Stephanie Plum has settled in to her job as a bounty hunter, and so picking up a missing NJ girl who failed to appear after stealing her boyfriend’s truck seems like a cakewalk. And there’s a bonus — the boyfriend is willing to give her money too to find her and get some supposed love letters back from her. Easy peasy. Except nothing is easy for Plum, ever. The missing girl wants to stay missing, and her mother and co-worker are helping. Even when somebody else is looking for the girl too, and willing to hurt people to get them to talk.
What I Liked
Plum has an extra helper in this case, a guy who’s good with codes and clues. A flamboyant cross-dresser, he livens up the scene. And the relationship with Moretti leaps forward with the two cohabitating for a while. I love the scenes where the women were talking about guns and what type of gun to carry, use, etc.
What I Didn’t Like
There are some baddies who are painfully obviously involved, which Plum misses for most of the book. And someone who is out to get her is obvious as well. Also painful to watch. Oh, and one of my favourite characters, Ranger, has nothing to do for the entire book. More like an afterthought to include him.
This academic analysis of recent Canadian international development assistance is long on political economy and light on “realities on the ground”.
What I Liked
The text had a strong opening for its goals, even if the administrative context didn’t quite match their estimated / presumed political context. When it came to hard statistical analysis (Chapter 6) and mimicry of other donors, the paper was sound. Chapter 12 on children at risk, and the potential for mainstreaming, had potential but was undersold.
What I Didn’t Like
The book had a lot of rhetoric and assumptions than analysis of ethical consensus and normativism (Chapters 1-3), results reporting and power dynamics (Chapter 4, 5, 10), Corporate Social responsibility (Chapter 7, 15, 16), links to military spending for peacekeeping (Chapter 8, 9, 13,14), and soundbite announcements masquerading as policies (Chapter 11).
Disclosure
I am not personal friends with the editors, but I am friends with the author of one of the chapters.
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!
About three weeks ago, I posted my entry about search engine optimization (SEO), with a focus on how it was applicable to writers’ sites. I typed it up, proof-read, hit “Publish”. And less than a day later, good old Google lit up the tech blogs with confirmation of their implementation of tweaks to their Search Engine algorithm. The update, nicknamed Panda, is basically a result of a lot of “bad” things I talked about in my earlier post — spammers figuring out enough of the previous algorithm that they could fake their way to better rankings. Google’s goal is still the same — the most relevant, quality sites should rank first. However, if outsiders figure out the way to game that search, then Google starts to lose relevancy and market share (anyone remember Alta Vista search engine?). So Google monitors what sites do. And then adjust their algorithm to fight the tricksters.
In this case, the analysis available on the web of the changes is pretty extensive. CNET, for example, ran 2000 of the most popular searches before and after the change. And compiled an analysis of which sites’ rankings were affected.
Generally speaking, content farms were reduced in rank. These are sites that basically scrape their content from elsewhere on the web and just replicate it on their site — unlike news aggregators that credit the original source, a lot of scrapers don’t. And often they just mirror their sites in different forms (or scrape each other!) to boost their rankings — essentially trying to get more points by having more content on their site. However, the Panda changes basically take those types of sites and reduce the number of points they get from having multiple, low-quality articles that nobody wants (the sites make money by giving you a little bit of content on a lot of topics and a lot of ads when you visit).
But the tweaks are not perfect — some legitimate sites (i.e. non-scrapers) also got caught by the changes. Like the British Medical Journal, for example. Does this matter to them? Probably not — if someone searches for the BMJ, they’ll find it real fast. On the other hand, if the latest article about dermatitis doesn’t show up first on a general search related to dermatitis, BMJ isn’t going to stay awake at night worrying they slipped in the rankings.
By contrast, if the people who sell ads for scraper sites see their rankings slip, then the number of visitors to their site will slip, the click-through rates for the ads on the pages slip, and their commissions slip. So they need to update their tricks to make sure people are finding their sites, and that WILL keep them awake.
What does it mean for you as a writer? Almost nothing. You still need original content on your site and the right keywords. What MAY affect you though is if you have a lot of material on your site that is just a link to another site, or is a reposting of other material, even videos or news items…your site may start to look to Google’s spider bots like an aggregator, and you could lose relevancy points.
But do you care? Oddly enough, the answer may be no. While that seems counter-intuitive, think about how people get to your site. Most likely they clicked on an URL from another blog, or they searched for your name, or they searched for a phrase like “Books by Jane Author”. As with the British Medical Journal example above, you’re still going to come up pretty high (probably first if your URL is your name).
Rankings are therefore only relevant if you have a lot of other content on your site that you want people to find — like, for example, if you write a lot of blog posts about forensic studies. If you see this as a key marketing hook (i.e. “Come for the knowledge, stay for my books!”), then you should care somewhat. But unless you are the foremost expert, it’s going to be hard to crack those first few pages. For example, if you search for the term “mystery book”, you get a whole lot of sites that sell mystery books. But the rankings don’t produce an individual author’s site until #15 or #16 — http://www.robertburtonrobinson.com — and it looks like one of the reasons he ranks so high is that he has posted a lot of short stories online (i.e. original content). [** Note that I just repeated the search, this time logged into iGoogle so it knows how to “localize” my results, and RBR came up a whopping third this time! Wow!]
For the rest of the Panda algorithm, you may be interested to know that Amazon came in third in CNET’s test, no real change — just further confirming, if you’re selling books, that Amazon is the first stop on a global search engine train, regardless of what Apple, Barnes and Noble, or Smashwords tell you. There is a small caveat to that great Amazon ranking though — Amazon ranks higher on the CNET search as it now sells almost everything from soup to nuts, which means it has more products to match searches. B&N or Smashwords are only going to rank in that global search on items that had to do with books. So not really a fair comparison (as a writer, you don’t really care if people can find TVs at Amazon, just your book, but well, that’s the way the cyber marketplace works. Think of it as “diversification on steroids”. It also improves Amazon’s diversified revenue streams and ensures their longevity, plus their ability to leverage resources for advertising (reportedly $135M last year. And with Amazon announcing this week that they will soon start selling Kindles in Walmart stores (i.e. people won’t have to order it online anymore), expect Kindle and Amazon’s sales to grow even more!). In non-localized findings for “mystery book”, Amazon shows up 4th, GoodReads 6th, Barnes and Nobel not until about 27/28th.
So what else do you need to know about SEO? In my previous post, I neglected two areas of the algorithm.
One area is “registration” and “hosting” data. This essentially means you get more points if you are a registered owner of your domain rather than using a generic hoster like MySpace, Facebook, or on a blog spot. Technically though this is mostly covered by having your own domain name, it just ups the ante a bit to make sure you’re also the registrar for the site (think of it like your ISBN for your books — are you the publisher? or did you publish through Smashwords or Amazon and THEY’RE listed as your publisher? The former gets you more points for your URL.) So if you have your own domain, register it yourself and feel free (where possible) to stuff your registration details with your keywords. Not a huge issue, but take the points if you can; if you’ve registered elsewhere, don’t sweat it.
A second area is more about style. When you write a title for a book or a magazine article, you often try to be a bit quirky or unique — which works in print because when people see it, they already have the context. So an article entitled “What we can expect in 2012” in an article in Business Week is very different from a book with the same title in the Paranormal section of the bookstore or an article with the same title in an issue of Entertainment Weekly. But as a reader you don’t care, it’s easy to tell those three apart. But on the web, particularly in a search engine, the context is often lost — those three titles would be considered equally relevant to a search on that phrase. As a result, SEO gurus refer to a related area as microcontent, and suggest making your page titles more explicit. As a practical example, if your site has pages with books on it for sale, don’t call the page “My books”. Call it “Books by John Doe” instead — give the Search Engine the context of what is on the page if it only looks at that page. You also get more points if the page title STARTS with your keyword rather than just appears in the title — so if your key word is “murder”, then “Murder and Mayhem” gets more points than “Mayhem and Murder”.
Looking at the title for this blog entry, I had originally just written it as “SEO update”, as the context was clear. However, applying the microcontent rule to be more explicit, and to help my rankings in search engines, I’ve changed the title to be “SEO Update on the Panda algorithm and microcontent”. Now, technically I should say just SEO techniques or Panda algorithm or microcontent as the first word. But, microcontent is one aspect of content management, and I’m more comfortable with the title I’ve chosen — you balance editorial concerns against SEO each time you write anything for your site. This just makes that balancing more explicit.
Murdoch gets to investigate the death of Dolly Merishaw, a drunkard, a midwife, and an abortionist. She lived with two boys whom she treated horribly, as well as a young woman who is also a little unbalanced. It doesn’t take much for Murdoch to realize there was blackmail involved, the question being of who?
What I Liked
Murdoch’s investigation is relatively straightforward, but the fun part is seeing him trying to figure out the morals of dating and ballroom dancing while he still grieves his fiancée’s death. He’s also training for a bicycle race. It’s a good introduction of some supporting characters too.
What I Didn’t Like
The view of the young woman being unbalanced is far too simplistic and poorly portrayed.
