If you sell any sort of product or service these days and you are not actively monitoring the Internets (invented by Al Gore) for mentions of your product then you are going to go the way of the Dodo bird or at least not do as well as you could be doing. There is no excuse not to do this as it is so easy to setup Google alerts and other monitoring vehicles to keep tabs on what is being said about you on social media.

Here are a couple of recent examples for me.

First, last night I noticed my T-Mobile phone didn’t have service. Then I noticed that all four T-Mobile phones in our household didn’t have service. Rather than search on Google I went to Twitter and did a search to see if anyone was talking about a T-Mobile outage on Twitter. And boy were they ever:

On Wednesday, #T-Mobile was again a trending topic on Twitter, where customers expressed their frustration. “I talked to T-Mobile reps more than I did to anyone else,” joeldreamweaver said. “They overcharged me. I’ll never do business with them again.”

Wouldn’t surprise me if the person at T-Mobile monitoring the Internets for mentions of T-Mobile was notified of the outage before their engineers were.

Now given the size and scope of T-Mobile there isn’t much someone monitoring Twitter could have done here – pretty hard to respond to tens of thousands of Tweets – but it does go to show how quickly people will share their thoughts about your service, usually when there is a problem.

Another example is my recent review of Quicken 2010 – the same day I wrote the post I got a comment from Chelsea at Quicken who clearly has as part of her job to engage with bloggers who write about Quicken. Search Google for “Chelsea at Quicken” to see her at work.

Here was her comment to me:

Thanks for sharing your observations about Quicken 2010. I’m glad you’ve decided to stick with us after 16 years of commitment -that’s fabulous. If you’re still having any trouble, feel free to reach out – I am happy to get you some help so you can get going on our much easier-to-use Quicken 2010.

A very simple “welcome to the neighborhood” kind of a message – but welcoming nonetheless.

My final example is from my iPodMeister review. Now when I wrote my positive review nobody from the company stopped by but I did have a customer write about his disatisfaction in a couple of comments on that entry:

Attention: iPodMeister is easy to fool you when it comes to claiming your prize. “its to good to be true”. they claim some of my cds were damaged and covers missing and damaged cds do to shipping.. they irritate me when it come to communicating to them, i rather throw away the remainder of my cds then give them anything else.

Kris from iPodMeister left a comment in rebutal, less than a week later (why not same day Kris – come on!):

Kevin,
there is no reason why you should be angry. We stated clearly on our website (http://www.ipodmeister.com/eligiblecds.htm) and in the detailed e-mail you received that we do NOT accept CDs with incomplete cover art or radio edits, promos, or singles. We also stated clearly that we do NOT accept CDs that are severly scratched or boxsets that are incomplete. You sent over 100 (!) items that fell into these categories. Why are you surprised that we did accept CDs that were clearly described as unacceptable. Common sense tells you that these CDs couldn’t have any value for anybody. We don’t “fool” anybody. We made clear -both on our website and in the detailed e-mail sent to you- that damaged, incomplete, worthless CDs are … well, wortless and that we don’t accept them. Sorry, but there is absolutely no basis for your complaint.

Now the interesting thing in this case is that while I do side with Kris having been a happy customer, I do think you can get yourself into trouble by having such an argument with a customer out in public. So I am a little torn on this example – perhaps a better approach would be for Kris to ask me for the private contact information for the commenter so I could put the two together privately? Or maybe right out there in public is fine if you know you are right, I’m not sure. I do know that iPodMeister got a few more mentions and backlinks, and that isn’t a bad thing for them.

In any case, I thought these were interesting recent examples of the relationship between product and service companies and the Internets/Social media.

I suspect companies will respond quicker and quicker to what gets written about them. And I think that’s a good thing for everyone.

UPDATE: Interesting article on Social Media Monitoring that I found by looking at my referrer logs – somebody at Intuit uses SM2 for this very thing.

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I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are some first impressions of my fifth purchase, the Apple iPod touch 32GB:

Apple iPod touch 32GB

A number of years ago I got my wife a new Palm Pilot m515 Color PDA, which she has used at work ever since as her “brain” to look up medical information while on the floor. For some reason this isn’t something the hospital pays for, although they certainly don’t complain when employees use them to improve their patient care. Up until recently it sounded as though my wife was the only pharmacist at her hospital to use such a device.

That is until last week. One of her peers came to work showing off her new iPod touch 16GB and how it could wirelessly get information my wife could only previously get while tethered to her computer. And of course it came in that sexy Apple wrapping. It wasn’t until I looked back at that old post that I realized my wife has been using her Palm Pilot for almost 7 years. Time to upgrade!

After determining that indeed the iPod touch was the way to go and that it works with her medical information service provider, I ran over to Best Buy to pick up a 3rd generation Apple iPod touch 32 GB. Sure 16GB probably would have been enough but I wanted my wife to be able to trump her peer (not that anyone would be able to tell). I also purchased a combination wall charger/car charger. I decided I’d leave the case up to her because that seems to be a more personal decision as there were many different options to choose from. She would eventually go with a leather flip-case model.

Apple packaging is so minimalistic and stylish. I had to struggle a little bit to get the device out of the piece of plastic that had it in a death grip but eventually it succumbed and I was able to get it charged up and hooked into iTunes (for the app store) in no time. That was the one part of the process I really didn’t like. You literally could do nothing with the device until it had been synced up with iTunes. Woe to the person who buys an iPod touch thinking it could be their only computer. Not going to happen from what I can tell. After that I punched in it’s MAC address into my wireless router and suddenly it could see the world.

We haven’t done much with it, not even installing her work software. But I am anticipating no problems.

Overall, fun little device. Just make sure you have a computer with iTunes available!

This week’s mini technology reviews:
Windows 7 Review
HP MediaSmart EX495 Review
Quicken Premier 2010 Review
Quicken Quickbooks Pro 2010
Apple iPod touch 32GB

Related posts:

1. Mini Technology Review – Microsoft Windows 7 I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are...
2. Mini Technology Review – HP MediaSmart EX495 I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are...
3. Mini Technology Review – Quicken Premier 2010 I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are...

I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are some first impressions of my fourth purchase, Intuit’s Quickbooks Pro 2010:

Quickbooks Pro 2010

I have been using Intuit’s Quickbooks Simple Start Free Edition to manage the accounting for my small business for about a year. The initial version I was using said that it was capped at 20 customers, but interestingly enough when I went past that I had no problems continuing to use the free version. Since the needs of my business are few, I was happy to continue to use that free version.

Since I did a scratch install of Windows 7 I needed to reinstall my accounting software, which by now had been upgraded to the 2010 edition. Well guess what? That 20 customer cap was now enforced! Whoops. Time to buy the real thing: QuickBooks Pro 2010.

The packaging comes like most software these days – sparse and compact. Other than the software there was a quick start guide, a checklist if running multiple users, and a slightly thicker installation and setup guide. Per usual, I read none of this and just jumped right in. Install went very smooth and there were no problems importing my old data file.

I did have a problem with the registration process, however. While registration starts online you have to actually talk to someone before the product will be officially registered. And of course they use this as an opportunity to upsell you on products you have already told them you are not interested in. Which was a little annoying. But I got through that fairly quickly and got the program officially registered.

Here is a list of features that the Pro version has that the Free version does not:

• Allow multiple users to work in Quickbooks at the same time
• Import data from Excel, Quicken, Microsoft Office Accounting & prior QuickBooks versions
• Get a real-time snapshot of your business, in one location with the redesigned, customizable Company Snapshot
• Organize data with Customer, Vendor & Employee Centers
• Effortlessly track bills & set due-date reminders
• Track inventory, set reorder points and create purchase orders
• Reduce data entry by downloading your bank & credit card transactions into QuickBooks
• Share data with Word, Excel & sync Outlook contacts with QuickBooks
• Track international sales & expenses in multiple currencies

To be honest, I have little need for most of these features, however I am liking the Company Snapshot page. I also have plans to hook this up with my bank accounts, although I have not yet done that.

Overall I like QuickBooks. I don’t need much of what it provides and I probably could just as easily track my business accounting in an Excel spreadsheet, but doing so in a real accounting package makes my business seem more mature, and that’s certainly worth the small investment in this software.

This week’s mini technology reviews:
Windows 7 Review
HP MediaSmart EX495 Review
Quicken Premier 2010 Review
Quicken Quickbooks Pro 2010
Apple iPod touch 32GB

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I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are some first impressions of my third purchase, Intuit’s Quicken Premier 2010:

Quicken Premier 2010

I’ve been a Quicken user since 1993. I’ve certainly had my ups and downs with the application, sometimes deciding not to upgrade because I read user complaints, other times not upgrading simply because the functionality differences just didn’t justify it. I had looked at maybe moving to Microsoft Money in the past but since they dropped out of the personal finance software arms race this year I didn’t have to even consider that this year.

I’ve been using Quicken 2007 quite comfortably but had already made the decision this year to upgrade, and the timing was perfect after I upgraded to Windows 7.

So I stopped in at Best Buy on my way home from work and picked up a copy of Quicken Premier 2010. These days the packaging is pretty minimal, a small box just big enough for the CD, a few pieces of advertising and that was about it. No documentation to speak of.

Quicken installed easily and it was a simple matter of importing the backup file I had saved from version 2007. Having 16 years of transactions in there means the import took quite a long time but eventually I was up and running with the new version of Quicken and my old data. Did an internet banking update and everything seemed to work just fine. After exploring around for a little bit I quit the program and went off to other things.

The trouble started the next time I ran the program. It decided it could no longer read my new data file! I found this knowledge base article that told me the problem was the path was long than 39 characters. 39? That’s nuts! I think my path to the data file was C:/Program Files (x86)/Quicken/myfile.qdf, and yes that’s more than 39 but goodness, it’s not like that is some crazy huge path! Anyway, I moved my data file to C:/QCKDATA/myfile.qdf and all was right in the world. I considered C:/QuickenSucks/myfile.wdf but decided it wasn’t that big of a deal. Still, I’ll bet there will be a lot of frustrated Windows 7 64-bit OS users like myself who picked the default path and then get stuck the next time they run the program.

Overall I’m not seeing huge differences between 2007 and 2010, but I’m still glad to have upgraded – 3 years between versions is too much for me. Overall, given the lack of real options for personal finance, I think Quicken is a fine solution. Maybe next year I’ll look at going online with something like Mint, but for now I’m still a Quicken user.

If you want a more in depth review then check out this Quicken 2010 Review.

This week’s mini technology reviews:
Windows 7 Review
HP MediaSmart EX495 Review
Quicken Premier 2010 Review
Quicken Quickbooks Pro 2010
Apple iPod touch 32GB

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2. Mini Technology Review – Microsoft Windows 7 I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are...
3. Mini Technology Review – HP MediaSmart EX495 I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are...

I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are some first impressions of my second purchase, Microsoft Windows 7:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

I took advantage of buying Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade early on Amazon and they setup the shipping such that it would arrive on the official release day of October 22nd. How cool is that? I bought 2 copies of the upgrade, one for my computer which is being upgraded from Windows XP Media Center Edition and one for my wife which is being upgraded from Windows Vista.

Before I give a mini-review of Windows 7 a word of warning: Don’t buy what I bought if you need more than 1 license! What I should have bought was the Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Family Pack (3-User), which not only would have been cheaper for me but I would have also got a 3rd license! So that is certainly the way to go. Since I’ve got 3 more machines to upgrade I’ll be buying it for the next time.

So far I have upgraded my machine to Windows 7 and the results have been awesome. I love this OS! Because I was on Windows XP and there is no upgrade path to Windows 7 I needed to do a complete reinstall but that’s OK since I have found you can really extend the life of a computer by doing it that way – good to clean up all of the crap every once in awhile.

My computer supports 64-bit OS so I went ahead and installed that (the Windows Upgrade package comes with both 32-bit and 64-bit). So far after re-installing all of the software that I wanted to keep I have had no problems running under 64-bit, and performance is very good.

In the short time I have been using Windows 7 I have been impressed with the performance, stability and functionality. I love little discoveries like the very cool snipping tool.

My wife runs some pretty important software on her laptop that we have to verify will work under Windows 7 before we get her upgraded, but I am sure that won’t be a problem and we should get to that this weekend. Because she doesn’t tend to install a lot of crap I could probably get away with the Vista to Windows 7 upgrade route.

So far I am very impressed with Windows 7 – highly recommended!

This week’s mini technology reviews:
Windows 7 Review
HP MediaSmart EX495 Review
Quicken Premier 2010 Review
Quicken Quickbooks Pro 2010
Apple iPod touch 32GB

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3. Mini Technology Review – HP MediaSmart EX495 I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are...

I went on a technology bender this week and invested in a number of new gadgets and software. Here are some first impressions of my first purchase, the HP MediaSmart EX495:

HP MediaSmart EX495

The HP EX495 1.5TB Mediasmart Home Server is one stylish little server. I bought this to serve as our centralized home media server and PC backup repository. After we digitized our music I put all those files on one of the computers, but it wasn’t always on. So that caused problems that this little beauty will now solve.

The EX495 model comes with a single 1.5TB hard drive with capacity to add more. Of course I ordered it from Amazon loaded up, adding 3 Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5TB SATA Hard Drives.

Setup was a snap – the drive bays are easily accessible right up front behind the door, and the rails slide out very easily. Simply pop in the drives (no tools needed!), push them all in and you are ready to go. I setup the server in it’s home, plugged into into the network and hit the power button. After a few minutes all of the gorgeous bluish lights were on and I knew I was good to go. After installing some software on my computer I was able to connect to the home server and walk through some simple configurations.

Now that I have been on it for a few days there is only one problem I can report, which is that I have not been able to mount all of the nightly backups for some reason. But I did get one good backup right before I made my next technology purchase, Windows 7.

So far so good with the EX495!

This week’s mini technology reviews:
Windows 7 Review
HP MediaSmart EX495 Review
Quicken Premier 2010 Review
Quicken Quickbooks Pro 2010
Apple iPod touch 32GB

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I love to be surprised by great service and that’s exactly what happened to me today when I stopped in at the Southdale Sinclair & Tire gas station on France Avenue. I’ve never been to this gas station before but I decided to stop in on my way to lunch so that I was fully fueled up for the later rush hour.

When I pulled into the station I noticed the first set of pumps appeared to be full-service pumps as it was clear that someone who worked there was fueling the vehicle. Not wanting to pay to have someone do something I am more than capable of doing myself I drove over to the second set of pumps, thinking that would be the self-service aisle.

Nope. “Full Service at Self Service Prices” the sign at the pumps advertised.

OK, good enough for me – I’m not used to people pumping my gas for me but I decided to give it a try. A worker came over and automatically offered premium, which I suspect he knew my car requires. I agreed. Took me a minute before I realized I still had my car idling but he didn’t say anything and I turned it off right as he started pumping.

When it came time to pay I gave him my credit card and he came back with a clipboard and a pen for me to use to sign the receipt. I was pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t a “Tip” line on the receipt – I wasn’t 100% sure what the standard is but not having that on the credit card slip made my decision less pressure-filled and easy. “Keep the pen!” the guy cheerfully said.

Yep, I said cheerfully. Not used to that these days. He asked if he could wash my windows and after I said yes I engaged him in conversation, asking him how long they had been offering this full service.

“Since 1957,” he said.

Well then! Apparently this isn’t a Sinclair thing, just this one gas station. This guy was so upbeat, full of information, non-pressuring, etc. Part of me thinks there is a strong possibility he was the owner of the gas station. Is it possible for an employee to be so engaged?

Service with a smile and a free pen – next time I’m in the area I’ll go out of my way to stop by and spend more money with them.

And I guess that is the point. Bravo to Southdale Sinclair & Tire for knowing how to WOW their customers with outstanding service.

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How to Win At Craps Using A Controlled Dice Throw! By Frank Scoblete and Dominator

Have you ever wanted to play craps and actually beat the house? Like most casino games, craps is not beatable under ordinary circumstances. It is a game with a house edge, meaning the longer you play, the more likely the casino is to win. However, Frank Scoblete and his partner Dominator believe they have found a way for you to beat this game, which is covered in the book The Golden Touch Dice Control – How to Win At Craps Using A Controlled Dice Throw!

Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution

The Golden Touch Dice Control system has nothing to do with how you bet, when you bet or what you bet. It’s all about how you roll the dice. Scoblete and Dominator promote a system called “dice control,” where a player can affect the outcome of a throw by the way he holds and tosses the dice.

Dice Control Basics

Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution takes you through the mechanics of dice control step by step, from how you should stand, how you should set the dice, the various grips, the way to pick the dice up and how to throw the dice so that you get a true throw with a minimum of bounce off the back wall. The instructions are illustrated with multiple photographs so you can see exactly what is being taught.

Other Features of Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution

The book also details other aspects of craps gambling, such as how to play when not the shooter, how to bet, how to fix leaks in your shooting, team craps play and even how to make the most of casino comps. If you are a craps player, you are likely to be highly entertained by this creative system for attempting to beat craps.

What Readers are Saying

Skeptical about the ability to control the dice at the craps table? Check out what some reviewers on Amazon.com have to say:

Ray Channey:

This book shows the controlled throw from beginning to end and how the dice should spin in the air, land and hit the back wall in such a way as to give the player the edge over the game. The types of bets you make are important too because not every bet can be overcome with the controlled throw. You must bet properly on yourself as a controlled shooter and also you must bet properly on the random shooters which are most craps players. This book has great material and is a must book for craps players looking to get the edge at the game.

George Heller:

This book is a must read book for all craps players looking to get a real edge at the game of craps. It is based on the physics of the dice throw and the math behind the proper betting.

Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution is available now on Amazon.com for under $12, or 1 lousy place bet at a $10 table. It could be the investment you have been looking for!

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Did you hear about the rookie craps-throwing grandma who held the dice for 4 hours and 18 minutes this last weekend at the Borgata? According to this story it was 154 rolls without hitting a 7 (at the wrong time). Remember in craps there are times, when there is no point, that a 7 is actually a winner so I am sure she threw many sevens in her roll – just all when there was no point.

Over 4 hours!

I can’t tell you how much money I would have won on that roll. When I first starting playing craps in Vegas I had no idea what I was doing, although I did know that full odds was a good thing because the odds bet is the only even money bet in the casino. But I hadn’t learned about pressing bets yet. I was playing craps with friends from a bachelor party where two of us had back to back 90 minute rolls. We were happy to take $10,000 off the table but the dealers actually scolded us telling us we should have won $100,000.

Now that I know how to press, I would say they may have been right. Certainly would be right if that was one long roll without busting.

And 4 hours 18 minutes? On one of my hottest craps nights ever I turned $500 into $5,000 before giving a little bit back. As I wrote in the craps trip report I posted after that night we had THREE monster rolls in 3 hours, and each one was obviously less than an hour each – probably more like 30 minutes. I’ve never seen another 90 minute roll since that one amazing night.

I was in Vegas last week and took part in one hot roll where I turned $200 into $1,200 in about an hour, and I think that roll was maybe 45 minutes.

What do I mean by pressing?

I start with a $5 bet with $5 odds, both on the pass line then on as many come bets in succession as I can get. As I hit winners I press them up until I eventually get to full odds. At this point I’ve made a little bit. Then I start ramping up the presses going to $10 with full odds, to $15, to $25, to $50 and on this night, to $100. I had two points with $100 base bet with anywhere between $300 and $500 odds behind. I’ve gotten up to $200 base bet with full odds before.

When this happens I’ve already locked up a big win but I have a LOT of money on the table. Takes money to win money. Keep on pressing, and hope that you get some odds money back if the shooter hits a 7 when there isn’t a point.

4 hours? I’m guessing I would be pressed to the table maximum after a little more than 2 hours. And then, boy would the money get raked in. Hard to even fathom. The previous record (I didn’t know they had records for craps, honestly) was 3 hours and 6 minutes. So she bested the world record by 39%. She didn’t just beat the world craps record she obliterated it.

Damn, nothing better than a hot craps table. That one was smoking hot.

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One of my favorite Internet Marketing blogs is HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog. They recently published a compelling article showing the search engine authority ranking for Massachusetts’ top 100 public companies as ranked by their awesome Website Grader tool. Since I live in Minnesota and work for one of the companies in the Star Tribune Top 100 I thought I would run through a similar analysis for Minnesota companies.

These are the top 100 public companies in Minnesota as measured by annual revenue, ranked in order by Search Engine Authority. The links will take you to each company’s Website Grader report.

Target Corp. (www.target.com) 98.6
Best Buy Co. Inc. (www.bestbuy.com) 98.5
U.S. Bancorp (www.usbank.com) 98.2
Ameriprise Financial Inc. (www.ameriprise.com) 97.6
3M Co. (www.3m.com) 97.4
Compellent Technologies Inc. (www.compellent.com) 97.2
Travelers Companies Inc. (www.travelers.com) 96.7
ADC Telecommunications Inc. (www.adc.com) 96.6
TCF Financial Corp. (www.tcfbank.com) 96.5
Life Time Fitness Inc. (www.lifetimefitness.com) 96.5
Gander Mountain Co. (www.gandermountain.com) 96.4
Famous Dave’s of America Inc. (www.famousdaves.com) 96.1
Rimage Corp. (www.rimage.com) 96
ValueVision Media Inc. (www.shopnbc.com) 95.7
Christopher & Banks Corp. (www.christopherandbanks.com) 95.5
Lawson Software Inc. (www.lawson.com) 95.2
Medtronic Inc. (www.medtronic.com) 95.1
UnitedHealth Group Inc. (www.unitedhealthgroup.com) 94
Valspar Corp. (www.valspar.com) 94
Mosaic Co. (www.mosaicco.com) 93
Select Comfort Corp. (www.selectcomfort.com) 93
Piper Jaffray Companies (www.piperjaffray.com) 93
Caribou Coffee Co. Inc. (www.cariboucoffee.com) 93
Supervalu Inc. (www.supervalu.com) 92
Fastenal Co. (www.fastenal.com) 92
Plato Learning Inc. (www.plato.com) 92
General Mills Inc. (www.generalmills.com) 91
Polaris Industries Inc. (www.polarisindustries.com) 91
Graco Inc. (www.graco.com) 91
Alliant Techsystems (www.ATK.com) 90
St. Jude Medical Inc. (www.sjm.com) 90
MTS Systems Corp. (www.mts.com) 90
Xcel Energy Inc. (www.xcelenergy.com) 89
Ecolab Inc. (www.ecolab.com) 88
Imation Corp. (www.imation.com) 88
Tennant Co. (www.tennantco.com) 88
EV3 Inc. (www.ev3.net) 88
SoftBrands Inc. (www.softbrands.com) 88
Canterbury Park Holding Corp. (www.canterburypark.com) 88
Donaldson Co. Inc. (www.donaldson.com) 87
Fair Isaac Corp. (www.fico.com) 87
Entegris Inc. (www.entegris.com) 87
Datalink Corp. (www.datalink.com) 87
Stratasys Inc. (www.stratasys.com) 87
Pentair Inc. (www.pentair.com) 86
Arctic Cat Inc. (www.arctic-cat.com) 86
Analysts International Corp. (www.analysts.com) 86
C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. (www.chrobinson.com) 84
Hormel Foods Corp. (www.hormel.com) 84
Digital River Inc. (www.digitalriver.com) 84
Nash Finch Co. (www.nashfinch.com) 83
Otter Tail Corp. (www.ottertail.com) 83
MoneyGram International Inc. (www.moneygram.com) 83
Virtual Radiologic Corp. (www.virtualrad.com) 83
PepsiAmericas Inc. (www.pepsiamericas.com) 82
The Toro Co. (www.thetorocompany.com) 82
G&K Services Inc. (www.gkservices.com) 82
Winmark Corp. (www.winmarkcorporation.com) 82
Navarre Corp. (www.navarre.com) 81
Allete Inc. (www.allete.com) 80
Nortech Systems Inc. (www.nortechsys.com) 80
American Medical Systems Holdings Inc. (www.americanmedicalsystems.com) 79
Patterson Companies Inc. (www.pattersoncompanies.com) 78
Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. (www.buffalowildwings.com) 78
ATS Medical Inc. (www.atsmedical.com) 78
Deluxe Corp. (www.deluxe.com) 77
Medtox Scientific Inc. (www.medtox.com) 77
Granite City Food & Brewery Ltd. (www.gcfb.net) 76
Health Fitness Corp. (www.hfit.com) 75
Clearfield Inc. (www.clearfieldconnection.com) 74
Dolan Media Co. (www.dolanmedia.com) 72
FSI International Inc. (www.fsi-intl.com) 72
H.B. Fuller Co. (www.hbfuller.com) 71
Vital Images Inc. (www.vitalimages.com) 71
Vascular Solutions Inc. (www.vascularsolutions.com) 71
Regis Corp. (www.regiscorp.com) 68
Winland Electronics Inc. (www.winland.com) 68
Hutchinson Technology Inc. (www.htch.com) 67
XATA Corp. (www.xata.com) 66
HickoryTech Corp. (www.hickorytech.com) 65
SurModics Inc. (www.surmodics.com) 64
Appliance Recycling Centers of America (www.arcainc.com) 63
Image Sensing Systems Inc. (www.imagesensing.com) 63
Communications Systems Inc. (www.commsystems.com) 62
Hawkins Inc. (www.hawkinsinc.com) 59
Techne Corp. (www.techne-corp.com) 59
Digi International Inc. (www.dgii.com) 59
CyberOptics Corp. (www.cyberoptics.com) 59
Insignia Systems Inc. (www.insigniasystems.com) 58
Synovis Life Technologies Inc. (www.synovislife.com) 57
Multiband Corp. (www.multibandusa.com) 57
Mocon Inc. (www.mocon.com) 57
HMN Financial Inc. (www.justcallhome.com) 54
Apogee Enterprises Inc. (www.apog.com) 52
Angeion Corp. (www.angeion.com) 51
WSI Industries Inc. (www.wsci.com) 51
Rochester Medical Corp. (www.rocm.com) 48
Capella Education Company (www.capellaeducationcompany.com) 47
Zareba Systems Inc. (www.wtrs.com) 47
IntriCon Corp. (www.intricon.com) 36

Here’s a chart showing the trend:

Some more random info:

The average score for Minnesota’s Top 100 is 79.7.
The average score for Massachusetts’ Top 100 is 78.5, proving Minnesota superiority.
The score for this website is 95.3, which would be in the top 20 for Minnesota and the top 10 for Massachusetts.

What does all this mean? I don’t know. But I am pretty surprised at how poorly many of these companies scored.

How does your company fare? Or better yet, run the analysis for your state’s Top 100 and see how you compare to Minnesota. Which state has the best Search Engine Authority?

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1. Minnesota Tries To Ban Online Gambling It’s hard to imagine anything dumber than Minnesota ordering ISPs to blacklist gambling sites. Check out the fax the state...

It’s hard to imagine anything dumber than Minnesota ordering ISPs to blacklist gambling sites. Check out the fax the state sent to as variety of ISPs. Reading this over brings up a number of questions:

1) Did they include all ISPs?
2) Did they include all gambling sites?

They sent the notice to what appears to be the 12 biggest ISPs but I certainly didn’t take the time to research what they have missed.

The second question is very easy to answer at first glance – they missed a lot of very popular gambling sites! They put Full Tilt Poker on the list but not Party Poker, Ultimate Bet or PokerStars. Those are 3 of the world’s biggest online poker sites! Now that’s dumb.

How about some of the other things they say in the order. From the article linked to above:

The Department of Public Safety’s letters to the Internet providers say that “gambling is illegal within Minnesota” and claim that a federal law “requires upon notice by a law enforcement agency that you do not allow your systems to be used for the transmission of gambling information.”

How exactly is “gambling information” defined? Should I not be allowed to read the Wikipedia entry on the history of poker? Dumb.

What does the state gain here? Anything or are they just trying to protect people from themselves? Maybe I could understand it if we had public casinos bring in tax income – then it would be all about capitalism. But as far as I know our Indian casinos don’t pay any tax to the state.

So I conclude this is simply a weak attempt at being Big Brother. Good luck with all that – no way this sticks.

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I’m feeling a little nostalgic this morning after reading about the demise of Pontiac. I haven’t been a life-long Pontiac owner or anything but one of my first cars was a used Pontiac GTO – a 1966 Goat similar to the picture shown here. Well, I guess I should qualify that. My GTO was similar to this one in the same way that Susan Boyle is similar to Megan Fox.

It was 1985 and I already owned a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle that I had owned for a couple of years. For some reason that is lost to time the then 19 year old me decided to buy a muscle car. I don’t recall being very knowledgeable or choosy – and since I didn’t have much money to spend I couldn’t get much. But eventually I found myself owning the original muscle car, the Goat, a 1966 Pontiac GTO. It was in terrible shape – rusted body, especially at the rear quarter panels, interior was mostly stripped and most sadly of all, which I only realized later, the stock 389 triple-carb motor had been replaced with a 400 from a standard LeMans. Bigger isn’t always better – that 389 was a classic engine.

In addition to the different engine it sported a Hurst speed shifter and rear slicks. The car was huge and couldn’t corner a lick. But man could it haul ass going in a straight line. My plan was to restore the car to it’s former glory by doing all of the work myself. I didn’t know anything about body work but I bought all the tools to be a Bondo maven and over the course of a couple of years I actually did quite a bit of work in filling out the body to a shape that sort of resembled what it was supposed to look like. Once primed, it actually sort of looked decent, but only if you stood back a hundred yards and squinted. But I had a lot of fun working on it.

The problem was that I couldn’t legally drive it around and eventually that was the demise of the vehicle for me. Try getting auto insurance as a 19 year old boy with a speeding ticket or two on their record. Trying to insure a non-stock muscle car. My insurance agent just laughed at me. He said he would insure me for the summer for something like $3,000. Right. So off it went. I was sad to go.

Until a couple of week ago when I rented a Pontiac G6 while on business in Georgia I hadn’t driven another Pontiac since my GTO.

It was not the same.

R.I.P. Pontiac – you will be missed.

The 1966 Pontiac GTO
Specifications
Wheelbase, inches: 115.0
Weight, lbs: 3,445
Number built: 96,946
Base price: $2,783

Top Available Engine
Type: ohv V-8
Displacement, cid: 389
Fuel system: 3 x 2bbl.
Compression ratio: 10.75:1
Horsepower @ rpm: 360 @ 5200
Torque @ rpm: 424 @ 3600

Representative Performance
0-60 mph, sec: 6.5
1/4 mile, sec. @ mph: 14.65 @ 98

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If you have read my posts on How To Sell Used Books on Amazon you know that I went from a book hoarder who couldn’t even loan a book out, much less sell one, to someone who has worked hard to rid the house of the clutter caused by thousands of books boxed away or piled on shelves.

Well I’ve never had the same sort of problem with music – my boxes of tapes and records were sold off at a garage sale years ago, but as I had been looking to clear even more clutter (not to mention making a little money) a few months ago I read on article in the local paper about a service called iPodMeister that promised to turn your piles of CDs into cash. Well, actually it’s even better than that. What iPodMeister does is take your CDs and burn them to a DVD archive which then allows you to put that music on all of your music devices, thus saving you the time and effort of doing it yourself. And not only that but they also give you, depending on how many CDs you turn in, your own new iPod, iPhone or hard drive.

To give you a quick overview, here is the current conversion chart:

How many CDs or DVDs costs a new iPod/iPhone?

As you can see if you choose to not take their digitizing option then you can get even more hardware, but for me digitizing was key. I hadn’t listened to any of this music for many years and without being able to put it on my mp3 player (or my wife’s or children’s) it was just wasting away.

So, after doing a little online research and not finding anyone who has had a problem with their service I decided I would give it a try. First thing I had to do was gather up all of our CDs and DVDs (they don’t give you digital copies of the DVDs but they do count toward your total) and see how many I had. Because years ago I was a member of some music clubs I had a bunch of CDs that only counted worth half, so I had to do a careful accounting to make sure I knew what I was sending them. All told I counted 313 CDs (of which 128 were BMG or Columbia House) and 68 DVDs. With digitizing I decided I’d go with the 16GB Nano because I needed to upgrade my wife’s MP3 player.

At this point I reached out to the folks at iPodMeister through email not really knowing what I would find. What I found was an almost immediate response to my email, with very customer friendly responses. All of my communications with them would be like this – very quick to respond, and very helpful.

Shipping couldn’t have been easier – I boxed everything up into two very heavy boxes and they sent me to prepaid shipping labels to use with FedEx, so shipping didn’t cost me a dime. After a week or so I got a response confirming they had received my boxes and they confirmed how many they counted, which included some reductions:

We received your CD’s and DVD’s. After careful screening and counting we arrived at the following results:
3 items had incomplete cover art or were radio edits, promos, or advance CD’s.
7 items were scratched excessively or water damaged.
22 items had a market price in the single pennies (“penny CDs”).

All told this added up to a 16GB Nano and a check for $41. And 8 DVDs of archived music digitized at 320kbps. They told me it would take about 14-21 days to get everything done and out to me and sure enough within that time-frame I got the goodies.

The only bummer about the whole experience is that the box that was sent to me got a little shaken up in the mail and both DVD cases holding the archive DVDs got broken. But I have a ton of thin blank DVD holders and I just moved them into those, not a big deal.

All in all, I had a great experience with iPodMeister and would highly recommend their service to anyone looking to make some cash or equipment from your boxed up CDs.

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My 10 year old daughter said something interesting to me this morning. She wanted to type up a report she had done and she needed my help getting started. “What web page do I go to?” she asked. She had seen her brother type his reports on that computer and she just assumed it was a web based application. In fact what her brother was using is Star Office, but to her 10 year old mind she doesn’t think about applications because nearly everything she does on the computer is through the browser. She goes to YouTube to watch funny videos and plays games at places like Webkinz and Disney’s Toontown.

I’ve also embraced the web as more of my work is being done online rather than in fat client applications. I’m really starting to use Google Apps a lot now – mostly Gmail and Spreadsheet but I’ve done some things in Document and toyed with Presentation. Despite having Office 2007 on my primary computer if I need to put together a spreadsheet I’ve almost converted 100% to using Google. I’m not there yet with Document and Presentation but I think I will be this year.

Looking at my computer right now the primary fat client applications I am still using are Quicken, QuickBooks and Paintshop Pro. The first two offer browser-based solutions that I could easily switch to and probably will at some point (if I don’t go to Mint). I’m not aware of any browser based image editing programs but it wouldn’t surprise me if they exist. It certainly is more comforting as more of my data and applications go into the cloud – it offers added flexibility (I can use my Dell Mini 9 netbook anywhere) and I don’t have to worry about a local computer failure taking me down. I’m sold on the browser!

I know this isn’t a groundbreaking observation but I thought it interesting nonetheless.

Want to know the future of computing? Check out your kids.

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This is a guest post by David Stanhope from Whey Protein King.

Supplementation to a Bodybuilding regime is very important. To get the required intake of daily calories, bodybuilders eat about five to six times per day. Supplements can provide part of this intake, as well as vital sources for muscle growth, repair and recovery from training. This is particularly important considering the grueling training schedule. But what supplements are available? Also, what exactly do they do? You do not have to be a professional bodybuilder to want to use supplements to enhance training results but having a good understanding of them is key as the market is large, competitive and can be confusing.

Whey Protein

Whey protein is the most commonly sold supplement. Whey protein is a natural product, a byproduct of the cheese manufacturing process. Whey has the highest biological value of any known protein source. It is quickly and easily digestible and when taken after training, it helps muscle repair and growth. Whey has many medicinal benefits also, including assisting in weight loss, diabetes and wound healing. Whey is also full of essential amino acids, vital for muscle growth. The Whey protein market is becoming increasingly competitive, with new flavors, higher protein contents and in the last few years introductions of liquid whey protein, eliminating the need for any preparation before taking. To see some of the best brands available, check out these whey protein reviews.

Casein Protein

Casein protein is another dairy sourced protein like whey. Casein makes up around 4/5 of the protein content in milk and is also found in products like cottage cheese. Casein Protein is a slower release protein source. It is absorbed and released into the body at a slower rate than whey but this can be beneficial in some instances. It is a good source of protein to take before you sleep, particularly after a training day. In the hours you are asleep, the Casein is being released and providing amino acids for your craving muscles. It also ensures vital protein won’t be burnt by the body as a fuel source overnight, as it may be seeking an alternative source after its Glycogen stores will have been used up training.

Creatine

Creatine’s main advantage in bodybuilding is its ability to enhance to production of ATP. ATP stands for Adenosine Tri Phosphate and is essentially the energy source for your muscles in contraction. Creatine supplementation allows for longer periods of workout and training by providing the Creatine Phosphate system used in this type of training with more Creatine. More Creatine equals more ATP. This allows more of an energy release and sustained use of the muscle. (ATP is converted into ADP (Adenosine Diphosphate) and it is this that allows the energy release for the muscle.) Creatine is stored within the body in muscles.

Nitric Oxide (NO2)

Nitric oxide is a gas present in the body that is able to work in a multitude of the body’s cells. Nitric Oxide has many benefits for bodybuilding. These include vascular dilation, which allows more blood flow to the muscle and in turn a better muscle pump, better transfer of nutrients and quick recovery. Some Nitric Oxide supplements can be high in caffeine, so check labels; especially if you suffer from tachycardia (fast heart beat.)

These examples are just some of the supplements available. I hope that I have given you an insight into them and some better clarification. Supplements are just that. They supplement training to enhance results but they should never take the place of ordinary diets or natural food sources. Also, if you are taking any medication or suffer a medical condition, please contact a medical practitioner before use.

Many thanks for your time.

David Stanhope

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photo credit: schoschie

I didn’t meet the woman who would become my wife until I was 25. At least I don’t think I had met her before then. We did grow up within 10 miles of each other and she did have an older brother who was my age, and we did do some of the same things like going to the Minnesota State Fair. So it certainly is possible that if we didn’t meet that we at least rubbed elbows at some point.

In fact I have thought in the past how interesting it would be to see a “life travels” map that shows your movements and allowed you to overlay the travels of others, for exactly this reason – to see if your paths had ever crossed before. I think it would be incredibly fascinating.

And of course completely ludicrous. Right?

Well, maybe not so much. Have you seen the new Google Latitude? It promises the ability to “See where your friends are in real time!” by mapping your movements through the cell phone network. Of course this is an opt-in program and there are many options for controlling privacy, but it causes me to think about what could be in the future.

It really isn’t much of a stretch to start imagining the tracking being done through embedded microchips rather than cell phones that could be left at home. And I certainly could envision a future where instead of being opt-in that those microchips begin to be embedded by worried parents and finally as a standard for any new birth.

Massive databases could begin to store the historical tracking data, Google Street View could go from being static snapshots taken annually to real time photos. It would be simple to build an application that allowed you to track multiple people, giving you the option to fast forward through their life history until the subjects were within a certain range, at which point you could cross-index with Google Street View images at the same moment.

Sci-Fi stuff to be sure, but it just doesn’t feel that far-fetched anymore.

For now though I’ll be keeping away from Google Latitude, at least on my phone. My kids though? Those microchips sure sound promising…

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I have mentioned before how I got started selling books on Amazon. It sure was hard selling those first books as I always tended to be a hoarder when it came to books and I had a hard time even loaning them let alone selling them. But I got over that and now every year I go through a cleansing process that looks like this:

1. Sell books direct on Amazon
2. Sell remaining books in Garage sale
3. Donate remaining books

Sometimes my wife will push up #3 when there is a specific book she wants to donate to the school library. In fact an argument could be made that if you were really trying to maximize the profit per book that donating them and taking a tax deduction would be the best method, but I actually like selling books through Amazon and garage sales so there is entertainment value in it for me too.

I started my spring cleaning a little early this year and a couple of days ago I listed 63 books for sale on Amazon.com and as of today I have sold 38 of them, for a net profit after packing and shipping expenses of about $185.

Because I have pretty much optimized the method I use I thought it would be useful to document my process for finding, listing and selling books on Amazon:

Finding Books to Sell

Because we are constantly buying books or receiving books for gifts, our house offers a seemingly endless supply of books from which to choose. Years ago I actually wrote a little webpage that could be accessed from a mobile phone where you could punch in the ISBN number and it would return results from Amazon showing what the used prices were. What I use now is even cooler. I’ve got a G1 phone with a barcode scanner – I simply scan the book, and the G1 gives me a link to book search, which I then click through to Amazon to see what the book is selling for. If the lowest used book price is over a couple of bucks than I plan to sell it. Any less than that and it really isn’t worth my time to sell to Amazon. You will find a lot of people are selling books for .01 but because I am an individual seller it isn’t cost effective for me to sell at that price!

Maybe if I get around to it I’ll learn how to program for Android so I can build an app for the G1 that utilizes the barcode scanner but immedially pulls back used book price info from Amazon rather than making me click a couple of links. Add that idea to the pile!

If I didn’t have such a good supply of books at home (and even if I do I may still try this in the Spring) I would go to garage sales with my phone and scan promising looking books to see quickly where I could make some profits by flipping books someone is trying to sell for cheap.

Listing Books on Amazon

So now I have a bin of books and it is time to get them listed. This process goes pretty fast. Amazon provides a form where you enter the ISBN number, and it then prompts you for selecting a drop-down box for condition (almost all books I sell are Used – Like New or Used – Very Good) and a condition note. I usually write something like “No spine crack, no writing – only minor cover dog-ear. Satisfaction assured!“. After that you enter the price you want to set. On this page they include a listing of the current new and used prices and if you want you can drill in to see the details. At this point I know the lowest price is a price I am willing to sell at so because I want to flip this book quickly I always set for one cent less than the current lowest price.

That’s all you need to do to submit your listing. You will get an email telling you the book is listed and there is an inventory page you can go to to monitor your books. You will find that others will list the same book for a penny less than yours so if you really want to sell the books you need to be occasionally going to this page and lowering your price to be the lowest as the lowest price is usually the one selected should someone want to buy.

Selling Books on Amazon

Once your book is sold you will get an email notifying you. Here is the exact process I use once I get such a notification:

1. Track sale in Excel spreadsheet where I track expenses and revenue (email will incldue book title and total credit for the sale).
2. Delete notification email from Amazon
3. Go to orders page on Amazon and print packing slip.
4. Cut off the shipping address from packing slip.
5. Grab correct envelope (I use padded envelopes I buy on the cheap at Sam’s Club) and apply return address sticker and shipping address label.
6. Highlight the part of packing slip that refers to leaving feedback on the sale.
7. Write a handwritten “Thanks! John”
8. Fold up packing slip and put it into book
9. Put book into envelope and seal it up
10. Throw envelope into bin for next trip to post office.

Once I return from the post office I do the following:

1. Update Excel spreadsheet with shipping expenses
2. Contact buyer through Amazon link thanking them for their order and letting them know that it has been shipped.

It sounds like a lot of work but it really isn’t – and if you are like me and actually find this sort of thing fun then it’s a great way to clear a little clutter and get paid for it.

Good luck selling books on Amazon.com!

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The good news is that I took one of the tickets I won in the Blogger Tourney to today’s Sunday Million where I finished in 166th place out of 16,260 players. A score good for $3,577.20 – my second biggest win ever.

The bad news is that this is how I got knocked out:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $200+$15 Tournament, 25000/50000 Blinds 5000 Ante (8 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button (t464502)
SB (t1794281)
BB (t4349913)
UTG (t663598)
UTG+1 (t1132309)
MP1 (t1533527)
MP2 (t1711953)
malice51 (CO) (t793038)

malice51’s M: 6.90

Preflop: malice51 is CO with 3, A
4 folds, malice51 raises to t133333, 2 folds, BB calls t83333

Flop: (t331666) 7, 2, 5 (2 players)
BB bets t150000, malice51 raises to t654705 (All-In), BB calls t504705

Turn: (t1641076) 9 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t1641076) J (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t1641076

Results:
BB had Q, J (one pair, Jacks).
malice51 had 3, A (high card, Ace).
Outcome: BB won t1641076

That’s just so brutal. Maybe you could argue I shouldn’t have been going against the big stack, but you can’t play frightened. For him to call over 500,000 with nothing but Q high? What does he put me on? Ouch. I’m so sick over it I can’t tell you. First place in this tourney pays $330,000. That would have been nice!

Well I still have a $530 ticket left so hopefully I’ll be able to turn that into something later.

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I got some custom printed business cards printed up recently through a couple of different sites, Moo.com and iPrint. I’m not going to do a big write-up post comparing the two, but ultimately I will be purchasing more cards, should I need them, from iPrint. Don’t get me wrong, the Moo.com cards were nice enough, but the final product layout just didn’t look as nice as iPrint and the cards were a weird size. Plus Moo.com was a lot more expensive.

As often happens when purchasing something my decision to continue to purchase from iPrint was driven by the outstanding product support I received. When you order your custom business cards at iPrint they make very clear that before you hit the order button that you need to make 100% sure that the card looks the way you want it to look.

In my case I had included a link to my public LinkedIn profile but instead of linking it as www.linkedin.com I used linkedin.com thinking I would save some space. What I forgot to do was to make sure that the link still worked in the latter case and as it turned out, it didn’t.

So I bought 250 cards that I was going to have to scribble a “www.” on if I wanted to make them usable. Really a bummer! But, totally my fault.

Shortly after I discovered this mistake I received an email from customer service with the following:

We want to make sure you are totally satisfied with your product. If you have any problem whatsoever, please reply to this e-mail and we will be happy to help you. Your satisfaction is our first priority!

So I rather sheepishly wrote back to say that through no fault of theirs I was not 100% satisfied with my business cards.

Long story short, they refunded me 30% of my original order and gave me a coupon code good for 50% off the replacement order. I thought that was more than fair.

Given this great support, price, the easy and powerful online business card software they provide and superior quality of the final product, I highly recommend using iPrint for your custom printed business cards.

Free Shipping on orders of $75+ at iPrint.com!

Thanks Jaime!

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photo credit: billaday

Every Saturday I’ll be reaching deep into the archives. Or at least trying to, I’ve been missing a few weeks although tonight I did get caught up. In addition to using this as a chance to catch up I also use it as a chance to clean up some meta data on some old posts, so there is a method to my madness. Here is what I was writing about this coming week, five long years ago:

Good Luck To Saint Johns – I wrote this post about Saint Johns’ upcoming battle with powerhouse Mount Union before the game took place and then I updated it with the results, which was an amazing Saint John’s win. I still remember the game, was very fun to watch and the best part was seeing how well coached the kids were by Gagliardi, truly one of the giants of the sport.

The Mushy Middle – When I wrote the post I seemed to be saying that 60% match as the top put me in the middle but I’m actually amazed I had that kind of a match in 2004. This year when I took the test I think Gulianni was on top with something like a 30% match. In any case, I’m still clearly in the mushy middle when it comes to politics. A little bit of both parties please.

Review – Tournament Texas Hold’em – Review of a tournament poker program I bought. I still actually have it but it’s in storage – each year I bring it out and put it in our garage sale but nobody ever buys it.

A pretty light week. See you next week!

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