John Beagle |

Let us proclaim Thursday a Day of Thanksgiving

November 26, 2008 / By John Beagle / In jesus, prayer, thanksgiving / 1 Comment

Photo: Visitors we are thankful for this year.

This year a Thanksgiving Feast will be celebrated in our home.
As the head of the household, it is tradition for me to say a prayer of thanksgiving.

So here is my prayer :

Dear God,
It’s Thanksgiving Day, so let us give thanks together.

Thank you for the turkey, mash potatoes and gravy we are about to receive.
…(Amen)

Thank you for our family and friends
Thank you for our visitors
Thank you for our pets, our homes and the fun we all have together
Thank you for the sun on the beach and greens on the golf courses
Thank you for our health and wealth and our optimism for both
Thank you for our time together

In Jesus’ name we meet.
Amen

About Thanksgiving:
Thanksgiving was not always celebrated in our country. For nearly one hundred years, the tradition dwindled. Thanks to Lincoln’s urgings, Thanksgiving got a fixed date to be celebrated in the US.

Both Washington and Lincoln Proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving and acknowledged the Almighty God and helped keep the spirit of Thanksgiving alive. Source: ConservativeTruth.org

Washington proclaimed “a DAY OF PUBLIC THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Lincoln called for Americans “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”

50 Twitter Twips from Webmaster World’s Pubcon Vegas 2008

November 16, 2008 / By John Beagle / In pubcon, twitter, vegas / 1 Comment

Warren Whitlock was the first person I met at Pubcon.

Below are all the twips I tweeted (notes I took) while at Pubcon last week. The actual tweet stream contains spelling errors plus additional commentary from me. All Pubcon tweeting was done via my cell phone so posts are short due to technological limitations.

There were multiple Pubcon conference tracks available. Tracks included SEO: Organic Search, SEM, Social Brand Networking, Web Hosting, Content, Advertising and others. I mostly attended social networking in Salon C.

It’s interesting what Zappos and Comcast are doing in the Twitter space. I might follow their example with my company too. Certainly I will be watching the efforts to fully benefit from micro-blogging.

My Pubcon Notes
If I heard a tip or good idea, I tweeted it. You can follow me,
JohnBeagle on Twitter.

Here are my PubCon Twitter Twips, in order as they appear:

1. warren wrote Twitter Revolution
2. rand …yahoo buzz helped huffington post get traffic
3. rand… follow new president on twitter
4. rand…user profiles build good page rank you can leverage
5. gray…build trusted profile
6. pubcon social mktg seminar… try everything. see what works
7. gray..nohard selling on social sites but logos are ok
8. reach out to bloggers in the space
9. email neil patel for his slides on the dark side of social media
10. find people in the social media space and hire them
11. also hire interns and telecommuters’ to cut social media costs
12. see what google put in its database with key words and advanced search …select 24 hrs
13. only 100 people can connect laptop at pubcon
14. easytweets is worth taking a look at for commercial social
15. pubcon lunch sucks but cloud computing with amazon dude was cool
16. amazon dude Mike Culver speaks tomorrow at pubcon
17. twitterers use the term …tweet …when posting they don’t twit
18. twitter has passed the one billion tweet milestone
19. zapos has 400 employees on twitter …its in their culture
20. brian carter now up on pubcon stage blog + bookmarketing + twitter = optimization
21. propeller is pretty much useless ..buchard at pubcon
22. add digg vote button on posts so people can vote right away
23. only 6 to 8 stories from un-trusted domains get on hom page of digg ..Buchard
24. facebooks kent schoen speaking at pubcon 120m users
25. ugc user generated content is gold
26. bloggers hate technorati…Jenkins at pubcon
27. stumbleupon is a better social space
28. facebook connect digg …good pubcon tip from Breslin
29. openid is a distributed login tool …on list to try
30. “Twitter” #1 most talked about in Social Thread at #pubcon today
31. dont build a Frakensite -Ulle
32. know thy competitor with Bruce Clay
33. andy beal as james bond ‘spy’ with domintools.com
34. Bill Atchison ‘noarchive’ entire site
35. optimizing pdf for se by george aspland
36. comments count on video search – greg jarboe
37. spencer suggests multiple rss feeds on blogs such as comment rss
38. andy beal isnt afraid to post his true opinions on his blog
39. no one thinks blogging is going downhill at #pubcon
40. 9 to 10 am est is best time to post a blog -beal
41. lee odden keeps several drafts of posts going at all time
42. blog as often as u can – barry schwartz
43. have at lesat 3 bloggers on a blog – schwartz
44. LIVE search looks better than Yahoo
45. interview with bruce clay on live seach excel integration . its cool but no one will use it .
46. clay: word integration would be better
47. paid links need to be in relevant text. need to be the only paid link on the page
48. buy links directly from website owners – Lessnau
49. sometimes I buy links -fishkin
50. Chris Tolles fom topix advised to do as little moderating as possible

Mongolian Music Friends

October 7, 2008 / By John Beagle / In Uncategorized / Leave Comment

Mongolians Music AD Friends, originally uploaded by John Beagle.

Ankhaa and Dembee were visitors in our home last week. Ankhaa celebrated his 16th birthday on Sunday. Dembee already is 16. Neither boy spoke any english. Thumbs up was the first sign language we learned. Do you like this? Thumbs up or down?

While Ankhaa lives in a traditional house in town, Dembee lives in a ger in the countryside. Life is quite different in Monglolia. There is limited electricity and running water. But there are lots of cell phones.

Everything was an adventure. From taking showers to eating hamburgers like a sandwich, the boys received an education in our American ways. We played golf, basketball, and soccer with my 16 year old son, Bobby.

One night the boys made us a traditional Mongolian supper. They went shopping for the food. Prepared the food and then performed music on their Morin Khurr (horse head fiddle) for us. The attached video is the performance from last Thursday night in our Monroe, Ohio home.

Here is a video of their performance in our kitchen:
Mongolian Performance in Monroe, Ohio

John Ryan Beagle HS Graduation Speech

September 24, 2008 / By John Beagle / In high school graduation valedictorian / Leave Comment

My son, Valedictorian of Monroe Local Schools Class of 2008, gives a graduation speech.

John encouraged his classmates to “apply what you have learned, don’t let the years you spent in high school go to waste.” He references 70’s philosophical lyrics from Pink Floyd’s, “Time” here:

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

In conclusion, John said, “Always make the rest of your life, the best of your life.”

Day 8 Held Hostage by Duke Energy

September 19, 2008 / By John Beagle / In blackout, duke, smb / 2 Comments

breaker poll 007-crop, originally uploaded by John Beagle.

A 5 minute repair from Duke Energy could put mine and 10 other SMBs back in business. Many have called to report this.

This outage hurts tenants in the building which include Health Service Review, Christian Credit One, Adult Care, Amerprise, New Steel, Verizon, T-Moble, International Quality Health Care, Xponex Media, and others. All without power.

Small business is the backbone of Middletown. Right now 10 businesses are out of business. And will continue to be out of business until this is fixed.

Trucks drive right by our pole. I tried to flag one down as they drove by, but they just went on by.

Since last Sunday evening we have been feeding the generators to keep our server farm alive. I took a 2 to 5 am shift Monday refilling our gasoline powered generators.

As I type this, I’m still in the dark.

I hope we soon find power.
Is this the way things will be or might be?

My Seat at OSU Stadium

September 8, 2008 / By John Beagle / In football, Ohio State, osu, stadium, the ohio state university / 2 Comments

Ohio State 012, originally uploaded by John Beagle.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a stadium in college football that is as well-recognized simply by its shape. The OSU stadium is laid out in the shape of a horseshoe and has a capacity to seat 89,841 screaming fans. Source: OhioStateTix.com

I sit in row 9 (not bad) near the bottom of the “U” is a good place to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes. This game, against Ohio University, was an “All Ohio College Football Game” one that hadn’t been played since 1999.

A new cheer that involves fan interaction was started this year with Youngstown State. Every time Ohio State gets a first, the scoreboard announcer says, “Gain of (blank) on the play and that’s another Buckeeeeeeeeeye … (crowd response) first down.”

Now its the second game, and I agree with Buckeye Commentary blog poster who says, … for the love of all things Ohio State, stop the call and response first down announcement from the scoreboard. Stop it. Right. Now.

Still, Buckeye games are fun. Tailgating is even funner.

Wrigley Field in Chicago

August 22, 2008 / By John Beagle / In Uncategorized / Leave Comment

Wrigley Field , originally uploaded by John Beagle.

We had seats 5 rows off the first base side and could see our Cincinnati Reds up close coming and going off the field.

Going to a Cubs game is an event. Much like a college football game, because there is a mass of people everywhere in and around the stadium. The streets were closed for foot traffic to all the great bars in town.

I want to do this again! Chicago rocks. Cubs won 5 to 0.

Grass Roots Economic Development in Middletown

July 24, 2008 / By John Beagle / In development, economic, Middletown, ohio / Leave Comment

Bill Murphy Meeting 059, originally uploaded by John Beagle.

I was surprised the other day when Bill Murphy, the City of Middletown’s Economic Director, called me and asked for an appointment.

Bill said he was on a mission to meet businesses in the city and find out what the city can do for them.

So, when he showed up today, he brought the president of Sawyer Realtors a 70 year old Middletown Company) , John Sawyer.

Also with Bill was Fred Debiasi. Fred sits on the board for the Chamber of Commerce and is the President of America Savings and Loan.

“We have to listen to our existing businesses first. We want to find out if the city can do anything to help. What can the city do for your company?” were the questions being asked.

We had a good brainstorming session. One thing we all agreed to do was to help get the good word out about Middletown, Ohio. To help people find Middletown through positive news. Businesses in Middletown need to share their good economic news, tell the real story of Middletown instead of the one the newspaper tells about car wrecks and social ills. That’s not the real news of Middletown.

Real news is news such as job promotions, new products, locations and visions for the future. Middletown is located in a prime area for growth, midway between Cincinnati and Dayton. Locating your business in Middletown puts your business in the heart of the entire SW Ohio MSA (Cincinnati and Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area) .

We intend to distribute Middletown, Ohio news through the city’s website and MiddletownUSA.com.

Lebanon Bike Path Under I-75 to Little Miami

June 23, 2008 / By John Beagle / In Uncategorized / Leave Comment

Lebanon Bike Path to Little Miami 218, originally uploaded by John Beagle.

I just realized that bike paths are generally publicly funded. Since I have been paying taxes for 35 years, I in effect have help fund all the bike paths in the US. Therefore all bike paths are mine!

Well that’s what I am telling myself and anyone who will listen.

This is a photo taken on the Lebanon bike path under Interstate 75. A very challanging bike path, due to changes in elevation. But also very fun to ride.

There are some photos on My Bike Path Blog Entry: Lebanon to Little Miami Bike Path.

I will be checking out different bike paths in the US as often as possible.

The Yin and Yang at 2008 ADVANCED SMX

June 9, 2008 / By John Beagle / In Black Hat, Ethics, Morals, Seattle, SEO, SMX, White Hat / 5 Comments

SMX Seattle 144, originally uploaded by John Beagle.

The redeye seems appropriate for this photo of Stephen Spencer and Danny Sullivan. It was taken at the end of the SMX Advanced 2008 in Seattle the place where in the know SEO’s go. It appears that Stephen is shooting laser beams at Danny for the final assault at the conference.

SMX in Seattle did have a bit of Yin and Yang to it. Yin was the anti-Moralist SEO, Jay Young of Link Fish Media, Inc. Yang was Google’s SPAM Buster, Matt Cutts.

Moderator of the Yins and Yangs was mild mannered, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land.

Danny’s job is to keep everyone playing nice. A boundary that was breached at 2 of the SEO sessions, “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques” and “Give it UP!”

Around 11 o’clock on Tuesday, June 3, 2008, the assault on white hat SEO’s was opened up by Jay Young with this salvo -‘were not in this for the morals, were in it for the Marketing!’ Mr. Young offered several tips that Matt Cutts would consider over the line, some even ‘way over the line’ such as certain types of SPAM.

Matt Cuts explains his position on immediately removing SPAM from the News in this SMX Advanced 2008 Matt Cutts video by Dave Dugdale of rentVine.

“No one can blog about this for 29 days… keep under wraps… let’s not go too far… and remember, Matt Cutts is sitting out in the audience,” reminded Moderator Danny Sullivan just before the packed seo session, “Give it UP!” the last SMX session on the last day.

In keeping with Danny’s request, I can’t say for another 3 weeks what was said in the ‘Give it up!’ Session. (Hint: The Stephan Spencer presentation).

But, I can share you this photo just after the SMX session ended. Danny was frazzled to say the least. And Stephen was pleased, Danny was not.

Danny… remember Ricky Nelson’s Garden Party, “You see, ya can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself”