Wednesday, September 05, 2012

All-Inclusives in Jamaica

Just finished up an article for the new travel planning advice section of Visual Itineraries: it's on the best all-inclusive resorts in Jamaica.
Posted by at 4:25 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Press Release: Best Honeymoon Destinations

Release headline: Visual Itineraries Launches Guide to the Best Honeymoon Destinations and Resorts
Release date: August 29, 2012

Posted by at 9:26 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Press Release for Quick Badge & Sign

Release headline: Name Badges, Name Tags and Full Color Signs by Quick Badge & Sign Co., Inc. Let Us Help You Show Off Your Company Logo and Recognize All Key Employees by Name Release date: August 22, 2012

Posted by at 9:07 AM 0 comments

Costume Kingdom Press Release

Press release pickup for my client, who donated a number of costumes to the Boys and Girls Club: Release headline: Costume Kingdom Provides a Wardrobe Change to Disadvantaged Youth
Release date: August 22, 2012
Posted by at 8:57 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

SEMpdx Rooftop Party coverage on KGW

Posted by at 9:08 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Press Release: Visual Itineraries & Google Reviews

This went out today: Visual Itineraries Adds Google Reviews for Hotels and Activities.
Posted by at 10:09 AM 0 comments

Client: David Streicher

David's now showing up on MapMaker and Google+. He's got a blog on Oregon Wills, Trusts, and Probate.
Posted by at 10:08 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Travel Advice: When to Visit Tahiti

We've just published a new article on the best time to visit Tahiti on our Visual Itineraries blog.
Posted by at 11:20 AM 0 comments

Monday, July 23, 2012

Where can I find overwater bungalows?

You probably knew that they had overwater bungalows in Tahiti, but you'll also find them in Fiji, Zanzibar, Maldives, and more.
Posted by at 1:22 PM 2 comments

Batman Breakfast ranking test

I know this probably doesn't make sense...never mind, it's a Bat-test.
Posted by at 10:02 AM 0 comments

Sunday, July 22, 2012

SEMpdx Rooftop party 2012 promotional video

Posted by at 11:37 AM 0 comments

Monday, July 16, 2012

Press Release Pick-Up

The following news outlets republished our Visual Itineraries press release: Release headline: Visual Itineraries Launches Consumer Travel Planning Tool
Release date: July 16, 2012

Posted by at 9:54 AM 0 comments

Press Release: Consumer Version of Visual Itineraries

Full press release is here.
Posted by at 9:47 AM 0 comments

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Photos from the Forest Grove Concours d'Elegance

Click here for the photo gallery.
Posted by at 11:25 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

A Change of Latitude: Atlantis and Couples Resorts

Laura Beyer or A Change in Latitude travel agency has created visual itineraries for the 6 Atlantis Resorts in the Bahamas, and also Couples Resorts in Jamaica.
Posted by at 11:34 AM 0 comments

Monday, July 09, 2012

Shoreview Travel Itineraries

Roxanne Brown of Shoreview Travel and Elite Beach Vacations has created three cool visual itineraries: Maui, Oahu, and Los Cabos.
Posted by at 9:47 PM 0 comments

SEO Optimized Photo Gallery

Just installed my SEO-optimized photo gallery on the Marque Motors website this past week. You can also find it in action on Glen Dene Hunting, Coastal Mist Chocolates, Sunspots Safaris, and of course my own photo gallery site.
Posted by at 4:13 PM 0 comments

Exotic French Polynesia: Moorea & Bora Bora

Tahiti travel specialist Cathy Jackson from Sunsational Vacations in New Jersey has used Visual Itineraries to create this collection of her most recommended resorts and things to see and do in Moorea and Bora Bora.
Posted by at 3:12 PM 0 comments

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Best honeymoon resorts in the world

At Visual Itineraries, we've put together a list of the top 250 honeymoon destinations around the world. There's some pretty fabulous places on our list, with lots of hi-res photos, videos, virtual tours, and more.
Posted by at 5:09 PM 1 comments

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Guest bloggers...an opportunity

One of my clients, Costume Kingdom, is now accept guest blog posts. See their guest blog post submission guidelines page for more information.
Posted by at 5:05 PM 0 comments

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Flying with Dominik

Click the photo, then click Slideshow


Dominik is one of our Rotary club's exchange students--returning to Switzerland next week.
Posted by at 11:50 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Article on Honeymoons

PleasureTripping.com just published an article I wrote for them on creative honeymoons.
Posted by at 4:07 PM 0 comments

Monday, June 18, 2012

Quick backlink checker

I built this quick-and-dirty backlink checker that will find pages in SEOmoz's Linkscape database (using the very powerful SEOmoz API) that link back to a given page.
Posted by at 11:36 AM 0 comments

Friday, June 08, 2012

Rainy June in Portland = time to go to Fiji!

I wish...too much to do. But if you've got more free time than I do, check out my latest blog post on the best time to visit Fiji.
Posted by at 4:57 PM 0 comments

Friday, May 25, 2012

10 SEO Myths Debunked

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz talks about ten SEO myths in today's Whiteboard Friday video:
Posted by at 9:06 AM 1 comments

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Guest Blog Posts Available

Visual Itineraries is now accepting guest blog posts on our travel blog (travel topics only, please). See our guest blogging guidelines.
Posted by at 10:30 AM 0 comments

10 Dive Destinations for Every Diver's Bucket List

Just published an article about ten diving destinations that ought to be on every scuba diver's bucket list. Read my article on GoWorld Travel Guide.
Posted by at 9:07 AM 0 comments

Friday, May 18, 2012

Client quoted in the Orlando Sentinel

My client, Jonathan Alper, an asset protection and bankruptcy lawyer in Orlando Florida, was quoted in an article in the Orlando Sentinel yesterday.
Posted by at 9:21 AM 0 comments

Sunday, May 06, 2012

Flight to Florence for lunch with my 90-year-old Grandma

click the photo to see the gallery
Posted by at 9:11 PM 0 comments

Saturday, May 05, 2012

Spring flowers



Click the photo to see the gallery.
Posted by at 3:35 PM 0 comments

Monday, April 16, 2012

April boat trip

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 10:20 AM 0 comments

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Cherry blossoms

A few pics from today.
Posted by at 4:56 PM 0 comments

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Bailey's Lacrosse Game

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 10:24 PM 0 comments

Tom Smith's Favorite Hotels in Spain

ME Madrid Hotel, Madrid, Spain

Tom Smith, from The Travel Society, worked with Visual Itineraries to create a collection of his favorite hotels in Spain.
Posted by at 11:32 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 19, 2012

A pile o' feedburner feeds

Posted by at 1:35 PM 0 comments

Look at all the juicy new links

Mostly from local directory submissions, of course. If you're a human reading this, you're gonna be bored. This is really just for spiders :-)


YellowBot, on Facebook, and how about CrunchBase :-). There's a Yelp profile too for Visual Itineraries (prize goes to the first person who reviews us!). UBL has a page for our cool travel website too. Never heard of Directory Central, but our travel site is there too.

LinkedIn of course has a page for Visual Itineraries as well as my own profile page with a mention on it. And Jacob's got a visual itineraries sample page on his Classic Ridge Design site too.

Google+ (of course) has Visual Itineraries. StumbleUpon...and Lookup Book...and Best of the Web Local too. And since I'm a board member of SEMpdx, there's a page for me there with a link too. And AboutUs.org, where I've written a series of articles on SEO.

And there's also Virtual Itineraries, which I created simply because people were typing that instead of "visual".
Posted by at 11:48 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 12, 2012

New Client: Quick Badge & Sign

Name Badges Portland
Posted by at 9:04 AM 0 comments

Sunday, March 04, 2012

Winter Hawks Feb 2012 round 2

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 7:04 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

CenturyLink Paid Me $1971 To Stop Being A Customer




So here's the story. About 3 years ago, I signed up for a DSL + DirecTV bundle through Qwest (which has changed its name to CenturyLink). Somehow Qwest screwed up the account setup, and had my DirecTV account in their system tied to someone else's bill. DirecTV, not getting any money for my account from Qwest, started billing me on my credit card each month as well (I guess I must have given the installer my credit card for installation, or something like that).

This I discovered this past August, when I got a call from DirecTV asking for my updated credit card info. Hmmm...I thought...I'm pretty sure I pay for that through Qwest/CenturyLink. "Oh no, we've been billing your credit card for this every month." I'd never noticed it on my bill before, but then, I just scan my credit card bill each month really just looking for companies I don't know.

5 hours of calls to both companies later, talking to supervisors on both ends, CenturyLink finally agreed to credit me back for the double-billing. The customer service supervisor at CenturyLink, Becky, tried to get her company to send me a check, but apparently that's not their policy. CenturyLink expected me to essentially "work it off", i.e. leave it as a credit on my account until it went back to zero.

Becky says to me, "really, the only way they'll send you a check is if you close your account."

I'm really not in a position to offer interest-free loans to one of the largest corporations in Oregon. That, and I really don't feel like it in this case. So I switched my internet to Comcast (which is WAY faster, and less than half the cost).

6 months later (well, actually only 2 months later...it took the first 4 months to get to where they credited my account), I received (and quickly cashed!) the check you see before you.

Clearly, it's not good business for CenturyLink to behave this way. If you think of the discounts and promotions they offer to GET a new customer, you'd think they'd make this problem go away quickly and try to keep me. It seems to me that this is a classic case of middle management not having the authority to make a small decision to do the right thing for their business (and the customer).

DirecTV, in my opinion, didn't come out smelling like roses either. After all, charging my credit card for the monthly bill without my authorization is probably credit card fraud. And they refused to give me the "new customer" promotional rate when I re-signed up with them. If it wasn't that I hate the Comcast DVR functionality, and DISH only has 720p HD TV, I'd have switched there too.

If you want to help spread the word, there are posts for this on Digg and Reddit. :-)
Posted by at 9:06 AM 1 comments

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Alfa Romeo Owners of Oregon Tour

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 8:59 PM 0 comments

Friday, February 17, 2012

Local influence on Organic SERPs

Just published an article on local-influenced organic search results on SEOmoz's main blog today.
Posted by at 12:17 PM 0 comments

Cheetah Conservation Fund trip


Teresa at Mango African Safaris and Jason at Azumano Travel are putting together a trip to Namibia to visit the Cheetah Conservation Fund headquarters--and I've done a Visual Itinerary for the trip.


In addition to a visit to the CCF headquarters, travelers will be staying at Olive Grove, Ongava Tented Camp, and Otjibamba Lodge. The executive director of CCF, Laurie Marker, will be escorting the trip at Ongava Game Reserve as well as the tour of the CCF facility.


Guests have the option to add on various other stops (since they're flying so far...why not?), including Babson House, Kulala Desert Lodge, Victoria Falls, Chobe National Park, and Capetown.

Posted by at 9:21 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Skills Mismatch in Today's Economy

This is a really terrific summary of how the raw unemployment % doesn't tell the whole story. Courtesy Crisp 360:

Infographic courtesy Crisp360 Career Development
Crisp360 Career Development
Posted by at 11:41 AM 0 comments

Friday, January 13, 2012

A worldwide guide to using your turn signals

Just put this guide to using your turn signals up on my Visual Itineraries blog :-)
Posted by at 10:29 AM 0 comments

Friday, January 06, 2012

Bailey's Birthday 2012

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 9:12 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Visiting Santa

Click the photo to view the gallery



Click the photo to see the gallery.
Posted by at 10:52 AM 0 comments

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Christmas Lights


Click the photo to see the gallery.
Posted by at 8:40 PM 0 comments

Friday, December 09, 2011

Press Release - Macadam Vision Clinic

Just issued this press release about emPower electronic bifocals for my client, Macadam Vision Clinic:



Release headline: Macadam Vision Clinic First on the West Coast Offers the World's First Electronic Bifocal

Posted by at 9:45 AM 0 comments

Sunday, December 04, 2011

Land Rover Adventures

click for gallery
Posted by at 7:58 PM 0 comments

Monday, November 28, 2011

Bandon weekend with Andrea

Click for the full gallery

Click the photo for the full gallery.
Posted by at 10:33 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

American Comedy Co., San Diego


A new San Diego comedy club opening in spring 2012--some of their first comedians include Kevin Nealon, Christopher Titus, Tom Arnold, Tom Green, and Bobby Lee. I'm in the midst of an SEO project that involves both natural and local search optimization.
Posted by at 2:50 PM 0 comments

HTG Inc.


Another client of mine--HTG does large-scale technology rollouts, system integration, asset management, asset retirement, distribution & logistics, and IT outsourcing. They're based in Vancouver, WA.
Posted by at 2:35 PM 0 comments

Mango African Safaris


Mango African Safaris has been a client for some time--mostly doing SEO work, and also some Google Maps integration coming up soon, but also sharing content for the properties they represent with my Visual Itineraries company.
Posted by at 2:29 PM 0 comments

Chubb Collector Car Insurance


Just completed an SEO project for Chubb Collector Car insurance, involving a wide range of changes throughout their website, including a major revamping of their photo galleries (with the help of Jacob Miller of Classic Ridge Web Design in Santa Cruz) to optimize the images for search.
Posted by at 2:26 PM 0 comments

Monday, November 21, 2011

Trios Studio: press release

Just sent out a press release this morning announcing Trios Studio's new online jewelry catalog, done in conjunction with Columbia Gem House...and it's got pretty good pickup so far:

Release headline: Trios Studio Launches New Online Jewelry Catalog

Release date: November 21, 2011

Posted by at 9:41 AM 0 comments

Sunday, November 13, 2011

New sample Visual Itineraries

We've just finished putting together a set of amazing visual itineraries for different parts of the world.

Check out this virtual tour of Italy...Ben wants to go simply because they make great noodles.



This African safari itinerary covers mostly where Melinda and I went in Kenya.



Of course, we have to have a tour of the Seychelles in the mix too...



A virtual visit to Fiji is next...Ben and I went there about 2 years ago, and loved it!



I had a fantastic trip to Thailand back in the late 1990's, but didn't manage to visit as many places as in this visual itinerary, nor did I stay anyplace anywhere NEAR as nice :-)



I put together a magical Maui adventure as well--I think Maui is often overlooked as people tend to know about just Kaanapali, Lahaina and Wailea, but there's a ton more cool outdoors stuff to see and do if you know where to go.



And someday I want to go the land down under--maybe time it to catch the Australia MotoGP races at Philip Island if I'm lucky!

Posted by at 11:11 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Cottam Family Vine


From Ben to his great-great-great-great-great grandpa. My dad made this for the hallway:
Posted by at 9:18 AM 2 comments

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Trios Studio: new online jewelry catalog live!


We've finally launched our new online jewelry catalog for Trios Studio of Lake Oswego, featuring some amazing custom jewelry design work by Trios' designers.
Posted by at 4:29 PM 0 comments

Monday, September 26, 2011

My eyes! My eyes!

Had my annual vision checkup last week with the best eye doctor in Portland, Dr. Greg Schober, at Macadam Vision Clinic :-). He did my pre & post Lasik consultations and I'm very happy now to be seeing 20/10!

Below are my eyes, pics taken with Macadam Vision Clinic's digital retinal photography machine, which eliminates having to have your eyes dilated (and being useless for the rest of the day!) as well as giving a much better picture of what's going on in there.







Posted by at 9:07 AM 0 comments

Friday, September 09, 2011

Need replacement windows?

One of my clients is All Season Windows, and guess what...they do replacement windows :-). Super guys...read the testimonials on their website!
Posted by at 9:37 AM 0 comments

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Pebble Beach Concours 2011

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 11:19 PM 0 comments

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Gooding and Laguna Seca

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 5:32 PM 0 comments

Friday, August 19, 2011

Concorso Italiano

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 6:28 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Pebble Beach 2011

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 10:29 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Summer motorcycle trip with Aaron

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 8:50 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

New client: Trios Studio


New client--3 amazing custom jewelry designers from Lake Oswego.
Posted by at 2:03 PM 0 comments

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Allure of the Automobile

Click the photo, then click Slideshow
Posted by at 11:27 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

What's Tashmarine?


From Xinjiang province in China comes the gem tashmarine. The deposit is at at an 8,000-foot elevation and can only be mined a few months of the year due to the cold. Photo courtesy TriGem Designs (a client of mine).
Posted by at 10:56 AM 0 comments
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