I’ve got a new idea for a website. For the past several weeks I’ve been scribbling pages of notes on site goals, value proposition, and all the things that I want to make it worthwhile, link worthy and fun for visitors. I have keywords, themes, purpose and plans, but no name for it.

After running through several days worth of names with keywords in it, and finding all the possible domains taken, I spent time finding words from other languages that might represent the site in a creative way. Every name I tried was not available for my new domain name.

Now I know why so many new sites have weird names, with one or two syllables and no obvious meaning unless you read the “About Our Name” page to find out. I went to the Urban Dictionary to try and make up words myself.

All of my made up word combinations were not available for purchase.

My son likes to make up words, and he had one the other day that seemed fun. I ran a domain search on it and yep. His made up word is not available for me to use.

The one word I liked the best is trademarked. Before I had even checked, my husband had shot out the perfect slogan for it. This is so frustrating.

How odd this is. For years I was razzed for “Cre8pc” not being a keyword logical domain. It was chosen in 1996, before keywords in domains became a golden rule.

Now I get to be different with permission and an excuse for class that says “But there wasn’t anything left.”

I’m a Geico caveman fanatic. In thinking about it, I’ve concluded the cause is a mid-life connection to my childhood, when naked trolls with long tangled pink hair were popular. Everytime a Geico caveman commercial comes on, I stop everything to watch it, even though I’ve seen them so many times.

Is this a stroke of marketing genius? I’m not convinced. I haven’t switched to Geico. I’ve been with the same auto insurance company for 10 years. But, I love their commericals. I love the way the cavemen cock their heads. I love their cute tempers. I especially love their quirky culture and social habits.

I must be in the exact demographic that marketing companies target for odd and unusual things. They’re reaching me, but they haven’t persuaded to me to change my habits. Microsoft’s Ms. Dewey didn’t lure me away from Google or Yahoo!. Geico’s adorable Aussie lizard didn’t make me pick up the phone to call Geico.

Not even this playful website converted me into a customer. But, I spent an hour there anyway.

Snooping Around a Guy’s Pad

Geico has created a Cavemans Crib website, where people like me can party with the cavemen.

With the same kind of Ms. Dewey“what will happen if I do this” antics and snide remarks by your host, the caveman in this site welcomes you to his party while dressed in his bathroom. He invites you to relax and maybe read a magazine while he gets ready. But that’s not what I did.

I visited the kitchen. Clicked on the gihungus TV. Tripped the electrical circuit by using his microwave. Listened to his phone voice messages. Tickled the shrimp cocktails on the counter. Went down the hall and spied on him. Snuck into his laptop and read his email. Got a recipe for smoked Hungarian Paprikash. Played songs on his stereo.

Sometimes Mr. Caveman would show up, usually to scold me.

I asked Ms. Dewey for her search results on “Geico cavemen” and she said, “Sorry. I can’t talk about that. My hands are tied.”

If you can bare with the FLASH load times, this site is entertaining. Granted, the cavemen are nowhere near as sexy as Ms. Dewey, (you get a quick glimpse of his hairy chest as he leaves the room to get ready for the party) but the website is so simple, even Cre8pc can use it.

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This post is dedicated to my husband, Eric, Matt Bailey and Christine Churchill - Happy Birthday!

I’m back! The surgery for a torn meniscus on my left knee on Monday went very well. I’m not in any pain (unless I do something dumb like make the knee do something it’s not ready for yet.) Recovery has been annoying only due to the side effects of medications, but on the other hand, my dreamstate has been awesome.

Once I dreamt I was running with a large wolf. Eric says that must have some symbolic meaning to it. I didn’t dream during surgery. The last thing I heard was “take deep breaths and let the medicine relax you” and the next second, “You’re in recovery. On a scale of 1-10, how do you rate your pain?”

It’s like walking into a shopping mall and you’re assualted with one of those consumer survey takers who want to interrupt your visit with a bunch of questions. You arrive, visualizing all the cool things you might buy and someone wants to know how you rate Tide and demands to know how many shampoo products are in your shower.

My pain never went past a 6 and that didn’t last long. Wheeled into my “room” after being stablized in recovery, my husband and son kept me company for the next hour or so, until I was steady enough to be in a car to go home.

The Web Is On TV

All during this week I was weak and fatigued, so the TV was all I could focus on for the first few days. This is when I noticed that commercials look like Web 2.0. That familiar blue and green color combination is all over the place. Here I am, thinking I can forget about web stuff for a week. No way. There’s two Dove commercials that flirt with me, and then say that if I want to see more, I have to visit their website. CNN refers to their website all the time, as did my local news stations, as did Oprah in nearly every show.

I couldn’t stand to watch “my soap”, because Alan Quartermaine has been “dying” for the past month and that’s just a pathetic way to treat a long-time actor. “GH” is disconnected from long-time viewers like me (I watched Luke and Laura get married, watched Stone die from Aids, and was a viewer when John Stamos played “Blackie” and Demi Moore blew everyone away with her voice and hair.)

The Web is in Print

When I got to the point where I could read without falling asleep, I noticed that magazine page layouts look like web pages. Words have hover colors or are highlighted in yellow, like what we see on the web. Every magazine I read has a section near the front that highlights their website with what readers like the most and what is featured. One web design magazine I subscribe to is sending the print version, but in the meantime, I can log in to the web version and start reading it now.

There is no need to be patient anymore. Will the next generation of humans ever know the thrill of running to the mailbox to get the “thing I’m waiting for”?

Everywhere I Go

I thought I’d do some browsing to sites I don’t normally go to, but that plan never worked out. I got sucked into my Bloglines feeds anyway and pretty much remained there.

I did some searching in Google on the type of knee surgery I had. Apparently I’m not alone. According to my MyBlogLog, someone searched on the term “torn meniscus humor” and found my blog. What in heaven’s name is so funny about knee surgery?

I’m sure those of you with MyBlogLog do the same thing. It’s hilarious to see what search terms bring back your web site pages. So many of them are off the wall. Along with the torn meniscus humor one is “porn production in Sydney”. Have I ever written on that topic? I don’t remember. But they found my blog searching for it.

Hope I was helpful.

There’s Always Something to Remind Me

It took a lot to make me laugh this week. To make matters worse, my daughter just got her drivers license and decided that on day two of my surgery recovery, she was going to take my car out alone for the first time. Actually, she was going with her best friend, Britney, but that only scared me more. Three and half hours later, I thought I would need an ambulance because I had stopped breathing. I was in SUCH a panic, it was getting dark, my cell phone was dead so I couldn’t call her every five minutes (so I kept making Eric call her. He deserves a medal when I get like this.)

So they get home and she and Britney come bouncing up the stairs to where I’m stuck in bed, giggling and carrying on as if they were drinking and I start to tell them to quit being so happy because I’m mad at them. Eric bounces into my sight first, all happy, and I’m thinking, what the heck? We’re supposed to be the unhappy parents here. Next up, is my son Stefan. I’m thinking he’s there to see his sister get yelled at. That’s always fun. The youngest, Andrew, is always jumping up and down anyway (I swear he thinks the earth is one big trampoline), so he’s trailing along for the show. (There’s always one in my house. Trust me.)

And then Arielle and Britney come clamoring into the room with a pile of balloons, cards, flowers…and of course, now I know why they took my car.

Another Place and Time

I expect to be back next week with something on topic sensible awe inspriring. Okay, industry related.

Inspiration

Melody A.M. by Royksopp - The song titled “Remind Me”, used in the Geico Caveman in Airport commercial.

This is my last post for an uncertain period of time. I wasn’t sure when to do it, but this week is just nuts so while I’m thinking of it, here’s what’s happening.

I’m going in for surgery on Monday, February 19, to repair a torn meniscus in my left knee. Over the past two years I learned I have arthritis in my lower back and knees, on top of Hashimoto’s auto immune disease. This just means my thyroid no longer functions without medicine and pain management is unusually difficult. From what I’ve been told, the Hashimoto’s may be the cause of the arthritis (they both appeared together).

I think my knee was torn during a baseball game the summer of 2005 and I didn’t know it. I just thought the pain was part of the arthritis. We only recently discovered the damage during an MRI.

This is routine surgery. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Search engine optimization is being defended once more. This time, by Danny Sullivan, who attempts to set things straight with Jason Calacanis. He is joined by many other voices on issues of trust, integrity, social media optimization and marketing practices.

The anti-SEO sentiment may be driven by bitterness over what is viewed as purposeful manipulation. Skilled search engine marketers not only target known users of a product, but they also create desire, need, and emotional connections to products or websites.

This, in turn, helps to create fake, inauthentic traffic and links by the unknown end users who weren’t specifically marketed to or designed for, but bought the storyline and wanted in anyway.

We want to feel part of the Big Thing, even if it has nothing to do with us, wasn’t supposed to be for us or isn’t remotely even like us.

“We have a hunger for something like authenticity, but are easily satisfied by an ersatz facsimile.”-George Orwell, c. 1949

Can we tell where we stand in a culture of fakeness? How can we determine whom to design or market to when the expectations themselves are created by our creations?

Targeting Authentic?

We may use simulated models in software development. We may create user personas, which can be composites of “real” people based on marketing and other data, such as behavioral. We’re taught to determine project requirements first. We might study and analyze data to be absolutely sure we’ll be successful at the end.

Or Targeting the Dishwasher?

If you ever watched someone load a dishwasher, you come to understand there is no standard way of using the appliance. Everybody has their own way of doing it. This is also how many people view web design. Since there are so many ways of interacting with a website or online application, we often hope to nab a small percentage that will use it the way we do.

Horror Stories

I know there are people who sit on the mountain, in their throne, surrounded by the misty haze from “I Am Right and You Are All Idiots” land. Sometimes these people keep us employed in odd ways.

For example, I learned that an acquaintance of mine was hired to work on a software application already in use by a certain industry. It costs an extreme fortune to own and maintain this application. In a sudden move, the software company changed its mind. It’s scrapping the existing application, restructuring the company and planning an entirely new application that will take an estimated three years to build. It is intended to replace the existing one, which no one is permitted to work on anymore, other than to maintain it for existing customers.

Many of us have worked for schizophrenic companies and ridden the roller coaster. One of the reasons for the crazy ride is the end user. Every time they think they know who that is, and the platforms they like the most, something new comes along and it’s Groundhog day again.

This particular company has no usability department, does no user testing and has no usability requirements documentation for their application.

Are we marketing and development for the right people?

What Comes First? The End User or the Cool Thing?

I view Digg as more like shooting paint balls into a field of obstacles with people ducking and screaming and trying not to get hit. If you manage to hit someone at Digg, a few things might happen. They want revenge. They will cut you down in gang-like fashion out of boredom and because it’s fun to do that. They may like you. They may join your side and call in the army to see your cool thing.

Social media marketing specifically targets Digg, Reddit and other social media because the people who participate there determine the next cool thing. It’s a tough crowd, but is it the right one for your company? What if they like something that fits their demographic? They make it cool and popular, and companies invest even more money into development because their data interprets the traffic and links as demand?

Wouldn’t you want to know who the people are who created the buzz? Are they who built your cool thing for or did they make you build it for them?

Are we building dumbed down versions of things because we didn’t put the time, effort and money into studying the actual target market?

It’s Okay to Mess Up Because Nobody Knows or Cares Who It Effects

There are mistakes in judgment and implementation every day. In today’s news, digital music sharing is under the microscope because the effort to protect music also created limits for those who legitimately share music online. The effort to help one demographic messed with the choices of another.

Jason Calacanis wrote in Why people hate SEO… (and why SMO is bulls$%t):

The whole point of social media is TO BE REAL NOT FAKE!!! Just be yourself and participate… that’s all it takes (and note, participation is not just putting in your own links, it’s voting/commenting on/submitting other people’s content too!).

I find this remark to be very sad, and very telling about the expectations of people in positions like his. I interpret this as permission to be hateful, judgmental, verbally abusive and cruel because in places like Digg, you don’t need to be real or authentic in the first place. You don’t need to ever use your real name.

Anything can be created without the benefit of ever telling anyone who you are. One only needs to note this week’s story on the attempt to propose live during the Super Bowl. The entire process was promoted and covered publicly under the initials “JP”. Donations poured in. Hollywood bought into the romance. When the proposal finally aired during a TV show, some swore it was just a marketing ploy rather than an authentic marriage proposal.

The lines between authentic and authentic fakeness are blurred. (A woman without makeup and hyperventilating while being proposed to is not how a diamonds company would advertise their product.)

What Dimension Are We in Now?

I’m barely touching on the subject of authenticity. Inspiration came from Fake Authenticity: An Introduction.

How do you know when something is real or fake, authentic or imitated to look authentic?

Are we now a culture that accepts and even demands fake authenticity?

Cartoonist Dan Clowes has mocked “blues clubs where all-white upper-middle class audiences who imagine themselves to have ’soul’ like to congregate”… but the thing about the House of Blues is, it’s so over-the-top that it doesn’t just appeal to our yearning for authenticity-it actually rubs our noses in the impossibility of ever discovering an authenticity which has not always already been commodified. In a way, that’s a good thing-but only if it freed us from the futile quest for authenticity, which of course it does not. Instead, it makes you feel hopeless and resigns you to the world it has created. You find yourself accepting, with a weary shrug of the shoulders, the aesthetic which comes with the “Elwood” blackened chicken sandwich and watercress-jicama salad.

Is smoking what Jason Calacanis labels, “SEO-crack”, or marketing the magic of illusion worth investing in?

I wonder if it matters these days whether or not it’s productive to invest in, design, develop and test a product intended for specific people and uses.

It seems to me there’s an entire culture with millions of people anticipating the next totally far-out thing and they no longer give a damn if it is real.