Abbott and Costello Meet Wall Street
By Brian | December 4, 2007
Computer services consultancy BearingPoint has replaced their CEO, Harry You, with their COO, Ed Harbach. The article’s headline?
Who, me?
Categories: The World Wide Weird | 3 Comments »
The Imus Chronicles
By Brian | December 2, 2007
Now that this seems to have played itself out, let’s review Don Imus’ last year, shall we?
April, 2007 – Imus makes an insensitive remark about the surging Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team.
April, 2007 – Civil rights activists, chiefly Rev. Al Sharpton, feed the Gaffe Machine, and get Imus kicked off CBS Radio and MSNBC Television.
Soon after April, 2007 – CBS Radio gives Don Imus $20 million to refrain from publicly commenting on the incident.
April – November, 2007 – Don Imus enjoys an 7+ month vacation, complete with $20 million in pay.
December, 2007 – Don Imus resumes his daily radio show, this time at WABC radio in New York, the most listened to talk radio station in the country, and where he originally earned his “shock jock” moniker. (Hat tip to Mike Starr: Imus got his big break at WNBC, not WABC).
December, 2007 – Rev. Al Sharpton has no comment, except to say he’s “waiting to see.”
Is it me, or does it seem like the only people that were hurt by this whole affair was the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team? And, as I said before, they by Rev. Sharpton much more than by Don Imus?
Categories: News and/or Media | 2 Comments »
Excel Macro to Create Table HTML
By Brian | December 2, 2007
Way back in August of 2006, I posted on how to make HTML tables appear properly in Blogger posts. Since then, whenever I needed one, I’d write out the code in a text editor, get it just like I wanted it, and remove all the line breaks and paste the resulting (cryptic) code in my post.
It occurred to me recently that Excel should be able to do this for me. I tried the “Save As HTML” feature, but the HTML code it generates is exceedingly difficult to read. It’s not that it’s incorrect, mind you, it’s just that it includes individual style elements for each cell, so the resulting HTML is very flexible, but also very difficult to read.
To address this problem, I’ve written a quick Visual Basic macro that creates simple HTML code, like most people use for quick and dirty tables in blogposts.
Here’s what you need to do:
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Categories: Tech Talk | Comments Off on Excel Macro to Create Table HTML How People Found Me – November EditionBy Brian | December 2, 2007 The Categories
Queries were up dramatically again this month (943 vs. 736), thanks to an explosion of Billy Joel queries, an even bigger explosion (you should pardon the expression) of Adult/Porn-related queries, my Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree photoblog, and a couple of posts I did on TicTacs. And you thought these How People Found Me posts were self-indulgent and boring… After months of lagging slightly behind Technology, Billy Joel has surged past it with 237 unique queries in the month of November (up almost 30% from October). Back in October, I was shocked to see I had 23 unique Adult/Porn-Related queries that brought people to my site. Well, in November, it was 149. That’s me – the Larry Flynt of the microblogosphere. Hah! Meanwhile, keep reading and check out some of the things people Google for (and then click through to my site for!) Words fail. In other news, fourteen separate TicTac related queries brought people to my site. Read about those below as well – it’s hard not to laugh at just about any Google query about TicTacs, but these are especially rich. Also interesting this month are the types of queries that dropped in popularity. Politics is down 47%, which probably has more to do with me not blogging about it than people not caring about it. Baseball is down 73%, which also makes sense given that October contained the post-season and November contains contract negotiations. Also, that country song with “I Should Be Sleeping” in the title seems to have run it’s course – queries are down a whopping 95%. And in news that is sure to bother the Jersey crowd, queries about Bruce Springsteen dropped off a whopping 85%. Like baseball, though, Bruce wrapped up his big season in October. The Referring Sites This month’s referring site of the month award goes to buzz.mn, James Lileks, proprietor. James posted something about Christmas lights this month, and I replied in the comments with a link to my Rockefeller Center exploits (hey – a little self-promotion never hurt anyone). My comment generated 130 pageviews from 36 unique visitors. Those Minnesotans are so nice, aren’t they? I also tried my hand at self-promotion on a New York Times blog called Dot Earth, which had talked about New York’s efforts to make the tree more enviro-friendly. Again, my efforts yielded results – 61 pageviews from 17 unique visitors. The Keywords All told, a whopping 943 queries resulted in hits to Familygreenberg.com in November (207 more than were used in October). Here are some of the more entertaining samples: We start with Billy Joel, in honor of his recent Google surge. There were bound to be some winners in a field of 237:
Next, we move on to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Again, with that many queries, there are bound to be one or two gems:
Next, we move on to TicTacs. I remind you, these aren’t all the TicTac related queries from which I received hits, these are just the funniest five:
Now it’s time for our two monthly features. First, the generally wild and wacky:
And finally, the Adult/Porn-Related queries. I’m starting to think that maybe posting the strangest ones in these monthly updates is what’s driving the traffic. I can only hope that some of these folks stick around and find something more, er….wholesome to read than what they were looking for:
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on How People Found Me – November Edition Familygreenberg.com Health Check – November EditionBy Brian | December 2, 2007
Well, any way you look at it, November was a good month for FamilyGreenberg.com. As best as I can surmise, it stems from two reasons. First, Billy Joel is preparing to tour again, and the number of people looking for him on Google has skyrocketed. And since my site is such a Billy Joel Google magnet (still not complaining, but still don’t understand why/how), I reap the benefits. Second, I decided to Photoblog the arrival, setup, decoration and lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in November, since I was walking by it every morning anyway. This little experiment turned out to be a huge success, and not only drove traffic to the site, but also increased traffic to non-tree related pages. In December, we’ll see if people stick around… Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Familygreenberg.com Health Check – November Edition We’re #1,574!By Brian | December 1, 2007 This cool, interactive chart from the New York Times shows the 5,000 most common surnames in the United States, according to the Census Bureau, who has compiled this list exactly twice in history (once in 1990, and once in 2007). I’m proud to report that Greenberg stands proudly at #1,574, just behind Redmond and just ahead of Cote. Most of my friends’ and fellow bloggers’ names don’t make the list, with the exception of Starr, who comes in at an impressive 1,135 (between Joyner and Morin) and Walsh, who blows us all away with a whopping #265 (between Fields and Little). Up next: some even more useless information. Finding it may take a while, though… ;-) Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment » Suggestive Sporting Goods MergerBy Brian | December 1, 2007 From the Pittsburgh Business Times:
Careful research has been done on this topic, and extensive studies have proven that there exists no way in the modern world to comment on this story without making a sexually suggestive reference. That is all. Categories: The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on Suggestive Sporting Goods Merger Rodney King’s Luck ContinuesBy Brian | November 30, 2007 In a story that received almost no airplay, given what a media sensation this man once was, Rodney King was shot on Wednesday evening on a street corner in San Bernardino, California. The article says he was hit two or three times in the face, arms, back and torso by birdshot fired from a shotgun from a distance, and that his wounds were not life-threatening. It reminds me (and several of the stories commenters) of the time Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face with birdshot during a quail-hunting trip earlier in the year. What I find most interesting about this is how Rodney King has “fallen from grace” in the eyes of the media. Back in 1991, he was an iconic victim – an African-American man who was savagely beaten by white police officers in Los Angeles, touching off a series of riots in the city that left 55 people dead and caused more than $1 billion in property damage. He received a $3.8 million settlement in the ensuing lawsuit, and would occasionally pop up in the press to reiterate his rather inspiring tag line, “Why can’t we all just get along?” Since then, though, he’s had many run-ins with the law, including a 2004 jail stint for driving under the influence of PCP (the drug he was high on when he got beaten by the LA cops). After this week’s shooting, police officers found it difficult to get information at his home because his house guests “appeared to be drunk and few cooperated with officers by providing information.” While no one’s justifying the beating he took, I think perhaps the media has realized that Mr. King has some serious problems, and that while he was a victim, the term “innocent victim” is probably too much of a stretch. I’ll also note that no one has even mentioned the skin color of the person who shot him. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I think on the whole, it’s probably a positive thing. Categories: News and/or Media | Comments Off on Rodney King’s Luck Continues Manual Google MarketingBy Brian | November 30, 2007 Yesterday afternoon, I tried something I hadn’t tried before. I went to Technorati, searched for “Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree” and then posted a comment on the Top 5 resulting blogs that basically said, “Hey, I have a photoblog – come take a look!” (Actually, I posted to the Top 6, since one of the Top 5 was Simple Tricks and Nonsense, where my online friend Jason Bennion did a post specifically about my page). As of last night, the results were poor. Three of the five blogs had removed my comment altogether, probably mistaking it for comment spam (or, maybe it is comment spam? That’s a philisophical discussion, I guess, although I’d argue that while self-promoting, at least the link was to a relevant topic. Plus, I’m not collecting IP addresses or selling anyone anything). But, I digress… Anyway, this morning I checked my Google Analytics stats and found that the volume to my site had increased 100% over the average volume for the month (201 pageviews, as opposed to an average of just over 100). Seventeen of those hits came from Simple Tricks, and thirty-eight came from one of the two blogs I posted to. The other blog generated no hits at all. Two interesting thoughts: 1) The blog that generated traffic is run by the New York Times. So while blogging is all about the little guy having a voice to compete with big media, we once again see that big media is correctly named – even a very small percentage of their much larger audience can move the needle on a small site like mine. 2) Self-promotion works. The photoblog page had been averaging around 11 pageviews per day since I started it, so only ~25 of the extra 100 views came directly from the link. Pages/Visit yesterday was 1.97, as compared to 1.60 the rest of the month – a 23% increase. This further exemplifies Scalzi’s Bacon Cat Incident Effect which recognizes that when you get someone to your site for a particular reason, they often look around a while before they leave. Hopefully, a few of them come back from time to time and an audience builds. This concludes today’s random observations about the Googleverse. You may now return to your regularly scheduled lives. Oh, and P.S.: If you’re here because you viewed the photoblog yesterday and came back to check out the blog, welcome! Please come back often and tell your friends! Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Manual Google Marketing Christmas at Rockefeller Center – The Big Day Finally ArrivesBy Brian | November 29, 2007
One administrative note: now that the tree is lit, I’ve put the pictures back in chronological order, as opposed to reverse chronological order, as I had them throughout the process. For those who have been reading all along and just want to see the latest, click the double-right arrow to go to the end, and the click the left arrow to see tonight’s batch (13 pictures from tonight, 55 in all). I figure this is a better way to organize the pictures for those hundreds of people who will Google-stumble across this page in the months and years to come. So all that’s left to say now is Merry Christmas to you and yours. There’s no denying it now – the turkey is eaten, the tree is lit, Black Friday has been blackened, and Cyber Monday has been processed. It’s Christmas season, boys and girls! Deck the halls, roast the chestnuts over an open fire, and jingle all the way! Categories: New York, New York | 1 Comment » |
All I can say is, that was definitely worth the wait. Check out the completed