Darryl King’s blog ireckon

No I didn’t just swear. It is a very real question.

When something happens twice to me in very quick succession I often think it means I am supposed to take notice. I have. So you’d better too!

On Saturday while getting some last minute paint for our old office (a couple of quick repairs) I visited a commercial paint supply business to get my supplies. Half way through them preparing my order, I noticed a message stuck over their EFTPOS terminal “EFTPOS Down”. Yes Solver Stones Corner this is you.

So I asked. Noticeably before starting a $200 order they didn’t ask me if I was intending to pay electronically, they just assumed I could read their small note and that I would process it. I did, albeit a little late.

So yes their EFTPOS was down, I had a company credit card, so I asked them to do it manually.

“Sorry they took that option away, but you can walk to an ATM it is less than 5 minutes”.

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[ NB> to see how Dymocks handled this, quick note at bottom, follow up post to come ]

I had a mission. A simple mission. All I wanted was to replace a copy of a good book that was so good, someone has lifted it!

The book itself is not the issue, but it was a good project management book which I like to keep handy to explain to people our project management documents and process.

Anyway I digress. Too late to stop at a book shop and none of the local major stores show in store inventory, (Gee wouldn’t that be such a good idea! Live store inventory) and my preferred local bookstore Coaldrakes at Milton, is nearly closed and doesn’t have it in stock. I want it now. Well more importantly I want to order it now and just have it turn up quickly.

Help - Google! Yes look at that Angus and Robertson has it, Dymocks has it. That’s a start. Amazon has it (of course) and they will ship tomorrow which means less than 5 days and I will have it. How do I know this? Well I have always gotten my books from Amazon quicker than they promise.

Angus and Robertson, ships within 24 hours 7-14 days till I get it. Okay that is one slow camel it is coming on, unless of course it is actually coming via the USA, in which case I may as well just order it from there.

So back to Dymocks. Well look at that, yes they have it and can ship immediately, even better they seem to be the only site on the planet that has it as a downloadable PDF. Wow that is better; I can store it and not waste any paper. Except the electronic version is dearer than the paperback (now that is odd). The electronic version is enough to make me jump in and buy it.

This is what happens next: (more…)

Today our first twitter recruited employee started at ireckon. Scott Hampson, aka @agent_x, has started with us in our important role as Site Producer /Project Manager.

Last year, when the person previously in that role left, to move further afield, we decided to run with our existing team and let the whole GFC thing run its course.

This role is very important, for obvious reasons, and so I had to make a tough call and let someone go from a position that had become redundant but who we were trying to get to do some of this work, and look for a likely candidate. (more…)

In case you didn’t get the flurry of tweets on my account this week, you wouldn’t know I have been at SMX Sydney 2009. SMX stands for Search Marketing Expo. This pretty much sums up the conference.

I have been working in the web for a rather long time now, and pretty much from the beginning, there has been a need to find relevant content. It is a constant that hasn’t changed; just the ways we get to it has changed.

Before there was Google there were other engines, and since then optimising content has been necessary to get your content found. Note I say content not sites.

One of the important elements from SMX this year is the prevalence of the new windows to content that exist, and that change is always occurring.

Does it mean traditional Search practices are dying?  Definitely not. In fact, with all the Social Media hype about at present, one could not be blamed for thinking Search had dropped of the relevance radar.
It hasn’t.

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