Monthly Archives: November 2008

Does your brand need an iPhone app?

Posted on November 21, 2008 | 3 Comments

Writing about the Sonos iPhone app got me thinking about branding (and brand extension), so I thought I’d get a little brandsignerish today. If you have an iPhone, you’ve probably seen the free Lightsaber app, which is now essentially an ad for The Force Unleashed, an iPhone game. But, did you know that Ralph Lauren has an iPhone app? And so do Pink (or is it P!nk?) and Nine Inch Nails (theirs is a paid version of the normally free Dance Dance Revolution-like Tap Tap Revenge).

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What does a 10,000-view day buy you?

Posted on November 17, 2008 | Comments Off

Fourteen days ago, a post on this site was linked by Daring Fireball, one of my favorite blogs. I can only imagine what his daily traffic is like, but presumably it is ample because he writes that site for a living. I can tell you that getting linked to by him sent me almost 10,000 views in one day. Oh how I wish I had Google Ads on this site that day! Predictably, that level of traffic did not persist.

Hey, it looks like the long tail!

Hey, it looks like the long tail!

The next day, maybe a tenth of the traffic. Since then, I’ve been averaging in the neighborhood of 50 views a day (I was getting more like 50 views a month, so this is still a big jump). But the biggest difference I’ve noticed over the last two weeks is that I get a lot more spam now. Fortunately Akismet catches almost all of it, but I got spammed about 100 times in the last two weeks alone. Which is as many as the site has gotten since moving over to WordPress.com in May.

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WordPress.com and Google Webmaster Tools

Posted on November 13, 2008 | 1 Comment

I decided to play around with Google’s Webmaster Tools to learn a little bit more about how Google sees my site, and to see what the tools had to offer. Adding my main page and my portfolio to GWT was as easy as putting a meta tag in the <head> section for each site (a flat index.html page in the case of tonyscida.com and a Django template in the case of portfolio.tonyscida.com). But, this blog is hosted on WordPress.com, so the process was a little more involved. Here’s what I did:

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Which is more important, speed or prep?

Posted on November 5, 2008 | 1 Comment

Like almost anyone who spends any amount of time online, I recently had an idea for a web site (more on that at a later date). Having worked in marketing (of one form or another) for nearly all of my employed adulthood, and falling back on my college business courses, my first thought is to make a plan. A well-crafted strategy can be indispensable to endeavors in all sorts of industries. On the other hand, energy spent planning is energy diverted from building, as the chaps at 37 Signals wouldsay (though they’d say it more eloquently, I’m sure). 

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The only statistic that matters

Posted on November 4, 2008 | 2 Comments

Two weeks ago this Thursday I was laid off from my job. On the way home, I listened to smart people on NPR talking about the jobless rate and government bailouts. I’d like to say that I heard what they were discussing from a different perspective, as I drove home contemplating resume revisions and wondering how the unemployment process works. But really, I didn’t. Talking about people’s lives in the agregate is just plain hard to relate to. And smarter people than me think about these macroeconomic issues on a daily basis. I decided that all I could do was reach out to everyone I know, and most of the people they know, and do what I can to disunemploy myself. What’s your plan to get through this economic turmoil?

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Selection Bias In Action

Posted on November 3, 2008 | Comments Off

Saturday, for first post for National Blog Posting Month, I wrote a paragraph about installing a network printer on a Mac and a PC. I noticed a new (to me) feature here on WordPress.com to add a poll to a post. I like to play around with new features, so I added a one asking whether PCs or Macs were better (a poorly constructed poll, I admit). When I checked the poll, the next day, there were two votes: one for PC, one for Mac. Sunday a wrote a review of a an iPhone app that was linked by John Gruber over on daringfireball.net, a very popular Apple-focused blog. Today, there are 42 votes: 40 for Mac, one for PC and one for Neither.

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Review: Sonos iPhone Application (Gallery)

Posted on November 2, 2008 | 11 Comments

Sonos System

Sonos System

Sonos, makers of a very cool, but quite expensive, multi-room, networked, eponymous music system with a cool full-color controller, have come out with a great new free iPhone app: Sonos Controller. As an owner of both a Sonos system and an iPhone, I have wanted this application since the iPhone 2.0 update was announced. And, after playing with it for a few days, I have to say the execution is pretty good. Though it looks different, the iPhone app has a workflow similar to both the click-wheel sporting controller and the desktop software.

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Why I Use a Mac

Posted on November 1, 2008 | 1 Comment

I’m at my parents’ house this weekend for a little visit. While I was there my Dad and I decided to do some tweaking to their network set-up. After moving things around to our general satisfaction, we decided to get the network printer installed on his laptop. After about the fourth attempt, we found instructions on an Idaho State University tech support site on adding a network printer as if it were a local printer. So, after he started following those instructions, I pulled out my MacBook Pro, and in less time than it took him to find the right manufacturer in the list Windows makes you wade through, I was able to go to System Preferences>Print & Fax, click the plus sign icon under the list of printers and add the printer (which was the only printer listed in the add dialog).

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A Post a Day for a Month

Posted on November 1, 2008 | 2 Comments

So, today begins National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. People all over the web attempt to post once a day, including weekends, for the entire month of November. Inspired by Abi, I’ve just decided to try my hand at participating. We’ll see how it goes.

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Posted in NaBloPoMo