And I already have aperture envy to “go bigger”. » More: My New Toy
Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category
My New Toy
September 30th, 2009Thanks in Advance
August 14th, 2009The phrase “thanks in advance” is starting to bug me. It just seems condescending. Typically, the person saying it is asking for a favor, and the conversation goes like this:
Hello,
Would you do me a favor? It would really help me out. Thanks in advance.
We should embrace “biased” media
July 8th, 2009TV Stations like Fox used to get me all wound up with their interpretation of the news. I, like many others, detected a bias and disagreed with the direction they are leaning in. But why do we put such standards on journalism? Sure, we want to receive accurate news, but why do we insist upon unbiased news so long as the information we are getting is factually correct? » More: We should embrace “biased” media
And then Palin
July 7th, 2009This whole Sarah Palin resignation debacle is just silly. Her decision to resign mid-term just doesn’t make sense regardless of what you think of her. But what I find even more puzzling are some of the comments by her lawyer, Thomas Van Flein. » More: And then Palin
Googlebot Secret Message?
May 1st, 2006Ummmmm, Matt? Is Googlebot tying to send me some sort of secret message here? All kidding aside, I saw something interesting recently. I was looking to see if Googlebot had come by one particular page of a site. So I logged into the server and grepped the access log for ‘googlebot’. » More: Googlebot Secret Message?
World Gas Prices
April 27th, 2006And here I thought those of us in the USA probably had the lowest gas prices.
» More: World Gas Prices
Fighting Comment Spam
February 27th, 2006Despite using a captcha to fight comment spam I’ve seen an increasing amount of the junk in the past few weeks. At first I thought maybe the spammers were getting past the captcha, but carefully analyzing the log files shows that isn’t what happens.
In the most recent comment spam I received the spammer simply used the following Google search:
"Leave a comment" inurl:subject
Secure Document Delivery
January 30th, 2006
There has got to be a better way to deliver secure documents to people. Today I received a 1099-MISC form in the mail. The window on the envelope which is supposed to display your name and address also displayed my tax ID number. But even that slip didn’t really matter because the envelope wasn’t sealed.
I’m not suggesting I don’t trust US Postal employees. There are a number of ways this process could be improved. For example one of my banks sends me an email telling me my tax forms are ready. I log into their secure website and download them. That is a good, secure process.
» More: Secure Document Delivery
Things are Crazy
January 5th, 2006Things are crazy. Things are very crazy. I’ve written close to 100 blog posts this week and I’m still behind on one of them (flightnest). This whole craziness has been the result of a few different factors.
- Google let one of my websites out of the sandbox. Or since Google barely acknowledges such a thing exists I’ll say that overnight traffic from Google increased over 30 times normal levels. Yes, I wrote that correctly, overnight traffic increased 30 times.
- Perhaps it wasn’t entirely the sandbox, as I made a couple of other important SEO changes to my site and perhaps all of that hit at once. Who knows. I’m happy though.
- I’ve started to really figure out contextual advertising. It takes time. Contextual advertising isn’t simply adding ad code and changing colors and placement. As Jeremy Wright has said, contextual advertising is now about “delivering the correct ad to the correct visitor at the correct time”. I’m closer to understanding this now.
- The start of a new year is just a crazy time in general. We’ve all taken some time off over the holidays, got behind in work, and then all of these trade shows like CES and MacWorld happen that I need to cover news from.
All of this boils down to being a crazy time. I’m behind on a few of my other, non blogging projects (sorry John!) and I also have realized that I need to take some time, sit back, and evaluate where my business has gone in the past fourteen months. I sense a new direction is in order, one that will allow me to set aside the projects I was never enthusiastic about doing, but did so because they were lucrative. Instead I’ll be focusing on projects I enjoy, that I avoided before since they were not lucrative…. but now I’ve figured out how to make them lucrative.
Overall, I need to figure out how to start saying no. I’ve turned down a few projects in the past, but not many. I need to start looking at projects in a different way, and evaluating them based on time constraints and long term gain. And this is just the start of some business brainstorming I need to do. I wish business coaches were less expensive. 
Exactly What is Contextual Advertising?
November 25th, 2005Google policy prohibits the use of other contextual advertising programs alongside AdSense ads. We all (should) know this. But what exactly is the definition of contextual advertising? How would you define it? Go ahead… think about it now… write down what you think is the definition of contextual advertising. Really, write it down now because I want to give you a couple of scenarios and see if they fall within your definition of contextual advertising.
» More: Exactly What is Contextual Advertising?
