Last night I checked out Bubs in my stomping grounds of Pacific Beach. They purchased the building next to theirs, knocked out a wall and made it a lot wider. Some of my friends are not fond of the expansion. Their complaint is that it takes away from Bub’s small dive bar atmosphere.

I personally like Bubs better now. It has just the right amount of space now. Ad 2 San Diego is letting our membership decide on January’s happy hour venue.  Bubs will definitely be on the card!

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Today is the first official day in which I am a full time entrepreneur! I left my job as Marketing Director at CommUSA to start up San Diego Online Marketing Agency BigTuna Interactive. I will continue to manage CommUSA’s online marketing efforts as their agency of record.

You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own and you know what you know
And you are the one who’ll decide where to go.- Dr. Seuss

I’ve always seen myself as an entrepreneur and sailing my own ship. BigTuna Interactive will allow me to expand on my online marketing passions. It will also free up my schedule to attend more conferences. I plan on attending the following list of conferences in 2009:

• Online Marketing Summit
• South by SouthWest: Interactive sessions
• SMX Advanced
• AAF National Conference
• SES San Jose
• AAF Western Region Conference
• Ad 2 Mid Year Retreat
• Monthly San Diego Ad Club and Ad 2 events

Training and development has always been one of my guiding principles. I’m looking forward to a great 2009 as a free man!

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2008 was a breakthrough year for WordPress. The company flat out separated itself from all the other blogging platforms. In fact, it has now positioned itself as a major player in the content management system arena.

WordPress version 2.7 “Coltrane” has a really slick admin center. This blog is currently running on 2.6 (due to a terrible host and I’m too lazy to manually install the upgrades. However, many of my other blogs have started using 2.7. One of the best features is that we will no longer have to go to the CPanel to update the version. WordPress has whipped up a new version about every 2 weeks, so it used to be a real task. Last year, I updated about once a quarter.

The founders of WordPress flat out get it. They are pioneers in open source applications and have helped millions of people create better web experiences. I’m considering heading up to San Francisco for their WordPress boot camps. Looking forward to WordPress in 2009!

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This the season to point out big brand seo follies. I read an interesting article this morning about some iphone applications that Kraft whipped up and decided to check out their sites. For the most part, their sites are top notch. They are all written in the asp.net framework.

Surprisingly though, every one of Kraft’s sites are missing the meta description and keyword tag. Their title and header tags are weak too.  The meta keyword tag has definitely been discounted by most search engines, but Yahoo! still holds it relevant. Meta discription is a must for all websites.

Brands from Kraft Foods

Since Kraft is such a powerful brand, their flagship sites have a page rank of 7 from Google.  If they had the appropriate meta tags, they would probably see better rankings for their long tail keywords.

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The Ad 2 San Diego holiday party is tonight at Las Hadas restaurant in the Gaslamp. It’s a new Mexican restaurant that is located where Chive used to be. This holiday party is special to me for two reasons:

1. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Sports Bigs program.
2. I started this event three two years ago, making this our 3rd combined Holiday Party with the PRSA New Pros. The Rotaract Club of Downtown San Diego joined in the festivities in 2007.

The combined holiday party in 2006 was my first official Ad 2 event as Programs chair. In all honestly, the party didn’t end up very well, as attendance was down. However, we rebounded last year and had an excellent show. I’ve handed off the reins of programs to some very competent Ad 2′ers and I’m confident that tonight will be a good time.

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Motorola is continuing to release more CP Series two way radios in to their portfolio. Recently, they launched the Motorola CP185. The Motorola CP185 has been received with warm reviews, as the two way radio is getting better reviews than the Motorola CP200, which is Motorola’s best selling two way radio.

Two way radio communicators like the fact that the Motorola CP185 is a display. Battery strength and radio signal indicators are viewable from the display. Other Motorola radios, such as the CP200, do not have a display.

I was surprised that the CP185 didn’t come with a water resistant casing, like the Motorola CP110, which was released in late summer, 2008.  I am curious if Motorola will continue to build the CP product line or if they will add some new radios to the Mag One series.

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It’s Santa Pub Crawl time of year again! The 2008 San Diego Santa Pub Crawl is going to be on December 6, in East Village. My friend, Allison Farinas has put on the pub crawl for the past 3 years now. Everyone is encouraged to bring either a $20 toy or $20 donation.

Last year, I showed up wearing my finest ugly sweater. You can rest assured that I’ll be wearing another incredible ugly sweater this year.

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Bloomberg reported yesterday that the two way radio division for Motorola had a really good quarter. They raised profit 23% to $403 million and sales gained 4% to $2 billion. As I’ve reported before, the MOTOTRBO is a huge reason for the success of this division.

The two way radio division has been Motorola’s bread and butter since the company was formed. Unfortunately, they got caught up on low margin consumer electronics, and lost their way for a while. Motorola had a hit with the Razr, but quickly lost their edge (no pun intended) when the iPhone and other phones hit the market.

At $5.37, Motorola’s stock can only go up. I’m buy no means a stock analyst, but feel that it’s a good buy.

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The Motivent inspirational product was recently introduced to market. This promotional product was developed by local San Diego company Diggimac. The Motivent is a unique casing (frame) that can hold either a picture, or piece of paper. That paper can house an inspirational saying, company logo, or whatever you choose.

The Motivent has a unique locking mechanism which allows it to be clipped to your ride’s dash vent. Hence the name, moti-VENT.  I think this product will be a hit with religious groups and youth sports teams. You can purchase the Motivent online at the official Motivent Store. It retails for $9.50 a unit.

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It’s been almost two years since the Motorola BPR40 was released.  At first, this radio was thought of as a cheap knock off.  People were skeptical of its small size and were weary that the “Mag One” label wouldn’t hold up to Motorola’s quality sandards.

After a couple of years, the BPR40 is gaining strength as one of Motorola’s top lower tiered radios. I recently hooked my Uncle up with a set to use at his meat packing plant and for hunting. Granite, this radio is more expensive than the toy radios that most hunters use. But, with 4 watts of power, it is not going to have as difficult as a time transmitting through the thick foliage.

One of the best features of the BPR40 is that it comes with a full magone accessory line of headsets, earpieces and speaker microphones. An even better feature is that the accessories are less expensive than the Motorola CP200. The magone accessories are of cheaper quality, but do the job for most applications. It is common to see bouncers at clubs using the Motorola BPR40 and having a surveillance kit earpiece.

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