Urban Vancouver

Please see the attached Wish List / Request for Quotes for contract specifics.

The Teen Summer Reading Club is a Canada-wide teen reading club run by the British Columbia Library Association. Currently, over 3000 teens and over 700 library branches participate in our program. We're entering our 5th year of the program and looking to make some significant changes to our Drupal-based website: http://www.teensrc.ca.

Deadline for submissions: Jan. 21, 2009

Vancouver or Lower Mainland applicants only, please, as this job requires some face-to-face meetings. Thank-you!

Please contact me at the coordinates below if you have any questions.

Cheers,
Trish Rosseel
E-mail: trish.rosseel@gov.bc.ca
Phone: 604-660-3965
Fax: 604-660-0435

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that today was the MacWorld 2009 event. I’m going to briefly cover the highlights, as numerous other Mac sites have liveblogged the event, covered every word in painstaking detail, and provided commentary.

1. The Keynote speech is now available to view online.
2. iLife ‘09 was released. Some of the new features include: quickly share photos from iPhoto to Facebook or Flickr. Have Sting, Sarah McLachlan, John Fogerty and a host of other musicians teach you how to play piano and/or guitar in GarageBand. A “Keynote Remote” app for your iPhone and/or iPod Touch to control Keynote presentations.
3. A new 17″ MacBook Pro. Pretty much everything you’d expect (three USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire 800 port, the fancy new trackpad, lightweight etc). Then a twist - a non-removable battery - with an 8 hour (using wireless) charge. Rechargable up to 1000 times - but non-removable. Did I say it was non-removable?
4. Big changes to the iTunes Store. Most notably, the entire 10M-plus song library will go completely DRM-free (8M tracks now DRM free, the remaining 2M (ish) by the end of the year. To update your DRM’ed tracks you’ll be charged $0.30 per track.

That’s certainly not all of the changes/additions/announcements made today, but a pretty accurate list of the major updates.

runforcover: St Germain and the rain

As some of you have seen via Twitter I have been starting to post links to a blog called WestCoastAlpine.com. What some of you might not know is what this blog is about, hopefully I can help explain it in case you were curious. If you are into winter activities in British Columbia or just in general I recommend following our updates (you can subscribe to the RSS feed) as we hope to provide more information about the local ski conditions as well as some other interesting information as often as we can.

WestCoast Alpine is a project of Robyn’s and mine related to the ski and snowboard activities of British Columbia. Currently we have been reporting on our adventures at the ski resorts such as Cypress Mountain, Grouse Mountain as well as the infamous Whistler/Blackcomb.

We will also be writing about the various events on the ski resorts around British Columbia such as the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival at Whistler/Blackcomb or the Kokanee Winterfest at Mount Washington. We may not get out to them all but we will try and keep up to date on what’s happening with them.

Don’t forget when we do our ski/ride road trips that we have plans for throughout the winter season, we will be writing about our accommodations, conditions of the runs as well as anything else that we come across in our travels.

We will also be keeping tabs on the equipment manufacturers.  Reporting on new released gear from such companies as Solomon, Burton, Head, North Face, Heli Hanson and others. After all, the more I get into snowboarding the more the gear and equipment fascinates me and I might even become a gear whore! With that of course I am sure we will be writing reviews of various gear we purchase as well throughout the year.

This project of ours also introduces Robyn into the world of blogging. She so far really enjoys it as she does like to write. It was also a fun way of combining one of our common interests and introducing her into another aspect of my life, yes the online life.

WestCoast Alpine is a WordPress blog theme of my own creation. I will also be tweaking it over time as we build it up with more content. I have always been a fan of using 2-column layouts which are centered. I find it easier to work with a variety of resolutions starting at the 1024×768 and up. If you are running less than that, well you should upgrade your monitor, video card and/or bump up your resolution to at least that.

The left column (main content) allows for up to 500px wide images/photos. This also allows for plenty of space for copy without having it looked squished or stretched too far. The right column (sidebar) is roughly 250px wide and will allow for up to two 125px wide button ads (if we see fit to use them) side by side but allows for some decent sized copy such as links or little blurbs too.

The layout itself was created in Adobe Illustrator and then sliced apart and glued back together using good ol’ CSS. I do try my best to keep everything XHTML and CSS valid as that is just good practice. I find that sometimes I do have to edit the output of other people’s WordPress plugins to ensure it is XHTML and CSS valid but that’s another story.

So come by, read a few posts and say hi to both Robyn and I over at WestCoastAlpine.com!

Kicking off the New Year, there are lots of great entrepreneurial, techie, and capital raising events coming up - Techvibes has a good roundup in their Venture Capital Outlook 2009, and we’ve updated our events listing at Upcoming — 13 events in January and counting!

But this post is about highlighting First Round Capital holding “Office Hours” in Vancouver. First Round is a top tier Silicon Valley venture firm, so it’s great to hear that they’re coming for a visit. James from AdHack and Danny and I met with them when they did this event across the street from their Palo Alto offices at the University Coffee Cafe. They teamed up with Boris Wertz’s W Media Ventures to put this on, and I think it’s a great format — practice your 1 - 2 minute pitches now.

Who should come? First Round says:

just like the original Palo Alto edition, we’d love to meet with entrepreneurs, people thinking about becoming entrepreneurs or folks who would like join a start-up. We’ll be available for a bunch of informal ~15 minute chats. Again, there’s no agenda. We’ll provide the napkins to write on and the coffee to keep you warm while you wait.

They’re also asking that you fill out this form if you know you’re going to come ahead of time, although it’s not required.

We just showed up last minute in Palo Alto, so spent plenty of time out on the sidewalk chatting with the other entrepreneurs. I think it wouldn’t be a bad thing if our extended local ecosystem filled that form to capacity… (yes, I’m looking at you Whistler, Okanagan, Victoria, Bellingham, and Seattle). Maybe Pete from HearWhere wants to take the guys skiing at Whistler?

See you January 15th at the Agro Cafe from 4 to 6pm. Happy New Year, and good luck with all your ventures.

Note: if you prefer email notification for events, our events calendar has a Feedburner email subscription attached to it.

If you’re stuck on what to get the tech lover on your Xmas list, here are some last minute ideas!Watch Akash Sablok’s tech segment on the popular Breakfast Television program.  Breakfast Television (BT) comes to you live every weekday on CityTV (Vancouver).More info: Breafast Television (Vancouver)(c) 2008 Rogers Broadcasting Limited (used with permission) .  

If customers linger for a while on your help page, or in the checkout process, or any other area of your site, it may indicate a customer has some anxiety (or got up to get a coffee and a donut).

This is a good idea from an Internet Retailer article on how to employ live chat profitably:

Orvis invites customers to chat only when they are on certain pages, such as customer service. “We have a lot of stuff on the customer service page,” Wolansky says. “If 15 seconds go by and you’re still on that page, you’re probably looking for something and haven’t found it.”

Orvis also offers chat to customers lingering on the checkout page. But Orvis does not offer chat on product pages, where visitors may linger reading reviews, examining photos, watching videos and comparing products. “Sitting there for a long time is not an indication you have a problem,” Wolansky says. “I don’t want to bother you.”

With the help of web analytics, retailers can map out the typical paths taken by customers who buy, and identify deviations that indicate a visitor is likely to leave, says Kevin Kohn, executive vice president of marketing at chat provider LivePerson Inc. If a lot of visitors abandon after two minutes on a particular page, he says “when someone’s there for a minute, 45 seconds, it’s not a bad idea to reach out offering assistance.”

Selecting the Right Ecommerce Software in Six Weeks or Less
When: January 21st, 2009 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Panelists:
Bill Mirabito, Founder and Principal Analyst, B2C Partners
Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend...

• Saving Sales With Triggered Coupons
• ShopTogether is Live Chat Help on Steroids
• In-Store Pickup Tips for Multi-Channel Retailers
• Bloggers Digest - 3/7/2008
• Recovering Sales from Abandoned Shopping Carts With Email

Photo by Scott Meizner’s slick Canon 5D Mark II.

It’s just after midnight, the day before Macworld keynote ‘09. I can see the glow of the Moscone Center from my hotel room. I can’t quite see the line o’fanboys, but if I crane my neck a wee bit, I can see the twinkle of their MBP and a glint in their eyes. They miss Jobs. Ahh, don’t we all.

For those of you not able to come to Macworld, I’ll be covering all of its geeky goodness with the MacBreak crew. So I want to ask you:

What Macworld inside scoop would you like hear about? If you think of person, company, or Mac-related product you’d like to learn about, fire a comment here or @lisabettany on twitter or squint your eyes, distort the Space-Time continuum, and leave me a scroll somewhere near the Moscone Center. No guarantees that I’ll get it, but good effort, none-the-less.

We're hiring again... and if you're a social media strategist with a social-change frame of mind, then do we have the job for you:

Social Signal is offering a great opportunity to be part of a team of smart, creative people who are making a difference in the world. If you are a social media expert with great strategic, writing and organizational skills, you can put your expertise and skills to work on projects that speak to your passion for social change. And you’ll find that the joy of working with kindred spirits can be matched by the thrill of helping our team do its best work and our business to thrive.

WHO WE NEED:

We’re looking for a social media strategist who can work with a team to create innovative visions for online community and social media projects, and turn those visions into reality. The right person is great with people, words, technology and details. We need someone who:

• is a strategic communicator - a great writer who thinks in terms of messages, audiences and communications goals
• lives and breathes online, and is contagiously passionate about what Web 2.0 means for organizations and the world
• has experience with client relations, PR or account management: a true people person who is also terrific at managing projects, tracking details and getting it all done
• loves working with a team to generate ideas and deliverables that are more creative than what you could achieve flying solo
• shares our excitement about how social media can support organizational innovation and progressive social change.

The posting's here. We're looking for someone who's as immersed in this weird and wonderful world of social media as we are, someone with a passion for changing the world - or at least their corner of it - and someone who's a delight to work with. If that sounds like you, then please: apply within.

This Christmas season I used the downtime supplied by most of my peers taking two weeks off of work (can you say downturn?) to get around to a number of highly geeky personal projects on my residence’s IT network.  Aided by the web (and knowing which instructions to safely ignore) I successfully completed all of the following:

All in all my future wife was quite dismayed at the number of times I broke out the torx screwdriver and cracked open a computer on the ottoman while watching “Long Way Down” but I’m grateful it’s over with.  Happy New Year all!

UPDATED: One more Bonus thing I did!

Seeya.

With the recent snow that we’ve received here in Vancouver there has been a lot of debate on what the bylaw states are proper snow and ice removal from our fair sidewalks. I have looking through the bylaw as best I could (disclaimer: I am not a lawyer) and have found the section of bylaw that coincides with this matter. Hopefully this will help people understand what is required by law of the properties around the City of Vancouver.

Vancouver ByLaw 2849 - Street And Traffic Bylaw

Subsection 76:

The Owner or occupier of any parcel of real property shall, not later than 10:00
a.m. of any day except Sunday, remove snow and ice from any sidewalk adjacent
to such parcel for a distance that coincides with the parcel’s property line, except
that this provision shall not apply to real property occupied only by a one or two-
family dwelling.

76A. Notwithstanding section 76, the owner or occupier of any parcel of real property
in that area of the City bounded on the north by Burrard Inlet, on the east by Main
Street, on the south by Terminal Avenue, False Creek and English Bay and on the
west by Stanley Park shall, not later than 10:00 a.m. on any day except Sunday,
remove snow and ice from any sidewalk adjacent to such parcel for a distance
that coincides with the parcel’s property line.

76B. If an owner or occupier of any parcel of real property fails to remove snow and
ice, as required by either section 76 or 76A, the City Engineer may authorize the
removal by another person and the costs of such removal shall be at the expense
of the owner or occupier as the case may be.

So if I had the proper understanding, as long as the owner or occupier of a property has shoveled their sidewalk by 10AM of that day they are in the clear. They also don’t have to do it one Sundays. Though most landlords and property managers I’ve seen do a pretty decent job of their sidewalks. I just wish more of the retailers around the WestEnd did a better job of salting their sidewalks. If I slip on the ice outside of a store front and break my leg or something, do I have legal action against that store? Who knows but I do hate having to walk up inclines on icy sidewalks.

The other municipalities probably have similar bylaws too, or I would think they would. What do you think of this bylaw for Vancouver?

Since kicking off the Phones for Fearless campaign collection on Dec. 23rd, the phones are piling up, responses are coming in from far-flung places, and the story appearing in myriad social and traditional media outlets.

We are still accepting donations at Raincity Studios so bring your old devices down to help bridge the digital divide in a very tangible manner. While you are backing up your data and bundling your power cords, here are a few highlights and notes to bring you up to speed on the success so far.

Gillian Shaw's blog posts and Vancouver Sun article helped muster another round of exposure for the project. Of particular interest is the way she worked Walter Lynxleg's work into her story with a photo gallery in her 12-21-2008 blog post "Donate your cellphone".

Here's a video interview with Walter Lynxleg (who) "overcame homelessness and is now hoping to put together a book of photos of people living in the neighborhood and the people trying to help them"

Later, Ms. Shaw followed up with Walter's story in the print edition article on December 28, 2008, "Life on the streets seen through a simple lens - Walter Lynxleg, once homeless, uses a cellphone camera to record life in his Downtown Eastside community."

Walter is quoted saying, "I was homeless," said Lynxleg. "Then I got a job and managed to save enough money to get a place to live. Now I take photos of people who are helping people on the Downtown Eastside. I am planning to publish it in a book that I am calling Angels Without Wings."

Walter is now the recipient of a video camera and training from Steve Jaagger (Reached.com) who explains, "I'll give him a seat in our video class and I'll give him a video camera," said Jagger. "He can go into an Internet cafe and store his videos on YouTube. Guys like Walter are trying, all they need is a little bit of help. He is very passionate about the whole native thing. He wants to finish his Grade 12 and go back to his community and start showing the young guys -- you can do something."

Thanks Gillian for providing this sterling example of a complimentary relationship between "social" and "trad" media - (note: we really need better terms or no terms to describe these artificial differences)

Jackie Wong from WE (WestEnder) gave a call to talk about the campaign. She asked how the phones would be used, how we used social media to spread the word, and why Raincity Studios is involved. I won't answer all the questions here, instead read the article "Technology for All - Campaign seeks to put discarded electronics into the hands of the poor" from the January 1~7 2009 edition. To whet your appetite here's a photo of poster boy, Kris Krug holding a copy of the print version complete with his photo supplied by yep, me ;-) plus a quote from yours truly about the campaign tactics:

Developers at Raincity Studios have been using Twitter, Flickr, and blogging platforms to spread the word of the Phones for Fearless campaign. “The thing that’s neat about using tools like Twitter, blogs, and Flickr is it opens us up to a much bigger audience,” says Dave Olson of Raincity Studios. “We’re getting responses from California and Ottawa. It really gives us an opportunity to amplify our message to a much wider area, and much more quickly.”

We've tried to snap a picture of each donator, along with a festive message and their phone. This helps put a face to the donation and thanks everyone for their generosity. Big ups to Lorraine Raincoaster for creating a custom blog post of gratitude for each person.

Did you donate? Go to fearlesscity.ca Media Arts section to see your dossier. Add a comment if we missed your blog/twitter/whatever link.

Along with publishing a custom blog post for each donator Raincoaster published a massive blog post round up in Phones for Fearless: Day 1 and Phones for Fearless Campaign Update along with a barrage of Twitters (via @raincoaster and @fearlesscity).

Here are a few quick hits of my fave posts from the plenty (more phonesforfearless posts on the Fearless City blog):

Phones for Fearless 2008 » Vancouver Blog Miss 604 by Rebecca Bollwitt

Stylefinds: Phones for Fearless CityPhones for Fearless | ChalkedUp

Creativity at Work - Phones for Fearless! Donate your old phones to change lives

Lowther Rinse Repeat » Fearless City Cell Phone Drive

Fade to Play » Mobilised for Fearless! and Do you have an old phone? Please donate it to Fearless City

Please donate your mobiles to Fearless, see you tomorrow! | Roland

Say no to gadget clutter, donate to Fearless City

Hmm, Does this Twitter Thing Really Work…? « Me Like The Interweb

and my very fave from Sean Orr's Chalked up:

A Christmas Miracle just happened. Sort of. I was mobbed by a pack of elves. Not just any elves however, these were social media elves and they were all a twitter. One of them handed me a bottle of homebrewed winter ale (for my Dad), another a tasty chocolate, one of them handed me a pen to write a message to the homeless and took my picture holding it up, while yet another packed a bowl for me to smoke! How festive! All I had to do apparently was get on my toboggan and spread the word! Give us your used phones!!! I would give them mine, but I just bought my first cell last year. DO THIS.

Finally, if you want to know more about the mobile tech Fearless City and partners are brewing up, listen to the podcast with Roland Tanglao and I riffing about Mobile Non-Profit Campaigns and Projects - on Raincity Radio and Roland's epic post SMS Framework + FeedAPI = SIFT awesomeness for Fearless and Whistler.

Here's the podcast blurb and link pack for your convenience:

Mobile technology can change the world - or at least help people express themselves with art and improve safety too. Raincity Studios' Support Services Coordinator and digital experimentalist, Roland Tanglao discuss an assortment of mobile-themed projects and initiatives with host DaveO including:

• Sift Tool
• Mobile Muse
• Vancouver Art Gallery Fuse night
• Homeless Nation
• Fearless City
• Phones for Fearless campaign

1. Used mobile cell phones and digital cameras are still accepted at Raincity Studios
2. Check out Phones for Fearless blog/photo galleries, add comments, favourites etc.
3. Drop a comment if we missed your post or donation - we aim to please ;)

Apologies to regular readers but going to be waffling on this subject for a bit. That's why there's category specific feeds :)

On Saturday we went with our realtor and looked at a few homes in the local area. The good news is that house prices have fallen significantly in our area over the period we've been away and some nice houses are within our reach.

But what was interesting, was that unlike in the boom years when we bought our last house, all the houses have been on the market for a long time - ranging from 2 years to a month (something that was unthinkable a while back). Some of the reductions were impressive, including one town house that dropped from 699k to 599k.

Compared to almost every other market in Canada the prices are still silly naturally, but that's what I get for wanting to live in North Vancouver. But the real question for me is how low will it get? It won't be as bad as the US. In the US the forced foreclosures by banks and dodgy loans pushed the market down. In the UK it was the lack of bank lending and the realisation that prices were over inflated.

In both cases there are reasonably regular reports of house prices. I blogged about this a while ago, but there is very little information on the market here. The Vancouver Sun mentioned this:

How bad the market in Canada is depends on who you talk to. Some Canadian commentators have called for the creation of a S&P/Case-Shiller index here.

But we have the technology to crunch numbers what we need is data. Who do we turn too for data to figure this out?

Local government? Well for me that's the District of North Vancouver and so far I've been unable to find out information on sales. I did find a tool that shows you non-financial information on the property, but the terms and conditions say:

The User may not post The Content, or a modified form of The Content, on any electronic bulletin board, place The Content on-line in a downloadable format, or use The Content in a Website.

So time to fire off some emails to my local government.

Realtors? Well that's probably the MLS. And that isn't promising with stuff like this in the Legal section:

All links to any CREA website must be accompanied by a prominent notice which makes it clear to a browser that the link leads to a website of The Canadian Real Estate Association

Unless CREA expressly agrees otherwise, all links to any CREA website must connect to the home page of the website

The prohibited uses include "screen scraping", "database scraping" and any other activity intended to collect, store, reorganize or manipulate data

Oh heck just broken those. Wake up people it's 2008!

CMHC might help and they do have PDF reports on the housing market. However they are concerned with housing starts (for example 2007-2008 there's a 100% drop in Condo housing starts in Greater Vancouver). However I've seen nothing on prices.

In the end I'm left with this printout of all house sales in North Vancouver that show all only 19 houses sold in North Vancouver last month for an average of 50,000 less than advertised. I can be sure about a few things it will not be as bad here, as the US, but it will not get better anytime soon, so no rush.

Meanwhile I feel sorry for the people who spent 870k on this house that was bought near what most people consider the peak for 389k and are now "excited about the idea of giving this '70s-style home a facelift". As some one who's been looking in this market - I think they saw you coming.

If anyone knows of a way to get house sales data - let me know.

The past few days I’ve been slowly reading the book Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets (author: Stephane Grenier) which I won over at Derek Semmler’s blog and there is one point I would have to agree with in regards to being a serious blogger: Don’t rely on blog hosting services such as WordPress.com, Blogger, TypePad. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good Blogger or WordPress.com sites out there and their authors are taken seriously but they are far and few. I have always found that to take it to the next level and be taken more seriously you need to look at being self-hosted.

So what does it take to become a more serious blogger and have people regard you as a blogger? Hopefully I can shed some light on the subject. I do consider myself a blogger though it definitely isn’t my full-time job. Perhaps one day I can blog full-time, wouldn’t that be cool?

This is probably the most important requirement if you want people to take you more serious in regards to being a blogger. Domains are relatively cheap and can be bought within 5 minutes, the hard part is coming up with a name that is not already registered. For starters try registering your www.<FULL NAME>.com. Chances are it probably is not taken, though then again if your full name is fairly common it might be. Domain names are usually around the price of a cup of coffee at your favorite local coffee shop. I’ve paid as little as $5 for a domain, you just have to look for deals. Typically I find that a domain will cost you about $8 per year.  Yes you do save more if you register it for a longer period but your initial upfront cost will be a bit higher.

If you are going to niche blog (blog about a particular topic you are experienced in) then you might want to think about various keywords pertaining to that niche topic and use that as a domain name. Though in this day and age I am sure it will be hard to find good keywords to use in domains.

Just remember don’t make your domain name too long so people have a hard time typing it out or have the chance of spelling it wrong.

Flickr Photo by Russ Garrett

Since you are going to be buying your own domain name you will need to find yourself a good web host. There are hundreds of thousands of webhosts out there. If you want a recommendation and are on a tight budget I would recommend looking at Bluefur.com. They have a web hosting package (Mini Unix) where you can pay less than $6/month for your very own spot of the Internet. Just be sure to use the Promotional Code: dynamicshark to receive 15% off their services. That’s what I did!

There are a few blogging platforms currently on the market and they can be free, though I (and others like me) will highly recommend you choose WordPress. WordPress.org is the self-hosted version of WordPress.com. Self-hosted means you need your own webhost to host the WordPress platform files. It is not as scary as you might think.

Not only can you set up WordPress in about 5 minutes (once you have your own webhost and domain name) but with the largest user community for a blogging platform there are many available plugins or add-ons which can add even more functionality to the already fairly full-featured blogging platform.

WordPress also allows you to choose from hundreds of free themes, or if you want to go with the more professional or unique look there are may WordPress theme designers out there as well. There are also semi-unique themes in which you can purchase for a small amount of money too. Semi-unique means that other people might have it but since you are paying a bit of money for it it will be less common. With 71 Million blogs out there or so, paying for a theme is not a bad way of going if you want to be a bit more unique and stand out from the crowd.

If you are worried about loosing your content, you can move all your old posts into your new WordPress self-hosted site with not too much trouble. You will at least have your posts and comments intact. Though you will start with a 0 PR (pagerank) in the eyes of the Search Engines. Normally you can do a 301 Redirect (this tells the Search Engines you’ve moved) but normally you do not get that option with shared hosted blog services.

In fact I can help you make the move from shared blog hosting with services such as WordPress.com, Blogger to your own self-hosted blog. If you are interesting be sure to get in touch with me via my Contact form, or even via Twitter.

Alright so you’re asking yourself what is so great about being self-hosted? You don’t have to pay for monthly web hosting fees, or yearly domain renewals when you are on a shared blog service right?  Things just work too (most of the time).

Well being self-hosted allows to to take blogging to the next level. You can add a much more unique look and feel  to your blog. I also mentioned you can use plugins or add-ons right? Plugins (or sometimes called add-ons) allow you to add more functionality to the already full-featured blogging platform of WordPress. If it natively does not do it, I am sure there is a plugin out there to do it for you, if not I know people (like myself) who are able to code up the plugin to your needs.

If setup is correctly done, seldom do things break down. If they do they can be linked back usually to a badly coded plugin, or issues with your webhost. I have yet to experience any issues with my blogs (yes I do run more than 1) and all of them are running WordPress with various themes and plugins.

Are you looking to perhaps monetize your website? You know make some extra income? Most shared blog hosts will not allow you to monetize your site. You also have more customization in regards to advertisements and placement with a self-hosted blog.

What do I like (or love) about having a self-hosted blog? It’s mine! I’m not part of a company’s subdomain and I don’t have to follow their hosting rules. I follow my own rules, my own path and I do what I what, when I want to my blog. Since I am paying someone to host my site, if something goes wrong I have a better chance of it being fixed/corrected if they want my money, shared-hosted sites don’t care because they are not making money off of you. Right?

Being self-hosted is also part of the ‘branding’ process for yourself and your blog. I find it easier to tell someone I run www.tyleringram.com as opposed to a site like onyxdragun.wordpress.com. It is a similar rant of mine about people who conduct business via email with services such as Hotmail, or Yahoo. It just doesn’t look professional, especially if you are trying to be taken seriously and you do not own your own domain.

Domain names are cheap!

So now that I have hope to have left you with some more information about being self-hosted and being seen as a more serious blogger, what could be next? Well the next part is to think about are some of the other aspects of your newly self-hosted site such as Themes, RSS Feeds and the more popular topic these days of Social Networking with such services as Twitter.

So stay tuned for the Part 2 of A Few Pointers For Being Taken More Seriously As A Blogger

The final variable in the Marketing Experiments conversion sequence is “a” for anxiety about following through with a purchase.

Some of this anxiety is about the product, some is about you as a retailer. You must address both. And unlike friction (resistance) which must be minimized and balanced with an attractive incentive, anxiety needs aggressive overcorrection on your website.

Ecommerce anxiety comes in a number of flavors, including fears about:

• Quality of the product
• Quality and reliability of your customer service
• Will the item arrive on time?
• Will the product be as described or as appears on screen? Is it the right color or size?
• Will it fit? Is this item true to size?
• What if the product needs to be returned?
• Is this site secure (privacy, credit card information)?
• Is this really the best price?

Today’s post will focus on anxiety on the product page specifically.

The e-tailing group conducted a consumer survey last summer and found that product descriptions were the most important to help make a purchase decision, followed by the merchant’s guarantee, stock availability and quality of images. (One can assume for certain categories like jewelry and apparel, images are even more important).

The survey also found:

• 76% believe content is insufficient to complete research or purchase online “always, most often or some of the time”
• 79% “rarely or never” purchase a product without complete product information
• 72% will abandon a site for a competitor or research further online, typically finding what they want elsewhere

Product Descriptions

One of the most effective ways to address customer fears in product descriptions is to research what actual buyers of the product care about by reading customer reviews — including reviews on other sites like Amazon, Buzzillions and competitors.

Product Images

Multiple views and zoom tools are very helpful for customers to get a closer look of a 2-dimensional image. Showing products in context can dramatically improve conversion because it shows the relative size of an item, what it can hold, how it looks on a person and so on.

The increasing use of video merchandising like Martin + Osa’s shop-by-outfit and Tiger Direct’s video reviews/demos are also effective.

Customer Reviews

There are many statistics touting the virtues of customer reviews, even negative reviews, improve conversion because it gives customers more information about a product (that doesn’t come out of a marketer’s mouth) and a better sense of trust.

Beyond just having reviews, the usability of your reviews can improve conversion, like allowing customers to hone in on 1 star reviews or 5 star reviews:

Or allowing products to be rated by attributes:

Amazon also allows customers to vote reviews as helpful and not helpful, and shows the top positive and top negative reviews, and allows search within all reviews:

Pluribo is also an exciting technology that uses natural language data mining to summarize a product’s strengths and weaknesses extracted from a number of product reviews. So far, it’s only available for select categories on Amazon through a Firefox browser extension.

But Amazon doesn’t have all the review-toys, Shoes.com uses Bazaarvoice’s Ask & Answer product, and Shoeline has its own Return-o-Meter to reduce customer fears about products.

Stock Availability

Showing that an item is in stock is good usability, as well as sizes and colors in stock without the customer having to add to cart to find out. Nine West does this well with rollovers and broken outlines:

Overstock creates a bit of anxiety — good anxiety (urgency) on products close to selling out:

Limited Inventory!
Sell out Risk: VERY HIGH
In Stock if you order today: Leaves our warehouse in 1-3 business days.

Note the buying guide link and “you can always remove it later” assurance are appropriately placed as these are other fears customers may have.

Selecting the Right Ecommerce Software in Six Weeks or Less
When: January 21st, 2009 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Panelists:
Bill Mirabito, Founder and Principal Analyst, B2C Partners
Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend...

• Using Product Images to Reduce Size and Color Fears
• Trigger Email: Asking for Customer Reviews & Video Reviews
• Do Customer Submitted Photos Add Value?
• Can Product Images Improve Conversion? Showing Products in Context
• Improving Product Descriptions Using Competitor Customer Reviews

This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to run IE in OS X. Now I know what you’re thinking - why on earth would I even want to use IE when Safari, Firefox and Opera are all far superior browsers? Well, there are still a handful of sites that require you to use IE, and even “tricking” them with the IE user agent doesn’t always work.

1. Before you get started, make sure you have X11 installed. If you’re using 10.5 (Leopard) - it comes pre-installed. If you’re using 10.4 (Tiger) follow this tutorial to install X11.
2. Now download Darwine, open it, and drag it to your Applications folder.
3. Once X11 and Darwine are installed, download ies4osx and open it up. You’ll be presented with the ies4osx installer.



4. Place a check in the box labeled Silent Install (I have accepted all the EULAs) and click the Install button.



5. ies4osx will do its thing and install Internet Explorer 6.



6. Once completed, you’ll be presented with a message letting you know the installation has finished.



7. You’ll find Internet Explorer 6 now located on your desktop. Double-click it to launch, or move the file to your Applications folder if you prefer to keep your desktop free of applications.



8. And now you can use IE 6 in OS X.