Archive for August, 2005

Well, it’s happened. I’m backlogged. Grind time. Sometimes you have to just put the phone on voice mail and crank through the promises you’ve made. My clients are great, not one has been upset at the tough week. But my voice mail ran out of space again, and that’s gotta be annoying to hear “voice mail unavailable.”

I have also fixed up my fax system. I was depending on handshakes from other machines to switch to faxes, but have now added a new line. Starting Tuesday they should flow through 100% of the time from any fax machine in the world now. I’ll publish the new number as soon as it’s confirmed.

The Webtrends Enterprise test with Ecometry is going pretty well. I have accurate page names showing in flow funnels and the data all looks about right. The next phase is to get it to feed the subtotal data (ecommerce) into the tags the way WT demands. Kevin Pahl has been very helpful in arranging me to talk to developers within the organization to get things done. He also managed to turn up the volume of data refreshes so I could test my work more quickly. Kudos.

I’m thinking about the new GoToMyMeeting service. I am constantly in the need for screen share and presentations, and this may be the thing. But when to have time to run a test. Aggghhh.

This service outperforms Yugma in a big way. I tried using Yugma for months. It’s awful.

Click to check it out.

What a great weekend. Spent lots of time on the porch writing about blogging for the new BizLex article. It’s hard to write about blogging - I mean it’s hard to write about something changing so fast. You know that as soon as you’re published, it’s old - done, passe. I just hope I have written so that readers understand that it’s not the current form of the blog that matters, but the concept of democratic self-publishing.

A nice steady rain forms the backdrop now. Writing sure focuses me. I can say that while gathering information for articles I learn more than just about any other time during the week.

I’m still not sure how it will pan out for blogging. But it isn’t really the blogging that we need to pay attention to - it’s the fact that customers are firmly in control.

This has been one of the busiest weeks I can remember… almost no time to write. It seems that there is so much overhead required to run a company, even if you’re doing nothing bug “being” a company! Well, my clients have been amazingly understanding. I’m back on my feet and making excellent progress on some of the projects that were behind.

I’m writing about blogging - and have always said I’d wait until I truly had a handle on it before I ever really started doing it. I’m doing tons of lurking - watching, learning. I’m a believer listening first. Well the article will be in next month’s Business Lexington. I’m hoping it will turn out well.

I’m trying to make the connection between social networks, six degrees of separation, and blogging. It just seems to complex for this magazine, so I’m getting back to the basics.

I love, really love, web analytics. I live and breath it. In fact, I show some signs of being addicted to learning more about the why’s of web user patterns, deeper, more more. Why upon why upon why.

So I was totally absorbed by Malcom Gladwell’s latest book, Blink. I finished it in a single day. I’m not here to write a review - but let me say the book has really made a difference.

In this book, Gladwell discusses at length, and with great skill, the power of rapid cognition. Thinking without thinking, he calls it. Gut reactions. First impressions. Stuff like that. He also talks about the dangers of getting too much information when only a bit will do.

I think that in the web marketing world, we must think hard about some of his lessons. While I’m tempted to peel apart every layer of analytics put out by the tools, I am going to be careful. My gut reaction to a web business idea is almost always right - and that is what I’m selling. I’m not selling data - I’m selling the skill of knowing.