Sheara Wilensky . com

My friends at Pocket Change have just discovered the most expensive Hamburger in New York at the Wall Street Burger Shoppe, on Water Street in the Financial District. For $175, you too can enjoy this juicy Kobe beef burger, topped with foie gras, black truffles and eatable gold flakes. Just wanted to say thanks to Pocket Change. We don’t know what we’d do if we hadn’t found out about the delectable piece of meat.

Check out some coverage at the Daily News and The Street.

I manage the accounts for my clients who are enrolled in the Google Adwords Program. I am currently setting up a campaign for a new, boutique NYC area brokerage, and just Googled some relevant terms to get an idea of the current sponsored listings. Number four in the sponsored listing for my query “Manhattan Apartment” yielded the following ad:

NYC Apartments for Sale
www.XYZCompany.com
Condos, Coops, First Time Buyers
www.XYZCompany.com

Now, some of you out there are familiar with the advertising program and know that Google limits the amount of characters per line to 25, 35, 35, 35 - with the display URL in the last line. Each character is very valuable - and you need to carefully choose your words! To waste line 2 with the URL is just a stupid thing to do! I actually don’t think I have seen anyone make this error until today. Now the ad might be relevant, but there is no call to action and so they are probably not attracting qualified traffic.

In the same set of sponsored listings for the query “Manhattan Apartment”, the second sponsored ad was a listing posted by an individual agent, with the agent’s name in the ad, and a landing page that takes you to the agent’s profile page. Now, I also happen to manage the account for this agent’s firm…and guess what…the agents do not have access to the Google Analytics! Which brings me to mistake #2. Do not advertise in Google (or on any other search engine for that matter) if you are not tracking the performance data! How can the advertiser modify their ads, see which ads are achieving high click-through rates, high ROIs, are performing poorly or performing well, etc., without having access to the data? Yet another way of throwing money down Google’s drain. This agent is probably wasting a lot of money on the campaign.

So my advice to all you novice Google advertisers out there: read through the Google Adwords Help Center, join the forum, buy Google Adwords for Dummies, arm yourself with enough knowledge to run a successful campaign. Pumping more money into the system will not guarantee you top placements; you can achieve great results without going broke. If you write compelling ads and monitor your results, you can do very well. If you don’t know how to do this or need a little guidance, you can contact me. I am achieving very healthy ROIs, and my ads are very well written, if I do say so myself (gettin’ great click-throughs).

So over the past few weeks we have all been reading about the on-again, off-again possible Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo for $47 billion. Now I am reading on Search Engine Land that Microsoft wants Facebook for $15 million!

Now, I am all for big companies coming together to create a new user experience for the consumer (see my post about tech firms joining forces to invest in a new WiMax network. And I have nothing against Microsoft - I am a Windows user and proud of it! But Microsoft clearly wants a piece of the search and social media action. And why not, there is nothing wrong with that. But I think Microsoft is resigned to the fact that Live Search is never going to make any kind of dent in the search search demographic, so rather than coming up with something unique, something big (which of course is not easy to do), Microsoft would rather just take their money and buy something shiny. I see zero benefit to a Microsoft-Facebook merger - except of course the Microsoft execs. And don’t forget, Microsoft already has a $240 million stake in Facebook which they purchased in October 2007.

Here is an interesting article on the subject:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3893228.ece

You can also read about the latest in MicroHoo here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=4808236

In celebration of Israel’s 60th birthday, a fabulous display of celebrities, politicians and musicians entertained a sold-out audience last night at Radio City Music Hall in Rockefeller Center.

The night began with speeches from various political figures, including Israeli ambassadors and consuls, Governor David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. We even heard video messages from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and President George Bush, which was actually pretty cool. Natalie Portman then came on stage, as she was introduced as the host of the evening…what a cutie! Never heard her speak Hebrew before.

Rami Kleinstein and his orchestra opened the musical portion of the show, followed by a beat-boxing Matisyahu, who sang his hits “I Will Be Light” and “Jerusalem”. Matisyahu was surprisingly mellow, he usually jumps around like a Chasid and I expected him to be more crazy in celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut. He became a bit more lively upon joining Idan Raichel for a duet. Idan Raichel gave a great performance, as usual. When David Broza came on (I love him - amazing guitarist) he made the right choice performing his two most well-known songs, “Banu Lechan Mitachat LaShamayim” and “Yihieh Tov”.

David Broza was followed by Paul Shaffer of David Letterman fame, who came on together with Richard Belzer, aka “Munch” from Law and Order SVU. They did some sort of odd Yiddish musical shtick, not quite sure what that was…it was strange humor which maybe we could have done without, but hey, more Jewish celebs showing their support of Israel we’ll take.

The highlight of the evening for me was Yael Naim. You probably know her song “New Soul” from the MacBook Air commercial. She has a stunning voice and can really perform! Yael sat down at the piano, and gave a rendition of Britney Spears’ Toxic. It was awesome, a slow, sensual version of the song. I guess she was making fun of Britney (?) but her version was pretty excellent. Very unexpected from a poor-English speaking Israeli Frenchwoman. Hopefully someone was able to record that performance. I did however catch the second half of “New Soul”, check it out.

I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning entitled “Big Tech Firms to Invest In Wireless” about how major telecom firms will be joining forces to create a new $14.55 billion communications company. Called Clearwire, the company will set out to develop a mobile network based on a technology called WiMax, promising to offer faster speeds for mobile and other data services. Sprint would be the front-runner on the deal, with a $1.05 billion investment from Comcast, $1 billion from Intel, $500 million from Google, $550 million from Time Warner and $100 million from Bright House. Google is promised to be the default search engine on the mobile devices employing the new technology.

So what is this “WiMax”, anyway? WiMax is an acronym that stands for the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It is a technology aimed at providing wireless data over long distances in a variety of ways. It can support fixed and mobile broadband usage and is a powerful alternative to DSL and Cable.

WiMax is a wonderful technology because it essentially eliminates the need for running wires through walls. It works similar to WiFi, but at higher speeds, over greater distances and for a greater number of users. WiMax provides two forms of wireless service. In one way, a small antenna on your computer transmits to a tower station using a low frequency range similar to WiFi. Lower wavelength transmissions are not easily disrupted by physical obstructions and can diffract or bend around obstacles. In the other form of WiMax service, a fixed dish antenna, say on the roof of your building, points to the WiMax tower. This is a stronger, more stable connection using higher frequencies to send great amounts of data via high bandwidth.

Since WiMax equipment is minimal, installing and maintaining the service is more cost efficient than more traditional methods of obtaining internet access. A solution that makes sense in more rural areas due to its greater coverage areas, WiMax is starting to be seen more in cities, especially in older commercial buildings which are not pre-wired for high-speed internet access.

I first learned about WiMax a few months ago doing research for a client. I thought the product was great and the wireless solution logical. In fact I was surprised that more companies were not offering this option. And as it turns out, my office now utilizes WiMax to access the internet (we are in an older building)! I imagined it would only be a matter of time before the bigwigs started to catch on.