Calling all Nick Ut fans…
By Brian | June 9, 2007
So this is weird: the guy who took this picture also took this picture.
Which do you think will wind up earning him more money?
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 4 Comments »
Sign of the Times…
By Brian | June 8, 2007
My son, Avery, in the car this afternoon, passing a bank: Daddy, what does ATM stand for?
Me: Automatic Teller Machine
Avery: Daddy, what’s a teller?
Categories: Family Matters, The Future is Now | Comments Off on Sign of the Times…
Fancy Gift Cards…
By Brian | June 8, 2007
My son just got a Target Gift Card for his birthday. Check it out:
My, we’ve come quite a way with these things, haven’t we?
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »
Best PC Accessory ever…
By Brian | June 6, 2007
OK, what’s cool about this isn’t so much that it’s a beverage chiller, but that it’s a beverage chiller that plugs into a USB port.
Categories: Tech Talk | 3 Comments »
The Many Fortunes of Alex Rodriguez
By Brian | June 4, 2007
After a disappointing post-season last year, talk around New York baseball fans/writers was about whether or not the Yankees should trade Alex Rodriguez.
A-Rod silenced those voices this year, by having what could arguably be called the best April in the history of baseball: a .355 Batting Average, 14 Home Runs, 34 RBIs, a .415 On-Base Percentage, and an .882 Slugging Percentage. Most of these statistics led the league.
But consider this: what would fans and sportswriters have said if their “28 million dollar man” wound up April with a .235 Batting Average, 5 Home Runs, 11 RBIs, a .361 On-Base Percentage, and an .422 Slugging Percentage?
Because that’s what he did in May.
Of course, April’s stats are the only ones that are published on their own; May’s are baked into the season-to-date numbers, hidden forever to anyone who doesn’t know about ESPN’s Splits page. I get the feeling, though, that had A-Rod’s first two months of 2007 been reversed, and April 30th saw him hitting .235 and embroiled in a couple of on-field and off-field scandals, that the New York sharks would be smelling fresh meat.
Once again, perception meets reality and clocks it upside the head…
Categories: Sports Talk | Comments Off on The Many Fortunes of Alex Rodriguez
Microsoft’s Surface Computing
By Brian | June 2, 2007
Check out this demo of Milan, Microsoft’s new “Surface Computing” product. It’s a really slick, touch screen computer built into the surface of a table. They’ve got some silly applications (a paint program), as well as some more interesting ones, like a photo slideshow/viewer where pictures and video can be moved around the table and resized by stretching them (a la Apple’s iPhone), and a restaurant application that shows interactive menus (the restaurant kind, not the computer kind).
It can also recognize real world objects. The glass of wine you ordered can be tagged so when you put it on the table, the table can “label” it with the kind of wine, the winery, or other advertising/promotional content. And when you’re paying the bill, it can recognize your credit card, and let you split up the bill by dragging pictures of what you ate onto your credit card (not an icon depicting your card, mind you, but the card itself). When you’re done, there’s a “Pay” button on the table that applies the charge to the card.
CNET’s review says the units will cost roughly $10,000 and will start appearing in stores, casinos, hotel lobbies and other public spaces soon. I think this is one of those breakthrough technologies that needs some critical mass to really catch on. Once that happens, mass volume production could make it cheap enough to show up on desks in offices and schools, as well as various places in the home. The kitchen table is an obvious choice, where something very much like the restaurant application would be useful. But what about the bathroom vanity? Imagine a vanity that identified your medication for you, told you how much to take, or reminded you when it was time to refill the prescription.
Back in the ’90s, my employer had a “vision of the future” center that would postulate just these kinds of things, but the Internet was brand new then, and desktop/touchscreen technology had not advanced to this point. Now, it seems like we’ve achieved a point where it would pass the Mom & Dad test…
Categories: Tech Talk, The Future is Now | 2 Comments »
How People Found Me – May Edition
By Brian | June 1, 2007
The second of my two monthly features is the familiar How People Found Me, because when it’s not about the pageviews, it’s all about the keywords.
I’ve chosen to do this in two sections – categories and keywords.
The Categories
| Category | Count |
| Billy Joel | 163 |
| Technology | 140 |
| Celebrity Look Alikes | 80 |
| Overrated Films | 21 |
| DSL | 20 |
| Al Gore | 18 |
| Steven Wright | 17 |
My four posts on Billy Joel’s latest tour and single release (the playlist, the concert review, the song review, and the song lyrics) have been a HUGE Google magnet. In the month of May, 163 different search queries brought people to one of these four posts. That’s more than five unique queries per day!
Similarly, my various posts about technology issues (specifically Blogger, Google, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, my new Dell PC and HP Laptop, and my Tech Guide reviews) have caught the attention of 140 unique queries. And a couple of posts I made on a lark about a site that does face recognition and suggests celebrity look alikes has garnered 80 unique queries.
The others on this list are smaller, but they surprised me in terms of how many people would think to search on them. A post on some random Top 20 Over-rated Films of All Time list generated 21 queries. A Ramblings article I wrote in December of 2004 about DSL installation brought in 20 queries. My review of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth yielded 18, and a couple of jokes I heard Steven Wright tell on Letterman one night brought on 17 (many of which, by the way, were flawed attempts to quote the actual text of Wright’s jokes).
The Keywords
All told, over 700 queries resulted in hits to Familygreenberg.com in May. Here are some that I found the most interesting:
| Query | Rank / # of Results | Comments |
| current event on tapeworms | 1 / 217,000 | That’s me – worldwide authority on tapeworm news! |
| upsilon sigma alpha | 3 / 745,000 | It was just a joke! Upsilon Sigma Alpha = USA |
| oprah face recognition software | 4 / 249,000 | People really need software to recognize Oprah’s face? |
| how to spell “”google”” as a verb | 7 / 258,000 | Err…G-O-O-G-L-E?!? |
| jerry seinfeld phil mickelson | 7 / 13,800 | Funniest golf game ever… |
| taylor hicks is sleeping in bed | 8 / 168,000 | As opposed to sleeping . . . where, exactly? |
| cartoon technophobe mother | 8 / 715 | Sounds like a rather arcane cartoon… |
| miraculous recoveries from female online liars | 12 / 44,800 | Those female online liars – they sure know how to bounce back! |
| whats the point in sleeping | 13 (and 14!) / 8,560,000 | I ask myself this all the time… |
| pronounce water philadelphia | 19 / 269,000 | Must have been some out-of-towner who couldn’t get water in Philly & turned to Google… |
| will you give me some information about what happens to an underwater ecosystem after an earthquake? | 35 / 45,500 | This isn’t that strange a query, I was just ammused at how the person spoke to Google like it was a person… |
| hasselhoff eating pizza | 41 / 125,000 | Obviously a slow news day… |
| elton john”” and “”tired of singing”” | 105 / 243,000 | Maybe he should write the words & let that other guy sing, then… |
| working out porten | 180 / 115,000 | Now here’s one of the few Google searches where I actually feel like I deserve a higher score! |
| atlantic city escorts | 350 / 1,320,000 | Speaking of working out Porten…(ok, that was a cheap shot…) |
| how much money would have ralph kramden have saved nasa | 0 / 233 | Pow! Zoom! Right to the moon!! |
| famous people out of marlboro hs / marlboro nj | >500 / 122,000 | Really? 122,000 webpages about this? Must be short web pages… |
| all important people born in oh. | >500 / 2,470,000 | A slightly longer list (but only slightly…) |
| greenberg puppy | >500 / 122,000 | Not in my house… |
| mac consultants +erode | >500 / 102,000 | What are they implying here?!? |
| pun of the year | >500 / 1,450,000 | To all who knew me growing up – yeah, that’s right – someone googled “pun of the year” and wound up at MY site… |
| should couples sleep separate at their first wedding night | >500 / 1,060,000 | Maybe that’s what led to the second wedding night… |
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 1 Comment »
Familygreenberg.com Health Check – May Edition
By Brian | June 1, 2007
I may be falling behind on my ISBS Tech Guide (I’ll start again soon, I swear!), but Google Analytics has provided me the tools to create two monthly features. This is the first of the two – the site health check. Rather than explain it, I’ll just show it to you:
| Metric | April | May | % Change |
| Visits | 1,792 | 1,441 | -19.59% |
| Pageviews | 2,132 | 2,563 | -16.82% |
| Pages/Visit | 1.43 | 1.48 | +3.45% |
| Avg Time on Site | 40 sec. | 46 sec. | +15.00% |
| Bounce Rate | 80.75% | 78.42% | -2.89% |
| % New Visitors | 91.63% | 88.48% | -3.44% |
Digging into the data a bit more (I won’t bore you with details), it seems that overall visits and pageviews on the site dropped in May because Billy Joel’s touring wrapped up (in April, roughly 900 of the 2,563 pageviews were Billy Joel related; in May, that number was roughly 450, which accounts for the net difference in pageviews on its own).
On the upside, people are staying longer, leaving after one page (“bouncing”) less often, and returning more often. So all in all, things are going pretty well.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Familygreenberg.com Health Check – May Edition
Bush Haters Take Note: Something I Can Get Behind…
By Brian | May 31, 2007
Two weeks ago, I flew from Charlotte, NC to Newark, NJ while torrential thunderstorms covered most of the northeast. As a result, my 3:20 flight was delayed six hours, leaving at 9:30pm, and ultimately getting me home well after midnight.
Well, yesterday, I was on the 7:30 flight out of Charlotte. The weather was beautiful in both cities. The planes were where they were supposed to be. The crews were available and ready to take off. All the stars had aligned. So?
A 90 minute delay.
It seems Air Force One was on a runway in Newark airport, causing Newark to issue a full ground stop (as is normal procedure for Air Force One) until President Bush departed. Now, to be fair, I got on standby for the 6:30 flight, and made it home at around the expected time, but still – we were so close to an on-time departure!
That settles it – I’m definitely not voting for that guy again…
Categories: Political Rantings, Travel Talk | Comments Off on Bush Haters Take Note: Something I Can Get Behind…
The Dangers of DVR with Live Television
By Brian | May 25, 2007
We recorded the American Idol finale last night on our DVR, and watched it back about a half hour after it started. Great show. Excellent musical acts, such as Tony Bennett, Gladys Knight, and Smokey Robinson (who, I’m sorry, looks like he went to a plastic surgeon one day and said, “I’d like to look surprised for the rest of my life.”). Anyway, the show ran it’s allotted two hours. At the end, they went to commercial, and when the commerical was over, the recording ended! They didn’t announce the winner!!!
Turns out the show ran about 6 minutes long, so anyone who DVR’ed, TiVo’ed or otherwise recorded it using some automated, Guide-based system entirely missed the announcement of the winner. We had to go out on the web & find out who won (for those who still don’t know, it was Jordin Sparks).
Of course, through the wonder of YouTube, I can watch those last 6 minutes at my convenience. And now, so can you:
First of all, it’s worth noting that more people voted for this year’s American Idol than voted for George W. Bush for President in 2004. About 10 million more!
Given the final two, I think it was the right choice. I also think it doesn’t matter much at all. Last season produced three big stars (Taylor Hicks, Katherine McPhee, and Chris Daughtry) and two smaller ones (Elliot Yamin and Bucky Covington). This season will produce four big stars (Jordin Sparks, Blake Lewis, Melinda Doolittle, and Lakisha Jones), two smaller ones (Chris Richardson and Phil Stacy) and one bizarre one (Sanjaya Malakar). The winner has a small advantage with promotion, but not that much.
That said, if you ask me who the best singer was, though, I think my vote would have gone to Melinda. C’est la vie…
Categories: Primetime TV | 1 Comment »