Diorex

Just installed Xobni for Outlook this week. So far I am terribly impressed.

Xobni is kind of a personal assistant for Outlook. One of my issues with my email is that I long ago started creating folders for different tasks around the office. So I have a folder for my Google team, another one for Affiliates, another for IT, Creative etc. Then have folders for my direct reports and colleagues I email frequently.

Well this turned into a mess in almost no time. Say I had a creative for my Google team, but it was based on something from Yahoo and now we needed a little tweaking from IT. A single thread now ends up in maybe 5 different folders. Which means to do a search to find the attachment I am looking for, I might actually have to wait through outlook’s slow ass searches in 5 folders.

Then I need to find that itenarary on the trip I took in February to Miami, I flew maybe 15 times so far this year, and probably had 10+ emails around each trip - I basically had to open 15 emails to find the right one.

Or what about someones phone number - the way my interoffice addresses work, I actually have like 5 different contacts folders. I dont know how or why this is the case, but it is. With Xobni, I just type a persons name and it gives me their number - it does not even have to be something I saved, it can be from their signature - has yet to steer me wrong yet.

Xobni solves all of this and lots more. I can type in a persons name and it will show me every person with that name I have ever sent or received an email from, click the name, and I now see every conversation I have had, it even tells me what time of day they send me email, what the best time of day to get a fast response is and who I email the most with.

Today, I could not remember that sales reps name from something I renew every 3-4 months. Just type in a keyword that identifies that product and up pops a list of anyone I have emailed using that keyword. Click on the reps name, his phone number and email address pop right up - what used to be a frustrating few minutes of searching was a 5 second process.

The creative teams sends me no less than 10 attachments a day - finding the one from last week I need is always a nightmare. Now I can type in the name of the creative - or the person who made it or even the client it was made for and I get a nicely sorted list of attachments - which never fails to identify the attachment, I dont even have to open the email, just click on the attachment listed and it opens.

I am less than a week in and I am in love with this product! It may not be for everyone, but I probably get close to 90 emails a day and our company is pushing 70 people now - no way i remember everyones last names or can spell some of the really hairy ones.

I was honestly spending 15+ minutes every day just looking for old emails (or the spreadsheet with the results from the multivariable test we ran sometime last spring or was it summer). I can see how someone who gets lots of affiliate junk mail could put this to work. Looking for a new dating offer - just type ‘dating CPA’ into the search tool and voila all of the emails that had the hot new dating offer I never even read until I needed them.

Alright now that I have praised Xobni - what other Outlook plug-ins are there? What else can I not live without once I have it installed.  I have had it for 4 days and I would pay a monthly subscription to keep it.

Here is a screenshot of a page I found, but the images and my ramblings do not do the functionality any justice.

(sorry for stealing the image I got it from www.digitalhome.ca - but I am clueless as to how to take a screenshot and then upload it - I frequently amaze myself at what I cannot do online)

I am not a big domainer, I personally own less than a hundred domains, but I have been getting more and more interested in this space in the last few months. I expect to make sizable investments and own several thousand names within the next few months.

I read with interest today an article from Domain Name News about the beta launch of FUSU, which is a domain name stock exchange similar to Nasdaq or NYSE.

Aside from the potential (and likely significant) regulatory hurdles I find this idea fascinating.

Some of my initial reactions to reading this article:

1. 45% ownership limit makes it almost impossible to compel a purchase or prevent bad management. Say I buy all 45% of a domain that is available. The 55% owner of the site can set any price he wants in a sale and I am forced to go along with it? Just today Morgan Stanley dumped its position in the New York Times because despite being the second largest shareholder it could not control the future of the company. Rupert Murdoch had a similar problem with DowJones, Google someday will have this problem with its founders shares, as Ford and other companies with super voting stock do. Almost every real stock that has this set-up trades at a discount to what it would be worth without that set-up.

2. How do you share revenues? Pre or Post taxes? What about expenses (what is reasonable hosting cost or registration fee)? What about self-dealing selling some leads to an affiliated company for less than their market value? What about the inevitable salaries paid to employees of domains? What about PPC arbitrage to domains?

3. Liquidity will be a huge issue - markets on shares will be percentage points wide even with market makers. Is there a process to short domains? Without the ability to easily short marketmakers cannot make competitive markets. I used to be an onfloor derivatives trader and I know how this works. What about margin? Clearing houses? How will the IPO work? Will this be too easy to manipulate? Just look at the 1880’s with railroad stocks and robber barons.

4. Portfolio Management - Will mutual funds be far behind? Options? Invest in a portfolio of 1,000 generic domain names? The legal industry domain fund, the local markets index, the porn-dex. This can get crazy really fast. Fun as heck, but crazy.

5. Listing requirements - what kind of criteria will be used to keep the listing quality listings? or will everydogdomainname.com be listed?

6. Fraud - Fraud in parked pages is less of an issue right now because I dont click on my names because i dont want to lose my privileges, what happens when 1000 people own a piece of a parked domain how do you monitor that? If you could earn IBM $$$ every day without it costing you money and you owned IBM would you do it? Would thousands in concert or otherwise not do it? How do you deal with a domain that has one overzealous minority owner?

7. liquidity - I already mentioned this, but the reason the stock market is as robust as it is, is because there are people like I used to be who would step up and catch the falling knife and cushion the overall blow by providing liquidity. What happens when there is a mad rush for the exits and no buyers?

Update - 8. Potential Deal Killer - this is a non-US based company. I am pretty sure my hedgefund friends that are salivating at the domain name industry will be less ecstatic when they realize this investment may be subject to the laws of Slovakia of which they know next to nothing about the judicial system. To succeed this will need to be either US based or maybe UK or Japan. Those 3 probably have 90%+ of the worlds stock market wealth and for good reason.

Oh this sounds like so much fun…I cannot hardly wait. Virgin territory with a bunch of unsophisticated investors (both buyers and sellers) in an inefficient and illiquid market. Oh the opportunities…

I want to thank Sup3rnova for the mentions in his Uber Affiliate Marketing Guide. Best of all it has a low price of just $97, but if you click now there is an instant rebate for my readers of $97. Thats right he has compiled everything you would ever need to write an Ebook on making money in internet marketing totally free!

My traffic has skyrocketed as a result of his post, which I appreciate. But, I appreciate that he took the time to find all of these gems. I actually ended up re-reading some of my old stuff and all of the other links in there. Some absolutely amazing blogs I have never even heard of, as well as tons of great content, tips, secrets, and commonsense.

It is free, but it would be worth every bit of the $97 he should have charged…

Ever since I got my Ipod late last year, I have been devouring Podcasts - especially those related to Search Engine Marketing or Entrepreneurship.

Here are a few I especially enjoy:

Daily Search Cast - Hosted by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land is a recap of recent events in search marketing. His unique insight into the trends of this industry is amazing. Not everything is useful, but he tends to be on top of things and if nothing else it is about the right length for my drive to work. I love when Dave Naylor co-hosts. Barry Schwartz and Darren from WMR are not quite as entertaining. (although I swear I get every single one of Danny’s off the cuff remarks that Barry never seems to get.) Would love to see more variety in guests. We saw it for awhile at the beginning of the year, but now it seems like mostly the three from above.

Net Income - hosted by Shoemoney. This show is entertaining and can be a good source for ideas etc. Shoe seems to use a ringtones example every show which is always pretty funny. Lately, it seems like it has had a little too much product placement though.

SEO Rockstars - Mostly like listening to 2 old hands talking in the booth behind you at the bar. Some shows ramble on about nothing and others are packed full of good stuff from the start. You never know what you are gonna get from these 2 and unfortunately lately, we have been getting nothing at all.

SitePoint - Dave Naylor’s show for the European audience. Dave usually says something he should not have which is reason enough to listen. His co-host is overly technical and not nearly as much fun. This show you can usually listen to 10 minutes and turn off if the topic does not interest you.

Rush Hour - Neil Patel, Cameron (no even gonna try and spell that name) and CShel host this show dedicated to social marketing. Like SitePoint, this show is either great or an hour long drag. Some of the best segments are when Cshel asks seemingly stupid questions, but then Neil and Cameron spend the next hour spilling the beans on social marketing.

All of the above shows can be found on WebmasterRadio.FM

Here are 2 shows about being an entrepreneur that I really enjoy.

Calacanis Cast - Hosted by Jason Calacanis. This controversial and successful entrepreneur has some great guests and some awesome insight into starting and growing a company. Whatever you think of him personally, this podcast is worth listening to if for no other reason than to get motivated.

Venture Voice - Hosted by Gregory Galant. This show is a series of formal interviews between Greg and CEO’s of different companies. If you are looking to start a company or working for a young start-up there is incredible wisdom about the entrepreneurial mindset in these episodes. Have not been many lately, but well worth hitting up the archives to listen to everything they have done.

What shows are you guys listening to? My ipod is just about empty and I would love to find 2-3 more search or entrepreneurial related shows to help fill my commutes.

Jason Calacanis recently unveiled Mahalo, which is a human edited search engine.

I for one think it just might work. (Todd at Stuntdubl disagrees) It is becoming more and more common for me to not find what I am looking for with a Google search, especially on commercial type searches.

SEO’s (and rightfully so, it is after all money) have gamed the engines on anything and everything worth gaming the engines over. Lets take a generic and high volume search for the word “Google” on both engines.

Google’s results are just an uncategorized list of links to different Google products. Mahalo has links to the company, the charitable arm, GMail, Youtube and several other things someone with that generic query might want. Then they go a step farther and list news articles about the company from a variety of sources, then a recent stock chart, then links to all of the products and acquisitions made by the company, blog entries, even a hacks and tutorial section, a criticism section and links to other companies someone searching the generic term Google might want to find. In fact just about anything I want to learn about google can be found within 1-2 clicks from these results.

Try eBay, Apple, Yahoo and others and the results are consistently better.

What about Celebrities…

Take Paris Hilton (who is now staying at the 1star Lynwood Hilton…) her page is nicely broken out into the Top 7 which is about the same top7 as Google, but followed by sections devoted to Photos, Videos, News, Biography, Timeline, Gossip and merchandise. It has a few dozen links on the page nicely organized and easy to find.

What about the darling of Dallas - Tony Romo - I think Google wins this one, but mostly because Mahalo suggest to me he is playing for the Dolphins and trying to date Jessica Simpson (2 strikes…) Otherwise, once again there is a lot more links neatly categorized for someone trying to get information about him.

Lets take something Spammy (I think they should re-name spam to Viagra or maybe Blue Pill) and search for Viagra. Noone who is not an SEO or a spammer is gonna tell me that the 5th link in Google - Yacht Club of America - which then redirects to a pharmacy is what I was looking for. Mahalo has awesome information, links to blogs, natural alternatives, plus its top 7 are almost the same as Google’s results.

I for one cannot wait to see how they build it out. Will they be able to stay on top of thousands of news topics, celebrities, and other searches or will the pages grow stale quickly? For now, I am just disappointed to see that most of what I searched for returned ‘no results’ even when closely related. i.e. Buy Viagra.

Certainly an alpha product, but it will be interesting to see how easy it is to game it and how fresh the content remains. As an internet marketer I love google, as an internet user I am ready for a better alternative.

I Stumbled across Mind Meister and think this is a really cool tool.

Basically, it is a free form brainstorming tool. It allows you to create groups and sub-groups. It gives icons, and numbers, it allows you to share with others and tracks their collaborations.

I have long used tools like this on a white board drawing a fish skeleton, where invariably at the end of the meeting, someone has to copy down the idea and then try to put it into a spreadsheet and then send it out to everyone. This tool allows you to brainstorm online, and it allows you to track updates as you go. Did you try something that did not work? Hit a dead end? Discover a new line of thinking, make a few quick changes and all of that can be documented quickly and easily for everyone on the project.

Work by yourself, I have mapped out several very detailed business models and shared them with potential partners. I have also mapped out an entire new website that we are launching in 2 weeks. I am sure there are dozens of good uses I have not even considered.

This is still in a private beta, but I have a few invitations to share if anyone is interested.

Shoemoney put me on to the guys at Crazy Egg and I have to say that I am very impressed.

We started using this on many of our sites about a month ago, with very surprising results. Keep in mind that we track just about everything about our customers interactions with our site, yet we still found amazing value from the visual heatmaps.

A few things we learned.

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