Replace them All

I was thinking since we need to be somewhat concerned with experience and continuity in some places, maybe leave those who are on a couple of key committees in a dangerous world. Like Armed Services Committees. But then I looked to see just how many are on these Committees. Wow. Really that many?

House Armed Services Committee

Senate Armed Services Committee

At least the Senate site lists what the subcommittees are so you can see what these folks supposedly do.

 

Sent to their respective email addresses today:

To:

The Honorable Representative Jim Hines
The Honorable Senator Joe Lieberman
The Honorable Senator Richard Blumenthal

As one of your constituants I urge you to reject the upcoming bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R.3261. While it’s cleverly named in such a way as to suggest anyone against it clearly supports criminality, the provisions of this legislation are more pirate-like than what it proposes to protect.

Goals for the legislation may have initially been laudable. However, the idea of  “prior restraint” of speech without a judicial hearing is beyond disturbing. This law as drafted far oversteps in terms of due process. It’s not just a perfect example of what’s commonly referred to as the “Slippery Slope,” in terms of censorship, but provides for such immediate punitive action that that possible cascade consequences can’t begin to be understood. Interfering with Internet DNS, search engine results, and more put both free speech and jobs at risk. Moreover, the technical requirements are at the same time both vague and onerous. The potential effects on both commercial and Open Source computer programming creation, messaging traffic and more lean heavily toward the detrimental side. And in total, the bill practically begs to send various types of software development off shore.

In theory, I’m all for the goals of the legislation. As a long time Internet entrepreneur with several patents to my name, I’m in favor of protecting the rights of intellectual property owners. This bill unfortunately appears to be a case of legislation drafted of, by and for particular special interests at risk due to their lack of competitiveness. Not by those seeking fairness, equity or lawfulness.

In short, the cure here is far, far worse than the disease. Vote this down. This is among the most potentially damaging pieces of legislation you all have put together this year.

 

Yes, it’s a long title for an Excel Spreadsheet used to create utm tracking scheme variables for Google Analytics. I’m just doing a tiny bit of keyword stuffing here so the page gets found and people can use the spreadsheet I made if they like.

What’s Different About this Google Analytics URL Builder Spreadsheet?

It’s a fairly comprehensive set of options for creating useful utm variables for Google Analtytics. The concatenation formulas in the Generator tab leave blank spaces if you’re not using a particular variable. So it’s a reasonably fast way to make some Google Analytics Tracking Code enabled links if you’re not just doing it programmatically. I’ve either had to create these myself or had to have other marketing co-workers create proper codes for links. While anyone can go to the Google Analtytics URL Builder, that can become tiresome if you have a lot of them. I made the attached sheet years ago when doing some consulting and have used it at several companies. People seem to like it. (Well, no one really likes the hassle of doing this. But they like that it can give better drill down reporting. So I figured it was time to just put it out there in case it might be useful for others.)

Anyway, here it is…

(Oh, and obviously you use this at your own risk. Your responsible for configuring your stuff appropriately. I’m not responsible for your reports or coding scheme.)

Google_TrackingSchemeGenerator_20110613

If there’s an errors or you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Scott

 

Curation is now In

I’m sorry. I’m just having a bad buzzword reaction. So it’ll take a whole post to get it off of me. Didn’t the idea of a curator used to have a feel kind of like a musty museum? When I hear the word, I just flashback right to a 5th grade trip to the Museum of Natural History. Not any more! It’s a cool word now. At least in the realm of nouveau information architects and buzzword compliant Internet marketing folks. The rise of the word Curation reminds me of back when marketing folks started pronouncing the word ‘niche’ as “neeesh” instead of “nitch.” It helped identify the truly clued in vs. the riff-raff of Madison Avenue. I’d love to see a graph of word frequency for Curation over the past 5 or 10 years. That would be interesting. [Read the rest of this entry...]

 

This has maybe gotten out of hand. Sure, I work in the online industry, but multiple computers, handheld devices, etc. Do I really need all this stuff? Maybe not. Maybe I could trim down a bit. But as much trouble as all the updates and management, etc. is, I think overall I get more value than it costs me. And the good news? It’s getting easier, not harder. Today’s more consumer focused Software as a Service (SaaS) options mean I don’t have to do as much really effort filled tasks as I used to for the same goals. Everyone has their own needs, but I thought I’d share some of my current strategies for managing my personal data items.

If you’re facing similar issues, personally or family wide, maybe some of these strategies are useful to you.

[Read the rest of this entry...]