A journal of no very wide circulation...

Biltmore at Night - Coral Gables

Wed, 30 May 2012 17:17:35 -0400

Biltmore at Night - Coral Gables

Theater of the Sea…Islamorada

Mon, 28 May 2012 13:58:39 -0400

Theater of the Sea…Islamorada

Shack between Everglades City and Chokoloskee…

Mon, 28 May 2012 13:20:00 -0400

Shack between Everglades City and Chokoloskee…

Miami from the Rickenbacker Causeway…

Mon, 28 May 2012 13:18:42 -0400

Miami from the Rickenbacker Causeway…

Drove through the Everglades today - saw this guy in Big...

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:48:07 -0400

Drove through the Everglades today - saw this guy in Big Cypress…

Downtown Fort Myers - #SWFL

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:51:33 -0400

Downtown Fort Myers - #SWFL

Excerpt - How To Build Client Relationships Through Digital Creative

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:48:00 -0400

Photo By Timo Kuusela

This is an excerpt of an article I wrote for the Pomegranate Digital Agency Blog:

Everything’s a commercial. Everything’s a pitch. The wallpaper of reality has become an endless mixed-media collage of advertisements…

It’s tough to stand out against the lurid backdrop of digital video, blinking neon lights, saccharine marketing jingles, slick websites and print ads on magazine pages so glossy they almost blind.

Without Powerball-sized promotional budgets, it’s almost impossible to compete in the bigger, louder, brighter and beloved-by-pop-culture-celebrities arena.

It’s imperative to put your advertising dollars in places where they will make the most impact.

Here are 3 cost-effective digital strategies to help you build meaningful client relationships:

Read the entire article at the Pomegranate Blog!

Musing on GM, Facebook, Promoted Posts and the Future of Digital Advertising

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:17:00 -0400

This is an excerpt of an article I recently wrote for the Pomegranate Digital Agency Blog:

..the most effective advertisements in digital are now being disguised as content. Facebook is even joining in…expect to see more of this trend in the coming months and years.

Why? Because…

Modern consumers still love to buy — but they hate being sold.

Consumers are forced to endure a ceaseless onslaught of constant competition for the few remaining moments of their short attention spans.

This is why advertising is changing. This is why people are becoming blind to ads — and why you need to extend beyond CPC ads if you expect to reach those of us who aren’t clicking on Facebook advertisements.

This is the age of digital empowerment. The information superhighway leads directly to our pockets and the mobile devices almost every set of eyes are glued to.

When questions arise…answers are there for the taking.

When needs arise…solutions are just a search query away.

People are looking for information…not advertisements.

They don’t want high pressure sales pitches. They want to do research and sell themselves on your solution before they make the call.

Read the entire article at the Pomegranate Blog!

The Truth About Location-Based Social Apps and How @FriendThem Protects Your Privacy

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:49:50 -0400

An excerpt of some writing I did about the Friendthem app:

Now that the location-based capabilities of modern smartphones have been put to work powering digital platforms of all types — it’s no surprise that location-based social apps are popping up all over the map.

In the U.S., smartphones are in every hand. People are checking in, doing price research, writing restaurant reviews, sharing geo-tagged photos and connecting with each other in real time… all over the real world.

This powerful technology opens up new horizons of opportunity to connect and share in ways never before possible.

At the same time, it’s more important than ever to make certain that we’re putting reasonable safeguards in place to protect our privacy and personal safety.

Read how the Friendthem app opens a new era in connectivity, firmly grounded around your personal privacy preferences…and always on your own terms…at the Friendthem Blog!

StringFly Photographer Fights Animal Neglect with ACE in Luxor, Egypt

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:41:00 -0400

This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the StringFly Blog:

When our editors noticed one of our longtime StringFly photo contributors, Helen Bailey from Luxor Egypt, uploading images of unhappy looking exotic animals, we knew we had to reach out and get the full story.

Photography. Passion. Activism. Volunteering. Individuals selflessly helping to make the world a better place. The tale we were told inspired us so much that we’ve decided to share it here with you. Here it is in Helen’s own words:

Read the Entire Article at the StringFly Live Blog!

4 Time-Saving Blogging Ideas

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:05:32 -0400

An excerpt from a post I recently wrote for Pomegranate:

From Fortune 500s to small neighborhood restaurants, businesses of all stripes and sizes are successfully using frequently updated blogs to increase brand awareness, attract new business, disseminate important announcements and forge deeper bonds with clients.

If you happen to be the individual responsible for authoring fresh blog content, then you already know what a time-consuming process managing a company blog represents.

That’s precisely why it’s so important to assure that you’re exploiting all available resources in ways that save you time — and help you grow your business…

Read my “4 Time-Saving Ideas To Make Your Company Blog Work For You” on the Pomegranate Digital Agency Blog!

Can Big Data Make Mobile Ads More Relevant?

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:59:15 -0400

An excerpt from my recent post on the Pomegranate Blog:

As internet browsing habits have changed over the past few years, digital advertising solutions have struggled to keep pace.

These days we all jump from home and workplace desktops, to iPhone and Android smartphones - and then into meetings with our tablet computers…the screens keep changing, but we stay the same.

This creates huge headaches for marketers, as they spend time and resources strategizing ways to attract new business using digital advertising — but keep needing to start from scratch every time their “hot lead” switches screens…

Read the rest at the Pomegranate Digital Agency Blog!

Citizen Journalism Guest Article on The Daily Crowdsource

Sat, 19 May 2012 22:06:47 -0400

An excerpt from my recent guest article “So, you’re still using the phrase citizen journalism?” on The Daily Crowdsource:

Tempers flare as new-media types envisioning democratized media coverage butt heads with old-school journalists repeatedly reminding the world, “Well, you wouldn’t hire a citizen surgeon…would you?”

Read the full article at The Daily Crowdsource!

Ridiculously good… (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:16:33 -0400

Ridiculously good… (Taken with instagram)

Google’s Knowledge Graph -- Stupid-Proofing Search

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:50:00 -0400

Have you ever watched a less-technologically-savvy member of the human race attempt to search Google for a specific snippet of information?

It’s enough to drive you crazy. You can’t stop yourself — you’re emotionally and situationally forced to correct their digital semantics. You blurt out the missing keywords they need to type into the search box. You start verbally editing…

“No…you’ll never find it that way. You need to take out the word ‘and’, add the word ‘super’ at the beginning — and make sure you have the town name and state abbreviation in there, too.”

Then the search results appear. You cringe. You just want to physically grab the mouse away from them, as their hand is magnetically drawn towards any advertisement on the page.

“The website with the information you need is in the number 4 spot. How do you not see that? WHY ARE YOU CLICKING ON THE AD?”

Maddening. Aggravating. And, now…a thing of the past?

That’s right, folks…with the release of their new Knowledge Graph update, Google has officially made Search stupid-proof.

Up until this point, you needed some level of skill to reach actual answers through a search engine query. Not any more.

“This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.” states Amit Singhal, SVP of Engineering at Google.

The Knowledge Graph concept represents a paradigm shift in Search — one in which search engines begin to see the words you type into them, not as random strings of characters, but as representative of actual things and ideas which share relationships with other things and ideas.

Google is striving to absolutely understand what you are searching for — and immediately empower you with the most relevant details about that thing. At the same time, you’ll also be introduced to the things you are most likely to search for next - or related information to help your research unfold in serendipitous fashion.

“How do we know which facts are most likely to be needed for each item?” continues Singhal. “For that, we go back to our users and study in aggregate what they’ve been asking Google about each item. It’s not just a catalog of objects; it also models all these inter-relationships. It’s the intelligence between these different entities that’s the key.”

Google Knowledge Graph also has a crowdsourced correction system built in. When users find and report errors, Google will share those findings with the source and the knowledge graph will continue to improve.

So, in short, we’re the last generation who will be forced to endure the random grab-bag of oftentimes unrelated search engine results.

Imagine…we’re living in an era granting us the unique opportunity to add another of those “techno-generation-bonding” questions into our vernacular…

“Hey…remember when we had to walk up to the TV in order to change the channel?”

“Hey…remember when search engines had no idea what we were asking them for?”

The smarter Google gets…the dumber we’re able to be.

— written by Eric Taubert

3 Smart Startups Participating in the Evolution of Social Connectivity

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:22:00 -0400

The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the Pomegranate Digital Agency blog:

Chime.In, VYou and Friendthem are working to improve the ways we relate and communicate.

Human minds, in collaboration with digital technology, continue to devise creative ways for people to meet, build relationships and communicate with each other. The implications of these connections are gargantuan.

Artistic insight. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Scientific breakthroughs. Personal happiness. It’s amazing to witness the magic that happens when people interact…and these days, we’re surrounded by it.

Read the rest at the Pom8 Blog!

Avoiding Social Media Mediocrity - Broadcasting vs Engagement

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:04:00 -0400

The following is an excerpt from a social media marketing article I wrote for the Pomegranate Digital Agency Blog:

Facebook. Twitter. Pinterest. Google+. Tumblr. Instagram.

Unfettered access to these social media platforms populated by hundreds of millions of users opens up promotional, branding and relationship-building opportunities for your brand that were unimaginable five years ago.

Yet, the level of noise in the world has increased commensurate with the growth of these developing technologies. Everyone selling anything has pounced on these open airwaves with the intent of establishing the mindshare they need to grow their businesses.

And many of them are doing more harm than good…

Read the rest at the Pomegranate Digital Agency Blog!

An Inbound Marketing blog I wrote for Pom8...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:02:20 -0400

“Let’s face it, the internet altered the world. It liberated us — turning us from powerless and passive consumers of one way scheduled broadcasting into independent thinkers with the free will to choose what we want to see — when we want to see it.

This is precisely why inbound marketing has become all the rage. Instead of engaging in the brute-force push to expose blatant commercial messages to those who may, or may not, want to see them…we, instead, utilize what we now know about consumer habits in the new digital paradigm to do the work for us…”

Read the entire article at Pomegranate Digital Agency!

Follow Eric Taubert on Twitter: @erictaubert

StringFly in the Philippines...

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:31:13 -0400

“The Lenten Procession projected sorrow, sadness and repentance. To complement the emotions, i decided to shoot from a lower perspective…”

Read the rest of my interview with StringFly photographer, Neil Norman Littaua — and see more of his photos at StringFly Live!

My interview with a StringFlyer from Orihuela, Spain

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:26:54 -0400

“My photos came from the general procession held in Orihuela, a city where the Easter parades are now recognised as an International Tourist Attraction. Thousands of tourists come to the city in Alicante province to watch and take part in the various events that unfold the story. Many of the sculptured figures on show date from the 17th and 18th century and a number were created by the famous Murcian sculptor, Francisco Salzillo…”

See the other photos and read my entire interview with Keith Williamson at StringFly Live.