Reuben Yau

Maps and QR codes

reuben — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:48:16 +0000

When I need to go to a new place, I will research it on my desktop using one of the typical map sites to get an idea of travel time and where it is. I have a Motorola Atrix which has a nice map app which offers turn by turn directions. I use it a lot, but the problem is that I’ve just performed the search on my desktop and there’s no fast and convenient way to repeat that search on my phone, or even better yet, just transfer the result to my phone.

Google Maps offers print, email and a nice “Link” feature which generates a HTML link which you can copy and paste, unfortunately the clipboard doesn’t span from my desktop to my phone.

Bing Maps has a share button which allows me to share on Facebook, twitter, or email it to myself. Hmm, still not as quick as I’d like and I’d rather not broadcast my map locations to my social connections.

Yahoo Maps also has a Send via email, but again, it’s not convenient enough.

Mapquest has the same options as the search engines, but also two more interesting ones: Send to Mobile and send to Garmin GPS. The first uses SMS messaging, the other is great if you have a Garmin GPS device, but I don’t. So this is a bit better, but I’m not sure I trust the SMS option. I’ve had messages be delayed and as with the other options, it puts me in a position where I’m waiting and relying on an external service.

What I really need is the ability to be in control and initiate the transfer of the map result immediately to my phone.

What I think would be ideal, is if the mapping sites could add another option to print a QR code for that location. That would allow me to instantly transfer it to my smartphone, hopefully the phone would also recognize the URL and automatically open the map app.

What do you think?

RIP Remington

reuben — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 04:24:06 +0000

RIP Remington

About a week ago my puppy Remington was diagnosed with cancer. It all started when we noticed he had blood in his urine. He had a course of antibiotics for a UTI but that didn’t do anything. After that was another type of antibiotic for possible prostate infection. When neither worked, we took him in for an ultrasound and a needle biopsy. A couple of days later we learned he had cancer, that was a week ago.

We were referred to the OSU oncology center who performed another ultrasound. The tumors were adjacent to his ureter and around his spleen, which was more than likely the source of the bleeding.

We spoke to the doctors several times over the last few days trying to figure out the next best course of action for him. We spoke to them again this morning and had scheduled a cat scan to get a much better idea of the location of the tumors, prior to a surgical procedure to remove them.

We were out this afternoon and had dinner, when we returned home it was obvious that something was very wrong with Remy. He didn’t come and greet us in his usual goofy way, he just lay in the kitchen, he couldn’t even stand. It was quite clear that the tumors in his abdomen had further attacked his body leaving him unable to function. He was very lethargic, had white gums and was somewhat cool to the touch, he was bleeding inside and we knew he wasn’t going to last the night.

We hung out with him in the kitchen for a while trying to postpone the inevitable. We knew there was nothing we could do to save him.

It was obvious he was in pain and we didn’t want him to suffer any more. We took him to medvet. I wept the entire way there.

It was hard signing the paperwork, very hard. We thought we were going to have many more months with this sweet puppy before this day would arrive.

We spent our last moments with him comforting him as best we could.

Now he is no longer in pain. Very soon he will be running through a forest being goofy, playing with lots of other dogs and his favorite toy.

I will miss you puppy.

RIP Remington 10/22/2009 – 7/1/2011

How big is Manta?

reuben — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 07:04:15 +0000

Sometimes when working on a big site for a long time, you get used to the big numbers. It’s easy to talk about hundreds of thousands of these and millions of those and lose perspective of just how many companies are on Manta. For fun today I decided to do some simple math to try and put the volume of companies I work with into perspective by providing references to more familiar items.

Printing

A Dell 5130cdn laser printer ^[1], touted as one of the fastest laser printers, would take over 2.5 years of nonstop printing to print out all 64 million companies. You’d need 2,836 of these printers running non stop to print them all out during an 8 hour working day.

Length

Once printed I could lay them end to end and form a line about half way around the world ^[2], about 423 marathon ^[3] runs end to end. If you ran all those marathons back to back at the fastest pace ever run^[4] you would be running for over 36 days without a break.

Height

I could stack them flat to reach a height of about 20,000 feet, which is higher than the maximum altitude of most helicopters. The Boeing Apache AH-64 gunship has a maximum service ceiling of 21,000 feet^[5]. Most skydivers bail out between 3,000-13,000 feet ^[6].

If we took the papers and stood them up end to end, instead of going half way around the globe, they’d go up just over 11,000 miles, almost twice the thickness of the Earth’s atmosphere^[7]. The space shuttle and space station orbit the Earth between 100-300 miles, while GPS satellites orbit the Earth between 6,000-12,000 miles^[8].

The ~24M companies in the US arranged this way would create a line of paper about 22,000 feet high, or 17,600 Empire State buildings^[9] stacked ontop of each other.

Area

If we laid all the paper out and taped it all together into a rectangle it would have an area approx 1.5 square miles which would cover 722 football fields^[10].

Weight

I would need 128,000 reams of office paper needed to print every company which would weigh about 1,280 tons^[11], equivalent to about 640 SUVs^[12], or a pod of 116 world record male orcas^[13].

Volume

These reams of paper would take up 13,851 cubic feet, so I would need 34 shipping containers^[14] to hold them all.

Counting

If each company was a dollar bill and if we used a money counting machine typically used by banks^[15], it would take almost 27 days to count them all, not including time to load and unload the machine.

Population

If each piece of paper was held by one person, I would need almost all the people in California, New York and Virginia^[16].

References

Dell 5130cdn laser printer prints at 47 pages per minute, single sided
http://www.dell.com/us/en/highered/peripherals/printer-dell-5130cdn/pd.aspx?refid=printer-dell-5130cdn&cs=RC956904&s=hied

The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles
http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzcircumference.htm

A marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon

Fastest marathon ever run is by Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya in 2:03:02
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_world_record_progression

The Boeing Apache AH-64 has a service ceiling of 21,000 feet
http://www.boeing.com/history/mdc/ah-64.htm

Skydivers jump between 3,000-13,000 feet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_diving

The Exosphere is the outer layer of the atmosphere at ranges up to 6,213 miles (10,000 km)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

Satellite orbit altitudes
http://www.spacetoday.org/Questions/PolarSats.html

The Empire State Building is 1,250 feet high
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State_Building

An American Football field is 120 yards by 53.3 yards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football#Field_and_players

Calculations were done using 20lb paper.

Assuming the average weight of an SUV is 4,000 lbs.

The largest known Killer Whale was a male that weighed around 22,000 lbs and was 32 feet long
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/KillerWhale/physchkw.html

The volume of a twenty-foot cargo container is 1,360 cubic feet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

The Tay-Chian TC-5500 desktop note counter can process 1500 to 1800 notes per hour, I used an average of 1650 notes/hr for the calculation
http://www.taychian.com.tw/5500/index.files/5500.HTM

List of populations by State taken from April 2010 census data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

Beer Thirty in Columbus OH

reuben — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 02:16:50 +0000

Since moving to the Columbus area, I’ve practically been a hermit, rarely venturing out. I live and work on the outskirts of Columbus, rarely needing to travel inside the I270 circular. There are a number of really great neighborhoods within the I270 ring, like Upper Arlington, Clintonville and the Short North, but to me and my limited travels, I jokingly call anything within I270 “downtown”. On the occasion that I have driven through “downtown” I’ve noticed a number of bars that would be quite interesting to visit:

Betty’s Bar
435 W Nationwide Boulevard

Phil & Young’s Tavern
1455 Harrisburg Pike

Amicon Grill
1168 Chambers Road

Claddagh Pubs Of Polaris, LLC
8745 Sancus Boulevard

Ok so the last one is not downtown, but I pass by it all the time and yet have never gone inside, which is really quite odd, since I used to frequent an Irish bar in London (a lot!) before moving here.

There are so many really cool bars and taverns in Columbus. I probably won’t get to sample them all, but I’d love to step into a few of them, sample their food and beverages and perhaps record my visit with a photo.

What other bars and taverns in Columbus should be on my list?

Memorial Day 2011

reuben — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 18:35:49 +0000

On Memorial Day, the Rotary club here in Westerville, along with volunteers from many other organizations planted 2,500 flags, into what is called the Field of Heroes. It pays tribute to the sacrifices given by the many people in harms way, in order to protect our rights and freedoms. I missed photo opportunities in previous years for various reasons, but was adamant that I was going to capture the field this year.

On Monday morning I arrived at the field around 5.40am which gave me just enough time to scout for some good locations before the beautiful sunrise hit. From the weather forecast I knew there were going to be some clouds in the sky so I hoping for some crepuscular rays (aka God Rays). Below is one of the images I captured and processed into an HDR image from 5 separate frames.

Thank you to the Yahoo Editor who chose this image to appear in the Memorial Day gallery on Flickr alongside other wonderful images.

Redirects in the Real World

reuben — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 16:03:30 +0000

Photo Credit: TheCullinaryGeek

A couple of weeks ago I decided to go out for a meal with my wife, we dropped the kids off and headed out to one of our favorite Italian restaurants. As we pulled into the parking lot we immediately knew something was wrong. The lot was empty! This is a well known, family owned, independent restaurant which is always buzzing. I walked up to the front door and peered in. All dark. I scanned the door and windows for an indication of what was going on. Nothing, just the standard postings of the menu and list of business hours.

I trudged back to the car and discussed it with my wife. We made a quick decision and ate at a different place a couple of miles down the road.

The next day, my wife was researching the restaurant and told me that they’d moved a block down the road. My mind was racing: “Why didn’t they post a permanent redirect to the new location?” It seemed like such an obvious solution.

People forget to post redirects to new locations even in real life. In this case, it would have only taken a few minutes to post the new address on a piece of office paper and tape it to the door. They lost my business, reluctantly to another restaurant that day, but we’ll be visiting them again at their new location, at which point I will adjust my mental bookmark.

2011 Spring Clean

reuben — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 04:48:46 +0000

It’s been so long since I really did much with this site, so I thought it was time to give it a spring cleaning. I chose a nicely coded wordpress theme and made a few minor adjustments. Unfortunately this site hasn’t received much attention since I’ve been in ‘head down’ mode for the past couple of years.

Enjoy the new theme and feel to drop me a line if you see something broken, missing or quirky.

My Mustache Brings all the Girls to the Yard

reuben — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 04:48:07 +0000

This November I shaved my goatee and grew a mustache (aka mo) much to my wife’s disdain. It was part of a worldwide event known as Movember which aims to raise awareness of common male forms of cancers, such as testicular and prostate. Susan G. Komen does a great job of raising awareness for breast cancer, but to date I haven’t come across a male alternative that’s quite as prolific.

Mike Halvorsen suggested that the men in the office grow mustaches to help promote and further the cause. While some men were a little hesitant, I plowed full ahead into mustachery madness. When I announced to my wife that I was removing my goatee and starting to grow a mustache she was a little surprised. But when I put it to her that a man’s mustache is like a pink ribbon, she let it go, with the proviso that it also goes at the end of the month.

When I was growing up in the ’70s and ’80s manly men all wore mustaches, it was just something you had to do, there simply was no choice in your style of facial hair. It was a foregone conclusion that by the time you reached your teens you would stare at your top lip in the mirror for at least an hour each day trying to coax out a fine, whispy mustache, because only then would you be considered a real man.

So back to our mustachery endeavors in the office, we had about a dozen finely groomed Manta men touting all shapes, sizes and styles of masculinity. Our group raised $415 which was awesome, especially considering that our company matched that donation.

So on to next year and I hope we can entice more Manta staff and other organizations to grow a mustache in the name of promoting cancer awareness. It’s now December and I’m once again clean shaven. My wife is happy that my mustache is gone, even though it will be back again next year, to hopefully raise even mo money.

Optimize for Search Engines or Users?

reuben — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:09:05 +0000

Over the years a lot of SEOs have gone back and forth over this legendary question:

“Do you optimize for search engines or users?”

From my SEO point of view, it’s a ridiculous question.

We like to ask leading questions, and this either or type question is extremely prevalent in our daily lives:

Do you take the red pill or the blue pill?
Do you cut the red or green wire?
Do we go left or right?
Nikon or Canon?
Chevy or Ford?
Pepsi or Coke?

From an SEO point of view, can you see what’s wrong with all of these questions? They’re written to suggest that you only have two choices, when in fact a creative SEO will be able to come up with a lot more than two answers. SEO is usually not constrained by physical limitations of the real world, as in the questions above.

The most obvious answer to the question is that you optimize for both. The two choices given in the question are not necessarily mutually exclusive, that assumption is inferred by the question. Challenge your assumptions!

Other answers could be:
1) Test and see which wins
2) Take sections of your site and focus each section on either engines or users.
3) Create a similar site and write it the other way, then refer to #1.

You see, even with a question that started off with what appeared to be only two possible answers, within a few seconds, we’ve expanded to many more possibilities. With some more creativity, you can probably come up with a larger selection.

So next time you’re asked a leading question, take a moment, challenge your assumptions, then deliver your creative SEO answer.

List of Pubcon 2009 Speakers twitter ids

reuben — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:32:35 +0000

I happened to be looking through the Pubcon 2009 conference binder looking for one of the speakers so I could find their twitter ID. Then I thought, hmmm, perhaps there might be other people also doing the same thing. So here’s the list of Pubcon 2009 speakers in alphabetical order by last name, with their titles, companies with link and twitter ids, where I could find them. Let me know if there are any edits, additions etc.

Reem Abeidoh
Social Media Strategist, Outrider
@rabeidoh

Tony Adam
SEO Manager, Yahoo!
@tonyadam

Bryan Allison
VP Marketing, Vegas.com

Glenn Alsup
President, Viewmark

Peter Arceo
Executive Director of Casino Marketing, Las Vegas Hilton
@peterarceo

Elizabeth Archambault
Freelance Affiliate Marketer, Wedding-Resources

Jeff Arena
Sr Product Manager, Yahoo!
@jeffarena

Tim Ash
CEO, SiteTuners.com
@Tim_ash

George Aspland
Founder & President, eVision, LLC

William Atchison
Founder, Crawl Wall

Andy Atkins-Krueger
Managing Director, Web Certain Europe Ltd
@WebCertain_DE

Jake Baillie
Managing Director, STN Labs