Because stats are just so delicious.

So I was looking over the stats for one of the local search sites we own (European) - 500,000+ searches, so a decent spread. (An aside - we operate and test roughly a dozen simple local search sites for various countries to gauge user-reaction on quality of data).

The site does roughly 4000 unique visitors a day (weekdays). On weekends it drops to 1500 unique visitors a day - a drop of over 50%.

But what is odd is that on weekdays there are roughly 2500 searches conducted. On weekends, it drops to 250 - a drop of roughly 90%.

Mind you this is just raw searches - they could be visiting the site and then searching, or finding the site via a search engine and then searching, or whatever other combination.

Still an interesting thought - are people more willing to seek out what they want on work-days?

Automated them.

If you are doing a task that is repetitive and can be automated - you need to.

If you are doing a task that can be automated - you really need to. Even if it doesn’t seem obvious or is complicated - the hours spent figuring it out is worth it.

Case in point: I am in the process of figuring out some automated analytics. The system interfaces with a dozen partners and sites, all building up information on various sites - revenue, click rate, traffic, etc. If done right it should lead to a profit of $250,000 within the first year. Roughly 100 hours will be spent on the project.

After that it is 95% automated - our partners will then take care of it all. We only get involved in completing payments.

There was a good post over at 37 signals about kindle haters. The core of the argument is that people haven’t tried it and are bitching already.

Thankfully my bitching comes with a disclaimer - I have tried it. During Gnomedex (August 10) I got to play with it for roughly 30 minutes.

Now some relevance. A lot of my friends consider me a luddite. I hate social networks. I hate cellphones (in fact my cellphone is dead right now and hasn’t been charged since I got back from the GeoDomain Expo). Call me old school - but once work is done, I don’t want to do anything computer-related. I like meeting face to face. Enjoying my time. A big reason I’m a fan of the Wii

Also - while in third year engineering, I did a group project on e-ink. We had to analyze its strengths, its core uses, etc. I fell in love with it immediately. It was great. Instead of having to look at an ‘active’ screen (that strains your eyes), you had something passive that was easy on your eyes. Going from LCD to e-ink is like going from CRT to LCD - huge difference in eye strain.

So when I saw the kindle I was quite excited. It seemed like it was a good fit for me. Some of my thoughts:

• The design is really ugly. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t want to be caught dead outside with this. My first digital camera was a crappy looking BenQ. I was so embarrassed by it I never used it. The Kindle is really ugly.
• It is easy to use. Navigating isn’t hard. The scroll wheel is intuitive - once you get used to the fact that it is for menu selection, not browsing content. The little nav bar on the right grows/shrinks according to your options - no ambiguity here.
• The design is a bit stupid. The keys are really annoying to press. But far worse (and I believe the biggest flaw) - the back and forward buttons are in the dumbest possible place. I couldn’t hold onto it firmly - doing so would press either button. So you have to hold it from underneath it. Really - dumbest move.
• It is fast. I was downloading the NYTimes and a few books and pretty beep beep speeds. EVDO worked well here.
• I hate the price. $399 for this? The iPod comparison is unfair - the ‘content’ there was priced at $0.99 - and you could import books for free. I would love if I could import books from the Gutenberg project. But I’m pretty sure you can’t
• At the same time, individual costs aren’t too bad. A book for $9.99? Not bad. Newspaper subscription isn’t too high either. Easily portable, search able (YES!) - seems like a fair deal. Plus perma-online is nice.

Talking to the rep, I was told that on anything (even blog RSS) under $0.99 would be a net loss. I wonder if they did some deal that is more connection-based instead of bandwidth-consumption (or some hybrid).

All in all - I do think that the Kindle product itself needs a lot of changes to it. I like the underlying system - I think with the 2.0 product release I will become a customer.

With a ton of stuff to deal with

I did write about my takeaways from the GeoDomain Expo.

One thing I haven’t liked about iBegin Source was that we had one of the worst sites for convincing prospective customers to purchase from us.

All changed now. New design, new style, more substance.

It was quite the mad dash - I’m off to San Francisco now and won’t be back until Sunday. In the mean time, be impressed by Google having had over 1 million business owners verify their listings. I am curious - is that US/Canada only or does it include UK/Germany/etc? (I’ve received multiple postcards from Google, and we are a Canadian company).

Oh - once back, on Thursday I’m going to be pulling a ‘24 hours to build something’. The last time I did something like this resulted in LocalBrit.co.uk (and see the story). It should be fun

I’m surprised no one has mentioned Yahoo’s FireEagle. In a nutshell - an API that lets you query and figure out where a user is. Not user IP baloney - far more accurate.

The site itself is rather plain - hopefully I can get in soon and find out how the system works (eg - since the API is suppoused to be two-way, how do you ensure you don’t get inaccurate information on a user?).

At the same time - this is sorta creepy. A phone that constantly ‘phones home’ letting a centralized server know where you are (or aren’t)?

I believe Urban Mapping is working on something similar - but it has been more than few weeks and no word.

So I was looking at the subdomain breakdown of Google via Alexa. The fourth most popular is Video, with Google Maps (and local) coming in at #8. Even more oddly Google Maps only had 1% of visits, with Video pulling in 3%. And even more perplexing Google Maps falls behind Picasa, Groups, and Translate (wha?!?)

Either Alexa is waaaaay off the rocker … or the uptake on local is weaker than thought.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a metropolis kind-of-guy. I like walking around to get what I want. I hate using my car. Toronto was ideal for me - within 5 minutes I had everything I could want - subway, grocery stores, dozens of restaurants (I lived in Yorkville), dozens of shops, 24 hour convenience stores, etc. I talk alot about the true sustainability of such living (and the opposite for suburbia).

So when I saw Walk Score I was like - damn. I should have thought of this before. It’s so bloody simple!

At the same time, it is more a feature and less a company. Analytic sites agree - it spiked the past two months, but started falling in October. And only keeps going lower.

Furthermore - I think a lot more could be done with it. And it could integrate brilliantly into other aspects of iBegin.

So the question is - if we build our own version, improve it, and give credit to Walk Score as our inspiration - is that a rip-off, or a true inspiration?

The USD vs CAD chart on Yahoo pretty much sums up my experience with the USD.

Being a Canadian company, when we started we had roughly 1 USD = 1.5 CAD. Now the rate is at 1 USD = 0.95 CAD. And it hurts. My spending power outside of the US has been dealt a blow to the gonads.

But there is an unexpected reversal - our consumer-oriented business is seeing a spike in business outside of the US. Case in point: vB Skins. We charge roughly $600+ USD per custom template (and we’ve done over 100). A year ago I would have said 95% of our customers are from the US. Now I would say it is roughly 40% US, 60% overseas (just last week we sold 5 skins to 3 different EU customers).

So - yes the USD is hurting. But the world is far bigger than the US. This is a grand opportunity.