It all started with Mel Carson tweeting an excellent question:

Are 7 pillows really necessary when in a hotel room. I only have 1 at home!

Some people like, Lisa Barone, prefer to have many pillows. I personally like to have a flat pillow.

In fact, I take one flat pillow, fold it in half and sleep more comfortably that way.

The other night, I ended up with my wife's fluffy pillow and it didn't work out too well. I had a stiff neck the next day. The next night, I made sure to give her back her pillow and retrieve mine.

I suspect I am out of the norm when it comes to pillow preference. I would assume most people prefer a fluffy pillow over a flat one? I would also assume people would prefer more than one pillow. I for one, prefer flat, dull, single pillows.

Which moves me to the next topic... Tuck or no tuck? Me, no tuck - 100%. I hate the tuck.

Posted at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , Daily Grind | Comments (6)

It all started with Mel Carson tweeting an excellent question:

Are 7 pillows really necessary when in a hotel room. I only have 1 at home!

Some people like, Lisa Barone, prefer to have many pillows. I personally like to have a flat pillow.

In fact, I take one flat pillow, fold it in half and sleep more comfortably that way.

The other night, I ended up with my wife's fluffy pillow and it didn't work out too well. I had a stiff neck the next day. The next night, I made sure to give her back her pillow and retrieve mine.

I suspect I am out of the norm when it comes to pillow preference. I would assume most people prefer a fluffy pillow over a flat one? I would also assume people would prefer more than one pillow. I for one, prefer flat, dull, single pillows.

Which moves me to the next topic... Tuck or no tuck? Me, no tuck - 100%. I hate the tuck.

Posted at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , Daily Grind | Comments (6)

Happy New Years everyone!

Let me tell you how my New Years Day is/will look like for 2010.

5:30am : Wake Up & do wake up stuff
5:45am : Run through emails, do forum research, check feeds, etc.
6:25am : Morning prayers (at home, don't know of early place to go on New Years)
6:50am : At work
7:00am : More emails, misc items, update misc blog posts
7:15am : Pay bill, do deposits from previous days, etc
7:30am - 9:30am : Bill my clients, so they get a nice New Years Day surprise
9:30am : Remove 2009 file cabinet contents and replace with 2010 storage
10am : Write this blog post
11am : Go to see Avatar with some of the RB team

WHOO HOO!

3:30pm : Get home and scramble to get ready for Shabbos at 4:15pm

Posted at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

I have been writing consistently on search, seo, sem, Google, etc for over six years now. It is a long time, but there are others who have been writing about search consistently longer than I have. By consistently, I mean, really never stopping in the six year plus period. All together, I have written over 20,000 blog posts on search between the various sites I write/wrote at, i.e. Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land and formerly Search Engine Watch.

I started this in 2003 as just hobby, as a notebook for my own SEO notes. It turned into a lot more. It doesn't drive much of my income, but it does have some financial perks. If I didn't have a solid job with my company, RustyBrick, I doubt I would be able to do this. Plus, my wife is very understanding. ;-)

In short, I really enjoy the search industry and I don't do the blogging for the money. I do it because I feel like I am helping the industry out. Sometimes, it feels very routinized and boring - but when I get a thank you from people, even the smallest email, tweet, letter - it means a lot.

Last night, Sebastian tweeted something that really made all of 2009 efforts worthwhile. Yea, less than a 140 characters and I feel that 2009 was not wasted. He wrote:

Then it got at least two retweets, one from a Googler, JohnMu (who rocks, btw) and another from an AdWords specialist, @EdWords.

Amazing what 140 characters can mean to someone.

Thanks!

Posted at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Category: Buddies , Daily Grind | Comments (2)

Yesterday morning I got a nasty paper cut on my middle left hand finger. I am not exactly sure where it came from, but I am pretty sure it happened between 6:10am and 6:50am.

All day yesterday, it was bugging me when I was typing. I complained on Twitter once.

I am not the type to take meds when I am sick or put on bandages when I feel a little annoyances , but last night I decided to go the neosporin route. Before going to sleep, I put on a bit of neosporin and a bandaid and drifted away.

This morning I repeated. I can say, I think it is helping.

So - for all of you out there with paper cuts, try neopsorin and a bandaid - it can help you too!

Posted at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

Often when I walk to the bathroom, down the hall from my office, I decide to do so, with my eyes closed.

There is something refreshing about walking and having your eyes closed. I am not sure what it is.

But when you are exhausted and tired, try it. Of course, I am a bit nervous that I might walk into someone. So I first look to make sure the path is clear. I then get nervous when I pass the elevator and then someone's office door. But then it is clear sailing, for a whole additional 3 steps, to the bathroom.

So to get the full nap time, I do the same routine on the way back from the bathroom and into my office.

Does it help? I think so.

Am I weird? I guess so.

Posted at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I rarely watch movies. That includes watching movies at home and especially at the theatre. I assume it will be an even longer time until I see a movie again in a theatre (got a kid now). But I do watch most the movies I end up seeing, on flights to conferences.

I often pick the movie via iTunes and download it to my iPhone for the flight. Sometimes I will rent a few movies, depending on the length of the flight.

The criteria I use to find out which movie I want to rent is based on how much violence is in the movie. I just really enjoy watching war movies, movies with guns, people getting killed, lots of anger and lots of action. Otherwise, the movies don't often keep me focused. Movies way out there, with lots and lots of constant action, let me drift away for a bit - something I rarely do.

One of my favorite bloody movies is 300. I saw a piece of it on TNT last night. Of course, my wife hates these types of movies - so you know.

Here is the trailer:

What a great movie.

Posted at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Yesterday, my daughter applied for her first passport at the local passport office. I was a bit nervous going in the middle of the day, between two conference calls, to get her a passport, but I came prepared.

I arrived at the passport office, meeting my wife and daughter there. We parked in the spots nearest to the passport office entry way (which is behind the building). We walked in, and we were next in line. As soon as we walk in, we look around and spot someone coming over. She asks if she can help us. I sigh in relief, that we were being taken care of right away. I explain the the lady that we want a passport for our daughter. She quickly asks, if we have all the paper work, assuming we don't - but I said we do.

She was then quick to ask us to come over. Then with a smirk, she asked for the passport application. I handed it to her immediately, all filled out via the dynamic PDF, so it is easy to read, cause it came from the computer. She then asked if we had a birth certificate - I said, I have five copies, how many you need and handed her one. She then asked us for IDs, which we both handed to her within seconds. Then she asked if we had a picture, I said no - but we would like to pay you to take the picture for us.

She takes out this huge old Polaroid camera and has us place our daughter on a wall and position her head so she is looking up and into the camera. It was a pretty cute thing to watch.

Then we write two checks, one for the passport application and the other for the picture. Then my wife and I sign the passport application and we are done. The whole process took less than 10 minutes, not including 15 minute drive time to and from.

I like to come prepared and know what to expect prior to going to any engagement, especially government offices. Between being really efficient with the government worker and our baby being really cute, we even got the government worker to smile at us (something you rarely find in these offices).

I also am proud to say that I efficiently (even though 5 different offices were required) merged my property lots into a single lot, which should help with my property tax issues with mortgage company.

Posted at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I am not a big fan of going to doctors. I am not a big fan of going anywhere but my office, to be honest. So when I need to go to doctors, I tend to like to go really local.

By "really local" I mean, within the same office building as RustyBrick. In fact, my general doctor and my dentist (who I really need to see) are both in my office building. My dentist is on the same floor, just down the hall. My doctor is a floor up.

Why do I like really local doctors? Because they are better! No, I am kidding. In fact, I think one of them is actually not that great of a doctor.

I like them because I don't have to sit and wait in a waiting room. Some of my old doctors, I had to sit for hours before seeing them. I don't like the, sit and wait game.

These doctors (dentist) call me when they are ready. They say, the doctor is ready in a few minutes and that I should walk into their office. I then walk into the doctors office, bypass all the people waiting and go into the room to where I will be treated.

I always feel some guilt when I walk pass the people who have been waiting, but I go really local for that reason.

Posted at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

Wednesday night is the start of Passover and that means I go offline for four work days, completely offline.

It also means that I might get sick. I typically fall ill on Jewish holidays. I am not sure why. But if you count the times I get sick, the majority of them, fall out on Jewish holidays.

It is likely a physiological thing where I get over stressed from being out of communication, where it impacts me so much that I physically get sick.

In fact, my wife is already concerned that I am going to get sick that she has been asking me how I feel, starting this past Sunday. I honestly hope I don't get sick. I hate getting sick on these holidays. But not sure what I can do to prevent it.

I have work issues. I am a work-aholic. I stress when I am disconnected from work. I handle Shabbos (friday night through saturday night) mostly okay, simply because I do it every week and because most of the world is off those days. But being offline during the work week for two or three days straight, with no means of communication to the business, is incredibly stressful for me.

Starting this Wednesday night, I go completely offline, without turning on a computer, checking email, speaking to the employees, etc, until Saturday night. That is three full days, in a row. I then do it again on Tuesday night, through Thursday night.

It is sad for me to say this, because I should not be feeling this way about the Jewish holidays. I know my body and mind needs the rest, but sometimes, going cold turkey, is more stressful then not being in the daily grind.

In any event, I always manage through it and I wouldn't give it up for anything. I just hope I don't get sick over the holiday.

Posted at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

I am mad about being efficient. Mad about it.

I was telling someone that I am not sure if I can become more efficient then I am now. Honestly, I am sure there are ways I can be more efficient. But I didn't say that. I gave her an example of how crazy I am about efficiency. Let me share this example with you, even though, you may think I am nuts.

You know the light switches that have two switches or more on the same switch cover? There is an example of what I am talking about in the picture above. Well, I am so crazy about being efficient that I have to have the dual switches that I use daily in the same position. Either all up or all down.

Why is this? It has nothing to do with being OCD and must having it look a certain way. It is about being able to efficiently turn on or off the lights. I don't want to waste the time of having to turn one switch up and the other one down, to achieve my goal. (Note, these lights are controlled by two different areas, so being up or down might mean on or off, depending on the other switch.) I want to be able to quickly swipe my hand either upwards or downwards to be able to achieve that goal in a single motion, as opposed to two motions.

Crazy, I know. But when this person asked if I was OCD, she asked me, "You don't turn flip the switch three times and spin around in a circle, do you?" I said no. I just flip the switches on or off and go on with my business.

It is a good thing I have a good wife who agrees to put up with those things. :)

Update: Let me be clear. I don't care if the switches are in the same position. I just care that I can turn them on or off with one motion.

Posted at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Some how, a bottle of Shea Butter SoftSoap got into my bathroom, don't ask me how. So the past few days, I kept washing my hands and then having the urge to wash my hands again. I didn't pay enough attention to care why.

But last night, I looked and noticed there were little beads in the soap. Those beads made me feel like I had dirt on my hands, even after washing my hands. To me, that is just annoying.

I do not mind bar soap with these beads on them. In fact, I prefer bar soap with those beads, especially irish spring.

But for some reason, the same beads in liquid soap doesn't sit well with me.

Posted at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Sorry for not posting anything today. I am in catch up mode.

I landed last night at about 5pm, got home at about 6pm. Brought our bags upstairs and then went to work until about 7:30pm to do some critical things.

Then all day today, was a lot of catching up.

You would think, that working 4 hours each day while on vacation would leave not much to catch up on - but nope, it doesn't work that way, does it...

Posted at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Small chat these days is basically the following conversation. So, how is everything? Are you doing okay in these economic times? Business good? How you dealing with it?

It is like the same convo I have with different people that I haven't seen in a while. I guess it is like talking about the weather. But who cares how cold or wet it is outside when we are in a really bad recession.

Heck, I even hear kids (elementary school age) talking about the recession.

I guess it is good to talk about it, helps people not worry as much...

A little over a month ago, I asked, Are you worried about the economy? The 44 results included 36.36% are worried a little, 27.27% are very worried, 22.73% are just worried and 13.64% are not worried at all. I wish I was part of the 13%. :)

I am a worrier, that is just me. Well - I don't worry about everything, just what I consider valid things to worry about and with this recession and running a company, with employees, families and other companies depending on the company, I feel pressure to keep on ticking. Now, my company is doing well - we are doing just fine. But I still worry based on hearing all the economic data every day on the radio or via Internet. I worry when I hear that hundreds and hundreds of well known retailers will be closing their doors. I worry when I hear financial institutions are failing. I worry when I hear about job reports.

I can just hope it passes soon, not that I expect it to. I just hope that my family, friends and people I know are not impacted by the recession too much.

In any event, if you have not taken the poll, it still should work - go take the poll. And here is a new poll. How soon do you think we will start seeing a recovery.

Personally, I think it won't be until some time in 2010.

Posted at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Category: Buddies , Daily Grind | Comments (1)

I am Jewish, I do not celebrate Christmas. However, today, virtually no one in the US is working. So things here, for me, are pretty slow, to say the least.

First, Happy Holidays to all my Christian friends! Wishing you and your family a wonderful holiday!

So what did I do today, so far?

• Last night, I left work early, which was at 5:20pm.
• This morning, I came to work late, which was at 8:20am.
• I went through the feeds and forums very quickly since it was pretty dead out there.
• I then did my traditional search holiday logo post at the Search Engine Roundtable and at Search Engine Land.
• Oh, we did some server maintenance as well
• Added a new beta tester for the iPhone Siddur
• Finally customized the Search Engine Roundtable's Kosher iPhone Database application with revised data
• Did some client work, very little

So now it is 2:30 and I am writing this blog post. What will I do now? I'll likely wrap things up here and go home. At 4pm, I have a family Chanukah thing that I need to get to.

The next couple weeks will be slow. But as always, I prepare for it by spending a lot of money and trying to give bonuses, which I actually did already.

Oh, I did not eat any Chinese food this year. :)

Posted at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I am, are you? Take the poll below:

Posted at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

I was dreading having to serve Jury Duty, dreading it. Why? Well, I was actually interested in learning from the experience, but it would have meant me getting to my office at 4am every day, leaving for Jury duty at 8:30am, then coming back to the office at 5pm and staying until 10pm - for the whole week.

So when I rescheduled my Jury duty, I picked the week of Thanksgiving. Why, well as I assumed then, it "should be somewhat slow." Well, I got lucky and I did not have to serve.

I checked the court web page every day after 5:30pm to see if I had to come. Each day it said, no new jurors needed, please check back tomorrow to see if I need to come the next day. So I checked Friday at 5:30, Monday at 5:30 and last night at 5:30. Each night said the same thing, except last night.

Last night said I am off and off for the next 6 years or so.

Jury call for Wednesday - Friday, November 26-28, 2008. Those jurors who kept their commitment by calling every evening or checking this web site, but were never requested to appear, please mail your summons Part A to: Rockland Jury Department, 1 South Main Street, Suite #250, New City, NY 10956, within 1 week and write on the summons, “NOT NEEDED”, and we will consider it good service. If it is not received within 1 week, you will get another date randomly assigned to you. You will also be excused from serving in Justice Court for 6 years and Federal Court for at least 4 years. If in the future, you get a summons from another court and you require proof, just call us and we’ll be happy to mail it to you.

We've enjoyed working with you and on behalf of the staff, County of Rockland & State of New York, we thank you.

I enjoyed working with you as well!

I mailed out the details as specified and I should be set for a while now, at least I hope.

Glad it worked out, cause I had a client who really wanted me to ditch Jury Duty to meet. :)

Posted at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Figured I do a single blog post to tell you what is on my mind today, maybe I'll expand them out in the future.

For the past few months, since the financial bubble, I have been listening to Bloomberg Radio. Very depressing, to say the least.

In any event, first I hear Citigroup is laying off 50,000 workers. I think to myself, this is not going to be a good day. The market then skids the 8200 levels after it opens.

Then I see the SEC is charging Blogger and Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban with insider trading related to sales of Mamma.com.

Some correction in the markets, I think. But sad news, why why why....

Then I read that the top executives at Goldman do something right, they say, no bonuses for us in 2008.

More correction in the markets.

Now, the markets are rising a bit, now only down about 50 points for the day.

During this time, I spend an hour on the phone with Verizon about them not really signing me up for the FiOS triple play. So I am being billed $80 too much every month. This is the fourth time I called them about this. Each time, they said they got me on the plan this time and they have not. So I sign up again. This time, I am in a one year plan, for $94 per month. Let's see if they give me the plan and the credits I am suppose to get.

The good news, is they tell me I can now upgrade to the multi-room DVR option, since originally they did not support HD TVs. So I am hoping this actually works when I get home. It should be activated remotely.

Oh, got my new MacBook Pro up and running Saturday night. I used migration assistant, that took about 3 hours to run and when the computer popped on, it worked like my old, just faster. A few things did not transfer over, such as my printers and VPN info, but so far, no hiccups yet...

I think that is about it for today at 1ish.

Posted at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Got more Google schwag, but to be honest, less schwag has been coming in overall. In any event, this shwag is named the Google H2Go Stainless Steel Bolt Bottle.

Interesting bottle.

Posted at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (5)

I have been trying to avoid the avoidable. I was first served for Jury duty about a year ago, but they had my birth address. So after postponing a few times, I had my mother write back to them that I was no longer at that address.

This past week, I received my Jury summons at my home address. So I need to respond. Last time I postponed, I was asked to serve in lower Manhattan, which can take 1.5 hours to get to.

Thing is, I was asked to serve during the PubCon conference. But I am schedule to speak during the conference, in Vegas. So I can't serve. I first called the automated 800#, but it didn't give me the option I was looking for (i.e. the week of Thanksgiving, when it should be somewhat slow). So I called the local number and the lady who answered hooked me up with that week, as my new date to serve.

Ultimately, I do hope they don't pick me. If they do, I will proudly serve. But it will mean, I will need to wake up at 2am to get all my work done.

Posted at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I have been having email issues. I am getting emails fine, but my desktop client, Apple Mail, has somewhat been corrupted.

In short, it seems like my IMAP trash can is duplicating my deleted mail over and over again. I typically have about 25,000 deleted emails in a 30-day period stored in my trash can. But it has been duplicating that file over and over again. This morning, I had almost 300,000 emails in my trash folder. I tried deleting it, but those files are not on the IMAP server.

So now, I am trying to rebuild my mailboxes completely. To make things worse, the email server thinks I am hacking it, and it is blocking me out. Fun stuff.

As an email OCD freak, I cannot describe the stress this is giving me.

Posted at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I'll be taking a couple days off from blogging. Taking a very short vacation.

Everyone, have a great weekend.

Posted at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I have a new morning schedule, which means I may be waking up 12 minutes later. So I thought I would share with you, like you care, how that is going for me.

See the picture above, that is me, kinda, in the morning. It is not a picture of me, just some random guy on Flickr. But I am in bed, for the first part of the morning, working.

Today, for example, I got up at 5:25am, before my alarm clock went off. I then went through emails, then through RSS feeds and set up the morning writing budget for Search Engine Land. I did more emails, more feeds, some discussion forums and more work. Then I did the morning bathroom stuff and then came back to the computer to do some more work. I left the house about 6:15am and prayed and then go to work at about 7am.

I honestly like getting to work knowing that I went through email and the feeds. So when I get to work, I check email again, go through the 20 new feed items and then move into my Roundtable research.

So, technically, I am not waking up later, but I feel like I am getting more work done earlier, plus going to my local synagogue in the morning, which saves me driving time.

Posted at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

I was strongly considering waking up later. Well, today was the first day of that trial. I woke up about 12 minutes later then I normally do.

I did the morning stuff, which now includes squinting a few times and rubbing my eyes. Then checking email, then going through morning feeds and then doing the morning bathroom routine.

I left the house 15 or so minutes later then I normally do and went to a later morning services. So my whole day is about 15 minutes lagged due to waking up ~15 minutes later.

I will try to stick to this routine for a bit and see how it goes. If all goes well, then maybe Ill go to the next level. But probably not for a while.

Posted at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Since starting at Search Engine Watch taking over for Gary Price to work as the News Editor with Danny Sullivan, I have been waking up pretty early to get all the blogging mostly done before the normal work day. This started about 2.5 years ago, and my typical day started with me getting up at 5:45 (now a bit earlier) and leaving the house by 6am.

This worked out well, since Danny was based in the UK. So he was up and about and he and I were compiling the news and stories very early in the AM. This pattern continued when we both left to start Search Engine Land But now that Danny has moved to the west coast, he now won't be around until much later.

RustyBrick is also more self-sufficient then it was a few years back. So I have less busy work with RB, and more creative work with it. So managing the blogging and "real work" during the day should be easier.

I am strongly considering waking up at 6am, and leaving the house by 6:20am. Then going to Jewish morning services at that time and ending up at work closer to 7am - as opposed to 6:30. In fact, I am hoping to then move that to a 7am wake up and 8am work start. I am not sure if I can stomach the "late" start - but I think I should give it a shot, at least the 20-30 minute delayed start.

Posted at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (5)

If I am ever watching TV when my wife isn't around, which really isn't all that often, I try to watch the GamePlay HD channel (or Family Guy).

GamePlay HD is basically a channel devoted to "gammers," video games. I enjoy watching it because many of the shows are either taking you through the story of a game, which I find fascinating in many cases, or competition play. I first discovered this channel when I was home sick...

This Sunday, I tried to watch the GamePlay channel, which is on channel 786 on Optimum Cable, but it said the show was unavailable. So I checked last night and it is still unavailable.

I am becoming a little concerned that Optimum took the same route as Dish network and killed off GamePlay as a channel. I certainly hope this is not the case...

I cannot find any news on an official or even rumored cancellation of this channel by Optimum or CableVision.

Update: I am getting reports that this channel works this morning, from people at home. I will test it out in the PM.

Posted at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

It has been a long time since I had a boring weekend. In fact, I miss them. Nothing like being able to sit around, watch TV and just relax. So after work on Sunday, I came home, got a quick hair cut and then got a tie. After that, I went home and simply relaxed.

I got a green tie, I don't have many green ties.

In any event, I really want this 8-bit tie. Maybe one day, someone will buy it for me and Ill have an excuse to wear it.

Posted at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

We recently hired three new programmers, once about a month ago and two new coders who are starting in within a week or so. The coder who started has a nice desk already, which he enjoys. The two new guys have place, but we wanted to open things up a bit.

In the "client specialists room, i.e. the programmer room, we had a corner where we stacked up food. Literally, tons of food, stacked up in the corner of the room. It is actually a place for a programmer to work, but it was covered in food and papers. So we decided to buy a Sterilite Cabinet to place all that food in. Guess what, it really all fit - we didn't think it would. The Sterilite Cabinet has huge capacity. It is great for solutions like this.

In the picture above, you can see we put the cabinet on the right of the fridge. BTW, yes we have two microwaves - one for kosher and one for non-kosher (maybe ill blog on that later). It fit perfectly. The cabinet's new location was the place of our water cooler (check out that comments on that blog post btw). We moved that water cooler, which is no longer from Sunbeam,to a new location. The office looks much cleaner.

There are still a lot of things we need to do to organize the office but we are getting there.

Posted at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , Food , RustyBrick | Comments (0)

One might think that I may be a loud, outspoken type of personality. You would be wrong. I am extremely quiet, especially in larger groups.

Even though I write a ton all over the web, when it comes to talking - I don't do much of it. Yes, I do speak at conferences and seminars. But when it comes to group conversations, I normally take the back seat. I often enjoy listening, and then speaking when I have something good to say.

I used to love listening to speakers who would say so much in just a single line. You know the type. There are those that will repeat the same message over and over again in a 30 minute speech. And there are those that will say 30 messages in a single speech. I much prefer listening to the speaker who says 30 messages in a single speech then listening to a speaker who gives one message in a single speech.

There was one speaker I remember specifically. Every single line was a message in itself. He said a line, and that alone could have been a 30 minute discussion. But he stopped there and then moved on to his next line. Yes, the next line could have been a 30 minute discussion.

Back to being quiet. There is this concept in Judaism (I can be wrong, if so, Israel Brother, please comment).... I think it goes... We are only given so many words in our life time. The more you talk, the less time you got. I don't think it is literal. But there is 100% value in that statement. I think it has to do with the value of listening what others are saying and then only speaking afterwards.

I am being distracted left and right from this post, so I am cutting it short. Which is kinda fitting, i.e. less words. ;-)

Update: I should clarify. I have nothing against loud people, I am just explaining that I am not loud. That is just not my personality. Nothing is wrong with loud people.

Posted at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (8)

Dare I admit it? In the house chore department, I got it easy.

Why admit it now? Well, this weekend, was the last two-days of Passover. We had my in-laws and family over for the full two-days. My wife also invited over my parents, my sister and kids and my brother and kids for a Sunday lunch meal (they are all in walking distance - well, not parents, but they were at my sister).

Preparing a house to house, room, clean, feed, etc nine people is a chore. I barely did anything myself to help. I did my part by staying out of the kitchen and staying out of my wife's way. I believe she had help from her family, but I am not sure how much help. In any event, I, for the most part, stayed out of the way.

I did have a few things to take care of, such as the lighting (which I messed up on), timers for certain appliances (which worked for the most part) and fixing some things prior to the holiday. But I had no say on food, rooms, bedding, cleaning, etc. All I did was go to work and stay out of the way. In fact, I rarely ever do the wash, clean the floors, make any food or anything - things magically get done some how.

My wife doesn't like when I talk about her here, but I do need to say that she did a wonderful job this holiday!

Posted at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Since I was sick most the week, I figured maybe I'll just pick up the routine blogging next week.... I started back at the other blogs, but maybe ill take a holiday for this blog...

So see you Monday and happy last days of Passover!

Posted at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

So I have been sick since Saturday night/Sunday morning. I typically get sick on holidays or weekends, not sure why - but normally when I get really sick, it happens on days I am off anyway. Sometimes, these sicknesses linger into work days - I hate when that happens.

Monday, I was off for Passover. Tuesday, I was hoping to come back, but I was too sick. My wife made me go to the doctor - who happens to be in the same building as my office, so before and after the doctor visit, I spent some time in the office (with fever). In fact, I actually interviewed a new PHP candidate for a job, in person.

Today, I think my fever is beginning to break. I got into the office after 10am. I am absolutely exhausted already. What is with these flus that they not only kick you when your sick, but linger on and on with being weak days after?

I hope I get back to 100% (if I was ever a 100%) soon. Not being able to be quick quick quick, is really bothersome.

Posted at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

I am sick, sorry for lack of posts around the web.

Posted at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Remember my post from a several months back named I'm Not Nice: Cold Calls From India Programmers?

Well, I am so much worse now. Here is my new scenario:

(1) Phone Rings
(2) I say, "Hello"
(3) There is a three second delay...
(4) "Hello, my name is Joe," is heard in an Indian accent from far away (i.e. VOIP line).
(5) I said, "I assume you are looking for us to outsource to you?"
(6) There is a three second delay...
(7) "Yes."
(8) I say, "Not interested, Goodbye."

I don't even have patience to wait for the person to tell me what they do. I ask them straight out...

Posted at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (9)

I was at the bank today, depositing a few checks - like I do a few times per week and I noticed a promotion for "Remote Check Deposit." A way to deposit money from your computer, without having to go into the bank!

I have heard about this mysterious but yet fascinating invention before, but blew it off as a folks tale. ;-)

Seriously, many banks now offer this to companies. I go to the bank a few times a week, in fact, I send my partner to go also, I send my wife, and also, I often send my mother. I am sometimes too busy to go, but the funds need to be deposited to keep the business operating. Today, I went and I saw the promo for Remote Check Deposit.

The teller wrote down the branch manager's name and telephone number, so I can get more information. The second I got back into my office, I called the branch manager. He looked up my account and said I qualify and might be able to get the scanner for free, plus a reduction in the monthly fee.

He then gave me the fees without any reduction and promised to call me back with my rates. Here are the fees without any reduction:

• $866 for the scanner - one time fee
• $125 per month for the service
• $0.09 per check

The 9 cents per check is fine with me but the $125 per month is crazy, at least for my business. Let's do some math...

If I go to the bank 3 times per week, let's say there are 45 weeks I go to the bank (52 weeks per year). 135 bank runs per year. Now, if each bank run costs me more than $12 or so, then it makes sense for me to buy this service, at the retail cost. Let's say, it takes me 15 minutes to do a bank run and I am worth $300 per hour (am I?), then the 15 minutes costs me $75? So I would be saving $63 per run by getting this device.

See why they call this fuzzy math? In reality, I don't think it is worth $125 per month for me to be that lazy. In fact, why are they charging me for this? Think of the amount of money they can save by having businesses process their own deposits and not have them come in and take up the teller's time? One day, this service will likely be free - it just makes sense. How much would I pay for it? I don't even know if I would pay $30 per month for it - just doesn't seem worth it and I do need to see the sunlight on some days.

How much would you pay for this service?

Posted at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (6)

I have become a stickler for being on time for scheduled business calls. I really really get annoyed when I have a scheduled call for a certain time and that person is not around for the call, when we scheduled it.

There are two cases of these calls.

(1) The person is suppose to call you and calls you an hour later or never calls. When this happens, I always want to tell the person - we had a call scheduled for X and I cannot talk now. But often, I stop what I am doing and take the call anyway. But it really makes for a bad impression.

(2) I am suppose to call the person and he/she doesn't answer when I call. When this happens, I always leave a voicemail saying, it is X time and we had a schedule phone call. I hope everything is okay. Please call me back at ###-###-###, thank you. Again, leaves a bad impression and really bothers me.

I am an extremely punctual individual about most things. I am the type to be 15 minutes early to everything. I call people exactly on the dot, when scheduled. I actually often make sure to clean my plate before expecting a phone call or meeting. Otherwise, I might be distracted during the call.

In addition, I am much more in favor of scheduling phone calls as opposed to just calling "whenever." It allows me to devote the necessary attention to whom I am speaking with. Otherwise, I can be involved in 5 different things and one of those five things can get lost in the pile (although that rarely happens, I hope).

Of course, that is my nature and not everyone has this type of mentality. What type of person are you? More laid back or not? Here is a poll:

Posted at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

Sorry for lack of posts, been a very busy day. Typically I get a chance to post here, but I honestly didn't have any time yet.

It is 1:15 (EST), been up since about 5:30am and the only thing I have eaten all day were two Granola bars (which I just ate).

Back to work...

Posted at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

I learned a while ago that I cannot expect my employees to work as hard as I do for my company. It is my company and the more I put into, hopefully the more I get out of it. But in reality, hard work does not always pay off (don't tell your kids).

But I don't expect my employees to work as hard as I do. I do expect them to work hard and they do. But I don't expect them to work as hard as I do. I figure, you set an example and hopefully it encourages them to work harder. I do have some employees that work incredibly hard, maybe two that work as hard as I do. Since they read this blog (yes, I know you read) I won't name names...

BUT... I do expect that if I work for someone they work as hard as I do. I expect that. If it is your business, you should care more about your business then I do. Sometimes, be it with clients or other work, I get the feeling that I care more about their business then they do. That bugs me, it really does. Why should I work my brains out and pick up the pieces when they care less than I do?

Anyone ever feel that way?

Posted at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (6)

I keep trying to upload images to Flickr from iPhoto via FlickrExport but I get "Error 2 in photos.upload.checkTickets."

Seems like is it on Flickr's side. A Flickr help post has a message from staff on this issue:

Hi folks -

This morning we lost a part of Farm1, and as a side-effect we've stalled on the uploads. We're working on the problem right now, and we're hopefully going to get it sorted out ASAP.

Sorry about this!

Hope it is fixed soon, got to show you guys something. :)

Posted at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

It has been light in the mornings at 5:45am, when I get out of the house. But that is going to change Sunday, when we change the clocks.

We spring forward.

So 5:45am will be like 4:45am - that always confuses me. :)

Back to darkness for a while, technically until late April, when the sun rises at 5:50ish.

Ughh, hate dark mornings.

Posted at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I sign a lot of papers, I hate papers, but I sign them anyway. Checks, IRS forms, contracts, and so on.

Today, I was asked to email a copy of my signature to be used on the SphinnCon Israel handout. So I sent over one that I use on my proposal emails and I then scanned in a few others.

My signature really stinks! At least I think so. Typically, I will just sign my last name or part of my last name, cause I am in a rush. When trying to sign my whole name, it takes too long and I feel it comes out weird.

I am not artist, but is there a way to teach oneself to have a pretty looking signature that takes little time to sign?

Posted at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I was devastated when the Dockers Mobile Pant was discontinued. This pant rocks. It has so many hidden pockets, that it makes me comfortable holding my gadgets - which now really only consists of an iPhone.

Places like JC Pennies and other stores do still sell some, so I am still in luck.

Why do these pants rock? Like I said, the Hidden Pockets are what make it awesome. Pockets include:

- It has 7 pockets that I am aware of
- 3 Pockets are hidden
- In each main front pocket, there is a hidden zipper pocket behind it (great for wallet or change)
- On the side knee, there is a hidden pocket (great for a cell phone)
- Then you have the normal pockets

No belt clips required!

Posted at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

I have this thing where I don't like too much stuff in my pockets and I hate things clipped to my belt. One technique of keeping your pocket's spacious is to de-clutter your keychain to the bare essentials.

The picture above, is a picture of my current keychain with items I recently removed.

Now, all I have on my keychain are keys for:

• My wireless car key
• My wife's car, yea I need it often
• My house's front door
• My home's side door
• My office's mailbox key
• My safe
• My office wireless key

The most useful key by far is my office key. It opens the building's front and back doors, it opens my office's main door and all the doors inside my office and even the closets. Access control controls, yes, sometimes access control can go very wrong but most of the time it rocks.

My wireless car key also is cool, but I wish it took up less space. Why does it have to be so big? Why does my wife's car keys have to be so big?

What did I remove from my keys?

• I no longer have a key chain (those silver things in the picture, free from Lexus)
• I no longer carry a pathmark card, I never go (I got a good wife)
• Office bathroom key, it is almost always open
• Physical building key

I may decide to drop even more keys. I don't really need my house keys, I go through the garage door (which is programmed to open in my car). I don't really need the safe key at all times. I don't really need the office mailbox key at all times also. But I also think I may need them at important times....

Keep it de-cluttered!

How do you manage your keychain?

Posted at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Michael Gray tagged me on What Websites and Programs Do You Use to Get Things Done. So, I thought I share with you the most uses sites and programs I use on a daily basis.

Posted at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , iPhone | Comments (3)

I am so used to a crazy busy schedule that these next two weeks make me want to jump out of my skin.

Yesterday, I set my alarm clock to wake up at 7:30, two hours later than the norm. But I was up at 5:45 and couldn't go back to sleep. So I got up closer to 7 and go to work at 8am. 8am is crazy late for me to get to work. I left work at about 2pm yesterday, because there was nothing to do.

Like last year, I have a list of year end items to take care of. Some of those are already done, but most can't be done until January 1st, which I can do all in one day.

So I sit here, bored out of my mind. Thinking, maybe I should write a long post that might help people or maybe those people won't read it because they are enjoying their time off.

The search world and the business world are both so slow. In fact, today and yesterday were the first days I set the Facebook application to a "Freezing" status, because search news is basically ice cold now.

One more week of this... I guess I will survive.

Posted at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I was just about to call a doctor for being congested since October 3rd, but it has cleared up finally.

I believe it was this past Thursday, the 15th, about 1.5 months after I first became congested. I have been mostly clear via my nose since then.

I was afraid to say anything, in fear of bringing the congestion back. But it seems to have subsided.

My stomach is still a bit weak from something that hit me Sunday night, but I am 95% back to normal with that. I hope to play ball tonight, but we will see. I ate something I shouldn't of last night, so I have yet to eat this morning and I have been awake since 5:40am... Maybe Ill eat a few snakes.

Posted at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

Most people, from what I hear, use the snooze button on their alarm clock. Not me.

If I don't wake up minutes before the alarm then when it goes off, I get up.

When I was a kid, I always kept my alarm clock on the other side of the room. It forced me to get up and turn it off. Once I was up, I did not go back to sleep. Now, even though my alarm clock is right next to my bed, I still get up on the first sign of an alarm.

If I snoozed, I would be incredibly late for everything, so snoozing doesn't work with my Out The Door In 10 Minutes routine...

Posted at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Seriously, my iPhone is my light source when it is dark.

In the early AM, when I leave the house and there is no light, I use it to show me my way. It is just so dark outside and no light at all is in the house. I can turn on some lights, but I don't want to disturb my sleeping wife (I am so nice).

So instead of turning on a light when I need to walk down the stairs, I use my iPhone to light my path.

I can't tell you how I am looking forward to switching the clocks tomorrow night. It is wayyyy toooo dark in the mornings.

Posted at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Category: Apple Macs , Daily Grind , iPhone | Comments (1)

Figure I give a public health update.

• I am still congested after almost a month, but I feel like it is getting better...
• My wrist feels somewhat better, but it hurt again last night after sawing some wood and then running to play basketball. It is hard shooting a ball, when you have that pain.
• My right foot has been hurting after playing ball, but I feel like that will go away soon.
• My left big toe kind of hurts also
• I still see a floater

I think that is about it. That is my current health update. Other than that, I am tired - but who isn't?

Posted at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

Way too often, I get a phone call from someone who has an Indian accent. This person typically says, "May I please speak with your CIO?"

I just got a call from someone who called with that accent and said:

"Can I speak with your head of IT or your CIO?"

I was short on time and responded, "No."

He then began explaining that he was from a programming company in India and they can do work cheaper for us. He asked, "Would you be interested?" I said, "No."

VOIP is great but...

I am not nice, but...

Posted at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

I just love watching these two company's stocks move:

52 Week Low: $437.00

52 Week Low: $76.77

Posted at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

That is my garbage can in my office. I feel so sick.

I guess it started last night some time. But now I feel bad. Can't stop sneezing, I feel tired, I feel hot, a bit nauseous, errr.

I got in late this morning because of long services, it put me an hour behind. Then I struggled to focus on researching for both Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land. I am pretty much done now.

Now I need to catch up on RB work. I got two meetings today, not looking forward to either now.

Then I go offline tonight until Saturday night. Ugh... So sick.

What makes things worse is that I know my wife and mother will call me often to yell at me for not taking medicine. That is just what I need, phone calls with an upset tone. I know they mean the best, but still. Got so much to do, so little time, and I am working in slow-motion.

Posted at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

So last week, I went offline Wednesday night until Saturday night for the holiday of Sukkots. It was three full days of being offline. I did the same thing for Rosh Hashanah a couple weeks before, and I do it one more time this week (starting Wednesday night).

Going offline for three days in a row is really not easy for me. Not easy mentally, not easy physically and not easy when I get back... But it is something that I have to do, so I do it. This is how I dig out from being offline, when the rest of the world is not.

(1) I first download all the email from the past three days. Now this is a lot of email, a ton. Most spam is blocked, the spam that is not blocked is deleted. I then scan from the oldest to the newest and delete, file or reply to things. Anything I can't reply to stays in the inbox until I can reply to them.

(2) Then I check blog comment spam.

(3) I then read blog posts at both SERoundtable and SELand.

(4) Then I will go through all the feeds I missed over the past three days. Most I will skip, because they were covered at either SERoundtable or SELand.

(5) Then I jump on QuickBooks to review billing items.

(6) Scan emails again and then hopefully get read for bed. Keep in mind, I don't start item #1 until it is very dark outside.

The following day, I go to the office. This happened to be Sunday for these holidays. Yesterday, I was in the office for about four hours.

(1) Reply to emails that required me to be in the office but did not require additional help from staff.

(2) Review and pay bills.

(3) Send out invoices to customers.

(4) Go through emails again and file things away.

(5) Review feeds again.

(6) Prep things for Monday.

Then last night, I prepped some stories for SELand and went to sleep.

This AM I was still behind by thirty minutes. Maybe because it was Monday, maybe because Danny is away traveling for the next 6 weeks. Who knows.

I still feel behind.

It all starts again Wednesday night. To make things crazier, I am closing on a new house and moving next week.

Posted at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

I should be more tired. I just don't feel all that tired. Is baffles me. Well, maybe not baffle, but surprises me a bit.

This week, time to rise was 5:15am. I did not go to sleep any earlier. In fact, I went to a concert at MSG in NYC two nights ago. Didn't get home until late, didn't get into bed until later. I was not tired at all yesterday. Today, I am also not tired.

I actually woke up even earlier today, without the alarm clock and got a bit of an early start.

I don't get it. I should be more tired. Heck, it is even pitch black in the morning, when I leave the house. Those types of mornings typically make me tired. Not this week.

Yea, running low on things to write about today. Amazing, huh?

Posted at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I got my second AT&T Wireless bill this weekend. I opened it and noticed I was billed for going $35 over on my minutes.

That made me a bid sad, so I started crying. No, I didn't cry. I put the bill on the side, and figured I would call today.

The week before, I called AT&T in a panic. I noticed I was about 70 minutes over, so I called AT&T. The person said, no worries, you have roll over minutes from the previous month that will cover it. Whippeee.

Then I get this bill for the overage.

I heard bad bad bad things about AT&T customer service and expected I would be charged no matter what I said.

I called, I said, I went over, why? I was told I had roll over minutes. The rep said, well, since the roll over minutes were from your first bill, they don't roll over. But in this case, she said, I will issue you a credit. I was pleasantly surprised.

The credit was issues and displayed on the web site within minutes of hanging up.

Sweet!

Posted at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

On April 5th, I officially switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. But recently the new Bloglines Beta was released, so I thought I give it a new shot.

I always liked the Bloglines Mobile version over Google Reader Mobile. But the iPhone Bloglines is even sweeter.

Now with Bloglines Beta, I get a lot of the nice functionality that makes feed reading fast, as I would have with Google Reader. So I will pin the two against each other for not just the first time and not just a second time, but this will be my third time.

It is a good thing it is quick to switch back and forth. :)

I hope to make a decision in a week or so.

Posted at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Daily Grind | Comments (0)

This is the August 28th issue of a daily post that will contain links to commentary of the posts over at the Search Engine Roundtable. If you want the daily link finds to continue, and if you miss the daily search wrap up, please go here and vote. All links I find throughout the day that ad some commentary to the posts written over at the Search Engine Roundtable, will be in the Daily Link Finds. The purpose is two fold: (1) To help people find discussion around our articles and (2) To thank people for linking to us. How do I find these links? Only one way, via a Google Blog Search link command, so make sure that (1) you are in Google Blog Search and (2) link to us.

Daily Link Finds for August 28th, 2007 (from past week or so, sorry if I missed some):

• Blog News Roundup 8/17/2007, PPC Hero
• Search Engine Marketers Fantasy Football Challenge, www.marketingshift.com
• SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 17, 2007, Search Engine Land
• Utah SEO, Bryan Phelps and Paid Links, Alex McArthur
• Audycje na temat pozycjonowania, seomedia.az.pl
• Bruceclay.com - Friday Recap, BruceClay.com
• Headlines of Note for August 20, 2007, Internet Marketing Monitor
• Barry Schwartz, Please Learn about the DMCA, Dense Random Googler
• Personalization session at SES 2007, Geeking with Greg
• SES San Jose Coverage Roundup - August 20, 2007, Search Engine Land
• SES San Jose Day Minus, Online Marketing Blog
• The Long Tail Is Dead -- Long Live the Long Tail, Search Engine Watch
• This Weeks Must Reads in Search Marketing, Web Analytics World
• Coverage of the Summer 2007 Search Engine Strategies Conference, ResourceShelf
• Search Engine Roundtable's Coverage of SES San Jose, Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Strategies Copyright and Trademark Panel, blog.ericgoldman.org
• SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 20, 2007, Search Engine Land
• SES San Jose: Top Takeaways Part 1, Web Analytics World
• SES SJ 2007 Session of the Day: Personalization, User Data, seo-space.blogspot.com
• Eight Observations On PPC Ad Copy, Rimm Kaufman
• Paid Links Debate Heating Up: Google Under Massive Fire at SES San Jose ::, Fantomaster
• Who ranks who with Personalized Pagerank?, Andrej's Miscellany
• SES San Jose Coverage, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Danny's iPhone challenge, Joe Duck
• Search Engine Strategies (SES) 2007 Recap, www.lonelymarketer.com
• Afterthoughts on SES San Jose, Jonathan Mendez's Blog
• Matt Cutts Attacks Graywolf After SES Session, Scott Hendison
• PilgrimâÄôs Picks for August 27 - Post SES Edition, Marketing Pilgrim
• Search Headlines, Search Engine Watch Blog
• SES San Jose Housecleaning, Small Business SEM
• PilgrimâÄôs Picks for August 28 - Anniversary Edition, Marketing Pilgrim

That is the discussion I have found via Google Blog Search around the posts at Search Engine Roundtable for August 28th, 2007. Thank you for contributing!

Posted at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

So Gary Price handed me a box, wrapped in birthday paper this morning. It looked like this:

So I looked at the card on the front, which read:

Barry -

Now you'll always know when your pen's running low!

Enjoy,
Ask.com

So I open the box and find a feather pen with a bottle of ink.

Too funny, a feather Quill pen. Yes, I guess, I will always know when my pen is running low on ink.

Thank Ask.com for fixing my pen outage!

Posted at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Typically, I am the type of guy that wakes up minutes before the alarm goes off.

But this week, I did not once wake up before the alarm went off.

I am getting a bit concerned.

What is different from this week as compared to last week? It is not like it is darker in the morning. It is also not like we had a time change. I didn't do any traveling. Haven't really been staying up any later.

What is going on?! :)

Posted at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (5)

This is the July 17th issue of a daily post that will contain links to commentary of the posts over at the Search Engine Roundtable. All links I find throughout the day that ad some commentary to the posts written over at the Search Engine Roundtable, will be in the Daily Link Finds. The purpose is two fold: (1) To help people find discussion around our articles and (2) To thank people for linking to us. How do I find these links? Only one way, via a Google Blog Search link command, so make sure that (1) you are in Google Blog Search and (2) link to us.

Daily Link Finds for July 17th, 2007:

• SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 16, 2007, searchengineland.com
• Google en bref - 16 juillet 2007, www.zorgloob.com
• 36 Totally Free PPC Learning Resources, www.aimclearblog.com
• A Comprehensive Guide to Using Flickr for Traffic Building and Marketing, www.doshdosh.com
• Google lanserar Custom Search, blogg.resultatmedia.se
• Google Launches Custom Search Business Edition, www.techmeme.com
• Google plaatst image-ads in zoekresultaten, www.dutchcowboys.nl
• Google Puts Image Ads in the Search Results, forums.digitalpoint.com
• Premium Adwords mit Bild, www.prometeo.de

That is the discussion I have found via Google Blog Search around the posts at Search Engine Roundtable for July 17th, 2007. Thank you for contributing!

Posted at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I was using my favorite pen today and I pressed the top in to eject the top of the pen, and the ben blew up.

You may be able to see the crack around the rippled part of the pen.

What is that right next to the Ask.com pen? I guess my replacement pen, from Searchfeed.com.

Why am I blogging up something so petty? Remember the The Latest Google Flatline from Ask.com that jokes about a Google pen that ran out of ink? Yea, Google restored the pen soon after. So when my Ask.com pen broke, it reminded me of this.

Posted at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Just realized I didn't update my blog today. That is rare...

So what happened today?
- Crazy busy morning...
- Blogged at SER
- Blogged at SEL
- Ben left at 11am
- Personal thing here or there
- Interviewed someone at 12:30pm for a job here
- Got on a client call
- Blogged more at SER and SEL
- Got on a Google call
- Did some wrap ups

Posted at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Some of you already know that RSS has changed my life but to what extent?

Good question.

I do a ton of reading in order to write at the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land. A ton. This includes scanning and reading thousands of forum threads each day and thousands of RSS feed items from blogs, news sites and more.

Here is a look at my RSS reading trends provided by Google Reader, my primary RSS reader.

This graph shows you the number of feeds I have read in the past 30 days. Keep in mind, last week, I was offline all of Wednesday and most of Thursday, for a holiday - so I did not read feeds those days.

As you can see, I easily read over a thousand feed items each day. In the past 30 days, not including two days, I have read almost 30,000 items from my ~400 feeds.

This graph shows you that I read most of those feeds between the hours of 8am and 10am. This pretty much goes well with my schedule. I go through forums (I do not use RSS for forums) between 7am and 8am and then do RSS feeds. Forum research is used to blog at Search Engine Roundtable and RSS feeds research is used to blog at Search Engine Land. So then throughout the day I check less often for new feed items. And pretty much midnight through 5am, I do not touch my feeds.

This graph shows you that most new feed items are on Tuesdays, at least for the past 30 days. Interesting... I wonder if this is the norm for the rest of the world.

So let me tag a handful of people to get ideas on their feed reading. Now I need to tag people who use Google Reader, so this may be tricky...

- Matt Cutts
- Nick Baum
- Mike Maddaloni
- If you use Google Reader, please comment and let me know if you post your stats

Update: About a year later, I revisit this post with Have My RSS Reading Habits Changed?

Posted at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Daily Grind | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

For the past few weeks, I have been waking up just a few minutes before my alarm clock buzzes at 5:45am.

I honestly like when I wake up before the alarm clock buzzes away. I hate the sound of that buzz. So if I wake up before, I can turn it off before it buzzes. Plus, it won't annoy the wife, who tends not to hear it anyway.

The main thing, I feel more awake throughout the day, if I wake up before I am forced to open my eyes.

Good morning.

Posted at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

If you are signed into Google and you do searches, Google will store your Web History. I only set it to shave my search history, so this is just a sample of that.

Here is the numbers of searches I do by hour (I believe this is based on Eastern Standard Time).

Here are also the number of searches I do by day:

It also shows me my post popular searches by hour or day. 5am, I typically search for "weather" like searches. Around 6am through 10am, I tend to search for content on specific sites (i.e. I am looking for stuff I wrote at SEW or SER or SEL, so I use site: command to find it). Then starting around 11am through 12pm, I search for lunch things, like restaurant names and stuff. Then between 1pm and 5pm, I typically search for more business things and stock quotes, along with site commands. 6pm and onward I am back to weather searches along with the others searches from throughout the day.

This makes for a good tag meme. I'll tag...
- cshel
- Danny
- Stuntdubl
- Aaron Wall

Posted at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

As many of you know, I was offline for the past two days, completely offline.

I absolutely hate digging out of it.

Right now, I can barely focus. It's like my fingers are drunk and tripping over each other. Not good for a blogger, not good at all.

First thing I do is download emails. Hundreds of emails come in, hundreds. Thousands are blocked for spam reasons, then a couple hundred more are then blocked on my secondary spam filter. Then the real emails. Hundreds of those, hundreds. Most of them I can quickly glance at, and delete or file away. Then there are the ones I can do quick replies to and delete or file away. Then there are the ones I need to wait and respond later (I hate those ones).

Then speak with some RBers to make sure everything went OK the past few days. Delete any voicemails that I don't need to return and move on.

Then the comment spam. I review what I can, delete was is bad. Ben did a great job watching over it when I was gone. So it was not bad. But some slipped through to the other blogs. I then ban some more domains, update some of the filtering, let the spam comments delete and rebuild and continue on.

Then comes the forum administrator stuff, reviewing the spam and posts at my own forum. That goes quickly, since I do very little promotion of that forum. And the mods there simply rock.

Then off to the feeds. Over 2,000 unread feeds. I take a quick breath, mark most of them as read and then review Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land's caps to get me up to speed. Some feeds I read, based on folders I have set up - so I didn't mark them all as read.

But right now, I am so out of it.

Off to write more...

Posted at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

I use Digg every now and then, supposedly mostly when I spam them, in any event...

This post will make me look dumb, but I figure if I couldn't easily figure it out, others may have not either.

Some how, some reason, I had the Technology section set as my home page for Digg.com. It bothered me that the main page was not the generic news section which is inclusive of all sections.

I went to my preferences and there was no option there to set your home page. So I gave up.

Then yesterday, I saw a little link on one of the inner sections named "Set Topic as Digg Home." Whoo hoo! That is what I wanted, so now the news section is my Digg home page again.

Here is a screen capture of the location of that link.

Simple, staring me in my face almost every day, but still, I didn't see it.

Posted at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Daily Grind | Comments (0)

Since I am in a history mood, I thought I share my past email signatures. I decided to publish my email and phone numbers here, but please do not spam me, please. :)

The first email signature I was able to find in my archives was this one from 1999.

Simple and no phone number on this one.

I then added a phone number to my email signature some time in early 2000 or late 1999. Then we had a 914 area code, until Westchester County stole it from Rockland County.

In late 2000, I changed it to the 845 area code.

Then sometime in 2002 we moved to a new office, in Suffern, NY. So we needed a new number.

My signature remained like that until a couple months ago. But this is what my signature looks like now.

I pretty much added the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land stuff to the signature file.

In fact, my Treo email signature still does not have the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land stuff on it.

I actually experimented with this colorful signature for a couple days and then gave up on it.

It was too much.

So why did it take me so long to add Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land? Well, to be honest, the bulk of my email responses have nothing to do with the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land stuff. The majority of my emails at RustyBrick related, so I didn't want to confuse those folks.

Even today, the bulk of my emails at RustyBrick related. But when I switched to Apple Mail and finally got around to messing around with email signatures, I thought graying out the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land parts was a good alternative.

I can, of course, make different signature files for different responses. But that takes too much time, I rather just use a default. So this is my current default now.

Damn, I can blog about anything...

Posted at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (5)

I have been testing and comparing Google Reader versus Bloglines as my primary reader for some time now. The history goes back a while, but you can start here and then click back through the links to see that I finally switched over to Google Reader from Bloglines.

I never compared the mobile versions of Google Reader & Bloglines. So I figured I do a post right now on that. I am not a heavy mobile RSS reader, I would say I used the mobile RSS readers a few times per week - i.e. when I am out and I am bored (see Streaming the Daily Search Cast Podcast at the Mall.

The Intro Pages:

What You See on Bloglines Mobile:
- Total Number of Updated Feeds
- Categories or Folders
- Items Updated by Folder & Feed
- Mark All as Read
- Display All Feeds (including unread ones)
- Display Saved (Starred) Feeds
- Search Feeds

What You Don't See on Bloglines Mobile:
- The Updated Feed Titles

What You See on Google Reader Mobile:
- The Updated Feed Titles
- Mark All These Items Read

What You Don't See on Google Reader Mobile:
- Total Number of Updated Feeds
- Items Updated by Folder & Feed
- Categories or Folders
- Mark All Items As Read
- Display All Feeds (including unread ones)
- Display Saved (Starred) Feeds
- Search Feeds

Summary on Intro Pages for Bloglines versus Google Reader Mobile Edition:
Google Reader Mobile does allow you to see "starred" items as well as view the folder/categories (i.e. tags) for items unread by folder or category. But it requires an additional click. It would be nice to set this as a preference. But this is not a huge deal, I can always bookmark the /tags page instead and use that. So you can get to almost all the information Bloglines provides on the first page, but it takes one extra click.

Let's take a look inside now.

Viewing A Feed Item:

What You See on Bloglines Mobile:
- The Feed Title
- Contents of Feed
- Link To Original Post
- Date and Time
- Email Content Feature
- Save (Star) Item Feature
- Keep as New Feature
- Unsubscribe from Feed Feature
- Mark Feed As Unread
- Feed Summary

What You Don't See on Bloglines Mobile:
- View Next Unread Item

What You See on Google Reader Mobile:
- The Feed Title
- Contents of Feed
- Link To Original Post
- Save (Star) Item Feature
- Keep as New Feature
- View Next Unread Item

What You Don't See on Google Reader Mobile:
- Date and Time
- Email Content Feature
- Unsubscribe from Feed Feature
- Mark Feed As Unread
- Feed Summary

Summary on Item View Pages for Bloglines versus Google Reader Mobile Edition:
While I like the features on Bloglines, some may be overkill and slow things down. I do not need to see the feed summary when I am viewing an individual item in that feed. The other features are nice to have and I wish Google would add them. I also find a preview of the next unread item in your feeds at the bottom of the item feed view useful and would recommend Bloglines add that to their mobile edition.

Conclusion:
Overall, I find Bloglines Mobile to have more features that I would use while reading my mobile feeds. It is, however, not enough to make me switch back to Bloglines. As I said, I do not use mobile RSS as often as when I am at my office or on my computer at home.

Posted at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Computers , Daily Grind | Comments (4)

No one is perfect, even-though we strive to be, or do we? Anyway, that is for another blog post. There are things that I wish I was more serious about. Well, maybe not "serious" but "devoted to" or "scheduled to" to do on a daily basis.

Here is a list that comes to the top of my head as I write this:

• Learning Torah more often, the daily dose is great and all, but I still feel guilty about not doing much more than that.
• Eating the right things, I am getting older and I know I should take better care of myself.
• Playing sports harder than I do, I am lazy but I do play well.
• Brushing my teeth better, things are OK, but I should do better.
• Being more patient with people. I am known to do things very quickly and thus I have very little patience. Sometimes that is transparent to others.
• Going to evening prayers (I got mornings and afternoons down, but I get tired at night).
• Sometimes I blog too much, need to be careful with that.
• I am sure there are other things, but they don't come to mind right now.

Family, feel free to blast me in the comments. Friends, maybe you shouldn't. ;-) Fellow SEOs, sure, why not.

I'll tag people with this... Let me think... My old time buddy Shawn Hogan. I bet Kim Krause Berg would have a colorful response. Let's tag another woman, Vanessa Fox because it has been 9 days since she updated her blog. How about ShoeMoney since he will be 100% honest with us. And we need someone from outside of the U.S., so how about DaveN, I am sure he will make us laugh.

Posted at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (9)

I admit it, I have a serious condition. It is commonly referred to as OCD or obsessive-compulsive disorder. But my OCD is not typical.

I am obsessive and compulsive about emails.

Like most people in the tech industry, I get tons of emails. To be honest, I will go out and say, I probably get more emails than the average guy in tech. Why?

• I get email notifications of every single update that happens in my business automatically.
• Blogging related emails (all the press releases, tons of tips from readers, etc.)
• SEO emails (people think I am a help desk)
• Google emails (when Google has issues, I act as Google's help desk also)
• Standard client emails throughout the day, of course.
• Internal RB emails.
• Friend/Family emails.
• Of course, SPAM

I am pretty sure I ordered the list above in volume order. It gets overwhelming sometimes.

But what makes it worse is that I am obsessive over not having email in my inbox. I absolutely hate having email in my inbox. I also hate not knowing if there is new email in my inbox that should be filed away quickly.

My email filing system is pretty good. Here is a sample structure but not exact:

- Search Related
-- Search Engine Roundtable
--- SER Advertising
--- Google
--- Yahoo
--- Ask.com
--- Microsoft
--- Design
--- Pulse
--- Seals
--- Misc
-- Search Engine Land
--- Google
--- Yahoo
--- Ask.com
--- Microsoft
--- Misc
-- SEW Blog
-- IMNY
-- Conferences
--- SES
--- PubCon
--- SMX
--- Misc
-- Forums
--- Cre8asite
--- SEW
--- WMW

- RB Related
-- RB Clients
--- Client X
--- Client Y
--- Client Z (and so on)
-- Prospects
-- Biz Development
-- Hosting
--- Email
--- Servers
--- VOIP
--- Network
--- Security
-- Employees
--- Employee A
--- Employee B
--- Employee C...
-- Legal
-- Affiliate
-- Receipts
-- Promotions

- Personal
-- Wife
-- Dad
-- Basketball
-- Misc

This list goes on and on...But I need to stop somewhere...

Then I use Smart Folders for quicker access to some type of mail. I won't get too specific here also.

Now, if an email is not filed away quickly and I know it should be, it really bothers me.

What is worse, is that if I am not by my computer, I live on my Treo. I am the rude guy who you are having dinner with and while talking to me, I am going through my email on my Treo. I am also the guy who is walking from my office to the bathroom, reading email on my Treo. I am also the guy who is responding to emails while driving 75 MPH on the highway (I know!). The list goes on.

But it all goes back to me being compulsive and obsessive about email and email not being in my inbox. Well, I do sometimes see the bottom of my inbox and that feeling, is something I cannot describe.

Update: I am live doing the Search Pulse radio show and I am checking email! I am sick!

Posted at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Category: Computers , Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Andy tagged me asking which magazines do I read offline. So here you go...

My favorite magazine is Wired followed by MacWorld. So here is my bulleted list:

• Wired
• Mac World
• PC World
• Business Week
• Time
• Red Herring
• Optimize
• Information Week
• Networking Wold
• Search Marketing Standard

I am sure there others, but that is what comes to mind.

I typically read them on the weekends.

I'll tag:
- Danny Sullivan
- Tamar
- Judah
- Todd
- The Lisa

Posted at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

I am now down to waking up at 5:50am and getting out the door by 6:00am, give or take two minutes.

Here is my process:

1. Take shower night before


2. Alarm clock rings at 5:50am


3. Never ever hit snooze


4. Sit up and open computer


5. Review emails for potential emergencies


6. Delete junk spam in blog (big time waster)


7. Go to bathroom to tinkle, brush teeth, brush hair, etc.


8. Go to bedroom to get dressed in closet, to not wake wife


9. Shut down computer


10. Put Treo in chest pocket


11. Bag the computer


12. Say good day to the wife


13. Walk out the door and lock it behind me

That is my process, pretty much exactly. The first 10 minutes of my typical day.

I got my morning ritual down to 10 minutes or so. How about you?

Posted at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (16)

This goes back a bit...

Ask.com's Bloglines was annoying one day, so I decided to pin Bloglines vs. Google Reader. Ultimately Bloglines won because Google Reader has performance issues in Safari. So I set Google Reader as my backup RSS reader.

But that all changed recently...

After hearing Google Reader fixed the Safari memory leak, I decided to give it a second take. And I have now made my decision to make Google Reader my primary reader and make Bloglines my secondary reader.

Why? Speed. Google Reader is now quick - CPU wise and also is quicker to use.

Thanks Google!

Posted at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Crazy day today...

• Woke up at 5:10 (30 minutes before I normally wake up).
• Left at 6 to drive to LGA
• Arrived at LGA at 7:15ish
• Left LGA at 7:30ish
• Got to office at 8:15
• Swamped with stuff....
• Blogged both at SER and SEL
• Did financial stuff
• Did client stuff
• Did internal RB management stuff
• More blogging...
• This post
• Now clients are walking in for a meeting...

Next week is going to be madness, just madness.

FYI - I am off the blog Tuesday and Wednesday for Passover, and so is Tamar.

Posted at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I thought I get a bit personal with this post and talk about my showering likes and dislikes.

When it comes to soap, I like Irish Spring. I prefer the original, but sometimes my wife buys the one with MicroBeads. It is a nice surprise because that version kinda tickles. I have also tried the IcyBlast version, which was also OK. But my favorite is the original, I like the smell of it.

No, I am not Irish. But I just like it.

What I don't like is having fifteen different soaps. One for your face, one for your hands, one for your toes, one for your back, one for your eyes -- you get my point. I just need one solution for everything. I am a simple man with simple needs.

Of course, this doesn't mean I use soap in my hair. Honestly, I tell my wife to buy me the cheapest shampoo for my hair. Currently, I use White Rain for that, but honestly, any kind is fine with me.

So there you go. I took you in the shower with me.

Posted at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

I just got word from Google Reader Engineer, Mihai Parparita, that they have made speed improvements to Google Reader on Apple's Safari.

Mihai said:

We've made some improvements with regards to memory leaks (affecting all browsers, including Safari). Now if you switch between one subscription or folder and another, memory should be properly reclaimed.

So I gave it a quick test with my morning feeds and it worked! Google Reader is now fast in Safari!

That was the main I stuck with bloglines after my first test.

Now that the speed improvements are here, I will be giving it another run. I will give it about a week and let you know what I decide. But it is looking good for Google Reader.

Thanks Mihai!

Posted at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Computers , Daily Grind | Comments (0)

Today is my birthday, which means it is my brother's birthday too - how simple!

Anyway, not much to say. I don't think I will be doing anything special today. I hate the surprise stuff. I hate making a big deal about my personal things.

But you have to admit, Cartoon Barry is looking pretty cute in that birthday hat. ;-)

Like most Thursday nights, tonight my wife and I will go out for dinner. But tonight, unlike most Thursday nights, I will be getting a piece of cake. Whoo hoo!

Honestly, I am a lucky guy. There is nothing I really want for my birthday, that I don't already have.

For more about me, check out About Barry page and then look at the top portion of the page for the links to my different profiles.

Back to the daily grind.

Posted at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (17)

I have been quoted many places since beginning my coverage on search, in fact I stopped keeping track - which is kind of a shame...

Today, I had two calls, one with a smaller publisher and one with Forbes. I spoke with both about twenty-minutes on different topics in search.

The Forbes call went something like this....

Reporter: Hi, can I ask you some questions on X, Y and Z?
Barry: Ummmm... Sure

Reporter: So Search Company X launched Product Y today, and I had questions on it. I saw you wrote about it at blog Z.
Barry: Ummmm.. Yea.

Reporter: Can you tell me what you think of their implementation of it?
Barry: Sure, well, since it is so new, I don't have full access to it yet, but as far as I know, it would work like this. I then explain how I envision it would work. I explain how it differs from others and where it can improve or change.

Reporter: Do you think people can take it this way? (Trying to get me to say something that goes against the product, even if I don't feel that way).
Barry: Well no. Since they launched it this way, it won't be used for that - at least not the way it works now. But technically, if it was implemented a different way, people can abuse it in the fashion you said. But not currently.

Reporter: But if they did implement it that way, would you say it can be used in a bad way?
Barry: Yes but they didn't implement it like that.

Reporter: Asks the same Q another way...
Barry: I give examples again of products that are similar and explain that this product was not launched in that fashion - so it won't be used in that way. If that changed, then yes, it can be used in that way....

Don't get me wrong... I love these calls. But it is funny. They call you with a story in mind and try to make the story by having you agree with them. I guess that is how it works... I really don't know.

Some calls are pure opinion and further explanation on the topic. Those are fine and dandy.

Do I get quoted and linked to? Not likely... I would say at best, 10% of the calls I get from these publishers (Forbes, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, eWeek, and so on) end up quoting me. 90% of those do not, but they may use the ideas we talked about it. Is it a waste of my time? Never, I enjoy the calls and it is worth it for me to try to get that quote.

But what really upset me was a call from the smaller publisher. About two months ago, I answered about 30 minutes worth of questions, she sent me the report today. I reviewed it, and it didn't contain my name or any other names from her sources. I asked her about it and she said we do not cite names for privacy reasons. I am like, thanks for telling me. But that call was fun too. Would I do it again? Honestly, I probably would because I like helping people. Should I? I doubt I should. I would think if I spent that time writing a blog post at Search Engine Roundtable or Search Engine Land, it would help a lot more people than the case above with the smaller publisher.

Posted at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Daily Grind , SEO Tips | Comments (0)

Since RSS is critical in my daily life, I decided to have a backup RSS reader.

As you know, I have had trouble on occasion with Bloglines. It is expected that programs some times blink out, so to help not miss a beat, I decided to use Bloglines as my main reader and Google Reader as my backup reader.

How does this work?

I continue to use Bloglines as I normally do. But after I get through my morning feed runs, I will use my Google Reader Dashboard Widget to click over to Google Reader and mark all items as read. I may do this a few times throughout the day, after I know I have seen everything in Bloglines.

This way, if something does go wrong with Bloglines, I know I have very little overlap or missed feeds in Google Reader, to fall back on. Yes, this means I need to export my OPML file from Bloglines to Google Reader every now and then, but it is not a huge deal. I consider this like any backup procedure, RSS is just that important to me.

Do you have a RSS backup solution?

Posted at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Daily Grind | Comments (0)

There are certain repetitive tasks I do throughout the day. And with those tasks, I try to automate as much as possible. Why? Because a few minutes saved several times per day, seriously adds up.

One thing I do is use my toolbar bookmarks folder to store articles, blog entries and other items that I want to write or link to throughout the day.

I then export that folder into Text Edit. After that, I save the files as HTML.

I then bring it into BBEdit so I can use the power of find and replace with grep.

For example, with my daily link finds, I need to format the links so that we have the article name as a hyper link followed by a comma and then the article source.

So with a bit of grep, I am able to do a find and replace on the HTML generated by Text Edit and make my HTML in a matter of a split second versus a few minutes. I use this several times a day for several different reasons, so it is a huge time saver. Thank you Ronnie.

Here is a screen capture of the BBEdit grep action in use:

Basically, it is:

Find this: ^<p class="p1">(.+),([^,]+)</a></p>$
Replace with: <li>\1</a>, \2</li>

Posted at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I can't believe it, I got my inbox down to 0 (that is ZERO) messages!

Well, as I write this, it now has more emails. But I have a screen capture to prove that my inbox is now empty.

I am a nut when it comes to email. Anything in my inbox must be taken care of. If not, then I freak out. I have tons and tons of folders plus "actions" to move emails from my inbox into specified folders.

I am just glad that I was able to take a screen capture of my inbox with zero messages. Honestly, I don't know how people manage to put all their messages in their inbox without any folders. I don't get it.

Posted at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (8)

I gave Google Reader a shot against Bloglines, and I believe I gave it a fair shot against Bloglines but ultimately, my RSS reader will remain to be Bloglines (at least for the time being).

To make things fair, I put a Google Reader toolbar bookmark right next to my Bloglines bookmark. I created a Google Reader Dashboard Widget Notifier to place right next to the Bloglines notifier. And I tested using both for about two weeks.

My only issue with Google Reader is that it seriously hogs resources on my Apple.

Rendering Google Reader items in Safari is no fun. I have a super fast computer, tons of RAM, top of the line. But either Safari has major issues with rendered JavaScript and AJAX or Google Reader is written poorly. Either way, and Ill assume it is Safari's fault, Bloglines does not have the same problem.

So until either Safari fixes their JavaScript issues (which I know they have) or Google Reader reduces some of the JavaScript they use to make a sweet web based RSS reader, I will be sticking with Bloglines.

I do like a lot of things about Google Reader; such as the list view versus the expanded view tab and many more things but it is not enough for me to switch.

My default browser has to run quickly with my RSS reader. RSS speeds up my life, I can't let it slow me down.

Posted at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

As you know, I have been testing Google Reader against Bloglines. With Bloglines, I use a Dashboard Widget to see how many items in my feeds I have not seen. I wanted the same thing for Google Reader, but the only thing available was a desktop program but not a widget.

So Ronnie, my brother, put a Google Reader Dashboard Widget together for me. It can be used by any Mac user running Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

It is a simply program that tells you the number of items you have not read in Google Reader. To use it, just go to the Google Reader Dashboard Widget page, download it, install it and plugin your Google Reader account info. Bang, it works.

I actually asked Ronnie to mimic the style of the Bloglines Widget, so that they look nice side by side. I have mine lined up like this:

So get yourself a Google Reader Dashboard Widget.

Posted at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I have had an American Express business card for ages. I recently upgraded to the platinum business card to reap some better rewards. But I think American Express is getting the upper hand.

I know people who really know how to use those rewards. They get free flights, upgrades, extra perks, etc. I get nothing.

I was at a friend, he told me that he has American Express Luggage Tags. Supposedly, they get you your bags faster. So I called, asking for these luggage tags, and they acted like they never heard of such things. Hmm, what does this look like or what about this or this.

I called a couple times in the past, seeing if I can get upgrades and so on. Noddaa.

I think I am using my AMEX card wrong...

Posted at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

This is a question I get every now and then. For some background, my search blog, Search Engine Roundtable, reports on the "pulse of the search marketing community." What that means is we try our best to find our article stories directly from the search community, within search forums.

People often wonder how I and the crew find our threads. Well, I am not going to give away all my secrets but I will tell you some basics.

Every morning, normally between 6:45am and 7:45am (EST) I do my "forum research." This includes a bunch of things.

How Do I Find Good Search Marketing Threads:

(1) I go to my preferred forums first; they include:

• Search Engine Roundtable Forums
• Cre8asite Forums
• DigitalPoint Forums
• Search Engine Watch Forums
• WebmasterWorld

(2) I scan all new posts from the last time I visited the forum. I try to spot quality signals from these posts. Quality posts have certain signals:

• Descriptive titles
• Nice number of responses relative to post data and forum membership numbers
• Thread creator is long time contributor
• Thread commenter(s), those that reply, are long time contributors
• The thread views are high, relative to data and membership
• A search representative participated in the thread

Don't get me wrong, these signals are just that, signals and they do not work 100% of the time. So some times you got to go with your gut and dig deeper yourself.

(3) If content is low, I then go to my secondary search forums list and do the same in step two.

(4) I then have some tricks to find some really hot threads, but I cannot share those tricks.

(5) I rarely ever get people submitting a thread to me. I wish I did. But people rarely use the submit a thread form to inform me of good posts. And I rarely ever get notifications from forum moderators or administrators of quality threads. So this is an open invitation... Please use the submit a thread form to send us quality threads - don't worry if you are unsure - we won't yell at you. But if we do use your submission, then you are likely to get link credit...

That is how I find some of the threads I post at the Search Engine Roundtable. Again, I didn't list my secrets, and I doubt I ever will, but there is some information for you.

Posted at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , SEO Tips | Comments (7)

Just an FYI, I have been in the office since about 6:30am (EST). It is now after 9:30pm (EST).

Hope to leave within 30 minutes...

Posted at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

Today's downtime with Bloglines pushed me over the edge and I decided to fire up Google Reader again.

(1) I have updated my Google Reader OPML file to that of Bloglines.
(2) I then went through all recent Google Reader threads and marked them all as read.
(3) I added a bookmark next to my Bloglines bookmark on my toolbar.

Now, whenever I look at one RSS reader, I will then look at the next RSS reader. I calculate it will probably take me 30 - 50% more time to get through my feeds this way. But I am going to do it for two weeks or until I can. This way I can seriously test the two.

Already I have made modifications to Google Reader:

(1) I only show updated subscriptions on left pane.
(2) I switched from expanded view to list view on right pane.
(3) I only show updated subscriptions on right pane.

I am sure I will make more modifications soon...

Yes, Google Reader does place more load on my browser and computer. But maybe it was because I had thousands of unread feeds.

I am willing to give this switch a serious test. So here it goes.

Oh, Google, please find me an Apple Dashboard Widget notifier.

Posted at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I depend on RSS, I honestly cannot live without it these days. Yes, I know, I have said this before, but RSS has changed my life. Without a stable RSS reader, I am in bad shape.

Since about 10am (EST), Bloglines, my preferred RSS reader, has not updated. Heck, there is a long support thread at Blogline's forums with numbers of complaints.

Bottom-line, a couple hours of downtime I can deal with. But 5 or so hours of downtime in the middle of the day! Well, that is an excuse to switch to Google Reader.

Heck, I should just switch already, since everyone else is.

Or should I give them another shot? Free is free... Google has had their issues with up time. In fact, Ask.com, owners of Bloglines, mocked Google over their downtime. Maybe, it is time for payback from the Google Reader blog?

Please Bloglines, hope your not off for presidents day.

I feel so in the dark!

Posted at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (4)

Every morning, when I get into the office, I pretty much open the same four tabs in my browser. I use Apple's Safari as my browser, and I thought I share with other Safari users, how to speed up their daily web usage grind.

I personally open up my blog admin for SER and SEL, my forum and a RB backend application. But for my example, I am going to show you how to open up Ask.com, Google, Yahoo!, and Live.com in a jiffy using Safari. Honestly, this tutorial is for my Dad, because he asked me how to do this. :)

Step One: Create a new bookmark folder on your toolbar by clicking on the book icon or by selecting "Bookmarks" "Show All Bookmarks." Once you are on that screen, there should be two plus sign icons at the bottom of the browser, click on the one on the right side. It will then give you a new folder, it looks like this.

Step Two: Name your bookmark folder, I like to use symbols for those types of folders, I used ☼ (thanks Fox). You should now see the bookmark in your toolbar, directly under the URL bar.

Step Three: Navigate to the URLs you want to bookmark and drag them by the favorite icon (or the blue globe) into the bookmark folder OR you can click on "Bookmarks" and select "Add Bookmark" and place the URL within that folder. I did this for Ask.com, Google, Yahoo! and Live.com. It looks like this:

Step Four: You are done, now right click (no right button, alt key plus mouse click) and you will see "Open in Tabs." Click on that, and presto, all your bookmarked pages will open in tabs. Repeat only Step Four every morning or whenever you need those tabs, and you saved about a minute or two of repetitive processes each day.

It looks like this in my example:

Hope this helps some folks.

Posted at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Category: Computers , Daily Grind | Comments (4)

To make the lag worse, I had a meeting today. Well, actually, it was suppose to be with someone named Jake. Let me take you back to the scheduling of the meeting.

About 1.5 weeks ago, I get a phone call from a person who wants me to meet with someone to develop a new web site. It is urgent. Unfortunately, I was unable to meet with the person until I got back from SES Chicago, i.e. today. I ask if he can describe the site so we can discuss scope and quick estimates before we meet. He said it was too complicated of a site to do over the phone. So we scheduled the meeting for 11am this morning.

11am comes and goes, I get a phone call at 11:06 from a woman who said we have a meeting today. I said, we have a meeting now. She said her "son" told her it was for at 12. I said, OK, let's meet at 12.

12:00 comes and goes.

12:15 I hear some talking on their cell phone loudly as they enter the door. It was her, she comes in, I put away the stuff I was doing and begin talking with her. Her cell phone rings once, really loudly. I wait and then ask her to describe the type of site she wants. In short, she describes a 5 page static site about her business.

What? Scroll back up... "He said it was too complicated of a site to do over the phone." 5 page web site?

I then told her we only develop large sites and that this project is too small. I apologized for her wasting her time. I told her I tried to save you your time, but your son told me it was too complicated. I referred her elsewhere.

Oh, during our three minute meeting, her cell phone rang four times. You would think after the first ring, she would silence it.

I thought I learned from past experiences here; When Are Prospects Wasting Your Time?

Posted at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , RustyBrick | Comments (0)

I started my normal routine this morning, got to work about 6:45am, but things went downhill from there. Something was wrong... But with my nature, I did not let it get to me, I ignored it, continued about my day.

It took me about 45 minutes to find a thread to write about this morning. I slowly found threads, but by the time I was done with "sucking the forums dry" of information from the weekend, it was 8:45am. I was way behind. Danny was cool, he said no rush, but I got RB stuff to do and I know if I don't finish blogging by 9:30, I get slammed with real work.

I first try to email Danny the list of topics I found over the weekend. Finally got things working and Danny got back to me with things he thought I should blog on. We typically match on what we find to be important, but today, he pulled out two things I would not have blogged without his suggestion.

As I begin writing, I am getting pinged via email, IM, several phone calls, three different walk-ins from employees at RB. I am like, so this is what computer lag is all about!

Internet congestion is what causes lag on someone's computers. You typically find it on IRC chat rooms or online games. Anything that involves real time interaction, that is slowed due to Internet congestion, kinda is defined as lag.

I was experiencing lag! Still am, as I write this.

To make things worse, all of QuickBooks online services are not working. So that doesn't help.

Anyway, as I type, I feel the letters and words are about a second or two behind when I click on the keys. In reality, it is instantaneous, but to me, it feels like a delay, a lag, if you will.

So weird. Any of you experience this feeling, while typing?

Posted at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

Kinda makes me go wow and then want to throw up.

I counted the number of blog posts I have done at the various blogs to-date. Here is the run down.

Search Engine Roundtable: 3,876
Search Engine Watch: 1,137
Cartoon Barry: 350 (including this one)
RustyBrick Tech Blog: 63

Estimated Total Blog Posts: 5,426 up to right now.

What about articles published, I have no clue, I won't even attempt to guess.

Forum posts?

SEO Chat Forums: 2,642
Search Engine Watch Forums: 2,631
Search Engine Roundtable Forums: 1,146
Cre8asite Forums: 890
DigitalPoint Forums: 219
WebmasterWorld: 159
HighRankings Forum: 123
JimWorld: 100

Estimated Total Forum Posts: 7,910

I feel a bit weird and fuzzy. Good thing I type fast. ;-)

Posted at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

I am a heavy Bloglines user and when I see The Bloglines Plumber I get worried. Over the weekend, The Bloglines Plumber was very active and he is popping up very often this morning, but thankfully, I was able to get to my feeds. I am very very dependent on Bloglines, so it scares me to think that it can be down or go offline. I am honestly willing to pay for a service like this, if it means very little downtime and that it won't go away.

Also, it is not great for hosting blogs at. We know Blogger has their share of downtime, so does Bloglines. :)

Who is the plumber? Well, he is the guy who comes up when Bloglines has a technical issue.

He says;

Hi, I'm the Bloglines Plumber. Bloglines is down for a little fixer upper. We will be back shortly. Bloglines will be all better when I'm done with it.

Thanks,
The Bloglines Plumber

Posted at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

My Dad bought me this wonderful present, it enables me to learn some Torah (תּוֹרָה) during my day. Torah is the Jewish Bible, orthodox Jews are suppose to learn from the Torah throughout the day. We are suppose to live by it and observe the laws and guidelines - in short, it is our way of life. I have to admit, one of my downfalls is that I do not make enough time for this aspect in my life. I pray with a Minyan twice a day but this I fall short with.

My Dad knows this and he bought me a new book from Artscroll named The Daily Dose. It is great, it is about 18 minutes of learning per day (18 the number has a special meaning in Judaism). Each day includes a bunch of aspects from the Torah including:

• A Torah Thought for the Day
• Mishnah (משנה) of the Day
• Gems from the Gemara (גמרא)
• A Mussar (מוּסַּר) Thought for the Day
• Halachah (הלכה) of the Day
• A Closer Look at the Siddur
• Question for the Day
• Taste of Lomdus (deep thought), once a week

Thanks Dad!

Posted at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , Religion | Comments (6)

It is one thing to wake up and it be dark, it is an other thing for it to be dark when you drive to work, but to be at work when it is this dark in the morning doesn't seem natural.

I decided to snap a picture of what it looks like in the back of my building when I get to work.

Here is a picture from inside my office looking at the window, it is like a mirror.

Posted at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (8)

I am still catching up, getting back in the swing of things. It is hard going away for two days and not being able to run on your routine and schedule.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know I am catching up and Ill have a few more blog posts here today, like I did with SEW and SER today.

Catch ya all soon.

Posted at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

This week, minus Monday, when I was traveling, I wrote 71 blog posts in four days. Here is the break down:

13-Oct :: 20 posts
12-Oct :: 21 posts
11-Oct :: 16 posts
10-Oct :: 14 posts

Those numbers are between the Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Watch and Cartoon Barry blogs.

How do I do it? Here is my typical day. I seem to be blogging now until 9:30am and sometimes 10am into the day. But of course, real work stuff does cut into blogging time also.

Posted at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

So, for a really long time now, the Search Engine Roundtable has been hovering between 20 and 35 on the Technorarti top blog list.

ShoeMoney tells me that now I am off the list completely. So I look and I see that I am now way off the top 100 list and ranked at 252. Shoe is currently on the list at 92, but his current rank shows him at 115.

Matt Cutts is off the list and so are many other popular blogs.

What is up with that! Oh, and I never got my tshirt for being on the top 100.

Posted at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , SEO Tips | Comments (0)

A stupid thing that kinda bugs me, is when I get to the office in the morning (6:45ish) and the elevator is not at the first floor. Even though my building is only four floors, the elevators are slow. City elevators are extremely quick, but yet, they have between 20 and 100 floors to go between. In any event, it just makes me feel that I am wasting time, standing waiting for the elevator.

Don't get me wrong, I know it is just a minute, but I am crazy like that. Yes, sometimes I take the stairs, but not at 6 in the morning.

One thing I try to do, when I get to my floor and if no one else is in the elevator, is send the elevator back down.

Typically, in the morning, the elevator traffic starts from floor 1 and goes up. So the next person who uses the elevator is typically coming from the lobby. So I send it back down for them. It takes no time, so why not.

Posted at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

So this week I am getting up before 5:30 each morning... Yea, I am tired and that is one consequence. But there are others...

I typically don't dress well, at least I am told that...

But at 5:30AM, when it is so dark outside and you can barely think, getting dressed is something I just don't think about.

For example, I put on gray pants with white stripes. Then I put on a red, white and black dotted shirt (stripes up, down, left and right). I am also wearing Nike sneakers.

If I was popular, maybe I would make the Worst Dressed List. :)

If you looked at me, you may laugh.

Posted at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (12)

This week I get up before 5:30 each day. Fun.

I am tired.

And the Jets lost. :(

Posted at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

Fortunately, my business gets several calls and emails per day from prospective clients, looking for services. ~90% of those calls or emails are right off the bat, not something we are interested in pursuing for several reasons. Then there are the other ~10% that are prospects we are interested in discussing business with in greater detail. Let me run down a typical prospective call...

(1) Ring Ring...
(2) I or one of the guys here may answer the sales line (extension 1)
(3) I typically will end up talking to the prospect...
(4) I ask them what they want
(5) They typically tell me, "I want a web site for my business?" (that shows something)
(6) I ask questions to get more details...
(7) I then listen as much as I can and prompt more questions until I am satisfied (few minutes...)
(8) I then ask if the person wants a ballpark figure for pricing and timing.
(9) This can go two ways:
(a) Some say that it is not important, that they want to move on and meet in person. Typically, this is a sign of a larger company who wants to get things done right and not cheaply. But not always...
(b) Some ask for the information, I give it. It scares some away and some it does not. But it saves me time with a meeting, either way.
(10) I thank them, they thank me, and I may follow up with a summary email, if they ask for it.

Today, I went through this call, it went to step 9a. Right, a ballpark figure was turned down. I figured, maybe this was worth it. So we met the same day. But before she came, I knew something was up. One of the first things that came out of this prospects mouth was, "I am a small business, I don't have much to spend..."

So for the next hour, she drilled me with questions about sites, marketing, search, etc. Of course I sat and answered them, showed her examples. But it was such a waste of time for me. She knew it. She just wanted to learn, for free - what one has to do to make her idea into a success.

I personally would never waste someone's time like that. Knowing from the onset that you cannot afford our services and making it sound like you can, to get the meeting. I feel that it is just not right. Again, my own personal opinion - I am sure some will argue.

So how do you know when prospects are wasting your time? I know there are over 200 readers, some may have an opinion?

Posted at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (9)

Honestly, one of the worst parts of blogging so much is all the press releases I get. I honestly can not stand them. It is unsolicited. Who said I want them? If you are news worthy, trust me, I will find it and blog it.

Some are tactful. They ask if they can send me emails about news from company ABC.

Some are not. They just keep sending unsolicited releases to my inbox.

It honestly drives me nuts.

- I do not write professionally.
- I do not consider myself an news writer
- I do not do this full time
- I do not have time for the releases
- I do not care to read 95% of those releases
- I do enjoy blogging
- I do enjoy discovering news as opposed to being feed it
- I do enjoy expanding or recapping other stories

- I do NOT want your releases!

It honestly drives me nuts. I am sorry for being so blunt. Maybe I am just a bit stressed right now. :) Don't you just love that picture? Flickr rocks!

Posted at 6:42 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

As I said, I recently started on this crazed Super Double Big Gulp addiction. The first step was to acknowledge there was a problem, and I did that. Phew....

Now, I need to do something about it.

I am proud to say I am Super Double Big Gulp free since the day I posted that. Yes, three full days, without a Super Big Gulp. Yea, thank you - thanks for your support.

But to take that to the next step. I think I won't be drinking any soda during the week at all. Only soda on weekends, starting at Friday night and ending at Sunday night.

Hope it sticks.

Posted at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

I am a horrible sales man. It is true, I stink at sales. And guess what? I am the sole sales person at RustyBrick. It is my job to handles business development which includes branding, publicity and, yes, sales. The other ten or so talented people at RustyBrick are the doers, they are developers, designers and system admins. It is my responsibility to do the sales, and I stink at it.

RustyBrick is as busy as ever. Which is maybe why I am a bad sales man.

I go to meetings to meet prospective clients and I:

• don't dress well
  
• don't come to meetings well groomed
  
• don't prepare outstanding presentations
  
• don't compliment the individual I am meeting with
  
• don't research the prospect
  
• don't write powerful, graphical, proposals
  
• don't say why RustyBrick is better than others
  
• don't act like I want the prospects business
  
• don't follow up on those proposals
  

I am sure there are other things I am missing. But it hit me today. I have been sending out proposal and not following up. I hit the send button and that is the last I think of them. Not because I am not able to track if they got it and stuff. That is not true, I capture when I send the proposal, when it was received, how many times the person(s) viewed it, what pages they viewed and at what times. But I haven't been looking at that data for a year or so.

Just an hour ago, I got an email from a big prospect I sent a proposal to, probably two weeks ago. They wanted to schedule a meeting. I was like, hey - I remember sending them a proposal.

Oh, and when I finally close the deal (i.e. the client sends me a check), I don't get excited. I am weird, I honestly, don't get excited about many things.

So why are we so busy with new work and repeat work? I think it is because we care so much. We won't stop until the product is perfect. People trust us, they respect us and most importantly, we respect them and value their business. Sounds like I am selling something, but it is honestly how I and my employees act towards our clients. Hmm... I am honestly thinking of deleting this now, but I wrote so much, so I will keep it.

Bottom line is that I am not a good sales man.

If you are a client, would you agree?

Posted at 6:41 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (9)

I think I have a problem. I hear the first step of fixing that problem is to admit it to the public. So here it goes...

Almost every morning during the week, I stop of at the local 7/11 and I pick up a Big Gulp, not just a big gulp, a super duper big gulp. I fill it with Coca-Cola and slurp away even before I leave the store.

I am addicted. It gets me going in the morning. I need it.

So now what?

I know I am better off without it.

Posted at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (5)

As I said, I live and die by Bloglines and RSS. One of my biggest pet peeves is how Google News RSS is managed. Like I said, if I read something once, I do not wan to see it again. But when it comes to subscribing to a news search at Google News via RSS, it appears that the same articles are updated every 20 minutes or so. Yes, the same articles are updated and appear as new in Bloglines.

I am not sure if this is an RSS bug, a Google News bug or a Bloglines bug - but it is annoying.

Now you can say that the news search itself was updated. I.e. a new source was added but is not displayed, but it was added to the search. But it is down right annoying, just like when people constantly update their posts.

So what can be done to fix this? Can I do something?

Posted at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

The one bad thing about being so dependent on a free service is that you have no one to hang when it is not operating at optimal performance. I was just praising Bloglines - and how it changed my life along with RSS and now I am barely able to breath without it.

Bloglines has been incredibly slow to update most of my feeds today. They must be having some spidering and index issues.

I don't fully understand the process they have there.

I just hope it gets back to normal, soon.

Posted at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)

I will be giving an internal SEO pow-wow today. Ill be covering all the basics and then some of the futuristic stuff. So if I am not quick to reply to your emails, that is where I am.

I start in about 15 minutes, 10am (EST) and won't stop until I am done.

Tons and tons of material to cover.

So I suspect I won't be done until 6pm or so. But I will talk as fast as possible.

Update: Burned through about 200 slides in less than 3 hours. Done and done.

Posted at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , RustyBrick , SEO Tips | Comments (0)

I had on my list of topics to write about, "How RSS ha changed my life." I was going to hold off on that entry but then York commented about Which Search Blogs Am I Most Likely To Read In More Detail?

You see, I have a list of 75 plus blogs I read. York said,

How do you read all those blog? I mean even if you speed 5 minute per blog, you will have to spend 6 hours per day for all these reading.

And 5 minutes is not even long enough for you to type the url and talk a good peek at the details of those blog.

If I spent 6 hours per day reading those blogs, how would I be able to do anything else?

RSS is the answer. I use Bloglines to manage my RSS feeds. I subscribe to blogs/news sites/searches that I am interested and I set it to only show me content that I have not read yet. So if I have read yesterday's blog post from Diamond Vues, Bloglines knows it, and it won't show me the feed if the site hasn't been update since then, it also won't show me anything I have read in the past, unless that post is updated with new content. So I do not read 75+ blogs each day, far from it.

But even if I did, the way Bloglines and most RSS readers display the content makes it easy to skim new content within a matter of seconds. Here is a screen capture of Bloglines at this moment in time for me.

Now, on the left hand side, it shows only feeds (news/blogs/searches) that have been updates or not read since I last viewed my Bloglines. It also shows a number by each folder (I categorize my feeds in several folders, some you can see and some are not displayed because they have nothing new in them at this time), and it shows a number by each source.

For example, the "Barry RSSes" folder has 28 items of new items I have not yet read or that have been updates that contain searches I set up for my name or similar names. Also, you can see I clicked on the Slashdot feed, it is now unbolded and has no number on the left side, but it does show I am viewing 3 items, 3 items that are new and I have no seen yet. Next time I go back to Bloglines, it will not show me those same three items for Slashdot.

So in reality, I do not read 75+ blogs each day. I do track 75+ sources (much more that 75) each day, but Bloglines and RSS helps me with that.

Then I can simply scan the updates feeds and decide wether I want to click deeper into the feed. I rarely do, so that is why I came up with my Which Search Blogs Am I Most Likely To Read In More Detail? list. If I click through, then it must have a great title and short description.

So that is how I manage to stay on top of things without those things staying on top of me. RSS is an invaluable tool for me. It has, without a doubt, changed my life.

Posted at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (2)

One of the stories I covered today was about how Google may be classified as an investment fund company because they have more than 40% of their assets in investments. While I was covering the story, I was on the phone with someone. We were talking about scheduling something on a Monday. But at the same time, I was writing the title of the blog post.

Original (Typo) Title: "Google Has Too Much Monday, Possibly Classified As Investment Fund"

Real Title: "Google Has Too Much Money, Possibly Classified As Investment Fund"

I bolded the typo to add some emphasis.

So if you did a search in Google News for Google throughout the day you may have seen:

Yea, pretty embarrassing. But also a bit funny. I actually got Monday to be bold by searching in Google News for monday. :)

I was wondering why I didn't get a hundred emails from people who noticed this typo. I mean, it was like that for well over an hour. So I asked the IRC WebmasterRadio.FM chat room and one person said...

that is actually pretty funny.... I saw that in my RSS reader and, while it confused the hell outta me, I just accepted it that you guys knew more than me, and it was some type of weird investemnt-related terminology

Wow, dangerous.

Sorry about that guys.

Posted at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind , Just Funny , Just Weird | Comments (1)

I hear that if you make the top 100 list at http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs/ that you would receive a t-shirt or something. I have been in that list for like over 3 months now and I got nothing. Oh well. :(

Anyway, yesterday I was at the number twenty-two spot, now I am at the number 28 spot.

The only search blog that ranks higher than me at the moment is the Google Blog at 18. Technorati also has a way to favor a blog. SER currently has 27 people that favorite it, that is pretty cool.

You can also see the Roundtable's "tag cloud" at the profile page, pretty neat. And it shows you the number of links pointing to the blog by authority and by freshness. You may have also noticed I use Technorati to power the search feature of this specific blog.

Oh, please feel free to favorite SER at Technorati:

Posted at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

Like many of you that read this blog, we all get a ton of email. A ton! We all have several spam filters to help weed out the bad stuff. We all have unsubscribed from newsletters and switched over to RSS subscriptions for those newsletters. We have all set up automatic rules to put messages you don't need to read immediately into different folders for later. But I am finding email these days to be unbearable...

It starts around 9:30am (EST), the emails start flying in. I begin to reply to one and then bam, as soon as I hit the reply button and put that email away, five more hit my inbox. Heck, I am a fast typer, I am very quick to reply to emails but I can't keep up between the hours of 10am-5pm throughout the day. Normally, after 6pm I am able to get through most the emails.

The good thing, is that if I am away from my desk for an extended period of time, I get less emails. For the obvious reason, that I do not reply to my previous emails, that require an additional reply, and so on.

Today, it is 1:30PM (EST), and I have already sent over sixty emails manually. This is not automated stuff. I sent 60 emails. How many did I receive? No idea, few hundred? I should get a program that works with Apple Mail to keep stats on this stuff, it would make for a nice graph.

Spam is still bad, but it catches 95% of the stuff, I would guestimate.

The real issue are the emails that need responses. Again, 60+ emails sent and it is only 1:30.

Between client work, employee stuff, internal business, side projects, press releases from the search writing, and other things, it is just sometimes, overwhelming.

Do I prefer the phone? Heck no! If you do call and get my voicemail, I will get that via email.

I am also psycho with keeping my email organized. I have a very detailed folder structure that works well for me. So putting emails in their appropriate buckets, is something I am a bit paranoid about. I think I need some counseling. :)

Alright, now I have a ton of emails that need my attention, so I will cut this short.

Posted at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

Let's play the where is Waldo Game... Andy Beal has posted that he is departing Fortune Interactive. Ok some history for you.

Andy first founded KeywordRankings, then KeywordRankings was bought by WebSourced, WebSourced changed its name to MarketSmart Interactive. Andy left WebSourced, many bad rumors buzzed through the SEM community. Then Andy started Fortune Interactive. And now, ten months later, he is leaving the company he co-founded.

Got that? Phew... Spinning here...

Oh, when he left WebSourced he wasn't allowed to keep his popular blog, the Search Engine Lowdown. But with this departure, he can keep Marketing Pilgrim.

Good luck Andy!

Posted at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Category: Buddies , Daily Grind , Rambling | Comments (0)

All I can say is thank god. Mike Grehan, someone I have always deeply respected and looked up to, have made a bold move. He has formally resigned from MarketSmart Interactive (AKA WebSourced).

Now that I have a place where I can speak frankly, I will - to some extent.

I was honestly shocked and sad when I heard Mike joined WebSourced. But I did not state so there. Soon after Andy left WebSourced and it worried me even more. Since Mike and Andy were pretty good buddies, I had to think - something was up.

Heather is still there, I believe and also a good guy, Garrett French. When will they leave? I don't know. The reputation MarketSmart I. has rubs off on those who work there. Mike leaving, doesn't help them much. 22 comments in a post on my personal blog doesn't do much for them either.

Mike, I know this must have been a hard situation. But you know you can count on us in the community you helped build. If you need anything, we are here for you.

Posted at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (5)

I was able to post one item this morning at the SEW blog and then bam, it wouldn't load. None of it would load. Not the blog, not the forums, not the main site, not the admin areas...

For me, it is timing out after

so-1-0-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.28.125) 20.547 ms 34.961 ms 26.304 ms
so-6-0-0.cr1.lhr3.uk.above.net (64.125.31.185) 89.840 ms 109.154 ms 92.362 ms
* * *

uk.above.net (64.125.31.185)

I pinged Danny, hope it gets back up soon. It has been about 20 minutes so far.

Some others can get to it, some others can not. It is not specific to my computer or my ISP.

So that is why there are not many posts at SEW right this minute. I am writing offline for now.

Update: And we are back, about 10:10 it came back online. Hence, all the new stories live at SEW.

Posted at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

As many of you know, Danny Sullivan is out this week in California. He is spending some time with the search engines and preparing for the big San Jose SES show. While he is out running from search engine to search engine, I am at the SEW blog trying to cover both my area of topics and Danny's topics. Today, happened to be a crazy day for search news. As you can see from today's daily recap, I posted on 8 items and also placed 21 different stories into the search headlines at the SEW blog. Number of stories I viewed today in total? Plus the number of forum threads I reviewed? No idea, but I can guess well into the thousands.

Days like today can get a bit crazy and nutty. Between compiling a list of about 30 items to manage at the SEW blog, I covered 6 items at the Roundtable and placed several more in my hit list for the other authors to tackle, when they can. After then, Danny shot over a few items he received on his email, that I should take a look at. I believe there were like 4 or so new items I had to either blog or include in headlines.

Who would of thought, the search industry can be so incredibly busy. Heck, it is the summer and news for search engines, specifically, is suppose to be slow. I am afraid for what the fall brings.

But honestly, I really enjoy it. Do I enjoy it more when Danny is away? It has its pros and cons.

Pros:

• Freedom to post whatever
  
• Freedom to not post items I don't like (there is a difference)
  
• Can hook up friends with links in headlines (of course I use my best judgement with that)
  
• Can get to items whenever, as long as it is before 11:30 AM (EST)
  
• Less IMs and emails throughout the day
  

Cons:

• Danny is a huge help with finding stories
  
• I can get up at 5AM and it is already the early afternoon at Danny
  
• I don't always need to find stories, sometimes Danny got them all on a list for me (huge time saver)
  
• Danny is brilliant and I love talking with him throughout the day
  
• Funny also, so we sometimes mess around with non-search topics
  
• Days like today can cause an overload
  

Today proved to be exceptionally challenging with the things going on with SER & SEW blogs, the implementation of a dynamic sitepal cartoon barry character on this blog, AOL giving me issues with things (more on that later), some issues with a few sites that needed my attention, made a job offer to a new RB employee, interviewed an other potential employee, had an in person client meeting, dealt with a couple family things, reviewed items with a sick employee and then the generic stuff.

But overall, it is nice to run shop over at SEW when Danny is away. But I can't wait for him to come back.

The next two weeks, I pretty much run solo. This week Danny is doing pre-conference items. Next week, is the conference. I plan on updating all the blogs prior to 9AM (PST) time, and possibly some updates in the evening. I also will be proving, with an excellent team of volunteers, real time coverage of the conference, throughout the day. So next week should be even more search nuttiness, but I won't be dealing minute to minute with RustyBrick items.

So, anyone want anything funny or inappropriate posted over at SEW? Just kidding...

Posted at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

Weekly, I help my buddy, ShoeMoney, out with his show Net Income. I do what he calls, The Money Minute, where I give a roundup of some of the most popular topics in the search community, all within 10 minutes.

The show begins at 6pm (EST) and runs for about an hour every Tuesday.

Well, why do I always leave right after I give the Money Minute?

I also play basketball Tuesday nights at 7:30PM (EST). So I need some time to get home from work, change, eat a quick bite and say hello to the wife - before getting to my ball game that lasts typically until after 10PM (EST).

Hope that answers the question some folks have been asking me via email and in the chat room.

Posted at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Category: Buddies , Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I often get emails from spammers (marketers) saying that they can rank my site in the top results (like I want that). I delete them or they get caught by my spam filters. But this is the first email, I remember, getting from MarketSmart Interactive, you know, aka Keywords Ranking, aka WebSourced. Here it is word for word:

Subject Good Morning:

I hope all is well.

I undestand the market today is a challenging place to complete, so wouldn’t it be great to know everything about your competition and what you need to do to compete and move ahead of them. I would love to discuss what you are doing to resolve some of your concerns, go over some of your goals, and learn more about the business model that you are using and if its focused on selling into and through resellers or one of the other avenues. Also I would love to talk about what you are doing to increasing your conversion rate, driving traffic to your website or event, or getting a higher rank in Google among your industry. Do you have any time this week or next to talk a little bit about these concerns?

MarketSmart Interactive creates synergistic interactive experiences that can effectively change your target audience’s online experience and behavior.

We're justifiably proud of our reputation as a Publicly Traded Marketing Firm (THK)for providing breakthrough thinking, innovative solutions and solid results. It has landed us some of the world's most admired companies such as Motorola, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Sketchers, Black and Decker, Dewalt and Citi Financial among hundreds of others.

Our core solutions include, but are not limited to:
Organic Search Engine Optimization
Media Buys and Email Marketing
Conversion Enhancement
Competitive Intelligence
Paid Search/Sponsorship Marketing
Usability/ Behavioral Targeting
Linking Strategies
Affiliate Marketing

Bill Ross
National Marketing Executive
MarketSmart Interactive, a Think Partnership Company
http://www.marketsmartinteractive.com
Direct Line: 919-433-3024
Fax: 919-433-3030

Has such a large firm, with such a huge and proud reputation, not know who I am? I would hope that those involved in search, day in and day out, would recognize my name, the company name, etc... I do write about this stuff all day at two pretty popular search blogs.

This is just sad to see from a company that I once had respect for.

Posted at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (34)

I may not be providing this roundups the remainder of the week. I had a sudden emergency and I need to be with family during this time. I and my family are OK and well.

Google Images update, so expect some drop (only drop) in referrals from that. Split on the Yahoo Search update, that continues to happen. Google is heard in court over click fraud, this time they come armed with a independent report backing them. Google's tests a new interface and also enabled rich text on Google Base pages. SEOMoz teaches SEOs how to price campaigns, and for the rest, Yahoo pays YPNers for surveys. We also discuss link baiting, parties and a new keyword report.

Here is my coverage for the day:

Search Engine Roundtable Topics:

1. Huge Drops in Google Image Search Referrals Over Weekend - Did you notice the drop in your stats?
   
2. Google's Click Fraud Efforts Are "Reasonable" - as I said Friday, this is a good thing
   
3. Yahoo! Search Update Continues - some are upset, some are happy
   
4. Yahoo! Publisher Cashing in on Surveys - money, money, mooooneeyyy
   
5. Is Link Baiting Frowned Upon by Search Engines? - no it is not
   
6. SES San Jose '06 Party Thread - sorry Joe ;-)
   

Search Engine Watch Topics:

1. Google Test Expandable "More" Link - pretty neat
   
2. SEOMoz Spills The Beans On Pricing An SEO Campaign - extremely useful, extremely
   
3. Judge Hears Objections To Google's Click Fraud Settlement - should be interesting...
   
4. Google Base Becomes More eBay Like With Rich Text Feature - annoying
   
5. Only 11 Percent Of Searchers Use One Word Queries - Very interesting data...
   

Posted at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I have been covering the topic of "online reputation management" for a while now, the most recent post I have on it was named Personal Reputation Management: The Reactive Approach. I feel it is important for pretty much everyone to track what people are saying about them. I have been doing this for years with RSS news & blog searches for a while. I have to be honest, I stopped reviewing blog results and pretty much focused only on news results.

How do this work? Simple.

(1) Go to Google News and Yahoo! News.
(2) At each, enter in your full name and hit search (you can use quotes if you like, I do both)
- Google News Results for Barry Schwartz
- Yahoo! News Results for Barry Schwartz
(3) Each respective news engine has a little "RSS" link, copy and paste that URL into your RSS reader
(4) Presto, instant personal reputation management solution.

This is often how I find out if and where I have been quoted.

In the world of Barry Schwartz news results, you often find either myself come up or this Professor Barry Schwartz, sometimes you get the Calvin Klein and sometimes you get some others, but mostly myself and this professor who wrote a very popular book, Paradox of Choice and he was actually invited to Google to speak on the topic.

Anyway, I am writing this post to gather the places I have been quoted, in terms of major news sites. I am sure I missed a few places, but these are the recent ones I am aware of.

1. ABC News - August 6, 2009
2. BusinessWeek - June 5, 2009
3. eWeek - August 28, 2008
4. News.com - July 11, 2007
5. Reuters - Jul 21, 2006
6. The Street - Jul 19, 2006
7. Forbes - Jun 26, 2006
8. CIO - March 29, 2006
9. CNN Money - March 28, 2006
10. News.com - December 2, 2005
11. News.com - August 31, 2005
12. Publish - August 24, 2005

Plenty of more quotes from News.com, eWeek and similar magazines. There are others, but I can't find them now. Just shows you, I should keep better track of them.

Oh, you can see I am procrastinating today.

Posted at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (0)

I went to 7-11 this morning to pick up a quick bite. I bought this 32oz Snapple and paid for it. Then I walked out, still very tired, and it slipped out of my hand. I call this Snapple the leaning tower of Snapple.

Check out the lean on that Snapple. Compare it with Leaning Tower of Pisa and you will see, Snapple has a lot to do with Italy.

It actually tastes pretty good. Dropping it helped mix all those "natural lemon flavors with other natural flavors." Mmmm mmmm "Made from the best stuff on Earth," well yea.

Posted at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (3)

What is my typical work day look like? Good question. Here it is.

5:45AM the alarm bell rings. I wake up right away and check email. Then do the morning stuff.
6:00AM leave home to do some religious stuff
6:30AM - 6:45AM I come back home and say goodbye to wife and off to work
7:00AM I am at work and begin research and blogging at the Search Engine Roundtable
8:00AM I hope to be finished with the Roundtable and then move on to Search Engine Watch Blog
9:00AM I get down with real business and work with RustyBrick stuff most of the day
11:30AM Tuesdays - Fridays, if I am in the office, I try to catch the Daily Search Cast
12:00PM - 6:00PM I work and also may do some blogging at various blogs
6:00PM I try to leave around now, sometimes I don't until later
6:15PM I get home and turn computer back on to work. Some nights I play basketball, some I help around the house, some I sit in front of TV with my laptop and girl. :)

Sleep, I try before midnight.

Posted at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Category: Daily Grind | Comments (1)