swansonager – what is matt up to?

We all love Google (ok at least 95% of us), but chances are there has been a time when you wanted to search for something that you remember seeing on a domain – but when you search on Google you have to scroll through hundreds of results to find whatever it was your looking for on that domain.

What if there was an easy way to do just that – enter a domain, and the keywords you wanted to find on that site and get them back. This has always been available using technical search operators on Google but I decided it was time to build a simple interface around it. So I built Better Google, Better Search – http://bgbs.net/.

How can bgbs.net help me?

Here’s a quick example:

The other day I saw something on my facebook feed about the book “The Shack”. I knew that our pastor had spoke about that book last summer but I couldn’t remember where on the site the link might be – using BGBS, I can enter this in the domain name: apostles.org and then enter the keywords: The Shack – in the keywords box. In about 2 seconds I have the link to the exact page on Apostles.org that I wanted to find.

Doing a normal search query on Google would have taken forever to easily find this page but since I already knew the domain and keywords, I used the tool on bgbs.net/ to find the link.

The UI I wrote basically encapsulates the site: operator on any Google search but when you try and explain how to use search operators to non tech folks, you get them confused most of the time. I hope you enjoy bgbs.net – I think you will

Altavista served over 300,000 Visitors the day it went live in the mid 90’s and served over 4B queries in year #1

Many of you might not know the story behind Altavista and how they flourished as the 1st true search engine before Google, Yahoo!, Excite and many others – but there is one lesson we can all definitely take from their history: corporate myopia.

If you haven’t read The Search by John Battelle, I highly suggest you pick up a copy. It’s well worth the read.

Altavista was born out of Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) by Louis Monier – and in 1994, Monier saw the need for Search like no one had before him. Yahoo! had a pretty good catalog of URLs and sites at the time, but it didn’t have search. Louis saw this hole and started his quest to fill the gaping hole where search was needed.

It wasn’t too long before he had created the first prototype of what would eventually become Altavista. The biggest challenge he faced was the justification of the product. Since DEC was in the business of producing hardware, he had to justify the Altavista project to showcase what DEC chips could do with data – not a bad thing, but in the end – it was.

The reason I bring up Altavista and Monier is this:
Louis saw a huge gap to fill where there was no search.

What is that gap that you are trying to fill?

Maybe it’s a new product or service, but I can pretty much assure you that the right approach is identifying a gap and filling it with a service. Creating a product and then trying to push it into a gap is much harder than the reverse.

What’s your Altavista?

What is your Temecula?

What do I mean by that? Well, the video below from bicycling.com is a great read on how you can leverage your existing assets to bring value to your business, domain, or blog. The Temecula area just outside San Diego is a beautiful place: ton of mountains, a free public campground at Vail Lake, amongst many other great outdoor features. But what draws me to this place, is what one land owner is doing with his private land: opening it up to the mountain bike community for development.

The owner of this land in Temecula, has opened up his property to allow mountain bike enthusiasts to create a series of trails and the like – all for free. What a beautiful thing for all parties. The land owner gets his land developed and on the map as a destination for mountain bikers and trail enthusiasts, and the mountain bikers can build trails to shred – for free.

What a brilliant idea for this guy who owns the land – he gets his land developed for free and his customers (albeit free for now) win. He can then parlay this into a revenue generating machine at some point down the road, but the great part is his initial outlay has been outsourced for a spectacular price: free.

So today I ask you to ponder, “what’s your Temecula?” and how can you leverage existing assets to help take your site, blog, or business to the next level?

photo credit: swansonager – Hurricane Gustav waves in Destin, FL

While I am not an elite runner by any means, I do enjoy working out, both running and mountain biking along with a lot of tennis. That being said, we all aspire to be better in whatever our passion might be – SEO, working out, seeing rich people, or whatever it might be for you.

When I was out running 3.2 miles this morning before 7am, I thought of something that I read in runners world a couple months back from an elite marathoner. He said this:

“If I’m working out when my competition is sleeping, then I know come race time, I’ll have the edge on them”

My question for you is this:

What motivates you to keep a step ahead of your competition. Is it working while they are sleeping? Maybe for you it’s automation to make things easier. Whatever the case, what’s your motivation to keep one step ahead of your competition in your niche?

After being in the software industry for well over 10 years now, I know that at times we get in a rut. The question I often wonder is how we can spur innovation when we’re in those down periods where we just can’t seem to get motivated.

I remember back in 2006 reading about Google’s 20% time initiative. This ‘20% time’ works as so (at least at Google):

The 20 percent time is a well-known part of our philosophy here, enabling engineers to spend one day a week working on projects that aren’t necessarily in our job descriptions. You can use the time to develop something new, or if you see something that’s broken, you can use the time to fix it.

While we can’t all have this luxury, I think that actually forcing yourself to take time from each day and do something like this will really help with your motivation. Maybe for you it’s actually taking the time to read that book you’ve been wanting to start. Or, maybe it’s creating a website in your spare time about your passion.

If you’re a big company, maybe it’s time to approach your boss about this subject. I’d go in with a “this is a win-win” for both of us type attitude. You can spur innovation in your company and bring in new ideas while at the same time giving yourself a much needed break from your mundane daily duties.

If you haven’t started your own “20% time policy” yet, maybe today is the day to get it kick started and put your new plan into action.

Chuck Norris uses two Total Gyms at his house. Why you ask? One for him, one for his wife. Since he has to leave at 6am for the office, he uses the tools he needs to make his workout happen. What are you doing to make it happen with your website or blog?

Just do it.

Something that is. If you have all the tools necessary in your tool box to build your business, but sit around and do nothing, you won’t amount to much in the world of building a successful blog or business. Just do a little bit everyday. Much like working out, You won’t get lean or in shape over night, but doing a little bit each day will help you reach your goal. Don’t think you have time? Shoemoney nails with Time is all we have

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

Just like Chuck has only 15 minutes to workout – he has a specific routine to do. Chest, Lats, Tris and Bi’s.

You might only have 15 minutes a day to do something for your business or blog, but you’ve got to make the time and stick to your plan. If you fail to plan, plan to fail. You need a defined plan to use your time effectively and be productive with your tools and time.

An un-used blog or stagnate website is a dormant site collecting web termites. You don’t want web termites – trust me.

Using your tools will energize you

Look at what others in your space or the web/seo space are using to help increase their traffic and customers. Just like Chuck’s wife didn’t know about the Total Gym before they got together, you might not know about other great tools out there that others are using – look around and ask. (note: I’m putting together a post on this topic later this week so ping me if you would like to share your top 3 tools with everyone)

Like Chuck’s wife says – “just try it and maintain your daily workout” (or work in our case) – by just using the tools you have at your disposal, you will be moving in the right direction and see some positive results.

I always think back to the successful things I have done or been a part of in my life — all the experiences I went through to get me to those places that brought me to that point in time. Without each step along the way, you can’t get to the next thing that’s 5 steps ahead of where you are right now. Are you taking the steps today you need to get where you want to be next? If not, why not?

Not that kind of fat…. but with all organizations there is indeed some layer of fat – whether it’s in sales, marketing, or technology. One of the biggest things I admired when under the leadership of CareerBuilder was the implementation of lean software development. If you don’t know or haven’t been exposed to lean development, take a look at the book by Mary and Tom Poppendieck Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash.

This book will give you a great overview on what principles you can (and should) be applying to your business if you are not already. In general I really like to use my Microsoft Outlook example since most everyone can understand how that can apply to lean development. Think about how you use Microsoft Outlook, or Thunderbird, or whatever email client you use on a daily basis.

During your daily use of email, I would bet you probably do about 5 things, give or take: Send, Receive, Compose New Mail, Reply, Reply All. Ok, you probably use your calendar a lot too but for sake of the discussion, you do only these 5 actions 80% of the time when using your email. These software programs have hundreds of other features built in and they took many, many months to code, test and eventually release to the public for consumption.

That being said, we as humans only use about 20% of the features of a piece of software 80% of the time. From a development perspective, it would be far better for a developer to create these ‘20% features’ that are used 80% of the time during a 3-4 week timeframe and then release. Getting the software in the hands of your customers so they can tell us what is and isn’t working. Spending an additional 3 months on the remaining 80% of the features that will be used less often is important, but not worth holding back the development and release cycle (i.e speed to market)

The example above falls under ridding software of ‘Extra Features’ as one the three biggest wastes in software development according to Tom and Mary P.

Over the past 5 years, I have implemented this principle in daily development. While those extra features might be ‘nice to have‘ – take a step back and use your application as one of your users – maybe there is some other core feature that is used 80% of the time you can tweak to make more efficient for your broader set of users.

The three biggest ways to eliminate waste in software development according to the Lean Development standards that Mary and Tom set forth are:

• Extra Features

We need a process which allows us to develop just those 20% of the features that give 80% of the value.

• Churn

If you have requirements churn, you are specifying too early. If you have test and fix cycles, you are testing too late.

• Crossing Boundaries

Organizational boundaries typically increase cost by over 25%, creating buffers that slow down response time and interfere with communication.

If you don’t have a copy of Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash, you are definitely missing out on some great principles that can be used in almost any business.