Hashtags can be handy. Hashtags can be good. But in my first trip to the SXSW conference, ironically, I’m getting a first-hand view of when hashtags can go totally wrong.

Someone decided it would be a great idea for every session to have a hashtag. OK, I get that. It makes it easy to see a conversation around a particular session. But the bad idea was giving no real thought to the length of those tags.

Consider. I’ve been on two sessions this week. One was Getting Your Game Found In Search Engines, with the assigned tag of:

#gamefoundsearchengines

That’s 23 characters — 16% of the total 140 you’re allowed in a tweet. Why so long? Why not #gameengine or #gamesearch or #gmsch

Another session was Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web, where the hashtag was:

#beyondalgorithms

That’s 17 characters, 12% of the total 140. Why not #beyondalgo or #balgo?

Now consider the hashtags suggested for today’s keynote by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams:

#SXSW #evwilliams #mondaykeynote

That’s 32 characters, 23% of the space available. Thank goodness Ev is just @ev on Twitter. Because if you want to tweet anything he says — and use all those hashtags to be part of the stream — and use his Twitter name — you’re not going to have much room left!

I have  a lot of sympathy for the organizers, in that there’s 100 zillion sessions going on, so making hashtags for all of them is tough. But if you’re going to do it, put hashtags out there, then do it right.

Ideas? My top-of-the-head tips:

Keep them short. That’s obvious

They don’t have to make sense. That algorithm session? The hashtag could have easily been something like #algosxsw or #sxsw23. I like the last one especially. You’re just looking for a way to consolidate all tweets from a particular session around a particular tag. Give them unique numbers!

They’re reusable. Hashtags don’t have to be unique for each event. If SXSW uses #sxsw23 this year, it can use it for a completely different session next year. Why? Because most hasttag searches, I’d wager, happen at the time a particular event is happening. No one’s going to see “old” information from #sxsw23 (if that’s what was used) when the latest one goes on.

That’s one reason why for my own Search Marketing Expo confernces, the hashtag we use is always #smx. Not #smxadvanced or #smx2010 or #smxwest. Just #smx. Usually, our shows are well spaced from each other. But we’ve even had shows in Sydney and Canada happen right at the same time, both using the same hashtag, without that much confusion. Being in different timezones, there wasn’t much overlap.

We don’t assign hashtags to particular sessions. That’s just felt like overkill to me. But we’ll have five sessions going on at the same time, so that might actually be good. If we do that in the future, I’ll go for following some of my own advice!

In the UK, children’s savings account are common. My kids have two of them there with different banks. Both came with special features designed to encourage them to save — a little plastic bank to sort their coins, for example, or a bonus on their interest. But here in the US, banks are apparently uninterested in kids. It’s been a surprisingly disappointing  experience trying to find similar accounts.

Our local big bank offers kids savings accounts, but there’s nothing special about them. No special interest rate. No waiving of minimum balances. Nada.

Our credit union has youth bank accounts, but it’s pretty much the same thing. There’s no compelling reason to enroll the kids, so that they can gain 0.10%.

Looking around online, the pickings were pretty slim. Many credit unions seem to have kids saving accounts, but no everyone is eligible to join different credit unions.

Key Bank has a bank account for kids, no minimum balance required, which looked interesting. But with no branches near us, the kids don’t get the feeling of going into a branch to deposit their money.

That got me thinking. While I remember being a kid, having a paper passbook and going into a branch to make deposits, I rarely do that these days. My deposits are usually through an ATM or electronic transfers. So am I chasing an “old fashioned” account for my children that doesn’t fit the reality of banking today?

Perhaps. So how about letting go of needing a branch near me? There are a few more options. US Bank has youth savings account, as does Sovereign Bank. But US Bank only lets you use its own ATMs, while Sovereign provides no ATM access.

The perfect account seemed offered by USAA. No monthly maintenance fees. A decent interest rate (at least as decent as they get right now). Access through any ATM, and if there’s a fee, they’ll refund it. How sweet is that?

It did seem ideal, except for being only open to those with US military ties. Or so I thought. Thanks to Twitter, Michelle Lowery told me that wasn’t so. And I looked again. Buried, you’ll discover you CAN open a financial account without a military connection.

So if you do this for your kids, don’t worry that when you get through the application process, you’ll be asked all these military connection questions that you may answer no to.

Overall, I remain surprised there aren’t better offers out there for kids. I know my main credit card remains the one I got back because Citibank stuck a little table up and caught me on my college campus with a special offer. Kids accounts I guess are a pain for banks, but a little pain early on my produce better loyalty down the line.

There was no danger here in Newport Beach from the tsunami caused by the Chilean earthquake. That’s good, since local residents like ourselves got warning calls from the city an hour after the waves hit. But despite the thousands of miles, you could see them arrive and have an impact.

The waves came just after noon Pacific time. I wasn’t positioned well to really see the first one, but I moved and caught the second on video. I was standing next to Mark Legg, a local geophysicist from Huntington Beach. You’ll hear him talking on the video:

Another arrived after this but didn’t have the power to reverse the flow of the river near its mouth. But there were some interesting currents it created:

To give you a sense of the change, this is how the river looked when the tsunami wasn’t pushing it back. Keep in mind that there had just been an extremely heavy rainfall early in the morning, sothe flow was pretty strong. The tsunami was powerful enough to push all that back:

Here’s the Orange County Register report about the waves.

Also, in case anyone was worried that it was crazy to be out there, it was clear by this point there would be no large or dangerous wave arriving. San Diego and points further south had come through completely unscathed. You also can’t see in the video that there’s a small hill right above the water — we were watching it from the river channel, rather than on the actual beach.

Forget Democrats and Republicans. There’s a different Blue State, Red State divide — that between which states have In-N-Out Burger locations and those that have Dunkin’ Donuts.

As you can see in the map above, much of the western half of the United States lacks Dunkin’ Donuts. Meanwhile, I constantly hear from visitors to California that they crave In-N-Out whenever they come out here. I take them for granted. I’ve got got one less than two miles away from me; six are within 10 miles.

NOTE: Oregon apparently has a Dunkin Donuts. I might update the map later to reflect this.

Really, while President Barack Obama might think that this political map is the Red State / Blue State divide that needs to be bridged (picture from Wikipedia):

I submit it’s the food divide that needs to be shattered. What does it say about our country where there are only three cities in total where you can have both an In-N-Out burger and a donut from Dunkin Donuts at the same time: Mesa, Arizona; Tucson, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada?

By the way, In-N-Out makes it pretty hard to get a state-by-state view of all their restaurants, but I did my best working off this list on their site. Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t provide any easy-to-read list at all. Instead, I found a list of all restaurants as compiled by the good people at the new Factual search engine. I filtered that to Dunkin Donuts locations. It might not be perfect, but it was the best and most convenient data I could find.

NOTE: Michael McCulley tweeted me this list of more Dunkin Donut locations, so I’ve updated the map. Texas

Also big thanks to the awesome US Map Maker program from John Adamson at Texas A&M. It made it super easy to produce this map of America’s fast food divide.

There are some people who really, really want my readers to know about various essay writing services that are available. I mean, they spam me with links constantly. So to save everyone time, I thought I’d just compile all their offers in one place.

Back in November, someone by the name of “Essay Writers” posted to my Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade article:

Thank you for this wonderful blog. This is a good video streaming!

I guess they needed a break from writing all those essays. They linked over to www.research-service.com, and clearly this is a company to avoid. I mean, “This is a good video streaming?” That’s not very good English. I’m not sure I’d want them to write my essays.

In December, Linda34 read my article about the AP charging for quotations and was compelled to comment:

To be successful means to have the A+ level and for this, people must demonstrate the good quality custom term paper. But is that possible to perform it not utilizing a support of the website writing services? Yes, that is workable, but that will be more simple to essay buy about this good post in Internet.

The bolded words were links that lead over to exclusivepapers.com. Again, I’d have to recommend against this service. That comment is just poor English. The same company also left me this poorly written comment in January:

To be successful means to get the high grades and for this, guys must demonstrate the good quality write my paper essay. But is this real to write it without an aid of the online writing services? Sure, it is realizable, but it would be easier to buy do my paper essay about this post in web.

Also in December, Ly33Odry read my “As Obama Turns America Socialist, An American Reflecting On Life In Socialist Britain” post. That provoked this comment:

The one only pass way to have some information about this post is to order already written essays or buy essay.

The comment linked over to essaylab.com. I have to say, a poor quality comment like this compels me to put this service on the “don’t use” list as well.

In January, Jenifferls left this comment:

Some essays writing services write nice essay writing example referring to this post and the superb outcome simply about become our writer, you can receive with no money!

That lead to primewritings.com. I don’t even understand the comment. So when primewritings.com says on its site:

Our talented team of writers will customize your college essays to go with your language skills and academic standard, whether you are in school or college, we are always there to help you. You do not have to worry anymore about your academic difficulties.

I just have to shake my head. If you can’t even write comment spam clearly, I’m going to trust you with my essay?

Also in January, “Free Essay” read my about FDIC limits and was really thankful for it, commenting:

Whenever I see people like you which sharing information for other peoples, I feel so glad, thanks for your information and continue your work.

I really appreciated that feedback. But the “for other peoples” part makes me think that essaymania.com, while it may offer free essays, probably doesn’t have good quality ones.

Interestingly, Free Essay came back to that same article and commented again:

I believe the information covered in the discussion is top notch. I’ve been doing a research on the subject and your blog just cleared up a lot of questions. I am working on a custom essay and custom essays for my English class and currently reading lots of blogs to study.

I found the comment confusing. No, not because it had nothing to do with my blog post. Rather, because it linked to three different services. Free Essay linked his name to the aforementioned essaymania.com site. But then the first link in the comment went to www.genuinewriting.com (AKA Genuine Writing) and the second to www.customessaymeister.com. Gosh, which one is best?

More confusion. My “Oh My God! My Village Is Being Invaded!” post got this comment:

Yeah, definitely custom written essay Thank you.

What does that mean? And why did “Custom Writing” who left the post link to www.solidpapers.com for their name but to genuinewriting.com withi the comment? Again, I’m confused. Which one is best?

In another comment from January, “cxJessica” wrote:

It is manageable to purchase essay and  buy custom essay papers at the paper writing service just about this good topic.

Add supremeessays.com to the list of places that seem likely to suck.

Someone else left this on my post about Arrested Development, done in Lego:

The quality of your brilliant information close to this good post can be compared with the academic essay writing from writing service only. Thence, you move in a good way. Thank you a lot for your efforts!

And thank you, the good folks over at www.essayscentre.com — I wish you all you deserve.

Lately, it’s a place called www.quality-papers.com that wants attention. I keep getting comments like:

Different spheres of our life consume a lot of time and money, thence why should we waste time for expository essay accomplishing? That is easier to utilize some famous custom sociology essays service to purchase the sample essay from, I guess.

I am willing to tell that an experienced media essay writing service is a light on the road of research essay writing. So, all people can utilize it every time they need buy essays.

People opine that the business term paper writing supposes the really time taking process. However, students count on the media essay service help anytime when that is needed.

I don’t think that every single student in the world has a passion of definition essay writing! Nevertheless, persons ,which don’t have writing skillfulness have to utilize a support of experienced essays online service and enjoy a result.

Various fields of our life consume a lot of time, thence why have we to waste time for analysis essay writing? This is easier to utilize really professional essay writing service to order the persuasive term paper at, I guess.

I’ve got about 10 more similar to those above. Here’s the thing. If you go to www.quality-papers.com, the site makes little sense. There’s no way to contact anyone about essays. No phone numbers; no order forms; no complete essays. Just one butt-ugly web site.

I suspect whoever runs this site is hoping that after they spam enough blogs, they’ll start ranking for terms and maybe will try to redirect that traffic to an actual sales site.

Of course, they need to start ranking. As it turns out, they do rank for essays online on Google. But I’m going to make a little prediction, and this is one based on an essay of my own I wrote — about why it’s not a really smart idea to be spamming my blog.

That essay was called My “Beware Of Dog” Don’t Spam Me Sign, and it covered how it’s kind of stupid to be spamming the blog of someone who writes about search.

As a matter of fact, did you read this great article about Google’s search algorithm in Wired recently? Little story. Last month, I had the pleasure of doing a talk with some of the folks mentioned in that article. I was pointing out examples of where I thought maybe Google could improve its search relevancy. I think it went pretty well. Google’s dead serious on not wanting junk in their results. They were game to see what bad examples I could find out there.

So that site that’s ranking for “essays online” right now, that’s really cruddy? I think that’s an excellent example of where Google needs to reexamine its search algorithm, do some tweaking, so junk like that doesn’t come up. In fact, I get the impression the entire essay writing space probably deserves a little attention right now. I suspect there are a lot of duplicate companies operating under different names just spamming and jamming the results.

You know the  ironic part? This post will probably rank eventually for some essay-related term. And some dumb-ass will come along and leave a comment

Yesterday, I wrote about how I’d shifted from my Macbook to Windows 7. Today, my Sony laptop stopped working. No joke. I’m sorry, Steve Jobs, I repent. I’m back on my MacBook now. Please spare me any further wrath.

My Windows 7 laptop is a Sony Vaio that I’ve had for nearly three years. As I explained in my post, it was giving me all types of problems I’d attributed largely to Vista — hibernation issues and battery warnings. Windows 7 cleared those up. But today, for some reason, my keyboard went out. First, I could no longer cut, copy and paste using CTRL X, C and V. Then I lost the ability to restore using CTRL Z. Then certain letters on the machine stopped working: i, j, m, u, z. Turns out, you really need all the letters of the alphabet to write.

I blame Sony more over Windows 7. The issues I had with that machine have always made me feel something wasn’t right. Prior to the Sony, I’d always owned Toshiba laptops. That’s the way I’d go, if I were to stay with Windows.

Of course, I probably won’t. Steve has me really scared now. Who knows what other powers he possesses?

Back in December, I debated whether I should dump the Mac. As circumstances would have it, Apple itself kind of tipped me over to Windows 7, which I’m currently using. Whether I’ll go back to my MacBook remains to be seen. So far, Windows 7 is pretty compelling.

Apple’s first mistake in pushing me away was providing me with a faulty MacBook. It died two weeks ago. It turned out to be a bad logic board, in the end. As I’d purchased AppleCare, the repair was covered on my two year old MacBook.

The people at my local Apple store were very nice. In fact, they even quickly pulled the hard drive out of my machine and grabbed an important Outlook file off it that I needed. But still, I was going to be without my Mac for a week — and since I was also going on vacation at the end of that week, that actually meant a two week hiatus.

I needed another machine, and here’s where Apple failed again. I’ve been waiting — and waiting — for the new rumored MacBooks. You know, the ones that supposedly have the super-fast i7 Intel quad-core processor? The ones that failed to get announced at the same time the iPad was unveiled. The ones that failed to get announced as part of Macworld.

If the new Macbooks had come out, I’d have upgraded before my old machine died and happily carried along. My big issue with my current Macbook has simply been that I’ve wanted more processing power. I run both Windows and Mac operating systems simultaneously, and for whatever reason, the Macbook just isn’t as snappy in doing that as in the past.

Rather than buying a new Macbook, I resurrected my old Sony Vaio that’s nearly three years old. This was the machine that, ironically, drove me to the Mac in the first place. It came with Vista, which was awful. It also seemed that Vista and the Sony kept deciding that both of my batteries were faulty. My laptop would just die for no apparent reason, which isn’t a good feature to have in a laptop. Putting the laptop into hibernation also caused it to go all blue screen of death.

When Windows 7 came out, I got a copy after a few weeks and installed it on the Sony. That’s pretty much seemed to solve the battery issue (very rarely, it still glitches). So when it was clear my Macbook would be gone for a long duration, I jumped onto the Sony and started using it actively.

Windows 7 is pretty nice. OK, it gave me my first blue screen of death today. That sucked. But the new taskbar, where you can hover and see active programs, is pretty handy. Programs themselves run well.

Where things really shine is for multi-monitor support. I recently outfitted my Macbook so that I could use four monitors (see My MacBook Pro Goes Multimonitor: 4 Monitors At Once!). Now, I’m using all those monitors with the Sony. Thanks to Ultramon, each monitor has its own taskbar (learn more about this in My Multimonitor Setup: Three Screens For One Computer). I find that a little easier for keeping track of everything that with the Mac, where you depend on the dock or that F3 /Expose thing.

It especially shines in that all my Windows applications can use all four monitors. On the Mac, they’re pretty much restricted to one single monitor. If I try to use Unity mode under VMWare, things just bog down too much. A faster Macbook would probably solve this — but as I’ve said, that’s not an option from Apple right now.

Why not just dump Windows entirely? That’s what I figured I should do back when I first debated leaving the Mac in December:

I’m coming to the conclusion I should jump one way fully — Mac or Windows, but not both. I should just give up Windows. Finally wean myself off Outlook despite (as I’ll explain in a future post), why Outlook remains a killer product. I’ve certainly enjoyed learning about image programs like Skitch or Aviary that have made the piggish Photoshop Elements largely unnecessary. Goodness knows I’m overdue to abandon FrontPage 2002 (Shut up! If you want a nice, clean HTML authoring tool for a writer, not for a designer, this is still a killer program). Surely I know I should transition more to cloud-based programs like Google Docs.

I started doing that with the Mac, to go all Mac. I tested out Office 2008 for the Mac — and discovered how awful Excel is in it compared to Office 2007 for Windows. I was clearing out my mail in Outlook to experiment with using Thunderbird. I was contemplating a move to Google Calendar even though it doesn’t understand that when I want to view a month at a time, that can mean 4 weeks across months (say mid-February through mid-March).

Then the Mac died. Suddenly, I was in an all-Windows environment. I didn’t even have to drag out my Office 2007 CD since Office 2010 is available online in beta. And since I was on one platform, my older Sony was pretty peppy running whatever I threw at it.

On Monday, I tried shifting back to my Mac. After about a day, I was done. I enjoyed too much the advantages of running my Outlook calendar on one screen, my Outlook mail on another, Microsoft Money on a third screen and so on. I can’t do that on my current Mac. And I want more time to transition away from from Windows. Also, in the wake of Google’s hacking attack, I’m a little less eager to jump into the cloud as I was in the past.

I sure do miss my Macbook’s keyboard, though. Apple even replaced my worn out N key! And my Mac’s screen is so much nicer, not to mention the look of the Mac overall. I also miss the ability to scroll with multitouch, though I depend on that more when I’m traveling than when I’m using a mouse back in the office.

In another sign that the move might be permanent, I pulled the extra 2GB of memory from my MacBook last night and put it into the Sony, which uses the same type. I’ll probably use the Sony on my next trip, too — since unlike the Mac, it can actually hibernate. That means save my current desktop state and shut down into extremely low power usage. The Mac will only “sleep,” which uses way more power. It hibernates only when it’s about to completely run out of juice, which isn’t handy.

Still, I’m holding out hope. There are some Mac programs like Skitch that I love and miss. If Apple gets the new Macbooks out quickly, I might go back. The clock’s ticking, Steve Jobs. Sure, I might get that shiny new iPad. But you might lose me on your cashcow, those overpriced real computers.

Postscript: So, um, that was a short move. See my follow-up post, Steve Jobs Is The Most Powerful Man Alive – He Breaks My Windows 7 Machine From Afar.

My 11 year old loves Arrested Development. He loves Lego. I guess it was inevitable the two would collide. He’s been busy constructing scenes from Arrested Development out of Lego. Here, Gob is about to make the yacht Lucille disappear:

Here, Gob is hanging out with one of the many girls of low self-esteem during Spring Break:

Here, Gob regrets letting Buster in on his magic (OK, illusion!) act:

After I posted these, he got a request on Twitter for the banana stand and Gob on his Segway. So he dived in:

Curious if others had the inspiration to combine Legos and Arrested Development, I did some searching. I’m asking to get permission to show photos for some of these. In the meantime, you can click to view those that aren’t embedded.

Here’s a nice one of George Michael in flying suit gear taking on the Tobias the Mole over the miniature village that Gob had Buster build:

The photo was taken by Jordan Chesbrough and is used with permission. The scene was created by Jon Furman.

Here’s the banana stand from Camera Wences, and used with permission:

I like Buster with a hooked hand!

From Nannan Z on Flickr (and shown with permission), here’s a huge Gob on the Segway at the construction site:

From unfulphilled on Flickr (and shown with permission), here’s one of the entire Bluth family:

Here’s another of the banana stand with a better Buster, Gob also on a Segway and with flames! The same person also has a great one of the stair car.

Just a quick update from the work-side of my life. Our SMX West search engine marketing conference happens this March 2-4 in California. Working with my co-chair Chris Sherman, we’ve assembled over 50 sessions of search marketing goodness. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is also keynoting — his first time ever speaking at a search marketing conference!

If you know someone who needs basic education, we even have a special SMX Boot Camp track with introductory pricing.

Speaking of pricing, the early bird rate expires this Saturday. So get registered!

To learn more about the show, see the Agenda-At-A-Glance or check out my virtual tour at Search Engine Land, Why You Should Attend SMX West 2010: A Personal Preview, From Danny Sullivan

Today, I logged into Facebook and got a huge, honking message saying they needed my birthday as a “security measure.” Then I got a second overlay message popping up right on top of that to make clear I really needed to enter it.

Color me confused. I thought Facebook already had my birthday. In fact, I know they had it, because I’d given it before to be shown on my profile. But then after they did all those scary privacy changes last December, I took my birthday off my profile.

So WTF? Did pulling it off my public profile mean that Facebook lost its internal record of the date? And why over a month later did Facebook suddenly decide it needed my birthdate. Shouldn’t it have known it was gone back in December, if that’s when it disappeared? And why do they need my birthday as a security measure at all?

Doing a quick search, I discovered these types of prompts have been happening at least since 2007. Peter Keung has a blog post from back then showing the same nag screen I got. He also asked Facebook why they needed his birthday and was told:

For the security of yourself and our other users, we need to verify that you are old enough to use the site. Additionally, there are certain age requirements for particular networks so that the right users are associating with the right network. No information that you provide to Facebook will be distributed or used in any way. Let me know if you have any other questions.

You know what? Want to verify I’m “old enough,” like over 13? Then ask me to pick my current age. You don’t need my exact birthdate to verify age (especially given it’s not really going to be verified anyway). Or ask for my birth month and year. You don’t need the exact date.

Unfortunately, there was no way to use Facebook unless I gave it my birthday. So I did. Or I did off by a few days. The first time, it came back saying I wasn’t old enough — despite having picked my correct birth year. Tried again, again no luck. Third time was a charm — except I then got logged out.

Now when I try to log in, I get this message:

Account Unavailable

Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I didn’t believe this message was correct. Why would only my account suddenly be unavailable due to “site maintenance” that seems to be affecting few other people. I mean, no one else is twittering about this problem. In reality, I suspected a screw-up based on the entire birthday thing.

So, I hit the help area. There’s an entire topic devoted to the “Site Maintanence” issue, telling me:

“Site Maintenance” usually means that we’re making an improvement to the database that your account is stored on. While we’re doing this, you will not be able to access your account. In most instances, this maintenance will last only a few hours. Please note:

• After the maintenance is over, you will still be able to login with the same password.
• Your profile and account will not be affected by the maintenance.
• We don’t do site maintenance on all accounts at the same time, so it is possible that some of your friends will be able to access the site while your account is unavailable.
• It is not necessary to contact us about Site Maintenance.
• If your maintenance lasts longer than 24 hours, please follow these instructions to clear your browser’s cache and cookies.

If you’re still having trouble after trying the above steps, please click here.

OK, so just big time coincidence? Just sit back and it’ll be OK in a few hours. Maybe? But being worried, I went ahead and used the form to request help. I got back this auto-response:

Thanks for your report. Some users have been experiencing difficulty logging into and using the site for several days. Specific symptoms of this issue include:

Inability to log in due to a “Site Maintenance” error message

Missing friends from the Friends page

Errors when trying to access Inbox

Unfortunately, we do not have a specific date for when this issue will be resolved, but we are working to fix it as soon as possible. Please note that this is a temporary display issue and no content has been removed from your account.  Although we are unable respond to every bug report individually, we are reading them. We appreciate your patience.

Woah. The login screen gives me a message saying all will be good in a few hours. Facebook’s help pages give me a message saying all should be good in a few hours. But now Facebook’s autoresponder has no “specific date” for when things will be fixed.

All this started by a process that was designed to supposedly protect my security. I’m not feeling so secure.