Friday, February 24, 2006

Dear diary...

Dear Diary,

Nothing new happened today that is worth writing about because so much is happening in real life that my online life has taken a back seat except for all those online things I've been doing to get away from the offline things in those rare and frequent moments where I can't decide if online or offline is more relevant, boring, or fascinating than the other.

By why is it that I can go for 2 hours straight without looking at a Web site, fire up CNN to see what the latest headlines are, just to have someone walk over to start gabbing with me at work?

Why is it that everyone wants something now but when I want something it's who are you? and why is it that any good deed goes unpunished only for so long as it's not worth noticing?

This is why I've resisted blogging for so long. I feel compelled to say something, anything, even if it's the most inane nonsense just because there might be someone out there who, while cruising the Web in the midst of a sleepless night, comes across my blog and decides they want more, more, more!

There's only so much of me to go around, and you can't have all of me. I don't just blog for myself, I blog for SEOMoz, too. And maybe one day when Dixie finishes installing stuff elsewhere she'll install that blog for me on the new domain and I'll have three blogs to keep up with.

In other news this week, Suite101 is now hiring writers again. Looks like the pay scale is a little more flexible -- in both directions -- than the old one. Problem is, they are looking for people with the skill to be search engine optimizers. It was once fun to write for the Suite. It was funny to watch people just scrape in with their minimum required words so they could get the highest rate-per-word possible. I never cared much about the rate-per-word. It was a flat-fee schedule and I understood that. I just started writing and kept going until I was finished.

MSN rolled out a new artificial intelligence for their search engine and then when Whinemasterworld (one of the more disreputable search engine optimization forums) complained long and loud, they changed back to the old AI. Problem is, guys, the old AI ain't serving up much in the way of good, relevant results, either. Maybe that's why the V.P. who has been running MSN search suddenly stepped down this week.

Google continues to make people's day by delisting sites. Why are they doing that? So they can roll out Big Daddy (one must suppose). When it's all over, they'll probably restored the delisted sites like they always do. In the meantime, everyone and their brother will think they have been penalized and yet more insane theories will be proposed for various Google behaviors.

Wikipedia becomes more popular every day. I'm now formally proposing a new Michael's Law (I think this is Michael's Third Law, so that makes it special because there are only two others like it): Any stupid idea will make more money than any common sense idea. Needs a little work, but let's take a look at a few stupid ideas that have made lots of money:

Microsoft Windows

Google

Pet rocks

The Bachelor

The business world could have had power, stability, and a very powerful graphical environment 15 years ago but since there weren't UNIX support specialists on every street corner, they decided to go with Microsoft instead (because I can always get support). Hint: There was a reason for why there were so few UNIX support specialists. Quality doesn't need much support.

The search industry has evolved in many ways. The best search engine that ever came out was Altavista's Raging Bull. What happened? The company that owned Altavista at the time didn't have the patience to wait out the dot-com meltdown. So they closed down research and development and eventually sold Altavista to Yahoo!, who replaced the innovative Raging Bull with...Inktomi. The "kick me" boy of search engine spam.

My brother had a girlfriend who thought pet rocks were cute. Okay, teenagers don't express the best judgement in the world, but millions of those things were sold, displacing a Mexican river's geological history all over the world. 500 years from now, some archaeologist is going to dig up a pet rock in a pet rock cemetary and wonder why people worshipped the stone(d) gods.

I have nothing to say about The Bachelor.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home