ben robison

Some Things I’d Like to Say, But Can’t

The fact that I work for one of the vendors, means that I don’t often write about analytics anymore. There are a few reasons for this: 1) I don’t want to be perceived as an official representative for the company and 2) my site isn’t supposed to be an advertisement.

So I was delighted when I read this article by June Dershewitz over on the Web Analytics Association’s blog. June created a list of the “Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started In Web Analytics.” She says a few things that I often think about, but resist the urge to write about. Some of my favorites are:

4. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Numbers won’t match, they won’t add up, they won’t make sense, sometimes they won’t even exist. Know how much dirt you’re willing to live with, then accept it and move on.

5. You will learn to love the query string. You will come to see it as a beautiful haiku…

8. Don’t fall into the “report monkey” trap…

I also got a laugh when she said that CSV files don’t have to be comma-separated. That’s wrong. CSV files still have commas in them, even if they don’t show up in Excel. Those mysterious commas that you don’t see are performing a wonderful technology magic to keep your data organized.

What do you wish you had known before you started doing web analytics?

Tags: excel, top 10, Web Analytics

How Well Does Your Name Google?

So if you’re anything like me, from time to time you google your name. I like to see how many of the top 10 results are actually me. Since I started doing this a year or two ago, I simply cannot compete with Benjamin Robison the apparently famous violinist. Though my blog gets a fair amount of traffic, I can’t make any headway against him.

Next in line is Ben Robison the director of an aircraft carrier fleet and then third on the list is me. Then you’ll find a link to Ardesco’s site and find out that Benjamin Robison the violinist is also a director (no wonder I can’t top him).

Then there’s the Blue Dwarf’s blog talking about my visit to the Web Analytics class at BYU. Whoever the Blue Dwarf is, he must be an SEO expert, cause my name is only on that page one time, and I was surprised to see it ranked so high.

The there’s ISLand where my blog gets resyndicated, followed by a few more blogs mentioning Ben Robisons that aren’t me. And finally my LinkedIn profile rounds out the top 10.

So that gives me 40% of the top 10. Not too bad, I thought until I googled my neighbor’s name just for fun. Dang Him! All top 10 results are relevant to him. Sure he’s got his own photography business. Sure Apple has spotlighted his work. Sure he’s got movies about him on YouTube. Sure his photography rep links to him. But does that make him more special than me =)

Anybody want to make popular movies about me and post them on YouTube? No takers?!

Tags: google, me

5th Cable Gets Cut - Sounds Like An Inside Job

Or a U.S. job =)

When two cables got caught, we chalk it up to coincidence. The third was a little strange, but still possibly explainable. When the fourth was cut, suspicions arose. Today, a 5th undersea cable was cut, and now it can only be explained by the super-secret government James-Bond-but-US-style agent.

That’s my theory anyway. Five cut cables is a little too much to chalk up to coincidence and given the strategic location of the cuts, someone had something in mind, when they got out their industrial strength underwater internet cable cutters, climbed into their robot-armed submersible, and took it down a few thousand feet.

No terrorists have no reason to cut internet access to their hidey-holes do they? It’s a guessing game of who would have a motive to do something like that. Maybe we (the US) are testing out new forms of warfare. Somebody in the Pentagon said “I know, let’s cut off their Internet access and maybe they’ll just give up.”

Tags: conspiracy

Super Tuesday Demonstrates Liberalism, Prejudice, and a Few Other Things

A few quick thoughts on yesterday’s primaries.

It’s not secret that I’ve been supporting Mitt in my own small ways, but it’s been acknowledged many times that if you’re looking for a conservative who supports the three traditional conservative pillars, Mitt Romney is your man.

Sure McCain is gobbling up lots of the independent votes, but the number of Republicans voting for McCain says one of two things: Either Americans in general are getting less conservative and care less about families, life, lower taxes, etc. or they’re (for some reason) willing to believe that McCain will not continue to do as he’s done in the past and thumb his nose at the conservative Republicans from whence his support comes.

All the people voting for Huckabee says something a little worse. Though Huckabee staunchly refuses to accept the fact that his completely unexpected success yesterday represents anything but a resurgence in his bid for President, it’s now widely known that McCain was throwing his votes in the Huck direction in an effective (though below-the-belt) tactic to keep Romney from getting votes.

Whether people don’t like Romney because he’s a Mormon, or because McCain’s palpable feelings of personal hatred towards Gov. Romney are contagious, it certainly seems that though the country is willing to elect it’s first woman president, or it’s first black president, the fear/misunderstanding of Mormonism has not been completely overcome.

Prejudice works both ways and the incredibly strong showing at the Southern Polls shows a bit of prejudice in the opposite direction.

Well, things look bad in the Mitt camp this morning, but what scares me the most is how divisive this has been for the party in general. I’ve heard many good conservative people voicing opinions that they’d rather vote for Hillary than McCain. There’s a scary thought.

Tags: 2 cents, hillary, huck, mccain, mitt, politics

Accuracy & Precision: Two Problems with Social News

Whether it’s deliberate or accidental, I’ve been reminded several times in the last few months that you can’t believe everything you read in the social news.

Those who do it on purpose seek the sensationalism needed to create Digg-able linkbait. This is by far the more atrocious sin, but many bloggers simply neglect to check their facts. Far too many people assume that because they see it on their social news site of choice, it must be true, so I stand up here as the voice of reason. Please check your facts! Stop the sensationalism!

Here I do not condemn the rumor sites that identify themselves as such (anything related to Apple), nor the fake sites that everyone knows are fake (Fake Steve Jobs anyone?), but rather the Diggs, the Slashdots, the Techmemes, the Reddits, and the Sphinns of the world.

I finally got sick of the magnitude of sin on Digg and canceled all RSS subscriptions from that site. For this reason, none of my examples come from Digg, but I can only imagine that it carried even worse headlines and summaries.

TSA Bans Batteries from Luggage on Airline Flights

A few recent examples: first there was the “fact” that starting Jan 1, 2008, you couldn’t take spare batteries for your devices on plains anymore Electronista reported this as Lithium Batteries to be Banned from Air Luggage; it also showed up on Slashdot as the slightly more accurate TSA Limits Lithium Batteries on Airplanes an accurate enough title, though the content of the article said otherwise. As it turns out there are some limitations, but they are not nearly as strict as we were first told. For the full story, check SafeTravel.dot.gov here and here.

RIAA Says that Ripping MP3s is Illegal

Then the RIAA said that ripping CDs to MP3 was illegal. Slashdot had it as RIAA Argues That MP3s from CDs are Unauthorized and Electronista picked it up as RIAA Claims CD Rips Are Piracy in Lawsuit. These are probably more forgivable since both were based on an article in the Washington Post. Later though, this article popped up on CNet that gave us the real story exposing Marc Fisher (Washington Post reporter) as a bit of a sensationalist himself.

I’ve got no love for the RIAA, but Mr. Fisher deliberately misinterpreted statements in the RIAA’s brief and refused to admit to having made a mistake (at least to my knowledge). What the RIAA actually said was that the unauthorized act was putting the MP3s in the Kazaa shared folder on his local network. Admittedly the RIAA is still venturing into unknown territory, but anyone can see the difference in the magnitude of the claims.

The part that really irks me, though, is that people continue to report it inaccuracies, even after they’ve been clarified and corrected. Just this afternoon on Slashdot, there’s a report that the EFF has come to Mr. Howell’s defense (defendant in the above RIAA case) and the Slashdot contributor clearly states “This is the same case in which the RIAA claimed that Mr. Howell’s MP3s, copied from his CDs, were themselves unlawful.” That claim was never made.

Cary Sherman (President of the RIAA) actually said “Not a single (legal) case has ever been brought (by the RIAA against someone for copying music for personal use). Not a single claim has ever been made.” Granted it’s worming around the issue of how the RIAA really feels about the topic, but it’s an official statement and, very strictly speaking, it’s true.

Can we put an end to the sensationalism and just report the news so that we can stop wasting our lives reading false news? I’ve really got better things to do with my time.

Tags: 2 cents, riaa, social media