Shane Life

I learned about Silicon Prairie News last year when I attended Big Omaha, a one-day conference devoted to “forward-thinking creatives, entrepreneurs and innovators” (more on my trip to Big Omaha). You may remember me mentioning Silicon Prairie News earlier in the year they featured me and this blog in their 5 in 5 series.

Dusty Davidson and Jeff Slobotski have cultivated a phenomenal startup culture in Omaha and with the help of writer Danny Schreiber, they’re showing the nation that Omaha and the rest the Midwest is capable of some really great stuff.

Today, they launched the new version of their site and it’s really great. Congratulations to SPN and everyone involved in the new site for the great work. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

…more on the launch of SPN 2.0 from the site itself

I used to think that my first name afforded me an amount of uniqueness in the world. I never really met a lot of Shanes, let alone a lot of Shane Adamses. But just my luck…there are like half a dozen of them that are active on the internet.

• The Realtor, (who snagged the vanity URL from all of us a long time ago)
• The musician and author,
• The storm chaser,
• …and now the teenage fiction writer from Philadelphia (who is also on Tumblr)

Great.

Now I realize that I’m probably not doing myself any favors, since I’m currently fourth on the Magnificent Google List despite having been online for longer than all of them.

But I just can’t help myself.

(reposted from my Tumblr)

I’ve been an avid Wordpress user for many moons. I really believe that there is not a better blogging software on the market, particularly for writers. It’s customizable, easy-to-install, and easy to understand.

I’ve even seen it used for full corporate sites and photoblogs elegantly.

But it almost does too much, is too powerful, requires too much attention.

I’ve had my eye on Tumblr for a really long time, but I could never pull the trigger on it. Frankly, I’ve got over 5 years and 900+ posts that I want to keep. But the concept of the community that Tumblr presents, combined with the fact that a lot of really funny and interesting people are on there has got me interested enough to give it a try.

I’m currently trying to figure out how to feed my Tumblr into my Feedburner account so those of you reading through Google Reader (or whatever other RSS reader flavor you might be using) don’t really notice, but as of yet, I haven’t figured that out (any help on this would be superb).

For now though, if you’re my friend on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll see my Tumblr posts come through. Or, you can just go follow me on Tumblr:

ShaneLife.Tumblr.com

I’m not abandoning Wordpress just yet. But it’s on notice.

I’ve got a bunch of half-written drafts sitting in my dashboard, just waiting to be published. I think I am being too picky about what gets published and what doesn’t. I’m not ready to get one of those Tumblr/Posterous thingies yet, but I like the idea of quick, portable content.

But it’s not something that is impossible with Wordpress…just something I’m not doing for whatever reason.

I also have a tendency to be long-winded. Maybe I need to try and focus on keeping my posts shorter.

What do you want to see?

Derek Powazek on the key to SEO:

Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

I feel like I’ve been saying some version of this since I had the chops enough to give advice on what people should be doing on the Web (not nearly as long as Derek). In my opinion, search engine optimization is about two things:

1. Write clean code – this means semantic HTML, with structure and presentation separated.
2. Write great content – see Derek’s comment above.

That’s it. When I was job searching earlier in the year, many of the web-based jobs I interviewed for asked me what my expertise was in SEO. I promptly told them the above two things. In my opinion, SEO is just about as easy as that.

For proof, if you search for “SEO” on Google, you’ll find that Derek’s post is on the front page within 24 hours (as of the time of this post). For a term like SEO to appear on the front page that quickly is unprecedented if you are an SEO specialist. If you’re looking for a better way of proving Derek’s point, I am guessing you’ll fall short.

Thanks for the post, Derek.

I’m still Brian Fellow!

Five years ago, I started this blog with a simple Blogspot account and an innocuous post titled “I’m Brian Fellow!” At the time, I was working at Perceptive Software and my buddy Kevin and I used to laugh constantly at this skit. It always makes me laugh.

In that post, I stated the following, in an attempt to introduce myself to the blogodome:

Things I like:

• hanging with my wife and dog
• movies
• music (I really really like my iPod + iTunes)
• Chipotle burritos
• the TV show “Alias” – the best show EVER
• Apple computers
• most EA Sports video games for PS2
• poker (only recently really, but I like it a lot)
• reading (but only sometimes)
• cheeseburgers
• Mountain Dew (most forms, though I have yet to try the new black kind)
• The Chiefs

Things I dislike:

• ignorance
• people who drive with their lights on during the day
• temperatures over 85 degrees
• people who don’t vote because “one vote doesn’t make a difference”
• pants other than jeans
• old navy t-shirts (they are too short for my long torso)
• the general refusal of PC users to accept the Firewire interface, favoring USB (for some god-forsaken reason) over it

I’m a generally happy guy. But I’m opinionated and when I think a certain way…I’ll tell you. Just FYI.

Most of this is still true.

Sure, “Alias” isn’t on the air anymore. And it definitely went downhill in its later years. I rarely play my PS2 anymore (although I might play a Wii if I had one with Beatles Rock Band. I still dislike ignorance and temperatures above 85 degrees (which makes the glorious weather in KC all the more…um…glorious). And while I would prefer to wear jeans everyday, I don’t, since I can’t really. At least not currently. Old Navy did something to their T-shirts and they fit better now. And I’m totally over the Firewire/USB thing.

But not really.

So it’s been five years since I started blogging. Not much has changed about me. I’ve always treated this blog as an extension of my real life and I hope that it is reflected in my writing and when people meet me.

I can’t believe it. 863 posts in 38 categories with 1,164 tags and 2,182 comments. Thanks for reading. I will keep writing and I don’t intend to stop anytime soon.

I was fortunate enough to get a preview copy of Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone is Connected, Connect Your Business to Everyone. Joel is the president of Twist Image, an interactive agency from Montreal, and is an authority on blogging, podcasting and entrepreneurship on the Web.

The book is an extremely quick read and is great for people who are interested in getting their businesses involved in social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and others.

Everyone is connected. Connect your business to everyone.

Not only does he have a catchy subtitle, but Joel backs it up with many stories about the successes and failures of companies and individuals over the past decade on the Web. I found so much of the book extremely relevant to my work at Cerner, although for someone who has been working on the Web for as long as I have, a lot of the concepts were ones that I am aware of and have been talking about at work.

I guess I’ve got a head start on the majority of Joel’s audience. I’m not saying that arrogantly — I found a lot of value in the book and it was nice to have someone speak so clearly about the strategies that I’ve been attempting to implement. But for those that work in the arena of social networking as a part of their profession will find themselves maybe saying once or twice: “I’ve heard that story before.”

There are lots of great nuggets of information peppering the chapters of Six Pixels of Separation. I particularly appreciated his section on Web sites and why they are one of the most important parts of your brand (I especially appreciated it since I am, by profession, an online marketer, and I make Web sites sometimes).

I recommend it for entrepreneurs, business owners, marketers and anyone who is ready to get connected to their customers online. Mitch Joel has made this ever-changing new world of the social web approachable, interesting and implementable. It’s becoming more important to businesses everywhere and those that are doing it well are seeing benefits to their bottom line.

One important thing that Joel points out in his book is it’s not too late to get involved. Most of these platforms are still in the very early stages of growth (Twitter launched only 3 years ago!) and while there are some companies who are already in these venues, companies and entrepreneurs can still get involved.

Go pick up the book on Amazon now. It is released on September 7.

I rediscovered Dooce this week. Her story about her washing machine reminded me of why I originally started reading her — she’s a terrific writer. And absolutely hilarious.

As I was navigating around her site, I was reminded of something that she does called the Daily Chuck. Dooce takes a picture of their family dog Chuck (and sometimes their other dog CoCo).

Floss | Photo copyright 2009 | Heather B. Armstrong | dooce.com®

Now I don’t have near the readership that Dooce and Blurb (her husband) do. But I love my dog equally, if not more and he is certainly as cute. Now he probably won’t sit still so I can balance a bowl of Cocoa Puffs on his head, but he’s cute all the same. So starting September 1, I’m going to start posting a daily picture of Dreyfuss here on Shane Life.

It won’t interrupt my normal posting schedule, but I thought it would be fun to take pictures of my dog. You know…for posterity and stuff.

About a month ago, Silicon Prairie News asked me if I’d participate in their Five in Five series, a video that I would shoot, edit and upload that answered five questions about my blog and was less than five minutes.

1. What is the name, subject and URL of your blog?
2. Why do you blog?
3. How long have you been blogging and what blogging software do you use?
4. What’s your favorite blog (besides your own)?
5. What do you think the state of the blogosphere is in our region?

Today, my video was posted. I thought I’d cross-post it here.

I’m pretty happy with how it came out, although I thought of stuff I would have mentioned later, like more specific shout-outs to KC bloggers that I like. But oh well. Another time perhaps. (Or even another post.)

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you probably wouldn’t know about this, so enjoy.

And please… try to be nice.