A couple of days ago there was a lonely s at the end of the file. Amakhala scared.

And:
I am seeing a lot of “MySQL server has gone away” error messages in different context,
e.g. when I updated the WP install, when I try to access the website, in the right-hand area displaying categories.

I asked the hosting company and they pointed me to this link (which I haven’t tried yet).

If you have any hints please let me know.

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Wordpress Woes

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Glowing leaves

An example of an analog tweet…

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Analog Tweet

I guess, one of the preliminary assumptions is that you consider your collection of 140-character-long phrases valuable. And would like to search thru them from time to time.

Friendfeed
One easy workaround is to add your Twitter stream into Friendfeed. Friendfeed – currently in a difficult interim situation since the Facebook announcement – still has the best real-time search. It is a great way to archive your tweets and make them searchable.

Import OPML file into Google Reader
These days, bloggers don’t talk much about OPML anymore. OPML files (and the legitimate re-use thereof) were widely discussed in the early days of the Swiss blogosphere.

It seems many apps try to shield us from the underlying technical issues regarding import/export and backups.

Dave Winer shows how to extract the feeds of your Twitter world using an OPML tool.

My Twitter world is accessible at http://tw.opml.org/get?user=nchenga&folder=1.

Next, I can download this file to my desktop.

And upload it into Google Reader:

• Go to Manage Subscriptions
• Select Import/Export
• Select your OPML file and click Upload

It puts all of the newly imported feeds into a separate folder. ReadWriteWeb has a detailed how to.
The only downside is that you don’t want to re-read all of the tweets in your Google Reader. Especially if you’re reading other RSS streams within the same account.

Offline RSS Reader
You can use the OPML file to create an offline backup within your favorite desktop RSS reader. I use the feed reader in Opera 10 to pull a copy of my RSS feeds together. Advantage: doesn’t interfere with my online reading.

Twistory
Another fun tool is Twistory, which adds your Twitter prose to your Google Calendar. It offers an iCal feed. And you can time events by adding t and /t to your posts.

Timetracking tagging: start your tweets with both t or /t and Twistory will keep track of what you’re doing.

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How to Backup your Twitter World

I installed the same MobilePress plugin and activated it a few minutes ago. Based on the plugin description, it should detect if you’re accessing the website with a mobile device and display a version optimized for iPhone and Barackberrys and others.

A couple of Mobilepress URL hooks to remember:

• ?mobile – display mobile version
• ?nomobile – render the standard WordPress theme / normal blog.
• ?killsession – kill any session data stored and render the correct version of a blog, based on browser / device type

In addition I just downloaded the latest Wordpress app for my low and humble iPod Touch. According to @whiteafrican it is much improved compared to the last version.

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Chiperoni goes Mobile (kind of)

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Autumn 2009

1. Don’t worry about being perfect. There are never right or wrong answers to complex business decisions. The best that you can do as a leader is to gather all of the information that you can (in a timely manner), do a cost-benefit analysis of potential options, use your best judgment — and then go for it.

2. Learn to live with failure. Great salespeople are the ones who get rejected the most often. They just ask for the order more than the other salespeople. You are going to make mistakes. You are human. Learn from these mistakes and move on.

3. After you make the final decision — commit! Don’t continually second-guess yourself. Great leaders communicate with a sense of belief in what they are doing and with positive expectations toward the achievement of their vision.

4. Show courage on the outside — even if you don’t always feel it on the inside. Everyone is afraid sometimes. If you are a leader, your direct reports will read your every expression. If you show a lack of courage, you will begin to damage your direct reports’ self-confidence.

5. Find happiness and contentment in your work. Life is short. My extensive research indicates that we are all going to die anyway. Do your best. Follow your heart. When you win, celebrate. When you lose, just start over the next day.

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Today’s link

One of the things slowing tech uptake by the rest of society is that you new-media pundits get so impatient you have moved on to the next thing before we’ve had a chance to digest your last idea.

via Scoble’s “Why I don’t use Google Reader anymore”

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Impatient new-media pundits

Where to start explaining is the hard part.

Also there are so many myths in this area – garnered by SEO vendors selling their services as a “Wunderwaffe” for instant web traffic success.

As is typical at Chiperoni headquarters, here are a couple of ideas and a rough outline for my presentation.

Ideas and links

I liked this section of Derek Powazek’s recent criticism of all things SEO:

The One True Way

Which brings us, finally, to the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free:

Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.

Then do it again. And again. You’ll build a reputation for doing good work, meaning what you say, and building trust.

It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.

‘Cos it explains why you can have all the SEO you want but without personal drive, it will take you nowhere. It’s the content that matters.

Within a larger organization, this personalized focused drive isn’t always possible and needs to be planned and managed carefully.

Derek’s approach misses some aspects. As pointed out by Danny Sullivan at “An Open Letter To Derek Powazek On The Value Of SEO”. Many aspects that long-term bloggers learnt between the lines while trying to google-bomb their way into the top 10 are unknown to website owners and need explaining. (May I take this opportunity to remind my blogging friends that I am still the top hit for “boring flower snapshot”? Yes, I may).

Rough outline
Here’s a first outline, which I’ll convert into PPT slides on Monday:

1. SEO – from directory lists to a secret search algorithm

2. White hat SEO vs. black hat SEO
Goodbye to link farms, Keyword stuffing, Cloaking, Redirects

3. Myths and legends

4. Technical Aspects of SEO

5. The Google Webmaster Guideline
Web developer must clearly have SEO thoughts in mind when building the site:

• Title tag
• Meta description
• Keywords
• Clear navigation structure
• Readable URLS

But this is only the basis…

6. Writing for the Web and SEO

How to get into the top 10 search items for a search phrase:

• Technical aspects – is your website conform with Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Keyword research – identify 5 to 12 keywords that users will enter to find a service or product
• Content – write copy that supports the buying process and incorporates your main keywords, see “Content drives action”. Write for people not search engines. Incorporate keywords intelligently. At the end of the day, it is people that will read and share your link.
• Coherence – the whole site with its meta tags and content must fit together – in German we say the site “muss stimmig sein“.
• Frequency – the Internet has become more dynamic than ever. The real-time web is here to stay. The companies and the technologies may/will change. But the concept will remain. It is like an ocean of data, seeping around us. Create a flow of articles, news items and events at regular intervals. To continue the analogy – offer a stream of data that grows into a river and forms a wide tributary when it reaches the ocean.
• Outposts – Google decides how important a website is based on the number of back-links. Strive to get listed within your industry sectors leading websites and online directories. Publish articles at external news sites. Use online PR distribution services such as PRWeb. Build your online reputation. Links from non-relevant, off-topic sites will have no impact on your search engine ranking.
• Patience – it takes time to build web reputation. No instant fix.
• Old “traditional” media vs. new “online” media – don’t neglect one or the other. Use all distribution channels to make your marketing message known. But – an important but – read the TOS at Facebook, Twitter beforehand. Maybe your company cannot afford having its data locked in by some of the TOS we see these days. Just like with print, be aware that some new media may not be beneficial for your product or service.

What do you think?

Other aspects to consider?

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Intro to SEO and SEM

At the day job and here.

I moved my blog from one install to the other. After importing the MySQL db, several characters were no longer displaying correctly.

There are a number of plug-ins and descriptions:

• How to Convert Character Set and Collation of WordPress Database
• Converting MySQL Database Contents to UTF-8
• How to fix funky characters on your blog

I tried a combination of UTF-8 Sanitize and Search and Replace for broken Umlauts and accents.

Any suggestions or further recommendations? Any other strange characters to fix?

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UTF-8, Charsets and WordPress