Saturday Tunes

Posted on by under Music

I mentioned awhile back that I would start posting some links to music I like.

I’ve decided weekends would be a good time to throw these out to you. Consider it the Weekend Edition of A Penny For…

I thought about writing a long explanation of the stuff I like, but it would take a long time and I don’t think I would properly capture it anyway. Let me just say I listen to a wide range of stuff.

My links are going to send you to iTunes

My first link is going to be to Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional.

Evangelizing

Posted on by under Business Media

I just wanted to give another pull for the best business publication – The Wall Street Journal. I have spoken their praises in the past. Yesterday’s edition is a perfect example of why I subscribe.

All the WSJ links require a subscription. Spend the $79 and at least get access to the online edition. The print edition is $199 for 52 weeks.

TLC only gets better

Posted on by under Business Media

I would say if the television is on in our house that there is an 80% it will be tuned to TLC.

It sounds like they are only getting better. This fall, one of their new programs is called Taking Care of Business. This from the press release:

A new TLC series hopes to move small businesses from “in the red” to “in the money.” TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS, a new thirteen-episode series on TLC, tackles small business troubles in a big way, and sends a team of gurus — equipped with fresh ideas and plenty of inspiration — to identify problems, turn things around and help businesses live up to their best potential, and let their owners realize their dreams. Together, the “dream team” examines all aspects, from location and product offering to marketing and customer service. They present concrete ideas to help businesses be their best.

[via Radio Marketing Nexus]

P.S. Doug from Trading Spaces also has a new show coming out this fall. They are looking for victims..I mean homeowners.

Speculation Adds to Rising Oil Prices

Posted on by under Economy

WSJ reports [sub. needed] that speculators are heavily involved with energy futures. They are lured by the ever increasing prices for oil and natural gas driven by both supply issues and surging demand.

Analysts believe speculators are playing the role of marginal buyers, sending prices higher than they would otherwise be, but doing little to alter the basic upward trend driven by broader market pressure such as high demand. Jeff Curry, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, estimates prices would be in the low $40s a barrel were it not for the these speculators.

Change This!

Posted on by under Word of Mouth

I want to point people to Change This! I think the project has a lot of potential. Most of the talk I have seen has been criticizing the format and not really talking about the ideas. I realize pdf files are not ideal, but the control over design that you have and the ubiquity of Acrobat readers outweighs the shortcomings. I also think they have done a great job of catering to bloggers by creating permanent pages to link to and trackbacks on those pages.

As for talking about the ideas, it will be interesting to see how that evolves. I think alot of blogs have a small set of topics that they talk about. You are not going to find political editorial on this blog. You are going to find business editorial and (more so lately) thoughts on the evolution of blogging. I think that limits in some ways the viral nature of these manifestos. I wonder if ChangeThis needs to create a medium where the ideas can be talked about.

The interesting part of the project is just starting though. ChangeThis! invites anyone to submit proposals. The proposals are put into the Slush Pile and everyone gets to vote. The most popular proposals move to manifestos. I think that is way cool. And it is very interesting to see which ones are bubbling up.

Geek Speak

Posted on by under Misc.

I was running some statistical analysis this morning (I’m sure that is what most of you are doing at 8AM this Friday morning).

I found my Office X without much for stats.

After a quick Google search, I found this great page with tons of reference documents and lots of online java tools. You can just cut and paste your data, press a button, and get a p-value for your t-test.

Love it.

Finetuning – Question 4

Posted on by under Blogging

I get a lot of people who tell me that if they can get lots of people read their blog they will consider it a success. More eyeballs the better. These are people who still have a media viewpoint of the web.

I believe traffic is important, but linking and commenting are each equally important also. It is about conversations. That means you need people listening (traffic), but you also need people talking back (links and comments).

Today’s question: In your experience, what kinds of entries generate the most comments?

I think I could also ask: What sort of entries do you comment on? What qualities or traits do they have?

Woot! RSS Feed

Posted on by under Technology

I hope you have heard about woot!. Their concept is offering one product per day, and selling it until they are out (and they sell out everyday). The products are of the electronics bend. I like the concept. My wife described it as “The Home Shopping Network for the Internet”. Not a bad description.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed to find out what the item of the day is. Love it.

My trouble is that the feed doesn’t seem to be updating for me. I haven’t been getting no products since Monday. Anyone else had the same problem?

An Evangelism Q&A

Posted on by under Word of Mouth

Q: What company has designers mocking up what they think the next version of a product is going to look like.

A: Apple does.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has two posts (here and here) on the latest design speculation based on a trademark that was filed in Europe.

Update: Engadget is having a contest to guess what is new is coming from Apple. There are prizes too.

Meme Experiment II

Posted on by under Uncategorized

A New Meme That Raises Your Blog’s Google Rankings!
By Nova on Weblogs

This posting is a new, improved, second-generation meme experiment that is designed to spread faster and more broadly than the first meme experiment.

This new meme is simply better because it’s more beneficial to you to participate. Why? Because by participating in this meme, you may be able to raise the Google rank and visibility of your blog. In other words, this meme rewards your blog for hosting it.

Disclaimer

This is purely an experiment and is just for fun. We are really just curious to see what will happen. Furthermore, we have no commercial intentions. We don’t mean to annoy anyone. However, if you don’t have much curiosity, or at least a sense of humor, you might find this experiment to be upsetting. In that case, I suggest a good strong cup of coffee every morning. If after that you are still unhappy, you must not read any further! On the other hand, if you are interested in exploring new frontiers, keep reading and we look forward to your participation in this experiment. It’s totally voluntary. What’s the “meme” being spread here? Well, actually there are many memes that this posting represents. And your weblog URL will be one of them, if you participate.

How It Works.

Just copy this full text of this meme and follow the instructions below to fill out your blog’s answers to the survey and add your blog’s URL to the “PATH LIST” at the bottom of this post. The path list is the history of all the blogs that the meme traveled through to reach you. The last URL before yours in the path list should be the URL for the blog you discovered this meme on. By adding your URL after it, your blog URL becomes part of the path for the meme. Everyone who gets the meme downstream from you will then include your URL on their blog. And by doing that, they are in effect linking to your blog from their blog, which in turn raises your blog’s Google rank. By posting this meme to your blog you help raise the rankings of every blog in the path before yours, and every blog that later posts as a result of your blog then helps to raise your Google ranking. Kinda cool, huh?

By hosting a copy of this meme on your blog you are part of a worldwide network experiment to see how a blog posting spreads across social networks, geography and time. The dataset from this experiment is public, open and decentralized — every blog that participates hosts their own data about their own blog.

Anyone can then get the whole dataset by just searching Google for this unique string: 98818912959q This code is the “global unique identifier,” or GUID for this Meme — it marks every web page that participates in this Meme so that it can later be found with all the others.

To see how this meme is growing at any time, or to join the discussion about this experiment, visit the Root Posting for this meme at http://www.mindingtheplanet.net to see trackbacks and comments there.

A Collaborative, Distributed, Emergent Blogroll

This Meme is effectively a collaborative, distributed, emergent blogroll. It is no different really than any blogroll (any list of other blogs you add to your blog) — it just forms in a different way. Instead of you adding all the links to it, your social network adds them and then you add yours at the end and send it on to others in your social network. There’s no top-down control or guidance of the process. Every blog that participates is equal. Nobody knows what the result of this experiment will be.

Can Your Blog Out-Rank the A-List Blogs?

This Meme, if it works as we hypothesize it might, could help a lot of lesser known blogs get better rankings than even the “A-List” blogs. In other words, it’s kind of like unionizing to beat the big guys. There is strength in numbers, after all. Let’s see if this works! If it does work, we should find lots of lesser-known blogs that participate in this experiment appearing in the “top lists” of the major blog indexes. Who knows, maybe we can even take over the top lists? You can see that this works by just looking at the results of the first meme experiment which launched the Minding The Planet weblog to the number 5 slot of the Daypop Top 40 blog posting index in just two days! Who knows, maybe it will be your blog up there next?

Why Are We Doing This?

OK, so why are we doing this? The short answer is, “Because we can!!!” But seriously, we’re also doing this because it is an interesting way to generate a dataset that we and others may study to analyze how ideas move across social relationships on the Web, and how communities can emerge and self-organize. It’s fun and it’s research, and anyway, it’s harmless and it helps bloggers get better visibility, so we figured we’d just try it and just see what happens! We hope you’ll join us!

Interested in participating? Follow the instructions, below…

INSTRUCTIONS

Step 1 First, to add your blog to this experiment, copy the whole meme (the full text, including the introductory information above and these instructions and the path list at the end) to your blog.

Step 2: Fill in your answers to these REQUIRED SURVEY FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL:

(2) I found this meme on date (day/month/year):18/08/04

(3) I found this meme at time (24 hour time): 15:17:00

(4) I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing the Web” or “Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Newsreader Software

(5) I posted this Meme at my URL: http://www.apennyfor.com

(6) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 18/08/04

(7) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 15:18:00

(8) My posting location is (city, state, country): Mukwonago, WI, USA

Step 3: You may also fill in these OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

(9) My blog is hosted by: N/A

(10) My age is:

(11) My gender is: Male

(12) My occupation is:

(13) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software:

(14) I use the following software to post to my blog:

(15) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 15/06/03

(16) My web browser is: Firefox

(17) My operating system is: Mac OS X

Step 4: Don’t forget to add your URL after the last URL in the PATH LIST below:

The Path List below shows the sequence of blogs that this meme traveled through to reach your blog. Add your blog’s homepage URL to the end of this list, if you want your blog’s Google rankings to be raised as others get the meme from your blog. Also note that if in your blog you post this meme in two parts — an excerpt and an extended entry — make sure to tell your readers to copy the whole meme into their blog, including the Path List. Also Note: If anyone has put anything inappropriate in the list — like porn or advertising for example — then feel free to delete it from the list. Unless you like porn and/or advertising! Then, at the end of the list, add a text link and a hotlink to your URL)

THE PATH LIST: HOW THIS MEME GOT TO YOUR BLOG

1. http://www.mindingtheplanet.net Minding The Planet
2. http://www.pheedo.info Pheedo
3. http://www.apennyfor.com A Penny For…
4. (your URL goes here; also, please add a new line after this one, for the next person.)