Blogging about Blogs
Washington Post Inadvertently quotes Brian, Jeff
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006OK, here’s what happened: Jeff Porten writes this post, in which he links to this WaPo article. I respond with this post, also linking to the same WaPo article.
The Washington Post has a feature on their website called “Who’s Blogging?” which is powered by Technorati. A link to my post shows up as the first of three blogs in the banner ad that appears with the article (see picture). If you click on the “Full List of Blogs” link, you get this page, which includes both my post and Jeff’s.
At a very minimum, this is very cool. To the uninformed observer, though, the whole thing looks a little like Jeff and I were contacted by the WaPo and asked to comment on the article, which of course, isn’t the case. In any case, I won’t return the check if they decide to send me one.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs, News and/or Media | 1 Comment »
Do I hear $1,129.09?
Wednesday, August 16th, 2006Here’s a algorithm that estimates the value of your blog based on the number of links it has and the value per link that AOL paid for the Weblogs, Inc. blogs.
I Should Be Sleeping comes in at $1,129.08. Not a bad sum, until you consider that DailyKos is worth $6.2M, Instapundit is worth $3.5M, and John Scalzi’s Whatever is worth just over $500K.
Interestingly enough, JeffPorten.com comes up as being worth 1,026.44 NL HE SNG’s. Damn, that’s a well written algorithm…
(Hat tip: Scalzi)
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 1 Comment »
How People Find Me – July Edition
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006Fascinating Google searches that led people to my site in the month of July:
- condi headache (4 / 232,000)
- internet is not a truck it is a njtransit (>100 / 33,900)
- net neutraliity (2 / 10)*
- how to wire a dsl jack (33 / 1,230,000)**
- economics of nintendo in the 1980’s (>100 / 11,200)
- clonk scenarios (>100 / 565)***
- christie brinkley now (>100 / 504,000)
- finding naked pictures (>100 / 20,100,000)
- argument on demand (>100 / 45,600,000)
- no whammies no whammiesstop (1 / 3)****
- couple sleeping positions meaning (>100 / 13,500,000)
*: That’s right, I’m one of the prime resources for people who are interested in net neutrality but can’t spell “neutrality.”
**: Somewhere, Steve Walsh is laughing his ass off…
***: I have no idea what a “clonk” is, nor does that word appear on my website. Google bug?
****: If you put the space before the word “stop,” I drop to 7 / 777,000. Still, a fitting tribute to, er…what’s his name. You know – the Whammy guy.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on How People Find Me – July Edition
The Great Simple Tricks Pizza Challenge!
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006Well, this is interesting…
Jason Bennion, who blogs at Simple Tricks and Nonsense, has a friend who makes the rather ridiculous claim that a pizza place in Salt Lake City, Utah (Este) makes a pizza that “rivals or excels over the best New York has to offer.” I, of course, suggested that this claim is likely based on the assumption that none of his customers will ever travel to New York and compare. Little does this pizza store owner know about the power of the internet’s long tail…
Long story short, Jason’s friend has agreed to reach out to the pizza store owner (Dave) and have him send me a pizza. He even plans to create a short film about it. My role is to eat said pizza, and blog about the relative similarities/differences to a genuine New York pie.
As Jasons says on his blog:
I, of course, am planning to blog the whole process and am simply thrilled that my little corner of cyberspace has finally given rise to one of those ridiculous stunts that the Internet seems to have been invented for…
As am I, Jason. As am I.
Gentlemen, start your ovens…
UPDATE: More info here.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs, The World Wide Weird | 1 Comment »
How People Find Me (Catch-Up Edition)
Monday, June 12th, 2006Inspired by Jeff Porten, I finally went ahead and wrote the query to pull back search phrases people used to access this blog. I’ll try to check in once a month or so like Jeff does, so we’ll know what people are looking for (and what they’re actually finding). Anyway, let the fun begin:
- Billy Joel concert review (3 / 1,100,000)
- What prevents crime (4 / 7,590,000)
- bad billy joel songs (>100 / 2,510,000)
- microsoft outlook 2003 is not responding (>100 / 3,360,000)
- anna kornikova nude pictures (68 / 81,800)
- jeff porten (12 / 68,500)
- baby duck (7 / 1,140)
- grease platypus (>100 / 79,100)
- scotus interruptus (25 / 591)
- congressional decorum <>100 / 147,000)
- i’ll be watching you from above <>100 / 22,400,000)
- sleeping with someone (>100 / 26,100,000)
- is sleeping with your children ok (>100 / 10,900,000)
- leahy wiretapping (3 / 120,000)***
- embarrasing photos of people in their underwear (>100 / 25,000)
***: Jeff’s How people find me, May version, in which he points out that I “still kick [his] ass” on the “leahy wiretapping” query, now ranks #2, ahead of my post, which is #3. I’m sure that in a couple of days, this post will outrank his. So at what point are we just intentionally messing with the Google algorithm?
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on How People Find Me (Catch-Up Edition)
New Low in Ego Stroking: Google Bragging
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006For those too busy to do a Google search on “leahy wiretapping”, allow me to brief you on the results:
Result #17:
I Should Be Sleeping: Senator Leahy on Privacy in the Post 9/11 World by Brian Greenberg
Result #129:
TidBITS: CFP 2006: Life, Liberty and Digital Rights by Jeff Porten
Result #363:
TidBITS#828/08-May-06, including the above article by Jeff Porten.
Not in the top 400 (but accessible when searching “leahy wiretapping site:jeffporten.com”):
The Vast Jeff Wing Conspiracy – CFP2006
So now just so we’re sure we got this straight:
– Jeff goes to conference
– Jeff gets a paying gig writing about the conference in a well respected e-zine
– E-zine posts Jeff’s article
– Jeff blogs about his article being posted
– I read his blog post, read the article, and comment on it in my blog.
– Google classifies my blog post first, Jeff’s article second, and Jeff’s blog post third.
We’re living in a very strange world, folks…
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 1 Comment »
What’s Wrong with the World Today – A Microcosm
Thursday, May 18th, 2006I don’t know, maybe I’m just tired and need to take a break, but it seems to me that the nature of political debate (at least in the blogosphere) has degraded into a lot of meaningless shouting lately. I used to find these discussions informative (and sometimes even entertaining), but now I often feel like I’m screaming into the wind.
Here’s the downward spiral as I see it:
- An event occurs in the world.
- Several people have a knee-jerk reaction to it, based almost entirely on emotion or political affiliation.
- Other people, perhaps inspired by the knee-jerk reaction, escalate the emotions with comments about a tangentially (or not at all) related topic.
- People who have more information, either through research or experience, disagree and provide supporting evidence.
- The first group counters with one of several canned responses: a) “You’ve missed my point”, b) “You’re a partisan hack that won’t listen to the other side of the argument”, c) “Your ‘facts’ are just a pack of lies created by <insert name of opposition here>”, or d) “You’re crazy – my brother-in-law’s friend’s wife knew this guy who <insert anecdotal, and probably apocryphal, story here>.”
- Other people, seeking to do actual research on the topic, read this crap use it to defend related positions on some other blog
- Repeat ad nauseum.
As you can imagine, this process turns in on itself in multiple places. People citing source material may be providing factual sanity to the discussion, or they may simply be recycling garbage from another blogger’s emotional rants. People without facts respond to the appearance of these facts with “You’ve missed my point” and then promptly change their point to something they feel more confident defending.
Eventually, the conversation goes nowhere.
I bring this up because of something I read recently about Google (hat tip: Instapundit). Let’s follow the bouncing ball on this one, OK? Stay with me, though, this gets a little strange in spots…
THE EVENT OCCURS
It seems Google donated more than $1 million to MoveOn.org, to help them lobby for Internet regulation legislation in Congress.
INITIAL, EMOTIONAL REACTION
Amy says:
That’s it. I’m changing my homepage to Ask.com.
This is fine, of course – changing her homepage is her perogative. I don’t much like MoveOn.org either, nor do I have any idea where they stand on Net Neutrality or other Internet regulation. But I’m also a Google user and a Google shareholder, and their political donations don’t affect the way their search engine performs, so I’m staying put. But like I said, Amy can set her homepage to whatever she wants for whatever reason.
MORE EMOTION
Jabba the Tut chimes in with:
I’ve had it with Google. After helping China censor the internet, use Hizbollah as a legitimate news source, while dissing conservative/libertarian websites, supporting the MoveOn smear merchants was the last straw. I’ve posted instructions on how to remove Google from your FireFox toolbar at <link>.
Jabba’s teetering on the edge of truth here: Google complied with Chinese laws, many of which would be considered censorship in this country, and took some heat for it in the US. Their GoogleNews service uses an algorithm to establish the relevance of a news article, so while the algorithm might require tweaking (the product was in Beta for a very long time), it’s probably a stretch to claim that Google is intentionally promoting one website over another for political purposes. And, of course, he implicitly converts Google’s donations to aid in congressional lobbying into carte blance support for all of MoveOn’s positions. This might very well be true, but he has no proof (or at least he doesn’t offer any).
ESCALATION
Next up is Chris J. Breisch:
I’ve been saying for some time that Google is the Evil Empire. This just proves it. Remember, Google records every search you EVER make and tags it with your IP and every link you follow from a search. This is presumably so that they can tailor your results better to you in the future, but this is the ultimate in “big brother-ism”. I will never use Google again.
Ugh…
First of all, every search engine records every search you make, and every web server has an IP address for every pageview. Suddenly, though, Google is “big brother.”
FACTS APPEAR, BUT ONLY BRIEFLY
Bryan C. to the rescue:
Wait a sec. This isn’t about necessarily about Google supporting MoveOn’s ridiculous political antics. It’s about funneling money to sponsor the Net Neutrality bill. I hate MoveOn, but I must admit that I have some mixed feelings about opposing that bill. This time at least it sounds like Google’s acting out of responsible self interest, and I expect that from a corporation. Though I’d prefer they’d have sponsored a more neutral opponent of the bill and stayed far, far away from MoveOn’s slimy den.
[Also], every single web server you visit does the exact same thing, including every other search engine in existence. Traffic logging and analysis are vital to any smoothy functioning web site. . . . If you don’t like or trust Google then by all means use someone else, they really need the competition, but whoever you use will be gathering the same data.
This should be the point where Chris (and maybe even Jabba) come back and say, “Thanks, Bryan – that was useful information. I hadn’t realized this was standard technical architecture as opposed to evil, corporate greed.” But alas, no…
ESCALATION & EMOTION RETURN
LatinoPundit says:
Did you type this on a Microsoft comptuer b/c it is standard quo to put cookies (tracking software) on your computer to make it easy for everyone to see where ya been? Now all of the sudden you are outraged b/c of Google? Ha!
…and then Karen chimes in with this gem:
Get the word out: by using Google paying links, you support MoveOn.
Between the whole child porn thing they got going, their anti-semitism, and then the censorship in China, Google is a joke. Why isn’t anyone going after them like they did Microsoft? Where is a tobacco lawyer when you need one? Maybe we should say there is a lacrosse player working at Google, then all the libs will go after them.
OK, so now cookies are secret, tracking software, invented by Microsoft to see where you go online, Google is involved in child porn, anti-semitism, and censorship in China, and both companies are just as bad as tobacco companies and the (currently convicted of nothing) Duke lacrosse team.
First of all, cookies aren’t software, they’re data files. Secondly, all servers create cookies (Windows and otherwise), and they write those cookies to all kinds of desktop machines (Windows and otherwise). Claiming cookies as a Microsoft product is like claiming that Toyota makes gasoline. Furthermore, cookies don’t track where you go on the web. They record that you’ve been to the specific site that created the cookie, so when you return it can personalize your experience.
As for Google, the “child porn” thing was actually Google refusing to give search data to the federal government who wanted it to support its case against child porn. We’ve already discussed the censorship thing in China, and for the life of me, I have no idea where anti-semitism came from. So much for a reasonable discussion of corporate political donations and/or net neutrality. How I feel for Bryan C….
MORE FACTS COME AND GO…
The comment thread goes on to contain a fact-based post about net neutrality (from Dan), a post from Brian Carnell calling Dan a liar, and a post from Dan saying “Brian – we’re saying the same thing.”
Then David Johnson gets into the act. He tells Brian: “I have read A LOT of discussion about this issue and that is the first I’ve read of what you just said,” and then he tells Dan, “Yup, I think [you] sum it up about right.” Which, of course, is interesting, since Dan just told Brian he was saying the same thing. I guess we are to assume that David agrees with Dan’s take on net neutrality, but not with his take on Brian’s post about that topic. Sheesh!
Next, Jon Kay provides a link with more information about net neutrality (helpful), and then an anonymous reader ignores that information entirely and accuses Google of mounting “a campaign to outlaw financial transactions between consenting adults” (I have no idea what that even means).
I GIVE UP…
And so it goes. If you’re just a reader looking to learn something from all of this, you need to mentally separate the signal from the noise. In the above example, it’s all pretty clear, but sometimes the noisemakers don’t reveal themselves until late in the game, when you’ve already been distracted from the main point.
If you dare to participate in one of these discussions, you had better be prepared to ignore half the participants or do battle with a bunch of uninformed crazy people. In several cases (which admittedly, is all my own fault), I’ve found myself the last man standing – all the rational people have abandoned the thread, and I’m left explaining to some crazy person that Google isn’t monitoring his personal search history, or that Microsoft isn’t reading his e-mail, or that George W. Bush isn’t personally listening in on his phone conversations. But what do I know – I’m just a partisan hack that won’t listen to the other side of the argument.
Sigh…
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 5 Comments »
Happy Birthday, I Should Be Sleeping!
Monday, May 8th, 2006Since the occasion is sure to slip by everybody but me (and, to be fair, it almost slipped by me as well), I feel the need to point out that today marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. I thought I’d take this opportunity to take narcissism to a whole new level, and give myself a bit of an annual review. Those who are put off by such endeavors are encouraged to move on now…
Traffic
This is post #203, which comes out to a little more than one post every two days. Not bad, considering my initial concern was whether I’d have the time or interest to keep a blog updated for any length of time.
The blog itself has drawn 1,292 hits during the year, but I’m assuming that roughly 600 of those hits are from me. As much as I like Blogger, my one complaint is that the only way to verify a post is online is to go to the blog itself, which messes with the statistics. I typically post, bring up the blog page, make edits, and check the blog again. That plus the occasional hit I make to see if anyone’s commented (I get e-mail when someone comments, but I occasionally check from work or from my blackberry, where I don’t have access to my personal e-mail). At any rate, 600 is a conservative estimate, but works for my (self-serving) purposes.
The individual posts to the blog have drawn 6,135 hits for the year, driven mostly by a higher-than-I-can-possibly-explain PageRank in Google.
That makes 6,827 blog hits, as compared to 8,165 non-blog hits on the rest of my site, or 45.6% of my total traffic driven by the blog. This makes sense, given that the rest of the site doesn’t update nearly as often, but is also gratifying in the sense that I’m not completely screaming into the wind over here.
Post Highlights
The average post has received 30.4 hits, but this is very misleading. My top two posts have 4,270 hits (more on that later). Without those two posts, the average is around 9.3 hits, which feels much more like reality. Another useless stat: 28 of the 202 posts (14%) have received 20 hits or more, so again – once in a while, I reach beyond my circle of friends (loyal readers who visit here because they already know me from pre-blog days).
Here are links to my top 10 posts of the year (by traffic):
Concert Review: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden – 2,936 hits
Billy Joel plays the oldies… – 1,334 hits
What Prevents Crime? – 80 hits
A Review: Billy Joel – My Lives, Disc 1 – 60 hits
Apple takes a shortcut, costs me $30 – 53 hits
Help for the Tech Support Generation – 45 hits
More on the Mactel front… – 43 hits
A Review: Billy Joel – My Lives, Disc 3 – 43 hits
Cats & Dogs Living Together – 40 hits
A Review: Billy Joel – My Lives, Disc 2 – 38 hits
I find it very gratifying that this list composes many of my interests: music (specifically, Billy Joel), technology, and a hint of politics/current events. The big news for the year, however, was Billy Joel’s 2006 concert tour to promote his new box set My Lives. I saw a setlist from the one of the first shows and blogged about it with Billy Joel plays the oldies…. Fans, starved for setlists, took to Google in droves, and my site became a popular link. Even though the post contains nothing very substantial (except a link to a setlist), it quickly became the most popular post on the blog. Then, I saw the show itself. On the train ride home, I blogged a review from my blackberry, Concert Review: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden, which has single-handedly commandeered 43% of the blog’s traffic in a single post. It’s also set records for comments – generating 45 (including my own responses to commenters with questions). In an attempt to “give the people what they want,” I wrote reviews for each of the four discs in the box set, which have also generated healthy traffic (although nothing like the ones that mention the tour). In fact, it’s occurring to me now that just discussing it here will probably drive this post up in the Google searches, leading people somewhere they probably don’t want to be. If you’re on of these people, my apologies. I can only hope that the title “Happy Birthday…” is enough warning to prevent extra clicks.
The Comments
Since we’ve already established that the whole point of this endeavor is self-serving ego boosting, I’ll go on to admit that the biggest kick I get is when people leave comments. I’ll acknowledge right up front my loyal readers, who also happen to be some of my best friends: Jeff Porten, Michael Weinmayr, and Mike Starr (with an occasional visit from Steve Walsh). Those guys comment all the time, which is fun, but the real ego-boost is when I get comments from people I don’t know, especially when they’re from different parts of the world. Some examples:
From the Billy Joel Concert review post:
International:
thanks mate… nice review!.. am considering buying a ticket for the London show at wembley
International again:
Thanks for this blog, Better hurry before the US soldiers stationed here buy ’em all up. Will bring a pack of tissues in case Good Night Saigon is part of the set…
Useful:
Took a few Googles to finally nail down the info you provided. Thanks.
Helping to Sell Tickets:
Thanks for providing the info I needed to decide to go.
Fostering a Sense of Community:
Thanks for this blog it has been great to share in everyone’s experiences.
A Vote for Quality (and again, international):
What a great review- sounded real- not all sugar!! Thanks again. Meic- the Isle of Man [mid-way between England and Ireland]
Here’s one from Apple takes a shortcut, costs me $30:
I wanted to thank you for your post. I too am new to the video ipod and was getting frustrated beyond belief…as of this morning, all problem videos are working perfectly. Thanks again!!
I’ve discussed Google’s ability to help people solve technical problems several times over the year. It’s such a kick to know I did the same for someone else without ever being asked.
Finally, some comments from a recent post, Why Watch United 93:
Thanks, Brian, for a very thoughtful and informative response. Your perspective now makes a lot more sense to me now.
I’m glad I clicked over here to read your perspective, Brian.
This came from a conversation on Simple Tricks and Nonsense with Jason Bennion and his girlfriend, Anne, who live in Utah, and found my thoughts and feelings about 9/11 and the recent United 93 movie helpful in thinking about what the event (and the film) meant to them. Again, this kind of personal connection, especially about something so emotional, would have been inconceivable without a blog.
Links
While I Should Be Sleeping has been mainly a self-standing entity, it has received links from a few other blogs. First and foremost, of course, is Jeff Porten’s very cool blog, The Vast Jeff Wing Conspiracy. He has linked over here on posts about technology (About The Cult of Macintosh, Spending My Summer in Boot Camp, and Quantifying Wintel Macintoshes to name just a few), about politics (Menschenhawks, for example), and even about Penn Basketball (Penn, the Mourning After). His site generates a lot more traffic than mine, and I’m sure the residual effects of his links have been invaluable in achieving the (very) modest degrees of success I’ve seen over here. Thanks a bunch, Jeff!
As I said above though, the real kick is when people I don’t otherwise know get into the act. Two quick examples:
First, another case of “I inadvertently help someone I don’t know with a technical problem.” In this case, it’s PunditMania, who gave me a hat tip for helping solve a Blogger template problem in Solving Template Problems Arising since the Introduction of Blogger Images.
And then, of course, there’s this guy, who’s a fan of the rapper, Daddy Yankee, and thinks I’m a bad influence on my son because I take him to Yankee Games. Easily the funniest link I saw on the web all year…
Where Do I Go From Here?
As I’ve said, the blog’s generated a small modicum of good in the world, and I’m having a blast writing it, so I’ll certainly continue doing what I’m doing. I can’t think of anything to change, really – I’m pretty happy with the frequency of the posts, the topics, the page layout, etc., etc. If you’re reading this and you have any suggestions, please drop me a line.
The only thought I had was, as kind of a birthday present to myself, to register IShouldBeSleeping.com and redirect it to this site. Unfortunately, someone already owns that domain. Fortunately, he’s willing to sell it (I think he bought it in the hopes that some anti-insomnia concern would want to pay big money for it). Unfortunately, e-mails to his published address bounce back with a “Sorry…this mailbox is full” message. Apparently, he’s purchased more than 300 domains in hopes of selling them off, but doesn’t seem to be checking his inbox too frequently.
If anyone’s still reading this diatribe, and has any suggestions about how else I’d go about obtaining this domain, I’d be happy to hear about it. I’m not looking to drop a ton of money on it, but I figure at least start a negotiation and see where it takes me…
That’s about it. As is typically the case on this site, it’s insanely late at night and I should be, well…you know.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 3 Comments »
Experimenting with the Link Exchange
Thursday, September 1st, 2005I got an email from the folks who run The FraudWatcher network. They’ve linked one of my blog entries (What Prevents Crime?) to one of their pages, and have asked me to link back to them. OK, here goes:
Fraud – Crime In Aruba
Description: Fraud Prevention, Information and News about Fraud Online
The page I’m linking to has some formatting issues at best, and at worst reads like it’s written for search engines to find rather than humans (lots of half sentences, no line breaks, etc.). My links is one of 81 links listed at the bottom of the page as “Other Websites.” Also, they want me to “register” my reciprocal link, or they’ll de-link me from their site. On the upside, the e-mail claims they get 1,000 hits a day, and at this point, I’m basically a traffic whore, so I’ll take whatever I can find. If you’re reading this and you came from that site, do me a favor? Drop me a comment on this post & tell me what you think of their site (and mine, if you like). I’m curious if this is a scam or a legitimate operation.
And for the record: I’ve been to Aruba four times in the last five years. The horrible events concerning Natalee Holloway aside, I’ve never seen anything on the island that even comes close to crime, let alone the crime waves and drug problems referenced on the FraudWatcher site. Then again, I spend 100% of my time going from resort complex to resort complex (beach, casinos, restaurants, etc.), so maybe I’d have worse (better?) luck with crime if I strayed off the beaten path a little.
Also, my parents, my wife and I took our kids to Carlos and Charlie’s last year to celebrate Brandon’s second birthday (pictures here – check out the last two for the birthday festivities). We had a great time. And although the restaurant is where Ms. Holloway was before she encountered trouble, and nothing unusual or illegal happened at the restaurant, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to hear that some percentage of people now consider it unsafe. Such is life on the perception/reality continuum.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs, News and/or Media | Comments Off on Experimenting with the Link Exchange
Follow the Tipping Hat…
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005OK, first things first: Hat Tip to Yishai over at Digital Irony for reminding me that a search for your own URL in Technorati works as a trackback system for folks using Blogger which, as far as I know, doesn’t provide trackback functionality on the individual posts.
Second, a big old “right-backatcha” to Punditmania for giving me my first official Hat Tip.
Let’s hear it for the unknown bloggers – one big happy family…
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 1 Comment »