Monthly Archive for February, 2009

Using Google Alerts to Find Jobs, Rare Products, etc.

Published on February 18, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I’ve helped two people with this so far, and they seem to appreciate it.  So here it is for you, too.

Since Google Alerts added the ability to send alerts to feeds, the world got a lot easier…at least in my book. (I had started writing an email parser for Google Alerts…now I don’t have to.)

What I love about Google Alerts is that it lets me do research without doing any work.  The research comes to me.

That kind of research is useful if you’re looking for a new job, looking for freelance/consulting work, or looking for rare items.  Instead of setting alerts with multiple websites and services, you can use Google Alerts to send them all to one place, with one management interface, from the most comprehensive search service in the world.

The key here is to use the “site:” search command.  What “site:” allows you to do is search within a single website.  An example is “SEO consultant site:craigslist.org“  This query will search all pages on craigslist that mention “seo” and “consultant.”  If you wanted to look only in Boston, you would search “SEO consultant site:boston.craigslist.org”

For finding rare products, setup an alert, but monitor Ebay.  The query would be “site:ebay.com”  If you’re looking for the rare 1909-S VDB penny, you would query “1909 S vdb site:ebay.com”

The key here is to refine your queries to find only the things you are looking for.  You can add negative search operators, a “-” before a word to remove listings that are irrelevant, or use quotes around groups of words to find an exact phrase.  Expect to spend a few minutes refining each query.  Your SEO consulting work might be refined to something like “SEO consultant -”graphic design” site:craigslist.org”

Here are the instructions:

  1. Go to Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
  2. Search term: seo consultant site:craigslist.org
  3. Search that query in regular search to get an idea of what kind of consulting gigs are out there.
  4. Choose “Deliver to Feed” from the dropdown.
  5. Submit.
  6. Add the feed URL to your reader.
  7. Any time a new page is found on craigslist that has “seo” and “consultant” in the page text, it will update the feed.
  8. You check the feed once or twice a day, and send your info to any relevant projects.

You can also use change “craigslist.org” above to “kijiji.com” or “monster.com” or “elance.com” to find other opportunities.

To feed it to a home page, use iGoogle: http://www.google.com/ig

Add a Google Reader widget, and use Google Reader to combine all of the feeds into one, then it’s part of a Google home page, if that is useful to you.

A Lesson in Winning…from Elementary School

Published on February 9, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Just like any suburban-american kid growing up in the 80s, we had bake sales, cake walks, and 739 other elementary school fundraisers named after sweets our mothers didn’t want us to have.

Often, these events would have drawings for prizes.

It was very simple.

You buy a ticket.  Then you put your ticket into the bucket in front of the item you wanted to win.

Organizers hold a drawing, choose a ticket, then announce that ticket number.

If you have the matching ticket number, bingo, you win.

It taught the same lesson as Candyland: It’s all up to chance.

Or so I thought…

…

I really wanted this foam paddle ball set.

Seriously.  It was the coolest prize out of all 20-something prizes.  Certainly out of the 10 or so that were for awesome guys like me.

I wasn’t about to try and win a My Little Pony.

I wanted the man’s toy.

The foam paddle ball set.

…

I had a younger brother at the time.  Maybe two.

The brother I definitely had, his name is Chris.  He’s 15 months younger than I am.

We competed at things.

If he wanted to play hockey, I wanted to play hockey.  If I wanted to play in the creek, he wanted to play in the creek.  If he wanted to make art….well, I didn’t want to make art.  And he didn’t want look for fossils either….

I digress.

Anyway, we only competed over the things that mattered.

Like, what color My Buddy we were going to get.  Or who would get the Speed Racer shirt, and who would get the He-Man shirt.

…

When it came to the fundraiser named after an ADD-inducing sweetfood and how we were going to strategerize our efforts to get what we wanted, we naturally devised separate plans.

I, being the older, obviously had the better plan.  Being older, naturally, gives me superior intelligence.

I would take all 10 tickets my parents got for me, and put them all into the bucket in front of the foam paddle ball set.

I didn’t want anything else.  If I happened to win something else, I wouldn’t be happy with it.  It just wasn’t as cool as the foam paddle ball set.

It was simple.  It was rational.  It made sense.

If I had 10 tickets in there, then I must *definitely* have the best chance of winning.

At least better than Chris’s strategy.

Chris’s strategy was dumb.  It didn’t make any sense.  It was haphazard.  Too loose.  Too immature.

He chose several things that he could be happy with winning.  I would imagine there were about five things. (Since just about anyone would find winning a box of rubberbands to be lame…except for some people I know who would still disagree with me.)

Chris took his 10 tickets and put two into each of the five prizes he would be happy to win.

I know, right?

Haphazard.

Dumb.

…

When the time for the drawing came, I was nervous and excited and anxious all at once.  But maybe it was the sweets.  Or maybe I had to go to the bathroom…really bad.

I couldn’t wait for them to draw for my awesomely blue and red and yellow foam paddle ball set.

They should’ve just skipped the first 14 drawings and gone straight to it.  Everyone knew it was the coolest prize anyway.

After what seemed like years of hearing random little girls screaming upon finding their number called, they finally got to the toys for real, eight-year-old men.

We didn’t let out a shrill shriek, no.  We let out a raspy “Yes!” as we fist-pumped in a pre-Tiger Woods era, marching up to get our prizes with a huge grin like we’d just been elected president.

Finally, it was time for the foam paddle ball set.

I was stoked.

I was sure I was going to win.

How could I not?  I had 10 tickets in there?  That HAD to be more than anyone else?

…

And my number didn’t get called.

I was as pissed as you could imagine Richard Simmons being pissed.

The fist-pump still happened.  But with out the pump.

At least Chris wasn’t going to win anything.

…

But he did.

In what I was sure was some sort of divinely-intervened spite (For what, I’m not sure…it could have been any number of ill-intentioned things I had done to my younger brother over the years), I’m fairly certain he won the very next drawing.

Yes! Fist-pump. Grin. March.

I hated my life.

And what did he win?  Something stupid I was sure.

I think it was some sort of foam pool noodle.

You couldn’t even do anything with it except for beat people with it.

Which is exactly what happened that summer.