Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

There are rarely times when I feel I need to get something off a site if they didn’t make it easily available to download but it does happen. Next weekend I will be going on a small trip with my brother and a friend for 2 days of golf. We have all been looking at the course’s website, checking for information and reviewing the course on their score cards. The website has a lot of great information and so my instinct was to try and get it on my Blackberry. There are 2 things that I wanted – the hole yardages and the small video flybys like you would see on TV for tour events.

I don’t want to use any of this information maliciously, I want it for personal consumption. The only difference is that I don’t feel like having to use a data connection every time I want to take a peak.

One of my buddies at work reminded me of a website called File2HD. This site is very simple in the you enter the URL of the web page you want to search and then hit Get Files. Very simple and it will then list all the files that it found with download links to them. If you right click on the download link and choose Save Target As then you are able to keep the file locally.

So now I have my fly by videos of the golf course on my Blackberry and I will only know if my brother and buddy read this if they want to see them!

Remember that this is for personal consumption only. The filed team has a Terms of Service. The information that I have is something that is found in their yardage book which I will still buy. Don’t take advantage and for sure don’t steal copywriter material.

If you are a golfer then have fun out on the links, if not…

Geek on!

I have been using Google Analytics for a long time and it gives me great information and history, but there is something really awesome about live stats. Without it if you really want to know how a post or a tweet affects your traffic, you have to keep really good track of what you are doing and when. Then take the time to analyze that data. Live stats let you track your impact right away.

Move out Google Analytics, move in Woopra.

Woopra is another analytics service but they offer a slightly more detailed look at your stats. Live view is one of the most impressive things that I have seen for web stats and with a little work and tweaking I managed to up my page views by 1000% yesterday.

This service is not free across the board however. It is based on page views and if you are over 30,000 then you have to pay for the service. Most people are under that and that means that it’s a viable solution for the little guy. I truly believe that you can gather enough money from Adsence to pay for this if you have that many hits.

They also have a client program that you can download which is even better then their web interface. You can remain logged in which allows you to view your current status or any history when you like. AWESOME!

One thing that I have noticed that screwed me up a little was my time zone setting. By default it is set to UTC so if you are somewhere else you really want to change that. The problem I had was that it didn’t take affect when I set up my URL the first time. Then my reports reset at 7pm which was annoying, especially yesterday!

I still like to have my Google Analytics setup and the code remains in my html for now. Google is pretty much a standard when it comes to this information so I like it to be there. I am not sure if Woopra will be around forever so I like to have my information in more than one place. It’s almost like a backup copy of my stats, like they say “Data doesn’t exist until it exists in 2 places”.

Have fun with it, if you have 100 hits a day then it starts to get a little addictive ;)

Geek on!

I have been using Dreamhost for quite some time and I am very pleased with their service. I know that there are larger hosting companies out there but these guys have their stuff together and have been very helpful when I have needed them.

Now they have an offer that will let you have 1 extra FREE lifetime domain registration for any plan you sign up for.

This is the push you need to start your own project, perhaps your own blog or a family website with news and photos etc.

Geek on!

I am finding it increasingly difficult to find direction in the 2.0 or Social Media world. I have been working on a blog for quite some time and still have a quite low readership, or a least much lower than I would like. My question remains “Where do I spend my time and how much time is needed to make an impact?”. There are parts of me that think it will be impossible to make inroads in the social media world without being laid off from my 9-5 job.

I do work hard at my day job but I have never let it spill over into my personal life unless there is some sort of special project that needs tending to. I have a wonderful family and after doing all the normal family things after getting home from work it is already 9:00pm. If I don’t want to get sick due to a lack of sleep, the most I can spend is a couple of hours a night in my home office writing articles or working on my site’s back end.

It simply doesn’t feel like enough! My main goal is to have enough readers and viewers to sustain quality content through their interaction. I would simply like to be available for people who need guidance or support with their technology needs. The problem is when you have a small amount of time available to invest in your own branding, building up an audience is very difficult.

So the original question remains. How much time is enough and where is that time best spent? Up until now I thought it best to concentrate on my blog posts or updating my website. I am not sure that is the best way to spend time anymore. There are hoards of people that are moving away from their personal blogs and spending time on Twitter or Friendfeed, most notably Robert Scoble. This definitely will get you noticed but it seems that you need to spend 10 hours a day for real recognition. If your main career is not fed through social media then you won’t have 10 hours a day, you might not even have 2.

As I write this article I continue to come up with new strategies for myself and then find ways to break them. The video/stream portion of my website is really what interests me because it is what gives me the instant feedback that I like. I wonder if you can really support a video stream and gain viewers simply by being active on twitter. For some reason I don’t think so.

I am starting to believe that there is no way to obtain my true goals by only spending 10-12 hours a week on my blog/stream.

I would really like to spark a discussion with this article, please comment away!