Georgia being good

A much prettier face.

Georgia Being Bad

Not a very pretty face.

Stevie Wonder Concert

Just getting in our seats and are ready for the show to start.

Lila Carseat

Romance in the Napa Valley Wine Country

Romance in the Napa Valley Wine Country.
I made a request on HubPages for some information on planning a trip to Napa Valley for our 10 year wedding anniversary. I'm still thinking about the French Laundry, but I think you'll find this useful.

Julia's Braids

Robin braids Julia's hair.

Lila sucks her thumb

Lila found her hands and now soothes herself while she sleeps.

Sink Bath

Lila gets a bath in the sink.

Unpacking This Weekend

We moved to Burlingame this weekend. Been busy unpacking.

Country Culture Yogurt

Robin and Cecily eating yogarts on a very nice SLO day!

How I Met Your Mother

Georgia was impressed that Robin and I knew each other as little kids today.

Overhead Projector

We are at the Burlingame Kindergarten orientation tonight. They still use overheads.

Food Faces

My lunch kind of reminds me of Wilson from Castaway.

All My Girls

I'm heading off to work and the girls are hanging out at home while Robin has a cup of coffee. What you can't see is Maggie on the floor next to Georgia and Julia to the far left. Man I have a lot of girls. Wonderful.

Bye San Francisco

Moving the family out of San Francisco in two weeks and saying hello to Burlingame.

Birthday Cake

I loved this cookie covered giant cupcake cake. Perfect for a two year old. Even better was watching each kid take and eat one of the giant cupcakes.

Taking the Girls to Dance

Julia and Georgia in their dance outfits.
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Grandma Glenna

Grandma Glenna, Lauren, and Lila

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Meet Lauren Edmondson

Mark and Moe had a baby girl today.  Lauren Edmondson 8 pounds 15 ounces and 20.5 inches.
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Aunt Joan's Outfits

Georgia and Julia in their new outfits from Aunt Joan.
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Lila Muriset Edmondson

Born at 8AM.  8lbs 6oz and 20 inches long.
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Super Tuesday

Do you wear the I Voted! Sticker?  I do.
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Rain Today

I got hit with a soar throat today.  Yuck.  Driving to get a burrito.
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Watching the Girls

A friend is coming over to watch the games today with me and the girls.  Robin is heading out to do some shopping.
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Catching Mice

Man. My garage is full of mice. The little critters got into a bunch of stuff. And. Have wreaked havoc. Last night I took the girls to the store to get mouse traps. We baited the mouse traps with jack cheese. No dice. Not one mouse. So I searched on line for the best bait for mouse traps and am now trying peanut butter.

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Julia Swinging in the Park
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Blogworld

Listening to Matt from Wordpress talk about bloggers. He had one
great line. Blogging is one big padded room.

I laughed when I heard it, but it's very true.

Salty Pig Parts

I saw this and said, I'd like to try that. My wife said, yuck.

Do you think it's good marketing?

Baby Safety

I started putting together a few Hubs on examples of baby safety for things like wifi and wireless baby monitors and the best baby gates.

I'm thinking of doing tips on outlet covers, child safe drawer locks and baby thermometers. All of it is good preparation for our new baby coming soon!

Georgia Rides Her Bycicle

Georgia rode her bycicle to Mitchell's for an ice cream this afternoon.

Sisters

This weekend at the pumpkin patch, the girls went for a pony ride.
Here they are sitting. Waiting. Together.

Kids Cut Their Hair

I know I cut my own hair as a child. Georgia gave her self a little
hair cut today. There's a good dent in the side, but she likes it!

Julia Eats a Donut

Julia just eats the frosting, but Georgia puts the whole thing away.
I'm wondering if this sugar rush will send them through the roof.
Maybe they'll burn it off on the walk home.

Driving To SF

After spending the weekend with our folks, we drove back to San
Francisco. My wife snapped this from the car just a little outside
Paso Robles.

Georgia Climbs a Tree

Georgia climbed her first tree today.

Avila Beach

It's a gorgeous day in Avila Beach, Ca. Having lunch here today with
my family.

Cake At A Birthday Party

I've never seen kids pay attention like they so when they are watching
a birthday cake cut.

Baby Hair-Do

My wife isn't very happy with Julia's hair-do this morning. I slicked
it back and put it in a ponytail. Then used a little hairspray to
give it a little hold.

Golden Gate Bridge Photo

I've been trying to get a good photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. With
a little more light, this would have been a nice picture.

Fleet Week San Francisco

The girls are watching the Blue Angels fly their jets at Crissy Field.

Family Walk

Taking the family to Walter Haus Park.

Dress Code

In case you missed the memo. The dress code is goggles and rain boots.

California St

Heading down California Street in San Francisco.

Bomb Sniffing Dogs

I've noticed that there is frequently a german shepherd in BART that
is sniffing for bombs.

I asked the policeman handling the dog about it and all he would
whisper is that he is a bomb sniffing dog.

I've also seen more of them at the airports like the one photoed
below. I snapped his picture at the Ontario Airport last night.

I've always enjoyed seeing animals work. Only if the Iphone had a
video camera, then I could have captured this one on the job.

It's a Boy!

After two girls, I heard somewhere that it is an 80 percent chance
that third baby is girl as well. It looks like we bucked the odds.
It's a boy.

When Can You Charge for Listings

This is continuation on classifieds. In order to charge for listings
the site has to have one of two compoments - that are really one
thing. Buyers.

People pay to list on eBay, even though there are a zillion free
places to post because eBay has an enormous community of buyers and
the likelyhood of selling your item is good. With the exception of
craigslist, there are few places that offer this.

So, if your sites new or lacks an established traffic flow of buyers,
then it's nearly impossible to sell listings. Unless the listing fee
is used to attract buyers.

If I was going to try and start a paid classified website, I'd try and
build a community first. Microsoft tried to launch a free classified
website on the strength of its funnel. I doubt that this service has
the stregth to take on craigslist. However, Facebook launched a
classified site on top of its community. I think this has a good
chance of becoming the dominant classified site.

Classifieds

Craigslist turned local classifieds for newspapers upside down.
Cutting prices to the low cost of free for most types of listings.
This has caused a serious financial issue for newspapers.

Today I learned that a large piece of the online ad spend growth is
expected to come from online classifieds in four big categories. Jobs,
autos, misc and real estate.

eBay has been succesful with the pay per listing model, but I'm not
sure that this market isn't headed towards free.

Also, the trend is heading for decentralization of the listings. Sort
of like YouTube for classifieds.

The killer solution seems like an API that accepts listings and a
service that pushes it everywhere you would like it to be posted. For
example, I want to fill out one form, post it to ebay craigslist etc,
have an option to post it to PPC search engines and gives me a widget
to post it anywhere.

Pets on Muni

I don't know if pets are allowed on Muni in San Francisco, but I see a
lot more of them these days. Yesterday, there was a giant lizard, but
I couldn't get a picture.

This little dog joined us for the morning commute.

Messaging

Messaging on a website is communicating benefits, highlighting a new
feature, providing help and alerting a person to other important
information.

The key to messaging is providing it at the right time. As products
add features the messaging becomes increasingly complex which makes
delivering the right message more difficult.

The interesting thing is its hard to find a website that consistently
delivers messaging across the site that is effective. On HubPages we
have used a right hand nav that highlights as you change boxes. We
have placed the answers to the top customer support issues in the
boxes. However, it hasn't cut down the inquiries. I wonder if the
best messaging is simply a big button with a phone number that is
answered quickly and answers questions accurately.

Fundamentals and Innovation

If the 80/20 rule holds for creating a viral website I'd say it's 80
percent fundamentals and 20 percent innovation.

Fundamentals are the core skills of running a site like customer
support, and making the app scale. Don't underestimate fundamentals.

Innovation is what makes your site standout. It differentiates you
from the noise. And its what people talk about when they describe
your site.

My advice is to innovate, but remember that successful innovations are
built on top of fundamentals. If Magic Johnson couldn't two hand chest
pass, he'd never be able to throw a 92 ft no look behind the back
bounce pass through a defenders legs and over the next persons head
for a perfect alley-oop

Beating Costco

I drove by this tire shop in Mountain View yesterday and there's this
BIG sign that says we "We Beat Costco."

What I didn't get in the picture is a we're hiring for $10/hr sign
right next to it.

See, Costco pays higher wages and that attracts talent that is
knowledgable about tires. Plus they have the best return policy around.

It takes a lot more than cheap prices to beat Costco.

Viral Website Part Four: Natural Search Engine Optimization

This is a huge way to leverage content into traffic. Don't do
anything blackhat or you will eventually get caught and killed.

Just organize the site well. And follow fundamental SEO rules. It's
best to start this from the beginning.

Ok. That's it for the series.

Viral Website Part Three: Give Them Something to Talk About

This has two meanings.

First, create something unique. If one person loves it, the chances
are good someone else will as well. People that love something tell
others.

Second. Let users communicate on the site. Comments, forums, chat,
and email are ways to do it. This makes a site sticky and keeps
people coming back.

Viral Website Part Two: Contribution

Once you have lots of people signing up, people need to get value to
continue to use it.

When it's new, there isn't that much there, so it must be easy for
people to contribute. Digg lets users submit stories, which is easy,
but even easier is to leave a comment and even easier than that is a
one click Digg vote.

The key is to figure out how people will contribute and to make sure
there is something very easy that anyone can do to add value.

Components of a Viral Website: Signup

If you learn by seeing what is successful, what do the large social
networks have in common? It's a well integrated signup process that
connects you at the beginning with people in your address book that
are already using the service as well makes it seamless to invite
others.

The downside is this technique has been criticized for being spammy.
So make sure users can opt out of sending emails.

The upside can be tremendous with thousands of people signing up
daily. The experience for each new user is also enhanced when they
are connected with more people they know.

Trading Up Problems

I try to be aware of the type of problems I'm dealing with daily. I
have two buckets. Good and bad.

Bad problems are ones that should have been prevented. I screwed up
and now it's biting me in the ass. Like a bug. Or a legal issue where
you're at fault. Or even worse, you lose customers.

Good problems are trying to decide which features to build. How to
scale because more people are using your service. Or where to invest
because your business is throwing off so much cash.

The key is to understand the type of problems you have. Then you'll
have a picture of where your business is heading.

Testing Googles New Video Upload...and Happy Bday Eddie

Picking a Better Name

Don't you think they could have picked a better name for their thrift
store?

This store is located smack downtown Ventura.

Losing Weight

I've been thinking of trying weight watchers to see if I can lose 20 lbs by Christmas. That would put me at about 210 lbs. One thing I like about Weight Watchers is the point system. If you're not sure what it is you can read about Weight Watchers Points and tell me what you think.

Nice Day in Noe Valley

A very comfortable day in our neighborhood. Perfect for sitting on a
bench.

Dry Ice

Someone left dry ice outside our office. Good thing nobody stepped on
it with bare feet or picked it up.

When Do You Hit The Gas

If you read other bloggers in the VC area there has been a lot of talk
about time. The short of it is that things don't work out as quickly
as we would like, but if you can hang in there long enough, you will
make it.

There is a spend to grow formula and a save cash until you figure it
out formula. The big question for new companies is what are the signs
that it is time to switch from figuring it out to spend to grow.

Probably the worst mistake you can make is thinking you have it
figured out when you don't because it usually means increased spending
which takes away time.

In the end it's time that matters.

Guadalupe California

I snapped this picture coming down Division Street out of Nipomo on
our way to the Far Western.

Brothers Arm wrestling

Family arm wresting championships tonight.

San Luis Obispo County Free Cigarettes

General Hospital in San Luis Obispo has a sign posted that says the
county is nolonger providing free cigarettes. Shocking.

Google Power on Public Markets

For the most part, when Google updates it's algorithm it's a million little webmasters that hunker down and discuss it in forums such as webmasterworld. They talk back and forth and try to understand the changes. When an algorithm change goes against you, it can mean that you lose a substantial portion of your income.

Public companies like About.com - owned by the NY Times, and Answers.com have a huge dependency on Google traffic as well. Last week Google tweaked it's algorithm and just like that, Answers is down 28%. Ouch. Also, last week Associated Content announced a $10 Million round of funding for a site that lives on Google traffic. Venture Beat calls it a bold strategy. And, just to be clear, Google is by far the biggest source of traffic for HubPages.

When it's a million little webmasters that feel this pain it goes fairly unnoticed in the main stream press. When it's a big company that screams it could be different. It may also be different because Google has the ability to change the value of a public company with a very small tweak. Answers.com is down 11% today. Think it has another 17% to go?

Customer Problems

When you have a new site that is growing there are pain points in the
administration. It could be things like deploying new builds or
simply moderating the site.

Most people defer the infrastructure work until it feels like a
nagging two year old and can't be ignored.

One thing to be cautious of is that there is probably something that
is just as painful for your customers that use the site everyday.

Fix your customers problems before you fix your own.

Making Progress

Through the last year we have continually worked to improve the
Hubpages website and monetization. Progress, measured by monetizable
traffic has come in big steps that doesn't line up with new features
or improvements.

The biggest gains in traffic have been where few things change for a
longer period of time. While the biggest step backwards has been
after our most major changes.

However, after each major update the site does recover and hit new
highs.

A good thing to keep in mind when updating the site is can you
pinpoint causality for traffic changes and adjust quickly for unwanted
side effects.