The photos from our afternoon at Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth are quite a contrast to the Victoria Mansion.
Click on photos for larger view.
Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category
Christmas Past – Part 2
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
What I Learned In My Website/Social Media Experiment
Sunday, November 6th, 2011Today’s post is a reprint of a guest post I wrote for flyteblog.com. A big thanks to my boss for having it on his popular blog.
The Goals: Learning, SEO and Social Media Experiment, (and possibly get some passive income without investing much money).
As a developer, I’ve probably built or worked on several hundred websites at my current job.
As the company has grown and our offices have become more spread out, the exposure to elements of a project that are not part of development has naturally narrowed. (I do sometimes miss our “one room schoolhouse” office). Flyte has been on the leading edge of Social Media and I’ve become a convert, but haven’t done a lot with it beyond my Twitter and Facebook pages.
I thought it might be fun and interesting to see what my learnings would be while working through a new project of my own.
Lesson 1: Figure out your business first, then build a website for it. Not the other way around.
The idea:
Several friends and acquaintances have mentioned that while Amazon is a trusted online store, they feel overwhelmed by the busy home page and the number of choices. As a voracious reader, my friends often ask me what I’m reading and for suggestions. I also hear excellent book suggestions from friends and my boss.
My idea was to present selected choices through Amazon with quick pick book suggestions. Once people find they like the site suggestions it can become a quick way of picking a book and ordering it though Amazon, usually within the framework of my cozy website.
Since this was a learning project, my approach was like that of a number of people with new, very small businesses – with a not fully defined idea for making some money, and a preference for spending my time worrying about what the site looked like instead of how effective it would be.
After going back and forth with my build (for much longer than I should have) because I waffled between direct links to Amazon or an iframe associates store, I decided to really go for the social media challenge and use the iframe store within my content area. This means I’ll need to get really creative with Social Media, since search engines will not “see” the book content in the iframe store. Iframes are sometimes a necessary evil but be aware of their limitations and build in other avenues to feed rich content to search engines.
Lesson 2: Visual look of design is important, but know your content, strategy, and information architecture so it can guide the design.
(And lesson 2b, which I already knew but apparently had to learn again the hard way – make sure you have the design locked down before you start the build).
- A site that is pretty will not trump the lack of good content or non-intuitive navigation.
- You can be unique and creative without getting your budget off track.
- I’ve been using an app for turning photos into ink and water color drawings and decided to use this to create illustrations for my site. After buying a few stock photos, and taking a few myself, I used the app to give a cozy welcoming feeling to the pages with faux illustrations.
I went ahead and made the site live. After all, if you build it they will come, right? My only promotion of it was to offer a sneak peak on my facebook page (soft launch) . As expected, I’ve had very few hits (I check my google analytics daily – there was one weird day where I suddenly had 42 visitors, direct traffic from Hennepin County, Minnesota – I have a vision of an entire classroom of people being given a wrong URL!)
The better approach
Now to see if targeting search engines and using Social media can make a difference.
Coming up with keywords: Word Tracker offers a free trial or you can use the free keyword tool at Google. I put in my generic search term – Book Suggestions. Wham! immediately it returned something I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t given a thought to – using the phrase Book Club suggestions. I was also surprised just how much difference a slight variation can make. E.g.: “book club reading list” had low competition, and global search number of 4,400. However, “reading book club” had low competition, and a global search of 246,000.
I came up with several similar eye openers and went back to my site, rewriting some of the content, navigation and titles to incorporate the terms. I admit, at times the text felt more awkward to me, but we’re giving keywords a try right?
Next I moved over some of my mainebabyboomer blog posts on books I’ve read to the new blog on The Cozy Library. Since I’m using iframes, the blog is going to become the main source of content that the search engines can find. Starting out with several posts gives it a kick start, and I’ll need to blog regularly each time I read a new book.
I’m writing this guest blog post for the flyte blog, hopefully encouraging YOU dear reader to come visit my site. [Insert shameless self-promotion here - go to http://cozy-library.com].
Lesson 3 – Know when phase 1 is done and it’s time to start phase 2.
I could go on tweaking the site and adding content forever, staying in “soft launch” mode. There will always be more SEO that can be done, more books added, more blog posts, more design tweaks. I want to comb through past flyte blog and Maine SEO blog posts culling out ideas to follow up. But that work can also be done after official launch. It’s better to get this website out and start promoting it – while I continue to go on reading flyte articles on how to use twitter, facebook, blogging and SEO to promote it. So….(drum roll)…Announcing the new site, Cozy-Library.com.
Postscript Learning – the spike in my google analytics turned out to be because I was doing cross browser testing using Adobe BrowserLab – be sure to take their IP out of the mix if you don’t want to skew your results.
Snapshots of Bangor (and personal) History
Saturday, September 24th, 2011Growing up in Bangor, my life was entwined with that of St. Mary’s Church. Attending St. Mary’s school, we had first Friday mass at the church just across the school yard (followed by Gosselin’s donuts and hot chocolate since the fast before communion prevented having breakfast – how would you like to be the nun with a class full of kids hopped up on that sugar rush!)
Month of May included the living rosary at the shrine of Mary on the corner between church and convent. First communions. Confirmations. Forgetting your chapel veil and bobby pinning a kleenix to your head. The excitement of Christmas morning mass followed by gift opening. The mystery of the teens in the family going to Midnight Mass. All part of my childhood. And so even though I started separating from the church in the mid 70′s, it came as a personal shock the night the great church burned down on Feb 3, 1978, at the hands of an arsonist.
While going through some old photos this weekend looking for family shots, I came across these pictures I took the night of the fire, and the next day. I blame the blurriness on subzero temps combined with seeing your personal history burn down before your eyes. More than thirty years later I thought some of my fellow former parishioners might find them interesting.
Do you remember where you were the night of the fire?
Click on image to view largest available size.
A different type of 3D movie?
Saturday, June 11th, 2011Recently I saw the movie Certified Copy with Juliette Binoche. There’s a great summary of the movie in this New York Times review. The start of the movie is an author’s lecture on his book, which tries to convince that a copy is as good as an original if it is such a good copy it evokes the same feeling.
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, I found it interesting and did appreciate that it was a good catalyst for conversation after the movie. I found myself trying to figure out whether the couple in the movie had really married long ago, or just met.
At the beginning I was convinced they had just met, at the end of the movie I was mostly convinced they had been married long ago. It was a day or two later when I was describing the movie to my sister that it struck me how much I had reacted exactly as the director wished, thinking the copy of a marriage might in fact be an original, or real couple seeing each other again – I could not tell the copy from the original.
I’m not a big fan of 3D movies, it seems to me that the energy and resources have all been focused on the special effects rather than story and character development. So what I’m asking here is – what makes a real 3D movie – a special effect needing glasses, or is it when the movie reaches out to you, grabbing you so that two days later you’re still discussing the thoughts and ideas it evokes?
Who do you think YOU are?
Sunday, April 3rd, 2011Recently I watched the show “Who Do You Think You Are”, and saw a fascinating story of Rosie O’Donnel tracing her roots back to Ireland.
Over the past couple years, my siblings and I have made more progress in tracing our Irish roots than in previous decades. We knew our paternal side could be traced back to Ireland, but with that generation gone by the time we started looking, we had only a few family stories to go on.
This is one of the areas where Baby Boomers are getting an incredible boost from the internet. With every passing year more paper records are transferred to electronic availability. In our case, it still took some physical visits to City Hall or other offices with public records (thanks Greg!), but we are still finding new information on the web this year that we could not find just a year or two ago.
Recently my sister managed to contact a cousin when she found his updated information on the web. Now, you must remember that at the time baby boomers were young children, the easy technology of today’s digital cameras and video did not exist yet. Many families did not have the means to take photos as a camera and film were luxuries. And so it was that my cousin sent Pat a scan of a photo in his family’s album. My first surprise was that my father (James Arnold Maher) was known as Arnold to several members of his family. I had always heard he was called Jim. My next realization was that this photo, titled Uncle Arnold and Family by my cousin, and blurry though it is, is the first and only time I’ve ever seen a photo of my entire family in one shot. (My dad died when I was 6, so much of what I know is through stories) That’s me sitting on my dad’s knee.
I want to urge all my fellow babyboomers out there to start searching now for those ancestor photos and stories. Not only is more information available on the web than every before, but also you can tap into the family stories and photos before they are lost forever.
New mainebabyboomer.com
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
Mainebabyboomer.com is now live and offers affordable websites for small business.
The mainebabyboomer.com blog has moved to mainebabyboomer.com/blog
Trickle Down Quality and our Economy
Friday, January 28th, 2011Years ago when I worked at L. L. Bean, I attended a training session on quality. As was popular in the 90′s, we started the session with an exercise. A fresh white piece of paper was started around the room full of attendees with the instruction to tear a tiny piece of paper off the edge. By the time it made it around the room, half the paper was gone. The session leader pointed out that this was a visual of 98% accuracy/quality. After we each handed on a “project” of 98% quality, by the time the project was done there would only be a 50% quality rating.
I was reminded of this over the past couple weeks as I changed my internet service and phone provider. My existing DSL service (OTT-formerly MidMaine) was pushing out a measly .5 – .8mbps (yes, that’s point eight) and the time had finally come to just change to another provider. I chose GWI because we use them at work and service seems fine. The combined DSL and Phone package requires Fairpoint to be a contributor as well – something to do with the combined wiring at the end of our condo building.
I was really excited, thinking about that awesome speed I was going to see when the switch happened. GWI guy showed up on time, was courteous, and explained to me that Fairpoint had not been out and done their part of the job – possible communication breakdown. My switchover was rescheduled for a week later.
Next GWI guy showed up on time, was courteous and helpful, and explained that the Fairpoint people had been there but still hadn’t done what they needed to do for GWI to complete the work. He called his office to touch base and the person on other end told him I have Time Warner (I don’t). I pointed out to them that Time Warner does not even come to Brunswick. Again, no switch completed, but he checked wires, set up my modem and generally did what he could in the moment.
The next night I came home from work to find I had no phone dial tone and no internet connection. Since the order for the switch had been submitted almost two weeks ago, my current provider assumed ok to cut off my service. I tried not to break into a cold sweat and panic from not only tech withdrawal but feeling cut off from the world. Without my beloved internet I was bereft.
When I got in touch with them this morning they apologized and explained that a vendor meet appointment was set for this afternoon and I would finally be reconnected to the Interwebs. Fairpoint even came a little early and got my phone back online.
Each person was courteous and helpful, but by the time each had done their job, the process as viewed from my side had been seriously lacking in quality and satisfaction.
The cascade:
-
Communication between vendors took too many attempts. (Multiple trips expended resources both in productive hours and in gas for vehicles.)
- No one thought to stop the end service order to my existing company when problems were encountered. (Using up more productive hours in phone calls and follow up.)
- For the most part they did not take a view higher than the scope of their current job to visualize what was happening upstream or downstream – not looking at the big picture and the details at the same time resulted in loss of service (and extra expenses for them) during the handoffs.
- I had to use a vacation day in order to be home to make sure all was finally completed, which in turn affected my productivity at my workplace (and the possibility of my spending money on a “real” vacation day if I hadn’t had to use it for this instead).
We are all worried about this economy.
When it comes to the environment, we often hear that even little things like turning off a light or recycling the newspaper can make a big difference if we all do them.
I have to wonder as I set up my own small side business, how much of a difference can we all make to the economy if we pay attention not just to doing our own jobs well, but also keep the broader perspective in mind, including where things might be improved in our work handoffs before and after our step in process. Each small improvement we make in our productivity can trickle down to the next part of the process – more efficiency, less waste = better economy.
Trickle Down Quality and our Economy
Years ago when I worked at L. L. Bean, I attended a training session on quality. As was popular in the 90′s, we started the session with an exercise. A fresh
white piece of paper was started around the room full of attendees with the instruction to tear a tiny piece of paper off the edge. By the time it made it around
the room, half the paper was gone. The session leader pointed out that this was a visual of 98% accuracy/quality. After we each handed on a “project” of 98%
quality, by the time the project was done there would only be a 50% quality rating.
I was reminded of this over the past couple weeks as I changed my internet service and phone provider. My existing DSL service was pushing out a measly .8
mbps and the time had finally come to just change to another provider. I chose GWI because we use them at work and service seems fine. The combined DSL
and Phone package requires Fairpoint to be a contributor as well – something to do with the combined wiring at the end of our condo building. I was really excited,
thinking about that awesome speed I was going to see when the switch happened. GWI guy showed up on time, was courteous, and explained to me that
Fairpoint had not been out and done their part of the job – possible communication breakdown. My switchover was rescheduled for a week later. New GWI guy
showed up on time, was courteous and helpful, and explained that the Fairpoint people had been there but still hadn’t done what they needed to do for GWI to
complete the work. He called his office to touch base and the person on other end told him I have Time Warner (I don’t). I pointed out to them that Time Warner
does not even come to Brunswick. Again, no switch completed, but he checked wires, set up my modem and generally did what he could in the moment. The next
night I came home from work to find I had no phone dial tone and no internet connection. Since the order for the switch had been submitted almost two weeks
ago, my current provider assumed ok to cut off my service. I tried not to break into a cold sweat and panic from not only tech withdrawal but feeling cut off from
the world. Without my beloved internet I was bereft.
When I got in touch with them this morning they apologized and explained that a vendor meet appointment was set for this afternoon and I would finally be
reconnected to the interwebs. Fairpoint even came a little early and got my phone back online.
Each person was courteous and helpful, but by the time each had done their job, my end result was seriously lacking in quality and satisfaction.
The cascade:
Communication between vendors took too many attempts. (Multiple trips expended resources both in productive hours and in gas for vehicles.)
No one thought to stop the end service order to my existing company when problems were encountered. (Using up more productive hours in phone calls and follow
up.)
For the most part they did not take a view higher than the scope of their current job to visualize what was happening upstream or downstream – not looking at the
big picture and the details at the same time resulted in loss of service (and extra expenses for them) during the handoffs.
I had to use a vacation day in order to be home to make sure all was finally completed, which in turn affected my productivity at my workplace.
We are all worried about this economy.
When it comes to the environment, we often hear that even little things like turning off a light or recycling the newspaper can make a big difference if we all do
them.
I have to wonder as I set up my own small side business, how much of a difference can we all make to the economy if we pay attention not just to doing our
own jobs well, but also keep the broader perspective in mind, including where things might be improved in our work handoffs before and after our step in process. Each small improvement we make in our productivity can trickle down to the next part of the process – more efficiency, less waste = better economy.
Guest blogger at flyte new media
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010I’m not sure if it qualifies as a “guest” blogger when it’s the company I work for, but my boss has a very well read blog at flyte new media, I was extremely pleased that a couple of my posts were accepted to be published there.
Today’s post:
Do Baby Boomers Need Social Media?
Read previous post:
3 Reasons for Baby Boomers to Jump Into Blogging and Social Media?
Book Suggestions: The Postmistress; The Faculty Club
Saturday, August 21st, 2010The NEW how to take a screenshot on a PC
Saturday, July 24th, 2010A while back I posted instructions on how to take a snapshot of your monitor screen and turn it into a photo. I was quite surprised when I used it today and was no longer able to create a screenshot. After a bit of searching and finding similar instructions to my previous post, I found instructions on the NEW way to take a screenshot (PC):
Hold down the Shift and Fn keys and click the Print Scrn key – on my laptop computer it’s F11 key in the top row – yours may be a different F key on your computer or on a full keyboard it may be a separate key, but it will have some abbreviation of Print Screen written on the key and be in the upper right quadrant. The Fn key will likely be near the Shift key in the lower left quadrant.
From there, open your favorite image program (I use Photoshop, but most PCs come with Paint – look under Start – All Programs – Accessories – Paint. You can use Control + V to paste the screenshot into program.
A simple thing to do once you know the right key combination!
