Friedbeef’s Tech

Sproose is an alternative search engine which shows you organic search results derived from all the major search engines like Google and Yahaoo, but then adds a twists by allowing voting for pages that you like. 

This allows you to not only fine tune and create better search results, but you also get plugged into a network of web sites that have been prioritized for you by other users from their voting as well. 

Some people like to draw comparisons to Digg because of the voting system, but I’d like to think of it as del.icio.us search with organic results built in. 

Challenges

Currently the biggest challenge for Sproose is the lack of community participation.  Most search terms I tried had few user recommendations if any.  The good news is that whatever it lacks in participation, it makes up with organic search results - which means you still get quality search results in many cases so far. 

Still - The biggest drawback here would be that you only need very few votes to influence placement of a site in the search rankings, thus those sitting at the top of the pile with a few votes may very well be the ‘choices of a few’ rather than the ‘wisdom of a collective’.

To help increase awareness, Sproose has also recently launched a site widget where once installed, visitors to a page can remotely vote for it to increase their ranking in the Sproose search engine index. 

The conclusion

Despite it’s challenges, Sproose looks to me like an alternative search engine to keep on the list when Google doesn’t give you what you want.

At the very least, this is an interesting experiment in search, and I’m rooting for them to succeed.

Disclaimer: Sproose has paid me to test and review their service - and to give an honest opinion. Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, and have not been influenced by Sproose in any way.

[tags] search, social networking[/tags]

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CopyBlogger puts it perfectly - “Subscribers are the life blood of a successful blog”

Subscribers are visitors who care enough to actually want to be notified whenever you update your content. and “Getting someone to voluntarily pay attention to you over time is the greatest gift you can get as an online publisher”

Now typically, unless a publisher willingly shares that information via a feedburner chiclet (which looks like the pic below) - that information is pretty much kept secret.  This post will show you how to obtain those numbers!

Why find out the number of subscribers?

If you’re a blogger:

You want to be able to benchmark your own numbers with similar sites.  Furthermore, it gives a more complete picture to complement existing benchmarking metrics like

• Alexa - which tracks traffic
• Technorati - which tracks linkbacks
• Pagerank - which tracks importance within Google.

It is especially useful if you’re new to blogging and want to know what works, (eg. writing style, topics, posting frequency etc.) - and how it translates into subscriber numbers.

If you’re an advertiser:

You want to be able to to track how many people would be reached via a press release, sponsored post, buying an advert in the feed, etc.  Yes - you could just ask the publisher, but this greatly speeds up the filtering process.

So what’s the secret to getting the numbers?

Step 1: Sign up for Netvibes - a free AJAX start page

Step 2: Install the SK-Feedburner statistics widget

Then just site back and track the Feedburner Statistics of any site running feedburner!  

Note: Most sites which track their feeds are already running on Feedburner - so this set of stats will be highly relevant across most sites.

Which is more valuable to you?  Pagerank?  Technorati rankings? Alexa rankings? Or the number of feed subscribers?  Let us know in the comments!

[tags] rss, metrics [tags]

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What do I need to get some attention?

“The average American employee spends about a quarter of their working day (around one and three quarter hours) dealing with email” ManagementIssues.com

It’s hard to scan through and pick out the ‘important’ emails to respond to when one is faced with a deluge of email every single day.  Here are some personal tips for email headers which I use to ensure the email gets read and replied to in the fastest possible manner.

1. Get Personal - Type in the person’s name into your subject heading.  This is perhaps one of the lesser known and most underrated approaches to crafting email subject lines, but works incredibly well for me   For example:  Rather than an email title of ‘Need your report’, try ‘John: Need your report’.  Get that person’s name in there and you instantly create a more personable experience, and a higher chance of your email getting read.

2. Tell them if the request is a quick one - If you require some really quick work done or input from the recipients, let them know it won’t occupy too much of their time.  For example, if it takes 2 minutes to complete, tell them it will take 2 minutes, or mark down ‘Quick request’ in the subject header.  That way your email comes through as a task that can be quickly dealt with, and will have a higher chance of being read with something done about it. 

3. Don’t overuse the word ‘Urgent’ - Make this mistake and you’ll start to sound like the ‘boy who cried wolf’.  When a truly urgent email goes out with a subject heading starting with the word ‘URGENT’, you don’t want your recipients to glaze over it.

4. Be specific - Get right to the point with your subject headers.  Also make use of acronyms like ’FYI’ and ‘FYA’ in the headers itself so the recipients know what they will need to do after reading your email.

5. Be concise - If your title has less words, it’s easier to scan, you’ll increase your chance of it getting read.

What email productivity tips do you use?  Tell us in the comments!

[tags] email[/tags]

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