frankhagan.com

There really is no excuse any more for buggy manuals, difficult software and substandard interfaces in consumer products. A pox on all the game-rattled software engineers who spent their youth playing fantasy role playing games. I don’t want to become a Ninja Master to listen to some music.

I was excited to find a Sansa e280, a 8GB MP3 player, under the Christmas tree. Last year, I received a Sansa 1GB player that occupies the low end of the spectrum, but it plugged in and worked from day one. I’m still using it, while the e280 is packed up for its return to Sansa.

Here’s the problem: Sansa includes an instruction pamphlet that advises you to go to Settings > USB Mode to choose the correct mode for transferring your MP3 files. The Settings menu does not include an option “USB Mode”. None of the options that are there include “USB Mode”. The player does not “auto-select” USB Mode either. I can’t get content onto the player.

Ah, let’s see if there’s a firmware update for this new product. There is! Right there on Sansa’s website! And, there’s the media conversion file to make video files compatible with the player. I down load both installation programs.

The media conversion program insists I don’t have enough disk space to install it. I have 132 GB free. Perhaps its corrupted. I re-download it, and the program once again complains that it needs some space, and 132 GB of free space is not enough. Fine, I only listen to music anyway, so I’ll skip the media conversion.

The firmware updater installs just fine, thank you, and asks me to plug in my e280. It recognizes it … for a few seconds. Then it proclaims that I have no memory left on the player, and besides, it can’t recognize the player anymore.

I uninstall the firmware updater, and just for grins, try installing the media conversion program again. It installs this time. Hey, maybe I’ll run a video through the player. I plug it in, the media conversion program recognizes the player … for 5 seconds. Then it can no longer recognize it. I close the media conversion program and reopen it. Same process.

WindowsXP recognizes the Sansa e280 just fine. I can see it as a disk, with nearly all of its 8MB of space, but Windows Media Player cannot write MP3 to it because … somewhere, “over the rainbow”, there is a configuration setting that takes the place of the “Settings > USB Mode” wild goose chase in the manual. Perhaps there’s one of those “game hints” sites out on the ‘net somewhere that tells you to push this while scrolling that, tap that other thing three times and push RESET to get to it. But alas, I do not want to have to become a Lord Duke of the Dungeons of Denomia to listen to some music.

I’m thinking of an iRiver Clix or … an Ipod. Never been an Apple guy, but I understand you don’t have to be a Ninja Master to listen to music on an Ipod.

Tech

I live in an area with frequent brownouts and power outages, and even with a UPS on the system, I seem to go through hard drives every few years. The last time I was wholly unprepared, without a recent backup. Worse, I had accumulated hundreds of digital photos that are now lost to the great bit bucket in the sky.

When I bought my last computer, Dell had an option for a RAID 1 configuration. RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Independent Disks” and in the case of RAID 1, two or more hard drives “mirror” each other. So if one fails, you still have another copy or two of your data. In Dell’s case, the RAID 1 configuration is an Intel controller built into the motherboard, and you have two SATA hard drives that are exact copies of each other.

Recently, I had the misfortune to see how well RAID 1 works. In doing so, I found some myths that need to be busted, as well as some tips to save the next guy hours and hours.
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Tech

Many of you know I transitioned from the gas appliance manufacturing sector to a high tech manufacturer of superconducting RF filters used in the cellular communications arena. I find my “boiler guys” contacts woefully inadequate at helping me find new employees now, but I am looking for a Sr. Tech Support Engineer, field based in the western US, but reporting directly to me:

Superconductors Technologies, Inc. (STI) has an immediate opportunity for a Sr. Technical Support Engineer to support our efforts in providing world-class service. STI manufactures solutions for uplink enhancement to increase capacity utilization, lower dropped and blocked calls, extend coverage, and enable higher wireless data throughput for major wireless companies.

This position is based in the western U.S. Extensive travel is required (75% or more).

Applicant must have experience in the wireless industry, or related telecom experience. The Sr. Technical Support Engineer must ensure proper integration of our products with the various wireless base stations (Ericsson, Motorola, etc.) and be able to verify proper operation by performing tests, including tower sweeps.

Beyond technical expertise, the successful candidate will be able to provide technical assistance in a variety of situations, including on-site assistance, web-based and telephone support, as well as formal class-room style instruction. Excellent verbal and written communication skills are required. The applicant must be comfortable dealing with RF engineers, salespeople, technicians, and independent contractors on a daily basis.

You can email resumes to fhagan@suptech.com, or look for our ad on Monster.com (to appear in January, 08).

Business, Tech

I’m returning to a simplified approach to web page design, especially when trying to get sites indexed by the search engines (mainly Google, because where Google goes, the others follow).

But first things first:
The title tag is always important, not because of search engines, but because of readers. And designing for readers first is always the best policy. All the other “optimization” tricks won’t help you if you get page ranking high enough for surfers to find your page … and then pass you by. So a nice title tag, that shows up in the browser’s “top bar”, is always a good idea. I don’t always pay that much attention to it, and realized I had the same title for all the pages at modirt.com, the Missouri farm, land and commercial appraiser’s site I’ve been working on. Different titles for different pages, as appropriate, makes the surfer’s job easier.

The Description meta tag
The description meta tag is used as the actual description in Google’s results pages, so I’ve taken a second look at it on the site. The full description meta tag was “Professional appraisal services for a wide variety of agricultural and commercial properties throughout Missouri and neighboring states for assignments large and small. Our specialty is providing valuation services for complex and difficult assignments that most firms find difficult to handle.”

As presented by Google, that description tag looks like:

Note: the description meta tag is used as Google’s description of the site

I had several variations of what I really wanted to say, with “farm”, “farmland”, “MO” and “Missouri” listed in the keywords meta tag. But the keywords meta tag is, while not quite ignored, not actively indexed by Google. After consulting with the client, Howard Audsley, we determined that people use the search phrase “Missouri farm appraiser” or “appraisals”, but rarely, if ever, use the word “agricultural” out in wide open agricultural spaces. I plead city-boy ignorance on that one, but not Big City Arrogance …. I quickly worked through the lingering mental fog of the flu and wrote this new, stilted version of the description meta tag:

Missouri Farm, Land and Commercial property appraisal from Audsley & Associates, with services for neighboring states as well. Complex and difficult valuations that most firms find difficult are our specialty.

Its not perfect yet, but I’m counting on the mention of the flu to earn me some web-slack.

We’ll have to see how quickly Google picks up the new description, once the horrified client reads it and corrects my prose. In its current form, it should truncate to something like “Missouri Farm, Land and Commercial property appraisal from Audsley & Associates, with services for neighboring states as well. Complex and difficult …” We’ll tweak that some more, I’m sure, but it might be nice to have a little cliff-hanger right in the Google listing … having the reader ask “Complex and difficult what?” might prompt a few clicks.

Keywords and meta keywords
I mentioned that the meta keywords tag is “not-quite-ignored”. I’ll admit to some confusion on this, as I have always heard that, but yet “keywords” are what the search engines really index. You can tell that from the very strange results you get when searching on a term such as “heavy duty flashers” … everything from automotive flasher relays (my search intent, honest!) to, well, I should have known.

But the keywords Google is looking for are the words in the content. Some “optimization” folks tell you to put your keywords in H1, H2 or other title text on the page, but I’ll refer back to rule number one on being nice to the surfer; it has to be readable by your customers first.

Luckily, Google has a tool that, once you register your site with them, will tell you how high up on the chain your desired keywords are hitting. You can guess why the word “Farm”, “Land” and “Missouri” are toward the front of our description now, and will be emphasized in the site’s copy: Google reports “appraisal” as the number one keyword for the site. Very good. But the very important “Missouri” comes in at number 11, and “farm” is down in the 37th spot. (In my defense, “agricultural” scored much higher, but we’ve covered that already).

Being kind to the surfer means that you don’t want a consumer in Oregon clicking on a link only to find it is for an appraiser in Missouri, so we want that keyword up in second or third place. The other keyword that is important is “farm”, and we want that up high on the list too.

What is interesting is that the list of keywords Google has indexed from the site’s pages are almost all in my keywords meta tag. So I’m not giving up on the keywords meta tag just yet, especially since other search engines may use them.

Business, Tech

VW has a promising technology about to hit the north American market, a clean burning, high mileage diesel Jetta. Diesel has been used in Europe to eake out more fuel economy, but their standards for pollutants are much less stringent. The Japanese car makers have captured the “high concept” fuel sipper market with cars like my beloved Prius. So Audi, Mercedes-Benz and VW cooperated on technology enhancements to try and tweak their diesel engines into the clean burning category without sacrificing too much of the fuel economy. And while the new Jetta won’t carry the “BLUETEC” label, it is thought that it was a result, at least in part, of this initiative.

The Jetta TDI is expected to have a $2,000 premium, about the same as a hybrid, with fuel efficiencies about the same percentage higher than the equivalent gas engine model. So far, not a big deal. But combine that high mileage with B100 biodiesel, and you have an environmental winner. That “B100″ classification is 100% soy or “yellow grease” oil refined to ASTM fuel standards; not the deep fryer oil from the local restaurant. B25 biodiesel is 25% soy or yellow grease oil and 75% petroleum diesel. You won’t violate your car’s warranty by pumping biodiesel into it, but all bets are off if you’re pouring McDonald’s fry oil into your tank.
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Climate, Tech