Two weeks ago, House Bill 2463 passed the Oregon House unanimously – 60 to zero to legally require computer workers to report any discovered child porn. Failure to do so can include a penalty of $6,250, up to a year in jail, or both.

I’m proud to announce that we are one of the sponsors for Portland WordCamp 2010 that is taking place this weekend, although I’m very disappointed that I can’t go.

When I was first approached about sponsorship, I wasn’t really sure that it would be a huge value for me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I just had to support the event and the community.

I’ve had my share of issues with Comcast in the past, and this one is just as frustrating.

Just like many of my issues with them so far, it’s completely inconsistent from market to market, so their support department seems to know nothing about it.

I just finished my slides for an hour-long presentation that I’m giving on Wednesday, April 15 at a monthly meeting of the Corvallis Etailers Association.

The presentation is taking place at

• 420 NW 2nd St, Corvallis, OR 97330
• 12 noon to 1:30pm

I’ve prepared a presentation on a few essential SEO basics, but after gauging the room for SEO knowledge I plan to quickly shift to a more advanced presentation.

This morning, email and website access is sporadic (at best) on the PDXTC servers, and it is slowly being restored.

For what it’s worth, the problem was not actually on our end, but in the middle, with one of Portland’s primary bandwith providers making a stupid mistake. i know that’s of little consolation, but it’s the truth.

Okay, catchy headline, I’m guilty. It won’t be the last, but may very well be the best you’ll ever see, if you look at it logically…

Regional conferences are showing up all over, dividing the time talent and energy of the conference speakers.

After the original SearchFest in 2005 did not return in 2006, SEMpdx was formed and revived the event for the following year.

Next Tuesday night, you’ll have an opportunity to hear two usability experts talk about real-life examples and case studies, and perhaps even some live reviews, (if you’d like to submit your own  site) in the February SEMpdx event.

Instead of the usual Hot Seat panel focused on nothing but SEO, two new panelists will be showing their skills:

As I promised this morning, I have uploaded my East Portland Chamber of Commerce presentation here, including all of the links that I spoke about.

You may open it directly from this link, or just right click here and choose “save as” to get it onto your own computer.

For those that weren’t in attendance, it’s a basic presentation with a few site-usability tips, and links to what I believe are the best 12 places for listing your website for free in local directories.

I just spent nearly 2 1/2 hours on my 10 minute presentation for the East Portland Chamber of Commerce, tomorrow morning at Warner Pacific College.

If you’re already a search marketer you probably won’t learn much, but if you’re a small business owner, it should be enlightening.

Next week is an SEM Hotseat event geared towards beginners. Have you come to search marketing events before and been overwhelmed?  Do you have some SEO questions that you think are too basic?  This is your chance to get that added level of detail and attention you may have been craving at other events.

Next week’s SEMpdx presentation gets very specific regarding the local search ranking algorithm. SEMpdx is fortunate to have a new board member join us for 2009 who’s recently moved here from San Fransisco.

His name is David Mihm, he’s an expert in local search, and he’s agreed to give a similar presentation to the one he gave at SMX West in California couple of months ago.

I’m looking forward to next Tuesday nights meeting of the Oregon Computer Consultants Association.  The subject is going to be using open source software on your desktop as a replacement for Windows, whether personal use, business use or both.

I’m so fed up with computer problems that I’ve actually considered buying a Mac, but I have a hard time believing that it would help me in the long run, and it certainly wouldn’t be economical.