Archive for May, 2008
May 31, 2008 at 12:09 am
While I’m sitting here putting together a list of all the blog posts I wrote last week, I actually remember much better the blog posts I didn’t write. So many ideas, so little time. I started to write a couple of the ideas, but they went nowhere fast and I threw in the towel. Maybe too soon. Frustrating week in that sense. Here’s what I did manage to publish in the last week….
Small Business SEM
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
Next week won’t be any better; I’m on the road for a few days.
May 30, 2008 at 12:15 am
I think my wife said it best, when there were only about 10 minutes left in the season finale: “I just want this show to stay on 24 hours a day.”
Me, too, love. Me, too.
That had to be the best two hours of television I’ve ever seen. And LOST is the best show of all time. There are people who actually don’t watch LOST, and I feel so bad for them. They’re missing something amazing.
Meanwhile, I checked Amazon just now and the Season 4 DVD set is already available for pre-order. Nice! Gotta wait until early December, though. Good thing for us: We’ve kept the whole season on TiVo, so we can watch whenever we want.
May 29, 2008 at 12:24 am
Look who finally had a chance to play in the social media sandbox today. Yep. Moi. Found lots of (IMO) good content. Here’s what I shared on various sites in the past 24 hours or so:
mixx
digg
Sphinn
Busy, busy, wasn’t I? Also submitted a bunch to StumbleUpon, but let’s not start listing those….
May 28, 2008 at 9:32 am
Being a moderator at Sphinn is pretty time-consuming, but it’s also fun! I’ve killed thousands of submissions and accounts from users spammers trying to game the site for exposure, a free and followed link, or whatever else they’re trying to accomplish. As Danny (I think) once said, “Nothing smells better than fresh killspam in the morning.” Hehehehe, so true.
Sphinn’s guidelines seem pretty straightforward to me. The primary rule is use common sense. Well, judging from the amount of spam that gets submitted every day, common sense isn’t very common.
So, in an effort to help those who need it, here are one moderator’s examples of signs that you’re spamming or gaming Sphinn. (I’ve blurred out the names of the guilty; the point isn’t to call them out individually, it’s to help… really. (And to make you roll your eyes at the crap we see.))
1.) Your submission has 61 words in the title.
(Note: Sphinn has no specific rule about how long a headline can be. But really, 61 words? Takeaway: Use common sense.)
2.) The URL you’re submitting has the phrase “for sale” in it.
3.) The article you wrote is filled with affiliate links.
(Note: As a moderator, I’ll overlook it if you have a good article that has an affiliate link at the end. But the example above? Spam.)
4.) You repeat your keyword four times in the headline.
5.) You repeat your keyword six times in the headline. (And once more in the description, because too much is never enough!)
6.) I click to read your article, and before the page loads, you hit me with a pop-up window selling your products, your services, your newsletter … anything.
(Note: Sphinn has no rule against submitting articles with pop-ups. This is not spam by definition. It’s just annoying, and looks spammy. Takeaway: Use common sense.)
7.) Your submission gets 19 votes in less than 40 minutes, while every other submission before and after yours only has 1-2 votes.
(Note: I know people have friends/co-workers who help vote up each other’s stories. We decide on a case-by-case basis if these are spam/gaming the site. And I know there’s only one submission from a recognizable user in the screenshot above, but still … 19 votes in less than 40 minutes? Please.)
8.) You submitted your home page.
(No image necessary. Point is, 99 times out of 100, people submit a home page for self-promotional spamming purposes. Submit your articles/blog posts, instead; not your home page.)
9.) Your story is off-topic, and you wrote the headline in ALL FREAKIN’ CAPS.
(Note: Off-topic = spam. ALL CAPS = annoying.)
10.) You have a public, open-to-anyone Facebook group called “I Sphinn Your Back – You Sphinn My Back.”
If I missed any, feel free to add them in the comments!
May 26, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Hoping you and yours had an enjoyable holiday (if you’re in the U.S.), and hoping you remembered the reason for the day off. Seems like a lot of big Web sites remembered what Memorial Day is all about … but not Google. Odd that they celebrate almost every holiday with a special logo, but not Memorial Day….
Anyway, the McGee 4 had a good day. Thought about my dad, who served during the Korean War. I remember going out for Halloween one year wearing the actual Air Force hat he wore. That was cool, even if it was about 10 sizes too big for little ‘ol me.
Cari worked today (the real estate industry doesn’t know what “holiday” means), the kids played outside a bit, I cut the lawn and the first cookout of the year was a flaming success. (Pun fully intended.)
We had our flag out today, too, and the above is a photo I took shortly before bringing it in. You can click for the bigger version on Flickr, along with some Memorial Day quotes I found.
May 26, 2008 at 7:43 am
One of the great things about Web 2.0 is that it’s now kinda cool to sit down and share vacation photos with friends — not like back in the old days when you’d sit in the living room and go through slide-by-slide while Grandma or somebody tries to explain every little detail in the photo. Save me from that torture!
Now, you can cruise through pix and see what you want, leave comments on the photos you want to, mark some as favorites, etc. Or you could ignore them altogether and make me sad. 
I think this might be my favorite shot from the Philly/NYC trip earlier this month:
That’s a somewhat artsy-fartsy shot of Independence Hall. Turned out well, and a little messing with the exposure makes it more interesting (to me). If you’re curious to see more, the full set of 39 photos is on Flickr now.
You can see my son at Yankee Stadium, and some good action shots from the game we saw. Or maybe the room where the Declaration of Independence was debated in Philly, plus the very moving Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier with its eternal flame. We also took the kids to see my grade school and the all-boys high school I attended — kinda like the school in Dead Poet’s Society, but ours wasn’t a boarding school.
May 25, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Several years ago, I popped Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 into my Playstation 2, and was immediately blown away by the awesome theme song — a song I’d never heard before. It was called “Crash and Burn.” The band was Automatic Black. I’d never heard of them, either.
Online research led me to an in-progress Web site where I didn’t learn much about them, other than that they were from Philly and had recently opened up some shows for Aerosmith (I think). They only had two songs from what I could tell: “Crash and Burn” and “Go Your Way.” How on earth did these guys land the theme song for Tiger Woods golf?, I remember thinking.
I kept an eye on their Web site, hoping for news of more songs. But … nothing. The Web site went away, and I assumed they did, too. I gave up on them a couple years ago.
Wrong!
I don’t know how I got there, but I found their MySpace page, which is now their only web site. They have four new songs streaming on there; none of them are as good as “Crash and Burn,” but I do like “No Matter What” and “The One.” Don’t like “White Trash Vacation” — way too many F-bombs for my taste.
They’ve recently released these songs (and one other) on a new EP, which you can buy on iTunes. I did (except that one song), and it’s great to be rediscovering this band.
Turns out they’ve been through a lot in recent years. The lead singer and his wife had a baby girl, but if you read the MySpace blog, you’ll learn that the little girl was diagnosed with cancer and then died this past December. So sad…..
Say a prayer for the family, the band, and check them out when you get a chance. I think they’re worth watching and supporting.
May 23, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Heh. I like the baseball-tinged headline there. If only Mel Allen were around to provide some audio for me. (Does anyone know what I’m talking about, or am I too old?) Anyway, here’s a week’s worth of blogging.
Small Business SEM
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
Richland Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
@U2 Blog
Good week. Very productive on the blogging front. And I was even on the road for two days…..
May 18, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Found this one on a site called iTricks:
That photo of the goose and her goslings always gets links and traffic on Mother’s Day. In fact, it was also used on a blog about information security. Cool. Here are the others I’ve found over the past couple weeks:
May 17, 2008 at 1:44 pm
… won’t actually be a car, it’ll be a Toyota Highlander. Like maybe this one:
In late 2006, when I started working at Marchex and was faced with having to drive the 200+ miles from West Richland to Seattle at least twice a month, I had a feeling my little Toyota Corolla (the 1999 model) wouldn’t survive much longer. So I started looking for something bigger and sturdier to get over the mountains in winter, and decided on the Highlander. Never bought it, though, because the company let me work from home over the winter months while Snoqualmie Pass was more like an ice rink than a highway.
Fast forward to two weeks ago, when we’ve rented a mid-sized car for our vacation back in Philly, except when we get to Avis they’ve upgraded us to a brand new, only-5-miles-on-the-odometer, 2008 Toyota Highlander. YES!
I’ve been wanting to drive a Highlander ever since ‘06, and this was my chance. I wasn’t disappointed. The thing drove like a charm — super smooth, very quiet, all kinds of comforts in the passenger cabin. And, much to my surprise, it went more than 300 miles on 3/4s of a tank of gas! We drove from Bristol up to NYC and back, then down into Philly and back, and didn’t have to fill the tank until the day before we were coming home. There was still 1/4-tank of gas and we’d gone more than 300 miles. When I went to the gas station, it took a little more than 15 gallons … so 300+ miles divided by 15+ gallons … more than 20 MPG for a big SUV. I’m sold.
Only problem is, it might be years before I get one. I don’t buy new cars until my current car is dead. And my ‘99 Corolla, like all Toyotas, just keeps going and going and going and going…..
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