First hand SEO experience

Posted on January 25th, 2010 by Mel in Misc, Review | No Comments |

I’m so proud! I wrote a blog post over at my friend Gizmo’s stupidities blog (don’t be fooled by the title, it’s not only stupid stuff :)) about the MSI e-reader that was presented at the CES 2010. With this entry, I managed to land on the first place in a Google search!

Of course, that wouldn’t have been possible without Gizmo’s great SEO, but I wrote the copy so it’s not all just because of the background settings. :)

Alas, I just had to realise that the entry is now on the fourth place only… Oh well. SEO and search results aren’t an exact science anyway. Still feels good though, to (have) be(en) at the top. :)

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Moving Tales I

Posted on January 22nd, 2010 by Mel in Moving | No Comments |

It’s been a while since I last posted, but after a brief stint to Paris, city of my dreams despite all the negative aspects, and a relatively busy week, plus a horrible 2009, there are finally some good news: my spouse has found a job. Yay. :) Since the job is in another city, we obviously have to move. Our choice fell to Düsseldorf, famous for its Altbier and the rivalty with Cologne. Though it’s not the city my spouse will be working in, it’s nicer and bigger and we actually have friends there which made the decision easy.

The first thing I did when I learned about the job was to go to http://www.immobilienscout24.de to look for flats, something I’ve been greatly looking forward to ever since we became unemployed. Finding just the right place to live may be a chore for some, but it’s something I enjoy. Looking at pictures of flats, checking out a particular neighbourhood and, best of all – when available – looking at floorplans and beginning to think about how best to furnish the flat.

Aside from rent and size (at least 60 sqm), we have another wishlist with items that are more or less important to us:

  • the location. It needs to be relatively close to the main train station or at least easily reachable by public transport. A supermarket should be in the vicinity as well. We don’t have a car and we also we don’t want to haul groceries through the public transports. It should, of course, also be safe enough.
  • the general condition. We don’t want to move into a flat that first needs a complete overhaul before it is livable.
  • electrical outlets. We both have computers plus assorted accessories like printer, scanner, cell phones, external hard drives etc. most of which require electrical outlets to work or for recharging. Not to mention  the usual household appliances like fridge, TV, washing machine… all of which need outlets. In modern flats, that shouldn’t be an issue, but older ones may be lacking in that regard.
  • an extra powder room. That doesn’t sound like such an issue, but apparently, Germans don’t usually consider that important. During my first search at immobilienscout24.de, I found 130 flats that matched the general location (i.e. relatively close to the station) and size requirement. When I narrowed the search to include only those having an extra powder room, the number of matchs dropped to 30.
  • good water pressure. I’m probably totally horrible with that, but there’s nothing worse than a shower from which you have the impression that the water basically trickles down onto you. It then not only takes ages to get soap out of your hair, but you don’t exactly feel clean afterwards as well. I know that if the water pressure in any given flat isn’t how I like it, it’s enough of a major point for me not to take this flat even if it’s perfect in any other aspect.
  • a bathtub would be a plus. Not for me this time, but for my spouse. I could live with only a nice shower. :)
  • if possible, no already equipped kitchen. Even if that would save us some money in the end, standard kitchens have a standard height which is too low for me. I’d prefer to invest some money into a kitchen that doesn’t make my back hurt whenever I cook or do the dishes.
  • not on the groundfloor. It’s not only that people could peek into your flat, but I’d never feel safe enough from break-ins.

Then there are some things that would be nice:

  • two bedrooms so we can sleep in one and put our computers into the other.
  • one large living space that includes a kitchen would be practical at times. Or at least with the kitchen close to the living space where we normally have dining and living room furniture, which of course means that the living space should be big enough for both.
  • since there are people who come to visit us regularly, we need the possibility for them to sleep at our place. We don’t necessarily need a bedroom just for that, but at least a living space large enough for a sleeper sofa.

As you can see, we’re not all that difficult. ;)

In order to find this perfect flat, I’ll continue my search within the next few days. Contacting realtors and such. I’ll keep you informed of the progress and result, of course. :)

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The place where time stands still – Die Bahn

Posted on January 5th, 2010 by Mel in Misc | No Comments |

I’m a relatively regular long-distance train traveller and have been for almost thirteen years now. Not owning a car, the train has generally been the best alternative for getting around. Since I’m also a heavy Internet user (who would’ve thought? ;)), I was delighted when it became possible to not only check train schedules online, but to be able to order the tickets and print them at home, thus making it unnecessary to find time to go to the train station during their office hours to get my tickets. Of course, nowadays one can probably use the ticket machines even for long distance tickets, but I like to have some time to find just the right train and that’s just not possible if there’s a chance that at any moment, there’s a queue of people wanting to get tickets as well.

There is only one little problem with the online ticket service: it only works for Germany. No, that’s not entirely true. I can buy tickets even if my trip leads me into the neighbouring countries. But I will not get the pricing information nor will I be able to print the ticket at home. Instead, it is sent to me by post which means that I need to purchase my ticket at least two weeks in advance, just to be on the safe side in case there are any delays in their handling time.

Why am I telling you this? Easy. Next week, we are going to Paris for a few days, mainly because of the present I gave my spouse for our anniversary, but also to see a few friends. This trip will take place using the Deutsche Bahn, or Die Bahn. There are quite a few people that keep telling us to take the plane, but really, that’s just a lot of hassle for maybe an hour of time saved. There might be cheaper tickets, but less than a week before the scheduled departure, that’s highly unlikely.

Anyway.  Since there are two of the aforementioned issues – trip into a neighbouring foreign country and less than one week before leaving – we had to go to the train station to buy the tickets. And I just knew that we would once again be dealing with one particularly lively lady. Like the last three times we went there to buy tickets.

When we arrived, there were already several people standing in line and only two counters open, one of which was indeed manned by just that lady. We were hoping to be lucky, but were not and so had to approach this woman who, even if she only says “Good afternoon”, makes me want to go to sleep. Seriously. Her voice is soft and low and devoid of any emotion or difference in volume or… life. And she generally takes a lot of time dealing with anything. But I was prepared. I knew what I wanted. Certainly, if I gave specific instructions, she would just type that into her computer and we could be out of there in five minutes.

Yeah, right.

The first wish we had was to take the cheaper of two possible trains on the way to Paris, one leaving at around 9 am, the other arriving at around 7 pm. If I do that search on the website of Die Bahn, it takes me less than thirty seconds per request. It took her at least three or four minutes and then she had to use her handheld calculator to add up the difference prices. I’m certain that’s not her fault but a flaw in the (horribly looking) software she has to use. The adding up of prices, that is. Finding the right train just cannot take all that long. Apparently, it does. And while we waited there, in silence, with more and more people arriving, our eyes were drawn again and again to the large wall-mounted clock. That seemed to had stopped moving.

Finally, we had the figures, made a decision – took us about five seconds – and then she went on choosing that train, looking for reservations – I never, ever travel without having a reservation whenever it’s possible – and did who knows what else while we waited and waited. After a while, she took the pages that were printed and began folding them. Almost like an afterthought, she added, “Did you want anything else?” … “Yes, a return ticket.” Duh.

Again, I knew what I wanted: a train leaving at around 10 am. I had checked up on it before, knew there were three possible connections that all left Paris at 10.01 am, but arrived here at different times, with the fastest arriving more than an hour before the slowest. But I didn’t know the prices but I trusted that since it’s their job, they’d sort that out at the Die Bahn office.

After what seemed to be hours later, she finally printed the return tickets. During all that time, I watched the screen though it was too far away for me to be able to read what she was doing, but either she did not know how to use the software or there was some other problem, for she apparently entered the data several times. I can only hope that she knows how to do her job. She’s been there for years, after all. In that case, I have to blame it on the software. It cannot be that difficult to create an easy to use software to ensure fast handling of requests – if their website already has such a tool! Admittedly, some information cannot be had online (pricing again), but it cannot be all that hard to add a module for that so that those poor people behind the counters can do their job in an adequate speed.

Had I had all information available to me at home, I could have made the purchase in less than five minutes. As it were, we spent half an hour in the Die Bahn office, ten of which were spent waiting for our turn and the rest to be spent waiting for the employee to handle two simple requests.

Now, I’ve worked closely with an inbound call center for a few years and know that time is actually money, especially in a transaction based payment scheme. I don’t always adhere to the policy that says “if a call lasts longer than two minutes, cut it”, for I think that a customer deserves to be treated with respect and also deserves their request to be handled in a timely manner – if that takes five instead of two minutes, it might cost the company a little, but if the customer hangs up and is happy, that’s a customer who’s more likely to stay – which means that they’ll continue to pay us instead of a rival company. In the end, this will save us money because we won’t have to spend a fortune in customer acquisition. At least not to replace old customers, but merely to find new ones.

There is a little problem: there is no alternative to Die Bahn. Of course, there are planes and I could rent a car, but neither is practical nor all that cheap and I still think that going by train is generally less stressful (unless they’re late as usual and you miss your connection). Therefore, I have to use Die Bahn. But they could really do something to provide work tools for their employees that ensure higher customer satisfaction. And tell their employees that even if they hate their job, showing it to customers is not the way to go. A smile now and then and some enthousiasm would go a long way as well.

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Review – Fastpencil.com

Posted on December 30th, 2009 by Mel in Review | 1 Comment |

I like to write. I’m certainly not a grand author or writer who does it for a living, but during the past few years, I’ve realised that sometimes, after a “dry spell”, I have the urge to write. It can be anything, really, most often linked to a role-playing game though not necessarily a text that I would actually use for it. But when I have the urge to write, I can only put it off for so long before I do need to sit down and do something about it. That’s why I started an in-game blog a couple of years ago: I felt the need to elaborate on things about my character that I could not show in any then existing in-character way. Plus, I didn’t think a personal blog would be all that interesting, neither for me nor for the Internet in general. (As you can see, I kinda changed my mind about that ;)).

Now, the game I’m currently playing on is in a bit of a decline (it’s very cyclic) and we’re currently considering rebooting the game universe which of course includes making new characters. We’re sticklers for good character creation and require a detailed biography for any character which means at least 40 lines of 80 characters each (yes, the width of a standard terminal window) which really isn’t all that much.

Anyway. I had the basic outline for my new character and felt inspired, but didn’t want to use EditPad Pro nor Google Docs, two solution I generally use for writing purposes. At that time, I was using my little Eee PC on which I had installed Jolicloud which comes with a whole library full of online apps. So I went through the apps, trying to find something which suited my tastes and needs. My choice fell on FastPencil.

This is normally a solution for writing and publishing books but also comes with a community and which allows you to collaborate with others who can co-write with you or merely review what you have written. I don’t have any plans to write a book just now, but even for a casual writer, FastPencil appealed to me. It has a relatively easy to use interface, very Web2.0-y and it’s relatively hands-on as well. I say “relatively” because they could make a few changes in the usability department. Oh, I could probably have made my life easier if I had read the help pages, but I don’t do that unless I have no other choice. For me, a website (or software) that requires me to read help pages before I can use it is not something I will return to.

Sign up is easy and once you have activated your account and logged in, you come to your personal dashboard. It already shows the usual Web2.0 collaboration stuff and allows you to send messages to Twitter and Facebook. It also allows you to create a new book, later called “project”.

Generally, this is what you start with. When you click on the button “Start new book”, you are taken to a page that offers twelve templates for your project, ranging from “Chapter Book” over “Memoirs”, “Photo Book” and “Children’s Book” to “Poetry” and “Cookbook”, thus allowing anyone to find a suitable template for their needs. Once you have chosen a template to start from, you are prompted for a title and whether to it’s a private or public project.

For the character biography I wanted to write, I chose “Memoirs”, the most suited template. It comes preloaded with a number of chapters that help you outline the high points of your story, but you can at any time delete, rename or create chapters and subsections. Opening your project brings you to this page which gives you a general overview, but does not show anything of the content. To get closer to being able to begin writing, you have to click on either “Chapter Outline”, the second yellow button from the top, or the “Chapters” link in the “Progress” box. You can also click on the “Go to Chapter” link at the top right, a button which took me a little while to discover.

Any of the three brings you to an overview of the existing chapters. In case of the “Memoirs” template, these are the following:

  • Family
    • The World When I Was Born
    • Brotherhood
    • Sisterhood
  • Education
    • My Favorite Teacher
    • Big Events
    • Graduation
  • On My Own
    • Love of My Life
    • Kids, Work and Pets
    • Finding Meaning
  • Reflection

Of course, these chapters are merely an idea and many may find them inadequate, but one can easily add more chapters or rename them which I have done for my own project. I have kept “The World When I Was Born” because that allows to lay out a general overview of the universe a fictional character is born into.

To finally begin writing, one more click is needed: on the title of the chapter you want to edit. This brings you finally to the place where you can begin doing what you are here to do: writing. The interface is very basic which is quite good, allowing you to focus on writing, not needing to fiddle with page layout, typesetting or anything. On the left hand side of the main text box, you find buttons for basic style changes, for bold or italic font, underlining and lists. There is also a built-in spell checker, you can view the created HTML of the text and include images in your text.

Something that would be most useful here is the possibility to align your text differently. Per default, it is aligned left, but there is no way to center it or align it to the right. Even though you can edit the HTML, whatever you change only remains valid as long as you remain on that page. Once you have left it and return to it, changes in the HTML are not taken over which is quite annoying. What’s the purpose of being able to see the HTML code if you cannot make any changes to it?.

It would also be practical to be able to change the font size if not the font, at least for editing purposes. I generally prefer smaller font sizes, though I do have to say that after a bit of getting used to, the font used for the book content is pleasant to look at.

The spell checker is a nice feature. By clicking on it, all words unknown to an US English dictionary are underlined by familiar red wavy lines. Then, by clicking on an underlined word, one is prompted a list of words that may be more correct than the one you used, just like it would work in Word. A simple click on the spell checker link disables it again, making the wavy lines disappear.

In the right menu bar, you find the important “Save” button, though there is also an auto-save feature. Still, before you navigate away from a page, make sure to save your work. You never know.

The “Revisions” feature allows you to see a list of all versions of your text, much as you can find in Google Docs or Wiki entries. “Collaborators” brings you away from the editor page which is a bit impractical because the only easy way back is to use the “back” button of your browser. Unless you want to click yet again five times to return properly to the editing page. “Comments” and “My Notes” open two Lightbox-similar overlays displaying comments and notes to the current page. Comments are public, i.e. collaborators can see and post comments, while the notes are private and can only be seen by the author. I use them to keep track of the official timeline. While it is possible to delete notes, it appears to not be possible to properly delete comments. The corresponding button mentions an “archiving” though it is not clear where a comment is archived to. It is not listed anymore in the list of comments, but the number in brackets behind the “Comments” link keeps showing all comments, even archived one. I first thought it was a simple cache problem, but even using a different browser to display the page did not solve this issue.

The “Reference” link works only if you select a word or expression. It then opens a new tab, looking up the expression on answers.com. “Word Count” does just that: it gives you another Lightboxy overlay displaying word and character count of the current chapter.

“Delete chapter” is a link you should only click if you really do want to delete your chapter. You are prompted to confirm this once, but if you do, it is impossible to go back.

That is about all that’s necessary to know in order to begin using FastPencil for writing. Of course, there is the whole publishing process which is quite nicely done, but I won’t go into detail about that. Mostly because I haven’t gone through it entirely yet. :) I did upload a cover image for the text I’m writing, created to FastPencil’s specifications, but in the preview, it looked all raggedy and not as sharp and cool as offline. Also, if you do not publish a book, you will only ever see a small cutout of your cover image which is a bit of a pity. I’d love a simple Lightbox to show the entire image.

To sum up, I have to say that I will definitely do my writing project with FastPencil. Even though it demands more clicks than I’m normally willing to do in order to get where I want to go, it’s a nice, clean interface that appeals a lot more to me than the bleak white of Google Docs or any normal text editor. Plus, since it’s online, I can access it anywhere and don’t need to save it on my computer (though I certainly will do that once the project is finished – one can never be too careful).

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Moving into the computer age

Posted on December 28th, 2009 by Mel in Computers | No Comments |

Christmas is over, the snow has melted and was replaced by general humidity and a bit of rain – which is never very far away in this region. I spent a few days with my family where a surprise awaited me: my father had bought himself a laptop. A Medion Akoya E5218 to be precise.

It was quite amusing. We were at his place – with “we”, I mean my husband, my sister and her husband – sitting near the fireplace and he proudly announced to my sister’s husband that he bought a laptop. My brother-in-law is not at all interested in computers. He uses them, yes, but not much more, and so, at my father’s announcement, my brother-in-law pointed at my sister and me, telling my father that we were the right audience. Which I immediately proved by asking questions like “What Windows 7 is it running? What’s the screen size?” to which I did not get an answer, of course. Or rather, he told me that the screen size was 40cm and I was like, “Who uses centimetres as screen size indication??” I’m a fervent believer that the US should abolish the Imperial system and move into the 21st century regarding any measurement units, but I have to admit that regarding screen sizes, inches are the only unit of measurement that I can work with. But it appears that Aldi, the company selling the computer, thought that Germans don’t understand what 15.6″ means and so they wrote in large letters “40cm” on the packaging.

Anyway, here are the basic specs:

  • Intel Pentium T4400 (2.2 GHz)
  • Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
  • 15.6″ matte widescreen, 1366*768 resolution
  • 8x DVD burner with dual layer support
  • 4 GB RAM
  • 500 GB hard drive
  • 1.3 MP webcam
  • 9 cell battery

Connectivity is as follows:

  • 4x USB 2.0
  • 4in1 multi card reader for SD, MMC, MS and MS Pro memory cards
  • 1x Express Card Slot 54
  • VGA, HDMI, RJ45

So really, it’s not a bad laptop at all, especially considering the price: 499 EUR. The best part about this computer is the matte screen, really. The colours are quite brilliant from what I was able to see – I only sat in front of it for fifteen minutes or so – but I’m not entirely fond of the resolution. With Windows 7 Home Premium running, it seemed as if this screen could use a bigger resolution. But maybe that’s just a first impression and after using the laptop for a while, I’d realise that this is the perfect resolution for this screen size.

The RAM is great, of course, but quite standard nowadays. Though during my brief usage of the computer I didn’t feel as if there really were 4 GB of RAM available. Navigating seemed a bit slugging. Then again, I had to use the touchpad even though the laptop was delivered with a mouse which I didn’t know at that point. I really wish I had had more time to spend with that laptop, especially to clean it from all the crap that was installed by default – trial versions of an anti-virus software and Microsoft Office to mention only two – and I guess that by setting up a proper system, it would’ve been a bit quicker as well.

Alas, my father is a total computer illiterate and an acquaintance of his helped him get the computer running and even set up an e-mail account for him. Pity only that my father, when I asked him what his e-mail address was, couldn’t answer me. Apparently, he didn’t even note it down. I also gave him a real quick intro into what to do with those three buttons at the top right of a window. No, I am not kidding.

He said he wanted to take some introductory computer classes – which is useful and definitely necessary – and which makes me think that even though there are already quite some classes advertised, it may be a field in which a freelancer could make quite some money. I need to give this some more consideration.

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