books from such authors as Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuler and then write a report on what I read. He made his point, but used it as a teaching moment and to be honest, I really did learn a lot!

Way to go Robert! Not only are you teaching your son, but all of us in the process as well. I look forward to the next installment and have added your Son's feed to my bloglines account.

Here is a quick little article on Search Engine Marketing and the Corporate Blog:
SEM and the Corporate Blog

According to a Backbone Media case study (pdf), several blogs published by corporations produced the following strategic benefits:

• Public relations: Corporate blogs provide another way to publish content and ideas, get information to customers quickly, and receive customer feedback.
• Sales generation: With transparency heightened, corporate blogs can establish industry-specific thought leadership, build online user communities, and increase sales.
• SEM: Blogs can boost search engine positioning, increase link popularity, and readily allow for RSS syndication. All these add up to increased site traffic.

Yahoo gets into the Social Bookmark arena called MyWeb 2.0. They took Google's lead and released it as a beta. Check it out at http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/. The word is social bookmarks will be a way to help cut through some of the search engine optimization spam techniques. This is a big announcement for the future of social bookmarking. It will be interesting to see how Furl, Spurl and del.icio.us

I am going to continue using www.spurl.net to save my bookmarks. I like the interface and the unobtrusive buttons it adds to my browser. I also like how it works with both IE and Firefox and the fact that it shares my bookmarks with del.icio.us. But I am going to keep a close eye on how MyWeb 2.0 evolves.