• March 15th, 2008
• Filed in
  • Blog
  • Shameless Promotion

Man I almost missed it! I didn’t even notice before looking at my archives today. I launched this blog on March 3rd 2007 right before I left for SXSW last year. I was burning the midnight oil for about a week straight to get it up. I’m happy to stay I’ve stuck with it. Previously I had a hard time sticking with it. I’ve gone through lulls of sporadic posts and periods of hyperactive posting but all in all I’m happy with the past year.

Most Popular - Year Numero Uno

1. HP C4200 Leopard Driver Issues
2. Using jQuery To Avoid Classititis In IE6
3. Wired Apple Keyboard Review
4. Russian Spam Gmail Filter
5. Red Sox Virtual Waiting Room Suckfest

2007 Analytics

I’d like to make drastic improvements for Year 2 of somedirection.com. As such I’m going to share my blog stats for my first year.

I’m currently working on a new theme I hope will really propel this blog forward. I’ve always ‘disregarded’ the interface for the most part leaving it as ‘good enough’. I’ve let the content speak for itself, but version 2 will show off some more flashiness and what I’m capable of as a developer as well as improving the site in these ways:

• Increase Average Page Views - I’d like to bump up my avg page views to 3 or 4 per visit. That will equate to better access to the long tail of content and better design to promote more browsing.

• Time on Site - Increasing time spent will be a side effect of increase page views. Maybe I need to write longer articles as well. I’m considering breaking up the articles into a “read more..” format so I can show more on the index without overwhelming visitors with content.

• Bounce Rate - Gotta get that down.

• Monetization - Nothing annoying and in your face but I’d like to experiment with ad placement and generally learn more about online marketing. The best way to learn about it is to do it.

• Subscribers - I need to improve my RSS feed penetration and encourage users to subscribe to my feed. I’m planning to offer an email push subscription as well. I’m toying with the idea of a newsletter, but not sure about the subject matter as of yet.

The best way to get my blog out there is not only by generating quality unique content, but also by becoming more involved in my ’space’. I’m looking forward to breaking my lurker habits.

That’s about it. Happy Birthday to me, and if you think there’s anything that I can do better or something I might’ve missed by all means let me know.

Popularity: 8% [?]

• January 1st, 2008
• Filed in
  • Blog
  • Rants

I don’t know whether I have been avoiding sticking my foot in my mouth, or just plain uninterested in most things, but one of my resolutions for 2008 is to break my awful habit of lurking around.

Most of my interaction with my development/designer colleagues has been face to face when I attend SXSW, but that interaction quickly dies off shortly after my visit to Austin every year. The problem is entirely my own fault - I’m just bad at keeping in touch - something I need to work on. But I’m not attending SXSW in ‘08 for the first time in 3 years, my only option is to put myself “out there”.

I’ve been lurking my whole career and I need a change. I want to increase the readership of somedirection and the only way to do that is to crawl out of this little cave I’ve built for myself on the Internet. One of the first places I’m starting this “coming out party” is in the successful 9rules community run by a pair of my SXSW friends Mike Rundle and Paul Scrivens. There’s a lot of things I’m excited about in 2008 and the wheels are in motion for this to be a great year.

So I welcome my readers, speak up! Quit hiding! Become involved. Let’s get a salad of comments going here!

Popularity: 12% [?]