RobMaurin.com

Ontario + Quebec = Midlands. You heard it here first.

Time to coin a new phrase, people.

New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador: that's East Coast, right?

BC is West Coast.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan (and depending on who you ask, Alberta) are the Prairies.

I propose a new category for the provinces in between. THE MIDLANDS. Something that encompasses the not-east/not-west provinces, without having to single out Ontario and Quebec. Because sometimes a comment is just about the middle of the country: if you say "Ontario," the rest of the country immediately bristles and starts talking about what a bunch of jerks we all are; if you say "Quebec" people immediately get locked into issues of language and distinct culture.

Maybe Midlands should be expanded. I'd be happy to welcome the Prairies into the fold, which would make the Midlands anything that's not a Canadian coast. After all, Ontario and Quebec are hardly in the middle of the country. They're sort of middle and east, though I hesitate to call them the Middle-East Lands. I await the no doubt riveting debate that will follow this post, but for the time being will keep using "Midlands" to mean Ontario and Quebec.

Still to be determined: How do we aggregate the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut under a particular term? Is it just The Canadian North?

(BTW, for those lexicographers who will some day be tracking the first usage of the term Midlands, you'll find it at my comment on a blog post by your friend and mine, Bessy.)

Photo Shoot in the Kitchen

For one of my magazine projects (should I say which one? not sure if the client would be happy...) we needed to shoot a couple of things in a kitchen. Someone volunteered my kitchen for the job, and the next thing you know I have Michael (photog), Sasha (stylist), Valerie (photog's assistant) and Andy (all-around handyman and installer guy) crammed into the kitchen for one very long day of shooting.

We needed a pic of a particular dishwasher and a particular faucet, so the job involved taking out the existing appliances and fixtures, installing the new ones (not hooked up -- just put in place) and then reversing the process.

It's amazing how much goes into even the smallest on-location photo shoot.

Scary: Penalized by Google?

Earlier this week I blogged with an example from my SEO workshop, that it's meaningless to rank first in a search result if the terms you're ranking for drive no traffic.

Oops.

For the example, I set up a simple page that was well optimized for the term "bilious magenta henchmen," which easily ranked first in search because, let's face it, who competes for that? I had the term in the title, in the H1 header, in an H2 header, and in the main copy. A bit heavy handed, perhaps, but my keyword density was 7.7%, which I thought would be well within limits. In a day I was #1 in Google for that keyword phrase.

But I'm guessing that Google pegged me for black-hat practices, and the page, if not altogether de-indexed, is buried somewhere in the SERPs it will never be found.

Silly mistake on my part. As far as search engines are concerned, if I'm manipulating search engine results to make a well intentioned point, it's still manipulating search engine results, and that's grounds for a penalty.

Now, to get my ranking back up will be an unpleasant task...

John L.'s Top 10 List

Cleaning up some papers, I found a note that was given to me by a waiter, John L., at L'Unita restaurant in Toronto.

I had gone to L'Unita on a recommendation that they had the best gnocchi with gorgonzola in the city, and I'm pretty sure I must have said something to John along the lines of "gnocchi with gorgonzola is the best thing in the world." He was clearly the sort of server who likes to push the envelope, and who likes a little banter, because by the end of the meal he brought this:

Top Ten Best Things in the World
According to John L*****

10. Gorgonzola gnocchi
9. Parker Fly Guitars
8. Vintage American Muscle Cars
7. Long, waxed legs
6. Finding large sums of money
5. Perfect tits [I am quoting, by the way]
4. '82 vintage Bordeaux
3. Flying to Monaco on the Concorde
2. Cashmere socks
1. Multiple tantric orgasms

You have to give him credit for creativity. It's an interesting, eclectic list. I could quibble. The Concorde, for instance, never flew to Monaco, and hasn't flown at all in a five years and change. I might argue that 5 and 7 are preferable to 2. But mostly, I have two thoughts:

a) he definitely pushed the limits of the server/customer relationship, and frankly, given the company I was with (some older, distinguished friends), I think he crossed a line, especially with 5.
b) I still have the note. That says something. Well done, John L. If nothing else, you were memorable.

And the gnocchi? Not my favourite.

Words That Ought to be Banned

maven -- starting about 5 years ago, suddenly this word is everywhere. I despise all words that become trendy because writers in newspapers and magazines decide they need a new term to replace parts of their vocabulary that are overused. I especially despise these crummy fashionable words when they become tired from overuse almost as soon as they arrive: "maven" is almost always preceded by "style," and probably a good 60% of the time it's used to describe Martha Stewart. Enough already.

canoodling -- exactly the same as above. With the added insistence that if you don't use a word in your own day-to-day speech, you shouldn't use it in your writing. I've never been told by a friend that anyone was caught canoodling at a nightclub. Ever.

nosh -- see canoodling. Unless you speak Yiddish and actually attend the odd seder. If you don't understand the relationship between "goyim" and "goy," you don't ever "nosh." So just say "eat," please.

pundit -- see canoodling; particularly annoying because it's most often used by journalists trying to sound smart while describing subjects who are quoted to give an interview some heft. It strikes me as, "Look at me using smart words and talking to smart people! We're all so smart." And that sounds to me like whitewash.

world-class -- if you have to say it, it ain't true. Not to mention that even if it's true in some regard, you've failed to define the specifics. If something is as big as, or expensive as, or as effective as the benchmark-setter in the world, give me that specific comparison instead of the vague "world-class" label.

Wolverine Review: Meh

X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn't strictly awful, but it's nothing to hang a franchise on.

I took this afternoon off to treat myself to a movie, and decided I was going to be the first kid on the block to see the new X-Men movie. I enjoyed the earlier installments well enough, but am not a fan in the sense that the movies didn't matter to me. Gotta say, I'm disappointed in this one. It was entertaining enough at times, but lacked the kind of superhero magic that I want from an action flick (whether or not the characters ar superheroes).

The opening credit sequence, though, was one of the most magical things I've seen in a while. While rolling a basic list of the film's stars, a series of vignettes play in the background, taking care of a whole lot of backstory in a really artful way.

Effects are generally seamless, though Hollywood is so good at this kind of thing, I find it hard to be blown away lately. That's a shame (my own immunity to FX creativity, I mean). But there is a horrid bit of CGI at the end, during the tiny cameo by Jean-Luc Picard. Funny how jarring that can be, and perhaps all the more reason to marvel at the improbabilities that I was able to accept throughout the rest of the film.

One last thing: Ryan Reynolds as an action hero? Even less likely than Matt Damon, pre-Bourne. But I'm diggin' it. Here, as in Blade Trinity, he gets to pair stunts with witty banter, and it works.

Out of the sandbox

March 22: registered and created the first pages on songwritinghooks.com
April 13: first concerted push at content and promotion (Twitter)
April 16: realized I had nofollow and noindex tags in my headers, thanks to a Typepad setting I had neglected
April 16: corrected the noindex and nofollow tags, created a sitemap and submitted to Google
April 20: finally indexing on Google with a search of songwritinghooks.com (1st); on page 1 when searching "songwriting hooks" (10th position)

SEO: Learnings so far on SEO (the practice), SEOs (the people), and the snake oil

In talking SEO with several smart people, I've recounted this (ahem) joke a couple of times in the last few days:

A guy brings his car to the mechanic because it's making a godawful racket somewhere under the hood. He explains the problem to the mechanic, who pops the hood open, looks around, pulls a greasy screwdriver out of his pocket, and turns some screw one half turn.

The mechanic starts the car up and it's fine. The mechanic writes up the bill and hands it to the owner, who looks at it and screams, "$700?! Are you kidding me? All you did was give a screw half a turn!"

The mechanic looks at the guy, calmly takes back the bill and itemizes it:

Turning screw half a turn: $0.50
Knowing which screw to turn: $699.50

Which, in a nutshell, sums up a lot about the business of SEO right now.

On one hand, I feel a little guilty giving a screw a half-turn and handing over a bill. So many sites are so tragically underoptimized, just pointing out the basics is a revolutionary improvement to the site's positioning in SERPs. But I try to remember that there's huge value in knowing not just about the existence of page titles, H1 tags, internal linking structure and incoming links, but also how to finesse them to do the right job. And not everyone has devoted 8 hours a day to figuring it out.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are people who know just enough to keep a client mystified and therefore in need of continuing services. And since any SEO consultant, good or bad, begins the spiel by saying Google is secretive and that nobody can guarantee search engine performance, it's pretty tough to tell the good SEOs from the bad. The most telling schmucks I've seen are the ones who write about content and keywords being king, but whose writing is so atrocious nobody would ever link back to their pages.

More to follow in a subsequent post.

Google Chrome: 10 Thoughts in 20 Minutes

Finally downloaded Google Chrome, and am taking it out for a quick spin. I'm not going to do a full review of it the way a tech blog would. Think of this more like a first date, and I'm sharing the gossip with you the next morning over coffee.

1) Why do I feel suspicious?
Though I'm generally a fan of Google (occasional Big Brother tactics notwithstanding), I haven't made Chrome my default browser. Worth noting: the minute Firefox launched, I made it my default browser. So I'm keeping my distance. I think it's because Firefox still feels like the virtuous little guy. Google -- not so much. 

2) Very Windows, surprisingly
The interface really feels like a Windows product to me. The frame of the browser, the tab structure -- something about the little details. Given that Chrome is only available for XP and Vista (nothing for Mac yet, damn them!) that's somehow fitting and maybe intentional. I wonder if the eventual Mac version will have Mac in its genes. 

3) Immediately in love with tabs
OK, you got me here, Chrome. You can drag any tab out of the tab bar, and it opens in its own window. Or you can drag a tab from one existing window and move it into a second window. As someone who routinely (and very much on purpose) has a dozen or more tabs open, in two or three windows, this lets me multitask much more easily. Love it. 

4) Liking the new window/new tab view
When you open a new tab or window, it displays a half-dozen or so little boxes, representing the sites you visit most often. (Did I mention Big Brother?) Looks good, loads fast, and seems useful. Unfortunaltely, the mini screen grab that shows in the little window is a screen grab of some moment in the past. It would have been super cool if the screen grabs were updated in real time, so that you could see whether your page had changed, and whether it's worth opening it now for new content. I bet they do that in an upcoming version. 

5) Love the smart thinking around search
Why do I need one bar at the top of my browser window to display the URL of the page I'm on, and a separate space to enter a search query for my default search engine? I couldn't think of a good reason either, now that the Google engineers have pointed it out. In Chrome you just type your query into what is usually the URL bar. Bonus: as you type, you get suggestions. 

6) The boldface in the URL bar
As I type this post, the URL of the page I'm on is http://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a-0xxxx-xxx-xa401116---8cxxxxxx970c/post/6a--0xxxxxxxx-xxx0112. Absolutely meaningless to me. So Chrome bolds the bits that are meaningful -- in this case, just www.typepad.com. Not sure how much of a difference this makes, but it's a neat idea. 

7) No wasted space
The browser window uses space efficiently. Even though I'm very used to every window of every application having some padding built in, Chrome's frame is thin, and the attention-worthy content goes closer to the frame edge than it does in other browsers. 

8) Incognito Mode -- meh
You can go into "Incognito Mode," where none of your browsing activities get saved to your computer. Worth having, but on my Mac Mini, Safari has been able to do this for me since I got it 5 years ago. Although to be fair, in Chrome you can go incognito for a single tab or window, whereas in Safari you're either completely cloaked for all tabs/windows, or completely open. 

9) Task manager
Just as you can close troublesome apps in Windows, you can use the Task Manager to force quit troublesome tabs in Chrome. Smart. 

10) Not feeling the revolution, but no reason not to do this
This sounds like a "meh," and it sort of is, but I can't think of a reason not to use Chrome so far. I thought the whole deal with Chrome is that it wasn't a browser at all, but really a whole new kind of beast. I was expecting an experience that would be totally foreign, and in some way exciting and revolutionary. But in its own messaging, Google is calling it a browser, and that's really what it feels like. Having said that, it incorporates some really smart features, and I can't (in this very short test) see anything missing here compared to Firefox or Safari or IE. 

Final 20-minute verdict: No need to run. But whenever you're ready to upgrade browsers, go for it. Looks like it's another step in the evolution (but not revolution) of the web browser. 

Google Chrome download link

Extras in the Movie of my Life

The crossing guard on the way to the streetcar stop, who seems to have a gimpy leg and a speech impediment, who would always ignore me when I greeted him in the mornings, but now chats with me. I worked so hard to break down his wall and get him to acknowledge my greetings, but now that he chats, I have nothing to talk about other than the weather, so sometimes I don't cross at his intersection any more because it has become awkward.

The hot dog vendor who was and maybe still is at the park by the Flatiron building in the summer, and who I see in the winter at MEC, who I talk to as if we actually share some history though I don't even know his name.

Rube, of Rube's Rice at the St. Lawrence Market. I've seen him there since I was a small kid, maybe 6 or 7 years old, ever since my dad started taking me to the market on Saturday mornings. Rube is older now, and thinner, a bit more frail but not much, and he's still at the St. Lawrence Market every time I go, and I want to write him a letter one day to tell him that though he wouldn't know me from a hole in the wall, his constancy has always been a comfort and I'll miss him when he's gone.

These are a few of the extras in the movie of my life. This concept came to me from one of my favourite podcasts, How Much Do We Love (available at howmuchdowelove.com, or on iTunes). It's a great show with Sara Davis in Silicon Valley, and Rob Lindley in Chicago, talking about good stuff in the world, from their passion for turbans to the glories of blood orange bitters.I highly recommend you subscribe.

Anyway, they revisited the topic of "extras in the movie of your life" in their most recent podcast (#104). As you'd imagine, these extras are the people who have a recurring part of the background of your personal story. They likely don't advance the plot much, but they probably add some colour. They're not as important as a supporting actor role (how good was Viola Davis in Doubt, by the way?), but the cumulative effect elevates the story in a subtle way.

Other extras in my life:

The cast of Breakfast Television.
The super-friendly and competent waitress at Mimi's.
The slightly creepy guy three houses down, who is usually a disturbing busybody with an too-intense stare, but occasionally does nice things like get out the snow blower and clear my laneway even though he doesn't have a garage on it.

Who are the extras in the movie of your life? And does anyone have Rube's address? I need to write that note.

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BONUS FEATURE:

Speaking of extras, how much do we love Kate Winslet in the very first episode of Ricky Gervais' Extras?