NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft 747 back at Patrick Air Force Base

I was driving to swim early last Friday morning when I was surprised to see the NASA 747 parked at Patrick Air Force Base.  During the summer of 2012, the specially modified 747 was a frequent site at Patrick AFB during the time when the last Shuttles were being ferried to their final resting spots in museums.  Since that time I had read in news reports that both the 747's were going to be retired to air museums in California and Texas.  Since that time I have seen one or both of them at Patrick AFB on several occasions in addition to last week.  Maybe there is a new mission and they decided not to park them in the air museums.  One observation is how vulnerable to terrorist or any type of attack these planes are when parked at Patrick.  This photo was taken from my bike just off the A1A road that runs past the base.

Patrick AFB doesn't have much flight activity on a regular basis.  There are some Florida Air National Guard troop carriers stationed there and a couple of old P3's as well.  Every couple of weeks, some old Fighter Jets show up on the weekends, I will try and get a shot of them next time I see them.

Paul Speese

Update on Nike Fuel Band

I have been using my Nike Fuel Band every day for more than 1 year until this week.  I traveled home to Pennsylvania for Spring Break and forgot my USB cable so for the first time in the year I am not wearing it because the battery is dead.  I really miss it, but it did remind me to post some observations of my first year of usage.  I am on my second Fuel Band as the first one crapped out after about 7 months.  To be fair, it still worked fine with the exception of the button.  It kind of got stuck in the down position.  Nike was pretty good about replacing it, we went through the usual debugging process but they pretty quickly understood the problem and I had a new unit within a week.  Since that time it has worked great and the battery life on the new one is improved by a day or two.

I suspect Nike continues to iterate and improve the accelerometer algorithm which interprets motion.  I don't have exact figures to quote you but I have noticed recently that biking with the Fuel Band on my wrist is equivalent to putting it on my shoe.  I will do a test on the same route  with the same level of effort and report back but my sense is that Nike has adjusted the algorithms to recognize cycling and report more accurately.  

Another random observation is that the average Nike Fuel band owner has lost interest in exercise or isn't wearing the band.  I generally earn 4000 Nike Fuel Points per day and generally meet my 3000 point goal 6 of 7 days in week.  In my 50-59 age group the average points per day is less than half of mine and on average they only meet their goal 1 day per week.  Pretty pathetic.  I still wish the Nike Fuel Band was waterproof for swimming laps.  My exercise on swim days is significantly under reported.

All in all I am very happy with the Fuel Band, I would like to see some incorporation of Heart Rate and Waterproof on future versions.

Paul Speese

SEO and Conversion

                                                                       Paul Speese

SEO-It is now all about conversion.  So over the last 4-5 months we have written blogs, assembled FAQ's, continually added new content to the website, created Keyword and search term lists over and over.  After all of that work and time invested we are somewhere on the continuum of what I would call success.  We have reached a level where the majority of our keywords and search terms put us on page 1 of Google.  We are less successful on exact match part numbers, which is frustrating but my sense from watching the activity very closely is that most people search part number families, part number roots, or the overall specification.  So, without fooling myself I think we are in a good place at this point.  So, we get anywhere from 20-40 people a day searching for something relevant to what we sell and they land on one of our pages.  Now what happens?  Do they fill out a quote request?  Do they send an email?  Do they pick up the phone and call?
The answer is no, or more accurately not often enough.  We get a small fraction of visitors actually contacting us, at least that we are aware.  This week we had 3 companies search the exact same part number, an unusual part number that we happen to stock in volume.  All 3 companies hit our website multiple times within 24 hours, did they call us?  Did they send a quote? Did they reach out and ask the obvious technical questions?  NO, NO, NO.  Interestingly, what did happen is that we got an order for the part from a small US based company that had never heard of us.  They must have received information from one of the 3 large companies to buy from us.  You could say that was successful conversion, but our goal is not just a sale but customer acquisition as well.  The 3 European companies searching the part were all in our sweet spot and selling to a proxy here in the US doesn't provide the inroads we desire.
So, again the question arises.  If only a small fraction of the companies who land on our site convert that search to action of some meaningful type, if only to tell us who they are, email address or name, then is this all a waste of time?  We sat around Friday brainstorming on how to increase conversions.  Do we need more and better content?  Maybe.  Do we need to offer free freight?  Maybe.  Do we need to offer discounts for new customers?  Maybe.  I think we will try all three of those ideas over the next couple months and see if that improves our conversion rate.  I would welcome any suggestions.

Paul Speese

Brave new world of SEO

Paul Speese-COO

Part of my responsibilities in my latest assignment are to create a new web site and to generate as much new business from it as possible.  The best way for me to accomplish that objective is to have the largest number of Keywords important to the client land on page 1 of Google, Bing and other leading search engines.  I am about 2 weeks from launching the new web site and I can tell you that I have spent a lot of time and effort to understand the dynamics of Google's search algorithm and through hit and miss tactics we appear to have some success.  There are 3 important elements in successful SEO that I have learned.  The first is to have the content that you want found prominently displayed and searchable in both dynamic and static pages on the web site.  The second is to use Blogging to reinforce the most important content.  The third is to continually update and add new content to both the web site and Blogs.  Using these simple but time consuming tactics we are now on page 1 of Google search results for approximately 75% of our top 200 keywords.  Not bad for 4-5 months worth of work.  We are also on page 1 for approximately 65% of about 45,000 part numbers that are important to the client's core business.

The next challenge is conversion.  We are getting approximately 35 hits per day on the site.  Almost all of them are relevant to the business, we get approximately 5 per week to reach through and contact us for  a quote or other questions.  How do we increase that conversion rate?  That is the key question and will be the subject of my follow up post.

Paul Speese

Nike Fuel Band Update

I have been using my Nike Fuel Band for almost 3 months and have some positive and negative comments for others that are considering buying the device. 

Overall I continue to be happy with the device itself.   The battery life is excellent; I generally only charge it for a short time, from 5 minutes to 30 minutes and have never had it shut down.  If I am at home I generally synch via USB every day but when I am traveling I may go 3-4 days without synching.  Synching does have some other issues.  I would estimate that 10% of the time the synch gets hung up and does not work the first time.  Also, there are frequent software updates to the device and they often require more than one attempt to update the firmware.  My other upload issue is Bluetooth to my IPad; I have never done it successfully.  To be fair, it could be my fault as I have not spent a lot of time on it but the few times I have tried it were unsuccessful. 

Once you have successfully uploaded your data, the website is well designed and quickly provides you the information you want to review.  Check out the screen shot from today. 

 The other screen I look at is the goals hit and Active days.  This is a great motivator to keep up the workouts even though it is hard to make the goal every day, but I console myself by getting it most days, as you can see 69 out of 79, not bad.

 The last area of the web site that I generally look at is “How you compare”.  Frankly, I wish Nike would do a better job with more information about peers and the Nike community but this is a good start.

 Okay, there are a few negatives or bumps in the road.  Nike started a Facebook app to compete with other Nike Fuel Bank users.  I signed up for it and it never worked and it is now gone.  Great idea!  What happened?  On a similar note, I received an email a few days ago that was a report on my June activities.  I was happy to see they were giving comparisons similar to above for peers and the Nike community but it was erroneous, there is no way that it was right, check it out.  

They apparently compared my daily average to other’s monthly average.   This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence; I can understand it if I were part of a Beta user group but this is in full production. 

There have been a couple of other annoyances like last week I met my goal but the system captured a lower number.  I have had to reset the device a few times, but that is quick and relatively easy. 

Overall I am quite happy with the device and the web site.  My real hope is that Nike continues to invest and refine the system’s algorithms to better interpret the data, i.e. cycling/elliptical versus just steps.  I also am anxious to see what they are going to do with the publishing an API for developers.  Jawbone UP has an unauthorized API available, Fitbit has a published API.  I think this data is more valuable in the context of overall health and wellness apps that include more than just Nike Fuel/calorie expenditure. 

Nike apparently has a limited API release for developers creating music integration apps that allow for different music to play based upon activity feeds from the Fuel band.  That is cool, but we need more data liberation for apps we would like to create. 

Paul Speese

How to use your Nike Fuel for cycling

I love my new Nike Fuel but wish that Nike had been more aggressive with their accelerometer algorithms and could detect and report activities than walking steps.  But that is a topic for another session. 

I was frustrated that Nike Fuel under reported Fuel Points and Calories burned when cycling.  Look at the chart below on a day where I did 45 minutes on the Elliptical in the morning  and 60 minutes on my bike.  I definitely worked harder on the bike but when worn on the wrist Nike Fuel under reports Fuel Points and Calories burned:  

The following day I did exactly the same Elliptical workout for 45 minutes and rode the same route on the bike, with the exception that I wore the Nike Fuel secured to my running shoe.  Check out this chart:

I suspect this approach may over report cycling Fuel points and calories burned but it is more accurate than wearing the Nike Fuel on your wrist. 

A couple people expressed concern about losing or damaging the Nike Fuel Band by wearing it on your shoe.  I didn't worry much, I simply locked in onto one of the laces and double secured it by tying the lace over it as pictured below.  It may look goofy but it is very secure and hasn't moved on the two rides used in this way:

Nike Fuel Secured to Running Shoe Top View:

Nike Fuel Secured to Running Shoe Side View:

New Android Ice Cream Sandwich Nexus

I bought the new Samsung Nexus Galaxy phone last week.  This is the first Android phone shipping with Ice Cream Sandwich version of the O/S.  I waited for the Verizon Wireless version of the phone, for many reasons. 

                                                                  Samsung Galaxy Nexus

1.  4G LTE footprint of Verizon is awesome and only getting better.

2.  Verizon is my primary provider and I am sick of ATT and T Mobile slow networks.

3.  My DroidX was showing its age and I wanted to replace my primary phone with a faster phone that had front and rear cameras and could do effective video conferencing over 4G

So, I broke down and bought the new Nexus, which is what I am going to call it.  My first impressions were just ok.  It is thin, the screen is nice, the speed is good and it slides in and out of my pocket easily.  It does not have the WOW factor that the original Nexus had on me.  This is a much more subtle phone, it is more of a covert champion rather than a shiny new "look at me" type of phone.  I have had it now for 3 days and it is growing on my as the strong silent type of phone versus the flashy look at me phone.  I really had wanted to purchase the Galaxy S II phone but Verizon never picked it up.  I assumed this phone would be out in October and it has been a long wait, over 2 months later than anticipated.  Then to add insult to injury, Verizon and Google got into a pissing contest over the NFC enabled Google Wallet which delayed the release until December 15th.  

                                                            LifeSignals Vital Signs App

One of the coolest features with the new Nexus is the facial recognition screen locking.  I found it very easy and intuitive to set up and it works very well in normal lighting conditions.  It does not work well if you are wearing sunglasses or a hat.  I did it this morning while working out on the elliptical, worked fine each time.  It worked while I was driving as well.  If it does not recognize you, it will prompt you for a PIN number after a few seconds, it is not annoying at all. 

Compatibility with the LifeSignals Application in Ice Cream Sandwich:  I was worried that I bought a new phone for my own use and that the current version of LifeSignals App would not function.  I was pleasantly surprised, it functions perfectly and looks terrific. 

Battery life is a probably my biggest complaint.  In Mobile Network settings you can de-select 4G LTE and select only 3G.  I did that this morning and it appears to noticeably improve battery life.  I will keep it in 3G mode unless I plan to do a demonstration of our App or am using Video Conferencing.  I don't have 4G in Doylestown where I live, so it is a moot point for when I am at home.

My second biggest complaint is Verizon.  They raised the price of Hotspot from $20 to $30 per month for 4G Hotspot.  One cool new feature in Ice Cream Sandwich is there are now 2 methods for tethering the phone.  In addition to turning the phone into a Wifi Router you have the option of using Bluetooth Tethering.  I haven't used it yet, but I assume that is handy in the new Ford Synch systems and maybe in noisy Wifi environments.  It may be a little more secure (through obscurity) than traditional Wifi hotspot in Airports and other busy areas.  

All in all, I am very happy with the phone and feel that I will like it more as time goes by.  I would highly recommend the phone to any Android user.