Pat

Aggressive campaign calling

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:50:41 -0700

Campaign workers are getting aggresive. Close to 10 calls from one campaign today then I finally picked up. Some dude instantly read me a script then asked if I’m for or against some legislation. Their campaign concurred with my off the cuff answer so the dude asked if he could transfer me to the representive’s office. Aggresive, annoying, but efficient.

Always use the shorter language code

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 22:41:00 -0700

Was interested in why AddToAny gets so many repeat translations submitted for certain languages. Turns out that we were still only using the compound language+country codes for some languages; for example, sv-SE instead of sv. Analytics show that far more users around the world are using browsers that return the shortest language code, usually the two-letter ISO 639-1 variant.

To reply, or not to reply, to a rude Internet dolt

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:00:01 -0700

I love doing support emails for AddToAny, and I give everyone the benefit of the doubt… even the random Internet weirdos usually come around within a few responses. But over the last few days some rude Internet dolt has *really* been testing my patience. His emails have a bit of everything: fallacies, swears, insults, ignorance, hypocrisy, asininity. The best response is no response at this point, but a part of me wants to either meet him to see if he’s for real OR reply with the most demoralizing itemized breakdown of what I really think about his existence. Is there a middle-ground?

Dislike software patents, but they're a necessary evil right now

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:54:11 -0700

I dislike software patents, but as Jonathan Schwartz outlines, they’re a necessary evil. While it’s relatively cheap to start an Internet company, obtaining the IP necessary to defend yourself against patent trolling is a prohibiting factor. Patents are so disproportionately expensive for a bootstrapped startup that they’re often disregarded; yet they’re vital for reducing risk of litigation and having success in a market that’s full of patents. It makes me wonder about the collective of software companies that dedicate so much time and capital to patent applications. Is the review drain even worth it to the USPTO? Probably not, yet we’re all still blowing money on IP acquisitions instead of creating jobs to build things that matter.

Vegetarian food versus meat

Wed, 19 May 2010 13:52:00 -0700

What I like about vegetarian food is that almost everything has a standalone taste. Most meat is truly tasteless without seasoning or marination. Once you’re over the expected tenderness of various meats, you’ll find practically no difference between the two diets.

Jobs: Thoughts on Flash

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:37:18 -0700

Jobs: Thoughts on Flash:

Great essay by Jobs. This is a kiss of death to Flash if Adobe doesn’t quickly find a way to open source, re-license, and standardize Flash. Letting go of their proprietary grip would be a boon for their creative products, and it’s something they should have done years ago for a better chance at true standardization. As of today, revenue from their once-ubiquitous technology is going to dwindle as they’re forced to support a legacy product.

Facebook's EdgeRank

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:31:00 -0700

So “EdgeRank” is the algorithm that powers your Facebook News Feed, and it’s also what attempts to maximize your time spent on Facebook. Instead of delivering the quick-consumption updates you actually want to see (status, explicitly shared items), it barrages you with items that are likely to keep you engaged, attentive, and ad-click happy…

Update, July 27th 2010: A comment I left in response to a friend wondering why nobody responded to his status update:

It’s not that your FB friends weren’t interested, it’s that Facebook’s “EdgeRank” algorithm that powers the News Feed predicted that this wasn’t engaging enough, thus worthwhile, to show in most of your friends’ News Feed.

iPad versus e-ink

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:36:07 -0800

Real e-readers have e-ink on their side because I will never read a book that is blasting light at my face.

Unfortunately, latency is still a crippling problem with e-ink, and full color would be nice to have, but once these issues are resolved I’ll be a happy reader of e-books.

That said, let’s see an LCD device that has e-ink on the backside!*

* Yes, the idea is that obvious, USPTO. Strap a Kindle to your iPad and don’t grant the patent. ;)

iPad is neat, unremarkable

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:59:00 -0800

To me, iPad is unremarkable. Since I have a smartphone and a laptop, it’s as useful to me as Microsoft Surface. The plain merger of the two devices isn’t appealing, but I’ll concede and rebut the usual Apple points:

The display probably makes up for the lack of camera(s).

The UI probably makes up for the lack of 3rd party background apps.

The cool probably makes up for fragility.

Put this kind of capacitive touch on a real laptop at a competitive price and I’m sold.

SEO crash course

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:02:00 -0700

A couple of friends asked me about SEO for their new fitness website. My brief response:

Books have been written on the subject, an industry exists, but my quick short summary…

Think keywords with just about everything that goes up on every web page. What top 5 keywords do you want for your site? Pick ~5 in your niche based on what people are actually searching for the most, or what they might be searching for in the future — plug search terms into Google Insights for Search. Focus on those keywords, find a way to use them often, and naturally.

Put the important words (in text) as early as possible on your pages, but again, fit it all in naturally. Use synonyms and variations of key-words & -phrases on your pages.

Beyond content, there are some technical web page source aspects that are important to search engines:

Title of the web page - what you see in the titlebar at the top of your browser
URL of the web page - use “friendly URLs” if possible
- Worthless: http://example.com/articleDetail.php?id=5
- Better, but lacks strong multiple keywords: http://example.com/An_Ounce_of_Prevention_a_Pound_of_Cure
- Juicy: http://example.com/fitness_helps_prevent_disease
Inbound links to your web pages - partner. Get a post published or re-published by one of the bigger dogs in your industry. Ideally if you’re selling organic juice, the link should look like organic juice, and would be surrounded by other contextually relevant words like ‘San Diego’ and ‘pulp-free’. Random regular links from your buddy’s blog with no context are usually a waste of time; 1 authoritative site properly linking to you is better than 50 or so nobodies
META description - use those keywords, but keep in mind that people searching will most likely read this description in their search results
- Nice & user-friendly, but could definitely add more relevant keywords: “Welcome to Hone Fitness and Health!”
- Juicy: “San Diego fitness, bodybuilding, and health store, serving North County and East County. Buy the best organic juice, smoothies, and muscle tees.”

SEO methods will change over time, and there are many other little things you can do to improve SEO and traffic right now, but I think this is a good primer for those who are both curious and resourceful. Needless to say, it’s imperative to have good content.

Early cancer detection

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:47:14 -0700

Wired: Why early detection is the best way to beat cancer

It’s been on my to-do since January to follow the Canary Foundation (see article), which focuses on early cancer detection. I’ve seen it noted fairly often that early detection offers the absolute best chances of beating it, but there is still no cheap, easy and safe access to detection technology for everyone.

I really like what the Canary Foundation is doing, and I’m optimistic that coupled with genetic testing from 23andMe and Navigenics (which are still, arguably, too expensive) we’ll be better focused on early detection, and soon.

Top 10 Widgets on the Web

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:10:11 -0700

ghostery:

This is the second in a series of posts coming this week on the Top Web Bug Trackers we saw at Ghostery last month.

Noteable:

It’s all about Sharing. 4 of the top 10 widgets (AddThis, DiggThis, ShareThis and AddToAny) are focused on letting users rate or recommend content.

Wow, AddThis is twice as large as its next 3 competitors combined.

Portable Social Networks: Facebook and MySpace were missing in action. Twitter Badge, MyBlogLog and Google FriendConnect own the category.

Search is still it. The Google Custom Search widget is 4x the size of either Google Widgets and Google FriendConnect.

Embed:
Rank Tracker 1 AddThis 2 Google Custom Search 3 Twitter Badge 4 MyBlogLog 5 DiggThis 6 ShareThis 7 Google Widgets 8 Alexa Traffic Rank 9 Google FriendConnect 10 AddtoAny Widget Analysis by Ghostery - June 2009

Next up is our Top 10 Web Analytic Trackers report. Please let me know how can we make these reports better.

Methodology: This data was compiled via the GhostRank submissions of our users. Thanks to all of you who have opt-ed into sharing the bugs you find with the community none of this could be possible without your contributions.

GhostRank is an opt-in feature included in Ghostery that allows users to submit the bugs they find across the web.

Today we measure the existence of web bugs on a per-domain basis (E.g. google.com, wordpress.com, etc). What this means is that sites like “tumblr.com” and “blogspot.com” would only count as one site when in reality there are 1000s of sites hosted on those platforms under subdomains, i.e. “ghostery.tumblr.com”.

Future versions of our tracker reports will be based on subdomains in order to more accurately measure “website” distribution.

david: Did anyone notice the crowd Palin resigned in front of?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:01:41 -0700

david:

Did anyone notice the crowd Palin resigned in front of?

"We are also in the process of developing an archive system to make sure that links are available..."

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:53:00 -0700

“We are also in the process of developing an archive system to make sure that links are available beyond our systems.”

- bit.ly FAQ. This is so good to hear from a critical url shortener. I hope they can deliver.

"Surprise is overrated. Surprise is the opposite of engagement."

Sat, 30 May 2009 17:24:54 -0700

“Surprise is overrated. Surprise is the opposite of engagement.”

- John Lilly, CEO Mozilla

Contact form notices are funny

Sun, 24 May 2009 01:10:00 -0700

It’s always mildly funny to me when contact forms have a bold, sometimes all-caps, sometimes red line like, **NOTICE**: This form is for [this] and [that] ONLY. Please do NOT send us [The Kicker] using this form.

You can identify immediately what annoys them most, and wonder what odd # of email subjects they get that drives them up the wall. Do they have a breaking point before calling it quits? Or will they finally invest in fixing their site design and/or making that one form more intuitive? I favor the latter suggestion. But to imagine the degree of one’s frustration to post such a notice and their lack of a better initiative, and then to think of those poor users that they shame…

I think both parties deserve to meet each other.

"FWIW, my feedback to those responsible for this practice: I’m not going to purchase any DLC..."

Sun, 10 May 2009 15:28:34 -0700

“FWIW, my feedback to those responsible for this practice: I’m not going to purchase any DLC until this album is released, and meanwhile the chances of that future DLC purchase rapidly decrease. I don’t like being ostracized. Delaying the game based on the technical limitations of a console is one thing, testing my patience and my wallet is actually hurting your sales.”

- Me, regarding the DLC delay of Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape on Rock Band 2 for Nintendo Wii

miss vu + illustration

Tue, 05 May 2009 21:42:00 -0700

miss vu + illustration

Photo

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:33:06 -0700

Tumble iPhone App

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:07:03 -0700

Just testing!