Blog entries

Information Doubling

Kurt Booker — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:48:59 +0100

I learned a new word today: yottabyte. A yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. I'm a computer guy so I'm familiar with the other common units of measure: kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte. I even bought a terabyte-sized external hard drive at Costco last year, something I could never imagine doing in the early days of the Internet. It's almost full now, and I may need to get another. Will I ever have a petabyte (1000 terabytes) sitting on my desk at home, I wonder?

...

Stories that wow

Jeneca Jones — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:00:00 +0100

If you want to get the media’s attention, pitch them an unusual story. It’s true. Media love news of the weird. Always has, always will. Why? Because we love it as much as they do. So, we knew we had ourselves a good one when our client came to us with the story of a 5 million-year-old fossil that came from a 7-foot-long fish with fangs like a sabertooth cat. Our interest was piqued, to say the least.

We wanted to know more, so we started asking questions – lots of them. As it turns out...

Invest in Creativity

Liz Cawood — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:00:00 +0100

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” At least according to Albert Einstein. How many business owners believe that to be true? How many owners even think about nurturing imagination?

I thought about that the other day when a prospective client said, “We need some real creativity.” When I asked about his product and what innovations the company had made over time, he seemed genuinely startled. He’d never considered applying creativity to his product or processes. He only though...

CAWOOD’s Carnival for the Cure

Liz Cawood — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Save the date: September 11. Stop by our parking lot at 1200 High Street between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and get your face painted, splash someone in a dunk tank, have a Tarot reading, or just enjoy old-fashioned carnival games and food. Proceeds will go to Komen Eugene Race for the Cure. It’s the first time an Oregon Race has been held outside of Portland. Form your own Race team, or contribute to ours!

We want to thank our partners who are making Cawood’s Carnival for the Cure even better:...

Buy a raffle ticket. Win great prizes!

Liz Cawood — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

To support Susan G. Komen for the Cure, as part of the Eugene Race for the Cure, we asked local merchants, restaurants and service companies to donate prizes for our Carnival raffle. Boy, did they respond! Thanks to them, we have hundreds of items – all are worth at least $25.

You can buy raffle tickets from any CAWOOD staff member. They are $5 each.

We’re hoping everyone who buys a ticket wins. But, as everyone knows, you can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket.

And the winners are...

Dana Turell — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Last month, we told you about a contest to see how many unique page views each Market of Choice blogger could get during the month of July. Overall blog views went up more than 50%. Here are the top three:
1st Place: Anne Marie Bracco, West Linn Floral Manager – 358 page views, up from 45 the previous month. Wow!
2nd Place: Cassie Stockton, Willamette Cheese Steward – 114 page views
3rd Place: Aaron Kirschnick, West Linn Wine Steward – 92 page views

Each received a ...

Dodgeball for the Cure

Kurt Booker — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:00:09 +0100

Last night, after a 30-year absence from competition, I was dragged out of Dodgeball retirement to play for a charity event, Go Pink at Summer in the City!, to raise money for the Komen Eugene Race for the Cure®.

Joining me in the Dodgeball madness were my fellow co-workers and spouses. I use the word "madness" because we played with six balls on the court, making for some fast, intense action!

Playground Sports helped setup and manage the tournament, with a fenced ...

Something to talk about

John Lively — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:19:19 +0100

I never imagined how much I would enjoy using my new Travoy or the interest it would create. Whether commuting to work, going to the store or meetings, people notice the Travoy and ask about it. Often times other riders notice when we pass each other. Most comment about it being a great trailer and ask where I got it.

One rider said he had just purchased a competitive model, but was going to send it back and buy a Travoy. Even people who are not riding will comment about what a grea...

Wearing a Pink Shirt

Kurt Booker — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:42:10 +0100

I'm a pretty open-minded fellow. Extremely open-minded, I might say. I've studied countless philosophies, ideas, theories and religions and respect them all (well, most of them). And I've enjoyed a wide range of experiences. I've delivered pizza late at night in scary neighborhoods, and dined with millionaires in Manhattan. I've played a trombone in dive bars while wearing a dress, and been dragged around downtown in a gimp outfit. I've eaten all kinds of foods, read all kinds of books, en...

CAWOOD wins a trifecta

Liz Cawood — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

To be recognized by APEX, The American Business Awards and The Communicator Awards all in the month of June was quite a high for us. Of course, it’s an honor to be recognized on an international level, but the work we do for our clients each and every day is the greatest reward of all.

Two years in a row we’ve won a coveted “Stevie” award from The American Business Awards. This year, we received the Best Writing/Content Award in the Website or Blog category for the collaboration that...

New websites we’ve launched

Liz Cawood — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

After you read about all our awards, you know that we do websites! We do them from strategy to optimization. Our service takes the hassle out of working with various companies to put up a strategic, well-designed site. Check out our newest:

Pathology Consultants

Dari Mart

Lochmead

Northwest Specialty Clinics

Cancer Care Alliance

The case for a strong web presence

Liz Cawood — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Opinion Research Corporation surveyed 1,053 adults in March of this year. Scott Severson, president of ARAnet, discusses the results in this May 4, 2010 Bulldog Reporter column.

In general, respondents said they were “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to read and respond to:

•Articles that include brand information – 53%

•Email offers - 51%

•Sponsored search engine links – 40%

•Banner ads – 28%

•Pop-up ads – 19%

More than half of the respondents ...

Start with these five basic SEO tips

Dana Turell — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Search Engine Optimization sounds good – how do you make it happen for your site? Here are five basics every site should have to maximize its SEO.

1. Choose keywords. The term, "keyword," describes a word or phrase search engines use to index a Web page. Decide what words and phrases you think Web users will enter into a search engine to find your site.

2. Use those keywords in the text of your Web pages. Search engines "read" the actual text of Web pages (not graphics). ...

Are you breaking the law and don’t even know it?

Jeneca Jones — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Your employees regularly search the Internet and come up with great stuff. But for the sake of your company, be sure that they are complying with copyrights. If you don’t have a license or permission to use documents, don’t send, make copies or post them to your site – that goes for internal distribution and Intranet sites, as well. Check out www.askbeforeyouact.com or www.copyright.gov.

When gleaning information from the Web or printed materials, you should know that it’s no longer...

The invasion of the Travoys

Liz Cawood — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

How fun to work with the energetic folks at Burley Design. For years, they offered child, pet and utility trailers. This year they added a trailer that lets you tow your stuff easily – it’s called the Travoy, an urban trailer system. Half of our staff now use the Travoy. Here’s what some of them have to say:

“My new Travoy is the perfect bike trailer for all kinds of trips I do, but especially for commuting to work and meetings. Some of the trails I take have tight turns or limited...

A new meaning for 9-11

Liz Cawood — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

When we tried to find a date for CAWOOD’s Carnival for the Race for the Cure, we almost gave up. And then, we found 9-11. Let’s change it from a day that brings sadness to one that brings hope. Be here from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

We’ll be in our parking lot. You can win cupcakes, get your face painted, put someone in a dunk tank, have a Tarot reading or just enjoy old-fashioned carnival games and food. All proceeds will go to Komen Eugene Race for the Cure. It’s the first time the race ha...

Foodies: check it out

Dana Turell — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Even the best employees need a little incentive from time to time. Visit www.MarketofChoice.com and you’ll discover an array of award-winning blogs written by everyone from the organic and natural grocery buyer to your Market wine and beer stewards. To make things interesting, we suggested a contest to see how many unique page views each blogger could get during the month of July, which encourages them to write more and tell customers about the website and their blog. The top three wil...

Pathology Consultants' new website

Liz Cawood — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:23:30 +0100

Check out Pathology Consultants' new website! Our challenge was to create a look and feel that could transition to all materials used by the practice, which performs both clinical and anatomic pathology to diagnose and characterize disease by examining biopsies or bodily fluids.

The site was designed to provide information for both referring physicians and patients. For instance when patients are referred to Pathology Consultants' Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy Clinic, they may have qu...

CAWOOD honored with three international awards

Dana Turell — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:22:53 +0100

On May 28, we received word from the International Academy of the Visual Arts that CAWOOD was being honored with three awards as part of The 2010 Communicator Awards, including:

Interactive Distinction Award in the food and beverage category for Market of Choice's website

Integrated Campaigns Distinction Award in the business to consumer category for Oregon Imaging Centers' "Make time for the girls" campaign

Interactive Distinction Award in health care services category ...

Two new websites for Northwest Specialty Clinics

Kurt Booker — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:29:03 +0100

I've been building websites for 15 years, on subjects ranging from music retail to building contractors to astrology. But I never thought I would build a web page for testicular cancer. Not until now. It reminds me of a database administrator I knew who took a job maintaining databases devoted to diarrhea. It is amusing in a low-brow, scatalogical way. But in all seriousness, it is important work nonetheless.

CAWOOD recently launched two new sites for Northwest Specialty Clinics. Orig...