One of my clients is a private school, 1st through 9th grade. Today, while on campus meeting with several administrators there was a fire drill.
There’s nothing like standing in a muddy field with 200 1st and 2nd graders to make you feel young again!
I love my job!!
Every now and then it’s a good idea to update your cell phone address book, deleting old numbers, reorganizing your speed-dial, and so on. While you’re at it, follow Marc and Angel’s recommendations for 10 handy numbers to keep in your phone. For example, find a local locksmith and add his/her number to the address book, just in case you lock your keys in your car and have to get somewhere in a hurry. Also recommended: airline reservation hotlines (for dealing with flight cancellations and other travel troubles), your primary care physician, and the lost/stolen-card number for your credit card. Check the complete list for other suggestions, then add your own in the Comments.
Dan Perry points out a new “feature” from Google in the SERPs. Evidently, Google is trying to protect us from ourselves.
http://danperry.com/wordpress/ouch/
I don’t know, this company may have done something really hideous in the past. Or they could have just been “had” by an unethical web developer (though the developer of the current site seems to be a Microsoft Certified Partner). Or maybe…Google made a mistake?
I took a very quick look at the code on the home page and found nothing that looked troubling. There’s one javascript for analytics, but nothing strange that I noticed.
I am not in any way saying this site is safe or ethical. I don’t know. But I don’t see any golf vacations to Wisconsin in my near future so I’m not going to worry about it too much.
My point is, if Google is so “concerned” with our computer’s well-being then why not just remove the listing and contact the site owner to give them a chance to resolve the problem, instead of making them march around the town square with a big red “B” (for Badware) on their chest. I would guess that there has never been any type of communication from Google to this site owner about this label.
And what is more frustrating is that if this site is crooked, then why let it continue to take up a place in the top-20 where some well-meaning, non-badware site could be listed instead.
But for a minute let’s assume that the “This site may harm your computer” message is legit. And Google is granting some leeway to this site by continuing to display the listing (even though there is a big red WARNING sign). What about the other “shady” business practices Google has instituted.
Google consistently oversteps its boundaries of being a roadmap to information. Somewhere along the way someone at Google decided they would be the Traffic Cop. It seems to me they’ve set up one big-ass speed trap!
For companies who rely on their websites to provide an income for the people (with families) who are employed by those companies Google can, without provocation, notice, or response, put them out of business.
Google has created a business model where every business has a dependency on being ranked highly. And when a site is not ranked highly the only course of action is to pay for ads.
I don’t fault Google for being so successful. Or even for becoming everything that they claim they hate about Microsoft. But I do fault them for hiding behind the curtain. Even the Police have to tell people what the laws are before they start arresting people. Google does not tell us what the laws are. And when you ask them they tell you it’s a trade secret.
And I thought only my wife could change the rules in the middle of the game and get away with it.
Thanks to Dan for pointing this out. If you want to see more of Dan’s writing visit him at 19thHole.com (http://www.19thhole.com/user/danperry/blogs) or at his blog (http://danperry.com)
Shopping from home? Real-time video monitoring of your own home?? PAYING BILLS THROUGH A COMPUTER?!?!?! Now that’s crazy talk!
43 folders has been a favorite resource of mine for several years. Even if I don’t always follow their great advice for Getting Things Done, it’s good to hear how other people stay focused and organized. One recent post got me thinking more than usual.
Time management for parents is something I have on my mind lately. We are expecting our first child in February and I have been told that spinning plates and new babies don’t mix. I will have to disagree and several of the comments to this post confirm my suspicions.
First of all, I think “Time Management” is a terrible term. We can’t manage time. Time goes on with or without us. We have no control over time. We can only manage our use of that time.
My wife will tell anyone who will listen that I am terrible at managing my time. But only because I manage my use of time different than she does. She is a planner. She wants to know three weeks out what she will be doing and she stresses when plans change.
For me, I choose to forgo the stress and wait until the last possible moment to figure out what I am going to do. I tell her, “there are deadlines for a reason”. And I never miss a deadline, and that just makes her furious.
I can’t wait to see how a baby will change things.
I have a lot going on right now and I am struggling with priorities. My main focus, 19thHole.com is on the rise. We have our first “serious” sponsor campaign beginning October 15th and we continue to sign up new members every day. We launched the site on April 1, 2007 and I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect as far as sign-ups or traffic.
In six months we have signed up 651 members and are averaging just over 3,300 uniques per month and 25,000 page views. This without spending a dime on marketing. Our traffic generating campaign is working, though I would have liked to see some more dramatic spikes along the way. I am disappointed with the conversion rate of visitors to Members but that was a risk we took when we decided to leave the content open to the public. Good for traffic, bad for repeat traffic. We will see how that decision affects us in the future.
Some of our tests have proved interesting. For example, I can easily generate significant spikes in traffic from StumbleUpon but the SU crowd doesn’t stay. It’s a short-term tactic at best. I have begun working on a plan to optimize some pages to focus on converting Stumblers to Members. More on that later.
One concern of mine is the amount of email I get from people who assume that 19thHole.com is the home of The Grey Goose (r) 19th Hole TV show on the Golf Channel. Maybe I need to partner with Grey Goose…hmmm. I’ll have to think about that.
My next big decision is whether to go after some venture capital funding. I would welcome the financial backing and more so another pair of eyes to look over things. I have no experience with VCs so that’s a new business to learn. Yet another spinning plate.
Before I get started I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes:
#7. I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.
George Burns
#6. Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.
J. Paul Getty
#5. Success is dependent on effort.
Sophocles
#4. Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Oscar Wilde
#3. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Henry Ford
#2. The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
And finally…
#1. I fear regret more than I fear failure.
Taryn Rose, CEO, Taryn Rose International
For more great quotes, visit Fast Company’s First Impression Quotes Archive.
