Author: Murray Todd Williams

I live in Austin, Texas. I'm enthusiastic about food, wine, programming (especially Scala), tennis and politics. I've worked for Accenture for over 12 years where I'm a Product Manager for suite of analytical business applications.

My New Obsession with PageRank

This all started last week when I found a possible client for my friend Alley who does web design and, more importantly, knows about web advertising and Search Engine Optimization. (The client was asking me about SEO and as you’ll see, I knew nothing.) So one day last week as Alley and I were doing an analysis of the client’s website Alley started talking about the client’s PageRankTM.

…or maybe the title should read “Murray’s Website 4.0” This all started last week when I found a possible client for my friend Alley who does web design and, more importantly, knows about web advertising and Search Engine Optimization. (The client was asking me about SEO and as you’ll see, I knew nothing.) So one day last week as Alley and I were doing an analysis of the client’s website Alley started talking about the client’s PageRankTM.

I feel like a complete idiot for not knowing about this thing, like I’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years. Alley explained how a PageRank of 2 was a pretty good starting place (for this client), how values of 3 or 4 were fairly realistic targets, and that values of 6 or higher are often reserved for super-powerful corporations with major websites. I finally downloaded the Google Toolbar for Firefox—that’s how you see PageRank values for specific web pages—and started looking at all sorts of websites to compare their rankings. There were a number of surprises.

First of all, my friend Dale’s website has a PageRank of freakin’ 7, thus placing him under the official title of Demigod! (Any pearls of wisdom for us mortals, Dale?) It also beats the ranking for the California Democratic Party and a lot of other major organizations. (Note: he’s tied with the national Democratic Party site.)
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Next format DVD prediction: HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray

In the upcoming format battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray for the standard that will bring HDTV to the DVD disk, the winner will be… neither.

This post will probably not be too interesting to most people. I’m writing it mostly as my “message in a bottle” or “time capsule” to the future to see how good my powers of prediction are. That being said, let me polish my crystal ball, gaze into it and forecast the future.

In the upcoming format battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray for the standard that will bring HDTV to the DVD disk, the winner will be… neither.
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Avian Flu: A Study in Confusion

Preface: back in 2007 when I went from being a freelancer to applying for a real job, I switched dozens of old blog articles to “private” so that a potential employer wouldn’t Google me and find a bunch of opinionated material.

14 years later, I was going through my WordPress instance and the title of this blog caught my eye. Frankly, I don’t remember any of this, and it’s downright weird reading what is essentially a diary entry from 2006—a long time ago!  Anyway, I’ve decided to un-hide the blog post so you can see just how prescient  this ended up being!

A couple months ago in my union health care committee (mentioned in the last blog entry) the chair brought up the topic of the Avian Flu. Apparently a union member had contacted her asking for information about it. What ensued was a lengthy… you know, I can’t use the word “discussion” here because it would suggest a modicum of intelligence. There was a lot of confusion where committee members, some of them quite passionate, made statements that mostly suggested they had no understanding whatsoever of the entire topic.

Now, due to Murray’s Golden Rule of Blogging (Assume anything you write will be immediately read by the person who will be the most offended by it.) I’ll just state that I found the entire exercise frustrating and avoid the details. Some members of the committee put together a single-page information sheet for the upcoming Heath Fair that, in my opinion, really missed the mark on addressing what’s relevant. (It basically advised people not to handle live or dead birds while traveling abroad and to wash your hands a lot.)

I also watched last night’s Daily Show where Jon Stewart mocked the White House’s new 233 page Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan which stated quite clearly the lack of involvement the federal government would have in dealing with a future pandemic on the local level. “Basically, the lesson that the government learned from Katrina was they had done too much.” (audience laughs)
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idoit

For a brief moment I thought of i + Do It = iDoIt. I even like how it sounds when you pronounce it: I Do It. I typed ‘idoit’ into Google for a search and suddenly realized my folly, as Google politely asked me “Did you mean: idiot?” That could have been a disaster in the making. Kinda like the old Chevy Nova that didn’t sell well at all in Latin American communities because in Spanish “no va” means “doesn’t run”!

Although it’s jumping the gun a bit, I’m trying to figure out a name for my upcoming Task/Project Management application for the Mac. I’ve internally called it iProject, but a quick Google search comes up with a product that I think is made in Germany. I’ve tried the combination of adding “i” + any common related term: Task, Todo, GTD… everything there has been taken. Granted, my product doesn’t have to start with the letter “i” but I wanted to emphasize my own design goals which are (a) to have something that is as simple and easy-to-use as it is powerful and (b) an incredible level of integration and “plays well with others” with the existing iCal and other Apple applications.

For a brief moment I thought of i + Do It = iDoIt. I even like how it sounds when you pronounce it: I Do It. I typed ‘idoit’ into Google for a search and suddenly realized my folly, as Google politely asked me “Did you mean: idiot?” That could have been a disaster in the making. Kinda like the old Chevy Nova that didn’t sell well at all in Latin American communities because in Spanish “no va” means “doesn’t run”!

I’m happy to entertain any application name recommendations. Until then, I’m going to keep calling this thing iProject.