My first big SEO victory came today when SEO Guru Peter Quinlan pointed out that I know rank at #1 for the term “henry rose”.
If you care even slightly about seo you can check it out and some other stuff about how websites work over at Mechanical Turducken.
Deep in my heart I actually think I’m a pretty good writer. Sure i spit a lot of crap out on to the internet, but when pressed I think I can actually write quite effectively.
Of course if one never writes, ones writing will suffer. It’s possible I’ve spent too much time in the last three years focusing on not forgetting how to ride a bike (despite the old adage that you can’t) and not enough time polishing the old brain.
If I were to make some bold proclamation about how I am going to start blogging regularly now to better my writing and keep the old brain functioning my dear readers would surely cry out that they’ve heard such promises before and are not convinced.
I think part of my problem has always been that I want to blog about the technical stuff that I do, but I’m terrified of getting something wrong and getting called out on it. Of course that’s the wrong approach, I ought to throw my thoughts out to the Internet and embrace any feedback i get. Right.
Over the last few months <a href=”http://www.marketingmason.com/blog/”>Peter</a>, the SEO manager at Zillow, has been teaching me a bit about SEO. It’s a fascinating game that can bring in big money if you’re good and you’ve got no morals. Anyway all this talk of SEO has inspired me to write more frequently for frequent updates make google smile upon you.
One of the things i’ve been playing with is this website. By no skill of my own I currently rank #2 when you type in “Henry Rose”. My great success is the tagline that google shows “Henry Rose is a man who enjoys a turducken Sandwich. Of course this is just a meta description tag, but still exciting to me as it’s my first success in manipulating the GOOG.
To cut to the chase i made another boring and self indulgent blog (exactly what this world needs). This one i’m only going to write about the internet on. The idea is to give tips for those just getting started as their the ones that can use my knowledge the most.
I ask any readers with a technical bent to call me out on my bullshit over on my new blog about how websites work. And if anybody has something they’d like to contribute (a shocking concept i know) let me know. I’d happily give you an account.
When did AIM add even MORE aimbots? I just noticed that it’s gone from just “Moviefone” and “ShoppingBuddy” to a whole slew of worthless bots. Although I am a bit curious about this “Prof Gilzot” Bot, i’ll take the bait.
Well, here’s how my conversation with Prof Gilzot went:
12:29:42 PM hreonsrey: Hello
12:29:42 PM profgilzot: Welcome hreonsrey, I am Prof Gilzot and will help you with your SATs. I am a great reason for your parents to allow you to IM even longer than you already do! You can start testing right away by typing menu or learn more about me and my colorful past by typing more.
12:29:52 PM hreonsrey: menu
12:29:52 PM profgilzot: Here is a list of things Prof Gilzot can do. Type in a selection and enjoy!
1. Challenge yourself to a question.
2. How am I doing Prof?
3. Top 10 Results
4. New Questions Alert
5. Email Test Results
6. Refer a friend.
12:29:58 PM hreonsrey: 1
12:29:59 PM profgilzot: Here are the tests you can take.
1. Math Test
2. Sentence Completion Test
3. Vocabulary Test
12:30:01 PM hreonsrey: 1
12:30:01 PM profgilzot: Are you ready to take the Math Test?
12:30:03 PM hreonsrey: yes
12:30:04 PM profgilzot: Here we go and good luck hreonsrey!!!
If x + 3 is an even integer, then x could be which of the following?
(A) -6
(B) -2
(C) 1
(D) 2
(E) 0
12:30:23 PM hreonsrey: c
12:30:24 PM profgilzot: You are correct!
Are you ready for another question?
12:30:28 PM hreonsrey: not really
12:30:28 PM profgilzot: Hm? Type menu or help.
12:30:31 PM hreonsrey: help
12:30:31 PM profgilzot: Here is a list of things Prof Gilzot can do. Type in a selection and enjoy!
1. Challenge yourself to a question.
2. How am I doing Prof?
3. Top 10 Results
4. New Questions Alert
5. Email Test Results
6. Refer a friend.
12:30:37 PM hreonsrey: 2
12:30:38 PM profgilzot: Math Test: 100.0% (1/1 correct)
I can send you the full tests you have taken if you want. Just type 5 to proceed. To go back to the main menu type menu or help.
It looks like AIM is trying to stay relevant by providing some content. Interesting … I also had a fun conversation with Spleak (http://www.spleak.com/) She advised me not to sleep with Lindsay Lohan … thanks Spleak.
So a while back I was all hott on the plan to make a bike-centric social network, but the market got crowded and I got lazy. But now that Facebook has opened up to third party developers I think i’ve got an opportunity to do it for real.
Keep you eye out for Facebook Bikes!
Here’s an interesting article discussing whether the googlebots are able to index content published to a page using javascript.
It wasn’t long ago that people were concerned about whether google was indexing dynamic pages created with server-side php/asp/etc. They do. I’m sure they’re working on getting the Javascript content indexed too, but this serves as a good reminder of why as developers we must keep our content accessible.
It’s been forever since I’ve posted over here, so, quick update.
For the last month I’ve been working on a game designed to teach teens some consumer skills. It’s bankrolled by the National Consumer’s League and is … almost … really cool.
Anyway it’s bee a lot of php which has been good experience. Also some XML and Flash, another two things that are good to work on.
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about the project is having some say in experience decisions (mostly because I build it up ;)). But working on something that’s designed for kids is an interesting problem space that I haven’t thought about a whole lot before.
A big part of the project has been reworking some exsisting php to allow for the rapid rebranding and re-deployment of the game. For example, we used to just offer the game to high school students in the fall, but now we’ve got rebranded versions for a spring semester competition, as well as for middle school students. Re-purposing the existing code has taught me a great deal about architecture for this site of web application.
Ok… now to fix the last round of bugs, yeah right.
So i’m working on a redesign for the whole site. Obviously the existing design was something i just slapped together to get up.
When it comes down to it my site is like an audition. If it’s bad it reflects really poorly on me. So… the pressure is on.
Man it’s nice to have full control over every aspect of a project, but it’s also hard to define boundaries for yourself.
EDIT: So i’ve started implementing the new design, but i can only work on it here and there so it’s going to look kind of broken for a while. Sorry!
Today I read the Gould Paper “The 1984 Olympic Message System: a test of behavioral principles of system design”. (PDF from www.tol.oulu.fi) It was an interesting paper from a systems design perspective and I’m hoping I can draw from it some useful points for the designers and builders of modern web applications.
More after the cut, including my dream for a cool use of the web for large scale usability testing.
Despite the fact that I am in fact an ordained reverend I cannot yet walk on water. Although, google thinks I can:
So a couple weeks ago I got assigned to build a calendar for On The Boards, a local theater group. It was nothing too spectacular, just a php calendar with a little javascripting for rollovers and for filtering the genre of performances that would be displayed on the calendar.
I didn’t have much javascript experience but I was able to build the page to spec in a couple days with the knowledge I had.
However, it was then decided that the filters needed to reflect not one, but three genres for each performance. The color of the perfomance display was to change based on the highest priority genre selected in the checkboxes below. This was wasy out of my league but after a few more days it’s done. Woot! Not quite live yet because we’re waiting on the client to populate the database, but it’s nifty!
Check it out: OtB Calendar
