Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Few people are as intriguing and visionary as Nikola Tesla. If this American immigrant had been as beloved and accepted as Thomas Edison, we would have had 2009 technology back in 1909. Unfortunately, this revolutionary genius was given short shrift by many and his image has become obscured by history.
If you’re like me, you first heard about him in 2006’s “The Prestige,” an excellent movie, by the way. I’ve been thinking a lot about him recently, and I want to share my thoughts on this great man and what he might have accomplished if the world had been ready.
Without Tesla, we wouldn’t have car engines, long-distance radio, radar, fluorescent lights, energy-efficient light bulbs (which Tesla created more than a hundred years ago, but was not allowed to manufacture until a few years ago because of patent issues on the socket) and many other useful inventions.
If Nikola Tesla had created the Internet, I’m sure it would be many times better than what we have come up with. First of all, he would have come up with a much better means to transfer information online than comparatively inefficient phone lines, coaxial cables, fiber optics or copper wires. He probably would have started with a wireless system and made it faster than we’re used to. Then he would invent something truly amazing to replace that, just like he always did.
You can read the rest of this blog entry in the Submit Solution Website Design Services Blog on November 9. The photo of the Tesla Coil is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of maveric2003.
Tags: history, internet, movie, Submit Solution, web, website
Posted in Movies, Web Design | No Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
On Friday, October 30, 2009, eHarbor, Inc. will host its annual Halloween party. I can’t imagine it being anything but a lot of fun. We’ll have people dressing up in Halloween costumes, decorating the office with plenty of orange and black decorations and, best of all, competing in a Chili Cook-off.
That’s right, we’re going to enjoy some hot chili just in time for the frosty weather that’s bearing down on Utah and probably other parts of the country. Several people have signed up so far for the competition and each of them will bring their chili concoction in on October 30 to serve it at the party. I’m not sure how the dishes will be judged, but the winner will be rewarded for their efforts.
I’m looking forward to the food and the costumes. I’ve never been too interested in dressing up, but I hear some eHarbor employees are quite creative. Last year, one employee dressed up as Severus Snape from the Harry Potter books, and another dressed up as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, who famously walked through New York City in the film “Ghostbusters.” It will be fun to see what they come up with this year.
This talk of Halloween costumes reminds me of something I would like to share with you.
Each month in our company newsletter, which we call the eHarbor ePort, I write a comic and someone else illustrates it. In the October 2009 issue, I did one on the upcoming Halloween party. You can find it below. We’ve been doing these comics since February of this year, so maybe I’ll post some of them on the eHarbor Blog for all the world to see. Some of them are pretty funny, if I do say so myself, but others are inside jokes.
If you haven’t seen “The Karate Kid” recently, I highly recommend you check it out. That’s one of my personal favorite movies.
This blog entry has been all over the place. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading a little bit of my stream of consciousness. Be sure to keep coming back for company updates, and go to the Submit Solution Internet marketing blogs for the latest insights on Web design, SEO, PPC and social media.
Tags: eHarbor, event, food, Fun, funny, holiday, movie, positive, Submit Solution, utah
Posted in Fun, Movies, eHarbor | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
By Robert Lockard
The other day, I had an image in my mind of a strange object and I wanted to find a picture of it online. The only problem was I didn’t have a clue what it was called. The image in my head was of a scene in “Superman II” when General Zod’s henchman Non is in the Oval Office and he’s staring intently at something. It’s five metal balls tied to strings in a row and the ones on either end keep hitting the four still balls, causing the ball on the other end to bounce away and come back again.
Maybe you already know what I’m talking about.
I turned to one of my coworkers here at eHarbor, Inc. and asked her to help me. She could picture it, as well, but she couldn’t put her finger on the name. I tried searching for “metal ball attached to strings hitting each other” on Google, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. Luckily, my resourceful coworker found it on Amazon.com, I believe. I could now put a name to an image – Newton’s cradle!
This story illustrates my need for a visual search engine and not simply a text-based one. Luckily, Microsoft and Google are both heading in that direction. I read about their efforts in a CNN article entitled, “Microsoft, Google expand search-engine tools.”
You can find the rest of this blog entry on the Submit Solution SEO Blog on October 6, 2009. The photo of Newton’s cradle is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of ƒяαиcєscα яσsє.
Tags: CNN, Fun, google, image, internet, movie, msn, new, photo, search engine, Submit Solution
Posted in Movies, Search Engines | No Comments »
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Those of you who read my April blog entry “eHarbor summer party coming in June” know this weekend is the time of this long-awaited event. It will be held in Hobble Creek Canyon, near Springville, Utah. On Friday night, we’ll enjoy a barbecue and outdoor movie. I’m definitely excited for that.
eHarbor, Inc. employees will be able to camp out that night and compete in water e-lympics Saturday morning. Here are some of the activities the e-lympics will include:
· Water volleyball
· Watermelon-eating contest
· Water-balloon toss
· Water kickball
· Hula-hoop contest
· 3-legged race
I hope the clouds will begin to part and the rain will stop by Friday. I grew up in the Puget Sound area of Washington state, so I’m used to rain and clouds. But here in Utah, I’ve been trying to get used to the extreme cold of winter and extreme heat of summer. I don’t mind having cool weather in the summer, but it’s starting to throw me off a little.
Anyway, even if it’s not the best weather, I’m sure we’ll have fun. On Monday, I watched a play of “Beauty and the Beast” at the Scera Shell outdoor theatre in Orem, Utah. It rained on us for a while leading up to the start of the play. But I enjoyed that play so much I hardly minded the rain at all.
Before the summer party, each eHarbor department (Support, Marketing/PR, Design, etc.) was asked to create a flag to represent it. There were some really creative designs, and I am excited to see them at this event. I hope to get some great pictures of them and other things for a future blog post.
The photo of the tarp sagging with rain is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of nalilo.
Tags: company, eHarbor, event, flag, Fun, movie, orem, positive, sport, summer, utah, Washington, weather
Posted in Fun, Movies, eHarbor | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
By Robert Lockard
So far, it appears the Conficker C virus is not doing much damage, as many had predicted it would. The Washington Post published a satiric blog post on April 1, entitled “Conficker Worm Strike Reports Start Rolling In,” describing all of the damage being done by the virus. Then, at the end, the author included a note saying, “Just kidding - April fools!”
This keeps happening: the Cold War, Comet Hale-Bopp, Y2K – all of these events were supposed to bring about the end of the world, or at least a fundamental change in it. But they failed to live up to expectations. The world hardly changed at all as a result of these events. Yes, I know the Soviet Union fell apart at the end of the Cold War, and that was a pretty big change. But look at Russia today and you’ll see they haven’t really changed that much. President Obama just met with the Russian president to talk about nuclear disarmament. Sound familiar?
Pranks like Conficker C, which don’t deliver on their promises, might actually do a great deal of damage by leading people to lower their guard or simply not care about actual crises that come later on. I never try to fake people out so I can laugh at them and say, “Made you look!” because that damages credibility and makes people constantly on edge and less eager to trust others. That’s not what I want.
This discussion reminds me: Last week, eHarbor, Inc. treated its employees to a showing of the movie “Knowing.” The movie had a lot of good moments, and I especially enjoyed it because the filmmakers actually had the courage to *SPOILER ALERT* blow up the world. No sugarcoating, no simple solution, no endless number of countdowns to avert destruction, like in “Armageddon” (a movie that utterly failed to live up to its title) – just the whole world on fire. Now that’s a way to deliver on catastrophic promises.
Mind you, I don’t want the world to be destroyed and, after seeing the movie “Knowing”, I felt a little depressed. But I do like seeing promises fulfilled when someone bothers to make them. Heck, even “Back to the Future Part II” promised the universe, or at least our galaxy, would be destroyed by a time paradox – but that didn’t really happen. All I’m saying is I hope someday people who promise something earth-shattering will actually follow through with it. Until then, I won’t hold my breath.
By the way, eHarbor and its affiliates (Magellan Commerce, Real Estate Promoter and Submit Solution) have good news on the horizon that I can’t wait to discuss. We’re growing a lot and we hope to share the positive ecommerce news soon as new products are released and updates are added to our websites.
The photo of the cat and dog sitting together is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of MïK.
Tags: april fools day, armageddon, back to the future, computer virus, conficker c, eHarbor, flickr, funny, holiday, humor, Knowing, magellan commerce, movie, news, online, Real Estate Promoter, Submit Solution, web, worm
Posted in Ecommerce, Movies | 2 Comments »
Friday, March 27th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
It’s Friday, and eHarbor, Inc. is celebrating a successful start to 2009 by heading to the Thanksgiving Point Mega Plex in Lehi, Utah for a movie day – just as I mentioned in a blog entry last week. We’re closing up shop early and going to a 3 p.m. showing of a movie called “Knowing.”
I love sharing enthusiasm and good news, especially when times are tough.
Can you believe this is the 20th blog entry I’ve written for the eHarbor Blog in the past two months? I’m having fun sharing ecommerce news and search engine optimization tips. Of course, sometimes I enjoy taking a moment to simply have a little fun every now and then, like today.
On Tuesday, March 31, 2009, the day before April Fools Day, I plan on posting a more serious blog entry about a potentially troublesome computer virus called Conficker C. Not exactly about ecommerce, but I think it’s good to be informed of things like this since we depend so much on computers for our businesses to succeed.
The photo of the papers falling in Buenos Aires, Argentina is from Flickr and it is the copyright of friendofdurutti.
Tags: blog, company, Ecommerce, eHarbor, flickr, Fun, Knowing, movie, positive, search engine optimization, SEO, utah
Posted in Fun, Movies, eHarbor | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
I keep adding tidbits from movies to my blog entries to spice them up. I’ve mentioned several movies in my blog entries: “The Natural” (1984), “Pinocchio” (1940), “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), and “Back to the Future Part II” (1989).
This time I’ll focus solely on movies. Indulge me a little as I depart from ecommerce topics once again.
On March 27, eHarbor, Inc. will treat its employees to a showing of a new movie called “Knowing.” That movie looks really interesting. eHarbor has been seeing exciting growth in 2009, despite tough spots in the U.S. economy, so this will be a fun reward for all of us who are making eHarbor’s success possible. eCommerce seems to be doing pretty well, under the circumstances. Don’t lose hope!
It’s still March, but it feels like summer with the kinds of movies coming out in theaters. “Watchmen” and “Monsters vs. Aliens” are two examples of movies with a summer feel. But both of these have March release dates. Hopefully, the real summer movies won’t disappoint, either.
My next blog entry will be the last in the search engine optimization series we’ve been covering for several weeks. There are plenty of other exciting topics to discuss, so stay tuned! The “Knowing” poster is the copyright of Summit Entertainment.
Tags: 2009, back to the future, business, company, Ecommerce, eHarbor, event, Fun, Knowing, movie, new, news, positive, success, summer
Posted in Fun, Movies, eHarbor | 10 Comments »
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Welcome to part 4 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization practices. I took a little break in my last blog entry to talk about some fun things that make me smile. Let’s back to talking about important SEO tactics. We’ve talked about making content king on your website, adding concise Web page titles, and optimizing images on your site. Now we’ll talk about simplifying your Web pages’ URLs.
To start things off, it’s time once more for me to apply my love of movies to the discussion at hand. As Indiana Jones noted in a key scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), “Belloq’s staff is too long. They’re digging in the wrong place!” You’ve probably seen that movie, so you know that Indy’s nemesis had part of the instructions to build the staff of Ra, but because his staff was too long he was led to the wrong place in his search for the Ark of the Covenant.
All of this is highly applicable to URLs. If a URL is too long, it can be difficult for customers to remember and difficult for search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo to catalog. If Indy were a webmaster, he would probably have said, “Belloq’s URL is too long. They’re Digging in the wrong place!”
That might be a little silly, though.
Examples of long URLs that are poorly structured and hard to follow can be found at Mapquest and Google. On Mapquest, I looked up the mailing address of eHarbor, Inc. and it gave me this: http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Orem&state=UT&address=13
23+N+Research+Way&zipcode=84097&cat=eHarbor%2C+Inc.#a/sea
rch/l::1323+Research+Way:Orem:UT:84097-6200:US:40.321124:-1
11.680809:address:Utah+County:1/m::15:40.324683:-111.679178:
0:::::/so:Eharbor+Inc:::r::25:::::/e.
Google searches are a little better. Here’s the URL of a search I did for eHarbor: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=
1G1GGLQ_ENUS311&=&q=eharbor&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f.
Now that’s a mouthful.
I don’t mean to slight Mapquest or Google. The purpose of their URLs isn’t necessarily to look pretty and get posted on websites. They exist solely to contain search parameters and show people what they’re looking up. However, in the world of ecommerce, keywords are essential, and you want your URLs to reflect that.
Here are some principles that can help you create strong URLs for your Web pages:
- Use a simple organization structure on your website. For instance, on the Magellan Commerce website, if you click on the “Features” tab, you will go to this URL: http://www.magellancommerce.com/features. Very simple. Just add a / to your main URL and include a word or phrase describing what is in that section. As you add content to sub-pages, you can simply add another / and additional words describing the content on those pages.
- Along with the first point, it’s better to use words than numbers in your URLs. Words are much more “friendly” to your site’s visitors and they help optimize your pages for search engines. Using “page 1” or seemingly random numbers and code to organize your URLs isn’t pretty and doesn’t help much with SEO.
- Don’t use too many keywords in your URLs. Be brief but descriptive about what people can expect to find on each Web page. No need for a whole lot of repetition.
- Only create one URL for each Web page. It’s possible to have multiple sub-domains and versions of a URL. For instance, you could have http://submitsolution.com and http://www.submitsolution.com go to two different sites. Choose one form of a URL, with or without www, and stick with it. Also, you’re better off only using lower-case letters in URLs, instead of mixing capital letters in.
This is the fourth part of this series. We’ll cover several other ways to achieve SEO in upcoming blog entries. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The “Raiders of the Lost Ark” movie poster is from Flickr and it is the copyright of MDH in Houston.
Tags: content, Ecommerce, eHarbor, flickr, google, image, indiana jones, marketing, movie, msn, online, photo, search engine, search engine optimization, SEO, seo series, url, web, website, yahoo
Posted in Movies, SEO, Search Engines, eHarbor | 7 Comments »
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
By Robert Lockard
I recently read a blog entry on Copyblogger (a great blog if you want to improve your online writing skills), entitled “Warning: Contents are hot.” In it, the author recommended writing about a topic you’re passionate about in order to create some interesting content that people will love reading. I thought I’d follow that advice.
The eHarbor Blog has been going strong again for three weeks. I’ve been focusing on eHarbor, Inc., ecommerce and I’m right in the middle of an informative series of blog posts on using search engine optimization to improve your ranking on Google and other search engines. I thought I’d take a little break from online marketing topics and write about something a little more spontaneous to remind myself and my readers of much that is right in the world.
I’m not much for creating controversy, but I do like talking about things I love. I also really enjoy bringing others happiness. It’s tough to feel happy or positive when you read so much bad news every day. There are plenty of news articles about the global economic recession, real-estate downturn, stimulus packages and every other challenge going on in the world. To combat these emotional drains, I would like to suggest five reasons to smile today.
1. Despite the trouble in the economy, Forrester Research predicts ecommerce will grow, in terms of both sales and market share, from 2009 to 2013. eCommerce sales increased 13 percent to $141.3 billion in 2008 and they are expected to grow another 11 percent in 2009. Online sales should even surpass $200 billion by 2012, according to their estimate. Now that’s some great news.
2. I’ll bet you didn’t know that today, February 23, 2009, is International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day and Play Tennis Day. This is your opportunity to give your dog a treat as you play a few sets with a friend.
3. George Frideric Handel, composer of beautiful musical pieces, including “Messiah,” was born on this date in 1685. Several years ago, I got to sing the tenor part of “For unto us a Son is born,” and boy is that some high-pitch music. I admire anyone who can sing well because good music always uplifts me and makes me smile.
4. On this day in 1940, Disney’s “Pinocchio” was released in movie theaters. While it’s not my favorite Disney movie, “Pinocchio” does have one of my favorite songs: “When you wish upon a star.” I told you I love movies.
5. One more reason to smile is that life feels a lot nicer when you can lift your head up and smile at whatever comes your way. Even if you can’t control everything that happens to you, you can control how you react to it, so try to stay positive, and focus on what you can accomplish right now.
The photo of the laughing kitten is from Flickr and it is the copyright of d u y g u.
Tags: copyblogger, data, Ecommerce, eHarbor, flickr, Fun, future, history, holiday, internet, movie, news, online, personal, positive, research, web
Posted in Ecommerce, Fun, Movies | 8 Comments »
