Playcornhole.org

I love the American Cornhole Association. Not because I love the sport of Cornhole - I have never actually played - but because I love the thought of a group of people making the tough decision that their sport's name was non-negotiable, even if it makes the average person think of an anus.

I have received confirmation for a child of the corn (Iowa) that Cornhole is really a sport being played in front yards everywhere. I guess it is like horseshoes.

Anyway, join the American Cornhole Association, buy their stuff, and ALWAYS stick to the rules of Cornhole.

Oh yeah, happy Halloween!

Posted by James at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When you have a some time to kill and you are looking for good old family entertainment, check out homestarrunner.com.

The best places on the site are "Toons" (especially the "Teen Girl Squad" and "Puppet Stuff" area - check out the song "Everybody Knows It") and "Strong Bad Emails" (the classics are "Dragon" and "Kids Book").

Enjoy!

Posted by James at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Innovation is an extremely important part of business success and has been since the "beginning of all known time" (thanks to WebTrends for the great terminology). A lot of companies embrace innovation as one of their oh so important "values." The big question is - is innovation really being lived out by an organization or is it just a dusty motivational poster on the wall. I believe that if innovation is truly accepted into a company's culture they will have an edge up on their competition (or they will at least be able to keep up.)

I have been trying to pay more attention to innovative trends in the world and I have been searching for a good blog to keep an eye on.

Recently Fortune Magazine has jumped into the innovation blog world with their new Business Innovation Blog. While I prefer personal blogger’s sites, I do like the thought that it is some one's job to seek out great innovation information and put it on the Web.

So check it out. If anything you will find links to other great innovation blogs.

Posted by James at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, picture this....So you are working your day job, sitting in your cube. Everything is calm and that pisses you off. You are getting bored and you need some excitement in your life.

Thank God you are sitting next to a 20 pound abomination of a Nerf toy, the NERF N-STRIKE UNITY POWER SYSTEM (TM)!!!!

This is THE weapon for total cube domination. Why? Let me tell you why!!!! (in bullet points suckas)

• It is the largest Nerf Blaster on Earth


• The Blaster is 3 guns in one


• The three guns come apart or combine with an integrated trigger system


• The gun with 6 barrels either fire all at once or semi-automatic


• The rocket launcher fires hard and leaves red marks


• Everyone at work who sees you coming with one will respect your authority

(if you need to take out some coworkers, get yours from eToys)

Posted by James at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A friend told me about the gapingvoid Web site a while back but I recently revisited it to read the essay on "How to Be Creative." The essay is pretty long but is worth the read, especially for those of you who have a knack for creativity but find the 9 to 5 lifestyle suppressing your inner creative.

The author is a brit named Hugh who has managed to parlay his drunken pasttime of drawing cartoons on the backs of his business cards into a full time gig of being a "blogvertising" consultant. Way to go Hugh, if we could only all find that kind of successful outlet. More about Hugh and the gapingvoid.

For those of us who might not be able to find that outlet fulltime, we may feel better after reading Hugh's "Sex and Cash Theory."

Posted by James at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Andre the Giant has a Posse.

That is how it all started in 1989. An artist named Shepard Fairey started an experiment in what he called "Phenomenology" which, in his own words, is aimed to "reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment." For the full explanation check out the Manifesto.

Since it's inception, the "Obey" movement has grown and spread worldwide. If you keep an eye out you will notice the face of Andre the Giant in the backgrounds of movies and television shows and in the city you live in. I even remember seeing Obey graffiti in Berlin in 2001.

Check out the Obey Giant Web site. The poster gallery is a great place to see Shepard's work is on display.

Posted by James at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google updates are always interesting. The most recent update dubbed "Jagger" has not been a letdown.

I am sure the update is still going on so I am not going to get too excited about some recent success on a competitive term (15,000,000+ results) on one of my work sites.

For some reason Webmaster World is down, which is good, since it seems like people post like madmen during updates. I guess there is a alternate site up right now so all the WMW junkies can get their fix. I am just glad they didn't run off with my PubCon registration money.

The Search Engine Watch thread on "Jagger" is up, so if you need your daily dose of speculation, head on over.

Posted by James at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Do you have $40,000 and a need to go REALLY, REALLY, REALLY fast? Sure you do!

Behold the Ariel Atom.

This car is nuts! Let me give you three reasons why we all need one of these:

• 0-60 in 2.91 seconds


• 0-100 in 6.8 seconds


• 0-100-0 in 10.88 seconds

One part that is missing from the video is the road test of the Atom by the "Stig" (their mythical road tester). In the end there is only one car ever tested that was able to make it around the Top Gear track faster — the Ferrari Enzo. That's right, it is almost as fast around the track as a half million dollar supercar.

So what if it doesn't have a windshield?

Posted by James at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is a great article about what Web 2.0 is from Tim O'Reilly - see it here.

The article really speaks for itself and I am watching a great Frontline, so I will leave it to you to read.

Posted by James at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Danny Sullivan's Daily Searchcast from Friday reminded me of the hilariously smart group known as the Dark SEO Team. I checked out their PR10 project a while back. They managed to hijack (or something like a hijack) Google's own PageRank. A great example of issues with the whole PageRank system.

Now they have taken on another Google problem—duplicate content.

It seems that to make a point about Google's fairly random choice of what is the "good" copy of duplicate content and "bad" they have managed to get content on Matt Cutt's blog deindexed by, presumably, creating duplicate content pages.

At SES San Jose 2005, Matt Cutts basically explained that if Google finds multiple copies of the same content the computer tries to pick the "best" version of the content. Interestingly, he admitted that the computer is just taking a calculated guess, but a guess none the less. Scary stuff for the "white hat" crew who are spending time and money trying to create great online content.

In the end, the Dark Star Team has found a way to take out other site's pages by making duplicate pages that are "better" than the original. Hopefully this kind of mischief will motivate Google to find an innovative solution to the duplicate content problem.

Props to the Dark Star Team.

Posted by James at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, I think I just jumped into a time machine. I just heard a commercial for the VH1/Honda Civic Flash Mob contest. What the hell! I thought the "flash mob" died about 2 years ago.

Seriously.

I remember I went to one of the first flash mobs in Denver. It was an imaginary Ping-Pong game at the Pavilions downtown. I was an interesting exercise at the time but the trend of flash mobs imploded a couple of months later. Something about the heavy media coverage kinda wrecked the whole thing..

Anyway, I have no clue why VH1 and Honda have decided to revive the term from it's grave. Let the flash mob rest in peace you bastards.

Over and out.

Posted by James at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had a great meeting at work today and Web 2.0 came up. Pretty exciting stuff.

Rather than being like every other geek and writing a dissertation on what Web 2.0 means to me, I thought I would shoot for the first Web 2.0 haiku.

Oh, Web 2.0.
Please let me understand you.
Before others do.

Damn...that was pretty.

Please feel free to come up with your own.

Posted by James at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Guess what. I hate iTunes.

Why? Because iTunes is the only way I can do anything with my iPods. That is right, iPods, plural. I have a Mini and a Shuffle. But for the love of God, Moses, and Allah, iTunes makes me want to shoot myself in the face every time I try to use it.

And that is why I was so happy to hear that Apple just posted record net income and the stock dropped like a rock. You have to figure that now that Apple is selling 6.5 million iPods a quarter everyone who owns shares has an iPod, and suddenly they realized that their pretty little mp3 player is being controlled by the Joseph Stalin of software.

Go Napster. Go Yahoo Music. Go, um, Broncos?

Alright, gotta go, I have to run to Best Buy and get the new iPod that plays video...or maybe a Nano.

Hell, how else am I going to meet the cool kids who went to art school?

Posted by James at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Gotta give (as we used to say in the ghettos of Ken Caryl Ranch) a big up, peace and shout out to my boy Justin Bregar, the master of all that is the Intarweb. Without him there would certainly be no Marketing Punk as I am not smart enough to set up this kind of stuff.

To see the greatest site on the entire Intarweb go to Bregar.com!

Posted by James at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a quick note on a recent experience I had with EXP Wines. I bought a bottle of their 2001 Syrah a couple of weeks ago. When I opened the bottle the wine tasted good but after about 30 minutes the wine just seemed to go bad. Very strange.

I looked on the bottle and saw a link to the EXP Web site. I found a contact list and sent in an email telling about my experience. Within a few minutes I had a response from a guy named Bob Barker at EXP. He offered to replace the bottle of wine free of charge.

I got my wine last week and recently got a chance to try it. The wine is great! Most importantly, the customer service that I received from EXP was very impressive.

Bravo Bob!

Posted by James at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After hearing a lot about Webmaster Radio, and attending a great party (with a VERY annoying MC) at SES San Jose 2005, I finally check it out. Now I am glad I was punished with their adverts because the couple of shows that I have listened to are very good.

The two shows that I have listened to are Danny Sullivan's "Daily Searchcast" and "SEO Rockstars."

The great guru of SEO, Danny Sullivan, has a daily show called the "Daily Searchcast." Seems to be that he calls in from England every day and gives an update on the state of search and new search news as he sees it. The show I listened to was enjoyable, with the normal dorky flair that any SEO program may have.

I also checked out a show called "SEO Rockstars," which is hosted by Todd "Oilman" Friesen. The "Oilman" is an old school SEOer who has been doing SEO since the beginning of all known time (thanks for that terminology WebTrends). The show was over an hour long and very interesting - a great thing to listen to if you are one of the lucky people who can listen to music all day at work.

If you are interested in checking out the show either set up an RSS feed to update you on new shows coming out or go to Webmaster Radio.

Posted by James at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ok, so I am trying to figure out what my first entry in the Marketing Punk blog should be and I figure I should say a word about the Marketing Punk man up in the top banner. The image is actually a picture I took in Amsterdam on the way back from my trip to Ghana earlier this year.

The man was graffiti on the back of one of the shops of the Amsterdam flower market. I thought it was cool so I took a pic. A few months ago I was bored so I screwed around with it on Photoshop and switched the colors up a bit, I am sure it took me about an hour to do it...pretty sad.

Anyway, that is the first riveting entry into this blog. Hold onto your hats, it can only be uphill from here…

Posted by James at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi, my name is James Omdahl and Marketing Punk is my blog.

First off, let me explain why I chose Marketing Punk as the name of my blog.

No, it isn’t because I have a mohawk or because I slam dance (although that would be flippin' awesome). I chose Marketing Punk because marketing is what I do and on more than one occasion I have been called a punk. A punk as in, “get that punk kid off my lawn” or “that marketing punk kid is trying to tell us that traditional marketing is dying.”

So if you are searching for news on facial piercing, liberty spikes or deals on Doc Martins...you've come to the wrong pop-shop cowboy.

Next up, why the hell am I blogging?

Well, partially because it is what I do for a living. Not this blog, but the InsureMe Affiliate Blog, which covers affiliate and search engine marketing. If you are looking for good content on SEO, PPC, or marketing yourself online, it’s the place to go.

Since the Affiliate Blog focuses on online marketing, Marketing Punk tends to be a little schizo when it comes to content. While I do write about marketing here, I tend to write more about the various fun stuff going on in my life, things that entertain me, and topics that I am passionate about.

Check back often and for the love of God, leave a comment. It is like my crack, etc.

If you would like to contact me to check out your business, get my opinion on something, or if you want to pay me to shut up, you may do so at james@marketingpunk.com.

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy!

Posted by James at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

God created Marketing Punk. You betta recognize.

Posted by James at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)