The (SEP) Guy is writing this blog posting from home awaiting someone to come help get his car started.

Winter officially wins. Though it’s been relatively short, it’s been brutally brutal. So far, in five short weeks, The (SEP) Guy has slipped and hurt himself falling on ice; had his card snowplowed under; been forced to sleep on an airport floor after spending 4 hours snowed in on a runway. And now the car.

No amount of searching for warmer locales or warmer clothes from Mountain Equipment Co-op will help. Reports of the warmest January on record. Phhfffft.

Maybe it’s the time of year but no less than Yahoo! and Business 2.0 each have articles on less than saintly bosses today.

I’ve had the privilege of leading a team, and it really is a privilege. And I have the privilege of being partnered with someone who leads a national team and whom I consider nothing short of a mentor. I watch him work countless hours and I watch his team respond to email requests late into the night on weekends. It takes a lot of work to make it seem so effortless but in watching, I’ve learned that they readily engage because they know he is actively engaged… Yes, even late into the night on the weekends.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that we have officially launched our blogroll as of this posting.

And it gives me great please to announce Dave Forde and Perfectio as our first blogroll mention.

Why? Simple stuff that.

A blog with the intention of Bringing together Canada’s connected community is a very good blog indeed. While by no means a nationalist (So no, this doesn’t really qualify as a Patriot Missive.) I personally don’t feel that we do enough as Canadians, and as Canadians in technology, we don’t do enough to put ourselves front and center centre.

If not the first in Canada, one of the first. Take a bow, guys!!!

It’s a two blog day!!

Under the auspices of striking while the iron is hot, Search Engine People is beyond thrilled to announce that we are among the first, if not the first Canadian company to become Google Adwords Qualified.

Not only has Search Engine People met the minimum standard requirements for qualification, we have surpassed them. (Google requires two Google Adwords Qualified Professionals, Search Engine People has no fewer than four.)

And, ripped from the press release, in the words of my boss:

90 minutes, fifty bucks and a little bit of knowledge goes a long way towards becoming Google Adwords Certified, which The (SEP) Guy is pleased to report he in fact did yesterday.

The exam, at over 100 questions is for the most part user-friendly. And there is a handy little study guide. Of course, for the really challenging questions, there’s the thing called Google that you can search with. (I think this Internet thing is really going to catch on!)

Under the auspices of better late than never, and after phone calls, emails, protestations and enquires, not the least of which may well have been a phone call from Andrew Wahl of Canadian Business Magazine, Google has reversed its policy, now allowing Canadian companies to become Google Adwords qualified and as such, a Google Adwords Qualified Company.

Becoming a Google Adwords Qualified Company requires:

Well, first of all, it requires being listed in the Google country participants which Canada is, here.

Sometimes the coolest things are the simplest.

One of those things is inserting your company logo as an icon at the beginning of your browser string or URL.

And it’s surprisingly easy to do.

Well, according to our multi-talented technical search guy, (Shout out to Wisam) it’s really easy.

In fact it can be done in four, count ‘em, four easy steps.

1. Get a copy of your company logo in Gif or JPEG format
2. Use a tool like http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ to generate the favicon.ico
3. Upload favicon.ico to the root directory of your site
4. Insert the following

I do.

I’m relatively new at this company and I have those moments where I feel pretty clueless. It’s the little things. Remembering to set the alarm but forgetting to turn out the lights. (The last thing I was told was and don’t forget to set the alarm.) Right. Got it. Set the alarm. Set the alarm. New guy moment. Singular focus out of that need to get it right.

We all want to make our mark, especially when we’re new. And we try desperately hard not to step on toes. Doesn’t always work.

Content may rule, but there are a few rules for content that need to be considered.

From a search engine perspective, there was absolutely a time when they (they being machines) did not care. In essence, blah, blah, blah, keyword. Yada, yada, yada, keyword. Da da da keyword. And there you have a winning strategy. Seriously.

But times have changed and the search engines are trying to change with it. But, and this is a big but, the search engines are trying to create a logical automated process to a fundamentally human experience.