SEO My Name: Success!

As you can see the Google search for my name is now returning my blog as the top entry.

I'm still not sure what it took to make this happen. Google is a curious creature.

SEO My Name

Here's a question: Is a well named sub directory better for SEO than a domain name?

Case in point: I searched my name on Google and came up with this:



The pipl site which ends in /Aaron/Bronow is ranked higher than my blog which starts with aaron.bronow.

So I did some research:

1. The pipl site is "unranked" in Google toolbar's PageRank. My blog has a PageRank of 1.
2. The pipl site has about 54 pages indexed with Google. aaron.bronow.net has about 136 pages indexed.
3. The exact search string "aaron bronow" appears first in the title of both pages.

One difference I noticed is that the meta description and keywords of the pipl site contains my name whereas I had forgotten to apply any SEO meta tags to my blog homepage. So I corrected this error and I'll check again next week to see if anything has changed.

Stay tuned.

Think more, work less

I want to spend more time in front of a white board than a keyboard. My goal in career path is to be a software architect. The problem with architecture is you must have a proven record of success (or at least incredible failures) to get people to listen to you.

Just like buildings, software needs architecture, design, engineering and development. The developer is the hammer-wielding lumber-packing implementor. The engineer takes the design from the designer and makes it work in a physical environment. Engineers have to know how things work. It helps to have been a developer so you can make estimations of time and resources. Also an engineer who knows what needs to be done can make alterations to the design to decrease cost and improve stability. The designer is all about aesthetics. People have to want to live in this thing (or live with it anyway). If it's going to sell it needs to be environmentally friendly and cost effective. Designers take an idea and make it beautiful.

Architects are full of themselves. It's a job requirement. To be a good architect you have to believe that you can dream up something that is better than anyone else's dream. And when you're comparing dreams you don't have anything other than your own ego. You might think that the world doesn't need architects because designers and engineers could just get together and make pretty things that actually stand up (or start up). You're wrong. Architects think up things that haven't been done before. Or a completely new way to do something common. Just like the other positions in the work-to-thought career path the best architect will have started at the bottom and have intimate knowledge of the process. Then the great architect will forget all of that garbage and invent something that no designer, engineer or developer would attempt.

So think big or go home. But don't work with your hands if you can work with your head.

Amarok

Amarok rocks.

I store all my music on a 70GB laptop hard drive in a USB enclosure which I carry in my bag between work and home. Most of my tunes are MP3 but there are a few OGG and WMA albums. I am anal about my file structure and naming scheme.

Genre\Artist - Album\Artist - Album - Track - Title.ext

I decided on this structure by necessity. I don't use the genre tag in ID3 because often times I just don't agree that such a track belongs under such a genre. So when I want to hear a bunch of Industrial Electronic music I don't want to build a playlist. I just drag my Industrial Electronic folder onto my media player and hit shuffle. The next level of playlist building I use is album. I don't bother with an Artist directory because I usually want to listen to just an album or shuffle all the albums. It's feasible to shift+select the list of Artist - Album folders and add them to the queue since they are all in alphabetical order in the same Genre directory.

This is just the first of the reasons I love Amarok. More to come. Stay tuned.

Don't Be A N00b: Find free music you really want

Don't: listen to the radio and write down songs you like.

Do: use last.fm.

According to Wikipedia last.fm is the largest social music community in the world with 15 million active users. Create a free account and download the scrobbling plugin. The software sends the title and artist of every song (CD, MP3, WMA, whatever) you play to last.fm where it's logged with your account. Going to your dashboard gives you a history of each track you listened to, when you listened to it, what you listened to next and if you loved it or not. You can flag a song as "Love it" which puts it in a special category you can pull up later.

In addition to logging the listens and loves last.fm allows you to tag tracks, albums and artists. I use "seen live" and "seattle band" as my favorite tags so I can keep track of concerts I've been to and new local bands I haven't seen yet.

Once you've built a substantial profile of listens the recommendation engine will find songs it thinks you would like. This is accomplished by finding groups that have been described as similar and scanning the playlists of other users that appear "near" to you in taste. Your last.fm neighbors are people who like what you like.

The radio feature streams music from your neighbors playlists or random tracks that have been recommended to you. Only music that has been posted by artists or included by the last.fm team is streamable. It's like any online radio station except that you can tune in to custom stations based on your previous interests or things you've never heard before.

View my last.fm profile.

Don't Be A N00b: Remove Inktag security devices

Don't get ink on your new clothes.

Do get a Dremel.

Step 1: Determine what we're working with.

This particular device does not have a magnetic strip inside which is why the alarm did not go off when I left the store. It is simply designed to deter theft by making it difficult to remove without ruining the article of clothing.

Step 2: Prepare your workspace.

I used a paper bag to make a shield for each side of the device just in case something went wrong during the removal process.
Fitting the paper around the metal pin that holds the two sides of the tag together was relatively painless. Ok, it was literally painless.

Step 3: Choose the right tool.

This Dremel tool I got for my birthday should come in handy. I've seen this done with a lighter and a pen but I wanted to see what was really in this thing since this is my first attempt at removing such a device.

Step 4: Dissect

I cut the tip off first to see what was inside. The spring mechanism is in that clear plastic cylinder. Next I cut the side off so I could get my cut-off wheel into the metal pin.

Step 5: Success!

After a few seconds of grinding the pin is cut and the device falls apart. No muss no fuss.

Don't Be A N00b: Use Firefox search plugins

Don't waste time searching the Internet.

Do use Firefox' search plugins.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

• ShareTV.org


• IMdb


• Astalavista.box.sk


• eBay