Richard Upton

Gary Taubes on Nutrition

2010-03-27T22:30:00.001-07:00

Right now I'm reading Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, a brilliant book on nutrition. While there are many articles on the Internet about Gary Taubes, there is no substitute for reading the book. The book is very detailed, which is important for me because it explains in detail why nutrition science and propaganda has evolved the way it has.

Here are some of my favorite articles about or by Gary Taubes:

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? The article that got the public's attention
Inside the Story: Gary Taubes Interview with a good list of links at the bottom.
Frontline interview
Gary Taubes Strikes Back Discussion of NY Times book review and Mr. Taubes' rebuttal

California Higher Education: Raise Tuition

2010-03-05T00:48:00.000-08:00

It makes no sense to cut classes at California state universities and community colleges when there are students willing and able to pay for them. The state should raise tuition to cover its costs. To the extent it has funds to do so, the state should offer financial assistance to those who cannot afford the tuition.

This is a solution I heard some time ago on KQED radio from a president of a private university who used to work in public schools.

Showing Outlook 2007 Calendar Appointments in Different Colors for Different Statuses

2009-10-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

In Outlook 2003's calendar, appointments and meetings marked as "Free", "Tentative", "Busy", and "Out of Office" all automatically appeared differently on the calendar view to make it easy to visually distinguish them. Outlook 2007 offers the same "Show time as" options, but does not automatically visually distinguish these statuses by default.

I wanted this feature back in Outlook 2007, because I use my calendar not only to block out time for meeting and appointments which I mark as "Busy", but also as reminders for things I'd like to do if convenient, which I mark as "Free". Items I mark as "Free" are things like "Read the corporate newsletter", "Drink water", etc.

One way to visually distinguish meetings and appointments in Outlook 2007 is to manually assign each meeting and appointment a category which is associated with a color. This is what I did at first, but thought there must be a better way.

Then I figured out how to get Outlook 2007 to automatically set a different color for each meeting and appointment based on the "Show Time as" status. The steps below work as long as your meetings and appointments don't have a category assigned to them. I went back and removed all of the categories from my meetings and appointments so that this automation would automatically color them.

From the "Go" menu, select "Calendar".
From the "Edit" menu, select "Automatic Formatting...".
In the "Automatic Formatting" window, click "Add".
In the "Name" field, type "Free".
In the "Color" field, select a color from the pull-down menu.
Click "Condition..." button.
In the "Filter" window, click "Advanced" tab.
Under "Define more criteria:", click "Field" pull-down menu, then select "Frequently-used fields" then "Show Time as".
Under "Condition" select "equals".
Under "Value" select "Free".
Click "Add to List" button.
Click "OK" to close the "Filter" window.
Click "OK" to close the "Automatic Formatting" window.
Check your calendar. Your calendar should now show all "Free" appointments and meetings in the color you chose, except for those appointments and meetings which have a category assigned to them.
Repeat above steps for "Tentative", "Busy", and "Out of Office" statuses.

Oracle Wallet and tracing didn't work when executed by cron jobs

2009-10-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

For those who may find it helpful, here's a problem I ran into along with the solution.

When a Korn shell script using Oracle 10gR2 client's sqlplus was run manually at the command prompt, the script successfully used an Oracle Wallet to log in and run an SQL script.

However, when the same ksh script was run with a cron job, I would get the following error:
"ORA-12534: TNS:operation not supported".

When the ksh script was changed to use a hard coded user name and password instead of the Oracle Wallet, the script ran fine when run as a cron job or when run manually.

The script sets and exports the TNS_ADMIN variable so that the script will know where to find the customized sqlnet.ora file which contains the Oracle Wallet information. I added a line to the script to print the TNS_ADMIN variable's value right before the script attempted to run sqlplus, and verified that the value of the variable was the same whether I ran the script manually or with a cron job. The TNS_ADMIN variable's value is that of the path that contains the custom sqlnet.ora file with the Oracle Wallet information.

To further troubleshoot this problem, I tried turning on the Oracle client's tracing feature by editing the customized sqlnet.ora file. I found that the tracing feature worked when I ran the script manually, but the trace didn't work when the script was run by the cron job. This told me that the cron job wasn't using the sqlnet.ora file I was editing, even though I could see that the cron job was picking up the correct TNS_ADMIN variable value.

I found that that the user running the cron job had a hidden file, .sqlnet.ora, in the user's home directory. After I renamed the hidden file, the cron job then used the sqlnet.ora file in the directory specified by the TNS_ADMIN variable.

Workaround for SQL*Loader-297/ORA-01756 problem

2009-10-01T22:55:00.000-07:00

Upgraded Oracle SQL*Loader (a.k.a. sqlldr) from a 9i version to a 10gR2 version on two computers, with release 10.2.0.1.0 on one computer and release 10.2.0.4.0 on the other.

Some ctl files have the following line:

flag "'N'",

When I'd run sqlldr release 10.2.0.4.0 or the 9i version of sqlldr, the above line caused no problems. But when I'd run it on release 10.2.0.1.0, I'd get this error:

SQL*Loader-297: Invalid syntax or bind variable in SQL string for column FLAG.

ORA-01756: quoted string not properly terminated

I found I was able to get the ctl files to work with release 10.2.0.1.0 by changing the problematic line to this:

flag "RTRIM('N')",

Outlook 2007 changing font and other formatting on reply or forward

2009-07-28T18:31:00.001-07:00

Outlook 2007 is driving me crazy: I'll reply to an email using my default Outlook font of Calibri. Then I'll open the email I just sent from the "Sent Items" folder and find that the text I just wrote get converted to Time New Roman font. Also, the font for the text for all preceding emails was usually, but not always, also converted to Times New Roman. For example, in an email I'm looking at right now that has a long string of replies from different people, some people's signature line text got converted to Times New Roman, but some signature lines did not.

I've tried changing numerous settings in Outlook to prevent this switch, and have had with no luck. However, I did find one clue: After opening one of these troublesome emails, I went to the "Other Actions" menu and selected "View in Browser". This opened the email in my default browser (Internet Explorer 8), and my email reply looked just as I had sent it (see screenshot to the left).

I have noticed that when I send out these types of emails where the font appears to switch, when I get a reply from a recipient, I see that not only is the font of the message I had sent still changed, but it also appears changed when I view the email using "View in Browser".

For the record, here is a list of things I have already tried:

Use message format HTML or RTF.

Use or don't use theme.

Change new message and reply default fonts to Verdana or Calibri.

Use or don't use signature.

Check or uncheck "Rely on CSS for font formatting".

Check or uncheck "Save smart tags in e-mail".

Anyone have any ideas how I may be able to fix this switching problem?

Puerto Rico and Caribbean Vacation

2009-02-17T16:01:00.001-08:00

My wife and I just got back from a great vacation. We flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico and stayed there for 10 days, then boarded the Carnival Victory ship for a week long cruise of the Southern Caribbean.

In Puerto Rico, we went on tours five of the ten days with Juan of AAA Island Tours. The other five days we explored PR on our own. We had a great time--I highly recommend checking out Puerto Rico and giving Juan a call to help show you around.

The Carnival Victory cruise of the Southern Caribbean was a blast. I was afraid I'd get bored on a cruise with days at sea, so I chose this cruise because it docks at a different island every day.

My Yahoo! Email Account is Not Working

2008-11-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

My Yahoo! email account is set to forward to my personal domain email account, but it's not working properly. So please send any email to me at my rickupton.com email account, or send me a message via LinkedIn or Facebook. Or just give me a call.

Value of Excel Formula Won't Show

2008-08-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

This problem has driven me nuts on more than one occassion, so I am documenting the solution here for reference. Maybe this will help you.

Problem: Enter formula into cell such as "=B2". After entering formula, instead of seeing the value of the B2 cell, you see "=B2".

Step 1: Go to "Tools" menu, select "Options...", then select the "View" tab. Under the "Window options" section, is "Formulas" checked? If so, uncheck it, click "OK", and hopefully you're done. If that doesn't fix the problem, or if "Formulas" is unchecked, then go to step 2.

Step 2: Change the number format of the cell to "General". If this doesn't fix it, then copy the text of the formula, paste the text in Notepad, delete the cell, change the format of the cell to "General", then paste the text from Notepad into the cell. That should fix it.

Connecting a Sony KDL-19M4000 HDTV to a Sony Vaio PCG-V505BCP laptop

2008-07-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

It took me some hours to figure out how to get a Sony Vaio PCG-V505BCP laptop running Windows XP Professional to work with a Sony KDL-19M4000 HDTV the way I wanted it to, so I'm posting these instructions in case they might help someone else.

The instructions haven't been completely walked through end to end yet--they are based on notes. So there may be some missing, unnecessary, and/or incorrect steps. I'll verify the steps at some point in the future.

Turn both TV and PC off.
Hookup laptop docking station to TV using a VGA cable, not a DVI-D/HDMI cable per the note on page of the KDL-19M4000 Operating Instructions booklet: "Do not connect a PC to the TV's HDMI input. Use the PC IN (RGB IN) input instead when connecting a PC. Note that although the Sony document "How to Use Your Television as a Computer Monitor" appears to imply that the docking station can be hooked up to the TV using the docking station's DVI-D port and the TV's HDMI port, a Sony technical support person told me that there would be no benefit in doing this since the signal from the laptop to the docking station is analog.
Turn on TV and set input to "PC" with Wide Mode set to Normal.
Turn on computer with laptop open. The operating system should recognize the TV as a plug and play monitor, but at best will only give a 1024 x 768 resolution which leaves a large border of unused screen space.
Download and install latest ATI® Mobility™ Radeon™ Graphics Controller Driver Update from Sony support site for PCG-V505BCP.
Download and install EnTech Powerstrip installer. I learned about this utility from the aforementioned Sony document "How to Use Your Television as a Computer Monitor".
Go to Windows Display properties > Settings tab.
Click on monitor number 1 box to highlight it.
Click Advanced button.
Click Displays tab.
Make sure both monitors are "on" with a green on/off icon instead of a red on/off icon.
Click target button for notebook LCD display to make it the primary monitor, which should automatically set the external monitor as the secondary monitor.
(What steps did I take next? Click OK a couple fo times?)
Open Powerstrip > Display Profiles > Configure
Below "X" to close window, click down arrow to change display to "2. Mobility Radeon 2".
Click Advanced Timing Options button.
Make sure "2. Mobility Radeon 2" is shown on left side of window.
Click "Custom Resolutions".
Click "E-EDID".
Highlight the second resolution, 1440 x 900, then click "Add new resolution". (For some reason the 1280 x 768 resolution doesn't work for me.)
Click button to restart computer.
Go to Windows Display properties > Settings tab.
Click on monitor number 2 box to highlight it.
Click checkmark to extend desktop.
Click OK to close Windows Display properties.
Open Windows Display properties again.
Click on monitor number 2 box to highlight it.
Change resolution to 1440 x 900.
OK to close.
Change monitor 2 (TV) to primary monitor.
Drag monitor 2 (now the laptop LCD) to be diagonally to the right and below monitor 1, to minimize accidentally losing mouse pointer on laptop monitor while laptop is closed.

Places I've Visited

2007-12-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

I feel very fortunate to have visited many places around the world. Hopefully, I'll be able to see many more.

img src="http://www.tripadvisor.com/CommunityMapImage?id=16349218&type=TRIPADVISOR&size=LARGE">

View my profile

Visit TripAdvisor.com

I may have pumped up the numbers a bit more than others who use the TripAdvisor service by marking small towns I've visited close to my home.

On the flip side, I'm missing a number of places in other states and countries that I've visited but have either fogotten the name of or forgotten that I visited.

I skipped places I've only driven through, transferred planes at, or seen out the window of a train.

Click here to view the list of places I've visited.

Del Mar High School Class of 1987 Reunion

2007-05-09T00:27:00.000-07:00

Del Mar Dons: It's been 20 years--let's get this reunion started!

Reunion details are now at the Del Mar High School Class of 1987 blog.

No More Email Form, Just LinkedIn

2007-04-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

On my personal website, I have a contact page that, until tonight, had an email form. Until recently, the email form provided a great way of enabling anyone to easily contact me without exposing my email address. Unfortunately, spammers recently figured out how to send spam via feedback forms. Maybe there is some way to "spam proof" an email form, but instead of doing any research, I just removed the form.

Now I only offer my LinkedIn profile link as a way to reach me. For those that don't want to use LinkedIn, I suppose I could show some text like username at something dot something, but I'm betting that LinkedIn will be sufficient for anyone who wants to reach me.

Part Catalog for Search Engines

2007-03-07T21:25:00.000-08:00

At work, we've recently implemented a part catalog on a website for selling Sony parts for professional products. Customers entering the Sony ServicesPLUS site from the site's home page should have no reason to click the part catalog link on the parts search page, because it would be time consuming to flip through all of the pages of the catalog to find a part. Instead, customers would use the part search functionality on the parts search page to find information about the part they want.

However, before we implemented the part catalog, search engines did not have any information about most Sony parts because most of the parts could only be found via customer initiated searches. Now with the part catalog, search engines can follow plain hyperlinks to find all of the parts in the part catalog. Right now, I see that Google has picked up many, but not all, of the part numbers. Hopefully soon Google and other search engines will pick up all of the parts and enable customers to find them via search engine searches.

Can't Access Yahoo! Sites and Can't Send Email

2006-07-31T23:19:00.000-07:00

I got a new 2Wire 2700HG-B Wireless Router/Modem from AT&T (formerly SBC) to hook up to my DSL line, and found that I couldn't access any Yahoo! websites, and I couldn't send any email (but I could receive email).

Ater spending much time with AT&T's first tier and second tier support reps, I was told that the problem was probably spyware that targeted communications to Yahoo! After getting off the phone with technical support, I ran a full scan of the hard drive using both Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Personal and McAfee VirusScan. No luck in finding any problems.

I then unplugged the 2Wire box and plugged back in my old SpeedStream 5360 modem and voilá, access to Yahoo! sites was restored and I could send emails again. Now I have to find some time to sit on the phone with AT&T to figure out how to get the 2Wire box to work. I bought the box from AT&T, and I seem to have proven that the problem is not with my computer, so they should figure this one out.

I'll post an update once I learn from SBC how to fix the problem.

PayPal and HTML Pages Created Using Microsoft Word

2006-01-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, I use Microsoft Word to maintain the web site for a non-profit. To dip my toes into the waters of PayPal, I decided to go with the simplest option of adding "Buy Now" buttons to the site. To reduce concerns about people tweaking the information sent to PayPal, I decided to take advantage of PayPal's encyption option. I found that if I pasted the block of code from PayPal into the HTML editing window of Microsoft Word, Word would corrupt the block of code.

So now I keep two versions of the page in question: one with PayPal buttons, and one without. I use the one without buttons to edit everything in the page but the buttons using Microsoft Word. Where the buttons go, I enter the letters XX and YY.

Then, I make a copy of the page without buttons, and open the file using Notepad. Searching for XX and YY, I replace the letters with the blocks of encrypted code generated by PayPal. I then am careful not to open this file with Microsoft Word or else the code will be corrupted.

I keep the PayPal blocks of code in text files so that if I need to edit the pre-PayPal page using Word, I can do so and have quick access to paste the PayPal code in.

Site and Blogs Go (Mostly) Ad Free

2005-12-10T00:51:00.000-08:00

Google offers the AdSense program which enables anyone to publish ads on their web sites and blogs for a slice of ad revenue.

Since I'm an IT professional, I feel compelled to try some of the latest trends to see what they are about. So I decided to give the AdSense program a try.

I've had some fun experimenting with the program: Trying different ad sizes and colors, placing ads in different locations on a page, tweaking copy to ensure that ads would be relevant, and more. However, tonight I have shut most of the experiment down.

The reason I decided to take out the ads was that I got some hints that the ads may be harming the credibility of my sites. The primary purpose of my web site and blogs is to share information so that others may benefit from it. Often I post messages to Yahoo! Groups with links to pages on my web site pages or blogs. I get the impression that some think that I am sending them to my site for ad revenue, which is unfortunate. I've had Yahoo! Group moderators mark my messages as spam, and send me messages that I'm not allowed to send messages of a commercial nature. This tells me that the moderators checked out my links, saw ads, and assumed I was trying to sell something.

The only ads I have now are those which appear after using the Google search box on my blogs. I didn't want to remove the search functionality, since it's useful, and feel that the ads shown here won't do any harm.

By the way, are you curious to see how much I've made take a look at my earnings so far:
July 2005: $5.82
August 2005: $4.40
September 2005: $7.75
October 2005: $6.77
November 2005: $6.40

Not much money!

Some people are very adept at making a substantial sum from AdSense revenues. They do this by blogging often about subjects which attract readers as well as advertisers who want to reach those readers. Attracting readers requires regular postings. I have no desire to make a living blogging, even if I knew what topics would earn substantial ad revenues. I prefer my current employment for income.

Great Soul Food...in Seattle

2005-10-26T20:16:00.000-07:00

The Wellington restaurant has some great soul food. I'm not an expert on the subject, but to me the overall quality of the food was the best I've ever had at a soul food restaurant. In addition, the service was extremely good, the atmosphere very pleasant, and the prices quite reasonable.

Our dinner party decided to order a number of entrees and sides so that we could get a taste of a number of different items. We got catfish, ox tail, macaroni and cheese, grits with cheese, okra, collared greens, and much more (sorry, I can't remember it all!)

While I may have had a particular dish better somewhere else, no soul food restaurant I've been to has had such top quality across all dishes.

For dessert, we got chocolate cake, 7-up pound cake, and a sweet potato something or another (cobbler?) with a pecan topping. The cakes were good, but the sweet potato and pecan dessert amazed.

If you're in Seattle, I recommend you give it a try:

The Wellington
4869 Ranier Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98118
(206) 722-8571

PayPal for MLK Association

2005-07-27T01:23:00.000-07:00

One of my upcoming projects for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley is to enable the organization to accept electronic orders for memberships and tickets online. After taking a look at PayPal's website, it seems like it will be fairly simple and economically feasible to set up online payments using PayPal.

One word of advice I have heard and read several times is that a bank account dedicated to PayPal transactions should be set up. The main checking account for the organization should not be linked to the PayPal account. My understanding is that PayPal can reverse a payment without warning. This would be damaging if the reversal came from a checking account and caused checks to bounce.

Offering tickets on line could be a huge help to the organization, especially for Freedom Train tickets. In the past, tickets have been sold in advance by board members, but the distribution reach of these board members was limited. So most of the 2,500 Freedom Train riders would purchase their tickets at the station on that day. To meet this demand in a timely fashion, numerous volunteers were required to sell tickets. Finding volunteers to take on this task has at times been difficult.

With online payment capability and a good marketing plan, my plan is to get a majority of riders to purchase their tickets online in advance instead of on the day of the train ride.

I look forward to working on this project.

Blog Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tip

2005-07-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

Search engines like sites that are updated frequently. A blog that frequently has new posts will have a home page that changes frequently. But what about previous posts that are archived? They could stay the same forever, unless...

An idea struck me that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere. A quick and easy way to change the text on every archive page is to change the text within the blog template. For example, at the top of every page is the large text "Richard Upton". Below that is some smaller text which currently reads "Posts from Richard Upton of San Jose, California". I could change this smaller text to read something like "Miscellaneous notes from Richard Upton of San Jose, California", keeping the keywords "Richard Upton", "San Jose", and "California". Of course this is only a small change, but the idea could be applied on a larger scale.

I'm not sure how much this will help; maybe the search engines don't give much notice to changes made to the template. But I don't think it could hurt, as long as you don't drop or diminish the value of your keywords.

Visiting San Jose

2005-07-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

Back in the late 80's I had an idea to write a visitor's guide for San Jose, and distribute it at local book stores, hotels, etc. At the time, visitor information was only available to visitors from either booklets offered by local organizations promoting their interests or within a few pages of larger visitors guide books covering California or San Francisco. The information offered by local organizations were basically advertisements, and the few pages within the larger tourism books failed to cover what I thought a visitor might enjoy in San Jose.

Granted, San Jose is not a city to which people usually come for tourism, but there are a lot of visitors who come to San Jose for business or family. So my thinking was, if someone is in town for whatever reason, they might find useful a comprehensive guide for visitors which cast a critical eye on what San Jose has to offer.

So I started collecting newspaper clippings about interesting restaurants, shops, points of interest, and more from the San Jose Mercury News and Metro newspapers. Then came the rise of the Internet, and all of the content that came with it. I figured, if my potential market for a visitors guide was limited before, it would probably be even more so now due to all of the information on the Internet.

So, instead of writing a visitors guide, I've created two web pages about San Jose. While my pages are short on content, I think they are very useful because I believe they contain the most comprehensive lists of links to San Jose visitor information on the Internet.

Here are the pages:

Idea for Blogger Writer's Block

2005-07-22T02:22:00.000-07:00

I was thinking, what subjects could I cover in the future for blog posts?

I've been active on a number of Yahoo! Groups for years, so then it dawned on me: reuse the content I've already created. So here's my plan for finding material for posts when I don't have any new ideas or don't have time to write any new idea:

Go to one of my Yahoo! Groups' web site.
Click "Messages" to view all messages.
Type my Yahoo! ID into the "Search" field, then click "Go".
Skim through all of the messages I've ever posted to the group.
Find a message with some interesting content.
Copy and paste the content into a blog post draft.
Proofread and update content.
Post it!
Repeat process.

Multiple Blogs and Customizing Blogger Templates

2005-07-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

Blogger doesn't have a feature to set up categories within a blog, but does allow for multiple blogs under one profile.

So I created two new blogs: MBA Notes from a Santa Clara University Alumni and LinkedIn Notes. After setting up the blogs, I realized that I like having multiple blogs better than just one blog with categories. I used basically the same template for each blog, but made subtle customized differences. For example, in my personal blog, my profile is near the top of the right side of the page, which is the default. This is useful because people coming to this blog may be looking for information about me, and would like to see my profile. For the other blogs, readers may be less interested in seeing my profile, and more interested in seeing links to recent postings. So I moved the chunk of template code for my profile below the recent posts and archives box. Also, by placing the recent posts and archive links closer to the top of the page, search engines might give more weight to the relevant keywords in those links.

Other customizations I've made include pasting in code for an invisible counter courtesy of StatCounter, RSS feeds thanks to Feedburner, Google searches and advertisements from Google's AdSense program.

I've read a little bit about blogrolls and will consider that as a future add-on to one or more of my blogs. Another add-on, HaloScans's trackback system, doesn't seem too appealing based on what Dave Taylor and "Improbulus" say on their blogs.

Does anyone have any other add-ons to recommend?

I don't know how to code in CSS from scratch, but having had my fingers in so many programming languages and knowing HTML, it's not too hard to figure out how to do some basic customization with the Blogger template. Those who are not experienced with programming languages may have a tougher time customizing Blogger templates.

Blogs for Networking and SEO for Blogs

2005-07-18T22:58:00.000-07:00

I am using blogs to share information about miscellaneous topics which interest me. It's convenient to have an easy way to post miscellaneous information without much work. So that people may find the information I share and benefit from it, I've implemented some basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques which are applicable to all web sites. However, there are also SEO techniques that are unique for blogs. "How to network with your blog, Part 2" contains some good advice that I've started to implement to enable people to more easily find my blogs. The information in the article about changing the Blogger template may be out of date, because my Blogger template code looks somewhat different than the code presented in the article. The article includes links to sites that list blogs, including Popdex and Feedster, to which I've submitted my blogs.

Search Engine Optimization: Part Two

2005-07-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

Previously I shared some basic search engine optimization tips.

In addition to these tips, I've optimized the various sites I manage in other ways as well. I spend the most time thinking about how to optimize the site I manage at work, since the success of that site is what enables me to get paid. For the other sites, I implement optimization strategies when I have spare time.

For site engine optimization tips, I subscribe to email newsletters from the following sites:

http://www.sitepronews.com/
http://www.webpronews.com/

Both of these sites send a lot of ads along with their newsletters, so beware. I get the newsletters delivered to my work email address, and find that most of the newsletters and ads get caught by our spam filter. So I have to log into the spam filer and release the newsletters.

I first learned about search engine optimization strategies in an MBA class at Santa Clara University. The class, MKTG 592 taught by Dr. Kirthi Kalyanam, included a lot of great information for anyone interested in the Internet as a marketing channel.

Created Two New Blogs for LinkedIn and SCU MBA Posts

2005-07-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

To organize my posts, I've created two new blogs:

Previous posts on this blog related to these two areas have been moved to these new blogs.

This blog will be a "catch-all" for all other topics.

MBA Application Essay Review Service

2005-07-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

This post has moved to my new blog MBA Notes from a Santa Clara University Alumni.

Keith Ferrazzi and Networking

2005-07-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Here are two links regarding Keith Ferrazzi, who is perhaps the ultimate networker. While his style may be over-the-top for you, I think you'll find at least a few nuggets of his advice to be useful.

The 10 Secrets of a Master Networker
http://pf.inc.com/magazine/20030101/25049.html

Keith Ferrazzi's blog
http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/blog/

Now Listed on League of MBA Bloggers

2005-07-08T17:48:00.000-07:00

As of today, I'm listed on the League of MBA Bloggers blog, listed under Santa Clara University. I'm the second entry listed for SCU, next to my friend the prolific blogger Kaleem Aziz. I don't think I'll ever generate nearly as many entries as Kaleem, but I plan to share MBA-related content on occasion.

If you're an MBA student or alumni and you maintain a blog that contains MBA related issues, you may want to submit your site to the League blog.

StatCounter Nice, But Javascript Code Corrupts Hyperlinks in Word

2005-07-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days, I've inserted StatCounter code into the template for this blog, my personal site, and the site for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley. While the code worked fine for this blog, I ran into a problem with the other two sites. My personal site and the MLK site have pages that are maintained using Microsoft Word. In Microsoft Word, I inserted the StatCounter Javascript code into Word's HTML view of each page. For some reason, doing so corrupted all of my links with relative paths: Word changed all of the relative paths to full paths for my local drive. After stripping out full paths from the hyperlinks manually, I found that the links could become corrupted again. So to fix the problem permanently, I decided to change all of the hyperlinks with relative paths to full paths. To identify all of the broken links, I used the W3C Link Checker, an excellent free link checker. Links on both my personal site and the MLK site are now fixed.

The StatCounter service is excellent: it provides free detailed information about traffic to one or more websites. One feature I really like is that it offers the option to install a cookie on the webmaster's computer, so that traffic to the site from the webmaster's computer will be excluded from the statistics.

Blog is now "Feed Enabled"

2005-07-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

One of the purposes of my home page and this blog is to experiment with different ideas and technologies which may be useful for my job or my volunteer work. For example, I have been able to experiment with a number of ideas for search engine optimization on my personal home page, learning lessons which I applied to the web sites I manage for Sony and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara County.

After reading a lot of hype about RSS feeds, I thought I should take a shot at implementing a feed for my blog, just so that I know how it works. I don't expect many, if any, people to utilize my feed. However, the lessons learned from this exercise might prove to be useful for work and volunteer projects.

To learn more about RSS feeds, even how to create one, you might find this article to be useful. It explains how to create an RSS feed from scratch.

Instead of creating a feed from scratch using the information in the article above, for this blog I used Feedburner. This service automatically scrapes titles from my latest blog entries to create a feed. To add my feed to your My Yahoo! page, NewsGator, and other services, click this button:

After creating my feed, I inserted into my home page's "What's New" section some HTML code provided by Feedburner to display the feed.

Here's how many readers are linked into my feed. I'd be extremely surprised if it got into a high single-digit!

People Named Richard Upton Around the Globe

2005-06-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for another person named Richard Upton (not me, who lives in San Jose, California), then here are some links to other people named Richard Upton, grouped by country:

Australia

England (United Kingdom)

Ireland

Landscaper

New Zealand

Soccer player

United States

If your name is Richard Upton, and you would like to have a link to a page for you added to this list, please contact me.

Microsoft Word for Web Site Creation and Maintenance?

2005-06-25T00:43:00.000-07:00

Some have asked, how did I create my personal web site?

I created and maintain both my personal web site and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley, Inc. websites using Microsoft Word.

For web site design, Word has limited functionality, can crash during editing, and produces verbose code. However, once I got used to its quirks, I found it convenient for quickly assembling web pages with a lot of tables. Yes, I've heard that tables are now out of style, but they work and I'm able to generate them quickly in Word.

At work and in previous moonlighting jobs, I've "hand coded" HTML and Perl code for web sites using Notepad and UltraEdit on the Windows OS, BBEdit on the Mac OS, and vi on Unix.

If you're wondering how this site was built, it was built using Blogger, on online service that makes building Blogs relatively easy (with some easy customization as long as you know your HTML tags). Just go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for an account to get your very own blog started.

Media Exposure for Non-Profit Organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area

2005-06-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

The following are notes that I took at the The Silicon Valley Radio and Television Public Affairs Directors and BAYPAD (Bay-Pad) Bi-annual Media Workshop on securing News and Public Affairs coverage, from 9:30 A-M to 12 Noon, on Wednesday, June 8th, in the Community Room of San Jose Martin Luther King Junior and San Jose State University Main Library.

Note that there were a number of media organizations represented; not all tips apply across all media organizations. Be sure to check with each media outlet for details.

A warm thank you goes to Rosana Madrigal and Empire Broadcasting for inviting my wife (and by extension me) to this very informative event. I would also like to thank Ms. Madrigal for inviting me to record a public service announcement for airing on radio station KLIV for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley, Inc..

Contacts

Useful contacts: http://www.kron.com/ Click community, then go to media access guide (60 stations listed here, not just KRON).

South Bay reporter for Channel 7 Erik Rosales of ABC cell 415-672-9139, email Erik.Rosales*AT*abc.com

Event Coverage by the News Media

Give map and directions to event.

How many people are expected?

Have someone at event looking out for media.

Have event between 10am-3pm for 5pm, 6pm, 11pm news.

Reserve parking for media.

TV is about show and tell using images, so consider visuals.

Have people ready to give a personal story.

Have someone that has been affected by the organization.

For example, at event for cancer, lady said in 15 seconds how American Cancer Society helped her and her daughter.

Try to find a hook, a person that can tell a story to one person. Imagine talking to on person when talking to the radio microphone or TV camera.

Having a personal story helps reporters sell the story to producers.

For different language news media, have person who speaks in language of media outlet available.

Prefer to have other people available besides the top person or the spokesperson.

For minors, make sure adults consent, and ideally, are there.

More than one person is helpful, so that all stations aren’t lined up for the same person.

Try to pick people who would come across well on TV.

Press Releases

Give phone number that will always be answered: cell phone.

Current contact names, cell phone number.

Send press releases via fax and email, then follow up with a call.

Also send to PR newswire services.

Call day before event. Call in morning better. On weekdays during business hours best.

Channel 7 So. Bay Bureau is not staffed during the weekend.

Send press releases to bureau in area, not main office (e.g. for Channel 7, send to the South Bay bureau, not San Francisco).

Not only events but also human interest stories are good.

Put on press release that you have video if you have it, since the news stations like it. If you video of the event when it happened, video regarding the subject, etc.

Bay City News 415-552-8900. BayCityNews.com. Puts out calendar every day, also a week in advance. Fax to Bay City News in San Francisco. Associated Press is used less often, they tend to PR News Wire is sometimes used, but more for business.

One page press release.

Add pictures to second page of press release if useful.

Don’t do attachments to emails.

Give as much lead time as possible.

See Empire Broadcasting handout for sample press release.

News release at least one week in advance.

Public Service Announcements (PSAs)

PSAs are not to beg for money. Ask for support, direct to website.

PSA four weeks in advance.

PSA announcements should be tailored to demographics of listeners.

TFN means “Till Further Notice”.

Only one PSA will be run at a time.

For different language news media, have person who speaks in language of media outlet available.

How to produce a PSA for TV by Making Your Own

(Many said that it is not a good idea for non-profits to spend limited resources on audio-visual equipment to produce a PSA that broadcast stations wouldn’t air due to poor quality)

Buy a digital camera for $800-$1000, plus $200 for a separate microphone (built in microphone not good enough). Tripod for $60 or $70. $25 work lights at Home Depot. Headphones.

Never shoot into the sun. Do not shoot in really bright areas or really dark areas.

To even out light, use white cardboard to reflect light. Pizza box will work!
Traffic, construction, airplanes. Use cheap headphones ($3) to hear what is being recorded.

On Mac, use free iMovie; for PC use Avid, Adobe’s Premiere, etc. to edit video.

Make sure that if you’re on a budget that the PSA idea can be done within budget.

Needs to be transferred to Beta (can be done for $15 per copy by dubbing house), make special note to media if you need it returned. Yellow pages video duplication house.

Local schools and 501c3 charities can request electronic equipment donations from Sony Electronics Inc. [If you are interested please contact me, Richard Upton, for more information.]

Post-news Releases

Post-news releases are good too, talking about the success of the event.

If sending on Friday but news is on Monday, put “Embargo until Monday”.

If you have an angle on current events, contact media. (e.g. Terry Schiavo case, Stanford contacted news saying had doctor which had opinion on subject).

Media sponsorships can include

Web site links

Providing an emcee

Radio features

KLIV does daily feature about organizations. Contact Rosana Madrigal.
Need to add KNTV 11’s handout for bullet points regarding what needs to be covered.

Univision

Sponsorships 2 to 3 months in advance, weeks in advance for others.

vhernandez*AT*univision.net

prodriguez*AT*univision.net

Fax/emails can be in English, but PSAs must be in Spanish. Interviews are best in Spanish, but can have voiceovers.

Infinity

No faxes for these, they use email only:

harryo*AT*live105.com Infinity San Francisco incl. Alice, Live105, and ? Three stations, soon more, for public service announcements for Live105 and other stations.

kcbsnews*AT*cbs.com. KCBS prefers calendar events (as opposed to general “support us” announcements) Can send MP3 recorded file.

Music stations don’t do news, unless there is a music angle for free tickets.

Forget about snail mail.

Alice and Live 105 will take text copy and produce PSA for audio. PSA may not get on radio, but could show up on web site.

KFOG, KNBR, and ?

Don’t send only 2 days in advance, send earlier.

Gimmy Park Li does 30 minute in depth radio programs. Gimmy can squeeze a PSA into 10 seconds.

Graduated from Santa Clara University's MBA Program

2005-06-24T04:52:00.000-07:00

This post has moved to my new blog MBA Notes from a Santa Clara University Alumni.

Growing My Web Site Part 9: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2005-06-24T03:34:00.000-07:00

Personal web pages are useful for information services professionals to experiment with ideas before trying them at work. I have learned a lot about search engine optimization (SEO) by trying to get search engines to put my site at the top of the results list when someone searches for the following:

"Richard Upton"
Richard Upton
"Rick Upton"
Rick Upton

As of today, MSN puts one of my pages at the top of the results for all four search criteria above. My results are not bad with Yahoo! and Google, with some criteria yielding the top result.

Some of the things I've done to improve the visibility are to use the keywords Richard Upton and Rick Upton in the following places:

File names, separating words by hyphens.
Title metatags.
Description metatags.
Top of the body of page, in a large font.
Links to pages on my site.
Body text.

I also created inbound links to my site from other sites I manage.

Doing all of this was enough to give great visibility to searches for Rick Upton and "Rick Upton", but visibility for Richard Upton has been a tougher nut to crack...until the creation of this blog.

This blog has Richard Upton in the subdomain name, separated by a hyphen which is recognized by search engines as a space. The words Richard Upton are all over the place on this blog site. It will be interesting to see what happens once the search engines get around to crawling this blog.

Growing My Web Site Part 8: Bells & Whistles

2005-06-24T03:22:00.000-07:00

Well, there are no literal bells and whistles on my site, but I had fun adding the local weather, Sony stock ticker, advertisements, and local search engine to various pages. I tried to make them look as tasteful as possible so that they would not detract from the content. Google provides the advertisements, while the stock ticker, weather, and local search engine are provided by Yahoo! as a part of their hosting service. I really like the local search engine that Yahoo! provides as an add-on: it crawls the site every night, and provides a clean interface. Contrast that to other site searche add-ons which clutter up the screen with branding and ads, and provide results which may be based on a site crawl from a few months ago.

Growing My Web Site Part 7: SCU MBA Information

2005-06-24T03:15:00.000-07:00

I posted the courses I took for four MBA concentrations, because I was often asked: How did I manage to get four concentrations?

I posted the list of MBA classes I took in case someone wanted to see if they took a class at the same time I did.

Also, it was just an interesting and entertaining exercise creating the two pages above.

Growing My Web Site Part 6: Online Networks

2005-06-24T03:06:00.000-07:00

Sure there are a lot of web pages that have tips for people who want to be a part of online networks. However, I thought it would be useful and valuable to offer pages about online networks targeted to my coworkers, schoolmates, and neighbors. So I did, the results of which are listed on my online networks page.

Growing My Web Site Part 5: San Jose Visitor Information

2005-06-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

After creating pages for school tips and LinkedIn tips, I thought, what other information could I share?

Back in the early 1990's, I seriously considered writing a visitor's guide to San Jose, California. Although San Jose is not really a tourist destination, it still attracts many visitors who come here for business or other reasons. At the time, San Jose did not have its own travel guide, and only was given short mention in California travel guides. I thought that travelers would appreciate a local guide that would give more insight than a state guide would.

Now with a plethora of resources on the Internet, the San Jose visitor can find plenty of visitor information. The only problem is, I don't think it's well organized, at least for the way I like to travel. Once I arrive at a destination, I like to minimize travel and take advantage of every point of interest within a small area. Once I exhaust the opportunities within an area, then I move on to the next area.

So I created web pages which encourage the San Jose visitor to take advantage of all that downtown San Jose has to offer. The pages are mostly full of links, since I thought it would be best to leverage others' work, but I think my link pages add value in that they bring together a list of attractions one place that is more comprehensive than other sites. Here are my San Jose pages.

Growing My Web Site Part 4: Contact Information

2005-06-24T02:46:00.000-07:00

Once I got into LinkedIn, I started thinking about this question: How can people who know me and are looking for me find me on the Internet? One answer that came to mind was registering on networks like LinkedIn. So I registered on most every social and professional network site I could find, all of which are listed on my contact page. Most of these sites have very little information about me, since the purpose for registering was just to be accessible by those who already knew me. The purpose was not to spend a lot of time filling in personal information so attract people who did not know me.

Growing My Web Site Part 3: Resume

2005-06-24T02:38:00.000-07:00

After posting LinkedIn Tips, I started to get some traffic to my site. Although I wasn't looking for a job, I thought, just in case someone might want to offer me an outstanding opportunity, why not post my resume? So I did, which you can see here. I know that my resume in its current state needs some work. Right now, the resume is mostly responsibility-oriented. It could be improved by making it more accomplishment-oriented to show the value I've added in each position.

Growing My Web Site Part 2: LinkedIn Tips

2005-06-24T02:32:00.000-07:00

After posting my school tips, I happened to go through my backlog of emails, in which I found a couple of invitations for LinkedIn. After accepting the invitations and learning about the service, I became an evangelist. I sent out LinkedIn invitations to coworkers, classmates, schoolmates, and friends. Many had no idea what LinkedIn was all about, so I created LinkedIn Tips to help them get started.

Growing My Web Site Part 1: School Tips

2005-06-24T02:10:00.000-07:00

Why did I create a personal web site?

I originally set up my website just as place where I could park large files to transfer to coworkers, contractors, or schoolmates.

When I was working on my MBA, I started thinking about things that helped me succeed in school. I wrote a list of these items, typed them into an email template, then sent them to all of my friends and coworkers in school. I received a lot of positive feedback about my tips, with word that my tips were being both photocopied and forwarded via email.

Learning that people appreciated these tips, I thought that I should post these tips to my web site. So I posted them; here are my school tips.

LinkedIn Yahoo! Groups

2005-06-24T01:37:00.000-07:00

This post has moved to my new blog LinkedIn Notes.

Richard Upton's First Blog Entry

2005-06-24T01:09:00.000-07:00

Richard Upton who?

The Richard Upton who lives in San Jose, CA and usually goes by the nickname Rick.

Rick, why a blog?

Well, what got me started was that I had to create one to post a comment on another person's blog. I haven't been hankering to create a blog. I figured that, being an information systems professional, I should give it a try just to know what it's all about from a content provider's perspective. I don't plan to do a whole lot with this blog. Basically, I plan for this blog to contain some comments about and links to the content on my main web. This blog should yield three benefits:

Provide a means for me to share some additional information that either

doesn't neatly fit into my structured personal web site, or

isn't compelling enough to make me want to take the effort to add the information to my personal site.

Make my personal web site pages easier to find using search engines due to new inbound links.

Make me easier to find when people search for me on search engines using "Richard Upton" (with quotes) or Richard Upton (without quotes).

Please take a look at my web site. If you find that you find yourself craving more related information beyond what is offered on my site, please come back to my blog and skim the blog entries to see if there is any additional information here which might interest you.