Really more for myself than my dedicated readers...ha ha... I am posting a few future blog titles that I need to write about because I want to focus this particular blog on actionscripting best practices in the e-learning vertical, which is my primary area of expertise.
Here are the titles you can look forward to seeing articles on in the form of my to-do list!
1. Scorm and flash resources. Getting your flash stuff to work inside SCORM. (If you cant wait for this article, visit pipwerks.com now and join their groups. They are the best)
2. Building an RSS feed aggregator in flash. I need to do this myself, so I'll post how I did it when its finished. The purpose of this is to put any feed url into flash vars of an embedded flash object, and quickly parse out the important information with a nice little XML parser. I'll do one in AS1 and AS3.
3. Actionscript 1, 2, and 3. What are the futures and advantages of each? Is AS3 truly the best for all applications?
4. Badges badges badges. Making badges you can let others embed on their sites in flash.
5. My world famous video player widget. How its made, how you can use it.
6. The best quiz/question engines. Theory behind them, what works, and what is most effective for training online.
7. "What would google do?" by Jeff Jarvis book review
More to come!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Internet and the shared experience.
With all these social networks that are heavily customizable, targetted advertising, and personalization of content feeds, the shared experience of the internet is becoming less and less apparent.
When you log into a system, the appearance is constructed on the fly based on your preferences, settings, and permissions. If you are an "admin" you get different buttons and layouts than a "public user" and again different from a "member" on an increasing number of sites.
At one time, when you went to any website, you could call someone and get them to look at the same site, and you'd both see the same colors, same ads, same content.
Now, with feed aggregation, embedding, and even inline comments and ads, you could even be watching the same youtube video but have entirely different contexts and popup messages than someone else viewing the same video somewhere else.
Moreover, with Google's promotion and web history tools, not to mention international filters, search results differ depending on who you specifically are, so the idea of calling someone and saying "Hey...google painted squirrell and check out the third result" will no longer work.
How important is the context to a message? What difference does it make if my friend and I watch the "Simpsons" and my TV in the kitchen is 13" and someone else watches it on a 72" Flat screen in their livingroom?
I think these are important considerations for the design and evolution of rich web applications, because shared experience is what makes us able to relate to each other. Without it, in all our "connectedness" we become increasingly "disconnected".
When you log into a system, the appearance is constructed on the fly based on your preferences, settings, and permissions. If you are an "admin" you get different buttons and layouts than a "public user" and again different from a "member" on an increasing number of sites.
At one time, when you went to any website, you could call someone and get them to look at the same site, and you'd both see the same colors, same ads, same content.
Now, with feed aggregation, embedding, and even inline comments and ads, you could even be watching the same youtube video but have entirely different contexts and popup messages than someone else viewing the same video somewhere else.
Moreover, with Google's promotion and web history tools, not to mention international filters, search results differ depending on who you specifically are, so the idea of calling someone and saying "Hey...google painted squirrell and check out the third result" will no longer work.
How important is the context to a message? What difference does it make if my friend and I watch the "Simpsons" and my TV in the kitchen is 13" and someone else watches it on a 72" Flat screen in their livingroom?
I think these are important considerations for the design and evolution of rich web applications, because shared experience is what makes us able to relate to each other. Without it, in all our "connectedness" we become increasingly "disconnected".
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Why Second Life is Largely Irrelevant, (and how we can fix that).
My SL alter ego would kill me for saying this, but Second Life is largely irrelevant. Why? Because it doesnt integrate into my life.
I have an island in Second life called "Tree Estates IV". I pay $299 every month to keep it there, but I'm only there 1-2 times a week for up to an hour for the past 6 months.
Its important to me and my business, and it still pays for itself in ways I cant begin to calculate, but those are intangible things as yet, and dont currently translate into cash. So for me, that is the first way SL is irrelevant. Only a slim minority of participants can do business with it.
Its not like Im off the computer much. I spend most of my online time either doing work or in facebook, various ning.com sites, googling things, digging things, checking CNN.com and more.
Second life doesnt integrate with any of those things, at least not in useful ways. In fact, my SL character's blogger page and facebook page gets more attention than his actual SL avatar gets.
I bet, seriously, im not alone in this situation. Even when I actually hang out in second life, my window fills with chats, popups, messages, notices so I cant really even see the virtual 3dness of the world. Last night I was in a televised in world gameshow called "the second question" and I found the 3dness almost irritating as I tried to get the audio all set up. I could have easily participated without even having a 3d world as it operated mostly like a big conference call. (we all "phoned it in" as it were)
Its not all bad though. I will say that in spite of all this, the true value is by looking like I do in second life, and by having my island, I can "tell a thousand words" about my skills, my asthetic, my personality. As a calling card, it beats everything else combined, and that is easily the primary reason I keep the island going.
But that still isnt relevant, and while it works for me as a 3d modeller / enthusiast, it doesnt work for most people who just have the default avatar or buy everything they wear, beyond showing their taste.
That still means that Sl is only relevant for the first 1-2 seconds of first impression you have with someone. What about the ongoing, continued relationships? Well, they quickly evolve past the look you established, and become simple chat sessions.
How do we make it relevant then?
Well one way is this. I used the windlight simulator technology to enhance a logo on my website. Now average joes who dont care about 3d technology or virtual whatsits can experience some of the benefit without having to sign on, get an avatar etc.
One could argue that Machinima movies do the same thing, but lets be honest, unless you are already a gamer those generally do look creepy and silly, the sheer magnitude of belief suspension required to view those make them practically unwatchable by the mass audiences. No question it will improve but for now, not practical.
Another way would be making SL content viewable without having to log in. People could see part of the world, say, as the background of a website, or have an in world camera that could see a little spinning logo inside SL and thats just the header. A widget that allowed people to replace all the blogger, facebook, and other profile pics with their current in world face, preferably as an interactive 3d model instead of just a static photo.
You could build simulations of various things and allow non logged in people to interact with them from web pages, like a car, or a ball on a stick. Basically opening up the simulator technology to be embeddable anywhere and everywhere. The simulator is the key value of SL, and it just needs to get more portable.
Conversely, users need to be able to "digg" things in SL, or have their facebook status update their SL status, or even have their avatar pull data from facebook, linkedin or whatever.
Join me in this conversation by posting your comments!
I have an island in Second life called "Tree Estates IV". I pay $299 every month to keep it there, but I'm only there 1-2 times a week for up to an hour for the past 6 months.
Its important to me and my business, and it still pays for itself in ways I cant begin to calculate, but those are intangible things as yet, and dont currently translate into cash. So for me, that is the first way SL is irrelevant. Only a slim minority of participants can do business with it.
Its not like Im off the computer much. I spend most of my online time either doing work or in facebook, various ning.com sites, googling things, digging things, checking CNN.com and more.
Second life doesnt integrate with any of those things, at least not in useful ways. In fact, my SL character's blogger page and facebook page gets more attention than his actual SL avatar gets.
I bet, seriously, im not alone in this situation. Even when I actually hang out in second life, my window fills with chats, popups, messages, notices so I cant really even see the virtual 3dness of the world. Last night I was in a televised in world gameshow called "the second question" and I found the 3dness almost irritating as I tried to get the audio all set up. I could have easily participated without even having a 3d world as it operated mostly like a big conference call. (we all "phoned it in" as it were)
Its not all bad though. I will say that in spite of all this, the true value is by looking like I do in second life, and by having my island, I can "tell a thousand words" about my skills, my asthetic, my personality. As a calling card, it beats everything else combined, and that is easily the primary reason I keep the island going.
But that still isnt relevant, and while it works for me as a 3d modeller / enthusiast, it doesnt work for most people who just have the default avatar or buy everything they wear, beyond showing their taste.
That still means that Sl is only relevant for the first 1-2 seconds of first impression you have with someone. What about the ongoing, continued relationships? Well, they quickly evolve past the look you established, and become simple chat sessions.
How do we make it relevant then?
Well one way is this. I used the windlight simulator technology to enhance a logo on my website. Now average joes who dont care about 3d technology or virtual whatsits can experience some of the benefit without having to sign on, get an avatar etc.
One could argue that Machinima movies do the same thing, but lets be honest, unless you are already a gamer those generally do look creepy and silly, the sheer magnitude of belief suspension required to view those make them practically unwatchable by the mass audiences. No question it will improve but for now, not practical.
Another way would be making SL content viewable without having to log in. People could see part of the world, say, as the background of a website, or have an in world camera that could see a little spinning logo inside SL and thats just the header. A widget that allowed people to replace all the blogger, facebook, and other profile pics with their current in world face, preferably as an interactive 3d model instead of just a static photo.
You could build simulations of various things and allow non logged in people to interact with them from web pages, like a car, or a ball on a stick. Basically opening up the simulator technology to be embeddable anywhere and everywhere. The simulator is the key value of SL, and it just needs to get more portable.
Conversely, users need to be able to "digg" things in SL, or have their facebook status update their SL status, or even have their avatar pull data from facebook, linkedin or whatever.
Join me in this conversation by posting your comments!
Crowd Computing and 6 steps to make it work for you
I have a lot of people coming to me for advice on their websites. Here is my personal philosophy on the topic and what drives my advice to pretty much everyone these days.
First of all, websites as we generally think of them, are dying or dead. The idea of a static page with some sharp graphics, perhaps a fancy flash logo animation etc. has largely become irrelevant to most people in the past few years.
I like to correct people and say web presence instead of website. Web presence means just that, your presence on the web, in all forms. Your emails, your facebook pages, profiles and groups, your blogs, your pages on other social networks like ning.com, linkedin, twitter, second life, myspace, wikipedia, and your AIM/MSN/Yahoo chat handles. That list seems to be getting longer and longer, but essentially its all just where you're at on the web.
It may seem intimidating to have all these things out there and feel like you HAVE to be on all of them. The good news is, you dont. You only have to participate where you feel most comfortable, and where you get the most "bang for your buck". Buck in this case translates to time and effort.
I watched from the outside for 10 years this blogging and social networking phenomenon, really staying out of it and focussing on my job of building dedicated flash applications for online training. I stayed out because what I saw was millions of people with what I would characterize as a very shallow web "presence" in a wide range of media. I would call it spamminating, or just dipping your toe in a lot of different pools. That sort of thing didnt mesh well with my personality. I like to get into something and go very deep, explore it to as far as its limits, and master it, THEN move on to the next thing.
As the technology evolved, I did too. With the advent of more and more cross linking between them, badges, open application architectures, and flexibility, I saw a new opportunity to dive deep. With all the cross linking done automatically by things like badges, you can now write once, publish everywhere. That exicites me.
I read this line in a book called What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis that talked about how linked in disseminates the hundreds of millions of photos by using algorithms that monitor the cross promotion and cross talk between members about photos, and basically could use the wisdom of the crowd(crowd computing?) to determine interestingness.
Now, like the new ad companies, my audience gets my content not by how good my SEO skills are, or my raw willingness and lack of social life to post to thousands of networks all day, rather...and this is important so I'll bold it...my content automatically goes to people who are interested in what I have to say.
This is game changing. I've always thought that the internet was the dawn of a collected conciousness, but now with vastly more intelligent search thanks to google and the like, everything we say can and will be said to the people who need to hear it.
It effectively turns everyone's brains into one giant brain, with computers as the connectors between brains.
For now, we have to post our thoughts in writing to things like blogger, but eventually I think thanks to voice recognition, our every thought, our musings, will bring us kindred spirits to develop those thoughts either into new thoughts, learning journeys, personal catharsis, and evolution.
Crowds have always been feared by people, as angry mobs with pitchforks, but in What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis talks about the wisdom of the crowd. If properly analyzed and understood, a crowd is vastly intelligent, it is the sum of all its parts. If you take an individual neuron, its not capable of much, but put them all together and you have the most complex thing in the known universe, the human brain.
For the first time in history, sites like Flickr and Google have begun to speak to the crowd in its language (or even give it a language for it to articulate itself) And its talking. It has a lot to say. Democratic ideals have always tried to make this a reality, but voting never really captured the true meaning of what the crowd wanted, only grunts and warbles. With AI and computing however, the crowd now can finally talk with unprecidented precision.
What will we say to the crowd? More specifically what will you say to the crowd? Here is where we get out of the clouds and return to earth with actionable items:
1. Make sure you have and control your personal brand on as many social networks as you can find. This means own your own domain www.myname.com if you can. Own your company name www.mycompany.com, myproduct.com etc.
2. Create a facebook fan page for your product or service. Get everyone you can to join. If there already is one, become an active and leading participant. Always Give Value in everything you do.
3. Create and own your facebook profile, before someone else does. Facebook is used by 150,000,000 people as of this post, and by default is quickly becoming the defacto identity source. If you dont own your facebook profile, you are wide open to someone else taking it for you. And that is still legal.
4. Create your profile on everything else. Ning.com, Linkedin.com, blogger.com, myspace.com. All these can be more or less empty but just grab and own them.
5. Now that you've experimented with all these things and learned all these new skills... :) Pick which one you like the most and dive deep. In linked in, get all your friends in there, find new contacts, find opportunities, recommend people you respect. In facebook, post funny and entertaining things to your status, make people smile daily. Tell people things they can use, share your ideas, your concerns, your hopes.
6. Watch the comments roll in, tweak what you are doing based on them. If one thing you do gets no fans or comments, but another thing does, do more of the other thing.
That is how you can, right now, capture the wisdom of the crowd.
Good Luck!
First of all, websites as we generally think of them, are dying or dead. The idea of a static page with some sharp graphics, perhaps a fancy flash logo animation etc. has largely become irrelevant to most people in the past few years.
I like to correct people and say web presence instead of website. Web presence means just that, your presence on the web, in all forms. Your emails, your facebook pages, profiles and groups, your blogs, your pages on other social networks like ning.com, linkedin, twitter, second life, myspace, wikipedia, and your AIM/MSN/Yahoo chat handles. That list seems to be getting longer and longer, but essentially its all just where you're at on the web.
It may seem intimidating to have all these things out there and feel like you HAVE to be on all of them. The good news is, you dont. You only have to participate where you feel most comfortable, and where you get the most "bang for your buck". Buck in this case translates to time and effort.
I watched from the outside for 10 years this blogging and social networking phenomenon, really staying out of it and focussing on my job of building dedicated flash applications for online training. I stayed out because what I saw was millions of people with what I would characterize as a very shallow web "presence" in a wide range of media. I would call it spamminating, or just dipping your toe in a lot of different pools. That sort of thing didnt mesh well with my personality. I like to get into something and go very deep, explore it to as far as its limits, and master it, THEN move on to the next thing.
As the technology evolved, I did too. With the advent of more and more cross linking between them, badges, open application architectures, and flexibility, I saw a new opportunity to dive deep. With all the cross linking done automatically by things like badges, you can now write once, publish everywhere. That exicites me.
I read this line in a book called What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis that talked about how linked in disseminates the hundreds of millions of photos by using algorithms that monitor the cross promotion and cross talk between members about photos, and basically could use the wisdom of the crowd(crowd computing?) to determine interestingness.
Now, like the new ad companies, my audience gets my content not by how good my SEO skills are, or my raw willingness and lack of social life to post to thousands of networks all day, rather...and this is important so I'll bold it...my content automatically goes to people who are interested in what I have to say.
This is game changing. I've always thought that the internet was the dawn of a collected conciousness, but now with vastly more intelligent search thanks to google and the like, everything we say can and will be said to the people who need to hear it.
It effectively turns everyone's brains into one giant brain, with computers as the connectors between brains.
For now, we have to post our thoughts in writing to things like blogger, but eventually I think thanks to voice recognition, our every thought, our musings, will bring us kindred spirits to develop those thoughts either into new thoughts, learning journeys, personal catharsis, and evolution.
Crowds have always been feared by people, as angry mobs with pitchforks, but in What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis talks about the wisdom of the crowd. If properly analyzed and understood, a crowd is vastly intelligent, it is the sum of all its parts. If you take an individual neuron, its not capable of much, but put them all together and you have the most complex thing in the known universe, the human brain.
For the first time in history, sites like Flickr and Google have begun to speak to the crowd in its language (or even give it a language for it to articulate itself) And its talking. It has a lot to say. Democratic ideals have always tried to make this a reality, but voting never really captured the true meaning of what the crowd wanted, only grunts and warbles. With AI and computing however, the crowd now can finally talk with unprecidented precision.
What will we say to the crowd? More specifically what will you say to the crowd? Here is where we get out of the clouds and return to earth with actionable items:
1. Make sure you have and control your personal brand on as many social networks as you can find. This means own your own domain www.myname.com if you can. Own your company name www.mycompany.com, myproduct.com etc.
2. Create a facebook fan page for your product or service. Get everyone you can to join. If there already is one, become an active and leading participant. Always Give Value in everything you do.
3. Create and own your facebook profile, before someone else does. Facebook is used by 150,000,000 people as of this post, and by default is quickly becoming the defacto identity source. If you dont own your facebook profile, you are wide open to someone else taking it for you. And that is still legal.
4. Create your profile on everything else. Ning.com, Linkedin.com, blogger.com, myspace.com. All these can be more or less empty but just grab and own them.
5. Now that you've experimented with all these things and learned all these new skills... :) Pick which one you like the most and dive deep. In linked in, get all your friends in there, find new contacts, find opportunities, recommend people you respect. In facebook, post funny and entertaining things to your status, make people smile daily. Tell people things they can use, share your ideas, your concerns, your hopes.
6. Watch the comments roll in, tweak what you are doing based on them. If one thing you do gets no fans or comments, but another thing does, do more of the other thing.
That is how you can, right now, capture the wisdom of the crowd.
Good Luck!
Changing all my sites to blogs
I spent the last day and a half converting 4 of my 120 .com's to blogs using blogger. I chose blogger for the simple reason that it is currently #8 on alexa.com's list of highest traffic blogs, well and that its owned by Google, my current "mentor". I just renovated part of my house to have a lovely sunroom addition (and sank any hope of getting out of debt in my life time with it...heh heh)
So I thought, why not do all the work in there? I have this excellent $300 laptop that is a bit small, but it works wonderfully with the wireless internet in here, so I just sat on the couch sipping coffee, listening to old jazz 78's, and went to work!
First one was this one of course, but I didnt have much content to put in it so it didnt take too long. I added a bunch of links to it today, and hope that all the cross linking I did will help increase my "google juice" without getting spammy. The thing thats kept crossing my mind is, what kind of person is going to sit an read all this nonsense? My private ramblings, poorly written and unedited? Certainly not somebody I would likely target as a client, I dont think anyway. They generally want the highlights. No, I think the kind of person reading all this will be the kind of person I wouldnt want to read it. My parents, mabey a friend who is a bit too snoopy, and possibly someone seeking some kind of dirt on me, or to steal my identity for their own evil purposes I guess.
So why do it? Well, my primary driver is, the very exercise is cathartic. Seeing my thoughts on "digital paper" solidifies them, makes them almost talk back to me, and gives me a personal sense of permanence. Reading this as I type it, its almost like Im being scrutinized by the external visual representation of my thoughts...ah but Im getting too close to a post for my personal philosophy blog, secondskeleton.com! So I'll leave that for now.
Secondary driver, posterity. I often think about what legacy I will leave behind and ways to make the most of this short life we all have. Im writing my thoughts down here, and in some ways, this my end up being all that's left. There's so much going on in my head that I really want to just get it out there so mabey others can use it some day...mabey even in 100, 1000, or 1000000 years!
All the blogging stuff then is ready, but its not done, Ive started something. Mabey just a beginning, but Im starting to write, and Im excited about that. Ive effectively removed all the technical barriers to writing and I feel suddenly free to just put it all down.
If you are still reading...thanks! I hope you can get something out of it. This is the beginning of a learning process for me, I've been at this for 10 years now and Im really doing my first blogs! Well, you cant be first at everything.
So I thought, why not do all the work in there? I have this excellent $300 laptop that is a bit small, but it works wonderfully with the wireless internet in here, so I just sat on the couch sipping coffee, listening to old jazz 78's, and went to work!
First one was this one of course, but I didnt have much content to put in it so it didnt take too long. I added a bunch of links to it today, and hope that all the cross linking I did will help increase my "google juice" without getting spammy. The thing thats kept crossing my mind is, what kind of person is going to sit an read all this nonsense? My private ramblings, poorly written and unedited? Certainly not somebody I would likely target as a client, I dont think anyway. They generally want the highlights. No, I think the kind of person reading all this will be the kind of person I wouldnt want to read it. My parents, mabey a friend who is a bit too snoopy, and possibly someone seeking some kind of dirt on me, or to steal my identity for their own evil purposes I guess.
So why do it? Well, my primary driver is, the very exercise is cathartic. Seeing my thoughts on "digital paper" solidifies them, makes them almost talk back to me, and gives me a personal sense of permanence. Reading this as I type it, its almost like Im being scrutinized by the external visual representation of my thoughts...ah but Im getting too close to a post for my personal philosophy blog, secondskeleton.com! So I'll leave that for now.
Secondary driver, posterity. I often think about what legacy I will leave behind and ways to make the most of this short life we all have. Im writing my thoughts down here, and in some ways, this my end up being all that's left. There's so much going on in my head that I really want to just get it out there so mabey others can use it some day...mabey even in 100, 1000, or 1000000 years!
All the blogging stuff then is ready, but its not done, Ive started something. Mabey just a beginning, but Im starting to write, and Im excited about that. Ive effectively removed all the technical barriers to writing and I feel suddenly free to just put it all down.
If you are still reading...thanks! I hope you can get something out of it. This is the beginning of a learning process for me, I've been at this for 10 years now and Im really doing my first blogs! Well, you cant be first at everything.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Changing my personal brand in 3 hours.
My previous (current?) brand is northeastmagic.com. I do coding for a living, so the brand was based on coding as "magic" as I was not good at explaining how exactly I "solve problems" or enhance online applications with my work, so I called it magic.
Its been that way for 10 years. This afternoon I decided to eat my own dogfood so to speak, and begin opening up my brand to conversation, rather than just having a scaled down resume/me and my opinions and ramblings.
So first thing I did was sit down and ask myself, what exactly do you do? See, I read this book called "what would google do" by Jeff Jarvis, and in it he says that a fatal mistake of many businesses is not knowing what they do, what their core value proposition is.
So, I thought about what I do. I build little flash apps to enhance or customize existing back end internet based applications. A quick recent example is my "RSS headline display" widget built for www.southshoreclipper.com.
I also help people figure out what technology they need, and how to spend as little money as possible to get the job done effectively.
So in realizing that, I tried to think of an analogy. Handyman popped into my head. A person who comes into a situation, makes an assessment, then applies his skill, and if they are smart, hires out or recommends purchasing the stuff he or she isnt the best at. They don't reinvent the wheel, and they make clever use of existing resources and whatever else is around.
So code handyman is the brand. Next step was to quickly register the domain names. Code handyman doesnt exactly spill off the tongue, but it is easy to spell and relatively short, so for a domain name, its pretty decent. There is a common mispelling of it, handiman. So I registered both spellings even though one is wrong. How did I know it was common? A google search of the word handiman returned over 80,000 results, even though it did ask me if I meant "handyman".
Another advantage of the name is "code handyman" in quotes on google returned only 119 results, so its clearly a brand that I can take over and own in relatively short order without fear of confusion with another brand.
So I have my domain names. Next stop is to use blogger and grab the blog title for myself. I like blogger because it's associated with Google, and I want that "google juice" as Jeff Jarvis would say.
I think the time consuming parts will come next, like designing a sharp, trendy looking logo, deciding what drapes and slip covers to buy...but the decisions that needed to be made quickly have been made, and Im well on my way to establishing a new brand, a new successful brand I hope.
So by using blogger to drive my content, I open it up to a conversation rather than me me me me. I hope to see your comments and look forward to talking to you.
Sincerely,
The Code Handyman.
PS watch for changes to the following sites over the next few days:
codehandyman.com
codehandiman.com
northeastmagic.com
treekyomoon.com
secondskeleton.com
genericise.com
autoplayer.com
iruntheweb.com
iruntheuniverse.com
iruntheplanet.com
Its been that way for 10 years. This afternoon I decided to eat my own dogfood so to speak, and begin opening up my brand to conversation, rather than just having a scaled down resume/me and my opinions and ramblings.
So first thing I did was sit down and ask myself, what exactly do you do? See, I read this book called "what would google do" by Jeff Jarvis, and in it he says that a fatal mistake of many businesses is not knowing what they do, what their core value proposition is.
So, I thought about what I do. I build little flash apps to enhance or customize existing back end internet based applications. A quick recent example is my "RSS headline display" widget built for www.southshoreclipper.com.
I also help people figure out what technology they need, and how to spend as little money as possible to get the job done effectively.
So in realizing that, I tried to think of an analogy. Handyman popped into my head. A person who comes into a situation, makes an assessment, then applies his skill, and if they are smart, hires out or recommends purchasing the stuff he or she isnt the best at. They don't reinvent the wheel, and they make clever use of existing resources and whatever else is around.
So code handyman is the brand. Next step was to quickly register the domain names. Code handyman doesnt exactly spill off the tongue, but it is easy to spell and relatively short, so for a domain name, its pretty decent. There is a common mispelling of it, handiman. So I registered both spellings even though one is wrong. How did I know it was common? A google search of the word handiman returned over 80,000 results, even though it did ask me if I meant "handyman".
Another advantage of the name is "code handyman" in quotes on google returned only 119 results, so its clearly a brand that I can take over and own in relatively short order without fear of confusion with another brand.
So I have my domain names. Next stop is to use blogger and grab the blog title for myself. I like blogger because it's associated with Google, and I want that "google juice" as Jeff Jarvis would say.
I think the time consuming parts will come next, like designing a sharp, trendy looking logo, deciding what drapes and slip covers to buy...but the decisions that needed to be made quickly have been made, and Im well on my way to establishing a new brand, a new successful brand I hope.
So by using blogger to drive my content, I open it up to a conversation rather than me me me me. I hope to see your comments and look forward to talking to you.
Sincerely,
The Code Handyman.
PS watch for changes to the following sites over the next few days:
codehandyman.com
codehandiman.com
northeastmagic.com
treekyomoon.com
secondskeleton.com
genericise.com
autoplayer.com
iruntheweb.com
iruntheuniverse.com
iruntheplanet.com
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