So…the question is should i cancel my TV service? What’s the tradeoff?

Downsides (some temporary):

1. No more CNN, FOX, MSNBC, Live sports or anything live for that matter. Maybe losing cable news is a good thing anyways.

2. The only networks participating at launch are Fox & ABC (surely the others will follow though). No HBO, Showtime, NBC etc – YET.

3. Presumably you will have to wait a day or 2 after the episode airs before you can watch it. Spoiler alert!

4. Lifestyle networks that my wife loves (i.e HGTV, Food Network etc – are they ever going to get on board with this stuff?)

5. Is the remote bluetooth? If not you won’t be able to hide it. If it is, it won’t work with your universal remote. (update – it’s an IR remote)

6. Download caps with your ISP. Be aware of them and keep in mind a feature length movie in 720p HD will probably be 3-4GB.

At $0.99/episode that’s about $4/mo per show. For the price of my existing cable bill i could watch about 20 shows a month, every episode.

So it seems like for people who have larger cable bills (like me), and watch less than 20 shows this becomes pretty attractive. Really attractive.

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“Before the (Google) penalty, we had zero social media presence. We sort of looked at it like, “It must be nice to have the time to do that.” Now, as part of our whole strategy of never buying a link again, we blog about anything. We’re up to 3,200 Facebook fans. We Twitter every day. “
Ryan Abood – GourmetGiftBaskets.com

Sometimes people ask me if i can recommend an SEO company for their website because they want to be on page one. My advice is don’t waste your money. This article from Inc.com is a perfect example of why. It’s all about content marketing now folks!

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“I just checked out my website grade on grader.com and I’m down to a 51/100! What can I do? I’m nowhere to be found on Google. I’m beyond page 10, which means nobody is finding me.”

Maintaining a photography blog is tricky because you have to balance showing off your work with driving traffic to your site. Here are some tips i gave him to help him do both:

1) Your post titles & URL’s are date heavy.  Stop putting the date manually in your post titles because it is redundant, you want the url to be mostly useful relevant content – numbers are wasteful.  In this example, you want to get people searching for “cookie thief” vs “july 27th 2010″.  Notice the difference below:

Permalink: http://www.ninelivephotography.ca/2010/07/27/july-27th-2010-my-365-cookie-thief/ 
Post title: July 27th 2010 – my 365 – Cookie Thief

vs

Permalink: http://www.ninelivephotography.ca/2010/07/27/my-365-cookie-thief/ 
Post title: The Cookie Thief (i added the word ‘the’ in)

2) Amount of content.  Your posts tend to be very short, like a few sentences long.  There is nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t lend itself well to SEO because when the search engine looks at the page, they don’t see much content relevant to that keyword so it gets less weighting.  I’d also suggest linking out from your site more to other blogs, messageboards etc etc…

3) WordPress tweaks.  Some of this you’ve probably already done.  Do you have google webmaster tools setup?  Do you have the SEO all in one plugin installed?  Google sitemaps plugin?  These help make sure you are indexed faster.

4) Type of content.  Seems almost all of your posts are promoting your pictures.  Seeing your work once someone gets to the site is important in establishing trust/compentency and having them contact you for a quote etc – but it doesn’t do much to get them there.  There is a good marketing quote that goes something like “Nobody cares about your products / services.  What they care about is solving their problems.”  If i were you I would focus on photography tips, tricks, how to’s & tutorials because that is what people are searching for.  Doing that will drive much more traffic (potentially virally if it’s a good post), and establish you as a thought leader etc etc…all that will eventually lead to more photography work for you.

The other thing about those type of posts, is you can share them on facebook pages / message boards / digg etc and it drives traffic to your site without seeming like you are spamming your services.  ”hey just thought you guys would find this interesting since it’s relevant to the discussion going on here:….” – something like that.

Matt Cutts from Google also has some good tips for photographers looking to optimize their sites for search engines:

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To be fair, this issue may be specific to Canadian shipping addresses.

Around mid-May i ordered a Dodocase for my iPad. I knew it would be a long lead time for it to ship, but what they didn’t tell me was the ship time going outside the US is ridiculous. Approaching a month since it shipped and it still hasn’t arrived!

It takes just over a month to walk from San Francisco to my home in Milton ontario. So – something is very wrong with either:

a) Dodocase’s shipping process
b) The US postal service OR
c) Canadian customs

Why isn’t Dodocase offering other shipping methods (i.e Fedex / UPS etc…). I’m sure people will gladly pay extra to have a tracking number that works.

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No better way to start the work week than track 27 at union station

1. Kick it off with a 15 minute delay sitting on the tracks at Spadina.
2. Don’t apologize for the delay when we start moving again.
3. Take a few thousand commuters and drop them off at track 27. For those not familiar with track 27, it is the least desirable drop off point at Union Station in Toronto. It’s a very thin track waiting area so the exits are teeny tiny and it adds like 5-10 minutes to your commute just to get down the stairs & out of the fucking station, and for those travelling north (most commuters), it’s at the very far south end of Union.

At least increase the size / number of exits!

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Yeah, we were pretty far back.

Last night i packed up my air drums and headed into the city for Toronto’s very own Rush. Here’s the salient points:

- Neil Peart: he still has it, although damn he is looking old these days.
- Geddy Lee: the vox, the slappa da bas, the keyboards – BRILLIANT
- I now have an appreciation for the last 3 tracks on Moving Pictures (Camera Eye / Witch Hunt / Vital Signs)
- The older material was absolutely incredible, some of the newer stuff is good but it has a generic hard rock feel and is not as interesting as the more adventurous 70′s/80′s songs.
- The comedic videos throughout the show were fun, in particular the “i love you man” reprise at the end.
- Molson Amphitheater while fine once you get into the venue, is an absolute disaster to get in and out of in typical Toronto fashion.
- There is a sweet free parking area on the north side of the Gardiner Expressway just west of British Columbia on a side street.

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This is a funny photo gallery of 100 firework vendors all fighting each other for your mindshare, but i think it’s also a good metaphor for the state of most advertising these days. As Seth Godin says, when we are overwhelmed by choice we stop listening.

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