Archive for January, 2009

New Design Coming for SPWD

Sunday, January 25th, 2009
Screenshot Wordpress
Image via Wikipedia

Over the past few weeks I have really been reading up on blogging, social media and all that fun “web2.0″ buzzword stuff – you know how it goes. One common thing with most of the top blogs that you find is they all use some form of custom theme. Whether it is a premium theme (Thesis seems popular due to all the features and customization that is possible) or a custom rolled theme, the story is the same – to really make an impact you have to be credible. Somehow we all don’t view the “free” themes as credible.

So as such I will be joining the ranks of bloggers to use a custom design here on this blog. Fortunately for me I am a web designer & developer so I will be doing all the graphics, all the Wordpress customization and pretty much anything else.

As a shameless plug – if you like the new design when it launches and are interested in hiring me for your custom design all you have to do is contact me and we can work out the details and see if we can make a good partnership.

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More Accurate Google Analytics

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

I was recently reviewing the Google Analytics for the site here, and noticed that the traffic was rather high. Upon further investigation I found that many hits where coming from myself! Well, on a smaller traffic blog such as this, having very many “self” visits included might give one a false indication of traffic. Another area this might cause bloated traffic is if you have multiple users editing, viewing or otherwise interacting repeated on your site.

For me, I found this out after viewing the Maps portion of my analytics and seeing that my home state had the most traffic. I do promote a bit locally, so I investigated further. At that point I realized that the majority of visits were from myself – adding posts, previewing them, checking the site, checking changes etc. So, what is one to do? I filtered my IP from the analytics.

Now I can do this because I have a static IP. Don’t have that? Ask your ISP, most for a small charge will set it up for you and for small monthly charge let you keep it. This way, the static IP can be filtered from your analytics results and not impact the bottom line on your view of traffic.

To accomplish this filtering process, once logged into Google Analytics click on the Analytics Settings. Next, under the Actions column in the row of the site you wish to add the filter to, click edit. At this point, you want to find the Filter section, and choose Add New Filter. This will give you something like the image below, where you can choose from several options to filter from. You can choose to filter domains, IP addresses and more. The one you want to select is Exclude All Traffic From an IP Address.

filtersetup It is important to note how the IP address is notated: 192\.168\.0\.1 – notice the backslash before the period. You can exclude a single IP address by including all four octets or you can exclude and entire range by including fewer octets: 192\.168\.0\. note that it ends with the \. this will exclude all hosts on the 192.168.0. network. So if you have multiple users in your company that view your site repeatedly with multiple IPs from the same network, you can effectively exclude all visits from staff this way.

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Is It All About Community?

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

In two different articles today on ChannelWeb, there are two completely different stories. Both are about Giants, both are about tech companies. One has made communities the other has alienated communities. Is it all about community? If you believe that the web and Internet are empowering social media, interaction and community at businesses, around businesses and within businesses, then yes, it is just that simple – it’s all about community.

In an article by Rick Whiting over on ChannelWeb it is noted that Microsoft is cutting 5000 jobs over the next 18 months, and that sales grew merely 2% in the year-over-year report, with earnings down 11%. It is not difficult to understand why – Vista was merely not adopted as was hoped, and the XP deadline was extended a time or two to meet demand through OEM and VAR channels. The other thing of note, is Microsoft is involved in media (Zune), Gaming and Enterprise. Enterprise and gaming, according to the article, had better individual increases, but it obviously was not enough to avoid cuts.

Meanwhile, Apple is reported to have had a stellar quarter, in an article by Kevin McLaughlin on ChannelWeb. Apple had iPhone sales up 88% over the past year, Mac sales up 9% and iPod sales up 3%. Earnings were higher than expected and even amidst rumors mentioned in the article of Steve Jobs’ health. There were no mentions of cut-back at Apple.

I think, and this is my opinion until I can maybe run some polls and do research, the biggest difference in the two is centered around community. One look at the two companies and the communities around them is easy to see – Microsoft is notorious for alienation, a fact that anyone in the tech industry know. Closed source, closed doors, closed minds in my view. Apple, on the other hand, embraces communities, embraces customers and feedback and strives to make a better product aimed at what their communities desire and need, rather than what Apple feels like providing to their communities. Imagine this – Microsoft has said Vista is the most secure and reliable Windows yet and still adaptation is slow due to poor track record. Microsoft has said Vista gives users more of what they want….but with the steep cost, poor performance and other features did they really give consumers what they want?

Who has the better community? I think it is easy to tell from recent earnings, recent trends and especially looking at social and new media which one is winning with a better community.

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Positive Value

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

The past few days a mantra that has been going through my mind is POSITIVE VALUE. Why? Because everything we do, say or otherwise output carries value with it, whether it is negative or positive depends upon who we are, our mind set at the moment and general life conditions.

However, something I have come to notice, not only in life offline, but life online as well is people like to be around those that have an output of generally Positive Value. You know what I am talking about – the friend that every time you call has some form of drama, or gripe about something. The person you see at Church and simply say, “Good-morning, how are you?” to that goes into a 15 minute session about how things are the worst ever, and there is just simply no hope. Not to say that we all don’t go through valleys, some of which are rather deep. But if we focus on the valley, hence negative value, we will never see the mountain top to which we can begin to climb to.

Chris Brogan asks what are your three goals (summarized by three words) for 2009: Mine are Value, Engagement, Motion.

VALUE I not only plan to see the Positive value in as much as possible around me, I intend to create positive value for as much as possible around me. Whether it is helping someone, creating a web site or app that solves a problem, or just giving of my time, effort and money to make a change and difference in one or more peoples’ lives.

ENGAGEMENT I would like to become more engaging – create conversations with people, online and offline. I am shy, introverted and sometimes come off wrong, but that’s okay. I know that and can work on it. I would also like to become a more engaging writer, writing not just here on this blog, but other items that engage the reader – that which makes them think, reflect, act and do. That which creates a dialog between two or more people.

MOTION Too often I find myself at a stand-still. I wonder what’s next? Where do I go from here. This year I plan to always stay in motion in my endeavors and never to become still or stale. Too often all of us get downed by daily activities, that thing called life: family, career and friends. Sometimes we sit on an idea, waiting for it to form, develop and execute itself, well at least I know I do. Not this year – motion will keep going forward, at all times.

To that end, my number one focus is POSITIVE VALUE – what value are you creating today? Is it positive or negative? Do you focus and surround yourself with negative or positive value? What effect is that having in your life, today?

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Beginning Social Media – 7 Post Series

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

While trying to get a better grasp on “Social Media” I wrote a 7 post series in what I found perusing some of the “top” promoters, thinkers, users, and movers in this new paradigm. These posts are linked below.

  1. Part 1
  2. Part 2
  3. Part 3
  4. Part 4
  5. Part 5
  6. Part 6
  7. Part 7