Dave Naffziger's Blog

How are options granted and priced? Get an understanding of the documents required to grant stock options and how prices of stock options are determined (both pre- and post-409A regulations).

A month ago, I opened accounts at the three major hosted blog platforms (WordPress, Typepad & Blogger), and wrote two equivalent posts (similar titles and keyword densities) on each platform using made-up keywords. I also hosted a WordPress powered blog on a newly registered domain and created similar posts there (I recognize that this isn’t an entirely fair option because I didn’t do the same for all three platforms). I used all of the default options of the blog platforms.

I then monitored the search results for these fictitious keywords to see how quickly the posts would be indexed and how the posts would rank relative to each other.

The two terms I targeted were: patwrxa & qtyuist, and the four blogs I used were: patwrxa.com, patwrxa.wordpress.com, patwrxa.typepad.com, patwrxa.blogspot.com

1. Time to Indexing

The average time that it took for the posts to be first seen in the search engines . I didn’t include Live.com as it had only fully indexed one of the four sites (Typepad). I also tested and excluded Technorati, which never picked up the Typepad blog.

The rank is my qualitative assessment based on the data, my perception of the importance of the various engines, and how I saw the data change over the week. Yeah, I wish it was more scientific too, but you’ll have to deal.

Rank	Platform	Google	Yahoo	Google Blog Search
1	Blogger	2 days	10 days	1.5 days
2	WordPress	5.5	8	3
3	WP on Domain	6	8	1.5
4	Typepad	3.5	21	Never Indexed

I had several observations:

• Blogger gets content into Google’s index the quickest (not surprising)
• WordPress.com and Hosted WordPress were indexed similarly quickly
• Some posts jumped in and out of the index.
• I was surprised to find Typepad indexed slowly on Yahoo, and not at all on Google Blog Search.

Also notable: Yahoo is already struggling with spam on the search terms

2. Relative Ranking

Average Position calculated by taking the average of the two positional ranks.

A note on Yahoo’s numbers. The blogs indexed in Yahoo fluctuated a lot, so I have two numbers listed for Yahoo: the first is the present day rank. The second is the average rank when all pages were in the index (about a week ago). N/I means Not Indexed (Currently)

Rank	Platform	Google	Yahoo	Google Blog Search
1	WP on Domain	1.5	1 (1.5)	3
2	WordPress	2.5	2 (4)	1.5
3	Typepad	2	N/I (2)	N/I
4	Blogger	4	N/I (2.5)	1.5

OK, these results were a lot less consistent between platforms and between search engines. I did notice several things:

• The blog on the domain patwrxa.com did the best for the keyword ‘patwrxa’.
• I didn’t see any major sandboxing issues with the new domain. Or, the blogs all faced similar sandbox issues.
• There seems to be an inverse relationship between rankings on Google Search and Google Blog Search. This may be coincidence.
• The rankings did bounce around a bit. The numbers I posted above are the current rankings and generally represented the steady state.

Summary - the Best Search Optimized Blog Platform?

WordPress. Although the assessment is more qualitative than quantitative. It is indexed quickly in all engines and ranks well in all engines. If you host your own version of WordPress, you’ll find the search performance to be similar (maybe even better) to a WordPress blog hosted on wordpress.com.

Disclaimer: Although I think it is informative, this is far from a scientific test. To properly conduct a test, you would need to create tens of blogs on each of the platforms and test each with real keywords in addition to the manufactured ones - time/skills that I definitely don’t have.

I was looking at my twice monthly power bill, and was simultaneously impressed and disappointed with the ‘green-oriented’ aspects of the bill. I can begin to see how something as simple as a power bill can contribute to broader conservation efforts.

I love stats, and the power bill contained two comparative stats that told me how our usage compared to last year’s usage. I thought the graph and stats were pretty cool:

So, we used 20% less electricity this year. Great. I think.

I love that this is on the first page of the bill, but they could do so much more. This would be a great place to tell me:

• Is my improvement better or worse than that of other customers (an unseasonably warm winter could have improved everyone’s bill)
• How does my consumption compare to other customers? What quartile am I in? How about average energy usage per sq ft? Even better, tell me how I compare to the other people on my block.
• Usage by day? Are we particularly inefficient on some days? A daily graph would be pretty cool, although I’m pretty sure they don’t have the data to support this.

Not everyone is a numbers geek like me nor are they similarly competitive. But, this has actually had an impact on our energy usage, so I imagine it would do the same for others.

They also have this cool renewable energy program: GreenUp. You get to buy a guilt free energy consuming lifestyle for a mere $12 a month. For this low monthly charge Seattle City Light commits to give you energy from renewable sources instead of stinky coal factories. So, your power can at least feel superior to other people’s power as it travels down the lines to your house.

Although I’m happily spending $12 a month, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just paying Seattle City Light extra money for the privilege of feeling better about my energy footprint (aka, does the money go to renewable sources or to a public utility slush fund).

Does anyone know if other utilities have similar programs?

I play on an IM soccer league where our team doesn’t live up to its potential. I commonly tell my wife after a game “We lost, but we should have won”. The individual players on our team were better than the players on their team (in some cases a lot better), but we never played as well as a team. Professional sport is littered with examples where the players that comprised a team were a lot more talented than the team itself (2004 Dream Team, etc.) Sports provide an easy and obvious metaphor, but teams of all types don’t live up to their potential for similar reasons.

There are plenty of reasons why teams don’t live up to their potential, but in my experience they falter most often because of a lack of trust. Players hold the ball too long, or kick it down field rather than passing it short. Developers redo each other’s code, managers micromanage, sales people prospect in each other’s territories, and everyone wants to tell the marketer how to do their job. This almost always results in a negative spiral - people resent when they aren’t trusted, and no one trusts someone they resent.

I’ve found several things can be done to break the trust spiral (OK, here is where the sports metaphor breaks down a bit).

• Clearly define responsibilities. Managers need to clearly define the boundaries between responsibilities and ensure those boundaries are upheld. Team members need to be congratulated for excelling in their role and discouraged when they unproductively stray into someone else’s role.
• Highlight successes. Clearly identify moments when team members follow through with their deliverables. The team should become accustomed to seeing team members meet or exceed their commitments.
• Create a forum for feedback. Communication that happens in whispers and behind closed doors is destructive - it needs to be brought out in the open. Everyone needs to feel that they can raise issues and offer suggestions in an environment that is open, fair and constructive.
• Increase feelings of security. Team members must be comfortable, confident and secure in their role. People can focus on their own role when they no longer see their teammates as threatening.
• Allow Time. A consistent pattern of consistent, predictable interactions and deliverables naturally serves to build trust over time. Monitor this closely though - if the team isn’t improving you’ll need to be more actively engaged.

Although many of the things to improve trust can be implemented by team members, a strong leader may be critical to creating quick and lasting change.

I spent close to a week out in DC with my Reserve Unit (sorry for the blogging - hiatus). I continue to be amazed by the inefficient nature of government spending - particularly in software and related services. My exposure has primarily been to the systems within the Intelligence Community (IC), however I’m sure that other agencies suffer from similar problems.

The process begins in an awful place. The gov’t becomes convinced that their need requires custom requirements… because, no other organization in the world is like the US government. Government contractors reinforce this belief and set off building a custom application on the most expensive software and hardware available. In several years, the government gets a multi-million dollar system that could have been replaced by a $30K system in a month that meets 95% of the business needs.

On top of this, the IC suffers from a severe lack of people that know better. It isn’t that IC personnel aren’t smart (many are brilliant), it is just they’ve only known the ‘government way’ their entire careers. The IC personnel come from one of three channels:

• Government employees
• Military members
• Contractors

Government employees and military members are typically lifers. It is very rare that you see someone mid-career move into these positions. It can take up to two years to get a security clearance. This barrier to entry prevents people from joining mid-career. Government employees typically begin their careers in the government (often getting their clearance while in school).

But what about the contractors? They’re outside the system right? Well, no. It’s that pesky security clearance again. Most of the big contracting firms hire from within the system, pulling in govies and ex-mils that are already cleared. They then sell them back to the government at far higher rates. Hence the term ‘retread’. The system feeds on itself, rarely introducing fresh thoughts into the system.

What’s the solution?

Clearly barriers need to be lowered to get new people into the system. A few approaches:

• Carve out unclassified work. Unnecessarily classified projects significantly limits the talent pool that can contribute. There are plenty of projects or components of projects that don’t need to be classified.
• Overhaul acquisition laws. Navigating the federal acquisition process is extraordinarily challenging. Companies that contract to the government often have dedicated personnel to navigate the process. The goal is to get “new to the government” people helping think about our projects. I’ve commented before on the backwards nature of the FAR.
• Expedite clearances. I know that background investigations are important and take time, but we simply have to be able to clear people faster. Two years is too long…

For some reason inexplicable reason Utah consistently passes laws that attempt to regulate niches of the Internet in Utah only. While these laws are typically a boon for Quova and other IP geolocation companies, they are ridiculous attempts by Utah to rewrite existing laws.

In 2004, Utah passed the Spyware Control Act (Ben Edelman’s review), which intended to protect trademark owners from otherwise legal (and annoying) popups from spyware. While no one likes popups, the fact remains that the legal foundation for the law was shaky at best. Utah amended it in 2005 and then saw the legal principle behind the Act struck down in a Second Circuit Court ruling (boy is it rare when you see the EFF siding with spyware purveyors). I believe the law still stands, but it is likely toothless at this point.

The latest brilliant incarnation of Utah law is to ban keyword advertising on trademarked terms. Although misrepresented as a generic ban on keyword advertising, this is still another example of Utah overstepping the bounds of its authority online. Google has already fought in court and won the right to display competitive advertisements on branded keywords. I have no idea why Utah lawmakers feel that they can usurp existing trademark law, and it can only be a matter of time before Google masses its legal forces against the gates of Utah.

The only solace I take in any of this is that the question of whether companies can comply with state or national laws online is no longer at issue. Years ago, the IP geolocation industry was set back by Yahoo’s insistence, that Yahoo couldn’t technically comply with a French ruling to remove Nazi memorabilia from their site (ironically, Yahoo’s refusal to utilize IP geolocation technologies set them back several years on Google).

I dislike that IP geolocation can be used to justify absurd laws, but it is naive to think that local and national laws have no impact online. Now, hopefully the courts will stop studying the technical feasibility and instead begin dealing with the legal and policy implications of an Internet that is local as much as it is global.

A few reasons why all employees (including founders) should be on vesting agreements. An overview of standard vesting schedules and practices. Also delves into the two most common types of acceleration: ‘single-trigger’ and ‘double-trigger’ acceleration.

If you read the other JB Blogs, you’re already aware that we’ve launched a beta vertical search site: CouponLooker

There are hundreds of great coupon sites out there. But it is simply not possible for any one of them to be comprehensive. Our goal was to create a resource that makes it easy for users to search the entire landscape of coupon sites. Google just sends users to pages. We surface, rank and dedupe the coupons so that users don’t have to do this work themselves. By making the coupons more accessible and easier to find, we also hope to increase the number of people that search and find coupons online. We expect to drive many new customers to the coupon sites.

We realized early on that we needed to make the coupon sites that comprise our search index successful. Coupon sites make money by embedding their affiliate codes into the links to the merchant websites. We don’t link directly to merchant websites - all of our links go back to the coupon sites with the most relevant coupon codes. Instead of affiliate revenue, we expect to make our money through sponsored advertisements along the top and right of the search results (currently sponsored links).

The search algorithm still has a way to go, but we’ve built it in a way that enables us to iterate quickly. I think it provides usable results today, but that we’ll be able to blow the current implementation out of the water in the near future.

You can also install a coupon search widget for your blog (I need to work with my template to make the sidebar larger so it can fit):

more coupon codes at couponlooker