… I presume that click volume from US based IP addresses is what drives the top links under the big URL’s on Bing search results. If so, it’s kind of a comic/sad commentary on the interests and needs of Wikipedia users that two of the most highly-demanded links within the Wikipedia site are these…
Posted in Uncategorized
[...organized in order of crowd reaction / noise level...]
1) Deep trey buzzer beater to win game (higher seeded team)
2) Same (lower seeded team)
3) Regular 2-point Buzzer beater to win game (higher seed)
4) Regular 2-point Buzzer beater (lower seed)
5) Alley oop
6) Swat (opponent)
7)Buzzer beater trey at end of first half
8) Nasty dunk
9) And 1
10) Double dribble (opponent)
11) Deep trey
12) Travel (opponent)
13) Crossover drive by speedy guard into paint for layup
14) Missed back end of 1 and 1, offensive board, with put-back for 3-point play
15) Crossover pullup jumper
16) Back door cut (princeton offense classic)
17) Steal in the backcourt for a quick 2
18) Technical / Intentional foul
19) Coach ejected
20) Mascot mimics violent confrontation with other team’s mascot
Enjoying a last moment of quiet after a sunny and solid day in “the Seattle of Texas”…
(Or is it the Portland of Texas? Portin?)
Looking forward to a mellow cocktail shindig with a technology partner Friday, a lot of not so mellow shindigs all over town, and hopefully a few local-tips along the way.
Mostly just missing my girls though, already.
If you’re reading this and you’re here too, track down some of the SCG team here in force until Tuesday and we’ll gladly share a Shiner Bock with you somewhere along the endless parade of roadhouses on 6th.
Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone
Posted in Uncategorized
…than “Whiteout”, I don’t know what it is. I am mad at HBO for even programming this gobbledygook into On Demand. I want my brain cells back.
Posted in Uncategorized
Yanks often bemoan the fact that New York, Boston, and Los Angeles dominate many professional sports leagues in the US by virtue of the relatively larger television advertising revenues which those markets drive into their team (owners) coffers, thereby financing the best and most expensive players.
Over in England this season, however, the whole situation is a bit different with their largest sports league the English Premiership. Free from the shackles of salary caps and considerations about revenues and profitability, by virtue of many teams’ deep-pocketed owners, the current EPL team ranking table is looking like a return to late 19th century England. Manchester (whose two main teams are owned by Yanks and Sheiks) has returned to its prior industrial-revolution glory, with its teams 1 and 2 atop the table. London is sitting as England’s ‘second city’ at the moment, having its most storied clubs gazing upwards longingly at Manchester City and United from the 3, 4, and 5 spots. (Incidentally, those teams are owned by shareholders, a Russian billionaire, and a British billionaire.)
As for the rest of merry old England, well their hometown sports fans must all just have to wait for their own billionaires to arrive eventually.
The most odd, yet perfectly representative, forum post title showed up on our local neighborhood blog a few days ago, which I just happened across:
“Did anyone notice their chicken missing last night?”
Those insolent nocturnal vermin ate my daughter’s foamy soccer ball last summer, and now they’re moving on to urban hipster backyard pen poultry. The horror!
R.I.P. UrbanChicken
Posted in Uncategorized
…was that point in Girl Talk’s All Day when Beastie Boys mashed up with Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life gave way to Madonna, followed almost immediately by “ABC“. If you were on the Girl Talk tip way back Unstoppable or Night Ripper days, good nose for the perfect mix of pomo and OMG. If you, like me, got clued in by a coworker when Feed the Animals came out and then sought out a live show (holla MFNW!) and had your mind blown by how infectious this stuff was, well then wait until you hear All Day. But then again, you probably already have. If you’re just getting up into GT thanks to his “You Like Me, You Really Really Like Me!” moment in NYTimes magazine last weekend, all I can say is that if you liked the album you’ll Love his live show. [Confidential to my buddy in Austin - two days to the show, amigo - pay the craigslist people, you and Marge will get to shake off those Bodyhype skills at long last.] And if you’re too cool and a Girl Talk hater who thinks he’s too pop, too hip, too played out, or too easy, all I’ve got for you is a vintage Cosby Show “CHALLENGE!>>>>“.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Girl Talk, mashups, rocking laptops, sweat, Twista+U2
Hours at CES thus far: 22
Hotels Visited: 9
Quality Rank, among all hotels visited, of the Cosmopolitan: 1
Total Number of shoppers spotted within all ten extreme luxury retail stores within new City Center complex: 3
Length, in miles, of line waiting to even ascend escalator to enter Convention Center monorail station at CES closing on Thursday: 0.5
Duration, in minutes, of wait for an official CES shuttle bus to Strip hotels at 6:00 pm: 50 minutes
Unofficial CES 2011 attendee count (as per scuttlebutt): 126000
CES 2010 attendee count: 95000
CES 2008 attendee count (as per 1 taxicab driver who seemed trustworthy): 225000
Rank in display booth square footage of Panasonic at CES 2011 (I think): 1
Number of $50 steaks consumed by men in slim-tailored sport coats: [more data needed]
Tonight I received an automated year-in-review Stats email from WordPress, the platform on which I manage this blog, and I felt compelled to post it automatically from the simple link that concluded the email because I wanted to add this commentary on why this is awesome (as opposed to post it simply to highlight the extremely modest, but interesting, performance of my blog this past year…).
First of all, this email is the perfect example of “delightfully intrusive” communications. It’s delightful because it’s genuinely useful, interesting, and valuable information that I wouldn’t have taken the time or given the attention to focus on for a few moments had WordPress not sent it to me via another medium (email). It’s delightful because it uses certain emotional triggers to reward and reinforce my inclination to keep blogging. And it’s delightful because the timing was perfect — right on January 1st, when the information it contains is timely and interesting.
Secondly, it’s an example of the goodness that can come from using statistics and analytics and data in the right ways: to inform, to compel and motivate additional high-value activity, and to retain customers. I live my professional life in the realm of analytics these days — focused primarily on social media analytics, via my company Spring Creek Group, but also remaining mindful of the ways that site and paid-media marketing analytics can compel better and more valuable programs — so I really take note when smart analytics data is provisioned directly to stakeholders in ways that are timely and valuable. In this case, WordPress is nailing it: automatically, presumably at low-cost, and provisioning just enough data (but not too much) to answer a few key questions without raising too many others.
Third, the info contained within the “2010 in Review” email about my blog is almost all extremely interesting because of the fact that it’s a combination of quantitative (# of posts, # of visitors, # of views, etc.) and qualitative (which posts generated the most interest and views, which sources of traffic to the blog were the most valuable last year, comparisons to other data sources or points that place things in broader context – see the Boeing 747 capacity stats that WordPress cleverly married to my viewership stats in order to make me feel emotionally rewarded for the the impact, however small and modest it really was in comparison to truly high-reach and big-deal personal blogs out there).
Fourth, WordPress editors used a clever combination of infographics, stats, and good copy (the use of “stats monkeys” is a sly humorous nod to the kind of language that analytics geeks really use, acknowledging that at least some of their intended recipients of emails like these probably live or work in the realm of data and stats daily).
Fifth and finally, the WordPress team recognizes the power of making it easy for someone to find value in what they’ve provided and ‘share the love’ — in this case, making it easy for me to further highlight the value I’ve gotten from their communique *and* to share it onwards via a one-click “Post This” link within the email that automatically links back to their own platform and automatically populates a new post (this one, below) with all the information they provisioned to me. Smart, directly tied to their own success metrics (which no doubt include both quality and quantity of new posts generated by their high-value users on their own platform).
Well done , WordPress team.
[p.s. Probably the most interesting insight I took from the wrap-up Stats in the email, reproduced below by WordPress' magical "stats monkey's", was the fact that the biggest drivers of traffic to my blog were the things I've been experimenting with in the first place: 1, occasionally linking back to it via my Twitter account; 2, trying out posts utilizing high-volume search-term topics like cars and popular movies to see if it drives a decent volume of organic search traffic (which it does, apparently - see the 'Cars' and 'Social Network' posts); and, 3, the very domain and H1 Header title of the blog itself, which i intentionally chose a few years ago because I thought it would be funny to claim the domain and choose a blog Title that matched the default phrase used by Firefox when direct-type URL's fail to find a registered domain. All of this provides a feedback loop to me, and encourages me to keep experimenting with both blog topics and copy as well as to keep renewing and building out my domain-specific personal presence on WordPress' platform.]
[p.p.s. For those who have gotten this far, the full content of the "2010 in Review" email content below. All comments above added on by me as a post edit to complement the original content. Cheerio and Happy New Year 2011 to anyone who finds their way to this post!]
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 35 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 191 posts. There were 16 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about a picture per month.
The busiest day of the year was October 26th with 89 views. The most popular post that day was Awesome Things in the Movie The Social Network.
The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, feedly.com, facebook.com, linkedin.com, and claymcdaniel.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for cars with fish names, oops! this link appears broken, oops! this link appears to be broken., subaru pzev badge, and oops! this page appears broken.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Awesome Things in the Movie The Social Network October 2010
Holy Cow There are a Lot of Cars Names After Animals, Fish, and Birds February 2010
1 comment
Bags, bags, and more bags January 2010
2 comments
About August 2007
I love my Subaru, but their new “PZEV” badge makes no sense March 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
