Christian Moist: eCommerce, Search Marketing and MCM Electronics

Time for Change!

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:49:00 +0000

For a long time, I was proud of the fact that I was using Blogger as a blogging platform. I thought it was challenging and fun to invent ways to hack and get around many of the challenges associated with hosting my own Blogger blog and using the non-xml old style version. I associated it with driving a vintage car. There was something cool about not moving to the latest and greatest, but instead sticking with retro for retro's sake. Blogger is the ratty old Chevy that, with some love can be made into something that will turn heads and function pretty well, but not without a lot of work.

Additionally, I was able to convince myself that WordPress or another CMS was too robust for what I needed and had doubts about integrating the rest of my site into a CMS.

That's all changed. Shortly (how dare I commit to a specific date), I will be making the move to WordPress. There is too much support, too many features (for both you ans I) and too many good things going for it to not make the move. To boot, everyone else is using it. True, it's terrible to be a follower, but there is strength in numbers, and strength in knowledge. Nine of ten design firms I speak with prefer WordPress. While you need to know XHTML and CSS to do web work...its seeming like knowing WordPress doesn't hurt either.

Blogger, so long. WordPress, here I come.

*Sorry for using "I" ten times above. This blog isn't just for me. It's for others as well. "I" promise to not let that become a habit. :)

MailChimp - Now With More Context!

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:46:00 +0000

A bit ago, MailChimp came out with another revision to their site. Their revisions are always great and they're always taking steps forward. Past revisions offered better interfaces for creating emails; things like a fancy WYSIWYG editor, etc. Mostly pre-campaign features.

This revision seemed to focus more on the analytics end of things; the post-campaign features. They now feature a much enhanced analytics package with tons of my favorite thing; context!

Check out the screen shot above that calls out a few of the areas they present very well. Not only does MailChimp compare your current campaigns performance to your account average, it also compares it to your industry average based on other like accounts they manage. I think this is wonderful, as stand-alone numbers are fun, but without knowing how these numbers compare to some other relevant numbers, no measurement can be made, and no action can be taken. They even go as far as to put it in MailChip terms in the green box at the bottom of the screen shot.

Other features they provide which provide context are the ability to see a domain performance report compare opens by location with an interactive flash map.

Good job, MailChimp. Keep up the good work!

Fancy Blogger Calendar Date

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:27:00 +0000

There is a lot of talk about creating cool funky calendar style dates for blog posts like the one one this site. Most of them are centered around WordPress, as it's built in PHP, and is easier to manipulate.

Fortunately, the original Blogger allows users to publish files in php as well as html. As such, creating the calendar date thing is pretty straight forward in Blogger, when publishing in php.

Initially, Blogger outputs the date as a string like this:

Mar 9, 2009

After a bit of planning, we decide we want the month at the top, the day in the center, then the year offset at the bottom. We should be able to do this with four divs (or any block level elements, for that matter); one container div and one for the day, month and year. The container div will house a background image and the inner divs will have margins placing the data exactly where we want them.

Going to Photoshop, we design something like this:

You can see that the divs are laid out for each of the bits of data. From this, we can measure exactly how much margin we need and where.

Now lets lay out what we want the HTML to look like:

<div class="date-block">
<div class="date-m">jan</div>
<div class="date-d">21</div>
<div class="date-y">09</div>
</div>

Next, let's create the css to style our HTML above:

.date-block {
background: transparent url('../images/calendar.gif')
 no-repeat scroll top right;
display: block;
float: left;
font: normal 900 10px Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
height: 59px;
margin: 25px 0 5px 0;
text-align: center;
width: 54px;
}

.date-block .date-m {
color: #FFF;
display: block;
line-height: 10px;
margin: 6px auto 2px auto;
padding: 0;
text-align: center;
text-transform: uppercase;
}

.date-block .date-d {
display: block;
font-size: 26px;
font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
line-height: 18px;
margin: 7px auto 0 auto;
padding: 0;
text-align: center;
}

.date-block .date-y {
color: #FFF;
display: block;
font-size: 9px;
font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
line-height: 9px;
margin: 4px auto 0 32px;
padding: 0;
text-align: center;
}

Lastly, we need to create a function that we can call in the Blogger template to turn the standard date into our new fancy calendar date. The function will look like the following, which you can place in an included file, or directly in the Blogger template:

function prettyDate($date) {
list($month, $day, $year) = explode(" ", $date);
$day = str_replace(",", "", $day);
$year = substr($year, 2, 4);
echo "<div class=\"date-block\">";
echo "<div class=\"date-m\">" . $month . "</div>";
echo "<div class=\"date-d\">" . $day . "</div>";
echo "<div class=\"date-y\">'" . $year . "</div>";
echo "</div>";
}

Breaking it down, we are going to split up the original date by exploding them by the space character, which will give us:

$month = "Mar";
$day = "9,";
$year = "2009";

Notice that there is still a comma after the day, so we replace ',' with nothing. Additionally, we turn the four digit year into a two digit year by grabbing the substring of the year, starting at the second digit and grabbing the following two digits, which will return '09'. At this point, we simply print out the HTML containing the variables $month, $day and $year.

Lastly, in our Blogger template, call the function and pass the original date to it:

<?php prettyDate("Mar 9, 2009"); ?>

The function will run when the page loads. This example assumes a couple of things. You have included a functions file with the above function in it. You have placed the CSS in an included CSS file, or directly in the Blogger template. You are running on a server that has PHP installed. Enjoy!

Reasons I Think it's Still Wise to Know Javascript

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:59:00 +0000

With libraries out there like jQuery and MooTools, the need for a front end developer to know Javascript is lessening. jQuery's selector and simple method based context makes it easy for those who have no coding experience to jump right in and hang with those who do. There are, however, some instances, in my opinion, that knowing Javascript can be very handy.

Adobe Extendedscript Toolkit

This IDE allows an Adobe user to write all sizes of scripts to automate tasks in all of its programs. Automate image resizing and directory creation. Employ conditional logic to an action. Target multiple Adobe applications with one script. Do all of this and more with the Adobe Extendedscript Toolkit. What language are these scripts written in? You guessed it. The primary language is Javascript. Optionally, use VBScript or AppleScript. Of what value is this to a front end web developer? A user could write a script to open a site mockup, chop into slices, save them all and close the document, all in the blink of an eye. Photoshop 7.xx users can download the extension. (This tool comes with any CS editions)

UltraEdit

UltraEdit is my favorite text editor. It's lightweight, easy to use and very customizable. The latest version incorporates scripts that can be written and called with hotkeys, or by referencing the menu. Much like the Extendedscript Toolkit above, these scripts are written in Javascript and can make automation or repetitive tasks very simple. Need to print an HTML snippet? Use a script. Need to tag all of the files in a directory with your 'copyright comment'? Use a script. Write a script to find all special characters in some text and replace them with their respective hex codes. These were just a few instances where I use Javascript in applications other than web development.

SlurpConfirm404

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 01:19:00 +0000

Like many other site owners out there, I've got created a smart 404 error page that emails me when a user arrives on said page. This enables me to identify common problems that I can fix. (For example, I've moved my blog from cmoist.com/ to cmoist.com/blog/, so I still get a lot of visitors to these now defunct URLs) Anyhow, after sorting out some of the more common problems, I started seeing pages come through that looked nothing like any URL I've ever hosted. All of them looked something like "SlurpConfirm404/PhD7Cameron/melanson.htm".

After a bit of research, it appears that this is the Yahoo! slurp crawler. The purpose of this crawler is to ensure sites have a proper 404 error page in place. Yahoo creates a URL consisting of random words that it appends to the end of your domain, then crawls.

Read Yahoo!'s explanation for what exactly the purpose of this crawler is.

Guide to SEO for eCommerce Sites - Part 1, Product Pages and Title Tags

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:13:00 +0000

Over the past year or so, we've taken large strides at MCM to optimize our site for search engine optimization. I'd like to share some of the steps we've gone through to get to where we are today. Obviously, optimizing for an ecommerce site is a bit different than optimizing for a blog, but there are a lot of similarities. Each week, I'll cover a different portion of this process.

Most of the work we did focused on our product detail pages, as our primary goal was to get better coverage of our site and increase our indexed page count. We have something like 250 thousand product pages and a fraction of that number make up the rest of the site. Because our product detail page is technically only one page of code and affects hundreds of thousands of pages, it's the best "bang for the buck", so to speak.

I think its important to point out that there are several elements that comprise a search result, and that they all come from different places on your page. There is the title, the body and the destination url. These are all important in their own ways.

The first item on our product page that we addressed was probably the most important item; the title tag. This populates the title of a search result. We originally had something like this:

<title>MCM Electronics | 58-10665 - 12 Ft DVI-D 
Home Theater Cable</title>

So there are a few problems with this. Initially, when browsing search results, your store brand is pretty much irrelevant. Sure, brand will play a small part in whether or not a searcher clicks on your result, but a relevant page title will go a lot farther towards getting a click. If you do your job and actually show relevant data in the title, people will notice your result, then see your brand in the url line below, or once they click through and visit your site.

Thinking like a potential customer who is searching, lets define what terms they are likely to search. Using the example from above, which is a Monster Cable cable, by the way, the searcher may search for "Monster Cable". They may search for "DVI400-4M", Monster's part number. They may search for "DVI-D cable". Out of all of this, the only bit in our original title was "DVI-D cable"; no manufacturer info at all. The truth is, when dealing with branded products, there are only a few bits that are universal; the manufacturer part number, upc and a few other identifiers. Therefore, it's more relevant to put these important bits in the title. MCM's sku is pretty much worthless unless someone knows they want a 58-10665 from MCM Electronics, but chances are, if they know that much, they will be visiting our site directly and not through a search engine. Hence, there is no real point in including MCM's proprietary sku in the title.

Putting all of the above together, we reach the conclusion that we want to include the manufacturer part number and the best title or description of the product we can come up with. Additionally, many people will search for the manufacturer name in conjunction with the manufacturer part number. Combining these two fields in a search query is a sure-fire way to get relevant data, and will rule out the possiblity to get results for a "DVI400-4M" from some other company, should they have the same term in their title. Now we have something like this:

<title>12 Ft DVI-D Home Theater Cable | 
Monster Cable | DVI400-4M</title>

This is far more relevant than what we first started with. It combines three model specific attributes that searches will be searching for, if they are searching for this product.

It's important to remember that search engines have limits to number of characters they display. Google limits their titles to 66 characters, including spaces. If your title is longer than that, it will get cut off and Google will display a '...' at the end of the line. You can do some coding behind the scenes to cut your long title down to size, or simply let Google do the work for you.

Next week we'll discuss META tags.

Driving Traffic - Free Before Fee

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:41:00 +0000

Recently, a coworker and I discussed having a friendly competition to see who could drive more traffic to their blog. We are both starting from scratch, essentially, with low, low traffic. Both of us are in marketing, but in different areas. It would be interesting to see what avenues we both took to get to the same destination. It seems like this competition won't be happening, but the question still remains. What is the best way to drive traffic to a blog, or any site, for that matter?

Obviously, content is king, but even if you have a site filled with awesome content, the word still needs to get out. Without visitors, page rank won't increase and without page rank, visitors won't appear. It seems like a real chicken-or-the-egg predicament. This is why it's crucial to take the initiative to drive traffic yourself; not waiting on your favorite search engine to do all the heavy lifting for you.

With ecomm sites, or sites that may show a return, either by sales or by turning traffic into revenue with AdSense, spending money to get traffic is warranted. Chances are, at some point, you will see the investment return. But what happens when you just want traffic for the sake of getting traffic? Maybe revenue isn't the ultimate goal, but promoting/networking yourself is. Yes, one should put a value on promoting/networking them self, but if traffic can be had for little investment, wouldn't that be better?

Create a Foundation

First thing's first. Submit your site map to Google and every other search engine you desire. They should have tools available for you to submit a site map. Google uses 'webmaster tools'. Additionally, optimize your site for search engines. Learn about meta tags and keywords, then put it all into place.

Socialize

There are several ways of attaining free traffic. Posting your site on social networking sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us and Twitter are all free, and can provide traffic. Don't forget your Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn profiles. The larger the friend list, the more possibility there is of recruiting traffic.

Network

Do your part to be an ambassador for your site. Learn and live your site. Is it about electronics? Join and contribute to electronics forums. Add valuable content by discussing relevant topics with others in the community. Place a link to your site in your signature (if allowed), or reference your site in discussions. In addition, guest blog on other's sites, or have others guest blog on your site. Generally, this will include a link back to your site, which will increase the user base for both parties.

Engage your Readers

Now more than ever, the internet is a community. As a site owner, embrace your site's visitors. Ask questions. Task them with writing product reviews. Create polls. Throw competitions. Create email lists and RSS feeds. Make them feel like a part of your site, not just a inconspicuous passer by. Users should feel as if they have invested in the site; given time to the site and added value to the site.

All of the above solutions are free and are by no means the complete solution to out-trafficking all of your friends, but are a good start before getting into paid advertising. How do you plan to out-traffic your competition?

Five HTML Tags You May Not Know About

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:25:00 +0000

Being a self taught front-end web guy, there are occasions when I come across an HTML tag that, well, I hadn't heard of. Some of these are more useful than others; there are tags that I could probably go without knowing for the rest of my career and there are a few that I can't imagine doing without.

<pre> (text, inline)

Before I started to blog with the need to show highlighted pre, I had no clue that this tag existed. Use it to specify any type of pre. By default, most browsers will print this in the ugliest font they can find.

<ins> & <del> (text, inline)

Surely the insert and delete tags go back to the beginning of our beloved markup language, as they seem to be best used when using HTML as a word processing language, not necessarily the rich interfaces that are so common today. Obviously, they signify inserted and deleted text. The ins and del tags have two optional attributes; cite and datetime. Cite should specify the location (as a URI) of an explanation of why the insertion was made, while datetime should state the date and time of the change. By default <ins> underlines the text within it and <del> strikes through the text within it.

<caption> (table, block)

Used inside table tags, the caption tag is to be used only once and must appear right after the opening table tag. It's meant to describe the contents of the table and by default displays above the table. Style this element to get the most out of it.

<base> (link, inline)

Defines a base location for links on a page. This can come in handy if every link on your page will have a base link of something different that your base domain.

If you are just getting into HTML, or even if you have been doing it for a while, it may be worth taking a look at the W3C to see if there is anything you just haven't had a use for yet. Chances are, something may come in handy that you were not previously aware of. Additionally, getting to know all of the HTML elements will greatly improve (and simplify) the pre you write.

Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:51:00 +0000

Recently, a new feature was implemented to all of my Google Analytics accounts. Advanced Segmenting is still in the beta stage, but it's there, none-the-less, thanks in part to Googles analytics evangelist, Avinash Kaushik. Out of the box, Advanced Segmenting supplies several 'standard' segments, including new and returning visitors, paid and non-paid visitors, search, referral and direct traffic, as well as traffic with conversions. These are great to get you started, but the option is also available to create your own segment, which is where the fun begins.

I've found it handy to do things like divide paid traffic into specific channels, such as paid keywords and CSE traffic, using referral path as a dimension. This seems to work well, as these sites normally wouldn't send traffic to my sites, unless I've hired them to do so. Another idea is correlating specific dimensions to site goals.

The drag and drop Advanced Segment Creator is very simple to use. You're able to select from many dimensions and many metrics and use 'and' and 'or' logic.

Google slates this addition as an "enterprise-class feature". I tend to agree and think that steps like this will bring Google closer and closer to solutions like Omniture. Go Google!

AdWords:Seminars for Success in Columbus

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:42:00 +0000

About a week ago, I attended Sitening's AdWords:Seminars for Success in Columbus. These are full day, in person seminars that are devoted purely to, well, Google AdWords. Currently, they offer two different seminars; AdWords 101 and AdWords 102, which are ticketed as beginner and intermediate, respectively. Although I've been using AdWords pretty heavily over the past five months, I thought it best to attend both seminars, just in case there may be some valuable basics that I missed out on.

During day one, Anastasia Holdren talked mainly about how AdWords works, starting your own AdWords account and different features associated with AdWords. This was great for those who were new to paid advertising, of which there were several. In addition to paid advertising, the seminar focused a decent amount on SEO, which in reality, needs to go hand in hand with an SEM effort. Day one also focused on conversion tracking, developing quality keyword lists and the Google network.

Day one wrapped up with an hour of Q and A with Stasia and the group. It's always neat to talk to others in different industries about how they are using AdWords, structuring accounts and what kind of results they are seeing.

After a short trip to my hotel, a $5 foot long (which quickly turns into a $10 foot long when you opt for double meat and cheese), some family guy and a catch up session on email, I was off to sleep.

I was excited about day two. I had high hopes of learning more advanced AdWords trickery. While we covered some more basic topics: AdWords Editor, location and demographic targeting, dynamic keyword insertion and basic KPIs, there were a few things that I really found helpful. We talked a bit about MCCs (My Client Centers), which I knew a bit about, but didn't know all the details. Also, we discussed all the different types of ads that Google now offers. Of course, text and image ads are common, but Google is also providing an avenue for creating radio, print and TV ads, all through your AdWords account! As a company, we are always looking for ways to make things easier on systems and employees..this is a great example of how Google is on the same page.

Speaking of making things easier, the AdWords API was also brought up. Although it isn't free (and requires you have an MCC), this can be a great way for your backend system to communicate with AdWords, automating tasks like bid management and creating keywords for new products. There were a few programmers there that were using this functionality to the fullest.

The classes are $250 each, come with a bit of Google swag as well as a $50 AdWords credit. For more information, visit http://sitening.com/google-adwords/. If you hurry, you may be able to get in on the Hawaii seminar!

HTML email design shouldnt be difficult!

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:56:00 +0000

Up until six months ago or so, I was responsible for MCM's email marketing effort. We sent HTML and text emails to our opted-in users about once a week.

Before I took this task on, I thought designing web pages for all the different browsers out there was difficult. It turned out that designing HTML emails was worse. There are a lot more email clients than browsers, and all of them seem to have their own rules and quirks. Of course, there are guidelines out there to work around all of these. (I'd recommend giving MailChimp a visit for lots of good info)

After I had moved on from creating our email promotions, I came across the "Email Standards Project". This ~~website~~ movement aims to "work with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email". Sweet.

In addition to bringing fed-up designers together, the site uses it's version of an acid test to rate the state of all major email clients, from excellent to poor and gives full reports to boot. I'd recommend stopping by this site, saying hey, bloging or linking to it and spreading the word.

Here's to better web standards support in email clients!

Vector Magic: Convert Raster Images to Vector Images

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:28:00 +0000

The other day at work, one of our temps was tracing an image in Illustrator to 'vectorize' it. I recommended using Vector Magic. I then sat and reminisced about college and the days of Adobe Streamline. Anyhow, Vector Magic takes your raster image and converts it to a vector image. There are several steps during the process that let you fine tune what your result will look like, from smoothing to number of output colors.

The advantage of turning a raster image into a vector image is that vector art is infinitely resizable. You'll never lose resolution. Last time I checked, Vector Magic offers a couple of free uses of the tool for free. Charges after that are minimal, especially since one could spend 15-20 minutes tracing an image in Illustrator, when you could run it through Vector Magic in a minute; a savings of 19 minutes...1/3 an hour's pay.

There is talk about Vector Magic being purchasable in the future as a desktop application. I'm looking forward to it.

New Addition to the Family!

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:58:00 +0000

Well, a day after my last post, my wife gave birth to our first child. Claire Isabelle was 7lbs 7oz and 20in long. Needless to say, everything has taken a back seat to the new addition. Since it's been a month, I'll try to get back on schedule with updating the blog more often. I've got some neat stuff I've worked on over the month, so look for it soon.

Smarter Web Design with CSS Buttons

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:28:00 +0000

Up until about six months ago, I always preferred to make all of my buttons in Photoshop. (You'll notice this on mcmelectronics.com)I was able to get them to look exactly how I wanted them to; no variations in size or of the font.

Recently, with a little inspiration, I decided to go ahead and take a stab at recreating the buttons that we use on our main site. Once complete, this will mean that I don't have to create 50+ buttons for each site we do, and our front end guys don't have to wait for me to build new buttons when needed, they will have the styles needed at hand. Sure, it wont be identical to the PS version, but it will be close.

Here is a sample button from a step in the checkout process.

So, the first thing I did was to go to my original .psd and created images to use for the left and right sides of my button, similarly to the tutorials over at dynamicdrive.com.

Tips: Make sure to make the right side of your image long enough to cover any phrase that will be used (and then some). Save them as gifs with transparent backgrounds, or pngs so that they can be used on any background.

Now that we have the images ready and saved, lets start in on the CSS.

/***********************************************************
Author: Christian Moist, May 21, 2008
Bits For Regular Buttons
***********************************************************/

a.grnbutton{
background: transparent url('roundedge-grn-left.gif')
 no-repeat top left;
display: block;
float: left;
font: 900 11px Arial;
line-height: 14px;
height: 20px;
padding-left: 6px;
text-decoration: none;
color: #FFFFFF;
text-transform: uppercase;
}

a.grnbutton span{
background: transparent url('roundedge-grn-right.gif')
 no-repeat top right;
display: block;
padding: 3px 8px 3px 3px;
color: #FFFFFF;
}

Now to create the HTML. Essentially we are going to create a regular link and give it a class of 'grnbutton', but by looking at the code above, this will only give you the left half of the image we created earlier. To bring in the right half, we need to add <span> tags around the content of the word.

In all the HTML should look something like this.

<a href="#" class="grnbutton"><span>Continue</span></a>

Notice it doesn't matter if the word 'continue' is uppercase, lowercase, or a combination of the two because we have 'text-transform: uppercase;' in the CSS above.

If we try this out in a browser, we will get:

Continue.

There you have it. This has been tested in IE7 and FF, and should work in other major browsers without a problem. Next, I'll talk about creating input buttons to match.

How efficient are you?

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:56:00 +0000

I found out about RescueTime about a week ago from one of the blogs I came across (If I remember the name, I'll update), so I thought I'd give it a shot yesterday. RescueTime is a program that keeps track of your productivity at work or home and it's FREE!

It works like this. Visit RescueTime.com, create an account and download the software, then install it on your computer. They will have you test your connection to verify you can indeed communicate with them. Once connected, RescueTime will begin to pay attention to the programs you use.

After a bit, RescueTime populates cool flash charts on your dashboard. Label or tag programs that it sees you have been using with keywords like 'work', 'personal', 'development' or 'coding' to enhance the program's ability to track and categorize your work for the day. Add a weight to each tag to communicate how productive each is (from -2 for personal email to +2 for hardcore development). Once all of this data is populated, the results get very interesting and eye opening. Each time you use a new program that RescueTime has not seen, you will have the opportunity to tag it.

RescueTime allows users to set goals as well. For example, one of my goals is to work more than 6 hours a day, while keeping non work activities under an hour. So far so good.

All this being said, you must be honest with yourself and the program in order to get honest results. You could weight every keyword to the maximum value and look like a hero, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of using the program. To ensure you get valid tracking for say, work only, RescueTime allows itself to suspend tracking for lunch or playing on your laptop at home.

As stated above, the program is free for individual users, but costs for businesses and groups. I recommend giving it a shot if you are interested in improving performance at work.

RSS and Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:22:00 +0000

RSS isn't anything new. It's been around for some time now and by all means, an RSS reader can be a very useful tool. In fact I've done 'lunch and learns' to educate others about RSS, what it is, what it can do and how it can help you.

The premise is this. RSS is an XML feed that is produced dynamically (typically) by your favorite site. You subscribe to this feed via your favorite RSS reader and the stories/news come to you. It's kind of like getting mail. You don't have to go out and get news from your favorite site each day; the news is spoonfed to you in a non fancy sort of way. You get updates as your favorite site's feed gets updated.

That being said, I get a bit tired of looking at the blandness of a typical RSS feed. Sure there are occasionally pics and some basic HTML in the feeds, but nothing is quite like taking in all the features (and ads, dare I say it) of an actual site or blog. As of right now, I subscribe to some 15 feeds (using FeedReader) and none of them implement any real marketing. I know...'real simple syndication', yada yada, but someone has to implement this eventually. It will be interesting to see what develops in the way of marketing with RSS feeds in the future.

Creating Fonts with Font Creator

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:14:00 +0000

Let me start off by saying I've worked pretty much exclusively on a computer since I left high school. As a result, my handwriting isn't what it used to be.

I was turned on to a good idea by a friend; create a font of my handwriting. They pointed me to FontCreator by the folks over at high-logic.com. A free trial last 30 days and is enough to get your hands dirty. Additionally, there is tons of support on the web about the steps involved in the process of creating a font. Now I'm able to simply type out my letter, fill in my form etc and print it out. The result is essentially the same as if I were to write it all out myself.

So here is a preview of my handwriting, for better or for worse.

If you actually find my handwriting legible and want to give it a try, download the .ttf file here.

Web Stat Tracker

noreply@blogger.com (Christian) — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:13:00 +0000

This is all for personal use...nothing to see here.

Date	Alexa Rank	Google Page Rank	Google Pages Indexed	Google Incoming Links
3/13/09	608,552	0	113	1