| LED Digest 2678: Before Wiki were Cliff Notes |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher The Internet Marketing Boutique: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. July 11, 2008 Issue no. 2678 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Does Google Make You Feel Stupid? ==-- ~ Barrett J. Rossie "But we can (and should) create all-inclusive campaigns..." ~ Sandy Galvin "If things were changing that fast, we'd be there by now." ~ Tom Aman "...the wrong thing is being blamed as the culprit." --== Usability Issues ==-- ~ Tom Anson "...if I had the resources to do a usability study, I could find a lot of problems with my site..." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Barrett Rossie Subject: Stupid Google > Does Search Marketing depend on maintaining > a '2.0' mentality? Or will it eventually be > replaced with something else that is more > proficient for the 2.0 mind? What will that > be, and will it be a good thing? - Grant Crowell, LED 2677 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2092/190/ What a great and refreshing post from Grant Crowell. From a marketing perspective, we Internet "tweeners" have an incredible opportunity to link our clients to the pre-Internet generation as well the new raised-on-the-web generation. There are challenges. But we can (and should) create all-inclusive campaigns that few in the older generation of marketers, or the newer one, have the experience to handle. Barrett J. Rossie http://barrettrossie.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Sandy Galvin Subject: Change One of the constants in thinking about thinking is the notion that "things are speeding up" and that this age is qualitatively different than the last one. Having taught University students for (nearly) 30 years, I can assure you that every age is a "new age," and filled with fretting about how much faster life has become, how deficient the new breed of students has become, how broader the current age's thinking has become, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure that "Professor Grok" told his wife that students were completely different since they started making round wheels. Interestingly, a lot of this sort of discussion emanates from the same people who insist that tests such as IQ tests and SAT tests don't measure anything. And as for college students reading texts in the old way - there never was an old way. Except for the handful of students engaged in a particular class, or the handful of professors able to engage a broader cross section, most classroom students are a bag of hammers. There is actually a credible movement that suggests that IQ is increasing in humans overall (albeit slowly). And there is no doubt that the Internet has created a new environment. And there is no doubt, either, that the status of books is profoundly altered by the snippeting of information - not unlike the situation with Music CDs. But I'm willing to bet that 30 years from now, when galoots like myself are pushing up Daisies, people will be commenting in the ether about how sad it is that students don't use Wikipedia like they used to do. But before Wiki there were Cliff Notes, before Cliff Notes there were Classic Comics, and before that something else. The only thing more ubiquitous than the belief that the paradigm has shifted, are old folks who know it hasn't. If things were changing that fast, we'd be there by now. Sandy Galvin Barclay Blocks http://www.barclaywoods.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Stupid Google > It's a long article so I will offer my > summary: Prolonged use of the Internet, now > about 13 years into mainstream use, has had > a profound effect on the way we process > thought... speaking down to the neurology > of brain tissue itself, 'how we think' has > profoundly changed. - Grant Crowell, LED 2677 I read the whole article [ http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google ] and tend, in many respects, to disagree - the wrong thing is being blamed as the culprit. I think the problem has more to do with TV than with the Internet, goes back at least to the 1980s, and is still being reinforced. I remember commenting to my family when my kids where in their teens and watching a lot of music video about how this was creating a new generation with short attention spans. It is reinforced in adults by such programs as Entertainment Tonight (and it's Canadian equivalent, eTalk) where entertainment news is presented in very brief video/sound bites, seldom in any kind of depth. Many news broadcasts and morning shows are done much the same way. As for reading, there have always been those who read well and those who don't. I don't really believe the Internet has been a cause. Back in school, when students had to read some required numbers of books per year (like 6 or 8), there were always those who had trouble getting through that many while I usually ended up with a list of 30 or 40 books that I had read over the school term. I spend a lot of time on the Internet and still read a lot, sometimes fiction, sometimes non-fiction - 2 or 3 books a week, usually. To put this in some perspective, I am 73 and have been involved computers since the beginning of the 1960s and with the Internet since 1995. I have two sons who grew up with computers (I programmed games at one time and as 6 and 7 year olds they loved being my initial testers), and with the Internet since it was first available in our home and they are still a voracious readers - whether it be fiction or complex techical manuals doesn't matter, they just love to read. Personally, I think the home environment has a greater effect than anything - if parents are not readers, then children are much less likely to be readers. My sons were read to from the time they were babies so grew up with a love of books. This is much less likely to happen when parents use the TV as a substitute (and where they can learn to view everything in brief video/sound bites starting with programs like Sesame Street). In short, I feel it is TV, not the Internet, that has had the profound effect on the way we process thought. Tom Aman Aman Software -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Usability Hi everyone, This is in response to Shari Thurow's comments about my URLs and usability [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2091/190/ ]. Again, in the spirit of dialogue . . . not picking a fight or defending my position. I agree that a short URL would be best most times. In fact, I believe it would be best all the time. Why haven't I used shorter URLs on my site? Because, I have very few occasions where someone would come to my site, or find a particular product on the site, just by typing a page's URL into the address bar. People come through links, no typing required. And, once on my site, I doubt that anyone would even notice the URL for any one page. I navigate my site that way, but only because I know where everything is. I'm sure that, if I had the resources to hire someone to do a usability study, I could find a lot of problems with my site -- at least from certain perspectives. And, I agree that, just because I find it easy enough to find something on my site, that doesn't mean anyone else could. But then, again, most people come to my site through links from other sources. There is no typing required. Once someone is on my site, I've tried hard to make everything neat, tidy and organized -- as easy to find as possible. I really have not concerned myself with keywords in my URLs for several years now. Obviously, if the page is about frankincense oil, I'll have frankincense in the URL -- but not because it's a keyword. It's because it's about frankincense oil. I don't put the frankincense in a directory folder called singles because I'm working with keywords; I put it there because frankincense is a single oil, as opposed to a blend or base/carrier oil. I have the singles folder in the products folder, not because it's a keyword, but because it's a product, as opposed to just information about aromatherapy or the business opportunity offered on the site. Another reason I divide the products up as I do: It makes it easier for me to find a page for editing/updating. I have something of a "reading disorder", and locating a file in a long, uninterrupted string of files is quite hard for me to do. This has nothing to do with SEO, and nothing, really, to do with this discussion. It's not SEO gone wild; it's preventing something really wild from going on, just because I can't read what I'm doing. I realize that, without real studies to work with on this, most everything that can be said is more speculation that information. But, this has been my thinking when building my websites. Is this muddled? Tom Anson, IPC | doTerra Aromatics.com Certified pure therapeutic-grade essential oils (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid." - Patricia Alexander |
