I’ve come to an epiphany lately. It may seem obvious, but it truly changes the way you perceive things. The truth is that everything is local.

Think about it – what is synonymous with the internet? Sex. Travel. Weather. News. Sports. They are all very local oriented (sex – craigslist and AdultFriendFinder … whose affiliate managers email me twice a day ugh).

Really – the point of this post is for you to try to see the local aspect of your day to day life. The internet is a woven tapestry of local connections – but too often we see the finalized product, not the individual (local) links that bring it all together.

I will come back to this.

For every 20-30 emails we get at iBegin asking that we fix an issue, 1 of them always has the veiled threat of a lawsuit. “Fix my # or I will sue you!” “We have moved – fix it or I will have my lawyer deal with this!” etc etc. Of those threats, 1 out of 10 are just downright unstable. Capital letters. Abusive language. Even the occasional threat of bodily harm.

What boggles my mind is how these people stay in business. Yes bad information sucks. It can be annoying. But what is the harm in asking nicely? I can understand if you have emailed us before and we didn’t reply – but that doesn’t happen

Sadly enough – another reminder of the recession. The threatening tone in emails has increased – the more stress you put on the business owners, the more likely they are to pass it on.

I should note that while I can be crass here (and in other areas), all emails are always civil. Even with the random person who replies to me with mentions on how I must be working with the terrorists because of my Islamist name (true story).

Many readers here at my blog found me through my prodigious commenting on other blogs. And dare I say it, most of my comments contribute directly to the topic at hand, with little self promotion.

So the other day I came across what looked like a mostly useless comment by GenieKnows on Mike’s blog post on Google Maps Re-design. The comment itself was a cross between useless and retarded. I didn’t pay it any other thought as the poster’s name (Drew) was not linked.

That is until I was chatting with Mike on IM and he pointed out that the smiley face was in fact a link! The little spammers, having found out Mike’s blog was do-follow, were trying to impregnate a link through the use of a smiley. I encouraged Mike to call them out, but he was far too nice for that.

Thankfully I am not. Yesterday the idiots hit my blog with a near identical comment like that, complete with their hidden link in the smiley.

So congratulations on acting like utter jackasses.

Seth Godin on ads being like online tip jars:

I can say this because there are no ads here but,

If you like what you’re reading, click an ad to say thanks.

Pretty simple, but not an accepted online protocol, at least not yet.

I like most of what Seth says, but that just made my eyes boggle. Clicking on an ad that you don’t care about just because you like the content is outright cheating.

I hope people know to do better.

Greg Sterling loves coupons (or at least loves to talk about them ). Many other analysts and writers in the local space also talk about coupons a lot.

Not to be snobbish, but I’ve never really cared for coupons. Yeah I will use one occasionally, but rarely do I go hunting and looking out for coupons.

And (to my surprise) it seems like I was in the majority. I was just reading today on how coupon usage had been declining for 16 years. It took an extremely tanking economy to reverse that trend.

What am I getting at? So many people talk about how coupons are a great way to prove to businesses that online traffic converts … maybe they should look into some other method to prove the value of their traffic.

DDL:08 was a good experience for us – it was the first time we ever had a booth (though we have sponsored other events), and it was a good experience (more on that later).

Right now though I want to point out to a bonafide ass.

Part of our sponsorship was us sponsoring a Cyber Cafe. At the conference they have two sets of three computers connected to the internet. Two companies sponsor the cyber cafe, setting the homepage on the computer to a site specified by the sponsor. As such, three of the computers were set to www.ibegin.com and the other three were set to www.homes.com.

We noticed this earlier on, and it happened non-stop – some ass kept going over to the six computers and kept setting www.bizclip.com/portfolio/ as his homepage. And by non-stop I mean he would come by every 30 minutes to do this.

I never actually saw the bugger doing this as I was too busy to wait to catch him, but quite a few people let me know what was going on, including one of our employees.

I can only imagine the kind of service and product you would receive from someone who would stoop to such a level. Consider yourself warned.

Update: I should note that quite a few people did this. This one particular individual did it multiple times. At the same time – other than human decency I cannot imagine a way to ’solve’ this kind of behavior. Timers, perma-frames, etc – they all have drawbacks. So really nothing Kelsey nor we can do about it.

So I’m at the tail end of LeadsCon, getting ready to go home.

To me, the best two sessions were ‘Keynote Address: Lessons From the Leaders’ and ‘Uncovering Local Lead Generation’

The first was an interesting story – how things were done, how much FreeCreditReport.com cost (hand regged!), and so forth. Personal stories of success and development are always good.

The second was interesting in the sense of mechanics – the background work required to make local lead generation work. What is expect from businesses, and what is expected from consumers, and match the two.

The rest in the middle, while executed well (I much prefer talk sessions than podium preaching), was boiled down to two core issues:

1. Teeth gnashing at what meanies the FTC are and how they hate us
2. Teeth gnashing at the mortgage industry explosion, and looking forward to the housing market coming back

It was, in my opinion, far too retrospective, when it should have been more forward-thinking. What I got (and remember, this is my perspective), was that the only new thing was lead scoring.

My intent in coming was of course locally-oriented – local lead gen, while a tougher nut to crack than the traditional ‘financial’ categories (mortgage, debt, loans, financing), is also potentially far more lucrative (higher margins, repeat customers, word of mouth effectiveness). Yet every single established company I talked to had the same boiler plate answer – we think it’s great, it’s on our list of things to do, but not in the year 2008.

It reminded me a lot of the domainer industry. All those PPC companies are basically the same (their ads come via Google or Yahoo), and they all sell the same services. Instead of trying to evolve the market in new ways, it seems like everyone is content sitting on their laurels fighting each other for the same leads, instead of trying to work on new areas where there is no competition.

Yes there were most definitely some individuals who want to try new things, who are looking at new types of leads. But the local space requires scale and operations – a one man operation won’t make much of a dent in local lead gen.

At the end of the day, this just elucidates the level of disconnect happening between some of the major industries I travel. Local companies should be interested in domains (readymade traffic – just look at Marchex), and should be interested in getting the most money out of a consumer (lead gen!). Yet I saw almost zero local-oriented companies. Domainers should love local (‘unlocking’ the potential of their domains) and lead gen (leaving the Google/Yahoo duopoly) … but again, few domainers. Lead gen should love domainers (source of traffic) and local (higher margins, new areas) – but again, little interaction.

I almost feel like a trailblazer trying to connect the three – anyone else actively participating in these three areas?

So I had two packages to be delivered today, and one tomorrow – all three by UPS.

The one by ground got here just fine. It was ETAed to arrive on Monday, but got Thursday.

The one that was sent by one day shipping – the idiot driver claimed my address didn’t exist. Of course when I called them up it turned out that the full address was there. In the last 10 times UPS has had to deliver something to me, twice they have claimed the address doesn’t exist, and one time they delivered the package to an apartment 2 blocks off.

I really don’t get what in the hell UPS is doing (and who they are hiring).

But today I got a first – a recycled tracking code!

So when I called to yell about my screwed up delivery, I had to yell about this too. It took like 40 minutes to resolve it … which consists of me having to drive to a place 40 minutes away to pick up both packages.

Sigh!

Update the Next Day: Evidently once they get into a groove of screwing you, they continue.

I was told I would get a call at around 10 am to confirm that the package (with the recycled tracking number) would be held for me. 10 am came and went whoosh. So I called, and the rep claimed they called me. Except of course I have caller ID – and there was no call. When I caught him with that, he claimed it said they called, but that no one of that name lived there, so they must have dialed it wrong. When I asked him why didn’t they bother to RE-DIAL then … he was left speechless.

And checking online it says ‘Out for Delivery’ … timed at 6:47 am.

If you ever hear about me sending something via UPS – be sure to kick me in the balls. Both result in the same level of physical and psychological pain.

ReachLocal – recipient of $67million in funding.

The footer includes a link to ReachLocal Directory … which is nothing more than an ODP directory.

What exactly is the point of having that?

UPDATE: Fixed the funding – I had erroneously noted it as $160 million. Someone from RL did contact me about this – I was told that it is just an old directory page … but I fail to see why it is linked from their front page still.

It seems like Intel isn’t happy with its visual branding, and (trying) to take a hint from Target (bullseye), Nike (swoosh), Apple (apple), and so forth, is pushing out its own ‘evolution glyphs’

The glyphs were created from recurring shapes that were found throughout the microprocessor’s features as the silicon is processed. They’re hoping that the glyphs help make the Intel brand more recognizable like Target’s red bullseye and Nike’s swoosh.

See for your self:

And the new tune/video for the end of Intel ads: click here.

I gotta be honest – I don’t get it. Target has one image. Nike has one image. Apple has one image. NBC has one image. And so forth and so forth. How do 16 glyphs equal that level of recognition? Perhaps the 16 glyphs could be used as secondary elements, but still have a dominant image associated with the brand.

Then again, I’m not a million-dollar consultant.

Pretty sure this isn’t public yet – so be sure to digg it.