Is the internet broken?

In the last week I have been involved with 2 internet issues.  One was a client who called to complain that their site had been down for over an hour.  The other was a training company who did a upgrade on their site.  Now here is where it gets interesting.  I found out what was going on with both of the issues through social media.  Both had issues with being able to interface with their clients directly on their main internet site.  However they both had a presence on social media and were able to keep their clients appraised of progress through those channels.  I think this really speaks to many aspects of our internet lives.

One of the hosts that I deal with Lunarpages, had a problem with loosing power and then having issues with backup generators.  I got a call from one of my clients that was hosted in the data center that was affected.  Now with a whole data center going offline I can imagine that their phones just blew up as did any other service that you might try to contact them on.  If for instance they were using Voip then their phone lines would have gone silent when they lost power.  So in poking around to figure out what was going on I first tried to access the clients site.  Sure enough it was also timing out for me.  Next I tried to log in to the server, also met with no success.  Then I started looking on facebook and twitter.  Sure enough there were posts that the Lunarpages staff had put up to let their clients have an idea of what was going on.  Really very clever if you knew about the back channel.  I was able to call back my client in short order and explain the situation and once they understood the problem knew that the provider was on the task and things would get back to normal as quick as possible.  Bad problem with a clever way of client update.

The other issue was with Kelbytraining.  I had just signed up with them and the very next day started getting a “We are down for maintenance and will be back shortly” or something similar.  This however went on for hours and really I was getting the message for over a day.  I finally went on to twitter and did a search for them.  I found some tweets talking about how people were loving the “new improved” site.  Well that was a clue to me that some bad information was cached on my browser and I might need to try something different.  Well I first went to a different browser that I had not logged onto the site and found that it was indeed there and with a different look.  Next going to my main browser I cleared cache, cookies, history and was able to get to the site again.  As a web developer their whole change over was an abject failure from my viewpoint but I was able to sort out what was happening from another channel and solve my issue locally.   Now many others were not so lucky and Kelbytraining did so many things wrong on the upgrade that I could discuss in another post but — I did get a clue from out of channel and then was able to get things working again.

So if you or your company does run into issues with your main means of communication with your clients, such as loosing your website, what is your strategy to try to let them know what is going on?  Do you even have a plan?

Good things to think about!

pete

Keywords and phrases are your lifeblood on the internet.  When people do search for you or your business on the internet keywords/phrases are how they are going to find you.  When I get involved in helping a business with their SEO keywords are always the place that I start.  I love a client who is able to clearly define what it is that they do and where it is that they do it.  I have also had clients that have had a devil of a time searching for that definition.   I also have had clients that want to so broadly define their keywords so as to claim every possible way that they could come up in search.

Here are some of my thoughts on keywords.  For me you should be able to clearly define a set of keywords that define your business in a set of 3-4 keywords/phrases.  You may need more but to define exactly what it is that is your core business I think that fewer is better.  From there you can dig deeper into your keywords but you need a good solid core to start from.  I am not a long tail fan.  My reason for not liking the long tail is that I have seen time and time again where 80% of your inbound keywords are from 10-20% of your terms.  Google, and you, should be concerned with users getting a relevant result.  For me, sticking with your core will do the best over the long term.  I like to concentrate on the fat, easy part of the pickings.

An example might help clarify.  I have a client that does 4 things: restaurant repair, tenant finish, maintenance and hvac.  So on their home page that is where we define that is what they do.  Each of the 4 also has a page of their own to further develop those keywords.  Each of the regions that they work in also have a page.  So home page we talk about the 4 things and all the regions.  On the regions page we also reinforce the 4 things that they do.  On the 4 things pages we talk about the regions that they do them in.  A pretty simple strategy but it really works well for this client.  We also never talk about long tail items that would be things like:  supplier, parts, car, airplane, truck, home or training.

One item that many clients will ask for is to try to use a keyword/phrase that is really not theirs but might be a competitor or just a similar theme.  For example if you are selling Pepsi and you want to use Coke as a keyword.  I really try to discourage that type of keyword usage.  For me keep it simple and clean and keep to your core.

I may not be mainstream in thinking like this but have gotten my clients some very good results using this thinking.

Not that long ago a phone was a phone.  However a few years ago as phones became more powerful more features found their way onto the platform.  Browsers started showing up on phones to make the internet available while on the move.  The processing power available on early models were limited.  As were memory and display capabilities.  However at some point phones became almost as powerful as stand alone computers at providing a compelling web experience.  Smart phones have begun to make the the whole internet available in a usable format in a great form factor.

Mobile Web

As a web developer I found that the early browsers lacked many things that made the web experience a great one.  You could never be sure how javascript would act on different platforms.  Display issues were a big challenge.  In those early days I learned how to detect if a browser was making a request from a mobile device.  Through the user agent I could see the request and reroute the request to a “skinny” site if the request came from a mobile device.  I found this to be the best method to provide a good user experience.  The fullness of the site was generally not available to the mobile user on these sites that I adjusted to mobile, but I felt that I could provide an experience that someone on the move would find useful.  Generally I made the contact information easily available.  Some content explaining the site was also always good to have.  On some sites I could also provide a useful interface into the data base for information like properties for a commercial real estate site.  The display of that information was very different from the site you would see on a computer, but there were no display issues either.

I think that the real game changer was the iPhone.  This has turned into a “must have” device.  It has changed the way people access information.  Now with google in your pocket and a great display peoples expectations have also changed.  Most new phones now compare themselves with the iPhone.  Over time I think that might change but it also might go the way of the “Xerox Machine”, defining the mobile space.  Along with  more and more power, memory and better displays have also come more standards based applications.

My expectations of people on the move accessing a site have changed also.  I now can somewhat expect that someone on a mobile platform will have certain things available that will make browsing most any site a close experience to what they would find on a laptop or desktop computer.  I have found a couple of things that are different and must be addressed but they no longer have to do with display or lack of mobile device power.

One of the issues with mobile devices is that currently most smart phones use a touch screen of some sort.  Not all but most do.  Now with a touch screen mouse events become an issue.  On a site that uses rollovers to provide navigation, on a touch screen these must be handled differently.  I have sorted that out by using click events rather than mouse events with success.  Another issue that I have come across, specifically on the iPhone is the lack of access to a file system.  This makes it a challenge to upload files — pictures, documents, that sort of thing — from the phone.  I have come up with a method for doing this using a phone app and some clever code that allows my client to upload images at this time.  I think at some point there will have to be a file system of some sort added to solve this problem.  Apple fought bringing cut and paste to the iOS for quite some time also.

Now I have begun to fight providing “skinny” views to people that visit sites that I design from a mobile device.  I am trying to solve issues as they come up to provide the full site to all users and handle issues as they come up to help in that respect.

pete

News worthy events happen all the time. While it might feel like there are more large events of late I suspect that people are just more aware than normal. Not many folks are on holiday and with the weather not quite summer like yet there is more time spent in touch (and maybe goofing off at the office?).

I am noticing that how I get my news has changed quite a bit over the years. I think that it might be the same for you. While years ago the news paper and tv news were how most people heard about events that is not the case now. I find out about most breaking events on twitter.  Twitter provides me with a wide variety of views on the world.  I make an effort to follow interesting, insightful and knowledgeable people.  I also try to follow some that I might not agree with.  For me this is something that I need to do so that the news that I get and the analysis about that news is not just an echo chamber.  I think of an echo chamber as in there  is no dissension just everyone agreeing and reinforcing one another.  With links provided in tweets it is possible to share more with others if there is interest that is aroused within the tweet.

Another interesting thing about twitter is that I find that I can interact sometimes with people that I would normally never even know are listening.  For instance I put a tweet up about Starbucks new wifi offering.  I find it a very interesting model to follow (maybe an idea for another post!).  Starbucks on their wifi network is now offering some information that would normally be behind a paywall.  I find that a most interesting and fresh way for people to get paid (those behind the paywall) and yet for the information to still be “free” to customers.  In putting my tweet up I got an @ reply from Stephen Gillett, Chief Information Officer and EVP of Digital Ventures at Starbucks in Seattle.  I do not know Stephen but heard back from him shortly after posting my tweet.  This is making the world a much smaller place and people much easier to interact with.  I find this all very interesting and compelling.

Facebook can also be a good news source.  However I feel that facebook is more like an echo chamber for me.  I tend to use facebook as a means of connecting with friends and family.  While there might be some occasional differences of opinion, for me, I don’t tend to follow others on facebook that I have large differences with.  However I have started to use the like button on my blog.  I see that as another method to start a conversation about subjects that I write about.  I feel that online conversations are a good way to engage a wide variety of people and discuss many different opinions.

Notification of news is a bit different than getting the facts on a story.  I think that journalists have a vested interest in vetting a story.  It is my opinion that it is their job to make sure that a story is correct, and that they provide an unbiased report on the facts.  It is the opinion page of a paper that opinions are expressed.  Online, that separation is much harder to define.  For me there is not a clear method online of differentiating reporting versus opining.

I still like reading a paper.  There is something about how a paper is constructed that I very much like.  I find myself finding information about things that I would not normally be exposed to.  I also find the format very good at letting me read whole stories or just leads very quickly.  I also feel that the news that I read is just that, news and not opinion.  If I want opinion I know where to go inside the paper.  I still think that editors and journalists have a higher standards that they need to reach, versus someone with no formal training.  I find this especially true in more in depth stories and series that require lots of research and time.  While the internet is fast it is not necessarily the best at getting facts straight before becoming available.  I also find the formfactor — a paper — much more readable when just hanging out.  Very portable and not very fragile.  However I do miss the ability to immediately search for more information and so many times have a mobile device right at hand for doing just that.

I am interested on your thoughts on this subject.  Where to you find your news?  Do you try to investigate news yourself or leave it to the author to do the investigation?  Who do you trust?  Who do you not trust and why?

pete

Wow does Japan ever have troubles.  A 9.0 (upgraded from 8.9) earthquake.  That in turn created a Tsunami.  That in turn has caused a some nuclear plants to have troubles.  Like dominoes, the trouble just keeps coming.  I am amazed by the amount of destruction that has occurred.  It seems the the ring of fire is really acting up, with this being latest event.  New Zealand, Chile, Indonesia and now Japan.  Seems like a very active period to me.

As time goes on it looks as if the Tsunami in Japan is going to a much bigger issue than the initial earthquake.  The images that have come out really do show this most likely will be the case.  Aerial shots plus satellite imagery really tells a story.

The nuclear issues are still developing.  I think that the problems bring to the forefront many of the issues that people that are against nuclear are most concerned about.  It seems as though many issues such as the back up power for the cooling water may not have been optimally placed or protected.  There are many experts on both sides of the issue that can speak much more to the point than I ever could.

The scope of the problems that Japan is facing is huge.  I think that this is a great time to self evaluate how you might be able to survive a problem of similar scale.  I have heard that America is something like 3 days, or something like that,  away from starving.  Meaning that if supplies were immediately cut off then we would only have a short store of goods before running out of supplies like food, water and fuel.

When a storm hits here in Colorado we sometimes see a run on goods like water and food from the stores.  Many people here surcome to “cabin fever” after just a few days of snow keeping things from running normally.  How would we do if a problem was to run for months if not years.  How would you do?  What would happen if your home and all surrounding housing just disappeared?  What if supply lines — read roads and railways — were just destroyed?

I think that in a case where this type of disater strikes the best and worst of humanity comes out.  Many people will help others to a fault.  There are others that will try to make $$$ and have no shame in doing so.  What type are you?

I think that this most recent disaster is a great time to evaluate what is really important to you and should give you pause to think about others and how fragile that life really is.

I have been using delicious for years for easy bookmarking and the ability to get to them all from anywhere and any machine.  I have heard today that Yahoo is shutting this service down.  So I did some searching around quickly for a replacement.  I have come across Scuttle.  It is an open source solution that you can find at sourceforge here.  I will involve setting up a MySql database and then importing the tables provided.  Once you have got that done just navigate to the location where you put the files.  Go ahead and register yourself.   Once you have all that you can download you bookmarks from delicious using the api in this form:

https://username:pass...@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all

Save the page that comes out and then in Scuttle – click on add a new bookmark.   On the bottom of this page there is a link to add bookmarks from delicious.  Click on this and browse to where you saved the file and then click import.  That is all I needed to do to get moved!

For me this is giving me everything that I needed with delicious and now I control the content which is ALWAYS something that I like.  The cloud is great until it goes away for some reason (like Yahoo cancels the project).

I found this a very quick and easy solution I wish you luck in finding your own best solution!

pete

Well google has been very busy of late. First they brought out the quick search. If you have not noticed this yet it is pretty interesting. You must be on the google page itself and not on something like the search bar in FireFox. If you are on the page and quickseach is enabled, it is by default, then some interesting things will happen.  You can tell if it is on or off by looking right next to the search button.

Now if instant is on and you start to type a search the results will change on the fly.  The ads will also change.  As it has been doing for a while, google will also recommend some queries that might fit what you are searching for.  If you hit tab when there is a suggestion,  it will auto fill in the highlighted suggestion.  Now here are where things can get interesting.  If you are searching for something that google thinks is “naughty” then the results will not automatically update.  You can still make the search but you have to hit the search button to get results.  A white screen will greet you until then.  Also only 1 page of 10 is displayed.  I usually have adjusted my settings to show 100 results per page but if quicksearch is on it will only display 10 results per page.   Try it out it can be fun.

I have been thinking about how this will affect search for a while now.  One thing that I am still working over is how the suggestions will change search, especially the long tail of search.  I think the misspellings will go down, google will take care of you there.  Also with the suggestions you might get distracted by the suggestions and go off on a different path than you had started out on.  Also you might start to do more of a group search.  By group search I am thinking that instead of how you might individually think of a search the suggestion might steer you towards what others are searching for that might be just a bit different than using your own terms.  I am not quite sure if this will make for better search or more of a group think type search.  Any thoughts on this?

So just as I was digesting instant google upped the ante.  They have now made local much more integrated into the results.  In the past if you did a search that google thought had local relevance they showed a map with some results in the area that you were searching for, and if you did not explicitly mention a location it used your ip address to figure out where you were and did local based on that.  Now those local results are much more integrated into the results that you get.  The are denoted by a balloon in the results.

As you can see the map is now on the right and “floats” down the page as you scroll.  If the result that is shown is in the local results you get a balloon that relates to the map.  This new look will change how seo people approach their jobs I think.  If you have a strong local listing then you will look good in the new search.  However if you do not have a local listing or your local listing is a bit out of the the “local” area as google sees it then the results today might not give you the same results as in the past.  I think there will be a bit of a rush into the local listings area as people sort this new feature out.

I am still digesting these changes as to how it will affect my clients.   I would love to hear from you as to how you like/dislike the new google search and how it will affect you.

pete

In helping clients try to understand social media I have come across many issues.  These include but are not limited to such things as: what is twitter all about, should I have a facebook page, how often should I [tweet, blog], how do I build my online identity and many other questions.  I have tried to convey my thoughts on social media and met with a bit of success with some clients.  Recently in the Sunday paper I was reading the books section of the paper and came across Power Friending by Amber Mac.  I marked it as something I might be interested in, and would get to soon.  Later that week a colleague asked if I had seen the review.  I decided that this was a book that I needed to read to see what Amber had to say.

I got the book from Amazon and was very pleasantly surprised.  Amber really does get social media.  She is very clear in her presentation and has lots of hints and links that can help anyone from a newbie to an experienced person in learning about social media.  As an example she talks of podcasts with some really handy hints on building content.  Not sure how to use Youtube or wiki’s she can help you out.  Not sure what QR codes are — she explains them.  Nervous about how to set up a strategy, let her walk you through that.  Interested in some success stories (I remember and loved the #blameandrewscancer).  Dissect some failures.  This book has it all.

Power Friending and the Dog

My doggie just finished the book yesterday and we had a good chat about how best to show off our new found knowledge. He especially liked the use of “plethora” when talking about location based services!  You know dogs, it is all about the nearest “location”, plus he really likes that word!  He also suggested that I write a bit about my thoughts and thus this posting.

I also learned that she is part of the twit network.  For those of you who do not know about the network it is run by Leo Laporte and he and his “peoples” have built up a very useful podcasting network.  I often listen to many of his podcasts but did not realize that Amber was part of that network.  I immediately signed up for her net@night podcast because I liked her style in the book and felt that through the podcast I could keep learning cool tricks from her.  Upon finishing her book I let Amber know on twitter that I liked her book.  She got back to me in minutes!  Very cool to see someone who not only writes about her subject but also will still talk to the “little people (me)”.  If you are not yet following her on twitter ambermac you should.

All in all I feel that I will be using this book to help my clients and myself to better leverage the social media thing.  I highly recommend this book to all interested — regardless of skill level — in social media.

pete reum

Most parts of my job entail details.  Whether it is writing code correctly or helping a client choose meaningful keywords for them details do matter.  As a long time programmer I learned a long time ago that details matter.  If you misplace a semicolon in some languages then all sorts of things can go wrong.  When someone says that they just changed this one thing (usually in code) and it should not affect anything else, my ears perk up.

Some recent examples of details that were ignored: the dead battery on the emergency cut off valve on the leaking oil well in the Gulf; goals that were missed/wrongly awarded in the world cup; the iphone 4 antenna placement; volcanic ash and airplane interaction.  All of these issues has to do with details.  Everyone has different skills and one of my skills — I think anyways — is details.  Now I cannot spell very well as all my clients can attest to but getting the text into the right place at the right time, I can do that.

Here are a couple of details that I have had recent success with.  I have done some research into why certain pages on a clients site were so slow to load.  I had to dig into the code — the pages are generated with data from a local database and added into a mashup with google maps — and expose different layers where the slow issues might be found.  At the end I found out that I had not added an index to a table in the database.  Simple solution and the pages came back to life in the fast lane!  That was a tough problem that I need a variety of skills and tools to find the issue.  Details.

Another example of details in action was doing an evaluation of a clients site.  This became a bit tricky for a variety of issues I will not get into here.  The end result was that I was able to find a way by using Google Ads to direct traffic to their site using some keyword phrases that for some reason they were not currently using.  Those keywords help to drive traffic up to their site significantly.  They already had a click campaign running but — details — they had let this set of keywords phases slip away.

I am a details kind of guy and usually like digging in to figure out what is currently going on.  So whether it is in code or evaluation of a site or an issue I like getting down to the details of what is really going on with a process.  Sometimes this might take a long time and multiple tries.  The issue I spoke about above with the database took me months to really figure out what was going on, the fix took minutes to implement.  Your grandmother was right — “The Devil is in the Details!”.

pete reum

With the Olympics being broadcast by NBC there is interesting experiment going on.  While NBC would love for you to be surprised when an event is shown hours after it happened and in a shortened format, that is not the real world of 2010.  There are quite a few great articles about how NBC is not making their audience very happy.  Here is a good one from NPR.  And another from CNET.  Both of these are very good articles speaking to the unhappiness of the NBC audience.

Much of the anger is based on the strategy of doing “tape delays” to better promote their content — as the sole US provider of Olympic content — for better prime time ratings.  I think that this is yet another example of how the old media do not “get it”.   Especially with the Internet available on many different devices how can a fan not know the results of an event that they are interested in?  How does that serve the athletes that have trained so very hard for their events?  How does that help grow interest in sports that might only come to the attention of viewers once every 4 years, but might have a fan base that could grow?

It is interesting that some of the sponsors of NBC’s coverage of the games promote the ability to view the events anywhere anytime.  One problem with that is NBC is unwilling to provide those feeds!  So on one hand you have the local stations telling their viewers that they want to interact with them about what is going on in the games in real time via twitter and facebook.  On the other hand you have the corporate “brains” for instance showing the women’s downhill in a fragmented format the night of the event — hours after the results of the event are known.  Fans will know that the skiers go off in bib number order. Starting the “event” with bib number 4 is not showing the event.  Skipping to bib 15 next, really!  I was listening on a cool new feature on google.  I did a search for women’s downhill on google and they had a streaming portion of the results page.  They were pulling tweets real time into the frame and so I was hearing about the crashes and how hard the course was in virtual real time.  I knew that there were 2 US women on the podium as it happened.  NBC did show some of the crashes later and then again and again and again.

Now the downhill got me all fired up, as I am a skier and love the sport.  I started looking at the tweet tag #nbcfail.  Very interesting that many people were also feeling my pain at not being able to view the live event.  NBC is saying that it is a vocal minority that are unhappy with their coverage.  This is very much like the RIAA saying that downloads are hurting their business model.  Here is a news flash to you both — you are the dinosaurs and the model has changed.  There are so many different ways to view content that you cannot control them.  Just talk to the guys over in Iran.

Now my guess is that the “fans” of a sport will actually watch the whole event of their sport (hockey fans Canada vs. US).  That will include the commercials — note to advertisers.  When only the highlights of USA+ (see the NPR story above for the description) is shown those same fans will only tune in for a very short time to view their sport and then go watch other things — avoiding all commercials in the process.  My thoughts are that NBC will not listen to people that are unhappy.  I wonder if you contact some of the advertisers and let them know that you will NOT buy their products if they continue to support a company that does not support the fans, athletes or their families.  Might that change the way that NBC shows the games?

I would imagine that by the time the next games come around there will be individuals streaming events from their mobile devices to “friends”.  They in fact are probably doing that now.  The genie is out of the bottle and using the old school methods to try to keep the suspense is outdated and should be shown in the bright lights as a shining example of how NOT to show a sporting event.  Just imagine the outrage if a NASCAR or Superbowl was show tape delayed by 8 hours!

The Horror – The Horror.