I know, I should have put more in the title. Crazy Egg is a web page traffic analysis tool that focuses on visualization. You sign up for an account (starting at $10/month), add a line of code to the page you want to monitor (or your master page), and then configure a page to watch. As it accrues data you can go into the dashboard and visualize the results as your actual page with the number of clicks/percentage overlaid. It’s a really easy way to understand what parts of the page are being clicked.

It reminds me, again, that it’s not enough to just capture data, you have to be able to report on it meaningfully. A great report just instantly explains the story the data is telling, “ok” reports answer the question but make you work a lot harder to understand the story. Sometimes it’s a line graph or a funnel, but sometimes you need something more specialized.

Technically this works and I like the visualization, but I’m not sure yet that I can derive the kind of value that it feels like it delivers. Not their fault, I’m the one who has to decide what behavior I like/don’t like and come up with a UI change to try to get to the goal. I think it might be pretty interesting for bloggers who want to do better but don’t want to really get immersed in traffic analysis.

Let me know if you try it, would be interested to hear if it helped.

Among the things I’m experimenting with this quarter is changing my book reviews to include an affiliate link to Amazon. I did a couple manually (there are a couple in the pipeline for the next few weeks done that way), but it’s also one extra thing to do, so thought I’d look at plugins. First one I saw had a single review (bad), then found Amazon Book Linker v1.3 and it works pretty well. I’ll show you some of what it does below.

One you download and install, close and reopen Live Writer, and then click Settings, put in your own affiliate code. Funny that we get in the habit of blanking out info when posting on the web, but in this case if you’re inclined to use my code so that I can accrue cash, I guess that’s ok!

Then enter a search and click ‘search’, find your book, click Insert.

This is shown with the medium size image, the one flaw I’ve seen so far is that it defaults to small and doesn’t seem to save changes. I’m going to try the large image on my reviews and see what everyone thinks.

The HTML it generates is customizable, just click modify template (shown next). I need to tweak the layout a little, and I wish it supported pulling in some other data points like price, popularity, and a link for the author, but at least it can be tweaked some.

All in all a useful tool. Now it remains to be see if using it is worthwhile!

I try to be balanced on new technology and ideas, trying to find the middle ground between hype and usefulness, time and money, fun and work. When Twitter first came out I didn’t pay a lot of attention besides my usual reading about what’s new, not being a blogger at the time and not having a need then for ‘micro-blogging’. Since then the world has changed, both for Twitter and for me. Twitter seems to have morphed into something beyond micro-blogging, what my friend Steve calls sidewalk conversations. And me, my job and interests have changed such that blogging is both fun and work, and I’m in the idea/thinking business, so reaching a larger audience both makes sense and appeals to my sense of trying to do better.

I’ve put it off for a while for a few reasons:

• I already have too much on my plate (job, oPASS, PASS, SQLSaturday, blog, monthly editorial for SSC, family, hobbies)
• It’s felt like a fad, and while fun to try fads, I’m cautious about things that require a continuing investment of time
• It feels like another task switch, and as much as I like to think I’m a multi-tasker, I really value uninterrupted time and just dealing with email is hard enough
• Where’s the money? I’d be more interested if I could see a sustainable revenue model
• Twitter people remind me of the Star Trek episode The Game!

So while I’ve had reasons (and in truth have just enjoyed being stubborn about it!), all my friends seem to find value in it and I don’t see any of them as easily hypnotized (well, maybe one or two!). I’m at the beginning of a mental re-org, deciding what things to continue, what things to adds to my list, and importantly, what things will get removed next year. Should Twitter go on the list?

And by the way, the title isn’t a typo!

I’ve always thought it made sense for events; announcing last minute changes and adhoc meetups, reminders about upcoming events during the day, less certain about just day to day stuff. I’ve got two events coming up, SQLSaturday #21 and the PASS Summit, so I’ve had it in mind to try there anywhere – which means learning how the Twitter thing works. I’ll be doing some reading this week to try to learn the basics, and I’ll give it a try through the end of year and then write up more notes. As I do it, I’m going to try to understand more about it:

• Am I deriving business value from it (though may not be tangible and not an easy question to answer)?
• Am I having fun doing it?
• How much time am I spending on it and am I willing to remove that time from something else if more than 15 mins a day?
• Which tools make it easier/less time/more effective?
• Am I getting information there that I wouldn’t otherwise and is worth the time (think of missing a conversation between colleagues, sort of)?

Ah, checking Twitter already are you?  Sometime between now and Friday evening I’ll post something on Twitter. Something interesting? That remains to be seen!

I’ve been working on an idea for a while with Brent Ozar and Jeremiah Peschka for a contest that recognize the efforts and skills of bloggers in the SQL Server community. We went through a lot of iterations, but we decided to start with a simple contest this time, learn some lessons, and then make some changes for next time. Let’s start with the rules:

• Bloggers submit links in their choice of two categories, nominations open until Oct 15, 2009
• Content must have been written on or after Oct 15, 2008 to be eligible
• We (myself, Jeremiah, Brent) will review all the entries, score them, and then look at the scores to pick a winner in each category (and we’re not eligible to win)
• Winners announced during the PASS Summit (if nothing goes wrong!)
• Winners in a category this time will not be eligible in that category in the next contest

Ready to enter? Use this form: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGxCaVN2dWtNeEpkRXNlekZzVEk0Tmc6MA

Now some background. Our thought is to do this once a year, maybe twice a year, and expand it to include reader nominations and reader votes in addition to what we have the first time. We went with a simple online survey for now, if we get things figured out we’ll see about building something more permanent. We’re going to try to be transparent about our process. If something works, or doesn’t – tell us, and we’ll fix what we can this time, and fix it better for next time.

A good starting point for transparency is the judges, what’s a good system for picking them? We appointed ourselves this time to get things moving, we’re thinking that for the next round the three of us will choose someone to replace one of us (and we’ll use rock-paper-scissors to decide who sits down!) out of the blogger community. Open to discussion, but that’s one idea for how to keep it community focused. Probably the thing to pair with that is that judges aren’t eligible for a year or two after judging, that way there’s no appearance of back room deal making!

But…this is the first round. We’ve got a lot to learn, but I’m excited about the possibilities. Blogging tends to be a lonely endeavor, this gives us a way to recognize people for their efforts. It’s also a way to drive interest in blogging, and a way to challenge people to write better. We know that we’re all competitive, so it won’t take long before the bloggers will be scheming;

• should I save this great post for after the deadline so it’s eligible for the next contest
• should I try to compete in category x or y
• Grammar and spell checking
• Looking for gaps to fill

What’s great about that is those are all positive behaviors. We can encourage blogging and better blogging.

So what do the winners get? At least a nice badge for the blog, and maybe a shirt this time. Next time? That depends on you and on us. If we make it work and the contest becomes really interesting and competitive, then I see cruises, movie deals, heck – even free software!

I've been using Snarfer for a while now, preferring an offline reader so that I use a few spare moments to catch up on reading without having to plug in the air card. It works well enough, but lately I've been wanting something better, really driven by one idea - Snarfer doesn't encourage me to post comments. Comments are the feedback all blogger's love, me as much as the next person. I don't need - or want - to comment on every post I read, but I comment on maybe 1 in 50, and that is too low. In Snarfer I have to click the link to see the original article, scroll down, sometimes click another link for comments, and finally write something. Not that hard, but that minor road block inhibits rather than encourages me to comment.

I've been starting to look, and at the same time I ran across this post by Dare Obasanjo (interesting blog too) about RSS readers being modeled after email clients being broken,which was a follow up to a Slate article called Kill Your RSS Reader. Not sure they have the answer, or an answer that fits me, but there is something missing. I follow about 200 SQL blogs plus another 30-40 on various topics. I don't read all of them every day. Some I read every post, some I scan the titles and only read what looks good. Definitely at times it's information overload. I don't have an easy way to mark something directly for follow up except to email myself the link or copy/paste it into a task.

I can see there being three categories for me:

• Blogs I want to read every post, even if I fall behind (easy to identify)
• Blogs that I want to treat more like a newspaper, I read it that day or it goes away (easy to identify)
• Blogs that split the difference (hard!)

Features I think I want:

• I like not waiting on pages to load. Building them as a PDF and emailing them to me could be interesting (in aggregate I mean)
• I need it to be very easy to comment, and to manage my subscriptions to comments (the latter doesn't seem to have an established standard?)
• I'd like it to scan for links to blogs that aren't on my list and hold them for review along with why/where it came up
• Would be useful to know which ones I'm connected with (LinkedIn, Outlook, all the others)
• How often I've read something on a blog, could be used to prioritize my reading later
• Ability to write rules ala Outlook
• Have it learn what I like and at least prioritize that for reading first
• One click access to add it to my task list (even if that's in the software and not external)

I'm not much interested in sharing blog lists as far as a social feature, but definitely ok with sharing or finding with blog posts. Seems like so far the emphasis is on just managing the feeds and making them visible, not doing something more with them. Or maybe I'm either using the wrong tool, or the wrong viewpoint. Would I be better off with a handful of Google alerts?

Blogging is both more fun and harder than it looks, so when someone is getting started I try to offer what I can for encouragement. My friend Kevin is a .Net developer with an interesting sense of humor, and recently I was able to get him to talk himself into starting a blog (see what I mean about encouragement?). Starting a blog requires a mission statement and that's often reflected in the title, so I'll let you guess a little about the kind of content that Kevin intends to aggregate and create.

Here's the blog.

Something new for the end of the year - a recap of everything I posted for 2008. 303 posts if the data/my query is correct. Not all earth shaking posts, a couple typo's in the titles I had still missed, but some good ones too. For 2009 I don't know if I'll have that many or not, I'll still be aiming for 1 post per weekday.

Thanks for reading along with me this year, and a special thanks to those that drop in the occasional comment. Have a Happy New Year and I'll see you back here tomorrow!

A Display Challenge
A Minor Rant About Statistics
A Note On Sp Updatestats
A Week Of Books Part 1
A Week Of Books Part 2
A Week Of Books Part 3
A Week Of Books Part 4
A Week Of Books Part 5
Acm 5 Year Anniversary And Customer Service
Acm Queue Article About One Laptop Per Child
After Event Notes On Sqlsaturday 8 In Orlando
After Event Party Location Announced For Sqlsaturday 3 In Jacksonville
Agenda Posted For South Florida Code Camp
Airlines Don T Care About Customers Nor Does The Government
American History Quiz
Announcing Sqlsaturday 10 Tampa 2009
Another Take On Sp3 & Service Packs In General
April Fools Challenge
Are All Meetings Bad
Are You Security Minded
Argentina Code Camp
Assessing Db Changes
Beyond Managing To Middle Management
Blackberry Bold
Blog Changes On Sqlservercentral Com & Visiting The Indytechfest
Blog Likes And Dislikes
Blog Review Yours & Mine
Blog Update & Feedburner
Blogging On Sqlservercentral Com
Blogging Thoughts Part 1
Blogging Thoughts Part 2
Brown Bag Lunches Training Do They Work
Browse Source Code For Net Objects In Sql Reflector Sql2005browser
Building A Security Philosophy Posted On Sqlservercentral Com
Building Raffle Tickets For Sqlsaturday
Building Your Brand
Building Your Brand Part 2
Call For Speakers For Pass Summit Is Open Through March 28 2008
Call It A Day Or A Day Minus 2 Milliseconds
Calories Burned During Sex
Celebrating July 4th
Change Of Leaders At Onetug Adios Shawn
Changing Jobs Should You
Cheap But Good Kvm Switch
Cheap Vacation Travel Books
Chipotle A Model Business Or Just Good Food
Comments On A Recent Visit To Boston
Comments On Dissecting Sql Server Execution Plans By Grant Fritchey
Community Speakers Leaders Where S The Roi
Computed Columns Published On Ssc
Congratulations To Bayer White Connected Systems Mvp
Connecting To A Reporting Services Model
Creating Databases Posted On Sqlservercentral Com
Cross Functional Teams & Cross Training
Dba's Need And Deserve A Large Monitor And Preferably Two Of Them
Desktop Or Laptop
Digging Into Replication
Disabling Indexes Published On Sqlservercentral Com
Do You Love Pass
Do You Understand Microsoft Licenses
Dry Erase Board V2
E Readers Will They Ever Take Off
Election Day & Love Of Country
Employee Or 1099
Employee Or 1099 Part 2
Evaluate Jack Corbetts Blog
Evaluating Speakers At Events
Final Preparations For Sqlsaturday 8 On October 25th 2008
Final Reminder Sqlsaturday 5 & 9 Coming Up On October 11 2008
First Time Attendees At User Groups
Flyclear Privacy And Time
Flyclear Revisited
Follow Up Notes On Sqlsaturday 3
Follow Up Notes On The Custom Whiteboard
Follow Up To Blog Review Post
Forty Percent Discount On Sql 2008 Exams
Free Cheap Good Html Editor Is There Such A Thing
Free Ebook Chapter Book Introducing Sql Server 2008
Free Linq Book From Mspress
Free Subscriptions To Visual Studio Magazine
Getting Geeks It Pro S To Talk At User Group Meetings
Good Ideas Take Time Or How To Brainstorm Part 1
Good Ideas Take Time Or How To Brainstorm Part 2
Good Links On Speaking
Google Blogs & Images
Grasshopper
Growing New Speakers How To Go National Pass Needs A Policy
Happy Thanksgiving
Hard Core Object Oriented Programming Guidelines
Hello Secure World Ms Site Worth Looking At
Heroes Probably Not
How Long Is Your Receipt
How Many Drive Letters Do You Use For Sql Server
How Many People Can A Manager Manage
How To Improve Ms Connect
Ideas For Managing Cables
If You Like Books Look At Librarything
Indytechfest 2008 Set For Oct 4 2008
Indytechfest Update
Indytechfest Update Aug 18 2008
Ineta Champs Program
Information On Dell Equilogic Iscsi
Init From Backup Published On Ssc
Insufficient Space For A Side By Side Restore What Do You Do
Interesting Article About Measuring Performance In Software Test Mag
Interesting Web Hosting Option
Ip6 Addresses Could Break Your Db
Ironkey Personal Super Secure Usb
Is The Pass Summit Too Big
It's All About The Wireless Access
It Transparency Posted On Ssc
It Transparency The Intro
Jacksonville Code Camp Set For August 23 2008
Labor Day
Laptops Part 1
Laptops Part 2
Latest Orlando User Group Meeting & Assorted Attendees
Learning To Blog Via Books
Lessons Learned From Sqlsaturday 2 Tampa 2008
Link April Fools Joke On Jonathan Schwarz Of Sun
Link Avoiding Burnout
Link Killing Terminal Service Connections
Linq Again
Listening On A Non Standard Port
Looking For Incremental Improvements
Making Sponsorship Work At Community Events & User Groups My Wish List
Management Article Posted On Ssc
Managing & Professional Development Classes
Managing By The Numbers Part 1
Managing By The Numbers Part 2
Managing Money
Managing My Todo List
Mechanical Blog Posts
Mentoring & Sharing Your Interests Reading This Time
Mentoringnet
Merry Xmas
Microsoft Bi Conference Oct 6 8 2008
Minutes Of The Aug 2008 Opass Meeting
Mnemonic Phone Numbers & Cell Phones
More Code Per Module More Bugs But More Complex Code <> More Bugs
More Linq Discussion
More On Mentoring
More Thoughts On Linq To Sql
Moving Tempdb Posted On Sqlservercentral Com
Ms Making Net Framework Source Code Available
Naked Conversations
Negotiating It S Not All About Winning
New Book From Celko Joe Celko's Thinking In Sets Auxiliary Temporal And Virtual Tables In Sql
Next Opass Meeting Is Feb 12
Notes About Our Raffle Of The One Laptop Per Child Laptop At Orlando Code Camp
Notes From My Visit With The Charlotte Sql Group
Notes From The June 2008 Opass Meeting
Notes From The Sep 24 2008 Orlando Net User Group Meeting
Notes On My Visit To Birmingham Sql Group
Notes On My Visit To The Space Coast Users Group
Notes On My Visit To The St Louis Sql Group
Notes On The Jacksonville Code Camp 2009
Notes On The South Florida Code Camp
Notes On Went Well & What We Could Have Done Better From Sqlsaturday 8
Office Ribbon Find The Command Out Of Office
One More Sql Feature Wish
One Year Blog Review
Opass Meeting Tomorrow Night Aug 5 2008
Operation Hands Free
Orlando Code Camp 2008 Registration & Call For Speakers Is Open
Orlando Code Camp Reminder & A Special Raffle One Laptop Per Child
Orlando Code Code Follow Up
Orlando Heroes Launch Event
Other Thoughts On Brand Building
Partitioning Gotcha
Partitioning Part 3 Posted On Ssc
Partitioning Part 4 Posted On Ssc
Pass 2008 Day 1 Mon
Pass 2008 Day 2 Tuesday
Pass 2008 Day 3 Wed
Pass 2008 Day 4 Thursday
Pass Board Of Directors Part 2
Pass Board Of Directors Part 3
Pass Board Of Directors Part 4
Pass Board Of Directors Part 5
Pass Board Of Directors Part 6
Pass Day 5 Fri
Pass Presentation Evaluation Results
Pc Magazine Going Out Of Print
Performance Tuning Seminar In Jacksonville Fl On May 2 2008
Performance Tuning Tips From The Consultant Perspective
Perks At Work A Good Thing
Polos For Sqlsaturday
Pop Quiz What S The Max Number Of Resultsets Supported By Management Studio
Post Event Notes On Sqlsaturday 3
Post Event Notes On Sqlsaturday 5 & Sqlsaturday 9 And Future Plans
Post Event Notes Sqlsaturday 8
Practices Does Make A Difference When Speaking
Presentations Using A Panel Format
Presenter View In Powerpoint 2007
Professional Development Links
Provisioning Storage
Pumpkin Tossing
Quick And Dirty Code Compare
Quickbooks 2009 Not As Good As 2007
Rebuilding Stats Twice Or Not At All Posted On Ssc
Relaunching Jumpstarttv Com
Reminder Orlando Code Camp Is Mar 22 2008
Reminder Sqlsaturday 4 In Orlando June 7 8 2008
Reminder Upcoming Sql Launch Event In Jacksonville Fl On Sep 12 2008
Renaming Databases Posted On Sqlservercentral Com
Returning Stuff To Amazon
Review Of Pro Sql Server 2005 High Availability
Schedule Announced For Sqlsaturday 3 In Jacksonville
Security By Obscurity
Should Code Camp Sqlsaturday Be Free
Should I Run For The Pass Board Of Directors
Snapshots Part 1 Published On Ssc
Sometimes You Need An Analog Solution Sorta Earth Class Mail
Speaker Eval Form Part 2
Speakers Presenters Can You Answer All The Questions
Speaking At Pass Summit 2008
Spend Money To Make Money
Sql 2008 Schedule Slippage And Sql 2005 Sp3
Sql Code Review Scalar Variables
Sql Community The Site
Sql Injection Again
Sql Server Data Services Announcement Competitor To Amazon Simpledb
Sql Server In The Cloud
Sql Server Mvp
Sqlsaturday 2 Tampa 2008 Notes
Sqlsaturday 3 Jacksonville 2008 Registration And Call For Speakers Is Open
Sqlsaturday 3 Jacksonville Final Reminder
Sqlsaturday 3 Jacksonville Update
Sqlsaturday 4 In Orlando With A Twist
Sqlsaturday 4 Lessons Learned
Sqlsaturday 4 Wrap Up
Sqlsaturday 5 & 6 Update
Sqlsaturday 6 Cancelled
Sqlsaturday 6 In Cleveland Registration Open
Sqlsaturday 8 In Orlando Update Aug 21
Sqlsaturday 8 Session Evaluations
Sqlsaturday 9 In Greenville Sc On Oct 11 2008
Sqlsaturday Call For Speakers Cleveland & Olympia
Sqlsaturday Tampa 2008 Is This Weekend Feb 16
Sqlsaturday Tampa Call For Speakers
Sqlsaturday Update Aug 1 2008
Starting A Technical Blog Link
Sun Acquires Mysql
System Sessions Spids Rather Than Spid Lt 50
Taking Care Of Employees Storms
Tampa Code Camp Is Dec 6 2008
Tampa Code Camp Is December 2 2008
Tampa Code Camp Notes
Tethering Vs Air Card & Other Miscellaneous Phone Thoughts
The Fun Of Blogs
The Long Tail
Thoughts On Database Mail
Thoughts On Http Endpoints Schemas And Other Niche Features
Thoughts On Indytechfest 2008
Thoughts On Mentoring Part 1
Thoughts On Mentoring Part 2
Thoughts On Mentoring Part 3
Thoughts On Mentoring Part 4
Thoughts On Mentoring Part 5
Thoughts On Net Reflector Being Acquired By Red Gate
Thoughts On Virtualization
Todo List Follow Up The Notepad
Tool Review Hamachi Vpn
Tool Review Microsoft Virtual Cd Rom Control Panel
Tool Review Password Safe
Tool Review Quicken
Tool Review Servers Alive
Tool Review Snarfer
Tool Review Taskswitchxp
Tools
Transparent Translucent Or Opaque Whats Your Strategy
Tribute To Jim Gray
Trigger Notes
Troubleshooting High Connections & What S The Application Name
Two Mistakes
Understanding Microsoft Licenses A Short Follow Up
Uninstalling Software Sucks And Why Computers Are Still Slow
Upcoming Presentation At The Pass Summit 2008
Upcoming Presentations
Using Tripit For Travel Plans
Utah Code Camp Is April 26 2008
Vacation Reading Boyd & Mullane
Vacations
Vacations Part Ii
Visiting Birmingham Sql Group In June
Visiting Boston This Week
Visiting The Charlotte Sql User Group On Feb 27th
Visiting The Space Coast Net Users Group In June
Volunteering
Water Amp Cell Phones Don T Mix
Well Run Companies
What Does A Pass Summit Cost
What Is An Mvp
What S Wrong With Linq To Sql
What S Your Favorite Trek Episode
Where Are Profiler User Defined Templates Stored
Why Are Stored Procedures Too Hard
Why Format Tsql
Why I Want To Be On The Pass Board
Will You Host The Next Sqlsaturday
World Wild Telescope & Misc Microsoft Stuff
You Re Not Dumb And Neither Am I

Brent Ozar had a nice post recently on starting a technical blog, well worth reading and a good addition to my collection of blog related stuff.

One of his notes that I knew but don't think I ever wrote down was to post on weekdays only - there's a huge drop off in traffic on weekends. As I think about it I'm not sure it ultimately makes a difference or not (though I do believe it looks better to post Mon-Fri) for two reasons; one is that most blog readers use a reader, so even if you post on Sat they will see it when they hit the office Mon morning, and the other (a variation of the first one) is that hits on the page will continue to climb steadily (here on SSC I see about a 3 week period when views climb, after that it's one here and there) so again, I think this is people with readers catching up with queued content.

It's fun to read good work, and my friend Kendal Van Dyke recently posted How CommitBatchSize And CommitBatchThreshold Affect Replication. He was looking for the answer to how/when to alter the values of those two settings and BOL just didn't make it clear, so after the standard bit of asking and searching, did the testing to figure it out for himself and identified a minor bug in the process of doing so.

Kendal might disagree, but I think it's perhaps his best blog post because he shows he can identify a point that might be useful and dig in to understand it, and when blocked, go deeper to research it himself. It's what I expect from a good Senior DBA but don't always find. The other part is taking the time and having a place to document his efforts, so that he leverages his investment.

So, read the link to learn about something interesting in replication, or read it to see a good example of research, or read it to see how it makes sense to have a blog to post a lesson learned.

I'm using a Goggle blog for another project and overall it works fine, no complaints. I've also switched to using Live Writer for blogging, my typing is bad enough that a spell checker is a must (and grammar checker would be a nice addition). Today I was doing a post that included an image, easy enough in LW, just paste it in. When I tried to publish the post it told me I had to log in to Picassa so that I'd have a place for the images. I did that, but not thrilled with that implementation. Why do I need another step other than to drive traffic to another Google site? I just want to upload the image, and if I want to change it, I want to edit the post and change it. I get that the images can be stored anywhere (including Picassa) but it just seems like a bad model, having posts in one place and images in the other. Hide it from me, let me manage it using standard tools, all is good.

Images are always the pain point for these types of applications. Doesn't matter to me if the files are in the file system or a table (though I lean towards tables for DR and security), just make it seamless. LW does its part, Google just tweaked me enough to want to write something down about it!

Today I'll see how many bloggers I can interest/irritate by discussing a quick list of what I think works and doesn't work in a blog:

• I truly despise blogs that publish only the first few sentences in their feed. I use an offline reader just because I know I can do some reading without having a connection, so the intro thing breaks that. Beyond that, it's just annoying to have to click a second time to see what I should already be reading. Quit worrying about your page views, publish the material! Though to be fair, I still read the blogs if they have good content.
• I like blogs that are consistent in posting. Once a week, once a month, whatever the timetable, I feel like those people take their blogs seriously. Perhaps a high standard to set, or even an unfair one since there are some great inconsistent blogs.
• Equally, I'm not fond of blogs that only get a post when the owner learns something. I know some people use their blog as a repository for those odd scraps of hard won information and that's fine, but at that point is it really a blog?
• Echoing announcements. I don't need 700 SQL bloggers to tell me service pack X has been released. What I would enjoy is if you found something interesting in the readme or the install, or talk about how/when/why your organization handles service packs
• It's entirely fair for the blogger to define whatever mission statement they want (here I blog about SQL, business, community, but never politics), just try to stick to that mission. Then I can read a few posts when I discover your blog and get a sense of proportion, do I want to read the other stuff (and maybe even find it valuable?), or will I just pick it up in one of the super feeds like Database Weekly? Blogs that let me grab a filtered feed help ease the pain in some cases.
• I like posts that are a few hundred words or a few paragraphs. Long enough to engage me, not so long that I'm reading a white paper. Try to talk about one thing per post. Got two things to say? Two posts.
• Posts that look forced. I see more than a few blogs where you see a post come up and it has that feeling of "the boss just yelled at me for not maintaining my blog". Maybe I'm wrong on that. Nothing good about being made to do something you don't want to do. Of course, sometimes even those posts have value.
• Show me you can think and show me what you are really interested in, don't play for page views. Few of us are going to make money blogging, so why not write about things that come easy and show passion?

Do I stick to my own rules? Got your set of pet peeves (hopefully bloggers blogging about blogs is not one of them)?

A month or so ago I posted Blog Review - Yours & Mine to see what I might get for feedback about my writing efforts, and to spend some time taking a deeper look at my Blog Likes & Dislikes. The effort was mildly sucessful overall. I had a good handful of bloggers (mainly SQL focused) respond to me and overall the results were positive, with no deep negatives. I asked different people to try looking at it different ways. Here's one example, with the replies:

·         Comments on my about page, does it do a good job of showing who I am/my interests (professionally that is)

    I believe it does, yes. My perception is that you spend a good amount of time on technical items, but you also spend a good amount of time on professional development. In short, you look to help people professionally in multiple areas, similar to what I would expect from a coach or mentor. The question now is: do you feel that is the image you want to present?

·         Thoughts on the mix of content, do I spend too much/too little time on some topics?

·         How do I come across as a blogger?

·         Is length of posts ok, or shorter/longer?

·         What could I do to make the blog content better?

   I wish I had an idea for you, but i think it is pretty good as is. I like the simplicity of the site itself, and the content is solid

I don't think I could ask for much better, and it's good to know that it's not terrible! Though some good negative feedback (see Mechanical Posts) is actually more valuable, if you can see past your pride or determine that the criticism isn't quite pertinent - jury still out on that particular issue, I'll try to improve the next time I have external content published.

It was an interesting exercise, and probably more interesting if you don't have the benefit of a friend or two that also blogs and can give you more low level feedback. Like most things finding someone to really coach you to the next level is unlikely, you're stuck with experimenting with ideas until you find something that works better than what you currently do, even if only by a few percentage points.

Thanks to all who sent comments, and to those I reviewed, hopefully those comments were interesting and usable.

Occasionally I'm asked how I come up with ideas for my blog to maintain the just about one a day tempo. The answer isn't complicated, I come across an idea or two every day, then I just add that idea to my todo list and revisit when I need material. Not a very helpful answer though, because it doesn't explain how I find the ideas!  As far as the blog, it's two parts; one is becoming sensitized to things that happen that might be the base of a good blog post, the other is being comfortable with being able to take a sentence as a source and add value to it - my thoughts.

So let's start with the idea of being open to ideas. Possible sources for me:

• Magazines - often some good stuff especially if you read a diverse mix
• Blogs - not as often, but only because I'm trying to generate original material, but there are times when I want to post about someone elses blog post
• Questions that come up in class (or in forums)
• Announcements of any type
• Conversations with colleagues/peers
• Problems I solve or try to solve
• Community Events

On my list of possible blog posts I have right now:

• Discuss budgeting for businesses at the department/team level (based on a conversation with Steve Jones)
• Discuss the acquisition of Reflector by Red Gate (announcement)
• This post! (conversation)
• Trying to find a good HTML editor to replace Frontpage (and why) (a problem)
• Acrobat can screw up label printing if you have the wrong option set (a problem)
• Discuss advertising SQLSat on Craigslist and others (community)
• More on todo management (problem, sort of)

Most of those will wind up as posts here in the next few weeks and as you can see from the titles, they definitely need to be expanded to be useful. Many of those ideas will sit for weeks. I'll go through my list and some will pop out as 'I'm ready to write about that', while others need more research (HTML editors) and some just need more thought (Reflector). So I guess my process is to find something interesting, and then give it time to grow as needed. Sometimes the ideas require active thinking, or a discussion to fully shape my views. Other times I need to not think about it, let my subconscious work on it until the idea is ready.

In the case of my blog it's not that I'm an incredibly gifted writer (I'm not, maybe some day) or that I have a secret source of ideas, it's just that I'm always open to ideas/events that might be good posts. The process of taking those ideas and writing about them forces me to think about them, then you get to see the results - good or bad. When I talk to other people about blogging their biggest fear is lack of ideas, but as I talk with them they are often full of ideas. They just aren't recognizing them, or making the leap that they can take a very simple idea and convert it into a few paragraphs of thoughts.

Coming up, how this applies to business.

Perhaps you've noticed a few of the blog changes if you visit via the web rather than RSS. One good change is that it's now single sign on, so logged in SSC members can comment. Aside from that, I had hoped for greater visibility for blogs and an increased emphasis (SSC runs a very distant second to sqlblogs.com). It almost feels like a step backward:

• My About page is still missing
• Tag cloud is gone, not even counts by tag
• All blogs have to look the same, no option to pick your layout
• No better visibility than before about which posts are interesting, where traffic comes from etc

Interesting situation, not many blog posts here so not much reason to put in effort to improving the tools, not having great tools/exposure lessens the potential bloggers. Not sure what the strategy is.

Separately, I'm at the Indianapolis Airport writing this, waiting on Steve Jones to arrive so we can make our way to hotel and the site of the IndyTechFest tomorrow. John Magnabosco has done a really nice job of communicating about the event to registrants and I'm exciting to see how the event is run tomorrow, hoping for ideas to take back to Orlando. If you're attending please say hello, always (well, almost) have time to talk.

Mechanical posts are ones that are either auto-generated, or manually input with no real additional work put into them - an example of this in action is if you use Delicious to auto post to your blog each time you add a bookmark. This technique has it's place, but it's easy for it to become annoying...great you added a bookmark, but why?

Lately I've been soliciting input on my blog, trying to see beyond my own tunnel vision (see Blog Review - Yours & Mine) and while the follow up on that is still to come, some early feedback from my friend Steve Jones was that he thought I had too many mechanical posts and was maybe too erratic in my topics. I'm limiting the discussion today to the 'mechanical' posts. The majority of the ones he considers the offenders relate to articles that I've posted on SQLServerCentral.com, you can see the work I've done over the past year by using my tag cloud filter.

Some samples:

Renaming Databases was just published on SSC, another in my lastest effort to expose some of the hidden complexities in seemingly routine operations. Definitely read the discussion thread attached to the article as there were several very good additional tips suggested.

This was actually posted about a week ago, fell behind a little during travelling. Building a Security Philosophy was written to get people to think about they approach security. Do you give the proverbial Junior DBA only partial access? Do you believe in table access? Do you use the built in roles? I have opinions on the topic, but it's not clear that there are always right answers, and definitely some that are situational. Many of us have the philosophy that we acquired at the first job, or from the first manager or peer - at some point it's worth revisiting to decide if we still agree with those principles held for so long! 

Moving Tempdb isn't a common operation, and mercifully a simple one if it comes to that. As in much of the stuff I write about I wanted to put down a nice detailed answer to a pretty simple question. Think you know how it works? What happens to the original tempdb mdf/ldf if you move tempdb? Do they move? Get deleted? Read the article:-) 

Rebuilding Stats was published yesterday on SSC, some nice comments posted to it as well. The main point of the article was that if you're rebuilding indexes with the default options you're automatically getting stats update on those columns as well.

My overall goal is to post anything I do professionally that isn't my day job here, though I expect and know that many clients and potential clients will look to see what I write about and am interested in. When it comes to true technical content related to SQL I prefer to post on SSC for a number of reasons; I get paid for my work (the entrepreneural spirit!), it gets a little more exposure than my blog does, I really enjoy the discussions that follow content being posted on SSC (and that seem to rarely be as deep or as interesting on blogs), and I'm biased in favor of supporting the community that I helped build (and in turn helped me grow).

So the easy option is to just post the technical content here, forego the reasons above. Not thrilled with that. Or just omit adding it to my blog, not great either. The alternative - as Steve tries to demo in The Agile Cult, is to try to add value to the smaller post here than points to some other site with the main content. His matching editorial won't go up until tomorrow, so for now I'm grabbing his word count from today (Mon) as 530, and his blog (excluding the intro is about 320). My last article posted on SSC was about 630 words. Do I want to write an additional 25-50% over and above each article I post to make it non-mechanical? Or am I missing a step by not baking a little more of the why I did write this into the article (though it's often as simple as someone asked me to explain something, nothing more complicated)?

As I look at my examples above they are short. Probably not much shorter than the standard blurb that gets shown in the SSC newsletter, but short. One place not discussed that I think I've probably not done a good job is when I've posted a few times on tools I use. I've listed the tool and lightly discussed, but haven't posted a full review with screenshots, etc. I'm torn there, I think in some cases a little more work would really help someone understand why I like a piece of software, in other cases my comments will either interest you enough to read the link, or not!

My goal has been to tell those of you who follow along with me that I've done something external to the blog, and lightly encourage you to read that as well, or not. While clearly a two or three sentence post wouldn't work for his daily editorial, I'm still not convinced that brevity is a flaw. Don't want to miss an opportunity to learn, but also have to work to make sure I separate style comments from substance comments.  I'm going to wait to watch Steve do a few of his prequel posts to see how they come out, maybe if I see it done it'll be easier to implement. Either way, I expect to learn from the exercise. And while it may look like I'm really really down in the weeds looking at details, I think that level of introspection is required at times if you want to master something, and clearly I haven't mastered blogging nor settled on a solid place to analyze my results from.