Matt Rae

Twingine

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:27:00 -0700

Sweet site for searching on Yahoo and Google at the same time. This is NOT a metasearch, it splits the browser window and shows Yahoo on one side and Google on the other :) Twingine has definitely helped me find what I want faster than using one search over the other.

"Yahoo Search Marketing Review" or "How My Debit Card Was Reported Lost, But Not By Me"

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:29:48 -0700

I was excited to try Yahoo Search Marketing so I could better understand the product my team supports. Well Yahoo did all they claim to do and more.. I put $50 in an account and created a couple ads that brought people to this blog. Yup, I definitely got clicks.. about 20 per day or so. Yay!

The issue came when I got a note from Yahoo saying that another $50 had automatically been deducted from my checking account when my search marketing funds got low. Well, this wasn’t what I expected specifically since the I had my account set to “prepaid”.

So, I emailed Yahoo and asked for a refund since the deducted amount hadn’t already been used for ads. Yahoo happily refunded my money and set my account to something like “prepaid -pay as you go” which shouldn’t automatically add more funds.

No big deal yet.. My money was refunded and all was well. I thought I got a good test drive of Search Marketing. I was surprised come a few days later when my debit card stopped working. I called Wamu and they said that my card had been “reported lost”! I told them I had the card and never reported lost. Unfortunately they couldn’t reactivate my card or give me a replacement with the same number.

After four annoyed calls to Wamu I was finally told that somehow the money Yahoo deducted from checking account and later refunded was considered an “unauthorized transation”.

What a mess. I can’t seem to get straight answers out of anybody at Wamu.. they just shift the conversation toward sending me a new card. Well I’ll be getting the card soon.. I just wish Wamu were a little more interested in figuring out what went wrong so it doesn’t happen again.

Thanks Arnold for the advice.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:45:16 -0700

Thanks Arnold for the advice.

Testing yahoo search marketing

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:17:00 -0700

Hey, so if you showed up here via yahoo search, its likely you clicked on my ad. Since I’m working for Yahoo! sponsered search now, I figured I’d try out the product! Stay tuned for my review :)

Yahoo Job

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:40:28 -0800

I’m moving down to Sunnyvale next week! I’ll be working for Yahoo Production Engineering.

Google Data Center Blueprint

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:47:00 -0800

Google Data Center Blueprint:

Construction still unfinished

"How many people do you think had embarrassing information about them disclosed yesterday because of..."

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 08:52:00 -0800

“How many people do you think had embarrassing information about them disclosed yesterday because of some cookie? Zero. It never happens.”

- Sergey Brin

Remember The Milk!

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:51:00 -0800

Remember The Milk!:

Remember The Milk is a smart online task list. Check out the Firefox extension that integrates RTM into your Gmail page! Superproductive!

Easy copying of SSH keys with ssh-copy-id

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:06:00 -0800

Quit manually adding keys to authorized_keys, checking permissions on .ssh and user’s home directories. http://www.openssh.org/faq.html#3.14

‘ssh-copy-id’ comes with openssh to make this simple. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I didn’t know about it until today.. Anyway, I figured somebody might be in the same boat, so listen to how easy it is to add your key to an account.

$ ssh-copy-id hostname

It should be that easy.

225 Megawatt Data Center in Chicago

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:26:00 -0800

Data Center Knowledge posted this morning about a 225 Megawatt data center being built in Chicago. Considering the data centers announced recently average about 10-20 Mw, this seems huge. It makes one wonder what kind of data centers aren’t announced. Governments surely have their own secret data centers that dwarf most.

Apparently 1 Megawatt is enough to power 10,000 homes.. Buying flourecent bulbs hardly seems significant. I’d like to know how the carbon footprint of one of these data centers compares to that of a comparable number of homes.

10+1 Questions on Innovation to Bjarne Stroustrup

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:40:00 -0800

10+1 Questions on Innovation to Bjarne Stroustrup:

Bjarne Stroustrup is the inventor of c++. Here he’s asked and answers questions about innovation. Really interesting.