Keynote Speaker : Alan Beaulieu with Jason Lavin

Alan Beaulieu, Vistage Keynote Speaker, Visits Our Booth at All-City 2012 Orange County.

The Golden Comm team chatting about responsive web design with Orange County’s top CEOs at the exclusive Vistage All City event.

Today, Jason Lavin leads seminars discussing SEO and how businesses can grow online while reducing marketing costs.

All of this happening today in the heart of Costa Mesa at the Westin Hotel South Coast.

Learning so much from all the folks leading the sessions. We are all inspired to “make our move” today with Alan Beaulieu!

Goldencomm Booth at Vistage All-City Event

Vistage All-City – All day event

Almost all under 40 - (our team from left) Erin Liebman, Chris & Mary Mazurk, Lauren Bishop,
Steve Churm (OC Metro CEO), Harry Williams, Stacie & Kent Zimmer, Jason Lavin

Awesome job by Churm Media putting on the 2012 40 under 40 event at Pelican Hill. Thanks Steve Churm!

Patrick Rue of the The Bruery

If you missed it, just know that the room was packed with guests and local business supporting the amazing group of “under 40″ honorees. Watch out for these up-and-comers – one of our many favorites (just picking one) is Patrick Rue from The Bruery in the Orange Circle.

Ozzie Smith - "The Wizard"

When I was about 12 years old, my family took a trip down to St. Louis, MO.  I was living in my hometown, Peoria, IL, and my parents packed up the family, and headed about 3 hours southwest for our family vacation.  This vacation was going to be special – we were going to a St. Louis Cardinals game!  And not only this, we were going to get to see one of the great Cardinals players in that game – “The Wizard” Ozzie Smith – a 15-time All-Star, Baseball Hall of Famer.

This was also special because I was born in St. Louis while my father was in law school.  A couple of years later we moved back to Peoria, IL to be close to family, but St. Louis still holds a special place in my heart, as do the St. Louis sports teams.

The game was awe-inspiring to this 12 year old boy.  I think there’s even a picture in one of our old family albums of me on the field with “The Wizard” in the background.  Every child has fond memories of times where they got close to the people they really look up to, whether it be a celebrity, sports figure, etc., and this was definitely one of mine.  These people inspires us, and we feel like we can conquer the world when we’re watching them.  That’s how I felt that day watching “The Wizard” play.

For the past several years, I haven’t had much time to go to baseball games or keep up.  But, while I was living in Peoria, I would catch up every once in a while on a young rising star who got his start playing in 2000 for the Peoria Chiefs, the single-A Midwest League feeder team for the St. Louis Cardinals (at that time).  Albert Pujols got his start playing in my hometown, had wowed people, moved up quickly in the ranks, and was playing for the Cardinals by 2001.

It was exciting to be following the Cardinals during this time.  Pujols helped lead the Cardinals to victory in the World Series in 2006, and most recently in 2011, with Pujols matching Babe Ruth’s record of three home runs in a World Series game.  The Cardinals hadn’t been this hot since they won the World Series in 1982.

Cardinals mania was at an all time high, and dang, was it fun to be a fan.

By 2011, I was living in Orange County, CA, but still following the Cardinals.  So, I was really saddened when I heard that Pujols was leaving the Cardinals.  “Are you crazy?!” I was thinking.  “You’re letting this amazing player leave?!”

But then, I was thrown a twist.  Albert Pujols would be coming to Orange County to play for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Jason Sporting His Pujols Jersey

This definitely helped soften the blow.  Although saddened by the loss of the Cardinals, here was this All-Star player coming to play in our backyard!  I guess if he had to leave, then this is definitely where I’d want him to come.

And I’m not the only GoldenComm fan to be excited over this news. The day after the Pujols news broke, Jason, our owner, came in to work flashing his big smile and wearing his very own custom-made Pujols Angels jersey.  He proceeded to wear this jersey everywhere for the next week – around the office, in meetings, in front of clients, at his monthly SEO seminar, etc.  You can see him in the picture giving his “Master Your Webmaster” SEO seminar while sporting his new attire.

Pujols-mania is high in Orange County, and Jason and our team at GoldenComm are proud to be a part of it.  We all feel like 12 year old kids again, excited to see this baseball star work his magic in Orange County.

So now, even though I’ll always be a Cardinals fan at heart, I know we’re all really looking forward to Albert Pujols’ first season here in California.

For more information on this All-Star player, visit the Albert Pujols website.

Albert Pujols Joins The Angels

From all of us here at GoldenComm, we would like to extend a warm welcome to Albert Pujols.  We’re excited for the 2012 season, and we welcome you to Orange County!

How user friendly is your website on a mobile phone? Most of the population today is searching the web via their mobile devices and are looking for quick facts and simple answers. Making your website mobile friendly is an easy solution to increasing your customers user experience.

At Golden Comm we can reformat your website into a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) for mobile phones. A WAP is web browser for mobile devices that takes information from your website directly to your phone. It is basically a simpler version of your website. It allows you to just add basic information like an about us, schedule and contact information. Said another way, we put all of the information that a mobile user would need right at their finger tips!

A lot of you are probably thinking, why not just create an App? Creating an App is a more timely process and is not compatible with all mobile devices. Compared to a WAP, which is a timely and simple solution, an App has the full content on your phone and is not pulling from the website.

According to Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends Report from 2010, more consumers are searching the web through their phones then on their PC’s and wireless options are growing at a rapid pace. The report states that 48% of consumers use their mobile device for search and the number of Mobile App and Browser users has doubled since 2009.

Reformatting your website for mobile use is very easy and should be an important thing to consider when creating your website.

Let us help you see the potential in creating a WAP.

Contact Us for more information.

This week has been a crazy week for Golden Comm. We are proud to introduce SIX new members to our team! We also have gone through a slight renovation and the office is looking amazing! We are more than excited to welcome these new members as we continue to grow.

It’s a great thing when business owners come together to share their expertise. This happened at the PortTech LA Chamber in the beautiful Port of Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 13^th 2010. A wide range of businesses was represented, from Scandinavian technology imports to environmental monitoring and highway technology.

The uniting factor between all of the businesses, however, was the need for a stronger web presence. Jason’s topics included SEO, SEM, organic vs. sponsored links, and Google’s use of AdSense, AdWords, PageRank, and Analytics.  Several “real live” customer’s examples were used to illustrate to the group exactly what it looks like to attain an optimized website.

The meeting lasted just under 2 hours, but it seemed as if it went by in a flash.  The group had great questions and hopefully everyone took home one thing that will change the way they look at their website!

ALSO… we could not resist… we are now proud to announce that Golden Communications is a member of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce!

Jason Lavin guest speaker at PortTech LA

Yesterday we celebrated Jason and Stela’s birthday with a fantastic Independence Day themed cake that was both awesome looking and scrumptious! The rest of us at Golden Communications wish these two a great year and hope they both spend the time to celebrate properly, by… I don’t know, how about NOT working too hard? (Impossible, I know.)

Also, Happy Birthday to Travis, whose birthday was last week. Hope you’re having a fantastic vacation! As to everyone else? Have a great (and safe) 4th of July weekend!

Sincerely,
Your local Web Design Ninjas at Golden Communications.

Jason Lavin (GoldenComm's CEO) currently in action at the SEO seminar in St. Louis

Jason, expert and guru of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, hosts another seminar.  Currently, he is teaching about ad verbiage and landing pages, and how that plays in Google AdWords and Analytics tracking.  Today’s SEO seminar is hosted at The Charles Knight Center at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri.  The town is terrific, the facility is STUNNING, and the weather could not be better for us!

Check out Golden Communication’s next SEO Workshop and Register today!

Welcome to 2009 everyone! It’s back to work, full force.

GSC had our annual holiday party at Flemings Steakhouse, where amongst the Filet Mignon, Prime Rib, Lobster, wine, and deserts, we all shared some great laughs and celebrated our amazing 2008 year together. At Golden State, we definitely work hard, but we know when it’s time to let loose a little! The GSC team has one full new year ahead of us – E-commerce websites to develop, SEO and SEM strategies to continue, Blogging, Programming, Strategic Website Designs – oh it’s going to be an exciting one!

Also present at the GSC’s Holiday Dinner was Randy Bergstedt, VP of Marketing at Star Trac. We invited Randy to be our “special guest” at the dinner for being a great client, and to celebrate a new 2.0 initiative that GSC and Star Trac will be working on together in 2009.

A GREAT surprise we all received was from Jason. We all got to choose from a selection of UGG Boots, which were provided by one of our fantastic clients, Dan Goodman of Eilatan.
We really missed a few of the team that were not able to come (MIC, Aaron, Richard and the Clarion team).

GSC wants to thank both Randy Bergstedt and Dan Goodman for being a special part of our holiday party and our company. Happy New Year everyone!

Several months ago, a friend and I built a site based around a very nerdy inside joke we had at work. A code issue that web designers often face is making a layout work in all browsers using only CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Using CSS is the standard, proper, acceptable way to create a website’s layout. An out-dated method of creating websites’ layouts involves a bit of HTML called a table. Tables, for all their clumsiness, tend to work more consistently across browsers than CSS. Tables also do things like vertically align content to the bottom of a cell while CSS will only do this in conjunction with JavaScript.

Of course, there’s a huge logical problem with using tables for layout: the layout of a site is not actually tabular data. And we coders don’t like that bit of bad logic. Also, while tables solve the initial layout problem, they are significantly harder to update.

That said, there often comes a time while coding a site when a designer might entertain the wish to give up and use tables. So we made a site based around that frustration we felt when browsers wouldn’t obey our CSS. Brian created a flash widget that gives a designer 47 minutes to wrestle with CSS. After that time, the widget buzzes and provides the table code for the designer to use.

The whole thing was a joke that we just got bored enough to execute. But here’s where the story gets interesting… After sitting dormant for 9 months, suddenly someone found the site. And not just someone but a very popular code blog called Ajaxian. In one day the site’s visitors leapt from 0 to 400. The next day the site was picked up by a reddit user. At the end of the day, we had about 35,000 visitors.

The Google Analytics graph tells the story:

Impressive, huh?

More impressive is that within one day my Google Page Rank shot up to a 5. And while the instant popularity of the site caused envy in my friends who wished their sites could get 35,000 visitors in one day, I knew it wouldn’t last. Friends encouraged me to put Google Ads on the site, make t-shirts, anything. “This could be another dramatic hamster, Todd!”

But I declined. Give Up and Use Tables is a pretty pure form of internet meme. It’s a site that does one thing — execute a really nerdy joke. We had our day — literally one day — and that was it.

Or to put it another way:

The long graph shows the decline and fall:

It was a fun 24 hours. Golden State even received several referrals from the wave of traffic that hit the site. There are some lessons to draw from this on internet trends, viral marketing, and link-sharing. But I’m still basking in the fun of our joke entertaining so many people (and even inciting real argument). And while Brian and I might have let the domain lapse and the site disappear, Golden State has taken over hosting and will keep it as a geeky museum piece.

So if you’ve ever felt cross-browser frustration with CSS, feel free to succumb to your urge and Give Up and Use Tables.