LJWorld.com

If you're currently looking for a job or thinking about a change in careers, don’t miss the the Northeast Kansas Marketplace Job Fair, Wednesday, March 16, at the Lawrence Holiday Inn Convention Center!

Admission is free and is open to the public

A job fair is a great way to get you past all the usual hurdles, introducing you to many new people, businesses and employment opportunities. You’ll meet face-to-face with local employers, trainers and support professionals who want to get to know you — all in one day and all in one place! Leave that day with new job leads, helpful contacts, and the information you need to make the next move.

You’ll also be able to take advantage of our FREE Resume 911 booth for an expert assessment and constructive advice on your resume

Northeast Kansas Marketplace Job Fair Wednesday, March 16 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Lawrence Holiday Inn Hotel & Convention Center 200 McDonald Dr Lawrence, KS 66044

Questions? Send us an e-mail dbroze@ljworld.com or call (785) 843-1000.

NE KS Marketplace Job Fair by ajacobs

You guys have submitted close to 200 Valentine messages so far and Lawrence is definitely feeling the love. We'll be posting them until about 5:oo today so it's not too late to send in your Valentine's Day message. And be sure to check out the page to see if someone left you a message at http://www2.ljworld.com/marketplace/valentinescontestwinners/ [Submit Your Valentine's Message][1]

Last week we wrapped up a terrific Valentine's Day contest and I gotta say it was really great seeing all the special Valentine's Day messages. Nice end last week sending off a dozen roses to each of the winners along with all the other great prizes.

I've gotta thank all of our sponsors: In Lawrence Englewood Florist, Owen's Flowers, Pachamama's and Salon Blush. In Shawnee: La Vita Bella Day Spa and Hy-Vee's flower dept., and in Manhattan Kistner's Flowers and Salon Essentials in Manhattan for all the great prizes. And a special thank-you to everyone who sent in a Valentine to a loved one!

Cupid by ajacobs

[1]: http://bit.ly/ljwluv / Submit your Valentines

The Super Bowl commercial featuring a young boy dressed as Darth Vader, who thinks he successfully uses the Force to start his dad's car, has tied for highest finish ever by a car ad in the Super Bowl in an annual USA Today Ad Meter poll of consumer panelists. In a field of sometimes funny (the Ozzy Osbourne/Justin Bieber Best Buy ad), sometimes sexy (the Kim Kardashian Sketchers ad) and sometimes tasteless (the mockumentary Groupon ad) the cute and cuddly ads won out with consumers. According to the Ad Meter poll, the top 2 viewer favorites both featured dogs (for Doritos and Bud Light) with 3rd place going to Volkswagen's adorable Darth Vader. But who is the kid behind the mask?

6 year old Max Page plays the little boy dressed as Darth Vader, who unsuccessfully tries to use his Force powers around the house until he points his power in the direction of the family's VW Passat, which starts up seemingly at Max's command. This is the first national TV spot for young Max, though he has appeared in other regional commercials and has a recurring role on the Young and the Restless. Reportedly, Max and his family didn't realize the spot was for the Super Bowl until after shooting had began.

But Max's story is also one of perseverance and strength. You see, Max was born with a congenital heart defect and had a surgery when he was just 3 months old to implant an artificial pacemaker. According to his Mom, he is still routinely at the hospital. Blue eyed Max was beaming with a vivacious smile as he made the media rounds following the success of the Super Bowl spot. Definitely an inspiration!

http://superbowlads.fanhouse.com/2011/volkswagon-darth-vader-kid/

Last week, Google pulled the plug on its Goog411 service. As a frequent user of the service for the past 3+ years, this news is dismaying. Goog411 was fantastic, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 and you had voice recognition Google results for businesses. Just say your city and state and the place you were looking for or some keywords and Google results were spoken back to you. You could then say things like "more results" to get address and hours information or say "call" to phone the business directly. Pretty handy on-the-go, though the voice-recognition software never really improved over time and it failed to live up to its original promise of eventually giving you the closest results or coupons based on your location. Still, the service was free and way more thorough than directory assistance.

Even more distressing than losing this great service was learning that Google maybe never intended it to last long term and that their real objective may have been in improving their voice-recognition technology for future applications, as uncovered in this New York Time's Article: Farewell GOOG 411 NY Times October 14th.

The real answer was one Google search away. Here’s Google’s Marissa Mayer, talking to Infoworld in 2007, when she was Google’s vice president for search: “If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples.”

In other words, GOOG-411 was never intended to be a permanent exhibit; it was a phoneme-harvesting operation for honing Google’s voice technologies

The implication that Google's motives were more about improving their own technology for future monetization and that the usefulness of the service was simply a bi-product of that is not surprising, but I still feel let down a little bit duped.

Del.icio.us Leaves a Bad Taste for Yahoo!

Also burning through tech news over the past week were stories about Yahoo lay-offs and the possibility of social bookmarking site De.licio.us getting the axe. After around 600 Yahoo staff lost their jobs last Tuesday, stories started to appear in news outlets across the country that Delicious was on the chopping block, based partly on the lay-offs but more on the strength of a leaked Yahoo presentation slide showing the bookmarking site in the "Sunset" column of offerings that were being phased out.

Reportedly, requests for comment from Yahoo were met with vague and dodgy answers and the response by Yahoo's Chief Product Officer Blake Irving to chatter on the social networks was combative at best, as illustrated by his now infamous twitter post: "**Blakei** @bpm140 @joshu Really dude? Can't wait to find out how you got the web cast. Whoever it is, gone! Dec 16, 2010 11:28:49 AM "

About 24 hours later, Yahoo made a post to the Delicious blog how disappointed they were that the press got the story so wrong and that the site's future has yet to be decided. Hopefully, the internet giant says, Delicious will be moved to another company where " it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive."

I'm a huge fan of Delicious and after reading the reports of a shutdown thought "I already lost Goog-411 this week, please don't take my Delicious!" I'm sure there are other great social bookmarking sites out there (any suggestions? :) and even if Delicious does inevitably go away, Yahoo has at least given me much entertainment with how adolescently it has so far handled the situation. Their blog post promises 3 times to communicate and share information and updates as things develop. But if they had simply responded in an up front manner to the direct questions about the fate of the product in the first place, they wouldn't have to be pointing fingers now.

A great summary of what went down can be found on Search Engine Land: Yahoo Flubbed the News and another great synopsis and analysis of Yahoo here: Floundering Yahoo Lays Off 4 Percent of Workforce

footnote

Oh and yes, and the day this happened, Facebook crashed itself shortly after accidentally "launching" a host of new features that weren't ready yet. According to Wired, the site was taken down intentionally. Read an amusing account of the back and forth Wired reporter Sam Gustin had with Facebook here:Facebook Takes Itself Down

Twitter Post Yahoo's Blake Irving by ajacobs

Click to read the CNN article

European countries have also opened their investigations into the Google cars that travel street to street with rooftop mounted cameras and the images they collect for Google Map's street views. France has ruled that the images collected amount to personal data and will go as far as to pull over a Google car if they think they're recording. Germany wants people to be able to "opt-out" while Great Britain has no problem with cars or the images they collect. Meanwhile Canada has ruled that Google did break the law but that it was a "careless error" on their part

Even though the case was closed, the Canadian sentiment is in line with most of the European one - that Google Inc stepped out of bounds and rather arrogantly assumed they could create their own definition of what types of information is private.

Privacy concerns have dogged Google since the inception of Street View. I personally enjoy the service and find it useful. It's fascinating to be able to take a virtual tour through a city or visit the Great Pyramids of Egypt from my laptop.

I do think that Google would do well to at least label their street cars.

On Saturday, the Game Nut video game, movie and dvd store celebrated its 5th birthday party by giving away $5,000 worth of stuff in drawings and prizes. Like Nintendo Wiis, ipods, xboxes, plus they served cake in the gaming loft (which is awesome by the way, you can pretty much play any game on any system ever while lounging in a great big massage chair.) I saw a grandfather playing an old Atari 2600 version of Donkey Kong on a giant high-definition screen. And I can't forget to mention the cupcakes done in the style of pac-man, power-pellet maze and all.

If you're downtown, you can't miss their window displays. Unveiled on Saturday, 'Rampage' - imagine king kong and godzilla duking it out in in the great big city.

lawrencemarketplace.com/gamenut

A recent study found that 80% of coupon redeemers got their coupons from a newspaper. And close to 78% say they've printed out an online coupon at least once. Good article with some interesting information on coupon habits. The report speculates "These findings may indicate a lasting change in the psyche of consumers with regard to how they shop and spend as a result of the challenging economic times."

What kinds of coupons do you use? How do you get them (mail, newspaper, online)?

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=134869

Coupon Image by ajacobs

We are very excited to announce the addition of Ratings and Reviews to Lawrence Marketplace. 
Along with the recently added social media features and sharing options, this brings a new level of engagement and involvement to our site for both Lawrence customers and Lawrence businesses alike.

To get an idea of how the Ratings and Reviews work, check out this great blog post from the wonderful Whitney Mathews. Lawrence Marketplace Adds Ratings and Reviews

Let's keep these reviews fair and honest and they will start to build a terrific resource for the community. 

As a business owner you're able to respond back to any feedback or review that you receive.  And as long as your contact email is loaded onto your Marketplace page you'll be notified each time a new review is left.

We've prepared this Best Practices for Responding to Reviews
that has some great ideas on how to manage both praise and criticism. Reviews can highlight superior customer service and really put the spotlight on the best of Lawrence.

Thanks! and let me know what you think.

Tell others what you think and share your experiences about your favorite places in Shawnee, KS. The new ratings and review feature lets you rate Shawnee businesses and see what others have to say.

Had great service or a good experience at a local Shawnee business? Reward that business by letting others know! Leave tips and suggestions for others in your community

We're really excited about this new feature and plan on rolling over to the Lawrence Marketplace site soon.

ShawneeMarketplace.com