Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
This year, news about Colorado fires have become almost commonplace news fodder in the mornings. Tonight I got home after a long day working and horrible traffic only to watch in horror as the Waldo Canyon Fire was broadcast as it encroached on Colorado Springs. Live video showed people’s houses being devoured while heartbroken reporters tried to relay information over the local news channel. I checked in with friends to make sure they were OK and fired up Twitter. There was so much chatter for #WaldoCanyonFire that it was near impossible to get good information out.
Working with social media (and web tech in general) is one of the things I do at work. At first I just started retweeting attention grabbing pictures and tweets, then I decided to concentrate on the important stuff. Being at home with “regular” tools on hand, things felt chaotic. Clicks on my shortlinks would spike immediately then die off (my personal social network isn’t very big mind you).
It dawned on me that while I have my bit.ly reports to fall back on, my friends and family don’t have that luxury. What if they don’t bookmark the links but want to keep up with events? Posting a webpage was the obvious answer, but all of my sites are in a state of limbo. I have a blog (you’re reading it) which is 100% running but lacking of any decent content. Not really a big deal, but the URL isn’t easy to remember, which kind of defeats the purpose. I decided to make a page for the Colorado Fires on Phillip Marquez dot com.
For people who know me, it’s easy to remember and as far as listing reference sites and information for the fires in Colorado, it would do perfectly well. Some parts of the site are still under evaluation and configuration, so keep that in mind if you poke around.
Currently I have a decent list for the following Colorado fires:
- Waldo Canyon Fire
- Flagstaff Fire
Considering how late it is in the evening I will have to update the page for the other major fires:
- High Park Fire
- Little Sand Fire
- Possibly Weber Fire
Keep in mind that these are just the mainstream media fires due to their size or their proximity to populated areas. There are other wildfires in the state that are quite serious. See the InciWeb page for Colorado for a list.
Got an email this morning about some much-needed & desired updates in Google Analytics. On the list is new social reports, exporting and sharing, an update to flow reports including a new events flow report and a new attribution modeling tool for marketing accountability (read more about this concept in the attribution playbook).
I haven’t had time to dig through these yet, but when I do, I hope to post a short review at Web Metrics Wiki.
Saturday, March 19th, 2011
A couple of days ago, in the middle of a post-release flurry of activity, I returned from lunch and logged into Webtrends and was greeted with an ominous error message:
Message: Invalid column name ‘placeholder’.
Information: The error ”Invalid column name ‘placeholder’.” occurred while running a SQL Query (see SQL in log file)
Background Information
My Webtrends admin experience is somewhere between novice and moderate — I know enough to not be overtly dangerous, but since our expert recently left for greener pastures, I’ve added another hat to my hat rack of responsibilities. We’re using Webtrends 9.2 On-Premises with artifacts carried over from several upgrades and previous admins. There’s a lot that could go wrong that wouldn’t be covered by standard documentation. So with new tags, new reports, and requests to explain what various numbers mean, saying that error left me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach would be an understatement. But it ends well. I promise.
Continue reading > Webtrends – Invalid column name placeholder
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
Internet security is a big deal; just when you take it for granted, something happens to remind you that your online presence isn’t always safe. Occasionally though, a company does get something right. It looks like LinkedIn is being proactive about the Gawker Media security breach and has emailed potentially affected users telling them that their LinkedIn account has been disabled and tells you to go to the LinkedIn site and reset your password to enable the account.
Continue reading > Internet Security: Gawker’s breach and LinkedIn’s response
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Hello, my name is Phillip Marquez and I’ve been sitting on some domains for a little while with lots of good intentions, but less ambition and time than was required. Well, the time has come for me to take action (even if it is at a snails pace).
Being the first post in this blog, I’m sure you’ve guessed that Anecdotic.info is one of the aforementioned domains. It’s this razor sharp intuition that makes you the ideal reader for this blog. Kudos. OK, enough about you, let’s get back to me.
Continue reading > New sites for Phillip Marquez
