Being Mark Cohen

Google and Dell are purported to have negotiated a deal in which Dell will preinstall Google Desktop and the Google IE toolbar, as well as setting their PCs to use Google as the default search engine, according to Bloomberg. This is a step up on the last software deal Dell caught some heat for, the My Way spyware debacle. In an ultra-low margin industry like hardware and with constant competitive pressure to lower retail pricing I can understand Dell needing to tap alternative sources of revenue. I would also far rather have Dell deliver me a machine preloaded with Google software, which is generally considered to be stable, honest and reliable, than preloaded with software that is generally regarded as spyware.

It’s also a phenomenal defensive move by Google heading off Microsoft recent search-related moves to erode their market. One that does not leave Google perceived as whining to the courts and delivers Google an estimated 100 million new users of their desktop software over the life of the deal. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if an Australian media company cut a deal with key OEMs to cut off NineMSNs preinstalled user-base.

With Microsoft rumoured to be talking to Yahoo about teaming up to take on Google, and MySpace allegedly shopping around for the best deal for their search function, This is definitely not a single-front war.

Its amazing how many RFQs I am seeing that say “SEO” or “must have SEO” or “Must be Search Engine Optimized”. These are in the same RFQs where the prospective client is asking for a “fully flexible” solution. We probably need a form – letter response to send people explaining that the two concepts are mutually exclusive.

We cannot guarantee the content you put into a free-form wysiwyg editor is going to be search-engine friendly. We cannot even guarantee that it will always be compatible with all the browsers on the market, especially if you “roll your own” css. We cannot guarantee that the site you link to will exist tomorrow, nor that the site that links to you will still link to you tomorrow. We can’t even guarantee that Google will crawl your site. We especially cannot guarantee that the search terms people are typing in are the ones that your content is optimised for.

What we can do, however, is provide you with guidelines as to how you should be structuring your content so that it makes the most sense to a bot that can’t see colour or the fantastic work that our creative team comes up with. We can also put you in touch with some fantastic search engine marketing consultants who will help you with your in-page optimisations and just as importantly, with your paid search marketing strategies. If you are prepared to commit to spending a hundred grand on a web project, why not budget on a hundred and ten grand and run some optimised adwords campaigns.

Think of your new CMS as something like you standing on the side of the Cahill Expressway at 5:30pm with a sign that says “Apples for sale”. Thats your new shop on the web. How are you going to get anyone to stop? Spend a little and get a professional to throw some nails on the freeway in the right place. How d’you like them apples?

CeBit was a little more interesting this year. First off, let me say this: The Show Girls are back. If you were in any doubt as to whether we have another Bubble on our hands or not, the Eye Candy is back boys. The only show I’ve been to that had hotter showgirls was the motorcycle show last year. I can’t pull a Ben Barren and put the pics up though, as my wife would kill me

If you take each stall at the show as a vote for what’s going on in the industry, content and document management must be the single hottest area in IT right now. The general focus is around managing and getting value out of the masses of electronic documents that we have aggregated over the last decade. There is also significant buzz around project, process and lifecycle management. *Yaaawn*. We’ve been doing this stuff for the better part of a decade, nothing new. We were in this business before it was a hot spot. The knowledge management market could be compared to a kid’s lolly dropped in the garden. right now it’s covered in thousands of ants, all carting away as much of the sugar as they can. I don’t want to be the little ant left wandering around saying “where’d everybody go?” when the sugar runs out.

One of the highlights of the show for me was One Village, built by SkyLook. SkyLook is a piece of software that should not be underestimated. I downloaded the trial two days ago and I’m blown away. It is fantastic. Think of the way that MSN integrates with Outlook. Now think of what’s missing. Add it all up, that’s SkyLook. If you use Skype, get SkyLook. You’re short-changing yourself if you don’t at least evaluate it. Think of the ability to publish project WIP teleconferences to a blog and podcast them. Think of the ability to get an email from someone and call them directly from Outlook by clicking on an Outlook toolbar button and call any of their listed numbers directly. This is good stuff.

Some of the new hardware was cool, there was a little CD / DVD / Blu-ray burner that did colour printing onto the discs, with an inkjet based entry level unit at about $3,000.00, that was being shown by SCSI Integration (you have to look for it on their site, it’s under “desktop”)

Then there was a kind-of-classifieds site that has been built by eWay called BuyThis.com.au – Another free classifieds site going up against the likes of Cracker. Too little too late. If Cracker has successfully held CraigsList out of the Aussie market for two years, this one’s less likely to fly than an emu with bricks in his shorts.

It was odd to go to an IT show like CeBit and not see Microsoft there. Very odd. No MS and dozens of Penguins round the back of the halls in the cheap seats

This is my favourite 404 Error page I have ever encountered. I wish I could do that and get away with it

I took a walk up to Harris Technology at lunch today to get a 1 GB Micro SD card for my new phone. I was surprised to be told by the guy at Harris that they do not carry Micro SD cards. I checked their website, he’s right on the money. It seems that Micro SD / Transflash is still a bit too new to get at your average tech retail outlet.

I did some shopping online and found that Expansys offer what seems to be the cheapest 1 GB Micro SD card in Australia:

ORA Memory 1GB Transflash (micro-SD) Memory Module
Usually ships in 5 Days
Cost: 59.95
Shipping: 12.00
GST 10%: 7.20
Total: A$79.15

This is as cheap as the cheapest Hong Kong / Singapore – based seller on eBay, plus you have the comfort of knowing they are reputable and are not selling you a knock-off item. the down-side is the five day delay.

One of the more irritating things with my LG phone (which I now love) is when I try and sync with Outlook it always shows me a popup window saying A program is trying to access email addresses you have stored in Outlook. Do you want to allow this?

Today I spent two minutes looking into getting rid of this. I did manage to find the Office XP Resource Kit which was interesting in its own right, and within it there is a link to a page called the Office XP Resource Kit Downloads page. Inside the resource kit is a tool called “AdmPack.exe” – which is a tool for controlling Outlook security policies.

As they say:

“The Outlook Security Features Administrative Package must be installed separately from the other applications — it is not installed by the Office Resource Kit Setup program. To install the Outlook Security Features Administrative Package, run Admpack.exe from the \Files\PFiles\ORKTools\ORK10\Tools\Admpack\ folder on the Office Resource Kit CD. If you are installing the Outlook Security Features Administrative Package from an Office Enterprise Edition CD, the path is \ORK\Files\PFiles\ORKTools\ORK10\Tools\Admpack\. This executable will copy the four administrative files to a location you specify on your computer.”

Unfortunately this seems to be a network-wide security setting and if your Sys Admin is worth his salt he’ll refuse outright to run the thing and will shoo you away with a rolled up newspaper if you even ask.

Oh well, back to the drawing board…