Brain Hash

Moved my blog to wordpress

2006-11-06T18:18:00.000-08:00

I created two new blogs:

brainhash.wordpress.com
techhash.wordpress.com

I will not be using blogger anymore.

Life is tough

2006-08-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

"Life is tought, its tougher if you are stupid"
-- John Wayne

Web marketing

2006-08-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

The Web Marketing Checklist:
32 Ways to Promote Your Website
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today, June 14, 2006

How can you get more visitors to your website? What can you do to stimulate traffic? Here's a checklist of 32 items you need to consider. Many of these you're probably doing already; others you meant to do and forgot about; still others you've never heard of. Of course, a great deal has been written about this. You'll find links to thousands of articles on site promotion in our Web Marketing Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/research). While we're not breaking any new ground here, we've tried to summarize some of the most important techniques.
Search Engine Strategies

Perhaps the most important -- and inexpensive -- strategy is to rank high for your preferred words on the main search engines in "organic" or "natural" searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content on your webpage, so let's begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. They idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about.

1. Write a Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page of 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title, such as "the," "and," etc. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the tags, in this format: <title&gtWeb Marketing Checklist -- 31 Ways to Promote Your Website . (It also shows on the blue bar at the top of your web browser.)
Blue bar at top of web browser containing the Title

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Ammunition, Inc." use "Silver and Platinum Bullets -- Acme Ammunition, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is nearly your entire identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

2. Write a Description and Keyword META Tag. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. If you include keywords that aren't used on the webpage, you could hurt yourself. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags, in this format: Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title.

< meta name="DESCRIPTION" content="Increase visitor hits, attract traffic through submitting URLs, META tags, news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal links">. Your maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.

When I prepare a webpage, I write the article first, then write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag. Then for the keywords META tag, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty words and phrases. The keywords META tag is no longer used for ranking by Google, but it is currently used by Yahoo, so I'm leaving it in. Who knows when more search engines will consider it important again? Every webpage in your site should have a title, and META description tag.

3. Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3. Search engines consider words that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

4. Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it. Other places you might consider including keywords would be in ALT tags and perhaps COMMENT tags, though few search engines give these much if any weight.

5. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your page. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

6. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. Some webmasters use frames, but frames can cause serious problems with search engines. Even if search engines can find your content pages, they could be missing the key navigation to help visitors get to the rest of your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash. Supplement them with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. A site map with links to all your pages can help, too. If your site isn't getting indexed fully, make sure you submit a Google Sitemap following directions on Google's site (www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login). Greg Tarrant's Google Sitemap Generator and Editor (www.sitemapdoc.com) is a free tool to build these. Be aware that some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages. You can sometimes recognize them by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes stop at the question mark and refuse to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, and targeted content pages (see below). Commercial solutions include Bruce Clay's Dynamic Site Mapping (www.bruceclay.com/web_dsm.htm) and YourAmigo.com's SpiderLinker (www.youramigo.com)

7. Develop Several Pages Focused on Particular Keywords. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or keyphrase. For example, instead of listing all your services on a single webpage, try developing a separate webpage for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content. You can't fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but these focused-content webpages you'll want to spend lots of time tweaking to improve their rank.

8. Submit Your Webpage URL to Search Engines. Next, submit your homepage URL to the important Web search engines that robotically index the Web. Look for a link on the search engine for "Add Your URL." In the US, the most used search engines are: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, and Ask.com. Some of these feed search content to the other main search engines and portal sites. For Europe and other areas you'll want to submit to regional search engines. It's a waste of money to pay someone to submit your site to hundreds of search engines. Avoid registering with FFA (Free For All pages) and other link farms. They don't work well, bring you lots of spam e-mails, and could cause you to be penalized by the search engines. We'll talk about submitting to directories under "Linking Strategies" below. If your page is already indexed by a search engine, don't re-submit it unless you've made significant changes; the search engine spider will come back and revisit it soon anyway.

WebPosition Gold 9. Fine-tune with Search Engine Optimization. Now fine-tune your focused-content pages (described in point 7), and perhaps your home page, by making minor adjustments to help them rank high. Software such as WebPosition (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm) allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition's Page Critic provides analysis of a search engine's preferred statistics for each part of your webpage. You can do this yourself with WebPosition. The best set of SEO tools by far is Bruce Clay's SEOToolSet (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clay_seotoolset.htm). You can find links to hundreds of articles on search engine strategies in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_Search). If you want more detail, consider purchasing my inexpensive book Dr. Wilson's Plain-Spoken Guide to Search Engine Optimization (http://www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/seo.htm). Many small and large businesses outsource search engine positioning because of the considerable time investment it requires. If you outline your needs, I can point you the right direction to SEO firms I know and trust (www.wilsonweb.com/recommendations/seo-services.htm).

10. Promote Your Local Business on the Internet. These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site (see below), a local business should get links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide. For more information, see my book How to Promote Your Local Business on the Internet (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/local.htm).
Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites bring additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity") as an important factor in ranking, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines, too. Google has introduced a 10-point scale called PageRank (10 is the highest rank) to indicate the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links, however, are not created equal. Links from popular information hubs will help your site rank higher than those from low traffic sites. You'll find links to articles on linking strategies in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_Linking).

11. Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by overworked volunteer human editors. This hierarchical directory provides content feeds to all the major search engines. Plus it provides a link to your site from an information hub that Google deems important. But don't be impatient and resubmit or you'll go to the end of the queue.

Yahoo! Directory is another important directory to be listed in, though their search results recently haven't been featuring their own directory as prominently. Real humans will read (and too often, pare down) your 200-character sentence, so be very careful and follow their instructions (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/). Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don't have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Business sites require a $299 annual recurring fee for Yahoo! Express to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/busexpress.html). Other directories to consider might be About.com and Business.com.

12. Submit Your Site to Industry Sites and Specialized Directories. You may find some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member sites. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link, it may help boost your PageRank. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, your premium ad won't help -- but the link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking. Marginal directories come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up. Don't try to be exhaustive here.

13. Request Reciprocal Links. Find complementary websites and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites -- so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that get a similar amount of traffic to your site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don't have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages.

Check out Ken Evoy's free SiteSell Value Exchange. It (1) registers your site as one that is willing to exchange links with other sites that have a similar theme/topic content and (2) searches for sites with similar topical content (http://sales.sitesell.com/value-exchange/). Additionally, two automated link building software programs stand out -- Zeus and Arelis. These search for complementary sites, help you maintain a link directory, and manage reciprocal links. However, use these programs to identify the complementary sites, not to send impersonal automated e-mail spam to site owners. When you locate sites, send a personal e-mail to the administrative contact found in the Whois Directory (www.networksolutions.com/whois/). If e-mail doesn't get a response, try a phone call. I've written a brief e-book on Reciprocal Linking Tools outlining various linking strategies and other software you can use to make the task easier. (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/linkingtools.htm) One warning: Be sure to only link to complementary sites, no matter how often you are bombarded with requests to exchange links with a mortgage site that has nothing to do with yours. One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It's not just links, but quality links you seek.

14. Write Articles for Others to Use in their Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.

15. Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's PageRank. Learn more about business blogs in our Research Room. (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&querytype=category&subcat=ms_Blogs). If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

16. Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for years and have some clout with link popularity. However, opening or redesigning a website is seldom newsworthy these days. You may want to use a Web news release service such as PR Web (http://wilsonweb.prwebdirect.com). Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity some. More info on PR is available in our Research Room. (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_PR) Issuing press releases is a traditional promotional strategy, but there are other traditional approaches that can help you as well.
Traditional Strategies

Just because "old media" strategies aren't on the Internet doesn't mean they aren't effective. A mixed media approach can be very effective.

17. Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature. This is a no-brainer that is sometimes overlooked. Make sure that all reprints of cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company's URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, I recommend leaving off the http:// part and including only the www.domain.com portion.

18. Promote using traditional media. Don't discontinue print advertising that you've found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad. Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers' attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly-targeted magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.

19. Develop a Free Service. It's boring to invite people, "Come to our site and learn about our business." It's quite another to say "Use the free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site." Make no mistake, it's expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, such as our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/), but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site. Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales part of your site.
E-Mail Strategies

Don't neglect e-mail as an important way to bring people to your website. Just don't spam. That is, don't send bulk unsolicited e-mails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship. You can find lots to details and tips in my book The E-Mail Marketing Handbook (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/handbook.htm).

20. Install a "Signature" in your E-Mail Program to help potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs such as AOL, Netscape, and Outlook allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples on e-mail messages sent to you.

21. Publish an E-Mail Newsletter. While it's a big commitment in time, publishing a monthly e-mail newsletter ("ezine") is one of the very best ways to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site but aren't yet ready to make a purchase. Ask for an e-mail address and first name so you can personalize the newsletter. You can distribute your newsletter using listservers such as:

* Constant Contact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/roving.htm)
* Got Marketing Campaigner (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/gotmarketing.htm)
* AWeber (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/aweber.htm)
* Topica Email Publisher (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/topica.htm)
* Gammadyne Mailer (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/gammadyne.htm)

If you're just getting started you can use a free advertising-supported newsletter from Yahoo! Groups (www.yahoogroups.com). See articles on newsletter marketing in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=me_Newsletter).

22. Send Offers to Your Visitors and Customers. Your own list of customers and site visitors who have given you permission to contact them will be your most productive list. Send offers, coupon specials, product updates, etc. Personalizing the subject line and the message may increase the results. You'll find scores of articles on general e-mail marketing in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=me_Email-Gen).

23. Rent targeted e-mail lists. We abhor "spam," bulk untargeted, unsolicited e-mail, and you'll pay a very stiff price in a ruined reputation and cancelled services if you yield to temptation here. But the direct marketing industry has developed targeted e-mail lists you can rent -- lists consisting of people who have agreed to receive commercial e-mail messages. These lists cost $40 to $400 per thousand or 4¢ to 40¢ per name. Do a smaller test first to determine the quality of the list. Your best bet is to find an e-mail list broker to help you with this project -- you'll save money and get experienced help for no additional cost. You'll find many articles on opt-in e-mail marketing in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=me_Opt-in).
Miscellaneous Strategies

24. Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Blogs. The Internet offers thousands of very targeted e-mail based discussion lists, online forums, blogs, and Usenet news groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups to find appropriate sources (groups.google.com). Don't bother with news groups consisting of pure "spam." Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don't use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the "signature" at the end of your e-mail message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you. You can learn more from articles in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mm_Newsgroups).

25. Announce a Contest. People like getting something free. If you publicize a contest or drawing available on your site, you'll generate more traffic than normal. Make sure your sweepstakes rules are legal in all states and countries you are targeting. Prizes should be designed to attract individuals who fit a demographic profile describing your best customers. See dozens of articles on contests and incentives in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=ma_Incentives).

26. Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems so simple, but make sure you ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. (www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/bookmark.htm) Why don't you bookmark the article you're reading right now? You know you'll want to find it again soon.

27. Exchange Ads with Complementary Businesses. Banner exchange programs don't work well these days. But consider exchanging e-mail newsletter ads with complementary businesses to reach new audiences. Just be sure that your partners are careful where they get their mailing list or you could be in trouble with the CAN-SPAM Act.

28. Devise Viral Marketing Promotion Techniques. So-called viral marketing uses the communication networks (and preferably the resources) of your site visitors or customers to spread the word about your site exponentially. Word-of-mouth, PR, creating "buzz," and network marketing are offline models. #14 above, "Write Articles for Others to Use in their Newsletters," is a viral approach. The classic example is the free e-mail service, hotmail.com, that includes a tagline about their service at the end of every message sent out, so friends tell friends, who tell friends. You can learn more in my e-book Demystifying Viral Marketing ($12) available for no cost when you subscribe to my free, weekly Web Marketing Today newsletter (www.wilsonweb.com/wmt/). You can find articles on viral marketing in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mm_Viral).
Paid Advertising Strategies

None of the approaches described above is "free," since each takes time and energy. But if you want to grow your business more rapidly, there comes a point when you need to pay for increased traffic. Advertising is sold in one of three ways: (1) traditional CPM (cost per thousand views), (2) pay per click (PPC), and (3) pay per action, otherwise known as an affiliate program or lead generation program. Do some small tests first to determine response. Then calculate your return on investment (ROI) before spending large amounts. Here are some methods:

29. Buy a Text Ad in an E-Mail Newsletter. Some of the best buys are small text ads in e-mail newsletters targeted at audiences likely to be interested in your products or services. Many small publishers aren't sophisticated about advertising and offer attractive rates. For example, we offer low-priced 2-Line Ads in Web Marketing Today each week (www.wilsonweb.com/ads/2-line-ad.htm). Banner ads get such a low click-through rate (0.2%) these days that I don't recommend paying much for them. Banner ads typically cost about 50¢ to $1 per thousand page views.

30. Begin an Affiliate Program. Essentially, a retailer's affiliate program pays a commission to other sites whose links to the retailer result in an actual sale. The goal is to build a network of affiliates who have a financial stake in promoting your site. If you're a merchant you, need to (1) determine the commission you are willing to pay (consider it your advertising cost), (2) select a company to set up the technical details of your program, and (3) promote your program to get the right kind of affiliates who will link to your site. Consider affiliate management software. More info in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=em_Associate). You can see current software reviewed in my book Report on Affiliate Marketing Software 2005 (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/affilisoft.htm)

31. Purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads with Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/overture.htm) and Google AdWords (https://adwords.google.com/select/). The top ads appear as featured links to the right of "natural" search engine results for your keywords. Your ranking is determined by how much you've bid for a particular search word compared to other businesses. This can be a cost-effective way to get targeted traffic, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link. An excellent e-book on PPC strategies is Andrew Goodman's 21 Ways to Maximize Profits on Google AdWords (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/pagezero.htm). More information on PPC ads can be found in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_PPC). Pay Per Click advertising can be quite cost-effective when you learn how to use it. Yahoo Search Marketing even offers some free credit to get you started. (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/overture.htm). You can learn about software to administer such programs in my Report on PPC Bid Management Software (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/bidmgt.htm).

32. List Your Products with Shopping Comparison Bots and Auction Sites. Shopping bots compare your products and prices to others. Google's Froogle (www.froogle.com) is free, so be sure to list your products there. A Froogle listing also helps your product page's ranking on Google. Some work on a PPC basis: mySimon (www.mysimon.com), BizRate (www.bizrate.com), PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com), and Shopping.com (www.shopping.com). Others expect a commission on the sale and sometimes a listing fee, especially sales systems that host the merchant. These include eBay (www.ebay.com), Yahoo! Shopping Auctions (http://auctions.shopping.yahoo.com), Amazon zShops, Marketplace, and Auctions (http://zshops.amazon.com), and Yahoo! Shopping (http://shopping.yahoo.com). You pay to acquire first-time customers, but hopefully you can sell to them a second, third, and fourth time, too.

We certainly haven't exhausted ways to promote your site, but these will get you started. To effectively market your site, you need to spend some time adapting these strategies to your own market and capacity. Right now, why don't you make an appointment to go over this checklist with someone in your organization, and make it the basis for your new Internet marketing strategy?

Why does the UN exist?

2006-08-10T13:34:00.000-07:00

The UN is a waste of money and resources. There are far better usage of money that to spend it on a disfunctional organization like the UN.

The lebanon-Israel war

2006-08-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

A very interesting interview with George Galloway is posted on Sky news. Copy this link into your browser window to watch it.

3bubbles

2006-02-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

3bubbles is not in stealth mode anymore. Tech Crunch and Stowe Boyd both wrote about it on Friday last week. As usual, some people are really excited about the idea and others think it does not make any sense. Check the comments on Tech Crunch to see what issues came up regarding this new concept.

Lets be practical for a second, if you read a post on someone's blog and the chat feature is available, are you going to use it or not? Does it add value to you? My answer is yes. It is a great way to communicate with people in real time who care about things that you care about. I'd rather read blogs that provide chat functionality. If there is no one to chat with at the time, I can leave a comment and say for example “I’m interested in chatting about this post at time X day X, you are welcome to join.”

It is not all bright of course, when you are chatting real time you might not be able to articulate yourself to the best of your ability. Comments are usually well thought out and in general people know what the hell they are talking about. While on the other hand, real time chats –as you know- might not offer the same level of quality that comments provide. Your thoughts??

I already posted two comments on Tech Crunch and I will keep following up.

Learning ..

2006-01-20T17:59:00.000-08:00

Learning is a matter of intensity not elapsed time.

Tom Peters

Two executive summary events coming up

2006-01-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

We cordially invite you to attend two great events
being held at Santa Clara University. Both events will
address writing a successful and winning executive
summary. The speakers are top venture capitalists in
two of the most respected firms in the valley.

Event 1:
-Date: Monday, Jan. 30th
-Time: 7 to 8:30pm
-Location: Wiegand Room, Arts and Sciences Building,
SCU, CA
-Speaker: Arati Prabhakar, currently a partner at US
Venture Partners. Bio shown below
-RSVP at evite page by clicking here


Event 2:
-Date: Thursday February 2, 2006
-Time: 6 to 7:30pm
-Location: Wiegand Room, Arts and Sciences Building,
SCU, CA
-Speaker: Tom Fountain, currently a principal at
Mayfield. Bio shown below
-RSVP at evite page by clicking here
 
Drinks and appetizers will be provided at both events.
Please mark your calendars and RSVP at the evite pages
mentioned above.

Best regards,
The EBA Team
http://eba.scu.edu

Biography of Arati Prabhakar:

Arati Prabhakar joined U.S. Venture Partners in 2001
and is presently a partner with the firm. USVP is an
active early-stage investor in a broad array of IT and
healthcare startup companies. Arati's focus is fabless
semiconductor and semiconductor manufacturing
opportunities. She serves on the boards of Leadis
Technology (NASDAQ: LDIS), Kleer, Piviotal Systems,
Arradiance, SiBeam, and Kilopass.  Arati started her
career at the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA).  In 1993, President Clinton appointed
Arati as the director of the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST).  Arati later worked
at Raychem Corporation as senior vice president and
chief technology officer, and as vice president and
then president of Interval Research Corporation.  She
received her B.S.E.E. from Texas Tech University.  She
received an M.S.E.E. and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics
from Caltech.

Biography of Tom Fountain:

Tom Fountain's focus at Mayfield Fund is
infrastructure software, networking, and security.
Given this emphasis, Tom co-led Mayfield's investments
in Akimbi and Webroot. He also works with portfolio
companies including Cemaphore, Determina, Elemental
Security, Mendocino, Narus, and Scalix. Prior to
joining Mayfield in 2003, Tom was Co-founder and
Director of Engineering, Business Development, and
Corporate Development at Ingrian, a leading provider
of network and database security solutions. Tom joined
Ingrian from Stanford University where he served on
the faculty of both the Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science departments. He authored a required
course textbook and taught core graduate and
undergraduate courses ranging from programming to
systems architecture. Before joining the Stanford
faculty, Tom was Founder, President & CEO of a
software development and retail sales firm with
operations in four states. He is the co-inventor of 10
U.S. and 4 international patent-pending technologies
in networking, security, and operating systems. Tom
was a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at
Stanford University, where he earned an MBA with
distinction as an Arjay Miller Scholar from the
Graduate School of Business, an MS in Electrical
Engineering, an MS in Computer Science, and a BS in
Computer Systems Engineering.

A good year for EDA ... hopefully

2006-01-12T10:15:00.000-08:00

Sonics(where I work) has been getting a lot of industry attention lately. This article in EE Times talks about our first customer in the automotive market. I blogged about Sonics before.

In general, the EDA industry is expected to grow in the next few years. Read this article in EE Times if you want to know more.

Eid Mubarak!!

2006-01-11T16:47:00.000-08:00

I have not posted anything in a while. Happy New Year!! Yesterday was the first day of Eid Al-adha. Muslims celebrate two Eids each lunar year. The First Eid is called Eid Al-feter and its celebrated at the end of Ramadan (the month of fasting). The second Eid is Eid Al-adha thats associated with Hajj(pilgramige). The common saying when its Eid is: Eid Mubarak which literally means "blessed Eid" or "I wish you a blessed Eid"

Mandarin Chinese

2006-01-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

First read this article

If you are interested in learning Mandarin please let me know. We hired a professional teacher from SJCC and we organized our own little class. Our class is on Saturday 5-7pm. The cost is about $10/hour but could be less if we get more people.

Some good movies this christmas

2005-12-25T02:01:00.000-08:00

Let’s start off with Syriana. It was such a good movie. A great story, very political, made a lot of good points, and had a great crew. George Clooney and Matt Damon both performed really well. Oil, war, money, and corruption ... what more could you ask for. The movie had three parallel stories running at the same time and they all converge nicely at the end.

Munich was excellent too. I was not expecting Steven Spielberg to do such a decent job at portraying both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides. If you get a chance watch it. It talks about a series of assassinations executed by the Israeli Mossad after the death of the 11 Israeli athletes in the Olympics. The athletes were taken hostages by a group of Palestinians who asked for the release of several Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli government chose not to negotiate and all the Israeli hostages and the Palestinians who took them hostages were killed.

I was looking over some reviews by both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides and it looks like the movie got heat from both sides, mostly from the Palestinian side though. The Palestinian critics argued that the movie ignored many important facts. I found out about an article titled the "Spielberg on Munich: the humanization of Israeli killers, and the dehumanization of Palestinian civilians" that -as you can tell from the title- strongly criticized Spielberg. Watch the movie if you get a chance whether or not you agree with what Mr. Spielberg is presenting.

I have not seen King Kong yet and I saw Fun w/ Dick and James. It was OK. It serves its entertainment purposes, I was expecting more though.

SWAG

2005-12-20T11:08:00.000-08:00

SWAG is an abbreviation for "scientific wild ass guess" or "silly wild ass guess". We were arguing today about some features that we want to implement next year. We did not know how long they will take us, so our VP said, just give me a SWAG to make a preliminary schedule. I thought this word is fascinating. Oh man .. I'm so easily amused.

Its simple if you explain it well

2005-12-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

If you explain any problem to yourself WELL, you will find it simple. No matter how complicated or sophisticated a problem can be, once its described in the right words, you will be able to understand it. Once you understand it, you can solve it. So if what I'm saying is true, then problem solving comes down to describing the problem in the right words so that your brain can process the problem in a native format. By native format I mean a format that is familiar to your brain, a format that it can understand and digest.

TBC ....

Winter event

2005-12-16T00:58:00.000-08:00

I just sent this email out to our group. If you are interested in attending, please let me know.

Dear SCU students, friends, and alumni:

We cordially invite you to a great event during the
winter quarter. Dr. Aart J. de Geus, Chairman of the
Board and Chief Executive Officer of Synopsys will be
speaking about his experience starting Synopsys and
taking it from a small startup to a world leader in
EDA software and services. Dr. Aart's bio is shown
below for your reference.

Date: Thursday Feb. 23rd
Time: 5-7pm
What: EBA Executive speaker event
Location: To Be Determined depending on RSVPs
Agenda:
5-6pm Speaker
6-6:20pm Q&A
6:20-7pm Networking and socializing

Drinks and appetizers will be provided.

Please RSVP by sending an email to mmusa@sbcglobal.net

Best regards,
The EBA Team
http://eba.scu.edu

Bio of Dr. Aart J. de Geus, Chairman of the Board and
Chief Executive Officer of Synopsys:

Since co-founding Synopsys in 1986, Dr. Aart de Geus
has expanded Synopsys from a start-up synthesis
enterprise to a world leader in electronic design
automation (EDA). As a technology visionary, he is
frequently asked to speak on topics related to the
electronics industry. As one of the leading experts on
logic simulation and logic synthesis, Dr. de Geus was
made a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in January 1999. He was
also honored for pioneering the commercial logic
synthesis market by being named the third recipient
ever to receive the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society
Industrial Pioneer Award. In 2002, shortly after
transacting the largest merger in EDA history, Dr. de
Geus was named CEO of the Year by Electronic Business
magazine; and in 2004, Entrepreneur of the Year in IT
for Northern California by Ernst & Young. Dr. de Geus
is active in the business community as a member of the
board of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG),
the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDAC),
and the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA). He is
also heavily involved in education for the next
generation, having created in 1999 the Synopsys
Outreach Foundation, which promotes project-based
science and math learning throughout Silicon Valley.

The knowledge gap

2005-12-15T17:19:00.000-08:00

You do not know what you do not know. You are ignorant about your ignorance and that makes you even more ignorant. We face this dilemma everyday as knowledge workers. When you are faced with a big problem that you do not know much about, what do you do? There are usually mountains of information that you have to sift through. You need to make intelligent judgments about you really need to know and what to skip. And when you know something you have to make sure that you use your newly acquired knowledge to solve your problems and improve yourself. If you are an engineer, your value is equal to your ability to apply what you know. Executing based on your knowledge is truly the ultimate form of performance in any field.

But what do you do about what you do not know and there is no simple way to find out what you do not know? NOTHING. If you do not know about it, why bother yourself with it. You will come to know about what you do not know if you need it later. And if you don't end up needing it, you will never find out what you never knew in the first place.

Hamas and Iran

2005-12-15T08:52:00.000-08:00

تواصلت ردود الأفعال على تصريحات الرئيس الإيراني المشككة فيما يسمى المحرقة النازية لليهود والداعية أوروبا والولايات المتحدة وكندا لإعطاء إسرائيل قطعة في أراضيهم ليقيموا عليها دولة لإسرائيل.

That was an excerpt of an article from Aljazeera website. Here is the story behind this.

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust as a "myth." Not only that but he also called the Europeans and Americans to host a Jewish state in their lands and by that ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The article on Aljazeera had a lot more details about Ahmadinejad’s speech that I could not find in many of the mainstream newspapers in the US. As always, the US media gives you half the news. The BBC on the other hand showed the whole thing. I really like their coverage of the global front.

This is not good man. There is another problem, The political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Khaled Meshaal has said the group will increase attacks on Israel if it attacks Iran. This is bad in so many ways. Let me explain. First, what the hell does the Iranian guy think he is doing? He is asking the world to help in a nuclear program and then goes off making these remarks. Second, why is Khaled Meshaal in Iran? Hamas is a Sunni group and Iran is Shiite for the most part. Last time I checked, those guys did not get along. To be Cont.

The engineer's dilemma

2005-12-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

I think as an engineer, within two years, I will not have any competitive advantage against new kids coming out of school. This is scary. The Technology is changing all the time. The new comers are better positioned at getting engineering jobs for two reasons:
1- They are more familiar with the new tech
2- They are cheaper.

What’s even worse is that we are no longer just competing with people from the same school or area. We are competing with everyone out there. Be it India, China, Egypt, even Armenia. My startup has an office of 10 people in Armenia. They are all PhDs and they are freaking sharp. I don't know how much they are making over there but definitely orders of magnitude less than what we make here.

The million dollar question is what can we do? Engineering Design in my opinion is the solution. That’s off course if you want to stay in engineering.

In traditional hardware products, the engineering process starts with architecture and design and it ends with implementation. The Architect designs the system and breaks it down to smaller components with specialized tasks. The architect worries about performance, size, area, modularization, simplicity of the system, ease of use, and many other high level challenges. Implementers take care of the low level details; they get feedback from the architects on whether their implementation matches the architectural spec.

In small projects, the architect and the implementer are the same person. In many web projects, this is the case as well. However, when websites became more complicated, we started noticing non-technical product managers assuming the architectural role of a website and the engineer continued taking care of implementation.

In hardware projects, we still need architects who have very strong and deep understanding of the technology and the system. Most Architects are PhD level people who are articulate and have incredible writing and organizational skills.

So what’s the point of all this? If you want to stay in engineering, move to the architecture side of things and you just might be employed 5-10 years from now. Implementation is always needed and you need to know how to do it, but do not count on it keeping you in that job.

Otherwise, if you do not want to stay in the engineering side, go start your own business, or acquire the necessary skills to switch to marketing, sales, management,

Zeal

2005-12-14T23:09:00.000-08:00

“Every man is enthusiastic at times. One man has enthusiasm for thirty minutes, another man has it for thirty days, but it’s the man who has it for thirty years who makes a success in life.” Edward B. Butler

The difference between two industries ...

2005-12-14T22:31:00.000-08:00

The Semiconductor industry is mature and well-established. The major players are known and the market growth is measured years in advance. The technology is hard and the competition is fierce. The customers are demanding and the playing field is global. Even the smallest Semiconductor startup has to develop strategic plans to do business with China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Europe. If you do not have a global plan, you do not have a freaking business.

On the other hand you have the internet industry. Buy a domain name, get a Linux server, make some content, advertise for your site, get some traffic, and boom – You are up and running. Yeah, I know … it’s not that simple but hey compare that to a chip that costs you $20 Million dollars to make. Now you get my point!

Then you have the health industry, you need millions of funding before you can get a new drug out to the market. It’s just ridiculous how much crap you have to go through to get something done in such an environment.

I heard the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg saying that it took him about two weeks to make the initial version of his website. That’s it people! Two weeks of an undergraduate student time to build an entire social networking site. Now he is getting as many page views as Google. They never revamped his code; they only built on top of it. The internet allows you to take a good idea to market in no time.

The interesting thing is that not only the industries are completely different but the people involved too. Internet companies are younger, most of the workers have just graduated and they are very dynamic. They are creative, they move quickly, and they are trying new stuff out all the time. While Semiconductor companies are careful, slow, and very deliberate. New products are offered after doing extensive market research and profiling customer needs. It makes sense, right? If a chip is gonna cost you ten million dollars, you better be damn sure that you are going to sell that thing. There is no such thing as a beta product. Try selling a processor that half works or a playstation that crashes in the middle of a game. Semiconductor companies are filled with Principal Engineers who have been working in the field for the past 25 years.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that one industry is better or cooler than the other, they are just totally different. Since I have been on both sides, I think internet companies are in general a better fit for people my age. In my case, I’m enjoying the Semiconductor world for the time being. The internet stuff, I can always do on the side – which is exactly what I’m doing right now. By the way, if you are a talented web designer and can afford to work for equity, give a call, we might be able to do some business together.

My startup is rising

2005-12-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

The Semiconductor industry is starting to recognize our efforts at Sonics. Read this article to read about the new developments in our little startup.

Blogging is addictive

2005-12-12T23:06:00.000-08:00

Blogging is addictive but enjoyable. I like writing what goes on in my confused little brain. Just having your ideas down somewhere makes you feel better. I guess its part of our desperate need to feel that we are making a difference somehow.

I was chatting with my buddy Drew about the new opportunities and needs of the blogging market. He has been cooking something up that will take the internet market by surprise.Drew's blog can be found at http://cloudysenses.blogspot.com. I can not talk much about what he is doing, but soon enough you will find out for yourself. What Drew is working on will change the way we think about blogs, he will make it real, dynamic, live, and happening. How? Just wait :)

Calendars and time management

2005-12-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

There are so many tools, books, and programs that help you organize and schedule your life. If you like living your life as it comes, one hour and one day at a time (like I used to be and I do miss that life), then you can skip this post. But if you are crunched on time and have a lot of shit to take care off, welcome to my world.

I was trying to get a group of friends who do not know each other to meet and we ended up exchanging like 10 emails and several phone calls just to agree on a time that works out for all of us. We ended up scheduling a time that works for both of them but not me. What a pain?!!

There has to be a way to connect people's hetrogenous calendars without going through all this crap that I had to go through. How can we do that? How about an on line tool that can interact with your calendar software?? This on line tool will allow you to give limited access to a group of people who you want to meet with. If they are also members of this website (the same tool), you will be able to schedule meetings between people from different organizations without having to go through your secretary and at the same time, the tool will make sure that your desktop calendar stays in-sync with your on line calendar. I do not want to spell out my calendar on the phone whenever I schedule something with someone who can not look at my calendar. I found out that 37Signals provides similar functionality with their online tools. Good for them!

Another visit to Google

2005-12-11T22:45:00.000-08:00

No!! I do not want to work for Google. I interviewed with them on the phone three times and they were way too slow. So I accepted the offer from my current startup company. I think it was the right decision. The details of my decision making process are worthy of another post. So what is this visit all about?

Bjorn Lee who is a new friend that I recently met wants to give Google a visit. Bjorn is a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He has been in Silicon Valley for 18 months taking entrepreneurship classes at Stanford and interning at local startups. He is a really cool guy with great passion for Technology and entrepreneurship. You can read his blog at http://bjornlee.blogspot.com

I called Abid who is a good friend of mine from the SCU days and who is currently doing business operations at Google. Abid offered to take us for a tour and a free nice Google lunch. Another friend of Bjorn’s will be joining us, his name is Vinod. Vinod is also a student at NUS in the same Stanford program as Bjorn.

Bjorn being a biz student is “curious to know how non-engineers fit in within a "technocracy" like Google. =)” using his words. It should be a fun visit.

Found a place at last

2005-12-11T22:27:00.000-08:00

I’m officially moving to Mountain View. I just told my current room mate Nabeel about it and he was expecting it. I have been bitching about the drive for over a month now and he knows how bad it’s to drive north in the morning (as well as south in the evening). Although, I will be moving out by the 1^st of January, I have kept my current place up to the 15^th. For two reasons; 1- I’m not sure if I will be here during the break so that will give me more time to move 2- to make sure that I give Nabeel a solid month to look for a replacement. He will be definitely missed. I enjoyed doing the hikes and rock climbing with him. He also loves movies as much as I do; we have a weekly movie tradition. I’m happy that I’m leaving on good terms and that I have developed a solid friendship with him. I will be definitely hanging out with him after I move InshaAllah (means god’s willing in Arabic).

What about the new place? It’s a nice 2 bedroom apartment w/ one bathroom in a nice complex. No hot tub but it has a pool and tennis courts (which I do not play so who cares …maybe I will learn). I will be moving with a guy called Corey, he is a History PhD Stanford student. He is cool and pretty smart. He also went to a Jesuit school (Georgetown) for his undergrad so he knows how to appreciate different religious and cultural practices.

Anger!!

2005-12-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

"Anyone can become angry- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way- that is not easy."
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Iran's Nuclear program

2005-12-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi just announced that the US is allowed to bid on building a nuclear power plant in Southwestern Iran. SHOCKING!!

Iran and the US have been on bad terms for more than 26 years. Since the Islamic revolution took place in 1979, the US has opposed Iran in everyway possible. The US funded Saddam Husain during the eighties when he was at war with Iran, so that could you give you an idea about the amount of existing tension and hostility in the air.

So for Iran to allow the US to bid on the nuclear power plant, that’s really strange. The US already prevents US companies from doing business in Iran. It’s interesting to see how this whole Iranian nuclear initiative is going to turn out. The last thing the US wants right now is an Islamic state in the Middle East with Nuclear weapons, especially if this power is anti-Israel and potentially anti many other parties and groups in the area. Iran has been accused many times of funding HezbAllah in Lebanon and other anti-Israel militant groups. Also, the Syrian President Bashar Al-asad has been visiting Iran quite often lately, which raises a lot of question marks. Bashar is under scrutiny for his country’s involvement in the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-hareri.

I grew up living this kind of politics in the Middle East every day. My grandparents used to have their meals before the news so they would not miss it. Politics in the mid-east is everyone’s business and a common topic of conversation in people’s lives.

The political landscape is changing in unpredictable ways right now. The old leaders, kings, princes, and sultans of the Middle East are dying and a new generation of leadership is replacing them. Not much has changed so far, but things do not seem stable to me. I hope to write a couple of blogs about the political and social situation in Middle East right now. Now I have to go check out an apartment in Mountain View. Cheers!

Walk the talk

2005-12-11T00:35:00.000-08:00

I just read this on the 37Signals "The Signal vs. Noise" blog and just loved it. Thanks to Jason for posting this on Dec. 9th.

"If you find yourself talking more than walking, shut up, cut the vision in half, and launch it. You can always fill in the gaps later. In fact, you’ll know more about what gaps need to be filled after you’ve launched “half a feature” than if you tried to fill them in before launching anything."

Online personas

2005-12-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

So many freaking websites that have people's profiles on them. Can you trust that info? No one is going to post anything bad about themselves. You only post the best pictures, the best quotes, the best everything that you have done in your life and summarize into an online page.

I am not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with this, but it does bother me that online social networking has become so popular that it’s not as valuable anymore. Take friendster for example, when it first started, people were only connected to their real friends and their networks. Then in a very short period of time, people started racing on has more friends on friendster. Like it matters dude. Show me one of these friendster friends who is gonna help you out of a burden. I’m being too generic and possibly you might have made some true friendships on friendster or whatnot. But you get my point.

How can we ensure that someone’s character online truly reflects their real personality. I am gonna call this problem the Virtual Character Syndrome (VCS). If you have any ideas, shoot me an email.

Hashing about leadership

2005-12-10T23:04:00.000-08:00

Next week I will be meeting with the Dean of Business at SCU. His name is Barry Posner. Barry is an internationally renowned scholar on leadership and management. His book (The Leadership Challenge) is one of the bibles on leadership. In it, he discusses the topic of leadership from many angles. What I like most about the book is its universal concept of leadership. The book's preface is titled: Everyone's Business -- Leadership for today and tomorrow.

This tiny article is by no means a summary or a review of the book. Its just my own take on some of the topics discussed. The book was co-authored by Jim Kouzes.

Leaders are not born, they are taught. People who are great leaders have chosen to be that way. This is a point the book makes sure to make throughout the chapters. But what do I mean by great leaders? Who are these people and do we have example of them in our everyday lives?

In my life, my dad was the first leader that I ever respected. My dad has many good qualities that I really find hard to foster in my own character, but the one thing that has never ceased to mesmerize me is his patience. People! My father is a fighter. He was unfortunate enough to have a very rare disease in his blood system. This has caused him great amounts of pain and suffering. Despite all the pain and sleepless nights he had, I hardly ever heard him complain. Actually I lived with my dad for 20 years, I heard him cursing like twice.

Lets get back on track here with the topic of leadership. As you can see, my respect for my dad and my opinion of him was based on intrinsic traits that he had. His actions and the way he dealt with his problems is what made me value him. Its not only me who thought that my dad is a great man. Whenever there was a problem in the family, they called him to resolve it. Whenever someone wanted to get married, they asked my dad to lead the group asking for the bride's hand (sorry if you do not know the context behind the marriage procedures in the Arab world. What you need to know is that this is a really big deal =).

So someone like my dad's has established credibility by modeling the way. People who have lived with him for a long period of time trust his opinion and judgment. Posner discusses the importance of credibility thoroughly in the book. People will simply not follow if they do not think that you are credible. Leaders Model the way for others. Posner describes five practices that all leaders share and modeling the way is the number one leadership practice.

The other day I came across John Hennessy's speech when he was announced as president of Stanford University. His first paragraph was a quote and guess what his second paragraph was about? He was building his credibility, he tied in the message of the quote with his work at Stanford and he listed many of his accomplishments. He knows that he needed that base, people's reaction must have completely changed after they were reminded of his credentials. Credibility is the foundation. The worst thing that can affect your credibility is not walking the talk. Being flaky and not standing behind your words. In Islam, the prophet told his companions that their tongue is probably their worst enemy. Leaders have to watch what they say, because once its said, it’s done. There is no backing out. I feel like a hypocrite, because I almost never think about what I’m saying and I get in trouble because of it. Its getting late, so hold for the next episode of this leadership series.

My first post

2005-12-10T02:17:00.000-08:00

Whats up everyone? Welcome to my blog. I know you have been dying to read myblog for years (yeah right). So here you go, my blog at last :)
I decided to call my blog brain hash. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word hash in many ways. I picked the following meaning: HODGEPODGE, JUMBLE, or a confused muddle.

Today Yahoo aacquired Delicious! man .. another web 2.0 company makes it. I want to start my own social network site ... YES ... yet another social site ==> what I like to call the YASS phenomenon. How many of these social networking sites are we going to have? Are they useful? Do they solve a problem? What is it? What the hell is their value?

Dating sites, friendster-like sites, photo-mgmt sites, bookmark mgmt sites, .... too many sites man. I can not keep up with all this and I refuse to. I want to only spend my time on something worth it. I signed up with myspace, facebook, and my university's social network last week. Man .. this is ridiculious. I now have to manage those accounts and GROW them. The only networking site that I really care about is LinkedIN. All the others are-in my humble opinion-fluff.

Whats important online? If you know, please tell me.