While I do try to get away from my desk from time to time,
Most days I’m sitting her finding ways to make money online.

But today was just the day to give me enough reason,
To get off my ass and go out and enjoy the season.

So, I donned my costume and painted my face an eerie shade of purplish-white,
And reminded the little ones that trick or treat would end early if they began to fight.

I dressed as a vampire, and my nephew wanted to be a little blood sucker too,
My niece was a pretty witch, and wife was my victim with some fake blood goo.

With goody bags in hand, and a freshly charged camera,
With a “let’s go kids”, out the door we scampered.

Our journey was not far, for our neighborhood we had not left,
Within two blocks the kids bags were swollen with sugary heft.

Back to our home we strolled to join in handing out pounds of prepackaged sweets,
We joked and we laughed as we watched the procession of children roaming our street.

It was nice to get away and get a much needed break for my weary mind,
After all, the greatest treasure is the simple moments found in family time.

I hope you had an enjoyable and safe Halloween.

Since early 2003, I’ve been heavily involved in the open source software arena (I lurked from 2001-2003). My main activity has been centered around web-based applications, but I have spent an extensive amount in the desktop/server application arena as well. Over the past 5+ years, I’ve learned a lot of things from Open Source Software and I have come to be a staunch advocate for the Open Source model for both end users and enterprise.

As a whole, I would say my experience has been a very positive one. However, there have been some events over the past year that have taught me some of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a result of being involved in an Open Source Software Project. The following list outlines some of the things I’ve learned that you should NOT do. This list centers mainly around web-based applications, which have a different dynamic than desktop applications.

1. DO NOT put absolute control in one person’s hands.
2. DO NOT assume that the person leading development now will be there in a year.
3. DO NOT use highly hacked versions of your application to run your flagship site unless you have a solid enough model in place to support it.
4. DO NOT stifle the growth of your project by blocking user contributions, either intentionally or otherwise.
5. DO NOT forget to change privileged access passwords when a member with privileged access leaves or is “fired”.
6. DO NOT let the end user community run over your developers.
7. DO NOT let the developers run over the end users.
8. DO NOT make/let your developers handle management tasks that take away from coding.
9. DO NOT take a project upon your own shoulders with the thought that you can “save” it.
10. DO NOT ignore the writing on the wall. If the project is to the point where 1-9 have happened, it’s time to seriously evaluated whether it’s time to come up with a plan B.

Anyone who has been around Open Source for a few years has seen some, if not all of the above things happen. Sadly, I’ve either witnessed, or been a part of several of these. There are a number of things I have learned that I could have done much differently, and most likely better, but the past is useful in only the lessons it contains. I have learned from these lessons and have taken a step back from Open Source to fully allow the knowledge to soak in and to gain a fresh perspective on my future with Open Source.

A resource I became aware of earlier this year is the book Producing Open Source Software. Among other pieces of literature, this one is high on my must read list before I get involved with an Open Source Project again. If you are are involved in an Open Source Software Project, or foresee yourself becoming involved in the future, I highly recommend you read this text. I have read a good bit of this text, but not all of it. In it I found some very sound, practical advice on how to run a successful Open Source Software Project.

You’ve read my 2 cents. Now have your say!
What are some of the major poisons you have personally witnessed or been involved in that has had an impact on an Open Source Software project?
What resources have you found that are useful in keeping an Open Source Software Project on track?

No matter where you turn, the blogsphere is a buzz with the latest Google PR update. Even on my lowly little blog, I’ve even succumb to the temptation to blab about the PR buzz. Oh, wait, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Ah rats! And I promised myself I would walk away from the drama for a while. Oh well. Time to have more fun bashing Google! What has given me hope is that there seem to be some SEO professionals who are putting things into perspective.

Now that I’ve just managed to spam the trackbacks of a few of my favorite blogs, I’ll take a break and let you feast on some of the juicy gossip surrounding the latest PR update. Personally, I hate drama, so I’m off to go waste my time some other way. But, then again, maybe not. This latest PR update is better than Days of Our Lives.

I was engaged in a random conversation with a few of my fellows when the subject of coffee came up recently. Those who know me know that, of my passions, coffee is most certainly very high on the list. I would even dare to say that I could be a contender for a world record holder for the most coffee consumed in a lifetime by a living person.

This conversation about coffee brought to mind a speech I did for my Speech 111 class back in 2002. Of the speeches I had to give for that class, I would say that speech was the most enjoyable one I did. Of course, the dark chocolate covered espresso beans my wife prepared to accompany the speech certainly didn’t hurt. Still, I had a lot of fun researching the history of coffee and experimenting with sampling coffee in different forms while writing the speech.

Below, I have posted the demo my wife made for me to practice with. I would practiced my speech while listening to this track on my drive back and forth to college. While the audio quality is certainly not the best and it’s not a perfect narration, it is still an enjoyable listen even over five years later. My wife will probably kill me for publishing this online as she is very modest, but I think she did a great job of narrating this speech.

So, for you coffee lovers, here’s a short (~ 6 min) informational speech about our favorite beverage. Enjoy!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Yet again, my feed reader was a buzz over Google’s latest attempt to assert it’s authority over the Web. Yet again, Google slapped some big names with a PR hit that dropped several notable websites down a couple pegs in PR. And the Internet as a whole collectively says… “Um.. Yeah, so what?!”

Don’t believe me? Here, try this experiment. Go find a friend or a relative who is NOT Internet Savvy, who is not in an Internet related field and go have them do a search for whatever subject suite’s their fancy. Then, once they have performed their search, ask them what they consider the most important factor in deciding which source of information to read.

• Is it the site’s PageRank?
• Is it the site’s Alexa Rank?
• Is it how many backlinks the site has?
• Is it how many times the site shows up in the world of social media?

Chances are, if you asked any one of those questions to the end user, they would most likely give you a very befuddled look, like, “What planet are you from?”.

As a whole, the responses I get from people when I ask about their choices of reading sources, I usually get one of the following answers.

1. It looked interesting.
2. It was one of the first links in the search results.
3. It was the information I was looking for from a trusted source.
4. It was a well written site that had complete information with properly cited sources.

Now, as a fellow Internet Professional, I have to care about factors such as PR, Alexa Rank, SERPs, Social Media, etc, etc, etc. However, I often wonder if we are assigning entirely too much importance on the wrong kind of rankings.

Is it more important to have quality information, quality (buying/clicking) traffic and high positions in the search rankings or to have a high PR and Alexa rank?

The average end-user is oblivious to rankings other than what shows up first when they search for something. Ultimately, as web designers and SEOs, that is a high priority when marketing. Dominate the search results for your market and it will drive quality traffic to your site.

Now, about this crap of Google slapping sites with a PR penalty for selling ads without the rel=”nofollow” attribute… PR is a broken, ineffective, easily manipulated metric that quite honestly, does not truly represent the quality or popularity of the information being presented on a site.

I once built a site that got a PR 5 within 6 months of launch that was a carbon copy of hundreds of other sites. That site got over 250,000 page views per month. Was it a quality site? No, but it did have a bunch of backlinks.

However, I’ve seen and built other sites that, after a year, or even 2 years couldn’t reach a PR5, yet had higher quality content and nearly as much, if not more traffic, and overall, were much more beneficial to the Internet as a whole.

In my humble, but honest opinion, Google is grasping at straws to try to salvage its broken PR algorithm. In the process, it is alienating some of its strongest advocates, bloggers.

You’ve read my 2 cents. Now it’s your turn!
What are your thoughts on Google’s latest PR slap?
Do you think PR is a dying algorithm?