Dog Lesson for a Good Puppy

Here's a tip for those of you who might be, or might one day be in the process of training a puppy.

During the other morning's walk, one which for some reason Keeta and I found to be filled with dog encounters, we met yet another lady who was walking her puppy.

How did I, a blind guy, know it was a puppy?

That was easy. She told me she was training her puppy to sit. Proving her point, every few steps she would stop and say to the dog, "Sit." Of course I couldn't tell if there were any gestures or maybe slight pressure applied to the puppy's back end to enforce the command, but the voice was patient and consistent.

Still, I did see one way that her technique might be improved and for whatever my viewpoint might be worth I shared it with her.

"It sounds like you're doing a good job there," I said.

"Not so much," she replied.

"He's looking at me as though he doesn't know what I want or who I'm talking to. And he should know."

"Does he recognize his name?" I wondered.

"Oh yeah, he caught onto that right away. When I call him, he comes. That's why I don't know what's going on here."

"You might want to try speaking his name before you issue the command," was my suggestion, issued with the hope that the lady woudn't mistake me for a well intentioned know it all.

"Ruggles, sit," she entoned.

Ruggles complied instantly and I'm pretty sure he was rewarded with a cookie or two. Speaking a puppy's name before each command can serve a couple of purposes.

With a new puppy or any dog who is new to you and perhaps has a new name, the repeating of the name sound helps the dog to learn that the name sound belongs to him or her. Then, after the dog's identity is clear in its mind, the use of the name sound calls to its attention. The dog knows that the next spoken human words will be directed at him or her and will quite likely pay much greater attention to them.

Get into the habit of speaking your dog's name whenever you command them or even just talk to them. Your dog's name sound is music to his ears, unless of course your dog is a female, in which case it is music to her ears. Either way, chances are, you'll see improved results. Give it a try and see if it works for you.

Contributed by Larry Naessens

Viral Marketing 101

I just learned something today - although I may now consider myself rather worldly.

I have a blog. I have ventured into the worlds of YouTube, Facebook and have done EBay. I have even gone to the Twitter site, although I have yet to twitter. But I have learned that I am still way behind... and just so totally out of it.

So this morning I was following a bus, faced with a big white ad on it's back end, with big black lettering, "I am so over Sarah Marshall", and a reference to the website ihatesarahmarshall.com (naturally!).

I'm thinking, "What the heck! This guy must have issues." Soon after that bus, I see another bus ad, "My Mother never even liked you, Sarah Marshall". Boy, this guy needs some serious therapy. At that point I resolve to go to the website to find out what is going on.

So I go to the site. It's a blogspot blog, much like mine, except this guy has a budget to actually get a domain. And I see this guy really hates Sarah Marshall, and has issues and needs help.

And it's all for the sake of a movie. It's an ad. And it's called Viral Marketing.

Nothing is real. I've been had. But it's effective - they got my attention. They got me, someone who would likely never have given them another thought, to go to their site, and now here I am, blogging about it. This is my introduction to viral marketing.

But consider this a public service, a PSA just for you, perhaps another one of the uninitated, just like me.

So let this be a reminder of some sage advice that your parents likely taught you, and advice that's likely lurking in the dim recesses of your memories from the past:

Just don't believe everything you read.

Contributed by Jamie Naessens

Useless Fun on a Friday

Sometimes it's fun to just surf around, doing stupid stuff on the computer. And now I will share what I discovered.

1. Go to Google
2. Type "google xx-elmer"
3. Click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

Apparently there are bored Google gurus out there with nothing better to do than re-program the Google search page. These aren't even parody pages - they are real Google pages.

A special note from Larry's perspective - sometimes the blind experience of the internet through the eyes of a screen reader is very different than for the rest of us.

For example, type "google 133t"

Screen readers don't like reading these pages. Larry's "talking man", Window Eyes, his screen reader, tries to read everything literally, and tries to make words out of any letter combination, and painfully reads each number out. So when you "google 133t", just think about what kind of sense that would make to someone with a screen reader.

Even an unusual smiley like ;) isn't recognized as a smiley, and his screen reader calls it "semi colon right parenthesis" - and he's left wondering WTF... Anyway back to our Friday Fun.

You can also try:

google gothic
for those with a dark side

google xx-piglatin
alwaysway unfay otay alktay inway iglatinpay

google bsd
Great one to set your homepage for Valentine's Day

google linux
For penguin or operating system lovers

And just in time for some pre-holiday Easter fun:

google easter egg
A cute game for the kids (or yourself) - make sure Java is installed

Note: If you are googling from any of these "special" pages, sometimes you get unexpected results, or no page found. It worked best if I went back to normal Google first, and clicked the I'm Feeling Lucky button from that page.

I wonder if the bunny in the video that I posted earlier today would have done better if he clicked the I'm Feeling Lucky button?

Contributed by Jamie Naessens

RSS for Dummies

I consider myself to be rather clever when it comes to figuring out stuff. I have been a long time user of the computer, and not afraid to try new things, or even old things previously undiscovered (by me).

Now first off, if you are accessing this blog using an rss feed reader or aggregator, this may seem very basic. But that's okay. This can either be a refresher course, or you can use it to share with other RSS newbies out there.

But this RSS thing has had me pretty baffled. They talk about rss readers and aggregators, but what are they exactly? How can it help me?

Well now that I've joined the blogging world from the writing end, I've become more aware of these questions. Maybe I'm a little slow, but I'm okay with that.

They say that if you have a question, that there is likely someone else in the room who has the same question (I'm hoping anyway). I've been wondering for a while, but didn't have the ambition to take it any further. And once I started to try to figure it out, I found vague, or worse, found explanations that were too technical (read, scary), or just too busy promoting themselves, to really get a handle on it.

First stop: Wikipedia

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts

Let me comment on the "Really Simple Syndication" part. If my eyes start to glaze over when I first try to figure something out, I don't think they've succeeded on the simple part.

So now that we got that part of it over with, let's get to the nuts and bolts of this stuff.

I found this video morning, and because the guy who produced this video is very clever, he provided what I needed to easily share with you.

RSS In Plain English

Now I would also like to add one thing that he didn't cover:

Aggregator = RSS Reader

So now you know what I do - and so much smarter for it, don't you think?

There are other ways to get this info to arrive on your desktop, and that is by downloading a simple application, many of them free. This provides a handy icon located right on your desktop, or wherever you keep such handy icons.

Where To Find It

Now I would be remiss if I shared all of this valuable info, and then didn't give you any information about where to find such things. It's a tangled mess of info out there, old and new, so here's a list that can help you sort it out, organized by your operating system:

http://mashable.com/2007/06/11/rss-toolbox/

So invite you to add me to your RSS reader. And you now have all the info you need. There ya go. Happy RSS'ing.

Contributed by Jamie Naessens