As much as I enjoy the world of web marketing and the infinite possibilities of measuring media, specifically web analytics, there are days where I simply find my job mind-numbing and painful. OK, OK, OK. I’ll admit that web analytics can deliver the euphoria of discovering hidden nuggets of insight and the ecstasy of uncovering an untapped market segment. And I’ll also admit that I like to liken myself to Indiana Jones - following trails, using my intellect to find hidden treasure. However, just like Dr. Jones, I feel like I get beat up a lot as I crawl through a good amount of filth to get where I’m going. It’s during times like these when it feels crappy to be a web analyst. Avinash Kaushik never told me there’d by days like these…

The ugly side of web analytics

Web analytics is a new(er) field. Everyone knows this (right?). The industry still comprises of professionals who are more or less, for a lack of a better word, jacks-of-all trades and master-of-some - out of necessity, if not by design. Web analysts are usually part-developer, part-marketer, part-salesman, part-teacher and unfortunately for too often, part grunt. No one told me that I’d spend hours upon hours overseeing developers (aka herding cats) as they botch up implementation after implementation. Nowhere in the job description does it say that the client sometimes just won’t listen - no matter how many times I explain something to them. Nowhere is it advertised that I would have to have to spend so much time working around so many unbelievably frustrating limitations of analytics packages. Though I was briefed that I would have to wear many hats, I didn’t know I would have to wear a helmet and a cup.

Forget insight, what about hindsight?

So much talk about the information I can extract. So much talk about how to convince hippos. Oh Avinash, why didn’t you warn me about how slow-to-react analytics vendors would be to true business needs? Why don’t their filters work? Why are the reporting abilities limited? What about those missing bounce rate metrics? Don’t get me started about having to crunch numbers in Excel…

The fact of the matter is that as sophisticated as many web analytics solutions are right now, they aren’t that advanced. They lack percentage points, standard deviations, variances, significance and simple forecasting. All these common managerial tools are virtually non-existent. However, they all do give me averages… Forgive me as I rub my temples. Oh, did I mention that a lot of these solutions are slow?  No one told me that I’d have to wait days for some data queries. I’m not a BI analyst per se, but days seems awfully long considering the basic nature of the data. And as most you know, my analyst brothers and sisters, these short-comings have been around for years. Analytics tools come out every quarter - all missing some important piece of the puzzle. It’s like they don’t listen to us. If only Avinash would of warned me - I could of braced myself. *grumble* This situation, while better than 5 years ago, still “sucks”.

Macro-economic theory, take me away

It is said that if one or two companies hold the lion’s share of an industry, it’s because they have an initial technological edge. But overtime, as more entrants enter the market, this advantage fades - leveling the playing field. I can’t wait for that day. But until then, I’ll continue to create work-arounds, I’ll continue to crunch the numbers in Excel, and I’ll continue to double-tag. I’ll suffer through all of this because the rush of helping a client leverage a once unknown piece of intelligence is just too seductive. It feels too satisfying to give up. At least this part of the job Avinash did tell me about it.

Oh, OK. I get it now. Never mind.

With all this talk about Social Media, I thought to myself, “What is being social anyways?”. The way I was raised, it was about interacting with people. While it’s true that social media does indeed open new ways to interact with people, it also gives us  a way out of actually interacting with others. Oh and don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. If you’ve ever been on Facebook, you know exactly what I’m referring to. How many times have you checked a friend’s Facebook (“FB” for all your cool cats) profile to see what they’ve been up to rather than to drop them a line? How often have you checked a person’s LinkedIn account profile instead of e-mailing them? Don’t know about you, but this seems pretty anti-social, no? (I’ll bet a few of you check out my LinkedIn account in a few minutes… prove me wrong.)

Social Media: A shy extravert’s friend?

But I guess there is something to be said about the fact that some people simply are too shy to start mingling with strangers in person on a whim. Social media provides… a distant-intimacy that many enjoy - a way to be close (read: Direct Message) with people, yet comfortably far (read: hide my geo-location from stalkers) at the same time. Perhaps social media leverages the “latent social” segment of the population (in case no one has claimed it yet - I hereby claim the term  ”latent social” as my own, feel free to contact me for license agreements). This “latent social” (cha-ching) segment wants to get out there and “get social” but sweats at the idea of small-talk. Perhaps it’s this face-to-face small-talk barrier that channels many wannabe socialites towards social media. Just speaking for myself here, I enjoy the fact that no matter how quick Twitter or GTalk is or becomes, I will always have a few moments to ponder my thoughts and type something eloquent (as opposed to the verbal gunk in this blog post). In this context, social media, in the form of instant messenger, is akin to butterfly repellent for your stomach so you can calmly collect your thoughts.

Hey Rommil, social media also brings people together physically y’know…

Good point my friend. I admit, that whole events have been spurred by the very existence of social media. Events like Tweetup are prime examples of how a medium has promoted mingling and elbow-rubbing in a tangibly physical way. Even phone numbers are exchanged at these things (gasp). But I can’t help but think that every advancement in one direction is balanced by another extreme. As people are meeting to cheer Twitter and all that it’s done to bring them closer together, two other social media platforms come along to essentially keep us more apart.

There was a time, not so long ago, when if you wanted to know where someone was, you had to call their cell phone (or page them, you dinosaur). But today, you just need to check out their Gowalla or FourSquare status. In fact, if you think about it, as we move on, we can know more and more about someone without ever meeting them. With Gowalla (or FourSquare, relax people), I can track a friend’s movements (plus or minus a few metres) and know that he is having a coffee and then switch over to Blippy and track what he bought today. Hello? But am I the only one that thinks this is a touch creepy/stalker-esque?

Ok Rommil, I’ve read three paragraphs already, what’s your point?

Firstly, you’ve already read four. Secondly, I don’t have a point actually. I just wanted to share some of my random thoughts while multi-tasking. Essentially, I’m trying to think of something witty to reply to my friend on GTalk… speaking of which, GTG. TTYL. We should meet up sometime. *air kisses*

Here we go again. Back when I was in high school, one of the coolest things to do was to be into a band that no one heard of. We’d look down our noses at the very happy pop music lovers, thinking that they had no idea what good music was. And when we were asked what music we were into, we’d proudly fire off a half dozen names and praise their awesomeness. We’d even lend our friends tapes, and records in hopes that they, too, could see what they were missing. But, inexplicably, the moment that one of our favorite bands got popular, we considered them “sell-outs” and swore that all the new “fans” were into them just to be cool. These so-called “fans” didn’t “get it”, they were posers.

As immature as doing this was, I guess it was our way to express how we felt, how we lost a bit of our coolness, and we resented it. Well, I’m sorry to say, this high school pettiness is happening all over again. But this time, we’re not talking about R.E.M. or NIN, we’re talking about Twitter, you poser.

Sorry Oprah and Ashton, you don’t get it

Recently, I discovered a site called Here Before Oprah. Essentially, it’s a way to prove that you were old-school and a fan of Twitter before Oprah discovered it and brought her legions of fans onto along (enter the fail whale, stage left). But, weren’t we the ones praising Twitter just yesterday? Weren’t we the ones pushing for more people to get on it? Was I the only one that got tingles when newspaper writers started asking Twitterati for their opinions on articles? So why the about face? Instead of embracing Oprah, why make the point that we were on it before her? To keep cool, I guess.

Add to this, recent posts saying that celebrities only see Twitter as a broadcast channel, that they only talk amongst themselves, and that they don’t see it for it “truly is”. Truly is. What a crock. Yeah, because we all “got” Twitter when it first came out. Uh huh, sure. Y’know, I don’t recall Twitter originally being designed for retweeting (RT for those of you who don’t “get it”), but all Tweeters do it these days. Like so much in this world, many things grew and evolved into something greater than they were originally designed for, or were truly meant for.

Dinner knives make great screwdrivers

How many of you have cell phones, but primarily use it for texting? How many of you own TVs and use them to babysit your kids? How many of you have used a dinner knife as a screwdriver? In the end, it doesn’t matter what a tool was originally designed for, each person will use a tool as they see fit. If they derive some value that’s important to them, then great! If not, who are we to jump down their throats and act elitist?

If we stuck to using things for what they truly were designed for, we wouldn’t have Krazy Glue, Post-it notes, pace-makers, nor Twitter itself (I do recall that the internet was originally designed for the military - what’s your name soldier?).

Twitterati, Schmitterati

Looking down at Oprah’s plunge into Twitter is shameful, and seeing her presence on Twitter as the end of it is ludicrous. The web is undergoing an age of engagement and collaboration, i.e., the ultimate in marketing. The web is engaging, accountable, and collaborative. All this elitist behaviour is counter to the evolution.

So for those of you who see celebreties on Twitter as a negative thing, grow up, and embrace their curiosity. Welcome them and be friendly… you web 2.0/social media “expert” posers.

It might be true that there is no such thing as an original idea. Everything, at one point or another, is copied from something else. Some call this inspiration, others, copyright infringement. I call it a fact of life. Yes, it completely and utterly sucks. No one likes to see their blood, sweat and tears earn others business or praise. It’s like seeing someone else take credit for your children, unconscionable.

But what is one to do?

This happened to me a couple years ago. I was going through my web logs and noticed some disproportionally high activity from one particular domain. When I visited it, to my shock, I saw my entire site, photos and all, copied by someone in the US. Not only did he steal my look and feel, CSS and Javascript, the perpetrator had the gall to hotlink to my images. You can see a side-by-side comparison of the two sites here [250K]. See if you can which one is the copy. Hint: I’m not a Mystic Warrior of Rage.

It wasn’t the first time this has happened, but it was the first time I saw my entire site lifted. Granted my site was in a web designer inspiration book, but come on!

So I did what every rational guy in my situation would do, I called him right away (long distance charges be damned, this was my baby we were talking about!). Of course, no reply. Then I e-mailed him a stern message about his violating my copyright. His reply? The site was merely an interpretation of mine, he overhauled all my “bad code” and all the images were “rightfully” obtained through Google’s image search. A few gentlemanly emails later, he agreed to take down my photos, but he wouldn’t change his code.

So, once again I did what every rational guy in my situation would do, I broke his site [220K] (scroll down for the full effect). Unfortunately, the screenshot doesn’t capture the blinking effect I placed on the image, but you get the point.

Did doing this make me feel better? Of course it did. Was it the right thing to do? I’m not certain. Am I proud of my pettiness and actions? Not particularly, but what’s done is done.

Perhaps I could of gotten the law involved. I could of Google bombed him. I could of just been flattered that he copied my work. But in the end, there’s the right thing to do, and there’s the practical thing to do. Was hiring a lawyer worth it in this case? Not really, the guy was obviously small potatoes, and wasn’t getting much business anyways - as exhibited by his lack-lustre portfolio [250K]. Was I losing revenue because of his site? No, as he was in another country altogether. Was he going to gain business from copying my site? Perhaps he could attract some interest, but he definitely lacked the talent to back it up. So I left it at that. I left his blinking, broken site as is, and moved on.

How to avoid being ripped-off

In short, you can’t. You can set up all sorts of mechanisms to protect your work. But unless you’re a large company, with an army of copyright lawyers, there’s not a whole lot you can do to avoid being ripped-off. But if you’re a small enough operation, and agile enough, there is one thing you can do:

One-up yourself regularly


Redesign your site regularly. New CSS and Javascript techniques are created every day, why not use your redesigns as platforms to display and hone your pixel-prowess? Use your redesigns to create an awareness of your talent and your ability to regularly renew yourself. By doing so, not only will you will benefit by staying at the forefront of web design, you help keep yourself relevant. Just remember this:

Talent will outpace the hacks every time.

Have you ever been ripped off? What did do about it?

Special thanks to those who helped me think about this post: Cameron Campbell, Nicolas Roberge, Kirsten Cameron, Anna Gunaratnam, Ara Pehlivanian and Debbie Rouleau

As the needs of the work force change, so does what is being taught in our school system. Gone are the days of the slide rule, Rolodex, and the punch card. Children of today have to learn a brand new set of skills, many of which the generations before them would have never of dreamt of:  touch-typing, using spreadsheets, and performing online searches, just to name a few. So while I’m not surprised that elementary students today are computer “whizzes”, I am surprised by something I read recently: Schools today have less time to teach cursive writing and are instead devoting more time to teaching sciences and technology. The question then is:

Is this truly a bad thing?

My gut reaction after reading this story was, “Well of course they have to learn cursive. It is a vital skill essential to every day life!”. For instance:

• When I use my credit card. There’s something wrong about signing my name in block-letters. Definitely, cursive writing rules supreme here.


• When I read old documents, like the American Constitution and recipes from my grand-mother.


• When I pick up a Coca-Cola can. If it weren’t for my thorough knowledge of cursive, I might accidentally pick up a Dr. Pepper.


• When I want to be fancy and want to write a love letter, apparently it’s the thing to do.


• Finally, it helps when I want to read old-war-epic movie posters starring Denzel Washington.