adamweiss.net/blog

The Boston NOW paper I mentioned before was launched this morning, and I’m in it twice.

There’s a blurb about the Museum’s podcast and a callout box on the page of Boston Marathon coverage featuring the latest Boston Behind the Scenes.

I wanted to see if this would convince people to go to my website, but the early returns aren’t good. Boston Behind the Scenes has  seen exactly one unaccounted-for hit from the Boston area today – and that was from the servers of the Community Newspaper Company in Taunton. I’m pretty sure they were just thoroughly investigating the new competition.

The Boston Marathon is today, and the weather is not looking good!

It’s a hard race in a normal year, but I suspect this time will be really bad.

Last week, I put up an episode of Boston Behind the Scenes about the marathon. You can use the player below to hear about its history, and what it is like to run in a normal year.

 

 BBTS19BostonMarathon [21:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I watched An Inconvenient Truth for the first time today, then went to the NativeEnergy’s website to look into buying renewable energy credits. Using the money from credit purchases, NativeEnergy funds new renewable power projects like windfarms and a diary farm renewable methane project. According to their website:

With NativeEnergy, you can help finance and build new clean and renewable energy projects that help Native Americans and Alaska Natives create sustainable economic benefits, and that help America’s family farmers compete with agribusiness. These projects will displace electricity from fossil fuels and reduce other greenhouse gas emissions on your behalf, making up for the CO₂ emissions you can’t avoid.

When I did the calculations with their web tool, it turns out that I probably produce about three tons of CO₂ a year (as opposed to the national average of 7.5 tons/year). This wasn’t surprising, as I don’t own a car, walk to work every day, and only fly occasionally. What was surprising was the cost to offset those three tons: only $36.

So, for just $36, I’m now carbon neutral.

I’ve noticed a lot more people coming to the Boston Behind the Scenes site through the rss feed in the last day or two. I have also noticed a few weird searches bringing people to my site. So, when I looked at one of those search results and saw the listing below, I put on my email-writing face and set to work writing a letter to my podcast host, Liberated Syndication.

……….

From: Adam Weiss
To: [email protected]
Subject: “We are experiencing unusually heavy traffic…”

Apparently, Libsyn was having server issues when the GoogleBot came around recently. This resulted in the search listing for my podcast to turn into “Liberated Syndication // Podcasting Made Easy: We are experiencing unusually heavy traffic. Please try again in a moment.”

I have worked hard on a quality podcast that gets mentions on international travel websites and draws listeners from all over the world. I’m “above the fold” on Google’s first page for most searches related to my content.

After all of that work, there is no mention of the title of the show or any other details on Google when searching for the show, and I have seen a change in my site traffic in the last day as a result.

To make matters MUCH worse, my podcast is about to be featured prominently in a large-circulation newspaper. If readers see the paper and search for the show, they will not find it. Instead, they will find an apology and an ad from Libsyn.

I know that there are many ways to signal the GoogleBot, and there may be a way to say “ignore new stuff on this pass.” If there is, why isn’t it being used? If there isn’t, the error page needs to change significantly.

I have used libsyn for quite a while and recommend it to my consulting clients. I pay for this “reliable” hosting even though I have terabytes of monthly bandwidth that I am not using on another host. I can understand minor outages, but I never expected a service error to have repercussions that would change my virtual presence internet-wide.

This is unacceptable.

Adam Weiss

………..

I’m in the Apple Store at the CambridgSide Galleria with Kaija from work, showing her how easy WordPress is.

Google has just launched Google Voice Local Search, and experimental phone-based search system.

According to the website:

Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Using this service, you can:

• search for a local business by name or category.

You can say “Giovanni’s Pizzeria” or just “pizza”.

• get connected to the business, free of charge.

• get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.

Just say “text message”.

I’ve tried it out a few times, and it seems to work alright. The system was down for a while, but that’s to be expected with a service that’s less than a week old.

To hear a test call, listen to the MP3 below. Here’s the text message I got from Google during the call:

Subject: Burger King

Burger King
128 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02108
617-556-8299

 

 GOOG411 [1:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I went to an MBTA public meeting a couple of months ago and voiced this concern about the new CharlieCard vending machines:

The credit card readers don’t have a clear indication of the correct placement of the magnetic strip in the slot, and they only give you three tries to pay before you have to start over. Since there are four possible ways to insert the card, this leads to frustrated customers.

The T representatives seemed genuinely surprised when I brought up the problem, and said that they would look into it.

Fast forward to today, and look what I found on the CharlieCard machine at the Charles/MGH station (I wonder if the Chase logo is product placement or trademark infringement):