So this summer Matt decided to try biking to work for 30 days, Quadszilla tried blogging for 30 days, both worth while endeavors but I was looking for something to do that had value that would last longer than the 30 days … so I decided to reduce my inbox.

Like most of you I’d wake up every morning with 50-100 emails sitting in my inbox, to be honest most of them where crap and got deleted. Which got me thinking how much time do I waste deleting emails over and over again from the same companies that I am never going to use. So here was my plan.

• If the sender was legit unsubscribe the correct way
• If not set up a rule/filter to auto delete all email from them
• If  unsubscribe attempts failed set up a rule/filter to auto delete

The first 2 weeks of my experiment was brutal I was visiting hundreds of websites, trying to unsubscribe, remember and recover lost passwords it was just awful, However eventually I did see the light of day, and I was waking up to a smaller and smaller inbox. Here are some things I noticed:

• Smaller companies are much easier to unsubscribe from
• Larger companies have segregated lists making it much harder to unsubscribe
• Larger companies abuse take advantage of the 10 day grace period to remove you from their list
• In some cases it’s completely impossible to stop promotional emails (I like you ClickZ and iEntry but looking in your direction here)

This is absolutely an experiment I recommend that you take part in I can definitely say it’s been pretty successful and a huge win for me as I am usually waking up to 25 or less new email messages in the morning. The first weeks are definitely the hardest, and it’s probably going to take you longer than 30 days, but the rewards will give you more time to get things done in the future.

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My Email Inbox Reduction Experiment

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So those are my three skinit.com customized computers. The middle Yoda one is a Tablet PC, it’s a little old, slow and very heavy, mostly my wife and kids use it. The Battlestar Galactica one is my main laptop It’s got a big enough screen, decent memory and pretty fast, it also cost about $800 half of what the tablet PC cost. The Star Trek is my ASUS 1000 HE I use it when I travel or anywhere I don’t feel like lugging my big heavy laptop. Under real use I get about 7.5 hours of batter life … really.

So the stickers come from Skinit.com they have lots of different stock designs you can buy, but the Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek are custom designs. You upload the pictures tell it what computer and they do all the magic for you. You upload vacation pictures, pictures of your kids, your company logo anything you want. They cost about $30 – $50 and come in about a week. It’s a big sticker when you’re going to put it on have something you can smuch the airbubles out with I use a plastic wallper smoother. You can peel the sticker up and adjust it slightly. If you use a custom design it makes your laptop much more distinctive and less likely someone will steal it (if you see someone walking around with a Star Trek netbook at SMX let me know ). You can remove the sticker if you want it takes a little doing but is possible and doesn’t damage the laptop in any way.

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My Customized Laptops from Skinit.com

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The following is an open letter to Michael Arrington owner of  Techcrunch.com, you still have a chance to save Techcrunch before it’s too late.

Quantity Over Quality

Last friday May 8 I took a twitter poll to see how other people felt about Techcrunch, and whether it was just me who felt the overall quality had dropped, here are the results:

Sure it’s not scientifically accurate, and I don’t know whether you should consider 80 people a large enough cross section to be valid, but it’s hard to ignore that almost 75% of the people polled felt it was getting worse, so bad in fact that 26% no longer read Techcrunch on a regular basis. In fact the quality has gotten so bad that this weekend you had to do some public damage control to address people’s dissatisfaction. But let’s take a deeper look at some of the underlying factors.

Here’s a screen shot from my RSS reader this past thursday:

You published 23 stories to the main Techcrunch feed, 23 STORIES!!! I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many people who have the time to read 23 stories from one blog in a day, and there’s just no way you could push out 23 high quality stories in that period of time, it’s just impossible. Here’s the rub, 23 is pretty low for a weekday, look at the graph of how many stories get published to the Techcrunch feed, 40+ is pretty average on some days it even hits 80 stories:

See the orange lines, that how many stories I’m actually reading, if I’m spending more time marking stories read, than actually reading them, we’ve got a real problem. But let’s dig even deeper into those 23 stories …

Of those 23 stories 3 of them aren’t even from Techcrunch!
Interview: James Weatherson, Red Inflight Entertainment Engineer on Virgin America
Video Review: SuperSmoker Blue
Stupeflix releases awesome API to generate 1,000s of videos on the fly

Three is a low number on some days it’s 6, 8 or even 10 stories. I never asked for those stories, I don’t subscribe to Crunchgear or TechCrunch UK and quite frankly I don’t want to read them. However over at Techcrunch the editors are worse than a minimum wage McDonalds drive through clerk who decides “I really did want fries with that” and gives them to me without even asking. Listen I understand we’re in a recession and ad revenue and page views are down, and I understand that you’re trying to grow an new ad network, but force feeding me content I don’t want and never asked for isn’t the answer … really

Blogging Hypocrites

photo credit: Yodel Anecdotal

Sarah Lacy

Last week Sarah Lacy wrote a post entitled “News Flash: Paying for Coverage Is Still Taboo“, where she called out someone for pitching her about “pay per post”. Sarah’s position on the matter is, and I quote:

“I’m sorry, I still consider paying for coverage incredibly controversial and, for a reporter, unethical. Can you explain to me what has changed about this issue?”

Really you consider paying for coverage unethical? So Sarah Lacy you consider people who participate in the pay per post program and get $5, $10, $15 a post unethical, how do you feel about people who take sponsored trips across the globe, staying in hotels and getting free meals, in exchange for coverage? Know anyone like that? Let me jog your memory with this little video below …

Click here to view the embedded video.

I know 11 months is a long time in internet years, but last April you and some other bloggers like Robert Scoble went on a sponsored trip to Israel, see you blogged about it. I guess Silicon Valley operates under a different set of rules. I’ll let you in on a little secret  Sarah, to the rest of the world that is sponsored coverage, even congress has figured out it’s unethical for them to take sponsored trips. The fact that it’s OK for you take trips costing thousands of dollars for coverage, but not everyone else, makes you look like a big fat liar or hypocrite, take your choice.

I know you probably consider it good PR and it goes on all the time, but in a Google world, that’s a paid link, and you normally you would expect a Google penalty for it … except well that’s not how it always works, Google has two sets of standards and won’t actually ding high profile bloggers.

Censorship and Croneyism

I understand when you run a blog as popular as techcrunch you’re going to attract your share of haters, but the selective censoring of comments on your blog is a joke and has to stop. I understand you aren’t under the impression that I have some free speech right or anything, and hey that’s cool, but the way that most of the comments you allow agree with you is lame.  See you had a post about the truly awesome Robert Scoble showing his creative genius by naming his new project after a building at google, I commented on it and you deleted or censored it. Strong accusation isn’t it, but guess what I’ve got the proof, see backtype scanned and indexed it before you did the deed, see for yourself.

I get that moderating comments is a PIA and it’s getting worse with the trolls and haters, but if it sucks that much, turn them off, it’s what I did, only approving the one’s who agree with you is really bad mojo.

Save Techcrunch Before it’s too Late

This post isn’t a smackdown or a callout, it’s more of an intervention to try and help you save techcrunch before it’s too late. See like Tony Bourdain I’m a quintessential New Yorker. I’m cynical and sarcastic, I don’t like most people, I don’t think most people “are great” the way you hear them described at a party before you meet them. I think the world would be a better place if Obama nominated Judge Judy to fill the Supreme Court position that’s opening up, like I said I’m from New York. I know a lot of people from California misinterpret this cynicism as hatred, but really it’s not. Some people have figured out that  sarcasm is actually a compliment. I’m a firm believer that your real friends are the ones who will take the time to call you out when you’re doing something wrong. The problem is of course your friends won’t do that because they don’t want to piss you off. They’re afraid you’ll give them negative coverage while they wait around for another round of VC money or for a Google buyout, so that leaves me to do the dirty work.

I’ve been trying to tell you this on twitter except you blocked me there, I’ve left you comments, but you censor them, I’d have written you an email but I doubt you’d read it. so please Michael Arrington stop, look around, fix what’s broken, and save Techcrunch before it’s too late. If you’d like to talk more offline, that’s fine we have a few mutual friends who know how to connect us.

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Dear Michael Arrington Please Save Techcrunch Before it’s Too Late

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The following is a video from Philip Rosedale of Second Life speaking at TED. From a search engine and information retrieval perspective the video get interesting at about minute 9:00 . He poses the thought that things are going to change that the text web will eventually be replaced by imagery and symbology in virtual worlds. Also interesting is his example of how the web is devoid of social interaction in shopping and e-commerce environments.

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Philip Rosedale From Second Life on Information Retrieval

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Blogging’s been a little lighter than usual the past few weeks as I was getting caught up, but now that my heads back above water, the regular blogging should kick back in.

Also by special arrangement I’ll be blogging weekly-ish over on DIR Journals you can check out my first post Tips for Optimizing for Universal Search: Video. Also you can read Using Social Media as a Sales Channel by Shana Albert, and SEM for Mom and Pop: Turning Big Challenges into Golden Opportunities by Melanie Nathan. Barry Welford is also on board none of hos posts have published yet though, but stay tuned they are coming I promise.

Also I’ll be starting a monthly column on Search Engine Land, although my boss already yelled at me cause I got the date for my first deadline wrong, but I’m on it now I promise.

I’ve also got a guest post in the works for John Coronella on his blog Online Marketer

Regular blogging will be resuming on Viral Conversations next week as well.

I’ve also got a few other guest blog post coming up I can’t reveal just yet, but will when they are published.

If you’ve got a blog with over 250 subscribers and would like a guest post, use any of the email addresses on the contact form and get in touch, we’ll see if we can work out a deal.

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So Where Have I Been and What Have I Been Up To

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So last night I was chatting with Rae about Partnering for Profits program on Copyblogger. I paid signed up and downloaded my PDF copy. I sent myself a copy of the PDF by email so I could read it on my iPhone. When I did I encountered a problem I see with a lot of other products so I thought I’d share.

The PDF is printed in a serif font (fonts with little thingys hanging off them) at the end. This is a carryover from print days when newspapers like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal used them. However they are really bad for usability/readability on the web. For web based material you are much better off using a clean sans-serif font like Arial or Verdana. Think I’m being a baby take a look at the screen shots below and tell me which you find more readable.

#1) serif font in a PDF
#2) sans serif font in a PDF
#3) PDF converted to a web page in instapaper with user selected sans serif font

IMHO #1 is unreadable. Maybe for an email or single page but at 150+ pages, never going to happen. #2 is better and I could power through it. However #3 which removes the content from the context and lets the user choose the font size and style has the highest usability.

I don’t know that the authors ever considered I’d be reading it on a iPhone, but as smart phones become more ubiquitous it’s going to happen. Maybe I want to read a chapter while I’m waiting for my kids in karate class, or maybe other people will take their blackberry into the bathroom to read, or maybe someone will want to read the PDF they bought on a plane to a conference. The takeaway here is make it easy to consume your content, consider things like formatting, and font selection, allow some fexibility or wiggle room when you sell or distribute your product.

epilogue:
for people who want to convert things here’s how, use foxit to save your PDF as a text file, import it into your document editor of choice (I use google docs). Save it as a PDF or export it as an HTML. Upload the file and use Instapaper to pull it in, make sure you pull it in locally on your device then delete it.

Is taking someone’s copyrighted document and publishing it a copyright violation, technically, I’m sure it is. Putting it up temporariliy on a secret URL feeding it to instapaper and then pulling it down, IMHO follows the spirit of the law, but not the letter. I didn’t give it to anyone I just converted the it to a preferred format. Giving it away to other people IS breaking the law, and just bad mojo.

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Why Font Selection and Usability Matter on Your Product

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Earlier this week I made a post about Guy Kawasaki, and in retrospect it wasn’t the best course to take, and I’d like to apologize. My intent wasn’t to damage his reputation, because he is an author and speaker I like and respect. My intent for the post was to put Google on the spot for their paid link policy and bring the issue in front of a wider audience.

To be clear the decision to change the title of the post and re-order the content with Guys explanation first was my own. No one threatened me, no one had their lawyers send nastygrams to me, no black helicopters or any of that.

People make mistakes, sometimes really bone-headed stupid ones, in incredibly public places. It’s not the first one I’ve made and I doubt it will be the last, but hopefully I realize when I do make one and try to fix it.

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Apology to Guy Kawasaki

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If you’re here looking for the Flyclear discount code it’s below just copy and paste it into your application and you’ll get an extra month for free. If you want to learn more about the FlyClear program, keep reading below …

DSCAM12013314

Since I travel to about 8-10 SEO shows a year now, and have handful of on site client meetings, I’m actually spending more and more time in the air and in airports. FlyClear is program that allows you to register your biometric information (fingerprints and retina scans) and have a background check done on yourself to prove to the airlines that you aren’t a security risk. Once you are approved you get to go on a special line, which almost always has no wait, and bypass the sometimes lengthy standard security line (just like a disney fastpass but at the airport). When you get to the flyclear security station you need to present your clear card and have your biometric information rescanned and verified (in my case it’s my two index fingers but it could have been my iris).

Flyclear currently costs $128 a year, so if you spend any significant amount of time traveling through airports its probably worth it. You should also check which airports you are in the most and see if they have  Flyclear stations in them, in my case it’s JFK (NY), Los Angeles (LAX) , San Jose (SJC) … and oh yeah Orlando (MCO) the closest airport to Disney World! I really wish they would add one to in Las Vegas that security line is brutal sometimes.

When you apply for enrollment on the Flyclear Website they do ask quite a few questions. After you complete it you still need to go to a flyclear center to have your biometric info scanned. You then have to wait about 2 weeks before you get your card and can go through the flyclear lane. Let me repeat that to be clear, you cant show up at the airport and expect to cut the line unless you have already had your biometric information scanned and have a clear card in hand, yes really.

So what’s in it for me and why should you use my flyclear discount code? if you sign up with my code we both get 1 month added to our yearly enrollment. You get one month free and I get one month free … everybody wins!

So if you spend a lot of time in airports and they have a flyclear line (more are being added all the time) you can save yourself some time by enrolling in the Flyclear Program and you can get an extra month free if you use the flyclear discount code listed below:

DSCAM12013314

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FlyClear Discount Code

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I’m going to be doing some real time experiments on Google tomorrow, if you’d like to participate be sure to follow me on twitter and retweet the messages … lets see what happens shall we

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Conducting a Real Time Google Experiment on 7/30/2008

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Earlier this week we had our IMNY monthly meet-up and our member Dani Horowitz was nice enough to host the event at her bowling alley Dani’s Strike Zone in Elmont NY. I have to say for bowling alley the place was pretty cool. Nice and clean, good food, and a huge party room. So big thanks to Dani for hosting a great night. You can also check out Dani’s website IT Discussion Community for Developers & Technology Enthusiasts.

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IMNY Party Dani’s Strike Zone

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