u l t r a m o o k i e

Update:  Ugh, I pushed the wrong button and deleted this post.  Reposting from memory and half of an unpublished version.
I have been using MyBlogLog for a while now.  I like it a lot.  I tried out FriendFeed the other day and it is basically the same thing as MyBlogLog, but not as nice.  And recently, [...]

Update:  Ugh, I pushed the wrong button and deleted this post.  Reposting from memory and half of an unpublished version.

I have been using MyBlogLog for a while now.  I like it a lot.  I tried out FriendFeed the other day and it is basically the same thing as MyBlogLog, but not as nice.  And recently, there have been a lot of new features coming to MyBlogLog that is making it my default page in all of my webbrowsers.  In this Web 2.0 world (when are we getting the Web 2.1 or Web 3.0 upgrade by the way?), everyone has multiple blogs, feeds (like Flickr) and random sources of information (like Yelp, Twitter and such).  It is hard to keep track of all that information — and that is where MyBlogLog comes into play.  MyBlogLog “streams” your friend’s digital lives/information into one central location for you — it is like your very own internet secretary.  Very, very cool stuff.

And if you have a blog, the statistics tracking of MyBlogLog is also very useful.  I use MyBlogLog to look at outgoing clicks on my blog, that’s something not even Google Analytics has.  Yay!

So, if you haven’t tried MyBlogLog yet, give it a shot.  It is a very cool tool.

(And yes, Ian, I won’t get the streams crossed  :)  )

Thanks to JR for sending this very cool web analytics software over (via delicious). The software is a new package named Piwik, which is the “new” version of phpMyVisites. I’m going to run Piwik side-by-side with Google Analytics for a week. If Piwik can gather the stats that I need correctly, then [...]

Thanks to JR for sending this very cool web analytics software over (via delicious). The software is a new package named Piwik, which is the “new” version of phpMyVisites. I’m going to run Piwik side-by-side with Google Analytics for a week. If Piwik can gather the stats that I need correctly, then I will shutdown Google Analytics for two reasons. First, I can then keep my analytics to myself — sorry, no more spying for you Google (not that this measly blog would make much difference). Second, well, I can keep my analytics to myself! Privacy is a nice thing. Lets see how it goes.

Yes, I have an iPhone. I have had one for a week now — my lovely wife gave the iPhone to me as an early Christmas present! Isn’t she the best?? The acceptance of the iPhone is a complete reversal from my anti-iPhone attitude of earlier months.
So, here were some of my [...]

Yes, I have an iPhone. I have had one for a week now — my lovely wife gave the iPhone to me as an early Christmas present! Isn’t she the best?? The acceptance of the iPhone is a complete reversal from my anti-iPhone attitude of earlier months.

So, here were some of my beefs from previous postings, and some corrections (ie. me eating my words) or “still beefs”:

• Customers need to escape from their contracts to get an iPhone since the iPhone requires AT&T service. Our family plan with T-Mobile had been on a month-to-month basis for almost a year now, so that was not a biggie.
• iPhone costs too much. This was a beef when the 8GB iPhone was $600 and the 4GB iPhone was $500. Now that Apple has dropped the price of the 8GB iPhone to $400, it is not as big of a price pill to swallow (still expensive though) — I bought the very first generation iPod (ah, five whole gigabytes and six years ago) for the same price, but, the iPhone provides a helluvalot more functionality.
• No 3G on the iPhone. This is still a beef, but thank goodness for WiFi — I have WiFi access in all the regular places I am at (home, work, parents, Eileen’s work, etc), so that helps. I also have free AT&T WiFi access because of our DSL package. But, still EDGE access is pretty darned slow and that can’t be overlooked.
• “How can I buy music through the iPhone?” You can’t. You can now.
• Non-user replaceable battery. This is still a beef.
• Screen will scratch up easily. After owning an iPod touch (which is going up on Ebay soon), I have been corrected on this one. The glass screen on the iPod touch and iPhone are really resistant to scratching (unless you carry diamonds in your pocket).
• The iPhone is gonna weight more than a Windows Mobile device and pull down my pants like a Treo. Wrong again on my part. The iPhone is very light — not plastic toy-like light, but it has enough weight to make it feel solid, yet not “heavy”.

What got my wife and I really interested in the iPhone was the iPod touch — jailbroken and running iPhone applications, that is. Steve Jobs really did a number by removing the iPhone applications — especially Mail.app — from the iPod touch. Sure, the iPod touch has Safari and that can be used to check webmail, but the total convenience of Mail.app is indescribable. It really does make a difference. The other apps are also pretty cool; Weather and Stocks by Yahoo!; Google Maps by Google. Steve Jobs was quoted as saying, “The iPod touch is training wheels for the iPhone.” After using both the iPod touch and iPhone, I agree with him. Did the iPod touch have to be training wheels for the iPhone? No. Steve Jobs orchestrated it so that people who used the iPod touch only got a small taste of what the iPhone could do (I don’t believe him when he says the applications were not included just because the iPod touch is a “music” device) — and if they were interested, they would “trade up”. Good business strategy on Jobs’ part.

Let me get this out though: The iPhone is not the perfect mobile device. It has a bunch of flaws: No cut & paste, no Flash support in Safari, it crashes, and other minor things. But, what it does, it does really well — and it is a mobile device that will change the way other mobile device makers think when they start designing iPhone-killers. My SonyEricsson w810i was a great phone and it did everything the iPhone did: Mail client, Web client, music, video, camera, and other things. But, the iPhone just does it much better. The virtual keyboard works great, a lot better than the chiclet keyboard on the Treo, and on-par with the spacious keyboard on the Sidekick II. iTunes syncing makes a big difference when it comes to music management (since I am an iTunes using guy). The camera on the iPhone is not as good as the auto-focus on the SonyEricsson though.

After a week with the iPhone, am I happy? Damn straight, it is the best mobile device I have ever used — and I have gone through a bunch of mobile devices, some of them smartphones too (Nokia 6682, Treo 600, Sidekick II), none of them match the iPhone. I eat my words from my previous posting doubting the iPhone. I have been converted.

Update: I forgot to mention stuff about how I carry the iPhone around. I know people that carry the thing “naked” in their jean pockets with their keys and wallet and stuff. I’m a little paranoid about that (even though I know the screen is pretty scratch resistant). So, for the last week, I have been carrying it around in my old orange Timbuk2 Accessory Case (no longer available). I was looking for a really good case for my iPhone all week long and had been thinking about two: Agent 18 Eco iPhone Shield and the Contour Showcase for iPhone. The Agent 18 got shot down after I found reports that the case scratches the chrome on the iPhone face. The Showcase is really, really nice, but I like being able to hold my iPhone without a case around it. Finally, I found the Sena Ultraslim iPhone Pouch. Perfect case for my iPhone. Eileen picked one up for me today, the case fits the iPhone like a glove and works great.

If you’re a regular reader, you won’t notice any ads on ultramookie.com because I only show them to people who arrive via major search engines (aol, ask, google, msn, and yahoo).
Only recently have I started tracking just how well each group of searchers perform. Now that I have some data, it is really interesting to [...]

If you’re a regular reader, you won’t notice any ads on ultramookie.com because I only show them to people who arrive via major search engines (aol, ask, google, msn, and yahoo).

Only recently have I started tracking just how well each group of searchers perform. Now that I have some data, it is really interesting to see which search engines attract the “click monkeys“. The industry average click-through-rate is around 1%. Google and AOL users hover around that average. Yahoo! users seem to click more. What is surprising is the CTR of MSN and Ask users: They are freaking click monkeys — especially the MSN users. MSN users are by far worth more per million clicks than any other users: 8% CTR with a $26.86 eCPM, that is fantastic.

Life in the Silicon Valley, I am learning is much different that life outside the valley. Case in point, the argument that I just wasted two days on in class. When asked to give suggestions for the Yahoo! front page, most of the class gave good criticism. A classmate pointed [...]

Life in the Silicon Valley, I am learning is much different that life outside the valley. Case in point, the argument that I just wasted two days on in class. When asked to give suggestions for the Yahoo! front page, most of the class gave good criticism. A classmate pointed out that the front page cannot personalized. The conversation went something like this:

Him: “One thing is that you can’t personalize www.yahoo.com.”

Me: “Yea, you can’t, but there’s my.yahoo.com that is the personalization page for Yahoo!”

Him: “But, you can’t personalized the front page of yahoo.com like you can www.google.com/ig.”

Me: “You’re comparing apples to oranges. Front page of google.com cannot be personalized either.”

Him: “I’m not comparing google.com to yahoo.com. I’m comparing google.com/ig to yahoo.com.”

Me: “I know, but that’s not valid.”

Him: “It is valid. I was told to look at www.yahoo.com.”

Me: “Then compare it with the front page of Google: www.google.com. Although, that is not valid either, since Yahoo’s search page is www.ysearch.com, which is comparable to www.google.com.”

Him: “But, google.com cannot be personalized.”

Me: “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. my.yahoo.com is the same as google.com/ig – both can be personalized. www.yahoo.com is the same as www.google.com — both cannot be personalized.”

Him: “You’re wrong.”

I loved his FOX News style of argument: Total denial that he was comparing different types of pages. Either that or he really is as stupid as he sounds, I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, I’m guessing this maybe how he argued in elementary school:

Him: “My orange is sour and that banana isn’t.”

Other Guy: “Yea, but your orange is not the same as the banana.”

Him: “But, I was told to eat the orange.”

Other Guy: “Then compare the orange with another orange for sourness.”

Him: “No, my orange is the same as the banana.”

Other Guy: “But, it’s not.”

Him: “You’re wrong.”

Although I make some money off the ads that run on the site, I really don’t make that much money.  It is enough to pay for my hosting though, so running them has some payoff.  But, I figure (like I did a while back) that the regulars who come here aren’t going to be ones [...]

Although I make some money off the ads that run on the site, I really don’t make that much money.  It is enough to pay for my hosting though, so running them has some payoff.  But, I figure (like I did a while back) that the regulars who come here aren’t going to be ones clicking on ads, so I inserted back in the PHP code to eliminate ads for those who are reading the site directly.

Those who come from Yahoo!, Google, Ask, or MSN search engines will be the ones who see the ads.  It may ruin their first impression of the site, but I think that most visitors from search engines don’t really return anyways.  Do you often return to a site after you have found the information that you were looking for?

So, Terry Semel is getting hammered for not buying Google way back in 2002.  But, come on people think about it.
In 2002, Overture (aka GoTo) was doing pretty well.  Google was just a search engine and AdWords/AdSense did not even exist.  AdWords and AdSense are Google’s cash cows.  They bring in the billions and billions [...]

So, Terry Semel is getting hammered for not buying Google way back in 2002.  But, come on people think about it.

In 2002, Overture (aka GoTo) was doing pretty well.  Google was just a search engine and AdWords/AdSense did not even exist.  AdWords and AdSense are Google’s cash cows.  They bring in the billions and billions of dollars.  We can see that.  Lets say we can travel to one of the other billion parallel universes.  Lets say we landed in one where Yahoo! did buy Google in 2002.

The Google that Yahoo! acquires is sans the cash cows (as shown in history).  Overture remains independent.  After the acquisition, Yahoo!/Google do not develop AdWords/AdSense until later (just like how in our universe, the enhancements to Overture technology did not happen until later).  Yahoo!/Google gets squashed by Overture/Inktomi.  And at the 2007 Yahoo! Stockholder’s Meeting in this parallel universe, Terry Semel is pounded for…not buying Overture.

Strange.  Just a thought.