Search results for Molly Ahearn:
• Google: #1
• Yahoo: #1
• MSN: #1
Google Page Rank for my site: 2 (out of 10)
Number of page views to this blog: 322
Number of page views to my site: 383
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Insider’s Look: McDonald’s, March Americana Photo
On a road trip to visit the University of Rochester with our niece, we overnighted in Utica, New York. This vintage McDonald’s made me remember how they used to look before 42 oz. Cokes and super-sizing. I remember the first golden arches opening near us in the early ‘60s. We didn’t go, mind you, my mother didn’t approve of fast food. But it was a novelty to look at and to watch the number of burgers sold swell to ‘over 1 million,’ a number beyond my comprehension at the time. The first McDonald’s opened in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955. Ronald McDonald, played by Willard Scott, was born in 1963.
Be the first to buy a McDonald’s print online, one of my Americana Collection, and get a 50% discount on the print size of your choice.
Be the first to buy a McDonald’s print online, one of my Americana Collection, and get a 50% discount on the print size of your choice.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Photos from the Archives: Scenes from Out West
When I dug these images out, I missed my old F-3 and my tri-x film. Man, black-and-white just sings. These images are for you, Jude, enjoy.
I Want Your Photos
If you’re a shooter, enter your best shot in Molly Ahearn’s Photo Contest on my web site. There aren’t a lot of rules, so there’s no excuse not to participate. The contest is open to everyone in the known universe—except me, that would be a little too cozy.
The one experimental, and therefore unpredictable, element is the judging. I am entrusting the visitors to my website to judge the entries instead of the usual “art experts.” Not to say I don’t value the experts’ opinion, they’re always pleasant even when they rake your work over the coals. I’m just into this internet exploration thing and, well, we’ll just have to see how it all turns out.
If you win, you can choose to sell the image in my site’s store (25% commission) as well as receive a free Molly Ahearn print of your choice. Of course, you get the immeasurable pleasure of seeing your photo on my site through the end of the year!
The one experimental, and therefore unpredictable, element is the judging. I am entrusting the visitors to my website to judge the entries instead of the usual “art experts.” Not to say I don’t value the experts’ opinion, they’re always pleasant even when they rake your work over the coals. I’m just into this internet exploration thing and, well, we’ll just have to see how it all turns out.
If you win, you can choose to sell the image in my site’s store (25% commission) as well as receive a free Molly Ahearn print of your choice. Of course, you get the immeasurable pleasure of seeing your photo on my site through the end of the year!
My Website Sucked
After years of unmet intentions I finally launched my own website last summer. I make a living as a graphic designer so I’ve got oodles of experience designing sites. I’d programmed our firm’s (namaro.com) site using Flash, and decided it was perfect for my site. Flash generates javascript code, not HTML, which allows you to do all sorts of groovy things. Designers like it because it controls the look of everything including type. Every viewer will see the site as the designer intended; no one can gunk it up by enlarging the font size, for example. I don’t claim to have any mastery of the program, but when I successfully get it to do what I want, it’s a heady experience that usually involves endzone dancing. My site looked beautiful and loaded my photos quickly. I was proud.
One day my friend wanted to recommend my book to a storekeeper and my site didn’t come up in a Google search, or a Yahoo search, or anywhere. I had never googled myself and was shocked and amazed at the stuff that came up. My book was everywhere, residue from all kinds of photography jobs, design jobs and even several references to my college honors thesis, “The Crimson Tide of Slumber,” a title I now cringe to recite; what was I thinking? Apparently, there’s a hot field hockey player named Molly Ahearn. But, no reference to my site, she was right.
After searching Google’s innards, I found a place where you can submit your site address and did so immediately. I googled myself the next morning, nothing. I googled again every day for a week and showed up once. I was the first Yahoo listing, at least.
Clearly, something was very wrong. But what? As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been on an internet odyssey this winter. We’ve been on a similar hunt at the office and during the Christmas lull I followed an online course on search engine optimization on Lynda.com. Lynda is an outstanding resource. They offer online courses in every program I’ve ever heard of, for a mere $25/month, including blogger, the program I use to write this blog.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a longwinded, off-putting term for ‘how to get to the top of the Google heap.’ I will write a separate post describing in better detail what you have to do to accomplish that feat. Suffice to say for the moment, that my Google page rank was a “0.” I had not done a single thing Google liked. My biggest mistake was to create my whole site in Flash.
A complete overhaul was in order for my site as well as Namaro’s. I brushed up on Dreamweaver, an html generating program that even designers can sort of use. I had forgotten how pesky HTML is. I do not have the mind of a programmer. When I see all that code and all those brackets I feel completely overwhelmed. I have to breath yoga style and murmur constant encouragements to myself. We worked with a programmer in the early days who confessed a fear of trees. Another programmer we worked with had a raging pot addiction. Their afflictions seem outrageous until you realize they write boring HTML code every day of their lives; they have to do something to amuse themselves.
Today, as I write, my new site is up and running. Though it looks similar to the old site, trust me, it’s not. I’ve incorporated all the tips that I gathered over the winter. Please admire it. I released the site to the google gods on Tuesday, February 19. The next morning, I had a page rank of ‘2.’ Remarkable. They say even a ‘4’ is good. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
One day my friend wanted to recommend my book to a storekeeper and my site didn’t come up in a Google search, or a Yahoo search, or anywhere. I had never googled myself and was shocked and amazed at the stuff that came up. My book was everywhere, residue from all kinds of photography jobs, design jobs and even several references to my college honors thesis, “The Crimson Tide of Slumber,” a title I now cringe to recite; what was I thinking? Apparently, there’s a hot field hockey player named Molly Ahearn. But, no reference to my site, she was right.
After searching Google’s innards, I found a place where you can submit your site address and did so immediately. I googled myself the next morning, nothing. I googled again every day for a week and showed up once. I was the first Yahoo listing, at least.
Clearly, something was very wrong. But what? As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been on an internet odyssey this winter. We’ve been on a similar hunt at the office and during the Christmas lull I followed an online course on search engine optimization on Lynda.com. Lynda is an outstanding resource. They offer online courses in every program I’ve ever heard of, for a mere $25/month, including blogger, the program I use to write this blog.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a longwinded, off-putting term for ‘how to get to the top of the Google heap.’ I will write a separate post describing in better detail what you have to do to accomplish that feat. Suffice to say for the moment, that my Google page rank was a “0.” I had not done a single thing Google liked. My biggest mistake was to create my whole site in Flash.
A complete overhaul was in order for my site as well as Namaro’s. I brushed up on Dreamweaver, an html generating program that even designers can sort of use. I had forgotten how pesky HTML is. I do not have the mind of a programmer. When I see all that code and all those brackets I feel completely overwhelmed. I have to breath yoga style and murmur constant encouragements to myself. We worked with a programmer in the early days who confessed a fear of trees. Another programmer we worked with had a raging pot addiction. Their afflictions seem outrageous until you realize they write boring HTML code every day of their lives; they have to do something to amuse themselves.
Today, as I write, my new site is up and running. Though it looks similar to the old site, trust me, it’s not. I’ve incorporated all the tips that I gathered over the winter. Please admire it. I released the site to the google gods on Tuesday, February 19. The next morning, I had a page rank of ‘2.’ Remarkable. They say even a ‘4’ is good. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Burn my Feed—Geekoid Accomplishment of the Week or All Roads Lead to Google
After you get your blog going, you're going to want people to read it. I knew the first thing I needed to do was create an "RSS feed," but had no idea what that is or how to go about doing it. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, it's a way for people to subscribe to your blog like people used to subscribe to the newspaper in the old days. The more subscribers you have, the more attention your blog will receive. As of this moment, I remain the sole subscriber to mine!
When I googled “free rss feed,” I landed at feedburner.com, owned by—you guessed it—google—their tentacles reach into the farthest reaches of the internet. Anyway, you can sign up (you have to get a password first, of course), give them your blog address and it will automatically generate code for a widget that is placed automatically on your Blogger, TypePad, WordPress or MySpace site. You can add the RSS Feed logo, too, so people will recognize it right away. If you look in the lefthand column of this page, you'll see what it looks like. There probably are other sites out there that offer the same service. Pro services like tracking traffic and publicizing your site are available at feedburner.com at extra charge.
To get the RSS feed or email subscription widget installed on your blog follow these steps:
Step 1: go to www.feedburner.com, open an account and have them burn a feed of your blog address.
Step 2: in very tiny print at the top left area of their screen, you'll see a menu with 2 items "My Feeds" and "My Account." Click on My Feeds and you'll see your blog name. Click on that and then go to the Publicize tab.
Step 3: to insert the email subscription code, click on "email subscriptions" in the lefthand nav. Choose the first option, change the drop down menu to match your blog software (mine is blogger and hit go. It will automatically insert the widget onto your blog!
Step 4: to insert the RSS feed, click on "Chicklet Chooser." Select the size icon you'd like to see on your blog, then go to the bottom and change the drop down menu to match your blog software (mine is blogger) and hit go. It will automatically insert the widget on your blog.
That's all there is to it.
When I googled “free rss feed,” I landed at feedburner.com, owned by—you guessed it—google—their tentacles reach into the farthest reaches of the internet. Anyway, you can sign up (you have to get a password first, of course), give them your blog address and it will automatically generate code for a widget that is placed automatically on your Blogger, TypePad, WordPress or MySpace site. You can add the RSS Feed logo, too, so people will recognize it right away. If you look in the lefthand column of this page, you'll see what it looks like. There probably are other sites out there that offer the same service. Pro services like tracking traffic and publicizing your site are available at feedburner.com at extra charge.
To get the RSS feed or email subscription widget installed on your blog follow these steps:
Step 1: go to www.feedburner.com, open an account and have them burn a feed of your blog address.
Step 2: in very tiny print at the top left area of their screen, you'll see a menu with 2 items "My Feeds" and "My Account." Click on My Feeds and you'll see your blog name. Click on that and then go to the Publicize tab.
Step 3: to insert the email subscription code, click on "email subscriptions" in the lefthand nav. Choose the first option, change the drop down menu to match your blog software (mine is blogger and hit go. It will automatically insert the widget onto your blog!
Step 4: to insert the RSS feed, click on "Chicklet Chooser." Select the size icon you'd like to see on your blog, then go to the bottom and change the drop down menu to match your blog software (mine is blogger) and hit go. It will automatically insert the widget on your blog.
That's all there is to it.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
Insider’s Look: February Americana Photo
Readers of my blog (that’s you) are going to get first look at all new photos I add to my web site. You’ll also get the story, if any, behind the finished product. The first one of you to send me an email saying you want to buy the new photo will get a 50% discount on buying the print size of your choice.
This month, I’m revealing the first in my Americana collection: George and Cecilia Boesch on their 80th (or 85th or 90th) birthday.
George and Cecilia Boesch were my maternal grandparents. Their proudest achievement was their family—7 kids, 23 grandkids, still counting great grandkids, who knows there might be great great grandkids. Nana expected me to be a contestant winner on the game show Concentration. If she could only see what's happened to my memory now. She loved jokes—especially if they involved priests—and playing cards. She and her sisters played bridge and giggled and persuaded me to join them occasionally. I was shocked to hear them reminisce about boys they'd dated. Couldn't envision them with smooth skin and straight backs. Papa liked to flirt. Confined to a motorized scooter in his 80s (or was it 90s) he'd ride the mile down to Mott's supermarket in Hartford and get the cutest checkout girl to help him shop. He was (in)famous for his Elks performance in a pink bikini. Born just a day apart, they made a big deal out of their birthdays. Every time I see it, this image makes me smile.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The Internet is Not a Fad
When my brother and sisters and I were young we desperately wanted a color TV. We watched our favorite shows—The Wonderful World of Disney, Batman, Speed Racer, Loonie Toons—on a big clunky black-and-white hand-me-down of my grandfather's—while everyone else on our block saw them in living technicolor. My father said color TV was a fad.
Imagine my horror when I realized that I'd become my father (gasp)! I'd kind of thought the internet was a fad. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not a complete web-phobe. I google, shop and email, I work on computers all day, even design web sites. What I mean is that I didn't iM or Flickr or MyFace or YourSpace or a gazillion other internet things that everybody under 35 does as easily as drink water.
This winter I decided to try all this stuff out—with an open mind if at all possible. In case you're considering a similar metamorphosis, the first thing you need to do is buy a little black book for all your passwords. Before I did this (yes I realize you shouldn't keep all your passwords in once place in case a web-savvy burgler gets it and pretends to be you, but WHO CAN REMEMBER THEM ALL!), I had zillions of little pieces of paper that I had to search through before finding (always last) the one I was looking for. Often, I had to click the "Forgot my password" link and wait for the computer gods to remind me. Now, I smile, full of myself, when I get out my little black address book with all my passwords neatly arranged in alphabetical order.
The first thing I got going was this blog, which is actually fun and I'm enjoying. Many of you asked me how to set up a blog. I felt very superior. I thought I was alone in my ignorance, but apparently I'm not the last one to the dance. Truth is, setting up this blog took me about 5 minutes; no joke. Go to blogger.com and sign yourself up; it's free. Customizing the look and set up is not quite as easy, but still manageable. I designed mine to complement my web site.
As a photographer, I'm a little embarrassed about not having used a (free!) photo site where you can upload photos for people to view at their leisure. I cannot tell you how much time I've spent burning cds for people. Here's how you do it. You go to Flickr.com (or to any number of competitors) and you get a yahoo! Id and password (of course). Then you can upload up to 125 Mb of images at a time-FREE. Save it with a title like "Little League 2008" and then send out an email inviting people to view them. To protect privacy, you can limit viewers to be invitation-only. I love this whole thing. It’s already saved me oodles of time.
The im (instant message) thing I'm still struggling with. Maybe it's because I couldn't get a good display name—you need one of those in addition to a password. Or maybe I just haven't found the right use for it. I still like the telephone. [On a side note, I heard an NPR interview with a man who proved that Bell did not invent the phone! Next they’ll be saying Al Gore didn’t invent the internet.]
Second life really eludes me. The flying avatar thing is kind of cool, but past that, who has time for a second life? I struggle on a daily basis with the real one I'm living.
In reading about how to maximize your google rank (check out my blog entry about redoing my web site), I learned that signing up with one of these community sites is a good idea. I created a page (is this correct vernacular?) on artscuttlebutt.com which is managed by Art Calendar magazine. It's actually been fun, though I've made a few blunders. A couple of people have asked to be my "friend" but I haven't figured out how to say "yes" so they probably think I'm a snob. The great thing is you don't have to surf around the site to find people. If you just sit back, people write to you and then you can check out their work and go from there. It kind of creeped me out the first time I saw my photo pop up on the listed of visitors as soon as I visited an artist’s page. Maybe that’s why people pretend to be someone else online; maybe I should use an alias—one-eyed jack, or moon-shooter, or something.
A real cool thing is that you can design your own home browser page on iGoogle. Go to google.com/ig and they’ll suggest a few categories. Click the ones you’re interested in and boom, you’ve customized your interface with the internet universe. Don’t like the default options? No problem, simply click the “Add stuff” or “Add a tab” buttons and you can choose from thousands of options. Add pac man, a news feed from India, a whole section on cooking or photography. I’ve got Yogi Berra quotes on my home page (“If you see a fork in the road, take it.”), inspirational photos and quotes, a wikipedia search box, internet slang translator (critical for web neophytes like me), Spanish word of the day and regular stuff like the weather in my neighborhood, the date, and news headlines. Of course, a google password is required, but completely worth it.
I haven’t completed my experiments yet, but I have definitely decided that the internet is here to stay, and some of it is—well—pretty darn useful. Some stuff can suck all your free time like a giant toilet flush though, so be careful. Go out and buy that password book and I’ll see you out there.
Imagine my horror when I realized that I'd become my father (gasp)! I'd kind of thought the internet was a fad. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not a complete web-phobe. I google, shop and email, I work on computers all day, even design web sites. What I mean is that I didn't iM or Flickr or MyFace or YourSpace or a gazillion other internet things that everybody under 35 does as easily as drink water.
This winter I decided to try all this stuff out—with an open mind if at all possible. In case you're considering a similar metamorphosis, the first thing you need to do is buy a little black book for all your passwords. Before I did this (yes I realize you shouldn't keep all your passwords in once place in case a web-savvy burgler gets it and pretends to be you, but WHO CAN REMEMBER THEM ALL!), I had zillions of little pieces of paper that I had to search through before finding (always last) the one I was looking for. Often, I had to click the "Forgot my password" link and wait for the computer gods to remind me. Now, I smile, full of myself, when I get out my little black address book with all my passwords neatly arranged in alphabetical order.
The first thing I got going was this blog, which is actually fun and I'm enjoying. Many of you asked me how to set up a blog. I felt very superior. I thought I was alone in my ignorance, but apparently I'm not the last one to the dance. Truth is, setting up this blog took me about 5 minutes; no joke. Go to blogger.com and sign yourself up; it's free. Customizing the look and set up is not quite as easy, but still manageable. I designed mine to complement my web site.
As a photographer, I'm a little embarrassed about not having used a (free!) photo site where you can upload photos for people to view at their leisure. I cannot tell you how much time I've spent burning cds for people. Here's how you do it. You go to Flickr.com (or to any number of competitors) and you get a yahoo! Id and password (of course). Then you can upload up to 125 Mb of images at a time-FREE. Save it with a title like "Little League 2008" and then send out an email inviting people to view them. To protect privacy, you can limit viewers to be invitation-only. I love this whole thing. It’s already saved me oodles of time.
The im (instant message) thing I'm still struggling with. Maybe it's because I couldn't get a good display name—you need one of those in addition to a password. Or maybe I just haven't found the right use for it. I still like the telephone. [On a side note, I heard an NPR interview with a man who proved that Bell did not invent the phone! Next they’ll be saying Al Gore didn’t invent the internet.]
Second life really eludes me. The flying avatar thing is kind of cool, but past that, who has time for a second life? I struggle on a daily basis with the real one I'm living.
In reading about how to maximize your google rank (check out my blog entry about redoing my web site), I learned that signing up with one of these community sites is a good idea. I created a page (is this correct vernacular?) on artscuttlebutt.com which is managed by Art Calendar magazine. It's actually been fun, though I've made a few blunders. A couple of people have asked to be my "friend" but I haven't figured out how to say "yes" so they probably think I'm a snob. The great thing is you don't have to surf around the site to find people. If you just sit back, people write to you and then you can check out their work and go from there. It kind of creeped me out the first time I saw my photo pop up on the listed of visitors as soon as I visited an artist’s page. Maybe that’s why people pretend to be someone else online; maybe I should use an alias—one-eyed jack, or moon-shooter, or something.
A real cool thing is that you can design your own home browser page on iGoogle. Go to google.com/ig and they’ll suggest a few categories. Click the ones you’re interested in and boom, you’ve customized your interface with the internet universe. Don’t like the default options? No problem, simply click the “Add stuff” or “Add a tab” buttons and you can choose from thousands of options. Add pac man, a news feed from India, a whole section on cooking or photography. I’ve got Yogi Berra quotes on my home page (“If you see a fork in the road, take it.”), inspirational photos and quotes, a wikipedia search box, internet slang translator (critical for web neophytes like me), Spanish word of the day and regular stuff like the weather in my neighborhood, the date, and news headlines. Of course, a google password is required, but completely worth it.
I haven’t completed my experiments yet, but I have definitely decided that the internet is here to stay, and some of it is—well—pretty darn useful. Some stuff can suck all your free time like a giant toilet flush though, so be careful. Go out and buy that password book and I’ll see you out there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
