How Americans Spend Their Day

Maybe it’s the scientist in me or maybe it’s the communicator (because isn’t raw data the very building blocks of communication), but I love data. Data on just about anything: animals, web trends, weather, etc. And put that data into a colorful, interactive package and what could be better?

The NY Times did just that with an interactive graph of the results of the American Time Use Survey:

How Different Groups Spend Their Day

Beautiful graph, well implemented on the web. I can rollover it and see that when I go to sleep (between 8:30 and 9 pm) only 8% of Americans are sleeping. And I can look at what just women are doing by clicking one of the buttons on the top or I can break out an activity by clicking on it. Very well done.

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Whenever a client wants to have a blog on their website, I caution them that they need to set a schedule for posting to that blog because one of the first things I look at on a website is the date of the last blog entry. Theoretically, if that date is well in the past it’s an indication that the website is stagnant (and possibly the business is dead or dying).

Trying to keep up with my own blog when I’m very busy made me re-think what a stagnant blog may really mean. I haven’t felt like I had the time to post because I’ve been working so hard.

But it hasn’t changed my mind about needing a regular schedule of posting to the blog. I still think that people will look at the dates of the blog entries and even if it means that the company is busy with off-line work, it can still be used to indicate whether the information on the website is up to date and accurate. If they haven’t had time to post, they probably haven’t had time to update their hours or put up their newest specials.

So, you still need a regular schedule for blogging. It keeps you hooked in to the world wide web, it puts more stuff out there for Google to index and people to find.

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Not a whole lot, actually. When you bought your domain name (internet address or URL, like cornercode.com), whoever sold you the domain name probably suggested that you get a few extra ones, maybe with different endings or similar words in the name.

Should you get those extras?

That depends. If you’re trying to protect your name, you may want to buy the domain names that end in .inc, .biz, .org even, if you can. That way someone can’t set up shop at acme.biz when you are acme.com. You may also want to get domain names that are very similar to your name. If you are acmewidgets.com, you may also want to get acmewidget.com for the same reason. The last thing you want to happen is to have someone else’s website come up when a customer puts in your company name.

But should you buy similar domain names? Some people suggest that you can actually get traffic from owning just domain names. The only way that works is if that domain name used to point to a site and people are still typing that domain name into their browser to visit that now-defunct site. If your sites are similar and the defunct site had a following, then that’s a good way to get some new customers. If you’re buying a completely new domain name, it won’t have any traffic associated with it.

Web users are pretty savvy now, they don’t just type words in the the location bar of their browser, they type search terms into the search bar or into google. None of your other domain names will show up in searches because they don’t have any web pages associated with them.

So, if you’re buying extra domain names to protect your company name, I say go right ahead. If someone told you that buying 10 extra domain names that use different words for your products will get you traffic, well, they’re just trying to get you to buy more domain names (and give them more money).

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A lot of people have heard about blogs (web logs, a site where someone or a team of someones posts short articles on a particular topic) and I use blogging software (Wordpress, to be exact) on some of my sites because it makes it very easy to set up a blog and to set up a simple web site that the client can update and change themselves.

But, should every web site have a blog or be a blog?

I don’t think so.

If you have something to say that may be of interest to your clients, then a blog is a good way to get that info out and make it easy for you to put up posts regularly. Does that help your business? Yes, it shows that you know a bit about what you’re talking about, lets clients get a feel for you and how you work before they hire you, may even help a few people out and that’s always good.

But a blog can also do harm, especially if it’s set up and then not posted to regularly. I don’t think you need to post to your blog every day (as you can tell from my blog), but even getting a post up there every month can be a problem if you’re busy. And if you really don’t have something to say and you’re reaching for topics every time, it’s really hard to do. If a potential client comes to your site and sees you haven’t posted to the blog in 6 months, that gives a bad impression. It’s like looking in a shop window and seeing nothing but cobwebs and dust, you probably aren’t go to go in to buy something.

Not to discourage people from starting a blog, just think about how often you’re going to post and keep to some kind of schedule.

Here are a couple of links to blogs (of course) about blogging (or meta-blogs, if you will):

Daily Blog Tips

The Write Spot

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Blogs are everywhere on the internet these days, most people have heard the term, but what is a blog? Theoretically, the term comes from web log and at the simplest level, a blog is a site where the writer posts entries, like journal entries.

So, it can be a sort of diary, if you would ever write a diary where everyone on the internet can read it. Probably not a good idea. More often, a writer has a subject they are interested in, say broadway musicals or politics, and they write about that subject. The entries can be anything but are often news or analysis about the blog’s subject.

When this all started, most blogs were written by one person, now there are many blogs that are written by a team of writers (TUAW and Engadget are examples). And these blogs make money. How you ask? Mostly by having Google Ads on the site. When a reader clicks through on a Google Ad, the blog gets some money.

Lately I’ve read a lot of articles telling businesses that they need blogs on their web sites. Blogs can be very useful, if you have something to say every month or so. If you are a small business that is putting up an informational site (something like an online brochure), then I’m not sure you need to have a blog. Even worse than not having a blog is having one that was last posted to 6 months ago (though it does happen to the best of us), then your company looks dead.

If you do have something to say (new information to post, new research to comment on) every month or so, a blog is a great way to start communicating to the World Wide Web (and your customers). But it’s not for everyone, keep that in mind.

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The web is moving away from static sites towards dynamic sites, a trend that’s been in the works for a long time. You may have heard the term Web 2.0, this is the cutting edge of this trend, web pages that can be changed by the user on the fly, think Google Maps. But the trend is trickling down to even small sites.

Since most people want to make changes to their own sites and most of them don’t want to take a course in HTML programming and web design, I’ve been turning more and more to database driven, dynamic web sites. Usually, my client has no idea what I mean when I throw out those terms, understandably.

On the most basic level, a database driven, dynamic site is one that is created on the fly for each and every user from information stored in a database. For example, there’s Amazon.com. Unlike a static site, where you have a file for every single page, Amazon does not have thousands of files, one for each book, it has just one file that defines the layout for a book page, then fills in the info for an individual book from a database when a browser requests that book info.

But what does this mean for someone looking to create a small web site and keep it up to date themselves? It means that they can interact with the database (not as scary as it sounds as I’ll explain in a later post) and not worry about all the presentation details of the web site (colors, fonts, spacing, etc). When they want to change a word of a page or a description of an item, they can simply change the words in a database record and that change is immediately reflected in the site. The same goes for adding or deleting something (like a product) from the site.

It does require a different way of coding the site (using php instead of html, for one thing) and the site has to be well planned, or you’ll run into the old problem of not being able to put what you want up there, but it is a solution that lets you have a great looking site that you maintain yourself.

In fact, some people are already familiar with database driven, dynamic sites: every blog site is just that. And if you have a site that will have lots of content added to it, using blogging software (which is the database and the way you interact with the database) is a great way to quickly put that site up.

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I’ve been thinking about anonymity and the internet. Seems that when people are anonymous (and what allows you more anonymity than the internet) some of them get really nasty, doing things like threatening people. I’ve read a few articles that discussed this in terms of online communities. The current thinking is that allowing anonymous posting isn’t a good idea. And monitoring the comments (and letting people know that you’re monitoring them) is even better.

This behavior shouldn’t surprise anyone. I think we do it from the time we’re kids. I’ve already noticed with my daughter (10 years old) that if she knows I’m paying attention, checking in on her, she’s less likely to misbehave. And I finally understand why mothers come out to clubhouses with milk and cookies. They aren’t worried that you’re starving to death, they want to make it clear that they know you’re out there and might pop in at any moment. Someone is paying attention.

This is what online community leaders need to do. They shouldn’t be Big Brother and listen to everything, they just need to pop in with milk and cookies every once in awhile so all the members know that someone is paying attention.

So, when you’re setting up a community, say some forums where your visitors can post questions and comments, realize that you will need to pop in and take a look and maybe pull some posts. That will help keep the discussion on your forums civil so everyone can enjoy them.

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I was recently and abruptly introduced to the organization stopbadware.org when one of my clients sent me an email letting me know that Google was identifying her site as a possible spreader of badware. What is badware, you ask? Computer programs that take over users PC’s (mostly Windows PC’s) and then do things like log keystrokes to try and find credit card information and set up mail servers to send out spam. Often users don’t even know that they have badware installed, though the symptoms include slowdowns and sometimes complete shutdowns.

Is badware bad? Yes. Is it a problem for many, many people? Yes. As computer consultants, we spend a good amount of time cleaning badware off users pc’s (just want to point out again, not Macs, if you’re on a Mac, you’re luckily out of the badware loop).

Was my client’s site distributing badware? Maybe. Sometimes a hacker gets into a web server and alters web pages so they distribute the nasty stuff all without the owner of the site knowing. We were hacked a long time ago (thank you very much, frogee). The only vestiges of the hacking was a Dreamweaver lock file, that the hacker had changed so that it read something like ‘You’ve been hacked by the Cyber Overlord.’ As far as I could tell, that’s all the hacker did, overwrite our files to say we’d been hacked. So after the attack, I uploaded our files again and we were fine.

I mention this because that’s the only thing I can think of that could have triggered Google reporting us as spreading badware. I couldn’t find any of the hacks mentioned on forums (1 pixel frames, certain javascript). It’s a small site, less than 10 pages, not that hard to search. But I also couldn’t say for sure that there wasn’t something there I was missing.

It didn’t help that Google wouldn’t tell me why my site had been flagged. They sent me over to stopbadware.org, where I had to ask that my site be reviewed. They suggest you clean out the badware first, of course. I couldn’t find any, though I did re-upload the site and take down all those lock files. I also ran the site through a couple of online services that look for badware and it came out clean.

Our site was reviewed and I received an email saying we were clean. That was a relief, but still not a great experience. Was there badware on the site? Or were we flagged somehow because of that dreamwearver lock file? There doesn’t seem to be any way to find out.
And the all clean email included this ominous paragraph:

Please note that we will be retesting your website at periodic intervals in order to monitor that it remains free from badware. If we find that you are hosting or distributing badware in the future, the reviews process may take considerably longer than the original review.

The Bottom Line

Google can pretty much do what it wants with its search results, I’m not paying them, they don’t owe me anything. I understand why they are being so closed mouthed about what sent up the flag: they don’t want the badware distributors to game the system like some search engine optimizers have done since the start of Google. I’m not sure that it’s as important to be as secretive with badware as it is with search results, but that’s how Google has always done business.

However, there does seem to be a difference between page rank (where a site is put in the search results, 1 or 1,000) and actually flagging a site as spreading badware. Yes, Google says the site ‘might’ be spreading badware, but I bet that most people ignore that ‘might.’ After all, if Google thinks the site is doing it, the site is doing it. In many internet users’ minds, Google is the internet.

And there’s no arguing that being flagged as bad by Google immediately affects a site’s buisiness.

Is this going to help cut down on people’s computers being infected with badware? I’m not sure. I’ve only seen it from the other side, since I’ve never had one of these ‘possible spreaders of badware’ sites show up on my google searches.

I suppose I would be less frustrated if they had actually shown me what was triggering the flag, so I could fix it, instead of re-submitting my site and holding my breath, hoping that I didn’t get flagged again.

Oh, and by the way, I dislike the term ‘badware.’ It sounds like someone is being naughty. I prefer the term ‘malware,’ but that’s not what the organization decided to call themselves.

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I’ve been following the story of the harassment and death threats aimed at the author of ‘Creating Passionate Users,’ a blog that I read. I’ve enjoyed the blog, but am obviously not hooked into that part of the blogosphere, since I didn’t even recognize the names mentioned in the post about the harassment (warning: pictures and re-printing of the threats may be disturbing to some).

It made me think about all the stuff I don’t see on the internet, the porn, the vile language, etc. And, understandably, the experience has soured that author’s view of the internet and in a small way made me feel less safe as well.

One of the comments to her post made me think. A male blogger said that he had received similar threats/harassment, but he just let it roll off his back. We can get into a long discussion about our society, gender differences, etc, and why it’s easier for a man to ‘just let it roll off his back’ and not a woman. (and, don’t get me wrong, the guy who left the post was very sympathetic).

But I think part of the problem may be that the guys do tend to just ignore this kind of comment. It isn’t that we should tell these people that they shouldn’t make comments like that about women, they shouldn’t make comments like that about anyone. Then that avoids the whole problem of women sounding like whiners and babies when they do complain.

That’s pretty much my philosophy: women shouldn’t be treated differently, we should all be treated more civilly.

stopcyberbullying

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There has been a lot of news about phishing lately, including some studies about how phishers fool their victims and how the whole scheme works. Seems to me, though that people are concentrating on the wrong part of the scheme.

What is phishing?

It’s a way to steal information from you, usually identity info, like name, social security number, or login info for bank accounts or credit cards. You’ve probably seen at least one phishing attempt in your email inbox, say an email from PayPal or from Citibank.

How does it work?

The phishers send you an email that looks like it’s from some large financial company, like PayPal or Citibank or your credit union. When you click on the link in the email (which looks like it’s going to the aforementioned large financial company) it actually takes you to a phishing website (often some place like Russia). Once at the web site, you’re supposed to enter your account info or your personal info in. Do that and you’ve just handed the phishers your PayPal account (or credit card or bank account).

This is becoming a real problem. I receive so many phishing emails from ‘PayPal’ that I ignore everything from PayPal.

How do we prevent it?

Well, there’s a lot of discussion about that right now. A group at Harvard performed a study: Why Phishing Works (http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~rachna/papers/why_phishing_works.pdf) which sounds like a good place to start. However, this study concentrated on the phishing web site. I think that’s the wrong place to look. Instead, why aren’t we looking at the bait that the phishers use: the email they send. If the victims didn’t click on the link from the email, then they wouldn’t get victimized.

Seems fairly simple. However, some companies send links in email to their customers. I do occasionally click on a link in an email from a company, usually in a newsletter or ad (say from Amazon). I never click on a link to go to something like my credit union’s web site and I was shocked to get an email newsletter from my credit union that had just that, a link to the login for the credit union.

And it wasn’t too much after that my credit union sent out an email warning of a phishing scheme using their name. And they probably caught some people because the victims were used to clicking on links in the Credit Union’s newsletter.

So, if any companies are paying attention out there, don’t send links in your emails to your customers. I tell all my clients and friends to never click on links in emails. It’s the only way to be sure.

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