When things started shaking today, and I realized I was not going to die, I thought I’d check Twitter to see if anyone else was shaking. summize.com There must have been hundreds of tweets flowing in each second about the situation. Not that it made a difference for this non-crisis, but, at least for a few seconds, we had something non-mundane in common.
I redesigned my site. Again. Come visit. A blue gray theme (by me) and unified the tutorial pages.
I had another chance to repair a Windows XP computer for a family member. First thought: “why aren’t they using Macs, darn it.” Second thought: “at least I’m not washing dishes”.
It’s odd that I’ve been labeled a “Windows repair guy” since I’m really a Mac guy. I have never owned a Windows machine. I have owned Apple computers exclusively for the last 26 years. I learned to use the Windows OS on the job, where this crap is the norm.
When Windows-using relatives inevitably started having trouble, I just took my best shot. Unfortunately I was having enough success to get a good reputation.
Maybe, in the name of progress, I should act like their machines are hopelessly broken, and offer to join them on a trip to the Apple Store. Well, not this time. May as well get going so maybe I’ll have some sense of accomplishment tonight.
This time the symptoms were more extreme than the usual “my computer is running slow” issue. This time, when the user clicked any EXE file, the system would, instead of trying to load the file, load AOL and try to have AOL open the EXE. That’s not right at all. Is this what happens when the registry is corrupted?
Then a program named shellmon.exe would start and take up 100% CPU, effectively freezing the computer.
What is shellmon.exe? Google search results suggested that shellmon.exe is associated with later AOL installations.
Control-alt-delete to the rescue. End shellmon.exe process. CPU goes back to normal.
But don’t touch any apps. EXE’s are all mis-loading. The command prompt couldn’t be loaded. Notepad couldn’t be loaded. No exe would do anything besides load AOL, which in turn loaded the CPU-maxing shellmon. The scene was looking like a total reinstall, lost cause.
What started all this? “I was just going about my normal business, and suddenly nothing worked anymore. One time the computer told me that the index file was corrupt.”
I’m not sure what the “index” is. Maybe it was the registry complaining?
I’m guessing a virus overwrote a couple system files.
It was time to save what I could from “My Documents”, and reinstall Windows XP.
Apple Time Capsule came in handy. It has a Samba server, so a Windows machine can connect to it. The Windows machine’s wireless adapter was completely unresponsive, so I just connected an ethernet cord between the Windows machine and the Time Capsule.
Fortunately AOL lets you do everything from www.aol.com now. AOL users who have a different ISP don’t have to load AOL software.
AOL software complicates “normal” Windows troubleshooting, at least for me. It likes to overtake the machine. It has it’s own way of handling network and “security” issues.
AOL has a hopeless situation on their hands. They have no power users. Their customer support would be my worst nightmare. The customers just get to blame AOL, regardless of whether it’s their fault. AOL jumped on the train wreck that is a virus plagued Microsoft and Dell, and is expected to fix it all. Poor AOL.
Anyway, this user just needs email and games. So I suggested not reinstalling AOL. Just learn to use AOL’s web-only interface. So I reinstalled Windows, went through all the system updates, loaded Firefox, then had him practice using the web interface.
The wireless adapter driver was tricky. I tried to add it in the “Add hardware” control panel, but it never even saw the hardware. I loaded the latest drivers for it but no response from the adapter. Maybe it was a bad PCI slot. I shut down the system, unplugged the adapter card and tried a different slot. I tried 2 different ones before Windows finally said “you’ve got new hardware”, and I was able to navigate to the newly installed INF file. So once that was done, the adapter software interface came up, and I could see the local wireless networks. Yay. I unplugged the ethernet cable and considered the job done.
Another satisfied customer/relative.
And just as I’m wrapping this up, I get ANOTHER relative calling about AOL and Windows issues. Seriously, people. I need to start charging.
Here are a few things I’ve learned watching my numbers.
Why Posting Frequency Doesn’t Matter
It’s more important to have weekly posts with keywords, than daily posts without. I accidentally discovered some rare keyword combos, and the traffic flows to these old posts, no matter how much new stuff I put up. I posted nearly every day in April, not focusing on keywords, and my hits were low.
A surprising number of hits are coming from search engines. I try to use keyword-rich titles, and Wordpress builds the title into the URL. Killer SEO combo: title + URL.
I’ve had two posts with keyword rich headlines and nearly no content (just pictures) that get daily visits from search engines. Having a great title, even with no content, will people get in the door.
Of course, fancy headlines and crappy content may get people in, but I wouldn’t expect them to come back.
Why Posting Frequency Matters
Unlike my “lesson-oriented” posts, “news” posts would need greater frequency, or else no one will subscribe. Who shops at a store with 10 items? With the exception of In-And-Out Hamburger, not the way to go. However that points to the value of quality; In-And-Out makes one insanely great burger. Is it lunch time yet?
Accumulate good content. Each page has it’s own draw. All these draws add up to greater daily totals.
Increasing frequency could produce more posts with more accidental keywords. See previous section.
Niches
People naturally pigeon hole. At first this seems like a negative, but it is actually a strong positive (assuming you’re in the intended hole). You want people to think of you when they have “that sort” of issue.
I would argue that non-niche blogs can’t become popular. They are too “diluted”. Gotta find a working niche and put quality into it.
In my case the niche is web development. I’m blogging and podcasting on it to stay motivated to keep learning. Constant learning is essential on the web, as “the only constant is change,” and “the best way to learn is to teach.”
My web developer niche may be too general, so I want to focus even more. I’m looking at the Javascript and PHP niches of web development. It’s like focussing on “religion” instead of a single kind of religion. (That religion/development comparison is not far off. Getting a PHP guy and a .Net guy in the same room produces the same tense feelings as a monk and an atheist together.) In fact, not niching in this category could offend both groups, and I’d end up with only professors of religion, and not the more common believer.
When to Post
I haven’t noticed that one time of day or day of week is better for posting than another. Around the world, there is always someone Googling.
As for the podcast, I have a theory that people listen to music podcasts* at work, and talk podcasts during their daily work commutes. What happens on the weekend? That’s when they find podcasts, as they’re connected to their personal computers’ for iPod library syncing. So the weekend might be a good time for podcast marketing. My best download day was a Friday, but I think that happened because I hit a nerve with a certain group, and they were working less and downloading more on Friday.
(*The largest podcast category on Podcast Alley is music.)
Incoming Links, Linking to Myself, Making Friends
While my organic search results are good, I need to get more people linking to me. Until then, I’ll link to myself. Get multiple domains (yours and others’), all with links to the same place.
People hang out everywhere, so I’ll post everywhere. Sometimes I post the same thing in different places. It’s advertising. I use the blog, the podcast, iTunes, Podcast Alley, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, DeviantArt, Del.icio.us, and whatever else makes sense.
Recently I’ve been using summize.com to find Twitterer’s with similar interests and following them. I see their tweets in the Summize results, I click their profile, I check out there website. They’re told when I’m following, and sometimes they follow back. There you go.
Blogging is awesome for generating organic visits and performs better in that respect than paid ads. My audience may be the type who block ads anyway.
Promotion takes a little time, but I’ve seen it increase my traffic. Watching numbers go up is a thrill, especially if I can help make it happen!
Ultimately I want repeat visitors, subscribers, fans, followers, all that. My special online peeps, er, social network. So come on down! 
Podcast Alley puts numbers next to their categories of podcasts. 43,000 total podcasts. Wow. There are other podcast directories and better sources of data, but nevertheless I felt like making a chart.
How many have released content in the past 3 months?
What do the numbers say about the podcast listeners? What’s demographic?
I was a little surprised by what I found. Music on top; kids and environment on bottom. The largest group was uncategorized, with 12,000 podcasts.
Only counting categorized podcasts, a quarter are music podcasts. Then there’s 13% tech, 10% comedy, 8% religion. Business, education and society each have 6%. Art, sports, video, health each have 4%. And at the very bottom are tv, news, travel, food, games and hobbies, environment, kids, science and government.
Did some Googling. Found better stats.
The Podcast Consumer Revealed 2008 (lots of interesting stuff; 20% of people have downloaded and consumed audio or video podcasts; 25% of them have a MySpace account; they block pop ups and SPAM and tend toward non-traditional media consumption)
Online Radio Listening At-Work Grows (radio source: internet 20%, air waves 80%; college grads more internet aware)
BuzzMachine – “Podcasts get ratings” (6% of US adults are podcast listeners)
Paul Colligan’s Profitable Podcasting (list of links, emphasis on surge of video podcasts)
PodBridge cites the following:
Podcasting News – New Media Is Now Mainstream Media; Podcasting Growth Is “Massive” (China wins again; of all subscribers, 18% listen and download everyday)