Why did I write this little tool – Check Site for Google Analytics tool that you see above in my menu bar?

Google Analytics Hacks (Photo credit: Search Engine People Blog)

Because I can. Seriously now, because I have skillz. Ok, now the truth.

Ever go to a site and wonder “I really wonder how this person who has the same content as I do, and the same number of Facebook fans, and same number of followers on Twitter, etc…   — I wonder how they have 3 times the traffic I do?!?!” Not saying that this will always be the case, but sometimes – people forget how many times they put their Google Analytics code on their site. Hey, it can happen, it can be a totally honest mistake.

You may have put in your header, and forgot it was in your footer, or you may install a plugin that says “We’ll make this easy for you”, yet you forget you already have it your header (and footer). See. Very easy to accidentally put it in – nothing rogue intended. Happens all the time!

Not trying to point the finger at anyone or accuse anyone of “cheating” or stacking the statistical game in their favor, but this is a quick tool to check. Yes, you can do the “visit said site/page – then open up the source – then do a ctrl-F to find the string for GA code” – but that takes time. Heck, it took me time to think about that and then type it.

More simple – Check Site for Google Analytics – feedback and suggestions are always appreciated (link on that page near the bottom) – and yeah – I really don’t have mad skillz – I was just trying to be funny. I’m in no way a coder or anything intense – mad props, love and full on respect to all of those that have true coding skillz!

UPDATE: On the actual page for Check Site for Google Analytics, there is a note stating I put 4 tracker on this site (http://www.rexduffdixon.com) – which I did, but just removed this morning 5/11/12.

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Not really off the grid as in no electricity, pails for doing the deed, and other real off the grid type of things, but offline for the week. According to my calculations or rather some count up timer program, it’s been like well over ~1840 days since I last really took a long break from being connected. First time that I’ve been away from my constant on, connected connected state of mind. Close to 5 years of no real down down down offline time.

Image via Wikipedia

For the next week, you can contact me via my digits if it’s an emergency. Your left you know what have better been severed, a bullet sticking in one of your body parts, or someone is already deceased. Anything else can seriously wait. All emails will be ignored, and unless something that needs to be addressed when I return, most likely will be counted for grins, marked as read, and archived or deleted.

While going off the grid to be a tourist in one of the most populated cities in the world is probably an oxymoron of bigger proportion than I want to get into here. Off the grid in this always on world is still off the grid.

Yhep – first actual vacation where I’m not lugging a Macbook through TSA security will be nice. Just one carry on, and a good place in my check in boarding line for Southwest airlines.

That’s right I’m heading on a real vacation. Not checking in and keeping up with work stuff. Not taking care of that non-left you know what is severed emergency situation. Just chillin’, hanging with the peeps that matter time.

See you all again in week. Time to go live with the real world, all in, no Twitter, no Facebook, no email. Should be interesting seeing how that half of the world still exists. Yet …  in one of the biggest cities in the world. :) While I may not connect to you personally or interact virtually, I’ll most likely still need to use maps for directions, and hit some sites for reviews, etc…

See ya on the other side with pictures, stories, etc… Have a status updated, tweetful, and email’icious week.

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It was nice out on Saturday. Decided to test the power of public transportation and headed out to Santa Cruz for the afternoon. While the rides were long and boring, the views on the trip were well worth the time spend commuting there.

View of the beach and boardwalk from the wharf

More pics uploaded to my Facebook.

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Contrary to most popular belief, you don’t need boat loads of traffic to your site to continually make money on your blog. This site is living proof of that. I won’t go into details on how badly the traffic here is, but let’s just say, even the statistical tracking tools I take with a grain of salt says one thing: Traffic here SUCKS.

It seems like it’s been forever and a day since I have written anything on this blog. The funny thing is that while my statistics on this blog are like bottom cratered, I still continue to receive real money into my PayPal account monthly. In fact I think back to when I started blogging, and had no clue what I was doing or why I was doing it, this blog is making more now then it did back in the day.

Even back in the day when I was manually putting up ~+400 posts in a month (did I really do that?!?), I still wasn’t making much on this blog. Hell, not making much is a nice way of saying – I wasn’t making any money! When I think back, the traffic on here was not that great back then either, another nice way of saying – it was crap on a stick – but I certainly had more traffic on here vs my recent analysis of traffic.

What works on small blogs? It appears either direct ad sales (sweet plug for where I am working at now :) ) by being a premium publisher or using contextual text link advertising is the best bet. Sadly, I don’t qualify to eat our own dog food. While text links seem to be annoying, they do pay off. I’m living proof of that (as well as this blog). Many of you are skeptical, but I always say a picture is worth a thousand words. Since I don’t have the time to type out a dissertation or even a decent blog post in excess of 500 words, here are some pics that prove I’m not lying.

Now that is just for one month, so that doesn’t tell you the whole story. I decided to grab like a screenshot from December ’11 to now, and that tells you a bit more.

You are probably going, well that isn’t that much money totaled up – $192.36 – but let’s break that down. Traffic here has been bottomed out, nil, pretty much bots I figure – with a smattering of live viewers, which are most likely comment spammers. Also coupled with the fact that off the stats I do have, that money came in at no real investment cost to me personally. I haven’t done any blogging here, my other related sites scrape most of their content, auto piloted draws of traffic, and I basically use that money to buy music off of iTunes, rent movies on my Apple TV, and pay for the hosting and domain fee.

Could I push and make more money blogging? Sure, if I really wanted to write all the time and wanted to make my words a vehicle for monetary compensation. For now I figured I’d share with others out there with small blogs, that are sitting around gathering internet dust, that you can still at least make iTunes money with them. Even if you rarely post anymore or even draw much traffic. Making money online isn’t rocket science and it’s basically like anything else, the more you put in, the more you’ll get back out.

I haven’t put in much time to getting my blogs to make a ton, but they basically pay for themselves on auto pilot. That in itself is a nice thing, and coupled with the facts I work in Silicon Valley at a cool startup – can life get any better?

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Someone sent me this list, and I thought I should re-post it for those gamers out there!

GAMING ITEMS: TOP 11 HOTTEST PRODUCTS

1.   Battlefield 3 (Playstation / XBOX360)

Highly anticipated game released in October; this game is one of the blockbuster releases

2. Call of Duty Series

Just released: Call of Duty is the other monster first person shooter release this season

3. Super Mario Brothers Accessories

Super Mario T-shirts & plush toys are hugely popular

4.  Wii Controllers (Nunchuk / Zapper Gun)

Take your Wii gaming to the next level with these.

5. Batman Arkham City (Playstation / XBOX360)

The hugely popular new sequel to Batman Arkham Asylum!

6.   Xbox 360 Live Subscriptions

Xbox Live subscriptions are great holiday gifts, allowing online play for all your gamers

7.   Forza Motorsport 4 (XBOX 360)

The biggest new driving game this year for the Xbox

8.   Gears of War 3 (XBOX 360)

Released Oct 24th exclusively for the Xbox.

9.   Xbox 360 Console

Xbox 360 is the only gaming console to make the top 10 list

10.   Rage (Playstation / XBOX 360)

Hot new first-person shooter game released Oct 4.

11.   Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Playstation / XBOX 360)

BAFTA award-winner & only 2010 game to earn a place on the top products list

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Image via Wikipedia

It’s been a few month’s since I read this blog post by Chris Kelly,  formerly of Lookery, and now with another great startup. Looking back to that post, it goes to show you how short life can be.  That was from April of this year. In my mind it was like I read it yesterday.

Those days back in ’07-’09 building a company from nothing was a fun time, and while it was short lived, startup life was what I itched to relive and do once again. Had a few false starts in ’09 and sat on the sidelines looking in from the outside most of ’10 and ’11.

While consulting has it’s perks such as not having to go into a physical office daily, you do after some time lose that human touch of no office. While I’ll never shun the ability to fire up a browser and be at work to just get things done, sometimes it’s just good to have the ability to walk across the room and chat with a person if you run into issues.

About 10 days ago or thereabouts, a very interesting opportunity of timing opened up in my universe. Timing of being in the right place and connected to the right people from my recent startup past. It all worked out well, and within about 7 days time, it went from being just another day consulting for companies in NYC and Seattle to realizing that I was moving west.

This isn’t my first time living in California. In fact when I lived there back in the mid-90′s, my mother who since has passed, said to me “California is the best place for you to be.” It seems like mom’s always know what is best for their children. Little did I know that my journey back to the middle of the country (St. Louis)  and east coast (NYC ’09) would eventually all lead back to the place I call Cali.

Burlingame, CA might not be exactly in San Francisco, it’s on the peninsula just south of SFO.  Bay Area, CA if you will.

Image via Wikipedia

That’s where I’ll be heads down in a growing and exciting startup once again. If you would like to to reach me, twitter is usually the quickest, email is next, and if you have my digits – sms or a call will work just fine.

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This has to be the ultimate classic 80′s nomadic to the core song: Wanted Dead or Alive 

http://stlouis.craigslist.org/cto/2661934518.html

1997 Honda Passport LX Sport Utility 4WD – $2500 (Maplewood, MO)

Date: 2011-10-27, 8:54AM CDT
Reply to: sale-gbk6j-2661934518@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

UPDATE: Yes, this vehicle is still for sale. I will remove it promptly once someone hands over ca$h money AND I have signed the title over to them AND they drive off with this vehicle!

There have been a lot of tire kickers who only seem to email and ask questions. I have even had extended conversations with a few that seemed really interested. Still waiting on serious buyers to inquire.

Yes, it’s an older car, yes it has a few minor issues that I will tell you fully about. If you are serious about this vehicle, today (Thursday 10/27 or Friday 10/28) is the best day to get over here and take a look. Bring ca$h money, and I’ll sign the title over to you. It’s running fine, I’m doing a ton of errands in this week before moving.

PLEASE include a phone number if you are serious. I’ll call you as soon as I can. I do receive the email on my phone, so I can answer pretty quickly even though I may be mobile.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully serious buyers will contact.

Good running 4 wheel drive vehicle.
- ~125,xxx miles
- 6 cyl
- 4 wd
Body in great shape, needs some work, but runs well.

Contact for more info. Asking $2500 but willing to negotiate for the OBO. Need to sell this by Friday 10/28 if possible.

• Location: Maplewood, MO
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 2661934518

Here is a picture of my bud in Chicago last week the week before last for the Occupy Chicago protest that is most likely still happening and getting even bigger this week. Maybe not in Chicago, but  more widespread across the country and world.

While there are many events that are triggering all this Occupy mentality, I can’t help to wonder how close to an actual revolution we are living in. Dangerous times, desperate folks, unemployed people, all spell one thing – trouble.

Did I happen to mention that the picture that made the FoxNews affiliate is from the week before last? So the current picture which is below, is going to show that Occupy Chicago isn’t stopping, and while I write in advance and post later, this is still relevant and happening.

btw, what do you think “America is a Dying Whore!” – leave a comment if you agree or disagree.

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Image via Wikipedia

Just a casual observation as noted on several blog posts of late.If you have tweet arguments (is that a real term or did I just make it up?) they can come back to bite you. There are other examples we could share here, but don’t want to stir up crazy people from past tweet discussions that seemed to drag on beyond it’s life span.

One recent example of that is right here below. Or you can go to the site to see the original post here:

WhizTechCafe’s social media miss by ericasmith A spat between a local business and one of its residential neighbors turns ugly.

It started with a simple complaint.

“	It sounds like there is some sort of party under my window, what the hell @WhizTechCafe, this is why no one who lives here likes you.
	TabithaKMeyer  October 2, 2011

“	@TabithaKMeyer @WhizTechCafe rent space from time to time.. If u don’t like it or us were not mad it’s about business at the end of the day
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe understandable that you rent space. But if you’re going to be a coffee shop otherwise, be open during coffee shop hours.
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

Then it started to take a turn for the worse:

“	@TabithaKMeyer Its called part of downtown living maybe you should consider suburban living or get a loft that is not on the 2nd floor
	WhizTechCafe  October 4, 2011

Tabitha tactfully tried to end the conversation:

“	@WhizTechCafe Thank you, I’ll take your advice into consideration. Have a fantastic day!
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

But others already had picked up on the public conversation:

“	@WhizTechCafe Swing and a miss! Come on guys, can’t talk w/ customers like that. At least, it’s a bad idea. cc: @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe if you’re going to call out a customer ( @TabithaKMeyer ) at least use proper punctuation even if you can’t be a good neighbor
	PTtheIslander October 4, 2011

“	Wow, @WhizTechCafe, I think you picked the wrong person to aggravate. cc: @TabithaKMeyer @rizzotees @michaeltomko
	therebirth October 4, 2011

“	@therebirth @WhizTechCafe @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko Yes, Tabitha is not to be played
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@therebirth @WhizTechCafe @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko And btw, the wrong person to aggravate is…… your next customer. #justsayin
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

Again, that could’ve been the end of it. But it wasn’t:

“	@RizzoTees @michaeltomko talk like what?? @TabithaKMeyer has some sort of personal issue with @WhizTechCafe our REAL customers are all :-)
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe how many people were real customers before they got bad customer service from you ? @RizzoTees @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko
	PTtheIslander  October 4, 2011

“	@PTtheIslander lol punctuation this is twitter @WhizTechCafe offer 10% discount to printer lofts we r good neighbors but we cant pls every 1
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@PTtheIslander @WhizTechCafe have been open almost 1 yr I have never seen @TabithaKMeyer you have to visit to get bad customer service
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe nope, you don’t. This is an extension of your business. And please learn have vs had. Cc @TabithaKMeyer
	PTtheIslander October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer With respect, telling someone to move to the county. Just an odd tweet from a business
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer Unless you’re a real estate agent, that’s just a weird msg to send.
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer Again, with respect, you have customers that have expressed confusion at multitude of changes
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer changing hours, etc. I don’t make it downtown much anymore, but downtown residents feel this way
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer If your message to them is, “Just move, you’re not a REAL customer,” then we’re clear.
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer I sense you guys are trying hard and want to stick it out, and I’ve had good food there
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer But respectfully, & last thing I’ll say, this entire Twitter conversation should not be happening
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

That last tweet, by the way, is the moral of this story. But I’ll go ahead and let it play out.

“	@TabithaKMeyer @pttheislander stay out of this?? WOW!! You are the one who started this if there was a problem our number is listed 241-whiz
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe @pttheislander Ok, I was trying to stay out of this. But now you’re lying. I ate a Cobb salad there last week! Never seen me?
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

“	Is the customer always right? Appears that @WhizTechCafe and @TabithaKMeyer have a difference of opinion. #twitterspat #meantweets
	EvanBenn  October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe And you could have DM’d me rather than starting a visible argument.
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

“	@TabithaKMeyer WHO DO U THINK U R?? YOU STARTED WITH THAT IS Y NO ONE LIKES U N THE BUILDING SO DO NOT TELL ME WHAT I COULD HAVE DONE!!
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

About 30 minutes after this story was published and shared, Whiz Tech Cafe deleted all of its tweets related to this conversation.

“	@WhizTechCafe nice strategy to delete all your tweets. Good thing it’s been given the @storify treatment
	PTtheIslander  October 4, 2011

“	@PTtheIslander deleted = non-factor @WhizTechCafe
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe Wow. If you think that, you understand social media even less than you let on.
	LoganJames October 4, 2011

By then, this story was trending in St. Louis.

I’m a big believer in learning from mistakes; I hope everyone has.

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Image via Wikipedia

Why have I decided to create all these goofy job boards and feeds you might ask. Well it started out as an idea for something funny on one of my other sites, and I figured, why not make some a job board(s) – feeds on a few of my sites.

They became kind of addictive and fun to create. Once I created a few, and actually received some feedback to create another one (for Marketing Jobs), I figured people might enjoy them. Not only enjoy them, but might also have a need for  them.

Hopefully you find them useful, and if not, ignore them or don’t use them at all. If you know of someone out of work and looking for a gig, you may want to send them to the job board – feed that is geared towards what they do or their desired field of work.

Here are the different job boards-feeds I created, enjoy and share them if you find them useful or know of someone that might be looking in these various fields of work.

Technically Speaking Jobs – Startups, Ruby, PHP, MySQL, LAMP, IT, Sys Admin jobs

Marketing Jobs – Just as it says – jobs in marketing

SEO, Music, Bi-Lingual Jobs – Self explanatory I think

Wrestling and Coaching Jobs – Self explanatory

White Trash Jobs – This is the one that started it all. It was meant to be kind of humorous, useful, but also tie in with the site’s theme. Suggested as something to help drive more traffic to that site by my bud over at The Lost Agency

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Image via Wikipedia

If you really want me to produce your next music track, your album, your lot of songs – just ask me. One of the strangest reactions I’ve had lately is someone hitting me up on a buzz message stating that. While I wouldn’t mind producing music, and have helped to do so before, just ask directly would be the easiest way to get me to do this. Asking via a vague buzz message doesn’t seem to take on the seriousness that music production requires.

Serious about your music and what it takes to make it in the music biz, ping me directly, not vaguely. Thanks and have a great weekend. Please keep in mind I wrote this post about ~2 weeks ago. It’s so far been a nice outlet of thought that processes in my head during the day.

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Image by blahmni via Flickr

Many moons ago (ok about ~10 years ago) an old drummer of mine was trying to tell me something about a part in a song. He wanted to “semplerfi” it. WTF is “semperlifi”

No idea, as I know what Semper Fi is (thank God we have Marines) and what he really meant was that he wanted to simplify a few passages in a song we were writing as a band. While we never did semplerfi the song, but just worked through it, it did bring up an interesting point.

Quora is a great idea, but I think it’s over thought and not semplerfi enough. Most people need simple answers to basic questions. Not thread after thread of useless over the top information. You can find that by simply using Google. Those answers are available for free, with no Quora involvement needed. What is needed, at least in my opinion (notice how I’ve quit saying humble, as most  opinions are usually not humble to begin with, so why still do people say IMHO?), is that there needs to be a start up that is even more semplerfi than Quora.

Your basic Q&A portal where you could call it “The stupid question I was too afraid to ask on Quora…” Or something of that ilk. It wouldn’t be rocket science, but I bet you it would go over like gangbusters. The stupidest question you think is something too dumb to ask, I can bet you there are thousands that would like the answer, but are too afraid to ask on Quora since that place is for more than your semplerfi questions.

If you are interested in working up the semplerfi answer to Quora, hit me up, as I’d love to work on that as a startup.

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Image via CrunchBase

Yes, while I’m writing this about ~2 weeks in advance of it posting online, Google+ is turning into nothing but a cesspool of marketers and spammers. Too bad, as many of us had so much hope for G+ as the next social network that made sense. Of course those of us who are as cynical as I can be, realized that once they opened up access, so would the carpet baggers, hanger ons, and the scum of the internet would join. It’s come to pass, and even though I write this about ~2 weeks in advance, doubtful much will change by the time this post goes live.

While G+ goes down the drain in massive fashion, that still won’t prevent Google+ from going into a giant social space. Will it be used once the spammers flood the streams? That’s hard to say. Currently, Ignore All has become my favorite new addition to G+. Most of the crackpots that are joining, I wouldn’t want to see their streams on G+ or any other social network.

Here is to hoping that I’m totally wrong this time. Doubtful since I’m sure by the time this posts live, we’ll all still have spam in our inbox, as well as see spamvertised links elsewhere.

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Image by compscigrad via Flickr

If that is what you thought you’d be reading about now, you are sadly mistaken. I’m using this blog to just write about whatever comes to mind currently. It’s better to not have a set format since most people can’t comprehend beyond the quick < 140 character Tweet or the one to maximum 3 line Facebook status update. In fact blogging has become more of a news service more than anything.

Witness the fact that small tech blog about ~6 years ago called TechCrunch was valued well over the price the person paid to start it. Had revenue positive before it hired it’s first writer outside of the creator/founder. Then ended up selling out to the big dogs (AOL), even though revenue was still strolling in.

Blogging is now more or less people who want to create a media empire. In fact Mike is trying to do it all over again with his new Uncrunched. Figures. But then again, maybe he just needs to write again. I’m sure it will evolve into something big once again. But if not, at least he can write what he wants, when he wants, and say whatever he feels like. That’s the beauty of blogging. When it comes down to it, the only ethics you need to follow is those that make you the person that you are. The wild west.

What does that say about the future of blogging? Well anyone can (and many have!) set up a blog. With Tumblr and WordPress being so easy, it’s a wonder why we don’t have more blogs. Well we probably have too many. Many just sit around (like this one) and gather dust.

Gathers dust until the owner of the blog (me), decides to just hammer out posts. Relevant or not, and whatever fits the fancy of the moment. All that and blogging in advance so that nothing really matches a time or date. It’s back to writing at will. Also dragging an image to the post from my Zemanta that doesn’t even make sense with this post. Cool, right?

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Image via CrunchBase

I’ll have to agree with Drew on this -

Because I wanted to :)

a) Much love to Get Satisfaction.  Use them, love them, hug them, kiss them

b) I love tech. Period. So I’m now a West Coast Editor at The Next Web

c) I dono, there has to be a c

Why? Because I wanted to.  Great team, I’m getting my writing legs back after tweeting for 6 years is it? I’ve almost lost the ability to form a complete sentence, but I’m trying hard.

Got news, a rad app to check out? Fire away to drew at thenextweb.com

Kind of why I started to blog again, more like ramble on if you will. It helps to get some thoughts out, as well as occasionally tip the hat to people such as Drew.

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Image via Wikipedia

While you are out doing the surf thing this weekend, if you see a banner ad that makes you click, ask yourself why did you click that ad! As we all know, advertising is the money maker online.

Basically: Two ways to make money online – you run ads, you convert the results of those ads to sales – OR – you have a product (software as a service (SaaS) seems to be quite popular!) – OR – (third bastard child way) a kind of marriage of those two are apps. You know how to write one that everyone wants to buy or fund you to make more or hire you to make their app.

Still, I’d like to know what makes you click that banner ad. What is it in particular that turned you on to click that ad. If you’d like to leave some feedback on why that ad server that sent you that ad mattered, that would be great. Feedback is the comments area of this blog post of course.

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Manifesting itself as a new old problem? That is what a startup company needs to address. The old problems that are being shoved aside because they are not fun, but still keep coming back as a new old problem. What do I mean?

Image by brizzle born and bred via Flickr

Spam – While we all hate it, you find very few companies heading into battle against it. There are a few, but what investor is really going to put money into a company that is dedicated into fighting it? I see blog posts about people getting sick of spam, such as twitter user spam or fake accounts as noted in that recent blog post by @RizzoTees.

While it’s not the same as the spam websites out there that constantly barrage the inbox with the spam email, it’s all the same, very few companies want to fight it head on. While there are companies like the recent LaterSpam.org which is quite encouraging, one company is not going to be the answer to helping to curb this old issue.

Old issues taking on a life of being a new issue. Sometimes you can be the victim of clicking a bad short url, and even t.co isn’t perfect since it’s a wrapper, not an url shortener service. So you have to be guarded at best to stop this from happening. You should check into these urls to make sure what you are clicking is legit. While that will only help to prevent the issue from occurring, there are many other old becoming new issues that should be addressed.

While spam is probably the #1 issue that has never been resolved completely, there are others. They may be addressed in another post, but this one seems to be done for now.

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Cover via Amazon

A few weeks back, some guy I know hits me up on Facebook messaging and said he wanted to jam. I’ve been playing a lot lately as already noted, and since I pretty much have done the iPod shuffle (basically) I’ve been out figuring out different tunes. Getting the jist of the songs enough to play along, and I’m by no means perfect or anything. The dude asks me for 10 songs, which I started to jot down in a notepad on my phone. I came up with 10 pretty easily and here is the 12 I sent over:

Shinedown – Second Chance
Creed – One Last Breath
Creed – Weathered
Three Days Grace – Never Too Late
Socialburn – Down
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus – Facedown
Rascal Flatts – These Days
Motley Crue – Don’t Go Away Mad (just go away)
Better Than Ezra – Good
Journey – Don’t Stop Believing
Lucero – San Francisco
Train – Drops Of Jupiter

This was back on the 17th of September. I have not heard from him yet, but these would be fun to thrown down acoustically speaking. Two guys on guitars, type of coffee shop thing. Most are one guitar songs, but with two, it would be much easier to sing/play and on some of the more technical ones, easier to have one guitarist concentrate on certain passages. To make the songs passable and all.

I would love to call the project “iPod Shuffle” or something, but I guess that would run into issues of copyright, etc… I did get the idea from my week spent in the #FLA last month (August, early September) visit when I saw a guitarist/singer perform at the Fiddler’s Green Irish pub down there.

I liked it. Now hoping this guy will learn these songs, or the jist of them so we can jam soon. Already building the next 12 songs list. They already include the following: Shinedown – What a Shame, Papa Roach – Scars amongst others. Need to start jotting down what songs for sure.

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