Not only was Mayor Ed Koch one of the best mayors New York City has had, but he is also a philanthropist and has a great sense of humor. Today, Mayor Koch announced his support of DotNYC.net and DotNYC LLC for the .NYC gTLD. In addition to a press release, the team from DotNYC LLC, which includes CEO Antony Van Couvering, released a video of Mayor Koch, which can be viewed below.

I read Rick’s Blog this morning about search engine optimization specialists and spammers, and I agree that there is a lot of crap out there. I also know there are a lot of smart people who do this for a profession or a hobby, and a number of people helped me out when requested (THANKS!!).

One thing I took away from Rick’s article is that a company’s domain name is very important for SEO. Rick said, “Want the best SEO guy? Do a damn Google search!” He proceeded to search for the best SEO guy, and guess what returned #1? A listing for Mic Tienken, whose website resides on www.bestseoguyintheworld.com – a domain name with the keywords Rick searched.

Personally, I am less colloquial when I search, and I wanted to find the best SEO company. Guess who came back with the number one result… SEO Image, with a website not residing on SEOImage.com, but a website on www.bestseocompany.com, the exact search phrase I used.

If you want to improve your SEO rankings and do good SEO, it’s as easy as analyzing the obvious things on the professionals’ websites, and clearly the domain name matters for search engine optimization.

We’ve all seen infomercials, product marketing campaigns, and other websites that proudly boast “featured on CNN,” New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or some other popular journal or trade publication. The usual objective is to convey trust to the visitor, essentially saying that if a trusted source like NBC featured the product, service, or author, then it or he must be legit!

In some cases, I believe this is simply a marketing ploy and can be misleading. Some of the leading press release companies offer great placement on leading websites and trusted resources, assuming you can afford to pay for their services. This is great for companies who want to distribute information to a wide audience, but I think it’s misleading to say they were “featured” in the specific publication, when the company paid to have its news posted.

While the definition of the term “featured” can vary and may semantically be accurate to boast, I think it can be misleading and it bothers me when companies undeservedly boast.

For those of you who have to pay quarterly estimated taxes, this is a reminder that your second quarter estimated tax payment is due on Monday, June 15, 2009. I always get confused with the second quarter payment, since the first quarter payment was due on April 15, just two months ago and it would seem logical that it would be due every three months. Well, that isn’t exactly the case. More info can be found on the IRS website.

I always complain about paying my taxes, but as my accountant tells me, the alternative is much worse!

2009 Estimated Taxes Due Dates:
Quarter 1 – April 15, 2009
Quarter 2 – June 15, 2009
Quarter 3 – September 15, 2009
Quarter 4 – January 15, 2010