Yep, that’s $135 in chips I’m holding between my fingers which was won at the blackjack table. Unfortunately, it would go the same way it came. The casino giveth, but more often taketh away.

Note the sweet RayBan sunglasses, purchased at your local SunglassesOnly store. And yes, they do make for great poker glasses.

Devin submits his second entry with his photos from a Labor Day trip to the top of Mount Timpanogas.

“Hey Ma, I can see OrangeSoda from here!” Yes, that is the OrangeSoda office building in the background. Nice work Devin!

To add to the OrangeSoda-Above-the-World theme, Jon and Landry Sheppard sent in these great photos:

And no, they didn’t buzz the OrangeSoda office building. Other employees to get both feet off the ground that day include Alex McArthur and Cody Hunter. Nice work you guys! Next time fly by the office and rain some soda on us!

More travels of OrangeSoda are on their way. Now that even the skies are no longer safe, you never know where the fizz will show up next. Keep an eye out!

Even in the City of Sin, the fizz continues to grow. Keep ‘em coming!

I know what you’re thinking. “Southern Utah?!”

To that I say, “What’re you whining about? Devin didn’t even leave the state, but he’s still kicking your butt in the contest!” Yeah, there’s a throw down for ya!

Check out the OrangeSoda Tee in Goblin Valley:

Here’s Devin in Crooked Tree National Park (better known as Crack Canyon in the San Rafael Swell):

And no Southern Utah trip is complete without a visit to the Helper Bar:

Thanks to Devin for spreading the word of OrangeSoda’s awesome Internet Marketing savvy to the uninitiated in Southern Utah. Keep ‘em coming!

Let’s keep spreading the fizz to all corners of the world!

Because word-of-mouth advertising is so effective — consumers tend to trust other consumers the most — many advertisers have latched on to the idea of faking word-of-mouth advertising (known as “astroturfing” in the US) by pretending to be a consumer and giving themselves good reviews or dissing the competition.

At the most basic level, companies will use an alias to give themselves positive reviews on discussion boards, forums, and ratings sites such as ResellerRatings.com, PriceGrabber.com, and others. Many larger companies have started to get pretty elaborate though, as shown by Sony’s All I Want for Xmas is a PSP viral effort in 2006.

Wal-Mart also started a flog (fake blog) called Walmarting Across America, supposedly maintained by a couple of Wal-Mart junkies as they visited various stores across the nation. Turns out that the supposed Wal-Mart enthusiasts were actually getting paid by the retail giant.

Although Sony and Wal-Mart both got busted by the public, companies continue pushing the ethics boundaries. Because it’s so effective (and the new law difficult to enforce), you can expect to continue seeing fake postings from fake people on fake fansites. But you probably won’t even know that all the astroturfing and flogging is going on as advertisers get better at covering their tracks.

While the say-or-do-anything-to-make-the-sale attitude has long been the standard in marketing, it has caused considerable damage. Today’s consumers are more weary of company claims than ever before, choosing instead to place more trust in complete strangers they meet on the Internet.

With astroturfing, flogging, and other similar questionable tactics growing in use, even consumer-to-consumer trust is dying.

Get In On Astroturfing While You Can?

So the question arises, should you get into astroturfing while there is still something to be had from it? Personally, I say no. If you want to gain the trust of consumers, then be as transparent in your marketing as you possibly can. Being that it is in such short supply these days, consumers appreciate honesty in a company.

Both Sony and Wal-Mart’s flogs could still have been just as popular and effective had both companies simply told people up front that they were faking it.

OrangeSoda employees are encouraged to show their pride in making the business world a better place by showing off their OrangeSoda-skinned laptops and notebooks in various places around the world.

For those who don’t have a laptop, any piece of OrangeSoda-ness will suffice. Future posts will offer pictures of OrangeSoda around the world. With any luck, we’ll get to see various OrangeSoda chotchkes in the hands of famous persons or in famous places.

Already our illustrious CIO, Chris Finken, has brought the following images of his laptop in Taiwan:

OrangeSoda employees are expected to show their pride as they travel around the world. And if you’re an OrangeSoda client or partner, we’d love to see you with your OrangeSoda goodies wherever you go! Talk to your account manager to send in pictures.

Chris has got things off to a pretty hefty start. Let’s show him he’s not the only one with OrangeSoda pride!

A few weeks ago, many members of the OrangeSoda team placed our orders for OrangeSoda laptop skins from SkinIt.com. Not surprisingly, many people put in their orders for the laptop skins to add color and character to their laptops. Chris, one of our founders, created several designs for us to choose from that allowed us to pick a skin for our laptops based on our personal preferences and tastes.

The skins are functional as well as decorative, as they provide a protective membrane of sorts that will help protect our laptops from minor bumps and bruises that can be incurred during everyday use. They are made from photo quality paper with residue-free adhesive so they won’t leave us with a sticky laptop if we ever need to remove or reapply them.

They were very easy to apply as well and none of us had any trouble with air bubbles or wrinkles during the application process. Additionally, between us, we probably had 10-20 different laptop brands and models and SkinIt was able to accommodate each of us with customized skins to meet our needs.

We are all excited to show our true colors — the OrangeSoda colors — and we’re happy to parlay that excitement and pride into our work by bringing quality Online Marketing services to thousands of clients with experience and enthusiasm.

So, maybe one day you’ll be in an airport terminal, a library, or an internet café and you’ll look up to see someone typing away on a laptop skinned with the OrangeSoda logo, and you’ll know that that person is an Online Marketing expert, and someone who is proud to be a part of something special here at OrangeSoda.

Now, there is one big part of Web 2.0’s vision that matches mine, and that is communication. Although we are doing better, we still have a long ways to go.

I used to send email updates to all my friends and family whenever I learned about some new computer-related technology. Then I realized I was using the Internet incorrectly for something like that. Thus I started my first blog back in 1999. I had no idea what a blog was, and I’d never heard the term before or even seen a real blog before. But realizing that there was a better way to communicate with like-minded individuals, creating a website where everybody could see my latest computer-related postings and contribute their own thoughts on the matter just seemed like the logical thing to do.

Well, better communication and interactivity is a major point of Web 2.0. Set up a blog and you’ve taken a big step toward Web 2.0 compliance. Blogs are a technology that allows you to more easily communicate with others. Discussion boards are another that have been around a long time, but were never really properly used by businesses en masse.

Want to know what your customers are saying about you? Want to know what they wish you would do differently? Provide them with a place to talk about it anonymously and easily. Your customers are far more likely to have a conversation with other consumers online about their frustrations or praise rather than send you a letter in the mail or give you a phone call. Consumers trust each other, and will open up to each other. Opening up to a corporate entity, not so much.

Other ways Web 2.0 compliance can be achieved is with the use of wikis, Ajax, RSS feeds, and so forth. Other technologies that are considered Web 2.0 applications include Flash, any open source software, content management systems (CMS), and similar technologies. Remember, interactivity with the Web community is the key.

But now we get to the real question: how will Web 2.0 help you make more money? Well, this is where the excitement of Web 2.0 wears off. While a lot of Web 2.0 can be useful and helpful to users who visit your site, the real question you should be asking is, “Will it help me make the sale?”

The rules of business haven’t changed because some people got together and wrote up some rules on how they thought the Internet could be made better. Don’t install a wiki just because you have a burning desire to go Web 2.0. If it makes no sense to have a wiki, then don’t implement one. But if having a wiki helps you make the sale, then by all means install one!

For example, if you have a members-only site for hard-core campers, then a members-accessible camping wiki could help you retain members. If you own a pizza parlor, then using Flash technology to create an interactive pizza menu that allows users to click and drag ingredients onto a virtual pizza would probably create some buzz and improve business. If you create new content on a daily basis, then having a blog, CMS, and RSS feeds all make sense. Curious to know what features your customers want on the next version of your widget? Implement a discussion board.

The point here is that you shouldn’t go full-bore Web 2.0 just because it seems to be the “in” thing. Do it because it will help your business, and don’t abandon anything “Web 1.0″ if it’s still working for you.

In the end, there is no hard definition for what, exactly, Web 2.0 even means. As an entrepreneur, you need to be aware of what technologies are available to you, but just forget whether something is Web 2.0 or not and simply focus on those things that you know will have a positive impact for your business.

But just what is Web 2.0? How do you make your website compliant? Do you really even need to be concerned about it?

Despite the perception its terminology creates, Web 2.0 is not the next generation of Internet hardware and technologies. The truth is that most of the technology that makes up the definition of Web 2.0 is old. Simply put, Web 2.0 is just a more interactive Web, designed to facilitate sharing and interaction between users.

“Gee, that’s great Stuart. So how do I make my website Web 2.0 compliant?”

Okay, so you don’t care that Web 2.0 is simply an overly ballyhooed term that doesn’t really mean anything, or at least that’s my personal opinion of it. For me the Web is still a giant, underappreciated and vastly underused commerce and communications platform. While Web 2.0 has done a lot to change that, we still have a long ways to go.

I built my first website in 1998 for a retail computer business I cofounded. I still remember clearly having a discussion with my business partner about whether or not we should spend the money to build a website. Back in those days, having a website was quite a bit more expensive than it is today, and the number of people that actually had Internet access was a small minority.

I told my partner, “The World Wide Web is the future! In 10 years, EVERYTHING will be done on the Web. We’ll be buying groceries, cars, clothes, and even ordering pizza online. Telephones will be obsolete because we’ll be communicating over the World Wide Web with video. We’ll be taking orders and handling tech support over the Web. Customers will be able to view our inventory in real time. Our cell phones will be connected and be able to transfer data between each other. Even our cars will be connected! We’ll be able to dispatch a technician, whether he’s at home or driving around town, directly to a customer’s home – all over the Web.”

Well, the 10 year mark is approaching. Have we reached MY vision of the Web? Well…

I walked into a national tire store chain a few days ago. When I saw that each store’s inventory databases aren’t connected to the corporate website, I realized that we still have a long way to go. Imagine the day when you can browse the corporate website and view real-time inventories for all 1,200 stores in the chain and get prices on every brand and every size of tire, then being able to order and pay for the tires, schedule an appointment to have them mounted and balanced, doing all of this online, and simply dropping your car off at the store… all without ever talking to a single salesperson.

As a business owner, I believe that this is how you should be thinking regarding the future of your business on the Web. Despite my tire store experience, there is plenty of good news as well. I haven’t ordered a pizza over the phone in years!

Okay, but seriously now… The reality of Web 2.0 is that it is simply the vision of a few people for how the World Wide Web should be. The difference between their vision and mine is that they got the airtime and publicity.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how to actually make your website Web 2.0 compliant.