Archive for September, 2006

I’ve realized something about blogging. It takes work to keep updated and have a constant stream of original thoughts. I never want to parrot other people’s content, which is why I always want to comment if I link to another blog. Simply linking to another page isn’t really interesting, opinions and a context create value for a reader. I was kicking myself for not making a recent post lately, and I realized that it certainly wasn’t a lack of content or ideas. Just the opposite, there is an overwhelming number of ideas, thoughts, and other news items that could be written about. So many things, that I felt that I…

QuickBooks 2007 will incorporate four Google applications, AdWords, Maps, Google Base, and Google Desktop. The interface will allow QuickBooks users to interface to paid keyword campaigns and Google Maps business listings. The Google Base interface will allow merchants to upload their product inventories into Google Base. Intuit has an estimated 3.7 million small and medium-sized businesses. This is an amazing joint venture between two market leaders. Google CEO Eric Schmidt quoted the ‘Long Tail’ as the reasoning behind extending this service through QuickBooks. The essential principles of the cause of the long tail are: 1, more powerful tools; and 2, distribution of those tools to the population. By allowing Google to interface with QuickBooks,…

In what is being called a landmark precedent for accessibility, Federal District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled on Thursday, September 7th, that a retailer may be sued if its website is inaccessible to the blind. Target had filed for a dismissal by arguing that no law requires them to make an accessible website. The Court denied this motion and held that both federal and state civil laws apply to a website. Some legal “mumbo-jumbo” for the wanna-be lawyers: “The court held: “the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination in the enjoyment of goods, services, facilities or privileges, is that whatever goods or services the place provides, it…

One of my favorite T-shirts is one that I picked up at a Search Engine Strategies conference, back when it was in Boston. You can also tell that it is dated because it is from FAST: AlltheWeb. I think they were having a fire sale, as they were going to be bought by Yahoo! and were giving away hundreds of old shirts. I love the message of the shirt, “freshness counts” – That was the focus of FAST; indexing new sites and content as fast as possible and updating the search result to reflect those changes within days, rather than weeks. Living in Ohio, I rarely get to enjoy fresh seafood.…