Speaking of SEO

I've found it helpful to think about Search Engines like people. What I mean is, if Mrs Google comes to your site, she is looking in particular places to figure out what your site is about, and then validating the pages against the indications that higher level data gives her. She sees a domain named "www.tatertots.com" and thinks "this might be a site about tater tots". She goes to the home page and sees the word tater tots in several areas. She follows a link title "Tater Tot Ingredient Information" and goes to a page with the url "www.tatertots.com/tater-tot-information.html" - where she finds a page that lists all the ingredients but doesn't say the word "tater tot" anywhere - just a list of food ingredients! The page obviously should have certain basic areas that repeat this phrase or variations of the phrase so that Mrs. Google doesn't feel confused or ripped off.

This is a simplification of course - there are many gotcha issues with seo, such as duplicate content issues, keyword stuffing, spam, link syndication, etc - and Mrs. Google will look at all of these and negative marks against you as an information authority as it regards tater tots. But it gives you an idea of a common sense way to look at search engine optimization.

Google Friend Connect

Google has just released a social networking add-on for websites. Here's some info from their press release:

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social -- and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening's Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming -- picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

We're looking forward to trying it out over here - these features are becoming more attainable for the average site owner every day!

50 Ways to Identify a VIP

Did you know there are fifty ways to identify a VIP in a restaurant or bar? A VIP being a "very intoxicated person."

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) requires restaurants and other establishments to train their wait staff and bar tenders to handle situations where patrons have exceeded their capacity to be safe on the road. The new on-line Alcohol Server Education (ASE) course includes reading, test and videos that mimic real life situations where the server has to make a decision or pick appropriate actions to defuse potentially explosive behaviors.

OakTree built this custom course in Flash using a train ride motif. Each section of the course is represented by a different part of Oregon; beach, mountains, city, desert, etc. Once you've made it to the end of the train ride by successfully mastering the training, you receive your liquor server license good for five years. See the OakTree Digital press release.

One of the fun parts of the project was filming the lessons in Kells and McCormicks. Both were very willing to let us have the actors light cigarettes and spill drinks. We did use union actors for the roles even though several OakTree folks volunteered to get smashed for the part.