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Ten years ago, almost every small business created a website with the .com boom. Today, having a website is the bare minimum. Companies need to learn to embrace the web, or die. Its really that simple. Here are four basic moves that should be done by every business.

1. Create a Google Local Business Entry

People don’t use the yellow pages anymore, unless your customer base resides in a personal care home. Google’s local business center lets you register your business with Google. Its important to take control of the information rather than to let it fall to chance.

2. Start Blogging

If your company’s website does not have a blog, its outdated. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, blogging is a great promotional tool for all organizations. Keeping the blog fresh with desirable information can be a challenge, but the promotional benefits are enormous. The key to a good company blog is to create a sense of community. A sure fire way to get very little traffic is to just “hard sell” products or services via your blog. Nobody wants to read a bunch of press releases. Providing tips, news, industry trends, and the occasional product plug is the way to go.

3. Start Tweeting

Twitter is a great way to promote your business, and its free. Whether its promoting specials, industry news, recruiting, or just networking with existing customers, all businesses should have a Twitter account. Did I mention its free?

4. Create a Facebook Page

Facebook pages are free for anybody to create. At the very least it will result in a few web hits. Given Facebook’s skyrocketing growth, its import to have a presence.

Having hosted and developed websites for over a decade now, it was always funny sifting through the logs in the early days. When the Internet first became popular to consumers, pornography accounted a for a huge portion of search engine traffic. 90% of my search engine hits in the mid-90’s were people looking for porn (must be my last name). In fact, it was so bad back in the day, that the number one SEO move was to put porn keywords in your META tags.

A few years ago, I heard about a pornographic Youtube clone called “Youporn” in a Techcrunch article. Out of curiosity, I looked up Youporn on Google trends and compared it to Web 2.0 darlings Twitter, Flickr, Yelp, and Digg. Here are the shocking results:

While there is a ton of buzz about Twitter, Youporn is insanely popular, yet its barley mentioned in the press. There are 37 news articles that mention “Youporn,” compared to 75,000 for Twitter. Yet, if you look at the trend results, the Youporn keyword is TWO TIMES more popular than Twitter.

While the results are shocking, Youtube is still far and away the king.

Since Lance Armstrong’s comeback started earlier this year, he has embraced Twitter, blogging, and video blogging as means to communicate and interact with fans. A few weeks in to the Giro, Lance Armstrong stopped speaking with media, after the Italian press tried to vilify him because riders staged a protest on really dangerous course. This protest happened a day after a rider nearly died in a horrific crash.

Lance decided to cut out the middleman, and embrace new media as a means to disseminate information. Naturally, the mainstream media was not happy with the embargo. The major mainstream media outlets have a centuries old tradition of getting their asses kissed by those being covered. A New York Times writer published a snarky rebuke of Lance’s boycott yesterday. Quite ironically, it was in a New York Times “blog.”

Cycling is a sport that is poorly covered in the United States, so its easy to see why Lance would consider the press to be unnecessary. The New York Times sent Juliet Macur to cover the Giro. While Macur might be a gifted writer, she knows very little about cycling. Is it necessary for sports figures to embrace the media anymore?

Personally, I find Lance’s twitter feed and video blogs to be really interesting. Much more interesting than a lengthy media profile done by a journalist. There is certainly a need for good journalism, especially when it comes to controversial issues like performance enhancers. However; journalists need to accept twitter, and the fact that direct communication via the Internet is here to stay. Long gone are the days where major media outlets were the only method of disseminating information to the public.

So I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about Windows 7. Apparently, its the first Microsoft client OS release since XP (2002) that will actually improve with a new release. It also happens to be first “pre-release” Microsoft OS I’ve tried since 2001, which was when the release candidates of XP started to pop up on the Internet.

I was shocked to hear that Microsoft released a freely downloadable beta, so I decided to give it a shot. I googled “Windows 7 release candidate,” and the first result was this link . As soon as I get to the page, a pop-up comes up asking to install “Silverlight,” which is Microsoft’s lame attempt at creating a flash clone. Typical for MS, they clone something that is cross platform (.NET=Java, Silverlight=Flash), and make sure it only works well on Microsoft operating systems. Needless to say, I didn’t bother installing “Silverlight.”

So the next step was for me to click the download link. I assumed that would take me to a page where I pick my appropriate download, and away we go.. Nope, I was then prompted for a Microsoft “Windows Live” id. The windows live id is a relic of Microsoft’s failed “Passport” initiative to monopolize federated web authentication. It took me 10 tries, but I finally found an old account that worked.

So now can I download Windows 7? Nope, Microsoft wants me to fill out a survey. The best part of the survey is when they ask what my primary client operating system is, the only products they list are Windows! Naturally I picked “other,” but its just another shining example of Microsoft’s hubris.

So I avoided Silverlight, dug up an old passport account, and filled out a survey, can I download Windows 7 now? Nope, Microsoft wants to verify my e-mail account. Sadly, I never received a verification e-mail, so I guess I wont bother trying Windows 7 today.

Is pretty sad, that Microsoft can’t even get a simple beta download right. Its probably easier for someone to download a pirated copy of any Microsoft product, than it is to participate in a legitimate beta test.

As someone who deals with software configuration management on a daily basis, it amazes me that Ubuntu is the industry leader when it comes to OS upgrades. It doesn’t get much easier than this:

A major OS upgrade is a simple two step process. To upgrade simply Press ALT-F2, and type in update-manager -d

Grandma can do that..

Oracle announced today that they are buying up Sun, just weeks after the Sun/IBM deal fell through. While I was cheering on the IBM deal, I can’t say I’m very happy about Sun being bought up by Oracle.

Unlike IBM, Oracle has no history of embracing open source. Sure, one can argue that because Solaris, Java, and MySQL are open source, Oracle doesn’t really hold all the leverage with Sun’s open source products. One of the main tenants of the open source model is that anyone can take the existing code, and start their own version. However; in the case of Solaris, Java, and MySQL it would be very difficult to have a viable fork that advanced at their previous rate of development.

From a hardware perspective, it will be interesting to see what Oracle does with Sun’s products. Do they put more money in high-end hardware? Do they sell off most of their hardware business? Oracle wanted to get in the hardware business, but do they really want all of Sun’s baggage?

With the Sun acquisition, Oracle will realize their dream of selling the whole application stack. (hardware, OS, Language, Database) Given Oracle’s track record, why would anyone want to go that route? Sure, Oracle will do some tricks to speed up things, but at what cost? Your locking the entire application stack to one vendor. Is that really worth it?

Its a great move for Oracle, but Sun and especially MySQL customers have to be really nervous. If I worked for Sun, I would be busy updating the resume tonight. One thing is for sure, Postgres is going to get a big boost.