Author Archive

I Go Buy with a Little Help from My Friends

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

My family was recently in Boulder, CO—a place we had hitherto not been. Nice town, but where to go?
We spent most of our time at The Spot rock climbing gym because our kids were competing in the bouldering national championships. After a day of intense heart-stopping competition, with thrills and spills set against […]

Dealing with Negative Reviews

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

Following up on last month’s column, The Omniscient Jerk, which examined the basics associated with businesses being listed in local listing and results, I now want to take a look at the logical next consideration:
How can businesses respond when they receive less-than-favorable reviews?
Being listed is one thing, but once your business gets noticed, there will […]

The Omniscient Jerk

Monday, January 28th, 2008

“The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!” Steve Martin’s character in the movie The Jerk is ecstatic. He rifles through the pages and finds his name. “I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday!” He knows the importance of being listed. “This is the kind […]

Coining a New Day: Local Tuesday

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Black Friday marked the start of another holiday shopping season—a truly local activity. In recognition of the growing influence that local search sites have on offline shopping, I wrote this article and posted it on another popular Internet blog. I thought it was worth sharing here as well. All the best for […]

The Other Election Day

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Today is Election Day. The Other Election Day really—when periodically we as citizens gather to exercise our right to vote for governors, mayors, city councils, propositions, initiatives, referendums, etc. While we peruse the positioning statements of local candidates today, we will all continue to cast votes tomorrow and the next day.
Election fraud? […]

How Sputnik changed local search

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

Fifty years ago the Soviets launched Sputnik, and local search was forever changed.
Last week I was invited to speak at the IEEE Professional Communication Society’s 50th-anniversary conference and provide a retrospective of local search.
In 1957, searching for information meant going to the library. And local search meant using a phone book.
On October 4 of […]

OpenList.com is Live!

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

We generally try to stay away from too much self-promotion here on the blog, but today’s a pretty important day for many of us who’ve been ‘living’ local for the past many months: After launching more than 100,000 locally focused Web sites in June, we are really excited to announce the launch of […]