Quest RV – Hall of Shame Award

It’s taken us weeks to build up to this one. In our last post, we were so full of excitement…so optimistic…because we had rented this awesome RV to take our employees down to Austin for the SXSW show. Well, excitement and optimism wanes quickly into pessimism and dismay in this post.

I’ll start from the beginning and try to be brief. We rented what we thought was a killer RV from a reputable RV rental company, Quest RV. It was a 39 foot, 2007 Ventana and judging by looks alone, this thing was PIMP. Unfortunately, pimp turned into to pimp-slap 45 minutes into our journey. Yes, that’s right…just south of Dallas the son-of-a-bitch broke down. The dashboard lit up with warnings like “STOP ENGINE” and alarms were sounding. You know, the kind of stuff you don’t exactly want to see when driving a $300,000 vehicle. (Not to mention, driving something that big isn’t exactly what we were used to…so we’re a bit nervous to begin with.) So, we pull over and call Quest who says they’ll send help. They did and 3 1/2 hours later, we’re back on the road.

Ok, so yeah, we’re off to a bad start. It was Friday the 13th. Maybe that had something to do with it. Who knows? Oh well, press on, right? This is still gonna be a blast. Until…OOPS! 5 miles later, the alarms sound again with the same warnings but we’re told to keep going and that it “should be nothing.” Awesome. Was it “nothing” last time, too? Glad we burned a 3 1/2 hour segment for “nothing.”

We do finally make it to Austin, we pay our $130 a day to park, we do our trade show. On Sunday Ron and I bail from the tradeshow in the RV to take our families camping in our expensive motor home for a couple nights…leaving our employees to run the trade show. This part of the trip went off without a hitch. Then we go back to Austin to pick up crew #1 to return them to Dallas where crew #2 anxiously awaits so we can bring them back down to Austin for the second leg of SXSW. We’re rolling now, right? Wrong.

On our way home, we make it as far as Hillsboro, which is about an hour south of Dallas. I pull in to a truck stop to fill up with diesel and mistakenly turn off the engine. Why is that a mistake? Because the RV won’t start again, that’s why. Turns out the push-button transmission is now on the fritz. So we’re stuck there AT THE GAS PUMP for 5 hours while Quest RV brings us a different RV. This completely screws our schedule and crew #2 had to drive down to Hillsboro to meet us so crew #1 could drive themselves back to Dallas. BEATING! (And thanks to all of the LinkWorthers that helped us through that!!)

To everyone’s credit (except mine and maybe Ron’s), they all took it in stride and were super-excited to be heading down to Austin in this nice rig. Ron takes the wheel for this leg and no sooner had we gotten on the highway before an entirely new set of alarms lit up the dashboard like a Christmas tree. Seriously??? Are you joking??? Another call to Quest’s weary service tech assures us that this must be nothing and to simply “keep an eye on the gauges.” Wonderful….confidence abounds. NOT!

Again we make it to Austin (although MUCH later than we had planned) and parked the RV. (It does work perfectly while parked, I should add.) We do the rest of the trade show, we pack up the crew and all of our stuff, and we depart Austin. Heading home now, killer. It’s been a long week!

Ahem…we’re approaching Hillsboro again. Guess what? All of our lights (including headlights) begin to grow alarmingly dim. It’s 10pm…we can’t see a thing….and we must pull this f*$#in’ bus over AGAIN. This time, though, we’re not in the cozy bosom of a truck stop. No, sadly, we’re in the seedy confines of a XXX shop’s parking lot. (KILL ME NOW.) Another phone call to Quest, whose number I still have memorized, results in our using a backup power-system on board the RV that “should” get us home without problem. It does. Now for the fun stuff….

At some point in our journey, I put a nasty scrape on the driver’s side of the RV. Not exactly sure how it happened, but it’s there and I am more than happy to part ways with the $1000 deductible for the insurance we had purchased. I just wanted to be done with it. But, Quest felt a little differently. In addition to the deductible, they wish to charge me an additional $2400 for “loss of use” while the RV is being repaired. Mind you, this thing is not out of commission…it’s scratched! It had some scratches when we got it, too, but they sure as hell still let us drive off in it. So, that’s a LOAD OF SHIT, to put it mildly. Did I ask for reimbursement for the 12 hours of our “loss of use”??? No. Hell, I didn’t even ask for an apology, but they were more than happy to slap me in the face with this ridiculous charge.

In the end, we had to split this “loss of use” charge with them in addition to paying our deductible. We’re none too happy and as a result, we have bestowed upon Quest RV a LinkWorth Hall of Shame award.

RV really does stand for “ruins vacations.”

It is Time For A ROAD TRIP!

Tomorrow (Friday March 13th) we will be loading up and heading to Austin, TX for the SXSW Interactive and Music conferences. It is, by far, the most fun conference we go to each year. You can go and check this to know more about the musical festival.

We have lots of fun things to give away at the booth and we are looking forward to meeting everyone and having a great time.

If you see this coming down the road, throw us your best rocker horns!

It’s going to be a ton of fun. We also have day passes to the SXSW Interactive trade show floor. It’s a $75 value, so if you are interested in coming to the floor, let us know and we can hook you up with a free pass.

Need More Powerful Analytics?

Analytics is a necessary part of any online marketing campaign, right? Of course it is. And as the online marketing industry grows, so should the level of sophistication in which we analyze our data with a storyboard template. I’m certainly guilty of relying on what I’ll refer to as “status quo” metrics, meaning; I’m only paying attention to data that I’ve always considered to be important…not much else.

I was recently enlightened by a long-time friend and business associate who I believe has a truly unique approach to mining useful data and presenting eye-opening questions that have not been asked previously. The company is called DatabaseDNA and while it’s evident that this is not a web design or marketing firm; the nuts & bolts of what they actually provide is fascinating. One of the company’s owners, Tom Kapurch, has graciously offered to take on a few “pro bono” projects just to show the world what DatabaseDNA is capable of so we took the bait. And so can you, if you’re interested.

But let’s hear it straight from the horses mouth, shall we? I asked Tom for his description of DatabaseDNA and here’s what he had to say…

A better way of determining “what is important to know.”

Webster’s defines the word intelligence as the ability to learn … or deal with new or trying situations, or reason … and the skilled use of reason (and) the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly.

You won’t find a strict definition of business intelligence in Webster’s but when you search the term on the internet you will be directed to a variety of very sophisticated product sites powered by Microsoft, IBM, Cognos and SAS, to name a few.

A review of their products and services will offer terms such as analytics, dashboards, scorecards, data mining, corporate performance management (CPM) and compare business costs. And, as you search the resources of many companies you will learn many of their collective human resources reflect expertise with these systems. But … do they necessarily have the capability or experience to provide real intelligence or the capacity to provide the abstract knowledge hidden within the data and present these as actionable information?

To the best of our knowledge, our service provides the most unique analytical approach to business intelligence development. It relies on combined technology applications used in government intelligence traffic analysis, consumer and B2B marketing research, operations research and statistical quality control. The related SW program is designed to effectively integrate with any legacy or even desk top system.

With knowledge gained through patterns we call “information emergence” and trends that rely on a unique data measurement and metric development algorithm that goes beyond ‘static,’ conventional statistics, our process uses an experimental AND exploratory method for data mining and “on the fly” analytics. We further provide a highly visual output, whose displays lend to distributed cognitive understanding and consequent tasking in the decision-making process.

One of the most salient features of our process is its dependence on the effective identification of a ‘mid’ or ‘operational level’ of information (between a level of strategy and tactics) with an objective ‘categorization’ of data at this mid level.

This critical elements in this process to optimize decision-making at multiple, integrated management levels to:

1. Reduce dependence on management’s (often times) faulty perception of specific information’s value and relevance,
2. Provide improved specifications for information management and data collection and storage rules, and
3. Spread and reduces risk across key decision nodes at multiple levels of business management.

Our analytics process is not designed to replace legacy HW and SW systems that do an effective job of collecting, storing and distributing large volumes of data.

It is an effective tool to improve the use of these resources to gain a better understanding of “what is important to know.”

In short, it means that you can give these guys data of any type and they can tell you things about it that you never knew. I’m not really able to share the capacity in which we used DatabaseDNA, but I can tell you that we were deeply enlightened in a few areas. If you are looking for a marketing agency based in Idaho, check out the Boise SEO agency plans.

And as I mentioned above, these guys are taking on a few LinkWorth-referred projects for nothing in return other than, perhaps, some linkage and honest recommendations. Contact Tom and he’ll answer any questions you might have.

Minor Update

Just a little heads up, we have locked our system for a short time to add a minor update.

It will be be unlocked shortly.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

******UPDATE*******
We’re back!!

SXSW 2009: Shwag Sneak Peek

I’m really, really, really fired up for SXSW in a couple weeks. In fact, our entire company is because the vast majority of us will be there for at least part of it. Last year was our virgin SXSW experience and we pretty much knew the instant we got there that this would become a staple of our annual trade-show tour.

Because it’s Austin, because it’s SXSW, and because there is such a unique vibe to this event, you can’t help but want to do something extra cool for this show. And while last year we did things pretty modestly; I think this year we’re poised to make a bigger splash. For example, we’re not just getting a garden variety hotel room; we’ve rented a block of rooms with an adjoining party suite. We’re not just going to caravan down there or jump on a Southwest flight; we’re loading up the entire staff in a friggin’ tour bus and taking a road trip! And we’re not just handing out the same old shwag at the booth; we’re feeling more SXSW-y and have come up with some cool stuff in order to embrace what this event is really all about.

I won’t reveal everything we have in store, but I’m so happy with the way one of our gimmicks has turned out that I wanted to share it with the whole LinkWorth community. Check these out…

Get it? SXSW? Music? Guitars? Guitar picks???

LinkWorth is ready to rock SXSW. Come see us and pick up a few picks and other surprises…you might even find yourself with some new ink and cold hard cash in your pocket!

Temporary Outage Today

Just wanted to report to everyone we had a database failure today that caused us to be offline for less than 10 minutes.

We found and corrected the issue and apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused.

Meet The New Guy: Ben Edger

We have a few new faces around here so I thought it might be a good idea to put one of our new developers, Ben Edger, on the spot with a few questions to give the rest of the crew some insight as to what makes him tick. It’s no secret that we like to have a little fun with our employees so we’ll give this a shot and see how it pans out.

I present to you the first installment of “Meet The New Guy.” If it works, look for a few more in the near future. Now let’s get to meeting our new guy…

Matt:
You recently graduated….what was your degree in and where did you get it?

Ben:
I graduated from Texas State Technical College – Waco with an AAS in Web Design and an AAS in Web Development.

Matt:
What made you choose this path?

Ben:
My step-dad was/is a developer. When I was younger I always thought it was interesting to write HTML and I created my first Web site at age 12. Yes, it looks horrible compared to my new one. Web wasn’t my first choice though. I wanted to be a chef first but when I was in 12th grade I had a Dreamweaver class that showed me I was much better with computer then cooking.

Matt:
I think it’s safe to say that you were meant for web development if you started writing HTML at age 12. I’d say cooking is a good “minor,” though….do you still cook a lot? What’s your specialty? Let me guess: stuffed lobster tail accompanied with sauteed shrimp & scallop scampi??

Ben:
When I do cook, which tends to be far and in-between, I usually love to make Italian food. You’ll never catch me cooking seafood, EVER. If I get a strong smell of seafood, the real fishy smell, I get sick to my stomach. It’s been that way since I was younger. I don’t really know why though. I can’t even cross the seafood section in Wal*Mart without having to hold my breathe until I think I am far enough away from the smell.

Matt:
Duly noted. Seafood buffet. Next week. It’s on.

What’s your favorite thing to do on a computer?

Ben:
My favorite thing to do on the computer is to play video games and gamble with Cozino games, of course. I am a huge World of Warcraft fan and I’ve been playing it for about 2 years and 2 months. I am not limited to only playing Warcraft, I grew up playing games from just about every genre. That includes NES, Sega, Playstation, Xbox, etc.. I also enjoy working on my Web site, surfing YouTube or just chatting with the friends on Yahoo/AIM.

Matt:
That’s right…you’re a big-time gamer. I know very little about WoW, but what I do know is that it is insanely popular. Were you ever into D&D or any other offline RPGs? And tell me about your faction/class/race/whatever-the-hell your WoW character is about…if that even makes sense.

Ben:
I have played a lot of games from MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, to the table top games, like Warhammer. Warhammer really isn’t an RPG but you build and paint an army to ‘fight’ against another player. A lot of people get caught up in it and start to act like the army they field. I never really got into D&D but I have friends that play and I know a lot of the lingo that goes along with the game. I am apart of the SCA though. That’s a group of people that do LARP but not in the sense of magical creatures. You can read some about that at www.sca.org. In World of Warcraft, I play for the Horde (faction) as an Orc (race) Warrior (class). That means I run around and hit other players or ‘mobs’ (random environment creatures) with weapons in hand-to-hand combat. I can talk about Warcaft and games all day, so I am going to move to the next question.

Matt:
I’ll say when it’s time to move on to the next question, sir. Okay…let’s move on.

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

Ben:
Only one song? I don’t think one song would keep me going for very long. I like music but I like to find new music. Most the time I will listen to Pandora Radio (pandora.com) because it will throw songs in that I never heard before but might like to hear. The song that I listen to the most, currently, is Hide and Seek by Namie Amuro. Most the music I listen to is Metal though.

Matt:
Ok, ok…now I’ve stumbled into it. You love metal but right now you’re listening to Namie Amuro the most?? Wow…talk about musical diversity. I, too, tend to dig the heavier end of the music spectrum but I’ve got countless guilty pleasures as well. What metal bands are you into? Do you like seeing live shows? Are you a MOSHER???

Ben:
I listen to a lot of music all the time. My iPod has about 2,700 songs (which is barely anything) on it and they’re all sorts of genres. I do love metal and I’ve been to a Korn and Slipknot concert. I wasn’t able to get in the mosh pit but I would have if I was given the chance. When I got back from both concerts, I wasn’t able to move my neck from all the head banging and rocking out. I never buy CDs though, that’s my big downfall on such a low music collection. I download just the songs that I want from iTunes or get them from my friends.

Matt:
It wasn’t a good show unless you’re physically impaired for the next couple days! I’ve seen Korn; it was the loudest concert I’ve ever been to and I’m pretty sure I have some permanent hearing loss as a result. Good times. (And talk to me about a streaming mp3 ripper…I’ve got one you might like so you can bulk up that Library Solutions.)

What’s your favorite movie of all time?

Ben:
Most the time I say Event Horizon but for some reason Monty Python and the Holy Grail came to mind. That movie, and the rest of Monty Python, makes me laugh all the time. I own the Holy Grail and Life of Brian. I go back and watch them from time to time and just laugh. I love movies though. I will go and see any movie if I have the chance. I buy a lot of them from the Movies on Demand because I think it the long run it’s cheaper. If the movie is good enough, or I think it will be, I’ll go to the movie theater and see it.

Matt:
Now this was a lead-in question because I thought FOR SURE you were going to say Star Wars. (Although I absolutely LOVE the Monty Python flicks…hilarious!) When you first started working here, Ron and I took you to lunch and you told us about some Star Wars “memorabilia” you have. Care to share with the class?

Ben:
I love Star Wars but it’s not my all time favorite. I do own some Star Wars memorabilia. They are the Clone Trooper helmet and the Darth Vader helmet. I love the Clone Trooper helmet, it’s so much better made then the Darth Vader one that I got. I meant to bring it to the office but every time I get up I always get caught up in getting ready to leave that I forget the helmet. Someone text me in the morning and remind me!

No reminder was necessary. Check out Clone Trooper Ben. He wore this in to the office yesterday and I love it. Full-throttle coding requires a helmet!

Matt:
You seem like a really easy going person. What’s your biggest pet peeve? Seriously, I want to know what really pisses you off!

Ben:
Things that piss me off. I hate when people tell the wrong direction. Example: We live north of Austin. I hate when people say, “We’re going up to Austin this weekend.” How hard is it to look at a map? Honestly. I hate when people talk about something they don’t know about or try to claim they’re an expert at the subject. Example: Some guy in Best Buy tried to tell me that they didn’t make video cards for laptops. He worked for Best Buy. I just walked away from him to find someone who had a brain to help me.

Matt:
HAA! Well I’ll keep that in mind this weekend when I go down Oklahoma City for the top secret WoW power-leveling workshop that only Best Buy employees who work in laptop sales are allowed to attend.

Ben:
I wouldn’t trust those guys. They’ll tell you all the wrong information. =P

Matt:
Your 21st birthday is approaching. How are you going to celebrate?

Ben:
Yes, my big 2-1 is coming but I don’t quite know what I am going to be doing. My birthday is going to be on a Sunday this year. That means work the next day. I think we’re going to wait for the following weekend to go out and party it up. That way I wouldn’t have to call in being ‘sick’ (hung over). What are we going to do? What else? Hit the bar with my older brother and some friends. No worries though, I always have a DD to get me home.

Matt:
You’ll soon learn that Sunday nights are no obstacle, young jedi. Since you claim to ALWAYS have a designated driver, I have to assume that you have illegally hit the sauce before. What’s your preference? Beer? Whiskey? Tequila? Moonshine?? (This information will go in your file. LinkWorth is very sensitive to our employees’ alcoholic preference.)

Ben:
I don’t know what you’re talking about… okay, okay… Yes, I’ve drank before… this IS Texas. Isn’t it a requirement? I am not much of a beer fan. I will drink it if it’s the only thing around but if I can avoid it, I will. I like to drink Vodka, Schnapps and stuff like that. Since I can’t really buy it right now, I take what I can get. You know what I am talking about? I don’t drink a lot though. I have to be in the mood or it has to be an occasion for me to put a few back. The last time that I went drinking was New Years of ’08 and that was some fun times. I try to keep those night spread out for now.

Good stuff, Benny. Thanks for taking some time out for me and being a good sport. Welcome to LinkWorth!

Video Tutorials Preview

Here at LinkWorth, we are always trying to think of ways to help our users better satisfy their online marketing needs. One thing we want to do is make it as easy as possible for new users to become familiar with using the Control Center, so they can jump right into using LinkWorth in order to promote or monetize their websites.  In this spirit, we are producing a video tutorial series to teach everyone the ends and outs of each and every LinkWorth Product.  We would like to give everyone a sneak peak of what to expect in the tutorials and maybe get some feedback on what would be the most beneficial to all of our users.  Check out our preview tutorial for imaginationcreations.com below and feel free to leave comments, we will use your input in the development of future tutorials.

LinkWorth On Ice

In Dallas, frozen precipitation can pretty much shut the city down. People freak out and either drive the complete opposite way you’re supposed to drive on slippery days, or they just refuse to leave the house (notice how full our parking lot is).

We shot a little video of a view into LinkWorth during an icy day.

First is Matt sliding down the hill with cardboard:

Next up is me (Ron) being too worried about eating it:

Finally, Matt decides to give it a shot on his feet, post ankle surgery and all:

SMX West – Santa Clara – Coupon

Planning on attending Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West in Santa Clara? If you haven’t registered yet, save 10% on registration with our coupon code. Use:

• smx10linkworth

LinkWorth will have a booth at this event and hope you can stop by and say “hi”. Search Marketing Expo always puts together a fun and educational event and I’m sure it will only continue to get better. If you’ve never been to one, it’s one of the more well known trade shows in the search industry.

Other upcoming LinkWorth shows to keep an eye out for are:

SXSW Interactive – Austin – March 13-16
SXSW Music – Austin – March 17-20
Ad-Tech – San Francisco – April 21-22

We will have a booth at the above mentioned trade shows. So please stop by if you attend.