An in-depth interview with Yard Rock Records hip-hop artist Distrakt, talking about the sources of his inspiration, listening to some of his beats, and getting into some of the larger issues of racism in America. Distrakt is a talented video producer, and recently produced and directed a video of his ”Fire Escape,” now available on YouTube. You can get Distrakt’s CD Distraktions from Fat Beats, iTunes or the Distrakt website. Excerpted from The Artie Show, November 1, 2008.

We talked with Carol Odell, CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado about the BBB’s mission, how the BBB helps consumers, the BBB Online program, and benefits to businesses of becoming a BBB Accredited Business. In January, 2004 the BBBs in Pueblo, Colorado and Colorado Springs, Colorado joined forces to become the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado. They now service 25 counties in the region. In this interview, Carol tells us about some of the ways you can avoid being a victim of scammers and shoddy business practices. Excerpted from The Artie Show, November 1, 2008.

A group of investors based in Colorado have come up with a stunning new concept which combines entertainment, branding and education, and The Artie Show had the opportunity to talk with Mr. Lon Hendrickson about all of this. Visionary Sports Entertainment, Inc. has developed several characters for use in education including athletics, creates custom characters for business branding and several other valuable applications. Lon is also the founder and president of AlphaBrand Strategies, which teaches B2B clients to use strategic market planning to establish a leadership position in attractive markets, and how to leverage a position of strength to successfully grow their business. He is a veteran entrepreneur, having founded or held executive positions in several successful technology-based start-ups and business consultancies. A frequent speaker on marketing strategies, Lon also serves as an advisor for several emerging B2B companies. From The Artie Show, November 1, 2008.

Lucy Deslandes is a visual artist and Feng Shui consultant in Adelaide, South Australia and with a background in interior design. Lucy has pursued her passion for Feng Shui for the past 10 years. Her intention as a consultant and as an artist is to bring harmony and joy into peoples lives. As a student of Lillian Too, Lucy has studied in Malaysia to further her knowledge, completing the Master Practitioner’s Course in Feng Shui and Master Class in Paht Chee and attending seminars in time dimensional Flying Star Feng Shui. Her website, www.energymagic.com.au has limited edition prints of her art available for purchase. This interview is excerpted from The Artie Show, October 18, 2008.

We did a whole show with Lesser Mortals, the Colorado-based rock group with a history spanning over a quarter century. Originally started in 1980 under the name “Once,” Lesser Mortals has a penchant for writing their own original music. Four of the five band members joined us on this show, Chuck Short, who plays lead guitar, Dan Santistevan, guitar and keyboards, Gregg Howson, the bass player, and John Trivelli, the band’s drummer. Missing from this interview was lead vocalist Pete Zeigler. All five original band members share a musical friendship that fuels their song writing collaboration, creating a strong foundation for the band. Years of musical dedication, writing and recording original material, has resulted in the release of their full-length CD, “Edge of Tomorrow.” All the songs were written and produced by Lesser Mortals, and recorded at CRK Studio in Castle Rock, Colorado. We played four of our favorite cuts from this rockin’ album. You can get their stuff on iTunes or check out their website at http://www.lessermortalsband.com. From The Artie Show, October 11, 2008.

I call this little ditty Internet Marketing 101 because it quickly gives you a basic working knowledge of how to successfully promote a website. This is where I give away the store. Using the strategies I detail in this 17 minute presentation, my company has launched websites that have reached a million hits a day in less than 2 months. This material is based on a short presentation I wrote in April, 1997, and I have to say that since the Google era began, these concepts have worked better than ever. Artie.com, our animation site, has gotten up to 73 million hits a month, and it has a zero dollar advertising budget. It actually got a total of 1 billion hits in about 20 months. The key is that it has links from more than 17,000 other pages, and its “link popularity” is what makes it come up high in the search engine results for tens of thousands of keywords. Shameless plug: If this podcast piques your interest, you can get 10 more hours of instruction on Internet Marketing on professionally produced DVDs at ArtieRomero.com. Excerpted from The Artie Show, 10/4/2008.

Wendy Taylor owns two popular animation sites, the well-established and totally free site, GIFanimations.com, which her company acquired in 2001, and ProfessionalAnimations.com, which she launched almost exactly one year ago. At this point the new site has over 5,000 original animations available, any of which you can download and use for a very modest fee, and for only a little bit more her animators will customize it to fit your needs. Wendy and her husband live in Southern California, love to scuba dive and Wendy dabbles in underwater photography. Excerpted from The Artie Show, 10/4/2008.

Mark Silber is a very funny guy, an award-winning advertising copywriter who has worked in the ad business for over 20 years. Mark definitely enjoys his work, bringing a lighter approach to the websites, TV commercials and other ad materials he writes. If you want to see a business website that doesn’t fit the mould, you need to hurry on over to Silberware Commications’ site; it’s actually quite entertaining!  Mark’s office is in New York City, the heart of the advertising world, and he has become so well-known that his competitors use his name as a keyword to try to get hits. Excerpted from The Artie Show, October 4, 2008.

The Aptera is an actual solution.

A monologue on Alternative energy and flex fuels, in which I dispute many of the points made in Senator Richard Lugar and Vinod Khosla’s Washington Times article of August 4, 2006. Although the spirit of this piece is laudable, the facts don’t hold up. This year we are paying significantly more for our food because of the amount of corn that has been going into ethanol. But my main point of contention is that growing corn and making it into ethanol only creates a small fraction of the energy that we think we are getting. From The Artie Show, August 23, 2008.