Central Standard Tech

Crossing Borders with Laptops and PDAs

2008-05-16T12:01:37+00:00

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to...

The quarter-million dollar query

2008-05-16T07:23:00+00:00

What does a query cost? In one recent case, about a quarter-million dollars.

The story (suitably anonymized): User requirements resulted in a new feature added to a busy application. Call it Widget 16. Widget 16 was complex enough that the database side of the widget put a measurable load on the server. That alone wouldn't have been a problem, but Widget 16 turned out the be a useful widget. So useful in fact, that users clicked on Widget 16 far more often have anticipated. Complex query + lots of clicks = load problem. How big was the load problem? In this case, the cost of the query (in CPU seconds, logical reads, etc.) and the number of times the query was executed were both relevant. After measuring the per-widget load on the server and multiplying by the number of widget clicks per second, we figured that widget cost at least a quarter million dollars per year in hardware and database license costs. Especially database licensing costs.

That was an interesting number.

Obviously we want to use that number to help make the application better, faster and cheaper.

The developers - who are faced with having to balance impossible user requirements, short deadlines, long bug lists, and whiny hosting teams complaining about performance - likely will favor the former over the latter. We expect that to happen. Unfortunately if that happens too often, the hosting team is stuck with either poor performance or a large hardware and software bill. To properly prioritize the development work effort, some rational measurement must be made of the cost of re-working existing functionality to reduce load verses the value of using that same work effort to add user requested features. Calculating the cost of running a feature or widget makes the prioritization determination possible. In this case, the cost of running the query compared to the person-time required to design, code, test and deploy a solution made the decision to optimize the widget (or cache it) pretty easy to make.

DBA's already have the tools (Profiler, AWR) to determine the utilization of a feature as measured in CPU, Memory and I/O. Hosting mangers have the dollar cost of the CPU's and I/O figured out. What the DBA's and managers need to do is merge the data, format it into something readable and feed it back to the developers. Closing the loop via feedback to developers is essential.

The relevant data may vary depending on your application, but the data that almost certainly will be interesting will include:

Number of executions per time period (second, minute, hour)
CPU cycles per execution
Logical and Physical I/O's per execution.

The rough approximation of CPU load on the database server will be # of executions x CPU cycles per execution. The I/O's per execution x number of executions will give you a rough estimate of SAN or disk load. Obviously you only have a finite number of CPU cycles & I/O's available each second, and those CPU's and related database licenses have dollar costs associated with them. The actual application CPU and I/O data, measured against the total CPU and I/O available from your system and the annual hardware and software cost of the system will give you an estimate of the overall cost in dollars to run the query.

Notice that I didn't mention query response time. From the point of view of the developer, response time is interesting. It's what the user will feel when they navigate the site, and it is easy to measure. From a capacity/load point of view however, response time itself doesn't indicate the back-end CPU & I/O cost to achieve the response time. If the query or stored procedure returned in 200ms, but during that 200ms it paralleled out across all your CPU's and used up all available CPU time, you'll obviously only be able to do a handful of those each second, and if you try to do more than a handful per second, your application isn't going to be happy. Or if in that 200ms, it used 200ms of CPU time, you'll only be able to execute a handful of that query per CPU each second. In other words, focusing only on response time isn't adequate because it doesn't relate back to load related bottlenecks on the application and database servers.

For those who haven't seen an AWR report, Oracle has an example here. An AWR report allows your DBA's and dev team to slice, dice sort and analyze the heck out of an application. For SQL server we built a system that runs periodic profiler traces, uploads the trace to a database, and dumps out reports similar to the Oracle AWR's.

The bottom line: In order for application developers to successfully design and build efficient, scalable applications, they need to have comprehensive performance related data. They need to be able to 'see' all the way through from the web interface to the database. If they do not have data, they cannot build efficient, scalable applications.

Tim’s Tweets for 2008-05-15

2008-05-16T05:59:59+00:00

"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory." — Albert Schweitzer #

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Links for 2008-05-15 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-16T05:00:00+00:00

TeamCity :: Powerful Solution for Continuous Integration & Build Management
peter says this rocks
Diabetes Mine - the all things diabetes blog: Preparing for the Worst
this is on my mind every time i hear of a natural disaster. need to seriously think about this

The Cool Cam

2008-05-16T04:11:14+00:00

links for 2008-05-16

2008-05-16T01:34:27+00:00

SF0

Collaborative production game where goals of play include meeting new people, exploring the city, and participating in non-consumer leisure activities.

(tags: art community culture sanfrancisco game)
Official Google Maps API Blog: Introducing the Google Maps API for Flash

(tags: google map api flash)
TripKick.com

Find the best room in a hotel.

(tags: travel housing review)
Things my new commute has taught me #1: not all seats are equal

Find the best seat on the tube.

(tags: work travel review)
SeatGuru

Find the best seat on an airplane.

(tags: airplane travel review)

The Long Tail of Short Heads

2008-05-16T00:02:02+00:00

I've been trying to think of a way to illustrate the point I was trying to make in yesterday's post about the value of "micro-short-tails"* and came up with this:

Theoretically, the bars on the map represent three products sold on a website. They vary in popularity with Product A being more popular in terms of both traffic (and revenue, in this case) than Product B or C. The horizontal access represents search terms, so the left side of the graph shows that some terms drive a lot more traffic than terms further to the right. A typical hockey stick style graph (this is based on real data).

The point here is that, while the graph for Product C happens to be smaller than Product A, it's no less valuable when you're looking at just that product.

When someone looks at the value of keywords at a very high level, the terms driving traffic to Product A will appear to be vital, but Product C's terms may go unnoticed or become under appreciated. It's kind of a battle vs war type issue.

The nice thing is that it's often possible to figure out patterns of success. The types of terms that drive traffic to Product A will probably also work for Product B through infinity if applied in a similar pattern of ads, landing pages, offers, etc.

So, while it's true that you'll have less data to work with on really really long tail products due to low search volumes, it's still possible to make some fair assumptions that more often than not will prove correct.

* I think better term for this would be "Micro-Short-Heads" rather than "Micro-Short-Tails"

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Nabbit Moves Beyond Tagging

2008-05-15T23:53:42+00:00

On May 13^th a press release announced the new partnership between Eagan-based Jump Technologies’ Nabbit service and CBS Radio, Minneapolis (102.9 Lite FM, 104.1 Jack FM, 830 WCCO AM). This partnership will further move Nabbit from a relatively simple tagging application into a full blown marketing tool. On that day, the eve of the big rollout of said partnership, I sat down with Nabbit chief (“Chief Nabber” on the business card), John Freund, to talk about the Nabbit, where it started, where it is and where it’s going.

Nabbit was born some two years ago as Freund and his team at Jump Technologies were discussing the eBay purchase of Skype. “I remember saying how great it would be to have 50 million subscribers to anything.” The discussion included colleague (and radio fan) Norton Lam’s thoughts about tagging radio content. So was the birth of Nabbit. According to Freund, “The first year we dedicated about 10% of Jump Technologies resources to Nabbit.” That has clearly grown as Nabbit has evolved, indicating a great deal of confidence in the potential of the business.

At first, it truly was a “content play” offering listeners of radio the ability to tag songs and advertisements via internet enabled cell phones. Those tagged pieces of content are placed into the Nabbit user’s account for later action including purchase or artist and advertiser info.

“We found that while users were tagging music they were actually tagging more advertising and the calls to action that they provided.” This led to what Nabbit describes as the first service that allows marketers to combine broadcast, mobile, direct response, and online advertising into one integrated consumer marketing campaign.

Here’s how it works.

Once a consumer downloads the free application to their internet enabled mobile phone they assign stations to the buttons on the phone. When they hear something they want to “nabb” they press the button for that station. If it’s an ad, the Nabbit Ad engine springs into action. Not only is a copy of the ad placed in the listener’s account, it can also send a text coupon or place a call to their phone though the Nabbit Callback feature (and it should be noted that all the features are opt-in via the user’s Nabbit account).

This is where Nabbit’s media relationships come in. Freund and Nabbit have been working with radio station KTTB (B96) here in the Twin Cities (CBS isn’t the first). Freund says that the desire for exclusivity by stations was a barrier to getting deals going with the bigger companies. It took plenty of proof, and persuading, the likes of CBS that Nabbit truly needs to be on as many stations as possible in order to be successful.

There are still barriers that Nabbit will face from a revenue generation standpoint. The service is free to consumers so the business model is based on advertising revenue sharing with media partners. According to a quote from the press release on the Nabbit/CBS partnership, CBS VP/GM of CBS Radio in Minneapolis explained, “Nabbit offers our advertisers a unique ability to leverage multiple advertising platforms while at the same time benefiting our listeners by making our stations interactive.” Of course, there is no mention of whether radio will be be successful at selling this new platform in addition to all of the other products they must sell, but at least for CBS, there is a commitment to new platforms and to making this partnership work.

From a consumer/user’s standpoint, one might say (and I’m one) the need to download and access an application — which is how Nabbit is currently delivered — is a bit of a challenge for some mobile users. Nabbit seems to be on top of this issue. They will address it by providing an SMS process for tagging content within the next few months, according to Freund, and obviating the need for an application download and configuration on ones mobile phone.

John Freund is well aware of the marketing and education process that lies ahead. In addition to targeting the tech community and other PR initiatives, there is much they expect from those radio stations that participate. Introducing the Nabbit technology and trademarked words like “nabb” mean there are high expectations for those media partners to clearly explain and provide benefit to listeners and creating demand for using Nabbit. The advertiser side is bit easier. When you can supply multiple marketing channels and deliver — not only consumers to the advertiser’s doorsteps but can deliver proof of performance with metrics based on actual use — you go a long way in addressing advertiser resistance.

According to Freund there are currently 1,500 Nabbit users in the Twin Cities. Projections call for 20,000 in the next 2 months and 1.7 million in the first year. After a planned national rollout in two months, Nabbit hopes to have 10 million users by the end of 3 years. With deals pending that may or may not include Clear Channel here in the Twin Cities Nabbit, self funded by the employees and 2 additional partners, hopes to be profitable within one year. Freund explains, “The goal is to keep the company small. The largest area of employee growth will come from sales and marketing but we are certainly adding staff in all areas.”

Nabbit is one a many technology driven companies that are looking at and acting on ways to merge traditional media with new media to increase the share of advertising dollars for both sides.

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Garfield minus garfield

2008-05-15T23:20:46+00:00

Garfield minus garfield.

General Mills, Target, Best Buy, and Fingerhut Bare Their Social Media Souls

2008-05-15T20:18:09+00:00

I blogged about a big event here in Minneapolis last night, featuring four of our larger hometown brands (well, three, plus one pretty big direct-marketer you may have also heard of). The topic was social media, and you can tell it was hot by this shot I grabbed with my iPhone of the very crowed room. My post about it is over at my NewMediaWise blog, because that's where I talk more about marketing and all the changes happening in that field. The session was excellent, if for no other reason than I felt the panelists were sincere and candid in their remarks, and yet had as many questions as answers. It wasn't fluff or BS -- I think we heard what's really on their minds, and they got us thinking about how much more still needs to be done....by big brands as well as small.

Thanks to our great local interactive marketing organization -- MIMA.org -- for putting on this gig. They said it was the largest of any of their regular monthly meetings to date. Hot topic, and lots of good networking before and after. I had the opportunity to chat at length with two of the panelists afterwards, Jim Cuene of General Mills and Gary Koelling of Best Buy, and also to meet several other folks as well.

Tell ya what, after experiencing Minnebar on May 10 and MIMA on May 14, I'll say this.....this town is rockin' this spring!!

Target: Are you paying attention to social media?

2008-05-15T20:07:18+00:00

Last time I checked, a search for Target's house brand, Trutech, resulted in a post I wrote from May of last year (Why you should NOT buy Target's Trutech brand) being the #1 search result. Today, I noticed that it had fallen to #2 and that a "Target.com Official Site" sponsored link now appears. Perhaps that's related, but maybe not.

My friend and Minnov8 cohort, Graeme Thickins, recap of last nights Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association social media panel (which I couldn't attend) was fabulous. Best Buy, Fingerhut, Gage Marketing, General Mills and Target were all represented and had insightful things to say about what they were all respectively up to when it came to social media.

At last evening's event, Thickins reported that a metric was presented that Target's Facebook page has 33,000 members. While that's interesting, that post I wrote has had ~75,000 pageviews (almost all unique visitors) and dozens of mostly negative comments.

I've reached out on several occasions to the woman that handles PR for Target's Trutech brand; tried to connect with the video buyer; and in general reach out. Not to make a fuss, but to see if there is any awareness that they're selling electronics that -- God forbid you break the remote -- can't be operated with any of the dozens of universal remotes Target sells. Seems like something the video buyer might want to know and maybe fix while calming the Target "guests" down, heh? (just read some of those comments and you'll see people are quite agitated).

The Minneapolis StarTribune had an article about people posting negative feedback on their Facebook area which Target took to heart and jumped on, but is Target completely clueless and unaware of the tools to scan other social media and to address obvious shortcomings?

Is it bye-bye Wi-Fi in Philadelphia?

2008-05-15T20:25:42+00:00

Earthlink announced Tuesday that they are going to discontinue operation of its muni Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia. They say that they tried to transfer ownership of the network to Philadelphia or to a nonprofit (Wireless Philadelphia, I assume) for free but that the transfer "unraveled due to unresolved issues among the City, Wireless Philadelphia and the non-profit." Holy WAP Batman!

According to Earthlink that's $17M worth of equipment plus they would pay some cash and donate new Wi-Fi equipment. Since they can't transfer, Earthlink says they will remove the network at their cost and try to find alternative Internet connections for customers.

Meanwhile, the Wireless Philadelphia Blog says:

Philadelphia's Wi-Fi network continues to operate in the roughly 80% of the City in which it has been deployed (see map). Nothing in the ten-year Network Agreement permits EarthLink to unilaterally impose deadlines for the network's transfer, turn off the network or remove network equipment.

Metro Philadelphia and CNET have stories.

Meanwhile, back at the Minneapolis ranch, the USIW progress map says the network is scheduled to be completed in April, 2008. The tiny map on the page indicates the network is live in most of the city but there are several large "challenge areas" where it's not working. It would be nice to see an update as to what's going on especially since the Digital Inclusion Fund is waiting on $200,000 from USIW once the network is done and the City signs off.

Thanks to Ed Kohler for a heads up on the Philadelphia situation. He blogs at The Deets and Technology Evangelist.

Technorati Tags: broadband, politics, USIW, Wi-Fi, wireless, municipal, Philadelphia, Minneapolis

Crypto-Gram Tenth Anniversary Issue

2008-05-15T17:13:10+00:00

Ten years ago I started Crypto-Gram. It was a monthly newsletter written entirely by me. No guest columns. No advertising. Nothing but me writing about security, published the 15th of the month every month. Now, 120 issues later, none of that has changed. I started Crypto-Gram because I had a lot to say about security, and book-length commentaries were too...

Hurrican Mike, the BBQ Blogger

2008-05-15T15:55:24+00:00

Now Blogging at BettyCrocker.com, Hurricane Mike, the BBQ blogger: Packing and ready for Memphis from bettycrocker.com.

Flash Player 10 hit labs

2008-05-15T15:08:10+00:00

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

Check out some of what Adobe’s got planned for the next Flash Player release. Will we be able to compete with “Microsoft Sparkle” (aka Silverlight) ?

For those that like Video

My first XNA game is done

2008-05-15T14:27:13+00:00

Well I finished my first game on the XNA platform. It's a simple War Card Game - the concept was entirely used to learn some of the XNA API. The last time I wrote a game was using MFC and COM before that was a RPG using HyperCard 2.0 on a Mac LCIII and System 7 a LONG time ago - needless to say when you see the code you will not be surprised that it is a hot mess (at least in my opinion).

But - with all things aside - the game turned out decent and has some playability to it. I am working on an overhead scrolling shooter right now - just finished the player object (named RaptorOne) which is a futuristic play on the up and coming Joint Strike Fighter. More details on that to come - the explosions are slowing things down a bit (probably because of the number of frames I am using - will play around and come up with a better algorithm to speed things up so I can put more umphh into it).

The binaries for the game can be downloaded here...

http://www.driveway.com/u4i1i8n3c5

The source code can be downloaded here...

http://www.driveway.com/t4o8c2d0p6

This is turning out to be quite the hobby - I could spend hours doing this stuff. I asked my Wife the other day if she thought I should get a job doing this (should I get better at it of course) - she said that she was afraid that I would never come home - that was good for a chuckle. Anyway - enjoy the game and remember you need the XNA 2.0 Runtime and DirectX 9c + .NET 2.0 to run it - I didn't create an installer for this and I don't intend to - this was just for practice.

Inventor Of The Web Now Looking Into Metadata

2008-05-15T13:18:32+00:00

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web (shown right, Gore-ified), is complaining about how difficult it is to find what you want on the web. He brings up some points that ECM folks have known about for a long long time: metadata is essential for finding what you want. Timmay has been awarded a $350,000 grant to study the issue... like he needs the cash...

Anyway, I'm all over embedded metadata... but I can tell you right now its nearly impossible to get everybody in a small company to agree to a complex metadata standard, so good luck accomplishing that on the whole frigging internet... also, its even more impossible to get content creators to follow the metadata policies. People who work hard to create great content believe others should work hard to FIND their content.

Silly? Yes... but a very common attitude.

The ones who usually spend a lot of time optimizing their metadata and search results, are usually those with lower quality content, or people who are obsessed with their own popularity. Such as myself... Or, like spam blogs, aka splogs...

That being said, I wish Timmay well... but you don't need $350,000 to come up with a solution for this. I'd recommend creating a Microformat for embedded metadata, to apply to the content in the containing element... You'd also need some kind of cryptographically strong key for "trusted" metadata suppliers, so people don't try to tag porn sites with every metadata keyword in the universe. Also, the microformat needs to be extensible, so anybody can embed custom namespaces and keywords in it.

The Microformats folks have a tag similar to what he wants already, the rel-tag microformat. Its overly simple, but that simplicity will encourage adoption -- much in the same way that the "inferiority" of HTML over all other markup formats ensured its success. It looks like this:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/tech" rel="tag">tech</a>

If this link is anywhere on the page, it signifies that the page has something to do with the metadata tag tech, and it gives Technorati as the home for the tag. I'd expand on this to allow for other tag homes, such as del.icio.us, or even any arbitrary social bookmarking site.

Done and done.

Naturally, you'd want to be more precise... some new sites have dozens of articles on the main page, and you'd like to tag each section individually... so this tag should only apply to the content in the containing tag. Also, this kind of formatting is difficult to embed in a Microsoft Word document: I couldn't get behind any kind of distributed metadata model unless it easily worked in multiple formats. A CSS style might be a better choice than the rel attribute in the link...

Finally, it needs some kind of authentication model... perhaps you need an authentication microformat somewhere on the page, and all microformats on the page inherit the credentials. Of course, you'd need to have some kind of tag to force exceptions, so banner ads from remote servers would need their own auth tokens.

Whaddya say, Timmay? Is that due-dilligence worth $5k?

I Fought the Weeds, and the...Weeds Won

2008-05-15T12:29:37+00:00

I give up.

Last year, we stopped using a lawn service to treat our lawn. Ever since then, despite my best efforts, our lawn has gone to shit. Weeds everywhere. This morning, I tried to pull them, and after an hour's worth of work, I realized I barely made a dent in the weeds.

I'm calling that service again this morning.

Third Annual Movie-Plot Threat Contest Winner

2008-05-15T12:24:06+00:00

On April 7 -- seven days late -- I announced the Third Annual Movie-Plot Threat Contest: For this contest, the goal is to create fear. Not just any fear, but a fear that you can alleviate through the sale of your new product idea. There are lots of risks out there, some of them serious, some of them so unlikely...

Nothing To See Here

2008-05-15T06:00:50+00:00

Links for 2008-05-14 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-15T05:00:00+00:00

Raible Designs | Extensionless URLs with Java Web Frameworks
"In an ideal world, it'd be possible to modify the <a> tag at the very core of the view framework you're using to automatically encode the URL of any "href" attributes."
Iconize Me!
avatar art services - currently not taking orders but might again
Bic Camera - Yurakucho Store
one station up from Shimbashi

links for 2008-05-15

2008-05-15T01:31:29+00:00

NNDB Mapper: Tracking the entire world

Sort of like theyrule beyond the members of the board.

(tags: social people business map visualization)
gwap.com

Luis von Ahn, creator of the ESP Game and reCAPTCHA, launches Games With A Purpose.

(tags: web game)
Why Things Cost $19.95

What are the psychological “rules” of bartering?

(tags: money science)

Where Are Aspects When You Need Them?

2008-05-15T00:14:59+00:00

I had a brief encounter with aspects at the Colorado Software Summit a couple years back. I was glad to finally get a bit oriented to AOP, to which I had been blissfully ignorant, and decided that I had incredibly limited interest in the topic. Of all things, I kept wondering why AOP did not appear to be widely applied to the presentation layer, which was the first place I would think it to be.

Along comes Matt talking about extensionless URLs (a pet interest of mine) and dropping lines like this:

In an ideal world, it’d be possible to modify the <a> tag at the very core of the view framework you’re using to automatically encode the URL of any “href” attributes.

There you go - a cross-cutting concern if there ever was one. Where is our AOP for the presentation layer?

Technorati tags: coloradosoftwaresummit, aop, aspects, crosscuttingconcerns, URLs, presentation

Where Are The Dang Stellent Announcements?

2008-05-14T23:37:14+00:00

If you're a Stellent customer, you've probably noticed that you no longer get those nice customer emails about ECM from Oracle... that's because Oracle -- wisely -- has a pretty strict anti-spam policy... so people who own one Oracle product aren't blasted with info and offers from other products.

So what should you do instead? Well, first of all you need to register for the quarterly content management newsletter. This isn't customer-only focused, but its got a lot of good stuff... and the archives are online.

In addition, Oracle is now is doing a quarterly customer webcast to keep folks up to date about the latest changes in the product line. The next one will be June 5, 2008 at 9:00 a.m Pacific Time. If you'd like to attend, you need to register with Intercall. Its for customers and partners only... so be sure to use your company email address, or you'll get booted!

Another option is to configure Metalink to send you ECM updates. Follow these steps:

Log in to Metalink.
Click the Headlines link in the upper left of the page.
Click the Edit Page button under Headlines on the right.
In the drop-down list, select Certify and Availability, and click Add New.
In the top right, select the Certify Settings button.
In the drop-down list under Product Alerts, select Oracle Universal Product Management, and click Add New.
Click the Overall Settings button.
At the bottom of the page, click the Automatically email My Headlines to me checkbox.
Click Store Settings.
Play the waiting game, or hungry hungry hippos until your emails arrive.

You can also subscribe to bug reports and knowledge base articles, if you'd really like to keep up-to-date...

Of course, to be fully up to date, you'll need to do all this, plus subscribe to email notifications from the Stellent Yahoo Group and the Oracle ECM Forum... but that's only for information hogs like me ;-)

Are Long-Tail Keywords a Waste Of Time for Pay Per Click

2008-05-14T23:12:02+00:00

Brian Carter of Fuel Interactive raises an interesting point about the effectiveness of keywords in the long tail of pay per click advertising. It has long (in Internet time) been thought that advertising on a huge portfolio of search terms will generate better returns because you'll get a trickle of traffic from thousands and thousands of terms at low cost per click AND the traffic will convert at a higher rate for a double gain in returns.

However, Carter explains that this isn't necessarily the case:

The Problem with Long Tail Keywords

But the dirty little secret of PPC is that 95% of your conversions come from 5% of your keywords.

Really.

The others keywords either

* Don't perform (100 clicks and no conversions), or
* The clicks roll in so slowly that you won't have the statistical confidence to delete them until the year 2112 (yay, Rush!).

As I said, interesting points.

While 95% of conversions may come from a small sub-set of a keyword portfolio, that doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the portfolio is underperforming. The rest of the terms may not deliver as many conversions, but that's not really a measure of performance. Return on investment would be a better measure.

But more importantly, I think the biggest concept that could be misunderstood here is what I'll call "micro-short-tails." By that, I mean terms that get relatively few searches, but are still clearly short-tail terms when looked at on a page by page basis. For example a retail site could have thousands of products in inventory - some of which are relatively obscure. On a page by page basis, it's pretty clear that product-names and product-IDs would be considered short-tail terms while on a site-wide basis they would look more like long-tail terms.

In many cases, patterns of "micro-short-tail" terms can be generated and properly targeted to truly relevant pages.

Is this long tail or short tail? In my opinion, it's all relative.

I think Brian and I would agree that measuring what's working and building upon successes is the key to running great pay per click campaigns regardless of how different strategies are defined.

Opening Up SpringSource AP

2008-05-14T22:11:36+00:00

Just now getting my hands on the SpringSource Application Platform. It's deceptive, because there's very little functionality exposed when you run it. It starts up with less ceremony than Apache or Tomcat. (Which is kind of funny, when you consider that it includes Tomcat.)

When you look at the bundle repository, though, it's clear that a lot of stuff is packaged in here. In a way, that's like the Spring framework itself. On the surface, it looks like just a bean configurator. All the really powerful stuff is in the libraries built out of that small core.

Here's a quick listing of the bundles in version 1.0.0.beta:

./bundles/ext/com.springsource.com.google.common.collect-0.5.0.alpha.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.edu.emory.mathcs.backport-3.0.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.activation-1.1.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.annotation-1.0.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.ejb-3.0.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.el-2.1.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.jms-1.1.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.mail-1.4.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.persistence-1.0.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.servlet-2.5.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.servlet.jsp-2.1.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.servlet.jsp.jstl-1.1.2.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.xml.bind-2.0.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.xml.rpc-1.1.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.xml.soap-1.3.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.xml.stream-1.0.1.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.javax.xml.ws-2.1.1.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.json-1.0.0.BUILD-20080422112602.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.antlr-3.0.1.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.aopalliance-1.0.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.catalina-6.0.16.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.commons.fileupload-1.2.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.commons.io-1.4.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.commons.logging-1.1.1.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.coyote-6.0.16.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.el-6.0.16.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.jasper-6.0.16.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.jasper.org.eclipse.jdt-6.0.16.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.juli.extras-6.0.16.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.apache.taglibs.standard-1.1.2.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.aspectj.runtime-1.6.0.m2.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.org.aspectj.weaver-1.6.0.m2.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.slf4j.org.apache.commons.logging-1.5.0.jar
./bundles/ext/com.springsource.slf4j.org.apache.log4j-1.5.0.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.aop-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.aspects-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.beans-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.context-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.context.support-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.core-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.jdbc-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.jms-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.orm-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.osgi.core-1.1.0.M2A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.osgi.extender-1.1.0.M2A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.osgi.io-1.1.0.M2A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.transaction-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.web-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.web.portlet-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.web.servlet-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/ext/org.springframework.web.struts-2.5.4.A.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.common/com.springsource.platform.common.env-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.common/com.springsource.platform.common.math-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.concurrent/com.springsource.platform.concurrent.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.config/com.springsource.platform.config.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.control/com.springsource.platform.control.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.deployer/com.springsource.platform.deployer.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.deployer/com.springsource.platform.deployer.hot-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.ffdc/com.springsource.platform.ffdc.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.io/com.springsource.platform.io.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.kernel/com.springsource.platform.kernel.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.kernel/com.springsource.platform.kernel.dm-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.management.proxy/com.springsource.platform.management.proxy-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.profile/com.springsource.platform.profile.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.serviceability/com.springsource.platform.serviceability.ffdc-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.serviceability/com.springsource.platform.serviceability.ffdc.aspects-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.serviceability/com.springsource.platform.serviceability.tracing.aspects-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.servlet/com.springsource.platform.servlet.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.servlet/com.springsource.platform.servlet.tomcat-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.system/com.springsource.platform.system.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.web/com.springsource.platform.web.core-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.web/com.springsource.platform.web.dm-1.0.0.beta.jar
./bundles/subsystems/com.springsource.platform.web/com.springsource.platform.web.support-1.0.0.beta.jar

There's clearly a lot of functionality built in, but how do you get at it? The SAP, erm, SpringSource AP documentation screams for improvement. Maybe they think that, because all the parts are documented elsewhere, there's no need for any integrated docset. If so, they would be wrong. Despite that, I'm interested enough to keep poking away at it.

Oh, and one other thing: the default administrator account is admin/springsource. (It's actually defined in servlet/conf/tomcat-users.xml.) For some reason, that's buried in chapter 5 of the user guide. It would be handy to make that more prominent.

100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man's Library

2008-05-14T21:57:00+00:00

The Day There Was No News

2008-05-14T21:54:38+00:00

The Day There Was No News, originally uploaded by Pixelsurgeon.

Though this "The Day There Was No News" video was on the popular site BoingBoing and thus many of you have seen it, I wanted it available on my blog and to add a comment about it here as I found it a bit haunting to watch the scrolling news ticker at the bottom as the montage of BBC news anchors, right before signoff, sit and wait to go off camera as though there was nothing to say!

What if there was no news but only positive visions of the future?

A friend of mine is building a new, change-the-world offering focused on kids (initially 5th and 6th graders) and is all about enabling them to build a positive, vision video about their life. While there are many benefits: kids learning to communicate in a video age; learning and using hosted applications to create it; storyboarding out their vision and assembling it into a finished video; it's the essence of creating a vision video that is so powerful.

He and his team have enabled one school to date and I attended the in-school screening of the kids vision videos (there was an evening event too which I couldn't attend). You should've seen the faces of those kids who've done a vision video and shared it with their classmates, teachers, school and parents! I didn't even know these kids but connected with them on an emotional level as I looked at their hope-filled visions of the life they intend to create. It's mind-blowing that these positive feelings, beliefs, and joyful dreams live inside these little bodies and few of us ever have a chance to see how kids envision their future lives.

The evening event had parents all choked up as they watched these vision videos. My friend told me that one mom of a disabled boy came up to him afterwards, tears streaming down her face, and told him that she had no idea he had those sorts of dreams and intentions wrapped up inside his being. "I'll never look at him in quite the same way again," she said with a mix of wonder and pride in her voice.

Nothing happens until a vision of an outcome, of the future, or of possibility appears, and it's amazing when kids (or any of us) build a video that's a vision for our lives. Our hopes and dreams, our vision of the world as it could be, shifts our thought patterns and slowly moves our thinking to then create what could be.

My friend's vision is to have a "day" where kids all over the world show their videos of hope and possibility. Imagine that day, in a world where joy and hope is the focus and fueled by positive imagery, music, sound and visions of the future, being one where it's "The Day There Was Only Hope."

Uliken On Politics

2008-05-14T20:37:31+00:00

Perhaps you’ve seen ULiken.com? I’m not sure if this little contest will remain in equilibrium, but the precise 50/50 showing made a screenshot a necessity.

Type mnspeak, go to MNspeak, yes? Uh....

2008-05-14T20:17:33+00:00

Type "mnspeak" into the Firefox browser and you get the popular local MNspeak site, right?

Not so fast: Firefox is typically configured to do a Google search when words not ending in ".com" (or similar) are typed into the address field.

And the first hit for "mnspeak" in Google is Fimoculous, the personal site of former MNspeak owner Rex Sorgatz. When I pointed this out to him, he responded as follows:

Huh. That's interesting.

If you don't put a ".com" at the end of something in the Firefox address bar, it automatically does a Google search for that word and takes you to the first result. I'm apparently the first result for the term "mnspeak":

http://www.google.com/search?q=mnspeak

-Rex

So is MNSpeak losing a lot of traffic this way? I haven't heard from the current management yet, but one Twitter user mused:

wondering how much traffic @fimoculous gets from firefox users like me who type in just the keyword mnspeak (no .com) and end up at his site...

Maybe MNspeak needs to tweak its SEO a bit?

I'm In a Morbid Saint Video!!

2008-05-14T19:07:19+00:00

Now this is quite bizarre (i.e. don't ask how I thought of this), but there was a band from Sheboygan in the late 80s called Morbid Saint. They were the death-speed metal "satan" band (for lack of a better term) and Sardonyx (the band I was in) was the Christian alternative. Not that we were any better or worse, and frankly it wasn't that big of a deal. We ended up talking to them a couple of times and while I didn't get into their singing some of the songs were decent. On a whim, I decided to YouTube 'em, and I found this video:

It's just a bunch of pictures, but I started looking at the pics, and I thought, hey, that's the battle of the bands we both did! I wonder if I got in on a picture...and I did (comes in around 1:18)!

Too funny :).

By the way, the guys next to me are the members of Sardonyx. The guy to my left is Mike Gooding (drummer), the guy to my right is Bryon Zimmermann (bassist/singer) and to Bryon's right is Tim Heinen (guitarist).

The Great JRuby Japanese Tour

2008-05-14T19:37:35+00:00

Yes, friends, it's time one again for a JRuby tour. This trip, we're localizing to the islands of Japan. Do I have any Japanese readers out there?

Here's our route for this trip...it's going to be a crazy ten days:

View Larger Map

June 19: Tsukuba, Ruby Kaigi

Tom Enebo and I will be presenting JRuby at the Ruby Kaigi 2008 in Tsukuba this year, as well as meeting up with other Ruby implementers making the trip and communing with the locals. The Kaigi was great last year...lots of fun, great company, and an excellent community. We're both really excited about it. JRuby has come a long way, so we'll be doing a whirlwind tour of performance, Rails, GUI support, and finishing off with something special. It should be a great conference again this year.

June 23: Matsue, Lecture at Shimane University, Meetup with Matz and Locals

We were invited to present JRuby at Shimane University, as part of a lecture series they're doing on Ruby. And since Matz is based on Matsue, we'll certainly meet up with him to talk a bit offline...I expect he'll be pulled many directions at the Kaigi.

June 24: Fukuoka, Ruby Business Commons

Tom did a keynote last year for the Ruby Business Commons, a group of Rubyists proactively trying to bring Ruby to the business community. I suspect we'll deliver another talk or just meet up with them and see how things have progressed in the past year. At any rate, Tom enjoyed the trip to Fukuoka, so I'm looking forward to this.

June 25-27: Tokyo, meetup with local partners, universities, Rubyists?

Whenever Tom and I travel to Japan or meet up with Japanese associates, we put ourselves entirely in the hands of Sun Japan, and specifically our excellent friend and guide Takashi Shitamichi. So far, the Tokyo leg of our trip has a few embedded question marks, but I'm sure Shitamichi-san will be able to fill our days from dawn until dusk with events. Hopefully we'll have a little time to take a breath and poke around Tokyo again, but either way it will be a great end to the tour.

Spreading the Word

I'd really like to jam in as much Ruby and JRuby meetups, discussions, and talks as possible on this trip, so feel free to reblog (and perhaps translate) this entry, contact me, Tom, and Takashi directly...especially if you know of any good events while we're in Tokyo. And if you're press, Takashi can certainly hook you up if there's time in the tour (for emails...use firstname.lastname@sun.com).

JRuby is ready for the Japanese Ruby community, and we're coming to town to help send it off!

Jason Alba With Minnesota Recruiters At JobDig

2008-05-14T18:17:31+00:00

April 28,2008 we had our first Minnesota Recruiters topic session. We were fortunate that Jason Alba of JibberJobber.com was in Minneapolis for the week and had time to speak with us.

This was the first time in a 2+ year online and phone friendship that I was able to meet Jason in person.

Here is the PR material for the event:

Social Tools and Technologies for Recruiters

LinkedIn is obviously a powerful tool for recruiters. What about other social tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs? How can recruiters develop and execute a social networking strategy that will help them find new (and passive) candidates, engage with them and develop a relationship, enriching their candidate pool? Join Jason Alba as he shares what he’s learned as a job seeker and career management advocate, taking you on a tour of successful recruiter strategies with these four technologies.

How Jason started JibberJobber.com is a most interesting story which you can find by clicking Jason Alba’s Story.

Here are some more links for Jason:

http://www.JibberJobber.com
http://www.JibberJobber.com/blog
I'm on LinkedIn - Now What??? http://LinkedInHelp.com
I'm on Facebook - Now What??? http://ImOnFacebookNowWhat.com
YOU are CEO of You, Inc. http://www.JibberJobber.com/CEO

Jason covered a lot of material in 90 minutes including the use of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and more.

He also focused on the need to be authentic and transparent. Two traits that are vital when being online and I would say should be obvious things to do but I find many recruiters not doing it.

We had 40+ recruiters in the room and feedback from the event was very positive.

Jason sold some books and I picked up six for the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference.

I really appreciate the help from Toby Dayton and Molly Moseley of JobDig. They were great hosts and I look forward to doing this with them again.

After the event Jason, Steven Rothberg, Rick Deare, Katie Konrath and I had dinner where I kept the group somewhat amused with my many questions including why recruiters only post on job boards and do not take advantage of other tools. Many thanks to Steven for picking up the dinner bill.

Here are some blog posts about the event:

Here are a few pictures:

And here is a short video from the beginning of the event:

Rainn Wilson on SNL

2008-05-14T18:04:30+00:00

I don’t find SNL that funny very often, but this is pretty fun.

The Power of Firehoses

2008-05-14T17:42:58+00:00

My brother-in-law is a volunteer fireman - I think he'd get a kick out of this:

The Ethics of Vulnerability Research

2008-05-14T17:29:45+00:00

The standard way to take control of someone else's computer is by exploiting a vulnerability in a software program on it. This was true in the 1960s when buffer overflows were first exploited to attack computers. It was true in 1988 when the Morris worm exploited a Unix vulnerability to attack computers on the Internet, and it's still how most...

Speaking at FlashBelt again this year

2008-05-14T17:05:18+00:00

I’ll be speaking at FlashBelt again for the fourth straight year in June. I’ve spoken at this conference every year since I moved to Minneapolis in 2005. It’s a great conference that brings in both local and national attendees. My session is titled Distribution and Installation Strategies for AIR and will cover the following:

Flash and Flex developers have been spoiled by the fact that most of our applications are distributed over the internet through the browser and Flash Player. We didn’t have to worry about installation or updates within an application. This session will walk you through the process of building a custom badge using Flex that handles the installation, update and launch of your AIR application from within a browser. We’ll also look at how to implement an update feature within your Flex AIR application so your users can always have the most recent version of your application.

CommunityEngine Updated to v0.10.0

2008-05-14T16:39:47+00:00

Just wanted to let everyone know I tagged a new version of CommunityEngine which adds support for draft and published states for blog posts. Please note, this requires a new migration, so if you previously installed CE, you’ll have to run

ruby script/generate plugin_migration

and then

rake db:migrate

Don’t know about CommunityEngine yet? Well, it’s a free, open-source social network plugin for Ruby on Rails applications. Drop it into your new or existing application, and you’ll instantly have all the features of a basic community site. Read the announcement post or check out the CommunityEngine site.

Funny spam-themed mail from local reader

2008-05-14T15:39:58+00:00

This e-mail from a St. Paul reader made me laugh so hard that I had to share it with you:

Dear Julio Ojeda-Zapata:
You're my main source, on MPR and in the Pioneer Press, for daily tech news, thanks so much. And I'm so amazed at this that I have to point it out to you.
I just went to my Trend Micro spam filter and found that ONLY ONE of the first 100 had to do with Viagra! They're ALL financial--loans, credit, and gambling.
Did they get the memo about my lack of a penis? Do they know something about my finances that I don't know? Could there possibly be a more stunning demonstration of the shift in the economic climate?

New Blog Postings - Silverlight for Enterprises

2008-05-14T15:08:36+00:00

I wanted to call your attention to a series of articles that a co-worker and friend, Hanu Kommalapati's will be writing. He just posted his first entry on "Fundamentals" and will continue on to cover things like security, architecture, deployment, and more. Hanu is one of those people that falls into my "wicked smart" category. Hanu does a great job of looking at things through a customer's eyes and then articulating technical information in an approachable way. I just wish he would post more!!!

The Boys

2008-05-14T14:13:46+00:00

I haven't posted a picture of my boys in a while - he's a great one we got recently:

Fortunate

2008-05-14T13:41:47+00:00

I'm sitting here this morning, coding away, listening to some great songs, and all I can think of is this word: fortunate.

How fortunate I am to have the job that I do.

How fortunate I am to have met such a wonderful person in Liz.

How fortunate I am to have such amazing boys: Hayden and Ryan.

How fortunate I am to have a house to live in.

How fortunate I am to have great parents.

How fortunate I am to have all the stuff that I do :).

How fortunate I am to have the education I do.

How fortunate I am to not have gone down other paths in my life.

There are probably lots of other things I could think of, but that's the word of the day: fortunate. Yes, we all are responsible for our lives due to the choices we make, but sometimes things happen that we really didn't control, and sometimes those things can be amazing, wonderful things.

Just think of what you're fortunate of. Blog it, if you wish.