For the backstory on this, go read the top of Post#1 – to read the entire series – here’s your Tag. Ok, back to 5 posts…
NakedJen:
I happened to come across NakedJen not by some crazy internet search (shame on you!) but rather because I follow a guy named Dave Winer. Haven’t heard of him? He’s a blogging, scripting, RSS, techno, really smart dude. He writes to a few blogs, one of which I read in a lame attempt to make me smarter (http://scripting.com/). One day he happened to mention NakedJen who just happens to be a DeadHead (http://scripting.com/2014/04/25/nakedjensNewBlog.html). I scrolled thru the few posts she had up at the time and found this gem. I include it here for the simple reason that to me, it completely embodies that inner spirit of DeadHeads. Wondering what that is? It’s not drugs, it’s not skulls and roses and dancing bears, it’s not being naked, and it’s not living the life while on the road following the band. It’s all about… Oh heck. Just go read her story, “But I can’t deny, that times have gone by” – you’ll understand. By the way – that’s not a pic of NakedJen. I do absolutely LOVE her name though. (double entendre rocks!)
Eat24:
They started a huge media buzz when they pulled out of Facebook. in case you missed it they published a Dear Facebook Letter. It’s been a little bit and they wanted to let everyone know what happened since. “Eat24: Life Without Facebook” details just how they are doing. One of the interesting snippets I pulled from this is about their email newsletter.
Speaking of emails… something strange happened with those too. Ever since we closed our Facebook page, our weekly email open rate went up. Like, way up. Back when we had a page, our average open rate was holding steady at around 20%. We’ve sent 4 weekly emails since the breakup and have seen a week over week increase, with the most recent one coming in at over 40% (!!!).
For the record – my newsletter open rate is usually around 38 – 40%. I don’t use Eat24 myself and don’t subscribe to their newsletter. I’m sure theirs is a gorgeous handcrafted piece of art. I would describe mine as the opposite. It has a header image, a snippet of my post, the featured image of my post and then a link to ‘read more…‘ My Click Thru Rate hovers around 20% (those are the people reading more). I use a free service and the entire thing happens automatically. Need to setup one for your site? Hit me up!
Privacy Badger:
I found this in one of my tech folders. It’s from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It’s a browser addon that purports to stop evil tracking codes that watch what you. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web. If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser. To the advertiser, it’s like you suddenly disappeared.
There’s evil tracking out there for sure. Not all tracking is from the dark side though. There’s also some cool advertising / marketing stuff too. Ever go to Amazon and look at a few toaster ovens – then for the next few days or weeks you keep seeing ads for toaster ovens on all sorts of websites? In Google terms that’s called ‘ReMarketing’. Advertisers that run these style ads find that the click rates are much lower than normal ads but the conversion rate when someone does click is much much higher.
For right now, I’m playing with Privacy Badger and may write a post on it down the road.
This is what comes AFTER search:
Closely related to this whole tracking thing I found this post on Search. http://qz.com/205689/context-this-is-what-comes-after-search/ Context is the new search – or so they say. What do they all mean by that?
Search is opening up my Samsung Galaxy’s Chrome App and searching for an address to my next appointment. Context is my phone automatically looking at my Google Calendar, noting my current location, the address of the appointment, checking the current traffic conditions and then telling me it’s time to go – oh and here’s some handy dandy turn by turn directions for you too!
Want another? Context could be my phone noting that I seem to check in via Foursquare to Sushi Bars for dinner while traveling and then also noting that since I currently happen to be a few miles from home and it being close to dinner time, showing the top rated Sushi Bars close by.
Google Now does this right now. I’m sure iPhones do so too.
I placed this after the stuff on tracking because I want to point out that all this kind of magic doesn’t happen without tracking of some sorts. Not all tracking is evil – right?
Net Neutrality:
Staying on the Internet rights theme for a moment… Can we talk about Net Neutrality for just a sec? What is that? Wikipedia says it’s
the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.
And you are bound to hear much much more of this in the coming days as there’s a vote coming up. So while you may think that this Un-Neutrality isn’t really thing yet – it already is! Surprise! Over on the Verge I caught this post, “Major ISPs accused of deliberately throttling traffic“.
According to the company, these six unnamed ISPs are deliberately degrading the quality of internet services using the Level 3 network, in an attempt to get Level 3 to pay them a fee for additional traffic caused by services like Netflix, a process known as paid peering.
CGP Grey did a great video explaining this in simple terms (I really need simple terms sometimes)
Double Kudos to you if you tell the FCC to reclassify broadband internet as a common carrier telecommunications service: http://goo.gl/xHnB4n
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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