Google ranks pages according to really strange algorithms. I don’t do any active SEO on my blog. However, Google ranks me very high for certain searches. They often distract me from understanding my traffic. See illustration below: You can see all the traffic in the middle was when my posts on Windows 7 and Office 2010…
Check out this sneak peak at what Rock Band 3 will be like: A real keyboard, more realistic drums and a guitar that is a real world guitar. This takes learning music to a whole new level. I am very excited to get this for my kids. Currently, only the drums are a close analog…
After 30 days of having ads on the right of my blog, I now have data that shows how much money I could make with Google. It was really difficult getting analogous information on the web, so I hope this is helpful to other people. I am going to disclose the exact stats and money…
I actually found it a bit difficult and confusing to answer this question. There are many variables including traffic, audience make-up, page rank, ad size, placement and more. The numbers are all over the map. I am happy to share my stats with this experiment. My prediction originally was $2 a month. I wasn’t very…
Sometimes, I lend a treasured book to a friend or even an acquaintance. Through some happenstance, I end up not getting the book back. I hate this. I am one of those people who like to keep the books I have read around because they remind me of what’s inside and also because they make…
After an 8 month hiatus, I have rejoined Marketo. Truthfully, I found myself using the sentence “At Marketo we _________ and it worked great!” way too many times. I know I missed alot of things about Marketo and am really surprised 2010 worked out this way. It feels weird, like a High School reunion with…
I couldn’t help myself. I am using the 3.0 beta version of WordPress. It comes with a new theme that is pretty clean from an HTML standpoint. I haven’t made a theme in a long time, so I took the opportunity to build one up. Voila. It’s not done yet, but it’s a good start.…
There have been many analogies and metaphors used to describe the Goldman Sachs fraud case. I think alot of them are bad. John Stewart was very funny talking about them. Metaphors and Analogies are important tools for User Experience (UX) design. Not only is it helpful to explain to your peers what you are trying…
I’ve tried many different methods for font replacement on my site. I just can’t help wanting to use a fancy font. I just switched techniques, but here is the complete rundown. Cufon. A JavaScript implementation that uses Canvas tags to change the fonts of specified tags. It uses jQuery to find the fonts and a…
Say hello to my little friend: And I thought the point of school wasn’t meant for learning.
I love April Fools. It is permission to have a sense of humor once a year. It takes time to come up with a good joke. It should be clever and not too mean. One year I told my dad that we were pregnant with our fourth child. He got really angry. I don’t have…
Follow this trail. I want to watch the New York Jets football games. The problem is that I live in California. So I chose DirecTV with their NFL Superfan package to get the games. (Crazy expensive) DirecTV doesn’t have internet access so I got DSL from DSLExtreme. I also have to pay for a basic…
It took a few days, but I am no longer the #1 result for “Windows 7 blue screen of death”. Yay. Here is what happened to my traffic in the last few days: That decline is pretty much Windows 7 Google traffic. One funny thing that is messing up my test is that Smashing Magazine…
<rant> Apparently my 15 month old post on Windows 7 BSOD is the #1 ranked post on Google for the search query “blue screen of death windows 7“. A ridiculous amount of my traffic goes to that page. Like 30%. I don’t want this traffic. The page had like 40 comments. People kept asking me…