http://austinmash.com/blog The trials and tribulations of creating and promoting a brand new web site Tue, 06 Feb 2007 05:38:22 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en For those who like lists, here it is in the raw. Read what follows for the full spiel. 1. Profile yourself 2. Don’t be a loner 3. Befriend random strangers 4. Browse for likely friends 5. Find your friends in groups 6. Google for friends 7. Speak up 8. Approve away 9. Gossip in public 10. Broadcast yourself Bonus: Feeding ... http://austinmash.com/blog/10-ways-to-use-myspace-as-a-promotional-tool/ Wow, this blew me away! Today, I went to Google's blog search tool, typed in "ROT Rally", and there, at the very top, first on the list, was my blog entry! Who would have thought I'd somehow get top billing at Google? Yeah, it's a narrow ... http://austinmash.com/blog/at-the-top-of-google-search-results/ Summer has sailed past us. Perhaps for some, Summer was loud, proud, and full of crowd, chock-full of happenings and adventures, crammed with incidence and accomplishments as it splashed and danced across the calendar. Perhaps for others, Summer was more discrete and subdued, with the same-ol' stuff day ... http://austinmash.com/blog/summer-lull-summer-reading/ AustinMash! has been live for about 4 months now. From the beginning I included code in each page of the site that recorded every time the page was loaded into a browser, along with the user's IP address and the current date. This was primarily set up to ... http://austinmash.com/blog/wanna-be-impressed-check-out-google-analytics/ They were everywhere. If you were in town, you saw them, there was no way not to. They were everywhere. On the highways, in the parking lots, in the city streets, in your neighborhood! There they were, a few over here, and some more over there. ... http://austinmash.com/blog/rot-rally-rocks-and-roars-biker-babes-and-more/ My last post detailed the frustration I experienced in trying to add a simple movie clip to the web site. Most of that frustration was due to the time I spent trying to get Macromedia's new flash-based movie technology working well enough that other people could see the video, ... http://austinmash.com/blog/got-my-flash-based-video-to-play-hurray/ All I wanted to do was share with the world a small segment of my life, one I had captured on video. The idea seemed simple: upload the movie file to the web site, add a link to it, and let people enjoy. The video was a short ... http://austinmash.com/blog/why-is-video-so-frustrating/ Um, yeah - OK Weirdness, weirdoes, everywhere – and not a dudley in sight! YES! Feast your eyes on color and movement, on sights strange that stimulate, on sounds and smells and feelings that move and penetrate – look around, walk around, and immerse yourself in the wondrous creativity ... http://austinmash.com/blog/annual-eeyores-birthday-bash-keep-s-austin-weird-and-how/ I haven’t mentioned my job search for a while, mostly because it didn’t seem very relevant to the world of AustinMash!, but also because it wasn’t the biggest thing in my life. What was bigger than finding a job? Well, working on this site, and everything related to ... http://austinmash.com/blog/new-era-new-focus/ Overheard: “Listening to Gary speak is like taking a sip from a water hydrant. I’ve heard him give this talk several times, and each time I pick up something new”. There was quite a bit of discussion after Gary’s speech, all of it overwhelmingly positive. There ... http://austinmash.com/blog/a-sip-from-the-hydrant-gary-hoover-at-the-bigbreakfast/ The previous post describes my investigation into Ruby on Rails, as a framework I could use to rapidly build out the AustinMania! community portal. Alas, I was once again stymied by my web host, and for now, I cannot run RoR applications on this web site. This may ... http://austinmash.com/blog/austinmania-is-now-a-blog-too-and-you-can-post-too/ Sometimes the grand vision can get in the way. It has always been my intent to make the AustinMania! section of this site the part of this endeavor that “captures the essence of Austin online” and to let the community shape it, rather than create the whole thing myself. ... http://austinmash.com/blog/ruby-on-rails-stalls-pulling-out-of-the-station/ My last post had everything to do with avoiding spam, and now I am here to tell you, this weekend I witnessed people actually line up and wait just to get their own portion of SPAM - the luncheon meat! Talk about keeping it weird, there was an entire ... http://austinmash.com/blog/lining-up-for-spam/ They say that within a few seconds of connecting a new computer to the internet, it will be pinged, probed, and hacked if it is unprotected. Kind of like the classic leg-in-piranha-infested-waters effect. Well, I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know some badbots have ... http://austinmash.com/blog/hiding-from-spammer-robots-with-javascript-e-mail-address-writer/ The site hit a milestone of sorts, traffic-wise, the Sunday before last. On the 19th, I logged over 100 unique visitors in one day! I was pretty excited about that, mostly because these were real human visitors who came to read my blog, as opposed to mindless robots ... http://austinmash.com/blog/organic-traffic-building/