Saturday, December 28, 2013

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Having fun with Gianluca's blog post

It blows me away that Gianluca's wrap-up of Google changes this year and predictions for next year doesn't yet rank #1 for the phrase epochal infrastructural change. :-D

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Canadian heli-hockey

This...well....just watch the damn video!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Friday, November 08, 2013

On the Visual Itineraries Blog: social media explained

I wrote this piece today for the blog...I think it actually does a decent job of explaining the search marketing benefits of each of these major social media channels.

Thursday, November 07, 2013

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

ACA Website Performance

From the team at Portent Interactive comes this illuminating look at the rather appalling bad performance of the websites the states built for ACA (aka Obamacare). The full article is here.

How fast is ObamaCare? - An infographic by the team at Portent. Click for full size image.

Monday, October 07, 2013

Article on identifying the cause of a traffic drop

This just went up today at the Act-on Marketing blog...a post about Google's Angry Birds (Penguin vs. Hummingbird), and how to know whether it's an algorithm change in general (like Hummingbird), or a penalty (like Penguin) that caused a big traffic drop for your website.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

2010 MV Agusta F4 1000R

Just picked up this really sweet bike today:

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

New Pinterest boards

I've created 2 new Pinterest boards, one for African safari lodges, and one for the best pools in the world. They are both "works in progress", but I've found some amazing pics from resorts in Tanzania, Botswana, Kenya, Tahiti, Seychelles, Maldives, and more. A couple of examples:
Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, Tanzania
Saruni Samburu, Kenya
The Pavilion - Lizard Island, Australia
Faru Faru River Lodge, Tanzania

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The Romantic Seychelles

In conjunction with Teresa Sullivan of Mango African Safaris, we've put together a collection of our favorite Seychelles honeymoon resorts in a Visual Itinerary.

The royal couple Kate and William chose the Seychelles for their honeymoon (as did I, back in 2005), and a look at the photos will show you why.

Pictured: the infinity pool of the Banyan Tree resort, on the main island of Mahé.

Friday, September 06, 2013

Coverage of the SEMpdx Rooftop Party

They even managed to sneak a photo of me into the article :-) Here it is.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

I'm selling my old truck

A sweet old 1970 Chevrolet 3/4 ton. I've had it painted, spray-on bedliner, did tires, complete brakes, etc. More details here.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

My client Pauline Rhoads runs the cooking blog The Better Crumb. She's got a pastry and baking arts degree from Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, and spent a few years as a food writer and Assistant Editor at Greenwich Magazine in Connecticut. I'm thinking my son Benjamin needs to learn to make these cookies. The full recipe is here.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

EFR 2013

Two bikes, made by different companies, in different countries, BOTH had the kickstand switch fail, disabling the bike and ending the ride for them (Aaron on an Aprilia RSV 1000 and Phil on a KTM). Phil made it to Paul's party, then went home in the truck the next day. Aaron limped in nearly as far as Spokane, at which point my AAA paid for his tow to the dealer there. Had a great dinner and evening in Spokane with Aaron and Leanne, then headed back up to their place in Castlegar. Not the EFR trip I'd planned, but plenty of good times with great people. Click the photo to see the slideshow

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Celebration of Life Service for my parents

Click the photo to see the slideshow from their service on Sunday, July 28, 2013: Click to see the whole slideshow

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Rotary Testimonial

A short video interview with me on what it's like to be a Rotarian:

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Renae and Lola Cottam

My parents, Renae and Lola Cottam, died tragically on Saturday, June 15th, 2013. They'd told my sister Elizabeth Cottam and I many times that if they ever won the lottery, they'd help the Myrtle Point Library be rebuilt. Because that mattered to them so much, we are asking that in lieu of flowers, people donate in their name to the Myrtle Point Public Library Foundation. For more details, please see the Facebook page I've set up. If you'd like to attend their service, it will be held in Florence, OR on Sunday, July 28th, 2013 2PM to 5PM. Please RSVP via eVite.

Friday, May 03, 2013

Oregon House Bill for mugshot websites

My client, Portland criminal defense attorney Ryan Anfuso, brought the idea for this bill to the legislature. Read about it at Oregon Live; the text of the bill itself is here.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

New Vacation Packages Pages

Just added a big set of vacation packages pages for popular destinations to our Visual Itineraries website.



We've got specials for Tahiti, Fiji, Maui, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Mexico, Australia, Italy, and more.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Search-optimized photo galleries



Just published today, my article on how to optimize photo galleries for both regular organic search and image search. Read the article on the Raven Tools blog, and for some cool image web developer tips, scroll to the bottom :-)

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Time for a career change?

Google thinks I'm #1 for "skydiving as a career option". What are they trying to tell me???

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Open Site Explorer: "Just Discovered" Links

This is a pretty cool new feature of SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer that shows the newest links to your website. Here's an example. For a great writeup on this new tool, check out Tela's post.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Sponsoring my son's school again

I'm proud to have sponsored three new banners for my son's school, Peninsula K-8 here in Portland.

New article on Bridezilla



Just wrote this article on top 10 honeymoon spots for Bridezilla.

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Peninsula K-8 School Basketball Sponsorship

My travel company, Visual Itineraries, is proud to sponsor the basketball teams at my son's school, Peninsula K-8.

Monday, February 04, 2013

Photos from Myrtle Point

click the photo to see the gallery

HTG Inc. Press Release - ITIL3 Certifications

My client, HTG Inc. issued this press release regarding the company receiving ITIL3 Best Practices certifications.
 
Quite a number of industry and new websites ran the release:

Rivet & Sway Press Release

My client, Rivet & Sway, just issued this press release on their new round of funding.

Four sites wrote their own stories on it:
  1. Women's online eyeglass seller Rivet & Sway peers ahead with $2 million - The company, Rivet & Sway, today is announcing that it has raised $2 million in fresh funding from investors that include New York-based ... read more
  2. Warby Parker Competitor Rivet & Sway Raises $2 Million More - Rivet & Sway, which sells prescription glasses online to women at $199 a pair, has ... Rivet &Sway said it will use the proceeds this year for hiring, introducing ...read more
  3. VatorNews - Rivet & Sway bags $2M for women's prescription glasses - Rivet & Sway bags $2M for women's prescription glasses. The company aims to be the leader in online shopping for women's eyewear by Faith Merino on ... read more
  4. Rivet & Sway raises $2M | PandoDaily - Rivet & Sway, an online glasses seller based in Seattle, has raised a $2 million round from Mousse Partners, Baseline Ventures, and Harrison Metal. read more
 
Other places that picked up the release:

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

HTG Inc.'s new offices

My client, HTG Inc., recently moved their offices (to be closer to me, I think :-). Here's a photo gallery of their new facilities.
Updated listings in all the local business directories:

Monday, January 28, 2013

Snowboarding down Mount Royal

Seb Toots Montreal snowboarding run from Seb Toots on Vimeo.

This is pretty cool...I lived in the dorms right below Mount Royal for the first couple of years I was at McGill, and hiked up that mountain many times. Used to rappel down parts of it, too...there's some good small faces.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Islands of the South Pacific: Q&A with David Stanley

I recently had the chance to do a little Q&A session with David Stanley, author of many guidebooks on the South Pacific, on the Visual Itineraries website: http://www.visualitineraries.com/blog/a-conversation-with-guidebook-writer-david-stanley/ David's from Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island--not far from where I grew up.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Low passes by fighter jets

This...is....AWESOME....I guarantee a lot of underwear was harmed in the making of this video:

Museo Ducati at MotoCorsa

Arun's got some amazing Italian machinery on display at MotoCorsa this month.  Check out the photos I took yesterday:


Thursday, January 10, 2013

New travel planning article

At Visual Itineraries, I've published another in our series of travel planning articles--this one's on the best time of year to go to Australia.

Photo courtesy Rich in Kensington on Flickr.

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Louie's Pizza

An awesome new local pizza place has opened in North Portland--Louie's Pizza & Catering. The owner, Louie, used to run Nicola's just down the street. And yes, they have gluten-free pizza :-)

Monday, January 07, 2013

I found all my Tahiti photos!

A few years ago, I'd gone to Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora with Rodney Smith of Sunspots, and visited nearly every resort on all three islands...taking tons of photos. Unfortunately my hard drive went belly-up between then and now, and I'd lost a portion of my photo collection--including all the ones from French Polynesia. I just discovered that I'd uploaded a copy of most of them to Flickr...yea! So I downloaded the best of them, and added them to the respective brochures on Visual Itineraries. In Bora Bora, there are new photos for the Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort, the InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa, the the Sofitel Bora Bora Marara beach & motu, and the St. Regis. On Moorea, there are new photos for the Hilton Moorea Lagoon Resort, and the Moorea Pearl. On Tahiti Nui, there are new photos for the InterContinental Tahiti and Le Meridien. And, if you're wondering when you should go there, read our article on the best time of year to go to French Polynesia :-)