We acquire AE3Interactive, Change name to RedStage, Awesome new Websites

Looks like I'm finally allowed to re-join the social public.

After a whole lot of negotiating, debating, and postponing, I can finally say, we're Redstage Networks! *waiting for cheers*

Check out our new company websites at:
www.redstage.com
www.redstagesolutions.com
www.larisonline.com

and to read more about the acquisition of AE3 and the name change, head to:
http://www.redstage.com/archives/category/news Read More...

Grab your Name with UsernameCheck before the Squatters

Getting into with web 2.0 world to promote your business? Find it very annoying to sign up for a million sites and keep them up to date? Me too!

Here's a little something that can help reduce your frustration level--check out usernamecheck.com to snag your name before you throw something at your screen when squatters steal your brand. I'm working on it right now...

Thanks to Pete Cashmore from Mashable for the tip! Read More...

Google Chrome Struggling in Browser Market

Seems that Chrome is having some trouble getting off the ground. The early adopter experimenters are putting it down, and we're not seeing the masses pick it up.

Google Chrome had some benefits. I was looking forward to seeing how their attempts at multi-tab, multi-window, heavy browsing would turn out. However, I now have 6 browsers on my computer, and I'm getting a bit tired of testing browser compatibility for every new project. I'm sure other web developers and entrepreneurs are feeling the same. Read More...

Blackberry Counters iPhone App Store

The release of the iPhone App store was an incredible opportunity for the first movers in application development. It might be time to start seeking business opportunities for the upcoming Blackberry Application Center.

Whether or not you think the new Blackberry Storm iPhone competitor is going to have the cult following the iPhone has, I think the Blackberry market penetration alone should be enough to see this opportunity knocking. I've always been a huge fan of the Blackberry products from RIM, and I guess we'll see whether I regret my iPhone choice this year. Read More...

YouTube, the next E-commerce platform?

That's right, YouTube is getting us one step closer to Bill Gate's 1990's vision. Soon you'll be able to purchase products "as seen on YouTube" right from the video.

Next time Tony Soprano is saying "I need a f*ckin Coca Cola," you might find yourself buying a case.

Check out what YouTube has to say about it. Read More...

Anthony Comments on ClickTale: Spy on your Website Visitors

Our very own Marketing Director just tipped me off about a great tool he discovered called ClickTale. It lets you spy on your visitors by taking actual videos of their interactions with your site, in real time! This is seriously a game changer for the marketing world.

He was excited enough about it that he wrote a blog post right after telling me about it. Check out his post here: http://www.dailymarketingblog.com/2008/09/click-tale-analytics-tool-spy-on-your.html Read More...

Dammit. URL redirection for SEO blunder...

Well, we just had one of those "Splat! Coulda had a V8" moments. We didn't realize our clients' e-commerce platform was not avoiding the duplicate urls SEO problem. Here's a quick background on duplicate content and url redirection.

Duplicate URLs
Google hates duplicate content. They also happen to consider http://www.yourdomain.com completely differently from http://yourdomain.com. So that means you could possibly be splitting your google juice betweent the two domains without even knowing it, making it twice as hard to do SEO work.

Soltuion: URL Redirection
Now, this is not a journey for the feint of technology. If "Apache" and "Mod_rewrite" sound like a helicopter followed by some techno-babble, make sure you hire someone for this.

You'll want to PROPERLY redirect your urls in a way that google can understand. To do this, you'll tell them that the site has permanently moved to another url. In other words, you'll send google spiders a "301" error. Just like 404 means "not found", 301 means "permanently moved".

Well, in our case, the urls were being redirected, but not using the proper 301 designation. So it looked like it was working, when in fact we were getting screwed and our SEO efforts thwarted. Even fooled the silly SEO tools that show SEO friendliness.

Moreal of the store: Check google to make sure that "site:yourdomain.com" has the same amount of pages indexed as "site:www.yourdomain.com". If the number is different, you probably have a url redirection problem. Read More...