Seven2: Nick Murto

Review of Bill Morin, WAM Construction of Spokane WA

2010-01-19T11:49:00.001-08:00

I hired Bill Morin of Spokane based WAM Construction to build my house and I can’t tell you how disappointed I was both in his level of professionalism and quality of construction. I would never recommend using Bill Morin or WAM Construction in Spokane or wherever you might be. In the construction of my house I had many issues with lack of project management skills. Conversations would be forgotten, details were often neglected and subs were not lined up to get to my project in time. Also in my review of Bill Morin and WAM Construction of Spokane I’d have to mention that there were numerous quality of construction and completion issues. So many there were never fixed or completed that I had to hire an attorney to try and get Bill Morin to come back to my house and finish or fix the work. If you have any questions or for some reason are still considering hiring Bill Morin or WAM Construction in Spokane please email or call me anytime. Good luck!

Twitter: Back at it, again.

2009-03-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

I gave up on Twitter a couple of years ago, but it's been getting so much buzz that I thought I'd better give it another try and it turns out that I'm loving it again.

I'm still searching for just the right business case for it, but here are some of my Twitter accounts and what I hope to get out of them:

Twitter.com/Murtopia - My personal tweets. Using this to follow a few celebs if they are good such as Lance Armstrong and Dr. Drew. I also follow a lot of my friends and coworkers here. It's a great way to keep in touch.

Twitter.com/Seven2_ - The official Seven2 company tweets. We're making announcemnts about our current projects, following our travels and providing a glimpse of what life inside Seven2 is all about. We hope that it helps us to find more great employees and maybe helps our clients to get to know us a little better.

Twitter.com/Wakefirst - Wakefirst (wakefirst.com) is my wakeboarding social network that uses the Ning platform. I'm using Twitter to track any person or company that tweets about wakeboarding. Hopefully I can use this to become one of the best Twitter pages to aggregate all of the best wakeboarding chat. I'm also using this feed to provide great content on Wakefirst. Hopefully all of this helps to drive more traffic to Wakefirst.

Boxee

2008-12-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

I have a new found love. Boxee.tv is exactly what I've been looking for over the past year and a half.

I don't have cable TV at home, but just have a Mac Mini plugged into my 42 inch LCD TV. It's great for everything, and I watch all of my favorite shows online and also use the Netflix "Watch it Now" service a bunch too.

Boxee is a stand alone app that consolidates all of those things and more into one Front Rox like interface. You just use the Apple Remote in Boxee and you can browse TV and movies.

Additionally Boxee will access all of your media stored on your computer. Now all audio and video files are at my fingertips without leaving the couch!

Seven2 Launches Our Own iPhone Snow Report Application

2008-12-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

We recently launched two new applications available for the Apple iPhone. They are both ski and snow reports, one is free and can track two mountain resorts while the other can track up to 18 resorts at a cost of only $0.99

So far the reviews have been great, and the paid app actually is more popular than the free app. We'll have to see how it goes over the summer.

You can find the app on iTunes here: http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/browserRedirect?url=itms%253A%252F%252Fax.itunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.
woa%252Fwa%252FviewSoftware%253Fid%253D297362767%2526mt%253D8

Where is everyone?!

2008-07-11T08:08:00.001-07:00

I can't seem to find anyone in advertising or marketing today. I guess they are all still in line trying to buy a new iPhone...

I wonder if today should be a holiday for ad shops.

Sharing My Calendar with TimeBridge

2008-05-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

My new favorite web app is TimeBridge, a great utility that allows me to share my Microsoft Exchange calendar with anyone I choose.

In the past it's been difficult to set up meetings with my clients since they can't view my calendar. So I send them a few available times and they see if it works with their schedules. Often times there isn't a time that works so we have to repeat the process until something sticks.

Now I just send them a link to my online TimeBridge calendar and they can view my schedule and set meeting times for me. A small Outlook extension keeps both calendars in sync and up to date. Check it out at: http://timebridge.com

Tom Green Visits Seven2

2008-05-04T22:09:00.001-07:00

Here's some vid of him wearing our shirt:

Lindsey in the America's Kids Race

2008-04-27T19:32:00.001-07:00

This past weekend in Spokane. As a five year old they run a half mile, not bad!

Mario Kart Wii

2008-04-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

I can't wait for this game to come out! I think it will be available on Sunday, I hope I can find a copy. They even made a widget for this one, get it at: http://www.mariokart.com/wii/

Hulu - Now Open for Me!

2008-01-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

I got my Hulu invite this weekend via InviteShare and I'm loving it. It's feeds on my need for just one screen. You can't beat all of the programming found there. Check it out: http://www.hulu.com

I can wait to catch up on The Family Guy, Arrested Development, The Simpsons and others!

Microsoft Surface

2008-01-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

After having my iPhone for a couple of months now, I really think that multi-touch computing will be hot. (I still expect Apple to release one at this years MacWorld)

The Microsoft Surface is pretty sick - we'll be working on a project using those starting very soon. Check it out: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Photos from Powder Church!

2007-11-12T20:21:00.000-08:00

Check out these bad ass photos from Powder Church:

Find more photos like this on Powder Church

Announcing The Launch of Powder Church

2007-11-10T08:53:00.000-08:00

I just launched Powder Church, an new social network on Ning. This past summer I launched Wakefirst, the wakeboarding social network that has been very successful at supporting wakeboard events, fans and participants.

Like Wakefirst, Powder Church is a social network aimed at bringing skiers, snowboarders and winter sports fans together to share their experiences. Check it out if you have a minute and be sure to post some pictures and videos.

PowderChurch.com

Amazon's New Music Store

2007-09-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

I just made my first purchase using Amazon's new mp3 download store, AmazonMP3. First off, it's sweet because the mp3 has no DRM, so I can use the song however I want and transfer it between any of my computers and players.

Amazon has also created iTunes integration. Once you install their mp3 downloader any purchase will be automatically added to your iTunes library! The download of this app was easy and fast on Windows XP. My first purchase was added right into the library and it even had the artwork added too! Good thinking Amazon.

The Amazon store isn't nearly as sexy as the Apple store, but the songs are cheaper, DRM free and easy to use. That's a win for me.

A Radix Hymn Goes Live

2007-09-14T06:28:00.000-07:00

We just launched "A Radix Hymn" for Ronix and Chad Sharpe. Chad is one of the professional wakeboarders on the Ronix team. He'll be making posts and uploading pictures from his day to day life here on A Radix Hymn.

It's a sweet blog, check it out: http://www.aradixhymn.com/

Wakefirst getting some props

2007-07-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

Check it out: Ning has featured Wakefirst on their blog: http://blog.ning.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/779

Thanks Gina!

Why does the Army hate us?

2007-07-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

Were we really getting a DOS attack from the Army? It looks like we were getting 5-20 connections a second from pomproxy.monterey.army.mil

WTF? You be the judge.

Why I'm So Tired

2007-06-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

I've been in a Nike+ Challenge with some friends for the past week and a half. The challenge is to see who runs the most miles in 30 days. I'm surprised at how motivating this is. We're all looking for that extra edge - which might be running two or even three times a day!

Right now it's Jeff, Noel, Jason and myself. So far it's a close race, you can track the progress here:

Good Times!

What's Wrong with Joost

2007-06-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

While I generally like the idea of Joost in general, I have a couple problems with it. My home setup has a Mac Mini connected directly to a 42 inch Vizio LCD TV.

First, I love that Joost works so well with the Front Row remote control. Hitting MENU brings up the main Joost menu and the control buttons easily allow me to access all of the channels and the sub content of each channel. They have done such a great job with this that I wouldn't change a thing.

The picture quality on my tv is heavily compressed though. Some of the content is full screen and other is standard def and has black bars on the right and left. If they could increase the video quality I bet more people would be interested.

My main complaint happened today as my four year old daughter was watching original Saturday morning cartoons of Casper the Friendly Ghost. There are commercials that pop up at various times and the first one was for Kraft Easy Mac - this spot played about 3 times without showing any other spots. Then came a preview for Hostel 3 (or 2 - so hard to tell). The commercial is dark and scary and not at all suitable for a four year old. I'm pretty sure you'd never see an ad like that on Cartoon Network or Nick Jr. - They really need to work on placing ads based on their demo.

More on the Wakeboarding Front

2007-06-01T10:21:00.001-07:00

Launched an new wakeborading blog about Wakefirst over at Wakefirst.blogger.com - I'm using it to cover some of the info and help promote wakeboarding on Wakefirst!

Check out the wakeboarding blog here: wakefirst.blogspot.com

Find out more about Wakefirst here: Wakefirst.com

Agora Awards

2007-05-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

Seven2 is a finalist in the Spokane Agora Awards. The award presentation is tonight, and we'll see how we do. We've been nominated as a small business and have been through many rounds of applications, interviews and such.

It's an honor to be nominated. We're up against an orthadontist, a meat packer and a CPA. All very competitive candidates.

More to come...

Hot Wakeboard on Wakeboard Action at Wakefirst!

2007-05-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

We now have the url http://www.wakefirst.com set up and running. We're calling ourselves the Wakeboard capital of the internet, or should it be internets?!

Feel free to blog, upload photos and video or really just do anything you want in relation to wakeboarding!

Wakefirst Beta Goes Live!

2007-03-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

The Wakefirst wakeboarding community site recently went live. It's currently at Wakefirst.com

Users can create their own profiles and keep in touch with other wakeboarders while they learn and chat about wakeboarding.

Best Music On Campus, Conan Likes it!

2007-03-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Conan O'Brien was recently talking about a promotion with one of our sites, Best Music on Campus, we found his video on YouTube, check it out

For more of our stuff check out Seven2.net

Netflix - Watch it Now

2007-03-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

I finally was able to get the "Watch Now" feature activated for my Netflix account! I love it, but the library is pretty small. I was hoping that it would be their entire library, oh well, maybe later.

The service is great, on my cable modem and wifi network the video started playing almost instantly. The best part is that I can plug my laptop into my new Vizio LCD tv and get a perfect full screen picture.

The fee setup is great too, you get one hour of watching each month for each dollar you spend on your monthly account.

Wii Makes Me Sleepy

2006-11-25T14:50:00.000-08:00

I picked up my new Wii on Monday! (Thanks to Dano for getting us into the NOA Store!)

The Wii is amazing - everyone loves to play it! So far my favorite game on Wii Sports is Bowling, but Zelda is darn cool. What surprised my the most is how easy it is for non gamers to pick up a controller and play (and get addicted) without any real learning curve. My wife, who uses her mouse upsidedown (don't ask) always has a tough time playing video games because the controller seems backwards to her. She picked it up and was playing right away!

All I can say is that after a couple of good boxing sessions, I needed a nap. And my bicepts and shoulders were sore the next morning!

Check it all out at: Nintendo.com

Holy Bangkok Thai!!

2006-11-25T14:48:00.000-08:00

Thought that I had already eaten the best Thai in Spokane… I was wrong. Bangkok Thai in my new favorite! Their Curries and Phad Thai are amazing. It helps that they deliver, but their restaurant is beautiful. Check out their site at: http://www.spokanebangkokthai.com/

Flock and Blogger - Making it work

2006-08-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

I've found a great way to make Flock finally accept my Blogger account. Take a look here if you are having errors setting it up: Blogger API Issues?

technorati tags:Flock, blogger, setup

Blogged with Flock

My new favorite gadget: Nike+

2006-08-04T21:05:00.000-07:00

I've been back into jogging for a few months now and I bought the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit a few weeks ago. Of course I had to get new shoes, an armband and the Sport Kit (almost $200 total) but the end result is that I'm actually running more and faster than I had been in the past.

Before the Nike+ I would just use my Timex and track my total times. Now that I'm uploading my runs to the Nike+ site, I'm spending time tracking, comparing and goal setting every day. I'm a bit addicted actually.

There is so much to do on the site. I can even challenge friends to virtual races. I just hope that they keep adding more features. More to come...

Snakes On MySpace!

2006-06-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

Oh hells yeah! We just launched Snakes On MySpace - where you can snakify your MySpace page. That's right, we've got mutha fuckin' snakes! Is your plain old page way too boring for you? Just follow the easy to understand instructions and you'll be up and running in minutes.

Thanks to New Line for letting us try this out. We love the MySpace promos here at Seven2.

Seven2 Getting Props for Netflix

2006-05-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

Not a bad article that sizes up the Web's biggest spenders. Our own Reverend Tyler Lafferty got some good ink in regards to the work we did for Netflix, which happened to be very effective by the way. Here's the article on MediaPost.

Nintendo E3 2006

2006-04-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'll be at E3 in a little over a week; I can't wait to play the Wii. I hear there is a new racing game that Nintendo might be talking about that uses the new controller in to radically change the way we play racing games. Being a huge fan of racing games I can hardly wait. Throw in networked play and we should have a blast!

Last year I played the new Zelda on the Game Cube, but it still hasn't come out. Maybe they'll port it over to the Wii as well. Even if they don't, there will be a ton to do at the Nintendo booth.

I Heart Treo 700 Sync Errors

2006-04-25T10:49:00.000-07:00

I bought my Palm Treo 700w from Verizon in mid February and had nothing but trouble with the Exchange ActiveSync for the first 45 days. For a few minutes the Treo would sync up fine, then at a random interval I'd get an ActiveSync error. Typically I'd see errors more often then I'd have a successful sync.

The error codes were all over the board, but I usually saw 85010004, 85010001 and mostly 85010014. There is a good source for Exchange Error codes at: http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/faqs/activesync/exchange_errors.php

Over the month I spent easily a dozen hours on Verizon's tech support. Typically they'd try and help for a while, trying all the obvious stuff, then they'd bring someone from Palm on board. Palm support was knowledgeable in all cases but one, where I had to end the call because the guy on the phone barely knew how to use the internet.

With all the support calls we'd soft and hard reset the Treo. They had me re-set all of my settings and such over and over. But they were stumped because the device would sync for a minute then stop syncing later.

The solution! My IT guy Matt Cardoza found the solution on his own. I'm not sure if Palm or Verizon even knows how to do it right yet. Basically our Exchange server is set up to use multiple IP addresses, but Outlook Mobile Access on the server was set to only use one IP address. This is why I could connect every once in a while but get errors the other times.

In his words: Our Exchange server has multiple IP addresses, however the IIS Instance associated with OMA/OWA was only configured to accept connections from 1 IP Address.

I had to set the “IP Address” property in the IIS Instance that served /exchange (and all the other Exchange web folders) to accept “(All Unassigned)”.

Apparently the intermittent errors were due to the server going Round-robin with all the available IP Addresses, and by allowing all IP addresses, the authentication errors were resolved.

Once this easy fix was made my Treo 700 connects perfectly all of the time! I no longer see the 85010014 or any other error. Now I heart my Treo 700w.

Home of the Brave

2006-03-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

Here in Spokane some of my friends are shooting "Home of the Brave" - a movie with Sam Jackson (yeah, the guy from Snakes on a Plane)

Travis from Portland is the production secretary for the Home of the Brave shoot. He'll be blogging his experiences here: http://www.nxnw.net/blog/

Check it out, there's some cool stuff.

The Lamest Valentine Ever

2006-02-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

Does Go Daddy love us? They sent their customers an email today that links to a "special" Valentines Day message. It's hideous - don't even bother to go view it: Here.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

2006-01-17T19:24:00.000-08:00

Mac OSX on a PC - it's about damn time right? Now if I could only sync my treo, access an Exchange server and have the latest apps fully functional... Oh wait I do, I have an XP laptop.

Either way, I still love my old Mac cube.

Find out how to dual boot your PC to fun OSX here: DIGG.COM

Santa Smackdown!

2005-12-19T15:46:00.000-08:00

This is sweet! Okay, so we built Santa Smackdown but still, come on... It's fun. Right? Check out SantaSmackdown.com and let me know. Happy Holidays!

Pandora - Not the box

2005-12-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

I've been using Pandora all day now for my streaming radio. It's a relatively new site that streams music based on your listening preferences. Using the Music Genome Project as the basis to do music analysis, they map out characteristics of each song and use those characteristics to find music matches.

It's free with ads, or $32 for a year. Not bad at all.

Frappr! DS Friend Code Map

2005-11-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

I found a Frappr map listing DS friend codes this morning. I was the fifth person to join and I plan on telling more friends. The site is located at: http://www.frappr.com/dsfriendcode

Frappr uses Google maps to show a visual directory of group members. Not too many others in Spokane yet, but there is someone from Redmond!

Nintendo WFC: Mario Kart

2005-11-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Mario Kart DS since E3 in May where I stood in line after line just to play a few minutes of wifi head-to-head action. The game was released on 11.15 and with moderate success I was up and running in a matter of minutes.

I've now set up my DS to work on two separate wifi networks. My office connection was cake, all I had to do was have the DS find the network, then I typed in our office WEP security key which is 325gi8... just kidding. After that I was able to play against opponents across the region via wifi.

My home network was a bit tougher. I tried to follow the same procedures as at work, but when I went to test the connection I got an error code. The process went something like this:

Typed in the wrong WEP security code. 2 min
Couldn't remember my WEP key for home. 3 min
Had to access my wifi router's admin page to find out WEP key. Couldn't remember the url for that. 2 min
Found the URL, couldn't remember username and password. Figured it out after 5 tries. 2 min
Found WEP key, still got error (invalid IP number). Thought it would be great if the DS had a "renew IP address" option like my PC. Often times it helps when the PC gets a bad IP number. 5 min
Scratched my head. 1 min
Hopped on Nintendo's wifi site to enter in the error code, which was tough to understand and didn't help me out. 2 min
Found the "Router Config Support" page on Nintendo Wifi and easily located my router and found that it doesn't support Dynamic IP. Bummer since it's a pretty common Netgear. 1 min
Manually configured the DS to grab a static IP address. Also added a static IP to my router table for the MAC address of the DS. 1 min
Still errors, "settings are not complete"... Struggled, and discovered that I also needed to include a primary DNS. Where can I find that? Struggled some more and finally found it on my PC. 10 min
Success!! Total time was: 29 minutes, but now I'm set.

Now, I'm playing Mario Kart DS way too much. It's a blast and easy to play against friends directly or against any regional opponents. This is the best Mario Kart yet!

MPEG-2 to iPod Video on a PC + ReplayTV Stuff

2005-11-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

QuickTime on a PC sucks bad. I've been trying to get TV shows that have been recorded on my ReplayTV transferred over to my video iPod. The ReplayTV records shows in MPEG-2 format, but the iPod video needs to be in H.264 format, which is M4V, or MP4 (I think they are either the same or very similar).

Let me step back for a second. ReplayTV is the Betamax of the DVR world. I've had the ReplayTV for about 3 years now and love it. The features are very advanced and TIVO is just now catching up. Of course, I'm a realist and I know ReplayTV is dying, if not dead already.

The best features of my ReplayTV are:

1. Being able to download shows directly to your computer: There are applications (DV Archive) that work on both the Mac and the PC that easily allow you to do this. The downloaded file is in the MPEG-2 format which plays via most video players, but not automatically within QuickTime.

2. Being able to share shows with friends: I can share every recorded show up to 10 times with other Replay TV owners. A great web site called "Poopli" lets me search the recorded shows of other ReplayTV users and then request a download from them. It's great, free and the users are very generous.

3. Being able to add photos to my ReplayTV: I can upload pictures to my ReplayTV and have the images available as a slideshow. This works great when family comes over. We can all sit on the couch and take a look at the digital pictures on the big screen without having to crowd around the computer monitor. These pictures are also displayed as screen saver on the TV while we're pausing the program we are watching.

4. Being able to set recordings from a web page: ReplayTV has always had an online interface that allows the users to access their recording schedule while away from home. I can set shows to record, look at upcoming TV schedules and see what shows I have recorded.

Back to the iPod Video conversion...

Once you have an MPEG movie file on your computer that you would like to convert to watch on your iPod, go and download Videora iPod Converter. Videora is completely free and runs on Windows XP.

Prior to learning about Videora, I had to either open my video file in a video conversion program like Roxio and save it into a format QuickTime would understand, or spend $20 to get the right codec that would allow QuickTime to open the MPEG-2 file. Once QuickTime could open the file, I had to (first buy QT Pro for $30 then) select "export" and choose "Video to iPod". This would generate the correct file for my iPod.

The problem is that on the PC it seriously took 48 hours to convert a 30 minute video spot. Again, QuickTime sucks on a PC. My friends on a Mac could convert the file in about 2 hours. Still crazy for a 30 minute show.

Videora can instead open the original ReplayTV MPEG-2 file, and with one click convert the file right into the correct MP4 format. I tried this on a 90 minutes show last night, and within 2 hours the file was converted and ready to go on my iPod video.

To get the converted video onto my iPod, I simply drag the movie file into iTunes and drop it on the "library" item in the top left. It takes a second to come in, but next time I plug in my iPod, the video is instantly moved over. The quality is so good I can almost read the credits.

DVD to iPod Video on a Mac

2005-11-09T08:43:00.000-08:00

I'm predominately a PC user, but I still have an old Mac Cube I use at home to listen to internet radio. While searching for an easy way to transfer some of my favorite DVD's to my new iPod Video, I came across this powerful free software that would allow you to rip a DVD directly into the QuickTime mp4 format needed to play the movie on an iPod.

This video format is also known as H.264 - It allows for very small file size and great image quality.

The software is called "Handbrake" and it only runs on a Mac. I've never use software that was so easy to use. Literally one click to rip the DVD to iPod Video. Handbrake can be found at: http://handbrake.m0k.org/

On my old Mac Cube it took about 4 hours to rip the DVD (Batman Beyond). The resulting file was about 680 MB. The image quality is great and it only takes a couple minutes to transfer it to my iPod via iTunes.

Video Podcasting

2005-10-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

We've been thinking about it for months, and now it's a reality. Using Poderator you can now publish your own video podcast that is easily viewable through iTunes.

Video podcasting is really nothing different that traditional podcasting. Instead of linking to an MP3 file, you just link to your video file. So far we can confirm that .mov files are playable in iTunes, we'll be testing others shortly. Since we don't yet have a video iPod I can't confirm whether or not the video will play directly on the iPod at this time. I've heard there is a special format "H.264 video" that the video needs to be encoded to play on the iPod. It's a simple export from QT Pro.

To see a cheesy example we've added a test clip featuring Walker Texas Ranger to my Podcast: http://seven2.net/nicks_podcast/murto.xml

I've got my Micro!

2005-10-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Small is the new big! I picked up a Game Boy Micro last week. It's the coolest Nintendo handheld yet! The screen is so vibrant and so well backlit that it is playable in nearly any light conditions. This thing is going to be the hot item on many kids Christmas lists so far this year.

So far I have only one minor complaint. My hands are a bit large and there is a natural place for me to put my fingers on the shoulder buttons. When I push those buttons they depress and make a sound, but they don't actually do anything. You need to have your fingers over the middle of the button for it to actually depress. It's a little more awkward for me. Besides that I love it!

I've got my Nano!

2005-09-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

I went and picked up my iPod Nano the other day! Honestly I love it. I've got a shuffle, but my son uses it most of the time and it was a bit hard to listed to podcasts on it without a screen. I also have a first gen iPod 10GB. A good device, but come on, it's way old.

The installation was great and it even syncs with my Outlook contacts. I guess it is also supposed to sync up with my calendar, but so far that has not panned out.

Second to the Last Word on Google

2005-08-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

We actually hit the second position on a Google search for "Seven2" - not bad, within 2 months we went from page four to the number 2 spot. Oh yeah, we're experts now... ;)

Really it seems like the more links we had pointing to our site combined with the number of references to Seven2 on the page really effected our positioning. Honestly I also think our Meta tags helped some too, especially since the descriptions listed on Google is right out of those tags and not from any content on our page.

Poderator goes live!

2005-08-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

We launched Poderator last week! The idea behind it was that it was just too hard for your average Joe to create their own XML files to publish their podcast. We wanted to make a free, simple and easy to use tool that would allow users to publish their podcasts. The end result is Poderator.

Users still need to have a place to store their MP3 files and the XML file that we help them create, but once they do all they have to FTP them to their web server and they'll be set.

Once they create an account we save their file on our server so it's easy to add new podcasts on a regular basis. All the user has to do is log back in and add an MP3 file.

Now we just need to see if anyone wants to use it.

Needs More Cowbell

2005-08-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

Is this real? It looks like Christopher Walken might be running for president. I'm not sure what his politics are, but you gotta love the guy: http://www.walken2008.com

Trackbacks

2005-08-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

So I'm pretty rookie at this trackback thing. Just playing around, here is a link back to my spaces on MSN (which is fairly retarded). Read my Seven2 M Space blog info here.

Mobile Ringtones

2005-08-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

We've been looking for a way to allow our clients to add ringtones to their site. There are a bunch of cheap hacks, but the user experience isn't so hot. Just too many hoops to jump through for the average Joe.

After much web searching, we finally made contact with 3G Upload - these guys make it easy and affordable for us to add ringtones to our sites. Basically we provide them with MP3 files and they tweak them to fit a variety of phones, both MP3 and Polyphonic MIDI as well.

We then use their tools to build a download tool into our website design. Not bad, we hope to use them soon.

What the Google?

2005-08-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, we're done with our Google 30 Day Challenge... And in 30 days we went from 34th on the list to 5th!

We're not exactly sure how it happened, but here's a list of what we did to increase our search engine position in such a short time:

1. Blogging - We created our blogs and used them to link to our own site. The tought was that the more pages pointing to our owm site (Seven2.net), the more interested Google might be in us. From what we hear, Google really wants to deliver the most relevant results to their users. If many people are linking to a site it must be good right? Riiight... ;)

2. MoBlog - Similar to blogging, we used our moblog (seven2.textamerica.com) to link back to our site.

3. META Tags - We added relevant meta descriptions and keywords to each of our pages. Yes, each page has it's own unique meta tags. Also the tags were generated so that they matched words that were already on the page in html.

4. Site Content - We didn't really change anything here, but we did notice that the pages Google found and listed higher were the pages that had multiple references to Seven2. For us that is our news page. We list all of our press releases in order on a single html page. There are 38 references to Seven2 on that page. It looks like loading it up definately helps too. I'd just keep it relevant.

We'll keep on tracking, there is more to come. I hope we can stay on the first page of Google.

Poderator

2005-07-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

Poderator is a new idea that I had recently. From what I can find there is not an easy and free way to publish Podcasts. It's not hard for the average Joe to record a low-quality MP3 file, but publishing it is a bit confusing.

To publish your Podcast you typically need a knowledge of RSS 2.o with enclosures. It's not that hard to do manually, but it's not very pretty, and it's a little overwhelming for the average Podcaster.

Soon it will be free and easy for anyone to publish their own Podcast using Poderator. More to come soon...

2005-07-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Odeo Goes Live

2005-07-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

I'm beta testing Odeo, a new app for managing your Podcast subscriptions. It looks like they have two tools right now:

1. Manage and sync your MP3 player and podcast via their application. I believe it was built off of the iPodder framework. However, I use iTunes which now has the podcast directory and subscriptions built in. (even though I really like iPodder better).

2. A way to consolidate and manage all of your subscriptions in one place. They then offer an XML file that I can subscribe to in iTunes that pulls in all of my podcasts. It's a little strange, but I'll play with it.

They will be offering podcast publishing tools soon. That is the reason I really wanted to join in. I hope they will create an easy tool set to publish your own podcasts. So far it's been hard to find that, but maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places.

WooHoo! More Crazy Google Placements

2005-07-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, we're back moving in a positive direction. It's still pretty weird though. Right now we have:

#20 (page 2) - My Seven2 Moblog hosted with TextAmerica. Lot's of links to Seven2 throughout that for sure. However there is no mention of online marketing, just pictures of me in a Mexican wrestling mask I bought on eBay. Search for one here.

#29 (page 3) - Our Seven2 news page. I guess we use our own name a lot there. Good to know.

#30 (page 3) - My blog. Yeah this page right here. This is the first time I've even seen it listed in Google.

#40 (page 4) - The Seven2 Home page!! At the very bottom of page 4. I guess we need to mention our own name on that page over and over again. I'll go change that right now...

Googles is Crazies

2005-07-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, we actually slipped a few notches in our Google ratings (Now 35th). I hoped that searching for "Seven2" on Google would get us listed higher. We're an online ad agency and most likely people wouldn't be searching for us anyway, so it's more of a vanity thing.

What's really weird is that my Moblog ended up higher on the rankings than our site. It's located on TextAmerica where it's just a subdomain hosted for free. The Seven2 Moblog ended up in the 21st position. Very odd as there is little or no content there. I think Google is picking up my auto-signature from my phone that ends up being the caption for each image I post. I'll have to keep an eye on it and maybe add a better description to the Moblog.

Rent My Chest

2005-07-11T19:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, you can't rent mine. But I've rented Chris Pirillo's chest to help celebrate the Seven2's first anniversary. As soon as he posts the image you can we it here at Rentmychest.com

So far it's only $20 so it good fun. He'll also work with a female if that's the shot you need, but at $2k it's a little spendy for me.

It appears that even DeBeers has rented his chest. Not sure what they got out of it, but at least it shows they have a sense of humor. So far it looks like 85 people have taken the plunge. If nothing else Chris got to pocket about $1700.

I saw Chris speak at the DMA World in Seattle. It's put on by the Seattle DMA. They did a great job and most of the speakers had some good information, but by far Chris was the most animated. You may remember him from his TechTV days.

Our Google Challenge, Part II

2005-07-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

We've recently added some Meta tags as a first test. It's only been a day or so, but we've jumped up to spot number 32 on Google. That's still the fourth page, but it's early, I hope to move up a couple more screens if possible.

Search for Seven2 on Google here. Fingers crossed.

Timpani - LivePerson

2005-07-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'm demo'ing "Timpani" by LivePerson. It seems like it might be a good fit for one of our clients, CUE11. Honestly I'm not sure if the software will work from by blog spot but it's a decent place to try and see how things work.

If it does work I'm guessing you will see a pop up or other invitation to chat me up. If it doesn't I probably did something wrong or it's not supported in Blogger. I think the demo only works for a few days too.


	Live chat by LivePerson

SuperVerbs

2005-06-30T13:09:00.000-07:00

SuperVerbs

Our Google 30 Day Challenge

2005-06-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Last night I was doing some vanity searches in Google and found that our company "Seven2" came up 34th on the list. That's 4 pages in! One of the problems is that we are Seven2.net and not Seven2.com - The latter is a great paddle company and there is a lot if info about them online. Their site and stories about them take up most of the 33 listings before ours.

We've decided to spend 30 days trying a variety of methods to increase our position. As we go I'll list those here and give updates on our position along the way. I'd love to be listed in the top 10, but I'm realistic as well.

Tyler Lafferty will be helping me out as we go. You can view his blog here: superverbs.blogspot.com

Nintendo World Store

2005-06-29T21:59:00.000-07:00

We just launched the Nintendo World Store today. (NintendoWorldStore.com) It's a photo tour that shows off the latest and greatest Nintendo products. Back in early May, Brandon and I traveled to New York and met with photographer Jeff to shoot the store.

We spent 3 brief days there, but most of the shoot happened on one long night. We were able to have the store entirely to ourselves most of the time. I think our favorite part of the store was the game pod chairs. Nintendo customized three egg chairs by adding surround sound and a rumble pack into each chair! Once you settle down into the chair you have your own plasma screen hooked up to a GameCube loaded with all the latest games. We could have played for hours!

The Nintendo World Store is a gamers paradise for sure. It's a bit like taking Nintendo's booth at E3 and slamming it into an ultra hip, 2 story building connected to the Rockefeller Center. If I were you I'd get there as soon as I can.

The Things I Hear

2005-06-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of my favorite Podcasts. Mostly I use my Apple Shuffle to listen, but every once and a while I'll just use my first gen iPod. To download my Podcasts I use iPodder, it's very easy to use, works on both Mac and PC, and publishes everything right into iTunes.

iPodder creates a new playlist for each Podcast feed that I listen to. I then created a "smart playlist" that automatically consolidates each of the other playlists into one. Now when I plug in my Shuffle it is instantly updated with all of my latest Podcasts. It's pretty slick.

What I find myself listening to most often:

CNET Buzz Outloud, a five minute Podcast by Tom and Molly that keeps me up to date in all things tech. cnet.com
TWIT - This Week In Tech, a bunch of the old TechTV guys that are now out on their own. twit.tv
The Daily Source Code, Adam Curry's daily podcast. Honestly it's pretty long and he doesn't cover too much outside of his own life. If he could get it down to about 5 minutes I'd be stoked. curry.com

The Things I Read

2005-06-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my favorite online readings and resources:

Adverblog, Martina does a great job of keeping up with current marketing issues and campaigns. Most of the post are from Europe, but it all very relevant: adverblog.com
MMOOM, Making Money out of Mobile, another site maintained by Martina: mmoom.com
Marketing Profs, they offer a great email newsletter and most of the content is free: marketingprofs.com

Holy Weather Issues

2005-06-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

Things are crazy here in Spokane right now. We've got 60 MPH + winds and it's just starting to rain. My power and cable keeps going on and off and they say we are going to get a lightning storm over the next hours too. I guess it is so bad there was actually and emergency broadcast signal on TV and the radio.

I had only heard the test signals as a kid growing up. I had never really heard these used for real "emergencies" until I moved to Spokane. In the past 10 or so years I bet I've heard these things at least 5 times. Usually it's just for some sort of storm warning though. Right now the local news keeps popping up on tv and telling us how bad it is. They usually overplay things quite a bit though.

Rollin' Like VIPs

2005-06-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

We got the chance to sit right above the Mariners Dugout last night thanks to Dano. Great seats, I forget how much fun it is to watch live baseball. It was a great game, they lost after 13 innings though. We've posted pictures to our MoBlog here. We were so close that even our cruddy Treo 600 images looked great!

I Hate Phone Systems Volume II

2005-06-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

Seven2 is getting ready to move into our new office mid July. Again we need to start shopping for a phone system as the one we are using (BizFone") will be staying in with our current space. It's been a year since we went through it and it still sucks. You pay a lot but don't get much, oh well.

We're currently looking at one of three sytems, but can't decide.

Sitting in the Airport

2005-06-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

Our flight was delayed this morning, so Tyler and I have a few hours to kill in the lovely Spokane Airport. Not much to eat, just an A&W and some vending machines. Thank God there is Wifi here. But it still kills me that I have to pay for access in public places. They use Boingo here and it's a total rip off at $7 a day. Too bad the aiport didn't join the Spokane Hotzone, access would be free for anyone, at least for the first 2 hours. But really do you need more than that?

At least I can get caught up on some work, it's been crazy lately. Ah there is fun time tonight though. We're heading to the Mariners game and sitting front row. I'll be posting pictures to my MoBlog all night.

This is just a test

2005-06-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

You have to have a test the first time right?