Category Archives: Computers

Articles I Like: Building my viewer base on my blog…

The PolyBlog
February 26 2015

I find the whole “traffic” thing kind of weird, I must say. Posts about Foreign Affairs almost 2 years ago still get hits, no idea why, maybe it’s just because there’s nothing else out there that is like it. Maybe I hit a niche. I blog about personal stuff, get a lot of hits, go even more personal, get nothing. Kind of hit or miss for me. I know, overall, though that it will grow, still finding out how to get the word out without turning into a self-promoting spammer whore. I do know that I need to drastically alter my FaceBook strategy at some point, just haven’t gotten to it yet. However, since I am interested in building my “reach” so to speak, I often find myself clicking on tips and tricks. Heidi Cohen published a blog entitled “How often should I post new content?”, so when I saw it in a list of resources from Jon Morrow, I immediately clicked over to see it.

There are lots of “rules” out there that are analytics-based that say “Thursday afternoon is the best for Twitter” or “Facebook is good from 10:00 to 2:00”, etc. And most of them, in my view, are completely useless. Put more technically, those may be great stats for the overall use of social media, but the standard deviation is gigantic if you do a sample size of “1” to see if it is applicable to your blog and content. The only way to know is to test it out on your own site. The problem, however, is that I’m not doing this full-time. It’s totally a part-time gig vs. other commitments. So I don’t have the flexibility to bend my schedule to my blogging schedule, and I don’t particularly like doing “scheduled” posts. I might draft something that is on my mind today, but 3 days from now, totally irrelevant. I’ve tried it, and what I find is that take-up is a lot less if my post isn’t written and posted in an “immediate tone”. I just write too passively if I know I’m not sharing it for several days.

Cohen’s piece isn’t about that — it’s about # of times per day and how many entries on your blog in total to start generating critical mass. Nothing revolutionary, but certainly interesting. The real gold in the blog post, however, is a section about how to increase your frequency and output, for which she has a list of 7 things to do.

Collect post ideas. Don’t force yourself to sit down and grind out a post from scratch. Jot down the ideas as you get them so that you build the outline of a post over time and it’s partially written before you start. I find this very helpful for reducing writing time.

I love this option, and I’ve been doing it for some time. My problem isn’t a lack of ideas as I’ve got in the habit of seeing topics and adding them to my Evernote list; my problem is not then going back to it and actually writing them!

Use an editorial calendar. While this may seem like additional work up front, it helps to schedule post ideas and ensures that you cover important topics.

I hope to adopt this later this year, not quite there yet, but more related to another type of content (memes) than my regular posts. I just don’t quite have a set routine/schedule for the other ones yet. But I’ll get there.

Mix in other media formats. Another way to facilitate content creation is to use other media types. For example, include a weekly video, cartoon or photo.

I haven’t yet figured this one out yet, but I’m working on it. I have lots of clip art to choose from, which is one option, but I am also looking for ways just to expand my normal repertoire. However, I don’t want pics just to have pics — they have to help me tell my story, or they’re no good to me.

Create regular columns. Like a traditional magazine’s on-going features, develop columns with built-in, easy-to-execute formats such as customer of the week or book review.

Similar to the second one about an editorial calendar, I do want to get there. In the meantime, some of them are standardized already (like book reviews or a recipe format).

Share the workload. Have regular columnists who write every week or every month. This works well for business blogs because a variety of employees are involved. Alternatively, invite guest bloggers.

This is an extremely popular suggestion, and my short answer is probably never. Come on and sing, “It’s my blog and I’ll write if I want to, write if I want to, write if I want to…you’d write too if you had a blog too”. It might be a bit of a control issue, I don’t know, but it strikes me as odd when you have other content on your blog. You’re running a blog, not a business website offering a platform to others usually. I don’t care if others do it, I probably won’t. The only exception I could see is if a friend had an interesting story to tell, and I thought it was worth sharing as a blog, and they don’t have their own blog. I might be tempted then, but I’d have to think about it. My blog, my words. It seems like a no-brainer — unless you’re more interested in fandom and followers to your site than you are in sharing YOUR expertise.

Curate content. Have focused round ups or a best posts feature. The critical element is to add commentary explaining why that post is important. Here’s where less is more. You’re providing a service by selecting the best of what’s out there.

This is exactly the approach I`m willing to take. Excerpts perhaps but add your own commentary. Otherwise, I think it`s just stealing, even if you give the original source. Fair use means you’re excerpting pieces, kind of what I’ve done here today with the pieces from the article. But I limited it to the context and then added my own pieces.

And how do you finish it off? By linking back to the original so they can find it, such as the original article that prompted this post via How Often Should I Post New Blog Content? [Charts] – Heidi Cohen.

Okay, Future Shop didn’t screw me…

The PolyBlog
April 5 2013

So, as I predicted, Future Shop was not able to fix my tablet. Which means they called me today (actually two weeks ahead of the 60 day deadline too) to tell me the news. My tablet was back in Ottawa.

Ironically, the person who called and left me a message on my home phone said, “Great, tablet’s fixed, come get it”. However, they had a backup number for me at work, and the message there was, “Hi, I left a message on the other phone number but just realized that information was wrong. So let me tell you on this message that your tablet couldn’t be fixed, and you should come in for our exchange program.”

I’ll ignore the fact that if I got the first message she left, I would have been rather rudely surprised to get to the store only to be told it WASN’T fixed, but nevertheless, I knew, and prepared accordingly.

I read the F/S exchange clause which is as bad as you might think. The salesmen tell you it is either “full money back” or “replacement”. Well, no, it’s not. You see, the Toshiba Thrive that has gone to its eternal home of rest has no brethren available to exchange for it — F/S can’t give me a new one. So the warranty allows them to give me a refurbished one. Nope, also not available. So plan C says “equivalent tablet”.

Ruh-roh. I’ve read absolute horror stories about stores saying a much lesser model was the equivalent and people having to fight tooth and nail to get anything remotely comparable. Not to mention avoiding a crappy refurbished throw-back. So I figured, okay, let’s look at the specs of my tablet that were relatively unique, that I paid more for, and that other tablets probably won’t have, making it difficult to find a perfect equivalent. Made some notes and off to store.

For my Thrive, they found an equivalent Asus model pretty fast and I was immediately suspicious. But it was the same size. With same basic processor, dual core, same speed. Dang. Same resolution of screen. Version of android was actually even better. Shoot. I read an online review and it said basically, “Same as the Thrive” — yep even the review sites said it was the same. Crap. Cuz the Asus is $100 less than what I paid 18 months ago.

So I pull out my specs…SD card slot — yep. Shoot. Ah-hah, the full USB port? Yep, that too. So I’m figuring I’m screwed. Because although I know they have none in stock at this point, they’re going to give me that dollar value as the store credit.

But as I’m reading the review, I noticed something. The new Asus model has only one camera, mine had two. I never used either one, but that’s not my goal in noticing. Hmm…so I wandered back over and suggested casually to the customer service person that I would like to talk to the techie again, not threatening or pushy, just casually as I’m not sure it really is the equivalent model since it doesn’t have the second back-facing camera.

She noted though that since it is going to be a store credit anyway, I should talk to the manager instead, so I said sure. He wanders over, I was polite and casual, and said I was happy to take the store credit, just wasn’t convinced this was the right “equivalent model” since it didn’t have the camera. I was hoping for another $30-50 in credit out of it, but he agreed with me, said there wasn’t really another model to suggest, and therefore said they’d just do the store credit. For the full price I paid 16 months ago.

I said, “Well, okay, if you’re sure that’s the best way to handle it” while inwardly saying “Start the car!”.

I won’t forget the crappy treatment, I won’t forget the stress, I won’t forget that I’ve been without the tablet for last six weeks (something Jacob kept asking me about until he got his own recently). But the manager did the right thing, the simple thing, and it was no big deal for him either. Just an obvious solution for something that was only $100 difference.

Now, on my cynical side, I know that it isn’t really costing them anything as the bill goes to the insurance company that provides their warranty business. F/S doesn’t really care. And it’s store credit anyway, so they’ll get the money back meaning they gave me a store credit for something that has 40% markup and they’ll still have that profit later when I buy whatever I buy with that credit. And sure, I’m out some other money — the price of the warranty, a screen shield, molded case for the tablet, and an extra power bar that only fits the Thrive.

But I got exactly what I wanted out of the transaction — my money back and an open option to buy whatever dang tablet I want at this point, not just a short list from them.So I have to say F/S didn’t screw me. Stay tuned for more on my newly launched tablet search. And that groan you just heard? That was Andrea anticipating buyer’s angst driving me to want to talk to her about my options.

Why I’m beginning to hate FutureShop even more…

The PolyBlog
March 20 2013

I am not some pie-in-the-sky idealist when it comes to dealing with retail. I know that there are limits on customer service, etc. Bad employees, sure. Rude employees, yep. Stupid employees, check. But I rarely expect outright fraudulent statements by a major retailer. Once you take away the commission incentive, a lot of fraud disappears, which is why many of the retailers dumped it (it also eliminates really pushy salespeople and a range of other disincentives to deal transparently, that turn off customers).

Let’s back up to November of 2011. I bought an Android tablet, a Toshiba Thrive, from Future Shop. I’m pretty good with computers, but I’ve never had an Android before nor a tablet. So I shelled out $50 for them to do a bunch of setup on it. As I expected, once I saw what they did, I realized I could have easily done it myself, but the tech walked me through it, helped me configure a few things that would have taken me some time to find and get working, so all in all, that was okay. However, the service plan was a different story.

Normally, for most of this stuff, all the expert sites will tell you to run from the product service plans. And I would have run too, except for some fraudulent statements of the salesperson.

First, he told me that it was a “no pain” service plan — if anything went wrong, I could bring it back to FutureShop and they would deal with the manufacturer, etc. Well, according to customer service when I did eventually have a problem and brought it back to the store, all the salesmen do say that but it is not actually true. So FS knows their salespeople lie to the customers but apparently don’t bother training them properly. You see, in the first year, it is just the manufacturer’s warranty. Which it says in the agreement fine print. So you deal DIRECT with them. In other words, I had to ship it back to Markham to the Toshiba warehouse for repair. I shipped it express, paid for insurance, double packaged it, $40. Back from Toshiba in 3 days. Nice. Except that FS should have been handling that.

Secondly, they said, if anything goes wrong, and it comes back 3 times, it is considered a lemon and they replace it. Except, reading the fine print again (which wasn’t provided until after the sale completed), plus terms and conditions change over time, “software” problems are excluded. Well my problem isn’t a hardware issue — they just need to reflash the operating system because it glitches and crashes. And they don’t distribute the O/S image files, so only the manufacturer can fix it. So it probably won’t get declared a lemon.

Thirdly, there was supposed to be a separate 30-day lemon clause in the warranty too — if it was gone for more than 30 days, they replace it. Nope, terms and conditions say 60 days.

Finally, the computer is with them now (we’re into the second year so it is under FS warranty), and it has taken a month for them to do what Toshiba did in 40 minutes last summer. It’s the same issue, O/S needs to be reflashed. I even gave them a nice little set of instructions to tell them it happened before, what needed to be done, blah blah blah. Nope, still gone for a month. And when I checked with customer service today, I found out that it isn’t actually at Toshiba. Nope, FS techs fix it. Wait, what? That wasn’t the deal. It is supposed to be Toshiba fixing it and FS doing the liaison with them. Interestingly, I’m pretty sure FS doesn’t have the image file and the techs CAN”T fix it without the image file.

Which means, I think, in another month, they’ll have to throw up their hands and replace the tablet even under their crappy warranty conditions. That would be nice. Because as much as I have liked the tablet up until this point, we’re almost 18 months past original purchase, so currently available tablets have progressed way past what they were when I bought the first one.

Heck, I might even get the size (7″) that I wanted in the first place at two-thirds the price with faster processor. Stay tuned.

My replacement for Google Reader…

The PolyBlog
March 19 2013

Last Thursday was a sad day in my computing world…a friend alerted me on FB about the impending death of Google Reader on July 1st, when Google phases it out. I love RSS feeds, with some 90+ that I follow and browse for interesting topics daily, and that’s AFTER I cleaned out whole categories since January. I don’t read all of them, of course, but I frequently check the headlines of 20 or so relatively religiously and find a few articles a day well worth reading, often saving them for later. I find this more stimulating and satisfying than surfing regular “news” sites.

So, seeing as I use RSS daily, and Google Reader is being terminated, it was time to find a new one. My friend posted some links to some tech mags who said “Here are some big i.e. popular alternatives” to Google Reader. Of the lists that were shared, I found five that could be contenders. Ones that are only app-based are out — I do a lot of the reading on a desktop, and save and share for later, so while I want an app, I also need one that is web-enabled. My candidates at the moment are: Feedly, Netvibes, Taptu, Newsblur and The Old Reader.  Some come with extra bells and whistles so I’ll consider if I want those extra features.

Feedly looked promising to start. It is web-enabled, and can import from Google Reader. It also comes with a Firefox plugin which works well as I am indeed using Firefox these days (I hate old versions of Internet Explorer at work, and Chrome will neither install at work nor run efficiently at home, just really slow for some unknown reason). So this would seem like a good bet — Firefox integration should raise the bar considerably. I can switch from varying formats such as magazine, to just a title list, etc. Plus it integrates well with previously “saved” feeds from Google Reader. However, it’s not quite “right”. For some reason, it tells me in some cases there are “2 new articles” but then only shows me one. Even when I reset and refresh, it tells me there is a new article but won’t actually show it to me. Either way, something’s off. I’m temporarily eliminating Feedly from consideration.

Netvibes looks like a decent contender, allowing OPML exports from Reader to be imported (it appears). The site does note a high volume of “new users”, likely the result of people like me looking for a new RSS home. I also really like the discoverability factor of including some specific news feeds already pre-programmed and adding them to my regular feed (i.e. integrating a news feed into my RSS feeds). However, I don’t see an easy way to tag and “save” articles. Not sure what the VIP or premium options would give me, looks like I’m passing on this one.

Taptu was one of the first I tried, and I surprised myself by liking the magazine layout and pinkish/white colouring. It’s a very large change from text mode on Google Reader. However, there is some sort of lag on updates. Google Reader was showing me updates relatively “up to the minute” whereas Taptu was several hours behind. Usually that isn’t a problem but it strikes me as odd, and makes me question the viability of the choice. When you click on ADD STREAM, it takes you to three other tabs, one for Featured, one for Topics, and one for links imported from Reader. Seemed pretty good overall, and “saved” texts basically show up as Bookmarks, and there seemed to be lots of extra internal options. Too bad the update didn’t seem to be “live”. More importantly though, I can’t seem to switch from a “graphical/picture” version over to a text based “scan the headlines” mode. No dice.

Newsblur was my fourth choice, and while the free account is limited to 64 feeds, I have no qualms about paying $1/month for a premium account if it is the best tool for the job. The site, like others, was extremely slow the first day, but that’s not a worry in the long-term. I’ll never know though because even on the second day, I couldn’t get anything to work. Imports didn’t complete, connections to Facebook didn’t complete, heck even manually adding a single feed sent it into conniptions. I feel sorry for the people who used it regularly before — the influx of new people checking it out probably killed the servers as they couldn’t scale up fast enough.

That leaves consideration of The Old Reader. I exported my Google Reader settings, saved them to disk, extracted the Subscriptions.xml file, uploaded it to The Old Reader for importing, and got an error message telling me the site is unavailable. Sigh. This one was the most likely “suspect” in the pool to work, and I saved it for last, because it is like the “old google reader” before they did a major update (hence the name). I then went over to their “queue” page to reimport and it said it DID get my update, but I’m in a queue. Behind 21,139 other users. Gulp. Me thinks I could add them manually faster than waiting for that to complete. Not that I’m in a huge rush…after all, I have until July 1st before Google Reader goes belly up. And that doesn’t even account for possible extensions because of the hue and cry raised Friday by the blogging community. I got an update on Sunday saying the import was complete, but the interface was incredibly slow on Monday. I don’t know if that’s normal or a scaleability lag, but either way, it’s out for now.

Okay, so I’m going back to trying Feedly, as it mostly worked and it is hugely popular. I think I can make it work, although it is not as intuitively user friendly, even when in “titles” mode that looks a lot like Reader. I prefer “mark as read” getting rid of titles completely. If I’ve read it, I don’t want to see it again. Interesting that the news cycle has shown that 500K new users signed up for Feedly over the weekend. Many sites would kill for 500K users, and Feedly got them because another company doesn’t consider it a viable enough.community to support.

The one thing that bothers me though about Feedly is that I can’t “break” the synch with Google. Yep, it synched. Yep, it had all my saved articles too. Great. Now I want to “break” the synch and have it be stand-alone, but no dice. It says it will run stand alone when Google finally shuts down Googe Reader, but it took me awhile to figure out why it doesn’t run that way now. In a nutshell, all the RSS readers out there use Google on the backend. So you have to stay linked to Google to access their API. And while some sites are suggesting building your own backend is relatively straightforward, it is not for the faint of heart or small of pocketbook. Feedly looks like the first one likely to make it there, at which time they can break the link with Google. And, fortunately, with the huge new influx of readers, the site runners are hugely motivated to make it work for everyone, and my needs aren’t extensive. Before July 1st, I’ll download my OPML file again just in case, and in the meantime I’ll just keep using Google Reader.

I also planned ahead — I took all my saved articles OUT of Google Reader and copied them over to Evernote. It makes my Evernote database a bit bigger than I would like, but it’s working. I have almost 2000 notes now in Evernote, so I’m glad I have their premium account!

Now, if only Evernote would create an RSS feed built into it and I wouldn’t have to worry anymore!

Netiquette, blogging and writing online…

The PolyBlog
September 6 2011

On a discussion forum that I’m on, someone was noting a pet peeve of theirs was people who commit to doing a guest blog for their site and then flaking out with little or no warning.

I find the thread really interesting as it combines a bit of “professionalism” with “netiquette” with “marketing” with “writing”. In my day job, I deal with a lot of young professionals / millennials who have very different expectations of professionalism than some of us old fogies, and while this wasn’t specifically the sub-theme, in some ways it relates, at least in my mind.

We have a mental model of how people interact, and a lot of it is still stuck in the world of the tactile. Face to face, shaking hands, etc. And yet as the world globalized, we came to realize as business people that other cultures do NOT have the same expectations / roles in their rituals as a lot of us westerners. We even have a bunch of racist stereotypes hidden in business guides that resulted from these culture wars about how the “japanese” or the “chinese” do business, written as offensively to some business people in those cultures as some of the “poor blacks who find solace through music” stereotypes that permeated America for some time. Yet the reality was that our perceptions of how to do business changed — maybe not shaking hands is not a sign of disrespect, for example.

Like with globalization, the net opened up the world but this time to virtual commerce, and if we stop for a second, we’ll realize that if we offer guest blogs, then our blog is essentially an e-commerce site in that we’re offering to “sell” a guest some blog space in barter exchange for them writing a blog entry (plus some extra bits). What do the hosts get out of it? Content for our site, more visitors, an enhanced community network experience, and the knowledge / satisfaction we helped another author. What does the guest get? Visibility on our site, potentially more visitors back to their site, networking, and, umm, the satisfaction of writing an interesting blog on someone else’s site perhaps plus hopefully (!) some sales.

Now, if we look at netiquette (which is the reality of our online transactions, NOT the ethereal protocols we have in tactile world), we realize that on average overall relationships tend to be vastly more anonymous, more transactional than long-term, and most important of all? Far less secured — and I don’t mean in terms of access to credit cards. (And please, I’m talking about overall relationships, please don’t e-mail me to tell me how you met this really interesting person in Sweden 10 years ago on the net or your husband or your wife or found your long-lost 12th cousin).

If you offer me your book through Amazon, and I buy it, that’s pretty “firm”/secure because it is a simple transaction. If you offer me a spot on your blog, and I accept, that’s pretty soft. I know, I know, if you’re being professional, it shouldn’t be, but this is the online world. It’s more like an “option to buy” than a firm “purchase order”. Why?

Because if I’m the guest, I still have to do something to make the transaction happen. If we go back to the Mad Men world of hard advertising, “always be closing”, “telling isn’t selling”, etc., the transaction is still “pending”. We haven’t closed the deal, we just have an agreement in principle. In the real tactile world, people pretend that is pretty firm most of the time. Yet, as with say FutureShop or a car dealership, the minute that “customer” walks out the door without signing in blood, the reliability of that “deal” drops to the level of “possible lead” or maybe even “dead wood”. And after tons of conversations, dealers at both stores know that an agreement in principle is not the same as a sale.

The virtual world is full of people making commitments / over commitments / disorganization / websites launching with great fanfare by individuals and after ten posts going silent. Ask yourself — are you updating your own blog as often as you thought you would? Are you even keeping your commitment to yourself????

Add in the fact that your faceless entity on the other end who agrees to write a blog for your site may be (a) fully employed on the side, (b) busy, (c) afraid of failure, (d) deep in writing, (e) dead, (f) a complete flake, (g) changed their mind, (h) broke and can’t fix their laptop to access the net to read your e-mails, etc. and is too embarrassed to tell you any of those explanations. And then add in the fact that you have an agreement in principle, not an actual sale, it is not surprising when they don’t all deliver.

But a lot of that is our upfront expectation. At work, I obviously shouldn’t be expecting our millennials to be jumping up and down at the thought of last-minute overtime but I equally shouldn’t be expecting them to even accept it at all — some won’t. And that isn’t unprofessional, it is just a very different view of the employment relationship. One that differs from my “traditional” one. Not better, not worse, different. Because they are a completely different “customer” / “transaction partner” than I’m expecting / wishing they were, and I shouldn’t rely on them as if they were of the same “mental culture”.

What does this mean for those running sites asking / offering other people the chance to provide content in exchange for providing that content? Or dealing with businesses that offer e-services to us? Assume that not 100% of all “pending transactions” will close when you want them to, or at all. And have backup options ready to go in case they don’t.

For the writing world, magazines and publishers do it all the time — if the writer doesn’t deliver that front cover story or final chapter on time, they go with another cover story or fill the window with another author’s book. They’re prepared for their partners to perhaps not deliver, and have deadlines far enough in advance that they can substitute other material if needed.

Why aren’t we prepared like that? After all, we’re the ones that didn’t close the deal. And isn’t THAT unprofessional of us?

And for those of us hoping to participate as guests, the advice is simple — honour your commitments as if the deal has already closed, and you’ll stand out from the crowd of netiquette slackers whose commitment is more net-ready than world-ready.