Illumi-nate

All your favorite music you didn't even know about

2006-02-14T14:58:00.000-08:00

Another cool find - Pandora - for all your favorite tunes.

I love listening to music online. I hit a few of my favorite radio stations and also use genre specific stuff like Iceberg Radio, but Pandora takes this idea to a new level. You choose a band or genre, and it will play that for you. But it will also find music similar to that you may not have heard before.

So far, its been pretty good. I have one channel called White Stripes, and all the new stuff its pulled in has been pretty on target. Some of it I've heard before, like The Strokes, but others, like Wydown, I have never heard of before. Of course if Wydown is huge somewhere, I'm not a big authority on music either, and I may just have been living under a rock for the last little while. Either way, this is going to catch on in a big way, IMHO.

Breaking News

2006-01-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

this just in:

the coolest new site (ok, maybe not that new, but new to me) - reddit.com
it's a 'democratic' news site. stories are submitted by members and other members vote, either up or down, on whether they were good or not. it took a while to grow on me, but now I can't get enough. you should go check it out.

Another SEO Contest

2006-01-16T15:26:00.000-08:00

It has begun. The terms to try and optimize for are

v7ndotcom elursrebmem

You can go for the official contest here, or the guerilla contest here.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't know exactly what strategies I'll be using, but I better get cracking.

Search Engine Corporatization

2006-01-13T08:14:00.000-08:00

It's interesting to watch the back and forth between different ones in the SEM industry as Google incorporates more and more paid advertising into it's search results. I myself don't like it too much, but it is inevitable. That's Corporate America. If one looks far enough into the future, as with all corporations, maybe there will be leveraged buyouts, mergers and aquisitions until finally there will be only one search engine -

' Ask Yahoogle '

I like the way it just rolls off the tongue.
My 2c.

2006-01-09T15:50:00.000-08:00

Paul Graham, a wealth of information in regards to technology and the internet in general, has a good write-up on Web 2.0. He touches on a number of subjects as to where the internet is going, but this was my favorite:

Never make users register, unless you need to in order to store something for them. If you do make users register, never make them wait for a confirmation link in an email; in fact, don't even ask for their email address unless you need it for some reason. Don't ask them any unnecessary questions. Never send them email unless they explicitly ask for it. Never frame pages you link to, or open them in new windows. If you have a free version and a pay version, don't make the free version too restricted. And if you find yourself asking "should we allow users to do x?" just answer "yes" whenever you're unsure. Err on the side of generosity.

I second the motion!

My take on SEO as a newbie

2006-01-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

So I've been doing this SEO thing for about a month now, and I'm going to venture a few humble opinions on what seems to be important, in order of importance, in getting a site to show in the organic SERPS (as that's my focus with the site I'm currently working with) using 'white-hat' techniques. Here is SEO boiled down to it's essence:

1) Unique Content is King.
2) Links, and the more the better.
3) Where you are linking to and who is linking to you weights #2.
4) Keep your code clean, accessible, and W3C.
5) Build up topics from detailed to broad, cross-linking your info across the site where appropriate.

Now for any other SEO people out there reading this, you're probably going 'well, duh'. But I figured I'd start small and build on this topic instead of writing one earth-shattering, mind-blowing thesis.

I would also be remiss without acknowledging the amount of excellent information out there from many sources without which I could not have picked this up so quickly:
The oft-mentioned Matt Cutts (linked the non-www on purpose), SEOmoz was my original starting point, then there's the seroundtable and the searchenginewatch blog to keep tabs on what's new. Stuntdubl and Oilman have some good insights as well. There are many others, but how many links do you want to drop in one post anyways?

I think I'll be trying out what I've learned so far in Another SEO Contest. See what happens.

Boom

2006-01-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

Wow, just picked this up off of Slashdot. A spammer just got hit with an $11 Billion fine. Thats right - Billion, with a B. Dr. Evil eat your heart out. Somebody's finally getting harsh with spammers.

Silver Star

2005-12-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

Yes, its that time again - time to rip it up on the slopes!
Just went up to Silver Star mountain for the weekend. The snow could have been a little better, but I'm not complaining. You do have to know the mountain to not get stuck in some slow spots - my advice is to book it (go fast) all the time, even if there are 'slow' signs around.
Me and a few friends stayed in a chalet right in the village. The chalet was awesome, I found it through Owner Direct, a direct rental website. I would highly recommend this site to anyone, it has rentals not just for BC, but all over the world. Easy to use, and the accomdations did not disappoint.
More mountain posts to come as the season progresses.

Customer Service Email Feedback

2005-12-19T13:25:00.000-08:00

Do you ever get the feeling that most people just don't take the time to actually read and understand the emails that they receive?
I have had this happen a couple times recently. I won't use the names of the large, national, well-known companies involved. The structure of the response was similar in both cases as the example below. It went a little like this:

my email- Hi, I just bought a brand-new VCR from your company. Whenever I put a tape in, it will only fast-forward and not rewind. This is a major problem because as you know, most video rental outlets request that you rewind a tape prior to returning it. What should I do?

their response- We're really glad that you bought the VX-3000 VCR from our company. To play a tape, you must insert it and then press play. To rewind the tape, press rewind. To fast-forward the tape, press fast-forward. Thank you again for your business. If you have any other questions or problems, please let us know.

as you can see, this does not answer my question. It's not until I get really mad and send off a few blistering emails that I actually get an informed answer to my question. SO FRUSTRATING!!
So whats the deal here? Are we getting auto-responder emails feeding off of keywords and its not until an anger-index algorithim finally kicks in to boot it up the foodchain to real human eyes that you get a real answer to your question? I think not. People just can't take the time to read and understand what they are looking at and then take the appropriate steps to handle the situation.

Vancouver Weather

2005-12-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry, but I just couldn't resist.
To all my friends in TO, 'ha ha'.

You:
(image from thestar.com)

Me:

(image from katkam.ca)

User Experience

2005-12-14T15:55:00.000-08:00

Great User Experience and Design article over at A List Apart. Good read for anyone into Web Design. 'Keep it Simple' and 'Make it work' have always been my mottos. Always put the user first, even if you have the coolest new widget around.

OG Post

2005-12-13T19:30:00.000-08:00

Here it is...
Well, here it is. I've finally caught up to all the others on the information superhighway. Except that they're all speeding ahead to some new, incredible technology that I will find about tommorow. Ah well, one thing at a time. For any who stumble upon this blog, expect a regular mish-mash of postings - things I find funny (my humor is warped), things that bug me (alot!), programming stuff (to put the regular population to sleep) and random stuff as well.
And this being a blog, I would be remiss without linking to someone, so I'll throw a shout out to my good friend Tom, someone who sometimes knows more about computer stuff than I do, yet doesn't get labelled as a computer geek.

Here it is...

2005-12-13T19:26:00.000-08:00

Here it is...

for real this time.

For the two of you who know, I had a blog called 'elimi-nate', but after a lightbulb exploded over my head, I realized 'illumi-nate' is a lot less evil.

So I'll put up my original post, and enjoy the nicer me.