Quick Monday morning update. Two more vents in the Miami area in the next few months. First up is the Creative Suite Conference February 28-March 3 at the Miami Beach convention center.The other event is the Graphics of the Americas Design City event being held March 2-4, also at the convention center.

So I decided there was no reason for me to keep my 4 year old Dell that I have in my house, as it was on its last legs, and has probably gone through 3 hard drives, and a half dozen reformats over the last few years. So as I evaluated my choices, I realized that PCs always invariably look cheaper on the surface, but somehow I never end up getting one of those dirt cheap PCs. By the time I am done customizing my systems and building them, or buying them from Dell, the machine ends up costing close to 2 grand. So I thought, why not switch back to a mac after all these years of being 80% PC and 20% mac.

I used to be a mac fanatic and used them exclusively till around 2000.
Now I was looking at computers, and saw the iMac had all the things I need on a computer, including the ability to run Windows (still have to use it for a number of reasons). But with my new iMac (which seems to be running faster than I expected) I can just toggle between the two, and right there is an amazing selling point. I wish Apple would highlight this more.

I’m most excited about being able to organize everything in a future-oriented way.

This is actually a two-fer today. I was reading Jason Calacanis‘ blog, and saw this amazing new ad format being used on gawker.com today. This thing is 1000 pixels wide and 250px high. Now my first thought was, how the f- can someone pull off something this big? but seriously I really like this ad format and ad in particular too. Now I’m not sure if its going to still intrigue me when the ad unit is being used for “shoot the monkey win $100″ ads, but it does offer an interesting value proposition for the online marketing/branding world. This is the literal interpretation of a billboard on the side of the highway being transferred to the web. Now my question is how do you implement something like this? and how do you charge for this?

The next part of this is really the site this first banner links to: the Monk site on USA Network.com. If you’re familiar with the show, and lots of people are already, they know that one of Mr. Monk’s character flaws is his OCD. So lo and behold who is advertising on the show’s site? WINDEX! Genius ad placement. Who better to pitch your product than someone obsessed with clean.

Do you know of any clever product or ad placements?

Hey everyone, just wanted to give you all a heads up, that the January edition of RefreshMiami is fast approaching, and we hope you can all make it there. The topic being presented is PR2.0. More details are on the refresh blog.When: January 24, 7:00PMWhere: University of Miami Wolfson Building courtyard

So I did a search for miami web2.0 on google blog search, and I get this: Search Engine Strategies Latino. Right here in miami in june. The event is in english for those of you who might have been worried, but it could be very interesting. Search engine marketing should be a crucial piece of every company’s web marketing strategy, and if it isn’t, trust me, it will be.I’m not sure what the cost of this event is going to be, but it could prove to be interesting. As soon as I get more details, I’ll let you all know.

This is going to be the first of many posts or snippets on things I think are lacking in the city, that could easily be improved. I’ll offer my suggestions to make sure I don’t sound like a malcontent who has nothing to contribute too
First up: Small businesses have a hard time in this city.
My suggestion: get the chamber of commerce to organize co-ops for health and other insurance purchases. Also organize local neighborhood chamber meetings that have councilmen in attendance. I think businesses could benefit each other alot more if they felt connected. Take the concept of a homeowners association and apply it to small businesses across the city.

Do you run a startup? Are you located in Miami, Florida,or Latin America? If you answered yes to both of these questions then you should email me (brian at webpl.us ). We are going to be offering free 125×125 ad space for anyone who meets those criteria. Also if you are a startup/web company/tech co in the area, email me so I can add you to the directory we are building.

Southwest Airlines FINALLY redesigned their site after years and years of it looking the same. The new site sports ajax (or javascript for you purists), clean design, and most importantly it lacks the stodgy 1995-esque design it had been sporting since probably 1995. I have a feeling that this will probably increase their checkouts/conversions by 1-2%. Mind you I’m guessing entirely, but I suspect those who werent comfortable with the airline’s budget looking websitebefore might be more inclined to entrust their faith in the site/company.This site raises 2 questions:

1. how much do people associate your site’s design with your company’s image (southwest=cheap airline=cheap looking site?)
2. Secondly does the adage that people judge a website by its appearance in less than a second apply to corporate sites for companies like southwest?

What do you think?

So in the spirit of my travel related posts the last few days, I’ve been thinking about how much I’d like to visit India. I’ve been to Asia before, but only China and Japan. Then I see a post about the biggest SEO meetup in India taking place March 31, and I ALMOST thought it would be reason enough to go (I’ll wait till I’ve got a business trip to meet developers or potential business partners (18 hours in a plane is not my idea of fun, even if it had internet or 20+movie channels).

My question to you readers is: have you been to India? Would you go again? What is the best thing to see/visit?

AKA How the major players are keeping their fingers in as many pots as possible
A while back I wrote about the death of the signup, and how all the major players were making it as easy as possible for the everyday web developer to leverage their existing username systems to authenticate users. Well after looking back at the situation, it seems to me that the players are all moving their pieces around in ways to best capture asmany pieces of the pie as they can. (more…)