jamescamerongray

jamescamerongray — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:30:59 +0000

I had a great evening tonight at SBTUG, the Sydney Business Technology Users Group. Laurel Papworth gave a great presentation on Social Media which is one of my pet interests. Most of us use some form of social media but a lot less would know how to use it effectively for business. If you can ever get along to one of her presentations or get into one of her one day workshops I would highly recommend it. Failing that she also has her Social Media Business podcast series available on iTunes or from her website.

jamescamerongray — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:09:35 +0000

For some time now I have been wondering how I can improve my online presence with a view to aiding my prospects in a dimished job market. Like all good web monkeys I am in the never ending process of creating a resume/portfolio site I had thought that I was up against some firly stiff competition with the brand of ‘James Gray’. There’s James Gray (director of motion pictures), James Gray (MP for North Wiltshire) and James Gray (compser) for starters. Adding my middle name to the mix only makes the situation worse thanks to that fellow James Cameron, suffice to say there are a good deal of James Grays in the world.

I’d largely stopped worrying about it when I spotted that my recent signup to Sydney Cyclist had resulted in my page there landing at number 5 on Google when searching my name. There may be hope for my little site yet! Now to figure out what it is that this community site has that Google likes and leverage it to push my page up the rankings. I’ve had some SEO success in the past with top 10 Google search results in the past, lets try and remember those lessons and apply them here. Stay tuned.

Click where?

jamescamerongray — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 11:50:57 +0000

Yes I know it is fairly obvious what should be done but this is still wrong…

Setting up Google Analytics e-commerce: tip #3

jamescamerongray — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:01:12 +0000

This one was a real head-desk moment today – when you are testing your analytics e-commerce tracking codes make sure none of you co-workers have set the filters to ignore your office IP addresses. This problem just showed off my biggest gripe with Google analytics, the time it takes for the results to filter through. I put through a transaction this morning and now some 14 hours later the item has shown up in an implicitly created transaction without the parent transaction that was created at the time. I’m sure it will show up, probably overnight sometime, and yes patience can solve this issue but patience can be in short supply when you are dealing with marketing departments who make it up as they go along.

Setting up Google Analytics e-commerce: tip #2

jamescamerongray — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:23:06 +0000

This tip is documented but it’s not in their API reference but tucked away on one of their troubleshooting pages. When calling _addTrans the tax and shipping fields are optional but cannot contain the value zero (0). If you do not need these values or the value is zero then you must use an empty string (“”).

5 Sickening habits of mainstream websites.

jamescamerongray — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:31:06 +0000

I dont think I’m guilty of any of these. Yet.

http://www.techcult.com/5-sickening-habits-of-mainstream-websites/

Setting up Google Analytics e-commerce: tip #1

jamescamerongray — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:30:22 +0000

Google’s API documentation is just plain wrong. There, I’ve said it. I’ve been working with it for some days now to add tracking and found several holes that can and will cause frustration. My first tip is regarding the _addItem() method. Make sure that the first field contains the Order ID as used in the _addTrans() call, Google needs this to link the product to the transaction. Their documentation has conflicting info and they do get it right on one page I have found but their main API reference is incorrect in stating that the first field is the ‘Item ID’. If the order ID is not used in the _addItem() call you will wind up with an empty transaction and an implicitly created one to contain the stray item. Stay tuned for more e-commerce tips.

Small computer, more RAM.

jamescamerongray — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:00:26 +0000

I recently gave my HP Mini Note a much needed boost by doubling the RAM from 1 to 2 gb. The procedure was pretty straightforward, I followed the video tutorial over at laptopmag.com, installing a single 2gb stick. The procedure was over in 5 minutes, the only stressful part was trying to prise the keyboard off, just take it slowly and there should be no problems. The results are good, particularly when jumping around between apps but the video performance is still below par. That said it is still my favourite laptop to grab when I want to check the news or email.

When is Bart Simpson due to become a high court judge?

jamescamerongray — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:40:11 +0000

It might take until then for the judiciary to get a clue about social media. A US judge has ordered Google to hand over ALL Youtube user logs to Viacom in what can only be viewed as a move against the end user and a massive breach of privacy. There is even comment that such an order is illegal under US law. On top of that he rejected their request to have access ot the Youtube source code which, when you consider the number of Youtube clones out there and Adobe’s ownership of the core flash technologies, is ‘about as valuable as the hard drive it’s delivered on’. I think Eric Schonfeld over at Techcrunch has it right when he suggests that Google should deliver the 12 terabytes of log files in hardcopy. I’ll help print it.

Word of the day.

jamescamerongray — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:16:07 +0000

And the word of the day is QUIET. Not Quite, Q U I E T. I have a hard enough time restraining myself when I see the use of quite instead of quiet in an email or forum post but hey, spell check lets it through and it can be easy to mistype something. When I see multiple instances of it from one source on a real estate website, all these houses in ‘quite locations’ i see red. Stop murdering the English language!