Sometime last year, I received intelligence to suggest that the friendly folks at silverorange had rigged up a gizmo so that whenever anyone purchased something from one of their clients’ online stores, a cash register sound rang out throughout their spacious atrium.
Reasoning that this sort of positive reinforcement would be good for my clients too, I shamelessly stole the idea, and installed a tool that my friends at Yankee could pop-up on their desktops with a similar purpose. Much to my surprise and delight, the last time I visited, I saw the tool in use all over the company.
The success of this idea (thanks, silverorange) points out that simplicity often trumps complexity. Very detailed “who bought product X after clicking on link Y”-type sales reports are available to Yankee — and they certainly use them. But the visceral sound of a cash register ringing, and the pace at which it happens, has proved a better vehicle for communicating how well the store is doing.
In the same vein, I’m fascinated by the new Recent Google tool I installed last night (look over on the right). This is simply a bit of code that detects incoming traffic to this site as a result of Google searches, pulls out the keywords, and displays them, with links back to the same Google search.
While this same information is available from the nightly traffic report, somehow the “live” nature of the information right out here in public is more compelling. Somehow the notion that someone, somewhere, just used Google to end up here — perhaps just this second — is more interesting, more “real,” than a report of the same information prepared nightly.
Interesting to note: Wayne’s comment about BBC reporter Mishal Husain is currently on the front page of a Google search for bbc mishal husain, and that’s currently pulling in the most Google traffic.
Welcome visitors from Japan, Belgium, Estonia, Portugal, Thailand, Croatia, Malta and the Faroe Islands.
When you stay up late at night, you get to see a lot of interesting television. Last night it was the BBC documentary Blair’s War. The BBC, in its liberated “hey, you paid for this already” attitude, helpfully makes the script of the episode available on the web.
Synopsis: Tony Blair is pretty well ignoring public opinion in the United Kingdom to go to war.
The Geneva Convention is much in the news these days, mostly because Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks are accusing Iraq of contravening some aspect of it.
The Convention is actually a set of the following related treaties:
- Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field
- Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea
- Treatment of Prisoners of War
- Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War
My previous experience with The Geneva Convention was limited entirely to its application to Colonel Hogan and his wacky bunch of heros on Hogan’s Heros (warning: website plays theme song automatically; may be annoying).
Some more site renovations:
- Search the site
- Site archives (1999-present)
- Recent searches (right-hand side)
- Recent incoming Google searches (right-hand side)
The site archive goes out to my father, and to the departed Alan McLeod, who has gone on to the place where history and innovation thrive, who where the most frequent requesters of this feature.
My friend Stephen Good has returned to his long-dormant weblog. I introduced Stephen’s weblog when it went online last August.
About the closest thing you will find to unvarnished anti-war opinion on the CBC is on Global Village [warning: insane multi-media website]. It’s a good antidote to Aaron Brown et al.
From my American friend Maggie comes a pointer to this story about an American eBay vendor refusing to sell to a Canadian, giving the reason as “we do not ship to, or accept bids from, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany or any other country that does not support the United States in our efforts to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. If you are not with us, you are against us.”
While I’ve never subscribed to the “big blue marble” theory of happy world togetherness, images like this do force me to think twice.
About This Blog
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
To learn more about me, read my /now, look at my bio, listen to audio I’ve posted, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way).
I have been writing here since May 1999: you can explore the 25+ years of blog posts in the archive.
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