I like Reddit.
On average the signal to noise ratio is great, and a scan through the hot list is usually a very worthwhile venture. The wide range of topics makes it more entertaining and informative than many tech-only sites, but it still has enough tech-related info to feel pertinent to the software development profession.
I've also received a substantial number of hits from Reddit over the past couple of months, with no less than 5 entries hitting the front page for periods of time, with each of them yielded 6000+ inbound visitors. Though these are of no profit to me, it is satisfying that many of these visitors left great comments and sent interesting emails, and found the entries informative or educational. After each onslaught the number of RSS subscribers jumps by a hefty amount.
Early on I admittingly submitted a couple of my longer, more thought-out posts to Reddit, thinking it would help exposure a bit, but became a bit discouraged by the whole exercise after seeing them instantly start descending into the negative range. Pure speculation, but my guess is that some rather unsportsmanlike submitters are automatically "voting down" everything in proximity of their addition, hoping to make their own submission stand out in relation (it's the only rational explanation for the almost instant vote downs). I would also guess that many users skip over low-ranked new items, so it basically becomes a race to get the first couple of up votes before it's voted into oblivion, and then a continued series of up votes to offset the continual downvotes.
This came to mind as I was just "testing out" the quicklinks that I just added on posts. I discovered a case of a single entry that had been submitted to Reddit three different times from different areas of the blog (which is a "benefit" of users who subscribe to and read the different areas). I've put these in order, determined by the obvious sequential ID that Reddit adds. I'm not sure of the specific times of each of them.
http://reddit.com/info?id=14ev - This was added from the home page version. It earned a forgettable score of 1.
http://reddit.com/info?id=14lu - This was apparently added referencing the static version located here. It earned a healthy -4 score. Perhaps because it was a duplicate of the prior one.
http://reddit.com/info?id=14sm - This was added from the Software Development version. It earned a very respectable score of 204, and I knew about this one because of a substantial impact on the visits over a two day period.
The exact same content, in different forms, yielded a 1, a -4, and a front-page for two days 204. Whether it was because of titles, time of day, or simply luck of the draw (that the last one got momentum before the haters started downvoting), it is a fascinating demonstration that these sorts of web democracies aren't always a meritocrasy.
Just thought that was a little fascinating.
I've received a couple of fantastic comments about troubles that people have faced adding items from here to their del.icio.us bookmarks, namely because Radio Userland uses a constant title for all entries (and del.icio.us automatically uses the title, so three different entries get the same title if you fail to manually override its choice). The common title problem was one of the reasons I created the notables static listing, though of course that listing is just a subsection of entries.
To help with this issue, I've added quicklinks below each entry to add it to your del.icio.us bookmarks, furl bookmarks, to Digg it or to Reddit it (which will link to an existing entry if one is already on there), and to check for Technorati links (there are seldom Technorati links because most of the readers here aren't bloggers, or they aren't the sort of bloggers that comment on every site they visit. I'd get a big boost in the Technorati rankings if I started pandering to the incestuous blogging community). I've mirrored these items to the static section as well.
I've received some great feedback regarding the entry on setting up a MediaWiki install on Windows. Many of the comments were kind words of thanks (which I really appreciate. Knowing that it helps people is my greatest motivation), and others helpfully suggested improvements to the instructions.
As an example of comment-driven improvements, my instructions have you installing the GNU diff utilities, in particular for the diff3.exe utility, however the MediaWiki setup scripts don't properly find it (e.g. as the instructions are currently written the GNU diff utilities are completely unused, although they can still be useful in your day-to-day travails). This is because a prior revision included fairly involved changes to the MediaWiki config/index.php script so it would properly locate diff3 on the Windows platform, as it is currently Unix-centric and doesn't look for the proper executable, not to mention that it parses the PATH environment variable incorrectly . After receiving two comments that those steps were a little too complex, however, I removed that section.
My goal was to get people experimenting with MediaWiki, or even just wikis in general, so diff3 functionality really wasn't critical. I pared the instructions accordingly. Similarly one early draft included the building and installation of a PHP memory cache to improve performance, but that too is unnecessary to simply try out the product.
Another line of comments involved asking:
To answer this I really need to describe the philosophy of this blog, along with my resistance to "technology alliances".
In the byline of this blog I describe my philosophy as "pragmatic software development", and this really drives my recommendations. In this case there are a lot of development shops that are Windows-centric, with little or no UNIX/Linux experience, yet MediaWiki is one of the best, most featurer rich, "standard" wiki products out there. Choosing a solution that leveraged what shops already know with the best solution is a pragmatic approach.
Which brings me to my general philosophy towards Microsoft, as comments indicating that I'm either a Microsoft hater, or a Microsoft drone parroting the corporate line, have hit my inbox over the short history of this blog.
I am not subservient to Microsoft.
Unlike many Microsoft technology advocates (I truly love both SQL Server, and .NET, and I think they're remarkable solutions), I have no desire to ever work for Microsoft (Microsoft has some top notch, world-class talent, and I've met and worked with a lot of great talent from there, but they also have their share of both jerks and duds). I'm not going to praise their every move in hopes that I'll get noticed. yafla, my consulting/ISV company, has chosen to avoid any partnerships or tying to the Microsoft brand because we don't want to become another drone "consulting" company single-mindedly acting as a third-party sales force for Microsoft, desperately racking up Microsoft partner points by pushing less-than-optimal solutions on customers. We didn't choose to use .NET for our software because we're hoping to nestle into the Microsoft family -- we chose it on technical merit, and a pragmatic analysis of our current and prospective clients.
We work for our clients and ourselves, not Microsoft. This is a very important mantra for our services, and for the technology of our software, and if Microsoft wants their products to get recommended to our clients, and their technology to the foundation of our software, they need to make great products at competitive prices. No sales gladhanding, or sad career dreaming, is going to change that.
Am I saying that Microsoft solutions are second rate? Of course there are examples of Microsoft products that are terrible, and customers are being misled into buying buzzword-laden atrocities because a Microsoft partner is hoping to get invited to the next Microsoft dinner party. Yet there are also Microsoft solutions that are extraordinary. Windows 2003R2 is a superlative operating system, and where you need the breadth of its functionality, it can be well worth the money. Microsoft Small Business Server can be an amazing package of value for some small organizations, within the constraints of the product. Other times, however, if you have the appropriate skills, a Linux machine is the best choice, along with a stack of the many available free or close to free server products on that platform. Sometimes IIS 6 is the superior solution for a problem, while other times Apache would be your best bet. Sometimes PHP and MySQL is a great solution, and other times C#/ASP.NET with SQL Server is the perfect combo.
I don't blindly assume the Microsoft product to be the best, but neither do I automatically presume it to be second rate. Instead I evaluate on merit, and propose solutions based upon the customer and their needs.
To do otherwise would be just biased noise, and wouldn't be to the service of clients and peers.
Tagged: [Software Development], [Programming], [Software-Development]
I've been doing this as a somewhat regularly updated blog for just over half a year now, and the results have been extremely satisfying: I get about ~2500 direct unique visitors on an average day (increasing 2-6x when something ends up being a meme-of-the-day on sites like Reddit or Digg, and of course many read via aggregators), search engine referrals are up to 200 or so a day, and viewing the "who's on" list is a laundry list of influential corporations and locations across the globe.
It does feed my ego a little bit seeing visitors from various governments, the CIA, nuclear research labs, just about every large financial company, and visitors from every end of the globe. My numbers aren't huge, but it's a perfect composite of influential and knowledgeable readers.
The most popular entries thus far are as follows (I'm providing the static version links where possible):
Effectively Integrating Into Software Development Teams
Optimal Software Development Processes and Practices
Spelling Matters
Everyone Is Above Average - The Overpopulated Top 2%
I've tried to minimize the number of entries (outside of the personal category, though this anniversary one being an exception) to keep the noise as low as possible -- if you're using a reader it won't constantly pretend there's new content when I'm just adding a peanut gallery comment about someone else's blog -- though on the flip side that means that I've delayed various .NET and SQL entries until they're "perfect".
Perhaps I might have to find a compromise somewhere in between.
After fielding several wiki-related queries by clients and associates, along with numerous questions and comments online, it is evident that it's the Year of the Wiki. Wikipedia has proven the concept, and users have a growing awareness of the benefits that organic information growth could bring to their teams.
As such, I'm putting together a feature covering wiki options and alternatives, including specific instructions for configuring and using Wikis on Windows (as this is a particularly neglected area, and much of the information that exists is terribly out of date or quite simply non-functional). Of course yafla provides turnkey Wiki solutions and training as a service as well.
One more point: The consulting work has always overflowed purely from word-of-mouth and associate networking, so the business website has always been terrible (sort of the whole "the cobbler has the worst shoes" thing). As yafla is now entering a growth stage, wailing past the temporary manpower limit, I'm finally going to change the corporate website to properly reflect the services and capabilities of the organization, and actually allow options for prospective clients to engage our services. That should be up shortly, growing and improving rapidly over the coming weeks.
Three yafla resource "shout-outs":
yaflaColor
- A dynamic web tool to select colors, including proper saturation
and lightness varations of colors
pureJpeg - Remove extraneous JPEG blocks
High Performance SQL Server - Information to ensure your
database designs and usage are optimal
Have a fantastic weekend!
There is a growing trend towards smaller and smaller fonts on blogs (e.g. 0.60em). While it's a simple matter of customizing your local stylesheets, or overriding the font size at the GUI level,it is a bit of a hassle.. Nonetheless, it seems to be a growing belief that using a small font someone implies professionalism or academic worth.
Yet when will the cycle end?
I've described why I blog several times previously, including within my very first blog-style entry back on September 4th (this blog just passed its 4 month birthday). The motivations are the same motivations that have pushed me to post online "papers" for about a decade now: Reputation, a bit of an outlet for thoughts (it is therapeutic), and of course to maintain or gain some namespace in the internet world (which really means PageRank these days), or at least to avoid namespace loss.
The namespace competition is much more competitive these days than it was a few short years ago, with the technical ease of blogging encouraging a lot of very capable entrants. If you're stand still, then you're falling behind quickly.
It really has been an uphill battle trying to get my thoughts noticed, but I'm finally at a remarkable point where I post something -- something written late at night in a brief interlude between ending "real work" for the night and hitting the hibernate button -- and discover that many thousands of visitors have passed through the next day. Often something makes its way onto the meme sites courtesy of one of the readers who thinks it's worth sharing (thank you kindly to those good folks). That's pretty neat, and is very rewarding.
It's especially satisfying given that I seldom spend more than 3 hours on an entry, even on the longer pieces, usually spreading it out over several days. On an average entry -- for instance the spelling entry (which also saw many thousands of visitors per day), or understanding daylight savings time -- I spend approximately 30 minutes, going back on re-reads to clean up the flow. There are also coffee-break length entries like this one.
I usually have the general concept fermenting in my mind for a while, and I type quite quickly so it's really just a process of transcribing it out and dealing with the technical errata (like Radio Userland's propensity for being overly helpful).
To make them a bit more visually appealing, I tend to take a few more oddball pictures during day to day activities than I normally would, but that's fun and is hardly a chore.
Entries are often much more readable after about a week, and if blogs had a wiki-style history you would see constant minor wording changes and paragraph reworks.
The few pieces that have earned considerable attention have been real eye-openers, and in some ways they encourage one to move to the dark side: It's very easy to see, for instance, exactly the type of content that earns a lot of attention, and it would be terribly easy to write pandering pieces, saying everything that the crowd wants to hear, and that which they want restated (which is what many use the popularity-measuring sites for -- to push their own agenda by promoting sites that state their opinion, and by silencing dissenting opinion by punishing those that don't. Look at Slashdot comment moderation as a great example of this).
It has been a great experience, and I greatly appreciate everyone who stops by. Thank you very much for a moment of your time.