Apr 22 2008
Through the Filter 04/22/2008
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Penny Stove Instructions & FAQs
Backpacking stove
Archive for April, 2008
Apr 21 2008
Vertical love
I’ve delayed and waffled about it for a long time but about a week ago I finally did it. I broke down and bought a reporter style Moleskine notebook to use. I’ve been a pocket notebook fan for a long time but I was never convinced the vertical format was something that would match to my writing or organizational style. Boy was I wrong.
I first put it to heavy use as the Master of Ceremonies this past weekend for our school’s annual charity auction. Not only did the vertical format let me keep the lists of information, announcements, and changes in a cleaner format but it also was easy to carry around and write on while standing. No more awkward grip on the book as I’m trying to capture things on the right side. I’m using it this week for the prep and planning before my upcoming week long Appalachian Trail hike (a week off the grid…this should be interesting) and I’ll be taking it along to take notes on the trail.
If you’re a Moleskine user as I am and haven’t tried the vertical format yet…you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ll post some photos as I gather more insights into the pluses and minuses of this layout. One minus in the interest of being fair - lacking the ribbon bookmark I spend more time than before flipping through to the current page. I need to find a work around for that. (Clipping corners off pages perhaps?)
Apr 18 2008
I don’t have an attention problem…oh look! Shiny!
Pioneering research shows ‘Google Generation’ is a myth - Annotated
tags: education, literacy, library2.0, research
The report Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (PDF format; 1.67MB) also shows that research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors.
Apr 16 2008
Convert your Powerpoint slideshows to video
Finally we may have an option on converting Powerpoint slideshows to video files. Only thing really necessary is voice narrations and/or slide timings. Let me know if you take a stab at this thing.
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Convert PowerPoint presentations to video files for online viewing.
Apr 16 2008
Death by analytics - measuring your worth one visitor at a time
One of the biggest addictions in the blogging world stems from the company who’s motto is “do no evil.” Google Analytics and it’s ilk feed the ego needs of many a blogger. They’re driven to check their stats over and over, trying to coax one more visitor out, pondering and mulling over how to get a little more traffic to their blog.
Bah. If you’re going to use analytics (not just Google’s but anybody’s) then use it for the right reasons.
Search terms
Most SEO (search engine optimization) snake oil salesmen will try to convince you on the wonders that is meta-tagging, long tail search terms, blah, blah, blah. If you’re really trying to create a blog that delivers value (see Gallagher - “totally new concept!”) then look at your incoming search terms for what they are…the words people used to find your site. Remember though there’s nothing that says they were LOOKING for your site. Yours just happended to match the words they keyed into their search engine of choice. You can use this to improve the quality of your blog by writing and gathering content matching the interests of your visitors. If your most popular posting over time is “streaming video cell phone” then you have some insight into the types of readers you’re drawing in.
Feed vs. visitor
If you’re pumping out an RSS feed from your blog (and you better be if you know what’s good for it) you need to combine the traffic metrics from your feed with your site to get a more accurate picture of your readers. Think about how you use a reader. Do you go to every site on every feed or do you read the article and move on? If you do the second then you move the counter on the feed but aren’t counted as a site visitor even though you may find wonderful information in the article you read.
No instant gratification
You will learn more about your readers and your blog by tracking single articles over time rather than your whole site on a given day. Take a popular article and look at it over the course of a month. Does it cycle? Is there building interest? Was it a flash in the pan? All these kinds of questions help you gauge how future content will be rececived by your audience.
Cause and effect
If you’re like me and have hooked your Wordpress to Twitter you can see the direct correlation between a posting and the response it gets. There’s a strategy called “A-B testing” where you have users compare the same thing with only a singular variable changed and determine which is more popular. Titles are great example of this. Take an old posting that wasn’t all that popular and come up with a new, exciting title and repost it. More often than not you’ll see a bump of traffic corresponding with the title change.
Conclusion
Use analytics for what they’re intended. Gather data, interpret, and take action. If you want a telethon tote board, add a site counter to your site and stroke your ego. If you want to improve your blog…you now know what to do.
