I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine 10 years ago about “e-mail” versus “email”. Should the dash be used or not? I don’t remember how we arrived to a conclusion but I do remember we concluded that “e-mail” was the appropriate spelling. But is that correct?
I did a google search on “Masking Addresses to Prevent E-mail Harvesting”, the title of a recent blog posting. I did this to see if my web site had been index based on this phrase. It was and it was fourth from the top on the first page of hits. However, google being the smart one it is asked “Did you mean: Masking Addresses to Prevent Email Harvesting”. Notice there is no dash in the word “email”.
My site does not appear on the first page when searching google using the phrase without the dash in the word “e-mail”. As a matter of fact my site does not come up on any of the first 10 pages. I stopped looking after ten pages but I bet it is safe to assume my site doesn’t show up at all on that search phrase.
Being the curious type that I am, I decided to remove the dash from the title and text of that blog item. I’ll give it 24 to 48 hours before checking google to see the effect.
I had to make another change to the blog item permlinks for this site. I realized a URL like http://www.thecave.com/2005/06/23/office_pranks.aspx would cause problems in the future. I needed a way to identify the purpose of the permlink so I added archive/ before the year. The new permlink structure look like this:
http://www.thecave.com/archive/yyyy/mm/dd/blog_item_title.aspx
yyyy is the four digit year, mm is the two digit month, and dd is the two digit day. Including “archive” to the URL structure will give me more flexibility to use yyyy/mm/dd/ is other virtual URLs.
On a related note, I completed the monthly archive URL mapping. The structure is as follows:
http://www.thecave.com/archive/yyyy/mm.aspx
This makes it easy to enter the URL for any month on the blog. For example, http://www.thecave.com/archive/2005/06.aspx.
Email harvesting is a technique used by spammers to find email addresses published on web sites. Spiders crawl the net looking for text that looks like email addresses (ex: somename@somedomain.com).
I decided last night to make some enhancements to blog engine I wrote for this web site. That was around 7:30 pm. At 5:30 am I decided it was time to go to bed. I did roll out the changes but there’s more work to be done. And I know there are some problems too. For example melanieandkirby.com is displaying the wrong blog.
The most notable change is the new permlink for my blog entries. The old permlink, which are still valid, used a blog item ID as part of the query string. While functional it wasn’t very descriptive and not well liked by search engines like Goggle.
The new permlink uses a better structure consisting of the posting date and title. For example, the permlink for my last posting is http://www.thecave.com/archive/2005/06/23/office_pranks.aspx. As you can see the link includes the publish date followed by the title of the post. For older blog items that do not have a title the blog item id is used.
The other notable change is the blog item page itself, which is a new feature. Before you could only see the blog item on a page listing other items from that month. Now the blog item displays on its own page with the comments below. At last you can see both the post and its comments from the same page. This is a feature I have wanted implemented for a long time.
I still need to migrate the archives to the new permlink structure. For example, http://www.thecave.com/archive/2005/06/ should display all the blog items for the month of June 2005. Also I discovered that the links in the rss file are invalid, which will be fixed soon.
So why did I make the change? Simple, I want to make the site more appealing to search engines and hopefully increase my Google ranking. The blog item is now optimized by the title, which will make it easier to find specific blog items through Google and other search engines. There still many more things that need to happen to make the pages more appealing to search engines but this is a start.
One side note, all previous permlinks are still valid. As a matter of fact, the data store containing the blog items remains unchanged. I wrote an HttpHandler to map the permlinks to the correct page content. This mapping allows the site to support both the old and new permlinks.
Channel 9 has a video of Larry Osterman talking about some great pranks that have occurred over the years at Microsoft. My favorites include erasing an office and laying turf in an office.
Microsoft’s Michael Howard and others have started a wiki on Least-privileged User Account (LUA) security. Last year I tried running under LUA but found I needed administration privilege for many things, from installing software to writing code. Needless to say I gave up on my quest to use LUA daily. But with more information available today such as the nonadmin wiki I think it time for me to try again. Besides, I want to guarantee that my software installs and runs without a problem under least-privileged user accounts.
Last week I asked a few friends to send me feedback on SMTP Diagnostics. I’ve made good progress on the program since that time and I hope to have the first release available to the public within the next few of weeks.
Today my focus was improving the user interface. I was able to eliminate the tab control across the top, which I never really liked. The new interface also has a web look to it that I think improves the overall look. Take a look at the improvements made and let me know what you think.
Old user interface versus new user interface.
I’m putting the finishing touches on White Peak’s first product called SMTP Diagnostics. The product does exactly what the name implies. It helps diagnose problems that can occur when sending e-mail through an SMTP server. But this last bit of work is proving to be time consuming.
I need to setup the product web page. I need to draft the EULA. I need to install and setup forum software, which will be used to offer community support for SMTP Diagnostics. I have to create the installer and publish a PAD file. Then there’s marketing.
I need sign up with a reseller. I need to include marketing techniques in the application, and I need to setup an online store where people will hopefully buy licenses. Whew, the list goes on.
Good news is that once I have finished I’ll be able to reuse much of the infrastructure for new products.
I’m back in New York City where the temperature is higher then in Atlanta. It feels like it is going to be a long, hot summer in the city. Anyway…
My return flight gave me time to reflect on the ICCA National Conference I attended over the weekend. I realized how important professional development in the area of business is for a computer geek like me.
When I started my company I believed I knew enough to run a successful company. After all, I have been in the industry for 20 years and I know software development. I’ve been told repeatedly by my peers that I’m in the top percentage of software developers, and I feel I have some unique qualities that allow me to exceed client expectations.
This was the confidence I needed to get my company going. I thought, “I know and understand software development and therefore the clients will come.” However, I missed some very important points such as having a focus, knowing how to sell and market, and how to grow a business.
Events, like the one this past weekend, prove to be invaluable to me. Like many other computer geeks I spent the majority of my career learning technology while ignoring the business side of the industry, but understanding the business side is so important especially to a computer geek wishing to go independent, whether you are building a consulting practice or going to be an ISV.
To be successful in the software industry requires more skills than slinging high quality code. An ISV can produce the best application in the world but that application will not make a dime if it is not marketed correctly. A consultant may know how to solve the most complex problems in a given industry but that individual will never find the right gigs without knowing how to sell his or her services or how to find and engage the right clients.
Point is a computer geek owning a business must understand the principals of running a business and how to succeed in that business. This is equally as important if not more important as the quality of the work produced.
I made a conscious decision last year to study more on business related topics. My book case, which was once full of technology books, is now packed with books covering marketing, accounting, selling, and other small business topics. I have replaced attending technology events like TechEd and PDC with business related events like the ICCA National Conference.
I still have much more to learn. Heck, it took me 20 years to get where I am at with regard to software development and it will probably take me another 20 years to reach that same level of confidence in business.
If you are considering breaking away from the traditional software development job to pursue independence, I highly recommend reading the following business books:
The E-Myth Revisited
Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t
And many of the books written by Alan Weiss including Getting Started in Consulting, Second Edition.
I also recommend joining a trade organization like ICCA and ASP.
