Category: Technology

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Ha! Finally solved the mystery of the tubu that are red

So, from time to time I check out my website analytics, just to see what is drawing people to the site.

By and large most of my visits to picsfromtrips.com (generally over 70%) come from search engines – people searching for images of such-and-such and google doing a decent job of pointing them to my site.

For months I’ve gotten visitors searching for red tubus.  I rank well there because of the red lechwe I saw while staying at Tubu Tree lodge in Botswana.

What I couldn’t figure out though, was what a red tubu was. I had visions of some rare species of animal – or perhaps a variation of the (tree? person (Tubu’s tree)?) that gave Tubu Tree camp its name.  Wikipedia cleared that up – Tubu village in Botswana’s Okavango delta has apparently lent its name to the safari camp.  But that didn’t answer my question.

Well, I finally figured it out.  It’s a misspelling.  People are looking for a particular kind of image site – not at all the kind of images I have on picsfromtrips.  It’s a bit of a play on youtube, substituting red for you.  I’d link, but I’m not running that kind of site.

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website analytics

I look from time-to-time at the statistics of my sites, always a little curious about who is making it here and why.

I used to have a higher score from Google, but a massive re-design a few years back (when I started using PicsFromTrips) destroyed my ranking and neither site has built up much reputation since.

graph

That said, I do get a fair amount of traffic to PicsFromTrips, which makes sense as it’s a fairly keyword rich site with LOTS of images. I enjoy when I see that someone has found my site through a keyword search on Google and that they’ve stayed to check out related photos.  From time to time I’ve even been contacted by people traveling to the same destination asking questions about this or that.

What amazes me though is when I see abnormal spikes in my keyword traffic – like I did recently, due to, of all things, Semana Santa in Spain.  In 2001 I was fortunate enough to be in Spain for the festivities and I took a few (not particularly great) photos of some of the events.  For whatever reason, Google has opted to place me at the top of the search results for the phrase “procession madrid.”   I’m not sure why.  I don’t rank on Semana Santa Madrid or Semana Santa Procession even though the page is titled Semana Santa Procession Madrid.  I suppose “Procession Madrid” is a more generic term with less people targeting that term.

My amazement comes from the fact that I can rank so high against some terms and so low against others – I know that the logic behind search engine ranking is a dark art but still I can’t help but wonder.

In addition, I find that while I see spikes in individual terms, overall the traffic never spikes that far – so while I get a lot of visits from these temporary keywords, I can only summise that I’m giving up traffic on some of the lesser trafficed keywords, keeping the overall traffic pattern pretty stable.  Which doesn’t seem right to me.  Shouldn’t I experience larger overall traffic accompanying these keyword spikes?  It seems like Google has deemed my site worthy of sending some stable amount of traffic, and when that’s overly sampled with certain keywords I get less from others.  I don’t really think that’s true.. but could it be possible?

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WordPress platform

wordpress-logo-notext-bgI’ve been really impressed with WordPress. I first installed it about a year ago, in preparation for heading off to Africa. I wanted an easier way to update this site, and chose WordPress (for no particular reason… I also considered MovableType but for whatever reason ended up installing WordPress).

In the past year I’ve gotten to know the platform much better – and it continues to impress. It is incredibly easy to upgrade, install plugins, apply new templates, and modify those templates to your own desire.

Compared to other software that I’ve installed to manage websites, this is a breeze.

I’m equally impressed with the development community that’s out there supplying these add-ons.  There’s a plugin for just about anything you can think of, which is great.  Mostly I use plugins to control various aspects of the page design, and what shows up on that right-column over there.  Recently though I’ve been playing around with a few others – among them is Zemanta.   It’s a little utility that, as you type, suggests inline images or links that you can insert into your post to make your content a little more rich.

Another plugin I just installed is Disqus – a utility that allows people to comment – and to do so without having to create a unique login just for this site.  It’s a great idea – I hate having all of these 1-off logins myself so I’m glad I no longer have to ask others to create them either.

When I think back to how I used to manage these sites 10 or more years ago, it’s just amazing where we’ve come.

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Could logging in to Delicious be a thing of the past?

The old logo of Delicious.
Image via Wikipedia

Hallelujahs!

One of my pet peeves is websites that make me log in again and again.  Look, you’re smart enough to know whether I’m logging in from the same computer – don’t keep asking me to log in, OK?  Netflix does a great job of this.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve logged in – either from work or from home .

Delicious has been the exact opposite.

I am a big fan of Delicious.  I have my recent bookmarks right over there on the sidebar ->

I keep all of my bookmarks on there (and don’t bother with FireFox or IE bookmarks).  I have an iPhone app that automatically synchs with my account so I can always look up a site I’ve bookmarked. I’ve got a FireFox plugin installed at work and at home – it easily allows me to tag sites and retireve them later – from either of my computers, or my iPhone – or through any computer, actually (by accessing my links at delicious.com).

About the only thing I don’t use on Delicious is the bookmark sharing feature – you have to have friends on Delicious to do that and I can’t be bothered to set up any – I’ve got too many other sites asking for my friends.

So the one thing that kills me is when I try to tag a website using the convenient FireFox plugin and the stupid thing tells me that I have to log in because it’s been 2 weeks.  2 weeks!?  Come on.  What could I possibly have on Delicious that is that confidential.  What – is something going to masquerade as me and set rogue bookmarks?

Well, today at work, as I went to bookmark a site, I was asked, once again, to login.  Except this time, when I checked ‘keep me logged in’ I noticed it didn’t say ‘for 2 weeks’ – and when I checked it, I was given the warning that I shouldn’t do this on public computers blah blah..  So I can only hope – does that mean I’m now logged in for good from this machine?  Can it be true?  I can’t wait to see what happens.. Will accessing from a different (home) computer mess with this login?  Will it really keep me logged in forever?  Only time will tell.

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Have I told you how much I like Boxee?

Boxee
Image via Wikipedia

So a while ago I wrote a post about my move to the Mac platform.  As part of that move, I set up a Mac network and an Apple TV.  The Apple TV has been the best music streaming solution that I’ve tried by far.  But that’s a post for another day.

A couple of months ago, I signed up for an aplha test of Boxee – which included an application that hacks the AppleTV so that it’s no longer a closed system.  With that, I’ve got the Boxee software running on my AppleTV, giving me access to additional media browsers, which is nice and all.  But the real win is having access to additional content – Hulu being the best of the offerings by far.

Whereas before I could only watch shows that I purchased from the iTunes store (something I will only consider for things I’d rent through netflix anyway, like HBO shows), now I have access to a whole library of shows.  It’s awesome.  I can watch Jon Stewart, Arrested Development, The Rockford Files…

There’s been a lot of chatter lately about how to cut your cable bills and just rely on streaming content.  This may certainly be a reality for a lot of people, but not for me.  I don’t get any premium channels anyway – and I don’t see any way of cutting my cable bill, since my cable-provided high speed internet is what allows for the streaming content in the first place.

For me, it’s a way to get additional content, that I can watch when I want to (I know DVR users have had this pleasure for a long time now..).

I’ve read a lot of opinions about how the AppleTV is not a successul Apple product, and there’s truth to that – in as much as they’re not selling many of them and the closed system was a little limiting.  But with Boxee it’s really is awesome.


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More Twitter use – Going to a concert?

Here’s another great use of Twitter.

Jimmy Eat World has a special web page that collects all Twitter data (ok.. tweets) that are relevant to each of their tour dates.

What this means, is that a fan can post a tweet (following a pre-defined format) and their post will show up on the web site.  They can additionally subscribe to the tweets, keeping up-to-date with what all of the other concert-goers are saying.  It’s a pretty cool idea of taking a public event, which actually tends to be not particularly interactive when you think about it, and adds a level of community that hasn’t existed in the past.  I mean, when was the last time that you really interacted with someone else going to a concert – either before or during (remember, you can tweet from your cell, posting updates during the performance).  If they weren’t one of your friends that you were going with, you probably had very limited interaction (besides synchronized arm waving that is).

Now think of the marketing opportunity – there’s a page with all of the people who are into this concert with a really easy way to communicate to them – and some of them aren’t even going because the shows are selling out *(need tickets?  .. boy, too bad I’m not still working at StubHub – there’s another opportunity they’ll never take advantage of)*

The more I’m checking out Twitter the more I’m impressed.

photo courtesy “Scamp” from the Jimmy Eat World website