Sean’s Blog

This weekend, I went ot PodcampOhio.  It was just a really awesome new media conference here in Columbus.  I learned a whole bunch and met some cool people.  I thought I would share some of the things I picked up for everyone who couldn’t attend.

• Blackbird - A lightweight Twitter client for the Blackberry.  No need to use text messages for tweets.  Not as pretty as twitterberry (which I’ve been using for a while now), but (as far as I can tell) faster.  I’ve switched to Blackbird.
• Multiple Loops In Wordpress.  Requires some Wordpress hacking, but this looks to be a really cool setup.  I am currently playing with this on my Wordpress test install.  Here are the link to Mitch’s slides (from Studionashvegas.com) on how to do it.
• Custom Fields in Wordpress - Also from the slideshow, how to add custom fields for a sort of graphical tagging ability.  Currently playing with this in dev as well.
• CMSMadeSimple - I’ve been looking into CMSs for a side project I am working on but the learning curve for Joomla seems a bit steep for my liking.  CMSMadeSimple seems like an awesome solution.
• JungleDisk - I’ve heard of this service offered by Amazon, but after hearing some of the praises for it, I am really considering using it for backup.
• Summize - A way to dig into twitter for subjects.  Just about everyone seemed to be using it.

I really had a good time and would like to thank all the presenters and organizers.  I was really surprised to find something like this in my home town.  Do some digging in yours and you may be surprised.

I’ve been running Firefox 3 for a while now, and really only have good things to say about it.  I install it when I installed Hardy Heron (FF3RC5 was the default browser).  It seems to be faster, less resource intensive and have some great new features.

I have noticed though that on my work PC is does seem to crash every once in a while.  This only happens on Windows.  My linux PCs seem fine.  Maybe another reason to switch? 

If you haven’t yet, take the time to upgrade.  It’s painless and quick.  Here’s the link

For all the folks in Central Ohio (and surrounding areas if you want to drive), Podcamp Ohio is this weekend (June 28th).  I’ve never been to one, but it looks like it is going to be interesting.  While many of the topics are devoted to podcasting, There looks like there is a good subset of presentations on more general blogging technologies.  Plus it’s free and looks like a great place to meet some other bloggers in my area.

If your going, look me up.  I’ll be around.

Here’s a link to the official site.

This weekend I was working to setup a new blog that I have been getting ready.  I had the wordpress installation all set and ready to go and I ordered the domain name from GoDaddy.com.  I then pointed the new domain at the directory on the webserver that would be hosting the new site and set it up as an addon domain.  Everything looked good until I tried to navigate to the site.

When I actually when to the new site (we’ll call it addon.com) it redirected me to the front page of seanelavelle.com.  Now I know that the new blog was set up correctly on the webserver at http://seanelavelle.com/addon/ and the DNS record should point to the subdomain as addon.seanelavelle.com, but going to that address also seemed to redirect me to the main site.  I was at a loss.

After talking to Bluehost support we determined the problem was not DNS, but the Wordpress installation.  More after the jump

Read more »

I’m really busy today, but I ran across these and I thought they were great.  I totally want Mr Giggles to play with my kids…

Many, many more (14 pages) here.

I’ve always loved astronomy.  I never had the discipline for descent practice of it and my math skills are kind of shaky, but as something casual, i find it a lot of fun.   BoingBoing has a link today about an awesome picture taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter looking back at the moon and the earth.

Link to the NASA page with details and a larger image.

Recently I’ve been noticing an interesting trend. I’ve been seeing more and more entities (people, companies, movements) give out a Google “keyword” instead of a URL. For example, the Ron Paul campaign has a lot of placards that just say “Google Ron Paul” instead of just giving a website address (ie www.ronpaul2008.com).

Apparently companies in Asia have been doing this for a while now. I’m not sure if this is because of the difficulty of acquiring meaningful domain names, or if the subject is just easier to remember.

This means a couple things (to me). One is that while I don’t think premium domain names are going away anytime soon, they may definitely become less important. The other is that namespace crowding is going to be come much more of a problem.

What I mean by namespace crowding is the the inability to control how you rank in your search results. If you are the poor guy who owns Bill Gates Windows and Door Installation, you are never ever going to be able to Google that and be anywhere near the top of the search pile. A unique URL is the only choice at this point.

Your ownership of this phrase becomes even more important. Non-related pages or bad pages become much more of a problem, and one that is sort of out of your control. If the folks at boingboing decide that they want to write a post saying “Sean Lavelle is a tool” that is going to crush whatever Google ranking I have built up. That is sort of an extreme example (Cory, Mark, David and Xeni don’t do it! Please! ) but you can see who this lack of control would give someone who is invested in a particular brand fits.

What this means for me right now is that I am still pursuing a domain name that I want, but keeping an eye on how Google (and other search engines see me) is a very important part of maintaining your brand.

So go ahead - Google “Sean E Lavelle”

I like to share stuff.  I like find a lot of stuff on teh interwebs and I would like to share it.  The problem I run into, is that almost no one I know actually uses Google Reader, which has a nifty interface for sharing.

So sharing through reader is kind of out of the question.  After some searching, I found this nifty feature.  Basically it is a small snippet of Javascript that allows you to publish your shared items on a page of your choosing.  Here is the documentation from Google.

So I went and created a page.  I’ll add things to it from time to time that I find interesting as well as any notes that I have.  If you click on the “Read More” link, it will take you to the Google Page where all the notes I’ve added to shared items will be (if you care).  Take a look at the Shared Items page.

I go back and forth with the social media thing. Granted, it has made the web a much more interesting place to be. But 90% is pure and utter crap. Instead of communication, it seems like a bunch of people making connections then having nothing to talk about.

Such was the case of the disastrous Myspace.com experiment. I got on Myspace way late in the curve. And although I ran into a couple people that I haven’t talked to in a while, it didn’t really open up any worthwhile conversations and became a spam magnet. So I left.

I’ve been thinking about it though, and it really seems that you get out what you put in. So I’m going to give it another shot. I’m going to go hit the big networks and see what I can see. Hopefully this will work out better. I’ll keep you all appraised on how it goes.

I found these two things today that were just hilarious:
You almost feel sorry for the telemarketer:

Much more geeky, but still as hilarious: