So as a geeky tech guy you would have thought I would be lining up to jailbreak my iPhone but honestly I just never had a need to do it. Until now! I needed additional call management features that iBlacklist has but Apple has decided to no allow it in the App store. So that led me to do some quick reading on the subject of jail breaking your iPhone and outside of voiding your warranty I couldn’t see any reason not to. I ended up using the evasi0n program to do the jailbreak and it was super simple and easy, nothing to fear here!
Jailbreak!
March 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
A New Direction
March 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In the past I used this site as a portal for my consulting work along with industry related posts. Since I have been in house for almost 5 years now, with limited consulting roles I don’t nearly post as often. I have usually done most of my personal posts on Facebook, but I feel that is limiting and useful for quick updates only. I want to use this space to do a much better job of posting personal and professional things. I have gotten away from writing too much in the last few years and would like to have that outlet again. Hopefully I can keep up with a better posting schedule then I had in the past and keep up to date with things going on with the family and me!
Pubcon 2011: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Social
November 15, 2011 by 9 Comments
Last week I had the opportunity and pleasure to attend Pubcon Las Vegas 2011 through my full time position at Zacuto USA, and I must say that it was the best year yet for me for several different reasons that go beyond just the great knowledge that goes on in the sessions.
Recommended Reading: Killer Facebook Ads by Marty Weintraub
August 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
If you have never gotten the opportunity to see Marty Weintraub from AimClear speak you are missing out. I have seen him several times and it is always an informative session with actionable tips given by Marty. Your in luck though if you arent heading out to any of the major conferences soon, Marty has had a new book released a little bit ago so you can get some of those great tips without actually having to travel.
Killer Facebook Ads: Master Cutting-Edge Facebook Advertising Techniques is a great read that will give you the ability to get your Facebook advertising to a whole new level. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a little behind in getting my Facebook ads up to snuff performance wise compared to my other platforms. That’s why when I saw @aimclear mention that it was up for preorder I quickly had it in my shopping cart and was waiting for delivery.
It was well worth the wait and though I haven’t finished it yet, I can confidently say that it is worth picking up if you have any intentions of running Facebook ads, or are currently running them and want to boost performance. I won’t insult Marty by putting any of his work for free here on the blog, do yourself a favor and pick it up yourself!
Disclaimer: Thanks to IL Governor Quinn, I am no longer an affiliate for Amazon, the links above to the book are straight links, and this post was done out of admiration for Marty’s work
SEO Columbus Review & Recommendations
February 7, 2011 by 3 Comments
This morning while wasting time networking on Twitter one of my favorite SEO link builders tweeted about Mike Halvorsen. Apparently Mike, like most other SEOs that take client work wanted to rank for his local area searches. This is done all the time all over the world, but in this case Joe Rozsa has decided that he owns the words SEO Columbus.
It doesn’t seem to matter that there is no registered trademark with the state, nor that both those terms are too generic to really be trademarked. In going to Mike’s website I have NO confusion about who he is, I know from reading his site that he is a SEO in the Columbus area, and not part of the company SEO Columbus. (How lame is it to name your company that way, good thing you got the exact match domain too Joe cause I think your going to have ranking problems in the near future.) It goes to the heart of what is really wrong with a lot of America today. It’s the need to threaten or browbeat a competitor instead of being a better service or product. Joe has decided instead of making sure he keeps his #1 ranking in the SERPs by hard work, he will threaten Mike with an incredible weak arguments in my opinion. (As a side note I have no training as a lawyer, but I deal with a ton of TM issues in my in-house position with usage of our name and images)
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Google Chrome – The Switch is On
December 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment
For years I have been a diehard fan of Firefox as my browser, but lately between numerous updates and generally crashing once every few days I’m done with it. I have been flirting with the idea of moving to Chrome for awhile but I just couldn’t be bothered finding all the little things that I use in Firefox and my password manager didn’t have an extension for Chrome, which was a huge deal breaker because really I cant be expected to remember all my passwords between clients, work, and personal sites.
Then I saw a tweet by SEO journalist Danny Sullivan talking about his first day experience with the new Chrome OS. It’s a great read and one of the things that was referenced in the article was a password manager called LastPass. It got me thinking that I could now start using Chrome more and not have to remember passwords. Also I have applied for the Google OS pilot program for Zacuto as I have a few users that could benefit from that kind of machine, so I figured I need to get comfortable with Chrome in case I do get selected.
So I sat down to install Chrome and get my customizations in place to make it workable. I want to do a real go at switching which means I don’t want to be switching back and forth to do different things. After some searches I found extensions and web apps that will cover all the things I need taken care of in my day to day work. I lost one toolbar from Raventools.com, but I can still do all my work from within the site so it wasn’t a deal breaker though it was close. Ill petition the Raven guys for a chrome extension, they are pretty good about working on requests if enough interest is generated. (Sidenote: If you work with Internet Marketing check out Raventools.com, amazing reporting/monitoring tools.)
I also am taking this opportunity to test Springpad as I have been trying to find a good to do/task app that works across all my platforms, as I recently traded in my iPhone for a EVO with Android. It looks pretty good so far but only time will tell how I interact with it.
If you have been waiting until Chrome is more “mature” to start working with it, I believe that time is here. With Chrome OS coming its important that if you do any kind of tech support work your going to see it, so you might as well start getting into it. I’ll update in a few weeks to discuss how the switch is going, good luck with yours!
Good or Great?
November 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment
I was in Vegas for Pubcon, which was both a wonderful learning experience and also a thought provoking event for myself. As I tweeted at one point I had a realization that at this point in my life I am going to have to commit to a career path. For the last 8 years I have been bouncing between online marketing(SEO/SEM) and IT work. This has worked well for the mostly small businesses that I have been employed by because they got two roles filled by one person.
I feel I have done good work in these hybrid positions and always provided value to the companies, my current position included. Though I have found that with my kids getting older I am not able to dedicate the amount of time I had in the past to keep up to date in both disciplines. I wouldn’t say it is causing my work to suffer, but I am definitely behind the curve in testing new ideas and platforms.
That being said, I really want to get back to doing GREAT work. The only way at this point in my life that I think I can do that is by focusing on one of the paths. This will allow me to excel at that path and keep a healthy work/home balance with the wife and kids. The problem moving forward is I love doing both online marketing and IT work. I need to weigh the paths and the destination to figure out what will be best for myself and the family.
Preparing for Microsoft exam 83-640, Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring
January 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Since I finished up my exam 70-642 right at the end of 2009, for one of my resolutions going into 2010 would be to finish up my MCITP this year. In that regards, I am giving myself 45 days to prepare and pass the 83-640 exam. I am going from today (Jan 3rd 2010), so I am going to set my exam for Feb 17th which will work well for my schedule as luck would have it.
This exam replaces the 70-640 exam in the US because a part of the exam uses the performance based testing that I did the pilot for.
I am going to use the following resources to study:
- Train Signal’s Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Training
- Transcender Practice Exam
- Microsoft Self Paced Study Guide
I will start by going through Train Signal’s video courses first, then using the self paced study guide and virtual machines to get more of a hands on feel to deal with more of the performance based testing.
I feel this schedule will be tough, but I just got done designing and implementing a Server 2008 Active Directory network for a small business not to mention I have been working on Active Directory since 2000. I am going to document regularly here as I go through the study material.
Passed 70-642 Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuring
December 29, 2009 by Leave a Comment
![mcts[1]](http://www.davelawlor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mcts1.png "mcts[1]")
I have been so busy at the office that I have been putting off taking some of the exams I need to get done, when I noticed that one of my vouchers was going to expire I quickly registered to make the expiration date.
With the holidays and family commitments it was tough to get studying in but I managed to squeeze some on. Today even though I was knee deep in drama at the the office (another post on that in the future), I managed to squeak at a 850 to pass. This adds another line to my MCTS.
The next exam on my list is the 70-640, hopefully it wont take 6 months for me to get around to taking that one!
Block Yahoo Web Chat
December 28, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Another set of users were using the Yahoo web chat instead of doing what we are paying them for so I needed to block them also. There are a lot of useless and out of date messages posed about this but I finally figured it out, and the answer was close to what I did to disable gmail chat:
I setup my DNS with two primary domains for:
- httpcs.msg.yahoo.com
- webcs.msg.yahoo.com
I then set a host record for those to go to 127.0.0.1
After that they couldn’t chat no more!
