Launched a new look and feel. Brings in some AJAX and other bells and whistles. (It’s the renovatio theme designed by Entropy.)

Barna released a report about the extent to which churches are using technology… (more…)

I was introduced to a beta search engine, Clusty that offers a technology to ‘cluster’ search results. If you do a search for ‘Dune’ you can then determine which search cluster best describes what you were seeking. Here are cluster results for ‘Dune’ that allows you to filter the results.

⇨Movie (35)
⇨Dune Buggy (33)
⇨Game (19)
⇨Sand Dune (18)
⇨Science, Fiction (19)
⇨Kevin J. Anderson (10)
⇨Frank Herbert’s Dune (7)
⇨Dune Chronicles (6)
⇨Beach (7)
⇨Mud (3)

Why Clustering?

The problem of not being able to find what users are looking for has now transformed into one of finding too much information. Today’s search engines burden the user with the task of interpreting hundreds or thousands of documents to glean the information they need.

Categorization of all this data has been the obvious solution to enable users to better deal with this “information overload”. Traditional approaches to categorization involving taxonomies, however, are too expensive, time-consuming and complex for most organizations.

Find the Art in Everyday: A good example of Viral Marketing by Bannana Republic. Posted by Reformissionay who found it at Joe Thorn’s blog…

I’m looking at what type of open source Church CMS is out there… Here is one called the Web-Empowered Church (WEC). It uses TYPO3 Here is an example site: Ginghamsburg Church.

My quest for a new phrase to be added to our vernacular:

This may sound crazy, but I think Search Engine Optimizaiton should have an additional classification: Search Engine Engineering (SEE).

Often when I work with clients to optimize their pages, I have many limitations to what I can change. BUT if a client brings me in from the beginning, prior to one line of code, we can sit down and build a site that is more than optimized, it is Engineered. The important thing is the ability to differentiate with clients. All too often a client will have been ‘pitched’ SEO services but they end up only editing meta data or other trival seo changes. Now professionals can say, “we’re talking more than just seo, we are talking about engineering your pages from ground up to succeed on search engines.” It’s a totally different conversation.

SEE is a different conversation that says, “ok do you want me to optimize what you’ve got or do you want to engineer these pages. Engineered pages will significantly outperform optimized pages. The choice is yours.

I’d love to have this site be a leader on this conversation because many of us value your insight and others.

Forum Conversations:

Cre8 Forum
Search Engine Watch
JimWorld Forum

Search Engine Enginneered (SEE) Blog
Search Engine Enginneered (SEE) Wiki

Take a look at Ekklesia Systems‘ first templated design mock-up. There is still a ton to be done but we just got this up there.

I need your feedback. Thoughts on the design?

Added a paragraph on what Ekklesia is all about:

Ekklesia Systems is a scalable Content Management Architectures for churches who are serious about integrating technology into the vision of their church. The system is designed from the ground up around the latest technologies. This allows your church to leverage the online medium and communicate your vision to both your community and to the world. Users will be able to Podcast, stream or download sermons, receive syndication of the newest content and events and interact through the church’s forums and blogs.

I usually write these things and then come back after to remove marketing mumbo-jumbo.

I have work for some writers who have been published on (at least) sites like Relevant, theOoze, NextWave, etc. and have a established blog presence.

Post your blog in a comment below for me to check out.

Ok people. Which ones of you have book ideas that you’d like to pitch? I’m going to be meeting with the Editor, 2 Division heads (emerging, christian living) and a couple others for dinner on September 9th. If you have a good book idea throw it past me.

I’m pretty amazed. I also just started using Skype to work with a contractor on some web projects. It allows you to conduct free internet-based phone calls anywhere in the world. We are able to work on our projects (web dev) and talk about it as we work. (I guess other people would love it for gaming.) Most of you are probably aware of this, I am a late-comer on the IP telephony stuff. I used it about 4 years ago but the quality was so bad I wrote it off until now.

HisMethod (and all the rest of you in Australia) or CawleyBlog we may need to try this some day!

I’ve been using a couple of these web templates at Monk Development. Amazing! We just launched Players Vacation Club with a simple template (we edited it from tables to Web Standard based CSS) and it took 3 days! Talk about crazy.

Since, technagoraphobia (which you can now google btw, click on it) went over well. I have another term I’d like to introduce to the english language:

Search Engine Engineered, Search Engine Engineering or Search Engine Engineer. Ok, many websites will Search Engine Optimize, but that only takes existing data/content and ‘optimizes’ it for a Search Engine. Search Enginer Engineering, engineers websites from the ground up to peform well on Search Engines.

The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience (Paperback)
Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Websites (Paperback)
Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank (Paperback)

I think I forgot to mention the Burnside Writers Collective store is now opened. The first 200 orders of Miller’s books get an autographed copy. Don’t give your money to Amazon, help support the BWC group.

Monk Development has launched a concept (3Prophet System) we thought was somewhat revolutionary in the web/seo world. It turns out the Editor of Wired Magazine wrote about this in October 2004 and coined the phrase the Long Tail.

The 3Prophet System allows companies to target 3 & 4 word phrases people search for online. We launched Musolist (some SEO Results) and it has worked so well we plan on launching a few more sites. (Chic Salons, League List, Direct Mortgage Group, Time to Get Awesome!, MusoSource, IT People and more…all of these will be aggregated at ZipWatch)

The phrase “The Long Tail”, as a proper noun, was first coined1 by Chris Anderson. Beginning in a series of speeches in early 2004 and culminating with the publication of a Wired Magazine article in October 2004, Anderson described the effects of the long tail on current and future business models. Anderson observed that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Examples of such mega-stores include Amazon.com, Netflix and even Wikipedia. The Long Tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, successfully tapping in to that long tail market is often enabled by the distribution and sales channel opportunities the Internet creates. (Full wikipedia on the long tail.)

One of my favorite quotes came from Joe Kraus, a founder of Excite. “The top 10 searches were thousands of times more popular than the average search, yet these top-10 searches represented only 3% of our total volume. 97% of our traffic came from the ‘long tail’ – queries asked a little over once a day.” (full Long Tail post)